Jahoan: I had forgotten about Lake Eerie. Now that I remember, I think it took quite a drive for Jack and Danny to get there, so imagine Lake Amity is closer to Amity Park than Lake Eerie.
Jebest4781: Thanks!
Diamondteel4: Nathaniel is a quiet tomato, and must be protected.
Rosetrang628: Not telling about love square business. I have plans for the student council stuff; the bake sale idea is a good one.
Matt: I had forgotten about Lake Eerie, so let's just say Lake Amity is closer than Lake Eerie. I think Marinette should have given Chloe the Bee in Heart Hunter, it made more sense than calling in Kagami and the Dragon.
Crimson commando: Let's get through seasons 1 and 2 before we think about season 3, alright? I do plan for Dark Danny to make a reappearance after his debut, though.
Crystal Da Pony: I know. If it were up to me, Owl House would have at least four full seasons and maybe a big budget animated movie. Glad you enjoyed my changes like switching the target from Chloe to Mendeleiev and giving Mari a chance to explain herself. Yeah, Nath deserved an apology from Mendeleiev. Sam has ways of making Tucker follow through with his punishment, like calling his mom.
La gran diosa zorra fantasma: Glad you enjoyed the chapter and all the changes from canon I made. Yeah, teachers like Mendeleiev are the worst. I agree with your assessment of Penalteam.
Pokemon fan 1991: Yeah, I figured with another hero on the team, not all powers will be necessary every time. Chloe showed a lot more depth to her in seasons 2 and 3, and it's a shame season 4 and beyond erased all that just to make her a one-dimensional villain that the creator thinks is worse than Hawk Moth. We'll see once Walker gets his debut.
Fan: Don't rush me. I did see the first episode of season 5, and it was terribly executed.
P96822: Glad you enjoyed the chapter!
King of Fans: Glad you enjoyed the changes I made to the episode. I felt like Mendeleiev deserved the revenge instead of Chloe. I see your point about Marinette and Adrien with the 'loose lips sink ships' thing, but I felt they could have worked their way around the Sabrina thing in that one. Thanks for reminding me about the ghosts' ability to pass through walls not working in the Ghost Zone, I'll have to remember that when writing the kwamis in there.
Erica phoenix16: Thanks!
Leonardo: Glad you enjoyed the changes I made from canon. About THAT twist, Gabriel could have squashed Adrien's quest for freedom at the very beginning by twisting or touching the ring, literally commanded Adrien with the ring if he ever had doubts like in Gorizilla, or Nathalie could have sensed the sentimonster during Miraculer when she was a few feet away like she did with Feast, and there's more examples just aside from those. The fact that nothing hinted at the twist UNTIL season four is very telling about how much thought they put into it, which is zero. There's just so many plot holes involved it makes my head hurt.
Friendly reminder that speculation about future chapters and what you want to see is okay, but please leave a comment about the chapter I just worked very hard on if you intend to speculate.
Also, Two Kinds has a TVTropes page, so if you think of any trope examples for it, go ahead and add them.
Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or Miraculous Ladybug. They belong to their respective owners. Any and all familiar dialogue is for the sake of the plot.
One Kind of Spirit Week
The next big event was upon Casper High soon after the particle physics presentations. Casper High would be celebrating 100 years as a school. While this would normally be a major milestone for any school, nobody except Mr. Lancer seemed to particularly care.
"Casper High Spirit!" Lancer leaped up and down on a trampoline in front of the entrance to the school, attempting to do some kind of cheer routine and epically failing as he fell on his face. He then saw Jazz, one of his current favorite students, approach him and got to his feet. "Ah, Spirit Week. I love it so. The pomp, the circumstance, and mostly the spirt sparklers." He pulled out a photo he had dug out from his previous school memorabilia, and showed it to Jazz. "Jasmine, did you know I was a cheerleader when I went to school here?"
Jazz took one look at the image of her balding vice-principal as a teenager in a cheerleading uniform, and immediately tried to scrub it out of her mind. To further avoid thinking about it, she changed the subject. "Really? Weird. No clue. Look, can I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Lancer? About my brother, Danny? He's been acting really strange since the school year started, like he's not himself anymore."
As she explained to him her concern, they walked inside the school. At the same time, Danny happened to be walking past the, unused up until recently, school therapist's office when his Ghost Sense went off. Making sure nobody was around to see first, he phased into the office and found a blob-like ghost there. Transforming into Phantom, he and the ghost dove at each other with fists ready.
"I'd talk to him," continued Jazz as she and Lancer wandered through the halls, "but I'm his older sister and he's just going to think that I'm being bossy. And if he doesn't get some help, doesn't talk to somebody, all that frustration he's repressing could come out the wrong way."
Before Lancer could speak up and reassure her about looking into the matter, they both heard noises coming from the therapist's office ahead and went to go investigate. By the time they reached the office, Phantom had tried hitting the other ghost multiple times with his ecto blasts but missed, the ghost escaped, and Phantom switched back to Danny when he heard someone coming. Since Lancer and Jazz did not see the fight, their immediate assumption was Danny trashed the office for no reason.
Without any real evidence, Danny could only weakly offer, "Uh, I saw Phantom fighting a ghost?"
Homeroom already started that Monday, and Danny was still in the therapist's office with Jazz, Lancer, and the new therapist. Jazz and Danny sat in chairs while Lancer and the assistant stood off to the side, and the new therapist was fiddling with the room's thermostat.
Jazz shuddered slightly. "Is it always so cold in here?"
The therapist smiled brightly as she stepped away from the thermostat and started cleaning up some of the mess left behind by Phantom and the other ghost's fight. "Of course! I find that cold temperatures keep the mind icy sharp. And don't you worry about this mess of an office, either. Stuff happens! No biggie. Right, Jasmine?"
"It's Jazz," the older sister corrected, "my friends call me Jazz."
Danny scowled at his sister for meddling in his business again. "Yeah, well, your brother calls you fink."
"Danny, I'm just trying to help. We used to talk all the time," Jazz insisted, throwing her brother a concerned look.
"Yeah, when I was eight and you weren't a fink." Danny shot back.
Lancer stepped forward. "That's more than enough out of you, Fenton. Get to class while Dr. Spectra and I decide what your punishment is."
Danny threw Jazz one last sour look before stomping out of the office.
Once he was gone, Lancer's demeanor brightened as he turned his attention to the therapist. "Unlike her brother, Jazz is one of Casper's best and brightest. She'll be giving the keynote pep speech at our centennial Spirit-a-thon on Wednesday." He gave Jazz a proud grin, who flustered at the praise.
"Right on! That's why I'm here to pump up the pep one student at a time." Dr. Spectra gestured to the photos she had hung up on the wall behind her desk. They all showed her helping students.
Was it Jazz's imagination, or were all the students in those pictures somewhat depressed? Maybe they were how those students started out when Ms. Spectra began working with them.
"Jazz, Dr. Spectra is a highly respected motivational speaker and teen therapist," Lancer explained to the teen girl. "She's agreed to help 'pump up the volume' on that old Casper High spirit this week."
Well, he clearly still had that outdated book on teen lingo.
A short man walked into the office with a perpetual frown on his face. "And this is my assistant, Bertrand," Dr. Spectra introduced him.
Jazz waved a greeting to the assistant, but he turned up his nose at her. His reaction caused her to falter. That wasn't a reaction she normally got for trying to be friendly.
