Pain.

That was all Ember got when she tried to do even the most basic things. Ectobeam? Her hand smoked purple before dissipating, leaving her with shooting pains and a resolutely undestroyed tin can. Phasing? Full body chill and aches, although admittedly the aches were at least partially from walking into a wall. Flight? Parts of her felt like they were trying to tear themselves off.

She couldn't even make her damn eyes glow, the standard threat display for everything in the Zone. Whenever she tried, her eyes felt like she'd been staring at the sun for too long. Worse, she could swear there were… cracks, for want of a better word, in her irises. Little streaks and lines of black she was sure weren't there before. She'd stopped experimenting after that, and instead was lying on her couch. Music blared, but she couldn't focus on it.

She couldn't do anything in this body. And worse, it looked like trying to was actually damaging it, even if only a little.

She'd poured over the homunculus book she'd gotten with Morticia in hopes of finding a fix, an explanation, anything. The best the book had, though, was some vague claptrap about homunculi being bad conductors of spiritual energy or some such…

No. Bullshit was her immediate reaction, before she stopped to think that she was the one sitting there in an explicitly magically constructed body that wouldn't let her do ghost things.

It was probably accurate.

Shit.

This made everything a lot more dangerous than she'd anticipated. She hadn't even really thought it through before, but she'd been a ghost for longer than she'd ever been alive. The things she could do were just… always there. They gave her a sense of security, a sense she'd carried over even as she reveled in the feeling of being alive again. She'd thought she could rely on her abilities if she ever got into danger.

And now she found she couldn't.

Maybe… Maybe it'd be better to lie low from now on. Keep her head down a bit. Christ, if that trash can of a hunter kept coming after Danny, and kept being weirdly subtle about it, she'd probably get caught in the crossfire again, but maybe not as lucky. And she… she couldn't stand to lose this. Not again. Not when things were finally going OK for her.

Ha. Not great, or good, or even well. Just OK. That was how bad her first run had been, that having three friends and living alone as a goddamn teenager was a tremendous step up.

But it was more than just that. She could enjoy things again, new sensations, new experiences, they wouldn't just go over her head or sink into the abyss of rage and despair she hadn't left in all this time. Just being alive, even in this "not quite" way… it wasn't worth risking.

Her phone pinged, shaking her from her depressing reverie.

She really shouldn't have been surprised it was Danny. She pulled open the messenger app that Tucker had created for them all. Outwardly there wasn't a reason for that beyond that he could, but Ember had a suspicion it was really heavily encrypted, for reasons Rosie shouldn't know.

Danny

Hey, just wanted to check in and make sure you're doing OK.

Danny

First ghost attack can be… intense. I know a lot of people leave Amity when they get hit with one. Don't think that'd be you, but still.

Rosie

Am I OK?! You hurled a car door at him, Space Cadet!

Danny

Eh, so my shoulders are going to burn for a few days. No problem. You should see my dad. I'm pretty sure I inherited super-strength from him.

Danny

But seriously. Are you alright?

Ember hesitated, her hand hovering over the phone's keyboard. Her immediate instinct was to brush it off, type up something that made her look tough. But… One of the things she hadn't realized she'd liked most about being here, being alive, being actual friends with someone was that she didn't have to put up that kind of front all the time. So instead…

Rosie

Honestly? I've been better.

Rosie

Like I came this close to being paste on the road.

Rosie

It's a lot to take in. And that's not even getting into whatever the hell that flying tin can did to make THAT happen.

Rosie

I think it was worse that I couldn't fight back, you know? I don't have the inherited genetics of the fucking Hulk, unlike some people, apparently, so I couldn't even hock rocks at him.

Rosie

Haven't felt that powerless since…

Rosie

A while, anyway.

Danny

Yeah, I can… make a few guesses there.

Danny

Tell you what then. Come over to my place. Bring your guitar, too, you said you wanted to get some more practice in anyway.

Danny

I've got something you might wanna try out, we should probably do some festival planning now that's coming up, and on top of that I got the one perk of being related to the towns local hunters.

Danny

Free ectoguns!

Rosie

… I'm sorry, for a second there it sounded like you were going to arm me.

Danny

Oh good, you can get hints. I was wondering.

Rosie

Shuddup.

Rosie

… Seriously?

Danny

Seriously. You said not being able to fight back made it worse? Then I'll give you what you need to do that. At least enough to get away.

