"Mom, Dad, Danny, I'm home." Jazz walked through the front door, closing it behind her with her foot, careful not to drop any of the groceries in her hands. She knew it wasn't a great idea to carry them all in at once, but it's how she always did it. "I got stuff for spaghetti!" She yelled through the house, but there was no answer. Just the sounds of her parents muttering to themselves echoing from down in the basement. She set the groceries down on the kitchen table and dropped her keys, patting her coat pocket when they landed in it, before walking towards the basement stairs.

"Guys? Are you down there?" She called down the steps, no answer. She began to walk down.

"Mom? Dad? Are you-"

"Oh, Jazz is that you?" Her mother called back. She stilled and answered.

"Yeah?"

"You got the groceries?" Her mother asked.

"Yeah." She called back.

"Wonderful, you can get started on dinner, we'll be done in a bit." Her mother replied. It seemed it was another one of those days, her parents likely wouldn't be done playing with whatever new toy they had for hours and they wouldn't come up for anything short of a house fire until then.

"Okay." She called back, retreating back up the stairs. She started putting the groceries away. The bell peppers went into the fridge, the bananas in the fruit bowl, the bread in the cupboard, and so on until the only things out were the pasta noodles, the marinara and alfredo sauces, and a box of kiwis, a rare find this early into the season. It was late so she wouldn't have time to make the sauce from scratch if she wanted to be in bed by ten, so jarred sauce would have to do. She got a large pot from underneath the counter and filled it halfway with water.

She wondered what kind of project they were working on this time. Maybe it was the cold seeking missiles, or one of those ectoradiation recording cameras they had been talking about. She'd have to sabotage those if they actually went through with making them. No doubt they'd end up using them as security cameras, and then it would be near impossible for Danny to avoid their suspicion.

"Danny, come downstairs, I have a surprise for you!" She called as she lifted the pot out of the sink and set it on the stovetop before turning it on. She grabbed a bottle of olive oil out of the cupboard and poured some in the pot. There was no reply.

"I found some kiwis, I thought you might want to squirrel them away before Dad gets to them!" Still no reply.

He must have his headphones on, she thought. Probably playing Doomed with Sam and Tucker. She turned the stove on high, grabbed the box of kiwis, and made her way up the stairs to Danny's room.

"Hey Danny, I got you some ki-" She opened the door, Danny was nowhere to be seen. "-wis."

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. Danny was probably at Sam or Tucker's house. She dialed his number just to be sure and put her phone up to her ear, only to hear muffled ringing coming from Danny's backpack in the corner of the room. She hung up the phone and grabbed a kiwi from the package to drop into her coat pocket before hiding the rest underneath the blanket on Danny's bed.

Strange. Danny almost never left the house without his phone.

She walked back down the stairs to the kitchen to check on the pot of water, still not even close to boiling. Might as well go and see if her parents knew where Danny was. After all, there was really nothing better to do while she waited.

She walked down the basement steps, trying to ignore the grating sound of saws against some sort of hard material. Metal? No, maybe plastic. She reached the bottom and saw that her parents were on the other side of the lab, at the experimentation table, huddled over something she couldn't quite make out.

Ectoplasm surrounded the area like some sort of grotesque halo. It should disturb her, but she'd seen similar sights often to be desensitized to it. She walked closer to them, unconsciously softening her footsteps. "Hey, have you guys seen-"

They turned around to face her, revealing what they had been working on. It wasn't an invention like she had thought.

"Jazzypants, what are you doing down here?" She gripped the counter next to her for stability. Half of her mind was urgently screaming to run, the rest was screaming at her to get her parents away from the table, away from him.

"You should probably go upstairs, you don't want to see this." Her father took a step towards her. Her mother, on the other side of the table, continued cutting. The grinding sound pierced through her skull. She couldn't breathe.

"Jack, I need you back over here to hold this." Her mother said, holding out something in front of her. She couldn't see it, she couldn't see anything clearly, everything was just shapes and blurs. She grabbed at the air behind herself, hoping to latch onto anything for stability. Her fingers grazed something cold and metal, she grasped it.

"Sure thing Madds!" Her father turned back to the table and started to walk towards it.

"NO!" she screamed. She picked up the metal object and grasped it. A loud boom sounded and her father fell to the ground. Her mother screamed and started moving towards her. The room was spinning and she couldn't breathe. Another boom and her mother fell too.

She stared forward and lowered her arms. When had she lifted them? Her muscles went slack and she dropped to the floor, gasping in breaths and dry heaving. She looked up to the table, dripping with green like icicles on a warm day. She forced herself to her feet, and stumbled forward.

What she saw raised bile into her throat, but she quickly pushed it down. Her brother, eyes wide and glazed over, chest open to expose ribs barely attached, some snapped off entirely. Lungs visibly expanding and contracting at near inhuman speeds. Heart beating so fast it appeared it may burst. Core pulsing dimly, quickly, flickering like a flame in the wind. Other organs spilling out in such a way that she couldn't tell which was which.

She tried to push them back into his body but it was like they couldn't fit, she was hyperventilating, trying so hard to put him back together, he needed to be put back together. Tears blurred her vision, and Danny was choking, gasping for air, but she couldn't focus on that. She grabbed them and shoved them back in. His eyes blew wide, his back arched, and his mouth gaped open in a silent scream. They didn't fall back out though.

