Chapter 3.
They walked over to the small yellow car, Ochanomizu getting in the driver's seat and Atomu in one of the back ones. Danny glanced inside it, hesitating to enter. It didn't look much different than a normal car. The dashboard was a little bit strange, but not drastically so.
"Oh, come on, it won't bite you!" Atomu scolded, grabbing and pulling him down into the seat next to him. The car seemed to bob a little like boat as he stepped in. Danny shut the door behind him, sat down, and nervously buckled his seatbelt. This is going to be interesting, he thought, looking out the window. Ochanomizu turned the ignition, and a low hum started beneath his feet. He hissed as he felt the car rise about a foot off the ground and glide forward in a single smooth motion.
Atomu gave a laugh at his expression. "This must be really weird for you," he commented.
"Yeah," Danny muttered. He had never realized had much vibration and noise tires created.
"We were talking about how you got here?" Ochanomizu reminded them.
"Oh, right," he said, prying his eyes away from window, "It's kind of a convoluted story… you mentioned how you deal with time travel and robots? …I deal with ghosts."
"Ghosts?" Ochanomizu yelped.
"You mean spirits of dead people?" Atomu asked incredulously, his eyes widening.
Danny frowned. "No, not really. They're more like a different type of life form made of this incorporeal stuff called ectoplasm. Sometimes a human will leave behind a ghost when they die, but it's more of an echo of their regrets than a soul, per say."
"How does this connect to you appearing in this dimension?" he questioned.
"Well…" Danny slouched back and tried to come up with a good explanation, "All ghosts originate from a separate dimension called the Ghost Zone."
"Creative," Ochanomizu muttered.
"Hush! I want to see where he's going with this!" Atomu scolded. "Go on, Danny," he urged.
Danny gave them both funny looks. "Well, the Ghost Zone's a different dimension than the one I live in, but we're really, really close to each other. About as close dimensions can be without, you know, crashing into each other. It's all a bit unstable, so there's lots of naturally occurring portals between our dimension and the Ghost Zone. My parents are rather fanatically obsessed with ghosts, so they took advantage of that and made an artificial Ghost Portal in our basement. My parents, also being rather absent minded, have no control over what goes in and out of the portal, so the ghosts just come and go as they please. Not that the majority do any harm, but some are malevolent. And it's kind of my job to help fight them. So, this happened when I was in the Ghost Zone chasing one ghost because I thought he might have information about some bigger ghost that's been bugging our town, but I was accidently sucked into this dimension."
"I… believe I understood most of that," the professor commented, "What do you think, Atomu?"
"Honestly, I'm a little disturbed," Atomu replied, "The fact he ran into a portal to our world would seem to indicate that our world is bonding to the Ghost dimension in a similar way Danny's has."
"Actually—" Danny interjected thoughtfully, "…it wasn't a portal. It looked more like a tear, like in a ripped sheet of paper or something. And portals don't really pull you in, they just act as a doorway. This literally sucked me in as soon as I got in its 'gravity well,' so to speak." Danny scratched his forehead. "I've never seen anything like it. It seemed unnatural."
"Still, if there's one, there may be more," Atomu pointed out.
"I kind of hope there are," Danny moaned, "Otherwise I may be stuck here for a long, long time. Hell, if there's a difference in how time lapses in our dimensions, a second here could equal years back home."
"Yeah… unfortunately we can't really do anything about it right now," he sighed, idly swinging his legs.
"Yeah, I'm pretty much screwed over b… woah." Danny looked out the window at the view of skyscrapers, intertwined with multiple layers of roads. They were on one of the higher levels, and Danny could see what looked like a huge airport on a peninsula. Sea water almost completely surrounded the vast circular expanse of concrete, the grey surface glowing orange in the sunset. He stared in awe as a space shuttle shot up a huge curved sled and blazed of in a column of fire.
"Where's that ship going?" Danny asked excitedly.
"Uh…" Atomu craned his neck and focused his telescopic vision the vanishing ship.
"Oh, that's a cargo vessel. It's probably carrying supplies to the mining base on Demios."
"That's one of Mars's moons!" he exclaimed.
"Yep. I've been there once."
"Not that he was invited, but that never stops him," Ochanomizu remarked sarcastically.
Atomu laughed and started teasing the professor in Japanese. Danny stared out the other window. They were dazzlingly high up, and looking down through the noodle-like mess of roads and catwalks made him feel slightly dizzy.
"It must be hell to navigate these streets," he commented.
"The car does all the navigating," Ochanomizu explained, "Most people don't even bother to put their hands on the steering wheel. I usually have it in manual, though. Atomu and I tend to be trouble magnets, so I've become a bit paranoid."
"I must be too. A trouble magnet, that is. It would explain why I got pulled through the very fabric of time and space just to appear in the same block as a rampaging robot," he muttered in a sarcastly.
Another rocket launch quickly diverted his attention, though. "What's that ship?" he asked with wide-eyed enthusiasm.
"Passenger ship to the moon," Atomu replied.
"Damn, I gotta get me a ride on one of those," he murmured as he watched the light of the thrusters vanish into the upper atmosphere.
Atomu gave a sly smile. "I guess it isn't all bad, huh?"
"We've arrived at the Ministry," Ochanomizu informed them.