Hello. I'm feeling a bit better today. Thank you for the happy thoughts.
So, earlier I told you that I am planning on doing Ectober Week and NaNoWriMo. Here's an update on that: During Ectober week, I will not be posting anything for this story, because I'll still be doing DP stuff. I will be posting during November, but I won't be writing, so it'll burn my buffer. Unless I get sick again before that, and loose buffer depth. I think that's reasonable?
Mirae Alla: Yep. That would be correct, but Jazz heard eight, so she said eight. Yep. Also, I apparently can't count and write at the same time.
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Chapter 76: Meanwhile, Back on the Farm
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Ellie, after some debate, both internal and external, decided to haul the surviving GIW agents into the lair. Mirage had reasoned that they would be less likely to cause trouble that way, where the shadows could keep an eye on them. Ellie tended to agree, but this felt gross somehow. Ellie was already feeling rather attached to the lair, and she had hardly even stepped into it.
She wasn't sure how she felt about that. She had never liked being tied down, and this was definitely an anchor. At the same time, it made her feel close to Danny, and she liked that. In a lot of ways, he was her only real family. Sam and Tucker were friends. Jazz was great, Ellie loved Jazz, but Ellie still didn't know her all that well. Not really. Not as Ellie. She knew her through memories inherited from Danny. Although Danny had introduced her to Clockwork, and Ellie really liked him, really wanted to get to know him better, she still wasn't completely comfortable with the older ghost. Not like Danny was.
(She had talked about that with Jazz. Jazz had theorized that her bad experience with Vlad had made her distrustful of all adults.)
The shadow, Mirage, dragged the agents away, one by one. Well, dragged was probably the wrong word. The shadow was swinging the unconscious agents over his shoulders, and then jogging away, up the stairs.
After Ellie had dumped the last one over the threshold, she finally stepped over herself.
"You aren't going to be seeing us at our best," said Mirage, apologetically.
"Is this Danny's house?" asked Ellie, curiously. "I mean, is it modeled on Danny's house, because this pretty clearly isn't Amity Park."
"It's modeled on Amity Park, actually. This part is, anyway."
"This part?"
Mirage smiled at her, as they walked through the kitchen. "This place is pretty big. I think you'll like it."
"I hope so."
They walked out the door, which was oddly, but, Ellie felt, appropriately, not a door at all, but only a doorway, only an opening. There was a large, woody, thorny hedge to the left of the doorway. Ellie saw the outlines of bodies in the hedge. That looked like where the shadow had tossed the agents. This was confirmed a moment later, when Mirage threw the last agent onto the hedge. It almost seemed to eat the agent.
Ellie was a lot of things right now, but not surprised.
The plants all over the roads were interesting. There were a lot of different flowers, lacy, fluffy flowers. Looking closely, many of the denser bunches were situated to cover bloodstains. The sky was very pretty, very reminiscent of the aurora she sometimes saw when traveling in the arctic circle. It was, however, faded, gray, in places. They darkened as she watched.
"We're still trying to fix that," said Mirage. "Those monsters... We stopped the worst of what they would have done here, but they still did quite a bit of damage." Then he brightened. "I should tell you, that we actually have quite a few people living here, as semi-permanent residents. Danny was... Sort of upset that we didn't tell him right away. Usually they live here, but we evacuated them to deeper in, because of the Guys in White."
"Okay? Is that why Danny was here?"
"No. That story is, um. Harder."
"Oh," said Ellie, rubbing the back of her neck. "I wish I could be with him."
(She could tell that Danny was scared, that he was hurt.)
"He'd be happier with you here," assured Mirage.
"If you say so," said Ellie. "I'll take your word for it. But I want that story."
"Well, I guess it started with the assembly..."
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The inhabitants of Harmony and the visitors from Amity didn't quite know what to make of one another. Both groups were used to ghosts, both were liminal, both lived in similar, identical, in some ways, environments.
