Work Text:
As far as a love life goes, Jazz Fenton’s is fully dead.
Jazz’s personal dating history is a graveyard of bad ideas and worse boyfriends, and at this point she is well and truly over the concept of dating altogether. That specific social behavior is just clearly not serving her mental health or life goals or five-year plan to pioneer the field of ecto-psychology and put the GIW out of business. Or at least as close to “out of business” as can be achieved by a minimally-liminal, technically still-human civilian grad student who is currently operating as Ghost Queen Regent until her brother’s been “dead” long enough to count as a legal adult in the Infinite Realms, anyway.
Which is its own whole thing, really. Apparently she’s been alive long enough to rule as Regent, but Danny’s own personal “alive” stopped counting at fourteen and he’s only been “dead” for seven years, which—long list of legal ecto-technicalities short—means that Jazz has another twelve years of regent-ing to go before Danny can actually officially be crowned as Ghost King and she can stop having to show up at fancy ghost parties and sit in his fancy ghost chair for him.
Why someone has to be specifically nineteen years old to legally rule the entire Infinite Realms or even has to be a specific age to legally rule the entire Infinite Realms at all is not a thing that Jazz has been able to track down an actual reason for, but at least it’s not, like, nineteen centuries old. That particular restriction would definitely present an issue. Not dying for the next twelve years is much preferable to dealing with nineteen centuries of a power vacuum of absolute lawlessness in the Infinite Realms. At least Pariah Dark still was the Ghost King, even all locked up, and the crown and ring knew who they belonged to.
If the crown and ring didn’t know who they belonged to . . .
Yes, this is definitely the preferable option, even if it’s going to make writing her thesis very specifically Infinitely harder to pull off.
Being Queen Regent doesn’t actually have anything to do with Jazz’s fully-dead love life, admittedly—it’s not even a thing she can use an excuse to get out of dating, in fact, because Danny and the Council and the palace staff are the ones doing all the actual work; she pretty much just has to sign and seal the occasional decree and show up at the fancy parties to sit in the fancy chair, and Danny’s not allowed to declare war without either her approval or the approval of three-fourths of the Council. And also the whole “no dying for the next twelve years” thing. Also that.
The crown and ring mostly stay out of things, at least, aside from when she needs to stamp her seal into a decree. Humans mostly don’t even notice them, though also in the mortal realm her hair doesn’t typically burst into ethereal turquoise flames and frame the crown in blazing light, and that is at least occasionally a concern in the Ghost Zone.
Basically no one’s asked too many questions about why her new headband is a little more metallic-looking than the old one, and she’s typically practiced enough at regulating her emotions to keep the ring from acting up any worse than a particularly flashy mood ring would, so it hasn’t been too much of an issue aside from occasionally having to call up Danny or Dani to chase off ghostly would-be thieves when the standard Fenton Works kit isn’t quite enough to handle the issue.
So Jazz really doesn’t even have an excuse for how unfortunate her love life has turned out so far, honestly. Frankly Johnny 13 alone would’ve been reason enough to die celibate and then maybe revisit the concept of romantic relationships once she was a fully-manifested ghost herself and knew what her Obsession was and how best to satisfy its requirements. Just . . . that much time to work things out, basically.
( there is a SLIM possibility that Jazz won’t manifest as a ghost after she dies, of course, but only in the sense of “well, the multiverse technically does exist, I suppose”. )
Especially Jazz doesn’t have an excuse for the state of her pulse-impaired love life considering that after dealing with Johnny, the process of running the gamut from malicious ghost hunters to secret cultists to secret warlocks to entities-of-unclear-origin to red-pilled posers who'd never touched grass in their lives to musicians who didn't actually practice their music to Corey Brandon, worst ex-boyfriend ever, may his GPA rot in hell, had really only reinforced the obvious issues inherent in her taste in significant others. So yes, as far as Jazz’s love life goes, it is currently laid out in a very cold drawer in a very cold morgue and has shown absolutely zero interest in ever manifesting its own ghost. So that’s more annoying that it should be, probably, but also probably for the best.
Which, in summary, is why Jazz’s first reaction to the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen dead or alive or undefined dropping into the seat across from hers in the reading room of the Acropolis library she’s currently working in and greeting her with, “Damn, you are a knockout,” is to reflexively think “ew”.
In her defense: her literal entire dating history.
Then the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen dead or alive or undefined holds up a fat little spiral-bound notebook stuffed to bursting with glowing purple sticky notes and speckled with green ectoplasm stains and asks, “This yours, knockout?”
“Where did you get that?!” Jazz demands, immediately dropping her pen to lunge across the table and grab for it. Unfortunately, the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen dead or alive or undefined is much faster than her and pulls his hand back just far enough for her to miss her grab.
“I mean, that is a question that I will answer if it’s actually yours,” he replies with an easy shrug. Jazz is simultaneously mildly irritated that he’s assuming she’d just steal some random person’s glowy stained-up notebook and also actually incredibly grateful that he’s making sure it is her glowy stained-up notebook before he just hands it over, considering just what’s inside the thing.
Assuming he didn’t steal it from her to begin with, anyway, because ghosts aren’t particularly known for respecting private property or personal boundaries, except for when they really, REALLY do.
And she’s definitely still at least somewhat irritated either way.
“It says ‘J. FENTON’ in purple glitter gel pen on the back inside cover and page three just says ‘FUCK ALL BILLIONAIRES, VLAD MASTERS IN PARTICULAR’ in neon green highlighter,” Jazz says. “I did the blood on the guillotine I drew under it in pink glitter gel pen.”
The most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen cocks his head and arches an eyebrow perfectly shaped by either the nature of his manifestation or the genetic lottery or maybe Maybelline at her, then snaps open her notebook to check both the back inside cover and page three. Again, Jazz does appreciate him being concerned about returning her belongings to their rightful owner, but also, she’s still a little irritated. Offended? Irri . . . fended?
“And that’s the billion-dollar question from the knockout in the red corner,” the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen announces, then snaps her notebook shut again and tosses it on the table between them. Jazz makes a dive to catch it, because she does not trust the atomic stability of those specific ectoplasm stains.
"That's the 'my life's work' question, actually," she corrects, reflexively flipping through the notebook to make sure the guy didn't steal any pages or slip any haunted pens or bookmarks or anything into it. Some people would consider checking for haunted bookmarks to be an unnecessarily paranoid response to taking her eyes off her notebook for five minutes; Jazz considers it having a survival instinct.
Anyway, they are in the Infinite Realms right now.
"Are you here to work or are you just a reader?" she asks him as she glances back up from her notebook, mostly in pursuit of making sure he’s not the haunted bookmark type of ghost. He doesn’t look either Greek or Roman enough to be a local, either way.
"I dunno," he replies with a shrug, which is either not remotely helpful as an answer or extremely telling as an answer. "Don't think libraries are really my scene, though."
"Then why are you in one?" Jazz's survival instincts ask suspiciously, and the guy looks around the reading room and then just shrugs.
“I got a bud who likes to hang out in ‘em sometimes, I think," he says. "Thought maybe if I checked this place out a little I’d run into . . . uh . . . him? Her? I dunno, whatever. Pretty sure they're not really my scene, though, yeah."
Well, Jazz has heard much weirder from ghosts than them not knowing what gender(s?) their friends are, considering.
"Thank you for getting this back to me," she says belatedly, tapping her nails briefly against one of the less potentially-explosive corners of her notebook. It only sparks a little, so that’s fine. "That would've been extremely stressful to hunt down later.”
"No big," the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen replies with another shrug, tucking his hands into the pockets of his big bulky spiked leather jacket and bracing the heel of a big bulky spiked leather boot against the floor to lean back casually in his seat. He is also big and bulky, as a person. There's just a lot of big and bulky about him in general, Jazz is noticing. And also a lot of spiky, between the jacket and boots and piercings. And . . . big and bulky, especially.
. . . big.
Jazz's eyes briefly glaze over while she's staring at the unfamiliar ghost’s chest and the way his very thin black T-shirt is now stretched across and clinging to his very thick pectoral muscles like some sort of baffling fashion magazine-Photoshopped cross between vacuum-sealing and Grecian draping, except actually physically happening in front of her. Or at least metaphysically happening in front of her, anyway.
The V-neck that dips down just about the full length of his sternum does not help the situation. This guy might have better cleavage than she does, honestly.
Actually, no, he definitely does; Jazz is barely an A-cup. And even as an apparent AMAB—or, well, at least "assigned male at death"—person, the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen dead or alive or undefined is built like an action movie star and could not be contained by mere A-cups or any size of anything that didn't include at least a couple of "X"s attached.
. . . maybe triple "X"s, actually.
This line of thought is not helping Jazz clear her head, she recognizes, much less get back to her work. Especially not while she’s actively and repeatedly thinking of this ghost as "the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen dead or alive or undefined", even if it's an objectively true thing to be thinking. It's also a very bulky thing to be thinking, is the issue there.
Very, very bulky.
And, um . . . big.
Ergh.
"Do you have hypnosis powers?" Jazz checks suspiciously, just while they're in the area of "having survival instincts” and all. And maybe also the area of who in this conversation has the better cleavage. "Or pheromone?”
"Beats me," the ghost says, wrinkling his nose as he cocks his head to one side. "I dunno if I even have regular pheromones, is that a thing dead people can still have? Why're you even askin'?”
"I find it hard to believe you don't know that, given how physically attractive you are," Jazz says, eyeing him skeptically at the question, though that does at least imply an answer to the "is this the ghost of a dead sentient/sapient or a spirit that's manifested into a sentient/sapient?" check-in she hasn’t gotten around to yet, which tends to be useful information to have. "And also I have actual survival instincts. Though I apologize, the staring was a little rude of me. You really are very attractive and I just wasn't prepared for that today."
"I am?" he asks, sounding briefly surprised, then immediately switches to looking smugly pleased and preens, stretching out more in his tilted-back seat to shamelessly show himself off with annoying efficiency for someone who apparently didn’t know that about themselves. Jazz, unfortunately, still finds him incredibly attractive.
And also very difficult not to stare at again.
Well, at least she didn't insult him with the staring, Jazz supposes. Ghosts tend to be pretty shameless and both very id-driven and very vain anyway, really, so she probably should've expected that reaction from the start.
"Actually you're the most gorgeous sapient being that I've ever seen dead or alive or undefined, so yes," she replies frankly, because she values communication and honesty and also might have just ended up just a little bit dumbstruck over how pretty his bright orange eyes were when he pushed up his opaque red-lensed sunglasses to grin at her. "I really feel like that's something you should know about yourself, though, it's not all that subtle."
"Oh, yeah, no, I don't actually know what I look like or anything," the guy explains with no apparent concern over that very concerning idea, settling his sunglasses in his glowing white curls before gesturing dismissively in the general direction of his face. "Like, assuming I'm at least halfway human, I guess, but that's totally just me assuming."
Jazz . . . pauses, then looks the ghost over. The other remains objectively gorgeous and very much so the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen. He's dressed like a pop-punk model or musician—too clean and polished for punk-punk, and just an overall vibe of filling up the room while expecting to be the center of attention in it—and he's big and broad and . . . well, she's not sure if he's mixed—he might be, but not obviously enough for her to be certain—but he's just shy of white-passing if he is. His skin's a shade or two darker than she'd expect either way, with an obvious olive undertone, and his face has just the slightest implication of statistically East Asian features without actually making it all the way to undeniably East Asian.
Though going by a ghost's coloring is admittedly a bit of a lost cause sometimes, especially given his curly fade is starkly white and his eyes are luminously, gleamingly orange.
This ghost’s irises actually almost look—faceted, for lack of a better term. So that's interesting, actually; Jazz wonders what sort of Obsession or core led to that effect.
Ancients, Jazz wants nothing like she wants to fully pioneer the field of ecto-psychology. There are just too many fascinating things about ghost biology and manifestation and visual presentation that are blatantly obviously influenced by their mental states and personalities, and she wants to know what all of them mean.
His hair's just the slightest touch foggy, as are a few of his edges here and there, all fading in and not-quite-out of his more concentrated corporeal form. She's noticed his breath just barely fogging once or twice too, even though she hasn't felt any changes in the ambient temperature of the library itself. So that's also very interesting, considering. Obviously it's not the same thing as Danny's ghost-sense, but it really looks a lot like—
The guy shifts his center of balance to cross his legs. Jazz is unfortunately reminded of the vacuum-sealed drape of his V-neck and also observes the vacuum-vacuum seal of his ripped-up jeans. They are . . . very tight jeans, yes.
Nobody this ripped could wear jeans that ripped without them just shredding off, Jazz observes accusingly, and then wishes she'd brought a drink to this study session, because she could use a moment to make sure her mouth was occupied and not being expected to speak rationally.
Or she could just pour it in his lap and maybe spare them both the impending head-on collision.
. . . no, no: those jeans are bad enough without being wet.
. . . . . . . . um.
Jazz does not let that mental image happen to her. At all. Even slightly.
Maybe she could have just poured that drink into her own lap.
"You look alright," she lies in self-defense. It's a functionally-pointless statement after the whole "you're the most gorgeous sapient being that I've ever seen dead or alive or undefined" thing, but she's just doing her best in the face of this whole . . . everything, really.
This ghost is just a significant amount of “everything”s, and her fully-dead love life is not helping the situation.
Still, just because a pretty face—and, um, chest and biceps and thighs and—just because a pretty FACE is happening to her, that doesn't mean that this guy is actually a person that Jazz would actually consider interesting or emotionally available or even get along with. That’s really not something that can be reliably predicted based on a specific pretty face specifically appealing to her, after all, so this is just—
“Gorgeous, huh?” the ghost asks, still looking smug as he shifts his weight and preens again, pushing his chest out a little and making a show of inspecting his shiny black nails as he does, then grins even more smugly at her. His incisors are both gold-capped and just a little bit sharper than human, and his lower lip is pierced.
Twice.
Jazz stares blankly at him.
. . . so yes, this is a terrible, terrible situation for her to be in.
Why is she having hormones about a strange ghost in shrink-wrapped jeans? No, correction: why does she only ever have hormones about the weirdest person in the room?
. . . alright, she knows her own psychological profile well enough to know why that’s a thing, but still. Statistically, one would think her libido would have learned better by now.
“I realize you’re not a fully corporeal being, but how in the Realms do those clothes fit you like that?” Jazz asks.
“I dunno,” the ghost says, peering down at himself. “I just woke up like this.”
“Very funny,” Jazz says dryly. He blinks at her, then grins again and laughs.
“No, seriously!” he protests, still grinning.
“Dead or not, you do not have curls that perfect without a hair routine!" she shoots back, pointing at him accusingly. She just refuses to believe that.
“I have curls?” he asks curiously, lifting a hand up to ruffle through his hair. His curls, against all odds, remain implausibly perfect. “Oh, sweet. Wait, is this, like—an undercut, or what?”
“It might be more of a fade, but I’m unclear on the difference,” Jazz admits. “Do you normally not know what you look like, or do you know sometimes and not know others?”
“I mean, so far,” the ghost says with a shrug. “So far I don’t know, I mean. But it’s only been, what, fifteen minutes since I got here?”
“. . . got here as in got to the library, or . . .?”
“Um . . . everywhere?” The ghost shrugs again, looking unconcerned by that statement.
Ghosts are . . . very weird, sometimes. But obviously Jazz doesn’t want to pioneer the field of ecto-psychology because she thinks ecto-psychology would be boring, so:
“Are you doing anything later?” she asks.
“Beats me,” the ghost says. “Haven’t really had time to make plans or anything, y’know?”
