Chapter 4

It was a depressing ride home for Jazz and Tucker. Clockwork had said they had work to do, but there was no to-do list. What could they do?

"We need to talk to him," Jazz sighed once they neared the portal home.

"Talk to who?" Tucker barbed bitterly, "Bigfoot? Elvis?"

Exasperation flared inside of Jazz. "Talk to Danny," she clarified, "We need to talk to Danny."

Not a conversation he was looking forward to. "Don't know what we'd tell him. 'Hey, sorry, but we talked to the master of all time, and it's hopeless?"

"It's not hopeless," she insisted, "We just need to make a plan."

"One plan to save us all. Any ideas?"

"Well, it would be a nice start if we could get him out of bed," she began.

"Has he really been there all day?"

"He's hardly moved, as far as I can tell," she relayed calmly, hiding her strain under a layer of exhaustion, "And I think he might actually be sick."

"Danny hasn't been sick since the accident."

"Say what you want, but I think he can hardly move. I peeked in on him a few times, but he never acknowledged me. When Mom went to give him lunch she actually had to physically help him sit up."

Alright, that really didn't sound like Danny. Like any self-respecting teenage boy (and almost adult, too), he was reluctant to accept any assistance from his mother.

"At first I thought he was just tired or understandably depressed," Jazz continued, eyes far away, "But the more I think about it, it seems more...sinister, I guess. I don't know, I'm probably just all worked up and over-thinking it..."

Tucker sighed, reeling in another sarcastic comment. "We're all worked up. But we'll figure it out. Always have, always will."

They landed the Specter Speeder in the lab with no issues. They'd gambled a lot on the press conference taking a while, and thankfully it paid off. Well, not exactly; they were still no closer to fixing this whole mess than they were before. But it didn't backfire and they didn't get caught. That was something.

Without saying another word, they ended up outside of Danny's bedroom door. They cringed at the sound of his wheezing breaths, and Jazz wondered if she should go get the thermometer.

Tucker pushed the door open slowly and stepped inside. He found his friend slumped awkwardly in a half-sitting position, a half-eaten (or half-spilled) bowl of soup resting on his lap. His pale skin shined with a thin layer of sweat and his mouth was open in a haggard grimace.

"Hey, dude," Tuck whispered, as if the act of speaking would put a dent in his friend.

"Hey," the ghost boy rasped.

Tucker sat on the side of the bed and took the soup bowl away. "How you feeling?"

"Better."

Jazz was still standing in the doorway. Her goal in life was to someday treat psychological disorders for a living, but, as time stood, her bedside manner was rather lacking.

"Can you sit up?"

Danny grunted and tried. "I think so."

When the halfa managed to pull himself into a sitting position, Tuck smiled. If Jazz had been right about his condition earlier, he was getting a little better. "You need anything? Comic books, snack food, needlepoint?"

The grimace formed itself into a brief but genuine smile. "Got any sleeping pills?"

Tucker's lips narrowed and eyebrows synched together in concern. "You been having trouble sleeping?"

Danny didn't seem to deem the question fit for an answer. Instead he just lolled his head backward and let out a shaky sigh. Jazz chose that moment to exit and find some medicine for the pain. While she didn't know what kind of dose would be necessary, underdosing couldn't be any more harmful than letting him suffer, right?

"Did you lose your phone?" Tucker asked nicely, avoiding any intonation of accusation.

His friend paused then shook his head reluctantly. A nod to the right showed Tucker that it had fallen off the nightstand. Fallen, been pushed, whatever. While he bent over to pick it up, Danny coughed.

"I guess you're the hacker now, eh?" Tuck joked. Laughter is the best medicine.

Danny didn't laugh.

Jazz came back with a couple of pills and a glass of water. She passed them into her brother's clumsy hands and tried hard to smile. He put them all in his mouth and swigged without question.

"You didn't just poison me, did you?" he asked, lowering the cup from his lips.

"Hope not," she responded with a small laugh, "Just Ibuprofen."

Tucker didn't wait for a lull in the exchange before starting with the important stuff. "We need to talk about tomorrow."

Danny shut his eyes and let out a small groan at the thought.

"We need to come up with a strategy," he continued.

"Where's Sam?" Danny demanded weakly.

Tucker sighed. "On lock-down at her house. You can imagine how her parents have been reacting to all of this."

Pang. Yeah, that doesn't sound accusatory at all, Tuck, he thought to himself.

"Yeah," his friend agreed cheerlessly, "I bet."

"I think you should go to school tomorrow," Jazz interjected, trying to keep the focus on strategy, "Unless you're super sick, I mean."

"I agree. It would be weird if you weren't there."