Ember stared down, a feeling of warmth blooming in her chest that had nothing to do with her malfunctioning powers. Maybe she wouldn't have to give this up to keep herself safe, after all. Phantom coming through with the save, as always.

Rosie

Be right over.

Ember sat on the bus, her guitar in her lap and an amp under her feet. Phantom had mentioned wanting to hear her play anyway, so she justified both without having to acknowledge the sense of comfort having them brought her. She originally had to stand, as when the bus had picked her up it had been full. But, as she got closer and closer to Fenton works, the bus began to clear out.

And more and more people looked at her with what she could only describe as pity.

Or incredulity.

Ember definitely got why Morticia hated the damn bus if this is what it was like. Could nobody in this town keep their opinions to themselves?

For what would definitely not be the last time, Ember cursed Skulker. The bastard had to go after Phantom while she was driving him. Did the little blob ghost think that she was an easy target? Ember tried to ignore that she was, but the fact that her chest still hurt after trying to use her ghost powers made that very hard to do.

So she did what she did whenever she tried to drown something out.

She listened to music.

She flicked through her phone, a full terabyte of music downloaded to it, and access to Phantom's shared music streaming services. She was tempted to try and mess with the recommended list on that, but after running into a song titled "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" she tended to stay away from the streaming programs. (When she asked Phantom what the fuck, he slowly turned and glared at Tucker who broke out cackling.)

She flew through albums on her phone before something caught her eye.

Black Rain, by Ozzy Ozbourne.

Phantom had mentioned that this had one of his favorite songs on it, right? Sounded like it was worth checking out. She opened the album and looked through the song titles. He had said his favorite was Never Gonna Stop but that wasn't on the list, there was I Don't Wanna Stop though. Ember laughed to herself, Oh, he got the name wrong… I'm gonna tease him mercilessly for that.

She kept laughing as she hit play, as she imagined poking fun at him and how embarrassed he'd get. It was always funny when Sam or Tucker got their licks in on him he'd always get so bashful and try to push them away but of course they wouldn't let him. It'll be nice to have her own little thing to tease him about, her own little way of making him blush and squirm in that cute way.

She wouldn't admit it anywhere other than inside her own mind, but she felt a little bad whenever Sam or Tucker would reference one of their inside jokes with each other. She didn't understand what the hell a "flour baby" was or why billboards were inherently funny, but the three of them did. She just took it as fuel to get her own inside jokes with them.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the bus shook. Ember tightened her grip around her guitar, keeping it from sliding off and being thrown to the floor. She looked around to try and see what on Earth happened, but it didn't take her long to figure it out.

The buildings around her all had scorch marks and a few dents and cracks here and there. While Phantom might not have been fighting ghosts, correctly choosing Ember over the stupid town, that didn't mean ghosts attacks were stopping. If anything, they were actually speeding up which didn't surprise Ember in the least.

While the local superhero was away, the ghosts will come out to play.

Best she could tell, the only one able to cause any real damage had been Skulker, at least that she'd heard about. There had been a lot of reports about minor specters causing mischief, animals coming through (Ember didn't even know there was a whole horde of ghost raccoons in the Zone, yet there they were on the evening news, stealing everything with their shameless spectral paws), but nothing that might make Phantom reconsider his choice so far.

Ember's eyes scanned the walls as they went on by while the bus continued to rock its way through a set of potholes. It had to have been recent. Skulker had been keeping his head down ever since his attack on her and Phantom, so it probably wasn't him. The scorch marks didn't mean anything, since Valerie had been pulling double duty lately.

Oh wait, there was a mailbox sticking through the second floor of that building.

Man, even the Box Ghost could be annoying as hell. How the hell did they town put up with all these ghostly idiots?

… Or with her, she realized, uncomfortably.

Eventually, the damage started to disappear once they hit that "too close to the portal and therefore Phantom" threshold that all the ghosts knew to respect. No one wanted to wake Phantom up in the middle of the night, not just because that'd ruin their plans, but because he tended to get pissy if his beauty sleep was ruined.

At this point, it was just Ember and the bus driver, and only a minute later she was getting off as she bobbed her head as the music played. "All my life, I've been over the top. I don't know what I'm doing, all I know is I don't wanna stop."

You know what, Ember mused as she walked up to the door, Maybe I won't give him too much crap.

