Warnings: Fairly mild gore. Second chapter is when it'll enter 'oh god no' territory.

Rarely did his plans go so awry that they were unsalvageable. Vlad could only think of two occasions that fit the criteria of his current disastrous circumstances, and he had come out unscathed from both despite his losses.

Worst of all, it was what little affection he nurtured for Daniel that had been his downfall. Quite literally his downfall; they'd been battling in mid-air, exchanging the occasional punch and kick at his own leisure. He'd been humoring the boy solely to see how much he had improved since their last battle, and had been quite impressed with what developments Daniel had displayed. He'd even said so, much to the boys dismay.

The telltale hiss of a weapon closing in had caught his enhanced hearing. The sight of the condensed energy barreling towards them in his peripheral vision had been enough to tell him it had the potential to be fatal, but Daniel had been oblivious, focused entirely on his archenemy. He'd had an opening to escape, and had instead moved to fling Daniel out of the way, only managing to circle a hand around the boys wrist before he was being flung violently forward, bright pink ectoplasm spewing forth from a wound that extended from his back to his chest. A wide, gory hole.

Daniel's ectoplasm-speckled face took a moment to register shock. His own was strangely pallid, but relaxed. His grip fell lax and he plummeted hard into the streets below, bouncing and rolling upon impact.

"We've got him!" Exclaimed a voice. Dazed as he was, it took him a moment to identify it as Maddie's. "Grab the Fenton Ghost Weasel, honey!"

"I'm on it!" And that could only be Jack.

Vlad emitted a low groan, rolling onto his elbows as he attempted to rise. His body was impeccably sore. Never before had he been so severely injured. He could hear Jack and Maddie's approaching footsteps and willed himself to move, to escape, but his wound was deep and debilitating and he was barely grasping onto consciousness as it was. He wasn't above requesting help, so he looked to the skies to find Daniel.

He didn't manage to catch sight of him before there was a chilly sensation reverberating through his spectral body, a loud whirr, and darkness - not the sort that came with unconsciousness, but the pitch black that came with being confined to an empty, windowless room (which wasn't an experience Vlad was unfamiliar with, sadly). He found himself withering in pain in what little space the blasted contraption — the Fenton Ghost Weasel? — provided. His wound was still steadily expelling his life-force, tender and sore and currently being assaulted by his own knee thanks to the awkward position the cubic space forced him into. He tried to make himself a little more comfortable by manoeuvring himself into a curl, but it only served to further aggravate his injury. He was pretty sure there was nothing he could do without aggravating his injury, actually.

Beyond the walls of his cage, he could hear nothing. Not a hint of sound. He was in a dark, silent place, so disconnected from the world he might as well have been in a different dimension entirely. His body was becoming progressively weaker, and he knew exactly what would happen if he turned human in this device. With fear and panic finally overwhelming his initial bewilderment, he focused what little energy he had left on remaining ghost. It didn't matter if it hindered his healing so long as he remained alive enough to heal in the future.

The rocking of the Fenton Ghost Weasel came to a sudden stop. Vlad feared he had been set on a shelf somewhere in the recesses of the Fenton lab to be confined until Daniel either took pity on him or realized his well-being was in jeopardy, but what happened was far worse: he was released. The earlier chill enveloped him from head to toe and suddenly he was sprawled out on the floor of the Fenton laboratory, a bleeding, shivering mess at the feet of his old college friends. Were he capable of sweating, he was sure he would have been excreting buckets with how much effort it was taking not to give into the urge to whimper in distress.

The hands of his former friends, now captors were upon him before he could even conceive of the idea of escape. A hand fisted in his suit, a needle slid into his neck. He feared for a moment that he had been given an aesthetic to keep him pliant, but he didn't descend into unconsciousness. His limbs instead began to feel heavy, as if they were full of lead. What little space he had managed to put between himself and the dark blue tiles of the laboratory was suddenly filled by his torso. He tried to pull his arms beneath himself to move away from the gripping hands, but found himself unable to conjure up the energy to do so; whatever he had been injected with must have had sedative properties. And specifically spectral-binding, as he couldn't seem to access his abilities either. He sought the familiar feeling of ectoplasmic energy rushing to his fingertips and found only an absence.

Above him, Jack was excitedly bouncing on his heels. "It works, Mads! He's down and out!"

"Of course he is, sweetie; it was your design," Maddie said with an indulgent smile. "Let's get him onto the operating table."

