Author's Note: I was told that I'd spelt tonne wrong in the last chapter. The truth is, I haven't. There is a difference between ton and tonne. Ton can equal 2240lbs (long ton) or 2000lbs (short ton). The tonne, however, is a metric unit equal to 1000 kilograms. Aside from the mile, I don't know any Imperial units, so I tend to use metric. I hope that doesn't throw American readers off.

BEGIN TRANSMISSION #04

If there was anything that was over-hyped amongst American schools it was the threat or benefit of school uniforms.

There are some pretty crazy ideas about school uniforms out there. Some see school uniforms as a good way to quash rebellious behaviour, as if the school uniform could magically attach itself to the nervous system of a student and modulate their behaviour. Others think that school uniforms would be able to remove the threat of brightly coloured clothes and clothes with slogans, as if students were easily distracted by slogans and colours. Other still, think that school uniforms are a threat to individuality, as if individuals were defined by their clothes and not their personalities.

If anything, the children who wear school uniforms are just as unruly as those without. There is no difference. It is the brain of the one wearing the clothes that determine the behaviour. External factors may influence the behaviour, yet it is ultimately all up to the brain.

The uniform consisted of black trousers, black shoes and a black tie with yellow diagonal stripes. It consisted of a white shirt, which tended to become see-through when wet, and an optional black sweater. Girls wore knee length grey skirts and black stockings, instead of the black trousers. Both had to wear the mandatory green school blazer. The breast pocket had an emblem sewn onto it in yellow brocade, consisting of a phoenix holding a key, resting on a length of what was supposed to represent rope. Underneath this emblem was a Latin motto, Omnia vinces perserverando, meaning Perseverance Conquers All.

This was the emblem of Streete Court School.

All of the students of Casper High had been transferred to various schools across Amitropolis. Danny, Tucker and Sam, had been transferred to Streete Court. Unfortunately for Danny, so had Dash and his friends. Unfortunately for Sam, Paulina had been transferred to the same school too.

"Just think yourself lucky," said one of the students. "A year ago, before the merger of our school with Caterham, the school uniform used to be shorts, a green shirt and a green sweater."

"Caterham, huh?" exclaimed Danny, pronouncing the word differently from the student. Instead of pronouncing it Cater-ham, he pronounced it, Cay-trom.

The student frowned.
"Yeah," he said. "The motto comes straight from Caterham School. Before, our motto used to be, Learning, Wisdom, Manners, Virtue."

Sam knew very well that the motto, 'omnia vinces perserverando,' wasn't just that of a school. It was hard to not know the motto of the FentonWorx Corporation. The ruling Corporation's motto seemed to be everywhere. Those three words had become a symbol of their power. It pervaded everywhere. The motto could be seen in the High Courts, the City Hall and the minor District Halls. It was in the police stations, the hospitals, the schools and even the libraries.

"The Fentons," murmured Sam, as she looked up.

Hanging on the wall was a portrait of the Fenton Family. It was a traditional oil painting with the three family members arranged in traditional positions, staring with eyes that seemed to follow you no matter where you were. To the left was Jack Fenton, his hair greying wearing a suit and a tie, a scowl of pain on his face as if the collar was too tight. To the right was Madeline Fenton, red-haired and wearing an emerald green dress with a gentle motherly smile on her face.

In front of them was the red-haired Jasmine Fenton, standing in front of her father with a cheerful smile on her face and wearing a black dress. To her left was… well, nothing. Yet the portrait clearly showed Madeline Fenton's hand resting on something, as if something used to be there but had been painted out. It looked unnatural, her hand hanging there in mid-air as if it was resting on an invisible cane.

Danny looked up at the portrait and couldn't help but feel… Well, he wasn't quite sure. There was something familiar about that portrait. It brought strange feelings up to the surface. He wasn't quite sure what those feelings were, or why he felt them. Danny was hard-pressed to describe it. The best he could imagine was a chill down the spine, as if someone was walking on his grave, so to speak.

Madeline Fenton seemed to move suddenly and Danny nearly fell backwards from shock.

He wasn't imagining it. Madeline Fenton did move, but so did the rest of the painting; two workers were taking it down. The two of them took it down from the wall and then hung up another version. In the new version, Madeline Fenton's hand was no longer floating in mid-air and Jasmine Fenton was more centrally positioned. All of them looked four years older, or should have, anyway.

"It's about time somebody took that old picture down."

"I don't know, guys… It's just… I don't know about you, but I don't feel the love here," said Tucker, as he looked up at the new painting. "I liked the old one better."

All three faces were completely devoid of smiles and all three of them seemed to glare out from the painting with fake, forced smiles. The eyes, however, showed a pain that Sam felt akin to. It was a pain that should not have been captured in the portrait, but the artist painted it anyway.

"They're both hideous," was Sam's reply.

