THEN: The Fenton parents forcibly showed off their portal project to Sam, Dean, and Danny. While their son was creepily entranced by the non-functioning interdimensional doorway, the Winchesters were less enthusiastic and left Fenton Works with plans to return the next day to sabotage the portal. Their plans were timed perfectly as, the next morning, Danny's parents revealed that they planned to test the portal that very afternoon.
NOW:
The school day couldn't seem to go fast enough for Danny. Although he tried his hardest, every time he focused on what his teachers were saying, some word or sound would trigger the memory of the portal test and it would be a long while before he could think of anything else. The longest period of time when he wasn't thinking about the portal was during a pop quiz in history. He got all but one of the questions right; it was hard to connect the feudal system to a ghost portal.
As soon as the last bell rang for the day, he had grabbed Sam and Tucker by the arms and bolted out of the classroom almost before Mr. Falluca could wish them a good weekend.
"Danny! You're pulling my shoulder out of socket!" Sam complained as Danny forcibly towed her and Tucker down the street. Danny screeched to a halt and dropped his friends' arms, then started speed-walking towards his house, talking over his shoulder as his friends struggled to match his pace. His feet weren't the only things that were going a million miles per hour.
"Oops I'm sorry Sam but I just can't calm down I'm so excited they're going to test the Ghost Portal today and I don't want to miss it I mean imagine a doorway to another dimension it's almost as exciting as living in zero gravity on the International Space Station!" He paused to take a breath, but before he could continue, Tucker intervened.
"We know, dude. You've been talking about it all. Day." Normally Tucker was very supportive of his friend's interests, but the level of excitement that Danny had maintained throughout the day had drained him.
Seeing Danny take another huge breath, Sam quickly added onto Tucker's complaint. "I mean, if you're this excited about it, we'd better save our breath so we can get there faster!" Tucker shot her a look of gratitude.
"You're absolutely right!" Danny agreed. He shut up and walked even faster, pumping his arms up and down with enthusiasm. Sam had to stifle a laugh as an image of a middle aged woman wearing leg warmers and a leotard came to mind.
Earlier that morning and across town, Sam Winchester had begun to think of the Fenton household as a black hole. No sooner had he and Dean pulled up to the curb of the strange house than Maddie had whisked them both inside and sat them down in the kitchen with a whispered plea for them to entertain Jack while she put the final touches on the Ghost Portal. Before he had recovered from that whiplash, Jack had begun to bombard them with long winded diatribes against ghosts as he shovelled fudge into his mouth faster than Dean could shovel pie.
After a while, the banging and clanking noises from the lab had mostly quieted and both of the Winchesters started to get desperate. Sam didn't see any way that they would be able to sabotage the portal before it was tested.
"Yup," Jack sighed, licking another crumb of fudge off the glove of his jumpsuit, "As soon as Danny gets home from school today. You should have seen the look on his face when we told him we were going to test the portal this afternoon!"
The idea struck Sam like lightning. He leaned forward, the picture of a rapt audience. "That sounds so cool! It will be one small step for man, but one giant leap for ghost hunter... kind. Could Dean and I stay to watch the test too?" Dean was looking at him like he was crazy, so Sam bumped his leg with his knee, smiling widely in Jack's direction.
Dean stared hard at his brother. What the hell did he think he was doing? They didn't want to watch the test, they wanted to destroy the portal before the test! But... Dean glanced at Jack, then at the clock on the kitchen counter. They had been here for hours without a single opportunity to carry out their plan and they were running out of time. Inwardly, Dean sighed. Here goes nothing.
"Of course!" he rejoined enthusiastically, "Sam and I were just talking about how cool it would be to see such a... grand... and historical event!" Sam gave him a genuine smile and turned back to Jack. Mischief managed. Now for the shot in the dark...
"You know," Sam continued, cutting off Jack's overjoyed reply before he could start rambling again, "A test of a ghost portal sounds kind of dangerous... too bad we left our protective jumpsuits at home." He looked pointedly at Jack, willing the wheels in his head to turn faster. Sam hadn't actually seen where the Fentons kept their iconic Hazmat suits, but he was hoping it was the lab. Please... please be in the lab.
Jack twiddled his thumbs for a moment muttering about their lack of protective equipment and
running possible solutions through his mind. "Ah!" he said, his dramatic realization startling the Winchesters, "We have a bunch of extra jumpsuits down in the lab for emergencies. I'm sure we can find some in your sizes."
