Phic Phight 2022

~Prompt 035 & 165~

Category: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Family, Friendship.

Trigger Warning: Mention of attempted vivisection (nightmare), first stages of a Panic Attack.

Requested by: bread-tab & apinklion01


The Theory

Jack Fenton had some Concerns™.

After dinner, he and Maddie had forced Danny to do his homework on the kitchen table as part of his punishment for breaking curfew. After all, one could hardly run off if you have them constantly under your watchful eyes. And it had worked! Even if begrudgingly, Danny had sat down and worked on his assignments all the evening.

…Or at least he did until he had nodded off somewhen around 10 PM.

Quietly, the parents debated on what to do: Danny had focused on his homework after all and the bags under his eyes were so dark that they could be confused as bruises. He needed all the sleep he could get.
It would be irresponsible of them to wake him up now that he had finally managed to fall asleep.

Thus, after slowly making Danny lean back from being slumped on the table and moving his chair to the side to have a better access, Maddie crouched down and gathered him in a bridal carry, shifting his head against her shoulder to hold up its weight more comfortably.
He didn't even stir with how much he was exhausted.

Carefully, the mother brought him to his bedroom (he was still mama's boy, so Jack was more than glad to gift her this moment), while the father cleared the table. As he was doing so, Jack couldn't abstain from checking what Danny had been working on, i.e. Math and Science.
Ah. That was why his boy had managed to stay focused for so long, those were his favorite classes…
The man paused, as he picked up a manila folder buried under the notebooks.
This quality of paper was familiar! Didn't Maddie and he use it to print their research?

Jack frowned as he opened it randomly and lo-and-behold it was one of their most recent works! It was the study on different "types" of ghosts and how that affected their habits, mainly claiming haunts, fighting styles and "social" interactions.

While Danny getting interested in their work was both odd and delightful, what was really baffling the man were the notes made in green pen over the text.


"It has been observed the existence of three two types of ectoplasmic entities: humanoid, animal-shaped and amorphous Infinite Realms-native (abb. InRe-native) and souls of the deceased.

While the animal-shaped ghosts seem to retain behaviors from the shape they are imprinted from, humanoids tend to appear more complex and claim that their intelligence and emotional range is on pair with the average human being. Amorph ghosts display usually feral behaviors not dissimilar from rabid animals.
The souls of the deceased-beings usually have the same emotional and intelligence range of when they were alive, unless their death occurred in determinate traumatic circumstances (which usually make them regress) or the ambient ectoplasm of the place they drew their last breath was sufficient to give them a boost, amping their comprehension and/or empathy. InRe-native are exactly what their name implies, so they never began their existence within a biological body, creating behaviors usually incompressible for living and formerly-living beings (i.e. Observants have the intelligence and emotional range of a teaspoon)."


The more Jack read, the more the corrections made in Danny's calligraphy dissed their theories and researches, pointing out facts the man knew nothing of as proves of the contrary.

The most shocking fact was the continued belief that Ghost Cores were no other than actual souls, who had clung so tightly to the Material Realm they were from that they had managed to collect enough ectoplasm to maintain a more or less stable form, depending on the quality and quantity of ambient ectoplasm to keep on "existing".

(It was a jarring and… terrifying way to think. Souls? Not just imprints of post-human consciousness? Jack wasn't much of a spiritual man, but to tamper with the former sounded awfully like playing god.)

(And he wasn't someone with such a complex. But he had planned to experiment on Cores, if he and Maddie ever got their hands on a ghost with a power level high enough. Which would have involved someone, who according to Danny's note, had more likely been a person once… Or someone from a completely unique species, if their origin could be considered as an indicator to classify them in a cladistical way. The first and last of their kind in a way.)

(The thought was making him sick, even if the corrections his son had done were only counter-theories of his own.
Jack had often dismissed the things that his son told him as mere naïve ideas or fantasies of a teenager who didn't know better, but these corrections on their research hadn't been meant for them. They had been hidden. This was personal, almost like a ranting-diary and Jack was staring to feel bad for snooping.)

(But it had also been an eye-opener.
Were all their inventions, experiments and weapons humane? Did they even conform to hunting conventions?
Jack wasn't sure of it and that scared him.)

(He had to talk to Maddie.)

The man put down the folder and gulped, trying to keep down his dinner, then he looked to the stairs leading to the upper floor and to his son's bedroom. The kitchen was still empty, so Maddie was still up there. Why? What was taking her so long?

As if responding to his silent query, the woman walked slowly down the stairs, looking paler that usual, as if she had just seen a ghost. That though made Jack shudder instead of leap into action as he would usually do, but move he did and it was towards her, taking her hands into his ones once he reached her.

She stayed silent for a while and he didn't press for details, still shaken from his own finding and musings. However, his brain still went thousand miles per second like a chipmunk on cola: what could have she witnessed to make her behave like this?
What had been her life-changing revelation in a little bedroom (or on the way that had led her there).

– Jack… Am I a good mother and scientist? – Maddie whispered, tone as frail as a sparrow.

While normally her husband would have jumped to reassure her like his role imposed, the consequences of reading the document made him pause and consider. – …I don't know. I can ask the same of myself, though. – He admitted, equally quiet.

Since Danny had entered his teenage years, Jack had started to… dismiss his son's opinions and words in general, or, at least, everything that weren't praises.

Had he always been that self-centered? Where had his prejudices started to impediment the relationship with his offspring? Because, while she was daddy's girl, Jack wasn't listening to Jazz's opinions on ghost either.

Everything that mattered was hunting down these… he couldn't bring himself to say "creatures" anymore, because they weren't animals and, even if they had been ones before dying, Jack had never been disrespectful towards them. Why did the moment anything ceased to breath change anything? Why had the sole change in state of existence become a deal-breaker against something?
The ghost dog that had been witnessed playing with Phantom had displayed all the characteristics of, well, a living dog; the only difference had been its growing in size and becoming growly if angered, but "normal" dogs usually tried to do the same with bristling their fur to appear bigger, so it wasn't that different after all.

…Oh, holy fudge, what about Phantom? Which one of Danny's categories did he fall in? Which one would make things worse? Jack didn't know if he wanted to know.

– …Why are you asking it now? – He muttered, trying to keep his brain on track. After all, she was just back from Danny's room, had she seen the same thing as him?

– Danny had a nightmare while I was bringing him to his bed. – She looked down, staring at their joined latex gloved hands. How long had it been since they had held hands without a plastic barrier between them? – He… – She chocked up, eyes filling with tears, prompting the man to hug her and allow her to let out her emotions. – He asked me to put down the scalpel. That he was my son. He continued to plead, Jack, he cried in his sleep! He hasn't cried since he was nine and it was because of the reanimated turkey that tried to attack him! He was so terrified, if he hadn't been asleep, he would have had a panic attack, I can tell! But then… – Her breath hitched and she wailed against his chest, unable to continue anymore.

What had happened? What had Danny said to make his mother this inconsolable?

Jack didn't know and was terrified to know the answer.


A/N. A bit shorter than what I'm used to post for a single chapter, but it fitted well as my first contribution to the Phic Phight, so here we go, hope you enjoyed!

Plus, a shout out to Verl (datawyrms) and Penner for their input on what topic the research was about, because I was totally stuck! There are so many studies that could be done on ghosts. ( ≧Д≦)
Also many thanks to Gilbirda for their suggestion, because it tipped off the idea to use "Theory and Simulation" as title instead of "Homework and Nightmare". The latter was... so plain that a flat-earther would have used it as a proof that Earth isn't spherical, so yeah, thank y'all for the aid! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

Now, onward, to the next two chapters!