"Let me get this straight," said Jazz, voice stressed to the point of breaking. "You want me to steal a bunch of stuff from our parents so that you can help an alien lead an invasion of Earth, because, and I quote 'he doesn't really want to do it.' You're seriously asking me to do this. While you're being mind-controlled by said alien."
"Oh, yeah," said Danny. "You definitely can't trust anything I'm saying. Couldn't even if I'd slept at all since this happened. I fully encourage you to sabotage anything and everything you give me. Like, he's hijacked me pretty well, asking me to help him and all. I'm pretty sure he's being mind-controlled, too, though, so… You know what I'm like. You know what I spend all my time doing."
"Danny, you being part of a mind control pyramid scheme does not give me any confidence in your judgment."
"That's fair. But consider! You'll know where I am! And when! Great time to do some stuff. Or not. Up to you. Don't tell me anything."
Jazz sighed. "Run through what you want again."
"All of Mom and Dad's spare portal stuff. Porta-Portal if it's available. Shields. Make sure they can hold in physical items, not just ghosts. I mean. Since humans are the ones most likely to stop us. They've got Captain America, and he's not dead! The spy dudes Mom and Dad are working for now, I mean. SHIELD. They have Captain America. Oh! We also need—" Danny rattled off a list of components, "—and the ecto-converter."
"Why do you need the ghost torture device?"
"To be fair, most of what Mom and Dad make are ghost torture devices. I will also need the ecto-dejecto."
"Are you planning on plugging yourself into the ghost torture device to power this thing? Tell me you aren't."
"Hahaha, la la la, I can't hear you, come drop the stuff off or don't, bring whoever you want with you or don't, tell anyone you want or don't, but remember this isn't my first circus or my first rodeo and be aware that arrow boy will probably try to steal the stuff directly from Fentonworks if you don't."
"For the love of—" snarled an older voice, and there was the sound of a brief struggle before the line went dead.
"Well," said Sam, who had been silent for the whole call. A good choice, in Jazz's opinion. "That was… not expected."
"No kidding," said Tucker, who was trying to stick his staff in his duffle bag. "So, how are we going to interpret that?"
"Not at face value, that's for sure." Jazz drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She had pulled over when Danny called, so she wasn't driving, but she'd needed something to throttle in lieu of Danny, and the steering wheel was right there. "He was definitely trying to give us clues."
"Yeah," said Sam. "But it sounds like he doesn't know that SHIELD is connected to Nazis."
"You're not wrong," said Jazz. "But…" She made a face. Would he fight with Nazis if it meant saving the world? She certainly didn't want to. "How connected are we talking about? And how?"
"Don't know," said Tucker. "Didn't have the time to entirely parse what I managed to get into. I found a lot of mentions, though, and I don't know that there are all that many good reasons for a hate group to talk so much about a bunch of supposedly dead Nazis."
"And SHIELD?"
"Also unclear, but, like. Both the GIW and SHIELD are government things, right?"
"Right," said Jazz. "Okay. You're right. We're going to have to account for that somehow. But what Danny's saying… It sounds like they don't have enough power to run their portal. On the surface, this is a way to get that."
"The surface of the mind control. It's like a fig leaf," said Sam.
"Yeah. But everything he said about shields…"
"Do you think he was trying to get us to contact SHIELD?" asked Tucker.
"Maybe, but… It's also an opportunity for a trap. Shields can work both ways. If you put the portal generator on the outside, it's basically a cage."
"A way to trap him and whoever he's with."
"Which includes at least the evil space clown," groaned Tucker. "Whoever else the guy can brainwash, too."
Jazz nodded, but she was thinking about something else. "What about the army?"
"What about the army?" asked Sam. "It doesn't sound like we actually have to fight it, just keep the portal closed. Danny's only saying he has to do this because, you know. Mind control."
"Yeah," said Jazz, "but… That still leaves an army out there that wants to attack the Earth. One with the resources to send Loki in the first place."
"One that doesn't matter if they can't get here," said Sam.
"They sent Loki," said Tucker. "So, they must have some other way to get here. It's probably just harder than using the portal." He pointed at the Scarab Scepter. "Kind of like how I can use that, but it sucks."
