Over 100,000 views! Wow! And 250 favorites! You guys are great!
Reviews are always appreciated!
MsFrizzle: Yeah, I kinda thought that that would make sense, because even in the show, Sam knew about the Ghost Zone version of Pandora. I'm sorry for not putting it into the notes of the chapter it belonged to. Sometimes when I'm writing ahead I forget.
.
.
.
Chapter 74: Sensible
.
Danny wasn't entirely unaware of what was going on around him.
He could tell that he was in a place with a lot of green light. He could hear the rhythm of urgent speech above the rushing blood in his ears. His sense of touch was overwhelmed with pain, but there were places of greater and lesser sensation. His mouth tasted of blood and ectoplasm. He couldn't breathe through his nose.
But one of the perks of not being entirely human was access to non-human senses. So he knew, despite his traditional five senses being more-or-less useless, that Jazz, Sam, and Tucker were nearby, as well as maybe one or two other humans, and a few unfamiliar, but fairly powerful, ghosts.
He didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. The last thing that he could recall was getting blasted by one of the agents' weapons, tumbling towards the Core, and then... He didn't know. He couldn't remember. He had the vague, uncertain, memory of something... filling him? Like he was an empty and willing cup, or a puppet that needed a hand inside it.
(If he had been awake, he would have shuddered. He would have cringed.)
Based on that, and the presence of the ghosts, there were two possibilities. One, the GIW agents had beaten him, but then his friends and/or the ghosts had shown up, and beaten the GIW. He liked that possibility. That's the one that he wanted. But then, possibility two was that GIW agents had beaten him, then moved on, and Jazz, Sam, Tucker and the ghosts had just shown up, and they were all going to die very soon. He didn't like that possibility, but it was more likely than not.
Well, there were worse ways to go than among friends.
Although, now that he thought about it, it was possible that Jazz, Sam, and Tucker could catch up to the agents, or at least disable the bomb. The agents didn't know that destroying the Ghost Zone would destroy the material plane. They would have an escape plan, a delay on the bomb, time to get away, and pick up the other agents. Something. Anything. Danny tried to communicate this to his friends, but he couldn't move. He would just have to hope that they would reach the same conclusions. They were smart. They were geniuses, and if he could think of it, so could they. Hopefully. Gosh, he wished that they had had more time to think, to plan, before rushing off after the agents, but he hadn't dared to risk it.
But then... They were still here, with him. They weren't trying to save him, at their own expense, were they? At the expense of the worlds? He'd be fine. Well, probably not, but he definitely wouldn't be fine if the world ended! No, they wouldn't do that. So perhaps the more hopeful option one was the correct one. That was good. Good.
So when one of the ghosts picked him up taking him away from his friends, his family, he dredged up the energy to protest. It was a small, pathetic protest, and it didn't have any effect, but it was the principle of the thing.
(He wanted his friends. He needed them.)
Then he felt motion, movement, acceleration. The ghost was taking him somewhere. They were taking him away from the Core. He didn't know how to feel about that. Most of the time, when a ghost was carrying him somewhere, it was a bad thing, but Danny couldn't sense any hostility from this one.
Still, he was hurt. Everywhere. Hadn't been able to take an inventory of injuries, due to being... Well, he couldn't exactly call himself unconscious. He was thinking. Immobile, maybe. (He needed to learn more medical terms, considering how often he needed to use them.) Unresponsive! There it was. He knew he could find the right word.
It wasn't like he had anything better to do right now, though, so he might as well start his injury inventory, do as well as he could.
At the very least, he had a headache. Probably a concussion. His arm felt like it was broken. His nose was clogged, probably with blood, so it was probably broken, too. Breathing hurt, so add ribs to the list of things that were broken, and also a sore throat, from all the yelling (Wailing) he had done earlier. His leg felt hot, and so did his shoulder, so either they had been burned, or shot. He rarely got shot with actual bullets, so he wasn't sure how that was supposed to feel. Bad, probably, but 'bad' described how he felt in general, and he doubted that he had been shot everywhere, seeing as he was still (half) alive. Blood loss was a thing he was suffering from, but that was less of an issue in the Ghost Zone, especially where the ectoplasm was so thick.
(He, Sam, and Tucker had discussed this exactly once, before deciding that 'So, we're floating in ghost blood right now?' was not a question they wanted to examine too closely. It wasn't entirely true, anyway.)
