Disclosure
A Danny Phantom fanfic by BenRG
Disclaimer
Danny Phantom and the characters, situations, technologies and locations of the Danny Phantom universe were created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon Television. This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the world-wide web. No infringement of any trademark or copyright is intended or implied.
Author's Notes
This story was inspired by "The Ghost Portal's Done it Again!" by Half-Ghost, who is the person who came up with the credible idea for how Jazz could end up in the situation described in this story. I credit them entirely with the initial concept of this story. I hope that I'm not treading on any toes to use it as the jumping-off point for my own little tale about our favourite Ghost-Boy hero and his friends and family.
Half-Ghost, if you have any problems with this story, please feel free to email or PM me so we can discuss it.
Censor: T
Book 1 – Jazz Phantom
Chapter 1 - Metamorphosis
Jasmine 'Jazz' Fenton supposed that she had the right to feel lucky.
Okay, her parents varied between eccentric and outright insane with their monomania on catching ghosts. She had a kid brother who, by some freak of mischance, had been turned into a half-ghost superhero. Worse still, she lived in Amity Park, a kind of localised magnet for all things paranormal. Despite these things, she managed to have a remarkably contented life. She was doing well with her studies. Her grades were more than good enough and she was confident that, in time, she would gain acceptance to the college of her choice. Okay, there wasn't a 'significant other' in her life right now, but she wasn't in a hurry like a lot of her peers. Frankly, she thought that it was silly, trying to find a life partner whilst still in high school. Not everyone was as touched by fate as her brother, after all, who already seemed to have found a near-perfect match (although the poor clueless dope clearly didn't know it yet).
Nonetheless, she felt lucky. Until today. Today, she feared, was the day her luck finally and completely ran out.
She had been helping Danny with his ghost-hunting activities for some time, helping him to collate and codify the knowledge of ghosts, their nature, sociology, behaviour and unique world that he and his friends were painstakingly gathering as his adventures multiplied. She thus immediately recognised the malevolent creature known as 'Skulker' as soon as it appeared in her parents' laboratory. The self-proclaimed 'greatest hunter in the Ghost Zone' was obsessed with conquering the toughest 'prey' and taking macabre trophies for its collection. She knew it had sworn to take the life and skin of her beloved baby brother. Understandably, despite her fear, she wasn't about to let the creature get out of the lab and start chasing after Danny again.
It wasn't until much later that she would laugh and realise that her half-ghost kid brother was far better equipped to tackle the cybernetic monstrosity than she was. All she knew at the time was that Skulker would hurt Danny over her cold, rotting corpse. She grabbed one of her mother's ecto-blaster handguns from the work table next to her and shot the creature whilst it was still monologuing interminably about what it would do to Danny when it got its hands on him.
Unfortunately, that was pretty much the last shot that she got in. Skulker was massively stronger than The Box Ghost (the only ghost that Jazz had previously tackled single-handed) and was even stronger than Johnny-13's girlfriend Kitty (who Jazz had crossed... ecto-blasts with on more than one occasion). All Jazz could do was use every bit of her martial arts and gymnastics skill to keep ahead of a nearly-unending hail of blaster bolts, machinegun bursts and fire-and-forget anti-personnel micro-missiles. Finally, Skulker tired of the target practice and swept forward, feinting to the left before firing a grappling line at the young woman's ankles as she back-pedalled from where she had thought he as aiming his next shot. Snared, Jazz fell onto her backside and Skulker was on her in a moment snatching Jazz by the hair and lifting up into the air.
"You did well, little fireball," the huge ghost rumbled. "You are more than worthy prey for a lesser hunter. For one such as I, however, you are only a distraction." There was a metallic 'snick' and Skulker raised his other hand, two 18-inch long serrated knife blades emerging from his wrist bracer, perfectly spaced for severing a human head from its body.
Jazz, despite being on the edge of hysteria, somehow remembered that she was still armed. "Don't be so sure, ecto-breath!" she shrieked in a combination of terror and fury. She levelled her handgun at the creature's face and put an ecto-blast right in-between its eyes. With a roar of fury, Skulker threw Jazz across the room and followed that up with a plasma blast from his shoulder-mounted cannon. Blinded by Jazz's last shot, he missed and the bolt (which nearly took off Jazz's ear) struck something behind her and she felt the wave of heat from the resulting explosion.
Jazz's back struck the wall with nearly bone-snapping force and the world briefly turned into flashing stars. Darkness beckoned. Somehow, Jazz fought it off as Skulker advanced on her with all the pity and inevitability of an avalanche.
Desperately, Jazz fired at the oncoming behemoth but Skulker was barely phased, jerking briefly away from the strike to the shoulder before slapping the blaster out of her hand. Skulker reached forward with his right hand and seized the young woman around the throat, his huge hand easily encircling her neck. He effortlessly lifted her into the air. Jazz pounded and scratched uselessly at the huge metallic hand, trying to loosen its' grip enough so that she could at least breathe. As the darkness closed in from the edge of her vision, she looked into Skulker's glowing red eyes. "As I said, little fireball, you are a distraction," he growled. "Don't worry though: Your precious little brother will be joining you soon enough."
