Danny desperately tried firing more and more blasts and the dark cloud in the sky, but there was no success in it. Blast after blast hit the menacing cloud, but none of them seemed to affect it in the slightest. The cloud was over a quarter-of-a-mile in diameter, but Danny was sure that its larger size wasn't what was making it stronger.
"Okay, this isn't working, is it?" Danny weakly asked as he looked at the raging, intimidating cloud in the sky. "I'm outta here!"
Danny immediately started flying away until he noticed two people in the crowd: Sam and Tucker. They must have woken up and ran outside to see how he was doing. Danny swooped down at them and gave everybody around a rush of panic.
"Guys, this thing is really mean!" Danny yelled. "I talking, Lancer's-Final-Exam-mean!"
Tucker seemed to shiver at the thought, but Sam just jumped in and said "We need to learn more about that cloud thing before we can attack it! Better yet, we need to learn more about it before it does something really, really bad!"
The three of them walked back into the hotel (okay, Danny flew; he went intangible and passed through one of the windows and back into their room) As soon as they were all regrouped back into their room, they immediately started planning on what they should do to stop the curse.
"How did you guys end up outside anyway?" Danny asked, transforming back into his human form. "When I went outside to battle that cloud, you guys were asleep."
"We heard blasting out there," Tucker replied. "I woke up and saw you right in front of the cloud. I woke Sam up and we both ran outside as fast as we could to see if you were okay."
"Thanks for caring, guys," Danny plainly said. As soon as he thanked them, a question popped into his head. "Hey, wait a sec? Where are my parents? I thought for sure they'd…"
No sooner did Danny start this thought than his dad started banging on the door to the room. He was screaming "Danny! Danny, are you in there!"
Danny anxiously ran over to the door and opened it as quickly as he could. Jack looked like he just saw someone in his family get overshadowed by a ghost, with a clear sign of panic on his face.
"Thank the sweet smell of cinnamon rolls you're all right!" Jack yelled when he saw Danny was in his room with Sam and Tucker. "There's a massive cloud outside and I'm positive it means something bad!"
"Uh…it was the cloud that made all that thunder and made you take me home early from babysitting last night. Remember?" Danny said to his father.
"What!" Jack yelled. "It's that! Maddie, get the Fenton bazooka stat!"
"Jack!" Danny heard his mom yell from the other room, "The Fenton Bazooka is at home, on the paper!"
Jack smacked himself on the forehead and yelled, "Jazz! You see why I always carry that thing with me wherever I go!"
"Dad, can you stop yelling like that?" Danny lightly asked. "You're kinda embarrassing me."
"Oh…sorry," Jack said. "Well, anyway, I'm going into my room to think about what action needs to be taken to destroy that thing! I have the weirdest feeling that's not any regular rain cloud out there!"
Saying this, Jack went out into the hall and slammed Danny's room's door shut. Danny and his friends could hear Jack open the door on the other side of their wall and walk into the room behind that door.
"You think?" Danny asked in a smart-aleck tone in response to his dad's last comment. He turned back to Sam and Tucker, standing a few feet away from him.
"Well guys, any thoughts on how we could get rid of that cloud?" Danny asked.
Sam didn't say anything, she just shook her head. Tucker was the first one to speak up with an idea.
"I know!" he yelled. "How about we do some research to see if there's any record of anything like this happening before?"
"Great idea," Sam said with no emotion. "And just where are we supposed to do research? There aren't any libraries around here or anything!"
"No, but we do have this," Tucker said, going over to his bag. He started pulling out all his techno-geek stuff until he finally found what he was looking for. "Aha! Here it is!"
Tucker pulled out a think gray box. He opened up the top of it, and Sam and Danny realized what it was.
"A laptop!" Danny and Sam said loudly together.
"Yeah, haven't you even seen one before?" Tucker asked as he started his computer up.
"So not only were you keeping a Playstation from us but you were also hiding a laptop, too?" Danny asked, annoyed that they could've been playing some computer games instead of Playstation ones.
"Not only that, but it's internet-ready, too!" Tucker said, not understanding Danny and Sam's annoyance with him keeping the laptop secret.
Sam and Danny hid their frustration as they ran over to the computer. Tucker logged onto Google, but then stopped, not knowing what to type in.
"Uh, guys…what do you think I should enter for a search?" Tucker asked.
Danny and Sam had no idea what Tucker should put in. They suggested "Dark Cloud", "Evil Cloud", "Ghost Cloud", "Cursed Cloud" and just about any other thing that had the word "cloud" in it that would describe the mysterious thing in the sky.
After almost an hour of searching, all three kids came up empty. There wasn't one thing that they found that could tell them anything about the black cloud that was hovering in the sky (not that they were expecting much anyway).