All of that was without getting into the absolute mess that was his core.
If Danny had been properly awake, he would have been making every effort to get to the Far Frozen. However, Danny was not properly awake, and he was becoming less and less awake as time went on.
(He wondered if he was dying. Fading. He hoped not. He at least wanted to live long enough to see if the worlds had been saved.)
His ghostly senses were beginning to fail. He didn't have a good grasp on them all the time, and he often had trouble interpreting the information they gave him, but he had come to rely on them just as much as his human senses. If he lost both sets...
(If he died like this...)
(At least it wasn't quite as painful, anymore. Not as much as the first time.)
The thought scared him, and he struggled to stay awake. But it was futile.
.
.
.
Adrestia felt it when the child in her arms let go of the final threads of consciousness. Poor thing. Adrestia shuddered to imagine what he had been through. At least now he could get the help he deserved.
Meg and Alex flew to either side of her, struggling to keep up. Tess had been left with the humans. Partially to make sure that Phantom's three fraidmates could find the way to Duat Hospital, partially to keep an eye on Madeline Fenton. Considering Hades' threat, making sure the child in her arms didn't fade was more important. Adrestia was more than old enough to remember the rule of Pariah Dark.
But there was the other thing...
"Meg," she said, "Alex, go find the High Council. Tell them what happened."
"But, Addy," started Meg, "the High Council is, like, sequestered! You know that!"
"Yeah, and I also know that a bunch of fanatic humans tried to blow up everything and Hades just said that if he doesn't get this kid, he's going to cause a freaking cataclysm, so go un-sequester them."
"Dude, we're not gonna leave you-" tried Alex.
"You are, Alex."
"Um, no," said Meg. "Alex isn't. I'll go, but you need backup, okay? You've, like, literally got your hands full, all four of them. I am gonna blame you, though, if they fry me, got that? Just like, FYI. Later!" she called, as she pealed away from the other two.
"So'm I," said Alex. "If she gets, like, ended, I mean. I'd probably have to fry you, you know?"
"I get it, Alex. Just, I'm trying to head off a disaster here, if that's really what they're arguing about."
"Just, she's my sister, you know?"
"I know."
"We're cool then?"
"Yeah."
.
.
.
Maybe she was a suspicious person, maybe she was paranoid, but Sam suspected that 'Tess' had stayed for reasons other than the stated one. Maybe it was the was she kept glancing at Maddie. Maybe it was the weapons on her belt. Maybe it was a whole host of other things.
Most likely though, it was because 'Tess' was friends with Adrestia, (as in, Adrestia the Inescapable, inspiration of one of the Greek goddesses of vengeance,) and her sisters were named 'Meg' and 'Alex.' Those names were too similar to those of another trio of vengeance goddesses to be a coincidence. Sam was thinking of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. The Kindly Ones. The Gracious Ones. The Eumenides. Or, if one was brave and unwise, the Furies.
So, it was, in Sam's opinion, likely that Tess was sticking around to keep an eye on Maddie, so that she could arrest her, and haul her in front of the courts. Danny wouldn't be happy. Hopefully. Hopefully, he would be alive to be unhappy.
She wished that the glider could go faster. Of course, if they could go faster, the GIW agents would have been faster, and they would all be dead. So. Yeah. Best not say that one out loud. Not that Sam thought that Desiree would try to destroy the Ghost Zone, but the wishing ghost didn't always have complete control over her power.
She focused on flying the stupid glider. She didn't want to think about what could have happened. She didn't want to think about what had happened.
This Imhotep had better be able to help Danny. He'd better be at least as good as Frostbite. Otherwise... Sam didn't want to think about otherwise. She didn't want to think about all the bullet holes in her friend. Or the bloody gashes he had everywhere. Or the way he was coughing up blood. Or how blood had began to pour from his nose and ears only seconds after the Core had released him.
She wasn't sure that she had ever seen Danny quite that badly beaten.
Once they were farther from the Core, they started to see ghost animals and other ghosts. None of them attacked, however. In fact, many of them fled as the gliders passed by. Sam didn't want to examine the why of that too closely, either. She had to wonder, though, how many ghosts had been ended for the GIW to get as close to the core as they did.
(She wondered if Danny would join that number.)
.
.
.
