This is a bit short, but the last one was longer than usual, so I guess it all evens out in the end.
I'm almost to the end of my NaNoWriMo story. I've only got 1000 words left to win, but I'll probably need a bit more than that to bring the story to a proper close. I've got just under a week left. Wish me luck!
Special note: It has come to my attention that using the name of an Inuit deity for the bad Judge, and names of western deities for the good Judges may come across as culturally insensitive. This was not at all my intention. I looked at a large number of justice related deities for my three judges, and I only chose the name 'Issitoq' for the chief Observant because Issitoq's wikipedia page describes him as a giant floating eyeball, and that was just too appropriate not to use, while Themis was chosen due to my familiarity with Greek myth and the show's ties to Greek myth, and Ma'at was chosen because she originated on a different continent (Africa). I apologize if I have offended anyone, but I'm not going to change the names at this point, especially as it was never my intention to have these characters closely resemble the deities and spirits they borrow their names from.
SkreeSkraa: Thank you for your encouragement! I don't know if I could call this dedication, though. I've only been posting chapters for this since June. I know that there are fics with fewer chapters, but longer life overall that still update semi-regularly. As for the Observants... I don't know if I'd call them stupid, exactly.
Great: Sort of. I'm trying to write Issitoq as Obssessed with order, power, propriety, taboos and Taboos, punishing people who go against those, etc. Danny's existence goes against what Issitoq thinks of as the natural order, so of course he hates him. Putting such a creature in charge... Well, Issitoq just can't let that stand, now can he?
Insomniac Dormouse: I hope this chapter lives up to your expectations!
Raisa Petrova: This is true. And no problem! Once the holiday break starts, I'll have two whole weeks to work on my buffer.
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Chapter 90: Long Sea Voyage
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Danny sat on the most forward bench, waiting for Elysium to come into view. Jazz was sitting next to him, reading a book. Danny was enjoying the warmth she was giving off, or, more accurately, what that warmth meant. She was close. She was with him.
Danny didn't know if she knew what that meant to him. She probably did. She was practically his therapist, for all that she said that it was risky for people who were close in other ways to have a patient/therapist relationship. Danny didn't really get that. He knew some psychology from Jazz, but things like that, well. It went over his head. It seemed to him that a personal relationship would be better than talking about private things with a complete stranger.
Whatever. Jazz knew more than him about that kind of stuff. Still. She was the one he talked to. Not a stranger. Not even a ghost stranger.
He was rambling.
"You think that they're ready?" asked Danny.
"Hm? You mean, do I think that your classmates are ready to immerse themselves in ghost culture and behave civilly while doing it?"
"You say that as thought there's only one ghost culture," teased Danny.
"My answer would be 'no.'"
"Yeah," said Danny. "Me too." He sighed, and leaned on Jazz, doing his best to bother her. What could he say? He was her little brother. It was his job to bother her, and she didn't seem to mind. Much. "What are you reading anyway?"
"Oh, it's fascinating," said Jazz. "Clockwork gave it to me. It's about liminality. Those kids we met, back in you lair, did you notice their eyes?"
"Yes," said Danny. "They're liminal. I guess we never had a chance to talk about it."
"There was a lot going on, wasn't there?" she mused. "Danny," she said, after a pause, "I'm liminal, too, aren't I?"
"Mhm," hummed Danny. She knew this already. "Everyone in Amity, probably."
"How liminal?"
"Hard to quantify," said Danny.
"With respect to those kids?"
"Well," said Danny, straightening, glancing back at the knot of students hanging over the port side, "you're more liminal, I think. You've lived on a thin spot your whole life. They've only been exposed the last couple of years. They've just had more access to ectoplasm."
"Right now," said Jazz, trailing her fingers through a wisp of ectoplasmic fog, "I think that we have the same access to ectoplasm."
"What are you getting at?"
"Do my eyes ever change color, Danny?"
He thought about that for a minute. "They might," said Danny, finally. "I- I've never been sure that it wasn't a trick of the light, and didn't want to bother you with something that might not be real, and you already knew about liminality. Valerie's eyes change color," he added. "When she's angry enough, they flash red, like her suit."
"Really? What color do my eyes turn?"
"Gold," said Danny. "That's why I thought it might be the light, you know? I still think that it might be the light," he continued, stubbornly.
"I don't think so," said Jazz, ruffling Danny's hair. He stuck his tongue out at her, but she ignored it. "There are some things in this book that I would like to try."
"What, so it has, like, instructions? For what?" asked Danny, now interested.
"Sort of." She rubbed her lower lip. "This book is old. And weird. It uses the term 'magi' for human liminals in the Ghost Zone. Which is cool, but also, I don't know, kind of lame, too. There's a lot of stuff that I can already do. Things you've shown me how to do. The whole, 'humans are the ghosts in the Ghost Zone' thing. But there's other stuff, too. I'm not sure how to describe most of this. They almost seem like spells. The others are meditations. 'Touch your inner-self' kinds of things. But I guess that anything involving humans and ghost powers is going to be weird."
Danny peered into the book. "I bet that you could do this one," he said tapping an illustration. "You should try it."
"Now?"
"No time like the present," he said, grinning at her impishly as he parroted what she always said about his homework.
She smacked him lightly. "What about our traveling companions over there? We aren't exactly hidden."
"You could blame anything that happens on a passing ghost." He leaned on her again. "You know, when we're like this, I can feel you."