Onto the operating table…? Realization dawned on Vlad, violently twisting his insides - which were soon to be sorted into separate jars if he didn't manage some means of escape.

"A'ight, Mads." Jack heaved him into his arms with ease, carrying him bridal style. It would have been embarrassing were he not so alarmed by their intentions.

"You're moving a little fast, don't you think?" he began, voice low and scratchy, and would have been distinctly human if not for the slightest echoing quality brought on by exhaustion. "You haven't even questioned me yet."

"Oh, we'll question you," Maddie said with a pleased nod. She approached the operating table, Jack following her lead. "And you're going to be very forthcoming if you want to keep any of your molecules intact."

"That's right, ghost! We have you exactly where we want you!" Jack chimed in. It was with his usual lack of grace that he disposed Vlad on a long, thin gurney situated in the middle of the room. He hit it with a resounding thump and groaned aloud at the pain it sent straight to his tender back and side. There was pink on Jack's suit where he had been cradling Vlad. Thick, sticky, and seeming to glow. For the most part his wound had healed, but the buckets of lost ectoplasm remained clinging to his body and suit, still slick and wet, as fresh as it had been when spilt. Unlike human blood, ectoplasm didn't congeal.

Maddie stepped in to help bind his ankles while Jack cuffed his wrists. Due to the sedative, he wasn't able to resist no matter how much he might have wanted to. "I'll be happy to answer any questions you have, my dear. There'll be no need for an interrogation." He was weak and scared and in pain, and yet he managed a charming, toothy smile, so wide that his molars were visible. "I'm at your disposal."

"How kind of you to offer what we would have been able to acquire anyway," Maddie said dryly. Her grip on his left ankle was uncomfortably tight. "We I don't take charity from ghosts."

"I'm saying I'll be cooperative, provided my well-being is ensured," Vlad tried.

"But you're a ghost! You don't hurt like we do," Jack pointed out. He finished securing Vlad's wrists to the gurney and stepped away to retrieve a portable table from the wall.

"And you would know that, how, exactly? I'm the first of my kind you've ever managed to capture." Maddie looked particularly unamused at his words.

"We've had encounters," she refuted.

At that, Vlad snorted; most of their 'encounters' had been arranged by yours truly. They had a ghost portal that expelled ghosts daily, and yet it was primarily Daniel who fought them and Daniel who learned anything about them. That was easily explained by the presence of Jack, however; the man was known to inadvertently release dozens of ghosts into the human world while demonstrating improvements made to the ghost portal, something Vlad had been privy to due to how quickly the information had circulated. He hampered his wife with his foolishness.

None of the ghosts had ever tried to escape through his own portal. It would have been incredibly perilous to do.

Maddie had moved to a control panel and Vlad could hear her clicking away at buttons. The room was encased in an eerie green glow that became progressively stronger with each 'click'. A shield, but it wasn't dome shaped. It covered the walls and floor and ceiling like paint, thick and shimmering. Further examination revealed a metal slab - much like the one closing off the ghost portal - barricading the entrance to the laboratory. It didn't look like he'd be able to get far even if he did manage to escape his bindings.

Jack's approach was accompanied by the metallic jingle of medical equipment on a table. Vlad turned to him, pupiless eyes wide. "Jack," he said with what he hoped was some degree of affection. "You can't have not noticed how I've been afflicted by my injury."

Jack came to a stop beside him and his eyebrows pulled together. "How do you know my name?"

"Picked it up at the reunion," Vlad offered quickly. The volume of his voice was increased by the sight of scalpels and knives sitting on the approaching table. "You wouldn't really dissect an intelligent being, would you? And one capable of feeling pain, no less. It would just be inhumane—"

"Oh please," he heard Maddie interrupt from the control panel. "We know that was all an act. You're a ghost, ectoplasmic energy - you can't feel anything."

Jack was lifting scissors off the table. "But you have no evidence of this! You only have your assumptions!" Vlad protested, and while he didn't need to breathe, he could feel his breaths accelerating. Maddie seemed to notice his chest heaving as she paused in the middle of fiddling with a monitor.

"Are you seeing this, Jack?" Instead of acknowledging it as a response to fear, she sounded delighted. "This is an unseen phenomenon in any other ghost we've encountered!

"What is?" Jack asked, frowning down at Vlad.

