Continuation of day 4: Science
By the way, thank you all for the reviews! Between planning stories and planning lessons, my mental energy is low, so I'm afraid I'm not going to be responding to them very much, but I do love reading them!
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Stuck
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Danny took a deep breath. Okay. He had a camera strapped to him, and his parents were probably watching him through it right now, trying to figure out how to ambush him. Yay.
He had to hand it to them, this was inspired. If Skulker were here, he'd take notes. Or maybe not. Despite Skulker's obvious personality flaws, he did have a sense of sportsmanship. Sometimes.
If he stayed here, they would find him sooner or later. He wouldn't be surprised if they put a tracker in here, too, somehow. So, he had to go someplace they couldn't, at least not right away. Then, he could figure out how to get rid of the thing.
The question was, up or down?
Down would be faster, and have less chance of getting hit, but the sewers and storm drains weren't pleasant, and Danny didn't like phasing through solid ground very much. He could never quite shake the concern that he'd get stuck.
But he also wouldn't have to deal with things like tracking missiles, like he would if he went up, above the clouds.
Down it was.
He dropped until he was level with the storm drain tunnels, and then shot sideways. Being directly below where he was last seen didn't strike him as particularly clever, even if the camera included a tracker.
Once he'd passed through enough walls to get to a secluded and reasonably clean juncture, Danny stopped. He felt around the collar again. It seemed to have fused to his suit, somehow. No, he realized, sticking fingers into the neck of his jumpsuit, it had fused to his skin through the jumpsuit, somehow.
Gross. Why did his parents build such gross things?
Okay. First, phasing.
Extending intangibility to the device worked fine, phasing it off of himself, less fine. It was the 'phase along' version of phase-proof, then.
Next on the list was body manipulation, and- nope. He made his body warp into all sorts of horrible noodly shapes, and the device just warped along with him, flowing and misting. The only part that didn't change and twist was the camera itself.
Fine. He'd cut it off, then. It would probably hurt a lot, but he could do it. He'd endured worse than the removal of the top layer of skin from his neck and a small portion of his chest.
He summoned a blade of ice to his hand, made a mirror of the same on the tunnel wall and carefully, very carefully, began to cut away at collar. It bled green, ectoplasm trickling down to his shoulder.
It repaired itself.
Brilliant. His parents had really gone all-out with this one. It was really stuck on him.
Normally, this is when he'd reach out for help, when he'd call Tucker, Sam, or Jazz, but he couldn't exactly do that when his parents could be watching and listening to his every move.
Could the camera bit heal itself, though?
Last item on the list: just smash the camera to bits.
Wait.
Actually, wasn't this sort of an opportunity, a blessing in disguise? His parents were looking for proof that he, that all ghosts, were evil. Obviously, he wasn't going to give them that, but maybe he could show them evidence of the opposite?
Maybe he could do what he had always hoped and change their minds?
Maybe.
He couldn't really do what he needed to here, though. The risk that his parents would find him, or, worse, any ghosts that he interacted with, was too great. He'd just have to hope that the camera continued to work, continued to broadcast in the Zone.
But he couldn't use the Fenton portal. If they saw him getting too close to Fentonworks... well, he somehow doubted that the results would be pretty.
That left him a few options.
There were a number of reoccurring natural portals around town. But, he didn't really want to compromise their positions, though. Ghosts used them to get around, and not just the ones who caused trouble. Besides, none of them were open right now. He have to wait 'til dawn if he wanted one of those.
There was always Vlad's portal, but, well, as much as he liked annoying Vlad, revealing to his parents that Vlad had a portal could lead to unpleasant consequences. He wasn't nearly that desperate.
Which left... one option, actually. Oh, he knew he was going to regret this in some way shape or form.
He turned to face the warehouse district and set off.
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The warehouse district was bright with security lights and sparsely populated by late-night delivery-people and the odd security guard. Still, there were many shadows and, being able to turn invisible, Danny had no difficulty hiding.
Danny wondered how, and if, the camera functioned while he was invisible. Light would go through it, after all, and Danny didn't see in human colors while he was invisible. It would be good if it didn't work, if it didn't have some kind of ectoplasm detectors or sonar, but he couldn't know, so he couldn't risk it.
Which meant that he had to do this fast, before his parents showed up.
He made his way to the one completely dark building in the warehouse district: the abandoned packing plant.
Correction: the theoretically abandoned packing plant. It had specialized in cardboard containers, after all.
He phased through the walls (and how did the camera register that?) and his ghost sense went off. His eyes rapidly adjusted to the dark, and he rapped his knuckles against a wall. "Hello?" He called into the dark. "Boxy?" He paused. "I know you're here, I can feel you. You realize that, right?"
A mountain of boxes in the center of the room trembled and formed into an approximately humanoid shape, blue light streaming through the gaps. "IT IS I, THE FEARSOME BOX GHOST!"
"Wow!" said Danny. "You're really working on that entrance! Much better than last time."
"WHY HAS THE GHOST CHILD COME TO THE DOMAIN OF THE AMAZING BOX GHOST?"
"I need a favor," said Danny. "Well, a couple favors, actually."
This apparently startled the Box Ghost so much that he lost control of his boxes. His carefully constructed stack tumbled to the ground, the light fading. The Box Ghost himself flew out of the heap.
"A favor?! From me?"
"Well, yeah," said Danny. "You agreed that if I let you stay around, you wouldn't bother anybody and you'd help me with questions about ghost stuff."
"Yeeeeeees, the Box Ghost remembers," he said, tapping his fingers together. "But he did not think it would actually happen. Well, what have you come to ask the great," he raised his hands over his head and waggled his fingers, "BOX GHOST?"
"I need you to help me find a transient portal," said Danny. "My p- the Fentons put this, uh, camera-tracker thing on me, and I can't get it off." Danny made a face. "You'll probably want to lay low for a while, too, after this. Maybe relocate for a bit."
"Back to the Realms?" asked the Box Ghost, sagging.
"No, no, you can still stay, just... maybe not in this building for the next little bit. You remember the other one we checked out for you?"
"Oh, yeah, in the-"
"Don't say it!" Danny took a deep breath. "They could be listening," he said. "The hunters."
"Oh, right. The great BOX GHOST is aware of this."
"So, can you take me to a portal?"
"Yeah, that's easy. Come on," said the Box Ghost.
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The portal was a bit of a tight fit, but Danny managed. Not having bones could be useful, on occasion.
He spun slowly around, orienting himself. He knew where he was. Good. Now that he was no longer stuck in Amity Park, his first order of business was to get to the Far Frozen. If anyone could help him get this off, they could.
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To be continued on day 11: Doctor.