Huh. You know, for a chapter before a crapload of scenes I've been looking forward to writing, this isn't that bad. I'm surprised.
In other news, I think I forgot how to do Author's Notes again. Oh well, at least there's one of the cut scenes from Chapter 9 in here!
Chapter warning: I think my angst starts showing. Okay, it kind of does.
Onwards!
Chapter 11;
Danny woke up Sunday morning to his phone buzzing with a text from Valerie. 'Library? At 3? We need to work on our project. It's due next week.'
Danny texted back his reply of agreement before lying back in bed. He stared at the phone's screen for a moment before the time registered in his mind.
It's nearly noon. Wow, I actually got a normal level of sleep. It's a miracle.
He rolled out of bed, pulling on some normal clothes before heading downstairs. Jazz was in the living room, a book in her lap, and she looked up as Danny quickly rushed down the stairs.
"Wow, you're awake," A playful smile appeared on her face, "I was beginning to think Nocturn had paid you a visit."
Danny shrugged, "Nah, I'm just being a normal teenager." He pulled a face, "It feels weird. I don't like it."
"Well, if you want to continue your normal day," Jazz motioned to the kitchen, "I made bacon."
"Oh, sweet!" Danny cheered, rushing into the kitchen. The bowl was sitting on the counter, still slightly warm, and Danny smiled before bringing it into the living room. He sat beside Jazz, popping a piece in his mouth. "How is it that you're the only one in this family who has yet to cause a fire or bring the food to life when cooking?"
"Because I follow this mythical thing called the instructions." Jazz lifted her book up, continuing to read.
Danny continued eating for a minute before interrupting his sister's reading once again. "I saw that the lab's door was closed. Are Mom and Dad down there?"
"I don't think they've come up since they went down yesterday," She flipped the page, looking back at her brother. "I'd be careful for the next few days if I were you, who knows what they're building down there?"
Danny nodded, making a face. "Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks."
"No problem," Jazz went back to her book, and Danny went back to his bacon.
"...Hey, Jazz?"
"I'm trying to read here, Danny."
"It's just a book, Jazz. It isn't important."
Jazz didn't look away from her book. "Danny, if you say that again I'll hit you with it."
"Right, sure." Danny rolled his eyes, drumming his fingers on the bacon bowl before he spoke again. "I'm supposed to do a family tree thing with Valerie in a couple hours. Anything I should know for it that I might not...?"
"Hmm, nope." Jazz flipped her page, "Nothing comes to mind. Just be careful, okay?"
"I will," He stood, heading into the kitchen. Danny was just dropping the bowl in the sink when something on the calendar in his Mom's messy writing caught his eye. "Jazz? What's happening on Thursday?"
.-.-.-.-.-.
"Hey, it's Jack, again. Listen Vladdie, I messed up, and I really need to talk to you. Call me back."
Vlad rolled his eyes, deleting yet another message from his voicemail. Jack, no one cares what you have to say. Stop calling me every five minutes and clogging up my voicemail, I have work to do.
A few minutes later, Vlad was distracted from his work by a knock on the door. "Yes?" Honestly, one would assume Amity Park's city hall would have a better system for relaying messages than this.
"Mr. Masters?" His secretary, Isabelle, poked her head in. "Er, Maddie Fenton is here to see you. She said it was urgent."
...Odd. "Well, send her in." Vlad replied, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. A moment later, Maddie entered.
"Vlad," She sounded a little bit tense. "I need to talk to you."
He motioned to the chair on the other side of his desk, "Then by all means, talk away."
Maddie took it, taking a deep breath in. "Vlad, Jack and I are so, so sorry for what happened in college. Your accident, I mean. We didn't know how much it affected you until now. We never meant to hurt you, Vlad, much less nearly kill you. We're so, so sorry..."
Vlad's eyes widened, unsure of what to say. " Hold on, I'm sorry, I... You... Know...?" And she doesn't hate me? Hah!
Maddie nodded, "We put the pieces together last night. Vlad, I... I'm so sorry. I should've been better. I should've stopped Jack from turning the portal on. I should've done something!"
"M-Maddie, my dear," Vlad wasn't sure whether his voice shook with happiness or fear. "It wasn't your fault."
"But I should've done something!" Maddie protested, "You wasted years of your life in the hospital because we made a mistake, Vlad. We nearly killed you! I understand that you hate Jack because of this, but he doesn't deserve it. Not unless you hate me too."
There is something off about this. Why hasn't she brought up my ghost half? No matter, with that statement hanging in the air it may be best to improvise. Vlad moved his hands from the desk to his lap, "...I could never hate you, Maddie."
