Slayer Anderson

Marvel Fenton Chapter 1

A Marvel Phantom Side-story

04/23/2014

A/N: This is a little...spin-off, which is meant to give some depth to an important character in Marvel Phantom: Jasmine Fenton...so there won't be any spoilers here, just a bit of a change in perspective.

Marvel Fenton

Interlude I – When You're Strange

Jasmine Jeanne Fenton was responsible.

She, out of all of her family, conformed.

Jazz had, out of a lifetime of weirdness, managed to cobble together some semblance of normalcy. Granted, she was still a daughter of Jack and Madeline Fenton, which meant she'd never be completely normal. But she'd made her peace with that, no matter how much flack she'd given them over their ghost hunting. Still, if she couldn't be a normal teen, at the very least she'd be as normal as possible.

Good grades.

Volunteer hours.

Club memberships.

Extracurricular Activities.

Jazz was the exemplar student, the one-in-a-million child that every teacher looked forward to in their career. The student who listened attentively, did their work and more, and asked insightful probing questions about the material. All of which meant...

...she was a nerd.

Not even in her sophomore year of high school and she'd managed to get herself ousted from almost every social group in the school. It had been hard work keeping her grades up through a year of tormenting upperclassmen, snobbish preps, and the roving cliques of popular girls that lived to make her life hell.

...she didn't want to think about what it'd be like for Danny.

Her first year of high school had changed her, much more so than middle school. During those years, she had been able to 'hang out' with Danny and his friends plausibly without anyone thinking too much on it. She was glad Danny had never asked her why an 8th grader had spent so much time with a dorky 7th grader and his friends, even if one of those was her brother.

Because...

'Because, the truth is that Sam and Tucker are the closest things I have to friends,' Jazz admitted silently to herself as she stared at the ceiling. 'And how sad is that? Leaching off your younger brother's friends just for company.'

In a way, it hurt that Danny was more successful socially than she was.

In another way, she was terribly proud of her little bro...because he'd done the impossible and found two people actually willing to spend time in their home.

'And, of course, our parents had to go and muck even that up...' Jazz thought grimly before sighing. That wasn't fair, to her or them. She'd seen their parents' inventions fail in impossible ways; they'd exploded, caught on fire, disintegrated, simply fallen apart, brought household appliances to life, and sucked the house into an alternate dimension a few times.

But she'd never seen them succeed, not in any way that mattered, at least.

Until three days ago.

'They did it, they really did it,' Jazz thought once again with a hint of disbelief. Her parents hadn't spent their lives, their time, their money in vain. They'd succeeded in spite of the biting criticism from everyone around them.

Including her.

She'd deliberately told them, time and time again, that they couldn't find ghosts because they didn't exist. And she'd been wrong. Of course, no one would believe she wasn't a 'ghost nut' like her parents, so she'd known better than to attack her parents' reputation in public. They had always been the kooky ghost-hunters and they were always going to be.

It was a fact of life.

A fact of the life of Jasmine Fenton, at least.

And...if she was honest with herself, which she tried hard not to be, there was a part of her that admired the courage and tenacity that it took to get back up after over twenty solid years of failure. So, in a little, dark corner of her mind...maybe she respected her parents.

Just a little.

'And...now everyone else knows they aren't kooks,' Jazz sighed. 'You know...for some reason I thought things would get easier, not harder, in the unlikely event my parents were ever proven right.'

Sighing again, Jazz stood up to go bug her little brother a little.

Danny had been acting slightly odd (not that she could blame him, of course, given the circumstances around their home lately) over the past few days. He'd been a bit too quiet, confining himself to his room a bit more than normal. He'd also been avoiding herself and their parents...as much as one could avoid the only other people in a mid-sized house under a media siege.

Maybe he'd have an idea about how they could get out of here.

Because she needed respite from this madness, or she was going to go insane.

As much as Jazz didn't want to admit she'd was proud of her parents, there was also another side of her that, well...not quite hated them, but definitely resented them. They'd been the two largest and most influential figures in her life, but they'd also been instrumental in making that life very, very difficult for her. And, even if she didn't hate her parents...

There was a part of her that hated the fact that they'd been right.

About ghosts, spooks, specters, phantasms, phantoms...everything.

They'd been right about it all, and she hadn't believed them, she hadn't trusted them enough.

And...maybe she hated herself for that, too.

Shaking her head to clear it, Jazz sought out her little brother. She desperately needed to get out of the house, even if it was only for a little while. It would let her...think about things, get to the bottom of how she felt about her life, about her parents, about herself...

About this entire godawful mess everything was devolving into.

Jazz slumped, pressing her head to the cool texture of the hallway wall and trying to fight off the building pressure of an oncoming headache. And that was another thing, the slow-building migraine that seemed to creep up on her a little bit more each day as the stress mounted.

Maybe some fresh air would do that some good, too.

Marvel Fenton

It was amazing how a few hours could change your entire outlook on life.

These were Jazz Fenton's thoughts as she walked along the sidewalk, glorying in the unobstructed sunlight streaming down from above. She was thinking clearer, her anxieties were slowly dissolving in the face of a change in scenery, and even her dratted headache had faded to almost nothing.

Yes, things were looking up.

She'd even gotten to indulge a bit of her naughty side and raided her mom's back closet, disguising herself with a pair of bell-bottoms and a tasseled khaki-colored leather vest over her normal shirt. A pair of cherry-tinted glasses and her rolled-up hair tucked under black baret completed the ensemble. Yes, she knew she looked ridiculous, but as per Tony Stark's suggestions, she looked nothing like 'Jazz Fenton.'

And maybe the dated get-up was part of why she was feeling so good.

Playing dress up, pretending to be someone else, leaving her worries back at Fenton Works...

It was just what the doctor ordered.

