Danny was well on his way to being convinced that this was never going to work when he shivered and sneezed, which had the unfortunate side effect of him closing his eyes and nearly allowing Johnny to run him over with his motorcycle.

Even after catching his breath, Danny wasn't sure if the fact that he went intangible was due to his instincts or Kitty's.

He was getting used to the slight chill of being intangible. Being able to do it when he wanted to do it was hit and miss, though. He might be viscerally aware of the sensation of being intangible, but imagining it and making it manifest were two different things. He had better luck if he visualized pulling the power from the portal inside of him, especially if he was trying to turn something else intangible with him besides his clothes, but that took time he didn't always have. He knew his instincts might save him—they had more than half the time when Shadow had taken to jump scaring him and trying to knock him into furniture—but he'd rather they were more reliable if he had to depend on them in a real fight.

Surprisingly, he'd had better luck figuring out the ghost rays; the staticky buildup of ectoplasmic energy in the palms of his hands was a very distinctive feeling, and now that he knew what it was, he barely had to think about it to summon light. Summoning more than just light—summoning an angry bolt of energy to fire at someone—was harder, but not as hard as he'd thought it would be before he'd gotten this far.

Aiming was worse.

He didn't have his dad's aim, but he didn't have his mom's, either.

Danny still wasn't sure whether he or Shadow had broken more lights in here, since their practice session had taken out at least five. He'd have to figure out how to make up for that later. If it was just the lightbulbs, the allowance he'd saved up might cover it, but if not, he might need to find time to volunteer here when this was over.

Jazz would be thrilled. She'd actually be interested in this kind of thing. Probably.

Maybe she'd lend him the difference, though, and they could make an anonymous donation or something. It should help even if it wouldn't cover it.

He was pretty sure Jazz would agree to give him money in exchange for taking over some of the less enjoyable chores, though, like cleaning the lab or washing the dishes on the particularly precarious nights when something had gained sentience and mounted an attack. They always knew how confident the other one was in a bet if one or both of those made it onto the table.

He hoped he'd get a chance to make silly bets with her over things again.

Right now, invisibility was still a bust, and he was pretty sure he hadn't managed hovering (actual flight still seemed little more than a distant possibility at this point) without Kitty's intervention to keep him from smashing in his face by accident, but he was also pretty sure Kitty's help was part of his problem.

How was he going to know if he could do this on his own as long as she was chilling wherever she was and nudging him in the right direction? He'd asked her to step back a few times, and he was pretty sure she had, but when Shadow had nearly dropped him from ceiling height….

He was fairly confident she'd saved him even though he'd asked her not to.

To be fair, he'd asked her not to step in before Shadow had decided to take the fight from chair height to ceiling height, but still.

"You figure things out?" Johnny asked before Danny had recovered his wits enough to ask for an update.

"Depends," said Danny, which wasn't actually what he'd wanted to say, since he'd fully intended to ask about Jazz and the others. That definitely meant Kitty had overstayed her welcome. "What was there to figure out?"

Johnny, who'd moved so he was leaning against his motorcycle, lifted his hands in a placating gesture. "Relax, kid, relax. I knew to come back here, didn't I?"

Danny crossed his arms and shot Johnny a look—likely as not, one he was usually on the receiving end of courtesy of Jazz.

Johnny rolled his eyes but dropped his arms to mirror Danny's. "You know the shifter would realize we're trying to help you navigate this, yeah?"

Danny kept glaring.

Johnny's expression, which hadn't withered in the slightest, turned sly. "Listen, Kitty. October 7th. You, me, under the bleachers—"

"I really don't need to hear the rest of that," Danny interrupted, the words exploding out of him in a rush as much because they were true as because part of him had been expecting them to stay locked inside. He was more relieved than he wanted to admit that they'd come when he'd wanted them to without any sort of resistance. He'd never felt pushed to the side like he had with Sidney, but he wasn't convinced that was because he had as much control as it felt like he did. Kitty was bound to be more subtle than Poindexter. "What did you find out?"

"I asked first."

Danny huffed, but it couldn't be terrible news if Johnny wasn't already spilling it. He opened his mouth to explain that, sure, he'd maybe made a teensy bit of progress, even though he had no idea if he'd be able to do that without Kitty doing her thing, but that it was nowhere near enough to do what he apparently needed to be able to do to beat a shapeshifter.

Instead, he asked, "You think we can pull off a straight switch?"

All right, that was officially worse than Poin—Sidney answering Danny's questions using Danny's mouth, namely because Danny still felt in control despite knowing full well those hadn't been his words.

It was creepy.

Saying something he hadn't intended to say shouldn't feel so natural.

