#he’s in the ghost zone releasing some lil ghost friends

[maerinhearts]

All The BL I Have Read

If you're not interested in BL, scroll away. If you are... well...

Welcome. Hello. My name is Mae. I read a lot of BL in my free time because it's incredibly entertaining and I have a lot of fun. None of my friends read BL and the only one I share this information with is my best friend. Because I have a touch of the 'tism, I have compiled a list of every single BL I have ever read and I would like to share it with you.

ETA: This posted very oddly, and I've tried to fix it several times to no avail. I'm sorry.

Please keep in mind that these are in no particular order.

Let's start with the finished works:

Insecret: 102 Chapters

Again: 60 Chapters

Aporia: 108 Chapters

Dear Door: 163 Chapters

BJ Alex: 96 Chapters

Mad Dog: 51 Chapters

No Love Zone: 70 Chapters

Checkmate: 103 Chapters

Love or Hate: 106 Chapters

The New Recruit: 45 Chapters

Hold Me Safe: 49 Chapters

Love So Pure: 113 Chapters

Fake Romance: 37 Chapters

The Unquenchable Mr. Kim: 65 Chapters

Vanilla Soda Sky: 49 Chapters

The Big Apple: 65 Chapters

Darling For Dessert: 72 Chapters

In My Closet: 116 Chapters

A Life Without You: 65 Chapters

The Words In Your Snare: 82 Chapters

Snake Bite: 30 Chapters

Fuck this story.

A Man of Virtue: 131 Chapters

How To Snag An Alpha (Omegaverse): 106 Chapters

My Way With You: 4 very long chapters

Do you like pain? Same. I sobbed while reading this.

Tell Me You Love Me: 15 Chapters

Don't Build My Hopes Up: 50 Chapters

Love Shuttle (Omegaverse): 98 Chapters

Cherry Blossoms After Winter: 151 Chapters

Easy To Read: 50 Chapters

Solar Eclipse: 86 Chapters

Love In Kitsch: 52 Chapters

Broken Boy: 75 Chapters

Seriously… do you like pain? Because same.

On or Off: 91 Chapters

Assorted Wildness: 65 Chapters

The Sweetest Man: 115 Chapters

Surge Towards You (Omegaverse): 61 Chapters

Sign: 115 Chapters

Do you like angst? Same.

Mayday Mayday Mayday!: 50 Chapters

Do you like red flags? Same.

Anti P.T.: 63 Chapters

Top to Bottom: 56 Chapters

Lucky Paradise: 90 Chapters

DO YOU REALLY LIKE BEING IN PAIN? DO YOU ENJOY SUFFERING? FUCKING SUFFER. THE ENTIRE TIME YOU READ THIS. SUFFER.

Secret Therapy: 39 Chapters

Blind Play: 80 Chapters

My Bias Is Showing?!: 48 Chapters

Lying In A Dream: 66 Chapters

Love Me, Doctor!: 55 Chapters

BL Motel: 155 Chapters

Turn Off The Camera: 99 Chapters

Viewfinder: 89 Chapters

Undercover Partners: 174 Chapters

Siren's Song: 72 Chapters

Lover Boy: 81 Chapters

I know you love pain by now…

Unromantic Romance (Omegaverse): 64 Chapters

The Ordinary Lifestyle of a Universal Guide: 63 Chapters

Shame Application: 60 Chapters

Red Candy: 92 Chapters

Paid: 55 Chapters

If you read this, be nice to my baby Heejae… He a lil dumb… for a good reason, too.

Love For Sale: 93 Chapters

Kiss Me Liar (Omegaverse): 32 Chapters

Fuck everything about this one.

Heat and Run (Omegaverse): 107 Chapters

Gold Gray (Omegaverse): 126 Chapters

At this point, all you know is pain. This one is fucking SAD.

One Roof, Two Strangers: 56 Chapters

Crash Into Me: 48 Chapters

So you really love pain…

This handles some very difficult topics, please tread carefully.

Love Percentage (Omegaverse): 69 Chapters

Melting Into You (Omegaverse): 60 Chapters

My Master, My Jooin (Omegaverse): 64 Chapters

Blood Link (Omega...verse...ish...?): 135 Chapters

Uhmmmmm….???????????? Top is a vampire??? Bottom is a female lycan???? Uhm? He bites the bottom???? And like??? What???

Okay... Now onto stuff that I am currently reading and is still releasing. There will be an asterisk (*) next to works that are currently on hiatus:

Painter of the Night

Low Tide in Twilight (Omegaverse)

Limited Run*

Speak of the Devil

The Pawn's Revenge*

The Pizza Delivery Man and the Gold Palace

Legs That Won't Walk*

I don’t know what’s happening.

Idk why I’m here anymore.

Jinx

Pearl Boy

TREAD. CAREFULLY. I cannot stress this enough.

Opposites Attract

Anemone Theater

The Ghost's Nocturne*

Tread carefully with this one too. The top is a literal demon from the underworld.

Vanilla Taste

Stranger Than Friends

Odd Love (Side stories ongoing)

The Dangerous Convenience Store (Side stories ongoing)

Semantic Error

Liveta*

Steel Under Silk

Love Jinx

Payback

Under The Green Light*

Stay With Me

Honey Trouble (Omegaverse)

Hold Me Tight (Side stories ongoing)

The Hunting Game

Yakuza In Love

I kinda dropped this one, but also kinda didn’t. I need to pick it back up.

It's Just A Dream... Right?!

Trapped In The Dark* (Considering dropping)

Miscreants and Mayhem

Punch Drunk Love

Missing Love: A Married Man

Prepare… to fucking cry your eyes out…This one is so fucking sad. I’ve never cried so much in my life. You can’t even enjoy the smut. Tread so carefully with this. It is not for the weak-hearted.

You Get Me Going

Kill The Lights (Side stories ongoing)

December (Omegaverse)

Love Is An Illusion (Omegaverse) (Side stories ongoing)

Bongchon Bride

XXX Buddy/Perfect Buddy

Hard-Boiled Love

Hard-core BDSM. Tread carefully.

Origin of the Species* (Omegaverse)

Heal, Heal, Heal!

My Suha (Side stories ongoing)

Work Love Balance (On or Off Sequel)

Shutline

Double Trap

Cold Blooded Beast

DROPPED:

No Reason

Even If You Don't Love Me/Love Me Not

And now for my list of must reads (my faves) in no particular order:

Love For Sale

Man of Virtue

Hold Me Tight

Love Or Hate

Missing Love (this one is incredibly hard to read, but so good)

On or Off

The Dangerous Convenience Store

The Pizza Delivery Man and the Gold Palace

The Pawn's Revenge

Sign

In My Closet

Aporia

I want to put Blind Play on that list so bad, but it's so fucked up it's not even funny. I loved it, but the top is a literal murderer. So please keep that in mind before reading.

And so there it is. A list of everything I have read so far. If you ever want to message me and talk about BL, I'm down. If you want the link to any of these, message me and I will send it.

[mliter]

Sonic Frontiers.

I stayed up the night this released. The marketing cycle for this game was so eventful, making me more and more excited with every twist and turn.

