Danny stood upon a giant stained glass platform light from below. It featured him in the center, his two forms back to back, standing confidently. His ghost half had one hand up, enveloped in a sphere of green energy. His human half had hands resting on the top of an odd looking weapon. It seemed like a large metal rod with a hand grip and guard at one end and something rather like a blade at the other. The handgrip, upon which his hand rested, was black; the rod was white; the blade at the end was a vibrant green and seemed to have been frozen in mid-motion, as if it were never still. Dangling off a chain from the black guard was a silver charm that looked like the the logo on the chest of his ghost persona. On both of Danny's faces was an amused grin, as if they were laughing at a secret joke. To the right of the human Danny were two large circles that showed his friends' faces and three slightly smaller circles that showed his parents and sister with a few other yet smaller circles showing other friends; to the left of the ghost Danny were several circles of his ghostly friends, including Wolf, Dani, and Clockwork. They were all surrounded in a big ring that seemed made of snapshots of all of Danny's memorable fights. Dan from the future was at the top left of the circle while Plasmius occupied the top right. Below the feet of both Dannys at the bottom of the circle was the swirling green vortex of the portal. The top of the ring seemed empty.
'What is this?' Danny thought to himself as he looked at the finely detailed floor. The strange weapon his human half held caught his eye again. 'Why would I be holding a weapon I've never seen before?'
Three pillars of light appeared around him and three pedestals rose from the floor. There was a sword, a wand or staff thing, and a shield on them. Danny walked up to the sword first and saw in inscription on the pedestal below the floating weapon.
The power of the warrior.
Invincible courage.
A sword of terrible destruction.
Danny walked around to the wand and saw it also held an inscription.
The power of the mystic.
Inner strength.
A staff of wonder and ruin.
He took it up in his hand out of curiosity and heard the voice again.
"Is this what you choose?"
The wand didn't feel right in Danny's hands, so he put it back and walked to the shield to see that inscription.
The power of the guardian.
Kindness to friends.
A shield to repel all.
Having a feeling that the shield wasn't right either, Danny went back to the sword and took it, again hearing the voice ask, "Is this what you choose?"
"Yes..." The sword vanished from his hands.
"What will you give up in exchange?"
Danny went promptly to the wand and took it from the pedestal.
"Is this what you choose?"
"Yes," Danny answered, more sure of himself though he still had no idea what was going on or where he was. The wand vanished like the sword had, and all the pedestals sank back into the floor. When said floor shattered beneath him, Danny tried to fly so he wouldn't fall, but found that he couldn't and that, when he landed safely on another floor that appeared beneath him, didn't need to. The design of the floor was the same as the last one had been
"The door has been opened again."
The wooden door from before appeared, opened to darkness, and vanished after a moment.
"These are the enemies you will face."
Where the door had been, on the floor was an agitated pool of darkness. A few small creatures rose from it, entirely black but with glowing yellow eyes, and large antennae. The seemed rather like bugs, Danny thought. The pool of darkness disappeared from under them, the sword from before appeared again in his hand, and the creatures attacked him.
The creatures were weak but Danny, new to the sword, had a moment's difficulty fighting them. Particularly when one sank flat to the floor and tried to ambush him, since he couldn't hit it when it did that.
The floor shattered again and Danny landed on the third platform with sword still in hand.
"Beware, for when there is light, shadows are born."
Danny watched as his shadow became much more dense than it should have, lengthened, and then rose from the floor. It was a black doppleganger. The doppleganger grew a bit and turned into the form of Dan for a moment, then it grew to monstrous size. When it started attacking him, Danny really wished he could use his ghost powers so he could fly and get at the thing's head, but he had to suffice with attacking the hands because he couldn't do anything to the feet.
Periodically the little shadows would appear and attack him, or the giant shadow would summon a sphere of energy and use that against him, but eventually Danny won the fight and the creature fell.
