Oh, dear. My buffer is getting awfully thin now... I spent yesterday recovering from NaNoWriMo. Hopefully, my brain will let me think about this today, instead of that story. Wish me luck!

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Chapter 92: Obsessive Behaviors

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Danny made a distressed noise in the back of his throat as Dr Iceclaw phased off first his shoe and then his sock. The flesh of his ankle was a swollen, tender pink. That didn't look right.

He couldn't wait until his accelerated healing started to work again. He really couldn't. It looked like Dr Iceclaw couldn't wait either.

"Great One," said the larger ghost in a highly aggrieved tone, "we told you that you weren't entirely healed. You have to rest."

"I couldn't let you guys fight alone," argued Danny.

The doctor gave him a very sad look, then pulled the collar of his shirt down around his shoulder. "Look what you've done to these."

Danny looked down at the bruise forming around the healed bullet wound in his shoulder, and winced. "How does that even work?" he asked. "It shouldn't do that, right?"

"These wounds weren't healed in the normal way," said Dr Iceclaw.

Then Danny spotted Valerie coming up behind Dr Iceclaw, and he hurriedly pulled his shirt back up. His classmates hadn't been filled in on how hurt he had been, how hurt he still was, and he wanted to keep it that way. Dr Iceclaw glared.

Valerie was glaring, too. She retracted her helmet, and stared up at Danny. But then her expression softened as she spotted his ankle. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said. "I just twisted my ankle."

"Again," rumbled Dr Iceclaw.

"Thank goodness," she said. Then her face hardened again. "So, spill. How are you doing that?"

"Doing what?" asked Danny, blankly, looking up at Valerie.

"That!" exclaimed Valerie. "Sitting on that like- like nothing."

"Sitting on-? Oh. Um." He looked down at the side of the ship. "Well-"

"That explanation will have to wait, Miss Gray," said Dr Iceclaw, coolly. He picked up Danny.

Danny tensed. Being picked up by Frostbite, or Clockwork was one thing, but he didn't know Dr Iceclaw as well. He squeaked, and curled inward slightly. Then, when Dr Iceclaw realigned them with the gravity on the deck, he squeaked again.

"Apologies," said Dr Iceclaw, and he did look apologetic.

"It's okay," said Danny, looking down at Valerie. "She looks angry."

"Perhaps."

"I think she's angry. She's not going to let this drop, and then she'll remember all the other stuff, and it'll come back up, and oh my gosh, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be awful."

"Great One," said Dr Iceclaw, clearly uncertain about how to deal with this.

"I'm fine," said Danny.

They reached the top deck. Dr Iceclaw set down lightly, more lightly than his bulk suggested he could. Jazz, Sam, and Tucker were there in a moment, asking if he was alright. Danny was more concerned that they were alright. The whale had knocked down a mast, after all.

Dr Iceclaw set Danny on a bench, and started tending to Danny's ankle. He started by making the flesh, the skin and muscle, of his ankle invisible, layer by layer until only the bone was left. Tucker blanched and retreated. Valerie went pale.

"You've torn the ligament," said Dr Iceclaw. "But you haven't broken any bones."

"That's good, right?"

"Sprains are worse than breaks."

"Oh. Okay."

Then the door to below-decks flew open, and Dash came marching out, a very strange expression on his face, Mr Lancer and the rest of the class behind him. Clearly, he was angry, but there was something else there that Danny couldn't read. He marched right up to the small group, fists balled and back straight. If Danny wasn't mistaken, he had puffed himself up. He very much had the air of someone trying to make himself look larger, more intimidating.

Danny stared. While Dash often made an effort to look intimidating, especially to his victims, he hadn't ever acted quite like this. This, this was weird.

He walked right up to where Danny was, or tried to. Sam got in the way. He looked down his nose at her. "Get out of the way, Manson."

"If you have something to say to Danny, you can say it from here," she said, crossing her arms.

"What are you, his body guard?" Dash asked, sneering. Wow. That still was not a good look on him. Actually, it was even worse than usual, because of whatever else was underneath it. "What, Fentoenail, too wimpy to fight your own battles?"

"Shut up, Baxter," said Valerie. "He did better than you. He actually helped, rather than screaming like a little girl."

