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oliviayamaoka · 3 years

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The Distraction Continuation (Ghostface / Jed Olsen / Danny Johnson x Reader)

As requested, this is a continuation of the Distraction fic I made. Check out the first fic if you haven’t already. Enjoy! :)

You sighed deeply as you crossed your arms, shutting your eyes in slight annoyance at what was to come. Another trial. You hadn’t been in one for a while but your break was rather short-lived. There were three others that stood by your side. Ace Visconti, David King, and Yui Kimura. You respected them and actually enjoyed their company. Ace was funny, David taught you a couple of things, and Yui was always nice to you, encouraging you.

“Where do you think we’ll go this time?” Yui asked you, nudging your elbow with her own. You instantly lit up. Human interaction was comforting.

“Haven’t been to Hawkins or Glenvale in a bit.” Y/N replied with a slight shrug.

“My bet is the asylum.” Ace interrupted, pointing finger guns with that stupid smirk of his. Yui rolled her eyes, she didn’t seem to like Ace very much. Not since he flirted with her one time, even if it was jokingly.

“We might actually be there if Ace himself says so.” David said as the familiar gust of air surrounded the four of you.

You shut your eyes tightly, getting chills from the cold fog and air. The smell of fire and spring overcame you. Y/N opened their eyes, realizing that Ace’s bet was right. As always. A small laugh escaped your lips, a feeling of enjoyment before all hell could break loose again.

Your gaze averted to the familiar structure of the Crotus Prenn Asylum. A sound played in your head, the screech of the Nurse. You were always curious about her but never got the chance to even talk to her unlike... no, it was one time. You weren’t gonna go around and try talk to killers like you did with him.

You put your palm to your forehead, cringing at the memory. Not in a bad way but maybe you could’ve done something differently. No, not really. Jed was a psychopath, a murderer. He was charming in a fucked up sort of way. You sighed as you walked towards a generator behind the grey brick walls.

There wasn’t any indication that it was the Pig or Freddy, thankfully. You began to work on the generator. Your thoughts turned to the fear of being hooked, stabbed, and hurt. You shuddered at the thought of it, the feeling of the hook would probably never leave you. Death was forever here, unfortunately. Elodie and Felix’s conversation had given you hope, maybe there was a way out of here.

“Shit.” You mumble as you shielded your eyes from the small explosion.

Y/N huffed. You felt slightly disappointed in yourself and began again. Your head perked up as you heard stomping. It wasn’t loud enough to be the Oni or Trapper.

You kept a head on the generator as you noticed a dark figure stomping towards you. You needed a moment to process the situation. It was Ghostface? Oh shit, it was him, you thought. Flashbacks of your last encounter played in your head, he was definitely pissed off and you couldn’t blame it at this point.

“Don’t fucking try it.” He muttered in reference to you breaking into a sprint.

You felt panic wash over you as you quickly observed your surroundings. There weren’t any nearby pallets or vaults, it was a random open area near a hill with a chest and hook. Perfect, just perfect. Ghostface was quicker than usual, he grabbed you by the waist aggressively to tackle you down.

Ghostface held a knife to the back of your head once you hit the ground. You grunted as he put down all his weight onto you and assured that you wouldn’t be able to escape. The ground felt so uncomfortable, especially against your face. There was a few moments of you struggling beneath him to escape but it became no use. You stopped struggling after he pressed the blade against your skin.

“Didn’t bring a toolbox this time, Y/N?” He asked mockingly, pressing his gloved finger over the small slit. You winced at the stinging sensation but it was nothing you couldn’t handle.

“You know how to hold a grudge, Jed.” You replied. You were utterly terrified yet you always felt the need to reply to his stupid remarks.

“Indeed I do.” He replied, grabbing you and making you stand up. He held the knife to your back and pressed it slightly.

Ghostface was actually angry. He didn’t seem to mind actually hurting you or pressing the knife into your skin. You gasped at the painful sensation as he looked around, he saw the killer shack. He held a tight grip on your shoulder as he forced you to walk that way.

You instantly knew where he wanted to go. You just hoped the basement wasn’t there. Of course, you had known that this day would eventually come. But, why now? It was such awful timing, especially with the blue mood you had. Once the two of you reached the shack, he shoved you onto the ground aggressively.

“You’re pathetic... talking and talking last time we met. Now, you’re just a shitty excuse for a survivor.” He said to you. You scoffed.

“If it helps, Jed, I’m sorry.” Y/N replied. Your hand reached to the back of your neck where he had cut you. There wasn’t much blood but it still hurt. You stared at your bloodied fingertips as the man got more infuriated.

“You don’t get to call me that. And why the fuck are you apologizing?” He questioned you. His tone was venomous, this terrified you but him killing you was inevitable and well... you wanted to see him, anyways.

“If you didn’t care, you’d have hooked me now. I must’ve really hurt your feelings, huh?” You said, half-jokingly but you were also genuine.

“I don’t care.” He replied to you almost instantly. You knew that was a lie.

“Then why won’t you hook me? You could’ve slashed my back open but instead you pinned me to the ground... weirdo.” You mumbled.

He fell silent for a second. Ghostface was a bit baffled by you. Why weren’t you begging for your life? The version he remembered of you was different, or maybe he killed too many survivors that would beg. Not only that but he planned this out thoroughly. He was practically counting on you to scream and beg for your life. Ghostface had even made an offering for this realm because he researched it extensively, as he did with most of his previous murders.

Despite what he may have thought, Y/N was absolutely terrified. However, there was a strange feeling of attraction to him. Not necessarily a crush just yet but there was also a rivalry in which you felt comfortable talking to him. He felt like a real person. Well, of course he was a real person but you had no trouble making shitty remarks to him.

“I want this to last because you were being a little bitch last time. I’ve been dying to slice you open and make you regret that stupid little stunt you pulled.” He said to you.

You sat up, bringing one knee to your chest casually. There was a feeling of bravery that washed over you like last time. Y/N sighed deeply and looked around the shack. It was a basic shake. No totem, no gen.

“Yeah, sure... then do it.” You said to him.

“You’re not making this any easier.” He replied, more annoyed with you.

“Nothing you do is gonna make me regret what I did. Even if you do kill me and make me suffer, I’m still gonna come back alive. I’ve been puked on, trapped, and even had some weird ass trap put onto my head.” You said, standing up and pointing your finger to his chest.

“But you, Danny, only have a knife. I know the Legion or whatever their names are can use that better than you. You’re just a weirdo with a mask.” Y/N finished.

Ghostface seemed rather stunned, yet offended. Mainly because he couldn’t doubt anything you said. It became known that the Legion studied the human anatomy extensively, more than Danny ever cared to do. His area of expertise was stalking and memorizing a person’s schedule. But still. his ego was always bigger than any logic. The cloaked man grabbed your wrist. He oddly didn’t grab it too tight, he lifted your arm over your head.

“And what does that make you? I’m still better than you to some degree. You’re trapped here because the Entity thinks you deserve it and I get to kill anybody I desire.” He said, the tip of his blade poking your stomach.

“I guess we’re both shitty people.” You shrugged as his grip somewhat loosened. He sighed deeply before throwing you towards the generator.

“I had hoped killing you would be satisfying.” He muttered, bitter that your reaction wasn’t what he imagined. You fixed your shirt slightly and leaned against the generator. A part of slowly began to accept the growing crush you developed on the strange murderer, you didn’t care at this point since you were damned to an eternity of trials.

“It probably would’ve been if you weren’t so easy to talk to.” You said to him as he snapped his head towards you, confused for a moment. Easy to talk to? He scoffed in response.

“Easy? You’re the fucking weirdo here.” He said, with a bit of a defeated tone.

“You’re no ladykiller, Danny, but... I’m charmed. I guess it’s something killers like you do though.” You said to him.

“I don’t charm or seduce people. I watch them.” He corrected you.

“Explains a lot.” You said, looking at your nails. Ghostface was quick to give into his ego and crossed his arms in a very stubborn manner.

“Actually, I did. As Jed Olsen, anyways. People were so trusting of him and neglected to suspect the new guy in town. It made it easy to watch people and I had a lot of excuses to spend hours doing so.” He said to you.

“Jed sounds nice.” Y/N shrugged.

“Well, Jed isn’t real, babe. He’s a shitty facade of what people like in a person. Made it so much easier for myself.” Ghostface said.

“Okay then,.. what did you do? As a career?” You asked him.

“I was a journalist and wrote for the Roseville Gazette. They made me cover my own killings and I did a good job doing so. Nobody could really understand my work though, no matter how much I tried to when I was Jed.” He said, a proud tone in his voice as he spoke. You were weirded out and cautious but you wanted to try and understand him.

“So, is that why you do it? For art?” You asked him as his head perked.

“That’s exactly why! There’s something very beautiful about the redness unique to somebody pouring out of them, even mixing with others. Not only that but just toying around and seeing how loud one can scream. Each scream is so unique and different. And just like art, you can fix your mistakes if it isn’t done right.” He explained, he seemed more relaxed.

“Fix? But wouldn’t they be dead?” You asked him, genuinely confused.

“You have to be an expert craftsman to fix it. A scream is a delicacy, something I choose not to indulge myself in often. Y’know, don’t want anybody hearing what goes on. When I do want to hear the screaming, it’s usually when my target has piqued my interest or mildly annoyed me. It feels rewarding after going through all the effort to memorize their lifestyle.” He said.

“A weird but cool way of looking at it, I suppose.” Y/N said.

You didn’t really care about morality at this point. Such things as the Entity exist, anyways, You weren’t sure what you did to deserve being stranded here. Even if you did have a weird romantic interest in him, so what? Why would the Entity care? Why would any Gods care? And even then, you seemed to have an interest in his hobby. Blood and killing didn’t faze you anymore.

“You think so?” He asked you.

“Depends on the person, I guess. I’d only do it to bad people.” You said.

“But, you’d do what I do?” He asked you.

“Yeah...?” You responded. Danny seemed a bit giddy.

“How would you do it?” Ghostface asked, he seemed way too excited to hear about your non-existent methods of killing.

“I don’t know...” Y/N replied, feeling somewhat flustered by how close he was to you. It was a different type of feeling when he wasn’t trying to stab you.

“If you want, I could show you some pictures and give you tips.” He said.

“And kill who? We’re stuck in this hellhole.” You reminded him.

“What about the other survivors? They can’t all be innocent.” Ghostface said to you. He had some appreciation for you since you listened. It was crazy how much this strange man can switch up.

“No, never. I’m not that crazy.” You said as the loud horn of the exit gates blared. You looked around, really surprised. He seemed just as surprised.

“That long?” He questioned.

“Guess I’m just that good of a distraction.” You said to him as he silently sighed in frustration but didn’t seem to care. A part of him enjoyed your talk.

“Guess you’re gonna be my one kill.” He said, shifting towards you and pushing you against the wall. You were taken aback by his swift movement.

You squirmed against his body, somewhat sliding downwards so kicking was pretty much useless unless you wanted to completely fall. The two of you grunted quietly as he turned you around, shoving your face against the hard wall. It was uncomfortable but he wasn’t being as rough as he usually was. At this point, you were scared of his knife so you tried pulling his hands away from you in the awkward position. Ghostface tightly pinned one of your arms on your back, you winced as he tugged on your hair.

He leaned inwards, poking his head towards your neck and hair. Ghostface took a moment to memorize your scent and what your hair texture might have felt like. For some strange reason, he seemed to want to learn everything about you. It might have been a bad idea for you to have opened him up about his art.

“Get off of me.” You demanded in a stern voice.

“You’re scaring me, Y/N.” He replied sarcastically.

You froze up when he slid his hand under your shirt, his fingertips trailing on your back. It wasn’t the motion itself but rather the feeling of his ungloved hand. You felt yourself go into a rather catatonic state, not in fear but you were quick to wonder why he would take his glove off. A thousand thoughts and scenarios played in your mind. His touch was soft but still managed to leave you with chills.

Ghostface, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying himself. He made notes of how soft your skin felt, his hand curiously wandered upwards. It wasn’t long before his hand wandered to your more sensitive areas. A gasp escaped your mouth as kept you pinned with his knees, his hands groping you a bit more roughly. Your face heated up when he squeezed you, you didn’t seem to struggle either.

“Fuck...” You whispered.

“If only we had the time.” He mumbled, sticking three of his gloved fingers into your mouth. Your eyes rested as you stared upwards, allowing him to continue touching you.

“I bet you’re getting all excited over this... if only I could capture the look on your face right now. How does it feel? Having somebody like me have their way?” He asked you. You felt aroused yet ashamed to oblige him.

“It feels good...” You managed to say, his fingers still in your mouth.

You felt the bulge in his crotch grow hard but this wasn’t the time or place. As much as he wanted to fuck you then and there, he needed to have some control over himself. He pulled his hands away and slid his glove back on. You let out a sigh of relief but also a whine. You knew just as much as he did that it just wasn’t the right time. You wiped the saliva from your lips and slowly stood up.

He pulled you backwards by your waist. You felt him rub his knife near your crotch, gliding it teasingly. His other hand wrapped around your neck. You heard him chuckle rather darkly. At this point, you seemed more hot and bothered than he was. Ghostface squeezed your neck a little harder, wanting to get one last sound of of you before he let you go. He didn’t care whether or not the Entity would be displeased or not.

“Guess you’ll have to be a whore some other time.” He said, cutting you on the arm slightly. You pulled your arm away quickly.

“Whatever.” You replied, flustered by his comment. Did that just happen?

“Better go before the Entity kills you itself.” He said to you.

“Right, right... see you around, Danny.” You said before quickly walking away and then running towards the exit gates.

His head tilted curiously. Ghostface wasn’t sure if he had feelings or not. He admired you for listening to him and asking some questions though. But, now that he knew you’d do things with him willingly, he had some ideas. A wide smile grew behind his mask as he began to fantasize about the photos he would eventually take.

You would probably come to regret your actions, seeing as his obsession with you would grow. Danny needed to know everything about you and even felt a bit possessive now. It didn’t matter, there was many possibilities within the Fog. Pray that you’ll be ready for your next meeting.

NOTE: Currently writing a full fledged Danny fic with a different plot but have the sequel to the Distraction. Ty for reading!

#dead by daylight #dead by daylight x reader #ghostface #ghostface x reader #jed olsen #jed olsen x reader #danny johnson #danny johnson x reader #dbd fanfic #dbd x reader

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five-rivers · 4 years

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Adoption

Based on a prompt by @fabnamessuggestedbytumbler for the Phic Phight! An excuse for Lost Time fluff? Don't mind if I do...

The Ghost Zone had a legal system. A court system. A prison system. A police system. A set of established rules. There were even lawyers.

In theory.

In reality the courts (Observants) refused to look at anything that wasn't world ending. Every group had their own, private prison. The police made up their own rules and, even then, broke them regularly. The actual rules had gone several hundred years without an update and referred to places, organizations, and customs that no longer existed. The lawyers were all clinically depressed. That's what happens when there's no active, unifying head of state for hundreds of years.

Still. Every so often a sufficiently foolish ghost, possessed of a brave purpose, would attempt to navigate the ruins of the legal system. Few made it out alive.

(True, being ghosts, they didn't necessarily go into it alive, but it's the thought that counts.)

But those who did make it out (metaphorically) alive, did so with prizes... well, not great enough, but something enough to convince others to make the attempt. Hence Clockwork's current location and headache.

"Sign the paper, Walker," snapped Clockwork.

"That would be against the rules," said Walker, leaning back in his stupid chair. Clockwork's nonexistent spine hurt just from looking at it.

Maybe he should give himself a spine, just so he'd have a reason to feel this way.

"How," he began, "would it be against the rules? This form needs to be signed by a law enforcement official that has seen or witnessed conclusive evidence the child in question being abused by their natural parents. That is you."

"Yes, but the law enforcement officer must first get a warrant approved by an appropriate court in order to collect such evidence," countered Walker.

"Not if the official came across the evidence or act of abuse while pursuing a different case or simply following standard operating procedure. You saw them shoot at him. His mother put a gun to his head. Have mercy, Walker. I know you don't like him, but he is a child who needs guidance. Not a criminal."

"He's a criminal in my books," said Walker.

"What he did was hardly a crime."

"Jailbreak is a crime!"

"Not if one is unjustly imprisoned," said Clockwork. "He was attempting to remove the foreign object." No matter that possessing material-plane items wasn't an actual crime.

"He let others escape!"

"And what were they imprisoned for?"

Walker grumbled. "Some of them are dangerous, and even he knew that," said Walker, nodding at the file spread over his desk.

"Consider it a cry for help. While you were watching him," stalking him, Clockwork did not say, "on the material plane, did he really strike you as criminally inclined? Or perhaps he was simply confused and scared? One thousand years is a very long time in human terms. The targets of his Obsession would have died. Even if he did commit a misdemeanor, he would have rightly been granted clemency, or at least had his sentence deferred."

Walker frowned.

"That's not what this is about, is it? You covering up a mistake?"

"No," said Walker.

Clockwork blinked, quickly running through potential futures. "No one will care that you crossed the veil without authorization. No one who can do anything about it, in any case."

"There'll be an investigation if I sign that there piece of paper. What's the big deal, anyway? Like you said, humans don't live that long. Just wait fifty years."

"They almost ended him," said Clockwork. "He's a child. Do you really want that on your conscience? With the knowledge that you could have stopped it?"

Sighing, Walker picked up his pen.

Danny went to school. Mainly, he went because he didn't know what else to do. He needed the routine, even if the routine was a lie and he felt like trash.

"You could have stayed," whispered Sam, as his hand inched towards the bandages on his chest for the fifth time that morning. "They wouldn't have noticed you."

Danny shook his head. His hand shook more. He put it back in his lap. "It wouldn't have been right. Besides, I need a passing grade in this class, right?" He couldn't get another F, or his parents would kill him, except- except- except-

They had already tried to kill him.

Everything had gone so much worse than he had ever imagined- No. That wasn't quite right. It had gone- It had...

At least he hadn't been cut open.

(Much.)

"Mr. Fenton?"

Danny jumped, banging his knees painfully on the underside of his desk. He looked up, wildly, tensing himself to flee, only the fact that he was currently human keeping his powers from activating.

(Well, that and... what had been done to him.)

When had Mr. Lancer gotten there?

"What?" he asked, breathlessly.

"Are- Are you alright, Mr. Fenton?"

"I'm fine," Danny said. He wasn't. His ghost half was urging him to go find a nice, dark, quiet, safe corner to hide in, preferably one in the Ghost Zone, his heart was hammering out of his chest, he'd spent the night not-sleeping in one of the guestrooms in Sam's house, and that was before even touching on his injuries.

He forced a smile. Mr. Lancer was one of the few teachers who hadn't given up on him, which was alternately touching and frustrating.

"You look sick," said Mr. Lancer. "Are you sure you don't want to call home?"

Danny's heart stuttered, his core painfully cold. "I'm sure," he said.

"Today is a project day," said Mr. Lancer. "You wouldn't be missing anything in this class, and I can talk to your other teachers."

"No, I'm fine."

The legal clerk for the family court was the kind of ghost who seemed to have fused with her role. The sleeves and collar of her shirt melded seamlessly with her skin. Her nails were brass pen nibs. The lenses of her glasses were part of her face.

She lived in either the basement or the attic of this particular building, depending on how one oriented themselves, among barely-organized stacks of books and papers. There were parchment scrolls and stone tablets, too, the later often re-purposed as elements of the room's furniture. Green-marbled filing cabinets grew out of the walls, and electronic somethings glittered out of the shadows.

The clerk had been reviewing Clockwork's paperwork for literal days. Rather, she would have been, if Clockwork hadn't surreptitiously dropped a time medallion around her neck and stopped time.

She hummed, thoughtfully. "In this document, you are using the pronoun tsai to refer to the adoptee. Are you certain you don't mean tusui? Or perhaps chahe?"

"Absolutely," said Clockwork. The intimation that he wasn't fluent in nchabhatsi was insulting. On the other hand, the requirement for that particular piece of paperwork to be in the language was also, in his opinion, rather ridiculous. Many ghosts, especially the recently dead, did not know nchabhatsi.

"The adoptee is liminal?"

"Yes," said Clockwork.

"Hmm." She stood up and flew from her desk to an inverted bookshelf anchored to the ceiling. From a box she took a huge sheaf of papers, and blew an amount of dust from them that was unhealthy even to a ghost. "It has been a while since we used these," she said, giving Clockwork a faded-ivory smile. "You'll need to fill these out and have them notarized by the proper officials before you can proceed. Liminal spirits are so rare, after all! They require special care. Oh!" Her hands fluttered. "And I'll have to get in contact with our liminality expert. That may take some time."

"If you can give me their name," said Clockwork, "I will take care of it." He gingerly took the stack of slightly-decayed paper. Had it really been so long since a partly-human child had been adopted? Probably.

"Oh, you're such a dear," said the clerk, not noticing the sudden absence of the medallion around her neck. "But that paperwork won't do itself, and-"

"It's done," said Clockwork. Fulfilling some of the new requirements had been more challenging than others and avoiding a paradox had taken considerable self-control, but what good were his temporal abilities if he couldn't use them for personal gain now and again? None at all.

"Ah," said the clerk.

Familiar, and very loud, voices spilled from the hallway near the office. Danny, one hand on his locker, trying to remember his combination, froze like a deer in headlights. His heartbeat picked up, his core buzzed frantically. He couldn't move. Grey crept in along the edges of his vision.

"... not him. It was never him! He's dead-"

"Mrs. Fenton, Mr. Fenton, I'm not sure what you're getting at, here, but your son has been at school all day, and we-"

"A ghost killed him and took his place! It's been playing a sick game with us this whole time!"

"Danny would never have gotten grades like this. We should have noticed the lower intellect right away, if nothing else."

"That's-" spluttered Mr. Lancer. "You- Daniel's work is exemplary, what little of it he turns in. I'm going to have to ask you to go back to the office-"

"No! Not until that piece of ectoplasmic scum is wiped from the face of the Earth!"

"Danny," said Tucker, much closer. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

Right. Ghostly super hearing. Tucker and Sam, staring at him with concern, couldn't know.

"They're here," he managed, the words like sandpaper in his throat.

Sam uttered a word that would have sent her mother into a screeching fit. "We need to get you out of here," she said putting a hand on his back and pushing him down the hall.

"I'll run interference," said Tucker. "Make sure they can't follow you in the GAV."

"Good thinking," said Sam.

"Call me when you're safe," said Tucker, peeling off, presumably to hack the GAV.

"Danny, breathe," ordered Sam, as she propelled him through the double doors at the back of the school. "We're going to get you through this."

Clockwork had resorted to trapping the legal complex in a massive temporal bubble. Not the neatest solution, true, and it seemed to encourage the various functionaries, regulators, and bureaucrats to take even more time to process even the simplest request, but at least it would keep Daniel's suffering in the meantime to a minimum.

However, that didn't change the fact that he had been bouncing back and forth between the various floors of the building like a ping-pong ball, never getting closer to the solitary family court judge, for well over a subjective year. He was exhausted, frustrated, and he missed Daniel.

"You will be able to provide steady, stable access to the adoptee's preferred haunt?" asked his present interviewer.

"Yes," said Clockwork, dully. The room was ringed with runes that prevented deception of any kind.

"You will be able to provide shelter adequate for both his ghostly and human form?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He had answered these questions so many times before.

"You have taken the mandated class on liminality?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. He was beginning to understand why other ghosts just gave up and sought extralegal solutions.

"You are aware of a liminal spirit's developmental and emotional needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. This was just so boring.

"And are you able to satisfy those needs?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. If only it would end.

The interviewer nodded. "Then we're done here," he said.

"Ye- What? Does that mean I can see the judge?" asked Clockwork, hopefully.

"No. That means that your adoption motion can move on to the next stage," said the interviewer. "Our liminality expert will examine your arrangements and determine whether or not they are sufficient, and we will contact law enforcement to follow up on your claim that the adoptee is being abused."

Clockwork bit back a groan. At least he was making progress.

They cut through the empty field behind the school, angling back toward the surrounding neighborhood. The grass came up to their chests, except where there were holes, mounds, and gouges from ghost fights. When there was one in the school, Danny tried to bring it out here, so people wouldn't get hurt.

He wasn't often successful.

