Questions, Answers, Attacks
Danny has questions, Toby has answers, and ghosts feel a need to interrupt. ao3
“Well, before you do start lemme say that Cole n I have only been here for like, a week or three, on our little vacation from our home universe. I’ve been feeling kinda different since we got here, honestly, and my wings bursting into flame with my anger is… different to say the least. So, some of my answers may not exactly apply to your Realm.”
“Husband?” Sam arched her brow, smiling. “Tell me more about queer ghost history.”
“Right, see, that's one of the things I meant. I have no idea about the history of uh queer relationships in your Zone. Back home nobody really had any problems with it, but back home people were too scared of Cole to really voice their objections about some pretty basic social things.”
“Like?”
“Well, Tucker, Cole doesn’t like to wear clothes. Recently, after traveling through all the charged ectoplasm to get in your general area, he’s learned how to turn his lower half into a cloudy tail thing. Yeah, like that,” he said, waving at Danny when he turned his own legs into a tail. “And so he compromises by doing that.”
Danny blinked a few times before clearing his throat. “Will I age normally?” His voice was quieter, smaller than it was when Toby had first encountered the teens. The druid’s face softened ever so slightly and he shrugged.
“Well, if you’re half human like I think you are then you’ll probably age the way I did. Up to physical adulthood and then you’ll stop, or at least slow down so much that it feels like you stopped. Mom won’t tell me if I’m actually aging anymore or if I’m just like this forever.”
“Is your mom liminal too? I guess you’d be more a quarter ghost than half if she was.” Tucker tapped his chin in consideration and Toby chuckled, shaking his head.
“Ma is the god of the forest I was born in, and Mom is her archdruid. Well,” Toby shrugged, pointing at himself, “one of her archdruids.”
“Archdruid, like in dungeons and dragons?”
“I… feel like you’re referring to something specific in your world, Tucker, so I can’t say for sure. Druids like myself revere, protect, and draw our magical power from nature. We understand that there is no true divide between sapient beings and the rest of nature. And so, we can do things like this.”
Just slow enough that they could see it but faster than any of the teens could process, Toby transformed into an owl and flew silently around the room in a circle. They all watched him fly in awe, Danny shocked that even he couldn’t really hear the clearly visible beating of Toby’s wings, and when he landed and reverted to his original form, they all clapped.
“Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here for who knows how long. Any more questions?”
“Uh, well. This one’s kinda heavier than I usually get, since I’m usually floating.” Toby snorted and Sam groaned, rolling her eyes. “What happens when the other half dies? Actually, will I really ever go all the way?”
Toby winced, his wing rising up to partially hide his face. He winced again, lowering his wing, and shrugged. “Right, uh, I’m an Aasimar, and I never quite died, so I can’t say that I ever died. We’ll have to find someone with a bit more info around here to ask them about that later, but uh. Well, I can take a guess?”
Danny shrugged, gesturing for Toby to continue, and he cleared his throat, floating a bit off the ground. “Well, you said that being liminal is a new thing for you, which I can only assume to mean that you died somehow.” Plants of all kinds grew in the cracks of the walls and floor, forcing them even wider open, and something in the air felt distinctly angry to Danny for a second. “I’ve heard rumors that you beat the high king of your Ghost Zone, which means you’re incredibly powerful for being a toddler, and you’ve never experienced any sickness related to being liminal?” Danny shook his head.
“No, but Vlad did.”
“Then that means that your ghost is so intricately connected with your material body that both will likely sustain the other ad infinitum. You’ll probably be like me and just stop aging once you hit your prime.” Toby deflated a bit, the glow from his wings dimming and the colors leaning toward blue and purple. “Age is the culprit for most deaths that aren’t murder.”
“And … if I do get murdered?”
“Then I steal some diamonds and resurrect you, but for the point you’re asking about: Aasimar go to whatever outer plane their patron is from - in my case, I’d be pulled to Arborea if I was successfully murdered.” He snorted at that, shaking his head. “Genasi like Cole and I think Teiflings get processed through the court of the Raven Queen to decide where their souls go much like everyone else in my planar system. You’ll most likely just be a full-on ghost if you get murdered.”
“Ok, sorry, I know we’re talking about dead serious business here.” Tucker accepted Danny’s high five and the shove from Sam with a grin. Then he pointed at Toby with his PDA stylus. “I need clarity though. The fuck you mean with that Marvel multiverse bullshit bomb you just dropped in our laps so casually?”
Toby snorted and laughed so hard that he doubled over. “Oh, wow, ok. The multiverse is, I suppose, marvelous, yeah. The Infinite Realms is… the earth beneath the foundation of reality. It’s the basis for everything there is.
“There are, as the name implies, infinite Realms out there. Everyone has their own names for them, I suppose. What many older ghosts here would call my Realm, we call the planar system back home. It’s a wild place to explore, in all my 270 years I haven’t seen all of it.” Toby looked somewhere past them all, wistful. Fluttering his wings, the liminal cleared his throat.
“Right, yeah. All the planar systems out there can be traveled to through the Infinite Realms, though it’s a bit harder in most places to get that far. Especially considering the cosmic jellyfish.”
“The what?”
“I’m not comfortable talking about them. Next question?”
“Uh…” Danny scratched his head, brows furrowed, as he tried to process all of that. “So, circling back to a simpler one: how do you see with those big bright bonfires on you?”
“I’ll be honest, these aren’t usually physical without my putting in an effort. I’m unsure how to make them go back to how they were.” Toby’s wings curled up around him, sparkling almost mockingly. “The Zone is a lot brighter though, so, ya know.”
“Do you not know how to transform?”
