Merry Christmas! (If you celebrate. I hope you have a good weekend, regardless.)
Because some people asked:
Danny has effectively been adopted by Clockwork.
Ellie has a similar relationship with Pandora (although it's been largely out of focus in this story).
Dan is in denial about Nephthys adopting him.
Fright Knight imprinted on Damien almost as soon as he set eyes on him.
Sojourn, Frostbite, and Nocturne are the Ancients that currently do not have a Phantom attached to them.
The remaining Phantoms are the muscular clone, the tiny clone, and the prime clone.
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Chapter 227: Cinderella Stories
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"Look, if it's infected with some weird time-eating ghost bacteria or something, I'd rather you not tell me about it," said Danny, mumbling into Nocturne's blanket.
"Alright, there's nothing for us to discuss, in that case," said Clockwork.
Danny twisted to look over his shoulder. "What?!"
"I am only joking," said Clockwork. "Lay back down."
"You're picking up bad habits from Nephthys," complained Danny.
Nocturne patted Danny's head. "You say that as if you have nothing to do with it," the Ancient murmured sleepily.
"What is it actually?" mumbled Danny.
"Your foot appears to be vitrifying," said Clockwork.
"Wait. No. That's worse. Give me back the time bacteria."
"Vitrifying?" asked Tucker.
"Turning into glass," said Jazz, leaning forward. "Is it really? Can you stop it?"
"I'm not sure," said Frostbite, "I've never seen anything quite like this before. I'm sorry, Great One."
"Maybe I could cut off my leg and grow a new one?" suggested Danny. "I don't want it spreading."
"That is the worst plan I've ever heard of," said Jazz.
"You don't have to do that," said Clockwork. "You will be fine. Your system is simply experimenting."
"Experimenting with literally being made of glass?" That sounded like a terrible experiment. "Can you actually see that I'll be fine?"
"No to both. For the first, with incorporating the ectoplasmic variant the hourglass was made of into your system. Considering that you do have temporal abilities… In any case, I have seen this before. And I apologize. I must have missed some of the glass for this to have happened."
"Where have you seen it before?" asked Danny.
Clockwork sighed. "The Observants broke my things with some frequency. Not all of them were terribly careful while doing so." He rolled his eyes. "I cannot currently count the number of Observants that came to me complaining about vitrification, but the number was high, and it was never permanent. Issitoq would be vitrifying himself, if Themis didn't end him."
"Wait. What?"
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"I can't believe she beat me," whined Daniil Phlebotinum, face-down in the grass.
"You can't believe that the Ancient Master of Death beat you in a fight? Really?" asked Ellie, poking him with a stick.
"I don't lose."
"Looked like you lost to me. And about a thousand other people. Nephthys is giving out autographs, by the way."
Dan groaned.
"You really shouldn't have let naming rights be the prize."
"I hate you."
"You think I'm charming. At least Daniil Phlebotinum is only official when it comes to Libra, right?"
"So many people are going to hear it…"
"Well, then beat them up if you don't like it."
Dan lifted his head off the grass to stare at her. "Aren't you supposed to be all love and forgiveness and turn the other cheek?"
"Nah, that's Danny. And even he gets annoyed if someone mangles his name too often. But you already know that."
"Inviso-Bill. God."
"I've got to say, I'm glad I missed that. Can you imagine?"
"Intangi-Belle."
"I thought we'd already established that I'm not above stabbing you."
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"You know, the fact that I've been injured by a ghost artifact entering my body once again is sort of upsetting. What am I supposed to do in the meantime? It hurts." He shifted so that he could see the bottom of his foot, which was, indeed, shiny with glass. He rubbed his thumb over the smoothness and winced.
"Er," said Frostbite, "try not to walk on it, Great One. And I will check on it regularly."
"Be careful touching it," said Clockwork, who still wasn't taking this nearly as seriously as Danny would like. "It may magnify your time manipulation abilities."
"Is that a pun?" said Danny. "My foot is turning into glass and you're making puns about it?"
