A/N: OK, this is sort of fillerish, couldn't find a good place to break it off so I just chose a random point. Sorry.

chapter 5

"OK, run it again," Fenton said, leaning over Foley who was seated at the cluttered desk in their tiny office.

Foley moved his mouse, clicked the media player and restarted the recording. Standing behind Fenton, detective Sawyer looked around the office, having already seen the images so many times he could probably reconstruct them frame by frame. The office hadn't changed much since the last time he visited, over a month ago, except for the new looking computers and ghost... things. He studied them. They looked like weapons, long, white rifles with strange contraptions on top of them.

Sighing, he took a sip from his coffee and grimaced at the strength of the black substance. He didn't complain though. He had gotten little to no sleep that morning, and had finally dragged himself out of bed way in the afternoon. Neither Fenton nor Foley looked much better though.

He looked back at the laptop the two ghost hunters were staring intently at. It looked brand new too, with a large, high resolution external monitor attached to it. Next to it, an equally new looking printer and scanner. The rest of the office, the desks, the shelves on the wall, the chairs, were still old and battered. Books were piled up high on the floor because there was no space left on the shelves. Overflowing trashcan. Ancient looking desk lamp. It was clear what these people's priorities were: equipment, not a fancy office. Thinking about the GIW and their plans for a brand new luxurious 'research' center on the edge of town, he found this strangely comforting.

"And you're saying the ghost detectors never showed any activity?"

Sawyer shrugged and looked at Fenton, who was now looking at him instead of at the screen.

"Nothing at all. At first we thought it was just malfunctioning, but then the same thing happened at the second break in." He nodded at the screen. "Guy walks into the store like there's no walls, no alarm system, yet the ghost detectors every jewelry shop had installed after Danny Phantom robbed them a few years back never went off." Was it his imagination or did Fenton flinch? "Then he snatches only the most expensive jewelry and leaves the same way. There's no sign of a break-in or that he even touched anything."

Fenton stared into the distance for a moment, and Sawyer turned to Foley. "I'm going to have to show these to the GIW soon," he said, "Even though the detectors didn't show anything. If they had, it'd have been a clear cut case, and I wouldn't have bothered you. But I want to know what I'm dealing with and they're..." He hesitated, trying to find a way to say he had more faith in 'Specter Detectors' than the official government agency as diplomatically as possible.

"Fools?" Foley supplied, "Incompetent idiots? Arrogant twits? Overdressed..."

"We get it," Fenton said distractedly.

He leaned forward and pressed a button, starting the footage of the robbery again, a strange expression on his face. Foley watched him for a moment, and then turned to Sawyer.

"Can we have a look at the ghost detectors?" he asked.

Danny paused at the entrance of the jewelry shop - 'Starlight Diamonds', the second store that had been robbed in just as many nights – and seemed to collect himself before going in. Of his three companions, only Tucker knew what he was doing, why he didn't go in immediately. Detective Sawyer looked at the ghost hunter oddly. Gary, having arrived at the office at his fiancee's orders just before they left, was obviously not paying attention because he bumped into Tucker. He muttered an apology.

Tucker frowned. He knew that if Danny had to handle a ghost detector, he had to suppress his ghostly side to a point it was hardly there at all, had to try and bury his ectoplasmic signature so deep he would be as human as possible. He just wished the half ghost was a little less obvious about it. His behavior certainly was raising some suspicions. And neither making a police detective nor your future brother in law suspicious seemed like a good idea. Tucker needed to step in and create a diversion – and he had just the thing.

"Hey Danny, thinking about what ring to get Sam?" he asked.

Danny turned to him and glared. Tucker grinned at him, pleased with the fact that even though Danny was obviously annoyed, there was not the slightest hint of green in his eyes. Danny's scowl deepened, but then he shrugged, turned away from Tucker and opened the door, ducking under the police tape. Detective Sawyer followed him in after whispering something to the policeman standing guard next to the door, and Tucker nudged a clearly uncomfortable Gary before stepping inside.

The shop was dark. The showcases which should have been holding jewelry looked uncommonly bland when the clever lightening which normally made diamonds sparkle and emeralds greener than green was turned off. The only light came from the huge front windows. Tucker looked outside into the quiet street, his vision slightly blocked by the inverted words 'Starlight Diamonds'. He dropped his bag with a thud.

"Careful with that," Danny said.

"Why, what's in it?" Gary asked.

Danny looked at him and raised his eyebrows, as if he only just now noticed him. Gary looked back at him defiantly, obviously having decided not to be intimidated by him.

"You'll see," Danny said curtly. He turned to the waiting detective. "Can I see it?"

