Anne Camp: I'm glad you're enjoying it! Feel free to use the tower yourself. :)
Potkanka: Yep, Danny's a poor tired child.
Ch 17 guest: Thank you for coming and reading more!
Zela Night: Pretty much. When he left the tower and came back, that reset his entry point.
Asilretor: Thank you for your feedback! I was worried that wouldn't come through.
Thank you all for your reviews!
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Chapter 133:
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Ellie set Danny down on a nearby couch, then turned to glare at Prunella. "How did you get here before us?"
Prunella steepled her hands. "I helped build this place. I know how to get from floor to floor."
"I don't suppose you're still a doctor?" asked Danny.
"A doctor?" repeated Prunella, surprised. "I was never-" She closed her eyes. "Right. Even I forget, sometimes, even after so long here. No, in this version of reality, I am a historian." She paused. "I did study medicine, however. I always regretted not continuing down that path. What troubles you? Something more than the ankle?"
"Well, yeah, but I don't think that you can fix it. You couldn't before," said Danny, leaning back. "I guess we're just going to wait until our people start showing up?" he asked Ellie.
Ellie turned from Prunella, and shrugged. "Yeah," she said. "That's the plan." She flew over to the couch, and perched on the back. "I've always wondered how these floors have so much furniture. Like, where does it come from? Who brings it?"
"Who brings things to lairs?" asked Prunella, eyebrows raised. "Some of the things we brought, others came later. It evolves that people like to lie on couches while they contemplate the inner workings of their psyche."
"Is that what people do here?" asked Danny. "Really?"
Prunella rolled her eyes. "That and party. I miss the days before the science wars. The golden age of Theory."
Danny blinked. "Hey, are there doors in here?" Prunella would know the Tower better than almost everyone else. If she knew about a doorway to somewhere... easier, somewhere he or Ellie knew better, then they could go, get away from the bounty hunters that were certainly surrounding Tower.
"Excuse me?"
"Like, door doors. Doors that go places. Other places? Doors that are portals. Shortcuts. To other, um, communities."
"In the Tower? No. That wasn't possible. It would have interfered with the mechanism that makes all this," she gestured broadly at their surroundings, "possible. We have safeguards that keep portals from forming in here."
"Oh," said Danny. "It was just a thought."
"I have a thought," said Ellie.
"Yeah?"
"How do you feel about-"
The door opened, and Danny tensed, ready to bolt as best he could. It was the Unstoppable Mailman.
The man, still dressed in his normal outfit, shuddered. "I hate this floor," he announced. "I can feel it reaching under my skin, trying to change me." He drew his teeth back, revealing sharp white teeth. "As if I would let it. As if I could be anything but a mailman." There was pride in his voice. "Now, I have letter for you, Mr Phantom." He held a crisp white rectangle out to Danny.
"Really?" asked Danny, eyes wide and hopeful. He took the envelope from the Mailman carefully, with two hands. There were a limited number of people who would be sending him mail at this time, and a smaller number who would do so via the Unstoppable Mailman. "From who?"
The Mailman adjusted his turban. "I was commissioned by Lady Pandora," he said. "If you want to know who wrote the letter, however, I suggest you read it."
Danny nodded, and found the edge of the envelope. Ellie leaned close over his shoulder as he pulled it open.
Danny sighed with relief. "It's from Sam and Tucker and Jazz. They want to know where we are and if we need help. Well. Not you or Vlad. They don't know you're with us."
"That's fair," said Ellie.
"There's a plan to come get us," said Danny. "But they don't know where we are, or what circumstances we're in. Um," he looked up at the Unstoppable Mailman. "Did Pandora pay for a return letter?"
"She did," said the Mailman.
"Okay," said Danny. "Does anyone have some paper and something to write with?"
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Danny wrote everything he thought was relevant on one side of the page, and then Ellie started to write what she knew on the other.
"Hey," said Danny. "What was it you were going to ask me before?" He leaned back onto the couch, injured leg stuck out awkwardly.
Ellie paused, glancing up at the Unstoppable Mailman.
The Mailman rolled his eyes. "I guarantee you, I am completely discrete. The very soul of discretion, as it were." He paused. "In other words, I won't be telling anyone about anything you say, unless you want me to. More specifically, unless you pay me to. That's my job, after all."
Ellie didn't look impressed. "Okay. Cool."
Danny nudged her elbow, bringing her attention back to the question at hand.
"Oh my gosh, don't use the puppy eyes. You're worse than Cujo."
Danny looked at Cujo, who was sitting on the couch next to him. The little dog wagged his tail enthusiastically. He petted him.
"Cujo is a good dog," he said before returning his gaze to Ellie. "What did you want to ask?"
Ellie shifted awkwardly, glanced at the other two ghosts again, and then returned her attention to Danny. "Do you remember when I was unstable? How being close to you helped stabilize me? Kind of gave me a pattern to go on. I was thinking, maybe I could do that for you?"
Danny leaned into her. He could hear the hum of her core, her ectosignature, a supernatural melody. "I'm already close to you."
"I mean, like, closer." She cleared her throat. "Like, if I overshadowed you. Then our cores would be right next to each other, and you could copy off of mine."
