Danielle's ghostly glow was nonexistent in the daylight, except for the fact that her white hair shone in a way hair normally wouldn't. Maddie watched Danny walk with Danielle across Alicia's yard towards the place where Jazz had presumably left the Fenton Jet and tried to remember if she'd ever noticed Phantom's hair having a similar gleam. She could see the similarities now—Danny had transformed, likely to make it easier to carry the still-unconscious Madeline with them using a telekinetic power Maddie hadn't even known he possessed—but she couldn't remember thinking something similar back in Amity Park.

Would she have known either of them as ghosts—albeit only in part—if they'd dressed as ordinary humans and hadn't done anything particularly ghostly?

Plasmius was different; even if his hair absorbed all light instead of reflecting it—speculation on her part, as it was another thing she'd never noticed—he looked too ghostly to ever be mistaken as a human.

Was that intentional on Vlad's part, in the hope that she and Jack would never realize what he had become? Was it unintentional, his subconscious creating a visage that aligned with what he—like them—had believed ghosts to be? Both his forms looked far more different from each other than Danny's did. There had to be a reason for it.

Was that something she could ask, or would it be a step too far?

A question for another time, maybe.

Maddie closed the door on Alicia's cabin behind her and reached up for the key hidden above the door frame in a gap of the wood. Alicia didn't typically lock up when she was away, but she wasn't often away for long, and this time, Maddie had no idea how long they'd be.

She did know that Alicia would insist on coming once she realized Danielle had decided to make the trip—even if it was against Danny's wishes and the better judgement of them both. Alicia might not say it was to keep Maddie from losing her head, but that would certainly be part of it. It would also, likely as not, be the excuse she'd give even if the real reason was that she wasn't sure if she could trust Maddie to protect Danielle if Danny or Jazz were unable to do so.

Maddie locked the door and replaced the key, feeling the weight in her chest that seemed to have taken up residence there permanently.

Danielle might be doing this to strike down Vlad. She might be doing this for Danny. She might be doing it for herself. Whatever the reason, or reasons, she certainly wasn't doing it for Maddie. Which was fine, really. Maddie did not need or want Danielle to feel obliged to do any of this because of her.

What hurt was that Maddie was convinced Danielle was doing this despite her.

Danny and Danielle were hardly making swift progress, each of Danielle's steps careful and weighted with an exhaustion she couldn't quite hide even though she'd declined to lean on Danny, but Maddie hung back to let them speak in private. She didn't close the distance between them until she saw them speaking with Alicia at the door of the Fenton Jet.

Jazz must be inside watching Vlad.

Vlad, whose secret experiments in ecto-biology had gone so much further than they ever should have, if he'd been creating clones and turning those clones into ghosts.

Part-ghosts.

Better to think of them that way, likely as not. Even if ghosts weren't what she'd once thought of them, forgetting someone's human side—clone or not—would hardly help her to muddle through this.

Had Vlad forgotten it?

From what Danielle had said to Madeline, from what Madeline herself had said and done, it certainly didn't seem as if Vlad had treated the clones as their own people. Did he merely think them creations? It had been years since the three of them—she, Jack, and Vlad—had discussed souls and ghosts and imprints and everything else, but being a creation born in a lab rather than one born of a body would hardly negate—

Maybe she was getting ahead of herself.

She didn't even know what, precisely, Vlad had done to accomplish any of it. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, if she were being perfectly honest. It trod a line she herself had never wanted to walk, and whatever the method, whatever the means, it hadn't quite worked as intended, not if the clones were unstable.

Were they still unstable or was that a flaw he'd since sorted but about which he had simply neglected to inform Danny and Danielle?

"We're all going," Alicia called when she saw Maddie. Danny and Danielle had split apart, the ghost girl petting Cujo before heading for the passenger seats as Maddie approached while Danny took Madeline towards the back of the plane.

Where Jazz guarded Vlad, presumably.

Maddie offered her sister a small but genuine smile once she looked away from the plane's open door. "I know. I locked up for you."

It was a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but when Alicia smiled back, Maddie found it a little easier to hope than she had before.

Jazz jerked, nearly jumping up from her place on the floor when the door opened and Maddie's unconscious body was floated into the room beside her.

No, wait. That wasn't her mother.

It merely looked like her.

