THEN: Sam and Dean ran into a strange new ghost that was immune to all of the normal ghost repellants, including salt. After the ghost escaped into a strange, swirling green portal, the dumbfounded brothers contacted Bobby to see if he could identify the creature. Bobby directed them to Amity Park, Illinois to the home of the Drs. Fenton who had recently been featured on the Amity Park News website for capturing one of these green blobs. Unbeknownst to Sam, Dean struggled with himself over his father's morbid last words, coming up empty in the end.
NOW:
Danny said goodbye to Tucker and Sam at the corner of the street.
"Dude, what about Nasty Burger?" asked Tucker, his eyebrows drawing together.
"It'll still be nasty tomorrow," Danny quipped, "I've got to finish Lancer's essay so I can have Jazz look over it tonight."
Tucker shrugged. "Okay then. See you tomorrow!" He and Sam waved as they continued on towards Nasty Burger.
Danny waved back, then turned and walked towards the eyesore he called home. As he gazed up at the vaguely UFO-shaped ops center that sprouted from atop his otherwise normal two-story house, he thanked his lucky stars that there was no HOA in his neighborhood. His dad was currently in the process of installing a large, lightbulb-encrusted sign that read "Fenton Works" to the front of their house. The sign itself was already in position, but his dad had forgotten to install the lightbulbs before securing the monstrosity to the side of the building, so it was still a work in progress. As if his skinny physique didn't already give him enough reasons to be bullied for.
He was two houses away from his own when a shiny black car that looked like it belonged at an antique show roared past him and purred to a stop at the curb in front of his house. The doors creaked open and two huge men stepped out. Each of them wore enough layers of clothing to take care of at least half of the homeless in Amity Park. Danny wondered if they were sweating beneath all those shirts. He looked them up and down as they slammed the car's doors. The shorter one looked aggressive, like a dog with its hackles constantly raised, or a nervous squirrel. The taller one's hair almost covered his eyes and he looked vaguely uncomfortable with the whole situation.
"Hey look," the shorter one laughed, flashing his teeth in a way that Danny was sure gave him the pick of the ladies in the room. The man pointed up at the sign on the side of Danny's house. "They even labelled it for us, how considerate." Danny's brain gave him a non computing error. Had these guys come to visit his family? By now he had almost reached them. He racked his brain for distant relatives that matched the descriptions of these two, but couldn't come up with anything.
"Yeah yeah, let's go," the taller one shoved his hands into his pockets and headed for Danny's front door. Danny's feet kept walking, muscle memory carrying him along behind the two men as his brain tried to reboot.
The shorter one slapped the taller one's shoulder. "Why the long face, Squidward? We're getting first-hand lore about a completely new species of the supernatural! Cheer up, jeeze."
Danny's brain almost shut down. These guys were coming to visit his family... about ghosts?! The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. "Who are you guys?"
The two men whipped around, the shorter one reaching behind himself and grabbing... the waistband of his pants? They stared at him.
The taller one recovered first. "Do you... know the Drs. Fenton?"
Danny felt like he was in a dream. Drs. Fenton?! Nobody ever remembered that his parents had PhDs. "I, uh..." he swallowed, "I'm their son." The two men exchanged a look, and the shorter one let go of his waistband. Danny eyed him and decided he probably had issues Danny didn't want to think about.
"You're their son?" asked the shorter one, "We didn't know they had kids."
"Yeah," Danny couldn't stop himself, "Me and my sister, Jazz."
The taller one again recovered first. He held out a plate-sized hand. "Well, then it's nice to meet you...?"
"Danny." Danny shook the man's hand. They both sounded younger than they looked, but Danny was pretty sure they were still much older than him. At least eighteen.
"It's nice to meet you Danny. I'm Sam Winchester and this is my brother Dean. We're here to see your parents about their research on ghosts. Are they home right now?" Danny retracted his hand, trying to determine if this moderately creepy question deserved an answer. In the end, he didn't have to say a word.
