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Chapter 219: Revise and Return

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Issitoq had done it. He had speared the abomination right through the chest. Calesvol had struck true, as always, and it had been guided by Issitoq's knowledge of the creature. Perhaps someone else would have failed, would have missed its core, missed its heart, but not Issitoq. Not even with his eye half-blind, time obscured to him.

Issitoq knew he had pierced the abomination through heart and core.

So why wasn't it melting? Why wasn't it destabilizing?

Its eyes flashed red, and its skin began to shift. For a split second, Issitoq thought it was finally, finally melting, finally going away, but he couldn't delude himself for long.

Shadows flared around the thing's waist, and Issitoq realized his mistake.

He had not stabbed the abomination, but the time-displaced paradox it had spawned.

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Dan smiled. He'd had his doubts about Danny's plan. But, hey, anything to pop an eyeball, right? Especially the chief eyeball, the author of all Dan's tragedies.

Oh, sure, Dan would admit he'd shot himself in the foot more than once as far as his own happiness and sanity went, but the Observants and their constant assassination attempts, one of which had resulted in the death of his family and friends, weren't innocent in the matter. And, well, recent events aside, Dan wasn't one for introspection.

Which, yeah, was part of his problem.

Anyway. Back to beating up Issitoq.

Dan swiped at Issitoq, not bothering to pull the sword out of his chest (it wasn't a threat to his core, unlike Danny, Dan could move his). The other ghost's disguise shredded under the tips of his claws, but Issitoq escaped further damage. Dan snarled. At some point, he had shed his own disguise, but he couldn't pinpoint when.

Other ghosts were up and shooting. Nephthys and Clockwork, who had been prepared for this, were out of their seats. Issitoq was avoiding them all, so far, the remnants of his disguise clinging stubbornly to his arms and shoulders, jeweled bracelets and amulets glinting and glowing. Dan didn't immediately recognize any of them, but he could tell they were artifacts of power.

Perhaps, when this was all over, he'd eat one or two of them. For the sake of times that never were. Maybe he'd even eaten a few of them, back in the not-future.

The last scrap of Issitoq's disguise peeled away. His left hand held Clockwork's staff.

"Oh, h—"

Time wrenched itself backwards.

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Dan put his hand on the barrier of the witness box, preparing to jump over it. He paused. Something was… off.

Dan was a paradox, and therefore unpredictable, but he still existed in time, as part of time. Still experienced its flow, its progression from cause to effect. Still had to bow to its whims, to a greater or lesser extent.

But he was sensitive to certain things. To changes. Alterations.

Something had been changed.

He looked over his shoulder at the most likely culprit. Clockwork had doubled over, clutching his head. Oh, that couldn't be good. They did not need the old man to have a psychotic break and screw up Dan's chance at revenge.

No, wait. He's supposed to be getting over this and doing the whole 'I'm a better person now' thing.

(According to who?)

He was removing Issitoq as a potential threat to… Well, everybody. The world, really. Bad things happened when there was no Ghost King.

Yeah, anyway, that certainly sounded better.

Ugh. Had Clockwork freaked out because 'Danny' had gotten stabbed? Had he just rewound time and erased an epic battle? That would be—

He lost that train of thought as he was stabbed (again?) through the back, a long sword angling up and out of his chest. He turned, eager to fight. There he was, disguised as a bailiff of all things.

The door to the courtroom slammed open, Danny was standing there, eyes blown wide, hand over his heart. Great. His stupid younger self was going to ignore his own plan. Why not?

Anyway, back to beating the ectoplasm out of Issitoq. He could make fun of Danny la—

Time shifted.

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Danny found himself in the little, hidden waiting room again, and knew something had gone wrong.

Someone was playing with time. More to the point, someone was playing with time badly.

That someone was almost certainly Issitoq.

He leapt to his feet and shoved the box at Ellie, barely waiting for her to take it before running out of the room. The last loop of time had lasted for only minutes, and he barely remembered it. His head pounded and his core felt like it was trying to twist itself into a pretzel. Or an ouroboros. Or a mobius strip.

He threw open the courtroom doors.

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Jack knew he had missed something important when Danny, who was already in the courtroom, threw open the doors to the courtroom and rushed in.

There were now two Dannys in the room.

Now, it was possible Danny had duplicated himself. Ghosts could do that. But, well, right now both Dannys were human, and Jack wasn't quite sure how the physics of that would work. Like, he wasn't sure they wouldn't, but none of the options he had come up with in the last two seconds made any sense, so…

Two Dannys.