If possible, Dash got angrier. "Yeah? And whose fault is that? Huh? His! You people," he pointed an accusatory finger at Valerie, then Sam, Tucker, and Jazz, "have all the weapons, all the stuff! You should share! I'd do way better than Fentina, who can't go five minutes without breaking his leg."

Some parts of that argument, Danny had to admit, made sense. Dash and the others really couldn't be expected to fight ghosts without weapons. For one thing, they weren't being expected to fight ghosts. For another, unless Danny counted the time all of their parents had been kidnapped by Ember and Youngblood, which was over a year ago, Dash and the others had never been trained to use ghost weapons. That's what the ghost safety assembly had been for. Even counting that one time, they had only been trained with blasters, which they didn't have enough of for everyone. In fact, they didn't have enough weapons for everyone, period. Especially not now that the whale had flown off with the spear. Or should he still be thinking of it as the ecto-staff, even with the spear extension? Whatever. It didn't matter.

Unless Jazz had a whole lot more weapons from the lair than she had mentioned earlier. That wasn't impossible, but it was unlikely. That wasn't something Jazz would lie about, although she might forget about it. He was pretty sure she hadn't mentioned the ecto-staff before- Wait. That was included in the Peeler's built-in weapon set now. Yep. He had forgotten about that. (Really, the Peeler was hardly a Peeler anymore. It certainly couldn't be called just a Peeler. Yes, it could still do that, but at this point it was almost a low-level, nonlethal version of the Fenton Ecto-Skeleton.)

So, arming Dash, or any of the others, wasn't possible. The few ectoweapons that they had were best off in the hands of people who were actually familiar with them. That was Jazz, Sam, Tucker, and Valerie. And Danny himself, he supposed, although he had handed his blaster back to Jazz. Push come to shove, he was his own blaster, doctor's orders aside.

They had explained this, hadn't they? On the first day?

Then Jazz stepped up, shoulders squared and hands spread to invite reasonableness. "Dash, we talked about this just the other day. Even if we had enough weapons, you don't have the training, we do."

"You have tons of weapons," argued Dale, coming up next to Dash. Oddly, Kwan was staying out of this, not supporting Dash even by standing next to him, like he usually did when Dash was beating Danny up, or shoving him in a locker.

"We have, like, ten, total. You can't count most of Valerie's, or mine, they're built into the suits."

"Look, Jazz," said Dale, dismissively (Danny felt his eye twitch), "you're pretty and all, and you get good grades, but this is, like, real life. You don't know fighting. You should let us guys handle this."

This statement caused an uproar, starting with Mr Lancer exclaiming, "Little Women, Mr Gordon!" and ending with Sam saying, darkly, dangerously, "You want to find out how well I 'know fighting,' huh, Dale?"

"Whatcha gonna do to him, witch?" said Dash. "Curse him with your voodoo?"

This conflict was very strange, decided Danny. Not because it was happening at all, he had expected a clash with these two, he had been dreading it, to be honest, but because of the timing. Because of what had just happened, where they were, and because there was a very large, very confused ghost in their midst, who happened to like Danny. One of, if not all of, those things should have given Dash and Dale pause. (It was certainly giving Kwan pause, although it was perfectly possible that Kwan had finally had that crisis of conscious that Sam, Tucker, and Danny had been betting on for years. In which case, Danny won. He had thought that it would come before senior year, Tucker thought that it would happen before senior prom, Sam didn't think that he would grow up until graduation.)

Really, the two of them, and Dash especially, were acting like they had a need, a pathological need, to be at the top, to be in charge of the people around them. That was something that would get them killed if they kept it up. This near-suicidal behavior was something that he'd expect to see from a ghost who had their Obsession threatened, not a... Wait.

Alright, thought Danny, mind and face clearing. This behavior actually made sense, if looked at from that perspective. Yes, now he knew what was going on, not that it made this much easier to deal with. He had been hoping that this particular discussion would at least wait until they got to Elysium, when they'd have access to all the Elysian scholars and philosophers.

But, again, if Dash and Dale kept this behavior up, they would get themselves killed, if not by Sam, then by ghosts. So.

"Sam, wait," said Danny, before Sam could turn the verbal fight into a physical one.

"What?" snapped Sam, turning.

Everyone else stopped. Danny hadn't said anything yet, and, Dash's feelings and actions aside, they had apparently come to see him as something of an authority.

