It's been a while since I did a Sunday update, hasn't it? But what better time to do one than chapter 200?
I hope this cheers you guys up a little. These past few weeks have been depressing.
As I said in the AN last chapter, please support the end of police brutality! Even something as simple as staying educated on the issues and voting in the upcoming election can help!
TW FOR CONTINUING RIOT-LIKE CONTENT. Especially in the second half of this chapter.
Asilla: Yeah! After so long showing Danny at his worst, I wanted to give him a fight where he could really bring his powers to bear.
Nahmen: Technically, he isn't making them. They're already there. :)
Cyan Quartz: I had no idea! I sort of thought that I'd just get them out of Danny's lair and send them home, but I just kept having Ideas, and I decided, heck, might as well see how many plots I could squeeze in. It ballooned from there.
Dp-Marvel94: I think you'll like what's in the box :). But, yes! Danny finally gets a chance to shine in this fight after mostly recovering from his injuries.
vampireharry the 2: Thanks!
Jeptwin: I'm leaning in the direction that Amity Park isn't quite a genius loci, but it's a near thing. The ground is just as saturated with ectoplasm as the people. The GIW have tried to take everything, but they haven't had the time to succeed quite yet. Occupying and oppressing a community like this is a lot of work!
aquestionablepresence: Thank you for reading!
DarkFoxKit: I don't like the riots and looting, either, especially since (at least in my area) the only people who have been caught at it have been young white men. Also, fires in cities have a tendency to go out of control and cause collateral damage, so D: . Please don't do that, guys. I'm glad I'm giving you ideas for your stories!
ReflectiveReader: I'm glad I'm keeping you on your toes!
Anne Camp: Not quite, zombies, but, yes. :)
AnniBananni: They are, though. They totally deserve it.
TTGG03, GrovyleTheGreat, and 17: You need wait no longer!
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Chapter 200: By Grace
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"Thank the ancients and any gods that may be watching," said Astraea, collapsing into a chair and rubbing her face.
"Does that mean we have something to do, now?" asked Adrestia, leaning over the back of Astraea's couch.
In the interest of easing and accelerating the inexorable, but also rather slow, march of justice, Astraea had allowed Adrestia and the Eumenides to use her quarters as a sort of base of operations.
They were terrible roommates. Astraea loved them like sisters, but they were awful. Except for Meg. Meg was a sweetheart.
Adrestia played loud music and left soda cans everywhere. Alex threw herself onto the furniture with enough force to move it inches out of place every time and never noticed. Tess, Tess left clothes everywhere. Why did she even have that many clothes? Many ghosts got by with one set.
All of them ate things. Why? Why did they feel the need to do that? Why couldn't they at least do it outside? Or in the hall? Away from Astraea's upholstery, at any rate?
Except Meg. Meg was an angel of mercy, to use a modern turn of phrase.
"Yes. Well," she amended. "Soon, in any case. They are currently debating jurors."
"Ooh," said Tess, "So, we get to go get 'em? Any idea what they'll settle on?"
"C'mon," said Alex, with a crunch. "We all know what they're gonna wind up with. It's obvious." She crunched again.
Astraea shuddered to think what crumbs were being visited upon her recliner. She loved that recliner. It had been a gift. A gift from Adrestia, come to think of it.
"Yeah," said Tess, "and what's that, huh? You suddenly get some kinda eyeball power?"
"Guys," said Meg. "Can we not? I mean, like, really?" She paused. "Alex, you've got a bit of stuff down your front."
Astraea groaned.
"Well," said Alex, sniffing. "They're gonna do a fifty-fifty, aren't they? They just about have to, with all the humans involved."
"Fifty-fifty of what?" asked Tess, pointedly. "You mean, like, fill the jury with liminals? Fifty-fifty liminals? There aren't that many. You're just throwin' out stuff that sounds good."
"No, idiot. Fifty-fifty ghosts and humans. They'll pick half of 'em to be some Zone randos, and then we'll go grab some humans."
"They've got plenty of humans, though," said Tess. "They're not gonna send us out for them." She flopped. "Gross," she complained. "We don't get to do anythin'. This sucks."
"They're witnesses, though," said Meg, almost timidly. "They can't be jurors. Besides, 'cept for the one they're just kids. I don't think they'll let kids on the jury. They usually don't put kids on juries, when they have juries. Right, Astraea?"
"Sometimes they do," said Astraea, wishing she could properly glare at her friends. "When everyone involved is a child themselves, for example. I believe Meg is right, however. They will most likely exclude children from the jury."
"There," said Alex. "So, we'll have to go get some humans. See?"
"If humans wind up on the jury. Why'd any humans wind up on the jury at all?"
"'Cause there's human defendants, human witnesses, and a half-human victim, that's why."
Astraea heard a humpf that could only be interpreted as Tess going to have a sulk.
