Ectober Week 2019
(Shhh, I can totally submit this super late. Shhhhhhh.)
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Day 1 - Shatter
It started with a crack.
A hairline fracture, barely an inch long. It hung in the green, swirling mists of the Zone, nestled between the Endless Road and the Far Frozen, nearly invisible in the air. The crack had a warped Y shape, edges jagged and sharp - something that looked like it could cut.
The Box Ghost—the first to find it—warned the others not to touch. It felt like glass, he'd said. Like his fingers brushed the rim of a wine glass, making it sing. The clear, ringing note had shuddered right through him.
He felt like he might break.
No one really took the Box Ghost or his delusions seriously, of course. The warning went ignored.
(It was such a small crack, after all. Why bother to worry? The Ghost Zone tumbled with anomalies, and this one was so tiny. So harmless. So easily avoided.)
(Until, suddenly, it wasn't.)
Unwatched, the crack spread. Centimeter by centimeter, inch by inch, the skewed Y morphed into a mangled X, and then branched into something longer, more grotesque, a shape resembling one of the forbidden letters of the Old Language. By the time anyone thought to check on it, the crack had grown to a daunting size.
"…What is this," Frostbite murmured, stepping warily into its shadow.
The crack now resembled a spiderweb, the edges of it encroaching on the corner of the Far Frozen. The bulk of it sprawled over the Endless Road. Frostbite watched in awe and horror as one of the web's long, thin legs branched downward, fracturing in slow motion, and skewered the blacktop below.
The road split.
Crk. CrKK. Asphalt whined and crumbled. The length of the highway seemed to shudder and buckle, trying to twist away from the rift. With a rising whine, the road seemed to vibrate - then all at once, with a sound like deep thunder, the whole stretch of road just shattered.
Frostbite flinched away. Debris flew everywhere, thudding into the snow around him or spinning off in other directions, towards the green horizons. A chunk of concrete caught his leg, ripping past leather and fur to graze his leg, and the wound burned hot.
The chunk of road closest to the fissure burst into dust, a rippling cloud that seemed to swirl around the crack that'd destroyed it, before getting sucked into the hairline break like water down a drain.
Within minutes, the air cleared. Frostbite watched as the smoke fell away, slowly revealing the damage.
The Endless Road - a misnomer now - was in pieces. Ghost Zone gravity kept a few of the chunks floating, but most had spun away into the dark, leaving an empty gap.
Frostbite stared at the wreckage. A good mile or so of the road had been torn away, and all by one, little crack.
The crack that'd pierced the road sat, unmoving, in the air. It—the whole web, really—seemed more solid, more real than the zone around it. Like the zone itself was just a painting on pottery, and the ceramic underneath was breaking.
At the center of the web, between the jagged fractures, tiny triangles of the zone weren't green anymore. Frostbite could see bits of another reality poking through; golden twilight, vivid blue, starry red.
This did not bode well.
Edges of the web twined, sprouting more fingers. Three large cracks formed. One arc'd away, in a meandering line, towards Skulker's distant island. The second forked downwards, in the direction of Pariah's keep.
The third split the air, thin but unstoppable, straight at the Far Frozen.
Acting fast, Frostbite lifted his hand to his coat lapel, pressing the sapphire button on his communicator.
"Snowblind," he called to his right-hand warrior over the comms. "We've got a problem."
"What kind of problem," She asked with trepidation.
"The crack on the edge of our realm. It's spreading."
Snowblind was quiet for a long minute. "What's the damage."
"None to us—yet. But potentially? Catastrophic." Frostbite said. "The part of the Endless Road closest to us has already been destroyed."
"That does explain the glitch on the infimap earlier."
Frostbite knew she couldn't see him, but nodded anyway. He now knew that the terrible gouge that'd appeared across the map days ago hadn't been a mistake after all, though he desperately wished it was.
"What's the plan?"
He eyed the arching fracture, inching ever closer. "Evacuate," he advised. "Get everyone to a safe distance… at least until we know how far it can stretch—and what it can do. You are in charge while I'm gone."
"…I imagine you're going to fetch Phantom?" She asked, unconvinced. Frostbite knew she wasn't as enamored with the Great One as most of the tribe had been.
"I fear this thing might be powerful enough to shatter our domain—perphaps even the entire Zone. We'll need any outside help we can get." He said, stealing a last glance at the web of cracks above.
"And regardless," he added quietly, squinting at the dozens of colored fractures at the web's heart, windows to other worlds.
One triangle shard in particular stood out—a familiar glowing neon sign on the other side. Frostbite recognized it immediately, even if he could only read the first three stylized letters through the gap.
F-E-N-
"…I suspect Phantom has a stake in this peril, too."
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Everything around her was black, darkness. She couldn’t see anything for miles. She lay suspended in the air, floating. It wasn’t the same as flying though. It was something different.
Where was she? She was sure she’d just been on her way to Tucker’s house with Danny. What had happened since then?
Was this even real? Or was this a trick a ghost was playing on her?
She floated there for what felt like hours, though it could have been minutes or even days. There was no way to tell, it just seemed to drag on forever.
Then she felt her body begin to jolt. That was odd. There wasn’t really any sensation. Was she hurt?
