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 3 – The Ghost Girl of Amity Park
Jazz yawned as she slammed her locker shut. This new school day was going well apart from the fact she felt like she hadn't slept at all last night. Between her experiments and the excitement, the necessary serenity that precedes sleep was very difficult for her. It was a good thing that she had long ago established a 'study group' that would ensure no one missed any assignments or important class notes as she wasn't sure she had been entirely awake during all of it.
As a Senior, Jazz frequently missed her Sophomore brother as they were based at opposite ends of Casper High School. Nonetheless, she felt curiously comforted the few times she had passed the boy and his two friends (smiling slightly when she noticed that Sam had contrived to find a black silk scarf to use as a sling for her bandaged arm). The touch of warmth was a new thing that she didn't yet understand. Was this a 'ghost' thing? Feeling a sense of security from one of your own kind? Or was she just that little bit closer to her brother now that she shared such a significant part of his life?
"Hey, Jazz," came a familiar voice, breaking Jazz out of her thoughts.
"Hey, Marty," she replied. Marty Cross was a nice enough guy, Jazz supposed. He wasn't a 'hottie' by any stretch of the imagination (not that she really cared about such things). One of her 'study group', she figured that he liked her a little more than their purely academic relationship should allow but she didn't see any harm in that.
"See you in Math?" the bespectacled, sandy-haired young man asked. Jazz nodded as she set off for her Sociology classroom.
Jazz was half-way to the top floor classroom when she felt cold. A wisp of blue vapour escaped her lips and shot down the corridor. Before Jazz could absorb this experience, Red lights flashed, a klaxon sounded and suddenly the hallway was filled with hysterical children all running for the exit. The ghost alarm!
"Run for your lives!" one boy (a Senior and a member of the football team no less!) screamed as he ran past her, a wet spot clearly visible on the crotch of his pants. "The office equipment is possessed!"
The screams were all focussed on the Commercial Science classroom at the end of the corridor. Jazz suddenly felt a curious peace. For the first time in her life, she knew exactly how to react to the unexpected. As she ducked into the girls' restroom, she wondered if this was how Danny felt. Was a side-effect of their condition the instincts one needed to fight?
"I'm GOING GHOST!" A silly urge, but an appropriate one nonetheless. Rings of blue-white light flashed and Jazz, now intangible and invisible flashed across the corridor into the Commercial Science classroom.
As she had expected, the class (a bunch of Juniors) was backed up against the far wall by what looked like a floating swarm of staplers, pens, erasers, bottles of white-out and even one or two electric pencil sharpeners! What they couldn't see, and what Jazz could see was a cloud of green light in a humanoid shape in the middle of the swarm.
Okay, brave girl, you are here, now what are you going to do? Jazz fretted. She immediately decided against doing a 'Sailor Moon' by going visible and launching into a speech of some kind. Danny rightly mocked the full-ghosts love of 'monologuing' and she wasn't going to take up that particular habit. Hmm… Danny always says it is best to distract their attention right away. Jazz went visible and dropped to the ground. Everyone was so focussed on the swarm of possessed office equipment that no one noticed. Jazz stretched out her right arm and focussed the tingle of power there. A ball of green-white energy formed in the raised palm of her hand and suddenly turned into a phaser-like energy blast that shot into the green humanoid shape, which suddenly went fully visible as it dropped onto one knee.
"Who dares challenge Ryman, master of the tools of bureaucracy?" the ghost hissed as it turned to face her. Okay, it wasn't exactly the most impressive of enemies. If anything, 'Ryman' reminded Jazz of the Box Ghost except he had a fussy little moustache, thick-lens reading glasses and was wearing a garish green pinstripe suit rather than a workman's overalls.
"Let me guess: rule the world?" Jazz called out in a mocking tone.
"They all laughed at Ryman!" Ryman roared. "They said that Ryman was useless! A 'non-contributor'! They said that administrative skills were 'non-value-added'! Well, now Ryman will show all those smug professional types who has the real power! Starting with you!" With that, Ryman gestured and all the floating office equipment suddenly shot towards Jazz. The female halfa squeaked in fear and went intangible. The equipment phased through her and slammed into the wall, either imbedding itself into the drywall or shattering on impact.
