Author's Note:
This story gets such nice reactions. Makes me proud. :') And kind of giddy too, really. I really love you people. :3 (Pteradactyl, you'll be getting a response soon, sorry for my tardiness!) I'd really love to send messages back to anonymous reviews too, but alas, I can't. So simply, thank-you. :)

That moment when a 6,000 word chapter gets written in two days… I don't know how this happens, sometimes. I really don't.

We're finally up to Chapter 10! And we're about halfway through, too. I wonder if it'll take me another one and a half years to finish?

Layman Scripts
A fanfic by Pseudinymous

~ 10 ~
- The Balancing Act -

The phone rang, and it rang, and it rang. And then it went to message bank.

Jazz hung up with a huff, and hastily tried to call her old friend again. The sheer illegality of using her phone while driving wasn't even coming to mind right now, that being the very least of her increasingly lengthy list of problems. Once more, the phone rang and it rang, and nothing happened.

"Shit," she said, more to herself than anyone else. "Sam, why won't you pick up?"

"Perhaps your friend is busy," the Ghostwriter suggested. "Does she need to have one of those things with her? Maybe she left it at home."

"It's 2013, no one leaves their phones at home," Jazz rallied, taking a corner turn far more sharply than was necessary. Mira seemed to be bracing herself in the back seat. Jazz tossed the phone to the side storage beside her own seat, and the writer peered over it, curiously.

"This is all new to me. Back in my day, phones were wired to your house."

"I know, I know. Seriously writer, you can have your nostalgia trip later. I need to drive."

His face twisted sardonically, but perhaps not biting back in such a situation was the safest idea. They might have been friendly with each other, but Jazz had proven herself rather deadly indeed, and he much preferred not being on the receiving end of that. Mira in particular didn't look as if she had fared well. Having been commanded not to speak, however, Mira just stared straight back at him, face unreadable, and probably mentally plotting some sort of genocide.

The Ghostwriter shuddered. If anyone could figure out how to end a ghost for good, it was probably her — or at least, her in her current state. Possessed, for lack of a better word, by a mysterious entity…

He returned his eyes to the road, and fretted over Jazz's frantic driving skills. Where she had learnt them was anyone's guess — perhaps a few years of ghost hunting had influenced them more than he could know. After all, when you were being chased at high speed by a flock of murderous ghosts looking for blood, you'd be insane not to drive that fast. Even if it felt terribly out of control.

… Out of control. That wasn't something the writer had felt since… well, not since That Day, of which he did not speak and seldom thought of. Human bodies are fragile things, after all, and it doesn't take much to—

A giggle from the back seat. The Ghostwriter's head turned slowly, bringing Mira into proper view. The slight of a smile had crept upon her mouth, and there it stayed, giving him a suggestive look. He wasn't quite sure what it was suggesting, but eventually, and against Jazz's very strict previous advice, Mira opened her mouth. "You're scared, Ghostwriter."

He said nothing. Her grin widened until it brightened both of her deep blue eyes.

"You're scared because you don't know what's going on, and you're scared because you don't know if this problem you've created is reversible or not. You hate being human."

Was this some sort of strange mind game? The writer's head fell a little. "And what is that to you? Why would you care?"

Her face was mocking sympathy. "Because I love you, with all my heart."

Oh yes. Sure. Of course she did. He rolled his eyes and shook his head and returned his field of vision to the road that was hurtling towards them at terrifying speed. Mira wasn't even playing a game anymore, just being frustratingly sarcastic, and it was all for the non-purpose of messing with him. It must have been the only thing she had left she could do, now that she was unable to use any of her powers and stuck in a car with a trigger-happy Fenton.

Though the writer dearly wished to, there wasn't anything he could realistically rally back with — not while Mira was in a mood like this. It was probably wiser on the whole simply not to speak. Jazz kept on driving, and he had an inkling that she was only tolerating the sound of Mira's voice because shooting and driving weren't a good combination for not accidentally killing everyone in the car.

Mira wasn't going to stop it there, however. Oh no. She had her shovel, and she was determined to dig her hole. "You could have saved me, Ghostwriter," she told him. "You could have had the Real Mira, but you gave up on her."

