Assorted bits and pieces from works that were discarded without being truly thrown away. Symptomatic of my packrat approach to writing, potentially useful for those interested in my thought process, or how a given story could have gone during it's earlier stages.
This page contains all snippets related to my fanworks, primarily Danny Phantom related.
Assorted pieces
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A map that, alas, he did not have.
A map that Valerie had been sent seven human days deep into the world of the dead to retrieve.
Valerie felt her lips twist beneath the black visor of her suit, the mere thought of the man conjuring a deep sense of disgust streaked through with a raw anger that would have been familiar, perhaps even comforting, had it not burned just as much towards herself as it did the deplorable creature otherwise known as Vlad Masters.
Mister Masters, who had given her life direction and purpose when everything else was falling apart around her.
Masters, who had shown her who and what was to blame for all her pain, how to channel that hurt into something useful and meaningful and good.
Masters, who had praised her for her efforts, paid her handsomely for her work, who had high expectations for her in a way no one else seemed to, anymore, after the prestige she had suckled like a leech from her father’s job shriveled up to nothing and fell away.
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It had Taken three hours longer than it should have, according to the increasingly inaccurate data provided by her employer, but when the cold, rocky islets around her began to cluster together against the increasingly frigid temperatures, taking on a fine winter coat of ice and snow, Valerie Grey was certain she was close.
“About time.” The thought was laden with a sense of bitterness towards her employer that he, in this one particular instance, likely did not deserve. Vlad had told her it would take a week, at the utter minimum, just as had stated that there was only one map capable of tracking the ebb and flow of the landmasses which drifted through the distorted currents of the Ghost Zone like hellish ships through a funhouse sea.
The very same map, incidentally, that Valerie had been sent to retrieve. The very same map, incidentally, that Valerie had been sent, seven days nightless days deep into the realm of the dead to retrieve.
Beneath her mask, Val felt her lips curl, disgust curdled over with hot anger at the thought of the creature otherwise known as Vlad Masters.
“So your name is Valerie, hm? Lovely, lovely, too lovely for these sort of...surroundings.”
He had glanced only once at the chipped stool she had offered him, too surprised, too frankly flattered that Mister Masters would still deign to visit her family’s house, when all the rest of Amity’s prestigious and wealthy had deemed them lepers in all but name, to register the amused disdain with which he’d spoken.
“Tell me, my dear, how do you feel about striking out a bit, hm? Being a little more ambitious. I can’t imagine this is what you had planned for yourself, after all.
It hadn’t been, not by a long shot. Valerie had made sure to inform him as much, working herself up into a familiar froth as she told her story yet again, ranting against the ghost boy, his stupid dog, how he’d ruined everything and got away with it because he was too dead to give a damn about rules or innocents or the lives he might have ruined playing hero like a fool.
It had been so comforting, the way she’d hated then, ensconced in the self-righteous fury of a victim wronged, she hadn’t even noticed how sharp Mister Master’s smile had been, as he’s listened, there, how wide and smug the thin little crescent of his grin, as he stood there, listening.
“Ambitious indeed, and angry, and vengeful. No, no need to protest, Miss Grey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He’d held out the palm of his hand, easily halting the excuses already bubbling up the tip of her tongue. “ There is nothing that hurts more than having what is yours --” He bit off the word, smile twisting into something angrier, more wound than mouth, cut against his otherwise handsome features in a slit of pure violence. “Taken, stolen, for no better reason than because you were too weak and helpless to keep it safe!” He’d paused, body gone taught with
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Return to Chapter 1“Plasmius.” She reminded herself, the name bringing an extra flare of anger as she allowed her hoverboard to skid across the ground, pretended that the grinding beneath her feet was the broken knucklebones of the hateful creature masquerading as her patron and benificer. She imagined him squealing as he was dragged along with her board, green blood weeping in long strands cut by the rocky earth of whatever awful little islet she’d landed on this time. He would beg, she imagined, but she would be implacable, sneering into his dirty red eyes as she ground him into the dirt.
Valerie carefully did not imagine what would happen if he begged as a human, what would happen, what she might feel, if she saw the geniel blue eyes of the man who’d saved her at her lowest cloud over in pain and fear.
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Return to Chapter 1Valerie knew, intellectually, that a week long hiking expedition was no cakewalk. There were the usual suspects of weather and terrain to contend with, then the burden of supplies, finding suitable resting locations, and of course the slow wear of one’s own vitality from step after wearying step, aching muscles pulling bone ever more reluctant to rise from wherever they’d been last allowed to rest.
It was easy, terribly easy, to to simply lose first the path, then yourself, spiraling deeper into whatever green maw you had seen fit to fling yourself in, that had seemed so pleasing a notion, back home, far away, where you once were warm.
Valerie also knew, likewise, that attempting anything like a long trip through the wilderness without proper forethought and good preparation was practically begging for just such a scenario to occur. She could still recall her old camp counselor, from back in the good old days when long summer retreats were something her family could afford, saying as much, again and again, as she paged through slide after slide of faces missing or presumed dead, to hammer the point home.
Valerie was equally aware that if traipsing off into the wilderness for days at a time, as a snap decision, on the word of someone you not only distrust, but hate, was a bad idea, then doing so into a fundamentally alien environment, that required her to a suit just to survive the toxic atmosphere that would otherwise poison her from the inside out was positively idiodic.
Like many things Valerie Grey was aware of but preferred not to admit, she simply channeled what would be uncertainty into other, more productive emotions.
Such as how much she hated Mister Mast--Vlad. Masters. Vlad.
“Plasmius.” She reminded herself, a thief, a liar, and a ghost, hiding behind a human facade like the coward he was.
She brought her hoverboard down harder than she needed to, skipping like a stone across the icy surface before dragging a long, curving skidmark across the ground, allowing simple friction to steal away the last of her momentum as she savored the crunching of the raw earth beneath her own, unforgiving force.
For a brief, fevered moment, she imagined it was the crunching of his bones.
Now at a stop, Valerie stormed off the board, hardly noticing as it dematerialized into a cloud of reddish mist, swirling back into her armour in a misty cyclone of impossible technology and her own iron will.
Valerie huffed, exhaling the same stale breath she’d been breathing for nearly a week now, stripped of its offending carbon by her endlessly efficient suit, still charging in an arbitrary direction across frosty rubble that defined this section of the ghost zone.
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!”
While Valerie hadn’t exactly planned out what she had expected to occur, precisely, she did know that it wasn’t supposed to be like this: She wasn’t supposed to get lost, she wasn’t supposed to be confused, and she wasn’t supposed to be this...not angry, exactly, as that would at least be familiar, but dour; miserable and frustrated as much at herself as at the world.
Fighting, ghost hunting, all of this, it was supposed to be her release, the one place, the one goddamn place where she could be in control.
But no, Valerie is--was--a puppet, yanked around by the same kind of scheming, duplicitous monster she’d first set out to eliminate.
And she’d only figured it out because she somehow let herself be convinced by a different monster to help save his friend.
Who turned out to be an impossible fusion of ghost and human, able to take on a living countenance as easily as she could make herself dead.
In a process nearly identical to the one Vlad seemed to go through, when he put on his human guise.
As though her life wasn’t complicated enough.
Valerie kicked at a loose stone, flinging it into the greenish haze that passed for air. It wasn’t enough, so she kicked another one, nearly the size of her own head, launching in in a perfect arc alongside its smaller companion.
She had already given up on passing algebra, but one of the major casualties of that little truce between herself and Phantom had been an English assignment for Lancer, one she’d had a decent chance of actually finishing, for once.
She still hadn’t managed to make any real friends, not since she had personally terminated any chance she’d had with Fenton, romantically or otherwise.
It seemed like she and her father got into more arguments than not, fighting constantly over Valerie’s determination to prioritize ghost hunting over things like her “future” or her “prospects,” as though her identity as the Red Huntress wasn’t the key to both those things, now that it was all she had left.
And Danni-
Danni was the reason she’d taken this stupid mission in the first place. The young half ghost was maybe, what, twelve? With no one to support her but Phantom and however many ghostly friends he happened to have.
Valerie was willing to admit, grudgingly, that ghosts seemed to retain some kind of care reflex, a reflection of sorts of whatever sense of devotion they must have born while alive. It might’ve been enough for such creatures to want whoever they perceived as “theirs” under some degree of protection, even putting themselves at risk to do so. But what about when there was no apparent danger?
What about the human half that no ghost could ever truly understand, much less fulfill? Would they just leave it to wither, or worse, try to expunge it entirely out of some twisted notion of “right” or “purity”?
What if Danni felt like she was alone, no matter how many ghosts tried to surround her?
What if Valerie could be there to help?
With everything a mess back home, it had seemed like such a simple decision: Accept Mister Mast--Plasmius’ little mission, steal the so called “infini-map” for herself, find Danni, and get a much needed vacation from the trash fire of guilt and confusion her life seemed to have become.
This was her chance to do something unequivocally moral, a return to the certainty she’d once had before traitorous benificers, disappointed fathers, and empathetic ghosts blew a hole in her convictions and left her to bleed.
But first, she had to actually get to where she needed to be, a prospect that had proven rather more problematic than she’d first imagined.
Valerie thumped down onto the ground, using one of the odd. Crystalline outgrowths that seemed to pass as plants in this region as a bench of sorts before reaching into one of the four spacial pockets that accompanied her suit at all times.
There were several things about her suit that no one, not even Plasmius, to his utter frustration, seemed to really understand. Her spacial pockets, areas roughly the size of a well endowed storage closet which hovered within arm’s reach of her person whenever her suit was in an active state, were among the more useful of these.
One was permanently occupied by her suit’s mass reserves, which she used for repair work as well as the raw materials for her weaponry, while the other was dedicated to energy storage and conversion, able to siphon nearly any substance to fuel the rest of her systems. It was thanks to this engine that she was able to survive for such long periods in the zone’s hostile atmosphere, as it harvested the ambient ectoplasm for the energy required to keep her breathing and warm. That this required she eat, sleep, and work in a skintight suit of armour that was beginning to feel just the slightest bit greasy in the spaces between cloth and skin was entirely besides the point.
The other two spaces, however, were entirely free for her to stock as she pleased. Currently, they housed a large supply of shelf stable food, camping supplies, extra weapons, for those occasions she lacked either the mass required or time to spend on building one from scratch, and other miscellanies that would be either useful or required in her duties as the Red Huntress.
There was no need to search for what she wanted, as the knowledge of each space and its contents were but a thought away, delivered directly into her mind just as though she had always known, by systems she pretended were in no way fused with the grey matter of her brain.
single reaching motion, a physical expression of her intent, and the item she wished to hold was spat out of its container in a swirl of crimson. Roughly the size of an overstuffed restaurant menu, and likewise creased down its midsection in an artificial fold, it was hard to recognize, at first, as a map.
A map it was, however, woven from threads of dark, sinuous material interspersed with lines of warped yellow green, pulsing out of time with the other threads, more numerous than the green, and always moving, weaving over each other like in a nest of serpents crudely square, only just contained by the sickly borders that were not silk which bound them into a shape crudely rectangular in her hands.
It felt gross. It felt really, really gross, and if it weren’t the only thing that had managed to keep her even remotely on course through her long trip through this hell scape of a dimension, she would have tossed it down into the fog the instant she left sight of Plasmius’ portal, right along with the spy bugs, DALVco edition communication devices, and a rather well worn biography on someone named Vince Lombardi.
As eager to get going as she was to get the thing out of her hands as quickly as possible, Valerie took a deep breath, ignoring the metallic taste air gone days past stale, and stated the activation phrase:
“CantorTopoGraphic unit, test model three: Registered personnel, Red Huntress requesting access.”
A pointlessly wordy passphrase, seemingly created for the express purpose of giving the speaker an opportunity to hear their own voice.
Like the vast majority of other Dalvco products, now that she thought about it.
The CTG stilled briefly beneath her fingers, comparing her voiceprint against the one stored in its memory, before beginning to spasm wildly beneath her fingers.
The oily hued lines that comprised most of the map were the first to come undone, unspooling themselves into disparate clusterers, loosely woven into shadowy imitations of the surrounding terrain. The brighter, viridian threads, meanwhile, immediately began to coalesce, forming a single, emerald pathway through the dark islelets. Only a single splotch of green remained, twisting forlornly on one of the smaller landmasses below the main pathway, marking Valerie’s current position in relation to her desired path.
Or something close to it, at least.
Among the many unpleasant things that made the Ghost Zone an unpleasant hiking local was how no part of it seemed to be stable. Not only did the floating islands and purple doors, the closest this strange, pea-soup universe ever came to ordinary terrain, bob along unpredictable patterns in an otherwise intangible current, but the very space these things inhabited was likewise prone to instability.
Warping, twisting, vast gaps cut down to nothing in the space of an instant, then broadened once again into brand new expanse. While Valerie’s map seemed to be able to compensate for most of it, it was never quite accurate; A fact she discovered the hard way when she was sucked nearly two hundred feet below her flight path by the sudden atmospheric pressure created by a gap which hadn’t existed a few seconds prior opening quiet suddenly beneath her feet. Her map had predicted the occurrence, but had logged it as occurring nearly an hour later than it did, two hundred feet away from where it appeared.
Little mistakes like that had been becoming more frequent as of late, she’d noticed, as though there was something the system, in all its creepy glory, couldn’t properly correct for.
“Dismissed.” Valerie said, allowing the map to collapse back to a two dimensional structure before placing it back in her dimensional storage unit with a flick of her mental wrists.
dawdling, she summoned her board back once again, rising to meet the glowing pathway that still glowed bright in the circuits of her mind. Hopefully the map would still be accurate enough to guide her back to Plasmius’ portal.
And if it wasn’t? Well, if the so-called “Infini-map” was even half what her madman employer claimed it was, then there was nothing in particular stopping her from using it to guide Danni and herself back home.
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Return to Chapter 1If one were to ask one Valerie Grey what she disliked most about the ghost zone, she would be rendered instantly irate, her day ruined at the very notion at the idea of listing such a thing; Not because she was against order, mind, or lists as a rule, but rather would take offense that the inquirer would be willing to entertain the notion that anything to do with ghosts or their awful, pea-soup imitation of a universe could be placed in an order that so much as implied any part of it could be less hateful than any other part.
She would go on to describe the sheer breadth of her loathing for all creatures of an ectoplasmic kind:
How they lied, manipulated, and stole.
How they destroyed the lives of innocent humans around them, too focused on their own, selfish obsessions to notice or care.
How they put on facades of kindness and empathy, luring in the unwary with their caring facade.
How they seemed to think apologizing for whatever wrong they had done was enough to justify forgiveness, even when they obviously had no intent to actually do anything to fix the wrongs they’d done.
How they somehow live in a realm that was very nearly map proof.
How Valerie thought it was a good idea to take a week long hike through that selfsame universe, knowing full well she’d hate it all.
This last part may have been somewhat difficult to pin on the ghosts, in particular, but Valerie, well versed as she was in the art of assigning blame, had no such trouble.
“Turn off the lights, you lousy spooks.” Valerie grumbled, doing her best to sink as far as she could into the depths of her sleeping bag.
The lights did not oblige. Instead, they grew brighter in intensity, the increase in luminescence scaling in time with the alarm that Valerie realized was, with a ice cold jolt of fear, not her usual sleep timer, but a proximity warning.
It was a ghost. It was a ghost and it was right in front of her damn face!
Her arms were still trapped in her sleeping bag, and any hope of extracting them would take precious seconds she couldn’t afford to waste.
For any other ghost hunter, that might have been a problem.
For the red Huntress, however, it was the work of a moment: A mental command fired off to the waiting circuitry fused to the grey matter of her brain, and where there had once been mere centimeters of space between herself and her ectoplasmic adversary, there now stood a dull grey cube, roughly four inches square, its geometry perfect but for a single hole in the face of the device, opening up to the burning plasma already charged deep within the depths of the weapon.
Valerie’s sensors were momentarily blinded by the close range blast, registering no more than a squeal of pain from the direction of the threat as it suffered her return fire, before the world cleared once again, her proximity alarm now blessedly silent.
The threat had been eliminated but Valerie, still queasy with adrenaline from the close encounter, wormed her way out of her sleeping bag. There was no way she could relax now, not after a surprise like that.
Red boots carried
(finds snow rat, remarks on how hard they are to see because of glow not in spite of it, mentions sleeping bag camo then map.)
If one were to ask one Valerie Grey what she disliked most about the ghost zone, she would be rendered instantly irate, her day ruined at the very notion at the idea of listing such a thing; Not because she was against order, mind, or lists as a rule, but rather would take offense that the inquirer would be willing to entertain the notion that anything to do with ghosts or their awful, pea-soup imitation of a universe could be placed in an order that so much as implied any part of it could be less hateful than any other part.
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Why? Dunno. Maybe I just felt like it. ”
Maybe she was so sick and tired of all these dirty, rotten, ghosts, sneaking up on her, stealing her things while she slept, then acting affronted when she had the gall to chase them for it.
Maybe she was sick of wearing a suit day in and day out, whose incredible sensitivity tempted her more every day to peel it off, just to make sure there was still skin lying somewhere underneath.
Maybe taking a mission from an employer she knew viewed her as little more than an ignorant pawn was a bad idea.
Maybe she just felt like it, goddammit.
Valerie went for the antennae this time, pulling the ghost close against her own metallic face.
She could have just used the cubes to maneuver its head, of course, but the act of dragging it, physically, had a personal edge that Valerie couldn’t help but savor. It mattered to her, when things like this were personal.
“New deal, spooky.” Valerie could feel a grin creep across her lips. Even as her voice cracked in the anger that flared up from her chest to cradle the cockles of her heart in its fine and righteous warmth.
This was a ghost, and she was a hunter.
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As soon as Valerie had flown far enough as to be out of sight of Plasmius’ portal, she had made a point to dump almost everything he had given her.
First to go were the communication devices. The whole reason Valerie had decided to go along with Plasmius’s little “mission” was to get away from things. She had no desire to talk to anyone, much less the creepy, lying, traitorous ghost-thing masquerading as Vlad Masters. Watching the delicate headset clatter down the edges of one purple door after another before being swallowed by the green and purple tides that passed as atmosphere in the ghost zone had set off a spark of vindictive pleasure.
If Plasmius wanted to talk to her, he could crawl out of his portal and find her himself. Which he wasn’t going to do, because he had a cover to maintain, and what kind of delicate, elderly gentleman would throw himself into a dimension of pure, rarified death? Not Mister Masters, oh no.
Especially not when he had a willing pawn to do it for him.
The next to go were the more surreptitious listening devices, the hidden bugs nested in various weapons, camping supplies, and even a few joints of her armor, which would have gone unnoticed completely had Valerie not been sufficiently paranoid to divert almost all the resources she normally used for exterior detection on a full diagnostic run of her suits systems. It had left her almost blinded in hostile territory, but allowed her to pinpoint a miniscule power draw by a forign matrix, which in turn led her to yanking off the disgusting, tick like robots which had been clinging to her suit for who knew how long.
These, she had opted to crush.
After that went the ordinary, admittedly somewhat banal supplies: A large, pop up tent, several experimental, DALVco type weapons, a sleeping bag, a map, and a rather well thumbed biography on some Vince Lombardi fellow that seemed innocuous enough, but, having come from the same essentially untrustworthy source, was tossed down into the misty depths alongside all the other goods with which Plasmius had seen fit to equip her.
Was it a waste? Certainly.
Did she regret it?
Not at the time, no.
Valerie did not like learning about ghosts. It was the main point where she and the Fentons differed, really. Where Jack and Maddie hunted to learn, Valerie much preferred learning to hunt. How to fight ghosts, how to contain ghosts, how to end ghosts once she had them--any understanding of what ghosts were and how they functioned was learned out of necessity alone.
Valerie hated ghosts, dreamed of one day becoming a huntress skilled enough to rid the world of ectoplasmic scum for good, and the process of educating herself on such unnatural entities did nothing but abrade her patience to the point of madness. Every second she wasted was a second her muscle was allowed to relax back into useless flab, every moment she spent on theory was a moment lost to the schemes of the restless dead, every breath she wasted looking at the anatomy of those things was paying them a compliment she couldn’t bear to give. Valerie would always try, she truly would, but invariably her temper, rubbed raw from being forced to passively sit and look at the things she hated so would get the best of her, and whatever book she was reading would wind up shoved with needless force back into the shelf from which it came.
Knowledge was power, but guns were firepower, and if ever given the choice between the two, Valerie knew full well which she preferred.
Which was why that it was only now, with two of her four laser-cubes pressed against the chitinous temples of her latest target, that Valerie was availed of the fact that if ghosts did not, in fact, posses a mucous membrane, it didn’t stop them from sniveling out long strings of something that looked disgustingly akin to snot.
“Alright manbug, one more time.” She snarled, voice modulated down to something even lower and crueller than her natural snarl, one of the many small but useful functions of her suit. “Where. Did you. Put. my. Stuff?” With each pause, she pressed the nubs a little more firmly into the head of the creature, and God, it truly did look like some kind of locust, oversized and day-glow green.
“Apologizesorryregret.”
Ugh, the deeper she seemed to venture into this pea-soup hellscape, the more she seemed to run into ghosts whose grasp of English was...shaky, at best. It was pretty clear this current example was unaware that words were supposed to have gaps between them, which was, pitably, an improvement from the last example she’d been forced to chase down, which had switched between English and that strange, rasping tongue all ghosts seemed to know.
“Butlawstates, neutralterritoryunguardedgoods? Lawful? Rights?” The creature raised one of its three antennas in what Valerie could only presume was a tentative gesture.
It was the work of a moment to send a mental command to the cubes still pressed against its cranium, whining as they charged power in response.
“Ahaha, shouldbemistakenclearlyregret!” it gibbered, “Masterfullordyesapologies. Dealofgoodsforselfcontinueplease?” Discharge was coming out of its eyes by this point, a less viscous, watery substance that mixed with whatever was dripping out of its mandables into a glowing mess.
Slowly, with all six eyes fixed on Valerie's faceplate all the while, Valerie watched the as it reached into one of the overstuffed bags balanced atop its thorax, tensing just a little as it stuffed one claw into what she’d thought was one a several multicolored patches. If whatever he tried to pull out was a weapon of any kind--
--But no, true to its word, what the ghost pulled out, slowly, carefully, with a caution ill at odds with its threatening mein, was nothing more threatening than a single, well worn wallet and lone, red boot, a perfect match for the partner still attached to Valerie’s own foot.
Valerie snatched them both, loath to let the creature sully them more than it already had. The boot could be replaced, but the wallet--
Valerie opened the leather fold, attention momentarily diverted from the subdued enemy before her.
“Um, pardenexcuse...”
It was the work of a moment to notice that someone, or, more precisely, something had seen fit to rifle through it. Valerie dug her fingers down into the interior pockets, which had been stuffed with the crumpled remains of what had once been contact information, coupon clippings, and however many dollars she picked up during her last shift over at the nasty burger. All her cards, credit, debit, even her learner’s permit, had been bent and scuffed to oblivion.
“Masterlord? Dealisgood?”
A spike of fear seized her heart, muffled from the creatures perceptions only thanks to the functions of her suit, a blessing she needed only briefly, as she felt a flush of anger, familair and warm, rise up against the chill.
“What had it done to her picture?”
“...letgoplease?”
They had been shoved into the backmost pocket, the place where one normally stores small change and candy wrappers for some later, unknowable use. Valerie’s hands did not shake as she pulled out the small, crumpled remains of the polaroid, guantlented fingers smoothing back to a more flattened form.
The mask of the red huntress was equally controlled, an impassive reflection of shadow just as calm as it had been before it looked down to see the hole that had been pierced through the face of the woman who had once looked back from within the photo. A hole that, by sheer coincidence, looked a perfect match for the gripping spikes that lined the claws of the ghost before her.
Whatever face Valerie happened to be making behind the visage of the Huntress was rather besides the point.
“SoIamgoing--Oof!” The laser cubes were among Valerie’s favorite weapons, one of the only ones in her presets that had their own anti-gravity units, which allowed her to do things with them that no ordinary gun could hope to match.
Such as using them to forcibly slam someone’s head back farther than it was probably meant to go, for example.
“Shut up.” Valerie strode up to the ghost, which was leaking all over again, its whole face a mess as its head was kept forciby affixed to the deep red figure that approached it.
“Why!? Nothingwrong? Please--”
Its words were cut off as Valerie kicked it, hard, in the soft spot where abdomen met thorax. It was funny how ghosts kept so many features they didn’t need any more, like joints, for example. Was it subconscious, or did they just get a kick out of the facade, using their very forms to mock the living in a grotesque parody of life?
“Shut up means shut up, you dumb spook.”
She kicked it again.
Valerie was so sick of this, sick of all these dirty, rotten ghosts running hither and yon through their dirty, rotten, zone, sick of how they snuck up and stole her gear whenever she so much as lay down to rest, then acted for all the world as though she were wrong, somehow, to hate them for it.
She was sick of the toxic atmosphere that forced her to stay in her suit, which fit so well, so snugly, it became harder and harder not to peel it back, just to make sure there was still skin waiting underneath.
She was sick of being sick, of the creeping, miserable sense of failure that sat cold and heavy in her gut. The very same sense of misery that had inspired Valerie into the ghost zone in a wild, foolish gambit to outrun and correct her errors all in one fell swoop.
Valerie yanked its head upward, jerking hard on the shivering antenna until all six of its bulbous, leaking eyes were forced to meet the dark gap of Valerie’s own metallic visage. She didn’t need to do this, she knew, but need wasn’t the point. This was a ghost, an opportunist and a predator whose approximation of morals was little more than a dichotomy between the feared and the fearful. Valerie was cruel because cruelty was fearful, and in this vile, twisted realm, that was just the same as being right.
And if there was some warm curl of satisfaction there, a self righteous flame of rage well justified to lick against the otherwise impermeable chill hard and heavy in her gut, then that was her own business, wholly unrelated to the task at hand.
“Now, here’s how this is gonna work, buddy. I’ve got questions, and you’re gonna answer them, M’kay?”
With two guns and a death grip keeping its cranium more or less pinned, it couldn’t quite manage a proper nod, but Valerie was able to interpret the unusually hard convulsions of its thick little neck with no real trouble.
“Good, now, once we’re done with our little Q and A, you’re gonna drop whatever goodies you’re carrying around on your back, and then you’re gonna run.”
Valerie leaned in closer, until her faceplate was mere inches from its shaking, drooling face.
“Do it fast enough, and maybe I won’t shoot.”
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“Junk, junk, junk, weird, gross, junk, ugh! Is there anything good in here?”
The edge of the deep purple cliff was crumbling, careworn stones too tired to resist the suggestion of pull, which was slowly shifting downward as the glowing mists coalesced and thickened as the ghostly evening wore into night.
Just on the edge of this cliff, held together only by grass which grew winter dry and lifeless between the fractiline roots of crystal outgrowths, neither stone nore ice, sat a lone figure, legs swinging carelessly back and forth into the abyss as it rifled through the belly of some odd, patchwork sort of sack.
“Junk, junk, jun-no, a comic book?” Valerie paused halfway through the motion that would launch the floppy down to join the rest of its unwanted comrades.
“Moon Girl #358” she read, eyes skating over the garishly bright lettering at the top of the page, “The ruin of Samarkand?” Nothing rang a bell, but Valerie had never been much of a comics fan, so not recognizing some small, indie character was nothing terribly strange.
She ultimately decided to keep the floppy, tossing it into the small keep pile to her side.
“Don’t need it, junk, junk, ugh, stupid ghost!” Valerie clenched the back side of the bag, now fully eviscerated of its contents, with a returned sense of frustration. “Why didn’t you steal something useful!?”
She tossed the last remaining item, a novelty snowglobe displaying what would be a perfectly ordinary snowman smiling within the blizzard, were it not for the multiple carrots protruding at odd angles from where one might normally expect eyes.
Valerie watched as the snowglobe bounced off one of the small clusters of stone and earth which could invariably be found floating, remora-like, around the edges of the larger landmasses.
Unsatisfied with her last projectile, Valerie picked up the remains of the sack, now deflated to a fabric puddle at her feet, hurling it down to join the items it had once contained. This proved to be a poor choice, as the bag’s large surface area meant it floated more than fell.
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Return to Chapter 2Me neither, but Dani, she’s sweet, you’da liked her, she’s a human underneath all that ectoplasm, and it was Phantom, Phantom, Ma, who helped me save her.”
“Because she’s one of yours.”
Being guilted into helping others by a ghost of all things had stung. Humanity was the foundation of morality, or it should have been, or she thought it was.
“Then, after all that, I figure out Mister Masters, he’s one of these ghost, people...things too. But he’s not like Dani, mama. He gave in to the ghost, let it turn him evil. I don’t--I don’t know how long.
_____________________________She could tell herself that his ghostly obsession was just finally leading him to self destruction all she wanted, the look of raw desperation, the memory of utter sincerity in Phantom’s face as told her Dani was “one of yours” refused to falter.
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Return to Chapter 2“Or somethin’ like a ghost.” She admitted. “I dunno for sure. I think, I think he might be something like Dani? A half ghost, but he couldn’t resist like she could, and it drove him crazy.”
It made a certain degree of sense, she felt, if Vlad was indeed a halfa, rather than one of those rare ghosts that could hold onto some human facade for a while. It explained why he was able to fool an entire town, and more specifically, Valerie, for so very long.
It also formed the seed of a rather compelling reason as to why he was so keen to lay hands on Dani. Vlad was, so far as she knew, single, but that didn’t mean a thing, not the sheer breadth of what Valerie knew one could accomplish when ectoplasm was paired with genius minds and ludicrous amounts of money.
Masters and Phantom hated each other, she knew, but it was a strange, twisted kind of hate, familiarity mixed with a casual distaste unfitting for that of the apparent relations between mayor and ghost.
Phantom was notorious for referring to Masters simply as “Vlad,” a habit that stuck out against the ghost’s normal habit of addressing Amity’s human residents rather politely, going out of his way to use “Mister” or “Missus” whenever he involved himself with humans visually older than himself.
Valerie also knew that Masters would sometimes refer to Phantom by his original name when he thought no one was looking, casually referring to him as “Daniel.”
Phantom was remarkably quick to respond to any ghostly incident that happened to involve the mayor or his office, as though he were keeping a close eye out for such things, in particular.
When Masters set out his million dollar reward for the capture of Phantom, the terms of the contract had specified that the money would not be delivered if the ghost boy was destroyed before delivery.
Phantom and Masters mutual enmity had had rules, boundaries and expectations each expected the other to follow and know. It was, she had thought, not a day after she had watched those dark rings split her world in two, not unlike the unpleasant thanksgivings she had been forced to endure between the two sides of her parent’s family, back when her mother was alive. Two trees grafted, and failed to join, poison free to seep into the wood weeping what fast turned clear sap to deep and bitter sickness.
The rivalry between the two wasn’t just personal, it was familial.
And Dani was nothing if not a spitting image of Phantom himself, for the color of her hair to the very spelling of her name, the two were practically clones.
It was from this that the notion formed, a frigid blossom budding in the disquieting fracture of her certainty: “What if they really were all family?”
Vlad Masters was a scientist, a specialist in ectoplasm as an energy source,
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Return to Chapter 2“Because just getting her outta danger wasn’t enough, mama, I had to make sure she was safe, too.
Phantom, maybe, I guess he ain’t always evil-” sometimes. The concession had hurt almost as much as the discovery of Master’s long duplicity, “-but he’s still a ghost! They don’t think like you and me, things only really matter to them when it lines up with their obsession. Once Dani was out of danger, didn’t need no protecting anymore, what do you think he’d do? Keep her around?”
Valerie snorted at the thought, one she’d actually been foolish enough to believe in until she’d spotted Phantom on patrol, all by himself, a full four days since she’d last left Dani by his side.
He’d actually had the gall to bristle, as though offended, when she’d demanded to know where the ghost girl really was.
“He got rid of her, once he was done with her, pushed her outta his territory when another spook hangin’ round got too much to bear.”
It was the only thing that made sense, really. Certainly Valerie could not imagine that a child like Dani, already so isolated by the nature of her ghost half, willingly forgoing the chance at a home and a life of the sort Valerie would have gladly gotten her in Amity, would give her, that was, once she found where Phantom put her.
“Thing is, it’s pretty well known Phantom dumps all his ghost problems in the Zone. Story is, he can either sense the temporary ones, or somehow has access to a stable one somehow, I don’t know.”
Truthfully, Valerie did know, or at the very least, strongly suspected. Phantom was well known to use Fentonwork technology in his fights, much to Jack and Maddies vocal and very public displeasure; He was also remarkably familiar with their inventory, apparently aware even of failed prototypes like the Ecto-dejecto, a product too new for even Masters or Valerie to have even heard of. Jazz Fenton was also a well known pro-Phantom advocate amongst her peers, much to the dissapointment of her ghost hunting elders.
No, the only real mystery there was how the Fenton’s skill in ghost hunting technology so utterly failed to translate to ghost hunting in practice.
She just hoped Danny managed to avoid whatever problem Phantom undoubtedly caused them, popping in and out the way he did.
“What I do know,” She continued, “That if I wanted to get Dani out of whatever hellhole he threw her in, I would need a stable portal to do it, and there are only two of those, one’s owned by the Fentons, and Masters’ got the other.”
Valerie rolled her eyes, already anticipating her mother’s rebuttal.
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“Junk, junk, junk, weird, gross, junk.”
Valerie, never one for stillness, kicked her legs back and forth as she rummaged through the sack, treading over the abyss that spanned large and hungry just above the outcropping where she sat.
“Junk, junk, junk, and...you’re empty! Ugh!”
Valerie tossed the last item, which advertized itself as Moon Girl 358 in an obnoxiously eye-catching font, down into the gap. She flopped down on her back, legs still carrying her to nowhere as they swung back and forth over the edge of the island she’d chosen to make camp as the mists, always thick, thickened and gathered into true opacity as the ghostly evening cycled its way into night.
Valerie reached over to her left side, where a small collection of assorted objects, what few goods Valerie found useful enough to keep out of the entirety of the bug ghosts shoulder hoard. Most of it was food, prepackaged and vacuum sealed, as anything else would have absorbed enough of the atmospheric ectoplasm to turn toxic or worse, animant.
Amongst her collection sat one boot, and one photograph, crumpled and punctured well beyond repair.
Valerie reached for the photograph brushing her thumb over the one hole in particular, feeling along the edges of the absence as she reached for those parts of her suit attached not to her body, but her mind.
Graphical Storage and Processing:
Status: Active: Recall request: Confirmed.
Data: Available, reporting 100% recall. Overlay Request: Confirmed. Initiating Command: Overlay: Processing…In the space of a moment, the broken polaroid vanished, replaced with a pristine photograph of a small, three person family. The grass in the photo was a deep, natural green, so unlike the cold viridian that defined the space she’d been flying through for days now. Bright interjections of color added further life to the image; Cornflowers looked out with modest blue heads between the more assertive hues of the hop clover clustering low, but boldly, around the edges of the tattered quilt upon which the family sat.
The man in the photo was calm, his gentle not yet born from sorrow, but of calm. His hair and mustache close cropped and tidy, though his white suit, only lightly grass stained, was already unbuttoned at the collar, wilting in the long vanished heat. He had a round, gentle face, belaying the gleam of wry humor that glimmered within eyes deep set and hazel. His bushy mustache failed to hide the affection in his smile, as he looked down at the second member of the trio.
The child, no more than five if she was a day, stood upon the big wicker basket that formed the centerpiece of the photo. Even then, Valerie knew, she had not been one to refuse a chance to stand as tall as the world would let her.
The child, having obviously taken notice of the camera, had taken to posing in a manner that, in the mind of a child so young, might well seem authoritative. Any sense of dignity lent by the puffed out chest and button nosed scowl was, alas, utterly ruined by a unicorn themed dress, pollen streaks adding an extra dash of unintended cheer to the bright pink background upon which they froliced.
