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Treasure Vault

As weird and uncomfortable as being a whole nation's "Great One" could sometimes be, Danny could appreciate the perks

"You are welcome to take anything here so long as its returned to its chambers by the next high summet" Frostbite, who had instantly dropped what he was doing to play tour guide once again, intoned.

Frankly, Danny was starting to feel a little guilty about making him do that. Not a lot guilty, but, well, a little.

He had now visited the Farfrozen often enough to realize Frostbite was less "cool tribe leader guy" and more "Emperor of Canada, but everyone is dead" on the leadership scale, complete with meetings, politics, and responsibilities that definately had nothing to do with escorting three teenagers around his extremely cool trophy bunker.

"And the high summet next high summet would be..?" Sam asked, pointedly trailing off as she asked the question.

"The big meeting of all the guys in charge of the other Yeti tribes." Danny explained to her.

"Frostbite is the the guy in charge, but he has to listen to a bunch of other people to make things work. How long it takes between one meeting and another is - eh." He made a so-so gesture with his hands. This deep in the Zone, they both knew time wasn't really a measurable thing.

"it's either a month, a month and a half, or the space between one frost and the next during winter."

Frostbite's real position was also, contrarily, Danny felt much less guilty than he probably should about bugging the big yeti pretty much whenever.

His status as the Great One made him special, so special, that he could serve as an ironclad excuse for a yeti more interested in science and history than leadership to skiv out of work.

"So basically, its plenty of time to grab one of these doo-hickies for some killer show and tell." Tucker punctuated his words by swinging his camera in a slow pan around the area of the vault.Add more decription of the vault here?

"Oh yeah, baby, that's going on the front page of the feed as soon as we get back."

Tucker had yet to figure out how to access the real-world internet while in the Zone, but that didn't stop him from collecting as many photographs as he could.

"--And that is the extent of our more - I believe you would call them "borrowable" treasures." Frostbite finished, "But if you really wish, to access the next floor up, you need only recieve permission from myself and one of the vault's most exalted keepers -"

Who made a special point to glare at Danny whenever Frostbite's back was turned. Danny suspected they still held just a bit of a grudge over the whole infinimap fiasco.

"- which can be quite easily attained." Frostbite continued, wholly unaware of the trio's collective wince, "and anything there would be yours to keep until the waters of the Isheralt return to their source."

This time, Danny could only shrug in response to Sam and Tucker's inquiring glances. While he was sure Frostbite had mentioned something like that before, there were only so many geography lessons a guy could take before he started tuning things out.

Not that he'd ever say that where Frostbite could hear. The one-handed yeti seemed elated whenever Danny showed an interest in his lectures on ghostly science, history, or math, so much so that he couldn't quite bring himself to admit it was often hard to remember everything he'd been told. If I ever re-worked this into a real story, the above paragraph would be one of the first on the choppping block. I often need to remind myself that not really editing and just focusing on writing something is the whole point of this particular page.

To that one madman who somehow found this in the deep, deep dregs of the internet: Sorry about the redundancy, its a nasty habit of mine.

If I ever re-worked this into a real story, the above paragraph would be one of the first on the choppping block. I often need to remind myself that not really editing and just focusing on writing something is the whole point of this particular page.

To that one madman who somehow found this in the deep, deep dregs of the internet: Sorry about the redundancy, its a nasty habit of mine.

If he was being frank, it reminded Danny of his father, just with less proslitization on the excellence of ghost murder scattered in between rambles.

Both Frostbite and Jack had that same kind of earnesty to them, that absolute faith that their listeners could keep up with them, no matter how long or convoluted their rambling got.

Danny didn't want to say it, but their similar natures played a major part in how quickly he found himself bonding with the big ghost, and a major reason he kept coming back, despite how uncomfortable the whole "Great One" thing made him.

"Nah, we're good." Danny said, not ignorant of the kilted guard yeti listening in behind them.

Just because trouble liked to find him more often than not didn't mean he went out of his way to invite it in.

...Most of the time, usually. He was trying, okay?

"Are you sure?" Frostbite offered, obviously in no particular hurry to the meeting Danny's presence had given his due cause to escape.

"This is the level where we keep weaponry from what I believe you call 'The real worlds,' many of them fused together using a technique now lost to time. Rediscovering the way historical craftsmen could bind objects operating on such wildly different laws with ghostly psudo-cores is one of our long term goals. To have one such as yourself bring it to this "show and tell" might spur your more scientifically inclined classmates to contribute some research of their own."

"No, really," Danny insisted, "There's like, an entire floor of stuff down here, we'll be fine."

Danny had never quite managed to get the ghostly yeti to really understand that Danny and Phantm weren't considered the same person back home, and even if they were, they definately wouldn't consider him half as cool.

"But that is the floor where we keep our lasers?"

"Lasers!?" Both Danny and Tucker perked to attention at the same time. Danny remembered the anti-air rays placed stratigically around the yeti capital: Huge and distinct in their design from the usual yeti architecture.

