Act II, Scene 4

Warm sunshine flooded through the bedroom window and bathed the study nook in light, as Danny floated invisibly near the ceiling above his bed and watched Hobson expound on the organization and structure of the Periodic Table of the Elements. The Danny-bot sat ramrod-straight in the Aeron chair, a pencil in its hand and an attitude of studious dedication in its bearing. Too studious, Danny thought to himself. He should probably ask Tucker to program the robot to slouch.

Satisfied that the two robots would get along just fine, he phased through the wall and touched down silently on the thick Turkish carpet in the hallway. For a while he just wandered aimlessly around the upper floors of the mansion, through spacious rooms that were still unfurnished but were fitted out with fine marble mantels, gold-plated fixtures and elaborate parquetry floors formed from rare tropical woods. Gradually it dawned on him that he didn't really have anything to do. His games, his tech, and his programmable "companion" were all still inside his room, out of reach. His real friends were in school, equally out of reach. Even the library was out of bounds, as that was Jazz's personal study space and there was no way he was going let her catch him goofing off during school hours.

One of the larger rooms on the back side of the house had a balcony overlooking the immaculately manicured lawn that stretched down a gentle slope toward the tennis courts. Sitting on the railing, contemplating the vast expanse of grass, Danny had a sudden flash of distant memory: rolling around on the tiny scrap of lawn behind FentonWorks and giggling with childish glee as his sister tried to teach him how to turn a proper somersault. How long ago was that? He briefly considered jumping down from the balcony just to roll around on that lush, thick turf, but then he noticed the elderly gardener trimming the topiary with a large pair of clippers. After every couple of snips the old man would pause to glance up at him with an expression of vague disapproval. Suddenly self-conscious, Danny slipped back into the house and closed the french doors behind him.

Eventually he worked his way downstairs, where the cold marble floor of the grand foyer made his footsteps echo in the heavy silence. In the conservatory he sat down at the grand piano and plunked out a couple rounds of Chopsticks with two fingers. How strange, he thought, that his parents would have bothered buying a piano when nobody in the family knew how to play. Perhaps they had plans to buy him music lessons, to go along with the riding lessons and the dance lessons. Shuddering at the thought, he beat a hasty retreat through the ballroom into the formal dining room.

He wasn't alone. Jazz was already there, sitting quietly with her chin cupped in her left hand and her elbow on the table, poking a fork idly at a half-eaten slice of cake. Danny tried to creep away before she could notice him, but she looked up wearily and said, "Hey."

"What are you doing down here? I never expected to see you slacking."

"I'm not slacking!" she protested. "I'm just... decompressing. Clearing my mind."

"Staring into space, more like it." Danny's chair was on the opposite side of the table and he briefly considered walking all the way around so he could sit down, but he quickly changed his mind and hopped up to sit on the table instead. Barnes would probably have a cow, but at that moment Danny didn't particularly care.

Jazz pointed her fork at the rest of the cake, which was displayed on a silver stand on the antique Flemish sideboard. "Lemon Swirl Bundt Cake. Apparently it's some kind of 'welcome to the neighborhood' gift. You want a piece?"

"Nah," Danny sighed. "Don't seem to have much appetite."

"Me, neither." She shoved her plate away and leaned on her elbow again. There was a pause, during which the tall case clock in the foyer loudly ticked off the seconds. "What are you doing down here in the middle of the day, anyway?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be upstairs studying with Mr. Hobson?"

Danny glanced nervously off to the side before answering. "It's a... scheduled break. Like you said— decompressing."

"Hmmph. You never were a very good liar."

"Cut me some slack, will you? There's only so much 'Periodic Table' a guy can take, you know?"

"I thought Hobson was supposed to be a really good teacher?"

Danny shrugged. "I guess. It's all kind of boring, though. He talks, and talks, and talks, and I just sit there. It's weird, but I think I miss some of the little things about school— like the three and a half minutes between classes, when you have to shove your way through the mob in the hall just to get to your locker and then back to class. And sometimes you meet up with your friends, and get to talk for like fifteen seconds before you have to run. And then you have a different teacher next period, and different kids in the class, and different things on the walls to look at..."

