Hey, would any of you guys be interested in being beta readers for this fic? Pros: You get to read chapters early. Cons: I am an idea vampire and not great at communicating. PM me!
Thank you for the reviews! I love reading them!
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Chapter 122:
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"Thank you for the camera," said Sam.
"It isn't a problem," said the ghost who ran the little junk shop, waving her off. "Plenty of stuff falls through from the human realm all the time, and I can't sell more than half of it."
"It still means a lot to me," said Sam, turning the boxy Polaroid over in her hands.
"Why don't you try it out?" asked the ghost. "Take a picture of me."
"Sure." Sam raised the camera, adjusted it slightly, and snapped a picture of the ghost. After a second, a rectangular photo popped out. The paper was acid green rather than the usual white, but a clear picture developed on it all the same. Sam handed the little picture to the ghost.
"Thank you," they said.
"No problem," said Sam. She glanced back up towards the acropolis. "I'm sorry, I've got to go."
The ghost smiled, showing too many teeth. "Happy hunting."
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The first thing Sam took a picture of was a plant. It felt appropriate. Then she sat on a nearby bench, flicking the photo, waiting for it to develop. She knew it didn't really help the picture develop any faster, but it was a habit, a strong habit.
Sam sighed. She felt as if she was just distracting herself with all of this. She doubted that whatever power this might bring out in her would help her find Danny.
The picture became clear, slowly, and Sam stared at it, willing it to do something, anything. It would be pretty cool if she could change pictures... It would basically be photoshop, but with magic, but still. Or if she could control things that she photographed. Or, well, anything, really. She wouldn't describe herself as a nerd, but having what amounted to superpowers would be cool.
But nothing was happening. Nothing Sam could detect, anyway. She traced the outline of the shrub with her fingernail, looping around the ghostly flowers. It looked tropical. Almost like a hibiscus.
She licked her teeth. She hadn't brushed them properly in a while. She hadn't been taking care of herself properly at all, really. Danny would be ashamed of her. Well, probably not. Danny wasn't the kind of person to be ashamed of other people. Even when they acted stupid. Like Sam was.
The camera was sitting in her hands, begging to be used.
She raised it again, desultorily, and pressed the button, wishing that she could be taking a picture of Danny. Even the snap of the camera sounded depressed, and the flash was nearly nonexistent. She lowered it back into her lap, frowning. The flash had worked fine for the first two pictures she had taken. Had she jostled the bulb loose? She tapped the yellowed covering with her fingernail. It looked fine, but maybe she should show it to Tucker.
… Or maybe not. His affinity for things made more than a decade ago was limited.
She pulled out the half-developed photo, stared at it for a moment, and then looked up. The picture wasn't clear yet, but it didn't really look like the garden. She knew she hadn't put her finger over the lens, so what-?
She stood up, almost dropping the camera in the process.
"Danny."
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Danny cried again when they got to the next floor, this time more from relief than anything else. His parents really were alive and, well, maybe not well, exactly, since they were in the custody of Libra, but well enough. They were alive and they loved him.
The wisps, his friends (and how could he have forgotten them?), gathered close to him, purring. He rubbed his eyes, and pulled his fire-red hair out of his eyes. He looked around the room and blinked. Had everyone but he and Ellie, whose hair was the same brilliant red as his, gotten dye jobs between this floor and the last or did this floor do something as ridiculous as changing hair color?
Based on everyone's confusion, he suspected the later.
He sniffled again, and rubbed his face.
"I guess we just keep going?" he said, after a moment.
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Danny looked around at all of his much, much taller classmates.
"I thought this floor was s'posed to make us younger."
"My hair was gone," whispered Mr Lancer, his tone that of utter horror.
"I think it did," said Ellie. "It's just made you younger-er." She shrugged.
"'More younger,' dear," said Vlad, who looked the same as he always did. Incomprehensibly old. "You should say, 'more younger.' Or, perhaps, 'even younger.'"
"Why did you turn into a five year old?" asked Dash.
"I'm eight," said Danny.
"I'm two," said Ellie, who looked like a teenager and was clearly lying. Danny gave her a look. "Okay, okay, one and a half. And I don't have superlatives down yet, so sue me."
