Chapter Text
Billy didn't have time to ask how they were gonna get to the Ghost Zone before Danny was pulling him flush up against him, his cool body sending a chill through Billy, causing him to gasp. All he could see after that was green, toxic green like Phantom's eyes, like pure unfiltered ectoplasm, filling his whole field of view. The green didn't disappear when Danny loosened his grip and Billy could look around and see where they were. It surrounded them.
He could see what looked like floating islands in the distance, swirls in the green like ectoplasmic whirlpools, and doors floating around in seemingly endless streams. He took a deep breath of acrid smelling air, and tried and failed to get his bearings. It was like he couldn't tell which way was up and which way was down.
"This place looks... radioactive..."
"It is!" Danny said excitedly, which was absolutely not what Billy wanted to hear. Maybe he should have stayed in his Captain Marvel form for this. "Wait, I mean, not really!" Danny quickly backtracked. "It's... it's not that radioactive. It won't give you cancer or anything unless you spend decades here. It's only a little tiny bit radioactive." He held up a hand with the thumb and forefinger pinched close together.
"That's... comforting..."
"You don't have to worry about the radiation is all I'm saying," Danny reiterated floating further away very slowly. "The fact that everything in this dimension can kill you and the only reason it doesn't is because it just doesn't want to is much more concerning than the radiation. Just don't eat anything. And... stay close to me."
"Right... I'll stick with you then." Billy meant to follow him then, but couldn't figure out how he was meant to move when he couldn't push off anything.
"Nothing will hurt you as long as you're accompanied by the king, I promise," Danny said, meeting his eyes sincerely. "Now come on. You know how to fly, right?" Billy nodded, brows furrowed in confusion. "You can move through the Ghost Zone the same way you fly as Captain Marvel." He'd already tried that, but this body wasn't made to fly like Captain Marvel did.
"I can't even tell which way is up, here," Billy admitted with a nervous laugh. "How the hell am I supposed to find my way?"
"There is no up," Danny said, grinning widely and turning upside-down in demonstration. "There's no gravity in the Ghost Zone, except when there is. And you don't find your way, it finds you, except when it doesn't, and you end up lost."
"You just dragged me into Wonderland, didn't you?" Billy was starting to get that sinking feeling in his stomach that he got whenever he was in over his head. He'd agreed to come without knowing anything at all about the Ghost Zone and now he was facing the consequences.
"Hey, you were the one who accepted the invitation!" Danny chuckled. "Stop worrying. I run this place, remember. As long as I'm here, you'll be completely fine. And I can portal us both out if you get overwhelmed. All you have to do it ask."
"I'm not worrying!" Billy insisted, indignantly. "I just think it would be nice to know where I am or where I'm going."
"That's asking way too much around here, dude." Danny flew on further ahead, but Billy was struggling to move at all waving his arms and kicking his legs, hoping maybe he could swim forward.
"Hey! Wait up!" his friend turned around to see Billy spinning slowly, unable to stop or change directions, so he flew back and grabbed him by the shoulders, holding him firm and steady.
"What gives, Billy?" he asked. "Don't you fly all the time?"
"Not in this form, and never without gravity!" Billy huffed, crossing his arms. "This whole place is... screwy."
"Here." Danny grabbed his hand and started pulling him easily forward. "I'll lead you until you get the hang of it."
"Do you know where you're going?" he asked, remembering what Danny had just said about how you couldn't find your way here.
"Eh." Danny shrugged and wobbled his free hand. "I know where I want to end up," he said after a moment of consideration. "Like I said, the way finds you. The Ghost Zone is a little bit sentient, and a little bit psychic, and space and distance and time are all pretty fucky around here. Actually everything's fucky around here. My goal is the Infinite Archives, so as long as I don't lose sight of it, the Zone'll get me there."
"Is that really how it works?" Billy asked skeptically.
"Probably." He shrugged again, which was not especially reassuring. "Hey look down there." He pointed down at a bile-yellow stream flowing through the vast green emptiness. "That's the river of revulsion. Looks like the Revulsaurus is further downstream now, but you still shouldn't get too close or you might throw up from the smell alone."
"Dude, gross!" Billy grimaced and scrunched up his nose in disgust while Danny laughed.
"Hey, I said I would give you a tour," he said, eyes twinkling with amusement. "The way I remember it, the Infinite Archives shouldn't be too far from here, but... well... nothing is anchored anywhere in the Ghost Zone so everything shifts and after three thousand years, I'd be surprised if anything is where I remember it being."
"So we're gonna end up hopelessly lost."
"Definitely not," Danny promised. "And even if we do, I can portal us home whenever. There's nothing to worry about as long as we don't get separated."
"And if we do get separated?" Billy asked nervously. It seemed like all of Danny's assurances were entirely dependent on him being able to protect Billy if things went wrong, and Billy didn't like being that reliant on anyone, especially without a guarantee.
Danny's grip on his hand tightened, and he slowed until the two of them came to a stop. Free floating. Danny was frowning in thought.
"I'm gonna try something." The green ring that had appeared when they teleported from the real world to the Ghost Zone appeared, but this time, instead of passing over them, it just widened around them and then shrunk right into Billy's chest. "Do you feel it?"
Billy nodded, his eyes wide, and his free hand pressed hard against his chest, as if he could touch the portal inside him through his skin. It felt hot, tingly, almost electric. Like there was a tiny lightning storm raging next to his heart that slowly settled into soft thundering once it got comfortable.