“Great, what are your thoughts on being a case study?” Jazz asks with a grin of her own, leaning forward across the table on her elbows.
“. . . babe, you can study any part of me you wanna as long as you don’t call it a case study,” the ghost says, making a face over the words. Which is an interesting reaction, immediately, and one Jazz is going to need to include in her notes if she actually can ethically use him as a case study. He is, again, the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen, pop-punk vibes and faceted orange eyes and foggy white hair and physically impossible clothes and all.
“I really didn’t mean that as a come-on,” she says.
“You straight-up called me gorgeous, gorgeous,” he reminds her.
“You being gorgeous is an objective fact," she counters, since the ghost apparently isn't operating with the information of exactly how gorgeous he is. "And people can be gorgeous without getting hit on.”
“Really?” the ghost asks with a smirk, tilting his head. “‘Cuz I haven’t been around too long, but no one in this conversation is pulling it off.”
So much for an unbiased case study, Jazz notes resignedly.
Ugh. Why are her terrible life choices always so charming, even when they’re just going with the cheesiest possible lines?
“I mean, I do appreciate that you're self-aware enough to lean into it,” she admits with a sigh, resting her chin in her hands as she eyes him resignedly, and the ghost grins wider and tips his sunglasses down to wink at her. Those faceted eyes are such a bright orange that they look like little suns, Jazz thinks accusingly.
"Well, I find myself very rewarding to be aware of," the ghost replies, preening smugly again. "So cool, then, it's a date, gorgeous."
. . . uh-oh, Jazz thinks as she realizes her first thought this time was not an "ew".
Well, that reaction is definitely something she's going to need to get a second opinion on, she reflects a little less resignedly than she maybe should be letting herself.
In her own defense, Jazz is perfectly self-aware of her own character flaws and exactly how many of them are related to who and what she finds attractive, romantically-speaking, along with just how often that person has been the weirdest person in the room. Somewhat less in her defense, she's apparently about to make a date with a ghost who's been manifested for all of fifteen minutes and is already preening this smugly without even knowing how good he actually looks.
She can never let this ghost see himself in a mirror, Jazz swears to herself. That way lies madness, and also a distinct risk of him learning how to dress himself up even more gorgeous than he's already naturally manifested as.
Well, either way, still can't be any worse than Corey Brandon, she figures.
. . . which is not a challenge, for the record.
.
.
.
“I may, in theory, have what future historians may or may not, in theory, refer to as a ‘date’,” Jazz informs Sam and Tucker and Val once she’s back in the living realms, and more specifically once she’s met them for lunch at the Nasty Burger. The three of them are all currently sitting on the opposite side of a booth from her with a truly inadvisable amount of fast food stacked into a pyramid on the table, and all three already look their own various degrees of skeptical.
Jazz understands the skepticism, but she really needs a sounding board while she sorts out her thoughts about this not-officially-a-date/possible-case-study, and she is fully aware of just how terrible an option for sounding boards both Danny and Dani would make on this specific topic. Just truly, truly terrible. They’re both just getting a bit overprotective, at this point.
Which—yes, Jazz’s dating history is a very unfortunate dating history, she’s well-aware. Johnny 13 happened to her, and Dash Baxter’s weird little crush existed for way too long despite her being very clear in her total lack of interest in him both as a person and as a person who had been a raging asshole to her little brother on more than one occasion—which really, even if Danny wasn’t her brother, the fact that Dash had treated anyone like that had been red flag behavior enough. Jazz very strongly believes that the way that people treat people who they don’t want anything from is miles more indicative of their character than how they treat someone they do want something from.
Also, it’s just gross and a turnoff and emotionally immature, and she is not interested in raising a boyfriend. Especially not a total asshole of a boyfriend.
Even discounting Johnny and Dash, though, Jazz’s dating history has also included Ryan Richards, who’d turned out to be a ghost hunter who’d wanted to steal her parents’ tech for his parents; Brody Finnegan, who’d wanted to sacrifice her to summon the Ghost King like she couldn’t have just texted Danny for him if he’d asked her nicely; Angelo Michaels, who’d wanted to feed her to an ancient spirit of avarice because feeding ancient and unfathomable and ever-hungering eldritch greed-spirits is apparently such a smart way to pay off student loans; Gorgophone, who might’ve actually wanted to eat her . . . himself? theirself? it’d been unclear, honestly, and hadn’t really seemed relevant at the time anyway; Shawn Lewis, who’d wanted her to “hear him out” and “debate” about some manosphere content that he’d been watching and was describing as “very interesting to consider”, and Octavius “no-last-name-required,-baby”, who’d wanted her to just pack up and move to Denver with ten days’ notice without either of them even having job offers. Denver!
And also Corey Brandon, the literal worst ex-boyfriend to ever have been a boyfriend. Just . . . Corey Brandon.
Jazz should’ve fed Corey Brandon to Gorgie; he/they( /she? ) would’ve gotten more use out of that selfish prick as a meal than he’s going to be providing to society in the long run anyway.
Anyway, Gorgie really had been the most thoughtful and most respectful of her exes by far; they’d just both wanted different things out of life. Like not to be eaten, in Jazz’s case. Corey Brandon had wanted her to turn down her acceptance to the grad school he’d told her that he’d only “let” her apply to because he’d thought she wouldn’t actually get in and go do something “normal” with her life so he could actually take her home to meet his parents without them thinking she was a freak.
After Corey Brandon, Jazz was seriously considering just never dating again and becoming the Ghost Zone version of a crazy cat lady, except, like, with blob ghosts or something. Honestly she still might, no matter how gorgeous the ghost she met at the library yesterday was.
At least this ghost really can’t be any worse than Corey Brandon. If anything he’d probably just be a Gorgie, Jazz figures.
. . . so yes, Danny and Dani’s shared sense of overprotectiveness is a logical response to an established pattern of events and Jazz has made sure to let them know that she understands their feelings and those feelings are entirely valid feelings to have. But also if she gets ghost-ghosted due to this ghost getting ghost-kinged, she is going to register an official ghost-complaint.
No, Jazz is not above filing literal actual Infinite Realms paperwork over her love life, eldritch runes and blood rites and all. It’s not like she hasn’t had to do that before. Multiple times, in fact. Admittedly those occasions were more like the Ghost Zone version of police reports, but still; she’s taken the step before and she’ll take it again, is her point here.
“Sorry, a date?” Sam asks, cocking a dubious eyebrow at her. “I thought you swore off dudes to become a crazy blob ghost lady.”
“I mean, I’m not dismissing that option either, that option isn’t off the table,” Jazz replies reasonably. “They look very cuddly, I’m sure I could domesticate a few dozen."
“I don’t wanna deal with the logistical consequences of you doing that, thanks,” Val says, looking even more dubious than Sam.
“Logistically, those consequences are my problem,” Jazz says, deciding to stick with the reasonable approach.
“You say that, but that has literally never been a thing in any of our lives,” Val says. “Literally ever. Even once.”
"There's a first time for everything," Jazz says.
"Annnnnd I am actually even less reassured now, great," Val says, putting her face in her hand.
"So like do you need a panic button or just a bigger ecto-gun or what?" Tucker assumes, mostly around a mouthful or four of burger. He's the only one currently prioritizing the food, which is fair enough, but also means he's currently chewing with his mouth open, which is unfortunate. "A bigger ecto-gun with a panic button?"
"That wasn’t in the plan, but also I wouldn't say no to one," Jazz says, as a reasonable person who knows when to take the opportunity for a free ecto-gun. "Something I can still fit in my purse, ideally.”
"Yeah, I can probably do something with that," Tucker says, stuffing another two-thirds of a burger into his mouth. "Want a matching ecto-derringer?"
"Definitely," Jazz says. Again: she is a reasonable person who knows when to take an opportunity.
"Seriously, though, I distinctly recall the swearing-off of dudes happening," Sam says, cocking an eyebrow at her again. "We pinky-promised with blood, remember?"
"I feel like I would remember that, but I can't say I do," Jazz says, frowning consideringly. "Did we do that? Really?"
"Well, it wasn't our blood, but yeah," Sam replies with a shrug.
"Oh, no wonder I don't remember, then," Jazz says.
"I feel like it not being your blood should actually make it more memorable, but guess that's just me," Val says dryly.
"I mean, was it that prick Corey Brandon's blood?" Tucker asks. "Because otherwise, whatever, blood's blood, just make sure it's the right type to plug into the ritual’s hardware. Like, in the sense of human or animal or ecto, I mean, not actual blood types. Though AB does actually seem to work a little better in the cooling systems, it's really weird, you'd think it'd be O-, right? Like logically—"
"Why do I hang out with you people," Val sighs, covering her face with both hands this time. "Could we focus, please, before Ms. Ecto-Psycho goes and gets herself another cannibal boyfriend?"
"It's not cannibalism if they're not human," Jazz points out.
"Did we ever figure out if that guy was, though?" Sam asks.
"It's complicated," Jazz replies, waving the question off as currently irrelevant. "But still not technically cannibalism. And it's ecto-psychology, thank you very much, and it'll be Doctor Ecto-Psychology by the time I'm done.”
"I refuse to believe you are ever 'done', as a person," Val retorts flatly.
". . . alright, that might be a fair assessment," Jazz allows, because again, she’s reasonably familiar with her own character flaws and how to work with and around them. Still—"Point stands. Anyway, I'm aware it's a terrible idea for me to ever try dating anyone ever again no matter what dimension or state of being I'm in at the time, but also he seems very self-aware for a ghost while simultaneously knowing absolutely nothing about himself whatsoever and I am, unfortunately, very attracted to that dichotomy. Possibly just because I want to study it under a microscope, admittedly; jury's still out on that one.”
"You seriously asked a dude out just to psychoanalyze his weird ghost-brain?" Sam says.
"Oh, no, he's also the most gorgeous sapient being that I’ve ever seen dead or alive or undefined," Jazz clarifies. "Unfortunately. But also, yes, obviously, how is that in any way a deviation from my usual behavior?”
". . . yeah, fair," Sam says, then just sighs and gives her a pointed look. "So you haven't told Danny, then. Like . . . literally anything whatsoever."
"Again: how is that a deviation from my usual behavior?" Jazz asks, making another dismissive little gesture. Not that she’s particularly avoiding telling Danny or anything; she’s just conveniently scheduled this impending study date/case study in-between first meeting the ghost and the next time she and Danny have plans to hang out. Which is just practical, really; she’s got a busy week next week. And it’s also practical because—"I want to pick this guy's brain before Danny inevitably freezes him into a ghost-cicle or banishes him out of space and time."
"So like no optimism whatsoever about the chances of him not being a not-technically-a-cannibal, huh?" Tucker guesses, making a face.
"Not particularly," Jazz replies with a shrug, because at this point it really is a pattern. "Mostly just hoping he isn't red-pilled and at least intends to not-technically-cannibalize me himself as opposed to waving me around on a stick in front of some eldritch god-nightmare to get their attention. It's insulting to just be bait. At least if he’s trying to personally eat me I know he’s personally invested.”
"Does he even know who you are?" Sam asks.
"Unlikely, given he didn't know who he was, but he might've figured it out by now," Jazz says with another shrug, making a point of showing off the ring on her left hand—currently a mildly skeptical yellow—before folding both hands together on the table. "He really is unfortunately gorgeous. His hair is perfect and he dresses like pop-punk music given human-ish form and I think he might actually be almost as tall as me, which is always novel. Maybe six-two, six-three? Give or take, anyway. I've also never met anyone with so many piercings that I actually thought made that many piercings look genuinely attractive. Which—to be clear, I really cannot stress the 'most gorgeous sapient being I've ever seen' thing enough. Even more gorgeous than Gorgie was. Actually, more gorgeous than Octavius was, even.”
“Wuthering Heights, that’s possible?” Sam looks appalled.
“Maybe more ‘Picture of Dorian Gray,’” Jazz says. “Well—an Oscar Wilde reference would at least be appropriate, put it that way.”
"Yeah, I'm sure Fenton's gonna love that," Val replies dryly. "At least this time he gets to save your ass from a hot cannibal.”
"Still better than Corey Brandon," Jazz replies pragmatically. "Just—listen, yes, I am myself self-aware enough to know that this is a dumb idea that's probably going to end in a ghost-fight but also I might live another sixty or seventy years, and that is a long time to be single and bored and waiting around to tame enough blob ghosts to domesticate!”
"Okay, so he's gorgeous-gorgeous," Val says.
"You could probably add another 'gorgeous', honestly," Jazz admits.
"Ew," Sam says, making a face.
"You seem kinda fixated on that, yeah," Tucker says.
"He has a leather jacket and his jeans fit like they were tailored, and by 'tailored' I mean 'shrink-wrapped to his body'," Jazz says, and then maybe gets a little bit carried away and continues with: "They had rips in the knees and thighs that I wanted to shove both hands through. I actually wanted extra hands to shove through them. I wanted multiple extra hands to shove through them!"
". . . okay then," Sam says.
"Doesn't seem all that practical, but understandable enough," Val says with a shrug. Tucker just wrinkles his nose.
"Wait, his jeans fit like they were tailored but were also all ripped up?" he asks. "How does that work?"
"You know absolutely nothing about fashion, Foley," Val says, rolling her eyes in exasperation. "So what's pretty boy's name, then?"
". . ." Jazz says.
"Jazz."
"Well you're assuming he even knows it!"
"Did you ask?"
"That's besides the point!"
.
.
.
So yes, Jazz did in fact both meet and ask out and describe to multiple friends a very attractive ghost without actually thinking to ask him his name, but look, ghosts are socially atypical and also freaking weird, and she's just much more used to the ones that show up and announce themselves like they're either literal royalty or presenting at a talent show, alright? And yes, she was socialized as a living human growing up, obviously, but she's met about three-to-one more ghosts than living sapients since the age of sixteen, so that just engenders certain expectations in a girl, alright?
"So what is your name?" she asks the ghost as they sit down at the Escher-esque arguably-a-café that they just met at for their case-study/study-date, figuring there's no point in either deflecting or beating around the bush about it. Again: ghosts are socially atypical, and being straightforward about things is just more respectful anyway, in her opinion.
"I dunno," he says with a shrug, stirring his bright purple and only barely glowing smoothie with the electric yellow straw currently stuck in it. It's actually one of the more human-friendly drinks that most of the places in the Infinite Realms that Danny frequents has started keeping supplies for on-hand, which had been odd to see a ghost order. He hadn't liked the look of any of the ecto drinks, he'd said, which was a new one to Jazz. "Glowy green" is the be-all/end-all of a lot of ghostly aesthetics, in her experience. "I was trying to figure it out after we hung out the other day but I don't think I got it right."
"Well, what do you think it is?" Jazz asks.
"Zero, I think?" the ghost says, then wrinkles his nose. "Or . . . 13, maybe? I dunno, I can't remember either way, so I was just figuring I'd use both."
"'Zero Thirteen'?" Jazz repeats, a little bewildered. Well, it's not really any weirder than "Box Lunch", but . . .
"No, it's 'Zero' and '13'," the ghost corrects. Jazz stares blankly at him. "Do you have a name?"
"Jazz Fenton," she replies, which is novel to watch Zero 13 completely not react to. He really is a brand-new manifestation, yes. "It's actually very weird to me that I can tell you're pronouncing those differently. Why are ghosts like this?"
"I dunno," Zero 13 replies with a shrug. "You're the ecto-psychologist here, babe, not me."
"Well, I'm working on it," Jazz demurs, though she's pleased by the fact he's acknowledging her interests and experience and not even doing it in a subtly derisive way, unlike several other people she's had case-study/study-dates with, Corey. "I'm going to assume they were relevant numbers to you when you were alive, though; that's usually how that works."