One by the witness box, the other by the door. Honestly, the second Danny's outfit fit much better with what he'd observed of ghosts so far. It was much more thematic and made him look younger, as opposed to the Danny in the suit, who somehow looked older.

Danny #2 was wearing a suit vest over a dress shirt and short pants that emphasized his bare ankles and feet. The vest was patterned with stylized stars, gears, and snowflakes. A watch chain trailed from one of his pockets.

He was also wearing a cape. A cape that featured noticeably non-stylized stars.

And a hair barrette? A… weirdly growing hair barrette? Made of ice?

(Was Danny #2 wearing makeup?)

No, Jack did not know what was going on.

(A more common occurrence than he cared to admit.)

However, judging by the uproar, no one else knew what was going on, either, so Jack didn't feel too bad about his ignorance. It was taking him a lot of effort not to stand up and demand answers, though. Wolfsbane had said that they shouldn't speak during the trial, but—

One of the bailiffs pulled a sword out of nowhere and stabbed the first Danny through the chest. First Danny punched (clawed?) the bailiff in the face, and the bailiff's skin came off, revealing a completely different ghost underneath.

Jack was no longer sitting down.

Neither was anyone else.

The probably-not-actually-a-bailiff ghost pulled his sword from first Danny's chest and made an attempt to fly over the room to where second Danny was still standing. He was stopped. With prejudice.

Huh, that staff looked familiar. Didn't that Clockwork ghost have—?

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Issitoq had miscalculated. He didn't know how the abomination and its allies had learned of his plans, but they had. The thing sitting in the witness box was not Phantom, but the paradox.

He gripped Clockwork's staff tightly. His core ached. Even with the remnants of the hourglass, the little of it he hadn't passed to his former subordinates, shielding him from the worst of the effects, keeping his memory intact, he was not built for this kind of time travel.

The paradox seemed to be aware that something had happened. It was behaving differently than it had in the first iteration. Clockwork certainly knew what was going on, but his infirmity (Issitoq suppressed a sneer) had rendered him harmless, doubled over, his age flickering like a guttering candle. For the moment.

Issitoq knew that if this were dragged out much longer, Clockwork would recover, and that would be the end of Issitoq.

He had no more chances. This time, this time, he would get it right. He had to find Phantom, the real Phantom, and destroy it once and for all.

But where could it be? Yes, it had slammed open the doors in the last iteration, which was odd, because it hadn't done so before that, but that was several minutes off, and Issitoq wasn't sure he could afford the time to go searching for the aggravating creature.

The doors of the courtroom slammed open.

Phantom pointed at Issitoq and shouted, "Bailiff! He's the bailiff!"

Issitoq sprang into action. It had time powers! Issitoq had thought that even Clockwork would know better than to give such abilities to a child. Curse his idiocy!

(And it had to be time powers. If he were wearing a medallion, he would stay in the same place even as Issitoq rewound everything else.)

This was Issitoq's last chance to set things right.

Before the paradox could reach him, Issitoq shed his disguise and stopped time. Clockwork, of course, was unaffected, but since he was indisposed anyway, Issitoq hardly cared.

He had to get to Phantom. Had to kill it. Even with Clockwork's staff, the length of time he could maintain this stop was limited. If only the hourglass still had power… But it didn't, and Issitoq refused to waste thoughts on what ifs.

He angled the sword to pierce through Phantom's heart and core, and—

Phantom's eyes found his.

Impossible.

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Here's the thing: Clockwork had been teaching Danny about time for years. He'd even shown Danny how to unravel a paradox or two, not to mention the medical applications that had saved Tucker from bleeding out when they were attacked by the GIW in Danny's lair. Danny might not be able to manage actual time travel, or large-scale rewinds or fast-forwards, but he could move through a time stop.

True, he couldn't move through stopped time very quickly, but apparently his moving at all had been Clockwork's first clue that Danny had picked up temporal abilities.

Right now, well, Danny had already known something weird was going on with time. So, when he saw everyone suddenly freeze and Issitoq fly across the courtroom way too quickly, he knew he would have to time his counterattack perfectly. Otherwise, there'd be no way he could compensate for the speed advantage Issitoq had, even with all his new powers.

He didn't have a lot of time to consider what the perfect time could be, and maybe that was a good thing, because he wasn't sure he could stay perfectly still for very long. As soon as Issitoq got into beating range, Danny pushed his way past his guard, grabbed his sword-hand wrist, and kicked him in the chest.

