Thank you for your reviews! Thank you especially to those of you who helped me out with names, like kimcat, and Great. You guys are great!
Avenger2003: I know that the 'depowered superhero' trope can get kinda old, but this isn't the kind of situation that Danny can punch his way out of. He probably wouldn't use his powers very often anyway. He's still trying to keep his secret. He will get them back before the story is over, but don't expect them soon. Sorry.
kimcat: The shadows aren't going to be straight-up representations of personality traits or emotions like you might see in an 'into the mind' fic. They do embody certain aspects of Danny's personality, but they're a little more complicated than that. The lair is making them because they're 'useful.' Remember that the lair, beyond being a representation of Danny's subconscious, basically exists to give Danny what he needs and/or wants. The shadows are created with goals in mind. Echo's creation is a bit of an exception, because he was made artificially, but he's still part of the lair.
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Preemptive apology: I know that some of you have brought up the fact that I tend to end chapters on cliffhangers. I have, therefore, chosen to respond by... giving you all an even worse cliffhanger. Tee-hee-hee. But seriously. If the cliffhangers really bother you, wait for tomorrow, when I'll have the next chapter up.
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Chapter 33: Prove Me Wrong
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Astraea Iustitia knocked on her mother's door. Once, twice, three times. The door creaked open, and Astraea stepped, unfazed, into the pitch-black room.
She was, like her mother, and most of her family, blind.
She could hear the rustle of paper, the scrape of stone tablets, the swish of fabric, the tap tap tap of her mother's fingers on her desk. This was more than enough for her to navigate the room. More than enough for her to picture her mother in her chiton and himation, her sword and scales resting on the table, head propped up by one of her four slender arms, ends of her blindfold barely brushing the table.
"Mother," she said, thereby announcing her presence.
"Astraea," said the woman, tilting her head up, and leaning back in her chair. "What brings you to my office this afternoon."
"I have a case you'll want to take a look at." She offered the woman a sheaf of papers.
The woman took the papers, and ran a finger down the first page, frowning. "An act of murder committed by humans? You know we don't prosecute those."
"Look at the victim, the method. I think you'll change your mind."
A moment of near silence. "Their own child? In such a way? Your witness is reliable?"
"I believe so. But that is what a trial is for, is it not?"
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Danny walked out of the bathroom, wearing clean clothes, still shaking water from his hair, towel in his hand. He felt a bit better now. (He'd say a bit more human, but overall he doubted that was a good thing.)
So the next thing to do was breakfast. Then, gathering supplies for the journey. He doubted that leaving his lair would be straightforward, even with the wisps guiding them, not to mention after leaving his lair. (His lair was safe). The Ghost Zone could be dangerous. Deadly. There wasn't going to be too much human-edible food just lying around in the Zone either.
As he walked towards the kitchen, he peeked into each of the rooms, checking on his sleeping classmates. The rooms were nice. If the lair opened up somewhere convenient, he might invite some of his friends here.
He didn't see his father, though, or Mr Lancer. He didn't see Tucker either. Surely he had emerged from the other bathroom at this point. So where-?
Danny reached the larger, open room, and had his question answered before it was fully formed. Mr Lancer was sleeping on the couch. Jack was sleeping in an armchair. Tucker was in the kitchen, frowning at the label on a jar. He looked up as Danny padded in.
"Hey, man," said Tucker, quietly. "You feeling better?"
"A little. What are you doing?"
"Thinking of breakfast. Do you have any meat in here?"
"Not that I saw yesterday," said Danny.
"Darn. I guess I knew that, though. Well. I was thinking of doing some cinnamon toast."
Danny curled his lip. He didn't like toast. It was just so dry. And scratchy. He leaned around Tucker's shoulder to read the label on the jar. He frowned. "You don't want to put that on it," he said.
"Why, isn't this cinnamon?"
"That's cumin, dude."
"Oh, gross."
"You have to learn how to read cursive, Tucker."
"You need to stop writing in cursive."
Danny paused. "These..." He lowered his voice even more, glancing at his sleeping father. "This is my handwriting, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Didn't you notice?"
"No. Not really," said Danny, troubled. "You don't think that anyone else did, do you?" The way he emphasized the word 'else' indicated that he meant people who weren't on team phantom.
"I think Lancer might've, but, you know, he didn't see them until after, so, yeah."