"Good," Danny said. "Try to keep it there. I don't know how well it'll work, but that portal is connected to my soul, so as long as you're holding the portal, I'll be able to find you wherever you are, anywhere in the Ghost Zone, and go right to you."
"Oh..." Billy wasn't sure how to feel about that. It sounded both strange and weirdly intimate. Was he... holding a part of Danny's soul? "Cool." Was it cool? Billy wasn't sure, maybe it was more creepy, or maybe it was a little embarrassing, even. He couldn't decide.
"Let me know if the feeling disappears, because that would mean The portal isn't staying with you and I'll have to find a different method." For some reason other than the obvious risk of him being lost forever in the Ghost Zone, Billy really hated that possibility. He wanted it to stay right where it was. He wanted to trust that Danny would find him, and that he couldn't ever up lost and alone.
"S-sure thing." Why was he blushing all of the sudden? Thankfully Danny had already turned away and started leading them through the Zone again. He pointed down to a floating island covered in thick plant-life.
"That looks like... yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the Never-ending Forest," Danny said. "That's Undergrowth's realm, and he's uh... thorny, so you probably want to steer clear. I've never actually seen it in person, only heard about it from Frostbite."
"Doesn't look so never-ending to me." The island was big, sure, but hardly never-ending.
"Not from this angle," Danny agreed. "But like I said space and distance aren't all they're cracked up to be here. You think you can see the whole realm from above, but once you land on it, you cold walk in a straight line for a century and not reach the other side."
While Danny was talking, a vine reached up from the island and wrapped around Billy's ankle. He yelped in alarm and looking down he could swear the vine passed right through him before Danny shot it with ice and yanked Billy away from it, holding him close against his chest.
"You okay?" he asked.
"All good!" Billy squeaked, and pushed away. "I thought you said nothing would hurt us!"
"You're not hurt, are you?" Danny asked in alarm, looking at the withered vine drifting slowly away from his ankle.
"Well... no..."
"Oh good." He sighed with relief. "Undergrowth doesn't really like me 'cause I kicked its ass once... well... twice now. Even Undergrowth won't actually hurt you, but spooking you is fair game. This is the Ghost Zone, you know, literal home dimension of all ghosts and the most haunted place in the multiverse. If we can't pull jump-scares on unsuspecting passersby every once in a while, what's the point?"
"I don't like jump-scares."
"Yeah, but they won't kill you." Danny smirked, and tugged his friend further away from the Never-ending Forest. "Come on. I think we're getting close."
Billy frowned at him. He'd thought exploring another dimension would be more fun, but so far it had been a more frustrating and freaky. When Danny laid it all out like that, it kinda felt like he should've known better. Still, it wasn't all bad. This place was definitely freaky, but it was cool, too.
"What's with all the doors?" he asked. He'd been wondering about them since he arrived, but even though Danny said this was a tour, he hadn't mentioned them yet.
"Oh, well, the Ghost Zone is infinite, meaning some things are so far from other things that people from one place could go their whole afterlives, potentially millions of years, not knowing others even exist," Danny said. "The doors are portals; they make places more accessible. Most of them lead to specific ghost lairs, but others lead to different dimensions, different times, different places in different times and dimensions. A few of them are basically warp gates to the opposite end of the Ghost Zone, like our equivalent of public transportation, and at least a couple just open up into actual black holes. Basically, no matter what's behind the door, it's usually in your best interest not to open it if you don't know."
"Yikes."
"Yeah, I've almost been killed a couple of times opening the wrong door in here," Danny said. "Most ghosts really hate trespassers in their lairs. Although, to be honest, I still don't know how they tell whose is whose."
"Sounds like a pain in the ass," observed Billy, watching the doors warily, as if waiting for another evil vine or something even more horrible to jump out and grab him.
"Not as much as you'd think." Danny pulled him gently through a spiral of doors, unperturbed by the danger lurking behind them. "It's not like ghosts jump through their doors and cause trouble for no reason. As long as you don't go out of your way to open them, they're just part of the scenery."
"Still..." Billy eyed the doors nervously and tightened his grip on Danny's hand. Getting sucked into a black hole was not on his to-do list. "The scenery in Fawcett won't try to kill you under any circumstances."
"You're telling me none of your enemies ever made the trees and mailboxes come to life with magic and attack people?"
"No?" Billy cocked his head an furrowed his brows, astonished. "Does that happen a lot to you?"
"Well... not the mailboxes," Danny answered. "Technus did turn the street lamps and ATMs into a giant robot a couple of times though. Hey! I think that's it!" They sped up and kept flying until the reached a lavender brick wall. Then Danny stopped and pulled them to the ground next to it, letting go of his hand. As soon as Billy's feet touched the grass, there was gravity again, and he sighed with relief. "Welcome to the Infinite Archives."
"Danny, this is a brick wall."
"Ghosts who live in the real world have a saying," Danny said matter-of-factly. "Doors are for the living."
"I'm not a ghost."
Danny's transformation rings flashed and he stood there, looking very human, in front of Billy. "And we're not in the real world." Danny grabbed his shirt and threw him into the wall. Much to Billy's surprise, instead of smacking his head on the bricks, he went straight through, stumbling to catch his footing so he didn't fall on his back. A moment later, Danny's head appeared through the wall with a shit-eating grin and he stepped through after him. "Cool right?"
"What the hell?"
