Deep in the depths of Time, in a Zone green and undead lay a rotary. Several separate orbs spinning in steady orbit from shining gold rod ways. To it's center was an imposing central command of Greek pillars and a dome roof, the bottom edge a line of glassless windows.

Turning slow and sleepy with no one to guide and tend to their rotation. The grind of harsh iron or copper rusted and worn orange with age. Groaning like the dead.

Some making ticks within models of old grandfather clocks, egg timers, stately analogs.

A procession of soldiers made their rounds on the ceiling from an ovalesque track.

Glass screens glimmering dull.

Until one caught a flash of snow white.

He moved with caution and yet steps so assured and targeted that he could have only lived there.

A sharp gasp escaped his mouth at finding his prize.

Reclined was the Scepter of Time.

Taking the instrument he gave it a test wave, feeling it's weight and power shudder in his fingers.

And like that Clockwork's lair flared to life. Gears of all sizes and orientations from the ceiling and walls, to the floor, to the doors' frames, from pulleys to pull screens closer, began to turn fast and urgent.

Lights of gentle, eerie blue stabbed at his slit eyelids. Of which he responded by reshaping the pupil, largening the shape into rounded, fat pearls.

Overbalancing he arced into a tumble...

Which shattered the screen directly behind him with a stupendous CRASH.

"Now Dei, what are you doing up so late?" mused the subtle creep of a scolding.

Swiftly he put the staff to his back.

"Uh-- uhm--"

He shuffled his foot, eyes to the floor.

Looking to the glass Dei spoke up in a harried, shrill rush. "I-- I have no idea how, wow who would do something like that. I blame one-eye Morbeus."

With a wave of his hand the Time Master staff flew into his grip sending Dei reeling.

"Hee hee."

"Now, you weren't trying to sneak into the human realm through a time gate. Were you?"

Coming past Dei he fixed the viewing screen.

Out toward the Infinite Zone Dei sulked. "Sorry, but I mean what doesn't it matter? Morning or now, you promised me I could go and that you trusted me. But a human portal, all across the Zone! How is that not more dangerous?"

Clockwork simply sighed, indicating he join him.

He did so reluctantly.

"What have I always told you?"

Dei remained silent.

Was it spiteful? Absolutely. Not-- not that he meant to be.

He respected the old man, really. For all his stupidly cryptic advice and anecdotes he liked to call lessons in life. Training.

"All happens in its due time," he provided. "As I have informed you--" from the glass rippled an image of a destroyed city.

A boy, losing it all. So terrible. An explosion that flung him back-- "This is awful. Why...?

"You are present in only so many timelines. In yet millions more the boy to be your guide has borne the burden of a completely unique existence. A revolutionary, miraculous thing."

Was it really so much to ask for someone to just answer his questions?

Did his mentor get some thrill or something at playing with him and making his brain twist to pretzels?

The power fought off a figure of crimson, sneering scowl upon a skull face.

Only the emperor of the Ghost Zone. Pariah Dark.

"Father," Dei finally murmured.

Only for that image to disappear before he could even touch it.

Clockwork wasn't a Living Born. Had never had to even humor something like a human's linear course of thoughts and conception.

"That's a-- it's a lonely existence," Dei concluded. "Then, I--"

Does he take that from him? Is that what he was? Simply, simply someone to relieve another's burden? Is that why...

Why he exists? Long before his Father had thought to conceive an heir?

"Dei, please do not misunderstand," Clockwork intoned, unyielding crimson eyes softened unto the uncertainty written across his face. "Hours can and do make all the difference. For what we plan, the tiniest misstep could result in the complete annihilation of not just your future but of two worlds."

He nodded solemnly. It was something he'd understood since crying and clawing at the ancient ghosts who'd condemned his Father to sleep.

Condemned him to an eternal loneliness. To never be allowed to grieve his Father.

"Fine then if it's such a big deal I can go through a gate at morning," he huffed, "as promised."

"That is not my point and you know so."

He simply shrugged.

"You have a role to play in the fate of this world and another, but not as King nor as Master of Time," Clockwork said, "where the stream of time flows from now on, is solely on who Dei chooses to be." His mentor smiled.

