Wow. Chapter 91. We're coming up on chapter 100 soon. I kind of want to do something special for chapter 100. Like an event, or something. Or is that too weird? I just don't know what. Maybe a poll. Do you think a poll would be a good idea? I might do a poll.
So, NaNoWriMo is coming to a close. I managed to get over 57500 words down and reach a conclusion for the story. So, yay! Writing that much has made me really tired though. That's a hard pace for me to keep. I'm also almost at the end of my buffer for this, so, yeah. I had fun, but I'm glad it's done.
Happy Friday and thank you for reviewing!
MrsFrizzle: Your questions should be answered in the next several chapters, I don't want to give spoilers. They're all totally valid, though! Just, those reactions are what I want to explore, and I haven't quite decided how to handle them yet.
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Chapter 91: Whale
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"Does this mean that we're going to get ghost powers?" asked Tucker after Danny finished his explanation. He had mixed feelings about this. He was excited, sure, but he hadn't exactly been great at handling personal power in the past. Actually, he had proven to be downright terrible at dealing with power.
More than once.
Yes, as Danny would say, both times he had been dealing with mind control. The first time he had been practically overshadowed, towards the end.
That didn't make Tucker feel much better. Both times, the mind control had started of gentle, subtle, feeding on dark feelings of jealousy, envy, and resentment. Feelings that he did have. He didn't have them anymore. He had seen how much Danny's powers ate at him, how much they weighed him down. Not to mention his Obsessions. Tucker could take a day off from ghost hunting, Danny couldn't.
Sam looked a bit happier about it, but still dubious. That was the expression she had worn when Nephthys had told them about the Pilgrimage. Sam hadn't quite the same experiences with mind control, power, and corruption as Tucker, her experience with Undergrowth notwithstanding, but she had her own issues with going too far.
(They all did.)
Danny looked eager, but apprehensive. Like he was half afraid that Tucker and Sam would be angry with him. That was ridiculous, of course, this wasn't something Danny had any control over, and even if it was, it wasn't like Tucker and Sam would have blamed him. It was like he wanted to be excited, wanted to be happy, but he was waiting to see how Sam and Tucker reacted.
"Probably?" said Danny, shrugging. "I don't really know. I think-" his eyes unfocused, and Tucker had the suspicion that there were some ghost weirdness going on, "I think that those kids, the ones from Harmony, they aren't as liminal as you are, not quite, but they can do things." He drummed his fingers on his knee. "Yeah, so, probably."
"Yeah, okay," said Tucker. That's what he had thought.
"What about an Obsession?" asked Sam. Tucker blinked. He hadn't thought about that. "I mean," continued Sam, "I know that with the Pilgrimage, to become a ghost, that's, I don't know, a far future, it's definitely going to happen eventually kind of thing, but this is a lot more immediate," she glanced at Tucker, "and I do know that liminality makes us sort of obsessive to begin with, but this is different."
"I... I don't think so," said Danny, slowly. "That- To have an Obsession, you'd have to have a core. If you had a core, even a little one, I think that you would be guaranteed, or at least really likely, to become a ghost, and then the Pilgrimage wouldn't be necessary. But then, the Pilgrimage might give you a core. That might be how it works." He sighed, heavily. "I wi-" he stopped dead. "I should have asked for more technical details."
"Yeah, no w-word stuff, dude."
"Wouldn't that be just the thing to happen, though?" asked Sam.
"That is what our luck is like. Hey, that might not be the worst way to get everyone home. Desiree, I mean. It isn't like she can't be negotiated with."
"Let's put her on the bottom of the list of options," said Sam, sliding out of her hammock.
"You want to put her under the Box Ghost?" asked Danny, sounding surprised.
Tucker stared. "Dude, what's even going on with your list?"
Danny blushed. "Well, he can find portals. That's why he always shows up."
"But... You can find portals to Amity. With your ghost homing instinct. Is that still not working?" Tucker asked with concern. He had thought that Danny was getting better.
"It's working, it's working, I'm fine. I'm just not sure that we want to come out in Amity, because of the agents, and I want to keep our options open."
"Good point," said Sam. She rubbed the side of her nose, dislodging sand from the corner of her eye. "But let's shelve this. I think this falls into the 'worry about it later' category and I had you wake us up so that we could make sure our beloved classmates don't work themselves into a frenzy-" There was a thump from above, a shriek, and then shouts from Mr Lancer and Dr Iceclaw. Sam deflated, "Too late."