The final member of the picture was a woman, curvaceous and warm. She held a ball in one hand, the logical culprit for the bits of meadow smeared across them all. Her heat dewed neck was long, bent back from the mirth spilling from parted lips in a moment of sparkling delight that seemed to spill from the very edges of the photograph, brightening the very air in the light of her smile.
Valerie lingered on the woman’s face, fingers lightly tracing edges of her absent visage she herself refused to see.
She tried to smile back, but Valerie knew, for all the similarities of their features, that it would never be quiet as good.
“Hey Ma.” She said, “Long time no see.”
----------“...That humans could turn into ghosts? It was crazy, it oughta be crazy, but Dani was real, and if Phantom, yeah, that Phantom, hadn’t convinced me of it, I’d be--I’d be a murderer.”
Valerie still didn’t know what to make of that. Phantom had been so persistent, for so long, that he was a “good guy,” most days, Valerie simply opted to tune his protests out entirely. The ghost kid talked big game, but when he and his damned lousy dog ruined her entire life, what had he done? Nothing, that was what.
No haunting the creditors that had shown up one day at their door, no helping move the heavy furniture she and her daddy, with his crapped out back and white collar biceps, couldn’t afford to move professionally any more than they could afford to replace it if they’d left it behind. Hell, Phantom couldn’t even be bothered to announce to the world at large that it was his fault Axion’s security system was wrecked, as though he didn’t know every local broadcast would kill for a chance to interview the infamous ghost boy.
A press conference. All those sorrys, all those I-feel-bad-about-its, and Phantom couldn’t even be assed to hold a lousy press conference.
But then his little half relative was in danger, and then he actually took action and did something about it, offering everything he knew, everything he was, in exchange for Valerie’s aid.
She could tell herself that his ghostly obsession was just finally leading him to self destruction all she wanted, the look of raw desperation, the memory of utter sincerity in Phantom’s face as told her Dani was “one of yours” refused to falter.
It was almost as though he cared.
“I’d be a murderer.” She said. “I would have killed whatever humanity she had left for money, mama, and it would be all my fault. And--and-”
Valerie sniffed, ruthlessly willing away the tears threatening to blur the face of her mother into a summertime blur.
If there was any good of being stuck neck deep in an alternate dimension, it was this. Had she so much as sniffled at home, someone would have heard it for sure. Then, knowing her luck, would have made a special point to spread around how big bad Val had cried like some common damsel. The walls of her apartment, she knew, were as thin as her neighbors were spiteful.
Valerie rubbed her faceplate in frustration, wishing for the millionth time that she could take it off.
“And that ain’t the worst, either.” The moment had passed, but Valerie’s voice still wobbled with the stress of choked back tears. Her mother had always had a knack for that, pulling out emotions and feelings Valerie thought she’d had under control. She supposed it was something about being such a good listener, it made it hard to hold anything back.
“Mister Masters, you remember him? Gave me my first suit, kept daddy and I off the street while he was looking for a new job.”
Valerie bit her lip, chewing the bottom as she worked through the brief rush of confusion and rage that rushed against her mental shore. Just saying his name left a bitter taste in the back of her throat that made her want to curse, to sling the most vile words she knew until the poison was expelled. Which was an unacceptable course of action, not with her mother watching.
“Well, he lied.”
“All that help he gave was just a way to use me, to make me grateful to be used, his happy little pawn in his territory dispute with fucking Phantom!”
A harsh sound escaped her lips, a rueful bark akin to laughter. The Red Huntress, her best and only chance to make a life that mattered, a life earned for herself, by herself, only existed in the first place because Valerie Grey couldn’t resist rolling over like a dog to the first hand that reached out for anything other than harm.
“‘Cause the crazy thing is, mama, Masters, he ain’t even human. All that shi--stuff he talked about protecting the town, protecting the people from all those spooks, that was a lie too! This whole time, after everything, he was just another dirty, stinking ghost!”
The revelation had left her staggered, confidence bottomed out as she watched her patron and employer vanish beneath the power of the dark rings which had split from his waist, leaving a cackling monster in their wake.
“Or somethin’ like a ghost.” She admitted. There was always a chance he was something akin to Spectra, one of those rare spectors with a sufficient understanding of humankind that they could warp their exterior into a passable imitation of the same. A theory that would have been much more compelling had she not known for a fact that Spectra required no rings to alter her appearance, not the way Vlad, and Dani, did for sure.
“I think, I think he might be the same kinda thing as Dani, some kinda hybrid. It would explain why he wanted her so bad, like some kind of messed up family thing.”
It did not explain why Phantom was so invested in Dani’s survival, or why the two were so absurdly similar, sharing both name and appearance in kind.
“It was supposed to be a plum job, you know? go in, grab the spook, get paid. Would’ve been the last payday I needed to finally get me and daddy outta that hellhole, too, so I didn’t ask anything about it.”
She sighed, the sound echoing through her speakers before being swallowed whole by the fog she knew would have coalesced fully by now, suffocating sight and sound alike within its grasp.
Her mother would have asked about it, she was sure. The face in the picture was definitely the inquisitive sort, the kind of visage that would always be looking and seeking and be delighted in the act. It was the kind of face that could turn the most mundane of searches into an adventure.
Her mother was still laughing in the picture, but the cant of her gaze now seemed suddenly avoidant, the twist away from the camera lens a gesture of shame rather than joy.
God, this was why she hadn’t wanted to talk to her mom like this. Wasn’t her father’s disappointment failure enough?
“Don’t look at me like that Ma, I fixed it, alright?” After being guilt tripped by a ghost, “Me’n Phantom teamed up, we kicked ass, and we got Dani out. I ain’t working for Masters--Plasmius ever again, neither, that was it, I’m out. The Red Huntress is a free agent, just like I always dreamed.”
The Red Huntress was also going to have to convince their landlord to hold off on rental fees until her daddy’s next paycheck came in, but that was neither here nor there.
The woman in the photograph did not respond, but Valerie felt sure the edges of her smile relaxed at that, cheeks loosened even as an eyebrow raised, imperceptibly above the other. There was no need for words, however, when the question was obvious.
“Then what do you think you’re doing, all the way out here?”
Valerie grimaced slightly. She really hadn’t wanted to answer that one.
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Within the infinite Realms, there was nothing that did not glow.
It was subtle for most, a barely there luminescence of form barely visible to those who did not deliberately cup their hands about them in search of their shine. Much of the earth and stones that formed the floating islands that drifted through the Realms were like this, so subtle in their shine that most would fail to notice it was there.
There was plenty that was brighter, however: Great, crystalline forests, neither stone nor ice, each glowing with a light so akin to the other in intensity that in their deepest depths, shadows were banished in their entirety, rendering the viewer blind in the sheer monotony of their shine.
Even the floating doors that swirled around the misty currents of the unearthly realm glowed, particularly at the edges, where pockets of space distinctly other flickered like flames into the space beyond.
And of course, there was no ignoring the omnipresent mist, which pervaded the atmosphere at large in great swaths of green and purple. At times towering, the luminescent anvil of a ghostly thunderhead as reams of finer, thinner mist pools out at odd angles in a kind of supernatural rainshower before collapsing into itself as the pseudo-storm exhausts it powers. At others, subtle, creeping in as delicate, misty spiderwebs, so slowly, that by the time the unwary traveler realizes the danger, any chance of escape has already been lost.
Brightest of all, of course, are the portals, snapping in and out of existence in times and places only semi-predictable by even the most experienced of ghosts. Terrible, ovular flares of raw power, capricious and unstable holes in reality as full of opportunity as they were danger and fear. Portals were not merely the brightest lights around, but they were also the best and greatest opportunity an inhabitant of the Realms could hope to find, for in those areas where reality turned thin, things were prone to falling through.
The products of worlds unknown, constructs built on principles fundamentally apart from those known by the ordinary man, or his ghost; Bits of the living realms leaking through, altering the place beyond, imposing forign rules that form forign elements within the sphere of their influence; Strange and wonderful objects, or even beings, yanked from their natural places by virtue of their unfortunate proximity to these terrible, shining gateways, which called to all observers as a flame might to the unwary moth.
The ghost who sought to gain from these thin areas of the universe and seek the blessing of the portal would run the risk not merely of falling, or perhaps even being suctioned, into another place entirely, cut off forever from their home, but the competition of those who would seek to hoard the greater part of that opportunity for themselves, at the expense of all others who would seek it out.
Typically, this competition took the form of other ghosts, but it was not impossible for other species to join the mix. Such alternate competition typically took the form of beings from the living side of the portal, seeking to profit off the substance and artifacts of the dead, much as the dead sought to profit off them, but it was not impossible for a living being to walk among the dead, and fight among them for what living-realm artifacts any given portal might chance to yield.
Such as a teenager who happened to possess a suit of armor capable of glowing in suitably ghostly manner on command.
A teenager like Valerie Grey, for example.
___________Valerie stood a little apart from the crowd, careful as always to ensure any jostling was kept to a minimum, as much a byproduct of nerves and disgust as it was precaution against giving any member of her company the chance to wonder, even vaguely, at just how solid her form really was.
Look, but don’t touch. Touch, and I break your hand.
It was an attitude that seemed to work just as well for the dead as it did for the living, and even now, with the atmosphere set jittering with the force of a reality stretched thin to breaking, where even the thickest of her would-be competitors could all but taste the atmosphere of another world as it’s breath wafted through the fibers of the veil.
It was close enough to guess roughly where the portal would open, when it did open, and there was a constant jostling as each member of the group pressed against each other, cheek to jowl, claw to tail, to push themselves closer to where they guessed the opening would appear exactly even as they tried to push any particular rivals back.
The area to her left had mostly been claimed by the odd insectoids that had somehow managed to make it to the frontline of every portal rush Valerie had found herself obligated to attend. What few parts of them were left free of the patchwork rags stacked high over their hunched forms very much resembled cicadas, save for the placement of their eyes, disgustingly human-like, which peeked out from beneath chitinous joints, keeping clear of a face dominated be circular maw ringed with dense spirals of needle-fine teeth.
Interestingly, the bug ghosts were by far the weakest of the frontliners, making it so far up only thanks to a combination of skilled teamwork and shear rapacity of manner. Valerie had seem them fling the disintegrating bodies of their own comrades in the faces of their enemies, using the half second of distraction to mob combatants up to two levels above themselves until it was destroyed in turn.
They were also the most likely to try and pickpocket any ghost that became too complacent in the lull between a portal’s burgeoning and it’s full emergence.
Proximity alarm: WBM approaching.
“Goddamn weird bugmen.” They really couldn’t leave well enough alone.
With a thought, Valerie pulled from one of the four pocket spaces which existed as an extension of her suit, guiding the unformed matter stored there into the shape of a small, cubical blaster, one of her favorite weapons. She made a special point of slowing down the process of formation, allowing the ghost to get a nice, long, look at the burning core of plasma shoved just inches from it’s face hole.
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In the end, it took three days longer than it should’ve for Valerie to reach the edges of the far frozen, her internal mapping software, normally flawless, skewing farther and farther from reliability the longer she stayed. Whether it was some kind of interference from one of the more esoteric energies that irradiated the atmosphere, or if the deceptively steady drift of islands and doorways through some mathematically incalculable new direction, the end result was the same: The longer Valerie stayed, the more lost she became.
It was enough to make her regret chucking all the supplies Masters, no, Plasmius, had seen fit to equip her with before sending her off through his portal. She recalled the map in particular, as Plasmius had made a special point to brag over it before handing it over.
“The Latest in Dalvco engineering.” He’d purred, “Not as good as the real thing, perhaps, but more than sufficient for our needs, I’m sure.”
It had been an odd thing, more parchment than paper, with a strange, oily quality to its surface that never seemed to
_______________________(Val fighting other ghosts, has hooked up with convoy on way to FF?)
_____________________________Valerie did know, had the realization slap her just as she had settled into bed that same day. She had been miserable, the curious sense of wholeness that had stolen over her somewhere between rescuing Dani and the mock chase that had ensued between herself and Phantom not long after swallowed whole by a sense of anger and betrayal, familiar friends turned against her, churning in the hollows of her gut.
She had flown in just as the sun had simmered down past the horizon, leaving purple smears behind on a horizon just bright enough to cast the city below it into flattened silhouettes. What few streetlights survived the twin threats of ghost fights and budget cuts flickered weakly, sodium orange pools buzzing in isolation against the all consuming night.
There were other lights, too: Colder, paler, unnatural in their hue. Most of these stranger lights had darted in and out of the shattered husks of former buildings like freak minnows, dodging through cluttered allyways before escaping sight beneath trash bags swollen tight to bursting with the gaseous exhalations of their rotten get.
Valerie sneered at their presence, habitual disdain turning the corners of her mouth downward in automatic disgust. Ghosts were showing up more and more outside of Amity, these days, especially in the kind of run down and abandoned areas which made up the majority of Elmerton. It was so obvious, how little they belonged, their very auras, so unlike any natural light, declaring the foreignness of their being.
Normally, Valerie would have chased them off, given a gesture at pursuit, but on that night in particular, after having her entire world cracked through the middle and being forced to keep focus and function for so many hours thereafter, Valerie was willing to let whatever spooks crawled through the crumbling brickwork well enough alone.
For now, that was.
Valerie’s bed was waiting for her when she swung through the clouded plexiglass currently serving as a window, a more direct, stealthier entrypoint than the actual door, one that allowed her to keep her to keep her armour on until the very moment she was safe inside her room, with much less concern over being spotted while she was at it.
Valerie allowed her hoverboard to begin disintigrating back into its base componants
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The Yeti glanced back at her, smug grin on its muzzle a sure sign it hadn’t noticed the gun, flipping her a hand gesture she could only interpret as the insult it surely was.
Oh, it was on.
She sent an extra pulse of power to her gun to just shy of overloading, guaranteeing a hole big enough to be deadly whether she hit the core or not.
She was going to sever this asshole.
One final adjustment, and Valerie Grey pulled the trigger.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------The pink beam scythed through the atmosphere, deadly magenta intensely apparent against the backdrop of white. There was nothing to stop it,
--------------------------------------Damnit.
Couldn’t she shoot just one thing?
“Shit”
Valerie tossed down her gun with all the force she could, hit with a sudden headache as she forcibly pulled her units back to their resting baseline. She kicked the gun, which belched unfired plasma from the tip of its barrel in response.
“Oh yeah?” She yelled, both hands cupped around her visor towards the Yeti’s retreating form, “ Well I’m not the one who had to run away. Try fighting for real next time, huh? See who moves then!”
She was shaking, the after effects of excitement, or just stymied rage, she had no idea.
A chuffing sound from down below brought her out of the moment. Several feet down, yet another bunch of yetis gazed up at her. A family, it seemed, all balanced on a smaller, rattier version of the beast she’d almost shot just moments before.
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spirals could appear straight, and straight lines could fold a hundred different directions into a single path, ripping the unwary in every possible direction and leaving their disassembled pieces to dissipate where they fell in little piles of paradox that did and did not overlap in a single point.
___________________________________________________________________________________Things had been fine, at first. Her encounter with the miserable excuse for a shag carpet earlier that day had spurred her to cease dithering and stick to the road. She had yet to be correctly identified as a human, not even by ghosts that were up close and angry, playing it cautious and avoiding the locals was no longer as much a survival strategy as it was a waste of time.
With a top speed of over one hundred and seventy miles an hour on her board, Valerie had been confident that she would make her destination by the time. As long as she kept moving and stuck to the higher portions of the segmented obelisks, which continued to appear at steady intervals every few miles, other travellers seemed content to leave her alone.
The problems really began when she tried to compare how far she’d travelled in relation to her goal. It had been three hours--or perhaps four, her suit's timer kept jumping back and forth when she wasn’t looking--when she took her eyes off the middle distance and focused back to where the mountain loomed in the horizon beyond.
There was no change.
Nearly seven hundred miles travelled straight towards it, and It was exactly the same impossible size as when she’d first looked it over that morning.
But, of course, that implied the mountain was far away, incredibly so, to the point that everything she had done up to this point meant almost nothing to the distance she still needed to travail.
Valerie pressed her heels into her board, urging as much speed as she could from the device. She needed to move.
So of course, that was precisely when things began to slow down.
Gradually, more and more “people” had appeared along the road at all levels, organizing themselves by some unknown law into layers, where the slowest kept to the ground, and the fastest flew to the roughly perpendicular to the highest point of the segmented obelisks, which was where Valerie herself happened to be.
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The longer she followed the road, the longer it became, soon swelling to highway proportions, smaller roads jutting into and splitting off the main artery in near random intervals, ferrying travelers to and from the main path off to parts unknown.
More so even than the road, the number of travellers become inumerable, massive crowds of ghosts converging from all angles before merging into the greater stream of motion along the road. No more could she afford to duck in and out from the sight of errant herdsman, it was all she could do just to avoid getting clipped by the various wings, tails, or even vent gasses that ferried her fellow travellers on their way. It was at a point, indeed, where she was unsure if she could safely squeeze her way out of the flow without getting hit, even if she wanted to.
The increase in density did have the unexpected benefit of making the purpose of the carved towers somewhat more clear. Every ring represented some standard of both speed and height: If one went slowly, they were expected to stay parallel with the lower rings, with the slowest of all reduced to walking along the ground. If one could fly with some speed, however, or had a mount to do it for them, they were expected to stay higher up. The breaks between each section of the pillar seemed to represent some transitional area, the space where each layer were expected to avoid each other excepting those who desired to rise higher or sink lower to another layer of speed.
The Yeti from before, rude as he was, must have been irate due her slowing down at altitude, something that could well have caused a collision had traffic been any denser.
------------------------------------------------------------The mists had grown so dense, indeed, that had it not been for the traffic jam, she may well have failed to realize what she was seeing at all.
It appeared as a
___________________________________________________________By the time Valerie reached the city, the night mists had begun creeping down from the sky once again, great green plumes descending in ponderous columns to meet the blue-white fingers which steamed from the very pores of the earth, carrying with it the ash belched from distant chimneys, heatless, snatching up the dust and grime of the day before carrying it all up to the reaching sky, where it fused and mixed into colors which for which she had no name.
It appeared as a shadow in reverse, a slightly denser bulwark of dirty cream rising faintly from the haze. The impression of edges gave it definition, a loose outline of craggy ridges and peaked roofs suggestive of the landscape she’d just spent the day traversing, before finally coalescing into a dim vista of rising towers and bulky constructs so densely packed that they spilled over the rim of the steep defensive wall in a wave of habitation that pooled out in a broad ring of smaller buildings that ensconced the old barricade in thicket of habitation before reluctantly thinning back to open farmland and bowbacked orchards of unknowable age.
It was an impressive sight, a fantasy kingdom cut straight out of her little girl dreams cast in crystal and sheathed in ice. It was an unknown territory, unwitnessed and unexplored by living hands for eons counting, it was all the dizzying opportunity of the city packed with all the terrors of hell, it was an opportunity, an adventure, a threat of death paired with the possibility of outrageous reward.
Valerie hated it.
As it happened, magical ghost kingdoms were not exempt from magical ghost traffic jams, the likes of which she had found herself stuck in for what was probably hours, though with her clocks still malfunctioning, it was impossible to say. What she did know, however, was that her feet were killing her, the wooly vulture to her left had ghost fleas, and if the idiot in front of her revved his engines in her face one more time, she would personally climb into the cockpit of his ridiculous flying machine to ruin his day. Her gloves were already streaked black from where she’d rubbed prior emissions off her visor. Anymore, and she would simply be rubbing more dirt in than she would be rubbing off. While her suit’s suite of sensors weren’t wholly, or even mostly reliant on her physical ability to see, the loss of any of her senses wasn’t something she was willing to tolerate, not when she was so utterly surrounded.
To her left, to her right, down below and up above, there were ghosts everywhere. Never, not even during the uprising of Pariah Dark and his skeleton hoards had she seen so many ghosts in such proximity. Rubbing up against her board, braying and chattering, slapping green thighs in alien rhythms and throwing the crumpled remains of snacks on the heads of whatever unfortunate happened to be present down below. Most were yetis, and most of those yetis rode those headless, ringmouthed vultures which they seemed to favor as a mount, but that was not to say there weren’t others, either.
In the extra lane that had formed above her own as they inched ever closer to the city proper, there was a long legged-ghost who rode twin balls of fire, which allowed him to zip through the air as though on miniature skates.
Three rows to her right, there was a creature with a dozen heads and a single mouth, which they were forced to share between the each of them as they argued around the empty neck which sat crosslegged and sullen on a carpet woven from starlight and cold, grey ash.
Several levels below, she kept catching glances of what looked very much like a covered wagon, if covered wagons had the legs of a crab and thick, undulating caterpillar flesh where one might normally expect layers of canvas and rope.
Then, of course, there was the idiot with the flying jalopy just ahead of her, a mess of melted wax and meat somehow compressed into a well pressed jacket and a neat leather newsboy hat.
Valerie had spent the last third of the slow, painful crawl towards the city behind this animated butcher bin, watching it alternate between honking its horn in rapid staccato, and complaining from one of its dozens of mouthholes. When it grew bored of these other activities, it would rev it’s engines, deliberately running up against the rear of the wooly vulture just ahead, driving the poor wretch to squeal and buck in a fruitless effort to escape the narrow confines its master kept it in, while of course venting a new load of greasy offgases directly into the face of the rider just behind.
That rider, being, of course, none other than Valerie. She grimaced, squinting out of reflex at the greasy smoke spurted into her face, managing to hit her faceplate in perfect synchronicity with the outraged exclamations of the animal, now freshly bruised, just two places to her fore.
Valerie wiped her faceplate, choosing to ignore the smears her efforts left behind. The anger she would have felt hours before rendered weak and dull in the face of her exhaustion. The line above her was too dense to safely move into, even with the narrow empty space mandated by the segmented obelisks that she could see clearly now, were a kind of multi-tiered traffic sign, and she refused to to sink any further below, where traffic crawled at a pace both slower and more chaotic than the lines above.
The meat ghost revved his engines, pollutants caked her visor, an animal cried out in pain.
/(Outrage!) Pea cored excuse of a fool (Outrage!) You, Thin chested, Ancients blasted knob sucking utter/ dipwad! / Stop hitting me!/
Valerie wiped the grime off her visor, trying to ignore the ache shooting up her calves as the Yeti lost its temper. Between the pain of standing too long and the petty squabbles of the crowd, she kept imagining she was back at her job at the local Nasty Burger.
//(Val is pissed off but mostly tired, yeti on mount and meatsack argue, popo get involved, bring up this is the second reason valerie didn’t just shoot her way through)
______________________, a power she had already seen demonstrated several times already. Whenever a ghost saw fit to slow down or stop in line, whenever a group fell to quarreling, or crashed into one another in a massive, three dimensional car wreck, the white riders would be there, zipping to the scene with spears out and cuffs in hand.
Cuff that looked very much like a kind of bulky suppressor tech to Valerie’s eyes, cutting off all resistance of whatever ghost was deemed offended as soon as they closed around their wrists.
Valerie’s suit was immune to anti-ghost technology, which would have been much less of a problem if she wasn’t currently pretending to be a ghost, while surrounded by ghosts, headed towards a city filled with ghosts, without even a wild portal to duck into should she be revealed. She wasn’t sure why, but she hadn’t seen a wild portal since reaching the Far Frozen, putting her slimmest chance of escape days away.
They would eat her alive if they found her. They would rip her to shreds, and she wouldn’t even stand a chance. There were just too many to fight. Valerie took a glance at the ghostly enforcer at her side, then straightened, gliding past
(^change to show Val’s determination over her fear)
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the city was winter made real; lovely, yes, but essentially cold.
So far as Valerie was concerned, it could be the lowest pit in hell for all she cared. As long as she could finally get off her feet and into bed, she’d be satisfied.
A real bed, or a mat, or a floor clean enough to lay her nose against without fear of what dust or vermin may crawl in! After so long sleeping in the dirt, what had once seemed a matter of course now seemed closer to a luxurious sort of dream.
The road had still been fairly clear, at first. Between the high speed of her board and her need to burn her excess frustration into something that wasn’t the backside of a ghost, she made good time, following the road as it grew ever broader, merging in and out with new and larger roads at intervals as it wound its way roughly in the direction of the mountain’s wide center.
Unfortunately, with wider roads, came greater traffic, which grew ever denser as she followed the ghostly highway to its uncertain end.
There Valerie had been forced to crawl, in line, for hours, unwilling to turn off and relent what little progress she’d made, unable to admit that she could think of no better idea than following along as she was now.
By the time she finally spotted the city, she was too exhausted to even be ill about it, this obvious bottleneck squatting between her and her goal, which still loomed neither closer nor farther than it had when she'd first spotted it at the beginning of the day.
Valerie's board had a top speed of over one hundred sixty miles per hour, and, excluding the slowdown she encountered in the final third of the day, she had pushed up to and even beyond that number for hours at a time. As a reward, she had received no apparent progress and a mighty case of sore feet that reminded her all too much of her days doing over time at the local Nasty Burger back in Amity.
The job at the local Nasty Burger she likely no longer had, come to think of it. She had been on thin ice with her manager even before suddenly vanishing for one week? Two? More than two, probably.
Long enough to have lost her job, hopefully not long enough for her father to have started to call the police asking where she went. Her father–
Valerie squashed the thought with practiced ease, swinging down into a lower lane with unnecessary force.
She had been right in her initial guess that the segmented obelisks were a kind of multi-tiered speed limit sign, where higher segments indicated higher allowable speeds. The closer she came to the city, the farther apart the lower obelisks floated from the higher, until she was forced to choose between the lowest and slowest segments of the tier, or fly high above the city, overshooting it entirely.
And as tempting as it was to disregard the signage and fly at her own pace, Valerie had good reason to avoid causing trouble. A reason that was scratching its chin as it paged through a booklet colored in lurid hues beside her, rumbling happily to itself as it leaned against its mount, a special breed of the same headless, neck-mouthed vultures that most Yetis seemed to favor as a vile sort of horse.
The thing was a pale white, almost the same hue as its master, adorned at the flanks with strappings of red and brown, the same colors that adorned its rider’s kilt, fastened at the ends with buckles of gold.
They were yeti police, and wove through the crowd like sharks, their lithe mounts able to keep pace with the fastest of flying machines.
Valerie pushed her head up high as she scooted past the white mounted rider. She was entering a city filled with ghosts just like this, ones apparently capable first of organizing, then enforcing a set of laws, and she would not be intimidated by it.
Still, she was glad that the one time she had pulled her guns in the Far frozen, it had been somewhere rural, where organization was looser and enforcement was sparse.
At last, she reached the outskirts of the city, where the single large lane, now compressed into two, tight stacks, pressed so closely together that the herdbeast beneath her shuddered from the heat of her thrusters. The main road presumably led straight to the higher towers near the center of the city, but that was not Valerie’s goal, not for today.
Traffic was still dense, but had begun to thin out now that the highway was allowed to split into a dozen other, smaller tributaries that wound their way through the low lying hovels and ramshackle tenements which sprang in dense clusters everywhere there was space enough to hold them.
The high, gleaming towers she had seen overhead had vanished. She was too low now, and whatever lay beyond the crooked lines of the near horizon could not be seen.
Valerie aimed for one such road, she didn’t care which, muscling her way in a slow horizontal out from the crush. She paid no mind to the complaints and sense of /(Irritation!)/ Spat her way. Yetis might be clever enough to build roads, but on/off ramps seemed to have escaped them. If someone wanted to get off one road and onto another, they needed to either aim for the gaps in traffic, or create their own.
“Move over, hey! /I’m coming through here!/” Valerie pushed through the crowd, shoving against shag carpet backs and slimy green forearms as she made her way through.
Her movements were just as confident as always, even when her fingers sank too far into flesh too soft to support them, or tangled against lockes that seemed to grasp at her fingers, clinging with unnatural duration as her fingers brushed against them.
Once she made it to her goal, the first thing Valerie did was move her board beyond the narrow indentions that indicated the sides of the road, where she halted her board completely, flopping down over its surface as a kind of makeshift bench.
“Finally.” She groaned, pulling her feet up a little closer to her chest, where she could give them the massage they desperately craved.
Riding her board all day was one thing, but to do so while simultaniously making constant adjustments, trying to stay steady while getting bumped and jostled by every Tom, Dick, and Harry too stupid to stay dead for hours on end? A nightmare. She hadn’t been this footsore since her promotion up from Mascot duty more than a year back.
She could still hear the highway droning just a few yards away, Herdbeasts and mounts bleating out of time with racause shouts and engine noises blurred into a single noise; a long, low rumble just askew from familiar. Pedestrians lined the streets, some wading through the waist high mist, others surreptitiously floating just above it, though not without a leery glance or two over their shoulder as they tried.
Even Valerie’s resting spot, obviously a side road of no repute, was not completely abandoned. There were others turning off from the main road, just as she had, and even some heading towards it, speeding on their way before the night mists consumed the world in its entirety. She could hear shuffling within the mists, too, and caught faint mutters leaking out from the narrow apertures between buildings, just barely discernible underneath the drone of the highway not far away.
Valerie grunted, hoisting herself with some difficulty back to a standing postion on her board. The road she was relatively small,
____________________She still had the money in her wallet, still safely nested in her extra dimensional closet, loathe as she was to pull it out again, it was the only money, of any kind, she had.
Would ghosts take
Slowly, Valerie reached one hand upward, a useless gesture, but an excellent distraction from what she was doing with her other arm, which she wrapped behind her back, out of her observers immediate line of sight.
With a thought, she summoned her wallet in one hand, and in the other, a gun.
She still kept all her attention on the yeti, and didn’t miss the sudden attention he began to pay her back, looking at her pull objects from thin air with a look of pure astonishment.
Valerie pushed
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up down
“...That humans could turn into ghosts? It was crazy, it oughta be crazy, but Dani was real, and if Phantom, yeah, that Phantom, hadn’t convinced me of it, I’d be--I’d be a murderer.”
Valerie still didn’t know what to make of that. Phantom had been so persistent, for so long, that he was a “good guy,” most days, Valerie simply opted to tune his protests out entirely. The ghost kid talked big game, but when he and his damned lousy dog ruined her entire life, what had he done? Nothing, that was what.
No haunting the creditors that had shown up one day at their door, no helping move the heavy furniture she and her daddy, with his crapped out back and white collar biceps, couldn’t afford to move professionally any more than they could afford to replace it if they’d left it behind. Hell, Phantom couldn’t even be bothered to announce to the world at large that it was his fault Axion’s security system was wrecked, as though he didn’t know every local broadcast would kill for a chance to interview the infamous ghost boy.
A press conference. All those sorrys, all those I-feel-bad-about-its, and Phantom couldn’t even be assed to hold a lousy press conference.
But then his little half relative was in danger, and then he actually took action and did something about it, offering everything he knew, everything he was, in exchange for Valerie’s aid.
She could tell herself that his ghostly obsession was just finally leading him to self destruction all she wanted, the look of raw desperation, the memory of utter sincerity in Phantom’s face as told her Dani was “one of yours” refused to falter.
It was almost as though he cared.
“I’d be a murderer.” She said. “I would have killed whatever humanity she had left for money, mama, and it would be all my fault. And--and-”
Valerie sniffed, ruthlessly willing away the tears threatening to blur the face of her mother into a summertime blur.
If there was any good of being stuck neck deep in an alternate dimension, it was this. Had she so much as sniffled at home, someone would have heard it for sure. Then, knowing her luck, would have made a special point to spread around how big bad Val had cried like some common damsel. The walls of her apartment, she knew, were as thin as her neighbors were spiteful.
Valerie rubbed her faceplate in frustration, wishing for the millionth time that she could take it off.
“And that ain’t the worst, either.” The moment had passed, but Valerie’s voice still wobbled with the stress of choked back tears. Her mother had always had a knack for that, pulling out emotions and feelings Valerie thought she’d had under control. She supposed it was something about being such a good listener, it made it hard to hold anything back.
“Mister Masters, you remember him? Gave me my first suit, kept daddy and I off the street while he was looking for a new job.”
Valerie bit her lip, chewing the bottom as she worked through the brief rush of confusion and rage that rushed against her metal shore. Just saying his name left a bitter taste in the back of her throat that made her want to curse, to sling the most vile words she knew until the poison was expelled. Which was an unacceptable course of action, not with her mother watching.
“Well, he lied.”
“All that help he gave was just a way to use me, to make me grateful to be used, his happy little pawn in his territory dispute with fucking Phantom!”
A harsh sound escaped her lips, a rueful bark akin to laughter. The Red Huntress, her best and only chance to make a life that mattered, a life earned for herself, by herself, only existed in the first place because Valerie Grey couldn’t resist rolling over like a dog to the first hand that reached out for anything other than harm.
“‘Cause the crazy thing is, mama, Masters, he ain’t even human. All that shi--stuff he talked about protecting the town, protecting the people from all those spooks, that was a lie too! This whole time, after everything, he was just another dirty, stinking ghost!”
The revelation had left her staggered, confidence bottomed out as she watched her patron and employer vanish beneath the power of the dark rings which had split from his waist, leaving a cackling monster in their wake.
“Or somethin’ like a ghost.” She admitted. There was always a chance he was something akin to Spectra, one of those rare spectors with a sufficient understanding of humankind that they could warp their exterior into a passable imitation of the same. A theory that would have been much more compelling had she not known for a fact that Spectra required no rings to alter her appearance, not the way Vlad, and Dani, did for sure.
“I think, I think he might be the same kinda thing as Dani, some kinda hybrid. It would explain why he wanted her so bad, like some kind of messed up family thing.”
It did not explain why Phantom was so invested in Dani’s survival, or why the two were so absurdly similar, sharing both name and appearance in kind.
“It was supposed to be a plum job, you know? go in, grab the spook, get paid. Would’ve been the last payday I needed to finally get me and daddy outta that hellhole, too, so I didn’t ask anything about it.”
She sighed, the sound echoing through her speakers before being swallowed whole by the fog she knew would have coalesced fully by now, suffocating sight and sound alike within its grasp.
Her mother would have asked about it, she was sure. The face in the picture was definitely the inquisitive sort, the kind of visage that would always be looking and seeking and be delighted in the act. It was the kind of face that could turn the most mundane of searches into an adventure.
Her mother was still laughing in the picture, but the cant of her gaze now seemed suddenly avoidant, the twist away from the camera lens a gesture of shame rather than joy.
God, this was why she hadn’t wanted to talk to her mom like this. Wasn’t her father’s disappointment failure enough?
“Don’t look at me like that Ma, I fixed it, alright?” After being guilt tripped by a ghost, “Me’n Phantom teamed up, we kicked ass, and we got Dani out. I ain’t working for Masters--Plasmius ever again, neither, that was it, I’m out. The Red Huntress is a free agent, just like I always dreamed.”
The Red Huntress was also going to have to convince their landlord to hold off on rental fees until her daddy’s next paycheck came in, but that was neither here nor there.
The woman in the photograph did not respond, but Valerie felt sure the edges of her smile relaxed at that, cheeks loosened even as an eyebrow raised, imperceptibly above the other. There was no need for words, however, when the question was obvious.
“Then what do you think you’re doing, all the way out here?”
Valerie grimaced slightly. She really hadn’t wanted to answer that one.
“That--Dani, when she left, she just flew off, and I let her.”
Valerie imagined the other eyebrow raising, joining its companion in a gesture of astonishment.
“Yeah, I know, it was dumb. I was tired, distracted? Yeah, distracted.”
That was a lie. Valerie did know, with an awful, gut wrenching clarity that had wracked through her mind just as she had settled down to rest at the end of that long, grueling day.
She had just lain down for bed, where she had immediately collapsed after struggling through the plexiglass vestibule that served as a window for her to-go box of a room. She was still in her clothes, the act of dismissing her armor and sled enough to deplete her mental reserves.
