Chapter Text
That night, the three of them slept in shifts. They had two days left. Tucker had brought an arsenal of caffeinated drinks and junk food, bless his soul. Sam crashed on Danny’s bed while the two of them crawled through the scrolls in at least six different languages. They bordered on drunk on sleep deprivation.
“I think I might be dead and this is hell.” Tucker was hunched over at Danny’s desk with a half circle of cup noodles and energy drinks standing guard around him.
“Is hell even real?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that it’s called sumptuary laws. Why do we even have these? Ghosts don’t wear clothes.”
Danny lifted a hand toward the ceiling, waving it slowly. “Yeah, they just kinda…look like that.”
“Bro, I might be fluent in Ancient Greek at this point.”
Danny groaned what was probably an affirmation. He rested his head back on the bean bag he was sitting in and dropped the scroll he was reading on his face. It took a few seconds for it to reappear at the ceiling and free fall onto Danny’s face a second time. Despite himself, Danny let it fall on him at least three times.
“Uh, you good over there?” Tucker asked.
Danny caught the scroll mid-air about six inches from his nose. “I need to get out of here.”
“Caffeine run?”
“Ancients, yes.” Danny rolled off the bean bag onto the floor. He laid there for a moment, then sighed and heaved himself up. “Don’t work too hard, ‘kay?”
“Never.”
The good thing about living in a small town is that it’s relatively safe to walk alone at night, ghost attacks notwithstanding. The bad thing is that only four places are open past 8 pm in a fifty mile radius. Danny chose to walk to the only 24-hour gas station in Amity Park, the one nearest the highway. The night air was stuffy but not too hot.
About twenty feet away from the gas station, Danny’s ghost sense went off. He cursed and didn’t bother hiding somewhere to transform. No one was out and about at three in the morning on a Wednesday except him. He flew straight up to get a bird’s eye view.
In the middle of the highway was Clockwork. Danny nearly fell out of the sky in shock. He approached but stayed out of the road. He was still angry with Clockwork for being so cryptic. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to play in the street?”
“I am a Neverborn, ghost child. And I suggest you not insult me.” Clockwork teleported, or maybe stopped and restarted time to reappear behind Danny on the roof of the gas station. “I am trying to help you.”
Danny whipped around to face him. “What, like how you ‘helped’ last time?”
Clockwork didn’t react, his facial expression stayed the same when he shifted from an old man to a child. “Follow me,” he said. Then he ripped a portal in the air and flew inside.
Danny made a frustrated noise deep in his throat. He reformed his feet to pace in the air a few times. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll end up doing what he wants me to do anyway.” Against every gut feeling he had, he followed.
Portals always felt sticky to him. They were made of ectoplasm and air and nothing all at once, and Danny never got used to the feeling. Once he crossed over, the atmosphere of whatever new place he traveled to would feel like wind on wet clothes. This time was no exception.
Clockwork floated in the middle of the main room of his lair, waiting for what seemed to be no reason. Danny waited for about thirty seconds. “What are we doing?”
“I am a child right now.”
“You see how that doesn’t answer my question, right?”
Clockwork smirked like Danny couldn’t see it. Danny, as the petty person he was, strolled around Clockwork’s lair. He stared into pools and watched the past like television, a future he couldn’t interpret, and his friends in his room. He made eye contact with Clockwork, now a man, and swiped a time medallion off its hook on the wall.
“Must you act like a misbehaving cat?”
Danny tilted the base of one of the time pools. “You know everything. I’m sure you can confirm that if I don’t, then I’ll explode.”
Clockwork sighed. His tail rippled and he set his staff down to lean against a wall.
“I think I’ll keep doing this. You haven’t stopped me which means you want me to mess up your lair.” Danny grew bolder, moving to the left side of the room where the floor ended to knock a gear out of place. It seemingly fell out of existence. Danny extended an ear but he heard no clatter or crash.
Clockwork muttered something under his breath. He shifted into an old man and smiled. “Finally.” From the bottom of his chin, he plucked a hair from his beard. He held it out towards Danny. “Fire at this.”
“I’m sorry, what now?”
“I suppose you could freeze it, or scream at it. Whatever works for you.”
Danny hovered closer, confused. “I’ll just end up hitting you.”
“It’s not like it’ll hurt.”
Huffing, Danny said, “Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to goad me into fighting you. I didn’t think you were interested in being king.”
“I’m not. But I want you to be.” Clockwork held his arm out straight and insistent. “Shoot this.”
Danny’s eyebrows climbed to the top of his forehead. “Why would you want me to be king?”
“I know everything, remember? Now shoot.”
“Geez, for someone with so much time, you’re really impatient.”
Clockwork averted his gaze, as if looking into the aether for answers. He didn’t seem to find any. Despite not seeing it coming, he didn’t flinch when Danny shot a tiny ectoblast from the tip of his finger.