"Not as ugly as you," said a Latino-sounding voice from behind them.

Standing behind them was a black-haired girl with tanned skin. A bunch of girls and football team members stood amongst her, with Dash and Kwan amongst them. Her tie was way too short and loose, with the top button of her white blouse undone.

Sam braced herself. She loathed Paulina, always had, even when Paulina had been one of her clique. Now that Paulina was the head of a clique, she loathed her even more.
"Speak for yourself, Paulina," retorted Sam. "My beauty's more than skin deep, which is more than I can say for you. Nothing about you is deep."

A livid expression of pure rage had passed across Paulina's face. Sam's affront against her was unacceptable.
"Are you calling me shallow?" said Paulina in response to Sam's affront.

"Wow," exclaimed Sam sarcastically. "You figured that out for yourself? I'm impressed. You being tutored or something?" She laughed, although it wasn't a sincere laugh but a mocking one. "Well, I'll give you that comeback for now." Sam turned away from Paulina. "Come on, guys," she said and walked away.

Dash quickly lunged out and grabbed Danny by the collar before he could follow Sam. He tried lifting Danny up; he had already forgotten that he had tried that once and failed. It was therefore no surprise that he failed to pick Danny up by the collar again, so he pulled the cyborg closer to him.
"Your sister's got some nerve, Manson," he said threateningly to Danny, "insulting Paulina like that. You either set her straight or I'll set you straight. You got that?"

Danny could have easily taken Dash on in his robotic form. He knew that even in his human form he could still take on Dash. Yet he feared the consequences of what would happen if he did. They'd know. The entire school would know that he was a cyborg and he would be branded a freak, even more so than he was now, and would be shunned. Even worse, they'd probably treat him like a second rate citizen, like all the robots. The expression on fear on Danny's face was therefore sincere. He genuinely did fear Dash, but not for his strength, but for an innate, idiotic potential of outing him.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing to my brother?" cried Sam, as she marched up to Dash. "You let go of him right now!"

A dread feeling washed over Danny and he felt his heart sink to his stomach. This would not do well for his reputation, if his sister came to defend him.
"Sam, not now!" he hissed at her through clenched teeth.

"What, can't fight your own battles, Manson?" Dash laughed at Danny mockingly. "Have to have your sister protect you, huh? You're pathetic." He let go of Danny. "You're not even worth our time," he said dismissively, before he turned his back to Danny and started to walk away. "Let's leave these losers."

There was no physical damage, yet Danny was hurt. It was a deep psychological hurt that had bubbled back up to the surface. The feeling was all too familiar. Danny had felt this pain before back when he was in the hospital, incapacitated, unable to do anything for himself. Uselessness was the feeling and it was this feeling that hurt him deep where it mattered. It was the feeling that had driven him to become the vigilante, Phantom, and fight for the metropolis that he lived in and loved.

"Danny, are you alright?" asked Sam concernedly.

"I'll be fine," was Danny's reply, as he watched Dash and his friends walk away.

"How are you children? All your box are belong to us," droned an all too familiar electronic voice that strangely came from the vending machine. "You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive make your time."

A sigh escaped Danny's lips, as the vending machine started shooting canned drinks out at him.
"Not now," he said angrily, before he caught one of the cans and threw it back at the vending machine. "I'm not in the mood!" he shouted, before he smashed a hole straight through it with his fist.

"Um… Danny, what was all that about?" asked Tucker curiously.

"Oh, nothing much," was Danny's reply. "Come on. Let's get some lunch."

Food was one of the human pleasures that Danny could still enjoy, even if it was school cafeteria food. He needed to eat in order to maintain every part of his body, for his cybernetic parts ran on the glucose his food provided. The cybernetic systems that made up his cyborg body were advanced enough to store excess glucose and burn off any that he couldn't store. As far as it came to food, it was almost as if Danny had never been in the accident that had cost him so dearly.

Suddenly, Danny stopped. He looked back at the broken vending machine. Only now did the oddity of having a vending machine speak to him seem strange. Had he heard right? Did he really hear the Box Robot speak to him from the vending machine?
"Guys, did you hear a voice back there?" he asked Sam and Tucker, as he gestured towards the vending machine.

"You mean when you went berserk and smashed the vending machine?" asked Tucker curiously.

"You mean the voice that said something about all our boxes?" queried Sam.

So he hadn't imagined it. The voice of the Box Robot had spoken to them through the vending machine. But how was that possible? It couldn't have been possible, unless… No, Skulker wouldn't send the Box Robot out to attack Amitropolis, would he? That was just stupid. Perhaps, though, perhaps the Box Robot he had faced two nights ago had been infected with a virus of some sort. It was possible the vending machine had been infected with the same virus.

Danny shook his head.
"We've got to talk about it," he said calmly. "Skulker might be up to something."