Jazz grinned as she walked into the Amity Park library. Through a confluence of strange and bizarre factors, the relatively small town had a disproportionately large library, serving as the regional depository for tomes, maps, and other relics that dated back to the period when Amity Park was a frontier town in the early 1800's. Because of that, the library was a kind of 'dumping ground' at the dawn of the electronic age, having a massive basement filled with obsolete microfilm, moldering books, and maps that could rightfully be called historical treasures.

Despite all of the reasons, or because of them, the library served as a kind of totem to ward off students and young people, only aged scholars and studious collegetes dared cross the threshold. It was also because of this reason that the library had become a kind of sanctuary for Jazz Fenton, outcast extraordinaire. Barring the occasional member of her study group, most of whom considered hanging out at the library too geeky even for them, it was a safe bet that she wouldn't encounter anyone from her own age group and anyone she did encounter at least feigned civility towards her.

It was paradise.

Nodding discretely to the librarian, an aged crone who had the waspish 'hiss' down pat enough to quiet a herd of raging elephants, Jazz moved off into the stacks. The elderly woman glanced up from her book once, piercing steel-gray eyes penetrating the odd outfit with ease, before nodding slowly.

'Say what you will about Ms. Aberdeck,' Jazz thought happily, 'She doesn't miss a thing and she's always discrete.'

By this point in her scholastic career, Jazz had long-memorized all of the relevant filing information about the card catalog, allowing her to easily peruse relevant sections at will. Walking past the section which stored out-of-date and tedious textbook, the redhead grabbed a physics text that had been published before Nixon's presidency and dropped into one of the equally ancient padded chairs.

The smell of old paper, of knowledge, seeped into the air as she flipped slightly-yellowed pages, and Jazz sighed as she pulled a notepad out and began scribbling through a college-level math problem. This, more than anything, was why she loved the library. Already, she could feel fears and worries that had been weighing down on her flake off and blow away.

'Let's see...Force in this equation, and Acceleration, but that's a constant due to gravity...specific gravity is-' Her mind, a well-oiled tool even by Fenton standards, effortlessly plugged in values and variables like a seasoned calculator.

Tension drained away as the world was reduced to numbers and formula.

Simplified, making her parents just another X and Y set to solve for.

Danny? He was probably a Z...he'd always been an odd duck and might need a third dimension to graph him in. School? That was easy, a simple constant that made life irritating, but bearable. Life could be solved, just like any other math problem, when she looked at it like this.

Soon enough, her mind had decompressed, stretched and relaxed.

But, like any workout, now that she was done 'stretching' she needed the main event, a full serving of her favorite subjects. Placing the physics book back where it had been with the care and ease of an old friend, Jazz pocketed her notepad and began the long trek towards the fifth floor, wherein were stored her desired reading material.

Passing down the labyrinth of shelves, Jazz selected an Anatomy text, another on Pharmaceuticals, another on Brain Chemistry, and the latest copy which the library possessed (1987) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Later, of course, she would have to double-check her notes with more up-to-date sources, but that was half the fun of using old books like these! You got to learn everything twice!

Jazz swallowed her girlish squeal of delight...

...and set to work.

Because this was work, in its most basic form. Much like exercise trained the body, study trained the brain, gave her laser-like focus and problem solving ability. To fulfill her dream of becoming a leading psychologist one day, these were, comparatively, the basics she would need. Granted, she'd already been through this section five times, but...

...well, you needed a good grasp on the basics before moving onto the advanced material.

"Well, whaddya' know, I came in here to get away from all that noise and here I find I'm not the only one," A voice suddenly said.

Jazz's head snapped up, alarm seizing her as she was interrupted in her sanctuary.

The boy...young man, who had spoken was of a decidedly studious bent. Rectangular glasses framed deep brown eyes in a face with short-cropped brown hair. His clothing was, well...if he were older, she'd describe it as 'professional,' but he was obviously only a bit older than herself, if that. A backpack was hoisted over one arm as he grinned slightly.

"Oh, uh...hi," Jazz replied, slightly embarrassed by her late response.

"Hi," he smiled. Looking around at the empty study area about them, he gestured to an open chair at her table. "This seat taken?"

'Well, of course it isn't taken...' Jazz thought with confusion, her brows furrowing. 'Though, why doesn't he sit somewhere else? I mean, there have to be at least a dozen tables up here and he could have just come in and sit down without disturbing me...wait, does that mean he's...flirting? With me?'

"No," Jazz answered cautiously waving a hand at the chair. Unlike the ones on the lower levels, these were hard-backed and stiff, positively ancient wooden monstrosities that had to date back at least fifty years, possibly predating world war two. "Go ahead."

"Thanks," he grinned, "Michael, Michael Edwards. How about you?"

"Ja-Jennifer," Jazz invented quickly. "Jennifer Mitchels." It was as good a name as any and the first one that had popped into her head. It might be a bit gauche to lie like this to someone you just met, but giving her real name might have all sorts of bad reactions.

"Nice to meet you," Michael nodded. "So, are you a local?"

Torn between continuing her studies and conversation with another human being that wasn't her parents or one of their odd guests, Jazz nodded, "Yes, although it's not usually this crazy."

"I'd imagine," the boy replied. "I'm just in because of my dad. He works for the Chicago Tribune and wanted to try and get a jump on this whole ghost business. Of course, I had to tag along for the ride with the rest of my summer assignments."

"Ah," Jazz made a noise of understanding. She could certainly empathize with another teen being dragged away from home at last minute due to uncaring parents. "I know what you mean."

"Parents travel a lot?" Micheal asked curiously.

"Not as much as they used to," Jazz replied, "But quite a bit every now and then."

"I get it," the boy nodded, the quirked an eyebrow, "So...what's with the flower power get up, if it's not rude to ask?"

Jazz's mind spun, trying to invent something, before she blurted out... "I lost a bet."

"Ouch," Micheal grinned. "Pretty harsh terms. What'd the other person get?"

Jazz bit her lip, growing uncomfortable with how much lying she was having to do. Feigning a glance at her watch, Jazz's eyes shot wide. "Oh! I'm sorry, I actually have to meet a friend soon. If you're still in town, maybe we'll meet up later?"