Danny was already halfway up the stairs.
"Back up?" asked Tucker.
"Back up," said Sam, resigned.
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It turned out that there was a ghost.
That went without saying, of course. Dr Iceclaw was there. He was a ghost. But there was another ghost, an animal ghost, not one that possessed sapience, if Danny was any judge. It was a giant whale. Dr Iceclaw and Valerie had held it off with ice so far, but it was clear that the yeti was tiring. He was a doctor, not a whaler!
… Danny really needed to watch that series again. First, though, he had to do something about the whale.
Valerie wasn't doing much better. She wasn't used to fighting such large ghosts.
He mentally ran through his list of options. There weren't a lot of them. He had been told not to use his powers, he certainly couldn't transform, and he didn't have any weapons. Why hadn't he planned for this? This was foreseeable! Predictable, even!
"Danny," said Jazz, coming up alongside him, "breathe." She was wearing the Fenton Peeler in all it's white and silver glory. She handed Danny a blaster. "Here," she said, "and this, too."
"Is this Mom's staff?"
"Yeah," said Jazz. "Remeber, the-"
"The spear extension, yeah."
"Great," said Jazz. "I've got the bow, you take the stern." She grabbed Tucker, who had just arrived from downstairs, and ran off.
Danny exchanged a glance with Sam, who had both wrist rays at the ready. They were running to the stern a moment later, Danny ignoring the pain in his ankle, yelling at the class to get below-decks, where things were at least nominally safer, and they wouldn't be underfoot.
Jazz's plan was mostly solid, for something that she had most likely come up with on the fly. With fighters on both the bow and stern, Valerie doing aerial work, and Dr Iceclaw in the center, they could cover most of the ship.
The top half of it, anyway.
It quickly evolved that the whale, while not possessing a human intellect, wasn't particularly keen on being shot at. It reverted to the 'natural' method for a whale to attack a ship. It came at it from below.
This was harder for the defenders to deal with. The ship was in the way, keeping them from shooting at the whale, and the way that the whale kept ramming the ship wasn't helping. Nor was all the screaming from Danny's less-experienced classmates. Valerie, with her board (and, goodness, her suit had repaired that quickly), could circle the ship, and attack the whale more directly, but having her face the huge ghost alone (even only relatively alone), made Danny's core throb.
Danny put his foot on the port railing.
Sam half-turned towards him from where she was standing on starboard. "Danny, what-?"
Danny stepped forward, his foot leaving the railing. Sam gasped.
The thing was, in the Ghost Zone, gravity wasn't so much a law as a suggestion. His other foot landed on the wooden planking that made up the ship's side.
"Danny, what the heck-! Oh. Okay then."
Danny looked down to see Sam looking at him from the railing, her perception of gravity at right angles to his. He shrugged. The boat shook again. They both went back to work, Danny running down the side of the ship, Sam back across the deck.
This was better. Much better. He had a clear shot, now. He raised his blaster and fired. The shots weren't much more than a distraction, honestly. The whale's hide was thick, and from this vantage, he could see the majority of the shot glance off, leaving little damage. To do damage to the ghost, Danny would either need something very sharp, or would have to hit something vulnerable, something soft, something tender. Valerie had apparently realized that, too. She was aiming for its eyes.
She wasn't, quite, good enough to hit them, though.
All of the attacks were aggravating the whale, however, and it responded by opening its huge, toothy maw, and gathering a ball of fuchsia energy on the tip of its thick gray tongue. Heck, there wasn't really anything Danny could do about that. He flinched as the blast was fired, and the ship jumped, its programmed defenses kicking in and letting it dodge the blast, which shot into the ether.
Danny steadied himself, his ankle screaming, his newly-healed muscles aching. He must have made a sound, because Valerie zoomed down next to him.
"What are you doing?" she demanded. "And how are you doing that?"
"I'll explain later," he said. Then he smiled, masking his pain. "Maybe I'll teach you in Elysium. Here, take this." He gave her the staff, activating it. The ecto-spear sprang out. "You won't get through that hide with your normal stuff."
Valerie sent him an odd look, just barely visible through her face plate. "Thanks," she said.
"No problem," said Danny, sighting down his blaster again. Despite his less than ideal position, he was getting much closer to the ghost's eyes than Valerie could.
