Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. If I did, I would make him way more badass and add hundreds of episodes.
He got caught again.
Sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with him. That he had more than the Hero Complex that his sister said he had. It wasn't normal for him to get so used to this. To becomes so… blase about it. Like it wasn't a big deal. He supposed to him that it wasn't. It happened so often that at this point he just couldn't put in the effort of being scared or terrified. He wasn't resigned to it. He was just… bored.
It was the first time it happened with his parents though. With everyone else he could brush off, treat like it wasn't a huge thing. With them though… it might matter. It might really matter this time.
Then again, he thought, glancing up at his mother as she slowly cut open his chest, it might not.
He remembered the first time it happened. How much it hurt, the sheer amount of terror and violation he felt. He couldn't close his eyes without feeling it, without seeing it all happen again. He was such a mess that first week, couldn't look anyone in the eye because it all felt too raw, too soon. He quickly got over it though. He sucked it up and tried to hide it. His friends and his sister weren't fooled, but they let it slide, not knowing how serious it was.
The second time was considerably worse than the first. Those flashbacks just kept reinforcing the terror, making it worse and worse with every moment. The third time was just as bad as the first two. It was the fourth time that he really began to break down because he realized right then, strapped to the table, that this was his life. This was his life now and he would never be able to escape it because sooner or later, he would slip up and let it happen again.
The next few times it happened, well… he rather not think about those times. Suffice to say that the pain and terror eventually got old. He learned to deal with pain, to dismiss it and all the trauma that followed. It wasn't a big deal, not anymore. It just became another part of the boring routine that was his life.
So he wasn't scared when his parents finally caught him. Wasn't scared when they strapped him down. Didn't even scream when they started the vivisection, started breaking his bones and poking at his insides while he was still watching, still conscious and aware of the pain. He just layed there, with a bored expression, waiting for his opening. Waited for when they got comfortable, when they screwed up just like everyone always did.
His father walked across the lab to get another bone saw; the first one broke on his fourth rib. His mother turned away for a brief second to consult the slide with a drop of his blood on it.
He closed his eyes, reached deep within himself, and let the excess energy run free.
His chest exploded. Well, no, it didn't really explode. More like, the explosion came directly from his chest. His mom was thrown across the room, while his dad slammed face first onto the portal doors. Scalpels, saws, papers, pens, they flew across the room, breaking into pieces all around him. He kept the energy going for a brief moment, just to make sure, before letting up. He idly freed himself from the restraints, quickly breaking his left wrist in order to get himself free. He closed his chest up with his bare hands, and grimaced when he left the bones and missing organs regrow themselves. It always felt weird whenever that happened.
The metal slab was slippery, wet from his own ectoplasm. He just knew that he would have to clean all this before his parents woke up.
He looked over his parents and winced in sympathy. Yeah, they won't be getting up too soon.
Sighing, he turned intangible and overshadowed his father first. He always hated this part, even more so than the actual vivisection. It always felt so invasive, like he was just as bad as they were when they cut him up. But it had to be done; he couldn't leave any evidence of what he truly was behind.
With expert precision, he erased his father's memories of ever capturing him and replaced it with a fake memory of him getting away and them going down into the lab to fix something. An explosion happened and that was why they ended up on the floor. Once done with his father, he went to his mother and did the exact same thing, careful to make sure that both of their memories matched up. He knew through experience that giving people contrasting memories of the same events would only make them catch on. Then he would have to do it all over again, just like last time.
Once done with his parents, he began to clean up all of his ectoplasm, making sure to destroy any samples or notes they managed to take on him, as well as the "hidden" cameras in the far corners of the lab. He left the broken pieces of the lab where they were though; he had to reinforce the fake memories somehow.
At last, he took a quick look at his handy work. All seemed to be in order. His eye got caught on a certain machine in the corner and he frowned. He wasn't sure what this machine was called. but it sure managed to catch him in a hurry. He didn't even have time to dodge; one second he was flying away, the next he was strapped down in the lab. He'd probably have to take it apart later, in order to see how it worked so he could better fight against it. Worse comes to worse, he could always destroy it and any memory of his parents creating it.
He felt a bit bad for contemplating ruining his parents work, but he knew it needed to be done. He wasn't just a protector of the living; he had to protect the dead as well. He didn't want any other ghosts experiencing what he had on a monthly basis. He wouldn't wish that on anybody, not even the fruitloop.
He felt his body finish healing himself, his organs and bones back to their original places. He briefly contemplated turning human again, before deciding against it. He wanted to make sure that his body was completely healed before transforming. He tried transforming when his stomach had been open once; it wasn't pretty and the pain almost caused his body to shut down on itself and kill him for a third time.
He stretched his arms above his head and started to yawn. He really wanted to sleep. Maybe he could sleep in his ghost form for once? He shook his head. No, that would just be asking for a stray hunter to come and kidnap him again. And he really didn't want to go through all of that, especially after already going through it with his parents.
His parents.
He honestly expected to be more torn up about it than he thought. He always dreaded the day that his parents would look at him like a specimen, a lab rat for them to experiment on. Even when he got more and more used to the vivisections various hunters would perform on him, he still had nightmares about the day that his parents would strap him down and hurt him, just like all the others. He expected this to feel… different somehow, that it would seem all the more worse because it was his parents and not a group of strangers.
He guessed, deep down, he considered his parents no more different than from the others. They were all the same to him. All apart of the routine.
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