Even to her, her smile felt strained.

"Whoa," Michael interrupted as Jazz began to pick up her things and walk off. "Was it something I said? Maybe my breath? I swear it's just the sushi I had for lunch."

Jazz fought a giggle. 'I wonder if this is what popular girls feel like all the time? It's...nice to have someone trailing after you like this...wanting you to stay and talk to them.'

For an outcast like her, it was a unique experience.

"It's really not you," Jazz denied sadly. "I really do need to get going."

"Then maybe swap phone numbers?" Michael pressed as they approached the staircase. It was a grand old thing, probably build during the economic boom time of the fifties, back when they had added a further two floors to contain the burgeoning collection of historical documents. "Or email addresses."

"I'd like to, but I really need to go," Jazz explained again, trying to bring up a good explanation.

A sudden pressure around her wrist.

It took a second to realized he'd actually dared to make a grab at her and another, longer, second for the alarm to penetrate her brain.

"C'mon Jasmine," Michael grinned, something different and darker in his voice now. "I just texted my dad and he'll be here any minute for an interview. Then we can go out to eat and talk about your parents, the ghost freaks."

There was a heartbeat of disbelief, then the all too familiar crashing disappointment.

'Of course he didn't want to talk to me. No one would ever want to talk to me without being duplicitous. You should know better by now, Jazz,' the redhead thought derisively, the painful realization only confirming long-held beliefs.

Then fear, terror, anger, and a flurry of powerful emotions surged forward. What did he want with her? What was going to happen when his father got here? How had she let herself be deceived by him? How had he known it was her?

"Let me go," Jazz said, her tone wavering between an order and a plea.

"No can do," Michael smirked, tugging the more petite girl towards him as Jazz pulled on her captured wrist.

"Please," Jazz asked, almost begged, her eyes reflected the unreasoning panic of a trapped animal.

"Sorry Jasmine," Micheal said, obviously not meaning a word of it. "Or do you prefer Jazz? I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other when-"

"-No," Jazz cried, her voice raising now. "Let me go!"

Her hand, of its own authority almost, raised.

Micheal's other hand captured her stinging slap before it hit his face.

"Oh ho," Micheal crowed, another grin crossing his lips, "Got a little fight in you, that's great, but-"

And then Jazz's knee came up.

And her world spun.

The two teens had been arguing at an increasingly vocal and frantic pace, pulling and tugging at each other in an effort to maintain the status quo or make their escape. If there was a single less appropriate place to have this kind of semi-violent discussion, Jazz reflected later, than the top of a circular five-story tall staircase, then that location escaped her. Micheal's last push to get closer, probably to get a better grip, had brought them to the polished wood railing, right above the first of the descending steps.

As her kneecap made contact with his groin, Micheal's eyes crossed almost comically.

A brief flush of victory faded when Jazz realized that, in an effort to cradle his now-wounded pride, Micheal had pushed her away...

...and the only way to go, now, for either of them...

...was down.

Jasmine Fenton's palms slipped their grip as her head and back were pressed over the railing, her waist teetering on the brink. A brief second's balance allowed her eyes to glimpse the circular hole which plunged over fifty feet straight down to the hard white marble at the bottom. Blue eyes shot wide, this time in true outright disbelief.

And then Jazz knew, with a kind of absolute terrible certainty.

'I'm going to die.'

And, even as her waist slid over that precious few inches, taking her over that perilous brink, another thought burst into her mind.

'I don't want to die.'

Lightening fast calculations danced through her mind, numbers she had used just an hour prior to solve equations that meant so little now...'gravitational constants, acceleration due to gravity, resistance due to air pressure, something to slow me down, please, pleaseplease!'

Disbelief warred with desperation as her descent began in earnest.

Behind her, Micheal toppled into a painful ball, smacking his head on the hard wooden banister and falling to the ground, stunned. Even as he faded into a semi-conscious state, Jazz's mind revved up, the whole of her impressive intellect focused on saving her life.

On solving this problem.

And...coming up blank.

For all that she'd learned, for all that she'd studied, that knowledge was useless when faced with a five-story dead drop to her death.

A thought that wasn't quite a thought so much as an instinctual cry against the unfairness of the world rose up from somewhere deep within her. It wasn't coherent, there weren't words or logical reason backing it, just a blind will that rallied against dying do ignobly, so pathetically.

Something that wanted her to stop.

The command came from that wordless instinct that comes when flight and fight are no longer valid, an absurdity that ordered her body to stop falling. The voice got louder and louder, a strange burning sensation following in its wake and then...pressure folded onto her body, as if something was trying to catch her. But that was absurd, because there wasn't anything that could...she was going to die, there was nothing that could stop her, despite the fierce need to live-

And she did.

It was a slow thing, at first, but it quickly became more noticeable as something caught her, gently slowing her fall and then, somewhere around the third floor, stopping it all together. Jazz's wide blue eyes, already tear-streaked, and her voice hoarse from a pained and startled cry she didn't remember giving, were stalled into disbelief as she stood there, between the third and second floors of the Amity Park library...

...on nothing.

Her feet treading air as sure as if it were solid earth.

Without thinking, her hand snapped out, grabbing the banister as every instinct that pertained to her normal, human limitations cried out. Wrestling the vertical column as though her life depended on, and it probably did, Jazz clung for dear life to the wooden pole.

Thudding steps below, hard rubber on marble-

"Holy Hell!" Someone cried, yelled out as they saw her. Some part of her mind recognized it as the voice of the friendly, overweight, and balding security guard who'd had the cushy job for as long as she could remember.

"Hold on girlie, I'm comin!" The man was wheezing even with half a dozen steps, but he persevered and soon enough, Jazz was being hauled over the banister, her legs collapsing out from under her as she quivered and clung to the police officer.

And cried.

A lot.