"Physics in the Ghost Zone is different. Most things are intangible by default, meaning they can only be touched by other intangible things," Danny said. "In the Ghost Zone, humans are the ghosts, because we're tangible, and the walls are not."
"How come I don't fall through the floor?" Billy stomped his foot on the ground a couple times and it felt very solid, thankfully.
"It's a voluntary thing," Danny answered easily. "You don't want to fall through the floor, but when I threw you at the wall, you didn't want to hit it, right? Even if it was just for a split second, you thought something along the lines of 'I don't want to hit this wall', didn't you?"
"I guess, if 'this is gonna hurt' counts?"
"Exactly," Danny nodded. "Now the real trick is finding anything in here."
Looking around, Billy could see immediately what Danny meant. The wall they'd come through was about fifty feet high and so wide he couldn't clearly see the ends of it, and floor to ceiling, wall to wall, the only thing on it was card catalogue drawers. Floating around the massive room they were standing in, were dozens of silver quills, filling out green cards and filing them, removing cards from the catalogue to edit and re-file them.
"This is gonna be impossible, isn't it?" Billy guessed, shoulders slumping.
"It's not as bad as you think," Danny said. "Archivus is super well organized, and they maintain this place. The time-consuming bit is gonna be finding the right rooms." He looked around, searching for a sign maybe. "Where are we now?"
A glowing purple orb appeared out of nowhere and stopped in front of Danny. As far as Billy could see, it was just a purple orb, but apparently Danny could see something inside because he nodded in understanding.
"Can you lead us to the citizenry catalogues?" he asked, and the orb bobbed down and up once and started to lead the way out of the room. Danny immediately started to follow, and Billy trailed after him uncertainly. "Come on, keep up. It's gonna be a long walk."
they walked in silence for a short time, focused on following the orb, but after a while, the silence got boring, and they carried on an easy conversation, keeping the orb in their sights.
"I know I told you a few days ago that CPS finally caught up with me," Billy said. "They stuck me in a group home the other day. There's five other foster kids there, I hardly get any time to myself, and on top of that, all five of them watch me like it's their job 'cause I'm basically the shiny new toy, so I haven't been able to run away yet."
"Maybe you should give 'em a chance," Danny suggested.
"Are you kidding?" he asked, taken aback. "You have no idea what the foster care system is like. I'm not doing this shit anymore. That's why I was on my own."
"You're right, I don't," Danny agreed. "But I used to live in a house that regularly tried to kill me, with parents who thought I was a monster, so it's not like I've never had a bad living situation before." Billy was about to argue that it wasn't the same as living with strangers and never knowing what to expect from them, but Danny spoke over him. "I'm not saying you should abandon all your escape plans, just, you know, give it a chance. You can't slip out right away anyway with everyone's attention on you, so why not? How much worse could it really be than eating out of dumpsters and sleeping on the ground at the rock of infinity. At least at a foster home they're legally required to provide a bed for you."
"It could be a lot worse, actually," Billy said, thinking of the horror stories he could tell about his last stint in the foster system, and others that he'd heard from other foster kids and former foster kids. Danny's expression darkened. No doubt they were both remembering the same thing. Being locked up in a small, dark space for an accident.
Billy had liked that foster home at first. He'd only been there for a few days, but the people were kind, a man and woman, and their bio-daughter Lorraine, who was about to leave for college. There was a color coded chore wheel, the food was good, and everything was kept neat and tidy. Billy had thought once that it might be okay to live with them. Once.
His fourth day there, he dropped a glass while washing dishes, and it shattered on the kitchen floor. The man had hit him for his mistake before making him clean it up with bare hands. Two days after that, he'd gotten up and left his room to use the bathroom in the night, accidentally waking up the woman, and the next night, they forced him to sleep locked up in the closet. He'd skipped school to run as far away as possible the very next day.
"Even if it's fine now, I'm not gonna wait for them to show their true colors," he said bitterly. "The minute I get the chance, I'm making a break for it. I barely had a free moment to turn into Captain Marvel for that meeting, and all my stuff is still at that house." Not having it on him, or at the Rock of Eternity where only he could access it, made him anxious. Since he'd been homeless he learned that any of his belongings not kept on his person or at his magical base were basically asking to be stolen.
"Sure," Danny said, clearly sensing that it was not a topic he should push, which Billy was grateful for. "So, aside from being the new toy, what's this new foster home like?"
"Noisy and chaotic," Billy grouched. "This girl Darla won't stop trying to hug me, and she never stops talking. And Freddy's obsessed with superheroes. You should see the pages in his scrapbook on you. One grainy-ass photo and a bunch of newspaper clippings covered in question marks. He blathered on about this whole crazy conspiracy theory that you might be a hoax."
"He wouldn't be the first," Danny teased.
"Still, you can't even imagine how weird it is to live with someone who keeps a scrapbook—several scrapbooks, actually, about everything there is to know about superheroes, including you, your teammates, and your best friend," Billy said. "I'm serious, I've never met a bigger hero fanboy. It's all he ever talks about. He keeps trying to get to know me or whatever, and all his conversation starters are hero related. 'Which would you rather have, flight or invisibility?'"
"I have both," Danny said thoughtfully. "I think it'd be cool to be invulnerable. It'd make getting shot way less hassle."
"You already have a healing factor?"
"Yeah, but it's messy!" When I get shot, everything gets covered in either blood or ectoplasm, or both, my clothes get ruined, everything around me gets ruined, sometimes the ectoplasm combines with outside chemicals and starts turning super acidic and eating through the floor, plus, it's just gross. When you get shot, nada. The only thing that gets messed up is the bullet."
