"Driver, stop the car! We're getting off here."

Pulling the cab to a stop by the side of the street, the driver looked out the window at the partially-constructed building standing at the street corner. He looked to the buildings at either side, seeing nothing that would serve as a reasonable point of interest. Shrugging his shoulders, he hit the switch on the meter.

"That'll be twenty bucks and thirty-five cents."

Samantha handed over a fifty-dollar bill.

"Keep the change."

She immediately opened the door and rushed out of the cab, Tucker following right behind, before the driver could say anything else. Slamming the door behind him, Tuck followed Sam to the edge of the tall wooden-slat fence that enclosed the construction area as the cab pulled away and headed off down the street, leaving them behind.

Sam stopped at the fence, taking a look around. This was one of the busiest areas of the city; the sidewalks were nearly crowded with people, and the traffic lanes were never empty. As she was taking all this into account, Tuck prodded her shoulder.

"The Fentonfinder says he's right in the middle of this area. He has to be inside that structure..."

He waved his hand toward the building under development, which was apparently going to become a parking garage. Sam looked up at the spires of metal framework that stood atop the half-built walls. She nodded.

"He's definitely in there. But how are we going to get in there without anyone noticing?"

Tuck looked around. Any passersby would notice them for sure if they attempted to climb over the fence. He looked back at the fence, and walked up to it, wondering. Sam watched him as he pushed his hands against each board, evidently checking for something. As he put his hand against a slat close to the edge of the fence that stood next to an adjoining building, he felt it give and swing inward.

"Sam, over here."

He stood back and looked around, then motioned for Sam to go through the opening. She quickly dove in, being careful not to do anything that would call attention to herself. The slat closed behind her. She stood back, waiting, then saw Tuck as he pushed the slat in and darted through the opening. Together, without looking back, they ran inside the construction area.

"Honey, did you see that?"

A man stood at the window of his apartment, looking down at the street. Down by the construction area, two teenagers had just crossed into the restricted zone seemingly through a hole in the fence. As he watched them run into the building, his wife walked up next to him to gaze out the window.

"See what?"

"Two kids. They just ran through that fence. I don't think anyone else noticed them."

"Where?"

"They were there just a second ago..."

Suddenly, something else caught his eye; up above the traffic intersection, a wisp of black smoke flew through the air, seemingly of its own accord. He watched it as it crossed over the fence and disappeared through one of the walls of the building, fading from sight.

"Look, I think I just saw something else. It looked like some kind of... ghost."

"Honey, whatever it is you've been doing, you've been doing it for too long."

Sam and Tuck kept running until they reached the construction's center; a large pit that was dug for the foundation of the building's central pillar. Tuck looked down at the Fentonfinder's glowing screen.

"According to this... we should be right on top of him."

Sam looked around, a look of worry on her face. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted out in desperation into the silence.

"Danneeeeeeee!! Where are you??"

Tuck grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close to him, silencing her.

"Wait... I heard something. I think it was breathing."

Sam fell quiet, listening. After a short while, she could hear it too; deep, slow, somewhat ragged breathing, coming from somewhere close by. Breaking away from Tuck, she ran to the edge of the pit and looked down.

At the bottom lay nothing but a wheelbarrow and a large rock. As her eyes searched the area, she caught the rock shifting position suddenly, like something large had brushed against it.

Sam knelt down, preparing to descend into the pit. Tuck put down his backpack, letting it slide down to the bottom along the steep slope, then sat down at the edge and put his feet out before him to catch himself when he landed. Sam carefully made her way down, touched ground and then got back up on her feet. She looked out into the seemingly empty space as though she could see what was there.

"Danny..."

The rock, which lay several feet to her left, shifted again. She heard a sigh.

"Leave me alone..."

The voice came from the far end of the pit, to her right. Tuck walked up beside her, carrying the backpack in his hands, looking off in the same direction. Slowly, Sam approached the source of the sound, stepping lightly and carefully for fear that she might accidentally tread on Danny.

"You know I won't. I promised I wouldn't."

"Just let them bury me."

"Don't say that..."

