A/N: And thus did JadeR break her record for chapter length and singlehandedly double the length of her story. We got some background info in the first bit and lots of juicy fun in the next bit, so don't freak out at the length. Stick around, eat your complimentary Wonka Bars, and enjoy.

Animal House

By JadeRabbyt

FRIDAY

"There was definitely something here, I'll give you that much." The blood, dried black and crusted, lay splattered on the ground outside Jazz's window where the thing had stood the night before. Hal nudged a broad leaf holding part of the dried pool. "Probably from the deer. Too bad. We might have analyzed the DNA if it had been the beast."

This morning was nothing like those in Amity Park. It was eight o'clock and the mist still hadn't dissipated. The air smelled of pine and wet earth, missing was the noise of traffic and the light reek of smog, the honking of horns replaced by the fog-damped whistles and twitters of birds high up in the trees. Still, all things considered, Danny couldn't say he liked the change. He had gotten up with his dad and Mr. Kalen to investigate the monster; his sister was sleeping late; Cord sat inside doing home school work, and Mrs. Kalen was busy making breakfast in the house. Outside, leaves rustled to the ground as the wind nipped at the boughs overhead. Visibility had risen to around thirty or forty feet, but the vision of peace seemed a guise of future evil. The poor light and mist-muted rustlings sent chills up his spine.

"What kind of animals hang out around here? Is there anything that could have been mistaken for the… thing?"

Hal shook his head. "We get some bears, and Janice said she saw a wolf a couple years ago, but there's nothing I know of that might have done this."

"Anything in your labs?" Danny asked pointedly.

"Don't be ridiculous. We have some rats and gerbils, but nothing so serious as what your sister described."

Jack cast a frustrated glance around them. He stuck a hand in his pocket and pulled out something like a microscope-PDA crossbreed, pointing it at the blood, waiting as the device hummed and its screen lit up with data. "Who knows what happens in spooky woods like these? It might even be a dinosaur ghost!" Both his companions had to bite back a laugh. Jack folded his arms at them. "I don't see what's so funny. Jazz herself said she didn't think it had fur, and the eyes definitely sounded reptilian. It might be a velociraptor, or something like that."

"If we're going to start talking about dinosaurs then we might as well throw in a mutant wolf as well. The snout she described might have fit that category." Hal leaned against the house, waiting for Jack to finish with his beeping toy.

"Or a mutant bear." Jack pocketed his device, which had returned exactly nothing of value.

Danny sighed. "This is exactly why nobody takes you guys seriously." Hal smiled, and Jack harrumphed petulantly. "It might not have been a ghost at all! Jazz probably just saw something perfectly normal and then… freaked out a little. Or something." It was a dumb excuse, but it was also an extremely appealing and halfway likely one. As cool as such a monster might look in pictures, Danny wasn't too hot on squaring off with it. Villains: yes. Demon-monster-killer-thingers: not if he could help it.

Around the corner of the house, the front door creaked on its hinges. "Breakfast!" Janice chirped.

XXX

Ham and eggs and bacon and hash browns and waffles and pancakes, regular and blueberry, with pure maple syrup. "I have oatmeal too, if anybody wants that."

Danny blinked. "Whoa."

Jack grabbed a plate. "Say, you wouldn't want to come and live with us for a few months, would you?" Maddie leaned over and smacked him with a magazine. Corduroy laughed, from his nest of homework on the floor. A glassless window connected the living room and the kitchen, a doorless opening allowing passage between them. The living room's fuzzy brown carpet held the dinner table, shoved up against the wall shared with the kitchen, and several easy chairs plus a couch angled around the TV. Everybody could see everybody else, which was unfortunate for Jack because it meant Maddie could aim her whack more accurately.

It was a light whack, but he rubbed his arm in mock hurt. "What?"

"Just get your breakfast, dear." She sat at the table, eating her own bacon and pancake.

Danny opted for a waffle and joined Jazz on an easy chair next to the couch. "This might not be so bad."

"They're just fattening us up," Jazz grumbled, somehow sounding reasonably cheerful in spite of her tone. "They probably called us down because they ran out of food for that monster out there."

"Nuh-uh." Cord looked up from his homework. He'd spread himself out on the thick brown carpet between the easy chairs and the television, lying on his stomach over a large-print reading book. Mostly, he'd been looking at the pictures. "They just want your Mom and Dad to help with science stuff."

Jazz kept her voice down. "What kind of science stuff?"

Cord shrugged. "I dunno."

