Last update of the year! I hope you all have a happy New Year!

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Chapter 266: Can Everybody Stop?

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"Dan! Dan! Put us down! We can't leave everyone else!"

"Look," said Dan, his words half-swallowed by the wind, "the only people back there I really care about are Sam and Dmitri. Dmitri's got the Ancient Master of Space looking after him, and I have no idea where Sam is."

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God," muttered the president, whom Dan was not, perhaps, holding in the most secure and comfortable of positions.

"That's why we should go back and look for her!" argued Jazz. "And everyone else we came in with! Except maybe Irving."

"What happened to that idiot?" asked Dan, intrigued despite himself.

"Sojourn dropped him back into the Ghost Zone," said Jazz. "A lot of the others who were mind controlled, too. I wonder where he put them, actually…"

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Danny would be wondering why a bunch of portals had dropped a large number of deranged ghosts into the room where the Regency Council met… but he was used to things like this by now, and he did actually pay attention to major events in his life. So, while he protected Mr. Lancer from a version of Irving that had red eyes and zero chill, he knew Freakshow was to blame, and that something had gone very wrong back on Earth.

The fight, such as it was, only lasted so long because more portals kept opening up. Never long enough for Danny to fly through one, though his promises to Libra regarding the trials would have prevented him from doing that, regardless, but long enough to disgorge more ghosts. And a couple of shocked human Secret Service agents, which could not be a good sign. At all.

Oh, gosh, today was the day they were going to see the facility where the ghost prisoners were being kept, wasn't it? What was Freakshow doing there?

What a disaster.

Danny was not looking forward to negotiating with Themis regarding what this meant for the GIW prisoners. If a prisoner exchange couldn't be made, then their sentences would no longer be deferred, and, well.

Having offered an exchange to the president already, Danny felt like killing them all would send a bad message, even if all the ghost prisoners had escaped. Perhaps especially if all the ghost prisoners had escaped. Could Freakshow be aiming for a false flag operation, framing the diplomatic party for his misdeeds? On the surface, it wouldn't seem to benefit him, but if the US and the Infinite Realms were focused on fighting each other, he would be able to act more freely than otherwise. Also, he'd done it before, using Danny and the other Circus Gothica ghosts not just as slaves, but scapegoats.

He deflected an uncoordinated burst of ectoblasts with a shield. Right. Middle of a fight. Even if it was a stupid, easy, fight, he should still pay attention. Possibly think about how to snap everyone out of the mind control. A big enough shock, or threat to their Obsession should do the trick, if distance from Freakshow and whatever stupid magic thing he was using didn't.

The only one of these ghosts Danny actually knew, though, was Irving. Also, posing a serious threat to a ghost's Obsession wasn't a good way to make them like you, even if you were doing it to free them from mind control.

Just making up a threat, lying about someone or something else posing a threat, would be enough, but, again, Danny didn't know these ghosts. He maybe recognized one or two, but that was different from knowing them.

He should have put more effort into interrogating Lydia and figuring out what Freakshow's plans were. But there had been so much else to do: he had a new little sibling, learning to control thralls was an ongoing process, his time powers (matured or not) weren't entirely under control, diplomacy existed, he missed his friends, and there were still five empty seats on the Regency Council that needed to be filled.

Being prince was hard. He was tired. He didn't want to give Fright Knight completely free reign, despite his protestations regarding his distaste for torture.

He still should have done more. Not that he could change the past. Something so long in the past, he reminded himself.

(Time powers were still so weird to have.)

He knocked Irving down and froze him to the ground. Maybe he hadn't come up with a solution for everyone else, but he did know Irving.

Irving was from Amity Park, after all. Irving was one of his.

(And so were the rest of the ghosts. He'd know them, too, eventually.)

He just would have liked it if the way to reach Irving wasn't so close to things that gave him panic attacks.

"Oh, gosh, Irving!" exclaimed Danny. "Someone left the Nasty Sauce reactor on high! It's been hours!"