This was Sonic's newest flagship title after the tragedy that was Sonic Forces. This is an open zone world game, where Sonic can freely run around like in the Sonic CD intro. Upon starting the game, you'll find yourself in cyberspace, the first stage. It has as absolutely amazing track that introduces you to the tone for the rest of the game. Afterwards, you're in the game. After a quick tutorial, you're free to explore the game and do what you want. The game's structure is quite simple. Gather all the chaos emeralds, go fight the titans. You can approach that in any way or order you want. I look forwards to see how speedrunners will do this. Sonic controls buttery smooth, and if he doesn't, you can tweak how he handles to an intensive level. After years of debate as to what's the best Sonic control scheme, they just told us to do it our damn selves. I like that. Each island is sprinkled with little gimmicks from various sonic games. Springs, hoops, dash panels, you get the gist. There's plenty of mini Sonic levels just throughout the islands. The open zone format they were insisting on calling this really interesting to me. I don't know if we'll see it again, but damn was it good. My friends who usually laugh at me and write off sonic as dogshit picked this game up on a whim, and have already completed their 2nd playthroughs. It's fun to explore in this game.

The overworlds are fantastic. Kronos Island, Ares Island and Chaos Island are fantastic. Ares Island is my favorite to run around, and Chaos Island has my favorite theme. Each world has it's own gimmicks.

Combat's a thing in this game. Sonic realized that he's gonna need a lil more than a homing attack to take care of the enemies here (it would've been really cool to see him acknowledge this though...). It was really cool to see Sonic Team's take on how Sonic fights. And for me, they got it down to a tea. They represented the way he handles people perfectly. He's not strong like Knuckles, or a master of combat like Shadow. He's just fast. He uses his speed to confuse and overwhelm the opponent with intense aggression. Fighting as sonic isn't too complicated here. Many of his skills are mapped to easy 2 step button combinations that blend in with basic movement. This is the way to have Sonic fight. I think they did this flawlessly. I'm not sure if we'll see it again, but i hope we do. The Cyloop is also a welcome addition to Sonic's arsenal. It fits him perfectly.

The bosses also got an upgrade. The minibosses that will roam around the world are some of the best boss battles in the series. They dead put boss fights you'd see in a 2000's Sonic game as something you'd see on the street. And they're great. They all has specific themes, which escalates when Sonic lays hands on them. It makes the battles more intense and enjoyable. My favorites are the Fortress, Squid, and Ghost.

Now the boss BOSS battles? These are the best boss fights in all of Sonic the Hedgehog. Since the chaos emeralds play a big role in the story again, every world boss is a superpowered fight on grand scale. The production quality was UPPED. Giganto, Wyvern and the Knight are exceptional. My favorite is the Wyvern. I feel as if i'm flying around like in the Unleashed opening cinematic. Sonic fights like an absolute BEAST here as well. I can't remember the last time i've seen him fight like that in official media. It was amazing to witness for the first time. The way Super Sonic was moving, beating their asses had my jaw on the floor.

The story? I didn't expect it. Sonic team doesn't carry the shame of telling serious stories with Sonic and his friends. It's as if they've stopped listening to the reviewers and influencers that desperately want a blue hedgehog to shit on. Sonic, Amy, Knuckles, Tails and Eggman are almost unrecognizable here. From their mannerisms, to how they react to things, to even their voice acting, these faces feel like characters again. A running theme with all of them outside of Sonic is some sort of change or growth. By the end of things, they resolve to live their lives in ways that they've decided are better for them. It was amazing to witness. The lore of the series is back. And the story expands upon the sonic lore that's been stagnant for years, going as far as introducing a fantastic new character that's tied to one that's been around since the beginning. It was an absolute marvel to hear past events come up again as well.

Sonic Frontiers marks change. Like change, it wasn't perfect, and it got quite ugly at a few points. But it happens. The direction of Sonic is changing, the characters are changing. The management is changing. I think we're on a good path. There's confidence in this character again. I think we're heading back into the Sonic i fell in love with back then. This game made me happy. We're back.

[kellen-kat]

I have loved Daniel Fenton with my entire heart since I was 12, and I think young me would be so happy that I’m still drawing our favourite ghost boy

[darks-ink]

Absurdism Chapter 2

I haven't done my customary read-through on this chapter, so if there are any spelling mistakes and such, please let me know so I can fix them! (at some point, hopefully later this week)

Rating: Teen/K+ (a lil swearing, because teenagers, man) Warnings: - Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort Additional Tags: Sibling Bonding, Family Bonding, Alternate Universe - Halfa Jazz AU, Jazz makes friends

Chapter 2: Host the Ghost

[AO3] [FFN] [more Absurdism on Tumblr] First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

---

“Danny?” Jazz finally responded, thrown off. It was undeniable that this was her brother in front of her, but… how was he also a ghost? She was the one who had had an accident with the Ghost Portal, and there was no way he could’ve gone through the same, since the Portal had been turned on ever since. “How are you-- What’s going on?!”

“You’re asking me?” he muttered, shifting to a more comfortable position. Jazz felt faintly jealous of how well he took to the skies, his ease up here. She could barely float in place, and here he was, moving about like he’d been doing it for years.

“Well, yeah!” She threw out her hands, dismayed. “I’ve been ruining my school record chasing ghosts all day long, and now I find out you could’ve helped! How long have you had ghost powers anyway?”

He blinked at her, clearly stunned. Then he offered her an awkward grin, raising one hand to start rubbing the back of his neck. Oh, of course, his characteristic display of nerves. “I, uh. Look, it’s… complicated.”

“Complicated how?” Jazz huffed, crossing her arms. Danny seemed genuine, sure, but maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought. If he had been hiding ghost powers from her, for who knows how long, without her realizing…

“Okay, so, uh,” Danny said, snapping her out of her thoughts. He shifted again, his legs merging together in a ghostly tail, which twitched in… irritation, maybe? She wasn’t very good at reading the emotional tells of ghost tails. Not yet, at least. “Do you, uh, know about parallel universes?”

She rolled her eyes, chagrined. “You know I do, Danny. Mom and Dad talk about that kind of stuff all the time. Not to mention the Ghost Zone, which we know is in a different dimension.” Not that she understood why he brought it up. Unless… Unless he was implying--

“Right, right.” He bit his lip, probably thinking over his words. “So, um. I’m… from another universe, I guess? I accidentally went through a Portal in the Ghost Zone and didn’t try to go back because I thought this was home.”

Jazz stared at him, unblinking. As she remained quiet, Danny started fidgeting more and more. Plucked at the edge of his glove, tugged on the collar of his suit, swept his tail through the air.

Finally she took mercy on him, and broke the silence. “So my brother isn’t half ghost?”

“Probably not.” Danny shrugged, his vivid green eyes coming up to meet hers again. “I know I got my powers two years ago, when I was fourteen. I’m guessing that you took my place in this universe—timeline—for whatever reason.”

“I see…” She frowned at this new information. It did explain why he was so casual about his powers: he’d had them for far longer than her. But still… “So did our parents finish the Portal two years earlier, or something? If you got your powers when you were fourteen, your version of me must’ve been like… twelve.”

“Uh, no?” Danny shook his head, then quirked one eyebrow at him. “My Jazz is two years older than me. She’s eighteen now, but she was sixteen when I had the accident.” Then his eyes widened as realization struck. “Wait, are you saying that your version of me is the older sibling?”

“I mean, yeah?” She scratched her cheek, feeling increasingly thrown off by the conversation. The little experience she had with ghosts hadn’t prepared her for situations like this one at all. “So, what, we just swapped places? The younger sibling becomes the half-ghost?”

He shrugged. “Guess so… Wait, so then who was down with you when you had the accident?”

“Nobody?” she answered, tone questioning. “Why, did you have someone with you-- No, never mind,  of course you did. Sam and Tucker never would’ve let you do something like that without being there to watch.”

“Heh, yeah.” He grinned, a little sheepishly. “To be honest, they were the ones who convinced me to check out the Portal in the first place. I’m kind of surprised you checked it out, to be honest.”