Were those things artifacts, too?

Their excitement was cut short curtesy of Sam, who sent one elbow each into the sides of her over-enthusiastic friends.

"Right, no tempting fate." Danny sent an apologetic grimace her way.

"Nah, that sounds awesome - super awesome - and I would totally do it-"

Sam could almost make a pair of lasers herself with how the heat of her gaze seemed to burn across his back.

"-later. I mean later. geeze."

"aw man." Tucker whined behind him. "Lasers sound cool."

"I know buddy." Danny whispered back, layering an apologetic tone to his aura, unable to resist, even knowing his very human friend was essentially deaf to that kind of overlay.

They just needed to wait for a time and place where Danny's infamously poor luck was less likely to screw them all over.

"And you've got that meeting thing to go to, right?" Danny turned his attention back to the yeti, as it seemed he was about to protest further.

Frostbite visibly deflated at the reminder of his actual job.

"Ah, yes, the re-working of the tithe agreements for the off-cycle season. That is, indeed, very important."

"Don't worry." Tucker reassured him. "Knowing Ghost-boy over here, he'll find some way to make things interesting enough to get you out of that meeting sooner rather than later."

"True." Frostbite muttered to himself, much to Danny'd displeasure.

Look, he was trying here, alright?

"Well, if anything does occur, the treasure guard will be happy to assist, and even without an emergency, I'm sure any urgent questions the Great One might have concerning our peoples artifacts is of sufficient importance to put on hold so small a matter as -"

The king of the Farfrozen heaved a sigh, his aura slumping at the very thought of what he was about to do.

"...taxes."

"It can't be that bad, is it?" Sam wondered, as Tucker patted the yeti's hairy flank in an attempt at reassurance.

"I'm afraid you'll have to tell that to Snowstash." Frostbite said. "As I fear he has lately discovered the human concept known as powerpoints. And he has prepared several of them." Frostbite shuddered.

"More than several. Hundreds."

They all waved a regretful farewell to Frostbite's retreating back, even Sam, who had been pushing the hardest for Danny to 'just get an easy A without pushing our luck, which we all know is nonexistant, by the way,' looked slightly guilty at their collective failure to keep Frostbite away from powerpoint hell.

"Geeze, Tuck, did you have to jinx it?" Danny grumbled as they began moving through the densely stacked shelves.

"Hey man, you saw the guy's face." Tucker replied. "We could probably swipe the infinimap all over again, and if it got him out of that stupid meeting, he'd be elated."

One of the guard yetis, doing a poor job of pretending not to listen as they patrolled purpose-built walkways installed overhead made a sound of audiable pain.

"Nail our presentation on other cultures now." Sam reminded them, "repurpose governent property later."

"You got it." Tucker said, snapping a picture of an odd, vibrating polyhedron with his phone. "So what do you think we can grab that really gives that big dead and chilly kind of vibe?"

"It's not that bad." Danny protested, not exactly forgetting that he had no need for the heavily insulated jackets worn by his friends, but not willing to let the friendly slight pass without some protest in kind, either.

"Sure thing, mister ice ghost." Tucker said, hefting the lapels of his heavily insulated jacket "But us warm blooded types need a little more than spandex to keep warm."Tucker doesn't talk like this + bad dialogue in general.

Truthfully, they needed quite a bit more even than that. Both Tucker and Sam were covered head to toe in heated jumpsuits, faces fitted with rebreathers that pulled from the small oxygen tanks behind their backs, carefully sealed like deep-sea divers to ensure none of the atmospheric ectoplasm would infiltrate the seals and get into their lungs.

Both had to wear heavy goggles as well, protecting the damp membranes from similar incusions of the outside"air."

Compared to his friends, Danny was practically naked, clad in the lightweight inner jumpsuit he'd died in and a single scarf around his neck in the name of solidarity.

"eh, skill issue." Danny said, working his way through the aisles alongside his friends.

"Sam paused, taking a second look at a long and beaten halbard, sized for something inhumanly big, fitted with a hollow tube that ended in a long, thick needle."

"Does this do what I think it does?"

"Kill people?" Tucker offered, snapping a photo of the blade.

"No, hug them pointy end first." Sam snapped back. "I'm talking about this."

She poked the long needle with caution, grimacing as its surface shimmered at her touch.

Unlike the Halbard, chipped and battered from continuous wear, the needle was perfect, gleamingly sharp and polished to such a sheen it seemed more like hardened liquid than any kind of metal.

"Oh, it's a companion blade." Danny said, surprising himself with the reccolection. "The needle's meant to channel a ghost's power from their ectoplasm into their weapons, like a siphon."

"rad, so it's like a blood enchantment?" Tucker asked.

"pretty much, but they tend to wear out the arm over time, and, uh, the user. With all the blood loss." He gestured to the worn out blade. "The heads are made to be replacable because of it, this one was probably pretty close to getting swapped out before it got stowed away as a heirloom or whatever."