Sam stopped, feeling something touching her leg. She reached down to feel it, but it was snatched out from under her hands. She stood back up, looking toward the voice, and continued walking in its direction.

"Danny, please listen to me..."

"There's nothing any of us can do, and you know it."

"Danny..."

"I saw it in your eyes, and I'm seeing it right now."

Sam stopped. She stood upright, glaring in the direction of the voice.

"Do you really think we're going to just leave you here?"

She heard something scraping the ground, moving toward the far end of the pit.

"Why not? You've never been the kind of person who would lie to yourself."

"Danny, shut up and just LISTEN to me!"

The voice had come from somewhere above, and she turned her attention to that area. She immediately felt sorry for yelling at Danny, but she could think of no other way to get her point across. Her emotions were starting to take charge, and now her voice was beginning to shake.

"OK, I'll admit it. All this time... I've been trying to stand up for you... And I've really had nothing to stand on. And I'm sorry if it sounds like I've been lying to you just to make you feel better. I'm sorry if it sounds like I've been giving you false hopes."

There was no response. In the silence, she could feel something tugging at her conscience. Becoming overwhelmed, she gave in to it.

"No, that's not what it sounds like, that's what it is. That's what it really is."

Tears welled up in her eyes.

"...And I'm sorry, Danny, I really am."

After a long while, she heard another sigh. It was a sound of indifference, a "whatever". Sam closed her eyes, feeling the warm tears stream down her face. Her breathing became shuddered.

She then felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look and saw Tuck standing next to her, looking up at the voice in annoyance.

"Danny, now look..."

A deafening roar shook the walls, interrupting Tuck and silencing them both.

"No, YOU look!!!"

They shielded their eyes as a blaze of color and light filled the room. Danny materialized before them, his green eyes and white aura glowing angrily. He stood on all fours with his wings spread in a threatening manner. His long neck loomed over Sam and Tuck, looking down on them, his expression one of absolute fury.

"This is what you're going to be seeing from now on! Tell me, WHAT do you see?"

They stared up at him, frozen in shock. Their frightened reactions only angered Danny further. Teeth clenched, he breathed out through his nostrils, streams of purple smoke erupting from them. Sam and Tuck gave no response. Danny shut his eyes tightly.

"WHAT DO YOU SEE??"

Sam closed her eyes and screamed back a reply.

"I see my best friend, Danny Fenton!!"

There was a noticable, almost immediate change in Danny's expression. He sat down, his aura dimming, as though the weight of Sam's words had forced him into doing so. His head fell, and he stared at the ground, his wings falling to his sides.

Sam stepped up to him, reaching up to take Danny's face into her hands. He offered no resistance as she grabbed his ear-fins and pulled his head around to face her. She looked straight into his eyes, which had lost their imposing glow and had now taken on an expression of confused remorse.

"Do you really think I care what you look like? It doesn't matter to me what you look like. I wouldn't even care if you suddenly began sprouting hair and you turned into the Abominable Snowman. Because I KNOW who you are. Who you are will never change. It didn't change over the past couple of days, nor did it change back then from what happened in your parents' lab, when you first became Danny Phantom... In my eyes you are and will always be Danny. Always."

Her hands slipped from the flaps of skin, and she wrapped her arms around Danny's face, pulling his head into her embrace, pressing her face against his. She began to shiver.

"Nothing is going to change that, Danny... Nothing..."

Danny closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

"No, don't be... It's not your fault you were angry... Everybody gets angry sometimes."

Sam then felt something warm touching her arms, and she looked up; Danny was crying. Then something else grabbed her attention, something hanging across Danny's chest that seemed to reflect the light from his aura. It gave off a strange golden light, then suddenly disappeared from Sam's vision as a glowing blue mist engulfed her. Sam let go of Danny, standing back as he raised his head; his ghost sense had gone off again, the blue vapor streaming from his mouth. Somewhere nearby, someone was laughing.

Sam heard the voice behind her, and Danny had turned his head to look. He met the gaze of a red-haired woman dressed in a bright red suit, standing at the edge of the pit, looking down at them. Sam turned to face her, recognizing her almost immediately.

"Spectra..."

