#purpleillusn

     Jazz’s grip tightened around the book in her hands as she tried to drown out the sounds of her parents arguing. Last Christmas, the two adult Fentons had agreed to forget about their yearly arguments over Santa Clause. Unfortunately, they somehow moved on to arguing over Santa’s elves, which meant that the Christmas tradition of fighting over useless topics persisted, much to the exasperation of their two children.

     She could tell that Danny was trying his best not to be a Grinch after the events of last year, but after listening to around five minutes of how there was no way elves could survive the freezing north pole’s weather in those silly costumes of theirs unless they had fur or blubber, he eventually made the smart choice of spending the Christmas day out with Tucker and Sam. Unfortunately, since she had no close friends of her own, Jazz was unable to experience the same freedom. That was why she was in the living room now, sitting on a couch by herself with a book in her hands as her parents argued away.

     It became evident, once she had to reread the same sentence for the fifth time, that reading in the same room as her parents was impossible. She sighed and left the room, heading toward the stairs. She would have made a comment to her parents, but she doubted they would hear her when they were so invested in their debate.

     Halfway up the stairs, a sudden indoors breeze made her shiver—then something cold and wet landed on her shoulder. Of course, it couldn’t be snow because she was indoors and there didn’t seem to be any ice ghost around. Confused, she turned her head to look at what could have touched her shoulder. A small lump of glowing green goo greeted her.

     She jumped in surprise, nearly tripping down a step, before quickly wiping the substance off her shoulder. A green stain on her sweater was left in its place. She flapped her hand to shake the glowing goop off, and it was then that her eyes caught another stain on the stairs a few steps down. As her eyes traveled farther, she saw more and more green blotches roughly leading to the kitchen.

     She didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that this substance was ectoplasm. Why it was dripped in a trail inside her house was another matter entirely. From her experience hunting specters, she had seen only two forms of ectoplasm which leaked from ghosts. The first kind was in the form of saliva drooled by animal ghosts (which was unlikely to be the case, since there didn’t seem to be any canine phantom around). The second kind was in the form of a ghost’s blood.

     She felt a weight settle in her chest at that thought. Was this Danny’s blood? Did he get injured in a fight? But he said ghosts won’t attack on Christmas. Could he have been wrong? She cast a quick glance to the living room at her parents, but they seemed unaware of the ectoplasmic stains on the floor. Bringing her focus back to the stains, she bit her lip before deciding to follow them to the kitchen.

     Nothing was there, but she did see two more blotches on the floor. It was hard to tell because they were spaced apart, but they seemed to lead toward the basement, so that was where Jazz went. As she reached the basement’s door, she thought she heard clattering coming from below, and she hesitated, wondering what its source was doing. Steeling herself, she finally pushed the door open before cautiously stepping inside.

     Since nobody used the lab on Christmas, the lights were switched off. However, that didn’t mean the place was completely dark. Neon light came from the various ectoplasm in the lab—from the portal behind its striped blast doors, from the ectoplasm-storing weapons, from more stains scattered across the lab and from the thing these stains led to, which was…

     Jazz had to swallow back the bile that rose up her throat. There was a ghost in the basement, but a ghost of what, she wasn’t sure. It looked like it may have been humanoid at some point, but it was melting. Drops of bright ectoplasm fell from parts of its body which it failed to hold together, staining the floor where they hit. The melting ghost was frantically searching through her parents’ inventions, throwing metal scraps off tables and shelves, and Jazz realized that was the reason for the clattering she heard from the kitchen.

     She didn’t realize that her body was moving down the basement stairs until she accidentally skipped a step. She caught herself, but a loud sound echoed from her footstep as she did, alerting the ghost to her presence. It whipped around to face her—

     Jazz had to catch herself after seeing the ghost’s eyes. Though green eyes were not entirely uncommon among ghosts, there was something about the vivid, lime glow in this one’s pair that reminded her greatly of Danny. And they seemed scared. But before she could confirm if this really was her brother or not, the ghost vanished from sight.

     Jazz blinked. It was difficult to see in the dull glow of ectoplasm, so she reached for the light switch and flipped it. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling overhead turned on, giving her a clearer view of the mess that had been her parents’ lab. The girl turned her head in every angle in search for the disappeared phantom when a soft plop snapped her attention to a corner behind a shelf. There, another small blob of ectoplasm had fallen. More drops joined it in a small puddle of green; they were dripping from what appeared to be nothing, becoming visible as soon as they left the ghost’s main body.

     Slowly, Jazz made her way toward the spot. A smear in the green puddle told her that the ghost had moved, so she swiftly held up her hands in what she hoped was a placating gesture. “It’s alright,” she said. “I won’t hurt you.”

     There was a brief silence, and for a second Jazz wondered if maybe the ghost had left. But after a while, she heard an echoey voice ask, “You won’t?”

