Author's Note: Yup, I've turned the Box Ghost into a CATS-clone because I thought it'd be funny for him to speak in bad Engrish. You can bet your socks that there'll be more Box Robot appearances. It is also interesting to note that at the time of writing this chapter, scientists in Japan have created an artificial touch-sensitive skin much like the one Danny has in this fanfic. Here's to them.

P.S. I didn't want the Praetoriani to be confused with Praetorians (people from Praetoria), so I've changed the name of the Praetoriani to Praetor throughout the entire story. They are Praetor or Praetors and anything belonging to them is Praetorian. This brings me on to a second point. When I went back to alter the names, I found huge mistakes. How come none of you pointed them out to me, especially the huge error where I referred to Tucker as a 'she'? I'm beginning to wonder whether anybody actually reads my stories. It's no fun going back and seeing mistakes that nobody comments on, because it suggests to me the people who've reviewed only like my fanfic because it features their favourite character and not because of my writing skills or the plot. This sucks the fun out of writing. Please be more critical when reviewing and that means leaving reasons for why you liked or didn't like something.

BEGIN TRANSMISSION #03

"The Insurgent erased those memories?" exclaimed Lancer incredulously.

The Met Officer that stood in front of him nodded nervously. He had been asked to retrieve the data from the Insurgent's memory banks. It should have been easy. The head was the only thing that survived and the hard drive looked as if it was fully intact. Yet there had been so much encryption on the Insurgent's memories, it was a wonder how the robot himself could have used them.
"The hard drive was completely empty, sir," was the reply from the Met Officer.

Lancer sighed, as he dropped the papers to his desk. This was just not his day. He had been so close too. He could have captured the vigilante if only he had been just a bit quicker.
"Completely empty?" he asked again, just to make sure.

"Well, there was one thing left," said the Insurgent quietly.

"Well?" exclaimed Lancer sternly. "Spit it out, man!"

"The vigilante is a cyborg and his name is Phantom."

"Not again," sighed Phantom.

"Ha, nothing can stopping I, for I Box Robot," droned the bulky, blue Insurgent. "You have no chance to survive make your time." The Box Robot sidled back and grabbed the nearest box to hand. "All these box are belong to I," said the Box Robot, before it lifted the huge cardboard box and threw it at Phantom.

The box never hit Phantom, as he became intangible. It went straight through him harmlessly.
"Please, is that the best you can do?" yawned Phantom. It wasn't just that he was bored with the Box Robot's antics. He had a long day and it was getting late. "I've faced kittens tougher than you. They even spoke better English than you." He aimed a finger and fired a small plasma shot at the Box Robot's chest, hitting it and sending it flying backwards.

He couldn't believe that this Box Robot was the latest Insurgent attack on Amitropolis. If he didn't count it, though, then there hadn't really been any Insurgent activity since the Casper High Incident.
"This must be some kind of joke," said Phantom, as he strode over towards the Box Robot.

"Ha, ha, ha. I, Box Robot," laughed the Box Robot mechanically, as it rose back up and swung its arms slowly at Phantom. "You have no chance to survive make your time." Actually, slowly was an understatement.

"Looks like your arms've rusted up," commented Phantom, as he casually ducked underneath the rotating arm and walked up to the Box Robot. "Jeez, you're a mess." He then placed one finger against the Box Robot's chest and pushed, toppling it over in one go. "I should have left you to the cops to handle," he sighed, as he turned round and started walking away.

Before he got out of the warehouse, he turned invisible. After all, he didn't want anyone to see where he was going. It was not something that he wanted, especially because he had a great desire to change back to Danny Manson and take a shower to wash off the sweat that had accumulated on what parts of him were still human. A smile slowly broke across his lips. A robot that stank of B.O. Now that was a funny thought.

"I, Box Robot!" cried a voice from behind him.

Phantom whirled round and saw that the Box Robot had got back on to its feet. He sighed angrily. This was looking to be a long night. He became visible again and then rushed straight at the Box Robot, just as it picked up a huge box. The thing looked heavy and a split second later, Phantom realised it was flying through the air towards him. He slid underneath the box and let it fly over his head to crash into a million splinters behind him.

Seconds later, Phantom leapt out of the way. The floor in front of him splintered, as an energy blast smashed into the floor where he had been an instant earlier. He looked towards the two Insurgents, the Box Robot, and some new robot that had appeared out of nowhere.

