Hello again readers! I got my buffer back! Just to warn you though: The next couple of chapters will be a little shorter. Part of my problem with the buffer was that I didn't have a good natural break, so I had wound up with a SUPERMEGAFRANKENCHAPTER. (Reverb). Ahem. I didn't like that, so I broke it into two smaller chapters, this one, and tomorrow's. Thanks for understanding!

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Chapter 27: Breakfast Beneath a False Moon

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This was clearly not what Mr Lancer had been expecting. He spluttered, but got his feet back under himself quickly enough. "Yes," he said, finally, "I can but... Why do you ask?"

"We can take turns cooking while they're all fighting over the bathrooms... I guess there really must be bathrooms over there. Otherwise they would have come back by now." Danny looked at the... Well, he couldn't really call it a line. It was still a crowd, but a more organized crowd than before. "Anyway, I was thinking that we can do pancakes. I saw pancake mix earlier. You guys can find the other ingredients while I try to figure out how those stove tops work."

Mr Lancer blinked. "You mean, that's a kitchen?"

"What else would it be?" asked Danny. He had thought it a little odd at first himself, but the more he looked at it, the more obvious its purpose became. Although, Mr Lancer likely hadn't been spending much of his time looking at the kitchen. "I mean, it has cabinets, counters, those are stoves, and that seems to be a fridge."

"I suppose you're right," said Mr Lancer.

"Great. So, we clean up, you guys find pancake makings, or anything that requires minimal preparation, I'll work out the stoves. Okay?"

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"Ah," said Sam, her breath misting, "Mr Lancer, you don't want those."

Mr Lancer cautiously put the round red fruit back on the shelf. "Why not?" he asked, his own breath coming out white.

Sam made a face. "I don't know as much about it as Danny, but pomegranates aren't always safe, here in the GZ."

"I suppose it has something to do with Persephone?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I've met some weird ghosts, but no one's ever said that Persephone is or was real. There are plenty of Greeks, sure, but not too many outright gods."

"What would they do?"

"Hm?" said Sam. She was looking for soy milk, or almond milk. She didn't really have anything against normal milk, it didn't have a face on it, but she tended to choose the vegan option when it was available.

"The pomegranates," said Mr Lancer, picking up a jar to squint at the label. Was that Russian? "Was Mrs Fenton correct in saying that some foods could bind a person to the Ghost Zone?"

"What? No. Not exactly. Um. I guess that in some situations it could? Like I said, I don't know a lot about that, but it's more like... If you eat it, it's like an obligation? And then some of them are Stygian, which adds a whole new complication." Sam shrugged. "Nine out of ten times it's safe, but it's better not to take the risk."

"Is there anything else I should be wary of?"

"Yeah. Lotus. But you'd probably be wary of that, anyway.

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As it turned out, the stove tops were simple to use. Danny hovered his hand over the flat surface. It felt hot enough. He looked at the flame beneath. Somehow, the heat it was producing was constrained, directed upwards, not outwards. Danny would say it was odd, but after the windows, it was nothing. There was probably some kind of spacial distortion... An extra dimension that the heat was lost to, maybe? That would be interesting.

Danny walked past Tucker, who was pulling boxes from the shelf, then paused. "What are you even looking for?" he asked.

"Chocolate chips, dude," said Tucker. "Toppings, you know?"

"I think you passed some nuts back there..." Danny stood on his tip-toes, and pulled a jar down. It was labeled 'noix.'

"What language even is that?"

"French," said Danny absently, turning the jar over in his hand. "These are walnuts, I think." He put the jar down on the counter. I'm going to see if they've found any butter yet.

"Cool. They're starting to come back," said Tucker, indicating a handful of people who had come back from the bathrooms (that apparently did exist). "I might head over in a minute."

"Okay," said Danny. "I'm going to see if Sam and Mr Lancer have found any butter."

He walked over and stuck his head into the fridge. "Butter?" he asked.

Sam threw a stick at him and he just barely managed to catch it. "There's some more in here," said Sam, "but we'll take care of it."

"Okay, thanks."

"Hey, I found the chocolate chips," said Tucker. "You'd better use them, Danny."

"I will," promised Danny, rolling his eyes. He pulled a large ceramic bowl off a shelf, and placed it on the counter underneath. "Where's the pancake mix?"

"Here," said Tucker, hauling the large box over to where Danny was standing. "Do you think it'll be enough?"

"Probably? I don't know how hungry everyone is. I mean, I was able to eat some apples earlier, even if I threw them up, later. I don't know how much everyone else was able to eat."

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Well, the A-listers got into the food pretty fast. No one else got any, though. Some people actually appreciated the fact that we were stranded without food." He paused. "As in, they understood it. Not that they liked it. Jeez, this is what studying for tests does. Stupid standardized testing," muttered Tucker, darkly.

"Yep," said Danny, pouring the mix into the bowl. He looked back into the cabinet, found a cup, and began to draw water from the sink waterfall. "Ah, wait, did you see a whisk anywhere?"