It had been pretty out of character for her, yeah, she could admit that. But… “Our-- My parents were just so sad, when the Portal didn’t work… Even if I didn’t believe in ghosts, I just wanted to help, you know?”

He snorted, but his smile remained, soft. “Yeah, that’s why my Jazz took them out of the house. Wanted them to get their minds off of the failed Portal. Which is also when Sam and Tucker convinced me to show it to them, and, well. I’m sure you can guess how that went.”

Then his eyes widened, like he realized something. “Wait, so does anybody know about you being half-ghost?”

“No?” Oh, but of course. If Sam and Tucker had been there during his accident, then of course they knew about Danny being half-ghost. They would’ve helped him as much as they could, with his powers and his disappearances and everything else.

Danny eyed her speculatively. His tail twitched, but she still couldn’t quite link an emotion to it. She doubted it was irritation, now. “And how long have you had your powers?”

“A little over a month.” She narrowed her eyes at him, puffing out her chest a little. Her core whirled in her chest, in sync with her burst of annoyance. Just because he had two years of experience and friends that helped him didn’t mean… whatever he was going for. “Why?”

“Assuming that everything else follows the same timeline… You’ve fought the Lunch Lady already?” He ignored her attempt at intimidation completely. Not entirely surprising, in hindsight. She probably wasn’t terribly impressive compared to some of the ghosts he must’ve met.

“Well, I didn’t fight her, but I did encounter her, yes. And Dora as well, if that means anything to you.”

He huffed out a laugh. “And you probably weren’t an idiot with Dora’s amulet like I was, so you only had to fight one ghost dragon.” Then he sobered up a little, his smile losing its humor. “But you got the Lunch Lady to leave without fighting her? That’s pretty impressive.”

Danny’s tail split into legs again, and he took a seated position, one leg crossed over the other. Leaning forward, he placed one elbow on his upper leg. “But, sooner or later, you’re gonna run into a ghost you’ll need to fight.”

“I’ve fought ghosts before!” she snapped back. Just because he had two years of experience didn’t mean he could act all high and mighty! “Just because I talked it out with Dora and the Lunch Lady doesn’t mean I can’t fight! I had to beat Dora that first time, didn’t I? And all the animal ghosts, those can’t be reasoned with either.”

“That’s… fair,” he allowed, uncrossing his legs again. Instead, he started to circle around her. “But how much control do you have? What kind of abilities?”

“I have plenty of control!” She bristled, her hair flickering more aggressively, like licking flames. Then she released a hissing breath, forcing herself to calm down again. Just because she was fourteen didn’t mean she had to act like it. “And… Just the basics, I suppose. Invisibility, intangibility, flight. My ghost sense, of course.”

He nodded, but his brow creased in a frown. At least he stopped circling her again, coming to a halt in front of her. “So it really is right after your accident.” His voice was quiet; she wasn’t sure if he had intended for her to hear it.

“So now what?” she asked instead, crossing her arms. Looking at this version of her brother that, somehow, came from a different universe. God, that sounded crazy.

Danny bit his lip, glancing away from her. Nodded to himself, like he’d made up his mind. Turning back, he looked her right in the eyes, expression determined. “How do you feel about me training you?”

She blinked, caught off-guard by the unexpected suggestion. “I-- What?”

“Well…” He shifted, suddenly looking a little awkward. “It’s just-- I had some help figuring out my powers, and I still struggled. The only person who really could’ve helped was… asking for something I couldn’t give him.” Danny took a deep breath, looking more serious than she had ever seen her brother—or any variation of him. “But I can make sure you don’t have to go through that. I have two years of experience. I can help.”

It was… an alluring offer, she could admit. And genuine too—she knew her brother well enough to tell.

“Shouldn’t you get back to your own universe, though?”

Danny grimaced. “Eh, probably. But natural portals like the one I went through are unpredictable; I have no real way of tracking them down. The Ghost Zone is called the Infinite Realms for a reason, y’know?”

“Well, I didn’t know, because I haven’t heard anyone call it that before.” She cocked her head at him, trying to get a good read on him. It didn’t quite make sense. Why wouldn’t he be trying his hardest to get back, no matter how hard it was? What about his own family? “But if tracking down a portal is so hard, then what do you plan on doing? Isn’t Amity Park in danger without you there? Or did the ghosts stop coming?”

He barked out a sudden laugh. “Oh lord, no. They’re worse than ever.” He grinned, widely and brightly, showing off his small fangs. “But Va-- Red and Danielle can take care of them. They’re both very competent ghost hunters.”

Making sure to memorize the names, especially the aborted first name for Red, she watched as Danny’s grin fell a little, his shoulders slumping down. “As for getting home… I’m assuming that Team Phantom will be able to find me. The Booo-merang tracked me down into the future, once, so…” He shrugged.

“The future?” slipped out before she could stop herself. If their worlds seemed to be following the same line, did that mean that she was going to travel to the future at some point? Dangit, now she got them distracted. She’d tried so hard to ignore the earlier names and ‘Team Phantom’, too!

Danny’s expression fell the rest of the way, his mouth going flat. “I… Yeah. Don’t worry too much about it, Jazz. It’ll be fine.”

“Uh huh.” But she would let the topic drop for now. Whatever the context was, something had happened, and it wasn’t good. Her core whirred in her chest, and she grimaced. “Ah, um. Any chance we could continue this conversation on the ground?”

“Oh, of course!” Danny grew wide-eyed, then nodded. “Lead the way, I’ll be right behind you.”

She dove, aiming for the forest a little further away. There was still a lot she needed to discuss with Danny—this Danny—and she couldn’t risk bringing him to their home if her actual brother might be there.

Her landing was a little rough, as she stumbled over her own feet and transformed back to a human the moment she hit the ground, but at least she hadn’t fallen. Danny came in easily, his white-booted feet touching down soundlessly.

Then bright light sparked from him, familiar white rings sweeping past him, leaving him perfectly human as well.

It was the ultimate proof that this really was a half-ghost version of her brother. Not that she had needed it, of course, but seeing it… Well, seeing was believing.

“Are you okay?” Danny asked, stepping closer to her with a worried expression on his face. “Sorry, I totally forgot how new you are to this stuff.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, waving off his concern. “But-- Team Phantom, really? Not a very creative name, is it?”

Rolling his eyes, Danny stopped trying to get closer. “It’s what we decided to call ourselves, alright? We needed something better than ‘Ghost Getters’, which is what my Jazz came up with, and Sam and Tucker figured we might as well name ourselves after me. Since I’m, y’know, the actual face of the team.”

“Nobody knows they help?” That made sense, she guessed. Just because they didn’t have to worry about being recognized, because no one tries linking a ghost to a living human, didn’t mean that human helpers were protected as well. “Wait, so did you pick Phantom as your ghost name?”

“I mean, yeah?” He shrugged. “It’s a play on Fenton. Why, what did you pick?”

She grimaced. Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have criticized him. After all, she had also picked a synonym for ghost.

“…Specter,” she finally admitted. “But at least mine doesn’t sound exactly like my actual last name! How do people not catch on to that?!”

“Oh, Jazz, you and I both know that people wouldn’t think of linking a ghost to a living person.” Danny wrapped an arm around her shoulders, clicking his tongue. “Besides, our parents are dead certain that humans can’t have ghost powers.”

“Was that a pun?” she hissed at him, wondering why she was surprised in the first place.

He laughed, distancing himself from her again. “Yeah! Come on, you gotta work on your witty banter too. It’s a critical part of battle!”