Well, mostly. This woman must be the one who'd given Maddie the bloody scratches on her face. She wore gloves, but Jazz was fairly sure that if she were to remove those gloves, there would still be flesh caught beneath the nails of one hand.

Jazz looked to her brother, who was the picture of concentration as he followed the body into the room.

The door swung shut behind him without anyone physically reaching to close it.

"What?" It was the first word—the only word—Jazz could force out right now.

"Vlad," said Danny as he let the doppelgänger's body thump to the floor of the jet. Vlad lifted his head from its bowed position—he must have felt the vibrations—but the woman didn't even twitch. Hopefully that meant she was drugged, not dead—or deeply unconscious and in serious medical trouble, though in Jazz's experience, this was not likely someone with whom she'd need to worry about that.

Not unless her suspicions weren't true, anyway, but from what Jazz could see, she was in the right ballpark at the very least.

She had to be.

Maddie didn't have a twin any more than Jazz and Danny had a cousin called Danielle.

But if one so-called cousin could possess ghost powers, powers which included a regenerative ability that had kept her brother out of the hospital since the portal accident, why couldn't another?

It would explain the scratches.

And Jazz wasn't likely to get a better explanation from Danny.

"Which, by the way?" continued Danny, drawing Jazz's attention back to him as he wiped one arm across his forehead to mop up the sweat that had beaded there despite his being in his phantom form. "Change of plans. We're all going. Alicia's going to come switch you out, but hang tight till I secure her." He nodded towards the doppelgänger. "I don't wanna trust the Fenton Fisher and cuffs on their own. Um, the shelving unit is still bolted down, right?"

It was, so Jazz helped Danny tie the woman to it—it gave her a chance to see how unnervingly similar the woman looked to their own mother—but though a thousand questions crowded her tongue, she didn't voice any of them. She settled for the safer option: teasing her little brother. "I see your attempts to use the Fenton Fisher went as well as they always do."

Danny let out an exaggerated, exasperated sigh, but instead of pointing out the obvious opening she'd left him—that he'd only been using the line and not the rod—he gave an experimental tug on the woman's bindings and muttered, "No comments from the peanut gallery."

"Did you manage to untangle yourself without help?"

Danny glared at her, which meant no.

Some things would never change.

"So will I finally get to meet the infamous Danielle," Jazz asked, keeping the teasing in her tone but moving more cautiously now, "or do you think our dear cousin will need her space for a while yet?"

Danny was quiet for a beat. When he spoke, he did so without looking up, instead keeping his focus on his work. Because he didn't want to face her, maybe? Because he wasn't ready for this conversation? Because he thought Danielle wasn't, but he didn't want to admit that to her?

No, he wouldn't have any reason to keep that from her. He surely knew she'd accept his call on the situation, whatever it was.

Not that his words gave her any real indication of the answer she wanted. "Sam and Tuck told you about her?"

"Not nearly enough. Pretend they've said nothing."

More silence.

She might need to ask Danielle herself if Danny didn't want to give up any secrets on her behalf, but she'd thought they'd have talked about this.

Maybe they hadn't finished talking about it.

"I can ask again when this trip is over," offered Jazz. "Or ask her myself."

"She's family," came the quiet answer, "and I guess if Mom's finally piecing together the details, you won't be far behind even if you don't know the half of it."

Jazz looked at the woman Danny had finally finished securing, the one who looked eerily like their mother. She tilted her head in that direction. "Isn't that the whole of it? I didn't think there would be much more, even knowing it's Vlad."

That earned her a bark of laughter from Danny as he finally sat back and looked at her, though it was a bit too bitter and too far from his true laugh to be a comfort. "Yeah, I don't know why he thought this would work. Clones aren't any more identical than identical twins. They're still separate people."

Clones.

Danny said it so casually.

Jazz wanted to be furious—how long had Vlad been pulling these stunts if Danny could be so blasé about it?—but right now, she was just tired. She was already angry at Vlad. This should make it worse, but it didn't.

Maybe because part of her had suspected it.

Maybe because it wasn't the worst he'd done.

"Of course they are," she said instead. It was the agreement Danny would expect, and it wasn't like she disagreed in the slightest. "It's not just a matter of nature versus nurture; both matter, and both shape us. Vlad should know that."

