Chapter Twenty-Three: Inward Fear

Jake Fenton flew across the forest that surrounded his home, looking intently for his runaway sister. His Aunt Jazz had already received a call from his mother and father, telling him that, after a short visit to his grandparent's, they would shortly be arriving home.

Not that Jake was thinking about this at the moment.

Right now, Jake was thinking about cartoons.

In cartoons, as the episodes went on, the protagonist always found his/herself facing greater and more terrible obstacles, leading up to a climax at the show's end, only to amount to another in the next installment. Not that Jake thought of his life as part of a cartoon; he wasn't that crazy. No matter how over-the-top he and his sister's lives had gotten, this wasn't any work of fiction.

However, Jake sometimes believed that life imitated art, in addition to the other way around. Sometimes he thought as he sat on his computer, thinking about how the stakes could rise and fall and rise again like the tides. What terrible new enemies awaited them? What horrifying new enemy would the spectacular ghost-twins be needed to defeat next?

Lost in his thoughts, Jake–at first–ignored the clearing where his sister usually did her thinking. But after a second look, he saw it: the place had seen some heavy action. Blast craters lined the glade, and the oak tree in the center was splintered into innumerable pieces.

In the midst of it all was his sister, crouched on the ground in front of the remains of the tree.

Landing in the chaotic terrain, Jake walked through the splinters and holes, transforming out of ghost mode. The sunlight beaming into the entire place was paradoxical with its condition. When he reached Ellie, he heard her breath: it was uneven and shuddering, like been crying.

"Ellie?" he asked carefully.

The girl looked up at him; her eyes were raw, and her face looked swollen. She'd definitely been crying. "Oh gosh..." she said in a hoarse half-whisper, though it didn't seem as though she were talking to Jake. "It's my fault..."

Jake frowned in confusion. "What's your fault, sis?"

"I can hear her..." she continued hoarsely. "Whispering...laughing...telling me I'm nothing without her...that we're both...both the same!"

He crouched down to eye level with his sister. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Are you hurt? Did a ghost come here?"

Ellie nodded through her shuddering. "Piper..."

Jake looked around, picking up a splinter. It looked as though the tree had literally been shaken apart. Piper's handiwork, alright.

"All my fault..."

"Shh..." Jake went to embrace his sister, but she pushed him away roughly.

"Don't touch me!" she yelled. Her voice was harsh.

"Alright..." Jake said reproachfully. "But what's wrong? Are you going to tell me?"

"It doesn't matter," she half-whispered. "I...I...have to go."

As she got up off the ground, Ellie became a ghost in a burst of haloed light. She took off, no longer sobbing or tired. Jake watched it all with a mixture of sadness and disbelief. What did she mean about 'she'? Was it a nightmare? Was it another ghost that had accompanied Piper?

Jazz was right. Something was wrong here.

He took off back towards the house, where his aunt was waiting for him on the balcony to his room. Going out of ghost mode, he hugged his aunt, who embraced him back warmly.

"So," she said, "did you find Ellie?"

"Yeah," he answered. "She seemed upset about something. And the field was torn apart."

"What?"

"A ghost attacked her while she was alone. She didn't say anything else."

"Really..." Jazz said, and it wasn't a question. "I think she has a problem, Jake. Let's just hope she talks to someone soon."

In a heartbeat, Maddie Fenton can name the happiest moments in her life: the days her children were born, the day her grandchildren were born, and the day she and Jack won the Nobel Prize for discovering the Ghost Zone. However, the latter is no memory compared to the former, for she cares about her family more than any award she might receive.

This case applied to when she received a phone call from her son, Danny. He'd said that he was just coming back from a trip to Japan, and that they were going to bring them to their house for a family dinner. How kind a son she had, was what she thought.

Now, she was in Danny's car, pulling into the driveway that led to his famous mansion. The experience was always a treat for Maddie and Jack; they liked how the success of their company–no matter how far it had deviated from its original purpose–made their children happy.

As the limousine slowed to a stop, Maddie opened the passenger's door and lightly stepped out. She heard Jack's heavy footfall after hers as she opened the door, where Jake and Jazz were waiting.

"Hi, Jazzie!" Maddie said, hugging her oldest child.

"Hey, Mom," she said kindly in reply.

Maddie then leaned down to hug Jake. "And how's my little man?"

"Just fine, Grandma," he said.