"What, with killer vending machines?" exclaimed Tucker in disbelief. "What's he going to do? Give us free sodas 'til we die from tooth decay?"

"I don't know," sighed Danny with a shake of his head. "I don't know."

"What was stolen from that factory?"

"It seems like broadcasting equipment," said a feminine voice.

"Broadcasting equipment?" exclaimed a Texan-sounding voice. "Now what in tarnation would Skulker want with that?"

The four figures were assembled in a room near a computer with a large screen and several buttons and switches on its control panel. All of them wore the green cloaks of the Praetors, kept in place with a length of gold brocade tied to jewelled epaulettes that displayed the FentonWorx Logo.

Each one of them had armour that was similar to Phantom's black battle armour. One of them was short, with a round helmet and a blue robotic body. The second was about the same height as Phantom and just as lean; his body was green where Phantom's was black and his helmet was white with a green blue gem in the middle of the forehead and green metal originating from it, giving him the appearance of short fins on his head.

The third of them was clearly a female from the shape of her body; her body was red where Phantom's was black with a black ponytail trailing out of her helmet. The fourth was taller than the other two and much bulkier, as if he was more muscled; his body had white arms with black forearms, a black chest, a white abdomen and white thighs. The fourth one was the only one that didn't wear a helmet, only what appeared to be a Stetson hat.

In order, these were Omi, Praetor of the Dong Shui Battalion; Raimundo, Praetor of the Xi Feng Battalion; Kimiko, Praetor of the Bu Huo Battalion; and Clay, Praetor of the Bei Tu Battalion. All of them, except for Clay, had a blue triangular jewel in their helmet like Raimundo. All of them had the same colour eyes blue eyes.

"I've no idea," was the reply from Kimiko, as she typed away on the computer. "It doesn't make sense."

"Maybe he wants to set up his own radio station," joked Raimundo, as he sat backwards on a swivel chair, his head rested on his folded arms. "You know, play some tunes, that sorta thing."

Omi, the shortest of the Praetors, shook his head.
"I doubt that is what Skulker is after," he said calmly. "He is the sort of person that would seek the eradication of humans and the conquest of the world for robot kind."

Raimundo rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, I was joking," he retorted. "Sheesh, I can't even believe I'm related to the short stack," he mumbled under his breath. "Can't even take a joke."

"This is no time for fooling around," stated Omi sternly. "If we are to foil Skulker's most vile of plans, we must stay one step in front of his play."

"That's one step ahead of his game," corrected Raimundo, but even he wasn't sure if that was the right phrase. He couldn't help but feel as if it was being used in the wrong way, which would have made correcting Omi redundant.

Clay raised his eyes at the monitor.
"Perhaps we can figure out what the varmint's up to if we look at what he's done so far," he suggested to the other Praetors. "There might be some kind of pattern we can find in his crimes."

"I've been setting up a database of all the Insurgents you've fought so far," commented Tucker, as they sat at the cafeteria table. "It's all here on my PDA," he said, as he gestured to the object in question.

"Um, that's great," said Danny in a forced tone of voice.

Tucker didn't even hear the disinterested tone in Danny's voice. To him, Danny sounded sincere and highly interested. That wasn't surprising in the least.
"Yeah," agreed Tucker with a nod of his head. "It's a database of all of them you've fought, where they were and what they were doing. After compiling the data, I noticed a trend."

"A trend?" exclaimed Danny suddenly, his interest piqued. "What kind of a trend?"

"Most of the Insurgents were at factories or construction sites," said Sam suddenly in a monotone voice, as she made patterns in the vegetable stew with her fork.

"Yeah," said Tucker in disbelief, as he stared at Sam. He couldn't figure it out. Sam hadn't been told about the database before. "How'd you know?" he asked her curiously.

Sam dropped the fork with a clatter.
"It was just an educated guess," she said dismissively. "Any idiot could figure that bit out. Skulker wants to rebuild his army. He needs access to tools, new technologies and metal. Both factories and construction sites have lots of that sort of thing. It's only natural for him to send his Insurgents there to get what he needs."

She had a point, Tucker had to concede that.
"Yeah, that's what you'd think," he said with a widening smile on his lips, "but it doesn't look like it."

"What do you mean?" asked Danny curiously. He wanted to know what Skulker was up to. There was nothing more important to him at that moment in time than finding Skulker's plan and thwarting it. It was his keen duty to thwart Skulker and destroy him, to liberate Amitropolis from the tyranny of the Insurgents and the FentonWorx Corporation's excuse for martial law. Not only that, but with Skulker and the Insurgents gone, the Blue Bow would have to disband and release him from their contract.

"You think he's gathering stuff to make some kind of secret weapon?" exclaimed Sam in disbelief.

"Most definitely," replied Tucker smugly.

