Chapter 11: Clarity
It took Danny hours to recover. It happened slowly. First a feeling that something wasn't quite right. Then the feeling of detachment, of distance receded, and suddenly he realized that team hide-and-seek tag wasn't a real thing.
That wasn't good. He had just told his friends that they were playing a game that didn't exist, and then he ran off. With Leader. That was the wisp he was carrying. Not his actual name, which was a series of oboe and violin tones and two particular shades of blue, but that couldn't be translated into English as a name. So. Leader. Because he was the clan leader. Leader was very nice, and soft, and fuzzy, and squishy, and pretty.
Danny let himself be distracted by Leader's superior qualities for a few minutes, during which he cuddled into and mumbled at the ghost. Leader returned Danny's mumbles with comforting piano notes.
But he couldn't ignore the problem forever. He had to find his friends so that they could figure out a new game to play. One that everyone knew. That wasn't too bad. It would be just like regular hide-and-seek.
Danny sighed. No wonder his mom had been so mad at him. He'd been the rude one all along.
He frowned. There was something bothering him about the whole conversation. He didn't want to think about it. He wasn't in the mood to think back. He wanted to go back to skipping and frolicking through the woods, examining the flowers, eating things, like apples, pears, limes, and the odd insect, because he could.
Still, he couldn't do that when his friends weren't happy. And they weren't going to be happy when they were stuck playing a game that they didn't know the rules for.
But hadn't his mother been upset before he said anything about the game?
So what had happened? He had healed her arm. She'd done something awful to it, and it had been covered in something gross that had reacted weirdly violently with his ectoplasm. Surely she wasn't mad about that? Before that, she'd said something about using violence to get his way? That couldn't be right, he'd never- Unless he counted fighting with ghosts and ghost hunters. He did do that. But it was to help people. To keep them safe and happy. Not to 'get his way.'
Why would she say that? Why would she be so mean? It wasn't like her.
His humming took on a distressed edge as he tried to recall exactly what Maddie had said to him.
'Resorting to violence just to get your way, Phantom?'
He examined the sentence. The question? Was she confused about what he was doing? Did she not know that he was trying to help? But she knew him. He'd never hurt her! He didn't want to hurt anyone. Ever. She knew that, right? Right?
It wasn't like she hadn't known it was him. She'd called him by name!
She had called him by name.
She had called him Phantom.
Phantom.
She knew.
Danny was so caught up in his internal anguish that he didn't even notice that he had curled into a ball on the ground, his hands knotted into his hair. Leader and several other wisps hovered over him worriedly.
She knew.
She knew and she hated him. They all hated him. He was the worst. What was he doing? They were probably hunting him down right now. He sobbed. They all hated him. It was all his fault. He couldn't exactly put his finger on what 'it' was, but it was definitely his fault and he knew it. What was wrong with him?
The wisps brushed against him, trying to give him comfort, but Danny was basically insensate at this point. Still, the contact eventually made him realize that not everyone hated him, and he crawled into a tree to sing to the little ghosts.
Then he began, at last, to regain enough focus to remember what had happened before healing his mother. Considering that she had been wounded in that time period, this just made Danny freak out again. Somehow, he had forgotten that in order to be healed, a person first had to be hurt.
It was a bit of a cycle. Danny thinking of something that upset him, calming down, getting distracted, trying to figure out how the situation had come about in the first place, and freaking out again. However, as time went on, the calm periods got longer, and he spent less and and less time distracted by trees, or flowers, or odd looking shadows. On the other hand, his underlying anxiety began to build. Yes, it was somewhat muted due to what Danny now recognized as an energy overload, but it was still there, and growing, and it was what was fueling his intermittent panic attacks.
So Danny did the only thing that his rather abused mind considered logical.
He found a hole and hid in it.
It was a nice, deep, dark hole. More like a cave than anything else. So dark, no one would be able to see the lights of the wisps that accompanied him, let alone the lights of his eyes. So deep, no one would hear him humming and singing to the wisps, or the wisps responding to him. The walls were sturdy, so if his powers did something strange (and he could now recall several strange things that he had done while his was out of his mind, including whatever he had done to Maddie's arm) he probably wouldn't do any damage.
No one would find him. He'd be safe. They'd be safe.
He let himself relax a little, and found a nice alcove to tuck himself into, a little divot in the stone that was just the right size to cradle his body. He spoke to Leader and the other wisps, then. They deserved an explanation for all the craziness Danny had put them through, especially since Danny had essentially kidnapped Leader.
They were alright with that, though, strangely enough. Leader was a very old wisp, and he claimed to have been through much worse during some first meetings. Beyond that, they were curious. They wanted to know about Danny, and Danny obliged. For a while anyway.
Lying down, listening to the musical will'o-the-wisp language, Danny began to drift off. The day had been a hard one, and he was completely exhausted, both emotionally and physically. The energy that the wisps had given him had perked him up in addition to giving him a case of temporary insanity, but it was in the sense that giving an espresso to someone who hadn't slept in two days might perk them up. It helped them stay alert a little longer, but it was particularly healthy, and it didn't erase the need for sleep.
When Danny woke again, it was to the sound of voices. Human voices.
