Look at that! I've decided to do titles again, after not doing them for 100+ chapters? What chaos!
In other news, I've written to chapter 140, so I shouldn't have to do any skipping! :)
17: Danny is a sweet, soft child and nothing can change my mind. I do intend to continue Snow and Song, but it might be a while before I do so. I've got a bunch of other projects going on, plus the end of the school year chaos (teacher version), so, you know, time. But what can you do?
Inu Demoness of Darkness: I'm glad you didn't turn away! I always like having new readers, as you can probably guess. :) If you like platonic Danny/Clockwork may I suggest reading my one-shot collection Grandfather Clocks? It's mostly Lost Time fluff, with just a dash of angst and adventure for flavor.
Anne Camp: I'm glad you like the interaction, but I'm kind of veering away from romance as a whole for this fic. I'm not confident in that area. I kind of lean more towards Amethyst Ocean in general, too, so... Yeah... But I know there are a lot of valid issues people have with that ship, so... *shrugs* But romance in general isn't going to be a big focus.
Potkanka: Yeah, sometimes I like to give them a break. Not too often, of course, but every once in a while. They deserve it.
1228248: ~And many more!~ ;)
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136: Funhouse
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Dash was in shock. Real, serious, shock. He couldn't believe what had happened. He couldn't believe that Fenton, of all people, had knocked him out cold with one punch. Sure, over the past several days, he'd come to realize that Fenton was a good deal tougher than he appeared, but this was different than that.
This was in-his-face real. This wasn't some general, random, fact, known like something read from a textbook (if Dash ever read anything from a textbook), this was something he had experienced.
Fenton had beaten him. Dash would use excuses, like Fenton taking him by surprise, or only managing to knock him out because he was already hurt from his fight with Dale, but Dash wasn't blind. Fenton had been beaten up pretty bad, too. Had been since before they even got to this place.
If that wasn't enough, he actually flinched, flinched, when Fenton showed up with Valerie. He really, really wished he could blame the flinch on Valerie, but he was just barely self-aware enough to know that it was Fenton.
If this ever got out... It was one thing to be wary of Fenton's freaky girlfriends, but to be freaked out by the freak himself? It would destroy his reputation, topple him from his spot at the top of the Casper High food chain, the one he had beaten Dale to a pulp for.
Why did he even care so much? Was this that dumb limin-limb-lumen- Was it that dumb thing Fenton had talked about? It had sounded like the kind of dumb thing a Fenton would come up with, but what if it was true? Because he should have been more concerned about not dying right now.
Valerie prodded him up the stairs.
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Valerie felt sick. She was sick. Sick with some ghost thing, and-
That wasn't why she felt sick.
Danny was Phantom. Danny was Phantom, and she had hunted him. She had broken up with him to hunt him. She'd hurt him more than once.
She wanted to hit something. So she did. The stupid wall of this stupid ghost tower could take it. Stupid ghost tower that was probably going to give her an even worse job than the one she already had.
Why didn't Danny tell her the truth? Yes, she had blamed him for a lot of things, but did he really think that she'd kill him even if she knew he was human? She hadn't hurt Ellie, once she knew she was human.
Having to half-carry Dash up the stairs wasn't helping her mood.
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Ellie found Dale, beaten into unconsciousness. She had worn the look, and seen it others, often enough to recognize it. She hefted him up, and flew towards the stairs.
That had been easy! Now to find Valerie and Dash. That couldn't be too hard. They were both sort of noticeable people, and Dash was probably the one who beat Dale up. She didn't even have to find Vlad. She could avoid Vlad. Vlad could take care of himself, and if he was stuck here, that might count as a violation of his side of the agreement he'd made with her and Danny, which would be great. She really didn't want to train with him, for any length of time.
Yeah, thought Ellie, happily, it would be easy, and keep Danny out of trouble.
Her thoughts soured. There was really no way Danny would stay out of trouble.
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Danny padded through the beanbags, looking for his classmates, Cujo bouncing along at his heel. He was feeling pretty happy. He was mobile. He was useful. He was helpful. Cujo was with him. He knew that a rescue attempt was underway, and would soon know where they were.
These were all good things.
He was growing closer to the stairs back down. He could make out individual voices. It sounded like Mikey, Ricky, and the twins were having fun. Star and Kwan were shouting. There were ghosts making noises, too. For creatures traditionally portrayed as silent, ghosts could be loud.
One of his classmates came into sight. He had to do a double-take when he realized who it was. Paulina was laying face down on a beanbag, hair and limbs splayed. Danny approached cautiously, concerned. Paulina was always concerned about her appearance. Even in the Tower, in all this chaos, she had been trying to keep it up. Not very well, no, but she'd been trying, and a lot of appearance, Danny had learned, was attitude.
"Paulina?" he called. He leaned to one side, trying to get a look at her face. "Paulina? Are you okay?" He would never forgive himself if she was hurt. Never, never, never. No. She was still breathing. He touched the beanbag she was lying on, and tugged on it slightly. "Paulina?"
The girl groaned, and muttered in Spanish.
"Paulina," prompted Danny again.
"Go away."
"I know how to get to the next floor," said Danny, getting the important stuff out there before she fell back asleep.
"Whaaa?"
"I can get you to the next floor," he said, "where things are less, um, loud. There are couches up there."
Paulina buried her face back into the beanbag. This was really uncharacteristic behavior.
