Disclosure

A Danny Phantom fanfic by BenRG

Disclaimer

Danny Phantom and the characters, situations, technologies and locations of the Danny Phantom universe were created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon Television. This is a not-for-profit fan work for free distribution through the world-wide web. No infringement of any trademark or copyright is intended or implied.

Censor: T

Book 1 – Jazz Phantom

Chapter 2 - Going Ghost (Girl)

Jazz lay on her bed, completing her journal entry for the day. She had been fully human for virtually all the time except for two incidents, one embarrassing and the other potentially disastrous. First she had gone intangible when she had got onto her bed after lunch and had spent a few panicked minutes trying to swim out of the structure of the bed into open air until she remembered that she could fly. Second, she had gone invisible at dinner when her father had whipped out a new ghost-sensing apparatus that promptly went berserk, screaming that she and Danny were ghosts. Danny had been busy having a panic attack of his own and Mom and Dad were too busy trying to shut down the Fenton Spook Spotter, so none of them noticed Jazz's sudden apparent absence.

It's no good, I will have to tell them, Jazz told herself. Danny seemed determined to keep up this silly, immature 'secret identity' thing with their parents but Jazz was supposed to be the mature one, damn it! She was supposed to be the one who made decisions based on reason and logic, not like her impulsive and often-insecure little brother.

Then again... Jazz sighed. For the very first time she fully understood and shared her brother's heart-chilling horror at hearing her parents casually discussing the torments that they would inflict on any ghost they captured in the name of their so-called 'science'. No matter how hard she tried, Jazz's mind easily called up the image of she and Danny, helplessly bound to hard tables in the lab, their expressionless parents leaning towards them with energy knives or some other means of cutting their ectoplasmic bodies apart...

After willing herself back on top of her bed, Jazz screwed up her eyes and forced herself to go visible and corporeal again.

She might joke about her parents being 'insane' but it was closer to the truth than either Danny or, frequently, even she was willing to confront. Dad was intelligent, yes, but incredibly driven and obsessive to the point where she and Danny practically had to do without his day-to-day presence. Worse he had a child-like personality and frequently seemed to fail to understand that his actions had consequences - he was possibly a psychotic. Mom had a far better bond with Danny and Jazz, but there was a chilling, paranoid violence to her body language and voice when she talked about what she wanted to do with ghosts. Worse, her unquestioning devotion to Dad made Jazz wonder about the possibility of a submissive emotional dependence that would make Mom abide by any decision Dad made, no matter how unethical.

Jazz finished her journal entry and sighed. No, as much as she loathed it, until she was certain that she had a way to break the news to her parents that would ensure that they were still seeing their children before them, not two dangerous ghosts and potential laboratory 'subjects', she could not talk to her Mom and Dad about this.

What about Danny? She hated to approach Danny. She might occasionally tease her little brother but she knew the weight that he bore as the protector of Amity Park and she would hate to be responsible for increasing that burden in any way. Besides, she knew his mind too well from using him as her 'subject' in several Psych case studies for class. He would see her 'affliction' as a personal failure on his part - after all, was Skulker not one of his enemies? He had failed to protect her from him! She did not want to add guilt over the consequences of her own decisions to the troubles that he already bore in both his heroic and everyday lives.

Jazz slid off of her bed and stood up. Suddenly she realised that she had an opportunity that she had never dreamed that she would have. She had long wished to lift some of that burden from Danny's shoulders. Well, now the chance had been given to her. She had already demonstrated invisibility, intangibility and flight. Would she develop his other powers also? She mentally listed those she knew of: Energy field casting and manipulation, cryokinesis, the old ghostly standby of telekinesis and that incredible sonic/energy attack.

Jazz wasn't sure that she wanted superpowers of any sort. Of course, she also didn't want crazy, obsessive parents, to live in a town where every night was Thriller Night and to have a brother who had been driven nearly to a mental and emotional breakdown by hands-off parents who really didn't seem to understand that they had a family some days. So, ultimately, she had to get used to the fact that she wasn't going to get a lot of what she asked for in life and learn to roll with the punches.

