Happy Friday!
ZinFinz: Sorry for the confusion! Think of the different floors as snapshots of different AUs. (Thank you for still reading!)
maythestarsgiveyouhope: For Danny on this floor, I envisioned the events of the show as happening later. Like, he got zapped by the portal in his late teens, instead of early ones. It really isn't strongly related to him not aging.
PhantomOfProcrastination: Thank you for your review! You don't have to worry about not reviewing very often, though. While reviews do give me life, I am myself bad at remembering to review, and I know that it can be hard to think of something to say.
SkylerHollow: Yes, he is coming back. (Danny's managed to do a lot of damage to his core again. Poor Danny.)
malikashocker: I'm glad you found my fic! I would recommend HaiJu, RedHeadsRock, and critiqu's fics as well, if you haven't already found them. Also (and I am being very hypocritical, as I stay up early because of stories often), get some sleep! Your body needs it. The words will still be here.
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Chapter 119:
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"We need to find somewhere to sleep," said Danny. They had traveled several floors by this point. Some of them had been really weird. On one floor, they had all been left handed. On another, everyone had done some kind of... race swap... thing. Paulina had been French. Everyone had a different name. They had gone through a floor where everyone had neon hair. Danny's leg had alternated between being fine and being screwed up on each one.
Right now, they were on the twenty-eighth floor. It, apparently, altered every coin flip you had ever done. Danny, being sane, had never staked any life-altering decisions on the outcome of a coin flip. Ellie, who had never flipped a coin in her (admittedly short) life for the express purpose of being able to be on this floor without experiencing changes, said that he hadn't changed very much.
The same could not be said for everyone else. Dash and Kwan especially had changed. From what Danny could tell, they had decided which sports to try out for based on coin flips, and they had wound up on the swim team and the track team rather than the football and basketball teams. They looked a lot different with swimmer's physiques. Star, too, had changed. She wasn't on the A-list anymore. Her position in the popular group had been filled by Sarah. Which was bizarre, to say the least.
This was all made worse by the fact that the floor plan of this particular level was a giant spiral, and his classmates couldn't manage to phase through the walls. Danny and Ellie could do it with little difficulty, and Vlad could sort of get it, but he was surprisingly bad at it. Everyone else was rubbish, and Danny and Ellie couldn't pull a whole chain of people through after them. Danny couldn't even force intangibility on a wall for all that long at this point. He was exhausted. So was everyone else.
"Unfortunately," said Vlad, "this floor suffers from a dearth of places to sleep."
"How about the next floor?" asked Danny. He rubbed one of his eyes in an attempt to make it feel less gritty. It didn't work.
Vlad paused to think. "I do believe that there are rest areas upstairs. Unfortunately, this next floor is typically also the most crowded," he said, "and the best-dressed."
"What?"
"You recall the people who gave us cheese a few floors down?"
"Yeah?" said Danny. It was telling that he was too tired to throw in a jab about not having Alzheimer's like Vlad did.
"They intended to go to this next floor. It is something of an art gallery. The alteration is that each individual's favorite deceased or ended artist becomes longer lived."
"Oh," said Danny. "Right. So?"
Vlad sighed. "So we'll stand out. You don't want to stand out, put a target on our backs, do you, my dear boy?"
"Okay," said Danny. "No. What about the next floor, then?"
Vlad actually stopped dead.
"Vlad?" asked Danny, disturbed. "Are you okay?"
"Perhaps it will be best to rest before we go to that floor," said Vlad. He started walking again. Danny heard him muttering something under his breath, but he was too tired to interpret it.
"What? Why?" he asked. "What does that floor do?"
Vlad was silent. "For someone like me?" said Vlad. "Very little. For children like you, on the other hand..."
"Vlad. What does it do?" The question unfortunately came out as something of a whine, but Danny didn't really care.
"It makes it so that your parents are dead, or otherwise departed," said Vlad. "As my parents are already dead, it doesn't affect me."
"I keep thinking that Vlad is dead," said Ellie. "It always sucks when I find out that he isn't."
"Does it now?" said Vlad.
"Yep," said Ellie.
Danny swallowed. His skin had already gone cold. He shuddered, trying to bring his thought process back to normal. His parents being dead was a literal nightmare, and the 'closest' universe where that had happened might very well be that one.
