Chapter Text
"Are you sure you destroyed everything that can track him down?"
"Yes. I made sure of it. Now they can't find him unless they use the infinity map or follow Wulf. He is the only one who can find the kid now. And he's in hiding."
It has been a year since Danny was dragged from his own huge, comfortable bed and pushed into a random portal with two bags in his hands.
It wasn’t as hard as he though, Danny thought it would be harder since he didn’t have his powers. Have lost them for… He really couldn't tell. Probably months, could have been a year. All the love he had was buried beneath sadness and grief.
But thanks to Tucker’s lesson about hacking and making a new identity, and also the fact that one of the bags was filled with gold, Danny made it.
He sometimes wondered if they knew it all along, and that was why he taught Danny how to hack. The sad little smile Sam gave him when he wasn’t really looking.
Did they get the same warnings from Clockwork? That they’ll go before him?
Guess he’ll always be curious about it.
Danny slowly opened his eyes and blinked. The TV he left on while he slept was playing news now. But it just slipped out of his ear leaving nothing.
Danny missed the noise in his home. He missed his family. He missed his dad blabber about ghosts and inventions he made. He even missed the reanimated sausages.
Before Danny could think more, the alarm went off. Signaling him to wake up and get ready for work.
Yes, he was working. In a small Cafe which could give him endless caffeine if the boss allowed him.
Sure he still had his golds, but he remembered Jazz talking about how keeping a schedule was good for mental health or something like that. So… He followed.
The Cafe was small, with only two employees including Danny himself. Carol, his coworker, mostly worked in the morning while Danny worked in the afternoon. They talked if Carol decided to work longer. And that was how he found out about Carol's situation with her family.
And his boss, well his boss was a nice man who was probably into Satanism before or was just into metal. Danny didn't mind. He met Satan before and that guy was cool. Too bad Sam lost her interest after she met him.
As Danny stepped out of his apartment, and walked his way to the cafe, he couldn’t help but notice the flyers on the walls and picked one up. Huh, it looked like a traveling circus was going to come to town. The Freak Circus of Horrors.
“Great, just what I needed. Another traveling circus in my life.”
Yeah, no. He will turn off the TV and never look at the direction of the circus until it leaves. Don’t want to test his luck. It might be Circus Gothica 2.0. Better stay away as far as possible. He didn’t want to be mind controlled again after all these years.
But maybe he was just being paranoid.
The door chimed as Danny entered the cafe. It looks like there aren't many customers today. Carol was standing at the counter, looking at the flyer. Right, he forgot today was the day she worked longer.
“Oh, You made it just in time. Lucky you, the boss is talking outside and as you see, well better not jinx it.”
“Hi Carol. …Is that the flyer of the circus?”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. they hand this out to everyone.”
Danny frowned as he put on the apron. Well no TV advertisement was nice. mean this wasn't a Freakshow. But he still kept his guard up.
“And by the look of your face, you don’t seem to like the circus.”
“It’s not that this circus is the problem. I just had a bad experience with the first traveling circus that visited my town when I was a teenager.”
“Really? How?”
One customer left, leaving the cafe empty.. Danny arranged the table as they talked. Seems like Carol was interested.
“Do you want a short answer or a long answer?”
“Well there’s no customer right now, entertain me.”
“Well it all began when I was 14… Robberies suddenly began to happen as the traveling circus came to my town. My friend Sam, who was a goth, decided to skip the first period and watch the opening ceremony. And I followed.”
Danny frowned as he thought about that day. that damn sphere. He hoped there was nothing like that here. Oh who was he kidding. He didn’t even know if this place was a different dimension or just different time! There might even be infinite gauntlet out there!
“And it turns out, and I know you won’t believe it, the creepy evil bald ringmaster of that circus had magical crystal ball staff that can control certain types of people. And I, unfortunately, was one of those people. Even from the photo it affected me.”
Carol blinked and looked at him. It was clear she didn’t believe him. But Danny continued.
“It made me do exactly what the ringmaster told me to do. …Which included shouting that me and my friend were here, to the parents' protest who gathered in front of the circus to tell the goth to boycott the circus. Oh and by the way, the reader of that group was Sam’s parents.”
That made Carol snicker.
“And I bet you got in detention?”
“I mean, yes. But there was a TV in the detention room and then another advertisement came out. Another control. So I ran to the circus, at least that’s what my friend told me. Oh hey boss.”
Well since the boss is here now, he should cut it short. It was hard explaining this without talking about ghosts.
“Anyway, long story short, that man was using the people he controlled to gain wealth, my friends broke the magic crystal ball, freed me and the other people from being controlled and made the man put in prison for good. Thankfully, no one noticed I was in the robbery too!”
At that, they both looked at Danny. And Carol spoke
“Yeah I don’t think that this circus has a magical item that can mind control people. or can mind control people at all. And the circus is only allowed for adults. Besides, there weren't any news about the robbery so I think you should be fine.”
“You never know Carol. You never know… And I really don’t want to find out if they have it or not. And I think you should be careful too. You never know what they’re hiding.”
“Oh, Um, okay.”
Carol fidgeted for a moment. Her hands in her pocket. Unfortunately, Danny’s eyes were at the customer who just entered the cafe at the moment to see what she was doing. or even notice the pink ticket in her pocket.