Chapter 11: Master of Technology

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1

I am a mad man, an absolute madman, two chapters on the same day? What is this madness? I am spoiling you guys, apparently. Actually, I had basically everything of Skulker's file ready two days ago, I just had a few extra things I wanted to add, and then I worked on Technus, who like I mentioned last chapter that him and Skulker were the last I did of Danny's part of the files when I was writing all of them to make it easier later to get chapters out, as there was a lot to cover with them, also the fact that with Technus, despite appearing in a decent amount of episodes, his adventures have a lot going on as multiple days in the eposdes pass when he is involved.

On with the Show:

After finishing the file on the Ghost that hunts other ghosts, they moved on the next ghost in the path that Danny had left for them, Technus, Master of Technology. Opening the file, they saw a few pictures of the ghost, labeled Technus 1.0 and Technus 2.0. "He looks like a mad scientist in his first form, and what is with the mullet in the second form?" Jack remarked about the images.

Name: Nicolai Technus

Species: Ghost

Title: Master of Technology, as he calls himself.

Occupation: Unknown

Friend or Foe: Foe

Powers: Standard Ghost Powers, Machine Overshadowing-Unique to him, Machine Summoning, Electrokinesis, Telekinesis, Conjuration.

While the ability to overshadow is a standard ghost power, Technus can use it in a unique way, as he is the only one that can use it to take over machines and control them. He can turn himself into a line of floating digits and that is how he can overshadow machines, also he does it occasionally to just move about.

"Interesting variation on a standard ghost ability, I wonder how many other ghosts have a unique variation on a standard power," Maddie said.

The first time I met him, was when the Ghost Weasel exploded, see when the thermos got stuck in the hose and Dad left to get the Fenton Unlodger, I had hit the reverse switch and the Thermos launched across the lab, and hit the open portal door button, and Technus came out. He was the ghost that was exploded everywhere in the lab when the weasel exploded due it being to full, as the suction on it was sucking almost everything in.

"So that is why everything got covered in ectoplasm, and it was everywhere in the lab, how did that not outright destroy him permanently?" Jack asked.

"Ghosts seem to be able to take a lot of punishment that would kill a normal human and be completely fine, so who knows if there is a way to actually to kill them, which we may only want to know as a last resort, Jack." Maddie said, indicating that she had already decided on approaching the study of ghosts differently than they did in the past.

"Right, no more ripping them apart molecule by molecule," Jack said, with a bit of guilt that that line of thinking and study is why part of why Danny did not want to tell them about his powers.

So next part of this incident was that I needed some money for the Saturday afterward, as I had been invited to a party at Dash's house that had a dress code, that got changed at the last minute. Anyway, I had asked Dad to lend me some cash, and at their idea to sell some stuff, and that the shed needed cleaning out, Jack's mouth dropped open in surprise, "So that is why the Shed was empty when I checked it, I thought it had been raided by the Feds," Jack said, and in my defense, Dad even agreed with Mom on that when we took the junk from the weasel explosion out there. "Okay, fair, I did say that I probably should get rid of the junk, but he should have still asked me about before he did so," Jack said. So, I had a garage sale that Saturday morning to make some cash, selling stuff from the shed, some of it I did have to clean ectoplasm off of them. I managed to get the money I needed to buy the clothes, and went to the party, turns out that the motherboard and a copy of Portals XL that I had sold to Dash had been touched by Technus, as well as everything else had been infected by him.

So, I go to the party, and everyone is dressed as either me, Sam, or Tucker, WTH. Both Fentons just shook their heads. Anyway, I am a pariah here as always, I go upstairs where no one would notice me, and then my ghost sense goes off outside Dash's room. Technus had woken up, and was calling all the machines that had been infected by his ectoplasm, and he built a battle-suit for himself. Interestingly, due to the fact that Dash hadn't used the upgrade disk I had included with the other computer stuff I sold him, He was a bit glitchy for a bit, until during our fight he got his hands on the disk and upgraded, I then took us outside, but he just called more appliances to him, and his suit got bigger to giant size.