"See?" Jazz poked Danny, who slapped away her finger. "Fattening up. I told you."

He rolled his eyes. "Sure you did, Jazz."

"So are you guys going to show us the labs today, or what?" Jack shouted from the kitchen.

"Sure! The elevator's just out back." Janice waved her fork. "How's the breakfast, by the way?"

"Great, couldn't be better."

Janice grinned. She sat across the table from Hal, with Maddie beside her. "That's nice to hear. We don't get guests very often, but I did quite a bit of cooking back in college."

"That's true," Maddie nodded. "I remember that. You made some great casseroles."

"What about the labs?" Jack whined, sitting down to join them.

Hal laughed quietly. "Same old Jack."

He tried to think of a retort, but Jack really hadn't known Hal Kalen too well in college. The guy had always been off on some kind of special project that nobody had ever told him about.

XXX

Hal pressed his hand to the small keybox. "Hal Kalen." On the outside, the Kalens' backyard shed looked weathered and rickety, a simple backyard construction. But as the door hissed open on a reflective white interior, it became painfully obvious that the ostensible tool shed was anything but that. Walled with white metal and lined with a panel of buttons coded with letters and numbers, the lift was big enough for all of five of them with elbowroom to spare, minus the homeworking Corduroy.

"Nice." Danny touched the wall with the flat of his hand. It felt more like rock then metal.

"The alloy is similar to titanium, only a little heavier and substantially cheaper." Hal rapped on it, producing a dull thud that left no echo. "It forms the inside walls, and reinforced concrete surrounds the exterior of the lab, including this elevator shaft. The whole complex is underground, which shields us from being seen or heard from the outside."

In other words, a huge specialized prison. Jazz wondered what they planned to do if the fail-safes ever failed. "Not very sociable, are you?"

"Technically, we are a military installation. Their secrets aren't supposed to be discovered."

The lift slowed to a stop, and the thick doors slid open on a white, fluorescent-lit technoland. Two large containment tubes dominated the room, and though both were empty their glass showed signs of frequent use. They could see their reflections in the thick glass, and a number of small scratches scores their insides. A control bank sat in front of the tubes, its panels spotted with more buttons and view screens than any Fenton equipment. In the corner to the left waited a chamber in the wall, the size of a bathroom, one circular window punched in its door, while various other machines and cluttered worktables lined the side walls. Oddly enough, the center of the room had been left empty. Even the two tubes were removed toward the back.

The place was immaculate. Jack and Maddie felt like kids at Christmas, but Danny felt a burst of instinctive panic that took him a second to tone down. For her part, Jazz registered a yellow alert on the creepiness meter. The lab seemed far too clean, and a pair of iron jaws sealed an opening to the immediate left of the elevator door. Black and yellow stripes of danger paint ridged the teeth of the opening, and both siblings suffered an intense desire to bust in there and see what there was to see. Unfortunately, Hal continued on tour-guide mode and didn't send the slightest glance at the blast door so close at hand. She guessed he'd given a tour like this more than once.

"These tubes," Hal said, leading the way into the lab. "Are used for ectoplasmic separation and recombination. They're unpleasantly crude, but basically they're giant blenders." He nabbed a tool from a workbench and bent to the metal base of one cylinder. After a second of fiddling, a plate clicked open, revealing tangled innards. "This may look like ordinary wiring, but it's not. This system carries a special class of fluids I discovered some time ago during an experiment involving ectoplasmic distillation. It's what got the government's attention."

Hal rested an arm over his knee, his expression smug. "They let us alter distinct components of an ectoplasmic source: personality, power levels, memory complexes. We can extract these things and study them individually."

"Incredible. Ectoplasm is supposed to be homogenous." Maddie bent down to take a look for herself. She had no idea where they'd gotten their equipment. It couldn't be found on any public database—that much was certain.

"Essentially, it is," Janice admitted. "But Hal's tech lets us do it virtually, with computers. Each ghost has a unique plasma signature, and it's similar to the DNA in flora and fauna, but instead of coding for physical traits it codes for personality." She beamed. "We can do all kinds of neat things with it."

XXX

A stick snapped outside. Corduroy looked up from his homework. A slow, rhythmic crunching reached his ears through a crack at the bottom of the front door. He couldn't see it through the window, but the birds outside were silent, just as they always were whenever it came around. Cord smiled. That's how he could tell it wasn't a bear. The birds chirped for bears. He sat up, letting the book smack shut as he ran to open the door.