Ignoring how dismissive her assistant was to the student, Spectra elaborated, "Jazz, we're going to have a super week! Wait until you see what we have planned for the Spirit-a-thon. Right after your speech, show her the mockup Bertrand," she instructed her assistant, who pulled a page out of his jacket. He held it up for Jazz and Lancer to see, which had what looked like dominoes arranged to spell out Casper Spirit. "We'll set off this domino chain that says Casper Spirit. Dominoes represent how each person's spirit affects the next person they touch. Slammin, huh?"
Oh great, another person using outdated lingo.
Jazz rolled her eyes. "If by slammin, you mean weird, then yes."
"And the spirit sparklers will go off afterwards… right?" Lancer checked, really eager for the sparklers.
Spectra pulled out some of the mentioned sparklers from her desk. "Oh, you bet they will. After all, what's spirit week without spirit sparklers?"
Jazz curled her fist under her chin thoughtfully. "You know, you're a little over-peppy, but my brother might benefit from talking to you. But he's so mad right now, he'd never listen to me."
"Yes, well, he'll listen to me." Lancer crossed his arms sternly.
Later that day, Danny again found himself at the school therapist's office. Lancer made him leave class to come talk to the new therapist, or risk detention for the mess.
After sulking about it for a few minutes as he waited in the chair outside the office, the door finally opened. He showed mild surprise when Paulina walked out with Dr. Spectra.
"So, you're saying my popularity is, like, completely dependent on my beauty?" Paulina asked.
"I'm not saying it's fair, sweetie. But if you feel like you need something like a lot of makeup, I say go for it!" The therapist said cheerfully. "You're the only you you've got." Sending Paulina back off to her class, she addressed Danny next. "Danny, come on in!"
Danny followed her into the office, leaving Paulina standing in the hallway. After a moment, Paulina started to do as she was told, but a purple butterfly arrived and fluttered into her hair barrette. A familiar purple outline formed around her face, and she soon said, "I'll be the most beautiful, cutest akuma you ever worked with, Mr. Hawk Moth." Then dark purple energy washed over Paulina's body.
Inside the office, Spectra was behind her desk while Danny sat in the chair Jazz occupied only a few hours ago. Danny shivered in his seat, whisps of breath sneaking through his lips. "I can't believe my stupid sister convinced Lancer to make this my punishment. And can we please turn up the heat in here? I can see my own breath."
"Wow, you do complain a lot," Spectra commented with a shrug, "Hm, well your sister did say you could be a bit of a baby."
"What?!" exclaimed Danny, suddenly warmed by anger.
"Sweetie, it's not your fault she thinks you're a loser."
"Wait, Jazz called me a loser too?" he demanded.
Spectra got out of her seat, walking over to him. "Hey, those are her issues. I'm not saying you're a loser, Danny. I think you're a great kid." She stepped behind him, and rested her hands on his shoulders.
He started to melt into her touch, feeling drained. "Then why do I feel so miserable?"
She knelt in front of him. "You know what I think? You might be a mess, but mess is just the beginning of 'message'. Now go out there, and be a better you."
Taking that as his permission to leave, Danny trudged his way out of the office, smacking into the wall accidentally before taking a step to the right and finally walking out the door. The door shut behind him, revealing Bertrand.
The assistant watched as Spectra took out a compact mirror and leaned against her desk, admiring herself. "Marvelous…" she said to herself, watching her wrinkles fade away in a ghostly green glow and her face started looking years younger.
Bertrand crossed his arms. "Why are you wasting your time on a messed-up kid when we've got a big to-do planned for Wednesday?"
"Yeah, but Wednesday is a few days away," Spectra pointed out, "Teen misery is the nectar that keeps me looking fabulous, and that Fenton kid is like a walking spa treatment." She closed the compact, and put it in her pocket.
Bertrand hummed as his green eyes started glowing red. "Then maybe I should up the ante." His body morphed into that of the green blob ghost Danny fought that morning, and then the blob shifted into a giant ghost hornet.
"Miraculous Ladybug!" Ladybug tossed the Lucky Charm, a spotted watermelon, into the air and it dispersed into the usual swarm of magical ladybugs that reset everything to the way they were before the akuma attack.
Paulina, who was basically an akumatized version of the chibi form Desiree gave her in her wish called 'Cutenosis', reverted back to herself on the street. The A-lister looked around her surroundings as she sat on her knees. "Huh, how did I get out here?"
A few feet away, Ladybug and Chat Noir did their traditional fist bump.
"Too bad Phantom wasn't here," Chat Noir remarked, "I wonder where he is."
Ladybug shrugged. "He probably got held up with something else and couldn't sneak away to transform." The spotted hero walked over to Paulina and offered her hand. "Come on, Paulina. Let's get you back to class."
Paulina pouted as she took the hand. "Aw, I was hoping if I ever needed to be saved, it would be by the ghost boy."
"Wow, really feeling the love," Chat Noir deadpanned from where he stood. Grabbing his baton, he vaulted away. "See you at the next one, my lady!"
The bell rang, and since the akuma attack lasted only a few minutes without an alert being put out, the school day resumed as normal.
"Dude, you okay?" Tucker inquired, seeing Danny's sour mood as they and Sam walked through the halls to their next class.
"I'm fine," Danny grumbled, "I can't believe my sister told that shrink I'm a loser."
Having known Jazz about as long as she knew Danny and Tucker, Sam couldn't help being skeptical. "Are you sure Jazz said that? That doesn't sound like Jazz to me."
That was when Jazz crossed paths with them in the hallway. "Hey, guys. What doesn't sound like Jazz to you?"
Sam and Tucker merely glanced at Danny as he scowled at his sister.
"Still mad?" Jazz guessed.
"Wow, you are the smart one," Danny bit out sarcastically.
Jazz took a step towards her brother. "Danny, I know you're angry, but I'm worried about you. Ever since the accident-."
"Jazz, I know you think you're helping, and I'm sure when I'm older I'll appreciate it, but right now, I don't!" Danny interrupted her, tired of her smothering behavior.
She frowned at him. "You have to talk to somebody, Danny. You barely have any friends." At the affronted look Sam and Tucker threw her, she quickly amended, "Besides these two. And you have absolutely no extracurricular activities."
"Unless you count the ghosts," Tucker whispered to Sam, who quickly told him, "Shut it!"
Thankfully, Jazz was too focused on her brother to notice the friends' commentary.
"Well, maybe this is me now." Danny continued to rant. "Not everybody is pumped up full of spirit all the time, you know." He intended to say more, but his Ghost Sense drifted out of his mouth and he started to shiver.
"Ghost Sense? Now?" He murmured to himself, eyes darting around.
Jazz carefully approached her brother, concerned by his sudden shaking. "Danny, you're shivering."
Needing to transform, he ran down the hall away from the hand she had rested on his shoulder. "Leave me alone!"
"It's worse than I thought," Jazz thought out loud.
Before she could chase her brother, Jean from Ms. Mendeleiev's homeroom rushed over in a panic. [1]
"A freakishly large hornet's coming!" Jean shouted before pulling open the nearest locker and jumping inside to hide. In his haste, he accidentally closed the locker on his foot. "Ow, my leg!"
Bertrand flew around the corner, and while other students fled, Jazz was paralyzed with horror. The giant hornet took advantage of this, and went over to her. Holding her with his hornet legs, he started dripping ecto drool all over her, causing her to scream in disgust.