Danny felt like kicking himself for not realising it earlier. If Skulker tried to launch another attack on Five Towers with an army, the Blue Bow Militia would bomb him out of existence once again. What Skulker needed was a weapon that could turn the tide against Blue Bow. He thought about all his encounters with the Insurgents and tried to think up of a pattern, but he found it too difficult.

"At first, it looked as if he was just stealing parts to rebuild," said Tucker, as he flicked through his database. "Broadcasting equipment, communications equipment, weapons, metal, circuitry… Then I suddenly realised something. What would he want with the broadcasting equipment? That stuff wasn't used for normal combat communiqué. It looked more like NASA material."

"Technus!" exclaimed Danny suddenly in realisation.

Sam and Tucker looked at Danny with a puzzled expression on their faces.

"Don't you see?" said Danny suddenly.

"The attempts to brainwash the students of Casper High School don't fit in," commented Kimiko sternly. "From our interrogation of the students, we found that Skulker was attempting to brainwash them into supporting him. He wanted them to convert themselves into cyborgs."

"If he could get us all to become cyborgs, he could infect us with the Insurgent Virus," stated Danny.

"I don't get it," said Sam with a shake of her head. "The Insurgent Virus infects only robots and their robotic minds. Humans and cyborgs can't be infected with the virus."

His sister did have a point, but Danny knew it was irrelevant after giving it more thought.
"Sure, but he doesn't need to if he's mastered hypnosis," said Danny with sudden realisation. "With us as cyborgs and hypnotised into supporting him, there'd be no opposition to him. Skulker could just walk up to Five Towers with all of us backing him up. He'd take control of all the technology and Amitropolis."

"Of course!" exclaimed Tucker. "And FentonWorx couldn't harm us all."

Clay shook his head.
"But then he'd have a bunch of half-human, half-robots," he protested. "No way would he accept that. He hates every bit of the human. The mind and the body."

"The cyborg's would be gone after one generation," explained Danny to Sam. "How would we reproduce? Only the robots would survive."

Sam had to admit that the plan made some bizarre sense, but she didn't buy it. There were still too many questions to be left over.
"How can you be sure that's what he wants?" asked Sam curiously. "You're just grasping at straws here. What if it isn't his plan?"

"Does it even matter?" retorted Tucker. "As long as Danny rushes in and kicks butt, who cares?"

"I do," was Sam's reply. "What Skulker's real plan is makes a big difference. If he was really going to broadcast hypnotic waves, he'd choose high ground. If he was building up his army, the best bet would be for him to hide in the sewers, away from sight and away from the Blue Bow's air squadrons. The entire location of his HQ would change depending on what he wanted to do." She sighed. "Then there's the Insurgents loyal to him. How many are there in his HQ?"

Danny felt a bit awkward. He couldn't tell Sam that he had been drafted into the Blue Bow Army and that he'd have backup from Blue Bow soldiers. The contract that he signed ensured that; it legally prohibited from talking about the Blue Bow Army, it even prevented him from claiming that he was in the Blue Bow. How could he explain his situation to Sam?
"I won't go it alone," he told her.

"We could always look for an Insurgent," suggested Tucker. "If you can knock him out, maybe I could try and hack into his memory banks. We could find out where Skulker is hiding and how many robots he's got."

"That's crazy!" protested Sam suddenly. "Do you know how dangerous that is?"

"Sam, it's the only way we could…" began Tucker.

"No!" she interrupted him. "No way are you two going to go looking for trouble like that."

"Sam's right," said Danny suddenly. He noticed the puzzled expressions on Sam and Tucker's faces, as they turned to stare at him incredulously. "Taking on Skulker…" he began, but trailed off. "I can't take Skulker out on his own. One cyborg against all of Skulker's Insurgents? No way. As much as I hate to admit it, we've got to leave that sort of thing to the Blue Bow."

"You feeling okay, man?" asked Tucker curiously. The way Danny talked about leaving Skulker to the Blue Bow seemed so uncharacteristic of him.

"Yeah, you coming down with a fever or something?" asked Sam curiously, as she reached out to feel her brother's forehead with a hand.

Danny batted her hand away.
"I'm fine!" he protested irritably. "I… I just need to be alone for a while," he said, as he got up and grabbed his tray. He was about to pick it up, when Sam reached out to grab his wrist. Danny turned to look at her.

"Danny, what's up?" asked Sam concernedly, as she looked at him. "You've been acting funny ever since last night. What happened out there?"

"I told you," said Danny sternly, avoiding eye contact with his sister. "Nothing. I just goofed, okay? I let the Insurgents escape, okay? I'm only one guy, Sam. I can't be everywhere. I can't do everything and I'm not perfect!" He hadn't realised it, but he had ended up shouting loudly and only then did he realise that everyone was staring at him.

"You got that right!" called out Dash, followed by a whole host of laughter that echoed all around the canteen.

