Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Clockwork, for all their immense sight, has never quite hated someone as much as they hate the Observants who are standing behind them in this moment.

It's not like they haven't tried to explain why the Observants' plan—to kick the can on Pariah, whose release is looming, then kill the one who facilitates his re-capture—is a bad one. They have! In return, they've had to fend off accusations of favoritism (of course they play favorites, but they'll be damned before they admit it to the Observants) and repeated threats to their role (please, as though they would ever get rid of the one Ancient that vaguely tolerates their presence at all) for a month as a result. You would think, and perhaps they do, that the master of time would have unlimited patience.

This would be incorrect.

Clockwork slips into their youngest form for a moment, glitches into an indescribable mess of pure temporal energy and gears and springs out of pure frustration, then settles into their oldest form and pauses the clock-face they've been monitoring. They grip their staff tightly with both hands. Not for the first time, the Ancient envies the ability of the living and their spirits to take a deep breath to calm themselves.

"Enough." They say, the first word out of their mouth in the last three days. The two Observants freeze in the middle of what had been an impassioned rant about Clockwork's responsibilities, and the pair shrink back as the master of time turns to face them, hood low over their face.

"Er, perhaps—" The braver of the two attempts, but flinches back when Clockwork lifts a single hand.

"Allow me to summarize your concerns again," Clockwork says, tone flat. "You are concerned over the continued existence of King Pariah Dark. You are also concerned over the potential danger that the hybrid known as Phantom may present, should he be manipulated by the one known as Plasmius. These are the two problems at the core of your complaints, are they not?"

"Well, that's not wrong."

Clockwork scowls hard enough that one of the Observants flinches, transitioning into their middle-aged form. "These are delicate issues, and in the scarce moments of peace you have allowed me I have worked toward finding a solution. I have, in fact, come across one. Both of these problems will be dealt with. If another member of your council comes to my Lair before Pariah's defeat to speak to me about this, I will not be merciful in my reaction. Take that message back to that testament to self-importance you call a council, in those exact terms. Is that clear?"

One of the pair lets out a tiny squeak.

"I will assume that's a yes. Leave."

With peace once again obtained in Long Now, they turn back to the mirror, stroking their chin. The unfortunate truth is that the bastard eyeballs have a point. Left to his own devices, Phantom—Danny—isn't strong enough to properly destroy Pariah Dark, nor would he choose to without the knowledge of what the tyrant has actually done. If Pariah is simply sealed again, nothing really changes about the state of the Realms, and the Observants retain their assumed authority over the scattered Lair-Kingdoms and Necropolises.

If his situation doesn't change, Danny will lose everything to the machinations of those who see his kind as a threat, the same ones that even now hide in the shadows after manipulating Pariah so long ago. In a misguided attempt to escape his pain, he'll leave himself more vulnerable than ever, and the resulting creature will become the greatest threat the Realms and the myriad living worlds have ever seen.

If Clockwork were willing to share the details of their existence, they would acknowledge that this was the way things almost always went. They can hardly be blamed for getting tired of seeing the same futures in their investigations, and while there is a way out of that bleak situation, it requires sacrificing one timeline's future to preserve the other.

As impartial as they try to be, they've never been fond of the practice.

So, this time, when Pariah Dark is unleashed and battles Amity Park's defenders, they nudge things ever so slightly. A distraction here, a hit not taken there. Even they can't simply write a script and force time to follow it. But they can create an opportunity in the vast improvisation that the timestream represents, and maybe, just maybe, the players in the show will take it.

Their manipulation done, they sit back to wait with a bowl of popcorn. If their belief isn't unfounded, this will be a mangificent show.

Chapter Text

In the vast majority of worlds, Valerie Gray is unmasked in front of her father by Danny "Phantom" Fenton to prevent her from using the Fenton Ecto-Skeleton powered armor. Usually, this is an underhanded but necessary step to blunt her stubborn nature and save her life, given the severity of her injuries sustained in the battle beforehand.

In some, she isn't even involved, the role of Amity Park's anti-ghost vigilante having fallen to someone else. In others, her injuries are too severe to even attempt to take the armor, and while her identity remains secret her life is at risk anyway. In still others, she unmasks Danny before going into the fight herself, being that world's gatekeeping half-ghost.

In none prior did Phantom steal the armor before the injured but entirely still capable Valerie Gray could even attempt to with both of their identities still secret. She rockets after her rival with single-minded purpose. If Phantom intends to fight the monstrous king, fine. Easy enough for her to put aside her issues with the reckless thing long enough to deal with the threat.

If the ghost intends to surrender, or hand the suit over, then she'll annihilate it for its betrayal. Simple. Refreshingly so, even. She checks her weapons as they travel, tunes up a few of her best one last time. It's something to do in between glaring at the powered armor and taking in the surreal landscapes and doors around them.

The Keep rises in the distance, and Valerie tenses reflexively, shouldering her favorite rifle. The jagged spires are surrounded by what was probably once a prosperous city, ruined buildings and iridescent flame marring what could've once been a thriving metropolis that rivaled Amity Park. It's unsettling, and she chooses to focus on keeping Phantom in sight rather than letting herself get distracted.

She's been to the Zone before, of course. But she and Phantom had simply fought the hunter ghost then, Skulker, and traveling back to the Fenton portal afterward was as simple as passing craggy landscapes, imposing doors, and empty, green 'air'. The implication of a ghost king, of this ruined city, of all of it—the girl isn't ready to process all that yet. Still, she already finds it hard to keep herself from questioning whether ghosts like Phantom are really as simple as she'd thought.

Whatever. Focus on the task, she tells herself. Just like the martial arts competitions she misses with all her heart, tune out the things that don't matter, focus on defeating the opponent.

Said opponent registers on her scanner as soon as they pass into the Keep's vast entry hall despite the interference of the Zone, and she tightens her jaw at the realization of just how much power she's pitting herself up against on faith that Phantom can pull its weight. If that bastard Masters had warned her about the importance of the ring before she used it as a distraction, maybe this could've been avoided.

Too late now.

King Pariah Dark is three stories tall, wrapped in otherworldly furs and metal darker than the deepest shadows. Its face is pale and gaunt, too little battle-scarred skin stretched over bones that are far too sharp. The parts of it that are visible are rotting, exposed tendons and blackened muscle peeking through gaps in skin that's leather-worn but gossamer-thin.

It looks nauseating, a zombified barbarian king with a rictus grin and one eye burning like a lit coal from a too-dark eye socket. Green flames enshroud the back of its head, pouring off of the crown that sits firmly on its brow, and it keeps a tight grip on a mace the size of a car with its right hand.

She hates it with every fiber of her being for what it did to her home. As it speaks back and forth with Phantom in that unnerving static language of the dead, the tone the smaller ghost uses makes it clear that she's not alone in that feeling.

When the battle begins, it's like an explosion of movement. Pariah throws itself at Phantom, Phantom raises a shield to block its swing, and Valerie boosts into the air and opens fire on Pariah's back. Her rifle's shots largely splash against the king's armor, leaving it scorched but intact, but it's not like she really expected much else yet. The goal is to provide support, for the moment, especially since the crown simply deflects any attempt to dislodge it and lashes out with flames of its own if she gets too close.

One of her strafing runs results in a fireball lashing against her back, sending her soaring up toward the roof for shelter while biting back a scream. The suit absorbed the worst of it, but the flames definitely punched through, leaving her with an open wound from her left shoulder down to her lower ribs. She shakes her head, dives back into the fray. The pain isn't that important right now.

What is important is the way Phantom fights back, clashing against Pariah's power with an almost human desperation. Valerie switches her focus to shooting down the fireballs Pariah continues to conjure, giving Phantom more room to maneuver around the creature's mace. Even with the suit, the battle is clearly taking its toll on the ghost, the suit draining it as reliably as it drained Jack Fenton before.

It's a bit bizarre, honestly, but she doesn't have time to worry about it when the mace comes sailing through the space ahead of her. She throws her board's nose up and halts its momentum, the heat from the weapon's flames searing even through her suit at this distance. It stings at her eyes despite her mask, flares against the burn she received earlier. She pushes through the pain, focuses again.

"Phantom!" She barks, and her rival-turned-ally launches from the ground to slam into Pariah's midsection, sending the ghost king off balance. With Pariah's guard disrupted, Phantom begins firing radioactive-green rays from both of the suit's hands, pushing the king back toward the looming sarcophagus at the back of the room.

The crown flares brighter, Pariah calling its power to bear and beginning to push back against Phantom's blasts. Valerie inhales deeply, trying to ignore the sweet smell of slightly rotten limes and copper that fills the Zone's atmosphere.

She's only going to get one shot at this. If she fails, she'll definitely die. But Pariah's mace is in its hand again, and Phantom's strength is clearly faltering. She slams her heel back onto the board's accelerator and leans forward, the sound of its engines blocking out everything else.

Valerie Gray's hands wrap around the Crown of Fire, and her vision goes white. Every nerve lights up with energy, raw, uncontrollable, burning through her like she's been plugged straight into a power plant. She's dimly aware of her shoulder hitting the ground, of Pariah's enraged bellowing, but she hears and feels so little of it that it may as well not have happened at all.

Hundreds of voices in her mind whisper "Usurpers, warriors, would-be conquerors, will you be crushed by our weight or rise to it?" and she chokes on what she thinks might be blood. There's someone screaming. Someones. Herself and someone else, maybe, possibly, because it can't be Pariah. Phantom?

She pushes past the pain and overwhelming sensation to rip her mask off and blindly spit whatever's in her throat onto the ground. The world returns to her in fits and starts. Phantom has one arm around her and the other raised to project a shield, the suit abandoned behind it. The impossible size of the crown has left it hanging off the ghost's shoulder and draped around hers as well, and contact with the relic seems to have left them both seizing and struggling.

Pariah is bashing the shield repeatedly with its mace, but nothing seems to be getting through. That may be because of the way Phantom's normally green eyes are pure white, which may be the natural result of the raw power flooding straight through her and likely through the ghost as well.

The strength of the crown is enough that she's not entirely sure she's still alive in the moment, and if she finds out that she survived this mess, she'll have no idea how. Her body feels disconnected somehow, heavy, the pressure of the crown—or perhaps of what it represents—threatening to crush her into the stone below. It's almost unbearable. She feels more than sees Phantom hit its knees beside her.

What a pair they make, she thinks hysterically.

Then Phantom's midsection sparks, and light races outward underneath its skin like a wave. In its place it leaves behind aching familiarity, even with the brilliant ever-shifting white of the crown's unleashed strength in its—his—eyes.

The shield falters, and the crown's question roars in her mind, and Danny's arm falls to the side.

Valerie Gray pushes herself up to meet the exhausted boy in the middle, supporting his weight. She raises her empty hand as though she's holding one of her weapons. The crown sings in her bones at her determination, its power racing down her arm and bursting free in a beam of pearlescent white. The attack impacts Pariah's mace halfway through his swing and throws its arc sideways, crushing a support pillar and twisting the king's malicious sneer into a hateful snarl.

She can't hear whatever it roars at her. She doesn't care. She looks to the probably-maybe-Danny-Phantom-thing she's holding up and sees pained relief on his face, and decides to shelf her suspicions until later. Right now, it doesn't matter that this is the ghost boy and she's his hunter. Right now, it doesn't matter that this is almost certainly impossible. Right now, what matters is that they're here together, Amity Park's last stand, with a weapon in their hands that even Pariah struggles to overcome on its own.

"Together!" She yells, and she doesn't recognize her own voice under the cacophany that erupts from within her.

"Together!" He yells back, and under a thousand thousand other voices she hears Danny Fenton loud and clear.

They lift their hands, the crown tightens around them, and the unshackled power of the Zone (no, something says in the back of her mind, the Infinite Realms) pours through and out of them, a lance that pierces straight through Pariah Dark and burns its way up and out of the Keep like a beacon.

When the light fades the two bloodied teenagers lean heavily on each other, bound together by the iron of the crown around their shoulders. Neither of them should be standing, much less in one piece, after pushing that kind of power through them. It should've burned them out like a fuse being blown, destroyed them from within, and yet there they stand as Pariah falls to its knees.

The fire in its exposed eye is dim. There's a hole wider than Valerie is tall through its chest, right at sternum height. The ring drops from its hand and rolls toward them like a thing possessed, coming to a rest against her boot.

The fallen king's shock fades into a knowing smirk, and both Valerie and Danny shudder in response, the crown tightening possessively against their bodies.

"Having that much power," Pariah wheezes, static underlying every word. Valerie startles at the realization that she can understand it. "It's a terrible burden. Isn't it, children?"

Before either of them can respond, the king falls forward into a heap and begins steaming, its ectoplasm destabilizing before their very eyes. Valerie gags and Danny bites his fist, watching the king's body disintegrate in real time. Still, she finds herself unable to look away. This is important. This feels important at a level that she can't possibly define. The High King of Ghosts, destroyed.

"Are-" She starts, stops, swallows the bile that threatens to crawl up her throat. "Are you okay?"

"Been worse." Danny says. Neither of them sounds particularly steady, exhaustion and pain underlying every word. "You?"

"Same." Valerie says. "Danny?"

"Ye-" A pause. He wavers a bit, leaning against her a little more for a moment. She's almost certain he's as lightheaded as she is in the moment. "Yeah. Sorry."

"Fuck." She manages, and he barks a rueful laugh.

Then the crown flares around them, pulls against them, and the last thing she sees as they both collapse is the ring twisting and splitting into two before her eyes.

Chapter Text

"Clockwork! What is the meaning of this?! Allowing the crown to fall into the hands of the living and the hybrid?! What are you thinking?!"

Clockwork resists the urge to flash-age the Speaker of the Observants to dust, and in their opinion, this is quite the feat of strength. It would, admittedly, not last. The Observants, like Clockwork, cannot be affected by the passage of time in any way that matters. In Clockwork's opinion, this means that converting one into dust or backward into the base components of ectoplasm is ultimately harmless stress relief.

The Observants disagree. Funny how that works.

"I solved both of your concerns at once." Clockwork replies, not bothering to turn around from the screen in front of them. They know the Speaker well enough not to bother. The senior Observant is one of the few eyeballs Clockwork might even call a friend, despite their roles. "And the Crown chose to accept my solution, did it not?"

"As though the whims of the Infinite are somehow infallible. The Crown also chose to accept Pariah Dark, once, after all. This is unacceptable, Clockwork! Fix it!"

That causes them to whip their gaze around, an uncharacteristic snarl on their face that causes even the oh-so-confident Speaker of the Observants to falter and drift backward. "Do you presume to tell me to defy the Crown's judgement, Speaker?"

The Speaker stammers, then collects themself, crossing their arms stubbornly. "I presume that you will not allow the choices of the Crown to endanger the stability of the Infinite Realms once again. The point of removing Pariah from the situation was to heal the damage he did, not to cause more!"

"And what would you have me do? Living or no, the children destroyed Pariah's core in honorable combat, and did so with the blessing of the Crown behind them far more clearly than it ever fell behind him. They survived its binding after suffering multiple injuries and exhausting their own strength, which is something I doubt either of us would be able to do while unharmed." Clockwork waves one of their hands at the screen they had been watching, the tempo of their pendulum-core increasing with their speaking volume. "Tell me, Speaker, do you wish me to attempt to assassinate the heirs to the Realms in cold blood?! Because if you've forgotten, the Crown will defend its chosen against all comers, even as incapacitated as they currently are!"

The Speaker's eye darts to the screen, and their arms fall to their sides. Even Long Now's nigh-omnipotence has trouble tracking the newly-appointed heirs, as deep into the Realms as the Crown has taken them. What glimpses the screen provides are from unclear positions, but the two are alight with the Crown's power, unconscious, their bodies straining to contain the forces the artifact is pouring into them.

"They are children." They say, quiet horror in every sound. "What it's doing will destroy them, and they will destroy us. Pariah was simply crowned and took the throne and the ring. Why is it doing this?"

For a moment, Clockwork is silent, the room echoing with the ticking of Long Now's clocks and the frantic pulse of the Ancient's pendulum. They transform into their oldest form, and the lines of age on their face are deeper than they've been in over a century. "I don't know. I cannot see the possible futures of the Crown and its bearers, and I don't know why. Pariah was never obscured from my sight this way, merely difficult to predict."

"They are clearly still part of the progression of time. The Council is going to be in an uproar over this, and I personally…" The Speaker trails off, a ripple passing through its form in place of a shiver.