"Should know and does care are two different things, actually. Plus, he's apparently done some freaky, invasive stuff with memories. Dani thinks he might've been crazy enough to agree to work with Nocturne, which isn't good news for any of us if she's right." A considering look crossed Danny's face before he added, "Then again, I guess it's better if it's Nocturne and not a different ghost with similar powers. Though I can probably beat them the same way if it is. Maybe."

Hopefully, he meant.

"So the plan—?"

"Not here. I trust Vlad less than I trust Mom and Dad's stuff to work—because it would be just my luck if it stopped working at an inconvenient time."

Usually, his luck ran more along the lines of their inventions working too well and targeting him when he wasn't Phantom or working in an unexpectedly problematic way, but she saw his point and nodded. Further questions about clones and Vlad and whatever he was trying to pull could come later, too. Danny clearly didn't mind acknowledging it, but she doubted he'd be eager to let Vlad know exactly how much he knew if Vlad wasn't as secure as he seemed to be.

It wasn't like she was eager, either.

She hadn't really been asking what the plan was as much as whether the part she'd known had changed in a way that mattered to her now, but she could clarify that with Danny once they were out of Vlad's potential earshot.

Danny got to his feet with a quick, "I've gotta talk to Dani for a sec," which left Jazz alone with their captives.

Danny had shoved Fenton Plugs into the ears of the woman who was not their mother, but he hadn't bothered with a Fenton Sleep Mask, so Jazz found one of those and took care of it. In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter, because the woman would remain unconscious until her waking was no longer inconvenient to them, but the world in which they lived was a far cry from perfect, let alone one which catered to their every whim. Jazz would rather be prepared than have regrets.

For that same reason, she snapped a pair of Fenton Cuffs around the woman's ankles to go with the pair already around her wrists and practically hidden in fishing line.

Jazz double checked Vlad's bindings before settling down by the woman again. She knew from her earlier studies of the woman that every feature matched what Jazz expected of Maddie, right down to the red highlights in her hair that were bright enough to come out even without the aid of natural light, but she couldn't help but look again, wanting to find some flaw.

Some difference.

Some sort of proof that, good as Vlad's work had clearly been, it wasn't perfect, and if this woman had done what Jazz feared she'd attempted—replacing Maddie altogether—they would have noticed.

Unless her eyes were a slightly different shade, though, Jazz wasn't sure she'd be able to spot a physical difference. She was even wearing the same suit that Maddie usually wore, right down to the—

Jazz blinked.

The woman wasn't wearing the same suit Maddie usually wore.

It was the same sort of suit, and it was the same suit at a glance, a HAZMAT suit of the appropriate size and colours, but Jazz had worn one of Maddie's suits before. She knew how snugly the hood should hug the face, pulling in tight against the neck. Too tight, in Jazz's opinion, but if it wasn't tight, it might let some ectoplasm—or chemical, in other people's more normal circumstances—past the suit's barrier.

If this was a custom suit, Vlad had gotten something wrong.

If it was a knockoff, it was a knockoff that Jack—always more well-versed in the quality of the material and stitching and everything else of that sort than Jazz or anyone else in the family had ever been—was very likely to notice, which meant it was really a mistake.

Unless Vlad hadn't intended for this woman to replace Maddie after all.

Or unless he'd intended for her to be caught in the attempt.

Did he think her expendable as long as he got his prize—presumably Maddie herself—or had she become a problem he'd felt they might as well have the trouble of dealing with while he was otherwise engaged with some plan they had yet to uncover?

Had Jack's disappearance been part of that plan?

Was Vlad still ahead of them somehow, caught though he was, or had he been forced to act before being prepared, and now everything was coming to pieces around him?

Jazz didn't know.

The uncertainty irked her, grating on her nerves as if someone were dragging nails across a chalkboard.

Would Danielle know if Danny didn't?

Jazz knew she might not have the opportunity to ask, even if Danielle was coming on this trip with them, but—

The sound of someone rapping on the door frame jarred Jazz from her thoughts. Alicia held up the Fenton Utility Stick and a Fenton Anti-Creep Stick that Jazz must have missed in her earlier search, if only because it hadn't been a weapon she'd specifically been looking for. "I've got two pretty good votes of confidence that I've got this from here, so you can head up front with the others."

Jazz got to her feet and gave her aunt an impromptu hug, careful to avoid her injury. Alicia's initial surprise melted, and she must have shifted her grip on her weapons because Jazz felt her pat her on the back twice. It was Alicia's signal to let go, that the hug had been nice but it was over now, but Jazz hung on just a second longer, long enough to murmur, "Thank you."

