Hey, sorry for posting this so late. I got distracted by Ectober thoughts and NaNoWriMo thoughts. In other news, I will have limited spare brainpower this month.

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Chapter 167: All Aboard M. Bersback!

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Wes stared at the ghost in his living room. Amity Park had always been- he shouldn't say infested. That term felt too GIW-ish to countenance. Amity Park had always been haunted. There, that was better.

Amity Park had always been haunted, but Wes had never expected to find a ghost sitting peacefully in his living room, drinking tea, and talking peacefully to his mom. He also hadn't expected for any ghost he saw to be the ghost of someone he knew. Well, there was Fenton, but he hadn't expected that either, he'd just been able to see it, unlike literally everyone else in town.

"Mrs. Stadler!?"

The woman turned and smiled, green shining on her lips, and through her thin skin. "Wesley, dear, do come down off the stairs. And I go by Aunt Ravel now." She put her teacup down. "Speaking of which, I never did finish that blanket you ordered, Wanda, the one with red trim and stars? For your cousin's baby shower?"

"Well, I didn't expect you to," said Wes's mother, a little faint. "You had, um..."

"Oh, you can talk about my death, I don't mind. It is a little hard to dance around the subject, isn't it? With my being a ghost and all. I hope I didn't frighten you, showing up like I did, but I couldn't use the door, with all those nasty men on the streets, you know, the ones in white?"

"We know."

"That's actually what I'm here about. You see, those fellows in white, they aren't exactly friendly, are they? I'm sure you've noticed. We've noticed, of course."

Wes finally descended the last few steps into the living room. "When you say 'we,' who do you mean, exactly?"

"Why, all of us. All the ghosts in Amity Park. We'd like to do something about it, wouldn't you?"

Wes wished his dad was here. He'd always wanted people to listen to him, and take him seriously, especially since he figured out that Fenton was Phantom, but brokering an alliance with ghosts? That was too much. And people still didn't believe him when he said, when he showed evidence, that Fenton was Phantom! It was infuriating!

… And he was off track.

"Does that include Phantom?"

A frown passed over 'Aunt Ravel's' face. "Well, no, he's not in Amity right now, and more's the shame. If he were here, none of this would have ever happened. He wouldn't have allowed it." She put her hand over her heart. "That poor child. Those people are so cruel to him."

"He is Fenton, isn't he?"

"Wes," said his mother, a little strained, "I don't think it's the time for that."

Wes sat on the couch, gingerly, and his mother returned her attention to the ghost.

"So," she said. "Why you? And why us?"

"Well, it's because you know me, isn't it? And you're the ones organizing everything, aren't you?"

"How do know that?" asked Wes, aghast. They had been trying to keep their little rebellion on the down-low. Sure, ghosts could be invisible, and overshadow people, and go through walls, but there had been GIW all over town with their scanners, the meetings were secret, they didn't talk about what they were doing outside of the meetings, and a good number of Amity Park citizens had picked up the trick of telling if there was an invisible ghost nearby.

"Oh, it's a funny story, really. Or, maybe, not so much of a story as a description. You see, the ravens told me. They can speak, you know."

"The... ravens."

"Oh, yes. The ravens told me. And the cats told them." Aunt Ravel smiled. "I'm told Inky is very excited about what you're doing here."

"Inky. Our cat?" asked Wes's mother. She sounded lost. Wes was lost, too.

"Yes. She's been dead for a while, you see. You didn't know?"

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"Ship ahoy!"

The call echoed down through the ship, reaching Sam, Jazz, and Tucker. They had just managed to pull Sam out of her self-created prison, and were brushing pine needles off of her.

"Should we go up?" asked Jazz. "Or should we be asking what just happened here?"

"I don't know," said Sam, aggrieved.

"Well, what were you thinking about?" asked Tucker.

"You think I caused this?"

"Maybe?"

Sam shrugged. "A bunch of things. I was thinking about my plants that were in here, and about how I kept trying to make them grow, and how that didn't work out, and about fixing the ship- Oh, jeez, what!"

The boards beneath Sam's feet had started sprouting. She pointed at them, sharply.

"I'm just not going to think about that for a while, then," she announced. "We'll work out what's going on later, when I'm not going to make this ship uninhabitable."

"Sounds good," said Tucker.

Jazz had been frowning at the ceiling. "I think we should go up."

Sam ran her hands down her clothing again, dislodging a few more needles. "Yeah."

"I don't know," said Tucker. "Do you think they'll want us up there? I mean, we don't want to get in the way."

"It'll be fine," said Sam. "We're good in combat situations."

"We don't know if it is a combat situation, though."

"Then there isn't a problem. We can just phase through the deck if we need to get out of the way in a hurry. Aren't you curi-?" Sam cut herself off. "Yeah, no, never mind. Oh, jeez. I can't believe I-" She shook her head. "I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to."

"You came real close to jinxing us there, Sam. And you call me bad luck."

"What are you talking about?" asked Jazz.

"Later," said Tucker. "It's complicated. Let's go see what's happening."

They made their way to the upper decks, dodging running crewmen as they did. They tried to get more information, but none of the sailors had any. All they knew was that there was a ship coming into view. They hadn't made out the flags yet, or if there was a name written on the side.

They chose a relatively out of the way ladder to climb and went up. The deck was busy, but not nearly so much as it had been in the heat of battle. There was room from them.

A good number of the sailors were hovering at the port railing and pointing. Sam caught snatches of conversation, arguments about whether or not to avoid the ship, prepare for combat, or see if they could signal it for help. They didn't recognize the ship. Sam, Jazz, and Tucker joined them, squinting into the distance.