Sam opened his mouth, but Jack had already scooped the brothers up and was herding them
towards the stairs. "To the lab!" he shouted in Dean's ear.
The next few minutes were a whirlwind as Dean and Sam were shunted in and out of various rubber jumpsuits. When he tried to remember later, Dean could only recall a blur of orange and teal and an uncomfortable tightness in his nether regions.
Jack, a doofus in most other respects, turned out to be quite the genius when it came to sizing jumpsuits. Soon, Dean and Sam found themselves standing outside the entrance to the makeshift fitting rooms in the vault the Fentons apparently had in their basement. Jack clapped his hands in triumph as they examined themselves critically. With his almost unrealistic height, Sam had had to borrow one of Jack's extra jumpsuits and, although the shoulders fit, his - for lack of a better word - paunch region was lacking. The loose hazmat suit flopped around like a drowned fish every time he moved. Dean, luckily, fit almost perfectly into one of the white jumpsuits the Fentons had prepared for Danny when he got older.
"You look..." Dean trailed off into quiet giggles as he tried to find an adjective suitable to describe Sam's appearance.
"Just as ridiculous as you, I'm sure," Sam said, pointing to Dean's chest. Dean looked down to find a large Jack-shaped sticker staring back at him. His smile instantly dropped. He ripped that accursed thing off as soon as Jack had his back turned, tossing it into what he hoped was a trash can.
The three of them emerged into the lab, all clad in rubber, just as Maddie stepped out of the portal and removed her goggles.
"All finished!" she crowed, tossing a screwdriver into a toolbox. "Now, who wants some lemonade and fudge?" Jack raced for the stairs shouting "ME! ME!" like a child. Maddie and Sam followed at a much slower pace.
"Uh, I think I left my phone in the - uh - vault," Dean said, patting the pockets of his jumpsuit, "I'll meet y'all up there in a minute."
"Ok, just don't touch anything and you should be fine," Maddie said a little absently as loud bangs echoed down from the kitchen. Dean gave her and Sam a wink and a thumbs up and they disappeared up the stairs.
Dean turned towards the portal rubbing his hands together. "Alrighty... let's get to it."
Danny burst in the door of his home onto a strange scene. His dad was standing on the couch, one foot on the arm, one foot on the cushions in a stance reminiscent of Christopher Columbus. In his right hand he held aloft a platter of fudge, and in his left he held a glass of lemonade with a tiny paper umbrella in the top.
"You can't stop me!" he was shouting at Sam Winchester, who was reaching as high as he could and swiping his hand through the air just beneath the plate of fudge. He was wearing one of Jack's extra jumpsuits, the front of which fit him so badly that every time he made a move, it would flop around like an abundance of loose skin. His mom was attempting to sneak up on Jack from the other end of the couch. As Danny watched, she took a flying leap and landed on top of Jack's massive shoulders.
"Jack Fenton!" she said as she reached for the plate of fudge, "You will hand me that fudge this instant!"
"But...!" Jack began, but as he lowered the plate away from Maddie's outstretched hands, he put it within reach of Sam's, who snatched it triumphantly and backed away to the other side of the living room, a little out of breath. Maddie flipped off of Jack's shoulders and onto the floor in front of him as he started to go after Sam.
"Sit down, Jack," she said forcefully, pointing at the couch. Jack opened his mouth, but Maddie cut him off, "Or no more fudge for you!" Jack immediately clammed up and parked himself on the couch.
"That's not fair, Maddie-kins!" he said, cradling his lemonade, "Using a man's weak point against him is just plain cruel."
"It's not cruel, honey, it's tactics," Maddie fired back, relieving Sam of the plate of fudge and heading back into the kitchen.
Danny took the lull in the action as an opportunity to enter, pulling Sam and Tucker behind him. Jack slumped down into the couch, pouting while Sam Winchester turned to the teenagers.
"Hey, Danny," he said, a little breathless, planting his hands on his hips. "Did you bring your friends to watch the portal test?" Danny nodded.
"Sam," he said to the younger Winchester brother, "This is, er, well... this is Sam and Tucker."
The Sams stared at each other. "This is going to get confusing," Sam Manson said, rubbing her temples, "I'm just going to call you Sammy."
