Alright! 600 reviews! I love getting those things. Thank you so much for contributing to this story!

Error I've noticed in previous chapters: I left a bunch of people out of the contract Danny signed with his parents. I meant to include all of the students, but... I didn't. No one mentioned it, probably because they were forgettable background characters, but now that I've noticed it... Should I try to go back and fix it? I deleted those chapters from the doc manager months ago, so on one hand it would be kind of a pain, but, on the other hand, it's going to bother me.

Also, do any of you guys have suggestions for floor themes for the Digressed Tower? I have a number floating through my head (mostly from AUs stolen shamelessly from other people, stuff like gender swap, Family Breakfast, different people know, nobody knows, etc), but I think that it would be cool to include your thoughts and ideas as well!

agnl20g: Thanks for your feedback! Um, unfortunately, it is an Inky the cat situation (although they could be the same cat, if you wanted them to be). It's actually a case of two different people using the same assumed name, and further evidence that I have the entirely useless skill of completely forgetting what I've written. So, for background on the artist, 'ormolu' is an alloy of copper, tin, and zinc that looks like gold, and it was in my head that the artist was a massive Gustav Klimt fanboy, and Klimt's the one who did all those gold-illuminated paintings. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I had decided that it was a cool word.

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Chapter 109:

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The Digressed Tower was a lumpy, crooked, mostly oblong thing. It was not particularly pretty, or impressive, it was covered in bulging, rickety additions, and there was a distinct bend somewhere between a half and a third of the way from the top. Still, it was striking amid the relative desolation of Missing Theory.

"Cool," said Danny. "It's kind of sad that this is only thing left here after the wars, though."

"It isn't the only thing," corrected Ellie. "I'm pretty sure that there are still other communities, and there are doors to Method."

"Erm," said Mr Lancer. "What wars are you talking about?"

"The science wars of the fifties and eighties," said Ellie. "It started out as just being like, doctors and biologists and stuff about ethics, but it spilled out into other disciplines, too."

"Very good, Danielle," said Vlad. "You were paying attention after all."

"Not really," said Ellie. "Hey, Danny, do you know anyone in Method?"

"I've never been there, unless you count peaking out of the door in the Library of Tongues," said Danny. "You know how it is."

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. But, um, doesn't the Artwalk connect to Method? You know anyone on the circuit?"

"Yeah, but I don't know how to get there from here. Now, if I got within sight of the door to the Library of Tongues, that would be a different story. Still. I try not to expose myself to mad scientists more than I absolutely have to."

"I know, I know, it was just something that occurred to me. I'm sticking with the boat plan, though, don't worry."

"Science wars?" inserted Mr Lancer.

"Yeah. Blame the Nazis, I guess," said Ellie. "You can blame basically everything on the Nazis, right?"

"Right," said Danny. "But in this case it's true. Stupid Nazis, making things hard for everyone else."

"Gotta hate the Nazis," said Ellie.

"Hey," said Mikey, "are those ghosts?"

"Yeah. Don't point, it's rude," said Danny, gazing at the distant specters with an appraising eye.

"Why're you so surprised, anyway?" asked Ellie. "We did say that this was a truce zone, right? Of course there are going to be people here."

"I think I said something about the giant party, too," said Danny, picking out a floor near the top that practically strobed with rainbow colors. There must be a rave or something going on there.

"That you did. Just be cool guys, and, um, try to remember what we're trying to do. That's getting to the casino off the seventy-seventh floor, in case you weren't paying attention."

"I still think that we should just wait on the twenty-second until Pandora sends someone to get us," said Danny. "I don't want to loose anyone because we wound up on a floor where they think we kidnapped them, or something."

"You kind of did, though," said Kwan.

"Other way around, actually," said Ellie. "Seeing as you weren't paying attention, and all. But, sure, Danny, we can wait. This is just a back up plan. Because there's no way we're going to be left in peace."

"Which is why-"

"Give it a rest, Vlad."

"I thought this was supposed to be a truce zone," said Mikey.

"These are ghosts," said Ricky. "Apparently they have a different definition of truce."

"Not really. Danny and I in particular just have bad luck. We get attacked all the time when we aren't supposed to."

"This is true."

"So, backup plan?"