"There were utensils over there," said Tucker pointing.

Danny went over to the indicated cabinet and pulled out a whisk. Just then, Mr Lancer and Sam walked out of the cold room, carrying their spoils.

"Awesome," said Danny. He glanced at the small group milling around the sitting area and very obviously not looking out past the balustrade. Dash, Dale, Paulina, Tiffanie, Star... Of course the A-listers would somehow get to the front of the line. Whatever. Danny wasn't bitter about the popularity ladder, not anymore.

(Well, maybe a little bit.)

Danny started mixing the pancake batter. "You guys should go ahead and distribute what can be eaten as-is. I can handle this for now."

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There were pancakes. Lots and lots of pancakes. There were chocolate chip pancakes, and there were walnut and pecan pancakes. There was syrup, not maple syrup, unfortunately, but nice syrup nonetheless. Sam had found some strawberries, so those were there, and milk, and orange juice.

By the time Danny had finished making the pancakes, and had taken a detour to the bathrooms (which did exist, but were as exotic in construction as the kitchen), most people were already eating. Not everyone, though. Some had apparently taken Jack and Maddie's warning about the food to heart.

Danny slipped into an empty chair between Sam and Tucker, and pulled a stack of towards him. Gosh, he was hungry.

"Danny."

With a sigh, he lowered his fork, and looked up at his mother. "What?" he said. He didn't want to deal with this. He wanted to eat.

"These laws that ghosts have..."

Danny groaned, loudly, and shoved a forkful of pancake into his mouth. "What about them?" he mumbled around his pancake.

"Details," said Maddie. "What did we do, exactly, and what would the... Who or what would be in charge of enforcing the laws?"

"Um," said Danny, rubbing his eye. "What did I already tell you?"

"You said that there were laws against murder, rape, and sacrilege."

"Oh. Um. No, no, that's not quite right. Ghosts don't- Ugh. I shouldn't have translated it as rapine, it's so easy to take the wrong way. Maybe I should have said pillage. But that's not quite right either, and pillage in the English sense isn't Taboo... And it includes rape, but... Okay. Okay, I've got it, I've got it, just give me a second." He stuck another bite of pancake into his mouth and chewed fiercely. "Okay, so the problem here is that, originally, the Taboos were written- codified- by people who had a concept of existence but not of life. The first ghost societies. They had their own language, and it didn't have anything to do with English. Or any human language, for that matter. The categories they assigned what they considered crimes don't always make sense. Then, other things got tacked on to the original Taboos. The categories do still have... themes, I guess. So they're useful." Danny fell silent, and ate some more pancakes.

"Danny."

"Huh?" said Danny, intelligently.

"Sweetie, I understand that you've had some trouble finding translations, but-"

Tucker snorted. Everyone stared at him. "We didn't have any trouble finding translations," said Tucker, rolling his eyes.

"Tucker," hissed Danny.

"What do you mean?"

"Seriously? You haven't noticed?"

"Tucker," repeated Danny.

"Come on, Danny. It's not like it isn't going to come out. It's kinda surprising that it hasn't already, considering."

"Fine," said Danny, going after his pancakes again.

"What are you two talking about," asked Maddie, suspiciously.

"So, two years ago, Danny asked me to help him learn Esperanto," began Tucker. "He picked it up super fast. Then this jerk tells me that it isn't his first second language. He's already fluent in Spanish, and he's getting all As in French."

"Why would he know Spanish?" asked Paulina.

Of course everyone was listening. Danny felt himself turning pink, an uncomfortable heat gathering under his skin. He really preferred the cold.

(He had studied it, sporadically, in the last years of grade school and in middle school, mostly to impress Paulina.)

Tucker shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Anyway, after he devoured Esperanto, he decided to learn Latin, because a lot of ghosts know it. Then he picked up Greek. And when I say 'picked up,' I mean that he just showed up at school one day and said, 'Hey, guess what? I know Greek now!'"

"I didn't say it like that!" protested Danny.

"You kind of did, actually," said Sam.

"Not you, too, Sam."

"So you speak six languages?" asked Mia, shocked.

"Seven," said Mikey. "He speaks whatever it is these things use." He indicated the wisps.

"They aren't things," said Danny. "They're wisps. Will'o-the-wisps, and they're people."

"He speaks way more than that," said Tucker. "But good luck getting him to tell you how many that is."

Danny put his head on the table. "You're awful."

"What was the last human language you were working on? Russian? Chinese?"

"Chinese, yeah," mumbled Danny.

"You speak Chinese?" said Hannah.

"That's great, Danny-boy!" shouted Jack. "Why didn't you tell us?"

Danny was about to answer, but Elliot, of all people, interrupted. "Y'know, this is great and all," he said, "but there's still the whole 'you could be executed' thing that's hanging over our heads. I'd like some clarification on that."