As if to counter the suggestion, he broke out into another coughing fit. Jazz hated having to stand there and watch him fight a battle with his own respiratory system.

"You think anyone would notice?" he asked between hacks. There's a lot they haven't.

"They might. You never know who's going to be paying extra close attention."

Jazz was suddenly reminded of what an outsider she was. Danny and Tucker (along with Sam of course) had been defending the secret and Amity Park for years now. Little freshmen in high school took on all that responsibility, and look what they had to show for their efforts. Crisis after crisis after crisis. She only butted in occasionally, to help with this and that. There was a reason she had never been very involved; she wasn't very competent.

They'd continued conversing while she'd been thinking.

"If we just act natural, everything will be fine," Tucker said in what sounded like an attempted conclusion.

Danny wasn't having that. "It's not going to work like that, Tuck. They know I did it, they know it was me. I might pull it off as Fenton, but what about as Phantom? As Phantom I—" He was cut off by another round of coughs; apparently his lungs couldn't adequately store enough breath for four whole sentences without trying to get rid of some mucous. "Ugh, and why am I so sick? I'm never sick."

Maybe she could explain that. "Hmm. Have you noticed that, ever since the accident, your more potent psychological impulses have become more intertwined with your physiology?"

The boys stared at her blankly.

"English, please," her brother requested.

Despite his impatience, Jazz had brightened. "Your emotions affect your body more than a normal human's would. You're feeling a lot of very intense negative emotions right now, right?"

"Right."

"So wouldn't it make sense for that to affect you physically? For that to make you sick?"

He looked taken aback, unsure of how to respond. "Well that's a cruel joke. Guess I can give up on graduation." His eyelids scrunched together and he took a quick, scratchy breath. Like that was ever gonna happen anyway.

Jazz's chest ached. "You don't think you'll ever feel better?" Stupid question.

"We need to get you doing something," Tucker suggested, "Something that'll distract you, that'll make you feel better."

"What, like going on patrol? Gotta keep the ghosts away, right?" he laughed softly, "Oh wait, I'm Amity's Most Wanted again, aren't I?"

"Never stopped you before," Jazz whispered, unsure of what to say.

"Before I was a nuisance. Now...now I'm murderer. A cold blooded killer and everyone knows it."

"Dude, you know that it wasn't your—"

"If you say it wasn't my fault, Tuck, I swear to God—"

Suddenly Jazz made a decision. This tip-toeing method was utterly ineffective, and they needed to get some things done. "Daniel James Fenton, this was not your fault. This was an incredibly unfortunate but unavoidable mistake. Yes, a mistake. I want you to repeat that over and over again, out loud, in your head, however many times it takes until you understand that. Our mistakes do not define us, our decisions do."

"I decided to—"

"You decided to what? Check out a disturbance at the school? Do your job and defend this town like the awesome, self-sacrificing hero that you are? What I need you to do, what we need you to do, what this whole town needs you to do, is to decide right here, right now, that you will persist. You're a good person, Danny. A great person. Can you promise to try?"

This has to work, she prayed internally, Hit or miss.

Mid-speech she'd sat down on the bed next to Tucker and taken her brother's hands. They were shaky and sweaty (maybe snotty), but she didn't care. She gripped them confidently and stared compassionately at his conflicted face. After a few long seconds, he nodded.

A small smile appeared on her face. "So about tomorrow…"

….

Vlad Masters stood in front of an ornate mirror and readjusted his tie. His designer suit was perfectly arranged. His shoes were impeccably shined. Not a hair was out of place, and it was time to meet the press. Yet the billionaire mayor's sharp blue eyes remained on his reflection.

He'd done a lot of public speaking in his life. School presentations, board meetings, even previous press conferences. Whether in the classroom or on live television, oration had at some point just stopped being a big deal. No, it wasn't the crowd that bothered him. It wasn't a fear of forgetting one's trousers or how to speak. It was the content of the speech itself.

He and Maddie had just sat down for some light reading when the call came. And he'd had no peace since.

What exactly happened wasn't clear. And one of Vlad's people (who had since been fired of course) had scheduled a press conference before he had a chance to visit Daniel. Someone always wanted him to see something, hear something, do something. Some idiot or another always seemed to be loitering about, and he never had time to slip away for more than a few moments at a time. Now his constituents were waiting outside. Waiting for answers he didn't yet have.

Even two minutes after the scheduled speaking time, the mayor couldn't make a concrete decision about which route to take. He could condemn the Ghost Boy. Get Phantom out of the way and Fenton at his mercy. He could pick a scapegoat, or scapeghost as the case may be. As an admittedly power hungry man, enemies came by the basketful. He could be ambiguous, withhold judgment and leave other avenues open for the future, when he could further develop his schemes.