Sam led the way. Danny felt- He felt ashamed. If his powers were working, he would be able to fly them away, or at least turn them invisible. This would all be so much easier. He could have taken care of himself, and Sam and Tucker wouldn't get in trouble, because they would definitely get in trouble for this. But he couldn't.

He couldn't even convince his parents that he was himself. He had to screw that up, too.

Before, he had thought, worse case scenario would be that they'd try to 'fix' him, to remove his ghost half, or maybe they'd think he was overshadowed. At least, he'd convinced himself of that, convinced himself that dissection would be off the table if he ever told them, that they would still love him. Maybe they might still want to do tests, but they'd love him. They wouldn't want to hurt him.

But he had been so, so wrong. They didn't believe him. They thought he had killed himself, replaced himself.

They had tried to cut him open.

(They succeeded.)

His core shuddered at the memory.

At least, though, there hadn't been any ghost attacks today. He wouldn't have been able to fight anything stronger than the Box Ghost. Heck, he might have lost to the Box Ghost. Like this, he would have to leave the ghosts to his parents, Valerie, or the GIW, none of which were particularly good options for the hunters, the ghosts, or the innocent bystanders of Amity Park.

His core pulsed uncomfortably at the thought of any of them getting hurt, including his parents.

He flinched. His core had been very jumpy, very active ever since... it... happened. Usually it only did this while he was in ghost form, and was otherwise almost dormant.

"Are you okay?" asked Sam. "Is it hurting?" She was the one who had bandaged him up last night.

"We can't stop now," said Danny.

Sam flattened her lips. "That isn't an answer. As soon as we get somewhere quiet, I'm checking you out, okay?"

"Yeah," said Danny.

When they reached the short fence, Sam gave him a boost to get over and they made their way into the suburb. There was a small library branch down the road a ways. It had a small family bathroom that Sam and Tucker had patched Danny up in before. It would be a good place to regroup before trying to put as much distance between them and Danny's parents as possible.

"We could take the city bus, I think," said Sam. "There's a stop outside the library. Maybe we could go to Elmerton?"

"Maybe," said Danny.

"Any ETA on Jazz since last night?"

Danny shook his head. "She couldn't get a flight. She's taking a Greyhound. Won't be here 'til-"

There was a beep. Danny stopped breathing. That could have been anything, a phone, a watch, a car, something from a building, but something about it tickled at Danny's brain as wrong.

"There is a ghost twenty feet in front of you."

The whine of a charging ectogun-

Sam slammed into his side, and they both fell. Danny felt the cut on his chest begin to bleed again, and he curled around it protectively. It hurt so much more than it should, and Danny wondered if that was because ghosts were ultimately shaped by their minds and his was in so much pain right now.

His parents had just shot at him. From behind. Not ghost him, Phantom him, either. Human him.

They hated him. All of him. Not just half of him.

His ghost sense went off. Because things could always get worse for Danny and the universe apparently hated him.

He struggled into a sitting position and blinked, confused. There were people surrounding him, protecting him, standing between him and his parents. Sam was shouting. Danny couldn't make out what she was saying, what anyone was saying, not with his heart pounding in his ears.

"Kid," said one man, shaking his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Danny considered that. "No," he said, finally.

The man pulled a phone from his pocket and began saying something about calling the hospital. Normally, Danny would be worried about that, but he was looking for the ghosts. It was possible one of the more benevolent spirits that haunted Amity Park had happened across the scene, but, somehow, Danny doubted it.

His ghost sense went off again. He whimpered.

His people were in danger.

Ghosts usually came for him (he was leading them here, an evil ghost, causing all this trouble, murderer), or at least attacked him first, to get rid of him as a threat. He staggered to his feet. He had to get away. Still clutching his chest, he turned and bolted.

Almost at once, he was surrounded by ghosts in police gear. Walker's goons. Definitely stronger than the Box Ghost. Still, he was going to at least try to fight. He put his fists up. Maybe some of them would be dumb enough not to phase out of the way of his stupid human punches.

Then Walker himself descended from the sky.

"Daniel," he said, stiffly.

"Walker," returned Danny. A small part of him was grateful that Walker hadn't called him Phantom and spilled his secret. It was strange, but no ghost had ever seemed particularly inclined to do that, despite how easy it would have been.

"We have a court order to take you into custody," said Walker. "Someone wants to ask you a few questions."

Danny decided today's mood was 'pointless bravado and defiance.' "And why would I want to come with- whoa."

As Danny talked, Walker had taken a piece of paper with strange symbols written on it in green ink out from the inside pocket of his jacket. The symbols made his head spin... Or maybe that was just his injuries catching up with him. His left leg was trembling, and he wasn't sure how much longer it would hold out.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, and focused on Walker. "I have no idea what that says."

Walker sighed. "Just come quietly, son. Make it easier on yourself."

Danny swallowed his discomfort at being called 'son.' "You won't hurt anyone else?" he asked.

"I'm just here for you."

There really wasn't much of a choice. Whether he went quietly or got himself beaten up even more, Walker would win and carry him off. Anyone could see that. Besides, ghost prison might be a better alternative than getting dissected by his parents.

He raised his hands in front of him, wrists together. "Go ahead, then," said Danny, flatly.

Walker nodded, and the goons converged on him. The cuffs they put around his wrists glowed green, but they had weight in a way most purely ghostly things didn't. Danny doubted that he'd be able to phase his way out of them, human or ghost. Then they picked him up and the whole swarm started to fly away.

"Yes, this is my lair," said Clockwork. "I can, however, duplicate and be both here and at the secondary residence I acquired expressly for the purpose of ensuring continuity of Daniel's human life."

The 'liminality expert' grunted. "He's still been here, though, hasn't he?"

"Yes," said Clockwork. "He has."

"And he might be here again in the future."

"Yes. I do plan to have him here, for short periods of time."

"And later, when he sheds his human life?"

"Perhaps."

"Then I need to know, are these up to OSHA standards? Your entire lair needs to be up to OSHA standards."

"They're time viewers and tools for unraveling paradoxes. OSHA, even the OSHA of the far future, does not regulate these items," said Clockwork. "Why, in the name of time, do you even need to know? Surely, OSHA didn't even exist the last time a liminal child was adopted."

"Well," said the expert, slightly sheepish. "No. But regulations state that all residences must be safe for children by both human and ghost standards."

"Then OSHA is not what you should be using," said Clockwork. "OSHA is the set of rules for occupational health and safety."

"Ah," said the expert. "Then we can move right along to the next check mark, shall we?"

"Hi," said a cheerful voice.

Danny looked up from his contemplation of the examination room table and glared balefully at the ghost who had just entered the door. They didn't seem to be affected. But then, why would they be? Danny was handcuffed to the table and clearly not a threat.

"I'm the interviewer," said the featureless ghost. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No," said Danny.

"Well," said the interviewer, "I work for the eighth authorized family court of the Infinite Realms, we're actually the only one right now, but there used to be more, and a little while ago, an adoption request was filed on your behalf."

Danny blinked and made a face. "You mean, someone stole my identity in ghost court?"

"No, no," said the interviewer, waving one amorphous hand. "Not at all. I mean to say, I ghost filed a request to legally adopt you."

"Who?" asked Danny. "Not Vlad?" Vlad was the only ghost he could think of who had demonstrated any interest in adopting him.

"No, that's not the name listed here."

"Plasmius?" asked Danny, still cringing internally.

"No."

"Then who?"

"Clockwork."

"What, seriously?" Danny liked Clockwork, and he liked to think that Clockwork liked him back, that they were friends, but the older ghost always seemed somewhat aloof.

"Yes, he was very serious. Now. I have a number of questions I need to ask you." They took out a small, glowing crystal, and set it on the table. "Do you know what this is?"

"No?" said Danny.

"It's a record crystal," said the ghost. "But one of its other functions is that it can sense deception, and record when in an interview it is being used. Go ahead, say something you know is false."

"I... like toast?"

The crystal's glow dimmed slightly before returning to its previous level.

"There, see? Very useful, don't you think?"

"I guess," said Danny. He didn't know how to feel about this. Any of this. What would ghost adoption even mean? He trusted Clockwork, but this felt like too much, too fast. He hadn't even properly processed what had happened with his parents a few hours ago.

"Right. So. We'll start with an easy one, then. Is your name Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom, also known as Danny Phantom, or simply Danny or Phantom?"

"Yes," said Danny, eyeing the crystal warily.

"And what would you prefer to go by, for the purposes of this interview?"

"Phantom," said Danny.

"Alright then, Phantom," said the interviewer, "could you please tell me where you primarily reside?"

"Fentonworks," said Danny, "in Amity Park." So far, he hadn't really had a reason to lie. All of this was common knowledge for both his human and ghostly acquaintances.

"And what would you consider to be your haunt?"

"My what?"

"Your haunt. The territory that you have metaphysically claimed."

"I- I don't really understand."

"Is there an area that you feel compelled to defend against hostile persons? An area in which non-hostile ghosts defer to you?"

"I- Yeah. I guess. Amity Park. And some of the bits around it, too."

"The entire city?"

"I guess? I don't know," said Danny. "Is that weird?"

"It would be unusual," said the interviewer.

Danny really wished the interviewer had an expression he could read. Or even just something approximating a face.

"Now, do you feel safe in your home? In 'Fentonworks?'"

The correct answer to that question would be no, but he wasn't sure he should answer. What if this was some kind of elaborate trick?

"We can come back to that," said the interviewer. "Are there any other places where you do feel safe?"

"I mean, sure?" said Danny. He fidgeted.

"Would you please share some of those places?"

"School, I guess?" Except that he got beaten up there all the time and his parents had hunted him down there and he had to escape and... Yeah.

The crystal dimmed. Danny grimaced.

"Ah," said the interviewer. "Anywhere else?"

"My friends houses," said Danny. "And the Far Frozen." To his relief, this time, the crystal stayed bright.

"Have you ever been to Clockwork's lair?"

"Yeah," said Danny. He slouched in the chair as much as possible. He wasn't sure he should be answering these questions, but he was. Maybe he should stop.

"Do you feel safe there?"

"Not at first, but now I do."

"I see. Why not at first?"

"Clockwork and I didn't meet on great terms and we sort of got into a fight." Maybe that would get the interviewer to stop. They'd decide Clockwork couldn't adopt him and leave. Did Danny want that? He wasn't sure.

"That's more common than one might expect. But you feel safe with him now?"

"Yes."

"Alright, moving on. How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

There was a long, drawn out silence that managed to be skeptical despite the interviewer's lack of a face.

"I know I'm small," said Danny, insulted, "but I am sixteen."

"Excuse my indelicacy, but... how old were you when you died?"

Danny flushed. "Fourteen," he bit out.

"Then you're fourteen."

"It was two years ago. I'm sixteen."

"Fourteen is your natural age," said the ghost. "A ghost's natural age is the age they died at."

"Yeah, but I'm still half human. I'm still aging. So I'm sixteen."

The interviewer shook their head. "As a liminal spirit, your apparant age range is likely larger than a normal child's would be, but your natural age, your true age, is still fourteen. Based on records of liminals, the highest extent of your age range is most likely to be either twenty-one or twenty-eight. That's part of the reason we investigate official adoption request so thoroughly. The relationship may very well last for thousands of years, if not forever."

"Wait, are you saying I could live forever?" asked Danny, incredulous. This was not how he wanted to find out he was immortal. Heck, he didn't want to be immortal.

"I'll admit, my understanding of liminality isn't perfect, but I believe that is the case. Why? Is that problematic?"

"The results of the law enforcement investigation have come back," said the bureaucrat to whom Clockwork was currently assigned. "As well as an inquiry as to the opinion of the mortal law enforcement arm."

"And?" asked Clockwork. "Their findings?"

The bureaucrat, who had up until that point not displayed evidence that xe possessed any emotions whatsoever, made a face of extreme disgust. "When the officers found the child, the human parents were openly shooting at him. Other humans intervened for long enough for law enforcement to pick him up. Of course, they then felt the need to arrest him and carry him away in handcuffs... I have no idea why I keep at this job, really I don't."

Clockwork's core shifted in worry. His first impulse was to leap up and go comfort Daniel, but he suppressed it. If he left now, he would lose his place in line and have to start over.

"The public nature of the event means that the human police are now investigating the child's circumstances and may recommend that the child be removed from his human parents' custody. If you have a human identity and you are able to gain custody of him there, it will aid your case here."

"I am aware," said Clockwork.

"Well, then," xe said. "I believe this is all in order. Here is your ticket to see the judge. Just show it to the door. You know where it is?"

"I do," said Clockwork, rising.

He had walked by the door several times in his dealings with the various clerks and notaries. The room behind it lay directly in the heart of the family court building, all the other rooms and residents armor for this one.

The door itself was made of dark wood full of eye-shaped knots. As Clockwork approached the door, the eyes opened, watching him. He held up the ticket and the doors swung inward.

Inside was a courtroom, complete with benches, tables, a witness stand, a courtroom recorder, a judge's box, and a judge.

The judge was a one-eyed ghost in pale purple robes. She examined Clockwork.

"We had not foreseen this," she said. "Not until you filed the first motion."

"You were never able to see me clearly," said Clockwork, hoping this would not turn into a power play between himself and the Observants. "Did you receive the relevant paper work, your honor?"

"Yes," she said. "Take a seat, Lord Clockwork."

Clockwork flew to the front of the courtroom and settled himself in the applicant's chair.

The judge leaned forward. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I love Daniel, and I believe he deserves more care and protection than he is currently receiving from his biological parents."

The judge waved a clawed hand. "Yes, yes. But you didn't have to go through all of this and get to me in order to do that. You could have just taken him. That's what most people do, nowadays. Ever since the King was sealed and our systems of governance began to decay."

"I believe it is the only way Daniel will truly be safe," said Clockwork, meeting her one eye calmly.

"You want to prevent us from 'interfering.'"

"That would be nice, yes," agreed Clockwork.

"You want this to be binding," accused the judge.

"You say that like it is a bad thing," said Clockwork. "But what else could induce him to fully remove himself from that situation? You see how they treat him. Have you looked at the medical report, yet?"

"I have," said the judge, looking at her desk. "Very well. All the paperwork is in order. I am approving you for a one-month trial period. At the end of the trial period, the status of the child will be assessed. If his state is found to be acceptable, the adoption will be approved and bound. If it is not, this court will take custody of him until such a time as an appropriate guardian can be found." She scribbled something on a piece of paper and then hit it with a stamp. "The probationary bond should be active. You may go."

"Thank you, your honor."

After the end of the interview, which had become much more distressing than Danny wanted to admit, one of Walker's goons showed up and took him away, to another room.

This room was different than any of the other rooms he had seen in Walker's prison. For one, the walls were a soft, pastel green with purple accents, not the harsh, neon pink of elsewhere in the facility. The chairs looked soft, and were arranged almost randomly, clustered in little groups, or around tables. There were colored pencils and crayons on and occasionally floating over the tables. A large basket sat in one corner, overflowing with toys of various sizes.

Alright. Danny was confused.

He let the goon- the... officer?- guide him into one of the chairs and put a stuffed rabbit on his lap.

"I- I don't understand," said Danny. "What's going on?"

"Didn't that interviewer guy tell you?"

"He said I was being adopted," said Danny, who still hadn't wrapped his head around that particular tidbit of information. "But I thought- I was under arrest?" He raised his cuffed hands. "You arrested me?"

"Those're just so you don't run away," said the ghost. He ruffled Danny's hair. "You're not under arrest. We're just waiting for the court to decide what to do with you."

"And what if they don't do anything with me?"

"Then it's up to the boss."

"Oh," said Danny, not liking the sound of that at all.

"But, if it helps, I think that the court probably will decide to do something with you."

It didn't really help, no.

"Do you want a lollipop?"

"Sure," said Danny. It wasn't like this day could get much weirder.

The ghost handed him a lime dumdum. Yeah. That was about what he expected there, honestly.

The sensation of a thick, weighted blanket being draped over his mind hit him with such intensity that he looked around, trying to see if someone had just wrapped him up in a blanket without him noticing. Tension bled out of his muscles, and his core finally stopped the angry/depressed/frightened/pained dance it was doing in his chest.

He felt... protected. Which was wrong, because he was in Walker's prison, and Walker would use any excuse he had to keep Danny imprisoned for a thousand years. Danny was not safe here. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

And yet, that feeling remained.

He brushed his fingers over the bandages over his chest. What was wrong with him? His parents hadn't even cut all the way through, but he was so messed up. He didn't understand.

This feeling... This 'safety'... It felt like a cruel joke more than anything else, only it was one he couldn't escape from because it was coming from inside him and he was calm but he was also crying.

"Oh, heck, do you not like lime? I think I have some green apples-?"

The door to the room opened, and Danny looked up. Before he could register who had come in, he was swept up into a hug.

He blinked into silky purple cloth. "Clockwork?" he croaked.

"I'm here," said Clockwork. "It's fine. You're safe now, Daniel."

Danny pushed away. Clockwork let him. "You're adopting me?" asked Danny.

"Yes," said Clockwork. "Unless you don't want me to."

"Why?" asked Danny. "I don't understand. I didn't think you liked me that much."

"I like you very much," reassured Clockwork. "I want you to be my family."

Danny sniffed. "Okay," he said. It wasn't as if he really had anywhere else to go. "Okay. But what about," he made an awkward gesture with his cuffed hands, "Amity Park?" The idea of leaving hurt, even worse than the cut on his chest.

"You won't have to leave," said Clockwork, soothingly. "You can still have your life there."

"I'll have to go back?" asked Danny, in alarm. Back to Fentonworks, where even the walls had it out for him with how much anti-ghost weaponry they had packed into them? He couldn't. Not after what his parents had done.

(A small part of him knew that wasn't what Clockwork had said, and that he was being irrational. That part of him was ignored.)

"No, no," said Clockwork. "I have a new place, just for you. If you'll let me show you?"

Very hesitantly, Danny nodded.

"Alright, good," said Clockwork. He turned to the police ghost. "Do you have the key for these? We really must be going."

"Yeah," said the ghost, producing the item. "The boss says that he expects you to teach the kid how to respect the law."

"Appropriately," said Clockwork, neutrally, unlocking the cuffs.

Danny felt an urge to hug Clockwork. So he did. Clockwork hugged him back, and rocked him back and forth, gently.

"Are you ready to go?" asked Clockwork.

"Yeah," said Danny.

With a gesture of his staff, Clockwork opened a portal.

Clockwork wanted custody of Danny. He wanted full custody of Danny. Legally. In both worlds.

This posed a bit of a challenge, as he did not legally exist on one of those two worlds. Thus, Clockwork had to establish a legal presence in the human world.

On the surface of it, this did not seem too difficult. Between his temporal powers, his minor shapeshifting abilities, and overshadowing, simply creating an identity was easy. The hard part was creating an identity that Daniel would not have encountered before, in order to avoid a paradox, while making it plausible that Daniel had encountered the identity before, for the purposes of dealing with mortal law.

In one timeline, the hill to the west of town stood empty of habitation, owned by the county but rendered unusable due to a dangerous failed mine on the site. In this timeline, however, the mine had never been built, and the property was instead owned by a reclusive hermit who went by the name of Charles Worth. The property had passed through many hands in the years before Mr. Worth had purchased it in his youth, and a stately, if somewhat faded, mansion sat at the hill's crest, overlooking Amity Park.

Charles Worth went to Amity Park only rarely, and for good reason. He was an albino, with red eyes, white hair, and even whiter skin, and superstitious people often thought the worst of him. In recent days, he had even been mistaken for a ghost.

'Mistaken.'

He rubbed Daniel's shoulders, and the child startled, pulling away from him again. Daniel had missed Clockwork's, admittedly minor, transformation, and now blinked up at his newly pale face, confused.

"Do you like my disguise?" asked Clockwork.

Daniel's eyes flicked up and down Clockwork, assessing, processing. He gave a tiny nod, and reattached himself. "Where are we?" he asked.

"Hickory Hill," said Clockwork.

Danny frowned, mouthing the words. "Isn't that owned by... Charles Worth. Charles- Oh. I get it."

Clockwork gave Danny a little squeeze. "Would you like to see inside?"

"Okay," said Danny.

The house, Danny had to acknowledge, as they approached the front door, looked haunted. As if some pale, frail, spirit might look out one of the lace-draped windows on the upper floor at any moment. As if there was a Gothic mystery just waiting to unfold. A murder mystery, maybe, full of forbid love and jealous lovers. Or the tale of a sickly heir to a great fortune.

Or that of an ancient ghost and his adopted half-living son.

Even before they stepped inside, Danny's ghost half had decided it loved the building.

The door, as Clockwork opened it, creaked in a loving sort of way, the tone low enough to be comforting instead of annoying. The entrance hall's floorboards did not creak under the weight of the ghosts, but Danny could tell that if a human tried to cross them, they would. He hoped the rest of the floors were like that.

He padded forward, daringly leaving the protection of Clockwork's cloak, examining all the dark nooks and crannies, the odd architectural choices arising from generations of additions, smiling at cold spots. Clockwork shut the door. Even then, there was a draft, curling around his ankles, cool and refreshing.

Danny smiled. It was small and strained, but it was a smile. "It's perfect," he said.

"Don't you want to see your room before you say that?" teased Clockwork.

"Yes," said Danny.

Clockwork led Danny to a staircase with an elaborately carved banister and began to climb. Danny followed eagerly. He had never thought his core would be so happy simply to have somewhere safe to exist.

It almost was enough to let him forget what his parents had done to him. He stopped, hand on his chest.

"Daniel?" said Clockwork. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," said Danny, automatically.

Clockwork frowned, the expression both familiar and foreign on Clockwork's falsely-human face. "Why don't we take a look at that, once we get to your room, alright?"

Danny nodded, swallowing back his irrational fear.

They went up, and Clockwork opened the door to a large room, much larger than the one he had back at Fentonworks. The bed was similarly large and equipped with curtains and enough blankets and pillows to turn it into a nest at a moment's notice. The walls and ceiling were painted a deep blue, with tiny green-white dots picking out a star map. The room also contained a number of carefully curated hiding places, areas where the dressers wardrobe or desk created blind spots and deep shadows. The floor was carpeted, but still icy.

It was an excellent room for a ghost (or half-ghost) like Danny.

He was too nervous to enjoy it.

Clockwork pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. It was a little strange to see Clockwork actually sitting and not floating or coiling. Actually-

"Can you have legs in ghost form?" asked Danny.

"I can," said Clockwork. "But typically I don't bother." He patted the bed. "Let's take a look at you."

Danny hesitated, holding his hands clasped in front of his chest. Clockwork's face went soft.

"I just want to make sure you are healing. I know this is difficult, but neither you nor I want things to get worse."

"I'm fine," said Danny. "I heal fast. It was just- It should be gone now. I've gotten worse."

"Is it?" asked Clockwork.

Danny could still feel it. "I don't know," said Danny.

Clockwork patted the bed again. Danny sat down and started fumbling with the hem of his shirt.

"Would you like help?" asked Clockwork.

"No," said Danny. He pulled his sweater off. Taking off his t-shirt was harder. Then there were just Sam's bandages. He bit his lip a the red and brown blotches staining them.

"Would you like to talk about it?" asked Clockwork, taking one end of the bandage and starting to unwind it.

"I don't know," said Danny. "I just- It's so stupid. I shouldn't have- They saw me walk through a door and- They don't even know I'm Phantom. They just-" Danny hiccuped. "They tried to cut me open. They pretended."

Clockwork pulled free the last layer of bandages. The long, shallow cut was still there, straight along his breast bone until the end, where it curved sharply right and tapered off. That was when Danny had jerked free of the restraints and ran.

"Why isn't it healing?" asked Danny.

"It isn't just a physical wound, Daniel. Ghosts are spiritual creatures."

"Oh," said Danny. It made a sick kind of sense. "So my core is really hurt? I thought I was just... That it was in my head."

Clockwork raised a hand to touch the bottom of the cut. "Your parents are important to you, and to your Obsession, your existence as a ghost. Of course their rejection would affect you." The cut began to knit itself together underneath Clockwork's fingers. Danny's core thrummed strangely at the touch. "I can heal your physical injuries."

"But not the mental ones, huh?" said Danny.

"You need time for that," said Clockwork, reaching the top of the cut.

"Good thing I have you, then."

"It is," said Clockwork. He leaned forward and kissed Danny on top of his head.

Danny ran his fingers up and down the newly healed cut. "So my powers aren't going to work until, what, I get over this?"