The Time Master had no reason to be so nice nor to indulge him as he did. The Observants themselves had put bounties on his head so as not to leave their 'safety.'

He could still sometimes feel the rock they'd gagged in his mouth.

"I mean, I get I'm awesome and everything but change the future," he laughed. "Be serious."

Clockwork laughed as well, deep and booming from his chest. Indulgent to the child as he mussed his hair.

"Aww hey!"

The old man could have all his riddles and what have you. It was whatever, wonderful. But he did not, did. Not. Get to mess with hair. That was his domain darn it and would take a whole process to get right again.

"Well, since I'm apparently so vital am I permitted to go back to my room and sleep?"

"Go child," he allowed in fond annoyance. To which he bent his knees to a sardonic bow of his head.

"With your leave," drawled the teenage Prince.

From his retreating steps static blasted and quivered from the fixed mirror.

Though the image was muted, the shapes distorting around the pair two boys were visible. The Prince in red and black, a smile on his face. Facing his own grinning reflection.

Once the morning actually came, an uneasy haze had settled over his chest.

For a long, long while he had woken up to green skies. Whether within the spiring plinths of the castle or from an upper floor parcel of the Time Master's domain. Floating within it's orbit from a long rod.

Dei could enjoy a panoramic view of shifting land forms, floating tribes of newly formed ghosts. Sometimes savage monsters hunting close by.

Dei packed from a simple rucksack. A souvenir of a now dim, dusted orb. Collected and pieced into the shape to portray the original owner. An inconsequential human soldier with an MK at his back.

Dei stripped the bed of it's sheets. Smooth silk stitched with golden ivy. Also packed was a gun.

It was some kind of ectoplasmic fuel weapon. The lifeblood turned to fuel and a fatal charge. Enough to kill a ghost with pink energy. Mid-level.

He waited along for Clockwork, fiddling with one of the many toys he may never get to see again.

From what he could gather, before the insides had become flooded with ectoplasm and ghost energy, the square was supposed to digitize some code in a disc and relay it as pictures.

And it also made a whiz and click noise at each push of one of the top buttons!

"Having fun Dei?" Clockwork asked softly.

He jolted, quickly grabbing his bag.

"Is it--"

"Yes child," he confessed. "However remember afterward there is good chance you will never come back."

He found that idea didn't wholly bother him. Never taking the throne, never... seeing the green sky.

Dei, was ultimately content with that fact.

Then again he had never been allowed to be loved.

Not when his Father was alive nor after when he was the only ghost left to punish for centuries of evil and vice.

Except for this elusive, suspect Master of Time.

Clockwork had defended him. Unconditionally. He spoke softly to him when he didn't have to, putting pain staking hours in each bulbous bloom of human knowledge... And willingly spit in the face of some unknown, begitten future with shit grin on his face.

Dei consumed Clockwork in a hug. "Thank you so much Father," he breathed into the purple robes.

All so he, a spoilt ghost Prince, could find it in himself what to do. Who to be.

With gentle, careful hands he returned the gesture of affection. Such a gift was... Solace Occasum.*

"You're welcome. My child."

"I'll make you proud!"

"I know you will."

************************

Dei roared in vexation, heavy temptation cutting into his insides to just shred the map!

Not only was he no more than wisp in his exhaustion of flying and weaving about under and over several lesions and regions, the destination, fabled ghost portal was a thirty miles off at least!!

Paranoid old ghost choosing a torturously circuitous route.

Studying close, all the while hitched in between spiked thorns of Orphelius Vera and some gelatinous strain of Woodrook sap, he found that a straight shot across, skirting all the most savage of lairs in that quadrant mind you, would afford him a much larger window.

Ha! Take that!

No one would get revenge for his Wanted posters on his watch.

Dei blasted ahead, ripping apart slabs of hideaways, homes, and foliage on his path creating a trail of gnarled destruction.

All of it gaining fast with an impressive snap of the wind.

Time to bounce.

He made a low dive, shielding his face with a grotesque, oversized sickle blade arm.

The slashing weapon was able to make swiss cheese of the worst.

The disgruntled howls and curses shouted at him were a whole other matter.

Until...