"Between the two of us," Clockwork leans on their staff. "I admit that this may have been a mistake. I didn't foresee this behavior from the Crown. But it's a mistake that cannot be undone now."

"If your intent was to reassure me, Clockwork, you've done a terrible job."

"If my intent was to reassure you, I would've kept Long Now sealed."

"What will you do now? I have to tell the Council something."

Clockwork pauses, looking pensive. "I will watch. And get in contact with the others. I will carry on my duties, and should we become required to intervene as we once did, we will. Does that satisfy you?"

The Speaker chuckles lowly, shaking their head. "Satisfy? Of course not. But it's better than I expected, I suppose."

"You should know that you're the only tolerable member of that whole damned Council." Clockwork smirks. "Tell the younger members to stop harassing me while I'm working, or I'm going to start sending them back to you in jars again."

The Speaker raises their hands in a 'what can you do' gesture. "I don't control them any more than I control the Council. But I do appreciate your restraint, old friend. I wish you luck."

Clockwork bites back the reflex to say they don't need luck, and simply hums. Maybe, just this once, a conversation with the Lady about things would be appropriate. It has been quite some time since they were in the same room, after all.

Sensing the conversation is over, the Speaker turns and leaves, Long Now shutting its own doors behind them. The Lair neatly detaches from its current position in space-time and drifts along its own path, taking advantage of its master's distraction to relocate according to its whims.

Said whims lead to the entire Lair materializing a thousand feet above Amity Park, the pulse of energy sent out by its arrival scattering the various creatures and spirits that have been attempting to harass the displaced city. Despite the mild panic caused by such an ominous structure manifesting, the city's defenders need the reprieve—and Long Now is just aware enough to know that it wants to get in good with the new heirs even before its master has accepted their titles.

Sam Manson and Tucker Foley have faced down some of the ugliest things the portal can spit out. They've been with Danny from the start, and even when he and his foes are at their most inhuman, they've never backed down. Together, they're willing to take on almost anything to help him out.

Almost anything doesn't quite include Jasmine Fenton, which is why they panic when she pops up in the back of the Specter Speeder thirty seconds after they take off with it.

See, the kids are used to acting independently. It's been months of three fourteen year olds holding the line up until now, and nobody else that they're aware of has figured out that the not-quite-human-looking ghost Phantom is actually also still alive. Outside of Valerie Gray, the city doesn't exactly have much else in the way of competent defenses against the ghosts that attack it, and as well-meaning as the Fenton parents might be they aren't particularly reliable.

So when Jazz says she knows Danny is Phantom, knows that they've been helping him, and isn't mad but would really like some answers about where her baby brother is, the two cave immediately.

"What do you mean, you don't know where he is now?" Jazz asks, pinching between her eyes to try and stem the tide of her incoming headache.

"Well, we couldn't follow him because Valerie would've gotten suspicious." Sam says, spitting the other girl's name like a curse.

"He also told us not to?" Tucker offers, turning to resume piloting the Speeder. "Normally we kind of ignore him when he does that, but there's nothing normal about all of this, sooo."

"Okay. So. My brother stole the suit of armor from the basement, then flew off to fight the ghost that sucked an entire city into the Ghost Zone, and the only person who went with him is Valerie Gray for whatever reason?" Jazz asks, surrendering to the headache. She climbs over the front seat and drops between Sam and Tucker heavily, squeezing her eyes shut.

"She's that gray hunter that keeps chasing him." Tucker says, as though that isn't full of horrifying questions in and of itself.

"She's an asshole." Sam adds.

"Language." Jazz blurts reflexively, and Sam scowls at her. "Okay. Okay, that's—I'll deal with all of that later. You guys think he's in that weird tower?"

Sam maintains her scowl for a second, then sighs. "We're not sure, but it beats trying to find any other leads right now or using one of your parents' trackers. Whatever that tower is, it's like it chased off the things that were still attacking people in the city."

"Also? If we had to sit around doing nothing any longer, I think we were both going to snap." Tucker says, drumming his fingers against the yoke of the Speeder a few times. "Sam still might, actually."

"You know what, for once, you're right." Sam says, putting a hand on the ecto gun she has holstered at her hip. "I need something to shoot, or yell at, or something."

"We're talking first." Jazz insists. "Whatever's going on, we don't want to make more enemies, especially if they could be friends who can help us find Danny."

Sam clicks her tongue, but doesn't argue. Jazz can't find it in her to blame the girl for her agitation. None of them have probably slept more than a few hours since this whole mess started, and they're all disheveled and doubtless in need of a shower and a change of clothes. Unfortunately, ghost invasions on the scope of kidnapping an entire city don't leave much room for taking care of yourself.

Besides, if something happened to Danny, Jazz might just give some of the weapons stashed in the Speeder a try herself. The really good beating-something's-face-in ones that her mother prefers. Maybe the baseball bat. Find out if ghosts have bones to break.

Letting herself get lost in the fantasy of saving her brother by any means necessary helps distract Jazz from the exhaustion of the last few days, and her headache has abated somewhat by the time Tucker brings the Speeder to a gentle rest at the base of the tower. He hefts a sort of ectoplasmic shotgun on the way out, Sam draws her pistol, and Jazz turns to the weapon rack above the left side passenger seats and browses for a moment.

Ultimately, she bypasses the whip-styled weapons and her mother's backup staff in favor of the same Peeler she once used on Spectra. Once the armor finishes deploying she also retrieves the brand-new Creep Stick at the bottom of the rack, grinning at the idea of it. The Peeler's a frightening weapon on its own, sure, but a baseball bat is much harder to miss with and she's never been particularly good at marksmanship.

Thusly armed, Jazz exits the Speeder and joins Sam and Tucker in staring up at the tower's doors. It's an impossibly tall spire, an edifice of bricks that appear carved out of some sort of obsidian or ebony. Gears carved of something like pearl or ivory jut from the structure seemingly at random, turning in time with the ever-present sound of ticking clocks. Each time she blinks it seems to change its height, the gears rearranging themselves, and the effect quickly becomes disorienting enough that she gives up on trying to estimate it.

While Sam and Tucker are still enthralled by the tower's upper floors, Jazz marches up to the massive wood (oak?) doors, prepared to knock somewhat politely with her bat—

—only to stop short as they swing inward with no further prompting, almost invitingly, revealing an entry hall to rival a castle that definitely extends further back than the tower's exterior does.

"What." She says, intelligently, and then yelps at the thunderous static-laced cursing that erupts from within the tower. She readies her bat, hearing the distinct whine of ecto-guns priming behind her, and braces herself for the arrival of. Of.

Is that a frigging toddler ghost? It's so small, distinctly an infant despite the scowl on its face and the scar over one eye. Sure, it's uncomfortable to look at for so many reasons. Its skin is a stark blue, and its chest is hollow save for a swinging brass pendulum in a cavity that seems far, far deeper than it could possibly be. It boasts four arms, each hand ending in wickedly sharp claws, and in place of its legs a wispy tail protrudes from underneath its purple cowl and cape. It grips a staff in three hands that's unmistakably made of gold, tipped with the spitting image of a stopwatch on one end and a spike on the other.

On closer examination, its every motion seems to be synced to the tempo of the pendulum in subtle ways. Even the way it bobs gently up and down occurs to the rhythm, but if Jazz wasn't looking closely, she wouldn't notice at all.

Then it speaks, and it sounds like the most authoritative adult she's ever heard, and her brain does another little backflip trying to process everything.

"I believe," It says, looking up at the ceiling, "That I told you to consult me before allowing guests to enter, you damnable brick pile."

Then it pinches the bridge of its nose in an incredibly familiar gesture of exasperation. It looks Jazz dead in the eye, and waves her in.

"You may as well come in. This explanation will require quite a bit of time, and if Long Now wants you to enter, then there's no point putting it off."

Chapter Text

With a burst of awareness, It suddenly Is again. This is an odd sensation, in that there is an It for a sensation to be felt by. Really, It feels far too spread out to Be much of anything at all, intermingled with The Infinite along with Its Other. The Other, too, stirs. It finds that the Other being Something other than simply part of The Infinite with It is another strange concept.

With the concept of Being comes the concept that It and the Other were not Something before, and causality and time slip into Its awareness like impurities. They disturb the act of simply Being with their insistence, and Its awareness narrows away from The Infinite, though The Infinite hazes at the edges of Its pieces and always will and always has.

Hasn't it?

Well, yes. By its very nature The Infinite always Has Been and, Being a part of it for a time, It and the Other must always Have Been as well. But there's something there, in the impossible mists of infinity. A finite, linear existence. Two sequences of events, two not so static entities.

Its head hurts, which is how It remembers that It has one and also that pain can exist. This leads it to the feeling that pain is unpleasant, which is a whole realm of distinction that opens back up to it.

Above all else, It is confused, and finds this to be quite distasteful, and the Other is also confused and It knows this even though they are now separate. The Other is not enjoying the experience any more than It is, at least. It's not sure that's something to be celebrated, but there's something companionable about shared misery, It finds. It may have known that, at some point.

Existing in this way is exhausting.

And yet.

It is they is Somebody. To be Somebody is something with meaning to them, is important, is necessary is vital is theirs. But so much is missing of them and it aches, not in the way their head aches but something deeper and less physical. They are small are real are tired are lost are afraid.

They grab onto the truth that they are, that their Other is Somebody as well, and the body they're realizing they (still?) have (again?) quakes with knowing that part of them isn't them anymore, is The Infinite instead.

Fear of losing more constricts them further into being a physical, limited thing again. They long to be part of the Infinite again. They long to be their finite self again. They know which one hurts more to lose, and they cling to the self they're piecing back together with all the might they can find in them.

They had, have had, will have, a name, two names. They grapple with memory, syllables in languages that are alien to their home universe and all adjacent slipping through their grasp in the effort. When their identity remains unnamed, they discard it for the moment and extend their awareness into the body that they've found themself occupying.

They're not really sure if it's theirs or not, at this point. It seems to have the right number of limbs, digits, ears. There's not much to hear, or maybe their hearing simply isn't a thing yet. Their eyes refuse to open, although they might be trying to move the wrong muscles. This seems alarmingly likely when they suddenly inhale, and their coalescing mind is flooded by petrichor, ozone, citrus. Names that have meaning, that can be assigned to the scents.

Their hand brushes their Other, and the Other locks a tight grip around their wrist, and thoughts of red and gray and chasing and longing come with its warmth. Valerie. The Other has a name, like they do, and it's Valerie and they're Danny and they have to hold on for Jazz and Sam and Tucker and it's like a floodgate finally bursting.

They're—he's—Danny Fenton, fourteen. He is also Phantom. And somewhere deeper than all of it, he is irretrievably a part of something so vast that trying to grasp it again would scatter him just as much as it did before, if not more so.

Danny opens his eyes and the stark green atmosphere of the Infinite Realms greets him. He's never, not once, been happier to see the clouds of condensed ectoplasm drifting past. They may be lost, but they exist to be anything at all. He breathes deep and finds lungs that fill properly this time, twists his hand to grip Valerie's tightly, and tries not to cry.

God, he wants to cry.

He turns his head. There's Valerie, still in her battered suit, breathing and staring out at the clouds and looking as lost as he feels. Her eyes trace the edges of a passing rock, sparkling with what he thinks are probably tears that she also refuses to shed.

The thing that immediately sets off another war in his brain is the recognition of the plain metal band that sits on her brow, wrapped around her head like it belongs there. But it does belong there. It belongs there as much as the one on his own head, and he knows this, but he doesn't, does he?

He works his mouth, but nothing comes out. It takes him two more tries, with her now looking at him and raising her brow, before he remembers that he needs to push air through his throat to speak.

He croaks a "Hey, Val," and the way his voice sounds—as though he's gone weeks without using it—is what finally breaks the dam. The two begin crying, then sobbing, adrift in what appears to be an uninhabited part of the Realms, and the damning thing is that if asked Danny isn't sure he can explain what they're crying over.

Time is still fuzzy, linear but not willingly so. They aren't sure how long they spend like that, clinging to each other's hand, mourning something undefinable. The whispers of the Infinite sing in the echoes of their sobs, answering, almost soothing, if the Infinite is capable of such a thing.

It's Valerie who finally breaks out of the spiral first, rubbing her face with her sleeve and then taking a deep breath. "We won, right?"

Danny hums, hiccups on the last of his sobs, and twists to face her properly. "We beat Pariah, at least. Is this winning?"

"I don't—" Val lets out a derisive snort, wipes her eyes again. "I don't know, Fenton. Nice hat, though."

"Back at you," Danny says. "Where even are we?"

"What're you asking me for?" Valerie says, and there's a bit of a sharp edge to her voice. "You're the ghost, apparently, ghost boy."

"Man, I know we need to talk about that, but are you seriously mad at me now for it?" Danny asks, brows furrowed.

Val doesn't respond at first. She looks away, watching a particularly dense cloud descending past them, and he can see her chewing her lip. As exhausted as everything in his very soul is, he takes it as a slightly encouraging sign that she doesn't let go of his hand.

"I should be." She squeezes his hand tight. "I really fucking should be, you idiot. I should be mad about you letting me shoot you forever, about having my life ruined by a dog you fucked up catching, but I just…"

She trails off. Danny risks a squeeze back. "I'm sorry."

"Don't. God help me, Danny, don't you dare, not yet, or I'll break your stupid nose to shut you up." Valerie says, and for all the heat that should be there her tone rings hollow and empty. She breathes in deeply, then turns to face him. "After all of the shit we've done for the last few months, I think I already know you didn't actually mean to fuck everything up for me."

She pauses, searches his face. He forces down every intrusive thought and random comment his brain throws at him and meets her eyes instead.

Huh. Were her eyes always such a rich emerald? They feel deeper, multifaceted. He can't help but want to keep staring at them.

"I don't want apologies." She finally says, and he has to bite his tongue from asking any stupid questions immediately. "I just want an explanation. Maybe to yell a little. Later. And then we can figure out everything else. I should be mad, like I said, I just—you feel it too, right?"

"Yeah." Danny says, softly, because he does. There's who he was before this, and who he is now, and some of the things past-him felt so worried about just feel… thin? Empty. No substance. Maybe this is what it feels like to have a near-death experience, instead of a half-death experience. Don't people come away from those with a new perspective on stuff?

Whatever, unimportant. He focuses on Valerie again, finding that she's returned to chewing on her lip while he was distracted in his own head.

"So," She says, finally. "We're alive, and Pariah's gone, and we're lost. My gear's missing, including my board. Don't suppose you can do your thing and get us out of here?"

"I'm half dead, not a homing pigeon." Danny rolls his eyes.

Although.

He does know where the portal is. If he thinks about it, he's pretty sure he knows where everything in the Realms is, especially something as violent as a wound in the fabric of infinity. Because, of course, the Infinite knows itself, doesn't it? His thoughts and his sense of presence fall away, and the walls he's constructed to separate himself from the Infinite start to crumble, and what even is 'he' anyway—

He gasps, cheek stinging, as a slap from Valerie snaps him back to himself. When he can process what he's seeing again, he realizes she's shaking, staring at him with undisguised panic in her eyes.

"Danny?" She asks, and he swallows because it takes him a full second to connect 'Danny' with himself.

"Shit. Oh, shit." He rubs his face, and feels a little further from hysteria when she grabs his wrists gently. "What was that?"

"I don't know." Valerie bites her lip, maybe a little harder than normal. "You were getting, uh, weird. Like a scope going out of focus slowly."

Danny's stomach is such a tight knot that it might pull him in, collapse him like a dying star. He lowers his hands, eyes staring straight into Valerie's.

There was an Other.

He has to know.

"Val, which way is the portal?" He asks, softly. "Humor me. Try to think about it."

Val gives him a glare that could probably melt stone for what he's sure seems like stalling, but she complies. Her grip slackens after a moment, her eyes burn like prisms of colors that Danny has no name for (but is intimately familiar with, because they burn within him as well, don't they?) and sure enough, she starts to fuzz out at the edges.

Details slowly slip away, until Danny grabs her shoulders and shakes her violently, his heart jackhammering in his chest. She's about to go back, part of him screams. She's going to be lost again, just like he was about to be.

Another, quieter, calmer part questions the entire premise of being lost to begin with.

He ignores it and slumps in relief when her eyes flutter, her pupils reappearing. She gasps, then shakes her head a few times. "What the fuck was that?"

"Yeah." Danny says, before he huffs out a tired laugh. "Me too."

Valerie groans, crossing her arms over her stomach. Danny can relate. It's not nausea, per se, but they're both acutely aware of how it feels for their organs to exist, and that's not fun. "Okay. I guess I have to trust you to fly us out of Hell, or whatever."

