Chapter 18
"Forget about the - Danny!" Tucker huffed as Danny continued moving along the row, completely ignoring his friend's shout. He made a face, frowning, as he turned toward Sam. "We just made a touchdown, and Danny's only think about snacks?"
"Don't look at me," Sam said, shrugging. "I still think it's ridiculous being dragged out to watch this when it's this cold out." She hugged her coat closer about her body and shivered.
"Says the person that drives her car with the top down." Tucker stared flatly at his friend, but as his mind turned back to Danny, he frowned even more. Danny was usually all into the game, cheering like crazy when the team scored a touchdown. Maybe Tucker only saw his friend's response as strange because of that conversation earlier in the week that he had with Sam. Tucker dropped his chin into his hand as he stared down at the field. Was Danny really hiding something from them?
A sudden popping noise made him jerk, his gaze snapping toward the end of the field where the lights blew. Sparks showered the field, and the players closest to the end zone backed away quickly to avoid being struck by them. Gasps raced through the stands as the other lights burst with a chorus of loud pops. His head twisted so sharply toward his friend that Tucker thought his neck might have broke in the process. He rubbed absently at the back of his neck as he shared a look with Sam.
"Virus," Sam said and was on her feet in a flash, shoving her way through the row of fans.
Tucker was quick to follow, stumbling and tripping over the other people in the row. He mumbled apologies as the people he stepped on glared at him as he passed. They were barely halfway down the bleachers before the scream rang out, making them halt. Gazes turning toward the field, they both watched as the virus descended onto the field, fire spitting out of the jetpack strapped to its back. It wasn't completely unfamiliar to them since Skulker was one of the most common viruses that Phantom fought over the past three years. The way the virus kept hunting after Phantom made Tucker shudder at the disturbing implications, and he didn't want to think too hard about all the times Skulker shouted about mounting Phantom.
Skulker dropped to the middle of the football field, and even from the distance, Tucker could see the gleam of a smirk upon his metal face. The players still on the field swiftly stumbled away from the virus with the fiery green Mohawk. No one in their right mind wanted to stick around after the appearance of a virus manifesting a physical form outside the NetZone. The crowd of panicked fans rushed like a swarm to escape the area before the virus could attack. Tucker snatched hold of Sam's hand in a tight grip as they got swept along with the crowd, all the pushing and shoving almost making him lose his hold on her hand. When he caught a flash of white through the dense throng of people, Tucker followed it, watching the Phantom program racing toward the field to deal with the virus attack. In his distraction, he miscalculated his step and tripped over someone else's foot. He went down, knocking Sam to the ground too. The people around them didn't give much notice to the fact that they fell as they continued stampeding away from the field. Tucker crawled over to cover Sam, protecting her from being stomped on by the passing sea of people.
An explosion came from somewhere in the direction of the football field, and some of the fleeing people screamed at the noise. When the crowd thinned, Tucker twisted around to check what was happening, spying Phantom racing toward Skulker with one of his green energy balls already prepared for an attack. Tucker climbed off Sam, getting to his feet and offering her a hand to help her up from the ground.
"Phantom, look out!"
Both of them turned at the shout, the voice sounding familiar. Tucker was surprised to see Dash, Kwan, and Paulina still near to the field, though the A lists were wise enough to keep their distance to avoid being in the way of the fight. Skulker's projectiles could be dangerous, but from that distance, Tucker thought the three of them would have enough time to get out of the way. Somewhere in his mind, he recognized that Dash was the one to shout the warning for Phantom.
Warning? Tucker blinked in confusion. At the tight grip on his arm, he turned back to where Phantom faced off against Skulker. With a start, he realized that Skulker didn't come alone. On a red plate of energy above Skulker, another virus stood, her hand already swinging downward to strum out a chord upon the guitar she held. If she wasn't a virus, Tucker might have thought she looked kind of cool with the eighties rocker theme that she had going. The sound wave struck Phantom, sending him flying back into the stands where he crashed painfully with the wooden bleachers. Tucker winced, imagining how much that probably hurt.
"Tucker!" Sam slapped him on the shoulder.
"Ow!" Tucker rubbed at the spot where she struck him as he frowned at her. "What was that for? I didn't even say anything about you having some weird crush on a program!" He yelped again when Sam punched him even harder in the shoulder.
"That's not why I hit you." Sam's violet eyes narrowed furiously at him for the comment.
Tucker bit the inside of his cheek to stop from grinning when he caught the soft pink trying to spread across her cheeks. "Then why did you hit me?" He frowned at her, his attention straying briefly back to the fight taking place on the football field. Almost everyone else dispersed by this point. Danny parents arrived with weapons in hand to fight the viruses, though things weren't going in their favor at this point. But when he found Phantom again, Tucker felt a surge of panic as he watched the program facing off against one of the Guys in White agents. It didn't look like things were going well for the rogue program either.
