Chapter 8: Jazz gets over whelmed

I tried to act as normal as possible, but there wasn't much I could do. I glance outside to see the dark sky, just now realizing how long I had really been gone. Maddie spotted me almost immediately, " Sweety, how was your day?" as if just realizing that I existed, not even questioning where I had been all day. She goes around me and starts bustling around the kitchen and procuring fudge for Jack. She looks in my direction, pauses, and lets out a "hmmm." She eyes the books and glances at me with suspicion in her eye before making her way toward me. So yeah, it's not like they ever see me near any or expect me actually to read anything.

It's like they think I'm stupid or something, but I kinda get it; after all, Books are more of Jazz's thing than mine.

But that didn't make her glance hurt any less. So I stand in front of the books to block her from reading the title. " What are those?" she asks, gesturing to the books. I try to act nonchalant as I go and clutch the books to my chest, " oh, these? Just some books that Sam brought over." Then, raising an eyebrow in disbelief says, "why would she bring these over here? You don't really read, dear?"

"Oh, Danny! Thanks for grabbing those for me." Exclaims Jazz as she comes to the rescue. Playing along, I complain, " ugh, why did you want to borrow these again? What does magic have anything to do with psychology?" Her eyes narrowed at the word magic, realizing that the books were not of this world. She assertively walks toward me and carefully snatches the books from me, acting haughty. She quickly started to defend herself, " believing in such things as the occult can cause different types of psychosis. One of the most common defenses in criminal trials is that someone told them to do it. They usually go with the defense that god told them to do it or the devil. So-"

" Wow, that's great, Jazzypants!" exclaimed Jack cutting her off and addressing Maddie, ``do we have any more fudge " and that was the end of the conversation. I motioned to go upstairs, and with her affirmative nod, we raced up the stairs to safety.

Once in my room with a locked door between our birth givers and us, I let out an unknown breath. I flop onto the bed, cover my eyes, and groan. Not long after that, the bed shifts as Jazz plops down next to me. She leaves me alone for a few moments before poking me in the temple. " so.., what kept you gone for so long?"

" Well, it's a bit of a long story…." So I speak in a lull whisper about my trip to the Farfrozen, and the new beings I found out were somewhere out there. As well as explain and warn her of the rules in place for borrowing from Writers library. She, of course, wanted to know about the doctor's visit, but that was a bit harder to talk about.

Especially my breakdown.

It was fine until he said that the electricity is inside of me. Then suddenly, I was back there, in the portal. In the end, I only tell her about the dual-core type trying to co-exist with one another and the adjustment that comes with that. It's a lot to take in, but she seems to be taking it well. She snaps me out of my musing with the question of the hour, " What are you going to do?"

"It's not like I can stop protecting the town. I'll just have to adjust." I tell her, which she doesn't seem too happy about when she protests, whispering, " But it still hurts you when you transform! You will do yourself more harm than good. I know we didn't do a very good job defeating the ecto-pusses," I chuckle at the reminder, " but we can take over for you! I know we can." Then, I shake my head vehemently, " no, absolutely not. You're going to end up hurt, not to mention the others in the town."

"But Danny-" my shoulders slump, and I begrudgingly silence her with my hand as a forlorn look overtakes my face. I hesitate before confiding, " my concern isn't just for the living," she gives me a confused look, " if the ghost ends up with the wrong people… they could be ended." She stumbles over her words, "ended? What do you mean by end? They're already dead. What else could happen?" Affronted, I glare, " A ghost isn't just a form of post-human consciousness!"

I tell her, my voice soft, " We- they are more than that." her eyes widened, but I didn't notice, " What makes the ghost is the core. It makes a ghost who they are. If there isn't one, they are nothing more than a hunk of ectoplasm stuck together with no sentience. If a core is hurt badly enough or Ancients forbid destroyed, " I emphasize, " then they are gone, their soul, their very being, will no longer exist. No more afterlife, no chances of moving on, reincarnation or whatever else is beyond."