Danny immediately regretted this, because apparently Issitoq had been wearing something glass on his chest and now there were shards of it in Danny's foot. Ow.

But Issitoq seemed to slow. Or did Danny get faster? Whatever. It didn't matter. What mattered was getting back Clockwork's staff and making sure Issitoq was no longer a threat.

(If this was another duplicate, Danny was going to scream.)

Danny twisted Issitoq's wrist, letting memories of his mother's self-defense lessons guide him. Of course, Issitoq was a ghost, and didn't really have bones, so the motion didn't really do a whole lot.

Issitoq snarled at him and tried to stab him by elongating and twisting his arm. Danny snarled back and transformed, the colors of his ghost-made outfit inverting, using the light from his rings to blind Issitoq to his next attack. Which was, incidentally, a ghost ray directly to Issitoq's huge, bulbous eye, because Danny would rather like the guy trying to kill him to be permanently blind, thanks.

Sadly, this did not appear to work, as Issitoq followed up with a number of attacks of his own, all of which Danny (shockingly) dodged.

Danny responded by trying to freeze Issitoq's hand (the wrist of which he was still holding) off. This worked better than the martial arts twist he'd tried before, but the offending appendage remained attached to Issitoq's body.

It did stop Issitoq from trying to hit him with the sword, though, so that was a win.

Danny pushed on the ice, willing it up Issitoq's arm even as he fended off Issitoq's increasingly frantic attempts to hit him with Clockwork's staff.

(Danny wondered, briefly, if Issitoq knew the staff could turn into a scythe. Best not to remind him of it if he hadn't thought of it.)

One of Issitoq's bangles flared orange red, and Danny's ice stopped its creep up Issitoq's arm.

Drat.

He let go of Issitoq's wrist, drawing his hand back to grip the sword's cross guard. If he got this weapon away from Issitoq, then he'd have a much easier time getting Clockwork's staff back and restarting time.

Except the sword was apparently sentient. Fun. Its distinctly unhappy and unexpected pressure on his mind made him falter.

Issitoq took advantage, shaking off Danny's grip. They were back to range again, something Danny couldn't properly engage in, seeing as the crowded courtroom, which Danny could not enter without breaking his promise to follow the rules of the trial, was directly behind Issitoq.

Hitting someone who was time-stopped with a poorly aimed ectoblast would be bad.

He wrapped himself in shields and pushed one at Issitoq as a construct, letting it shape itself into a net. Issitoq dodged, but Danny used the distraction to split off a duplicate and—

Oh, bad idea, bad idea. His sense of time split and fragmented. Whatever was letting him move did not extend to two bodies, apparently, and he lost hold of his second body almost as soon as it was formed, leaving him with a splitting headache and an opening that Issitoq immediately inserted himself into.

At least he was back in Danny's reach.

Danny responded with electricity, which was uncharacteristic of him, but he was reaching. Issitoq fell back, and they circled each other, cautiously.

Danny was sure he'd win, eventually, if Issitoq kept fighting him one-on-one. However, Issitoq running was a very real possibility, as was Issitoq remembering Danny's Obsession and striking against someone who was frozen in time.

Movement caught Danny's eye, and he reversed direction, trying to steer Issitoq. The ghost lunged at him again. Danny pulled up his shields once more.

Issitoq's sword cut through them. Danny dodged backwards.

Alright. That was an unpleasant ability to deal with.

He swiftly built a sword of his own from ice and ectoplasm. Not his best work, Frostbite would probably scold him for sloppiness if he was formally sculpting, but this was in the middle of a battle, and the blade's main purpose would be to catch Issitoq's sword on the flat and redirect it so Issitoq couldn't bring that cutting power to bear.

Danny did not want to test the sword's sharpness against the cloak or his new powers. There weren't a whole lot of sentient ghost swords out there, at least that he'd heard of, and they were all a bit ridiculous.

Just in time, he brought his sword up to parry Issitoq's. He generated a screen of pebble-sized ectoplasm constructs with needle-sharp points and sent them hurtling at Issitoq. A few of them hit.

Issitoq raised Clockwork's staff and began to bring it down. Danny raised his free hand, generating a shield to protect himself.

He needn't have.

"I believe," said Clockwork, his voice like the rumble of thunder in the otherwise perfect silence of stopped time, "that this is mine."