"That's true," Billy said, only a little bit smugly. "But I only have invulnerability as Captain Marvel. As Billy Batson, I don't have any powers at all. You can use most of your powers no matter what form you're in."
"Jealous much?"
"Little bit, yeah," he admitted. It was really unfair how powerful Danny was, but even despite all that, the only power Danny had that Billy could say he was actually jelous of was the ability to use his powers in his human form. The number of stealth missions that would be infinitely easier if he could shoot lighting out of his hands as Billy Batson, or fly? It would make his jobe so much easier.
Finally the orb led them into another room and stopped. A sign was hung prominently next to the door, but it was in a script that billy didn't recognize. Once they were inside, the orb vanished.
"Is this it?"
"This it it," Danny confirmed. "These are the citizenry catalogues, which means every citizen of the Ghost Zone is listed here... somewhere. Are there any assistants here?" he asked, almost like someone might ask if there were spirits present at a seance. From the rafters flew seven or eight little green globs of goo with curious faces.
"What are those? They're adorable." Billy stepped closer to get a better look, and one of them floated over to rub against his cheek for a few seconds with a soft purr before zipping to Danny along with the others.
"Blob ghosts," Danny answered, scratching one of them on what appeared to be its head. "You can find little guys like these pretty much anywhere in the Zone. They form when ectoplasm coalesces around something and gets a little too concentrated. In the Infinite Archives, they serve as assistants to help you find things. All of them are personally trained by Archivus."
A few of the blob ghosts cooed and trilled. Billy had no idea what any of it meant, but apparently Danny understood.
"We're looking for some people," he said to the blob ghosts, speaking very clearly and carefully as if speaking to a group of toddlers. It was kind of cute, actually. "They may not be citizens, so don't be upset if you can't find them." The blob ghosts bobbed up and down like they were agreeing with him. "We would like to find my sister, living name: Jasmine Alicia Fenton; my friends, living names: Samantha Coral Manson and Tucker Axel Foley; my parents, living names: Jack Terrence Fenton and Madeline Christina Fenton; and one more, a halfa, living name: Danielle Masters, or Danielle Fenton."
The blob ghosts nodded again and then scattered, chittering and trilling.
"How long is this going to take?" Billy asked watching them open drawers, fan through cards and push the drawers closed again. One had to shove a quill out of its way and got bopped on the head with a silver feather for its rudeness.
"Not as long as you'd—" a blob ghost returned carrying a neon green card with dark purple writing on it—"think." He took the card and read. "Jazz made it here. She's going by Psychopomp, and her place of residence is... Amity Park?" Danny looked perplexed.
"What's wrong?" Billy asked, noticing the look on his face and guessing that something was amiss.
"That's where we used to live, like... live live," Danny explained. "Amity Park is my home town but... it's not in the Ghost Zone."
"So... does that mean she's still alive and living there?"
"That's impossible," Danny refuted, shaking his head, astounded. "I've been back there, and the town doesn't exist anymore, and it's been over two-thousand years there, so even if it did, she couldn't still be alive. Plus, if her card is in this room, that means she's a citizen of the Infinite Realms."
"So what's that mean?"
"I guess... somehow the Ghost Zone has an Amity Park now?" Another blob ghost flew down with a card and handed it to Danny. He read the purple writing. "Phantasm. Living name: Danielle Jane Fenton née Masters. Place of residence: Amity Park..."
They waited another few minutes for the rest of the blob ghosts to return and sway side-to-side with their heads bowed. "You didn't find any of the other names?" The blob ghosts repeated the motion again. "That's alright, thank you." He patted each of them on the head before handing back the two cards they'd given him. "You all did a great job." Billy patted a few of them on the head as well. They were squishy and smooth, and felt surprisingly nice to touch.
"What now?" Billy asked.
"Now... I guess we go to Amity Park." Danny called for the purple orb to lead them to the exit, and they started moving again.
"So what's Amity Park like?" Billy asked, as they made their way out. He listened intently as Danny described his hometown.
In all the time they'd known each other, Billy had never heard his friend talk so much about his life before they'd met. For the first time, Billy learned that Danny's old house was also his parent's ghost hunting company, Fenton Works, and that his sister wanted to be a brain surgeon all her life until she was sixteen and decided she'd rather be a psychiatrist instead. Danny told him about Amity Park Zoo and how he'd gotten a 'C' on his bio project, even though he'd learned how to speak gorilla and his findings were featured in a scientific magazine, and he was still a little bitter about it.
He learned that Danny used to go to a school called Casper High and their mascot was the ravens, and he was bullied by the football star Dash who's family bribed the school to make him the varsity quarterback when he was a freshman, and he had a huge crush on the queen of his grade, Paulina, but she never gave him the time of day, even though she practically worshiped Phantom.
Billy was a little surprised when Danny brought up a goth bookstore that had slam poetry nights, since he didn't seem like the type for those things, but then Danny told him about one of his best friends in his home dimension, Sam, a hardcore goth. Apparently, Danny's other best friend was a tech geek named Tucker, and the two of them spent a lot of time at the arcade in middle school before it closed.
To Danny, it seemed the town was as much the people as it was the places, if not more so. The people, and the ghosts, who also made up a significant portion of Danny's description of the town. There was Sid, who haunted his old locker at the school, and Spectra, who impersonated the guidance counselor to make students depressed and feed on their misery. And Technus, and Skulker, the Box Ghost, and Ember, and Johnny, Kitty, and Shadow who just came to have a good time.