Sam's face hardened a little and he crossed his arms. "Only if I get to call you Samantha." Danny intervened before a hardcore glaring contest could get underway.
"Why don't you call each other by your last names?" he suggested, "Sam Winchester, meet Sam Manson."
"Winchester," Sam nodded curtly.
"Manson," the other Sam nodded back.
"So, Winchester," The Manson Sam said, not having quite relaxed yet, "Danny tells us you and your brother hunt ghosts."
The Winchester Sam nodded. "Among other things."
"What, you hunt vampires and zombies too?"
Fortunately, Dean stomped up the stairs to the lab at that moment clamoring for something stronger than water and cut the tension before it could build again. He caught sight of Danny and company standing awkwardly in the living room.
"Hey, kid," he said, "Who're your buddies?"
Danny took a deep breath. "Dean Winchester, this is Sam Manson and Tucker."
"That's gonna get confusing," Dean said, glancing at his brother. Before he could say anything else, Sam stomped up to him and stuck out her hand.
"Sam Manson," she said, "My friends call me Sam, but you can call me Manson." Inwardly, Danny was impressed. What a power move... Outwardly, he facepalmed.
Dean looked uncharacteristically flustered, but he gripped Sam's hand firmly, accepting her unspoken challenge. "Dean Winchester. I guess you can call me whatever as long as you don't call me Mr. Winchester."
Sam grinned like the feral goth she was. "Oh, I wasn't planning to." Dean raised his eyebrows, at a loss at what to do with the small angry child in front of him. It was only as she walked away that he muttered, "Snarky brat." so that only his brother could hear.
"Alright kids! Let's get you suited up and we can all go watch the portal test!" Maddie said as she reentered the living room.
A few minutes later, the majority of the Fenton clan along with the Winchesters and Sam and Tucker were gathered around the black pit of the portal. Jack and Maddie busied themselves performing last minute checks on the machine while nobody noticed Dean cross his fingers behind his back.
Danny, of course, was in his custom white jumpsuit, fidgeting uncomfortably between Sam and Tucker, who were both garbed simply in long plastic aprons and goggles. With the cost of building the portal, Maddie and Jack couldn't buy jumpsuits for everyone... no matter how much they wanted to.
Clucking disapprovingly, Maddie pointed to a clear structure that had been set up against the back wall. "Behind the blast shield, kids." She made eye contact with the Winchesters. "You too. We don't want things to get messy if something goes wrong."
Yeah, thought Sam Winchester, because punching a hole into another dimension in your own basement is so safe. But the brothers made their way behind the shield without any audible complaints. They watched the Drs. Fenton inspect their machine, holding their breath until a loud ripping sound tore their attention to the group of teenagers beside them. They turned just in time to see the Manson girl toss a Jack Fenton sticker into the garbage can. She stopped Danny halfway through his protests.
"You'll thank me later," she said, turning away to watch the proceedings. Shrugging, Danny followed suit.
"I really don't think this is a good idea," said Tucker, a little out of the blue.
"Huh? Why not?" asked Danny, more puzzled than he should have been under the circumstances. Tucker favored him with a look that said "You're gonna make me explain?"
"Think about it, Danny," he said, speaking slowly, "Your parents are literally trying to rip a hole in the fabric of space. In your basement. In the middle of a crowded neighborhood. Using the city's electric grid. The list goes on." Danny frowned, Tucker's logic not quite cutting through his euphoria. Thankfully, Sam, the female one, came to Tucker's rescue.
"I think he's trying to say that if this thing goes wrong somehow... the blast shield isn't going to be enough." Collectively, the three teens gulped, both afraid and thrilled.
The Winchester brothers shared a look. Sam leaned closer to Dean, whispering, "You sure this will work?"
Dean, palms sweaty, nodded, eyes wide. I sure as hell hope so. He crossed the fingers on his other hand too, just in case.
"Alright everyone!" Maddie said, ushering Jack behind the blast shield, a remote in his hand, "It's time for the big boom!"
"Please don't use the word 'boom', mom." Danny was turning a bit green.
Maddie didn't seem to hear him. "Goggles on, everyone!" She waited until everyone had slid the tinted goggles down over their faces before patting Jack's huge shoulder. "Go ahead, dear."
Grinning like a maniac, Jack plunged his finger into the big red button in the center of the remote and cried, "BONSAI!"