What if Danny didn't die? He does open the portal but for the first time in their lives the Fentons followed OSHA regulations.
He doesn't have the powers, but he was right there when the portal opened, he saw the tear in reality and it...it did things.
It wasn't something that a humans mind was supposed to see, while the Infinite Realms are the in-between dimensions, and what is in-between the in-between?
Elder gods, slumbering calamities, fallen angels hid from their gods ever present eye, righteous spirits who reached nirvana, monsters beyond imagination...
The crack before the Realms snapped to his dimension was only open for a mere moment, a single millisecond but to the young boy it was eternity, and he could only watches as all those beings turned their attentions to him, they saw him, observed him as much as he did them.
He had fallen, screaming as he clutched his eyes, his eyes and ears were bleeding, his brain pounded so hard it felt as if it was going to knock out his eyeballs, Sam and Tucker, spared from it all as they had turned their heads when the lightning flashed and rent the portal open could only rush to the boy, trying to help him but all he could do was scream. Because what was beyond had saw him, and gave him a gift.
Far away, in a tall tower, a man with a gleaming gold helmet shuddered as the ankh of light in front of him shattered.
He fell to the floor, the minor magic he used failing as the more complex spell fizzled and broke, leaving him painfully wheezing on the ground, clutching at his chest.
"N-no...T-this can not be...T-The order...it...it failed...it can not fail!" Dragging himself across the Tower of Orders floor, Dr. Fate forced himself over to a lone summoning circle, falling onto it with an exhausted groan, the Gaurdian of Order muttered a soft word, and the circle flared, and in an instant he was gone, leaving the Tower shaking it it's wake.
On the couch of the House of Magic, John Constantine was feeling as if the world had fucked him so hard in the ass he would never be able to walk straight ever again.
And with the pounding in his skull from a truly deadly hangover wasn't helping either.
Nor was the half dead Dr. Fate puking up his guts in his living room.
"Argh" which translated to "What the bloody fuck are you doing in my house you daft shiny headed prick" but John didn't really have the strength to say that.
"Blugh" was what the ever regal Dr. Fate responded with, which obviously meant "The border between realities have been broken, the Beyond Dark knows of our existence and has seen our world, they have come to either eat upon our existence and reality or defend agaisnt the others that seek to only fill their own unexistance."
John of course, carefully and gracefully pissed himself.
In Faccuet City, a young Billy Batson screamed as his head exploded with noise, the gods and heros alike were all suddenly the strongest they had ever been, their powers flooded and overwhelmed his mortal form, and to save his life, the Champion of Magic forced itself into being.
Even in the Champions form the sudden influx of godly might was almost too much, steam charged with lightning billowed off him in great plooms, sparks zapped from his finger tips to the ground, and the air stunk of ozone all around him.
The gods were ranting, each talking over each other, debating in so many dead languages Billy's mind could keep up the translations.
It wasn't until Solomons voice boomed over the others that the voices fell quiet. "ENOUGH! NOW IS NOT THE TIME OF IN FIGHTING, THE BEYOND IS AT OUR DOOR..."
Taking a breath even if he didn't need it, the ancient king looked all the years he had lived and then some, "Young William...oh dear precious boy...our dear son. A great advent has begun, a door which should never been opened has been thrown wide...the beasts you face, the abominations of teeth and tentacles are just the mites that have slipped under the door...waht is to come will make all that you have faced look like mice...we will not have enough time to prepare you with what is to come..."
Solomons voice broke at the end, and he hung his head in the mental image in Billy's head "Seek out others, join forces with any. All those in touch with the arcane shall know of what just happened...as Champion you will be the spear head, the general of them all...you will lead them agaisnt the Beyond."
It took a week for Danny to come back to himself again, at least a little bit, he still had a haunted look in his eyes, and was far to quiet. He barely spoke at all, but when he did it was in ramblings of things not understood by any of them.
His parents assumed it had been a ghost that left in this state, their hatred for the ectoplasmic beings growing more and more as their son, their boy grew worse.
Jazz, unlike her parents listened to what Danny described, studied what she could and figured out what she couldn't, at each dead en she pushed, with Tuckers help she gained access to computer systems that held secrets of the occult, and with Sam's freely given credit card? Oh she dived deep into spell, trying desperately to find any kind of cure for Danny's predicament.
As time went on the boy only got worse, he had begun seeing the beings in the Beyond, some whispered wisdom, of long lost ways to calm the millions of mutterings in his gray matter and the pounding of his heart, while others screamed, in jubilation and rage, as it is only in being seen did they become real, and becoming real meant they had a foot hold in existence.
The wise figures, while helping had also steered him to their own goals, some told him to hate the jabbering hordes, others said that the only way to truly to be rid of them was to be nothing as well, to go far past being a person, into being one with the Byond.
Some of the mutterings lead to more questions, they spoke of Gods long forgotten and recent, of their betrayals and what they did to fall, others claimed that they were not fallen, that they were there to protect him from those that were.
The more and more he listened the more and more he saw of them, until Danny began to not understand what was real and what wasnt.
So he didn't even flinch when a group of imposing figures were in his room when he came up to his bed, hoping that the voices of Parathax the Unbeliever would be quiet enough for him to sleep.
Oh he did scream quite a bit when the sad trench coat man with a multi fractured sould reached out and touched him.