Sam spotted the ship everyone was talking about, and sighed. Well, there was one thing that wasn't going to turn into a problem. She turned to shout to the sailors. "I know that ship!"

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Dan floated to his feet, ready to fight. "What do you want?" he demanded, harshly. He had never met Nephthys, but he had heard her, during his captivity in Long Now. She was friend and sister-by-choice to Clockwork. No friend of Issitoq's, and no friend of his, either.

"At the moment, you," said Nephthys. "I require your aid."

Dan scoffed. "You want my aid? What is this? Some kind of redemption thing? Don't you know I'm irredeemable?" He punctuated the sentence with an attack, which splashed harmlessly off of the air around Nephthys, without even so much as a sign of a shield.

Nephthys was unamused. "By human standards, perhaps, but let's not confuse ourselves with illusions. We aren't human."

"What are you talking about?"

"We aren't human. I am thousands of years old. Even allowing for the uncertainties inherent in time travel, and the ages of your component parts, you've not seen a hundred years." Her voice was cold. "You killed, what, a thousand people who had never harmed you or did you ill? Beyond that, a million or two who had? You can't imagine how many lives Clockwork and I have ended between the two of us."

"I haven't just killed people. I've ended ghosts," said Dan. He didn't like how uncertain he sounded.

"So have I, and from the way Clockwork tells it, you didn't destroy nearly as many people as you think you did."

Dan didn't know where this was going. He didn't care. It was time to get out of here. It didn't look like Nephthys was going to attack him, so- he shot off, only to run into another portal, and plow right back into the crater.

He shot right up, fire in his hands.

"What do you want?"

"I want to destroy the Observants. I assume you do, too?"

"Why?"

"Do you mean why I want to destroy the Observants, or why I want you to do it with me?"

"Either! Both!"

"Well," said Nephthys, drifting up to Dan's level, "the first is obvious, if you think about it."

"It's about Danny."

Nephthys's eyebrows went up behind her veil. "Tangentially. But, mostly, it's about Clockwork. They've harmed him once too often. Issitoq has also been playing with portals, and points of transition are mine. As for the second, you're changing. You're in my sphere of influence, now."

"So it is 'redemption,'" snarled Dan.

"No. It's change. You don't need redemption. All those things you say you did, they never happened here. Hardly anyone knows what could have happened. Most who do are Observants." She tilted her head. "But what I think you're more concerned with is forgiveness"

Dan didn't have to stay here and listen to this nonsense. He flew away. Right into another portal. Maybe he did have to stay.

"I don't want forgiveness."

"Don't you?"

The two ghosts stared at each other, Nephthys's gaze much cooler than Dan's. Did Dan want forgiveness? Hadn't he been thinking about that before?

"If no one remembers, there's no one who can forgive me, is there?" asked Dan, tone biting and sarcastic.

"There's Daniel."

"He's not going to forgive me. He can't."

Nephthys shrugged. "Things change. I can't see the future or read minds. Maybe you aren't looking for forgiveness. Maybe you're looking for self-respect, or a new start, or a purpose, or any number of other things. But you have changed, and you are changing. I can feel that as surely as I can feel my own skin." She paused. "Clockwork believed you could change for the better. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, a last-second chance, and a last second chance. Will you take it?"

"Take. What," ground out Dan. He'd hated this inscrutable nonsense from Clockwork. He wasn't at all prepared to take it from someone else.

"This chance. It won't be for nothing. You'll change, and change again. Change is the only constant in this world or the other. Those who seek to stay the same rot from the inside out."

"You're offering to pay me?" Dan couldn't quite believe what was going on.

"I'm offering to give you the change you desire. I can do that as easily as Clockwork can peer through time. As I said, you are in my sphere of influence."

Dan couldn't believe he was even considering this nonsense, but it wasn't like he had a choice. If he tried to leave, Nephthys would just portal him back into the crater. He understood that now.

"If I don't agree to whatever it is you want me to do?"

"You're in my sphere of influence. I can change you to something less threatening, if it becomes necessary."

"Blackmail seems beneath you, Ancient Master."

Nephthys shrugged. "The carrot and the stick. But, as I said, I think you'll enjoy what we'll be doing."

Dan smiled, sickly. "Like I enjoyed killing hopeless, helpless patients at hospitals?"

"If you're trying to scare me off, or disgust me, you'll need to try harder than that. I've watched all the horrors of human history and then some. Your sins don't measure up."

"Then you haven't seen them! You haven't seen what I've done! I have! What I did. For no reason." The force had gone out of his argument, along with its point.

There was a long, silent moment. The air seemed to vibrate.

"You could forget, if you wanted," suggested Nephthys. "The Lethe exists for just that reason. That, too, is a kind of change."

"But if I forget-" If he forgot what Danny had shown him, he might do it all again, all those terrible things.

"You can change before then, and stay changed."

Dan felt small and trapped, as he hadn't been since he was a teenager. If he was as powerful as he had been, he would have been able to get out of this. He could have made his own portals. Nephthys hadn't even faced him in the other timeline, hadn't dared oppose him. He could have fought her. He could have won. He was sure of it.

But not as he was now. His core twitched and pulsed and burned. Nephthys was right. He was changing.

(He was scared. He might have been scared for a while. He wasn't sure.)

"Alright," he said. "I'll do what you want." He paused. "Which is?"

Nephthys smiled. (Her teeth were like razor blades.)