The air had been stiff and peaceful just a few moments before. The sky barely had any clouds in it, and the trees seemed rather green. Birds were singing happily without a care in the world, and it was a safe bet that if it weren't for school, kids would be out either doing chores or hanging out with friends. All of the roads were empty, as this was the time when most people were at their jobs or school.

The peaceful environment could fool anybody, because very shortly, the air was filled with the sounds of laser blasts and explosions as two people (who were ironically neighbors) were battling on the top of the rooftops.

"Take…this!" Danny yelled. He shot out his hand and fired a blast of energy from it.

Mr. Compton, Danny's new neighbor, was Danny's adversary for this battle. He was in a ghost hunting suit he had made, being a ghost hunter himself. But Danny's parents' inventions were pale comparisons to the device Compton had. It looked like Compton's suit was powerful enough to blow away about ten ghosts at once.

The ray of energy hit Compton in the chest, but it didn't seem to do anything significant to Compton's bright blue metallic suit.

"You think you're so tough?" Compton snapped. "Think again!"

Compton pressed a button and a giant ball of light formed in the center of what looked like the heaviest laser cannon Danny could imagine. It was obviously going to fire some laser, and if it hit Danny, he would be turned to dust in less than a second.

"There's got to be a weak spot in that suit somewhere," Danny softly said as he looked at the beam getting ready to fire. "If I can find that spot, Mr. Compton's a sitting duck!"

Danny's trail of thought was interrupted when the beam fired. It was like a giant cylinder of concrete with a blinding white center and a blue lining. Danny had to duck, and it was a good thing he did.

When the laser passed, Danny turned around and saw it hit a hill a few hundred yards off in the distance. When the laser hit the hill, there was a giant explosion there that looked like someone had triggered a land mine.

"Holy smokes!" Danny yelled. "That thing's got enough power to demolish the Great Wall of China!"

Compton seemed very infuriated that the ray missed Danny, and he pressed a button that caused it to start charging up again.

"I really need to find the weak spot on that ghost suit," Danny said. "If I don't find it, I'm toast!...actually, I'll be lucky to just be toast if I get hit by that thing."

Danny tried flying around as Compton got his laser charged up. Then, Danny saw something that he thought would give him an advantage.

"His faceplate!" Danny yelled. "If I hit the glass protecting Compton's face, it'll smash and distract him enough for me to deal the finishing blows."

As Compton fired the thick laser, Danny fired his own at the stained blue window protecting Compton's face. But to Danny's unpleasant surprise, his ectoplasmic ray bounced back and hit him, just as Compton fired his devastating beam.

The ray hit Danny, therefore throwing him backwards. Normally, he'd consider that bad, but based on the circumstances, that was the luckiest thing that could have happened. Because when Danny got thrown back by his own blast after it deflected off of Compton's faceplate, Compton fired his laser beam. The beam would have hit Danny if he didn't get knocked back by his own blast.

"Okay, no more Mr.-Nice-Guy!" Danny yelled once he got up. But as he looked around, he still couldn't see where the suit's weak spot was. Danny decided to just ignore it and instead flew back down to the square top of one of the buildings.

"Uh-uh-uhhhhhhhh," Compton said like he was a parent scolding a bad child. "No running from this one!"

Compton put down his giant cannon and it got replaced by two smaller cannons, one on each arm. He started firing the blasts alternately at Danny as he ran across the roof. Just like in the movies, all the blasts came within an inch of Danny as he was running across the roof.

"Okay, this is bad," Danny said to himself when he came to the end of the roof. He couldn't just jump off it and fly away, because that could only make him an easier target for Compton if he was floating in mid air.

When Danny came to the end, he quickly turned around and ran towards Compton. He leapt in the air with his fist clenched and punched Compton's faceplate. Of course, that only made Danny smash his hand.

"Gahhh!" he screamed in pain as he clenched his throbbing hand.

"Heh heh heh heh heh," Compton said. "Perhaps firing a blast at me didn't convince you that I'm completely invincible?" he asked.

Danny groaned, but he felt weakened now that his hand was hurting pretty badly. But he couldn't let that distract him, because he was going to die at Compton's hands if he allowed that to happen.

Danny then made the move of running off the building and allowing himself to float down to the ground. When he landed, he ran over to a stop sign and pulled it out of the ground. He then flew up into the air with it and held it like a battle axe as he stared at Compton.

"What do you hope to do with that?" Compton yelled with a cocky smile on his face.

"This!" Danny yelled. He swung the stop sign as hard as he could and tried to nail Compton in the head with it. It worked when Compton screamed in pain and made a dent in the armor.

