Chapter 52

After parting ways with Danny when lunch ended, Tucker collapsed into his seat in his next class. He was still grinning to himself after his friend's reaction to a little teasing. Part of him was very disturbed by the fact that his friend was apparently crushing on, even if he was in denial about it, a man old enough to be his father. He shuddered at the imagery of Danny being with someone that old, though in terms of looks, he guessed Vlad Masters wasn't all that bad, but that didn't lessen the weirdness of them being together. But if Vlad made Danny happy, that was the only part that really mattered to Tucker. His friend deserved to be with someone he loved, no matter how creepy other people might see it. Tucker cringed when he thought of how Sam would react when she learned who Danny actually liked. She was surprisingly cool with the idea of Dash kissing Danny, and Tucker wondered about that since he was pretty sure she was still harboring feelings for him.

Sighing, he dropped his gaze to his PDA, deciding to put thoughts of his friend's love life out of his head. He tapped through the screen, only halfway paying attention to his teacher as the tall man rambled on about formulas for math. He would probably regret not listening to his explanation of how to do their homework, but his attention strayed to his PDA, but not simply because of his love for technology. A frown crossed his face. Maybe technology really was the only love he would have in his life. Unlike Danny, Tucker had trouble getting anyone to like him. Valerie rolled her eyes any time he tried to use one of his pickup lines on her. Maybe, just maybe, Danny had a point with his advice of simply talking to a woman instead of hitting on her with lame lines that made her gag and walk away. Tucker laughed to himself, never imagining that he would take romance advice from Danny of all people. But Danny was doing better than he was in the love department.

Shaking his head, Tucker focused back on the task at hand. His green eyes flicked over the screen as he read through the data on his PDA. His frown grew as a cold sense of dread trickled down his spine. What was this even? The change in the Phantom coding that he picked up during lunch was vastly different from the unique signature taken from the football game, that Kwan thankfully transferred to him. The little blip he noticed the other day had him worried, but even after spending a good portion of the night analyzing the data, he couldn't puzzle out what caused that minute change. Tucker tried to gather up enough saliva in his very dry mouth to swallow. Now his worry bloomed to full out panic as he tried to make sense of the change in the Phantom coding. What was happening to Danny? Glancing at the clock, he tried to will the time to move faster. He needed to talk to Danny. Now.

Tucker waited impatiently through his classes, grinding his teeth as the time before the final bell slowly ticked away. He kept going over the data, again and again, and each time more of the picture became clearer to him. When it finally made sense to him, he felt like kicking himself for not realizing it sooner. It was so obvious in retrospect! But of course, they would pass off a cold as nothing more than that since this was the time of season when people got sick. They didn't stop to wonder about how Danny's cold coincidentally hit him at the same time that the change started appearing in his coding. That horrible feeling washed over him again as he rubbed at his face. He should have seen it sooner. He should have told Danny about the blip the moment he spotted it. But he thought he could figure out what was happening and a way to stop it before it got worse.

As soon as he heard the bell, Tucker packed up his things and headed straight for their lockers, knowing that would be where Danny was likely to go first. He reached their assigned lockers and leaned back against them with his PDA clutched in his hands. He really hoped Danny would to listen to him before this thing could finish what it started.

"Danny, I think we need to talk about something," Tucker said the moment Danny turned up to get something from his locker. He glanced about the hall and realized this was definitely not the best place to hold this conversation. "Uh, somewhere private?" Danny had to understand what the "talk" would revolve around from that. Relief flooded him when Danny agreed to talk, but tension rose up in him when he heard a growl.

"Can it wait?"

Shit! Tucker went back into panic mode as soon as he heard that simple three word question. He actually cursed that damn sense of nobility that Danny had, risking his life to protect the town and the NetZone from harmful viruses. "Danny, this is kind of important," Tucker told him, putting as much urgency into his voice possible, praying that Danny would take the hint and realize that what he had to say couldn't be delayed.

"And so is this."

