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It shouldn’t have been so difficult. Impersonate one of Billy’s little friends for a week, and Hotep Ra would—Well. That was between him and Hotep Ra. But things, as they so often did around liminals, got complicated.
He had known it wouldn’t be easy. He hadn’t a lick of technological skill, and getting Technus on board had been, hm, not precisely feasible. Amorpho didn’t like sharing the stage, anyway.
But! He had a plan. Hacking and whatnot required a toolset as well as a skillset. Take away one, and he could easily hide the lack of the other.
A bit of overshadowing to plant the idea before his entrance as ‘Tucker,’ a slouch and affectation of delinquency, a few carefully crafted lines… that was all it took to get grounded and banned from the use of all electronics.
That morning, he joined Billy and Samantha, moaning about his carefully choreographed loss and surreptitiously signalling to the weak ghosts he had managed to bribe into helping him, so that they’d distract Billy. Billy and Samantha didn’t seem at all suspicious. Good. His research into their annoying, oft-ignored friend was bearing fruit.
“Well,” said Samantha, “I know it sucks not being able to use them at home, but you do have the emergency one in your locker.”
Ah. That was an unexpected wrinkle. No matter. Amorpho was an expert at improvisation, and this was just another thing to break.
“It was a good idea to keep one there,” said Billy.
He would have to find a way to get rid of Billy soon, though. He would run out of allies before too long, and, as Spectra had discovered, Billy would, eventually, notice his ghost sense being played with.
Faking sick today might have been a smarter move- but shutting himself away in a human's room was no way to shine. Also, he might not remember what being sick felt like… No matter!
He spun the dial on the locker (with just a bit of flair) and popped the door open. With a tiny tug of ghostly telekinesis, the electronic fell out and cracked against the floor.
“Not my PDA!” wailed Amorpho. “My last hope!” He bent down, as if to try and salvage it (but in reality to make sure it was definitely, one hundred percent broken) but didn’t get there before Billy pushed him through the wall and into an empty classroom.
“Who are you?” demanded Billy, aura flaring through his eyes. “And what have you done with Tucker?”
“Wh-what? Dude, really, it’s me!”
“Try again,” snarled Billy.
“Really, Billy,” insisted Amorpho.
Billy’s eyes narrowed. “Amorpho,” he spat. “Where’s Tucker?”
“Er, um,” said Amorpho. “I’ll tell you, if you tell me what gave me away?”
“Other than you calling me by the wrong name again? ”
“Back at the lockers,” specified Amorpho. If he could salvage nothing else from this disaster, he could, at least, improve his craft.
“Tucker’s got names for all his PDAs. I think that one was Susan or something.”
“That’s creepy.”
“You’re literally impersonating him.” Billy shoved a glowing fist into his face. “Now. Where is my friend? ”
.
Honestly, Tucker thought that being Pharaoh would be pretty cool. Starving to death for it? Not so much.
As good as the food here looked and tasted - yes, he had caved and tried some - it didn’t have any substance. It didn’t make him full. Which. Yeah. Made sense. Eating at the Far Frozen or in Dora’s kingdom was like that for him and Sam, too. Danny was the only one who got any energy from it.
Anyway. The food wasn’t the point here. The point was that he’d been kidnapped. By ghosts. Which, uh. Was really more Danny’s thing than his.
And, yes, these were the Egyptian ghosts who had been interested in Tucker before, but that was strictly a mind control situation. Not something liable to make him miss class and have to give uncomfortable explanations to his parents. Overshadowing was a perfectly good excuse. Lots of people got overshadowed.
Where was he?
Right kidnapping. It was hard to think when he was this hungry! And it had only been a day. Ugh, even when he was fasting, he only had to last until dusk, and he had his parents doing the same thing.
This sucked.
Danny had better come get him soon, because he had tested out a few things, and he didn’t think he could get out on his own. Like, he could walk through the walls (or fall through the floor, more often) but there were a lot of ghosts here, and also… well… They were on a floating island.
Tucker couldn’t fly.
Like, at all.
(But Danny didn’t know where he was.)
He paced back and forth across the painted floor of the luxurious, golden room he’d been given. All of the ghosts here were so respectful of him, except for Hotep Ra, who had made himself scarce after depositing Tucker, but they were also incredibly unhelpful. And disturbingly excited about his upcoming ‘ascension.’
Which he was pretty sure was code for ‘we’re waiting for you to kick it.’
He really had to come up with a plan for if Danny couldn’t find him.
He could try dropping through the floor and out the bottom of the island again. Last time, they’d just sent a ghost to get him, but maybe they wouldn’t, this time? Yeah, and maybe he’d fall through a portal straight into the Nasty Burger, too, and they’d give him a free Mega Meaty Special.
Not likely. He’d starve while falling just as quickly as he would here.