However, they groups were very different. The group from Harmony was much larger, of course, and consisted of many age groups, instead of almost entirely children. The people of Harmony also considered ghosts to be part of their group, not outsiders, not nuisances, not menaces. The people from Amity, especially Jack, had some trouble with that. The people of Harmony tended to get along well. Danny's classmates typically did not. The people of Harmony, while in a relatively strange place, were inured to such places. They had traveled through the Ghost Zone, or, in their parlance, the Outside to get there. Those from Amity were used to Amity, which, while strange, was only one place, and was fairly normal most of the time. For certain values of normal. In any case, they had spent their lives in the 'real' world, not counting a brief stint in the Ghost Zone when Pariah Dark had invaded.
Now, the people of Harmony were used to welcoming new groups of people. Every one of them had been 'new people' at one time or another, stumbling through the mystery that was the Ghost Zone, and the lair. All of them had needed help, or wanted help, and they had been given it. But they couldn't deny that these particular newcomers were especially difficult.
The students, Jack, and Mr Lancer had awkwardly been placed with the other children and their parents, and Anthony Trent had awkwardly made his way back to them, to speak with Jack and Mr Lancer. Well, at this point, mostly Mr Lancer. Jack was thoroughly distracted. Distracted by the surroundings, distracted by the ghosts, distracted by the people.
"I have to admit, I'm a little confused," said Anthony. "How did you get in here in the first place without going through Harmony?" Anthony had asked this question already, and had gotten a rather evasive answer. "I would understand if you said that you don't know, but that doesn't seem to be what you are saying."
"Well, I don't entirely understand the logic behind it, but..." Mr Lancer trailed off, glancing at his students and Jack. "Some parts aren't exactly nice. Or public knowledge"
"We could go elsewhere to discuss it," said Anthony.
"I can't leave my students."
"I can understand that, but my people want answers."
"So do we," countered Mr Lancer.
"I can explain," said Mirror. Mr Lancer jumped. The way the shadows could appear so silently, without any warning, unnerved him, even though he'd had a few days to get used to it. Anthony, on the other hand, seemed unaffected. Perhaps he was just inured to the way ghosts moved, having lived among them for... Actually, Mr Lancer wasn't sure how long these people had been here, and he'd heard some of the students speculating that they weren't people at all, but more shadows.
Mr Lancer didn't believe it, but it was an interesting theory. Something that he might see in a discussion of a literary work. Maybe he should give them all extra credit for this ordeal.
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"So," said Byron, having selected the most approachable-looking of the newcomers to interrogate. "You're from Amity Park, right? That's what you guys said before?"
"Yeah," said Mikey, sticking close to Ricky.
"That's in America? Or Canada?" asked Sonia.
"Which state?" asked Charlotte, who had managed to rejoin the older children. "America is the one with states, right?" she whispered to Alice.
"Um, yeah, America," said Mikey. "Wh-What- Uh. Where are you from? Originally?"
"And how did you get here, anyway?" asked Ricky.
"Uh, we walked," said Ryan.
"Lets see. I'm from California, Alice is from Britain. Ryan, where are you from, again?"
"Australia," said Ryan. "But my Dad was from Florida, so we spent a lot of time flying back and forth. You know how that is."
The blank stares he received from the Casper High kids told him that this was not the case. He shrugged.
"I'm from New York. Upstate, not the city," said Sonia.
"I'm from Washington," said Teddy. "But I had cousins in France. That's why I was on the plane."
"Not me. My whole family just fell into a hole one day. We were on a road trip to Arizona," said Bobby. "Oh. I was from Oregon, though. Willamette Valley."
"I'm from Germany. I was going to be an exchange student," said Ben.
The other children from Harmony chimed in, filling out the list. The younger ones, those around Charlotte's age, often didn't know where they had originally lived. They had known their street addresses, and occasionally they knew the city they lived in, but there hadn't been a reason for them to know either of those for years, much less the state that they had lived in. Or province. Not all of them had been from America.