"Shut up!" he snapped.

Jazz jumped so high that some would have said she'd nearly joined the astronauts.

In spite of himself, the Ghostwriter continued, having been thrown into a rage. "You'll be quiet or I will shoot you!"

Both sets of eyes were now firmly upon him, and he shrunk into his own seat at the unpleasant realisation of how he'd reacted. Was that still such a sore spot? And how had she known it would get to him like that? Now Jazz was paying more attention to the writer through the mirror than she was to the road, and he understood with immediate dread the sorts of things that must have been running through her mind.

"You're a parasite living within the body of that poor woman," he spat at Mira, after some deliberation. "It's no one's fault but yours!"

She smiled, conceit etched into a face he painfully remembered from better times. "Ah, but you could have saved me. All you needed to do was, dare I say it, be more like her."

"Oh my God," Jazz cut in, having finally heard enough. "I'm trying to drive! Writer, if she speaks again, for God's sake shoot her or I will for you!"

That was enough to actually keep her quiet. Jazz sighed with relief, and continued to drive as if other road users and things like signs and road rules didn't exist.

The Ghostwriter sat back in his seat, hardly relaxed as all sorts of awful things whirled about in his head.

… What if he had said yes all those years ago? Would events have unfolded such that Mira would never have sought to explore the Abyss? It was possible he could never know, not unless she returned to her old self again. But thirteen years had passed since she'd been normal, and he was losing hope that she could ever be restored. Once again, he was giving up on her — just in a completely different way.

His eyes felt heavy. They got like this when he wanted to cry in frustration, or just cry at all, but for a ghost this was an impossible task. But as a human it was nearly impossible to stop the tears that were threatening to surface, and he was struggling to maintain control over himself. Gods, why now? Had he been by himself it might have been liberating, but here it was just a sign of weakness and distress which would allow Jazz a deeper insight into his head — something he wasn't quite comfortable with, yet.

Jazz said nothing, but nonetheless he could feel her eyes upon him. Watching, with a curious apprehension that would disappear in a few seconds, and then return again in half a minute's time.

The car was parked outside a mansion. Jazz attempted to call this Sam person once more, but when this was foiled for a third time she threw the phone into her pocket in disgust, nearly kicked the driver's side door open, and stomped out of her car with a huff. Her foot came down with a heavy thump on each of the stepping stones up to the house, where she rang the doorbell several times, knocked vigorously, and yelled blue murder up into the solid white walls.

Nearly a full minute passed before there was some kind of response. The door opened a creak. A woman with jet black hair — it had to have been dyed — and a pair of solid black sleeping things appeared in the doorway. Her head was wilted and her eyes drooping to the side, as if it was five in the morning.

3:30 in the afternoon, admittedly, was a little late for this sort of getup.

The Ghostwriter couldn't hear what they were saying, but it didn't take long for the gothic girl's face to fall into a worried frown, and she poked her head out of the door and peered into Jazz's car. Afterwards she pulled her face back in, and swung the door open properly. Jazz returned to her vehicle.

"How well do you think you can carry yourself?" she asked the writer. He looked down at his digits and thought about the last time he'd tried, when they had both nearly teetered through the plasterboard. It wasn't something he was keen on doing again, but part of him felt like it was more the awkwardness of using her for balance too much, rather than his jellied legs themselves.

"Perhaps… I'm not sure. I suppose we can find out," he griped, flicking the latch on the door and pulling one leg out. "Okay, now…"

In a slow movement he held onto the handle just inside the car and used it to draw himself up to his full height. His legs wobbled dangerously underneath him, threatening to collapse under his own weight, but be fought against that, straightening them until they were perfectly rigid. There he stood for nearly thirty seconds, trying desperately to remember what a human sense of balance was like.

Come to think of it, it was much easier to wake up one day and find that you were a ghost. At least you could move. It might have looked ridiculous, and he loathed to think of several situations where he'd found himself accidentally upside-down, but he'd generally ended up where he'd wanted to go. In the end, anyway.

He shuffled to the side, palming his way around the car to assist.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Jazz asked, worried lines forming on her face, but he shot back a determined nod and kept moving until he was positioned in a straight line to the door.