"You and I both wish this was Hell. Hell would make more sense." Danny deadpans. He goes to transform and doubles over, his body bursting with that prism-shade for a moment. It's not quite pain- it simply feels like something inside of him is too big, and in that moment, he feels Val's hand on his shoulder, hears her saying something, but she's so small in his senses—

—and then he's fine, Phantom once more, and able to realize she's holding him around the waist and chest like she's trying to keep him together. Maybe she is.

"You with me, ghost boy?" She asks, her voice shaky.

"Holy shit." He manages, in lieu of a better answer.

And then, before either of them can say another word, an impossible clocktower-keep springs into existence before them, its front gate wide open. The Specter Speeder sits anchored off its left side, and Danny feels a moment of relief at the sight before taking in the rest of the tower's facade. A ghost—Danny's brain tickles with the word 'time'—floats in the doorway, regarding the pair with bright red eyes and a tired expression.

"There you two are."

Chapter Text

Valerie is only slightly embarrassed that her first instinct upon sighting the time ghost is to reach for a gun she knows she doesn't have. Sue her. She's willing to accept Danny being Phantom, for the time being, but a clearly powerful ghost appearing with a lair that makes Amity's tallest buildings look puny?

Even with the significantly more pressing issues hanging over their heads, that makes her feel a bit twitchy.

If the ghost notices or cares, it doesn't bother to show it. It just waves them both in, and when Danny starts toward the door, she jabs the arm around her waist and glares at him. "Seriously?"

"Ow. What? You wanna try to fight right now?" Danny hisses, and well, that's probably a fair point, but it doesn't mean she has to like it. She glares a little harder, and he tilts his head toward the side of the keep behind her, which requires her to twist a bit.

Ah. The Fentons' bizarre Infinite-Realms-submarine-thing. She tries not to worry about smoothly the term 'Infinite Realms' has slid into her brain, because again, priorities. Still, if the cylindrical ship is here then that means someone brought it here, and if this ghost wanted to trick them into coming in of their own power, then it would've doubtless made the ship far more obvious.

She sighs, mutters a begrudging 'fine', and lets Danny carry her to the rock that the ghost's lair sits upon without further complaint. As soon as she's close enough, she pries his arm free and hops down, grateful for the feeling of something solid under her again. She doesn't mention it aloud, because Danny would inevitably make some stupid pun about it being 'grounding' or whatever and then she'd have to hit him again.

"So what do you want?" She asks, glaring at the time ghost. Danny groans, but she ignores him in favor of crossing her arms.

The ghost pinches the bridge of their nose, shimmering into an elderly version of themself. "What I want is to collect the Realms' heirs apparent without violence, if possible, Miss Gray."

"Not that we don't appreciate the pickup—" Danny goes intangible just as Valerie's elbow would've hit his arm— "But what does that have to do with us? We don't know where Pariah's kids or whatever would be."

The ghost levels them both with a stare that could freeze fire itself. "I know you have not been dead very long, Danny, and Valerie is still some semblance of living, but you are surely more clever than that."

"Don't be a dick." Val snaps, before glancing at Danny. Her eyes drift up to the thin metal circlet on his brow, and she bites her lip. "Oh."

Danny's gaze soon lands on her own mirrored headpiece, and he grimaces. "That doesn't make any sense."

The ghost is quite suddenly a toddler, which does nothing to make its tone less dry. "As much as I would enjoy debating the finer points of the fabric of existence itself and the nature of its mandate to rule with two fourteen year olds, I would prefer to do it inside of my tower."

Valerie meets Danny's eyes, unspoken debate passing between the two of them, but before either of them can reach a decision Jazz's voice filters out of the open door.

"Daniel James Fenton! Get your ghost butt in here right now or I'm going to put you in one of mom and dad's thermoses for a week! You too, Valerie, or your dad is gonna hear about all of what you've been up to!"

Both of them cringe in a way the time ghost could never have caused alone, and then the pair scramble past their host and through the door without another single word of complaint. Valerie might not answer to Jazz, not really, but she knows the older Fenton kid to be a force of nature when she wants to be and she'd rather not get that energy aimed her way.

Behind them, the ghost lets out a loud sigh and snaps their fingers, and the sound of the doors slamming shut echoes down the hall.

Valerie inhales sharply as soon as the doors are shut. There's a distinct, unmistakable feeling of being welcomed, a warm thing that comes from the walls and the floor and the impossible ticking of clocks. Somehow it puts her in mind of hazy days when her mother still lived, coming home from first grade to a tight hug and laughter.

It fades before it can properly get her hackles up, and before she can think too hard about it Jazz comes out of a side door and slams into Danny like a train. Both he and Valerie yelp, and Val reaches for the gun she isn't carrying before her brain catches up to what's happening, barely registering Sam and Tucker following Jazz out of the side room.

"Hey!" Sam snaps, grabbing Valerie's wrist from behind as though she also doesn't see that Val's gun is missing. "I think you've shot at him enough."

Valerie… kind of wishes she wasn't aware enough of the others' positions to keep from flipping Sam over her shoulder for that one. As though she isn't feeling guilty enough about having tried to put holes in the boy she maybe has had feelings stewing for. "Hands off, Manson. I'm not armed."

"Sure." Sam says, and Val can hear the eye roll, but she lets go anyway. "What are you doing here?"

"Same thing he is, apparently." Valerie takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly. "What're you three doing here?"

"Looking for him." Tucker shrugs, walking forward enough that Val can see him without turning around. "Trying to make sure he doesn't get killed the rest of the way by psycho ghost hunters, or ghost kings, or whatever."

Valerie's hands tighten into fists for a moment, but then the time ghost—now elderly once more—puts a hand on her shoulder and there's something almost parental about it. It defuses her completely, and she stares the ghost in the eyes, searching for some indication of foul play.

"I will entertain no fighting in this tower." The ghost says sternly, glancing at Sam and Tucker before returning their gaze to Valerie. "If you simply must continue to antagonize one another until a punch is thrown, I insist you step outside first."

For a moment, Val thinks about arguing. She's pretty sure, if she could read minds, she'd find that Sam would be doing the same thing. It's Tucker who breaks the tension by holding his hands up in surrender. "Fine, fine, sorry CW."

The ghost's eye twitches. "It's Clockwork. The list of those who I will allow nicknames from is very short and does not include Living children I have only just met."

And that… Valerie can actually kind of respect that.

"I promise not to swing first." She says, finally turning to give Sam—who looks no less sour than she normally does, in Val's experience—a saccharine-drenched smile.

The girl flips her off, which is fair enough, then crosses her arms and glowers at Clockwork. "Yeah, fine, what she said."

Clockwork shimmers into a toddler again, sighs, and begins to fly down the hallway before pausing and looking over their shoulder. "I would appreciate you five following. We have urgent business that needs to be discussed, and I refuse to go over it twice."

Jazz finally releases Danny, who looks a bit dazed, having transformed back to his human form at some point. She glances at Val, expression a bit pinched, then starts after Clockwork without a word. Tucker falls in behind her, but Sam seems to be refusing to let Val out of her sight, which means it's in full view of her that Val approaches Danny.

"You good, ghost boy?"

"Somethin' like. You? No more fuzzing out around the edges?"

"Not yet." Valerie sighs heavily. "Wouldn't have minded it to get away from the glare your girlfriend is giving me."

"Not my girlfriend." Danny says flatly. "But I mean, you kinda have spent the last half a year shooting at me. I get why they'd be kinda suspicious of you being here."

"I'm literally right here." Sam says, still glaring at Valerie like she could light her on fire. "I don't know why you two are acting like shit's cool, but we haven't exactly been given a good reason to think she won't try to kill you."

"It's complicated." Danny throws his hands up in exasperation. "Same thing I told Jazz. I couldn't even explain it if I tried, which I know because I tried."

"She shot you!"

"It doesn't matter anymore!" Danny snaps, and both Valerie and Sam stare at him.

It's not like Val doesn't understand. Between their mutual, uh, whatever the hell they experienced and the way Clockwork was talking, their lives have gotten so much more complicated than the already weird relationship they had before.

The problem is that it all happened in the space between when they left Amity Park and now, and despite things being a little hard to feel out after Pariah's end, it clearly wasn't that long.

Which means, of course, that Sam is now marching up between them and staring at Danny like he's lost his mind. "How can it not matter? She was trying to kill you! Or, destroy you or whatever!"

"A lot of shit happened." Valerie says, gritting her teeth. This is what she's always disliked about Sam, ever since she really got into a position to know the girl. She can admire being strong-willed, but once Sam's decided a position, it's almost impossible to convince her to change it without someone's life being at risk.

Add to that the way this is hardly the first time she's witnessed Sam not listening to someone about something that should really only be their business, and she's strongly weighing the potential risks of upsetting their host by decking her across the face.

"Sam, I swear I'll try to explain everything later, but we're kind of busy right now aren't we?" Danny tries, and that at least makes her pause.

"Fine." Sam nearly hisses. Val's sure she isn't imagining the way Danny shivers at the sound. "But this explanation better be good, Danny, because otherwise I'm keeping her away from you for your own safety."

Val snorts despite herself. "Yeah, okay."

Sam clenches her fists and jaw so tightly that her arms shake a little, but she falls back behind them again, giving Valerie an unobstructed view of the way Danny sighs in what's probably relief. It's not like she has any room to talk about accidentally hurting him, she knows that, but she so dearly wishes it was her place to tell Sam to chill the fuck out. She settles for giving him a tight smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

Clockwork, for their part, ignores the argument. Valerie watches the back of their head, still unsure what to make of the enigmatic ghost. Her ghost hunting experience to date says that they're a threat, a big one, but something on a different level makes her feel more that they're simply dangerous in the same way she or Danny are dangerous.

Something deeper than that, the part that can pick Danny's location out now even when she's not looking at him, whispers family. As the ghost opens a door into a bizarre chamber done up like a 50's sitcom living room, she wonders if Danny feels that impulse too.

Chapter Text

Danny tries to sit away from Valerie, if only to keep the peace between her and his friends, but Clockwork levels him with a stare that Danny's sure could freeze a glacier and points to the empty cushion beside her on the couch. For a moment, he considers protesting—he's not sure why it matters if he doesn't sit next to her, as though it's this strange time ghost's business to begin with—but the ticking of the tower's clocks intensifies the instant he opens his mouth. He shuts it again and sheepishly drops into the seat beside Valerie, across from his sister, crossing his arms and trying not to look anyone in the eye.

Sam and Tucker are angry. He can tell that much just from the looks on their faces, even if he couldn't feel it in the air. It's an electric live-wire tension that buzzes in the back of his throat, and he hates it, but what was he supposed to do? Let Pariah Dark gather strength and wage war? Not work with Valerie when she was the only one there who could help?

Jazz, of course, is. Complicated. Not just how he feels about her presence, but how it feels to know that she knows now. Grief has echoed in the space just above his stomach ever since they had their brief chat in the hall, and he wishes he knew how to make it better.

Because, well, he did in fact get electrocuted in the portal. There's no getting around that, as far as he can tell. He's still not sure if he's properly dead and just faking being alive sometimes, or what, but somehow the distinction just doesn't matter as much as he thinks it probably should. The effort to care about something like that slips through his grasp in the face of knowing that however changed it left him, the crown—the Infinite—has done something far, far more important.

But, if he and Valerie are also part of Infinity, then didn't they take part in whatever was done on both sides?

He knows she's also thinking about what's happened to them again, because they aren't really that separate, two parts of an even greater whole, aren't they? The sound of Jazz saying something is muffled, indistinct, a single point among uncountable others. He slips, and Valerie slips with him, and the Infinite catches itself.

He snaps back into being just Danny to the sound of a grandfather clock, its chimes reverberating into his very being, and realizes with a start that he and Valerie are occupying part of the same space at the same time. They've leaned into each other and slumped such that their chests and shoulders are intersecting, and the effect foregoes the cool tingle of intangibility for something more akin to the tiniest buzzing of static.

Nothing is wrong, it says, but they are somewhat bending the rules of physical space here.

They yelp and scramble away from each other, to the extent that Danny winds up perched on the arm of the two-cushion sofa and Valerie is peering at him from behind it. For a long moment, nobody says a word, the two simply staring each other down with gaping mouths and blown-wide pupils.

Then Clockwork clears their throat.

"If the Heirs Apparent are done?" They drawl, sounding almost bored.

Five pairs of eyes snap to them just about instantly. It's Valerie who finally speaks up, after the silence lingers for a few seconds too long. "The what?"

"The Heirs Apparent to the Infinite, the new High King-and-Queen-to-be of the Realms, the Kingslayers, the Chosen Avatars, take your pick." Clockwork says, going from toddler to ancient, then gestures with one of their wizened hands at the couch. "Please sit back down and try to focus on me, and I will try to make this easier to explain to three mortals and two fourteen year old conquerors."

Danny glances at the other couch, still too stunned to clear his head and process most of that, to find that Tucker and Sam are staring at him and Valerie with the same confused shock on their faces. But Jazz has this look on her face, her brows pinched and her jaw tight, looking not quite at him but at the circlet on his head.

That echoed grief is back, like a punch to the gut, and stronger now. He swallows harshly and climbs back down onto the couch, and doesn't flinch when Valerie jumps back over it to land beside him. He drops his eyes from Jazz's intense gaze, then works his way back around to looking at Clockwork, taking a deep breath. "Okay."

Valerie stares at the floor, fingers digging against her knees hard enough that if her nails were even slightly sharp Danny's sure she'd tear the pants of her suit, armor or no. "Yeah. Okay."

Clockwork nods to them both, their lower arms crossing over their chest and obscuring the steady swing of their pendulum. "Thank you."

"Whoa, no, none of this is okay-" Sam begins.

Clockwork seems to go from facing them to facing her without moving, like a movie missing frames, and before another word can leave her mouth their staff is pointed straight at her chest. "While I am inclined to agree with you, Samantha Manson, I must ask that you wait to protest the results of their victory until after I explain them."

Danny blinks. Ordinarily, someone taking such a threatening tone with any of his friends would have him already intervening. But Clockwork just—he trusts the ghost, for some reason. Instinctively enough that he's not even remotely thinking of them as a threat. Valerie looks as confused as he feels, and he imagines she feels the same way.

Tucker, for his part, is a bit ashen but is already holding a blaster. Jazz has a hand on the Fenton Peeler at her hip. Sam glares at Clockwork, but says nothing else.

"Thank you." Clockwork says, pulling their staff back and cradling it in three hands. They're in their middle-aged state by the time Danny can see their face again, the ghost moving to the center of the room. "Now then. As I have not yet properly introduced myself to Your Highnesses—" Danny sees Valerie twitch out of the corner of his eye, and honestly, same, "—I am Clockwork, the Master of Time."

"Uh huh. I'd say nice to meet you, but this hasn't been." Valerie says. Danny elbows her arm gently, even if he doesn't really disagree, and gets an elbow driven into his side in return.

"I admit," Clockwork says, pinching the bridge of their nose. "It is not how I wanted our initial meeting to go, no."

"Can we get back to the 'heirs apparent' thing?" Tucker half-wheezes. "Before the time god or whatever gets impatient again?"

"The technical term is Ancient." Clockwork says, not looking Tucker's way. "Now then. I believe that I regrettably already know the answer to this, but did one of you happen to pick up the Ring of Rage?"

"There really wasn't a chance to." Danny says, and the way Clockwork's expression tightens makes his heart sink.

"I see."

The humans in the room—save Valerie, if she even counts at this point—don't seem to notice. But whatever Clockwork does makes Danny acutely aware of the entire lair suddenly moving, going from one point in the Infinite Realms to another without any travel time. It feels like something moving inside his skin, a rippling that's entirely too physical, and he claws at his arms even after the brief moment it lasts for.

Valerie, he knows without looking, is bent over and taking heaving breaths, her arms clutched in a white-knuckle grip.

And then an extremely gentle hand lands on their shoulders, and they look up in unison to find the wizened old man form of Clockwork looking down at them with some mix of sympathy and guilt. "My apologies, both of you. It has been so long that I did not consider how Long Now moving with you within it might affect you right now."

"What." Danny says, flatly.

Valerie grimaces. "That fucking sucked."

Danny can hear the distinct whine of multiple ectoguns, and when Clockwork moves to stop blocking his vision, all three humans in the room have weapons leveled at Clockwork and Jazz has fully engaged the Peeler armor.