"You- you're sure that this, that changing... Um." He paused, trying to organize his thoughts. "You're sure that the floors, they don't actually change who we are underneath, right? It won't change, like, you know?"
"Quite sure," said Vlad. "What are you afraid of, Daniel?"
Danny crossed his arms. "Nothing," he said.
Vlad raised an eyebrow, but did not further dispute Danny's claim.
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Clockwork had managed to find a gap in the Observants' interdiction of the Digressed Tower. It was much less difficult once he realized that Issitoq was using the hourglass. Not easy. It was never easy to worm his way around the Observants' restrictions, but the Digressed Tower was, in some ways, like Amity Park: a thin spot in reality. Though, it must be said that the Tower was more of a thin spot across time and probability rather than across dimensions, as Amity Park usually was.
The thing with the Digressed Tower could be viewed from a number of different angles, from a number of different time lines, and some of those time lines were not interdicted.
He could see Daniel. Daniel was injured. Horribly so. Much of the work he and Frostbite had done on his core earlier had been undone, and the Digressed Tower was certainly not helping his mental state.
Not to mention the assassins Issitoq sent.
If Clockwork had been human, he probably would have chewed his nails to the quick, or picked up some other self-destructive nervous habit. Actually, he probably wouldn't have been chewing his nails. He was wearing gloves, after all.
Then, in the other time mirror, to his left, he was watching Dan. Issitoq had put the thermos in a triply sealed 'secure' container that he had then locked in a room in the Panopticon. It was ridiculous. Vlad Plasmius had waltzed into the Panopticon and stolen one of their prisoners. Perhaps Vlad was more powerful that the average ghost, but their citadel was anything but impenetrable.
And, to keep Dan in the thermos, Clockwork had had to rewind the thermos's time ever so often. That wasn't something the Observants could replicate. Not unless Issitoq stood over the thing with the hourglass, which was not, incidentally, infinitely re-usable. Clockwork couldn't see him doing that, not as a hypothetical and not as real future possibility.
Dan, however, had been quiescent thus far. Clockwork wondered if he had actually actually gotten through to Dan somewhat after all the time he spent talking to him, or if Dan was just biding his time, waiting to strike. Either option was possible at this point. If he'd another year or so to work with Dan, or clearer vision, then he'd been able to tell, but as it was...
He sighed, and ducked just in time to avoid being hit by Nephthys's slipper.
"Why did you drain my lake?!" she demanded.
"I needed some way to divert that paradox," said Clockwork, turning around.
"Don't give me that. I know that you know how to fix paradoxes without damaging the environment, and I know that you know that I know you know that. You owe me one smack with this slipper, a dozen cookies and a new lake!"
"You already fixed your lake, though?"
"I don't care, I want a new one! I want change in my existence that isn't you draining my lake!"
Clockwork sighed again. Nephthys changed her lair on a regular basis. She could be called the Ancient Master of Change just as easily as she could be called the Ancient Master of Death. But then ghosts weren't always rational.
(Neither were humans, from what Clockwork had seen.)
"I can't give you a new lake," said Clockwork.
"Why not?"
"I can't tell you," said Clockwork.
Nephthys glared. "Oh? And what is the real reason you drained my lake?"
"I can't tell you that, either."
"Can't or won't?"
"Can't."
"Why?"
"Can't tell you."
"Hm," said Nephthys. "Was Issitoq here? Is that what this is about?"
"I can't tell you."
"Really," said Nephthys. "You still owe me some cookies, but I suppose that they can wait until after the initial committee. The recess is going to end soon."
"I can't go."
"Excuse me?"
"I can't go," repeated Clockwork.
"Is this related to all those other things you can't tell me?"
"Yes," said Clockwork.
"So this is more important than the trial that may decide your own child's fate?"
"More important? No." He adjusted his mirror, and Nephthys came closer, peering over his shoulder.
"Oh dear," she said. "Is that Daniel? Is he where I think he is?"
Clockwork nodded once.
"Why?" asked Nephthys. When Clockwork stayed silent, she answered herself, "Issitoq. Of course. Brother, I will get you an advocate, and I will... take care of this." The centers of her eyes sparked purple, and obscure patterns crawled along her skin, touching her skin with pale blue pearls. "Things need to change."