Marvel Fenton

That night, after her parents' berated her admittedly poor decisions, after the Starks had left, after the revelation of a heretofore unknown relative, Jazz lay awake in bed unable, or unwilling, to sleep. Curled up in a ball, her tears had long-since dried after her near-death experience, replacing disbelief with a kind of numb acceptance to the fact that...

"I can fly," Jazz whispered, staring resolutely at nothing.

Unbelievable words from an unbelievable experience.

'There, I said it,' Jazz admitted, remembering the momentous feeling of, even if for so brief a time, she'd hung in the air unassisted. 'Alright, so it was more like hovering, but still...I think I might have actually started to go up a bit at then end, there.'

Jazz shook her head, admonishing herself quietly as her internal voice of reason spoke up.

"Don't be ridiculous. People can't fly."

Another, more fantastical side of her mind, something which had been quiet for years, quiet ever since she'd realized how heartless and cruel the world really was, rallied.

"But I did. I flew. Hovered."

Jazz bit her lip, easing her legs out of bed before sitting up and removing the notepad she'd scribbled on earlier that day.

Before it had happened.

She swallowed.

At war with herself, torn between an unreal reality and a living fantasy, Jazz returned to what had always comforted her the most and what might be the only way to settle this 'argument' she was having: schoolwork.

Fresh paper.

Calculator.

Protractor.

Compass.

Pencils.

Like old friends they came when called, each stacked on her desk to be used when needed. A set of reference manuals came next, color-coded and slightly worn with continuous use that contained conversion tables and the relevant constant to solve almost any mathematics problem outside of theoretical physics. Picking up a mechanical pencil, Jazz closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

'Start with what you know,' she thought with a new-found purpose.

Body weight, height of the fall, acceleration due to gravity.

Force, momentum...and to stop the fall?

'Counter-force,' Jazz thought, narrowing her eyes at the number which came out. 'Too high to possibly be an air pocket, updraft or something else like that...' If she were interested in an easy explanation, which these doubtlessly were, then any one of a thousand simple mental tricks would distract her and derail the topic. 'But I don't want an easy answer,' Jazz resolved, 'I want the truth. I want to know what happened.'

She bit her lip, staring at the short list of calculations she'd already done, complete with a simple diagram of the stairwell itself and a trajectory of her fall, even though a shiver raced up her spine as she'd drawn that curve. 'Okay, I've exhausted what I know. Now...what do I want to find out?'

A treasured tool of the investigator, the Scientific Method.

Maybe she was more of her parents' daughter than she wanted to admit.

Jazz shook her head, pressing to fingers to her temple. 'How did I stop falling? No, too vague...what force or counter-force exerted on the falling body of Jasmine-'

She frowned, erasing her name.

'-of subject 'A' caused downward momentum to cease and relative altitude to stabilize?' Looking over the sentence, Jazz nodded. When outlining a goal, it was best to refrain from personalizing the project. Plus, the fact that it was a purely academic piece of research meant that she wouldn't have to think about-

Ohgodsohighup! Gonnadieplummetingdeathpainohgodohgodohgod-

-about that. She didn't have to think about that.

'So, Subject A has fallen a distance exceeding twenty feet and has nearly attained a velocity which would prove lethal upon contact with Surface B.' This outlined the problem nicely, Jazz thought, 'now, according to my problem statement, Subject A halted her descent at approximately twenty to twenty-five feet due to inexplicable means.'

Now that she'd outlined the matter properly and framed it in scientific terms, she could think about it clearly. She could distance herself from the trail that 'Subject A' had gone through, pretend that she hadn't been there, that it hadn't happened to-

Jazz stopped that train of thought, breathing in deeply and fending off the rising panic.

Back to work, think, fill the void.

'Now...form a theory.'

Jazz blinked. That was the next step, but...her mind was blank. Even thinking about the experience which she-Subject A had endured, there was really no logical explanation for what had happened. It didn't make sense.

Fall.

Stop.

'Okay, if I don't have any logical theories to test...' And here she sighed. 'Let's move on to the illogical. What possible explanations are there which do not readily conform to sense and reason?'

The butt of her eraser tapped idly against the paper.

'Ghosts?'

The errant thought actually halted the formidable engine that was Jasmine Fenton's brain. As quickly as the gears began spinning again, her hand came up of its own accord and smacked against her face, laying her visage in her palm. After a long moment, Jazz raised her head and reluctantly wrote the word down, each letter causing an almost physical stab of pain. Once done, the redhead dropped the writing instrument in disgust and screamed into her pillow, muffling the noise of outrage and distemper coming from her mouth.

Sitting back up, Jazz sighed, sweeping a hand through her hair. "Alright. There is the extremely small, but extant chance that ghosts might be responsible for Subject A's cancellation of descent." The words said aloud relieved a bit of tension from her, even as she offered an addendum, "Extant, but unlikely...so, other options."

Then mechanical pencil stared at her accusingly.

"Illogical possibilities of causation," Jazz reminded herself, picking the plastic rod back up. With great disdain, she subsequently scribed 'magic,' 'psychic ability,' and 'divine intervention.' Each was horrifically unscientific, but...there was little else she could do.

'So, four...theories,' she grimaced with distaste, 'now, design a test for each.'

This, admittedly, was much easier than exercising her (admittedly limited) creativity. The ghost one was a bit difficult, but if there was a ghost playing 'guardian angel' (as opposed to an actual guardian angel) then it would presumably return or, and here she shivered a bit, hadn't left. As long as she kept a few ghost gadgets she would, presumably, be able to at least detect the presence of something paranormal.

Since her parents had proven that they weren't legitimately insane, at least.

Writing down a quick summary of the plan to test that hypothesis, Jazz looked down the list.

'Testing 'magic' and 'psychic ability' will be a little tougher,' Jazz admitted to herself silently. 'If I could get on the internet, I might be able to find one of those new-age sites about meditation or something, but mom cut the phone lines, so...'