Danny stared at the label for a few more minutes. "Let's do French toast instead," said Danny. French toast was, in Danny's opinion, the only acceptable kind of toast.
"Sure. We have eggs?"
"Yeah. Let me get them."
The smell of food slowly drew the others to the main room. Tucker was eating as they went. Danny hoped that no one minded having breakfast twice in a row, but he wasn't the best at cooking, and breakfast was easy. They could have just done cereal or oatmeal or something like that, though. There were plenty of cereals here. Also oatmeal. Also raisins. Also cinnamon. Raisins and cinnamon were necessary for a good bowl of oatmeal, in Danny's opinion. They were also relatively unlikely to animate when exposed to ectoplasm, unlike sausage. Or most things in the Fenton household.
"Thank you for cooking us breakfast, Daniel, Mr Foley," said Mr Lancer. There was a smattering of half-hearted agreement.
"No problem," said Danny. "Um," he said, "we should probably talk about what we're going to do next, though. Like, we should carry as much food with us as possible, because we don't know how long it'll be until we can get more, and stuff like that..."
Thankfully, Danny did not have to micromanage the preparations. Mr Lancer went camping and hiking frequently as a hobby, and Maddie had survival training. (So did Jack, but. Well. Jack.)
Things were going well. Of course they had to go wrong.
Danny wasn't sure what started it, but he became aware of what was happening pretty quickly. It was hard not to, although several people somehow managed it.
"-think I'm gonna take crap from you, Swamp-boy, just 'cause we're lost-"
"Back off, Dash!"
"Mr Baxter! Let go of Mr Marsh immediately!"
"And what are you doing about all of this, Lancer? Huh? We're just running around, following this freak," he gestured at Danny. "How do we know he isn't lying about working with Phantom? I haven't seen any proof!"
"Jeez, Dash, you think Danny just magically knows how to speak that weird ghost language?" Ricky pulled his shirt out of the larger boy's hands. "Grow a brain al-!"
Dash took a swing at Ricky. It didn't connect. It didn't connect because Danny was there.
"The hell, freak?!" demanded Dash.
Danny touched his lip where it had split. It came away bloody. He licked it. It was salty, but under the salt there was the sweet-sour-spicy tang of ectoplasm.
"Woooow."
Danny turned his head so quickly that he put a crick in it. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw a few other people rubbing their necks, so he knew he wasn't alone.
A boy was sitting on the counter, leaning back on the palms of his hands. He looked a lot like Danny, actually, except for the white hair and green eyes, and a half dozen or so smaller details. He wore a black, zip-up, hooded sweatshirt, and a white t-shirt. His jeans were faded black, and his boots were thick-soled and steel-toed.
"Stay back, kids!" shouted Jack, interposing himself between the boy and the class.
Many of the students backed up uncertainly. Danny noted that Sam, Tucker, and Jazz seemed unconcerned. Mr Lancer also stayed put, although he was visibly nervous.
Maddie stepped forward a knife held in her hand. Since when was she holding that?!
"Shadow," said Maddie, "what do you want?"
"And- what? If I don't tell you, you'll stab me? Again? In case you hadn't noticed, it didn't really work the first time." Maddie only glared. The boy shrugged. "First off, I explicitly said that 'Shadow' wasn't my name. Call me Echo. As for why I'm here..." His eyes drifted lazily to Dash. "I'm kind of curious as to what you think you're doing. I mean, are you an idiot?"
"Don't talk to him, Dash," instructed Maddie.
Echo rolled his eyes. "Please. You think that I haven't heard everything you people have been saying. But back to the topic at hand. Dashiel Baxter. What are you doing hitting someone here? I mean, even you must have noticed how much he- Excuse me. How much Phantom objects to people being hurt. He does spend a copious amount of time making sure that it doesn't happen, after all. Then you have what happened to Madeline Camilla Fenton when she decided to menace my friends, here." A pair of wisps alighted on his shoulder, as if to make his point. "So, I'm just wondering what you thought would happen if you did hit Richard Marsh. Here. In this place which, you have been told, more or less explicitly, caters to Phantom's needs and desires, regardless of social niceties or inhibitions."
Dash spluttered incoherently.
"Then again, I suppose that you weren't thinking at all, were you?" Echo vanished, then reappeared directly in front of Dash. In a moment, the taller boy was on the ground, his arm bent painfully behind him. "Do say otherwise, I would love to be proven wrong."