There is nothing but silence between us

Jazz tries to compose herself, voice choked and slightly erratic, " does that mean.. your core if it keeps hurting you can just pop out of existence?!" Bewildered, I stopped her, " it's okay, I'm not going anywhere."

"But you have a core! So if it's gone, does that mean your soul would be gone? Would you die?" Her line of questioning causes me to flinch, " I'm still here," I say like a liar, " you have nothing to worry about." There is no way I'm going to be willing to address the schrödinger's question, not now, and definitely not with her. " Besides, my core is just adjusting. After a while, it will be fine; I just have to make sure not to transform too often." Letting it go, for now, Jazz says, " well, we both know the no transformation thing is going to be a problem."

" Well, not necessarily," she tilts her head slightly, " what's the alternative, since Sam, Tucker, and I are apparently out of the question? And I know you're not going to leave the ghosts to the GIW or…." I finish for her, " Maddie and Jack. Also, who said anything about needing to transform to fight them? I can just do it in human form. Problem solved!"

"In human form? I'm not sure that's a good idea, little brother, after all, you can't just go around fighting ghosts as yourself. Your whole cover for ghost attacks is that you're afraid of them." That is true, but " they could just think that I'm growing out of my fear? Say that I took steps to learn how to protect myself," which isn't untrue. " What about your powers? Can you even use them well enough in human form? How would you even explain them? It's not like you can explain what you can do with simple ecto contamination?"

"I can just use Fenton tech. Or some of my designs and keep the powers as a last resort for the time being," I say, a bit excited at the prospect of field testing some weapons. " That still doesn't take care of the question, if you can even use your powers well enough if you need them as a backup?" Trying to persuade her, I say, " look, I can use this as a learning experience. I need more practice using them like this anyway, and I can always ask Pandora or Frostbite if they are up to helping or CW if they aren't too busy. It will be good practice for the future anyway."

She pouts a bit but eventually gives in, " so what is with the books you didn't really explain what you wanted to do with them?" Looking at her like she had lost her head, I replied, " I thought it was obvious we were going to read them? I thought that if we split both, read through one, and whoever gets done first starts on the third one" She smiled at me, " that's a great idea; what are the titles?" I slide them over to her and say, " if it's okay with you, I'll start with Beings of the Infinite Realms, or It was a ghost? Or was it? I'm not really interested in reading Fact or Mythos: Realms edition."She looks them over before deciding, "I'm okay with that. I'll start with the Fact or Mythos book then."

She takes the book and leaves the room, though not before wishing me a good night.

It doesn't take long for me to settle into bed and crack open Beings of the Infinite Realms. I only planned on reading a bit of it before bed, but I ended up reading throughout the night. I just couldn't put it down. Every word had me questioning just what exactly have I gotten myself into. I can barely handle ghosts. There is no way I'll be able to handle All of them.

Around five o'clock in the morning, a series of soft knocks sounded off the door. My body stills as I wait for something else to happen, but nothing comes. I slowly climb off the bed, tense, and make my way to the door. My hand had just reached the handle when I heard Jazz on the other side of the door, " Danny, you still up?" her voice making the tension seep out of my body. I open the door to see her still clad in her pajamas with Bearbert Einstein under one arm and a book in hand. I motion her in, and she immediately starts to squeeze the life out of me, " uh, Jazz, you're kinda suffocating me here," joking a bit, waiting for her to let go, but what happens next leaves me absolutely floored. I feel hot tears fall on my shirt, making me freak out, " Woah, Jazz, it's okay, whatever it is, it's okay," trying to calm her down. Which did nothing but make her cry harder. I redirect us to the bed as she clings to me like a koala bear.

