Hey again! Thanks to those who've reviewed. That includes Inviso-Bill, L'ange-Sans-Ailes, purpledog100, ilikedan and chaotic pink chocobo. Thanks for your rapid responses! And I realize that I forgot to make a disclaimer, so I'll do that now.
Disclaimer: DP and all related characters belong to Butch Hartman; the 'Almost Got 'Im' idea belongs to Warner Bros. who used it in Batman: TAS. But using the DP villains in that theme was my idea!
You know the drill: Leave a review and I'll leave a reply! So R&R, everybody!
Now back to Technus' 'Almost Got 'Im' story...
OOOO
"I had once been able to sneak around unnoticed by the whelp by controlling his friend's PDA system, so I figured that second times the charm, right?
"When his friend was alone, so the whelp wouldn't sense me, I ghosted into the device and took it over, being careful to keep up its usual functions so he wouldn't know the difference. Though I had to put up with some annoying, youthful music for a while, it'd be worth it if my plan worked.
"All I needed was for the child and his friend to go down to their basement and wait for the weapons vault to be opened. It wasn't hard; I was able to do it on the first day down there; the whelp's father opened the thing every five minutes to grab something, and the boy was on his computer with his friends.
"Did you know he keeps files on each of us and tabs on where we are?"
"Huh, really?" asked Johnny, a little skeptically.
"I guess he's getting smarter then," reviewed Vlad.
"Anyway, when his father came rushing out of the vault, and went rushing upstairs to go shoot at something, I took my chance and phased out of the PDA and slipped into the vault before it closed. "The boy sensed me, of course, as soon as I was out of the device, and saw me slip into the vault. He 'went ghost' as he says, and followed me, but he was too late; the weapons and gadgets that his family built were already fusing together into my new being!
"It took mere seconds for my new body to build itself, and once done, I knew the child wouldn't stand a chance, for I was now Technus: Destroyer of Worlds; Lord of Ectoplasmic Weapons! That last statement I made sure to tell him.
"You don't stand a chance, whelp!" I told him.
"You're right; I don't," he said, then he slammed the door shut and locked me in the vault."
"What just like that?" inquired Kitty.
"You couldn't ghost out?" added Ember.
"No, the inside of the room was protected by Ghost Shields so I couldn't get out. So I ended up being stuck in there for two days, until he came to let me out. Then he sucked me into the Thermos."
OOOO
It was the stupidest and bluntest ending they'd ever heard. If it were any more stupid and blunt, it would be a caveman's club combined with his forehead.
"You're kidding, right?" asked Johnny. "You just let him suck you in there?"
"Hey," yelled Technus, "by two days I was unshaven and starting to smell! What would you do?"
"Johnny'd have surrendered, shaved and taken a shower, if he knew what was good for him," Kitty answered for her beau, peering at him over her cards. "And back to the game, I got Three of a Kind, Ace High."
The others all groaned as they'd been beaten, Technus once again chucking his cards to the table.
"Eee," Kitty squeaked, reaching in to take her poker pot.
"Well," began Vlad, "looks like the deal and anecdote falls to you, Box Ghost."
"This should be good," chuckled Skulker, picking up his new hand.
"Har-dee-har-har! Very well, I shall relinquish my tale of packaged terror! It was but four days ago...BEWARE, for those of you with weak constitutions may wish to leave the table!"
"Hey, no way we're givin' you a better shot at the pot, dude; we're stayin'!" said Johnny.
"As you wish! It happened four days ago..."
OOOO
"I had him cornered in a warehouse; controlling dozens of boxes of TNT! I saw the fear on his face, and I knew this was his end, and then..."
"What?" asked Ember.
"I forgot TNT could explode, so he fired at a box and they all blew up in my face!"
OOOO
"But..." stammered Kitty, "you said you knew the boxes had TNT in them."
"Of course," said the Box Ghost, "with all that TNT, the boxes would be very heavy indeed! HA HA! And I was so close too..."
