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Also...these panels

Waitress taking my order: Such arrogance! Not only do you presume to boast under the guise of being humble, but your order employs the most decadent of linguistic excesses - the tautology!

My date, who until recently thought "tautology" referred to the study of tensile strengths and upon learning her mistake compensated by reading through its Wikipedia article: That would be more correctly identified as a "pleonasm".

The editor I hired to curate my posts who styles himself as a sort of scheming court advisor: My liege, this one is getting away from us. The punchline loses much of its impact when the rest of the joke is derailed by this increasingly self-indulgent meta humour. Were it up to me, your Grace, which of course it is not, I would cut the others and leave myself as the only supporting character. You need noone else, Your Majesty...

The GIW knows Amity Park is a huge fraud. The “most haunted city in the US”, really? They’ve been checking the place out for decades with nary a peep aside from that couple of crazy scientists that moved into town around twenty years prior.

Because of this, the town became a punishment duty. One of their agents causes trouble? They get put in time out and sent to work for a while in Amity Park. Let those idiots chase after pointless rumors while the actually competent agents work with the more important ghosts. The reports back from the town get barely more than a cursory glance before getting tossed in the shredder.

…Which really came back to bite them when ghosts did actually start to show up, and they didn’t realize until after the Amity Park branch had royally screwed up the situation.

Fuck, they really hope this doesn’t start a war.

That’s not a normal thing to do, Stewart. No one cares about the file room, Stewart. Get back to analyzing the anomalies in the tri-state area, Stewart. Well, to hell with the naysayers! The file system needed to be organized and Evan was going to do it.

…Okay, but it was really boring. Evan had been working on nothing else for almost five hours now, and his eyes were starting to cross from sorting out all the dates and locations. Even the fact that they were all cool reports of things like Mothman sightings and agitated spirits could only do so much to ease the endless stream of sequential numbers.

He found a breath of relief when he accidentally dug up the Amity Park box and snickered to himself. This should be good; the gossamer-thin veil between Amity Park and the spirit realm meant that the area needed to be monitored, but nothing interesting there had happened. Ever. Not once since the GIW had first been founded in the 50’s. So the place had been relegated to a sort of punishment duty, the GIW equivalent to weeks-long stakeouts with little guarantee of payoff. The reports were usually filed without being read.

Evan settled in to read a long series of resentful reports from disciplined agents being sent on wild goose chases, smirking to himself. The smirk didn’t last three reports.

Twenty minutes later, Evan picked up the whole box and ran to the analytics department, sweating bullets.

---------

“So this is the situation,” Juno began, doing her best to appear unruffled, despite the fact that they were in an emergency meeting almost two hours after the workday should’ve been over. “Twenty-four years ago, Dr. Jack Fenton and Dr. Madeline Fenton theorize that the spirit realm could be reached through a man-made portal. Their prototype explodes in their lab partner’s face. We laugh at them and forget about it.” She paused, glancing across the room. No one was laughing now. “Four years ago, they managed it.”

Juno had worked for the GIW for more than forty years. She’d been the head of the analytics department for almost twenty, working as the communications hub between research, spiritual relations, and security. She thought she’d seen it all by now. The situation at Amity Park? Was like nothing she’d even imagined.

“How the f-” Byron caught the boss’ eye and stopped himself. “How?”

“That’s not the main problem right now,” Juno said. The research department would be looking into it, of course, but there were more immediate concerns. “Obviously, with a permanent portal open between the human world and the spirit realm, all hell broke loose, literally. There are ghost attacks, plural, every day.”

“How many fatalities?” Paul asked, leaning back in his seat with a grim look. As head of security, he’d probably seen his fair share of agitated ghosts, and some of them could get nasty.

Individual spirits could usually be appeased without too much trouble, contained if necessary, but a flood of spirits straight from the spirit realm? Even a well-staffed branch like New Orleans or San Francisco would struggle. Amity Park had a skeleton crew.

“So far? None,” Juno said. She folded her arms behind her back with a sigh. “By some miracle, the actual grace of God, I assume, a guardian spirit took up a post there very early on. Judging from the descriptions, he’s newly dead, five years at most, and it must have been brutal, because he’s keeping everything in check almost single-handedly and despite the interference of amateur ghost hunters. The… poor quality of the information is making it difficult to discern what his exact criteria are, but our leading theory suggests that he’s a peacekeeper of some kind.”