"Magic," Jazz said the world aloud, leaving a mildly bitter aftertaste in her mouth. "I can't believe I'm considering this...if it is magic, though..."

Another few moments went by, her gaze distant as she stared at a set of books stacked discretely in one corner of one of her bookshelves. The seven books were a guilty, unscientific pleasure, but they did make a reasonable case for a magical subculture.

Picking the pencil back up, she began writing. 'In the event of magic being revealed as the cause behind the phenomena, it is unlikely that this has been expressed as a unique element within Subject A. As such, contact with 'magical' elements of society, most probably a secretive subculture, should be forthcoming. Until contact is established or, alternatively, a secure source of reliable knowledge regarding the subject can be obtained, this hypothesis is tabled for observation as research of this nature could have unintended and dangerous consequences without careful instruction.'

After the exceptionally thorough paragraph was put to paper, Jazz looked it over with a critical eye before nodding slowly.

"This is ridiculous," Jazz said quietly, doubt sneaking in as she looked back over her work. Seeing her thoughts for the last few hours written down, staring back at her starkly, accusingly, brought the situation home for her.

Pressing her head to her desk, she gloried in the cool soothing sensation of the hardwood beneath her forehead. "I'm talking about ghosts, and magic, and...all of this like its real." She stopped a moment. "Well, ghosts are, but it's still absurd."

A long, rattling sigh escaped her, "I know all those psychology textbooks say that you're predisposed to become similar to your parents, but I thought it was supposed to take longer than this."

A long silence met her statement as she took in the silence of the night. Even the reporters camped outside had settled down once it got dark and nothing interesting asserted itself. She looked back at the careful equations in her own, neat hand and the experiment design she'd been constructing, before sighing yet again. "Maybe...maybe I really did imagine it? Maybe I just-"

Jazz bit off a growl, turning and beginning to stomp as quietly as possible while still exorcising her anger. With a frustrated scowl on her face, she shook her head. "No. I'm not wrong. Something happened. To me. To Subject A. She-I-should be dead. There is no logical reason for me to be alive. Therefore, I'm going to find that reason and make it logical."

Now resolute, Jazz walked back over to her desk, staring at the next prompt.

"Psychic ability." Now, she deliberately ignored how silly the words sounded. "Telekinesis."

'I...guess that would do it. Truth be told, I don't really know much about any of this beyond what I've seen on TV or read in books. I know there's, let's see...telekinesis, obviously, but also...telepathy, psychometry, or object reading...then there's pyrokinesis, like in Carrie-'

Here, an involuntary shiver raced down her spine. "I'm never letting mom and Danny talk me into watching a movie with them ever again. I swear, how does an eight year old not get nightmares from something like that?"

'Come to think of it, that probably means there's some kind of kinetic ability for each of the elements...and probably a lot else I don't know about. Still, do I know enough to safely construct a test?' Jazz thought quizzically.

And there was the question.

Could this, any of this, really be tested? The absence of spiritual phenomena would, of course, suggest a conclusion, but...

"I suppose it comes down to whether I can recreate the phenomena in a less risk-intensive fashion," Jazz hummed thoughtfully, adding notes here and there in the margins of her paper. The 'ghost' proof would be relatively easy, she knew and suddenly realized that the 'divine intervention' theory would be as well.

'Presumably if God, or some other deity-like individual, saved me with such a blatant display of ability, they probably probably want me to do something for them.' Jazz rationalized, her mind conjuring an image of herself standing in front of the President of the United States in long robes and sandals, asking him to, "Let my people go," popped into her mind and she was torn between bursting out in giggles and palming her face again. Suddenly, a rather dark thought chased the amusing (and probably heretical) picture out of her mind.

"Never, ever, ever letting Mom talk me into another movie," Jazz reaffirmed as she changed 'divine intervention' to 'divine/infernal intervention.'

This time, an image of herself, standing by the President's side floated to the top of her mind and Jazz shivered as her mental-duplicate's eyes were backlit with a hellish and otherworldly light as she stood, clad in a darkly colored suit. The whole appearance of this version of herself radiated menace and hate. Forging past the disturbing and surreal plethora of images now clogging her mind, Jazz began to write.

'Theory currently untestable. As stipulated in 'magic' theory, Subject A should await contact from an involved party.'

And that was all she could bring herself to write on the subject.

"I am not the Anti-Christ," Jazz asserted quietly, shaking her head. "At least, probably not."

Maybe she'd use a hand mirror and her vanity to check for any...revealing birthmarks.

You know, just in case.

With that thankfully out of the way, Jazz returned to her previous theory 'psychic ability' and frowned thoughtfully. Out of all of her current batch of ideas, this was probably the most 'safe,' at least for a given value of the word, to test. Granted, she could just as easily tap into a source of 'magic' within her and duplicate the outward appearance of psychic ability. But, well, she had to start somewhere didn't she? Presumably if she used her 'mind' to do something than silly hand gestures, stick-waving, and bad pseudo-latin, she could quantify it as a psychic ability rather than a magical one, right?

Right. Sure.

"So unscientific," Jazz sighed, feeling as though she was groping around in the dark with one hand tied behind her back, trying to find a light switch in a room which might or might not even have one. Drumming her fingers on the desk, she eyed the clock.

'Eleven o'clock,' Jazz noted. 'Getting late. Okay, three quick tests and then bedtime.'

But which three?

Staring down at the short list of psychic 'powers' she gathered, Jazz tapped her pencil twice before circling 'telekinesis' harshly, then frowned and reached up to the shelf she kept stocked with study aids. Running a finger across a small row of paperback book spines, her pointer finger alighted on one in particular and, soon enough, it lay open on the desk before her.

Speed Reading and Other Study Tricks

Contrary to the title, Jazz groused as she skimmed through a few sections, the book held more viable tactics than 'tricks.' One in particular was a chapter on maintaining mental focus, which was the closest thing she had to a book on true meditation in her room.

Meditation, like magic, like psychics was just so...