Everyone else just stared at him, not knowing whether to laugh at him or slap their heads in exasperation. This was beyond Technus' defeat. This defied the laws of stupidity! CRIMINY! CRIMINY! DO YOU HEAR ME!
"So let me get this straight," Vlad spoke up, rubbing his temples, "you had boxes loaded with TNT not so you could blow Daniel up, but so you could hit him with them?"
"Yeah."
Of the earlier choice, the players decided on the former and laughed at him until they hurt, even Walker and Skulker. In fact, Johnny fell out of his chair and Kitty and Ember guffawed until their eyes were blinded by tears.
"Heeey, it's not that funny!"
"Oh, but it is," corrected Vlad, in between giggles. "Skulker: deal out the cards and tell your story before we keel over!"
"Sounds good," he agreed, still chuckling himself.
"Oh, shut up," the Box Ghost mumbled bitterly.
"I agree with Plasmius," stated Skulker, "for to successfully capture your prey, you must know his weaknesses, and I thought of a way to exploit one of his..."
OOOO
"I too have used that PDA to my advantage, though it caused me nothing but trouble the first time, I thought of a way to manipulate it without hurting myself.
"I just needed the Ghost Child to show up with his friends, and to avoid his Thermos for as long as I could; the rest was simple.
"I purposely revealed myself to him on his way home from school, knowing that he would instinctively rush in to defeat me. The two others that he surrounds himself with were there as well. I only needed the one with the PDA, but she could still be useful.
"I evaded all his attacks, and once I was close enough, I shot an imprint of myself into the PDA. Everything that was me was downloaded into the device: My intelligence, personality and hunter's disposition. Before any of them could react, I had the PDA attach to his male comrade and absorb my duplicated consciousness into his brain. In mere moments, his body was at my whim, and the child was now dealing with two Skulkers, but the tender part was that he would never bring himself to hurt his friend, no matter who was in control.
"I was sure that I had him at my mercy, although my 'extended body' was limited, I still had some power in it. For instance, he could make himself intangible and fly, so he was able to pose a threat, and I had some detachable artillery that I handed to him, to make sure he could keep the child from getting to the PDA."
"Hmm, not bad," muttered Vlad.
Nobody knew whether he was talking about Skulker's plan or his hand, prompting Johnny and Technus to fold.
"At one point, when the Ghost Child had been knocked to the ground, he whispered something to his other friend, the dark-tinted girl."
"Sam," Kitty clarified.
"Whatever. Anyway, he whispered something to her and then he grabbed her and flew off to his home. I, of course, followed with my 'extension', ready to bring the child to his knees. He ended up landing in the basement, and had the girl start tapping into his computer.
"When we arrived, he took the offensive and tried to steer us away. I knew that he was up to something, so I tried firing for the girl, but every one of my..er..our shots, he either took himself or deflected.
"Danny! It's ready!" the girl told him.
"The Ghost Child then altered his fighting style and knocked the weapons out of my 'extension's' hands and grabbed him, dragging him to the computer. Every attempt I made to stop him, he evaded and he quickly plugged a cord from the computer into the PDA attached to his comrade.
"His computer screen started flashing, and it was then that I realized what he was doing. Thousands of pictures of some dark-haired vixen with nearly flawless skin started downloading into the PDA."
"Paulina," Kitty clarified again.
"That girl needs a mustache drawn on her," mumbled Technus.
"As I was saying, he was downloading thousands of pictures of that girl to the PDA, and I knew what he was doing. Enough downloads into that device would cause it to crash and my digital consciousness would be lost. Before I could stop it, it was too late, the device dropped from his comrade and hit the floor, sizzling.
"Hey!" he said, now back in control. "Nobody uses Tucker Foley as a human photocopier!"
"With that, the Ghost Child sucked me into the Thermos, and brought me back to his Ghost Portal. The last thing I heard was:
"Figures, I just finished my payments on that one!"
OOOO
"Still..." concluded Skulker, "I almost got 'im."