"Do you know how Loki got here?"
"Again, no. I really need to get back in front of a computer…"
"Okay," said Jazz. "Will Danny's be good for that?"
"I practically built the thing, so, yeah."
"Great. But back to the army, what if this is more of a 'choose where you fight' thing?"
"Except Danny, or whoever is pulling his strings, picked the meeting place," said Sam.
"I'm not sure how important that is," said Jazz. "He gave us a lot of information. I'm not the best with portal physics, but there's probably a limited number of places that could produce the same amount of power as the ecto-converter. And then there's what he said about 'arrow guy.'"
"Maybe we're supposed to catch arrow guy in the act or something?"
"I don't know," said Jazz. "It isn't like Danny to put us in harm's way. I think we're missing something else."
"He does put us in harm's way, though," said Tucker. "Like, every time we go out on patrol, there's a chance something will happen. He tries to keep us safe, but the risk is still there."
"Plus, if this is an apocalypse-type thing… And he's not exactly thinking clearly."
"That does complicate things," said Jazz. She sighed. "We're missing something."
"Well," said Tucker. "I recorded the conversation, so we can replay it as much as we want."
"Great," said Jazz, starting her car. "Let's go. I want to get home and have some words with my parents about working for sketchy government organizations."
"Oh, yeah," said Tucker, with a nervous laugh, "speaking of, we never got to tell you why we had to teleport into your car, did we?"
Jazz took a very deep breath. "How bad is it?"
"Well…"
.
"I'm not telling you who 'supplies me,'" said Valerie, crossing her arms. "Not until you tell me what this is really about."
"Valerie," said Damon Gray, his hands tightening on the back of Valerie's chair.
"I'm afraid that's classified, Miss Gray."
"Not that classified," said Valerie. She'd trained herself to fight the dead. She wasn't afraid of this guy in a suit. "I already know it has to do with ghosts, otherwise you wouldn't care." She rolled her eyes. "I don't know why you think you're clever, rolling up with a different acronym or whatever, but I know you're with the Guys in White."
"Pardon?"
Her father cleared his throat. "The Ghost Investigation Ward? Government sponsored ghost hunters?"
"There are no government sponsored ghost hunters," said Agent Coulson. His expression had barely changed, but…
Valerie blinked, a spark of red tracing over her vision, highlighting small details in the way the agent was holding himself. She'd done her research, and micro-expressions and body language weren't to be trusted – law enforcement astrology, some people had called them – but expressions were signaling devices. Completely ignoring them was also stupid.
"They've got a whole shiny new building as headquarters right outside of Amity Park," said her father, disbelief coloring his tone.
"Do they now," said Coulson with no inflection whatsoever. "We'll need to look into that. But I think we can conclude that you aren't being supplied by the Fentons."
Valerie jolted. "What?"
"At this point, you wouldn't be hiding it if it were them. Their interests are too well-known. But to be honest, your equipment isn't our chief concern." He leaned ever so slightly forward. "How well do you know Danny Fenton?"
"He's a classmate," said Valerie. She didn't like where this was going at all.
"But not just a classmate. You two were romantically involved."
"Is there a point to this?" asked her father, the strain in his voice indicating that he'd like nothing better than to throw these men out of their apartment.
"He's been kidnapped," said Coulson.
"What?" said Valerie. "How? When? Why?"
"You don't think Valerie has anything to do with that," said Damon, incensed.
"No. We're fully aware of who was involved and who wasn't. But considering the circumstances, we aren't sure if we can rescue him without your help."
"What do you mean?"
"Ghosts are involved," said Coulson. "You would get more of a briefing if you agreed to help."
"Help how?" asked Damon, darkly. "You aren't recruiting my teenaged daughter to fight for you."
"We'd prefer to have the name of her supplier. But if that's impossible, we would like to offer you a consulting position, Miss Gray. Ghosts are outside our area of expertise."
Damon leaned forward. "What exactly is your area of expertise?"
Coulson let himself smile. "Homeland security."
"And you're interested in a kidnapping because…?"
"A threat may be involved. Miss Gray, as you might imagine, this is a time sensitive matter."
Valerie Gray frowned, then opened her mouth to respond. "I—"
"I think Valerie and I need to have a private discussion," said Damon. "If you don't mind."