Meaning he wanted everyone to be safe, which was a godsend in the current situation. Most guardian spirits weren’t so forgiving, even if they tended to be more morally driven than other ghosts.

Leon, the GIW head, sighed and rubbed his forehead. He was the only one there who’d been on board longer than Juno, going from research to security to analytics before finally settling into a leadership role. He’d been the one to establish deescalation as the primary protocol of the GIW. “And dare I ask what the Amity branch was doing during all this?”

“I’m so glad you did!” Juno chirped, a vein pulsing in her temple. “They’re among the amateur ghost hunters shooting at the guardian spirit. They’ve decided to detain him for experimentation and execution. For some fucking reason.”

She allowed them all a minute to absorb that. Several heads went ‘thunk’ on the tables. Some composure had apparently been lost as they transitioned to overtime.

“What course of action do you recommend, Agent J?” Leon asked tiredly. They’d worked together for long enough that he trusted her judgment.

“We need to send a new, competent team out to Amity Park,” Juno said. “I’ll have some recommendations on your desk by tomorrow afternoon. I suggest only transferring in agents with excellent spiritual relations skills, and as few combat agents as we can get away with. Trust me, if half the reports are true, that guardian spirit doesn’t need any help on that front, and he’ll only feel threatened by them. We’ll need to do a full internal review of the Amity base staff, but most likely the whole branch will have to go. After that, we need to speak with the Fentons and the Red Huntress, as well as the guardian spirit that now essentially owns Amity Park. This situation needs to be deescalated yesterday. And Agent Lambda?”

Leon raised an eyebrow, and Juno took a deep breath.

These were not the right circumstances. One of Amity’s ‘repeat visitors,’ a ghost identifying himself as Technus, had taken over a parking lot and was loudly declaring his intent to become a Transformer. He was making a surprising amount of progress.

“Introducing you to those movies was a mistake!” Phantom yelled, and then rammed into the construct feet-first at a high enough velocity that it went crashing down with an indignant shout.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Agent T asked Elena, not taking her brown eyes off the fight. Her honey-blonde hair was braided back, out of her face, and she tugged nervously on the end, unintentionally betraying her discomfort with the proximity of the fight.

Elena considered. She had sixteen years’ experience to T’s four, all in one of the GIW’s most active branches, so it wasn’t unusual for the younger agent to check with her. “After Hurricane Katrina,” she said after a moment. “That riled up most of the spirits in the area, it wasn’t pretty. But these two seem to be in a pretty good mood; I think they’re playing. You don’t usually see ghosts blow this much power on play.”

“I WILL BECOME TECHNUS PRIME!” Technus screamed. “AND CONQUER THIS TINY HUMAN PLANET!”

“You missed the whole point of the movie, dude!”

Agent T whistled, twisting her braid hard. “I would hate to see either of them in a bad mood.”

Elena watched Technus fending Phantom off with one hand while he psychically tore the cars apart and fused them back together in a more Transformer-like shape. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Find a way to keep everyone happy. If all this guy wants is to play with human tech and pretend to be a Transformer, we’ll drag together a junkyard just for him. I’ve done more work to appease weaker ghosts, honestly.”

“Is it that easy?” Agent T looked rightfully doubtful.

“No,” Elena admitted. She blew a black lock out of her face with a grimace. She’d need to pick up more hair ties; there was too much action here to leave it down. “For one thing, I think he came here to play with Phantom.”

Agent T frowned. “What makes you say that?”

Elena nodded at the bickering ghosts. “Most ghosts that you find in the material world are either bound here, like Phantom, or they fell through a natural portal and got stuck. Technus isn’t either of those - and he’s not trying to stay here, so he’s visiting. But he came here for a reason. Either he actually wants to be a Transformer, which he could probably do in the spirit realm, or he wants to fight Phantom.”

Phantom smashed through one of the Transformer’s arms, sending the dangling portion crashing to the ground. Technus swatted him away hard enough to crack the trunk of the tree he hit, then started trying to rebuild the broken arm.

“This is crazier than that guy that wanted us to reassemble his beanie baby collection,” T muttered.

“Not getting cold feet, are you, T? I thought you were all excited about the research opportunities here.” Elena wasn’t really surprised. Amity Park and all that it promised would be overwhelming for most agents, even the more experienced ones.

Agent T huffed. “No! Just… processing. These ghosts are so next-level powerful that it’s hard to grasp that they’re the same thing as always. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ghost do more than shatter windows before.”

