I know I said that I was only going to be posting ectober pieces this week, but I got inspired. This is a continuation of chapter 5, which is the one where Danny got shrunk.
I really like writing this because of that dynamic between Danny and Clockwork. Clockwork is this really old, really powerful, really wise, almost godlike ghost, and Danny is this little tiny sugar sweet thing, who is powerful, but rarely knows what's going on.
silverheartlugia2000: Hello. Sorry I didn't respond to your last comment. Yes, Danny doesn't know a lot about ghosts, and prior to this Danny hasn't had all that many positive adult role models. I'm not really doing the 'all the ghosts are just misunderstood' thing. They do attack Amity Park. But I am trying to make them more multi-layered.
Please review.
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Tiny 2
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Five hours ago Danny had been alone and scared. He had been hit with the Fenton Crammer, a shrink ray invented by his parents, and he had been exhausted, frustrated, and vulnerable. Now he was in Long Now with Clockwork, safe, well rested (a small miracle in itself), and finishing off a large (to him) bowl of soup.
He was actually surprised that he had finished it all, including the saltine. He did tend to eat a lot, he was a teenager, but usually he didn't eat so much all at once. He supposed that his currently small size might have something to do with it. He had a vague recollection that smaller animals ate more in comparison to their size.
He sighed at the empty bowl, and then looked up at Clockwork, who was watching him with a very indulgent expression on his face. Danny tipped his head to the side in confusion. He loved Clockwork, but he never knew what he was thinking.
Wait.
Back up that thought.
He loved Clockwork.
It must be true, otherwise it wouldn't have popped up in his brain so easily. It was weird to think about, though. He was a teenager, and a teenage boy at that. He didn't love people outside of his family. Well. He loved Sam and Tucker, but he had known them for so long that they were practically family, and Jazz sometimes said that he loved the people of Amity Park, or else he wouldn't put himself at risk for them so often, but this was different. He hadn't known Clockwork for even a year.
"We will be waiting for a while yet," said Clockwork, and Danny found himself immediately and thoroughly distracted from whatever he had been thinking about before. Clockwork had his full attention. "Would you like to accompany me while I work? I could use a fresh pair of eyes on some of my projects."
Danny nodded, happy and relieved to be helpful. That desire, that impulse, to do whatever Clockwork wanted, whatever he needed, was not as strong, not as painfully present in his thoughts, as it had been when Clockwork first revealed that Danny's family, friends, and teacher were safe, and that Dan had not killed them, but it was still there.
Clockwork offered his hand to Danny, and Danny climbed into it. It felt so nice and secure in Clockwork's hand. It was comfortable and safe. He did have to fight off the bizarre urge to nibble on the older ghost's fingers, but as a half-ghost Danny had become used to the occasional strange impulse.
"Daniel," said Clockwork, "would you mind attempting to change forms?"
"Okay," said Danny. He mentally reached inside himself, to his core. Unlike before, at home, when he had been forced into human form, his ghost form came to him easily. The rings flashed over him, faster than usual, and he was Phantom. Again, his mood improved. With his ghostly abilities available again, he needn't feel so vulnerable, and he could feel Clockwork more easily like this.
He started to purr, and wound his ghostly tail around the base of Clockwork's ring finger. He wasn't really registering how he was acting, he was just happy, and happy to be happy.
Clockwork gently stroked him with one finger, just like he had the first time he had picked Danny up. "Thank you, Daniel," he said. "You should turn back, now. We need to conserve your energy."
Danny complied, noting that he did indeed feel more tired than he had been before, more drained than he should have been, based on how briefly he had been in ghost form.
Clockwork nodded, and smiled again. Still petting Danny, he drifted out of the kitchen.
Danny rapidly lost track of where they were with respect to the kitchen, but didn't really mind. Everything he saw here was so interesting, so different. He rarely got to look at any part of the Ghost Zone without being on edge, always ready for an attack. But he could trust Clockwork to keep him safe, so he could look with only curiosity on his mind.
Long Now was fascinating. Many of the walls were made entirely of gears. Some of the gears had colorful, striped candles resting on them, burning with fire of every shade. They passed by an elaborate orerry at one point, and Danny very badly wanted to stay and look, but he also wanted to see what Clockwork was doing, he wanted to help, so he just watched it go by with wide eyes.
At last they came to a room full of time viewing screens. Clockwork's viewing screens were strange. The screen part of each device looked like nothing so much as giant magnifying lenses, but attached to each frame were gears, levers, strips of metal with strange symbols, grasping claws and things that looked like lasers. The images they contained seemed to rest both on and inside the lenses.