"Paulina, are you okay? Did you get hurt?"
"Just go away!"
Danny blinked. "Why do you want me to go away? Don't you want to go on ahead, so we can get back where it's safe?" he cajoled. He tugged on the beanbag again.
"I said, go away!" Paulina lifted her head again, glaring at Danny. Her accent was more pronounced than it usually was. "Why are you like this?"
"Like what?" asked Danny, confused.
"So persistent. It's annoying. Go away."
"I can't leave you here," said Danny. "Come on, you'll get hurt." He tried a different tack, one he knew would work for him. "Your friends will be there. I mean, maybe not right now, but soon! You want to see them right?"
The scream of frustration was entirely unexpected. "I don't want to see them?"
"What? Why not?"
"You wouldn't understand."
While there were a lot of things Danny didn't understand, a huge amount, actually. There was a reason he was called 'clueless.' However, he usually had a better chance of understanding when the thing was explained to him. As it stood, he had no idea what was going on here. Paulina wasn't giving him a lot of clues.
"Well, why don't you try to explain it? I'll listen, and Jazz always says that it's good to talk about stuff that's bothering you."
"I'm not going to talk to a nerd like you. Go away."
Danny sat down, cross-legged. "I'm not going to go away. I won't tell anyone, either. You know how good I am at keeping secrets. You've seen it while we've been here. I can keep yours. Promise." Danny usually didn't make promises, because he always kept them, he had to keep them. It felt right, though. Proper.
Paulina didn't respond. Danny fidgeted.
It only took a couple seconds for Danny to break. His patience was non-existent, especially with everything else going on in the background. "Is it about the other floors? Because those are just- I don't know if they're real options. If they're things that would really exist. They're just, I don't know. Shadows, I guess. Funhouse mirrors. It isn't as if they show who you really are, or anything. It's only what could have happened, if things were different."
"That's easy for you to say."
"Why?" asked Danny.
"You're always the same," said Paulina. "No matter where we go, or what happens to me, you're the same and it's annoying."
"Um, no, I'm not," said Danny, offended. Some of those floors had changed him a lot.
"Yeah, you are, 'cause you have a crappy reputation, and it doesn't matter for you what happens. Your weirdo friends aren't here to see it, anyway."
"Ellie's here. She's my friend."
That earned him a look. A disgusted look, but still a look. Then Paulina dropped her head down onto the beanbag again, exhausted.
Maybe that was the problem. "I can carry you, if you want."
"Gross."
"I'm not gross!"
"Whatever. Go away."
Danny felt the muscles of his jaw clench. "No." He thought back to what Paulina had said before. "What do you mean about reputation, anyway?"
"I mean, unlike you, I have a reputation. You're a loser, I'm not. You continuing to be a loser doesn't matter. Get it? Now, go away, like a good little loser."
"You..." Danny tried to process that. "Are you saying, that you think your friends will stop being friends with you, because of something they saw on one of the other floors?" He shook his head. "I don't think anyone is going to care about anything like that. They've got other things to worry about, and they were changed, too." He paused. "Paulina?"
"That's easy to say now,"Paulina said, grudgingly. "But they aren't going to forget. It's all going to come back up the second we're someplace safe, and I don't want to deal with it, so go away. Loser."
The last was said as an afterthought, and Danny rolled his eyes. "No one's going to stop being your friend because you looked different for a half an hour."
"I look different now."
"We all do."
"I look more different. You wouldn't know, but it takes effort to keep up appearances. I've been wearing these clothes, for like, forever."
"I do know, actually," said Danny, thinking of all the appearances he had to keep up while keeping Phantom a secret. Appearances he still had to keep up. He probably shouldn't have said that, but this floor being what it was, the rebuttal had just slipped out. He rushed to continue. "Everyone's really tired, and gross, and we all need a shower, I'm sure. Nobody's going to dump you just because you couldn't keep up appearances in the middle of all of this. Nobody could keep up appearances in all of this." Not that Danny wouldn't try his very hardest.
"It's what we did to Valerie."
Danny winced. "Oh. Yeah. That was pretty of mean of you. But it isn't really the same? I mean, you're all on a level playing field, not like with Valerie." He paused. "I can't believe I'm trying to justify that." He winced again. He hadn't meant to let that slip out. The sentences immediately before that hadn't been great, either.
"What? Run out of stupid ideas already?"
"I'm never out of stupid ideas." Wait. That wasn't quite right. "Look, I lied. None of your friends are up there right now, and they won't be for a while." Unless he counted Dash, he supposed. "So you can, I don't know. Freshen up? I think they found a bathroom..." He actually had no idea if they had or hadn't, but this was getting ridiculous and he was tired.
Surprisingly, he understood where Paulina was coming from. It wasn't quite the same as reputation, but he had been intensely concerned with acceptance in the year following the Accident. He looked for it everywhere and anywhere, including among his peers, in the form of popularity. The search, coupled with a no-longer-entirely-human psychology, had lead him to do some questionable things. Such as the garage sale that had released Technus, and stealing Soul Shredder. Probably, as Jazz had explained to him later, because he didn't think he would get that acceptance from the people who mattered the most, his parents.
He could understand that need. He could understand wearing a mask.
But that wasn't going to help him get Paulina to get up. "You know, the faster we get out of here, the faster we can find a shower." He paused. "I think Star and Kwan are getting closer."
Paulina was up.