Tucker restrained the urge to strangle his friend. Why couldn't Danny drop the hero role for two seconds? His life was hanging in the balance at that very moment, and he wasn't even aware of it! Desperation crept into Tucker as he tried to think of some way to grab his friend's attention and keep him from running off to fight yet another virus. "Let Valerie deal with it then." He caught Danny by the wrist, hand squeezing over that damnable watch. Valerie had the gear to fight viruses and the karate skills to make her a deadly foe. She could handle a virus alone without Danny to back her up just this once. "I really need to talk to you about something."

"I can't."

Tucker's grip fell slack at those words, and he watched numbly as Danny jogged down the hall. A hand went to his head, scratching through the fuzz of hair and knocking back the usual red beret that he wore. He had to do something. He couldn't let Danny run straight into a situation that could cost him his life at this rate. Rushing down the hall, he tried to follow his friend after losing sight of him during that moment of panic. It wasn't hard to find him when all Tucker had to do was follow the murmurs of people seeing Phantom race through the school.

"Foley!" Kwan caught his arm, stopping Tucker in his tracks. "What's going on? We just saw Phantom run by."

Tucker gulped because behind Kwan, he spotted Paulina and Dash. He could explain things to Kwan but not with the other two A lists present. "I, uh," he scrambled for some explanation that didn't out Danny to the other two, "think something bad is happening to Phantom. If we don't stop him, I - I don't know what's going to happen, but I don't think it'll be good." He turned away and started running after his friend again, barely acknowledging the thuds of the footsteps trailing after him.

Sam blinked in surprise when Tucker raced by her. "Uh, did you do something to piss off three of the most popular A lists?" she questioned, easily keeping pace with him as they ran down the hall.

"Chasing," Tucker panted, wishing he was a better athlete, "Phantom." He regretted the words immediately after they left his mouth and he saw the excitement reach into Sam's eyes. That announcement, of course, only urged Sam to run faster, breaking out the back door of the school first.

When they reached the football field, they found Phantom kneeling over the prone form of Valerie. Tucker gawked, wondering what could possibly have happened to the woman. Fear and panic mixed inside him, and he prayed she was all right.

"Oh god, Valerie!" Paulina gasped with her hands to her mouth, worry for her friends filling her expressive emerald eyes.

As concerned as he was for Valerie's well being, Tucker snapped his attention back to Danny. Shit, no! Another flare of panic washed through him as he noticed the charge of electricity crackling through the air around him. The black of Phantom's usual costume washed away to white as he approached the virus, large and spidery, before him.

"Da- uh," Tucker winced, catching himself before shouting at his friend, "Phantom! Stop!" He rushed toward his friend, praying, begging, that he wasn't too late to save him. Danny glanced his way, their eyes locking for a brief moment, and Tucker froze on the spot as the angry red bleeding into green eyes glared into him. Green washed through his vision, and it took a minute for him to realize that Danny put up a barrier around them. "Damn it!" he shouted as he pounded on the energy shields preventing them from going to his friend.

"What the hell is going on?" Dash demanded, grabbing hold of Tucker by the shoulder and forcing him to turn around and face them. All of them looked worried, Paulina's eyes remaining on Valerie's unmoving form.

"Why does Phantom look... different?" Sam frowned, walking up to the barrier, placing a hand to it.

"It's not - He's-" Tucker shouted out in frustration as he scratched at his head.

"Foley, breathe," Dash ordered sharply, annoyance crawling into his blue eyes. "Use your words."

"He's... changing," Kwan mumbled, deep lines etching into his brow as he watched the fight taking place on the football field. "Don't say it." He waved them off before anyone could make a comment. "I know that much is obvious based on just looking at him. I don't mean just in outward appearance." He turned to Tucker, and they could have held a conversation simply looking into each other eyes. "That blip you spotted was the start of this. Shit!" Kwan beat a fist against the shield. "We should have realized what was happening sooner."

"Wait. So you both have been monitoring Phantom? This whole time?" Sam frowned, violet eyes narrowing at her friend.

"Before you start yelling at me," Tucker said quickly, already seeing the start of Sam's rant building her furious expression, "I did lose the Phantom coding. I only got it back recently because of Kwan."