XXX

"What kinds of things can you do with it?"

"Well, take a look at this device over here." Janice gestured to the chamber they'd seen earlier, the tempered glass of its portal reflecting inquisitive faces. "We can put anything in there, animal or human, living or ghost, and get an immediate readout of its plasma signature."

"And that's… helpful?" As cool as they were making all this sound, Danny had yet to see any practical application for it.

"Very much so." Hal popped open the door to reveal bare, sturdy innards. The chamber extended back into the wall, forming a room about the size of a boxcar. "Once you have the plasma signature you can use it to isolate ectoplasm from the biological material. That's the difference between this chamber and the tubes. Here it's strictly study-and-separate, but those two other tubes can physically alter plasma composition, provided the chamber can give us its initial state. The process is lethal to living organisms, but it works just fine on ghosts or half-ghosts."

Danny's attention had been wandering, but he perked up immediately at that. "Half-ghosts?"

Janice waved away the issue. "They're very rare. We haven't found any natural ones, but we've created several ghost-animal hybrids."

Danny peered inside the chamber. There were no detection instruments that he could see. A small bomb couldn't have dented its interior, and had the walls been any color but white the thing could have passed as either a decompression or a torture chamber. "What do you do with those ghosts? The half-and-half ones, I mean."

"We destroy them." Hal smiled slightly at Danny's surprise. "Such creatures are intractable. Ghosts are controllable, and living things are controllable. Mixtures of both, while they suffer both plasmic and animal weaknesses, also exercise a mix of plasmic and animal strengths. The biomaterial boosts ectoplasmic power levels exponentially, and the ectoplasm strengthens the biomaterial to near invulnerability." Hal laughed, and the hair rose on Danny's neck. "You see, there's a reason this lab is built like a bomb shelter."

"Oh." Danny decided he was done asking questions, at least for the moment. His parents exchanged a few questions about the technical specifications which the Kalens happily answered, and Jazz even cut in with a question of her own. A strangely convenient question, Danny thought.

"Have you found any other kinds of ghosts?"

Janice bent up from a control panel, where she'd been showing Maddie a set of circuit diagrams. "Like what?"

"Well, ghosts that can change all the way between animal and ghost. The kind you were talking about before basically stay stuck on the barrier between the two. Is that right?"

Janice cleared her throat and nodded to her husband, who caught the look and frowned at the floor a moment before answering. The presence of his self-control was never more obvious. Jazz could practically hear the machinery whirring in his head. "That's an area of great interest to us right now," he answered. "It's one of the main reason we called you all up here, because we've been stuck on a problem in precisely that area for quite some time now."

"What's the problem?" Maddie had a hand on her hip and looked about ready to take apart a small spacecraft, her own attitude miles from Hal's cautious words and Janice's own mute patience.

"The tools we have here are able to separate just about any organism into plasmic and biological components. But there are some that we haven't been able to crack." They followed the Kalens to a safe at the opposite side of the wall. Hal knelt with his typical rigidity and opened it while Janice held her breath. He reached in and took out a test tube, sealed at the top with a tightly screwed cap. "This, is the problem." The liquid inside raged blue and black, moving like bottled fire and glowing more intensely than any light, artificial or natural. It threw the lab around them into a lesser dimension, and while nothing around them changed physically, the azure-black brilliance of the little vial made the everyday matter around them appear bland and less real, a carboard cutout of the vial's vivid essence. The arrogant little vial drew the eyes and awe of them.

"What is that?" Whatever it was, Jack wanted some.

"This is matter from the ghost we've yet to separate. There's something different about this extract that makes it unique from all others we've encountered." Hal tapped it with a finger. The fluid drew back and then surged against the site of the disturbance. "And circumstances have made it necessary that we decode it as soon as possible."

"The money's impatient?" Maddie clucked her tongue. "It's a shame. I ran into a foundation that wanted rush jobs. It's a shame, with such a unique specimen."

"That does it," Jack muttered. He really wanted his equipment now. "I'm going to ring those guys at the post office and see what the delay is."

Maddie excused herself to follow Jack up the elevator. "We'll be right back."

"Take your time," Janice offered.

Danny and Jazz waited as their parents hummed upward in the sterile white box of the elevator. Janice went to adjust some settings on the chamber, and Jazz pretended to busy herself at a workbench, looking with mild interest at the partially assembled machines, being careful not to touch. With his parents gone, Danny wanted a closer look at that vial. Even he didn't bleed that stuff. "Do you know anything about… that?"

