Avoiding Past And Future

7

It was just a few months after his 12th birthday when he messed up big time.

Life hadn't been that great but it also didn't get much worse. Sure, puberty was right around the corner. He was the main target of pretty much every single bully at school, much by his own doing. Quite a strong 'rather me than others' mentality made sure of that.

And of course he barely ever talked to his brother.

It's not like he didn't want to, he just felt like a bother, is all. He didn't have much to do except hang with his friends and tinker away at the invention of the week. His brother had so much on his plate already that he didn't want to add onto it. They both do try to reach out every now and then, but mostly it just faded over the 2 years since he really started to get into the hero thing. He caused a whole bunch of kids to follow into his footsteps and become a hero as well.

Oh how he would love to meet all of them one day. Not just because he aspired to be like them one day, even though that seems like a far off dream by now. No, he also just wanted to meet the friends that helped his brother through a lot of the hardships that he wasn't there for. Gotham was only an hour ahead of him, but it still made it difficult for both of them as there was only a small window between school, dinner and his nightly activities for them to talk. And Danny can't hold it against him that he might not always be the first choice to spend that little time with.

It wasn't all bad however. Because of all the free time he has, he had become very close with his two best, and only, friends. And when they didn't have time, he worked on the inventions. He had gotten really good at the tech part, with much thanks going to Tucker for teaching him a lot about computers and some debatably legal ways of using them. Not that it mattered much, he lived in the middle of nowhere, in a town nobody but the townsfolk know about. Well them and the paranormal tourists they get. How the 'most haunted town of America' wasn't more well known was beyond him. Best guess would be the rumors of it all being a fake.

But that wouldn't be for long anymore.

His foster parents had been working on their biggest invention as of yet. They were working on a doorway between our world and their hypothetical spirit realm. He hadn't thought much about it, really. He had always thought that if ghost were real, then they would simply exist on a different level than them within the same dimension. Much like in a way that 2D objects couldn't perceive 3D objects, humans couldn't perceive ghosts as they simply existed on a different level. Still, he had about as much proof for his theory as they had for theirs so it was an even playing field really.

It was hard not to get excited as well when it finally came time to the testing phase. Their child like excitement for this project was rubbing off on him as it would be a massive scientific breakthrough were it to work. Sadly, outside of a few sparks within the dark tunnel of metal and wires, nothing happened. Disappointment quickly washed over all of them. The impressive hunk of technology and ingenuity was nothing more than a bunch of wires and metal scrap. His foster parents has left the lab, even ignoring their own rule of not leaving the kids unattended there. Their grief over their failed project hitting them hard.

Danny felt really bad for them. Sure, he may not fully support their theory but he did really wish for it to work. He called up his friends and asked them to come over. He needed Tucker as a second opinion. If he was going to try and see if he could do something about this, a second brain would be handy. Sam was mostly there to make sure they didn't kill themselves by not being cautious enough.

Oh the sweet irony of that.

They had indeed worked on the ghost portal, as his foster parents liked to call it. They had managed to decipher the mess of a blueprint and made a few adjustments. Some of the wiring wasn't hooked up right and the flow of energy was disrupted in a few places. Likely the explanation to the sparks he saw when they first tried to power it up. However it had yet to turn on even with it being reconnected to the power grid. After a few more hours of painstakingly breaking their brains over the issue, the boys were about ready to give up. They took a small break to let their brains relax as Sam decided to have a go at it. There wasn't much she understood from the mess of scribbles. Except for one little detail.