Jazz considered herself as a pretty decent driver; she was always aware of her surroundings, and kept a close eye on anything that might suddenly put her or others in danger. But that hadn't prepared her in any way to piloting the Spectre Speeder through the firefight that was roaring over the streets of the capital city.
Her hands were an iron grip on the controls and she veered the machine through the air to try to avoid any direct hits. But with so many weapons and ghost rays being fired, there was a constant peppering against the side of the Speeder that set her teeth on edge. A particularly powerful blast struck the left side and she yelped as the Speeder jolted to the right. A red warning light began blinking on the console, alerting her to the status of the ghost shield which was now sitting at seventy-three percent.
'We're fine,' she muttered to herself, quickly darting between ghosts as well as she could. But despite how frequently she tried to reassure herself, a nagging voice at the back of her head reminded her constantly that this was way out of her league. Yes she came from a family of ghost hunters and could hold her own in a fight but this was entirely different. Not to mention the political ramifications if they lost the fight. Even if they won she wasn't sure what would happen. Surely half-ghosts would be considered too dangerous to be allowed to exist freely, and that didn't bode well for her brother or sister.
A shadow passed overhead and she looked up at the Ops Centre that she had been forced to abandon to the half-ghosts swarming its surface. The Speeder couldn't keep up with the jet at its full speed, and all she would end up doing was putting herself at risk from the ghosts. But it seemed that its own weapons were finally able to clear the ghosts away and it was back to its full manoeuvrability.
Another loud explosion struck her from below and she yelled as the Speeder jerked violently in the air. She struggled to regain control, fighting to rein in its spinning. Once it had stopped spinning, she forced herself to take a deep breath and focus.
'No time for self-doubt now, Jasmine,' she declared, 'I have a job to do.'
Up ahead, she spotted a cluster of soldiers taking shelter amongst two armoured cars, firing up at the half-ghosts who were simply going intangible to avoid their bullets. She gunned the throttle and slammed the Speeder straight into two that were returning fire, sending them sailing through the air for a good five meters before crashing to the ground and reverting to their human forms.
Jazz quickly unbuckled herself from the pilot seat and threw open the doors into the surprised faces of the soldiers.
'They can phase through your bullets,' she explained without bothering to introduce herself. 'Ecto weapons are the only things that will hit them.'
She reached down and pulled free a number of blasters, cannons, and ecto-infused bullets that filled the back of the Speeder and began distributing them to the soldiers. Their shock and confusion turned to grins as they accepted their new weapons and ammunition.
'Good luck!' Jazz called before she slammed the door again and returned to her seat. As she sped away, she turned the Speeder slightly so she could see the soldiers had accepted their new gear with gusto and were now blasting away at the half-ghosts.
A shadow passed overhead and she glanced upwards to see Youngblood's ship swerving through the air. The cannons were firing nonstop as the pirates swung from the rigging, swords deflecting the attacks of the half-ghosts that were swarming around it. Youngblood laughed maniacally from the wheel, clearly enjoying the havoc way too much but Jazz found she couldn't fault him. At the very least, his massive glowing green ship was proving to be a good distraction for the swarms of half-ghosts.
Without warning, the ship swerved as a powerful explosion rocked its starboard side and slammed into the Spectre Speeder before Jazz could react. The side of the ship buckled under the impact and she shouted with alarm as she lost control.
She caught sight of the ground rapidly approaching through the windshield but with the right thruster malfunctioning, there was nothing she could do to stop he deadly corkscrew she was stuck in. She gritted her teeth and braced herself as well as she could, preparing for the inevitably bad impact. But when the sudden halt came, there was no crash, no crumpling of metal or shattering glass. Instead, alarms were still beeping at her, warning of the damage as the systems tried to reboot.
She blinked and looked around. She still seemed to be floating above the ground though with the engines still struggling to restart she tried to figure out what had saved her. Moments later her question was answered when a shadowy ghost's grinning face appeared in her windshield. She knew that ghost.
The engines finally restarted and the Speeder began to hover under its own power again. A new engine revved outside and none other than Johnny 13 appeared outside, grinning at her.