"WHAT?" bellowed Irving, thrashing in the ice. "IT'LL EXPlooooooohhhh..." He trailed off, then stilled, eyes returning to normal. "Oh. Dude. I hate that that worked."

"Same," said Danny, forcing down a memory of when the reactor did explode.

Across the room, Moneta burst into a shower of coins, and several glanced off his shields, and he flinched at the sound. Clockwork was calmly freezing combatants in time. Frostbite was freezing them, literally. The tiger hadn't killed anyone yet, but they weren't being gentle, either. The ravens were going for the eyes. Danny wasn't sure what Nephthys was doing, but it was appropriately ominous, as opposed to whatever Fright Knight was teaching Damien to do.

All of a sudden, it was too much.

"Can you all stop?"

(Red flecks in lapis lazuli beads. Inanna had been a canny and skilled sorceress, operating on a different set of principles, a different tradition, a different paradigm of magic from Freakshow altogether. But there were only so many ways to invent the wheel.)

Everyone stopped.

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Like many magic users of his type, Freakshow did have contingencies for being dragged to hell or otherwise spirited away. He didn't go in for summoning, typically preferring to approach his victims physically rather than draw them to him magically, but it paid to be prepared.

Not that his protections did all that much against the all-too-human GIW. He'd been forced to use different contingencies for them. Contingencies that Phantom wrecked with the baleful single-mindedness available only to ghosts.

But that was in the past. In the current moment, they allowed him to see through the illusions that currently surrounded him in this not-quite-space the 'princess' had called a pocket dimension.

If only he'd access to everything he'd had before the GIW… Escaping would have been the work of minutes.

As it was… getting out wasn't impossible. Just… difficult. It did not seem as though dear Jasmine Fenton, the little know-it-all brat, was the true master of this place. Perhaps if its real master had been the one to send him here, he would have been stuck.

He fell back onto the desk in the office he had commandeered, soaking wet and smelling faintly of pumpkins and burnt wood. He rolled off, onto the floor, and stumbled to the attached bathroom.

When he opened the door, he knocked over a small bucket of… Some kind of cleaner? It smelled like a cleaner. It ran into a puddle of a different cleaner, and…

Why had this room been booby trapped with the ingredients for mustard gas?

Freakshow slammed the door, took several steps back, and resolved to freshen himself up somewhere else.

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"I have a strong urge to stab Freakshow again," said Jazz.

"We have freaks to stab at home," said Dan. "Besides, he's in the nightmare dimension or whatever, isn't he? It isn't like you can stab him again."

"I'd like to test that."

"How in the world do you convince people you're the mature one?"

"I am the mature one. The mature thing to do is turn around and help our friends."

Dan slowed to a halt in the air. "Can't you let up for five minutes?"

The president cleared his throat. "In the interests of diplomacy, I also think that we should continue on to a safe location."

"Shut up," said Dan, "I don't care what you think."

"He was agreeing with you, though."

"If I'm not going to take criticism from him, I'm not going to take advice, either."

"Fair enough," said Jazz.

"But I am," said Dan, grinding his teeth, "trying not to 'start a giant pointless war.'" He made his voice high, to imitate Danny's. "So, I can either do that, or I can go back and start beating stuff up, and maybe this moron," he hefted the president, "will get kidnapped again."

Jazz glared. "Can't you make portals or something?"

Dan opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Did you forget?" asked Jazz, slightly sympathetic. Danny, too, had that problem.

"No," said Dan. "I did not."

"Were you purposefully ignoring your portals so I wouldn't ask you to use them?"

"No."

"You are still able to make them, right?"

"Of course I am! Don't be ridiculous."

"So, why not just portal us to the embassy or something?"

Dan grumbled. "My portals have limits," he said.

"Distance limits?"

"I'm not familiar enough with where the embassy is."

"Then send us to the Ghost Zone," said Jazz. "We can get reinforcements while we're at it."