This line of thought irritated Vlad. If I'm just thinking about all the things I could do, why not consider stand-up comedy? Animal sacrifice? Karaoke?

Maddie had convinced him to try karaoke once.

He imagined telling her that night that her son would one day be accused of such a heinous crime. That she would cry out for his blood, as he was sure she was doing now. This would all be due to Jack's influence, of course; the bumbling idiot had a tendency for ruining lives one stupid stumble after another.

He imagined telling her now that her son had been accused of murder. No, that certainly won't do, he snapped internally, That's even worse than the animal sacrifice at the press conference idea. If anything, the current situation made it only more important that he and the boy keep their secret identities just as they were: secret. Maddie and Jack would undoubtedly point their blame (and their ectoguns) in the direction of ecto-contamination. It would reinforce their belief in the infallibly evil nature of ghosts and destroy what thin affinity his beloved Maddie still had for him. Jack would want to cure his son, and would probably kill the boy with his moronic methods.

So ambiguity it is.

As he sighed and turned away from the mirror, an intern peeked in. "Sir," the young man uttered shakily, "They're, um, waiting. I mean, everybody is ready, sir. Whenever you're ready, sir."

Ah, I love that. Seeing the terror he inflicted on the face of a lesser man almost always made Vlad's day.

"Tell them I'll be out momentarily, Steve."

"My name's not—" Nick began out of habit. He stopped himself as soon as he'd realized his blunder. Correction definitely was not worth the trouble in this instance. He merely bowed out of the room with a humble, "Yes, sir."

As soon as Vlad stepped out of City Hall, he was immediately assaulted by a barrage of flashing lights and shouting.

"Mr. Mayor—"

"Exiting City Hall now is Amity Park's acclaimed—"

"Mayor Masters, what do you plan to do about—"

When he got to the ornate podium, he cleared his throat and all went quiet. No one wanted to miss a word of his address. A quick scan of the crowd and a calming breath were all it took for Vlad to readjust his face into a diplomatic mask of the appropriate concern coupled with his trademark reassuring confidence.

"Citizens of Amity Park," the mayor began, "I speak to you on what certainly is a very solemn day. This previous night, our community lost a stellar public servant and, I've been told, a gem of a husband, son, and friend. This was a man named David Baker. A moment of silence for him, please."

Another crowd scan. A few people had closed their eyes or bowed their heads, but most of them were still staring expectantly up at the figure on stage. Alright, the mourning angle is dead.

"The circumstances surrounding this tragedy are still unclear."

This got a reaction from the crowd. Cries of anger and shouted questions resounded through the open area in an unpleasant clamor. For exactly half a second, Vlad Masters reconsidered his tactics. Then he quickly reconsidered reconsidering.

No matter what, he refused to confront or shout down the crowd. So, like a stern schoolteacher or a tired parent, he simply waited for the noise to slow then stop. Hungry reporters and anxious townsfolk alike eventually realized what was happening and hushed with embarrassed indignation.

"The investigation is still ongoing, and I can assure you that we at City Hall have some of the world's greatest ghost experts working on the case—including the esteemed Maddie Fenton." He paused for a moment and the people in the crowd exchanged brief, confused glances before mustering up a faint clap. Vlad waited a while before waving them down as if there were roaring applause. "As this is a first in our community, my administration is taking a cautious and prudent approach to the acquisition of the truth and the eventual pursuit of justice." He could hear his approval rating plummet and cursed the Fenton boy for getting into this mess. "I will take a few questions."

Hands shot up, in the press section and otherwise, and the shouting resumed. Vlad could feel the origins of a headache in his skull, and his chest was heavy with the weight of his irritation. Making a point about how he wished the rest of the proceedings to go, he pointed to a quiet, unassuming reporter a few rows from the front.

The balding man adjusted his glasses and hurriedly flipped a page in his notes. Unprepared oaf. Vlad resisted the urge to tap his foot.

"Uh, Mister Mayor," he stuttered, "How do you intend to ensure the safety of Amity Park?"

Vlad grinned. Perfect. "The safety of the citizens of Amity Park has always been enormously important to me. Nothing is of more imminent importance to my administration than the safety and happiness of my citizens. That is why I have always done anything and everything possible to ensure the ghostly menaces which threaten this town are kept at bay. As I have stated previously, Amity Park is home to some of the best ghost experts in the world." He paused momentarily to signal the end of his answer. "Next question."

More hands went up, quietly this time. Vlad spotted a younger woman with unkempt hair near the back of the press area. He very carefully pointed her way, and she looked from side to side as if to ask her neighbors if she'd really been chosen to speak. The slouching journalist cleared her throat and asked, "What do you say to allegations that the Ghost Boy committed this crime?"

