When the front door of Fenton Works creaks open, the sleeping teen on the couch nearby doesn't even twitch. He's been asleep for at least an hour by this point, and his fever ridden brain just can't bother to alert him to the company he'd just gained. The little ghost pup nuzzled into his torso, however, does notice and he wakes drowsily to give a quiet yip of greeting to those he recognizes as friendly and familiar faces. The noise is enough to grab the attention of the group of people at the door, who'd just finished toeing their shoes off. Generally speaking, it isn't common practice for Sam and Tucker to remove their shoes when they came to visit the Fenton Residence, but it had started raining on the way there from school. Jazz, on the other hand, makes a habit of not tracking dirt in her room, and she certainly doesn't want mud covering the floor she had just cleaned yesterday.

The yip from seconds ago directs Jazz's attention to the loveseat. Taking note of the lump on the couch, Jazz can just scantily see from her current vantage point, she gathers that it must be her brother.

Playing the part of a good older sister, Jazz hushes her brother's two friends when they start a mild fuss over who would get to see their friend first. A slight chill falls over her as she pads over to the couch, and she stops short at the sight she's greeted with. Her hand flies to her mouth in an attempt to physically hold in the squeal that almost escaped her, and she has to look away to avoid the impulsive giggles that are threatening to gush from her throat. Cujo cocks his head at the strange behavior of his friend's kin, and – by the looks of it – seems worried about her choice of actions, but he doesn't move to investigate further being perfectly comfortable where he is.

Sam and Tucker look at each other, raising an eyebrow at Jazz's odd little performance. They'd been mid stride over to where she's standing, when a muffled squeak popped from her mouth and effectively stopped them short. Neither of them understand what's making her struggle to hold in her laughter until they come close enough to peek over the arm of the loveseat. Sam just manages to hold in a similar reaction, but feels a distinct heat rise to her cheeks despite her attempts to beat the warmth down. Tucker, however, has no trouble snapping an unnecessary amount of pictures from various angles. He tucks them away for blackmail material later as he chuckles evilly to himself. Oh yes, what a wonderful friend he is.

On the couch lies a napping Danny, curled tightly around a distractedly vigilant Cujo who appears to have been asleep only moments before. Danny's hair is ruffled, his face is flushed, and he seems entirely unperturbed by the TV playing reruns of a sitcom from the eighties just feet away. Jazz, Tucker, and Sam take a brief second to thank every force they can think of that they'd made it back before Jack and Maddie did. It would have been an absolute disaster if they found their son cuddling with a ghost in their house. Sick or no, they would have forced Danny into quarantine and endless tests, and captured Cujo for experiments.

It takes a moment but, Jazz manages to snap herself out of her giggly daze as she notices something odd. (Which is strangely not the ghost dog her brother is content to snuggle with). She leans closer, eyes slightly narrowed as she scans over the scene with a more critical eye. What is it that's nagging at her so much? She can't quite but her finger on it. Sam and Tucker stop chuckling at the trail of drool coming from their friend's mouth at the notice of Jazz's sudden silence, and knit their eyebrows together at her curious behavior. Narrowed eyes widen when she finally realizes what it is that caught her unconscious attention: the blanket. She has no memory of ever seeing that blanket in the house before. Her mind begins to race, surely it can 't be that important, but with her brother she'd learned long ago that every detail in his life is significant in some way no matter how small.

So where had the blanket come from?

She turns to her brother's friends, questioning look firmly in place, "Have either of you seen that blanket before?"

They glance at each other, then her with a look that spoke volumes of how sane they think she is for asking such an odd question.

They answer together, "Uh no," and it almost comes out as a question.

"Why is it important?" Tucker asks.

"I'm not quite sure," Jazz's replies softly, speaking almost entirely to herself and then continues more loudly to them, "but I can't shake the feeling that it must be significant in some way. You know how things are with him."

They do, probably better than she does, and her comment brings about a string of their own questions. The unimposing dark blue, lilac stitched, fuzzy fabric suddenly becomes the subject of the scrutiny and concerns of all present.

They stand quietly crowding the couch for a moment, before Jazz figures she won't get much thinking done half hungry. She turns and walks to the kitchen, leaving her brother's friends to ponder while she goes to grab her daily after school snack. The air is cool in the kitchen as she strides over to the fridge, and she uses that moment to skim over her surroundings, taking idle note of what she sees. She thinks little of the dishes on the table before she opens the refrigerator and remembers her parents' failed experiment last night. She does two things: first, she almost smacks herself for not remembering and leaving her brother to fend for himself, and second, her eyes snap to the innocent dishes on the table that definitely weren't there this morning. She takes two large steps over to them and examines them closely, finding that they smell faintly of cumin and cayenne, two spices she knows her mother hasn't bought in months. If she was suspicious of something peculiar happening in her absence before, she's sure of it now.

