Jazmine sat up in bed with a start. Sweat trickled down her body, and her heart was pounding. She looked around her darkened bedroom. Nothing moved about within in her sight, and the only sound she could hear was her own frightened breathing. Giving herself some time to calm down, she then got out of bed and walked to the window, looking out on the night.

The lights of central Amity Park sparkled in the distance. She looked up into the sky, which glittered with the light of thousands of stars, shimmering like diamonds in the absence of the moon. She knelt down before the window, staring up into the star-strewn sky. She held her hands together in silent prayer. Wherever her little brother was, she sincerely hoped beyond any other hope that he was all right.

A soft white light crept under Danny's eyelids. He felt a dull ache in the side of his head. As his awareness of the outside world gradually returned to him, he noticed that he was laying on his stomach, but not face-down on the ground. His arms lay at his sides. He concentrated his energy toward moving them, getting his hands underneath him, in order to raise his chest up off the ground. Slowly he managed to bring himself into a position where he could do so, but when he went to push himself upwards, he felt an unusual weight in his neck, which seemed to keep his head down where it lay. He pulled himself back, and his chin dragged the ground, until he found a muscle in the back of his neck that allowed him to make his neck arch, bringing his head up, then holding it up over his body, where he was used to it being. With that out of the way, he was able to get up on his knees, leaning backward on his heels. However, his legs felt different from their usual structure; his ankles were too long for him to lean back on his heels, so he brought one leg under him, leaning his weight on ohe foot, then bringing the other leg up under him so that he could stand up. His back arched, so he stood upright, then suddenly felt a hard tug on his spine, pulling him backwards and down. Unable to remain standing upright under the heavy pulling, he lost balance and fell over backwards, landing with a loud, resounding thud. Something ended up being crushed underneath him. He sat up, which took less effort than trying to get up on his knees, and felt around behind him; his hands met what felt like a pair of extra limbs that seemed to have sprouted right out of his shoulder blades, limbs that bore a broad, thick skin membrane that extended from beneath his shoulder blade to the very end of the limb. Wings. He felt something else beneath him as he sat up, and he reached down behind him, only to find a long tail that curved outward from the base of his spine and lay out on the ground like a large, bony snake.

He blinked his eyes, trying to bring his surroundings into focus. He found himself sitting in a dimly-lit chamber, the walls going up and meeting the ceiling not far above his head. Wondering where he was, he crossed his arms over his knees. It was then that he noticed a glow coming off of his skin, and he looked down at his hands. His eyebrows furrowed. These couldn't be his hands; they were bright white and only had four fingers each, plus each finger was tipped with a menacing-looking yellow claw. He held out an arm and looked at it. Just before the elbow, the skin turned from white to black in a straight division, as if he were wearing a glove. He arched his neck, his eyes traveling up his arm to his shoulder, where he noticed another area that was completely white, separated from the black by a curve that went down from each shoulder and met just at the upper ridge of his sternum, with the white part extending the length of his neck.

His mind halted for a moment. He had never seen his chest and neck from this perspective; he had always seen it this way when looking in a mirror. He felt around his neck and discovered that it was much longer than he thought it was; he had to crane it downwards in order to touch his face. Then his fingers met features he never knew he had: a pair of fin-like structures that stuck out where he knew ears should have gone, a pair of long spikes the protruded from the back of his skull, a scaly fringe that ran from his forehead down the back of his neck, and a face that went outward from his eyes, a reptilian snout resting on the end. Inside his mouth were several sharp teeth and a forked tongue.

He held his hands out in front of him again, his mind still muddled. He tried to remember what had happened before he fell unconscious, but not much came to him; everything else seemed to have faded into obscurity. He vaguely remembered seeing a bright flash of light, but that could have just been his imagination. Then he remembered that he himself had brought forward the light... He had forced it out from himself, and it took the shape of a ring... Someone was laying on the ground in front of him, and it was because of seeing that person, he was able to call forth the light.