Penelope Spectra crossed her arms, a look of evil smugness on her pale-skinned face. Apparently she had not found anyone miserable enough to feed off of for a long while; her hair did not have its usual fiery tinge, and a number of wrinkles had crossed her bony cheeks. Nonetheless, she stood triumphant, as though everything was going her way.

"Well, now, look at you, Danny. A scared little teenager trapped in the body of a vicious monster. Have you figured out yet how you're going to explain this to your parents back home?"

Danny rose up on his hind legs, spreading his wings. He looked away from Spectra, turning his attention to his friends. Tuck was cowering behind Danny, looking out at Spectra from what he considered to be a safe vantage point. Sam, however, was standing next to his leg, looking up at him.

"Don't listen to her, Danny."

Danny looked back at Tuck, stepping forward so that both Tuck and Sam were behind him.

"You two need to get out of here."

"But..."

"I know, but I don't want you getting hurt. Now leave!"

Sam nodded, understanding him clearly. Grabbing Tuck by the arm, she ran to the other end of the pit, dragging him alongside her. Carefully, the two climbed up the somewhat unstable incline, reaching the top without incident. Danny turned his attention back to Spectra, who apparently didn't seem to care what the others were doing.

"Look, Spectra, your plan isn't going to work for you anymore. I've figured it out... You and your little green friend had planned to trick me into turning into the Ghost Dragon by slipping the Amulet on me while I wasn't paying attention. Then you were just going to leave me to go on a rampage and destroy everything, unable to control myself. In the process, you two were hoping that I would end up murdering my friends and family..."

Spectra grinned. Danny's brows furrowed.

"Well, your plan's backfired. I can control what the dragon does now, and the only ones I plan on harming are you and Bertrand! I'm not your tool anymore, Spectra!"

She laughed again, catching Danny off guard. He blinked.

"Oh come on now, Danny, you can't expect us to take the blame for your transformation. You had as much a part in it as we did. All we had to do was get the Amulet on you; you allowed yourself to get angry all on your own."

"You shut up..."

"Anger is a beast, Danny. A beast which once you lose control of, you become. That is where the Amulet derives its power. I'll admit that you did manage to foil our original plan, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any room left for improvisation. You'll be back under my control before you know it."

A flash of green caught Sam's eye, and she looked up.

"Danny, look out!!"

Coming down like a comet from the open sky above where Danny stood was Bertrand, having taken the form of a serpentine dragon, almost identical to Danny. Danny didn't look up in time; Bertrand's claws dove into the back of his neck, and he roared in pain. Landing behind Danny, Bertrand pulled his arms up and back, lifting Danny bodily from the ground, then flinging him forward, sending him crashing through the nearest wall.

Out in the street, traffic came to a screeching halt as the side of the half-built wall on the street corner exploded outward, raining dust and debris on cars and people nearby. Immediately afterwards, something gigantic sailed through the air, slamming into the asphalt in the middle of the intersection, scattering the cloud of dust with its body. A few bystanders were frozen in a state of terrified curiosity; only after they saw the creature raise its head to look back at the hole in the building did they decide to flee, screaming, having noticed the long, sharp teeth.

Danny scrambled to get to his feet, turning to face Bertrand, who perched with his forearms at the edge of the hole, his red eyes glowing furiously. Laughing darkly at Danny's awkwardness, he pulled himself through the opening, getting down on all fours on the sidewalk. Danny spotted movement a short distance away from where Bertrand was getting up onto his hind legs; Sam and Tuck stood at the edge of the flattened barrier, their hands cupped around their mouths, yelling at him. What they had to say, he couldn't hear; all around him, car horns were blaring in his direction. Looking down, he noticed that he was blocking traffic. He flapped his wings and leapt into the air, hovering a safe distance above the intersection, exclaiming an apology to the people below. Too late did he realize that turning his attention away from Bertrand was a bad idea.

The green dragon sprang into the air and slammed full-body into him, sending him flying backwards. Danny tried to spread his wings to slow down, but that only caused him to flip upside down in the air just before his body struck the side of another building further down the street. The momentum had him clinging to the side of the damaged apartment complex for a few seconds, after which he slid off and fell, slamming into the pavement below. Something gave underneath him, and a loud, piercing alarm went off. He leapt up onto all fours. Looking down, he noticed that he had accidentally crushed the roof of a car under his chest. Panicking, he picked it up and looked in through what was left of the shattered windows; it was empty.