"What, finally accepting the truth, Fentertainment?"

"Yes, actually," said Danny, calmly. "I know why you're feeling and acting this way, and I'm sorry."

"Danny, what-?" started Sam, but she was cut off, by Dash's victorious laugh.

"Hah! You heard him Manson, hand 'em over," he demanded, shoving his hand in her face.

"That's not what I meant, Dash, and I'm pretty sure that if you don't move your hand, Sam will break it?"

"Yeah ri-"

"You know that she's placed in martial arts competitions before, right?" This wasn't a lie, it was just that the competition had been in the Ghost Zone. Actually, if he thought about it, that made it more impressive. "What I mean, is that there's a physiological reason for why you are acting like, well," Danny searched for a diplomatic term.

"Like a meat-head," supplied Sam, spitting the word meat as if it was the worst insult ever.

"Like an aggressive idiot," tried Tucker.

"Oh!" said Jazz, pounding a fist into an open hand. "Of course! I should have seen that! The abnormal aggression, the disregard of logic and self preservation, it makes sense now!"

"Sure," said Danny. "Let's go with that. You need to redirect, or you'll wind up picking a fight with someone you can't beat." He had, admittedly, already done that. "Or, worse, someone who won't see anything wrong with killing you. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about this earlier, and I really should have told all of you. I just didn't know if I was right, I didn't want you to be scared, and I was worried about how you'd react." He looked at Dr Iceclaw. "Dr Iceclaw, you've studied liminality, right?"

"Of course," said the ghost. The undertone said, he wouldn't be here, with Danny, treating Danny, arguably the most liminal person in existence, otherwise.

"You'll tell me if I get something wrong?" The ghost nodded in reply, and Danny took a deep breath, ignoring a twinge in his chest that told him that he had likely pulled something else during the fight with the whale. "Okay. So. Do you guys remember the time everyone in school got ghost powers?"

"Yeah!" exclaimed Hannah as most of the others murmured. "That was so weird and sketchy. You know, Wes and I looked up those doctors afterwards, when the bugs flew out and we were released, and there wasn't any record of them? Like, at all? And there's no record of North Mercy Hospital being refurbished. It's got to be some Guys in White cover-up, right? So that no one figures out that there are ghosts in Amity Park?" Hannah sounded less certain than she usually did.

"Um. No. Not exactly. The doctors were actually ghosts in disguise who wanted to steal our genes. Genetic information, not pants," he added for the benefit of the football players. "Long story, and sort of off-topic. Anyway, um. Over time, you have all been exposed to a lot of ghostly things. The attacks, the invasions, the overshadowings, the whole town getting sucked into the Ghost Zone... The list goes on, and that's on top of Amity Park being a natural thin spot. There's a huge amount of ectoplasm in Amity Park compared to the rest of the state, and there's way more here. There are side effects."

"Oh my god," said Mikey, suddenly. "Are we mutating? Is that what this is? Are we turning into mutants?"

"Um," said Danny. "Sort of?"

"That is so cool!" There was a pause. "I'm not going to get cancer from this, am I? Or grow a third arm?"

"Um. Definite no on the cancer, probably not on the third arm. I've had way more exposure than you from Mom and Dad's stuff, and I'm fine. The side effects are mostly mental."

"Always knew you were a basket case," muttered Rebecca.

"You'd hardly notice, under normal circumstances," continued Danny. "It makes you more, um, passionate, but also more obsessive. It's small things, usually. Like, if you really like comics, you daydream about getting that one issue you're missing, or about what will happen next in the story, or you write fanfiction or something. If you like to garden, you're gardening every day, you fertilize, and you've always got all the weeds out. It usually isn't anything bad. Usually, it's good. Like, with the band kids. They practice all the time, they're passionate about music, so they're placing high in all those competitions, and they sound really good. I've always thought that it makes Amity Park more colorful. More interesting. Because they say that you should follow your passion, and it's easier to find it in Amity. The thing is, because of the 'obsessive' part, you can wind up doing things that don't make sense, logically. Just like with OCD, if you can't do your thing, you get anxious. You try to do it, but it doesn't work. That's what's happening here, Dash, Dale. You have to redirect your passion."

Dash glared down at Danny. "Are you saying that because I think you're Fen-trash, I have some kind of mental defect?"

