Author's Note:
Phew. Just started full-time work! It's quite rewarding, but also tiring. :) Having fun writing this in my downtime~.
"Come on, it can't be that bad," Danny pointed out. "He's probably worrying about nothing. My ghost sense didn't even go off!"
"You know I'm supportive of you earning extra marks any way you can, but are you sure about this?"
Jazz's face was screwed up in thought as she added another ghost hunting-whatsit to the duffle bag. Danny ignored her and kept digging through the weapons vault, trying to find anything that might be useful enough to neglect using his ghost form — just in case anything went seriously wrong. Jazz already had the Fenton Peeler stuffed into her backpack, so that wasn't going to be an option, and they'd already added the detector they'd need.
"Danny," she said, not taking well to being ignored. Danny stuck his head out of the vault and gave her a non-committal shrug.
"Jazz, it'll be fine! I bet he's not even overshadowed. Probably just getting old and losing his memory."
"Memory loss through old age doesn't really happen that way…" Jazz muttered, but she remained focused on the task at hand. "I'm just saying we need to be careful. This is Amity Park. It could be anything."
"Yeah, yeah." Danny slipped back into the dining room and threw the last pieces of equipment in the duffle, then zipped it shut while simply pushing his sister out of the way. "C'mon, before mum and dad come home and realise what we're doing."
Lancer sat within the plush confines of his favourite armchair, a nervous clammer gripping his whole body, his fingers in particular. They bounced and jittered upon his knees as if trying to escape the unreasonable confines of his own skin, and Lancer for the life of him just could not stop. He'd never been so nervous in his life — and not because of the memory blanks, oh no! This time it was due to the very sudden lack of memory blanks since his little chat with one Daniel Fenton.
If there was a ghost, did this mean that it had heard him? That it knew he was talking about some way to deal with it? What if it hadn't just left, and was instead planning a sort of retribution?
The knock on the door nearly sent him rocketing out of his chair.
"Mr. Lancer?" called Danny's voice, muffled only slightly by the presence of the wood and some very thin plasterboard. Lancer stood up straight like a misshapen metal pole, then directed himself carefully towards the source of the noise.
"Mr. Lancer, are you—" Danny tried again, just as the man swung the door open. The boy stopped mid-sentence, his mouth still hanging open from his call, and promptly closed it after a moment's deliberation. Jazz was trying not to roll her eyes.
"You're after a discrete, non-Maddie and Jack Fenton ghost hunting solution?" she asked.
"Erm," said Lancer, "Yes, Ms. Fenton. I didn't think you were—" he paused, fishing for the hip and in-fashion way to say things "—into the whole ghost hunting thing."
Jazz quickly lost composure. "Well, I—"
"Times change," Danny filled in, arms crossed over the shoulder strap of the weapon-filled duffle. "So do you want us to get started, or what?"
"Yes! Started! Please!"
Lancer moved right out of the way, letting the Fenton siblings march into his homely environment. It was notably devoid of a lot of homely comforts save for the books; there were no couches, only a single armchair placed in the centre of the room in front of the television. No coffee table existed, nor a dining room table — only a collapsible fold-up single-person table fit for eating TV dinners. The only elaborate or expensive things there seemed to be the chair and the bookcases, which were dutifully maintained if nothing else. Jazz thought Lancer seemed embarrassed to be about the emptiness, however he never raised the point and so she didn't know for sure.
Danny began by pulling out the Fenton Finder. He'd rigged it long ago to stop recognising his own ecto-signature, and he started to shuffle through the lounge room with it, waving the device around in slow circular motions through the air. There was nothing.
"Huh…" said Jazz, who had taken to holding the duffle bag dutifully.
"See, told you there wouldn't be anything," Danny declared, now moving to the dining room and kitchen. "I'll bet you ten bucks the whole house is clean. And he's not possessed either, his eyes are fine."
Lancer followed after them, tentative step after tentative step, although from about two rooms behind.
When Danny's search of Lancer's bedroom and his laundry turned up nothing, all he did was shrug. "Mr. Lancer, you can come out now! There's nothing anywhere in here! Can't even find trace evidence of a ghost having been here earlier."
"H-huh," said Lancer, though his voice told them both he was still clearly rattled. Danny was just about to turn the Fenton Finder off as Lancer entered the room, but suddenly the little device erupted with noise.
"GHOST DIRECTLY AHEAD. YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE SOME SORT OF MORON TO NOT NOTICE THE GHOST DIRECTLY AHEAD."
Jazz made a sort of strange choking sound that was about as far from ladylike as one could get. Danny nearly dropped the detector.
"But he's not overshadowed! His eyes are completely normal!" Danny sputtered, gesturing wildly at a very spooked Lancer. "Look, I'm not the only one seeing this, right Jazz?"
"What's going on? Is there a ghost inside—"
"There's no ghost inside you at all, Mr. Lancer!" Danny shot back, before Lancer could get more of his panic out. "I thought maybe you could be intermittently overshadowed — like, possessed — but if you were we'd pick up the signature of the ghost in your house. That's because it would have to be jumping in, then back out."
"Danny, we tested the detector before we left the house," Jazz warned, backing away a little from Lancer. This did nothing to calm his mood. "Something's not right here."
"I'll tell you what's not right," said Lancer, quickly. "I'm stuck, that's what's not right!"