'Hey, Jazz,' he greeted her as if they were old friends.
'You!' Jazz snapped.
'Long time, no see.'
Jazz glowered at him for a moment before another ghost appeared that also seemed familiar to Jazz and it took her a moment to place her as one of the three ghosts that had banished all the men in Amity Park.
'C'mon, Johnny,' she exclaimed, 'Don't waste your time on this human.'
Johnny winked at Jazz and she felt her skin crawl. Not for the first time she was relieved Danny had been so persistent in refusing to let Johnny take control of her.
'Until next time,' Johnny said and revved the engine of his motorbike. Kitty jumped on behind him and the two sped off, the black shadow racing close behind.
'Jazz, are you all good?' Tucker's voice called over the crackling radio.
'Fine,' she replied, shaking herself back to reality.
With the engines sputtering but still functional, she pushed the Speeder back into motion, acutely aware of the creaks and groans the hull was making.
'Good because the National Guard need help setting up a perimeter against the river.'
She silently turned the controls to head towards the river, willing the Speeder to stay in one piece just a bit longer. The joystick was shuddering in her grasp, threatening to send the vehicle spinning out of control again. A quick assessment of the panel told her the ghost shield was fluctuating as power levels faltered, sitting between thirty-six and eighteen percent. To make matters worse, every time a wayward ghost ray or ectoball exploded against the hull, the Speeder jolted violently and the energy levels dipped.
'Come on,' she grunted as she wrenched the controls back after a particularly violent crash.
It was with a massive sense of relief that the river came into view and she eased off the throttle. Just as Tucker had said, the National Guard had set up their equipment along its banks, firing up at the half-ghosts that were attempting to cross to the rest of the city. Some of them were bearing various ecto weapons likely courtesy of Tucker's drones but the vast majority were doing what they could with the weapons they already had.
She halted the Speeder behind their lines and threw the doors open again. This time they seemed to know what to expect as they rushed forward and quickly began passing along the weapons and ammunition she offered.
For the first time, Jazz caught sight of the outside of the Speeder and swallowed nervously. The metal was buckled and warped in several places, and some panels were missing entirely, exposing the internal wiring that was sparking dangerously. The right thruster had a worrying amount of smoke spilling upwards and as she watched, the ghost shield shimmered in and out of view.
But there was no time to worry about it now. So long as it wasn't actively falling to pieces or exploding, she'd just have to deal with it.
'Thank you,' on of the men said, hefting a Fenton Bazooka. 'Are you alright?'
He gestured back to the Speeder and Jazz tapped her armour.
'I'll be fine. Ghost fighting is what we do.'
She hurried back into the Speeder, it's storage bay completely deleted of weapons. But, according to her mom, that meant the space could be converted into something else. She scrambled back into the pilot seat and activated the seal to close off the cockpit from the rest of the Speeder. The engines coughed as she brought it up into the air again and more warning alerts began to sound, but she brushed them aside and activated her array of weapons.
Blasters and cannons appeared out from panels along the sides of the Speeder and she grinned. Now this was something she could enjoy more than weapon resupply.
The Speeder shuddered as she began firing at the half-ghosts, he engines struggling to provide enough energy, and the ghost shield flickered again. This time she ignored its warnings and directed all available power to the thrusters and weapons, letting the shield disappear. Once again, her parents' weapons provided her with the solution.
She activated one of the cannons that hung suspended from the base of the Speeder, it's automatic targeting locking on to the half-ghosts' ectosignatures. A brilliant beam of blue light exploded outwards and engulfed three of the unfortunate people and before Jazz's eyes, their forms destabilized and they were pulled into the new Spectre Speeder's 'thermos cannon' as Dani had dubbed it. The storage area behind the sealed panel shuddered and creaked as her new unwilling passengers arrived. But more importantly, the control console began to hum with new life as the energy from the half-ghosts was absorbed and redistributed to the engines. Immediately, the ghost shield reactivated and rose to forty-two percent capacity, while her weapons began to fire more powerful blasts. So long as the damage didn't get too drastic, she was ready to keep the fight going.
