Written for Dannymay 2021 Day 8: Gravity
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"We already know you can walk on walls, Danny," said Sam. "It's cool and all, but why bring us all the way out here?"
"No, no," said Danny. He gestured to the red bricks by his feet. "I'm not doing this."
"Yes, you are," said Tucker. "We can both see you."
"No, I mean, I'm not using ghost powers to do this."
Sam and Tucker frowned and examined the wall of the park more closely. It was an out of the way corner, the sight of it blocked off from the rest of the park by the restrooms and a large tree, otherwise Danny wouldn't have even tried this, no matter what he saw that squirrel do.
"Are you sure?" asked Sam, after a minute.
"Positive. Like, you have to touch the right bricks, otherwise it doesn't work, and being near the edge—" he pointed to the top of the wall "—is weird, but it's definitely not my ghost powers. It's that gravity is weird here."
"Don't a lot of ghost fights wind up going through here?" asked Tucker. "Do you think it might, I don't know, stick, somehow?"
"If it was like that," said Danny, "my whole house would be that way."
"Have you ever tried walking on the walls not as a ghost?" asked Sam. She grimaced and muttered something under her breath about grammar.
"Believe it or not, yes," said Danny. "It'd be way easier to vacuum the walls if it worked like that. I wouldn't even have to hide it from Mom and Dad. Anyway, I think there are a few other places around that are kind of like this, though. Where physics are kind of… broken, I guess." He frowned. "Like that road that's shorter than it should be one way, and longer the other, even though it's the same length…" He trailed off.
"Okay, before we start in on that, let's make sure this is an actual thing, and not your ghost powers," said Sam. "Where do I need to step to make this work?"
Danny showed her.
It really wasn't just his ghost powers.
"And I can just… walk around?"
"Yeah, as far as I can tell, it acts just like normal gravity except for the direction. I was able to hang off the top of the wall, even. I wouldn't recommend it for you, though."
"Why not?"
"I can fly. You'd just drop."
"Ah. Yeah. That would be… yeah," said Sam. "But you said it got weird?"
"That isn't weird enough?"
"Fair. What about the other walls?" she pointed.
Danny shrugged. "Act as walls. You can lean on them. It's weird."
"You can lean on them anyway," said Tucker, as Sam did a few experimental hops. "They're walls."
"Yeah, but not from this direction," said Danny. "Trust me, it's weird."
"You don't have to trust him," said Sam. "Come on and try it, coward."
Tucker, having proven on multiple occasions that he was the exact opposite of a coward, rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. Holy ghosts, you're right, this is weird."
"See? I told you."
"Cool, cool," said Tucker. "But, uh, hate to be the one who asks this, but how do we get off?"
"Oh, easy, you just touch the ground."
"What, like thi—" Tucker failed to catch himself as gravity reasserted itself in the proper direction. "Ow."
"You okay?"
"My pride isn't."
"Fair," said Danny, taking advantage of his ability to fly and his nonstandard sense of balance to just walk off the wall. "Want a hand?" he asked Sam.
"No, I've got it," said Sam, carefully extending her hands.
"I hate both of you," said Tucker, still face-down in the grass.
"Aw, we love you, too," said Danny, making a kissy face.
"I can't see you, but I can hear you, and it's my turn with the thermos tonight. I can make things very inconvenient for you."
"But you won't."
"But I won't," agreed Tucker, finally moving. He pushed his glasses back up his nose. "You said there were other spots that were like this?"
"Oh, yeah. Loads."
"Can you show us?"
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No one really went under the underpass, not even homeless people, which was really a pity because this was wild.
Although, come to think of it, that might be why no one went under the underpass.
Danny put another stone in the air.
"They just stay there?" asked Sam.
"As long as you put them on this level, yeah," said Danny. "But if you give them any momentum, it stays and they move out and then fall, so you have to be careful about how you let them go."
"Even if you push them up?"
"Yeah. It looks really weird, though, watch." He nudged the pebble up, and it continued in that direction for a moment before turning and falling.
"It looked normal to me," said Tucker.
"It doesn't follow proper ballistic motion," said Danny. "It doesn't accelerate when it's in that stripe. Watch again, okay?" He did it with another rock.
"I'm still not seeing it."
Sam patted Danny's back. "I think you just have a better eye for physic-related things than we do."
Danny sighed.
"Alright, what else do you have?" asked Tucker, making some kind of note on his PDA.
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"Oh, jeez, oh, heck, oh, jeez," said Tucker. "Why am I friends with you? Literally, this sucks, this sucks so much. Get me down, get me down, get me down."
"You are down," said Danny.
"I am not down, I am a hundred feet up and upside down, I swear, Danny, if you don't—"
Danny sighed and pulled him off the manhole cover.
"Oh," said Tucker.
"It's just an illusion," said Danny.
"You could have warned me."
"You didn't wait," said Danny, frowning.
"Sorry, that's my fault," said Sam, raising her hand. "I dared him to."
"Even if it's an illusion," said Tucker, pausing to catch his breath. "That's kind of dangerous. It's a good thing no one really walks by here…"
"Yeah," agreed Danny. "It's a good thing all of this is out of the way. So far, anyway…"
"What's up?" asked Sam.
Danny made a face. "Just… thinking about how it would be good if we could, I don't know, make a map and tell people about this kind of stuff. So they wouldn't accidentally get trapped or hurt or something. Maybe we could make flyers, or something."
"Yeah, who'd believe us, though?" asked Sam, shrugging.
"We could try and get your parents involved?" suggested Tucker.
"Let's… let's leave that for a last resort," said Danny. "Right now… Just something to keep in mind, I guess? Especially if we really do find something dangerous, or one of those, what did they call them… a natural ghost portal. I mean," he continued, frowning, "there have to be some of those around. Not all the ghosts come through our portal."
"Your Dad's security is kind of rubbish," said Tucker.
"Not that rubbish," said Danny, "and they've upgraded it a bunch since the whole Johnny thing." He glared at the memory.
Tucker's PDA beeped. "Oh, I've got to get home," he said. "Can you fly me home?"
"You're still using your PDA to schedule things?"
"It worked, didn't it? Besides, I've got all the places coded, so if Skulker steals her again, she'll send him to Timbuktu."
"I'd feel bad for Timbuktu," said Danny, "but, yeah, I'll fly you home. Sam?"
"I actually want to stop by the book store," she said. "See you tomorrow?"
"Okay," said Danny.
"You'd better have some even weirder stuff for us to see," she said, not quite walking backwards.
"Will do!" said Danny. He turned to Tucker. "So, do you want to do this under the arms, piggyback, or bridal?"