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Chapter 118:

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Danny couldn't help but stare at Mr Lancer. He did not quite look like himself. He didn't feel like himself. There was something wrong there. Danny tilted his head at the man. Of course, deep down, he would be the same person he had always been, but the Mr Lancer Danny knew might not be closely related to the real Mr Lancer.

Danny sighed. Traveling through here was definitely hurting his brain. Not to mention that he was being forced to work with Vlad. Vlad, who was a cheese lord, a drug dealer, a terrible person in general.

He glanced over at the unbearably smug, unquestionably terrible person in question. Vlad was standing to the side, arms crossed, suit immaculate, smirking.

It made his skin crawl.

On the other side of things, they had herded all the cats (aka students) back into one group, and Vlad knew the way to the next floor, so they would probably be... he wouldn't say safe. None of this was safe, not with a bounty on his head. Better protected, maybe. He bit his lip.

(Danny was used to stress, used to responsibility, but this long-term direct responsibility was getting to him, especially since some of his classmates seemed to have no survival skills whatsoever. He was going to chew through his lip at this rate.)

He counted his classmates one more time, double-checking that they were all there. They were.

"Okay," he said. "Since Vlad knows the way out, he's going to lead us to the next floor. Please, please try to stay together. Find a buddy or something."

"What's the next floor?" asked Mikey.

"Um," said Danny, looking to Ellie for answers.

"It makes everyone older, I think?" said Ellie, uncertainly.

"So you're not a midget anymore and Vlad's a corpse instead of just looking like one."

"We're the same height."

"I stand with what I said."

"I'm not that old," said Vlad, offended.

"Yeah, you are," said Ellie and Danny.

"I'm only forty-three."

"And I'm two," said Ellie, unimpressed.

"You're trusting him?" said Valerie. Her injury had transferred to her other arm, but, somehow, so had the dressings Danny had applied.

Ellie snorted. "No. Not really. But the only person he's ever in the mood to murder is Danny's dad, and really, your dad kind of deserves it sometimes."

"He's working on the fudge thing, okay?" said Danny. "Fudge isn't as bad as cheese, anyway."

He saw Vlad roll his eyes, and his glare intensified.

"This way, children," said Vlad, sweeping through the crowd. Ellie followed close behind, keeping a suspicious eye on her creator. Danny sighed, and took up the rear. If a ghost snuck

A whispered conversation started up between Mia, Hannah, and Sarah about how oh my god, it really is Mayor Masters. Star was casting strange, sideways looks at Mikey and Ricky. The twins were glued to Mr Lancer, who looked like he was about to have some kind of breakdown. Danny didn't blame him. The A-listers had banded together into a knot. They were really too close together if they had to run.

There was so much fear on the air. It was making Danny nervous. Paranoid. Each door they passed was an object of intense scrutiny. It didn't help that sometimes ghosts would come out who didn't want to attack them. It was a haunted house, replete with jump scares. The dust and spider webs only added to the ambiance.

(Danny may have enjoyed it, except for everything else going on. He was a ghost, after all. He liked a good scare, now and again.)

And then a ghost dropped from the ceiling, right onto Danny. He fell and squeaked, undignified, and attempted to call ectoplasm into his hands. They sparkled green, and the green-skinned, bug-eyed ghost hissed. Danny kicked, catching the ghost's tail, and managed to flip the ghost over so that he was on top, not the ghost, and then drove his elbow into the ghost's nose. The ghost's face deformed around the blow, and Danny felt rows of small, sharp teeth latch onto his elbow. He concentrated his attention on his elbow, ignoring the sting in his core, and fired off a ghost ray from that joint.

Taking advantage of the ghost's need to reform it's head, Danny rolled off, clearing the way for Vlad and Ellie to blast it into submission.

Vlad was about to hit it one more time, when Danny said, "Don't end him, ancients, Vlad."

"You want him to follow us?" asked Vlad, raising an eyebrow.

"He won't," said Danny. He grabbed the flickering end of the ghost's tail, and phased it into the floor. "See? There. Happy?"

"Not exactly," said Vlad.

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The stair to the next floor was spiral, cupped in a mural-covered well. There was a large pile of cheese a few meters to the left of it. Danny felt his eye twitch as several of his classmates, and Mr Lancer started towards it. Danny grabbed the back of Mr Lancer's shirt, and the back of Paulina's.

(Why was he not surprised that Paulina had tried cheese before?)

"Guys," he said, trying to get the attention of Dale and Rebecca, "the stairs. We're here for the stairs. Seriously. Please."

"Hey," said Ricky. "Maybe we should send one person up first? Just to test things out? In case there are, you know, more of those guys that are trying to kill us up there."

"Not a good idea," said Ellie. "If we go separately, we might not realize that we're together. I guess it's less likely for you, because you're all humans, and this is the Ghost Zone, but still."

After a bit more cajoling, they got everyone to go up.

Danny's world shifted again.

He rubbed his eyes. "Two questions," he said.

"Yeah?" said Ellie, voice equally strained.

"Did we just come from a floor where we were midgets and cheese was some kind of drug?"

"Yeah, but I think that we're actually midgets," said Ellie.

Danny looked up. "What?" Then he did a double take. "Why do you still look like you're a teenager?"

Ellie shrugged. "Different life histories, I guess?" She tilted her head. "You're fourteen in the universe I remember. I'm pretty sure that's how old you were on each of the lower floors, too, so..."

"So that's probably how old I actually am," finished Danny. He looked around. "Why are we surrounded by people from my old high school class?"

"What do you mean by why, Fenton?" demanded Dash, crossing his arms over his slight paunch. "It's your freakazoid parents who crashed the reunion and sent us all here."

"That's not what happened," said Mikey, pushing up his glasses. "There was an explosion in the ghost tech lab at Axion, and..." He trailed off. "Why are you even here?"

"I just told you."

"It was just me and the ghost boy!" said Paulina. Wailed Paulina. Well, she looked as pretty as ever. He wondered if she was just as soulless as she had been the time she'd dated him, played with his emotions, and humiliated him just so she could get back at Sam. "Where did all of you people come from?!"

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. This was going to be a long day.