She raced along the riverbank, weapons discharging constantly as she and he National Guard repelled the half-ghosts and kept them contained within the immediate vicinity of the White House. Every chance she got, she would capture more half-ghosts and siphon away their energy to keep the Speeder running. With the ghost shield back up and her weapons firing back, she felt her confidence surge, even able to ignore the pained groans and creaks of the vehicle as its damaged parts were forced back into service. Naturally, the universe had to knock her down a few pegs in response, that classic Fenton luck kicking in.
A powerful blast stuck the side of the Speeder, throwing Jazz off course and almost crashing into the river. At the last second, she managed to spin around and gunned the engine, racing upwards to assess what had hit her. A massive exosuited half-ghost had landed on the banks of the river, robotic arm raised and still smoking green. For a moment, Jazz and the ghost locked eyes before the latter grinned and spun to take aim at the National Guard.
'No!' she shouted and slammed her foot on the accelerator. The Speeder doggedly raced forwards and the weapons locked on to the new threat. Right as the exosuit was about to fire on the National Guard, Jazz's ghost ray slammed into the suit's back, throwing him into the ground. She brought the Speeder around to hover over him and began unleashing a barrage of weapon fire while he was down. For a moment, she had him pinned, but a flash of green light from amongst the smoke was the only warning she had before he was retaliating with his own ghost ray.
She yanked the controls to the side and the Speeder lurched out of the way. But it wasn't quick enough as the ghost shield shattered and the thruster on the left side was struck with a shuddering blow, followed immediately by an ear-splitting explosion that threw Jazz forward into the control panel.
Her ears were ringing painfully as she picked herself up, a barrage of warnings filling the screen in front of her. The Speeder was still airborne, but barely, and a quick check of its systems showed that she had lost the port thruster entirely and there was a worrying amount of structural damage to the hull. Another hit like that and the Speeder would crack like an egg and release all the ghosts she had managed to capture so far. Then she'd be entirely helpless.
She diverted the power away from the port thruster back into the centre and starboard ones and gunned the engine again. She shot past the halfa who staggered to his feet and swiped at her, his metallic fist grazing the back of the Speeder before she was out of range again.
'Come and get me,' she muttered to herself, hoping her plan of luring the exosuited ghost away from the National Guard would work. An explosion rocked the Speeder from the right and she craned her neck back to peer through the side of the windshield. Sure enough, the ghost was hot on her tail, palm raised to loose another attack.
She began to zigzag, ducking and weaving the ship just as her parents had taught her to. And the Speeder, despite the damage it had already sustained, responded as well as she could have hoped. She wove through the abandoned cars lining the roads, taking dangerously sharp turns around buildings to dodge away from her pursuer's ghostly attacks. She could feel the engine straining as the controls shuddered in her grip, but she did her best to ignore it, focusing everything on staying in one piece as much as she could. The ghost shield was slowly recharging after the massive hit that had broken it, but there was only so much the damaged systems could do. Every time the ghost behind her fired, the resulting explosion would send the shield flickering dangerously again, even as the blows went wide.
Her luck finally seemed to run out as she realised the Lincoln Memorial was fast approaching and she veered to the left, sending a trail of water in her wake from the Reflecting Pool. Out in the open, the full scale of the ghostly invasion of the capital was laid out for her to see. Frostbite's army was still doing its best with the humans to fight off the invaders, while Danny's ghostly army and volunteers were keeping them penned in from above. Everywhere she looked there was ecto balls and ghost rays flying all around, explosions rocking the air and filling it with acrid smoke. More mundane weapons were firing as well, for all the good they did, and she caught sight of several tanks carving deep trails in the grass around the Washington Monument.
She was so take off-guard by the sudden chaos around her, dodging around fire as best she could, that she momentarily lapsed in her evasion techniques against her pursuer. A massive explosion, more powerful than any that the Speeder had sustained before threw her through the air. Immediately, the control console went dead and all systems shut down. She couldn't see the back of the Speeder thanks to the metal panel that separated the cockpit from the bay, but she could hear the cheers of the half-ghosts she'd captured as they escaped which was all the evidence she needed that the Speeder's hull had finally been breached.