Clockwork brought them to a very large screen that was set horizontally to the ground. One of this screen's many attachments was a semi-circular table that curved around half the lens and supported a number of tools. Some of the tools were surprisingly mundane, hammers, pliers, scissors, tweezers and the like. Others, Danny couldn't name. There was one thing that looked like a magnifying lens, except that it contained the rainbow burst of a planetary nebula. There was a golden tube covered in designs that crawled along its surface. There was a mirror that-
Clockwork flipped the mirror over. "No need for that, I think." He gazed contemplatively at whatever was shown in the glass of the time screen. Danny wasn't at an angle where he could see it well, but it looked colorful. "I am afraid that I will need both hands," said Clockwork. "Would you mind watching from my shoulder?"
Danny shook his head, and Clockwork raised his hand so that Danny could clamber from it to his purple-clad shoulder. Danny steadied himself by gripping a fold of Clockwork's hood, and putting his feet on top of the gear-shaped clasp that held Clockwork's cloak on.
"Very good," said Clockwork. Then he gestured down at the time screen. "Now, tell me, what do you think?"
Danny followed Clockwork's gesture. Rather than a scene in the glass, there was an image af a sparkling, pulsing, multi-colored tangle of string, wire and webbing. He frowned.
"It's pretty," he proposed, finally. "But... It's wrong. There's something... I don't know. What is it?"
"It's a paradox," said Clockwork. "More precisely, it is a metaphorical representation of a paradox. An interface, if you would."
"So, it represents someone going through a portal and changing something?"
"It is a bit simpler than that," said Clockwork. "There are no people involved, at least not directly. The cause is a small object falling through a portal, traveling back several minutes, and affecting the initial event. This causes the event to become more complicated with each successive iteration." Clockwork indicated the points of interest with a gloved finger, using levers to zoom in and out, and to rotate the image. Danny nodded, making note of how one string was wound throughout the knot, others joining it, the first dragging them along, the pattern becoming more complex with each successive layer.
It wasn't the only string at the beginning, though. Other gossamer strands wove through those first few layers of the knot, though Danny quickly lost track of them.
"What about those?" he asked, pointing.
"Other, less central objects in the paradox. But, see here, their importance grows. Then, here, this is the point at which the paradox, hm, how should I say this? This is the point at which it becomes dangerous, at which it begins to threaten to tear, and damage the timeline."
Danny hummed, signaling his understanding.
"My question to you is, what would you do to unravel it?"
Danny examined the knot. It was quite the puzzle. However, "Couldn't you just cut the first string?"
"Would you like to try that?"
Danny bit his lip. "What would happen to the other, the, um, less central objects? Would one of them take the first one's place?"
"Very good," said Clockwork, reaching up to touch Danny again. Danny leaned into the contact. "It is something that happens quite often with these kinds of paradoxes. The smaller strands, in the absence of the larger one, will combine. Other items will be pulled in, and the paradox will be as strong as ever. The only change is that you have destroyed an object- and you can see why that would be an issue."
Danny nodded, and adjusted his position. "Can you turn it around?" he asked, stalling.
Clockwork pulled a lever, and the image began to slowly rotate around its center. Danny watched it, head tipped to one side, trying to divine a way to untangle the the dense ball of string.
"Couldn't you make it so that the portal doesn't form?"
"That is a possibility, however, due to the way that natural portals form, another would appear nearby shortly thereafter. Besides, portals are not solely under my jurisdiction."
"They aren't?"
"No. Remind me to introduce you to my sister, Nephthys."
"Nephthys?" repeated Danny, tasting the name. It was familiar, but he couldn't place how.
"Nephthys, Ancient Master of Death."
That's why it was familiar. "I think I might have met her," said Danny.
Clockwork paused. "You might have, at that."
"So, you have to get permission from her first? Or you need her to do it for you?"
"No. I could do it myself, and she would find no fault with me. I simply do not like stepping on her toes, so to speak. When I can find a way around disrupting portals, I do so. She does the same. Overall, it is better to let natural portals be."
"I don't get it," admitted Danny.
"If not released, pressures and energies build over time. Natural portals release that. Playing with them can create thin spots, weak points, and cause other problems. Then there are the interpersonal issues that such careless action might cause. You know as well as any how ghosts hold grudges. I could explain more, but it would be complex."
"Okay," said Danny. "What if you caught whatever it was when it went into the Ghost Zone the first time?"
"Ah," said Clockwork, picking up a pair of pliers. "Let's try that out, shall we?"