There, atop the fraying sheets of her bed, staring half vacant at the peeling yellow latex that covered the ever dampened plaster of her walls, Valerie had dared, at long last, to rest.
So much had happened in the space of twenty four hours, events swinging her wildly from the highs of the morning, capturing a dangerous ghost, then Phantom himself scant hours after that, to the steadily growing ache of fear and dread, as she was made to realize Dani wasn’t what she’d been lead to believe, as she began to suspect, after watching him fret, after seeing him beg, not for himself, but for another, that neither too, was Phantom.
By the time she saw dark rings turn her kindly sponsor into the hateful Plasmius, the expected burst of rage, the sense of betrayal and fury that ought, needed to welter forth inside her simply failed to come.
She could feel it, simmering down at the bottom of her gut, and she was sure that after a good night's rest, the warmth of the onrushing tide would sweep her up, just as it had with Phantom not too long ago, bathing her in its righteous heat and filling in the prickling gap that now occupied the center of her heart.
Ghosts lied, ghosts cheated, and ghosts betrayed. She knew that, she had preached that, stalwart in her devotion before the scorn and ridicule of her fellow classmates, from Manson at the bottom all the way to Sanchez at the very top.
“And which of them was it, in the end, who was used by a ghost?”
Valerie twisted in her sheets, wrapping her pillow around her head, hoping to block out the world around her, now suddenly become an intolerable ward against her desired repose.
Her sight was darkened, but the scintillating wires of her mind buzzed ever on.
How could humans be ghosts?
How could ghosts be humans?
Why would Vlad-Plasmius-want her to hunt them?
Had Phantom told the truth about not deliberately ruining her life, or lied about ghosts that somehow retained their humanity?
Humanity, or just human form, a more insidious version of that misery sucking ghost and her shapeshifter petling?
Would Dani end up like Vlad, given time? A hollowed out shell of a person, with a ghost crouched deep inside?
Why did Dani’s ghost look so much like Phantom, right down to the black and white hazmat gear? Was it related to the way Vlad-Plasmius-was suddenly so set on capturing this new ghost? Was it why Phantom was so set on rescuing her?
Could ghosts have family?
Did she want to know?
Valerie twisted in her sheets, battered jeans providing no reprieve to heat dampened legs stuck askew the frayed linens of her bed. It had been so much easier, just a few hours before, not to think about the implications of everything happening around her, swept up in the moment and more than happy to drown in the current dragging her in.
Now, however, she was at last still enough for the facts of the matter to come home to roost, crowding her brain with questions she didn’t know and peeping out answers she preferred not to hear.
One, particularly ugly little voice chirped one fact in particular, that kept her spinning on her mattress, awake as the smug certainty of its voice wore deeper with every new and more worrisome concern.
“No.” it replied, “You don’t want to know at all.”
She could have kept watching Vlad Masters, once she discovered what he truly was, but she didn’t.
She could have grilled Phantom harder, before and after catching him, but she just let him go instead, no questions asked.
She could have just asked Dani, before she flew off.
She could have stopped Dani from flying off at all, offered some kind of shelter, directed her towards help, somehow, but she hadn’t.
Why?
“Because you’re afraid.”
Afraid that all her accomplishments, every scrap of self respect that she had clawed from every successful hunt, all the power and skill that she had accrued, was nothing more than the machinations of a ghost.
“Because you’re afraid.”
Afraid that everything she had ever known was wrong, from her wealthy self’s conviction in her own personal superiority, to her current self’s morals, that it had been all falsehood, all the way to the end.
“Because you’re afraid.”
That she was the only one who was alone. Friends gone, mother dead, father absent either at work or in exhaustion from the same, boyfriend thrown away by her own hand.
When even ghosts like Phantom seemed to have somebody, what did that say about her?
“Because you’re-“
Valerie seesawed up, slamming her fist deep into the spongy drywall besides her bed.
She breathed, panting against the unbanishable scent of mildew impregnated in the deep corners of her room. System readout crowded the edges of her vision, cluttered from her own lack of focus, refusing to dim even as she clasped them shut with her free hand. She paid no mind to the sensation of cool leather that met the heat of of her throbbing gaze, gave no thought to the sensation of wires snaking seamless way through blood veins and arteries, or the sound of electricity, always present, now, pick up and hum ever louder in response to her mind’s distress.
She ripped her other hand from the hole she’d made there, then tucked it tight against her body, still armourless, but thick and heavy in a way that the internal changes had already been made, changing the texture of her torso into something that reminded her very much of polymer.
She clutched herself tight, there, alone in the dark, refusing to see.
“Shut up” She whispered, eyes still clenched tight and covered over.
“I ain’t afraid, and I ain’t alone.”
Valerie raised her head, glaring not at her room, nor the darkness, but everything: All the world that had wronged her, or yet to wrong her, or refused to care for wrongs done upon her. Still curled against herself, a half armoured Huntress bright red and sleek in clashing silhouette with the more rounded forms of her own exposed body, red and browns contrasting in turn with the washed out blue and dampened yellow of her own over cramped chamber.
“And Imma prove it.”
Her gaze, though wet at the edges, remained strong and clear, twin beacons of a soul not unlike a blade, bright and shining and more all but eager to cut any hand that should dare to fly against it.
She had chosen to become what she was, she had accepted the consequences, but Danni hadn’t. And if she had allowed the spectral appearance she had donned to fool her into thinking anything to the otherwise, then it only made sense that she should get started on fixing it all the sooner.
A smile, bright and almost hopeful, began to creep at the corner of her mouth. Yes, Dani had been fooled into allowing the ghost in her to take her away from potential human contact, and Phantom, being a full ghost, would be all too happy to indulge that, as shown, clearly, by his own willingness to let his probable relative fly off to God knew where.
Valerie was the only one who could help that human side of her, could maybe even offer her a place to stay. Dang, if things went well, maybe they could even team up against Plasmius, kick his damn spooky ass together.
The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. Danni wouldn’t have to be afraid any more, wouldn’t be driven to look to the dead for any semblance of contact, and Valerie could make up for not wanting to stop her, when she watched her run away.
“Because you were afraid.”
“Shut it.”
Alone in her room, as the dark slid slowly into morning, Valerie grey began to plan.
Back in the present, suffused in a thick fog of poison, she averted her eyes from the woman who wasn’t there, slightly guilty at her deflection. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her mother, it was that those few days after discovering she had been nothing but a toy, that everything she thought she knew could, maybe, just possibly be wrong had been...hard.
At first, she thought she could find Dani in the human realm, sure, she was a ghost, or part ghost, part human? Whatever. The point was, Valerie was one of the best ghost hunters around, with sensors that extended up to ten miles square when they had an ectosigniture to key in on. She had found Dani within hours of being ordered to find her the first time around, so how hard could it be, to find her again?
Quite hard, as it turned out. Dani was absent from the whole of Amity, Elmerton, and all surrounding districts. There were no reports of ghost girls or anything of the like in the nearby cities, and not even a brief sweep of Chicago, which had cost her an entire day of school, turned up nothing.
Valerie had, to her shame, eventually gotten desperate enough to seek out Phantom, an act that proved more frustrating than useful, as the lousy spook had chosen that moment, precisely, to turn tight lipped in regards to Dani. She received no more useful answers than “She’s fine,” and “Why do you want to know?” Or even, “Did Plasmius order you to track her down again?”
So much for their little truce. Phantom wouldn’t even tell her if he knew where Dani was, or if he was just as ignorant as she. He didn’t trust her with the truth? Fine, then she had no reason to trust him back. An actual ghost like him wouldn’t understand, not like a human, at least, in the way she wanted him to.
A part of her had been relieved at that, that Phantom, and therefore ghosts, still weren’t human, couldn’t think like them, couldn’t feel like them, at least not properly. It made her avoidance of him thereafter feel much more justified.
Not dealing with Phantom, however, was just one thing off an overloaded plate that seemed to crack a little more with every new morsal stacked atop it.
Her grades were slipping, as she lost track of time and failed again and again to do even the most basic look throughs that her graphic storage required for recall.
She hadn’t spoken to her dad in nearly a week, and the last attempt had been a stilted parody of conversation, both of them picking at the congealed remains of their microwave dinners, as Valerie tried not to talk about how much he’d been working lately, and Damian pointedly did not discuss a certain Red Huntress’ true identity.
In the end, they had both put their dinner away, uneaten, to be used for leftovers later.
Her boss at the nasty burger was threatening to dock her wage if she missed any more shifts.
She no longer spoke to anyone her own age, nor did they go out of their way to speak to her. Even Star, the only one of her old “friends” to keep in contact after her descent into poverty, was busy these days.
And knowing any one of them, any single one could secretly be a ghost in disguise did nothing to make her any more outgoing.
If she was being completely honest, the tribulations of the past several days had very much been on her mind when Plasmius began talking about some artifact or other deep in the Zone, she had latched onto the idea, readily volunteering to seek out the object herself.
It was a chance to get away from it all, work, school, life itself, really, while simultaneously providing the perfect opportunity to seek out Dani in the place Phantom would have been most likely to hide her: The Ghost Zone.
And if Dani wasn’t there, then there was really nothing to stop Valerie from borrowing Plasmius’ precious artifact. She might not know the exact details, but then again, there wasn’t much need to.
What better for finding things, after all, than a so-called ‘infinimap?’
Gently, Valerie ran her thumb over the remains of her mother’s face, hating the perforations she felt there, and hating, just a little, that she could feel them at all. The thick black leather beneath her gloves should no more be able to feel than the crimson outerwear above them, but somehow, impossibly, they did.
“It’s fine, mamma, I got it now. I’m fixing all my mistakes, and it’ll all be good, just you wait.”
Overlay image: Session end.
Reluctantly, Valerie allowed the memory of her mother to flicker out, back to the recesses of her mind, far from where any ghost could touch it.
Vision restored to a neon green reality, Valerie pointedly turned away from the holes pinched between her fingers, only loosely held together by polaroid remnants crumpled beyond repair.
Damn shitty ghosts.
Gently, she placed the photograph’s remains down beside her stolen boot, which she hadn’t even bothered to put back on before finding a suitably soft patch of dirt to collapse into. The chase with the bug-ghost had happened at the tail end of a long, hard day, getting more and more lost on what she had been certain, just yesterday, was a path just a few hours from her destination.
She pulled off her other boot, revealing skintight leather underneath, a match for the unarmoured portions of her arms and torso. The gloves came next, crimson gauntlets placed beside their comrades, forming a little pile of goods.
Even with the meager supplies gained off the oversized cicada from before, it was a remarkably small collection.
Valerie felt a sigh escape her lips as she placed a hand over the pile. She should have done this from the start, she knew, especially something as irreplaceable as her mother. She had just so desperately wanted to have something of home with her, close by and tangible, she’d foolishly kept it in her pockets instead.
Thus was the price of sentimentality, leading you on with a desire for a peace that’s already passed you by, stealing whatever small comforts remained without remorse, between eyeblinks, even, if it felt the need.
This was life as Valerie understood it, and it was only to be expected, she supposed, that death was in this regard very much the same.
Unit_1 selected (Gen_Storage:) Report:< Status: Stable (10% full) Contents (See details) Intake request: Intake selected? (Y/N) >Yes Processing…
The bag went first, outline frayed into mist as it was pulled piece by tiny piece into the void that waited just above her right shoulder. The gloves and boots followed, a little more smoothly than the bag, as they were a part of the Red Huntress, and returned to her more readily than they would anything else.
The picture, of course, went last. The green of summer dissolved, fading into the brown of a dead woman’s neck, supporting nothing, now, as the photograph evaporated between her fingers, left to clench at the memory of its battered form.
“Good night, ma.” Valerie rubbed her fingers where her face would have been, imagining a smile that stirred a grief like seaglass, burnished smooth by sand and tide. It was a familiar thing to her, now, more comfort than not.
“Sleep well.”
Nothing from the mists responded, no mothers long destroyed rose from its depths in reply.
She hadn’t expected it to.
Deep in the realm of the dead, a small, feminine figure curled up on a purple outcropping of stone. Clenched tightly against itself as it struggled, breath by mortal breath, for some moment of repose.
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Assorted Pieces
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Beneath her mask, Valerie smiled, taking in her environs with grim satisfaction.
It had taken four more days, following nothing more than the half stuttered instructions of the insectoid spector and the increasingly low temperatures of her surroundings, but she had finally, finally made it.
Where once there had been a wide, unending expanse of mists, punctuated only at the oddest intervals with some free-floating landmass or scorchmarked ruination to mark the distance travailed, there was now a dense expanse of pale white islets, separated only by fractiline cracks that leaked thin streams of green and purple into a landscape otherwise predominated pale white and icy blue. Deeper in, even these cracks disappeared as the surface coalesced into a true snowscape, leaving only a bright green sky to demark the unearthly nature of vista she now beheld.
The Far Frozen, in all its frigid glory.
Now if only she could figure out where to go next.
Valerie reversed the thrusters on her hoverboard, shutting them down once her momentum was at a halt. She pulled her feet out from their holsters, slumping down butt first upon the board.
She rather figured that she’d earned the reprieve.
“Daang, GZ,” she muttered, a habit she had more and more difficulty stopping the longer she spent on her own, “Just how extra do you gotta be?”
The Far Frozen, like everything she had so far encountered in the Zone, was far larger than she’d anticipated. Straight ahead, the landscape stayed mostly flat, punctuated by the combination of withered outgrowths, bone spurs, and crystal she’d come to consider a sort of ghostly equivalent of plantlife. The farther she had ventured into the cold, the more the crystal seemed to predominate, and the scene before her was no exception. Turquoise spires reached glistening heights all before her, shining spires glimmering between rocky crevices and over the strange, tumbled over ruins that seemed to dot the whole of this peculiar realm.
To her left, the land flattened out, thin, glasslike tubes jutting out from the wastes, a marshlike stretch of small, stationary ghosts, sending thin filaments out to the icy atmosphere, rippling between the winding path of thick, cerulean sludge which predominated this section of the landscape. In the distance, a small cluster of dwellings, hewn from the same snow and ice against which they were built to guard, huddled just above the slow moving current.
She had seen such dwellings of a similar nature scattered about the rest of the zone, decently common, though not as much as the decayed structures in and even upon which they often squatted. She usually avoided such places on principle, having no interest in discovering what happened when the trouble presented by any single ghost was multiplied by an entire village’s worth of spectors.
To her right was a mountain.
Dominating the full of the horizon, a great, ragged claw reaching up to tear at the very throat of the heavens, plucking at the green strands of mist that twined beneath that terrible hook of stone as flesh might come away in ribbons from the tusk of some great beast. A base so great as to extend past the capacity of the eye to view it, an impossible monument to size itself, thrust with keen and ragged edge ever upwards until it bent back on itself from the sheer weight of its existence, a mind boggling testament on the impossibility of impossibility carved in wicked angles from an entire world of ice and snow.
Valerie blinked and looked away, eyes somewhat sore from the effort it took just to see.
“Pretty damn extra.” she affirmed, squinting against the tears that had sprung up from the strain.
She sighed, deciding now was as good a time as any to have some lunch.
A quick check of her storage units wasn’t heartening, revealing three plastic wrapped biscuits, the last remains of the bags she’d taken from the thieving insect in exchange for its life, a couple of old sardine cans that had tumbled out from one of the small portal flurries that erupted like summer storms throughout the mists of the zone.
Running through the middle of those things was risky, she knew: such portals readily swallowed any small ghost too weak to flee them, and could readily coalesce into something large enough to swallow a human with ease.
With that particular storm, at least, she’d managed to get lucky. In addition to the sardines, she’d also managed to fill several bags of water, grimy, but potable, from a portal that opened somewhere in the middle of what could only have been some kind of lake.
That same portal had also destabilized much more quickly than she’d anticipated. While her machine enhanced reflexes had been enough to save her hand, the bag she’d been using at the time had been unusable to dodge the transdimensional backsplash, its end obliterated into nothing, its liquid contents evaporated quite suddenly to steam.
Valerie had spent a long time staring at the remains of the bag after she’d escaped, the sides cut off with an edge so clean it was difficult to imagine that there had ever been anything there to connect them at all.
With that memory fresh in her mind, she opted to start with the biscuits, saving the sardines for some other, more desperate hour.
One of the many, many things Valerie had learned to hate about the ghost zone was the way it so often turned perfectly ordinary tasks into full blown ordeals.
Eating, for example, which in the real world required no more effort than it took to raise the article of her intentions high enough to chew, became a multistep exercise of sufficient tedium that it made her want to yank her helmet off and damn the ecto-contamination that was sure to follow each and every time.
As it was, she resummuned her storage unit, mentally carding through its contents until she hit the biscuits she desired. Once she had marked them for removal, she needed to concentrate where she wanted them to appear--While her storage unit could intake and deposit items anywhere within her physical range of contact, they seemed to default to placing any object she summoned in the palms of her hands--which, in this case, was the small hollow space between her face and the visor of her helm.
Had her suit not been such a perfect fit, skin tight everywhere but where she required space to breathe, Valerie would have then wriggiled her arm out of its sleeve and up to the scanty space of her headgear.
Unfortunately, however, her suit was skin tight, so much so that she was sometimes tempted to peel it off, just a little, to ensure that there remained skin at all.
Deprived of a more human manner of consumption, Valerie was reduced to chewing the wrapping off whatever parcel she’d managed to cram against her face this time before pulling out the edible interior with her lips in a ruminantery maneuver distressingly reminiscent of a goat grasping at the leaves of a particularly high sort of branch.
While she could use her storage units to pull out the detritus that remained after such “meals,” the system never seemed to be able to fully remove the grease and grime that clung to her face immediately thereafter, and while the all the mercys of noseblindness might save her from the stench, it could do nothing against the raw distress born of oils clung tight and putrefying against her face, of the inescapable itch they seemed to generate, until they, too, became one more part of her skin, fusing with derma fused with leather mixed with armor bound by wires connected by bone.
Focus.
Valerie yanked her thoughts back on track, forcibly disregarding the crumbs pooling around her chin as she contemplated where to go next.
“Now if I was some crazy ancient treasure, where would I be?”
The river village, she disregarded immediately. It was too small, too humble, too obviously ephemeral in its ramshackle style of construction to house anything of worth. It’s close proximity to water was another point against its favor. If the infinimap was anything like the charts she knew from earth, then it wouldn’t take kindly to being kept in the damp, flood-prone confines of some dead fellow’s attic.
The ruins beneath the crystal woods were a much more likely option. It wasn’t simply the age of them that persuaded her so much as the sheer outrageousness of their extent. Though not the eye-searing absurdity of the mountain, the ruins still stretched on as far as the eye could see, more densely and numerous than any other such abandonment she’d yet seen. Tower after tower lay crumpled and splitting atop each other there, a forest felled by titans and left to rot. It was impossible to imagine a civilization that could build such a thing, imposing even in the utmost of their decay, yet find anything so simple as a map to be somehow beyond them.
On the other hand, the ruins were, in a word, ruins. Ghosts might be fundamentally incurious beasts, but even they could not be so blind as to disregard easy riches. No, if there was anything left in those ancient remains, then it was somewhere not yet discovered, too deep or too well hidden to be discovered. She knew for a fact, furthermore, that wherever the Infinimap might be, it’s location was known. Masters had not only said as much as part of his debriefing before she’d departed for the Zone, but had even gone so far as to mark its placement on the map he’d provided as part of her supply pack.
The supply pack, specifically, that she’d tossed as soon as she had a chance to do so, the one she hadn’t bothered to look through for anything that might be important before lobbing it into the first hole she found large enough to keep it.
“Pft. I did fine.” she grumbled, licking up the last crumbs of biscuit about her mouth.
The words tasted like a lie, but not even the worst untruth could match the bilious taste of resentment at the notion, the mere idea that she would have been better off relying on the support of some dirty stinking ghost, much less the machinations of Vlad Plasmius, to even consider. That the Red Huntress was perhaps less than capable with her strings cut was a pill too bitter for her to bear.
And in any case, hadn’t she made it all this way on her own, hadn’t she? She was practically half way there. That it had taken a bit longer than she’d envisioned proved nothing, not all.
In fact, she’d already figured out where she needed to go next.
Valerie looked back towards the mountain, just because it hurt to look at was no just cause, to her mind, at least, to turn away her gaze.
Yes, if the Infinimap was anywhere, it was there, that grandiose testament to size itself. Huge, sturdy, ostentatious in that way ghosts never could seem to quite resist. It was exactly the kind of place where an ancient artifact might be found.
And if it wasn’t, then Valerie had already determined she would simply start shooting things until someone, somewhere told her where to go. It wasn’t the most efficient method in the world, but it would make her feel better.
By this point, Valerie was willing to take whatever she could get.
Biscuits finished, Valerie expelled the remains of her meal back into her storage unit as she pushed herself back upright, slipping her boots back into the holsters of her sled.
With her decision made, she saw no point in lingering. She had a mountain to sweep, a treasure to find, and a home to return to.
And perhaps, if she was lucky, she would bring Dani back with her when she did.
-----------------------------------It took about two hours before she found the road.
At first, it seemed little more than an animal track, wending towards the mountain like a dry stream of compacted snow.
It was here, too, that she saw her first yetis.
Huge, hairy things, they were, nine foot apes with heads like dogs or oxen, crowned with horns of ice growing directly from their great, domed skulls. Most walked or flew in the company of beasts even greater than themselves, which looked as though some mad God had gotten distracted partway from molding a mammoth into a tyrannosaur, leaving a long nosed abomination in his wake. Most of these creatures were yoked to wagons of rough hewn crystal, but many weren’t, driven as a herd of cattle by smaller ghosts, nearly blobs, who whined and nipped at their heels whenever one of the beasts tried to stray from the path their hairy masters drove them on.
At first, such parades were few, and easily spotted. Valerie preferred to stay relatively high above the surface when she travelled, ensuring she readily spotted these bizarre caravans long before they spotted her. Whether it was due to some native disinclination, or more practical reasons associated with the burdens so many of them carried, she wasn’t sure, but most of them stuck close to the ground, preferring the tread of their own two feet over the easy motion of flight.
Loathe to be spotted any sooner than necessary, Valerie did her best to swerve off the road whenever she came to close to one of the ghostly denizens, ducking low or swinging high to avoid their gaze, a process that became more and more untenable the longer and farther she journeyed on.
Gradually, the road widened, and the travelers both on and above it grew steadily more numerous, until her options were to either abandon the path completely, or continue as though she belonged upon it, just like any other ghost.
Valerie bit her lip, slowing down her board as she mulled over her choices.
What was once an slender path through the wilderness had broadened into a wide track, twice as broad as her board. Churned snow lay scattered where it was not beaten into cloudy ice, faceted in the shape of footprints whose endless passing had beaten it into shape.
The landscape, too, had changed. Where Valerie had first arrived, it had been desolate, vast streaches of wilderness with only the occasional cluster of huts to be found at distant points. Much like most of the Ghost Zone that she’d journeyed through on her way here, it took very little effort to imagine that she could be lost in that snowy waste for eons, and remain at every moment utterly and completely alone.
That image had now become much harder to maintain.
No longer was habitation a single cluster of ice-hewn hovels clinging to some distant horizon. Though still no more than a dozen or so in each, small villages could be spotted all across the landscape in friendly proximity each to the other. Tusked beasts, the same hybrid creatures driven along the road, could be seen grazing near well tended copses of dead trees and bone. Well maintained paths could be seen connecting these villages, though none so large or broad as the one she was on, weaving between snowy hills and small valleys until merging with the horizon well beyond her sight.
Not far from the road she flew above were tiny cairns, packed so densely as to form a low sort of barrier along the edges of the path. Some were tall, others short and somewhat rounded, and many more floated, moored to their weightier comrades by a variety of string, rope, and wires. Many of these were clustered especially tight around a much larger monolith, broken roughly a third of the way from where it jutted up from the ground into floating segments, perhaps seventy feet apart, and of such size that Valerie could make out the sigels smeared across it even from the distant height from which she spotted it.
What hasn’t changed was the mountain.
On one hand, it was just as large as it was before. On the other hand, it was no larger, either, it’s monumental proportions making a mockery of distance as it loomed over the horizon like a portent from the earth.
Valerie was obviously getting closer and closer to some kind of civilization, increasingly large numbers of dangerous ghosts becoming less avoidable with every mile, and still her goal seemed no closer for it.
Just how much longer was this supposed to take!
“Oi, Foreigner!”
She whipped her head around in response to the guttural exclamation, turning to find an old, grizzled Yeti looming just behind her back. Braids ran down from the top of his mane all the way down to its thick waist, wrapped with nothing but a checked blue kilt, rich in hue, but faded slightly at the edges, as though from wear.
“Are you standing, or are you moving, huh?”
“Moving where I wanna move!” The snapped reply was automatic, so much so that it took her a second to register the language it had been spoken in. It was rough, heavily accented with a growlish rumble, but it was English.
“...If you don’t like it, maybe you oughta move yourself instead.” The second half of her reply lost much of its heat in the delay of her realization. It had been, well, she wasn’t sure how long it had been, precisely, with her clocks out, but weeks, for sure, since she’d heard English so fluent.
The yeti, for it’s part, seemed to take offense. It’s aura took on an edge of ill temper, turning ragged at the edges to such a degree that it affected its mount, yet another kind of beast she’d never seen before, a sort of wooly vulture, though with nothing more than a toothy hole where one might have expected a more proper head. It clattered its wings in unease, monstrous sucking sounds issuing from its neck hole as its own aura flared in response to its master.
“Dumb forigner! Fool! You want me to break the law?” The Yeti thrust one claw over to the floating obelisk, “I stay on road, I am high, you are not moving! You want to go slow, then go down, or I turn your machine belly into scrap, huh?”
“No, I want you to quit yelling! Maybe if your wooly ass wasn’t such a jerk about it, I’d’ve gone!”
She was arguing, with a ghost, at altitude, over speed zoning.
What?
Valerie felt vaguely as though she’d slipped ever so slightly out of step with reality. Her heated reply came less from a place of anger and more from a baffled sentiment that there was no more reasonable reply to be had.
The Yeti snarled in response, low and rumbling, as he dug his heels into the sides of his mount.
“Move.” It said, “Or I move you.”
Valerie was just far enough away from her opponent that she was able to dodge the beast’s charge, bat-like wings churned to sudden motion by their master's goading force. It was far faster than she, rocketing at her like a furry torpedo, but Valerie was more maneuverable, and was already ready, almost itching, for the violence to escalate.
She swerved down, the tip of her hoverboard cutting a sharp S as it ducked beneath the belly of the beast. She summoned her weapons in the same moment, one of her larger rifle-cannons this time, something that packed a heavy enough punch to skewer through something with a lot of mass, which she mounted against her shoulder in a single motion.
Hit the animal first, take out the bigger threat, then aim for the yeti, who even she could see was older, not tubby, but soft. Hitched to his mount as he was, its chances of untangling itself from the flailing beast before she could fire off her second shot were slim to none.
She turned her board full circle, her vertical thrusters reclaiming lost altitude as she twisted around to hit it from behind.
All systems were ready, electronics in her brain feeding her all necessary parameters to make the shot, her visory connected to the aiming system of her gun. Adrenalyn fed in artificially regulated quantities, pumped through reinforced veins, suffusing muscles optimized for combat. Finger on the trigger, the huntress found her target.
A target that was very rapidly shrinking, one hairy hand thrust up in an unmistakable gesture of pure insult.
“Stupid Forigner, hahaha! Next time, you move for yeti!”
Secure in its victory, it hadn’t even noticed the gun.
One pull of the trigger, and she would end this bastard.
For insulting her.
For being rude.
His very existence wiped off the face of the earth.
He deserved this.
He did deserve this, Damnit.
Couldn’t she shoot just one thing?
“Shit”
Valerie tossed down her gun with all the force she could, hit with a sudden headache as she forcibly pulled her units back to their resting baseline. She kicked the gun, which belched unfired plasma from the tip of its barrel in response.
“Oh yeah?” She yelled, both hands cupped around her visor towards the Yeti’s retreating form, “ Well I’m not the one who had to run away. Try fighting for real next time, huh? See who moves then!”
She was shaking, the after effects of excitement, or just stymied rage, she had no idea.
A chuffing sound from down below brought her out of the moment. Several feet down, yet another bunch of yetis gazed up at her. A family, it seemed, all balanced on a smaller, rattier version of the beast she’d almost shot just moments before. The larger of the three looked up at her, his hand across the muzzle of the smallest of the trio, which clutched against its mothers breast, whimpers leaking out in spite of the muffiling paw clenched against its face.
It was uncomfortable, in a way she couldn’t quite explain.
“What are you looking at, huh?” She said, picking her gun back up, slinging it over her shoulder as she reactivated the thrusters on her board, pushing them as hard as they would go.
Just because that oversized excuse for a furry was getting to wherever he was going intact didn’t mean she was about to let him make it there first.
“Show’s over.”
She ran her engines as hard as she could, streaking far away from where the small family sat, still watching.
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The mists swirled, wild and dense, threads churned in on themselves before rising up in wild geysers that exploded at their peak, scattering into halos of electric power. Clouds rose into mountains, looming high and twisting at the edges into self consuming spirals while the wind lashed out against the world, snatching dense droplets of ectoplasm out of the clouds and carrying them along its writhing back at opposing angles before sending them hurtling down to soak the landscape below.
Valerie braced her feet against her board and thanked her lucky stars for intangibility.
She stood in the center of the storm, lighting lanced through her body, sending her meters flickering as the excess power bled through the overlap in realities. It couldn't truly harm her, but it was a small thrill, every time.
She scanned the edges of of the clouds, keeping a close eye on those portions of sky that visibly twisted into unnatural hoops, siphoning power off the crackling anvilheads to fuel their distortion.
She breathed in, bracing her feet against a wind she couldn't feel.
“One.”
Below her, the mists burst upward, exploding in a volcano burst, engulfing her entirely. She couldn't see, couldn't hear for the roaring that engulfed her senses now. Even her suit was blinded, what little data it could glean from the roiling masses of supercharged ectoplasm crushed to empty static.
She breathed out, eyes still focused on the cluster of clouds she had spotted before.
“Two.”
The geyser passed, rushing upward in a tail of fire. Her vision cleared, and she refocused on her target, a knot of multiple spinning whirls, gobbling cloudstuff thick and fast, condensing it into a single center point that had begun to glow and shudder from the strain.
Her board tilted downward, a crimson arrow aimed at the heart of the cluster.
Lightning flashed. The centers of each whirl ignited, bright green spheres of terrible luminosity, overwhelming every other glow.
“Three.”
Valerie kicked her thrusters to their highest speed, streaking past billowing clouds, wind howling as it clawed through her, seeking purchase as she careened faster, faster towards the newborn portals that lay below.
They rose up, green maws in a green hell, bigger and bigger as she approached, until the osscilating tear in the universe consumed her vision entirely.
“Go.”
The wind screamed, and she screamed back, her voice snatched away among the chorus of the damned, Liquid ectoplasm slid underneath the grips of her board, ice pellets clawed across her back, the beating thrum of the portal knocked against her bones as her board slid across her boarders, and for one brief instant she straddled the chewed open edge between here and there, a body pulled between two halves of forever, crushed down into the space of a single, open gate.
It chilled her skin, it burned her bones, it set every gauge and meter screaming into the red, the intolerable space of space stretched on forever, red and green past the point of her mind's ability to comprehend entirely. A twisted, upside down, rightside up, spinning foreward sensation of needles stuck deep through the center of pupils blown wide and scattering in cosmic shrapnel lodged through arteries, capillaries, musculature, sheering through the sinews of her very soul.
It wasn't something humans were meant to endure, it wasn't something anything, ever, was meant to endure, and in that brief moment of passing, Valerie felt a hot sting of doubt that this time, neither would she.
Then, just like that, she was through.
She stood on her board, breathing hard. Vlad's artificial portal couldn't hold a candle to the sensation of its natural counterpart. It always took longer than she wanted for the impossible memories to clear, cutting precious seconds out of what little time she had.
She was somewhere dark, wherever she was, the hollow green of the portal behind her the sole illumination in what seemed to be a large warehouse, stacked high with boxes of a siverish hue, textured like wood, reflective like metal, stamped in signs and symbols that made her brain ache at the edges, where paint and canvas seemed to fuse.
Valerie was never one to waste time, and as soon as her knees regained the strength to support her, she was up, hand reached out towards the nearest crate. As soon as her palm made contact, she pulled it into her storage, running a scan on all contents inside.
Unit_1 Selected (Gen_Storage:) Contents (Analysis) Analyze selected Processing...
The portal behind her wavered, sending shadows dancing over everything but herself, still glowing red from every part of her armor, floating noiselessly above the ground.
Analysis complete: See details (Y/N) >Yes
Valerie checked behind her, making sure the portal was still there. Observation had taught her that those that formed at the very center of a storm lasted longest, giving her the best opportunity to find a world with something she could actually use, but natural portals were fickle things, rising and falling in erratic tempo with the storms that spawned them. Every second she wasted put her at risk of being trapped two dimensions away from her home reality. It was a balancing act, keeping an eye on where she was while never loosing sight of where she needed to be.
It was this division of attention that distracted her from the shadow moving out of sync with the ebb and flow of the portals own light, her sensors registered the motion, but made no alarm. It had no reason too: the thing in the shadows was not a ghost.
Analysis (Details:) >>Unknown subtsance (5%) >>Unknown subtance (12%) >> polymer(2%) >> protein (60%) >>oils...
Valerie cut the breakdown there. If it was protein, then it was probably meat, which was good enough for her. Details could wait for a time that wasn't now.
She reached her hand out for the next box, already planning how many she should fit in her dimensional pocket. General storage wasn't very big, but it was rare to come across such a promising haul.
She absorbed the box, then moved to the other, far enough away from the portal that her own crimson light was able to cast its own shadows in bloody highlights.
She took the second box, then another. A quick glance at the portal, which had begun to waver dangerously at the edges, and she moved in for a third. She still had time.
It happened then, a movement at the edge of her peripherals, a lunging motion in the corner of her eye. By the time she whipped her head around towards the threat, it was too late. She caught sight of a flash of feathers and snapping teeth as a weight slammed into her hard enough to knock her off her board completely, the pale white light of a flashlight sent spinning where the beast had dropped it, its blinding gaze adding to the confusion.
Valerie dimly registered something cold slicing into her abdomen as she reached out for one of her guns, any gun, something to extract the inch long teeth trying to snap her helmet in two.
She felt the weapon solidify in her grasp—one of her rifles—and immediately brought the but down on the creature's skull, knocking it hard enough to halt its assault, just long enough for her to get her legs under its belly and push it off.
The edges of the portal vibrated harder, the edges fraying.
Valerie used the space to turn the barrel of her gun on her attacker, aiming for the chest. She missed, aim too sloppy and the creature too fast, and the beam drilled into the thigh instead, causing it to scream, reaching scaly hands towards the burn leaking a dull, lightness red.
Valerie swallowed back the knot of bile rising in her throat, then turned and booked it for her board.
The portal was obviously destabilizing, the light flashing bright, then dimming in an otherworldly heartbeat steadily rising to its terminal crescendo. Valerie could hear a scrabbling behind her, claws on concrete that kept slipping on the bad leg. She did not look behind her, did not pause for breath as she leapt on her board, forcing the scrapes under her freshly repaired suit to burn anew.
It wasn't enough.
She didn't have the time to look behind her, but the sudden yank down on one of her fins was unmistakable: Something had grabbed her board, something was trying to pull itself up to get her, and she didn't have the time to shake it off.
She kicked her thrusters as high as they would go, and hoped they could overcome the drag in time to make it back.
Shadows leapt high and vanished, cutting the world into freeze frames tinged in green. Boxes stacked in crooked silhouette; high, grey walls lit bright and then consumed, the high pitched whine of her jets mixed with the guttering warble of the thing on her board as it burned from the flame. She could feel a something cold and sharp lodged in her ankle, the constant bucking of her board thrown off balance from the burden clinging to its side.