She rang the doorbell, and she could hear Phantom running down the stairs inside. The door unlocked and Phantom swung the door open.

"You sure you're a fan of Never Gonna Stop? Cause I can't find that on that album. I can find 'I Don't Wanna Stop' though."

Phantom went through a series of expressions, before landing on frustration and slapping himself in the face. "There's no way I did that."

"You did," Ember laughed. "So much for your favorite song, huh?"

"Oh no, this is gonna become a thing isn't…" he trailed off as he looked down at her amp. "Oh, shoot, you didn't need to drag that all the way over here."

Ember groaned and looked at the amp. "Seriously? I lugged this all the way over here for nothing?" She thought for a moment before looking up. "Wait, you have an amp? I haven't seen one here?"

Phantom smiled at her with a cocky grin. "Oh, I think there's a lot you don't know about me." He said, as if she didn't know that he was; a dead kid who got to keep on living after the fact, the local superhero, and an absolute dork of a nerd. And her friend, she supposed.

"Uh huh, sure…" Ember said rolling her eyes and walking through the door, she put her hand on his chest and pushed him out of the way as he chuckled. She set her amp down by the door and carefully set down her guitar. "I'm guessing your 'ops center' has audio equipment or something?" Ember said, giving air quotes around the giant safety violation's name before folding her arms.

Phantom didn't answer her right away. Instead he looked over her carefully. Ember raised an eyebrow at the scrutiny. It didn't seem like he was checking her out in the way Dash did, but he was definitely checking her over. When his gaze finally went to her face, he gave her a warm smile. "Well that too, but I was thinking of the 'or something' part…"

She was fine.

Objectively, Danny knew that she would be. The two of them hadn't stopped talking even after the fight with Skulker. Who after that last fight, got Danny to break his streak of not going ghost for a night as he tried to hunt him down, but as far as he and Valerie could tell, the blob ghost with delusions of grandeur was hiding under a rock and waiting for Danny to calm down.

Jokes on him, Danny gave Valerie some new toys to play with, which was about the only reason she wasn't also shooting him for leaving her to the ghost attacks for the last while.

But probable ghostly war crimes aside, that wasn't what Danny was thinking when he saw her standing there in his doorway. Instead he only felt relief. Her mockery didn't make him feel embarrassed (or less than he usually would be), instead it just brought relief. The sound of her teasing him drowned out the sound of her screaming during that attack.

He looked her over, her hair was still slightly damp, probably from a shower before coming over, but she still bothered to put on some light makeup, nothing that would cover any bruises from the other day. She was wearing her favorite battle vest again, and while there were no holes in it, some of the patches had several scuffs on them, but they weren't damaged.

He'd admit, he couldn't tell what damage on her jeans were from the attack last night, or from the fact that she liked her jeans ripped.

All in all? No different… If Danny wasn't looking for the well-hidden wariness common to every citizen of Amity Park. That slight but ever-present alertness, always on the lookout for anything that might be ghostly. It was… Upsetting, a little, seeing Rosie acquire it too. He'd wanted to keep her safe.

Slight movement made his eyes jerk back up toward it, though it wasn't a ghost creeping around his peripherals, it was Rosie raising an eyebrow as he looked her over. He remembered he had been asking if she wanted to come over and practice here and that she had carried her amp all the way over.

He cleared his throat. "Well, we actually have an amp here, though it's uh… a bit special?" Rosie's eyebrow lifted even higher in skepticism and he waved her into the house. "Come on, let's get you set up…"

Rosie followed and he pointed at the couch (and no, he didn't spend an hour last night cleaning it in case she said yes, shuddup).

"Have a seat," Danny said, moving for the door. "I'll have your amp set up here in a minute."

"I mean… " Danny paused as Rosie hummed to herself. "No. Go get this special amp. You got my curiosity."

Danny chuckled and turned back to her with a grin and sarcastic salute. "Alright, one special amp, coming up!" Danny ran up to his room and used his intangibility to dig through his closet as fast as he could. He found it pretty quickly, to his surprise.

Rosie laughed the second she saw what he was carrying. "Oh God, is that a FentonAmp?"

True enough, it was indeed an amp, Fenton style - all unpainted polished metal and green glowing attachments that neither of his parents could adequately explain the purpose of, beyond his mom once muttering about "the ridiculous idea that form followed function" and ranting about the stupidity of marketing not long after. It was, to Danny's admittedly untrained eye, a professional grade piece of gear, but it also came with the stigma of his parents.

