It's Friday!
Jeptwin: I hope that's a good interesting! :D
lenasmith106: I'm glad you liked it! Sometimes I just have to do a cute chapter, slip it in between all the angst and violence.
ReflectiveReader: Yeah, I want the ghosts and their relationships to come off as just a little bit creepy, a little bit too intense, with some unsettling implications from a human perspective that ghosts are either used to or don't consider problems.
Anne Camp: It is bad timing. But, from a Doylist perspective, Clockwork is too powerful. I must nerf him for the plot. (Sorry, Clockwork.)
mangageek3: Yeah, Clockwork is having some perception issues at the moment.
Cyan Quartz: Yep! Trying to move forward on the main plot after the Inanna arc. :)
ThisPerson1: Thanks! That's really nice of you to say. I'm glad you're enjoying the story!
neokid93: Wait 'till Danny sees just how jerky the GIW are being. Hehehehehehe. :)
Great: I'm glad it felt that way! Like I told ReflectiveReader above, that was my goal.
17: I am a sucker for Lost Time, I admit. They both deserve love.
DarkFoxKit: Oh, no, ideas. I remember the last time I had an idea. It turned into 191 chapters. It's better to have no thoughts. Head empty.
Eyriegirl: They're getting a little bit of a break... At least Clockwork is making Danny take a nap? Right?
Asilla: Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the story! I'm not an expert on mythology by any stretch. I did, however, spend a long time on the internet chasing around on Wikipedia and history sites to find what I used and reread Inanna's Descent to the Underworld several times (it's only a couple pages long, by the way). It's good to know the details are appreciated!
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Chapter 191: Take Away
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Due to Amity Park's… unique relationship with the afterlife, just about every other religious organization that met within city limits was a cult. The personalities and flavors of these cults ran the gamut from 'otherwise normal religion but with an explanation for ghosts' to 'probably satanic' to 'definitely satanic' to 'completely insane' to 'started out as a scam, but then ghosts happened.'
Wes didn't particularly care for the cults. He was an atheist, thanks, and way too many of them worshipped or at least venerated Fenton, which was incredibly weird. At least one of them was even after actual Fenton, rather than weird ghost Fenton (aka Phantom).
On the other hand, they were an Amity Park fixture, so Wes was quite disturbed to see members of one of the admittedly weirder cults get led, one by one, onto a long, white, windowless bus. He shifted his position on the roof slightly, the eyepieces of the binoculars digging into his cheekbones.
This was bad. It almost looked more like something that belonged in a World War II film than real life, and as soon as he thought that, he realized both how stupid it sounded and how screwed they were.
He scanned up the road to find an alleyway filled with the shadows of Amity Park citizens. They'd known this would happen. He shifted again, and found a different ally, this one home to a single cultist. The cultist was holding a box, presumably filled with cult items. He looked pathetic, but Wes could have kicked him for hiding in the wrong alley.
The GIW dragged him out, screaming. They burned the box in the middle of the street.
On other roofs crouched other ghosts and Amity Parkers, all of them unhappy with the current situation. They were about to do something that would result in the GIW coming down harder on them and Amity Park than ever before, but considering what was happening now, no one really cared. It would happen anyway; the only question was when.
The bus started up again, turning toward the house of the next cultist. Its escort, four white trucks, fell into a cordon around it.
Wes backed up down the side of the house and walked along the side of the roof. He braced himself at the edge and jumped. It was a short cut. He landed several streets down, on a mattress that had been left there for that exact purpose. A helpful hand rolled him off before he was squished by another jumper. Another person handed him a rattle.
Amity Park had a vast number of spatial oddities, many of which fluctuated frequently. The shortcut from the roof to here was a mild example. The ghosts knew far more than the humans. There had been a regularly updated map of them online, at a secret, unsearchable address, but it hadn't been updated since the disappearance of Fenton's class. Wes had his suspicions about that.
In any case, some of the spatial anomalies could be manipulated, if you knew how. Including one of the ones the GIW bus was about to drive past.
