Special thanks to DemonKittyAngel for the idea for this next floor!

Woot! School is out! Yay!

... And now I'm working on professional development. Sigh. It's eating a lot of my writing brainpower because of all the essays. But once I finish this course I won't have to worry about it until the next license renewal cycle, so that's good.

Thank you for reading and reviewing!

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Chapter 139: And Other Bad Days

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Danny decided not to go back down. Ellie had gotten a lot of his other classmates, including Dale, the nerds, and the remainder of the A-list, up already. There were very few still down there, and with (crazy) Vlad out of the picture, Danny felt comfortable leaving her to it. Mostly. He was having a hard time sitting still, a hard time not pacing.

"Danny," cajoled Mr Lancer, "sit down, please. You're wearing yourself out."

Wow. He hadn't tried that before. He should totally do that. Yikes. Wisdom.

Vlad had stalked off soon after coming up, either out of anger or embarrassment. Danny was glad. He didn't really want to talk to Vlad right now, didn't want to unpack... everything.

Emotionally, Danny was shot. He really should sit down. His ankle hurt. He should sit down. He rubbed his eyes, and the wisps who had made their way up here cuddled up to him. He hummed at them, reminding them that he needed space, had boundaries. He rubbed the back of his neck. No more spinal cord cuddles. That had been unpleasant. They had to stay on the outside of the skin unless they asked and he said yes. That was fair.

Eventually, after several more of his classmates, and a few friendly ghosts, came through the door, Danny did manage to sit down. Not still, exactly, but down. He tucked himself between Mr Lancer and the arm of the couch and worried. He wasn't sure what floor they were on anymore. It had to be at least fifty, right? Or was it more like forty? Had Ellie said what the seventy-seventh floor was supposed to do? How would they know when they got there?

He moaned, and buried his face in his hands.

Mr Lancer patted his back awkwardly. "I'm sure everything will turn out fine, Danny," he said. "We must be at least halfway there, right, Ms, ah, I forgot your name?"

"Prunella. I'm not certain where you came in, or where you're going, but this is the fifty-fourth floor." The ghost woman shrugged. "Usually it's the fifty-fourth floor. I've never been entirely sure if one of my colleagues didn't add a feature to scramble the floors every now and again. None of them are sure, either. As you might imagine, the construction of the Tower had its... hiccups. Even I can't be sure if I didn't do that."

"Great," said Tiffanie (Danny wasn't sure if Ellie had brought her up, or if she had found her own way). She was trying to work knots out of her curly hair with her fingers. "All of that and no food, brilliant. No wonder you guys are all dead."

Danny winced. Hunger was making everyone moody, and the fear was wearing off. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say.

Prunella cleared her throat. "We aren't actually. All Dead, that is. In some circles, it is considered rather rude to assume things like that. As for human food..." Prunella rolled her eyes. "You'll forgive us for not expecting any humans."

Tiffanie grumbled. Danny scanned the room nervously. No one was happy. Dash and Valerie were both staring holes into him. He looked away in a hurry. He'd been avoiding their gazes.

The door burst open, revealing Ellie and the last of Danny's classmates, Elliot. Ellie had a bruise on her cheekbone, a new one, and Danny was up instantly, fussing over her.

"It isn't anything," said Ellie, waving him off. "I just had to fight for this guy." She indicated Elliot, whom she was holding by the back of his shirt. "I'm not sure why."

"Can you let me go, now?" asked Elliot, a whine in his voice.

"Sure," said Ellie, removing her hand.

Elliot stumbled forward and glared at her. "I was doing just fine on my own, anyway."

"No, you weren't," chorused the class.

Ellie raised an eyebrow.

"Compulsive liar," explained Danny.

"Ah. Be careful with that, kid."

"I don't want to be called kid by someone who looks fourteen."

"Tough. So, next floor?" asked Ellie, clapping her hands together.

"What about that letter?" asked Mia. "Shouldn't we stay put so that your friends can find us?"

"No," said Prunella, a bit too eagerly, leaping in before either Ellie or Danny could say anything. "You should keep moving, else you might be overrun. There isn't much difference between a bounty hunter and a hitman, for all that they are different professions."

Danny looked at her askance. That wasn't wrong, it had been his and Ellie's reasoning, too, when they wrote in their letter that they would be continuing up, but but that was too much enthusiasm. She was probably curious about how the upper floors were going to affect them. That was why she was in the Tower, why she had helped build it in the first place, to see it working. Danny couldn't be too surprised. He could still be disgruntled.

"Speaking of," said Ellie, "Val, what job do you have?"

"I- What?" said Valerie, who had evidently been too focused on staring holes in Danny to notice much else.

"What job do you have?"

"I'm a cashier at the grocery store," said Valerie.

"Cool. Hey, Vlad's not up here. Is he?"

"He is," said Danny. "He's off sulking somewhere. We'll probably run into him before we get to the next floor . I've got to talk to you about that, later. Privately."