On the one hand, it's incredibly sweet to know that his sister and his friends would throw down with a time god to save him. On the other, holy shit now isn't the time. He holds up his shaking hands, taking deep, even breaths. "We're good, guys. It's okay."

None of them even so much as lower the guns. He's pretty sure Jazz is raising an eyebrow at him behind the faceplate of the Peeler. While he probably deserves that reaction most of the time, it's somewhat inconvenient in the moment.

"If you don't believe him, at least listen to me, huh?" Val snaps, and that at least seems to get them to lower their guns, though they remain visibly on edge.

"Thank you." Clockwork says, one hand idly running along the stopwatch atop their staff. "Loath as I am to admit it, though my mastery is normally relatively unchallenged, in this matter we do not really have the time to spare on lengthy explanations. If you three would please proceed to your vehicle, the heirs and I will be heading down to Pariah's Keep below us to look for the ring."

"Hold on, why do we need the ring so damn bad?" Sam asks, even though Danny and Valerie are already getting up to go.

Clockwork's eyes narrow. "Without it, both heirs will be unable to contain themselves to a finite shell, and will quickly be lost to us forever within the infinity they now embody."

Jazz, probably sensing that Sam isn't quite done arguing—Danny can see it too, in the way she clenches her jaw—grabs the two younger teens by the wrists and starts pulling them along. "I'm not losing my brother over a stupid ring."

As they disappear back into the hallway, Valerie groans, rubbing her face. "You two remember that I can't fly, right? Still human, and all that?"

Danny suddenly feels a little queasy at the reminder. "Are you?"

Val shoots him a glare, but it lacks heat, more anxious than angry.

"You know what I mean." He says, quietly, hands sliding into his pockets as he stares at a particularly interesting spot on the featureless carpet-like floor. When he raises his eyes again, he finds that Clockwork is staring at them both with something he thinks is probably pity worn into their face. Or maybe guilt? Danny's not sure.

"Then. What am I? What are we now, Danny?" Valerie asks, an uncharacteristic tightness in her voice.

Clockwork turns to follow the humans, folding their arms underneath their cloak. "Were that I had an easy answer to that, I would give it to you both. But I think even at fourteen you are both smart enough to know that you are both not as you were."

Danny sighs, starting after Clockwork, and a moment later Valerie joins him. "That really the best you can tell your new royalty or whatever the hell?"

"Woe betide me if my new royals require their advisors be all-knowing." Clockwork says, and Danny can just about hear the eye roll. "The Infinite grows more demanding all the time, I suppose. Why shouldn't the same be true of its avatars?"

"You can just say yes next time, you know." Valerie says, as they exit Long Now. Sure enough, the clocktower has relocated itself to hover over Pariah's castle, providing a stellar view of the large hole they'd left in its ceiling.

Clockwork doesn't acknowledge her, simply beginning their descent toward the keep. Danny reaches for Valerie's hand, lifting her up into the air and pulling her along for several feet before realizing he never transformed back into Phantom.

Whatever. Trying to process everything makes his head spin, and it's not like he's never flown as his human self before, so he just angles them toward the hole in the keep and starts flying.

Chapter Text

Once everyone has arrived, the search of the Keep splits into two distinct groups. Danny and his 'team' gravitate toward the entry area for the throne room, presumably so that his friends can interrogate him further about Valerie and what's happening.

She tries not to care. It's easy to distract herself with the hunt for the Ring of Rage without the chatter nearby, as she and Clockwork hunt near the open Sarcophagus and the ruined throne. As strange as Clockwork is, they're not exactly talkative, and Valerie lets herself zone out a bit as she turns over rubble and shifts rocks.

It's easy to feel out the room while standing in it, she finds. Everything in it is a part of the same Infinite that she slips into, and the Infinite seeks through itself in record time, because it naturally already has.

She gasps as she snaps back into being Valerie Gray, a cold hand buzzing against her shoulder. She whirls and then screams, stumbling back against the rubble and away from the beachball-sized eyeball that's looking down at her. It does nothing to calm her down when the entity catches her with both of its hands, and she nearly swings at its eye before Clockwork catches her by the wrist.

"Valerie. Enough."

"Get your fucking ghost hands off me and maybe we'll see!"

"Val!" Oh, that's Danny, thank god. Clockwork lets her wrist go and the eyeball wisely releases her shoulders. "Val, it's okay, this is a friend of Clockwork's."

"I apologize for the fright. I came as soon as I could." The eyeball says, and somehow does sound truly sorry. "The Council continues to be in an uproar, and the matter of the missing artifacts is not helping. When I saw that you were starting to discorporate, I attempted to intervene, that's all."

Valerie stares at it, at the way it wrings its hands, and finally takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Fine. What the fuck is your deal?"

"I am the Speaker of the Observants." The Eyeball ghost bows, its head bobbing above its robes, then stands back up. "It is… alarming to meet you, Your Highness, though a pleasure in time I hope."

"Don't touch me again unless I tell you to, and maybe we'll be ok eventually." Valerie says, once she manages to unclench her jaw. "What in the hell are the Observants?"

"I will explain later, Your Highness. For the moment, I fear that the Ring of Rage is not here, and as has been demonstrated the effect of being without it is simply growing worse as time passes." The Observant somehow manages to look like its brow is pinched, without having a brow. "While I do not know my new lieges, I would be disheartened were you both to simply become a part of the Infinite before you wished to."

Valerie's skin crawls, but—and she considers this to be quite a feat of strength and introspection—for the first time since Danny and the dog had ruined her life, she considers that maybe that's just because of her assumptions. Clockwork, Danny, and now this Eyeball all seem like extremely powerful creatures, and yet Danny is Danny, Clockwork is a bit enigmatic but hasn't harmed them, and even this Observant seems polite and. Well. Friendly, even, if a bit stiff.

Still, she bites her lip, narrowing her eyes at the trio of ghosts (and thanking her lucky stars that she catches the sight of Jazz intact and seemingly unharmed behind them). "Did we seriously search this whole place already?"

"Already?" Tucker asks, somewhat incredulous-sounding. "Dude, how long do you think we've been here?"

"The Infinite is a timeless thing. For us, it has been forty minutes of searching. Valerie, however, likely experienced some ten of those at most." Clockwork says, and all eyes turn to Valerie and Danny, and while he rubs the back of his neck, she glares at them instead.

"It took forty minutes to figure out I was turning into—into whatever?" She asks, and the humans look sheepish.

"Jazz was arguing with Clockwork about whether or not you two are old enough to be royalty." Sam says, crossing her arms. "It was loud. We thought you just didn't want anything to do with it."

"That's… fair." Valerie admits, although it leaves a weird taste in her mouth to admit that Sam knows her even that well.

"Now do you believe that there are more pressing matters, Jasmine Fenton?" Clockwork asks, narrowing aged eyes at Jazz, and their echoing voice and ticking-clock noises are tinged with irritation in ways that make Valerie's head spin.

Jazz is unaffected, or at least puts up a good show of being unaffected. She walks straight past Clockwork and the Speaker (who is wringing their hands again, which is alarmingly relatable) and positions herself behind Val and Danny. "What I believe is that someone needs to be with these two as much as possible until you figure out how to fix this mess, since you seem to know everything anyway."

The Observant clears something like a throat (though their eyeball is notably detached from the robe it hovers above, which concerns Valerie deeply), then floats in between Clockwork and Jazz. "Whatever you seem to think of us, Miss Fenton, we have no intention of leaving your brother and Miss Grey in a dangerous position without help. Even were they not our new royals, they are children of the Living—mostly—who have gathered a tremendous amount of power and responsibility fixing a mess that the Dead and Neverborn created."

"With that said," Clockwork says, before Valerie and Danny can properly both bristle at being called children, "It is not as simple as regretting our actions and producing the ring. It should have been here, or if not here then already on your persons. That it is not is extremely concerning, and it—like you both now, or the crowns you wear—exists outside of linear time. I cannot track its presence or location, and the interference you both caused still lingers here else I would simply peer into the past."

"Is there anyone who might have both an interest in the ring, the knowledge that it was vulnerable, and the ability to get here before you were recovered?" The Observant asks, and Valerie and Danny both stiffen, Danny letting out a small growl that Valerie's alarmed to realize she's echoing.

"Fucking Vlad." Danny says, baring sharp teeth.

Jazz's eyes widen, although Tucker and Sam don't look surprised. "Do you mean Vlad as in our creepy godfather, Vlad Masters?"

"He's such a fucking asshole." Valerie confirms. "Gave me the ring but didn't tell me what it was, so I used it to distract Pariah and his knight and get him and Danny to safety after they got beaten up out by Casper High."

"Vlad Plasmius." Clockwork muses. "The older of the two hybrids involved in this mess. I suppose I should have known he might take this opportunity, although I was hoping he was simply too cowardly to engage directly like this. This changes things. With the ring in his possession, I can see his timeline no more clearly than that of the heirs. I do believe he is no longer in the Realms, however—he likely has abandoned Amity Park to its current situation."

Valerie jumps. "Oh, fuck, Amity! The Fentons are, like, the only people who can fight back there!"

Danny's eyes widen. "Ohhh, shit, my parents are not gonna hold that whole city by themselves."

"Mom and dad could barely hold a paper bag by themselves." Jazz mutters, just loud enough for Valerie to hear.

"Your home is safe." The Speaker says, holding a hand up to calm the teenagers before Tucker and Sam can start to panic as well. "Long Now has ensured it by its presence there. Very few things in this part of the Realms will risk offending the Master of Time."

"It's safe, but… it doesn't have water or any way to get more food or medicine." Tucker says, glancing at Sam. It's no secret that there's a personal angle to this. Even Valerie knows that Sam's grandmother is one of countless people who will need the outside living world sooner rather than later, and keeping hostile ghosts out won't refill her medicines. She's never done more than meet the woman in passing, but Old Ida Manson is one of the few people from their old life that her father still speaks highly of.

Sam, for her part, looks outright murderous as she lifts a finger to point directly at Clockwork. "Fix. This."

"I do not have the power to." Clockwork says, levelly.

"Who does?" Danny asks, and both he and Valerie tense at the way Clockwork's eyes glide over them. There's something almost testing in the ancient ghost's gaze, but it doesn't quite seem like it's as piercing as perhaps it should've been.

Before she or Danny can question Clockwork, the Speaker makes a sort of coughing noise. "We should, perhaps, return to Long Now and take its protection back to Amity Park, hm?"

"No, hold on." Valerie says, holding her hands up, trying to take deep enough breaths not to explode. "I want to hear them say it. Who can fix Amity?"

"The Heirs Apparent, of course." Clockwork says, stroking the beard they now sport. "But you knew that already. You can feel it, I suspect, something that doesn't belong, like a. Hm. To put it in human terms, it would be like a splinter or debris that's been scabbed over inside a wound. It's likely not causing you two physical pain, if I had to guess, and I do. But it's always present, isn't it? Something out of place. Something you both have the power to put back, should you have the patience to learn how to use your new status."

"Tell us how." Danny just about growls, a reminder that sets off the voice in the back of Val's head screaming that this isn't just Danny but Phantom.

She shakes it off and glares at the time ghost, arms crossed. "I'd do it while we're asking nicely."

"It would be prudent to return to Amity Park first." The Speaker says, and to their immense credit, their voice manages to stay completely level despite the way they wring their hands anxiously. "Those who are your family members are no doubt concerned for your well-being, and the job of fixing Amity Park's incursion into the Realms will be made immensely easier if we have free access to the portal there. Without it or the ring, it's likely that attempting to return Amity Park to the living world would render you both unable to inhabit a finite avatar for quite some time."

"Prudent." Jazz mutters, then grasps both Valerie and Danny by the shoulders. "We're going back to the clock tower, because I'm not letting either one of you risk yourselves like that."

Sam bites her lip, then steps forward between the Heirs and Clockwork. Valerie can see how tense she is in the lines of her shoulders, the way her hands are balled into tight fists at her sides. Somehow, she's holding it together. Val's not sure how, but damned if it isn't kind of respectable in and of itself.

Sam turns to face the Heirs, and the fire in her eyes is enough to keep them both silent. Finally, she speaks. "We're doing what Jazz says. I'm not going to let you die again because one of us was stupid."

Danny makes a noise kind of like a wounded puppy, and Valerie reaches for, finds, and squeezes his hand in response. She's not really sure what Sam's talking about, but there's time yet to learn.

As a group, the ghosts, humans, and Heirs make their way back to Long Now—some in the Speeder, some on their own, but none venturing too far from the others.

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, the 'Most Haunted City' title held by Amity Park, Illinois, was kind of a joke. A tourist trap slogan for a city that always lived in the shadow of Chicago, something to set it apart from its sister Elmerton before economic disparity did that job far more effectively than a slogan ever could. Even so, there was no question among the older residents that Amity Park was haunted in some way or another.

Then, one day not even a year ago, everything changed when the Fenton portal turned on. And suddenly, that slogan wasn't so funny anymore, and the teenagers were gossiping about ghosts with the elderly. The Drs Fenton went from oddballs in bright suits you'd occcasionally spot to a constant presence in the city, one that people began to slowly recognize as perhaps not wanted but needed.

Before long, the Amity Park Phantom emerged, an almost fae teenager-looking creature with too-long limbs and a hauntingly young voice to go with rending claws and incessant puns. Phantom became more common still than the Fentons. If a ghost attacked—or even just got spotted, some days—a streak of white-black-green would arrive within a few minutes, and it would rarely stay still long enough to be questioned properly.

Public opinion of Phantom was split heavily and shifted like it was at sea in a storm, but there was no question that it tried to keep people safe. When the little ghost screwed up badly enough to nearly destroy Axion Labs, it was something of a shock to the city to see a seemingly-human vigilante take up ghost fighting in a grey and red suit, wielding weapons that would make the Fentons blush.

The vigilante's voice was disguised by a filter, even when she came down low enough to be heard over the sounds of a ghost fight, but it was generally agreed that she was young, female, and well-trained. Initially, some citizens believed her to be sent by the military, though she took the time to distance herself heavily from that idea. Her battles with Phantom have become nightly news, her duels with other ghosts turning her into a rival hero in the public's eyes.

Valerie's father, of course, has no idea that the vigilante he reads about in the paper every day and overheard gossip about in Axion's break rooms is his beloved baby girl. She wasn't sure if Danny knew before all of this, but she'd wondered. It doesn't matter now—she wasn't sure any of it mattered now—because they know each other better than any nomal person ever could know someone else.

After all, they're two parts of the same whole, aren't they?

The lights of Amity Park below her start to swim and blur, and Valerie closes her eyes and leans against the balcony railing. "Fuck."

The tower behind her seemed to somehow give off a feeling of sympathy. Valerie of a few days ago might've had an issue with that. Valerie of the moment reaches back and pats the wall, swallowing thickly. "Thanks. I think."

The tower chimes softly—how, she's not sure—in response, and she lets out a strangled laugh at the absurdity of the whole situation. She's waiting for the Speaker to return with her father's location, because she needs to talk to him about all of this, and a tower with a mind of its own is trying to offer her comfort and succeeding.

Her life, she reflects, is so goddamn weird nowadays.

She feels the Speaker approach before the ghost is even in Long Now's airspace. It snaps her back to herself like a bucket of ice water, the feeling almost more of a warning not to let herself drift lest she be unable to find her way back. If it weren't for Long Now somehow insisting it could keep her safe, she's sure she would be out with the others to meet up with the Mansons and Foleys.

Val opens her eyes to find the Speaker coming to a stop just off the edge of the balcony. "Is he safe?" She asks, in lieu of a greeting.

"Good to see you're still grounded, Your Highness." The Speaker says, then offers her a hand. "Yes, your father is safe, though he's quite worried. Allow me to take you to him."

Valerie stares at their hand. This is another way her life has radically changed in just the last few hours. This morning, from her perspective, she'd have grabbed a gun to blow a hole in a hand like this. Now, she reaches out and takes it, lets the cool feeling of weightlessness sweep through her body in a way that would ordinarily terrify her, and allows the Speaker to lift her easily off the balcony.

The Speaker is a relief to talk to, at least. There's no baggage like with Danny, no intensity like with Clockwork. It's not easy, but at least she doesn't feel like she's drowning in second-guessing the things that are being said—and the things that aren't—like she does with them right now. In fact, there's really only one burning question about the ghost in her mind at the moment.

So, once they're on their way down from Long Now, she glances sidelong at them. "Why'd you pick me?"

"Mm?"

"You didn't have to choose to look for my dad. I don't think anyone would've blamed you for avoiding the crazy human girl who shoots ghosts. So why?"