Her terror didn't last long before Phantom flew onto the scene with a flying kick. "Back off, ghost bug!" The moment his foot made contact with Bertrand's face, he turned the both of them intangible so they would go flying through the wall.
"Phantom?" Jazz blinked, not having been saved by the hero before, before pointing in afterthought. "That hornet was a ghost?"
Phantom managed to kick Bertrand out to the school courtyard, the few students outside scattering at the first sign there was a fight going on.
"Somebody call for an exterminator?" Phantom quipped as Bertrand regained his bearings.
Spectra's assistant gave the bug equivalent of a grin. "My, you are clever, aren't you? Swat this, big boy." The giant bug zipped at Phantom, pointing his stinger offensively.
Before Phantom could throw up something like a shield, Bertrand nicked the sleeve of his suit, tearing a large rip. The ghost hero grasped his arm in pain, falling to the ground.
"I should have gone intangible. Idiot!" Phantom mentally smacked himself. "I'm not getting better at this. I'm getting worse."
Bertrand circled back around for a second dive with his stinger. This time, Phantom acted quicker and decided to try the new shield he discovered he could create during the trip to Wisconsin. Luckily, it seemed to work as Bertrand went bouncing off the green dome. Once the hornet sprung off the shield, Phantom dispelled it.
He jumped to his feet, fists glowing with energy ready to attack. "Alright, pal! Time for you to-." Phantom's fighting words died in his throat when he saw his opponent had vanished. The ecto energy gathered in his hands dissolved as he dropped his guard. "Gone. Great. Another bad guy gets away." Sulking, he hovered up high to see if he could find a sign of where the hornet went. [2]
Behind his back, Jazz was staring at him from a classroom window.
"Maybe Jazz was right. Maybe I am a loser," considered Phantom defeatedly.
Unable to hear Phantom, Jazz watched as he flew away out of sight. "Phantom saved me," she said to herself before smiling, "Wait until I tell Danny!"
If there was one way to boost her brother's spirit, it would be to tell him one of the local heroes saved her.
Making a roundabout flight back to school, Phantom snuck into a closet to de-transform.
Danny tracked down Sam and Tucker, who had met up with Marinette at some point. It was lunchtime, so the four students made their way to the cafeteria. Alya wasn't at Marinette's side; she was elsewhere taking interviews with witnesses who had seen the ghost hornet, which meant it was safe to talk about Phantom with the young designer.
"Did you get it?" Sam asked as they walked.
"No. It got away," Danny grumbled. "And I didn't even have the stinkin' thermos."
"You really need to start carrying that around in a lunch box, dude," said Tucker.
Marinette shook her head. "Nah, that's too impractical. He'd need to carry it all the time. What he needs is a way to wear it." Her eyes wandered to her purse, and inspiration was right in her face. She smiled at Danny when she had her idea. "Like a strap!" She slid her thumb under the black string strap she used for her purse as an example.
"I've never heard of a thermos with a strap," Sam remarked, raising an eyebrow.
Marinette gave Danny her best pleading look. "Let me try to rig something up. I'm not much help with the ghost stuff; the least I can do is help make the equipment a bit more accessible."
"I guess it's worth a shot," Danny said, giving into Marinette's offer to support the fight in her own way. "I'll grab the thermos from my locker after classes let out, and you can try whatever idea you have at your house. I'll just grab one of the spare thermoses until you give the original back."
/
"What do you mean you didn't see a ghost?" Jazz questioned her little brother.
The Fenton siblings were sitting at their kitchen table later that night. Neither had dinner yet, or started their homework, the latter being weird for studious Jazz, but she was insistent on her brother's well-being coming first.
"It didn't look like a ghost to me. It just looked like a big bug, so I ran." Danny's expression grew cynical as he added, "Like a loser."
"I was right." Jazz gave him an annoyed stare. "You're not going to listen to me, are you?"
"Nope." Danny boasted a victorious smile, thinking his sister was finally getting the hint how annoyed he was with her.
"Then you leave me no choice." Raising her voice, Jazz called out, "Mom, Dad! Can I talk to you about Danny?"
Danny's face fell as Jazz adopted the very smile he was bragging moments ago. "What? Jazz, no!"
In moments, the Fenton parents were sliding into the kitchen. Jack was wielding a new invention.
"Is there something wrong with Danny?" asked Maddie.
"Is there a ghost involved?" Jack added.
The parents hurried over to Danny, and Maddie started inspecting her son for potential problems. "Is there something you want to talk about?"
Jack leaned over her shoulder, tweaking with the settings on the device in his hand. "That involves ghosts?"
"I… I…" Danny struggled to find something to say that wouldn't result in his secret being exposed. Glancing at Jazz, he suddenly found a way to twist the situation around. "Actually, yes. Jazz saw a ghost today." Watching his parents' eyebrows spring up, he knew he had them. He smiled at his sister. "Tell them, Jazz."
"What?!" Maddie jumped over Danny to get closer to Jazz. "Why didn't you tell us?"
Jack pulled his phone out, wondering how he and his wife missed a ghost alert, and shook it in frustration. "Blasted phone. It would have been a good chance to try out the portable Fenton Ghost Peeler." The Ghost Peeler being the device he had brought into the kitchen. "It tears ghosts apart atom by atom!"
Eager to display its abilities, he pressed a big red button on top. Armor quickly sprouted out from the device, mounting giant lasers to Jack's fists. It was apparently Jack's first time trying on the armor because as soon as it had formed around him, he lost his balance and fell onto the table, breaking it into pieces.
Guessing the conversation was going to be suitably embarrassing for Jazz, Danny got up and left the kitchen with a smirk. "Well, enjoy your chat."
Jazz groaned at two things- the first being her brother dodging her attempt at a therapy session, and the second being her embarrassment at her father breaking the table.
With Danny successfully avoiding a discussion with their parents, Jazz decided to try a different tactic. If she couldn't find out the change in his behavior directly from the source, her next best bet was his friends.
Jazz knew Sam and Tucker just as long as her brother did, if not as well. Thus, she knew when to ambush them and how to persuade them.
Cornering them after a class she knew they didn't have with Danny, she started probing. "Don't you think he's acting weird? I mean, haven't you noticed how gloomy and negative he's been lately? Really, it's a miracle he hasn't been akumatized by that Hawk Moth guy yet."
"Uh, Jazz? We're Danny's friends. That means we keep his secrets from you," pointed out Tucker. Jazz handed him twenty dollars as incentive. "Although…"
Before Tucker could spill anything, Sam snatched the bill and gave it back to the older teen. "We all have our problems, Jazz. I know you're worried, but Danny's okay."
While they talked, Danny stopped at the water fountain near them to get a drink of water. While he had his head down, Bertrand snuck his ghostly arm through the wall and yanked the fire alarm that was near the fountain. [3]
Immediately, the fire alarm started going off and the sprinklers in the ceiling started raining water down on everyone.
Danny, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker all spun around, and while Danny was confused at what was going on, his friends and sister were looking as if he was the one who pulled the alarm.
Of course, the fire alarm going off meant the fire department was called and the school had to evacuate. Everyone was soaked. The A-lister girls started throwing tantrums about their makeup, the geeks complained about their technology being ruined, the band geeks did the same about their instruments, and everyone was generally miserable.
As the suspected alarm puller, Danny was subjected to an interrogation by Mr. Lancer while Mr. Damocles spoke with the fire department.
"A month's detention? But I didn't do anything!" Danny protested, his sister and friends glaring at him in accusation.