"Heads up!"
Danny and the two men looked up in time to jump out of the way as a small waterfall of lightbulbs crashed onto the pavement, scattering glass everywhere. Before any of them could react further, Danny's front door flew open and a woman in a teal Hazmat jumpsuit stuck her head out, already yelling.
"Jack Fenton, the Fenton Fannypack is not meant to carry more than five lightbulbs at a time - oh, hello Danny!" The speed at which his mother could change from yelling to normal conversation gave Danny whiplash on a regular basis.
"Danny boy!" It was indeed Jack Fenton, garbed in bright-orange jumpsuit and rappelling from the roof of their house, that had dropped the cascade of lightbulbs on the group. Danny waved halfheartedly, his parents' behavior characteristically making him walk the thin line between crushing embarrassment and debilitating anxiety.
"What the hell...?" The shorter of the Winchester brothers, Dean, muttered, his eyes wide, again letting go of his waistband. Sam didn't move, resembling a deer caught in headlights... or perhaps a moose. He was too big to be a deer.
Danny rubbed the back of his head, looking anywhere but at their guests. "Yeah," he chuckled, "they're home."
His mom noticed the brothers. "Danny, who are your friends?"
"This is Sam and Dean Winchester," Danny said, gesturing, "They're here to talk to you and dad about..." He cast a questioning look at Sam and Dean, trying to ask them without words if they really wanted to broach this subject with his parents. The brothers didn't get the hint.
Sam spoke up, "We're here to see you about your research on ghosts-"
"Ghosts?" Jack's voice was still boisterous, but muffled by distance, "Don't get me started about ghosts!"
Maddie smiled apologetically and pushed the hood of her jumpsuit back. "It's not often we get visitors asking about ghosts, but I suppose that article that Amity Park News wrote did give us a little bit of recognition." She gestured as she spoke, beckoning them inside. "Did you know we've been researching ghosts and other ectoplasmic beings since we were in college? In fact, that's where I met Jack..." And on and on she went. Dean gave Danny a look that said, Kill me now, and Danny could only smile and shrug as the brothers were bustled inside the Fenton residence. Danny was about to follow them when Jack's voice called him again from on high.
"Danny-boy, grab the broom and clean up that mess, will you? I've got to refill the Fenton Fannypack." Without waiting to see if Danny had even heard him, Jack began hauling himself back up the side of their house. Danny sighed and followed the Winchesters inside.
Dean felt like he had been run over by the metaphorical semi as he situated himself on the Fentons' couch. Judging by the look on Sam's face, he felt the same way. Dr. Madeline Fenton, or Maddie, as she had introduced herself, was a firehose of information and hadn't stopped talking since she had first stuck her head out the door to berate her husband for dropping the lightbulbs. Has she even breathed yet? Dean realized he had completely zoned out of the conversation.
"- of course the Fenton Nets are old news by now, we've developed a much more efficient method for capturing ghosts that involves very little precision aiming! This will help Jack, I think, he's never had very good eye-hand coordination... but we haven't had a chance to test it on an actual ghost yet, so this is all theoretical at this point." She noticed her son - Danny, was it? - coming out of the kitchen with a broom and a dustpan and turned her firehose on him.
"Danny, sweety, before you do that could you please get our guests something to drink?" Danny stopped and sighed longsufferingly. Maddie was talking to them again. "What would you like? We have water, orange juice, milk, pop-"
"Beer?" Dean asked, slightly desperate. Sam elbowed him, smiling through gritted teeth at Maddie.
"Water would be fine, Dr. Fenton," he said. Danny made a noise as if he wanted to say something.
"Uh, mom, dad hasn't fixed the filter in the fridge yet..."
Maddie's eyebrows drew together, "Ah, yes, that ectoplasm is proving much more difficult to clean out than originally thought..."
"There's ectoplasm in the filter in your fridge?" asked Sam, concerned.