Ellie made a face. "That sounds wonderful."

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

"It isn't bad. Erases the worst day of your life."

Danny's eyes went narrow. "Uh. That's kind of problematic, isn't it?"

"How?" said Ellie, walking to the far door.

"Isn't this the worst day for, well, a lot of you guys? It'll probably get really weird if a lot of you forget what's going on."

"This isn't my worst day," said Mikey. There was a surprisingly large amount of agreement from the class.

"How are they defining day, anyway?" asked Ricky. "Any twenty-four hours? Midnight to midnight? Dusk to dusk? Dawn to dawn?"

"Don't look at me," said Prunella, "I wasn't in charge of that floor. It doesn't matter, anyway. All options must lead to the Tower, or the Tower cannot generate them."

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Danny was worried. Danny was always worried, lately, but he was especially worried right now. He hadn't brought it up, but his worst day had been... character forming. Foundational. He wouldn't mind forgetting it for a little while, but... he wasn't exactly sure where forgetting it would leave him.

But, according to Ellie, the floors couldn't change him too much, they weren't able to. If they tried, it wouldn't work. The floor where his parents were dead hadn't turned out as poorly as he had feared, so that helped... And he was fairly certain that the whole... Dan... ordeal had lasted for more than a day. Actually, it had been several days, even just from his perspective, without time-travel shenanigans. There was just... one particular day in there that was especially bad. But he had a suspicion that was the important day, when it came to the development of his character.

He would just have to deal with it, though. There wasn't anything he could do.

He would just have to... He lost his train of thought as he went through the door. He was sure it wasn't important. He was here for a reason, and he certainly hadn't forgotten that, even if this floor was supposed to erase his worst day ever. To be honest, upon taking inventory, he couldn't imagine having a day worse than the ones he could remember. So.

This was... He counted in his head. This was the fifty-fifth floor. He was more than halfway up. If he got to the top, then the Iris would see him.

If the Iris saw him, he could plead his case. It was said that the ruler of the Universe Tower could open doors to other possibilities, to the past, to the future. Unable to find Clockwork's lair, get that cursed medallion out of his chest, or even find Vlad, that was his only hope, the only chance he had of getting back to his own time, and defeating that thing.

Danny had lied, tricked, and stolen his way here. If anyone here knew who he was, they would probably try to kill him, and he couldn't blame them for that. But they didn't understand. None of them did. He had tried that. It didn't work. It never worked. It just hurt, and-

Wait.

Wait. No. He couldn't be remembering the last few floors properly. He couldn't be- He couldn't be seeing what he was seeing. This had to be some kind of lie, some kind of trick. A mind game. Dan did that, occasionally. He would come, mock Danny for not making his way back yet, point out all his ruthless choices, his petty cruelties, say that Danny was becoming just like him, and then taunt Danny with illusions, with memories shown with a touch of a core. But the Universe Tower was supposed to be safe from that monster, one of the few places he wouldn't go.

Therefore, it was full of refugees, petitioners, applicants, hopefuls come to see the Iris. If Dan was here, he'd tear through them like an addict through a pack of cigarettes. He'd destroy them for his pleasure, not even savoring them, leaving their remains scattered across the floor. Danny had seen it before.

Danny shrunk in on himself, clutching his tattered cloak. There wasn't any point in fighting. He had tried to do that so, so, so, many times. Between his many defeats, and the- the suicide attempts (even now, he didn't like to think of them that way), he was weak and broken. People were going to die because of him, and he was just going to let it happen. Let all of this happen. If he tried to fight back, Dan would make it worse. Dan always made it worse.

He'd been so hopeful this time.

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"He's catatonic," proclaimed Prunella. She shook her head. "Completely unresponsive."

"Why?" asked Ellie, stepping closer. She was in human form, because she really didn't want to melt, and any ghost powers at all would set off that mess.

"I'm not sure. If I were to guess, however, I would say that something he saw in here shocked him and set him off. He's not in good shape." The ghost doctor put her hands inside the hood Danny was wearing, as if to cup his face. "I think he's been tortured."

"Tortured?" interjected Mr Lancer, horrified. "I thought this floor was supposed to get rid of bad days."

"It does. A lot of people don't realize it, but sometimes a bad day averts much worse ones." She looked at Ellie. "You aren't in good shape, either. Perhaps if you did what you did before, and overshadow him?"

Ellie shook her head. "I don't think that'll work," she said. When Prunella raised an eyebrow, she added, "It's just a feeling."

"Alright then."

In truth, it was more than just a feeling. At its root was a feeling. The feeling that Danny didn't recognize her. If he didn't recognize her, he would reacted violently to being overshadowed. If he reacted violently enough, no more Ellie. She'd seen what happened to her 'siblings.' She had no desire to repeat that, and she was afraid.

"Let's hurry up and get off this floor."