Hal tipped his head. "No. Not much. It's very pure." He looked down at Danny. "Do you want to see?"

"Sure." Danny took it from Hal and held it cautiously in the palm of his hand. The color distracted him, but in a pleasant kind of way, something like watching a familiar show on television. The vial felt cold and hot at once, and the strange tingling sensation reminded him somewhat of his own projectile plasma. He took his eyes off it long enough to ask about that. "Does it ever lose the color or get… less cold?"

Hal smiled. "Good question. Ectoplasm dies without a will to drive it. Lesser kinds wear out in a couple days, but this sample will last for several weeks."

"Oh." That meant they had to replenish it, which meant they had regular access to whatever produced this stuff… "Hey, where did you get this?"

"You're not going to like the answer to that." It wasn't so much a threat as a mild, almost disinterested warning.

"Tell me anyway."

"We got it from the thing your sister saw outside her window."

Danny's mouth dropped open. Jazz had heard it too, and she froze where she stood. "You're kidding." She shook her head, disgusted as she stomped over to join them. "You knew all along exactly what I'd seen, and you didn't bother to tell me?"

Hal shrugged. "I didn't see a reason to worry you. The monster is under our complete control."

The liar! Hal had told Danny that he didn't know what it was, but whatever it was could use a lesson. "So bring it over here and let me knock it around!"

"And how exactly would you do that?" Caught in his threat, Danny didn't say a word. Hal plucked the vial from his hands. "That's what I thought."

"This morning, you told me you didn't know what it was."

"What do you think would have happened if I'd told you? All four of you would have gone bananas and tried to kill it, effectively destroying twenty years of government-funded research. For which you may have conceivably been jailed," Hal snapped.

"Conceivably," Danny mumbled.

Maddie's voice crackled through a panel next to the elevator. Hal turned from Danny and punched in some enigmatic command in the keypad near the elevator. Machinery whirred, and Danny's parents stepped out an instant later. "They say the equipment is on its way." Jack sighed at the Kalens' lab. "I guess it can wait."

"Hopefully we can keep you busy." Janice tilted her head in the general direction of the massive amounts of equipment surrounding them. She glanced down at the kids. "Why don't you both go up and keep Cord company while the parents talk shop?"

"That's a good idea." Maddie gave them a fraction of her attention, the bulk of it occupied by something like a grossly deformed trowel. Whatever it was, she found it delightful. "You know how your father is once he gets… excited." Jack had already started to dig through a nearby toolbox. Janice cringed at the mess he was making.

Hal returned the vial to its safe against Danny's mute defiance. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll get your parents up to speed and see you two later." The thick doors of the elevator slid shut, and the small room bounced as pulleys and pressure systems carried them topside.

Jazz glared at nothing in particular. "That guy is a dirt bag."

"I guess I have to agree with you on that." Too bad. The monster really existed after all, but he didn't see why Hal hadn't told them about it first thing. In the lab, he'd said they could control it, and since his family was still alive Danny supposed that had to be partially true. On the other hand, since Hal hadn't mentioned it right away, he must have assumed it would stay out of sight. Which, clearly, it had not. "This could be a very bad thing."

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Ya think? These people are nuts. School would be better than this." The thick doors slid open on the Kalens' backyard, and Danny and Jazz headed for the kitchen door straight ahead. She frowned slightly, looking without quite seeing the house before them. They were both a long way from civilization if anything went wrong. The springs on the kitchen door creaked as Danny pulled it open. The cheerful yapping of a children's program drifted out to greet them, and Cord peered at them over the sofa cushions.

"Hiya!" He climbed over the top and hit the floor, his blonde bowl cut jiggling at the motion. "You guys want to play or something?"

Jazz smiled. "Maybe later. I'm going for a walk."

"You sure that's a good idea?" Ideally, Danny would have liked to get this whole 'monster' thing worked out before anybody did any wandering. With their most effective equipment in transit, he wasn't exactly secure in his status as the Fenton family back-up plan. Not to mention the fact that his parents might start to wonder if Amity's guardian mysteriously turned up in Michigan.

Nevertheless, Jazz brushed him off. "Look at Corduroy. He's still around, and we need to know more. A lot more. Besides, I'm just going down to the lake."

"Jazz…" It was no good. She shut the door on him, her feet crunching on the leaves outside as the sound of her footsteps retreated. Danny sighed and plunked down on the couch, watching the happy random little colorful people bounce along to some awkward tune while praising the number six. "You're lucky you're an only child, Cord."