Jazz looked at the resulting wreckage thoughtfully. "Ya know, I'm not sure that the school's insurance policy covers this sort of stuff."
With a roar of rage, Ryman lunged forward and physically tackled Jazz, knocking her against the wall, causing the plaster to shatter around her. Instead of the expected pain, she only felt the pressure of the impact and of Ryman's podgy hands as they clawed at her throat. Jazz's karate lessons (taken on the insistence of mother) came back to mind. She slammed her fingers into the base of Ryman's shoulder joints, making him let go of her. She pushed him away with a light kick and followed up with a pile-driving punch to the solar plexus. Of course, Ryman was a ghost and didn't have vulnerable nerve clusters anymore. However, he obviously hadn't yet worked out that there wasn't a spoon and gasped in pain, floating away from her. Jazz wound up to deliver a twisting roundhouse kick that sent the clerical ghost spinning across the room. "You… little… whore!" Ryman gasped, wiping a fleck of blood-like ectoplasm from his lips.
"Sticks and stones, fatso!" Jazz spat back, unleashing a pair of ecto-blasts, one hand after the other that blew the irritating creature through the exterior wall.
Then things fell silent. There was no sign of Ryman. Jazz dropped down (she had been unconsciously levitating) and looked around at the devastation. The Juniors were beginning to shuffle uncertainly, clearly unsure if Jazz was going to attack them next. How does Danny handle this stuff? She fretted to herself. Do I say something like: 'That's right, citizens, the city is safe once more'? "Well," she said aloud. "That didn't seem like too much of a chore…"
Jazz would later admit that this was a mistake – she ought to know that nice Mr. Murphy's law would instantly punish a comment like that. With a roar that didn't even manage to sound slightly human, Ryman phased back through the wall. Instantly, every writing implement and bit of paper in the room was mobile and heading for Jazz. The halfa young woman dived out of the way but already knew that it would be following her. This was no wild attack – Ryman's mind was directing every motion.
Instinctively, Jazz started to fly, twisting around mid-air to unleash a hail of ecto-blasts at the pursuing bits of office equipment. The problem is that there were too many and they were too small. No matter how many she shot out of the air, double that number were still coming at her. Suddenly, Jazz couldn't move! The four laser printers at the front of the room had unplugged themselves and wrapped their power cords around her ankles and wrists! "Get off of me! Get…! Oh… snap!" Jazz closed her eyes and winced as the airborne hail of office equipment struck her and threw her towards the wall dividing the classroom from the hall. Instinctively, Jazz went intangible and fell through the wall.
Stunned, the halfa woman staggered to her feet as Ryman drifted through the wall in front of her. A few moments later the four laser printers floated through the doorway and took up position, two to either side of their ghostly master. "You should have kept away, little girl." Ryman boomed with a smug grin. "This place and all within belong to Ryman!"
"Not on your un-life!" Jazz replied, throwing an ecto-blast at the podgy ghost. With a laugh the creature summoned a ream of paper to take the blast in his stead. Then he gestured towards Jazz and the four laser printers began to spit out sheets of paper as fast as a machinegun does bullets. Taken by surprise, Jazz was struck by the airborne hail of paper and thrown down the length of the hallway by the continuing strikes against her face and limbs. Too wrapped up in the pain of the attack (yes, there was pain now), Jazz didn't realise she was reaching the fire doors out onto the central stairwell until she hit them, hard.
As the doors swung closed, Ryman raised his arms in infernal triumph. "Yes! Ryman is victorious! Ryman is supreme! Ryman…"
"Ryman has serious self-image problems from the way he needs to talk about himself in the third person!" Jazz phased back through the door and flew directly towards the 'master of the tools of bureaucracy' at full acceleration. The dozens of paper cuts stung like hell and Jazz was not feeling particularly nice anymore.
"Defend me, my pets!" Ryman squeaked, sounding genuinely scared (not surprising, given the fierce look on Jazz's face). The laser printers began to spew paper again, the hail of razor-sharp sheets heading right for Jazz, who dropped into a hover.