Imagine a female Phantom; where Phantom's armour was black hers was red, and where his armour was white hers was black. The entire face of this robot was obscured by a helmet with a darkened visor and she held a large bazooka of some sort. She floated on what looked to be some kind of hover board.

"Well, well, if it ain't the half-robot freak," taunted the newcomer.

"And what if it is?" retorted Phantom; he only realised it wasn't the best of comebacks after he had said it, and kicked himself mentally for it.

The red newcomer laughed.
"Take a guess," she replied, before she aimed her bazooka at Phantom. The inner barrel began to glow, before a huge blast of energy shot out and straight at Phantom. "Well, you're quick," she commented, upon seeing that she had missed. She turned round to face the Box Robot. "Go get what we came for," she told him sternly. "I'll deal with this traitor."

"All those parts are in time belong to us," blurted out the Box Robot nonsensically, before it turned round. "Every hail Skulker!"

"I have no idea what you said, but I'm not letting you do it," called out Phantom, before he reappeared in front of the Box Robot and blasted it in the chest, sending it flying backwards. He watched as the red Insurgent flew above the Box Robot and then turned round to face him. "You're not taking anything from this place."

"Oh yeah?" exclaimed the red Insurgent. "Talk to my foot." She leapt off the board and kicked out at Phantom, aiming for his head, but her foot connected with his chest instead. Then she aimed her bazooka at his head and fired. She fired again and then again, but all her shots missed, as Phantom rolled out of the way and ran for it. "Come back here and face your punishment like a robot!" she called out.

There was no response from Phantom. She cried out angrily and then leapt on to her hover board, before chasing straight after him.
"Coward!" she called out.

"I'm no coward!" protested Phantom from his hiding place. "I just want to keep my head on my shoulders. Is that so bad?"

"You'd look better than you do now," insulted the red Insurgent. "Now come out and face your fate like a robot!"

"If you say so," retorted Phantom, before he leapt out from behind the boxes and threw his charged bolt of plasma energy at the Insurgent's bazooka. He missed. "Aw man!" he sighed disappointedly. He saw her fire and leapt backwards, just in time to avoid being hit by a blast of energy that would have torn the limbs from his body. Phantom returned fire, but the red Insurgent dodged all his shots.

The next blast hit right underneath his foot before he could even step down. The debris caught him off guard and before he knew it, Phantom toppled backwards and crashed on to the hard concrete floor. His heart, one of his remaining human organs, was racing a mile a minute. His mind was attempting to do the same and try to think up of a way to defeat this Insurgent.

"I knew it," laughed the red Insurgent, as she floated over him. "You're not that tough."

"Commander Echelon, parts are now belong to us," buzzed the Box Robot.

"Good," snapped the red Insurgent, as she aimed her bazooka down at Phantom. "Now say nighty-night."

"Nighty-night," replied Phantom and with the emphasis on the last word, he kicked at Echelon's hover board with such force that she fell off it and fired a shot straight into the Box Robot.

"You have no chance to survive make your time," groaned the Box Robot, before it keeled over and crashed on to the floor with a heavy thud.

Phantom turned his gaze away from the sparks that flew from the damaged Box Robot and then towards Echelon. She had already gotten back to her feet. He scrambled up to his feet as best as he could, but not before she fired at him. There was no way he could get out of the way in time. Phantom raised his hand in front of him almost instinctively.

In movies, this is where something steps in to save the hero. It may be a friend, an ally that is of yet unknown, it could even be a new ability like say, some kind of force field made out of an eerie green plasma energy. Whatever it was, it would at this point step in and save Phantom from certain doom. You'd expect it to happen, like some great green aura that comes up to protect Phantom from bodily harm or some kind of flat reflective surface of plasma energy to reflect.

It didn't happen.

The force of the energy bolt blasts hit him like a tonne of bricks.

Echelon smiled underneath her helmet then turned to face Box Robot.
"Come on, let's get out of here," she said sternly. She hopped back on to her hover board, her feet planted firmly on the metal and then flew it out of the warehouse with the Box Ghost following after her.

And Phantom lay there unconscious on the floor of the warehouse, the lower half of his robotic body blasted to pieces. Wires dangled loosely, electricity leaping between frayed wires and metal, sparks flying and hydraulic fluids and blood dripped on to the floor and spread into a huge puddle. Eyes stared sightlessly upwards.