"That is one possibility," said Clockwork. "But everyone heals differently."

"Can't you tell?" asked Danny, reaching for his shirt.

"The more involved I am in an event, the more difficult it becomes for me to see its future," said Clockwork. "The timeline branches and splinters as I look at it. Also, it may surprise you, but you are fairly difficult to predict on your own."

"Oh," said Danny. He pulled his shirt on, ignoring how it caught on the dried blood on his skin. "So, what now? Should I just, I don't know, hide out here? I mean," he shifted, uncomfortably, "It's fine if I can't let anyone know I'm here, I get that, but I'd like to, um..."

"Live your life?"

Danny flinched. "As much as I can, yeah." He licked his lips. "Sam and Tucker didn't get in trouble, did they? They're fine?" He'd been so wrapped up in how miserable he was, he'd barely spared his friends a second thought, and now that guilt from that rained down on his head.

"They're fine. Due to the circumstances, they haven't gotten in any trouble at all, so stop that."

"What?"

"Feeling guilty. I know for a fact that the safety of others was your first consideration." Clockwork patted his shoulder. "As for your continued presence here on the mortal plane," Clockwork smiled, "would it surprise you to learn that I am in fact registered as a foster parent? I have even had a few children here, although not many stay for long."

"Really?" said Danny. "But... Wait, um. What about- What about Mom and Dad?"

"They were seen shooting at you in public after insisting that you were a ghost. They've been arrested."

Danny swallowed. "Are they going to be alright?"

Clockwork sighed and shifted so that he was sitting on the bed next to Danny. He put an arm around Danny's shoulders. "They'll be fine," he said. "But we should come up with a story about how you wound up here, hm? For the social workers."

During Daniel's periodic visits to Clockwork's lair, Clockwork had noted how tactile he was, how much he enjoyed hugs and other physical expressions of affection. After Daniel got past his initial hesitation concerning his new situation, that particular personality trait multiplied.

Clockwork suspected the Fentons were ultimately to blame. Their hostility towards Daniel's ghostly identity and their tendency to carry objects that could hurt Daniel precluded him from seeking comfort from them, and his friends and sister, while very remarkable, were children themselves. Their relationship with Daniel was different.

This meant that Daniel could and would spend long periods of time laying against Clockwork. Usually, he would be doing homework during those moments or talking to Clockwork about various ghostly things that he had never had a chance to learn about before.

Today, however, he was just sitting there, quietly, almost dozing.

"I'm not keeping you from doing things?" asked Daniel, abruptly. "Am I?"

"No," said Clockwork.

"You don't have to do time stuff?"

"I can make duplicates and also time travel. I can be wherever I need to be. But if you want space-"

"No," said Daniel. "This is good." He snuggled closer and startled as a ring of light flashed around his waist. He was, for the first time since before his parents had attacked him, a ghost. Clockwork, in turn, shed his human guise.

Daniel was blinking down at his gloved hands.

"What?" he asked.

"I think you finally relaxed," said Clockwork, ruffling Daniel's hair. The smaller ghost leaned into the touch, purring. "Your transformations might be a bit unpredictable for the next few days."

"Good thing it's a weekend, then, huh?"

Danny jittered nervously as he and Clockwork passed through the large, eye-covered doors. This time last week, strange ghosts had been in and out of Clockwork's house, asking questions, poking things, and staring. Clockwork said they were checking to see if everything was in order, if the adoption could become official.

Danny didn't really see why it being official mattered. The Ghost Zone didn't really have a government to speak of. Families that Danny had seen just sort of decided that they were families, and that was that. It seemed important to Clockwork, though, and Clockwork claimed that there were certain benefits, like strengthening connections... Danny didn't get it. Wouldn't their connections be strengthened anyway?

Clockwork guided Danny with small nudges, directing him to a seat in front of the judge, who stared down at them with her one enormous eye.

"I have decided to approve the adoption request regarding Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom," she said.

Danny felt Clockwork relax incrementally beside him. He smiled. The judge's pronouncement felt a little anticlimactic to him, but, well, whatever.

But the judge wasn't done speaking. "The child's familial bond with his biological parents will be severed. The familial bond will be established with his current guardian, known as Clockwork. On all levels legal, physical, metaphysical, metaphorical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, Clockwork will be the sole parent of Daniel Janus James Fenton-Phantom. Due to the child's status as a liminal spirit, the memories and associations stored in his human brain will not be altered, and he may still experience feelings, especially those of nostalgia, towards his former parents, however, this is expected to fade with time. Questions?"

Danny had rather a lot, actually. Clockwork hadn't quite explained it like this. "Wait, are you saying I'll forget my parents?"

"No," said the judge, in a rather condescending tone.

"You won't forget them," said Clockwork. "But your core won't recognize them as your parents anymore. It's so you'll be able to defend yourself." His tone was almost pleading. "Your relationship with your sister will, of course, be unaffected."

"Okay," said Danny. They clearly didn't see him as their son anymore, so... It wouldn't really change anything. He didn't like the idea of ghosts he didn't know messing around with his core, but he trusted Clockwork. Even if he was apparently really bad at explaining ghost adoption. "What about the other stuff? The physical, metaphysical part?"

"The severed bonds in your core are replaced with ones to your new parent. Similarly, new bonds will be established in your parent's core," explained the judge. "Are you satisfied?"

Clockwork gave Danny an encouraging smile.

"I- Yes. I'm satisfied," said Danny.

"Very well." The judge waved forward a seven armed bailiff who had been waiting in the corner of the room.

The bailiff carried two tall glasses and a large, covered pitcher. He set one glass each in front of Clockwork and Danny and poured a thick, white, faintly glowing liquid into each of them.

"What is it?" asked Danny.

"It is a potion designed to stop our cores from fighting the changes that are about to happen," said Clockwork.

Danny looked at the potion dubiously. "Like an anesthetic?"

"Like an anesthetic," agreed Clockwork. He had already picked up his cup. "Together?"

"Okay," said Danny, still doubtful.

He picked up the cup and brought it to his lips, watching Clockwork carefully over the rim. Clockwork tipped his cup back, and so did Danny.

The potion reminded him a lot of eggnog, except that it was thicker, heavier, sweeter, like it had been mixed with honey. Almost at once, that heaviness settled into Danny's bones, weighing him down, a sensation just to the left of sleep settled over him. He lowered the cup from his face, his grip on it going gentle. The bailiff caught it as it tipped over.

Clockwork reached over and gently, slowly, pulled him close. Then he went as limp as Danny.

Inside, Danny's core became open. Not open, as in vulnerable, but as in receptive. Listening. He felt soft. Malleable. Like someone could press their thumb into him, and it would leave an impression when he hardened again. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation.

The judge sighed with something like disapproval. "So mote it be." She raised a stamp up off her desk, brought it down, and things changed.

Or, at least, Danny did.

Clockwork, being the elder ghost, recovered faster from the potion than Daniel. There was no reason to stay at the court, so, after bidding a goodbye to the judge, he picked Daniel up and left, flying a polite distance before opening a portal back to their home outside Amity Park.

He settled Daniel down in his bed, phasing him beneath his covers and tucking him in. Daniel would need to sleep off the potion, as well as take time to adjust to the changes to his psyche, however minor they might be.

"I love you so much," said Clockwork, brushing Daniel's hair out of his face. Getting here had taken subjective years of work and planning but it was worth it, because now Daniel was his child, in every way that mattered.

Forever.

Yes, that ending line was a little bit ominous, but they're ghosts. They wouldn't be happy if it wasn't ominous!

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2020

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amerrierworld · 4 years

Text

Curtain. (iii)

Carol (2015) fanfiction

Pt: 1 | 2

Word Count: 1,884

"Hey, T, you alright?" Dannie said as they got back to Therese's place. He leaned against the wall as she struggled to get her keys out.

"Of course, why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, ya seemed a bit distracted during dinner. Did something happen? Was it Richard?"

Therese hesitated in answering as her hand halted on the door knob. Sure, Richard was always a pain in her ass. Their respective jobs kept them apart, thank God, but Therese was never the keenest on keeping exes in her circle of friends. In this case she had no choice.

"Yeah, kind of. I mean, he's always been a misogynistic asshole, don't you think? I can only handle him for so long at any given time," Therese said, breezing inside with an air of nonchalance. Dannie wasn't having any of it as he followed her.

"Or was it a certain blonde boss that was keeping you from enjoying the night?" he asked as he followed her up the stairs.

"Shut up, Dannie," Therese quipped back without looking at him. "I'm stressed, alright? You might get a bit of a break now that the show's done, but I've got a new job coming up and that shit's never easy."

"Right, sorry, T, I didn't mean to upset you."

Therese sighed as they got to her door, turning to face him. "No, it's okay. I'm being weird, I know. It's just... well, sometimes I get confused, y'know? Like I just don't know what I want, and I get swept up in all these things and people around me, and I can't say no to any of it. Now what am I doing? I'm barely out, and barely paying my rent, and not doing the jobs I originally wanted to do. I never planned to be an art teacher of any kind. And it all just piles up."

She was staring at the ground, brows furrowed as she thought things through. Though she wouldn't tell Dannie the real aggressor of her overloaded thoughts was in fact the director, it was the only thing truly on her mind. She hadn't looked at anyone properly or found anyone as attractive as the blonde woman who she didn't even know the first name of. It scared her.

Two strong arms wrapped around Therese firmly and Dannie hugged her during her brief ruminating session.

"I can't imagine what it's like, T," he said, his chin on her hair. "I know it's probably tough, Phil's had a hell of a ride with figuring himself out and that took a toll on him. You've had it almost worse in my opinion, cause it took being with a shithead like Richard-"

Therese snorted.

"... to make you realize that you deserve more, and better."

"Being gay is the best thing in the world," Therese sighed. "But also the worst. No girls I look at ever know what they want. Or what they like. Or they're just experimenting. And, you know, homophobia..."

"Ignorance."

"Hate."

"Yeah, but girls."

"Yeah. Girls," Therese cracked a smile and Dannie did too. He bumped her arm playfully and she opened her apartment door.

"You wanna come inside for a drink?"

"Nah, I better head home. Phil's probably done his shift so I gotta make sure he eats at least something other than Redbull before he crashes on the bed."

"Gotcha."

"Let me know if you need anything, okay? I'm just a call away."

"I know, Dannie. Thank you."

"Goodnight T, have some sweet... blonde... dreams!"

Therese tried to swing her purse at him but missed as her best friend went cackling down the stairs.

September - before the first day

"Oh, Miss Belivet, is it?" asked the elderly lady at the front desk. Therese nodded, pulling at her skirt, her bag swung over her shoulder as she stood by the reception desk of the school- her new school.

She'd been working tirelessly the past week to really get herself in order. She even had a plan for the kids; themes accompanied with the crafts, and lessons in the art they were doing, not just mindless cutting and glueing. God, she definitely wasn't getting paid enough for this. Therese hoped her work would at least be appreciated.

"I was called to see the school today with Mrs... Robichek, I think it was?"

"Yes, you're right, I'll just page her down."

Therese waited by the receptionist, wandering a bit as she took in the school's architecture. Despite its clear technological advances of the relatively up-to-date phones, computers and printers, the school itself still had an old architectural feel to it, like something out of the 50s. The floors had a horrendous tiled pattern and the walls' pale green colours had faded into something ghastly.

Shuffling caught her attention and Therese turned to see a small, old lady with thick framed glasses in the doorway of the office. Though she looked just as ghastly as the school's design, she had a peppy smile on her face.

"Welcome, Theresa," she began. Therese's own smile faltered a little but she couldn't be bothered to correct her new colleague. Robichek, or Ruby as she introduced herself, gave Therese a tour of the small but well-regarded school.

"Now, you've got it easy, Theresa dear. You'll just need to be here everyday after school, no need for those 8am calls! Hah!"

Therese zoned out a bit as she watched the janitors and teachers bustle about the school, preparing for the new year and welcoming all the kids. Teachers with boxes filled with notebooks and markers. Desks being shuffled around and moved. The janitors cleaning the windows and floors thoroughly, making the tiles shine so brightly it gave Therese a headache.

"Here we are," Ruby suddenly piped up, entering a small classroom. Therese did a full turn once inside, noting the sink at the back of the room, handy, she thought. A selection of about 20 seemingly unused easels were propped up against the far wall, making Therese's hands itch with excitement.

"Now, usually this is Mr. Tucker's classroom. After 3pm, you've got it for yourself. You won't be allowed to move or touch his desk, but do whatever you like with the rest of the set up, as long as you move it back at the end of the day."

"What does Mr. Tucker teach?"

"Hm? Oh, during the school day he teaches the eighth graders, mainly. He's also coach and teaches gym, so he barely uses this room for his own things; that's what the gym office is for."

Therese wandered around the room for a bit, wondering if she was invading someone's space by being here. But no, she was only playing babysitter for kids after school. Administration insisted it still needed a curricular focus, according to Ruby, that's why they wanted an art-focused program rather than just letting kids waste their time for an hour or two.

"Between you and me, I think they're also doing it so they can cut some of the art funding during the regular day. This is technically outside of school hours so they don't have to worry about it, but they still count it as the curriculum being met," Ruby scoffed. Therese hummed in response, knowing how little arts were appreciated in schools nowadays, especially for younger years.

"Well, I think that's it, my dear! There's room in the teacher's lounge for your things once you start tomorrow. You needn't worry about taking up anyone's space, so do what you like."

"Thank you, Mrs. Robichek."

"Not a problem."

"Can I ask one question though? Where are all the art supplies?"

"Ah, that. Well. You see, I'm afraid this is as much as you're gonna get. It's an art club, Miss Belivet. The school board isn't going to be buying supplies for you."

With that, Mrs. Robichek walked out, leaving Therese to her own devices. She wandered about, checking the drawers in the cabinets and by the sink. A box of broken crayons and old Crayola markers was all she found. Some scissors, half a pack of construction paper, a couple glue sticks... The only real asset were the easels at the back of the room. Someone probably funded those with good intention, but no one seemed interested to use them properly.

As she crouched by the sink, rummaging through the last few piles of flimsy paper and boxes, the door opened. In walked a beanpole of a man- thin glasses framing his beady eyes. He was dressed in a suit that seemed to hang off of his body, old and boring in every way. He had a box in hand that he set on the desk before noticing Therese at the other end of the room.

"Who are you?" he asked immediately. This, Therese assumed, was Mr. Tucker.

"Oh, hello, Mr. Tucker. I'm Therese Belivet, I'm-,"

"The new art teacher, yes I know. I suppose we're sharing this classroom for the year, hm?"

Therese nodded bleakly as she got up, a forgotten glue stick in hand.

"I'll have you know I have a very strict way with my things, Miss Belivet. I will not allow you to move anything off of my desk. This need for art after school nonsense is ridiculous in my opinion, but I will mostly be in my separate office by the gym. Do what you like with those things," he nodded to the easels, "but don't make a mess of my classroom."

Therese was stumped by the man's arrogance and haughty behaviour so she clasped her hands in front of her instinctively, like she was a student back at boarding school. "Of course, sir."

He gave her a pointed look, not moving from his spot. Understanding the cue, Therese hurried out the classroom as fast as her feet would carry her.

God, what a weasel of a man, she thought, taking a breather as she headed back to the main office. She wouldn't be needed until 3pm the next day, which opened up her mornings nicely. She waved goodbye to the receptionist, who she learned was named Patricia, and walked out in the late summer evening air.

Therese hurried to get a cab, texting Dannie on her way back to her apartment.

met 3 new colleagues today. 1/3 was actually bearable

Dannie replied within a few minutes.

no shit, eh? what are they like?

receptionist is nice, does her job and didn't ask any questions. this one other lady teacher seems to be like everyone's overbearing grandma (good thing she teaches kindergarten i guess??) oh and the last guy seems like a total creep- really uptight

what does he teach?

gym. he's the coach of whatever teams they can even have here. it's such a small school.

damn, he's not ripped is he? if he creeps you again i could take him down, maybe.

lol nah he's a stick more than anything. doesn't seem to like me, or art for that matter. i have to share a classroom with him.

bummer. maybe paint the walls a sick fluorescent magenta? that might send him a message. kids would enjoy it too

Therese snorted at her phone, though the message gave her an idea. She hastily sent a reply to Dannie before directing the cab to the nearest art supply store.

A/N: Two updates in one day. I couldn’t help myself :3 Hope you like it folks. It won’t be long until our two leading ladies meet, I promise.

#carol #carol aird #carol movie #carol fanfiction #carol x therese #therese belivet #cate blanchett #rooney mara #sarah paulson #The Price of Salt #patricia highsmith #carol 2015 #wlw #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #merry writes

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redbootsthetimetraveller · 3 years

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I wanted to request the “OC dressed by other OC” things but you’ve got so many!!! And they’re all so cool!! Would you mind saying what some of your favourite ones’ styles are (i.e. mod, psychedelic, hippie, glam, etc.)?

Love your art❤️

oh I am always up to talk about my characters and thank you for sending this!! I appreciate these sorta things because it’s a nice message AND I get to talk about my characters which helps me actually figure them out lmao

and I know you’re asking for my favourites but that is subject to change and I want to talk about all of them. and I’m not entirely sure exactly what styles of dress they each come under but I’ll use the terms where I see fit, and I’ll just. ramble about their individual dress styles. that’s the same thing right!

this is gonna be long (spoiler alert: IT IS) so to keep things short for those who don’t want to scroll through a mile long post, I’ll put it under the cut

so I’m gonna start with the starstrucks because they ARE my like. main characters. I am planning something with them which is in its very early stages of development but I’m hoping that when things around me settle down I can work on it a bit better than what I have (but I procrastinate the things I WANT to do so we’ll see. feel free to nag me about it though)

roger claire: considering he’s like. the main-main character (not intended, that was meant to be snowy but HERE WE ARE) his outfits and style of dress changes a lot but also it’s not that creative for a lot of it. at the start he wears more mod clothing, but he’s not that daring since he is pretty cautious. he had a strict family. anyway around 1965 he starts getting a lot more daring and he’s definitely not an extravagant dresser he does know how to dress sharply despite that so you get things like his peacoat that I DEFINITELY didn’t copy directly from micky dolenz on the cover of more of the monkees, and that really heavily decorated overcoat that’s 18th-century inspired but also Groovy, y’know? that sorta thing carries over into the seventies where he pretty much wears shirts with the sleeves rolled up, light coloured trousers, and a few t-shirts because Variety™. haven’t really thought about beyond that but he’d probably dress like a cool dad

pete sutton: he’s got sensory issues so he’s even MORE cautious in dress style than roger. main thing is turtlenecks though. and a lot of purple. there’s a quote about ray davies being the kink most likely to wear a tie offstage and I think pete’s the starstrucks’ equivalent

snowy smith: he’s got the most defined wardrobe out of the lot of them! black-and-blue striped jumper, a black peacoat, blue jeans, blue-green shirts, his leather jacket (which has blue-violet stripes on it so it’s unique from the million other jackets I draw) since he’s definitely on the rocker side of things and cuban-heeled beatle boots he doesn’t need since he’s already 6′1

charlie morris: REALLY mod. at the start of the story he has a collarless jacket with pink trimmings. his colours are yellow and green but I also always end up drawing him in red

davey peacock: mod, but the mod that your parents approve of. does get a bit more adventurous when his uncle, the manager, gets fired, and I gave him a union jack jacket like pete townshend had at some point lol. he also gives hippie clothing a shot around 1968 and in the eighties he has a mullet and not a good one

rory locking: SO MUCH ORANGE. aviator sunglasses, collared shirts with the first two buttons undone, his kinda short jacket that’s plasticky leather with a fluffy lining (those style jackets have a particular name don’t they? I can’t remember it) but like. there’s so much orange. why did I do that my markers are dying

mick lily: light was denim. that’s about it.

next we have the midnight delusions

jimmy jade: scarves. he has a gold embroidered black suit that I’ve drawn a couple of times and ALWAYS regret it because OW, pink, and a lot of black

teddy van alst: he has a leather jacket. wears interesting trousers and really plain shirts typically. he’s the one with the cool glam makeup even though it’s 1966 and glam isn’t exactly a thing yet. he’s a rocker though

arthur floyd: has a leather jacket like his bf teddy! it has roses embroidered on it. he has a rose sorta aesthetic going on, along with the blue-and-gold star outfit that I drew him in a couple of times. he’s sort of a carnaby street mod if that’s a thing lol

lucky littleproud: gonna be real with you he’s boring he wears colourful shirts and trousers that’s about it. I haven’t worked on him much :(

peter morrison: between hippie and mod. definitely more on the hippie side compared to his sibling

stevie maple (counting him here even though he kinda isn’t a Member): textured shirts, he’s more of an american mod. considering he IS american (unfortunately)

all of those side characters I have absolutely no idea how to group but are part of the same story as those two bands:

sylvia chase: mod, but she also doesn’t put much effort into her appearance. that’s the best way to describe her style

holly keys: she’s a model so literally whatever is the ‘hottest’ trend

james cassidy-bell: he dresses like brian jones in the early-mid sixties

katherine robinson: mod, and then the most avant-garde things she can find if she’s going in public. and a lot of red lipstick (that’s her Thing)

morgan morrison: MOD but also like that sorta soft aesthetic thing that was popular in like. 2017. because why not am I right

christopher goldstein: he is also a model but I draw him in really dandy-ish stuff a lot. him and jimmy sorta have a prep/goth dynamic going on

and that’s about it for the characters who really are gonna appear often enough to bother describing their dress styles! moving on now

keith neptune: band tshirts and anything with patches on it.

nico (haven’t come up with his surname yet, if y’all have suggestions I’ll take it): baggy jeans, sneakers, baggy tshirts, and has a denim vest with patches on it but Different types of patches to keith. if keith has the sorta etsy partches nico has ‘I pickpocketed these from a bikey who hasn’t showered in a month from a servo in the middle of nowhere’ patches

grey: they have a brow leather jacket that I think was inspired by jim morrison, a stamp out the beatles jumper, and a really big and motheaten black woolen jumper which they wear with beatle-boots, a white collared shirt, and like. not black jeans but very desaturated blue jeans that happen to be very dark

jude anne sutton (yes I know she and pete have the same surname they’re not related they’re in different universes): mod. enough said

rene shannon: mod but boring. he’s Repressed y’know

leslie (I’m gonna change her surname lol): honestly mainly shift dresses and that one really simple black-and-white dress, and their ripoff black watch tartan jacket, and tall boots.

danny: honestly? he dresses like a mod but at heart he’s a rocker. he’s a rocker who washes

that One character I won’t name: it’s complicated. he goes from trying to be a teddy boy with the rest of his friends and then it goes a little wrong and they fight about it and then they discover early rocker culture and he sticks with that for a while and then starts dabbling in more mod stuff and then DEFINITELY his style changes into the dandy stuff of the middle of the sixties. you know the stuff I’m talking about. and then he’s a hippie for about two seconds and goes back to dandy stuff but throws a few of his old rocker pieces back in. THEN he has a breakdown and fucks off to america for three years (returning home like twice for two days before fucking off again) where he’s got a peacoat, his old leather jacket, a turtleneck, a few shirts, and two pairs of jeans. that’s it. for three years. and workboots obviously because he’s trainhopping. I have that part very worked out as you can tell!

harper (character I have sketched exactly Once but have his style very sorted out): he starts off pretending to be a teddy boy in the way that a fifteen-year-old with a highly overprotective and lowkey horrible mother would probably be. he is also kinda Broke for that exact reason. and then he and the above character get into more rocker stuff and that’s probably where the two drift apart and where rene/jude/leslie/whoever else I may come up with would come in

anyway!!! I think that’s every character I have a defined style for. some of it’s a little hard to explain but I hope this cleared things up. I have also had a migraine for most of today so my ability to use words is extra impaired lmao!

and I’m so sorry for just. rambling. but I do have a lot of characters and I love them all so much and I’m so happy you like them too!!!

#ocs #oc band #ask/#text/#I warn you. it's a Lot #and thank you I needed the excuse to just TALK about them and ik it's not what you asked for exactly but it's something right????#but like. I dunno if I know things well enough to say definitively 'that character is a mod and that one's a rocker' and if they even FIT s #because as you can tell if you're reading this some of them have less of a neat square box of fashion they fit in and more a colour or a pa #particular article of clothing #this post made my browser crash. oops

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judgement-free-sideblog · 5 years

Text

Never underestimate a black suit

Bill Hader x Reader

I'm not even going to pretend I regret this one. It all started in 2009 when I became obsessed with SNL, then he just kept popping up, here an there and the crush just grow, and since thanks to It chapter 2 he is finally getting the recognition he deserves I got this idea last night and I got to write it before it escapes my mind.

