Chapter 280: Illusions

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To Tucker's surprise, he actually knew how to use all the stuff in the laboratory. Not because it was modern, it was the opposite, but because Duulaman must have spent quite a lot of time here.

He still wasn't entirely used to the whole reincarnation thing. To be fair, it wasn't an easy thing to get used to.

On the other hand… it was reassuring to know that his past life was just as into technology as he was, even if that technology was more along the lines of alchemy, practical engineering, tradition, and guesswork with a bit of astronomy thrown in for flavor.

He held up a vial to the light. The liquid inside shone purple red.

"Well," he said, "it isn't aglaophotis."

"Few things are, Pharaoh," said the alchemist who'd been his assistant.

"It should work though, right?"

"I have every confidence in your work, great Pharaoh. You have always been very skilled."

Tucker doubted that 'always,' even his past life had to have been new to this stuff at some point, but he hoped that this, at least, would work out.

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"You had an entire conversation with Prince Phantom and his guardian, and you didn't think to stop them? Yes, yes, I know, physically there might not have been much, but politically – There are social conventions – A, that is, I – No, no, don't do that. If you see them again, tell him I need to speak with him immediately. Yes, yes, very good. Goodbye." The president hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

Forget salvaging his political career. As soon as his term was over, he was going retire permanently and never get within a mile of politics ever again. Or ghosts. He was going to avoid ghosts, too. This was hell. He hated this.

(A small part of him knew he wasn't going to keep this resolution. He couldn't. Even with all the handicaps he'd face because of his wife's actions and his sister-in-law, he loved politics and what they could give him too much to ever really quit.)

There was a knock on the door. "What is it now?" he asked, frustrated. He couldn't even have five minutes to process, could he?

"It's the pope again, sir," said a muffled voice.

"Tell him I'm busy!"

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Danny froze midair. A thin, icy mist escaped his lips. He spun to face north, squinting in an attempt to focus past the clouds. To his right, the dome of Amity Park's shield gleamed an unearthly, pearlescent green, but ahead of him were the more natural hues of the forests of Lake Eerie State Park. Beyond that, a thin strip of bright steel grey reflected the sky back. The lake itself.

It was rippling.

Something very large was moving over there.

"Lake Eerie," said Danny. "The lake monster. How did he know even know about that?"

"I believe that information about the Lake Eerie Monster is freely available on the internet," said Clockwork. "There may be a Wikipedia article." He tilted his head. "Also, you and your friends wrote about them on the website you made."

They had. Danny couldn't let the people he was protecting swim into the lake monster's maw all unawares!

But even if that website wasn't well known, and Tucker had set it up so that you needed to be from Amity Park to make an account, it was still out there. Danny shouldn't be surprised Freakshow had somehow gotten his hands on the information.

And yet…

In lieu of answering, Danny flew towards the lake.

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Danny had underestimated the number of monsters in Lake Eerie.

That is to say, he had thought there was one large monster, and perhaps a school or two of ghostly fish. This was not the case. There were, in fact, dozens of monsters of all sizes.

Freakshow, looking exactly as he did when Danny had seen him being taken prisoner by the GIW, was riding on the head of the largest, serpentine beast, several more humanoid ghosts floating around him, blank-eyed and holding various objects that sparkled and shimmered.

"Phantom!" he shouted. "We meet at last! Ah-! You don't want to do that, boy! Not when your little friend could be anywhere around me, invisible! A pretty little shield, yes?"

Danny hesitated. There were layers of invisibility, and Danny could see pretty deep, but there was no sign—

This hesitation was enough for the monsters to summon ectoblasts and do their best to knock him out of the sky.

Time stuttered.

"Look carefully," said Clockwork, floating next to Danny.

With a jerking, almost sticky motion, time resumed. Clockwork blocked half of the attack with shining blue shield.

"I am looking carefully. You might even say I'm watching, but—" He broke off, flicking away a monster that looked like nothing so much as a reptilian sea lion. He didn't flick it nearly as hard as he could have. If Sam and Pamela were here, hidden somewhere, putting too much force into his attacks was dangerous.

It was the same problem he'd faced in Amity Park, lately. Especially with his Ghostly Wail. There were very few places, most of them technically outside city limits but within the reach of Danny's sense of responsibility, where he could use his full strength safely, and then only if there weren't any spectators.

"Hm," said Clockwork. "How about I watch your back," he tapped Danny's shoulder blade so that he could feel the face of one of Clockwork's wristwatches, "and you try see what you can of our enemy."

"That's a stretch," said Danny. "This is a lake, not a sea."

"I'd lake you to worry less about my puns, Daniel, and more about this battle."