...unscientific.

Granted, if she discovered one of these hidden talents, that would have to change. She lived her life by the codes of reason and logic, those of her Enlightenment and Renaissance forefathers. If there was one thing her father and she agreed on, it was that magic was a lot of hooey. 'Magic better hope I don't get involved with it! If I can do magic, there's going to be some serious explaining to do.'

Somewhere, a Sorcerer Supreme sneezed.

Picking her pencil back up, Jazz hesitated a moment before putting lead (graphite) to paper. Under a heading of 'Working Hypothesis: Subject A possesses psychic ability in the form of telekinesis – Testing Part 1.'

Moving down a line and indenting, Jazz continued writing, thinking the words silently as they were marked down on the page. 'Test a: Using applied mental focus techniques, Subject A will telekinetically move or retrieve a small item horizontally across a flat surface without physical contact from a distance of one foot.'

Jazz nodded. She'd thought to move something across the room, but it was best not to get too ambitious in the first test. It was incredibly unlikely she'd discover anything tonight, but she needed to make some level of commitment to this project right now, otherwise she'd likely wake up and disregard the entire thing as misremembered fancy.

'Test b: Subject A will attempt to lift a small object off the ground without physical contact for a length of five seconds from a distance of one foot away.'

Another reasonable test, small steps.

Jazz bit her lips, temptation warring within her.

After a moment, she shrugged, what could it hurt?

'Test c: Subject A will attempt to recreate the phenomena in question by rising in relative altitude by three inches for five seconds without exerting physical force to leave contact with the ground.'

A slight feeling of giddiness bubbled up from within her, but Jazz ruthlessly tamped down on the sensation. This was for science. SCIENCE!

The redhead cringed. "Oh god, I am turning into my parents."

Rolling her eyes in exasperation, Jazz turned her mind back to business, her eyes flickering over her desk for a small 'item' with which to test her abilities. Finally, she settled on a paperclip, which was a good choice for multiple reasons. Firstly, it was analogous to a gram (more or less). Secondly, it could lie flat on a surface, which would decrease the probably of movement by other sources. Thirdly, it was metallic gray in color which made it stand out from the background of the wood; this would make focusing on it slightly easier.

"Okay," Jazz whispered, "Test one commencing."

Sitting with her legs folded on her bed, she laid the paperclip on the deep brown of her wooden desk chair and positioned the chair one foot (using a ruler for the sake of accuracy) away from her bed. Satisfied, she leafed through the mental focusing exercising within the slim paperback before setting the book aside.

And focused.

And focused.

And focused.

And-Jazz palmed her face and relaxed the tense lines which had creased over her forehead. She was probably trying too hard. If she was trying to tap into an innate ability it most likely needed 'directed thought' rather than undirected focus. Biting her lip for a moment, Jazz settled on an 'imaging technique' which had been explained in a self-help book she'd read a year ago. Seeing as how 'visualizing the future' hadn't helped all that much and she had maintained her status as a friendless outcast, she felt perfectly justified in throwing the thing in a shredder.

Still, the book had been extremely illogical and very qualitative in its analysis, which was essentially what she was doing right now, so the same practice might apply.

It was worth a shot, at least, and she was drawing blanks on alternative courses of action.

Breathing deeply and forcing herself to relax, Jazz imagined a few fairly simple math problems, feeling her worries edge away, before her eyes shot open. "That's it!" She whispered excitedly.

Imagery.

Math.

Directed thought.

'This just might work,' Jazz nodded, before settling back down. "Should I use the formula for Mechanical Energy? Wait...is psychic force mechanical? Friction should be applied, definitely, and I'll probably need to apply Constant-Acceleration Linear Motion, Power, and...Newton's Laws."

After a few moments with pencil and paper, simplifying the equation to something she could work with more easily in her head, Jazz sat back down and turned towards her nemesis, the paperclip, grinning slightly. "Okay you warped piece of alloyed aluminum, get ready to be moved."

Closing her eyes, Jazz brought the quickly-memorized formula up, complete with diagram. Opening her eyes, she focused on the formula, on enacting her will on the item before her, on moving the object...believing that she could do it, that it would happen...

And felt something so strange she almost lost her mental grip on that feeling.

Concentrating harder, picturing the formula and its companion diagram more clearly, Jazz felt something stirring deep inside the recesses of her mind. It was...not quite an echo, but something like the sensation of one? Which didn't make any sense.

The paperclip hadn't moved, so Jazz swapped a few values in the formula, applying more 'force' to the 'work' she wanted done. Perhaps it took more effort for psychic ability to overcome inertia?

The feeling within her mind grew, a sensation not unlike being on fire without the heat blossomed within her brain, resulting in a strange prickling which caused her to break out in a nervous sweat. What if she was doing something wrong? What if she was going to give herself a stroke? What if-

Jazz forced those thoughts aside, upping the values on her 'equation' again.

It didn't feel wrong, but then again what did she know about all this?

'Still, more and more this is looking like something I did myself. I think I remember something happening like this, some weird sensation when I was falling,' Jazz contemplated. Still seeing no progress with the paperclip, Jazz upped the values again, this time doubling the already high force behind her effort.

And still nothing.

Well...nothing in the most abstract of senses. The cool fire in her mind had intensified into a corona of energy that was felt, not seen, but decidedly there in a way she couldn't describe or justify. Still, she could feel it pushing against...something. Against...against-

A sudden insight seared into her brain as her equation rearranged itself on her whim. The errant thought of flight, the events when she had fallen...was it possible that she wasn't pushing against the paperclip, but was instead pushing against-

And then she was sent flying across the room, rolling to a stop against the far wall with wide, stunned eyes, the thought completing itself.

-herself. Pushing against herself.

Hurried footsteps rushed up the stairs, a quick series of knocks echoing on Jazz's door. "Sweetie? Jazz, honey, are you alright? What was that noise?"