"Any time, kiddo."

On one hand, Jazz knew the words were true. Alicia would drop everything to do something crazy like this for them if they came to her for help. On the other hand, Jazz didn't want to drag Alicia into these situations. She didn't want either of them to be in those situations in the first place.

Maybe, once they found Jack and they explained everything to him, it wouldn't be so bad.

Maybe they wouldn't find themselves in these sorts of situations at all.

Jazz could only hope.

Jazz didn't see Danny when she left the back of the plane, but she could see Maddie in the cockpit, already in the pilot's seat and checking over the controls.

She could also see the girl who could only be Danielle strapped into one of the seats along the side, determinedly looking anywhere but the cockpit.

Danielle looked so much like Phantom, so much like Danny, that it felt like someone had reached into Jazz's chest to squeeze her heart.

Jazz might not be clear on how exactly Vlad had done what he'd done—because he'd clearly done something beyond cloning, and not just whatever a potential team up with Nocturne like Danny had mentioned might produce—and frankly she didn't care to know the details unless they were relevant to her, but she….

Danielle spotted Jazz, and a ghost of a smile crossed her face.

It was official.

If Danielle was fine with it, then as far as Jazz was concerned, she had a sister, not a cousin.

"Hey," Danielle said as Jazz approached, which Jazz took as a more concrete invitation than the smile had been that her company was not unwanted.

She took the seat next to Danielle, though she didn't bother to buckle in yet. "I'm Jazz."

Danielle giggled. Jazz hadn't expected that—she hadn't been certain Danielle would find anything particularly amusing in any part of their situation at all—but she was grateful that Danielle could find the humour in it. If she could find humour, she wasn't drowning in far worse emotions.

She looked all right, too. Tired, sure, but not moving in a way that hinted at the injuries she surely had. Jazz was pretty sure the giggling would've hurt otherwise, and even Danny wasn't great at hiding the flash of pain he felt whenever he forgot about an as-of-yet unhealed injury. She really hoped Danielle didn't have more practice at hiding everything than Danny did.

Then again, if she'd spent any amount of time with Vlad, she probably did.

"Yeah, I know." Danielle stuck out her hand, laughter still sparkling in her eyes. "Dani."

Jazz blinked.

"With an I."

"Of course." Jazz smiled as she shook Danielle's—Dani's—hand.

"For now, anyway," the girl added blithely as her hand dropped back to her lap. "I figure I'll try out a different nickname once the confusion stops being funny."

"So you prefer Dani to Danielle?" Danny had called her Dani, and she'd introduced herself as that, but Jazz wanted to be absolutely sure.

"From you, though it doesn't matter now, I guess. I got the reaction I wanted already." Dani blew out a breath, angling it so that it stirred her bangs. "I'll stick with Danielle from your mom, but I already told Aunt Alicia she could call me whatever."

Aunt Alicia.

Not just Alicia.

Choice of name could sometimes speak volumes.

"That was a mistake, by the way," added Dani, but she was smiling, and Jazz knew from her tone that she didn't regret her words to Alicia. "When it's just the three of us, she's never called me by the same name twice."

The three of them.

Alicia, Dani, and Danny.

Jazz was going to have to get used to that idea, wasn't she?

At least Maddie understood now. She might still doubt—Jazz wasn't wholly convinced she didn't—but she was trying to be supportive. She was trying to learn, to take her cue from them, and Jazz appreciated that. If nothing else, it would make breaking the news to Jack easier.

Because they would be breaking the news to him.

They'd find him.

Once they dealt with Vlad, they'd find him.

Depending on what Jack knew once they found him, that might make breaking the news easier, too. At least, it would if he knew about Vlad's betrayal and hadn't attributed it to the work of ghosts—Plasmius included, since Jazz suspected that little hurdle might be a little more difficult to process than Danny and Phantom being one in the same. As much as Jack and Maddie had insisted on their most polite days that Phantom was nothing more than a putrid piece of ghost scum, it was easier to see the parallels between Danny and Phantom once you knew to look for them than it was to see those between Vlad and Plasmius.

Then again, Jazz was biased.

She was trying to account for that bias, but even if she managed that, she might not manage to account for just how much faith Jack has in old college friend. Plus, loath though she was to admit it, Vlad was good at keeping up his mask. If he weren't, Maddie wouldn't have any doubts at all.

