Hey! Guess what? I'm sick. So. Yeah. It shouldn't affect updates, but... yeah... Might not be able to respond properly to reviews for a while. I'll try to get them answered on like, an individual basis, I guess.

Thank you for your reviews! They make my day!

.

.

.

Chapter 162: The Pack

.

This was a disaster.

Issitoq had lost track of the monster entirely. He had lost it. It had somehow managed to disappear, beyond even his sight, and he simply didn't understand it. Even if the monster was a paradox, it was here, in this time, now. Issitoq should be able to see it.

But he could not. No matter where he looked, the monster wasn't there.

Issitoq slumped against the wall in a kind of despair. How could he have unleashed this monster, another monster, into the world?

He had to fix this. He had to expiate this sin. But how? How, how, how? What thing now in this world could ameliorate these terrible mistakes he had made? Who could possibly forgive him?

No- No. The thermos would have broken anyway. Clockwork had sabotaged it. There was nothing Issitoq could have done. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And still, nothing was all he could do. Nothing was all anyone could do. As far as he could see, there was nothing that could stop either monster, either abomination. Nothing in this time.

Nothing... in this time.

His hand tightened around the hourglass. He wasn't limited to this time.

.

.

.

Dan sat down on a new island. This one was much smaller than the one he had rested on before, barely wide enough to properly sit on.

He didn't know why he hadn't thought of this earlier. No, actually, he did.

He hadn't thought of it because it had never been useful to him in the past- No. In the future.

He hadn't thought of it because he was an idiot. A high school dropout who'd never gotten higher than a C.

He hadn't thought of it because he had a thousand insignificant and irrelevant scraps of ghostly knowledge locked up in his core, and so little occasion to use them.

Half of Dan's core was made of Danny's. His ectosignature was almost identical. Dan's ghost sense was not the same as Danny's, his core temperature had changed when he merged with Vlad, and it had lost some of its efficacy, its sensitivity, but it could still detect ghosts, it could still read ectosignatures. It was enough to be able to find his own ectosignature on the ectoplasmic winds of the Ghost Zone.

.

.

.

Dan inhaled. Strictly speaking, Dan did not need to breathe. He was a ghost. He didn't even need to inhale to speak. There were other ways of vibrating the atmosphere. But inhaling let him scent the air, bring it closer to his core, so he could detect the ectosignatures it carried more clearly.

Danny's, thus far, eluded him.

He inhaled, exhaled. This was the only way he could find Danny, but it was boring. Almost as boring as being trapped in the thermos.

But, he reminded himself, unwillingly, that hadn't always been boring, especially once Clockwork had taken him up onto the main floor. More happened in Long Now than was immediately apparent. Clockwork had many visitors, the Observants, Danny and his friends, Nephthys, and the other Ancients. The Observants were boring when they weren't infuriating, but the others ranged from mildly interesting to fascinating.

When there were no visitors, Clockwork worked, unraveling paradoxes and adjusting the timeline towards what he thought qualified as 'happiness,' and he was more than willing- too willing- to explain his actions to Dan. When Clockwork had neither visitors nor work, he would lecture Dan, or, and this was oddly more common, play games with him. They were all mental games, chess and checkers on imaginary boards, and Dan had scorned them at the time, but...

Dan barred his teeth, and snarled. What was this? What was-

He tasted the edge of Danny's ectosignature. Good, good. He could go and he could do this, before he lost any more conviction, before he lost sight of why he was doing this. He would kill Danny, and the way forward would be clear again.

.

.

.

Danny bounced on the balls of his feet, smiling.

"I can feel my knees properly," he said, excited for that small thing.

"You're recovering faster than I thought you would," said Dr. Iceclaw, winding up one of his long wires. He had just removed the metal rod at the end of it from Danny's mouth.

"My ankles and feet are still kinda-" Danny almost fell over as he tried to balance on one foot. Pandora caught him. "Not right. Thank you."

"Do you think you're up for going outside?" asked Ellie.

"That's not a bad idea," said Iceclaw. "It would be good for you to walk around and stretch your legs."

Danny brightened, then wilted a little. "I don't think I want to talk to any other people right now. They're probably curious about why I'm here and stuff."

"I don't think you'd have to," said Ellie. "There are lots of different courtyards and stuff. We can ask Dora if there's one that isn't used much. Or we can ask someone else. I guess it doesn't have to be Dora. She might be busy. She's probably busy."

"I'm not busy."

"Hi, Dora," said Danny.

"Why did you want me?" asked Dora.

"We were wondering if there's somewhere outside we can go without a lot of people?" said Ellie, the lilt at the end of the sentence turning it into a question.

"Oh, of course," said Dora. "We can go to my private garden, and have something to eat. Do you take wine, Lady Pandora?"

Dora's private garden was contained inside an enclosed courtyard. It made Danny feel a little like he was in a deep well, except that the small spot of sky above was lurid green, and the plants below were pale blue, like Dora's dress; the opposite of what one would expect from a well.

In the center of the garden was a paved area, and in the center of that was a medium-sized pedestal table.

Dora began directing her attendants to set up a small meal on the table. Danny, meanwhile, began to make a lap of the garden. The plants were not, as he originally thought, all the same, despite their overall fairly uniform color. He wondered how they had been bred, to get this effect. When they were all in bloom they must be pretty remarkable.