Danny beamed at Clockwork in delight, even as a spider-fish cast a sticky net over him. "Okay," he said, ripping apart his bonds and hardly even noticing them, "that one was really tear-able. It stunk. One might even say it was pungent. Not as much as all this fish, though!"

"Would you have preferred me to call it a bait-le?" asked Clockwork dryly. "Focus on the enemy, Daniel."

That might have been easier without the distraction of the puns, but Clockwork had successfully pulled him from the guilty anger of not knowing where his people were, not knowing if he might hurt them by mistake. He could focus on something else, now.

Namely, Freakshow.

The humanoid ghosts around him floated in a rough semicircle, each holding a goblet that sparkled with red light. Freakshow himself was wearing his ringleader costume.

Where did he get that?

"Where did he pick up his old outfit?" asked Danny.

"Oh, so he is wearing that," said Clockwork. "I wasn't sure. It's a bit overlayered from my perspective."

"But where—" Danny kicked something that looked like it was made of seaweed and filled with eyeballs into a nearby tree, "—did he get it? I don't think they have stuff like that on order, and where would he find the time to make it himself. He should have been busy." More importantly… "Jazz didn't mention it, either."

"I do not think Jasmine mentioned anything about Mr. Showenhower's clothing. Or lack thereof. People tend not to, unless the clothing is truly outrageous. Or obscene."

"That's the point, though. It is outrageous. And he shouldn't have it." Danny froze a large salamander to the ground.

"Which means…?" prompted Clockwork.

Danny glared at Freakshow and his attendants as if they were a particularly vexing homework problem. What were those cups they were holding even for? Why did they all look identical? No matter how much he thought, he didn't think any of the tags back at the Arkwright House had been plural, so what-?

Not cups. Goblets. Goblet. Goblet of Illusions.

Danny hissed, annoyed. "He's not here," said Danny. "That's some kind of illusion."

"That was my conclusion as well," said Clockwork, "although I wasn't sure all my evidence for it really existed. Thank you, Daniel."

"That doesn't mean Sam and her mom aren't here."

"Indeed," said Clockwork, trapping a goldfish made of smaller goldfish in a second-long time loop, "it does not."

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Sam loved plants.

She did. She really did. All plants. Sure, she'd volunteer to weed out invasive species, but the problem in those cases wasn't so much the plants themselves as where they were. In the right location, they would have been fine. There was no such thing as a bad plant.

In light of how many brambles she was being marched through, she was revising her opinion. There were some plants that were just evil. She still loved them, but they were, in fact, bad plants.

Freakshow grunted. "I think we can fly from here, lads," he said. "Miss Manson's knight in shining armor is now, heh, otherwise engaged. Having a lovely little dance with the lady of the lake, hm? I knew the little clown would show up sooner or later." He started muttering to himself.

Sam looked on in discomfort. At least before, he'd usually monologue to one of his hapless minions, if not at whoever happened to be his hostage-of-the-plot, or other convenient audiences. Talking to himself made it seem more like he was becoming unglued.

Sam did not want to be at ground zero of his villainous meltdown. She still wasn't close enough to just stab the jerk.

The two ghosts nearest her grabbed her arms and lifted her into the air.

Maybe slipping her mother the knife would be easier.

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Margaret Tetslaff was used to chaos. Came with being a gym teacher, never mind being a gym teacher at the most haunted high school in America. She was also used to organizing that chaos. Loud, commanding, decisive – that was her! Those traits had stood her well while she was in uniform, and they stood her well now.

Maybe she hadn't been part of leadership during the conspiracy phase of everything, she wasn't one for subtlety, but she had sure been involved when the fighting started. She'd kept her service weapon, way back when she'd been discharged, and a few other… questionably legal items. Good things to have in a fight.

And now? Now she supervising border patrol along with Falluca, who had the drone kids set up with cameras, computers, and radios. Tetslaff honestly wasn't sure how they had electricity enough to run everything, but she wasn't going to question it. For all she knew, Falluca, now being a ghost, was providing all of it.

Not likely, seeing as her house and the rest of the city still had electricity, too, but whatever. Maybe there was a powerplant she hadn't heard of in Elmerton or something. Not her problem. She wasn't nearly far up enough that she had to make decisions about tactical assets. She was just coordinating a bunch of volunteers.

Plus Falluca, who had to have a serious intervention before he even got out of his house. Again, not her problem.

"Uh," said Mikey Snow, pulling a pair of blocky headphones away from his head, "team five is reporting some weird stuff in the north."

"What kind of stuff, and what checkpoint?"

"Uhh," said Snow. "They're by the Lake Eerie State Park sign, and they say they're getting movement, but its more movement than just normal animals should make, and there's weird lights."

She exchanged a glance with Falluca, who looked miserable.