The moment the ectoblast hit the hair, Clockwork let go. The hair straightened and grew, glowing a bright white. Within seconds, the hair transformed into a sturdy staff. It hovered on its own for a second and Clockwork sent it into Danny’s hands before it could fall.
“Consider this a gift.” Danny opened his mouth to speak but Clockwork steamrolled ahead. “And before you ask, no, I’m not trying to win your favor before you’re crowned. It’s a gift, not a bribe.”
Danny tested the staff’s weight, twirling it and making stabbing motions. He paused mid-strike to ask, “Wait, could I have done this with my own hair?”
“You could have certainly tried.” Clockwork busied himself with forming a new cog to replace the one Danny knocked out of place. “Try stamping it on the ground.”
Danny shrugged, then did as told. His staff shrunk to a miniature version of itself about the size of a toothpick. “Oh, sick. It’s portable.”
“Bend it.”
Danny narrowed his eyes. Bending seemed like the opposite of what a staff should do. He gently pulled on one end of the tiny staff to find that it shimmered like Clockwork would when he shifted. Clockwork’s back was to him. Danny stared at the staff and said, “I know you're smug over there.”
Clockwork grunted, which may have been a laugh he tried to cover up. Danny let him get away with it. He could reciprocate a gift every once in a while. He face palmed when he realized he would have to make another caffeine run.
—
After some playing around, Danny decided to manipulate his staff into the form of a safety pin. He kept it on the lapel of his jacket, both as a statement and for convenience. It took two hours for Sam to find out Danny’s solo mission to the thrift store. He had tried to be casual about asking if she had a sewing kit he could borrow and she found his first attempt at ripping his own jeans under his bed in minutes.
“Yikes. I don’t think these can be saved, Danny.”
Danny crossed his arms and did not pout. “I ripped those on purpose.”
“With what, a vegetable peeler?”
Sam had a point. In the interest of having thin threads stretched across the tears, Danny had attacked the jeans with a pair of scissors and his nails in ghost form. It wasn’t pretty.
Danny didn’t answer. Sam set the jeans down on the bed with a gentleness that didn’t suit her. “Please tell me you didn’t use a vegetable peeler.”
“Do you really have so little faith in me?”
“Absolutely yes, why do you ask?”
Danny snatched the jeans and shoved them beneath his bed again. “Do you wanna look for loopholes in that combat law again?”
“Tempting, but you can’t distract me that easily.” Sam perched in Danny’s desk chair. “What’s with the…jeans?”
“It’s nothing.”
Sam pulled her phone out of her skirt pocket, one that she made herself. “Don’t make me bother Tucker during his nap to hack into your search history.”
Danny sputtered. “That’s a bit of an over-reaction, don’t you think?”
She shrugged. “I think Tucker would want to know about this too. Last time you cared about how you looked, you wore a godforsaken tracksuit.”
Danny blushed. “This is different.”
Sam waited for an explanation. Danny didn’t give one. “Well?” she asked.
He didn’t make eye contact. “Will you teach me how to paint my nails?”
Sam gasped. “Yes. I don’t even care that you’re distracting me, but yes.” She scrambled to gather her things and lace up her shoes. “Fly us to the general store, this is an emergency.”
“Uh, Sam.” Danny let his transformation wash over him. He lifted his hands, where his nails had grown out. He was hesitant to call them claws, but at this point, they were long enough that he couldn’t wear gloves over them.
Sam didn’t hesitate. “We have to do black.”
—
Black nails suited Danny. He decided to paint them in both forms, happy with how the points looked sharper in ghost form and his fingers had little rounded boxes in human form. He tapped his nails on each other and enjoyed the clacking noise it made. He spilled some polish on a scroll on property laws and didn’t find it in himself to care. Until it growled at him, that is.
It was their last day before the coronation. Tucker volunteered to stay home to translate and study up on the rest of the scrolls. What they had found was unsettling to say the least. The Ghost Zone didn’t have a standard law-making body or law-enforcing organization. Most issues were settled by the Royals, the Observants, or a Council of Ancients if the involved parties couldn’t do it themselves.
Very few laws were made surrounding the Royals, meaning they could do nothing or almost anything and it would be legal. They could make laws, repeal laws, anything except uproot the other branches of government or violate agreed upon terms of trial by combat. The Royals didn’t even need to obey the other branches if they didn’t want to.
The Observants had the most literature surrounding their authority and creed, but most of it was useless. They were founded to watch, to judge, and to keep their hands clean. They had the least mobility out of the three branches, but they were the most active in any legal sense. Based on the three full scrolls dedicated to their limited functions, the Observants liked to hear themselves talk about what they could do rather than actually do it.
Across all the scrolls, none of them could find anything on what the Council of Ancients does. It seemed they were figureheads, or old political figures that met every few millennia when needed. It was a closed group, limited to the original members. Danny, Sam, and Tucker didn’t like how unknown they were and yet they were some of the most powerful ghosts in the Infinite Realms.
That afternoon, the three of them sat in a circle in Danny’s room and agreed they would not stand for this. They slept that night knowing what they would do.
