Danny Fenton considers himself painfully average.
His grades, his popularity in school, his number of Twitter followers, all of it absolutely screams 'average'. It's not a bad thing, per se, but it's probably why it's never crossed his mind that anything extraordinary could possibly happen to him, ever. Sure, his parents leave their weird 'ghost hunting' stuff lying around and Danny's accidentally stubbed his toes, cut himself, or received a small shock from something, but he's never been one to believe in things he can't see. Hell, he even hates the very concept of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
He's not even sure what makes him the prime target for his school's most notorious bully, Dash Baxter. When he figures out what it is, though, he's definitely getting rid of it. Highschool is painful enough already without the added pressure of trying to avoid getting the snot beaten out of him every day.
Speaking of which, he's currently stuffed himself into a tight crevice under the football field's bleachers, trying to catch his breath and peering through the slats between the seats for any sign of his attacker. Sweat rolls down his face and back, making him feel gross and cold, but he doesn't dare move an inch. Dash seems to have some kind of sixth sense that lets him immediately hone in on panicking teenagers trying to avoid a black eye.
He sits there in silence for god-knows-how long, only daring to move when his muscles hurt too much to stay hidden and his phone vibrates in his pocket, probably because his mom sent him a text asking where he is and why he's taking so long to get home. Even then, though, he keeps low to the ground, crawling through the wet grass and letting his eyes dart everywhere in search of Dash.
He hears footsteps on the gravel path stretching from the school's westernmost doors to the football field and immediately shoves himself back into the shadows with a quiet curse. The steps grow louder, like Danny's thrumming heart, and then...
"Danny? It's all clear. The gorilla's gone."
Danny flinches at the voice, then lets out a shaky exhale and crawls out from under the bleachers. When he finally rises to his feet and dusts the grass and dirt from his jeans, he feels warm relief spread from his chest through the rest of him.
His closest- and only- friends, Sam and Tucker, stand there with sympathetic smiles on their faces. Danny wipes the sweat from his brow.
"You're sure he's gone?"
Tucker nods. "Yep!"
"Apparently, he got an anonymous tip that Paulina's gonna be hanging out at the theatre and he doesn't wanna pass up a chance to hit on her." Sam adds with a suspicious wink.
"I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say you were the so-called 'anonymous' person who tipped him off," Danny replies, laughing softly.
Sam gives him a mock look of horror, pressing a hand to her chest and exclaiming, "How dare you accuse me of something like that! I would never-"
"Oh, come on," Tucker groans, "It was you, don't be so dramatic."
Sam jokingly punches Tucker in the shoulder, making him yelp in alarm and spring away. He rubs at his shoulder with a narrow-eyed look at Sam, but as he opens his mouth to complain or shoot back a retort, Sam jabs a thumb over her shoulder. "Anyways, let's get the hell outta here before we run into any more of the knuckleheads."
"I'm good with that," Danny mutters, swinging his backpack over one shoulder and following Sam as she turns and leads the way down the path. Tucker jogs to catch up, and once they reach the sidewalk, the three of them settle into their usual walking pattern, side-by-side.
The walk to the Fenton house takes about 30 minutes, which makes it the closest of their houses to Casper High. So it goes without saying that the Fenton house, despite all its weirdness, is the one they hang out at most often. Well, 'weird' is the understatement of the year.
The massive metal ops center balanced precariously on the roof, the neon signs screaming 'Fentonworks' to the entire city, and the red brick walls that so starkly contrast the rest of the cookie-cutter houses in their neighbourhood… actually, Danny thinks he's found the reason why Dash singles him out. Even though Danny has absolutely no interest in his parents' crazed obsession with the paranormal, it's probably affected his reputation by proxy. That would explain Dash's relentless torment.
Pushing the door open, Danny shouts a quick 'I'm home' to which he receives no response, then shuts the door behind Sam and Tucker and kicks his shoes off. They do the same, and move to head upstairs… when Sam pauses.
"Hey, Danny," she calls as he gets halfway up the stairs, "didn't you say your parents finished their 'spirit portal' today or something?"
Danny stops, glancing down at her over the railing. "Yeah. Why?"
"You've got to show us!" Tucker interrupts before Sam can respond, racing back down the stairs.
With a reluctant groan, Danny drags a hand down his face. When neither of his friends respond to his obvious distaste, he throws his arms in the air and comes back down. "God, fine. It's stupid and not gonna work, just like everything else of theirs, but whatever. I guess we can look."