The whole time they walked, Billy listened, occasionally interjecting with comments, or asking questions to keep Danny talking. It was the most he'd ever learned about Danny's past by far. Maybe it was this place, the Ghost Zone, his home turf that made him more comfortable, but in any case, Billy wasn't going to complain. Finally, they reached the foyer, and the purple orb vanished.
"Your majesty," came a voice from a nebulous being made of ink and paper, with strange markings, and glowing purple eyes. The being wore a purple, pinstriped vest with a name-tag that 'Archivus' with the words 'head archivist' underneath. Scribbling quills and blob ghosts floated around them.
"Heya Archivus," Danny greeted with a small wave. "Long time, how've you been?"
"I have been well," Archivus' voice had a stange whispery quality, like the sound of fanning pages in a book, a the hissing and popping of an old, dusty record, "and you?"
"Getting better over time."
"I trust you found what you were looking for?" Archivus asked.
"Sure did!" Danny smiled brightly at them. "Your domain is even more well organized and easy to navigate than I remember. The guide orb is new."
"I have a whole fleet of them now, added fourteen hundred years ago, took over a decade for them to lead out all the lost ghosts," Archivus told him. "Best investment I have made in eons. However, me and the blob ghosts are still in the process of re-filing the catalogues of the dead-and-gone after a disaster with an angry poltergeist two hundred years ago."
"You're not working the poor things too hard, are you?"
"Please," Archivus scoffed, a sound like a heavy dictionary snapping shut. "I of all people know the importance of properly managed shift work. And we all take tea breaks at regular intervals, of course."
"Of course," Danny said. "Thanks for having us Archivus, but we have to be going now."
"Farewell, your majesty." Something like a limb stretched across Archivus' formless body to thump twice against the left side of their vest, which then lowered, as if in a bow.
"Bye!" With that, the two of them left the archives, and they linked hands so Danny could lead the way through the air again.
"Hey, what's with that thing Archivus did?" Billy asked.
"What thing?"
"With the thumps and the... was it a bow?" Billy had seen that same gesture before. If he remembered right, Deadman had done the same thing when he first saw Danny float up out of that coffin over a year ago.
"Oh, that, yeah," Danny said, frowning in thought. "That's the 'traditional royal salute of the Infinite Realms.' The thumps are supposed to symbolize a heartbeat, which ghosts don't have, and the bow symbolizes subservience. The whole thing is supposed to indicate that every ghost puts their life in the hands of their king, and not doing it is an insult to the king's authority—traditionally, anyway, personally I prefer when people forget about it. Two beats is standard, four for loyal friends and followers of the king, and six for the king's personal servants, but I don't have any, nor want any. In ghost speak it's called o̷͈̳b̨̳̟̘̱̣s͈̟̗̥̫̻ḙ̦͢r̝̪v͓̹̼̣̬̮ͅi̳̟̭̺t̵͙̩̖u̡̩͎̹̺̲̥̣d̡̩͍̭̞̖̼̘e҉͖."
"That's... kind of a lot." Having everyone in an entire infinitely large dimension put their life in your hands sounded as stressful as being the champion of all magic in the multiverse. Which Billy could absolutely confirm was stressful as hell, but at least it was him and every version of him in the multiverse working together, and not just him alone.
"Yeah," Danny agreed. "It's a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility, and I've always hated it. Especially since ghost king was a total figurehead position for ten-thousand years while Pariah was locked away. They don't even need a king since most of the realms have their own leaders. In all that time, what they had in the Zone was a functional anarchy, and the king was never needed or wanted. The Infinite Realms is way too big to be ruled by a single person anyway; that's too much power for anyone to have. That's why I never use it unless I have no other choice."
"That's probably why they all seem to respect you so much," Billy said. "Zatanna told me about that Pariah guy a while back, and he sounds like a dick. You don't abuse your power, plus as a protector spirit, you always act in your people's best interests, rather than trying to conquer them. No wonder they like you."
"Yeah, well, it's still a pain," Danny said.
"Well, duh," Billy agreed with a scoff. "Responsibility always is. You think the champion of all magic doesn't know that?" He knew that all too well.
"Fair." Danny shrugged and pointed at medieval castle floating above them to the left. "That's the Medieval Realm, my friend Dora is the Princess and leader there. She taught me a lot of stuff about magic and leadership. She can also turn into a dragon. I wonder if her brother's still in jail? His sixteen hundred years should be up, but I kind of doubt he actually made parole."
"Ghosts can go to jail?"
"Depends," Danny answered. "In most dimensions, the dead can't be held accountable for crimes in which case, no they can't; but here, they can, since dead people make up a significant portion of the population."
Danny continued to give his weird tour, pointing out different lairs he recognized, but acknowledging that there were some he didn't. Finally, they came upon a town, floating on an island of it's own. Danny had had something to say about every place they'd passed so far, but when his eyes landed on a relatively ordinary looking town in the Ghost Zone, he fell silent and stopped dead.
"What's that?" Billy asked, curious about his friend's reaction.
"That's... Amity Park..." Danny said, and then dragged Billy down to the sidewalk in the middle of the town. He looked in awe at a brick building with a big ugly contraption on the top and a hideous neon sign. "That's my house!" He didn't let go of Billy's hand as he ran up the front steps to the door, dragging him along, and reached into his right hip, pulling out a set of keys which opened the lock easily. "The locks are even the same."