He stopped. "Dora? Is this a vampire melon?"

"Oh, yes. Don't worry, they are completely tame."

"Cool," said Danny, wondering how that was accomplished. "Do you think-?"

Danny abandoned his question as a great howl filled the sky. At the edge of Danny's hearing, he detected shouting. One of Dora's escorts began urging the party back towards the doors. Something came hurtling down from the sky.

It was a dog.

Then it was two dogs. Then three. Then a great number of dogs were in, or floating over, the garden. Cujo then chose to ram right into Danny's chest, almost knocking him over.

"Hi," said Danny. He looked at the other dogs. He recognized them from the fight at the Tower. "I'm sorry I haven't been playing with you much the last couple of days," he said to Cujo, "but I've been sick."

He looked over at Dora, worried. She didn't seem angry so much as exasperated.

"I see you've made some new friends," she said, "but I would appreciate it if they left my garden. They are more than welcome to stay in the kennels or the yard, but this is too much for my little garden."

"I'm sorry," said Danny. "But they're more Cujo's friends, I think."

Cujo yipped. This was the cue for the other dogs to pile on, licking and cuddling Danny.

Dora raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"

.

.

.

Dan stood in front of a door, cursing himself, past, present, and future. He had followed the wispy, uncertain trail of Danny's ectosignature, but instead of bringing him to Danny, it had brought him to Danny's lair. Really, it was just typical. The universe couldn't let him have his way even once.

He reached towards the doorknob, but then let his hand fall back to his side. Why torture himself with might-have-beens? With impossible fantasies that weren't even his?

He had half turned away, when the door opened.

Dan's eyes snapped to the figure standing there, then narrowed. "You aren't Danny."

"No, I'm not," agreed the young man, easily. "But I'm more him than you."

Dan's lips curled. "I have better things to do than talk to shadows."

"I know what you want," said the shadow, before Dan had gone very far. "What you really want, deep down inside, that you hide even from yourself."

Dan was in front of the shadow in an instant, only inches from his face. "What do you know about it?" he snarled. It was an effort to keep himself on the right side of the threshold.

"I know what Danny knows," said the shadow, "and he knows more than he remembers. More than he lets himself remember. You touched his core."

"And what is it that you think I want?" demanded Dan. If Danny knew, then he should have done the same thing as Dan. What was wrong with him?

(What was wrong with Dan?)

The shadow gazed at him. "You know, this isn't your second chance. It isn't even your third. Or your fourth. Or fifth. Or-"

"Your point?" interrupted Dan, fully aware that the shadow would keep going until it was stopped. He had a suspicion that it was just trying to stall him, to keep him from getting to Danny for even just a minute longer, and yet, he couldn't leave. He had to know what the shadow was talking about.

"My point is, that this is your last chance, and it's a chance most people don't get. This world almost a blank slate for you. All your sins are erased. They never happened. Mostly."

"You think I want to be redeemed?" asked Dan. He laughed. It was a cold, hard, laugh, entirely without humor. "You think it's about my sins? It was never about my sins. It was never about what I wanted!"

"Then who wanted it?" asked the shadow, head tilted.

"You don't know anything," hissed Dan. He lunged at the shadow, not caring what defenses might await him beyond the threshold of the lair, but the shadow slammed the door closed a moment before Dan could get in.

Blocked, Dan's rage subsided. Oh, he could probably batter the door down, it likely wasn't even locked, most lairs couldn't, but why bother? With Danny's death it would cease to be.

.

.

.

Mirage slid down the door, and buried his face in his hands. The other shadows crept closer, oozing along the ground and the walls to put pressure on the door, an unliving barricade.

"Okay. That was scary," said Mirage.

The lair had felt Dan's approach before he had reached the door, but had not had enough time to make a new shadow for the purpose of distracting Dan. Instead, it called on the ones that already existed. Mirage, as the shadow created mainly to lie to and mislead other people, had been the one chosen to speak to Dan. Well. That was probably the wrong way to put the decision. The shadows weren't their own people, after all. They were part of the lair.

"I think he's leaving," said Umbra.

There was a collective sigh of relief. Most of the lair's power was in its size. The shadows doubted they would be able to fight off Dan. If he had come in, all the people in the lair would have died. Their only chance was to bluff, to distract him until he left.

"Do you think I said the right things?"

"Like there are any right things to say with him," said Echo, bitterly.

"Yeah."

"Should we, ah, should we evacuate?" asked Fractal. "We know where he's going..."

"And send everyone where?" asked Umbra.

"There's no point," said Shade. "If Danny can't stop him, no one can."

The other shadows had followed his reasoning before he had finished his sentence. It was only the truth.

"That's a bit narcissistic of us, isn't it?" said Echo. "I mean, he shouldn't have to be the only one to fight that guy. What about Pandora? Or Clockwork? Or, heck, the eyeball freaks, since they're the ones that made him in the first place. They can't possibly want him running around, either."

"If any of them are going to beat him," said Mirror, "they'll do it before he gets to Danny."

The shadows sighed again, the sound of it curling eerily around the simulacra of the Fenton lab. "Maybe," said Mirror, "but that doesn't mean we aren't right."