“No it’s not,” she snapped back, flaring her eyes at him. “And if you’re actually going to help me train, I hope you plan on bringing more useful advice.”

“Hey!” He pressed a hand to his chest, mock-offended. “I’m a great teacher, thank you very much. And you don’t know how often banter has served to distract my enemy so I could catch them off-guard.”

She sighed, but let it go. “Fine, as long as we’ll focus on actual half-ghost stuff too.”

“Of course we will.” Danny dropped the pretense, falling back into serious. “I know how hard it can be to be half-ghost, Jazz, especially with our family.”

“Speaking of our family… How are you planning on handling that?” She raised a brow at him. “Since I’m assuming you still need food, just like I do.”

“Oh. Right…” He made a face like he had, in fact, totally forgotten about necessities. “Uh, I don’t know. I’m not carrying a ton of money, and I can’t go wandering around town all willy-nilly because people will think I’m this Danny.”

“You hadn’t thought of that at all, huh?” she asked, unimpressed. “Really, Danny?”

“Hey, it’s not like I chose to come here!” he snapped back, his eyes flashing green briefly. “Even if I went into the Zone to look for a portal back, I still would’ve needed food or water. I can’t live off of the ambient ectoplasm like ghosts can—and neither can you, by the way.”

She sighed. “That’s fair. Alright, let’s see… How long can you stay in your ghost form?”

“Without shifting back?” Danny frowned, thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I’m not sure. Never had a reason to try, I guess. Several days, for sure, but I’ll need to eat more to make up for the extra energy I’m burning through.”

“Right. So then, how about this. Danny—my Danny—and I are both teenagers, so we’re eating a lot. We can use that to play off the disappearing of leftovers and such. I’ll make sure that there’s enough food in the fridge, so you can grab some of those. I’ll keep an eye on where my brother is, so you’ll know when it’s safe to go into the kitchen for food.”

“And, what, spend most of my day haunting the town?” Danny shook his head dismissively. “I mean, most of that will work, but the moment your parents get a ghost scanner together I’ll have to start shifting back. Otherwise I’m gonna be running away from them all day long, and I’m really not up for that.”

A ghost scanner? Yes, that would throw off their plans… “Do you know what that’ll look like? The ghost scanner, I mean?”

“Yeah? Unless they’ll change its design in this world. Why?” He frowned at her.

“Well, why don’t we just… sabotage it?” She shrugged at his incredulous look. “I’m not saying we destroy it completely! But if we can stop it from picking up on you—on us, both of us—that would make life a lot easier, right?”

Danny paused, as if considering it. Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah, no, you’re right. That thing was always a pain, anyway, since it picked read me as a ghost even in human form.”

“Okay, so that’s food.” She raised a fist, uncurling a single finger. “You can grab drinks the same way, and if you carry a bottle you can just have water with you…” A second finger joined the first. With her other hand, she started tapping on it as she thought.

“And sleep?” Danny asked, dryly. “I don’t need as much sleep if I stay in my ghost form a lot, but I’ll still need some. Unless you can me to lose consciousness and shift back mid-air.”

“You can… nap in my room while I’m away?” She made a face. It wasn’t a great option—she didn’t like the idea of Danny being in her room without supervision—but she didn’t know any better ideas. “It’s not ideal, but my parents will be in the lab all day anyway.”

“Ugh.” He wiped a hand over his face, but nodded his approval anyway. “So I’m gonna be living a nocturnal life for the time being. Great. Brilliant.”

Oh, that was right. Forcibly shifting him into a different sleeping pattern would probably cause trouble, wouldn’t it? “Is that okay? We can build up to it slowly, if you want. That should make the transition easier on you, or on your body, at least?”

Danny flapped a  hand. “It’s fine, never mind. I barely sleep during the night, since the ghosts keep attacking. Most of my sleep I get while napping in class, anyway.”

“I can’t imagine that that does your grades any good.” She narrowed her eyes at him. Danny’s grades were never the greatest, anyway—he could coast on by without much effort, so he preferred to focus on other stuff—and she knew her grades had already taken a hit from the regular hunting.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said dismissively. “There’s nothing I can do to change it, and definitely not now, while I’m here. No point in worrying about it.”

“That’s not a very good way of coping,” she chastised. But, fine, she supposed she might as well drop the topic. “But alright. I gotta head home before anyone gets worried. What about you?”

He hummed, taking a moment to think it over. “I think that I’m gonna fly about a little, explore the city. See what kind of differences there are between our versions of Amity Park.” He raised a hand when she opened her mouth. “I’ll stay invisible, don’t worry. I’m not gonna be the one to tip off Amity Park to the existence of ghosts.”

“Okay,” she said, slowly, “good. Make sure to drop by somewhere tonight, so I can help you grab leftovers.”

“Yeah, alright.” Light flashed in the clearing as Danny shifted back to his ghost form. He met her eyes again, and now that she was looking more closely, she realized his eyes were the exact color of ectoplasm. Eerie. “And Jazz… thanks. For going through the effort of arranging things for me behind your parents’ backs.”

“Of course.” She smiled at him, trying to press as much warmth into the expression as she could. “Thank you, too, for helping me with the half-ghost stuff.”

Danny huffed, shaking his head. “What else would I do? You’re my sister, Jazz, even if you’re not my Jazz. Stay out of trouble, and I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

“Only if you do the same.” She watched as he floated up, smooth and effortlessly. “See you tonight, Danny!”

He raised one hand in a wave goodbye, then suddenly shot off.

Show-off.

[violetsystems]

#personal

It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks in terms of work.  It is a little surreal to identify as working for yourself.  I ran into one of the people who hangs out on this block.  I’ve known them for years in passing.  There’s a gang of people who hang out in the alley underneath the subway tracks.  They asked what I had been doing.  I replied I work for myself now.  My office is officially my kitchen.  It look out at those very tracks. They film Chicago Fire and PD on my block often.  I don’t watch either of those shows but it can have a Hollywood backlot kind of feel.  Most of the street level communication I have resembles grittier parts of New York.  There’s no one dominant kind of person on the block.  People tend to keep to themselves but know vaguely what the other’s deal is.  There’s a sort of hidden network of communication maybe.  A block culture.  That can get a little hard to read the further you get away from your safe zone.  I’ve travelled all over the world at this point by myself.  I started travelling to Asia back in 2011 with the intention of networking.  Later in 2014, I revisited making music particularly with a Chicago form of street dance called footwork.  Footwork at the time was on the tip of everyone’s tongue.  But the root of it was buried under layers of white dominated dance music.  In 2015, I decided to say fuck it and try to organize a music tour for myself.  I tried with people in my own city but their personal agendas always eclipsed my basic plans.  There was a bass driven night in Chicago at the time called Coldtech.  It had a sister night in Melbourne.  I tried to organize a tour that passed through on my way from New Zealand.  I went to New Zealand to visit a friend.  I ended up going out on a few dates then ghosted the final night.  Somewhere in there I got detained in customs and accused of being a gang member.  I eventually ended up in Japan where I met Jake Innes.  Jake was an anime nerd and video game freak.  He knew the Coldtech people but was more like me.   Out on his own trying to use his passion to promote something he loved.  Culture.  Just like punk back in the day, you could count on that culture in a pinch to survive.  We travelled all over Japan for a few days.  Jake was my translator.  I was guided to amazing food.  Amazing spots to shop.  We talked about what moved us.  I had come up with this dumb ass phrase at the time.  Yolonet.  A sort of blockchain word of mouth.  Jake had a lot of trust with people.  He was friends with Lil B after all.  It didn’t really matter who he was friends with to me.  I am a very genuine and transparent person.  You have to be when you’ve wasted so much time on liabilities.  You never expect those to turn out to be past friends.  After reading all this depressing news about the entropy in the job search, I felt down.  You don’t expect your professional contacts to just disappear without a trace.  I barely have the connections on professional social networking to prove it.  Those people never reach out.  Never ask how my employment is going.  Don’t even realize I work for myself.  And yet the block knows.  Jake knows too.  In fact, the last two releases I put out just for fun were purchased by him.  The only way I am connecting to people I can depend on is through culture.  Something I can trust beyond politics, sooth saying, and employment fraud.  

