 
# Johnny B. Fast: The Super Spy

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## Part 1

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### By

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## Tom Doganoglu

This novel is a work of fiction

Copyright © 2011 Tom Doganoglu

Covert Art Mike Motz

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission by Tom Doganoglu.

Smashwords Edition

# Contents

Chapter 1: Super Spies

Chapter 2: Trouble at School and Work

Chapter 3: Department X

Chapter 4: Second Chance

Chapter 5: Responsibilities

To you, the reader: For sharing this world with me.

# Chapter 1: Super Spies

Johnny Clunker was a normal and average boy. He was about average height and average build, he had average short brown hair, and a generally nice and normal average smile. Except that he wasn't too normal or average as far as those words meant.

He went to school, tried to do his homework, and did his best to fit in socially during the day. But at night, shy, weak, and timid Johnny Clunker became something else entirely.

He became a super spy.

He became Johnny B. Fast.

He went on important missions to save the world, and they usually went better than the way this one was going right now.

What a mess.

The entire warehouse was surrounded by United Order spies with top of the line gadgets and weapons. It was a rundown, abandoned warehouse, probably used for some type of heavy machinery in the past. There was a partial second floor that looked down on a massive layout of scattered crates and boxes, forming makeshift hallways and rooms. Perfect places for hiding. Nevertheless, this was going to be harder than usual. Johnny looked through his night vision goggles, trying to find all the spies' patrol routes.

It was his birthday. Johnny Clunker, or Johnny B. Fast now that he was undercover, had just turned fifteen years old. This was not a good thing. Johnny didn't like birthdays, they were filled with bad memories about bad things that happened to him when he was thirteen. Johnny B. Fast tried to push the thought out of his head.

He forced himself to pay attention to the sentry posts and their routes around the building.

Maybe he had been wrong, this shouldn't be too hard.

But they sure had a lot of spy agents guarding the warehouse tonight. It would probably take only one of the best spies in the world to be able to snatch the United Order's Super Chip right out from under their noses.

It would take a super spy to get this Super Chip.

Super was an important word in his business. When you got as good as Johnny was, they didn't just call you a spy, they called you a super spy. And when you were after a Chip as powerful as the one Johnny was after tonight, it wouldn't do the Chip justice to call it a regular Chip.

Johnny sighed; he hoped he could live up to the name super.

What a mess.

The radio in his earpiece went off with a burst.

"B. Fast? You okay?"

Johnny whispered back, the microphone in his ear would pick up his words.

"Why wouldn't I be okay?" he hissed, with a bit more nervousness than he wanted to admit.

"You haven't moved from your position in ten years."

That was Agent Ackers, the most sarcastic field operative anyone could ever hope to have helping them. He was assigned to be Johnny's ears, eyes, and nose when he was on missions. And if you asked Ackers, he would also add brain to that list.

Agent Ackers was in his early twenties, and always stayed back at base where he was safe. He was really skinny, and constantly seemed to have a bunch of pimples sprouting up all over his face. He was very sensitive about his skin condition, and claimed that was why he always stayed back at base.

But still, Ackers was in his twenties, so at least he had somehow survived fifteen. Something Johnny hoped to do tonight.

"Are you still there?" Ackers hissed in again.

"I'm just checking out where all the sentries are."

"That's my job; it's your job to get the Chip. Now there should be two more guards in front of you, and three directly below them on the next level. I would recommend being highly stealthy, or taking them all out with a loud bang," Ackers advised.

"Those two options are completely opposite from each other! How can you recommend two choices that are so different?"

"It's my job," Ackers informed.

It was his job to be annoying, thought Johnny.

"Now which one is it going to be?" Ackers continued.

"I think I'll choose the stealthy option," Johnny said.

After all, that was the more spy-like thing to do.

"Hey! You there! What are you doing?"

From out of the corner of his eye, Johnny could see that he had allowed a guard to sneak up on him while he was talking with Ackers. That type of thing usually didn't happen to him. It's just great having a birthday, he thought.

The guard was wearing all black, covered from head to toe in a Shadow Guard uniform. There was a circular insignia on the left side of his uniform that meant the United Order, which also meant bad and evil.

The Shadow Guard uniform had a unique ability to bend light and make the wearer appear to be invisible, but it drained a lot of resources and was generally not used, making the Shadow Guards stand out more than they intended to blend in. Johnny always wanted to point out the irony of the uniform to the guards, but he didn't think now was the best time.

"Guarding the Chip," Johnny said instead, trying to answer the guard's question.

Johnny wasn't wearing their uniform, so his response was a little suspicious.

"I've never seen you before," the guard responded, raising his gun and pointing it at Johnny.

Johnny slowly got to his feet.

"I'm with the second division. You've probably never heard of us because it's our job to not only guard the Chip, but also to make sure the first division, which is you guys, are doing their job properly. We do our job best by making sure that you guys don't know we're doing our job when you're doing yours."

The guard got lost in Johnny's rambling.

"What second division?"

"Ah, you see?" Johnny said triumphantly. "You've never even heard of us. We wouldn't be very good at our job if everyone in the first division knew the second division was watching their every move."

"There is no second or first division!" the guard said angrily.

Johnny looked distraught.

"You mean you don't even know you're in the first division? What division did you think you were in?" Johnny asked.

The guard wrung his hands in frustration.

"There are no divisions!" he hollered back.

Johnny winced at how loud the guard was being. He was pretty sure that he could take down one guard pretty easily. He could probably even take out two, three with the help of some of his gadgets. Okay, maybe even four or five with the help of some of his really advanced spy gadgets. Johnny had a really high opinion of himself, but he wasn't sure if he could take down every guard in the warehouse singlehandedly.

At least not today; it was his birthday, after all.

"There are always divisions," Johnny instructed.

The guard looked confused.

"For instance," Johnny continued his lecture while the guard kept the gun pointed at him, "right now you are on one side and I am on the other. It's a good thing you have a gun, because that at least helps..."

Johnny stopped talking.

Lightning quick, he stepped in close and to the side of the gun, karate chopping a specific nerve on the guard's neck.

Johnny caught the gun as the guard dropped it.

"...to try and even the odds," Johnny continued.

The guard fell to the ground, stunned, but still conscious.

"See? Without the gun you would have had almost no chance."

"You talk too much," Ackers chimed in through the ear piece.

"I wasn't talking to you."

"I can't help but hear every word you say. It's one of the hardest things about my job, and the source of my extremely large therapy bills," Ackers informed him with an exaggerated sniffle.

"You don't have to pay for your therapy bills," Johnny said.

"Still have to make the time," Ackers quipped back.

"Don't blame your skin condition..." Johnny tried to add, but Ackers beat him to it.

"Can't talk about that. Off the record."

"How come you get to pick what's always on or off the record?" Johnny asked.

"That's also my job."

Right, thought Johnny.

He kneeled down beside the still conscious guard.

"Anyway, the moral of the story is: you were right the first time, there is no second division," Johnny informed the guard as he knocked him unconscious.

"Did you knock him out with that neck nerve pinch thing?" asked Ackers.

"Yup," Johnny lied.

"One day you're going to have to show me how you do that."

"Nope, super spy secret," replied Johnny. "I'm going radio silent now."

* * *

Johnny ran down the stairs leading to the first floor and the area where the Chip was to be exchanged. The United Order was paying a lot of money to get a computer processor Chip from a group of scientists who claimed that they found a way to make CPU Chips faster without burning out from the heat build up. If the United Order was able to duplicate this Chip before anyone else, they would have the fastest computers on the planet. Not that they even needed to do that, it sounded like just having one of these Chips would be enough to dominate the entire world's technological resources.

There were a lot of guards on the floor, seven to be exact. That was supposed to be a lucky number, thought Johnny. The guards patrolled the floor with a bored and sloppy demeanor, none of them were expecting anything to happen. That would be Johnny's biggest weapon, the element of surprise.

He slowly snuck around a few crates until he could get a good view of the center of the warehouse. There were three scientists speaking to someone in the United Order, not a guard, someone who actually looked important.

The man turned and Johnny got a good look at his face. He had a big scar that ran down from one side of his face to the other. He was also very, very tall, towering over everyone near him. The three scientists all seemed very nervous around him. And the man, Johnny decided to call him Scar, loomed over everyone, intimidating them with his ugly glower.

"Let me see it," Scar demanded.

The scientists all motioned to each other nervously. Finally, one of them, the one at the very back of the group, shook his head.

Scar raised his eyebrows in warning.

"We would like to see the money first," the Brave Scientist spoke with a scared and squeaky voice. "Please," he added, taking away much of his show of strength.

"Of course," Scar replied.

Scar raised his hand, palm out, towards the Brave Scientist.

His colleagues around him instantly parted, leaving the Brave Scientist standing all by himself. A blinding white light shot out of Scar's hand and completely enveloped the Brave Scientist.

Johnny was forced to look away from the brightness, but he heard the scream that followed. When the light finally died down, Johnny looked back and saw a steaming skeleton lying on the ground where the Brave Scientist used to be.

Johnny's mouth hung open in shock.

The rest of the scientists looked from their dead partner and slowly back to Scar.

"I hope, for all your sakes, that he was not the one carrying the Chip," Scar boomed.

"No, no, I have it right here." One of the scientists held up the Super Chip.

Without a word, Scar snatched it from his hand and examined it.

Scar brought out what looked like a small, green lens. He looked through it at the Chip and was able to see the Chip magnified hundreds of times.

"As you can see," the scientist continued, "the Chip uses light as registers, being able to withstand heat and process computer instructions at speeds of up to ten times or more than the best modern computers. With this Chip you would have a huge advantage over the rest of the world."

Scar checked the connections and the registers as the scientist blabbed on until he was satisfied that he was holding the right processing Chip.

"This is the one," he said at last, lowering the magnifying lens.

"And now our payment?" another scientist asked.

Scar motioned to the seven guards around him, who instantly surrounded the scientist and brought up their guns.

"But...we brought you what you asked for, and we didn't try to double cross you," stammered a scientist in protest.

"You did," admitted Scar. "How very foolish of you."

With an icy cold stare at the scientists, Scar nodded his head.

The seven guards instantly fired white beams from their guns, similar to the beam that came out of the device on Scar's palm, but without nearly the amount of brightness or power.

The scientists shrieked as they were melted down to their skeletal form, and then they all fell over each other to form a pile of bones.

It was too late to save the scientists, but Johnny B. Fast had to act fast before Scar got away with the Super Chip.

Peeking out from his hiding spot, Johnny planned his attack. All the guards were standing very close to each other, which was the perfect time to strike. Still, he waited until Scar started to walk away. There was something about him that Johnny didn't like. It wasn't that he was scared of him, Johnny B. Fast wasn't scared of anyone, but still, it didn't hurt to be safe rather than sorry.

Once Scar was far enough away, Johnny bolted.

He came running out of his hiding spot, throwing out what looked like a yo-yo as he ran.

The guards all yelled in surprise, but before they could mobilize, the yo-yo shot out and wrapped around three of the seven guards. As the string started to go around them, it grew in length and stuck to their clothes, creating a sticky web that kept their arms pinned to their sides.

The other four guards would be more of a problem. They were far enough away that Johnny couldn't use a similar gadget to stop them.

They brought up their laser guns and aimed them at Johnny.

Johnny slid to the ground and threw an egg at the floor. As soon as the egg hit the ground it exploded into a strobe of multiple colors, flashing and blinding everyone in the immediate area except for Johnny, who had kept his eyes closed when the egg burst.

Lasers shot randomly over his head.

Johnny stayed low to the ground as he quickly ran toward the nearest guard.

When the lights stopped, Johnny figured he would be taking down the four guards before they would have a chance to recuperate and figure out what happened. He just had to position himself to be at the right spot at the right moment.

That's what being a spy was all about.

The strobe light stopped, and Johnny was ready to take down the...

Five guards?

Six?

Where did that other one come from?

Seven, no eight guards. Plus the two in the back.

Johnny wasn't sure what happened. There were only supposed to be four guards, and now he had to deal with ten?

Things were not turning out as they were supposed to. If Johnny could get out of this in one piece, he would have to strongly consider taking a year off the spy business.

The ten guards, who could now see, brought their laser guns up in Johnny's direction.

He had to think of something, fast.

Really fast.

Johnny froze.

"Uh oh," he managed to say.

It looked like turning fifteen wasn't going to work out very well for Johnny B. Fast.

But then she appeared out of nowhere.

Dropping down on the first guard from the half floor above, she knocked him out and instantly sprang toward the second.

Before Johnny or any of the other guards knew what was happening, the young girl had already knocked down four of the ten guards. They looked to be unconscious, and Johnny wasn't exactly sure what she was able to do to knock them out so fast.

The girl was wearing a black outfit and her brown hair was tide back in a ponytail. She moved so gracefully and quickly that none of the guards had a chance to react.

Reaching into a pouch at her side, the girl threw out a rubber ball at the group of six guards that were left. The ball hit one of them right in the chest and then exploded out into a net that covered them all. One of the guards managed to get out as the net fully caught and then electrocuted the remaining five.

Johnny and the guard looked at her in awe.

"Are they dead?" Johnny asked.

"Just unconscious," she replied.

Johnny and the last guard looked back at the net. It was at that moment that they both realized they weren't on the same team. The guard brought up his laser gun, but Johnny quickly knocked it aside and punched him out.

"Nice move," the girl commented as she looked at the nine guards she had taken out all by herself.

"Thanks. Um, you too, nice move, I mean moves, because you did more than my one."

The girl laughed at him; it was a nice melodic sound, but Johnny didn't like the fact that it was directed at him.

The warehouse was now empty, both Scar and the Chip were long gone.

The girl got a closer look at him.

"You're that boy from school, Johnny something...Clunker! Johnny Clunker."

Johnny hated his real name. What kind of a name was Clunker? It was the sort of name that guaranteed you wouldn't get picked for teams, or get to hang out with the cool kids. It practically begged teachers who saw it on test papers to try and find any way they could to give him a failing mark. No matter which way you looked at it, Clunker was not cool. Which is what he capitalized on in school to keep his super spy identity secret, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"That's not my real name!" he blurted out before he could really think about it. Why did she make him so nervous?

"No, it is my real name. But it's not the name I'm going under right now," he tried to correct himself.

"What's the name you're going under right now?" she asked the obvious question, her eyebrow arched up in an amused glance.

"I'm Johnny B. Fast," he said, holding out his hand. "And I'm a super spy."

The girl looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing again.

Johnny felt really foolish holding out his hand for her to shake while she was laughing at him. He slowly retracted his hand.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

She quickly composed herself.

"I'm sorry. I never met a spy who introduced themselves as a spy before."

"Maybe I admitted I was a spy to throw you off and make you think the last thing I was was a spy?" Johnny tried.

She looked like she was going to laugh again. He had to get a hold of himself; why was he so nervous?

"Forget it, that just sounded terrible," he admitted.

She could see he was suffering, and her heart went out to him, "I didn't mean to laugh," she offered.

"Yes you did," he shot back.

"I guess no one ever means to laugh when they laugh. That's the whole point of laughing, it takes you by surprise," she reasoned.

What a strange girl she was. Still, Johnny couldn't deny the fact that she had flawlessly taken out ten guards by herself.

Nine! Johnny had taken care of the last one, even if he was preoccupied at the time, it still counted.

Trying to make up, she held out her hand for him to shake.

"My real name's Nancy Korrins, but you can call me Seventy-Seven."

"Seventy-Seven?" Johnny asked.

"Yup," she offered back, her hand still stuck out between them.

"What kind of a name is that?"

"It's my spy name," she replied, taking back her hand.

"That's not a very cool spy name," Johnny said.

"Spy names aren't supposed to be cool, they just are."

Johnny shook his head.

"What's the point of having a spy name if it isn't going to be cool?"

"That's just guy talk. Guys are always trying to look cool, or be cool, or have cool names," she reasoned. "Besides, the whole point of it all is to save the world from evil."

"I think the world would rather be saved by Johnny B. Fast than by Seventy-Seven," Johnny shot back.

"I don't think the world cares who saves it, as long as it's saved," Nancy, or Seventy-Seven, replied.

As they were talking, a lone guard, the last one left in the warehouse, crept slowly toward them. He had a laser gun in his hands, and he made sure to keep it lowered as he approached. Both Johnny and Nancy were too involved in their argument to notice.

"Spy names aren't even supposed to be known, they're supposed to be a secret!" Nancy argued.

The guard got closer. He could have taken the shot then, but he wanted to get even closer so that he couldn't miss. Maybe he could even take both of them out in one shot?

"You know, I didn't ask for your help," Johnny stated.

"But you needed it."

"No, I had everything under control," Johnny replied.

"I'm sure that's what you thought, before you jumped in the middle of that group of, was it ten people?" she asked, feigning not knowing how many guards there had been.

"I was right about to take care of them."

"I'm sure you were."

"I had several ways of doing it!" he practically screamed at her.

"I'd like to see one of them," she stated coolly. "And until I do, I'm going to assume that I saved you and that you need to thank me."

The guard was in position, he wasn't going to get a better shot than this. He raised his laser gun up high, set it for an explosive blast, and aimed it at the two of them.

"Well, for one thing, I could have done this."

In one quick movement, Johnny leaned sideways and threw a handful of marbles past Nancy.

At the same time, Nancy turned around and brought a whistle to her lips, letting out a sharp trill that caused the guard to drop his laser gun and grab his ears in pain as he was lifted off his feet from the blast.

Meanwhile, the marbles Johnny threw reached the guard and exploded, drenching him in a kaleidoscope of multicolored extra sticky paint.

The guard passed out.

Johnny and Nancy turned to look at each other.

"I got him first," Johnny stated.

"You did not," Nancy replied.

* * *

The moon cast a soft glow on the perfect looking neighborhood street. The houses were all lined up in an orderly fashion down a straight road, and even the sidewalk was immaculate, with no cracks or chips that could be seen. Large, overgrown trees dotted the landscape, creating dark leering shadows over the houses.

Johnny and Nancy walked along the sidewalk. Every third house they passed was the exact same model, leaving only three distinct types of homes in the neighborhood. Most of the houses on the street had their lights off, hinting at the lateness of the hour.

"That one is mine," Johnny pointed to a house that looked mostly like all the others. "Looks like dad's asleep."

"Your father lets you stay up this late on a school night?" Nancy asked.

"I'm a spy, staying out late is part of the job description, _Seventy-Seven_." He used her spy name in a mocking tone, trying to get back at her for making fun of his own.

"Besides, he usually goes to sleep early. Lots of stress at work gets him tired."

As soon as he had said it, a light went on in the house.

"Guess he's up; going to have to sneak in again," said Johnny.

"What about your mom?" she asked.

Johnny looked down at the ground as they walked, suddenly getting quiet. Nancy realized that something was wrong, and thought it would be wise to give him his space.

They stopped walking and stood in front of his house. Johnny looked over at it. The house was small, as houses go, but it looked comfortable and cozy.

"My mom passed away a couple of years ago," Johnny finally said. "When I was thirteen."

"I'm sorry," Nancy reached out her hand and placed it on his shoulder.

"It's been me and my dad since then. He does what he can, but sometimes he doesn't really know how to be a mom. Especially at dinner time," Johnny said as he watched his house.

Nancy finally took her hand back. "Does he know what you do?"

Johnny almost laughed out loud.

"No way. If he found out I'd never be able to keep doing it. Being a spy isn't exactly a normal thing for someone still going to school."

Johnny turned to look at her. "Do your parents know?"

"No. Well, I don't really know who my real parents are," Nancy admitted.

"How can you not know who your real parents are?"

"I was adopted," she informed him. "There's no way they would be able to sleep at night if they knew I was out fighting crime."

Johnny nodded in silence.

"I guess we're a lot like each other," Johnny thought out loud.

"In your dreams," she informed him.

"I was trying to make you feel better. Like you could almost be in the same league as me," Johnny shot back.

"We didn't do that great tonight, the Super Chip got away," Nancy said.

"Don't worry, we'll get it back. Besides, it's just a little Super Chip, no big deal."

"It is a big deal if you consider that with something that powerful, a normal computer could hack into and overrun any security network on the planet, giving the user access to funds, secrets, weapons, even nuclear weapons," Nancy said, a worried expression coming over her face.

"Like I said, it's no big deal," Johnny tried to lighten the mood.

She smiled uneasily back. It was such a small thing, the Super Chip. It couldn't outright attack anyone, or be used to physically harm anything. It was hard to believe that it presented much of a danger at all. But that only increased its deceptive threat. The Super Chip would act like a cancer, starting small and unnoticed, and slowly growing and tightening its hold until there was no way to separate it and no way to stop it. From a small nothing to a world shaking monster, the United Order would use the Chip to make all technological security obsolete. They would be in every corporation, every network, and inside every home. They wouldn't be hacking into the system, they would be the system, and everyone else would be at their mercy.

Nancy stepped away, getting ready to leave.

"Hey, where are you going?" Johnny asked.

"Home."

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"Just a few streets down," she motioned with her hand.

Johnny looked down the street, at the shadows and the swaying tree branches.

"It's late, I should walk you."

"I walked you home today, you can walk me home next time," she informed him.

"But it's late, and you're a girl, it's not safe," he pressed the issue.

"You mean it's not safe around me. Are you already forgetting how I saved you back at the warehouse?" she asked.

"I would have taken care of all of them," Johnny started.

"You would have, I'm sure of that beyond any doubt, but you didn't have to because I was there," Nancy stated boldly.

She reached behind and pulled out an odd looking device. It had a small handle, with three tubes extending out of it, and a large trigger just off the handle.

"That looks like a cool gadget," Johnny stated, his eyes instantly drawn to the technological wonder in her hands.

"Being a spy isn't about cool gadgets and names," she said again.

"It's half of it, or most of it anyway," Johnny insisted, never taking his eyes off the device. "How does it work, what does it do?"

"Let me show you," she leaned in close, very close, Johnny noticed as he felt a flutter in his stomach, and showed him the device. She then pointed it at the trees and said, "Go go gadget..." she stopped short, noticing the look on his face and burst out laughing.

"Actually, you just push this button," she managed to say, after she got control over her laughter.

"That's what I thought," Johnny returned, doing his best to look and act as cool as possible after she was done laughing at him, again.

She pointed the small, hand held device at the branch of a nearby tree.

She pushed the button and a small grapnel shot out of the three tubes and attached itself to the tree trunk.

"See you at school, Johnny Breakfast."

With a whoosh, Nancy zipped up off the ground and disappeared into the depths of the trees.

"It's B. Fast!" Johnny called after her.

* * *

Johnny quietly opened the door to his room and slipped inside.

His room looked like an average enough room, in keeping with his secret identity; there was a desk, computer, chair, and all his clothes dumped wherever there was a spot on the floor.

His walls were all white, and there wasn't a single thing on any of them, and his bed was up against the wall directly opposite from the door, nothing you would expect from a super spy.

Johnny quickly changed out of his spy clothes and into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He picked up his cast-off clothes from the floor and rummaged through them. Johnny pulled out an assortment of spy gadgets and weapons. He put them down in a drawer in his computer desk, removed the ear piece out of his ear and tossed it in with everything else, then slid the drawer closed.

Johnny looked at the computer and sighed. It looked like it was older than he was, with a monitor so small that laptops had bigger screens.

The computer was turned off.

He leaned over and started typing on the keyboard: 'Johnny is the best spy in the world!'

As soon as he hit the exclamation mark, a small humming noise came from all over the room. Panels in the wall slid up to reveal multiple display screens, the ceiling opened up slightly and a projector slipped out, turning on and displaying a holographic display of even more screens and a keyboard, all hovering in the air before him.

Johnny walked over to the floating keyboard and started typing in midair with furious speed. One of the monitors against the wall lit up with an image of an irate Agent Ackers. Pimples covered his entire face.

"I'm going radio silent now," Ackers started mimicking Johnny with heavy sarcasm. "Gee, that was only, I don't know, a million years ago!"

"We weren't alive a million years ago," Johnny said.

Ackers froze him with a look. Johnny glanced apologetically at Ackers' face. There was a two way video connection with them, so they could both hear and see each other.

"I'm sorry Ackers, something came up," Johnny explained.

"Something is supposed to come up!" Ackers explained. "You're on a mission, things are supposed to come up and I'm supposed to help you deal with them."

"I know, it was an oversight."

"Oversight? What's that? I think it was more like an over-mind, as in it was over and out of your mind to think about keeping me in the loop. How am I supposed to help you if you don't let me help you?"

Johnny shrugged.

"If it wasn't for this," Ackers gestured to the pimples all over his face, "I'd be out there with you in the field. Instead, I'm locked up here in a basement, nurturing my skin condition and wondering what happened to the agent I'm supposed to be backing because he put me on radio silence!"

Johnny had to lean back and listen to Ackers yell. Ackers didn't mean to get so upset; he was really a good guy. Johnny could understand the frustration he must have felt at not knowing what was going on. Still, Johnny didn't understand why pimples on a face would keep someone from being out there in the field. Johnny suspected it had more to do with Ackers' courage than his pimples.

"I've been thinking," Ackers continued. "They shouldn't even allow you to be able to put me on radio silence. It shouldn't even be an option that you have. I'm supposed to advise and guide you during missions, and if I think you not being advised or guided by me is a bad thing, then you shouldn't be able to do it."

His rant should be coming to an end soon, thought Johnny. They usually lasted a certain amount of time, and Johnny could tell that Ackers was beginning to slow down and run out of things to say.

"I think I will put in a request for having that option removed before your next mission," but Ackers kept going. Maybe he had a bit more left to complain about.

Johnny liked Ackers. How could he not? He knew Ackers meant well.

There was a knock at the door. It was his dad!

Johnny sprang into action. He couldn't let his dad see all the computers and gadgets.

"Sorry Ackers, have to go."

Johnny had two choices, he could type in his password into the old keyboard lying on the desk, or he could hit enter and put the whole system into sleep mode.

"Son, can I come in?" his father asked from behind the door.

There wasn't any time to type in the whole password.

"Just a moment dad!"

"I suppose you're going to go radio silent again?" Ackers asked sarcastically.

Johnny didn't even bother to reply, he slammed the Enter key on his old computer as hard as he could.

All the panels slid down covering the monitors, the projector from the ceiling turned off, killing the holographic displays. The projector then slid up, allowing the hole in the ceiling to close. Within moments Johnny's room looked just like an ordinary room again.

Johnny jumped onto his bed and grabbed a comic.

"Okay Dad, come on in," Johnny called.

The door opened and his dad, Henry Clunker, walked into the room.

Johnny's dad was about medium height and slightly pudgy. His hair always looked a bit uncombed, and his glasses were always a little crooked. He was easy with a smile and quite clumsy, getting into accidents more often than he cared to admit.

"What was taking you so long?" Henry asked.

"I had to clean up my room a bit," Johnny answered.

Henry looked around the messy room; there were clothes still on the floor and things still out of place. Henry would have hated to see what it looked like before Johnny cleaned.

"Don't worry, I'll get to it," Johnny said, seeing his dad's bemused look.

"Oh, of course," Henry said.

Henry wasn't big into discipline, so he usually made a small attempt, and then ended up giving in with an, "oh, of course," to whatever reason Johnny had for not doing what he was supposed to be doing.

"It's kind of late, isn't it?" Henry asked.

"Yeah, I was just going to do some homework before going to bed," Johnny offered, before realizing he was holding a comic. He quickly shoved it aside.

Henry nodded and beamed. That was his son, always staying on top of his school work.

"That's great to hear son, I'm so happy you take your school work so seriously."

Johnny smiled weakly. He was going to have to put more time into some of his subjects. Truth be told, being a super spy was a difficult business, and he didn't always find time to fit school into his schedule as much as he liked, especially when it came to Ms. Sniders and her English class.

"I just got this note from school," Henry continued, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a paper on school letterhead. "It's from Ms. Sniders. I believe she's your English teacher?"

Johnny swallowed uneasily. How bad could it get? He thought of the woman, and she somehow reached out from across space and time to torment him.

"Uh, yeah, she's my English teacher," was all Johnny could say.

"Are you having some trouble in her class?" Henry asked, a concerned look on his face.

Johnny's dad would believe anything he said, and it was because of that very reason that Johnny hated lying to him.

"I just don't get some of the things she teaches very well," Johnny said.

He didn't tell his dad the part about her being a lousy teacher who couldn't teach a newborn baby how to breathe if she had to. Or the fact that she could suck all the happiness and motivation out of a classroom just by giving students her evil glare.

Henry leaned back against Johnny's computer desk and accidentally hit the Enter key on the keyboard as he was settling down to read the note.

Instantly, all the panels slid up, the projector came down from the ceiling and projected the three dimensional keyboard right behind where Johnny's dad was leaning.

Ackers' angry and impatient face came up on the screen at the far end of the wall on a screen almost as big as the wall itself, magnifying every aspect of his pimples and his disgruntled scowl.

Henry missed all of this as he was studying the note.

"Yes, it says here that you haven't been handing in all your assignments, and that you don't do very well on some of the essays," Henry continued.

Johnny had to do something! He couldn't let his dad see all the super spy equipment that Johnny had installed in their house.

"I'll try harder dad," Johnny started to say as he tried to move, without drawing too much attention, to get near the keyboard with the Enter key that would hide all the advanced technology.

"She just doesn't explain some of the concepts of English very well, like all those words and sentences and things," Johnny wasn't even thinking about what he was saying, he was just trying to find a way to get to that keyboard.

Henry put the note down and looked at his son. Johnny froze.

"I just wish you would have come to me sooner about all of this. I'm pretty good at English. I used to do well back in the day before we had all these computers to do our spellchecking and thinking for us," Henry patted the monitor of the ten year old computer he was leaning beside.

Johnny looked from the old, antique computer beside his dad to the three dimensional keyboard and super flat monitors behind him, not to mention the larger than life display of Ackers on the far wall who was still glowering and scowling and looking generally put out and neglected.

Henry put his hand on his son's shoulder.

"Son, we'll do what we can to bring your mark up. Don't worry about this, your dad is on the scene now, and together we can do anything!"