She burst through a stack of boxes, silvery wood splintered at the point of impact, scattered elsewhere, bursting open when they hit the floor around the portal, guttering like a candle starved of air.
Valerie pushed harder, forcing her engines to whine in protest as she aimed straight for the center of the hole.
Viridian edges collapsed inward, throwing out bursts of energy partly lightning, partly flame as the portal lost definition, it seized, scissoring inward just as the tip of her board made it through.
Valerie's last sight of that otherworldly warehouse was of the portal, spasming in one final lurch before collapsing behind her, cutting of the scream of her would be passenger as she made it past the dizzying border between life and death.
She was through, breathing hard, with a stinging pain in her ribs and a throbbing pain in her ankles, but she was through. Valerie found herself laughing, only a slightly hysterically, as she pulled Intangibility back over herself, cutting herself off from the storm to which she'd returned.
She had gone into another dimension, another world, with freaky dinosaur people, and mirror-wood and who knew what else, and she'd won.
It was a wild rush, a heady mix of tension and danger not unlike an especially thrilling hunt, the kind she hadn't had in ages now.
A spike of pain shot up her ankle, her sense of victory cut short by the throbbing reminder of her mistake.
It was an arm, three out of four fingers dug past her protective outer layer and into her skin, the tips dug deeply enough that her suit had opted to bind itself around them instead of over, sealing the claws into the gaps they had cut.
A humans ability to turn intangible in the ghost zone paired with the red huntress' raw firepower, the fact that most portals, or, at least, all those she had ducked into before, had been either devoid of life or otherwise threatless had made her cocky, or maybe just slipshod, the results were the same either way.
Valerie grimaced, reaching down to grab the arm at the base of its scaly wrist.
“Like ripping off a bandaid.” She muttered.
And then she yanked.
It hurt, as expected, struggling more with the reinforced fibers of her own suit than the claw itself, feeling every strand snapping in the back of her mind, like the crackle of static against her fingers on an old TV, snapping in the back of her brain in a sensation that was not quite pain. The throb of her actual wounds, aggravated by the tugging, more than made up for the lack of a more traditional hurt.
Then it was out, leaving behind nothing but an empty space between blood and skin, rapidly knitted shut by the fibers of her suit. A few red drops had managed had managed to escape, turned solid after slipping out of contact with the rest of her. They hovered as brief, crimson stars, before turning green from the Zone's corrupting touch and joining the rest of the whirlwind that still cracked and spun around her.
Valerie herself stood still, intangible, untouchable, as fundamentally apart from the screaming chaos as her own world was from the one she'd just departed. She looked at the claw in her hand, red at the tip and red at the bottom, the remains of its crisp white uniform soaked through from where the portal had severed it, an absolute secession of contiguity so complete that even in spite of the blood still oozing, it was difficult to believe it had ever been attached to anything at all.
She told herself that if lizards could regenerate limbs, then dinosaurs could, too. She told herself that it wasn't human, even if it was alive, so it didn't count.
She let go of the arm, watching the storm grab it in it teeth and bound away with its latest prize.
And even if it did count, it was justified.
Valerie turned her board to a new group of portals, maws wide open.
She would save Ellie, save herself, and then she'd feel bad about whatever.
She breathed in.
“one”
She pointed her board towards her new objective, narrowing her focus back to the goal at hand.
For now, however, she had to survive.
She breathed out.
“Two.”
And to survive, she needed food and water, uncontaminated by the Ghost Zone's poison.
Three.
Valerie kicked her thrusters up to speed, a crimson lance cutting through the churning chaos of the storm.
She'd try harder next time.
--------------------Valerie sat on her board, legs swinging free as she watched the last of the storm dissipate, thick clouds strung out into thick pearls as they were pulled apart and disintegrated back to ordinary daytime mist. Swarms of little blobs darted in and out of the dissolving cloud mass, communal auras pulsing in a shape deceptively akin to some larger kind of ghost as they swum in and out of the flagging cover, seeking out those ghosts even smaller and more timid than themselves, which came out of hiding exclusively to feed off especially dense masses of ectoplasm, of exactly the kind decaying around her now.
It had astonished Valerie when she had first seen it, ghosts eating and hiding and even – she shuddered at the memory – breeding just as though they were alive. It wasn't just the depth of the environment, but the unselfconscious nature of it all that belayed any notion of mimicry alone.
The world below her, too, was a-bustle as countless larger ghosts scurried over floating debris and islets, looking for portal droppage that may have been caught by the landmasses below. It was a safer, but less prosperous method of collecting real world goods, exposure to the zone at large practically guaranteeing any food she found would be fully inedible. The raw inefficiency, paired with the required proximity to ghosts lead her to disdain the practice, preferring the empty center of the storm, where the winds were too wild for ghosts, unable to to simply phase through the matter of their home dimension, would ever dare to brave.
She could have also stolen, of course, picked up a straggler or a would be thief of the kind that still harassed her every now and then when she tried to sleep and robbed them for all they were worth. They were ghosts, she knew, there was nothing morally wrong with stealing from a species had no understanding of right and wrong beyond their own selfish needs, but the way they begged, they way they cried and pleaded and succumbed with such disturbing ease, as though they weren't used to fighting at all, it unsettled something in her, leaving her ill at ease for such hours after. The danger of being split in half by a destabilizing portal had seemed preferable by comparison.
Well, until she had actually seen someone get genuinely split, that was.
She'd gotten cocky; the combination of a human's ability to turn intangible in the ghost zone paired with the red huntress' raw firepower, the fact that most portals, or, at least, all those she had ducked into before, had been either devoid of life or otherwise threatless had almost gotten her killed, a genuine arms length away from turning into the same kind of monster she was supposed to hunt.
She felt a chill roll through her, a shiver that had nothing to do with the ever lower temperature of the world without.
She could have died. An unknowable distance away from everyone and everything she had ever loved, she could have died, sheered down the middle in the worlds ugliest magic trick. For a moment, she imagined herself like those faint drops of blood, corrupted green and consumed, half of her subsumed into something fundamentally foreign, becoming indistinguishable from it, while the rest of her lay bleeding on some cold stone floor, for some scaly guardsman to look at at wonder over in its next round of patrol.
She had faced danger, even death, before, but that wasn't the same as realizing it, as recognizing your continued existence as a miracle of happenstance, continued but for the unknowable wiles of fate. Had she not chosen to blow through that particular stack of boxes, instead of going around it, had she spent a second longer trying to kick her attacker off, had she done anything, just a few seconds off, then that would have been it; Valerie Grey, dead and gone.
Valerie let the fear roll through her, felt it judder down her spine down her spine, then took it in her hands and crushed it, balling it down to a more manageable size before tossing it down in the trash bin of her mind.
Useless, stupid fear, like she needed more distraction in her life. She was fine now, and she'd be fine later. Just because she felt bad about some what if or maybe didn't mean she could allow it to make her stop.
And despite that one slip, she had reason to satisfied with her latest supply run. In addition to the three silvery boxes, which turned out to be packed with tins that contained a disgusting, but edible sort of squidlike animal, she had also managed a fistful of plants, snatched out of a field by the light of a planetary disk wrapped in a sparkling ring across the pitch black sky, and several bags of water from a portal that had opened in the bottom of a giant concrete reservoir.
If she was lucky, this would be the last foray into other world she would have to do at all because, at long last, after nearly a dozen more days of travel from when she had first squeezed the directions from that thieving insect of a ghost, she had made it to where she wanted to go.
It appeared as a line of pale white on the horizon, rolling into view as the last of the storm clouds hiding it from view dissipated, ragged mountains painted top to bottom with long streaks of snow, vanishing from one horizon to the other in an unbroken line of mass larger and more complete than any island she'd yet seen.
It was the Farfrozen, there was no doubt. A few hours more, and she would make it to her destination at long last.
It looked big from a distance, sure, but she was sure that it was nothing compared to the distance she'd traveled already. All she would need to do then would be to phase into whatever over the top castle the locals had built to guard it, snatch the infinimap, and phase back out again, and she would be done.
Whatever else this nasty, vile realm could throw at her, the worst was over.
She was sure of it.
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By the time Valerie reached the city, the night mists had begun to gather all over again. Great, ponderous fingers descending as a godly accusation from the sky above towards the thin green blanket seeping up the ground below, a waist deep blanket that shot its own wispy tendrils up at odd intervals in temerous reply.
It was little more than a dim outline, at first, a cream colored suggestion of form thrust up against relatively flat surroundings as a set of suspiciously symmetrical verticals distinct from the uneven peaks and beaten down ruins she’d already seen many times before.
As the traffic crawled on and the view grew clearer, the city coalesced into something more distinct: It was obvious that it must have been some kind of fortified citadel, once, long ago, and even now the remains of the mighty wall that encircled the innermost portion could be seen where the city had not spilled over, frothing over the massive bulwark before it spilling into a wide ring of smaller, more humble structures that grew ever more sparse around the edges, eventually dissipating back into the kind of rolling pasture and bow backed orchards she’d spent hours passing on her way there.
Tall, spiraling towers filigreed in gold, crystal parapets floating as crowns above glimmering roofs, ancient keeps crouched low beneath arching domes of ice. Grand arches formed open passageways high into the city, carved with massive symbols and topped with statues of rugged make. Despite how many structures were allowed to float, there was a sort of rugged strength to the city, reminiscent of the wind-carved glaciers she had seen in a documentary once, many years ago. There was delicacy there, yes, an attention and appreciation of beauty in those fine wrought forms, but it was a beauty devoid of softness, carved with endurance, wrought by force, bunished beneath the hands of survivors: Here was a city, and here it would stay, without pity, apology, or remorse.
Slowly, the road wound on, straight through the glittering throat of the metropolis. From a distance, one could even imagine the highest towers looked a bit like teeth.
----------------------------------------Valerie sat back on her board and groaned. She wanted to rub her feet, but she didn’t want to take off her boots. Taking off her boots would require bending, and bending required effort, something she was loath to do knowing she would just have to put them back on a few seconds later.
In the end, she opted to simply massage herself through the soles of her boots, leaning back on her board as a substitute bench during her brief respite.
“Traffic jams.” She grumbled, “ghosts’ve got traffic jams.” Valerie kneeded deep into the arch of her foot, trying to push out the ache. “ I shoulda guessed.”
She hadn’t made it to the mountain.
She had tried, damn it, she had, but it wasn’t enough.
She must have flown seven hundred miles before getting bogged down by the crowds, and in all that time, the mountain had been unchanged. Just as large, but never larger, changed no more than if it had been a painting brushed across the sky.
Almost as though it was much, much farther away than she had originally estimated.
Valerie preferred to blame the traffic jam instead.
Valerie groaned, swinging herself back onto her board.
Constant stopping and starting, low, animal groans mixed with the dull hum of flying machines, crammed shoulder to shoulder, jostled, bumped, pushed by enemy hands for hours on end.
She hadn’t stopped at the city because she wanted to, she had stopped because her nerves were frayed to their absolute limit and she wanted to puke.
She had never seen so many ghosts.
She had never been touched by so many ghosts.
A>nd after a five minute foot massage, she was going to get back up and see and touch them all again.
Just a little farther.
She climbed back up to her board, ignoring the ache climbing up her feet and into her thighs, darting out of the narrow alley she had taken as her emergency respite, back into the fray.
The main road she had followed in had split into several large thoughroughfairs, which split off into smaller and smaller capillaries, dispersing the crowd amongst the main body of the city. While this meant the main roads were no longer completely jammed, it did not mean they were empty.
/(Enthusiasm!) Artifacts! Fine Wares! Secrets of the Ancients and ages of old!/
“A Great One returned!” /His kind return with it! Lo, an old era rises anew, lo, ye cowards that deny it!/
/From the hands of our bravest! Goods from beyond the realms!/
/(Irate!) you miserable knob licking fools, what did you do to my car?!/
Everywhere, there were ghosts. Wading through the mists, now waist deep on a full sized yeti, they had stalls on the side of the streets, mountbeasts festooned in colorful ribbons and backs stacked high with trinkets. The lower strata of the road was still mostly occupied by herdsmen, though they were moving out, cajoling their anxious charges into large, gated pens, dull, uncertain moans vibrating out of time with the raucous of the street.
Just ahead of her, two yetis shoved their fingers up their nose, dangling bright green tongues at a more humanoid ghost, who honked the horn of what looked like the offspring of a three way collision between a bicycle, an airplane, and an antique sedan. He was still on the road, however, and as Valerie herself had discovered not long ago, anyone on the road was expected to keep moving. She watched as the ghost, either unable or unwilling to pull over, shook his fist at the retreating miscreants, still making faces and laughing at the dinks they had made in the other ghost’s machine.
She felt a hairy shoulder slide past her. Another Yeti, already too far beyond the point where she could shove back. Behind her, someone goaded their mount, another one of those awful not-vultures, she was sure, into bumping up against the backside of her board, forcing her to rebalance even as she moved foreward.
/Hey! Foreigner!/ “You go faster, yeah?” /(Attention.)/ “Hey? You know English? Hey!” /Hurry up!/
“I am going. The speed limit.” Valerie ground out.
More specifically, she was going as fast as she could without rear-ending the ghost in front of her. She still couldn’t read the segmented obelisks, reproduced in miniature along the city roads. She didn’t care about the rules, she cared about getting where she needed to go without attracting attention.
Which ghosts like the one behind her seemed determined to make as hard as possible.
/(irate)/ “No one is looking, eh? Hurry up!”
“I will. When I can.” Valerie reminded herself again that these things had cops. Yeti cops, who went for the “foreigners” first in every chance they got. She’d already seen it in the half a dozen wrecks she’d passed on her way here.
She gritted her teeth and kept her gaze fixed straight ahead.
The crowd roared all around her, crying, cajoling, echoing with inhuman reverb.
The press of a forign body making contact with her own, sliding across, then away. Soon, another would press against her. There wasn’t enough space to avoid them.
Buildings crowded up on all sides, lines strung haphazardly between them like thick webbing, netting her in.
Something jostled the back side of her board.
/Hey! Hurry up! Hey! Hey!/
She could do this.
This was fine.
he mists kept rising, and the streets kept narrowing. Valerie took turn after turn, mostly picking which road to take over which looked more desolate than the one before.
While none of what she had seen of the city so far was exactly pleasant, her initial impression had been of something more careworn than rough. Those buildings along the main road had been sturdy, built of carved ice-bricks and crystal beams into unpretentious containers for homes, shops, or whatever else their undead makers might desire. The longer she went, however, the more unpleasant her surroundings became. The outskirts of the city might have been a far cry from the magnificent, glimmering towers she had first glimpsed on her way in, but they were not nasty, not like this.
Crooked piles shaped in the rude outline of buildings, crowding in on an already narrow road with leering facades, looming over her with dirty faces stretched in pain or malice. The mist was too thick by this point to really tell.
Whether it was the oncoming night, or just the part of town, Valerie now had the road to herself. Her hoverboard skimmed a few feet above the road, leaving only a single, churning eddy of fog to mark her passing. She wasn’t fully alone, she knew. There was still the occasional passerby, most non-yeti, all furtive, scurrying across the sidewalk or darting along the road. These travelers, at least, seemed inclined to avoid touching her whenever there was space to do so. There was very rarely space to do so.
Whoever had built this place, they hadn’t done so with any kind of plan. Even in the obscuring haze, the buildings were obviously jumbled against each other, a collection of ice cubes poured out across a lawn and grown into houses. Many were packed so tightly that they resembled a ramshackle wall, indistinguishable but for the difference in material from which they were built. The only spaces were other roads, even thinner and narrower than the one she was on now, squeezed between decayed bone and cracked ice so tightly the very air around them seemed pinched.
Faint shuffling occasionally echoed from these elongated alleyways, and muffled bangs, that of a door opening and closing, perhaps, somewhere in the distance, but on her street, it was quiet.
It was disquietingly similar to Elmerton, in those darkest, most rotten parts, where dead factories breathed out shadows and crickets never sang.
Valerie breathed as softly as she could, board powered down to its lowest setting as she crept through the silent city. Her gaze alternated between scanning outside, and glancing at her ectosigniture detection units. Neither technique was as helpful as she would have preferred: Night had risen, destroying her line of sight. Anything beyond a few feet turned into nothing more than a vague, glowing outline against a slightly brighter background of green, and her detection arrays weren’t much better: The ambient ectoplasm of the Zone made individual ectosignitures difficult to detect, cutting her standard ten mile radius down to four yards, maybe, when the atmosphere was clean and not cluttered up by ecto-dense objects, like buildings, for example, or fog.
She squished the urge to turn back, to be intimidated like a common coward and flee back to the more open spaces she’d left behind. She was a ghost hunter. She was a professional. She knew what she was doing.
And it was true that she wasn’t operating on blind instinct alone, as she wove her way deeper along the thin, crooked road, she recounted them.
There were fewer ghosts here. Fewer the ghosts meant more safety.
This was obviously a poor section of town. Poor meant no one cared. No one caring meant she could do more with less trouble.
They actually put up signs she could understand here.
It wasn’t that she had suddenly gained the ability to read -- it was that whoever put up signs in this part of town presumed the viewer was illiterate. Valerie found herself too tired to be insulted. She was far past the point she would have normally gone to bed and her legs were still killing her..
The night had turned dense enough that she could only just make out the crude pictograms, glancing over them as quickly as the suffocating night allowed.
Piping woven in clothlike patterns between lines of wire stitching.
“No.”
An outstretched hand, tiny skulls clustered in the center of its palm.
“No.”
A defaced poster of a one armed yeti, crude symbols scrawled over his icy prosthetic, small, insulting mustache doodled just below his nose.
“Harhar, but no.”
Then, at last, she found it, a depiction of a room with a bag in the center, a yeti sat just beside it, mouth opened wide and arms outstretched in an obvious yawn.
Valerie halted her board. Somewhere she could rest safely. Somewhere away, from everyone. Somewhere with space to breath.
Then she could rest up, get out of the city, follow the road to the mountain, get the infinimap, save Elle, go home.
Easy.
Valerie stumbled to the ground, dismissing her board with a flick of her mental hands. The inn, and she hoped it was an inn, that ghosts maybe slept after all, was not much different than all the other structures that surrounded it, save for its comparably larger size. A foundation of worn ice brick, stuffed with hard-packed snow between the gaps, which gave way to splintered logs of bone. Windows had been carved out of the ossiferous substance, sheeted over in cloudy panes illuminated by a pallid yellow glow just bright enough to overwhelm the seething green of the surrounding night.
There was also a door, hewn from yellowed bonewood, slightly askew at the frame.
Valerie marched up to the door and began to knock.
“Hey! Open up!”/You an inn or what? Come out here and tell me./
She kept knocking as she spoke, which meant that when the door was yanked open with abrupt force, Valerie found herself thumping on the belly of an ill tempered yeti, aura bristled out and seething.
/What./
He must have been nine and half feet tall, perhaps more, if he straightened out the slouch, and he was right on top of her. It was even worse than the road, because here, there were no distractions. His gaze was focused solely on her. She tried not to think how easy it would be to see her breathing.
She tilted her head back and stared him straight in the eyes.
/You heard me. I’m looking for a room./
The yeti looked her over, glazed over eyes took her in with disdain.
/It’s late./
/No shit./
/This inn is for yetis./ He moved to close the door, stopped only by the foot Valerie shoved in the way.
“Dead racist buffalo sonova--!” Valerie bit down on the thought before it tumbled down past her lips. As if her feet weren’t sore enough, that door was yeti sized -- she was lucky it wasn’t crushed!
“So that’s how you do bussiness, huh?” it was a struggle to keep her voice from cracking, she probably hadn’t broken it, but holy shit that hurt. / Turn ‘em away cause they look funny or they're the wrong color and you hate that so bad you just gotta take all that money they woulda give you and fuck it all! You keep an inn for a hobby then, asshole? Bet that works real good in the slums. Well, guess what-/ She leaned in as close as she could to the yeti, dark visor boring holes into his bland yellow gaze. “I ain’t that easy” /and you’re gonna let me in./
/So, you have money, yes?/ Not once during her tirade had the yeti so much as flinched, watching her rant with bored dishumor.
“-huh?”
/You. Have money, to pay./ The Yeti thrust a paw in her face. /Give up front, I let you in./
Valerie stopped short. That wasn’t the direction she thought this was going to go.
On one hand, it made logical sense. All those roads and buildings and traffic obilesks weren't going to build themselves. On the other hand, a part of her wanted to flip a table. Money!? Why would she need money!? These were ghosts! They were dead!
/Fine then./ Valerie crossed her arms in a motion to buy time, still leaning back as casually as she was able to keep eye contact with the monster in front of her. Ghosts, even big ones, were dangerously fast. She would need every second if she wanted to come out of this alive. /You want it now, I got it now./
?She used the extra half second to send a panicked inquiry to her item storage, which obligingly screwed the information directly into her brain.
The headache that always came after using that feature was worth the expediency, she didn’t have time to read any sort of list.
The ghost's hand inched closer to her face, distinctly impatient.
The money she had in her wallet was still there, for all the good it did her. Aside from that, she had nothing.
Sleeping outside when ghosts were few in number vast tracks of land lay wild and empty between her and what few, scattered pinpricks of civilization there were was one thing, but to sleep out here, where ghosts crammed against each other and the whole country stank of habitation denser than she’d ever seen before?
Unacceptable, it was too exposed, they would kill her in her sleep.
Then and there, Valerie threw together a plan.
She reached her left hand, nondominant, upwards, making sure the yeti tracked the gesture as she activated her general storage, keeping his attention off the motion of her right arm, which she wrapped behind her back, out of his direct line of sight.
She summoned the money out of wallet and the largest gun the small of her back could hide at the same time.
She had no intention of going down easy.
/There./ She shoved all three dollars and fifty cents into his paw, still crusty from where the bug had salivated over it, so many days before. /Here’s your lousy money. Hope you like it./
The yeti had looked startled when she’d pulled out her payment from thin air, which shifted to contemplative interest as he examined her paltry payment. He was distracted enough that he lessoned the pressure he had on the door frame, giving Valerie the chance to slip her foot into intangibility, forcing the unnatural sensation down her calves.
He brought it up to his nose, sniffed it, eyes fogless and clear.
She could also use intangibility to find somewhere safe, maybe. Should’ve thought of that from the start, rather than risk dealing with a ghost, would have if she wasn’t so tired and still so unused to the prickling chill trying to sink her through the floor.
/These are living world goods?/
“Huh?”
The yeti shook his head, muttered something unintelligible under his breath she couldn’t quite catch.
/Living world goods.Lesser realms. From portal. You went into a portal, and took these out, yes?/
/Maybe I did. You got a problem with that?/ She recalled the police ghosts she had encountered early on, back in the thin sliver of the zone she could somewhat recognize.
They had certainly disliked them very much.
/Ha! Problem, the only problem is if you have more./ The yeti grimaced, a twist of the maw that traced unnaccustomed lines in an almost smile, /Enough for one night, because you are a whelp and you are daring, but not two./ He opened the door wide, beckoning her in.
/As you said before, this is business, not hobby./
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She still didn’t regret it. In fact, she refused. Knowing the kind of creature her former sponsor truly was, whatever was on it had probably been a lie, anyway.
But that did leave the all important question: Where exactly was she supposed to go now?
To her left was the broad side of a mountain, its craggy head vanished somewhere in the mists above, descending in a series of sheer cliffs into craggy hillocks and valleys half obscured by splintered archways of stone. There were settlements, ahead and to her right, rendered distinct from their craggy surroundings by the smooth symmetry of their form. Aside from that, she could see little more than dense wilds, interspersed by crystal thickets and mountain splinters.
___________________She did not need more trouble, she needed to sleep, alone, for as long as it took for the universe to stop feeling like stones tying down her feet.
Her fathers face, hung pensive above a picture of a perfect summer's day, hovered darkly in the back of her mind, threatening to crash down completely if she didn’t find the time, somewhere, somehow, to push it away.
____________________Shoot the enemy, steal their shit, move on. The bland brutality of hand to mouth survival, the predators solution in a world without prey.
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now.Iceburgs suspended by nothing gave way to dense collections of islets, which coelesed into ever larger chunks, eventually fusing into a single mass of never ending ice and snow. The edge of this place had vanished behind her some hours before, and no new border rose to meet her. Everywhere, in all directions, the land rose high and descended in steep craigs and mountain valleys, interspersed with crystal clusters fractiline that had entirely replaced the trees of bone once so common when her journey began.
Were it not for the greeness of the sky, now sending long fingers to press the coming night down to the earth, she could well imagine that she was back in the living realm, somewhere far north of home.
Valerie pressed for altitude, skirting just below the swelling clouds as she searched for somewhere, anywhere, a ghost might keep a map.
She wasn’t sure, exactly, what she had been expecting, would not admit to herself she had been avoiding considering it at all, but Valerie was certain she had never imagined anything like this.
This, Which stretched on mile after mile, this, with its undistinguished nature and tiny clusters of huts in what few gentle dips of the land deigned to cradle them, this pastoral, utterly undistinguished vista devoid of towers and castles and vaults or any other thing that might conceivably hold a treasure or artifact of any kind.
Valerie slowed her board, trying to figure out where she needed to go.
All the other islands she had seen before, even the ones of significant size, had some key feature - a looming skull faced mountain, a grand cathedral of staring eyes- some obvious centerpoint to the landmass easily spotted with a little altitude or distance gained. Now, however, it didn’t feel like she was on an island, it felt like she was on a world.
A world she remembered Plasmius giving her a map of, among a handful of other charts, specifically.
It had been one of the first things she threw out when she entered the zone.
“No regrets.” That shitty old thing was probably trapped somehow, anyway.
Still, that left the question of where she was supposed to go from here. The wind, pouring down the slope of one of the many mountain cliffs that rose high and descended in great ice encrusted slabs to the ground below, pushed against her back, sinking the chill pervading that place just a little deeper into her bones.
The weather here wasn’t as intense as the portal storms, but it was far, far colder, enough to overwhelm a portion of her suit’s environmental resistance. Even going intangible did nothing but make her colder, as the air simply passed through all of her, chilling her from the inside out. It was getting worse, too, or seemed to be, aching fingers progressing to numbed joints and a shuddering down to the waist that never seemed to stop.
She needed shelter, and she needed it
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Valerie was beginning to think the Ghost Zone could read her mind.
had taken six hours--four hours--none of her clocks matched anymore---All the rest of the day of flying before she admitted it, but once she was willing to look, there was no denying it.
The Farfrozen was huge. Enormous, just absolutely, unreasonably large.
Everywhere she looked was blue and white. Great, sloping planes of snow cut abruptly into river gullies, where thick cerulean currents wove their sluggish way into basin lakes trimmed at the edges with glassy reeds that rustled in motions unrelated to the wind.
Where the ground didn't descend, it rose, needle sharp protrusions competed for space between the great mountain jaw she had begun tracing almost as soon as she'd arrived, with no end in sight. Long stretches of glimmering crystal grew between thin roadways, connecting small village clusters in a loose weave.
Here and there she had even passed what seemed like ruins.
Unnaturally straight lines, felled towers yet unburied beneath the snow lay collapsed around massive roadways, larger than any machine she could imagine fit to ride it, cut through the vast cityscape, crushed mountains beneath its heel, cowed the bucking landscape beneath the leveler's rod and yoked to the chains of a people with nowhere left to go.
Mountains carved in places by a hand finer than nature alone could count, the square, inhuman snouts of faces obliterated looked up blindly in long lost victories against foes long vanquished. Archways, built floating above the ground, rather than upon it, were scattered all throughout the air around these sort of carvings, long since drifted off their paths and turned into deadly hazards as the nighttime mists drifted ever lower above her head.
Massive trenches, of the kind that reminded her of grainy, monochrome pictures from her history classes, cut across long miles with military precision that gradually decayed the farther back they went, until she came upon yet another massive city, again in ruins, its trampled remains defended by nothing more than a rude line scraped out of the ice. Dark green stains had marred that last, desperate trenchwork, up to the very rim, and sometimes past.
Other islands she had seen on her way here had ruins, just as some had been large.
None, however, had possessed anything like this.
This, which vanished in every direction, leading onto nothing but more of itself. This, which was littered with no mere cluster of decayed townships or hollowed out fortresses, but of skyscrapers and earthworks that hinted at a level of wealth and power she frankly doubted ghosts could achieve.
Valerie doubted she could even call the Farfrozen an island anymore. The sheer expanse of the place now evident before her, the deep, profound solidity of the earth, as if she could dig for years before she found a bottom, belied the idea of the free floating rocks she had passed so many times before.
Valerie halted her board, stomping the thin layer of ice that kept building up around the edges. Her legs, worn sore and still stinging in the heel from where the dinosaur had cut her earlier that day, protested, sending dull bouts of pain through her overtired calves with every kick. She ignored them, kicking what fragments didn't fall over the edge of her craft. Theoretically, she had a few pole arms that could serve as a good enough ice scraper, practically, she didn't give a damn. She was tired, frustrated, and even more so, painfully cold.
On one hand, it was called the far frozen, she wasn't expecting a sauna. She just hadn't expected to watch her external readouts to start in the negative fifties and keep creeping downward as the evening progressed.
It was minus ninety-eight now, and still sinking.
She kicked off the last of the ice, freeing up her board from the weight and reasserting its aerodynamic shape, then ducked below the swelling night.
Her options were continue on and freeze to death, or admit that she wouldn't be finding the Infimap today, after all.
“or ever.”
The thought bobbed up and down her exhausted mind as she spiraled down to the ground below.
Up close, the crystal forests looked like a nightmare born of an overstressed botanist with a crippling fear of rocks. Patches of blue, square edged masses, reminiscent of some kind of borite, competed for the low ground with half formed geodes, sat in clusters against the larger trunks of clear quartzite that served in place of trees.
Night mists had already flooded the bottom layer of the woods, seeping up from the earth and rising gradually to meet the sky. They were still thin enough to part from the wake of her passing, lapped against glimmering breakers self illuminated in their own pale light. Ten hundred faces flashed crimson from her own glow, crooked mirrors threw her own image back to her in cracked and distorted flashes. Facets shone from angles where no additional light was thrown, reflections of her self snuck past her vision far beyond the point where any mirror should have caught them. The stoney forest was silent, yet Valerie had difficulty shaking the feeling that she was not alone.
Her end goal was shelter. The crystal woods cut out vision and wind, leaving her less cold and less visible to any threat that might seek her out. The snow, or the white fluffy stuff that looked like snow, could be built into a crude igloo to help keep her warm. While it sat thrity-four degrees colder than the genuine article, as long as it shared real snow's insulationary properties, it would be enough for her suit to finally start compensating for the chill.
Valerie cursed, half stumbled like a fool as stiff muscles failed to respond to the sudden bump of her board against a cluster of those massive, near invisible columns that made up the majority of the local “foliage.” The colmnar giants grew denser, here, jutting each at angles to the other, forming a broken lattice of tilted stone.
Valerie hadn't even noticed until she'd rammed right into it.
“Stupid Zone” She didn't have the energy to make the insult sting.
The jostle had left her with one leg half collapsed on the board, and the other, the one that had been stabbed by a dinosaur earlier that day, had slid out from under her completely, stopped only by a nearby cluster of psudo-gypsum, where it was wedged between a cluster of fruits, leaking unnamable fluids from their shattered hulls.
She yanked her foot back out, too busy ignoring the pain of the cold to consider the pain in her heel.
Fine then, the Zone wanted to screw with her? It could screw with her. She'd show it who's boss. Her. She was boss, and if it wanted to spite her with huge, rocky things, then she'd spite it right back.
The frustration felt good, something sharp finally cutting through the dull, rounded over ache of all other thoughts that had begun crowding in her brain.
She slid fully off her board, numbed feet stumbling only slightly over the obscured ground. She had been hoping to find a clearing of some sort, a place nicely hidden with a pile of snow unbroken by any interruption of stone, but she could make this work.
What part of her brain wasn't half frozen in a pained over slurry suspected she rather had to.
She dismissed her board, summoning a gun to her hands in the same moment, leveling the barrel towards the base of the frosted column that had first seen fit to stop her.
This particular gun was one of her drills, designed to spin the ectoplasm in the barrel through the air and into the target, good for hard shelled ghosts and large bodied sluggers. It was bigger and bulkier than she preferred, but as long as her target was slow, or in this case, stationary, it did its job admirably.
She pulled the trigger, waited the half second it took for the weapon to spin up and fire.
Boom.
Just as expected, the shot drilled a respectable hole in the base of the stone. A few more hits, and she would have enough space to squeeze her way in with just enough space remaining for her to plug the entryway with snow.
Evening had not yet progressed to the point where all sound was wholly muffled, and the sound of her shot rebounded though the crystal hollows, clapping against itself in fainter and fainter echos. The distant sound of tiny claws followed after, wildlife stirred up and afrighted.
Valerie charged her gun for another shot.
Up to this point, Valerie had been cautious. She had avoided any ghosts she'd seen, and done her best to stick to areas where any ghost might see her. When she did have an encounter with a ghost, such as the intermittent theivery she had encountered on her way here, she kept the encounters brief. There was no point in attracting any more attention than necessary from some ectoplasmic scum.
Boom.
Valerie, tired, aching, and perilously cold, did not consider how the sound of a miniaturized cannon might attract precisely the attention she was trying to avoid. It was just as her gun finished charging that she registered it, bigger and more powerful than the creeping animal-things she'd detected in the woods before. The unmistakable indication of a nearby ghost.
/(Amazement) Whoah./
She shoved her gun around, staggering beneath its weight, reminded again of yet another reason she hated the zone. In addition to ruining her clocks, all her detectors where overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of ectoplasm, cutting her area down to a disgustingly low range. It was a phenomenon, she'd noticed, that got worse at night.
The ghost wasn't right in front of her, but this late in the day, it was likely close.
/Who's there?/ her attempt to twist on her heel turned into instant regret. On top of the newly aggravated cuts from portal adventures earlier in the day, her ankle seemed to be sprained. She pushed all her flagging strength into staying upright beneath the burdensome weight of a gun too heavy to easily swing.
/Show yourself!/
She was so cold, so tired, the effort of standing up straight, keeping her shivering hidden beneath the layer of her suit, was almost too much. She clung to the fact that it was a ghost, forcing herself upright in knowledge that any sign of weakness could provoke it to attack.
/Is that a treasure?/
A grey muzzle slipped out from behind a crystal, yellow eyes widened into saucers beneath a shaggy mane tumbled down between stumpy grey horns curled in twin question marks above over sized ears flopped down against its head.
Valerie thought it looked a little bit like a bleached ape with a bison's head glued between the shoulders, with a little but of ugly sprinkled on for good measure.
/That, in your hands! I heard it from all the way over there!/ The creature gestured to some indeterminable point in the distance. /It was a big bangbangbang! And I was very (excitement) because regular powers don't make that kind of noise even when they do make noise so I went to see and it looks like a treasure./
The thing stared at her, its aura vibrating.
/It is a treasure, right?/
If she said yes, would it leave her alone?
/It does what I need./
/(Interest) what do you need it for?/ Ignorant or uncaring of the gun pointed at its chest, the thing sauntered forward, broad feet gliding over the uneven ground with ease. /Is that a hole?/
/uh-huh./ Valerie ground out, deeply rankled by the creature's proximity, now cut to half of what it was. /My hole, that I made for me./
'Now screw off.'
For once in her life, Valerie had no interest in shooting a ghost. Just two more shots, and she would have a space she could crawl into and not die in. And while what lingering unease and adrenalin from standing so close to an obvious threat kept her from collapsing, it wasn't enough to deal with something like this. A chill had nested in her bones, laying itself over her muscles in an omnipresent ache that pulsed out of time with the sharper pain still flaring in a foot gone numb inside her boot. More dangerously, she could feel a fugue settling over her brain, seeping in at the edges, slowing everything down. She was so tired, and so cold, even anger took work.