"Come along, everyone," said a manservant who had walked into the atrium. "The dinner will start within thirty minutes."

Maddie sat down, waiting for the dinner to be done...

As Jake sat on his bed in his room, waiting for the little family reunion downstairs, he thought about what Ellie had said to him in the shattered peace of the storybook meadow. The entire notion of another ghost out to get them was very plausible with their history, but the way Ellie had said it sounded like only Piper had been there.

It sounded like something worse.

Jake had long known that Ellie's dreams took place inside a mind palace. Ever since she was diagnosed with clinical depression at a very young age, Jake speculated that this was to order out her mind into a less threatening form.

But Jake knew that mind palaces were not supposed to be friendly places. There were areas inside them where their masters could not venture, where Cicero's rules of spacing and light do not apply.

He thought about the look in Ellie's eyes. Beyond the tears, he had thought he had seen a look of sorrowful desperation. As though Ellie was being destroyed by some inward fear.

Fear.

Ellie was afraid of something. No. Someone.

Herself. What she could become. Somehow, Jake knew it, but he couldn't explain how. It could have been back when the psychologists said that she was a very emotionally unstable girl; it could have been back when she actually used to talk to him about her problems. But it was there. That terrible realization that could send someone into fits of worry.

"Jake? You in here?"

Gina Gray's voice cut through his musings like a knife.

"Huh? O-Oh yeah," he said. "I'm just...resting."

"Oh. Okay." The girl sat down on the bed next to Jake. "Whatcha thinking about?"

Jake raised an eye as he looked at the ceiling. "What?"

"People don't look the way you do unless they're thinking about something. So...what is it?"

"Well..." Jake said, "...frankly, about Ellie."

"Your sister?"

"Yeah. She's been avoiding me lately, not speaking to me."

"Why's she not speaking to you?"

"Because you're my friend. She thinks I 'betrayed' her, or some other nonsense."

Gina rolled to look at Jake. "Aww...how sweet that you'd go against your sister to be friends with me." She gave him a peck on the cheek.

It was a moment frozen in time.

Jake's cheeks flushed with blood as he processed what had happened. Why did she do that? Was it something like a kiss you get from a relative? Was it something more?

"Jake?" Gina asked. "You okay?"

"What?" he asked, snapping out of his haze. "Oh. Yes, I'm fine."

A pause.

"Gina–" he started.

CCCCCRRRRRAAAAACCCCCKKKKK!

Jake's eyes darted back to the ceiling as he heard the sound of cracking wood and breaking drywall. For a second, Jake thought the house was going to implode in on itself. What actually transpired wasn't an improvement. Something had wedged itself into one of the light sockets and was now parting entirely to reveal a small, elliptical object with a glowing green eye, six metal cables wriggling around it like things alive.

Gina screamed, "Oh my gosh, what is that!"

"I am HEXAPOD, child," the ellipse said in a brisk, metallic voice. As it lowered itself into the room, Jake saw that this creature was actually some type of robot. "I have been charged with the task of your friend's annihilation." Its eye turned on its stalk to the open ceiling it had just created. "The area is secure, Father."

"Very good, Hexy," came a voice that sounded akin to grating metal. At the top of the hole, looking down like a malevolent god, was a man with green skin, cyberpunk clothes, a white undercut mullet, and dark-tinted sunglasses. A maniacal grin was plastered across his face, exposing small, sharp teeth.

On the other side of the gaping ceiling was a towering, bulky battlesuit that looked something like a gorilla. In the evening sun, its dark, metallic arms shone with a blood-red outline. Contrasting this hue was a wreath of glowing green flames that surrounded its entire head. Its talon-like feet gripped into the ruins of his ceiling, looking as dexterous as his fingers.

Both figures jumped down into the room, creating clouds of plaster dust that made their appearances all the more menacing.

"If it isn't Jacob Fenton, son and heir to our most hated foe," the suit said in a deep rasp.

"We shall take great pleasure in tearing you limb from limb," the man added.

Jake didn't have time to react as four of the HEXAPOD's tentacles enclosed around his limbs and started exerting outward pressure. Gina's cries for help were quickly replaced by the roar of blood in his ears and the sound of cartilage popping in his body. He felt the bones of his forearms bending as the robot's arms forced his backwards from his torso, beginning to feather towards the greenstick fractures that would become full breaks in only seconds time.

Oh man, he thought. Oh man, this is bad.