"That's what Mom and Dad say." He climbed up on the couch and stood on the cushions, taking a seat on the top cushions. Danny entertained a fleeting concern that he would fall and crack his head, but he figured if Cord was on the friendly side of hell's angels then he could probably be trusted to balance himself on the cushions of his own sofa.

"Do you know anything about that thing that Jazz saw?"

Cord bit his lip and shook his head, kicking his feet in time with the TV's song. "Nope!"

"Are you sure?" Danny looked up at him, but Cord merely giggled and smiled toothily.

"Yup!"

"Great." Danny grabbed the remote from between the sofa cushions and looked for something more interesting than the joy of Mr. Sun. His options included the weather channel, a Canadian news station, more kids' shows, another weather channel, some kind of medical emergency nonsense, and a station devoted entirely to the care and feeding of animals. Life had apparently decided to hate him for the duration of this little vacation. Danny settled for the medical channel, where the same tongs he occasionally used to flip eggs were being used to remove somebody's cherry-red internal organs. "Your parents have some weird TV channels."

"They say the other shows are bad for me."

It was hard to imagine how spleen removals could be constructive. "What about movies or reality TV? Don't you get any of that?" There didn't appear to be a VCR or DVD player in the vicinity, so no movies. Now that Danny thought about it, he hadn't seen a normal computer around anywhere either.

"We just have this." Corduroy grabbed the remote away and turned it back to Kiddieland, where insanely happy people were praising the educational value of one's fingers. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Fantastic." Danny took back the remote and switched off the handicapped television. "Did you say there were things to do around here?"

Cord pouted at the TV before answering. "I guess we could play tag."

Danny hadn't played that game since fifth grade. "Tag?"

"Me and my dad play sometimes. One person's 'it' and the other person—"

"No, I know how to play. Don't you think it would be kind of easy for me to catch you, though?" Monster in the woods Danny thought.

"That depends." Cord smiled, and his eyes shimmered with something Danny had never seen before. When he tried for a closer look, it disappeared. "How strong are you?"

"How strong… Wait, what?" He could have sworn that glimmer was real.

Cord just giggled. "Don't worry. You're like me; I know. I bet they left part of you at home, huh? We're not supposed to talk about it, but we know the truth." The glimmer darted through his eyes once more. "Right?"

Danny reflexively scooted toward the other end of the couch, putting some distance between himself and the creepy little boy next to him. "Did I miss something?"

Cord grabbed his arm and tugged him off the couch, towards the door. "Oh, come on. Let's play tag!"

XXX

Jazz paced around the lake, following the yellow-brown strip of beach up the path that led to the docks. The planks stretched out in front of her, their weathered, knotted sides homely and reliable in spite of their age. Beneath them the lake water rippled calmly, without waves, reaching from the old dock to the other side of the bay. Farther down the beach, the water twisted through a narrow neck and met with the wider lake beyond. The water glinted turquoise in the sun, which had long risen to the top of the sky. Clouds would drift across it periodically, casting the bay into shadow and bright light in turn.

The forest behind Jazz paid no mind to such changes in radiance. The trees clumped together all along the lake, growing denser still as one looked deeper into the forest. There the light was controlled on a sliding bar, growing lighter or darker with careful continuity according to the hours of the day, not the moods of the clouds. Nothing brightened or darkened suddenly in there, but where Jazz stood the sun shone strong, and she felt safe. A path ran out to the mouth of the bay, and she left the dock to follow it, kicking off her sandals for the soft dirt. She could collect them on the way back.

The wind played through her long hair, and Jazz felt herself relax into a smile. The Kalens couldn't have chosen a better spot to isolate themselves. There must be fishing, and snow in the winter, and Cord had said that there were many things in the woods that entertained. She imagined Thoreau could have fallen in love with such a place, although those mountains did look a little dark on the horizon. Had Thoreau believed in karma? She didn't think so, but Jazz didn't know for certain.

The Kalens. They lived with their nice white house with Janice, their people-pleasing housekeeper and mother figure. Hal might as well have been cut from stone and his son…? Jazz bit her lip. She still didn't know about Corduroy, but he fit into this somewhere. She'd have to ask Janice about it later.