Spectra approached the vice-principal. "Hey, Mr. Lancer! It was an accident. But, we're going to take this accident, and make it an acci-don't, and learn from it so it never happens again." She vowed chipperly.
Danny, not liking how his last session with the therapist went, tried to argue. "But-!"
Lancer shut down his argument. "No buts. You could learn a little bit about school spirit from Dr. Spectra here. When I was in school, I got the same advice. And look how I turned out!" He gestured to himself as a shining example of someone with spirit.
For once, Danny and Spectra seemed to have the same thought.
Mr. Lancer was overdoing it.
Their attention, along with the vice-principal's, was torn away as a commotion stirred among the rest of the school.
"I'm the Magician of Misfortune!" An akumatized student declared as everyone distanced themselves from him.
'Wait, is that Jean?' Danny wondered as the akuma villain leaped away to cause mischief.
Nobody noticed Marinette and Adrien slip away to transform.
While Ladybug and Chat Noir fought the new villain, Danny was forced to go with Spectra to her office. As they got the session started, Danny was already questioning her methods of helping him.
"And this is supposed to help me how?" Danny demanded in a disgruntled tone.
The reason for his sour mood was the costume she put on him. He was wearing a top hat, a sash that read 'spirit', and a diaper.
"We're going to help you overcome your fear of being called a baby," answered the therapist.
Danny sat down in his seat across from her desk, sulking and trying to ignore the diaper. "I'm not afraid of being called a baby. I'm afraid of being called a loser," he corrected her.
She smirked at him. "Ah, and therein lies the problem. You care too much about what other people think."
At that moment, Dash, Dale, and another one of their football teammates entered the office carrying boxes.
"Where do you want us to put these banners up, Dr.?" Dash trailed off his question once he and his friends saw Danny. Feeling vengeful for his secret collection of teddy bears being leaked, Dash taunted, "Hey, guys, check it out. It's the Casper High spirit baby!"
The three bullies had a laugh at Danny's expense.
"Of course," Danny sighed, resigned to the embarrassment.
Meanwhile, Spectra fed off his misery without anyone being the wiser.
While Dash and his buddies took pictures of Danny in the spirit baby costume to post online for further mockery, Ladybug and Chat Noir defeated Magician of Misfortune.
Once they stopped him from making the Dalv Co. building downtown disappear, they managed to break his akuma object and purify the butterfly.
"Pound it!" The two Miraculous heroes bumped fists as Jean turned back to normal.
"Is it just me, or have there been more akumas than usual lately?" Ladybug asked her teammate.
Chat nodded at her. "Yeah. Which is weird because I heard around town that it's school spirit week over at that one high school. You'd think everybody would be so happy, nobody would get akumatized."
Ladybug shrugged. "Maybe a coincidence? I don't know." She flung her yo-yo, preparing to leave. "Your turn to take the akuma victim back. Bug out!"
Chat saluted her with two fingers. "Cat-ch you later." He chuckled to himself. "You're not the only one with an exit catchphrase anymore, my lady." Turning to the most recent victim, he held out a hand as Jean stared up at him. "Come on. I think it's time you get back to class."
Once school ended for the day, Danny's little trio made their way to Amity Juice rather than their usual choice of Nasty Burger.
Amity Juice was one of the few hangouts Amity Park had for children and teenagers. Owned by Nino's father, Chase Lahiffe, and operated by him and a small staff, Mr. Lahiffe intended for Amity Juice to be a child-friendly bar to encourage the youths of the city to practice their eventual independence in a safe environment. More often than not, the clientele leaned towards the under eighteen crowd. [4]
It was set up like a regular bar, with a countertop complete with barstools and booths. A corner of the place was used as a stage for any performances being put on. With the establishment intended for child safety, there was not a dartboard but a variety of arcade cabinets and prize games like a claw machine.
Kwan and Valerie were sitting at the counter, each receiving a glass of juice with a straw. Kwan had gotten an earful from Valerie about blowing her off for Donna after agreeing to attend the homecoming dance together, forcing her to take a D-lister like Tucker as a date. Plenty of time had passed since then that they were on good terms again.
Valerie played with her straw, swirling around the juice in her glass. "I don't know; Dr. Spectra said I worry way too much about material possessions."
"At least you'll have them. Spectra says I'm going to grow old, broke, and alone." Kwan took a pity sip of his juice.
At a booth behind them, Danny and his friends sat. Tucker had an ice cream cone, and Sam had a glass of some vegetable juice while Danny brooded across from them.
"Man, it was brutal making you wear that stupid baby suit. I could hardly watch. Though, I did get some good digital pics." Tucker brought out his phone, and showed his friends the pictures he had saved to his social media.
Danny scowled at his friend as he put his phone back in his pocket. "Hey, whose side are you on, anyway?"
"Danny, come on," chided Sam, "you know he's kidding."
The half-ghost teen thunked his head on the table as Sam took a sip of her juice. "I don't get it. Why am I so depressed and angry all the time? That shrink is supposed to be helping me. Ever since I started talking to her, I've been feeling worse."
Tucker licked his ice cream. "No kidding. Hawk Moth must be too busy to akumatize you, otherwise you should have been overshadowed by an evil butterfly by now."
Just as Danny opened his mouth to make a comment about possibly being akumatized, Jazz arrived at their booth. "Hey Danny, how's it going?"
"Like you care," Danny said flippantly, resting his chin on his palm. "Just go away, Jazz." Then his Ghost Sense slipped through his breath again. "Oh no…" he muttered to himself, looking out of the booth to his sister and friends' confusion.
Further down the countertop from where Valerie and Kwan were sitting, Paulina was compulsively powdering her face while staring at a compact mirror. "If my skin's perfect, I'll be perfect." The A-lister noticed the juice bartender staring at her, and glared. "Do you mind? You're like the second old woman to hover over me today, and I'm so not in the mood."
As the bartender walked away somewhat offended, Bertrand emerged through the floor in his blob form, leering creepily over Paulina's shoulder.
'Got to keep Jazz busy.'
Danny dramatically stood from his seat in the booth, and slid Jazz in his place. "Yeah, well, if you're going to take her side, then you hang with her too. Here, take my seat." He threw his arm over face in feigned despair. "You've already taken my friends."
He ran off towards the employee exit, the closest one in the bar, to find a place to transform.
Jazz was immediately back on her feet and following him. "Danny, wait!"
Sam glanced at Tucker, and they both zipped out of their seats. "Come on!" Sam exclaimed, ditching her drink. Tucker, somehow, held onto his cone in his haste.
Jazz followed the back hallway to an exit door. "He went this way. I'm sure I can head him off." She pushed the door open, and saw her brother standing in the alley behind the bar.
Before she could call out to him, she finally got what she had been seeking.
The answer to the change in her brother's behavior since the beginning of the school year.
Jazz watched as Danny's everyday clothes turned into a black and white jumpsuit, his hair turned bright white, and though she could only see a tiny bit of one of his eyes, she noticed how it changed from its cool blue to neon green and assumed it was the same for the other eye.
Danny was Phantom.
Shocked quiet, she watched as he jumped up and flew away to deal with Bertrand.
Sam and Tucker, figuring they could try and delay Jazz by taking another way out, arrived too late. All three of them witnessed Phantom leave before turning their attention on each other.
Jazz pointed at her flying brother. "Did you see that? Tell me I didn't just see what I saw."
"It's not what you think, Jazz." Tucker immediately tried to cover up, only confirming for the eldest Fenton child that they all saw the same thing.