"What do you think, Addy?" asked Meg, suddenly. "D'you think we'll be sent out?"
"Dunno. But whatever the advocates finally decide to do with the jury, I can guarantee it'll be at least twice as complicated as it needs to be."
There was a knock on the door.
"Come in," called Astraea. She didn't want anyone to experience her rooms in this state, but she had come to terms with the fact that her wants didn't particularly matter.
The door creaked open, and someone drifted in. "The initial committee wishes to inquire as to the availability of the services of one Adrestia the Inescapable and of the Eumenides, known also as the Gracious Ones."
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"Fenton."
"Yeah?" said Danny, snapping out of his daze. His haunt was feeding him so much information, he could barely keep up with it. Was this some kind of battle-mode, fight-or flight thing, or was it permanent? If the latter, he could see it becoming distracting.
"I don't know how to work this stuff."
"Oh," said Danny. Then, because he could never resist giving Wes grief, he said, "So, what were you planning on doing when you got up here, if you didn't know how to work any of it?" Even as he said it, however, he was moving to Wes's side and activating the equipment.
"I wasn't exactly expecting to get up here all by myself," pointed out Wes, scowling.
"You aren't up here all by yourself."
"I might as well be. What is that?" Wes asked, nodding at the picture slowly filling in on a large flatscreen that had popped out of the wall.
"Oh, that's the satellite picture."
"The what now?"
"Two satellite pictures, actually. Mom and Dad paid to put some mini-sats up. These ones are geosynchronous. They keep tabs on ectoactivity in Amity Park. Should be filling in any time now. Basically useless, though, what with everything going on. It's all just going to be green."
"Every time I hear about your parents, Fenton… I swear to god."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. What are you trying to do, here, anyway?"
"Get word out. Before the GIW cut us off, they stopped trying to explain ghosts away. We'll be taken seriously, now." Wes swallowed. "I hope."
"Okay, um, I'll just try to flood everything, then?" Danny started to flit around the Ops Center, pressing buttons and pulling on things. "All channels… And the internet button! I'm so glad Jazz suggested that. Automatically posts videos to the internet and… Camera. Microphone. Okay, you're good. Tell me when."
"What, just like that?"
"Just like that. Hope you have a script."
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Harriet's phone chirped and she swore. It should have been silenced. She had considered turning it off and removing the battery so she couldn't be tracked but had decided against it when faced with all the other ways she and her equipment could be tracked. Almost all high-end electronics were lo-jacked in one way or another nowadays, it seemed.
She pressed her hand against it, hard, as if she could retroactively muffle the little jingle. Sweat trickled down her back. If she kept doing stupid things like this, she was going to get caught-
Something cold and metallic pressed against the back of her neck.
"Don't move," said a deep voice behind her. Something clicked. "Sir, I've detected a civilian near the secure perimeter. Advise?" There was a beep and a click.
"Be advised, all persons attempting to approach the perimeter are to be considered hostile. Civilian population has been compromised. Dispose of hostiles according to subsec-"
There was a sharp crack, and the cold spot on her neck vanished. Harriet whirled, heart racing. A man in white was sprawled on the ground, blood leaking from a coin-sized hole in his temple.
Two more sharp cracks split the air, and Harriet dove to the ground, praying that it would make her a smaller target.
"Miss Chin!"
Her head snapped up. She knew that voice, but… It wasn't possible.
Then a ghost phased out from behind a tree, and she realized it was possible after all, because life and death had never played nice and stayed separate in Amity Park.
"Miles?"
"That's me, ma'am!" said the young man, saluting. His dark green skin contrasted weirdly with his teeth, which were much sharper than they had been in life, and the scars of the explosion that had killed him. "Me and my unit have been detailed to escort you to a safe location." He held out a gloved hand.
"Detailed? By who? Why?"
"Uh. Hum. I'm not actually sure. I just woke up, you see, most of us did. The whole dirt-nap business, you understand. But I think you're needed for corroboration? Our orders were more, hm, feelings, I guess? From the land. Or the air… It's hard to expl-"
"Stop chatting!" called a rough voice. "We're in enemy territory!"
"Right," said Miles. "Come on, ma'am."
"Your unit?"
"Yeah," said the young ghost, voice soft. "We're the ones whose bodies came back, but not our souls. Well, our souls, too, I guess. Now anyway." He frowned. "Okay, they're not together."
"Shut up, Rice," hissed a voice, close enough to make Harriet jump.
"Right, right. This is Commander Bloom. He's invisible. I can't quite work out how to do that. Yet."
"Be. Quiet."
"Yes, sir."
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"I don't know what else to say," said Wes, turning out his hands. He and Danny had come to the wordless agreement that Danny stay behind the camera, largely because the GIW had blamed him for the kidnapping, and they didn't want any implications.