     It was a girl’s voice—a young one. She even sounded a bit like Danny when he was younger. Jazz turned to where she thought the voice came from and gave a gentle smile. “Just because I’m a Fenton doesn’t mean I’m as impulsive as my parents. If you want to talk to me, I’ll listen,” she told her. She wasn’t sure why she was being so gentle with a ghost—maybe it was because she reminded her somehow of Danny, or maybe it was because of the fear she saw briefly when their eyes met—but she had a feeling that this ghost was innocent and just wanted help.

     Another beat of silence. Jazz could almost feel the hesitation coming from the young ghost. Finally, the phantom let herself become visible again and floated in front of Jazz.

     Now that she was right in front of her and wasn’t disappearing from sight, Jazz was able to observe her appearance; and she found even more traits she shared with Danny, or at least a younger version of him. It was hard to pick them out at first due to all the melting, but she saw, in addition to the glowing green eyes, snow white hair and a faint splash of freckles across her face. She also wore a black-and-white suit akin to Danny’s, although her design was slightly different.

     As Jazz wondered why this ghost looked so much like Danny, a memory clicked in her brain—a story of one of Danny’s adventures which he had relayed to her one day. She remembered how she felt so fussy over her little brother after hearing what happened to him, and how angry she was at Vlad for having done such a thing. But her brother had shrugged it off and said that, on the bright side, at least he had a likeable half-ghost “cousin” now—the same cousin, Jazz was sure, that stood before her now.

     “I know, it looks kind of bad,” Dani said, pulling Jazz out of her thoughts. She had a sheepish smile on her face, although it looked like only half a smile since the other half was literally melting—which, by the way, her face was melting and yet the girl seemed fine by it. Jazz watched as she brought a hand up in a ‘wave it off’ gesture, and she had to swallow back bile when it caused ectoplasm to spray from her hand as she waved. “But don’t worry,” the ghost girl said, ignoring the amount of substance her body was losing, “I’ve totally got it.” Jazz didn’t seem convinced.

     “You’re melting,” Jazz pointed out, still horrified by the sight before her. The younger girl chuckled and brought a goopy hand to rub at her neck.

     “Yeah, I guess I am,” she admitted with a shrug. “…Okay, so maybe it is pretty bad. I’ve kinda been hoping I could find something here to fix me.” Quieter, she added, “Danny did last time.”

     “‘Last time’?” Jazz questioned, having heard her sentence. “So it’s not the first time this happened to you?”

     Dani looked away. “I’m…unstable,” she said after a moment. “Normally, I can keep myself together…but apparently not forever.”

     Jazz felt a surge of sympathy for the young girl, who currently seemed to be sinking lower into the ground as her body spread across the floor. Right. She was still melting. “You said Danny helped you last time,” Jazz pointed out. “How did he do that?”

     Dani scrunched her face (or what was left of it, anyway). “He used something called…Ecto Dejecto, I think,” she stated. “It sort of un-melted me.”

     Jazz nodded. Ecto Dejecto. She knew where that was…right? She always tried to pay careful attention to all her parents’ inventions in case they ever use it on her brother, but lately she’s been focused on prepping herself for college, so she wasn’t as attentive as she used to be. Her brows creased with worry as she tried to recall what Ecto Dejecto was and where her parents may have placed it. From the corner of her vision, she saw of Dani, who was more puddle than person now. The sight made her heart quicken its pace. She had to find this Dejecto thing now.

     She walked in big strides to one of the shelves and scanned the things sitting there. It was then that she realized she still didn’t know what the thing she was looking for looked like, so she turned to Dani (ignoring the churning in her stomach when she saw her) and asked, “Do you remember what it looked like?”

     “It was a liquid, in a needle,” she helpfully supplied. “Could you find it quickly, though? ‘Cause…” She didn’t need to finish her sentence.

     Jazz’s eyes zoomed past the entire shelf, but there wasn’t any needle she could find. She was missing something, she knew, but what? She shut her eyes, trying to remember anything about this Ecto Dejecto—and she did.

     With a bright glint in her eyes, she rushed toward a box in the corner of the lab where her parents dumped all their failed experiments. She rummaged through its contents, and when that took too long, she dumped them on the floor then rummaged through them again. There! A needle with a tape on it labelling it as Ecto Dejecto. She picked it up, hurried to where Dani was, felt startled when she saw that she had become no more than a green puddle, shook away her fear, and pushed the needle’s contents into the puddle that was Dani.

     At first, nothing happened. Then the puddle started to bubble. It continued to bubble, and Jazz began to fear that maybe she got the wrong needle in the dark—or, worse yet, that her parents might have perfected its original purpose of dissolving ghosts. But just as her heart was pounding and tears were beginning to form in the corners of her eyes, the green liquid began to rise, shaping itself into the form of a small girl. Jazz let out a deep breath she didn’t know she was holding, and the tears in her eyes did fall, but out of relief.