The volunteers had to step out and back in to get a good view of things happening outside the shield. It was vaguely transparent, but details beyond general shapes and movements were difficult to impossible to discern for anyone who wasn't a ghost with specially adapted eyes. That glow was killer. Still, she'd think that they'd be able to describe things a bit better after living in Amity Park for so long.

"Come on, Snow, we've had ghosts around for years. They've got to have some kind of idea what they're looking at. Is it ghosts? Some kind of military vehicle?"

Snow relayed the question. "They say there's too many trees to be sure, but they think it's ghosts. But big ones. Like, how big?" he asked into the radio. "They don't know how big."

"Could be the Lake Eerie Monster," called Hannah Weston, from her station on the other side of the room. She was keeping track of the different patrols with pins on a map. "We call it Larry, for short."

Tetslaff did not want to know why.

A lake monster ghost crawling out if its lake… That could be this circus freak they'd heard about, or it could just be that all the troops being brought in had disturbed it. Hard to tell.

"What else do you know about this lake monster, Weston? Does it like wandering around on dry land?"

"If it did, it wouldn't be a lake monster," said Weston, shrugging. "But everywhere around here has cryptids, including the forest by the lake. They just get, heh, overshadowed by the ghosts. Though, I guess some of them are old enough, now, that they might have died or become ghosts."

"Or maybe they were ghosts all along?" suggested Snow. He turned slightly, back to the radio. "Sorry, say again? They think it's more than one, now, Ms. Tetslaff."

"Probably not the lake monster, then?"

"No, we're pretty sure we only have one of those," said Weston, far too cheerfully. "Are there any ones that are like, white with two legs and no arms?"

"Uh," said Snow, "they just said that there are trees in the way. They're not even sure they are ghosts."

"So, they could be disturbed cryptids! Man, I wonder if the shield messed up their ecosystem somehow."

Tetslaff would have liked more adult volunteers. Sadly, the students knew how to work the equipment, and it was more reasonable to have adults do the actual patrolling for dangerous clowns, so here they were.

There was a shriek from the radios.

"Oh, geez," said Mikey, pulling the headphones of his head and just as quickly putting them back on. "Uh, there was a big ectoblast to the north. Definitely ghosts fighting up there."

"You okay, Mikey? That was loud even from here," called Star from her station, where she was monitoring the southern border.

"I'm good! I'm good! What was that? They're trying to see more."

"Be careful of the barrier," said Tetslaff. "We still aren't sure who all is being let in."

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"Enough of this," snapped Danny.

This was a delaying action. None of these ghosts stood a chance against Danny, and Freakshow had to know that, between the illusion and the hostage threat.

But if Freakshow wasn't here, then neither were Sam and Pamela. Freakshow wasn't the kind of person to let his hostages get too far from him.

So.

Danny didn't need to hold back quite as much as he had been. Sure, he didn't want to seriously hurt these ghosts, he didn't want to hurt them at all, but to get through to Freakshow and free them, he had to. He charged an ectoblast, energy swirling up around his arm, past his elbow, and aimed at the largest ghosts. He prepared to fire—

But what if—

He was wrong about where Sam and Pamela were?

He overestimated how much damage this ghost could take?

He missed and hit someone who couldn't handle it?

He jerked, the blast going wide, up into the sky where it burst like a firework. His core keened at him unhappily.

Danny should have realized that Freakshow would be harder to deal with than he looked like he should have been on paper. The man knew a lot about ghosts, knew about Danny. Of course he was going to have some sort of plan to get him out of the way. If the man wasn't so greedy and impatient, all his plans would have worked. Heck, if he'd decided to go somewhere other than Amity Park, he would have won this round.

But given that Freakshow had provided a very neat counter to Danny, shield using his own Obsession, the very thing that had saved Danny from Freakshow the first time, what could Danny do to beat him now?

"There is something else you can do," said Clockwork. "Another power you can use."

Danny immediately knew what Clockwork was referring to, and he really didn't want to.

"They are already under mind control," reasoned Clockwork. "There wouldn't be any additional damage."

But what if there was? And even if there wasn't, this seemed like the perfect setup for a slippery slope.

"Daniel," said Clockwork, as if he knew exactly what Danny was thinking. Well, joke was on him, then, because Danny knew for a fact that that wasn't part of Clockwork's powerset.

Danny closed his eyes, as if he could shut the world out. He didn't want to.

But some of these larger ghosts wouldn't go down without some serious damage, and the extent of the illusions was unknown. Was he throwing a tantrum for no good reason? Clockwork's tone didn't seem to suggest that. Clockwork preferred to let Danny make his own mistakes and come up with his own solutions – he rarely told him things outright. But he'd never been particularly shy about telling Danny when he was outright about to do something wrong, and he had never steered Danny down the wrong path.

So.

When Danny opened his eyes, his vision flashed red.