Episode I
By JadeRabbyt
Disclaimer: Style and errors belong to me. Everything else is the property of Nickelodeon including characters and basic plot. The story is based on the theme song, because I thought that his origins deserved their own episode. I haven't read any other fanfics because I need time to develop the characters on my own, so if this plot has been written before by somebody just email me with a link to the story and I'll credit them in the next update. Comments and constructive criticism welcome. Forgive my terse introduction/disclaimer, but I haven't slept in over 24 hours due to the friggin' airlines. That said, enjoy the story!
Danny Fenton was an average, ordinary kid who went to an average, ordinary high school. He became acquainted with the inner contents of a trash can on more than one occasion, as is customary for freshman boys, and he was liable to forget his homework every so often in favor of movies or friends. He enjoyed video games and running about the city on his scooter, and he possessed a healthy aversion to his older sister's prodding in her pursuit of a career as a psychologist. Danny Fenton's two best friends, Sam and Tucker, were both relatively normal but graced with some distinguishing traits.
The most striking aspect of Sam was her affinity for black clothing, activism, and generally cynical disposition. Her shoulder-length black hair was usually combed straight, accentuated by a small ponytail in back held in place with a purple scrunchee which matched the rest of her typically black and purple clothing. The least striking aspect about her was her fabulous wealth, which encompassed a home bowling alley and theater. She didn't speak of it at all, and Tucker and Danny didn't discover it until later in the year when they visited her house.
Tucker was also favored with distinguishing personal traits. He was a bit of a technophile, not enough to be socially inhibited by it but just enough to have an advantage in technology over most others. Emotionally, he was a fairly well-adjusted freshman, despite the apparent contradiction in terms, and his middle-class family was respectable enough.
Danny also had a middle-class family, but they were not in the least respectable. His mother and father were single-mindedly devoted to the pursuit of ghosts and often neglected the business of their children in the frenzy of their enthusiasm. They lived on a city corner; their red-brick building unmistakably marked with the glaring neon sign "Fenton Works," visible to everyone who traveled down either of the cross-streets. Tourists would note with astonishment the bulbous metal extensions on the roof, hovering above the sign and moored by cylindrical tunnels and tangles of cables. The advanced ghost-hunting laboratory could easily have been mistaken for a children's museum.
Little did the pedestrians and drivers know that the real excitement was beneath the city streets, where Danny's parents conducted the most remarkable-or harebrained, depending on one's inclination-of their inventions and experiments. They attempted the construction of machines to detect the spectral elements, machines to contain them, machines to destroy them. These ambitious projects were constructed on the life-long hope of Jack Fenton, Danny's father, to catch a ghost and unveil it to the scientific community, which for so long had unanimously held his fixation to be the product of delusional obsession. The vast majority of his attempts ended up in the scrap heap, true to the predictions of his critics. Every so often, however, one of his inventions would work, and it was on one of these occasions that Danny Fenton became unique.
The harsh beeping of the alarm grated against the morning. Danny groaned and tightened the covers about his head, but the noise kept on until he reached out and slammed the snooze button. He sighed and went back to sleep, but ten minutes later when the drone of early morning traffic was once again splintered by his alarm. He blinked slowly, brushing the shock of black hair out of his eyes, and rolled out of bed, turning off the alarm on his way out. Yawning, he called to mind the day's activities. He had some vague notions about school, then maybe friends later, and somewhere in there was something else he couldn't remember. He rubbed his eyes and headed for the bathroom, leaving his morning amnesia to sort itself out while he took a shower.
Jazz was in the shower. He waited, staring thoughtlessly for an interminable amount of time until his sister had finished, then stumbled in. Following the completion of his hygienic duties, he arrived for breakfast to find Jazz ready to leave. "See you at school."
"Hm," he said, removing cereal from the cupboard.
"Good luck on that huge test of yours," she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Danny's eyes boggled. "Looks like you'll need it," she said, not unkindly. She left muttering about the detrimental effects of the example set by their parents.
Danny threw the cereal back in the cupboard and rushed up the stairs to his room, throwing his biology textbook and mess of notes into his backpack before racing back downstairs. His mother, already dressed in her blue lab jumpsuit, caught him on her way up from the basement.