One shot: Imagine you are a PA in Barry and you have the biggest crush on Bill Hader but it seems like he hates you because he is dead serious all the time he is around you.

Warnings: Swearing, Age gap (I know he is just over forty but god I love him).

You were pacing on the set, the Steve Allen Theater, hoping for someone, anyone, to give you an order so you could pretend you were so good at your job as PA so they won't fired you. But the damage was done, all thanks to your verbal incontinence and now the most amazing job in the world was about to be over.

You had started working on Barry about a year ago, and you have loved every minute of it, the cast was so sweet and down to earth, and make your job so much easier, D'arcy Carden for example was always thankful with you for the simplest things like bringing her coffee and Sarah Golberg even had invited you to lunch after you helped her with a female problem one time. They were so talented and nice that you could not believe it when the production called you back for the third season to keep working there.

But then it was him, the titular character, the fucking genius whose hard work and imagination have created this magnificent show, Bill Hader. Yes you were 28 and he 42, but still you couldn't explain it, there was something about the way he spoke and the way he walked that made you weak on your knees every time, and his laugh, you were sure something had been fixed in your mind after the first time you heard him laugh.

And then it was that first week of shooting from last year, the retro outfit with the suspenders, you couldn't get your eyes off him and you almost made one of the sound guys trip with Henry Winkler. And then the table scene, you were in the back making sure the extras were in their right place and avoiding look at him because he was so perfect on that scene that you certainly will froze just by looking at him.

This little crush was obvious for absolutely everyone, except obviously for Bill, you were sure that Anthony Carrigan even deliberately asked you for anything when he was talking to Bill to see you all clumsy and awkward, not to be a dick, just to push you to talk to him, but you were certain he didn't liked you, with most of the other members of the cast and crew he was always laughing, but in the limited interactions you had he was serious, asked you for a coffee now and then or to make a phone call but just that, and you were beginning to think your absurd infatuation was making him uncomfortable, so you tone it down, made a composed face and limited to do your job.

But now you had blow it. That morning they were filming the behind the episode, for the new season, at some point Barry had one of those daydreams and he imagine himself married to Sally, so there he was all perfect in a black suit sitting in his chair next to Alec Berg talking about the challenges of the new season and how thankful they were to come back.

"So the cast is amazing, the first two episodes of the season are incredible and you have managed to keep the same novelty feeling on the series, why do you think that is?" The guy interviewing them asked.

"Well I think it's mainly thanks to the cast" Alec started "This guys are just amazing, this season we are actually giving Sally a bigger arc and that is very interesting"

"And the crew too" Bill said then "I mean they make us all look good, even when some scenes are a total disaster, the set designers, the wardrobe and all that" they made a pause and you were there to put water bottles in the table between them.

"Bill I have known that you used to be a PA, you think that gives you a better understanding on how hard it is for and aspiring actor as Barry, and does it translate on the writing?" He asked and against your better judgment you stay there to listen.

"Totally, but on a more personal level I try to no be diva with my PAs, recognize they do a hard work and know them all by name, that sort of things"

And then your verbal incontinence kick in, and there, just a few feet away, your mouth was quicker than your brain and still looking at him you spoke, not that loud to be heard by the three of them but enough for him to look straight at you.

"That's bullshit" you instinctively took your hands to your mouth and turn around before you could saw him react and went away pretending you were taking coffee orders. And here you were just waiting for the "we are gonna have to let you go" speech when one of the other PAs called you.

"Hey Y/N Hader says you have to go to his dressing room ASAP" Your friend Danny said and you felt like something heavy fall down inside your stomach.

"Can someone else go?" You answered trying to find an excuse "I have to walk Kirby's dog" you lied.

"No, he said you specifically, something about a mail he asked you to sent?" You gave him a thumbs up and start walking to his dressing room, already feeling you were fired.

"Did you need anything Mr. Hader" You tried to sound professional, and not dead ass scared.

"Oh sure, Y/N, please come in" Great! He did know your name, so apart from impertinent you were an asswhole. And he was still in that stupid black suit that made him look so gorgeous, not like the tshirts and hoodies didn't. "Do you by any chance printed those documents I asked you to send last week? I seem to have deleted them and Alec is going to freak out" He said as nice and kind as always and the weight in your stomach start lightening.

"Yeah sure, I ... well unless someone says is confidential I make copies of everything, an old habit" You said looking for a flash drive in your purse. Since all the crew sing a NDA at the beginning of the production there was nothing wrong with that, unless of course you put it on Twitter if you wanted to go to jail.

"This is not your first work on a set right?" He asked while you started looking for the documents in his laptop.

"Oh no sir. I worked in Dead to me two years ago, but since they are in a break I try my luck here last year, and HBO has better catering" You said concentrated in your work.

"Oh so you met Christina?" He asked genuinely interested, "how old were you then?"

"26, a bit late to start in this business I know, but well I like it more" You answered with a smile and then pointed to the laptop "There they are".

"Thanks so much, truly a life saver" He said and let go a sigh "And you are never too old or too young to start, as long as you enjoy it, and tolerate your bosses... bullshit was it?" He said raising an eyebrow accusatory. You immediately turn white and then red and multiple apologizes started bubbling in your mouth.

"I'm so sorry sir, I really am, I sometimes speak my mind and say all this stupid stuff, I'm sorry" You finally managed to say. He started laughing, you didn't let go the painful irony of the situation, it was the first time you made him laugh, and probably will be the last.

"I'm sorry" He said finally " I couldn't help it, relax. I'm not mad. It was quite funny what you said, I sound like such a duchebag I know everyone by name" He said making an acute voice and you start calming down "But if anything I'm sorry I made you, or any of the crew, feel like you don't matter. All of you are actually great" He said and smiled again to you. "Also lose the Mr Hader, that's bullshit, you can call me Bill".

"Oh no, I couldn't, I'm already so embarrassed by why I did" you started and he looked at you making exaggerated puppy eyes mouthing please, and it was lucky you were so nervous otherwise you would have exploded with laughter "Ok Bill"

"Ok then you are 28, and recently started as a PA, you want to be an actress?" He said, leaning back on his desk.

"Absolutely not, I wanted to be a writer, I was a writer actually in a newspaper, but it didn't feel right and then I realized I wanted to write stories, scripts, and one of my friends was an extra in Stranger things, then she said Netflix needs PAs and well there I went" You said, it was easy talk to him. "Also I don't have the looks for it and hate to se myself in pictures"

"I don't have the looks for it, and here I am" He said opening his arms "But honestly you keep writing and trying, if it's what you want, I mean I get here"

"Well yeah but have seen yourself in that suit?" Your mouth betrayed you again and you look at your feet to hide your face. "Amm I think I have a dog to walk, bye" You said before he could said anything and run away.

The next weeks were difficult, you avoid being alone with Bill but you kept doing your job as good as always, and every once in a while you will notice him looking at you, thinking on how pathetic you must look to him. Until the last day of shooting, they wrapped up the season and it was amazing. The only thing left was to go for a drink at Henry's place and start looking for a new job, thankfully you had finally written a promising draft and your hopes were high.

Maybe that's why you actually choose to drink at the party, and dance with your friends and some members of the cast, and you were a little more talkative than usual, until Anthony who was talking to you about something you were not actually listening leave you alone next to bill.

"So what's next??" He asked in the middle of the loud music, and you didn't quite got it because he signaled the garden and you followed him. "Finally I couldn't hear my thoughts" He said once you were outside.

"It's really loud, but you all deserve it" You said and suddenly realized you were alone. "What where you asking?" You tried to sound casual.

"Oh if you could get me a coffee" he joked and then quickly add "No I was wondering what's next for you after this is over?"

"I actually waiting good news from Amazon, maybe with any luck I'll get a chance with one of my scripts" You said proudly.

"That's amazing" He said with bright happy eyes "I'm so glad for you, so we won't be seeing you in season four?"

"With any luck no" You answered "You'll have to find another impertinent PA to call out your bullshit" You add laughing.

"Oh I'm pretty sure we will find someone, or I can always call you and ask you to do it for free" He said and you could notice how close he was "You know as a concerned friend"

"Sure, I can do that, my contract finalized yesterday day so I guess starting today I'm just your rude friend that says come on man don't be a duchebag" You said letting go a small laugh but he was looking at you completely serious.

"In that case..." He started and took your face between his hands, he was so tall and you felt so tiny next to him but also it was so nice and comfortable being so close, he lean in to kiss you and stop just close enough to your mouth so you will feel his breath, as if he asked for your permission to continue, and instead of saying something that could ruin the moment you close the distance and kiss him.

His lips felt soft and tender over your lips, and he slowly started deepening the kiss pressing you against him from your waist, and you hold on to the front of his jacket trying to keep him closer to you, hoping for this moment to never end, until the absurd necessity of oxygen force you to split.

"I ... I didn't think it would be appropriate to do that when we were working together" He started, smiling like a child. "I'm sorry if I made you feel like I was avoiding you, Anthony messing up with me by having you around all the time didn't help either"

"Don't worry it's okay, and yeah it would have been super inappropriate but thank god I no longer have a job" you said still trying to make sense of the situation.

"Would you... I mean I love Henry but there's only alcohol in here, do you want to go grab some dinner?" He said pointing the exit.

"I would love that" you answered, overwhelmed by joy and you followed him to the door, happy with all the possibilities the future hold.

#I love bill hader #sue me #bill hader #bill hader imagine #barry berkman #barry hbo #fanfic #fluff #bill hader fanfiction #bill hader x reader #bill hader edit #100 #200 #300 #400

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 4/23/21: MORTAL KOMBAT, DEMON SLAYER, TOGETHER TOGETHER, STREET GANG, SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS

Ugh. Trying to maintain this column as a weekly entity during the final few weeks of the longest Oscar season ever has been really hard, and I’m not sure that will change once the Oscars are over either, because I look at the number of movies being released both theatrically and streaming over the next few weeks, and it makes my head hurt. Sorry for the kvetching, it just is what it is.

There are two big theatrical releases this weekend, Warner Bros’ MORTAL KOMBAT and DEMON SLAYER THE MOVIE: MUGEN TRAIN from FUNImation Entertainment, both which have already been released internationally. I also probably won’t be able to watch or review either before this column gets posted.

Mortal Kombat seems like the easiest sell being that it’s based on the popular Midway Games video game franchise introduced in the early ‘90s that led to a series of films, books, comics and you name it. It was a very popular fighting game that had over a dozen iterations including one in which MK characters fought against DC superheroes.

The very first Mortal Kombat movies opened in 1995, right amidst MK-mania, and it was directed by one Paul W.S. Anderson, his very first movie in a long line of video game-related movies, including a number of Resident Evil and the recent Monster Hunter. There are a lot of people who love those games, and yes, even people who love that and other movies, but to others, who may have been too old to get into the games when they came out, the whole thing about different fighters fighting each other just looks kind of studio. Even though I’m interested to see what producer James Wan brings to this reboot, I just don’t have much interest otherwise.

Unfortunately, and this is pretty daunting, Warner Bros. wasn’t sending out screeners to critics until Wednesday with a review embargo for Thursday night at 7pm, which is never a good sign, and yet, it continues Warner Bros. continuing the trend of being one of the only studios that screeners EVERY movie to film critics rather than just making them pay to see it on Thursday night or Friday. I hope to watch it and maybe add something Thursday night, time-permitting. Not sure you heard but the Oscars are Sunday.

As far as box office, Mortal Kombat opens on Friday but also premieres on HBO Max, and I’m not sure there will be as much urge to see MK on the largest screen possible, as there was with Godzilla vs. Kong. Because of that, I think the cap for this one over the three-day weekend is about $10 million but not much more and probably more frontloaded to Friday than we’ve seen in some time.

Mini-Review: As you can imagine from my statement above, I don’t hold the Mortal Kombat games or other iterations in any particular high esteem, so I’m basically jumping into this movie, directed by Simon McQuoid, just as a movie and not necessarily as a video game movie.

It starts off promising enough like a samurai movie with a flashback where we watch Hiroyuki Sanada’s hero sees his wife and son be killed by Joe Taslim’s character that will later become Sub-Zero. The general principle seems to be that there’s a world where people from other worlds fight each other to gain complete control. The hero is Lewis Tan’s MMA fighter Cole Young, presumably a popular character from the game? He is also soon attacked by Sub-Zero presumably because he’s marked with a dragon tattoo that deems him a champion of these fights, but he needs to find someone named Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee) to help him get to the “Mortal Kombat.” At the same time, he meets the movie’s most entertaining character, Kane,

played by Australian actor Josh Lawson, mainly because he swears constantly and cracks wise -- he’s a bit like Wolverine, actually, and he’s actually the best part of the movie.

Otherwise, everyone and everything is always so deadly serious that everyone else we meet just doesn’t have much impact, because frankly, none of these names or characters mean jack shit to me. Sure, some of them sound vaguely familiar but I was more interested in the great Asian actors who turn up including Tadanobu Asano’s Lord Raiden, who is gonna claim Earth if its champions lose at Mortal Kombat. And Sub-Zero basically just shows up and tries to kill everyone.

As with far too many action movies, the action itself is great, the writing and acting not so much.

As it goes along, things become more epic and fantasy-driven but that also makes the dialogue seem even worse. Similarly, the fight choreography is pretty great, but the movie still leans way too heavily on visual FX to keep it more interesting for anyone not too interested in MMA… like myself. When all else fails, they can show off Sub-Zero’s cool ice powers every chance possible as well as the other’s powers, but some of them (like Lord Raiden) just made me think of this as a rip-off of the great Big Trouble in Little China.

The thing is I’m not a fan of the video game nor of MMA, so Mortal Kombat really doesn’t have much to offer me. The whole thing just seems very silly, just like almost everything from the ‘90s. (How’s THAT for a bad take?)

That said, I thought the final battle was great, and I enjoyed some of the gorier aspects of the fights, too, and it all leads to my favorite part, which is the three-way fight between Cole, Sub-Zero, and… actually I’m not sure if it’s a spoiler or not, but it’s a pretty cool fight that almost makes up for some of the dumber characters introduced earlier on. (LIke that guy with four arms. I know he’s a character in the games, but I didn’t even care enough to look up his name.)

It’s perfectly fine that they decided to go Rated R with the movie since most of the nostalgia for this movie and franchise will be towards older guys, but at times, the CG blood is so hinky it feels like the decision to go R-rated was made well after it was filmed.

Even though I went in with the lowest of expectations, I still found most of Mortal Kombat kinda trite and boring, maybe something I’d appreciate more as a teenager but not so much as a grown adult. But what do you expect for a movie based on a video game that’s just a bunch of “cool fights”?

Rating: 5.5/10

And yet, Demon Slayer could be the surprise breakout of the weekend, considering the theatrical success FUNimation has had with theatrical releases of the My Hero Academia movies into theaters in 2018 and 2020, and the hugely successful Dragon Ball Super: Brolly, which grossed $31 million domestically after a surprise $20.2 million in its first five days in roughly 1,200 movies. In fact, it made $7 million its opening Wednesday in January 2019, and FUNimation is hoping that Demon Slayer will have a similar success by opening it for a single day (Thursday) in IMAX theaters before Mortal Kombat takes over on Friday.

Demon Slayer has already grossed $383.7 million internationally compared to Mortal Kombat’s $10.7 million, and you cannot ignore the huge popularity that anime has seen over the past few decades. In fact, a bunch of screenings for Demon Slayer in NYC have already sold out, although you have to bear in mind that these are 25% capacity theaters. Even so, I still think this can make $4 to 5 million on Thursday and another $7 to 8 million over the weekend, depending on the number of theaters. Yes, it will be quite frontloaded, and I’m not sure what the cap is on theaters and how that will affect how it does over the weekend, but expect a big Thursday and a more moderate weekend but one that might give both Mortal Kombat and Godzilla vs. Kong a run for the top of the box office.

Also hitting theaters before streaming on Netflix (on April 30) is THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES, the new animated movie produced by Chris Miller and Philip Lord, following their Oscar win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a little weird to open a new animated movies, presumably in select theaters, when such a hugely anticipated animated movie like Demon Slayer is opening, but Netflix won’t

The movie itself is directed by Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe, and it involves a family named the Mitchells, whose eldest daughter Katie (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) is leaving home for college, so her father (voiced by Danny McBride) decides that he’s going to drive her there and use it as the chance for a cross-country family trip. Meanwhile, it’s set up how the world becomes overrun with robots when a tech giant creates a new personal assistant.

I wasn’t sure whether I’d like this even though I’m generally a fan of all of Lord/Miller’s animated movies including both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies. It took me a little time to get into the family and the general premise. In some ways it reminded me of Edgar Wright’s The World’s End where it’s trying to merge these two disparate genres, but when they actually merge, it just doesn’t work as well as it may have seemed on paper. That worry is soon expunged, because Rianda finds ways to integrate the two ideas over time.

On the trip, the Mitchells run into their perfect family neighbors, the Poseys -- voiced by Krissy Teigen, John Legend and Charlyne Yi -- and you’d think they might be a bigger part of the movie then they actually are. I’m not sure I would have liked doing the family-vs.-family thing so soon after last year’s Croods movie, but I did love the dynamics of the Mitchells being a very relatable imperfect family with Danny McBride being particularly great voicing the family patriarch. It even has a really touching Pixar’s Up moment of Katie’s father watching old home movies of them together when she was younger.

In general, the filmmakers have assembled a pretty amazing voice cast that includes Conan O’Brien, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen and Beck Bennett. Actually the weirdest voice choice is Katie’s younger brother Aaron, voiced by Rianda himself, and it sounds like a strange older man trying to be a kid, so it doesn’t work as well as others.

What I genuinely liked about Mitchells vs. the Machines is that it doesn’t go out of its way to talk down to overly sensitive kiddies or skimp on the action while also including elements that parents will enjoy as well, and to me, that’s the ideal of a family film.

While some might feel that The Mitchells vs. the Machines is fairly standard animated fare, it ends up being a fun cross between National Lampoon’s Vacation (cleaned up for the kiddies) with Will Smith’s I, Robot, actually, and yet, it somehow does work. It’s a shame that it’s really not getting a theatrical release except to be awards-eligible.

Next, we have two really great movies I saw at Sundance this year and really enjoyed immensely…

So as I mentioned, I first saw Nikole Beckwith’s TOGETHER TOGETHER (Bleecker Street), starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison, at Sundance, and it was one of my favorite movies there with Helms playing a middle-aged single guy named Matt, who hires the much-younger Anna (Harrison) to be his surrogate, because he wants a baby. It’s a tough relationship thrown together due to each of their respective necessities.

Part of what drives the movie is how different Matt and Anna are, him being quite inappropriate with his suggestions and requests but not really having a working knowledge of female anatomy, pregnancy, delivery etc, but being really eager to raise a child and having the money that Anna clearly does not.

While I was familiar with Helms from The Office, The Hangover, etc. I really didn’t know Patti Harrison at all. Apparently, she’s a stand-up comic who hasn’t done a ton of acting, comedic or otherwise. That’s pretty amazing when you watch this movie and see her dry sardonic wit playing well against Helms’ generally lovable doofus. What I also didn’t realize and frankly, I don’t really see this as something even worth mentioning, is that she’s a trans woman playing a clearly CIS part, and she kills it. I certainly wouldn’t have known nor did it really affect my enjoyment of the movie, yet it still seems like such a brave statement on the part of the director and Harrison herself. The thing is that Harrison isn't just a terrific actress in her own right, but she brings out aspects of Helms that I never thought I would ever possibly see. (If it isn't obvious, I'm not the biggest fan of Helms.)

The movie has a great sense of humor, as it gets the most out of this awkward duo and then throws so many great supporting actors into the cast around them that it’s almost impossible not to enjoy the laughs. There’s the testy Sonogram tech, played by Sufe Bradshaw from Veep, who tries to maintain her composure and bite her tongue, but you can tell she’s having none of it. Others who show up, including Tig Notero, Norah Dunn and Fred Melamed. Just when you least expect it, Anna Conkle from Pen15, shows up as one of those delivery gurus that make the two of them feel even more awkward.

What’s nice is that this never turns into the typical meet cute rom-com that some might be expecting, as Beckwith’s film is more about friendship and companionship and being there for another, and the lack of that romantic spark even as chemistry develops between them is what makes this film so enjoyably unique. Beckwith’s sense of humor combined with her dynamic duo stars makes Together Together the best comedy about pregnancy probably since Knocked Up.

Another great Sundance movie and actually one of my two favorite recent documentaries AND one of the best movies I’ve seen this year is… you know what? I haven’t done this for a while so this is this week’s “CHOSEN ONE”!! (Fanfare)

(Photo courtesy: Robert Fuhring/Courtesy Sesame Workshop)

Marilyn (Mad Hot Ballroom) Agrilo’s STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET (Screen Media/HBO Documentaries) is a fantastic doc about the long-running and popular PBS kids show that’s every bit as good as Morgan Neville’s Mr. Rogers doc, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Which was robbed of an Oscar nomination a few years back.

Let me make something clear on the day I’m writing this, April 21, 2021, that this is my favorite movie of the year, the only one I’ve already given a 10/10, and the end of the year might come around, and I have a feeling it will still be my #1.

You see, I was raised a Sesame Street kid. It’s not like I didn’t read or play outside or not get the attention of my parents or family, but there was so much of my happy, young life that I could attribute to my time watching Sesame Street, and when you watch Marily Agrilo’s amazing doc, it all comes rushing back. There is stuff in this movie that I haven’t seen in maybe 50 years but that I clearly remember laughing at, and there’s stuff that got into the mind of a young Ed that influenced my love of humor and music and just outright insanity. Sure, I loved The Muppet Show, too, but it was a different experience, so to watch a movie about the show with all sorts of stuff I had never seen or knew, that’s what makes Street Gang such a brilliant documentary, and easily one of the best we’ll see this year. Of that I have no doubt.

From the very origins of the show with Joan Cooney developing a show that will be entertaining and educational to the kids being plopped down in front of the TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so they can learn something, it’s just 1:46 of straight-up wonderment.

Besides getting to see a lot of the beloved actors/characters from the show and many of the surviving players like Carol Spinney aka Big Bird/Oscar, you can see how this show tried to create something that wasn’t just constantly advertising to young minds.

More than anything, the show is a love letter to the bromance between Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and you get to see so many of their bits and outtakes that make their Muppets like Burt and Ernie and Grover and, of course, Kermit, so beloved by kids that even cynical adults like myself would revert childhood just thinking about them. Then on top of that there’s the wonderful music and songs of Christopher Cerf and Joe Raposo and others, songs that would permeate the mainstream populace and be remembered for decades.

The movie is just a tribute to the joy of childhood and learning to love and sing and dance and just have fun and not worry about the world. I’m not sure if kids these days have anything like that.

It also gets quite sad, and I’m not embarrassed to say that in the sequence that covers the death of Mr. Hooper, I was outright bawling, and a few minutes later, when Jim Henson dies in 1990, I completely lost it. That’s how much this show meant to me and to so many people over the decades, and Brava to Ms. Agrilo for creating just the perfect document to everything that Sesame Street brought to so many people’s lives. This is easily the best documentary this year, and woe be to any Academy that doesn’t remember it at year’s end.

The other fantastic doc out this week, though I actually got to see it last year, is Lisa Rovner’s SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS (Metrograph Pictures), which will play at the Metrograph, both on demand and part of its Digital Live Screenings (available to join for just $5 a month!). This is an endlessly fascinating doc that looks at the women of electronic music and the early days of synthesizers and synthesis and some of the female pioneers. It’s narrated by Laurie Anderson, which couldn’t be the more perfect combination.

The movie covers the likes of Suzanne Cianni; Forbidden Planet composers Louis and Bebe Barron, who created the first all-electronic score for that movie; the amazing Wendy Carlos, who electronically scored one of my favorite movies of all time, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange; Delia Derbyshire, who was also the subject of Caroline Catz’s short, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes, which tragically, I missed when it premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March. Derbyshire was also famous for creating the iconic theme to “Doctor Who” while working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the '60s. Others who appear in the movie, either via archival footage or more recent interviews are Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel, who I was less familiar with.