Really, though, 13? Is that her unlucky number or something, or is that actually an identifier for a particular classification of ghost? Was Johnny actually a more specific kind of ghost than she'd initially realized, or is it just a coincidence, or is it something unrelated to being ghosts at all?
"Oh, I guess I was alive before this, huh," Zero 13 says, looking puzzled by the idea. "I didn't really think about that.”
"Well, not every ghost was," Jazz says. "Technically a lot of you are just manifested concepts or experiences. But you personally do seem very dead. No offense or anything; most people are dead. Actually most people have never even been twenty, is what I've heard."
"Really?" Zero 13 asks, wrinkling his nose.
"The childhood mortality rate was actively horrifying throughout most of human history, so yes," Jazz tells him. “Therefore, most people have never been twenty. Which explains a lot about both the Infinite Realms and ghost society in general, for the record."
"Huh," Zero 13 says, then looks briefly thoughtful and says—"I guess I haven't either, actually? Like, barely. I think I'm nineteen, anyway. Or . . . three, but that's definitely not a thing. So probably nineteen, yeah. Do you know how old you are?"
"You could be three, actually," Jazz tells him. She's seen stranger manifestations, for sure. "But yes, it's statistically unlikely. I'm twenty-three in living years. I don't have a death age yet."
"The fuck? Wait, I thought everybody here was dead, babe," Zero 13 says, squinting at her in confusion. "Like, aside from the . . . manifest-y spirit-y types, I mean. Is that not a thing?"
"Only mostly," Jazz replies with a shrug, picking up her own drink for a sip. She went with the iced coffee, which only has as much ecto as the frozen ecto cubes in it do., though it does admittedly still taste a bit like chewing tinfoil or licking a live wire with blood in her mouth. But look, the sort-of-baristas did their best, and she appreciates the effort either way. "And a couple of them are only half-dead, of course."
"Oh right, that is a thing, isn't it," Zero 13 says, frowning like he's trying to remember something. Jazz assumes it's something from the inherent knowledge that most ghosts manifest with and occasionally just seem to get collectively downloaded into their brains, which is psychologically fascinating and now typically includes not only the existence of halfas but also specifically the existence of Danny, one way or the other.
Meaning, sometimes it's "this is Phantom", sometimes it's "this is Ghost King Phantom, first of his name", and sometimes it's "HEY THIS GUY'S SUPER-FUN; EVISCERATE ON SIGHT!!".
Ghosts, again, are psychologically fascinating. And also extremely freaking weird.
Jazz isn't pioneering this field for nothing, obviously.
"A bit of one, yes," she says. "Do you mind if I take notes? Because I'm definitely going to be taking notes, but I can pretend I'm not if it'd make you more comfortable."
“Is mind control actively involved?” Zero 13 says. “Because if not, I’m cool.”
“That’s not really a method I abide by, no,” Jazz says with a distasteful expression, shaking her head. “Also, not very helpful for psychology-based field research. This stage is mostly interview-based, actually.”
“Yeah? When do we get to the cage match stage?” Zero 13 asks with a grin.
“I realize that’s probably meant to be a joke, but it’s stage three,” Jazz says, and Zero 13 looks briefly puzzled and cocks his head.
“Why would that be a joke?” he asks.
“. . . no reason,” Jazz says, and makes a quick note in her notebook with glittery ecto-green gel pen. “Technically it’s not a cage match, actually; if you can make it through the labyrinth and the Minotaur, there are some pretty useful training grounds in the Acropolis. But if that doesn’t work out, we can swing by Princess Dora’s place and fight a dragon.”
“Can we do both?” Zero 13 asks hopefully.
Jazz just . . . makes another note.
“Maybe,” she says. If nothing else, she’s now officially tempted to do both. “Any idea what your powers are yet, by the way? Or any suggestions of an idea, at least?”
"Oh—uh, I think I'm maybe kinda telekinetic?" Zero 13 says, tilting his head thoughtfully. "And like, I can fly.”
"Everybody can do that," Jazz says, waving him off impatiently. "What are just your powers?"
"Not everybody," Zero 13 grumbles, looking a little insulted.
"About ninety-nine point pine of everybody in the Infinite Realms," Jazz says, waving him off again before pointing her pen at herself. "Except for me, obviously. Flight and telekinesis both come standard for ecto-entities, along with phasing and invisibility and overshadowing; the powers that are just yours are the ecto-psychologically interesting ones."
"'Overshadowing'?" Zero 13 frowns.
"Possession," Jazz clarifies. "It's not really relevant over here, you can only do it to living beings. Most living beings, I mean. There's exceptions. But those are all pretty standard, and enhanced strength and speed and durability are also generally to be expected. You should have something more atypical too, though, like a haunted motorcycle or shapeshifting or teleportation or a banishing kiss."
"Repeat that last one?" Zero 13 asks.
"No," Jazz says. "The point is, you must have something; you're much too developed as a ghost to not have any additional abilities."
"I can't tell if you're complimenting me or calling me a disappointment," Zero 13 says, squinting skeptically at her through his sunglasses. "Like, which of those are you doing? Am I getting negged here?"
"Excuse me?" Jazz says, because now it's her turn to be insulted. "You think I'd have to resort to negging to psychologically manipulate you? If I was trying to psychologically manipulate you I would have more class and more skill than to resort to negging!"
"I think you're a fucking trip, babe," Zero 13 says, leaning forward to rest his chin in his hands and give her a besotted look. Jazz is immediately thrown off, because the last time someone gave her a besotted look it was because they'd wanted to eat her alive.
In the literal sense, not the metaphorical.
"A trip?" she echoes, still feeling thrown-off. Zero 13 grins at her.
"Oh, all the way to China, babe," he says, sounding—approving, for some reason? "How much Mandarin you speak?"
"Not very much," Jazz says, just watching him in mystification. She knows her personality tends to appeal a lot more to ghosts than it does to the living—it's the Obsessions thing, she's always assumed—but it's still always a little bit baffling to experience. Just—look, there's a reason just about all of her non-familial/non-romantic relationships were Danny's friends first, alright? Back home, she just either eventually sort of grows on people or just eternally weirds them out. In the Ghost Zone, people tend to just get her much more naturally.
It's still always just that little bit baffling when it comes up, though.
"This still isn't telling me what your powers are," she says.
"I mean, aside from I guess all the stuff you listed, beats me," Zero 13 says with a shrug.
"You should just know, as far as I know. Though I still have my suspicions about pheromone powers," she says, and he just laughs.
"Naw, knockout, this is all natural," he replies smugly, making a point of preening again, then pauses and amends: "Or, well, supernatural, I guess."
Then he—frowns, for a moment, and looks . . . off, for a moment. Jazz opens her mouth to ask what that's about, but—
"Oh, wait," he says, his frown just barely deepening. "Maybe I do know."
"You do?" She perks up reflexively. "What is it?”
"Uh—" Zero 13 frowns a little harder, wrinkling his nose, then shakes his head. "One sec, I think I just—"
Jazz's vision very suddenly blurs, and then doubles, and then—
". . . huh," she says, blinking at him and—well, the extra him. "That's different. Usually duplication powers come out as perfect matches."
"I mean, we do look pretty much the same, don't we?" the original Zero 13 says as he and his duplicate both turn their heads to look at each other. His duplicate looks unimpressed and just raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. "Uh—I mean, I think we do? Okay, in my defense, I still only kinda know what I look like.”
"No, I mean the reversed coloring," Jazz clarifies. For one, Zero 13's duplicate has black hair instead of white and blue eyes instead of orange, and almost looks alive. It has unnaturally black hair and unnaturally blue eyes and an inhumanly flawless complexion, but still, it’s much closer to "alive"-looking than she usually sees in the Ghost Zone. It’s not even fogging out at the edges like Zero 13 himself is—hell, it’s not even really glowing.
. . . actually, the inverted coloring makes it look a bit like seeing Danny and "Phantom" standing next to each other probably would, doesn’t it, Jazz realizes, which feels a little strange.
The duplicate slants its eyes towards Jazz, still looking unimpressed. She . . . pauses, for a moment. That . . .
"That's different too," she says.
"What is?" Zero 13 asks, wrinkling his nose again.
"Are you controlling it?" she asks.
"Huh?" Zero 13 looks puzzled. "No. Why would I do that? He can handle himself."
". . . that's definitely different," Jazz says. "Do you mean it's—do you mean he's autonomous?"
"Yeah?" Zero 13 says. "Like, obviously. I didn't make the dude to be an asshole to him."
. . . that is very, very different, yes, Jazz observes. Then she grabs her pen and starts scribbling in her notebook as fast as she can.
"Are you just assuming or do you actually know he's his own person?" she asks. "Actually, sorry, I'm asking the wrong one—do you know you're your own person?"
The other Zero 13 rolls his eyes, then gives the original a dubious look. Zero 13 looks sheepish.
“I mean, probably not?” Zero 13 says. The other Zero 13 just rolls his eyes again. “Like, I know he is, I just don’t think he agrees with me on that one.”
. . . ghosts are so psychologically fascinating.
“Can you talk?” Jazz asks the other Zero 13 curiously. He looks exasperated by the question.
“Are you just antisocial, dude?” Zero 13 says, poking the other Zero 13. “Did I make you antisocial or something? Sorry, my bad, that one’s on me.”
The other Zero 13 folds his arms and drops his head back on his neck to stare accusingly at the ceiling. Jazz wonders if he can speak or not; wonders if he is his own person and why he’d disagree with Zero 13 about it if he was.
Again: absolutely psychologically fascinating.
“What do I call . . . him? You?” she says. “Whichever one of you’s actually willing to answer that question.”
Zero 13 peers over at the other Zero 13; the other Zero 13 sighs.
“Okay, well, I guess that one’s on me, then?” Zero 13 guesses. “Uh . . . hang on, lemme think for a sec.”
“For the record, if you pick ‘Shadow’, for personal reasons I’m going to have to leave the dimension,” Jazz informs him.
“Why would I pick a name like Shadow?” Zero 13 asks, wrinkling his nose at her. “He’s not just a copy.”
“We’re just not going to have the ‘Shadow’ conversation right now,” Jazz says. “Though while we’re in the neighborhood and also still discussing your powers: you don’t have any influence over luck or probability, do you? Is that where the ‘13’ came from?”
“No?” Zero 13 says in confusion, then pauses and mulls it over, and then more confidently repeats, “Naw, nothing like that. Anyway, he’s not my shadow. Like—you said that duplicates are supposed to match, right? So he’s my match. So like—maybe ‘Match’, you think?”
“Maybe more like a mismatch,” Jazz says wryly, raising an eyebrow at him. “At least chromatically-speaking, anyway.”
The other Zero 13 pinches the bridge of his nose, then just shakes his head and makes a dismissive gesture. Which, well, even if he doesn’t—can’t?—speak, he at least does communicate, and is clearly functioning independently of Zero 13.
“Mismatch it is,” Zero 13 sniggers, and the other Zero 13—Mismatch—shoots him a dirty look. Zero 13 just laughs.
It occurs to Jazz that she may have accidentally arranged a third wheel for this case study/study date, so that was an unfortunate decision on her part.
Well, in her defense, it wasn’t like she’d ever have expected that Zero 13’s powers were going to be “just create an entire sapient being out of literally nothing, not even basic ectoplasm”, so . . .
. . . that is actually an alarming ability, Jazz realizes. Is there a limit on how often Zero 13 can do that, or . . . ?
That is definitely a question that she should be asking him, but also definitely a dangerous question to be asking him, because then he might figure out the answer.
Well, no one ever assumed ecto-psychology was going to be a safe field to pioneer. Actually, mostly people have just been telling her "try not to die too messy".
"So like, wanna talk about the nature of free will and color themes?" Zero 13 suggests to Mismatch as he leans into his space and peers at him curiously, and Mismatch just puts a hand over his face and somehow manages to look long-suffering despite having been manifested for even less time than Zero 13 has been.
Jazz is going to need a bigger notebook.
“Just like what do you know about Freud and the whole id and superego thing, ‘cuz I think this one dude I knew who really hated Hanson told me some stuff about—”
Much bigger.
.
.
.
“Do you think there’s anything psychologically-significant about the fact that you remember the existence of a boy band from the late nineties but you’re not sure what your own name is?” Jazz asks curiously at the end of their case study—or study date, whichever. Case-study . . . date. Zero 13 is leaning against the brick wall outside the café and Mismatch is ten feet away and stubbornly pretending both of them don’t exist while he drinks the electric yellow ecto-matcha that he refused to acknowledge Zero 13 ordering for him but did, in fact, collect the moment neither of them were looking at him.
Jazz took so many notes on this case-study date.
“I think you could definitely kick my ass, gorgeous,” Zero 13 replies admiringly, which is not actually relevant to the question but is admittedly maybe a little too flattering to hear from a man built like the Playgirl personification of a monster truck. “Also I have clue zero what you’re talking about with the boy band thing. When were we talking about boy bands?”
“Never mind,” Jazz says. “Same time next weekend? Assuming you remember what a weekend is, that is.”
“I think so, so no, ‘cuz that’s way too long to wait,” Zero 13 says, then flashes her a sharp, gold-incisored grin. Mismatch, actually, does not have the gold incisors, Jazz realizes.
She also realizes that's a bit disappointing to her, aesthetically-speaking.
“Oh, I’m going to regret this,” she says resignedly. “How does Thursday sound?”
“I was more thinking Monday,” he says, and Jazz is, again, unfortunately, a little more flattered than she probably should be.
“Maybe Tuesday,” she allows, and Zero 13 grins.
.
.
.
“So. His name is Zero 13, he has a shadow of a friend who doesn’t talk, and he’s interested in specifically you,” Danny says, eyeing Jazz with understandable but inconvenient paranoia.
“I’m fully aware of all those things, yes, but—look, just hear me out, alright?” she stresses, raising her hands between them. They’re in Amity, mostly because Valerie went to a concert tonight and isn’t available to keep an eye out for local ghost nonsense, and the usual suspects don’t exactly keep track of Red Huntress’s social calendar, but also because they do actually want to see their parents sometimes and inviting them to the Ghost Zone to hang out is not a sustainable option for that.
“Uh, no?” Dani says. “Dude, every time we ‘hear you out’ on a dude, you get, like, Ghost-King-sacrificed by braindead morons who don’t have the guts to just call the business line!”
“Wait, there’s a business line?” Danny asks, giving her a bewildered look. “Since when do we have a business line?”
“Since Tucker jury-rigged one for me in my office, obviously,” Jazz says, because obviously they have a business line. Why would they not have a business line?
“Your office? Your office in the castle?” Danny demands. “What the frick, we have a business line that works in the freaking Ghost Zone?!”
“I don’t know why this surprises you after I just said Tucker was involved,” Jazz says, eyeing him doubtfully.
“. . . alright, yeah, fair,” Danny allows, but then scowls accusingly at her. “Wait, no, we’re getting off-topic here. Just—Ancients, Jazz, why are you dating the second coming of Johnny 13?!”
“It was one study date, and it was more a case study than anything else,” Jazz huffs, folding her arms. “Case-study date. And also he’s the most gorgeous sapient being I’ve ever seen dead or alive or undefined.”
“Annnnnd there’s two of him,” Dani says, then pauses for a long moment before continuing with, “. . . so is this, like, a weird kinky thing or—”
“DANI,” Danny yelps in horror, clapping his hands over both of his ears. “I don’t wanna hear either of you talking about any kinks, especially not any weird ones! Like ever!”