"Then why do you find it so easy to hate Jack? It's my fault too, Vlad. You were best friends in college, why can't you be like that again?"
Because he nearly killed me. He gave me powers of the dead! I am a freak thanks to him! Stop trying to take his blame! Vlad stood, pacing back and forth. "How much do you know?"
"What do you mean?"
"About my accident, with the proto-portal!" Vlad snapped, turning to face her. "How much do you know about its effects?"
"...You mean about the Ecto-acne? Not much. We knew it could be fatal, but we never put the pieces together."
"Besides that. What else do you know of its effects?"
"Not much," Maddie admitted, "We don't have anything to do experiments with."
She doesn't know. All this and she never put the pieces into place. Maddie, I expected better. You nearly gave me a heart attack for nothing!
"If that's what you came to ask me for, please know that I have no interest in being one of your test subjects." Vlad turned away, caught between laughing and bashing his head on the wall.
They had guessed. They had been so close, they'd nearly put the pieces together... But they hadn't. And it was much more amusing than it should've been.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Valerie looked at her phone's screen, laughing quietly at the series of texts from her dad. The first was a picture of Danielle holding three tubs of ice cream, standing in front of a shopping cart with an excellent pout on her face. Afterwards, her dad had sent her a short message; 'This girl is going to eat everything we have if I don't buy her the ice cream. Good thing she's cute.'
Valerie would be lying if she said she wasn't surprised to learn that her dad and Danielle had taken a shine to each other. She hadn't expected it, and the fact that someone who was part ghost could act so human...
It made Valerie wonder, not for the first time, if there were other human-ghost hybrids out there. And if there were, were they human originally, or ghost? How was she supposed to classify them? If they were a ghost who could turn human, then they were a ghost. And she hunted ghosts. But if it was the other way, they were human. And Valerie couldn't hurt a human, she just couldn't!
But how was she supposed to decide who was who?
A tapping on her shoulder startled Valerie, and she quickly turned in her chair. Danny was standing behind her, smiling. "Hey, Val."
"Oh, hi Danny." She motioned to the other side of the table, and Danny pulled up a chair. "You spooked me."
Danny snorted, amused by some joke Valerie missed. "Yeah, I do that. So, project?"
Valerie nodded, pushing a piece of lined paper and a pen towards Danny. "I was thinking we could do it as two posters, but I didn't have the paper for that. So we'll do rough drafts now, think up a legend, that stuff. Okay?"
Danny nodded, clicking the pen. "Okay, so three generations, right? Us, parents, grandparents?"
Valerie nodded, and the conversation was interrupted as her phone vibrated. "Sorry," She quickly checked her texts, quietly laughing at the picture. Dani had found several tubes of cookie dough, positioned them into the word 'okay', and was balancing them on a tub of ice cream. Her dad had captioned it, 'I said she had to be able to carry whatever she wanted to buy. Bad idea.'
"What?" Danny asked, and Valerie handed him her phone. He smiled, "Yep, that's Dani for you. Have your dad tell her to use more human means or it isn't fair."
Valerie did, and after receiving a very amusing picture of Danielle looking like her world had come crashing down, she turned back to Danny. Valerie took a second before gathering the courage to ask the question which had been pressing in her mind for a few days. "Danny... I know how this is going to sound, but can a human and a ghost exist in one body? Like as the same person?"
Danny raised an eyebrow, looking very much unamused. "Val, seriously? You have one living with you. Don't play dumb, I know you know."
Valerie's phone fell from her hand and onto the table. "You know about Danielle?!"
"...Maybe," Danny muttered, "Okay yes. I saw her transform."
"And Phantom didn't flip out at you?!" Valerie had started playing with her hair. Danny knew?! He knew about Danielle, and he... What else does he know?
"Eh, he was busy." Danny replied, and looked at Valerie in the eye. "I think that was when the Red Huntress had a gun to his head. Or was that the day after? I really need a sense of time."
"Heh, how about that?" Valerie started clicking her pen, not making eye contact. Why would Phantom let Danny know about his cousin? His parents hunt ghosts, and they hate Phantom! I knew ghosts weren't the smartest, but this is past the stupid line! "Well, I guess we should work on the tree, huh?"
"Probably," Danny shrugged, positioning himself in the chair. "I'll go first. Is your pen ready?" Valerie nodded. "Okay, well, you know about my parents and my sister so I probably don't need to go into them unless you want middle names... Um, my mom's maiden name is Fletcher. She has an older sister named Alicia, who's divorced on lives in this hick town called Spittoon, and uh... Oh! My dad has a twin sister, Jill, who has two kids, uh... Hold on, I forgot their names... The last name is Payne though, I know that, and her husband is named Aaron."