This was incredibly frustrating. If he could access his powers, this fight would have already been over. Yes, this was a relatively powerful animal ghost, one with a clear grudge against boats, but Danny had fought stronger. His ice could get through the ghost's skin with no problem, not to mention his shields, his speed, his... There was no point to this. He had to work with what he had.
Which was a blaster and his mastery of the mind-tricks that made the Ghost Zone so much fun.
Wow. It was like the exact opposite of an arsenal. A quiver with one arrow. One string to his bow. Why did he know so many metaphors for this?
Maybe he should include his razor sharp wits on his list. Yeah. That sounded better.
In any case, Valerie had point with this. Danny's job was being a distraction, so that Valerie could hit the whale with the spear.
Danny's heart rate spiked as he considered all the ways that could go wrong. Oh, ancients, he hoped that Valerie didn't go overboard. The whale was dangerous, yes, it was attacking them, yes, but that didn't mean it deserved to be destroyed or crippled.
(And he was so used to seeing Valerie as an almost enemy, an an antagonist... He was so used to not trusting her... To seeing her go after innocent ghosts... To seeing her going after him.)
His aim wavered, but he steadied himself. He was protecting Valerie. He was protecting the silly humans on the ship. His silly humans. He was not protecting the whale.
(His Obsession's attempt to latch onto himself no longer seemed so strange.)
He fired, and the whale flinched away from the well-aimed blast, which hit just to the right of its eye, momentarily distracted from Valerie. Valerie, always ready and rash, swooped in, trying to take advantage, only to narrowly miss being hit with one of the whale's flippers. However, the whale's movement brought it back into the range of the marksmen on the deck. Additionally, Dr Iceclaw had decided to join Danny and Valerie down below, and he was throwing ice at the creature, which was much more effective. The only problem was that with the two heavy-hitters (Dr Iceclaw and Valerie) down here, the whale might decide to- Oh, and there it was, it was switching back to the top. Wonderful.
Valerie and Dr Iceclaw, being blessed with flight, easily zoomed back to the top (although Dr Iceclaw shot Danny a very dirty look before going). Danny, being, if not earthbound, then shipbound, could not move so quickly. Not to mention his ankle, which was Not Happy with capital letters. Then, too, staying here could be tactically advantageous. They couldn't play the 'chase the whale back and forth' game forever.
Danny glanced towards Elysium. They were still miles and miles away. Only the most eagle-eyed of ghosts would be able to spot something as small as the ship from this distance. That meant that they had almost certainly been spotted. There were plenty of sharp-eyed ghosts in Elysium. However, considering how far away Elysium was, it would be some time before any help got here. Danny's top speed of one hundred and sixty miles an hour was something of an outlier, and it took him some time to build up to it. He couldn't expect help from there, couldn't rely on it.
He flinched as the ship shook, and lost balance, falling. He heard the horrible, shrieking, groan of a mast breaking. The ship shuddered again, and began to list, Danny's perception of gravity shifting despite his best efforts. There was a logic to this somewhere, Danny was sure. Even in the Ghost Zone, even in the very grip of madness, there was some logic, some reasoning. He just had no idea what the logic was, when it came to flying boats, because there wasn't any reason for the ship to be acting like this as far as he could see. Perhaps it was simply trying to mimic what would be happening to a real ship in these circumstances. Maybe it was more 'alive' than Danny had first thought, and it was hurt. That wasn't uncommon with ghostly things. (Now Danny was struggling to avoid imprinting on a questionably-sentient mostly-inanimate object. Great. What was he doing?)
The whale was heading down below again. Danny scrambled to his feet. Or tried to. Danny hissed as he tried to put weight on his ankle. He had aggravated it in his fall. Fine. He could fire prone, and he did, rolling over to shoot at the whale.
Oddly, he was getting closer to the whale's eyes while shooting like this. He supposed that there was a reason that snipers fired from this position.
Valerie and Dr Iceclaw flew back over, harrying the whale. It was now sporting several chunks of ice on its tail and fins.
Danny hit the whale's eye. It came as just as much of a surprise to him as to the whale.
It bellowed, loud and deep. Valerie plunged her spear into the whale's side. Then, at last, it turned and ran, leaving a trail of pink ectoplasm behind it.
Danny relaxed, and then tensed again as he saw Dr Iceclaw coming towards him. The doctor did not look happy.
