"Danny's where?!"

Jazz pauses while tearing apart her brother's room to move her phone away from her ear.

"In the lab, right now. I think our parents caught him, somehow." She checks under his bed. "They said something about a bullet, or removing one, or... something, so we might have some time."

"And you're sure it's Danny?"

"Yes," Jazz stresses. "I went down there to try to get him out, but I didn't have enough time to break him free before mom and dad came back, plus, I don't imagine you know how to remove a bullet. The wound I saw, albeit very briefly, definitely looked like a gunshot wound." She rips the covers off of his bed and rifles through his dresser drawers.

"How did he even get shot? He's a ghost, he can go intangible."

"I don't know Sam, I don't know any of the details." Jazz pulls Danny's backpack out of his closet and dumps it onto the floor, the thermos along with various other ghost hunting tools hitting the floor with loud clangs. She kneels next to the pile. "I heard my parents talking about a hugely strong ghost and something about a bullet, went down to check things out when they were getting stuff from the van, tried to get him out, failed, and then immediately called you. I haven't even contacted Tucker yet."

"Okay, okay… sorry. I'm kind of freaking out here."

Jazz sighs, picking up a thermos. She shakes it experimentally. "I know, I'm being pretty short with you too. Just come on over and come right up to Danny's room, I think I have an idea, but I'll need the both of you for it. Should I still call Tucker?"

"No, I got it, just get everything ready for whatever you're doing over there. We'll be over in minutes, I'm already in the car anyways."

"Door's unlocked."

"Got it, see ya. And Jazz? We got this."

Jazz smiles into the phone. "I know." She says. "We have to."

She hangs up her phone and tosses the thermos and some other items onto Danny's bed. She looks at the wall beside his closet, knowing that's where he stashes most of his more… incriminating equipment. She considers breaking through it to retrieve some, as this is probably an emergency that warrants it, but holds herself back until Sam and Tucker get here.

She checks the time, it's only been around two minutes since she'd left him, and their parents were carrying some… pretty intimidating stuff when they were heading downstairs. She was thankful that she was quick enough for them to not suspect anything.

She kneels on the hardwood floor beside Danny's bed, taking a long, deep breath to steady her frantically beating heart.

"Please little brother, you have to be okay." She whispers to the empty room.

TTTTTTTTTT

-click-

Danny wrenches his arm out of Jack's grip, breaking out of the right cuff in the same motion. Jack, surprised at Phantom's remaining strength, reaches out to grab at the boy.

Danny, seeing this, grasps the cuff still attached to his left wrist and swings it at his father. When he feels it connect harshly with the bones in his dad's hand he feels a twinge of guilt and hurt pierce his core, his obsession to protect fighting against his human fears. He pushes it down.

Jack shouts and clutches his hand, momentarily distracted by the pain, giving Danny a chance to sprint around him and to the stairwell.

"Jack!" Maddie calls out, and rather than chasing after her prey, she instead fumbles around with the equipment on her desk, not that this goes noticed by the fleeing ghost boy.

The combination of how much ectoplasm he's lost, the ectoranium, and the series of sudden movements cause Danny's body to topple to one side, and his injured arm grazes against the right wall of the stairwell before he can even ascend.

"Mads, go after him! I'll start the house!" Jack runs over to the control panel by the portal, entering in codes and slamming on buttons.

"Oh, sweetie, no need." Maddie says, in a much too calm manner. She raises a small, green remote into the air and smiles.

"You know as Fentons, we have contingencies." She shakes her head as she presses the only button on the remote.

Meanwhile, Danny- currently reaching towards the door of the basement, collapses on the stairs with a shout, electricity coursing up his arm and straight through his core- along with the rest of his body. While not as strong as… some of the shocks he's received in the past, it's definitely enough to floor him, and the reaction with the bullet causes it to seer white-hot pain back into his shoulder.

Maddie keeps a hold on the button as she picks up a line of cable and stalks up the stairs, pausing to watch Danny struggle to stand while still being electrocuted, supporting himself on the wall of the stairwell.

"We did tell you it would be easier on you if you cooperated." She releases the button.

