This one got kind of long, and I'm not super happy with some parts of it. I hope you find it enjoyable, anyway.

Thank you for your awesome reviews!

Insomniac Dormouse: A little bit of both, but mostly the loopiness.

Cutiepie: You'll have to wait and see! :)

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Chapter 115:

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Phantom did not miss how all of the humans, and many of the ghosts, grew quiet and drew closer. He would have had to have blind to miss it. He also did not miss how Valerie shifted away from the ghosts, a glare on her face, nor how her hands moved, to her to her leg, as if in search of a weapon. That could be problematic, Phantom decided. This place, where friends could become enemies and enemies, friends just by crossing a threshold, was not the place to start a fight.

That's when Phantom's stomach decided to remind him of another thing that could be problematic. He sighed, then cast an appraising eye at the ghosts. With the exception of Plasmius, these looked to be people seeking entertainment. Partiers. Here for mildly mind-altering experiences.

(The person in the back with the lab coat and clipboard might have been an exception, and bore further observation. Phantom had heard rumors that there were still some psychologists in the Digressed Tower, clinging to the hope that they would someday acquire enough data to create a coherent paper, regardless of the fact that what they thought they were researching, and therefore what they were recording, was different on every floor.)

Having made that assessment, he then addressed the ghosts, "I don't mind being the evening's entertainment, but we've traveled quite some distance, and we're rather hungry." He smiled up at the ghosts politely, hopefully. There was no guarantee that any of these ghosts had human-compatible food, but it wasn't a bad gamble, either, considering the eclectic tastes of ghosts and the number of them gathered here.

A few of the ghosts rolled their eyes and left. They had been hoping for a free show, Phantom gathered, had been expecting one ever since twenty-odd humans had walked in the door. Others muttered and hissed at their neighbors. Some patted their pockets, as if expecting to find human food there. A very small number actually produced food. Interestingly, they were mostly from the same group, and the food they produced consisted mostly of crackers, dry sausage, grapes, and cheese.

"We were originally going to a wine tasting a few floors up," one of them, a woman wearing a long, black dress, explained. "That's the floor where a famous but departed artist has a longer existence."

"Oh, alright," said Phantom, a little confused about how she knew what he was thinking.

"There wasn't much else for you to be that confused about, looking at us like that," said the woman. "I would be confused, too."

"Oh," said Phantom, glad to have that cleared up, but concerned that she could read him that well. "Thank you. Well," he began as the food was distributed, "I suppose that at this point you're all looking for a story, not my hobbies, or what have you? You," he said to the ghosts, "want to know why there are so many humans here, and you," he said to the humans, "want to know why I've changed so much from the," he hesitated for a split second, recalling the name he had in their reality, "Danny you know. I should tell you, I don't have the answer to either of those questions, but I hope that what I can tell you will be a good substitute."

Phantom drew his legs up onto the couch so that he was sitting cross-legged. He was a little nervous. He usually didn't have quite so many strangers interested in him, personally. But he supposed that was going to change from now on, what with the aftermath of the invasion by those white-wearing weirdos and Judge Issitoq's irrational hatred of liminals. He swallowed.

"The first thing that I truly remember is waking up in the Barrens. That is a region of the Ghost Zone," he added, for the benefit of the humans. "I was alone in the green, just floating there. No idea where I was, no idea who I was. I had no memory beyond the moment. I think now that I must have fallen through a portal and floated the Lethe before I woke up. I was scared, of course. I think anyone would be. I wasn't even able to decide which direction to fall in. Then Walker showed up and took exception to the clothing I was wearing, which was, as you might have guessed, from the material plane.

"Walker, of course, threw me in prison. I didn't think so then, but Walker's prison was probably one of the better places for me to wind up. I was fed, clothed, and relatively safe. Walker's rules kept me from getting too badly injured. On the other hand, he and his guards enjoyed using pain as a... teaching tool." Phantom paused, bringing his hand up to touch his opposite shoulder, running his thumb over a particularly nasty scar. "I was not the fastest learner. I..." He trailed off again.

"As a human, I was disliked by a number of people," he said, changing track, "but ghosts tend to like children. Children are rare, here in the Infinite Realms. So there were a fair number of people willing to teach me, protect me from the more violent inmates.

"After a while, I became aware of some of the more interesting abilities humans can gain in the Infinite Realms. For example," he briefly pushed his hand through the couch. "I initially tried to use them to escape. I could walk through the walls of the prison. But, well, Walker always found me and brought me back. He started using material plane objects to keep me caged in, the hypocrite. That was three, maybe four months in? Perhaps a little longer? I'm not sure. Time can be uneven in the Realms. Most places don't have a steady day/night cycle, and even those that do often... warp, when compared to the material plane. An hour in one place may not be an hour in another.

"At that point, I had gained something of a reputation, so I was invited to join in the next jailbreak. It may surprise you, but it was all very civilized. Jailbreaks were and are a regular occurrence in Walker's prison. This one was moderately successful." Phantom sighed. He had left a lot out. He hoped that his avoidance of mentioning his liminality wasn't leaving him with too many plot holes.