“The duplication powers were not a thing I knew about upfront,” Jazz clarifies. “Though they are psychologically fascinating.”
“Oh god, it is a weird kinky thing,” Danny mutters, covering his face with his hands instead and curling in on himself in mid-air. Jazz doesn’t bother pointing out that they’re not in the Ghost Zone and he might not want to be levitating in downtown Amity, at this point. Everything in Amity Park is already weird enough anyway. “Never mind, I’m just gonna go curl up and die for a few centuries. Pariah Dark can have the job back, that coffin is my coffin now.”
“I have done way too much eldritch paperwork for you to abdicate now, King Phantom,” Jazz retorts, narrowing her eyes at him.
“You are threatening your baby brother and literal king, oh my god, Jazz!” Danny protests indignantly, floating back a few feet above the sidewalk as Dani sniggers.
“You’re not my king, and it’s not a threat if it’s a promise,” Jazz replies, smiling sweetly at him instead. Danny cringes and immediately hides behind Dani, so she hasn’t lost Intimidating Big Sis privileges yet. “Anyway, it’s fine, he’s probably harmless. At least half of him is probably harmless, I mean. But, uh, could you both maybe keep a comm on you Tuesday night, just in case I need to hit the panic button I also got Tucker to make me?”
Sue her, she’s a practical person. And also, um . . . possibly is going to be outnumbered on the next case-study date, considering.
Well, that’s her own fault, she supposes, so oh well.
.
.
.
Zero 13 shows up to their next case-study date without Mismatch, which is kind of a bummer for Jazz’s research but probably for the best, under the circumstances. She has so many questions, though, especially after asking about him and being told that Mismatch is still manifested, just . . . didn’t feel like coming, apparently?
No, Zero 13 doesn't know why.
No, Zero 13 doesn't know where he is.
No, Zero 13 isn't concerned about that.
So, so many questions.
“Figure out any fun new powers since last time?” Jazz asks Zero 13 as they’re standing in line waiting to buy some slightly haunted shaved ice. Or, well . . . comparative levels of "slightly haunted", for the Infinite Realms and all.
“I’m maybe kinda telekinetic,” Zero 13 says. Jazz frowns. She knows they talked about the ghost-telekinesis already; it's in her notes, and also she specifically remembers talking about the ghost-telekinesis. Maybe Zero 13's memory issues are actually a part of his manifestation, come to think? Definitely another case of “she’s heard weirder” if it is, really.
“That one's standard, remember?” she reminds him anyway.
“Yeah, no,” Zero 13 says, shaking his head. “Like—definitely no, I’m maybe kinda . . . more telekinetic?”
“. . . hm,” Jazz says, frowning a little more. “Can you clarify that statement for me, please?”
“Do you know how big Los Diablos is?” Zero 13 asks.
“Roughly the size of LA, why?” Jazz replies, because they’ve been cataloguing a lot of the separate realms and districts of the Ghost Zone over the past two months and, well, it’s also not exactly subtle what earthly city Los Diablos is a mirror of. Plus LA’s actually been in the news this week, because yesterday there was—
"I found out it existed yesterday,” Zero 13 says. “And then I broke it.”
Jazz . . . pauses, then reaches for her notebook. She considers assuming that Zero 13 is exaggerating or embellishing, but with ghosts, welllll . . . chances are maybe forty-five percent that he is, forty-five percent that he isn’t, and ten percent that he has in fact just made the understatement of the century. Just statistically-speaking and all.
At least from her sample sizes, anyway.
“How much of it?” she asks. “Percentage-wise, I mean. Or fractionally. Just your best estimate either way."
“Like, all of it,” Zero 13 says. “So, uh, I guess a hundred percent?”
“All of it?” Jazz echoes. She tries to keep the tone of the question neutral to avoid potentially biasing his responses. She's . . . debatably successful, probably.
The Infinite Realms being infinite makes it very difficult to have a centralized news station or newspaper, but right now Jazz really wishes it did. Or at least a centralized hub of news and information, anyway.
LA did apparently report some significant—and significantly strange—seismic activity yesterday, is all.
“I think I kinda do that kind of thing a lot,” Zero 13 says, then pauses and amends: “I mean, I think I might?”
“When you say broke . . .” Jazz trails off.
“. . . uhhhhh,” Zero 13 says, then makes a face and half-waves a hand in the air with no apparent direction in mind. “Maybe I mean more, like, took apart? Like—reverse IKEA-ed.”
“Okay,” Jazz says. Zero 13 really knows a lot of brand names, for a ghost with zero memory of being alive. And also a lot of relatively recent celebrities and just modern pop culture in general. Which, well—he obviously died recently, yes, but he remembers IKEA well enough to use it as an adjective but doesn't remember his own name.
That fact is definitely getting its own section of her notebook.
“And how long did that take?” she asks.
“I dunno,” Zero 13 says with a shrug. “Like three seconds, I guess?”
“Per . . . construct, or . . .?” Jazz frowns. Maybe she didn’t phrase that clearly enough, as a question; she’ll have to work on her approach to—
“Technically, yeah,” Zero 13 says. “But I meant, like, period.”
. . . Jazz is having an extremely difficult time maintaining neutrality.
“Was that a ripple effect, then, or more of a wave, or something else?” she asks.
“Naw, naw, I mean I did it all at once,” he clarifies, waving the question off.
. . . . . . . . . Jazz is having an extremely, extremely difficult time maintaining neutrality, yes.
“I have some follow-up questions, if you don’t mind,” she says, doing her best not to vibrate in fascination.
So anyway, that conversation takes up most of that case-study date, for obvious reasons.
.
.
.
It’s actually going to be incredibly difficult to fit this case study into just a study date or two, Jazz has very thoroughly learned, because it turns out Zero 13 can’t go five minutes without saying some truly buck-wild and baffling shit.
There are a lot of follow-up questions.
So, so many follow-up questions.
.
.
.
“. . . wait, what do you mean, ‘the atomic level’?”
“Uhhhhh . . .”
“I have some follow-up questions.”
.
.
.
Alright, then, Jazz observes as she reaches for her emergency post-it notes. “Understatement of the century” it is.
.
.
.
“Ancients, dude, do you have any idea how exhausting putting an entire realm back together is? We were at that crap all last week!” Danny groans into his folded arms where he’s half-collapsed over the desk in Jazz’s palace office a week later, which is fairly self-evident timing-wise, she figures.
Unfortunately Danny collapsing on specifically her desk is messing with her organization system and is also an inauspicious beginning to him and Zero 13 meeting for the first time. Probably, anyway, she figures.
Not that Jazz had actually planned this meeting, mind; Zero 13 had just sort of popped in her window out of nowhere a couple of hours ago to talk her ear off and hadn't left before Danny'd shown up for lunch thirty seconds ago and immediately gotten offended over, well, having to spend all of last week putting an entire realm back together.
Probably fair, really, which is why Jazz had not planned this meeting.
Jazz in fact had not actually even informed Zero 13 either that she'd had an office in the palace or where said office was, much less that she’d be in said office today. When she’d asked how he'd even found her, he’d just said it wasn’t like there were that many heartbeats around.
So that’d been interesting, as a response. And also, again, a truly buck-wild and baffling thing to say.
At this point Jazz is pretty sure that she's going to need a new notebook before they even make it to the Ghost Zone's version of Thursday.
She started this one last Ecto-Tuesday, for the record.
“Oh, I mean, you coulda just asked, man,” Zero 13 says from his unfortunately attractive artful sprawl across Jazz's guest sofa, where he's spent the past forty-five minutes not caring that they’re in a palace while obsessively fiddling with every single fidget toy she owns. “Like, I took it apart to begin with, I knew how it all went back together.”
“You knew how it all went back together on the atomic level?” Danny asks incredulously, popping his head up out of Jazz's paperwork to give him a disbelieving look. Some forms get knocked off her desk, but she thinks she can cut him a break on that, because of all the objectively insane things that Zero 13 has even implied—
“Yeah,” Zero 13 says, like that is in any way a reasonable thing to say.
Jazz immediately goes for her notebook and her backup notebook.
“Why didn’t you do that to begin with, Zero 13?” she asks. He twines the hinged snake-shaped fidget toy in his hands around his fingers with a shrug, seeming unconcerned by the question.
“I dunno, nobody asked me to,” he says. “Didn’t really think about it, I guess.”
Jazz takes some notes and makes absolutely no effort to be subtle about it. Ghosts remain psychologically fascinating and she has no idea how anyone who’s ever met one settles for studying exclusively human psychology. Not to validate the unhealthy unceasing intensity of their parents’ personal lifelong obsessions, but, well—she gets it a little, that’s all.
Just a little.
“Jazz,” Danny says, glaring daggers at her with his I can TELL you're validating Mom and Dad’s unhealthy and unceasing lifelong obsessions look on. Whoops. “Dani and I together needed a whole week and more ectoplasm than the castle uses in a year to fix Los Diablos and everyone there still complained we’d done it wrong, and your latest datemate could’ve just, what, hit reset on the place?!”
“We’re not datemates,” Jazz corrects. Danny just eyes her, which feels very unfair and also off-topic.
“Huh?” Zero 13 wrinkles his nose in confusion. “Wait, I thought you were Danny.”
“You realize that’s not actually that uncommon a name, right, man?” Danny asks, pushing himself up on his elbows in Jazz's scattered paperwork and raising an eyebrow at him. “Also she’s my clone so like, we share a lot more stuff than just both being ‘Danny’s. Both being 'Danny's is pretty minimal, so far as stuff we share."
Zero 13 stares blankly at him for a long moment, then just wrinkles his nose again, but this time in very obvious distaste.
“You straight-up named your clone after yourself?” he asks dubiously. “Seriously, dude? How are you not embarrassed about that?”
“Don’t look at me, the creepy froot loop billionaire who made her without actually asking my opinion first named her!” Danny protests indignantly, pushing himself upright completely so he can wave his hands in the air emphatically enough to make his point. “And we tried to offer her other names, okay, she was attached!”
Zero 13 . . . frowns, the facets of his sun-bright orange eyes flickering, then just pushes himself up too, folding his arms and squaring up to scowl at Danny, which certainly is a choice for any ghost ever to make, but also—
. . . huh, Jazz thinks, a little perplexed to realize that Zero 13 actually looks upset. Not the exaggerated, Obsession-focused or fight-focused flash-in-the-pan type of irritation or anger that’s typical to see in a ghost, but the actual, genuine emotion—the actual lasting emotion.
Huh, she thinks again, and makes another note.
“So you just let some creepy asshole name her instead?!” Zero 13 demands accusingly, still scowling at Danny. Jazz briefly wonders if this is about to turn into another Johnny 13 situation. That’d be unfortunate, at this point in her research.
Well, still better than another Corey Brandon, she figures.
“No, because again, he made her without actually asking my opinion first!” Danny shoots back in exasperation. “That’s not on me, man! Like she’s my sister, okay, I wasn’t involved in the decanting process!”
Zero 13 opens his mouth to snap something back, and then—pauses, again, and then just . . . frowns.
“Your—‘sister’?” he repeats in confusion, unfolding his arms and letting them fall down by his sides. “I thought you said you cloned her.”
“I said a creepy froot loop billionaire cloned her, dude,” Danny corrects, looking increasing exasperated. “You’re the one in this conversation who just makes people, apparently.”
“I don’t just make people!” Zero 13 protests with another scowl as he glowers at Danny again. “What kind of asshole just makes people?”
“Creepy froot loop billionaires, was I in any way unclear there?” Danny says.
“I mean, you did make Mismatch,” Jazz says, tilting her head as she watches Zero 13 thoughtfully. “Does that not count?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t, like, make him up,” Zero 13 retorts grudgingly, still looking annoyed. “He’s supposed to exist.”
“. . . I won’t even be dead long enough to learn all the things I want to learn about your manifestation,” Jazz mutters in distressed fascination, grabbing a couple of highlighters out of her bag.
"But you're totally not dating," Danny says dryly.
"I said that, yes," Jazz says, shooting some dagger-eyes of her own at him before looking back to Zero 13 and putting on a pleasant smile. “Would you like to discuss your thoughts on what you mean by ‘supposed’ to exist, Zero 13?”
“I’d rather discuss my thoughts on dating, knockout,” Zero 13 counters, leaning forward against her desk to smirk down at her.
“Can we triage these conversations?” Jazz suggests.
“Ew, flirty Jazz,” Danny mutters under his breath, making a gagging motion behind Zero 13’s back. Jazz shoots him the most angelic dagger-eyes liminally-possible, which only involves a little bit of ecto-energy sparking.
Currently, anyway. It’ll most likely be more once she dies, if nothing else. Or something eye-related, at this rate.
Eh, she’ll just take some notes and figure it out eventually.
“You don’t mind just talking about yourself for a few hours, do you?” she asks Zero 13, and ignores Danny’s dumb fake-gagging motions behind him. This is for science. Well, psychology.
Very, very attractive psychology, she amends as Zero 13 grins at her, gold incisors and all.
“I mean, if you really wanna,” he says.
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“I’m sorry, and you weren’t concerned about the heartbeat comment?” Val interrupts, both her eyebrows hitting her hairline as she leans forward across the worktable.
“No?” Jazz says, a little mystified by the question. “Finding me via my heartbeat is not even close to the weirdest thing a ghost’s done to me.”
“Yeah, okay, but how did he do it?” Val stresses pointedly.
“. . . to be fair, I’ve had a lot of follow-up questions to get through as it is,” Jazz says, wincing momentarily. Though that might be one she should’ve thought to ask a bit more immediately, in retrospect.
“You are gonna actually get eaten by a ghost someday, and you are gonna deserve it, and that is what I am telling everyone at your funeral,” Val swears.
“I’d rather just be cremated. Though I don’t personally subscribe to the concept of cosmic justice, honestly,” Jazz says. “It’s a social construct, not a scientific fact. Plus I really don’t think you can argue people deserve to suffer and die no matter what the circumstances are. Not that I’m saying you can’t ethically kill someone, obviously, but that’s more a case-by-case-basis sort of thing, not, I don’t know, karmic retribution from an unknown force or state-sanctioned execution.”
Val stares at her.
“Is that really what you’re focusing on right now?” she asks.
“Yes,” Jazz says. “Well, that and how this map of Los Diablos overlaps with this map of LA. There’s some very weird things happening in the Arts District and I can’t actually find Bel Air.”
“You know, I used to think Danny was weird before I met the rest of your family,” Val says. “Now I think he was just doing the best a normal person could after being born into your family. Is he adopted, maybe? Is that a thing?”
“Technically I can’t say for absolute certain, since I was two when he was born and as far as I can tell my first actually discernible memories start around age three or so,” Jazz replies reasonably. “But probably not, no. Could you pass me those page markers, please?”
Val just stares at her for another long moment, then passes her the page markers.
“Thank you,” Jazz says. “I think Hollywood is just going to need its own separate map at this point, to be honest.”
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Jazz does some math.
. . . Jazz double-checks some math.
Jazz also invests in a supplementary notebook, because having one just makes it much easier to cross-reference certain things. Like the exact cubic mileage of LA, for example, and a rough estimate of what, exactly, “the atomic level” genuinely involves.
. . . Jazz triple-checks her math, then buys two more supplementary notebooks.
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Zero 13 meets Dora.
Zero 13 also meets Aragon.
Dora does not actually have to bother dealing with Aragon this time. Dora does not actually even have to bother transforming, this time. Danny doesn’t even hear anything until it’s already dealt with, and Danny tends to hear things very quickly in the Ghost Zone these days.
So that’s, um . . . interesting.