"I think so," he said, looking beyond the gate and into the worried violet eyes of this Sam girl. Slowly, he pulled himself away from the car, let his balance collect itself for several seconds, and began a very gradual and measured walk towards the mansion's front door. "Mmm," he mumbled. "Yeah, I think we're okay."

"That's a real geriatric shuffle you've got there," Sam remarked from the doorway, although at least she seemed more concerned than mocking.

Jazz, satisfied that a disaster wasn't about to happen, turned to Mira, who was jittering to herself in the back seat. "Right," said Jazz. Mira stared back with a catish gaze. The silence she got in reply told Jazz that she was going to be extracting words from the woman from here on out.

"How well can you move?" Jazz continued, her voice and expression sharpening, daring her adversary to put a foot out of line. Mira's head shrunk well into the leather.

"Well enough to put a seatbelt on," she replied, quietly. Jazz only needed to think for a couple of seconds before she made a beeline for the trunk of her car. Mira's eyes followed her all the way there. "What do you think you're doing?!" she began to demand, but Jazz didn't honour it with a reply.

The Fenton Inhibitor came out. Mira's eyes widened in horror.

"Oh God. No. Not that again. No!"

The grin that Jazz wore was quite unlike those of her past self. "Oh God," she mocked. "Yes, this again."

"No, no!" Mira continued. "I promise I can't walk well, please God don't shoot me with—"

"Then you will uncompromisingly follow my every command, Spectra."

And Mira nodded, in that strange mechanical way that horrified people did.

Jazz paraded her out of the car, allowed the not-ghost woman to lean upon her side while she held the Inhibitor to her head, and marched her towards Sam's front door. Sam regarded the spectacle with both humour and horror, probably thanking all of the lucky stars that very few people ever ventured into this cul-de-sac of a street, and stood aside.

The Ghostwriter watched them pass, and tried to remember that quickening his pace to match theirs was only going to end badly. Before he knew it, they had disappeared inside the house.

When the writer finally reached the doorstep, Sam the Gothic Woman regarded him with sympathy, before gesturing him into the hallway. The mansion was huge, and it reminded him in a vague way of his library — the real difference, of course, was that realistically no one would ever match his level of book ownership. For all practical purposes, it was getting to the point where the books owned him.

Jazz and Mira were already nowhere to be seen, Jazz having already whisked them off to a different room deeper within the house.

"So… you're actually a ghost," Sam began, closing the door behind. The mansion gave a dreadful echo from the noise. "But, there was an accident and now you're not?"

"More or less," he mumbled.

Now the girl was puzzled, brow knitted together in curiosity. "Doesn't it normally happen the other way around?"

The Ghostwriter breathed out a deep breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding as he walked, eyes scanning the unfamiliar building. "I like to think I'm not overly conventional."

"Hmm," said Sam. "Well, you're lucky, because I like unconventional." She began to walk in the direction of what the Ghostwriter thought was a kitchen, but with his limited point of view it could have been just about any sort of room. She began to elaborate. "Normally I don't trust ghosts — or ex ghosts — but if Jazz thinks you're okay, that's enough for me."

He nodded, a little absently. "Speaking of her… where did she go?"

"A different room. She told me to tell you to stay here."

The writer had to double-take. "I'm sorry? Why would she say that? What's she doing with Mira?"

"The other ghost? Interrogating her, probably," said Sam, with a shrug. "Want some juice? I was just getting it out of the fridge when you all called in."

The contrast between the two topics hit the Ghostwriter's brain like a well-aimed brick (although, if he'd taken some time to think, he would have realised it was probably the reason she was heading to the kitchen-looking area). "Juice?" he stammered. "No, hang on, I want to know exactly what's—"

Sam cut him off there, offering a simple shake of her head. "Jazz said no. If she can place her trust in you, you can place your trust in her."

He found himself in a stunned silence. He stood there, legs still rigid, trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing. Why were they in this house, anyway? Did this girl live all alone here? Was this where Jazz planned to house them? Was she extracting information from Mira, using whatever techniques she found necessary? Why hadn't she explained anything? He'd assumed something would come up when he'd gotten here, but to have her disappear with Mira like that—"

"Juice?" Sam repeated, looking bored. "I've got toast, too."