I've got to think of a way to stop lots of small targets! Wait a minute! Danny can shoot from his finger tips as well as the palms of his hand…! Jazz concentrated her power to her finger tips and, much to her pleasure, generated little energy beams from each of her ten fingers. The beams tracked around like little lasers, cutting every sheet from the air. It also carved burnt, smouldering knife-edge trails along the walls, floor and ceiling but Jazz figured that any public building in Amity Park would have insurance against more typical ghost rampage damage.
The laser printers, now out of ammo, charged Jazz, swinging their plug-tipped power cords like flails. Jazz went intangible and let them fly right through her before turning around and blasting two out of the air with ecto-blasts.
Two of the possessed printers remained. Switching to her karate knowledge, Jazz went corporeal and grabbed one power cord as it swung towards her. She used the momentum to swing the laser printer against the wall where its casing shattered. Then she turned to the last, just in time to get a plug to the face. Jazz jerked away with a cry of pain. She turned back to duck another blow, then levitated up over another before responding with a side kick that span the printer away from her before a twisting punch, energised with a crackling sheath of ectoplasmic energy, shattered the airborne computer peripheral like it was an ice sculpture.
Jazz dropped back down and noticed a pathetic whining noise. The remaining printer was dragging itself towards her, its now-visible parts moving in an attempt to grab her and grind her up like a jammed sheet of paper. With an annoyed noise, Jazz fired an ecto-bolt into the wounded possessed machine, blasting it into a hundred pieces.
Jazz didn't feel the need to suck in a breath, but she did pull herself up a bit straighter as she looked at Ryman, who looked worried and more than a little cowed. "You are running out of toys, Ryman," she announced. "There is still enough time for you just to leave this place, go back to the Ghost Zone and never come back!"
"Never!" Ryman declared. The portly ghost stood up a bit straighter, clearly trying to look magisterial and impressive but only managing to look slightly pompous. "Bureaucracy controls the transfer of knowledge, knowledge is power and, as I am the master of the tools of bureaucracy, I am the master of POWER!" With that elaborate and somewhat insecure-sounding battle cry delivered, Ryman launched itself towards a stunned Jazz, flying right for her, sparkling brightly with ectoplasmic energy.
Jazz charged up her ecto-blasts again, one in each hand, and noticed that, when she put her hands close together, the 'pre-fire' energy balls merged together. Ah! That's a nice trick! Jazz thought, she raised her hands, wrists touching and fired the combined energy beam at the oncoming ghost. The blast caught Ryman full in the face, stopping his charge and making him drop down to the floor. The ghost glared at Jazz, clearly not out of the fight but currently conserving its power until it had a new strategy to use.
I'm getting good, but I'm also getting tired! Jazz thought desperately. There has got to be a way to stop him! Jazz looked at her hands. Maybe if that stuff is attracted to itself, I can… yeah! She generated another pair of ectoplasmic balls. She pressed the energy spheres together and then separated her hands, drawing out a streamer of ectoplasmic energy between them. Now, if I can get these moving just right…
Jazz pirouetted, her hands above her head to impart rotational energy to the ectoplasmic balls and streamer and then swung her hands forward and apart, launching the bolo-like projectiles towards Ryman. The attack spun down the hall and struck home, wrapping the ectoplasmic streamer around the ghost, trussing him up from neck to ankles. The ghost fell onto his back with a loud thud.
The ghost struggled for a while but clearly couldn't get free. "Okay, you're down, but how do I get rid of you?" Jazz asked herself aloud. "I could try blasting you until you vanish… but Danny says that is the same thing as killing a ghost and I'm not a killer! Blast it! How does Danny deal with this?" Jazz snapped her fingers. "Of course! The Fenton Thermos! Tucker usually has one!" She turned and was about to fly off. On an instinct, she turned back to Ryman. "I'll be right back, pal. Don't move an inch!"
Ryman snarled and suddenly shone with a bright green light. The ectoplasmic streamer binding the rotund ghost vaporised and, before Jazz's eyes, he went intangible and phased through the floor. "Oh no you don't! I haven't gone through all this for you to just run out on me!" Jazz leapt up into the air, went intangible and phased right through the floor, hot on the trail.
