Author's Note:

Ever since I started my other story, Layman Scripts, my normal chapter length has been something like 5-6K words. But I suppose the comparatively puny length of these chapters is helping me maintain an actually decent update schedule. It's kind of nice, yeah...

Thank-you to all those who've reviewed, I appreciate every single one of you - reviews help to keep fanfiction writers' souls alive. ;) Hopefully I'll be able to reply very soon.

"So, uhh, good news and bad news," Danny proposed, after Lancer had managed to collect himself enough to stand up. Granted, standing may not have been exactly the correct term; he was propped upright only by Jazz's struggles against his side, and she was only barely strong enough to make any difference at all.

"In order, Mr. Fenton…"

By this point Lancer sounded only tired rather than angry. Getting winded did that to you — if anyone knew that, it was Danny, who'd taken punches to the gut and lungs more times than he cared to count. Nevertheless, his teacher wasn't going to like the news, though it was probably good that at this point he seemed too tired to argue with whatever it was.

"Well, the good news is, there was a ghost here, and I just sucked it into the Fenton Thermos. You're safe from that now. But the, uhh, the, ehehehe… the bad news…"

Jazz sensed her brother wasn't going to spit it out any time this year. "Well, it would seem that there's another ghost and that you actually are possessed," she said, rather quickly. Lancer gained an unhealthy pallor worthy of those due to have six feet of fresh soil piled on top of them.

"So when I blanked out just then—"

"—That'd be because the ghost was in control," Danny finished, his expression so guilty that it couldn't be hidden. "But don't worry! It doesn't wanna be there anymore than you want it to be there — it's just that it can't get back out."

"And that's supposed to stop me from worrying how?!"

Jazz shrugged, which decidedly failed while still holding Lancer up. Wisely, she guided him back over to his lone armchair. "Well, it doesn't seem to be hostile."

No. Lancer wasn't having a bar of this. His hand had crept up over where his heart supposedly resided (Danny had never been able to prove that Lancer and all of his surprise pop quizzes actually owned one), and he laid back into that plush headrest with a sigh that might have been closer to a death rattle. Surprisingly melodramatic, but then again he did specialise in books with plenty of such flavour.

"Maybe we should give you a moment to calm down…" said Jazz as she unsuccessfully looked around for a seat of her own, but Lancer was shaking his head.

"Since when are ghosts not hostile?!"

"Danny Phantom's not hostile…" Danny muttered, saltily.

"Aside from him! I'm sure we're not dealing with Danny Phantom around here!" Lancer shot back. Danny said nothing.

Jazz was well past the point of biting her lip and was now chewing upon it in such a manner that suggested she might tear it open if she wasn't careful. "Maybe you should just get some rest for a while, Danny and I need to talk about something."

Lancer actually laughed. "Yes. Rest. Ulysses, I'll try."

"Well what are we supposed to do? He's out there having an anxiety attack in the other room!" Jazz hissed, though her brother seemed equally panicked. "We've gotta get that ghost out. Do you think you could just point the Fenton Thermos at him and do it that way?"

Danny's arms were crossed, and he shook his head. "It doesn't work like that, Jazz. And even if it did, the ghost isn't weakened. You gotta weaken the ghost before you catch it."

Jazz looked away. "Didn't seem to matter much all those times I accidentally caught you…"

"Are you calling me weak?"

"No!"

There was a pause.

"So none of these weapons are going to work without hurting Lancer," Danny pointed out, arms still firmly crossed. A frown was creeping down each side of his chin, although one side more than the other. "And I can't phase through him and just fish the ghost out that way."

Another pause.

"… What about the Fenton Ghost Catcher?" said Jazz, slowly. "Do you know if that thing ever actually worked?"

"A little too well, actually…" Danny muttered. "But it's huge! And mum and dad will notice it's missing immediately!"

"Then we need to bring Lancer back to ours when they're not there. I could create a distraction while you…"

"Forcibly throw him through the ghost catcher, right?" Danny sighed. "And then deal with Lancer being out of it, and Lancer screaming at the sight of the ghost, and then the ghost being all out of it too from being separated. This'd better be an amazing distraction, Jazz."

Jazz grinned a grin Danny had scarcely seen on the girl. "Oh, I've got one all right. Just you wait."

Lancer was decidedly Unhappy. It wasn't the sort of unhappy you could spell without a capital letter; there wasn't enough emphasis involved in exactly how Unhappy he was. He was the sort of Unhappy that involved homicide if one was so inclined, and a very large yet fearful scowl if one was not. He put each foot in front of the other with excessive force as if to illustrate this point, or perhaps to somehow make the ghost inhabiting his body feel uncomfortable. He of course had no idea whether he was succeeding, although in reality considering the ghost was currently unconscious, he wasn't.

"Seriously, not all ghosts are bad! Even if our parents say they are," Danny insisted, but Lancer ignored him as if the words hadn't so much as even been uttered. Nevertheless, Danny was persistent: "We've met lots of friendly ones!"

"Friendly?"

Danny tripped over his own words and corrected himself. "Well, they've been okay, anyway."

"I can't believe I'm letting the two of you do this…" Lancer muttered. "The last people I wanted to see about my… issue is the two most deranged people in town, although I must say you're both giving them a run for their money."

Jazz had to hold herself back from trying to defend herself as 'the normal one'. Now that she was trying to get into the ghost hunting by helping Danny too, she'd lost the privilege to call herself that. At best she was the 'comparatively normal one'. This was either going to bode fabulously or disastrously for her future career, but for now that wasn't what she was thinking about.

Jazz's eyes flicked up to the massive Emergency Ops Center above FentonWorks, and knew what she had to do.