"You forgot your cousins' names? That's just sad."
"I haven't seen them since I was like, ten, okay?! Aunt Jill's a detective a few towns over, so she's always busy. Rightland has a crime problem. But yeah, Jesse is thirteen- no wait, he's fourteen- and Michelle is twelve. And I have no clue what their middle names are."
Valerie suppressed a groan. As if this project couldn't get any more painful.
...But why would Phantom let the son of ghost hunters, who isn't even one of his supporters, know about Halfas? I'm missing something here, but what? It has to be huge; Phantom must have some connection to Danny, something... But what?
Wait, Danny's still talking. Crap. Oh, this is awkward...
.-.-.-.-.-.
Jack put the phone down, not even bothering to leave another message for Vlad. His once best friend hated him, and he just... Jack didn't know what to do. His mistake had nearly cost Vlad his life, and it had taken him twenty-five years to notice!
What kind of friend was he?!
Jack moved back to the lab, eying the containment unit. He could work on that, but somehow, working on a unit to contain spirits of the dead didn't sit right with him. His gaze moved towards the computer, and hidden somewhere in the back of his mind, Jack recalled a lecture from Jazz about 'the benefits of the internet on the stressed mind' from when he'd taken away Danny's laptop a few months ago. Somehow, Jack guessed that most of it had been made up, but at the moment that didn't matter. He booted up the computer, and was surprised to see that it had been left on website.
Jack's gut twisted, and he recognized it in a heartbeat. It was the site of dead and missing children Maddie had been looking off nearly a week ago. And she had clicked on one page, one with the date of death three days after the date of birth.
Oh, Maddie... Why?
There was no picture, no identification besides the name. But Jack didn't need a picture; one had been stuck in his mind. Of the little boy who was barely taking the form of an infant, but on the left side of his face, in line with his eye, was a freckle which would've become a birthmark. The little baby, born too early, who never had a chance to live.
Jack couldn't break his eyes away from the small data sheet beside where the picture would be. He read the name over and over again before it escaped his lips in a quiet gasp.
"James Peter Fenton."
They'd just gotten out of college, him and Maddie. They were attempting to start a business together, one thing led to another, and they... They weren't ready to be parents. But that didn't mean they weren't going to try. He'd proposed two weeks after Maddie told him.
But... When Maddie went into labor too early, Jack didn't know what to do. He'd driven her to the hospital, but he'd been trying so hard to be a good father and husband that he'd driven slowly, safely. If he driven as he normally did now, maybe things would've been different. But he hadn't, and the baby was born too soon.
Three days. For three days, he was a father, and Maddie was a mother. But James hadn't been developed enough to survive for long. There'd been complications with his lungs, and...
Jack and Maddie didn't talk about him. They never really got over it; how were they supposed to? But this whole thing with Phantom from a week ago... Jack had been alarmed too. But Phantom couldn't be James. Phantom was not James!
That little baby from twenty years ago had not become a ghost. He couldn't have... Phantom couldn't be his son.
There were footsteps, and then his wife spoke. "Jack...?"
He turned back, giving his wife a sad smile. "Hi, Mads." He moved the mouse, clicking the red X in the browser's corner. "How was your walk?"
Eheheh, heh… Yeah I wish I could I made that up on the spot. But no, I had dead babies worked into the plot from the beginning. And for some reason I can write angst at one in the morning but not humor.
I am a horrible person. Moving on!
Okay, two things; first of all, next chapter will be on an in-story Thursday despite it being in-story Sunday. This is because I can't think of anything to fill 2000-5000 words for those three days. I am aware that this means I'm throwing my system out a window, but oh well. After all, I'm pretty sure most of you want to see Valerie's training session and more Vlad and Danny being dicks to each other instead of me pulling random scenes out of a hat.
Secondly, as those from Tumblr have probably pieced together by now, LoveWritingStories and I are starting a new story on April 3rd! We've been planning it for over a year and have had the date set out for six months, so we're both really excited. However, by no means will I cancel this story or SOS Text. They already have slow updates, I can work around the schedules they have. Anyway, if Fanfiction complies the story will be called Connections, and it would mean a lot to us both if you guys did check it out. ^^
Now that my shameless self-promotion is done, follows, favorites, votes for the misleading poll, and reviews are all loved. But if any of those reviews turn into flames I'll sic them on Vlad, since honestly? He's still probably laughing with his cat over the fact that Maddie and Jack didn't piece his Halfa status together.