Disclaimer: Yeah...My name still isn't attached to anything legal of Danny Phantom. I don't make money off this. At all.

Life, Death, and Everything in Between

A fanfic By MidnightResWri

He never wanted to rule the world until a certain half-ghost made the suggestion.

Command: Upgrade

Nikolai Technus loved to invent in life. He had a laboratory famed across the globe for the insane and wonderful things he created. Most of his work had been ahead of the times, yet to find it's niche in the world. He knew the world would eventually catch up with his brain. It just happened far too slowly to his liking.

When he attempted to sell his inventions to investors, most rejected him. They told him free energy would never catch on. The ability to connect computing devices (which took up entire rooms to perform simple tasks) in a network sounded like a pulp science fiction novel. Even after demonstrations, they refused to believe he had invented a very early, very limited Internet. Something for which he would come to find he would never gain credit.

Nikolai Technus died of old age. He left behind his notes and some of the prototypes of the gadgets he poured his life into, to be found by the next generation. But his love of technology kept him going to a long unlife.

The other side had been odd in the beginning. Nikolai wasn't sure what to do with himself, other than find technology. He needed to feel the advancements, make his own upgrades. Do something with the electrical appliances he had once poured his life into. He never saw the use of interacting with anyone, dead or alive. There was inventing and testing and upgrading to be had.

He continued his inventing in the Ghost Zone. Other residents of that world of the undead would, at times, come to him with commissions. An upgrade here. A new gadget there. He accumulated many favors over the years from those who approached him. He had yet to collect on them. He hardly cared.

He became known by his surname. He became praised for his workmanship. He became something in unlife that he never had before. He became respected.

Technus rarely entered the human world after his death. He never cared for it much. Only popped in every decade or so to check the living's progress in technology. And it was on his most recent visit that changed his mind about the world of the still living.

A living boy had turned into a very dead ghost before his eyes. The room he entered had been filled with inventions on par with his own genius. He was in a place he would have enjoyed speaking to the ones who managed to create both room and boy. He had only just announced his name and title when the boy spoke to him.

"Oh no you don't. You're not going to use the technology in this lab to take over the world."

The suggestion had honestly never occurred to him in all of his visits to that realm.

So, he responded that he thought it was a great idea. It really was a great suggestion. It wasn't really for him, though.

After hearing his admission to liking the idea, the strange little hybrid attacked him. He could have left after that battle, but he wanted to see if the world had finally caught up to him. What better way than to see the world through the eyes of the technology? Technus couldn't think of one.

He came to the living world much more often after that encounter. He couldn't tell you why. He justified his frequent schemes with excuses that mocked his own love of technology. He wanted to use technology to improve the world, not for the destruction that little hybrid thought he desired. In truth, Technus loved finding the more secret advancements of the living world. It helped augment his own research and development.

He enjoyed manipulating the technology and seeing how far he could push it. If he changed one aspect of the design, what would the outcome be?

If Technus remembered his manners, he might have thanked the young little hybrid for giving him a new purpose. Had he let himself drop the facade of megalomania around the child, he might have clarified his purpose in the world of the living.

But Technus never did, and so continued his antagonism towards the boy. The thought that it was to help the young child upgrade like his beloved technology crossed his mind. That might have been the truth. It might have been a lie. But that was the justification Technus used whenever he encountered the boy. Either truth or fiction, Technus found himself loving the world of the living and challenging the wonderful product of science he found that day: the perfect hybrid between life and death.