"Ew!" Paulina shouted, drawing all attention to her. "Is that thing melting?" She pointed toward where Phantom fought against the virus. They all turned to look, watching as the two halves of the human-spider virus dissolved away, and Tucker felt cold dread as he saw the wispy white hair wafting in the air like flames.

"Phantom!" Tucker shouted, immediately jogging forward the moment the shields dropped around them.

Paulina ignored them as she went to Valerie's side, more concerned with checking on her friend. Tucker couldn't blame her for that since all of his worries were centered around his best friend. He gulped nervously when Danny landed his red eyed gaze on him. The scythe looked pretty dangerous and deadly, only adding to his nervousness. He risked another step closer to his friend as he clutched his PDA in his hands, biting his lower lip as he checked the data on it.

"D-Phantom," Tucker glanced back at the others before facing Danny again. He tried to explain about the cold being connected to the corruption of his coding. How could he not have seen it before? He felt horribly guilty, and not only for that reason. The whole start of this, Tucker couldn't see any other explanation, began when he accidentally set off the Data Deleter that struck Danny in the chest. Maybe being human at the time saved him from any major damage right away, but he didn't come out of it completely unharmed, digitally. The red mark from the blast had stayed for quite awhile after the accident. This was all his fault! "I'm sorry. I realized what was happening too late. "You're not-"

"Phantom anymore?"

The smirk on his friend's face was nothing like Tucker could ever remember seeing. The cruelness of it paralyzed Tucker with fear as the blazing white blade of the scythe was held far too closely to his face for his liking. This wasn't his friend anymore. This wasn't Danny. Tucker's hands trembled, the PDA nearly slipping from them as he gulped.

"I'm not the weak, pathetic Phantom anymore. I'm the EXEcutioner." Then, like a flash of white light, he was gone, disappearing into the NetZone before anyone could get their wits about them.

"I called for an ambulance," Paulina announced, breaking the strained, tense silence that fell over them. She knelt beside her friend as she clutched Valerie's hand tightly in her own.

"Good. That's good." Tucker nodded numbly, lacking for something better to say.

"So what are we going to do about Phantom?" Sam's mouth pursed as her brow drew to the center. "Or I guess, EXEcutioner now. I don't exactly know what happened, but I'm guessing this name change and new appearance is a bad thing."

"Very bad," Kwan agreed as he folded his arms over his broad chest. "His data was being slowly corrupted. We only noticed a small blip in the beginning, but we couldn't determine just from that what was happening to him. It was such a small thing that it almost seemed insignificant at the time Most people would have simply overlooked it entirely."

"Can you do anything to help him?" Dash questioned, blue eyes glancing between the two resident techno geeks of their group.

"I," Tucker started hesitantly, sharing a glance with Kwan, "don't know. The change might be too much a part of his coding now to be fixed or removed."

"Well, try!" Dash shouted.

"We'll do what we can." Kwan placed his hands on his friend's shoulders. "But this isn't going to be as easy as cleaning viruses and harmful content off your computer. He's not just some random program. We can't just, like, wipe him clean and reboot him."

"That would certainly be a poor idea."

Tucker jumped at the sudden, new voice, and he spun around, turning his attention, like the others, onto the man that appeared. Perhaps digital being would be a better term, Tucker realized as he took in the strange appearance of the man with his black hair shaped similar to horns and his red eyes and oddly colored skin. It was only a guess, but Tucker suspected this was Vlad in his digital form as there were some similarities in appearance between them if he squinted hard enough to see them. Okay, Tucker thought distractedly, maybe I can kind of see how Danny fell for the guy. In this form, Vlad didn't have that whole "old as Danny's father" look to him.

"Who exactly are you?" Dash demanded, narrowing his eyes at the man.

Vlad gave the jock a dry look. "I'm going to assume that you're Phantom's friends." But something in his look told Tucker that the man already knew who Danny's friends were. "Then I have a task for you." His red eyes landed on Tucker, who jolted and gulped under the man's gaze. "I need you to keep track of Phantom's location in the NetZone. When you find him, I need you to block him off. Trap him in one spot before he can do too much damage." He plucked the PDA from Tucker's hands. "And when you do, contact me immediately. I'll track him on my own, but it'll go faster with more than one person looking for him, and it'll be easier to deal with him if he can't keep running around." He handed the PDA back to Tucker. "I've programmed my contact information into this."