It made Jazz want to scream.

Logically, she knew how things appeared to someone who didn't know everything, but the sheer amount of manipulation—

"Danny's right; your face does do that weird pinching thing when you're worrying about something."

Despite herself, Jazz felt her face warm, but Dani was kind enough not to comment on that, at least. "Danny briefed you on all my facial expressions?"

"Just the relevant ones." Dani shot Jazz a cheeky grin that only served to highlight her resemblance to Jazz's little brother, and Jazz realized the girl was trying to make her feel better. "That was angry worried, right? Maybe with a dash of panic mixed in somewhere?"

Jazz narrowed her eyes. Playing along was the quickest way to forget her embarrassment, despite the subject matter. "If Danny had pictures to accompany this little lesson of his, I'm going to kill him."

"Technically, that ship has sailed, but since I'm in the same boat as him, trust me when I say it really isn't worth thinking about."

Quite aside from the fact that Dani was right—Jazz really didn't want to think about Danny's whole situation right now; just calling his abilities ghost powers and sidestepping what that might actually mean was far less likely to send her to an early grave—the girl hadn't answered Jazz's question.

Crud, Jazz had been joking, but had Danny really had pictures? She knew he had some embarrassing or otherwise awful photos of her stashed somewhere in his room—blackmail, essentially—because the two of them had been in a years-long war that had involved trying to get the jump on each other since their parents had developed their Fenton Filmer, which had essentially been a camera with specially treated film and an accompanying development process meant to consistently reveal invisible ghosts. It, like so many of her parents' other inventions before the portal, had never seemed to work except for their mundane functions.

Jazz had never tried it since Jack had burst into the dark room (now repurposed for storage) in a fit of unchecked enthusiasm and ruined all her photos.

Apparently, she was going to have to dig it and a few rolls of film out from the back of her closet.

Said film would only be a few years old, and she'd have to risk the standard development process, but if the film worked despite that and had only failed earlier because there hadn't been any ghosts hanging around to be caught on film? Being able to take a picture of Danny while he was invisible should give her an edge.

If she could determine where he was, anyway.

Ugh, she'd have to figure that out later.

There was going to be a later where that seemed like a relevant problem worth her time.

"Look," Dani said, reaching out to touch Jazz's arm to draw her attention again, "I know this has been a lot. I know Danny didn't exactly brief you guys about me. I didn't want him to. I was trying to figure myself out—I'm still doing that—and I just…." She shrugged. "I thought it would be easier if we were just cousins."

"That's how Sam and Tucker know you," Jazz said slowly, since Tucker saying as much was how she'd found out about it in the first place. It certainly said something about Danny not having told them the truth, though. As far as Jazz was aware, Danny had told them everything else. Not her—she was his sister, so there was automatically stuff he would never want to tell her—but if they hadn't been told the full truth about Danielle….

Jazz let her words hang.

Dani shifted, looking away and reaching up to rub the back of her neck. "Yeah. Third cousins once removed. That's what I told Danny when I first met him." Her eyes met Jazz's again as her hand dropped. "Do you know the rest?"

Jazz had seen that expression on Danny's face before.

It meant he didn't want to hear the answer, even though he knew he needed to hear it.

"I don't know details, just that Vlad's involved," she said, and Dani looked away again. "We don't need to talk about that. Right now, we don't even need to talk about what's happened or what is happening. I mean, there's some other pretty relevant stuff we could be talking about instead. I'm pretty sure you know more about me than I do about you, so what's your favourite book? TV show? Subject in school?"

"I don't go to school," Dani said. "Not a real school. I ran away. School wasn't on the agenda. But if I did, then science, I guess? That's the closest they get to astronomy, isn't it?"

She liked astronomy.

Somehow, Jazz couldn't bring herself to be surprised.

Maybe, once things settled down, Dani would be able to enroll in school, and she could see what else she enjoyed.

But in the meantime….

"So what's your favourite constellation, if you had to pick just one?" Dani looked back at her with wide eyes, possibly surprised that Jazz wasn't arguing her absenteeism. Given what Danny might have told her, that would hardly be unwarranted. Jazz smiled and added, "And why. Even if it's only because you think it has a funny name."

Dani grinned, and Jazz knew that had been the right question.