Nocturne woke to the sound of arguing. "...can't even revive a ghost then what good are you?" a familiar female voice was demanding, volume rising with every word.
"Listen here, sweetheart," a gruff male voice responded. "I'm an expert in killing ghosts, not reviving them from unconsciousness."
"Yeah, yeah, your powers of destruction are truly unparalleled," the female voice drawled, sounding completely uninterested. "I understand that. What I don't understand is why you can't do anything useful."
"Killing threats is useful," came the growled response, which earned the male a derisive snort.
"Right. Sure," the female replied and Nocturne finally placed the voice. He opened his eyes and turned his head slightly, taking in the sight of Hanna Weiss. The halfa was going toe to toe with an very irritated looking Dan Phantom, or rather, she was standing with her arms folded over her chest while Dan floated in front of her, teeth bared in a furious snarl. Nocturne groaned, trying to sit up, and Hanna was at his side in an instant, easing him into a sitting position with gentle hands. "Nocturne, are you okay?" she said, eyes concerned.
"I will be fine," the star spangled ghost replied, waving off her concern. He eyed Dan Phantom with no small amount of trepidation as he tried to remember the exact events that had left him lying on the ground inside his own realm. His mind felt scrambled, but that was probably because it had been a long time since he'd been rendered unconscious. The last time he'd been badly wounded enough to render him unconscious was during the battle to lock the Pariah Dark away in his coffin. Any kind of physical combat wasn't Nocturne's specialty and he had been trying to distract the Fright Knight. It hadn't been the best day of his long existence and he'd spent a long time building his power back up, added some by his last foray into the human world. Of course, Danny Phantom had ruined that particular plan, but Nocturne had managed to funnel enough power from dreaming people into his little section of the Ghost Zone to keep it fueled independently of his own power for a while.
"Isn't Dan Phantom supposed to be locked away in a Fenton Thermos?" Nocturne questioned and Dan scowled at him in response.
"Yes," Hanna admitted. "But that hasn't worked out very well for anyone since Clockwork was taken, probably by the same things that attacked you."
"I sincerely doubt that," Nocturne replied, flowing smoothly upright as his realm began to feed him some of its power. It was also giving him its impressions of what had happened to him, aiding his own, scrambled memory as he struggled to recall precisely what had happened. Nocturne's entire realm was sentient, to a certain extent, if only because his Sleepwalkers became part of the landscape when they were not active. It was part of the reason his part of the Ghost Zone was so expansive. It had been made with a combination of his own power and of the Sleepwalkers, who didn't mind being absorbed into the scenery when they hibernated.
Nocturne recalled seeing a few oozing bodies of the former Guardians testing the boundaries of his meadow. He had known better than to send a few of the Sleepwalkers to deal with the once again freed trouble. The Sleepwalkers were capable warriors in their own right, but the former Guardians would shred the weaker ghost without any trouble. Instead, Nocturne had gone to deal with the rabble himself, only to discover that it had been an ambush. From what he could glean from the impressions his realm was feeding him, the Sleepwalkers had risen en mass and driven off the attackers before placing Nocturne's unconscious form in the forested part of his realm, which had the most built in protections.
"I went to investigate a disturbance at the borders of my home," Nocturne informed Clockwork's concerned apprentice.
"Let me guess," Dan Phantom interrupted. "It was those pesky little ooze creatures that managed to eliminate Clockwork for me."
"I highly doubt that they would have managed to destroy Clockwork," Nocturne replied coldly, the position of stars on his body fluctuating in irritation for a moment. "But yes. Those...ooze monsters, as you call them, were testing the boundaries of my borders. I went to handle them personally, since they would have made short work of my Sleepwalkers, only to be ambushed by the Fright Knight."
"The Fright Knight?" Hanna and Dan chorused before turning to scowl at each other.
"Yes," Nocturne confirmed dryly. "He seems to have allied himself with those despicable beings, likely because they promised him power enough to keep him from being bound to yet another master during his long existence."
"Nocturne, do you know what those things are?" Hanna focused in on what Nocturne purposefully wasn't saying, a tendency of hers that always impressed and annoyed the ancient ghost in equal measures. The talent made her a promising successor to Clockwork, but it also tended to end in her gaining information that she wasn't ready for yet, which could get her into trouble. At least this time, loathsome as it was for Nocturne to consider it, she had someone to help keep her out of trouble, even if that someone was Dan Phantom. Eventually the sinister phantom would run out of uses for Clockwork's apprentice and the partnership would end in disaster, but for now Hanna Weiss was as safe as she could possibly be in this situation.
"I do," Nocturne admitted, knowing that he was likely placing Hanna in more danger by telling her this, but knowing the girl, she would probably go looking for answers elsewhere if he didn't tell her. "The very first ghosts were beings of pure energy who existed alongside humanity, unlike the ghosts today, who are remnants of humans themselves and lurk mostly in the Ghost Zone. These ghosts were more powerful than anything humanity had ever experience and, as is the tendency of humans, they began to fear what they did not understand. The humans searched for a way to destroy the ghosts. Those of us that were younger than these ancient beings began to fear that we would be erased completely and we urged our elders to take action." Nocturne's eyes became distant as he remembered those dark days where he, Clockwork, and others had frantically tried to come up with a plan to save themselves while their elders locked themselves away, busy with their own idea of protection.