"You still haven't explained who exactly you are." Sam frowned darkly as she placed her hands on her hips.

Vlad turned his gaze onto the woman, not looking very impressed by the scowl she directed at him. "I'm the one who has been teaching him how to utilize his skills to their fullest."

"You know how to save Phantom?" Dash asked skeptically, and from the glower, he didn't like the man.

"I'll find a way," Vlad answered with such a strong conviction in his voice that Tucker couldn't find any sense of doubt that the man would save Danny.

"Look," Tucker said as he turned toward Sam and the A lists. "We're not helping Phantom by standing around here arguing with him. There's not a whole lot that we can do ourselves while Phantom is running wild in the NetZone. This guy," he pointed his thumb at Vlad, "can actually enter the NetZone and do something about Phantom. I say we just follow his plan and try to block Phantom's movements and keep him in one spot until this guy can do something to save him."

The others were reluctant but agreed that was probably their best option in this situation. Vlad left them to it, heading for an access point to jump back into the NetZone and start his own tracking of Danny.

"I," Paulina said hesitantly, "don't really know all that much about technology."

"It's probably better for someone to stay with Valerie," Kwan pointed out, looking like he wanted to stay and make sure Valerie would be all right too. They could hear the sirens of a coming ambulance in the distance, and Tucker was certain they all felt relieved at the quick response.

"Let's get cracking on this, Kwan." Tucker grabbed the jock's arm and started pulling him toward the school. There was a gathering near the building, students hanging back in uncertainty of the fight they witnessed. They pushed their way through the crowd and into the building. Kwan made getting through the throng fairly easy, his larger body creating a path for them. Once inside the building, they raced through the halls toward the computer lab. It wouldn't be the greatest set up, but it was the best they had on hand at the moment. Right now, speed was an important factor in finding and containing Danny. Tucker prayed repeatedly in his head that Vlad could save his friend.

DB-KT: Haha, okay. D: *laughs maniacally in the background*

animevampLlover: Yes~ It's all coming together now. Mwahaha~ 8D;;;

Omnifarious Writer: Yay! *does a dance* Oh yeah~ Where Danny's all shivering and cold while everyone else is perfectly fine with Undergrowth? *sobbing into hands* I sat there for, like, 3 hours debating a name for him call himself there. Then I slapped down EXEcutioner and it was like "omg, this is worst thing ever." But then it was also like "it totally fits though! DX" Totally a Jack thing. XD;;; Totally.

DARKLOVEFORFANFICTION123: That's good that your computer is okay now! I have a terrible habit of pairing Paulina up with another girl. XD;; And Sam could definitely be a good potential romantic interest for her, now that they're getting along. Haha, yes~ The title makes sense~ That's good! XD

midnight: Plot twist success! *cheers* Danny~ Val~ Poor babies~ D8 Be okay~

firelily18: Yes! Go save your man, Vlad! D:

BlueStar95: XD That would probably be pretty funny to have Danny do the whole creepy evil thing then just pull back with a wide grin and shout "Psyche!" XD;;

maltese: Yeah, it's great that Val finally stopped raging at Phantom. Too bad she didn't listen to him sooner and got rid of the suit. orz

Just Will: Some things need an outside person to smack him on the head to see. XD;; Especially when the other person is trying to keep the truth hidden. But at least Dash knows now about Kwan's feelings. But it's not, like, one hundred percent Kwan going "oh, everyone expects me to be a dumb jock." I mean, there is some of that. Especially when he has a dick of a teammate like Calvin. But it's also in part from the his family treats him. Being told he's not smart, will never accomplish anything of worth, always being diminished in everything he does, that definitely has a negative effect on his mental state, and in some ways, he does see himself as just a dumb jock. That's why Paulina and Val get so defensive about it.

Sammi: Well... they got rid of Technus' virus...