#hehehehhehheheheeeheehehehe.

[reallydumbdannyphantomaus]

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chapter 2 babes! i'm thinking this will only be like 10 chaps. anyway, enjoy! (ao3) (1)

Chapter 2

Loop 2

Jazz pounded on his door. “Danny, if you’re not ready in 15 minutes, you can take the bus to school! I’m not waiting!”

A time loop. A goddamn time loop. This would happen to him.

Danny sat up, resting a hand on his chin. He and Sam and Tucker had talked about time loops before, what they would do, but that was mostly focused on the Groundhog Day type of loop, where the day being repeated is otherwise innocuous. This loop, on the other hand…

The end of the world. Or, at least, the end of Casper High. That’s what would happen sometime around the end of the school day today.

“Okay,” he said. “What do I know?”

Well, it was ghost related. Figures, really, in the ghost capital of the world, but his ghost sense went off right before the explosion in both loops.

Differences between the loops? Well, the obvious one was that Paulina and Valerie didn’t fight in English, but did that mean they were in the loop, too? Or had one of the subtle changes he’d made throughout the day change that part as well?

It didn’t matter, he supposed. If Paulina was in the loop, she’d be useless. Valerie could be helpful, but he’d almost certainly need to be Phantom for some of this and that always made working with Valerie difficult. Best course of action was to contact Sam and Tucker, let them know what was going on, then investigate what the threat was and stop it before it got there.

Simple.

He pulled out his phone and sent out a quick text.

To: Sam, Tucker

hey so i think im in a time loop

From: Sam

for real???

From: Tucker

????

To: Sam, Tucker

yeah i lived today twice already. the bad news is that the day keeps ending with the school exploding

From: Tucker

WHAT

danny I’m too young to die

To: Sam, Tucker

been there done that

From: Tucker

D:

To: Sam, Tucker

anyway its got smthn to do with ghosts so im taking the day to investigate

any ideas?

From: Sam

go to clockwork dude

To: Sam, Tucker

OH YEAH

time ghost

this is why youre the smart one

ill let u know how it goes

From: Tucker

good luck dude

don’t die again

From: Sam

let us know if u need anything

Danny locked his phone, then sent Jazz a quick text that he had a ghost problem to deal with before transforming and sinking through the floor of his room, all the way down to his parents’ lab.

Whenever he went into the ghost zone, it always took him the better part of an hour to adjust to all the green. It was overwhelming in its ubiquity and too long of an excursion always left him with a headache. He understood the ghosts invading Amity Park a little better each time he visited.

Clockwork’s lair was at the far end of the zone, away from most other ghosts. Clockwork had once told him that this was a restriction placed on him to keep him from being too powerful, one of many. The Observants were in charge of making sure Clockwork didn’t go rogue and shape the world to his liking, limiting how often he could affect the time stream, in what ways, for what purpose. Clockwork, for all his power, was a prisoner.

(“That’s ridiculous,” Danny had said. “You’re out here trying to save the world and preserve the timeline.”

Clockwork looked away. “I wasn’t always.”

Danny didn’t ask.)

So when he approached Clockwork’s lair, only to be rebuffed by a shimmering force field, he wasn’t surprised. Upset? Yes. Concerned? Yes. Afraid? Obviously. But after all of Clockwork’s meddling during the Dan fiasco, the Observants had been extra cautious about not allowing him to interfere.

The Observants would let the world end to ensure Clockwork was punished, it seemed.

Danny frowned. No, that didn’t make sense. Clockwork had been ordered to kill him once, to save the world. What pissed the Observants off was that he’d instead chosen to save both the world and Danny. So maybe then this time loop was enough for him to save the world, but the Observants didn’t want Clockwork to meddle any more than that? Or something like that, anyway.

Ugh. Why did everything involving Clockwork have to be so cryptic and complicated?

“Now what?” he said.

He wasn’t any closer to figuring out what was going on. He was alone in the middle of the ghost zone, no allies in sight, enemies sure to find him soon…

Wait. Enemies?

Danny scanned the area. Sure enough, no one was around. This was normal for Clockwork’s domain, but he usually had to fight someone on the way from the portal to here. Skulker chased him past the Infinite Vortex. Johnny 13 tried to get him to smoke with him. Ember wanted to test out her new songs on him. Frostbite wanted to hang out.

He’d seen no one. The ghost zone was a ghost town.