/You made yourself a hole? (Interest) Like a nest?/ The ghost came closer, undeterred, and the part of Valerie that was still alert fingered the trigger of her big, slow gun.
/Or a fort? Oooo! (Excitement)./ Was it fast, or had she blinked? One moment, it was still a couple yards away, the next, it had inserted itself into her shelter. Being no more than two thirds her size, it was able to cram itself, just barely, into the space. /An underground fort carved by an ancient treasure from another world! You could build a network or a maze or one of those underground trenchworks and make secret plans against bad guys and monsters! So “Cool!”/
Valerie opened her mouth, something to the effect of “hurry up” and “fuck off already” halfway up her throat when her sluggish mind finally caught up with what she'd heard it say.
/The hell you mean, “cool?”/ It was a stupid question, born from her stupid surprise at hearing real English for the first time in what felt like ages. Not only was her control slipping, but she had given the little shit an excuse to talk even more. Sure enough, the creature's chest puffed up in pride, it's aura brightening enough to stand out even against the nightime glow.
/”Cool” Means 'cool,' like snow or ice, but also 'cool' as in excellent, amazing, and neat! It is all the best parts of coldness and the yeti-est of words!/
That was a yeti? Valerie squinted at the plus sized teddy bear in front of her.
She'd been expecting something bigger.
/I learned it from Freezewen who learned it from Freezepall who met one of those crumple cored halfwits from the House of Cold who told Freezepall who told Freezewen that he totally learned it from the Great One who uses it all the time, but I think he learned it from a portal diver like you./
The white haired thing had clambered out of her shelter, coming increasingly close in its excitement before suddenly leaning itself halfway over the side of her gun, forcing the nose down and away into the earth as it dangled its long limbs over the barrel, like a child over the rail low fence.
/Cause most portal divers are forigners, and everyone knows the House of Cold loves forigners more than they love their own moms and no way the Great One would talk to someone lame like that (certainty) and since you're a forigner then you must be a portal diver and if you're a portal diver then you must know “cool” words too!/
Valerie tried to pull her gun back up, push it against the chest of the ghost leaning in too close towards her face and regain control. She failed, aching muscles faltered, the gun too heavy, herself too weak.
/Right? (Anticipation) (Excitement)/
/Will you go away?/ She wanted to be angry, but her well of excitement had been scooped dry by an excess of excitement and aching cold. The sense of put upon frustration at being forced to humor the thing weighing down her gun and nattering in her face like a fool was not a desirable substitute.
/(Confusion)(confusion)/ The psychic transmission was underlined by the look of slight bafflement the ghost sent her way. /What do you mean?/ It said.
/I mean,/ She said each word slowly, enunciating them carefully to ensure they went through her translators with perfect clarity, /If I give you what want, then you leave me alone./
/But why?/
/Because I'm tired dammit!/ It seemed she still had the energy to get angry after all. /I'm cold, I'm tired, and you are in my way! You think I got time to play with you?/
She shook her gun, then, in a delayed realization, sent it back to her storage unit instead, leaving the ghost to fall over its own tail from the sudden removal of support. She summoned another gun, smaller this time, but still powerful, big enough to chew holes in the ice, but easy enough to swing towards a close range attacker, if she had a need.
/Well, think again, spook../ She charged her gun, making sure her back was straight, her gait easy and unimpaired, not from her heel, not from the cold, not from the creeping, aching absence of sensation creeping up her extremities and into her limbs. /'Cause I don't./
She braced her new gun against her shoulder and fired, chipping into the icy hollow, keeping a careful eye on the ghost off to her side.
It took more blasts to bore through, but it did so faster, quiet enough to avoid ringing its alarm too far from the source, but loud enough to shut down any chance of conversation.
Valerie dimly berated herself for not choosing a smaller model right from the start.
When it was done, she was left with a rude alcove carved below the slagged remains of a trunk, forming little stalactites of rapidly cooling stone.
It wasn't the most horrible place she'd ever slept in, if only because that one island filled with barbed wire vines that tried to root in her flesh every time she lay down for even a moment made for an uncomfortably high bar.
And the ghost was still there. Watching her, no doubt, for any instance of weakness, some sign or warning that she was open and vulnerable enough to attack. /Thought I said I was busy./ Valerie almost wished she could project her feelings along with her words. Maybe then it would properly piss off. As it was, she'd have to either hold off on sleep until it got bored and left, or maybe just shoot it after all.
/(impatient) (impatient) And I'm waiting for you not to be!/ The thing had jutted its lower lip out, arms crossed as its aura seethed in a comical display of upset. /You said you'd teach me words, and I wanna know, so I'm waiting./
/You know what—fine. “Fuck off! Go away! Get bent and die for real maybe, I don't care!/ She pointedly turned her back, though she kept all her sensors focused on the threat behind her. /Happy now?/
/Nooooo~/ It had the audacity to flop over, launching itself down on it's belly just in front of her shoes. /You have to tell me what it means first, otherwise it doesn't count./ it pressed its nose against her shine. Looked up with amber eyes as it tried to wrap itself around her, either ignorant or uncaring of the gun she had whipped in its face.
/(Determined)(impatient)(pleading)/
/Pleeaase/
This was it, without question, she'd found the stupidest ghost in the Zone.
/I'll show you my own fort which I built all by myself even though I only used my claws and sometimes a shovel and my rock collection which Great-uncle Freezehollow says is the best he's ever seen and you said you would and that means you've got to—/
Absolutely moronic. It was practically asking to be shot.
/—Because if you don't then that makes you a bad person and no one likes bad people because it's bad luck and the Ancients will hate you./
So why wasn't she?
/And you don't wanna be hated, do you?/
Valerie did not consider that no, she did not want to be hated, just as she likewise did not consider that she did not want to be alone with no one for herself to talk to for lengths of time that stretched longer and longer in her mind. She did not recall that humans needed to socialize and might suffer more and more pressure to do so with something, anything, the longer they spent alone. She failed to notice that for all her irritation, this was the first time she had spoken with something that could speak back without threatening or anger or pain.
What she did understand was that her sense of tension kept dissipating the more they spoke, and that perhaps something dumb enough to roll over and shove its face in the way of an armed threat was not itself something that needed to be guarded against as rigorously as she first thought.
That didn't mean she was about to lower her gun.
/Means nice to meet you. Now let go of my leg./
”Fahkov—goawaai?” It wasn't letting go of her leg. /Like that?/
/Uh-huh./ Using intangibility to yank herself out was a bad idea, but tempting. /Now for the last time,/ She pushed extra power into her weapon, sparking out the barrel as it whined with deadly promise, /I'm busy./
To it's credit, the ghost did let go, though not without a return of its fat lipped pout.
/What busy? (doubting) You're digging a hole./
Valerie slumped her shoulders and pushed back a sigh.
/I'm digging a shelter./ One that she'd probably have to abandon once the ghost went far enough away. /Unlike some people, I don't like hanging 'round in the cold./
The thought of having to force herself forward, find a new place to sleep, do it before the shivers wracking her body finally rattled open the gate to the dull, tired need to rest in a way that wasn't sleep at all was itself exhausting. It would be so much easier just to shoot the ghost.
/ooooh. (contrition) (contrition)/ The pout vanished, two paws covered its snout as its eyes widened in some new understanding at her words. /That's right, you're not a yeti./
Skip this whole charade, go to bed, warm up, be gone. It was the easy, obvious solution, one she had chosen every time, that had served her without fail.
/And all the not-yetis have to go inside somewhere or they freeze and I thought that maybe since you were machinekind and probably made of wires it would be fine—/
If only she could still believe she didn't need a reason, that it being a ghost was sin enough.
/But it's not fine—/
If only it had given her one, like so many of its kind before. Stolen from her, attacked her, something more than just being in her way.
/—and sleeping in a hole is awful and I can't just leave you because that's awful too/
Just give her a reason.
/—And that's why you should come with me!/
/...What?/ A ghost right in front of her, and she'd gotten distracted. She blamed the cold. Made every thought thick, like mud, something she had to wade through.
/To the village./ It said. /It has real beds and food and you can even sell things to the villagers instead of city-folk who will just sell the same things to us but for more any way!/
Then it reached out and grabbed for her arm.
Valerie jerked back, just in time to prevent contact.
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Valerie was beginning to suspect the Ghost Zone could read her mind.
From a distance, The Farfrozen had appeared little different from all the other islands she had passed on her way here: Large, but not untraversable, nothing a lonesome maroon couldn't cross with a few days of determined hiking. At no point in her journey did she come across anything she and her board couldn't pass over in a matter of hours.
And then she came to the Farfrozen, which was huge.
Great, sloping planes of snow skirted round with ragged cliffs, which gave way to mountains carved out at the bottom by great rivers of pale blue sludge, which frothed and tumbled into each other before separating out into frigid marshlands, dominated by cuerealan muck and thin, glassy reeds.
The edge she'd passed coming into this place was hours behind her, and she could no longer ward off the suspicion that the other end was somewhere farther than a few hours ahead.
This wasn't an island! It was Canada!
Valerie halted her board, crushing down on the thin layer of ice that kept trying to build up around its front. Of course the one "island" she actually needed to get to was enormous, naturally, because the time she already spent getting here wasn't long enough!
All the ice was smashed off her board, falling down in chunks to the land below. Valerie kept going, though, kicking at the dusting of snow that had fallen on the surface of her board. She had flown, continuously, for days! All her homework was late! Her dad was worried! She was worried! And there wasn't a thing she could do about it because she was--
She was--
She was lost!
Valerie swept off the last of the snow, then, energy departed, sat down heavily, looking out at the broad vista that stretched in every direction before her eyes.
It truly was enormous. Were it not for the unnatural color of the sky, it would be easy to believe she truly had found her way back to Earth. The world stretched ice frosted as far as she could see, marked by crystalian patches that had replaced the ossiferous trees that passed as plants the colder the temperature without had become, and though her gaze was cut short by the night mists, already pressing its fingers down to the ground below, the impression of enormity was undiminished. She could grow old here, spend her entire life just trying to map what she saw, and die before her chart was done.
Had she had a map of this place to start with, when Masters--Plasmius--first equipped her? Had she tossed that down, too, along with all the other incredibly useful supplies she had dumped into the first pit she'd found like so much garbage?
Valerie bent her head into her hands, blocking out the surroundings as she tried to ward off the impending breakdown. Hadn't she already had one of these earlier today?
She ran through all the reasons she'd told herself before: That Plasmius couldn't be trusted, that she was doing fine, that she couldn't let any of this get her down.
But that didn't change the fact that what directions she had managed to squeeze out of the bug ghost only took her so far as the Farfrozen itself. She hadn't bothered to look for anything beyond that because she hadn't felt the need: Not only had every other landmass she'd seen been relatively small, but they had been, for lack of a better word, obvious. Whether it was a glowering Skull or a tower of eyes, any key parts of the landmasses in the zone had a habit of announcing themselves in an obvious way, or so she had thought.
For the second time that day, Valerie pushed back the quavering fear that shook among the misery weighing down her gut. It was harder, this time, knowing she wasn't even close to the end, that she had a whole new haystack to look for needles in, and not a soul to help her do it.
How long had it been since she had talked to someone--?
Valerie caught the thought, tossing it into the increasingly precarious pile of things she needed to ignore.
First, shelter.
The Farfrozen lived up to its name, blowing winds of such frigid quality that not even Valerie's suit could completely halt the seepage of cold. Intangibility seemed to halt the worst of it, but it did nothing to warm her up. She'd noticed, too, that the cold became ever harder to bear, the denser the night mists became.
She had been keeping her board high, keeping her out of sight while affording the greatest field of view. Now she swooped low, bringing her board just a few dozen feet above the ground as she scouted for somewhere to hole up for the night.
Such was the unity of the Farfrozen, that the evil mists that normally fumed from every direction were largely blocked by the icy mass, forcing the majority of night to press down from the sky, leaving the lower elevations mostly clear for a few hours yet.
Valerie was glaring at the face of a small ridge, wondering whether it was better to laser out some of the ice and carve herself a cavern (more defensible,) or simply bury herself underneath a suitably hefty layer of snow, (it was faster and she was beat,) when she heard her suit fire off a warning: There was a ghost nearby.
Valerie Swore, summoning a pistol and two out of four laser cubes as she pushed for altitude. Normally, she would be all for blowing off some steam by cratering whatever miserable spook made the mistake of approaching her this time. Valerie had, however, had something of a day, and after her near miss in the portal storm and the crushing sense of entrapment that had been building in the hours since, she was well and truly done.
[(Attention!) Hey!]
Whatever it wanted, she didn't care.
[Foreigner, hey! Wait!]
She would leave, pretend she saw nothing, and hope that even if it was a ghost, it at least had the sense not to follow a heavily armed stranger into the night.
[(Exasperation!) (Attention!) I can't fly that fast, please slow down!]
Because leaving her alone would just be too easy.
Instead of slowing down, Valerie halted completely, jolting to a stop before whipping herself and every gun she had around to face the threat. The ghost wanted to play? Then fine! she would play. All guns ready, her sights locked on to a dot, gradually resolving itself into wide yellow eyes and stumpy horns, waving a round little paw in an effort to draw her gaze.
Was that--was that a kid?
[(relief-gratitude) Finally! I thought you were going to leave!]
Valerie kept her stance taught, but found herself suddenly unwilling to shoot, her brain too busy trying to reconcile ghost and threat with kid and stupid, as presented before her now. Before she knew it, the thing was on her, practically bouncing midair as it clung to the barrel of her gun, still pointed at the center of its chest.
[Mother said you wouldn't come this year again but I knew she was wrong especially since there was a major storm just outside the border and everyone has been waiting I even snuck out especially to look because I knew-]
Valerie's translator almost couldn't keep up, and her brain was now officially on a skid, unable to keep pace with the eagerness of a child unimpeded by the need to breathe.
[Just knew that we would have someone, even if it was just a foreigner. Right?]
Valerie stared at the ghost.
The ghost stared back.
[(Hoping) Please?]
[...No.]
[But I came all this way!]
[Well that ain't my problem, now let go you little-] Valerei tried to shake the ghost off her arm, to no avail. The little creature had wrapped itself around her arm, heedless of the weapon still pressed against its chest.
[But we have a full harvest of psillu oats! (conviction!) and, and, Freezeglen is the best smith ever and way cheaper than those dumb city types (Conviction) and you would have the whole village to yourself because no one bothers to trade with us ever-]
[I Said [get--offa--me.] The miniature ghost had an impressive grip, keeping her trapped between its paws no matter how hard she yanked her hand. That was what she got, letting one of these things get close. There was a limit to how much her suit could enhance her, a limit the dead tended to exceed with disgusting ease.
Logically, she knew should shoot. It was a ghost, she was a ghost hunter, it was how things here worked. For all she knew, the whole kid thing could even be an act.
"Ellie hadn't been an act."
[--And everyone would be very impressed with how] cool [you are even though you are hairless and that's kind of gross-- ]
[Wait.] Valerie's attention was pulled back to the creature's ramble, snagged on a word said in a language she hadn't realized she missed [What'd you just say?]
[that you have no hair.]
[Before that!] Valerie snapped. [What you said was] "cool"
The pathetic face it had been wearing moments before evaporated, replaced by a show of fangs and a dancing aura Valerie had only before seen through a set of crosshairs, on those rare occasions she took the time to notice what her target was doing at all before she pulled the trigger.
[(Prideful!) I did! It means awesome in a cold and snowy way, it is a very yeti word!]
[Where'd you learn it.] Modern English slang, deeper in the zone than it should be reasonable to find it. How? Why?
When the open pleasure curled into something devious, Valerie knew she had erred. She'd been too sharp, too insistent, even the most thick witted of specters wouldn't fail to take advantage of so clear a weakness.
[~In the village.] It said, coy tone and dancing aura such that Valerie seriously reconsidered her reluctance to hurt something that looked so much like a kid.
[Where in the village, who told you?] Valerie tried to bring her laser cubes to bear, pushing them level with its face as she charged her guns, letting their whine echo out in the otherwise silent sky.
[(pleased) ~Someone.] The ghost, ignorant of the weapons glowing before its eyes, had somehow managed to force it's muzzle into precisely the same shape human five year olds were prone to making, when they realized adults could be gamed. [(Cajoling) (Cajoling)]
Valerie, with her emotions contained by her suit, was immune to being fed on, but it also made it impossible for her to force any understanding of her intent on such an immature mind. The ghost simply stared up at her, pleased and smug and utterly vulnerable to any of the five weapons pointed at its face.
Worn down frustration and the ache of long exertion crashed over her like a wave. She was cold, she was tired, and she was miserable. As long as she stayed too weak to shoot the ghost in front of her now, it would just keep dogging her. Maybe if she followed along to whatever this thing considered a village, the inhabitants would have the decency to assault her immediately, rather than waiting until she had properly settled and begun to doze.
Indeed, if it was a village, there might even be houses, with rooms she could sleep in instead of dirt.
[You know what? Fine. I'll go to your thing. But-] Valerie pressed the empty plane of her visor against the ghost's nose. [If I think you're lying, I'll kick your hairy a--Backside so hard you gonna fly crooked. Got it?]
It's childlike appearance was throwing her off more than she thought.
[(Appreciation!)(Excitement!) Yes!] The small ghost partly unwound itself from her arm, until the two were connected by the hands. It tugged her hand, still clenched hard around her gun, pulling her in the direction it wanted her to go. [This way, come on!]
Valerie gently nudged her engines, directing them to push her along whatever path the yeti set. She couldn't bring herself to relax, not with how much she needed to do, not with a ghost, however small, keeping its cold grip around her fingers, but there was something curious in the creatures inane chatter, some quality or aspect that acted as a woolen blanket between her and the barbed wire that had rooted itself between skin and flesh, threatening to hew herself to pieces with every new motion she had to make.
They wove through the deepening night, bright red and pale white between the fractiline shadows of crystal and snow. One, small and talkative, voice reverbing off itself in spite of the smothering mists. The other rode silently behind, shoulders thrown back straight and haughty, even as the knees gently bent from the every growing weight of her profound exhaustion.
As she followed along with her sworn enemy, Valerie at last allowed her guns to dissipate back to the extra dimensional pockets she kept them in, and in that instant decided that should she ever escape this place, she would refrain from admitting just how much the prospect of a real bed influenced her decision to trust, of all things, anything so duplicitous as a ghost.
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Valerie crushed the built up layer of ice beneath her heel, stomping as hard as her exhausted thighs would allow. She stood under a mountain, paused beneath the carved chin of some ox faced beast, looking up grimly eyeless towards a sky collapsing downward, tracing purple-green fingers down the stone, following the stains of uncountable nights streaked over ice crusted cheeks like tears.
It was at once crude shelter from the snow and mists and overbearing reminder of how deeply she had erred.
What elsewhere might have been an island all its own, was here but a portion of lonely, ragged peaks, each filigreed and carved into monumental forms and fantastic spires now eroded. Stairways chained up cliffways that gave way to nothing, rude debris floated as the centerpiece of calderas carved into theater seats, while fragment arms and mooring chains tumbled freely through the air as flying hazards that became ever more dangerous as night came on and visibility decreased.
She had been following the mountains since she had spotted them at the edge of the far frozen earlier that morning, she was now forced to acknowledge that she would likely be following them well into tomorrow, too.
And the next day.
And the next day.
Perhaps, too, the day after that.
Her boot came down, vibrant red against the ice.
It wasn't that she expected it to be small, just that she had never imagined, hadn't even thought to consider, that any land in the Ghost Zone could ever be this big.
Before, behind, at every angle, the snow and ice went on, dipping into river valleys of blue sludge churning through glass-chime reeds, rising into sheer cliffs, shattering into canyons whose deepest portions sucked in the air in an endless downdraft, hard enough that she could feel the pull from miles up.
No matter how deep the crag went, however, it never went so far as to split through to the bottom. Indeed, were it not for the alien sky brooding just above her head, it was easy to believe she was stuck in some offbeat arctic landscape somewhere back home.
The last of the buildup was vanquished, swept away with a sweep of her heel, yet another problem she had no idea she even needed to consider: Ice buildup.
Dozens of degrees colder than the real thing, but just as pernicious, accruing at the edges of her board and clambering over with unnatural speed that became ever faster as evening faded and the temperature began to drop.
Fouling her aerodynamics, weighing her down, kept away from her thrusters only by the vicious heat of her engine fire, what had begun as an infrequent task was now needed every half hour or less, slowing her down even more.
She should have stopped a while ago, at least according to her suit, which had started buzzing cold weather warnings in her head a few hours back, and as much as she hated the aching damp that kept her shivering as it made its way down to her bones, she wanted nothing more than to keep pressing on.
As long as she was moving, she was doing, she was making headway, somehow. To stop was to admit defeat, and to bed down in the face of her failures, again, wondering where she was supposed to go now seemed intolerable. Better to make some headway while she could, and rest later, once she'd found some idea of where she might need to go.
Sore legs restraightened, back unbent, shedding the thin cluster of snow that had stole in and nested in the hollows of her back.
Just a little farther.
Flying was fine, most days. She didn't hate it. On really pleasant mornings, Valerie would even go so far as to call it fun. Punching holes through clouds from the force of her own shockwave and barrel rolling over a town half lit by dawn gave a thrill no ordinary vehicle could really deliver.
But that was most days, when she had been home.
The mist came down in columns, swollen into bulbous malformity as they collapsed one by one against the breaker of the land below before seething back up to infect the air overhead.
What the mist had not yet obscured, the storm did.
Ice and sleet fell in dizzying spirals, wet, heavy flakes intermixed with dry in a manner she would have thought impossible, had she been anywhere but the Zone.
Shapes swam in and out of sight, devoid of silhouette, more easily identified by the off color of their glow than any aspect of their form.
It kept getting colder, temperatures dipping from minus fifty to minus sixty, then down to seventy.
She kept shivering, felt the leather of her suit contract in an effort to keep warm.
Her calves ached, both from standing for so long and using them to steer, while the small of her back screamed for mercy after having stood upright for so long. She was tired, she couldn't see, all her sensors blinkered by the ectoplasmic white noise that became overwhelming within the mists.
She didn't want to stop.
An idea, any idea, the faintest clue as to where she was meant to go. Some key feature, some castle not yet ruined, she'd even take another ghost. Something, anything.
The ceiling kept falling, and Valerie found herself scooting ever lower to escape it, dodging between mountain peaks and detritus left free floating through an atmosphere ever more opaque. Her mind, like her body, was sluggish and sore, tired out and distracted from the alarms she never did find an off button for. She was sure there was one, but she had never figured it out.
It was a mooring chain that got her, in the end.
She had been scud running, board skimming maybe a few dozen feet off the ground. It was one of those cluttered sections of atmosphere too dense for her to fly through without holding intangibility.
Her brain was fuzzy, and her body numb, such that when the first brick hit her, it came only as a dull pain, a sudden sense of bruising blossoming out from a section previously numb. The second brick hit her over the head, smashing just above her face plate in a painful reminder that she had dropped her intangibility again.
Valerie, swore, rubbed her faceplate over the cracks, already healing, before resuming her flight.
She wasn't sure why, but intangibility was getting hard to keep a hold of, slipping through her fingers more and more as her concentration as a whole began to wilt.
Her head hurt, thoughts flowed down like syrup chilled down the ramps of her aching mind as alarms buzzed in the background of her brain.
She was terribly cold.
But she didn't want to stop.
The night mists had grown dense enough that she couldn't really see what she was flying through, just a vague impression of ground and not ground as she fought to keep her focus. Somewhere, distantly, she was nervous. Something wasn't right.
In that moment, as she vaguely began to consider whether or not she had been pushing herself a little too far, after all, that she failed to see the whitish glow floating against the green, twisted up like a dead snake on the pavement as it floated through the mist.
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It was hard night by the time they reached their destination, which appeared as little more than dim outlines of pale white inside the all consuming fog that now enveloped the world around them in a choking green grasp that snatched any hope of detail from scanners and eyes alike.
Valerie could faintly make out the outline of a worn down wall, opening up in an entrance not so much deliberately carved as simply pressed by the long weight of ages, until at last flattened low enough to pass as an entrance.
/(Excitement!) (Excitement!) And over there is where we built the fort and even though I'm not supposed to show it to you because you're probably an adult if you trade with everyone really well I'll let you see./
The small yeti, who Valerie had learned was named Behrki somewhere between its long ramble on all the best fishing spots and its other long ramble on why the only valid snowball fight was the kind fought "with strength alone." Valerie had started to zone out not too long after, as the deepening chill had worked its way further under her suit. By this point, her hands were quite numb, and of her feet, all she could feel was a dull, swollen sort of pain, scattering into static as it worked its way up her calves and settled in her knees as an ache.
She was really very cold.
/And there's the guard post! No one stays there because Freezehold is drunk and his son's a lout and nothing good ever happens here anyway./ The yeti--Behrki--she supposed, had taken to walking some time ago, and paused in his short legged trudge to look up at her, pushing /(Anticipation)/ and /(impatience)/ through her translator.
/...What./ Whatever empathic ability her suit registered as emotions were hard to parse on a good day, particularly without context. She was too tired to think this out, if the spook wanted something, then he should just spell it out.
/It's not polite to fly in the village, you know./ It said this with the absolute certainty of one who had been told exactly this as a fact of the universe, an indisputable truth too basic to require any explanation as to why.
Valerie glanced down at the snow beneath her board, unmarred but for a single line of footprints carved out from the snow.
/Then they can tell me that personal when we get there./ She began to push forward, dragging along the ghost who still clung to her hand, drug along on his belly by the momentum of her board.
/Pleeease (desperate.) I know you're all worn out and flying is hard and I'll get in so much trouble if you don't at least pretend with my dad especially because he hates it so much when other ghosts act like they're better than him even when they are and I need you to be a little nice pleeeaase./
It had wrapped itself back around her again, both hands grappling her own as it let its legs and tail drag along the ground. Valerie, for her part, wondered whether there was a means to electrify her board somehow. This was the second time today something had tried to slow her down by getting clingy with her primary flying device, and she was getting sick of it.
/(Desperation) come ooonn/ The ghost's tone had taken on a definite whine as it spoke. /I was nice to you, so you should be nice to meee./
Valerie stopped her board. It was going too slow to properly jolt the way she wanted, but it would do.
/No./ She ground the word out, pushed it from the flush of ill temper no longer dormant, rising up against the misery and the cold of her long, long, day.
/(Uncertain)(uncertain)(confused.) What do you mean no?/
"I mean-" Valerie took a moment to muster herself. /I mean Nice doesn't fucking matter! Nice, nice's just what people give you when they want something outta you. Would you been so fucking nice if I didn't get some goodies you and your furry ass friends wanted to lay paws on? Huh? Would you've invited me then?/
/I didn't--/
/No! You wouldn't! Cause that's what you do! You don't give gifts, you make investments, don't you? Don't you?/
/I don't-/
/ Everything's just another goddamn chesspiece, pushing folks around like they don't have lives, acting all sweet hoping they won't notice how you push them around./
/I'm sor--/
/Hush up!/ Valerie snapped. /You don't get to use me, not without me using you back./
/i mea-/
/And don't think for a second I gotta be nice about it./ Valerie raised the yeti up to her faceplate, blank as ever, revealing nothing but a dark reflection of its own pathetic misery. /'Cause last I checked, you need me a whole lot more than I need you./
Valerie managed roughly a second or so of satisfaction, pleased to have finally made it clear to this insufferable furball that she was not so easily fooled, when the yeti began to cry.
/I'm sorry i didn't--I just---it's what you're supposed to do./
Ghosts had a tendency to leak out the face, particularly where Valerie was involved. She had heretofore been able to avert any connection to the act of crying, any sense of guilt more than mollified by the understanding that what she was doing was needed and right.
/You always walk when you get close to the village, you're supposed to be tired, and I'm tired and it's not fair!/ The creature snuffled against her hand, still tangled wrist deep in its cotton-white coat. /(Misery) All the other merchants do it and the big kids and even the village chief and--and--it isn't about being nice and I don't understand!/
The memory came unbidden: Ellie's face, young, as the yeti was young, brought up to the huntress's visor and forced to face down a reflection of her own despair. Tearful confusion, pale hair stuck damp and tangled over tear stained cheeks as she looked up and uttered:
''You tricked me."
Was it the human in her, that had driven her to believe Valerie, when she had lied about her intentions?
How much did a ghost need to get out of another person, before it could be sincere?
She watched the Yeti, snivels edging into full fledged sobs, who had the gall, the utter indecency to give her no excuse.
Valerie sighed, tried to formulate the rat's nest of physical cold and tired guilt and anger turned black and maggot riddled but precious all the same, that had grown and kept growing ever since Phantom, since Ellie, since right and wrong had knotted themselves into an inextricable mess ever more difficult to parse. Since she shot living things, since she went along with ghosts, and they, somehow, failed to notice her humanity. Since she was stuck here, it seemed, and would be for a while. Since she had to say something, somehow, before this day could get any worse.
/Well--You wanna walk? Fine./ She opened her fist, allowing the Yeti, too surprised to catch himself, to fall back down in the snow. /I'll walk./
She looked down at the ground, deep snow half obscured by thick green mists. She couldn't fly like a ghost could, not without her board. Anytime she had to move, and even when she didn't, she kept it out. She had even taken to sleeping on it, sometimes, whenever she couldn't find a nook or hollow that felt sufficiently safe.
Valerie's board was the one of the very few things in life that had never failed her, no matter what.
She yanked on her connection, pulling the board out from under her own feet before she could reconsider or worse, allow her hesitance to show.
She plunged down, falling through the insubstantial remains of her platform as it atomized back into her storage. Her knees buckled, too numb and too stiff from hours of standing against the cold as she plunged down a solid foot into the snow.
The Yeti looked up at her, startled from his fit by the suddenness of the motion.
/Happy now?/ Valerie leveraged herself up, hoping the motion didn't look too pained, then dusted what excess of snow had been kind enough to stick to her boots rather than slide in them back to the ground.
She began trodding off crablike, still not wholly willing to trust a ghost with her back while so exposed.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Berhki wipe his snout one last time, before clambering out of his self made hole to follow subdued alongside.
He did not touch her, and remained mostly quiet as they carried on, tracing the faint depression where countless other feet had worn the path towards an otherworldly village nestled deep within the snow.
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The world swam in and out of focus. Blurs of white and blue swam in front of eyes too weighted down to see.
(/Concern/concern/)
(Foreigner, foreigner)
The world was somewhere beyond her, ringing and distant. It seemed the only thing connecting her to a solid sense of reality was the nail down the center of her stomach, forcing her focus away from the cotton depths of her repose.
She managed some water, that first waking, more by instinct than by will. Liquid filled her helmet halfway up her nose, compelling her to drink.
(/Baffled/concern/)
(Should have melted by now, with that aura.)
(/vexation/--Species like that? Who's to say)
Conscienceness came and went, painful and sticky, but otherwise detached. She watched the vague auroras and wondered what they were as she gnawed half heartedly at something the pinging in her brain said was food. The sounds inside her head had always been there, but at some point, they had gotten harder and harder to ignore. Forcing her to eat, forcing her to drink, a terrible burden, couldn't it tell she wanted to go back to sleep?
The things outside sat objects in front of her, now and again. Glowing blue and green, sometimes yellow, ovoid shapes of indeterminable purpose that they pressed up against her faceplate or tried to pour over her head. She felt something that could be hands, or could be paws. She felt something removed from beneath her, then replaced, sweeter smelling than it had been before.
(No Change?)
The sole source of darkness was the space behind her eyes, sweet black unconscious, sole reprieve from pain and hurt.
Slowly, however, even that began to fill.
Noise and colors, leering eyes, blue and red at once, looked down at her in duel contempt. Blue skin twisted, sucked into it's skull housing, and in the dream, she followed. The mind of the monster was hollow, but not empty.
Phantom was there, hiding something from her. He kept it behind his back, a single tuft of hair, pale as his own, just out of sight. She was enraged, she couldn't remember exactly why, but in that moment, it didn't matter. How dare he! She snarled, compelled her board to guide her to him, but no matter how fast she went, she couldn't move.
Phantom thought this was hilarious, he pointed at her, laughing a laugh just like Paulinia's, a short segment of mockery cut to endless repeat. Then Phantom was Plasmius, still tittering those same pretty girl noises as he reached out, the black of his palm became the black of the world, and she was falling.
She could move now, though she was still trapped inside the skull. Her father was beside her, her father's face followed just behind. The empty space behind his eyelids distorted sadly as he explained something profound. But her father's face had no voicebox, and she couldn't read lips. Valerie wanted to explain this, to work out some solution between them, but every time she opened her mouth, he pulled away.
She tried to move closer, but it was hopeless. Every foot she pushed forward was another ten between them. Thick green clouds rose between the gap, obscuring him further. She tried to scream, but just like her father, she had no mouth. She clawed relentlessly at the void, pouring in her now, filling up the space she was meant to occupy inside her suit until there was nowhere left for her to be. Helpless and alone, She stood beside herself and watched her be consumed.
Valerie snapped awake, suddenly and violently aware.
Everything still hurt, more so, if anything, than she remembered, but for the first time in what felt like a while, she was aware.
Aware enough to realize that the inside of her helmet smelled like the inside boys locker room during a bad day in summer, and she was somewhere she didn't recognize at all.
It was a room, or looked like one. Four walls roughly rectangular, giving way to a smooth dome that served as a ceiling. Four pillars, mostly plain, defined each corner, serving as a sort of built in frame for the intricate artwork spanning the enclosure.
Angular and somewhat stiff, each wall depicted a different version of rolling hills and crystal woodlands of the kind she had long grown sick of seeing in her flight across the snow. Unlike the real world, however, they showed no signs of decay. Made of solid, well kept ice impregnated with shiny stones and bits of color, they carved out a shiny, pleasant world of little villages nested among the spires and tended by large, ox headed ape-men wielding spades and pulling wagons amongst herd beasts merrily traipsing into what she could only imagine were butcher shops and storage racks.
One, not far from where she lay, had lain its head upon a stone, gazing up in smiling adoration at a master halfway through his dissection of its great and wooly hide.
Valerie turned her attention to the ceiling, an artful representation of the Ghost Zone's atmosphere, trying to ignore the way the butcher seemed to stare.
Her head felt like someone had stuck it up a church bell and used it as a clapper. Her body hurt, her eyes stung, there was a tinny ringing emanating from no where in particular that she guessed must be yet another alarm coming from her suit. It was certainly ripped enough to warrant it.
Damn Zone!
Angery, spiked pit of feeling, a sudden drop from her aching rationality so swift it caught her by surprise.
Damn Zone! Broke her damn suit! Ruined her damn life! Phantom and Plasmius and the weather making everything hard like it was goddamn funny!
Their fault! Their fault, dammit!
She clenched her fists, and was surprised to hear a crackle between her fists.
She pulled her hand out from the layers stacked on top of her, opening it to reveal her mother, crumpled even further
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Yeti villages, as it happened, were carved from ice.
Snow gave way to a well-cleared street, itself cut from the same kind of crystal which grew fractiline and glimmering all along the ridges she had seen during her flight here, tiled according to their type, forming a long mosaic of smoky stone and clear blue rock.
The houses abutted this street directly in an unexpected echo of those old, settler village she had seen pictures of along the east coast, stacked domes of ice like scoops of ice cream on a cone, two and three hemispheres high, half melted into each other at angles too artful for some blind summer to have sculpted from its heat, fused around clear circles of ice, or slumped into deep wrinkles which mimicked the shape of the surrounding land, as seen from above. Some of the finest even had the same kind of hard edged knotwork present in the road itself, tying one dome to the other in a brutal filigree that spoke of beauty as much as strength.