Jazz reached the pointed lip of the bay and looked out on its lake. She couldn't see the horizon, and the woodsy setting went from quaint to threatening. They really were alone out here. Far be it from here to wish others harm, but maybe it wasn't so bad having a whole town of potential targets to surround you. The vast empty lake and the stern hard forest might as well have painted a sign over her head: foreign intruder HERE. Small waves splashed against the sand, and a little farther down the beach, a thick white bone gleamed, its surface slick with water-wear. Jazz didn't turn around immediately, though that was her first impulse. Instead, she forced herself to walk farther and—squinting reluctantly—picked up the bone between thumb and forefinger. It was lighter than she'd thought, but every bit as creepy. She let it plunk to the ground. Her skin crawled as she began to head back, picking up her pace as she returned to the path.

She had to get her sandals. As Jazz stooped to pick them up, a light gurgle drifted through the air. She froze and listened for more, realizing with a shock of panic that, save for that one mysterious gurgle, the woods around her were dead silent. Jazz turned her head slowly, very slowly, towards the lake. A small vortex swirled and disappeared, and the sounds of the birds returned to the forest.

XXX

"Now, cover your eyes. Don't look, stop looking!"

Danny sighed a long-suffering sigh and did as he was told. He'd let Corduroy drag him into the forest, out of sight of the house, and prop him up against a thick old tree for the purpose of a second-grade game that had a decent chance of ending badly at best, in disaster at worst. At least the mist was gone, and the light was neither too dark nor too light. Danny supposed it wasn't so bad. He could catch Corduroy without trouble, so unless he decided to let the kid win, this game wouldn't last that long. All things considered, it was a pretty good place to meet trouble if trouble decided to show.

"Now you count to ten and see if you can catch me." Danny pressed his folded arms into the tree trunk, hiding his eyes in the crook of one elbow. Behind him, he heard Cord backing away. "Okay, ready, go!"

Danny counted evenly, speeding it up a little as the numbers rose. "Eight nine TEN! Ready or not, here I come!" Had he really said that? Old habits came back fast, but his mild embarrassment evaporated as Danny realized that Corduroy had disappeared without a trace. The kid must have hidden behind a tree or something, because Danny didn't see him. "Uh, Cord?"

"You have to run if you want to catch me!"

The sound came from somewhere on his left, and it came from a surprising distance. Danny took off sprinting. "How did you get so far away?"

"You should know that!"

Danny changed his direction again, bounding over a log in his haste, his sneakers making a racket in the leafy rubbish carpeting the ground. The forest didn't measure distance like a town. You could see yourself moving in a town. Different buildings passed you by and different people passed you by, but a forest was just trees, trees, and more trees. It got frustrating quickly. "Cord, where are you?"

"Aw, you're not playing it right." Danny whirled, and where nothing had been before, Danny saw Cord. The kid had materialized from Planet Nowhere. As Danny watched, he took off with superhuman speed. The little squirt was a blur, and Danny lost him again.

"How did you…!" Danny paused. Something kept nagging at him, and he thought Cord was right. He should be able to figure this out. Scratching through his memory as Corduroy whizzed all around him, Danny suffered a blinding flash of the obvious as he remembered Corduroy's words. You're just like me. The kid hadn't been talking about other kids, he'd been talking about ghost powers! That put an interesting spin on this little vacation, but it raised more questions than answers. "How did you know about me? Did you tell anybody?" Danny tried not to shout.

"No." Once again, Corduroy favored Danny by appearing within decent speaking distance. "You mean you didn't know about me?"

"Should I have?"

"I thought you would." Cord frowned. "Weird. Hey, just chase me, alright?"

"Corduroy, this is a very important secret. Nobody can know about me, okay?"

"I don't see what the big deal is. My dad already thinks there's something weird about you anyway."

"Cord, time-out. Come here a second." Dubiously, Corduroy obeyed. Danny tried to think of something that would make sure a ten-year-old with bad judgment and a big mouth wouldn't accidentally ruin his life. "Back in my town, I'm kind of a… hero."

Cord's mouth formed a perfect O. "A superhero?"

Jackpot. "Yes. And I have to protect my secret identity, otherwise people will try to catch me so they can lock me up or hurt the people I know. So you can't tell anybody, alright?"

"That's soooo cool!" Corduroy bounced excitedly, the sheer coolness busting from him in a happy little jig. "I wish I could do that!"

"Just remember, you can't tell anybody." Danny spoke in a hushed whisper, although Corduroy's enthused reaction made him want to do the joyful jig right alongside the younger boy. Danny's story was true, and Corduroy's reaction was honest. Rarely did he have the opportunity for such pleasures.

"So you'll play tag with me now? You'll use your… powers, just so long as I don't tell?"