She dragged on the controls, trying to regain some semblance of flight, but they were dead in her hands and she could do nothing but watch as the Washington Monument began to fill the windshield.
'I'm going down!' she shouted into her coms, 'I need help at the Washington Monument!'
She barely had time to brace herself as the Speeder slammed into the ground, carving a deep trench in the grass before slamming into the side of the monument. She remained curled up in on herself as she was thrown about in her seat, the safety belts the only things keeping her from becoming a human pinball. But as it was, everything seemed to start hurting at once when the shaking finally stopped and she dared to lift her head. The windshield was gone, the only remains of it lying in pieces around her feet. The console in front of her was sparking and smoking dangerously while the walls of the Speeder that she could see were buckled and cracked, some letting in shafts of daylight. She looked down at herself, assessing the damage. Her own armour was dented in places and sported some wicked looking slashes along its surface, but it didn't appear to be breached in any way, for which she was immensely grateful. She knew without a doubt that had she not been wearing it, she would have been destroyed along with the rest of the Speeder.
Ignoring the bruises that were quickly making themselves known to her, she pulled herself free of the safety belts and dragged herself through the broken windshield. The nose of the Speeder was a crumpled mess, smoke rising from the damage and she pulled herself along as quickly as she could before it could decide to explode. The remains of the vehicle were wedged pretty firmly against the side of the Washington Monument but there was space enough to squeeze between them and only the ruined earth alongside them.
She looked back and gulped in terror; the back of the Speeder was gone, the only sign of there being thrusters was the charred black shards of metal that jutted out from the walls. Naturally, there was no sign of the half-ghosts she'd caught, and she felt a strange sense of loss looking at the completely totalled vehicle. But she didn't have time to dwell on it as a shuddering crash sent dirt spraying over her as the ectosuited half-ghost landed nearby, grinning down at her as his eyes glowed dangerously.
'That was a fun game, little mouse,' he hissed at her, 'But it seems you've been caught.'
Jazz staggered to her feet, activating her suit's weapons that looked pitifully small compared to what the exosuit was boasting. The half-ghost wasn't impressed either, laughing and raising his own arms. The metallic fists began to glow with green light and Jazz immediately assessed her options. Her suit had a very basic ghost shield, designed to stop only medium-powered ghostly attacks, which this situation definitely exceeded. The armour itself was sturdy, but there's no way it could withstand what was about to be fired at her. Her only chance of survival was to run, right now.
She turned and bolted, hoping to maybe get some reinforcements from the friendly ghosts, but before she had moved more than two steps, an explosion threw her off her feet and sent her crashing to the ground several metres away. She gasped and tried to get her breath back while crawling on all fours, trying to ignore the laughter of the ghost slowly advancing on her.
'What did a child like you think you could do out here?' he goaded her and she glanced back to glare at him. 'You have no powers, no vehicle, and no weapons that can do anything against us. You never stood a chance.'
He raised his fist again and Jazz resolutely turned to face him. If she was about to die, she wasn't going to let it be while she was trying to crawl away.
Which meant that the she saw something that the half-ghost didn't: the Fenton Family Assault Vehicle barrelling towards him from her right at top speed. For a brief moment, she caught her father's eye and he grinned at her. Then with all the grace of a train, he slammed right into the side of the half-ghost, forgoing the mass of weapons that bristled on the vehicle's roof in favour of trying to smear Jazz's opponent into the dirt.
The half-ghost was dragged under and caught in the treads, his suit sparking and being ripped apart before he was spat out the back and left lying like a mangled piece of roadkill. Jack wheeled the RV around and brought it skidding to a halt before Jazz, spraying dirt and grass around her.
'You alright, honey?' he called through the opened window.
'It could be worse,' she replied with a wide smile, 'Thanks, Dad.'
He grinned back but before he could reply, there was a shout of fury from her right and Jazz turned to see yet another armoured ghost charging towards them, seeming infuriated at the sight of his downed comrade.