He started violently awake, dislodging a dozen or so wisps from where they were dozing on top of him. His first and strongest impulse was to vanish. So he did, the wisps following his lead.
Then he started to wonder why he had gotten so scared. Valerie was the only one with weapons now. No one else could hurt him. He took a deep, calming, breath.
The voices sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place them. They sounded scared. Lost. That was okay. Danny was lost, too. They could be lost together. But first he needed to find out who it was.
He walked towards the voices, his steps light, humming a little. It really was nice down here. Nice and dark and cool. Lots of tunnels.
Danny turned a corner and almost ran right into the muzzle of the Fenton Mortifier. His wide, scared eyes tracked along the gun's length, back and up to his mother's gloved hands, along her arms, to her shoulders, to her face, which was twisted into an almost unrecognizable a rictus of hate. Behind her stood his father, just as hideously furious. He knew they were going to shoot him.
"Please," he whispered.
Maddie pulled the trigger.
Danny woke up screaming, clutching blindly at his chest, lightning licking off of him in random spurts. Will'o-the-wisps hovered worriedly in the air around him as he wedged himself further into the corner he found himself in. It was odd, normally he hated confined spaces, but now, here, in his hysteria, it felt comforting, like an embrace.
(It occurred to him, in a distant sort of way, that it was good that none of his human friends were here. If they had been holding on to him, they would have been electrocuted.)
He only stopped screaming when the action became physically impossible. When his voice and lungs would no longer cooperate.
But when he stopped, and his hysteria receded, he had something that he didn't when he had fallen asleep. Clarity. He really remembered, now. More than that, he was able to think.
Wow, he'd been a mess. He was still a mess. At least now he knew what was going on.
He unfolded himself from his little alcove. He'd had his freak out, and his recovery time. Now he needed to find the others. That shouldn't be too hard, right? I mean, all he had to do was fly up, find the group that had stayed, and then follow the yarn to the group that had left. He frowned. It had been a long time since he had left them. They may have moved. Scratch that, they would have moved, after being 'attacked' by ghosts. He shook his head. Even so, unless everyone was in under the trees, he should be able to spot them from above.
Still trying to dispel his doubts, Danny stretched, and brushed himself off. Then he hummed an explanation to the handful of wisps still with him, and reached for his core.
The next thing he knew, Danny was curled on the ground in agony.
Oh. No. No no no no no. No. This couldn't be happening, not on top of everything else. He couldn't- When had he last gone ghost? When he went to go look for Technus in the gym? Had that- that awful, horrible, monstrous thing damaged his core? Because this wasn't because of the wisps. He'd dealt with overeating before, and although this time had definitely been worse than that time, it didn't keep him from accessing his other self.
Danny closed his eyes and forced himself not to panic. He couldn't afford to panic. There were people relying on him, and, speaking of panic, he didn't even want to think about what Sam and Jazz were probably going through right now.
(He was a terrible friend, and a worse brother.)
Eventually, he got back to his feet. First things first. Get out of this hole, because he wasn't going to find anyone down here. Not even Dash was that dumb. (And what did that say about Danny?)
Danny had just started to walk back to the vertical shaft he had climbed down when his ear twitched, and he froze, listening. There were voices. Human voices. Danny broke out in a cold sweat. It couldn't be. It couldn't be his parents. There was just no way. Even if it was them, they wouldn't have the Mortifier with them. That thing was broken.
Besides, now that he had calmed down again, he could tell that the two voices did not belong to his parents. They were both young. Male. Danny frowned, listening. Not Dash. Mikey and Ricky? And they were arguing about something?
Danny hummed a request for quiet to the wisps, and invisibly made his way towards the voices. The tunnel he took was much narrower and more serpentine than the one in his dream, which soothed him somewhat. Especially because when he tested it, he could pass through the walls intangibly.
After a few minutes of walking, he was close enough to start hearing what the argument was about.
"... should have stayed!"
"We were calling up to them for an hour. They didn't hear us, we didn't hear them."
"Yeah, but they would have found the hole eventually."
"Not likely. And then, how were they going to get us out? We don't have ropes, or climbing gear, or anything, really. And considering how far we slid, we probably couldn't communicate with them anyway, not unless they fell down themselves."
"I still don't like it, Ricky. When you're lost, you're supposed to stay put."
"In the human world, sure. Back home there are organizations, and people do search parties and stuff. But here, well, no one's really sure where we are to begin with."
"I guess," said Mikey. Danny peered around the corner to see the boys making their way by cell phone light. The red-haired boy sighed deeply, and adjusted his glasses. "It's just so dark in here, though. It's creepy."
"Yeah," agreed Ricky, not sounding too happy either.
This was going to be tricky, Danny realized as he backtracked down the tunnel. The shaft that he came down wasn't going to be an acceptable exit for the two humans. They'd have to find another one. Also, speaking of human, a normal person wouldn't risk stumbling around down here without a light source. Danny fumbled in his pockets for his phone, an old brick phone that Tucker claimed was indestructible, and sighed in relief when he found it. If he lost another one, his parents would k-
His thoughts skittered to a halt.
(They had already done a pretty good job of it, hadn't they?)
Danny shook his head to clear it. He had a plan of attack now. He could help Ricky and Mikey find their way up, and then the three of them would look for the others.
Now to put it into action.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone