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The world ended on a Saturday, and it wasn't Danny's fault. Even if that Saturday happened to be his sixteenth birthday.
Okay, maybe that was a bit overdramatic. But, honestly, neither he nor anyone else he'd ever spoken to knew why or how things had turned out this way. Just that, one morning, reality shook, shuddered, and took a few steps to the left.
Humanity woke to green-streaked skies, a rainbow sun, and a lot more universe than they were used to. So did ghosts.
This was a problem. It might even be deemed the problem. Humans and ghosts didn't exactly get along, and even when neither the ghosts nor the humans involved particularly wanted to fight, the new laws of nature and the few who did want to fight tended to ruin things for everyone else. (Cough, GIW, cough, Walker, cough.)
Hence the end of the world. Or, at least, most large-scale governments.
It could have been worse.
Amity Park stopped being a city that day, fragmented with Ghost Zone wilderness, landscape and spatial dimensions shattered in a spiderweb centered on Fentonworks, the portal a wellspring of wild power and unpredictable translocations. Danny had worried that the portal had been the cause of the whole thing, but Amity Park was far from the only place with similar issues (look at New York), and Danny eventually was able to accept that not every bad ghost-related thing that happened was on him.
(Probably.)
Honestly, once everything calmed down a bit, the new world was much more comfortable, physically and mentally, for Danny to live in. Which was weird, but made sense. The new world was split between human and ghost, just like him. It was everyone else who was uncomfortable, now.
Which, again, he felt guilty about, but, yeah. He couldn't do anything about that, so feeling guilty was counterintuitive. Thank you, tiny Jazz in his head.
It was Saturday again. Time for the market fair.
"Mom and Dad are already out?" asked Danny, leaning over the banister.
"Yeah," said Jazz, not looking up from her work transcribing an old ghost text into something more palatable to human eyes. She adjusted her green lenses to sit closer to her eyes. "An hour or two ago. Some guys from Chicago came in last night, apparently, and they wanted to get a head start."
"Okay," said Danny. "I'm going, too. You want anything?"
"Nope. I'd be going myself if I did," said Jazz.
"You sure? Nothing for dinner?"
"Nope, I'm all set."
"Cool," said Danny, padding towards the door. He pulled his nice, dark coat, the one he'd gotten from Dora, off the hook, and shrugged into it, pulling up the hood.
"No shoes today?" asked Jazz, who had finally looked up.
"Eh," said Danny. "I guess not. Doesn't really feel like a shoe kind of day." He flexed his toes.
"Well, avoid blackberries, then," said Jazz.
"They should avoid me," joked Danny. "Good luck with that book!"
"Thanks," said Jazz, waving as Danny left.
Fentonworks was the same tall, brick-and-UFO building as it had always been, but now it stood alone on top of a small hill rising from a distinctly purple forest. The dark grass waved back and forth like the tentacles of a sea anemone. Bright green portal streaks, cracks in reality, stood out against the foliage, along with a few other buildings that had once belonged to the Fentons' neighborhood. The sun was blue today, but Danny predicted it would be green by nightfall.
Danny walked down the path, the dirt on it declining to adhere to Danny's feet. He hummed, quietly, a tune he half-remembered from before the apocalypse. He would not be walking all the way to the market fair, it was too far. His parents had taken the Speeder.
Danny, on the other hand, had a shortcut.
He reached one of the portal-fractures and passed through to a part of the forest where the trees whispered to one another. He took a moment to reorient himself, and continued to the next portal fracture.
As far as he knew, he was the only person who could reliably travel like this. He could have flown, but the market fair was busy, and he preferred to maintain his peaceful life. Phantom was still a celebrity in Amity Park. Even more so now, than before, as ghosts were no longer shot on sight.
Some ghosts even came to Amity Park's market fair.
He walked through a wider-than-usual fracture which deposited him just outside the main fragment of Amity Park, near the erstwhile mall. The mall and its attached parking lot being the place the market fair took place.
It was busy. There were trucks stamped with the seal of Illinois parked on the edges, presumably belonging to the delegation from Chicago. There seemed to be more ghosts than usual as well, enough of them to make Danny shiver. Had they come from Chicago, or was it just a coincidence? If they had, that would be nice. Chicago had a lot of local influence, and was one of the places that was still trying to hold together something like a national government. If they accepted ghosts, others would follow more readily.
Peace between the two worlds in places other than Amity Park would be very nice.
Danny wandered down the paths of the market fair, not in any particular hurry to get to his parents' booth. He was always more interested in the other things at the fair. Even if he rarely bought anything.
People seemed to be mostly moving in one direction. No, they were being drawn in one direction, with people tugging their companions onward. Danny, not having anything better to do, went with the flow.
Which led back to where the Chicago delegation was set up. Several people were standing in front of the trucks, arguing.
"How can you lose an entire bevy of ghosts?" demanded the man who appeared to be in charge.
The target of his ire merely shrugged.
"Can't lose people like that, bub!" shouted someone from the crowd. There was a titter of laughter.
"Didn't you have a big, fancy announcement, fed?"
More laughter.
"Yeah, what did you want to say?" This voice had an echo to it, and the the man looked extremely aggrieved.
Nevertheless, he took a deep breath. "We were led to believe," he said, cheek jumping, "by certain ghosts, that there was a way to negotiate with the ghosts and... reverse this nonsense."
Wow. So, Chicago got scammed. That could have repercussions. Danny hoped Amity Park wouldn't see too much of the fallout.
"Wouldn't you jump on any chance to stop this?" demanded the man in response to the jeers, gesturing at the sky and its pulsing bands of light.
"Tell us a better story!" shouted Ember, who had struck up a much more cordial relationship with Amity Park after the apocalypse. "One that we'll remember!"
The man turned away, throwing his hands in the air. "Go find them!" he shouted, presumably to his subordinates.
The crowd broke up.
Danny was curious. It was one of his defining characteristics, both as a human and as a ghost. He followed one of the Chicagoans as they walked into the market turning this way and that.
"So," he said, "what story was your boss fed?"
The woman jumped and looked down at him, disconcerted. (Yes, he was short. That wasn't his fault. Except that it probably was, via the portal accident.)
The woman sighed. "Why not, it'll be out before too long. We were told that the rightful king of ghosts was in hiding here, or something stupid like that. I don't think they ever said he could fix the world, even. Only that he could be negotiated with." She kicked the ground. "This is so stupid. There's no ghost king. This is never going to get fixed."
"It's not so bad, is it?" asked Danny.
"How old even were you when it happened. Ten?" asked the woman.
"Excuse me, I was sixteen," said Danny, crossing his arms.
"That's cute," said the woman, dragging her hand down her face. "You're like thirteen, tops. Not nineteen. Jesus. Go bother someone else, kid."
Danny rolled his eyes. "Well, you aren't wrong that there's no ghost king. Last guy who called himself that got beaten up and locked in a sarcophagus forever."
Then, just to mess with her, because she'd been rude, Danny turned invisible and left before she turned around.
Now... He should probably try to warn people about the scam artist ghosts. Or would they know from the other people watching?
Danny flicked back into visibility and continued perusing the various stalls, making small talk with the owners, bringing up the Chicagoans when it was appropriate.
He was passing by the covered entrance of the mall, one of the most crowded spots in the market fair, when his ghost sense went off, indicating an unfamiliar ghost was nearby. He scanned the crowd for the ghost. He didn't have to look very hard. Strange ghosts tended to draw eyes, even in Amity Park.
Especially ones that looked like this. Inhumanly tall, cloaked, and moving smoothly. Glimpses under their hoods showed faces riddled with decay- or at least the appearance of decay. The three of them held instruments. Flute, drum, and summoning bell.
Danny stood to the side to let them pass. After all, they weren't doing anything bad as far as he could see.
They did not. Instead, they stopped in front of Danny. Typical.
Then they started playing their instruments. And kneeling.
Aaaand the crowd was getting bigger. There was the person from Chicago, too. Could he escape without turning invisible with all this attention on him?
Probably not without showcasing his ghost powers. There were people who knew him in this crowd. Like Paulina. And Star.
"Um," said Danny. "Hi?"
The leading ghost looked up as the sun's light turned emerald green.
"Blessings of rot and petrichor, my prince. May you have a home in the dark, and may the distant stars you reach for never fade."
Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw the Chicagoan's jaw drop.
"I think you might have the wrong guy," said Danny. "I'm not anyone's prince."
The ghost grinned, sharp and white. "We came to give our blessings, my prince. You do not need to accept them for them to exist. We offer, also, our service and our hope in this new world that you are so suited for."
Yeah. This was going to be a problem.