Danny's eyes snapped open. He couldn't see a thing. The only thing he could sense was the stagnant air around him; the stillness of the silence seemed so fast-paced and unnatural. The silence of the air seemed to echo and reverberate within the small, confined space. Both made his stomach seem to churn.

Something slid open and Danny was suddenly bathed in a blinding light that made his pupils narrow and his eyes squint.

"Daniel."

That voice sounded so familiar to Danny, but to whom did it belong? Why did he recognise that voice and that thin figure silhouetted in the bright light.
"Who are you?" he asked, as he shielded his sensitive eyes from the bright light with a metallic hand.

A gasp escaped Danny's throat. He was still in his robotic form. Danny recognised that black-hand with the white fingers and the white metallic forearm that it was attached to. There was no doubt about it. He was still in his robotic form and that was worrying. This person knew his name, not the pseudonym he had given himself. He knew that Phantom was Danny. Whoever this person was, he knew Phantom's secret identity.
"How do you…?" began Danny, but he was cut off the by the voice of the silhouetted figure.

"My great masterpiece," chuckled the person in front of him.

"How do you know my name?" asked Danny worriedly.

"Go!" called out the man standing in front of Danny. "After him! He must pay for what he's done! Now go! Kill him! That's an order!"

Images of memories, forgotten, past and present flashed before his eyes. The round face of a black-haired man, his eyes hidden by a white glow that made his spectacles white. The thin face of a man with dark hair. Danny's blueprints. The Insurgents he had destroyed.

A siren screamed through the silence, shattering all semblance of serenity.

Danny's eyes snapped open for real and he sat upright. The first question that went through his mind was, 'Where was he?' Where was he and what had happened to bring him to this place? He looked around him and noticed the large crates and boxes, each emblazoned with the FentonWorx Corporation's logo; the emblem, a cog with a capital F atop a capital W within its hole, was known throughout the United States and none more so than in Amitropolis.

The place looked like a warehouse…

A warehouse? Yes, that's right. Danny had gone to a FentonWorx warehouse to stop some Insurgents from stealing something and… He remembered now. That red Insurgent, Echelon. She had blasted him to bits surely? He could remember, before he blacked out, seeing his arm lying a good metre away from his body and fluids dripping from his wrecked robotic body.

Yet, he raised his robotic hands in front of him and flexed his hands. He was in one piece and it didn't appear as if he was damaged in any way.

The alarm was still wailing. It was deafening loud. How could anyone hear anything in this racket?

Danny… No, he had to refrain from calling himself that whenever he was in his robotic form. He was Phantom. Whenever he was in his robotic form, he was Phantom, and no one else.

The sound of metal clashing against concrete echoed around the huge warehouse.

Before Phantom knew what was going on, he was completely surrounded by Geists. These weren't the purple Geists of the Insurgents either. They were the green Geists that could only have belonged to the FentonWorx Corporation, with white glowing slits for eyes and plasma cannons for their right arms.

"I must say it's mighty darned stupid of you to stick around and trip the alarm like that," drawled a young Texan-sounding voice. "Never seen a crook do that before, but I'm darned if it don't make my job easier."

A robot suddenly appeared in view in front of Phantom. Like Phantom, he had a human face. It differed, though, in that the face had a rather chiselled chin and what seemed like dimples on his skin. His armour was black like Danny's and was similar in coloration to Phantom's, only that the hands looked as if he were wearing brown leather gloves and it looked as if he was also wearing leather cowboy boots. There was a red kerchief around his neck and in place of a helmet was a Stetson.

Phantom recognised the green cloak draped around this robot's shoulders. Its edges were laced with gold brocade and a length of gold brocade was fastened to the jewelled epaulettes on either side of the cloak to keep it in place. The symbol on these circular epaulettes was that of the FentonWorx Corporation. It was unmistakable, as was the cloak itself.

This robot was one of the Four Praetors.

"It's time to turn yerself in, friend," continued the black-armoured Praetor. "Yer days as a vigilante are over."

Phantom thought about his predicament. He didn't want to speak to the Praetor and give his voice away. That voice of his was possibly the only thing that could help track him down. It was the only thing he couldn't disguise and hide from the all-seeing FentonWorx Corporation. He was about to get slowly to his feet, when the Praetor called out.