Suddenly, a flash of images shattered his mental inertness, and he remembered everything... Almost everything. He had attempted to switch to ghost mode to prevent the dragon that had taken over his body from getting any closer to Sam...

Sam!

"Sam, where are--"

His voice caught in his throat. The last time he had heard it, he was in the lab back home, facing Bertrand. Somehow or another, his voice had come back. He could also feel his feet touching the ground, something he had not felt for a long time. He looked down toward his feet, and his heart nearly leaped up into his throat.

Those were not his legs and feet, those were the legs and feet of something reptilian, like the Ghost Dragon he had seen long before, like the one he saw in the reflection in the lake just a while ago. But yet they were clothed in the uniform he always ended up wearing whenever he switched to ghost mode, save for each foot ending in three toes, each toe ending in a large yellow claw. These were not the legs and feet of a human, but they were his...

He looked at his four-fingered clawed hands. Those were dragon hands, yet they were still his hands. He was able to control their movements; so somehow he had gained control of the body of the Ghost Dragon, which before had complete control of him. He got up on his feet again, being careful to lean forward so that the weight of the wings and tail behind him would counterbalance his forward weight. He turned his head and looked at his large wings, which had a white membrane connected with black ribs, the main limb being black as well.

Going ghost gave him complete control over the body of the Ghost Dragon. However, doing so didn't return him to his normal state; it turned him into a dragon. A dragon that was somehow also part ghost and part human.

As he turned back around to look at his tail, something on the ground caught his eye. He looked down, where the chamber opened up into a passageway, and saw what looked like some kind of doll. A doll that was standing up by itself and was now slowly moving back against the cave wall, a doll that looked like someone he knew...

"...Tuck?"

The doll blinked, mouth agape. It looked like it was trying to speak, but it was choking on its words.

"Yes...?"

Danny turned to face the doll, then got down on his hands and knees to get a closer look at it. The doll cried out in surprise and pressed its back against the cave wall, covering its head with its arms and curling its body into a fetal position, shivering. No, this wasn't a doll of Tuck; this was Tuck himself. Danny remembered how large the Ghost Dragon was compared to everything around it, and now that he had taken the form of the dragon, he was seeing everything from the dragon's point of view, as if people were miniatures from a dollhouse.

"It's okay, Tuck, don't be afraid... It's me, Danny."

Tuck moved one arm, looking at Danny. He looked him up and down, seeming to see a resemblance that Danny had yet to notice, except for the fact that he was wearing the black and white jumpsuit normally worn by Danny Phantom. Tuck's arms dropped to his sides, and he got up off the ground, standing to face Danny.

"Danny? ... Is it really you in there?"

Tuck walked up to Danny, staring up at him in astonishment. Danny smiled.

"Yes, it's me."

"But,,, how?"

"I'm not exactly sure, but when I tried to go ghost..."

A memory suddenly raced through Danny's mind. He looked around him, toward the ground.

"Wait. Where's Sam?"

"Sam? She's down by the lake. I carried her there after you collapsed."

Danny faced Tuck, a look of worry on his scaly face.

"Is she all right?"

"She's fine. She came to a short while after I got her out of the cave. Right now she's washing the dirt and blood off of her by the lakeside. I left her to come check on you, I knew something had happened when the dragon fell down after somehow or another going ghost."

Danny's mind lingered on the word "blood". He hoped that her getting thrown by the dragon didn't damage her too badly. He didn't want any of his friends to get hurt, especially when they were trying to help him by restoring him to his human form...

Danny froze. He reached up with one hand to touch his neck, where the amulet should have been, even though he knew he had looked there before and yet did not see it. He frantically felt all around his neck and shoulders with both hands, but felt no amulet; he even pressed down on the cloth around his neck, thinking that maybe the amulet was underneath the uniform. It wasn't.

"Tuck...! The amulet... It's gone!"

Tuck stared up at Danny in shock.

"Then... why are you still a dragon?"