"Of course," said Coulson. He left the apartment and waited. It would have been very easy to eavesdrop. Trivial. But he didn't need to.
Valerie Gray walked out. "About that briefing."
"Excellent. If you—" His earpiece chirped.
"We have a reported sighting of Loki in Amity Park. Correction, make that two Loki sightings."
.
Unfortunately, nothing short of a Loki sighting was going to get Jazz's parents out of the lab, so that's what she manufactured. Tucker was upstairs, working on hacking government agencies from Danny's computer and Sam was keeping an eye out for the 'arrow boy,' which left Jazz to try to put together the tools they'd need to fight a space clown army and maybe also secret government Nazis.
Why was their life such a mess?
Jazz picked up one of the Fenton Boo-Staffs and made a face. She was proficient in its use, but, honestly, they were having enough trouble with magic staffs, weren't they? Sure, the Boo-Staff was designed through science, not magic, but the two were converging at a rapid rate.
Still, she couldn't turn her nose up at a weapon because of something that boiled down to superstitious associations. Speaking of associations…
She turned it over in her hand and gazed contemplatively at the portal. Danny wanted all the spare portal stuff and the Porta-Portal. She'd thought that it was because he wanted to cannibalize it to make the alien portal, but that didn't completely make sense.
How had this alien been planning to invade if he hadn't come across Danny? If he had an army waiting in the wings, there had to have been a great deal of planning for this already. He must have at least one way to bring the army here that didn't rely on the work of two obscure scientists and their half-ghost son.
That wasn't quite the right angle to approach this from, either.
She went back to the weapons. Portal things. Shields, physical and ghostly and possibly SHIELD the acronym as well. The ectoconverter. Danny making references to Circus Gothica and Freakshow—
Wait.
Not his first circus. Not his first rodeo.
Not his first invasion. Not even his second.
And how had he solved those? What was the clue here? Should she even be trying to find clues in what he said, considering the mind control?
She picked the blaster up off the table and fired directly behind her. There was a cracking sound as the ectoblast hit something physical midair, and Jazz dove for cover.
"Arrow boy, I presume!" she shouted, because she might as well annoy whoever this was while she had the chance.
Something thunked into the table next to her, and she rolled away just in time for the metal table to be electrified. The ectoplasm canisters on the table cracked, bubbled, and started to smoke. A few of them moved, sluggishly, as if uncertain if they should self-animate or not.
Screw it. "Activate Security Authorization—"
Something hit her shoulder, toppling her.
"—Psychic Record!" she finished. "Red Rover Protocol!"
"Authorization accepted, Jazzerincess!"
At that point, she started to feel the pain. Arrow boy had, evidently, shot her with an actual arrow.
Despite humans like this existing, people somehow thought ghosts were outliers. What a joke.
She crawled under a different table and listened to the lab's defense systems activate… and get demolished with the accompanying twang of a bowstring.
This guy was good. Which was bad. Very bad.
And Jazz was bleeding. It really hurt.
A hand pulled her up out of her hiding spot. "I prefer Hawkeye."
"You're going to have to get used to being disappointed," said Jazz, as cheerfully as she could manage. Over his shoulder, a figure appeared in the swirling ectoplasmic smoke that had enveloped the room. "My brother must have told you how bad I am at names."
Arrow boy didn't look amused. "Where's the portal equipment?"
"You know," continued Jazz, mostly stalling at this point, "people can fight mind control. I've been working on a study of it. Most reported successes happen when people are asked to do something they've never done, or never would do… But I guess you've killed people before, huh?"
"The portal equipment. Or I start talking to the kids up—"
Sam whacked arrow boy over the back of his head with the Fenton Creep Stick. He dropped like a bag of rocks.
Jazz sighed in relief. "You've gotten better at sneaking."
Sam, meanwhile, was staring at Jazz's shoulder in horror. "Not the time. Oh, God."
"I'm okay."
"You are not. Who uses arrows?"
.
"You think Danny's Phantom?" Valerie shook her head. "You think Danny is Phantom?"
"Our intel is very good," said Agent Coulson as he drove.