There’s people outside of that Yolonet who have gone dark.  Entire segments of ex-friends who memorialize people who have long died while pretending I just vanished from the face of the earth.  It’s been surreal to watch.  Much more disorienting to live.  And yet, I am still here and surviving.  The people in my dash are much realer and emotionally satisfying to me than the people who forgot about me.  And the mystery of why is a little harder to detangle.  I was reading a book about Chinese director Jia Zhangke.  He was talking about how as a kid the only way to escape the place you grew up was to join the army or go overseas to school.  It’s the same if not worse here.  America talks a great game about freedom but it’s at the expense of the coffers of the military industrial complex of world war two.  Thank the baby boomers for that.  It benefits mostly the rich and generationally wealthy first.  Wealth connects and is rewarded by those connections in America with more wealth.  People who have Military family ties seem to always fall victim to the state’s own hidden expectations of connection, opportunity and ability.  Hunted by recruiters since there’s little actual income to go around.  The rich are hording it without paying taxes.  So the military often bullies people into the reserves when there’s no valid occupational work or space on corporate payrolls.  Fight their wars as a gateway into a career in cybersecurity I’m already overqualified for. My current state of wealth is due to a benefit known as a pension.  This is to say I actually worked for it.  And this is also to say I’m not exactly retired by choice.  But I worked with a lot of people I knew for over twenty years.  I literally got people jobs at that place.  My ex girlfriend for one.  That ended horribly.  The other people I helped out to try to connect ghosted me out of guilt presumably.  And so the only people I seem to be able to rely on are in the culture I have built or connected to myself.  This blog has been one of those lifelines in ways I am not at liberty to divulge at times.  There’s people I have better friendships through a click of a button than I’ve had ever in my life.  I used to try to explain these things to people.  And generally my exile from anyone in real life giving a fuck is a harsh lesson in the reality.  People don’t actually listen.  They don’t actually communicate in anything other than comparison and contrast and monetary valuation.  I was reading how a person just literally asked to buy the rights to one of Elon Musk’s tweets for 7777$.  How a sentence from a billionaire is worth more than my pain in this entire process or the lives of the worker’s in his factories even.  We just got six hundred dollars.  That should be enough for us.  But I wasn’t valuable enough to insure past October even though I was paying the premiums.  It would seem the real world’s network isn’t very reliable or at least focused on something so out of sync it seems comically evil.  What can I rely on?  It seems a lot.  I never have felt alone in the last year or so.  Ever since Valentine’s day really.  Sometimes you can show you care by not even saying a word.  Words are worthless when you can buy them for seven grand I guess.  It’s the action of caring and attention that counts.  If you built a foundation on people who didn’t care, your path ahead will be volatile at best.  If you limit someone based on your fear of them outshining you, the results will be constantly mediocre.  And many times, later in life you find you’ve outgrown these limitations people envision you in.  And through that worthless feeling you seek out something true.  You take the once in a lifetime risk to set up your own network.  To leave the baggage and the past behind and see it for what it really is.  Your self worth is no longer shackled by people’s envy, jealousy and active sabotage.  You are a defective crash test dummy that served it’s purpose for capitalism.  Or you can leave the car wreck behind and opt out of the American social experiment entirely.  It’s a free country after all.

The baby boomers did have an answer to all of this.  Shut up and take their money because they know what’s best.  My dad would always say later on in life I’d understand Republicans.  Maybe I’d even want to become one.  Like many Republicans from the suburbs, he’d never be caught dead in the rougher areas of the city much less outside of the country.  I’ve never seen any politicians talking to people on the streets in passing.  I’ve never seen anyone answering, speaking for, or actively working on this privilege that acts like a monkey on my back.  I’m an only child.  When my parents die, my bloodline is some bullshit.  I’ll most certainly have to deal with some estate affairs on either side.  But when I die, who knows where my legacy will go.  Will I get married?  Will I have children?  Will I be able to fulfill my role in the helping America achieve it’s desired GDP?  I can’t even count on my government during a Pandemic let alone to hold people accountable for crimes.  Will I die alone, invisible, broke but talked about on the Internet.  Will people watch my life until the very end to see the tragedy unmatched to their own?  Are people just drunk on making me some sort of talking point?  The gossip will never end.  The sad truth of the last five to ten years for me is simple.  There is an opposite to block chain.  A network of people who only cover for themselves and their lies.  The great lie as they spoke of in Germany did something horribly foul.  A lie when it gets out of control.  A lie when it eclipses the truth.  When every word out of your mouth is gaslighted to protect an entire ecosystem that feeds itself and protects the criminal.  When your very presence needs to be edited and erased to continue the engine running.  A great lie can tear a hole in the very fabric of reality and the truth of a narrative.  And it can suck somebody so far out into space that they have to terraform a whole new network of support.  These days the writing is on the wall.  We trust everything and doubt further.  I have only had the luxury of looking to myself for answers.  I have other inspiration.  The best inspiration if you ask me.  But I keep that to myself for fear of breaches in trust.  But it’s no lie what I believe in.  A freedom that allows love to bloom.  A freedom that values people for what they do in deeds not speculation.  A freedom that is accountable in broad daylight and answers for what it represents.  Opportunities that exist outside of war economies and mark to market accounting.  Making art that connects people without controlling the dialog.  Being part of a culture and democratically so without disrespecting the read receipts.  I’ve been real for longer than most people have been breathing.  Not long enough to claw my way out of the designs these dinosaurs outspend me on.  But the one thing I know going forward is that you cannot get anymore hardcore of a foundation other than being true to yourself.  And I’m proud to surround myself with people who are true to me.  Wherever the fuck you may be.  You all live deeply inside my heart.  And that’s something there’s no price on to betray.  So let’s stop speculating and let’s live in the moment.  I built this Yolonet for us.  And instead of hello world.  Let the first words be simple.  I love you.  World peace forever.  Drink some water.  It’s your human right.  <3 Tim

[darks-ink]

Absurdism Chapter 3

Danny and Jazz begin their exciting game of “share the POV”. Much like the braincell, it is almost always Jazz’.

Rating: Teen/K+ (a lil swearing, because teenagers, man) Warnings: - Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort Additional Tags: Sibling Bonding, Family Bonding, Alternate Universe - Halfa Jazz AU, Jazz makes friends

[AO3] [FFN] [more Absurdism on Tumblr] First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

---

Chapter 3: Two of a Kind

Danny stretched out, releasing a huge yawn, then bonelessly flopped back onto the roof he was lying on. Staring unseeingly up at the sky, he contemplated how he’d gotten here. Man, he really should’ve realized sooner that this wasn’t his Amity Park. Maybe if he had, he could’ve gone back through the Portal.

Despite his bluster towards Jazz—this Jazz—he really was concerned about how things were, back home. He was sure that Valerie could handle the ghosts, especially if Dani dropped by, but he hadn’t seen his cousin in forever. And Sam, Tucker, and Jazz might’ve been pretty good ghost hunters, perfectly capable of helping Val, but…

But they would be far too busy looking for him to be any help.