They stopped at the face of one such structure, neither the largest nor the most ornate, nestled among of cluster of other, slightly finer dwellings Berkhi, who had been heretofore subdued as they made their way through silent streets, raised small fist towards the door, carved from faceted crystal too smoky to see through with any clarity, before glancing back at her, radiating a sense of /(Seriousness)/ unsuited to his small frame.
/When you go in, you're supposed to be polite./
/Yeah, I got it./ Sure, fine, whatever. If she could tolerate one ghost for however long it took to get here, she could tolerate some more.
Anything to get her out of the cold.
/I mean right away, not mean at first then okay after, or-or okay at first then mean then back to fine again. You've got to be nice right away, especially Grander Freezebalm because he hates foreigners which you are and especially traders and my papa will be in so much trouble and it will be all my fault unless you are super good so you've got to be nice./
It stared up at her, buttercup yellow eyes all imploring.
/Okay?/
/Fine, I'll be nice to your parents, just open the door./ She had already been worn out when it had started getting dark, but there was a weight to her tiredness that had crept up on her sometime between nightfall and now, trying to smother her consciousness in steamed wool and wet quilts, making it hard to think. The edges of her limbs had gone numb some time ago, then, paradoxically, began to warm.
Alerts had started going off in the corner of her vision some time ago, only helpful in giving her something to focus on other than the leaden weariness threatening to smother her whole.
The Yeti continued to stare, brow furrowed in doubt.
/...Please./ pinching out the word physically hurt, too close to begging, a dangerous, unwelcome hint to just how miserable she really was. /I know what nice is, so please let me in./
/Alright./ it's gaze remained serious, but it's aura visibly loosened around it as it nodded, serious as could be. /But if you mess up, Grander Freezefolk always says rude yetis get ended and he wishes he could have the core of every low breed scammer strung together as a belt and even though you're not a yeti and I don't like you, I think you would make a very bad belt./
So saying, the Yeti turned on its heel, knocking on the door before him with an impatient patter.
Valerie knew of Yetis, in the pop culture sense that the word brought to mind: Huge, hairy apes, that dwelled among mountain peaks and glaciers, wandering among the frost wastes in whatever crude hollow might offer them shelter.
It was already quite apparent that (Valerie did not expect full grown yeti to be so big)
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"There she is, Danno, the old Nightengale house, still looking good, eh?"
Danny, himself hardly an architectural aficionado, leaned back in his seat, trying to work out the ache budding up from his backside, a consequence of six hours of driving.
"Sure dad, looks great. If you squint, you almost can't see the dry rot."
"Eh, such a kidder." His dad took one hand off the wheel, which wouldn't have been so terrible, had his other hand already been preoccupied windsurfing out the window. Fortunately, they had already slowed down, The indomitable GAV sliding only slightly on the gravel drive.
"To hear my brother talk, her bones are even sturdier than her looks!"
In truth, the house was oddly well kept, considering the long duration of its abandonment. The sun had long ago scorched whatever color it had first been painted, but the house itself retained the fine, aristocratic lines typical of its era, long, narrow face slumped only slightly at the bottom, where it rested on a foundation of damp grey stones. Thin windows peered out over a weed choked ruin of what might have once been a garden, dustless gaze flashing bright with the reflection of the late afternoon sun, which painted the surrounding woodland in fresh shadows shot through with deep yellow light.
The roof, though loaded heavy with the remains of countless autumns, bowed only slightly beneath the load, while gutters choked with green lay gave no hint of leakage, as though the fresh grass, thriving in emerald contrast to the dull grey thickets of the field below, saw fit to absorb the full of any water that came their way, freeing the buildings narrow brows from the travasity of rot.
As they pulled into the overgrown remains of a drive, Danny couldn't shake the uncanny sensation that he was being watched.
Once the GAV had finally ground to a halt, Danny leapt out, almost phasing out of the buckle directly in his haste to be free. He loved his father, truly, but six hours of Jack Fenton in an enclosed space was a lot for anyone.
Danny wished again that the rest of his family could have joined in. His mother had a knack for steering wheel whenever his father's hands flew off it, making the whole affair less deadly for all involved, and for all his sister's prattling on the matters of psychology annoyed him, it was a welcome reprieve from Jack's endless diatribes on the extermination of ghosts.
"All set, Danno?" His father asked, having thumped out of the driver's seat and come around to Danny's side of the car.
"Sure dad." Ready as I'll ever be. The thought passed his mind just as his back gave one firm, satisfying crack, just as his muscle soreness finally began to ease.
While falling ass-backwards into an active ghost portal had proven to have several drawbacks over the years, ghostly healing was not among them. The ability to shake off sore muscles and cramps in thirty seconds or less was an ability he wouldn't trade for the world.
Danny followed behind his father, tracing his broad orange back as they made their way past a smaller car, a deep blue compact utterly dwarfed by the armoured van beside it, and into the grass.
If the field masquerading as a front lawn had seemed unpleasant from a distance, it was entirely vile up close. Briar vines snaked in and out of the wild grasses, wrapping around particularly dense clusters in hateful bouquets, while the ground lay hidden in a mixture of rotten black stalks, trampled under and suffocated by their comrades and turned sticky with rot. Were it not for his father's bulldozer tread and a few surreptitious uses of intangibility to snake through the worst of the mess, Danny was uncertain he would have made it through the field at all.
The dampness, chill and cloying, that seemed to permeate the very lowest points of the ground around him seemed reluctant to let go.
The door, like the rest of the house, was in curiously good repair. Dark, strong mahogany peering out between flaking paint, bleached white everywhere but at the edges where there still remained some trace of its original pale blue.
The door opened not two seconds later, revealing a broad man in dark grey slacks and a sweat stained office shirt rolled up to the elbows. He was as tall as Jack was, but thinner in the shoulder, before broadening, wedge like, at the waist. Had Danny not known beforehand that they were visiting one of Jack's brother's, the broad chin and dark, grey scuffed hair cast in perfect double between the two men would have made it obvious.
"Davie!"
"Jack!
"The two men embraced at the shoulder, halfway charging into each other's side in a patented Fenton hug.
"Thanks so much for coming on short notice." David Fenton released jack first, grasping him on the shoulders before retreating to the doorframe, "With the kids out for school and my wife such a homebody, you know, I thought I'd be doing this alone!"
"Aw, Davie, anything for you! I just wish I could've brought the whole family. If it weren't for those gosh darn ghosts, she would've come in a heartbeat!"
Danny still wasn't sure if he should be grateful for that. On one hand, knowing his mother, an excellent ghost hunter in her own right, was there to protect Amity alongside Sam, Tucker, and Valerie eased something he preferred not to admit existed. On the other hand, with one parent remaining at the house, Jazz had been able to beg off going, claiming that disrupting her studies at such a critical time during her psychological development might be bad for her grades.
One day, Danny would learn how to use big words to say nothing and escape all his problems. Then he could stay home, too.
"Call me David, please." The other Fenton replied, "So you and madaline--the crazy redhead from collage, you got together?"
"You betcha!" Jack exclaimed, "She's the love of my life! Gave me two kids, Jazz couldn't make it, but Danny here came with me to help, say hi kiddo!"
"Hi." Danny replied, he brought his hand up in a half-hearted wave, choosing to ignore the twitch of the jaw as David Fenton noticed, likely for the first time, that Danny had been standing there at all.
"Well, hello young man." The elder Fenton, to his credit, brought his smile back in record time, squeezing out from the doorway to greet him personally, hand reached out in welcome. "Names's David Fenton, but you already knew that, how are you?"
Mostly bored. And itchy, but mostly bored. Danny wasn't a big fan of nature on a good day, but something about this particular variety of weed was unpleasant to the touch.
"Eh, Im okay." Danny said, taking the man's proffered hand. It was large, not unlike his fathers, but softer, plush palms and fingertips unmarred by work. "It's a nice place I guess, but what do want us for? Dad just said you wanted to meet."
"I did, and I do my boy!" David exclaimed, if he noticed the coolness of Danny's fingers, he didn't show it, finishing in a hearty pump before releasing his grip. "What's wrong with wanting to spend some time together as family, hm?"
"...Because I only found out you were real, like, yesterday?." Every year, his dad had sent hand decorated cards off to his 'big old Fenton family clan,' and every year, he received no reply, letters disappearing into the mailbox, never to be seen again. The choice to believe that his father's relatives consisted of Canadian girlfriends and make-believe had honestly been the more merciful than the other option: That he was getting ghosted harder than an actual spirit could ever hope to dream.
"Ah, Danno, such a kidder." Jack, who had ambled over while they spoke, slapped Danny across the back with affable force, nearly toppling the thing teen face first into the rotten ground. "He gets that from his mom. Any chance to bring the family together is a chance worth taking, and with a special tour of the old Nightengale house, too! I didn't even know this baby was still standing."
"The old Nightengale-Fenton rivalry." David tsked, as he turned his attention back to the other adult, "That side of the family always was prone to holding grudges. If old Alliaster hadn't been the last of them, why, forget inheritance, I doubt Id've been told the old place was here at all."
"Come on, Davie, they weren't so bad." Jack replied, "Why, it was good old uncle Allie who got me into ghost stories!"
"So you're still into those after all?"
"Into it, why, I never quit! Mads and I are Amity park's number one ghost hunting couple! We're practically town celebrities!" Jack said, conveniently leaving out the decade and a half, pre-ghost portal, where they were Amity Park's number one ghost hunting loons.
"Well, you're sure to get a kick out of the house, because according to local legend-" David dropped his voice to a stage whisper, a smile creeping up one side of his face, "The Nightengale house is Haunted."
"Really!?"
"Really!?" Both Jack and Danny spoke at once.
"Really!" David affirmed, "It's the big reason I'm having so much trouble with the place-the locals won't step foot here no matter how much you pay them. I've been working on surveying and cleaning the place out pretty well on my own."
A ghost? This far out of Amity? While his father was obviously hooked, Danny couldn't help but doubt it. While he had to admit he still felt peculiarly watched, the ectoplasm in the air was low, more so than average, lending a supernatural dryness to the air that was frankly unpleasant to breath. His ghost sense, meanwhile, remained completely silent.
"Well, no need to keep standing around, come in, come in." Danny had just finished chalking off the possibility of ghosts when David finally saw fit to wrap up their conversation. What fun adults got out of standing around, talking about nothing, Danny would never know.
"We put dinner on the pot just a few minuets ago, so there's plenty of time to look around."
Jack, never one to stand still for any length of time, bounded up he stairs. Danny, meanwhile, followed some distance behind, glad to be out of the foul lawn, but without any interest in the inevitable house tour that was sure to follow.
It came suddenly, just as he crossed the mossy threshold into the gleaming oaken floor, stripped naked, bound down, every nightmare he had ever had of examination tables and cold chains mixed with the sensation of serpent flesh and spiders crawling over his body, supine, denuded, and utterly exposed.
His breath came in gasps, his thoughts blurred and panicky with the certainty, the absolute conviction, that something somewhere wanted him not dead, but gone. His heart beat, his core screeched, then fell silent, cowed into hiding deep within the protective layer of his humanity.
He felt, but did not see what grasped his shoulder, bucked against it as he fought to get out.
"Whoah--Danno, hey, what's wrong?"
"...Dad?" The sense of panic had retreated leaving behind unfocused distress and a sudden, pounding headache echoing in it unholy wake. He blinked blurry eyes up towards his father, who frowned down at him in concern.
"You okay son?"
"He looked like he was having some kind of fit."
"I'm fine." Danny croaked, waving off the concern of father and uncle alike, "I just, uh tripped? On the doorframe, yeah."
He chuckled weakly, already kicking himself for such a miserable excuse. Should've blamed it on black mold, or old house fungus, ugh.
"You know me, good old mister klutzy."
His chuckles did nothing to relieve the dim sense of concern echoing off his father, and that was odd, how little he could taste it, the faintest sense of violet and iron dusting his tongue. Maybe his dad wasn't as concerned as he looked?
"David, did mad old jack finally come down or did he--oh, oh my." A new voice interjected, "Is everything alright?"
"Not sure, Rich." The fuzzy form of David moved toward a lean, sparse outline of a person, "I was just inviting in Jack and his son in, when all of a sudden the kid just collapsed."
"Sure you don't want to see a doctor, Danno?" Things were beginning to resolve slightly, overwhelming migraine resolving into a more manageable ache.
Danny hesitated. On one hand, yes, getting out of this house suddenly seemed like an amazing idea, on the other hand no. Danny hadn't managed to avoid medical professionals for a solid year and a half just to voluntarily submit his highly ectocontaminated and deeply abnormal excuse for a body to the dangerously thorough rigamarole otherwise known as standard medical testing.
"I could check him out, if you like, off the books of course." The new person, who had resolved himself somewhat into a a man of wide, sturdy bones fit rather poorly in a skin stretched overthin across his frame. A fine salt and peper mustache somewhat eased his gaunt appearance, bristling curiously where Danny still lay half propped up in his fathers lap.
"Feeling all right, young man?"
"Peachy." Danny replied, still trying to squint through whatever grime had gotten in his eyes. Everything felt like he was peering through a pair of well smeared glasses, shapes distorted or rendered indistinct across his vision. The lingering headache didn't help.
"Just fine. Gimme a bit and I'll be even better.."
"That was quite the trip to be just fine so soon after. When I came in, you doing a pretty good impression of a flower sack, if I don't say so myself."
"You missed it, but the kid was convulsing before you came in." David unhelpfully saw fit to reply.
"Just let Rich check you over, son." His father said, "He's the Fenton Family's own home grown doctor! He can check you over without all that hospital nastiness we know you hate so much."
"Just a humble general practitioner, I'm afraid." Richard deferred.
"You mean you-no, nevermind." Danny pushed aside the fact that his parents had not, in fact, been wholly oblivious to his sudden turn against medicine. "I'm really fine." He hoisted himself up, pushing away the doctor's searching hand.
"See? I just stumbled. Totally normal, now lets go with this, uh, thing you were doing."
"The house tour?" David offered.
"Right, the house tour. Awesome. I love houses, and touring them. Soo~ let's go."
Danny's attempt to remove himself from the center of the unwanted spectacle was foiled by Richard, who caught him by the shoulder as he tried to leave.
"Wait! I know you're nervous, but are you certain, truly, that you're really alright?"
"I just said I was fine." Danny didn't like this, being caught in a strange place, surrounded by strangers. "And I meant it. It's all good. Now let me go." he pulled his shoulder out of the man's grasp, only to find himself caught again when he stumbled in the retreat.
"With all due respect, convulsions are hardly anyone's idea of fine-"
"Christ, kid, you can't seriously just shrug that off-"
"Whoah, whoah, easy guys." To Danny's great surprise, it was his father who came to his aid, approaching both relative with palms wide open. "My Danno's an honest kid."
Danny winced.
"So if he says he's fine, I believe him!" He brought both hands down on Danny's shoulders as he did, forcing Danny to put all his concentration in keeping his knees from buckling under the weight.
Normally, this would be easy, but normal wasn't a long dull ache in the back of his skull and a crushing sensation of rejection saturating every sandpaper breath and setting his muscles trembling with unaccustomed weakness.
"That right, son?"
Danny smiled up at his father, a sense of guilt mixing with profound relief.
"Yeah dad," he said. "Like I said, just a trip."
"Well, if the boy himself says so..." Richard looked over to David, face pinched in irritation and concern.
"Your family, Jack, your rules." David said, "Can't say I like it though. If that kid falls over for good, don't forget that that shit's on you."
There was a brief moment of silence, tension mixing between all three parties, at once kinsmen and strangers both, before Richard cleared his throat.
"So, ah, David." He said, "perhaps you might consider delaying a tour?"
__________________Dinner proved to be an oven pizza pulled out from a lime green dinosaur of an oven, half burnt at the edges and in the middle, suspiciously cold.
"Vintage my ass." David, who Danny still couldn't bring himself to call uncle, a phrase he still still associated more with Vlad, despite himself, than the wedge shaped man before him.
"Damn things a hunk of junk. I'm not even gonna bother assessing it. That's the first thing we'll be changing, soon as we get the move crews in from out of town, we're pulling that out first thing."
David Fenton thumped a fist on the table, sending up a fine ploom of dust.
"Still can't convince the locals to come by?" Richard asked, nibbling the midsection of the pizza somewhere beneath the finely trimmed hedge of his upper lip.
"A whole year after his death, and Aloysious still have them running scared. Heck-" He glanced over at Jack, a gleam altogether too calculated shining in his watery blue eyes, "Unless someone puts these old ghost stories to rest, this whole motel gig is dead in the water."
"Ghosts!" Jack exclaimed.
Danny choked on his pizza, swallowing the ill timed slice straight down his windpipe.
"Davie! You didn't tell me this place had ghosts."
"No you really didn't."
"Ah, must've slipped my mind." David leaned back in in his chair, ornately carved and padded in velvet, in a way that spoke of a certain accustomation to luxury. "But come to think of it, Jack, aren't you and that Maddie woman still doing the ghost hunter thing up north?"
"Ghost hunter?" Richard interjected, "With that suit of yours, Jack, I rather thought you were some kind of plummer."
"Ha! I'll have you know this is a patented Fenton anti-ecto clean suit, keeps you safe and fashionable to boot. Me an Mads need 'em, too, with how much live testing we have to do with our weaponry, that nasty old slime gets everywhere and then some."
Danny shuddered. Live testing was certainly one way to put it. The last experimental weapon he's been hit with in the field had taken a full week to heal.
"Sure they do." David agreed, the skein of interest still glazing over his eyes.
Danny understood, then, why he had disliked him from the start. He was more honest, than Vlad, and brusker, but there was a certain greasiness to the man that flavored every emotion he put out with an unpleasant and vaguely rotten aftertaste that not even the heavy charcoal flavor of the burnt half of his pizza could fully obscure.
"You betcha, why, just point me at the spook, Davie." So saying, he whipped out one a gun, because of course Jack Fenton would never go anywhere without being armed, brandishing it wildly across the table "I'll have that lousy piece of ectoplasmic scum put down in no time at all!"
"Good God, Jack, is that a gun!?" Richard, the evident reservoir of common sense within the family, Immediately tried to duck out from his father's wavering aim.
"No, of course it's not a gun: It's an ecto-gun! specially calibrated for spooks, haunts, and ghosts! If you'd like, I can show you!" He pointed the gun at his own foot.
"Jack, no-"
Jack pulled the trigger.
Then, in the utter silence that followed, he pulled it again.
"Hm, darn thing must be faulty." Jack squinted down the barrel as Richard, pale as a sheet, thrust himself up from his chair.
Danny caught David subtly shaking his head, indicating for the man to, sit back down? Play it cool? Act like his parents weren't a class act in crazy even when their weapons actually worked?
Danny, leaned down and groaned, trying to rub out the subtle headache that had been dogging him ever since he stepped inside the house.
"Ha! Same old crazy Jack." David's lips stretched taught against bared teeth, "You remember how he disassembled the family lawnmower back in the day?"
"Vividly." Richard responded.
"And combined it with the leaf blower." Jack said, still preoccupied with the gun. He shook it, then began fiddling with the cartridges, presumably to check whether or not he forgot to load them, "that old machine made lawn work a cinch!"
"It shaved my vegetables down to nubs!"
"Guys, guys, easy." David spread his hands in a placating gesture, more for a fuming Richard than Jack, still preoccupied with the malfunctioning gun. "We're all family here, right?"
"Related, certainly." Richard grumbled.
"Dissagreements aside." David continued, "We're all family, and Jack's side of the family has been kind enough to volunteer to help out, right?"
"Nonsense, I can't just let you walk back into a ghost infested house! I've even got the Fenton Weseal in the back of the GIV, we can make that nasty spector come to us!"
"Still no bars?"
"Jackie, my man, I know your eager to show off your, ah, expertise, but our little ghost problem has been going on for a while now, and we've all survived fine enough." David clapped his bother across the back, grin stretched wide as the taste of his confidence took on an overtone of impatience.
Danny pocketed his phone, took a longer look at David Casey Fenton.
"I mean, at least tell me you're going to stay for dinner!"
Jack paused at that, thick caterpillar brows conjoined as he rubbed his chin in contemplation.
"I don't know Davie, as long as you've got a spook running amok, I can't just leave it be. I've got a reputation to uphold! A Fenton neve is never done until the ghost is gone! And by gone, I mean hunted down and destroyed with prejudice!
"So, Remind me again why we drove twelve hours to go investigate a haunted house?" Danny had asked this at the beginning, but, laboring under a poor combination of boredom, irascibility, and a perverse teenage desire to drag the rest of the world down with his mood, couldn't quite stop himself from asking again.
He could be playing doomed with Tucker right now, he could be hanging out with Sam. He could even be investigating haunted houses, because he lived in Amity, where finding an unhaunted house took actual effort and a willingness to keep a huge, green dome over your house at all times.
"Because it's a family favor, son." His father's impenetrable wall of cheer had definitely taken a beating over the last several hours, but even so, he still managed a weary sort of smile at his ill tempered son. "Your old uncle Davie and I hadn't talked in years! I couldn't just turn him away after so long!"
Personally, Danny thought ignoring the man who ghosted you harder than the undead abominations living in your basement was a marvelous idea, but in that sense, he and his father were very different people: Danny had never seen Jack hold a grudge for longer than a week, and even then, he doubted he'd deny helping out his worst enemy, not if it was a matter of protecting them from ghosts.
He just wished he didn't have to be drug along beside him.
"Thanks Jazz." His sister, traitorous, sibling that she was, had immediately pulled the "I need to study" card, leaving Danny, known delinquent, to suffer the fickle winds of parental affection all on his own.
"You'll be fine, Danny. Mom's here keeping Amity safe, and so's Tucker, Val and Sam. Think of it as a bonding opportunity, and who knows, maybe you'll even see a ghooost~"
She had then walked backwards out of the room, doing the worst impression of Boxy he'd seen in ages,
Pft, like any ghost worth writing home about would venture so far from a portal.
Danny pressed leaned his face against the glass, watching the tress pass by in dense thickets as he waited for the drive to end.
"Jacko!"
"Davie!"
Dave Fenton proved to be a large, wedge shaped man, as cheerful and brash as his own father, with the same long jaw and dark hair gone grey about the temples. Where Jack, however, had a certain ruggedness to him, cauloused hands and workman's muscle hidden beneath an insularly layer of fat, Dave was soft, plush bodied, and generous about the waist.
It was easy to tell, just from looking at him, that whatever job this man held, it involved very little running.
"I came as soon as I heard about your problem with the spook!" Jack exclaimed, whipping out a pistol hidden on his suit. "Just point me at 'em, and me and Danny'll blow that evil undead scumbag straight to kingdom come!"
"Whoah there, tiger, you haven't even seen the house. The old spook only comes out at night, anyway, we've got plenty of time."
Danny pulled out his phone to check for a signal while the adults were talking.
"Only at night, eh?" Jack's brows caterpillared inward, somewhat confused, "Can't say I've ever heard ghost doing that. Most've 'em just pop up whenever it suits them."
"Ugh, Don't they ever." Danny's life would be so much easier if all ghosts just stayed nocturnal.
Well, maybe the ghosts up north are a little more flexible, who knows." David's smile had lost it's sense of stricture, returning to a more natural grin, perhaps even eager, as he spoke. "But this isn't any ghost, this is a Nightingale. Possibly even as old as the house itself."
Well, it wouldn't be a lot better, sleep deprivation was still inevitable, but at least that way he could have the day to himself.
"A Nightengale ghost?" Jack gasped, "In a Nightengale house? No way, I can't believe it!"
He shook his phone in the futile hope that it would somehow improve its reception, to no avail: The bars in the corner of the device remained resolutely empty.
"Then you better get started on a whole new religion, Jack my man, because what I've got in this house is unlike anything you've ever seen."
With a sigh, Danny pocketed his phone, resigning himself to boredom as he trudged behind the elder Fentons, now making their way up the woodland trail that served as the final leg to the grand old Nightengale Manner. If his luck held, everything else would be just as dull.
________________Even from a distance, Nightengale manor struck a memorable sight.
Set in the middle of what must have been, once, a magnificent garden in the English style, now overgrown and turned rank with weeds, it Perched tall and narrow on a fountain of mossy stone, aristocratic facade bespoke of wood paneled elegance hard weathered by the vicissitudes of sun and rain.
It had likely been blue, once, if what paint remained unpeeled around the window frames were any indication of the whole, but now the long narrow beams revealed their poplar character to the world, pale as bones, and strangely sturdy. No hint of worms infested the thin white beams, and no trace of mold defaced them.
Combined with the placement of the windows, placed one each to either side of the second story floor, one was left with the strong impression of a face struck ashen, peering over the weeds at some unknown horror lurking somewhere out of sight.
Danny rubbed a sudden rash of gooseflesh, prickling across his arms in defiance of the mid september warmth.
"There she is." David said, gesturing broadly to the half choked landscape before them, "With the old Nightengale-Fenton rivalry, I didn't even know this place existed until Aloysius Nightengale kicked the bucket six months back. Turns out, I was the closest relative the poor codger had left. Oh, Jack, you should've heard the fuss! I must've gotten sixty, seventy letters from that side of the family, all 'unworthy' this and 'ignorant that', Ha!."
David waved waved a dismissive hand, as though to toss out the very idea of the missives right along with the letters themselves. "As if they weren't the backwards side of the family, still clinging to Fentonightengale's bullcrap like it's gospel after all this time! Can you even believe it?"
"Oh, it's not so bad, Davie." Jack interjected. "In fact, did you know some of the first ghost hunting equipment me and V-man made in collage were based off Nightengale family legends!"
"Ha! For once, you were the clever one there, Jack! I had had no idea that hoodoo witchy shit could turn such a bundle until I took a good look at the place myself."
"Well, actually--"
"I mean, look at this! Those Nightengale bastards have been holding out on us I tell ya, come on, look at it!"
They had arrived at the garden gate at which, David, sweat stained and cheerful, saw fit to indicate.
Blackly stood against the pallid blue of the afternoon sky, warped askew by dense vines and washing earth, the gate gave crooked entrance to the weed choked remains of the garden beyond.
Though distorted from its progenitor shape, the effort its makers had put into it remained clear: sturdy pillars broke apart into looping vines, winding in on each other, warping from thorn studded vines to serpent mouths clamped down on taproot tails on one great, dizzying mass arching up the twisted gateway before plunging down into the earth before rising up the other side.
Ten thousand serpents conjoined to one, infinitely looping up and down beneath the earth.
No grand aficionado of architecture, Danny mostly found it creepy, albeit in a gee-Sam-would-love-this kind of way. The unnatural conjoining of plant with animal, conveniently colored a dark, oily looking black was exactly the kind of thing she would want to stick in her greenhouse, or maybe even her room.
What he didn't get was why some sweaty old man like David would take the same sort of interest.
Not until he touched one of the serpents, then immediately pulled it back with a hiss.
"Is that silver!?"
"You betcha kid, and crazy pure to boot! Some iron in there for support, but most of that baby is precious metal. Me and Murium plan to melt it down as soon as we get the road paved enough for something to hall it out. Come on, I've still got to show you the garden!"
Danny passed through the gate, trying to subtly suckle out the heat of his newborn burn while their backs remained turned. Not just silver, but blessed, a weakness he'd had the misfortune to discover when Pamela manson had seen fit to show off the family jewel collection.
The day remained as warm as ever, but still he shivered, looking into those rose-petal sockets, and fought back the frightful sensation that somehow, someway, the snakes were looking back.
The garden proved to be a trek almost as unpleasant as the mountain path: Everywhere, there was growth, choking pathways, obscuring corners, festering up in damp green fountains of what might have been a hedge. Tufts of grass ran riot in what few open spaces remained, bunched into savage bouquets by strangle vines and briars in their race to escape the verdant trample that would have them shaded out. Those that failed were consigned to die, suffocated beneath the endless blossoms, oversweet and pollen choked, a sacrifice to be buried and consumed.
Worse, Danny was almost certain most of them were some kind of anti-ghost flowers, because anything that didn't make him itch was practically guaranteed to make him sneeze.
"...First built around nine-teen-oh-one, give or take." David, who seemed to enjoy the sound of his own voice even more than Jack did at his worst, continued his rambling commentary on the grounds, the first half of which Danny, unnerved and annoyed by the contents of the garden, had managed to miss. "One of a whole network of so-called 'safehouses' designed to ward against the occult."
They had exited the garden at last, breaching the thickets into a relatively clear--and obviously new--patch of lawn.
"And it ended up haunted?" Danny grumbled, wiping the last of the snot that had finally stopped trying to flee his nose, "How does that work?"
"Hell if I know, kid, that's you're dad's gig." David shrugged, climbing up the mossy steps to the hard weathered door. "All I know is the damn spook is driving Murium nuts. And what the wife wants, the husband delivers, am I right or am I right?" He chortled, opening up the house.
"Well, what are you waiting for, come inside."
Danny felt it the instant he crossed the threshold.
The sensation of his core, squealing, then retreating deeper than he had ever known it, hiding like a mouse in its human den, leaving behind a sudden absence in its wake.
Danny did not remember falling, but he was down, bent suddenly on shaking knees with no memory of transition.
"What was that?"
He clutched at his chest, grasping at the phantom absence to no avail.
"What the hell was that?"
"Danno--Danny! You okay, son?"
His father was bent over him, grand orange form compressed almost to Danny's own eye level, gazing at his son with a level of concern than Danny thought a small stumble should really warrant.
Had he been out of it for longer than he recalled?
"Yeah Dad, I'm fine." He pushed himself up, ignoring the way his vision still tried to spin, "Just wasn't expecting, uh, those old doorjambs, yeah. I tripped on them."
"Are you sure, son?" Ah, yes, his least favorite part of family field trips: His parents paying actual attention to the things he said.
"Yep!" The word came out as more of a croak, "Totally fine. Just peachy. Now lets get out of here-"Before something else happens "-So we can see the rest of the house. I'm just, so excited."
"Well, if you're sure--" Jack started.
"I'm sure!"
"Well, I've got some good news for the both of you, then." David said, "Next stop is the kitchen, and I don't know about you two, but that uphill walk we took has got me all set for dinner!"
The inside of the Nightengale house, much like the exterior, was a gaunt, narrow thing, dedicated more to winding corners and blind alcoves than rooms. The ceilings were low, perhaps five feet all told, forcing both Jack and David to stoop. The walls, for some absurd reason, had been lined in newspaper, yellowed with age, letters blurred to illegible mush beneath the dull sodium lights that had only partly replaced a system of kerosene lanterns, which jutted out at irregular intervals from the walls, hallowed out vestibules smeared with soot.
Things became less oppressive as they neared their destination, walls had been stripped down and repainted, fresh, peachy hues providing slight a touch of cheer to the windowless corridor, and marks had been made on the ceiling, obviously marking it for reconstruction at some later date.
The kitchen itself had gone under similar renovation, the crisp, plastic smell of paint helpfully overlaying the scent of dry must which oppressed the atmosphere everywhere else, and a brand new microwave had been awkwardly balanced on top of the rust red coils of a defunct stove.
Other aspects, however, remained unchanged. Carved oaken pillars broke the space between the cooking and seating area, connected together by a knee high wall, and the table was a monstrosity: Obviously too large for the space provided, crammed between a set of squinting windows and the low divide, surrounded by equally heavy seats padded in frayed velvet looming over the polished surface of the table, ominously backlit by a small chandelier hung perilously low, multi-tiered girth hovering just a foot or two above where one was expected to eat.
Flitting in and out of this abomination of design was a sparse bottle blond in checkered slacks and a grey woman's power suit, dispensing paper plates around the edges of the table.
""There she is, the woman of the hour!" David swept in, wrapping one arm around the plantain shaped waist of the woman before him. "Jack, Danny, meet Murium.
""Nice to meet 'cha!" Jack grabbed the woman's hands, which he proceeded to pump. "Jack Fenton, at your service! And over there's my boy Danno! He's not much for ghosts, but I couldn't just let the chance to meet the family slide. Why, I don't think we've even talked since mom and dad kicked me out of the house told me to get a real job!"
"Hm, yes. An order they have yet to rescind, last I checked." She pinched her lips, looked him over, taking in the orange jumpsuit, the towering amiability, the utility belt overflowing with spare wires and half assembled tools.
Danny knew that look, had born its weight every day of his life for fourteen long years.
"So, you're a ghost hunter."
"You betcha!"
"Ah, I see. Going by your suit, I had rather guessed you were some kind of plumber."
"Actually, Dad's one of the top anti-ecto engineers in the country." Danny said. "Fentonworks has an exclusive contracts with government and private agencies, and it's dad who drafts out most of the designs."
Not that he would normally brag about how his parents sold new and improved methods of perishing his ghostly behind to the likes of Vladco or the GIW, but they were getting hard to bare, these people.
"Aw, Danno." Jack ruffled his hair, "Don't forget second best ghost hunter in Amity Park, mads being the first, of course!"
"See, Murium?" David said, "Just like I told ya, Jackie here knows his stuff! And generous, too! Man didn't ask for so much a penny before driving up."
"Did he now?"
"'Course! Jack replied "Davie's family, and with a chance to work with a real Nightengale legacy, I still can't believe it! So many of me and Vlad's--he was my friend back in high school, you remember him, Davie? Basically all of me and Vlad's early works were based legends from before the big family split!"
Danny made his way to the oversized dining table, where he'd spotted an oven pizza cooling among the paper plates, vague plans in his head to eat the entire thing while no one was looking, maybe one or two slices for his dad, but defininately not Murium and David. Nope, not them. A pizzaless dinner was the least of what these people owed him.
"Did you see the newspapers on the walls?" Jack continued to gush, "An old anti-ghost technique! The idea is ghosts are inherently obsessive, they would have to read everything in a way humans just don't! "
Danny winced, crunching harder than intended into his pizza shaped briquette. It wasn't quite reanimated ecto-weenies bad, but cooking was clearly not Murium Fenton's strong suit.
"Crazy thing is, the Nightengales weren't actually wrong! Spooks are only able to stick around if they latch onto something, some kinda concept or idea and use it as an anchor against death itself!"
"And it works?" Muriums voice filtered through to where Danny stood, unwilling to devote too much attention to the conversation--he'd heard this speech before-- but also critically bored, stared out the window as he worked on his pizza.
"Depends on what you count as works Mrs. M! A ghost is a ghost because it didn't die the way it's supposed to, but it's not like they survive, either! That anchor they used to keep themselves together is a double edged sword, it turns into their everything, warps their whole personality around it until whatever's left just isn't people anymore."
He was wrong, but so close to being right, it somehow made it hurt even more. Danny had had an accident, maybe even an Accident, sure, but he was still the same.
Tucker and Sam said so, so he knew it was true.
"At least that's my theory, Mads thinks ghosts are more like ectoplasmic copies! Bad impressions formed from the last thoughts of a dying mind or something-point is, ghosts may look like people, but they're not, they exist to serve whatever thing stopped them from moving on, and they'll maul the faces off any poor human who gets in the way! That's why we need hunters to force them out! "
"Well that's grand and all, Jack." David said. "But what's that got to do with why our house looks like someone sneezed a printing house one it?"
Danny started on his second pizza, then, since he wasn't eating them fast enough to properly annoy someone, grabbed a third and fourth slice, rolled up and stuck in his pockets for later.
"Good question! See these old fashioned ghost hunters, 'specially back in the day , they liked to generalize! Ghosts are pretty rare as long as you're not too near a portal, so if you meet a ghost that has a reading obsession, it's easy to think all ghosts have a reading obsession, and just like that, you've plastered your whole house in words to help slow 'em down!"
The view from the windows was plain, but better than facing the cramped, gloomy confines of the house, subtly easing the headache that had nested beneath his skull ever since he'd breached into the threshold of the manor.
"'Course, in actuality, the things souls fixate on vary pretty widely! Writing on the walls won't mean a thing against a hunt ghost or a machine ghost, and if you want to fight 'em the old fashioned way, you'd need to research each one individual like, find what makes the little buggers tick!"