Sawyer nodded, rounded the counter and disappeared into the back of the store, to return moments later with a chair. He placed it next to the counter and was about to climb on top of it when Tucker intervened.

"Here, let me. This is my specialty anyways," he said.

Sawyer shrugged and stepped back, letting Tucker climb the chair to reach the small, hardly noticeable ghost detector device mounted to the wall right beside the video surveillance camera. Two small screws and a disconnected wire later had the thing sitting on the counter. Danny picked it up and turned it around in his hands, and only Tucker noticed the look of concentration on his face. He crossed his fingers. Setting the thing off wouldn't be a total disaster, it could always be explained away with a malfunction, but it would be better not to attract attention to the fact that Danny set off these things on a regular basis at all.

"Thing looks alright," Danny said, "It has a backup battery." He looked up. "Tucker?"

Tucker stepped back, retrieved his backpack from the floor and opened it, a curious Gary looking at its contents with interest. He was not disappointed, and his eyes widened when Tucker opened a dark canister and carefully retrieved a small vial containing a glowing green substance.

The ghost alarm started blaring.

Tucker winced at the piercing sound and quickly put the vial back into the shielded canister, knowing that the ghost alarm not only produced a loud noise to warn any human in the neighborhood a ghost was near, but that this particular model also produced a high frequency signal particularly unpleasant to ghosts. Danny looked pained.

"OK," he said, "Clearly the thing is working."

"What was that?" Gary asked, "Is that ectoplasm? How did you get a hold of that?"

"We catch ghosts," Danny said before Tucker could formulate a more diplomatic answer, "What do you think?"

Gary mumbled something and withdrew into himself. Tucker stepped forward and took the ghost detector out of Danny's hands to study it, but he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. It was a fairly standard issue detector, based on the original design by Jack Fenton, perfected by his wife Maddie and now in mass production in a small factory on the edge of Amity Park. They were actually pretty good detectors, and Danny had been complaining about them endlessly in his emails to his friends when they were in college a few years back.

"So," Danny said, "We have a ghost that doesn't set off ghost detectors and who's obsession clearly is robbing jewelry stores."

Sawyer nodded. "Yes. And we need to catch it quickly or I get the GIW shoved into my investigation and they have a tendency to... well."

'Demolish everything and then declare the ashes ghost free," Tucker supplied.

"Really?" Gary asked, looking slightly taken aback.

"No." Detective Sawyer glared at Tucker. "But they tend to see ghosts everywhere, attribute everything to ghosts."

"Like a certain person we know," Tucker mumbled. Behind him, he heard Gary stifle a snort.

Danny waved his hand impatiently. "This is a ghost. We'll figure out why he doesn't set off the alarm later. What we need to do now is find out why he's robbing the stores."

"Ghosts have obsessions," Tucker said, "This ghost is obsessed with jewelry, more specifically, robbing jewelry stores. Most likely he was a criminal when he was alive, and he probably robbed jewelry stores before."

"This store," Danny said, "And the other one as well. Can you look into that? It might help us."

Sawyer nodded, retrieved his notebook and scribbled something down in it. Tucker looked at him in amazement and was about to comment on the man's archaic note taking when he saw Gary grinning at him. He closed his mouth and contented himself with shaking his head. Some people just refused to move forward.

"You worry too much," Sam said, stepping out of her car closing the door with a soft click.

"Really?" Gary said, "Because I was thinking I wasn't worrying enough."

They were standing next to Sam's sleek convertible – with the top up – in the orange glow of the streetlights. The street was deserted this time of night, save for a police car standing at the corner two hundred yards away. Gary could imagine the policemen sitting inside, bored out of their minds, waiting for yet another night of keeping an eye on the ghost hunting activities at the warehouse.

He sighed, turned and looked at the dark warehouse across the street. It looked normal, like any other warehouse, but with the added knowledge of it being infested with ghosts, more specifically ghost rats and as such combining disgusting with scary, the place looked ominous. Somehow, the dark windows seemed to radiate evilness. It wasn't hard imagining some dark force inside keeping the ghost rats bound to the place, always returning after having been caught night after night.

"Where is Danny, anyway?" Gary continued, walking around the car to join Sam, "Shouldn't we have given him a ride? I thought he didn't have a car?"

Sam shook her head, scanning the street for signs of her friend. "He'll be here," she said. She turned and looked up at him. "Seriously thought, don't worry so much about Danny. He's a good guy, and he is capable of listening to reason. He's just slightly... protective of his sister."