"This is where you grew up?"
"Yeah... the inside's a little different, but... not by much." Looking around, Billy decided he wouldn't live there if someone paid him to. It was hideous.
"Who's there?" asked a voice from upstairs as a woman walked down. She had long blue hair, glowing green eyes, pale skin, and she wore a black lab-coat over a red and black outfit. "Danny!"
The woman jumped off the stairs and flew to Danny, wrapping him in a hug. Danny finally let go of Billy's hand to hug her back.
"Jazz!" he said. "I can't believe you're here!" They pulled apart and he took a good look at her. "You're older."
"You aren't!" she said, just as surprised. "What happened to you? You just vanished one day and no one had any idea where you went." Danny's smile quickly started to droop.
"Mom and Dad didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Her smile fell just as quickly, and Billy knew right away that she already had several guesses based on that question alone. "What did they do to you?"
Billy cast his eyes down to the floor. This should probably be a private conversation, he thought, but he didn't want to stray too far when he didn't know how to navigate either the Ghost Zone or the town, so he just backed away and stood against the wall to wait in silence.
"They put my in a ghost-proof coffin and screwed the lid down," Danny told his sister. "I don't know exactly what happened after that, but I must've ended up in the Ghost Zone and then drifted into another dimension through a runoff portal and woke up three thousand years later."
"Ew," she grimaced. "Are you okay?"
"I'm good now, yeah," Danny assured her. "I actually kind of made a life in that other dimension. This is my friend from there, Billy." Billy's head shot up suddenly and he waved at her with an awkward smile.
Jazz seemed to notice him for the first time. "Nice to meet you, Billy," she said kindly. "I'm Psychopomp, but Psy is fine, or Jazz, I guess, but no one's called me that in millennia. I'm glad that my brother was able to find friends under such circumstances."
"Yeah, I'm glad I'm his friend too," Billy agreed. "It's nice to meet you." She nodded in polite acknowledgement, and then the moment was over and Billy faded into the background to let the siblings talk to each other for the first time in far too long. He didn't mind.
"Before we catch up," Danny said. "I have to ask... what happened to Mom and Dad, and Sam and Tucker? They weren't listed as citizens in the archives."
"Oh... well... you know Mom and Dad, they would've rather died than become ghosts," she and Danny both chuckled. A person kind of had to die to become a ghost, Billy thought, so it must've been some sort of inside joke. or maybe that was the joke. "When you were gone, there was no one to stop the ghosts coming through the portal, and when they realized you weren't there to stop them, more started coming through, and the ghost fighters that were left couldn't keep up, so they started breaching further out than Amity Park.
"Mom and Dad urged everyone to arms, and thanks to them, an all out war against the Ghost Zone started. I guess that was their goal all along, because they died peacefully, without any purpose or desire to keep on existing, and I'm pretty sure they wore specter deflectors 24/7. We discovered after you disappeared that a person who dies wearing a specter deflector can't become a ghost. Sam and Tucker never bought into the war on ghosts, and fought for ghost rights, and because of that, they ended up getting arrested for treason, and forced to wear court-ordered specter deflectors so they wouldn't become enemies of humanity after death. When they eventually died... well... that's why they're not here, but they always stayed true to their beliefs, and to yours."
That was dark... what kind of hell does a dimension have to be for them to have methods of ensuring people don't become ghosts and haunt them when they die? There was nothing remotely like that in Billy's home dimension. No wonder Danny was always so half-hearted in his attempts to return home.
"Why didn't you have to wear one?" Danny asked, and billy would be lying if he hadn't been wondering the same thing. Not that he wanted Danny's sister to be forced into something like that.
"I did for a while," she said. "But I actually got to be a pretty good liar as time passed, and eventually, I convinced them that I hated ghosts too, and the specter deflector got taken off. It... sucked, I'll be honest with you. It was absolutely terrible, living a lie like that. But I couldn't risk that you wouldn't have anyone to come back to. I needed to become a ghost so you wouldn't be completely alone if you ever showed up again."
"What about Dani?" Jazz furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, and Billy tried not to show that he was listening in, but he was confused as well. Wasn't Danny standing right there? Why would he asked about himself? "I think the archives said she goes by Phantasm now?"
"Oh! Well, yeah, she's here too," Jazz said. "She uses Nellie, now, as her nickname. In my defense, no one ever told me about her when I was alive, and I met her after I became a ghost. She's out traveling somewhere, but her lair is the mayoral mansion, since it was otherwise unoccupied."
"What about Vlad?" Jazz paused for a beat and pressed her lips together.
"Vlad was destroyed by the Guys in White a few years into the war, when they discovered him," she said after a moment. Billy was completely lost at this point. He had no idea who Vlad was, or why a bunch of guys in white would destroy him. Danny's description of the town hadn't included any of them.
"That's... jeez, you know how much I hated Vlad, but no one deserves that." What?
"Yeah..." How much damage could some white guys even do? Billy wondered. Wait, scratch that. Historically, the answer he was was looking for was 'a lot'. He could feel his brows scrunching up and tried to force a neutral expression.
"Hey, how is Amity Park here, anyway?" Danny asked finally.
"Well, when Dan was... taking care of the war in that dimension, the village ghost moved the town into the Zone through the portal... the town as it's supposed to be, anyway. No soldiers patrolling the streets, no huge military base built around Fenton Works to monitor the portal..."