"Easy there," called out the Texan-sounding Praetor. "You take that nice and slow there, partner. Don't want you pulling any of your darned tricks." He glared at Phantom with ice-cold blue eyes, regarding Danny carefully, as he said, "Now you put your hands where we can all see 'em. That's right. Nice and easy does it."

Phantom vanished.

"What in tarnation?" exclaimed the Praetor suddenly. "Fire!" he called out. "Fire! Don't let that snake in the grass get away!"

A hole was suddenly blasted into the chest of one of the Geists and then another. Three more Geists suddenly went down in a hail of plasma bolts that seemed to come from nowhere. The Geists fired blindly at a target they couldn't see. None of the robots could see Phantom dodging their shots, returning fire from random positions within the circle of robots that attempted to blast him to bits.

"Nobody makes a fool out of the Praetors!" cried the Praetor, before he lashed out at thin air with what seemed like a metallic whip.

Being invisible, Phantom didn't really think the Praetor would hit him. He was wrong.

The shock jolted him out of invisibility. He staggered back away from the Praetor in shock, not believing that the black robot had managed to cause a huge gash in his right arm near his shoulder. Phantom was sure that his circuitry was exposed now thanks to the huge slash in his armoured exterior.

"Stand down," ordered the Praetor to the Geists. "Let me deal with this vigilante." He waited a while and heard nothing. "What? No wise acre comments?" he asked Phantom and received no reply. "You're a silent one, huh? Well, I don't mind. No skin off my nose." Then with one flick of his wrist and his arm, he lifted the whip into the air and whirled it round above his head.

It was difficult for Phantom to anticipate what the Praetor would do next. He had never encountered a robot that attacked with a chain whip before. In fact, before he had met this Praetor, he had never thought of a whip as much of a weapon against a robot or a cyborg like him.

The whip lashed out and hit Phantom in the chest with a horrible cracking noise. It retracted and the Praetor threw the whip's pointed end straight at Phantom's chest.

Phantom became intangible and the tip of the whip went straight through him. He rushed at the Praetor, hoping to get at least one hit in and then be off. Green plasma energy charged up in the palm of his hands and then he fired these shots at the Praetor. They were dead on their mark, yet none of them hit the Praetor. Phantom's opponent had become intangible too and a split second later had leapt at him and knocked him off his feet.

He had experience with this before. As Phantom fell, he quickly took advantage of the momentum. Intangible metallic hands grabbed on to the Praetor's shoulders. Phantom's intangible foot shoved against the Praetor. He crashed to the floor, then used his momentum to throw the Praetor off him, kicking out as he did so to get his opponent off him as quick as possible.

The Geist chip became too hot and Phantom became tangible again, as the Geist circuitry reset itself. He got up to his feet as quickly as possible, just in time to see the Praetor get back up.

A chain whipped out and ensnared itself around Phantom's leg. The Praetor, with a smug smile, yanked and pulled Phantom's leg out of from right beneath him.
"Give it up, partner," drawled the Praetor. "I can hog-tie you six ways to Sunday. There's no way you can beat me."

"We'll see about that," said Phantom foolishly.

"So, you can talk," said the Praetor in a mock-impressed tone. "And here I was thinking you were mute, when in fact you were just plain rude."

Phantom quickly fired a blast of plasma energy at the Praetor, hitting him in the chest. He had hoped that the shock would have made him let go, but it wasn't powerful enough. It was apparent from the smile that spread across the Praetor's face that Phantom would have to think up of another way to break free.

The Praetor tugged on the whip and pulled Phantom straight towards him. The black cyborg slid towards him, as he clenched his free hand tightly into a fist. He threw the fist straight down at Phantom.

Robotic hands caught the fist and did their best to hold the Praetor's fist back. Phantom struggled against the might behind the Praetor's robotic arm. It was powerful. The arm was far stronger than anything he had experienced before and it was only a matter of time before the Praetor's might gave way and his fist crushed him.

"Break it up! Break it up!"

There was a green blur and suddenly a robot had appeared next to them. He looked like Phantom, except his skin was more tanned and his eyes were a deep chocolate brown. The robot was the same height as Phantom too and just as lean; his robotic body was green where Phantom's was black and orange where the green ended to give way to white. His helmet was white with a blue gem in the middle of the forehead and green metal originating from it, which curled around the white and ran along the sides, giving the appearance of fins.