After their disappearance, the previously-imperilled students came out of the classroom and into the hall. "That wasn't the Ghost-Boy!" one girl said in amazement. "It was a girl! A ghost girl! Who was it?"
"I don't know! One of her friends replied. "Maybe Inviso-Bill has a big sister or something!"
On the floor below, Danny Phantom was continuing a systematic search of the wing of the school where his Ghost Sense had told him the latest ghost was. Unfortunately, none of the witnesses had been coherent enough to mention exactly where the creep was rampaging, so Danny was sweeping the building, one level at a time. Of course, this was the senior wing and he hadn't seen Jazz amongst the evacuated pupils outside the building as he tried to get away from Mr. Lancer to transform. He hoped that his sister was okay, especially after Skulker worked her over for a while yesterday. He would always remember the cold panic and hot rage when that filthy scum had boasted of killing her.
Danny was actually quite surprised when a podgy, balding ghost wearing a green pinstripe suit and reading glasses phased through the ceiling. "Out of the way…" the spook cried out in a slightly panicked tone of voice. "I… Oh no! Why you as well?"
"Me as well?" Danny replied, nonplussed. He was about to interrogate the battered-looking ghost further when a second ghost phased through the ceiling. This one was a girl… no, a young woman, wearing a maroon and white jump suit with long blue hair the same colour as Ember's trailing behind her.
"Come back here you troublemaking paranoid-megalomaniac ectoplasmic disaster!" the second ghost screeched in a voice that Danny found hauntingly familiar. The first ghost turned around with a noise that sounded like a cross between panic and anger and lashed out with a very weak-looking ecto-blast that the second ghost dodged, responding with a much more powerful blast of her own. Then, surprisingly, she dropped down to the floor, grabbed the podgy ghost's arm and used a perfect over-the-shoulder karate throw to toss it into the wall. At the last moment, the first ghost went intangible and flew through the wall. "I said come back!" the second ghost yelled, sounding righteously peeved, and shot after it through the wall.
"Great," Danny mumbled in the empty corridor. "Not only do I have to defend my hometown from the dregs of the Ghost Zone, now I also have to act as referee to everyone else's grudge matches too!" The ghostly outlaw defender of Amity Park went intangible and flew through the wall after the previous two fighting spirits.
As he did so, he absently noted the nearby door marked 'Stationery Cupboard'.
Inside, he found that the young-looking female ghost had backed the older-looking podgy male ghost against the far wall, right next to the shelves of office supplies. In the palm of her right hand she held the fiery green-white ball of energy that was a pre-fire ecto blast. "Okay, that's enough!" Danny barked.
The female-form ghost squeaked in surprise and turned to face him before suddenly smiling at him as she dispelled her attack (something that worried Danny – nothing good came from a new ghost being pleased to see him). "About time you got here!" she said in that oddly familiar voice. Now he was up close, her face was familiar too… "This creep was tearing up the Commercial Science classroom and threatening the students before I stopped him!"
Danny quirked an eyebrow. "And I suppose you decided to help out of the goodness of your heart?" he asked, laying on the sarcasm as thick as he could.
"Well… of course I did!" she actually seemed surprised and a little offended.
Danny sighed. "Look, I don't know why you two are fighting but you should keep it to the Ghost Zone not bring it…"
At that point, the podgy ghost stood up straight. "You fools!" he roared. "You have chosen to face me in the place of my greatest power! Now Ryman will destroy you all! Starting with the interfering girl!" To Danny's surprise, every piece of equipment and paper in the room rose up into the air and lanced towards the girl, who drew back with a gasp of fear. Combat-honed instincts took over and Danny focussed his energy into a super-hard screen of ectoplasm in front of her. The possessed office equipment (yeah, that marked fatso as the original troublemaker all right) bounced off the shield, swirled around the creature referring to itself as 'Ryman' and prepared to fly forward again. Danny drew himself up, opened his mouth and unleashed a Ghostly Wail (dialled down to low power to avoid demolishing the school, as nice as that would be). The displacement blast blew 'Ryman' against the wall and reduced his possessed weapons into slivers of wood, paper and plastic and that quickly dispersed in the maelstrom. The shelves shattered into splinters and the cinder-block wall was suddenly covered with concentric cracks like a shattered window.