Elena gave her a reassuring smile. “Maybe it’s easier when you’ve seen the full scale,” she said. “Focus less on the destruction, more on what drives them. Ghosts don’t do anything they don’t want to do, so figure out what their goal is and help them out. I promise you, they’re all just people underneath the fuss. These two? They’re just roughhousing, and they’re-” She winced as Phantom’s body cracked a concrete wall. “-getting a little careless with it.” She grinned. “Boys being boys.”

“Boys being boys,” Agent T muttered incredulously, but she did seem more relaxed after that.

Elena leaned back to watch the encounter. Like she’d said, ghosts usually reserved displays of power like this for when they were actually upset. But these two had essentially unlimited access to ectoplasm, and so there was nothing stopping them from expending as much as they wanted. It was, in its own way, fascinating. There were so many unusual dynamics at play here. If the last guys hadn’t stirred up the locals so bad, this would’ve become their most active research facility overnight.

Soon after, Phantom phased through Technus’ Transformer, and Technus came tumbling out with an outraged wail. Phantom tossed him, then kicked him into the ground and grabbed something off his hip - a capture device, the ‘Fenton Thermos,’ that seemed to be his signature.

“Next time I’ll show you Star Trek,” Phantom promised Technus, and then caught him in the miniature vortex. Technus wailed indignantly as he was pulled inside, and then Phantom attached the thermos back onto his belt.

Belatedly, Elena registered that the fight was over, which meant-

“Wait, oh shit, oh shit,” Elena muttered, hurrying back to the van and gesturing for Agent T to do the same. T did so without question, but it was too late; by the time they’d started it up, Phantom was already gone. Elena set her head against the wheel and sighed. “Ah, hell.”

Decisively, Elena stopped it and got out early, hands in the air, and they let her approach - thirty feet, twenty feet. Phantom slid in front of the other ghosts and took a guarded stance, and the biker pulled his girlfriend onto the bike and revved it with a glare, but if that was as hostile as things got, Elena would count it as a win.

“Hey,” she called out, keeping her voice calm. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’d like to do the polite thing and make a tribute to the guardian spirit before we officially settle into his territory. It’s okay if you and your death-bound stick around, I know you probably don’t want me around anyone so newly dead.”

She was maybe laying it on a little thick, but people tended to sit up and take notice when you used the same cultural terms that they did, and ghosts were no different. It was a form of respect, to match language with someone, and she did her best - tribute, guardian spirit, his territory, death-bound, newly dead. Terms that ghosts used to talk about themselves, which were almost always distinct from the language used by both ectologists and spiritualists. (GIW agents usually fell into a bastardized blend of all three.)

And sure enough, she caught their attention. The biker and his girl exchanged a baffled look, and Phantom gave the other two a quick glance before returning his attention to Elena, still wary but not quite as defensive.

“Is this a joke?” Phantom asked sharply. His voice echoed faintly, resonating with itself. “You’re the Guys in White. You might be new here, but I recognize those uniforms. You’ve been here almost as long as I have.”

Elena took a deep breath. The trick would be explaining it simply enough that the young ghost wouldn’t lose patience with them, but thoroughly enough to give them a second chance. “No jokes here,” she promised, hiding her nerves the best she could. If any of these ghosts lashed out… “The local admin, Agent Alpha, has been operating against official GIW policy for years now. He and everyone that worked under him has been fired. We’re moving ahead now with approved protocols, starting with making an offering to any guardian spirits that have settled in the area.”

Phantom scowled at her, unimpressed. This close, she could see that mist was wisping off the ends of Phantom’s hair, the start of a morph. His wary snarl bared fangs, and his skin was tinted a faint green. It was fascinating to see such a young ghost so clearly; the green ran along illusory veins, barely visible in his temple and cheeks.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Phantom snapped. His ectoplasmic gaze was piercing; Elena had never seen eyes so vivid before. “Get the heck out of here.”

Elena winced. This wasn’t going well. But the female ghost’s eyes narrowed, studying her and her partner with sharp eyes. T shifted nervously, taking half a step back before stopping herself.

“Phantom, wait.” Phantom raised his eyebrows at the woman, but nodded once, and she continued, “You mentioned a tribute, right? Let’s see if it’s something worth having.” Her derisive tone said she doubted it, but honestly, it wasn’t anything Elena wasn’t used to hearing from more powerful ghosts.

