By Nyassa Kaiba
Chapter 6The lab was deserted when Danny and the others walked in. "Hello? Mom? Dad?" Danny called.
No answer.
"Okay. Can we get this over with?" Sam asked nervously.
"Somebody scared?" Feralae asked, arching an eyebrow.
"A little." Sam admitted.
"Relax Sam, Mom and dad deactivated the portal before they left for the meeting. There are no ghosts lying in wait for us." Danny told them.
"Right… but after all the problems we've had with the ghost zone, I'm a little bit nervous about going in. I mean, all this bad stuff has happened to us there, what good can come out of it?"
"Not all ghosts are evil." Danny pointed out. "Look at this Ghost Master person. She's probably as gentle as a kitten."
"Not if she can send Skulker flying into the next territory." ZP said with a wry grin.
Sam winced.
"Okay Sam, look, you won't be going in there alone okay?" Feralae told her.
Sam nodded.
"Well then." Danny said with a grin. "Going ghost!" He said as he transformed.
"By the grace of the gods, by the grace and power of the Dragon Masters… REVEAL MY TRUE NATURE!" Feralae called as she held her sword key point down. "Sam, take yours and repeat the incantation." She instructed.
"Oookay." Sam said nervously as she pulled out her key. She closed her eyes and recited in a rush. "By the grace of the gods, by the grace and power of the dragon masters… reveal my true… nature?"
The key, slowly, agonizingly became a sword. "Cool, I did it!"
"And you're about to do more!" Feralae said as she faced the wall with the Fenton Portal. "Okay, now this is what we do. Focus on the ghost zone, EVERYTHING you've seen when you were there. You don't have to search for it since you've been there. When you HAVEN'T been there is when you have to search."
Sam had her eyes squeezed shut as she focused, breath held.
"Now cut a door with your saber." Feralae told her.
Sam, eyes still closed, cut a rectangle with her saber. That was the instant that Danny's ghost sense went off, leading straight through. "I guess that means we did it." Danny said, gathering himself to spring in case any ghost attempted to come through Sam's tentative doorway.
"Do breathe Sam." ZP said kindly. "And opening your eyes would help."
Sam did as she was told and gasped.
A yawning portal, sparkling with energy showed nothing but crystal blackness beyond. Danny pointed. "That sure does lead to the ghost zone. I can feel it."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Asked Feralae. "ZP, can you and Tucker keep an eye out for Danny's Parents?"
"No problem." Tucker smirked.
"Yeah, Tucker and I can talk tech!" ZP said cheerfully. "It should only take five minutes right?"
"It should, but if something goes wrong, we'll need cover." Feralae told her Master.
Sam gulped. "Can we just get this over with?"
"Relax, its five minutes in the Ghost Zone, what could possibly go wrong?" ZP asked cheerfully.
"Let's just take the plunge already." Sam said, gathering her confidence.
"Okay then." Danny poked his head in the portal, then pulled it back out. "The coast is clear." He told them. "Follow me."
Sam tiptoed after him, slipping into the portal. Sure enough, she was in the ghost zone. Feralae followed after her. Sam started to float off. "Wait, you have to close the portal again or ghosts can get out." She pointed her sword at the portal. "Use your sword to gently push the portal closed."
"But how will I get out again?" Sam asked, worriedly.
"By focusing on an image of Danny's Parent's lab when you make the return portal." Replied Feralae. "It's all mental Sam. If you have strong focus and confidence your powers will respond strongly. If you have weak focus and little confidence in your abilities your powers will respond poorly."
"Kind of like with Danny's Ghost Powers?" Sam asked. She closed the portal as asked.
"Exactly. I'm starting to think that Ghosts and Gatekeepers are similar. We don't have all the powers ghosts have, but we don't need them." Then she turned to Danny's look of horror. "What is it?" She asked. Then she saw what he was looking at. "No way."
"Hey isn't that our school?" Asked Sam.
