Hello. Here is the Friday update. Not much to say here. Sunday's update will be the last one this month. The next week, I will be doing Ectober, and will be taking a short break from this. Updates will start again in November.

Feedback & criticism is always appreciated!

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Chapter 80: Looking

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It would be wrong to call Themis gleeful, when Adrestia and the Eumenides made their report. Or wrathful. Rather, she was suspended somewhere between the two emotions.

She was also, well, cautious. Justice might be blind, but it wasn't deaf. Themis had just spent the last several hours in a meeting discussing making Phantom King of All Ghosts. The Ancients, who would make the final decision about the matter, were clearly leaning towards making him King. Equally obviously, the Observants would do anything to keep that from happening. She knew that this trial would, inevitably, have political consequences. That fools and unrelated persons from all over the Zone would come to stake an interest in the outcome.

It was a good thing that Libra was in charge of this case, if only by virtue of finding it first. From the way that Ma'at, who was standing next to her, was reacting, the third Judge had something of a soft spot for the young ghost as well. She had hidden it well during the meeting, but now it was coming out. Or maybe it had just developed. Themis was close to developing one herself, if only to spite Issitoq.

But, well.

Justice was blind. She had to remain impartial.

Sometimes it grated on her, that the Ghost Zone no longer had a true police force. Her people tried, but their jurisdiction and area of interest was sadly limited. They were, overwhelmingly, lawyers, clerks, and judges. There were a few 'correctional officers' but, well, most of those weren't exactly people that you wanted to empower to deal with people before their guilt was determined. Unfortunately, true police forces were relatively new, when compared to the broad sweep of history. There weren't a terribly large number of police officers who had become ghosts thus far, and many of those were lured into Walker's service, and Walker was just, well... He would benefit from a visit to the University of Ys' Psychology Department patient care department. His Obsession was completely out of control.

"Adrestia," she said, making her decision, "I want you and Astraea to go back to young Daniel's lair, and collect all other witnesses that you find there. You should also take Miss Watson, so that she can examine his lair. This has the makings of a complex case, and we must have all relevant evidence." She thought a moment longer. "And I believe that we should make a case against any surviving GIW agents as well. Attacking Ereshkigal," said Themis, using the name that the Core had most recently introduced themselves as, "has been Sacrilege for as long as I can remember, and I doubt that they could reach Ereshkigal without breaking the Taboo of Murder. Not to mention all the attempted murder their actions imply. Also, whatever they were trying to do in front of young Daniel's lair is unlikely to have had friendly intentions. Find out what it was."

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Ellie was talking to Mikey and Ricky (they were pretty fun, actually, except that Ricky was being difficult), and the two little old ladies that they had been waiting with, when she felt the Door open. That was weird.

She and Mirage had collected all of the Amity Park people in Harmony except for Valerie, and she had been feeling pretty good about the whole thing. The Door, though... That put her guard back up.

"Echo is looking at it," said Mirage, quietly, not quite whispering. "Shade and Umbra are standing by, but they're still keeping an eye on the agents."

"Who is it?" asked Ellie, her voice pitched just as low. Even so, Ricky and Mikey were staring at her strangely.

"I think- Huh. Interesting. It's the people we talked to earlier, except more of them? One more, anyway."

"Yeah? Is she Greek, too?"

"I don't think that the winged ones were Greeks, were they? Greeks usually do the four armed thing."

"Only usually, and that's only the Greeks who weren't ever actually Greeks. The Dei."

"I know that," said Ellie. "I'm not completely uneducated. Just, you know, mostly, and, uh, not at all formally." She blushed, suddenly, and looked away, abruptly finding herself looking straight at Ricky. Somehow, she blushed harder. "Okay, we're just going to step outside for a second, okay?" She grabbed Mirage's wrist, and pulled him outside.

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"So," said Mikey, "there totally was a girl version of Phantom. The website was right. Pay up."

"I don't have my wallet," grumbled Ricky.

"What, why?"

"I don't know. It was gone three days ago, when we woke up. Was it just three days ago?"

"I don't know. I stopped trying to keep track when my phone died."

"God," said Paulina. "You two are such freaks. Everyone knows that the best info about Phantom is on-"

"Oh, don't you worry, dear heart," interrupted one of the old ladies, hobbling over to Paulina with a bowl of red hard candies. Mikey had tried a couple of them. They were all cinnamon, as far as he could tell. He had been hoping for cherry. "Want a bonbon?"

Paulina made a face. "Uh, no thanks. This figure doesn't keep itself."

Dash reached over her shoulder, and took two of them, gagging visibly after putting them in his mouth. Yeah. Cinnamon.