The point is that as someone who was a fantastic for electronic music and synthesizers from a very early age and for someone who feels he’s very familiar with all angles of music, I learned a lot from watching Rovner’s film, and I enjoyed it just as much a second time, because the footage assembled proves what amazing work these women were doing and rarely if ever getting the credit for what they brought to electronic music, something that still resonates with the kids today who love things like EDM.

An endlessly fascinating film with so much great music and footage, Sisters with Transistors can be watched exclusively through the Metrograph’s Live Screening series, so don’t miss it!

Hitting Shudder this week is Chris Baugh’s BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (Shudder), which I didn’t get a chance to watch before writing this week’s column, but Shudder in general has been knocking it out of the park with the amazing horror movies it’s been releasing on a weekly basis. This one involves a quarelling father and son on a road who must survive the night when they awaken an ancient Irish vampire.

Also hitting theaters and streamers and digital this week:

THE MARIJUANA CONSPIRACY (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

MY WONDERFUL WANDA (Zeitgeist Films)

WET SEASON (Strand Releasing)

CRESTONE (Utopia)

VANQUISH (Lionsgate)

BLOODTHIRSTY (Brainstorm)

SASQUATCH (Hulu)

SHADOW AND BONE (Netflix)

And that wraps up this week. Next week? No idea… I know there’s stuff coming out but I probably won’t think about it until after THE OSCARS!!!! On Sunday.

#movies #mortalkombat #demonslayer #weekendwarrior #reviews #sisters with transistors #togethertogether #mitchellsvsmachines #streaming

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elixir448 · 4 years

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Good Girls 3x06 Thoughts (Will I ever get these up after the episode? Nope)

Good Girls 3x04 and 3x05 Thoughts Here

So lemme tell you.This post was basically finished and then I accidentally deleted it and have spent the last few hours typing it all out again. I’m just...yeah.

Dean and Au Jus

I know that a lot of people feel that Dean talking about cancer and chemotherapy costs would have been the perfect moment for Beth to scathingly bring up his lie about having cancer. While I acknowledge that it could have worked and all of us have been wanting to see this since he blurted out that he had cancer in season 1, there are a few reasons why I wouldn’t have wanted the issue raised in this scene:

1. I think it would have trivialised the depth of such a betrayal.

2. This scene was about Beth’s reaction to Lucy’s death and having to dig up her body, clean her face with baby wipes and then take a photo of it in order to unlock her phone and convince her kind-hearted boyfriend, who she loved, that she is still alive and wants nothing to do with him. This has nothing to do with Dean or his lies and it has everything to do with Lucy and the weight of her death on Beth’s shoulders. Why should it be about Dean? Despite the fact that he is in the scene, it actually has nothing to do with him.

3. I do wonder if the cancer lie will ever be addressed, mainly because I think Beth felt so guilty over Dean being shot by Rio that she essentially let it slide. Even in 2x05, when she finds out that Dean had multiple affairs rather than just one, she pointedly does not raise it. Perhaps it’s because she only found out about it in the lead up to her confrontation with Rio and Dean in 1x10, so bringing it up would essentially force her to think about Dean being shot before she even had a chance to confront him about it personally. I do think that Beth and Dean are going to go their separate ways this season, romantically I mean. There was some unconfirmed information floating about that the show was looking to cast an actor as young Dean and I think, if that’s true, any flashbacks probably would have been as a prelude to these two ending their romantic relationship for good. If it is true, I’m even more annoyed that the last few episodes couldn’t be filmed. Anyway, the way I see it, when Beth and Dean’s romantic relationship ends as a storyline, I think it will be a decision borne of weariness rather than resentment.

Also, I just need to say that I kind of love that Dean is getting so many scenes with Au Jus and kind of love seeing him with the bird. He seems like such a proud father. I’m more invested in this storyline than I am in the four star hot tubs storyline and Gayle tbh. For now anyway.

The Hills

I’m really starting to understand what Manny meant when he said that he was most interested in what the writers are doing with Stan in this season.

As soon as Stan told Ruby that he might be able to become a cop again, I knew that he wouldn’t return. At least not immediately. There are probably two main reasons that will stop Stan from returning to the police force:

1. Disillusionment with law enforcement. In season 2, we saw Stan being confronted by a federal agent (Turner) who was threatening and absolutely willing to use underhanded tactics, such as false testimonies, to get Stan to do what he wanted.

2. Stan views himself as morally compromised and unfit to protect and serve. He knows that he’ll abuse his position and help Ruby if she needs it again.

Beth actually says to Ruby in this episode that Stan can’t be a cop again. Even though he obviously doesn’t know about this, I can really see the entire situation, and everything that has happened since they robbed Fine and Frugal, lead to a pretty tense conversation between Beth and Stan in the next episode:

Lemme tell you, I gasped when I saw this promo image for 3x07, especially given the fact that Reno has said that we’ll get to see a little of Beth and Stan interacting in this season. It’s actually one of my hiatus wishes and I feel like we’re all anticipating their scenes together. I mean, Beth and Ruby have been best friends since they were teens. Stan and Beth have probably known each other for ages and we saw some tension in the last season, stemming from Ruby’s betrayal of Beth to save Stan. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think the last time we saw these two interact was in season 1, so it’s about time we see them talk face to face.

Of course, it’s been a few episodes since we saw Stan as a security guard in the strip club, so I’m really excited to see what happens there, the introduction of Onyx and more scenes with Krystal. I think Onyx may be introduced in the upcoming episode?

It was also so good to see more of Harry again. Danny Boyd Jr is such a talented and cute little actor. Like, he’s so small!

I LOVED the scene where Ruby points out the reasons why Stan is a cop (protect and serve) at his core. He doesn’t want to be involved with their shady stuff but he always gets dragged in. I would give anything to see a scene where Stan defends Ruby so staunchly to someone because I have no doubt that he would and I need it. Grabby hands.

Mick

Give the guy a hot tub!!!!!!!

I’m telling you. I screamed when Beth blurted out “I have herpes!” Oh my god. I died. Yeah, your husband won’t be happy about it. Nor will your crime husband.

I’m also just going to reiterate that I don’t view any of what Mick’s doing as a betrayal of Rio. What Beth was trying to do in this episode was in an attempt to get the cops off their collective backs and, if he gets a free hot tub out of it, good for him.

I guess we’ll have to see where it all goes but I’m not convinced that Mick is going to betray Rio in some profound way. Hell, I’m not even convinved that Rio doesn’t know about all this.

Beth’s character progression

God, Beth did so much in this episode. She really got down in the dirt herself and dug the dirt away from the Lucy’s body, asked for some wet wipes to clean her face, while trying her best not to be sick, and then took a picture of Lucy’s face. Even thought she has gotten her hands dirty, with regards to her role in the crime world, this is the first scene where she physically gets her hand dirty when she’s not gardening.

@captainallthingspurpleme wrote a great short post summarising the girls’ actions in this scene and absolutely nailed it! I don’t want to reiterate because I think it’s worded a thousand times better than I could articulate it.

I think Beth’s breakdown in this episode was so earned. We so rarely see her emotionally lose it, especially not in front of other people. The fact that she’s breaking down in front of Dean of all people, from whom she has been repeatedly proven to be emotionally and intimately removed from, shows how torn up she is over everything that has happened.

Despite this, she somehow manages to process it and file it away and is back to business in her next scene with the girls, where she texts Max, takes charge and tells him to come over in a moment of decisiveness and then deals with him. In the Good Girls 3x02 thoughts post I wrote, I talked a little bit about how ruthlessly pragmatic Beth can be, her ability to process horrible things and compartmentalise and how we see this happen with everyone in her life except for Rio. We’ve seen it after she processed that Dean had cheated on her, when she processed that fact that Mary Pat was extorting them and accepting how similar they were, when she found out about Dean faking cancer and when she processes Turner’s death. She always gets back to business. I think we’ve seen it again in this episode, with regards to Lucy’s death. While I don’t think she’s dealt Lucy’s death mentally, not even a little bit, I do think she has compartmentalised it which is just so Beth, as I point it in that previous post, but it’s underscored as being even more chilling in this episode, particularly with the last shot where she appears to blend into the pitch black behind her:

I’m sure everyone has read it already but @foxmagpie wrote a fab post about the lighting of Beth and Rio throughout the episode and how it relates to Beth’s character development so, instead of reiterating her analysis, I’ll just leave a link to it here.

Beth and Rio

I’ve seen that people are displeased with the screentime that Rio has had, which is a totally valid opinion. I’m personally really happy with what’s been happening with his screentime. @pynkhues wrote an amazing post during hiatus about why she thought Rio would become a POV character and have more scenes in season 3. She hit the nail on the head! I think the writers have really delivered on this front because Rio does have his own POV now, we’ve seen him interact with his family, we’ve seen him operate outwith the girls, his boys have returned and we’ve had a glimpse into how many people he seems to ‘employ’ and, if Manny is to be believed, we are also going to find out more about the people to whome Rio answers / owes debts to. I’ve been wondering who these people are since he mentioned it. Are they larger scale crime bosses or are they corrupt big wigs in political or federal circles? Does he owe them a debt of money, potentially due to his absence while he was under Turner’s thumb, or have people in the crime world put two and two together and realised who was feeding names to the FBI? I don’t imagine that giving such information to law enforcement goes over well amongst criminals.

I’m going to start by discussing the first scene between these two, which is really weighted. It reminded me so much of 2x07, where Beth and Rio’s feelings, both generally and for each other, bubbled to the surface in a rare moment of emotional honesty.

This scene starts with Rio’s car drawing up and Mick approaching Beth. It’s hilarious to me that Rio decided to wait in the car instead of dealing with her drama (petty AF) but also really emphasises the fact that Rio’s doing his best not to give Beth an inch. He’s trying to maintain the faux gulf that has developed between them. He’s also failing because, let’s be honest, Rio didn’t have to come at all; he could have sent Mick or one of his guys just like he did in the last episode but he didn’t and there are potentially a few reasons for this:

1. It’s possible that Rio anticipated that there might be problems and that he would have to step in to handle it because...well, Beth is his problem to deal with. His rotten egg. Not Mick’s.

2. He definitely knew that Beth would be feeling the weight of Lucy’s death on her shoulders, which I’ll discuss later in this section.

3. Maybe he just wanted to see her, even if he didn’t want to / couldn’t justify speaking with her. There’s something so tragic about the fact that, even if the drop had gone smoothly, Rio would have sat in his car and just taken her in because he can’t help himself.

Also, side note here, but I honestly love that Rio was watching from his car as Beth mouthed off to Mick. It’s so funny!

It was only upon rewatching the episode that I realised it’s actually raining in this scene. When Rio approaches Beth to sit down, at the picnic bench and under the tree, they are both protected from the rain and it kind of makes it seem as though they exist in their own personal bubble, even though Mick is stanidng less than a few feet away from them. Rio clearly brought Mick in an attempt to exert a level of control over his interaction with Beth and also to non-verbally remind her, and himself, that this is just business.

I’d also like to take a minute to discuss the significance of the setting, which is a picnic bench that is not Beth’s backyard but in a separate, meaningless location.

This is the last time Beth and Rio were at a picnic bench:

Compared to this:

God, these two messes are such a mess.

The difference between the two scenes is so stark, including the obvious differences in lighting and their comfort levels with one another. Not to mention the fact that in the image from 2x08, Rio sits on the tabletop in a higher position (which makes sense because Rio retained much of the power throughout season 2, even after Beth took the pills and strong-armed him into a 50/50 deal) but they look at each other directly, unafraid, comfortable and happy. In this scene, Beth and Rio sit on more equal footing but look away from one another in opposite directions, sobered, worn and quiet.

It really highlights the fact that, in season 2, the distance between these two was being abolished but now they’re back to trying to hold one another at arm’s length. It’s clear that they’ve been through too much at each other’s hands.

When Rio sits down, there is a long, weighted silence. Rio adjusts himself on the bench and stares at his lap and waits. This is so important. When Beth eventually breaks the silence by saying (about Lucy) “She was a good person” and sniffling quietly, Rio seems completely unsurprised. He knew she was going to bring up Lucy and her death. He knew and he still let her take the lead. He repeatedly says in this scene that it’s just business and yet his actons suggest otherwise. Why sit next to her, why let her bring up Lucy when you knew she was going to? And perhaps more importantly, why not immediately discuss business? He responds by saying “she seemed like a really sweet girl”. Even though he views ordering Mick to shoot Lucy as business, he doesn’t invalidate how Beth feels about it. In fact, he’s almost gentle with her. He’s been gentle with her in this season but always as a manipulation tactic, always to make her more fearful. But in this scene, he’s honestly gentle and patient with her.

He knows she’s crying in this scene. Her voice breaks, she sniffles, she wipes at her face and he can’t look at her. I think, despite everything, Rio struggles and doesn’t know what to do when Beth is in pain.

In fact, he doesn’t look at her at all until he says “I got my own debts to pay aight” and then “Oh, you still think you get a say in this huh? Nah, see that ship sailed when you put three slugs in me”. It’s so clear that, in this scene, Rio has to summon enough anger to be able to look at the tear tracks on Beth’s face. This is followed by Rio saying “You, me, we” while still looking at her but then his eyes deviate downwards before he says “It’s just business” because it’s dishonest. It’s such a callback to the scene in Rio’s car in 2x12. This statement also seems pretty out of place in this scene, almost as though Rio’s been thinking too long and hard about it and had to say it in order to convince himself.

Beth seems genuinely hurt (I need to write a separate post all about this) and her eyes flicker over to Mick, absorbing Rio’s non-verbal reminder of their relationship being a business one. She then looks at Rio again and we have a shot of him looking away from her again, rocking his jaw and he almost seems angrier than when he was raising his voice, probably because he knows that he slipped again, despite everything he was saying.

When the sneak peek came out before the episode aired and Rio said, “so who’s the boyfriend?”, I was really confused. I was momentarily transported to fanfic land where Beth meets someone new and Rio is jealous haha. Seriously though, the word sounds so foreign coming out of Rio’s mouth, as the words boyfriend/girlfriend have never been thrown around in conversations between these two. It made me think, and probably made a lot of other people think, about how these two compare to a conventional romantic relationship.

The music is also incredibly weighted in this scene. Loving all the piano they’re using!

Moving on to their final scene in the episode, I love that Beth knows that Rio’s going to be his usual pissy self and want an invoive and then the way he scrutinises it. Omg, it was so cute.

Also excuse me sir but did you just compare your relationship with Beth to that of a boyfriend and a girlfriend? Again, the word boyfriend sounds so foreign and new coming out of Rio’s mouth. When Beth replied by saying, in a very feminine tone might I add, “he got over it”, I just about died. God, these two messes are using another couple’s relationship to address their own relationship. You bloody messes. I’m shaking my head. And the fact that Rio replies “they always do”, I am shaking my head again. Hahaha. Lol. Imagine these two ever being over each other. They really can’t be compared to other romantic relationships because they’re too stupid.

Also, Beth and Rio are dressed so similarly, all black, in their scenes together but particularly in this last scene.

I think that the way they are positioned is, again, so significant and obviously different to their first scene in the episode. In this final scene, Rio is once again positioned above Beth, standing while she is sitting. In the first scene, he sat down next to her, waited for her to speak and listened but he also lost control, even though Mick was there, and seemed to internally berate himself afterwards for it. Now, Mick is still there but Rio is taking extra precautions by avoiding even sitting down and keeping the interaction as short as possible.

They are also finally facing one another and Beth has regained the power and confidence she didn’t seem to have in the first scene, even thought she isn’t delivering the full amount of money. Like I said, I think she has processed and compartmentalised Lucy’s death and that possibly has something to do with it, as well as the fact that she probably feels powerful knowing that she’s deceiving Rio.

By having Beth and Rio face one another in this scene, while wearing such similar clothing, it really depicts them as two sides of the same coin, as almost but not quite mirror images of each other, as counterparts.

#nbc good girls #beth x rio #gg season 3 #annie marks #ruby hill #stan hill #ruby x stan #dean boland #au jus

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creepilywatchingyou · 3 years

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Memorable Things of 2020

- finally started my debt free journey after years of reckless spending. paid off around 8k of credit card debt in the past 7 month despite being unemployed due to COVID

- went to boston with my mom and sam

- moved in with my gf

- got to live with lonnie for a week and took the worlds greatest photo of her struggling to go down the stairs

- witnessed my dog bite lonnie and she looked so shocked. i can replay this memory as if it happened in slow motion

- took cash on a walk and he found $5

- found a $5 bill and 2-3 weeks later, i found another $5 bill. i check the same spots over and over for money.

- found airpods by a mural last year and i check the same spot everytime i’m near it for airpods. sam told me i won’t find another pair in the same spot

- saw jonny pierce on 14th street. followed him for 6 blocks as i tried to convince myself to say hi. ended up having too much anxiety...

- went to eat bahn mi with adiba and my brother passed by. she hugged my brother. i’ve only witnessed my parents hug my brother

- costco is god when it comes to essentials during quarantine

- went to target and found a brand new toaster and under the sink cubby thing inside a shopping cart in the parking lot.

- finally got a full time job and was laid off after 3 days because of COVID-19

- started working 2 jobs in the middle of the year for 7 days a week with 1-2 days off a month. experienced/undergoing the worst work related burnout ever

- earned the most amount of money i’ve ever accumulated in a year

- literally almost drank a bottle of wine/moscato everyday throughout quarantine

- watched tiger king at 3AM during quarantine and filmed this masterpiece video of a tiger eating in the show followed by a close up of my dog eating

- gave up on animal crossing because terraforming is fucking anxiety inducing

- sam found brand new beats audio cable under the couch in a hotel and left it in my bag. i stepped on the cable, developed a blood blister and my foot skin keeps peeling off in globs.

- started a collection of pieces of skin from my feet

- built my first printmaking studio at home

- got back into photography for the first time since the beginning of college

- got funded a grant to pay for my film expenses along with developing equipment

- tried selling as much of my belongings as i own to fully pay for a leica or moped

- bleached my eyebrows and dyed them blue

- burned off my eyelashes on one eye as i attempted to sniff a lit scented candle

- grew out my hair to the longest it’s been since high school but the hair stylist accidentally cut off all the progress

- mainly work remotely and ended up with a mullet

- celebrated my 1 year anniversary with my gf at costco due to quarantine

- got my first and only tattoo of 2020 which is too big to cover up if i ever wanted to

- fell in love with this cat i named “corona” and tried convincing zach to help me bring “corona” home

- adiba and i sent each other random shit throughout quarantine and i now own a danny devito pillow case along with a carl wheezer hat

- got abi a shrek chia pet that was delivered to her house. she thought it was a dildo she ordered and almost died in her room when she opened the package containing a shrek chia pet

- went to a drive range for the first time with jeany (golf is more fun that i thought it would be)

- went to the beach with my hs friends after being apart for over a year. also, i kept anticipating for lynjen to return to the US. currently have a large triangle tan line on my back from a severe sunburn. also, i finally got to talk to everyone and realized that everyone else doesn’t have their shit together too and that’s it absolutely fucking ok despite the fact that for the longest time i really fucking thought i was way behind in life compared to my hs friends. this is probably the best day of my year.

- got into hiking again

- took my dog hiking for the first time and now my dog is my hiking partner

- finally got close to my brother and talk to him daily

- started watching movies regularly and realized i fucking love the matrix

- successfully went a year without vaping

- decided that if i ever have the option to be a pelican, i will keep keep rani in my mouth because it’s the closest i can get to eating him even though i’m allergic to cats

#new years #shit

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Rose the Hat

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Stephen King really seems to have some sort of vendetta against kids, huh? It seems like some of his most vicious and terrifying creations exist solely to abuse, consume, and eviscerate kids, and almost all of those creatures have serious pedophilia undertones to them. Obviously the most well-known example would be Pennywise, and for good reason; a killer shapeshifting alien clown demon that devours kids and lives in the sewer is going to stick in the mind, in no small part thanks to being brought to life onscreen by talented men like Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard. But there is another child predator straight from the pages of King’s work who made her mark on cinema: Rose the Hat.

Rose is a sort of psychic vampire, who consumes the shine from children to preserve her immortality alongside a gang of fellow monsters known as the True Knot. Think Dracula, Pennywise, and Elizabeth Bathory all rolled into one. And if that isn’t a terrifying combo, I’m not sure what is.

Motivation/Goals: Rose’s goal is simple: consume the shine from innocent kids, when their power is strongest and the taste is far better. Unfortunately for the kids, eating the shine out of them is horrendously unpleasant and fatal. And unfortunately for one of our protagonists, the young Abra, she is one of the most powerful children Rose has ever seen. After becoming aware of her existence, Rose sends the True Knot after her and pursues her herself to an absurd degree, even after hitting numerous setbacks, from her hand being mutilated to her followers being massacred. Part of this seems to be the implication that those with the shine are rarer nowadays and they desperately need to eat something like this to stabilize themselves, but at some point it does seem like Rose is going out of her way for the thrill of the hunt, though it is also evident she wants revenge for the death of her followers, because there is every indication her affection for them is genuine.

Performance: I’m really happen I got to see the 2010s Mission Impossible films before I saw this, because it gave me a deep adoration for Rebecca Ferguson. She is an excellent actor, and she manages to give Rose a sort of sub-Pennywise sort of creepiness. She definitely has a child predator vibe to her, especially as seen in the opening when she tricks a little girl to her death; seing a female character written as a child predator is not quite as common as the alternative, so it’s interesting to see it. But that being said, she’s honestly the opposite of Pennywise in a lot of ways – where Pennywise is ugly she is beautiful, where Pennywise is uncanny and creepy she is sweet and inviting, where Pennywise’s affection is faked Rose genuinely seems affable at first. It definitely helps set her apart and make her a great, unique villain in her own right. Plus, gotta love that dapper hat she rocks for most of the film.

Final Fate: Rose shows that she has no idea what she’s actually dealing with as she follows Dan and Abra into the Overlook. Now, the Overlook has been established so far in the film and The Shining as a horrendously evil place, with Doctor Sleep in particular noting how the hotel hungers for the shine as much as Rose does. Now, Rose not only has the shine in her, but has also inhaled the stored-up steam from previous victims before entering in an attempt to give herself the upper hand. Can you guess what happens when Danny finally decides to unleash the imprisoned ghosts of the hotel?

Her death is actually a beautiful little bit of karma. After centuries of picking on defenseless children, Rose is made as helpless as a child at the hands of the ghosts of the Overlook. For bonus karma, the way her death is presented is very similar to how her and the True Knot devoured a terrified little boy earlier in the film. She dies screaming and in agony, a truly fitting death for a monster such as her.

Best Scene: I mentioned briefly in the Psycho Analysis for Jack Torrance that there is a scene near the end where she reenacts the scene where Jack menacingly walks up the stairs towards his wife. This here is probably my favorite scene of hers, as it leads into the disturbing sexual assault-esque attack she unleashes on Dan before he reveals that he has her right where he wants her and unleashes the imprisoned ghosts of the Overlook. It’s a great finale for a villain like her, and Ferguson really does a good job at coming off as menacing as Jack Nicholson in her own way.

Best Quote: Rose has a very simple and sweet quote that I think sums up just what’s so great about her: “Well, hi there.”

It’s not flashy, super impressive, or the most memorable line of all time. It is, however, very affable, friendly, and delivered in an inviting tone of voice all the time, masking her true personality under a persona that has led countless children to a grisly end. Yeah, she’s a Stephen King villain alright.

Final Thoughts & Score: Rose is one hell of a villain for sure. A lot of it comes down to Rebecca Ferguson’s stunning performance, which really helps you endear yourself to Rose; she just exudes a natural charm and charisma throughout the film, really selling you to the idea that Rose is a charming, cunning individual who could convince someone to her cause. You wouldn’t think someone like Snakebite Andi, whose entire deal is acting as a honey trap to punish pedophiles, would then join up with a child murdering psychopath, but Rose is just that outwardly charming that yeah, you know what? I fully buy that this kid fell for it.