The Speaker is quiet for a moment, as they pass over the skyscrapers of downtown. Eventually, the ghost hums noncommittally. "Must I have a reason?"

Valerie groans. "What kind of answer is that?"

"The type you give when you spend too much time with Clockwork. How about this: I think you're interesting. I think you could be a great leader, but you're young and don't deserve what Clockwork's meddling has forced upon you. And, if I'm allowed to say it, I think you need someone on your side."

Valerie scowls. "I-"

"Do not misunderstand that for pity, Valerie Gray. It's simply knowing what it's like to do what you think is the right thing and wind up alone for it." The Speaker says, shooting her a glance. "Your fellow Heir may be your ally, and it seems that his sister will follow his lead, but one doesn't need to be gifted with an eye as large as mine to see the way his friends look at you, or to realize nobody showed up to find you. I'm not trying to pretend to simply be your friend, especially given how you've been wronged by ghosts in the past, so don't interpret my actions as anything except the outstretched hand they are."

They pause, Valerie's eyes drifting toward Amity Park again, then add "If it's easier to believe, you may simply decide that as ruler of the Infinite Realms you and I are going to have to work closely together and that's the reason I'm making an attempt to be friendly now. I won't begrudge you for it."

"Stop." Valerie says, throat unexpectedly tight, and she stares at the city below her. If her hand tightens around the Speaker's, well, neither of them comments on it.

Up ahead, Amity Park General Hospital looms. Anxiety twists Valerie's gut into shapes that pretzels can only dream of. "You said he was safe."

"He is. Your father is unharmed. As far as I was able to gather, he took responsibility for protecting this building and has yet to leave." The Speaker shrugs, as though this isn't threatening to make tears spill from Valerie's eyes. "He seems quite honorable, choosing to defend a hospital in a time of crisis. But I also know that he has yet to stop trying to find you through whatever means are available to him."

"That's—" Valerie sniffs, wiping her face on her sleeve, then takes a deep breath. "That's my dad, alright. Yeah."

"Would you like me to wait outside?"

Valerie chews on her lip for a moment, then nods—and, much her to own surprise, even offers a "Please."

The Speaker sets Valerie down just out of sight in the hospital's attached parking garage, then vanishes from sight. She processes that she can still feel them nearby for a moment, the ghost's presence unmistakable, and wonders if this too is part of her strange new state of being. When the Speaker drifts away, she shoves down the spike of anxiety at how clearly she can track them and instead turns to walk across the accessway tunnel, wishing her suit had some damn pockets so she'd know where to put her hands.

Nurses and doctors bustle around her, initially only giving her a sideways glance. The reception lobby is blessedly intact, she finds, with only a few of its seats overturned and a suspicious ectoplasm stain near one of the walls. Next to it sits a Fenton-designed ghost shield generator, and the relief she feels realizing that the hospital had its own defenses beyond just her father is enough that she staggers in her step.

This draws the attention of the reception desk worker, who's nursing a cup of what's probably (hopefully) coffee. He sits up and stares at her, rubs his eyes, stares a bit more, then leaps from his chair and vaults the counter to rush to her side. "Miss Gray?!"

Both of them freeze halfway into Valerie dropping to a defensive posture, and she blinks owlishly at him before standing up again and clearing her throat. "Uh. Yeah?"

"You're alive! Thank god, your father's been about out of his mind with worry!" The reception clerk lets out a deep sigh, then smiles wearily at her. "Come on, I'll get you to him."

Valerie blinks again, then nods and lets the clerk lead her to a rear office. The poor man's motions are half-jitters as he knocks at the door, and she wonders just how many cups of coffee he's had since the last time he slept.

Then the door opens, and she meets her father's eyes, and nothing else matters as he sweeps her into the tightest hug she's ever known.

"Valerie." He says, hoarse.

"Hey, dad." She chokes out, returning his hold as best she can. And for a moment, finally, after everything, she's home and safe in his arms.

Chapter Text

Valerie tries to squeeze as much into the moment of embracing her father as she can. All of her fears, her anxieties, all of it collapses in the face of dad being safe and alive. And for that moment, she can pretend she doesn't have ectoplasm stains on her armor, that there isn't a scorch mark on it, that she's not wearing it at all. That she doesn't have the weight of a terrifyingly large responsibility-slash-obligation quite literally weighing on her head in the form of a plain metal crown.

In that moment, she is six and it's eight years ago and he's wrapping her in a hug like this and reassuring her that he's not going anywhere and they'll be okay and he'll keep her safe, he promised her mother, and everything outside his arms feels like it simply can't touch her anymore.

And then that moment passes, and he steps back to look her in the eyes, and she's not sure how to even begin to explain herself as he works his jaw.

"Where were you?" He finally asks, voice heavy with emotion.

Valerie swallows around the thick feeling in her throat. "Fighting. Helping Phantom."

"Helping Phantom?" Damon asks, eyes wide. "Fighting ghosts? Where did you even get this stuff? Who gave this to you?!"

"It's a long story, dad." Valerie says, eyes falling. "We, uh, should sit down."

"Yeah. Yeah, alright." Damon says, after a long moment of silence. He sits down heavily, like his shoulders are physically weighed down by the responsibility he's taken on and his daughter's revelations.

Valerie drops into a seat opposite him, crossing her arms over herself. "Vlad Masters gave it to me."

"The billionaire? What the hell does that man think he's doing putting my daughter in danger like this?"

"There's—I didn't know it was him at first. We'd just lost everything, I was angry, and a box arrived with the armor and instructions and I—" Valerie inhales deeply. "I wanted to stop anyone else from losing everything like we did. I wanted revenge."

"Why didn't you tell me, Valerie?"

"I didn't want you to worry. I knew you'd stop me, dad." Valerie says, her eyes falling to her hands clenched tightly in her lap. "And I didn't want to stop."

Damon sighs, rubbing his face. "So. So, you've been out there fighting ghosts. My baby girl, out there fighting ghosts, alone."

"I've been safe!" Valerie protests. "I've been more than safe! I'm good at this!"

Damon takes a deep breath, then shakes his head. "I can't—you know I can't let this keep happening."

"Well it doesn't matter now." Valerie says, and when he snaps his gaze to her she flinches.

"Did you get hurt?!"

"No! Not—not hurt, just." Valerie pinches the bridge of her nose, then reaches up and lifts the crown off her head to show it to him. "This, isn't part of the suit."

Damon stares at the crown. It's such plain metal, but the more he stares at it, the more it shimmers with flames that aren't quite real. The violet-red echoes of stolen power reflect in Valerie's eyes, and he shakes his head again to try and clear it. "I think I'm seeing things."

"I wish." Valerie bites her lip for a moment, then drops the crown. Just as it would hit the ground, the ring of metal warps back onto her head like it's always been there. "Turns out helping Phantom kill the Ghost King means someone else gets the crown, like it or not."

"Helping Phantom do what?"

"We stopped the invasion! We saved Amity Park! We probably saved a whole lot more than that!" Valerie throws her hands up. "It was worth me going, dad!"

"Nothing is worth you doing something so dangerous!" Damon slams his hand on the desk. "Nothing is worth losing you, Valerie!"

Valerie groans, pressing the heels of her palms into her forehead. For a moment, the temptation to just disappear rises in her mind, but she shoves it down before she can start to fade again. This is too important. "Well, you didn't lose me. Instead, I kept you and everyone else safe!"

"You shouldn't have had to! You're fourteen!" Damon yells, and then takes a moment to lean back and breathe, tears glistening in his eyes. "You should be worried about boys and school, not… not this. God, not this."

Valerie crosses her arms across herself. "Yeah, well, that ship sailed when ghosts took everything else from us. I wasn't going to let them take you too."

Damon wipes at his eyes, slumping in his chair again. "So. So, what, you have a magic ghost crown or something?"

"It's complicated." Valerie says, chewing her lip again. "Phantom has one too. And, well, we're… heirs to the throne?"

Damon makes a distressed kind of groaning noise, burying his head in his hands. "How? You're alive."

"I don't know, there's so much, dad." Valerie says, wringing her hands. "It's not just wearing a crown."

"What do you mean by that? Why does this keep getting worse, Valerie?" Damon asks, not lifting his head.

Valerie shakes her head. "It's not worse, I don't think—I don't even know what to start with. I'm—Phantom and I are both— how do I even—I need help here!"

She's briefly aware of her voice wavering, though her father looks at her with wide eyes that suggest perhaps that's not all there is to the sound. A sense of another presence entering the room touches the edge of her awareness.

"Perhaps I can assist, then?" The Speaker says, fading into view beside her.

Damon has an ecto-pistol out before Valerie can say anything, but she stands and holds her hands up. He still shoots, and the Speaker twists out of the way nearly effortlessly.

"Dad! Stop!" Valerie steps between them. "They're friendly!"

"What are you- it just showed up in the middle of a hospital, Valerie!" Damon exclaims.

"I know! They're here to help explain things, I promise!" Valerie turns to confirm that the Speaker is fine, then sighs. "They're, uh, my… helper?"

"That is to say, I have taken the role of assistant and advisor to the young Heir for the time being." The Speaker elaborates. "Her situation is quite complicated, as she says. I would appreciate it if you refrained from attacking me while I try to explain what I can."

Damon looks between the two of them, then slowly lowers his pistol. "You're lucky my daughter is vouching for you, ghost."

"I'm certain I am." The Speaker says, and manages not to sound completely like they're rolling their eyes. "I am aware of your name, Damon Gray. I am the Speaker of the Observant Council."

"You have a name?" Damon asks, narrowing his eyes.

"You may refer to me as the Speaker or Speaker, if you must. I do not believe humans can produce the sounds required for my actual name." The Speaker says. "Please, Valerie, you may sit back down. I think the conflict has passed."

Valerie and Damon both take their seats, and to the Speaker's credit, they claim an empty chair next to Valerie's. She isn't sure, but she suspects it's to keep from looming over her father, which she appreciates.

"Valerie Gray and Danny Fenton struck down Pariah Dark in combat by stealing the Crown of Fire from him." The Speaker says, and Valerie groans at the casual reveal of Danny's name. She's not entirely sure how she feels about him yet, but she'd been hoping not to give his secret away. "The Infinite, through the Crown, chose them as its heirs."

"What the hell was Fenton doing there?" Damon asks, leveling a disbelieving stare at Valerie.

She lets out a beleagured sigh, then glares at the Speaker. "Danny is Phantom, dad. I don't really know the whole story, and it was supposed to be a secret."

"Apologies, Your Highness."

"That—" Damon rubs his eyes. "Fine, okay, I'm going to pretend that makes sense. What the hell do you mean the 'Infinite'?"

Valerie leans forward. "The Ghost Zone's not actually called that. It's called the Infinite Realms."

"The Ghost Zone? But you aren't dead!" Damon exclaims.

The Speaker manages to sound a bit pained. "Believe me, Damon Gray, this was also an issue raised by myself and others. The Infinite has a will to it, and I do not pretend to understand it, but Infinity is not to be denied. There is no loophole that we could find. Your daughter is to be the Queen of the Infinite Realms, an avatar of Infinity, whether any of us likes it or not."

Damon buries his face in his hands again. Valerie doesn't blame him at all. The reality of it is likely only so clear to her because of her unique perspective, having become part of the fabric of Infinity and then separated again. She knows it's changed her, made things easier to comprehend for her. Even with that, it's overwhelming. She can feel the Infinite even now, though she tries not to focus on the feeling.

The last thing her father needs right now is to see her start to lose herself again.

"Valerie?" he asks, finally, sounding exhausted. "Are you okay?"

Valerie considers it, she really does. Is she okay? After all of this, after everything that's happened to her and everything she's done and everything she's becoming, is she okay?

"I think so?" She decides. "Yeah. I mean. I could probably use a shower, and I still need to figure out what all this is gonna mean, but I'm not really hurt and I'm not feeling all that tired or anything."

She'll have to investigate that later, because by rights, she should be exhausted.

"I can assure you that Her Highness is in excellent physical health." The Speaker says, nodding their eyeball once. "The Infinite's power does not appear to be causing unexpected problems for her. So long as the Ring of Rage is retrieved promptly, she will be fine. Additionally, though I have not known her long, Her Highness is possessed of great strength of spirit and will. She has maintained a clear head throughout this ordeal."

Valerie can feel her cheeks growing warm, and she stares at the Speaker, jaw clenched tight. She doesn't trust her voice in that moment. Then her father stands, and she jolts, eyes flying to him as he walks around his desk.

Damon puts his hands on Valerie's shoulders, looking into her eyes. It takes her a moment to realize he's crying. "You know, when I called you my little princess growing up, I didn't think you'd find a way to make it real. You're really okay with this?"

Valerie swallows the tightness in her throat. Her voice still shakes when speaks, despite her best efforts. "I think so. You know I won't let anyone make me do something I'm not okay with."

Damon cracks the tiniest smile, and it's enough that Valerie leans forward to hug him. The Speaker occupies themself with something in another corner of the room while the two humans embrace, squeezing each other tightly.

"I still don't like this." Damon says, quietly. "I still don't want you to deal with any of this. This is so much. I barely understand it, and my baby girl has to live it."

"I can do it." Valerie says, not lifting her head from his shoulder. "I'm gonna figure this out. And I'm gonna be the best ruler anyone's ever had."

"You are." Damon says, firmly. "I know you are. But I am so scared for you anyway."

"I'm still gonna be here." Valerie says, firmly. "The Infinite can deal with that."

The Speaker clears their nonexistent throat. "If I may interrupt, there is no reason to think you would be required to abandon your mortal life completely. As an Avatar of the Infinite, the ability to travel to the Realms whenever you see fit will be well within your grasp. And no citizen of the Realms would blame you for enjoying life while you have it, I would think."

"See? Yeah, I'm scared, but I can do this." Valerie says, finally looking her dad in the eyes again. "We'll be fine. We'll figure everything out."

"I suppose we will." Damon concedes. "But I'm still going to worry about you."

"I know." Valerie says, squeezing him again. "'cause you're my dad."

"Always." Damon says, kissing her forehead.

Valerie reluctantly releases him, wiping her eyes, then sighs. "Just gotta get the ring. And put Amity Park back where it belongs."

"What's the deal with this ring?" Damon asks, looking at the Speaker with a deep frown. "You said as long as they got it, she would be fine."

"The Ring of Rage, as it's known from Pariah's rule. It's an artifact meant to allow finite rulers to regulate the power of the Infinite." The Speaker runs a finger along a poster showing the human skeletal system. "Without it, as fragments of the Infinite, she and Danny will struggle to maintain their finite existences as separate beings from the Infinite."

"It's—it's not as bad as it sounds." Valerie says, grimacing. "But I'm not sure I can explain it. Being, uh, part of Infinity is a lot."

Damon looks between them, alarm clear on his face. "And where is it?"

"We have good reason to believe Vladimir Masters has taken it and fled to the Living World that Amity Park originates from." The Speaker says, turning to face Damon. "We intend to pursue him, but to do so, we must return Amity Park to its home."

"I," Damon says, "Am going to kill that man."

Valerie's not sure she's ever seen her father as angry as he looks in that moment. It's a cold and steady kind of anger, the kind of thing that makes her shiver a little. While he's always been passionate, this feels almost detached, and she's certain that if he had Vlad at gunpoint he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

"I must insist that you leave Vlad to us." The Speaker says. "He is far more dangerous than you know."

"But—"

They're interrupted by, of all things, Valerie's cell phone going off. A quick check finds a single text from Danny: 'Meet us @ NB ASAP'.

"Looks like Danny and Clockwork figured something out." Valerie says, glancing at her father. "You've got your phone, right?"

"I do, but I should come with you." Damon says.

"You should sleep, dad." Valerie grimaces. "I'll let you know when things are gonna happen. Please lay down for a while? You look like you're gonna fall over."

"While I am mostly unfamiliar with mortal physiology outside my role, I must agree with Her Highness." The Speaker crosses their arms. "You require rest, Damon Gray."

Damon briefly looks like he's going to argue, but then he sighs. "Fine. Okay. Be safe, Valerie, please."

"I will. I promise." Valerie says, hugging him once more. "See you soon, dad. I love you."

"I love you, too." Damon says. He pats her on the back before letting her go, and watches as she and the Speaker vanish from sight on their way up through the ceiling, praying silently that his daughter will come back to him in one piece.