Danny staggers around to sit on the stairs, looking Maddie dead in the eyes and taking deep breaths. He's lost this one, he realizes. How could he forget about the stupid shock?

"I-" he stutters. "anyone would run once they realize they're being… being experimented on." he slurs.

Maddie sighs and approaches again, Danny doing his best to flinch away. She stops and withdraws her hands. "We aren't going to experiment on you because that would likely literally destroy you. You think we'd destroy our most valuable specimen yet within mere minutes of capturing it?" She shakes her head and pulls Danny up by the collar of his jumpsuit. "We're actually attempting to preserve your existence. The metal needs to be removed for proper testing of your natural state." She easily pulls him carelessly down the stairs, almost lifting him clear off of the ground (not that it was a super impressive feat, he was what, like 35 pounds as Phantom?). Jack waits for her at the bottom, glaring at Danny and clutching his hand.

Instead of looking him in the eyes he chooses to look at the ground as Maddie pulls him along. He has a really strong urge to apologize right now, getting a giant chunk of metal thrown at you hurts way more than you'd expect, and he's a human-

Jack looks at Maddie. "Let's get it down on the table."

"Right." She pulls him over to the dissection table, Danny trying to walk rather than be dragged, and pointedly avoiding looking at the tools- or anything really besides his stained boots.

"Get on the other side, and only remove the cuff when we have it's left hand locked in."

Danny willingly sits on the table, still trembling but ultimately deciding it's the best (and pretty much only) choice at the moment. He takes a cursory glance towards the stairs, praying that any second Jazz, Tucker, and Sam will emerge from upstairs and whisk him away to safety.

They wouldn't just leave him here, right?

Look at him, the so-called hero begging to be saved.

Maddie keeps a hold on his suit and pushes him down to lie on the table. The cool metal soothes his aching muscles, but doesn't make him feel any better about the situation.

"How many restraints?" Jack asks, and Maddie takes a moment to look their patient in the eyes. Danny avert a his gaze.

"All of them. And then cables around his hands and head."

He looks back up at Maddie with surprise on his face.

"Is that-um" Danny's voice cracks, and he laughs. "Is that… I really don't think that's necessary, right?"

Maddie furrows her brow, handing the waist strap over to Jack. He threads it through the other end of the table. "Perhaps not, but we also thought the handcuffs were unnecessary, which we were apparently wrong on." Jack pulls and tightens the strap a needless amount. Danny throws a scowl in his direction. He doesn't acknowledge it.

TTTTTTTTTT

Jazz stands on the steps of FentonWorks, tapping her foot impatiently against the concrete. She glances down the road every few seconds, keeping her eyes peeled for Sam's black sedan. She'd only called them minutes ago, so she doubts they'd be here this soon, but she couldn't stay in that house while her brother was likely being operated on. Without anesthetic. Or any type of painkillers or basic dignity.

She sits, stands, paces, checks the time and her messages constantly, heart skipping a beat any time she hears an engine around the corner or down the street. Still too soon.

She had to calm down. Panicking when she needs to stay strong for Danny wouldn't do anyone any good. He'd probably laugh at her right now, for worrying so much.

(If she knew he was currently pleading for her to save him, she'd lose it.)

Her phone rings, causing her to jump and whisper a rare curse. She checks the caller ID, and then answers.

"Hey Sam. Where are you?"

"We're jogging up the block, I parked my car a ways down just in case, is Danny okay?"

"I'm not sure." She walks down the steps, looking down the sidewalks. "I haven't heard anything from the basement yet, but it's pretty close to soundproof. I wish I could see what was going on."

Sam rounds the corner and hangs up the phone, running up to Jazz.

"We might have a solution to that." she breathes, looking behind her. "C'mon technogeek, let's go."

Tucker appears a few seconds later, breathing heavily. He leans on his knees. "The... Ops Center computer," he hoists up his heavy backpack further. "It's wirelessly connected to the security system… right?"

"I… don't know. I think so." She turns around and walks back to the porch.

"Either way, if it's connected to the same network I should be able to get in, it'll just take more time than just accessing it through the software. How long as he been down there with them?"