Of course, even with all that said, I think Rose only ends up as a 9/10. This is mainly because she really Isn’t a household name or a true icon among Stephen King villains like, say, Pennywise, Annie Wilkes, or Jack Torrance. She’s so close, and maybe her score will change if she ever becomes a well-known icon like those others, which I think could happen considering how good the film was. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

And aside from that, the fact remains Rose is ultimately not the ultimate, final evil of the film that must be confronted. In fact, she pales in comparison to the true villain, a villain whose presence is felt throughout the movie and is alluded to many, many times before it finally appears. I am of course referring to…

Psycho Analysis: The Overlook Hotel

Yes, I am doing a Psycho Analysis on a building.

The Overlook is not a typical villain, of course. It’s not something that can truly be dissected in the same way as other villains, because there is not one single performance here – rather, there are multiple performances here that are all apart of the nefarious machinations of the hotel. But all of them work together to prey on the weak and frightened, and help build up the Overlook as a terrifying force the likes of which cinema rarely sees in more obvious villains, let alone evil, sentient buildings.

Motivation/Goals: Despite the numerous ghosts all doing different things and despite all the supernatural goings-on, the hotel has one very clear goal, even in the much vaguer Kubrick film: the Overlook wants to drive people to madness and take their power for its own. This is explicitly spelled out in Doctor Sleep, where it is made clear that the hotel was preying on Jack’s weakness as well as on Danny himself, wanting to consume him as much as Rose does. To this end, the ghosts all play a part in pushing people over the edge.

Final Fate: Danny decides to finally allow the fate of the book version of the hotel to catch up to it, and cranks up the boiler and burns the hotel down, opting to stay in and sacrifice himself to ensure he doesn’t become overtaken by the hotel again and allow its evil to spread out into the world.

Best Scene: It’s really weird to think of the hotel having a “Scene,” but if we’re referring to the ghosts… The Shining features the iconic scene of the creepy twins in the hallway as well as the lady in Room 237, both scenes that have stamped themselves into the cultural consciousness.

Doctor Sleep has one that may actually be even better, though; in a scene reminiscent of a scene in the first film, Danny sits at the bar and is offered a drink by the bartender. However, here the bartender has taken on the form (or perhaps even is the spirit of) his father, Jack Torrance. This scene really cements Danny’s character arc and shows that, for all of his flaws, he was still able to overcome his addiction and prove once and for all he is a better man than his father.

Oh, and if you just want something big and fanservicey, every ghost appears all at once to kill Rose. It’s pretty awesome, if I’m being honest.

Best Quote: There are a lot of ghosts in the film, and a lot of them have interesting things to say, but only one quote has wormed its way into the cultural consciousness to any great degree, and that’s the twin’s invite to Danny: “Hello, Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever... and ever... and ever.”

Final Thoughts & Score: The Overlook is one of the most famous locations in cinema, and as a villain – no, as a force of malevolence – it is utterly perfect. Of course, things are kept rather vague and mysterious in The Shining to fit with the oppressive, terrifying tone, but even then there are so many little touches such as the bizarre, shifting, and even nonsensical architecture (there are rooms there that could not reasonably exist at all) that add to the unnerving atmosphere that when the sequel outright states plainly that yes, the hotel is a malevolent entity with a will of its own, it’s not even the least bit surprising.

The ghosts go the extra mile to making the hotel feel as evil as it is. The woman in 237, Lloyd, the twins… all of them add their own creepy flair to the proceedings. What’s even better is that even in Doctor Sleep it is never entirely clear if the hotel is just empowering the evil spirits or if it is outright creating them based off of the horrendous tragedies that occur there. It’s also interesting how it only ever seems to target people when there’s only a few there, functioning as normal hotel when it’s fully operational. The thing is almost an SCP, with the mysterious and sinister ways that it operates.

Obviously, there’s no way I could give this place anything less than full marks. 10/10 is the easy score for a villainous building the likes of which cinema has never really been able to top. Can you name a single evil building as memorable as this one? I suppose there’s the titular building from Monster House, but as good as that film as, can you say with a straight face that that house comes close to the sheer unchecked malevolence exuded by the Overlook? Rose really didn’t comprehend at all that this hotel is not something to be trifled with.

#Psycho Analysis #The Shining #Doctor Sleep #Rose the Hat #Rebecca Ferguson #The Overlook Hotel #Stephen King

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five-rivers · 4 years

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Lethean

@ghostpetrol Hello! This is your Winter Truce gift! :)

This is mainly from your ghost king prompt, with a little bit of Skulker and friendly banter thrown in for seasoning. This wound up being much, much longer than I first expected it to be, and I hope it's coherent and enjoyable. Happy holidays!

Read on FFN

Lethean

It was a town hall meeting about the ghost problem, so, of course, the ghosts had to show up. They didn't arrive in the usual way, however, which was swooping down on a crowd from the sky, or phasing through the ceiling. Oh, no. That was too pedestrian for these particular ghosts.

No. Instead, they tore the air open in dozens of great, green rents, and surrounded the assembled citizens of Amity Park in a matter of seconds.

But this was Amity Park. Ghosts were expected, not merely ironic.

There were ghost hunters in attendance. Many ghost hunters. The battle was pitched before the ghosts had fully entered the room.

The ghosts wore robes of black, gold, and white. Their skin was green, their claws long and sharp. Each one had a single, huge eye.

There was one exception, a ghost that looked slightly more human, though few present saw him. One ghost wore a purple robe, and held a long staff topped with a clock. A very few who he passed by later claimed he was crying, weeping, whispering, "I'm sorry," as he floated through the crowd.

As for the other ghosts, all anyone heard them say over the screams, ectoblasts, and ghost rays was "The King!" and "For the King!"

(Although there were a few that claimed the phrase wasn't "for the King," but "find the King.")

Then, as quickly as they had arrived, they were gone.

It took hours for Amity Park to realize that five teenagers had disappeared with them. After all, the five of them were always vanishing during ghost fights.

Danny awoke to the sound of running water. It was a pleasant sound, but not one he thought he should be sleeping near.

Nevertheless, he opened his eyes slowly. He felt languid and oddly heavy, though that might have been because he was wet.

Why was he wet?

He had been laying in the middle of a large, airy, atrium-like room, in a kind of depression with a drain on the bottom. The room itself was quite pleasant, and its numerous water features had provided the noise he was hearing.

He found what was in the room to be less so. There were people laying on the ground, scorch marks on the walls, and splatters of red and green on the floor.

He ran to the nearest person, a human girl with long, red hair. He checked her over. She didn't seem to be injured very much, except that she was unconscious.

On checking the other four, he found they were much the same.

They felt awfully familiar, but he couldn't recall where from. Actually, now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember any 'wheres' for them to be from.

This probably wasn't a good sign.

He looked around himself, trying to find a clue to who he was, or what he was doing here, other than his name. The only thing that really stood out to him was the complicated spigot set on the ceiling above the depression he had woken up in.

Then he saw the ghost.

His first impulse was to interpose himself in between the ghost and the humans, easily calling spectral power to his hands. But the ghost was crying, and he felt familiar in the same way the humans did.

He felt like family.

Danny let the ectoenergy he had gathered fade to nothing. He drifted hesitantly to the alcove the ghost was huddled in. It was on a balcony wrapping around the room, and Danny didn't see any stairs. He would have to fly up there.

"Hello?" he said, his voice echoing in the atrium. "Are you alright?" He floated up a little farther. "Can you help me? I think my- my friends are hurt, and I- I don't know what to do. Or why I'm here," he added more quietly, "or where I am." Or anything else, really, except his name.

"I'm sorry, Daniel," said the ghost, his voice ragged.

The ghost knew his name! That was a good sign, right? The apology... That was less good.

Danny flew the rest of the way up, and peered over the rail. He gasped. The ghost, who wore purple and definitely had a thing for clocks, was chained to the wall.

No longer cautious, Danny flew to the ghost's side. He tugged experimentally on the chains.

"Do you know if there's anything I can do? Is there a key?" He pulled a bit harder. The chain separated from the wall. "Oh. Huh." Abruptly, all the locks on the chains fell open. "Huh."

The ghost straightened, unfolding from the alcove. Danny flinched back at the sudden motion. The ghost was much taller than he had thought. But then, he suddenly wasn't. He was much smaller, younger, a baby. Then he was old.

Danny wilted back in confusion.

The ghost sighed, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. "My apologies, Daniel. I am Clockwork, the Ancient Master of Time." He returned to the appearance he'd had when Danny had first seen him. "I serve reality, the Infinite Realms, and the King of All Ghosts."

"Okay," said Danny. That sounded somewhat familiar. Not that he actually remember any of it, but he might have heard it before. But... King of All Ghosts? The term gave him a bad feeling.

The ghost put a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Daniel, what do you remember?"

"I- Nothing. I don't- My friends, I think they're hurt. They're unconscious. Can you help? I don't know what to do."

"There is nothing wrong. They are simply taking longer to recover from the purification ceremony than you."

"The what?"

"The purification ceremony," said Clockwork. "It is required for the King and his court to be purified with the waters of the five rivers, the Lethe, Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon and Styx, before the King ascends the throne."

Danny looked around, nervously, as if expecting a king to pop out of the floor.

"Daniel, you are the King."

Danny blinked. Oh. He hadn't expected that.

"Did something go wrong?" asked Danny. "You were chained up, and it looks like there's a fight. And I don't remember anything."

"Not remembering anything is part of the purification. It is to ensure that you are an impartial and fair ruler." Clockwork said the words almost as if they were physically hurting him. "As such, I cannot give you the details of what happened. Suffice it to say, there were some who did not agree with your nomination to the throne."

"Oh," said Danny again. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure you are the King of All Ghosts."

"No. That my friends are alright. They are my friends, right?" It wasn't like he had any evidence to back that up, after all. He could be wrong.

"Yes. They will be awake in just a few minutes, and they are your friends. Your very best friends."

Danny nodded, relieved in more ways than one.

"Shall we go down, and greet them?" asked Clockwork.

"I- Yes," said Danny. "Yes, that's a good idea."

"I don't get it," said the girl who called herself Ellie. She adjusted her ponytail again. She had done so eight times since they had say down. "You're saying he's the King of All Ghosts, but he's definitely human. That doesn't make sense."

Danny frowned. "But I'm not human. Not entirely. I'm half-ghost. Shouldn't I be saying the same thing, anyway? All of you look human."

"None of you are human," said Clockwork. "You are liminal spirits. You may appear human, but you have ghost cores. That is enough for you to be called ghosts."

"Cool!" said the girl who had introduced herself as Sam. "Does that mean we have powers? Dark abilities?"

"Of a sort, yes."

"Nice."

"Hey, Danny," said Tucker, "you don't seem too happy. Are you alright?" His fingers twitched, as if they wanted to touch something that just wasn't there.

"Of course he isn't," said Jazz. "He's just been given a huge responsibility he knows nothing about." Jazz was the first person he had checked on, when he woke up. "So have the rest of us, actually. What does the King's court actually do?"

They had left the atrium, and were sitting outdoors on violet grass under a swirling green sky. A few meters away from them, the ground abruptly ended. Clockwork had told them that they were on one of many floating islands in the Infinite Realms.

"That depends largely on the King," said Clockwork, half-bowing to Danny.

Danny squirmed. "It can't all be up to me. Can it? I mean, why even have a king at all, then? I could just, you know, not do anything."

Clockwork nodded. "You could choose to do nothing. Your mere existence is enough for the Infinite Realms. You inform their shape, their nature, and, to some extent, the nature of their inhabitants. For example, the last King of All Ghosts was a violent man. When he took the thrones, the environment of the realms became more hostile, more dangerous, less hospitable. Many larger islands fractured. Wars became more frequent. People as a whole became more aggressive. But there are other traditional roles, that you may take up, or not, if you so desire."

Wow. That made Danny feel even more apprehensive, if anything. He turned to the last member of the group. "What do you think, Valerie?"

Valerie shrugged, crossing her arms. "I think this whole thing is ridiculous, and I'm going to wake up in bed any minute now. I mean, ghosts, really? And you're in charge of all of them? No offense."

"No, that's fair," said Danny. He didn't feel kingly, that was for sure.

"Perhaps," said Clockwork, "I can bring you to your residence."

Danny looked back at the large building they had come from. "So... We don't live here?"

"No. This building is only used for the purification ritual."

"Wait," said Tucker, "how are we going to get there? Do you have a plane, or something?"

Danny turned to look at him. "You don't remember that we can fly? I mean, you've seen me and Clockwork flying."

"I must've gotten a higher dose of purification, or whatever," said Tucker. "I don't remember that at all. I thought that was a you thing. What about you guys?" he asked, turning to the others.

Ellie levitated up from the grass in response. Valerie clicked her heels together, and what looked like a high-tech surfboard popped out from the soles of her feet. The surfboard (hoverboard?) began to float, with Valerie on top.

Sam and Jazz, meanwhile, looked on with confusion. Then Sam snorted, and shook her head.

"Okay, Tucker, pure of heart, let's see if we can't figure this out."

The Observants arrived at the black castle only a few days after Danny and his friends had settled in. Clockwork ushered Danny to the cavernous throne room, and his friends gathered close around him, ready to fight, if need be. They had seen the Observants enter the castle from an upper window, and they had disliked the one-eyed ghosts on sight. None of them had yet determined why, and Clockwork wouldn't say anything.

Danny especially didn't like how Clockwork seemed to be almost afraid of the Observants. He hoped the little practice they had done with their abilities and powers would be enough, if things got violent.

He settled into the overlarge throne, very aware that he was wearing a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. Valerie, with her armor-summoning abilities, was really the only one dressed for a confrontation.

"Open," he commanded the doors on the far side of the room. They obeyed, swinging inward.

The Observants filed in. Danny pulled his legs up onto the throne. He probably shouldn't have, he knew it made him look younger and less confident. Too late. Putting them down might make him look indecisive, on top of all that.

The Observants stopped before the steps leading up to the throne. One of them raised up an elaborate chest, and eased it open.

"We have brought you your crown, your majesty."

So they had. The Crown of Fire flickered softly in the confines of the chest.

A second Observant raised a smaller box. "We have brought your ring, your majesty."

The Ring of Rage laid, quiescent, on the crushed black velvet lining of the box, the carved skull on its front glaring up at Danny.

Danny pushed up, out of the throne, and hovered a few inches over the ground. He flew down the steps to the Observants, and examined the Crown for several minutes. The Observants seemed to be holding their breaths, waiting for something.

Of course, they were ghosts. They didn't have to breathe. Even Danny didn't have to breathe, when he was in ghost form.

He reached down and picked up the Crown. The fires it was wreathed in immediately changed from a sickly, rotten green to a pale, icy blue-white. The Crown itself expanded and thinned. Danny tilted his head. He hadn't expected that. He lifted the Crown up over his head, where it stayed, floating.

The Observant closed the chest and quickly withdrew. Danny turned his attention to the ring bearer. It occurred to him, then, that they were afraid of him.

Why?

He'd ask Clockwork, but Clockwork probably wouldn't say.

He picked up the ring. It turned a dark, silvery gray, and the skull disappeared. Odd. He put it on the middle finger of his right hand. It fit perfectly. That Observant pulled back as well, disappearing among the others.

"Your majesty," said a third Observant. "It is time for you take up your responsibilities as King of All Ghosts."

Danny retreated in confusion. The Observants wanted a lot of things, most of which didn't really make sense to Danny. Valerie pushed the door firmly closed behind them.

"Alright," said Tucker, pointing at Danny. "If this is going to happen a lot, we need to get you some better threads. Like, something cool."

Danny looked down at his pajamas. "Yeah, probably."

"Also, we should probably look into the laws and precedents of the Infinite Realms, if we're going to be called on for advice."

"And by we, we mean you, mostly," said Sam. "Since you're the King. We'll help you, though." She elbowed Danny, lightly. "As much as we can."

"We can run interference, if nothing else," said Ellie, leaning into Valerie's arm.

"Thanks," said Danny, smiling slightly.

On the inside, he was freaking out. He had felt directionless ever since he had woken up, and that feeling was worse than ever. He didn't know what he was doing, or what he should be doing.

It was awful.

"Hey," said Sam. "Look at me, Danny."

"What?"

"It's going to be fine. Don't worry. According to Clockwork, we don't technically have to do any of this."

"Right," said Danny. It wasn't as much of a relief as it should have been. He felt bad. All his friends were trying so hard to help him, and he was basically useless, no help at all.

There was a knock at the door. "Your majesty, you can't just ignore your responsibilities. We will help you, advise you!"

Clockwork sighed, heavily. "You do not have to do anything, Daniel, least of all whatever they want." His words dripped with venom.

The banging continued. "Clockwork! Open this door!"

Clockwork jerked towards the door.

"Stop!" said Danny.

Clockwork stopped, and seemed to sag in relief.

"Can they make you do things?" asked Danny. "Were they the ones who chained you up before?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Why? Because they told you not to say anything?" asked Danny, suspicious.

Clockwork was silent. He wouldn't look at Danny.

Danny bit his lip, incensed on Clockwork's behalf. He threw open the door. The Observants weren't going to take advantage of him, and they certainly weren't going to take advantage of any of his friends.

He threw open the door.

"Your majesty," started the Observants.

"No," said Danny. "Whatever you're doing to Clockwork, you're going to stop. You can't order him around anymore."

"Your majesty," said what he was taking as the head Observant, "I don't know what he's been telling you-"

"Nothing. Which is the problem," said Danny. "Did you tell him not to? Were you the ones who attacked the purification ceremony?"

"No one attacked the purification ceremony!" protested the Observant. "We were running the ceremony."

Alarm bells started to ring in Danny's head. Big, nasty ones.

"You were running the ceremony." Danny looked between the Observants and Clockwork. "The ceremony where we all lost our memories."

"It was necessary," said the Observant. "All the Kings go through it."

"He's lying," said Jazz, suddenly.

"How do you know," asked Valerie.

"I don't know, I just do. How did you know how to use your suit?"

Danny turned a glare to the Observants. "Stay away from me and my friends. Including Clockwork. Don't you dare order him around anymore. Or else."

"Your majesty-"

"Get out."

"But-"

"Get out of our home. I don't want to ever see you ever again. Ever." He slammed the door.

"So, uh, we didn't have to forget our lives?" asked Ellie. "Is that the takeaway here?"

"No, I think the takeaway is our memories," said Tucker.

"That's one way to put it," said Danny. He rubbed his eye, angrily. "Clockwork, is there any way to get our memories back?"

"I can't say," said Clockwork, miserably. "I'm sorry, Daniel."

"That's the first thing you said to me," said Danny.

"It is."

"Because the Observants made you lie?"

"I can't say."

Danny groaned.

The Observants weren't the last petitioners. Surprisingly, most of them wanted to work in the castle. Cooking, cleaning, guarding, tailoring, doing various... castle-things. They wanted to fulfill their Obsessions in service to the King. Which was Danny.

Honestly, he didn't get it. He wasn't nearly cool enough to deserve that. He especially wasn't cool enough to deserve the praise the big white yetis heaped on him. But they were nice.

Danny was finally becoming more relaxed, too. Somehow, having more people around was helping him. He liked seeing what people were doing. He liked seeing them happy, and they seemed to like him helping them, and explaining various things to him.

Which was very good. Because he didn't really know a lot. Hardly anything, actually. He was pretty ignorant, sadly.

Right now, he was with a pair of tailors who were putting him into a suit vest with long tails and short pants. The vest was probably very nice, but Danny didn't know much about suits. All he knew was that it sort of made him feel sort of elven, or fairy-like.

There was a knock on the door, and Jazz stuck her head in.

"Hey," she said, "we have company. I think you'd better come."

"Is it the Observants again?" asked Danny. The one-eyed ghosts hadn't given up. He, Sam, and Tucker were looking for ways to keep them out of the castle.

"No. They're from the Far Frozen."

"Okay," said Danny. "Sorry guys, but I need to go."

"That's fine, your majesty, we are almost finished." The tailor waved her hand, and the stitching finished itself off. "Do you like it?"

Danny looked in the mirror, and smiled at the star patterns in the embroidery. "Yes, it's very nice. Thank you."

"No, thank you. It has been far too long since my work was worn by someone deserving."

Danny blushed. He didn't know if he was deserving.

"Okay. Well, bye," he said, slipping out the door. He turned to Jazz. "Did they say what they wanted?"

"Just that it was important, and you could help. They were worried," she added.

They entered the room where Jazz had left the yetis to wait. They both bowed immediately. Danny still wasn't used to that.

"Jazz said that you needed my help?" he prompted.

"Yes, Great One," said one of the yetis, rising. "I am Snowfall of the Far Frozen, and I have been sent by Chief Frostbite."

Danny nodded. He'd only met Frostbite the one time, briefly, along with a bunch of other leaders, but he liked him. He was big, soft, and friendly.

"The Far Frozen is in danger. A recent battle has displaced one of the Fire Islands, sending it flying towards the Far Frozen. The temperatures are becoming unbearable, and collision is imminent."

"What can I do?" asked Danny. He wanted to help, but he felt that averting a natural disaster on this scale was beyond him. "Do you need help evacuating? New homes?"

Deep-seated worry passed over Snowfall's face before being hidden again. "One of the powers of the King is redirecting the movements of the floating islands."

"Oh!" said Danny, brightening. Maybe he could avert a natural disaster. "How do I do that?"

The two yetis looked at each other. "We were hoping you knew."

"Oh," said Danny, much less energetically. "I guess I'll... go see if Clockwork knows."

Danny stood barefoot on top of a snow drift in the Far Frozen. The Far Frozen was beautiful and peaceful. The snow felt good on his feet.

Less good was the giant, flaming, erupting volcano floating a few miles above the island. He could taste ash on the wind. The tips of the Far Frozen's great glaciers were melting. He could feel the heat on his face

He reached into himself, into his core. Cold flowed out from him, chilling his surrounding. Snowflakes condensed from the air around him, and fell gently to the ground.

He looked over his shoulder at his friends. "Do you think it's getting farther away yet?"

Sam and Tucker were almost unrecognizable under all their layers. Both of them had relatively warm cores. Valerie was wrapped up in her suit, which was impervious to temperature changes. Jazz was dressed warmly, but not like Sam and Tucker. Ellie, meanwhile, had had much the same reaction to the Far Frozen as Danny, which was to say, she loved it.

"It is not," said Clockwork.

"Has it at least stopped getting closer?"

"No."

"Has it... Slowed down?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's progress, right?" He looked back up at the volcano before he got an answer. "What if I went up there, and just, you know, froze it? It'd still hit, but it wouldn't melt anything any more, right?"

"Daniel, you can do this."

"I know, I just don't feel like I can." The sentence came out as a very un-kingly whine. "It's a giant mountain! It's ridiculous."

"Maybe that's the problem," said Jazz. "Not feeling like you can do it."

Danny groaned.

"We all have weird powers," said Sam, teeth chattering. "Tucker has that electricity thing, I have my plants, you have ice, Jazz has mind powers... Why is this so much weirder."

"I don't know!" Danny threw up his hands, and glared at the approaching island. "Why won't you just go away?" he demanded. "You're hurting people! Go somewhere you aren't. This place is huge! You have plenty of room!"

"Ah, there we go," said Clockwork.

"Wait, what, really?" asked Danny, flabbergasted. "That's what worked?" But even as he said it, he felt a sensation of rightness settle in his core. It was moving away. The Far Frozen was safe. He had done a good thing, today.

"Note," said Tucker. "Talking inanimate objects does work, I'm not crazy."

"You are crazy," said Valerie. "You named that PDF-"

"PDA," interjected Tucker.

"-Janet. Who does that?"

The Far Frozen might be a snowbound wasteland, but Frostbite really knew how to throw a party. There was food, music, dancing, lights, everything.

Danny was maybe just a little intimidated by all the cheering they were doing, but, hey, it was still pretty cool.

After a while, though, the yetis calmed down or were distracted, and he was able to slip away and find a quieter side room to hang out with his friends in. He collapsed gratefully onto an icy couch.

"Wow," said Tucker. "That was a party. Like, the best party ever. I don't think I've ever been to a better party."

"I don't think we've been to any parties, except this one," said Danny.

"Huh?"

"We haven't been to any parties. Not since we lost our memories."

Tucker blinked. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I hadn't really thought about that. Maybe we should throw one when we get back to the castle."

Danny sighed, and was surprised to hear a nearly identical one from Ellie.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I just-" Ellie sighed. "I don't want to go back to the castle."

"You want to stay here?" asked Sam, sounding shocked. "But, it's so cold."

"Well, it's really nice here, and it would be good to learn more about our ice powers, but, I mean..." she trailed off, uncertainly.