A loud roar brought Danny's attention back to his attacker, who then pounced on him from behind, causing him to drop the car. Bertrand shoved him down on his stomach against the pavement, grabbing his neck and pulling it back, as though attempting to break it. Putting one hind foot on Danny's back at the base of his neck, he laughed as Danny flailed his arms about trying to get at him.

"What do we have here? Looks like a dragon that doesn't know how to be a dragon! Your size and strength may have given you the advantage last time, ghost kid, but this time, they're not going to help you much..."

Danny drove his claws into the asphalt for anchorage, then swung his neck forward as hard as he could, flinging Bertrand off of him. The ghost monster quickly rebounded against another building, causing it to crumble, then leapt at Danny with his claws and fangs bared. Danny threw himself to the side, rolling over to dodge the attack, then leapt toward the buildings on the other side of the street, going intangible and phasing right through the walls, disappearing from Bertrand's sight in a matter of seconds.

Bertrand landed on all fours, then rose up on his hind legs, glaring at the spot where Danny had escaped.

"Your ghost powers aren't going to help you, either, you know!"

He opened his mouth, a bright glow emanating from the back of his throat. A bright beam of ectoplasmic energy then erupted from his mouth, striking the building. Danny, who lay crouched behind the building, found himself suddenly half-buried under the rubble as the structure collapsed right on top of him. He quickly dove into the ground, phasing through the pavement to escape Bertrand's next attack.

Bertrand was causing way too much damage for his liking. Even though the area was rapidly being evacuated, sooner or later, someone was bound to get hurt. He had to figure out some way of getting Bertrand away from the city before anything else ended up getting destroyed from their battle.

Danny shot up out of the ground, regaining tangibility, and looked around him. There was no sign of Bertrand. Suddenly, something struck him hard from behind; Bertrand had phased through the skyscraper behind him for a sneak attack.

"Foolish ghost kid! Don't you know that when you're two stories tall, you lack the element of surprise?"

Bertrand swatted Danny hard with his tail, slamming him against yet another building. Seeing the next attack coming, Danny leapt into the air to dodge the second energy beam. Flapping his wings, he took off into the sky, hoping that Bertrand would follow him. He circled around in the air, looking down to see if Bertrand had taken the bait. His question was answered when a third beam struck him in the chest, paralyzing him. Having lost all his strength in the space of a few seconds, he dropped out of the sky, his body hitting the ground with enough force to create a noticable tremor.

Lights flashed in his vision as he began to come around. He felt Bertrand upon him, coiling himself around his body like a boa constrictor does its prey. He lay with his back to the pavement, apparently in the middle of the street. Bertrand was pinning him down, tightening his coils, slowly squeezing the breath out of Danny. Danny tried to fight back, attempting to wriggle himself loose, but he didn't even have the strength to lift his head off the ground. He opened his eyes halfway, looking up at Bertrand, who grinned back down at him.

"I told Spectra this would be a piece of cake. I knew it wasn't going to take much to bring you down. You thought you'd overpower me, but you can't! You're afraid to. You're afraid someone else is going to get hurt, aren't you? That, my little loser friend, is your weakness..."

Bertrand pulled his coils tighter, feeling Danny's bones giving under the pressure. Danny cried out in pain, although no sound escaped his lips due to his inability to breathe.

"You can't do anything for fear of hurting somebody. You're so big, you're afraid you'd knock something over, or step on somebody. You can't fight back when you care too much for what might happen to somebody you don't even know. So why do you even bother trying to fight me?"

He twisted himself to the side, snapping a rib, causing Danny to cry out again in silence.

"You can't fight me... You can't do anything... But you're still going to pay... For what you did to me... What you did to Spectra... You're going to pay for it with your life."

Danny tried to open his eyes, but all he could see was spots. He thought he saw a glowing light as Bertrand prepared to fire one final beam at his head, but he couldn't keep it in focus...