I had to keep him busy while Sam and Tucker hacked him with a current version of Portals. Funny enough, due to Technus's ego, when Sam also was distracting him so that Tucker could do his thing, he easily fell for the old introducing yourself and your goals trick, he even said hello to Sam. Weird, Ghost don't normally do that in the middle of battle. Anyway, so by exploiting a hole in the software security, the mech suit was shut down and thermosed Technus, and the mech suit fell apart and I hauled all the pieces back to the shed and Dad was none the wiser that I was behind it going missing. Jack crossed his arms and shook his head, him and Danny are going to have a little chat about this later, as he thought that stuff was both taken by the Feds, and they had planted spyware in the junk.

The next time I saw him, was in Walker's Prison, with the rest of the Rogues at the time sitting at one table, was still in a robot suit, smaller the the one he was in here on earth, but looked the same. Didn't talk with him much, but he helped in the riot and escaped with the rest of the prisoners.

After that, was the English Test/Video Game incident, where due to my own actions, I had stayed up all night playing Doomed with Tucker and Sam (did not know this until later), and then when me and Tuck got smoked by Sam, again not knowing it was her, I threw the Fenton Helmet that I was using as a controller and it hit the portal door control button and he was the one to come out, it was immediate too, like he was waiting for it. Anyway, he had seen the game, and then he had left after catching me out with an ecto-shock field. I chalked it up that I would have one sleepy day at school and worry about Technus the next day, even though it technically was the next day, I had also completely forgotten about the test in Lancer's class, so I had slept through it, Both Fentons shook their heads in disapproval, and then that night we went hunting for Technus, where we found him in the park making a battle suit, which was based on Sam's game character Chaos, but fortunately he did not have her skills, so we defeated him, well he self-destructed the suit, and then I want to say he hid in the Fenton phone in my ear as I can't think of how else he got in the game, as I had left the Fenton phone I was wearing at the computer when I left after spending another night playing Doomed with Sam and Tuck, with Sam smoking us again.

So, Lancer had decided to let me retake the test, and gave me three days to study, and then found me in the internet café, how did he find me? Actually, I think I know how, he plays Doomed as well, as after we took down Technus in the game, we were on the verge of winning, and then got blindsided by Lancer's character.

Mom and Dad, you know part of that story when Lancer brought me home.

"I remember now, and you snapped Danny's phone in your hand, like it was nothing," Maddie remarked.

"Yeah, I did, I did buy him a new one though," Jack said, sheepishly.

Tucker and Sam filled me in on the Technus side of this ordeal while I was out of commission, apparently Tuck taught him how to play the game, and Technus realized he could use his powers while in the game, and then it became a hassle, fortunately, despite have the advantage of being able to be in the game when we couldn't, Technus didn't make that much progress while we were not around, probably had to learn when to expect how the game was going to act against him as a "player." "Here is a question, if he was in a game, why was it as big of a deal as Danny is making it out to be?" Jack asked, only to be immediately answered by what they read next. The reason it was a bad thing that he was in the game was that if he won, he could have spread his power all across the internet to every computer in the world. "Oh, that is why," Jack said.

Sam and Tuck kept Technus in check while I was dealing with the test. After acing the test, I rushed home, to get on the game to help stop Technus, and when Tuck mentioned that Technus was using his ghost powers, it gave me the idea to do the same, I don't know if I could pull off a stunt like that again, but it worked as I able to catch up to everyone quickly, and we were able to defeat Technus, and trapped him inside the game.

Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I have learned my lesson on this, nowadays it is mostly just my ghost hunting that affects my ability to get good grades, I don't know how I will be able to address that.

"Hopefully with help from the community of Amity Park, you will be able to do better with having to do less ghost hunting," Jack said.

The next time I actually saw him, which was after the Ghost King incident, but before the family camping trip. So, the three of us were in the lab, cataloging that all of my foes had been accounted for, as we were planning on having a ghost free fun weekend, turns out the computer memory was full, so I had to delete something, which I decided to delete an old version of Doomed, Tucker tried to warn me, but it was too late, as it was version of the game that Technus was trapped in, and by deleting the game, he was now free, well he was still trapped in the computer until I used the Fenton Ghost Catcher to remove him from it. I tried to duplicate myself, but that did not turn out well, as I still needed practice, and I was only able to do it during the Ghost King crisis due to the Power-enhancing nature of the Ecto-suit.

Even though I did not see it, he must have downloaded himself to Tuck's PDA, which would be how he hacked the Fenton RV. After he took command of the RV, and Dad hit the ejector button, "I remember this," Jack said. Technus had crashed the RV into an electronics store, and began forging a new battle suit with the RV as the base to make it more mobile, calling himself Technus 2.0. he tossed me into a dumpster and took off.