"What if we traveled around?" asked Danny. "I've been looking at some history things with Clockwork. Human kings used to do that, travel around and see where they were needed. I think we could help more people that way. The castle is kind of hard to get to."

Ellie sat up from where she had been laying. "That would be nice," she said. "I think I'd like that."

"We'd be able to learn more about the Realms, too," said Sam, thoughtfully. "But we should probably put a limit on how long we stay in any one place, except for the castle. So we don't put too much strain on anyone. Either our hosts, or ourselves." She gestured to herself and Tucker. "We don't all like the same things. Obviously."

Danny nodded. "We'll want to stay if we're in the middle of something, though."

"That's reasonable," said Sam. "Just-" She shivered. "Well, you get it. It's cold here. You two Phantoms probably wouldn't feel great about hanging out in a tropical jungle."

"That's true," said Danny. "What do you guys think? Val? Clockwork?"

"Sounds cool to me," said Valerie, shrugging.

"It will open many opportunities for you," said Clockwork. "It will, however, be wise to return to the black castle periodically."

"Okay, cool! I guess we're decided, then. Tomorrow, we'll have to ask if they have any maps here, and figure out where to go!"

"They don't look dangerous," said Valerie.

"They're really pretty," said Jazz. She sighed. "It's so cool that they're real."

"Are you kidding?" said Danny. "Do you see those horns? Those hooves? Feel that ectosignature? They're dangerous." He narrowed his eyes and peered over the large rock he was hiding behind. "And evil. Very evil. The most evil."

Grazing in the center of the floating island was a herd of unicorns. They were black and hot pink, with long, grey horns, and sharp teeth and hooves. Their manes were made of ghostly flame. On the other side of the island stood the flaming ruins of a once-thriving community.

Removing them was the latest task Danny and his friends had taken on. They'd been traveling and helping people for some time. Months, maybe. But it was hard to tell exactly, because the Infinite Realms didn't have strictly defined days and nights. Some of the individual Realms did, but not all of them together.

"Come on, Danny. They're animals. They don't have the awareness to be evil," said Sam. "They're just acting according to their nature."

"Either way, we still have to chase them off."

"No, no, that's not going to work," said Sam. "They'll either come back, or bother someone else. What we need to do is relocate them."

"What's the difference?" asked Ellie.

Clockwork wasn't with them today. As Master of Time, he did have other responsibilities. He had said something about a complex paradox he needed to untangle before he left.

"The difference is that one is humane, and actually fixes things, and the other just makes the problem repeat later."

"No, I mean, practically. What would we have to do differently?" asked Ellie.

"We'd need to find a place to relocate them to, first," said Sam. "Then we'd have to catch them, somehow, or guide them away."

"Oh yeah! Clockwork gave me a thing like that! Look." He showed them the shiny green and white cylinder.

"I've got something that looks like that, but square," said Valerie, "and redder. Actually, it doesn't look like that at all. Why did I think it did? Anyway, it catches ghosts. Yeah. I'm pretty sure, anyway. I haven't tested it."

"Okay. So, we can't just leave them here while we search for a place to put them. Sorry, Sam. They're just too dangerous. They might attack somewhere else. Once they're all caught, then we can find somewhere to relocate them to."

Sam sighed, but nodded. "You're right. So how should we approach this? Maybe Val and I could go around from behind, and we can kind of pinch them together?"

That was a good idea. "Yeah, I was sort of thinking-"

"Hey, guys?" said Tucker. "They're looking at us."

The unicorns were indeed looking at them, Danny saw. The closest stamped its hoof, and lowered its horn.

Danny swallowed. "Oh, jeez."

A few hours later, Danny and the others laid, out of breath and exhausted, on another, much smaller floating island.

"Okay," said Danny, weakly raising an arm. "That didn't go to plan."

"There was a plan?" asked an unfamiliar voice. "You could have fooled me."

Danny snapped upright, his first instinct being to defend his friends. Of course, their first instinct was to defend him, so all their various weapons and glowing fists wound up pointed at the hapless ghost.

The ghost in question was encased in silver armor modeled (very roughly) on human anatomy. He had rivets, a green, fiery mohawk, and sort of stubby legs. He also looked rather intimidated.

"Uh," said Danny, lowering his fists. "Sorry. Who are you?"

"I am Skulker! The Ghost Zone's greatest hunter!" He puffed out his chest.

"Hunter!?" screeched Sam. "You mean you hunt poor innocent animals?"

Skulker looked sideways at Danny. "What can I say that will make her not attack me?"

"Do you hunt animals?" asked Danny.

"It's not like I kill them! Make your girlfriend stop looking at me like that!"

"She's not my girlfriend!" objected Danny, quickly.

"I'm not his girlfriend!"

"You're back at that? Really?" asked Skulker. "I know your memories got erased, but really?"

"You knew us?" asked Jazz, with interest. "Is there anything you can tell us?" They had met several people who had knew them before, but their accounts of what they had been like were... confused. At best.

"You were the greatest prey I've ever had the pleasure of hunting!" said Skulker. "And also one of the best hunters. Except for me, of course. But that," he pointed back towards where the unicorn horn still was, "that was pathetic. What happened?"

"Well," drawled Danny, "it might have something to do with that whole memory erasing thing you were talking about. By the way, are you, like, really a tiny little ghost inside a robot suit?"

"Oh my gosh!" said Tucker, floating higher. "You're a mecha? That's so cool! How do you work?"

"I am cool," said Skulker, "and- Wait. How did you know that? How did you know about that?"

"I don't know. Your ectosignature is just kind of weird. But, back to you, you're a hunter? Have you hunted, you know, unicorns before?"

"They're actually why I'm here," said Skulker, proudly. "But then I saw what you were doing, and it was just so hilarious that I couldn't stop laughing long enough to properly pilot my suit."

"Cool. But have you ever caught one before?"

"No. Actually, you once saved me from being brutally dismembered by one. But, today, that will change! Today, I capture a unicorn for my collection!"

Danny tilted his head. At this point, no one was threatening Skulker anymore.

"By collection," said Sam, slowly, "what do you mean, exactly?"

"My collection," repeated Skulker, "on my island. I let all my prizes roam free, of course, so I can have the pleasure of hunting them again!"

"Okay. Yeah. That's good enough for the demon horses," said Sam. "We're teaming up and giving them to you."

"I- What? No, that's a terrible idea," said Skulker.

"That's a great idea!" said Danny.

"No."

"Yes!"

"I'm the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter! I don't team up with anyone."

"But shouldn't the Ghost Zone's greatest hunter be able to teach people how to be great hunters?" asked Jazz.

"Ohhhhhhh," groaned Skulker.

Danny smiled.

"Ssooooo," said Danny, sliding in next to Tucker. "You were a pharaoh before. I wonder how that works, what with your tech Obsession?"

"Well," said Tucker, vaguely waving his hands at the tall, shiny pyramids in front of them. "I don't think tech is my only Obsession. Protection isn't your only Obsession. But, I probably fell in here through a portal from Egypt. That happens."

"Speaking of which, do we even know what time period it is out in the human world?" asked Danny. "I've seen people from all over. Like, the farthest back person I've seen is from, like, prehistory, and the farthest along had this raygun thing going on for them. But maybe they were just Obsessed with science fiction."

"Who knows," said Tucker, shrugging. "Hey, I think- I think I need to stay here for a bit longer. I just want to, I don't know. Find out who I am."

"That's cool, dude. Take all the time you need."

"... and he just... gave you a sword?"

"Yep," said Jazz, looking down at the object. "I think he was an Ancient, like Clockwork. Fright Knight."

"So that's... That's Soulshredder," said Danny, pointing. "The sword that will send you to a dimension that contains your worst fears if you get cut by it."

"Yeah," said Jazz.

Danny rubbed his eyes, and sat down on an overstuffed chair. They were staying in a rather nice house in Logres-Prydain, which was a rather nice, large archipelago ruled by certain deceased and imaginary British monarchs.

They hadn't done anything there, except for playing tourist, Logres-Prydain was a very stable realm, apart from its fits of melodrama. Not at all like Albion, the other realm ruled by former British leaders, which had far more than the occasional colonial impulse. Still, it had been a nice, relaxing vacation.

Until now.

"Did he say why?"

Jazz shrugged. "He said that it belonged to the first defender of the King, and he wasn't doing that anymore."

"Oh. Well. I guess that makes sense. You're going to have to get sword lessons, though. I told you that you should have joined the rest of us when Frostbite gave us lessons."

"But the library."

"Yeah," said Danny, remembering. "The library. It was pretty cool." He paused. "Do you think Fright Knight would give you lessons, or should we get, like, the Green Knight, or something?"

"Uh. Since he kind of left right after giving this to me, I'd say the second option."

"Good call."

They stood over the hulking, but defeated form of Undergrowth, former Ancient of Plant Life.

Danny had never seen Sam look so awesome.

"How did you take control of his plants?" he asked, tapping one of Undergrowth's vines with his foot and freezing it. Maybe Undergrowth was tied up by Sam's plants, but Danny didn't want him to root himself again.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. I think I might have done it before? It felt sort of familiar. You know how it is."

"Yep," agreed Danny. He sighed. "So, what do we do with him?"

"Isn't he wanted?" asked Valerie. "I think I saw a poster or two, back in Logres."

"Mhm. By the Observants, though," said Danny.

"Okay," said Ellie. "So what? Make them work for their keep, or whatever."

"Not a bad idea," said Danny. "I kinda feel like we might regret it eventually, but I don't really care. What do you say, we wear Undergrowth down until he fits in the thermos, take him to the Observants, and then go back around, pick everyone up, and go home?"

Sam stretched. "Sounds good to me. This whole thing," she waved at the ghostly jungle around her, "has given me some ideas about how to Observant-proof the castle."

"This is actually really cool," said Sam. "I thought it would be like a zoo, with all the animals in cages, but it isn't."

"I told you it wasn't," said Skulker, sulkily.

They had stopped by Skulker's island while circling back to Logres-Prydain to pick up Jazz. It wasn't quite on the way, but Sam and Valerie had wanted to see it. Sam because she was still suspicious as to Skulker's treatment of animals, and Valerie because she wanted to learn more about hunting. She really liked hunting. Almost to a disturbing degree.

Danny hoped she wouldn't wind up after his skin like Skulker apparently had been.

His life had been weird before. He wished he knew more about it, wished one of the ghosts he met would tell him something more than, Oh, hey, I used to fight you a lot, but I want to be best friends now.

He wished he knew why none of the ghosts would say anything. It couldn't all be because of the Observants.

Could it?

"Skulker," said Danny, interrupting. "What were our lives like?"

The ghost went quiet. "Complicated," he said, finally. "More than I ever knew about, even if I did hunt you and observe your behavior meticulously!"

"Wow," drawled Ellie. "That's not creepy at all."

"You lived with your parents, and your sister," continued Skulker.

"Ellie?"

"No, the red-haired one. You went to one of those human schools with your girlfriend and her," he pointed at Valerie, "and that tech-y boy."

"You mean Tucker's not from ancient Egypt?" Oh, boy, he hoped that wasn't going to turn into a problem later on.

"No. Why would you think that?"

"Long story. What about me?" asked Ellie.

"Honestly, I don't know where you came from. You're related to him, somehow, though."

"Oh," said Ellie, clearly disappointed.

"But that's really all I know."

"That's it?" asked Danny. "Do you know what happened to our parents?"

"No. It isn't like we were best friends. Oh, yes, that's right. You and the huntress used to be enemies. Once I pitted you against one another on this very island! Good times."

"Okaaaaaaaaaay," said Danny. "This has been fun and all buuuuuuuuuuuut I think it's time to go." He started floating away, awkwardly.

"Sure, whatever," said Skulker, waving. "Visit soon! I have to introduce you to my girlfriend!"

"Clockwork?" asked Danny. "Are you okay?" Ever since they'd gotten back to the castle, Clockwork had been acting nervous and stressed.

"I'm fine, Daniel," said Clockwork, fidgeting with the hem of his robes. "I am simply... anticipating."

"Anticipating what?"

"Certain... Events. That will happen."

"Like, bad events, or good events?"

"Events," repeated Clockwork.

"Give me a hint?" asked Danny, half-playfully. He leaned back in his chair, and played with the toes of his bare feet. He actually quite liked the suits with short pants the tailors kept giving him. He was less certain about the pocket watch, anklets and other decorations they were adding lately, but he did like the ticking sound the pocket watch made, so it was all good.

Clockwork shook his head. "No, Daniel. I can't tell you about the future. I apologize for being distracted. Now, where were we?"

"I think you were talking about the Swan Princesses, and the settlement of White Mountain?"

"Indeed." He waved his hand, and an image appeared in the air, like a holographic projection. "Now, if you will turn your attention here..."

"How do you like it?" asked Sam. She and Tucker had been working on a new barrier for the castle for the past two weeks. The result was floating, interlocking, shifting hedges of black roses grown over a framework of shiny tech. It was a bizarre, but oddly appealing combination.

"It's great!" said Danny. "But it isn't going to keep people who need us out, is it? As in, people who need us who aren't the Observants?" He'd asked the question before, but he felt the need for confirmation.

"It'll let people who ask for help in," said Tucker, proudly. "People who say they need help. My stuff will also give me alerts whenever something unusual comes up."

"So will mine," said Sam, quickly. "Not as quickly, but it'll be good as backup, if Tucker isn't available."

"That's really amazing, you guys. I wish I could have helped."

"Pft. It's no problem," said Tucker, waving his hand. "You've been really busy."

"Still," said Danny.

"No, dude. You were stopping a war, weren't you?"

"And averting a natural disaster," said Sam. "The Lethe flooding could have been a real problem."

"Not to mention rescuing all those guys the ghost hunters caught, and figuring out what to do with the ghost hunters," continued Tucker. "What did you do with them, anyway?"

Danny shrugged. "I just kicked them back out into the human world. I hope they don't come back."

"Anyway," said Sam. "There is something you can do with this, if you want to. We left room for your ice, and-" she took out a papery packet. "Tada! Iceflower seeds. Between the two of us, we should be able to make them grow, and then you can have just as much warning when someone is knocking on our door as we do."

"Cool!" said Danny. Then he grinned. "Literally."

Sam and Tucker groaned in stereo. "Seriously?" said Tucker.

Danny shrugged. "The pun was just sitting there. You couldn't expect me not to take it. But, really, Sam. Where did you get these? I thought Frostbite said they were almost extinct."

"Eh, well, I got help from the Far Frozen, and we all asked around. I'm thinking about starting a seed bank, or a botanical garden. You know, to preserve ecological diversity."

"In her copious free time, you know."

"Shut up, Tucker."

This was Jack and Maddie's fifth trip into the Ghost Zone. Every time they got further in. Every time they improved the Specter Speeder. This time was different, though. Last time, they had seen the Ghost King.

It had only been from a distance, and he had looked very different from when he had dragged Amity Park into the Ghost Zone two years ago, but their instruments didn't lie. He was the only ghost who could possibly have that much power. No other came close.

Maddie wished the encounter had lasted longer, that the Ghost King had stayed still long enough for their instruments to analyze his ectosignature and determine what his powers and weaknesses were. If she and Jack were to defeat him, and get their children back, they needed every advantage possible.

At the same time, Maddie knew they had been lucky. If the portal hadn't opened up before the Ghost King attacked them, they could have been killed. They hadn't been prepared to face him, then. Now they were. The Specter Speeder had been fitted with all of their very best weapons. They were ready. Ready to get their children back, or die trying.

The universe seemed to agree with them. They had yet to have a single ghostly encounter. The Ghost Zone was quiet, quiescent. The sky spun slowly around them, islands passing by in the distance.

"According to the ghosts we questioned," Maddie said, "the Ghost King's castle should be this way, and he should be in residence."

Jack nodded grimly. "I wi-"

"Don't say that word. Don't you remember what happened last month?"

"Sorry, Mads."

Maddie bit her lip. "So am I. I didn't mean to snap at you." She sighed. "I'm stressed. What were you saying?"

"It would have better," said Jack, cautiously, "if any of the ghosts had known why the Ghost King woke up again."

"It would have been nice to know what had woken him up in the first place," said Maddie. "But it doesn't matter. We're not trying to put him to sleep." A flash of odd color caught Maddie's eye, and she leaned forward, looking up through the windshield, to try to see what it was and where it had gone. "Did you see-?"

A bolt of fuchsia energy hit the front of the Speeder and splashed against the shields. Alarms sounded in the cabin as the Speeder was forced down. Maddie cursed, and began activating weapons. Why hadn't the ghost detector gone off?

Oh. Now it activated.

"Big ectosignature, Mads!" shouted Jack over the noise.

"The King?" asked Maddie, as green, then pink, hit the shields.

"Not quite that big, but- What's that?" The Speeder shook under another barrage.

Maddie yanked on the controls. "Two colors! There must be two of them!"

"The engines!"

"What?"

A temperature warning suddenly went off. Were they overheating? No, the engine temperature had dropped. An ice user? Like Phantom had been?

Maddie revved the engine, but it was too late. It had gotten too cold, and they were dead in the water.

Yet another fruitless trip. Maddie hit the steering wheel. They could probably fight their way out of this, with all their weaponry, and rig up a way back, but they'd have to go back to the drawing board as far as their rescue attempt went.

It was probably a good thing. If they were brought so low by these ghosts, they would have been destroyed by the Ghost King. But, still, it was so frustrating.

"Maddie, I can't get a lock!"

Maddie snapped back to the present, and frantically started pressing buttons.

Then the barrage stopped, suddenly and completely.

"Still only one ectosignature?"

"No, I have two, but one is so small, I can't-"

A red figure on a board swooped into view in front of the Specter Speeder. Maddie froze completely. That was Valerie Gray.

Yes, she was wearing that red ghost hunting armor, but Phantom had revealed her, back when the Ghost King had dragged Amity Park into the Ghost Zone. Maddie wasn't likely to forget that, or anything that had happened then.

"Ghost hunters!" shouted Valerie Gray, loudly enough to be heard inside the Speeder. "Disable your weapons, and open the doors of your vehicle."

A ghost girl appeared out of thin air next to Valerie. The board tipped somewhat, and the girl seemed to laugh, gesturing at Valerie with a teasing gesture.

The ghost looked like Phantom, almost like she could be his sister. His twin, even. That would be incredibly rare, among ghosts. But then, Phantom had always been an oddity, right up until he had disappeared entirely.

Maddie wasn't surprised he was involved in this, however tangentially.

She fumbled for the PA microphone. "Valerie Gray?"

The conversation outside stopped, as both girls turned their attention back to the Speeder. Valerie's mask receded from her face.

"How do you know my name?"

"You don't recognize us?"

"Kind of hard to, considering you're in that big thing. All I know is that you're the ones who've been harassing people and causing problems." Valerie crossed her arms. "Why don't you come out, then we can talk about whether or not we know each other."

Maddie lowered the microphone, and turned to Jack. "It's obviously a trap," she said.

"But she might know where Danny and Jazz are," said Jack, "and even if she doesn't, we have a duty to her, as well. She's a victim, too."

"She might be overshadowed," said Maddie, even as she nodded in agreement.

"She's definitely under some kind of control. Otherwise she'd never work with a ghost. But I think we have to risk it. For Jazz and Danny."

"For Jazz and Danny," agreed Maddie.

She pushed open her door and leaned out. The void of the Ghost Zone yawned dizzily beneath her, the ectoplasmic mists spiraling down forever. She waved at Valerie. "Alright, let's tal-"

The ghost girl was abruptly next to Maddie, and there were four of her.

"Gotcha," she (they?) said, grinning, as they grabbed onto her and Jack.

Maddie's vision blurred, and when it came back into focus, she found herself next to Valerie Gray, supported in the air by two copies of the ghost girl. Jack was similarly imprisoned.

"So," said one of the copies. "What should we do with these guys? Any thoughts, Val?"

Valerie Gray regarded them silently. There were streaks of red in her hair, and flecks of gold in her eyes. An affectation, or a side effect of living in the Ghost Zone for so long?

"You say you know me," said Valerie. "How?"

"You mean," gasped Maddie, trying not to think about the endless drop beneath her feet, "you don't know us?"

"No. I don't. What are you even doing in here? You're human."

"So are you!" said Jack.

Valerie shrugged. "Not entirely. I'm going to ask again, what are you doing in the Infinite Realms?"

"We're looking for our children," said Maddie.

"Oh, we can help with that," said the ghost girl. "When did they die?"

"They didn't," snapped Maddie. "They were kidnapped, by your king!"

Valerie snorted. "I highly doubt that. When was this?"

"Almost a year ago," said Maddie. "The same time you disappeared."

"Uh huh," said Valerie. "Well, it wasn't our king. He hasn't been reigning for that long, yet. I doubt it was the last guy, either. Last time I checked, he was still locked up."

"What were your kids' names?" asked the ghost girl.

"Their names are Daniel and Jasmine," said Maddie.

"Okay, cool. Hey, Val, what do you say we have our resident mind reader take a look at them?"

The floating island the ghost girl had set them down on was tiny. Barely large enough to pace on. If the ghost girl or Valerie had been on it with them, it would have been far too crowded. As it was, the two girls had chosen to float some distance above the island while one of the ghost girl's duplicates went to go get the 'mind reader.'

Maddie surreptitiously checked her suit's built-in weapons for the fifth time. Maybe it would be better to attack the ghost now, but then the absent duplicate would still be free to gather reinforcements. If the 'mind reader' was the ghost controlling Valerie, defeating it could free her, and get the Fentons an ally.

If not, then- then-

Maddie didn't know. She had come into the Ghost Zone with so many plans, but they had all depended on having the Specter Speeder, which was now a floating dot in the distance. More than that, she was distracted by Valerie's apparent amnesia.

Would Danny and Jazz remember them? Would they be under the control of ghosts as well? How would they get past that? They had expected them to be imprisoned, yes. They had even expected them to be hurt, or controlled. But amnesiac? That hadn't been something they had planned for.

"Here we come," said the ghost girl, above them.

Maddie looked up, and traced her gaze to two approaching dots. They grew larger and larger, until they resolved into humanoid figures. One was the ghost girl. The other...

The other was Jazz.

She had a blue streak in her hair, and her eyes flashed pale yellow-orange when she looked down at Jack and Maddie, but it was definitely Jazz. It was Jazz, despite her anachronistic clothing, despite the long, thin, and wicked sword strapped to her waist.

It was Jazz, and the blank look on her face when she met Maddie's eyes confirmed her worst fears. Jazz didn't remember them at all.

"They're telling the truth," said Jazz.

"They are? Really? You and Danny are their kids?" asked Ellie.

"That's what they think, anyway," said Jazz. She glanced back down at the couple. "They're also hiding enough weapons to equip an army."

"You should have seen their spaceship thing."

"And what Val said to them when they were in their spaceship thing. She sounded like Walker!"

"I did not."

"Did too!"

"Okay, okay," said Jazz. "But what should we do with them? Send them home? Get Danny? What?"

"Well," said Ellie, "what do you want to do?"

Jazz sighed. "I don't know. I'd just as soon not deal with this. I mean, we've all been curious about our pasts, but our responsibility is to the Realms, and they're, well. A menace."

"You don't feel anything for them?" asked Valerie, sounding surprised.

"I do, but..." Jazz shrugged, unable to explain just what she felt. "Anyway, they think we're being mind controlled or something. I don't think we can just get through to them. But if we just send them back to the human world, they'll come back. At least, that's the vibe I'm getting right now."

"It's like with the unicorns," said Ellie. She paused. "Does that mean we have to relocate them?"

"No, I don't think that would work. Or it might work," Jazz corrected herself, "insofar as getting them out of the way, but not in terms of having a satisfying conclusion. I mean, imagine if we left them on an island somewhere. We'd always be wondering and worrying about them, wouldn't we? And they'd always be trying to escape. But... I think you have a point, comparing them to the unicorns."

"Wow, thanks, Jazz. I was beginning to think that everything I said was wrong."

"Oh, come on. I'm just trying to talk myself through this."

"I get it, I get it. Go on. Tell me how I'm right."

"I think we need to give them what they want, at least partially, then they won't feel the need to come back. It might help us get some closure, too, as far as our former lives go."

"Meaning?" prompted Valerie.

"Meaning, we should take them to Danny."