With a rush of air and condensed vapor the Zone split. A tear in the very fabric of it's existence requiring a moment of reverent awe.

Some stood stiff, paler than if the Final Death itself had come for them. The moment their cores would stop humming or rendered obsolete.

Sometimes, sometimes it even happened in the Living Born. Whenever they went to the place only allowed them; having Obsessions based on tangible matter and people, much less than any concept or idea no matter how much raw desire clouds that.

Once finished, they do not dissolve.

Only this one, Dei couldn't say so.

Oh he had the body of a Human. Legs and hands, upright on those two legs. Lanky and from what he could discern youthful.

All that ectoplasm.

Raw energy.

His map pulsed with green light in his pocket.

Time restarted itself, speeding past as he did so with the urgency and cutting precision of a bullet.

Core flaring with magnetic power, converting the energy from his usual fluid metamorphosis. Now a snapping, rigid conduit.

A boom of epic proportions went off in his skull.

Hands grasped onto warm, living flesh sending a shock through his system.

Cold, unliving flesh.

Living flesh.

Beating and bleeding.

Unfeeling in his chest. Numb and cold.

Veins pumping.

Dying. Burning.

Dei held on for all he was worth. This human, so young and so fragile, his own home left behind, so cruel and unfair. It's energy flowing into his core and expended just as quickly to undiluted substance.

The boy made an awful crack when he was thrown forward.

Slumping on a metal wall Dei had no sense of himself to discern any other detail.

In fact, he was much more focused on a body that could only be unravelling.

An electric charge ripping out nerves like faulty wiring, brain melting, and scream raised in such a pitch his eyeballs throbbed.

He was a monster.

He was a bull head.

Human.

Beast.

Mist.

The green conduit, languid but fierce then dispersed, bursting into photovoltaic spores.

Finally allowing a spasming Dei Dark to collapse in exhaustion.

"DANNY! Danny!"

"An-- an ambulance-- Jazz--"

The tone grated into his already pained skull.

"Oh god! Oh my God Sam he's spasming! What-- what do we--!"

Distressed and garbled. Utterly wild in it's urgency.

Until a female cut sharp into the disarray.

"Let-- just let. Me. Think."

"And what about the ghost!"

The frayed thread of a life fading made Dei watch the now named Danny's eyes open.

As they leaked a toxic green sap, the color of his eyes slowly burning away to visceral, gauzy white.

"Gh-- ghoooo--"

Only to cough ferociously, spewing bubbling and burning ectoplasm on already raw, rough skin.

*Original phrase is Solis Occasum and means, in Latin, "the setting of the sun."

Spores dispersed.

To the winds and to the skies.

Upon the waters and the crevasses of whittled old knot holes.

Within metallurgy and fires from home and boiler.

Of wild blazes and coming storms soothed back to sleep.

The ones who were lucky to escape.

From steel pure enough to be titanium with not even the slightest pore of humanity. No minute, miniscule flaw to indicate living/feeling creatures.

Well, clearly present company excluded.

Death had come upon the Fenton door.

Whether by sickness or...

But-- but that wouldn't happen.

That couldn't happen. Danny was fine, he would be fine.

Danny was breathing, there was no foaming spittle or blood or anything else. Just a drip of spittle but he wasn't choking.

He wasn't choking and he was breathing.

And Tucker-- Tucker had fled upstairs away from the grisly sight. To call an ambulance.

He was calling an ambulance despite-- despite his own apprehensions.

Because this was Danny. And since it was Danny, whom they had compelled to go in in the first place...

A figure fluttered into sight. A Lovecraftian vaguely human shape with a grizzled old face, flaming white hair, mismatched ram's horns, and baring tusks.

"OMG is he--"

"Stay away!" Sam snapped. "Whatever you are or whatever you want!"

For all his ugliness he hadn't done anything. But when it came to Danny, all bets were off.

"I'm sorry but look I think I can--"

A BOOM resounded shaking the small lab.

Beakers shattered and shelves skidded across the floor into several center points of ripping air.

And from them came yet more beasts and horrors straight out of her Occult texts.

Only for the imbalanced ram to ram into battle with a vengeance.

Green.

