Many, many thanks to Cordria for betaing for me. Go check out her stuff it you haven't yet, it's amazing!
This scene is the first time Danny gets shocked in the portal, mainly because I was kind of surprised I hadn't read one yet.
Characters aren't mine. Constructive criticism welcomed.
Song in quotations is "Do Better" by Say Anything.
OOOoooOOO
"Life is not a spark in space, an episode of Will and Grace, controversial yet mundane, Deborah's messing with your brain."
OOOoooOOO
"Are you guys sure this is a good idea?"
It was late that night; Sam and Tucker were staying over to work on a particularly tricky English paper due the next Monday. During one of their (many) breaks, they had convinced Danny to take them into the basement to look at the Ghost Portal, a supposedly very impressive and rare piece of tech, which was the epitome of his parents' research and findings throughout the both of their lifetimes.
The only problem, of course, was that it didn't work. Three years of construction only for the contraption to fizz and die. Danny's parents hadn't left their bedroom since. Jazz hadn't stopped trying to deduce a diagnosis from them, and even through her long bouts of psycho-babble and complicated words he barely understood, he could tell there was reason for worry. Apparently spending three days locked in the same room was some cause for concern.
But that had little to do with the situation at hand. As they stood in the dimly-lit basement, a few machines humming quietly against the walls, Tucker had idly mentioned that he was curious about what the inside looked like. When Danny had added that he shared that curiosity, Sam was incredulous.
"I mean, you live here. They've been working on this for three years, and you don't even know what the inside looks like?" she said.
"It's not like I take an active interest in their ridiculous ghost-fighting obsession," he replied, while a small voice in the back of his mind reminded him he was just as curious to see inside the dark passageway as they were.
"Still. We have to see it now."
And thus resulted in the three of them standing in front of the opening, Danny clutching the spandex jumpsuit in his hands. His father had created one for each of them, having determined that as soon as he proved the existence of ghosts, he would teach them all the finer points of ghost fighting. As if the larger man knew the finer points of much anything that wasn't food.
"Danny should go first," Sam said as he tugged a jumpsuit from one of the cabinets lining the walls.
"What? Why?"
"Because it's your house," she replied, as if that were a perfectly logical reason for him to be the first down a potential death trap.
"What does that have to do with anything? You're the one insisting we go in."
"What, like you don't want to? Besides, if we're going by that logic, Tucker should be first. He's the one who mentioned it."
"Don't drag me into this," Tucker interjected, not even looking up from his PDA, where he was designing the programming for a new app, and, while entertaining, he didn't appreciate the argument that he should be first in a likely highly dangerous and harmful situation in which he hadn't overly wanted to participate in to begin with. "There is no way on Earth I'm going into that thing first."
"But you were the one to bring it up!"
"I didn't think we'd actually do it! Who knows what could happen? There could actually be ghosts in there! If you think I'm going to risk this fine face for some stupid dare, you're wrong."
"Fine, fine! If you two are going to be such babies about it, I'll go first," Sam said, holding out a hand to Danny for the jumpsuit they were supposed to wear when there was even a chance they'd be exposed to ectoplasm. The trio agreed that it was pretty stupid, but they'd all rather not risk it. Besides, if they got caught down here, at least they'd be following one rule.
Danny frowned at Sam before a flash of light, echoing and amplified by all the metal, bounced around the room, accompanied by a shutter click. He turned his frown from Sam to Tucker in time to see him try to hide a small chuckle. "Sorry," Tucker said, although he didn't really sound sorry at all. "Your face was priceless."
Danny scowled at his friend before again switching his attention back to Sam. "No way are you going in there first. If anyone, it's going to be me," he replied, and began slipping on the jumpsuit before she could further argue. The spandex felt weird and stretchy against his skin.
Sam threw up her hands in defeat and stalked away, but even she couldn't hold back the slight smirk at the edge of her lips. If there was one way to convince a boy to do something, it was insult him into thinking it was his idea.
When she turned back around, Danny had suited up and was attempting to pull off the insignia of his father's face that was, for some reason, plastered to his chest on the suit. Sam finally had to come over and peel it off for him. He turned then to the looming opening of the portal, which seemed much more intimidating than it had moments before.
"Are we sure this is a good idea?" he repeated, suddenly unsure.
"Yes. Now go. I'm curious too, and you're taking too long." Sam shoved him forward, punctuating the end of her statement, but truthfully, she'd grown slightly worried as well. A sick feeling had worked its way into her gut, and she forced it down with all she had. Now was not the time.
He cast one last look up at the gaping opening of the portal before stepping into the dark hole, drilled through the bedrock underneath the house. He recalled how long it took his parents to get the grant allowing them to both pay for the drill and convince the neighborhood heads that it would cause no harm to the structural integrity of the house or the street.
It was larger on the inside than it seemed from the outside. In between the two rings that formed the entrance and the back, the portal opened up cavernously, creating inky shadows that made seeing the floor and the far corners impossible. Each side was made with three layers of alternating steel and iron plates. Some kind of tech lined the walls, creating patterns that glowed faintly, but not enough to provide sufficient light. Thick cables lay haphazardly on the ground, and Danny couldn't help but be picture them as snakes, writhing and wrapping around his legs, climbing slowly up, suffocating him….
He tore his gaze away from the cables and glanced around the rest of the portal. Everything looked so seamless, every inscrutable detail accounted for. He couldn't imagine what went wrong.
As he looked around, he reached out his palm and rested it against the cool metal walls, in order to ground himself. He felt a slight give where his palm rested against the metal, and for a split second, he was confused; metal walls didn't give, right?
After that, there wasn't much Danny remembered. A flash of blue light—an intense agony, like all of his molecules, all of his cells, every strand of DNA was dissolving and reforming, over and over—screams echoing from behind him, calling out in worry and fear—weightlessness as he was thrown from the portal and onto the floor of the lab.
Darkness as he passed out from the pain.
OOOoooOOO
"You could do better, you could do better, you could be the greatest man in the world."