"I'm getting a signal from the barrier," said Tucker. He was decked out in all his Egyptian gear, but also with a whole lot of tech. It left something of an odd impression.

Danny looked up from a pile of correspondence. "Oh, yeah? Is it the Observants?"

"No, it's Jazz, Val, and Ellie with a couple of humans." Tucker drummed on the table. "I'm going to go check it out."

"With the side effect of leaving us with all of this," said Sam. She gestured at the table full of letters.

"Hey, it's Danny's fan mail," said Tucker, pointing finger guns at the two of them. "Catch you later."

A few minutes later, he came back.

"Hey, guys. Problem. Big problem."

Jazz came in right after him. "I don't know if it's a problem, exactly, but Val and Ellie are outside the barrier with our parents."

"Is this what you were talking about?" Danny asked Clockwork. "That event you were talking about earlier."

Clockwork shrugged, misery evident in his motions.

"Is this the Observant's orders, still? I could smack their eyeballs right out of their heads..."

"What are we going to do?" asked Tucker. "Talk to them? Send them away? What?"

"How about we make them go through our maze?"

"Wh- Why would we do that?" asked Danny.

"I don't know. It sounds like fun. Oh! It might make them reveal their weapons. That would be good, right?" Sam shrugged.

"I guess, but I think that might be, you know, unnecessarily cruel," said Danny.

"Yeah, so?"

"So, that's bad."

"Is it?"

Danny shook his head. "Let's go to the throne room, and let them in. It sounds like a lot of their aggression to ghosts is them thinking that the 'Ghost King' is involved with our kidnapping. Which, I mean, yes, clearly I am involved in my own kidnapping, but, you get it."

"It would be good if they stopped attacking people," said Tucker.

Danny groaned. "Yeah. I can't believe I have to worry about my parents randomly attacking people."

"It isn't all that unbelievable. You're pretty violent."

"And you aren't?"

"Hey, I'm not denying it."

The ghost girl, who was apparently named Ellie, held Jack and Maddie as they and Valerie floated over a castle trapped within a ever-shifting framework of barbed-wire-like roses and ice.

It looked like a prison.

Slowly, the spinning layers came to a halt, revealing a path to the castle at their heart.

"Looks like they want to see you," said Ellie, flying down. She set the two humans down on the edge of the island, and then gestured at a huge pair of doors. "Go ahead," she said. "We're right behind you."

Maddie's lips twitched at the threat, but turned away. Let the ghost think Maddie was afraid of her. She and Jack walked forward, past the ghosts guarding the doors, and into a long, broad hallway.

At the end of the hall was a dais. On that dais was a throne. Jazz stood just beyond the last step of the dais, below the throne, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. To the throne's left was Tucker Foley, Danny's best friend. He was dressed like something out of a documentary on Egypt. To the throne's right was Samantha Manson, decked out in poisonously bright flowers and a ragged green dress.

In the throne itself sat Danny, wearing a neat suit and a crown that burned with blue fire. The tips of his bare toes fell just short of reaching the floor in front of the throne.

"Jack and Maddie Fenton," he said, in a clear, carrying voice. "Please come forward."

Maddie looked over her shoulder at Valerie and Ellie. Their expressions suggested that Jack and Maddie had better start walking.

As they approached the throne, Danny pushed himself out of the throne and stood. Other than the odd clothing choice, Danny looked the same as he always had. Unlike the others, odd lights didn't shine from his eyes, and his hair wasn't streaked with strange colors.

"Hi," he said, in a more normal tone of voice. "I'm told you want to talk to me. To us." He smiled faintly. "I'm afraid none of us remember anything from more than, hm, call it eleven months ago, though."

Maddie's brain was still trying to process the situation.

"You really don't remember us?"

"I'm sorry," said Danny. "We don't. You seem somewhat familiar, though, if that helps."

It didn't.

"You're the Ghost King!" exclaimed Jack, suddenly.

"I am," said Danny.

"But," said Maddie, as the throne and the crown suddenly clicked into place for her, "how? You're human!"

"Only half," said Danny. He shrugged, and light rippled across his skin. His hair went white, his eyes green, and his skin darkened.

Phantom stood in his place.

Then, before Maddie could blink, he was Danny again.

"That's apparently enough," continued Danny.

"How..." Maddie couldn't get enough air to ask the question.

"I don't know exactly," said Danny. "But from what I've read, it can happen if a portal opens up on you." He tilted his head. "We would like to hear what we were like, though. Not many people will tell us. Are you alright?"

"Breathe, Mom," said Jazz. "Go ahead, breathe. Everything is going to be fine."

The room they were in now was much smaller. Almost cozy, despite all the death symbols and ghostly trappings. Maddie eyed a scythe hung above the fireplace suspiciously.

Jack had taken a ghost detector out of his suit, and was scanning the children. All of them had ectosignatures, but none of them showed up as so much as overshadowed.

"Why don't you remember anything?" asked Maddie as Jazz tucked a quilt around her.

Danny rolled his eyes, and the flames of his crown flickered higher. "A certain group of ghosts thought it appropriate to revive an archaic purification ritual which used the waters of each of the five great rivers, one of which is the Lethe, for my coronation. They have been punished appropriately." He shifted his weight. "But tell us, what were we like? What were our lives like?"

"Come home," said Maddie, her voice hoarse from all the stories she had told. "Come home, all of you. Whatever this is, we can fix this."

Danny shook his head. "We can't." His voice was rough as well. He had told his share of stories.

"You can. We can hide the changes to your appearance."

"No, we physically can't. We bathed in the waters of the Five Rivers of the Infinite Realms, including those of the River Styx. We're bound here. We can't set foot in the human world."

"You can visit, though," said Jazz. "Whenever you like."

"As long as you don't attack any of my subjects," added Danny.

"We can't leave you here," objected Maddie, "as slaves to ghosts."

"We aren't slaves," said Tucker, annoyance clear in his voice.

"But you don't actually have to leave," said Danny. "You could live here. The same prohibition against attacking people would apply, however."

Jack and Maddie exchanged a glance that conveyed thousands of words. "We would like that," said Maddie, returning her gaze to her son.

Danny smiled, and clapped his hands together. "Excellent! I'll see about having some rooms made up for you. Come on," he said, standing, "let me show you what we've got.

Maddie followed him out of the room, her eyes fixed on his crown. She wasn't giving up. This wasn't over yet.

This wasn't over at all.

#danny phantom #winter truce #wintertruce #wintertruce2019 #christmas truce #christmas truce 2019 #gift #ghostpetrol #phanfic #mywriting #my writing

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wahbegan · 4 years

Text

Desecration (for anon)

All right here it is I ended up getting so many ideas of ways to go with the plot that the dirt under the nails ended up being more of a recurring thing than a focal point but whatever enjoy

Here’s the smell of blood, still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

-Macbeth, Act V: Scene I

Laßt die todten ruhen.

-Ernst Raupach

Lana was trying to get a promising femur fully unearthed when she heard Dani chime in behind her: “You know, this place is what J.K. Rowling named Harry Potter after. Well, I mean, you know, not THIS place, but just Potter’s Fields in general, I guess.”

“Yeah, that is so totally fucking fascinating, are you gonna come help me with this or what?”

Dani obediently jumped in the grave beside her, though grave was a bit of a loose term. Most of the burial sites around here were above-ground, and for good reason. When the flood waters had come, this place had been torn up and churned into a mass of mud, sink holes, and exposed bones. Which made it perfect.

Who would notice a few missing? It wasn’t like the corpses would feel the absence.

Lana and her sister were grave-robbers by trade, though they would never refer to themselves as such when asked. They were witches in a marketable sort of way, selling morbid curiosities to like-minded spirits and using them to adorn their apartment.

It was spiritual in a sense. It was an active deed of rebellion against the old religions and ways of thought that put these people in the dirt and forgot about them. It was a connection to the Earth and mortality...and it was a bit of fun, besides. Nobody robs graves because bones look cool.

But it helps.

Aesthetic witches, they would call themselves when making a sale. Profaning the sacred for fun and profit. But not the sacred to them. That’s what made it okay. These bones were sacred to a different time, a different religion. An oppressive artifact from dark times past that hated women and gay people.

In short, these were only sacred to the enemy. And besides that, just bones. It was Dani and Lana’s full belief that graveyards exist for the vain conceit of the living. An idiotic practice. Nobody living benefit from the dead staying in the dirt. Digging them up, however...

These particular bones’ rest had already been fairly thoroughly upset by nature, which seemed like a sign if there ever was one. The storm revealed the bones, and the moon herself smiled down and illuminated them, leading them surely and steadily to uncover more of the skeleton the femur belonged to. They’d become desensitized to the ghoulish nature of their work, the almost comical air of Gothic horror that surrounded them. In truth, it was nights like this they deliberately sought out to go gathering materials to turn into geode holders.

“Fucking Hell, that’s part of a spine. Hip bone, femur, spine...this guy’s looking great! Please have an intact skull, please have an intact skull...”

Dani was working farther up, uncovering smashed ribs and bits of sternum. “Nothing yet, Anal.”

The pet name had always incensed her, mainly because she couldn’t think of a good enough comeback. Dani’s a hard name to make fun of. Dandy? Danny boy? She usually just settled on kid, despite only being 3 years older.

“Then shut your ass up and dig more, kid. Any of those ribs look good? Got a shoulderblade?”

“No, the femur looks like the best part, maybe the hip bone. The rest of him is all smashed to shit. Kinda looks like...”

She paused and frowned a bit, her mind seeming to drift off to do its own thing somewhere else.

Lana crouch-walked over to her and gave her a playful shove to bring her back to herself. “Like he got fucked up, yeah, probably was. Here, I’ll do this end, you just work on getting that hip bone the rest of the way out.”

Dani obeyed quietly and continued to work in silence. Lana was too focused to really notice how strange that was until later.

Right now, she was focused on prying up the thick, sticky Earth where she felt this guy’s skull had to be. It was hard work, grime working its way into the lines of her hand and under her fingernails. She kept prying and pulling at roots, certain it had to be there.

This is right where it should be if the rest of his skeleton is here, there even seemed to be a bulge or a change in consistency of the Earth like it was packed in, and-

As she had clawed at the latest fistful of dirt, her fingernails had scraped down bone. It was an unpleasant sensation, and her nerves jangled a bit. She had to pull her hand out of the dirt and shake the unpleasant feeling out of it, but the look on her face was triumphant as she turned to look at her sister.

“Guess what I got, biiiitch?”

Dani looked up, still seeming in a bit of a daze. She had wrestled the man’s pelvic girdle out of the ground and was cleaning it off in her lap. “Huh?”

“The skull, dumbass!”

Dani returned to her usual self a bit, sarcastically craning her head to look around Lana and frowning. “I don’t see any skull...”

“Oh, fuck off, I’m working on it.”

It took several more minutes to get the thing out of the ground. It felt unusual: the wrong shape, the wrong texture. It was definitely a skull, but...

When she finally pulled it free, she understood. She held it in both hands, just staring at it in dumbfounded awe for a moment. Whoever this was, or had been, was hideously deformed. One eye socket was intact and full of thick dirt, but on the other side there was no depression at all. One nasal cavity was crooked, looking like it was about to collapse in on itself.

But the most remarkable thing were the growths. Rough, almost tumorous growths of bone protruded around the back left quarter of the skull, running up to the skullcap and around the left side of the face almost to the missing eye. Overall they seemed to form one irregular mass, giving the head a lopsided, half-sunken appearance. They were coarse, almost jagged to the touch, overlapping and stacking on each other like some kind of plant or fungal bloom. Like coral.

Then she noticed the scoring. Lines on the bone. Not natural ones. Incisions cut into it. Someone had sliced this man’s face to pieces. As she turned it in her hands, she saw the probable cause of death: a hole straight through the back of the cranium, almost perfectly square. A stake hammered through it, most likely.

Lana felt like it was Christmas morning.

She was still staring in silence as Dani turned over the pelvis and mused behind her. “Hmm...think it’s a woman, actually.” Dani had dreams of being a forensic anthropologist that were on the back burner for now. Mainly because it was exactly what she did now, but she’d be celebrated instead of given strange looks and possibly arrested.

“Fuck that. Come look at this.”

“Fuck that?! Well, excuse me for trying to be-woah. Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Holy shit.”

They both stared in measured awe for a moment before grinning at each other as Dani threw her arm around Lana’s shoulders and kissed her cheek.

“This is our Golden Ticket, Dan. I can feel it.”

In the end, they only took the skull home with them. They left the ribs, hips, and leg where they lay in the mud.

Neither of them noticed how dark it had gotten. The moon had gone out on them.

Dani sat cross-legged on their rolling chair, scrolling through articles on her laptop, which a decal helpfully informed all and sundry was located on Elm Street. Lana was still cleaning the skull slowly, meticulously. It was hard work, and she didn’t want to put even one nick on the thing.

“God damn it, wish we had some of those beetles. You find anything yet?”

“Shhh, shut up Anal, I’m working here.”

Lana rolled her eyes, even as she smiled a bit. She put it down to the fact that she was the younger of the two, but Dani seemed to get a little too into the stuff. She took it seriously in a way Lana just didn’t, couldn’t. She’d outgrown that phase. She knew Dani would too, eventually, wouldn’t pore over articles online so meticulously trying to figure out who it was they dug up, the exact history and superstition behind all their morbid little artifacts. The thought almost made her sad. She really could be a great Forensic Anthropologist if that’s what she wanted.

She put the brush and pick down and looked at her hands absently while she waited for the kid to come back with something interesting. They were almost black, filth-encrusted. Her skin was darkened in general, but it was the lines of her hands and fingerprints that the grave soil really threw into sharp relief. And her fingernails. Under the tips, in her cuticles...she hadn’t thought she’d gotten that much dirt on her hands while she dug.

“God, my hands are fucking filthy.”

Dani didn’t look up. “You know, a very long time ago, people invented this wonderful thing called soap, and if you mix it with water, do you know what happens? It’s really amazing.”

Lana made as if to punch her and then walked to the bathroom sink and started scrubbing.

The water going down the sink was almost black. Must have been the rain. She made a mental note to avoid digging in the mud in the future. The water ran translucent black, but somehow she STILL wasn’t getting it-

“Hey, get in here! I think I got something.”

She ran out of the bathroom so fast that she barely dried her hands, and didn’t see the dark stains left behind on the towels.

“All right, so,” Dani was thrilled enough with her discovery she didn’t even wait for Lana to say anything or get all the way over to her, she just started dumping. She was like that. “I haven’t got a name, but I was looking at old medical cases involving disfigurement or deformity. Turns out, first of all, I was right. It was a woman. See? I don’t even need no fucking doctorate! Anyway, I think this is our gal.”

The old monochrome photograph showed the side of a tent, presumably that of a travelling freak show. There was a bearded woman, conjoined twins, a little man, a man covered in thick fur-like hair...and on the far right, sitting in a chair, a black woman with one eye, a collapsing nose, and a swollen, lopsided head.

She had no hair on the deformed side, and the scalp looked rough and uneven in texture. From the photograph, it was clear her arms and the lower half of at least one leg were swollen and malformed as well.

“So THAT is a travelling sideshow that moved throughout the South at the end of the 19th Century. Apparently, her deformity started out relatively minor, but as she grew, her bones kept...” Dani looked away from the screen and nodded at the skull. “Doing that. I think it’s called...ossification? Atypical osseous growth? I’m not exactly sure. Anyway, like I said, her name’s not listed, but she was apparently something of an object of fascination to a white surgeon who lived right around here, one...Robert Ender, who wrote a first-hand account of his research into her affliction, but it’s behind a fucking paywall. Of course. Anyway, in 1893, says he paid the circus owner a lot of money for...her?”

“For her? What do you mean ‘for’ her?”

Dani was squinting at the screen, still reading. “Hold on, I don’t know, to study or something? Aw, what if they got married, wouldn’t that be-”

“What? Kid?”

Dani’s eyes looked different, the excited light had gone out of them. She suddenly seemed much older than she was, looked tired. Tired and a bit sick. She continued reading in a monotone voice. “Ender paid the circus owner an enormous amount of money to study her affliction. Medical experimentation on black women was on the wane since the end of slavery, but since she was a side show performer, and this WAS the deep-ass South...” she trailed off for a moment before continuing.

“He made several surgical incisions into her head and face and vivisected her. She eventually died during a trepanation. There was a minor scandal, but charges were never pressed and Dr. Ender kept his position in society. Her body was buried nameless in the Potter’s Field.” She cast her eyes down. “That’s what I saw...you know, in the ribs. It looked like they had been cut one by one. By shears, you know? Peeled back.”

There was silence between them for a moment before Lana grinned and patted her sister on the back. “Jesus, great job kid! That’s...incredibly fucked up, but look at us! We got a minor celebrity here. We can put her story everywhere. I’m not sure I want to sell her.”

Dani cringed at the words “sell her.” She chewed her lip for a moment in a way Lana had come to know well over the years. It was her designated “i’m going to say something that will upset you and trying to pick my words carefully” face.

“Lana...I don’t think I’m comfortable with this.”

“What are you talking about?!” Lana laughed a bit, still not taking her very seriously. “You’re the one who wants to go pro with grave-robbing, what’s the problem?”

“We shouldn’t keep it.”

“All right, I mean, if you REALLY want we can sell it, it just seems like a was-”

“That’s not what I mean.” She paused again, then looked Lana in the eyes for the first time. “We should put it back.”

“What?! Put it back? What, you think her ghost is coming for us?”

“You’re not listening!” her voice had a force in it that it almost never contained, and Lana was taken aback. “I’m not scared of it. It’s just so...sad.”

“Honey,” Lana put her hand on her sister’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “She’s already dead. There’s nothing we can do. But we can tell her story! We can make something out of her death, right?”

“We don’t even know her name.”

Lana stared at the skull, considering for a moment. “What about...Octavia?”

Dani cocked her eyebrow, but made no response.

“Yeah, Octavia! That’s a good name, right? Hey, Octavia,” Lana turned towards the skull on the counter with a friendly wave. “You cool if we take some pictures of you and put them on the internet? Not that you know what that IS, but...” she turned back to Dani, expecting a begrudging smile. There wasn’t one.

She just shook her head slowly, then looked over at the hand Lana still had on her shoulder. “Jesus, woman, I thought you washed your hands.”

Lana herself took a good look at them for the first time since she’d come out of the bathroom. If anything, they looked dirtier. She glanced under her nails to see a thick black line of accumulated dirt. “I did! I don’t know why this dirt’s so stubborn. Wait here,” she sighed and returned to the bathroom.

As she scrubbed, watching black dirt flow down the drain, she heard Dani get up and move around. “Hey, I’m going out for cigarettes. You want anything?”

Lana poked her head around the doorframe. “I thought you were quitting!”

Dani just shrugged and continued out the door.

It made her a bit angry, in all honesty. The kid was overreacting, which wasn’t that unusual for her. They had more than one fight in the past caused by Dani being too sensitive about strange things. But this was different. It was always petty shit, big dramatic blow-outs of the kind that siblings had, but that always blew over when they admitted they were both being assholes.

But Dani had looked at her with real reproach. With something accusatory in her eyes. She thought it was wrong. She thought Lana was a bad person.

The black kept flowing down the drain, and Lana scrubbed her hands harder. “Fucking thing...”

It wasn’t like none of the bones they’d taken before hadn’t been from people who died badly or had bad lives, was it? They were dead now. That was one thing the two had always agreed on. They were dead, and the dead have no use for their bodies.

She looked at her hands, which felt raw. Dirty as ever. She grabbed a towel and scrubbed it over her hands and fingers. By the end, it was badly stained, the individual fibers clotting together.

But her hands were dirty. And there was that black under her fingernails.

“God DAMN it, how...” Lana felt a rush and a drop in her stomach, like she’d just fallen off a cliff. Something was wrong.

She was at the desk now, fumbling through implements, grabbing the pick she’d been cleaning the skull with to take it to her nails. She picked it up and stared.

The skull was dirty again. More than dirty. Its eye was packed with soil, just as it was when she first found it.

She stared, clutching the pick in her nerveless hands. In a moment the shock would wear off and she would truly panic, but for now, her brain was still trying to make some kind of rational sense of it, trying to parse what it was seeing. In a sort of faraway daze, she noticed a furtive movement under where the skull rested. She was dimly aware she was going to regret turning it over, but that didn’t mean she could stop herself.

A massive Devil’s Coach Horse scuttled out, raising its abdomen in a threat display and opening and closing its jagged mandibles at her. The panic broke forth.

Lana screamed and back-handed the thing, trying to brush it off the desk. It flew directly at her face, buzzing. She flailed and swatted blindly around her head in a panic, only to receive a painful pinching sensation in her forearm. It had sunk its jaws into her flesh and was holding there tightly.

She dropped the skull. She could punch herself in the face for doing it, always treated her bones better than that, would never risk breaking it, but it was a reflex. She dropped it and swatted at the horrible black beetle, only to make contact with her own skin.

The buzzing had stopped. The beetle was gone. So, too, was the dirt. The skull lay innocently on the floor, cleaned off, staring at her.

She stood there for a moment, breathing raggedly, hands shaking. “I’ve lost my fucking mind. I’ve gone...and lost...my fucking mind.”

She looked at her shaking hands intently. She closed her eyes and opened them again. She shook her head, bit her tongue and took deep breaths. But after all, the dirt was still there. The one thing that hadn’t left.

She lifted her pick up again off the floor. She didn’t dare touch the skull. She worked it under the crescent of her fingernails, scraping and tugging at the accumulated filth. It came free easily enough, she noticed. There was plenty of it on the tip of the pick and raining down on the floor. The problem was it kept coming back. She could see it now. As she pulled one line of dirt from beneath her nail, another seemed to seep out and take its place.

Jesus Christ, where was it all coming from?

She turned the sink on high, as hot as it would go, and got her pocket knife. She wasn’t thinking rationally, it was just animal panic and desperation to get the damned dirt out. She worked the blade under her nail until it flared with red hot pain.

She worked through her other nails, digging and stabbing underneath, biting down to keep from crying out as more and more dirt came out. Black was running down her fingers now, a translucent black like the dirty water going down the drain.

There was a source, there had to be a source.

“Fuck it.” Lana growled and wrenched a nail free, then another. She started screaming again as she saw what was underneath. There was no blood, no exposed bed of nerves. Just more dirt. Black powder. She dug at the miniature dirt beds in her fingertips with the knifepoint, prying more and more loose before giving up, throwing it down on the floor in frustration.

She wrung her hands under the water, trying to get it out, trying to get anything out at all. It was helpless, the water just kept flowing black, there was nothing but dirt underneath her skin and her nails. The pain was unbearable. She felt light-headed, on the verge of passing out, but she couldn’t stop. Not now.

Dani was only gone for about 15 minutes, but was already too late. There was blood everywhere. Running down the sink to the floor, on the mirror, on the knife. The sink was full of nails, and the water that ran past them down the drain was pink. Lana was slumped across the far wall of the bathroom, barely conscious. There was no skin left on her hands. She had scrubbed it off.

Dani didn’t ask her any questions. Not as she drove her to the hospital, not when she regained her consciousness. Not ever. What she did was take her in, leave her with the doctors, and drive straight back to the Potter’s Field.

What she did was put the skull back exactly where she found it, and say a tearful apology, and beg for mercy for her sister.

She told Lana later, as she was visiting her in the mental hospital she’d been referred to. She said it unprompted. Worded it gently, like she didn’t suspect damn well what had happened. “Hey, Anal.” She rested her hand on top of the gauze covering her older sister’s. “I, um...look, don’t be mad, but I got rid of that skull while you were recovering. It...I really wasn’t comfortable with it, you know, and I just thought that-”

“Thank you.” Lana’s smile was weak, but real. “I’m sorry.”

It was almost the last time they ever spoke of it. Once, as Lana caught Dani glancing forlornly at the gloves she had taken to wearing, the subject came up again.

“It’s not your fault, kid. You know that.”

“I stormed out on you because I was upset. That was dumb.”

“Yeah, well, if I’d listened to you...you know. I was just...excited. Felt like we found something real, you know?”

Dani let out a bitter laugh. “We did. Lana? Do you ever wish we did tell her story?”

Lana considered it for a moment before slowly shaking her head. “I think, maybe...maybe it wasn’t our story to tell.”

#writing #not sure i like this one as much as the others actually but i've been working on it for god damned AGES so #skimping on the editing for now oops

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