"Danny," said a voice. It sounded familiar.
"I'll bet it was a ghost!" exclaimed a second voice.
"Jack, not now! He's coming around."
Danny blinked and looked uncomprehendingly up at his mother. There was something… "Jazz?" he muttered.
"She's gone," Maddie replied quietly. "Sweetie, what happened?"
"There was a ghost…" His brain was slowly resuming normal function. "I tried to save her…"
"Jack, go warm up the RV!" Maddie ordered her husband, who was already doing just that. "Are you going to be alright by yourself, Danny?" she asked worriedly.
He nodded as he pulled himself into a sitting position. "Yeah, I'll be fine." Seeing the continued concern, he grinned and added, "If any ghosts come back, I'll just suck them into the Ghost Weasel."
Maddie returned the smile half-heartedly, and considered having him come with them in the RV. But if it attacked him once, it might do so again. She didn't want to put him in danger. "Don't leave the house," she admonished him. Once he gave his word, she nodded decisively and dashed out the door.
Danny stood carefully, but he seemed to be alright. He waited several nerve-racking minutes for his parents to leave before invoking his ghost form; he couldn't risk them coming back, after all. He had a feeling he knew where Jazz was going. Any investigation into the wall mural would have to wait.
Every single person who had ever lived in this house had either jumped off the balcony or walked into the bay. Danny had stopped the former; the ghost of Julia must have knocked him out to accomplish the latter. Outside, he caught a glimpse of his Dad taking the hairpin turns a little too fast and spared a moment to roll his eyes. They were adults; they could take care of themselves.
As expected, Jazz was walking across the beach toward someone Danny suspected was Roy, probably being controlled by Ronan. Why they felt the need to reenact their deaths was beyond him, but it was time to put an end to it. He pushed himself to go faster as the two would-be victims strolled casually into the surf.
"Jazz!" he yelled. "Snap out of it! You're being controlled!"
She faltered slightly and started to turn, but Roy tugged on her arm. They barely made another step before Danny was there, lifting them back out the water.
"No!" Jazz/Julia yelled, struggling. "Let us go!"
"Not on your life," Danny replied.
"Release us," Roy/Ronan growled. "Or face the consequences."
"Get out of my sister and her boyfriend, and you can do whatever you want." He deposited them at the very edge of the beach and floated between them and the waves.
They looked at each other, the very picture of rage. When they turned back, their eyes glowed a familiar shade of blue-green, the same color as the water in the mural. Danny was unimpressed. "We're doing them a favor," Ronan said.
Danny lifted an eyebrow. "By getting them killed?"
"We wouldn't expect a child like you to understand," Julia replied in a snide tone.
"You're right," the ghost boy agreed. "I don't. So we can do this the easy way, or the hard way." He lifted his hands to display the charged power. "Get out, or I force you out."
The two exchanged glances again, then looked at him scornfully. "You would harm them just to get rid of us?" Ronan asked skeptically.
Danny grinned. It was the same Cheshire Cat expression he often saw on Kat's face. "Oh, this won't hurt them a bit."
They considered that for a few minutes. After Danny prompted them a second, they closed their eyes, and the humans fell to the ground. The boy threw himself down at his sister's side, fearfully begging for her to be alright.
She blinked and looked up at him. "Danny?"
Next to her, Roy sat up slowly and looked around. "How did I get out here?"
"You were possessed," Danny explained. Receiving only a blank look from Jazz's boyfriend, he explained further. "By ghosts."
The two teens stood and dusted themselves off, then Roy laughed. "Oh, I don't believe in ghosts."
"Um…" Jazz started to say something. She looked over at Danny, hovering several inches above the ground, and marveled at the human mind's ability to delude itself instead.
Danny snickered and patted her on the shoulder. "You sure know how to pick 'em, don't you?"
"Oh, shut up, D…ah…ghost boy whom I've never seen before…" She turned her attention back the mildly perplexed Roy. "Come on, let's just go back home."
"Stay, please," said a voice.
"We're not through yet," a second finished.