Realizing what Tucker said wasn't helping, Sam crammed his ice cream cone in his mouth to keep him from speaking further. "It's just Phantom obviously flying away to deal with another ghost or akuma. Jazz, you sound like your father."
He keeps some things to himself.
We're Danny's friends. That means we keep his secrets from you.
Oh, those two definitely knew.
"Jazz?" Sam called her name, bringing her out of her thoughts.
Jazz started laughing in what she hoped was a convincing way. "Oh, of course! My parents are such loons. Oh my gosh, is it that late? I've gotta work on my Spirit Week speech." Without waiting for either teen to respond, Jazz hurried away to give the impression she knew nothing.
Back in Amity Juice, Paulina eventually noticed someone else was hovering over her.
"Do you mind? I was here… first?" Paulina's sass fell away when she realized that the person bothering her was actually a ghost.
Bertrand snarled menacingly, causing Paulina to scream along with the bartender and all the other patrons still inside the bar, and all began to flee. As the establishment cleared out, Phantom phased inside and rushed at the blob ghost with a flying kick. Bertrand went soaring into the performance stage area.
"I know you need your makeup, but you're just going to have to wait your turn." Phantom quipped.
Bertrand swatted at him, sending him crashing into the soda fountain behind the countertop. He followed that up with a large ectoblast, but Phantom managed to fly out of the blast zone, leaving a giant hole to form where the countertop used to be. Phantom dove at Bertrand while he was vulnerable.
While everyone else exited the bar in a chaotic rush, Sam and Tucker slipped back inside to see if they could help their friend. They watched helplessly as Phantom slammed into a booth and managed to knock it askew.
"You're not very good at this, are you?" Bertrand taunted the ghost hero.
Phantom got up, clenching a fist. "Yeah, well, maybe I don't need to be to beat you."
Bertrand shifted from his blob form to a wolf.
"You just changed your shape," Phantom observed, putting the pieces together. "Wait a second… you were the hornet too, weren't you?" He pointed an accusing finger.
Wolf Bertrand pounced at Phantom, grazing his leg with a bite and cornering him.
Seeing their friend in trouble, Tucker spoke up. "Hey, leave him alone!"
Not pleased to have an audience, Bertrand abandoned his pursuit of Phantom to pounce at the two normal teens and snarl at them.
"Or, don't. Seriously, it's open for discussion." Tucker weakly retracted his previous statement.
"No! You leave them alone!" Phantom jumped back into action, tackling the green shifter.
They ended up rolling a few times, resulting in Bertrand having the hero pinned instead of the other way around.
"Oh look, the little loser ghost has a few baby helpers," mocked Bertrand.
Phantom's eye twitched. He had been called a loser far too many times in recent memory, and the last time pushed him over the edge. "Do not call me a loser!"
Kicking Bertrand off him as he realized the other ghost hadn't pinned his legs, Bertrand was sent smacking into a wall. Phantom fired an ectoblast for extra measure, but Bertrand managed to dodge it, leaving a hole in the wall similar to the hole in the countertop.
Thinking quickly, Tucker pulled the backup thermos from his backpack. "Danny!" He threw the thermos to his friend, who got to work uncapping it. Unbeknownst to anybody in the restaurant, Jazz peeked through the front window.
Before he could, he heard Bertrand speak. "Well, that's enough damage for one afternoon," the ghost mused as he looked around the destroyed bar. Shifting back into his blob form, he flew away. "Ta-ta!"
Sam and Tucker glanced around for themselves, and cringed at the damage. "I sure hope Mr. Lahiffe is insured," Sam said.
Maybe she could use her family's wealth to help with repairs somehow.
Danny clenched the thermos in his hand. "Great. Another endorsement for the town screw-up, and Ladybug isn't even here to fix the damage. Just like she warned me."
He phased through the roof, and started to fly home, leaving Sam, Tucker, and unknowingly Jazz, to watch him with sympathy.
Later that night at FentonWorks, Danny attempted to eat dinner. His parents were busy testing the Fenton Peeler invention, and Jazz wasn't around, so it was only him.
He played with his fork, rather than eating. The day's events left him without much of an appetite.
As he poked at his food, Jazz came into the kitchen and the siblings stared at each other.
"What?" Danny asked testily.
"Nothing." Jazz walked over, and pinched his arm, making him yip with pain.
"Ugh, what?" Danny reeled his arm back.
"Nothing," his sister repeated before cautiously approaching why she had entered the kitchen. "Uh, Danny? I know I've been hard on you lately, but you know I think you're great, right?"
Danny scoffed as she sat down. "Yeah, right. That's not what I hear."
"Then you've heard wrong," said Jazz, "look, I know you think I'm pushy and I'm a know-it-all. I know you think I'm a jerk sometimes…" She trailed off upon seeing her brother smile at her. "You know, you can stop me at any time."
"I know."
Smug little…
Not rising to the bait, Jazz kept on course. "All I'm saying is I'm your sister and I care about you. And even though you think I won't understand, you can talk to me about anything." She rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
As Danny tried to find something to say in response, the two siblings heard a loud noise in the living room and peeked in to see what the issue was.
The noise turned out to be their parents vaporizing the couch as a test for the Fenton Peeler.
"I'm just saying," Jack was telling Maddie as he wielded the new invention, "if we can find that ghost at the kids' school, we're going to peel that ghost like an onion."
"Well, we can't completely vaporize it. Don't you want to at least examine the remains?" Maddie pointed out.
While watching their parents casually discuss dissecting the ghost, Jazz unconsciously put her arm around her brother. Danny noticed first, and brushed it off.
"I don't feel like talking about it," he said, and went back to eating, this time actually putting food in his mouth instead of playing with the meal.
Jazz sighed as she glanced at their oblivious parents. "Yeah, I'd imagine not."
Determined to end the conversation with her brother knowing how much she cared, she kissed him on the forehead like their parents did when they were younger and exited the kitchen to head up to her room.
At first Danny was touched by the gesture, but then his teenage mind took over and he frowned in disgust. "Oh, gross!" His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket to find he had a text from Marinette.
A few minutes later, Phantom landed on the Dupain-Chengs' rooftop balcony above Marinette's room, and de-transformed into his human form. He knocked on the trap door.
"You finished?" Danny checked.
Marinette smiled and waved him inside. "Yeah, come in."
Danny climbed down into Marinette's room, and glanced around as he followed her down the ladder from her bed. "Huh. I guess we've been in each other's rooms now. Very… pink."
"Thanks! Your bedroom was, uh, very spacey." Marinette picked up her project from her computer desk, and handed it to him. "Here."
Danny took the thermos from her, and looked it over. Now, the thermos had a sleek, silver strap on it that matched its hi-tech design. "This looks great," he said, fiddling with the strap to see if it could tighten or loosen.
"I could have easily given it a different strap, but as a designer, I wanted it to match the aesthetic of all your parents' other ghost stuff so I spent the other afternoon looking through a bunch of fabrics to find the right one. If it weren't for that, I would have had the thermos done the same night you gave it to me," explained Marinette, running a finger over the strap's material. [5]
"I appreciate that. Thanks." Danny opened his backpack he brought with him, and put it in with his things. Then he pulled out the other spare thermoses. "Think you can give the other ones a strap too, just in case?"
"No problem." Marinette took them and set them aside. "I still have to do some homework, so at best I can have them ready tomorrow after school."