I will admit, my memory of the next bit is a bit hazy as I had to juggle the memories of two different versions of me, as I had the dumb idea, seemed good at the time, to use the Ghost Catcher to separate my human half and my ghost half, which both halves didn't realize at first that they were only the one half, the ghost half got my sense of responsibility to do good, but also my ego of doing everything myself, and my human half was just the fun loving with no care for responsibilities side of me, so both were worse off as separate then as one, so a series of different events for different halves happened, one was mainly fighting Technus and the other was hanging out.

Both sides had to team up as Technus was using the RV's ghost shield to keep Phantom away, so Fenton had to go inside and drain his battery, with him momentarily depowered and a wheel blown off, we pushed him into the harbor, and then Ghost side wanted to remerge but ended up just overshadowing the human half. Tucker and Sam tried to see if another pass through the Catcher would fix the issue, it didn't, wrong side, and it made it so there were two of the same looking Danny, as in how I looked before the split, as human I had a mullet when separated, and both could go ghost with only half of our powers, for example one had had flight and ecto-blasts, the other had intangibility, that was an interesting conundrum, poor Jazz, walked in and saw two of me. It was also a pain to hide the secret identity from Mom and Dad with that happening.

"Oh yeah, that was weird, how did we not realize something was up with that, as wasn't one of the Ghost Dannys outside with us and then when we asked where human him was, the other half landed hard on the ground, distracting us, and then human Danny was there without explanation," Maddie realized that was probably the closest that Danny came to having his secret exposed to them.

So, the RV plus battle suit is returned to us, and Mom and Dad recovered the Black Box, and then Dad plugged it into the House's mainframe, Technus was in the Black Box waiting for that as he then took over the house, and both halves split up, one to save the family and friends that were trapped and the other after Technus. So, Technus brought the house to life and such and started to move it down the street toward the power plant, to drain it. So, the four of us managed to catch up to the house, and Sam and Tuck grab the Catcher while the two of me took on Technus, was a curb stomp for us. Fortunately, Sam and Tuck showed up with the Catcher and separated the ghost from the house, and this is where he showed his new 2.0 look off. I/we grabbed him and flew backward through the Catcher, and it merged us back together. Once again whole, I easily captured Technus, and he vowed that he would return, they always do.

"Do they never learn?" Jack asked the open air.

He was at the Christmas Party and when the Rogues helped save Christmas Eve, Technus used his command of electricity to restore power to all the Christmas lights that had blown out.

After Christmas, I saw him briefly when I went after Skulker, thinking he had done something to Jazz, and Skulker was stealing his Lightning Rod. During our battle, Technus came out of the door to his realm, apparently, he had been in the shower, and was looking for his lightning rod, and I had accidently hit him with an ecto-blast that was aimed for Skulker but missed, which knocked him back into his realm.

After that, he was back to his old tricks, he attacked me while me, Sam and Tucker were at the mall, and had apparently upgraded himself, I did notice the new look at Christmas but didn't really register it in my mind. This is also where Technus had his ultimate moment as a villain as he managed to take over the satellite owned by Axion Labs. I don't know exactly how Technus got into the computer hub at Axion Labs as during our school trip there, Mr. Grey had held me back a moment to tell me to keep our family's ghost weirdness away from Valerie, as he didn't want her being the Red Huntress after I exposed her. By the time I walked into the main area, the Red Huntress suit was attacking the lab, I was like, what is Valerie doing, only to realize later that Technus was in control of the suit.

It also turns out, that despite he himself viewing emotions as being a weakness, and there by hates them, or at least love, he was the one pushing me and Valerie into dating each other, playing matchmaker, think about that for minute. Both Fentons cocked their heads in thought for a moment, was a bit odd. He was doing this to keep me distracted so that he could continue to hack the main computer's massive code firewall.

I realized the thing with the suit when it attacked human me at school, and I asked the question if she was in there, and Technus's voice came back at me, and pointed out that Valerie was elsewhere, and due to the fact of being outside the school building that has cameras and Valerie was right there, I couldn't easily go ghost as Technus was chasing me, had to climb into the dumpster to be able to change. Realizing I didn't have to hold back, I quickly made quick work of the suit, and Valerie was left demoralized, me as well, all to Technus's plan.