It was not, Danny was ashamed to admit, not Dash's cry of pain that shook him out of his stupor and spurred him to action, but his parents' purposeful movement towards Echo and Dash.
"Stop!" he shouted, arm stretched towards Echo. The boy smiled up at him, as if he knew exactly what was going through Danny's head, and, Danny realized, he very well might. Danny didn't know enough about lairs and shadows to be able to say one way or another.
In a single, fluid motion, Echo released Dash, stood, and was behind Danny. He put his hands on Danny's shoulders, and rotated him to face his parents. His right hand lightly grasped the outside of Danny's right shoulder, but the left was tight against Danny's neck, his index finger outstretched, resting gently against Danny's carotid.
Danny's breathing became shallow. His head tilted back, both to follow the direction of that outstretched finger, and to rest his head against Echo's shoulder. His eyes unfocused ever so slightly. He felt himself relax, almost unwillingly, his muscles going ever-so-slightly limp. This was different. Surprising. Different. Good? Maybe. Hopefully it wouldn't be bad-different, like so many of the other changes his life had suffered thus far.
It was like Echo was borrowing his will, which wasn't an entirely ludicrous preposition.
He wondered if Echo would still be taller than him if he wasn't wearing combat boots.
Danny blinked, eyes still refusing to focus. He was vaguely aware that a- He hesitated to call it a conversation, when the tone of it was so venomous and vitriolic- was going on. He gave up on his eyes as a lost cause, he was only looking at the ceiling anyway, and redirected his attention towards his ears.
"-if you hate ghosts more that you love your children," Echo was saying.
"Those two things are entirely unrelated," said Maddie, sharply.
"Be careful what you say," Echo half-sung the words. "He's listening now. And what do you mean, 'unrelated?' Do you have any idea how often his life has been endangered by your inventions? How often he has almost lost his life? And your daughter, hounding her because you thought that she might be a ghost. Going after her with nets and guns. Did you think she had died?" Echo paused. "You intend to answer any of these questions? Hm?"
"We don't answer to you, ghost," said Jack.
"Perhaps not," agreed Echo. "But don't you think that you owe him one? At least?" Echo's finger tapped gently against the side of Danny's neck. Danny's breath hitched in his throat, and black spots danced across his vision. Spots that contained spots that, oddly, looked like what Danny imagined Echo was seeing right now.
This was officially weird. Even by Danny's standards. He wondered what quirk of ghostly (or, as the case may be, hybrid) physiology was making him react like this. Similarity between their physical makeup and ectosignature causing Danny's brain to conflate signals from echo with signals from his own ghostly body? Echo's lack of a core? Danny's core damage? The lair bond? Something else entirely?
"Let Danny go, or we'll-"
"Or you'll what?" asked Echo, his laugh the radiance of sun on broken ice. "Even with little Miss Red there and her bag of tricks, there isn't anything you can do to me. I'm not real after all. Speaking of, I think that she still owes all of you an explanation herself." Danny felt him lean forward, so that his cheek ever so slightly brushed Danny's ear. "But first, I want you to answer at least one thing for me. Do you love your children more than you hate ghosts?"
"Of course we do!" exclaimed Jack, angrily.
Echo leaned in farther, and adjusted his right arm, so that he supported Danny more securely. Suddenly, Danny was no longer looking up, at the ceiling, but over towards his parents. Danny blinked uncertainly at the teal and orange blurs. Then Echo tilted his head so that his face rested against Danny's. Danny could feel the way the muscles in his face moved as his expression shifted. A tiny, surprised, sound escaped from Danny's throat.
"I don't believe you," said Echo.
"Why you-" The orange blur moved towards Danny.
"Ah, ah, ah!" chided Echo, sliding his left hand up Danny's neck. Danny was very glad that Echo was holding him up, because his legs were feeling very week. "I don't think you want to do that. You know what, I'll give you a chance to prove me wrong. Let's play a little game. Okay? If either of you two can become a ghost, I'll let Danny go. If not..." Echo's hand tightened slightly around Danny's throat. It was a good thing that Danny didn't need quite as much air as a normal human. "I like Danny. I think that he'd make a better ghost than he makes a human."
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I did warn you guys. Sorry.
