Portals

Conflicted

The Nomicon under one arm, Danny trotted down the streets of Norisville, ducking past people with their noses plastered to the screens of their little boxes. So long as he didn't bother them, they would let him be. Still, he glanced at them warily as he skirted their personal bubbles. A distracted cyborg was still a cyborg.

After quite a bit of wandering, he found himself back outside the grubby arcade. It was empty; not even the nutty pair that had been inside earlier stood hunched over a machine. Well....

He stood under the doorframe and pulled out the Nomicon again. A Ghost Writer book that wasn't trying to destroy the strange world it had been stranded in. It belonged in the same sentence as "the Box Ghost and Lunch Lady would have a kid together one day."

He choked down a retch.

He glanced at the Nomicon again, biting his lip. Ghost Writer never seemed like a bad guy. It had been Danny who started the fight by destroying the poem. Plus, he wasn't one of the ghosts that blatantly tried to kill him during the Disasteroid crash in the Ghost Zone, even though their original fight had gotten the ghost thrown into Walker's prison. Danny knew from experience that it wasn't a nice place.

Then the book let off a bleat of red light. Danny's mouth filled with freezing air, which he gasped out. What—

"Hey!"

Danny turned. Randy and Howard were charging down the street, but Randy had surged ahead as Howard's stubby legs struggled to keep up. Danny wiped his sweaty hand off on his shirt before running it through his hair. "Oh. Hi, guys."

Randy didn't even acknowledge him. The teen ripped it from Danny's hands, just as the book let off another burst of red light. The half-ghost disguised the puff of condensation by clearing his throat into his hand.

"You should have taken that thing and moved back home, new kid," Howard grumbled.

Danny gave him an odd look. So he knew what the book could do then? "Can—"

The book bleated again, this time flashing twice. Randy glanced up, giving Howard a meaningful look that Danny knew well. It was the same look he gave Tucker and Sam to signal a "Jazz distraction" way back when, before his older sister knew who he was. He was not falling for that.

Howard sidled over, hands shoved in his pockets. "Hey, new kid—"

"My name is Danny."

"...Danny, d'you want to take a look at this awesome new game that Greg just got? I think you'll like—"

Danny watched Randy out of the corner of his eyes. Just as he pulled the book open, Danny whipped around and clamped a hand on his shoulder.

Then he was falling again.

Just as he was about to let out a frustrated sigh, the ground rushed up and hit him in the face. The rest of his body quickly followed suit.

"Ow...."  He sat up, then locked eyes with Randy's. They were as wide as dinner plates.

"How are you here?"

Danny had turned up to face the sky, squinting into the parchment tones. "Was that a portal? Are we in—"

Then he froze. At least, his throat did. It was so cold. It was like when he lost control of his ice ability that one time and had to be rescued by Frostbite and the people of the Far North.

He crawled forward a bit, blinded by the tears in his eyes, until his left hand landed in something sticky and wet. Mud! There was water in mud!

A flower of blue ice shot from his hand and into the swamp that the Nomicon was trying to present to Randy. It spread like wildfire across the scene so masterfully doodled by Ninjas of past, shooting up the jagged trees and turning them into icicles. A deformed Booray Catfish froze to the tree he was standing behind. Even so, Danny's sigh of relief was marred by the tiny puff of condensation, even as the pounding sunlight of the Ninjanomicon beat down on their backs.

Randy could do little more than gape. "Where did you get your hands on an ice ball? How did you use it in here? Is Jean already selling them again? Howard...."

Danny had no idea what Randy was talking about, but he rubbed his hair and stood up, thankful that his fingers were no longer blue. "Look, I'm really sorry about that...."

The parchment sky flickered above them. Danny glanced up and was surprised to see highly stylized writing floating in the air.

A ninja is not without friends the same way he is not without enemies.

Danny's thoughts flew to Sam and Tucker back in Amity Park. Man, everybody must be so worried about him. He did disappear inside a portal that not even Clockwork could see inside. They must be worked up into a panic.

Or maybe years had passed since he last saw them back in Amity and his statue had sat there, green and moldy until it crumbled into nothing. Forgotten.

Sam could have forgotten about him.

That alone almost forced a sob out of the half-ghost. There was no way something as stupid as this would get between him and his friends. Sam had been turned into a plant princess, for crying out loud, and they had still been together.

A scream from Randy pulled Danny from his thoughts. The half-ghost turned to find the black-haired teen stuck up to his waist in mud. Crud. So the book was still trying to kill them after all! And Randy was struggling like crazy, trying to pull himself free. Didn't he know the first rule about escaping quicksand?

Danny waved a hand at him as he raced to the trees of the frozen swamp tearing down an enormous branch. "Hang on, I'll get you out of there!"

But as he threw the end of the branch to Randy, who was already in up to his shoulders, something cool and wet crawled over his own shoes. The pit of mud had expanded to him too, and he couldn't seem to pull his feet free. Flight, intangibility, plasma rays, nothing pulled him free. Randy had already disappeared under the mud, not even a bubble to mark his resting place.

Somehow Danny always knew it would end this way. Death by book. He knew it.

But he was already half-ghost, he thought as the mud reached his shoulders. Did he have a foot in the door to full ghost-hood? Then he could return to the Ghost Zone, ask Skulker for directions to the Fenton Portal now that his pelt was no longer worthy of being put on a wall (insert gag here), and go home purely as Danny Phantom. No more identity crises ever again. A little convincing, and Sam and Tucker could join him in the next life. Tucker always did want to be a ghost, anyways. They would be like Johnny 13, Kitty, and Shadow... without the problems, of course. They could patrol the streets forever and watch his tiny town grow around that statue of himself holding up the world. Danny Phantom forever. He liked the ring of that.

He turned up his face to get one last breath before the mud swallowed him for good.

Yes, that would be nice. To the Ghost Zone.