Henry was always super optimistic about everything. Not that that was a bad thing, but sometimes Johnny felt that his dad, as much as Johnny loved him, was a bit naïve about how the world worked.

Johnny felt guilty as soon as he had the thought. His dad was just trying to help.

"We'll start studying together tomorrow," Henry said as he turned to walk away.

"Dad!" Johnny cried out.

Henry turned back in alarm, having just missed seeing the advanced computers behind him.

The giant display of Ackers shook his head in the background, and slapped a supersized hand against his supersized head. It made a small noise and Henry almost turned around again.

Johnny grabbed his dad's shoulders and spun him around to face him again.

"What! What is it son?" Henry asked in alarm.

"I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate what you're doing for me. And that I won't let you down. Math might be a hard subject for me, but I think that with your help I'll be able to get through it."

As Johnny spoke, he slowly made his way around to get closer to the keyboard of his ten year old computer.

"Are you having trouble in Math as well?" Henry asked.

"I meant English," Johnny corrected himself.

Ackers just shook his head in the background, exasperated.

"It makes me really proud to hear you say that," Henry said, beaming. "I know that if your mother could see you and your dedication, she would be proud too."

Johnny finally made it to the keyboard and quickly hit the Enter key. All the computer screens were instantly covered with a panel sliding down. Ackers opened his mouth to say something, but he was shut out before he could make a noise.

The projector in the ceiling retracted up and out of sight, the three dimensional display of the keyboard disappearing along with it.

Johnny let out a sigh of relief.

His father turned around then, to see what had troubled Johnny so much. Seeing an ordinary looking messy room, Henry turned back to face his son.

"Don't worry yourself so much, you don't have to clean your room tonight. I can see that this is a big commitment from you," Henry said, holding up the letter, not knowing the truth of Johnny's distress.

"We'll start first thing tomorrow morning. Don't you worry, we'll get a tutor, several if we have to! This seems to mean a lot to you, and I won't let you down!" Henry's father clamped a hand down on his son's shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"Now it's late, get some sleep," Henry turned and made his way out of the room, but not before he ran into the desk and door on his way out.

"Excuse me," Henry said as he exited. Johnny's dad was very clumsy; it somehow fit with their last name: Clunker.

Johnny fell back on his bed and closed his eyes in despair.

He hated English class.

* * *

In a darkened room with a single light source sat a woman with jet black hair. The Widow Black was her spy name, and she was watching a computer monitor which showed the fight at the warehouse over the Super Chip.

She was dressed all in black, with a single zipper that ran up the front of her skin-tight suit. The Widow Black moved her hand in the air, and the monitors changed to show a different perspective of the fight. She was wearing a glove on her right hand with blinking lights all over it. With gestures from her hand, she was able to control the computers in the room.

She was in her late forties, but it was almost impossible to tell her exact age because of her extreme beauty and wild, flowing hair. Her face resembled a classical statue; it was both beautiful and cold. Her lips made a determined, thin line as she watched footage of Johnny and Nancy fighting the guards.

"Poorly executed. Sloppy," she commented.

It was hard to tell whether she was talking about the guards, or the way that Johnny and Nancy were able to beat them.

The Widow Black watched as Johnny and Nancy talked.

"Never speak to the enemy, and never during a hot zone," she said to herself.

She waved her hand in the air, and the image froze on Johnny. The Widow Black stared at the image, studying it.

"You are in over your head, and there will come a time when you will regret these actions."

She lingered on the image a bit, before finally tilting her finger and allowing it to continue playing.

The Widow Black brought her other hand up to her ear and pressed a button on a device. A voice came through on the other end; it was Scar's.

"Yes?"

"You have the Chip," the Widow Black told as much as asked.

"We have it."

"Good. I will meet with you. I will give you the coordinates." There was a measure of malice in the Widow Black's voice. "Don't let anything happen to that Chip."

# Chapter 2: Trouble at School and Work

The school looked just like a regular school, so naturally Johnny didn't feel like going inside. It wasn't that he disliked school, he just felt that he didn't apply himself enough, which usually brought up feelings of guilt. He wanted to apply himself more, but with his regular spy job it was becoming harder and harder to sleep, let alone study.

Still, as Johnny went through his usual excuses in his head, he knew that he had no one to blame but himself. School was important, and it was doubly important to a super spy who had to know everything he could about the world.

"I'll do better," he promised himself.

A passing kid heard him say it and turned to look. Seeing that there was no one else around, the kid realized that Johnny was talking to himself.

Slightly embarrassed, Johnny gave him a weak smile. The kid looked away and shook his head.

I have to make sure no one thinks I'm crazy while I do better, Johnny thought, wanting to avoid any further stares and head shakings. At least it helped with his identity, making it even more likely that he was unlikely to be a super spy.

He also wanted a chance to try and talk to Nancy. Johnny was interested in how she became a super spy, and found out about the Chip and where it was being traded, and how she learned how to fight like that, and where she got all those cool gadgets.

His mind thoroughly off of his school subjects, Johnny headed into the school without much prospect of doing better at it.

* * *

"Nancy!" Johnny whispered as loud as he could while still being able to call what he was doing whispering. She sat just ahead of him, and currently had her back to him while she was listening to their English teacher talk about English.

"Nancy," Johnny tried again.

Ms. Sniders, their English teacher, swooped her beady eyes around the room from the front of the class.

"Did I hear someone talking?" she asked.

Johnny lowered in his seat and kept his eyes down.

Ms. Sniders was an old, strict woman. She liked her class to be absolutely silent while she taught. She had been known to throw students in detention, make them write extra essays, and even create entire extra projects just because they were found talking in class.

Johnny did not want to have to write any essays or create any projects. He waited while she passed by his desk, looking for another sound from the culprit.

She was a tall, thin woman. Every single student in her ninth grade class had to look up to her, and every single student was also scared to death of her. She had really thick glasses that looked like they went out of style sixty years ago, and the dresses she wore always had polka dots on them.

"I know I heard talking. You might as well come clean now before it gets worse for you," she said as she stalked down the aisles of desks.

"If there's one thing we all hate, it's talking." Ms. Sniders always included the entire class in on what it was she hated. She passed by Johnny's desk again, adjusting her glasses as she stared in his direction.

Johnny kept his eyes down to the ground. She must have developed very strong neck muscles by having to keep her head up with those really heavy glasses on. Johnny bet that if she took off the glasses, her head would whip back with the tremendous force of years of straining muscles.

"If the culprit refuses to come clean, if they insist on hiding, in spite of how much we all hate cowards, then I have no choice but to continue the lesson."

That didn't sound like much of a threat to Johnny, in spite of the fact that he hated her lessons. She turned her back to them and began to write on the board. It didn't seem like Ms. Sniders liked being a teacher.

"Nancy!" Johnny tried again.

Nancy turned her head back to look at him slightly.

"Are you insane?" she asked.

"I wanted to ask you some more questions about last night."

"Now?" Nancy hissed back.

Even though they were both super spies, neither one of them wanted to mess with Ms. Sniders.

"I wanted to ask how you became a spy," Johnny pressed.

"No, we'll talk later," Nancy turned around and faced the front again. But Johnny wasn't finished.

"Don't worry, she's old and probably as deaf as..."

"As deaf as what?" boomed Ms. Sniders' voice.

Johnny froze. She was standing directly beside him, hands on hips, stern glare directed straight down on him. Johnny thought she had still been at the front of the class; he hadn't even noticed her make her way over to his desk.

He tried to answer her, his mouth moved, but for some reason no sounds were coming out.

"Out with it Mr. Clunker, we all want to hear what you have to say."

Johnny looked around the room. All of his classmates, including Nancy, were looking at him. It certainly seemed like they all wanted to hear what he had to say. Johnny wanted to hear it also, because he had no idea what it was that he should say.