"This was my first time being free. To be honest, I had no idea where I was going, or what I was doing. I had been separated from the other escapees. Luckily, I ran into another relatively benign environment. Have any of you heard of Sidney Poindexter?" Surprisingly, the humans nodded. "Well, he maintains an externalized lair that is a facsimile of a material plane school. He and I came to an arrangement that suited us both, and I began to live there.

"Unfortunately, Walker isn't the type to let things go, and, about a month later, he made a bargain with a high-security prisoner name Wulf-" The nearest door smashed open, interrupting Phantom. Well, maybe it wasn't the door so much as the person who had kicked it in.

"You! Whelp!"

"Skulker," said Phantom. The hunter wasn't going to go after his pelt here of all places, was he? "What do you want?" Then Phantom took in the ghost's appearance. He looked, in a word, terrible. As if he had just gone through a firefight with a much stronger opponent. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine! What I want is-!" Skulker stepped over the threshold. The marks on his armor vanished. "I- Whelp? What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for Lady Pandora to pick us up," said Ellie. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought I was- Ohhhh." The ghost wrenched open the door and stepped back outside. The burn marks and dents reappeared. He then turned around, still holding the door open. "Someone put a price on your head, boy. A high price. High enough to risk breaking a truce. They'll be coming here."

"What?" said Phantom. He strode to the door. "Are you sure?"

"Positive. I wouldn't be here otherwise. I'm the only one allowed to take your pelt, and I'm not so crass as to do it a truce zone." He puffed out his chest, and, in doing so, almost lost his grip on the door.

"Yes, yes. You're very honorable hunter, despite trying to murder me repeatedly. Do you know where they are? How far? Wait, how did you even know where I was?"

"I overheard it from them," said Skulker, "and they won't be too far behind me."

"Great," said Phantom. "I suppose I owe you one. Unless that thing we agreed not to talk about occurred in your history as well."

Skulker scowled. "We agreed not to talk about it!"

"Good to know." He turned. "Did we agree on a plan B before we came in?" He had discussed one with his original companions, but, well, they weren't here. His sister (he was still very excited about having a sister) and these humans were. And Plasmius too. He didn't really want to count Plasmius as part of his group, but there he was.

"Yeah," said Ellie, "there's a guy at the casino upstairs who owes me a boat."

"Old Fifty-Three Card Jake?"

"That's the one."

"Huh, okay."

He glanced out the door, past Skulker. He saw ghosts out there, flying towards the Tower, dozens of them. Phantom recognized some of them, though he wished he didn't. They were not people who Phantom wanted to be around with a dozen-plus humans in tow. Some of them, he had history with. Bad history. Not like with Skulker, where the whole thing was very nearly a joke.

It was unlikely that they would all forget what they were doing with just a left/right change.

"Time to go, then," he said. "You had better get out of here, too, Skulker, unless you want to become scrap metal."

"But the story-" protested one of the ghosts, over the sounds of the humans' panic.

"Another time, perhaps. Thank you for the food. You know, you could always come with us, if you want excitement. Or fight one of those people, if they break the truce."

"Please, children," said Plasmius. "No one is going to-"

"The oncoming horde disagrees," said Phantom. "If they don't come in, fine, but if they do, I want to be closer to plan B. What's the next floor? Anyone know?"

Ellie made a face. "It's the gender swap floor."

"Oh no!" said Dash, as Dale's face went slightly green. "No, I'm not going to be a girl!"

"It's temporary, but if you want," said Phantom, "you can stay here and be used as bait, or killed, because I know some of those thugs, and they will do that. Just so you know, there isn't any guarantee that any of us will want to save you when we're on another floor and experiencing an identity crisis. Where are the stairs?" The last statement was entirely rhetorical. He had already spotted the stairs, which were tucked into a corner along one wall. "Come on," he said. He had learned that, often, the way to get people to follow you was to just assume that they would. Confidence, as Pandora would say, was key.

By the time he got to the bottom of the stairs, his sharp ears could hear a small crowd moving behind him. Good. Good. He didn't exactly want to be responsible for these people, but circumstances told him that he already was, and he just knew that he would feel guilty if one of them died.

He jogged up the steps, reaching the top in a couple of seconds...

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… Dani reached the top step and collapsed, hissing, around her injured ankle. Gosh, that had been weird. That had been really weird. That had been really, really weird. She could remember not remembering. She could remember living in the Ghost Zone, could remember not knowing Neil, who was... Who was a girl for some reason downstairs.

Wait... Dani had been a boy downstairs. This was the gender swap floor, ergo...

Crap. She was actually a boy. That was a pain that very nearly rivaled that of her foot which felt like it was going to fall off. This whole thing was a bad idea. Abort. She would rather go back down and fight that whole horde of ghosts, and-

She heard a door downstairs get kicked in, and revised that opinion.