"Super cool." Sam eyed the blade with a new appreciation. "But more metal than goth, and the school weapons policy says-"

"No weapons no matter what" They all chorused. "No matter how super cool or awesome."

"I still can't believe Lancer confinscated my lipstick shooter." Sam grumbled. "It isn't even meant for humans, and it was mine, it was practically government approved theft!"

"Hear it sister." Tucker said. "But hear me out, we take it in without the head-"

"I still say it's only a matter of time, with Danny's parents on the job and ghost attacks getting worse by the year, pocket lasers will be mandatory for every student by graduation!" Sam finished, still worked up oveer the unjust theft of her personal property.

...Which had also been a gift to her from Danny, but that was irrelevant, of course.

"Guess that does mean we have to pass over the weapons for now." Danny said. "Unless we want to represent the Farfrozen as the land of big sticks and needles."

"I dunno man, that doesn't sound too far off."

But Tucker was moving on with the rest of them even as he spoke, snapping one last photo for the road before moving on.

The next item that caught their interest was a box, pieces of cable and tubing on one end sole evidence it had once been part of something more.

Danny could only shrug when the other two sent a glance his way.

"Probably yanked from a portal or something." He said. "They never make sense, but they never throw them away, either."

The more he looked at it, the more sure he became of his guess. It had that particular headache-inducing quality that he had come to associate with things that operated based on rules incompatable with one's own.

"If it's useless, why keep it?" Sam asked, hefting the corroded device by its unwired sides.

"Future proofing. Turns out there are a bunch of different universes out there, and a lot of times, anything you pull out of them just keeps working the way that universe says it should. Apparently you can combine them too, make cool artifacts and stuff that you never could with ghost powers alone."

Artifacts like the ring of rage or crown of fire, or, he suspected, the horrifying staff Freakshow had weilded to keep his ghostly minions in line.

They all had that same, painful to look at quality, thay edge-of-the-vision static that lingered on the edges of your gaze, whispering of places long distant and out of synch, melded together into a half-heard harmony of parts that were never meant to be combined.

This box was no artifact, at least not now, not yet. Perhaps it may have been, before some interprising portal diver decided whatever whole it was once a part of was too big to carry, and perhaps it would be, come the day one of the Farfrozen's more expert artificers managed to combine it with other scraps of other-worldly items dropped or stolen from the natural portals prone to flickering open throughout the Realms.

But for now, it lay inert.

Or it did, until Sam tipped it over and spilled an impossible tide of pure darkness onto her face.

"Sam!" Both Danny and Tucker raced towards her, with Danny, the halfa, finding his way there first.

The first thing he did was twist the box back upright, hardly noticing as he did that the facet from which the darkness poured remained a solid structure, devoid of any hollow for which to hold.

Despite this, the spillage of thick, misty black halted as soon as it was turned back "upright", leaving a seemingly unharmed Sam sputtering against rapidly dissipating particles of pure night.

"Sam, are you Okay!?" Tucker had managed to catch up to Danny in the moments it had taken him to reset the device, patting her back as he held a hand up to her face.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Yes, no. Three fingers and a stick." Sam answered, spitting the last of the darkness out from her lungs. "ugh, tastes like sour apples and despair."

"But you're sure you're Okay?" Danny asked, his core still screaming at him as he checked her over. "No alternate voices in your head? Weird thoughts? Funny feelings?"

"No impulse to eat people?" Tucker added in. "No mutating into a monster, or need to rule the world beneath your iron fist?"

"No more than usual." Sam said, gently pushing both boys back in an unspoken request for space.

"Although, now that I think about it, it wasn't that bad." Sam re-assessed the box. "Not a weapon, unique and interesting, and something fun to throw at our classmates as a finisher at the end."

She smirked, obviously warming to the idea. "imagine smoking out Paulinia with this."

"Or Dash." Tucker added.

"We don't even know what this stuff is?" Danny offered.

He was still distinctly put off by the uncanny fragment. Back-of-the-eyes ache aside, the device had hurt one of his, and that was unnacceptable.

"Pretty sure that's what makes it fun, dude." Tucker said.

"Oh, so a locker full of teddy bears is no good, but dumping magic smog on people's heads is cool now?"

"Hey, I thought that was funny." Tucker shot back.

Sam, the one who had ended up changing her mind between those early days of friendship and the current day when it came to Casper High's bullies, had the good grace to look abashed.

"Anyways, I say no." Danny said. "We're here to give a presentation on yeti culture, which this thing is not."

He shuddered. "Just hanging around the thing feels creepy."

(Sometime after they find something cool)

• Frostbite smiled to himself as he watched the meeting dissolve into chaos.
• Yes, the Great One and his friends truly were a blessing. The number of conferences those three had gotten him out of were inumerable.
• Secretly, he resolved to find an excuse to get them back into the vault sometime soon.
• He wanted to see what they would do once he got them onto the floor with lasers.

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