The Fenton family's lab is situated in what was once a basement, Danny's pretty sure. Well, he's never seen the basement as anything else other than a lab and neither has Jazz, but it had to have been something else at some point. Before the crazy couple moved in.
Now, the lab- pristinely clean, much cleaner than normal- is a sterile, cold, damp pit with metal walls and lined by counters and cabinets overflowing with weird science-y stuff and weird drawings taped to the walls everywhere. It certainly doesn't help his parents look any less crazy, that's for sure.
But Sam and Tucker have seen all this before. They're not here for that.
They're here for the steel doors built into one wall, surrounded by more strange drawings on slowly-aging paper, and marked with some sort of celtic-looking symbol that Danny's seen far too often in his parents' notes. This, supposedly, is his parents' greatest creation: a gateway to the Spirit Realm. Which, obviously, doesn't exist.
Danny leans against the farthest wall, arms crossed and expression slumped into one of boredom as Sam and Tucker inspect the gateway with interest. Tucker snaps a few photos on his cellphone, and Sam backs up to take a picture using her Polaroid. Just before she clicks the shutter, Tucker makes a face and strikes a stupid pose, which makes Sam groan in exasperation as the photo slides out of the camera.
"You couldn't act just a little more serious?" Sam sighs.
As she lifts up the photo to look at it, Tucker lets out a laugh. "Nope!"
"Okay, you guys got to see it. Can we go do something else?" Danny groans from his place at the opposite end of the room.
At his snide comment, Sam and Tucker exchange a glance before looking back at Danny with matching shit-eating grins. Danny furrows his brow. "What?"
"Could it be-"
"Oh man-"
They speak at the same time, but their words only match up when they both cackle, "You're scared, aren't you?!"
As cheeky laughter echoes around the lab, Danny stands upright and snaps, "I am not!"
"Are too!" Tucker retorts between bursts of laughter.
The mockery coupled with his frustration at Dash and his parents must have flipped a switch in Danny's head, because he strides across the room with a scowl. As he stops in front of the Gate, Danny lets out an irritated breath and says, "Fine, I'll prove it."
"Oh, damn, are you going inside?" Tucker asks incredulously.
Danny glances back over his shoulder with a smirk. "Hell yeah I am."
"It's safe?" Sam asks, and Danny lets out a snort.
"None of my parents' crap ever works. Nothing's gonna happen."
"Famous last words." Tucker laughs lightly, elbowing Sam in the side, "Get a picture of him when he goes in! It's gonna look so cool."
"What, me standing in an empty pit?" Danny sighs as he pulls the metal lever to the right of the Gate and the doors slide open with the hissing sound of pneumatics. "Yeah. It's gonna be absolutely amazing."
On the other side of the doors is, as Danny expected, a metal tube of sorts, lined with exposed wires, shimmering with what looks like hundreds of crystals- don't mom and dad use those in their stupid rituals?- and humming quietly. Some of the papers that had been taped to the door are knocked off as the doors open and are sent fluttering all throughout the room like dead leaves. After taking a moment to stare at the inside of the Gate, Danny turns around and gestures to it. "See? Not. Scared."
"Betcha won't go inside." Sam says in a teasing tone.
"Betcha I will." Danny sighs, turning back around and looking once again at the inside of the Gate.
You know… maybe this is a stupid idea.
He bites his lip.
Oh, screw it. Nothing ever works, anyways.
As soon as he steps inside the Gate, a strange chill passes over Danny's body, running through his veins like liquid nitrogen, freezing everything it touches and sending whirlwinds of ice shooting into his skull. With a wince, he backs out.
Tucker barks out a laugh. "Ha! You're scared!"
"N-no, I just… felt something," Danny mumbles, still distracted by the cold trapped under his skin and eating into his bones.
"Like what?" Sam asks, semi-seriously.
Before Danny has the chance to reply, a keening noise erupts from within the Gate, making all three of them slap their hands over their ears. The crystals lining the walls of the portal light up with an ethereal blue light for a heartbeat, then the entire inside of the Gate seems to simply disappear, becoming nothing but empty, black space on the other side. Danny takes another step back, but apparently it's not enough.
Some sort of inhuman wail sounds from within the Gate, like countless tormented souls all screaming their agony at once, hoping to escape their fate. There's a sound like a heavy foot slamming down on the floor of the lab, but there's nothing to suggest that there is actually something there. No shadow, no claw marks, nothing.
