Hey there, happy Friday. Is my writing/story quality holding up? We're getting past the buffer that I wrote during the Summer, and into what I'm writing late at night, after I've done all of my school stuff (Ten chapter buffer, yay). Hopefully, this won't devolve into nonsense, but it is likely that I will be making more mistakes.
Um. I'm planning on doing Ectober, and NaNoWriMo so... I may take some time off of this, or ease back on updates. Just a heads up. I will give you more info as we get closer to those times.
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Chapter 70: At the Threshold
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It took them a while to work out what to say. None of them had really 'heard' the agents trying to make contact. The lair was present throughout, but the lair wasn't intelligent in the way that humans and ghosts were. It did not know what had been said, could not know what had been said, in much the same way that it had not known who or what had, or still was, camping outside the Door.
But Danny had heard quite a bit, flashing through his head in a moment of panic. That's how he had known that this group, which had been in the lair, was named Eurydice. He just had to remember what had been said. How to make contact properly, without arousing suspicion, to make them lower their guards just enough to get into a good position to attack.
"This is Agent Alpha-Eurydice calling Agent Alpha-Orpheus. Over," said Mirage, his voice enough like Alpha's that it made the hairs on the back of Danny's neck stand on end.
"Alpha-Eurydice, this is Agent Alpha-Orpheus. How are you calling? Over."
"We have eliminated the ghost jamming our signal, and have secured several members of the beta target group. We have not yet located the alpha targets. Permission to send beta targets through to your location. Over."
"How many persons? Over."
"Four. Over."
There were several minutes of silence, during which time everyone held their breaths.
"Send them through. One at a time. Over."
"Affirmative. Sending the first one now. Over." Mirage put the radio set down carefully. "Okay, Sam. Are you sure that you want to do this?"
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Sam nodded, and stepped towards the Door, checking her Fenton Phones one last time, then the weapon she had been given. They had decided that they couldn't send Maddie through first, because she would be shot, nor Danny, nor Jazz, as they hadn't been able to find out whether the GIW was after only the adult Fentons, or all of them, and, even in human form, Danny was looking a little ghostly (also, there was concern about what might happen to the lair if Danny died). The shadows couldn't go through, because they couldn't leave the lair. The wisps and other ghosts, like Maddie, would be shot. That left Sam and Tucker to go through and provide distractions.
The Door was in the same place that the Fenton Portal was in the original FentonWorks, but it looked completely different. Instead of a swirling green hole in the wall, it was an actual, rectangular door, made of dark, gray-black wood, with silver fittings. There were subtle patterns of stars, snowflakes, and gears etched into the silver, and the fittings themselves spread out over the dark wood like frost.
Sam laid her hand against the Door. It was icy. She took the frigid doorknob in her hand and turned it.
There was a kind of membrane in the doorway. A shimmering, undulating surface between the lair and the outside. Sam had never seen anything like this in the doorway of a lair before. Then again, she had never seen a lair under attack before, so maybe this was normal.
She could see straight through it, but, somehow, she knew that the agents on the other side, in all their white-uniformed glory, could not see her. This would make things easier, Sam hoped.
She stepped through. Again, it was strange. It wasn't entirely unlike stepping through the portal. But it wasn't entirely like it, either. It tasted of lime, fire, and salt. It tasted like tears and blood. It clung to her as she passed through, reluctant to let her go, begging her to turn back, to be safe, to be cared for, to be happy, always and for all time.
(Sometimes Sam wondered what Danny would be like, if he had died all the way that day. She liked to think that he would be the same, but she wondered.)
"Identify yourself!" ordered an agent.
"I'm Sam Manson," she said, enunciating clearly. She didn't need to fake the slight quiver of fear in her voice.
"Samantha Manson?"
"Yes."
"Step forward."
Sam followed their instructions. After a while, a woman who Sam immediately pegged as a public relations/psychologist type (She felt only slightly guilty about this. She hated putting people into boxes, but as they had tried to kill her... Well...) came out and took Sam to a tent. There were benches, cots, and medical equipment in the tent, as well as a few doctors. The woman had introduced herself, but Sam hadn't been listening. The woman had said a lot of things, actually. She seemed to think that Sam was in shock.
The Fenton Phones buzzed, and Danny told her that Tucker had just come through. Just a few seconds now. Once Tucker reached the ring of fortifications around the Door, he would give her a code word, and they'd act.
Sam stared at her feet, looking at a tuft of grass sticking up through the white sheeting that was the tent's floor. It was a lustrous green-purple color, typical for grass in and near the Wastes, assuming that said grass was healthy, which it often wasn't. The Wastes were called the Wastes for a reason, after all, and it wasn't because they were a prime vacation destination.
She listened to Tucker, who was talking nervously through the Fenton Phones. He was just babbling nonsense, saying anything inconsequential that came into his mind. It wasn't a bad strategy. No one would suspect him of anything after he commented on the color of the tents, the clothes, the barriers, the weapons, everything, three times already.
"But, you know," he said, voice tiny through the Fenton Phone's speaker, "what I'd really like to do, as soon as I get home is eat a Nasty Burger!"
That was the cue. Sam's hand flew to the button on her wrist, and she depressed it.
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Danny stepped through the Door not even a second later.
He opened his mouth, and Wailed.