Chapter Text

Danny Fenton sits in the mostly-abandoned Nasty Burger, head resting on the top of the booth table. At the counter, Clockwork talks quietly with Jazz about some thing or another. He's trying to ignore it, letting the cool surface of the table help ease the way his thoughts keep racing.

He doesn't like this plan, but no matter what he thinks of, he can't find another way.

The portal is the key. It's a paradoxical thing at the moment, because it's a hole into the same dimension it's currently in. If they can modify it, channel the crown's power into it instead of raw ectoplasm, and ignite it, then it should undo the damage that Pariah inflicted on space-time and return Amity Park to the living world. The theory is completely sound, as far as he understands it.

The problem comes in with his parents. In addition to the fact that they'd no doubt be guarding the portal while looking for a way to track down him and Jazz, they're the only ones who have the knowledge required to modify the machine. In order to convince them, in order for any of this to work, Danny has to do the one thing he's avoided this whole time and tell them the truth of who Phantom is.

He groans quietly at the thought.

It's not like he doubts they love him. The problem is they love him, not Phantom, and as much trouble as he has reconciling the two parts of himself he's never been completely sure if they'll manage it. That's what his sister and Clockwork are discussing, he thinks, based on the accidental eavesdropping his enhanced senses caused before he focused enough to block them out.

Valerie's on her way, and the thought is more comforting than it might've been a few days ago. Still…

If it turns into a fight, he knows he can't hurt them, not really. His father's not as outright dangerous as his well-trained mother, and he can avoid his father's aim better, so the plan is for him and Valerie to handle Jack. Clockwork has volunteered to keep Maddie busy, and the thought should be more terrifying than it is. In reality, it's complicated. Madeline Fenton is one of the few humans alive that might have any chance of doing something the master of time won't see coming. And there was an odd gleam of excitement in Clockwork's eyes when they suggested it, one that was almost certainly trouble.

So, Clockwork has dibs on fighting Maddie, if (not when, Jazz would tell him, even though there was no way it didn't) it turns into a fight. That leaves Jack, and for all his father's bluster and bad aim, the man is strong and stubborn enough to be a threat. He's creative, too, which is part of why his inventions are so unpredictable. All of those things are going to give Danny and Valerie trouble. Still, it's one last aspect of his personality that makes Danny a little bit genuinely afraid—Jack Fenton's slow to anger in most cases, but a perceived threat to his family will bring out a temper like a wildfire. Danny is genuinely afraid that they'll have to subdue his father physically, or even knock him out, and being careful about it while Jack slings around weaponry and is wearing protective gear is going to be a headache and a half.

The Speaker will be keeping an eye (heh, Danny'll have to use that one) on things from a safe distance. According to Clockwork the Observant is quite a strong entity, but not suited for taking offensive action in general, certainly not against humans that are to be left alive afterward. So, they'll be making sure no other ghosts interfere, especially those strong enough to be more curious than afraid if Clockwork starts throwing their powers around.

Danny sits up at the first twinge of sensation from his expanded senses, looking out the window at the precise spot in the sky Valerie's approaching from. He's not sure he's ever going to really get used to the way he can feel distances, positions, layers of reality that he'd rather not unpack, all of it, but, well. He's already starting to adapt to the constant awareness of Valerie Gray's location relative to his own, the way he's starting to think she could be halfway around the world and he could pinpoint her on a globe.

It should be scarier than it is. A lot of things about his life seem to boil down to that ever since the portal opened.

Sure enough, Valerie appears in the sky shortly after, and to his pleasant surprise she's flying unassisted. Danny transforms and takes off to meet her, and the Speaker sails past them both and heads for the Nasty Burger, which suits Danny fine.

These so-called heris have been needing to have a private conversation anyway, he figures.

"Val!"

"Danny!" Valerie smiles as he pulls up in front of her. It's a tired smile, but so much less weighed down than it had been in Long Now.

"Your dad okay?"

"Yeah. I mean, he looks like hell, but he's not hurt. Just needs to actually sleep." Valerie shrugs. "It was good to see him in one piece."

"Yeah, I bet." Danny twists, winding up beside her, and the pair take a seat side by side on the roof. "You feeling okay?"

"Better than I should be." Valerie reaches up to remove her crown, turning it about in her hands. "This is a fucking lot, still."

Danny watches the iridescence dance across the metal, then sighs heavily. "We have to get my parents in on helping."

Valerie's fingers pause, then tighten around the crown. "Why?"

"Gotta use the portal to fix things. Only way we can figure out to get Amity Park back where it belongs before anything else happens to it or the Realms." Danny leans back, staring up at the swirling clouds of condensed ectoplasm above them. He tries to ignore the pit in his stomach. It's something he has experience with pushing aside, at least. "We need their help to fix it up, so."

"So you're going to tell them?" Valerie guesses, watching his face for a reaction. When he flinches, she groans, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You ever think maybe we're just cursed with the shittiest luck imaginable?"

"Sometimes. Then I remember Vlad got stuck in the hospital for years when he got his powers, and I think maybe my luck is just really fucking weird instead." Danny grins, all teeth. "I'll let you know if I figure out whether that's better or not if you do the same for me with yours."

Valerie huffs a small laugh, which Danny considers the biggest win he's had since Pariah's invasion started, and slams her crown back on her head. "You guys better have a good plan for this."

"Good as it gets!" Danny throws his arms wide, as though presenting something magnificent. "We tell them. When it turns into a fight, 'cause Jazz is wrong and it totally will, we get my dad, Clockwork basically called dibs on mom, and Jazz and the eyeball dude stay out of it. Ta-dah."

Valerie stares blankly at him for a few seconds, then punches his arm. "That plan sucks ass."

"That's what I said! But Clockwork is insisting, and I'm kind of a little afraid to actually get into a fight with them, so we're doing their plan!" Danny crosses his arms, rubbing the spot she punched almost petulantly. "Ow, by the way."

Valerie makes a psssh noise and lifts her hand to punch him again. "You want me to show you ow? Thought Phantom was tough."

"You would've been upset if I didn't react, too."

"Maybe." Val says, but Danny can see the way she's fighting not to smile. "Maybe I just expect better from my nemesis."

"Hah, yeah." Danny frowns, fidgeting a bit with his suit's sleeve. He can't help the anxiety, and given everything else, he doesn't stop himself from voicing it. "Are we good?"

"If we weren't, I'd be sitting somewhere else plotting your second death still." Valerie says, flatly. "I'm good if you are. I'd have to be a real asshole to still be mad at you, especially after all this shit."

"Hah, 'course I'm good with you." Danny shrugs. "Sam and Tuck think I shouldn't be, but I dunno, like… if something like that happened to me, I might've done the same thing. And who's gonna sit down and listen to the ghost that messed up everything they had going in this town? Besides, I—Jazz has made it clear I might've been kind of a real asshole to you first."

"Then let's just agree not to be assholes anymore." Valerie says, and Danny finally feels that knot of anxiety fade a bit. "Besides. Sounds like we're in this together either way, so we might as well get along."

"Well, if you put it like that." Danny laughs, and he's rewarded by Valerie joining in, the sound echoing in the dead air.

He's just considering whether or not to tell her about his weird crush—it seems almost childish now, considering the problems they're both facing—when a toddler-sized Clockwork phases through the wall in front of the building and drifts up to meet them, an appraising look on the ghost's face.

"I apologize for the interruption," they say, resting a hand on their staff, "But the opportunity we waited for has arrived. The Doctors Fenton have arrived home, and I am ever in opposition to the idea of wasting time."

Danny stares at the ancient ghost, trying to figure out if that was a joke or not, then chuckles nervously. "Right. I guess we're heading out?"

"That would be the plan, yes." Clockwork says, bowing their head. "Jazz will be accompanying you for the attempted diplomacy. I will be following at a safe distance. Is this acceptable, Your Highnesses?"

Somehow, Danny's certain that isn't actually a question. He gets up and drops off the roof, then nods to Valerie as she clambers down herself. "Gonna have to be, right?"

"I'm not gonna argue this time." Valerie says. "You got a weapon for me to use?"

Clockwork waves a hand in the air dismissively. "I am of the opinion that you will not require one. Simply be mindful of how much of the Infinite's power you channel."

"Oh, good, we're winging it." Val mutters, just loud enough for Danny to hear. He's sure that Clockwork hears it too, but the ghost says nothing about it, so he just gives Val a sympathetic 'what can you do' shrug.

Their plan—such as it is—set, the team collects Jazz from the parking lot and sets off for FentonWorks in silence.

Chapter Text

By the time their group reaches Fentonworks, Danny is certain that Clockwork is some kind of mischief spirit who happens to also have time powers, not that he'd ever say that aloud. The ghost spends the time humming an arena fight song from some country that Danny's never been to, according to the Speaker, and Danny's certain the way they're holding their staff is almost dripping with excitement.

Things go poorly immediately.

Despite their occasional single-mindedness, the Doctors care deeply for their children. They've also been running on very little sleep, and Jazz and Danny have both been missing for too long not to drive the Fentons into a spiral of concern. The city still being in the Realms, and the aggressive ghosts that had plagued it until Long Now staked a claim, certainly didn't help.

It might also have been a good idea, in retrospect, to bring the Specter Speeder back with them.

At any rate, it veers into trouble like this: The pair walk up with Valerie between them, and the Doctors meet them at the door. Jack nearly rushes out to embrace his children, but Maddie stops him and frowns.

"Where on earth have you two been?" She asks, suspicion lacing her tone.

"Out trying to find Danny." Jazz says. "With Valerie's help."

Valerie nods, saying nothing, which Danny's pretty sure is wise here.

"Without us?" Maddie scowls. "This is an unprecedented, dangerous situation! And where were you, Danny?"

Danny tries very hard to mask the way he flinches. "Uhhh, I was. Looking for Sam and Tucker?"

And that's the moment, as Jazz slaps her forehead and Val mutters a curse, that things spiral out of control. Because as soon as he says it, his mom whips out a blaster and aims at him, glaring, and his dad's face grows hard. "Nice try, ghost. Jazz, Valerie, if that's really you, step away from the ghost."

"What? Wait, what?!" Danny protests, hands in the air, eyes wide.

"Mom, dad, it's really him, we can explain—" Jazz says, holding her hands up, before Valerie yanks her back and steps in front of her.

"Our Danno is too scared of ghosts to have gone out looking like that!" Jack yells, before lunging at Danny, which causes things to—

—stutter, Clockwork appearing and grasping a frozen Maddie, the Speaker whisking Jazz away—

And then Danny and Valerie are diving to either side to avoid Jack, while Maddie and Clockwork have vanished with the ominous ticking of a clock.

"I always forget how big your dad is!" Valerie yells, as Danny transforms.

"I know! Really hopin' for that growth spurt, myself!" Danny yells back, before Jack catches sight of him.

"Ghost boy!" Jack roars, the gauntlets in his suit crackling to life. "I should've known it was you! Who else would pull this kind of trick twice!?"

"Twice?!" Valerie groans. "Of course someone else already impersonated you!"

Danny yelps, ducking a swing, then dives between Jack's legs to reunite with Valerie on the other side. "Have I mentioned that my life sucks sometimes?!"

"A few times now, I think." Valerie says. "What's the game plan?"

"We have a game plan?" Danny grimaces. "I mean, I guess we try to tire him out?"

"Oh, great. Yeah. That'll work great." Valerie says, and Danny doesn't have to look at her to know she's rolling her eyes.

"No ghost is gonna outlast Jack Fenton!" Jack proclaims, lunging at the pair and sending them splitting again. "Get back here and tell me what you did with my son!"

"I am your son!" Danny yells, darting into the air. "C'mon, dad! It's me! I can explain everything!"

"Yeah, sure you can!" Jack replies, pulling out a blaster. Valerie, perhaps sensing disaster incoming, launches herself at his arm and manages to grab the weapon in question, which frees Danny up to tackle the off-balance man to the grass. Sparks fly from the suit's built-in Specter Deflector, but Danny fights through the pain to plant his hands on his father's shoulders.

"Listen to me!" He yells, before being bodily flung off Jack.

Valerie grunts as she catches him—her own developing powers of flight already coming in handy— then shakes him a little. "Danny, save it! He's not listening!"

"The only thing I want to listen to is you telling me what you did to my Danny-boy, ghosts!"

"Right." Danny clenches his jaw for a moment. They need to figure something out. Jack's jumpsuit is durable, so they can be a bit reckless, but the real problem is the Deflector. If they could take that out, then the options are simpler. Danny could just phase his legs into the ground, or something, and that'd solve the problem for a while so they could try to convince him to stop fighting.

Probably. Jack's strength is a bit terrifying.

"Do you know how to lower the output on this blaster?" Danny asks, grabbing the discarded pistol in question and zipping back up away from an attempted tackle.

"It's not that different from the ones I got from Vlad." Valerie says, after examining it for a moment.

Danny nods, then leans forward to whisper. "Aim for his belt, low-power shot. That'll turn off the Deflector so I can touch his suit. I'll distract him. Just don't miss? Especially not too low?"

Valerie pauses, grimaces, then nods. "I'll do my best?"

"Good enough!" Danny says, then zooms down toward Jack and rolls as he passes him. "Round two!"

"Get back here!" Jack yells, spinning and grasping and just barely missing Danny's spectral tail.

"Yeah, okay!" Danny says, reversing course, though his eyes widen and his stomach sinks at the realization of just how close he came to his father actually grabbing him. "We can keep this up until you're ready to talk!"

Jack grunts, then lunges for him again, and this time his hand wraps around Danny's arm and halts him in midair. "I don't think so!"

Danny yelps, then flails. If his father actually tries to hurt him, Danny can recover, but the guilt will be there for who knows how long, and he's not sure he's ready to let his dad make a mistake like that. "Valerie! Now would be good!"

"Shut up and stop moving so much!" Valerie yells.

As soon as Danny forces himself to still, he sees Jack's eyes flick up and widen. There's the unmistakable sound of an ectogun firing, the shot whizzes mere inches past his head, and he flinches at the bright flash of the Specter Deflector overloading.

"What-" Jack starts to say, before he yelps, another shot hitting the back of the gauntlet holding Danny.

With his arm freed, Danny bolts back into the air and surveys the scene. His dad's hand will be fine—the ghost gauntlets are made of materials so durable he can't even name them, he's pretty sure—and the deflector sparks once, a thin trail of smoke wafting from its casing. His father is glaring daggers at the pair of them, checking the damage himself.

"You have a plan now, ghost boy?" Valerie asks, keeping the gun unnervingly steady and aimed at Jack.

"Uhhh."

Danny frowns. He needs to get behind Jack and get his hands on his father's back, so he can phase him into the lawn deep enough that he can't simply flex his way out immediately. He knows from experience that humans can be left partially phased without harm. He knows the distance he needs to cover. But his dad is startlingly quick, and getting behind him with enough time to do this right would be hard even with his ghostly speed.

He's still staring at the spot he needs to reach after a couple of seconds, and the world shifts around him like zooming a camera, and suddenly he's in the perfect position and feeling a little bit fuzzy-edged again. Danny shakes his head twice to clear it, grasps his father's suit, and pushes intangibility into him. "Time out!"

"Get your hands—whoaoooa!" Jack yelps, flailing, unable to stop Danny before his body is buried in the soil up to his shoulers. He makes an impressive amount of noise trying to free himself, but ultimately slumps and pants for breath.

Danny flits away again and high-fives Valerie, who rolls her eyes but smiles. "How was that?"

"Not bad, ghost-boy. You still with me all the way? You kinda got, uh—" She waves her hand in a so-so motion.

"Yeah. I think, anyway. It wasn't something I tried to do, but it worked out?" Danny offers, rubbing the back of his neck. It's perhaps a bit odd, or uncomfortable, but he's gotten used to simply following instincts he doesn't fully understand.

Valerie sighs, glancing at Jack, who—oh, hell, is he crying?—has his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. "We should probably figure out how we're going to explain this to him."

"It'd probably be easier if we figured out where Clockwork took mom." Danny says, frowning. A tickle at his new sixth sense alerts him to a familiar presence from behind, and he glances back. "Knowing she's safe might help. Speaker?"

"She is fine, Your Highness." The Speaker says, bowing slightly and earning a scowl from both Heirs. "You may expect her back shortly. Clockwork is, as ever, having their fun."

Clockwork is having a great time, if you'll pardon the pun. You will. They know you will.

You see, it has been eons since the last time anyone but Pandora was willing to engage them in a spar. Yes, they understand why—their very nature means that, even if they attempt to play fair, they're somewhat beyond intimidating. This doesn't mean they aren't frustrated by it. Every ghost likes a little bit of fighting, or so the adage says, and being the eternal personification of a concept doesn't make Clockwork any less of a ghost.