Amity Park had been waiting for an opportunity like this.
Wes gripped his rattle and hoped this would work. The ghosts were waiting on the other side. They couldn't be at this end, because the GIW's detectors would pick them up. He and his fellow rebels stared out the alley, at the road, waiting to glimpse the GIW convoy. In the other alley, other Amity Park residents held slide whistles.
The first truck went past. They raised their rattles.
The second truck rumbled across their field of view. The others had their whistles to their lips.
The nose of the bus came into sight. The rattles were shaken. The whistles were blown. An iridescent not-bubble spread between the two alleyways and consumed the bus like an amoeba.
There was a moment of perfect silence. Then all the conspirators charged the bubble, not wanting to be near the trucks when the agents in them finally reacted.
Wes ran right into a tree. His face came away sticky with sap. He looked up, and the trees bent weirdly against a teal sky. Ectobolts zig-zagged through the air, turning sharp corners by themselves. The bus was rammed into a camellia whose flowers opened and closed lazily. A psychedelic paisley encroached on the white paint of the bus. A ghostly green firetruck hung above it, firemen descending with gothic and jagged jaws of life.
Wes was pulled to the side, and reality snapped back into place. Relatively speaking. The ghost firetruck was still there, and the ghost firemen were still cutting into the bus, and the GIW agents were still shooting, but some of the more trippy elements were- Oh god! The camellia was animate!
Well, that was Amity Park for you.
Wes, like most of the volunteers for this, had carried an ectoweapon. It was tiny, one of the freebies given out by Fentonworks, but it was still a gun, and it would still knock a guy back. He pulled it out now and held it in front of him.
Would he be able to shoot an agent, even if one attacked him? He didn't know and didn't really want to find out.
How the heck did Fenton do this all the time?
The side of the bus was torn open with a tortured shriek. The ghosts scattered, crying out in alarm as the neon-green metal in the walls was exposed to the air. A few of the braver humans fired into the gap. The agents inside fired back.
This was going to be long, which was bad. Terrible, actually. The bus had to have a GPS, and the agents had to have cell phones and radios. They were supposed to get this done fast and be gone before the other GIW got here. Every minute it took them to get the imprisoned cultists out of the bus was another minute for the GIW to bring in the big guns. Possibly literally.
The firefighters started using their hose.
"Hey!" shouted Wes, standing. "You're going to drown someone!"
"Shoot! We forgot that was a thing! Shut it off, shut it off!"
Wes was suddenly thrown backwards, his shoulder blossoming with pain. He'd been hit.
This sucked.
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Sam was not able to convince anyone at Libra to take her to the Panopticon.
What she did manage to do, however, was spread the word that the Observants had been interfering and had attempted to destroy Danny. Considering the Obsessions of the members of Libra, and the underlying reason for all the current visitors, well, it generated a lot of anger. Outrage, even.
Add that to the Observants' machinations being the reason for the disappearance of the victim and key witnesses, and thus for all the delays in the trial…
The first boats started to leave for the Panopticon within an hour. Meanwhile, the class was shown to Libra's brand-new human-safe housing. A secretary with an eyepatch was giving them a tour of the facilities.
Sam glared out the windows as another group of ghosts took off, heading for the Panopticon.
"Please tell me you aren't thinking about stowing away," whispered Jazz.
A slow grin spread over Sam's face.
Tucker groaned. "Did you have to give her that idea? Really?"
"Shut up, Tucker."
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Everyone had their own rooms, so there really wasn't any need for Sam to be quiet. She got up out of her bed and went out into the hallway. There was a stocked kitchen at one end, and Sam intended to raid it for supplies. She didn't know how long it would take to get to the Panopticon, and she didn't want to starve on the way there. Or the way back, for that matter.
She'd had enough of going hungry on her last impromptu voyage through the Zone.
She opened the door too the kitchen aaaaaaaaand there was Jazz.
"Sam," said Jazz.