"I don't know about that." Danny looked wistfully back toward the house, or where he guessed the house might be. "How far away are we?"

"Far enough. Nobody's going to discover your secret identity." Cord beamed like a two-hundred-watt bulb. "My parents can stay down in that lab for hours and hours and hours!"

Danny chuckled. "I hear you." He thrust his fists in the air and changed into his phantom form, the white rings sweeping along his body and bleaching his air, touching his eyes, and giving him a much more impressive outfit.

"Wow." Corduroy shook his head. "I can't do that."

"Time-in!" Danny tagged Cord and blasted off into the forest.

"Flying? No fair!" Danny laughed and spared a glance back. Corduroy was hot on his tail, his feet a blur against the ground, his blonde hair plastered back against his head and his dark eyes narrowed into the wind. Far from left behind, Cord was actually gaining. Dirt, leaves, and twigs flew up behind him in a spiking cloud of detritus, and Danny headed up, angling into the trees. Cord bit his lip, squinting into the air. He launched off a rotting log, punching a hole in the moldy thing as he went airborne. Cord shot into the air, arms splayed out behind him, leting his feet pound into the thick sturdy trunks of the dense trees surrounding them. He timed it with the muscles in his calves and the impeccable sense of balance in his ears, taking just long enough to catch himself before vaulting off like a remote controlled rubber ball, just as his father had taught him. He couldn't fly, but he could jump like nobody's business. With a final soaring leap, Cord stretched out his hand and closed it around Danny's ankle.

Danny gasped and wrenched away, the touch throwing him off-balance in addition to catching him completely by surprise.

"Is that all you've got?" Corduroy dashed into the distance, laughing, with Danny right behind him.

XXX

Several hours later they pushed the door open and stumbled into the living room, hooting with laughter and making a beeline for the kitchen. "Water…"

"Where were you guys?" Jazz popped up from the sofa, where she'd been waiting and reading by herself for entirely too long. "And what do you mean water? I hope nothing happened, because I'm sure I saw something in that bay."

"Was it a monster?" Danny grinned.

"No, no, it was just a… ripple, actually."

"Oh a ripple." He and Corduroy snickered. "We'll just call out the cavalry for that one, won't we Jazz?"

Jazz set her book down, wondering if Danny had been hit in the head with something, like a cinderblock. "Danny, did you get brainwashed?"

"Endorphins." Corduroy tugged open the fridge. "Mom says endorphins are—"

"Runner's high, yes I know." She noticed for the first time that both their faces were red and sweating. "Seriously, what were you two doing?"

"Playing tag. Lighten up, Jazz." Danny splashed his face with water from the sink, and Jazz wrinkled her nose. Janice had to cook at that sink. Cord caught sight of her miffed expression and did the same thing.

Jazz groaned and padded over to the kitchen-living room window. "'Lighten up Jazz'? Danny, there's—"

He threw a cup on the table and sighed. "Yes, a monster, I know. I'm looking into it."

Corduroy nodded earnestly, but he was clearly picking up an unhealthy tendency to take after Danny in the 'Jazz Respect' zone. "Don't worry. We got it covered."

Jazz got right up in her brother's face. "You—" she said, pointing.

Danny cast an annoyed glance at her intruding finger and poked her in the forehead. Jazz yelled and stumbled backward, which gave Cord and Danny enough room to scurry past her, snickering like the irritating little male juveniles they were. They clattered up the ladder to Corduroy's room, where much more raucous laughter quickly broke out.

Jazz growled and considered calling up the parents, but she decided they weren't worth it. She retreated to her couch and her book. The ceiling above her thumped with two pairs of footsteps, making it more difficult to concentrate, but she managed. Finally though, there was just one pair of bouncing, thumping, jumping steps that made the glass quiver. The regularity of the noise made it impossible to ignore, and between that and the vibration Jazz felt like her skull was imploding.

"Hey Jazz, can you hear me now?" Corduroy's delighted question came through the walls with infuriating clarity, and Jazz heard her own brother laugh shamelessly before the noise stopped and they settled down to unintelligible muttering. Which was a considerable improvement, as far as Jazz was concerned. Those two had to learn to play Monopoly, or she might just ask the monster if it took requests.

The thought brought up an image of the orange-eyed monster with a mike it its hand, singing karaoke. She laughed at that, and then she laughed at Cord's obnoxious little thumping. Something was going on, but whatever it was seemed willing to wait, for the moment at least. For the first time since she'd got back from her walk, Jazz stopped listening for terror at the door and returned to the comfortable couch and the crinkling pages of her book, and the boys continued to chatter overhead.