Of course everyone knows, he thought with an undetectable sigh, Wasn't ever really a secret. "The investigation is still ongoing and I can offer no comment on that at this time."

Their mayor glanced down at his watch. His hands were resting intertwined on the podium, so a subtle wrist rotation eliminated even the need for him to shift his "calmly" smiling face downward.

I did say questions, he thought to himself, And that was two, technically plural, questions. But he had made no improvement on the mood of the crowd. One more for good measure couldn't hurt. He wanted the press conference to feel comprehensive even though he was offering no real information, but he also didn't want to draw attention to the fact that he was indeed saying basically nothing.

"You, there. Concerned citizen in yellow."

A woman near the front of the citizens' section dropped her hand and took a breath. Vlad had judged her in a second. Barely done hair, little if any makeup. Dull clothes and a small assembly of children at her feet. He would look compassionate for listening to the concerns of a frazzled mother and gain brownie points in the community. She was even holding a baby. Maybe she'd bring it up to the stage and he could kiss the slimy rat. The camera's would love it.

And she would surely ask some emotional question. Probably some reiteration of the, "Are we safe?" plea, which he had already addressed but would happily elaborate on with more flowery language.

The more he told them they were safe, the more they were bound to believe it.

The woman wasted no time in handing the infant to a nearby man and pulling out a rumpled note card. Vlad experienced a moment of uncertainty before she began.

"Mr. Mayor. Amity has been suffering from ghost attacks for years. I've spent this entire time worrying for the safety of myself, my friends, my husband, my children. When you ran for office, you promised that you would help. You'd make it better, you'd make it safer. We put our trust in you, and nothing is better. Since you've taken office, we've been enslaved by dream ghosts, plant ghosts. Terrorized by that weather ghost. There was even a day when all of the men disappeared, Mister Masters. Need I go on?"

The rhetorical question hung in the air as she paused. "All during your administration. So I ask: do you accept any responsibility for what happened last night?"

Damn Daniel.

The crowd growled. The crowd rumbled. The crowd roared.

"My administration's first priority is the safety of Amity's citizens. We are working to figure out what happened,"—no one was listening—"And protect all of you from the dangers…."

"That's not enough!"

"What do you say to—"

"My hydrangea bushes—"

"What happened to law and order? What happened to—"

Just when Vlad didn't think things could get any worse, he heard an all too familiar voice getting ominously closer.

"Hang on, V-Man! We're comin'!"

That giant orange blob was plowing his way through the crowd like a freight train. A stupid, careless freight train. In one hand was the hand of his beloved Maddie, and his other arm was supporting what appeared to be a new Fenton Bazooka.

Jack climbed on stage, foregoing the stairs in exchange for an awkward pull-up style entrance. Huffing and puffing like the wolf Vlad imagined him to be, he reached a beefy arm around his shoulders and squeezed. Vlad guessed he'd also forgone a shower.

"Don't worry, I've got this," the oaf panted in his ear, as softly as was in his nature.

Immediately after releasing his old college "pal," he tapped the microphone, creating an auditory disturbance that successfully garnered the attention—and further ire—of the almost-rioters.

"Is this thing on?"

Hm, I wonder if Daniel would kill me if I asked.

"Hi everyone. It's me, Jack Fenton. I know you're all very upset right now, but it's not Vladdie here you should be mad at."

By know Maddie had found the stairs and seen fit to take whatever weapon Jack had been waving around. This, unfortunately, allowed him to resume his smelly, one-armed hug/crush-Vlad stance.

"V-Man here is a great man, a wonderful mayor, and a grade-A friend. And he has our full support! Isn't that right, Mads?"

Poor Maddie looked exhausted. She sighed, obviously humiliated by her current husband's antics. "Of course, hon."

"What we have here is our newest invention. And it's going to help us catch and destroy the ghosty that killed Mr. Baker. Behold the Fenton...the Fenton…" He paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully with his sausage link-fingers.

"The weapon which has yet to be named," Maddie assisted.

"Ah, yes! The Fenton Weapon Which Has Yet to Be Named. Anyway, this beauty stalls the core of a ghost, stops it dead in its tracks." He took a break in his explanation to laugh at his own joke, a joke Amity Park had tired of years ago. A joke Vlad had tired of twenty long years ago.

Maddie continued for him. "One blast should render a ghost incapable of doing more than maintaining its form. It is as of yet untested, and it is likely the charge will need to be adjusted based on the power level of the ghost."

"We're setting it to high, so that the next time we see Invisobill—" Jack began.

"Who may or may not be guilty—" Vlad interjected, wanting to quickly separate himself from judgment.

"—we'll be ready."