Danny

I squinted. Was I really seeing this right? Because right there, right in front of me, was a glowing, swirling portal. Really very generic for the ghost zone, a natural portal to who-knows-where popping up in front of you unexpectedly. It sounded normal, too—just a slight whooshing sound. Heck, it even smelled normal. But what was so different was its looks. I mean, it was glowing and swirling and being all mysterious like it was supposed to be- textbook portal stuff, really- but what changed it was the color.

It was brown. Not the general green, not even a slightly more rare pink or blue or purple. Brown. Sure, that might not seem like much to you, but to me that was really weird. I thought I'd seen everything the Ghost Zone had to offer, after two years of being the general enemy of pretty much all of the ghosts—except the rare-found good ghost, like Frostbite or Dora.

And so, of course, I dove right into it like an idiot.

Katara

"So," I started nervously, eyeing the long, oval table that seated almost all of the four nations' most important people to whom I was talking, "As you all know, the Fire Nation has been having some… um, problems lately…"

"You can say that again!" Sokka cut in rudely. "These solid spirits are super creepy! I mean, just yesterday I was in the bathroom, and this HUGE spirit just…" He trailed off, finally noticing the stop-talking-right-this-instant-or-that-spirit-wil l-be-the-least-of-your-worries glare I was sending his way.

"Aha… yeah…" finished Sokka. He looked away nervously.

I rolled my eyes.

"I agree with your brother," the Earth King told me quietly from across the table, "The spirit infestation is only getting worse, and if it is affecting the Fire Nation- the biggest of all the four empires- this greatly, then I can only imagine what would happen to my people if the spirits decided to spread out."

I nodded nervously. The Earth King asked Aang, who sat next to me, "What are your plans to stop the spirits?"

I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. Aang, Zuko, Toph and I- and, to some extent, Sokka- had been working together for about two weeks now to solve the problem of the odd solid spirits that were plaguing the Fire Nation. But despite all of our planning and problem-solving strategies, even trying to make peace with the spirits, nothing seemed to work. And so, though we had certainly expected to have one, we had no plan to present in this emergency meeting.

"Um… well, I…"

BANG.

I screamed.

"What the heck is-?" Zuko started, but was cut off by a screaming Sokka who, in his haste to stand up, had flipped his chair over backwards.

"Intruder!" he yelled frantically, "Invasion from the skies! Ready your weapons, we're being attacked!" Sokka pulled out his boomerang and held it at the ready, prepared to lob it at somebody any second.

A boy- maybe fifteen or sixteen years old- had fallen out of thin air onto the table, scattering the failed plans that had been piled up neatly, ready for rejection. He sat up and dusted off his clothes (which were very odd. The materials were unlike ones I had ever seen). "… Ow," he mumbled. He looked up suddenly for some reason, then seemed confused for a second—and then looked back down at us, brushing away his raven-black hair absently to reveal bright sky blue eyes.

"Ah, sorry," he said, his voice clear and ringing across the table as if falling out of thin air into the middle of a meeting was something that was perfectly normal, "Did I interrupt something?"

Danny

I looked up. That's odd, I couldn't see the portal closing. Hmm… a brown portal that was invisible from the other side? Definitely weird.

I looked back down to the people circling the table- most of them were sitting down, though one was standing up and yelling something about sneak attacks from the sky- and noticed that they looked shell-shocked. Huh. Guess they weren't used to this kind of thing around here… wherever I was.

And I noticed that their clothes were an extra kind of weird, like something people from hundreds of years ago would wear—though it was possible, I reasoned, that I was actually that far back; with portals from the realm of the ghosts, you really never know. They also seemed like they had some kind of a color code for the clothes they were wearing. Some wore red, one white, a few blue, and still some had on brown.

I realized I should probably apologize; they looked like they'd been in the middle of something important. "Ah, sorry," I said, "Did I interrupt something?"

The room was still silent; nobody really knew what to say. Then a young bald boy with weird blue arrow tattoos, the only one wearing white (a clean, simple toga) stood up a bit nervously. "H-hello," he stammered, probably still a bit dazed, "Who are you?"

I bowed mockingly. "Danny…" I looked up through a black strand of hair. The portal made me change back? Definitely fishy. "… Danny, at your service," I joked, deciding that my last name wasn't needed. This Aang guy hadn't told me a last name, so either he didn't have one or last names weren't very important in this case.

Aang bowed back (I guess they do that here), but he still looked a little bit suspicious. Frankly, though, I didn't blame him. Unless you were really used to ghosts, somebody falling from midair would seem as out-of-the-ordinary as that brown portal was to me.

I chuckled bit sheepishly, "Sorry about that whole falling-from-the-sky thing. Really, I did not intend to be here right now."

Aang nodded uncertainly, "No… I mean, it's no problem, I guess. Not at all." The last part was muttered and not intended for me to hear, but I did anyways with my ghostly hearing.

I looked down at the long tabletop. Scattered on it were lots of thick, ragged papers. I looked around the big room suddenly, wondering why the papers were so old-fashioned, and noticed that the only source of light other than the non-glasses window spanning one wall was a few candle-torch things. I looked back down, and realized why the papers were so rugged.

"It was a time portal," I breathed, frustrated, "Now it'll really take some time to get back to Amity."

One paper in particular caught my eye. It looked like a very bulky, iron version of… a Fenton Thermos? The main figure looked nothing like my parents' invention, but I knew the Fenton Thermos—every green line, every crack, every screw- and the inner workings. The inner workings of this looked a lot like a Fenton Thermos. They were close; I'll give them that. To getting the machine working, I mean. Really close- only a few things out of place.

But what puzzled me was why they would need a Fenton Thermos. If they were used to ghosts, then my falling out of the sky wouldn't have surprised them in the slightest. But if they weren't, then why would they need a Thermos?

Unless… unless there was a reason I was here. One of those "destined to be" things

Clockwork always rambled on about.

…Maybe…

Maybe these people needed my help.