"At least take a banana! You really shouldn't be skipping breakfast." He started to protest, but she shoved the fruit into his hand. His father arrived in the kitchen behind her, and Danny caught him expounding on the sound design of another ghost-oriented invention.
"I tell ya Maddie, we'll have them with this one for sure! I can't wait to fire it up this afternoon." He spied Danny on his way out the door. "Son, I want you here this afternoon to see this. It will be man's first look into the ghost world."
"But Dad, I was going to go with Tucker and Sam to-"
"Your friends can wait a bit, Danny. I want the family to be here for this."
"But-"
"Listen to your father, Danny."
He sighed. "Alright."
"Great!" his father said, grinning broadly. "See you this afternoon!" he called, his large frame retreating back down the basement stairs.
Danny rushed out the door and ran most of the way to his school, sparing only a fleeting thought for the name, Casper High. Although he had been seeing that same tiresome name for the last month now, he had yet to pass it without feeling a twinge of mixed frustration and curiosity. While his parents' preoccupation left him with more privacy at home, it bothered him that it had to be associated with his school. Today, however, he had no time for such considerations and ran past the wooden sign to the lawn of the school.
He walked quickly towards the entrance but was soon distracted by the jeers of the football players. They stood at some distance from him and were shouting and laughing in his general direction. Dash, the broad- shouldered quarterback and particularly devoted bully, yelled something about his pants. He was confused until he remembered that he had a banana in his hand, and shamefacedly shoved it in a nearby trash can. "I'll see you later for your lunch money, Fenton!" Dash shouted. Danny continued walking quickly toward the school, meeting Sam and Tucker in the hallway.
Tucker waved lazily. "Hey Danny. What's up?"
"Huge test. Up late studying." He reached his locker and pulled out the day's necessities, then slid down to the floor and pulled out study materials. "I don't know what I'm going to do here."
"Same with me." Tucker said, joining him on the floor. Sam looked down on them for a moment and shook her head.
"You probably would have been better off just getting some sleep. If the test doesn't go well, at least we can go hang out after school."
"No can do on that either. My parents want me home for some dumb thing they built."
"Are they still off on that ghost kick? You'd think they'd give it a rest." Tucker said.
"My parents? Never."
"Well, at least they're fairly cheerful mad scientists," Sam said with a shrug and half-smile.
"That makes it so much better." The bell rang through the halls, and Danny gathered his things and walked toward class. "See you guys later."
"Good luck," Tucker offered.
"He'll need it," Sam said quietly.
Several minutes later, Danny was slumped at his station in Mr. Lancer's biology class. The balding, beer-bellied instructor paced the front of the room for a moment as the last of the students entered and took their seats.
"Late again, Mr. Jackson. That makes three tardies. See me after class about your detention." Lancer spoke with his trademark quiet maliciousness. "As you all know, I hope, today is your first big test of this biology class. If you do well, good for you. It means you are a hardworking student who will probably do well in my class. If you do poorly, well, you might start looking forward to a busy summer." He favored the class with a smirk. "You may begin once you receive the tests. Talkers will automatically fail."
Danny took his test dismally and gave it a once-over, pencil at the ready. He thought it looked intimidating, but manageable, and set to work on it. As he progressed, so did the hour and the difficulty of the questions. Danny ran a valiant race against the minute hand, but he was still scribbling away on the last page when the bell rang.
There was a clatter as students rose to leave, and Lancer called for all the tests to be turned in. Danny was still scrambling, and Lancer strode for his desk. "In case you didn't hear me properly, I said this test is over."
"I just need a few more min-" But Lancer snatched away his paper and walked away. "I'll see you tomorrow, Fenton."
Danny packed his things and left. The test had done little for his disposition, and he waded through the hallway crowds tired and frustrated. The three hours before lunch passed relatively uneventfully. He dozed through most of English class, only to discover when he awoke that the class had been assigned an essay, Schaffer format. He blinked lazily at the news and asked his informant what a Schaffer essay was. Algebra was a little better. He was cheered to discover that he got a B on the last quiz, and the assigned homework looked easy enough. The Spanish teacher gurgled and chirped away for the last hour, and then the bell rang for lunch.