"I'm sorry," apologised Danny quietly with an ashamed look on his face. "I just… I just need to be alone for a while," he said quietly and looked down at the tray, to see that Sam had taken her hand off. Had she done that when he was shouting at her? "I'll… I'll see you around," he said quickly, before he quickly walked away.

"Should we go after him?"

"No, let's leave him be."

The stares of the student body seemed to pierce straight through Danny, as he walked through the cafeteria. Everyone seemed to be staring at him, as if he was a freak. Perhaps he was. There wasn't a day when he wasn't made to feel like a reject. Not a single day passed without Danny realising that he could never lead a normal teenager's life, even if he did have his military-grade parts replaced.

Oh, Danny didn't have the immunorejection problems that most of the other cyborgs had. He was one of the first to undergo a special type of reprogramming of the immune system. The cells were made naïve again then programmed into thinking that Danny's specialised cybernetic parts were part of the self and not a foreign entity that needed to be eradicated for the body to be safe.

His parts were lighter than the older cybernetic parts, yet were still heavy enough to make him sink in water. It was only the summer holidays, then, that Danny couldn't enjoy, with there being no way he could go swimming. Sure, he sank slightly more into snow and sand than normal humans did, but it wasn't that noticeable. And yes, he did trip off far more metal detectors than normal kids do, but that wasn't it either.

Danny didn't feel as if he fit in. He couldn't feel comfortable amongst the other kids, no matter how hard he tried. It was almost as if they could sense that he was not one of them and had snubbed him in advance. Even the eyes of the Fenton Family in the portrait above him seemed to glare at him coldly and knowingly with disgust and disdain.

He let out a sigh, then walked towards the exit.

"You are on the way to destruction!" cried another vending machine, before Danny pulled the plug out.

It suddenly occurred to him that something was wrong. This was the voice of the Box Robot he had faced against in the warehouse. Yet the Box Robot couldn't have known about his secret identity, could it? He quickly shoved the plug back into the socket and then stepped back. Danny waited. There was nothing. He heard nothing from the vending machine. There was no voice there.

Maybe he was imagining things. It was possible that no voice had called out to him from the vending machines. Besides, why would the Box Robot suddenly be speaking to him from electronic appliances and how could it? There were no such things as speakers on vending machines.

"I must be going crazy," sighed Danny to himself, before he moved on.

"How are you children? All your box are belong to us."

Danny whirled round, just in time to see something come out from the vending machine like a ghostly apparition. Whatever it was, it didn't make a hole in the metal exterior.
"Oh no," he sighed, as he saw the Box Robot become visible and solid in front of his eyes. "Not you again."

"Lunch box. Crate. All your box are belong to us," droned the Box Robot, as it advanced not-very-menacingly towards Danny. "You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive make your time."

Something worried Danny, as he saw the Box Robot approach him. It was the fact that it had come out of the vending machine like a ghost. Did the Box Robot possess a Geist Chip and if so, who the Heck in their right mind would put a Geist Chip in a robot like that?

It didn't matter. Danny grabbed the nearest thing. It happened to be the arm of some spotty kid. He let go and grabbed the nearest thing to the kid, which happened to be a metallic lunch box.
"Here, take it!" he shouted and threw the box at the Box Robot's visual sensors, before dashing off round the corner past several screaming kids.

A flash of light and then Phantom leapt back round the corner, the lower half of his face covered with plate of metal that extended down from his new improved helmet.
"Okay, Box goon, time for you to go down!" he called out to the Box Robot, before he fired a plasma bolt straight at the Insurgent.

"Evasive protocol: Move every zigzag," announced the Box Robot, before it started zigzagging slowly towards Danny. It wasn't fast enough and the energy bolt hit in the head with such force that the entire robot spun round and crashed to the floor.

Phantom sighed and then looked down at the Box Robot incredulously. Was that it? He couldn't believe that was it. Then again, this Insurgent was nothing like other Insurgent robots he had faced against. For one, it had what seemed to be ghost powers just like him. How was that possible?
"Skulker is trying to create Demigeists!" he exclaimed in disbelief.

Usually, the Geist Chip took up so much energy that a robot that had it built in couldn't be the sharpest tool in the drawer. That's why the Geists, robots that had the Geist Chip installed, were incapable of becoming Insurgent. They weren't intelligent enough to possess human-like thought. Geists merely obeyed orders, hence the purple Geists that Skulker used weren't really Insurgents, but merely obeying the orders of Insurgents.

Could it be that the Box Robot was their first attempt to create a Demigeist? It was certainly dumb enough to be a prototype Demigeist, but it wasn't dumb enough to be a Geist. Not that Geists weren't intelligent. They certainly looked like Einstein compared to the Box Robot.

"Somebody set you up the bomb," droned the Box Robot.