"The elders shut themselves away in a pocket dimension, despite our pleas for them to do something," Nocturne recalled. "They never emerged from it. Instead, days later, the dimension imploded in on itself, creating the Ghost Zone. When we entered the portal together, searching for our missing comrades, we were unable to locate them. Instead we found creatures of beauty and incredible power. They were all that was left of our forebearers. They had used all of their considerable powers to create a home we could call our own and protectors to keep our home safe. We were blessed by their final gift, and for a time all was well, but like all good things, it could not last." Both Hanna and Dan were watching him intently now. Hanna's expression was serious, her brow furrowed, as if she could see where this story was going and knew that it wasn't going to end well. Dan looked intrigued, but also...hungry. Nocturne had no other words to describe the expression on Dan Phantom's face. It looked as if the other ghost was contemplating all the things that he could do with a power that could create something as vast and difficult to define as the Ghost Zone. The very thought of Dan having that kind of power made Nocturne uneasy, and he did his best to push it away.
"Our guardians grew curious about the world outside the Ghost Zone, so we allowed them to travel into the human realm, unsupervised. We only discovered too late that we had made a terrible mistake. Our guardians were not ghost, but all they had seen their entire lives were ghosts who fed off humans whenever they left the Ghost Zone, so they assumed they could do the same. They fed off the worst of humanity, and it changed them. Their golden glow turned dark and their intentions became sinister. They attempted to take over the Ghost Zone and feed off its power so that they could take control of the human world, but the ghosts were able to band together under the command of Pariah Dark. We managed to lock our one time protectors away in the center of the Ghost Zone," Nocturne finished.
"So all we have to do is lock the creatures away in the center of the Ghost Zone again and I can go back to working on my world domination plan," Dan drawled, not looking at all happy with the situation.
"Exactly," Hanna chirped with a falsely bright smile, making Dan turn to stare incredulously at her. "Minus the world domination plan, of course." Then she turned to Nocturne, expression serious again. "You said the middle of the Ghost Zone, right?"
This was not the greatest plan that Danny had ever had, and that was saying quite a bit, because Danny had come up with a lot of stupid plans since he'd become a halfa, and probably even more before that. Currently he, Dani, and Ember were huddled on a rock outcropping, hoping that none of the numerous black, oozing creatures noticed them. When they'd slipped through the door, Danny had expected to find some kind of deep tunnel full of the same sentient sludge that had kidnapped his parents. Instead, he and his companions had found themselves in a cave full of jagged rocks that were the same browns, reds, and golds as weathered desert stone. The cavern was lit from within by what looked like aloe vera plants that were a startling teal color and dripping luminescent violet liquid from their spiked leaves. There was a pool of disturbingly bright orange water at the very bottom of the cavern and completely dark tunnels branched off from the pool, the occasional ooze creature sliding into one of the openings.
"How are we going to find your parents down here?" Dani asked, careful to keep her voice low to avoid attracting the attention of the creatures below them. "There are probably hundreds of tunnels that branch off of those six openings and your parents could be down any one of them."
"She's right," Ember agreed, not sounding at all happy. "Unless you have a map of this place, we're out of luck."
"We can't just give up and leave my parents down here," Danny protested, even though the lead weight of hopelessness in his gut told him that his two companions were right.
"I'm not suggesting that, babypop," Ember replied sourly. "But I, at least, have enough common sense to know that barreling through the tunnels down here will only get us killed."
Danny wanted to argue, but he knew that he couldn't. Dani was right. There were probably hundreds of tunnels, if not thousands, in this particular realm and his parents could be locked away in any one of them. "Okay," he said, defeated. "We can't find them by randomly searching these tunnels, so we need to find someone that knows the exact layout. From there, we might be able to pick out the most likely spots for these things to keep prisoners at." He turned to Ember and asked, "Any ideas on who we could ask?"
"Pariah Dark would know," Ember said, lips curled into a slightly mocking smile. "But you don't want to open the sarcophagus and ask him."
"Anyone else?" Danny prompted, amused, and Dani lifted a hand over her mouth to muffle her giggles.
Ember frowned, expression as serious as Danny had ever seen it as she considered the possibilities. "Clockwork probably would have known, but he's not exactly available to interrogate," she said at last. "The Fright Knight's also a possibility, since he was working for Pariah, and Nocturne's old enough to be a possibility." She paused for a minute and then grinned wickedly at him. "If you really want to stretch the boundaries of who might know, you could try Skulker."
"No thank you," Danny replied immediately. "I really don't want to deal with being hunted today. The Fright Knight's out too, unless we absolutely have to talk to him, because that's not a fight I want to do again. Especially not in his domain. That leaves Nocturne, not that I really want to tangle with him either."
"Oh, right," Ember teased, a wide grin on her face. "We all heard how the Dream Master knocked you around again and again until you finally managed to send him back home."
"I'd liked to see you try to fight someone that might not, technically, even be there," Danny retorted, sulking a little and ignoring Dani when she nudged his arm. She was probably just going to try to make him feel better, and Danny really wasn't in the mood for comfort after what had happened today.
"I don't try to pick battles that I shouldn't possibly be able to win," Ember told him in a superior tone and Danny scowled at her. "Besides, you're not the one who has to talk to Nocturne. Oracle's already taking care of it."
"Orac...Oh, Hanna," Danny said, comprehension washing over his features.
"Exactly," Ember said, looking incredibly smug as Dani nudged Danny in the arm again. "All we have to do is meet up with her and find out what she knows."
"Uh, guys?" Dani said, cutting them off. "I hate to interrupt your bonding time, but we're about to have company." Both Danny and Ember whirled around and followed Dani's gaze towards several ooze monsters that were making their way up the rocky walls towards them. They stared in silent shock for a moment, both wondering what they'd done to draw attention to themselves. Dani didn't take the time to entertain such thoughts. Instead she grabbed Danny and Ember's arms, tugging with all her might and snapping, "Run!"