“I guess he was excited about the idea of getting to fight a dragon,” Jazz observes, watching Zero 13 chase Aragon around in the air above the castle while the other shrieks furious curses back at him. Mismatch is leaning against the castle wall beside her and looks incredibly bored. He didn’t have to bother getting involved either, but also didn’t seem inclined to either way.
She definitely wants to know if he and Zero 13 have comparable strength levels, though, and also wants to know if that means Zero 13 was capable of fully duplicating his own abilities for Mismatch, or if it means Zero 13 had halved his abilities to share with Mismatch.
That’s just . . . definitely something she wants to know, considering. Also something Danny might eventually need to know, given her luck with dating. Not that she and Zero 13 are really dating-dating, which is why it is perfectly fine that he was showing off for Dora earlier and in no way whatsoever an issue, obviously. Because it’s fine. Perfectly so.
Really. Fine.
Mismatch eyes her dubiously. Jazz does not say anything about Zero 13. Or Dora. Or exactly who Zero 13 is supposed to be on this case-study date with right now and really, it’s not like—
It’s fine! Perfectly fine. She and Zero 13 are not in fact actually dating because dating always ends terribly for her, so Zero 13 is perfectly well-within his rights to hit on a dragon princess if he feels like it. Perfectly well-within!
. . . it’s probably for the best that Jazz isn’t wearing either of those dragon amulets herself right now, yes.
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She does feel a bit better about things when she realizes Zero 13 mostly just seems interested in convincing Dora to come fight him too, at least.
Aragon does not enjoy the afternoon.
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Jazz isn’t deliberately avoiding introducing Zero 13 to anyone—except for her parents, for very obvious reasons—but Tucker and Sam, like Danny, also first meet him accidentally. After the dragons thing, Jazz decided to take him to the Acropolis training grounds a little ahead of schedule, and Sam and Tucker were there talking to Pandora about setting up high-speed internet for her. Well—actually, Tucker had been trying to explain what high-speed internet was to her, but that was apparently what they’d been getting around to.
“Dang, Jazz,” Sam says, tilting her head as they watch Zero 13 chuck a pair of Spartan ghosts across the arena and out of bounds from the stands. They’re very large ghosts, and when Jazz says he chucked them “both”, she means he chucked them both at once. As in simultaneously. As in, he picked up two ghosts both built like seven foot eight of solid muscle and armor, and then he chucked them both.
Technically he had to use both hands to do it, but only in the sense he was doing it, again, to both of them at once.
“I feel like you actually undersold the ‘gorgeous’ thing, last time,” Tucker says, staring blankly at Zero 13 as the other throws his fists up and crows in delight. Tucker looks a little bit like he’s having an identity-relevant crisis. Jazz adds a note about that in her notebook. “I—does he have pheromone powers? Hypnosis powers? Like—I dunno, Cupid powers?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Jazz replies, clicking her pen open. “Do you want to expand on what about him is making you think he might, though?”
“Jazz, they lent him a pair of bracers and what I’m pretty sure is just an armored miniskirt and did not lend him a shirt,” Sam says. “I don’t feel like this is a line of questioning you have to bother with pursuing.”
“That would be terrible research work,” Jazz says indignantly, then squints suspiciously at her, because—“Does that mean you’re experiencing possible pheromone-related symptoms?”
Sam eyes her.
“No, Jazz, it means your boytoy is offensively hot,” she says.
“So is that a ‘yes’?” Jazz says. “‘No’? ‘Maybe’?”
Zero 13 gets buried under several more Spartan ghosts, disappears under the pile of them for all of five seconds, and then stands back up holding the entirety of said pile over his head with a loud, crowing cackle. His muscles are very . . . defined? “Defined” is the word Jazz is going to go with here, yes.
She might get slightly distracted by that. Just . . . slightly, yes.
A bit.
“I dunno, Jazz, do you think he has Cupid powers?” Sam asks dryly.
“He definitely has Cupid powers,” Tucker mutters.
“We’re in the Acropolis; they’d be Eros powers,” Jazz replies distractedly. Zero 13 blocks a fuckoff-massive spear with his forearm. Just his forearm. Well—also the bracers, technically, but—
“Isn’t Eros technically the god of erotic love?” Sam asks. Tucker makes a strangled noise and buries his face in his hands, though he keeps his fingers spread so he can watch Zero 13 suplex a ghost twice his size into the dirt. Or—powerbomb, maybe? Is that a powerbomb? Jazz isn’t actually very good at the names of wrestling moves; she knows much more about Muay Thai and Jeet Kun Do, and a bit of kung fu and karate. Zero 13 seems more like a wrestler and boxer, so far as his moves go, though she has seen some kickboxing influence mixed in there.
Well, he did decide to just straight-up deck Aragon in his full dragon form, so that isn’t all that much of a surprise, Jazz figures. And—
Zero 13 smashes into another ghost with one of those fuckoff-massive spears, does something very fast and complicated-looking to them, and comes up ten feet away in a roll with the spear in . . . yes, just one hand again, alright, that’s—
The next three moves Zero 13 makes are actually very simple-looking, at least if someone knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about bōjutsu, how to handle a spear like a rokushakubō, or just any form of martial arts at all, and end in him surrounded by a sprawled-out circle of groaning ghosts all collapsed on the ground, some of them still twitching a little.
Zero 13 gives the spear a showy little one-handed spin and grins wide enough to flash his incisors.
“. . . technically Cupid and Eros are the same god,” Jazz says.
“So is that a ‘yes’? ‘No’? ‘Maybe’?” Sam deadpans, raising an eyebrow at her. Zero 13 laughs at something and leans over to offer one of the Spartans a hand up. Jazz experiences every possible form of regret and also an unfortunate ooey-gooey flutter of warmth in her stomach, like butterflies dripping with ectoplasm are trying to fight their way out of her intestines.
Zero 13 laughs again, then cups a hand around his mouth and calls over to Pandora: “So do you guys do rope work here, ‘cuz bet I could lasso that minotaur back in the maze for a real good bull ride if I had one!”
Pandora looks musingly intrigued by the suggestion. So do several of the Spartans.
“. . . excuse me, Sam, Tucker, I think I left the stove on in the living realm,” Jazz says faintly, and snaps her notebook shut. A nonzero chance of Eros-related powers is going to have to remain in her assessments, yes.
Though maybe a little bit higher than just “nonzero”, considering.
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Jazz is graphing out the results of Zero 13’s sparring matches in the Acropolis last week when Dani phases up through her notebook and says, “So I hear there’s a dude who’s fun to throw down with?”
“Literally every ghost ever wants to throw down with each other, Dani, you’re going to have to be more specific,” Jazz points out dryly, mostly just because the “phasing through her notes” thing is inconvenient and she wants to nonconfrontationally discourage the habit. Dani sticks her tongue out at her, then shoots up into the air over her desk and tips down face-first to look down at her with a familiarly sharp grin.
Well, someone probably wanted to redecorate . . . somewhere in the castle, Jazz reflects.
Or maybe just the entire castle, under the circumstances.
“The one who broke Los Diablos, duh,” Dani says. “And the one who you’re dating all over the whole entire freakin’ Ghost Zone. Like all infinity of all the Infinite Realms.”
“We are not dating,” Jazz says firmly, pointing her pen at her. “I mean—yes, we’re going on dates, technically, but that’s different. And they’re more like study dates. Or case studies, I mean. Or—it’s different, alright?”
“How?” Dani asks, grinning wider and tilting sideways in the air like a particularly malicious baby seal.
“It’s not a relationship or a commitment, it’s just—socializing for ecto-psychiatry,” Jazz replies with as much dignity as she can muster. It’s admittedly less than she might prefer, given she’s feeling a bit flustered for no good reason. “Technically.”
Dani grins at her. Jazz grimaces. The “particularly malicious baby seal” vibes are absolutely and very specifically “particularly malicious baby leopard seal” vibes.
At least, the amount of teeth involved in Dani’s grin definitely evokes “leopard” a lot more than “harbor”.
“If I take you to meet Zero 13, will you at least attempt to minimize the collateral damage?” she asks resignedly.
“No,” Dani says.
“. . . I appreciate you providing me with realistic expectations, at least,” Jazz sighs, closing her notebook.
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.
Zero 13 isn’t ever all that hard to find, and Jazz doesn’t so much deliberately track him down as just take a few steps out of the castle and immediately trip over him.
“Hey, boo, how’s it hangin’?” he asks her with a grin like they actually had plans to meet up or something, pushing up his sunglasses as does. Jazz doesn’t even like the color orange that much, she thinks accusingly. It’s a perfectly fine color, and as a lifelong very vibrant redhead she obviously knows how to make it look its best without clashing, but her favorite color is teal, dammit. Like a nice light blue with just a touch of green to add some character to it; that kind of thing. So the literal opposite of orange, pretty much.
Orange should not look this pretty just for having a few facets and a cocky grin and some perfect cheekbones framing it, is her point there.
“Wow, you’re really good at running into dudes you’re not dating, Jazz,” Dani “observes” slyly. Jazz has a brief moment of struggle with an overwhelming rush of the Cain instinct and ignores her to smile pleasantly at Zero 13.
“Hi, Zero 13. This is—” she starts, and Dani immediately shoves past her and grins like a full-grown overgrown leopard seal up at Zero 13 despite being quite literally half his size. Like—ghosts don’t really have weight unless they feel like it, obviously, but if Zero 13 were a fully-corporeal being, all that muscle on that big broad six foot three frame would at least have to get him to two hundred and twenty pounds, if not more, and Dani’s human form is at best a hundred and ten. Jazz actually isn’t sure if Dani’s actually quite as corporeal as she should be, physiologically-speaking—it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, given the nature of her physiology—but even with that aside, Dani’s still a very small and slender person, and Zero 13 is very much not.
“I’m your new best frenemy,” Dani says with a fully predatory leopard-seal grin, leaning in towards him. “Did you seriously pull a suplex powerbomb on Aragon?”
“No,” Zero 13 says. Dani immediately looks disappointed, until he clarifies: “It was more like a spiral bomb.”
Dani stops looking disappointed, and starts looking thrilled.
“Let’s beat each other up,” she says eagerly.
“Sure, okay,” Zero 13 agrees, and Dani looks even more thrilled. To be fair, usually people twice her size are a little more hesitant about agreeing to fight her unless they’re very antagonistic about it, and even then they usually patronize her about it. Zero 13 just casually agreeing without even giving her a doubtful look first is a definite outlier. “Uh—who are you, though?”
Jazz is going to have to take some notes about this conversation, clearly.
“This is Dani,” she says. “The little sister version, obviously.”
“‘Dani’?” Zero 13 repeats, and then he gives Dani a different kind of look. Not doubtful, but . . . odd, a little.
Intent, a little.
Or—maybe not just “a little”.
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.
Jazz might notice more about that, but at the time, mostly what she notices is the property damage.
To be fair, it is so much property damage.
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“. . . so like, I know you’re already dead, dude, but when Danny sees this mess he’s gonna kill us,” Dani says, making a face at what’s left of the training grounds.
“So no round two?” Zero 13 asks, looking disappointed.
“. . .” Dani says.
Then Dani grins.
Jazz decides it might be best to head for higher ground for now, though admittedly that’s only so helpful when Dani and Zero 13 can both fly, and both do it like they’ve been doing it since the day they were born. Which is true for Dani, of course, and “true” for Zero 13 as far as he remembers, she supposes, so . . .
She’s definitely gotten a much better idea of what Zero 13 had meant by “the atomic level”, though.
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Zero 13 leans in close and grins at her, all cocky and preening and smug about it, and the way it makes her feel is a very good reason to concentrate on anything else about him.
Whether she’s alright with risking a few case-study dates or not, Jazz already knows better than to go and let herself feel like that again.
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She really, really knows better than this.
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“So how do these guys actually tell you two apart when they’re talking if you’re Dani but this Danny won’t go by, like, ‘Dan’ or whatever, anyway?” Zero 13 asks Dani curiously from where he’s draped over the couch in Jazz’s office, because for some reason the two of them and Danny are all hanging out in her office today, never mind how much homework she has to do right now.
Or how much Ghost-King paperwork Danny’s definitely not doing right now, either. But that’s a problem for Queen Regent Jazz, and currently Grad Student Jazz is the one in the driver’s seat. Grad Student Jazz is the only Jazz who has ever Jazz-ed at all, right now, and she is death-gripping the gear shift.
It is just so, so, so much homework. And also largely lacking in ecto-psychiatry applications, unfortunately.
“I dunno, maybe the fact she’s a girl? And listen, we do not go by Dan, okay?” Danny says with a grimace. “No Danning. No . . . Dannery, whatever. The Dan timeline is the bad timeline.”
“I was asking Dani, dude, and oh my god, don’t be a pussy about the bad timeline, everybody has at least a couple bad timelines,” Zero 13 snorts, rolling his eyes. Jazz makes a note in the margins of the essay she’s proofreading to follow up on that comment later. She also notes that it’s interesting that she can tell when he’s saying “Dani” or “Danny” without any included clarification, though she guesses it’s no different from how she can tell that he’s saying “Zero 13” instead of “0 Thirteen” or anything like that.
Definitely still something she’s going to be including in her notes, though.
“Mine killed the human race,” Danny retorts flatly, just eyeing him. “Like. All of it. Via the personal touch.”
“. . . okay, that one’s a little worse than usual,” Zero 13 allows, making a face.
“You think, dude?” Danny says.
“That still doesn’t make it less of a pain when people are talking about you-Danny and not Dani-Dani and it’s impossible to tell without detouring off the conversational highway, though,” Zero 13 counters with a dismissive shrug, waving him off. “So like, let’s focus here, man, let’s figure this one out.”
“Well, I’m the cool one, obviously, so if the ‘Danny’ somebody’s talking about sounds like a loser, it’s not me,” Dani says breezily, tossing her hair with a smug grin. “Piece of cake!”
“So ‘Cool Dani’ and ‘Uncool Danny’?” Zero 13 suggests with a grin, and Dani laughs in delight. “Or maybe ‘Dani’ and ‘the loser also known as Danny’?”
“Oh please say that in front of the stupid ghost court next time they’re dumb enough to think they can suck up to Ghost King Phantom by taking potshots at the ‘worse’ halfas,” Dani says with a cackle. “I legit need to see the faces they’d make for that.”
“Ancients, Jazz, I hate every single boyfriend you’ve ever had,” Danny groans, putting his face in his hands.
“Zero 13 isn’t my boyfriend, thank you very much. But he also isn’t wrong, it wouldn’t hurt to have a shorthand callsign for emergencies,” Jazz points out reasonably, which admittedly bodes ill for her getting this paper written by midnight Living Realms time. Zero 13 isn’t wrong about that, though, and given the nature of their lives . . . “So maybe ‘Dani Prime’ and ‘Danny Phan-Two’?”
“Phan-Two?!” Danny protests indignantly. “I was here first!”
“Yes, but I was here before any of you,” Jazz replies with a big-sister-sweet smile. Danny immediately cringes in obvious reflex, so she feels good about the “big-sister-sweet” qualities of said smile. “Also this way’s funnier.”
“I am being bullied,” Danny groans dramatically, flopping over on his back to sink halfway into her office floor. “I am being bullied and I’m telling Mom.”
“Telling Mom what, that the ghosts were picking on you?” Jazz asks, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Telling Mom your boyfriend was,” Danny shoots back.
“Good luck surviving that,” Jazz says. “If you tell her I have a boyfriend again she’s going to interrogate you, and then she’s going to pout when I tell her you’re lying about it.”