Green blood, green skin.

Flaming hair of all shades. A musician ghost, a hunter he knew well.

Sound became a secondary factor.

Draw.

Aim.

Dei pulled the trigger on the weapon, the shot piercing what would be a heart.

And within that came the fear.

The cessation of existence, Dei stained with the entrails and smear of rotted, burning flesh.

The coalescence of spirits shrieked, all united in their abject terror of their glowering monarch.

Dei took no time to let them nor himself recover before he shot again once, twice, three times.

Ghosts began to attack, with much more caution and cunning, but before raw, screaming power it made no difference.

Simple ghosts turned to splatters on now live electrical confines, the more complex left reeling or spectral bodies battered worse than the worst of abuses, and those who were out for blood... those he spared.

So that they could listen. From within his palm seared a sigil of a crimson snake entwined of twin heads under an eye like a chalice.

"Hear what I say," reverberated his seething, cruel voice, "I claim this homestead, this village under my domain. This is my haunt and I never want to see another ghost besiege it. Not for my sin today. Disobey... AND YOU'RE LIVES ARE FORFEIT!!! NOW RETURN! BY COMMAND OF YOUR KING!!!"

Growing and swelling in size the mark grew thorned metal mesh ensnaring all who were present, lashing venomously to the two young humans when he spared a glance.

But in protection he wanted to express.

The portal now shut, mechanical locks sparking red before resealing with a resounding click.

Form unstable Dei shuddered now feet firmly on the ground.

"That won't hold forever," he warned the glaring girl and the boy barely responsive.

He waited for some reply.

Something beside the silent encroachment of unlife but received none.

Simply for his girl to hold him.

"Eeengh. Sam," he moaned.

"I expect a week, before they decide I am not their King but a traitor. That means this doorway must come down."

He set down the gun.

Right in the human's encroaching hand.

"Did-- did we win?"

The boy looked at him now, straining but no less obstinate to make sense of, whatever he saw.

What did the dying see?

"Wh-- hughhh."

The boy retched and heaved. Turned to his side, shaking all over as the pulsing of green veins began to crack around his face and nape.

Before throwing up a putrid soup of boiling, bubbling green.

"NO! DANNY! DANNY!" the girl howled shaking a now unconscious teenager.

Dei could only watch. His bag dropped somewhere, somewhen.

Hardly mattered.

From the window above came the cry of sirens. Of hope for this boy.

And soon, with the glare of red and blue on the walls, the sobering silence of the adults doing their work, and interplay of paramedic, fire person, police, and any and all authorities, the inconsequential ghost was left forgotten.

Who he had learned was named Danny Fenton went wheeled out from his basement. Sam ushered out as well, and a flash of fiery hair demanding to be by his side.

What-- what had happened?

Where was he?

What was he?

Something-- something--

He just wanted to sleep.

He. Just. Wanted. To sleep.

Danny hated being woken early.

Jazz...

With her voice, her visage, the faint, flashing image of teal. Her teal eye...

A razor of agony shoots down his throat and straight to his sternum, ripping his organs apart.

A needle, beating, beating hard as if it were a hammer to stitch him back.

Stitch him...

No!

No!

All wrong!

He was all wrong! All wrong! His parts were all wrong!

It hurt.

It all hurt.

Remembering that day.

The green and the pain.

What he had thought for a brief moment was an angel.

Heaven.

Until the screaming started.

He hadn't liked screaming.

It happened a lot. Mom... Mom...

That thought carved all his... human things... out. And left only a hollow.

So much yelling. It was so unfair.

Sam.

Sam.

She hurt less.

She'd been there.

Oh right. She'd urged him inside, insisted he go inside. Camera in hand. And he had listened.

The green button. A trip.

And then pain beyond understanding.

The angel. No angel at all. Not a devil either. The protector had saved his life. From the portal, from those ghosts.

Rage set aflame to blue slammed into his self, circulating through his blood and swelling the thought of his brain.

**************************

He didn't know whether it was bad human form to meander through human boy's-- Danny Fenton's-- house unchecked and unchallanged. No more than another visitor who had bore witness to a horrific accident.

Who'd done nothing to explain it, clarify it.