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Valerie didn't know how she had gotten into this situation.
Yes, she could trace the chain of events from this moment back to the assembly, more or less, she was still a little fuzzy on what had happened between Danny and Phantom, but physically, she knew what had happened to herself. Still, she just couldn't understand how those events had happened.
She had seen down the barrel of that riffle. She had been sure that she was going to die. That she was going to be killed. By a human. She would have expected a ghost to do it, but not a human. Not a person.
Now, after an unproductive attempt to follow her ex-boyfriend, his mom, his two 'besties,' and a bunch of creepy ghostly shadows, she was sitting in a house. Drinking tea. With a tiny old British lady and her grandson.
The grandson was the one who had picked her up off the street. He had been dressed in dark clothes, and now, in his kitchen, was still carrying an ectoweapon slung over his shoulder. He was kind of hot, actually. For an older guy. He almost looked like an older Danny. It was incredibly frustrating, though, that he had insisted on bringing her home, and disrupting her search for Danny.
The old woman gave her another cup of tea.
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Nathan and Lester had stayed in the house at first. They weren't crazy, not like Valerie, and the A-listers. Who knew if there were other people with guns running around here? At least the shadows had caught all the ones here, and the shadows had never evinced a desire to kill them. The opposite, relly. The shadows had protected them.
The screams, though, had been... The screams had been bad. The twins had retreated to a back room to wait them out. When Mirage had brought them back out, smiling encouragingly and flecked with red dots, they hadn't seen any sign of the agents whatsoever. Not blood, not bodies, not drag marks. Nothing. The streets were all vines and toothy flowers, joined, while Nathan and Lester hid, by blue and violet grasses.
Mirage had led them, quickly, quickly, quickly, away from where the agents attacked them, and to a house where two old ladies pinched their cheeks, and called them sweetheart, and sugar, and apparently thought that they were their grandchildren, or nephews, or something. Then Mirage had left. A young woman had popped in briefly, checked on the older women, glared suspiciously at Nathan and Lester before muttering something about looking for more soldiers to shoot.
"I hope Valerie's okay," said Lester, wistfully.
"This is all your fault," said Nathan.
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Paulina had, of course, tried to follow Phantom. Following Phantom was always the right choice. Sooner or later he would realize that she was his one true love. Not Manson or Gray, no matter what that shadow, Mirage, had tried to suggest. No one turned down Paulina, gently or otherwise. She'd wear him down eventually.
In the meantime, Phantom would keep her safe. Like always.
Of course, she got horribly lost in the meantime. Until she found her own house. Or the copy of her house? She wasn't sure how things worked here. She walked in. The inside had been changed, beyond the doors. It looked like someone else had been living there. Someone who liked to collect carved wooden animals.
It made her skin crawl. This was her house! Well. No it wasn't. Paulina knew that. But it felt like it should have been.
She found a room where there were fewer wooden animals, and settled in to wait.
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Dash tried to follow Paulina, at first. She was his friend, even though he didn't always understand her, and they didn't always get along.
But Dash was dizzy from all the blood he had lost, and his ear hurt. He was practically deaf. (Not to mention scared, but Dash Baxter didn't do scared.)
He thought that she was probably going towards the Fenton place, seeing as she was going after Phantom, and the Fentons had all that ghost stuff. He had been to FentonWorks maybe a dozen times before, to get tutored by Jazz, mostly, and everyone knew where the Fentons lived. It was hard to miss, with all the neon. But this Amity, or Harmony, or whatever, was just a little bit different. All the plants threw him off, and he couldn't see the neon's glow. It reminded him of... Something. One of those too-common missing days. Whatever. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that he was lost. He had never been in this part of town before. He bet that it was where the nerds lived. He walked into what looked like a re-purposed Nasty Burger (re-named Quick Eats) and peered over the counter. He was hungry. Maybe he could get some food here.
