Consciousness slowly returned to Vlad, though he didn't open his eyes immediately. He could feel something soft under his back holding him up, and he could feel something like cloth covering his face. His face itself felt sore, and the way the cloth felt over it was very uneven. His eyes were not covered, and a bright light from above him hurt his eyes even with them closed. With a faint moan, he slowly opened his eyes.

He was looking up at the well-lit ceiling of a hospital room. The lights were pure-white, illuminating the tiles that made up the ceiling and making the room seem even brighter. His face was covered with grey bandages, he had been changed into hospital clothes, and he was lying down on a bed in the centre of the room. He tried to sit up, but he couldn't. His whole body ached, and he still felt cold. He was, however, able to turn his head to the left, where he saw Jack sitting by his bed, a worried expression on his face. Against the wall a few feet behind him was a dresser, and back to his right, at the wall the front of the bed was against, was the door.

"Wha…Jack?" he moaned, his words slightly distorted from the bandages. Jack's face immediately lit up.

"V-Man!" Jack cried. He grabbed Vlad in a great bear hug. Due to Jack's size and inability to realise that Vlad was in pain already, the aches in his body proceeded to grow substantially worse, causing a moan to escape his throat. Jack quickly caught on and let go. Unfortunately, he had actually lifted Vlad out of the bed, and letting go had Vlad falling back into bed with a rather hard impact to his back.

"I knew you'd pull through!" Jack shouted ecstatically, oblivious to Vlad's second moan of pain. "No spectral energy stream takes down my pal Vlad Masters! I –"

Jack stopped, his grin falling into a look of confusion. Vlad was looking up at him, and even though his face was bandaged, Jack could see in his eyes he was looking at him with an expression he had seen only once before – after the backwash incident. It was not quite hate, but it was one of anger, confusion, and demand of an explanation.

"Jack…" Vlad sighed. "What happened?"

Jack didn't answer, and he actually looked a little hesitant to do so. Vlad's expression narrowed under his coverings. He was not in the mood for this.

"Jack…" he hissed, more angry than before. "What…happened!?"

Jack hesitated for a bit longer, then sighed. "OK, OK…" he said in a voice like that of a little kid having to repeat his parents' rules aloud for them. "I went too fast with the switch, miscalculated once again, you were right, and the Proto-Portal…"

"No…" Vlad grunted. His voice shook slightly as his teeth went up against one another. "What happened to me?"

"Oh, that…" Jack's voice immediately faded to a worried tone, and he gulped. "Well…we rushed you to the hospital as fast as we could, Vladdie…they almost laughed us out, but I wasn't letting you just lie there, so…"

"What is it!?" Vlad screamed. Jack backed up a few steps.

"You've been hospitalised with a horrible case of ecto-acne," Jack said quickly, as though he felt saying it fast would help it go down better.

Vlad's face lightened, his shoulders slumped, and he titled his head. His eyes revealed feelings of confusion accented by the tiniest bit of annoyance.

"What?"

"What? Vladdie – wait," Jack gasped as his expression turned panicked again. "Don't tell me that – the ectoplasm's gotten to your mind! Ecto-amnesia's kicking in! You don't believe in ghosts anymore! We've got to –"

"Jack, I still believe in ghosts!" Vlad shouted. "Apparently, ecto-acne wasn't one of the thousands of theories you've blathered on to me about!"

"Oh," Jack sighed in relief as calmed down. "Well, the ectoplasm from the blast out of the Proto-Portal was contaminated with an ecto-impurity, and it shot out in enough quaniy to seep into your body and contaminate the epidermis of your face, resulting in a hormone trigger that popped up hundreds of spectrally-contaminated zits. We didn't have the stuff to fix you up on the spot, so we ran you in here. For some reason they laughed at us when I explained the situation, but one of them finally agreed to look over you and saw that it was serious. And that leads us through several hours of your unconsciousness and my pacing the floor until we get to right now."

Vlad stared at Jack for a moment, then looked away. His face was starting to burn, and it wasn't from the bandages or from the excessive pimples. He'd grown used to Jack's stupid mistakes, his miscalculations, and the potentially dangerous accidents he caused when they tried and failed to get their inventions to work. And they'd stuck together through it all. The closest they had come to breaking up – the non-ghost related backwash incident – hadn't driven them apart. But if Jack had done what Vlad was thinking he might have done…

"How long am I supposed to be in here?" he asked a bit too lightly, not turning to look at Jack.

"Ha!" Jack laughed. "I'll have ya' out of here in no time! I'm working on a –"

"How long did the doctors say I'd be in here?" Vlad cut him off, putting more force behind his words.

"At the least a month, probably longer – they don't know how to cure you and they've never seen acne like this before. But, the heck with that! I've got a big –"

"A month!?" Vlad shouted, shooting straight up in bed, finally turning to look Jack dead in the eye.

"At the least," Jack repeated, unaware of Vlad's temper. "But don't sweat it, V-Man! I've got a cure in the works even as we speak, and I even brought a small sample along to show ya!" Jack pulled out from his lab coat an un-capped test tube filled with green glowing fluid. "The doctors didn't want me doing anything to you 'cause of some dumb regulation, but I said…"

Jack had been making hand gestures as he talked, and now, one large swing of his arm sent the liquid in the test tube spilling out onto Vlad's left hand. Vlad immediately yelped, pulling his hand back and blowing on it furiously, trying to relieve the burn that it left on his arm. A strange red mark appeared on his hand. Jack looked it over.