Sam sighed, dropping her head into her hand. "Did you forget about what we talked about already? I swear sometimes, if I wasn't here, you and Danny would be hopelessly lost."
"Hey!" Tucker protested, feeling offended by that comment. He knew he could be a little absent minded sometimes, and he came off like the comic relief on occasion. Okay, maybe more than just on a occasion. But he didn't like all the seriousness that went on sometimes and couldn't resist cracking a joke to try and add some levity to an otherwise stressful situation. He didn't understand why anyone would want to have a gloomy outlook on life all the time since it sounded like a tiring and depressing act to keep up forever. He guessed that was merely another point on which he and Sam would forever disagree. The Goth thing never made sense to him, though it seemed to work well for his friend.
Sam growled out like she couldn't believe how dense her friend was being. "This is the perfect opportunity for you to get a lock on Phantom," she explained in a rather strained voice, resisting the urge to shout at him. "Then we can figure out a way to meet up with him later.
Tucker blinked at her before his eyes grew wide with that realization. He rustled through his things until he found his trusty PDA, his baby, the piece of tech that he always kept close. Maybe he did have some sort of pathetic obsession with technology, but it was the only thing that seemed to understand him beyond his best friends. He always had an interest in technology, ever since he was a little kid and his father bought him his first computer. A smile tugged at his mouth when he recalled his father's reaction after he came home from work and found his son dismantled part of the computer in the attempt to understand how it worked. At that time, of course, Tucker didn't really know much about what he was doing and poor machine suffered the consequences of his poor attempts to figure out how it was put together. After that, it was many years before he was allowed to handle any bit of technology without his parents' supervision to make sure he didn't destroy anything else. He still enjoyed tinkering with all the tech he owned.
Focusing his attention on the PDA, Tucker quickly tapped through things on the screen with his stylus while Sam stood beside him, impatiently tapping her heavy booted foot upon the ground. "That's not helping this go any faster," Tucker complained, shooting a quick glare at her. A frown settled onto his face as he examined things. The two viruses, Skulker and that strange female one, showed up quickly, their coding displayed for him to read as easily as an open book. He toyed with his PDA for a while longer, his frown growing deeper.
"Dash!" Paulina shouted suddenly
Neither Tucker nor Sam reacted in time to understand what the popular woman was yelling about until they were both slammed into by much larger bodies. A roar of noise filled his ears as dirty rained over him. Tucker lay stunned under the football player, breathless after being crushed between the other man and the ground.
"What the hell is wrong with you two?" Dash demanded, and Tucker managed to turn his head to watch as the blond man climbed off Sam, who looked as stunned as he felt.
"Oh, thank god!" Paulina breathed out in relief with a hand over her chest.
Tucker tilted his head back to look up at her until he was yanked up to his feet. "What just happened?" he asked, glancing around at the three A lists before turning his confused gaze onto Sam. "Did we really just get saved by the jer- er, jocks?" He cringed, hoping that little slip didn't earn him a punch from either of the two jocks.
"I know we don't exactly get along," Paulina said, folding her arms.
"Because you're shallow," Sam shot back as she glared at the other woman. Their eyes met with an almost electric spark of hatred passing between them.
"What Paulina meant," Kwan cut in, placing himself between the two women to block their view of each other, "is that we might be of different social statuses in school, but that doesn't mean we want to stand by and watch while someone we know gets hurt by some stupid virus. What if that attack had killed you?"
"Neither of you were even paying attention to what was happening." Dash folded his arms, his shoulders looking several times larger with the football pads under his uniform. "Is your stupid PDA really more important than your lives?"
"We were trying to do something," Sam said as she glared darkly at the jock, not in the slightest bit intimidated by Dash. She never was all that frightened of him, even when they were children. There was one time when Dash knocked out one of Danny's teeth when they were rough housing, and Sam later shoved Dash face first into the sandbox. "But I'm sure it's far too complicated for your pea sized brain to understand."
"Dash is not stupid," Paulina argued with a fierce glare at Sam.
"Sure." Sam rolled violet eyes as she nodded sarcastically. "Just like you're not completely superficial." The two women looked like they were seconds from trying to claw each other's eyes out until Kwan stepped in.
"Maybe we should move away from the zone of destruction," suggested the dark haired jock, already pushing the two "losers" toward a much safer location, out of range of any more missiles or other projectiles.