Done nothing but simply stand and watch.

It made his throat constrain as if a noose were digging at his ghostly skin. Turned whiter than that Raf something fellow from the Grimm timeline.

Appropriate.

Right now he did feel very much Evil.

Vaguely aware that in no way did he have the right to be doing this.

Gliding into his room, watch his breath heave in and out of his body through a mask.

Consider messing with the array of wires in his chest and arm.

A machine steadily recorded his heartbeat. A uniform, static beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

He positioned his butt and upper body into some kind of sitting pose.

He was a bit over the boy but that was fine he figured.

Just spool out his arm a little.

Limbs always liked to stretch and fly free for a moment. Though with a smile he did reign it in into an acceptable apposable thumbed arm.

One that let him take the human hand of breathing flesh.

So...

Warm.

Danny was warm.

And before he quite knew, or could even rationalize the why, Dei was close enough to touch his nose. Staring into closed lids that he knew to be an iridescent sweet blue.

"Hi," he breathed, breathing life to this boy.

His hair cascaded now a chalky ochre. Nooo. Don't bother him while he slept or whatever it was humans did when like this.

The intrinsic part of him raised and fed on death knew it wasn't sleep.

But that was scary. So, Dei wouldn't think about it.

Hair shorter he silently introduced himself.

Quite quick he found his insides crawling with sliming ants, his body demanding he move.

So he did a bit of fiddling.

First with the lights glaring gold before he put the glass bowl back.

The wrong way.

Of which it shattered to dangerous, shimmering fractals.

And then knocked over the heart machine.

"AHHHH!"

"Oh my, oh my... Dark! Dark! Dark!"

Dei scrambled and panicked and screamed some more.

Only breathing when a woman all clad in white burst in.

"Shit!"

The machine was righted.

She checked his eyes, scrutinized his hands, put a hand to his hair, and then gave his chest a listen for good measure with a silver string snake thing.

All in just fifteen counts.

Amazing!

So, he could smile, knowing that at least Danny was getting only the best care.

***************************

In many ways seeing Danny broke Dei's heart. And besides it was scary.

It also made him feel ugly and worthless to not.

See him that is.

For one, ghosts were cunning and heeded his warning. But there was a reason the Infinite Realms was an expanse of nothing and temporal anomaly.

When ghosts were ghosts, and he couldn't condemn that he had tried, things caught fire. They grew legs.

They made soup! Very bad soup.

People were getting hurt.

They ate up attention from Danny.

They came in droves.

And maybe for himself too, he didn't want Danny to see it.

He got used to the fact that Danny was 'in a coma.' Scary words.

Not so scary to see. Once one built up the nerve.

And Dei was if nothing worthy or tolerable, audacious.

He did all the things coma families did.

Talked to him about everything and nothing. Mentioned how nice he looked, and only once cut off a lock of black human hair, because why did it grow to only his neck? Why was it so-- so flat? And why was it also warm if it didn't have blood through it?

He'd seen from some of the grainy, awful quality TV shows that people in hospital got candy and flowers.

So he'd done that. Also learned, don't shove the whole bouquet to his nose. Otherwise they couldn't breathe.

He would make sure to remember. Humans. Had. To breathe.

And the nurses weren't doing everything. After all, people woke up all the time by sounds. And, and he had heard a local school girl, smart looking too, how she was thinking of sending her also hospitalized brother music to "stimulate his brain, let him know someone is waiting."

So he turned on the TV for him.

But there wasn't all that much good stuff.

Just the other sappy hospital shows. Sappy love shows and sappy bondage shows.

These hot, tuxedoed guys really had a thing for tying people up. What was that?

Hm, better watch out for them in the future.

"Right Danny?"

Weellll, silence wasn't a no.

"Boys like action stuff though right?"

He soon found a loud, exploding flick.

Really loud.

And the fancy shiny car! WHY!

And in all the noise he almost didn't hear it.

But there, clear as day-- the growl of a dog! From the-- from Danny.

"Not action, okay."

He turned to a much more muted show with jewelry.

Could one call some ad a show? He decided no.

**************************

At first it had been scary.

Floating in some weird in between.