'I've got this, baby,' Jack declared, revving the engine again, 'You get out of here!'
He sped off towards the approaching ghost, looking ready to do the same thing with this one as the last. But this time, he didn't have the element of surprise. Jazz could only watch in horror as the arms of the exosuit lashed out and caught the RV. The ghost was pushed backwards from the force of catching the vehicle, but he retained his grip, the treads spinning uselessly as Jack tried to regain his suddenly lost momentum.
The ghost grinned and Jazz could see the hands clutching the vehicle start to glow green.
'Dad!' she screamed, lifting her weapons to fire at the ghost.
He didn't even notice her efforts, ignoring even the RV's weaponry as Jack turned them on him. There was a flash of green light and an echoing explosion as the RV was struck at point-blank range, engulfing her dad in a green fireball.
Her voice was stuck in her throat as the ghost dropped the now charred and flaming wreckage of the RV, smirking down at it.
'Pathetic,' he hissed and Jazz felt her horror replaced with white-hot fury. She didn't care that she was hopelessly outmatched. She charged towards him anyway, intent on avenging her loveable goofball of a dad.
The ghost turned to her with a smug smile before he too was engulfed in a ball of green light. Jazz yelled and ducked, shielding herself as best she could from the wave of fire that erupted in front of her. If she hadn't been wearing her armour, and if she had been standing just a little closer, she would have been caught right in the middle of the maelstrom exploding in front of her. When the heat finally died down, she carefully raised her head and stared as all that was left was a charred black crater. A shadow passed overhead and she looked up as the Ops Centre jet raced by, a much smaller shape bailing out from it. Maddie activated a small set of thrusters on her armour's back and landed in a crouch.
'Mom!' Jazz shouted and Maddie quickly moved to embrace her, running her eyes over her damaged armour.
'Are you alright?' she demanded.
'Dad!' Jazz sobbed pointing to the wrecked RV.
Maddie's face hardened and she wasted no more time, running to the vehicle and beginning to tug at its mangled corpse to try to reach her husband. But even with her armour, there was no way she could pull it apart and her movements began to get more frantic and desperate.
'We need help!' Jazz shouted into her coms, 'Dad is trapped in the RV! Please, anyone!'
Without warning, the mess of metal before them seemed to rust and pieces began to fall away. Bit by bit, Maddie was able to rip her way and suddenly Jazz saw a flash of orange amongst the black and grey and she gasped. Maddie saw it too and began working Jack free. The RV was more rust than charred metal now and it was only a matter of moments before Maddie and Jazz were able to pull Jack free. His armour was in ruins, his jumpsuit peering through from beneath, but it seemed to have done its job in keeping him alive as Maddie eventually began to drag him free.
He gave a coughing gasp and blinked up at them through his cracked visor, giving them a weak smile.
'Did I get him?' he asked.
Neither of the women replied as they stared in mounting horror at the trail of blood that had followed him from the RV. From the knee down, his right leg looked to have been severed and blood was pooling around the grievous wound.
'Dad...' Jazz breathed, tears welling in her eyes. But ever the pragmatist, Maddie began to work at trying to apply a tourniquet with anything she could find and stem the bleeding.
'Shadow! Return!'
Jazz's head whipped up as once again, she found herself face to face with Johnny 13 on his bike, Kitty clinging to his back and his Shadow returning to his side.
'You got him out?' Jazz asked, shocked.
'We're on the same side now, right?' Johnny asked, looking surprisingly sombre as he took in the situation.
'We need to get him out of here,' Maddie announced, 'Jack is losing too much blood and I can't help him here.'
Jazz looked up to where the Ops Centre seemed to have been taken over by Technus, the ghost's laughing face making up the nose of the plane.
'We've got you covered,' Kitty said and raced away towards a cluster of yeti. Moments later, she was returning with one of their hovercraft and the three ghosts were manoeuvring Jack onboard.
Jazz was loath to leave the battlefield like this, but with her armour already damaged and her weapons only able to do so much, there wasn't all that much she could do. With a heavy heart, she followed her mom onboard as their ghostly escort guided them away from the fight.