When he really thought about it, of course, that blueberry pie hadn't exactly filled him up. And it wasn't like he was likely to enjoy these human privileges for much longer, assuming nothing went too wrong. It was perfectly normal to have a weakness like this. Hell, it was playing to Jazz's advantage, which was almost certainly good — just not for his curiosity, or his anxiety.

The Ghostwriter seemed to deflate. "… That… that sounds okay."

Sam the Gothic Woman turned out to be a person he had gradually forgotten. He only began to remember her after exchanging conversation for just over twenty minutes, and the Ghostwriter felt a little bit stupid, now, because it was ever so clear that this was the Phantom boy's best friend. Not to mention his almost-but-not-quite lover, and in an odd and disconnected way, his widower. She held herself as someone who had carried the loss in stride — almost as if she'd half expected disaster from the beginning — but never out of memory, and she drooped with the cancer of vanished hope.

He didn't mention the row he and Phantom had entertained a few years ago, from which his memory of her had originated. Unlike Jazz, Sam didn't need to know.

Hours passed and still Jazz did not emerge from the room. Sam continued her insistence that this was going to take a while, and Jazz knew exactly what she was doing — something that irritated the writer on a deep internal level, because even if he trusted Jazz, it didn't mean he didn't worry for her. As he and Sam spoke his desperation led to an attempt at intangibility while his hands were hidden from view under the table, but with a human body it was useless — it couldn't facilitate ectoplasm use or flow, and he was left with two very tangible human hands and an increasing feeling of frustration. There was a time many years ago when he would have welcomed this change.

But not now. Not anymore. Now it was just problems and more problems, and like being locked in a strange sort of prison.

Sam had eventually decided that everything was taking a little longer than she had thought, and showed him to a spare room. It was furnished sparsely but did contain a bed and a bookshelf, which was mostly empty with the exception of five books stacked on top of each other at waist height. When Sam had disappeared off to some other area of the house (he had lost track of all the areas of the house already, as he really only had bearings for his own library), the Ghostwriter took the first book off the top of the stack, titled "Modern Rituals of the Orient". It wasn't a topic he was overly enthralled with, but he laid himself down on the bed anyway, resting some very tired muscles and joints, and began to read.

After half an hour, however, he realised he was only ten pages in and he'd just had to read the same paragraph five times over. His mind was far too preoccupied with the current circumstances to focus, and so he placed the book on the floor just underneath the bed and pulled out a pen and paper from his pocket instead. Maybe writing would be more successful today.

But, as with his last attempt, the page remained frightfully blank. In the end he resigned himself to staring idly upwards, unable to rest or relax.

"Maybe I'll get my power back soon," he told the silence above him, as if speaking aloud would predestine such luck.

Of course, nothing happened. Today wasn't a good day.

Day turned to night. The sun sank into the horizon with a vivid celestial display of orange and pink, colouring the skies in beautiful pastel tones and turning gold the few clouds that still hung there. He got off the bed to watch that, wobbled himself over to the window, and kneeled down in front of it. The warmth of this setting sun left a pleasant tingle on his face, and he enjoyed it until it was gone.

Stars trickled onto the skyline. He griped at yet another missed opportunity to drift among them properly.

After so many hours, finally, finally the door opened. It was a slow, hesitant open, as if the person on the other side was nervous about doing so, and from his position on the floor the Ghostwriter turned his head to look. Jazz inched her way through quietly, her eyes falling upon him and then flicking back up to the star scape beyond the window.

"I didn't want you to see that," she said, softly.

"The night sky? Why not?"

"No, Mira."

It was only then that he truly noticed the solemness etched into Jazz's face, as if she had just done some things she truly wasn't proud of. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realised he had drawn a breath and forgotten to let it go.

"She's unconscious, now," Jazz elaborated, shifting awkwardly on her feet. "Her teleportation powers could have come back at any moment, so I had to shock her again, but it was more than she could handle. She passed out."