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Clockwork worked through a total of three paradoxes with Danny. The session concluded with the rather frustrating (to Danny) revelation that the most complex of the objects they had dealt with was a microscopic piece of dust, and the greatest time frame only a fraction of a second. Paradoxes involving people and choices were, according to Clockwork, much more complex.
But this led Danny to another question. "Clockwork, isn't our fixing a paradox a paradox?"
"Yes. But not all paradoxes become dangerous," replied Clockwork as he tidied his work bench, liberally applying telekinesis.
Silence, and then, "Is Dan a paradox?"
"You could define him as such, yes. His entire timeline was a paradox."
"He's dangerous."
"Yes."
"Could you get rid of him like this?" asked Danny, pointing at the wavy, curling lines of the latest resolved paradox.
Clockwork paused. "No."
"Why?" Danny was becoming agitated. Thinking about Dan always made him agitated. He couldn't think about Dan without remembering.
"There are a number of reasons," said Clockwork. "But at this point, the largest is that it is no longer necessary to do so. He is safely imprisoned here in Long Now."
Danny froze, not even breathing. He had somehow managed to forget that Dan was here. Dan was here. In Long Now. In the thermos, yes, but how long would that hold up? He was here. Dan was here.
He was now breathing very rapidly, but clearly not enough oxygen was getting to his brain. His vision was going gray around the edges and he had bent inward, fists curled in the thick fabric of Clockwork's robe, pulling threads out of place with his tiny fingers, ready to lash out at a moment's notice. He could barely hear Clockwork continuing to speak over the sound of the blood rushing through his ears.
He felt something large touching him, but he ignore it, knowing that it was not Dan. If it had tried to move him, though, he would have fought, would have struggled.
He knew he was having a panic attack. He just couldn't stop it.
Without any warning that Danny could detect, an icy sensation, not unlike being dropped into a pool of frigid ectoplasm, overcame him. His heart rate dropped precipitously, and the world spun away from him as he rocked, dizzy, on his perch. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, confused.
He felt energized, but sleepy (like he had after that one Thanksgiving he and his family had spent with Tucker's family; there had been no undead turkeys that year). His breath was cold, and his ghost half was almost uncomfortably close to the surface, humming just below his skin. Overcharged was the only word he could find to describe how he was feeling. He was, at least, more aware of his surroundings than he had been.
A large hand steadied him as he tipped too far to one side. Danny stared at it with a look that might have been called wild if it wasn't so drowsy. It was like he had been sedated.
That thought had him building up a panic again.
"Daniel," said a deep, calm voice.
Danny turned towards it. Clockwork. His hood had been knocked down. Danny had never seen the older ghost with his hood down before. The panic ran out of him like water from a broken cup.
"Clockwork," he said his tone almost reverent, "you have hair."
"As do you."
"But you have so much."
Clockwork shifted from elderly to middle aged as Danny spoke.
"So much," repeated Danny. "Like three shampoo commercials worth. You always have your hood on, I thought that you were bald. Not that being bald is bad, but..." Danny trailed off, fascinated. "Do you always have so much hair?"
Clockwork's next shift took him to childhood, and his hair shrunk to only a couple of inches long.
"No," he said, shortly, the ghost of a smile playing around his lips.
Danny gasped, purposefully exaggerating his actions. "It's so fluffy."
Clockwork hummed, possibly in agreement, possibly in amusement. "It isn't that fluffy," said Clockwork. "Here, I think I want you in a more stable position before I start moving around."
Clockwork picked up a pliant and rather limp Danny, and set him on his hand. Danny tried to sit up, but quickly tipped over again. He giggled, and made himself comfortable in his prone position. Clockwork shifted back to his adult form. He'd been in adult form a lot more often, lately.
"It's so shiny."
"I'm a ghost, Daniel. All of me is shiny. I glow."
"But it's more shiny," insisted Danny. He fell silent for a moment. "Clockwork?" he said in a much smaller voice. "What just happened?"
"You had a panic attack."
"Yes, but, after that."
"Much like in the human world, trusted adults have a great deal of influence over children. That influence is most easily felt through auras. What you might deem ectosignature and ectoenergy."
"Oh," said Danny, understanding. "That felt weird, though."
"I might have used slightly more force than was strictly necessary," admitted Clockwork.
"That's okay," said Danny. He yawned, then sighed. "You really do have a lot of hair."
"So I've been told."
"Why do you hide it?"
"... I lost a bet," said Clockwork, finally.
"Why would they make a bet to make you cover your hair? It's so pretty."
"Not to cover it, to grow it out."
"Oh." Another moment passed. "Who could you lose a bet against?"
"I really do have to introduce you to Nephthys."
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