Casper High School
The silence that followed the ghost's departure was heavier than any sound. The three teenagers stood frozen in the school parking lot, the only evidence of the chaos being a few scattered meatloaf splatters and the lingering chill in the air.
Danny turned back into his human form, still flabbergasted by what happened. One second, he was fighting a ghost, then another more powerful one came. The latter seems to have said something about giving her something like purpose, but Danny wasn't clear.
He looked at his friends, both of them the same like him. Confusion and shock can be seen from their faces.
Danny finally found his voice, stammering. "Guys! Did you see that? That other ghost! He was… he just…"
"Incredible," Tucker finished, his fingers twitching as if wishing for a PDA to record it all.
"He talked to her," Sam said, her voice full of wonder. "He didn't just fight her. He understood her."
"And that suit!" Tucker's hands flew up, gesturing wildly. "Did you see the cape? It was like living energy! That was next-level. Who is that guy?"
Before they could continue more, the trio heard footsteps coming towards them,
"He said he was a 'concerned party,'" Danny repeated, the words feeling inadequate. The ghost's aura had been a physical pressure, a weight of absolute authority that made his own accidental powers feel like a sputtering firecracker next to a thunderstorm.
Their frantic debrief was interrupted by a calmer voice. "There you guys are! The school's on lockdown for a 'severe food fight incident'." Jazz walked up, her ever-present psychology textbook tucked under her arm. Her sharp eyes immediately scanned the trio, noting their flushed faces, wide eyes, and adrenaline-trembled hands. "You all look like you've seen a… well, a ghost."
Before they could concoct a lie, another figure rounded the corner. Kael adjusted the strap of his leather messenger bag, his expression one of mild, polite curiosity. "Everything alright? I heard some commotion."
Jazz observed the four of them. The trio's reaction was instantaneous. Tucker's jaw was still slack with awe. Sam's eyes were narrowed in assessment. Danny looked like he might vibrate out of his shoes. They were a portrait of shock and confusion.
Kael, by contrast, was a study in absolute normality. His grey eyes were calm, his posture relaxed. He looked exactly like a student who had simply been gathering his things from his locker while some unexplained noise happened outside.
Jazz's gaze flickered between them. The contrast was concerning. Her brother and his friends were practically buzzing with manic energy, while her friend was preternaturally placid. It was like he'd been watching a mildly interesting documentary while a tornado passed by his window.
"Just… Dash being Dash," Danny managed to stammer out, a weak cover that Jazz immediately filed away as a lie.
"I see," Kael said, his tone neutral. He offered a small, reassuring smile. "Well, it seems to be over now. Ready to head out, Jazz?"
The walk to home with the trio's forcedly casual chatter, which Jazz listened to with a clinician's ear. Kael walked beside her, contributing little, his presence a quiet, steady constant. When they dropped off the still-jittery Danny, Jazz made a decision.
"I'll walk Kael home," she announced, looping her arm through his before he could protest. "Catch you later, little brother."
They walked in silence for a block, the evening air growing cooler. Jazz finally stopped, turning to face him under the glow of a streetlamp.
"Okay. What's going on with you?" she asked, her voice soft but direct.
Kael blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Don't 'what do you mean' me, Kael Veyne," she said, crossing her arms. "I've known you since we built pillow forts in your library. You come back from Elmerton and you're suddenly different. You're calmer. Too calm. It's like you've built a fortress around yourself."
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a concerned whisper. "After your parents death it's okay to not be okay. You moved away, you buried yourself in their work, and now you're back and you're acting like nothing in the world can touch you. That's not healthy. It's a classic trauma response—hyper-control to compensate for a feeling of profound powerlessness. You're carrying it all inside, and I'm worried it's going to… I don't know, vaporize you from the inside out."
Kael looked at her, truly looked at her. This was the Jazz Fenton he remembered: fiercely intelligent, deeply empathetic, and terrifyingly perceptive. She was mapping his psyche with alarming accuracy, even if her conclusions were rooted in human psychology, not ecto-biology.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, a gesture meant to be comforting. "Jazz, I appreciate it. Really. But I'm not powerless. I'm focused. Their work, it's my way of connecting to them. It gives me purpose. It's my anchor, not my prison."
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "You don't need to worry about me. I'm exactly where I need to be."
He left her standing on the sidewalk, her concern warring with frustration. He was so composed, so certain. It was the most worrying thing of all.
Fenton works
The silence in Jazz's room was loud, buzzing with the weight of her thoughts. The psychology textbook on her desk sat forgotten; her mind was fixed on Kael Veyne.
The boy she remembered had been sharp, but warm—laughing too loud during board games, groaning at homework, racing his bike with a fire in his eyes. He had felt things.
The boy who lost everything had been a ghost himself—pale, hollow, wrapped in grief so thick it was hard to breathe around him. That pain had made sense.
But the Kael who returned from Elmerton… he didn't fit. The grief was gone, not healed but erased, leaving behind a calm so precise it chilled her.
She saw it in the parking lot. Danny, Sam, and Tucker had been frantic, buzzing with adrenaline. Kael had rounded the corner not with concern, but with the measured calm of an observer. His "Everything alright?" was a line, not a feeling. His eyes didn't widen—they calculated. Registered. Assessed.
And that was what terrified her. He wasn't coping. He was compartmentalizing. Every word, every reassurance—"I'm focused. It's my anchor, not my prison."—was too neat, too rehearsed. Real people, especially teenagers, weren't that perfectly logical. They were messy. They were irrational. They felt things they couldn't explain.
Her Kael was still in there; she knew it. But he was buried under walls of control, too afraid to feel. She couldn't break those walls down, not without pushing him further away.
So she would wait. Watch. Be there when the cracks appeared.And when they did, she'd remind him—
It's okay to be human.It's okay to be messy.
It's okay to not be okay.