"Casino boat is the back up plan," said Danny, resigned. He rubbed his face. "I guess trying to find a door to the Library, Method, or the Artwalk can be the third backup plan. This is going to be worse than herding cats."

(Several people objected to being called cats.)

"Come on, I've been through the whole thing. The changes aren't that bad."

"My dear," said Vlad, "you have had a significantly shorter life than most of the people here. Trust me when I say that small changes can make quite the difference over time. That is, after all, the whole purpose of the Bends. Which, incidentally, was envisioned as a philosophy experiment as much as an experiment in psychology, Daniel."

"I know?" said Danny, giving Vlad a quizzical look. "Look, Ellie, give me an example of what one of the floors does, other than the left/right floor, and I'll try to explain why I'm worried."

"The eighteenth floor removes a regret," said Ellie.

"Provided that the removal of such does not mean that you would never go to the Bends," added Vlad in a typically condescending tone. "That is the common theme between the transformations."

Danny nodded slowly, his eyes lingering on Vlad. Now that his mind was clearing somewhat (the pain was helping with that, to some degree), he was wondering why Vlad's appearance hadn't startled him more. Or maybe startled was the wrong word. Upset. Angry. Frightened. Vlad showing up usually elicited all of those emotions. Could it simply be the knowledge that Vlad couldn't attack without severely undermining his position with the council? Or maybe he just didn't see Vlad as a threat (disturbing in its own right, for multiple reasons). Or perhaps he had just acknowledged, subconsciously, that, even with the addition of Vlad, the situation couldn't possibly get worse.

(He was also fairly sanguine about Smith being there, but that was a completely different thing. Smith had never attacked him or Amity Park before. Danny was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if it prevented conflict.)

"Okay," said Danny, slowly. "Give me a second here. So, assuming that it's the biggest regret that could be changed with that constraint, I'd probably have told Mom and Dad what I do with my spare time way earlier, which would mean that the circumstances under which I was in the Tower would be much different. My entire life might be different. So, I might not even know why we were there, I might be surprised that everyone is with me. I might expect Sam and Tuck to be backing me up. I might be less injured. I might be more injured. I might be friends with Dash." The expected interruption did not happen. Dash was looking unusually contemplative again. "Ellie, depending on how all that played out, I might not even know you. You might not exist in a time line where I told Mom and Dad what was going on right away. I don't know how I'd react to you in such a situation. I mean, our first meeting wasn't exactly smooth sailing. Then, there's Vlad."

"The only thing I regret, little badger, is-"

"I'm going to stop you right there. I've heard the story about how you going to ask my mom out so often I could probably recite it." Danny paused, and twisted so that he could see Vlad better. Which was a mistake because he moved his ankle. Which hurt. A lot. "Speaking of you, though, nobody's ever stopped being dead because of the Tower, have they? Because dying is something people tend to regret."

"No," said Vlad.

"Like I said," said Ellie, "the more important a thing is to you, the less likely it is to change, and, um, considering that Obsessions are ghostly Obsessions..." She shrugged. "At least, I've never heard of someone suddenly being alive, or being dead, or whichever, because of something the floor did."

"Right. Because you have to be a ghost to have an Obsession."

"What about that liminality thing?" asked Ricky.

"Not the same thing," said Ellie, apparently feeling comfortable enough to flip herself over. "You don't have cores."

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One part of Hannah was listening to the ghosts' conversation intently. The rest of her was not.

Could Wes, her cousin who had all but abandoned all other conspiracy theories for one, actually be right? Even she had thought that he must be wrong, that a person couldn't be alive and dead at the same time, but-

But-

That wasn't true, was it? Not with those two flying around. Danny hadn't been possessed, earlier, he had just been... She didn't know what he had been. Not possessed, for one. Or overshadowed, either. In retrospect, that actually made way more sense. Occam's razor. Once you remove the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Or was that Law and Order? Some other cop show? Whatever. They were all run by the Illuminati, anyway. Or ghosts. Ghosts were looking to be more and more likely. Heck, the Illuminati was probably ghosts. Who else would be so obsessed with freemasonry and triangles?

She probably owed Wes an apology, when she got home. If she got home. She'd probably get home. Unless Vlad Masters tried to kill her because he was a ghost too, apparently. How had she not seen that? It was so much more plausible than the immortal mutant psychic theory she'd been working with since he'd been elected.