Afternoon had purpled into evening, casting the ruined garden below in gloomy silhouette, vines extending leafy hands in futile prayer towards the departing day. Danny was struck with the image of a fruit left too long on the vine, ruined but not yet rotten, too soft in the hand, too sweet between the teeth. The unwanted flavor of something that should have gone bad, spilled over across a tongue that could not reject it, settling in a stomach it was never meant to join.
"Which is why modern ghost hunters use these instead!"
It was about then, too, that he spotted the smudge faint grey hovering over the newly planted lawn.
"Good God, is that a gun?"
"You betcha! Meet the Fenton Ectosterminator, guaranteed to blow any spook, haint, or ghostie straight back to kingdom come!"
"Crazy!" David exclaimed. "Jack my man, I shoulda hooked up with you ages ago, think how the boys back home would react if I came home with something like this!"
Too pale to be a shadow, Too shapeless for a beast, moving like a ripple of moonlight over churning water, undulating towards the Nightengale house with the slow placidity of a deep sea jelly.
"You and your boys club always did love their toys. Just promise me you'll keep it away from people."
"No worries about that Murial-"
"-Murium."
"Right! All Fenton equipment is 99% guaranteed spook only weaponry! I bet I could point this thing at you right now, and it would barely even tickle!"
"And if I happen to be that one percent?."
Danny squinted against the panes, tried to feel for the tell-tale chill billowing up his throat that would prove beyond all doubt what this thing could be, but his eyes told him nothing, and his core remained still.
"Not a chance! We've had a few, uh, misfires over the years, but that only happens with mass ectocontamination, like Danno over there!"
"In fact, I can show you now!"
Jerked back to attention at the sound of his name, Danny whipped around, ducking behind one of the broad backed chairs as Jack lifted up the gun-a green and white hybrid between a sawed off shotgun and a compact bazooka, in the general direction of a horrified Murium and a David who seemed to struggle between fascination and appall.
"Dad-" Danny started, but it was too late.
He had forgotten, or perhaps never learned, that this wasn't Amity, and these people didn't know.
He pulled the trigger.
And, in the astonished silence that followed, pulled it again.
"Huh, I must've forgot to charge it." Jack flipped the gun around, squinting down the barrel as he tapped the trigger in an effort to get some kind of reaction.
"Sure you did." David said, a peculiar look, almost satisfaction, passed across his face. "Or who knows, maybe it's working just as intended! Like you said, it's only supposed to work on ghooosts."
"It was supposed to fire, though." Jack was still puzzling over the gun, "I'm sorry Davie, I don't know what's wrong with her."
"Ah, it's all in good fun!" David jostled his wife, whose face had puckered into itself and showed every sign of staying that way for some time. "Isn't that right, hon?"
Murium did not reply.
"Thatta girl." David patted her back nonetheless, immanently pleased. "Now, who wants pizza!"
He sauntered broadly over to the table, pause in shock at what he saw.
"What the--there's only three left!"
Danny gave the man his best, most brilliant smile before swiping another slice off the plate.
"Sorry uncle David, guess someone must've gotten into it when my back was turned." Danny said, chewing loudly, "Gee, I wonder who."
His sense of accomplishment was tarnished only slightly by the view out the window. The ruined garden lay still, the windless gloaming weighing down the world in the last, tepid dregs of summer. No strand of grass stirred, no leaves rustled, no grey ripple disturbed the scene.
Whatever it was had vanished, leaving behind nothing but the becalmed evening and the growing conviction that Nightengale manner just might be hiding something, after all.
________________Danny pulled himself up the narrow staircase--the third in series of disconnected elevators--because nothing in this place was normal, squinting against the light coming off his phone in a futile attempt to avoid aggravating his headache.
Signal unavailable.
'Figures'
This was just his luck, stuck in a weird, creepy house, surrounded by a horrible garden that set off every allergy he shouldn't have, that was, on top of everything, somehow really haunted!
And it shouldn't be haunted, Danny knew. He was certain the that at least half the plants in that garden were selected for their spectral repelling properties, was slightly less sure he had seen them before in one of Sam's many grimoirs. Plants and hard, wordy English were just two of the things he was happy to leave in his best (girl) friend's very capable hands.
There was something wrong with the house itself, too. Something more subtle than the green waste without, something that would have probably left him comatose, judging by how his core was acting, or worse. The sensation that his ghost core was hiding had never truly left, burrowed deep within his human form against whatever poison permeated the very studs of the bone-white house.
It left him off kilter, as if someone had suddenly swept in and stolen a leg out from under him and expected him to hop just as fast as he had before. He felt weak, wobbly at the knees and entirely too warm. Not to mention, of course, the unyielding sensation of a skull shrunk two sizes too small against his brain.
As if thinking wasn't hard enough when he felt normal, as if he wasn't stuck miles away and with no means of contacting the people in his life who were actually, genuinely smart, and might be able figure out what was going on with this place. Or stage an abduction to get him out, he'd be fine with that, too.
Because he was certain, beyond all doubt, that this was no place for ghosts. If it was this hard on him, a halfa who hadn't even stayed a full day, he could scarcely imagine what it would do to a full ghost who stayed long enough to establish the place as a haunt.
There was the question of his ghost sense, too, which had never activated, not even once.
The nightengale manor was unquestionably a terrible place for ghosts.
And yet, at the same time, it seemed to be haunted.
David and Murium had shared some more of the details over dinner, reluctantly supplemented by some microwave meals pulled out of the fridge.
Neither of them had seen the ghost directly, so they claimed, but had been repeatedly troubled ever since they first moved: Sudden chills and cold patches, whispering sounds in the dead of night, and, worst of all something, persistently impeding their efforts to renovate the property into something that wasn't, as David Fenton had put it "A goddamn crazy fun house maze."
"We must've tried to pack this place up a million times." He had said, happy to carry the story in place of a murium still to ill disposed toward his dad's attempt at a practical demonstration to offer all but the most basic overtures of conversation.
"And every day, every damn day I tell you, it'd all be put back. Thought we had a vagrant living in here at first 'till we figured it out!"
The one to 'figure it out' had been Murium, apparently, who had been working through the Nightengale family's papers, when she'd stumbled across one of Alliaster's diary's, which repeatedly referenced seeing 'the grey waif.' drifting through the halls.
"Said that was how he knew his time was up." David had said, leaning across the table, one hand covering the side of his mouth, right eye twitching in the nigh irresistible urge to underscore the action with a wink, "'Cause you can't see the ghost unless you're about to kick it yourself, see?"
"So I--we--dug deeper, looked into this whole spook thing a little more; And get this--, the big bad hunters knew they were living in a haunted house from the start!
"The girl, this 'grey waif' goes back all the way to the beginning of the house! No one ever said why she was there, but in the earliest documents we could find, just little fragments, they talk about foundations, see, and little Atlases, keeping their world lifted up above the waters of chaos and death."
It was a big dumb ghost story, filled with evil Nightengale patriarchs and the lingering remnants of their cruel practices haunting their ancestors forevermore. It was also the kind of thing Danny couldn't quite bring himself to believe--The ghosts of Amity Park were anything but insubstantial, and had there truly been a resentful spirit wondering the halls, it would have done something more than rearrange furniture by now, he was sure.
And yet, his dad had seemed to take it seriously, though he did interject at points, and there was, of course, the simple fact of the matter that Danny himself had seen something crawling across the lawn, and as much as he would love to chalk the phenomenon up to a pizza induced hallucination, he wasn't that lucky.
There was something in the Nightengale manor, of that there was no doubt.
He just wasn't sure it was a ghost.
The stairway exited into a hall, trying to ignore how the memory of the path back down was already dissolving in his head. It wasn't a big house, he could make it back down.
The hallway before him was plastered in vintage newspaper clippings, though some had the added additions of little drawings, seemingly hand drawn, of deep red flowers, black stems and broad, leafy forms overlaying the print.
David had said they were staying in...the third door to the left? Yeah, that sounded right.
He walked down the hall, built with at an obnoxious and clearly deliberate leftward slant. He allowed his fingers to skim over the wall, counting the protrusion of the frames as he squinted against the bad lighting of the house. The very air seemed to be smeared, here, which paired with the omnipresent headache to make focusing on anything to long very much a chore. One door, two doors, then three.
Danny put his hand on the knob, then yanked his back, hissing in an inhuman cry of pain.
The knob was silver, tarnished to a deep, oily black.
Ah, yes, that's right, the guys who built this place were rich, and hated ghosts, so of course random utility objects were made of things that existed specifically to hurt him. Because things like that were totally reasonable in his world, obviously.
He rolled his eyes, wrapped his smarting hand with the hem of his T-shirt, then, barrier in place, tried for the handle once again.
Though the handle remained uncomfortably hot, he was able to pull the door open, ready for the sight of some old fashioned bedroom, ugly and dust powdered desolation of a lodging.
What he had not expected to find was no room at all.
Danny stared, aghast, at the sight of the same, peeling yellow newspaper that festooned the walls everywhere, half a dozen headlines loudly proclaiming the end of the Great War, the death of Edith Wilson, and dizzying excitement of the first powered flight.
It was a wall, he was staring at a wall.
Danny closed the door, then opened it again. No rooms manifested, and the wall remained a wall.
"Huh." He said. "Must've gotten the wrong door."
He turned around, intent on going back down the stairs to see if perhaps he was supposed to meet David and his father on the second floor, rather than the third. He turned back around, fingers dragging lightly over the wall, counting the bumps made by the doorframes.
One door.
Two doors.
Three doors.
Four.
Danny halted, staring at the the blue-grey entrance half bewildered.
Had he miscounted?
He turned around, this time actively watching the wall, keeping close eye and steady hand over each paint chipped panel he passed by.
He passed by one door, then a long stretch of hall, empty save for where someone had drawn over the papered walls, dragons and sea monsters melting in black eyed agony into headlines and adverts beneath his fingers.
He didn't remember that, but he wasn't specifically looking at the wall the first time, either.
He passed the second door.
Then, after a breathless minuet, his fingers hit a third.
"Must've miscounted after all."
Danny wiped his forehead, pushing off the slick sheen of sweat gathered across it. He really wasn't as heat tolerant as he used to be, and the near absent presence of his ghost core was just making it worse.
It was then that the knob began to turn.
Slowly, so much so it seemed more mirage than motion, a ploy of the dust choked air, metal scraped against wood, creaking slowly as it was pushed open opposite to the direction that Danny himself had swung it minuets ago.
The door that was supposed to open to nothing but a wall, the door that shouldn't have any handle there to turn. Danny threw one arm out, palm wide open and one leg braced against the ectoblast he instantly, instinctively sought to call forth.
Instead his core caught fire, screaming in wild agony down in the hole where it lay hidden, burning him up from the inside out as poison burned through his veins, seeking to eliminate him from the roots.
It was the same pain he'd felt when he'd first entered the mansion, but longer, nastier, a more more concentrated and focused effort to eliminate the thing that had come so close to revealing itself as something so much less than living.
Every inhalation was a plea, every stuttering heartbeat desperate testament against the accusations brought against it. He was alive, please God he was still alive. Right here, right now, at the very least, he was mostly still alive.
Awareness came in segments, cut between heaving breaths choked down a windpipe caked in grit.
A ripple of moonlight hewn into the shape of a woman's hand, fine boned and delicate, merged with the wood.
The shape of darkness, cut into the gap between door and frame.
A pale eye peeking out.
The unrelenting scent of stone.
The judgement passed, the hand unclenched, leaving his core to spin back down to the too-still state it had been all evening, and Danny found himself alone.
He tried to pick himself up, only to have his jellied muscles rebel, dumping him back down to the splintered floor. And just as he had pulled himself high enough for it to actually hurt, too.
"Haha, very funny." he said. "Trying to murder me wasn't good enough, so now you've just decided to bully me instead."
He managed to get his knees back under him, though not without some protest, which gave him the leverage he needed to pull himself upright.
"Jokes on you though, I'm already taken." He gave the door his most confidant smirk, the one Tucker had verified made him five-hundred percent more annoying when worn, and tried not to think about how much he hurt. "And as much as I appreciate the thought, my guy's just not into sharing."
If the house, or the thing-in-the-house heard, it didn't respond. Which, rude. Just because it was an evil, ghost hating, paradoxically haunted house didn't mean it just got to ignore whoever it wanted.
He was trying to have some banter here, if it was going to be that set on murdering him, some witty exchange of dialogue was really the least it could do.
Once he was stable enough to stand without aid of a supporting wall, Danny staggered back to the middle of the hall, fully intent on finding his way back down the stairs. Truthfully, he wanted to leave the house entirely. This wasn't his haunt, he wasn't responsible for this. He could be napping down in the GAV, with an unsuppressed core and a bag of chips. His dad would probably be fine, this place was a spectral anathema, and if whatever ghost like thing was stalking the halls of Nightengale Manner hadn't bothered him yet, it probably wouldn't bother him later.
Probably.
Danny halted his tread, a tired sigh escaped his lips as he rubbed his freshly bruised head. Probably was the problem, leaving a better taste in his mouth and a dull ache from the thoroughly useless thing still secreted deep and quite in his chest. As much as he wanted to leave, just abandoning his dad, who had been so happy to have some company on such a short notice trip, who was a terrible shot and tripped over his own feet more than Danny himself, it galled in a way he just couldn't deny.
There was another urge, too, a sense of curiosity that whispered impossible and but how with feather light voices, tickling a latent curiosity in the back of his brain.
The Nightengale house should not be haunted. As much as they had gotten wrong, with their written over walls and crooked windows, they had obviously gotten enough right that no ghost in their right mind would ever want this place even near their territory.
And yet, there was something there, something distinctly spectral, and a part of Danny, the part that had taken an interest in ghost science rather despite himself after being forced to live it over the past year and a half, just wanted to know why.
It was the same instant that he had turned back around, intent on resuming his original plan of finding whatever guest bedroom David had taken his father into, that he saw the knob, the same knob on the same door that still lead absolutely nowhere, begin to twist once again.
This time, rather than opt for an ecto-blast, danny grabbed a small green vase, previously doing a poor job of decorating a nearby console, hoisting it high above his shoulders in preparation for a throw.
While the ghost would probably--no, scratch that, definitely just phase right through it before it hit, it made him feel better, and without access for his ghost powers, he needed what he could get.
"Danny?"
"Dad!?"
Danny lowered his makeshift weapon, trying not to look surprised as he peeked around his father's massive frame. He saw a narrow sliver of a perfectly ordinary ceiling, water stained plaster fallen off in chunks around a poorly installed overhead light.
"Where have you been son? We've almost got everything installed."
"Oh, you know, around." Danny said. He put the Vase back in the console. "It's a big house, I got distracted uh, looking at all the cool stuff."
"Totally understandable son!" jack moved partly back out into the hall, as if to admire its confines. "There's not much more exciting than coming face to face with so much family history. Heck, even with Davie...Helping! Setting up all out equipment took longer than we thought."
"Jack, Jacko my man! Come over here!"
His father's face tensed for a brief second before he called back.
"Just a second, Davie, I just found my son!"
"Great! The kid can join us! Now hurry up, Murium's gonna want to head to the hotel by eight, and I can't keep her waiting!"
"I guess." Danny shrugged. The normal answer of 'definitely no' waived in favor of the promise of company. "You're said you were setting up ghost detection stuff?"
"Ghost detection, entrapment, and dismemberment! Sometimes all three at once!" Jack replied. "I just wish I could figure out the power issue, the batteries can't seem to keep a charge."
They turned into a bend in the hall, which terminated suddenly into another door, this one propped open with what Danny recognized as one of the latest iterations of the Fenton family ghostsploders, a sort of miniature gun turret designed to serve as a lightweight home defense. Just as his father had said, it seemed to be inactive, barrel slumped down as if asleep.
"Jack! There you are, here, hold this." David hustled out from the middle of the room, shoving a small ectodetector in his brother's hands.
"Well, I--"
"Great, great, now, hold it out like this." David posed with one hand outstretched.
"I'd love to Davie, but we still need to figure out that battery issue before the spook starts causing trouble. If we can't get these things working, we'll be sitting ducks!"
"Sure, sure." David said, whipping out his phone. "Now, just one more picture for the folks back home, eh?"
"David--" Danny raised his eyebrows at his father's use of someones actual name. "--Davie, That's a great thought, but maybe you can take photos while I work on the equipment instead! Wouldn't that be fun? Give everyone an inside look at a real ghost hunting machine!"
"Christ, for the last time, no one wants to see your doohickies, Jack, they want to see a ghost hunter! Now show the camera how it's done."
It took thirty more minuets of this before David was through, finally relenting to the demands of his prunely wife and leaving for the night. In the end, it was Danny, more than Jack, who was preoccupied playing circus seal, who set up the last of the equipment around the house.
A certain, unaccustomed silence fell between the two remaining Fentons, then, uncomfortable for it's awkward unfamiliarity. Danny wasn't much of a talker outside of his friendship with Sam and Tucker, but his father was a man happy to fill up the space with whatever fancy happened to cross his mind, chattering away and muttering half to himself elbow deep in servos and mechanical grease. Whether it was the overlong drive or the effort of grasping onto what thin relations remained from kinsfolk so long estranged, Danny wasn't sure.
"They're making fun of you."
The words more or less tumbled out of his mouth, coming as he helped re-assemble a faulty ecto-detector.
"Hm?" His father, apparently absorbed in one of the more fiddly bits of the device, appeared startled at his words.
"Your family or whatever." Danny said. "They don't think its real. You saw that David guy–He acted, he acted like ghosts were a game, just a made up story he could get you to act in like a trained monkey. He'd making fun of you, dad."
"Oh Danno." A huge hand came down to ruffle his hair, "of course he thinks ghosts are just a game; He's never seen one. Your mom and I never took you on our business trips when you were a kid, but you should have seen some of the guys who hired us out! We must've been called to half a dozen different places as a practical joke alone, and that's not counting the kookoos and the cultists who wanted us to waive around incense and dance naked naked underneath the moon! We were too scientific for the loonybins, and too loony for the scientists, and neither of 'em could stand us.
But your mom and I, we knew what we were doing was important, and one day, everyone else would too. We had a duty, to ourselves and the people, and we couldn't let even one spook run wild just because a few people wouldn't understand."
Jack sighed, switching out a yet another set of batteries from the open case.
"I will say I'd hoped after all these years, after me and Mads finally made it, Davie might–that he would've been a little proud. And who knows! Maybe he will be, if only we can figure out how that gosh darn spook is draining the batteries! If I didn't know any better, I'd say the ectoplasm was suppressed!"
Jack leaned back on his haunches, wiping away the thin layer of sweat that had adhered across his brow, while Danny looked on, considering.
We had a duty. It was something Danny could understand. He didn't lose sleep and skip school fighting ghosts because it was fun, he did–well, because he he had to.
Because it was his fault the portal had turned on, because it was his purpose, because, in the the midst of of his carbonization in the electric pyre of his parents device, he could not bear to leave until he was certain beyond all living doubt that his friends and family stayed safe.
It hadn't quite crossed his mind that his father, goofy, easy going Jack Fenton, might be driven by in a manner much the same.
"I guess–but what if there's not a ghost, or none of our equipment works? Couldn't we just, maybe it would be better to leave?"
"No can do, Danno." Jack said, immediately popping the small bubble of hope that had worked its way up Danny's breast. "I hate to say it, but there's something spooky going on here for sure, and if there's one thing a Fenton never does, it's give up! We'll find that nasty, battery killin' ghostie if it takes us all night to do it!"
Danny groaned, head flopping down to his chest.
"But what if it attacks? What if "
up down
Stood at the rocky peak of a weathered down mountain, surrounded on all sides by a massive garden in the English style, Nightingale Manor looked down upon the world with an aristocratic visage whose narrow facade bespoke of a wood paneled elegance hard weathered but unbroken.
Not that nature had not done her very best, certainly. Moss clotted the gutters, bent them down like angry brows over windows placed in diagonals to the walls. Weeds stuck up in and among the old foundation stones, and wind and rain had scrubbed all but the faintest trace of blue from the hard poplar boards that lay beneath.
Yet the house still stood, in strangely good repair for one so long abandoned. No water stains marred the bone white wood, no cracks tore through the bottom, it towered, impregnable, sturdy as the mountain itself, but not, it seemed, defiant.
Indeed, Danny's first thought when he caught sight of the Nightengale house, still one wide field and a garden distant, was that it seemed unhappy. The crooked windows, paired with the wide double doors that lay below gave the strangest impression of a face struck ashen,looking out with hangjawed horror at some long vanished fright.
This did not stop him from resenting it, however.
"Jack!"
"Davie!"
Jack Fenton, Danny's father and one half of the reason Danny found himself dragged eight hours across state lines on the worlds most embarrassing house tour, embraced his co-conspiritor, one David Julain Fenton, absentee uncle and current owner of the aged domicile looming atop the hill.
"Jack, look at you, old man, still doing the ghostbuster thing, eh? Complete with the suit!"
David, like his brother, was a large, broad man, strong jawed and bushy browed, blue eyes just a few shades lighter than his father's own.
Where Danny's father had a certain workman's physique, however, built up underneath the insularly layer of fat over countless nights chasing ghosts and hauling machinery, David Fenton had a plushness to him, marshmallow soft and essentially unsupported. It was obvious to look at the man, already sweating from the short excursion downhill, whatever life he lived, he lived it far away from motion.
"You know it Davie!" Jack replied, "Me and Mads have been supporting ourselves on ghost bustin' and ghost hunting since Jazzikens was just a tot!"
"Well, color me glad to support the family business!" David replied, "Come on, I'll show you around."
Danny sighed, trudging with grand reluctance up the earthen path towards their destination.
"Come on, Danno, it's not so bad." Jack said, having at last picked up on the ill mood his son invariably fell into on these sort of 'family bonding trips,' some two excursions prior. "I know your not fond of the family business, but look on the bright side! You get to meet your old uncle Davie–"
Who had spent the eighteen years ghosting his entire family harder than the undead abominations underneath their basement.
"Learn some family history–"
About his psycho ghost hunting relatives who somehow managed to be even weirder than his parents.
"And get back to school with credits toward your grade and some real life work experience under your belt!"
Which he only needed in the first place because he was too busy trying to keep the aforementioned undead from turning his town into their own personal playground to properly keep up with his grades.
It was a grand irony, really, of the kind that had come to typify his existence, that Danny's ghost hunting directly lead to getting forced into a "summer internship" to prevent him from failing the year entirely, which his parents were more than happy to volunteer for, immediately creating a position for their son as, what else, but 'apprentice ghost hunter?'
"Yeah, totally. I'm learning so much."
"See? That's the spirit! Just–just hang on a little longer, okay son? I haven't seen Davie in years, and it would mean a lot to your old man if you could show a little of that good old fashioned Fenton cheer."
'Oof, right in the guilt.'
Danny sighed, he didn't want to be here, but then, he'd made that very clear on the drive over.
Perhaps too much so, if the tension peppered with the vague, floral taste of upset coming off his father in waves was any hint.
"I guess, I mean, I'll try. Just have to smile, right?" Whatever grin he pulled across his face must not have been half bad, melting the tension from his fathers own regard in response.
"Attaboy! If all else fails, focus on the now, that's what I say, keep it up long enough and hey presto! Before you know it, it's already later! Funny how that works, eh?"
The hike up to the garden was short but tiring, the pallid, sticky warmth of the late September sun leaning over the treetops into the unexposed field which girded the space between trees and garden beating down on the unshaded heads of the small party with all the bitter dregs summer.
It would not have been so bad, truly, had Danny not been obliged to have hiked up whole of the mountain before reaching the peak. As excellent a vehicle as the Fenton ghost assault vehicle may be, it was wholly unsuited to scaling the near vertical donkey path which proved the sole access to Nightengale Manner.
The need to tote all their standard ghost hunting equipment along with them had certainly not helped.
"...aiming to make an inn in the long run." David, slick as a well oiled seal, rambled on happily, seemingly oblivious to the cloying heat.
"Nevermind what those lousy stick in the mud Nightengales say. You shoulda heard 'em when they'd heard the closest living relative to Alliaster had was a Fenton! Unworthy this, and ignorant that. Nasty little zeolots just wanted to keep all the good stuff for themselves I tell ya. I mean look at that, come on! Look at it!"
He gestured to the garden gate, stood blackly as a stormcloud against the sky.
The shape of the gate echoed the shape of the house, four fine lines shooting straight from the ground in twin parallels capped by an elegant triangular arch. The main body of the gate was combined of what Danny thought at first were vines, filling in the space between the supporting outlines of the structure in knots so intertwined and dense it was impossible to tell where any one plant ended and the other began.
It was only thanks to to to the peculiar, lined texture of the plants, delicately pressed into the metal with the finest care, that he realized that the gate was in fact filled with a seething mass of roots.
Thick, bulbous roots, swarming like eels within the frame, and within each tuberous knot, paradoxically placed, there could be found a flower, peeking out with delicate faces amongst the densest and most gnarled of networks.
The whole earthen mass tangled upward, eventually converging towards the triangular peak of the gate, where there sat enshrined at the very apex a wart backed amphibian, nested with a circle artfully perforated by fine taproots, where they fused with the body of the animal, connecting it to the whole.
It was here, also, where the only spot of color could be found. Whatever madman had seen fit to make such a gate had seen fit to carve out the eyes, unquestionably, disturbingly human, looking down upon the viewer with lapis gaze.
"Silver! Pure silver!" David exclaimed, just in time for Danny to yank his hand back. "Not that you could tell with the tarnishing–Can't say if it's a waste or just tax evasion, hiding this thing up here when you could just melt it into bullion instead."
"But Davie, you can't do that! It's a heirloom, and maybe even the remains of an old ghost ward, why, it's nothing real tech couldn't match easy, but if you were grab a big bucket of salt–"
"You'd keep out the spooks, yeah, yeah." David waved his hand dismissively. "Wouldn't be so bad if the damn thing weren't so ugly, feel like that damn frog is staring at me, swear to God."
The garden proved unpleasant in its own way. Though the feral boughs and branches provided a welcomed shade, they also blocked the wind out in its entirety, the becalmed atmosphere thickened with flower scent and leaf rot into something halfway to syrup. Vine clambered over vine, rank grasses made war with the rosebushes as as boxwoods turned slowly feral, engulfing ancient benches into their barky maws as they grew ever larger and more untamed.
Danny tried to imagine how much Sam would love a place like this, how in awe she would be of so much life, the way a cultivated garden had so quickly given way to its natural state.
Mostly, it made him miss Sam more than it made him appreciate the garden, alongside Tucker and Jazz, busy prepping for her first collage semester. It would have been so much more fun, if only they could have come along. Sam would be able to name every plant here, while Tucker, unable to go anywhere without internet access for any length of time, would have already found a way to amplify his phone's wifi signal, bugging Danny to lend him whatever bits he was missing to complete his build.
Thinking of—
Danny pulled out his phone, only to grimace, stuffing the useless device back into his pocket seconds later. Even at the top of the mountain, all four signal bars remained greyed out and dead.
Nothing about the weather had changed when they exited the garden, but the air was so comparatively pleasant from the stultifying environment of the garden, it was hard not to feel refreshed.
"Ah, that's the stuff." David said, breath flowing gustily from nostrils flared in appreciation of the more open atmosphere. "Soon as we fix up the road enough for bulldozers, we're flattening that allergy bed first thing. Ah-Hey Jack."
Jack, previously distracted by by the innards of one of his ecto-guns, looked up in surprise.
"Hey Davie, watcha want?"
"Come up here a minuet, woudja? You and the kid."
Danny and Jack glanced at each other, and, neither seeing any particular reason to disagree, followed David up the crumbling stone steps.
"There we go, just like that. Jack you pose with gun—No, it's fine that it's not fixed, keep it up like that—Now with the kid, you said your name was Dustin?"
"Danny."
"Danny, you get behind Jack here, look like you wanna know what's inside. Good, good, now hold on, just like that!"
Once he was done posing them, David clambered back down, whipping out his cell phone to snap a few photos.
"Really Dad?" Danny said, subtly keeping his hand a few centimeters above the handle David had tried to place it over. Just like the gate outside the garden, it was silver.
"It's just a few pictures, Danno." Jack muttered back. "Nothing wrong with that."
"Great! Now one with Jack crouched down, make it look like an ambush! With the kid peaking through the window, go for dangerous, but scared."
Danny opted to cover the groan and eye roll that suggestion elicited by leaning his forehead across the filigreed window embedded within the door.
It was this that proved to be his undoing. The ancient door, hinge misaligned or perhaps simply not fully closed, responded to the gentle pressure of his forehead by swinging unexpectedly open, leaving the overbalanced teenager with nothing to stop him from falling face first through the threshold.
It was only thanks to years of being targeted by bullies, forcing him to hold back every kneejerk instinct to go intangible or retaliate when unexpectedly grabbed, that he didn't push himself into a hover then and there.
Danny had just enough time to regret his life choices before being hit with an overwhelming wave of pain.
It felt like he was being stabbed. Worse, it felt like he was being drained, his vitality siphoned by the hollowed out fangs of some unseen serpent latched on hard to his chest.
"Are you
As I am?
Am I
At last
Unfettered
From this
Dark imprisonment
That Christ
forsakes."
His core screeched, seeking shelter even deeper within the depth of his living self. He could spot, from the corner of his aching eyes, a form, carved from the reflection of the moon on some unknown water, looking down to where he shuddered.
Or are you
As they are
An interloper
Upon this earth
Devil in the shape of
A child now long
departed?
He felt it, when his humanity, already dominate, came between his ghost and the needle, rising higher than it should, dizzying him with the drumbeat of a heart that sang too loud, to fast, as his core went quiet in his chest, leaving behind a terrible hollow sensation that would have brought him to his knees, had he not already been kneeling.
Danny opened his mouth to reply: yes, no, maybe just a freak I'm not sure, but found his words cut short by a jostle on his shoulder.
"Danny! Danno, are you okay!"
The presence dissipated, but the feeling of his core, frightfully, unnaturally becalmed, remained.
"Dad?" Danny turned to his father. "Yeah I'm fine, I just tripped and maybe-kinda-sorta saw a ghost?"
"A ghost?"
"A ghost!" David who had waddled up behind Jack when he kneeled down toward his son, looked down on the scene in wonderment. "Already!? Damn."
"You think that lousy spook knocked you down?" Jack asked, brows furrowed in anger and concern, before glaring out at the empty air with a scowl. Danny couldn't see it from his position, but he was sure his father was reaching for one of his guns even as he spoke. "Why I oughta–"
"No, dad, I really tripped. Or fell, more like fell." Danny leveraged himself up, only to be foiled by the pack of equipment still pressing down on his back, suddenly much heavier than he remembered. "The ghost just, um, talked to me?"
"Oh really! What it say, kid? Any secret family treasures I should know about?"
Danny honestly wasn't sure, and was, even more honestly, not sure he wanted to be.
'Are you as I am?'
Did that mean she was a halfa? An ex-halfa? Was that what they ended up as when they died, some kind of ghost sucking afterimage of a person? The thought was disconcerting, and that didn't even begin to touch on the weird religious stuff. It reminded him of some of the creepier cults that had started setting up shop back home. He hated the creepy cults back home. Those guys were weird.
"Uh, I think she was asking if I knew her?" Danny rubbed his nose, which had managed to hit the floor after all during the debacle. "And that she was trapped somewhere dark. She was talking funny, it was hard to tell."
"Already lying!" Jack said, helping his son back to his feet. "Typical ghost cunning. Danno, how about you head back to the car, son. Looks like this ghost is nastier than we thought!"
"Whoah, hold up a second Jack. You can't leave the kid, the ghost came for him, and he saw it!"
"Anyone can see a ghost if it lets 'em." Jack helped hoist Danny back to his feet. "You head back to the GAV, Danno, your old man can handle it from here."
"What?" Danny, caught off guard by the change in topic, almost fell back to the ground. He really did not feel good.
"You're just an apprentice, Danno! The Nightengales were top tier ghost hunters back in their day, and when Davie called me about a ghost problem, I–well, I didn't think it would be to big a deal."
"Whatever that thing is, it knocked you down faster than I could move! I don't want you getting hurt, son." Said the man who very regularly tried to hurt Danny, placing a comforting hand across the small of his back, attempting, undoubtedly, to ease his fear.
"I'm fine, dad, really." Danny shoved off his father's hand, trying not to look irritated as he did. His parents had no idea he was Phantom, just like they had no idea that he was arguably a better ghost hunter than them both.
"See, kid's fine!" David interjected. "Which is pretty crazy! I dunno how ghosts work where you come from, but the Nightengale ghost is something special."
Evidently pleased with having placed himself back in the center of attention, David swung through the other door, where he could face both Jack and Danny from the slight incline provided by the uneven floor.
"'Cause I might not be a ghost 'expert', but I've been reading up. And our little lady spirit can't be seen by just anyone! According to the documents some of the old Nightengales left behind, the only times the so called 'grey waif' can be seen is when is when someone is comes too close to death, or–"
David paused dramatically, his arms spread out for emphasis.
"They're psychic!"
"Psychic?" Both Danny and his father echoed the word.
"Psychic." David repeated, then, overcome by some secret humor, fell to chuckling into his fist. "The look of you two, God, was that practice or improv...?"
"But anyway," David continued, wiping the tears from his eyes, "sensitive and shit, you know, kid can see ghosts."
Danny would have thought the presumption funny, had it not been so damningly close to the truth.
"Danno always did have a knack for telling where a spook was..." Jack appeared, astoundingly, to be considering the notion.
Or perhaps not. Jazz kept telling him he wasn't looking at his ecto-detector as often as he should for how fast and accurately he was able to locate ghosts. A habit that was, it seemed, catching up to him now.
"What do you think, Danno? Want to stick it out together?"
Danny looked back at his father, and considered it.
On one hand, no. No way, nu-uh, abort mission and return to base. This wasn't his haunt, he had nothing to do with this. His powers were suppressed, and the simple prospect of walking out the door, shaking off whatever power had compelled his ghost half to stay still and hide so completely was tempting.
On the other hand, that would also mean leaving his father with nothing but shady uncle number two (this time by blood!) Alone, in a house that was haunted by a ghost he didn't understand, that could somehow, impossibly siphon power straight from his core without even touching him. He hadn't even noticed her until she appeared.
...Which, now that he thought about it, was odd. It was possible his ghost sense was simply muted to the point of unusability, but—
Danny glanced at the ecto-detector strapped to his fathers hip, casing freshly re-installed from where he'd been fiddling with it earlier.
Neither had any of their ghost detecting equipment. Every ghost sensor in both their packs had been mere feet away from an active apparition, and made no sound.
Something wasn't right, and Danny wouldn't, couldn't, just let it be, not while the chance that he could help protect the people he cared for remained.
"Well, I guess if it counts as extra credit?" He said at last.
What came after was set up, both Danny and Jack pulling apart their packs and setting up the detectors, turrets, guns, and a small ghost shield in the entryway foyer of the home, both because of its close proximity to the door and its generous size, which was, according to David, something of an exception to the Nightengale house's overall design.
"Looks like an entire newsroom got lost in a funhouse maze and died." He'd said by way of description. "Seriously." He spread his hands wide, as if to encompass the absurdity of their surroundings.
Just as he said, Newsprint covered every inch of the houses walls, all the way up to, then over, the grand overhead skylight, filtering the late evening through acid yellow leaves until everything reflected some shade of sulphur. What wasn't yellow was stained black, headlines melted into obituaries, words smudged to waterfalls devoid of meaning, smeared over wood and trim, leaking through from the stacked layers of paper that lurked below.
"If I thought this was the kind of thing ghost hunters did, hell! I'd kick you out, too!"
"You were kicked out of the house?" Danny hadn't known that.