Jazz climbs the stairs, opening the front door and dropping her voice to a whisper. "Only about 5, 10 minutes tops, time is getting weird with all of the adrenaline. I'm surprised- relieved too, that you got here so fast."

Sam and Tucker follow her inside. All three take a glance towards the kitchen before heading to the second floor.

"Yeah well, Sam has a lead foot already, and when she heard that Danny was in trouble… were lucky we didn't pass any cops, let's just leave it at that."

Sam ignores the jab directed at her, bigger things on her mind. "I was also already out, I was going to pick up dinner. After getting your call I picked up Tucker and got here as fast as I could."

The three of them take the manual way up to the ops center, unwilling to take the risk of some notification going off downstairs from the elevator activating.

Once they're up, Tucker drops his bag on the ground next to the computer systems. He sits in the chair and starts entering in various FentonWorks passwords. Sam begins to dump out all of the ghost equipment they brought from her backpack.

"I don't have any of my stuff, but you and Tuck have all the same gear. Danny has some stashed in his room, too."

"Yeah, I already looked through his stuff. I found a thermos that's got something in it, which should be useful-"

"Alright!" Tucker exclaims. "Looks like they haven't changed the codes for this setup in like, months. I had to use an old one, but I'm in.

Jazz walks over to the monitors. "So you can get onto the cameras?"

"Yeah, not only do they have the software installed, but they have it wirelessly accessible up here, too. I was hoping that would be the case." He clicks open a security application and enters in another password. "I added an invisible admin account on this software a while ago so we can see what's going on and delete incriminating footage. Looks like they haven't found it yet." The application allows him in, and a number of security feeds display on the screen simultaneously, they can even see themselves sitting up in the ops center.

"So you know that they're recording everything?" Sam asks. Tucker selects and enlarges the one that shows the best angle of the lab. "Doesn't it show-"

As soon as the feed loads, a loud, pained shout is heard from the computer, causing everyone to jump. They watch the screen intently, tension thick in the air.

They hear rather than see a feminine voice. "We did tell you it would be easier on you if you cooperated." The only person they see is Jack looking up the stairwell, which is out of view from the camera.

"Danny!" Sam cries. "C'mon, we have to go help him!" She begins to run over to the elevator.

"Wait!" Jazz grabs her arm before she slips out of reach. "Just… wait." She looks back towards the screen, where fragments of a quiet sentence come through. "Anyone… being… experimented on."

A sigh. "We aren't going to experiment on you because that would likely literally destroy you. You think we'd destroy our most valuable specimen yet within mere minutes of capturing it? We're actually attempting to preserve your existence. The metal needs to be removed for proper testing of your natural state."

"Tch." Sam chuffs. "They just want him alive longer so they can torture him in the name of science."

Jazz nods, agreeing for the sake of ease. "Well, whatever their intentions are, it would probably be worth it to let them operate for now. I don't know what's going on with him, but the fact that he didn't just walk out of the containment cube in human form must mean something." Jazz contemplates. "So, this is either part of a plan, or…"

"Or he can't change back." Sam mentions,

"Or he doesn't want to risk revealing himself." Tucker finishes. "I mean, look at all these cameras." He gestures at the screen. "It'd be a race to get rid of the footage before your parents freak out and check themselves."

The room goes quiet, and they watch Danny quietly.

"So," Sam breaks the silence. "You said you had a plan on how to get him out?"

Jazz's face sets into a determined expression, and she nods.

TTTTTTTTTTT

Various straps tighten around Danny's knees, ankles, thighs, arms, and chest, rendering him completely immobile aside from his eyes and head. He chokes out another laugh.

"You know, I'd usually make a joke here, but considering who you two are, it'd probably be weird."

Jack coughs in a lame attempt to disguise his chuckle, and Maddie sends him a disapproving look before stretching the additional cables over his ankles.

"Humor is a common way that humans cope with trauma. I have to say, you're very good at imitating our behavior."

Danny raises a shaky eyebrow. "So what I'm hearing is that you think I'm funny."

"No," She says, "I think you've got this entire town fooled with your extremely thorough charade, especially the younger ones." She swaps the cable in her hands out for another padded strap, laying it across Danny's forehead. "Likely due to your choice of appearance."