—
Coronation Day began with a sweltering August Saturday morning. The cool temperature of the Ghost Zone was a welcome change, even if none of the trio was happy to be making the trip. They took the Specter Speeder to Pariah’s Keep for a quick escape, if needed.
Surrounding Pariah’s Keep, thousands of ghosts hovered in every direction. It was as if they created standing bleachers in the air in front of and above Pariah’s Keep.
“Finding parking’s going to be tough,” said Tucker.
“Do you ever think ‘hey, maybe that joke shouldn’t leave my mouth’ before you say it, or no?” asked Sam.
Danny let his friend’s bickering wash over him, staring at the crowds. He made eye contact with a few ghosts as Sam piloted the Specter Speeder through an empty patch near the bottom. He saw Johnny 13 and Kitty, the Box Ghost, Technus, Desiree, and almost every ghost he knew. Even Skulker attended with his arms crossed, not a weapon in sight.
The Specter Speeder settled onto the rocky ground that extended around the castle at Pariah’s Keep. The trio stepped out, tense and in a tight formation with Danny in the front. The Observants, perhaps all 113, were present in neat rows floating in front of the castle’s grand doors.
Danny floated up to be eye level with the Observant standing in the center. From here, he could see a few ghosts spectating from the castle’s towers and walkways. He didn’t like the feeling of being watched with thousands of ghosts behind him and in his blind spots.
“Ghosts of the Infinite Realms,” said the Observant, “thank you for your attendance to the coronation of your new King, the ghost child who defeated Pariah Dark in single combat.” He went on about tradition, authority, and honor.
Danny stopped listening within the first minute. He got to a count of eighty-three Observants when the speaker motioned for a chest to be brought forward. He opened it to reveal the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage.
He picked up the Crown of Fire to hold it in between himself and Danny. “Do you accept this responsibility, the right to rule, and the burden of power?”
Danny squared his shoulders. “Do I have a choice?”
“Do you have a replacement in mind?” He didn’t. In the silence, the Observant pushed the crown forward. He repeated his first question.
Danny took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”
The Observant placed the crown in the air above Danny’s head. It stayed in place and Danny’s hair joined the fire’s dance. After a moment, his hair sparked at the edges and shifted into white and green fire.
As if Danny couldn’t hear him, the Observant hummed a surprised noise. He turned, unbothered, to gather the Ring.
“Do you swear to bring justice, revenge, and retribution to those who would wrong your subjects, the Ancients, and the Observants?”
Danny let the question turn the air stale. He turned around to see his friends and all the ghosts he just became responsible for. He made the choice not to linger on the faces he knew so he would be forced to learn new ones. These people had less of a choice than he did.
He faced the Observant and the Ring of Rage. It was a contract, maybe even a collar he had to wear on his hand. What was the difference if he already wore one over his head?
“No.”
Whispers broke out into the crowd. Danny swallowed the instinctual part of himself that wanted to turn to see the sounds happening behind his back. He focused and the rings of his transformation flashed around his waist. He was already in ghost form, so he had to concentrate to bring his street clothes with him without shifting back to human.
His dark leather jacket draped over his torso, shining with the reflection of the ectoplasm surrounding Pariah’s Keep. His now bright green scars peeked out from his shirt, a low v-neck black shirt he and Sam made together. His cargo pants were tucked into his boots.
Danny plucked the safety pin off his jacket and shook it, extending it into a bright white staff. He twirled it a few times and let it rest behind his head, across his shoulders. “You can keep the ring. My first ordinance as King of the Infinite Realms is to no longer serve the Observants or the Councils of Ancients.”
Danny, the petty creature he was, stuck his tongue out at the Observants.
Shouting broke out in every direction. Danny could feel the beginnings of a portal forming behind him as easy as breathing. He gestured for Sam and Tucker to drive the Specter Speeder into the portal instead of “as far away as possible, as fast as possible” the way they agreed last night.
Danny waited until his friends were safe, then fell backward into the portal. The last thing he saw was the Observant in front of him raise a hand to grab him and miss.
—
“You can open portals now?!” Tucker screamed the moment they arrived in the Fenton Lab.
“Apparently?” Danny was a touch below hysterical. He was high on adrenaline and maybe leftover caffeine.
“You didn’t tell me you had a staff,” Sam said. She snatched it from his hands and tossed it in her palms a few times.
“Oh, good, I thought I was the only one confused about the safety-pin-staff.”
Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “We were busy.”
“Not that busy, dude.”
Sam was miming stabbing people with the staff, a mirror of how Danny first acted when he first received it. Tucker was rapid fire asking questions, barely waiting for Danny to answer.
Danny rubbed the fabric of his cargo pants between his fingers, careful not to rip it with the sharp nails of his ghost form. Maybe how he handled the coronation would have consequences, or he would have a hard time convincing his new subjects to trust him when that was their first introduction to the new Royal. Danny was nervous and wired, but he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.