Jazz laughed. "I assume that you're not talking about your sense of touch."
"That too," said Danny, "and you're warm, but, yeah, that's not what I'm talking about." He paused, and blinked lazily, curling closer to his sister. "I can feel you. Your ectosignature."
Jazz frowned. "I thought you couldn't do that in the Ghost Zone. Too much ambient ectoplasm."
"Not usually," said Danny. "But I can when we're this close, and I think that it's gotten stronger the last few days. I could feel you in the hospital, when I was unconscious."
"Do you think that it has anything to do with, um, being blessed?"
"I don't know. It could just be being here, in the Ghost Zone. I don't think that you've ever spent more than a night, have you?"
"No," said Jazz. She suddenly sat straight up, dislodging Danny in the process. "Sorry," she said sheepishly, as he re-balanced himself. "What about Sam and Tucker? Can you feel them now, too?"
"I- Maybe? I don't know."
"You should check. Where are they, anyway?"
"Napping. I got my sleep schedule reset courtesy of drugs, but theirs is still kinda screwy. How are you managing, anyway?"
Jazz shrugged. "I'm fine."
"Okay," said Danny, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't involve leaning on Jazz. "I still think that you should try that thing in the book. It isn't that far off of intangibility."
Jazz eyed him skeptically. "Danny, this is straight up telekinesis. I'd say that it is miles away from intangibility."
"Not really. Look, human intangibility here is basically just telling ectoplasm to back off and leave you alone. It's you telling the ectoplasm to be intangible to you. This is telling the ectoplasm to do stuff for you." He starred at the book contemplatively. "You could probably try visualizing it as hands or something. Visualization is important. Ooh. Now I have a vision," he gasped dramatically, "a vision of you, surrounded by dozens of disembodied hands! Think of how much more quickly you could shelve books at the library!"
"Oh, stop it," said Jazz, with good humor. "Maybe I'll give it a try once we get to Elysium. You should talk to Sam and Tucker, though, see if you can feel them, too."
"Yeah, I know." He started looking forward again. "You aren't mad, are you?"
"Why would I be mad? Like you said, we haven't had much time to talk about this, even since we got aboard... this... Did we ever get the name of this ship?"
"Yeah, it's the Glaciinsulo."
"The iceberg?"
"Yeah."
"That's kind of hilarious."
"I know, right? Hey! Is that Elysium?"
Jazz stood and went to the rail. "It could be," she said.
"I'm going to go get Sam and Tucker," said Danny, standing and rubbing a kink out of his knee.
"We probably won't get there for another couple of hours," said Jazz. "Even if that is it, it doesn't look any bigger than a thumbnail at this point. You can let them sleep."
Danny blinked. "Yeah... I would, but Sam made me promise to wake them up when Elysium came into view. She thinks that we'll need crowd control."
"She got a promise out of you?"
"Uh-huh." He sighed, and scowled. "I don't get it. She always knows what to say."
"I guess she just knows you, Danny."
"Yeah," he said. He smiled, all of his features softening. "That's a good thing, though. I have to go."
"Would you like me to-?"
"No, I've got this," said Danny, waving over his shoulder. He padded to the door below, pleased to note that he had acquired the knack of putting the tip of the cane down silently, and waved briefly at Dr Iceclaw, who was monitoring the other students, before descending.
The lights below were dimmed. It probably would have seemed quite dark to a human, but Danny had no issues. He easily navigated to the hammocks Sam and Tucker had claimed. Then he sighed again. Sam was not an easy person to wake up. So. Tucker first.
He went to prod the other boy, but paused, instead simply laying his hand on Tucker's shoulder. Like Jazz had said before, he shouldn't be able to detect the teeny, tiny ectosignature that Tucker had while surrounded by the continuous 'noise' of the Ghost Zone. He could feel back home, in Amity, but Amity had a lot less ambient ectoplasm. The only way that he would be able to sense it, would be if Tucker's ectosignature had grown, or if Danny had gotten more sensitive to ectosignatures. He was pretty sure the second wasn't true. If anything, based on the beating his core had received, he should be less sensitive.
But Danny could feel it, a persistent static hum beneath his fingertips. A smile worked it's way onto his face. It wasn't wrong for him to be happy, was it? He would have waited longer, listened longer, but, well, he had promised.
He gently shook Tucker's shoulder, then, when the boy began to grumble himself away, he gingerly jostled Sam. She threw her boot at him, which he caught.
"Sorry, Danny," she mumbled.
"Nah, it's cool. Um. So, we can see Elysium from the front of the ship, now."
"Okay, great," she said, rubbing her eyes. "So, now, what did we decide we had to do, Tuck?"
Tucker, groaned loudly, and pulled out his PDA. Then, in a monotone voice, he read, "Remind morons to bow to Pandora, remind morons to add water to their wine, remind morons not to insult the advocates, remind morons not to ask about deaths, remind morons not to ask about lives, remind morons not to ask about Obsessions-"
"Dude," interrupted Danny, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and sitting himself down on his own hammock. "Did you have to call them morons every time?"
"Sam made me."
"Sam. Why."
"They are morons," complained Sam.
"Not all of them," said Danny.
"Yeah, I know. I'm only reminding the morons. Not the ones that actually get it."
"Ah, okay then. Fair enough. Hey, um, guys. I think I should tell you something..."