He held his breath and listened for the sound of someone. Anyone.

In the distance, he heard what sounded like marching. 

When he flew toward it, he recognized the direction he was heading in. It took him ten minutes worth of flying before he placed it, though, and he could only hope he was wrong.

As the sound got louder, he knew he wasn’t.

��Oh no,” he said as he approached Pariah’s Keep. “Oh fuck.”

Thousands of skeleton ghosts—Pariah’s army—stood and thudded their swords into their shields as they strode forward in organized units. Above them, from the balcony of his castle, stood Pariah Dark himself, Ring of Rage on his hand but Crown of Fire nowhere to be found. Small mercies.

Behind him knelt the Fright Knight. Last Danny had heard, the Fright Knight was working with Vlad, and yet, here he was with his old master.

This was bad. This was all very, very bad.

“Intruder!” The cry rang out from the assembled army. Danny jolted as a number of the skeletons reached out and pointed at his hiding place. “Intruder!”

“Kill the interloper, Knight.” Pariah’s voice never rose in pitch, yet it carried itself across the battlefield and settled itself as a knot of ice in Danny’s spine. He’d barely survived the last fight with Pariah when he’d had the exoskeleton and the rest of the ghost zone on his side. What chance did he have now?

Danny turned and fled.

Right into the Fright Knight’s sword.

“Sorry, ghost brat,” the Fright Knight said, twisting the sword in Danny’s chest. Danny choked on blood and ectoplasm. “But I don’t have time to play with you today.”

The world faded out again.

--

“Val, I’m heading to bed. Have a good day at school, sweetheart. I’ll see you for dinner? My shift starts at 8, can you be home in time?”

Valerie drew in ragged breaths. It happened again. She’d seen the world—or at least Casper High—get blown up twice now. That was too real to be a dream. She—everyone had—

“Valerie?” her dad said. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” she said, forcing the word through her tight throat. Then again, loud enough for Dad to hear. “Yeah! Sorry, I’ll, uh, I’ll be home for dinner.”

“Good. Good morning!”

Valerie choked down a sob. “Good morning, Dad.”

Valerie gave herself one minute after her Dad closed the door to his bedroom to freak out. One minute to cry and lose her mind. Once the clock on her beside ticked over to 7:18, she took deep breaths, wiped down her eyes, and got to business.

What did she know? She pulled out the dream journal she kept by her bed and turned to an empty page. Sometime during the last class of the day, Casper High would be attacked. This last loop saw her in the classroom instead of outside the principal’s office, so she saw the green glow approach just before the end. Ghosts, then. It was always ghosts, wasn’t it?

The first time, Paulina had started a fight with her. The second time, that didn’t happen. Had she somehow changed the outcome just by knowing what was going to happen? Or was Paulina stuck in a loop with her?

Valerie groaned. As useful as it might be to have some help with whatever was going on, she half-hoped that Paulina wasn’t involved. Her ex-friend wasn’t exactly at the top of the list of “People She’d Like To Be In A Time Loop With” after all.

She chewed on her lip. However, if Paulina was in the loop, it could mean that Danny was, too. They were all in the same place during the first loop; could all three of them be in this together? If so, it might even be worth dealing with Paulina. Danny was easily in the top three of her time loop list, right there with her dad and Star. Maybe the two of them could work together and let Paulina do whatever.

She stopped writing. This was all speculative now. The best way to figure anything out was to head to school. If Danny and Paulina remembered, they were bound to be acting strange.

She started to take off her Dumpty Humpty sleep shirt, then paused. What better way to signal to anyone else caught in the loop that she was stuck too than coming to school in her pajamas? It stuck out enough that someone reliving the same day would definitely notice her. Plus, it would save her some time.

So, instead of showering and changing, she swiped under her pits with deodorant and headed off to school.

--

Neither Paulina nor Danny were in school today.

On the plus side, that pretty much confirmed that they were stuck in the loop. They hadn’t missed the last two loops, after all. On the downside, now she looked like an idiot for no reason.

She didn’t even realize that they weren’t there until lunchtime. It wasn’t like she shared a lot of classes with them, and she didn’t have their schedules memorized. Only once she saw Tucker and Sam eating alone, Dash and Kwan laughing with Star, but not Paulina, did she realize that they weren’t there. She hit herself in the forehead. Of course. If you keep reliving the school blowing up, you’ll probably avoid the school. That made sense. It wouldn’t work, of course, but it made sense.