“Considering that animal thing you did, I’m shocked at that. Also, can you teach me how you did that?”
“Transform how, Danny?”
When Danny demonstrated, Toby’s eyes widened and his feathers appeared to grow fluffier than before. “Wow, that’s amazing! I thought you just had an illusion up or something but this is a full-blown transmutation of your whole body.” Toby grabbed Danny’s hand and grinned. “Do it again.”
Danny shrugged and morphed back into Phantom, but when his transformation ring passed over Toby, the man pulled back, taking the ring with him. It swept over him like a wave and tinted green. When the transformation finished, Toby was standing more solidly on the ground, his wings nowhere to be seen, and staring at his hands. “Uh… are you ok?”
“Danny this is fucking awesome. I thought I knew all there was to know about changing your body but this is something else. I’m how I was before Cole and I went on that trip together.” Toby grinned, bouncing on his feet. “This is so-”
A crash was followed by screams outside and Danny’s ghost sense went off, drifting toward the noise. He sighed and held out his hands, taken immediately by Tucker and Sam. “Of course, I can’t get one conversation in. Toby, you… are a bird.”
Toby was, already, flying out of the hole in the ceiling, having not even bothered to revert to ghost form. Danny shrugged and flew through the wall, not bothering to check for where Toby had disappeared to. “Well,” Sam drawled, “That’s new. I didn’t know anyone but Vlad was mixing animals together, Danny.”
“Well, these things could be from Vlad, so who knows?” Danny set them both down on the sidewalk near the problem area and his fists and eyes started glowing like torches. “Ok, do I wanna know how a hawk and a squid met and made you guys? Or is this one of those ‘the universe was young and how bodies are supposed to look hadn’t been decided yet’ dealios?”
The large birds with octopus bodies for heads shrieked in indignation at Danny’s perfectly valid question, and Danny rolled his eyes. The creatures dove for Danny and a blade made of ice slid right into the center of the swarm, cracking into a shower of shards that had the hawktopi scattering. “Figured you’d want some help, though these things are roughed up enough that I doubt you need it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen any ghost but me bleed, but I’ve also never used a bladed weapon like that before.” Danny fired off a volley of ectoblasts at the swarm while it regrouped, knocking them out of the air where Sam and Tucker could catch them on the ground. “How are you talking to me as a bird?”
“Have you never seen a bird talk before?” Toby, despite being a peregrine falcon, managed to look like a little shit as he circled around Danny’s head. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure, cause I couldn't do this back in my planar syst-” A tentacle swiped at Toby and ended up hitting yet another octohawk that was trying to grasp at him, and Danny edged away from the other liminal. “Don’t be fucking rude!”
Ice outlined every detail of Toby’s body and spread out in a swirling cloud of raw cold for 10 feet in every direction, followed by an indignant screech that had Danny covering his ears. The Hawktopi were, probably, somewhere under the mounds of ice that surrounded the spots they had occupied when Toby attacked them. That hardly mattered, of course, because they became hailstones that shattered on the ground a second later. “Oh my god, the third liminal I know and you’re a fucking pokemon.”
“The hell is a pokemon?” Toby cocked his head to the side, still surrounded by ice and hail, snowing his way over the ground below. “So, do you guys fix up the city after these fights, or is that something I’m gonna do new for the place?”
“You can fix things with magic?” Danny blinked and smacked himself in the face. “Of course you can, that’s half of the things people fantasize about having magic for. Dude, if you can show me how to do that I’d be beyond grateful.”
“Well, from what I can sense of you, that should be pretty easy. Hold on.” Toby dove, the wind whistling with his speed, and he landed as his human self, wings still hidden and his personal snowstorm fading away. “You’re like, clearly attuned to the sky and I’m pretty sure you’re a weather spirit by nature, so I can teach you some things pretty easily. Hold on.”
Toby’s eyes began to glow a vibrant forest green and the cracks in the pavement where the ghostcicles had fallen were slowly sealing themselves up. Danny, meanwhile, scratched his head and looked at his friends for any help with understanding the adult suddenly in the group. They both shrugged, and Sam spoke up as usual. “What do you mean Danny is a weather spirit?”
“Oh, well, anyone who uses magic has this… thing in them. Like, a metaphysical center where the magic sits in between our souls and our bodies. Everyone can only use so much magical energy at once, and that's where it all builds up.” Toby gently poked Danny’s chest in the center and his finger shone for a second, sending a vibration up and down Danny’s being. “Ghosts all have much the same, but for something … older, more primal I think than magic. Regardless, yours has the same feel as weather spirits and elementals that I’ve encountered.”
“And you’re sure it’s… weather?”
“I am married to an embodiment of the storm, Danny, I know weather magic when I sense it.” Toby chuckled and dusted his hands off, the crack in the road gone. “As a matter of fact, he’s probably the better person to teach you how to use your powers. I can introduce you all to him if you want?”
“Huh… that sounds like a good idea, but I think for now we should probably stop and process all of this, or else our brains are gonna explode. Mine is, anyway.”
“Yeah, this is wild. Will you be here for us to talk to again later?” Tucker hummed. “How do we contact you?” Toby simply transformed, his wings springing forth and golden light spilling all over the place with fresh air that a city like Amity Park didn’t normally enjoy in its wake. A feather was plucked from those shimmering wings and handed to Danny, Sam, and Tuck, before Toby waved and flew up above them.
“This has been fun, kids. I’ve gotta go… talk with the people on this list you gave me. Bye!” With a beat of his wings and a flash, Toby was gone, and Danny sighed loudly.
“He’s gonna tear them to shreds.”