Danny regarded Ellie with sleepy alarm. "Half-ghosts are hard to overshadow. You could get stuck."
"I've tried to overshadow you before, and it was fine," said Ellie, now more confident.
"What do you think, Prunella?"
"It would certainly be interesting, and the theory is sound, based on my experiences. I do not have the extensive background that my other versions might, however, and I would have limited experience with that particular kind of healing regardless. Ghosts cannot overshadow one another, and liminal spirits are rare, both now and historically."
Danny didn't know if that was a comforting opinion or not. He could remember when Vlad had made Ellie overshadow him, though, back when she still went by Dani. He could remember the struggle. The fear. The love. The sense of being invaded by something just slightly off. Something so close to him, but so different. Could remember being attacked by someone he wanted to protect. He could remember all the other times he had been overshadowed, and all the side effects. He could remember Poindexter, and his lair, and being trapped in a body that wasn't his.
But... He was so tired. It would be so nice to just let someone else deal with everything, and hide, and sleep, within his own mind.
"At the least," said Ellie, "I could fix your ankle."
Danny's eyes went to the door. No one else had come up yet. "Are you guys sure they'll come?"
"Well. Probably?" said Ellie, correctly divining Danny's meaning.
"Based on my prior experiences of that floor," said Prunella, "your companions will eventually end up here, or two floors down. Considering the chaos that will be taking place near the entrance, they will most likely come here."
"They won't try to just, I don't know, go out? Leave the Tower?"
"There are few external doors on that level. They wouldn't want to leave, in any case. They can't fly. Can they?"
"No," said Danny. "Not unless they've learned in the last thirty minutes."
"Then they will not leave the Tower."
"So, what do you think?" said Ellie. "Yes, no, pistachio?"
Danny shifted so that he could look Ellie in the eye. "You promise that you'll try to make sure they're all safe?"
"I'll try," said Ellie, stressing the word.
"Okay," said Danny, trying not to brace himself. "Go ahead, then."
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Vlad was frantic.
He had to get Daniel and Danielle. He had to get them, and go back. True, there was no guarantee that they would experience the same shift as last time, but he didn't care. Surely it would be better than this loveless existence.
If only he could find them. They were so good at hiding, and so angry at him. For good reason, he supposed, but they'd understand once they were back below. It would be so much better. As half-ghosts, they would be able to live there indefinitely, feeding off the ambient ectoplasm. If they needed human food, they could trade for it. That floor was popular. Vlad suspected that the only reason it wasn't full was that the news of the bounty hunters and fights had spread.
How ironic, that he was doing so much planning while he was running amok. He was stripped of self-control. He flew back and forth randomly. He couldn't even force himself into a regular search grid. He was just searching behind every beanbag large enough to hide a person. Indiscriminate, illogical, disordered.
Miss Grey had been quite annoying, but she was, like the rest of Daniel's insufferable classmates, ultimately insignificant. She was also quite far away at this point, and she had stopped chasing him for some reason.
There was other chaos happening near the first door. The ghosts who had stayed were giving in to their Obsessions. It was a good thing they were all relatively benign and well-managed ones, Vlad supposed. He didn't really care about the humans' safety, but he knew that (his) the children would be upset. So it was good. Less upset for the children would be better. They would come more easily.
Then Vlad could start to make things up to both of them. He could make things better, be a loving, careful father, start to heal the wounds caused by his stupidity.
But he couldn't find them.
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It was so easy to slip into Danny's body that at first Ellie doubted she had even done it. It fit her like a glove. A nice glove, not one of those weird plastic foodservice ones. Usually, overshadowing someone felt like putting on a set of poorly fitting clothes.
But then Ellie could feel Danny guiding her, quiet, but there, showing her where the right places to be were. She fit neatly between the layers of his existence, overlaying his ectoplasmic brain with her own, his core humming a welcome against hers. Gosh, his core was so messed up that it made her core hurt in sympathy.
… Which was just about the opposite of what they were hoping for, really. She pushed her mind in other directions.
Danny's ankle wasn't a pretty sight or feeling, either. It was a good thing that, even as well as she fit into Danny's body, she didn't have full sensation. She could probably go and get it, knit herself in, thread herself through, reach out to the surface of Danny's skin, inhabit him fully and completely, but... that would be a mistake. She didn't want to feel the full extent of Danny's pain. She could do what she was here to do without that.
She breathed in, breathed out. Danny's lungs felt different than hers. His mouth tasted salty and a bit sour, probably because they hadn't had any access to toothpaste. Or anything hygiene-related. Yeah. Ellie knew that she wasn't at her most clean, either. It was just that this was... someone else's un-clean-ness. Even though she'd been cuddling with Danny on-and-off for the past several hours, this was grosser. It just was. Somehow.
She was a half-ghost-half-human-hybrid. She scoffed at so-called 'logic.'
While she thought, and got used to Danny's body, Danny began to sink into a kind of sleepy semi-consciousness. His core was still very active, but also... Not. Ellie didn't know how describe it. If she focused, though, she could almost feel him thinking. Or... Not thinking? Doing whatever it was cores did below the conscious level.
"So," said Prunella, "what does it feel like?"
"And," said the Mailman, "are you going to finish that letter anytime soon?"
