Chapter 9 Thinking Outside the Box
It was what appeared to be nighttime in the Ghost Zone as pair of watchful eyes pierced through the darkness. It was a bit hard to tell, since the sky looked the exact same from outside the prison. The only sign Ari had was through the tired ache in her bones and lessened amount of staff patrolling the halls, her gaze darting towards the sound of two guards talking nearby.
This will work for sure this time! she thought. After the guards had disappeared down another hallway, she slowly counted backwards from ten before she put her plan into action. Three... two... one! She took a deep breathe and focused on her intangibility as she walked forward and phased through the prison door.
Yes! She cheered, But she couldn't celebrate yet, she chided herself. She may be out of the tree, but she was still not out of the woods yet. She had a limited amount of time to explore before the guards came back. She had been doing this little exercise for an undeterminable amount of days... or hours. She wasn't really sure since she didn't carry a watch. There was no real way to keep time in this place, outside of her three squared meals a day, though she had regrettably lost track since she had slept through most of the breakfasts because they served it really early in the morning, and no one really bothered to tell anyone what meal it was since it was the same slop for every meal. This had made it extremely boring for her.
At least in all the prison movies she had seen, the prisoners could scratch the amount of days in the wall, but since there was no sun or moon, she couldn't even have that anymore. She had grown tired counting the tiles on her ceiling and inventing different uses for her pillow and blanket. So far, it was at fifteen. The dubious timelessness of the prison was almost torture in and of itself. So the fact that she could try and sneak out of her cell most nights without being caught was like a thrilling game of hide-and-seek to her with insane stakes, and she was very good at hide-and-seek.
She had been careful not to get caught, though it was a challenge to avoid both detection from the guards and ghost prisoners, the latter of which would create a loud upset by discovering she had been able to sneak out of her cell and alert the other guards to her whereabouts with their uproar. The constant fear and adrenaline always reminded her not to get too cocky and to always stay alert. One false move and her little daily "exercise" could be put to an end. Permanently.
Because of that, she managed to slow down and stealthily avoid the nearby guard mechanics, who were constructing a room-sized rectangular box in one of the down one of the hallways.
Wonder what they're working on? she thought with fervent curiosity, but she quickly disregarded it as prison maintenance before slipping away, reminding herself she had a job to do. Thanks to the guards allowing her to keep her own clothes, since ghost clothing phased through her, she managed to sneak Sidney's handkerchief past the security search and scribble down a makeshift map of the prison on it, though she felt a small pool of guilt at having to stain it with ink. She had snuck a pen off one of the guards when he had to forcefully escort her, although she had to constantly concentrate to hold the spectral object with the Ghost Zone's unstable atmosphere. While the strange laws of physics were subjective here, as she didn't fall through the floor she walked on or be unable to eat the food they provided to her, certain pockets of the Ghost Zone were prone to instability. With this idea in mind, she began to formulate a plan of escape.
She wasn't allowed with the other prisoners aside from being escorted to meals in the cafeteria, so it got very crowded in her cell very quickly. It was all the entertainment she had since they had stripped her of all her other possessions. They had taken many things off of her when she was imprisoned. Her satchel, her phone, even the tampons she had scored from the Storage Room, though she managed to sneak some of them beforehand. Her slight of hand pick-pocketing skills almost made up for all the times she had been made fun of for using magic tricks. Her end goal was to somehow locate Johnny 13's motorcycle, along with her belongings, and plan an escape route out of here.
If she was successful in finding the storage room, this would be her third escape attempt. The first time she escaped, she managed to slip past the guards when they were escorting her to the cafeteria for lunch and tried to get lost in a crowd of other ghostly inmates. However, the cold, weirdly energetic feeling of passing through so many ghosts at once was so unnerving, she quickly found herself paralyzed from the shock and easily caught by the guards. The second attempt was when she had bolted away during a headcount and accidentally slipped through a wall in the process. This was when she began to practice more with her intangibility by doing her little exercises every night. Her map was almost completed, most of it drawing a layout of buildings connected and arranged by status of security. She knew where the door was, but the real issue was how to get out.
There were guard towers filled with lookouts and search lights, not to mention a twenty foot wall with curling barbed wire and enough suppressive fire power to take out a herd of African elephants. Right now, it was just a matter of looking for her materials, specifically Johnny's bike. Her belongings, she knew, were in Walker's office, and of course, she knew she couldn't go anywhere near that until she was ready to leave for good. She had checked the other buildings, most of them being rows of inmates every other floor, and was slowly narrowing down which ones were left for storage.
It was when she had come to the end of her map that she noticed she had been down a hallway she had never seen before. The amount of cells were much less than the other buildings, but the security and technology was much more advanced. She noticed a small box suspended in midair with some bizarrely cute icons stamped onto it. It had a bunch of police tape wrapped around it, along with some bizarrely cute pink cat stickers and smiley faces on the sides, and a Do Not Open sticker with a paw print inside of it.