Danny interposed himself between the apparitions and Jazz and Roy. He recognized Julia immediately, and was also able to see that her neck was tilted at an odd angle, as though it had been broken. Ronan also appeared as a green-skinned, seaweed tangle corpse, additionally sporting several of what could only be describe as gunshot wounds. They were the first ghosts Danny had ever seen that looked like they did at the time of death. It was chilling.
They still weren't setting off his ghost sense; that was the second thing he noticed. Either they were like Kat and simply didn't, or these were just projections. Either way, they were a threat. "And here I thought you smart enough to run," he quipped.
"You're the one who should be running, little boy," Julia informed him arrogantly.
"No one can resist our power," Ronan went on.
They joined hands, then raised their free hands as if to point. Danny threw up a shield to protect Jazz and Roy while part of his mind recognized the blue ectoplasmic energy he had been shot with earlier. Blue energy…like water…
"Guys, get out of here!" he snapped at the two humans. He could hear Roy protesting about something, but he had other things to worry about. He fired two energy blasts at his enemies and dove out of the way of their retaliation. "Why would you do this?" he demanded. "Why kill innocent people?"
"To save them," Julia answered. It almost sounded like she was begging him to understand.
"Lives are fleeting," Ronan continued. "We give them eternity."
"Whether they want it or not?" Danny asked rhetorically. He realized they were backing away as they fought, leading him towards the water. Clearly the Sound was important to them, but why? It seemed significant.
He dove through the ground to come up directly behind him. They clearly were not expecting the attack; Ronan pushed Julia behind him to take the brunt of Danny's kick. Before the boy could recover his balance, Ronan caught him by the ankles. As he started to lash out with his fists, Julia caught him by the wrists.
"You should have stayed away," one of them said; Danny didn't pay much attention to which one. "We had no quarrel with you. Now…"
Whatever they were planning was cut off by the roar of an RV in overdrive. The three ghosts broke apart to dodge out of the way as the Fenton Family Assault Vehicle skidded to a stop right where they had been fighting. Maddie leaned out the window, Ghost Bazooka in hand. "Attack our children, will you?" she yelled. Ronan was closest to her side, so he was the first to go. Julia screamed angrily and vanished, leaving Danny to give a panicked cry as he shot into the sky. Maddie yelled something after him, but he was too far away to hear. He went invisible and headed back to the house.
"Well, it's not like I wanted it to be harder," Danny said the next day. He and Jazz were sitting on his bed, just talking. He had explained everything as he understood it in the hopes his psychology buff of a sister might be able to give some helpful insight. "I just don't think it's over."
Jazz mulled over that for a while. "So you think what we saw was just projections sent by the real Ronan and Julia?" At his nod, she put a finger to her chin in a classic thinking posture. "If they can do that and still not be close enough to set off your ghost sense, they must be pretty powerful. Are you sure you should take them on?"
"I have to, Jazz," he insisted. "I can't just walk away from this. Other people could be killed."
"Danny, you could be killed." She sighed and covered his hand, recognizing the stubborn look that he inherited from their father. "I just worry about you."
"If you can figure out why they're doing this, I may not have to fight them." It was good logic; too bad Danny didn't actually believe it. Fortunately, Jazz did. Or pretended to, but it amounted to the same thing.
"Do you know how to get to them?" she asked in defeat.
"I think so."
Jazz nodded and stood. "I have a theory. Let me think about it for a little while, check my books."
As she opened the door to leave, Danny called, "So what did Roy think about last night?"
Jazz rolled her eyes theatrically. "He announced that my family is insane, ghosts don't exist, and that whole fight was a group hallucination. Honestly, I think the only reason I fell for him was Julia's influence."
Danny laughed and turned to attend to the last of his homework. The look of loss in her eyes did not go unnoticed, but having her for a sister had taught him one thing at least. It was better to wait until she was ready to talk.
A/N: Thank you, everyone, for your words of praise. Faded, it was a little of both. Jack doesn't like Roy by simple merit of the fact that he's interested in Jazz. Julia exacerbated Jazz's put off response to her dad's overprotectiveness to mirror the way she had felt at her own father's reaction to Ronan.