"Pretty good, Skulker; you're improving," praised Vlad. "Speaking of improving, Four of a Kind, Two High!"
Groans seemed to be the sound of the day, as they once again echoed through the destitute establishment. "Now, now; let's not be sore losers," advised Vlad, eagerly grabbing what was coming to him.
"Or sore winners," whispered Johnny.
"Huh," Vlad snorted. "And what of you, Mr. 13? Any daring evil-doing you'd like to share, or are you too embarrassed to enlighten us?"
"We'll both tell the story," corrected Kitty. "We're always together after all."
"That's not what I hear," scoffed Skulker, gathering up the deck. "Uh, who should I pass to if it's both your stories?"
"I'll tell it, and Johnny can deal, then we'll just go to Dracula over here," she explained, pointing uninterestingly at Plasmius. "That cool with everyone?"
No one held any objections, as no one particularly cared, so the deck went to Johnny with Kitty beginning the story.
As all eyes were on Kitty, no one noticed a green-eyed shadow rising from Johnny's feet and peeking at their hands...
OOOO
"Okay, something that you all have to understand is that, unlike you guys, Johnny and me don't make big revenge plans and hunting sprees. We just wanna cruise around, see some sights, and be left alone. Only problem is that Danny keeps wanting to ruin our fun every time he sees us."
"Might have somethin' to do with the fact that we tried to suck his sister's spirit in here or that you overshadowed that girl he liked," added Johnny.
"Anyway, we were in the town's mall. After all, I'd been stuck in this zone for years, I wanted to catch up on what fashionswere in now. Once I found what I liked, I had Johnny bring out his shadow and rough up the place while we left. But before we were barely out of the store, guess who shows up?
"You guys never waste time getting into trouble, do you?" he asked with his arms crossed in front of his chest like we were a couple of naughty kids. I could see those two friends of his running up behind him.
"Can't say we do," Johnny said back, and sicked his shadow on him.
"We tried to run while his shadow fought Danny, but I guess he's getting stronger because next thing we know, the shadow's flat on the ground in front of us."
"You guys really are losing your edge," Danny criticized.
"Then Johnny got an idea; he saw that Paulina girl coming out of a store to see what was going on."
"Shadow, grab the girl!" Johnny ordered.
"So his shadow melted into the floor, and then reformed by Paulina;grabbed her, then he brought her in front of us, so Danny couldn't fire at us without hurting her.
"Hey, let her go!" he yelled.
"Yeah, right. That's gonna happen!" Johnny laughed.
"Hi," Paulina waved at him.
"Looks like you're stuck, runt. Now just let us go, and we'll let go of the girl," Johnny negotiated.
"I have a better idea," Danny said, charging up his hand. "How 'bout you let her go before I suck you back into the Ghost Zone?"
"Then Danny fired at a nearby mirror window; it bounced off and hit the shadow from behind, causing him to drop Paulina.
"Danny caught her, and she started stroking his hair. Ew.
"Ooo. Brave and smart," she cooed, seriously, cooed at him.
"While he helped her up, we bolted to Johnny's bike and got out of there..."
OOOO
"But we almost got 'im," Kitty concluded.
"Please, you weren't even close," Vlad groaned.
"Oh, stuff it," said Johnny. "You're just as lousy as we are. In case you haven't noticed, the runt's still flyin' around beatin' us!"
"True, but don't you think there's a reason he calls me his arch-enemy? I've never been sucked into the Thermos; I've never been beaten by Daniel on his own accord, and even when I lose, I still get something out of it, don't I?"
Vlad's statement caused everyone to shut up, that and his Seven High Straight, again winning him the hand.
"Something you all seem to be forgetting is that you keep record of your powers, and his strengths and weaknesses, like those he's close to. But you keep missing the factor of your own weaknesses. Ember depends on her music; Walker forgets that Danny has friends in high places; Technus is limited by the technology he uses; Box Ghost is a victim of his pathetic powers and stupidity."