Jazz looked at herself in her long dressing mirror and wondered how like Danny's her 'condition' was. The fact that she was demonstrating the same powers as Danny's, and that her initial symptoms were so similar to his both suggested that, by pure chance, the damage to the Fenton Portal had somehow replicated the conditions that led to Danny's receiving his powers. If this was so, then she was no longer a human but was not entirely a ghost. If she had shared her little brother's fate then she was a... what was the word Danny said the ghosts used...? Oh yes, she was a 'Halfa', a kind of half-way house between alive and dead, able to choose which state she was in.

There was only one way to find out. She took a mock-heroic pose and, thanking God for the fact that all their bedrooms were sound-proofed, declared her brother's battle cry. "Goin' Ghost!" Naturally, nothing happened. Jazz nearly folded double from laughing so hard. It couldn't be that simple. What was the key, then? She stood again and glared at her reflection. She screwed her eyes shut and concentrated. "Go, go ghost!" she cried out. Nothing. She opened her eyes and took a posture of power. "Spook power activate!" Still nothing.

Jazz slapped her forehead. She opened the door to her room, strode across the corridor and knocked on Danny's bedroom door. "Yeah?" Danny called from inside.

"Danny, can I come in?"

"Sure!" Jazz entered to find Danny sitting in front his PC whilst Tucker lounged on the beanbag over by his closet and Sam lay on her belly on Danny's bed. All three kids had books open and were taking notes for their classes. "What's up, Sis?" Danny asked. He raised his arms to show that the bruises and abrasions from his fight with Skulker were gone. "I told you that I heal fast!"

Yeah, I know, Jazz thought. I don't have a single bruise or scratch left from my little coming together with Skulker. "I just need to borrow the Phantompedia," she announced. The Phantompedia was Sam's name for the scrapbook (more a box-file now) that contained the results of the their research into Danny's condition. It was all there – Danny's own description of his experiences and the painstaking measurements that they had taken, physical, chemical and biometric. There were tapes of Jazz's interviews with Danny, discussing his thoughts, fears and hopes about his situation. There were even flash drives containing computer-analyses of Danny's powers and videos taken by Tucker of Danny demonstrating his powers. Most importantly, it had Danny's description of how he believed his powers worked and the sensations that he experienced as he did so.

Danny shrugged acquiescence. He walked over to his closet, lifted up the carpet and removed the box file from its place in a hidden recess underneath the floorboards.

"What do you need it for?" Sam asked, shifting uncomfortably. The girl's elbow had been pretty badly wrenched. It was only over-extension but she wasn't going to be moving it too much for a few days.

"I just wanted to compare my experiences with yours," Jazz lied smoothly. It was almost true, after all.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you from him," Danny said, guilt filling his blue eyes.

On an impulse, Jazz touched her little brother's cheek and caressed it reassuringly. "It wasn't your fault," she replied. "We're all at risk in this town. Just being your sister doesn't change that."

Danny nodded reluctantly in agreement. Jazz took the file, thanked her little brother and left him and his friends to their homework.


Jazz waited until everyone was asleep before taking the next step.

In herself, she had never felt so awake but she knew that was just adrenaline, not just her 'condition'. Danny tired out normally enough when he lost sleep due to ghost-fighting and Jazz was sure that she would pay for tonight when she got to school tomorrow.

Her parents had made this a bit more difficult by staying up until way after midnight working on repairing the Fenton Portal. Her mother's blood-soaked promise of vengeance on the ghost who had damaged her husband's masterpiece had only strengthened Jazz's determination not to mention her condition to them without having first come up with a back-up plan to handle their obsession. What made it worse (and it made poor Danny so pale and frightened) was that their parents were blaming 'the Ghost-Boy' even though Jazz had loudly stated that he was not responsible for the damage.

Jazz had carefully studied Danny's description of his transformation and how he consciously called up his ghost form. She now felt confident that she understood the how. Now she had to see if she really could replicate it herself.

The young woman stood up and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She sucked in a deep breath and looked her reflection in the eyes. "Okay, girl genius," she announced. "Now's the time to see if you really have got what it takes." Jazz concentrated hard. She focussed on the cold rush of ectoplasm, the numbing chill of being a creature of organised energy fields and the tingle of power in her limbs…

Jazz's body flashed white like a camera's flash gun going off. A bright blue-white hoop of light appeared around Jazz's waist and split into two, one travelling down and the other up. Behind the hissing ring, Jazz's clothes metamorphosed into a body-hugging maroon-red and white HAZMAT suit. As the energy flowed over Jazz's face, her skin darkened to tan-green and her hair bleached to eggshell blue. Her eyes shone bright green, the same colour as the dim light outlining her body.