She ran to the first aid kit, grabbed the needle and surgical thread and started stitching him back together. He didn't even flinch when she stuck the needle in, just gaped, staring at her like a dead fish. At times, she wondered if he was even still there, but then the flickering light coming from his chest made her squash her thoughts.

When she finished with the stitches she got the gauze and started wrapping him. She had to lift him up to lead the gauze underneath every time she wrapped it around. She moved slowly and as carefully as she could with her hands shaking. Why were they shaking, they weren't shaking before, so why now.

Her foot bumped against something and she looked down. It was her father. A large hole burnt into his jumpsuit to reveal the skin on his left side bubbling like boiling water, flesh and musculature peeling away to reveal intestines fizzing away into a red pile of sludge onto the floor. She forced herself not to look at where her mother lay on the other side of the table.

She fixed her eyes to her brother instead. He needed medical attention. Real medical attention. and she had no idea how to get-

But she did. She looked toward the portal, its swirling green surface seemed so inviting. So warm. So safe. She didn't think, she just picked up her little brother and dove in.

"No please, you don't know what you're doing! It's me, Danny, look I can-" She had seen him change back, and not once did she accuse him of being an imposter. Not a misunderstanding.

"Stop. Fast forward."

"Of course dearie."

"Play."

"Jack, secure the clamps, we don't want him escaping." She lifted her goggles for a second to wipe the inside clear of fog. Her eyes were violet. Not overshadowed.

"Sure thing Ma-"

"Stop. Fast forward."

"Anything for you darling."

"Play."

"My this is fascinating. Its lungs are moving, they shouldn't have any reason to move, it's not using any air to talk right now. It has a heart too. A small one, but it's realistic. Look at the way it expands and contracts. The core's small too. We may have just discovered a new species." She spoke clearly and intelligently, her mind did not seem to be clouded in the slightest. She seemed to be genuinely enjoying this experiment. Not controlled or forced.

"Stop."

"Alright sweetie."

This was a problem, wasn't it. A major disruption of his plans. If his dear, sweet Madeline had indeed killed her son, or even seriously injured him like this, then he would never agree to be part of their perfect family. It was difficult enough convincing the boy to love him, convincing him to love his mother again after something like this would be near impossible. Or maybe even completely impossible.

Although, the boy did forgive his father for his half death, but it is quite possible that he had just distanced his father's contribution to that accident from the accident itself. Denial. And then, there was such a slim possibility of him surviving these injuries, what with the physical and emotional severity. A human would never be able to recover from that without drastic medical treatment, and a mental blow like this would be enough to halt the regenerative abilities of any ordinary ghost for who knows how long.

And if he didn't heal? If Madeline could not accept Daniel as her son after learning that he was half ghost, it's not that far a stretch to say that she definitely would not accept him if he were to become a full ghost.

And what did that say about himself? If Madeline had renounced her own dear son for being a ghost, it would take a miracle for her to begin to love a man such as him.

Although, he still hadn't seen the end of the footage. There was a possibility that Madeline saw the error of her ways, that she realized that what she was doing was wrong, that she stopped and helped her son heal. This couldn't be treated like any ordinary injury, healing it would take time.

Daniel wasn't in the right state of mind for his core to focus on his physical state rather than emotional, but if Madeline showed him that she cared for him, it may lessen the strain on his core. And even if she didn't, he may still be alive. Well, as alive as he could be. They might have kept him stable for further research. And if they did, he could easily go there and retrieve him. Then by nursing him back to health, he may be able to finally convince the boy that he cared for him.

Daniel would latch onto his rescuer and finally love him as the father he was always destined to be. Later on he would convince Madeline to join them, and after seeing the error of her ways she would be more than happy to. They could finally be a happy family.

Yes, he could make this work. It's better this way. Daniel needed stability in his moment of weakness. And in time, Madeline would be ecstatic to see her son again. Whether he be dead or alive. This was perfect.

"Fast forward."

"Anything for you honey." Yes, this would work perfectly.

"Play."

"Yes sweetheart." It would take time, but in the end it would all be worth it.

"Hey, have you guys seen-" What?

"Jazzypants, what are you doing down here?" What was she doing there?

"You should probably go upstairs, you don't want to see this." She shouldn't be there.

"Jack, I need you back over here to hold this." What was she doing?

"Sure thing Madds!" What was she holding?

"NO!" NO!

Gone.

His Madeline. His perfect, intelligent, beautiful, loving Madeline, gone. That girl, she, she took his Madeline. She destroyed her. She demolished his perfect future, his paradise.

And Daniel, she was mending him, caring for him, that wasn't hers to mend, it was his. His Daniel. He was supposed to fix it, he was supposed to make it whole, make everything better. He was supposed to make Daniel love him. This wasn't right, this wasn't how it was supposed to be. But there she was, stealing his son. And then they were gone.

Everything was going to be perfect, but then she tampered with it, destroyed it, stole what was rightfully his. She would have to pay, he would make her pay. She had ruined everything, and so he would stop her from destroying the last chance he had, the last fragment of his perfect paradise.

He needed to protect Daniel.

He needed to destroy Jasmine.