There was nothing he could do about it, though. He knew how rare natural portals were, and how unpredictable. It was nigh impossible for him to find his way back on his own, and convincing Frostbite to give him the Infi-map would be… well, pretty difficult, he supposed. He didn’t have any “Conqueror of Pariah Dark” titles to show off, not here.

What he’d told had been the truth, to some extent. If he was stuck here, he might as well make himself useful. Give her the guidance she would need; the guidance he wished he’d had, when he first started.

Of course he’d forgotten about all the potential downtime. Jazz had school, and even if Danny took care of most of the minor ghosts, that still left… a surprising amount of time. With how busy his life felt, he really would’ve guessed that ghost-hunting took up more time than it did.

Maybe the downtime just felt really long. It wasn’t like there was much he could do, after all. He couldn’t go anywhere in human form, because people might confuse him for this universe’s Danny Fenton. And he couldn’t go anywhere as a ghost, because people weren’t familiar with those. Not yet, at least.

That, and even if they were, it would probably involve his parents hunting him. And, uh, he wasn’t exactly jumping with excitement to get back to that. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten his real parents to quit hunting him.

His core stirred to life, and cold air wisped out of his mouth.

“Well, here we go again,” he grumbled to himself, pushing himself off of the ground. He glanced over at FentonWorks, but Jazz didn’t stir. Wherever the ghost was, it was outside her range. Well, whatever. He could handle it on his own.

He would almost be tempted to let it run a little loose, just to stifle the boredom, but it was too risky. That, and he and Jazz were trying to keep the existence of ghosts a secret for as long as possible. Letting some random animalistic ghost run wild wasn’t good for public morale.

A glint of light in the distance caught his attention, and he zoned in on it immediately. Metal, maybe? Not a lot of ghosts brought ectoplasmic metal with them, and surely it was too early for Cujo…

The connections clicked in Danny’s mind, and he hesitated. Skulker, of course. Maybe he should get Jazz. Skulker tended to be a pretty tough fight, always upgrading his gear.

But, oh.

Skulker upgraded his gear, from the moment they first fought. This Skulker wouldn’t have any of those upgrades. He would be 2.5 years behind the curve; he’d be a wimp compared to the Skulker Danny usually fought.

Danny tapped into his invisibility, then started a large arc, only vaguely in Skulker’s direction. He was pretty sure the ghost was employed by Vlad right now, assuming that the other half-ghost was Vlad in this universe. But Vlad wouldn’t know about Jazz—or Specter—just yet. Skulker was just following rumors, hoping to snatch a half-ghost as prey before his employer could find out. Danny just needed to show him how hopelessly outmatched he was, and make sure Skulker wouldn’t tell Vlad.

The hulking metallic ghost was crouched on a rooftop, his mohawk flickering in the wind. Danny hovered behind him, dropping his invisibility, but the hunter didn’t even notice him. Ha! Too focused on Jazz, it seemed.

Danny cleared his throat.

Skulker whipped around, the panels on one arm shifting to reveal an ecto-gun. Danny eyed the gun aimed at his chest with half-lidded eyes. He’d seen more impressive weaponry wielded by literal high-schoolers. And that wasn’t even counting Valerie or the members of Team Phantom.

“Sup,” he said instead, nodding at Skulker. “Having fun?”

The ghost seemed thrown off by Danny’s casual attitude, his gun faltering slightly and his brows drawing together. “Um. Yes?”

“Well, see, I don’t appreciate that much.” He crossed his arms, maintaining his hover so he was taller than Skulker. “She’s under my protection, you see.”

Skulker snorted dismissively. More panels opened up to reveal weaponry. Weak, outdated weaponry. That’s right! This Skulker hadn’t even upgraded his basic body with Tucker’s PDA yet. Oh, what a joke!

“Yeah?” the ghost challenged. The gun came back up, aimed at Danny’s chest—his core. “And what are you going to do about it, whelp?”

“See, I was hoping you would ask that.” Danny smirked at Skulker, releasing the tight grasp he’d had on his core. Volatile ectoplasm, as green as his eyes, started curling around his hands. Gathered in thick glowing balls of pure energy in his palms. His glow flickered brighter as more and more energy released from his core.

Maybe this was a little overkill, all things considered. But Skulker had been a pain in his ass plenty of times. Besides, better to release some of that pent-up energy on a target like Skulker, who could take it a lot more easily than the animal ghosts Danny usually fought.

“Oh, I see.” Skulker’s eyes narrowed as energy started building in his ecto-weaponry. “It’s a fight you want.”

Meeting Skulker’s eye, Danny grinned even wider. “What I really want is for you to leave this city alone, and refrain from telling your employer about the existence of another half-ghost, but sure, for now I’ll settle for a fight.”

Finishing his sentence, he formed a reflective shield in front of him, intercepting Skulker’s shot the moment it was fired. The ghost thus momentarily disarmed, Danny flung the ecto-glass at him.

Skulker spluttered, swatting the shattering glass away, and was thus distracted enough for Danny to grab onto him. His white gloves dug for purchase, before one hand closed around the strap of his shirt, and the other caught onto the edge of his pauldron. Eh, good enough.

Satisfied that he had a decent enough grip, Danny shot up into the sky, Skulker dragged along. The ghost struggled underneath his hands, but couldn’t get enough leverage to get free. Not until they reached a satisfactory level of height, and Danny let go of the ghost entirely.

“Whelp!” the ghost barked at him, jet-pack wings unfolding from the panels on his back. “What do you think you are doing?!”

“Getting you out of the public eye.” Danny shifted, new energy forming in his palms as easily as breathing. “Amity doesn’t know about ghosts yet, and I don’t want their first impression to be this ass-kicking.”

“You expect me to be fear you, just because of that little shield?” Skulker laughed, sharp and metallic, before raising his gun again. “Ha! As if.”

“Nah. But I’ve fought ghosts far stronger than you, man.” Danny raised one hand as well, focusing his energy into the single ecto-blast. “And certainly scarier, too.”

He fired. Skulker, unable to respond so quickly, took the blast straight on the arm. The gun was blown off entirely, the metal on Skulker’s arm blackened and smoking.

Before Skulker could pull out another gun, Danny followed it up with a few more shots for emphasis. Blew off the remaining guns, then froze up most of the wings holding Skulker up for good measure.

The ghost faltered in mid-air, his engines cutting out for a short moment. He glanced at his wings, then at Danny, who had barely even moved.

“I… see.” His voice was low, and he was clearly unhappy to be so clearly outmatched. “What… did you say you wanted, again?”

Danny snorted. “Convinced already? You didn’t even make me show off any of the really impressive stuff.”

He shrugged, ignoring the way Skulker’s eyes widened in surprise. “I want you to leave this city alone, and all of its citizens. If you must, you can come hunt ghosts here, but only after checking in with me, and if I agree with your prey. And you can’t tell your employer about the half-ghost you were hunting.”

Skulker remained silent for a moment, eyeing up Danny. Finally, he grunted, “You know of my employer?”

“Some,” Danny said dismissively. “I want to keep this city safe. And I’ve got the stinking feeling that if they knew about the existence of this half-ghost, trouble would come.”

“A fair assessment.” The metallic ghost thought it over for moment longer, angling his head. “And what if I do not follow these rules?”