Valerie was, possibly, starting to regret agreeing to come. "You're sure he isn't just being overshadowed?"
"Positive. We have the transformation on tape."
Okay, that was something.
"It's a very impressive lightshow. Reminiscent of classical Japanese magical girl anime."
That… sounded way too much like Dani for Valerie's peace of mind.
"… Assuming you're right," she said, slowly, "that means this Loki has all of Phantom's firepower."
"That is the problem."
"And you don't have anything that can work against him? Are the Fentons refusing to help or something?"
"The opposite, but none of their weapons seem to work against him. Possibly he simply knows some weakness in their technology that he hasn't exploited until now."
"Danny is smarter than people give him credit for," said Valerie, leaning back in the car seat and chewing on her thumbnail. "So, you want my tech to try to fight him."
"That would be ideal."
"You aren't going to get it in the next ten minutes. If Phantom is there, I'm fighting." Best to think of him as Phantom, for now, not Danny. She'd figure out if Coulson knew what he was talking about later.
"Miss Gray—"
She scoffed and interrupted him. "Forget Phantom, an ectopus could completely screw you over if you don't have reliable tech."
"A what?"
Unbelievable. These people had no idea what they'd gotten into, did they? "Ghost octopus. Whatever. My point is that I know how to fight ghosts. You don't. And considering that the world might end if we don't stop this guy, I'm going to fight and you aren't going to stop me."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"I—Wait, really?"
.
"Why do you like using yourself as a distraction so much?" asked Danny.
Loki rolled his eyes. "Who says I like it?"
"You keep doing it."
"Because it's strategically viable."
"No one had any idea we were here in the first place. I think you just like messing with people. Because you're a jerk."
"And I think you are simply upset that I sent Barton to retrieve our equipment without giving your sister the time you wanted."
Danny was upset about that. He would probably die upset about it. That didn't change the fact that Loki was the jerkiest jerk to ever jerk.
"She would never have helped us."
"You don't know that."
"She as much as told you no while you were still on the phone with her."
"That's just what Jazz is like."
A collection of black vans, military vehicles, and police cars shrieked to a stop on the road in front of them. Danny could hear the distant but rapidly approaching whine of something airborne.
"Agent Hill," said Loki, spreading his arms wide and casually twirling the staff. "What a pleasant surprise!"
.
"Coulson, the Loki on Park and Amity is the real deal. Phantom is with him."
Valerie leaned over. "Is that Park Park or Park Avenue? Or Park Street? Or, wait, do you mean Park Building on Amity Street? Because that isn't actually on Park, it's on the corner of Garden Drive—"
The car went over a bump. "Send me the coordinates," said Coulson. The GPS beeped.
"Oh, Park Street and Amity Avenue. No one calls that Park." She rolled down her window.
"What are you doing?" asked Coulson.
"I told you," said Valerie, red creeping over his skin, "I'm going to fight!" Before Coulson could say anything else, she climbed out of the window, summoned her hoverboard and flew to Park Street and Amity Avenue as fast as she could.
.
The only reason Coulson got to Amity Park before Tony did was that SHIELD didn't give him a ride and he had to fix his instead. Of course, fixing his suit was the responsible thing to do, he supposed. He had no fire power and little fighting ability without it. Martial arts were great and all, but he didn't think trying to go after Loki bare handed was a smart move.
And Tony was all about smart moves. No matter what Pepper said.
Anyway.
Point was, he was only getting into Amity when the Loki alert went out. Bad timing in a vast number of ways. He'd wanted to get his hands on the Fentons' schematics before round two with the kid.
"Sir," said Jarvis. "There is an unidentified craft ascending at your two o'clock."
"Magnify."
Jarvis zoomed in on… Okay, Tony had officially lost the plot.
"Patch me to Coulson. Hey, Coulson, you know anything about little red riding hood on a flying surfboard, or am I hallucinating?"
"Red Huntress is on our side," said
Tucker hunched over the Ops Center central control panel, trying not to be too nervous about the magic staff that would wake up his super-powered evil side sitting in the bag next to his feet, or Jazz and Sam tying up the mind-controlled government-sponsored assassin behind him. Oh, he was also trying to hack several different government agencies and also keep an eye out for news about alien invasions, strange lights, Tony Stark, Captain America, Danny, and ghosts, because this was when a ghost would try to stake their claim on Amity Park, without Danny to defend it.