At first, Danny was happy to see that the armor was invincible to ghostly energy but vulnerable to other solids, but there was no way he'd have the strength to swing the stop sign enough to break the suit, especially with Compton retaliating.

"…and this!"

Danny turned the stop sign around and stuck the steel end into part of the suit. Instantly, small sparks started jumping from the suit, and in a feminine robotic voice, the suit said "WARNING: LASER MALFUNCTION. WARNING: LASER MALFUNCTION"

"Ha!" Danny yelled. "Not so high and might without that laser, are you?"

"Fine then!" Compton yelled. "I guess we'll have to take this fight to close-combat instead!"

Compton charged up his rocket boosters and launched himself towards Danny, throwing a punch right into Danny's jaw. And since Compton's fist was protected by the metal armor of his high-tech jumpsuit, it was bound to hurt even more.

Danny was knocked back a few feet and started rubbing the part of his mouth where Compton struck him, but it didn't take long for him to get back into the fight.

"Okay then," Danny yelled, "how about THIS?" Danny charged up his ectoplasmic laser and pointed it Compton's wing. Theoretically, Danny thought that if the wing was broken, Compton couldn't fly. And he also saw that the lasers had broken, which hinted to him that the suit wasn't completely indestructible like he assumed it was at first.

But, when Danny fired his laser at Compton's wing, it didn't seem to do anything. Once again, the laser just bounced off the wing and came shooting back at him. (Luckily, Danny was prepared to dodge it this time)

"Danny, don't you see?" Compton yelled. "There is no possible way you can win! Surrender to me now!"

"Have you read any books or seen any movies where the snobby bad guy says that?" Danny questioned. "Because if you have, you know that they end up dead about ten seconds later."

"But this isn't real, is it, Danny!" Compton yelled. "This is real!"

Compton fired up his jets once again and started flying towards Danny like a comet. Danny jumped out of the way just in time, but Compton had way too much momentum to stop. He ended up flying off the end of the building.

Danny was shocked to think that Compton would plummet to the ground and die. Not too surprisingly though, Compton fired up the rockets on his battle suit once more and was now floating without being over anything except the ground hundreds of feet below him.

"Ugh…you dying or using your ghost suit to save your life so you can keep fighting me: I can't decide which is worse," Danny said.

"You won't have to worry about deciding much longer," Compton said.

"Okay, you gotta say at least something original," Danny commanded.

Tired of Danny's remarks, Compton flew over and landed right next to Danny on the roof of the building. He then punched the roof and part of it started to break in.

Seeing the strength in Compton's suit capable of crushing a concrete ceiling to an office building really surprised Danny, and he even jumped backwards a little from it.

Compton continued smashing the roof until it gave in and crumpled like dust under both of them. Both of them started falling, but both of them were apparently thinking alike.

The roof fell to the floor below of the building, with huge chunks of it shattering into smaller pieces. However, both Danny and Compton started floating about half way down.

Compton, upset to see that Danny didn't fall to the ground and either die or get hurt really badly, started formulating a new plan.

Compton shot over to Danny and grabbed the back of his head.

"Hey, what are ya doing!" Danny yelled.

Compton began smashing Danny's head into the wall as violently as he could. When Danny was still dizzy from the blasts, Compton flew to the ground and picked up a giant slab on concrete that had fallen from the roof when he smashed it in.

Obviously, Compton was going to crush Danny's head with the slab of concrete. Danny came back to his senses just in time to see this about to happen. (Which was about the same time when the concrete would have hit him)

"Whoa, watch it with that thing!" Danny yelled. He threw his hands up and started applying counterforce to Compton as they both tried pushing the block of concrete towards each other.

"This is the end for you, Danny!" Compton yelled, using every ounce of strength he and his ghost suit had to put into the fight.

"Come on, that's all you've been saying for the past few days," Danny complained, still trying his best to prevent his head being crushed by the slab of cement. "Can't you find something new to say?"

Compton didn't respond at all, and the standoff continued. Finally, Danny got the upper hand and threw both the cement slab and Compton away. Both of them fell against the opposite wall.

As Compton smashed against the other wall, he quickly fell to the floor below. Danny took this opportunity to escape as quickly as he could. He flew out of the giant gash in the ceiling and was now free again.

Meanwhile, Compton groaned angrily as he got up from the floor and looked out to see Danny had escaped. Growling, he fired up the jetpacks on his ghost suit and flew through the hole in the ceiling.

Danny was still on the ceiling, hoping Compton would have given up. One could imagine his disappointment to find that Compton was now back and not about to give in.