"Be honest," said Tucker. "The only reason you're annoyed by that is because you didn't come up with it first."
"That's true, but you shouldn't say it," said Danny. "If it reaches my ankle, though, I really am cutting it off."
"Okay, Cinderella."
"You're lucky I love you, Jazz."
"If it keeps you from amputating random body parts, I'll take it."
"A glass foot isn't a random body part. It's a very specific body part. One that I do not wish to have."
Danny's foot tingled. Heck. He thought he'd trained himself out of that.
"Oh," said Clockwork, "it's gone."
Danny sat up and narrowed his eyes. "Desiree," he said and stalked to the door. He threw it open, and, sure enough, the wish-granting ghost was floating there. "How did you even hear me through the door?" he asked.
The smile on Desiree's face grew slyer. "I have my ways."
"What's the catch? Is my foot going to sprout fangs and try to eat me, or what?"
"No catch. I do things out of the goodness of my heart every once in a while."
"This is a bribe, isn't it?"
"You catch on fast."
Danny sighed.
"Bribes are nonrefundable," said Clockwork, floating just behind Danny. "Even if you don't get what you want."
"Please, I've been navigating royal courts for years! I know how this works."
"Okay," said Danny, raising a hand, "what do you want?"
"Not much. Only to inform you that I and a number of colleagues are going to raid the GIW Headquarters in the physical world sometime this week."
"And… what do you want me to do about that?" asked Danny, wondering if this was something he should stop in the interest of preventing an international—No. An interdimensional incident.
The Ancients with him were not useful in this regard. Nocturne had fallen back to sleep, even.
"I can give you some stats on their tech, if you'd like," said Tucker. "Not schematics or anything, but capabilities."
"Yeah, hold up. You haven't answered my question. Why are you telling me this?"
Desiree raised an eyebrow. "After all our conflicts regarding forays into the human world, you really have to ask?"
"Uh," said Danny. "Yeah?" They stared at each other for a moment.
"I take it back, you don't catch on fast."
"Hey," said Jazz, "his conflicts with you never had anything to do with you being in the human world and everything to do with hurting innocent people and spreading chaos everywhere you went for your own gain. You're the one that's slow on the uptake."
"What she said. I don't really care about what you do to the GIW. You could punt them off a cliff and I wouldn't bat an eye. Heck, if I wasn't stuck here, I'd be punching them in the face myself. Just have a plan to keep yourselves from getting caught, okay? They're really sick and capable of acts that'd make a wartime Missing Theory scientist blanch."
Desiree looked skeptical.
"The ones that used to chase me around all the time liked to shout about their 'painful experiments.' Don't get captured. I'm serious. I don't want to have to figure out how to march an army across the veil. Or find your remains in a lab."
"I see," said Desiree, her skin slightly more pastel than usual.
"Also, what you've done to my foot, is that a permanent thing, an illusion, or what?"
"More of the second, I'm afraid," said Desiree. "But it shouldn't trouble you until it wears off, and by then whatever happened may have resolved itself."
"Huh. Thanks," said Danny. "Have fun beating up the GIW." He paused. "Is that it?"
"I suppose," said Desiree. Her eyes slid off Danny and landed on Damien. "Oh? And who is this? Do you have any wishes, young man?"
"Yeah. Nope," said Danny. "Have a good day, Desiree." He firmly closed the door and turned to Clockwork. "Can you tell if this," he pointed at his foot, "is going to mess me up?"
"You'll be fine," said Clockwork. "Everything will be fine." He patted Danny on the shoulder. "At least, I think so."
Danny sighed. "Thanks for all the backup, by the way."
"You were handling it marvelously, Great One."
"Take a nap, Danny. You get cranky when you're sleep deprived."
"You know what? I think I will."
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The trial ground on, cycling through the dozen-odd students, the teacher, and various ghosts. The wisps took the stand, with a translator loaned from the Library of Tongues, their alien perspective nonetheless difficult to parse. So did the people of Harmony, who pointed out that the Fenton parents had aided in the defense of Danny's lair, in the end. The Gracious Ones, the Eumenides relayed their experiences. Frostbite and Dr. Moon provided medical perspectives. Pandora, still cheerful from watching Nephthys's earlier victory, gave an account of what she had witnessed of Danny in Elysium, and after.