"Yes!" Maddie explained, "Jack does projects on the kitchen table sometimes and the ectoplasm gets everywhere. It doesn't clog things up so much as... possess them? We couldn't use the toaster for a week and a half because it kept launching charred bread at us when we weren't looking." Maddie chuckled at the memory as if possessed kitchen appliances were the norm. The Winchesters shared another look before Maddie asked them if they'd like something else to drink. Dean glanced at Danny as Sam tried to convince Maddie that they really weren't that thirsty. Danny's face was bland and he rolled his eyes when Dean made eye contact. Dean smirked. He kind of liked this kid.
Freed from his duties as butler, Danny hurried outside to sweep up the broken lightbulbs. He felt sorry for the Winchesters. They were going to get their ears talked off for at least the next two hours if they didn't manage to extricate themselves in a hurry.
However, when he came back inside he found, to his surprise, that the brothers were fully engaged in his mom's descriptions of the Ghost Zone - the theoretical alternate dimension where all ectoplasmic beings originated. He stopped in the doorway, reevaluating the men. Were they just as crazy as his parents?
"So these... ectoplasmic beings," Sam started, "they aren't the result of people dying in violent circumstances? Angry spirits, so to speak?"
Maddie dismissed his question with a wave. "Of course not. Spirits, if they existed, would be incorporeal. No, these ghosts are fully physical, although they do exhibit powers such as intangibility and invisibility. If I had to guess, I would say the stories you hear about 'ghosts' -" she did finger quotes as she said this word "- are probably people just trying to give a name to these ectoplasmic beings because the abilities they exhibit are so close to the legends surrounding 'ghosts'." She did finger quotes again. Danny wished she would stop. The conversation in the living room followed him as he continued to the kitchen to put the broom away.
"We had a run-in with one of these... ectoplasmic beings," Dean said the words as if they were in a foreign language, "and it didn't react to anything... uh, anything you hear normally hurts..." again he hesitated, "...ectoplasmic beings. Salt, iron, fire, nothing worked."
"You can call them ghosts if you want, Dean. Jack and I normally call them that so we don't have to explain what 'ectoplasmic' means to everyone. You know the saying 'fight fire with fire', right? It's the same principle here. Ghosts can only be harmed by ectoplasm, the same material that they are made of. Well, that and ungodly amounts of electricity... You'd have to take out the power grid of a small city to have even the mildest hope of killing a ghost!"
"But if this ectoplasm comes from the Ghost Zone, how do you get it?" Sam asked.
Danny shook his head as he shut the pantry and started back towards the living room. They really were just as crazy as his parents. And he'd had such high hopes.
A step away from the entrance to the living room, Danny was stopped cold by his mother's next words. "Ah, so you want to know about our portal project? I'm surprised you heard about that, it happened so many years ago." A portal project? His parents had tried to rip the fabric of the universe and this was the first he had heard about it?
"Uh, yeah, your portal project." Danny rolled his eyes as he listened. Dean wasn't nearly as smooth as he thought he was.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. "You want to know about the Fenton Ghost Portal?" At point blank range, his dad's voice overpowered any reply his mom had tried to make. "To the lab!" Danny jumped. They were coming this way! Quick, act natural!
He launched himself at the kitchen table, leaning awkwardly on his elbows and fixing his eyes resolutely on the salt shaker as if it was his entire world.
"I really don't think this is necessary." Sam had been taken captive by his dad, who steered him ahead of himself into the kitchen and towards the stairs to the lab. Dean was herded a few steps behind by his mom, still looking bewildered.
"You have a lab?" he stared at Danny, "In your basement?!" Danny shrugged.
Wrong move.
"Danny boy! It's about time we showed you the Fenton Ghost Portal! Let's go!" Jack wrapped a huge arm around Danny, verily plucking him from the ground as he tried to escape.
"Dad, I have homework!" Danny pushed against Jack's arm in vain.
"There is always time for ghosts!"
Well, thought Danny, so much for finishing Lancer's essay tonight.