"Since when does Amity Park have a village ghost?" Billy had thought, for a moment, that he might understand the conversation for a second there, when Danny asked how a whole town was moved from the real world to the Zone. But no. He was completely lost again, silently hoping someone would explain something in words he could understand.
"She started to form when the portal first opened, but you know they take decades or centuries to fully form," Jazz explained, although the explanation wasn't the least bit helpful to Billy. "We call her Mayor Amity, and she's the leader of our little realm."
"That's... awesome!" Danny said. "I always thought it would be cool to have our own village ghost! You know the town I live in now has a village ghost too, and she's super nice!"
Finally giving in to his curiosity, Billy couldn't help but ask. "What's a village ghost?" Thankfully, neither of them seemed to mind his interruption, and Danny explained without complaint.
"If there's enough ambient ectoplasm in a place, a ghost can form in the real world just like a Zone born ghost, developing slowly from the emotions of the people who live there, and basically becoming the ghostly personification of the place itself. They're usually benevolent, but also kind of territorial. Sometimes they're a little possessive of their people and don't like letting the locals leave, but they also tend to protect the town from things, or conversely, trap things in the town so they don't affect the outside world."
"And Gotham has one?" Billy asked, a little jealous. Now that he'd explained it, Billy kind of wished Fawcett city had one too. They did sound really cool.
"Yes it does. She's called Lady Gotham, and she breathes smog and has gargoyle wings."
Of course she did. That was pretty much Billy's entire understanding of the City of Gotham itself, that it breathed smog and had tons of gargoyles.
"Yeah, that tracks."
"Is Gotham... a nice place to live?" Jazz asked, clearly concerned, probably based on the fact that a ghost who breathed smog and had gargoyle wings was the personification of the city, which was valid, because Gotham was a terrible, crime-ridden, heavily polluted city.
"Yeah, actually," Danny said. "It has so so many curses on it, but it's honestly a nicer place to live for me than Amity Park was. Despite the fact that there's tons of crime and everyone has trust issues, there's a sense of community and... what's the word... everyone there stands with each other."
"Solidarity?" Jazz supplied.
"Yeah, that!" Danny smiled fondly. "My first day there, Lady Gotham kept the skies clear as a sort of welcome gift, and within a few hours, the whole city got together to reduce light pollution enough that the stars were visible that night, even though it's this massive, industrial city."
"That's... amazing," Jazz blinked in wonderment. Billy agreed, astonished.
"Is that why you insisted on living there even though it's a shit-hole?" Billy asked. "You never told me about that before. I knew it wasn't because of the gargoyles!"
"Yeah," Danny admitted. "The gargoyles are cool though, and they're everywhere."
They spent the next couple hours chatting with Danny's sister, the two boys telling her about the Justice League and all the adventures they had. Billy told her about what happened before they opened Danny's coffin and let him out, and he even told her that he could transform into an adult hero called Captain Marvel, because, hey, she was both dead and an experienced psychiatrist, so who was she gonna tell?
Eventually, though, Billy started to get tired, and Danny was feeling it too, so he gave his sister another hug and promised to come visit her again and maybe even bring her to visit his new home sometime. They stopped by the mayoral mansion to leave a note in the mailbox for Phantasm next time she returned to her lair.
"So who is Phantasm, anyway?" Billy asked.
"She's my cousin... well... my clone, technically," Danny explained as he shoved the note into her mailbox. "My godfather slash arch-nemesis Vlad—" so that was who Vlad was—"stole my DNA so he could try to clone himself a son who would maybe kill me? And definitely take my place. But halfas are nearly impossible to make, and even more difficult to clone, so... most of them destabilized into ectoplasm very quickly. Dani—or I guess she goes by Nellie now, she was slightly more stable than the rest of them, no idea why; she still wasn't very stable, though. But thanks to some problems in the cloning process or contaminated samples, I don't know what—she came out a girl, and Vlad wanted a son, so....
"I managed to free her from Vlad and destroy his cloning lab, and she finally got to run free wherever she wanted with someone she could come back to who would always help her, instead of trying to control her. The problem with cloning a halfa, though, is that without a ghost portal to stabilize the two halves, the ghost half starts to consume the human half, and they'll destabilize if it happens too fast. I was able to stabilize her enough to slow down the process to a safe rate."
"So... she would die slowly?" Wasn't dying slowly worse than a quick death? That was what Billy had always heard, anyway.
"She was born half dead," Danny said flatly. "I watched so many other clones melt, gone forever, and I wasn't going to let that happen to the one who survived. Better a full ghost than a puddle of ectoplasm."
"Well... sounds like you handled it better than Superman."
"Uh... I don't know what that means..."
"Oh," Billy hadn't really meant much by the comment, but he'd basically forgotten that Danny had only been in his dimension for a relatively short while and didn't know all the old Justice League drama, like the Cadmus Clone Debacle from almost five years before. "When Superman found out Lex Luthor cloned him in order to destroy and replace him, he was not happy," he explained. "He basically acted like Conner didn't exist and never interacted with him."
"What a dick!" Danny said, obviously disgusted by the thought. "I thought Superman of all people would be better than that! Isn't he supposed to be the blue boyscout or whatever, paragon of justice for all? Was Lex at least a decent father to him?"
"Dude, Lex is a supervillain, he treated him like shit."
"You're telling me, his creator treated him like shit and his father ignored him?" Danny asked, significantly more pissed off than Billy would've ever expected him to be. "Who the hell was he supposed to rely on? Who was making sure this kid didn't turn into a supervillain all by himself?"