With an almost dismissive gesture Skulker threw Jazz away. The young woman found herself flying though the air again, this time directly at the Ghost Portal. She knew that, outside of the Spectre Speeder or without a sealed HAZMAT suit, no human would last more than a few seconds in the alien continuum - hell there wasn't even air to breathe! With the curiously detached clarity of one who was about to die, she noticed that some of Skulker's earlier weapons-fire had damaged the Portal's control mechanism. Instead of a steady green vortex, the portal was filled with blue-white lightning and showers of yellow electrical sparks.
Then she entered the damaged Portal.
Then the pain began.
Jazz hadn't realised that the act of dying would take so long and hurt so much. Lightning crawled over her skin and Jazz felt as if her every nerve ending was being seared away. She swore that she could see her bones glowing through her skin. All she could do was writhe helplessly in the midst of the merciless arcing energy fields and scream and scream and scream.
Consciousness returned slowly. Jazz was lying on the floor of the lab, just outside of the Portal, which had now shut down. Every joint ached and every nerve ending sang with pain. She looked at the white object in front of her and wondered what it was. Then she realised it was her left hand, clad in the glove of one of her mother's old HAZMAT suits, which she had been wearing whilst taking her turn at clearing up the lab. With a groan, Jazz hauled herself to her feet.
I... I need help! Ambulance. Got to call an ambulance!
As she staggered towards the stairs, Jazz did not immediately notice the various anomalies. Normally, the HAZMAT suit was blue with black gloves, boots and neck. Right now, it was maroon-red with white boots, neck and gloves. Jazz also began to realise that she wasn't making a noise as she walked across the lab. Then she realised that she wasn't breathing... and didn't feel the need to breathe. The young woman's mouth dropped open. She placed a shaking hand against the side of her neck. No pulse. It was at that point that she noticed the green-white ectoplasmic glow outlining her body.
When Jazz's mind could process sensory data again, she was curled up in a foetal ball against the wall by a work bench, sobbing hysterically. She was dead! A ghost!
A thousand contradictory thoughts collided in her head. She had to run away! Get as far away from her friends and family as she could! Ghosts were dangerous, or so Mom and Dad always warned - they didn't really have thoughts or feelings, just overwhelming obsessions and the power to try to fulfil them. She could hurt people in a blind need to achieve some weird goal of hers! In any case, her parents were professional ghost hunters and the last thing she wanted to do in the first day of her afterlife was have her family trap her and pick her apart... What was Dad's favourite phrase...? Oh yeah: 'molecule by molecule'!
Whoa! Ease down there, Jazzy! She had to focus and try to be logical. Panic at this stage would not only be counter-productive, it would be the enemy of achieving anything useful.
She didn't feel the overwhelming need to do anything right now and she certainly didn't want to hurt anyone. Of course, she didn't know how long that would last. However, she had to admit that this circumstance was oddly useful. She had a lot unsaid to the people in her life and now she had the chance to say it. After that... Well, she wasn't sure what she would do after that. Finding someplace to haunt and spending the rest of eternity going bump in the night didn't exactly appeal. What alternative was there though? She wished that she had met some of the ghosts in positions of authority that Danny knew... Danny! Of course! Her little brother was half-ghost and could help her! He would either know or could find out how she could 'pass over' or whatever it was when ghosts were finally ready to move on to whatever happened to non-ghostly dead people.
A slightly crazy giggle escaped Jazz's lips. She had to cool down - she was starting to mentally babble and that was never a good sign.
Jazz slowly and shakily stood up and looked around the lab. The place was a shambles. There was, thankfully, no sign of her... her... her body – the damaged ghost portal had probably vaporised it. On a certain level, that was a relief. She was glad that Mom and Dad wouldn't be confronted with her charred corpse when they got home. However, it did leave her with the responsibility to remain at the Fenton Works until they returned. They might be exasperating, but she owed them an explanation of what had happened to their daughter.
Jazz was about to head up the stairs when she was struck by a thought. She had always wondered what it was like for Danny and now she had an opportunity to find out! If nothing else, she owed it to science to try to replicate her little brother's experimental findings!
Jazz stood still for a moment and remembered Danny's description of trying to feel empty... 'like a wind is blowing right through you' as he put it. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensation and, as Danny said he did, willed herself off the ground.
Jazz didn't feel so different but, when she opened her eyes, she found herself semi-transparent and half-way through the basement ceiling with her head and shoulders in the living room of the Fenton family home. Jazz was so surprised that she went fully corporeal, getting stuck half-way through the floor. Jazz screamed in panic and struggled helplessly for a moment before suddenly realising how stupid she was being. "Smooth, Fenton, real smooth," she told herself with a slightly self-deprecating chuckle. This time keeping her eyes open, she concentrated on the same sensations. As soon as her white boot-clad feet were clear of the floor, she willed herself corporeal again and dropped lightly to the floor.
