Hey. So I apparently screwed up earlier and posted this in the chapter 21 slot. If you wish to see the real chapter 21, just go back. For those of you who are just tuning in... Yay! Double chapter post today!

Terribly sorry about this, and kudos to AlecGateway for bringing this to my attention. I wouldn't have caught this otherwise!

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Chapter 22: Laws

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"Penelope Spectra was a ghost?" Mr Lancer repeated faintly. "I think I need to sit down." The teacher looked around, as if expecting a seat to magically appear in front of him. Briefly, Danny wondered if one would. When none did so, he simply looked back up at Jazz. "Continue," he said.

"I think Danny was the one who realized it first," said Jazz.

"It was always cold around her," said Danny, shrugging. "Also, I know I'm not the only one who noticed how awful I always felt after talking to her."

"That was her thing," said Jazz. "Mom, Dad, out of all the ghosts I've met, Spectra's the worst. If you want to talk about evil ghosts, Spectra's one of the few that deserve the title. She and her assistant Bertrand lived on Earth for years and years. They made up for their ectoplasm deficiency by relying even more heavily on emotional energy, and they get the most power out of depression, sadness, despair, self-doubt, self-hatred... If they get their claws into you, they can drain your life force, too. Make you weak. We did some research about them afterwards..." Jazz pursed her lips and shook her head. "It isn't important right now. They aren't good people. Lets leave it at that. Anyway, Danny..."

"I tried to get in touch with Phantom. He was having a lot of trouble with Bertrand though. Apparently that was their plan. They'd distract Phatom with Bertrand, while they went after the school. But I did eventually manage to reach Phantom. Jazz saw us meet up. She didn't tell me right away though," he said. "I'm still not sure why."

"I told you, I was still in denial about the whole ghost thing," Jazz defended herself. "And I had just see you t-talking to one, I didn't know what to think. I wanted to give you some space."

Good catch, thought Danny, nodding. "We weren't big on planning back then-"

"Back then?" asked Tucker, scoffing.

"Shut up, Tucker. We went back to school the next day. We didn't know where Spectra went after school. The spirit assembly was that day."

"I was doing a speech," reminded Jazz, helpfully.

"Phantom was still having some trouble with Bertrand, so he wasn't able to get there until right before the assembly. Um. Spectra was draining me pretty badly at that point. But I managed to find out that she was planning on..." Danny trailed off. "She was planing on blowing up the stage. Killing Jazz. She. Um. Her modus operandi was driving people to suicide. I didn't exactly snap out of it after she told me that, but I did give her a bit more of a fight, and she called Bertrand back to take care of me. Then Phantom showed up, and between the two of us, we were able to hold off Spectra and Bertrand for long enough for me to tell Phantom about Jazz and the explosives, and then he went to go save Jazz."

"He pulled me off the stage. At that point, Danny was, um..."

"I was getting beaten up pretty badly. But Jazz had the Fenton Peeler that day."

"Right! So I shot Spectra, and that peeled off her whole human disguise and stuff, and then Phantom beat up Bertrand and sucked them both into the Thermos. I mean, it was way more chaotic than that, but that's the gist of it. I started helping out after that. But I was never got quite as involved as Danny."

"And the thefts?" asked Maddie, after it was clear that Jazz wasn't going to say anything else.

"Well, don't tell my parents this," said Sam, "but it turns out that Circus Gothica was evil. You do remember that all of the stolen stuff was found with the ringleader, right?" She waited for tentative nods before continuing, "It turns out that he had a staff that let him control ghosts. We managed to break it. Phantom didn't even remember what had happened."

"And the invasion? Kidnapping the mayor?"

"That... That was actually my fault," said Danny, drawing attention back to himself. "Sort of. The mayor was overshadowed at the time, and the rest of it... It's a really long story, but it boils down to accidentally angering a ghost that decided to get revenge on me and Phantom both."

"You- You're saying that whole thing was because of you?" asked Paulina, outraged.