"Fine mom," she heard herself say, still lying stunned on the floor and praying her mother wouldn't open the door to find her in a jumbled mess. "I just tripped on my chair and stubbed my toe...sorry about the noise, I accidentally kicked it across the room."

The relief in her mother's voice was palpable and brought a bitter twinge of guilt to Jazz's gut. "I'm glad honey, but be a little more careful. You should be getting to bed anyway, big day on the road tomorrow."

"I was just getting into bed," Jazz affirmed. 'Technically and deceptively true in a literal sense.' "Night mom."

"Night honey," Maddie replied and, from her position on the floor, Jazz could hear the footstep fade away down the hall.

Jazz sighed, getting to her feet slowly and feeling out the areas where she'd have bruises tomorrow. Thankfully, she'd taken the unexpected 'ride' better than she'd thought, only the initial impact leaving a red discoloration on her left forearm, which would probably be a light red-purple the next day. Resolving to table the matter, Jazz gave in to her sudden exhaustion and dropped into bed, asleep before she even realized the significance of what she'd done.

Marvel Fenton

Jazz shot out of bed, instantly awake, her hand already slapping her bedside alarm.

And the events of the night before slamming into her own, waking, brain.

The teen's jaw dropped.

There was a sudden outcry of reason, common sense, logic, sanity which railed against what she had seen and experienced. It was impossible, she couldn't have done what she thought she did. The very idea that she had, had...done that turned hundreds, if not thousands of years of accepted theory and scientific observation on its head, sprayed it with silly foam, and slapped a 'Kick Me' sign on its back. The bizarre image she'd just conjured snapped her train of thought in half, bringing Jazz to the kind of stupefied standstill she'd never experienced before.

Later, she would liken it to a 'Blue Screen Error Message,' occurring not in a computer, but in her cerebral cortex.

The sensation of having one's worldview utterly destroyed, while not exactly painful, was definitely unnerving. The overall experience left her with a driving need to rant at the heavens about the unfairness of reality and the absurdity of the world.

But that wouldn't be productive.

And Jazz Fenton was nothing if not productive.

With a force of will that would have beggared most world leaders, the teen mentally tabled her existential crisis and got up to take her morning shower. Throughout her preparations for her part in the Fenton Family Road Trip, the entire matter of her...abilities-

'Yes, 'Abilities' is a very scientific way to put it,' Jazz thought with surreality rising high inside her mind. Riding the knife's edge of sanity and hysteria was not enjoyable and was taking quite an effort to merely not think about it.

-stayed at the back of her mind. Still, her enforced patience was rewarded and Danny quickly ensconced himself in his own little hand-held world as she opened her laptop and jacked into the satellite communications suite her mother had thoughtfully inserted into the GAV. This left Jazz able to reopen the tables of calculations she'd created last night and begin converting them into a much more exacting file hidden safely on a hidden, partitioned segment of her hard drive and camouflaged behind certain...stress relief media.

And then she could really get to work.

Three hours later, when Danny finally came up for air from his immersion within his game, Jazz had collated and compressed several dozen pages worth of arcane and abstract physics equations, built an entirely new electronic library's worth of theoretical math, and constructed a series of experimental tests which the average doctoral student could range from 'ambitious' to 'over-achieving.'

"What are you doing?" Danny asked curiously, looking up from his game.

"Research," Jazz replied, her eyes still locked on the screen of her laptop as she pulled up the Fenton Family Tree research she'd been periodically updating. Combined with the browser window full of information relating to their family, and her grandfather, it did paint a rather convincing picture that this was what she'd actually been devoting her time to, rather than a little side-project for when she took breaks from her true pursuit.

William Fenton looked to be an interesting figure, but...

...a subject which normally held her in thrall, history, was something which she could not be bothered to raised even the most pathetic interest for, at least not today.

She had research to do, yes, but not on their grandfather.

Marvel Fenton

As Jazz made her way from the campsite along the lake shore, she took solace in the fading noise of her family at work. The forest was quiet as she stepped through the brush of the seldom-used trail which wound up a small hill. It was an easy and winding path that let her mind wander while she kept a quick pace. After all, though it might be pleasant out in these wilds, she wasn't here for sightseeing.

This might be the only time she'd manage to get to herself in a while, after all.

In no time at all, Jazz reached the top of the hill, a secluded grove that held a small clearing with a few large boulders sticking up out of the ground. Looking around, Jazz nodded slightly to herself, satisfied that she was both far enough from her family and that the clearing was wide enough for her own purposes.

Besides, she was too excited to wait.

Because...if she wasn't hallucinating, if she wasn't finally going insane from overexposure to her parents...

'I have superpowers.'

It was a thought she didn't dare give voice to, not yet.

Every little girl, Jazz herself included, dreamed of being 'special' in some way. Jazz had been 'special' all her life, of course, and it had brought her nothing but trial and torment, but...this. Her life was finally looking up. She was out of her personal hometown hell, she was reconnecting with her family, and she might, just might...

She shook herself, refocusing her mind as she took a seat on one of the stones and unfolded her notebook before her.

On the densely-packed pages rested a compiled list of formulas, all calculated to her own exacting satisfaction.

Body weight, inertia, specific gravity, momentum, density...all to move her body.

...but that wasn't enough, was it?

She had to make sure her 'movements' weren't dangerous, that they were within human tolerances. She had erred on the side of caution, but those calculations would require more fine-tuning. First, she would need to experiment.

She breathed out, the air misting in front of her.

...and focused.

It was a simple application of math, something which she had reached for in her panic and already accomplished. The formula in her mind swelled, cool fire filling her brain as...

Jazz opened her eyes slowly, cautiously.

Then they shot wide in disbelief.

"I did it," she whispered as she looked down to the ground three feet below her unsupported body. "I did it," she repeated aloud, a grin threatening to overtake her face. "I did it!" Jazz screamed, raising her hands in triumph as her mind filled with intoxicating visions of flying high over the countryside, her mind automatically making the necessary corrections-

-and her body shot forward, sending her into a roll across the small clearing, smearing her jumpsuit with grass stains and mud. Jazz lay still a moment before convulsing, her lungs heaving in silent gasps that grew louder and louder and-

"Hahahahahaahahahah!"