"So you think that it's my appearance and not the fact that I fight off other ghosts daily at risk to my own existence?" He's unable to move his head, but his eyebrows still knit together. "You're definitely reaching there, aren't you?"

"It's similar to other ghosts." She rests her hands on the side of the table. "They all have facades, masks, fake skins of some sort, to trick humans. They appear to be something appealing or non-threatening to lure them in. In fact, I can think of a few more powerful ghosts that have that as their exact obsession, including you."

Danny narrows his eyes, becoming more irritated than fearful, despite his current circumstances. "And how did you figure out these obsessions? Did you ask them, or did you just assume?"

"Ghosts will lie. They don't want to tell you their obsessions, how they died, anything of that nature. They'll fabricate stories, intricate ones, and-"

"Well wouldn't you do the same? It's their death!" He struggles against the restraints, his head turning slightly towards his mother. "You want me to tell you how I died? I was electrocuted, basically by a lightning strike. You want to know what I was thinking? 'Thank the gods that it's me and not anyone I care about.' I was a normal kid before I died, completely normal! That doesn't change just because- because my body's made of ectoplasm."

Maddie scowls down at Danny, a deep frown set into her face.

She looks up at Jack, who nods and walks out of Danny's limited sight.

"And tell me, Phantom, why am I to believe you?" She asks. "For all I know, you could have been formed entirely in the mists of the Ghost Zone, and lived for hundreds or thousands of years before this."

Danny pulls on his restraints once again. "You should believe me because I… I'm-" He hesitates that thought. "I'm not…" He trails off, doing his best to look away from his mother.

Maddie studies his expression for a moment before nodding when his father returns. "Right. Jack, here."

She holds out her hand, and Jack lays a final, smaller strap into it. She smooths it out and situates the fastener.

"I'm tired of this." She says. "I don't neelil d to argue with a ghost. We'll have plenty of time to question you later."

Despite Danny's struggling, she snugly sets the last strap into Danny's mouth as he blinks away the tears slowly clouding his vision.

Once it's finally fastened around his head, she takes a deep breath.

"Get our masks." she says. "This should be quick, and we can take some ectoplasm samples while we're here."

"Do we want to take samples of the core, too?" Jack asks, and Danny stiffens. His core?

"No, we can get those later, once it restabalizes some. I don't want to risk destroying it."

Maddie picks up a pair of tweezers and the surgical scissors, heading towards his shoulder. Danny tenses. "Dear, would you turn on the operating camera? I want to be sure to get this as footage."

"Already done!"

"Wonderful! Then let's get started."

Maddie slowly begins to snip away at only his jumpsuit, to Danny's relief. He holds his breath as the square around his wound is peeled off and gingerly handed to Jack, who stores it in a small vial of fluid. He disappears from Danny's field of view.

Maddie gently pulls at the skin around Danny's wound, looking at it closely. "It's not particularly deep, it had a rather clean entry but… Jack, come look at this!"

Danny bites down on his gag, the uncomfortable pulling and prodding grating on his nerves, literally and figuratively. Jack hovers over him again.

"It's much more solid than other ghosts, and even… the imitation of flesh, and bone, and the way it's ectoplasm flows…"

Danny shivers, the pain isn't unbearable, more like a dull ache. To a doctor, he'd probably call it a three on that little face scale they give you. No, he's more concerned about the observations they're making at this point. He knows his body is strange, he knows it differs from the norm. He has organs, muscle, sinew, tendons- and he didn't have a doubt that Maddie would notice, but he wasn't prepared for it to happen this quick. He pulls against the restrains as much as he can, shifting his arm to obstruct her observations.

Maddie huffs in frustration. "Could you calm him down, dear?"

"No problem, baby." Jack pulls out a syringe- apparently this table couldn't self-administer- he goes to inject it into his shoulder, but pauses at Maddie's request.

"Jack…" she says, hesitantly. "Try to find a vein. If it's anatomy is somewhat accurate, it might have a stronger effect."

Jack nods and moves down to Danny's forearm, prodding at the skin to find what might be a vein. He feels the sharp pinch of the needle, but nothing else.

