The night air hung unusually heavy over the quiet weekday evening in Amity Park, still peaceful as the night time activities of the small town began and the daytime activities ended. The peace, however, ended abruptly as three rapidly fired ecto shots cut through the air. The figure they had been aimed at dodged one, phased through another, and stayed still as the third missed him completely.

He looked at his opponent as a wry look came to his glowing green eyes. "Is that all you got?" Danny Phantom shouted at the girl now facing him and glaring at him through her helmet as she crouched on her surf-board shaped hover board, shaking in rage. "I know a grandmother that can shoot better than that!" the boy let himself fall through the pavement below as yet another volley of shots came his way.

He flew a few feet underneath the ground only to shoot up barely three feet behind the red suited figure. An ectoplsmic blast from his finger took out one of the engines powering her vehicle, and caused the other one to malfunction. She yelped as the board jolted, and then started careening out of control in the direction she had been facing at the time, which also happened to send her skidding across the top of the nearest fast food restaurant, the Nasty Burger. The hover board shot out from under her, and crashed into the parking lot, while her suit snagged on one of the signs, and she hung from it, dazed.

"I hope you like extra grease!" Danny smiled triumphantly and turned away from her. She'd either get down by herself, or someone would be along soon to rescue her. He didn't need to worry about this particular problem for a while.

"Don't think this over ghost!" She screamed after him as he flew away. "I'll be back…AND I'M GONNA MAKE YOU PAY!"

"Yeah, sure," Danny shook his head and muttered to himself before letting his body drop to the ground as soon as the nasty burger disappeared from view. With a sigh, he allowed his human form to take over panting heavily as he tried to get his breath back, and dropped the triumphant, crowing attitude. "She's getting better," he gasped. "I think it's time for another training session."

And with that, he turned and walked through the growing darkness.

"Do I always dodge to the left?" Danny asked himself as he pondered his last few moves when he'd dodged blasts from several automated ectoplasmic guns on the opposite wall. Then he sighed and reactivated the program.

As the shots came at him yet again, he forced himself to move in different ways than he normally would when fighting. It took every ounce of strength he had to force himself to not use any powers as he dodged the glowing shots of energy. He dove to the side as one of the blasts hit right where he had been standing. Then he rolled forward as another gun shot at him from behind.

He jumped up on a table and ran between two of the blasters before jumping out of their paths as they shot each other with a satisfying blast. He didn't allow himself time to hesitate for a moment of triumph, but worked himself into the corner of the room, and jumped backwards as several other shots came at him.

After several more rolls and dodges, he paused in the corner again for a moment to see how many blasters remained operational. He spotted three moving out of the twelve he had activated. He'd taken out eight this time around, and that didn't count the seven he'd disabled in his previous session.

Charging out of the corner, he jumped right, directly at one of the mini ecto cannons. It charged up and prepared to release its energy shot. Danny wrenched his body to the right, and managed to dodge the streamline energy. The shot went wide and hit another of the wall mounted blasters. He stuck his hand out and grabbed he gun as he started to fall. The sudden weight on the bolts was enough to rip it from the wall.

He landed in a crouch on the floor, and ran towards the last working cannon, zigzagging his way across the room. When he got close enough to disable it he threw the one that remained in his hand in front of the blast it sent towards him, and tore the weapon from its brackets.

He slid down the wall and sat down panting heavily for the second time that night.

"All targets neutralized," said an obviously impressed voice. "Nice, I can't believe you managed to do that without using your powers once."

"Neither can I, Tuck. That was a lot harder than I expected it to be," Danny replied.

Sam stayed where she had been sitting the entire time. "Well let's see. You had to make your way through a heavily guarded room working your way around obstacles and taking out the machines that were shooting at you. How could you not expect that to be hard? Especially when you refused to use your powers."

"I didn't say I thought it would be easy," he countered. "I said it was harder than I expected."

"Yeah Sam, give him a break. Neither of us could have done it."

"Whatever," she brushed her short black hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear as she looked at the clipboard in her hand. "Next on the list is form splitting." Danny groaned. He'd been able to do so before, but he'd had a power up suit on at the time, and while it still didn't cause him as much of a problem as it once did, there were few things that could drain his energy more (in him and any clones he managed to create). On top of that, he still couldn't control it to a point where he could split himself equally every time, if at all.

"Hey Danny," Tucker winked at him, "You gonna be a two headed ghost again? Oh, and don't forget the one eye." The African-American boy slapped his knee and bent over, laughing.

Sam simply shook her head and returned her attention to her other best friend, who grimaced at the memory. It hadn't exactly been a good first try. Of course neither of them understood how much effort went in to splitting his form even that much. He'd been seriously drained most of that following week. And the whole fight with Plasmius almost immediately afterwards hadn't helped either.

Danny took a deep breath as he prepared himself for the effort. He focused his ectoplasmic energy into splitting his cells. He felt strange as the sensation overcame him...different from what he usually felt. He heard a small gasp as he suddenly lost control of the energy.

Danny opened his eyes to see the effects of his work. He knew instantly that he had failed to duplicate himself. With a sigh, he looked up and down his body to see what had happened. Once again he had managed to split himself only partially, not that he had truly expected more, but he had hoped.

"Aw man!" he whined, taking in the two arms on his right side, which complemented the three on his left. His left leg had doubled and his right had disappeared all together.

His anger seemed to intensify the longer he looked at the malformed body. "Dang it," he growled. "Why won't this work! How am I going to defeat Vlad if I can't even get control of my powers. Stupid littl-"

Danny slammed one of his five fists into the table his parents used to fix their weapons. As his hand came into contact with one of the exposed circuits on the table, electricity seemed to spark from his fist.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" he screamed as his body suddenly burst into what felt like flame. That was the last thing he remembered before he fell into unconsciousness