Jazz grinned to herself. Most girls were paranoid about their body weight. Well, she was literally and figuratively beyond that concern now. Ectoplasm was so diffuse a material that Jazz doubted that she weighed more than a pound!
On a strange instinct, Jazz turned to the mirror on the wall over the cabinet where Mom kept various books, photo albums and maps. Jazz looked at her ghostly features with an odd sense of detachment. Her physical features had not changed but it was like looking at a photographic negative of her face. Her skin had darkened to a tan-green shade like Danny's when he was in full ghost mode. Her red hair had gone a pale, eggshell blue like that of the rock star ghost Ember McLean and even her hair-band had changed from its normal blue to a deep maroon-red. What really caught and held her attention were her eyes. Like her brother, she had bright blue eyes, inherited from her father. Now, however, her eyes were a bright, unnatural energetic green, visibly glowing in the dimly-lit room.
My eyes are the same colour as Danny's, Jazz thought in a curiously detached way. Was this the first stage, she wondered? Would she slowly lose her emotions and her ability to sense the surreal wrongness of her situation until she was fully ghost - free of all emotion and conscience and aware only of a cold determination to achieve her goals no matter who she hurt?
Jazz staggered away from the mirror and collapsed onto the couch, hating with all of her heart the way that the cushions did not compress under her minuscule weight. It wasn't fair! Her time shouldn't have come yet! There was so much she wanted to do! So much she wanted to achieve! She wanted to know love and to have children of her own! She wanted to make her mark on the world and help people heal their minds and hearts as a practising psychiatrist! It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair! IT WASN'T FAIR!
Jazz Fenton curled up in a ball on the couch and, face pressed into her gloved hands, she wept, screamed and wailed inarticulately until her mind shut down and she was aware no more...
Jazz jerked awake when the front door burst open. Danny stood in the doorway, looking considerably worse for the wear. Tucker had a very visible black eye and Sam was cradling her left arm and had three parallel scratches on her right cheek. "Danny!" Jazz gasped as she staggered to her feet. "Danny! Are you okay?"
Danny visibly started when he saw his sister. In a moment, his expression of surprise turned into joy and he leapt forward, practically colliding mid-air with Jazz and hugging her as if he was afraid she would just vanish. "Jazz! You're okay! Thank God! He said… he said that he'd killed you!"
Skulker, her mind reminded her. Guilt clenched at her heart when she realised that she had been so focussed on her own grief that she had not thought to warn her little brother of the ghostly menace out for his hide. "Was it Skulker?"
"Yeah, he tried to get the drop on us by overshadowing Tucker!"
"It almost worked," Tucker added bitterly, his voice laden with self-accusation. Jazz made a mental note to schedule time to talk the usually-upbeat technological genius out of his pointless and unjustified sense of guilt.
"It wasn't your fault Tucker," Danny snapped. "We're just lucky that Skulker stinks as an actor and we were able to see through him."
"Not before Sam got hurt," Tucker sighed.
Sam slapped her friend on the shoulder and winced, clutching her left elbow again. "Hey! I told you not to worry about it!" the Goth girl snapped. "We all know the risks in this game! Sh... er..." Sam shot Jazz a guilty look. "Stuff happens."
Jazz had turned to the cabinet under the mirror and pulled out one of the first aid kits that Mom kept around the house. As she did so she wondered at the fact that her brother and his friends had not remarked on her 'make-over'. As she stood up straight, she glanced in the mirror and realised that her eyes and hair were their normal colour and that she was wearing a periwinkle-blue spaghetti-strap top and bell-bottom jeans. Jazz gasped and then realised that she was breathing. There was the deep, reassuring warmth of blood and the throb of a heartbeat that Jazz had not really noticed until she had 'lived' without it.
Jazz froze for a moment at the sight of her indisputably human features and clothing. Was it all a dream? she wondered hazily. If it was... how did I know about Skulker? Jazz was so surprised that the first-aid kit dropped out of her hands. With a muttered curse, the redhead leant down to pick it up... only to see her fingers pass right through the box. Jazz bit her bottom lip, forcing down a need to scream. She screwed her eyes shut and willed herself fully corporeal before picking up the kit.
"How badly hurt are you, Danny?" she asked as she turned around, trying to keep the squeak of stress and panic out of her voice.
"I heal fast," Danny announced. "Look at Sam's arm first. Skulker was yanking on it pretty hard!"
"Danny! Please remember to look after yourself!" Sam's exasperated plea brought a slight smile to Jazz's lips.
"Sam! Look, will you just let me worry about you for once?"
Jazz forced herself not to giggle, catching the amused glint in Tucker's eyes. The two of them already acted like a married couple! What would they be like when they finally admitted to each other that they liked each other and started dating for real? "Danny," Jazz said aloud. "I want to check you over whilst I put together a sling for Sam's arm. Please take off your shirt, little brother."
To be continued…