"Now what exactly where you doing with this stupid thing?" Dash questioned as he ripped the PDA from Tucker's hands. He looked it over but, not surprisingly, didn't seem to have any understanding of what was displayed on the screen.
"I was trying to get a lock on Phantom's coding," Tucker answered, reaching for his PDA, but Kwan grabbed it before Tucker could.
"You can do something like that?" Paulina suddenly became very interested in the topic of conversation.
"Of course he can." Sam scowled at other woman, and Tucker rolled his eyes at the two of them.
"Well, I tried." Tucker frowned as he folded his arms. He was trying to work out that problem when they were tackled by the muscle bound jocks.
"This coding doesn't even make sense," Kwan said, his mouth thinning as he reviewed what was displayed on the PDA.
"That's because you don't know anything." Tucker reached for the PDA, but the jock held it up out of his reach.
Paulina stamped her foot angrily on the ground. "Stop calling them stupid!" Her hands were on her hips as she glared furiously at Tucker. "You're the one that doesn't know anything."
Tucker blinked at her, taken aback by her reaction. He wasn't the only one that poked fun at the jocks' intelligence, implying their lack of brains. Practically everyone in the school thought of the jocks as nothing but muscles, jerks that harassed the less popular and bullied the nerds into doing their homework so that they could maintain passing grades and stay on the team. But then he realized that, of course, Paulina would step in to defend others of the In crowd.
Sam kicked Kwan in the back of the knee, forcing him to drop as he released a shout of pain. She snatched the PDA out of his hand when it was within reach. Her action stunned Paulina and Dash, who didn't react fast enough as Sam grabbed Tucker by the arm and dragged him off at a sprint. Tucker stumbled at first but managed not to trip and fall flat on his face. They were lucky that they weren't that far off from the parking lot where Sam's convertible was. Or, he should say, he was lucky. Sam was a far better runner than he was. They quickly climbed into the car when they reached it.
"Drive, drive, drive!" Tucker urged, his heart hammering in his chest with the fear that the jocks would be upon them any moment in a rage and out for vengeance.
"Did you get anything about Phantom?" Sam asked, dumping the PDA in Tucker's lap as she peeled out of the parking lot. Thankfully, he didn't see any of the A lists coming after them.
Tucker sighed as he slumped down in the passenger's seat. "No," he muttered in disappointment as he looked over the data on his PDA. "Phantom's coding makes zero sense. I could barely even pick it up at first. I don't understand what the person was thinking when they created the Phantom program." That was assuming he was actually coded by someone, of course. Tucker frowned as that thought rattled through his brain. What if Phantom wasn't actually designed by someone? He scratched at the back of his head, wondering how Phantom could have come about if that turned out to be true.
Just Will: Vlad's more of a strategic thinker. XD;; He likes to plan things before acting. Plus *gestures at last chapter* he knows eventually Danny's recklessness might land him in trouble. She really does, doesn't she? D8 Danny's all "oh here, let me help you up. You should really get out of here. I don't want you getting hurt worse than you already have. I'm sorry. That was an accident." But Valerie just keeps seeing him as evil. orz *sobs for the forever misunderstood Phantom* It could be a bit of both. XD;; Clockwork's sitting there in his tower (watching his soaps) and going "Ah, yes, finally~ Vlad won't be moping around anymore." I don't think I've seen that Scooby Doo movie. O: Was it a cartoon one or one of the live action ones?
D: *pets Danny* He'll be okay in the end~ D: I hope. orz *stares at Valerie* Maybe. Valerie, that's not playing fair! D8 Yes~ Slow build ups are fun! 8D Tumblr stalking? XD Haha, sorry for all my rambling posts over there. Thank you! X3 (Haha, I've been on a crazy writing spree since December!)
Sammi: *puts ice on Danny's head* It's just not his night. D8
swagdanny: Haha, I was~ XD Well, there are one night stands, but those don't usually end up becoming strong, lasting relationships. XD;; *sobs into hands* Danny, you poor baby! Getting knocked out while surrounded by enemies!
DB-KT: Cold hard truth, dose of reality. *does the hand weighing gesture* Punch to the face? *shot* XD;; Yes~ The evil cliffhangers~ 8D *gets shot again*
Guest: I am! 8D Omg, you and swagdanny both did that! XD *hides out where no one can find her and watches for villagers with torches and pitchforks* I'm sorry for the evil cliffhanger~
midnight: Vlad~ Come rescue your boyfriend before the GIW cart him off for dissection~ D:
maltese: I love parallels~ 8D They're fun~ Though not so much for Danny. D:
Author's Note: Yes~ If you haven't read Stalkers and Scones by Urchin of the Riding Stars, I suggest you do~ =D It's a really cute Vlad x Danny story!