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"Um," said Ellie. "Hello?" Okay, so she and Mirage hadn't just 'stepped outside.' They had gone to meet their guests, and Ellie was now shouting at them from down the road. It wasn't totally, one-hundred percent polite, but Ellie just preferred for first (well, second) contact to be at a bit of a distance. Considering what had apparently happened to Danny, she thought that was fair.

"Hello there!" called Adrestia.

"My cousin had better be okay!" said Ellie. Okay, yeah. That wasn't really polite, either. So sue her.

"We took him to a hospital," said Adrestia, reverting to speaking volume as she got closer. The sisters stayed in the background, bickering with each other. The newcomer stood by, quietly. "He'll have the best doctors in the Zone after him, I'm sure."

"Don't you mean, looking after him?"

"No? I mean, have you ever seen a doctor after an active patient? Just awful. Terrifying. I can tell you from experience. But, uh, these aren't the bad kind of doctor. These guys swear by the Hippocratic Oath, and all that."

"Okay. And you... five are here because?"

"Oh. Yeah, this is Miss Watson. She's an investigator. Forensics, you know? She's here to look at things."

"What if I say that I don't want her to look at things?" asked Ellie, more inquisitive than aggressive.

"Well, we'd leave. But you do want the people who hurt your cousin found and punished, right? Speaking of, we're also here to pick up witnesses. Anyone who saw anything. Oh, and the agents. We noticed that you must have dragged them in? I doubt that you want to keep them, although it is your prerogative if you do. Seeing as they attacked your lair."

"No we don't want them." She glanced around, searching for Echo.

A sigh came from behind her ear. "I'll take you to them," said Echo. "I would have liked to... Oh, forget it. I'm not using a euphemism. They deserve to be punished. I've been doing that."

"Libra will do that, too," said Adrestia, "and more thoroughly."

"It isn't my choice, anyway," said Echo, flippantly. "Which one of you want to do this?"

"I will," said Alex.

"I'll go with you," said Tess. "But only to prove to you that I'm scarier."

"Oh my gosh," said Meg. "You're both scary. Give it a break."

"Yeah, but you're the least scary," accused Tess.

Meg glared. "Take that back," she hissed.

"Quit it, you three," said Adrestia. "Meg, you're scary, too, but you can be consistently friendly, too, unlike these idiots, so you're with me, getting witnesses. Okay?"

"Got it, Addy."

"Okay, nice. So. Danielle. Mind introducing us to your guests?"

"Okay, first off, call me Ellie."

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Jazz, Sam, and Tucker did not, of course, leave the room. Pandora did have to go, now that Danny had woken up. Like Dorathea, she had a country to run. That left the three of them with Clockwork.

Danny slept quietly, eerily silent, for quite some time. But then, when the last of the sedatives the doctors had given him started to wear off... Then he started to dream, his eyelids fluttering as his eyes twitched back and forth beneath them. When he started to dream, he started to mutter and moan. He started to toss, almost pulling his IV out twice. Once, he sat up with a start, clearly not truly conscious, but babbling, hysterical. They soothed him back, with difficulty, Clockwork doing most of the work.

But after that, Danny kept almost waking, caught between partial awareness and whatever nightmares he was having. He kept tossing and turning.

Then he started making these little, indistinct, sobbing sounds, these tiny, pained, pathetic keens, and reaching out, grasping at the covers. Sam had almost climbed into the bed with him, his nightmares always seemed to lessen with human contact, but Clockwork beat her to it. Danny curled into the older ghost, whimpering.

"He is not well," said the old ghost. "He might harm you. He would not mean to, he would never mean to, but look at the railing."

Sam did, brushing her hand along the frigid metal. There was an impression in the metal where Danny had seized it in his earlier panic. "You will be able to fix his core, won't you?" asked Sam.

(She remembered those few, agonizing moments on the day of the Accident, when she was so sure Danny was dead. She couldn't go through that again. She couldn't loose him. She would go crazy.)

"I will," said Clockwork, confidently. "But it will take time, and unfortunately, I cannot accelerate matters as I usually do."

"Because of the Observants?" asked Sam.

"Because of Danny's powers?" asked Tucker.

"Both are factors," said Clockwork, "but, no. It is simply a result of the function of cores. Imagine, Tucker, for a moment, if I were to accelerate your device, there, while you had the camera on. It could record hours in a moment. To accelerate a thinking organ... Well, much the same thing would occur. I doubt that you would wish that on Daniel. In any case, doing it that way it might not work at all, regardless of other factors. Cores are complex. We will have to look at his first, before we can determine the bast treatment."

"Indeed, Lord Clockwork," boomed Frostbite from the door. Sam jumped. She knew that ghosts were quiet, and she was used to ghosts sneaking up on her, but it still startled her sometimes when someone as big as Frostbite managed to enter a room without making a sound. He smiled in greeting, but his face quickly grew grim again. "We have finished preparations to transport the Great One."