"Bring this guy to the Ghost Zone," said Dan. "You did hear the part about not starting a war, right? Why am I the one arguing against starting a war? I'm supposed to be the bloodthirsty one. You are supposed to be reasonable."

"Uh," said the president.

"Dan," said Jazz.

"Wait," said the president. "Dan?"

"What?" growled Dan.

"Are you, ahem, are you Prince Phantom?"

A bird squawked at them as it flew by.

"No," said Dan. "I am," he continued, in a pained voice, "a Phantom, but—"

"Technically he's a Phlebotinum."

"Do you want me to drop you? My name is Dan."

"Please do not drop me," said the president. "I had no idea Daniel was such a common name in your family."

"I was talking to Jazz," said Dan.

"Just send us to the Ghost Zone. It isn't like he can get more missing," said Jazz. "Clockwork or Nephthys can send us back."

"It isn't about him being missing. It's about taking him to enemy territory."

"We aren't enemies," protested Jazz. "We aren't at war."

Dan jerked his head back at the facility full of prisoners of war that was currently being eaten by angry purple plants. That was probably Sam's fault. Somehow.

"Could we have this conversation somewhere that isn't hundreds of feet in the air?" asked the president, who had apparently reached his limit.

"No," said Dan.

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"I feel like the ruler of a country having a meltdown over an existential crisis is a bad omen," said Damien.

"This is not an existential crisis!" screamed Danny, throwing a bench into a wall.

"No, no," said Fright Knight, "it's actually a very good omen. Getting this sort of thing out of the way early on, I mean."

"I already had too many mind control powers! What is this? Where did it come from? I want a refund!"

"I don't know, it looks like an existential crisis. And also a bad thing."

"Existential crises generally are more about whether or not you exist, mortality, the meaning of life, your purpose," said Nephthys. "This is just a regular crisis."

"I can tell you where it most likely came from, if that helps," offered Clockwork. "I could also perhaps give you a list of some benefits beyond mind control of sapient beings?"

Danny howled (making sure, despite the rage and confusion he was feeling, to keep it from becoming a ghostly wail), and destroyed another (already partially broken in the fight).

"Of course," continued Clockwork, "if you just want to destroy things, that's perfectly acceptable. You've been under a lot of stress, and these council chambers never last all that long to begin with."

Danny stilled. "Are you… giving me permission to just wreck this place?"

"Absolutely," said Clockwork, nodding serenely.

"Yeah," said Nephthys, "we don't care."

"The treasury isn't even here," grumbled Moneta.

Danny… had no idea how to respond to that, so he just teared up. "I don't want to be like Freakshow," he said.

Clockwork patted him on the shoulder and drew him in for a hug. "You aren't," he said, reassuringly. He brushed a bit of rubble off Danny's shoulder.

"How did this even happen?"

"Well," said Clockwork, wrapping him in his purple cloak with false casualness, "you did eat Inanna's lapis necklace, which she used for mind control purposes."

"I didn't eat it," protested Danny. "I put it in my body for safekeeping and – Oh, who am I kidding. Fine. I ate it. I'm like a baby, shoving everything in my mouth. Happy?"

"With you insulting yourself? Not at all," said Clockwork. "Besides, eating artifacts is—"

"No, it is not!" shouted Frostbite.

Clockwork looked put out. "You don't even know what I was going to say."

A portal opened up above Nephthys. She looked up, and everyone tensed. There had been a lull in portals, but they wouldn't be shocked to get another wave.

Jazz and the President of the United States fell through, followed by some interesting language, courtesy of Dan. The portal snapped shut.

Danny was absolutely sure there were protocols for greeting foreign leaders. Protocols, traditions, etiquette… Right now, standing in the middle of the wrecked Regency Council chambers, halfway through an emotional breakdown, and with Clockwork hiding almost all of him behind his cloak, Danny could barely summon basic manners.

"Hello," he said finally. "Jazz. President Klein. This is. A surprise?"

"Yes," said the president, trying and failing to find a firm place to stand on the rubble. "It is."