XXX

Danny twitched awake to the sound of pattering feet. He blinked in the darkness and squinted at Corduroys' bed—empty. At his feet, the trapdoor slid shut, and he heard what could only be the light, near-silent footsteps of Corduroy on the ladder below. Danny crawled from his covers and suffered a moment's indecision. He still didn't know where Cord got his powers, but he seemed okay from the afternoon they'd spent goofing around. And Danny was very, very tired from all that goofing around. That kid could run.

Nevertheless, he elected to haul himself out of bed for the grand purpose of preventing somebody from kicking his butt later. Corduroy may not be evil outright, but his entire wacko family obviously kept some gag rules. Danny switched to ghost and blinked invisible, sinking through the floor to follow Cord's small frame to the screen door in the kitchen. He held his breath as the child stopped, pinning him with a puzzled look. "Danny?"

Maybe Corduroy couldn't fly, but he had a leg up on Danny in terms of instinct. His cover blown, Danny reappeared. "Where are you going?"

Corduroy frowned. "You're not supposed to see me. Dad said for me not to tell you anything, and if he finds you—"

"I shared my secret with you, Corduroy. It's my job to protect people, but in order to do that I need to know what's going on."

Corduroy chewed his lip, his brow wrinkled in thought. Finally, he looked up decisively at Danny. "You have to stay invisible."

Danny nodded and faded from sight. Corduroy smiled and left the house, heading for the shed. He pressed his own small palm to the keypad, stating his name in a voice that sounded oddly formal. The doors slid open, and Danny followed him down.

Hal waited at the bottom. Danny focused all his energy on silence.

Corduroy's father knelt and embraced him in a quick hug. "You did well today, didn't you?"

"Yes Dad. I didn't say anything, and they won't get scared again."

Danny felt sorry for Corduroy. The lie came out more smoothly than the truth ever would have, but he couldn't decipher the last part. He focused back on the conversation.

"Good. Now Corduroy, I know you're used to our weekend trips, but we can't do any of those. Not while the Fentons are here. Do you understand?"

Corduroy didn't. "But you promised we'd always—"

"I know I did, but these are very impulsive people. You're a secret, and we can't let them see all of you or they'd be very, very upset with both of us."

Tears gathered in Corduroy's eyes, and his arms sagged. "But I—"

"NO, Cord. Understand?"

"Why can't I go out?" he exploded. "Why can't I! Why do we live out here in nowhere? I can't even do anything, but Danny and his dumb sister get to be around other kids all the time. We had so much fun today!" Corduroy started to sob, and his damning words echoed horribly in the slick twilight of the lab. "We had so much fun!"

Hal rose above him like a darker shadow. "You're dangerous. There are those who might think you a weapon. You have no self-control and your mental processes are inferior. Until we can fix that, you'll remain here."

"I want Mom! Mom doesn't say that, Mom says I should go out!"

"Mother doesn't appreciate the gravity of the situation," Hal said through gritted teeth. Corduroy started to shriek, tears streaming down his face. Hal put a hand to his forehead and slid it through his hair, staring at his son with more pity and anguish than Danny would have thought possible. Hal knelt down and took Cord in his arms, and the boy clung desperately to his father.

At that, Danny decided he'd seen enough. He flew back to his room and phased through the floor, crawling under the covers, feeling a whole slough of things that would have made a lot more sense to Jazz, he was certain. This had been a whole lot simpler when Hal was just another enemy to outwit. Now, it gave him a headache and made it next to impossible to get back to sleep. If Hal was telling the truth—and this time Danny felt certain that he had—then there really was a good reason for Corduroy to be imprisoned at the far edge of the world. Danny could imagine the details all he liked, but he couldn't accept the verdict of isolation. His friends meant too much to him, and the situation hit too close to home. In another time, he might have been Corduroy.

Some time later, the trapdoor creaked open and Cord slipped into the room on loud, careless feet, breathing in hiccups and raspy sniffles. "Do you see?" He radiated bitterness.

"No," Danny admitted. "But I'm starting to."

A/N: Every once in a while I manage to write a chapter that pleases me, even if it isn't a masterpiece, and this is one of them. Yay for Cord, my best OC ever! Today's bribe (which I'd rather not include but will anyway, just because the idea is so awesome): Danny-head pez dispensers, available in human or ghost mode for your tasty pleasure.