“Besides the fact that I can clearly kick your ass in a fight?” Danny raised a challenging brow. “I can destroy your reputation in the Ghost Zone just as easily. You’re the greatest hunter around, sure, until everyone knows you’re barely more than a blob ghost. Small, soft-shelled ghost that needs a robot suit to hunt? Not exactly a huge threat.”

“I—” Skulker blew out a noisy breath—somewhat surprising to Danny, since he hadn’t realized Skulker could even do that—and shook his head. “How do you even know that? Fine, whelp. I will leave, and if I ever chase prey into this upside-down world, I will inform you of my presence. Good enough?”

“And you won’t tell your employer?” Danny pressed. “Or anybody else, really. Nobody who doesn’t already know.”

“Yes, sure, fine,” Skulker snapped back. “Her existence will remain a secret, or at the very least, I will have no role in revealing it.”

“Good enough.” Danny released the gathering energy, softening the glow of his body, and stuck out an arm in Skulker’s direction. “Pleasure doing business with you, Skulker.”

“Wish I could say the same,” the ghost grumbled, but he took Danny’s hand and shook it nonetheless. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

“Sure, sure, of course.” Danny waved his hands at Skulker. “Go have fun upgrading your suit. But don’t break our deal, or I will know, and you will regret it. Gotcha?”

“Yes, I understood your threat already.” Skulker shook his head, flying off in the direction of FentonWorks—and the Portal. Danny watched him leave, then shrugged to himself, tapped into his invisibility, and followed Skulker.

You know, just to be safe.

---

“I feel like this is going to be come very confusing, very quickly,” Jazz admitted as she landed in the open space in the woods. Danny—alternative universe Danny—was already there, in his ghost form.

“Huh?” He blinked, clearly confused, and stuffed a phone into one of the pockets on his belt. “What do you mean? What’ll get confusing?”

“Just— this!” She threw out her hands for emphasis, trying to gesture at, well, everything. “I really appreciate your help, but, y’know. You’re Danny, but not my Danny, but that sounds so rude!”

He blinked at her once more, then snorted loudly. “Yeah, no, I get it. I’m having the same with… well, basically everything. Jazz, and your parents, and everything else. You can call me Phantom if it helps, though.”

“I don’t know…” She grimaced, shifting her feet uneasily. “That just feels… rude, I guess? It’s basically your last name, isn’t it? Phantom?”

“It’s my ghost name. Sam and Tucker use it all the time as well, when I’m in my ghost form.” He floated a little closer, then shrugged almost dismissively. “Plus, you’ll have to get used to it anyway. When we start making our public appearances, we’ll have to call each other Specter and Phantom anyway.”

Right. She supposed he had a point there. “I guess so. Will you start calling me Specter, then?”

“If you want me to.” Danny landed as well, his boots touching down on the grassy soil. “I don’t mind either way. I’ve gotten used to switching between that kinda stuff really quickly, with Red and all that.”

“Uh huh…” There was the mysterious ‘Red’ again. “Speaking of this mysterious Red, you mind telling me a little something about them? And Danielle, as well, since you apparently trust those two to help keep your Amity safe? Could they help here, too?”

He made a face. Guess not. “Eh, I don’t know, Jazz. Not now, that’s for sure. It would be better to focus on training your own powers for now, and I’ll keep an eye on those two just in case. Okay?”

“Sure, sounds good.” She shrugged, but made sure to remember that. Whoever they were, they must’ve gotten into the ghost hunting business after Danny. Strange, though. Were they half-ghosts as well, or regular ghost hunters? Maybe one of each? Red could be a ghost name, since most ghost hunters seemed content with using their own. Danielle… Ignoring the close resemblance to Danny’s name, she could be a regular ghost hunter.

But, if Danny wasn’t interested in following up on their existence, she was willing to drop it as well. For now. Her own powers still needed plenty of work, although she’d be perfectly happy just to get these few under control.

“How about we start with some basic control?” Danny asked, suddenly, snapping her out of thoughts. “I remember that that was one of the things I struggled with most, after the accident.”

“Yeah, uh.” She laughed, a little embarrassed. “That would be nice.”

“Thought as much. Do you have any preferences?”

Reliable flight was nice, of course, for travel. Invisibility was mostly annoying when it activated when she didn’t want to; she couldn’t think of any situations where she might normally use it. Most problematic of all, though…

“Intangibility, for sure.” It was not only the most annoying, it also activated most of the three basic powers, and it could be really tough to cover for. “I’m so done with dropping things.”

This startled a laugh out of Danny. He lifted off of the ground again, floating in closer. “Oh, yeah, I know your struggles. Have you gotten in trouble with school yet, for dropping so much glassware?”

“No?” She frowned, mentally prodding her core a little. Were warm-ups a thing for ghost cores? Did shifting into ghost form count as warming it up? “I try not to handle the glassware too much, just in case. Why, is that a thing I need to be cautious of?”

“Nah, sounds like you’ve got it handled already.” He flapped a dismissive hand. “I dropped so much glass during my first month that the school banned me from handling it anymore, but it sounds like you were smarter about it. Still, intangibility first?”

“Uh. Yeah, please.” She clenched and unclenched her fists a little, unsure of how to proceed. “And, um. Dan— Phantom. Do we need to do some kind of… warming up, or something?”

“What, like when you’re going sporting?” He frowned, then dropped the face and shrugged. “Not really? Using your powers is easier while in ghost form, but your core is active all the time. You don’t need to warm-up your brain when you’re gonna start thinking, right? It’s always doing its thing.”

“But aren’t powers more like muscles? Aren’t we training them?”

Almost immediately, he shook his head. “Nah. I mean, a little, but not really. We’re gonna work on your connection with your core, mostly, since that’s where your power malfunctions are coming from. Your core has the powers ready, but you’re not used to using it.”

She narrowed her eyes, but he seemed certain of his answers, and, well. She had no way to disprove him, did she? “And new powers? Building stamina?”

“Both will come with time. Your core is still new, and young. It needs time to grow and stabilize. Using your powers will guide it in a certain direction, which is why training will help you develop new powers sooner. And using them more will help you build stamina faster, since your core will focus more on developing it.”

“I… see.” She prodded the core again, mentally. It stirred, easily. Was that just the trick to controlling her powers? Getting better at communicating with this new part of herself? “So how are we gonna train that?”

Danny’s expression grew sheepish. “Well, mostly I figured you could just work on your powers here, where no one would notice. Like I said, control comes from practice, and I can’t really help much with that.” He shrugged. “Besides the assurance that you won’t get hurt, of course.”

Jazz shot him an unamused look, but he ignored it completely.

“So, anyway, wanna start with intangibility? I’ll be here to make sure you don’t get stuck phasing through something.”

“That’s a possibility?” She blanched, throwing a quick look downward at the ground. She hadn’t even known that it was possible for her to get stuck!

“Well, it’s never happened to me, since I’m pretty sure you retain intangibility by reflex if you’re partially phased into something…” Danny shrugged. “But now you can be sure that it won’t happen to you!”

“You’re a terrible teacher! Now you’ve gone and made me scared of something I didn’t even know I could be scared about!” She combed a hand through her hair, aggravatedly. “Honestly, Danny!”

“Uh, whoops.” He shot her a sheepish grin, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was pretty scared of accidentally getting myself stuck, so I figured the same would go for you. Sorry.”

“Honestly,” she grumbled, half to herself. “So far the only useful thing you’ve done to help is deal with all those other ghosts.”

Danny laughed, clearly still a little unsure of himself. “That’s fair. This basic stuff, I can’t help with, not much. But once you’ve gotten better at it, I’ll be able to teach you all kinds of stuff. Like this!”