"Skin feels much more taught than a normal ghost's, it does seem like it has muscle definition beyond an outward imitation." Maddie mentions. "We can run elasticity tests in the future."

As he listens to his mother drone on about his various abnormalities, he feels his body slowly become heavier, whatever he was dosed with taking a quick effect. Luckily, it seemed to decrease the amount of pain he felt in his arm as well.

The rest of the procedure felt like a blur, he could occasionally pick out bits and pieces of sentences, mostly ones continuing to describe his anatomy, but nothing he could make much sense from. He could tell that there was a pulling sensation in his shoulder, and then another pinch in his arm. The words 'sample' and 'strain' were used quite often, and the lights above him looked rater pretty for a long while.

And then they dimmed, which he was sad about, and then he saw his mom staring into his eyes again.

"It's taken… eyes… focus… thermos…"

Danny tried desperately to string the words into some sort of coherent thought, but before he could even put them in the correct order, all he could see was white.

Maddie sets the thermos down on a clean table and sighs. She looks at Jack.

"Alright, now empty it back into the containment cube and make sure everything's on maximum strength. Phantom will likely retain consciousness shortly after going into the field, but even with it's powers it won't be strong enough to break out." She wipes her gloves with a rag, noticing Jack wincing as he does the same. "And sweetie, I can take a look at your hand once I disinfect my own, and then I'll make you some fudge, how does that sound?"

Jack's eyes brighten at the mention of sweets and nods enthusiastically. "If there's anything besides ghosts that can heal, its fudge." He picks up the thermos and jiggles it in his good hand. "We probably do want to keep Phantom in a containment field so hecan heal too, huh?"

Maddie goes about cleaning the examination table of ectoplasm. "Mmm. At least for a few hours or so. We can put it in a thermos before we head to bed, just in case."

Jack heads over to the containment unit. "In theory, Phantom could break out of a regular thermos. I don't think their small-frame vaporizers could handle his struggling at full strength." He empties Danny into the containment field once again, adjusting the settings for maximum power output. "I'll get to work on making a larger one, though I'll have to take some readings at some point."

"That's fine dear, I don't believe that-"

Suddenly, Maddie is interrupted by a blaring alarm. They both cover their ears in a feeble attempt to protect their eardrums, but the alarm wasn't exactly made to be subtle.

"Jack! The ghost alarm, it's-"

Jack runs away from the containment shield to approach Maddie. "I know! But this is the manual activation, who could have-"

A bone-chilling scream is heard from upstairs, and like a switch, Maddie and Jack immediately run up to the source, guns ready to fire.

"Mom, Dad!" Another scream. It's Jazz-

They burst through the basement door, Maddie on point, to see an unconscious Jazz being carried by a ghost. A particularly merciless one, as well.

"The Wisconsin Ghost…" Maddie mumbles, and then points her blaster at him. "What do you want with our daughter, you ecto-scum!? Give her back, before we render you to a lifeless puddle!"

Plasmius shifts, holding Jazz under his arm like a small child. She really did look small, comparatively.

"Oh, big, scary words. My apologies." He smiles, his fangs glistening green against his glowing aura. "Just wanted to get some revenge on the ghost hunters that make my existence more frustrating by the day. Is that too much to ask?"

The Fentons both grip their guns even tighter, preparing to open fire, but Vlad quickly grabs Jazz by the back of the shirt and holds her in front of him.

They still, and he smiles even wider.

"I thought your little weapons don't harm humans? Perhaps I was mistaken."

Jazz and Vlad vanish from sight, although the ghostly echo of his voice still remains. He continues to talk.

"A moment's hesitation can be detrimental to a hunter, I thought you knew that?" Vlad's voice slowly grows further away, his escape imminent. "Now, I have some work to do, now that my own subject is prepared. Thank you for the kind donation, Fentons."

Maddie's face contorts in anger, and her head swings towards her husband."Jack, get to the GAV! It's tracker will be able to follow it."

Jack nods, running with Maddie through the back door and towards the assault vehicle. His voice lowers a few octaves to a strange tone for the usually loveable Jack Fenton.

"We'll make that ghost pay. Forget ripping it apart. We're getting our baby back, no matter the cost."