He’d tried talking his way out, but while all of the Egyptian ghosts here professed their love and loyalty to him, they also were definitely fanatics. They truly believed that him dying was for the best. Was the best for him . Tucker couldn’t do anything with that. Even if he was the smoothest talker in the Ghost Zone (which he was).
(Even if the girls were really pretty and definitely into him.)
(Because they were into him for his spirit, not his body. As in, they wanted his disembodied spirit. Haha.)
He wished-
Hey, wait a second. That was something he hadn’t tried yet.
“Desiree!” he whisper-yelled. “I wish I was home in Amity Park!”
He waited, tense.
“Desiree! I wish I was home in Amity Park right now! Or at least somewhere in the human world? Pretty please?”
Nothing. Figures she wouldn’t show up the one time it’d be useful. Well, forget her.
What else could he do? If he had his PDA, maybe he could set up some kind of distress call. Or… yeah, there wasn’t anything for him to hack around here. Yeah.
Ugh, the first time around with Hotep Ra was way easier to deal with. And cooler. And more fun. And he was able to fix it all with the scepter-
Oh, that had some merit. Maybe there’d be, like, a spare scepter somewhere? One he could use?
He turned to face the door and rubbed his hands together nervously, feeling over his knuckles. It was a longshot, but… he didn’t have anything to lose, did he?
He closed his eyes and phased through the door. Even after all this time, that still felt weird. Especially under his own power.
The halls were somehow both hot and chilled, the false sun beating down through the windows, and the air misted by fountains. Someone sang softly in the distance. The hairs on the back of Tucker’s neck stood up.
This place was so cool. But so, so, creepy.
Now, if he were a magical staff, where would he be? Was there a magical staff storage room? Nah, that was dumb. Maybe just, like, an all purpose magical object storage room? Yeah, that sounded better.
Now, Tucker wasn’t exactly an infiltration expert, or an expert on how ghost Egypt organized their giant gold-plated (or was it solid gold? He didn’t know and it was bothering him. Did electroplating even exist back then? Baghdad batteries were a thing at least, right?) undead palaces full of mummy people and mobile clay statue thingies. Ushabti.
(How did he know that?)
They hadn’t bothered to put any guards on him - supposedly because of something about the sanctity of his person, but more probably because they didn’t think he could escape on his own - so he wasn’t particularly worried about wandering around. Even so, wherever he heard anyone - or thought he heard anyone - he tried to hide. One time he wound up halfway inside a wall.
Then, of course, he passed by a place with food, and even if he knew it wouldn’t actually feed him, he couldn’t help but slow down a little… But he snapped out of it. If he got out of here, then he could eat. Real food. His mom’s cooking. Maybe he could talk her into trying a few things with dates (the fruit; don’t be gross), though… Those things tasted great.
But, back to what he was actually doing. Despite not being at all an expert, being a (pretty good) hacker meant that he did have some idea of where people put important rooms. After all, getting physical access to servers was an important component of being able to complete a high-level hack.
Okay, maybe he was a little bit of an expert. Sam was money, Danny was the brawn, and Tucker was the brains. Obviously the most important part.
People tended to keep things they wanted safe in central areas, away from public traffic, often underground. With those guidelines, he could start looking.
Most of the big, locked doors he encountered in the first hour were false leads. Although, he didn’t actually find many of those in the first hour. He kept getting sort of dizzy and faint, enough to force him to stop and rest until he didn’t have spots dancing across his vision anymore.
In the second hour, he found a treasury. There was a lot of gold in there, but not much in the way of other items.
After some more fruitless searching and hiding from ghosts, Tucker contemplated the floor. He was very much not a fan of falling through them, but he didn’t have a lot of other options right now. From the last time he dropped through the floor (and out the bottom of the island), he was pretty sure there was another level down there, but he couldn’t find any stairs down.
He held his breath when he dropped, and gasped loudly and greedily when light hit his face again. Of course, he hit the floor again right after, and had all the air knocked out of him.
He coughed, then sneezed. There was a lot of dust here. Ow, his eyes. And back. Definitely also, ow, his back. Yikes.
After he’d rubbed the dust out of his eyes, though…
He was exactly where he wanted to be. While there weren’t any immediately obvious staffs, everything here glittered with magic, despite the layer of dust.
… How did he know what magic glittered like?
Never mind that! He saw exactly what he needed! This ring would teleport him - how did he know that? - to his nearest friends!
He put it on and--
--dropped onto the central console of the Specter Speeder.
“Ow!” he said.
“Tucker!” screamed Danny and Sam, both of them trying to hug him at once. Danny won, because of intangibility.
“How did you get here?” asked Danny.
“Explain later, food now,” said Tucker. “I haven’t eaten since I was kidnapped.”
“Er,” said Danny, “we didn’t bring any food…”
“What?”
“This was a kind of last minute rescue,” said Sam, apologetically.
“We can check and see if Dad left any fudge in the secret fudge compartment?” suggested Danny.
“You know what? Sure. At this point, I’ll take some suspicious Fenton Fudge. Let’s do that.”