She should go check on Danny. The poor guy was terrified of ghosts; reliving a deadly ghost attack must be his worst nightmare.

After fifth period, she slipped out the back door of the school, summoned her Red Huntress suit to the surface, and zoomed toward FentonWorks.

She slowed as she neared the building, always easy to spot with the hulking metal contraption on top (Danny said it was the Ops Center; Valerie said it was ugly as sin). Peeking through the downstairs window, she spotted Dr. Maddie Fenton welding something at a workstation in the kitchen while Dr. Jack Fenton helped himself to a massive ham sandwich.

No sign of Danny.

She hovered up to the window outside his room. It was dark inside; she couldn’t make out if the shape on his bed was just his covers or if he was huddled inside. She rapped her knuckles on the windowpane. No response.

There wasn’t time for this.

She yanked the window up, busting the lock. The suit really was amazing; she’d never been so strong before. Slipping inside, she could see that the bed was, in fact, empty. Oh well. The window would be fixed when the loop reset.

“Where could he be?” she whispered to herself. Not upstairs, not downstairs.

Maybe… the basement?

She opened Danny’s door and slunk through the hallway, hugging the shadows and stepping toe-to-foot to muffle her footsteps. She needn’t have worried: a horde of elephants trampling through their living room wouldn’t have distracted the Fentons from their work.

She crept down the stairs into the Fentons’ infamous lab, lit by the same green glow that preceded the explosion in the last loop. Danny was, again, nowhere to be found.

Did he leave? Just… run away? No. He wouldn’t have left his family behind. He wouldn’t have left Sam and Tucker behind to die.

Would he?

As she turned to leave the basement, she heard a clattering sound behind her. Spinning back around, she saw skeletons, a horde of skeleton warriors, crawling out of the open portal.

She would deny it to the day she died for real, but she did scream.

She pulled out her ecto gun and began blasting away, but there were too many of them. Soon, she was overpowered, trampled under the boots of long-dead soldiers called to fight again.

One of them stepped on her head. She heard a squish and then there was nothing.

--

Paulina didn’t want to go to school.

School was going to blow up anyway, and there was no point in her getting blown up with everyone else. It wasn’t even a bomb or anything; no, it was a ghost attack, of-fucking-course. It wasn’t like she could do anything to stop it.

So she was staying home. It’s not like there was anyone else here to notice.

She texted Dash, Kwan, and Star and told them not to go to school. They asked why. She couldn’t think of a good answer. Not one they’d believe. She said she was sick and needed company. Star said she couldn’t afford another absence. Dash said he had a really important presentation today that he couldn’t miss. Kwan said he had something special planned today. They all promised to come visit after school.

Idiots. There wouldn’t be an after.

She laid in bed, feeling sorry for herself, eating a tub of low-fat sugar-free frozen yogurt and watching shitty romcoms on Netflix. Not for the first time, she found herself fantasizing about a bowl of real Rocky Road ice cream, but Alma was on strict orders from Paulina’s mother not to let anything with sugar in the house.

The hours passed slowly. Sam and Austin drove off to Princeton. The dancer learned to be true to herself and open to love. One of them had a bear, she was pretty sure. Maybe?

She dozed off at some point. When she woke up, her back was starting to hurt from laying horizontal for so long. She ate more disgusting frozen yogurt. She watched a game show that she forgot the premise of immediately. Looked at the clock. It was almost 3:00. It would be soon.

She threw up her frozen yogurt in the toilet.

Her friends were going to die.

Her friends were going to die.

Her friends were going to die.

Then she heard it. A boom so loud and powerful it shook the foundation of her house. Tears slipped out of her eyes.

“Oh god. Oh god. No. No!”

She looked out her window. In the streets, glowing skeletons marched, killing anyone who stood in their way. She watched as dozens of the idiotic agents of the Guys In White flew in on their ridiculous jetpacks and began firing away. But for each skeletal soldier that fell, five more took their place. The agents were soon overwhelmed, dragged down to Earth and ripped apart.

Paulina threw up again, this time on the floor. She was screaming and crying, she knew, but it all felt distant. Like it was happening to someone else. Like the skeleton breaking down her door wasn’t coming for her, but some other Paulina.

When they cut off her head, she didn’t feel a thing.