"Obsessive, more like it," Gary mumbled. He looked at Sam pensively. "It goes both ways, though. Jazz is always fretting about her brother, trying to keep an eye on him from a distance, trying to find out what he's doing. She's always defending him with her parents. She thinks I don't notice, but I do. It seems... unhealthy."

Sam sighed and looked in the distance. "Yes, well... that probably has something to do with their weird childhood. You know what Mr and Mrs Fenton are like. They were always like that. From a very early age, I imagine, Jazz felt responsible for her little brother. The household was a little insane."

Gary frowned. "So they had a troubled childhood?"

Sam blinked. "No no, don't get me wrong. Their parents love them very much and would do anything to protect them, it's just that they tend to get a little sidetracked." Her face darkened. "Their place certainly was a better place to be than mine."

Gary was about to question her further when something caught his eye. He turned his head into the direction of what he thought had been some sort of flash, but there was nothing there. Just when he thought he had imagined it, a hooded figure stepped into the street from one of the alleys, looked around briefly and then quickly made their way to them. Gary suppressed a shiver. For a moment, he thought that he saw two glowing green eyes in the dark space that held the man's face, but then he stepped into the light of a streetlight and he saw it was just his future brother in law.

Danny stopped a few yards away from them and looked at Sam, eyebrows raised in a silent question Gary didn't understand. He had wanted to ask Sam about her strange relationship with the ghost hunter, but didn't quiet know how to go about it without sounding like he wanted to push them together the way everybody else seemed to be doing.

"Let's do this," Sam said.

She rounded the car, opened the hood and retrieved an old army-green backpack. She beckoned Gary to come closer while opening it, and he was surprised to see the amount of tools and gadgets in it, all seemingly haphazardly thrown together. Sam started rummaging through the assorted weaponry and strange looking devices while Gary and Danny stood and watched. Finally, she retrieved something that looked like a blocky – for lack of a better word - gun, looking old and scorched. She handed it to Danny, who briefly checked it and then nodded in approval.

"Here," Sam said, placing something in Gary's hand, "Put it on your wrist, like so." She demonstrated strapping the device to her own wrist, and Gary followed suit. "It's a wrist gun. Very handy, allows a lot of freedom. It's like shooting ecto blasts from your hand. You know, like some ghosts can."

Gary shifted uncomfortably, then looked at Danny. Jazz had said he'd be in no danger, Danny was very competent and would make sure Gary was safe – at which point she had glared at her brother – and besides, they were only ghost rats, right? How bad could it be?

Something clicked around his waist and he looked down in surprise, berating himself for his brief moment of inattention and letting his mind wander. Sam was standing very close to him, clicking some sort of belt in place with small blinking red and green lights on it.

"Specter Deflector," Sam said, "Don't give me that look. I didn't name the thing."

She hit a switch and the thing whirred to life, causing goosebumps on Gary's arms. Danny took a step back and looked slightly annoyed.

"There," Sam said, "All set. Shall we?"

The annoying buzz of her cell phone laying on her nightstand penetrated Jazz's dreams – pleasant, nice dreams full of family and houses with gardens and a dog – and she stuck out her hand from under the blanket to try and silence it. Before she could reach it, the phone landed on the floor with a clunk, where it kept buzzing, sound now slightly muffled because the thing was on the carpet instead of the wooden surface of the nightstand.

Muttering furiously, Jazz rolled to the side of the bed, grabbed the phone and unceremoniously canceled the call. Silence, at last.

Well, not completely. Now that she was awake, laying on her stomach with her left arm hanging down, her hand still wrapped around the phone on the floor, she realized she could hear the sound of traffic outside, and people walking down the hallway talking loudly, a vacuum cleaner in the room next door...

She looked up. Nine AM.

"Crap," she muttered.

Slowly, she turned around and viewed the warm, motionless body of her fiancee next to her, still sleeping soundly. For a moment, her eyes traveled to the bandage around his arm, courtesy of Sam after he had been bitten by a ghost rat, and again she felt her fury rise.

No danger, Danny had said. They were just rats. Ghost rats. It wasn't like they'd carry rabies or anything. She had specifically told him to watch out for Gary, to not let him get hurt.

To his credit, Danny had been apologetic and had looked somewhat rueful. And of course he had gotten the worst of it, completely covered in small scratches, bite marks and some deeper gashes.

Sam didn't have a scratch.

Jazz sighed and felt around for the pack of crackers she had placed on her nightstand. She fumbled with it for a moment and then stuffed one of the dry crackers in her mouth and started to munch, staring pensively at the ceiling. Had it been a mistake to come here? Would it have been a better idea to just phone Danny with the news and have him blow off steam before he got to meet Gary? She shook her head. That was the cowardly way out. That wasn't the kind of relationship she wanted to have with her brother. She wasn't afraid of him.