It happened again, and she shook her head after the motion ended. That time it felt like a hiccup.
They happened at regular intervals. What kind of trick was this? Why puppet her around and not even cause any pain? What was this ghost getting at?
With this next jolt, pain flooded her body and she found her eyes opening, staring up at a white ceiling, a gasp leaving her mouth. The room was much too bright and she could see figures leaning over her. Their voices began to fade in.
“...me? Sam? Are you with us?”
Sam nodded, squinting her eyes at the lights on the ceiling.
“Can you remember what happened?”
Concentrating, Sam tried to recall the events before she was floating in that vast nothingness. She couldn’t remember anything past leaving for Tucker’s house.
She shook her head.
“That’s alright. We need to take you to get prepped for surgery. That ghost-”
The doctor’s voice faded from her ears as she felt a cold hand grip her own. She looked around but she couldn’t make out anyone.
“My…” Her voice croaked. “My friend. Is he alright?”
The grip on her hand tightened, she recognized it as apprehension. Fear.
The doctor’s face filled with sympathy. “His injuries from the ghost attack were too severe. I’m sorry. He didn’t make it.”
She squeezed the hand clutching onto her own with vice-like intensity. Tears filled her eyes.
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.” The doctor said softly. “We need to prep you for surgery now.”
They wheeled her bed out of the room, the invisible boy holding her hand the whole way there.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Ectober Day 7!! We did it ya'll.
Prompt: Masquerade/ Laboratory
Danny brings the Avengers to his home, snarks at Loki, and finally tells the truth. Tony then gives Danny an offer he can't refuse. He probably doesn't even need to look at the fine print this time!
"For the hundreth time, I'm not posessed." More water was thrown at Danny's face, making him close his eyes and grimace as his hair stuck on his face.
"'s not a demon, at least." Said one of the gigantic men, the shorter of the two. Shouldn't that have been obvious when their whole chanting didn't work? Talk about overkill, jeez.
"So, a ghost." The taller one added, looking down at the kid tied to a chair in the middle of a containing circle and considered him. "The thing is, whose ghost?"
"The ghost of your social life..." Danny mumbled, tapping his foot distractedly on the floor as he thought of a way out.
"Yeah, that's very funny..." The shorter growled, throwing a fist of salt at their captive, who shrieked in pain and twisted in his place at the contact. The man turned away slightly to hide his grin, it had been kinda funny.
"Stop that! What the hell..." Danny looked from one man to the other, his panic raising. He tested his intangibility, feeling relieved when the rope loosened a bit. Still, he didn't like the idea of disapearing while they were watching him. But if there was no choice...
"So, research." Said the long-haired sasquatch, crossing his arms as he turned towards his partner-in-crime. "Lock him in a salt circle and we'll let the kid go once we burn the bones.
For just a moment, both men turned away, looking at the only door in the room; perhaps to contemplate their next move, it didn't matter; what mattered to Danny was that one second where the attention wasn't on him, because that way he could easily turn invisible and fly away as quickly as his icy core allowed him.
"HEY! What the fuck??!!"
Leaving behind two shocked criminals who would most likely keep on their pursue, Danny headed straight home.
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Summary & Warning: DPxDC. Danny is put under the effect of Scarecrow's fear gas.
- - -
His eyes darted wildly around, his breath coming fast and loud as his body trembled.
"Phantom! Are you ok? Answer!" Even with the communicator right in his ear, Danny couldn't hear beyond the horrified screams that tore through his mind.
"See ya later, kiddo." Whispered a man before scurrying away.
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"Phantom! Here you are! Why aren't you answering? What's wrong?" Artemis stopped dead in her tracks as she saw the state the ghost boy was in; hunched over himself on the floor, rocking back and forth as he mumbled nothings into the air, and his hands were clutching his face, somehow tightly enough to make himself bleed even through his gloves. "... Danny?"
The boy raised his head and turned to see the archer a few steps from him, and his eyes widened in fear as he jumped up and backed away until his back hit the wall behind him.
"Can you hear me? What's wrong?" She asked once again, raising her hands in a nonthreatening way so as to not scare him even further.
It didn't work.
Artemis threw herself up to the side as a green blast passed where her head had been, and when she managed to regain her footing, Phamtom was already phasing through the ceiling, fists up and resdy to attack and eyes unhealtilu bright.
"Dammit!" She cursed loudly, and pressed the button of her inter-comm. "Robin, you copy? I found Phantom. He's not fine. I..." The archer swallowed heavily. "I think the scarecrow got him..."
Jazz Fenton’s first masquerade ball was a New Years Eve party with the Lit is Lit Club. It was a cheesy name for a group of college students over-dramatically reading Shakespeare to each other, but no one ever seriously suggested changing it. And yet, here she was, trying to explain to the figure in the gold mask and the navy suit that yes, they all thought it was a bad joke and yes, they were aware that no one used the word “lit” to describe actual literature. The words weren’t flowing right, and Jazz mentally tried to blame her mask.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Ectober Day 6!!!
Prompt: Candlelight/ Exorcism
Continuation of 'Wrong Number' and 'An 11th Summoning'
Danny's back in Amity, there's been no summonings recently. But that doesn't mean people still aren't bothering him. Enter Dash Baxter, Bully Extraordinaire