"I was just thinking," Johnny started.

What else should he say?

That he was wondering how someone else managed to become a super spy?

"I was just wondering," Johnny stammered.

"Yes Mr. Clunker, you were thinking and wondering what? The condition of my deafness?" Ms. Sniders leaned down and sneered in his face, waiting for his answer.

Her breath smelled foul and old, like the air from a long sealed tomb. Johnny actually had an experience with a tomb and mummy, so he knew exactly what that smelled like.

He could do this. Just think of something to say that would get her far away from him.

The problem was that her breath was so bad that it was driving out any other thought that Johnny might have had.

His eyes strayed to the board. Ms. Sniders was writing the chapter homework for the week. It was all Johnny had, so he grabbed it.

"I was just wondering, just thinking if we could move on ahead, beyond the assigned chapter, and do extra work for the week." It wasn't great. It wasn't even good; in fact, it was pretty bad, but at least Johnny had thought of something.

Ms. Sniders looked at him a moment longer. Johnny had to put up with that foul breath for just a few more seconds and then he would be fine. He wondered what it was in her mouth that could take normal smelling air and turn it into such a brutal weapon in the time it took someone to inhale and exhale.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Ms. Sniders straightened up.

Johnny breathed in fresh air. He hadn't noticed, but he had started holding his breath.

"You were thinking, using all your little brain power to ask me if you could do extra work?" Ms. Sniders asked as she stalked down the aisle and back to the front of the class.

Johnny couldn't understand it, but a lot of the other students were looking at him with a grim attitude. Why? What had he done?

"As you know class, I don't believe there is such a thing as a stupid question. You have to learn, the government pays me a meager salary to make sure that you do, so questions are part of your expected job requirement," she continued.

Johnny had a nagging feeling in his stomach, like he had just done something that he was going to regret. And then, it slowly came to him. He realized what he had done.

"Asking me if you can do more work is, in fact, a stupid question," Ms. Sniders proclaimed as she looked straight at Johnny.

"Not only is more work encouraged in most classes, it is expected in mine. So thanks to Mr. Clunker, we are all going to do three chapters, instead of one, for the week. We are all very grateful for Mr. Clunker's insight."

Johnny started sinking down in his chair. There she went using that _we_ word again. Johnny was pretty sure she wouldn't be doing any chapters at all.

The grim faces around him turned to angry glares. Johnny tried to smile back weakly.

Nancy just looked at him blankly, and then shook her head. He didn't feel much like a super spy at that moment.

* * *

Johnny stood glumly in line at the cafeteria. He stared at the cold looking food waiting for him when he finally got to the end. Johnny always tried to remind himself to make his own lunch at home, to spare him the fake looking and tasting food that the school always offered, but he never found the time to make it when he remembered.

"Next time for sure," he promised himself.

The line shuffled forward.

The Cafeteria Lady plumped a nice helping of fake mashed potatoes and gravy on the next student's plate, not looking too happy while she did it. No one at the school really knew her name; she never looked at anyone and never initiated or responded much to conversation. Because of that, she was just known as the Cafeteria Lady.

"Next," she droned in her bored, tired voice.

The line shuffled forward again.

The Cafeteria Lady plunked the next helping of fake food down onto Nancy's plate, weighing it down considerably and forcing Nancy to compensate to keep her tray up.

"Thank you," Nancy said.

"Next," replied the Cafeteria Lady.

Johnny really wanted to talk to Nancy, but he didn't want to give up his place in line. He looked behind him and saw how far the line stretched back. Johnny would have to start all over again if he lost his place. No one in the line behind him looked very happy; they were probably all thinking the same thing about making their lunches next time.

Maybe missing lunch wasn't the worst thing in the world? Nancy weaved her way around students and tables, looking for a place to sit.

Johnny decided he had to talk to Nancy. He left his place in line, much to the dismay of the student behind him who would now be served his lunch that much faster.

Johnny trailed Nancy, trying to quickly dodge the students faster than she was so he could catch up to her.

He wasn't really looking in front of him and ran straight into a student who purposely moved to block his way. The student was really big; it was like running into a soft wall.

Johnny looked up, way up, to see Bob looking down, way down at him. Bob didn't look very happy either; it must have been something that was contagious at school that week.

Two other students appeared on either side of Bob: Frank and Jim. The three of them were always around each other because no one else in the school was big enough to survive their rough behavior.

"You weren't watching where I was going," Bob said to him.

"A mistake I will never make again," Johnny quickly replied as he tried to side step Bob, Frank and Jim.

The three of them all shifted over to block his way again. Johnny had completely lost sight of Nancy now, but then again he pretty much lost sight of everything except the three of them at the moment.

"You made the mistake again," Bob leered down at him.

Johnny didn't understand. He never really did anything to bother Bob in the past, and while he always saw the three of them picking on other students, Johnny was never one of their targets. He always felt guilty that he never helped those students stand up to these bullies, and he pretty much knew without a doubt that no one would be coming to help him now. It served him right for turning a blind eye.

"Looks like you're surrounded by the Fourth Wall," said Frank while he hit his fist into his palm.

Johnny almost laughed out loud. They called themselves the Fourth Wall because they thought they were all so big that if they had one more member they could hold a roof over their heads. At least that's what Johnny thought they meant. It was hard to tell when each one of them was already as big as a house.

"I don't have time for this right now," Johnny tried as he moved to the right to slide past them again. Predictably, the entire Fourth Wall shifted with him, once again blocking his way.

Johnny was nervous. Worse, he couldn't understand why he was nervous. He was a super spy, and could take out entire platoons of guards, sneak past high tech security, and single handedly save the world from evil. Yet here he was being confronted by three bullies and he was at a loss as to what to do. He'd like to think it was because now he was Johnny Clunker, and Clunker kept a low profile, stayed out of people's way, and didn't save the world on an almost daily basis.

"You just made time," Bob said.

By now all the students in the cafeteria were watching them. Johnny looked uncomfortably around at everyone, trying to remember how he got into this mess in the first place. It seemed that every time he wanted to talk to Nancy, he was running into people trying to stop him.

Johnny looked Bob in the eye.

"I don't want to hurt you."

Bob laughed.

Several people in the cafeteria laughed along. Some of them were laughing because, Johnny had to admit, it was genuinely funny. Bob must have weighed three times more than him, and Johnny could only imagine how odd his warning must have looked. But some of the other people were laughing out of relief because they were usually the target of the Fourth Wall's attacks. This Johnny didn't find so funny. People should stick up for themselves. Johnny was going to show them how. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Johnny knew he wasn't acting in the best way to protect his secret identity.

"I'm serious. If you continue to get in my way, I'm going to have to put you in your place," Johnny said with an icy cold stare.

Wham!

Bob punched Johnny hard in the stomach.

Johnny instantly fell to his knees and tried to get some breath into his lungs. He hadn't seen that coming; must have been a sucker punch. Some super spy he was turning out to be.

"I think you hurt my fist with all your skin and bones," Bob laughed.

"Leave him alone!"

Johnny looked up through the pain to find that Nancy was standing beside him. He tried to tell her to get out of the way, but he still couldn't remember how to breathe.

"Looks like your mom's here to save you," Frank laughed.

This was slowly turning from bad to worse. It was bad enough that he couldn't take out the Fourth Wall, but it was worse that he might be rescued by a girl. Again!

Enough was enough. Johnny struggled to stand up and face down his bullies.

"Walk away, right now," Johnny said, a calm inner strength radiating from him before he ruined the effect by coughing and trying to get more air into his lungs.

Still, the bullies did pause for a moment, and momentarily looked at each other and wondered what they should do. But then they remembered that they were the Fourth Wall, and they backed down from nobody.