"It's also Poindexter's area of the ghost zone." Danny said in horror, for floating right in front of them was a carbon copy of their school.
"Well what are we waiting for, let's go say hello!" Suggested Feralae.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you…" Danny said worriedly. "Poindexter doesn't like me."
"He doesn't like you because he prejudged you based on your actions." Sam told him. "You WERE acting like a jerk that day."
"I suppose." Danny said with a sigh. "But if he tries to pick a fight, can I knock his head into the wall or something?"
"Danny…" Sam scolded. "If you pick a fight with Poindexter I'll knock BOTH your heads TOGETHER..." The three of them were slowly floating down towards the school.
"Alright fine." Danny sighed. "It wouldn't do anything to him anyway, he's a ghost."
"Right." Feralae found herself fazing through the ceiling. "Hey this is new." She commented.
"In the ghost zone humans faze through solid objects and ghosts are the solid ones." Sam told her.
"Oh that's right, I remember now."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Okay shoot."
"How come you know so much about us?"
"I get that a lot. Um… well… in the inter there's a cartoon about you guys. I'm from the Inter, ZP isn't, so even if she's a Master, she still doesn't get the same exposure I do." Feralae replied as they came to hover above the floor in the hall. "A lot of what I know about this sort of thing, I've gleaned from watching the different shows on TV. For example I used to watch the Teen Titans, and before I came here I used to do a lot of work with them."
"But how do the shows get there in the first place?" Sam asked. "I mean is there any proof that they're accurate?"
"Well they were accurate about Poindexter. And the portal and Valerie… trust me, so far its been startlingly accurate." Feralae told her. "The Inter is where the creative juices from hundreds of thousands of dimensions gather. The authors there can somehow see into the different dimensions and know what's going on. They don't know they're doing it. But somehow they're seeing into the alternate dimensions they're tuned to. I dreamed of being a writer before I became a gatekeeper. Little did I know what was in store."
"How do you know all this stuff?" Sam asked.
"Most of what I know I hear from ZP." Feralae explained. "When she found me I was at Titans tower, dazed and confused, not sure what I should do or where I belonged. ZP told them she'd take me in, but that we needed to use the tower as a base of…" She sighed. "There I go, off on a tangent. But ZP took me in and kept me from having to figure all this stuffage out on my own."
"That isn't a word." Said a reedy voice.
Poindexter was dragging Danny through the air with him. "Uh… hi… um… mr. Halfa, wants to be untied now." Poindexter had evidently bound Danny up with a spare rope and was dragging him through the air.
"I'm not letting you go until I have an explanation of what's going on here!" Poindexter growled.
"And an explanation you shall get." Feralae said calmly. "Danny won't go anywhere, but please untie him!"
"Fine." Poindexter was obviously in an awful mood that day.
"To start, do you know what this is?" She held out her sword, hilt first to him.
Poindexter took the sword, adjusting his glasses to peer at the inscription on the blade. "It's a sword, the inscription says, 'by the grace of the gods, by the power vested in me as triple goddess, I, Benten, bequeath this sword to Feralae, apprentice gatekeeper. Feralae, that's you right?" Poindexter asked.
"That's right." Feralae told her. "Gatekeepers open the gates between dimensions. For example, using that sword, I could go from the Ghost Zone to Earth and back, no need for a portal."
"Really? Wish I could do that." Poindexter said with a reluctant sigh.
"It only works for a gatekeeper though." Feralae told him. "Sorry."
"Oh well." Poindexter seemed to droop.
Feralae chuckled.
"What's so funny?"
"That posture, it reminded me of my little brother Mikael." Feralae giggled. Then she sighed sadly.
"What's wrong?" Poindexter asked.
"Personal issues." Feralae told him. "Don't worry about it."
"Oh no you don't." Sam told her. "You're going to work them out. You aren't going to hide them!"