"Ah, well! My folks were just worried about my carrier prospects." Jack pulled another set of batteries from a turret, they had been having persistent power issues, and it was proving difficult to find out why. "They just had trouble thinking of ghosts as a science, was all!"
"Yeah, real scientific!" David scoffed. "No offense Jack, but what's papered over walls and laser guns got to do with ghosts?"
"Great question, Davie!" Jack said. "See, ghost hunting as a profession has changed and grown with the times! Back in the day, it started with folks collecting what they knew and passing it down as tradition. So if one old village guy saw a ghost that liked to read, he'd tell it to all his kids, and they'd tell it to their kids, and before you know it—Hey presto! You have a whole culture pasting words all over their front walls and entryway, convinced every spook that sees it will have to read it, instead of just the one.
'Cause when a human soul stays longer than it's supposed to, it'll start to decay, just fade away to nothing until it poofs off to wherever dead folks go. But that's only if they don't have an anchor, a desire so strong, it weight 'em down and keeps 'em whole. That anchor, we call it an obsession, lets a soul stay closer to this realm, but at the expense of their humanity! Obsessions are so strong, there's nothing left for the person that made it, it just sucks 'em up until all that's left is a bag of ectoplasm fueled by whatever desire forced the poor soul to stay around long to turn into a ghost at all!"
Danny kept as much focus as he could on helping with the setup, cursing his lack of internet access. This was exactly the occasion he preferred to drown out with the loudest and most obnoxious songs spotify could offer.
"Problem is though, what that desire is could be anything! Maybe a ghost Obsessed with reading would need to read, but a ghost Obsessed with tinker toys wouldn't even pay a set up like this a second glance!"
It was how the theory came so close to being right, he suspected, that made the parts that were wrong hurt so much more.
"Of course, some stuff does work all the time. Like extra pure silver," Jack waved a monkey wrench in the rough direction of the gate they had passed through before the garden. "Or salt or even blood blossoms, back before they went extinct! It makes it hard to tell what really works or is just folklore until you test it for real, and that's not counting purity an' cultivar types and the fact that most of that stuff is either too heavy or too expensive to produce en masse!
That's where new age ghost hunters like me and Mads come in! The Nightengales are great, but they're old school, mixing up what works with folk tales and hokum and who knows what else. What you're looking at here–" Jack patted the hull of a small portable generator."--Is product of that good old Fenton-ian dedication to logic, reason, and the scientific way! Instead of relying on wives tales and mysteries, we take the fight straight to the source! Fight ectoplasm with ectoplasm! Human ingenuity combined with ghostly power! High power, mass production, and easy to use! Fenton products can put a spook on its knees faster than you can say surrender!
Or they can, most days, when–argh–Danno, could you get a spare set of batteries? I think this set ran out."
Danny hopped up, more than glad for the distraction, rifling through their spare battery sets, for all the good it did him. Each power pack felt the same in his hands, the characteristic tingle of ectoplasm absent from the air around them, too light in his hands.
He remembered the sucking sensation on his core, how unrelenting the pull, refusing to halt until his other half was forced to cover his ghost so completely.
Danny had an ugly suspicion that if he were to pull apart the holsters of one of their guns, he'd find them drained in a manner much the same.
They were all three of them sitting ducks, Danny, David and jack together. The ghost could come back anytime, and as long as they stayed in this house, there was nothing any of them could do to stop it.
Worse, Danny was the only one who knew it.
"Here's the stuff." Danny brought the batteries over, brain churning furiously as he tried to work through the problem of how to convince his dad to get out. David could probably be cajoled, or in the absolute worst case, simply pushed out of doors, but Danny knew for a fact, that as long as a ghost was involved, his father would never leave.
"Thanks Danno, don't know what's going on with all the equipment all of the sudden." Jack turned back the portable ghost shield, quite missing the eyeroll David sent his way, smirking over at Danny, as though the two of them were in together on some secret joke.
Hm, nope. Whatever was going on with David, he didn't want to know. He was dealing with other things right now, like a potentially maybe vampire ghost that could suck ectoplasm straight out of the air. Whatever shady uncle number number two was up to would just have to wait.
"Say, uh, dad." Danny said, not entirely sure how to broach the topic churning in his brain.
"Yep?"
"Say, hypothetically, there was something wrong with every ectoplasmic source of power, in um, the entire house, and none of your weapons worked, what would you do, you know, hypothetically?"
"Well in theory?" Jack asked, "I'd say probably do nothing! The amount of power it would take to suck out solid or liquid state ectoplasm like that would be ridiculous! Way more energy than any ghosts core could generate or sustain! Not to mention our ectodetectors should have gone off before they were completely drained. It's a nifty idea Idea, Danno, but when it comes to mechanical failure, you're better off looking for mechanical solutions. Which I will find, eventually, just as soon as I get these batteries replaced."
The batteries went in with a satisfying snap, but the small generator remained inert.
"Hm, maybe it's a wiring issue after all."
"Ooorr, Maybe the kid has a point." David, roused from his brief spate of post-lecture somnolence, interjected. "I mean, it's better than admitting your machines just don't work."
"Well, but–" Jack's face twisted, hand passed over his face in distress as he considered. "Ghosts can't do that Davie!"
"And I told you, this ghost is special, didn't I? How do you know this isn't some rare species, a once and a lifetime specimen, think about it Jack, your name, emblazoned across ghost hunting history for taking down the world's one and only super spook.! Don't you like it, Jack, doesn't that sound good?"
Danny saw the temptation pass over his fathers face. Jack loved people almost as much as he loved pleasing them, and after a lifetime of ridicule, the chance to be lauded as a paragon of his profession tugged at the edges of his avarice.
The fugue of glory passed, however, and Jack's slack expression was soon replaced with something more stern.
"If that's the case, then I need to call in Mads." He said at last. "This isn't something she can just sit out for."
"And our phones only get signal at the base of the mountain." Danny helpfully supplied.
"And we'd have to figure out some kind of insulator for our power supplies. These things need more power than just an electrical socket can provide y'know, ectoplasm's practically a necessity!"
"Which means we'd need to leave, for a long time, a really long time!" preferably forever.
"I'm sorry Davie, if it was just me, why, I'd take the fight to that spook with fists alone! But Danno's here, and Mads needs to know."
The expression that crossed David's face was an odd one: Frustration and impatience warred for control beneath a veneer of pleasant regret across his face.
But I tell you what! You know that family discount I gave you? Well now it's on the house! As soon as we can get some insulation over our batteries, we'll beat that spook free of charge!"
"Wait! You can't do that!"
"What? Why not." Danny saw no reason why they couldn't leave, right now, in fact. He was already shuffling towards the door.
"Because I asked you to come, didn't I?" David exclaimed. "Me, after all these years, I took a risk on you. Do you know what mom and dad would do to me if they thought I was playing around with the supernatural? Taking it seriously? Hell, I had to tell them I sold this place off before they'd get off my back! Can you imagine what would happen, if they found out I was taking to you!?"
"Davie, I don't–"
"Ghosts and spooks could be three times more popular than they are right now, and it wouldn't mean shit with them! Because you know what? You know what? Maybe it's 'cause they've got good reason!"
"Davie–"
"You were my big brother Jack! The best, the brightest! The natural born, bona-fide genius! Do you know how much I looked up to you? Do you know how we expected of you? Do you have any idea, how much it hurt when you threw it away! You chose your own selfish passions over mom, over dad, and over me!"
Jack looked astonished, surprise and upset staining the back of Danny's tongue with the thick molasses taste of his misery as he gazed at his brother in near bafflement.
"And then, did you call, jack? Did you visit? Huh? Did you?"
"Mom and Dad told me to leave, Davie!"
"That's not the point Jack!" David replied. "The point is you never tried. You just up and left for your own life, sending out letters and christmas cards like we were some lousy buncha acquaintances!"
David moved in, sliding into his father's personal space in a move more fluid than expected for a man of his girth.
"But I tried." David said, both hands resting on Jack's own broad shoulders. "I called you, and I could call you again Jack. For Thanksgivings, for Christmas, hell, just to hang out. But I need you to do this for me, Jack, I need you to come for me."
A grand silence followed, the space between them thick with each others feelings. Danny tasted regret, confusion, avarice, wanting, mixed together in a heady swirl that had him fighting not to salivate, his own hunger roused in contradiction to his distress at the sudden fight.
"Okay." Jack said at last. "Okay, I–I'm sorry, Davie, I understand. If you need me that badly, I'll do my best to help, but! We arm ourselves with all the silver we can find! And Danno, you've got to promise to stay outside, alright son?"
"That's the spirit!" David said, the tension between them popping like a stuck ballon. He patted the other man across the back, then whipped out his camera, seemingly all set to go.
"Good old Jack, I knew you'd come through!"
_______________________Danny, obviously, did not go outside.
He did consider it, in part just to see if he could. The problem was, there was every chance the ghost wanted him out, too. It was fully possible for a haunt to lock unwanted guests outside its domain, and between the attack on his core and the monologue it had given him during it, Danny was willing to bet that he wasn't exactly a welcome guest.
He rubbed at his chest, wincing at the hollow ache there beneath the skin.
As much as he hated the feeling, as much as he desperately, painfully wanted to step back outside, out of the sick yellow twilight and back into clear air and sky, he couldn't, not while he stood any chance of being barred from his family for good. So instead, he followed them up.
It frustrated Danny, slightly, as he chased the elder Fentons backs up the narrow stairway towards the second floor- supposedly the space where the grey waif was most commonly sighted–That he was expected to stay behind while David wasn't. Sure, he was a kid, and, sure, he'd made it clear hunting ghosts with his parents was a bore at best, and the fact that Jack and David were brothers, as strange as it was to think of his father as having family at all, perhaps played into it somehow, but still, Between the two of them, Danny at least knew what a ghost was!
"So much for being psychic." The thought grumbled across his mind as he squeezed his way up the stairs. Just as David had said, everything outside the main entryway was far more narrow, bent and uneven in a way that seemed peculiarly deliberate in its design.
It certainly made getting to the second floor a chore. Danny was clumsy on a good day, and between the weakness that flooded in the wake of his fleeing ghost half and the asymmetrical nature of absolutely everything, it was definitely not a good day.
He was slow enough that by the time he reached the landing, the shadow Jack and Davids backs vanished entirely, perhaps farther down the hallway, perhaps beyond a door.
And there really were entirely too many doors.
Doors crammed next to doors, doors set crooked inside frames tilted to match their skew, there were even doors nested inside other, larger doors, up to four at a time, each fitted with their own knobs and fine, miniature knockers.
It was not so bad as to say the entirety of each wall was filled with doorways, but it was a close thing, and perhaps even preferable when compared to hallway itself.
Like the stairs, the hall had been built at an angle, preferring to lead at a leftwards slant that terminated in an abrupt, seemingly needless corridor, bent at too sharp an angle to properly see beyond. The floorboards, too, were tilted, distinctly higher to the right side of the hall in a manner that was obviously deliberate.
What wall remained between the cacophony of doorways was plastered over with paper, much like the main entryway below. Though still damp, the damage here was less severe, and headlines announcing the arrest of Al Capone were crammed cheek to jowl against the sinking of the Lusitania, the rise of the Bull Moose party, the obituaries pasted over wedding announcements, celebrities, presidents, socialites pressed together in a mash of words, words, words.
Everywhere there was space, lives began and ended in grand pronouncements and little footnotes, begging for attention even as the letters they used to do it blurred and faded into incomprehensible cries that echoed across the ages from whence they came. So many memorable things, all forgotten, human triumphs and tragedy cut apart for wallpaper and abandoned, too dry to rot, to wet to crumple.
Danny traced the the wall, feeling the paper crinkle underneath his fingers as he walked, trying not to think about how he had no clue about what to do next. He had no idea where the ghost was, what it was doing, or even what he could do about it, if he did. He could hardly arm himself with silver, and to say his ghost powers were out of commission was putting it nicely. Just thinking of how hollow the echo of the space beside his heart felt with every feeble beat brought forth a new rash of helplessness and fear.
He needed to do something about this ghost, if only to cure himself of the fear that he may never touch his other half again, no matter how far he ran from this unruined ruin, that this damp and dusty atmosphere may never be expelled for every breath he took thereafter, or perhaps beyond.
Should he try to catch up with his father and uncle after all, rather than tag behind?
It was times like this that he really missed his friends. Sam and Tucker would have stopped him from wiffling like this, helped him think of some kind of plan that didn't involve falling face first into the jaws of the enemy, or at least stop his family from following him in.
Caught in a moment of lonesomeness, he pulled out his phone. Still no bars, and, worse still, the battery was down by half of what it was from when he'd last checked not two hours before.
Was the ghost, half ghost ghost? Draining electricity, now that it was out of ectoplasm?
Danny shut down his phone, hoping it was enough to save the battery as he turned the corner.
He was greeted with doors crammed next to doors. Doors set crooked in frames built askew, doors pressed into walls papered over with dead gangsters and sinking ships that seemed strangely familiar.
Almost as if he'd already read them over, just seconds before.
Danny blinked, the thought of 'oh I must have gotten turned around' quickly replaced by 'so someone made two identical halls?' It was the only explanation that made sense. He'd walked in a straight line and turned left, whoever must have built the house must have duplicated the hallways, some kind of obscure anti-ghost tactic, he was sure.
And he may well have convinced himself of that, had he not taken a step backward in his confusion, nearly slipping before he caught himself on the bannister that hadn't been there before.
"What the...What?"
It was the stairway, identical in every respect to the stairway he'd used to climb up to the second floor in the first place.
Except, of course, it couldn't be, because the stairway was down the other hall, the one he just exited, which wasn't here.
Danny knew haunts tended to bend reality, had done it himself a few times at Fentonworks, subconsciously hiding his favorite breakfast cereal from the rest of his family, or forcing the temperature to flux down to his preferred levels, regardless of what either the thermometer or thermodynamics had to say.
But something of this level, warping space without any regard for real world physics or the integrity of the space, so fast, so fluently would require an outrageous amount of power.
Several generators, a few dozen batteries, and a half-ghost's worth, perhaps.
It was then that he heard the knocking, a cold, repetitious staccato of fist against wood, echoing next to his ear, from down the hall, from each and every door all at once, overwhelming his senses as the ache of his hidden core flared as the thing–was it really a ghost? His initial doubt reconsidered–came near.
Danny, braced both feet, arms raised and fists clenched in his best fighting posture as the knocking reached a crescendo, shaking old dust from the twisted oaken rafters lurking in the shadows of the ceiling high above.
Powers or no powers, this time, at least, he'd face it standing.
As suddenly as the noise arrived, so it halted, vanishing into the onrush of silence flooding in its wake. Danny was left, breathing hard as the grimy air swirled in the dying orange glow of the edison bulbs that lined the hall.
Their illumination was just enough to make it obvious when one of the doors began to open, slowly, creaking with the reluctance of a beartrap left to rust, darkness spilling out from the confines of the frame in unnatural swirls of mist.
"Oh, haha, good one." Danny kept his posture, tensing his muscles in preparation to move. " Honestly, I always thought the whole knocking thing was overrated, but you made it work. Eight out of ten for scary. What's next? Blood from the walls? Sad moans? Wailing?"
The ghost, if it was there, stayed silent. Shadows whisped up and dissipated into the murky atmosphere, commingling with the dust.
"I'm warning you though, I'm a pretty good wailer. In fact, why don't you come outside, I'll show you, we can make a chorus!"
Nothing. The dim light burned narrow lines through the dark.
"That's it, huh?" Danny wasn't exactly sure why he was still yelling, except that it was banter, and banter made him feel normal, as if he could just get the enemy to respond, he could turn this into a normal ghost fight, something he knew and understood in a way he could handle.
"Blow all your budget on the opening act? Easy to do, but I paid the tickets and I'm not leaving until I get the whole show!"
Oh God, he was doing it. No powers, no backup, no plan, just standing there like a moron, offering to trade fisticuffs with a ghost.
Jazz was right. His plans were terrible, his long term planning skills were almost as bad as his dad.
"Well, C'mon, show me what you've got!"
The door creaked as it opened wider, revealing nothing, spilling out midnight darkness choked and lightless. Inky tendrils spilled out from the entryway, rooting into the slanted floorboards as though they had always been there, pulsing with latent shadows as they ate their way into the feeble light.
"Or maybe not. You know what, how about we don't." A fan of supernatural doorways, Danny was most certainly not, and as much as this one failed to turn green and glow, he couldn't resist the shiver that snaked up his spine at the sight.
Once more, there was no response. The ghost of Nightengale manner had made its intentions clear.
He gulped, looked down at the stairway he still teetered just beside. Built too crooked to see all the way down, it was impossible to tell if it would lead him back down, or simply loop him up again, trapping him in the same narrow corridor over an over until he went where it wanted him to go.
"Be brave, Danny, you're a hero, aren't you?" He imagined it was Sam, saying that, fearless gaze compelling him forward, just like always, pushing him towards destinations he alone would never dare.
Yeah, he was a hero, a ghost fighting hero, even if he was maybe, slightly, just a little bit in over his head at the moment, he couldn't just turn away.
Danny took a deep breath, forced his aching muscles to maintain a fighting stance as he moved one foot in front of the other.
And there was Tucker to consider, too. Always going on about being 'just tech support' when he was so cool, all the time. He had such talent in making things, in a way Danny always wished he could share.
He took it slowly, inching towards the doorway one step at a time. The closer he got, the denser the darkness became, tendrils withdrew, shadows beginning to draw into themselves at the edges of the frame.
He was only good at fighting, really, a knack for destroying things and finding trouble that only seemed to escalate when he woke up half dead and wholly inhuman in his parents basement over a year and a half before. Tucker didn't need powers, he could fight ghosts with nothing but his smartphone and sass, witty attitude unflagging no matter how hard things got. Danny hoped he didn't need powers either.
The dark kept condensing, making way for emanations of silver. He could feel its power clawing at him, trying to prise apart his humanity in search of the ghost hidden deep within.
Then there was Jazz, too, who knew his secret and stayed silent until he was ready to talk, who was still willing to be his sister even during that long interim when she thought he was well and truly gone, a ghost cleverly disguised as his own living self. It was a level of loyalty and love he honestly hadn't expected to receive, was still astonished, sometimes, to see it given.
Danny kept moving, and Silver lines coalesced, forming the crude outline of a person, splitting into two slender limbs and hourglass waist, a bellyfull of shadows swirling still within its tremulous waist.
There were his parents to consider, too. They loved him, he knew, in their own way. Always enthusiastic over his accomplishments, even the ones they didn't understand, and when his grades became well and truly unsalvagable, they went so far as to set up an internship, just for him.
The darkness centered at last within its chest, a hollow void where a core should be, sucking power from everything around it with endless, hungry force. Not even the silver shape that held it seemed immune, moonlight form disturbed to ripples as it swirled around its midnight maw.
All those people, his family, and the ghosts who offered much the same, Clockwork, Frostbite, Pandora, everyone. So many people, with so many expectations, failure seemed as much a dismissal of the efforts they poured into him as running away.
In the end, that was what family was. To receive, and in receiving, give. To seek to live up to the expectations of those who you admire, and become someone who they might admire in turn.
And one of the things he admired most about his own family, by kith and kin alike, was how they never, ever backed down.
Danny stood inches from her face, or it was a person now, features distinct as a reflection cast from a midnight pond. Distinctly feminine, a small nose, remarkably similar in curvature to his own, hovered below striking eyes, almond shaped and expressive in a way that tickled at his memory, as though he'd seen them not long before. Though fine details were hard to parse from so misty a countenance, she held her head high, as he did, each of them assessing the other as they stood on the border between one space and the next.
"Are you a ghost?"
Danny couldn't help the question, which had been simmering at the back of his mind from the moment he'd recovered enough to wonder it after entering the house. She controlled the house in a way he would expect of a ghost, but triggered neither his ghost sense nor any of his fathers detectors, pulled power in a way no ghost ever could.
There was the shape of her, too. Even discounting the black hole pitted within her breast, she was so ephemeral, and, what's more, so human.
By their very nature, ghosts were off putting, fundamentally warped in form from their discarded humanity. Not evil, he'd learned, not always, but different, form and feature altered with their being as a ghost.
Not even Danny had escaped. For all his heart kept beating, Every long toothed smile, every shake of his snow struck locks, every green blush against corpse grey skin, every one and more marked Phantom as a creature, a being fundamentally and essentially apart.
No.
I am not
And would never
Succumb.
Ah, well, that answered that question.
"Okay, so, not a ghost. Then would you say you're, what, body-deprived? Spectral-American? Believe it or not, I'm drawing blanks here."
As I am
Not
Forsaken.
So
You
Are not
Living
And
yet
Your Heart
Beats
On
Rejecting
This
Truth.
"Not what I asked, but yeeahh, I'm weird like that." He took a breath, hand venturing up to rub the side of his neck in an effort to sooth his nerves. As much as he lived with the fact, admitting it out loud was hard, even still.
"I'm a halfa." He said at last. "You know, as in half-a-ghost, half-a-boy, ha ha? Totally alive, except when I'm not? I really don't get it either." He replied to her blank look. "I just know I'm not completely dead."
Strange
To be
Stuck
So
And yet
Rejoice
Not
For any
Full
Release.
"Wait, what? Are you saying I should commit suicide?" Danny backed up in surprise, retreating a few steps from the silver form before him. "Thanks, but dying hurt enough the first time. And could you quit with the–" He waved his hands for emphasis "Stylings? No offense but this is Lancer's intro to poetry all over again."
No
I cannot.
I see now
That
Your
Perversion
Prevents
You from hearing
The call from
That other place
Which
Sings
inward
As
a wind
Always
In song.
"...huh?" Danny replied intellectually.
She'd lost him, not that he'd been following along terribly well from the start. He'd come into this expecting to trade blows, not riddles.
Come
And
Follow
If you
Care to
Know.
The lady turned, retreating beyond the door, which now opened, Danny saw, into a surprisingly ordinary room. No papers were pasted over the walls, here, making way for pale white plaster trimmed with the ubiquitous oak which provided A window, slanted at an angle, just as he'd seen adorning the face of the house, overlooked the garden finely tended with its demure hedges framing well groomed rosebushes, sprouting between a smooth marble path that wound its way between the house and the grand silver gate, shining in the newly risen moon in the same unearthly hue as the apparition that walked before him.
In most other respects, the room was unremarkable, a dark vanity sat undusted opposite to a modest bed, lacy sheets in perfect array above brass knobbed feet untarnished by age.
That which has
Departed
Should long
To go.
I know.
I swore
That I
Would not.
Those
many years
Ago.
The woman walked towards the bed, fingers dancing over its yellow frame with the motions of long familiarty and a touch of a nostalgic sort of love.
And yet
I
Betray
That oath
In
Welcoming
You
In welcoming
Those
removed
From
My line
Of kin.
In my
Longing
Ever greater
For rest.
She looked up, and Danny follower her line of sight, tracing it to the painting which sat proudly above the headboard. Large, with an enormously ornate and gilded frame of another era's fashion, depicting a family of four before a newly built Nightengale manner, Bright blue and cheerful in a crooked, eccentric sort of fashion, peering over the family in curiosity from it perch atop the clean grey stones of its foundation.
There was a man, obviously the father, broad shouldered and grinning, a wife, leaned into the shoulder of her spouse, eyes cast upward in painted sparkle as she gazed upon her love. A son, too, sat beneath his father's knee. And then, slightly apart from the rest of the family, almond eyes cutting through the viewer, was a woman.
I thought
At first
That
we were
Alike.
The same face, the same nose, very much like his father's, he realized, and even his own.
The feature must be some kind of family trait.
But where
You
Chose
I
Was Chosen
To stay
Was
An honor
They said.
There was one discrepancy, within the painting, standing out from the otherwise cheerful scene. The sun, shining somewhere beyond the canvas, cast the shadows of the three other members of the family only a little ways behind them, resting more or less undistorted across the lawn in a companionable cluster underneath their feet.
The woman's was stretched.
To live
Without living
Hidden well
From the
Long hand
Of death.
Over the field, over the garden, freshly planted, pulled out like taffy until there was almost nothing between the woman gazing smartly out of the canvas and the dark blot of her own shadow, where it looked out from its place upon the house, pinned against the foundation stones, back towards the person from whom it had been pulled.
On and on
Forever.
I told
Myself
It was
An honor.
"So you don't want to stay." He said. It wasn't really a question.
No
I am
Already
Gone.
He could see the wistfulness in her, tracing over the solid, living form of the girl she still was, solid and colorful in a way she could no longer be.
It took me
Too long
To
Realize
That.
She turned back to face him, and he felt himself shudder as the force of void pulling within her chest turned in kind, its full attention returning to him, now that he was once more within its sight.
I did
As I
Was
Bade
To do.
Fulfilled
Every
expectation
Gave
Everything
But
Everything.
She reached for his hands, her misty grasp delicate, but tangible, burning against his skin with cold fire as she laced her silver fingers between the spaces of his own.
I
Think that
I
Am done.
Her eyes, unquestionably human, bored into his with such intensity that he could barely register anything else, as she spoke, no, as she pleaded, palms clasped in desperate entreaty around the boy halfway towards the very kind of creature she had been made to rebuff.
I
Think I
Would like
To be
Done.
Danny himself did not understand, this desire for going. He had rebuffed it once, and grown deaf thereby to sleeping's song. The idea that a human soul might weary, that there might be other places, there beyond the green forever which claimed him thus, had become foreign to him, such that the fundaments of her desires slipped wholly from his grasp.
But there was one thing he knew very well, understood completely, beyond all doubt: This person was a person, and she was trapped. Chances were good that Danny was one of the first, if not the only, person not only able, but willing to help.
Please. She said.
Please.
"How?" He asked. "What do you want me to do?"
Fingers unlaced from fingers, leaving behind palms burnt red and blistered as she turned, arm thrust out, pointing with all her force back towards the cheerful vista centered above their heads. Then, in that last, determined gesture, vanished, her image scattering out in ripples, as if struck.
He followed that gesture, his sight moving upward from the unspoken command, up, over bedsheets, the headboard, across the fine green lawn and the family smiling therein, up and up, following the slender line of shadow to its point of termination on its corner of stone.
Old legends, something Sam must have told him once or twice before, flitted across his mind, the final push he needed to snap the pieces of the puzzle into a more singular whole.
Danny knew where he needed to go.
_______________________At one point or another, the door had closed behind him, which wouldn't have been so terrible a thing had the doorknob not been made of, what else, but silver. With his hands already burnt by the woman's own touch, Danny wasn't exactly keen to add to the damage.
Which, in one more point against this whole ridiculous day, stalwartly refused to heal.
In the end, he opted to wrap his shirt around his palms as a sort of makeshift glove, hoping that the thin fabric lining might be enough to save what remained of his skin.
He grasped the handle, then, as fast as he could, pushed forward, directly into the face of the person standing in the way of it's swing.
"Ghost!?"
"Dad!"
"Oh, it's you Danno." Jack lowered his makeshift weapon. "I thought I told you to stay outside."
"Yeah, um, I came back in." Danny lied. "Look, dad, this is going to sound crazy, but I–" Saw the ghost? No, that would make things worse. He needed his dad to listen to what he had to say, not discount it as 'the lies of some lousy ectoplasmic scum.' "...Had a psychic vision?"
"You did?" Jack asked, "You mean Davie was right?"
"Ha! Knew it. It's always the weird ones that's psychic." David came up with his camera raised, snapping a photo of them both. "So whatcha get on the old brain tube, kid?"
"And why didn't you tell us this before?" Jack, remained focused on the fact that his son, otherwise honest, so far as he knew, had elected to hold such important information back.
"It's new?" Danny would undig himself out of this hole later. "Look, the point is, I think I've figured out how to get rid of the ghost. Just follow me for a bit, okay?"
"Well, it certainly can't hurt." Jack said. "Alright son, lead the way!"
"About damn time." David said. "I was beginning to think this whole horse and pony show would go on all night."
Danny exited the room, newspaper coated, dark and dingy, a cracked and faded portrait overlooking the rusted over framework of what must have held a bed, once.
Had he looked behind him, he would have seen it, but he moved straight ahead, allowing the door to swing shut behind him with a click.
From there it was back to the first floor, navigating the twisting series of hallways he didn't remember traversing when he first came up, down the stairs, then, in a flash of inspiration, making a pit stop at the scattered array of technology he and his father had hauled up earlier that day.
"Going for technology after all, eh, Danno?"
"Yeah, unless you have a spare jackhammer lying around." As much as he would prefer simply to blast his way in if, when, he got his powers back once he went back outside, so long as his audience continued to tag along, subtly recharging a gun or two would suffice.
"Jackhammer? The hell you need a Jackhammer, for?" David was less enthusiastic, a touch of irritation coloring his features as he watched Danny and Jack heft a couple of the larger guns.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you." Danny said, putting a few preemptive steps between himself and his would be uncle. "I maybe-kinda need to break a few things to fix your ghost problem. No problem though, it's fine, stuff like this happens in Amity all the time!"
"Hey!"
David lunged forward, but even weakened, the overstuffed man was no match for the half ghost teen. Danny darted out of the house, using the nose of the gun to push the door open as he did.
His father, for whom the destruction of ghosts always took priority over a touch of property damage here and there, followed just behind.
He felt it, the moment he made it past the threshold. His core sprang back, swooping out from hiding to flood his veins with a sense of energy and power that left him feeling absurdly, paradoxically alive.
He managed to avoid stumbling from the surprise of the rush, but only just.
A quick jog across the fallow lawn, and he stood before his destination: A great, crudely carved block of granite, placed in the highest part of the foundation between the eastern and western walls.
"Wait dammit!" David, still lagging behind, struggled to catch up across the uneven ground. "This isn't what I signed up for!"
He had already charged his gun during his run, and a quick hand pressed against his father's own weapon ensured that the battery was active as well.
"All right, so something important to the ghost is in that rock, and if we can shoot it out, I'm pretty sure the ghost will come out too."
"Now that's a solution I can get behind!" Jack replied. "You're reminding me of me already!"
Danny grimaced, wondered if he'd think the same if he knew he was trying to help the ghost, rather than harm it, then discarded the thought. He was doing what he needed to do, for his family.
The living and the dead.
"On three, alright?" Father and son hoisted their guns, large, heavy repeaters designed to hammer large specters out of the sky.
"One"
"Two"
"Three!"
The late evening was lit in a barrage of stark green rays, stone shattered and sent flying with each successful hit. Cracks spread over the boulder, shedding gravel between larger chunks that turned more and more unstable with every hit.
It didn't take long, no more than two dozen hits, not counting those of Jacks that went wild, shattering stray windows or punching holes in the pallid clapboard instead of stone.
Danny was unsurprised when the entire face of the cornerstone collapsed, giving way in a little avalanche to reveal the hollow space secreted within.
Danny lowered his gun, and Jack followed soon after. David, who had run up too late to stop them, mouthed in mute astonishment at the sight of what lay within the stone.
"It's a body." He said, halfway between horror and doubt. "It's a god damn body."
"So that's why the Nightengale House was haunted." Jack agreed, his earlier excitement now thoroughly doused.
It was indeed a body, though of such excellent preservation it was difficult to properly call it dead. Her skin dewy and fresh as the day it had been buried, her cheeks, just visible from where her head rested against her knees, dusted with a pinkish blush beneath hair that had grown into a cloak around her, wrapping her in a cradle of curly brown hair, trailing down and conjoining with the roots that intertwined with each auburn lock, piercing through the otherwise perfect seal of her stony tomb and into the scalp, the fingers, the tips of her toes, merged so perfectly her otherwise perfect flesh that it was impossible to tell if she was the source of the roots, or their just their victim.
Danny felt a pressure on his core, saw a shimmering silver presence out of the corner of his eye.
"A body." David repeated, "You found a body, in my house, which you shot to shit, like a lunatic, because your stupid kid said you should."
"Well, ghosts don't usually haunt places for no reason, I suppose." Jack said, himself still slightly bewildered. "And while no Fenton would ever condone trespassing or undeath, so far as reasons go, I guess that's as good as any."
"A body, I can't believe it, do you have any idea how much paper work this is going to be? You stupid bastard, did you know this was here!?"
"Davie–"
"Don't Davie me! You knew this was here, didn't you! God, is this revenge, Jack, for not taking enough time to check on my oh-so-precious brother, for ignoring your stupid ghost bullshit for so damn long?"
"You're the one who called me about the ghost!"
"Because there's no such thing!" David was yelling now, face purpled up as he marched in the face of an astonished Jack.
"Because I read about the grey waif in a journal and thought it would be a cute gimmick for a new hotel! Rent the cheapest damn ghost hunters I can find for a cut rate family discount and some extra cred! Hell! Maybe bring their creepy kid along for the ride! Sure, hell, why not!"
"You take that back about my son!"
"Just admit he's a creep Jack! Just like you! Just like everything you ever did! Fucking up everything with superstition and bullshit and ghosts, I bet that redheaded psychopath you call a wife is just ba-"
Davids tirade was cut short by a black gloved fist thrown directly into his face.
"My son is not weird." Jack said, looking down to where David had fallen, bloody nosed and sputtering in the dirt. "My wife is not crazy. And you–" He took a deep breath, bracing himself to say the words.
"You are not family. Come one, Danno, let's head to the GAV." He grabbed Danny by the arm, shaking the halfa from his distraction. "We won't be coming back."
Later, after evening had descended into night and succumbed again to morning, Danny woke to an empty space beside his sleeping bag. He levied himself up, touched the cold blankets, rumpled from the restless motions of its former occupant, before following the bitter taste of his father's remorse to where the man himself stood, leaned back in the drivers seat, watching the deep blue rim encroach ever brighter towards what stars remained.
"We never talked much, growing up." The elder Fenton murmured, taking notice of his son's silent approach.
"I do that sometimes, you know, get so wrapped up in this idea or that, that people have changed around me before I even know it."
Danny did was familiar with the habit, more intimately than most. How could he forget the feeling, of changing so completely, falling through tables with breath misting between his teeth, while his father, so preoccupied with 'that gosh darn Phantom', working on this or that device, that he failed to notice the ghost right in front of his face?
How many scrapes had he gathered, how many bruises had he hid, how completely he had grown?
"I did it with Vlad, I did it with Davie. Sometimes I worry I do it with you and Jazz." Jack reached over to where Danny had sat in the passenger seat beside him, stroking his the dark tufts of his hair.
Was it too late to say he was too late?
"I thought when Davie–David called me, it was a chance, to maybe fix things, make up for–Make up for running off like that, all those years ago."
"He didn't deserve it." Danny muttered. David had treated them lightly from the beginning. Ghost hunting had been a game to him, and the people who practiced it a joke.
"I know." Jack replied. "But I couldn't just leave him. He was family, and that's what family does for family. Sure you, have fights, or make mistakes, or–or maybe leave for a while, find your own way, you know? But I'd hoped, I'd believed, that it wouldn't be for good."
"Nothing's forever."
Everything but forever. The words of the silver lady, had he really never gotten her name? Echoed back across his brain.
He still remembered what he saw there, hours before, too enraptured to pay any heed to the fight between brothers raging on behind his back.
He remembered how the hole in her chest had been filled, inch by inch, as she reached fingers forged from starshine towards the nested body of her former self, how, imperceptibly, those tender, root tipped digits had tried to reach back.
How eyes had opened, bright blue and lapis struck, towards the brilliant silver heart that beat, then grew silent in that misty chest, as the woman allowed, at last, to live, breathed her last, a subtle exhalation, her apparitionary self collapsing into the darkness, freshly opened, quickly sated, gone in a moment of departure, to a musics calling that sang something to the hollow space he knew now, was hidden behind his core.
He remembered the look of profound gratitude, on both her faces, as he watched her go.
"No." Jack agreed at long last, an earnest attempt to cover silence that suppressed them both. "But nothing's for never, either, I think. You've always got to try, son. Especially when you don't know what comes next. That's just what living is."