Chapter 310: In What World
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"What were you thinking?" demanded the president of the subordinates he actually shouldn't have trusted at all. "I wanted a minor – minor! – incident to distract the prince's minders. Not something that could be interpreted as an attack or make us look like incompetent morons who can't manage our own technology!"
He collapsed into the nearest chair.
"Do you have any idea," he said, not quite whining, "how lucky we are that I was able to distract them with the body double situation?" He honestly didn't know what he would have done if the ghosts hadn't been lying, too. Although calling it lying was a bit of a stretch, since there had very obviously been a body double in the first place… now, who the body double was… and the party crashing…
Whatever. It didn't matter. The ghosts hadn't just left. They were still in diplomatic contact. He had managed to get some points across in the aftermath and make Phantom- Fenton- whatever, acknowledge them. The president was going to do his level best to never directly bring up today ever again.
Still, there needed to be some sort of reparative effort.
(Which was a far easier thing to think about than the time travel or even how close Vlad Masters, one of the richest men on the planet and someone he was trusting to advise him on ghosts, was to Prince Phantom's family.)
He sighed. "Send in Alicia Walker in your way out."
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"Hey, Dad," said David, poking Nocturne, then tugging at his blanket. "What's a transatlantic accent? And why do I have one?"
Nocturne blinked sleepily at David, then, with one large, clawed hand pulled them underneath the blanket and snuggling.
"That's not helpful," said David, squirming. They yawned. "But I am tired…"
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The president checked his computer after Alicia left, then looked up. "Hey," he said, "bring those other morons back in. I need to yell at them some more."
"Sir?"
"I'm being called a racist antisemite on the internet. I'm not." He sniffed. "I told them to make it small. Small."
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Vlad squinted at the screen and hit the rewind button again. "Transatlantic?" he repeated. "In what universe is my accent transatlantic? That's not even a real accent!"
"Uh," said Jack, who, along with Maddie, had been quietly left in Vlad's care. "Isn't your accent transatlantic?"
"No!" said Vlad. "Transatlantic is a very specific and artificial thing that you have to learn. On purpose. It isn't a natural accent. Why in the world did he think I sound transatlantic?"
"Vlad," said Maddie, "do we have to watch this now? You were there, weren't you? And we can't even—" She cut herself off with a look of frustration on her face. "We need to talk about what we're going to be doing. How we're going to frame this. Contracts."
"Aw, Mads, do we really need a contract? Wow, I think we can almost see the-"
"Yes," interrupted Maddie. "We do. Don't you remember what he did?"
Jack turned away from the broad windows of the lavish apartment Vlad had rented for his stay in DC. "Maddie, we didn't do so great back then, either. All three of us have made mistakes, and we're all looking to make up for them! We can extend a little faith, right?"
Vlad tried not to cringe at Jack's open expression. Tried. He settled for disguising the cringe with a shake of his head. "Maddie is correct," he said. "We should formalize what we're doing. At least between ourselves."
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"What do you mean," the president whined (it was very definitely a whine) at the director of the CIA, "it isn't a transatlantic accent? That's what you call those pseudo-British accents, isn't it?" At least, that's what people at his middle school had called them. While he'd encountered similar accents as president, no one talked about them, because talking about them would draw attention to how pretentious they were.
"President Klein… no…"
Upon learning that he'd exacerbated a diplomatic incident with a political entity that might have literal Einstein, literal Oppenheimer, and God alone knew how many other dead physicists working for them based on wrong information, the president decided to go to bed. Perhaps permanently.
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Danny was happy to be able to distract himself with Truce celebrations. There were, after all, a great many of them, and he didn't have to dwell on… everything else. Like how Aunt Alicia now knew he was a ghost and thought he was only a ghost – not that he'd had an in-depth conversation with her after he'd decided to go with that version of the truth. He'd sort of ghosted her. Literally. Or on how he'd messed up diplomatic relations so thoroughly.
He'd thought the body double thing had been a good idea. Really. But maybe he should have just given up hope of holding onto any scrap of 'normal' humanity. It was greedy of him. Selfish. Unrealistic. He had so much else going for him. He was prince of an entire universe and had a family full of clones and millennia old almost-gods. And, like Sam said, normal was overrated. Not that he'd have listened to anyone telling him that. It was just, he'd tried to be normal, or something like it, for so long.
But if not for the wake-up call, he wasn't sure how long he'd have kept at it, kept trying. Trying. Failing. Lying. To himself and others.
He supposed it was a silver lining.
But! Distractions!
