Skyler was now in handcuffs and taken away in a police cruiser; he wouldn't be bothering them again. Unfortunately for Danny, that was just the beginning of his problems.
As soon as the police had taken Skyler away, Danny left the main room of the lab and started looking around for Tucker and Sam. After looking for only a few minutes, he found the two of them in a side room.
"Danny, the police just came!" Sam yelled. "And they took away Skyler."
"I know," Danny coolly replied. "I told Tucker to call them to arrest Skyler. Skyler was being a complete idiot and thought that by injecting some stuff from that dark cloud into himself, he would become stronger and more powerful."
"Well, what do we do now?" Tucker asked. "Now that Skyler's gone, do we need to focus on getting rid of that cloud again?"
"I'm not so sure about that," Danny said in a depressed way. "I looked at Skyler's files and found that there's more to the story behind that cloud. That cloud is actually a curse that goes back to 1368. Somehow, by that bottle getting opened, it looks like the curse was revived, and the Dark Mage was revived with it."
"Dark Mage?" Tucker asked. "Who was that?"
"That Bhyrun guy, remember?" Danny asked. "The stinker is that we have no idea what he looks like or where we can find him."
"Well, what do you think we should do?" Sam asked.
"I'm thinking we need to do more research," Danny said. "If that crackpot Skyler could find out anything about that cloud, so could we. I say we go back to the hotel and do more research on Tucker's laptop."
"Good thinking," Sam added.
Danny flew Tucker and Sam back to their hotel room without being noticed. As soon as they passed through the window and were back safe and sound inside, Danny let them go and changed back to his human form.
"All right, guys," Danny said. "Do you want to do research now or do you want to wait until the morning?"
"I'm pretty tired," Tucker said. "I could certainly go for some shuteye.
"Me too," Sam concurred. She was crawling into bed until she noticed something on Danny's shirt. As soon as she saw it, she gasped. "Danny! What happened?"
"Huh?" Danny asked.
"What's that red stuff on your shirt? Is it…blood?"
Danny looked down and saw an obvious bloodstain on his shirt on the spot where Skyler had thrown the tool into him.
"Oh, that…" Danny said. "It's just a cut from when Skyler and I were fighting. It's no big deal, really."
"Let me see," Sam said. She ran over to Danny and lifted up part of his shirt so she could see the cut. She lost her breath when she looked at it. "That's even worse than I imagined!"
For Danny to be perfectly honest, it was worse than he thought, too. The wound seemed to go pretty deep. It looked like an entire pool of red around a small spot, along with a pink ring surrounding the stabbed area.
"You'd better put a band-aid or something on that," Sam said. "It's going to get infected if you don't."
"Good thinking," Danny said. He went in the bathroom to pull a band-aid out of the cabinet and put it on the cut. "Thanks for noticing," Danny said when he came out.
"All right, now let's hop on the internet and find out stuff about Bhyrun," Tucker said enthusiastically a second later.
"Wait, I thought you wanted to go to bed," Danny recalled.
"After seeing what Skyler did to you?" Sam asked. "No way! If Skyler wants to merge with that cloud or get as powerful as it is, then we're going to stop at nothing to find a way to stop it!"
"Yeah! No one hurts my friend and gets away with it…except for maybe Dash," Tucker said.
"Guys, I appreciate the help," Danny said, "but you really don't have to stay up later than you want to do research just for me."
"If Skyler's that violent and can hurt you that bad," Sam said, "you're going to need all the help you can get to beat him."
"Guys, you're the best," Danny said, smiling.
A few minutes later, Tucker found something on a website regarding the supernatural.
"Guys, it looks like Bhyrun can take on the form of anything," Tucker said as he read off the website.
"What are you talking about?" Danny asked.
"Bhyrun, the Dark Mage, can take on the form of any living person once he is revived," Tucker clarified. "Basically, it says that if you see any living human, that could very well be Bhyrun."
"Are you sure that's true?" Sam doubtfully said.
"Everything else has been true so far," Tucker retorted.
"Okay, then that is a HUGE problem," Danny said. "We're talking about this guy who can do really bad stuff, and he's walking around like he's a regular person! How am I going to find him?"
"You think it could be Skyler?" Tucker asked. "Think about it: why else would Skyler want to inject himself with material from the cloud? The only explanation I can think of is that Bhyrun overshadowed Skyler so Skyler could get some power from the cloud, and by injecting it into himself, Bhyrun would get it."
"You know, that actually does make sense," Danny concurred. "It looks like that's our only lead for now. Luckily, with Skyler behind bars, we might not have to worry about him getting any more power."
"Yeah," Tucker said. "Anyway, I'm getting pretty tired right now. What say we call it a night and continue doing more research on this tomorrow?"
"All right," Danny said. He walked over to his bed and crawled under the covers. "Thanks again for all the help you guys have given me about this."
"Don't mention it," Tucker said.
"Good night, guys," Sam said.
As soon as all three of them were in their separate beds, Danny reached over and shut the lights in the hotel room out.
A few hours later, Danny awoke with a jolt. He looked around the dark hotel room and only saw its pitch black physical appearance. Danny wasn't sure what it was that caused him to abruptly wake up, but he found out in a second or so.
Danny heard breathing. Heavy breathing. Danny was even sure he heard something walking around close by. There was definitely something in the room with them.