“So I’ll tell her you’re lying and he’s another weirdo with a leather fetish,” Danny counters, floating back upright and off the floor to plant his hands on his hips and stick his tongue out at her. Which, well, her big-sister-sweet does tend to end up bringing out his little-brother-bratty, so no surprise there.
“Man, I feel like I could volunteer as tribute here but also that’d be validating Phan-Two and his total inability to deal with a bad timeline or two way too much,” Zero 13 mutters under his breath, frowning to himself consideringly. Jazz makes another quick little margin-note about “things Zero 13 knows about pop culture and does not know about himself”, just as something to migrate over to her notebook later. She really doesn’t want to actually take it out right now, that just seems like a bad, bad idea for her GPA.
“To be fair, the bad timeline had really dumb hair,” Dani says. “I would not want weird bad-timeline hair either.”
“Why is the first thing to go in the bad timelines always any sense of style, geez?” Zero 13 says. “Actually wait, no, I did have one bad timeline where I could still dress myself, just the timeline I was actually living in for some friggin’ reason just decided to go with, what, a friggin’ buzzcut? Like, bitch, please, did we hit thirty and forget how to handle our curl routine?”
“Yeah mine was more, like . . . ectoplasmic fire, kinda?” Danny says with a shrug. “Which hey, that wasn’t dumb, that was badass!”
“Yeah, sure it was, and so were the tiny goatee and perky little ponytail that future you was absolutely failing to rock with it,” Dani snickers. “’Cuz all that all together didn’t look weird or try-hard or mullet-esque at all.”
“You literally were not even involved in that situation,” Danny says in exasperation. “And you are also-literally wearing a ponytail right now!”
“And I make it look good,” Dani retorts smugly, making a show of preening before reclining backwards in the air and folding her arms behind her head as she smirks over at him. “Sorryyyyy, Uncool Danny, maybe next timeline you’ll dress better.”
“Evil me dressed fine!” Danny says, even more exasperated and throwing his hands up again. “You wear nothing but hoodies and parachute pants!”
“There was a cape,” Dani informs Zero 13 helpfully, grinning in obvious entertainment. “Did either of yours do capes?”
“Actually, yeah, both of them,” Zero 13 says. “The one dude also did some . . . I think it was armor, technically, but honestly it mighta just been an aesthetic thing? It was gold, so not gonna lie, it looked pretty sweet. Other dude was way more basic bitch about things, unfortunately, but did at least manage to pull off the cape. Honestly liked the first guy better, though, I understood his thought processes way more.”
“His evil timeline thought processes?” Danny asks, giving Jazz a pointed look that she pointedly ignores. She knows her own dating history, obviously, but the evil timeline is not the current timeline.
This timeline’s Zero 13 died long before he hit thirty, after all.
. . . mm.
“Well he didn’t exactly have good timeline thought processes, so yeah, those,” Zero 13 confirms wryly.
“Do you actually remember his evil timeline thought processes?” Dani asks curiously.
“Oh, literally zero percent of them. Big gaping blackness of zero percent,” Zero 13 informs her, tracing a wide circle in the air in front of himself with both hands, presumably in imitation of a zero. “Just he made way more sense for sure. Other dude was just kinda a bitch. Okay, well, they were both kind of bitches, but . . . well, I guess the first one had more . . . ambition, I’d say? Like, he got a lot more planets conquered, if nothing else.”
. . . Jazz gets her notebook out.
She can always finish her homework after dinner.
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“Do you remember anything about your bad timelines?” Jazz asks later, tilting her coffee cup from side to side.
“I mean, yeah, a ton, but also no, literally nothing,” Zero 13 replies with a shrug. “Like, I know it all, but I don’t remember any of it. Why, you remember stuff about yours?”
“I was apparently dead for it,” Jazz says, flipping to a fresh page in her notebook. This conversation definitely necessitates a fresh page. Possibly a fresh section. “Which I guess was related to it ending up the bad timeline to begin with.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Zero 13 says, looking up from his own coffee to grin at her again. “I’d totally bring down the bad timeline for you, boo.”
It’s not even really a pickup line, even though he says it like one, but . . .
Jazz stares blankly at Zero 13 for a moment, feeling—something extremely irrational that she knows much, much better than to be feeling, and then immediately goes back to her notebook.
She’ll go with doing the fresh section, yes.
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Jazz really, really knows better than this.
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Jazz thought she knew better than this, at least.
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“This guy sounds weirder every time you talk about him,” Tucker says.
“Meaning you sound weirder every time you talk about him,” Sam clarifies.
“That really just sounds like confirmation bias on your parts,” Jazz lies.
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They spend their next case-study date in the Far Frozen. Zero 13 absolutely hates it there, but also manages to build the most enormous—and most gorgeous—snow castle that Jazz has ever seen. She doesn’t even know how he does it; she literally just leaves him alone for fifteen minutes to confer with Frostbite on some regent-ly concerns and comes back to a snow castle big enough for the yetis to live in.
She takes notes, obviously, but they’re not very illuminating.
Some of the yetis take the time to teach Zero 13 some interesting wrestling moves that he absolutely should not have the physical strength to manage, and definitely should not have the physical leverage to manage. He seems to enjoy the visit a lot more after that, though he definitely still hates the cold either way.
Jazz takes some more notes, and doesn’t listen to his laugh or look up to see his eager, aggressive grin as the next spar starts.
It’s hard not to hear him laughing, though.
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.
The castle really is gorgeous, though Jazz doesn’t understand why Zero 13 apologizes about there not being any clouds.
As usual, when she asks, he doesn’t understand either.
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“How about next time we don’t play freeze tag in the literal tundra, okay?” Zero 13 suggests on their way back in the general direction of Danny’s haunt, which is not actually the castle. Zero 13 isn’t going to come in himself, obviously, because a haunt is personal—a home and a haven and the one safest place for any ghost to retreat to—but he’d said he’d drop her off. Which had been a bit ironic as a statement, given she’s the one driving the Specter Speeder and he’d hitched a ride with her to begin with, but also deeply unsurprising coming from a guy like Zero 13.
Jazz doesn’t know where he’s going himself after he “drops her off”, though. She hasn’t actually figured out if Zero 13 has a haunt himself yet, best efforts aside. To be fair, she doesn’t think he knows if he does either. She’s tried to ask him about it a few times now, but he’s never seemed to understand the question.
Or—no, he’s never seemed to understand the concept.
Jazz hasn’t really been sure what to think about that.
“Where would you rather go?” Jazz asks, mostly because she’s wondering about his haunt again and where—and what—it is.
Or . . . isn’t, maybe.
“I dunno, like the beach or something, maybe,” Zero 13 says with a shrug, then pauses and reconsiders. “Actually no, not maybe, I would love to go to the beach.”
“Are you kidding?” Jazz asks, unable to help making a face at the thought. She has yet to find any body of water in the Infinite Realms that wasn’t actually just raw unfiltered ectoplasm, and the tide patterns on this side of the portal are extremely strange on top of that. “There is not a power in the Ghost Zone that would ever convince me to swim in the Ghost Zone.”
“Aw, you don’t wanna see me in my speedo, boo?” Zero 13 asks with a teasing grin, leaning back in the passenger side seat and tossing her a flirty, dirty wink as he kicks his big heavy boots up onto the dash. Jazz is unfortunately reminded of the fact that he is, in fact, still the most gorgeous sapient being that she’s ever seen dead or alive or undefined. She is also unfortunately reminded of his triple-X chest and washboard abs and big broad shoulders and perfect biceps and that Grecian-draped saran-wrap excuse for a T-shirt and his very big—
Jazz, extremely unfortunately, has her hands full steering the speeder and cannot actually distract herself with her notes for once. And obviously Zero 13 is plenty distracting on his own, but that’s kind of the entire issue there.
“I don’t have any particular vested interest either way, but we’re still not going swimming,” she lies—well, half-lies, because come hell or high water they are absolutely not going swimming—and Zero 13 just grins like he can tell she is lying, which Jazz very much hopes he cannot, actually. She has enough problems with her fully-dead love life without developing any weird new . . . inclinations about any particularly gorgeous sapient beings that are technically involved in it.
Though her not-a-mood-ring is turning some very interesting colors right now, and none of them have a single thing to do with rage.
Jazz values honesty and open communication, but she is just really, really not prepared for the things everything but her brain wants her to be honest and open about.
Also, there’s “honest and open” and there’s “frankly just TMI”, and she and Zero 13 are just not in a place where this conversation would not be TMI.
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“. . . hey, was your ring always that shade of—?”
“Yes.”
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It’s very difficult to crash the Specter Speeder while travelling between specific physical locations in the Infinite Realms, but so is the entire experience of having Zero 13 joking with and flirting at her from the passenger seat and just being in general very difficult to ignore.
Well, when don’t they crash the Specter Speeder, really? It’s basically a tradition at this point, Jazz figures.
Which is what she’s going to tell Danny, as soon as she figures out how to get a tow out here.
Then Zero 13 picks up the whole speeder single-handed and picks her up with his other option for “single-handed”, and then the rest of the trip to Danny’s haunt is just a really, really, really embarrassingly uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing experience that Jazz is personally never going to recount to a single other sapient being for as long as she not only lives but exists.
The worst part is it’s not even actually physically uncomfortable, which she really would expect it to have been at some point. Usually flying like this gets uncomfortable pretty quick, in her experience.
Maybe Zero 13 can give Danny and Dani some “how to carry people better” tips, Jazz reflects privately, because something good might as well come out of her absolute mortification.
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“Please let me fight your boyfriend, Jazz,” Danny says, leaning down over her head from where he’s floating in the air over the throne. The crown sets off a few sparks in response to his presence, which isn’t unusual, especially in the throne room. And they are, unfortunately, currently in the throne room, because they have a lot of dead dignitaries due to show up in the next five minutes.
This meeting could absolutely have been an email, Jazz already knows.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she says, tipping her head back to eye him suspiciously. “And no, because you’re not abandoning me to all this diplomatic nonsense alone.”
“You clean up way better than me, though!” Danny protests. “And they always like you better, too!”
“That’s because I had the foresight not to die in a hazmat suit and know how to do a contour,” Jazz retorts dryly. “But I also know you could change the suit if you wanted. Vlad didn’t die in a cape, for one thing.”
“Vlad would absolutely die in a cape, that extra-ass fucking froot loop,” Danny mutters under his breath. “He’d die in a cape and be a smug prick about it.”
“Probably, yes, but not actually relevant to you refusing to manifest formalwear,” Jazz says.
“I’d sooner die, yeah,” Danny says. Jazz raises an eyebrow at him. “Excuse you, that was hilarious. No appreciation in this place, I swear.”
“I had actual work to do today, Danny,” she reminds him. “Ecto-psychiatry isn’t going to pioneer itself, you know.”
“. . . I mean, it might if you’re not careful,” Danny says warily. “Ghost stuff gets weird.”
“. . . okay, fair point,” Jazz says, feeling a little wary herself now. “I’m still not letting you run off to fight Zero 13. For starters you don’t even know where he is, you could end up gone for hours.”
“Yeah, that’s the point,” Danny mutters under his breath.
“Thank you for your honesty,” Jazz says, folding her hands demurely in her lap and smiling up at him pleasantly. “And also if you even try to ditch me here alone, I’m going to go find both of Zero 13’s bad timelines and you can fight them.”
“That’s not even a thing you can—"
“Them and Dan.”
“. . . that’s not even a thing you can—”
“And how is Clockwork doing lately? Have you been keeping up with visits?” Jazz asks big-sister-sweetly.
“. . . fine, but I’m gonna go fight your boyfriend after this,” Danny grumbles, folding his arms and floating up higher over her with a sulky expression. “I’m gonna need to go fight somebody after this.”
“Still not my boyfriend, but he’ll probably be open to that,” Jazz says agreeably.
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So far as ghostly understatements go, it’s about Los Diablos-level.
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“In my defense, no one’s really that attached to the castle,” Jazz tells Mismatch as they watch the incredibly violent light show overhead what’s left of said castle. Interesting new fact: Zero 13 can apparently shoot ecto-blasts from his eyes, which—what the hell even. “Can you do that?”
Mismatch just rolls his own eyes, which isn’t a particularly informative response.
The incredibly violent light show is a lot to have going on, admittedly.
A lot.
“. . . we should probably go stand a little farther out of the blast radius, I think,” Jazz says, and Mismatch rolls his eyes again.
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“A little farther” probably should’ve been a little farther than it was, Jazz notes afterwards as she’s combing the castle gravel and ectoplasmic slime out of her hair.
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“Wow, you really suck at carrying people, huh,” Zero 13 observes, raising a skeptical eyebrow at Danny. Danny just gives him a disgruntled look in response.
“Literal king of your home address and I still can’t get any respect, huh?” he says.
“Get some actual administrative power up in this bitch and we’ll talk, dude,” Zero 13 replies with a shrug. “Anyway, I didn’t vote for you.”
“Are you serious right now?” Danny asks, giving him an incredulous look. “Do you have any clue whatsoever what a king even is? Do you wanna fight me for king, because we can absolutely do that right the frick now, then maybe I can actually graduate college with a decent GPA. Get back in the ring right now, man.”
“The ring is not actually intact enough for you to do that,” Jazz reminds him, then advises, “You could just maybe get a couple of tips from Zero 13 on the people-carrying, that’s all.”
Danny groans in aggravation, dropping his head forward for a moment before lifting it back up to eye her sullenly. It is just about the most “little brother” expression possible.
“I could fight him for king,” Danny grumbles.
“Do you want the tips or not, Phan-Two?” Jazz asks, eyeing him dryly. “Or do you want to just keep carting Sam and Tucker around like grumpy potato sacks every time you want to fly them anywhere? Sounds very romantic, I’m sure they’ll love it.”
“. . . fine, I’m listening, but this better be good.”
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“What the fu—THAT ISN’T HOW THE TELEKINESIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK.”.
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Jazz is starting to run out of options to color-code her notes with and is seriously considering finding a ghost who can invent her some new ones.
It’d just be a useful time to have a bee-violet or hyperbolic orange highlighter, okay?
Maybe olo. Olo sounds like a nice concept for a color.
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“So I’ve been meaning to ask, do you know what type of core you have yet?” Jazz asks curiously during her next case-study date with Zero 13, which they’re currently spending sitting on a bench in the . . . well, mostly-restored castle gardens.
. . . partially-restored, anyway.
It’s an ongoing project.
It’s been a few months since Zero 13 manifested, though, so he’s probably had the chance to at least figure out what his core is by now—though she still has absolutely no idea what his Obsession is, unless “redheads” counts. As much as he likes to fight, well, so does literally every ghost she’s ever met. She still doesn’t even know where his haunt is, and in fact usually isn’t all that clear on where he even goes when he’s by himself.
The answer mostly seems to be either “wherever he saw Mismatch last” or “the most random and randomly dangerous option possible”, so there’ve definitely been chances to figure out his core by now. Jazz still hasn’t figured out anything about Mismatch as an ability either. Or a . . . person? Person, maybe?
Jury’s still out on that one, yeah.
“What type of what?” Zero 13 asks, wrinkling his nose.
“Your core?” Jazz gestures meaningfully from her chest to his, though she definitely does not use her ring hand, given exactly what she’s gesturing to. “Your . . . you know. Your core. They’re kind of a big deal?”
“Are they?” he asks skeptically.
“Absolutely, yes,” Jazz says. Alright then, well, Zero 13 apparently missed this part of the ghost-download. Which is definitely something he should not have missed and needs to know, so—“Cores are very personal and vulnerable. They’re typically element-oriented, and most ghosts never even show them to—”
Then Zero 13 sticks his hand straight into his chest and pulls his core right out.