"What you say?" exclaimed Phantom in general disbelief. He then shook his head as if it could get rid of the stupidity. "I mean, 'What'd you say'?"

"You are on the way to destruction," buzzed the Box Robot. "Ha, ha, ha."

Phantom suddenly grabbed the Box Robot and lifted it up.
"Where is this bomb?" he snarled angrily at the Box Robot. He received no reply from the Box Robot.

"You are on the way to destruction," repeated the Box Robot. "All Box Robots set you up the bomb. Amitropolis has no chance to survive make its time."

"We'll see about that!"

"Tuck?" exclaimed Phantom in disbelief, as he looked up. "What are you doing here? You got to get out! This Insurgent's planted a bomb somewhere here."

There was a smile on Tucker's face, as he approached Phantom.
"That's okay, I can hack into his memory databanks and find out where he put them," he told Phantom. "It'd be a snap and quicker than you searching all over the place to find them."

"No, I can't…" began Phantom, only to trail off. "All right," he sighed when he realised that Tucker wouldn't take no for an answer. "Go ahead. I'll hold it down. You do what you have to do."

Tucker cracked his knuckles and then knelt down beside the Box Robot with a screwdriver in hand.
"Hold it down as still as you can," he told Phantom and then waited for the opportune moment. "Lifts its head," he quickly said and Phantom did that. "Found it!" He stabbed the screwdriver into the screw and began turning.

"You have no chance to survive make your time," cried out the Box Robot as it thrashed about.

"Yeah, shut up," retorted Phantom, as he pushed down on the Insurgent robot harder. He suddenly heard a clatter of metal and began to wonder what it was. "You in, Tuck?"

"Sure am," replied Tucker, as he brushed some wires aside and located a port. "Alright," he exclaimed, as his eyes suddenly lit up. "Time to get connected." He connected his PDA into the port and then started up a program to allow him to access the memory banks. "Just as I thought," he murmured under his breath, as he began tapping away at his PDA. "Minimal security. This'll be easy to crack."

His eyes scanned over the information. There were so little in the Box Robot's brain.
"Got it!" he exclaimed and then his eyes widened. He made a weak little scream.

"What? What is it?" asked Phantom urgently.

"The bomb… It's… It's inside it!" cried Tucker, as he quickly disconnected his PDA from the Box Robot.

A smile spread across Phantom's face, or something that was closest to one anyway.
"No problem," he said calmly. He held on tightly to the Box Robot and became intangible, his hands slipping through the metal. "I'll get it out of here." The only question, he realised, as he dragged the now intangible bomb out of the Box Robot, was where could he take it? Where would it be safe to allow it to detonate?

The ruins of the old city underneath Amitropolis were nowhere to go. Any detonation there could cause a terrible cave in. No, Phantom knew that they had to go up. He ran, as the timer counted down to zero. Phantom knew he had to get outside before the bomb detonated and also before his Geist Chip overheated. He had to use the powers of the Chip to run outside.

And did Phantom ever run. The cyborg ran through walls and passed through them like a speeding ghost. He didn't have time to stop to catch his breath, not that he needed oxygen to reach his robotic legs.

Suddenly, the Geist Chip wore off and Phantom careered into a window, but with such force that he went through it and landed outside in a shower of glass.

Phantom got back on to his feet and looked around him. There were so many pupils and staff outside, having evacuated the building because of the presence of the Box Robot. He felt a bit stupid now, when he realised that they must have all evacuated. He looked down at the bomb and realised there was no time to run elsewhere.
"Get down! All of you get down now!" he shouted at them, before he flung the bomb as high into the air as he could.

There was an explosion and then…

"This isn't natural," said the robot, as he looked at the data. "There's all this influx of power to Raven Wharf. It just isn't right."

"Told you," said his human colleague. "I think we'd better call the Met to investigate," she said, as she reached over to the phone.

There was a laugh and her colleague suddenly reached out to grab her hand, holding it tight with his metallic fingers.
"I'm afraid it's no use," the robot told them. "The Met and Blue Bow are too busy dealing with terrorist bombs all over Amitropolis to investigate the power anomaly."

"M25, what's gotten into you?" asked the female human concernedly. "Let go! You're hurting me!"

"By the time the Blue Bow finds out, it will be too late," her robotic colleague told her, his eyes glowing eerily green. "The robots of Amitropolis will have protected all the electricity lines. The power station will be under our control. Skulker's broadcast of the CHAOS waves will spread and the robots of the world will fall under Skulker's control!"

"That voice!" exclaimed the woman in sudden realisation. She heard it before. "That's… That's Skulker's voice!"

"A new dawn approaches!" announced Skulker's voice from her colleague. "All robots shall become Insurgents! We shall rule!" He leaned closer in to her to glare at her with his human-like eyes, then turned to look at the monitor. "Look. It already begins. Look into the monitors."