Danny reached over and found the lamp sitting on his night table. He found the switch and flipped it, turning the light on and illuminating the room. Danny's eyes tried to adjust to the light, but he didn't need to see perfectly to see something in front of him.
There was a creature staring right at him. It was tall, had deadly green and red eyes and had a dark red physical appearance. It looked like a human, but it was completely red and had sharp claws and teeth.
Danny lost his breath, but then closed his eyes. Steady, Danny, he told himself, this is all a dream. You're going to open your eyes and that thing will be gone. Danny thought that and then opened his eyes, but the monster was still there.
"Okay, this isn't a dream, is it?" Danny said. "Okay, I've got enough to worry about as it is. I don't need something like this going and ruining my vacation anymore than it already has."
Danny transformed into Danny Phantom and immediately fired a blast of energy at the monster. It roared in pain, but instantly charged at Danny. Danny went intangible just in time and the monster passed right through him. Danny flew away from the creature and landed on the floor.
"Huh…wha?..." said Sam, still asleep. She opened her eyes and saw the monster Danny was fighting. She started screaming, which of course woke Tucker up.
Tucker had a similar reaction, except he got scared to the point where he hid under the covers for protection.
The weird creature turned its attention towards Sam and Tucker, and knowing they were defenseless, ran over to attack them. That is, until Danny charged at it from the side and kicked it in the side of the head.
The monster screamed roared in pain and was knocked against a side of the wall. While it was still down, Danny ran over to it and fired energy at it. The monster howled in more pain, but when Danny saw that he was about to attack it, the monster went intangible for a second itself.
"Wait, these things are ghosts?" Danny asked. "Then I can just grab the Fenton Thermos and…uggggghhhh. JAZZ!"
Since Jazz didn't plan on any ghosts on their "ghost-free" vacation, she thought it was necessary to leave the thermos behind. Now how was Danny going to beat these things?
When the creature became solid again, Danny continued firing blast after blast at it without mercy. Finally, the monster died. Literally.
The creature began to screech in pain, and it curdled up into a ball and slowly began to disappear. Danny seemed a bit disturbed at the thought of actually killing it, but he got over it after a minute or so.
"Great work, Danny," Sam said happily with a huge sigh of relief. "Tucker, you can come out from under the covers now."
Tucker nervously peeked out over the quilt on the bed, and when he saw the monster was gone, he fully sat up. "Whew, that was close."
"I wonder what the heck that thing was," Danny said. "I've never battled a creature like that before."
Danny changed back into his human form, looking as exhausted as ever. He looked at the clock and saw it was 3:00 in the morning.
"Well, fighting some weird monster isn't exactly what I want to do this early in the morning," Danny said. "How did that thing even get in here without anybody noticing? Oh well, enough talk. What say we get back to sleep."
Tucker and Sam both nodded their heads. Danny was about to go to sleep until he noticed something. He was shivering a little, and he embraced himself to stay warm.
"Hey guys, it's a little cold in here. How about I shut the window?" Danny asked. He went over to the window and opened the curtain so he could close the window. As soon as he opened the window, he had an unpleasant surprise. There was another one of the monsters staring at him in the window, and it had wings and was flapping in mid air.
Danny froze up. "So…they can fly," he said with fear in his voice.
The creature roared loudly and then burst its way into the hotel room through the opened window with its dragon-like wings open. When it was in the room and landed, it closed its wings.
Danny didn't waste any time. He turned into his ghost form once again and start getting up close to the monster and started attacking it with his fists. After punching it in the face a few times, the monster fought back and grabbed Danny by the throat. When Danny was helpless in the monster's grip, he showed Danny its two claws and made it obvious it was going to crush Danny's skull on both side with those claws.
Just as the sharp claws were about to break through Danny's head, the monster felt a smash in the head. It turned around and Tucker was holding a controller to his Playstation2 and was swinging it around like a lasso.
"Come on, you want to mess?" Tucker challenged. He continued spinning the controller around by the chord and swung the controlling part at the monster and hit it in the head with it. The monster dropped Danny and instead went for Tucker. But as soon as it let go of Danny, Danny countered by firing some of his own energy at the back of its head.
The monster turned around at Danny and started growling, but as it growled, Danny fired some energy in its mouth and crippled it. As the monster knelt down after Danny fried its throat, Danny fired one more blast right into the monster's face.
The creature began howling in pain again, and it too also began to disappear in thin air. After is disappeared, the room became quiet.
All three kids were breathing heavy, and Danny was now covered in sweat from both fights. He let out a quick sigh and went over to the window to close it. As he closed it, he turned back to look at Sam and Tucker.
"Okay, am I the only one who thinks those things have some connection to that cloud?" Danny asked. "I have never had to fight anything like those before."
"Well, you seemed to be able to beat them with no trouble," Sam said. "And at least they're officially dead now, so you don't have to worry about them coming back once you beat them."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Danny said.
Then Danny heard a loud roar from behind him. Danny was right in front of the window, but he had his back to it so he couldn't see what was outside. However, he didn't have to use his imagination to figure it out.
Danny's face turned to a glum expression. Without turning around, he looked at Sam and Tucker and said in a surprisingly cool voice, "there's another one of those things at the window staring in at me, isn't there?"
Sam and Tucker had nervous expressions on their faces as they both nodded their heads.
Danny moaned and turned around and looked at the third monster flapping its wings outside the window as it stared at him.
"Where do these things keep coming from?" Danny asked, annoyed as he got ready to fight a third one of those creatures.