Stars Above, Stars Below

Jazz woke up slowly.

This was a bit strange. She usually woke up quite quickly in the morning. Danny made fun of her for it. Called her an early bird, and all that. But she was so comfortable, even if she was a little cold. It felt like one of Danny's hugs. Speaking of cold, though, she felt like she was developing one. Her ears hurt.

Maybe she should get up. Find some medicine. She sat up, still not opening her eyes. She rubbed them, frowning. This didn't feel like her bed. Had she fallen asleep on the couch? The floor? Was that carpeting?

She finally got her eyes open, and the sight in front of her jolted her into full awareness. She wasn't on the couch or on the floor. She wasn't at home. She wasn't even inside. There were stars above her, hundreds and hundreds of them, with no trace of light pollution. What she had first taken as carpet was grass. She was, as far as she could tell, on a hillside, surrounded by dark lumps. She glared at one of the closer ones, willing it to resolve into something she could interpret, but she, unlike her brother, did not have supernaturally good night vision.

With great reluctance- she didn't want to make herself a target for whatever had brought her here- she retrieved her keys from her pocket and turned on her key chain flashlight.

The lumps, as it turned out, were actually people. Well, mostly people. There were also a few backpacks strewn around here and there. Jazz knew them all by sight, if not by name. They were students from Casper High.

She stared at them, frowning. This whole situation was wrong. Why in the world was she on a hill, surrounded by sleeping Casper High students? Most of them weren't even from her class! She watched the nearest ones for long enough to make sure that they were breathing, but after that she was at a loss.

Maybe if she looked around she could find Danny? Or maybe Sam or Tucker? She didn't have any better ideas at the moment.

She started to get up, but paused. Had that flower been there before? She was certain that it hadn't. It didn't look like anything she had ever seen before. Not that that was saying much. Sam was the one who was into flowers, not Jazz. Still.

It reminded her a little of a poppy. Except that it had layers of petals that alternated between sky blue, ice blue, and cobalt. So. Yeah. Okay, maybe it wasn't like a poppy at all. What it was doing, though, was bobbing against her leg like it wanted attention.

There was no wind.

"Um," said Jazz. "Hi?"

The flower stopped moving, except to tilt so that it was more directly pointed at Jazz.

Now she was having a conversation with a plant. Here's to hoping that this wasn't Undergrowth or anyone like him. "You're very pretty?"

The flower brightened to the point where Jazz would almost say that it was glowing. Actually... She turned off her flashlight. It was glowing. There was a ripple in the grass, and similar flowers began to pop up all over the hillside.

This was good, because their faint blue-white light clearly outlined all the people lying on the hill. Bad, because it meant that wherever they were, it was not normal and potentially dangerous.

She scanned her surroundings again, hoping to recognize a silhouette. She did, but not the one she had been hoping for. That huge, orange-tinted shadow could only be her father. She scowled, then did a double take. Why was she unhappy about finding her parents? Jazz scowled again. This had better not be another one of Ember's stunts. She and Danny were supposed to have a truce!

She turned her flashlight back on so that she could get to Jack without tripping over anyone or anything, and carefully picked her way over to him. Finally, she was close enough to actually turn her flashlight towards Jack. She stopped dead.

Her mother, Maddie, was there, too, lying next to Jack. Her teal jumpsuit wasn't quite as visible as his orange one, and she was much smaller, so she was easier to overlook. But that isn't what shocked Jazz.

No, what surprised Jazz was that there were a bunch of vines picking her parents' pockets. Pulling weapons from their jumpsuits and placing them on the ground, which quickly swallowed each weapon, then quickly smooth itself out, as if the unnatural action had never occurred.

One weapon, though, was held too tightly in Maddie's hands for the vines to steal. It was an odd looking gun, sleek and silver, and a little smaller than what her parents usually made. Jazz didn't recognize it. She felt like she should, but she didn't.

"What," said Jazz, flatly. She was entirely unsure how to react.