There was something clinical about the way she was speaking. There was guilt in her voice, but also a robotic knowledge that she did what she thought had to be done. When the writer offered no reply, she shifted again and sat down in front of him, crossing her legs on the hardwood floor.

"She almost told me what happened to Danny. I was so close."

Something panged deep inside of him. "You tried to torture the information out of her?"

The guilt she felt was clear, now — Jazz would have learnt many things from her parents, and knowing that they weren't above such things as torture, perhaps in her years she had learnt some techniques of her own. "I didn't want you to see that," she managed. "I mean… well, you never said it explicitly, but it sort of seems like you were more than friends with her, once…"

The silence could have filled a void with the sheer intensity of its nothingness. This time the Ghostwriter shifted uncomfortably, and he looked away at the empty bookshelves instead.

"Were you?" she asked.

"It wasn't quite like that…" he replied, chest frozen.

"Well…?"

This girl really didn't understand where her enquiries should stop and where his privacy should begin, did she? Maybe that's what shrinks did for a living, though, and if she was aspiring to be one she had probably taught herself to pry at people's inner thoughts with unmatched efficiency. He puzzled over himself, drew a line through the dust on the floor with an index finger, and thought about how best to put it into words.

"… It was many years ago. I guess — well, I guess we courted. She was more enthusiastic about the idea than I was, really… she reminded me too much of my sister."

Jazz's mouth had made an o shape, and he thought she was going to stop her enquiry there, but apparently she wasn't quite done. "So… you still cared a lot about her, then."

He paused. "Yes."

She nodded slowly, and drew her own little line in the dust. "I know she's still in there, somewhere. I held back as much as I could, but I think this might be the only way we'll ever find out how to get either of them back."

He didn't tell Jazz that it broke his heart to think that Mira was trapped in there, in pain but powerless to do anything about it. Those words sliced through his mind, again — he could have saved her. Even if he never would have been able to see any of this coming, he could have saved her.

Desperately, he wished this could all be over, and that Mira could be Mira again. What else had she been forced to endure during her hellish time of possession? Who had she been forced to hurt, be hurt by?

"I don't suppose you had any more convenient mind-reading moments?" the Ghostwriter sighed.

Jazz shook her head. "That'd be too easy, wouldn't it?"

"It would."

They didn't seem to know what else to say, and sat in an unsettling quiet for some time afterwards. Eventually the Ghostwriter picked himself up off the floor and laid down on the bed again, staring off into the unknown space beyond the room's lone bookshelf. "I can't write," he told the world around him, as difficult as those words were to say aloud. He let them hang in the air, and Jazz took notice.

"You've got writer's block?"

Not an inaccurate description. He frowned at the idea, but conceded to it.

"Since these events have begun to unravel as they have…" he told her, carefully. "Since I left the Ghost Zone for the first time. Although perhaps I could be more concise by saying it's since I met you."

Jazz reeled, taken aback by this revelation. "You can't write anything… because of me?"

"No, I can't write anything because of me," he clarified.

"But that doesn't make any sense…"

"Just because you can't see the sense doesn't mean it isn't there."

The girl tipped her head to the side thinking about this, and seemed to come to her own non-conclusions about it. "Did I do something? What are you implying?"

Oh, why had he gone and said anything at all? What was he thinking? My God, he could have some awful ideas sometimes. Even with the power to control reality, somehow his existence was more problematic than he had ever wanted, which truly bothered him. No matter what he did something would still always become out of control, out of reach, out of sensibility…

He looked at her. She was hurt. She had done something today that seemed truly outside of her range of values, and she was trying to hide that she was affected by that. Perhaps his observation skills had become better simply by being around her, as he remembered a recent time when this sort of thing would have flown cleanly over his head. If he was her, what would he be thinking? Would he hate himself for his actions? Worry that admitting them could lose an ally, a friend?

… But she was also strong, strong enough to do what had to be done even at the expense of her own sanity, and strong enough to openly admit she had done it in the end, in spite of the consequences that may have followed. She had resolve. When images of Mira struggling inside of herself didn't come to mind, Jazz's desire to save not just her own brother but Mira too occupied it instead. She hadn't just been interrogating Mira for information on Phantom, she had been interrogating Mira for information on Mira.