A green cloak, just like the other Praetor's rested on this green robot's shoulders.
"Clay, what's got into you, man?" asked the green Praetor in what sounded like a Brazilian accent. "You're usually more chill than this. How'd you expect him to join us if he's smashed to bits?"

"I'm sorry, Raimundo," apologised the black-armoured Praetor. "Don't know what got into me. I was madder than a red bull in a mirror house." He looked down dejectedly in shame, but that didn't last long. "What do you mean, 'join us'?" he exclaimed in surprise.

"You hadn't heard?" replied Raimundo in surprise. He saw Clay shake his head. "Got word from the higher ups. They want this vigilante to help us fight Skulker and his crew." Raimundo then turned to face Phantom with a smile spreading across his lips. "So, get up. We've got contracts to sign."

Phantom had already gotten up, but under the watchful eye of a few more Geists that Raimundo had brought with him.
"What makes you think I'll sign?" asked Phantom spitefully.

Raimundo laughed.
"You got no choice," he told Phantom. "What? You think you could get away with upstaging the Blue Bow?" He snorted at the idea. "Not likely, pal," he scoffed. "You broke the law, dude. You're lucky we don't throw the book at you. I mean, you can't just take the law into your own hands. No way. You're gonna come with us and sign those contracts. And if you don't like it, we can always throw you into jail."

There were Geists all around him and now there were two Praetors in the warehouse with him. If there was a way to escape, Phantom didn't see it. He had to go with him, or else. How else could he get out of the warehouse? There were more Geists than he could deal with and even if he did try to fight his way out, there were the two Praetors, the cream of the cream, the most powerful of combat robots ever created.

If he attempted to even escape, the two Praetors would cut him down to size and that would most likely be in a literal sense too. There was no way he could escape, even if he did become intangible. The Geist Chip wouldn't have lasted long enough for him to escape the warehouse. He'd have become visible within five hundred metres and they'd hunt him down.
"You win," sighed Phantom dejectedly.

"No," said Raimundo, as he rested a hand on Phantom's shoulder with a grin on his face. "We all win." A frown then passed across his face, his eyebrows rose up until they went underneath the edge of his helmet. He noticed something strange on the side of Phantom's helmet.

The helmet itself was just a standard affair. It was a white domed thing that covered the top of Phantom's head, the edge of which covered most of Phantom's human forehead. The ears were also covered with the helmet, by circular discs of metal that formed a part of the metal. It was the symbol on these circular discs that puzzled Raimundo.

A white capital P against a black background with the straight line jagged, which gave the dynamic impression of a speeding capital letter. There was a break where the curved line should have joined the straight backbone of the capital P and it was wide enough to give the impression that a black capital P had been put in the centre of the white version.

"Plasmius?" exclaimed Raimundo in surprise, as he took his hand off of Phantom's shoulder.

"What was that, Rai?" asked Clay.

There was a pause, as Raimundo thought about the symbol on each side of Phantom's helmet. It couldn't have been the symbol of… but it was.
"N-Nothing," replied Raimundo suddenly. "It's nothing."

Something sounded very familiar about the name Plasmius. He wasn't sure, but Phantom knew he had heard it somewhere before, possibly as Danny Manson. It was then that a thought came back to him. Phantom remembered Sam commenting on the symbol on the side of his head.

"That's strange," Sam had mentioned at the time. "I thought your cybernetic parts came from FentonWorx. This is the symbol of Plasmius Pharmaceuticals."

Hadn't Sam filed the symbol off his helmet, though? He could have sworn she had filed the symbols straight off to remove the incriminating evidence. So how was it that this Praetor had acted as if he had seen it on the side of the helmet?

"Come on," said Raimundo suddenly. "Let's get you down to North Black Tower. General Walker would like to have a word with you."

Though it had been four years since the Insurgent Rebellion and four years since Danny was found in the ruins of Amitropolis, it had only been nine months since Sam had known Danny.

It had taken three agonisingly long years for Danny to recover from his injuries, both physical and psychological. Three years had been spent in the hospital with Sam's Grandfather looking after him. During those three years, Sam had seen little of her Grandfather. All she knew at the time was that her Grandfather was spending more and more time with this Danny. In time, she had grown to become jealous of Danny.

Sam could remember once going to the Gordon King Hospital. It was the largest hospital in Amitropolis, located in the privileged areas of Amity Park. She had been there many times before to see her Grandfather, but she would always be daunted by the building. It was the very nature of Gordon King. The hospital was directly linked to the Five Towers by a sky bridge that was covered by a huge Perspex tube.