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Ectoweapons have ectoplasmic components. They often also rely on spectral signals and frequencies to function. For example, a standard blaster has both ectoplasmic conduits to bring charged liquid ectoplasm from the cartridge to the firing mechanism, and uses spectral frequencies to induce the ectoplasm to travel along those conduits.
This meant that ectoweapons were vulnerable to things like high volumes, and certain frequencies of spectral noise. Spectral noise like the spectral disruptor put out.
Of course, the spectral disruptor was designed to avoid the frequencies that GIW weaponry operated on, and Danny had broken it, but it was a good place to start. Between Maddie, who was a trained scientist specializing in ectology, Danny, who could sense ectosignatures and hear spectral noise, Shade, who had all of Danny's skills, but was less distracted by massive ectoenergy influx, and the need to recall what protocols the agents had been using to communicate, and Tucker, who was a technical genius, it wasn't too difficult to make what Maddie described as a pulse bomb that would target the GIW's weapons and tools.
It likely wouldn't do a lot of damage, and it wouldn't last for long. At best, some weapons might explode, overload, or begin firing continuously. However, it definitely would stop the weapons from functioning.
This is what Sam brought through with her, hooked into the activation button of one of her wrist-rays.
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Unfortunately, there was only one spectral disruptor. So Tucker got something different. Something more oriented towards taking out humans. It was a grenade. A flashbang. He didn't know if the lair had had it to begin with, or if it had come through with the agents. He didn't care. He just needed to give Sam the signal, and take out the agents guarding this side of the Door long enough for Danny and the other ghosts to come through.
As soon as he said the trigger words, Nasty Burger, he pulled out the grenade, pulled the pin out, threw it away, and dove away to the side, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. He kept his ears covered even after he saw the flash of light through his eyelids, and heard the bang.
Danny was coming through, after all, and the plan was to make a lot more noise.
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Danny Wailed, and Wailed, and Wailed. It wasn't nearly as strong as it normally would be, but that was a good thing. Danny wasn't able to target the Wail as well as he would like, and he didn't want to hurt Sam or Tucker. Although 'target' was probably the wrong word. The Wail was a strange and terrible power, and it seemed to affect different things, different people, in different ways, and Danny had little conscious control over the effects.
Behind him, ghosts streamed out from the Door. They weren't strong ghosts, many of them weren't even corporeal, or visible, but even weak ghosts could be lethal, under the right circumstances.
These were the right circumstances. The agents weapons were disabled by the disruptor, the agents themselves were disabled by either the flashbang or Danny's Wail. The agents' clothes were made to be ghost-proof, so they either went for the few exposed places, like faces or wrists, or ripped off the clothing entirely.
The ghosts were angry. They were not, in the grand scheme of things, particularly aggressive ghosts. They were followers, more than leaders. They liked having quiet existences. They liked staying in one place, subtly haunting it. Nothing big, nothing flashy. However, the GIW had invaded their home, had hurt the person that had given them sanctuary, and now they were trying to kill everyone, destroy everything.
Like all ghosts, they had a reason to exist, a reason to want to continue to exist. The end of the worlds did not fit into their plans.
Danny saw an agent run by with both of his hands missing. He saw another clawing at his eyes as wisps flew in and out of them intangibly. Other ghosts were pushing agents off the sides of the floating island. Some of the agents were fighting one another.
Then there was Tucker, shooting at the few mobile agents with a FentonWorks blaster. It didn't do much damage, but it knocked them back. He caught sight of Sam, briefly. Jeremy had gotten a gun as well, and was firing for all he was worth.
Then he felt to his knees, spent. Wisps swirled around him, replacing the energy he had lost. Spots danced in front of his eyes, and his rings slid over him as he lost hold of his ghost form. He felt, more than saw, his mother next to him, felt the hairs on his arms stand up as she fired her ecto-rifle.
But, before Danny got back on his feet, the sounds of battle began to die out. He scanned the carnage. Surprisingly, he felt very little about the corpses. He suspected that he was getting Obsession-induced tunnel-vision, and that once this was all done, assuming that he survived this, he would feel terrible.
The wisps and ghosts gathered around him, whispering, singing, telling him what they had found.
"I've never seen these kinds of ghost before," mumbled Maddie, sounding confused.
"You wouldn't have," said Danny. "They couldn't survive outside of the Ghost Zone, and they're usually entirely imper-imperceptible. They found the transports." He gestured away, to the edge of the little island, staggering a little. He thanked the little ghosts in their own sibilant tongue, and told them to go, to scatter, to spread the word. "We've go to go," he said.
Sam and Tucker rejoined them, little worse for wear, then Jeremy, a deep cut running across his cheek, breathing heavily. "What're we doing?" he asked.
"You four are finding protective gear, and I'm going after them. After Inanna. I know this area. I can get in front of them."
"Then what?" demanded Sam. "Danny, you're in no condition to fight."
"I don't know. Slow them down, I guess." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I should be better than nothing, and I should be less affected by the ectoradiation in the core than a human, and more stable than a ghost."
"Dude, that's suicide," said Tucker.
"Then hurry up and find protective gear before I get one of their glider speeder things to work. They'll probably be Egret-10's..." Danny trailed off, muttering to himself about different types of GIW gliders, and their various good and bad points.
"Remember," said Sam, although Danny wasn't sure who or what she was responding to, "this is the kid who landed the space shuttle once."
"What?" said Maddie. "When was this?"
"Technically speaking," said Tucker, "never."