"Great." Danny put his backpack on his shoulders. "I should get home. Spirit Week rally is tomorrow."
"Right."
Danny transformed again into Phantom, and prepared to fly out.
"Um, Danny?" Marinette stopped him. "I'm sure Ladybug and Chat Noir would have helped with the ghost at Mr. Lahiffe's juice bar if they weren't busy with an akuma across town."
He waved off the sympathy. "Don't sweat it. I know they aren't always going to be around at the same time as me, just like I was stuck in Dr. Spectra's office whenever they had an akuma this week. See you at school." Then, he phased through Marinette's ceiling and flew home.
Once he was safely out of the house, Tikki emerged from her hiding spot. "It's too bad about the juice bar belonging to Nino's dad. I hope they can repair it."
"Me too, Tikki." Marinette sat down in her computer chair. "The uptick in akuma attacks is interfering with our ability to help with ghost attacks, and we still have no idea what's going on. What's making everyone more vulnerable to akumas?" She pulled out her homework, and tried to start filling it out.
"A question for tomorrow, I guess. Focus on your homework for tonight. The project for Danny put you behind," Tikki advised.
"You're right. Akumas and ghosts will be around for a while, but homework will still be due tomorrow." Marinette's head cleared, and she was able to concentrate more on her assignments.
After a moment of quietly watching her holder, Tikki piped up, "Want me to put your pictures of Adrien back up while you work?"
Marinette sighed, almost relieved at the question. "Yes, please."
She and Tikki had taken them all down when Danny texted to say he was coming over to pick up the thermos. If Danny had found out about her massive crush on Adrien, she would have died of embarrassment.
The next day, it was apparent that Spirit Week was anything but.
"Uh, is it just me, or is the worst Spirit Week in the history of Casper High spirit weeks?" Sam inquired to her best friends that morning while they were at their Danny's locker.
Danny and Tucker looked around, and noticed that everyone seemed to be lacking energy. Clothes were wrinkled, hair was disheveled, a number of people had bags under their eyes, and faces were sluggish.
Some would have just attributed it to the lack of caffeine in the morning if it weren't for the fact nearly everybody was affected.
"Another day, another 24 hours closer to a career of pumping gas," lamented Dash. He looked like he hadn't gotten a good night of sleep in the past week.
"At least you'll have a job," Kwan said, looking pale. "Apparently, I'm going to end up a hobo. I didn't even know they had hobos anymore!"
Dale stumbled over. "Really? Have you SEEN our economy lately?"
While the trio enjoyed the A-listers being knocked down a peg, it concerned them that the three football jocks looked like they were knocked down too many pegs. When they looked the other way, they saw Paulina, Valerie, and Chloe slogging down the hallway like a group of zombies.
"Did you know wrinkles can start emerging as early as your mid-twenties?" Paulina told the other two. All three of them looked like they had put a weak attempt into their make-up this morning.
-LB-CN-P-
Hawk Moth sorted through the emotions he could sense. "So much misery, so early in the day. I know Casper has been a treasure trove of akuma victims lately, but what is going on at that school?" He asked, wide-eyed at how much concentrated sorrow the villain could feel in his potential victims.
-LB-CN-P-
While Hawk Moth grappled with his indecision of who to akumatize, Danny's group continued to observe their fellow students' depression.
"And to make it worse," Danny told his friends, "we're going to have to sit through Jazz's idiot speech when she tries to put the 'I' back in spirit or some nonsense." Speaking of his sister, he saw her coming down the hall with a smile on her face. As someone who strived to follow the rules, it almost looked like she was gleefully running through the halls. "What the heck is she so happy about?"
Sam shrugged cluelessly. "Don't ask me. I'm usually the sour one here. But compared to everyone else, I'm the goth bird of happiness."
"Me too, and we're two of the few students left who haven't had a session with Dr. Spectra," Tucker added.
Something in Danny's head clicked. The students were miserable, the uptick in akumas, and the therapist that was supposed to be helping everyone feel better instead of worse…
"Wait a minute," Danny said, grabbing Tucker's phone from him and opening his social media. "Let me see something."
Sam and Tucker looked over his shoulder, and watched him pull up the picture of him in the spirit baby costume. "Uh, I was gonna delete that," Tucker weakly commented.
"I'm glad you didn't. Look at that." Danny zoomed in on his face in the picture, his telltale Ghost Sense between his lips. "I kept thinking I was seeing my breath; that her office was cold. But what if that was my Ghost Sense? What if Spectra is somehow making people more miserable? What if she's a ghost?"
Sam narrowed her eyes. "Only one way to find out."
Luckily, Sam and Tucker were among the scheduled students to visit Dr. Spectra before the pep rally. Wanting to be able to help each other, they insisted on doing a joint session with the therapist, which she had no problem accommodating.
A mere five minutes after they entered her office, they were shambling out with slumped shoulders.
"I hate my life," Tucker mumbled.
"I hate your life more," agreed Sam.
Behind them, Dr. Spectra cheerfully saw them off back to homeroom. "Buh-bye! And remember, there's only an 'I' in misery if you spell it that way." As she closed the door to her office, Phantom invisibly phased inside.
He saw the green swirl of ghostly energy hovering over the room and how Spectra inhaled it, looking younger than she had the day before.
"Ahh, that's good." Spectra breathed, deeply content. "I'm gonna miss these kids. They're a waterfall of misery."
There it was. Phantom's hunch was correct. Before he could leave and report back to Sam and Tucker, he saw the green blob of a ghost he fought recently phase in through the wall.
Spectra looked up at her assistant's arrival. "There you are. Did you hook up the device?"
Wait, those two were working together? Phantom's eyes went wide.
"Of course," Bertrand reported, "And when the spirit sparklers go up, vaporizing the only chipper kid left in the entire school, there'll be enough misery and anguish to keep us looking young forever!"
Phantom bit back a scream. Those two didn't want to just cause misery, they wanted to cause… he couldn't finish the thought because it made him sick to his stomach.
Not realizing they had an audience, Spectra and Bertrand looked up at the clock as they heard the bell ring to signal the assembly.
"Well, there's the bell. Shall we go hear a speech and bum some more kids out?" Spectra asked, turning into a more ghostly form and joining her partner as they disappeared through the wall.
Once they were out of the room, Phantom decided it was safe to enter the office and turn visible, horrified by what he heard. It especially alarmed him just as he realized who the target for vaporizing was.
"Jazz!" Phantom cried out.
The gymnasium was full of students and faculty alike. Since homerooms were decided by grade level, it was split into four sections- the freshmen, the sophomores, the juniors, and the seniors- and by homeroom, so Sam and Tucker sat with Marinette, Alya, and the others in their class. Either nobody noticed Danny's absence, or chose not to spend the energy commenting on it. Despite the gym being full, it had to be the quietest, least spirited pep rally in history.
Even the teachers weren't sure what was going on with the children. While most couldn't decide what to do, Lancer took upon it himself to get the crowd excited.
"Hey, what's the matter with you kids? You call that a cheer?" Lancer took some pom-poms from a cheerleader, who was too drained to protest, and started waving them. "We got spirit, yes we do! We got spirit, how about you?"
Not a single person in the audience looked eager to cheer, even the few students that hadn't seen Spectra prior to the rally, including Marinette and Adrien, did not want to draw attention to themselves by being the first to respond to the chant.
"Okay," Jazz awkwardly said at the podium, the only student beside the cheerleaders without a seat.