. . . right, Jazz forgot who she was talking to here.
“Oh, weird,” Zero 13 says, wrinkling his nose again as he makes a face at his core. “Is that, like, me?”
“Sort of, it’s a little more—wait, is that steel?” Jazz asks in surprise, leaning in to get a closer look at the exposed core where he’s holding it up between them. He did pull it out and all, so he’s presumably fine with her taking a peek. She’s known a few ghosts with metal cores at this point, but never actually seen one of those cores exposed. She usually got the impression they were ores, though, not refined metal. And she’s never even met someone with an alloy core—well, at least not as far as she knows, anyway.
An alloy seems like an extremely weird option for a core. Cores can get pretty complicated, admittedly—Danny alone is enough proof of that, to say nothing of Dani—but there’s different definitions of “complicated”, and an alloy is, well . . . an alloy is something manufactured. Crafted, just by its nature.
Not something that just exists in nature.
“Uh, I think so?” Zero 13 squints at his core too, turning it in his hand. It’s flawlessly, faultlessly smooth almost everywhere, except for a single closed seam splitting it perfectly in half. It almost looks like it could come apart, if someone tried.
Jazz still hasn’t figured Mismatch out, but she wonders, for the first time: when Mismatch is around, is that Zero 13 duplicating himself, or is that Zero 13 dividing himself?
That is . . . possibly a possibility that she should’ve thought to figure out sooner, considering. Zero 13 has always seemed so convinced that Mismatch was someone else, though, so . . .
“That is fascinating,” Jazz says, staring even more intently at his core.
“I mean, it’s—” Zero 13 starts, and then cuts himself off. She reflexively glances up at him and finds him wearing a bright red blush and a confused expression. “. . . uh. If it’s me, why are you looking at it like that?”
“Because it’s fascinating,” Jazz repeats. Zero 13 blushes even redder, looking increasingly bewildered. “Oh, sorry, does that feel emotionally vulnerable?"
“. . . no?” Zero 13 tries to say, but doesn’t sound very convinced about it. “I, uh—what?”
“You can put it back, if you need to,” Jazz reminds him, mostly because it seems like he might’ve forgotten. Though possibly he also just hasn’t realized, considering. Zero 13 is very clearly both the type of person to figure out how to yank his core out of his chest without even knowing that that was a thing he could do and the type of person to not actually think through what yanking his core out of his chest might do to him, much less how he’d put it back.
Also, he yanked it out without knowing what it actually was, so . . .
“Uh—right,” Zero 13 says awkwardly, then immediately shoves his core back into his chest and makes a face about it. “Ugh, that feels so weird, boo.”
“So I hear,” Jazz says, raising an eyebrow at him. “There's definitely something ironic in the dead person in this conversation always being the one who’s trying to use that pet name on the living one, you realize.”
"Well I gotta trot out the good material for a knockout like you, don't I, boo?" Zero 13 asks, immediately putting on a flirty smirk as he leans in and winks at her. Jazz just gives him a wry look. Well, he's clearly not feeling that "weird", then.
"Mmmhm," she replies, then asks: "Feeling better?”
“All good here, gorgeous.” Zero 13 takes a moment to poke at his chest, looking briefly doubtful about it despite the answer. “That was at least the sixth-weirdest thing that's happened to me since I woke up, though.”
Jazz doesn't question the situation's placing in the ranking, considering Los Diablos happened to him. Or, well—Zero 13 happened to Los Diablos, more like, but her point stands.
Anyway, whether Zero 13 actually knows what one is or not, every ghost knows their core.
“Do you know why it’s an alloy?” she asks him curiously, and Zero 13 just shrugs again.
“I dunno,” he says. “Probably because there’s supposed to be two of me.”
Then he pauses, blinks, and frowns.
“Huh,” he says. ". . . okay, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but also: yeah, there's supposed to be two of me. Trippy."
“I’m just going to take some more notes,” Jazz mentions as she flips her notebook open in her lap and digs out a new pen color. That is not how Zero 13 has previously described Mismatch to her.
Though also, to be fair, she hasn't actually asked if he's talking about Mismatch right now or not. Which is . . . certainly a thought to be having, actually.
Hm.
"So who's the other one of you, then?" she asks, new pen already poised to write.
"Beats me," Zero 13 says with a shrug. "I don't think he's dead anymore, though, so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.”
. . . okay then, Jazz thinks as her eyebrows rise halfway to the crown in her hair.
She may need to invest in a few more pen colors, she thinks. And maybe some bigger highlighters. Like the really chunky highlighters.
"I guess he is the real one, though," Zero 13 adds after a moment, just barely frowning to himself. "Like—the real person, I mean."
. . . Jazz, again, has follow-up questions.
Which, well—when doesn't she, these days?
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Zero 13, unfortunately, does not end up having much in the way of answers, but Jazz supposes that’s not very different from usual either.
It does end up making for a much longer case-study date than usual, though.
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“. . . sorry, what was that about a shark king?” Jazz asks.
“No, no, that dude wasn’t actually a king,” Zero 13 says, making a face. “The actual kings were, like, tigers. Though like—different situations anyway. Mostly different, anyway. I think. Kinda?”
“. . .” Jazz says.
“What’s with the look?” Zero 13 says.
“Nothing,” Jazz lies while trying to work out how Zero 13 could have independently ended up in more than one situation that had involved dealing with sapient half-animal hybrids.
“You introduced me to a chick who can turn into a dragon when she accessorizes right, your eyes spark green when you’re pissed, and your hair sparks turquoise every time you can’t decide what to do,” Zero 13 says. “Also you’re the literal Ghost Queen?”
“Ghost Queen Regent,” Jazz corrects. “And that’s temporary, as is at least half of the sparking.”
“Are you sure about that?” Zero 13 asks skeptically, looking unconvinced.
“. . . 60/40,” Jazz says, grimacing a little. She does really hate not knowing that for sure.
“Uh-huh. So how exactly is that weirder than a tiger king, boo?” Zero 13 asks with a smirk. “Like, wanna math that one out for me?”
“Will you actually listen to me explain the math after?” Jazz asks, and Zero 13 laughs.
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Jazz’s math is meticulous, if inconclusive, but Zero 13 does in fact listen to her explain all of it after.
He also very clearly doesn’t understand a word of what she’s saying, but spends the whole time she’s talking with his whole body turned in towards her on the bench and grinning at her kind of—fondly, almost.
So Jazz still knows better, yes, but she also thinks about how Corey Brandon definitely never did that for her.
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“. . . sorry, the evil rat advisor’s name was literally Ratsputin? Seriously?”
“Sorry, remind me about the Box Ghost again, boo?”
“. . . touché.”
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“Does how I died actually matter for the psych stuff? I mean, I don’t even know how I even got all ghost-y like this,” Zero 13 says skeptically while he’s disassembling and reassembling the chess pieces on the board between them during another case-study date. They're sitting in armchairs on either side of a small end table with a chessboard carved into the top of it in a library full of green and purple books wrapped in glowing silver chains, because that’s just the kind of libraries that find an overworked grad student/queen regent in the Infinite Realms. Mismatch actually showed up today and is sitting on the floor by Zero 13's armchair, leaned back against it but facing away from and ignoring him.
The chess pieces are not, for the record, designed to be disassemble-able. Zero 13 doesn't appear to have noticed that fact, though, and somehow has actually been reassembling them back into whole and wholly perfect pieces over and over.
Mismatch is also leaning back against Zero 13's chair heavier than he could lean against it if Zero 13 weren't sitting in it, and Jazz wonders if it’s her or Zero 13 that isn’t supposed to notice that.
If it’s her or Zero 13 that is supposed to notice that.
"So you don't remember anything about how you died?" Jazz asks.
"Huh? Oh, no. I mean, I don’t remember shit, but I meant I'm not supposed to have a soul, so like . . . I dunno, what are ghosts actually made of?" Zero 13 asks, frowning speculatively. "Like, biologically or spiritually or whatever-ly, I mean. Atomically?”
". . . ectoplasm and willpower, mostly," Jazz says as Mismatch tips his head back against the side of Zero 13's armchair and shoots her a downright exasperated long-suffering look.
Well—ectoplasm and willpower or, sometimes, overwhelming emotion and absolute tragedy. But that part she doesn't know if she should mention just now.
Zero 13 looks younger than her, Jazz remembers abruptly, and given when he first manifested, probably is. And she remembers . . .
Danny doesn't look fourteen anymore, even when he's dead, but sometimes she thinks that he looked fourteen a lot longer than he should have. Thinks that maybe Danny doesn't actually look twenty-one, and just does it so the rest of them will feel better about things.
Most people have never been twenty, she remembers distantly, and then she thinks—the Ghost King has to be very specifically nineteen before they can be crowned.
That’d seemed like a very arbitrary number to her, before.
Jazz keeps looking at Zero 13, and Zero 13 keeps looking very much nineteen and not a day older than that.
Not a day more alive than that, that is.
Jazz wonders, for the first time, what actually killed Zero 13. She wonders if it had anything to do with why he’s sitting in the afterlife playing chess with her while actively assuming that he doesn't have a soul. Why he’d ever think he didn’t have a soul.
Why being “nineteen” matters that much, when most people have never even been twenty.
And then another question occurs to her—one that Zero 13 might actually know the answer to, and one that she definitely should've thought to ask him by now either way.
"Zero 13," Jazz says. "Are you a clone?"
Zero 13 looks up from the half-assembled pawn in his fingers to blink at her, appearing mildly surprised, and then reassembles it into a queen. He doesn’t even bother to look at it as he does.
“Huh,” he says. “Well that explains some shit."
Mismatch tips his head back against Zero 13’s chair and looks very, very long-suffering. Jazz glances down at him, and wonders . . . Zero 13 had told Danny that Mismatch was "supposed" to exist. Told her and Danny—his Queen Regent and his King, whether he’d been thinking of them that way or not—that Mismatch was supposed to exist.
Told her that there were supposed to be two of him, and one of them was the “real” person, but also not actually identified that “real” person as being Mismatch himself.
And Mismatch doesn't actually look dead in the same way that Zero 13 does. Doesn't really look “dead” at all, in fact.
But a dead person made him, and made him out of something.
Made him for something, presumably, whether Zero 13 really understood what the “something” that he was making him for was or not.
Did Zero 13 make Mismatch because he was trying to recreate the person he was cloned from? Because some part of him thought he couldn't exist, if that person didn't? Is that something he feels, and something he feels as being so integral to his sense of self that he manifested a power based on it?
Jazz genuinely can't tell if that's sweet, or bittersweet, or just the saddest hypothesis she’s ever had.
One of the chess pieces moves across the board without Zero 13 touching it, and Mismatch holds up a thumb and index finger in pointed imitation of a checkmark.
Jazz looks down at the board. Zero 13’s queen has her king in check—the actual queen, not the reassembled pawn he’s still turning over in his hand. Though she supposes that isn’t any less a queen right now either, because it looks exactly the same as the one on the board.
Jazz thinks of a few alternate hypotheses for the psychological origins of Zero 13’s duplication ( creation? manifestation? embodiment? ) ability, but the first one won’t leave her mind.
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Jazz picks up her own queen and beats Zero 13 in another three moves, and he sinks down in his seat and sulks at himself for a few minutes, and Mismatch rolls his eyes. Zero 13 snipes at him for it and then demands another game, but he still doesn’t sulk at her. Still doesn’t take it out on her.
Jazz can’t help noticing that it’s a lot more emotional a reaction than he’d had to realizing that he was a clone, though, and given how good most ghosts aren’t at emotional regulation . . .
Jazz writes down the new data point in teal glitter pen while Zero 13 is resetting the board and one-sidedly bickering with Mismatch’s increasingly varied range of unimpressed expressions, and then she looks at her notebook, and looks at how many pages she has tabbed with the case number she gave Zero 13’s file.
It’s . . . a lot more pages than she’s spent on just about anyone else she’s been taking notes on, isn’t it.
. . . hm.
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Dani and Zero 13 “spar” again, though it’s more like they just try to tear apart the entire Ghost Zone. They do not even pretend to be keeping to the training grounds this time, and Jazz has never heard either of them laugh louder.
She’s not actually sure if Zero 13 ever mentioned figuring out the clone thing to Dani, but she’s also not actually sure Zero 13 remembers figuring out the clone thing either.
She asks him some questions between rounds, though mostly she stays on the ground with Mismatch and uses the time to sort some of her notes properly. Might as well, after all.
She hears Zero 13 laugh again, and still knows better.
Still knows better, but . . .
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“Do you always ask Zero 13 that many weird invasive questions?” Dani asks on their way home after the “spar”, once he and Mismatch have left the castle and Jazz and Dani have started back towards the Specter Speeder to drive back to the portal. “Like, literally every single time you two hang out?”
“Frequently more, actually, today was a light day. Why?” Jazz replies distractedly, not looking up from her notebook. She can write and walk at the same time, and she wants to get her remaining observations down while they’re still fresh and before she has to drive.
“I dunno,” Dani says, sounding skeptical. “Does the dude, like . . . like that?”
Jazz . . . pauses, and looks up from her notebook to look over at her. Dani looks skeptical, too.
“He just seems to have some feelings about the clone thing, is all,” she says, which Jazz supposes answers the question of if he told her about it or not. “Like waaaaay more feelings than I personally have ever had, to be clear. Way more . . . science-y shit feelings? Like—way more experience with being around science-y shit feelings?”
“Oh,” Jazz says, and feels a little . . . off, suddenly.
“Just askin’,” Dani says with a shrug, stuffing her hands into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. “Or, like. Sayin’, I guess.”
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Jazz doesn’t know how she feels about that conversation, later, though it’s not much of a conversation either way.
Well, Dani doesn’t usually get too into that kind of talk, really. The complicated and messy and emotional kind of talk, Jazz means.
And, well . . . neither does Zero 13, does he.
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“Do my questions bother you?” Jazz asks the next time she sees Zero 13, because she’s feeling kind of guilty and also she’s not going to find out if she doesn’t ask.
“No,” he says, which is a relief, but also makes her annoyed at herself for stressing out over nothing.
“I told Dani,” she grumbles.
“Hm?” Zero 13 frowns, cocking his head to one side.
“She just—asked,” Jazz says, and sighs to herself.
“Naw, naw, dunno why she’d think that,” Zero 13 says, waving the idea off dismissively. “What’s there to mind? Means I’m useful, right?”
“. . . elaborate on that comment, please,” Jazz says.
“Just you’ll keep liking me as long as I’m still useful, right?” Zero 13 says like what he’s saying is in any way a reasonable thing to be saying, and Jazz feels outright nauseous. “And like, obviously I want you to keep liking me. So I don’t mind the questions, naw.”
Jazz has some regrets about these case-study dates, she thinks. And not the kind of regrets she usually ends up having when she dates somebody.
Well, it’s a lot different from this side of the equation, she thinks.
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“Did you know if your exes all try to rob, eat, or sacrifice you, you actually won’t end up being very good at dating or looking out for someone else’s emotional well-being?” Jazz asks, feeling a bit pathetic about it.
“Well, my two latest exes are currently in a ride-or-die situationship with each other and their goth-girl bestie and I genuinely can’t tell if I’m invited or not, so from a certain point of view: sure, I guess,” Val replies dryly, raising an eyebrow at her. “Though is that actually useful information to you right now or do you just wanna eat ice cream and do our nails and vent about boys?”
“I mean, if you’re not sure if you’re invited, doesn’t that imply also venting about girls?” Jazz asks, frowning in concern. “I don’t really know how to do that, I don’t actually think Gorgie had a gender but everyone else I dated was definitely a guy.”