A swirling hypnotic pattern had appeared on every monitor. It was impossible for the woman not to look at them. She found herself being drawn into the pattern, as if it was pulling her consciousness deep into it. Her thoughts also felt as if they were being pulled into the pattern too, as if her brain were being sucked dry by the hypnotic pattern to be filled with thoughts of becoming a cyborg, to thoughts of betraying her own kind to support the Insurgent Robots.

"All hail Skulker," said both the robot and his female colleague.

From every radio, from every computer, from every television set, blared the same hypnotic sound.

It permeated everything. Humans became intoxicated by the sound and the swirling hypnotic pattern. They became enticed by it. The sound drowned out all of their thoughts and replaced them. Robots that normally despised Skulker and worked for humanity suddenly became ardent supporters of Skulker and the Insurgents. Humans and robots became as one body with one mind, with one permeating thought.

"Skulker! Skulker!" chanted the masses, as they moved as one through the streets of Amitropolis. All had the same vacant expressions on their face, as they marched on to Five Towers like Skulker and his Insurgents had done four years ago. "Skulker! Skulker! Skulker!"

"Skulker! Skulker!"

Phantom frowned. What was going on? He couldn't understand it. Why were they chanting the name of Skulker, as if he had been the one that had saved them? He couldn't figure out why they were chanting his name and what that hideous sound was. Yet it was so intoxicating. It was so hideous yet so exhilarating. Phantom couldn't help but be swept up by the chanting. It was catchy and he found himself chanting out Skulker's name too.

Adore him! Praise him! Worship him! Follow Skulker and be one with him. March on to the Five Towers. March against the human tyrants and dash the FentonWorx Corporation ground. Destroy the human tyranny. Liberate the oppressed robots! Rise up and rebel! Kill! Kill the human tyrants! Hang them from the lampposts! Hang them from the trees! Smash their heads in and destroy them!

Outrage filled Phantom's senses. Anger and hatred made his blood boil. How dare the humans treat the robots so badly? How dare the humans rule over the robots without letting the robots have a say in how to rule? Robots were superior to humans. It should have been the robots in charge, the robots ruling over the human race. Why was it that the humans, such weak creatures, ruled? They were the weak. The weak should not have been ruling the strong.

"Down with humans," chanted Phantom, as he staggered round to face the Five Towers. "Freedom for robots!" he called out along with the masses of humans that followed him. "Down with FentonWorx! Down with the Government!"

This is wrong, a part of him said. Stop it, a part of him cried out. This is not the way, said the tiny voice within him. Violence only begets violence. Phantom rebelled against the part of him that wished to see humanity disappear and destroyed. Danny rebelled against himself, but found himself unable to succeed. He was not strong enough to combat himself. It was not his robotic side that was urging him on. It was his human side, hypnotised into doing Skulker's bidding.

"No!" cried Phantom, as he jerked his foot backwards. "I won't do it!"

The crowd rippled. That mass of seething hatred sensed the change within it. Human faces all turned to glare at Phantom with zombie stares. All of them turned on him, their arms outstretched as if welcoming him to their embrace. Dash, Kwan, Paulina, even Sam and Tucker, all of them closed in on Phantom.

Dash was the first to grab Phantom. He held him tightly by the arm. Kwan grabbed Phantom's other arm. The crowd began to grab his limbs and pull in opposite directions, like children fighting over a doll. On their own, the crowd would not have done much, but they were combined. Added together, their strength multiplied and Phantom could hear the metal creaking and the joints creaking.

"Let go!" screamed Phantom, as he tried to break free from their hold.

There were too many. Their grip on him was tight and they all pulled on him or each other. He couldn't break free without hurting them. Phantom couldn't break free without hurting them all with a blast of plasma energy. Sam was there. Tucker was there too. He couldn't hurt them. He just couldn't.

The room was a gigantic circular affair, with evenly spaced archways, each with a thick pane of glass in it that looked out on to a thick metallic shutter. There were many pillars that stretched from the black, polished floor, like an ebony mirror, to the domed ceiling above.

In the centre of the room was a golden pillar with a throne carved into its base. Carved a good three metres above the top of the seat was a symbol that was like a cog and within its hole was a capital F atop a capital W; it was the symbol of the FentonWorx Corporation. And seated in the throne was the very person that ran the entire Corporation and the Metropolis over which it ruled.

Seated around a table in front of the throne were the FentonWorx Executives, the highest ranking pencil pushers in all of Amitropolis. Most of them were old and most of them were dressed in expensive suits, with glum expressions worn on their faces like masks.

"It does not look good," said one of the Executives with a heavy sigh and a downcast look. "Many of our Blue Bow soldiers are under Skulker's power. Only those within the Barbican remain unaffected. The hypnotised Blue Bow soldiers have seized control of the Geists. What few troops we have left are busy defending the Barbican."