The staff glittered temptingly, and Tucker pushed it further under the table. He was pretty sure losing his mind to his jerkish megalomaniac (but very cool) past self would make the situation worse. How it would make it worse, he wasn't too clear on, but they already had one guy with delusions of divinity and a staff.
One was enough.
(Duulaman was definitely cooler than Loki, though.)
(And better looking.)
"Oh, heck, he's waking up," said Jazz, making Tucker jump and twitch towards the staff.
He managed to abort the motion and prep his lipstick laser instead.
"I'll just—" started Sam.
"You can't give him another head injury, it might kill him!"
"Jazz, he shot you. With an arrow. I don't really care."
"Do you want to deal with a vengeful ghost assassin while Danny's out of commission?"
Sam paused. "No."
"We've got the Fenton Cuffs on him, anyway. And the Fenton Chains. And the—"
"Please stop. If I hear any more about your parents' branded torture devices, I might lose my mind."
At that point, the archer groaned and tried to sit up. Unfortunately, he'd been attached to the Fenton Balls and Chain (three point five six times better than the original ball and chain!) and sitting up was therefore contraindicated.
Yeah. Tucker didn't know what the Fentons had been thinking, either.
"Hold up," said Jazz, kneeling next to the archer, then thinking better of it and kneeling on his chest instead. He wheezed, almost comically.
"Uh, Jazz?" said Tucker. "What are you doing?"
"One second." She pulled apart his eyelids with her fingers. "His eye color is different than it was."
"Contacts?" suggested Sam.
"I don't think so," said Jazz. "Who'd wear color contacts to rob someone? I think this kind of mind control must have a visual indicator, like overshadowing." She stood up and brushed off her knees, as if kneeling on the archer had made them dirty.
"Great," drawled Sam. "So instead of a Nazi assassin being mind-controlled by an alien invader, he's just a Nazi assassin."
"A concussed Nazi assassin," said Jazz.
"Who're you callin' a Nazi?" slurred the archer, squinting up at Sam.
Sam crossed her arms. "That'd be the guy working for Hydra."
"There's s'meone workin' for Hydra? Wha?"
"But more importantly," said Jazz, "it seems to suggest that unconsciousness may be enough to release Loki's victims from his control."
"Like Danny," said Tucker.
"Yeah, but then we still have the problem of actually hitting Danny, the Creep Stick's ability to concuss assassins that use archaic weaponry or no." Sam shrugged. "Maybe if we got all the other people Loki has first?"
"But we're not limited to the Creep Stick, are we?" asked Tucker. "That's why we… went to the museum." He rubbed his hands on his pants. They really shouldn't be having this conversation in front of the government agent.
"Yeah," said Sam, looking uncomfortable. "But I know that's… you know. It's kind of there for backup. So we have the option."
The computer beeped and Tucker spun his chair to look at it, scrolling through his news-scanning programs. "Ghost Watch just reported a Loki sighting."
"That's kind of late, isn't it?" asked Sam, taking a few steps forward to peer over his shoulder. "Didn't you send in that tip over an hour ago?"
"I did, and they reported on it. This is a different Loki sighting." He looked over his shoulder at the archer. "Is he, like, being a taxi for you guys and then going sight-seeing or what? Why is he even here?" The decision didn't seem to be strategically sound.
The archer blinked at him. "Who?"
Great. Fine. Not like he'd expected their prisoner to be useful or anything. He went back to the alert and continued reading, only to close his eyes. "Danny's with him."
"That's a problem," said Sam.
"No kidding," snapped Tucker. "At least we know where he is? We could…" He trailed off. "Heck." He reached under the table and retrieved his bag.
"What are you doing?" asked Jazz.
"Knocking out Danny," said Tucker, smiling thinly. "Wish me luck."
He grabbed the staff- his staff- and let the delicious power of it flow through him. A gust of sand swept him away and deposited him on the corner of Park and Amity.
It was, of course the wrong Park and Amity, but that was fine. He was an Amity Park native. He'd find the right one eventually. He raised his staff again.