Some moments afraid his parents would rip him apart themselves for what he had surely done. Because how else could he explain the marshmallow mush his head had become except with drugs.

How time just simply, didn't compute. Ran fluid as water past him, inside him.

Never there for more than a moment.

Now he got more used to it.

His hands still went adios from his body; Oregon or Canada maybe, from how cold they came back. Other times he was too hot at his center and other times he could almost hear voices.

Men and a woman. Women and a man. Mid-aged or old people.

One very cold and the other soothing.

"Demon!"

Was said in his presence a lot.

Yeah, way to make a guy feel confident about himself.

Well whatever.

For whatever idiot, holier-than-thou pain he had the absolute joy of Danny was human.

Danny knew people couldn't just say that about him.

The whisper of warm breath touched Danny somewhere.

His heart ached. He wanted to shoot up from this stupid invisible restraint or straitjacket whatever! Mom!

"When you wake up let's talk about who we have crushes on."

This voice.

Not Mom.

It was safe.

Danny did his damnedest to drown back in the dark sleep and timelessness of his color music mind.

For all he liked the idea of someone being here just for him and almost happy to be something deep, deep in his soul told him he had a lot of explaining to do.

So, Danny was quite annoyed at all the other chatter if he wasn't going to fess up or answer.

"I'll put on Classical for you this time."

***************************

Ha! Suck it freaky vulture things that had called him "v'one annov'ing idiot." Transylvania.

Pick a theme feather dusters!

All the stuff on that rinky hospital thing was trash.

As he was finding a lot of this stuff to be.

Finicky, creaky wood, weird smelling bedsheets, and peeing in a pan!

Barbaric! Though okay maybe that was more a-- can't get up to use the potty thing.

But still, couldn't at least use something other than the burning chemical scent.

It seriously smelled like a dead rat tank in that school place. Not that he was stalking the human's friends.

Just, making sure they were safe and not in enough peril to not see him.

And, while not in peril, they were very sad.

He couldn't do much about that as he had resolved not to touch a thing possibly keeping human alive.

Buuut, what he could do was leap in that TV box and find something decent.

And lo and behold sci-fi!

And better yet, he was seeing signs of life.

Dare he say, sometimes he almost woke up.

But this he only knew from the nurses checking in.

The ferocious burrow of a fiery purple dagger near made his vision go black.

He couldn't see his friend this way.

The hospital play center had become something of a den for him. Somewhere to rest and heal whenever hunters or the ghost visitors got a bit too overeager.

Why had he ever thought talking would work?

If there was one thing those Fentons got right--

"Auuughhhhhh."

On the floor he got down to one knee.

'Don't bleed, don't bleed' he willed.

Ice exited from his mouth.

A blast of purple lit up the windows nearby.

It didn't help that ghosts were beginning to circle too. Newly dead suddenly finding fonts of explosive power.

Even now, as he hid from the noise and cacophony of undead hell-raising, bare feet stomped the floors in perfect rhythm and unity. A children's parade through the hospital halls for more inductions.

***************************

Light hurt.

He went back to sleep.

They barely fed him.

Seriously.

What was this?

Danny may have been, well not a genius? Expendable? But he knew that had to be illegal!

Where was his cafeteria menu with slightly overdone pancakes and weird watery syrup.

(Still much better than the actual plastic at Casper High)

Heh. Maybe he'd missed the year.

A guy could dream.

Shivers and shingles gripped him one night.

Uber, uber late.

Dark and grim in his room so he'd feel like an absolute burden pushing that button.

He was sure the nurses had better to do anyway.

Treat some poor aching schmuck who hadn't brought all this on themselves.

His vision turned green again and his chest thrummed with cold fire.

***********************

"Hey!"

"...Look I get it I do, and whoever's fault it was--"

"Yours!" grumbled a bespectacled ghost, pulsating in his anger, teeth grit, scarf floating in the air as his fingers scritched and scratched at the threadbare coat.

"What will it get you to go back to the Zone?"

"Hmmm how about," the Ghost Writer pretended to hum, all the while a nasty grin grew, "my library!"

He pointed to the grandiose building of Greek design and infinite books.