"Hmm…" Jack thought aloud. "It appears the cure has the side effect of an ecto-rash," he looked up at Vlad, whose eyes had narrowed again. Jack gave him a sheepish grin.

"Ah well!" Jack said, going back into his own little world. "We'll just have to fix that! Right, Vladdie!"

No answer.

"Vladdie?"

Jack looked back at Vlad. He had again looked away from Jack and now had a grimace on his face so tense and infuriated that it poured out right through the bandages.

"Vlad?" Jack asked, a little hesitantly.

"Jack," Vlad muttered, having difficulty getting his words out through his clenched teeth. "Get me a mirror."

"Why?"

"Get me a mirror."

Jack still didn't move.

"You know, you aren't supposed to take those bandages off…" he started.

"Well Jack," Vlad finally turned to him, some sarcasm lining his voice, "as you say, 'the heck with that,'"

Jack grinned. "That's the spirit, Vladdie!" he said, oblivious to the sarcasm. He grabbed the hand-held mirror on the dresser in the room and tossed it to Vlad, who caught it with his good hand. With his burned hand he ripped the bandages off his face with a couple of hard pulls over his head. He thrust the mirror up to his face and looked.

His face was still dominated by hundreds of little red bumps that now didn't quite look like any human zits. There was nothing different about texture or colour, but they seemed to have some unique ghostly quality. His eyes, though no longer hot or glowing, had not returned to their original colour, instead adopting a middle-tone blue. And his hair was still snow-white rather than his usual deep grey.

Vlad could feel his teeth grinding once again, and his face was getting even hotter.

This was it.

"Jack," he said in a deadly calm voice, slowly turning to face his company with a disturbing phoney-grin on his face, "we've been friends for a long time now. Ever since college started we've been together. Through thick and thin, through good times and bad…and we've always held onto the dynamic duo. There was the backwash incident, and I came close, oh so close, to ending our friendship, but we stayed together through it all, right?"

"Right…"

"Then isn't it ironic that I am now in a hospital bed, wrapped up in bandages and with a burn on my hand, all because of my best friend, Jack Fenton?" Jack didn't respond – his only reaction was a look of shock. Vlad now let his phoney smile slide down into a nasty grimace.

"Oh, it's no big deal!" he hissed, sarcasm returning to his voice. "All this does is insure that what little social life I had is now ruined, that's all! Oh yes, there's also the fact that I'm going to be in here for at least a month – likely longer, as the doctors don't know anything about ghost diseases and can't cure them! Well, that's only two major…oh wait! This happens to be the month that several important tests are to be carried out in school, which I will now miss! And most importantly, I've been horribly disfigured! My hair looks like that of a man twice my age, my face is covered with acne, my eyes aren't even the same shade they were before, and I feel cold all over my body, and not a normal cold! All thanks to you and your stupid Proto-Portal! I told you it wouldn't work, but no! You had to rush in, ignore your miscalculations, and make a huge, fast throw of the switch to show off in front of Maddie! Oh, and by the way – where is she?"

Jack had backed up to the dresser at the wall, his face shocked, confused, and hurt. A trickle of sweat had run down the side of his head. He'd never seen Vlad this angry before – even during the backwash incident. It was frightening.

"I…I took her home a while ago," he stammered. "She was pretty upset about you. She said she'd…"

"Oh, perfect, Jack!" Vlad yelled. "An excellent plan! Take Maddie home so she doesn't see you add to the pain by giving me this ecto-rash!" he held up his bad hand. "I'm sure this will prove a huge help to my treatment! Just like all your other assistance was a huge help to our inventions! Well I have news for you, Jack Fenton – I'm tired of your help, I'm tired of your theories, I'm tired of your plans, and I'm tired of you!"

Jack almost fell back onto the dresser. Vlad was no longer just angry. Pure, outright disgust and loathing covered every inch of his zit-coated face.

"Vlad I…" Jack stammered again. "I'm sorry…I…"

"Oh sure!" Vlad rolled his eyes, turning to sit at the bed's edge, directly across from Jack. "'I'm sorry, Vlad! This kind of thing will never happen again!' Well, there won't be a chance for it to happen again!"

"What do you…"

"Get out!" Vlad roared. "I never want to see you again as long as I live!"

Jack didn't move – he couldn't. How could this have happened?

"Didn't you hear me!?" Vlad screamed. "Get out! Now!"

His words had so much menace in them that Jack's brain and nerves triggered an automatic jump to the door. He prepared to leave. But before he closed the door he poked his head back in the room.

"Vlad, just give me…"

"OUT!" Vlad tossed the mirror in his hand at Jack's head. Jack quickly pulled his head out and closed the door just as the mirror hit, sending out the horrible sound of shattering glass. The frame of the mirror slid to the floor, landing face-up. Most of the glass had been crushed into oblivion or imbedded in the door, and what was left was severely broken up and knocked around within the frame. Now almost all the shattered pieces managed to catch at the very end of their reflections Vlad's steaming form, right at the edge of the bed and almost standing up, grabbing at the covers with a death grip and hissing his breaths in through clenched teeth.