"In my defense, it wasn't my fault I was in the Ghost Zone that time, and Walker is a petty jerk."

"Walker being..?" asked Mr Lancer. He still seemed to be in shock from the Spectra revelation.

"The ghost behind the whole invasion. He's supposed to be the sheriff for the Barrens, but he makes up rules out of thin air just so that he can arrest people, no one gets a trial, and the prison terms are absurd, even by ghost standards. I mean, Walker's not even two-hundred years dead, and he's imposing thousand-year sentences? For having 'real world' items? Seriously."

"Er, Danny," said Nathan, "you said this 'Walker' is supposed to be the sheriff of the barrens, right? What are those?"

Danny blinked. He hadn't meant to say that much. "The Barrens are the geographical region closest to our- to the Fenton portal. A lot of natural portals there also open up into Amity Park. I'm hoping that this place comes out in the Barrens, because that will make it a lot easier to get back home."

"And when you say 'supposed to be,' does that mean he was appointed?" asked Nathan.

"You mean there's a government in here?" exclaimed Mikey.

"Yeah. There is but, look, even I don't entirely understand how it works, and I've studied it fairly extensively. If you're still interested when we have a few spare hours, I'd be happy to trawl through the nightmare that is Ghost Zone politics for you, but it isn't important right now, is it?" Danny rubbed his face tiredly. "Besides, hardly anything is applied evenly," Danny mumbled into his hands. "The laws of Ys are different from the laws of Lyonesse." He looked back up to meet his mother's eyes. "Does that answer your questions?"

Maddie's face was no longer quite as impassive as it had been. But she wasn't furious either, like she would be if she still thought that he was possessed. Her brows were furrowed, though. The corners of her mouth were turned down. "Technical differences," said Maddie, finally.

"What?" said Danny.

"You said that there were technical differences between overshadowing and possession. Before I make any decisions about whether or not... this arrangement you have with Phantom is anything like acceptable, I want to know what those differences are."

Danny took a deep breath. "Okay. So. There are three, um, call them disciplines, that you'd probably identify as possession. Overshadowing, mind control, and possession. Uh. Analogy time. Imagine that you have to get someone to sign something, but they won't do it. Overshadowing is where you forge their signature. With overshadowing, basically you get in between the person's brain and body, and otherwise just pretend to be them. There isn't much mental interaction in between the ghost and the human. You can sometimes mentally push the ghost out, but that's more, how should I put this, establishing control over your own physical space, and the ectoplasm in that place, than anything else. It's mostly a function of force of will. If you can't do that though, um, most of you know what being overshadowed is like. It's like being asleep. I know that some ghosts can manage to make you remember what happened as if you did it, like if you were dreaming, or pass on subliminal suggestions, but that's pretty high level. So that's overshadowing.

"Then you have mind control. In the analogy from before, mind control would be tricking the person into signing. Like, if you made them think that they were signing something else, or signing for someone else. That kind of thing. It can be used on either ghosts or humans, and there are a lot of different, um, I guess you'd call them carriers for it? Like, some ghosts use music, others use pheromones, physical attachments, or visual images. It doesn't actually require the ghost to be physically inside the person. In some ways it's a lot more versatile, but you've got to remember that it's still the person acting, not the controlling ghost. So you get some weird quirks. Like, if the person's morning routine always includes doing ten jumping jacks, then they'll still do that every morning, unless they're specifically being told not to. Because of that, mind control can be hard to detect. It can also be applied to a lot of people at once. On the other hand, it can be really fragile if it isn't renewed constantly. Like, anything that's too far off from a person's natural inclination will break it, depending on how long it's been since it's been applied. Sometimes, it can be broken even while it's being applied, if they're asking for something that's really far off.

"Then you've got possession. Going back to the signature analogy, possession would be like kidnapping them and forcing them to sign. It is not a nice thing to do, it's violent, and there's a lot more mental interaction. Both sides can get damaged. What's more, the person is going to remember everything unless you knock out their memory on the way out. I don't have a lot of data on it otherwise. Possession isn't used a lot, especially not by ghosts that will actually talk to us. There's apparently some debate over whether or not it's a violation of the Second Taboo..."