So Madline Fenton immediately opening fire on them as soon as they emerged into the courtyard Long Now had grown in the interim sends a thrill through their ephemeral heart, and they begin to deflect fire with wild glee.

The battle is thrilling, if they're honest (which they do try to be, no matter what others might say). Long Now, sensing its master's joy, declines to intervene as it normally would. After several minutes of volleying fire at the grinning ghost, Maddie throws the pistol at them and charges in, locking her staff open with the press of a button.

If Clockwork found her accuracy with the ecto-gun enjoyable to play with, the way she launches herself at them is a delight rarely experienced for a being so old. Clockwork's second pair of arms fold against their chest as they twirl and deflect, never going on the offensive properly, simply keeping Maddie engaged in the fight. Keeping their foresight from interfering pays off when they actually begin to have to work at their defense, the doctor's attacks whipping out so quickly even Pandora would be proud.

Neither of them says a word for a solid ten minutes of this. They battle through Long Now's recently-used sitting room into the hall, and Clockwork guides the fight toward the observation room door, only hesitating momentarily when Maddie seems to be catching on that she's being herded somewhere.

Her stance grows more aggressive in response, and Clockwork's hood falls with the intensity of the maneuvering they're doing to keep from being hit. Oh yes, this mortal will be invited back, they're sure of it. Perhaps they'll introduce her to Pandora, see what glorious heights of combat she can truly reach if her path diverges. What a joy it would be to know that someone so talented is helping to keep an eye on things.

The door to the observation room opens smoothly behind them, they twist and use three hands to brace against a particularly vicious thrust aimed at their eye (the one that's already scarred—perhaps Maddie thinks it damaged, which is a credit to her improvisation, Clockwork thinks) and then they're inside. Clockwork portals surround them, a ring of observation windows into timelines, rows upon rows stretching to infinity above and below them.

Clockwork grunts, swiping their staff toward Maddie's legs to make her evade instead of attacking, then snaps their fingers. The room lights up, each window around them coming to life with the image of the fateful day Danny activated the Fenton Portal for the first time.

Maddie's breath catches in her throat and she hesitates, and Clockwork takes the opportunity to disarm her. They can revel in the fight later. Right now, while Danny and Valerie deal with defusing Jack, Maddie is their responsibility. If they can convince her, then Jack Fenton will listen much more easily, they're fairly certain of that.

The muddying effects of the Infinite's crown on their precognition extending to things such as this makes them antsy, but they're working with it.

They put a hand gently on Maddie's shoulder when the moment of activation hits, and sigh. "I apologize, Doctor Fenton. This is an especially cruel thing to do to a mother. But on occasion, I must be as cruel as that which I watch over, and time is ever callous."

"What is this?" Maddie asks, rage and heartbreak warring in her voice.

"The truth. My name is Clockwork, and we have much to discuss. Your son, daughter, and husband are safe, I swear it to you. Will you hear me out?"

Maddie's hands curl into fists, and she trembles for a moment before looking at Clockwork and taking a deep breath.

"Clockwork has fun?" Valerie asks, squinting at the Speaker. Behind her, a pair of clock hands spin to life, and a portal opens silently.

"I am a creature of many facets, and like any creature, I do in fact enjoy things on occasion." Clockwork says, causing the two heirs to flinch at their sudden reappearance. Maddie follows them out, eyes red and puffy, and sprints to Danny, who yelps and shoots into the air.

"Danny!" Maddie cries out, and he freezes in midair, eyes wide. Clockwork simply nods, which causes him to descend slowly toward her, at which point he's wrapped in a hug that he's sure would suffocate him if he needed to breathe as Phantom.

"Mads!" Jack yells. "Mads, what—what's going on!? You're okay!?"

"I believe you, your wife, and your son are about to have much to discuss." The Speaker says, placidly. "However, may I suggest it waits until after we correct our current crisis?"

"It's all right, Jack. It's really him." Maddie says, not having released Danny yet.

"But he's a ghost! Our boy's not a ghost!"

"Well, technically, I'm only part ghost—" Danny starts.

Valerie groans, marching past Danny and Maddie and gesturing at Jack. "One of you two gonna get him up so we can get this over with?"

The Speaker sighs, bending down and lifting Jack free of the dirt, then drifting back and taking in the bewildered look on the man's face. "We should at the least go inside, I believe."

"Er. Sure. Um, I'll… get the security system?" Jack says, after a moment of glancing between his wife, his son, and the eyeball-headed ghost.

"You do that. I will retrieve Jazz, and we can have our conversations in more comfort, perhaps." The Speaker says. "Valerie, would you care to accompany me?"

"Uh. Yeah, alright. This seems kinda private anyway." Valerie says, glancing at Danny, who gives her a sheepish grin. "Good luck with this one, Danny."

Without waiting for him to respond, she and the Speaker vanish, soaring into the air and heading to retrieve Jazz from a nearby rooftop.

Chapter Text

The portal causes a nearly physical ache in both Heirs as they step into FentonWorks. It's like a mostly-sealed wound acting up, an old scar that's never quite healed right. To Valerie, it's like how her father describes his old knee injury during a rainstorm. The pain isn't even distracting, really, but it's present and she kind of hates it. To Danny, it's like the lingering sensation in his left arm, the echo of electricity and death.

Neither of them is fond of it, but while Clockwork, the Speaker, and Jazz talk to the Doctors, the Heirs walk down to the portal anyway without a word. The portal itself is active, but its surface roils like the sun, angry and unsettled and occasionally lashing out.

For a moment, thinking about where it might lead now causes Danny to slip, fuzzing out at the edges as his thoughts become caught in a tight, recurring loop. Valerie's the one who rescues him, simply by nudging him back to reality, but the ease with which his mind betrayed him is remarkable. He stares at her for a long moment before nodding, taking a deep breath and feeling it fill his lungs. "I'm good, I think."

"Yeah, like either of us are." Valerie says, then sighs, rubbing her arm. "Easier to think about the portal than talking to them about all this, huh?"

"Yeah." Danny presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, letting go of his transformation. "Well, I mean, talking to them isn't gonna fix this, and this is probably more important."

"Unfucking reality, easier than talking to your parents about being Phantom. I can see it." Val says, cracking a small smile. "Can't say I blame you, though. You're gonna tell me if you need me there when it happens, right?"

"You'd do that?"

Valerie scoffs, then lifts her chin and adopts a put-on snobby accent. "Only for a fellow royal."

Danny snorts, shaking his head. "We're joking about it now?"

"Would you be happier if I was trying to pick a fight with Clockwork?"

"More entertained, maybe." Danny glances at the portal again. "Weird to think we're going to be using this to save everyone, considering."

"Yeah. Considering it's the reason this whole mess even happened, you mean?"

"Yeah. And, you know, personal reasons. It kinda had it out for me a few months back."

Valerie grimaces. Even standing here, even without the crown's influence, the Portal's got enough power running through it that she's sure she can feel it against her skin. "Well, yeah. That too."

"Like you said, gotta joke about it or it'll just make you upset." Danny shrugs, glancing at the stairs. "Besides, it's gonna be something I have to tell them about, so…"

Valerie sighs, unsure what to say.

It must show on her face, because Danny brightens up with a small smile. "Well, at least we're past the 'I'll get you ghost kid' fighting them stuff. That actually went way better than I expected."

Valerie manages a smile as well. "You pulled some pretty cool moves there. Lucky us you had so much practice against me, huh?"

"Oh please, my dad is way scarier than you ever were."

Valerie laughs. "Yeah, well, he's like twice as big as me, so I guess that's fair."

"You're a waaay better shot, though." Danny grins. "So it's not like you weren't, you know, scary. Just not as scary."

"High praise considering I don't think I ever actually hit you." Valerie rolls her eyes.

"I got good at avoiding stuff real fast. Most of the time." Danny rubs the back of his neck. "It's the intangibility thing that I'm still getting the hang of."

"Uh huh. That why you keep leaving craters shaped like yourself in buildings?"

"Maaaybe."

"My hero." Valerie elbows him.

Danny laughs quietly. "Honestly, though? When I was flying off to fight Pariah, knowing you were behind me made me feel way better. That's how good you are."

"And I still never hit you. That's how good you are."

"Kids?" Maddie's voice echoes down the steps, and both Heirs perk and look in that direction. "Your… friend, Clockwork, has explained what we need to do. Can we come down and start working?"

Valerie hesitates, then reaches over and pats Danny on the arm. "You good?"

Danny swallows. There's a twisting in his gut, still, at the idea of facing his parents now that they know. But he nods anyway. "We're good. C'mon down, guys!"

What follows is a full three hours of the most awkward lab project any of them have ever taken part in. The portal is too dangerous for the humans to directly modify, so a lot of the work for Danny and Valerie is simply going in to touch the damn thing for them, swapping parts out as necessary and installing new pieces. The interdimensional tear's surface does nothing to them, allowing them to enter the tunnel behind it and work on the amplifying and igniting elements without needing to find some way to shut it down.

This all occurs while the Fentons dance around acknowledging the conversation they'll need to have, the Doctors trailing off on almost everything they say with a hopelessly lost look in their eyes whenever they address Danny. Valerie tries her best, she really does, but frankly she's having enough trouble with the pulsing wound in the fabric of reality right there anyway. Danny, meanwhile, is doing his absolute best to avoid looking straight down the tunnel, hasn't gone near a specific, blackened spot on the wall, and is every bit as awkward around his parents as they are around him right now.

The only one who seems to be unaffected by the tension is Clockwork. They spend the first ten minutes pacing around the lab, occasionally making a humming or disapproving noise as their eyes drift over one invention or another. At one point fifteen minutes in they simply vanish for thirty seconds with the Fenton Ghost Catcher. When they return, it is without the somewhat questionably-themed invention. Nobody says a word to them about it directly, but Danny at least feels almost relieved that the thing is gone.

By the end of the three hours, the portal's frame has been reinforced and extended. The piping of the filter has been disconnected and has joined the cables that once fed back and forth with the city's power grid in hooking into a device that resembles a four foot tesla coil, which hums quietly but in multiple voices at once. The coil then connects to the Ops Center's powerful antenna, which has been aligned straight to point at Long Now's waiting door.

The specifics of what Long Now has to do with the process are a bit more biological than technological, according to Clockwork, but when pressed they simply explain that the Lair is an amplifier for what they're about to do that will also ensure Amity Park doesn't create a new hole in this side of the veil on its way out. A time-space anchoring point. At least, the Heirs are pretty sure that's what Clockwork's explanation means. Even a part of the Infinite doesn't necessarily get a straight answer out of the enigmatic time ghost, it turns out. Some part of them both simply accepts this—the same part that looks at Clockwork and feels something like familial kinship—and rather than look deeper at that part, they return to the task at hand.

The most dangerous part of the entire operation is right at the beginning. Danny and Valerie stand in front of the angry, weeping wound of the portal, watching it boil as it attempts to open into itself over and over again. Their hands rest against the sides of the coil-like device, their eyes dimly glowing with the Infinite's power. The Doctors are behind a hastily constructed blast shield that affords no ability to see what is about to happen directly. Clockwork is behind the Heirs, while Jazz is in Long Now with the Speaker. Tucker and his family have done everything they can to shore up Damon at the hospital, while the Mansons have basically taken over city hall and have been using it to coordinate getting people to shelter and ensuring nobody has found a way outside of the city limits.

All of them, save the Heirs and ghosts, hold their breaths as Clockwork gives them the go-ahead to begin. It's time to close the Portal. Once it's shut down, the Heirs have an almost imperceptible length of time to begin opening it under the Infinite's power before the lack of it causes local space-time to implode. Clockwork is specific about the word implode. This, more than anything, has everyone on edge. Even the Speaker is alarmed at Clockwork being specific.

The Portal powers down with an angry popping noise, and both Danny and Valerie gasp at the sudden pain that shoots through them. For entities that are the most Something that can be possibly be, the Nothing that is left in the portal's place is agonizing. If the portal was a gouge, this is a hole, a sucking absence in the surface of Infinity. Somewhere deep in the Realms, the raw essence of them howls, their pain its own. The essence of space, of existence, and its avatars buckle against what would be their unraveling.

Clockwork braces. Time shudders and jolts and strains to keep flowing around the Nothing in front of them, and they plant their staff and growl with the effort it takes to keep the Nothing contained. It requires everything they have not to simply stop, their gears and pendulum creaking as their undoing yawns wide before them.

Danny and Valerie surrender to the Infinite, and the power surges through them like a supernova. The crowns' light sears the walls, their metal ablaze with prismatic flame that defies the Nothing, color that defines the order that this mindless entropy would undo. The two Avatars' powers surge with the roar of uncountable universes running through Their bodies, fingertips channeling the energy straight into the metal in front of Them. For a moment, Infinity entwines them with the Avatar of its sibling Time, and the three impossible creatures act in perfect unison. Clockwork collapses the flow inward, opening a single point in the Nothing for time to flow again. Danny and Valerie scream a defiant, rebellious noise, and Infinity sparks and flows into the hole Clockwork creates, Time allowing it to ignite.

Somewhere in another plane, as a direct result of this, a new Universe explodes into being as the process' excess power bleeds into a new Big Bang.

The portal bursts to life with a triumphant roar, then begins flowing straight out of the frame and down the coil and into the modified antenna atop FentonWorks. Power explodes from the antenna, the entire island Amity is on illuminated by its impossible colors. Long Now's gears creak into accelerated motion as it greedily devours its sovereigns' energy. Jazz and the Speaker are frozen in place as the Lair becomes the focal point for a portal that puts all other human attempts to shame. It envelops Amity like a shroud, then collapses back inward, leaving only the exit to the normally-sized FentonWorks portal in its place.

Amity Park reappears on Earth suddenly and without fanfare, as though it had never left. Power lines and utility pipes are seamlessly reconnected. Roads have no visible damage despite the fact that they simply must have been severed. Animals that had wandered into the empty space find themselves outside it again.

A second of time finally passes for the living, and Amity Park settles into place. Clockwork and the Heirs collapse against each other in a heap, steam coming from their bodies as their powers pull back inward again.

The last thing the Infinite can hear is the panicked yelling of the Doctors, before the pain and fatigue fade into blissful unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

By the time the Heirs are both awake again, Amity Park has been back in the living world for two days. The Infinite takes another day to remember its seperate selves properly, with the help of Jazz and Damon, while the Doctors work with a recovering Clockwork to stabilize the new portal as a proper, lasting opening.

It's not an easy process. Everyone involved cries multiple times, but by the end, Danny is Danny and Valerie is Valerie, even if they both have acquired a seemingly permanent pearlescent sheen over their eyes. It doesn't affect their vision, and it doesn't appear harmful to mortals or ghosts, so for the time being the Heirs simply accept it and move on.

There's more important things to worry about, anyway.

"You're certain we can't help?" Maddie asks, hands cradling a cup of coffee. Across from her at the dinner table, the Speaker sighs heavily.

"Unfortunately, yes. With the ring in his possession, Plasmius is simply too dangerous for mortals to engage." They cross their arms. "Believe me, Doctor Fenton, I'm not a fan of it either, but I am not allowed to interfere in this fight, and even if Clockwork could, they're still recovering. The Heirs must face a challenge to the crown on their own merits. Some rules aren't easily broken, even if the power behind the crown has favorites."

"They're only fourteen." Maddie says, looking down into her cup as though the dark surface of the coffee might reveal some new insight. "Jack and I started this to keep kids like them safe, not to cause this."

"Intentions are rarely what is weighed by history." The Speaker muses. "You have been afforded a chance to mend a relationship with your child before it was irreversably destroyed. They will need the support in that more than in this fight, I believe. And, if you do not mind my saying so, I believe that support will be far more taxing at times."

Maddie considers this, then looks at the Speaker again. "You sound like you're a parent yourself."

"I was." The Speaker's eye shifts, avoiding her gaze. "The advice I give you was not easily won, Doctor Fenton."

Maddie watches them for a moment more, then sips her coffee and glances at the stairs. "I'm sorry."

"I appreciate that." The Speaker says. "If it puts you more at ease, I still believe the Heirs will succeed. They are extraordinarily capable, despite their youth. Plasmius may be strong, but Pariah was far stronger, and they succeeded there."