Was she?

The phone buzzed again. Jazz sighed and held its small screen close to her eyes to see who was calling. Identifying her caller, she sat up, swung her feet out of bed and stumbled across the room into the bathroom in order to take the call without waking Gary, thinking that if the cracker hadn't been enough to quell her morning sickness, she'd at least be close to the toilet if she felt sick again. She pressed the button.

"Hi, mom."

"Jazz! How are you!"

Jazz winced. Trust her mother to speak in exclamation marks this early in the morning. Never mind that it really wasn't that early.

"I'm good, mom. How are you?"

"Morning sickness?"

Jazz eyed the toilet. "A little," she admitted, "I've got it under control though."

"You should eat something before you get up, that's what I always did, works like a charm," her mother said, "I had Jack fetch me something to eat, and guess what, he always came back with...."

"Fudge. I know mom, you told me," Jazz said, closing the lid of the toilet and sitting down on it.

"Oh, yes, of course. Well. Never mind then. Did you tell him yet?"

Jazz rubber her eyes. Already, she could feel a headache coming up. "No."

Silence on the other end of the line. Then, "Why not, sweetie?"

Jazz sighed. Her parents didn't, couldn't, understand the delicacy of telling a half ghost news that was unsettling to him. Unsettling because, in all his attempts to be as human as possible, he had definite ghostly tendencies. Obsessions, for instance. And Danny had very clear and definite obsessions.

A hero complex not being the least of them. And possessiveness of his friends and family was another. She wanted Danny not only to accept the fact that she could make her own decisions, could live her life the way she saw fit, but also that she was perfectly capable of doing so and even if she wasn't, she was allowed to make her own mistakes. He couldn't protect her from everything. However much he wanted to.

"Well," she said, "You know Danny."

"Yes, I know Danny. And I don't understand why you're making such a fuss about it. He's a good kid, not some... dangerous psycho like you make him sound."

"He's not a kid anymore mom. I know he's not dangerous." Like hell. "It's just... he always overreacts. I want to bring it to him gently."

Sighing on the other end of the line. "Gary is a nice boy, Jazz. Danny is just being... stubborn."

Stubborn was one way to describe it. Jazz rubbed her eyes again and yawned. Her stomach twisted unpleasantly, and she leaned sideways and let her head rest against the cool tiles.

"Fudge, dear," her mother said, "I know it sounds crazy, but it did work."

Jazz closed her eyes. "Yes mom," she said.

"Three robberies in three days," Jake Tannenbaum said, "All the same MO, no sign of a break in, just taking the most expensive jewelry and leaving without setting off any alarms whatsoever. I'm thinking this is starting to look like a ghost-case, but why a ghost would go about stealing jewelry is beyond me... are you even listening?"

Sawyer grunted a reply, but kept staring intently at the screen of his computer, uncertain if what he saw there was what he had requested. He looked at his query again, wondering if this was how he was supposed to be doing it, but then he dismissed it. Jake would know, but Jake would question his motivation for wanting a list of deceased jewelry robbers from the last ten years or so, that had been suspected of having something to do with robberies of jewelry stores, specifically the ones that had been robbed recently in the robbery spree.

Deceased would mean GIW. Sawyer just wasn't ready for them yet.

Squashing the feeling that he was obstructing justice in some way and was digging himself in deeper than he should, he altered the query a little and pressed enter again. The little twirling icon appeared to indicate that the system was processing his request, searching databases, cross-referencing other databases and comparing results.

"What are you doing?" Jake said from the other side of the desk.

"I'm drawing up a list of suspects," Sawyer said smoothly, not altogether lying, "A list of people previously convicted or otherwise suspect in jewelry theft." He had prepared that particular list in advance. "I thought we might question them, see if they know anything, see if they have alibis."

"We don't have much to go on," Jake nodded, "Unless you want to involve the GIW."

Sawyer shuddered. "No," he said, "Not yet. Not until we're sure it is ghost related. The detectors didn't go off, after all."

"And they were all in working order," Jake sighed, "I can accept one malfunctioning ghost detector, or even two, but three in a row in as many jewelry stores? Unless the ghost has some way of shutting them off or avoiding them..."

Sawyer frowned. There was that, of course. Whatever means the ghost had used to enter the stores, it involved manipulation of ghost detectors. He wasn't sure he wanted to know how the ghost had been able to do that. Fenton seemed to have some idea though. He sunk down deeper into his chair and stared morosely at the screen.

This had better work.