Jazz picked up the flow of the conversation as Danny's thoughts trailed off. "Me, I miss the rhythm and flow of a really great lecture. The intellectual challenge of a vigorous debate. The give and take of ideas, the Socratic Method, the communal search for truth. You know what I mean?"

Danny shrugged. "I sort of miss Fish Stick Fridays. With those mini tater-tots..."

She shot him an aggravated look and he stuck out his tongue in reply.

"You know what I miss the most?" she asked.

"A freak like you? I don't know... homework?"

"It's all homework now, isn't it? But no— it's being a peer counselor. Because school wasn't just about listening to lectures, or writing papers, or passing tests. I was actually doing stuff. Really important stuff! I was helping people deal with stress, overcome fears, resolve conflicts... but I don't do that any more. I just sit alone up in that library and read and write, and read and write, and read and write..." She shook her head sadly. "What happened to me, Danny? What happened to us?"

"Heck if I know," he admitted, squirming uncomfortably.

"I mean, theoretically, I could spend every moment of every day studying, until I knew everything there is to know about every subject—"

"—and I could spend every moment of every day just goofing off and enjoying myself—"

"—but is that really what we're all about? Is there no higher purpose in life? I mean, I'm not just some kind of academic machine!"

"No way," Danny laughed. "You're a nosy, pushy, interfering busybody!"

"And proud of it." She grinned slyly, gently guiding him into her trap. "And you're not just some lazy, game-playing slacker—"

"No way!" he cried defiantly, even a bit defensively. Her choice of words had stung.

"No way," she echoed quietly, suddenly quite serious as she held his gaze. "You're a hero."

He returned the stare for a few seconds and his carefree grin slowly faded as the deeper meaning of their conversation gradually dawned on him. Finally, he glanced away and shook his head in resignation. He hopped down from the table, took a few steps toward the door, then glanced back with an expression of gratitude and perhaps just a little bit of respect.

"Peer counseling, huh?"

She blushed and shrugged, a smug little smile on her face. "It's just that thing I do."

He spun around and ran into the grand foyer, then made a joyous, wild leap— the kind he only ever made when he had no intention of coming back down again. Once free from gravity he made a spontaneous somersault in midair as the transformation rings swept across him from side to side. Turning his leap into true flight, he soared upward in a graceful spiral through the three-story foyer and out through the roof.

Jazz leaned against the dining room doorway, gazing up at the ceiling as though she could follow his flight in her mind's eye. And she would have stood there for quite a while, quietly contemplating her own life's trajectory, except at that exact moment the front door crashed from its hinges and two white-suited agents burst into the house with weapons drawn and charged.

"Freeze!"

Author's Note: Whoa! What are they doing there?

As I have mentioned before, my first priority in making this revision was to increase the number of significant interactions among major characters. This was the scene that got the whole project rolling. From the very first time I saw the episode, this conversation grated on my nerves— because, no matter how well-written a character Hobson was, it was more important that Danny get this serious, important advice from somebody who knows him and loves him.

Note that Jazz is lonely and bored, too. All part of the new theme, in which the Fentons are not as happy in their new lives as they expected to be. I expanded the beginning of the scene in order to gradually establish Danny's boredom; in the episode, the change in his mood was too abrupt. I also introduced a little flashback of happier, simpler times— and then echoed that flashback in Danny's unusual, acrobatic transformation.

I can't remember if we ever saw Jazz acting as a peer counselor outside of her one scene with Spike in Mystery Meat, but it certainly seems like the sort of thing she would do.

Little things: Danny did not go downstairs to talk to the reality drill. Jack and Maddie are downstairs in the lab, working on the new Portal. And of course, I had to sneak in Vlad's "Welcome to the Block" bundt cake, for continuity's sake.

A special "Thank You" bundt cake goes out to Cordria, who graciously joined JH24 on the beta-reading staff for this project.