Danny bit his lip, trying not to riposte with the obvious. "No," he said, patiently. "It isn't a defect, just a difference. Because of all the ectoplasm here, the effect is getting stronger, and you don't really know how to deal with it, so you're doing this." Danny spread his hands. "You're obsessing over strength, over being tough, over being on top. That's why you're out here picking a fight you can't win, for weapons we don't have. You want to show that, despite everything that's happened lately, you're still strong. But you aren't going to be the strongest here. Not when we're dealing with ghosts who could wipe Amity Park off the map in less time than it takes to brush your teeth. You have to redirect your passion, focus on something else. Sports, maybe. Or, um, do you collect anything?" Danny didn't want to mention the teddy bears out loud. "You could try thinking about that."

"Or I could just beat you up," suggested Dash, trying to step around Sam.

"You will be doing no such thing," said Dr Iceclaw. Dash started as the ghost drew himself to his full height.

"Um, Danny," said Mia, hesitantly, "you're saying that we have obsessions? Like ghosts?"

"No, not really. It's more like, um, you're all a step or two closer to ghosts that normal humans are. It's called liminality. It's not- You're not dying, or anything like that. It isn't harmful, these two just aren't dealing with it in a healthy way. It can actually be really helpful in some situations, like, here, in the Ghost Zone. I think- I think that I explained to some of you before, how humans can manipulate ectoplasm to some degree? Well, that gets easier when you're liminal, because you already have ectoplasm in you, and working for you. You have experience with it, even if you don't know it. Then, because you have a bit of the other perspective, of, um, a ghostly perspective, it's easier to work with some of the Zone's weirder rules. Like, earlier, Valerie, you asked me how I was walking on the side of the ship? That's how. I just shifted my perspective, so that was down for me."

The blank stares that Danny was getting told him that he hadn't been as clear as he wanted to be.

"Jazz, help."

"Alright. You have all had health at this point, correct? Do you remember the lessons about hormones? Think of ectoplasm as a kind of hormone in this situation. Your bodies are trying to adapt to it. It would have happened back home anyway, but it is happening faster here, and in a more stressful environment. Just like with puberty, though, you have to learn to live with the changes in a healthy way. I didn't take into account how the environment, both the higher ectoplasm levels and the stress, would affect the process until, well, just now."

"Were you ever going to tell us?" asked Star, angrily.

"Honestly, no," said Jazz. "Not unless it became an issue or a ghost brought it up. The effect is typically a lot more subtle than Danny made it sound. He and I are more affected because we grew up in a high-ectoplasm environment. You guys never encountered tangible ectoplasm until high school. Our house is full of the stuff. We've both accidentally eaten some, more than once. You all know what our parents are like. For me, it manifests in my schoolwork, and my interest in psychology."

"And with how you always have to be right, and with being an adult."

"Thank you, Danny, but I think that I've managed to get over those."

"What about Danny?" asked Nathan.

"If you had ever seen his room," said Tucker, "you wouldn't be asking that."

"Space," said Danny. "I've got the whole sky mapped out on my ceiling." He sighed. His next sentences would be much less true. He didn't like lying, but he still didn't trust his class with his real secret. "Originally, anyway. But after the ghosts started coming, I started to get really anxious about safety, and that's one of the reasons I got involved with Phantom, I guess. After that, well, I spread out in a bunch of different directions. It makes it easier to handle." He paused. "But, none of you ever noticed, before this? I mean, even if you take away the ghosts, even if you look at before the ghosts, Amity Park wasn't exactly normal. Like, take these two," he gestured at Sam and Tucker, "and the meat versus vegetarianism thing. Back in freshman year, they both organized elaborate protests in a single night. That really shouldn't have been possible. No matter how gross the turfwiches were, getting so many people so passionate about a week-long experimental school menu so quickly isn't something that would have happened anywhere else. I guess it took me a while to realize, too, because Amity Park is normal for me, but it isn't like we live on an island. If you watch the news, or TV shows, or read, you see that most people are kind of apathetic, comparatively."

"I knew it!" exclaimed Hannah.

"That does make a lot of sense," said Sarah, "but, Hannah, you said that it was because the government was dumping psychoactive chemicals into the water supply."

"Eh, close enough."