It took a (painful) tap on her core to draw on her flight, and a helping hand from Neil, to get her upright and away from the top of the stairs.

Dani took a moment, once that happened, to look at the ghosts enjoying themselves on this floor. "Hi there," she said, forcing a smile on her face. "Don't mind us, we're just trying to avoid some people who are trying to kill us, you know how it is."

"What?" said one man, just before a door was opened and a mass of mid-sized, androgynous, red ghosts flew in.

"There!" screamed one of them. "In with the humans!"

"Get her!"

Vasilisa summoned a magenta shield between them and the attacking ghosts. "Get to the next floor!" she ordered.

"Hey!" yelled one of the ghosts who had been on the floor when Dani and the others got there, a man wearing a green party hat. "This is a truce zone! What do you think you're doing?"

"Back off, we're just here for Phantom!"

There was a beat where the only sounds were Dani, Neil, Mrs Lancer and Dani's classmates trying to get to the stairs, and the red ghosts trying to get past Lisa's shields. This was not an ideal situation. Actually it was very close to the opposite of ideal, seeing as Dani wasn't in condition to so much as act as a (half-) human shield for her classmates. Their only protections were Lisa's shield, and their finely honed ghost-dodging skills... Actually, that wasn't too bad. There were still a lot of red ghosts, and they weren't all weaklings, either.

Then the ghost in the green hat screamed, "Solidarity!" and the partiers attacked.

"Oh," said Dani, feeling a little lightheaded, "that's nice of them. Hope they don't get hurt."

"I'm sure they'll be fine," said Neil. "There are tons of them. This is a popular floor, I guess. You think I should help Lisa?"

"Nah, she'll be fine, little bro. And if we stop, we'll get trampled."

"We're the same size. Hey, I wonder, do I really look like you, and you look like me? When we're not here, I mean."

"We already look the same," said Dani. She was a little out of breath, which was troubling, because she really shouldn't be. Strictly speaking, even in human form she didn't really need to breathe. She should be able to carry on a conversation just as easily as Neil.

"True. Hey, does that mean that Yun, Destiny, and Dahlia are guys? I can't really see that. I mean, I did when we were downstairs, but, still."

"I can," said Dani. She yanked Neil down, having spotted a red ghost coming at them out of the corner of her eye. When she landed on her hurt ankle, she bit through her lower lip. Neil hauled her back up.

"Sorry," he said.

"Just," gasped Dani, "just pay more attention, please."

They were almost to the stairs, and Dani risked a glance backwards. All of her classmates (minus Sam and Tiffany, plus Ms Lancer) were there. Great. They hadn't lost anyone. She didn't know how she'd deal with herself if she'd lost someone. Not well, based on past evidence. She'd have to thank Vasilisa for the shield.

… Or maybe not. The woman owed her for Vortex and Undergrowth, among other things.

She and Neil ducked a blast of red ectoplasm. The red ghosts had gotten around Lisa.

Okay, time for the secret identity to be well and truly defenestrated. It probably had been time ereyesterday, everything considered, but-

Dani gasped. Maybe not. Even that pathetic attempt to charge up an ectoblast had hurt. Neil, on the other hand, got a three ectoblasts off in the time it took Dani to realize this.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," said Dani, she looked over her shoulder. "Shoot. Valentine! Michelle! Are you guys okay?" It looked like Michelle had tripped and fallen, possibly jostled by Dahlia, and Valentine had stopped to help her up.

"Fine," said Valentine, pulling up Michelle by one arm. "Keep going!" Valentine looked like he was trying to summon one of his guns, and it wasn't working. Bits of his suit kept materializing, then sparking and disappearing back into nothing.

Neil had to blast off two other red ghosts before they got to the stairs, although they were helped considerably by the party-goers. "I'm carrying you," he said.

"Fine," said Dani, hopping a little to give Neil a hand and hurry things along. She wound up in a weird, not-quite princess carry. Good enough for going up the stairs, provided that they didn't run into a doorjamb or shelf or something.

Then another ghost, much different, more brutal, more muscular than the red ones, bounded down the stairs, transforming from female to male as they did so. They raised a spear, a wicked smile on their face. Neil's hands were full with Dani. Neil pushed backwards off the stairs, flying, and Dani brought up her hands, a shield sparking between them. The spear shattered, and Dani went limp.

The wisps, who had been following along with Neil and Dani the whole time, swarmed the ghost. Apparently they could bite. Dani filed that away under 'useful information.' The bites didn't seem to do much damage, but it was still damage. The wisps weren't so harmless after all.

Then Dani found out why wisps typically didn't do that when the attacking ghost seized one of them and squeezed. The wisp screamed. So did Dani. Well, screeched, more like.

Surprisingly, the screech, which definitely wasn't a Wail, or anything supernatural, hand an effect. The ghost seemed to have sensitive ears. He (she?) dropped the wisp and covered his ears, letting Neil kick him in the face. Then someone from upstairs tackled him, screaming ectoplasmic murder, and Neil took the opportunity to get by.

Then they got to the next floor.