Danny opens his mouth, ready to suggest that maybe they've fucked up big time and it would be a swell idea to close the Gate, but something slams into his chest, knocking all the air from his body and stealing away his voice. He's yanked off his feet by whatever's hit him in the chest, then thrown aside like a ragdoll, where he lies on the floor, unable to move.
I can't breathe.
Danny feels his vision growing dark.
I can't move.
Sam and Tucker shout indistinctly.
Am I dying…?
The Gate slams shut as though someone hit the lever.
What a stupid way to die.
He sinks into endless night.
" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "
Danny wakes up, his tired eyes sliding open despite the overwhelming urge to close them and fall back asleep. He forces himself to sit up and take in his surroundings like a normal human being, and his heart stops beating when he realizes that he's not at all where he'd expected to be.
No, rather than waking up in his familiar bedroom with all its space-themed posters and comforting charm, he's sitting on seemingly thin air, surrounded by endless blackness shimmering with multicolored iridescence like spilled oil in a street gutter. His depth perception is skewed- is that wall right in front of me or miles away?- but his confusion is quickly swept away when previous events flood back into his mind.
He's dead.
He's dead.
With a shuddering breath, he reaches up to run his ice-cold fingers through his hair. He scrunches his eyes shut, trying with all his willpower to wake up from this nightmare… but no matter how hard he tries, he's stuck here, in this infinite purgatory, with nobody here to greet him or keep him company.
Or so he thought.
Before his eyes, the blackness in front of him twists, reshapes, changes colour, and glows until some sort of weird creature is standing in front of him, watching him with eyes like fiery green glass.
Danny would almost say it's a dog, but it towers above him like his parents' RV, and some things don't quite match up with your average dog. Like how despite its thick white coat and canine head, foot-long fangs protrude from its mouth, it has two sets of large ears, and ghastly green flames flicker from its solid green eyes. Its birdlike legs are jet black with two toes on each foot, and a thick, white mane runs down its spine from between its ears to its short and wispy tail.
In short, it's like nothing Danny's ever seen.
"- - - - - - - "
A garbled voice echoes in Danny's head, and he can't help flinching at it. The creature tilts its head ever-so-slightly at the reaction, then the voice comes again.
"Human boy."
"Y-yes-?" Danny begins, but the voice interrupts.
"I am Ayla. I am what your kind know as a spirit."
"So… spirits are real…?"
"Obviously. Otherwise, how would I be standing here before you?"
Danny swallows hard. "Am I… am I dead?"
"You are indeed dead," the creature explains with a flick of its short tail. "You foolishly stepped inside an active Gateway and allowed a malicious entity to enter your realm. I managed to overshadow one of your friends long enough to shut the door, but the spirit had already hit you so hard, your lungs ruptured, your heart burst, and your organs essentially-"
"Okay, I get it. I… don't wanna hear about how… how badly my guts were messed up."
"Insolent child," Ayla snaps in his head, baring her teeth, "you dare interrupt a being of my caliber? I could destroy your essence in an instant, eradicating your very existence itself."
A shudder runs through Danny's body, and he drops his gaze in fear.
Ayla snorts. "I jest. I am no such brute. Speak if you wish."
Despite her reassurance, it takes Danny a few seconds to find his voice again. When he does, he asks in a tiny voice, "So, um… what is this place?"
"A pocket realm between the human realm and the Spirit Realm. I caught your essence and tied it here so I could speak with you. It was difficult work, but at least you will not stay dead now."
"What do you mean by that?"
"My essence is fading. I have been around since before the dawn of humanity, and my time has grown boring. I have about one more human lifetime left in me, and I would like to do something worthwhile if I am going to fade away anyways," Ayla explains, drawing slowly nearer. "So, I will give up my independence as a spirit and fuse with your essence. If I do, you will gain my abilities as a spirit, including my healing, and make a full recovery. If you decline, you will still live, but your body will be too badly damaged to recover. You will live out your days in a comatose state. The choice is yours, child."
"I... " Danny swallows hard again. "...I...I don't know. I don't want to die."
"Your time runs short. Make a choice."
His consciousness swims and he wobbles, which makes a spear of panic lance through him, sharp and cold. "I accept! Just don't let me die-!"
Before he can finish, Ayla dips her head and speaks in that garbled language once again.
" -*-***-***- "
All the energy seeps from Danny's body as though some unearthly force sucked the very life from his flesh and bones, and he feels the vaguest falling sensation moments before-
.
.
.
He wakes up.