Spectra and Bertrand, both in their human forms, walked leisurely down the hall toward the gym where everyone else was.
"After we've destroyed everything, you up for a cappuccino?" Bertrand suggested.
Though her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses, Spectra's posture indicated her interest. "Ooh, that's a marvelous idea!"
As they briefly entertained their celebration drink, an ectoblast from in front of them sent Bertrand flying back. Spectra watched aghast as her assistant was attacked, and looked over her shoulder to identify the offender.
Phantom hovered ahead of the pair, a fist glowing green and the Fenton Thermos slung on his back with its new strap. "I figured it out, finally. You feed on misery, don't you?"
"I'm sorry, can I help you?" Spectra, who hadn't met Phantom like Bertrand had, was unfamiliar with the newcomer.
"No, I'm sure you can't. You can't help anyone except yourself." Phantom floated out of Spectra's reach as she lunged at him, continuing his lecture. "You find that one thing a kid's most afraid of- their future, their looks, their confidence- and you pick at it and pick at it while you and your snippy little ghost assistant feed on it!"
"Hey!" Bertrand complained behind Phantom.
Spectra clapped sarcastically slow with a false smile on her face. "Very good!" Her eyes turned red behind her sunglasses, and her form began to change into an entirely black shadow-like figure as she launched herself at Phantom. "But I fear you missed a few details!"
Phantom yelped, dodging her only to be tackled by Bertrand in his wolf form through a wall that they phased into.
"In this, our centennial year, we pay tribute to the past with these ceremonial dominos, each of which fall into the next and finally trigger the ceremonial spirit sparklers." Jazz went through her speech, gesturing to the setup in the middle of the gym that led to the ray guns on either side of the stage.
"Woo!" Lancer pumped his fists in the air before realizing he was the only one doing so. Clearly, he was the only person interested in spirit sparklers at the moment. Letting the moment pass, he knocked over the first domino, starting the chain.
Bertrand tackled Phantom through the wall to the yard outside the school and pinned him against a tree, miraculously avoiding crushing the thermos in the process.
"You thought you were going to stop us? You? You're just a frightened little kid!" Bertrand taunted, unsheathing his claws from his forepaw. He made a sweep at Phantom like he had done a few days ago, but Phantom moved quicker this time and phased backward into the tree, leaving Bertrand to scratch at bark. Confused at how he missed the teen, Bertrand looked around for him. Phantom took advantage of the wolf's vulnerability, and emerged from underground, punching the green ghost in the gut.
Bertrand went flying onto the roof with a rough crash, and Phantom watched the impact, prepared in case the shapeshifter attacked again. He was so focused on the assistant that he forgot about the boss.
Spectra flew up behind him, and put him in a headlock. As he struggled to break free, she flew him over to the gymnasium window.
"Let go of me!" Phantom demanded.
"Why would I do that? Your doubt, your misery, it's delicious." She made him look at the pep rally inside, turning his attention to the dominos falling and beginning to spell out 'Casper High'. "And the best part is, as soon as that silly speech is over, and that last domino falls and the sparklers vaporize the speaker, we'll leave you here to take the blame. And by the time I'm done with you, you'll be sure it was all your fault!"
Sighing, Phantom looked away from the rally. "Man, I am so sick of you dumping on me, and I'm so tired of dumping on myself." His gaze drifted back to his sister on the stage. "Jazz never did that, even when I was mad at her." His determination renewed as he thought of how his sister kept trying to show she cared throughout the past week. "And I won't let her down!" Twisting his palm backwards as much as he could, he fired an ectoblast in Spectra's face, forcing her to let go of him. [6]
The ghostly therapist regained her bearings, and began gathering ectoplasmic energy in her fists. "Bertrand, sic him!"
Bertrand jumped off the roof from where he had landed, and shifted from his wolf form into that of a ninja, swinging around nun chucks as he landed in a tree, ready to fight.
"I so don't have time for this," Phantom said in exasperation, pulling the Fenton Thermos from his back and uncapping it.
Bertrand tried to resist the beam, but fighting Phantom must have made him too weak because he was sucked in with little resistance. "No! Aaah!"
Once the assistant was in, Phantom screwed the cap back on and shook it mockingly at Spectra.
One down, one to go.
She did not take kindly to the taunt, gnashing her teeth. "You're through!" She lunged at him.
He dodged with ease, and snagged her by the wispy tail. "And you're done telling me what to do!" He threw her into the dumpster below, and glanced back through the window, seeing how close the dominos were to finishing. "Jazz!"
Phasing through the wall into the gym, he ignored the startled cries from staff and students alike. If he had paid attention to his surroundings, he would have seen Adrien and Marinette both shoot to their feet, shouting, "Phantom?!"
His focus was squarely on his sister, who met his eyes as he dove directly at her, and swept her off the stage without stopping. He turned them both intangible to avoid colliding with the opposite wall, and they vanished harmlessly, leaving behind the crowd in the gym to scream in terror as the ray gun 'spirit sparklers' blasted directly where Jazz had been standing moments prior. [7]
They landed in the custodial hallway in the back, nothing and nobody else there besides the storage room.
Setting Jazz on her feet, Phantom carefully looked up and down her body before staring at her face. "Are you okay?"
"I-I'm fine," she stumbled out the answer, doing the same careful examination of his person he had done to her. "Thank you."
Before either could say anything more, Phantom was yanked backwards into the storage room and shoved against the far wall. Again, the Fenton Thermos luckily avoided being crushed.
"Look at you," Spectra cooed in a sickening way as she held his head so she could inspect it closely. Phantom pulled the thermos around to try and uncap it, but Spectra easily swatted it out of his hands. "What are you? A ghost trying to fit in with the humans? Or some creepy little boy with creepy little powers?"
Behind them, Jazz stood in the doorway as a snarl formed on her lips and her fingers clenched. The sight of some ghost manhandling her brother enraged her.
Nobody treats my little brother like that! Ever!
"Both! Uh, neither? I don't know!" Phantom struggled.
As he attempted to break free, Spectra fed off the insecurity that emanated from his body, making him weaker. "You're a freak! Not a ghost, not a boy. Who cares for a thing like you?"
"Excuse me!"
Spectra dropped the drained Phantom, and turned around to see Jazz standing there. Though a bit dazed, Phantom recovered enough to see his sister boldly confronting his opponent.
"I don't know this kid, but I hope it's okay if he gets a second opinion." Jazz pulled out the Ghost Peeler, and activated it like the Fenton siblings had seen a few days ago. As the armor formed around her, Phantom only had one question in mind.
How did she get that from Mom and Dad?
"This is weird," Jazz muttered inside the suit before pointing the laser at Spectra and fired.
Phantom rolled out of range, and watched as Spectra screamed in pain. Her black form tore away to show her human form, which progressively peeled away into an older, more wrinklie version of itself with each layer.
"Talk about having nothing within," Phantom quipped, rising to his feet as he looked at an aged, white-haired Spectra.
Spectra felt her face, her voice cracked and dry from age. "No! I am nothing without my youth!"
Picking up the thermos from where it had been smacked away, Phantom finally unscrewed the cap and sucked her inside it. Spectra gave a final scream as she was contained. He situated the thermos on his back as the Ghost Peeler armor folded away into the device, leaving Jazz in her normal clothes.
For once, Jazz smiled at her parents' innovation. "Hey, it worked! But it's still weird." Turning her attention to Phantom, her expression softened. "Are you okay?" She asked, turning his earlier question to her back onto him.