"Jazz," said Sam. "So, are you here to stop me, or join me?"
"This is reckless and stupid, you know."
"So? Where's Tucker?"
"Pantry!" shouted Tucker. "I'm taking inventory."
"You're going, then?"
Jazz sighed. "Yes, we're going."
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Valerie didn't know what possessed her to look out, but she was glad she did. She should have known those three would be up to something. Sneaking out was low-key, even, all things considered.
Based on what Sam had been trying to do earlier, they probably had some way to get to where the 'Observants' were.
Valerie wanted to go with them. She wanted to show those Observants that they couldn't get away with using her like they had, sending that woman, Spectra, to manipulate her. They couldn't get away with trying to kill her friend. Even if her friend was sort of half-dead already.
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Paulina had been waiting up. She knew something would happen tonight, and she didn't want to be left out. When she saw shadows pass through the light under her door, she got up.
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By the time Sam thought to look over her shoulder, halfway to the Libra docks, there was quite a train.
"What the heck?" she demanded at a whisper, her lip curled up in incredulity.
Her classmates waved at her.
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"Clearly," said Sam, "this isn't going to work. We can't stow away with all of you."
"That's what you were doing?" asked Star. "Why would you do that?"
They were back in the human hallway, all huddled together. It was crowded, and claustrophobic. Sam was working very hard not to lose her temper.
"Because we want to tell off the Observants."
"But so many other people are doing that," said Star. "Do you really need to go in-person?"
"To be satisfied? Yes."
"Then, like, sue them, or something," said Paulina. "Make them come to you. Or whatever. There are a lot of lawyer here, right?"
"You know," said Jazz, "that's not a bad idea. We'd have to go see the Feathers, though, I think."
"Jazz," groaned Sam.
"You know I was never completely on-board with this," said Jazz.
"Traitor."
Jazz rolled her eyes. "I don't think this would have worked, anyway. Even with just the three of us. It was a longshot."
"So, what do we do instead? Send the Observants a strongly worded letter and hope they respond, instead of ignoring us?" Sam threw up her hands.
"Well, I think they'd have to respond, if we put it the right way. They're still bound by Ghost Zone laws, right? By their own regulations?"
Sam sneered. "Yeah and look at how well that worked out. They're supposed to, you know, not interfere with other people, just observe. And yet-!"
"I know, but I don't think it's a problem we can fix," said Jazz, gently. "They're a big organization, with a lot of people. We can't fight them all."
"Yeah. Yeah. If we're not leaving, then I'm going to bed. Bye." She turned and sulked down the hallway.
There were footsteps behind her. She whirled.
"What do you want?"
Tucker raised his PDA in front of his face defensively. "I don't know. I thought you might want to talk, or something. Also that you're probably going to try going off on your own."
"Not with all of you following after me like ducklings," grumbled Sam. "I'm so tired of not being able to do anything. I swear." A wooden supporting beam on the wall sprouted branches and delicate green leaves. Sam stared tiredly at them. She'd spent so much time trying to develop a power, but now she had two, one of which she couldn't use, because she didn't have any film, and another one she couldn't control, because she didn't know what was triggering it.
She had a lot more sympathy for Danny's struggles right after getting his powers. Ancients, she'd been a jerk to him, sometimes.
"So, are you really just going to bed?"
"Yes," said Sam.
"What are you going to do about the food?"
Sam looked down at the food she had packed in anticipation of their journey. "I don't know. Maybe I'll keep it. Just in case we get thrown into the Ghost Zone wilderness and have to survive on our own. Again."
"Yeah, that's probably a good call."
Sam gave him a tight smile and opened her door. "Goodnight Tucker."
"We'll figure this out, you know that, right? We just have to do what we can. Talk to our advocates. Stuff like that."
Sam nodded. "Yeah. I get it." He door had grown leaves. "I get it. You'll cut me out if I grow myself into a room?"
"Yep. Do you think that's, you know, likely?"
"I have no idea."