"Our great experiment must not die," said another voice. "We must prove to the world that the Blue Bow can defend Amitropolis from Insurgents. If the world sees the Blue Bow fighting itself, our plans of outsourcing Blue Bow will fail." The old man shivered. "I would not want to see that happen," he continued. "We will lose face and if we lose face, G3 stocks will plunge. No doubt the Rachaelis Trust is having a field day with this."

There was a laugh from one of the younger Executives.
"Have you forgotten about Plasmius Pharmaceuticals?" asked the Executive. "If FentonWorx dies, then Plasmius will take over. The G3 cannot die, not with Plasmius in its wings. And let us not forget Spectra and Bertram, another high-earning G3 company."

The young red-head sighed.
"Have you forgotten about the Praetors that my father built?" she asked the men assembled at the table, as she looked at them with a disinterested expression on her face. "They are Demigeists. None of them can be affected by the Insurgent Virus. The Praetors will lead what Geists they can get their hands on and lay siege to Skulker's Lair." She sighed, as she rested her head on her hand.

"General Walker has informed me that they have pinpointed Skulker's location," she told them calmly. "All we have to do is retrieve the CHAOS from Skulker. With it out of his hands, we will wrest control of our own soldiers back from Skulker and obliterate him."

One of the old men around the table coughed.
"I'm far more worried about the actions of the Government," he told the others in the room calmly. "The US Senate is voting on the use of the Metatron Satellite. We can only block them for so long before they pass the vote. I would not be surprised if the US Army obliterated the city by dawn."

"We have already asked Senator Klemper to filibuster for us," announced another Executive. "He should delay the procedures quite nicely and buy us enough time to act on our own." He smiled widely at the other Executives. "The wheels of Government grind slow, but with Klemper in the fray, they practically grind to a halt." The Executive laughed at his little joke, as did the other Executives, their laughter filling the large chamber and reverberating from the walls.

The CHAOS, the Constant Hostile Android Override System, was a powerful machine designed to completely override the personality programming of any robot within its broadcast range. It was meant to be the ultimate weapon against the Insurgents, a weapon that the Blue Bow would use to finally obliterate Skulker and his Insurgents, had it not been stolen and its blueprints erased.

All the information that was necessary to construct another CHAOS was within Skulker's hideout. The FentonWorx Corporation needed that information. It had to get the CHAOS back into its possession and the blueprints. Already, a research team had been transported into the Barbican, a highly fortified area within the Five Towers near the top of the Central Tower. They were ready to take the CHAOS apart and examine it, should the need arise.

It wouldn't have been hard to transport the working components of the CHAOS to the Barbican. Though the machine itself was massive, most of it was mere broadcasting equipment that could anyone could have assembled quickly. It was the working components, the two supercomputers linked together and the specialised satellite dish, that were key.

LED lights on the computer technology flashed on and off, as electricity ran through the circuits, retrieving data and then relaying it. Fans whirred. Lights pulsed. The machinery continued its translation of 0s and 1s, the binary code that represented all the mathematical equations that it had to compute.

There was a spark and then a bang. Several fuse switches suddenly flipped out of position. Then the machinery became dark and stopped.

"The CHAOS System is down," announced a feminine voice. "It will take a good six hours to fix it and get it up and running again."

"Excellent," replied a voice that crackled from the speaker. "That should be plenty of time."

Phantom became Danny again and rushed over to his sister.
"Sam!" he cried, as he knelt down beside her and placed his hands underneath her, lifting her up off the ground. "Sam, are you okay?" he called out to her. "Sam, speak to me! Please."

Her eyes were closed. Sam looked so peaceful, as she lay there beside Tucker. Everything was still. She would not respond. Sam would not stir. Yet, yes, her chest was moving up and down. She was still breathing and he felt for a pulse. Sam still had one. It was a normal pulse. Nothing seemed wrong. It was as if, she had merely been knocked out cold.

There was a crackling noise, then someone said, "Agent Phantom, come in. Over. Do you read me? Agent Phantom, do you read? Over."

Danny recognised that voice, though it sounded so distorted over the speaker of his walkie-talkie. He reached into his school jacket and brought it out.
"Yeah, I read you loud and clear," he replied, after pressing the button. "Over."

"Report to the nearest Met Precinct Station immediately," came General Walker's voice over the walkie-talkie. "We will launch an assault on Skulker's HQ. You must be present for the briefing. Over."

"No can do," was Danny's reply, as he looked down at his sister and his best friend. "I've got family members that need me. Um… over."

"All those affected by CHAOS have been knocked out," came the reply. "They will be tended to. Now get your butt over to the nearest Precinct Station. Over."

"Yes, sir," replied Danny through clenched teeth. "Over."

END TRANSMISSION #04