Danny watched the alien – Loki, he called himself – carefully.
As much as Danny knew what mind control felt like from the inside, he was even more experienced in detecting it from the outside. He had met Spectra long before Freakshow. Walker's invasion had been a lesson in paranoia.
Whatever else Loki was, he wasn't in control, and he hadn't been for a long time.
In theory, that put them in the same boat, on the same side. That is, the side against whatever person or force was pulling their puppet strings. In practice…
Well. Danny had met Dora, too, and as far as he knew, her brother hadn't needed mind control after everything else.
He pushed up against the boundaries he had been set inside, trying to get a feel for them, for what was allowed and what wasn't. As much as this was like Freakshow, it also wasn't. This had been designed with the living in mind, not the dead. He needed to know what he had to work with.
Danny looked outside himself, too. Dr. Selvig, the archer, and the other SHEILD people who had been taken by Loki didn't act like Danny was. They acted less like automatons and more like Loki had hijacked their loyalty, their passions, and harnessed them to his own aims.
Danny could feel something like that in what was pressing against his own mind. But that structure was too delicate, too… familiar to affect him, which left the more robust but rather crude method of direct control. He'd follow Loki's instructions to the letter unless Phantom pulled Fenton up short.
Or if Danny let himself be affected, if he stopped resisting. Which, obviously, he wasn't going to do.
He could figure out some way to play literal genie with Loki. His experiences with Desiree should do him some good.
"So," said Loki, reclining as indolently as he could on the hard seats of the SHIELD vehicle, "your powers interest me. Tell me about them." Despite his position,
"They're ghost powers."
Loki waited.
He kept waiting.
He frowned. "And what can you do with them?"
"Ghost things." Apparently, questions counted as orders. Good to know.
"And what are ghost things?"
"Scaring people."
"How? Show me."
Yeah. There was no way Danny was making this easy for him.
Danny launched an ectoblast at Loki's face. Next thing he knew, he was on the floor of the jeep, the staff pressing against the back of his neck. Loki could move faster than expected.
"You will not attack me again," ordered Loki, his voice a hiss. It barely sounded like he was speaking English.
"Sir," said the archer, "we need to get clean transport. Fury will be tracking us."
"Indeed," said Loki, distracted from Danny for the moment. "We will also need more soldiers for our cause."
"Can you show them what you showed us?" asked the archer.
"I…" said Loki, turning the scepter over in his hand. He looked at it almost as if he was surprised it was there. "I would like to hold that kind of revelation in reserve."
"I know a few groups," said the archer. "Might be easier to convince them with a display of force, though." He looked at Danny, who hadn't yet been allowed off the floor.
"Hm, yes," said Loki, also looking at Danny.
Wow, awesome, amazing, Danny had always wanted to be dumb muscle for a wannabe alien overlord. Great.
(… the alien thing was still pretty cool, though.)
"I don't suppose," said Loki, turning to the archer, "that you know the boy's capabilities."
"Fury briefed me," said the archer.
Okay. Fury told this guy all about him, too? Well, then, screw Loki and Fury. Danny didn't even know the archer's name, and the archer knew everything up to Danny's new and rarely used telekinetic powers? That just wasn't right.
At least it seemed that the archer only knew about Danny's ghostly abilities, not his human ones, although he wasn't sure how useful that would be. It was, after all, Danny's human half under control, and Danny couldn't see his ability to pilot a space shuttle, play hours' worth of video games, or turn his eyelids inside out saving the day.
Obviously it wasn't impossible (thanks again, Freakshow, Technus, and Youngblood), but it didn't seem very likely.
Danny watched passively as the archer, Dr. Selvig, and Loki started to make plans. There wasn't anything else he could do.
Being mind controlled was really boring. Even when the one mind controlling him was from outer space.
Come to think of it, wasn't it really weird that Loki looked human? Where humanoid aliens common? What was Loki's planet like?
.
So. Danny might have zoned out a little. In his defense, he'd spent a fair amount of time training himself to zone out during road trips. It was a thing.
When he zoned back in, Loki was ordering him to hijack a car.
His exact words? "Go get me that car."
Danny happily walked over to the car, even as the archer stalked over to another, weapon raised. Danny gently phased the (shaking, terrified) driver out and picked up the car before turning back to face Loki.
Hm. Danny could hit Loki, but then the car would also hit the other mind-controlled agents standing next to Loki, so… Danny tossed the car so that it landed behind them, on the SHEILD Jeep, crushing both vehicles into uselessness.