A stigma that seemed to occur to Rosie, because suddenly the laughter stopped and she shot him a look that sent a tingle (and a fear of God) down his spine. "Is this gonna blow up my guitar?"

Danny shook his head as he put it down. "No, no, it definitely won't. I've tested it pretty thoroughly-"

"Wait, did you make this?"

"No, I didn't, my d-" Danny was cut off as the amp started jerking around and a snarling came from it.

Danny leapt into action and held it down as it jumped and wriggled about beneath him, but then the back panel exploded open, the hinges shrieking in protest as the back panel bounced and a glowing hole was revealed. A particularly annoying blob ghost that had taken to being an absolute pest to Danny in particular started trying to make its way out.

"Oh no you don't!" Danny shouted, trying to shove it back in. It was both easier and harder than you'd have expected, easier because once Danny started trying to shove the thing back in it stopped trying to get out, harder because it instead bit Danny.

"Mother-" Danny started before slamming the containment unit shut. He shook his hand and inspected the bite, fortunately despite what the blob's teeth looked like, it hadn't broken skin. He looked up and Rosie's face was a mixture of horror and shock. "Sorry about that, I've been using this as a 'time out' box for really annoying ghosts." He checked the latch and saw that it had managed to get bent slightly and resolved to fix that later.

Before he got his hands on Skulker again.

"Skulker?"

Danny looked up and saw Rosie looking at him. The look on her face was a little less horrified and more intrigued now. Belatedly, Danny realized that he had been muttering to himself. "Uh, yeah, Skulker, that's the guy who attacked us. I was gonna shove him in the time out amp for like a week after he destroyed your car…"

The grin that spread across her face made Danny's mouth go dry. All the shock and horror was gone, replaced with maliciousness as she commanded. "Make it a month."

Danny laughed. "As you command." He reached into an open compartment in the back and pulled out a cable. He plugged it into the amp and flicked the switch that turned it on. The light on the front turned on and then he plugged in the cable. The amp let out bursts of random sound as the jack slid into place before going silent again.

Just to be sure, 'cause while he didn't think this was a problem, it was made by his dad, after all. He grabbed the other end of the cable. When his fingers touched the metal Jack on that end, the amp came alive again. (And thankfully did not blow up.)

The amp buzzed as his fingers held onto the cable. The sound reverberated throughout the room, a low droning buzz that covered up any of the sounds from the outside world.

Satisfied that the amp wasn't malfunctioning in any way, Danny turned toward Rosie before stopping.

Rosie was looking at him.

At this moment in time, Danny knew he had 100% of Rosie's attention. Her eyes kept dancing between him, the amp, and her guitar case. She was sitting straight up, like someone had shocked her, and she was gently biting her lip…

Danny took two steps forward, and her gaze snapped up to his face. He held out the cable and Rosie gently took it from his hand, her fingers brushing against his.

"Thanks…" she said in the quietest voice he had ever heard from her. She startled again, like she realized something was wrong and suddenly twisted around to start pulling out her guitar. In seconds, she was plugged in and ready to go.

All the while, Danny couldn't take his eyes off the blushing on her cheeks.

Rosie plucked at the strings, making sure everything was in tune. As far as Danny could tell, it was, but she gently touched each tuning peg to make it perfect. She didn't comment at all when Danny chose to sit next to her instead of any of the other available chairs. She stopped for a moment before taking the lowest string and tuning it down.

And then she started playing, slamming down on the whammy bar to start the opening of Kickstart my Heart.

Only a few moments later, Rosie jumped up and started walking about the room as she played. Danny hadn't heard her play before, but he had known she was good. But this wasn't just good - this was amazing. Danny couldn't help himself as he leaned forward.

Rosie always had a bit of fire in her, from the way she joked with the group to how she cursed Mr. Lancer's name. She was vibrant and alive in a way that made Danny jealous.

But seeing her play in front of him, it made everything else seem muted.

She wasn't just playing, she was dancing. A beautiful smile spread across her face, occasionally hidden by her hair as she twirled about.

All too soon, she finished the song. She let the final note ring out and she turned to face Danny. A small sweat had broken out over her face causing her to literally shine in the light and the rise and fall of her chest was more pronounced as she got her breath back.