Danny winced. Oh man! If anyone ever figures out who was responsible for that, I'm gonna be working at Nasty Burger for free for the next hundred years to pay for the repairs! He looked at the cowering Ryman firmly. "I don't know what your damage is, pal, but ghost or not, no one takes advantage of a girl whilst Danny Phantom is around!" He winked at the female ghost who was looking at him in awe and admiration.
Jazz couldn't help but blush. Sick and wrong! She told herself. Still, he doesn't realise that I'm his sister but I wonder if he flirts with all females like this? It might explain why Sam is always in such a bad mood! Jazz turned back to the clearly-exhausted Ryman and noticed him go intangible. "He's getting away!" she yelled, powering up her ecto-blasts.
"No he isn't," Danny replied with a charming 'bad boy smile', lazily raising his right arm. His eyes went blue and the air temperature plummeted. There was a crackling noise like breaking glass and suddenly Ryman was an ice sculpture. Danny casually unholstered his Fenton Thermos from its strap on the back of his belt, opened the cap and shone the electric blue light onto the frozen ghost. Ryman was stretched like a rubber band along the blue-white cone of light for a moment before vanishing silently into the trap's innards. Danny moved the wheel on the base to close the trap's iris and then turned to face the other ghost, his face cold. "And now it's your turn, Miss. Sorry about that." He raised the trap again, his finger moving to the control wheel.
Jazz's mouth dropped open. "Hey! Wait a minute, Da… Phantom! I'm a good guy!" she yelped, raising her hands as if to ward him off. Danny's eyebrow quirked up sceptically. "I fought to stop him from hurting the students when he attacked! I was trying to help you!"
"Maybe you did and maybe you didn't," Danny replied. "The fact is, though, that I can't have you running around the Physical World where you might hurt someone, whether or not you mean to." Danny actually smiled reassuringly! "Don't worry, I promise that this won't hurt you! You'll be back in the Ghost Zone before you know it!"
Very bad, Jazz thought. In her ghost form she was sure that she could survive in the Ghost Zone, but she didn't know how to navigate through it. Besides, she wasn't even sure if her parents had the Portal working again! How would she ever get home? "Look, this isn't…"
"I'm afraid it is," Danny said firmly. "Look, don't worry. I'm not gonna experiment on you or take you as a slave! I'm just gonna take you home!"
Actually you aren't but you don't know that! Jazz thought in a panic. Then she had a brainwave. Rather than try to talk Danny down, she went intangible and slid back into the nearest wall. Inside the wall, instead of going through into the next room, she remained intangible and willed herself up onto the next level as a scowling Danny flew through into the next room below looking for her. As soon as she was into the empty classroom, Jazz went corporeal and visible. Remembering that Danny could sense the presence of ghosts, she switched back to her human form. Thinking quickly, she sat down at a desk with an expression of boredom and resignation.
Danny was kicking himself for falling for such an amateur trick. He swept through the wall into the next classroom. The ghost wasn't there, not even invisible as his spectral vision revealed. He quickly performed a circuit of all the rooms around it, both on this level as well as the ones above and below. In the very last room he entered, there was someone there, but it wasn't the ghost.
"Danny!" Jazz nearly knocked Danny flying from the force of her running hug. "I thought I'd be trapped in here forever! I was getting some stuff for my teacher when the alarm went off! Someone slammed the door shut; I was about to open it when I saw the ghosts fighting outside and realised that it was too dangerous to try to get out!"
Danny unfastened his sister from around his neck with some difficulty, noting again that same odd sensation of reassurance that he had felt whenever he was around her for the past day or so. "It's okay, Jazz," he said. "The fight's over for now. I'll escort you out but be careful! There's a ghost still around and she's a pretty powerful and tricky one!"
Jazz nodded, not quite able to restrain the blush of pride from hearing Danny, the mighty and feared Danny Phantom, say that she, a first-time beginner, was 'powerful and tricky' – worthy of respect! "I'll watch out!" she promised.
To be continued…