Loki gazed at him appraisingly, and Danny wondered if he hadn't just made a mistake.
.
They got in the car the archer had stolen and drove to what the archer called a 'safe house.' They stayed there for a while. When they left, they had twice as many people and four times as many cars.
The new people made Danny's hair stand on end. He didn't like them.
Their next destination was a tiny airstrip, and they loaded themselves – and far too many guns – onto a small plane. Being trapped on a plane was even more boring than the car. He couldn't even eavesdrop on the conversations because no one had given him a pair of headphones and it was too loud in the plane otherwise.
It hurt his ears. He wanted to curl up on himself. But, of course, all he could do was stare blankly.
He didn't know where they were when they landed, but when they did, they were met by even more disturbing and armed to the teeth men and women.
Loki started to talk about business deals – that's all Danny could catch after the beating his ears had taken – but the situation devolved rapidly into violence, both sides shooting.
Danny… stood still and did nothing. He had not, after all, been told to do anything. For a moment, he panicked internally, because gun battles weren't places he wanted to be while human, but then he made the not at all disturbing discovery that, when his brain was disconnected, intangibility was reflexive.
(Okay, it was actually massively disturbing, but Danny was mostly just glad that he wasn't bleeding out from a bullet hole in his gut.)
"Boy!" snapped Loki. "To me!" The alien waved his hand, and Danny felt something cold and almost-not-quite like the Ghost Zone wash through the area.
With a flare of light, the airport tarmac was filled with duplicates of Loki.
"Defend me," barked the real Loki.
Danny obeyed. That, at least, was going to be one order he couldn't throw off at all. Too simple. Too short. Too in line with what he was as Phantom.
They retreated into a hanger, both sides of the battle taking cover behind or underneath planes and maintenance equipment.
"Take them down!" ordered Loki, pointing.
Well. English was a funny language. 'Them' could refer to oh so many things. Planes for example. Or walls. Roofs, even.
He spread his arms and sent ectoplasm flying in all directions.
.
"Were you trying to kill me?" roared Loki, hand resting on, but not yet constricting around, Danny's throat. The battle was well and truly over, but only just. Dust sifted from Loki's hair and shoulders.
"No," said Danny, honestly. Case in point: Loki was still alive.
Loki barred his teeth. There was a surprising amount of humor in the expression. "Oh, you think you're clever, don't you, little ghost?"
"Not usually," said Danny.
"Ha! Well, I've been thinking about how to bring you to heel since
.
Danny exhausted and pulled apart. Fenton wanting to go one way under the pull of the scepter, Phantom steadfastly refusing to budge. Loki could ask questions. More importantly, he could make an entire Fortune 500 company's worth of elite lawyers cry.
Maybe he should have waited to act out, played at obedience until he could do something, until he could figure out how to escape. Too late for that now.
"To summarize," said Loki, "you will stay at my side. You will not harm me, either through action or inaction. If I am in danger, you will protect me. You will not create situations in which I will be harmed. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Danny, hating the word as it forced its way past his lips.
"Good," said Loki.
.
They had a base, now.
Danny wasn't sure who it had belonged to originally, but now it was Loki's. They'd had to fight for it. Danny hoped that when the SHIELD agents woke up, they didn't remember what they'd done.
There was a lab in the base, a pretty good one, too, if Danny was any judge. Dr. Selvig's delight upon seeing it made Danny nervous.
Everyone else was running around, putting things together, setting things up. Danny was standing next to Loki, as was becoming usual.
Loki, meanwhile, was… Meditating? Sleeping? Did Loki's type of alien even need sleep? Judging by the way he'd been making everyone work, sleep was a foreign concept to him, regardless.
Something felt wrong.
Yes, yes, he was being mind controlled by a megalomaniac alien. Of course something felt wrong.
This was something different. Something…
Loki began to twitch, his breath coming faster. That scream of wrongness peaked and Danny reached out, grasping Loki's shoulder, letting his hand phase in just a little bit, just enough to brush against Loki's mind and—
Loki gasped. "You!" he said, his eyes finding Danny's. "You—What—Why?" His eyes went narrow and sharp with the last word.
"You were in danger," said Danny, neutrally.
Loki regarded him for a long moment. Danny could tell they were both disturbed. Whatever had just happened was not right. Was that related to whoever was controlling Loki?
"Very well," said Loki. He stood up. "Come with me," he said. "We have much to do."