Maddie bounded over to his side, prodding Vlad hard between the collarbones. "His chest, look at it."

"Oooh!"

Vlad almost couldn't believe how dismissive they were being to his distress. "Cease ogling me!" he demanded in a screech. "I'm an intelligent, living being! I don't deserve this!"

"That's debatable," Maddie scowled, clearly referring to their previous encounters.

The tip of the scissors was icy cold against his skin as it cut through his outfit, from neck to navel. Jack's beefy fingers peeled it apart to unveil pectorals stuttering in their ascent while Vlad was struggling to contain his involuntary human responses to fear. He held onto the breath, holding air in lungs that didn't need it, and then slowly breathed out.

"Madeline, please, please don't do this," he began imploringly, hoping to appeal to Maddie's humane side. "Not even a being with as dubious a past as myself deserves to be cut open while conscious."

Maddie's expression tensed, but Jack gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze. "It's just a ghost, baby. Don't let it get to you."

"You're right, Jack," she sighed, smiling and tilting her head up to press her lips to Jack's jaw.

Their display of affection was interrupted by a distant thudding coming from the walls (and Vlad, despite the circumstances, was somewhat grateful for this). All three of them turned their heads towards the source of the sound, before Jack shrugged and resumed the task of peeling the suit away from Vlad's navel. "Must be the pipes," he said.

Whatever it was, Vlad didn't particularly care. He was distracted by the serum beginning to wane. A little stronger now, he tried his bindings, weakly pulling and twisting to no avail; he hadn't expected to be able to budge them with how little strength he had, but it was still frustrating to fail.

A damp cloth was applied to his wound. Jack began gathering the ectoplasm in clumps, cleaning the skin as best he could, and he wasn't exactly gentle about it. Vlad attempted to twist away from those mammoth fingers, sending a spluttering hiss at Jack when he failed to move the necessary distance. He tried again to reach for his ability to turn intangible and felt only an absence. The mere attempt to access his powers dizzied him to the point of having to close his eyes against the now rapidly spinning room.

When he opened them, Maddie was sticking needles surrounded by sticky pads to his chest. The slight pain provoked a growl, and for the first time in his life he attempted to evade Maddie's touch. "Don't touch me, woman!" He didn't quite manage to thrash, limbs sporadically twitching. Maddie ignored him and set an elbow down on his chest to still him while she applied a needle to his side. None would be in the way of where the main incision was to be.

"Need a hand there?" Jack asked, but he didn't receive an answer as they were once again interrupted by thumping emanating from the wall. Maddie gave a small, irate noise and stuck the next needle in particularly hard, causing Vlad to yelp in dismay.

"When we're done here, could you call the plumber?"

"Of course."

He was somewhat shocked by how callousness. In college they had never exhibited this sort of behavior. He'd never known them capable of being so cold towards another living - in a manner of speaking - being, even if said being was a ghost. It served to reinforce his decades long decision to never let them know he was half ghost, least Maddie reject him for it. It had been Maddie who had unknowingly dictated his decisions after the accident, and it was Maddie who dictated his decisions now; he wouldn't resort to turning back into Vlad Master's until he was absolutely certain, without a doubt, that he wouldn't be able to talk his way out of a vivisection.

The thumping continued, moving from each wall of the room, and the dismissal of it was mutual. "You're aware you're not certified to perform a surgical procedure on a sentient being? Who - I repeat - is very capable of feeling pain." It was a long shot, but he had to keep them talking if he wanted to get out of this with all his organs intact.

Another needle was stuck in his side, between his ninth and tenth rib. "Now you're just getting desperate," Maddie sneered. It was an ugly look, and not one Vlad hadn't been delivered before. He glanced down to the toes of his shoes to see what Jack was up to. Positioning some machines closer to the gurney, thankfully nowhere near the table of scalpels and other painful-looking surgical equipment. He picked up four thin purple wires and attached each one to the needles of the sticky pads by a clip.

"You don't have any right to do this to me. I'm clearly thinking, and that should be reason enough not to… what is it you two say?"

"Tear you apart molecule by molecule?" Jack provided.

"Y-yes, that." His body seemed to have forgotten the pain in his side in favor of slamming him with fear. "I don't recommend doing that to someone who can feel every sensation."

"Something," Maddie corrected. Clearly she wasn't being persuaded by his argument.