"I'm scared," Bob said sarcastically, and he took another swing at Johnny.

Dozens of thoughts raced through Johnny's mind. First, he started thinking about the quickest way to take down all three bullies, but then he began revising his plan to try and keep his secret identity a secret by not revealing his skills to all the people that were watching the fight. But there simply wasn't any more time to think.

Johnny intercepted the swing near his face, making it look like he got hit, and shifted slightly, redirecting the hit toward Frank while pretending to stumble forward. Frank caught the punch right in his face.

Johnny's back was towards Jim and Jim wasted no time in taking advantage of an unfair situation. He swung at the back of Johnny's head with all his might. But before his fist could get there, Nancy dropped down on one leg and swung out with her other one, kicking Jim's knees out from under him.

Jim fell to the ground in a large heap.

Johnny looked over at Jim, and then back at Nancy.

"You're welcome," she said.

Before Bob knew what was going on, he had lost two of his accomplices.

"Looks like you'll have to be the First Wall now," Johnny commented, before realizing that he was screwing up his secret identity again. "I mean, please don't hurt me!"

Bob didn't understand what was going on, was Clunker joking? What had just happened to Frank and Jim?

"I am going to hurt you!" Bob declared, his simple mind latching onto the last thing he had heard and going with it.

With a yell, Bob charged at Johnny.

Bob was a very large kid, and once he got moving there was almost nothing that could stop him. Johnny waited until the last possible moment, and then spun and rolled out of the way, throwing himself sprawling onto the ground to look like he tripped. Bob watched him go out of the corner of his eye, but like a freight train he just kept moving forward, unable to stop.

The crowd of spectators had a moment to look on in horror before Bob plowed right into them, knocking at least a dozen students to the ground and managing to land on a good number of them.

Nancy looked on in amazement at the carnage spread out all around them.

Hands and feet tried to poke out from under Bob's massive form, there were muffled cries for help and groans of pain. Bob just looked dazed.

"What do we have here?" an icy cold voice asked from behind Johnny.

Johnny cringed. He knew that voice; he dreaded that voice.

Slowly he turned around to see Ms. Sniders' disapproving look spread out to all of them like a lighthouse beam, slashing back and forth to include everyone in the area.

She reached down with each hand and clamped her fingers on Frank's and Jim's ears. They yelped in pain. She pulled them up. They struggled to stand up as fast as they could before she could yank their ears off of their head. She did it with machine-like precision, and it looked like she would have been able to pick them up all by herself if they didn't cooperate.

"We don't like disruptions in the cafeteria, do we now?" she asked everyone.

Johnny could see the crowd start to quietly disperse as the students tried to slink away before they were singled out by Ms. Sniders.

He and Nancy had no chance to do that; Ms. Sniders had already focused her intense, cold, half smile on him.

Johnny had no idea how someone could show so many outward signs of emotion without seeming to feel them. For some reason her eyes always looked lifeless and cold. It was the worst when she smiled.

"Do we?" she asked again, directing the question to Frank and Jim beside her.

"No!" yelped Frank.

"We don't," pleaded Jim.

Johnny forgot what the original question was.

She smiled that cold, hard smile at them and released their ears.

Then she turned to Bob, who was just then struggling to get off of the people crushed under him.

Bob looked up, saw Ms. Sniders looking at him, and froze.

"I'm sorry," he squeaked.

She nodded a cold, grim nod.

Finally, Ms. Sniders turned her gaze on Johnny and Nancy.

"This is quite a ruckus you have caused, isn't it," she told them.

"They started it," Johnny tried to explain.

"It seems perfectly obvious to everyone who was the instigator here," Ms. Sniders continued. "Detention, today, for both of you," she declared.

"What?" Nancy all but shouted.

Ms. Sniders looked at Nancy. Nancy froze under that gaze as if Ms. Sniders was Medusa.

"Do you think, perhaps, that we are being unfair? Perhaps one detention is not enough, you may need more time to think about what you have done."

Nancy and Johnny looked down at the ground. Ms. Sniders continued to glare at them, almost daring them to say anything else.

Finally, satisfied, her face broke into a thin smile, but her eyes were still cold and lifeless.

Ms. Sniders turned and walked away from them.

* * *

Henry Clunker was frantic. He was hunched over his desk, shifting through piles of paperwork and tossing it around with abandon, creating a bigger mess than he had before.

The desk was filled to overflowing with paper, pens, clipboards, used coffee mugs, and a large, old computer.

Not finding what it was he was looking for, Henry dumped the massive pile back onto his desk and started opening his desk drawers, banging his elbow on the cubicle wall behind him.

Henry's cubicle was in the corner of the fifth floor, barely bigger than his desk, giving him almost no room to move the hard, wooden chair he sat on. Other people around him had more space, with newer computers and more comfortably shaped chairs.

"I know it's here somewhere," Henry said out loud.

It had to be there because Henry never threw anything out. His entire cubicle was one large deposit of paper waste. He kept digging, accidentally knocking over a large pile and then watching in dismay as the entire stack tipped over and fell to the floor.

Henry dove to his knees and starting picking up the paper, resigning himself to a long and difficult day, when he found himself staring at a pair of expensive shoes right in front of him. The shoes were attached to legs, and the legs were attached to Mr. Underling, his boss.

Henry, down on his hands and knees, slowly looked up to see Mr. Underling glaring down at him. Mr. Underling was an old man, with chalk white hair and eyebrows. He had a white mustache that looked out of style, and complemented his entire look with a white button up shirt and a black tie and pants. It looked very much like Mr. Underling hadn't yet discovered color.

Henry, by comparison, had a mixture of browns and grays that didn't seem to go together very well. He never spent as much time figuring out what to wear as he should, but then he spent even less time thinking about what people thought about his appearance, so it all worked out rather well. When he heard other people talk about the black and white drabness of Mr. Underling's outfits, Henry would support his boss by saying that at least his color scheme made it easy to pick him out in a crowd. People always thought that Henry was joking; it was what saved him from being a complete social outcast.

"Have you found that sales report yet, Clinker?" his boss boomed.

"It's Clunker," Henry corrected.

His boss scowled at him.

"Almost, I've narrowed it down to the right side," Henry said triumphantly as he stood up and gestured to the city of paper buildings that were on his desk.

"We are in a meeting right now, and we can't go on until you present the sales report."

"I've almost got it," Henry stalled for time.

Mr. Underling shook his head as he looked at what Henry would have to search through.

"Why don't you just get it off the computer and print it out again?" Mr. Underling said.

"My computer is still booting up," Henry explained. "I turn it on first thing in the morning, and then it's up and running just before lunch time."

Mr. Underling shook his head again.

"Just get me the report, and then get into the meeting to give it to me!"

Mr. Underling stormed off before Henry could respond.

Henry tried to explain to Mr. Underling's back that he was just in the process of doing that very thing when he realized at the last moment that it might look like he was being sarcastic. Still, he had to say something to let his boss know that he was hard at work trying to fulfill his wishes.

"Okay!" Henry called out after him, yelling it out loudly enough that Mr. Underling would hear him from the distance he had traveled.

Mr. Underling stopped, turned, and glared at him again.

A few other heads popped up from cubicles to stare at Henry. Henry waved weakly and then sat back down on his hard chair.

Maybe he shouldn't have yelled quite so loud? Maybe he shouldn't have said anything at all? Maybe he should have come in early to give his computer a head start in booting up? What was he supposed to be doing again? Looking for the sales report!

Henry started sorting through the piles of paper with renewed energy, like he was digging for buried treasure.

* * *

Henry knocked weakly on the closed door of the conference room.

"Hello?" he practically whispered to the door.