It was a relief, when Tucker announced that the tracker had come to a halt, and a greater one when the hospital came into view. With a name like Imhotep, Jazz had expected a pyramid. She wasn't entirely disappointed in that regard. The hospital looked normal overall, like a high-end modern hospital, but its tallest building was topped by a step pyramid, and its signs were printed in Hieroglyphs and Greek. Oh, and there were outside doors on all floors, instead of just the ground floor, but that was normal for ghost-constructed buildings.
They abandoned the gliders in a parking lot that was largely occupied by chariots. They didn't know how to turn them off, so they didn't bother wasting time trying to figure out how. It was hot here. Hotter than Jazz was used to in the Ghost Zone. Jazz hoped that Danny, with his affinity for cooler, cold, and even freezing temperatures, wasn't too bothered by it, although she supposed that the Core wouldn't have suggested coming here if they thought it would harm him.
Tess was the only one who could read the signs, so she led the way. Jazz, Sam, and Tucker had all learned a little Greek, but only enough to be polite to the denizens of Pandora's realm, not enough to decipher medical terms, or even to get directions without a whole lot of hand-waving. Danny was the one who was good with languages. Tucker had his PDA, with its translation tool, but Jazz would bet that this wasn't typical, human Greek, or Ancient Greek, this was Ghost Zone, several thousand years' diverged, Egyptian-influenced Greek. Tucker's PDA would be of limited utility. It was also, judging from some of his muttering, about to run out of battery.
(Most of his muttering was about how he hated hospitals, and how Ghost Zone hospitals should be more creepy than Earth hospitals, how Spectra had better not show up, and how this was really a tech expo.)
She led them into the main building, stepping into an atrium. It wasn't exactly bustling, but there were a fair number of ghosts going to and fro, and there was a receptionist situated at a desk in the center. Its decor was Egyptian-styled, with Hieroglyphs and carved into the walls, bright, stylized paintings, and gold fittings.
"Stay here," said Tess. "I'm gonna find out where they've gone." She walked up to the receptionist's counter, and began to converse with the blue-skinned ghost woman there.
"Tucker," said Maddie, "where's Danny?"
"I think that that's what she's trying to find out," said Tucker, not looking up from his PDA. His skin was a bit pale. He could deal with being shot by joking, but not a hospital... Go figure...
"But you have a tracker on him. We don't need to wait."
"Mom, really? Are we really going to do this? If you took a moment to think about it, you'd realize why that was a bad idea. I mean, I mean that, sure, we can go through walls here, but then we might run into a surgery, or a sick ghost, or gosh, who knows what. Humans don't react well to that kind of surprise, what makes you think that ghosts will? And if we don't go through walls, we have to go find our way through the normal way, which would be harder that you'd think. A lot of these places, they don't have what you would consider normal floor plans."
The receptionist nodded to Tess, and picked up an old-fashioned phone from its cradle on her desk. She began speaking into it.
"Look, Tess will come back, and tell us where he is and, more importantly, how he is. Because we might not be able to see him, he might be in surgery, or something, did you see all those-"
"Jazz," interrupted Sam. "Breathe. Danny will be fine. He's always fine," she muttered, sounding like she didn't really believe it.
Jazz opened her mouth, to say what, she didn't really know, but then she saw the tall, muscular, ghosts in 'Security' uniforms approaching. "Guys," she said instead, "do you see..?"
"Yeah," said Sam, turning defensively.
"Don't fight," warned Tucker. "Hospitals in the Zone usually operate under truces. If we start a fight, everyone here will be after us. I hate hospitals..."
Then Tess walked back over, slipping in between the security guards. "I'm kinda making an assumption here, but you're Maddie Fenton, right?"
"Yeah, that's her," said Jeremy. At Maddie's death stare, he raised his hands defensively. "Hey, I don't know what's going on here, and I don't really know you guys. First Mirror shows up, and then we're evacuating, then these lunatics show up, and then the world is ending, and now we're here, so I'm just..." He waved his hands helplessly.
"I'm sorry, dude," said Tess. "Sounds like you've had a rough time. Anyway, Maddie Fenton, I'm putting you into custody. Or, asking the hospital to put you in custody. Whatever. Uh, you don't really have any rights, exactly. Libra'll give you an advocate, if you can't attract one yourself. Eventually. I'm not gonna force you to say anything. Not my job. Ugh. This is hard. Look, you guys, just take her, will you? And just her, okay?"
"Look, Mom, don't fight them," said Jazz. "We'll come back for you."