"Well, this is just great," Danny said out of frustration. "My ghost powers are probably the only thing around here that could possibly blow that thing away, and not even those seemed to hurt it at all."
"Well, you think a person would have any useful info?" Sam asked, just doing her best to try to put a thought in.
"Well, I don't think that'll help," Danny said. "But I guess it's the only thing we have right now. Why don't we three go out on the streets and ask anyone about the cloud who we think would have some useful information about the cloud?"
Sam and Tucker agreed to it. In less than a minute, they ran out of their hotel room and were down on the streets.
"All right, split up!" Danny commanded Sam and Tucker. Danny pointed in one direction and told Tucker to go look that way; he pointed in the opposite direction and gave Sam the same commands. After his two friends split up, Danny ran behind the hotel out of sight and became his ghostly alter-ego, Danny Phantom.
When Danny did this, he began soaring in the air at over one hundred miles an hour, creating an awe-inspiring sight to everyone around him. He flew higher and higher until he was literally hundreds of feet in the air. He started flying around the entire resort area, but it was strangely deserted. Supposedly, a lot of people stayed inside so they could keep safe from the black cloud, whatever it was. Danny was amazed, seeing the once packed beach deserted. Now, he could clearly see the white sand and the water was undisturbed except for the waves. It seemed pretty creepy to him.
Danny had to quickly get his mind off staring at the deserted beach and instead start looking around for anyone who might have any idea what it was. Presumably, that would mean he'd have to see if anyone crazy enough to be standing outside would have any idea on how to stop the cloud or to destroy it.
As Danny was flying across the now deserted looking resort that was once so lively, he found less people standing outside than he thought. In fact, the only people standing outside were people taking pictures or staring at in awe simply because they had never seen anything like it before; Danny knew he would not be able to get help from any of those people.
When Danny was a good half-mile from the cloud but still soaring from the air, he had just about given up hope of finding anyone who could prove useful in determining a weak spot in the cloud.
Suddenly, Danny looked at the cloud and saw something. He couldn't tell what the cloud was doing, but it was definitely doing something. It seemed to have some kind of weird energy brewing up in it and looked like it was ready to unleash it at any moment. Danny began flying through the air so fast he was almost getting dizzy just watching everything go by around him as the cloud became bigger and bigger when he approached it.
Danny was beginning to hear people screaming as he got closer, and he honestly couldn't blame them; he would be pretty frightened too if something like that was getting ready to unleash energy or whatever it was about to do. When Danny was only a few yards away from the crowd, he looked down and saw one person standing right under the dark cloud as it looked ready to unleash energy. Having to think on his feet to knock the person standing out of the way, Danny just swooped down and impacted the person as hard as he could. The guy got knocked out cold as Danny hit him, but only for a few moments. Danny took this opportunity to change back into his human half as the guy was regaining consciousness.
As the person began to wake up and Danny finished transforming, a shocking revelation came to Danny when he saw the person's face; he knew who the person was.
"Dr. Skyler!" Danny said full of shock when he saw the person get up.
Indeed it was Dr. Skyler, the scientist who Danny saw at the presentation at the museum Jazz forced them to see the day before. Danny was nervous, but he was also confused as to why Dr. Skyler would want to be around the curse when it was about to release energy.
Skyler made a few grunting sounds as he got up, and the first thing he could see clearly when he regained consciousness was Danny's confused and angry look on his face.
"Okay, you got ten seconds to tell me what exactly you were doing under that cloud!" Danny sternly said as he helped Skyler get to his feet. "That thing looked like it was about to do something really bad, and you were just standing right under it as if it were a regular cloud!"
Skyler seemed annoyed, but also insulted at this. He didn't like the idea of a teenaged boy telling him what he should have been doing.
"Who are you to tell me what's dangerous?" Skyler retorted as he fully regained balance. "What is the matter with you! Nothing was going on!"
"Are you blind or something!" Danny yelled angrily. "That thing looked like it was ready to release some…energy, or something, and you were just standing there like nothing was going to happen. That was a pretty dumb thing to do, especially for an Oxford and Harvard grad."
Skyler just got more annoyed at this comment. "How do you know that something bad was about to happen from that cloud? You don't even know what it is!"
"Oh, and I suppose you do!" Danny said with frustration mounting in his voice.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," Skyler calmly replied.
Danny was quite taken back by this. Was it really possible for this Skyler guy to know what the cloud was? Danny had no idea what it was, his parents had no idea what it was, and his friends had no idea what it was. (and they were all pretty knowledgeable about stuff like that) How could Skyler know when he's supposed to be an expert on human anatomy and biology?
"Really, then!" Danny challenged. "Then what is it?"
"It's Bhyrun," Skyler calmly responded.