He met Sam and Tucker at their usual table in the lunchroom. They greeted him and inquired about his test.
"Bad."
"That's a bummer. You tried, though," Tucker offered encouragingly.
"That's more than most kids did in Lancer's class. I heard from one of the juniors that Lancer is one of the toughest graders in the school. Lots of upperclassmen transfer to ILS midway through first quarter," Sam added.
"ILS?" Danny asked.
"Intro to Lab Science."
"Oh." He gave his ostensible mashed potatoes a poke, and they quivered like Jell-O. "I was doing alright until the bell rang. Missed half the last page." He left the potatoes to quiver undisturbed and took a bite of the hamburger. "The rest of the day should go fine though. PE and geography. How are you doing, Tucker? I heard about that big project Bytters' assigned."
"Yeah, well, Bytters is from another planet. It's nothing a little internet data dredging can't fix." They continued to talk until the bell called them off to class. Danny muddled through the rest of the school day without incident, and he called goodbye to Sam and Tucker at the end of it and began the walk home.
He walked slowly, in no great hurry to be taken prisoner and endure hours of paranormal nonsense. A breeze tugged at his shirt, and he noticed the trees were just beginning to yellow, just beginning to recognize the onset of fall. He felt the hard concrete sidewalk beneath his feet and glanced around him at the people going in and out of various shops, laden with groceries, small bags, and occasionally a child. It gave him heart to see life proceeding as usual, with himself yet another actor on the set, going about his business. He liked who he was, but he wished that he was something more. He had friends, he had pretty good grades, he had a computer and a nice blue scooter, but he was nothing special. Some days- this one for example-he even seemed to be an average failure. He'd probably get a C- or something on the test. He couldn't even fail dramatically.
He felt a sharp jerk and brush of fabric. "Watch it!" a young woman scolded. She continued on her way without stopping, striding away purposefully. Danny looked after her for a moment. She looked about twenty and carried a black briefcase. Well-groomed and well-dressed. He turned stolidly and continued home.
He let the front door slam shut behind him and ran up the stairs to his room, barely missing the begoggled gaze of his mother as she appeared at the bottom of the basement stairs. He shut the door of his room, frowning a bit at the "Danny, is that you dear?" that drifted up after him.
"Yeah Mom, it's me." He heard her on the stairs and opened his door to save her the knock.
"Make sure you stick around until Jazz gets home. She's tutoring someone for about a half hour today, but we'll start the demonstration as soon as she's back from school."
"Fine."
She smiled with excitement. "We're sure this one will work. You're Dad's been working on it since college, you know." Her face clouded for a moment. "There was an accident or two, but we're both sure it'll work this time!"
He clenched his teeth. He was still tired, his test had been difficult, and it didn't help that his mother was ambivalent. "I'm sure it will. I'll see you then," he said curtly.
"Great! I'm sure you'll like it." She grinned and walked back downstairs, and Danny tried not to slam the door behind her.
He sat down at his computer and opened a game. He reveled in forty minutes of vivid, bloody zombie-slaughtering before his parents called him down. The game had put him in a considerably better mood, and he resolved to show at least a polite enthusiasm for the latest dysfunctional crackpot device out of respect for his poor, delusional parents. He walked down to the basement where the rest of his family was already gathered. His father grinned at his entrance.
"Good, we're all here. Now, because of the enormous and far-reaching implications of the device I am about to demonstrate, I feel obligated to explain it in great detail to you both. Everyone pull up a chair," he instructed, wheeling out a chalkboard. Danny's mother stood beside Jack, while Jazz and Danny carried out a couple folding chairs from against the wall. He nudged her and rolled his eyes. She gave him a sympathetic look, and they both prepared for an indefinitely long lecture on supernatural physics.
While his Dad got started on the diatribe, Danny searched the room for the new invention. He saw a tangle of wires that might be it, but he soon located a new machine against the far wall. It was a portal of sorts, about eight or nine feet in diameter. There was a small control pad mounted on the wall next to it, and various service lights shone around the circumference. He thought he recognized it from schematics that had been left lying around the lab in previous weeks. He kept half an ear open for his father's explanation.