…

"I'm really sorry."

Jazz's words sounded hollow. His expression softened for her, though he did not smile. "I wouldn't have known a better way, either. I think you did what you needed to do."

There was another pause.

"… You don't think I'm despicable?" she asked.

And he shook his head, setting his glasses askew as his face was resting on the pillow. He readjusted them swiftly. "You haven't had a normal life. You learnt the hard way that there's things you have to do, whether it puts people in harm's way or not. Life is full of decisions like that, some with serious consequences. You seem to understand the weight of what you do, and why it must be done."

She nodded, slowly. He wasn't sure it was in agreement, but in the end he supposed it didn't matter. She didn't need to believe it, she just had to hear it.

Jazz thought on this, before coming to a conclusion. "… That's enough for tonight," she determined. "Mira's secured, and Sam stays up all hours of the night anyway… she'll watch Mira. I'm going to get something to eat and go to sleep."

"It's still quite early in the —" the writer began, but then he took notice of the bags under Jazz's eyes, which probably didn't have as much to do with overtiredness as they did stress. "Actually, let's do that."

They had dinner together, derived from the smorgasbord of leftovers contained within Sam's fridge. But going to sleep was a plan that never quite happened.

"Do you think everything will work out in the end?"

The question hung in the air as if held up by some invisible source. The Ghostwriter didn't stop staring out of the window to answer. "… I don't know, Jasmine," he told her, honestly. "We have a lot of problems."

Jazz shuffled up to the window as well, taking a seat by his side.

"There is Mira, for one…" he began to list, eyes still unfocused. "And your brother. The script you touched. The other scripts, which of course went missing. Your parents. My keyboard. My… humanity. The entity that seems to be possessing Mira, if we can remove it from her at all. And all of this is connected, if not through itself then through the two of us."

"That doesn't fill me with confidence," she commented.

The half-moon had made its appearance through the window frame, balancing haphazardly above someone's chimney.

"There's nothing we should do until morning, I think. Maybe you could try writing, if you're so intent on not going to bed."

"Writing?" she double-took, and he supposed that was relatively justified considering the idea had come from nowhere. "No… I'm no good at that."

"Well… it's good stress relief, you know. Doesn't really matter how good you are — no one has to see it."

Jazz fell silent a little longer, twiddling her thumbs. The steady light from the streets shone into her face, illuminating it oddly as she thought.

"I wouldn't know where to start," she declared. "What would I even write about?"

"Well, what can you see?" asked the writer. "What can you hear, feel, touch? What is the smell that drifts through the air, if any at all? Is someone with you? Maybe you aren't you — if not, what is your name? What is your personality like? How do you feel about the smell of the mist and the fog at five in the morning? What are your ambitions, who are your allies, what are the challenges to overcome?"

She shook her head, almost violently. "I don't know all of that!"

"You don't need to. That's a puzzle that you can put together gradually. You only need one thing to start, and the rest you can discover as you go."

Jazz regarded him with scepticism, but before she could say anything the Ghostwriter had pulled a pen and notepad out of his pocket. "They're there if you want to use them," he said, holding them in front of her face. "God knows I won't miss them. I could stare at a blank page for hours right now and all it might achieve is a piece of meaningless scribble in the top-left margin."

A smirk. It was small, but gave a slight curl to the edge of her mouth. Now she seemed to be deliberating it, and she looked at him and asked, "You really are insistent, aren't you?" But she decided to accept the offer, and took the tools from his hands. "Is this what happens when you can't write? You try to indoctrinate others into your never-ending hobby?"

A short pause. "Well…" he managed. "Normally there aren't exactly others to indoctrinate."

In spite of her reservations, however, Jazz did begin to write. He wasn't sure about what — she was completely against showing anyone, and seemed justified in this feeling by saying she wouldn't be good enough. But it did at least seem to distract her from having a major internal meltdown. That was a positive.