She eventually lets me go and says, " I'm sorry, I just- the book said," I cut her off, " what did the book say?" she wipes her eyes, " the book talks about misconceptions about what it means to be dead and what the infinite realm is." But what about that could bring Jazz to tears? " It said that those who live there live off of the ambient energy that makes it up," I nod my head showing that I'm following along, " but those who live there can't survive outside of it, and the only reason that they can even leave the zone is that the body stores that energy inside of them." She takes a deep breath before continuing, " Wouldn't that mean that you need to be living there too since you have a core?" I had to interject, " Amity has ectoplasmic energy leaking into it all the time, even before the portal was made. The energy you were talking about is ectoplasm, right?" She nods but questions my thinking, "That means I should be fine. I go into the zone every once in a while, and it's not like im never near ectoplasm. We practically bath in it, and most of the food in the house has been contaminated by it anyway."

" Not to mention there is more out there than we realize," I tell her, "I'm only about halfway through Beings of the Infinite Realms, but it's already pointed out more beings than I could have ever thought of even existing. And there is no way ectoplasmic energy is the driving force keeping them there. It just doesn't make any sense." She looks at me, shocked, " what else is there? I know you said you met a Jötunn, but what else could there really be?"

" It's almost like all of mythology is real," I tell her in total seriousness, " In the Farfrozen, there is the Jötunn, Pandora, and her box is real, Clockwork is, well, he is a neverborn, he is a literal concept made into a reality. Desiree is a Jinn, and Frightnight is practically the headless horseman from Celtic mythology. Don't even get me started on ghosts mattering on the core type we," a slip of my tongue that I don't notice, " can be divided by type and resemble the fae. Heck, ghosts might really be the fae," I can't help but ramble on. Jazz sits there staring at me in wonder, " oh my gosh, you actually read it." I give her a mock glare, " but what about other beings like vampires and stuff, local legends are those real too?" I lean back and try to explain, " while I haven't gotten that far into the book, I know that they have to be real. I told you about Wulf, right?" she looks at me in confusion, " that's the guy who can make portals, right?"

"Yeah, except he's less of a guy and more of a bipedal wolf that only speaks broken English and Esperanto." All she does is blink at me. I wave my hand in front of her face, "Jazz," no response, "hello, earth to Jazz." still nothing.

I think I broke her

I take the books and set them on my desk while I move things around to hide them just in case anyone comes poking around. By the time I'm done, Jazz is grabbing bearbert and heading to the door, " are you going to be okay? I know I've dropped a lot on you the past couple of days."

"It's okay, it's been taking a while for me to get used to this kind of thing, and some of this can be overwhelming," she says, sounding determined, " but id rather be able to help than watch you go through all of this alone. Get some sleep little brother" with those parting words she leaves the room. I glance at the clock. It's 5:45, so that means if I go to sleep now, I can get an hour and fifteen minutes of sleep at the most. To sleep or not to sleep is the question. I settle back into bed and start to nod off, and the next thing I know, I'm floating in a sea of darkness.

The only thing around me is fumes of sulfur floating off into the darkness. The ground and sky are cracked, showing splinters of toxic green, and all I can hear are the screams of the damned. There is a figure off in the distance sitting high above the ground made of shadows, and of all things, he is saying Danny; their voice is deep, standing out from the screams. I move closer-

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

Then the next thing I know, an alarm blares next to me, and the sun is rising into the sky, and my head is killing me. What was that? It looked like nowhere on earth I've ever seen, not to mention the zone. It seems like a trip to see CW will be happening after all, but first to prepare for the day. I rush in and out of the shower, and somehow I make it to school in record time. I didn't even need to catch a ride with Jazz to be on time. The look on Mr. Lancers' face when I got to class before him was priceless. Like, he saw me, shook his head, looked at his coffee, and walked right back out of the room. The day went on slowly, meaning less small talk with Sam and Tucker, running from Dash, the whole shebang.

The whole time I couldn't get my mind off of that person,

The one in the dark,

I don't know how but I've seen them before,

And I plan to find out where.