Something had happened, but what?

Jazz rushes up to Danny's room, completely sure that she'd find another clue there. Tucker and Sam follow her, curious as to what got her so worked up. When she reaches his room, Tucker and Sam not far behind, a mild chill settles over them as she gives the space a scrutinizing once and twice over. Jazz's eyebrows knit together when nothing jumps out as particularly out of place. She'd been so sure...

Sam nudges her in the side with her elbow, and Jazz looks over to her with an inquiring look, before she notices that both Sam and Tucker have their heads tilted back with their eyes on the ceiling. She follows their line of sight until she sees what caught their attention.

"Are those scorch marks?" Jazz asks rhetorically.

Of course they are, and she doesn't need the nods she receives in response from Sam and Tucker to know that. Jazz is baffled for a few fleeting seconds, before it hits her like a smack to the face. She'd thought that the chill of the house had to do with a possible issue with the heater again, but when she really thinks about it, it's only cool in a few parts of the house. For the second time in the span of ten minutes Jazz nearly smacks herself. Ghosts. Of course, it's always ghosts.

She turns heel and marches back down to her sleeping brother, Sam and Tucker in toe, while she runs through her thoughts with a fine tooth comb. Ghosts, then it was ghosts, but why wasn't the house wrecked? She glares at her brother when she comes to a stop near the couch; he'd better not have disobeyed her. Jazz shakes off the thought, no, even if Danny had engaged the ghosts there would be more evidence of them being here. There hadn't even been an attack on the rest of the town while Danny was out of commission and – considering that the attacks have been becoming more and more frequent recently – it can't have been a coincidence.

But the facts still don't line up.

It's the perfect opportunity for the ghosts to cause chaos entirely uninterrupted, what, with Danny being ill... Wait. Danny has a fever, ghosts were in the house, the house wasn't destroyed, and there were no attacks during school. Jazz looks at Cujo appraisingly as she speculates, he tilts his head at her and his tongue lolls out of his mouth has he pants quietly. It just doesn't make any sense, it's almost as if...

The ghosts were bored without someone to fight.

That's it, it has to be. They came to bother him while he could do next to nothing about it, and got so desperate for someone to fight that they actually decided to help him get better sooner. It's completely asinine and makes less than no sense, but when she thinks about some of Danny's enemies, it doesn't seem all that implausible.

Jazz snorts, of course this sort of thing would happen to her little brother. She wouldn't be surprised if Clockwork himself were in on it. She glances at the blanket, her lip twitches, and she guffaws out a laugh. Sam and Tucker look almost concerned for her mental health by this point. They can't help but be extremely confused as they watch her support herself on the arm of the couch, clutching her stomach while she laughs, desperately trying to keep from waking Danny. Meanwhile, Jazz is beside herself at the mental image she just got of Clockwork reading her baby brother a bedtime story, and tucking him in for a nap. And the dishes in the kitchen. There's no other ghost she can think of that's affiliated with cooking like the Lunch Lady is, and just the thought of her blowing the steam off of a spoonful of soup as she feeds it to Danny is enough to send the redhead to her knees in laughter.

It's just so ridiculous.

The best part of it though, is that it's so utterly typical too. What has her life become if this is considered almost ordinary? Ghosts nursing her little brother back to health, yeah sure, totally normal. Jazz wonders what she would have thought of such an idea a few years ago.

Balderdash, is what.

Sam and Tucker are still staring at her when she finally turns her attention to them. She nearly starts laughing after she sees the kind of looks they're giving her.

"You guys are going to love this," Jazz breathes out as she begins to tell them what she had discovered, not even bothering to pick herself up from the floor. She isn't done laughing, not by a long shot. They would definitely get a chuckle out of this one, she's sure of it.

Thank you to the many people who read this story! I've had a few people ask me if I would ever consider writing more of this fic, and I decided I would if enough people read it, and I'm happy to announce that, that goal was reached recently. Also, I needed a quick break from working on my other fic, by writing something a little lighter to keep my creativity flowing. I do hope this was able to meet your expectations, and would love to hear your feed back! Feel free to point out any mistakes to help me improve upon this work. Until next time,

-Rookie (LS)

I recently changed my account name, just so everyone is aware. Rookthepawn is no more, Lilacspectacles has taken its place.

Here's a song I've been enjoying lately:

Mystery Skulls - Magic