Gordon King Hospital was identical to three other buildings that surrounded the Five Towers. It was identical to the High Courts to the south of the Five Towers, to the City Hall to the east and to Casper House (the Metropolitan Police Headquarters) to the north. All were identical, built in the same shape with the same cream walls. Only their windows differed and their interiors. The City Hall had blue windows and blue floors and blue doors. City Hall had red. Gordon King had green and Casper House had black.

Each one of the Five Towers rose around the Central Tower, each one a little taller than the other, with the Central White Tower being the tallest of the lot. There was East Blue Tower, the shortest of the lot, home to the FentonWorx Corporation's PR division and connected to the City Hall. Connected to the High Courts was South Red Tower, which was home to the Corporation's legal department. Then there was West Green Tower, home to FentonWorx's Research and Development Department, which, like the other four towers, was connected to a huge building within Amity Park.

It was in the Gordon King Hospital where she first met Danny, nine months ago. Her Grandfather once remarked that the Hospital was named after two sources, Stephen King the horror novelist and the Gordon Museum in London, a small museum for anatomical students filled with jars upon jars of various organs and deformed babies.

Sam had never liked the Gordon King Hospital. It was too clean. It was too sterile. The place gave her the creeps, even before her Grandfather had told her about the Gordon Museum in London. Not only that, but the Gordon King Hospital represented the one thing that kept her from having a decent family life. It sucked up her Grandfather's time and Danny had been just one of the other things that made her hate the Hospital.

But the expression on Danny's face when she met him…

The raven-haired boy had seemed unable to smile properly. He had seemed so pathetic, as he lay there in the hospital bed. All her hate had dissipated, leaving her with nothing more than the sorrow she had felt when her parents had died. The sorrow of seeing this kid, about her age, suffering such a huge operation and the death of all that he once knew, that sorrow consumed her from within.

"Sam, you okay?" asked Tucker curiously, as he looked up from whatever he was doing.

There was no reply.

It wasn't that Sam hadn't heard Tucker… Okay, maybe it was that she hadn't heard Tucker. No, in fact, it was definitely because she hadn't heard him. She was too caught up in her thoughts and her memories to even acknowledge the outside world.

"Sam?" exclaimed Tucker again, as he took his hands off the sleek black laptop. "You okay? Sam? Sam!"

"Huh?"

"You okay, Sam?" asked Tucker once more.

"Yeah, I'm alright," came Sam's reply. "I was just thinking, that's all." She turned to look away from Tucker.

"About what?" asked Tucker, not taking Sam's subtle hint to drop the subject.

Sometimes, Tucker reaffirmed Sam's belief that everyone was an idiot at something. She thought a little bit harder and realised that it wasn't just sometimes. It was all the time. Tucker was living proof that everyone was an idiot. If someone as techno-centric, as gadget-savvy and as smart about technology as Tucker could be such an idiot when it came to everything else… Actually, now that Sam thought about it even more, she realised that Tucker wasn't the best example to use; smart Tucker seemed to be an oxymoron when she examined the subject matter more carefully.

"Forget it," said Sam wearily, without even turning to look at her friend.

How she had become friends with someone whom she had once despised with a popular-girl's scorn was a mystery in itself. When she had been the popular girl, Tucker had been one of those that had vied for her attention. Sam had ignored him at every turn, belittling him at every turn. In a sense, she still did; old habits die hard, after all. However, he had befriended her when all others had turned away.

Tucker didn't know what to say or do, as he sat there in Sam's room. She seemed so sad, even more than usual. It must have been one of those sorrows that felt as if a hand has grabbed your chest, tightened its grip and twisted cruelly until it felt as if the flesh itself hurt. Tucker knew what that kind of sorrow felt like, the kind that made both soul and flesh hurt, that made it feel as if you no longer had any breath left.

"Sam," began Tucker, only to trail off. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Sam managed to say. She looked back towards Tucker and then thought about how he had been affected by the Madison Incident and the Insurgent Rebellion. "I'm sorry," she apologised to Tucker, words she had never said to him ever since she had fallen from grace with her friends.

"Sorry for what?" asked Tucker curiously.