"We can show them," said Danny, nodding to the windows. He had no fear his voice would be recognized. It wasn't like it was particularly well-known. "Or we have the outside cameras."
Wes's eyes bugged out a little bit, and Danny sent a mental message to his duplicates to go invisible. Invisibility was a good tactic against human opponents anyway. He knew all the blind spots, but in a fight like this there would be no way to stay in them.
"Right, right," said Wes. "Crazy Fentons…"
Danny snorted a little. After the satellites, he shouldn't be so surprised.
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Danny was vaguely aware of what was going on with his duplicate and Wes up in the Ops Center, and obediently flicked out of sight. Visible or not, it had no bearing on what he was doing, that being freezing GIW members solid.
He was fairly confident it wouldn't kill them. Probably. Maybe. If he thawed them out, they would most likely wake up, none the worse for wear. Not that he'd ever tested that theory.
Honestly, he didn't care.
He wound through the roiling crowd, letting frost flow off his legs, snowflakes falling from his hair. Ice spread out from his footprints, under the feet of the combatants. It didn't so much as slip up the Amity Park forces, but whenever a GIW agent, scientist, or lackey had the misfortune to step on a patch, they were flash-frozen.
Of course, punching was still on the table, he reflected, as his fist plowed into an agent's face.
(It occurred to him that this was easier than it should be.)
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Some people just shouldn't fight. Oh, Danny didn't begrudge people the right to defend their homes, especially since he hadn't been here to do his job (and didn't that hurt), but some people simply weren't any good at it, and others, well. He recognized way too many underclassmen in the crowd.
Also, some of the cultists were just, well, crazy. He had seen at least three people armed with what looked like anime replica swords, another with a whip, and two with ritual knives. All of which were very well and good, but you couldn't stop in the middle of a raging battle to sacrifice your enemy to God, or Satan, or whoever it was they happened to worship (Danny had a sneaking suspicion that it was him).
He pulled yet another freshman out of harm's way and used telekinesis to set them safely down the road. How did the adults let them do this? Was it just because they were an especially large freshman, or had the situation really gotten that desperate?
Danny ignored the fact that he had been in a ludicrously large number of life-threatening situations while he was a freshman, including a (short) war.
Or should he count Dora's overthrow of Aragon as a war, too? Whatever. It hardly mattered.
His range for telekinesis was somewhat shorter when he was maintaining invisibility, he noted, as he flashed a shield up in front of a vulnerable group. He hoped that Wes and his duplicate would get on with things.
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This was a fight, so Danny was fighting.
Humans were so much more vulnerable than ghosts. So much more fragile.
It made things easier.
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Ghosts were as vulnerable as humans, just in different ways. That's why this Danny was hiding, arms wrapped tight around the box. He didn't need his duplicate's order to go invisible. He already was invisible, sneaking through his home like he had so often before.
His gutted home. His occupied home.
Each broken piece of furniture, each hole in the wall, each piece of GIW-branded tech that passed in front of Danny's eyes filled him with a rage that he passed on to his doubles. (They hardly noticed. They were more than angry enough on the behalf of the citizens of Amity Park.)
This was his home, the center of his haunt, and they had all but destroyed it-!
No. This was not the time to get swept up into a ghostly frenzy. His counterparts had all been given their jobs. It was his duty to get the box safely into the Ghost Zone.
He let himself have some hope. Now that Clockwork was no longer under the control of the Observants, the contents of the box no longer had to be secret. Maybe they could be fixed.
(Maybe, after all this time, they could be saved.)
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Harriet stared at her cellphone, ignoring the growing ghostly battalion around her.
"I've decided," she announced, partly to herself and partly to the assembled anachronistic soldiery, "that I'm hiring this kid."
"Wes?" asked Miles.
"Is that his name? Yeah. He's got talent. Or at least guts, which makes up for a lot."
"Miss Chin? You should get ready. We need to move soon."
Harriet looked up from the screen and put her phone away. They had spent the last ten minutes or so in a little run-down shack, and she'd gotten the impression that they'd be there for a while.
"The enemy is redeploying elements of their perimeter to reinforce their units under attack at Fentonworks," he explained. "This is our best chance to get you across."
"And for us to see some action," said Miles, who had seen plenty of action in life and had gotten himself blown up in front of Harriet.
She swallowed, hard.
"Hey, it's fine," said Miles. "Ghosts come back for a reason, you know that. And our reason is to protect our home and preserve freedom." He smiled, eyes bright against the shadows. "No matter who it is that threatens it."
"Considering who it is doing the threatening," said a soldier in old-fashioned camouflage, "it's even worse."
An unearthly growl rose from the ghosts and made the hairs on the back of Harriet's neck stand up. She shook away her unease and checked her camera. Still recording.
"Alright," she said. "I'm ready. Let's go."