"How the hell do you even know all of this?" asked Rebecca.

"Um. Gathering data and keeping records is part of my job on the team," said Danny.

"Second law?" said Hannah, sharply. Curse her for her sharp conspiracy-theorist mind. Danny was too tired for this.

"Uh, there are three big laws in the Ghost Zone. Some people call them the Three Taboos. Or the Three Restrictions. They're the only laws that are anything like consistent across the Realms. There's, um, I think the best translation would be Acts of Murder, Acts of Rapine, and Acts of Sacrilege," Danny counted on his fingers. "That's in order of severity. They're not really human-accessible crimes, especially Acts of Sacrilege," he said idly, more to distract his audience, bring the discussion even farther away from him, than anything else, "so I wouldn't worry abou-" Danny stopped dead, eyes widening. He could feel his blood drain away from his skin. Oh no. Oh. No. "I think I'm going to be sick," he said, his voice faint.

He stumbled back to the doorway. Thankfully, no one was standing by it. They didn't like the cold, he guessed. Either that, or they were avoiding the snow.

(Danny didn't know why they were doing that, snow was great.)

Danny clutched the lintel, and vomited. Well. There went his... whatever meal he counted the apples as. What time even was it, at this point? The wisps floated down to bob hesitantly by his shoulder. He wanted to tell them, but he couldn't. He couldn't risk-

Oh. Ancients. Technus. Had Technus seen? Would the technology-obsessed ghost understand what he had seen? How long had he been listening to the Fentons' lecture?

What's more-

Danny whirled. "That-" he said. "That thing you made, just now. The circular one. How does it work?"

"Excuse me?" said Maddie, rocking back. She and Jack had come closer, both of them apparently concerned. Mr Lancer had his hands on their shoulders.

"You don't need to give me technical details," said Danny. "I don't even want to know them. But I need to know the underlying principle on which it works," he said, using his hands to underline the words.

"It takes advantage of the metaphysical link between a ghost and it's lair," said Jack. "It pulls on the link. It was supposed to pull Phantom in and trap him"

Danny inhaled deeply. It felt like his head was full of static. Full of bees. This was bad. "You can't tell anyone that you made that."

"What?"

"You can't tell anyone that you made that," repeated Danny. "Never talk about it ever again. If there's some schematic somewhere, destroy it ASAP. Actually, the same thing goes for that- the Fenton Mortifier. You can never, ever, talk about it. Ever. Destroy everything related to it, anything that shows that it ever existed."

"Why?"

"Are you seriously asking me that?" said Danny, laughing. He stopped. "You are, aren't you? Look, there are so many exceptions in the rules for Acts of Murder that even if you caught the attention of the Justices, you'd probably get off, but the Dead hate being reminded of their deaths. Being forced to relive it is something even beyond that. If word got out- and it might anyway, since Technus isn't exactly the kind of person to stay quiet. Do you know how many ghosts would kill over that? But then you've got this other thing on top of that, and arguably this is worse because it isn't limited to one group and- argh!" He scrubbed both hands through his hair. "If this gets out, you will be brought before the courts, and it doesn't matter that you're human. They could execute you. Or worse."

"Execute?" gasped Jazz.

"I'm not going to pretend that I understand all of the rules associated with the Taboos, but directly screwing with metaphysical attachments is one of the few specific examples I remember for Acts of Sacrilege. Which is not," he underlined 'not,' "good. None of you can talk about this. Please."

"Alright, Danny," said Maddie. "Alright. We won't. Just- Please. You're hurting yourself." Maddie shrugged off Mr Lancer's hand, and went to Danny, kneeling down on the ground (When had Danny dropped to his knees?). She pulled his hands out of his hair. Danny tugged away from her, his arms crossed protectively over his chest.

Ricky coughed into the silence that followed. "I don't really get what's going on with these Taboo things," he said, "but what about Phantom?"