He hadn't even tripped over the words.

Would he have even noticed the disconnect if he hadn't known what Kitty was doing? If he hadn't been looking for her interference, knowing those words had been hers and not his….

"So it's that bad, huh?"

Okay, that was a little unfair. It wasn't like Danny hadn't accomplished anything. "I can kinda do the ectoblast thing. My aim'll get better with practice. And I can sometimes go intangible when I want to."

Once again, he was more thankful than he'd ever admit to Johnny that the words came when he wanted them to, but that was surely a moot point, since Kitty could fill in Johnny after this if she ever cared to do so.

"Kinda and sometimes ain't filling me with a lot of confidence here." Johnny hummed. "Can you shape the ectoplasm into a shield? Deflect attacks?"

"Um. No." That would have been useful to learn. Why the heck hadn't he been practicing that? Johnny hadn't said—

No, wait, he'd said something about ectoplasm manipulation, hadn't he?

Danny hadn't realized that was the same thing—a different side of the same power or whatever the equivalent was for something that didn't necessarily have sides.

"Should be the same principle as when you're trying to open a portal in front of you. Y'know, with your whole wall of ectoplasm, window-shattering thing. Just the opposite of that."

Danny raised an eyebrow, but he wasn't entirely surprised Johnny and Kitty had not been listening as well as they'd pretended when he'd tried to explain to them how he'd figured it out.

"You can work on it. If you've got ghost rays down, you'll pick it up pretty fast."

"Do I have time to figure it out?" Danny shot back, hoping Johnny would take the hint and fill him in about the others.

He didn't.

Instead, he shrugged and asked, "You really wanna sic Poindexter on him? I don't want you going toe to toe with a shifter."

Oh, great. Johnny wasn't even pretending Danny was in full control now. Danny didn't need any bleed over knowledge from Kitty to know that Johnny was talking about siccing Poindexter on him, not on the shifter.

"I am right here, you know," Danny said flatly. "And, for the record, I don't want any of us to go toe to toe with the shifter. Not alone. That sounds like a recipe for disaster."

Johnny frowned, but his frown only deepened when Kitty had Danny add, "I don't know that Poindexter's strong enough. This is on a whole other level from taking down a schoolyard bully."

"He doesn't have to be strong enough. He has to be bait. He's good at that."

Sidney would not appreciate that.

Of course, he might not dispute it, either.

Time to forego subtlety. And any pretense at patience. "Speaking of, what's up with Jazz and Valerie and Sidney? At least tell me that before you debate making Sidney bait a trap we can't even spring."

Johnny waved a hand as if that didn't matter. "It doesn't look as bad as you think. Your friend isn't handling it well, so Poindexter made himself scarce and your sis is on damage control."

"Meaning?"

"You called other ghosts through before the shifter. Even if they're the one causing you the most trouble, you've run into a lot of others. Your friend hasn't. She keeps freaking out and going on about how a ghost stole her face."

Yeah, okay, Danny didn't need to know Valerie very well to know she wouldn't handle that well. He hadn't handled it well. Granted, he hadn't handled most of this in a manner anyone would call well, but that was beside the point. "And?"

"And this was after—I'm guessing here—she got roughed up by a friendly face. Your sis is trying to keep her calm and keep your parents from dragging out the weapons, but near as I can tell, Poindexter took a breather."

All right. That was reasonable. He could see Jazz doing that. And Poindexter; even if he weren't prone to pulling a disappearing act at the first sign of trouble, Jazz would have told him to go for a bit until she could make sure nothing got set off at the house.

"So—?"

"So what? That's your update."

"But what did Jazz say to you?"

"Nothing. Didn't talk to her. Didn't let her see me. You forget the whole point of splitting up again?"

"No, I just—" Danny broke off. This wasn't going to be worth arguing. He'd have to talk Johnny into going back later, preferably with Danny along this time, and the best way to do that might be by convincing him to track down Poindex—Sidney. Not to use as bait, necessarily, but as a source of information to find out what exactly had happened, since Danny very much wanted to know. "I guess I'm worried."

"Worry about the things you can actually do something about."

He was trying to do something about this, but he could be the bigger man and refrain from pointing that out. "Look, I— I know I need to deal with the shifter. That they're a problem that won't just go away and I should probably worry if it looks like they did. But I don't— Even with your help, I don't think I'm going to be ready to face them alone and win. That still sounds like a really bad idea."

"It is. Which is why Kitty suggested we cheat."

Wait.

What?

"You mean the trap thing? Even if Poindexter agrees—and I kinda get the feeling that's a pretty big if—that's not cheating. That's a plan. I don't even know enough about it to know if it's a good one."