“Do you want me to bother with doing actual nail art or not, Fenton?”
“Fair point.”
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Jazz reviews her notes on Zero 13; compares her notes on Zero 13. There are exactly two ghosts who she she’s taken more notes on than she has on him, and those “ghosts” are, in fact, Danny and Dani, who really only halfway count and she’s seen a lot more of either way. Technically she also has more “notes” on Vlad, but only in the sense she’s processed a lot of her pissed-off feelings at that asshole via stream-of-consciousness journaling about how much he sucks.
It’s technically reasonable, that she has so many notes on Zero 13. Most ghosts actually do things with their time and are therefore not available 24/7/365 for case-study dates, unlike Zero 13, so of course she’d have taken a lot of notes on him. And it’s been months since they met now, so again, of course she has a lot of notes on him.
Though probably the parts where she took notes on his least-favorite color and taste in ecto-drinks and various mentioned interests and doodled a determined little cartoon version of him running after a blob ghost with a net are a little more damning, Jazz has to admit. If nothing else, it’s not very professional notetaking for an impending ecto-psychologist/current Ghost Queen Regent.
That’s . . . possibly an issue, yeah.
Or definitely an issue. That’s . . . very definitely an issue, yeah.
Well, shoot.
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She should probably go find him, but she’s not really sure what she’s going to do once she does.
Though . . . well, she does have a lot of notes to source ideas from, she supposes.
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Jazz somewhat ridiculously packs a picnic for their next case-study date, by which she means she throws some ecto-netguns in a basket with a couple of water bottles and mostly not-resurrected sandwiches and a big bag of chips and box of cookies and then drags Zero 13 out blob-catching.
Well—she says “drags”, because Corey always needed dragged to anything she wanted to do, but Zero 13 is pretty agreeable about the process. He mostly just seems confused, which only lasts until she explains how blob-catching works and what it involves, and after that he’s surprisingly motivated about it.
Zero 13 manages to catch—well, exactly zero blob ghosts, in fact, but he doesn’t complain about Jazz carrying most of the heavy gear or seem to feel particularly emasculated by her catches. Which—yes, definitely he gets frustrated and irritated and very literally pouts over his own endless list of misses, but he doesn’t take that frustration out on her.
Ancients, the bar really is on the floor, Jazz notes resignedly, but can’t help appreciating it anyway.
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.
“Don’t you have any questions this time?” Zero 13 asks as they split the cookies instead of actually bothering with their sandwiches yet, and Jazz shrugs.
“I don’t want to only ask you questions,” she says, then amends: “Well, mostly I don’t. I really do have a lot of questions. But that’s not very—mm, respectful, if that’s all I ever do with you?”
“I really don’t mind,” Zero 13 says with a frown, looking actually self-conscious for once. “Like, it’s not just that I want you to keep liking me, I mean. Just—I dunno. You’re like the only person I’ve ever met who thought I was interesting enough to ask shit about anyway. Uh. As far as I remember, anyway.”
“. . . we can do another case-study date next time, how about,” Jazz suggests, because she doesn’t really know how else to respond to that without risking making Zero 13 feel like she’s pitying him or something. “We’ll just take a break from it today.”
Zero 13 grins at her over that, so hopefully that means she’s doing this right.
“Does that mean I get to ask you questions today, boo?” he asks. Jazz, unfortunately, experiences an entire migration’s worth of butterflies in her stomach over that.
“If you want, I guess,” she says, and he grins even wider.
“Cool,” he says.
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.
Zero 13’s questions are a lot less invasive than most of hers were, Jazz has to admit, but somehow feel a lot more flustering to hear.
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Zero 13 lends her his jacket on their way back from blob-catching and she ends up all swallowed up by the electric-humming leather of it, because even if she’s got a few inches of height on him, Zero 13 is still a very big, broad dude mostly composed of muscle and muscle and also, just to mix it up, a touch of muscle.
“The last time a guy gave me his jacket didn’t actually go all that well for me,” she mentions, inspecting the cuff of her borrowed sleeve, and Zero 13 laughs.
“Hey, no one said I gave you that jacket, boo, I like that jacket,” he says. “That jacket is a loan, got it?”
Jazz laughs embarrassingly hard at that, probably, but can’t really help it. He laughs again too, and his sunglasses are shoved up into his hair and his grin is wide and gold-accented and his eyes are faceted and bright and aren’t her favorite color, but might just be her favorite color right now.
It’s sort of embarrassing that she only realizes she’s never kissed him before once she actually kisses him.
“Oh,” he says, and then he blinks at her, and then he outright beams at her. She feels warm and ridiculous and like she’s swallowed another entire migration of butterflies, and they both laugh again, and then he kisses her, and his mouth is cool and electric and just so nice against hers that she barely even knows what to do with it.
She can feel him smiling into the kiss, and can’t help smiling back.
And then she doesn’t feel anything at all.
Jazz’s eyes blink open reflexively, and she stares at . . . nothing, because there’s suddenly nothing there.
Because Zero 13 suddenly isn’t there. She’s still wearing his jacket and her mouth still feels just-kissed, but Zero 13 himself is absolutely nowhere to be seen.
What?
. . . no stupid pun intended, but what the hell, did she just get ghosted here?
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.
. . . she didn’t, did she?
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Zero 13 doesn’t come back. Doesn’t come visit. Doesn’t come around; isn’t anywhere she’d normally find him.
He said the jacket was a loan, she thinks, and also thinks—you KNEW better, you idiot.
She was supposed to have, anyway.
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.
A week and a half later, Jazz is in her office and not talking about this to anyone, Danny, and perfectly, perfectly fine, and also writing the worst research paper of her entire adult life.
( he said it was a LOAN, and he kissed her back, and— )
She is perfectly, perfectly fine.
Jazz keeps telling herself that through three separate drafts of the same paper and two failed study breaks, and then Zero 13 doesn’t come in her window out of nowhere like all the times he did before.
For a second, though, she thinks he has.
“Mismatch?” she says, staring blankly at him where he’s crouched on her windowsill and staring back at her. He looks—weird. Sort of . . . twitchy, almost. Sort of—flickery, almost.
She’s never actually seen him without Zero 13 before, she realizes.
“Are you—okay, Mismatch?” she asks warily, and he flickers again, his face flashing through various different expressions as he does. None of them seem to really fit together.
“You’re still saying my name wrong,” Mismatch says, and also says, “Queen say Match’s name right,” at the exact same time. His voice comes out echoed and doubled-up—his voices come out echoed and doubled-up; the same one, but in two different tones—the same voice, but one version of it clear and the other version of it gravelly, and both of them explicitly contradicting what the other one says.
Jazz just keeps staring at him, actually almost startled enough to forget what she was just so upset about.
“You can talk?” she asks.
“No,” Mismatch says, and also, “Yes,” Mismatch says. Or . . .
“Your name really is Match?” she asks. Mismatch—or Match—looks irritated, and flickers. He doesn’t say anything else.
The flickering, though . . .
“Is something wrong with Zero 13?” Jazz asks warily, pushing her chair back a bit from her desk. Match gives her a look like he thinks she’s stupid, and then flickers so badly that his skin looks cracked.
His coloring flickers too, and switches back and forth between his own and Zero 13’s, and then for one moment holds as just Zero 13’s, but without those familiar bright orange facets in his eyes; they’re all white sclera, no pupil or iris to be seen.
It’s unsettling.
It’s also definitely something that’s going to require the library. And right now, Jazz means the palace library.
Though if it comes to it, frankly, she’s perfectly willing to kick down the door of Ghost Writer’s manor and just go from there.
She’d thought he’d disappeared on her on purpose, because of course the other shoe was finally going to drop as soon as she’d let herself think it might not this time, but looking at—Match . . .
Looking at Match, she doesn’t think that anymore.
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“I cannot believe I am doing this much weird ghost-research to find your boyfriend,” Danny gripes from the middle of the pile of books and paperwork currently smothering Jazz’s entire office. She has zero sympathy in several ways and for several reasons.
“I told you, he’s not my boyfriend,” she says irritably, not looking up from the scroll she’s currently skimming for useful information, or just any information. Neither seems to be forthcoming.
“You literally showed up to hassle me and Dani into helping you out while wearing the dude’s jacket,” Danny says. “You are still wearing the dude’s jacket, in fact, spikes and all.”
“It’s a pretty sick jacket,” Dani says reasonably, peering up over the haphazard stack of books piled up next to Jazz’s chair. “Like if he dumped you I think it’s fair you get to keep the jacket. Salvage, right?”
“He didn’t dump me, because we are not dating!” Jazz says in exasperation, then gestures pointedly across the office with the scroll she’s holding, because “across the office” is where Match has been sitting on her couch while flickering in and out of existence more and more frequently. It seems to be getting worse, and at this point she’s not even sure if he can really see or hear the rest of them; not even sure he’s really there enough to be thinking.
So that’s a little horrifying, considering. And also extremely concerning, but it’s mostly the horrifying parts that are what Jazz is getting stuck on, to be honest.
She’s still not even sure he’s really a person of his own, but that doesn’t mean she likes seeing him like this.
“Clearly something is wrong, Misma—Match, I mean—Match is doing that,” she says in frustration. “And I’ve seen Zero 13 around without him before, but I’ve never seen him around without Zero 13. Like, Zero 13 would always say he was somewhere else and maybe he actually even was, but he never came and saw me without Zero 13 before now, and he definitely never acted like this!”
“Oh yeah, that’s straight-up terrifying,” Dani agrees conversationally, and if there weren’t quite so much tightness in the corners of her mouth, her voice would sound pretty convincingly casual. “Totally for no reason, by the way, but if he starts melting, I call dibs on running for the hills before I develop, like, double-PTSD about that shit.”
“Please don’t start melting, dude,” Danny mutters under his breath in Match’s direction. Match doesn’t respond; doesn’t look at any of them at all. Jazz can’t tell if Match is looking at anything right now, given the disturbing way that his eyes have whited out again.
She doesn’t know what’s happening to him, but she knows it has something to do with whatever happened to Zero 13.
Zero 13 disappeared in a single blink and never came back, though, so she doesn’t know what’s different about Match. Maybe she should’ve thought to ask him if he had a core before all this.
It might be too late to ask Match anything like that now, though.
It might be too late to ever ask Zero 13 anything again, now.
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Jazz takes very, very thorough notes, and Match keeps flickering in and out on the couch.
She tells herself that as long as he’s still there, then Zero 13 must be somewhere they can find him. Must be somewhere they can help him, if he needs it. She knows he needs it, because he’d never have let anything like this happen to Match if he could help it. Even if he actually would disappear like that on her, he wouldn’t disappear like that on him.
And, well . . . he did tell her the jacket was just a loan, before.
So he has to come back, at least for that.
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“Oh,” Danny says, and blinks at the old, battered-looking tablet in his hands. Jazz doesn’t even know where it came from, but her head still jerks up immediately in response to the change in his tone.
“What is it?” she demands.
“Uh,” he says, still staring at the tablet he’s holding with a downright perplexed expression, for lack of a better description. “So like, I know you were worried that Zero 13 got, like, unmade or something, but I think actually he might’ve, uh . . . un-died, maybe.”
“. . . what,” Jazz says blankly.
“The fuck?” Dani says.
Match doesn’t say anything; doesn’t look at any of them, just keeps staring at maybe-nothing with whited-out eyes. Jazz’s stomach twists unpleasantly over it.
“Uhhhhh,” Danny says, which is not helpful.
“More information, please, Danny,” Jazz says, and barely manages not to snap her pen. Her ring is turning a lot of colors, and her eyes and hair are both sparking right now.
Or maybe it’s a little more like they’re burning, actually.
“You’re assuming I have more information!” Danny says defensively. “Just—I don’t even know where this thing came from, I’ve never seen anything like this in the library before. Literally, there is nothing digital in that stupid library!”
“How often are you actually looking for anything in the library?” Dani asks, though she’s already eyeing the tablet suspiciously. Jazz does not even slightly care where it came from, if it might have answers. “Geez, though, what kind of tablet even is that? That thing looks like it’s a freaking thousand years old.”
Match’s head snaps towards Dani, whited-out eyes wide and intent, and his whole body flickers as his sclerae both bleed black and his irises light up even bluer than they started.
The crown burns in Jazz’s hair.
Or Jazz’s hair burns around the crown, maybe.
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“Are you seriously about to run off with the Creep Stick and your boytoy’s jacket and literally nothing else for backup?” Danny asks incredulously from the doorway of Jazz’s bedroom in the castle. She mostly just uses it for storage, honestly, but it’s still her room all the same, and she definitely stores useful things in it. “That’s seriously the best plan you’ve got?”
“I’m also going to grab Mom’s bike and both of the new ecto-guns Tucker made me when I get back through the portal,” Jazz replies matter-of-factly, not looking up from the process of jamming everything she needs right now into a duffel bag. “And probably Dani and Match, if they’ll come.”
“Hold up, what the hell, those were both supposed to be guns?” Danny asks in alarm. “I thought the big one was like, I dunno, a freaking rocket launcher or something!”
“He had a little trouble restraining himself to purse-sized,” Jazz says, yanking the zipper of her bag shut.
“A little?!” Danny demands.
“Someone with a claim to the throne needs to stay in the Ghost Zone, Danny, and I am not staying in the Ghost Zone when my boyfriend’s gone and un-died on me!” she snaps at him. Danny doesn’t even give her a pointed look or call her out over actually using the word “boyfriend” this time. She wouldn’t care right now anyway, just—she can call Zero 13 that if she wants, dammit.
“Maybe you should, though?” Danny says. “Just like, maybe I should go, considering, uh . . .”
“Considering what?!” Jazz snaps again.
“We just still don’t actually know what he died of,” Danny says. “Or, uh . . . what he un-died of.”
“So what?” she demands impatiently. That is her dead boyfriend, okay, and she liked him that way! “I don’t care what he died of, Danny, I care about making sure he’s alright. Of every reason a guy’s ever been a terrible datemate to me, un-dying is the most buck-wild and ‘what the hell’ one, but being alive is only a temporary condition anyway, so what do I care? I just don’t want to wait an entire natural lifespan minus nineteen years to get my boyfriend back!”
“No, like—I mean he was in the Zone when he got brought back, Jazz,” Danny says carefully. “Like deep in it. And like, the dude’s been here a while, and been around us for a while. And also, y’know, the crown and ring and all.”
“. . . so?” Jazz says again, and frowns a little. What is he . . .?
“So why does Mismatch’s coloring keep switching up right now?” Danny asks, and Jazz . . . pauses.
Match’s coloring is the opposite of Zero 13’s, that’s all. It’s been the opposite of Zero 13’s, ever since he first happened.
. . . and Phantom’s coloring is . . .
“Oh,” Jazz says, and blinks at him. “Do you really think . . .?”
“I have literally no idea whatsoever,” Danny answers with a helpless shrug, turning his hands half-up in the air between them. “Just—I dunno, Jazz. I’ve got a weird feeling about it.”
Jazz blinks again, and looks at him for one more long, drawn-out moment. Then she turns back around, shoves her notebook and backup notebook into her bag, and grabs the Fenton Creep Stick off her mattress to shove in with them.
“I have exactly one feeling about this, Danny,” she tells him, because she does, in fact, have exactly one feeling about this. And she still knows better than this too, but she has notebooks of how much she also knows Zero 13.
He’d told her that he wanted her to keep liking him, and he’d told her that he didn’t think he was a real person, and he’d smiled into it when he’d kissed her.
Her hair blazes around her head, and so does the crown.
The ring on her hand is bright, bright orange, and the cut is faceted in a different way than it’s ever been before.