Of which was either on fire or littered an intersection with near collisions and wrecked cars.

"Not sure I can-- hey!"

A blast caught his rank buttocks making him recoil several feet in the air.

The Writing Ghost was ever so helpful in making the Prince careen to the hunters' feet in a deluge of books.

The partly disassembled press only just missed his head.

Exploding in wood, parchment, and thick ink Dei found himself drenched as he hobbled off across the sky.

He didn't need to fly far to find another microcosm of ghost flora. Much more docile than the fauna.

A plant's corrosive fugue settled over his face melting off the shroud of thin human skin he wore on his day trips.

He grunted, quickly reforming his slimy, misshapen head into something a bit more robust, cheeks now puffered up with fat and a bile sac.

Of which released a sticky high power decomposing parasite.

Besides that the cooing plant resembled a blue and yellow spotted probiscus. Slightly folded four point petals and spidery thin feelers.

Danny would go gaga over it he was sure.

With great care he unburied it from the patch of moist Soil manufactured from a radio tower and it's standing station intent on finding a botanist.

This room felt... different.

Danny wasn't sure how or really in what way did his mind feel out of sorts with itself.

He knew very well he was in hospital. Remembered even through the staggering fugues of pain brief moments where he came to to several machines, a small mounted TV on one wall, and a loose garment that felt strong as paper even in his frail grip.

Could be in the quietness or aloneness. He could feel it. Feel it so intimately. There'd been two or three people here at any given time. That wasn't the case anymore.

"Jazz," he rasped, voice strained from unuse and some sickly acid scratching at the walls.

"Mom, Daaad."

It hurts. It hurts so bad.

Hot tears began to squeeze out of his eyes.

Where was his family! Where were they!

"Ssss?"

"Danny! Oh Thank Ancients!" yelped a voice he had never heard and yet knew.

Even so he shrieked hoarsely to the face that now craned above his head.

"Ah ah, oh shit. Don't-- you can't talk," the ghost warned, putting a sizeable and clawed hand over Danny's mouth.

He writhed for a bit before a pulse of something stopped him short.

"The Hell-- the Hell are... you?" he inquired venomously for he knew. He knew the answer already. This creature could only be a ghost.

For the moment he decided to ignore the possibility that he was here because he was dead.

His parents-- his parents would want nothing less than for their son to fight. To not be wrenched away from them so easily.

"Please-- i truly mean no-- here everyday. I have t-- doctor! Nurse, who di get?"

And in ashes the hospital faded, turning into a whirring ghost portal raring to go. The huge engine or whatever power cell roaring to calibration and...

FLASSH.

KRRRCK!

The electrifying punch. The cold mercilessness of it all as each nerve burned.

High, inhuman anguished screams.

Filling his ears, tearing his sensitive throat.

...

Seconds passed.

...

Hours...

...

Hands. Gloved hands.

Danny had been screaming.

Danny hurt.

He hurt so bad.

Slowly, cruelly the kind voices of understanding nurses disappeared. Disappeared in his labored, guided breathing. In and out. In and... out. Faster than falling asleep as they unknotted his tense muscles out of tearing themselves apart. Laid him down like a beloved, fragile baby.

Fluffed his pillows, asked his request for lunch-- he couldn't speak-- and with a small nod fluttered away no less taken than if handling droopy flowers.

Of which he had many. And chocolates too.

Much too far, he decided.

And of course...

He snarled low and baleful to the menace that appeared from nothing at his bedside. "Get out!" he hissed. "Get-- Let that go."

"Okay, okay," he agreed, "I'll go."

He tossed the remote onto his chest, allowing him to reach and watch TV at his leisure.

"My name is Dei," he finished as he sat at the window's sill.

A panoramic window view and yet still with fine, expensive looking curtains.

Danny strained for the nurse's button at his pillow.

"Yah don't do that!"

And with that plunged into the ground, flying off like some kind of green comet.

Danny glared to skies a dimmer blue than he remembered, or maybe it was one of the drugs from the IV. He could almost swear green twirled along like trails of pollen outside.

Yet another nurse, this one male, brought in a paper plate of strawberry oatmeal and a cheese croissant.

"Call if you need anything else at all sir."