"...and as you can see from this mothman equation, the two extraparameters stack to form a perfect ring of exorcist's backlash..." Danny sighed and traded bored expressions with his sister. He leaned back and began to drift off, and he was half-asleep when Jazz elbowed him awake. "Finally, the last two restraints are made to cancel each other out, eliminating the dimensional barrier." His father chuckled. "Essentially, the machine you see on the far wall will allow us to enter and exit the ghost zone at will!"
"His brevity never ceases to astonish me," he heard Jazz mutter.
"Now, the moment we've all been waiting for," their father announced. "The first activation of the Fenton Ghost Portal!" He and their mother walked over to it proudly, and their children stood and followed, stopping a safe distance away. Both remembered several occasions when the ceremonial activations had turned explosive, leaving one or both of them with an embarrassing lack of eyebrows and a bruise or two.
"Go ahead and set up the computer, Maddie."
Their mother worked away on the large computer console against the adjoining wall for a moment, then gave him the thumbs up. "You're all set."
"Terrific," he grinned like a toddler at Christmas, then walked around the side and brought out the connecting ends of two cables. "Prepare to be amazed." He slowly, tentatively, began to bring the two connections together. In spite of himself, Danny found his father's excitement catching, and he tensed in nervous preparation for something unexpected.
"Here goes!" His father brought the cables together, then glanced toward the portal in excitement to observe...nothing. "Any minute now..." Danny remained on edge. Ten, twenty, forty seconds passed, and nothing happened. Danny relaxed.
Jack frowned worriedly. "Hmph." He unplugged the cables, blew off invisible dust, then plugged it in again. Still nothing.
Maddie clicked away at the keyboard. "All the settings are right. I don't know what's wrong." Jack hurried over and peered over her shoulder.
"Are you sure? Maybe that there?"
"Nope, that's right, dear. Maybe it's the hardware."
Danny relaxed completely as his father began to fuss about the portal, tugging and pushing at wires and plates. "False alarm," he said softly to his sister.
"I thought this one might work for a minute."
"Yeah, me too," Danny replied.
"I'm sorry dear. It was a really good effort," Maddie offered.
"Everything was built right, the math checked out. It just doesn't make sense," he complained petulantly.
"Well, I booked us for dinner at Marty's Mighty Meat House. We can still enjoy ourselves tonight," Maddie said.
"We can celebrate the fact that the lab is still intact. Besides, it isn't healthy to dwell for too long on disappointment," Jazz said. "I'm sure a relaxing family dinner will help us cope with this in a psychologically healthy way."
"Sounds great, but I think I should stay home," Danny said it a feint of regret. He wasn't eager to go out with the ghost brigade tonight, especially after he'd already sat through the briefing.
"Aw, come along with us, Danny, it'll be a nice family time," his mother pushed gently.
"I've really got homework to do. An English essay and Algebra, plus some sleep. I'm so tired I could nap through next Saturday."
"A growing boy needs his rest, Maddie. He has his school work to attend to," his father said with a twinge of pride. Danny looked hopefully at his mother.
"Well, I guess it would be alright. Just make sure you study, though. No TV."
"No problem. You guys all have fun. Sorry about the ghost-thing, though."
His father gave the machine a last quizzical look as he headed for the door. "I just don't understand it." He brightened as they all headed for the door. "Oh well. Have I told you about the Fenton thermos ghost catcher I'm building? I think this one'll really work. It will be able to- "
"See you later Danny," his mother interjected. "Get some rest, sweetie." He waved goodbye. Jazz waved back, and Danny mouthed "Good luck" to her as his parents turned toward the stairs.
"-catch ghosts in mid-air, and what's more..." Danny could still hear his father's muffled voice up the stairs, and it was only silenced as they left the house. He smiled slightly, thinking of the fabulous time his sister would be having. Their dad could go on for hours without pause about his latest ghost-junk.
He turned back to look at the portal. Its size, if not its functionality, impressed him. Most of his father's projects were simple hand-held devices rather than huge fixtures, and usually they did something when activated. He found it odd that his parents would work so hard on something that hadn't so much as sparked when they turned it on. In spite of himself, he was a little curious as to what had gone wrong, and against his better judgment, he decided to check it out.