-the laughter bubbled out wildly.

The grin stretching her mouth to it's limits was broad and carefree in a way it hadn't been for years as she rolled about on the ground, heedless of the scraps of nature now adorning her. Long moments passed as the laughter slowly exhausted itself, leaving her lying still, eyes staring up at the bright blue sky. Slowly, she got up, her visage clearing and honing to a focused mask of determination. She had some time before she was due back at camp, time that she wouldn't waste, couldn't waste if she wanted to be able to live with herself.

She'd make the most of her 'power,' she be someone.

She'd make something of herself, show everyone from Amity Park that they had been wrong about her, would be wrong about her. She'd never again be just the 'Ghost Nuts' Kid.' Even as she walked back to the rock, her starting point, ideas began to form out of the nebulous mist of future possibilities.

Marvel Fenton

Jazz burrowed further beneath the blankets, ignoring her brother's entreaties to cede blanket territory. After yesterday, she was feeling...fulfilled in a way that she hadn't in years. There was none of the manic urge to push her mind to the breaking point, to try and prove to herself that she wasn't what her classmates said she was. Her...superpowers, and how neat was that? She had superpowers, just like in those terrible, stupid, plot-less comics that Danny was so fond of...and that she secretly adored for their empty wish-fulfillment plots.

Then Danny's next question brought her good mood crashing back to Earth.

"Why are you acting like this?" He sounded slightly perturbed, but more curious.

'Why am I acting like this?' Jazz asked herself as she curled up tighter into the blanket. The answer, though, was obvious. She was throwing herself into her 'new' life. The idea of never having to go back to high school, of never having to tolerate Dash Baxter and his cronies ever again, of being able to finally relax around people who she might someday call friends...

...of being able to reconnect with her little brother, it was intoxicating.

"Acting like what?" Jazz asked, her tone forcefully light and hopefully ignorant as she sat up slightly, leaning her head against the opposite corner of the bunk, feeling the soothing cool metal on her forehead. An errant thought noticed how weird it was that cold could surprise her so badly, but feel so good when she expected it.

"You know, like you used to," Danny shrugged uncomfortably. "You bugged me all summer about my reading list and keeping my grades up when I get to high school and now you haven't mentioned anything like that in nearly a week. What gives?"

Jazz took so long in answering, that Danny almost thought she wasn't going to reply at all. Finally, Jazz moved a bit, hugging her legs to her chest and looking as vulnerable as Danny had seen her in a long time, her eyes even suspiciously wet. "Danny, I hate high school."

Was she really doing this? Was she really going to tell him the truth?

"Yeah, so?" Danny asked, confused.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she decided her fate. She wouldn't let those people ruin her life anymore. She wanted her brother back, she wanted someone to understand why she was such a neurotic bitch so often.

"No Danny," Jazz replied, something dark in her eyes, "I really, really hate high school. I hate the teachers, I hate the students, I hate the building, Danny."

"Oh," Danny said, shocked at the...loathing in his sister's voice.

"They're horrible people," Jazz spat. "Loud, obnoxious, vain, arrogant, shallow little trolls that can't show an ounce of compassion." Now, tears were falling freely from her eyes. "I hate them so much, Danny..."

It was like lancing a wound, letting the pain and anguish flow out, cleansing her soul of the infection which had taken root over the last year.

Jazz coughed up a strangled, quiet wail that stabbed at Danny's heart, the boy surging forward and, unthinkingly, grabbed Jazz in a tight hug. Jazz sobbed softly, grasping onto her brother like a rope thrown to a drowning woman. She was quietly mumbling, "I'm sorry," over and over, like some kind of mantra.

In a wet, painful voice, Jazz explained the torments of Casper High.

Spitballs had been a daily occurrence, befouling her clothes and staining her notes. Girls had bullied her, locking her in bathroom stalls, defacing her locker, stealing her gym clothes, and more. The jocks had made near-continuous passes at her, thinking her 'easy,' and various teachers had turned blind eyes to the treatment she'd endured, until she'd found a way to secure their protection. In the month after she'd started high school and for the rest of the year, she'd been a model student...no, even more than that. She'd set records for every test she'd taken, every exam they'd put before her had been passed with a hundred percent or better.

National level spelling achievements, rallies for every subject in school including some she hadn't even taken yet, academic prizes and scholastic honors from every corner. They'd made her valuable, untouchable even by the jocks. She was too important to be taunted and tormented then, given that she had her name on everything that wasn't football related in the awards cabinet.

But that didn't mean they had to like her.

That didn't mean she wasn't a Fenton.

It just turned her into an easy source for test answers, a lab partner that did all the work, or a study buddy that you could copy off of. And, true to form, teachers turned blind eyes towards the behavior. She was allowed to excel, true, and gain a measure of protection, but only at the cost of becoming an exploitable resource.

As the tears finally ran out, Jazz exhaled a quiet sigh into her brother's hug as he clutched her tightly, comfortingly. He was a balm to her pain, someone who had never said a malicious word her way, someone she could depend on. She drew strength from that connection and the thought of a brighter future let her very soul feel lighter as she unburdened herself.

Jazz is so very hard to write.

But, yes, this is what's been happening from Jazz's perspective. In this world, Danny's not the only one with powers. The specifics of her abilities will be explained more later. Also, some of the last part of this chapter is from Chapter 4, but augmented to show a bit more of Jazz's viewpoint. This should explain some of her issues and why she was suddenly inspired to tell Danny everything about Casper High. I got some complaints that her character development was too fast, so I hope that this should help allow people understand things.

Next Chapter: Jack O'neil and William Fenton reminisce about the good old days, Danny and Jazz go horseback riding and have a day in Salem. Also, some SHIELD flunkies.