"Hey! I have feelings too, you know!" he protested.
"Yes, I'm sure you do," murmured Vlad. "Moving on, Skulker's obsession with the hunt and need for the exoskeleton weakens him. And Johnny, your shadow can't withstand a decent blast of light."
"And what about you?" asked Ember.
"Yeah, you're telling us you don't have any flaws?" agreed Technus.
"Oh, of course I do," Vlad clarified. "But like I said, I factor them in and therefore I get more out of my plans, failure or not. That's the first rule of business, my friends: Turn every weakness into a strength. Keep your downfalls close to you, so you can use them to your eventual advantage." He took the deck from Johnny, and quickly shuffled it.
"For you see, many of his weaknesses are similar to my own, so I just had to think of how I would trap myself..."
OOOO
"For weeks I'd let rumors circulate through the Ghost Zone about a bank heist in Amity Park. I knew sooner or later, Daniel would overhear some bumbler, and head to stop it. I stayed out of sight, until he arrived, then I snuck up behind him and pummeled him over the head with one of my new inventions, the Plasmius Unconsciousness, designed to instantly knock out any ghost it comes in contact with.
"It performed without flaw, knocking him out just as I planned. I then took him to an underground lair near the outskirts of the town and bound him to one of the walls via some ghostly manacles.
"Given his spirit, it didn't take him long to wake up; idiotically demanding to know where he was and what I was scheming. LikeI would just tell him! Right!
"Patience, Daniel," I told him, "it's something you're going to need."
"I whistled, beckoning my animal ghost experiments to me. Daniel might have turned my earlier creations on me, but I still had my vultures, not to mention some new mutates I'd strung together. Except this time I made sure to program loyalty to me into their brains to avoid any repetitions of last time.
"It's your choice, Daniel," I informed. "Be eaten, beaten and pecked alive by my pets or join me and embrace the glory that awaits you. And who knows, with you on my side, maybe your mother will finally gather her senses and leave that fat idiot!"
"Wow, that's quite the offer," he said. "It's like one of those catch-22 situations, so you can just take that offer and shove it up your-"
"Insolent fool! Big mistake, Danny; your last mistake.." I snapped my fingers, ordering my beasts to approach him. "I didn't want it to be like this, Daniel; I wanted you at my side with Maddie, but I suppose it's better like this. After all, with you out of the way, your father..is already dead!"
"My animals were done with waiting and were coming in for their feed, but before any could even reach him-
CRASH!
"The wall adjacent burst opened, and a young figure stepped out holding a very large ecto-gun, so large, in fact, that she had to bear it on her shoulder to fire it. I recognized the girl, one of Danny's little friends, the night-loving Samantha Manson.
"Let him go, Vlad, or else!" she threatened. I had to admit that Danny had good choice in friends.
"Oh well, isn't this quaint? The little girlfriend to the rescue!" I couldn't help but laugh at them when their faces went several shades of red.
"She's not my girlfriend!"
"I'm not his girlfriend!"
"Fair enough," I said.
"You'd think they'd give that up and get together," said Ember.
"Yeah, who are they tryin' to kid?" asked Kitty. "I doubt they're even fooling themselves!"
"Anyway, as I was saying: "My pets, attack Daniel!"
"Danny, stay still!" Ms. Manson yelled.
"She fired the gun at his restraints, setting him free, and he promptly tore into my pets. They may be strong, but they're little sport against him. But that wasn't my concern; I was focussing on Samanatha. She kept firing at me, and I easily evaded. Then I turned invisible, and beat her over the head, knocking her unconscious, which, having done that twice that night, had made me realize that knocking people out was quite amusing.
"Unfortunately, I got a good wallop myself, as I too late realized that she was wearing the Specter Deflector belt that had caused me so much grief not long ago. Luckily, I saw the key in her boot, and snatched it, only taking a few shocks, and unlocked the device from her waist.
"Daniel was too busy with all the animals to notice that I had snuck out of the lair with his young friendover my shoulder, and by the time he did, I was long gone..."
