Danny Phantom: Clockwork Apprentice.

Jail Break.

"What screws up our lives the most is the picture in our heads of how it's supposed to be."
- - -

Danny wasn't supposed to go outside. He wasn't allowed. The men in white suits told him he was dangerous, he was evil. He had to stay inside to keep everyone safe. Sometimes, not very often anymore, they ran tests on him. Those tests hurt. More often than not they kept him conscious when they did it, said he had to learn how unnatural he was. As if he didn't already know. It had been two years already.

When Danny was nine his parents had been so excited, they had made a portal into another world. A world of ghosts. But when they tried to switch on the machine it hadn't worked. Feeling dejected they left their nine year old son and his friends downstairs and moped around upstairs. Danny's friend Sam told him to go and have a look inside. Danny hadn't wanted to, it was big and creepy looking. But Sam had pressed the issue and so after pulling on a little hazmat suit he ventured inside. There had been so many wires that he managed to trip on one but he caught himself before he fell. He looked confused at the beep he heard and looked to find that in his attempt to not fall he'd pressed a button. A button that said ON. And before a sense of fear and dread could completely overtake him the machine whirled to life. Electricity buzzed through him. Every nerve in his tiny body lit with pain. He screamed. And then it all went dark. When he woke in the hospital he was diagnosed with a slightly abnormal heart beat and low temperature but was considered okay enough to leave. They expected the symptoms to get better. But they didn't. Danny's heart slowed down to dangerous levels, but he felt fine. His temperature dropped further, making him feel like ice to the touch but he didn't feel cold himself, only to others.

The machine was on, his parents were happy and thus, unaware of their son's changes. He gradually figured out how to use the strange abilities he'd developed. He could turn invisible, though not always by his own will. He could float and fly, again sometimes it happened before he wanted it to. He could shoot lasers from his hands that eventually he learnt was ectoplasm. But it hurt to do so, the energy seared his flesh. In human form anyway. Half a year after the incident and Danny figured out he had another form. A form where the 'lasers' didn't hurt him. That was about the time that ghosts figured out the portal wasn't dangerous to them. It was a way out. Danny tried to help keep them in, which resulted in his friends Sam and Tucker to find out about his powers. He begged for them to keep it quiet. He was scared his parents would hate him. And with ample cause too as they always swore ghosts were evil.

Then about a month after he turned 10, after an argument with Sam about weather he was evil for stopping his parents from seeing a ghost, which was their life dream, she told his mother what he was. Danny had never felt so betrayed and in his anger he lashed out at her, accidentally shooting a 'laser' at the wall near her head. She'd screamed and called him evil but Danny protested. He was good right? He just wanted to keep the town safe by keeping ghosts away. In his distress things around him began to float. His mother watching in shock and fury. She shot him down with a net. It burned him, he couldn't go through it. He begged her to take it off. "It hurt's." He'd cried. "Please, mum take it off."

"Don't call me that you ectoplasmic scum. You stole my son." She had growled in reply, dialing a number on her phone.

"I am your son. Mum please." Danny sobbed. It hurt, her rejecting him, it hurt more than the net stinging his skin. At that moment Tucker came downstairs, flanked by Jazz who'd only just recently found out. Maddie was on the phone and Sam was standing smugly over Danny.

"Sam, what did you do?" Tucker cried.

"I told the truth." Sam answered. "Danny's evil Tucker. Didn't you listen to anything his parents said? Ghosts are evil."

"Danny isn't evil! He's the nicest person out there, remember when Paulina pulled your hair in the sandpit and called you ugly how Danny shoved her away and said you were prettier than her? He had his powers then. He didn't use them and he defended you. Remember when Dash tried to break my glasses again? Danny tricked him into giving them back, again not using his powers. He's not evil. He's our friend. He's my friend." Tucker yelled. Jazz was too horrified to speak, the net was making ugly red burns on her brothers arms. She rushed forward to pull it off only for her mother, who was done on the phone, to keep her away.