"I'm not a thing," he protested, growing angry. "I'm a thinking, feeling, humanoid being about to undergo a procedure most wouldn't perform on a damned monkey! And do you know why?" His lips pulled back in a snarl. "Because it's barbaric to subject a living creature to pointless pain! I'm sure most wouldn't even do this to a dog!"

There was, to his delight, another tense pause. And then it came crashing down, "I would take that into consideration were you not clearly trying to deceive us," Maddie began. "You don't have the nerve endings necessary to feel, you can barely think - I know ghosts are narrowed to a singular purpose, and yours seems to be harassing our family! Twice you've assaulted us, twice you've tried to kill my husband!" She leaned down, unpleasantly close. "Complain all you want, ectoplamic scum! You aren't going to get out of this."

Vlad was beginning to believe her. "I don't think that quite justifies this, but if it helps, I'm terribly sorry for my past escapades."

"No you aren't," was Maddie's rather predictable reply. Well, she wasn't wrong.

A lamp was pulled into view. He squinted against it, twisting his head to the side to avoid retinal burn. With his cheek pressed to the cool metal of the gurney, he could see Jack examining the screens of the equipment with pursed lips and drawn eyebrows. It was more concentration he'd seen on the man in all the years he'd known him.

He seemed to notice Vlad's staring and turned to him, a sausage-like finger tapping an equally as proportionally impossible chin. "You're becoming more of an anomaly by the second." He gestured Maddie over. "Come and look at these results, Maddie. His temperature, weight, ectoplasmic construction — it's nothing we've encountered before in our studies!"

Vlad was given the distinct impression this only made Jack want to pick him apart even more. He suspected Maddie would feel much the same way. "That would be because I don't function as any other ghost you've encountered." On the other hand, this could be an opportunity to coerce them into letting him go. He had faith in his manipulative prowess. "I can fall in love, too. It's a riveting experience, trust me." His eyebrows danced up, and that was probably why he had a scalpel embedded deep into his side wound a moment later. Immediately he cried out, withering and arching off the table, trying to force the scalpel to dislodge. But with Jack's help, Maddie cut away a significant portion of muscle and slid it into a vial.

"Oh, God, oh, hmmmfff." He blinked his eyes rapidly and bit his lip. "S-surely t-that wasn't necessary."

She didn't appear to be listening to him, moving around the gurney with the vial in hand to read the results on the monitor. Behind her goggles, her eyes were narrowed in concentration. It took several long minutes for her to finally offer her assessment, "These are incredible readings. I never would have imagined a ghost capable of having this unique an ectoplasmic structure."

Jack bent down next to her, difficult though that was for him with his broad shoulders. "He's really weird, like that ghost kid." He eyed Vlad briefly, contemplative. "He deviates from the norm too."

Vlad's voice was tremulous when he replied, "A lot about me deviates from what is considered 'normal' for ghosts." He looked down at his wound, now leaking fresh ectoplasm. The hot, stabbing pain had receded, replaced by a radiating throbbing that was only minutely less agonizing.

"I'm sure we'll confirm that when we get a better look at your internal structure," Maddie said with obvious distain.

"There's equipment that can provide you with images without the unnecessary gore." Again, he was ignored. "Talk to me, Madeline! I'm trying to be cooperative! I'm— I—" He was scared. He'd maintained his composure until now, but he was so scared. As a man who had never allowed anyone to get the upper hand against him, he felt incredibly vulnerable and exposed. "I don't want to die!" The surprise on his own face was almost as prominent as it was on Maddie's and Jack's. That…hadn't been a premeditated outburst. Perhaps the serum flooding his veins was making him more susceptible to his stress?

"It thinks it can die," Jack murmured in an almost conspiratorial manner.

"Just ignore it, Jack," Maddie replied gently. "It's putting on a show." She parted from her husband to circle back around to Vlad's left side. "You have the camera on him, right?"

"Er—" Jack pulled the cap off a camera suspended above the table. "Now I do. Sorry, honey."

Vlad growled in frustration at their inane exchange. "I'm not putting on a shooooh. Oh, gosh." The love of his life was wielding the scalpel. The very sharp, ectoplasm-stained scalpel. Without another word, she lowered it to his chest and made a deep incision just below his collarbones, dragging the blade down to his navel, slicing through skin and muscle as if it were butter. It nicked organs on its way down.

For a moment, Vlad was stunned into silence.

And then he screamed.