OOOO
"So what'd you do with the girl?" inquired Skulker. "Just drop her in the street somewhere?"
"Au contraire, my mechanized manhunter. Did I not say that Daniel had weaknesses similar to my own. My attachment to Maddie brings me down the same way Ms. Manson brings him down."
"Oh, so you used the girl to lure him somewhere else then," deduced Walker.
"Not quite," corrected Vlad. "Since I knew Daniel would escape my pets eventually, I needed another plan to get him on my side. A plan which is in effect right now!"
"Wait," Johnny interrupted. "You mean that this story like just happened?"
"Of course; why do you think I was late?" Vlad asked. "Right as we speak, Ms. Manson is dangling over a vat of acid in the Amity Chemical Plant, attached to a chain made to drop her down in-" The villain glanced at his watch. "oh, about half an hour now. I've sent word to Daniel. He is to surrender to me and my will immediately or Samantha will be nothing more but waste. And since I know Danny doesn't know where I placed her, I also know that I've won! HA HA HA!"
"Far from it, Plasmius," Skulker muttered, standing up. Except it wasn't Skulker's modified voice coming from the suit, but a younger, smaller voice.
Before anyone could comprehend what was going on, 'Skulker' grabbed Vlad by his collar, and flung him into some nearby tables. Then fired ecto-webs at everyone else, sticking them where they sat.
"For future reference, punks," he growled. "If you want a piece of me: Fine, but any of you touch my family or friends again, and you'll be seeing what's beyond your level of consciousness!"
He reached his hands up to his artificial head, and pulled it off, revealing none other than--Danny Phantom!
"Aw, crud," muttered Johnny.
"Looks like I'm pretty good at setting a trap myself. Lucky for me, I found Skulker in time to 'convince' him to lend me his suit." He headed towards the exit to go find Sam, but paused before leaving.
"One last thing." He held up his cards. "Straight Flush, Queen High. Beat that, losers!"
"The Box Ghost will have his revenge! I shall-"
"OH, SHUT UP!" roared everyone in the room.
"Okay," he whispered meekly.
OOOO
Sam had woken up some time ago, and wasn't pleased to see herself chained in midair, and even less pleased to see the bubbling acid below her. The bubbling liquid that she was quickly approaching, now with barely two minutes left.
"Danny! Tucker!" She got no response. "S-somebody! Anybody!"
"I'm here, Sam!" she heard Danny's voice coming towards her, seconds before he ghosted through the nearest wall.
Sam was so happy to see him that she didn't even wonder why he was wearing Skulker's exoskeleton.
Danny grabbed her in his arms and ghosted her through the chain, and then ghosted through the ceiling, back to her house.
"Thanks, Danny. I thought I was done!" she exclaimed, holding her arms around his neck a little tighter.
"Hey, not on my watch! Who would keep me from doing something stupid? Like telling me not to head to an obviouslyfake bank heist?" he asked.
"Yeah." Shesuddenly looked him over."Uh, Danny, what's with the Skulker ensemble?"
"Let's just say that tonight's been one crazy adventure after another," he replied and left it at that.
He dropped her off at her porch and bid her goodnight.
"Uh, Danny?" she asked, averting her gaze.
"Yeah, Sam?"
"I was kinda wondering if maybe you'd like to-I dunno-uh.."
Before she could ask him anything, she saw him shiver and a light mist appeared from his mouth.
"Looks like it'll have to wait, Sam. Raincheck, okay?"
"Sure, it's not that important."
With that, Danny flew off to find who or what had set off his Ghost Sense, while Sam looked after him, shaking her head, but smiling.
"Hmm, almost got 'im..."
XXXX
And that's "Almost Got 'Im. Hope you enjoyed! Sorry it was so short chapter-wise, but I tried to make it longer word-wise! Keep your eyes open for my next story, which'll hopefully be longer. Look out for "Shell of a Teen"! Starring Dash Baxter!