"If we do it our way, the shifter would see it as cheating."

Danny stared at him.

Kitty decided against helpfully explaining, even though she and Johnny must be on the same wavelength if they'd figured out the proposed plan from the little they'd discussed it.

"You remember what I said about the thing Kitty and Poindexter can do? Possession to the point of replacement?"

"How is that any better than what the shifter wants? Because I'm pretty sure their plan is to keep me barely alive somewhere while they pretend to be me until they have everything they want." He was still a bit surprised that the shifter had gone with the 'Danny ran away' story rather than straight-up pretending to be him, but they might have wanted to scope out FentonWorks to see how well that sort of plan would go.

Which, knowing his parents, would not be as disastrous as it should be.

They hadn't found a connection between him, their defunct portal, and the major uptick in ghost sightings since his accident. He was not going to be confident that they'd be quick to spot a ghost masquerading as him and living under their roof. Maybe after a few days, once they couldn't explain any weird behaviour by a poor night's sleep or stress from school or whatever they came up with, but that might be optimistic if they were distracted with fine-tuning their weaponry.

If their weapons didn't already react to him—or rather, to the portal inside of him—then the shifter wouldn't make it through a single prototype demonstration, but when he already registered as a ghost on half their equipment?

Danny was not confident enough to bet on his parents in that scenario.

At least, he definitely wouldn't make that bet with Jazz if dish duty was on the table.

Especially not when he knew the shifter would do their best to distract his parents.

"Trust me," Johnny said, as if he'd already forgotten about the threats he'd made earlier.

"Not really the thing I want to trust you about! This is messed up enough as it is. Kitty's in my head."

"That's the whole point."

"Doesn't mean I like it!"

"Doesn't mean you didn't agree to it, either."

"Yeah, but…." Danny ran a hand through his hair. "You guys got what you wanted out of it, right? So this can stop? And you can fill me in with actual answers? It's not like I can practice when Kitty can just correct anything I screw up. And she'll have to go if I'm going to fight the shifter without risking her."

"She'll have to go when Poindexter agrees to the plan."

"You mean if."

"When." Johnny didn't offer any explanation for his certainty, and he met Danny's dubious look with a scrutinizing one of his own. "You know the risks. You willing to keep this up?"

Danny wasn't entirely sure whether Johnny was talking to him or to Kitty, but he could fill in the blanks. Having Kitty stay was risky, since she'd get hurt if Danny did, and the shifter might have some unpleasant tricks up their sleeve if they discovered what was going on. On the other hand, having her go, however much Danny might want it, wasn't without risk, either, because Danny had not advanced as far as Johnny had obviously hoped he would.

In Johnny's book, Danny needed a babysitter.

Danny really wished he didn't technically agree on that front, especially since Kitty being the designated babysitter meant there might be blowback from Johnny.

Still, Danny found himself nodding.

He wasn't sure how much of that decision was Kitty's influence.

"Then nothing changes till Poindexter takes over."

"So we leave to find him." Danny purposefully didn't phrase that as a question. If they were going to go ahead with whatever this sketchy plan was, then fine. At least it involved finding Sidney and getting real answers.

Johnny nodded, and Danny let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

That was when he realized he was playing with Kitty's bracelet again.

"Is Kitty going to be okay if we leave? She's not going to…fade or something, is she?" She hadn't faded yet. Looking at her now, her glow was nonexistent, the table swathed in more shadow than before. Granted, that might just be Shadow's influence….

"She's anchored," Johnny said in a tone that implied his statement explained a lot more than it actually did. Danny looked back to Johnny and hoped the lost expression on his face would ask his questions for him. Thankfully, Johnny seemed to understand. "As long as nothing happens to her anchor, she'll be fine."

"And her anchor is—?"

Johnny tilted his head, and for a heart-stopping moment, Danny thought Johnny was simply looking at him. Logic asserted itself shortly thereafter, and he stopped fiddling with the bracelet.

"Do you…." Danny bit his lip. "Do you think they're going to be okay? Jazz and Valerie?" If Sidney had gotten away before his parents could pull out the weapons, he should be fine. Unless the shifter had found him in the meantime. "And Sidney?"

"Do you really want me to answer that when we don't know where the shifter is?"

Danny blinked.

He hadn't thought Johnny wouldn't reassure him.

"Show me what you can do first," Johnny said. His expression had softened a bit, maybe, but that didn't make his words easier to hear. "Kitty'll keep to herself. Then we'll see how much of a long shot this is."

Danny let out his breath slowly. "Fine."

This would be a short show-and-tell, but maybe, once they found Sidney and got some real answers about what was going on, they could turn this long shot of a plan into something they could actually pull off.