"The real question's why you're so giant, Dash, and... Why do I even care?"
"Hey," said Mikey. "Shouldn't you two look the same age?"
"How am I supposed to know?" said Ellie, shrugging. "We're probably just from different universes."
"Age is different for ghosts," said Danny.
"Yes," said Vlad, "and we don't have time to examine that in depth right now."
"Hey," said Danny, "Vlad, how old are you right now? Cause you look the same as you did downstairs. Are you, like, secretly like Will Smith, or Captain Picard?"
"What?"
"Jazzy's friend said that they're immortal."
"No, they're just actors," said Ricky, who had apparently gotten the short end of the stick and wound up a middle schooler. "Duh."
"No one asked you, Ricky." Danny looked around. "Hey, Pauli, you were acting really weird on some of the other floors. Are you okay? You look more normal now."
"Um," said Paulina, tugging on the ends of her braids. "Thanks, I guess? And I'm fine except I'm hungry and tired and I'm lost in the Ghost Zone. So, not fine."
"Yeah, sorry," said Danny, blushing. "Where're Sam and Tucker."
"I don't know," said Paulina.
"They haven't been with us, Daniel," said Mr Lancer.
"What?" said Danny. "I... Why not? They were with us when we came in, weren't they?"
"I didn't have time to get them when we were escaping," said Valerie.
"Escaping from what?" asked Danny. He stuck out his lower lip. "Where are they?" He wasn't pouting. He was eight. Eight was too old to pout. He wanted his friends. He didn't like it when they weren't with him, especially if he had to deal with Vlad.
"I think they're back in Elysium," said Ellie.
"Okay," said Danny. "I guess that makes sense. Oooh," he said catching sight of one of the floor's 'decorations,' a giant play structure on which a number of small ghosts were playing. "Hey, I think we should take a break. This is a good place to take a break."
"No." said Vlad.
"You're mean."
"You can come back later, when we aren't trying to avoid people who are trying to kill you."
"You're mean. Vlad's mean."
"I agree," said Ellie, a smug look on her face.
"Are you quite sure you're not five?"
"Mean," said Danny.
Vlad made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and walked over to pick Danny up and hold him under his arm. "We don't have time for this."
"I will bite you," said Danny.
"No you won't."
"Um," said Mr Lancer, "Mr Masters, have you ever held a child before?"
"Yes," said Vlad, already striding away.
"Strangling and kidnapping doesn't count, fruitloop!"
"That isn't how you hold a chil- Kidnapping?"
"It's how I hold this one."
"Amber alert everyone!"
"Vlad," sang Ellie, "he's gonna bite you."
"No, he isn't."
"Hey," said Hannah, "is no one going to talk about the invasion? I'd like to talk about the invasion, since it seems this place made us forget about it."
"What invasion?"
"The one with the spooky knight and the ghost king dude."
"That was years ago," said Nathan.
"No it wasn't," said Lester.
"Yes it was."
"No it wasn't. I know, because I asked Valerie out for the first time a week before it happened."
"You what? When?"
"Vlad is meeeeeeeeeaaaaaan."
"Stop gnawing on my jacket, you insufferable child!"
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"Since when did Danny go through a goth phase?" asked Tucker, adjusting his glasses as he looked at the picture.
"Never," said Sam. "I think this must be from now. Look, Valerie and Ricky are in the background." She looked up at the assembled ghosts. "Do any of you know where this could be?"
Pandora raised a finger to her lips in thought. "Could you take another one?" she asked.
"I don't know. I haven't tried," Sam admitted. She brought the camera halfway up, stopped, then continued the motion. She looked through the viewer, squeezed her eyes shut and thought really hard about taking a picture of Danny, then pressed the button. There was was a snap, and that anemic flash of light, and then the camera spat out a picture.
Everyone hovered over it as they waited for it to develop.
"Are you sure you're not taking pictures of the past?" asked Tucker.
"Did he even know Vlad when he was this small?"
"No," said Jazz, "he didn't. And look, there's Ellie."
"You're right."
Pandora sighed. "I know where they are."