Weird... Why would someone put up that much protection all for just one tiny box? Ari thought to herself, not noticing until she heard the guards making their rounds down the corridor. Not focusing enough on the present situation, she was startled into unintentionally phasing into the wall behind her and landing smack onto the ground. Pulling herself up from the floor, she found herself surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes on metal shelves and filing cabinets.
"Must be the prisoner archives or something," she mumbled to herself, glancing up before she began to curiously go through the files by name. "Hmmm... Dairy King, Danny Phantom, Delilah... Desiree!"
She quickly pulled out the file, revealing a paper-clipped mugshot of a woman with long black hair, red eyes, and green skin covered in ornamental jewelry and ancient blue harem clothing.
Name: Desiree
Aliases: Wishing Ghost, Jinn, Genie, Djinn
Category: 6
Status: Incarcerated
Security: Medium
Location: Building B, Cell Block 246
Bio: A wishing ghost born of the manifested spirit of a broken hearted harem girl, this female specter has the ability to grant wishes while having negative side effects to the wisher, adding to her strength and size. The more wishes she receives, the more powerful she becomes. Charged with reckless abandonment of humans and unauthorized matter manifestation for an indefinite amount of years. Keep away from all humans while in containment.
So she was arrested too! Ari thought with glee. Looked like she wouldn't have to break out of prison after all. She could just wish to go home and pretend that none of this had ever happened. But since this ghost sounded like the equivalence of the Monkey's Paw, she'd have to be careful on how she phrased her wish. For curiosity's sake, she pulled out the Phantom file. She had heard his name come up quite a couple of times, but was unsure on how he fit together in the grand scheme of things. Maybe this file would give her a clue into who he was.
Name: Danny Phantom
Main File, Subsection A
Aliases: Phantom, Ghost Boy, Dani Phantom
Category: 7
Status: At large, Wanted
Security: Close
Location: Unknown
Bio: This is a new, rare species of ghost known as a halfa, a ghost that is half human and can willfully change itself into human or ghost form. Presently unknown on which is original species of origin. Known under other aliases as Ghost Boy, Halfa, etc. (See File B for notes on Dani Phantom). Has large subset of powers outside of the usual ghostly abilities, including ice breathe, ghostly wails, etc. Charged for possession of real world contraband, trespassing, and driving unauthorized vehicles with sentence of one thousand years, as well as citing riots and aiding and abetting felons with a massive prison break. Current whereabouts are presently unknown. Extreme suppressive fire is needed.
Ghosts disguised as humans? That certainly was a terrifying thought, though she recalled hearing that he was a local hero from one of her classmates, so he couldn't have been all that bad. While she was on a role, she scanned over the other files. It was a shame that the only files they had on hand were prisoner files, having next to nothing on Walker himself, which was disappointing, but she did manage to find a file on Wulf, Nocturne, and Spectra, and Johnny 13. Apparently, this wasn't the first time he'd ever been to prison. She couldn't read very much of the other files, other than seeing their basic files labeled them as Category 9, 8, 5, and 5 ghosts respectively, before she heard a door slam open.
"Don't forget to organize shelves A - P for new evidence, Box Ghost," ordered one of the guards to the blue ghost in overalls, who was carrying in a large stack of boxes.
"Fine, fine. Keep your shirts on," Box Ghost grumbled, sour that he was treated as inferior to the other ghosts by doing their dirty work. Still, it got a few years off of his sentence to do menial labor, plus working with boxes was what he did best. Floating around the room, he telekinetically unloaded the boxes with the wave of his hand and began moving said objects into their respective shelves: B for Bags, M for Miscellaneous, P for Plasma Rays, etc. While they floated to their respective shelves, he wrote down and checked off the objects he saw on his list.
While he did this, Ari cautious peeked from behind a shelve two rows down, noticing that the black and green Velocette Viper was one of the objects, though it was strangely covered in bubble wrap. Distracted by possibility of escape, a loud creak came from the shelf she leaned on.
"Who's in here?" he cried out, as if expecting an answer. Ari pushed herself against one of the shelves, her pulse quickening in her chest as the ghost examined the warehouse. "You cannot hide from me, for I am THE BOX GHOST!"
She made no noise, fighting to keep her breathing quiet as she edged herself to phase through the wall, but forgot that she had felt the ghost files slip through her hands and land on the floor with a clatter, causing her to become full solid once again.
Taking that as an indication of where she was, the Box Ghost quickly shouted "BEWARE!" and closed in on his target as Ari quickly began to sprint into the other direction. Unlucky for her, she had run smack dab into the ghost and felt the cold chill of ectoplasm over her skin before she felt herself slip into unconsciousness.