"Him and three other teen superheroes formed the Young Justice team, and they do covert missions together," Billy assured him. "They've been tight for years now."
"At least he had somebody."
"He and Supes are good now, too, though," Billy said, feeling obliged to defend his own teammate, even though when all that first went down, he'd thought it was pretty mean for Superman to treat his kid like that, especially since he'd only been eleven himself at the time, and he'd empathized with Superboy a lot, since his parents hadn't wanted him either. "It took 'em a couple years, but once Supes was sure Conner wasn't gonna try to kill him, they fixed their relationship, and they're like brothers now."
"I guess anyone can grow," Danny grumbled. "Should've been like that from the start though."
"I guess... I don't know what I'd do if Dr. Sivana or someone ever tried to clone me, though," Billy admitted. He was just a kid himself after all; being the champion of magic aside, he didn't know if he could handle that kind of responsiblity, especially since his clone would probably be biologically Captain Marvel's age and not his own. Could he even parent someone older than he was? "I guess it depends on whether they're openly evil or if they're being manipulated. Actually, I don't know if Captain Marvel even has DNA to clone." Danny snorted a laugh.
"I think it's probably time to head home, don't you?" Danny asked.
"Probably. I'm guessing it's about one AM back home," Billy agreed.
"Your new foster family is probably worried sick," Danny said with a smirk and Billy groaned.
"Don't remind me." His new foster 'family' was the last thing he wanted to think about.
"Think of your room," Danny said, pulling him flush up against his cool body, "and I'll take us there."
Billy pictured the cramped room in the new foster home that was only 'his' in that his meager belongings were being held hostage there. He felt the buzzing sensation in his chest ease, and fluorescent green flooded his vision. Before his eyes had even adjusted, he heard a scream.
"Shit! Freddy!" Billy pushed Danny away and ran over to cover Freddy's mouth with his hand. "Shh... be quiet." Freddy's eyes were wide as saucers.
"Freddy?" a voice called up the stairs. "Something wrong?" Shit, Rosa! Why was she even still awake? He had to let Freddy go to cover with her.
"If I take my hand away do you promise not to scream?" Freddy nodded, and he took his hand away.
"Everything's fine, uh, Rosa!" Freddy called, stammering anxiously. "Billy, he just came back, and he s-startled me!"
"Billy?!" she shouted back. "You're back? Come here, let me see you!" Billy shot Freddy a glare.
"Yeah, I'm back!" he shouted. "I'm just gonna go to bed though! It's pretty late!"
"Oh. Alright!" she said, reluctantly. "I'll see you in the morning then."
"Yeah!" he called to her, then whispered harshly to Freddy, punching him in the shoulder. "What the hell was that for?"
"You were gone all day!" Freddy said back, just as angry, rubbing his now sore shoulder. "Nobody could reach you, and we thought you ran away again. Why would you do that?"
"I have a life outside of you guys," Billy snapped. "I barely know you guys."
"Apparently so," Freddy saidm, gesturing behind Billy. "Speaking of, who's your friend who just teleported into our room?"
Billy whipped his head around to see Danny, still standing there. He waved at Freddy awkwardly.
"Technically, I warped here," he said. "I can't teleport; there's a distinction. Also, I didn't know Billy had a roommate, or else I would've warped somewhere with less risk of clipping someone. Freddy, right? He told me about you. I'm Danny."
"Hi..." Freddy maintained his hard-edged glare for longer than Billy would've expected before it crumbled and his inner hero-geek took over. "Are you a meta human?" he asked. "How do you warp? Is it like a bending space-time thing, or more like opening a warp gate? How come Billy never mentioned you?"
"Oh wow, uh... yeah, I guess technically I'm a meta human," Danny answered. "I warp by opening a portal that lets me take a shortcut through another dimension which shrinks the distance between two places to almost nothing. And I'm guessing Billy never mentioned me because he's not a big sharer."
"That's an understatement." Freddy snorted. "Can you portal to the alternate dimension or just through it? Can you go to other dimensions?"
"Okay, that's enough interrogating my friend," Billy interrupted, attempting to save Danny from explaining interdimensional travel and the Ghost Zone to Freddy for the time being. He heard Danny sigh quietly in relief and knew he'd made the right choice. "Why are you even still awake?"
"What do you mean? It's not even ten," Freddy said.
"What?" Billy asked. "No way, it's gotta be at least one AM?" Confused, he turned to Danny who just shrugged.
"Time differentials," Danny said simply, like Billy was supposed to know what that meant. He did not. Freddy apparently did, and he gasped.
"Did you spend all day in another dimension?!" Freddy demanded excitedly.
"Uh... I think I'm gonna go," Danny said hesitantly, gesturing over his shoulder like he was just going to leave through the window. "I'll leave you guys to it." Green light filled the room, and when it faded, Danny was gone, leaving Billy to placate his new roommate by promising to tell him all about it the next day, since his body still thought it was one AM and he really needed to sleep.
It wasn't until he'd changed and laid down that he realized he could no longer feel Danny's portal in his chest, like a tiny swirling storm cloud right next to his heart. Strangely, he missed that feeling, and knowing that Danny would be able to come to him wherever he was, if he was lost, or in danger. It was probably for the best though, since he hadn't forgotten that apparently the Ghost Zone was slightly radioactive. Keeping a portal to the place inside his body probably wasn't the best thing for his health.