"I suppose you're right." Maddie murmurs, closing her eyes. Then, louder, "It's almost time for them to leave, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so." Clockwork says, emerging from the basement with Jack in tow. The ghost is in their elderly form, showing the fatigue that still suffuses every single part of their body. They keep their cloak wrapped tightly over their torso, hiding their pendulum well, but glimpses here and there have let the mortals see that its swings are less smooth than they had been before. The effort of keeping time itself from unraveling hasn't gone without its consequences. "They should be down any minute."

"Old Vladdie better watch his back!" Jack crosses his arms, his typical bluster a bit shaky. "I told Dann-o not to go easy on him just because we used to be friends, after all!"

"I'm sure Danny will take that advice to heart." The Speaker says, eye bobbing in an approximation of a nod.

"He better leave some for us." Maddie mutters, darkly, and she earns an approving nod from Clockwork in response.

"Alright!" Danny calls, from the stairs. "Think we're about ready to go!"

"Come on down and show us!" Jack bellows back, causing the Speaker to scoot slightly further away from him.

Danny's the first one down. He's replaced his Phantom jumpsuit with something that's a bit thicker, almost more like the padding a motorcycle stunt driver might wear. It's still his signature black with white, but the arms and legs feature ectoplasm-green highlight stripes down the sides. Despite the minor changes, including his 'logo' having been moved to over his left chest, he's still recognizably Phantom—just a little more protected. Jack, who helped to put the protective layers of the outfit together, nods his approval.

Next is Valerie, who has abandoned her Vlad-made armor for something closer to what Danny's now wearing. Hers features red highlighting to contrast his green, and her whites are a bit closer to gray. No logo adorns her suit, but unlike Danny, she has an ecto rifle slung over her back. Damon stands behind her, jaw clenched tight and arms locked across his chest, his eyes full of an odd mix of pride and worry.

"Your armor seems sufficient." Clockwork drifts forward, reaching a withered arm out from their cloak to conjure a portal in midair. "Allow me to provide a contribution of my own."

The humans tense immediately at the casual display of power, while the Heirs just watch with tired gazes. The ghost reaches through with three limbs and grunts, producing two sheathed swords that wouldn't look out of place as generic props at a ren fair. Plain brown scabbards and leather grips, pommels of unadorned metal and guards that have no distinguishing features. Danny's brow goes up quizzically, but before he can ask any questions, the Speaker gasps.

"Clockwork, where have you been keeping those?" They ask, getting out of their chair and flying over without pausing to apologize when Maddie startles.

"I have not been keeping them anywhere." Clockwork grumbles, turning to offer them to the Heirs. "Long Now has kept them. Apparently the Lady left them within it, and her domain is ever the foil of my own. Where and when they arrived, I have no idea, and I do not intend to pry."

"Did they just admit they don't know something? This is serious." Valerie mutters, and then elbows Danny to keep him from snickering.

Clockwork clears their throat. "If I may. These blades are for your use."

"Uh, I don't know how to use a sword." Danny says, frowning.

"The sword knows what you need to know." Clockwork says, simply.

Valerie squints, then takes her sword carefully. The blade almost seems to shiver within its scabbard, and when she places a hand on its grip, the weapon's size shifts to perfectly suit her arm and height.

Danny finds his blade doing much the same. A tingle crawls up his body as the Speaker helps fix the blade to his belt, and once it's done, he finds that he barely feels the weight. "What—"

"I believe," Clockwork says, pulling their arms back within their cloak. "That you will find them agreeable, so long as they find you agreeable."

"I thought Pariah destroyed the last surviving members of this species." The Speaker says, their eye somehow conveying an expression of intense focus as they help Valerie get her blade attached to her belt.

Clockwork hums noncommitally. "Time, I fear, is short, and not even I can change that. You must leave to confront Plasmius immediately. Be safe, Your Highnesses. Come back victorious."

"Give Vladdie heck, Dann-o." Jack says, hugging Danny tight.

"Teach that bastard a lesson about manipulating someone like you, princess." Damon says, embracing Valerie similarly.

Maddie joins Jack in hugging Danny, kissing his forehead just under the band of his crown. "Come home safe, Danny."

"I will." The Heirs echo. They glance at each other, grimacing at their unintended unison, then drift off the ground together while Clockwork opens a portal.

The Master of Time makes a huffing noise. "This will get you close enough to make the rest of the flight easily. It is the best I can do without alerting him further to your approach."

"Kick his ass, you guys." Jazz says, from the stairs, causing both Heirs to jump and turn to face her.

Danny gives her a sheepish grin, then dives through the portal, Valerie hot on his heels. They emerge in the sky over Wisconsin, Vlad's castle just visible on the horizon, the portal snapping shut behind them.

Valerie pauses, glancing at Danny, then sighs. "Hey. When we finish kicking his ass, you wanna… I dunno, find somewhere to get a decent burger together? Before we go home?"

Danny is halfway into launching into flight, and he immediately freezes and whirls to look wide-eyed at her. "Wait, I—hold on, is this—are you asking me out? Now?"

Valerie rolls her eyes. "Maybe I think we should try to have, you know, one normal thing before we go become co-rulers of the universe or whatever?"

"Then— then yeah! Sure!" Danny nearly squeaks, before clearing his throat and composing himself. "Vlad first, though. Uh. Shit, Val, I always kinda wanted to ask, before the whole you trying to kill me thing—"

"Shut the hell up and fly, Danny."

"Right!"

Chapter Text

Vlad Masters is waiting in front of his castle when the Heirs arrive, hands folded behind his back, with the Fright Knight standing to his left at attention. He plasters on a smile as the pair land in front of him, teeth visibly clenched.

"Where is it, Vlad?" Danny asks, and Vlad raises an eyebrow theatrically.

"Daniel, I'm sure I don't know what you mean. What could ever have brought you and Valerie Gray to my door on such short notice?"

Valerie snorts. "Man, you are such a creep in person."

"Now, now. Is that any way to speak to your benefactor? I must admit, Valerie, you of all people I never expected to abandon your cause this way. Working with Phantom?"

"We've come to an understanding." Valerie says, flatly. "Give us the ring, asshole."

"Actually," Vlad says, eyes narrowing. "I don't think I will. You two children should give me the crown, instead, don't you think? Before you cause any real problems."

"You mean like how you stealing the ring and bailing almost killed us?" Danny challenges, hands lighting up with green power that flickers with the Infinite's prismatic light at the edges.

"Don't be so dramatic, brat. You're already as dead as I am." Vlad growls, his own magenta ectoplasm igniting behind his back. "But if you won't give me what I want, then I can always push that needle further."

The light that sweeps over him is somehow inverted, white around black, and it's almost enough to distract Valerie when Plasmius lunges out of it with a swipe at her.

Almost.

She still might've taken a hit if Danny hadn't blasted Plasmius off course, and she shakes her head and unslings her rifle, sending blasts after the crazed billionaire. He vanishes into the ground, and she ceases fire and puts her back against Danny's, eyes scanning the area. There's something uncomfortable about not knowing where Vlad is that goes beyond the tension of a fight. The ring hides him from their senses on a level that stretches up into the territory of the Infinite's power, and it puts both of them even more on edge.

When he reappears near the Fright Knight, they whirl and open fire, but it splashes harmlessly against a startlingly solid magenta shield. "Honor our bargain, you useless pile of armor! Attack them!"

The Knight levels its gaze at the Heirs, then scoffs derisively and crosses its arms. "This is no fight of mine, Plasmius."

"Your offer was to aid me in usurping the current bearer of the crown!"

The Knight shakes its head. "You did not usurp the bearer that held it at that time, either way. Pariah is dead. I do not serve would-be rulers. Whichever of you survives, I will await you at your coronation."

Vlad screeches with rage, but the Knight simply vanishes from sight without another word. Though they're trying not to tap into the Infinite's power too heavily, the Heirs can definitely tell that the spirit of Halloween's presence has left the area, and it's enough that Danny at least sighs in relief.

"What, you weren't looking forward to the mess that was about to be?" Valerie asks, pulling the trigger a few more times to sink more bolts into Masters' shield.

Danny huffs, launching blasts of his own. "You wouldn't be joking about it if you'd fought him before. That guy's a menace."

"That 'guy' is an oathbreaker!" Vlad yells. "Fine! I will handle you two myself! Let's see you overpower me without the full strength of the crown under your control, you pathetic children!"

"You're the one who hired a fourteen year old to kill a kid you didn't like, assface!" Valerie calls back over the din of ectoblast fire. The response is damn near a roar, and she and Danny are knocked off their feet by the shield exploding at them, send tumbling across Vlad's formerly-manicured lawn.

Plasmius rises to the air, and Val fires twice more from her position on her back before her gun sparks and powers down. Danny groans and rolls into a crouch, then grabs her hand and yanks her to the side to avoid a two-handed blast of power from a newly-formed clone of Vlad's.

Valerie tosses the rifle aside and puts her hand on the hilt of her sword, glancing at Danny. "You didn't tell me he could do this bullshit."

"I thought you knew, honestly." Danny says, blasting a third Vlad in the face and ducking a punch from a fourth. "Like, he does it all the time."

"You're the one that usually fights him!" Valerie exclaims, drawing the sword and bringing it up just in time to intercept a burst from yet another Vlad. The blade sings through the air, slicing the projectile in such a way that it fizzles before it can close any more distance. "This is ridiculous, man, are you kidding? How many can he make?!"

"Normally? Like, twenty tops!" Danny replies, pulling his own blade with his right hand while blasting another clone with his left. "With the ring, though? Who knows!"

"My goodness, do you two ever shut up?!" A clone shouts, before another sends a roundhouse kick into Valerie's side and knocks her into a stumble.

"Well, we'll just have to encourage you to observe a healthy silence, you loudmouthed imps!" Another Vlad says, before joining three more in firing a combined blast at Danny. Danny throws up a shield, but his knees buckle, the force far greater than Vlad's clones could manage before. The blade trembles in his hand, eager to put itself to use, and he understands what it can do innately.

There's just no time. He recovers from the blast and leaps into the swarm of Vlads with a desperate series of slashes, but for the two he cuts down, four more suddenly appear and lunge at him, one managing to rake its charged claws along his side and cut deep enough into the fabric to draw ectoplasm. Valerie rolls out of her stumbling and comes up with a swipe that removes three more from the field, only to get shot in the back by a fourth and sucker punched in the gut by a fifth.

The Infinite's power hums under their skin. Despite it, they're losing—Danny's holding back to avoid using it, Valerie's hopelessly outmatched without her power armor and guns. Between the two of them they're still standing, even with the shots they're taking, but it's only a matter of time. The real Vlad is nowhere to be found, though with the power the clones are throwing around he must be close.

If only they could pinoint him. Valerie drives her sword through the one closest to her, then diverts into a slash that clears another pair that had been closing on her. Danny takes down three with a flurry of strikes, then blocks a series of ectoblasts from another four in the air. The chatter has ceased, because the pair can't afford the breath. They take to the air and are immediately swarmed, eight new Vlads swarming up from the ground with sick, fanged grins on their faces.

Ultimately, going to the air is their downfall. Valerie is hit with a blast from below, then tackled and slammed into the concrete wall by another clone, before being thrown to the ground and pinned by four more, dazed and unable to do more than weakly struggle. Danny, alarmed when she's first hit, is caught off-guard with a kick to the head followed by being quite literally body slammed into the driveway, then dragged limply to be pinned beside Valerie.

Somehow, the pair don't lose their swords, for all the good it does them. Vlad doesn't seem to care enough to try to remove them, an easy thirty of him swarming around them like animals preparing for a feast.

And there, descending from the air and clapping slowly, is what must be the real Vlad. He smirks, landing neatly in front of them, and kneels down to look them in the eyes.

"If you surrender now, and grant me the crown," He begins, his voice a low purr which somehow still brings to mind a diseased, feral cat, "I will only punish you two and Jack, and I will let Damon live."

Danny coughs—shit, is there a rib broken in there? Does he have ribs to break at this point?—and spits blood at Vlad ineffectually. "Fuck you, froot loop."

"Pity. And you, my dear Ms. Gray?"

"Take a wild guess, fuckstick."

"Hm. And here I hoped you two would be sensible." Vlad says, standing and beginning to charge energy into his hands. The clones do the same, the area lit with magenta like a demented rave floor. "Alas, I fear I have no time for second chances. Farewell, Valerie, Daniel. I'm sure Madeline will recover, once I give her an heir that's truly worthy of her."

The Infinite howls inside of their skin, thrashing and writhing against them to act, to embrace its strength once again. Vlad raises his hands, and Danny manages to crane his neck to look at Valerie. All she can do is nod to him. It might burn them out entirely, but the one thing they both know on a level beyond mortal comprehension is this:

Vlad Masters cannot claim the Crown of Fire, no matter what.

The release is like a dam crumbling before the force of a hurricane.

Vlad screams, because a mortal mind that isn't tempered simply cannot process the true shape of the Infinite's chosen. Impossible light pours free from every inch of Valerie and Danny's bodies. It's not heat, not pain, simply an embrace—almost like the feeling of a mother embracing her children at the end of a long day.

On the outside, however, the effect is akin to a bomb going off.

Vlad's clones are vaporized, instantly. Vlad himself is arguably luckier, because the Infinite's impossible destructive force floods through him, but does not kill him. The geyser of Impossibility that the Chosen Heirs are conduits to stops at simply throwing him to the ground and searing its shape into his mind.

Perhaps because Danny and Valerie are not truly cruel, it is not either. It may take years upon years, but Vlad will recover from the shock of this moment. This the Infinite knows without asking its sibling Time, because as blunt an instrument as it may be when tapped into without intention, it can be startlingly precise when it wants to be. It is, after all, Everything.

It pauses.

The problem with being Infinite is that small things are very hard to grasp onto, both mentally and, as odd as it sounds, physically. When you are Everything, it can be difficult to find and focus on a specific part of yourself. But there are two blades within Its domain that are more present than most things in this yard, weight that is held tight in bloodied hands.

Hands, of course, that belong to It. Four of them, yes. This is important: They are both part of it and separate from each other, and it is important to it that this is the case, though it is hard to understand why. The Infinite touches its domain around this specific weight, and shape begins to coalesce from it, familiar shape. Two familiar shapes, odd ones, unique. When you contain Everything within yourself, you see, uniqueness is a valued trait beyond many others. These shapes are unique because they belong to It in the same odd way the hands do, and It pulls Itself into them once more, uncomfortable at the way so much must be compressed into so little space.

There is something here that is not of It, It knows. Something that was important to It. Perhaps. There, on the finger of the madman that tried to force a claim on Its blessing.

The Ring that Is and Is Not a part of Everything. The Ring that came from Elsewhere, though Where is beyond It, It does not know. It finds that It is at peace with this, as much as a fundamental force can be at peace or not at peace with anything specific, and takes the four hands It has made and slides the Ring off of the Madman's hand.

Oh. That brings the Madman back into focus. It isn't fond of that, for some reason, though understanding why is beyond It at the moment. This is, of course, why It loves its avatars so very, very much. They understand both perspectives.

Quite tired of trying to comprehend things that normally would not matter in the least to It, It flicks the Ring once, impatiently. The Ring vibrates from the impact, and then—as even a Ring can understand you shouldn't make a primal force impatient—it splits itself seamlessly into two, a second weight of Not Belonging sliding into a new dent in Everything's awareness.

If It could smile, the Infinite would. And with boundless love, it slides the Rings onto two of Its fingers—

Danny and Valerie gasp, then both cough, their ribs suddenly existing again to burn from impacts and cuts. The Rings nestle onto their fingers and fix themselves there, as though they belonged there the whole time. Somehow, and both of them are aware they shouldn't be wondering how, their gloves do not impede this process at all.

The two Heirs stare at each other for a long moment while their brains resume the process of thinking, then they break into giddy grins and throw themselves into each other's arms.

"We did it!" Danny laughs.

"Hoooly shit, we did it!" Valerie echoes, spinning Danny in a circle. "Oh, man, I thought we were goners when we tried that!"

"Me too! Man, that was crazy!"

"You owe me a burger!"

"Owe you?!" Danny barks, before suddenly Valerie's laughter is much closer, and then she's planting an emotionally overwhelmed kiss on his cheek.

She pulls back to give him an awkward grin, both their arms shaking from adrenaline, her own cheeks burning. "Don't get used to that yet. I got caught up in the moment."

"Right!" He squeaks, blushing an impressive green. "Uh. Burgers. Celebratory burgers."

"Mhm." Valerie says. "And us getting out of here before the cops show, maybe."

"Right."

"Hey, Danny?"

"Yeah?"

"We make a pretty fucking good team."

"Yeah!"