     As she watched, green turned to black, white, and tan, until Dani was once again herself, in one piece and fully solid this time. The ghost girl looked down at herself, flexed a hand experimentally, and when she was sure that it worked, a large grin broke out on her face. “Thank you!” she cried to Jazz, and she seemed to hold out her arms for a second, but then she hesitated and dropped them by her sides. Sensing her wanted embrace, Jazz smiled and pulled the girl into a hug. After a moment, the girl hugged back.

     “I’m just glad you’re fine,” Jazz said, “Danielle.”

     Dani pulled out of their hug to give her a surprised look. “You know who I am?”

     Jazz laughed. “Of course I do! Danny told me about you.”

     “Oh,” Dani said, then smacked her own forehead. “Right. Of course he did—you’re his sister.”

     Jazz giggled, enjoying the dumb expression on Dani’s face. “But hey, I guess that makes us sisters, too, right?” she said once her laughter died down. “I mean, Danny said you’re his clone, and I’m not an expert on genetics, but…”

     Dani thought about this and smiled. “Yeah…I guess we are,” she replied. She let a ring of light form around her waist, which then split and traveled up and down her body, turning her hair black, her eyes blue, and replacing her monochrome suit with a colorful hoodie and shorts. Jazz found herself faced with an almost-exact copy of a younger human Danny, wearing a smile that reached her eyes. “Sisters. I like that.”

     After getting over the surprise from her sudden transformation, Jazz smiled back. She understood, now, why Danny was willing to forget what Vlad did back then as long as it led to the creation of Dani; though she only just met her, she could tell that Dani was a sweet girl. Then Jazz broke their eye contact to look around at the lab, and she winced at the sight of scraps and gizmos scattered across the floor. “Yeah, we might have to clean this lab up pretty soon, or Mom and Dad will want to know what happened.”

     “If we’re sisters, then does that make them my mom and dad, too?” Dani asked excitedly, still wearing that grin on her face.

     “Well, sure, genetically,” Jazz said. That must have been a wrong thing to say, because Dani’s smile faded. Realizing what she said, Jazz quickly amended, “We could get them to adopt you, though! Just think about it. We could be real sisters, and you won’t have to live without a home anymore.”

     “Did Danny tell them his secret?”

     Now both the girls’ smiles were gone as that question sunk in. Of course, if they wanted to adopt Dani, then Jack and Maddie would want to know who she is, and there was no way they could answer their questions without revealing Danny as Phantom. Silence hung heavy around the two girls.

     Dani broke it with a shuffle of her foot and a saying of, “I can clean the lab. I’m the one who messed it up in the first place, after all. You should go back to your parents and celebrate Christmas or whatever.”

     At this, Jazz scoffed. At the confused look Dani gave her, she held up her hands and said, “Sorry, but no one would want to be around Jack and Maddie Fenton on Christmas. They argue all the time this day over nonsensical subjects.”

     “Huh,” Dani said. “That explains the yelling I heard when I came in…but I thought Christmas was a time for family bonding.”

     “It is, for most families. But the Fenton family isn’t like most,” Jazz informed her with a sly grin. After a second, her smile receded, and she observed Dani for a moment. “…Have you ever celebrated Christmas?”

     Dani shook her head. Then, smirking, she pointed at herself and said, “This baby is only a few months old. Today is literally the first Christmas ever in my life.”

     “Really?”

     “Yeah.” As her arms lowered to her sides, she looked away and said, “Not like I have anyone to celebrate it with.”

     Jazz frowned. Then she set her face into a determined expression. “That’s not true,” she announced. “You have me. And Danny.”

     Dani looked up at her. “But what about your parents?”

     “I already told you, no one wants to be around them today. Besides, we see them every day. I’d rather spend the day with you.”

     That seemed to put the smile right back on Dani’s face. But then she looked around uncertainly. “What about the lab?”

     “Oh, that.” Jazz took in the sight of the messy lab, then turned back to Dani and shrugged. “I can just say a ghost came in and destroyed it.”

     “Well, it wouldn’t be a lie,” Dani responded with a smirk as she allowed herself to transform again into her phantom form.

     Jazz’s smile stretched across her face once more. Then she got up and held out a hand to Dani. “Coming?” she asked. “I’m thinking about finding Danny and forcing him to celebrate Christmas with us against his will.”

     “Isn’t that kind of rude?”

     “Hey, it’s a sibling’s job to be rude. You’ll learn soon enough.”

     Dani laughed. “Alright,” she said, taking hold of her older sister’s hand. “But we’ll have to sneak past your parents.”

     “I don’t know. I bet they’re still arguing over elves and what they should wear to work.”

     “Wow. Those really are nonsensical topics.”