Wasn't it obvious? Sorry for the way she had treated him. Sorry for what had happened to his grandparents during the Insurgent Rebellion. She wanted to apologise for everything that had happened in the nightmare world that Amitropolis had become.
"And thanks for sticking by my side," said Sam with a faint smile on her lips.

"It was nothing," retorted Tucker. "Anyone would have done the same thing." He sighed. "Between you and Danny, I've gained a posse that I'd never want to give up. Speaking of which, where is he?"

"You mean, Danny?"

"Drop the act, Mr. Manson," drawled Walker, as he sat at his desk. "I know who you really are."

Phantom tried his best to hide the expression on his face, but it was no use. Albert Walker, General of the Blue Bow Army, had caught him completely by surprise. The brief flicker of shock that had passed across his face like a Mexican wave was probably enough for General Walker to figure out that he was right.
"How…?" began Phantom, only to trail off.

"How did I know?" said Walker, finishing Phantom's sentence for him. "It was simple enough. FentonWorx owns Amitropolis, Mr. Manson. We have ways of finding it out." He then reached behind his desk and lifted something up. "You should have been more careful in covering your tracks," he told Phantom, as he placed the broken head of Technus on the desk top. "Unlike dead men, dead Insurgents do tell tales."

He chuckled.
"It was easy enough to figure out who you were from the visual data that Technus' databanks gave up," continued Walker smugly, as he leaned into his chair. "Did you really think you could steal from the FentonWorx Corporation and get away with it?"

"I didn't steal anything," protested Phantom angrily. "I was given these parts by mistake!"

"You didn't report the mistake when you found out, did you?" retorted Walker instantly. "You kept the parts and that's just the same as if you had taken them for yourself." He sighed and shook his head. "It would be a shame, though, for such a talented Insurgent Hunter such as yourself to have those military-grade parts removed."

Phantom didn't like the way Walker drew the conversation out. He knew exactly why he was there, standing in the office of the Head of the Blue Bow Army.
"Yeah," was all he could say in reply.

"Which is why I'm giving you a second chance," continued Walker, as he pushed a few papers forward. "Work for the Blue Bow, Mr. Manson. Help us find the Insurgents and destroy them." He formed a tent with his fingers, his elbows rested on the desk and rested his pale chin on his gloved hands. "Sign a contract with us, Mr. Manson, and I'll keep your little secret safe, and of course, overlook your transgression. Only you and I know who you really are, Mr. Manson. No one else in the Blue Bow knows and no one will have to know; that is, if you sign the contract."

Ghostly green eyes looked at the contract and the expensive-looking pen on the papers. That pen did look fancy, with Blue Bow Securities Ltd engraved on it and Phantom would have to use it to sign away his freedom. He would have to become just another soldier within the Blue Bow Army, another foot soldier for the faceless FentonWorx Corporation that grew like some foreign, invading ant colony.

"Can I just read it first?" asked Phantom, as he reached out for the papers.

"Go ahead," replied Walker with a smile on his pale lips. "May I remind you though, that you cannot change the terms of the agreement? The words of this contract are, set in stone, so to speak."

Phantom read through the contract slowly, looking at each word. The very nature of the contract was as with all legal contracts, long-winded and confusing. For all he knew, he could have been signing himself up to be surgically modified or mechanically modified. It was difficult. He was afraid of the consequences of signing the contract, but he was also afraid of what would happen if he didn't.

The very words printed in ink didn't serve to ease his fears either. There didn't seem to be a single clause within the contract that would have classed as being for his own protection. Every single word detailed how many rights he was losing to the Blue Bow Army and… Phantom turned the page and was greeted with some good news. In fact, he was greeted with a whole bunch of good news. Some of the clauses were for his own protection after all.

It seemed strange. He had broken the law, yet this contract… Well, it was the equivalent of rewarding him for what he'd done. Though there were far more clauses detailing his duties to the Blue Bow Army, the few clauses that outlined Blue Bow and FentonWorx's duties to him more than made up for them.

Phantom lowered the contract and looked at Walker with a frown on his face.
"So, I just sign here?" he asked, as he placed the paper down on the table and pointed at the dotted line.

"That's right," replied Walker with a nod of his head. "Just next to the X."

He couldn't see anything on Walker's face that betrayed any dastardly plans. As far as Phantom could tell, he would genuinely benefit from signing up to the Blue Bow Army.
"Okay then," he said and signed the contract under his pseudonym, Phantom. "You've got yourself a deal."

END TRANSMISSION #03