"Uh yeah, I'm fine." He parroted her earlier answer.
As the siblings reassured each other, energy seemed to return to the student population of Casper as if they got a huge breath of air after being underwater for longer than necessary. Everyone had been evacuated from the gymnasium after the ray guns went off and nearly vaporized Jazz, and were now standing in the yard around the school, waiting for news.
Confidence returned, Dash flexed his muscles. "As if I'm going to be stuck pumping gas. Pro football, here I come!"
Next to him, Kwan pumped his fists. "I'm not going to become a lonely hobo!"
"And I don't need a lot of makeup to be popular," Paulina added, joining the rest of the A-lister girls in a group hug. "I'm already totally cute!"
Still in the back, Phantom and Jazz nearly jumped as the door to the custodial hall burst open, and the trio of Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Mr. Lancer burst in, the two Miraculous heroes wielding their weapons. Seeing Jazz, Mr. Lancer rushed over to her.
"Jasmine, are you hurt?" The teacher inquired, inspecting Jazz's face and arms.
"No, I'm alright." She sent a grateful grin over to her brother. "Phantom saved me just in time."
"What happened?" questioned Chat Noir, reluctantly putting his baton in its place on his belt. "What was that in the gym?"
Phantom glanced between the other heroes, his sister, and the vice-principal before rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "It's kind of a lot to explain…"
"A ghost posing as a school therapist, really?" Lancer put a hand to his forehead, leaning on his desk in his office as he fought to stave off what was sure to become a migraine.
The heroes, Jazz, and Lancer moved to the vice-principal's office to discuss everything in private while the rest of the school were permitted to return inside and continue the school day. Lancer sat behind his desk while Jazz sat in front of it, and the heroes stood around the room.
"Yeah, her whole thing was to feed off people's misery. Same thing with her assistant too," confirmed Phantom.
"No wonder there have been so many akumas lately," Ladybug realized, looking at her teammates. "Hawk Moth was being drawn towards students that visited with Dr. Spectra and fell into despair about whatever insecurity she preyed on."
Chat Noir glanced at Jazz. "And they were going to vaporize Jazz to make a feast of misery for themselves? That's messed up."
"What happened to Dr. Spectra?" Lancer asked.
"Defeated and caught." Phantom shook the thermos. "Now that we know her game, I doubt she's going to try that again."
Ladybug nodded to him, swerving toward Lancer. "What's going to happen now, Mr. Lancer?"
"The school could benefit from a therapist, especially with Hawk Moth lingering over our heads," Jazz spoke up. "But given what happened, I don't think anybody is going to be open to the idea of one anytime soon. It might be best to wait a while before hiring another."
"After you do background checks and references first," Phantom put in.
Lancer sighed. "The both of you have a point." He swiveled in his chair to look out the window thoughtfully. "I suppose Damocles and I could have done a better job at researching before hiring her. That one is on us." His sigh got heavier. "So much for the 100th year of Casper High spirit." [8]
Chat Noir brightened, approaching Lancer's desk. "Maybe there's a way to still turn this around."
Everybody else in the office gave him a questioning glance.
As it turned out, Chat Noir had a solid plan.
Two days later on Friday, classes ended early for a special 'spirit rally redo'. Dominos weren't involved this time, and only Lancer had spirit sparklers since he insisted on them.
"What makes the 100th year of Spirit Week at Casper High special is that we have something that no other year has had before," Jazz spoke into the microphone, standing on the stage again. To her personally, her speech this time around felt more genuine than the one on Wednesday. "Heroes."
As if on cue, Phantom and his teammates emerged into the gymnasium to a roar of excited students and faculty. Ladybug and Chat Noir flaunted their weapons while Phantom did loops and other tricks in the air.
"When Hawk Moth began his first attack, we didn't know how to stop him until Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Phantom showed up to defeat Stoneheart and save the student he had corrupted. A few weeks after, Casper High experienced its first ghost attack, and again, Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Phantom appeared to save the day.
Amity Park is dealing with a two-pronged dilemma that has drastically changed how our lives operate, where classes could be abruptly ended because an akuma or ghost is disrupting our daily life, where our lowest moment can be taken advantage of. These things scare us.
Thanks to our new heroes, we have hope. We have reassurance that we can continue our lives in some form of normalcy, rather than pack up and move away, starting over while Amity Park becomes a literal ghost town. I love Amity Park, and I love Casper High. Despite recent… problems, we still have our spirit.
Ladybug, Chat Noir, Phantom… thank you for protecting us and keeping our spirits up."
As Jazz finished her speech, Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Phantom all finished their athletic displays and landed on the stage beside her, going to her and shaking her hand.
The crowd screamed with applause, and reached their peak when their speaker extended her fist along with the heroes, chanting two increasingly familiar words.
"Pound it!"
That night, everyone went home with spirits high and actually looking forward to the next week. The air was so positive, Hawk Moth couldn't send out an akuma at any point during the day, and there wasn't a ghost roaming around and causing trouble.
What would normally be an exhausting night of patrol turned into a casual flight for Phantom, who didn't feel like the loser that Spectra tried to make him believe he was.
From her bedroom window, Jazz watched the ghost hero fly contently without a burden on his shoulders. For the first time in weeks, he seemed like the little brother she remembered growing up with, and that was all she wanted.
"He can tell me when he's ready," she told herself as he disappeared from her view, settling in to relax for the night.
After pushing for him to open up and getting firm rejections, she finally understood why and resolved to be more patient.
Of course, that didn't mean she couldn't help in her own little way from time to time.
I put in Evillustrator as a breather episode specifically because of this one. Like Bitter Reunions, this episode is one of the DP episodes that changed the status quo in a major way - the change being Jazz now knows Danny's secret. Even after all these years, I appreciate this episode because it went against the norm of having someone find out and forget again until the series finale when they learn the secret along with everyone else. It also didn't occur until years after I first saw the episode as a kid that this one is so freaking dark, having Spectra gaslighting the whole school into depression just to feed her energy that allowed her to look beautiful then planning to kill Jazz for the ultimate misery meal.
This was a very personal adventure that was crucial for Danny and Jazz's siblinghood, so I had to keep Marinette and Adrien busy with a bunch of random akumas, and they were extremely lucky to be among the few students that Spectra had a session with. If they had, their kwamis might have tipped them off to something being wrong. I did try to keep the heroes in the loop by having Marinette attach the strap to the thermos to give her an extra scene or two, and having Phantom debrief Ladybug and Chat Noir about Spectra in the aftermath.
[1] – Like how a random little girl was replaced with Manon in Twisted Wish, Jean replaces a random student here.
[2] – An issue with this episode I had was the thermos popping up randomly whenever it was needed, so I made it a plot point for Danny to have trouble keeping it on hand when needed.
[3] – Thought it was weird how Danny's backpack had straps on the outside, so I just had Bertrand pull the alarm himself instead.
[4] – I decided to switch Elmer's Pharmacy with Amity Juice because it made more sense in my head.
[5] – The thermos having a strap didn't really make sense to me, so I came up with Marinette adding the strap so Phantom could carry it as needed.
[6] – Danny's escape via the rings didn't make much sense to me, so I changed his escape to using an ectoblast to free himself.
[7] – Since Phantom is a known hero in this universe, everybody saw his rescue instead of just thinking Jazz vanished.
[8] – Yeah, how Lancer missed Spectra's background check and references before hiring her is a mystery. If he had done that, he would have figured out something was wrong with her in the first place.
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