"It… it worked!" Jazz gasped out. "I went ghost! It worked! YAHOO!" Jazz jumped into the air in glee and wasn't even remotely surprised not to come down again. Jazz immediately began to fly around her room, laughing joyfully, noting as she did so that her legs lost definition and turned into a tail-like streamer of ectoplasm. "This is great!" Jazz willed her legs back and dropped back to the floor. No longer would Danny have to fumble through this on his own! Now he would have someone who could show him how it was done! An adult!

With a grin, Jazz willed herself intangible and soared up through the ceiling of her bedroom out onto what used to be the roof of their brownstone apartment and was now the balcony/veranda of the Op Centre her parents built when they took charge of the building. She looked out over the sleeping town of Amity Park. "Look out, Amity Park!" she called out, noticing for the first time the ghostly reverberation of her voice when she was in this form. "'Cause, ready or not, here I come!"

Then, something unexpected happened, something that reminded the young woman just how far she had to go before she could consider herself a match for her 'baby brother'. She gasped as a wisp of cold blue vapour escaped her lips. Instinctively, she turned in the direction it went in time to see a green-white light, blazing like the sun, flash out of the side of the building and into the night like a thunderbolt of Zeus. Danny! Somehow she had never understood just how unimaginably powerful her little brother was before this moment. Perhaps her new 'condition' allowed her to see his power more clearly or, maybe, her recent experiences had allowed her to see past the 'little brother' to the 'Conqueror of the Ghost King'.

Just to make the experience that bit more immediate, her brother had arced around and was heading right for her. A panicked squeak escaped Jazz's lips as she went invisible. She so did not want to have this confrontation right now, especially as, from his posture, she felt that Danny was spoiling for a fight.

"Don't bother going invisible on me," Danny declared loudly as he dropped into a hover in front of the balcony. "Believe me, it won't do you any good."

Much to Jazz's horror, she saw the green light in her brother's eyes suddenly flash out like lasers, scanning along the line of the balcony. With a sudden uncanny certainty, Jazz guessed that this new trick (which Danny hadn't got around to telling her about yet, obviously) would penetrate her invisibility like it wasn't even active.

Jazz stamped down hard on her panic. Going intangible, she dropped back through the roof and into her bedroom. "Human, human, human!" she babbled to herself as she hovered in the middle of the room. "Go human! Come on!" Jazz looked at the window and saw the aura of light around Danny – he was heading for her room! Squeezing her eyes shut she focussed on the feeling of warmth and life, of wanting and needing to breathe and the feel of blood pumping through her veins…

Jazz dropped clumsily onto her bed, bounced off and ended up lying on her back as Danny phased through the wall and came to a hover right over her. "Jazz! Are you okay?" he asked urgently.

"I… er… I'm fine, Danny," she said, her voice just a little bit too high for her liking. "I must have fallen out of bed or something!"

Jazz staggered to her feet with an embarrassed smile, not liking the suspicious scowl on her little brother's face one bit. Suddenly, Danny went semi-transparent and flew right through her! Jazz gasped. "Danny! What was that for?"

"Uh… sorry, Sis!" Danny replied, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I just had to make sure you hadn't been overshadowed or anything! There's some ghost prowling around!"

"Well, thank you for thinking to check," Jazz replied, managing a slight smile that looked sufficiently natural. Then she scowled. "Now, kindly get out of my room!"

Danny squeaked in fear and, going intangible again, shot through the door, doubtless heading for his own room.

Jazz sat down hard on the floor. She began to laugh. She had forgotten about Danny's infallible Ghost Sense! However, she had demonstrated that she, too, had it and also shared his instinctive sense of direction towards nearby paranormal activity. This was another data point in favour of her eventually sharing all of her little brother's powers. She had also forgotten how much nearly a year of ghost fighting had turned Danny into a seasoned and deadly warrior. If she thought that she was in a position to replace him any time soon, then she was the one who needed her head examined!

To be continued…