The vines seemed to share that sentiment, because they froze for a split second, before returning to their work. Then, as Jazz stepped forward to wake her parents, more vines shot out of the ground, blocking her path. Jazz's hand went to an ectoweapon of her own, a lipstick laser, which, oddly enough considering how thoroughly the vines were searching her parents, was still in her pocket.

Luckily, it didn't seem as if she needed to use it. The vines weren't attacking. Instead, they were each holding an ectoweapon, offering them to Jazz handle first.

Jazz gingerly took hold of a Fenton Peeler. "Thank you," she said, uncertainly.

The other vines crowded together eagerly, and soon Jazz had another Lipstick Laser, two Wrist-Rays, a pocket ghost containment device (nonfunctional), and a 'water-pistol' type blaster. She donned the Wrist-Rays, put the second Laser in her other pocket, and clipped the Peeler and the blaster to her belt. The vines retracted, giving her a clear view of her parents again.

This was weird. Not the part where she was dealing with a ghost (or something) that could control plants, she'd dealt with those before, nor the part where she was waking up in a strange place with a hole in her memory, that was far more common than she'd like. No, the weird part was that the ghost in question was taking weapons from her parents, and giving at least some of them to her.

Also weird: that gun. The one she didn't recognize. She stared at it. There was something written on the side, but she could barely make it out in this light. The first part was definitely 'Fenton,' but Maddie's fingers partially obscured the second word. Mortal? Martial? Mortified? Mortifier.

Jazz's memory of the ghost safety assembly returned in a flash. She had to clap her hands to her mouth to keep herself from doing something unproductive. Like screaming. Or vomiting. She couldn't believe- No. She could, and that made it worse.

She had to find Danny. Now.

But, how?

It was a bit of a long shot, but the plants had responded to her earlier. They had helped her. She turned away from her parents. Whatever ghost was taking the weapons, they couldn't be any more dangerous to Danny than her parents had already proven themselves to be. At the very least that thing they had hit Danny with would be taboo to them.

"Excuse me," she said, politely, clearly. It was always good to be polite, especially when face with an unknown quality. "Could you please help me find my brother, Danny?"

Nothing happened for a moment, but then the blue flowers began to close themselves. After about a minute, Jazz was left with a glowing, sapphire path.

"Thank you," said Jazz.

She walked beside the path, hesitant to crush the flowers underfoot. They led her more or less uphill, winding a little to avoid other people. The path ended in a puddle of blue light. Jazz spent a moment staring at it, confused. She was doing a lot of that, recently. She didn't see Danny. There was no dark lump of a body in that neat little circle. Then she noticed some of the flowers shaking, and she realized that Danny was underneath them.

She rushed forward at once, and the flowers withdrew. Yes, that was Danny, in human form. He was in a fetal position, trembling, and biting down hard enough on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, but it was Danny, and he looked reasonably intact, considering what he had just been through.

Jazz gently, cautiously, touched him on the shoulder, and said his name. Waking Danny from a nightmare could be a risky proposal. Not that he had hurt anyone, but there had been some close calls. Not getting a response, she shook him a little.

When he still didn't wake up, Jazz started to reassess her initial impression that Danny was 'reasonably intact,' and began to examine him more closely. On second glance, Danny looked quite a bit more ghostly than he usually did in human form.

The reason that his lip was bleeding was because his canines were sharp, not because he was biting down particularly hard. His hair was even inkier than it usually was, and it would periodically ruffle, as if in a breeze, despite the lack of one. Almost hidden beneath his hair were his ears, which were ever-so-slightly tapered. His skin was milky, almost paper white, and that was a problem, because it made one other, inconvenient ghostly feature stand out all the more. There was a Lichtenberg figure, a lightning scar, licking up the left side of his face and neck.

Jazz located Danny's left hand, where it was curled up against his chest, and pulled back the sleeve of his hoodie. Yes, the scaring was there, too, disappearing up the sleeve. Jazz frowned. That scar usually only showed up when Danny was Phantom. Even if Danny did turn out to be fine otherwise, that could prove to be problematic. Although, most people only ever saw the part of the scar that was on his cheek. They didn't know that it branched out over not only his face, but his left arm and hand, his torso, and his right leg and foot. The jumpsuit covered all of that. They also only saw it from a distance. She filed that problem away, and considered the psychological one. Danny really didn't like looking at the scar. Jazz herself had only seen the full extent of it a few times; one of those times was right after the accident had happened, when Danny had just come back from his checkup at the hospital, another, when Danny had gotten severely injured in a fight.