So, in a manner of speaking, Technus won this day, as he managed to crack the firewall and uploaded himself to the satellite, where he could reign terror with impunity, but before he did, he gave Valerie an upgrade. The current Red Huntress suit you will see Valerie use, was given to her by Technus, from the remnants of the old suit. She would hate that fact if I ever told her that, which I will probably have to at some point. Both Fentons felt the weight in Danny's words, laced with his slight dread and hesitancy of it. I "borrowed" the personal jetpack booster rocket and a O2 helmet and I went after Technus, having to fight Valerie too along the way.

With Val out of the way, I set the booster to overload and flew right for Technus as the head of the satellite became his head, and at the last moment, I turned intangible so that only the rocket was swallowed by the Ghost, and the rocket exploded and exploded Technus and the satellite, thereby saving the world from his terror, that is the second time I have made him explode, this time on purpose. I haven't seen Technus in a while, since this incident but I suspect he will be around in due time.

Anyway, despite him pushing us together, I enjoyed my time with Valerie, but that never became official, secretly due to the fact of our double lives. That is going to be a pain when she learns I am Phantom, as there is the matter of our fights, me exposing her to her dad, Cujo. As time goes on, I have realized that maybe I should let more people in on the secret, Valerie included. I need to patch things up with her, so that I may in the future count her as an ally.

"Though he does need more allies, the question becomes, will he reveal the secret to the world?" Jack asked.

"He may very well have to, but it will be on his terms, as long as no one blows it before he is ready to do so," Maddie said, hoping that they wouldn't be the ones to do it.

Also Note for Dad: If you are wondering about what happened to the class ring you gave me to give to Valerie, I asked Sam to hang on to it. I do wonder if she has found out about the engraving, I don't know as she hasn't said anything or asked me about it in anyway. Jack just put his hand behind his head, looked away from the laptop, and just whistled a bit.

Also, why does everyone keep saying that I am clueless, heck my codename during this mission in Axion Labs was Clueless1?

"How does he not know?" Jack asked.

"It is for him to figure it out," Maddie said.

If I were mark one as the second in command of the Rogues, it would be Technus, as I have faced him almost as many as Skulker and he is enough of a threat to be worthy of 2nd in command.

Loves to announce his plans, or at least he did at first. He has learned a bit once he "upgraded," he used to look like a mad scientist. Loves his shades as he has them still. He also is a sociopath as he hates emotions, or so it seems, which is weird still that he played matchmaker between me and Valerie, so that I would be out of his way.

As for whether if I think he is alive or not, I don't know, he hasn't mentioned anything regarding his human life, although he does have a first name, one of the few that do have a first and last name, also seems to be out of date with the lingo that we use today, as when Tuck was teaching him how to play Doomed, he said something like hoping to be as 'hip' and 'far out' as Tuck was in the game, so place him in the uncertain category and make a note to ask him later.

"Danny raises an interesting point; how many ghosts have first and last names?" Jack asked.

"Also, how many have a name that makes it seem like they were once alive, as there is the Box Ghost, as that seems to be his actual name," Maddie remarked.

Last note: During the ghost king incident, I swear for a brief time when coming face to face with my rogues when the ghost zone emptied, I swear I saw Technus, in his Doomed player model among them, but he was supposed to be trapped in the game until I accidently freed him, he was not among those that helped me fight the king's army so it could have been a mirage or something, or he found a way to project his mind out or something. May have hallucinated seeing him at the keep of the King, as I was falling unconscious due to the Ecto-suit's power drain on me.

"Makes sense as the Master of Technology, he would find a way to do something like that, or Danny could have just been seeing things among the large amount of Ghosts that came through the portal that day," Jack said.

"Makes sense either way," Maddie said, "Up next is Walker, finally about to get some answers about this crooked law enforcer." She exited Technus' file and opened Walker, Warden of the Ghost Zone.

"Good, no one locks up our son and gets away with it," Jack said.

There you have it everyone, the file on Technus, Master of Technology and the one I had been dreading to write, due to how much I needed to cover. Don't get used to this double post, just enjoy it. I hope you liked how I tried to rectify the deliberate goof that Technus was among the ghosts that left the Zone during Reign Storm, as some animator had to put him in that episode, despite that he was supposed to be still in the computer game.

Next time, The Warden of the Ghost Zone, Walker, that will be fun to work with a bit.