"You just don't give up, do you?" Danny asked. He stood up and got in his fighting stance, but oddly enough, Compton stayed floating in the air. And Danny could soon see why.

Compton flew off the edge of the building and steered himself towards another building. He bashed in a piece of that roof and pulled out a concrete slab that that roof had created after he punched it in.

Danny flew over to the other building, and just as Compton threw it, Danny put a shield up around himself. The slab of concrete bounced off of him as if it was rubber, and Danny let the shield down after that.

Annoyed, Compton took off and started flying at Danny as fast as he could, the rocket boosters on his suit sounding furious.

Instinctively, Danny fired a blast of energy as soon as he saw Compton charging at him. Compton tried to dodge it, but he miscalculated slightly. He turned to the side, and the blast ended up striking the rocket boosters on his wing. Luckily, the boosters were able to be destroyed.

The other boosters started stuttering from one of them being destroyed, and in just moments, they all failed.

A look of panic revealed itself on Compton's face when it happened. He instantly started tumbling to the ground, hundreds of feet below.

Danny watched in horror as this event unfolded. After what seemed like the longest time, Compton completed his fall and landed face-flat on the pavement, rebounding a little at the time of impact.

Danny gasped, then immediately flew downwards to see if Compton was all right. When he landed, he saw Compton was lying flat across the ground with his back side showing. Danny turned Compton over and just saw an empty stare. The suit seemed completely mangled, and the glass protecting Compton's face was shattered. There was quite a bit of blood on the inside of the helmet.

Danny was breathless as he stared into Compton's eyes. Everything went quiet, and the only sound that could be heard was the stuttering of Danny's breath. The streets were still empty, which was good because Danny didn't want anyone around him to see what had just happened.

As Danny looked at Compton's eyes, Danny thought Compton was dead. But Compton's eyes started flickering a little, and he turned them towards Danny, not saying a word.

"Mr. Compton!" Danny yelled, almost overjoyed to see his neighbor hadn't died. "Oh man, are you all right!"

Compton didn't say anything other than a few groans. He used every ounce of strength he had left in him after that fall to pull his arm upwards. Danny was completely silent, thinking Compton was okay.

Compton pushed a small button on his ghost hunting suit, and a small claw fired itself out of a hidden compartment inside of it. The claw immediately stuck itself into Danny, and Danny felt like he had everything being torn out from inside of him.

Danny fell over onto the ground when the claw stuck itself into him. He began screaming loudly and throbbed in pain. After a few seconds, he automatically transformed out of his ghost self and back into his human form. He looked like he had to exercise for nine hours straight when he changed back. His skin was dirty and there was a ton of sweat across his forehead. His clothes almost looked like he had just went swimming with them on.

"Hey! What the?..." he stammered.

The claw was now holding what appeared to be a black jumpsuit very similar to the one he had on when he went ghost. But there was something weird about it…there was a glow of ectoplasmic green around it.

Compton made a soft smile when he saw what the claw had done, but then his head just collapsed on the pavement. His eyes closed and his breathing stopped. He was obviously dead now.

Danny tried to take in everything that just happened. All he knew now was that Compton was dead and that the claw that had stuck itself into Danny just did something to him.

After trying to think things true, he just reached out and tried to touch the jumpsuit-like thing that the claw had just pulled out of him. But just as his hand would have touched it, he heard a snickering from above.

Danny looked up and he saw a charcoal black figure with glowing white eyes floating above him. Even though he looked like a moving sculpture of burnt wood, Danny could tell it was a ghost by the glowing field of black energy around it.

The figure grabbed the claw, and the jumpsuit came with it. "Ha!" The figure yelled. "Now I have your powers! You're helpless now, Ghost Child!"

"Wait a minute!" Danny yelled, getting up. He had to watch his step, now that he apparently didn't have any more of his powers. Danny tried transforming just to make sure the figure wasn't lying, but unfortunately, he wasn't. Danny had truly just had his powers taken from him. "Who are you?" Danny asked.

The all-black ghost started chuckling. "My name is Count Xissil van Horrick," he said.

Danny's jaw dropped. "So…Compton was serious when he said you weren't dead? But that person in your mansion…that wasn't a decoy or something?"

"No!" Horrick snapped. He was burnt black from the last time he and Danny had met. "Now I have your powers, and you will finally get what you deserve!"

Horrick took the claw with the black jumpsuit and started flying away. He was stopped when Danny screamed, "Wait! Where do you think you're going!"

Horrick stopped. He turned back and looked at Danny coldly.

"Give me back my powers!" Danny yelled.

"I will," Horrick promised. "You want your powers? Come and get them, as soon as you're feeling brave and ready to die!"