“What the heck is a tribute?” Phantom hissed to the woman. Both she and the biker ghost snorted.

He was seventeen, Elena thought, maybe eighteen at a stretch. Edging into adulthood, but baby fat clung to his cheeks and softened his face, and his shoulders weren’t as broad as they might have become. With both feet on the ground, his image crystal clear, she again thought that she could have mistaken him for human, but for the bright glow that cast shadows even in the light of day.

She couldn’t even call it an uncanny valley effect; the resemblance was comforting rather than unsettling, and a part of her wanted to step forward and hug him. She held herself back. This was a guardian spirit, not a human child.

“It’s how you curry favor with a powerful ghost,” the biker ghost said, low enough that Elena almost couldn’t hear. They were still uncomfortably tense, Phantom not taking his eyes off her even as he listened. “We’re too backwater to do that around here, there didn’t used to be anyone worth buttering up like that, but people do it to ask to move onto someone’s territory or for help with a problem or something.”

“Didn’t used to be?” Phantom echoed, brow furrowed, and both ghosts rolled their eyes at him. Elena hid a smile and noted to herself that despite Phantom’s considerable power, typical age dynamics seemed to play out between him and the older spirits.

“So, human, what did you bring?” the female ghost demanded, tapping her foot impatiently.

Elena slipped her hand into her bag, swallowing nervously as all three ghosts followed the motion. Then she pulled out the offering HQ had provided, and both older ghosts whistled in impressed unison. No recognition in the guardian spirit’s eyes, though; they were lucky the other two were here.

“Damn, alright,” the biker huffed, and elbowed Phantom in the side. Phantom grunted in irritation and hopped a few steps away, like a kid. “Take it. That’s Angel’s Ambrosia. Most ghosts never even see one of these.”

Phantom didn’t look convinced, but he held out his hand. Elena tossed it over: a small, round fruit that looked a lot like a mangosteen, but with a sky blue rind. It split easily under Phantom’s hands, revealing the honey-colored fruit, segmented like a tangerine and glowing faintly.

“Define nonviolent.” Phantom’s suspicious look didn’t waver. Given what ghosts were like around here, Elena supposed it made sense.

“Lizzie was agitated, and things were flying, but she hadn’t attacked anyone outright,” Elena clarified. As she’d hoped, Phantom’s shoulders loosened subtly at the way she referred to the other ghost. “Official policy says that no one fires on a ghost unless they attack someone directly, and to only subdue them if they’re actively endangering civilians.” It wasn’t usually a firing offense, but Maya really was particularly strict.

The other two ghosts looked bored now, but something about the way they stood on either side of Phantom told Elena that they were still tense. A third ghost morphed out of the biker’s shadow and begged, and Phantom gave them a segment of the fruit without looking. It was still cupped in his hands, untouched save what he’d shared with the others.

“The other agents… they were rushed out, weren’t they? How many are moving in?” Phantom asked. His voice snapped out like a whip, confident and demanding, far from the playful quips that usually characterized him.

“Six,” T said, from Elena’s right. Phantom’s attention shot to her, and she met his eyes. (Challenge behavior; Elena would have to warn her about that.) “Along with us and Agent Mu, there are two scientists, Agents G and N. Agent G is spiritually sensitive.” Phantom’s brow furrowed, and T caught on before Elena did. “That is, he can sense the presence of ghosts and liminals. And Agent S, the combat agent, is for legal reasons. He’ll stay on base when in uniform.” Phantom scowled, but didn’t verbally object.

“The scientists. What do they do? What are their specialties?” Phantom asked sharply. It was a fair question considering what Agent Alpha had directed the previous science staff to do. Elena suppressed a shudder. Standard cleanup hadn’t been enough to get rid of what those guys had left behind.

“Agent N is an ectopsychologist,” T answered calmly. “He studies ghost behavior on an individual and group level. The unusual ghost interactions here present a unique opportunity on that front. Agent G specializes in ectoradiation. This area is saturated in it, and we’d like to make sure there are no adverse effects.” There was a long list of GIW scientists clamoring to visit Amity Park already, but they needed to keep the staff limited and harmless for the moment.

Phantom considered them for a moment, then nodded sharply, apparently deeming them acceptable. “What do you want?” he asked, no less wary but dropping the protective steel edge he’d had before. Tellingly, all three other ghosts relaxed, stepping away out of their tight formation.