His fists lit up, suddenly, bright energized ectoplasm balling around his hands. Like the blasts from an ecto-gun, except that he was forming it himself.

“Pretty cool, huh? But if you’re not too big on fighting, you can use it defensively as well.” He swept his hands out, and the ectoplasm following, forming a hollowed-out ball around him. “See? We’ll spend a lesson or two on control, but after all, I’ll help you with new stuff.”

Well, she wasn’t above admitting that she’d been convinced. “What if I work on control at home, and we start on that stuff next time? Shields could be really useful.”

“Hah, uh, I guess?” The shield broke apart again, and Danny shrugged. “I mean, I usually dodge hits instead, since that costs less energy. But ecto-blasts are a pretty basic technique, so we can start on that next time, if you really want to. But! You’ll need to have a good amount of control already. Your core is essential for that.”

“Isn’t my core always essential?” she asked dryly. “Since it’s, you know, the center of my ghost powers?”

“You know what I mean.” He stuck out his tongue, and she stamped down her reflex to do it back. No matter how much like Danny he was, this wasn’t her brother. It was unfair to all of them to pretend otherwise.

Besides, if she was going to protect this town, she had to be a hero. No, not just a hero. The hero. Mature and an icon for the town to look up to. Not just a kid.

“But you want to get going, then?” Danny said, snapping her out of her thoughts again. “Since you said you wanted to work on your control at home?”

“Uh, yeah. If that’s… okay with you?” She twirled a strand of her vividly purple hair, still unused to its color—and the way it wisped. “Plus I kind of… need to clean the lab?”

“I’m not gonna force you to keep my company if you can’t or don’t want to, Jazz.” Danny met her eyes, the bright green barely hiding the sadness in them. “Go, then. I’ll be around when you’ve ready for the next lesson.”

“Right…” She scuffed one boot on the ground, but, well. She had committed, now, no matter how distressed Danny seemed. Besides, there was nothing she could do for him. “Well, thanks, anyway. For this, and for helping me with the ghosts.”

“Of course.” He cocked his head at her. “You’re my sister, Jazz, even if this is a different universe. Stay safe, okay? Cleaning the lab is always a nasty chore for a half-ghost.”

“I’ll be careful,” she assured him, before turning around, ready to fly back home. Then she paused, glancing back over her shoulder at him. “You be careful too, alright? Just because you’re not my Danny doesn’t mean that I want you to get hurt, either.”

“I promise.” He smiled at her, and she could almost pretend not to see the sadness in it.

She nodded to herself, finally pushing herself off and into the air. He’d be fine. Danny—Phantom—had been half-ghost for over two years. He could take care of himself.

But he just looked so lonely, here.

---

“What is this even supposed to be?” Jazz wondered out-loud, carefully lifting one of the half-assembled inventions in the lab. She was just about done cleaning the lab, anyway. She could afford the distraction. “Some kind of vacuum?”

Her core pulsed in her chest, and for a brief moment, she worried that she had somehow turned the invention on. But then cold air wisped from her mouth. Heaving a sigh, she turned around, towards the Portal.

Its green surface was flat, undisturbed. Ectoplasm swirled, like it was held back by an invisible barrier.

Suddenly it parted, a single humanoid ghost coming through. Green skin and oversized green gloves, a white coat with a humongous collar, and some of the wildest hair she had ever seen. Square glasses blocked the ghost’s eyes, so she couldn’t tell the color. Not that it was a big deal, but still.

“Uh, hey,” she greeted the ghost, putting down the ghost-vacuum-thing. “You’re not here to cause trouble, are you?”

“I am Technus!” the ghost retorted, pressing one hand to his puffed-up chest, “And I’m the master of all technology!”

“Okay, cool. Good for you.” She narrowed her eyes at him, nudging the vacuum-invention behind herself. “That didn’t answer my question.”

Technus narrowed his glasses—or glass-like eyes, she supposed—at her. “What does it matter to you? All technology is mine, anyway!”

“No it’s not! I won’t let you steal in this city!” She stood up, puffing herself up as well. “Either you go back into the Zone, or I’ll make you!”

“Hah! You’ve got nothing on me! Technus, master of all things electronic and beeping! And you! You are just a puny human!”

Jazz growled, her core eagerly stirring to life. Energy crackled over her skin as she shifted into her ghost form, casual clothes replaced by her purple jumpsuit.

“Ah, well—” Technus shifted, clearly thrown off. “No matter! Adios!”

And before she could stop him, he darted upwards, phasing through the ceiling of the lab.

“Hey, hold up!” She shot after him, phasing through the house. For a moment she was afraid that she had lost him, but then she caught sight of him again. Speeding towards the city, faster than she thought she could fly. Dammit!

Pushing herself to her max speed, she raced after him. He wasn’t all that fast, sure, but neither was she!

Technus slowed down soon enough, apparently distracted by an electronics store. Jazz finally caught up with him when her ghost sense went off again. She cursed, already turning to look for the other ghost, when Danny came to a halt next to her.

“Sorry, I was still in the woods. What’s up?”

“Some ghost named Technus.” She gestured over at the ghost, reaching for the Thermos on her belt. Yes, it was there, thank goodness. “He got away from me before I could shove him back through the Portal.”

“I’ll deal with him, he can be a bit of a pain in the ass.” Danny’s expression was serious for once, clearly focused on their strategy. “I want you to make sure he doesn’t get access to any of the tech around here. He’ll be able to possess it, and that’ll make him way stronger.”

“And we don’t want that. Got it.” She nodded, then dove down. It wouldn’t be a particularly hard thing, she figured, since Danny would be fighting Technus and thus distracting him. And it would give her a perfect opportunity to watch Phantom use his powers to their full extend, to watch him fight for real. Snapping up the occasional animal ghost didn’t count.

She had just lowered herself between Technus and the store when Danny followed her lead. Except, unlike her, he just straight-up tackled Technus.

Danny hit the full ghost like a meteor strike, hitting him at speeds she didn’t realize he could fly at. Somehow her not-quite brother stopped before either of them hit the ground, halting so suddenly that she was amazed he didn’t snap his neck.

Suddenly electricity lanced through the two brawling ghosts, crackling over Technus’ body, forcing Danny—Phantom—to distance himself again.

“I am Technus! Master of all things electric and zappy!”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” Phantom snapped back, a green ecto-blast forming in his fist. “I’ve heard it before!”

Technus opened his mouth, but before he could reply, the blast hit him. The ghost went flying down, crumpling onto the asphalt road. Not hard enough to cause serious damage, though, she was surprised to note.

Phantom shot down after him. Landed on Technus and pressed him back down when the ghost tried to get up.

“No, you stay down and listen,” he growled, aura flaring bright. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, okay? You go back to the Zone, and you’re gonna cool off. If you ever decide you can come here without stealing anything, or causing any other sort of trouble, you can come talk to me. Understood?”

“And if I don’t?” Technus narrowed his eyes, spectral tail lashing. “What if I leave, and come back unnoticed?”

“I’ll know.” Phantom leaned in close, eyes glowing brighter. “Trust me, you don’t want to find out. Leave, Technus, or I won’t ask so nicely.”

Then he let go, floating away from the previously pinned ghost. Technus looked between him, then her.

“Fine,” the ghost finally said, clearly begrudgingly. “Even I, Technus, know when I am outmatched.”

“Just go already,” Phantom snapped at him, and Technus flinched away, closer to her. “Specter, mind escorting him back, so we’re sure he’s not getting away?”

“Yeah, sure.” She waved a hand in the direction of home. “Come on, get going. We don’t have all day.”