But despite finding that, and a host of other, slightly disturbing things, she couldn't find what could be keeping him from waking up. There were no 'new' injuries, unless she counted the hole in his lip, the scar notwithstanding. Still, he trembled, and twitched, and made tiny, pathetic noises of distress. Jazz wanted nothing more than to hug him, but since many of his nightmares included be trapped, constricted, or restrained in some way, she wasn't sure that that would be a good idea.

Instead she settled for rubbing his shoulder. He was cold, too. Not that he wasn't always, but this seemed a little extreme. She added that to her list of potential problems. "Oh, Danny, what should I do? What would you do?" She turned that problem over in her head. "You'd probably try to fly up to see where we are. I can't do that though. Um. You'd find Tucker and Sam, and make sure that everyone really was alright. That no one was hurt. You'd try to wake people up. I don't want to leave you alone like this, though." She sighed. She couldn't just sit here. No matter how much she wanted to. "Sam and Tucker first, then."

Jazz started to stand, but was brought up short when an icy hand seized her wrist. Startled, she looked back down, to meet her brother's wide, blue eyes. They were, she noticed, the same color as some of the flowers' petals. She also noted, after a taking a second to get her hammering heart under control, that his eyes were twinkling with green and ice-blue stars.

"Danny?" she asked softly, kneeling once more.

Danny practically dragged himself into her lap, and then latched on, embracing her as if his life depended on it, still trembling and weeping. Jazz did the only thing she could do. She hugged him, and patted his back, and made soothing noises.

"Th-they-" stuttered Danny at last. His voice was broken, tiny, raw and hoarse. If his mouth wasn't pressed so close to her ear, Jazz never would have heard it. "I-" He choked, then tried again, "I- I was- I saw- felt," he cut off again. "I-it was the portal- I- They-" He stopped once more, just breathing. Then, in one breath, he said, "They did it on purpose."

Those words chilled Jazz to the bone. He was right of course. "I know," she said, simply. She could barely process it either. "I know, little brother. Are you- Are you in pain, anywhere?" He shook his head. "Danny," said Jazz sternly. She was getting back into familiar territory now.

"Throat," he said, finally, "head." Then, more softly, "Core."

"I- I have some aspirin," Jazz said. "My first aid kit was in my backpack. I don't know where that is, right now."

Danny pulled back, and Jazz got the impression that he was only now taking in their surroundings. After looking up to the stars, down to the flowers, and left and right, he gazed, bewildered, back at Jazz. 'How?' he mouthed.

"I... I have a theory," said Jazz, "but... But it isn't important right now," she finished rapidly, abruptly deciding that in his current mental state, her theory wouldn't be helpful to Danny. "I think we're in the Ghost Zone. M-Mom and Dad are here. So is most of your class, I think. I haven't seen Sam or Tucker yet, though. Um. And the plants might be sentient? And helpful? They kind of showed me where you were when I asked."

"Oh," whispered Danny.

"I didn't notice that anyone was hurt," Jazz added. "But they're all asleep. I think that we should try and find Sam and Tucker."

Danny nodded slowly, and let go of Jazz for long enough for her to get back up. As soon as she was on her own two feet again, however, he grabbed onto the hem of her coat, leaning into her side. Jazz put an arm around him. He wasn't behaving at all normally, but that was to be expected, wasn't it? He had just gone through something incredibly traumatic.

With luck, though, he'd- Well, not bounce back, but recover. He'd recovered from this once before, right? Jazz hoped he would again, and soon. (A large and uncomfortable part of her felt guilty and resentful for this hope. Her brother deserved time after all he'd been through.). If they were in the Ghost Zone, Danny was probably the only one who could lead them all out safely.

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