For example, the tenth was Rights Day, a relatively recent addition to the roster of days generally celebrated during the Truce, but one that was germane to current events. He wanted it to go well, and also to use it to avoid the martyrdom celebrations, which he felt were too depressing for his present state of mind.
The eleventh and twelfth didn't have anything too special, or, at least, nothing quite so widely known, although Ghost Writer had mentioned something about feast days. The thirteenth, was, of course, the thirteenth, which ghosts celebrated just for the aesthetic. The fourteenth wasn't anything specific this year, but it was also the date of an absolutely massive party on the surface of the Drowned Quarter, which Danny had to go to.
The fifteenth was the first day of Hanukkah, and Danny had been agonizing over things to get for Sam since he'd gotten enough breathing room to think about getting gifts, which wasn't all that long, if he took a step back and thought about it, even if it felt like forever and he wasn't really required to do anything for that, not being Jewish (at least he thought so – there were some stipulations he didn't quite understand about him happening to do something at an event versus being there to do the thing), but there were acknowledgements and gestures and it was also Zamenhof Day, which Danny didn't even realize was a thing, but since so many ghosts spoke Esperanto—
Distracting himself was, honestly, beginning to get exhausting, just because there was so much to distract himself with and it was all happening right next to one another.
The sixteenth was another heavy prep day, because the seventeenth was the first day of Saturnalia, and Saturnalia was big. Even outside of Romans, Roman revivalists, and pagans, a lot of people had picked it up because it was old, and the variety of the celebration meant there was something for everyone. Costumes, gift giving, gambling, drunken parties… the works. And then it went on for three days. Or longer.
And honestly, some of these things started earlier and ran later, too, because days weren't really a reliable measure of time in the Infinite Realms, given the lack of a rotating planet. And the presence of competing calendars. And people not wanting to end the party. Or not registering the passage of time.
Planning anything in the Ghost Zone was complicated. Even without natural portals doing weird things and local time slowing down or speeding up, which was admittedly something Clockwork was working on.
Anyway, all that was without getting to the Nine Days' Journey, the Expectation, Yule, Yaldā, the Solstice itself, Dongzhi, Sol Invictus, Christmas—
It was good. It was a distraction. He needed the distraction.
"Daniel," said Clockwork. "You're overworking yourself."
"I'm fine," said Danny.
"There is a reason you have a regency council. And there is something I want to show you."
Danny's resolve wavered. Failed. "Okay, but let me just do one more…" He reached for the stack of correspondence to his right. These letters had specifically come from Earth, and he was anxious.
Clockwork sighed. "Here," he said, "this one."
Danny snatched it almost as soon as Clockwork touched it and peeled it open, barely glancing at the envelope (presidential) before starting to read it.
Then his mouth dropped open.
"This is an RSVP to the Amity Park party! From the president!" Danny leaned in, reading the letter more closely. "Aunt Alicia is coming!" He put the letter on his desk and his head in his hands. "What do I do? What do I say? Oh, stars, who's this other person that's coming?"
Clockwork folded the letter closed. "A break, Daniel. Please."
Danny groaned. "I can't. I have to figure out the implications of this, and how it's going to affect the treaty talks." Because he hadn't been spending all his time avoiding his responsibilities, thank you very much. He'd been keeping up with developments and trying to add to discussions… after checking his input with the Regency Council multiple times.
His confidence had taken a hit, and that was what they were there for. He really wasn't supposed to make diplomatic decisions without them, anyway. Rather, they were supposed to make diplomatic decisions for him.
Clockwork clicked his tongue and picked Danny up.
"Hey!"
"You need to go outside," said Clockwork. "Clearly, I have been too hesitant in seeing to your needs. If you insist on work, we will use this time to practice some of your newer skills. Is that acceptable? You can spar with your siblings. They miss you."
Danny stopped struggling. It had been a while.
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Danny floated, lazily dodging ectoblasts. His newer siblings, Dustin especially, had been hesitant to start, but Ellie had been out for blood from the first moment Danny had suggested the game. The others had quickly followed suit.
On the other hand, Danny wasn't shooting back. He kept his ectoblasts and his ice to himself. His attacks at normal power probably wouldn't be enough to destabilize or seriously injure any of them, but still… It was just too soon. Maybe it would always be too soon.
But Clockwork had been right about it being time for a break. The Truce opening ceremonies had been less than two weeks ago, but wasn't that still a long time for someone his age? He'd been neglecting his family.
Ellie hit him with an ectoblast. "No moping!"
"I wasn't!"
"You were!"
"Not!"