"I'll tell you once we get out of here." Feralae hissed. "Not in front of Poindexter… please…"
"Let her go Sam." Poindexter told the goth. "If she doesn't want to talk about it she doesn't have to."
"Okay, fine, but my experience is that issues have to be worked out before they go from small to jumbo sized." Sam growled.
"Sam, you can't make her talk if she doesn't want to." Danny agreed. "Now, Poindexter, WE have to go."
"Alright… I was hoping you could stay for a little while." He said with a sad sigh. "But I suppose you're busy back on Earth."
"Yeah, we are." Feralae said with a soft smile. "And I need to get back, before my Master decides to go in after me."
"Master?"
"Yeah, Gatekeepers start out as apprentices, then they become Journeymen and finally they reach the Master Level."
"Oh, kind of like the Jedi in Starwars." Poindexter commented. "They start as paduwan and move up through several levels."
"Exactly." Said Feralae. "Sam, I want you to make the portal right here okay?" She outlined an area to their right about the size of a normal door. "And focus on going back to Danny's parent's lab."
Sam nodded, taking a fresh grip on her saber. She squeezed her eyes shut and cut open a gate to Danny's Parent's Lab. Feralae airily waved goodbye to Poindexter as they walked through. "See ya' round!" She said with a grin.
"WHEW!" Sam breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the portal.
"That was fifteen minutes." ZP started the conversation, looking at her watch.
"Okay, what is it about Poindexter that makes you so upset?" Sam demanded.
"You REALLY wanna know?" Feralae asked.
Sam nodded.
"He reminded me of my little brother. Whom I haven't seen in about three months. My parents split. My dad got angry at mom, grabbed lil' bro' and left in his truck. I got so upset that I ran off to what I didn't know was a gate. My emotions activated the gate itself and brought me to the DC universe. The Teen Titans found me in the volcano caves where Slade used to have his old hideout, and the rest, as they say is history." Feralae blurted her story out for them to hear.
"Your parents are divorced?" Danny asked stunned by this revelation.
"I suppose that's what you'd call it." Feralae said with a defensive growl. "I prefer the term split, or estranged, or…"
"It's no big deal Danny." ZP told him. "I'm an orphan. Feralae and I have a ton of psychic baggage on us."
"I know… I've just never met somebody who's parents actually DID split up." Danny said, eyes wide.
Feralae groaned. "Don't look at me that way."
"A lot of times Danny, Gatekeepers have some kind of tragedy in their pasts." ZP told him. "There have been exceptions, but most of the time they've got some kind of mental baggage that can both help and hinder their powers. For example, for Vlad it was becoming half ghost. For me it was… well… you don't want to know…" ZP told him. "It's not new news to me."
"Look, I'm not sad my dad was gone. He was a jerk. But I do miss my brother and mother." Feralae sighed.
"But… but…" Danny protested, looking over at a picture of his family on the desk.
"Your dad's a good man." Feralae told him. "You wouldn't understand the concept of the parent as jerk."
"You're right. I don't." Danny commented.
"Can we just drop the subject?" Asked Feralae.
"Okay, subject dropped. Now, Sam has opened her first portal. I say we go someplace to celebrate." ZP said cheerfully.
"How about Nasty Burger." Suggested Tucker.
"I'm in the mood for pizza." Said Sam.
"Bacon pizza?" Asked Feralae hopefully.
"Green pepper pizza. How could you be so cruel to the poor pigs?" Sam demanded.
"Okay, green peppers are fine." Feralae should have known that would set Sam off. "Save a tree, eat a beaver." Sam gave her a gentle whack upside the head.
Danny started laughing. Then everybody joined in. As they walked away from the lab Sam turned to Tucker. "Tuck?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry I got angry at you."
"Apology accepted." Tucker said cheerfully.
"But I'm still going to learn how to play football." Sam said, giving him a nudge.
Danny's laughter echoed through the empty lab just before he shut the door behind him.