"The greater the light in the darkness, the greater the shadows will be."
Another pool of the viscous shadows appeared beneath Danny's feet and the sword vanished from his hand. The darkness swallowed him again and Danny's last thought before he lost consciousness was of his friends.
Little did he know that Sam and Tucker had been going through the same thing, though when the three choices appeared in the beginning, Sam chose the wand and Tucker the shield.
A bubble of darkness appeared in the lab in front of the portal. It split in half and opened to reveal Danny, Sam, and Tucker unconscious inside it. The darkness fell away from around them and melted into the floor disappearing as if it had never been there. Then they stirred.
Danny woke up first, sitting up in a daze, not really awake. That is, until he realized that he was sitting on the cold metal floor of his parents' lab. Then his eyes opened wide with full awareness and recollection.
"Sam! Tucker! Wake up!" Danny shook his best friends awake.
"What happened?" Tucker moaned, almost incoherently.
Sam, startled awake, was rapidly recalling everything that had happened.
Tucker woke up a bit more; enough to say, "Hey, Danny, why are we in your parents' lab? Weren't we in the--!" Tucker's sudden silence indicated he to remembered what had happened.
"That door, and the darkness... Just what did Vlad do?" Sam worried.
"I don't know, but it can't be good. He screamed something about power, before--"
Tucker interrupted Danny with a gasp. "Look at the portal!"
Sam and Danny both turned their attention to the portal, which had a ring of darkness on the outside edge of the green vortex. And it was expanding.
"That can't be good."
"How long were we unconscious?" Sam asked, overriding Tucker's obvious statement.
"I don't know. I was having a strange dream about some weird shadow creatures."
"Me, too! And there were three pedestals..."
"With different weapons on them?"
Danny, Tucker, then Sam had spoken, all overriding each other quickly in excitement.
"So, I took the sword."
"The shield."
"And I took the wand." There was a pause in silence. "This is weird."
"No kidding," Danny said as he glanced at the portal again. The dark ring, rather like the iris of an eye, had grown slightly since they first noticed. "I'm going to check it out."
Danny stood and walked over to the portal and stuck himself halfway through it, careful to avoid the darkness, so he could see inside the Ghost Zone. When he pulled himself back out, he reported, "The darkness is taking over the Ghost Zone."
"How can we stop it?"
Danny shook his head. "I don't know."
Jazz's scream echoed clearly from upstairs. The trio ran up from the basement and into the living room where Jazz was. A shadow creature was attacking her, and she couldn't seem to touch it. Danny zapped it with a small ecto-ray from his finger and it exploded into a little cloud, which dissipated.
"That wasn't a ghost, Danny! What's going on?" Jazz was clearly terrified.
"Plasmius opened a door in the Ghost Zone and it released a bunch of darkness that's taking over everything," Danny explained quickly. "Where are mom and dad?"
"They saw the ... shadow-things and went outside to fight them off. The ghost shield wasn't working on any of them, but..."
"That's because they aren't ghosts. But do you know what direction mom and dad went?" Danny had glanced outside through the window to see the ghost shield, which other small shadows were walking through as if it weren't even there, but no parents or GAV.
"Towards the school, I think. They were looking for you because you were gone and thought you might've been there."
"How long was I gone?"
"Several hours. It's late morning. You were gone all night."
"All night!?"
"Yeah, but you wouldn't know that if you looked outside. It's dark, almost like it's dusk, and the sun is mostly eclipsed by something."
"Oh no."
Sam and Tucker appeared equipped with assorted ghost weaponry. "Your ecto-ray worked against the shadow, so we thought we'd get some stuff to fight with," Sam grinned, pleased with herself.
Jazz took some equipment from them and said, "We have to find mom and dad! They have to be okay!"
Danny transformed to Phantom once he was through the ghost shield and zapped all the little shadows that were in the way. Then he took off to see a wider area.
"What do you see?" Jazz shouted up at him.