"So…" she began, slowly as she brought her breathing back under control. "What do ya think about that?"

"That was-"

Danny didn't get to finish telling her how amazing she was, because the front door opened and slammed into the wall. "LUCY, I'M HOME!"

Danny groaned and threw his face into his hands. "Dad, no…" he grunted quietly.

Apparently he wasn't as quiet as he thought, since he heard his dad shout back, "Jack yes!"

Good God, Jack Fenton was enormous.

Ember had never really noticed before now. Whenever she'd seen him, it had been at a distance, or in the midst of a fight where her… Well, probably not adrenaline per se, but whatever the ghost equivalent of it was. Whenever her pseudo-adrenaline was up and she wasn't paying attention.

But now here he was, opening the front door of FentonWorks with a grin almost as wide as himself. And the man was wide, almost as wide as he was tall. Ember usually took that for a figure of speech, but Pariah, the man looked like he could comfortably eat her. And judging by the sheer amount of groceries still in his hand, that wasn't a figure of speech either.

"You must be Rosie!" Jack excitedly shouted. "Danno's told us all about you! Glad to finally meet you!"

Rosie was swept up in his wake as he barrelled to the kitchen, mildly stunned, and barely noticed the slight tingle as she passed the kitchen same thing happened when she walked through the door. She wasn't sure what that was, come to think of it. From previous experience, Fenton ghost catching stuff didn't come with a forewarning like that, so what the hell was she feeling whenever she walked through these doors?

Whatever curiosity she may have had was violently thrown from her head screaming as Hurricane Jack descended and ushered her to the kitchen table, where a sheepish looking Danny was already sitting.

"Sorry," Danny whispered, gesturing to his father as he put the groceries away at break neck speed. "I was kinda hoping he'd take too long over the groceries again so we could just hang out. But he knows about the festival stuff we're supposed to be doing and he really wants to talk about it."

"That's right!" Jack bellowed as he put the last of the groceries away and took a chair. No, wait, a very specific chair, Ember suddenly realised, reinforced with metal. And… green gadgets? Who needed an ectoplasmic chair?

"Mr. Lancer called," Jack continued, his excited voice modulated somewhat as he glanced at Danny. "He wants a written report about Danny's activities to help the festival, and a bit of the significance of them!"

"Okaaaaaaaaay?" Ember said, raising her eyebrow. Danny sighed.

"And dad did his PhD in occult studies on equinoxes, and a lot of the surrounding material."

"So figured I'd give you both a potted history of them! Should impress Mr. Lancer!" Jack smiled.

Ember, for her part, hesitated a moment. Her feelings of unease only grew the longer she spent around Jack Fenton. He didn't seem… condescending. Or cruel. The kind of man who'd steal someone's partner from them and ruin their life.

She really hadn't wanted to meet him.

"I mean, I don't have to write anything for Lancer, so why-"

"I can also tell you about the music that older cultures played to appease the veil."

He waggled his eyebrows, an unsubtle man who thought he was being cunning. But still, Ember was tempted. If nothing else, it'd be good to know exactly what she could do before… well. Best to focus on the funny irony and not what she'd be putting the knowledge to use for.

Not like she wasn't used to burying bad feelings to get on with something.

"OK. You've got my attention."

"Great!" Exclaimed Jack, before he leapt from his chair and pulled out a whiteboard that Ember had somehow missed, hidden in the kitchen. "So! To properly understand the protection songs, we have to start with symbols. See that, above the door?"

Ember turned in her chair and looked above the kitchen arch. There was something there, something that looked like a very angular and overcomplicated knot.

"Shield knot!" Jack said proudly. "Used by the Celts to protect the home against evil spirits!"

Well, Ember thought with grim amusement as he began lecturing about the various means of supernatural protection used by older cultures, that explains why I tingle when I enter the house.

Hazama: Bit of a delay on this one, for multiple reasons, but I'm pretty happy with how this turned out! We had to split it up, but fortunately that means that next chapter is just gonna be easier for us to get out. This was a really fun one to write, and I got to pull some stuff that we scrapped from an earlier chapter back in. I don't have much else to say that wouldn't just be gushing over how much fun I'm having with this fic so Imma leave it at that for now.

Kilaknux: Yup, same boat here, things got in the way, but damn this fic is fun. I like getting to allude to some of the occult knowledge I've acquired.

... That sounded significantly more sinister than I intended it to be.