This led to a lengthy tangent regarding Valerie's actions, but it was deemed largely irrelevant except as a sign of general prejudice against ghosts and was halted before more than a few previous witnesses had been called back.
Then there were character witnesses. Many. Many. Many character witnesses. Both hostile and amenable to the defendants. Interspersed with these were various experts. Psychologists, sociologists, historians, ectologists, most of them Dead, Neverborn, or Deathless, but a small handful of them living.
Then, he walked in. The ghost that had been impersonating Danny.
"Daniil Phlebotinum?" asked the bailiff.
The ghost glared at him, as if contemplating murder. Maddie swallowed. Seeing an expression like that on a face that was still so much like Danny's was disturbing.
"Yes," ground out the man.
"You haven't been called yet."
Daniil curled his lip. "I was about to be called, wasn't I?"
"He was," said Danny's advocate, cheerfully. "I sent a junior partner to fetch him."
"That is acceptable," said Themis. "You may take the stand."
"Finally," grumbled Daniil, making a show of stomping up to the little booth.
The bailiff set a little glass bottle down in front of Daniil. Maddie barely even listened to the words he spoke, she had heard the oath so many times the past few days. Instead, she watched his face. Who was he, and how was he connected to Danny?
"How would you like us to address you?" asked Hemlock.
"Just 'Dan' is fine," growled 'Dan.'
"Thank you," said Hemlock. "Could you please give the court a summary of who you are and how you are related to Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom, also referred to in these proceedings as Danny?"
Dan smiled. It was not a nice smile.
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"I'm a paradox," said Dan. "A might-have-will-have-been. Probably mangling the terminology, but it isn't as if the meddler ever actually taught me anything."
"Could you elaborate?"
"I'm from an aborted possible future. I was created due to a series of events that left Danny without his family and oh-so-perfect friends…"
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"How'd it go?" asked Damien, as Jazz closed and put to the side the book she had been talking to him about.
Danny had passed out on the bed and was currently using Nocturne as a pillow. Tucker appeared to be building a mechanical sarcophagus in the corner of the room, with Clockwork's supervision. Fright Knight was standing guard at the door. Frostbite had left a while ago, and Ellie and Sam were off teaching.
It had been a couple 'days' (insofar as they could be measured in the Infinite Realms) since Damien had been reborn. Days that had whipped by like a whirlwind.
Or maybe that was just Damien's perspective. Even counting his previous existence, he was still 'new.'
"Fine," grunted Dan. "Kept interrupting me with stupid objections about how what I was saying was relevant to the things they actually did, blah, blah, blah, told me to save it for the sentencing and custody hearings, blah, blah."
"Did it work, though?" asked Jazz.
"I don't know." Dan slumped into a chair, his hair flickering oddly as it pressed harmlessly against the fabric upholstery. "It's not like I can read the jury's mind. God."
Danny stirred and sat up with a groan. "You guys are murdering my sleep schedule."
"You don't have a sleep schedule," said Tucker.
"Exactly." He blinked blearily at Damien and patted his shoulder before returning his attention to Dan. "You're back. How'd it go?"
Damien's lips twitched up at the unconscious echo.
"Meh. Fine. Whatever. She—" Dan glared at the ceiling. "Your mom kept looking at me. Like- I don't know. It was weird."
"Weird how?"
"I don't know. She's your mom, isn't she? Shouldn't you know?"
"I wasn't there to see it. And technically isn't she your mom, too?"
Silence.
"Does that count towards the family thing?" asked Damien.
"No!" shouted Dan. "She's not my mom! My mom is dead." He got up and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
"I thought Nephthys is his mom," said Damien.
"She is, more or less," said Danny, waving his hand. "Just not… Ugh. It's complicated. I'm going back to sleep."