Eight o'clock turned to nine o'clock. Jazz had been writing for well over an hour. By this point the Ghostwriter was growing tired and bored, and he laid back down on the bed that had been provided for him and stared aimlessly off into space, his mind whirling troubling thoughts around like a washing machine stuck on cycle. It was calming to see her so focused, though, when he decided to look. He felt bad for keeping his eyes on her so continuously though, and removed his gaze when he felt it might be too much. She continued to sit there, cross-legged on the floor, penning something. Maybe she was unaware.

And then — something strange. He'd nearly fallen asleep by the time it happened, but something shifted inside of him, something to do with his core, and he came to the realisation that he was no longer cursed with humanity. Jazz noticed too — the glow had made its return, along with everything else that stopped him from passing off as just some random when walking around on the street. The Ghostwriter sat up quickly.

"It wore off after all," Jazz noted, one brow sunken. "I guess that's one issue solved."

But the writer wasn't convinced. He stood up as a test, found that this was no longer a million-dollar challenge, but sat back down on the bed again anyway. "This is odd," he declared, now reaching an intangible arm through a wall just to check that that worked again, too. "Really odd."

"Yeah, odd if you're alive," Jazz pointed out. "Looks pretty normal for a ghost."

"Actually, it's odd because I expected to be stuck this way for a few days. I mean… don't get me wrong, I'm glad, but this is out of place," he paused a moment, retracting his arm, and had a realisation. "Gods, you've got Mira held securely, haven't you?"

"Sam has a massive soundproof room filled with Fenton tech. She isn't going anywhere as long as she can't teleport, and Sam will make sure of that."

The Ghostwriter relaxed a little. "Okay. Okay, good. Maybe being human for a little while was worth it, then. This Sam girl, she used to help your brother out with ghost hunting?"

Jazz nodded, tapping the pen against the notepad he had given her and then closing it for the night. "She did. She's better at it than both of my parents — or at least she was back when she did it all the time…"

"So now that job falls almost squarely on you," he commented. Jazz gave another sad little nod, and sank her head into her hands.

"Lots of things have changed since Danny fell asleep. Prevention is better than cure, especially when you don't have the cure anymore."

Tiredness still flicked at the Ghostwriter's core. He stood again, stretching out his fingers and toes as he went, and took to her side. "It's starting to get late, now. Maybe it's time for you to go to bed? We might have a better lead than just that old shack, tomorrow."

"Mmm…" said Jazz, and he could hear the sleepiness in her voice, even. She got to her feet, still holding the pen and notepad tightly — he didn't ask for them back, he had plenty more where they'd come from, after all — and started towards the door. "I guess I should at least check my phone… had it off so my folks couldn't call me. Would've been pretty awkward…"

Jazz turned her phone back on, but stopped midway through the doorframe. The Ghostwriter nearly bumped into her, but stopped just in time.

It was as if her heart had stopped, or as if she was having some sort of minor seizure. For nearly half a minute she barely moved and offered no explanation at all, but the longer she stood there staring at the screen, the more laboured her breathing became. Finally, the Ghostwriter peered over her shoulder, and suddenly he understood why.

— SENT 23 MINUTES AGO —

Jazz we don't know what's happening! Please answer the phone! We're going to go to the house on Boundary to look… please just answer! Is it a ghost? What happened to you and Mirabella?! I love you sweetie… If you're in the boundary house stay calm and do whatever you can to get out of there! We're coming to get you! xoxoxo -Mom and Dad

"Christ," said the Ghostwriter.

Jazz just continued staring. Eventually, the phone slid straight out of her hand.

Author's Note:
Plotting this story is like a challenge to write myself in and out of corners, while still somehow managing to make everything even more complicated. Apparently when I write I don't magically fix any of the character's problems without turning them into something else even more troublesome. That should keep you all feeling confident!

Next chapter will be big. Huge. But not necessarily in length.

To those of you who are tagging along for the long-haul, thank-you so much. It always makes me happy to see the stats of this story as I write it and note that people are still reading along and (hopefully) enjoying it even after nearly 50,000k words and one and a half years.

Reviews don't keep me going — I'll finish this anyway reviews or not — but I cannot describe how much I appreciate them when I get them. Please tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, and help me become a better writer. :3

-Sudo

Next Up:
Chapter 11: The Script of Cause and Effect