He remembered the explosions, curtains of airborne green goo, and multicolored fires all to well to try anything unshielded. He remembered that his parents kept the spare jumpsuits in a side closet. Moving some spare parts out of the way, he cleared a path to it and managed to pry the door open. He saw several giant orange suits on hangers, black gloves and collar, and his mother's smaller turquoise suits in the same design. He knew he wouldn't fit in his dad's suits, and he didn't want to try his mom's if he could help it. He was about to shut the door and just try it with his own clothes when he noticed a smaller, white nylon piece against the other suits, shoved against the closet wall. He tugged at it, and a black suit fell off its hanger into his hands. White, with black collar, gloves, feet, and waist. He held it for a moment, stretching it experimentally and holding it against himself for comparison. It was exactly his size.
He wondered why his parents hadn't shown it to him. Had they been waiting for the right moment? Did they think he was going to follow in their footsteps? He hoped not. Having grown up with his parents' obsession over ghosts, he couldn't help but take it a little seriously, but he hoped they hadn't assumed that he was going into that line of work. They'd be disappointed. He checked to see if there was anything in his sister's size. Something in pink or red, perhaps? He didn't see anything for her.
He shrugged and changed into the suit. He would put it back after he was done, and even if he didn't, he didn't think they would notice it was gone for some time. The flip side of it, he speculated, was that his parents might care about him more than they showed. He figured it was more likely that they just wanted someone to carry on the torch for their little crusade. He rubbed his eyes. He needed sleep.
Once he managed to climb into the suit, he found that it was not altogether as uncomfortable as it looked on his parents. The material was a type of stiffened nylon, something like a cross between that of a swimsuit and a lab coat. It had an odd, rubbery texture about it, and he suspected his parents had probably soaked it or layered it with something they supposed to be supernatural. He hoped it was the good kind of supernatural and that he was not pouring on gasoline to protect against fire.
Finally suited up, he approached the portal and put one hand out on its shiny metal surface. Through the gloves he could feel the cool, slick metal. The machine shop had certainly done its job properly. He walked around it, looking to make sure the wires were plugged in properly. It all looked fine to him. He glanced at the computer screen his mother had been working on. Lines of commands and several viewgraphs filled the screen, but there was nothing he could understand. If a mistake had been made, it was more likely to have been on his father's part, anyway. He was inventive but not always thorough.
He took a look at the cable. One end ran into the side support of the portal-properly connected, he noted-and the other ran into a mess of tall, narrow canisters at the side of the wall. He wondered curiously if he'd ever been warned about messing around in the lab and realized incredulously that they had not. He thought he should be used to that sort of thing by now, but it angered him that they didn't seem to care whether or not he blew himself up, and he took their omission as permission to risk it. He continued his inspections, checking the connections on the canisters. All good. Canister pressure levels: all maximized, except for one. The label on that one said, "spectral plasma" and reported on its dial only 25% the pressure of the others. Danny knew where they kept more plasma; they used it all the time. Walking quickly, telling himself that it was nothing, his parents would have caught something that obvious if it was out of place, he switched it for a new one, taking care to unplug the canisters from the portal first, then hooked the tangle up again and watched nervously. The machine still refused to either explode or work, and he wondered with growing frustration if there was much of a difference between the two with this one.
He walked around it again, glaring at it and searching for changes. He didn't see any offhand. On the inside, a small red light blinked. His eyes widened, slightly incredulous. Had it been blinking before? He didn't think so. It was a large machine, and it would have been quite easy to miss something like that. Still, he took a closer look at it. Below the light was a label and a button. The label read, "fluid valve." The button was large and red.
In spite of himself, Danny found this particular button very exciting. He wondered what would happen if he pressed it, told himself not to be an idiot and that under no circumstances should he press it, then he jumped as far out of the way as possible and slammed it down.
There was a blinding green flash of light as electricity coursed through him. He heard someone screaming and a sizzling and snapping of wires and electronics, and as his mind and environment exploded with green heat, he thought that it was too soon for him and he wanted to see his friends again and then he lost consciousness.
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Comment, and thou shalt be blessed by the Hawaiian pig-fish humuhumunukunukuapua'a. (Yes, that really is the name of it.) Stay tuned for chapter 2, coming next weekend to a computer near you!