Phantom finally picked out one of the segments and popped it into his mouth, and his eyes actually closed for a moment, letting out a pleased moan. Elena smiled to herself. Supposedly, something about the fruit resonated with a ghost’s core, and it tasted like bliss.

“We’re hoping to establish peaceful relations with you,” T said, still unwavering. Hands at her sides, but palms forward, open. Relaxed. “The situation at Amity Park needs to be deescalated; it’s too volatile right now. If anything happens to you, everything comes crashing down.” Phantom’s scowl said this wasn’t news to him. “We’ll talk to the Fentons and the Red Huntress, try to get them to calm down. You keep doing what you’re doing. Is that acceptable?”

Phantom tilted his head, studying them. “What’s the catch?”

They exchanged a look. Agent T shifted uneasily, and Elena shook her head, trying to reassure her. Typical guardian spirit behavior - they tended towards paranoia.

“We’ll be a lot more active in town than the last guys,” Elena said at last, looking back at Phantom. “They kept to themselves when they weren’t hunting, right? But you’ll probably see us around town a lot. We’ll be doing PR work, teaching people about ghosts-” Phantom scowled harder. “-the real stuff about ghosts, the way you talk about yourselves.” The scowl eased, but he was still frowning. “And we might suggest some changes to try and keep damages down. There are less destructive ways to keep ghosts happy.”

“…You can stay,” Phantom decided, eyes narrowed. He cupped the rest of the fruit against his chest possessively. “But I’ll be watching you.”

“You can even show up and ask questions if you’d like,” Elena promised him. “We’ll explain anything we’re doing to you.” It was important, very important, to get on this ghost’s good side and stay there. “Are there any rules we need to follow while we’re here?”

Phantom raised his eyebrows, like he was surprised to be asked, but he nodded.

“You don’t threaten anyone with a weapon, don’t capture any ghosts, don’t blackmail anyone,” he ordered. “If you start intimidating people, I’ll know about it.” That was somehow even more threatening. “And you two!” T jumped, but Phantom turned to the ghosts. “Don’t break anything, don’t scare anyone. The Red Huntress will be out at five. You have ‘til then. Thanks for the help.”

All three of them grinned at him.

“Don’t mention it,” the biker said, leaning forward on his bike. His girlfriend hopped behind him. “See you around, Phantom.”

He glanced at Elena and T, scowled at them, and disappeared. Phantom kicked off the ground, and did the same only seconds later. With that, they were alone.

Elena wiped the sweat off her brow.

Possible Ghost King Danny AU here and just like, the absolute drama when the G.I.W. learns that said protector spirit is also the literal king of all ghosts now.

Even if it’s not a Ghost King AU Still pleanty of shenanigans to go around when they find out that the ENTIRE TOWN ended up in the ghost zone, and Phantom fought off the literal ghost king to save the town (and his rogues). Like holly specters they need to be even more careful, because this ghost just broke the power scale.

Reveal shenanigans. Like, they eventually learn that Danny’s half humaan and not full ghost and on the one hand, fascinating, how does that even work? On the other hand, oh gods, this has been a literal child, still in school, keeping the town safe. Sure things have calmed down now, but the fights sure seemed serious in the beginning if those reports are to be believed. Also, wait, the protector spirit is the son of the ghost hunters who made the portal?! Is he safe?! They’re trying to dissect his ghost form! Oh my lord, he died how?!

---

Cory sprouted an enormous headache the moment he laid eyes on FentonWorks, and it only got worse the longer he looked at it. "What the hell is that."

Agent G shrugged, only a faint furrow in his brow betraying his thoughts. Cory sighed, resigned himself to the situation, and stepped forward to knock on the front door. He in no way wanted to be responsible for delivering a certified Official Apology to the Fenton family, but unfortunately the only available alternative was Agent G, which was out of the question.

No one answered the door. Cory hesitated, then pressed the doorbell. He listened for footsteps.

Cory nodded. "If he's that contaminated, they're lucky he never developed ectoplasmic oncosis," he said, referring to the last stage of ectocontamination poisoning. "Maybe children are better able to tolerate it on top of being more susceptible."

G shrugged, offering no further thoughts, so Cory tucked the thought away for later. If nothing else, he suspected this town would provide some data on that front as well. If only they'd been here from the beginning! Cory had never been so thankful for his flawless spiritual relations record. He might not be great with humans, but ghosts, Cory could be patient with.

"Soil samples?" Cory asked G.

"Soil samples," G agreed.

Very relevant indeed