He tried knocking again, and then he waited. Henry could hear voices on the other side, but he wasn't sure if anyone could hear him. He certainly didn't want to yell out again, once that day was clearly enough.

"Hello, I found it," Henry whispered again, clutching several pieces of paper in his hand as he knocked again.

Henry was going to have to assert himself a bit more; he was going to have to open the door and go in boldly. Didn't Mr. Underling say he needed this report? Henry could picture it now. Mr. Underling was probably at the front of the room stalling for time, waiting for Henry to swoop in and save him with the report. Henry turned the knob of the door as slowly and quietly as he could. The door creaked open and Henry started tiptoeing into the room. He kept his eyes down and tried to move as slowly as possible so as not to attract any attention. Now he just had to locate Mr. Underling and slide him the report without anyone noticing. He could do it at a time when the presentation was getting loud, and everyone had their attention diverted.

Henry kept his eyes on the ground. He had managed to walk inside, but he was still standing by the door. He was going to have to look up if he was to find where Mr. Underling was. But he didn't want to look up because, to Henry's way of thinking, by looking up he would attract attention. Unfortunately, the presentation didn't seem to be getting louder. Now that Henry thought about it, he couldn't hear anything at all. The voices that he heard from outside the door had completely stopped since he opened the door. Henry listened, and began to realize that there were no voices at all. Everything in the room was quiet.

Henry looked up. He saw twenty people, all in expensive business suits, looking back at him. Every single person in the room, including his boss Mr. Underling, had stopped what they were doing and were focusing their complete attention on Henry.

Henry wanted to pass out. He noticed that he was still clutching the door knob with a straining hand. Henry smiled weakly and let go of the door. He had been hunched over, trying to make himself smaller when he had gone into the room, and now he straightened up and gave a small wave to everyone.

No one waved back.

Mr. Underling was still angrily staring at him from the front of the room. Henry had interrupted whatever presentation he was giving by trying to enter as quietly as possible.

"Well?" Mr. Underling finally asked.

Well? Well what? What was Henry doing here again? He looked down at his hand and saw the sales report clutched in a shaking, life threatening grip.

"The sales report!" he cried in relief as he held up the papers which were in danger of being crumpled up in his hand.

"Well?" Mr. Underling said again, holding out his hand for the papers.

Henry looked confused at Mr. Underling's outstretched hand before he realized that Mr. Underling wanted Henry to give him the papers. Henry hated when he got this nervous; it was a wonder that he remembered how to breathe under the stress he felt.

"Yes, here is the sales report," Henry tried to say with an air of authority as he put the slightly crumpled papers in Mr. Underling's hand.

"You'll find everything you need is there for the numbers to make sense," Henry continued, when he really should have just stayed quiet.

Mr. Underling didn't respond; he just looked over the reports silently.

Henry looked out to all the other people in the meeting, who were looking blankly back at him and Mr. Underling. Henry didn't want to keep looking at all those people that were looking at him, so he went back to staring at the floor.

"Mr. Crinkle."

Henry kept studying the floor.

"Crinkle!"

Henry looked up with a start to see Mr. Underling fuming at him.

"It's, uh, Clunker, sir," Henry tried to explain.

Mr. Underling shoved the papers back in Henry's hands. Henry was confused.

"Aren't all the papers here?" Henry asked weakly as he started going through them.

"They are there all right, there's only one small problem," Mr. Underling was talking in a really calm voice, which was scaring Henry more than if he were yelling at the top of his lungs. And then Henry saw the month beside the date on the sales report.

"Oh no, this is last month's sales report," Henry stated with fear.

"It gets better than that," Mr. Underling said in his deadly calm. "It is last month's and last year's sales report!"

Henry slowly moved his eyes back up the page to see the year beside the month beside the date column.

There it was, plain as day. Henry had just delivered a sales report to his boss that was over a year old. Slowly, he looked back up at his boss and tried to smile.

"It looks like the company did well last year," Henry tried.

No one laughed.

* * *

Johnny hated detention.

He didn't have it yet, but sitting in the office waiting to speak to the principal, he knew he was going to get it. Technically he did have it, because Ms. Sniders had already given it to him, but he knew that students could get these things overturned if they said the right things to the principal.

Nancy opened the door from the principal's office and came and sat down beside him.

At least he was finally going to get a chance to talk to her.

"Can you believe it? We got blamed for starting the fight!" Johnny started complaining instantly.

"We have more important things to worry about," Nancy said. "Like getting the Super Chip back."

"We never even had it in the first place," Johnny said.

"You know what I mean," she returned hotly.

In the short time Johnny had known her, he got the distinct impression that Nancy liked to lecture him on things. Maybe it made her feel like she was better than he was? Or maybe she felt because she knew some things better she knew everything better?

"Relax, we'll get it," Johnny replied casually, trying to be a bit condescending to get back at her for lecturing him.

It didn't work.

"Do you know what the Super Chip does?" Nancy said in her most perfectly annoying lecturing voice.

"Of course I do, everyone does," Johnny replied, trying to deflect her question.

It didn't work.

"What does it do?" she asked him point blank, the look on her face clearly suggesting that she didn't believe he knew.

"It does the same thing a regular Chip does and more," Johnny replied vaguely.

"Wow," Nancy replied, pretending to be impressed. "You really are a super spy."

Johnny threw up his hands in resignation.

"Fine, I don't really know what it does. So tell me already, again, for the second or third time, because you know you want to and there's nothing I can do to stop you."

"I'm glad to see you're finally learning," she said.

Johnny tried to think of something to say, but then just waved the thought away.

"Go on," he said. "Just try to be less annoying than usual."

"The Super Chip is faster than any other processor in existence. It's actually ten times faster, and has built in power for circumventing other computer bottlenecks. It can run circles around other computers, it can steal passwords, break encryptions, discover hidden security backups. With this Chip, there is no defense against computer hacking. They could steal money from bank accounts, break into important military installations, and hold the world for ransom."

Nancy took a deep breath, waiting to get a reaction from Johnny.

She didn't get one.

"That's pretty much exactly what you said the first time," he told her.

"But it doesn't seem to be sinking in. You don't seem to fully realize the danger."

"I get it, Super Chip plus bad guys equals super bad guys," he tried to assure her.

Nancy looked like she was going to hit him.

"You're very sure of yourself, aren't you?" she asked.

Johnny leaned over, looking around the office as the people around them went about their work, oblivious to the importance of what the two of them were talking about.

"I think it's time to introduce you to the rest of the team. From there we can formulate where the United Order is most likely to meet to try and use the Super Chip."

"You have a team behind you?" Nancy asked.

Johnny shrugged, "Yeah, sure. How else would I have learned my skills? Or got a hold of the really cool gadgets I've got."

For the first time since Johnny started talking to her, he could tell that Nancy was really impressed and at a loss for words.

"Don't you have a team?" he had to ask.

Nancy looked away, studied the floor a bit.

"You don't, do you?" Johnny pressed.

"Sure I've got one, an organization anyway," she answered flippantly. But Johnny wasn't fooled.

"But then who trained you? Or gave you those gadgets?" Johnny asked.

Nancy thought he was getting really irritating, and was beginning to question whether working with him was such a good idea. Who needed a team? Nancy had her handler, field operative, and trainer all in one person. And as far as Nancy was concerned, that was the only person she needed. Johnny simply wasn't as good a spy, in her mind, if he needed an entire team to help him.

The principal stuck her head out of her office, "Johnny Clunker, I will see you now."

Before Johnny could respond she had disappeared back into her office.

"It's your turn," Nancy pointed out, even though it was obvious.

"Don't think you're getting away from answering the question that easily," Johnny smirked. He could be so irritating sometimes!

"You can ask me as much as you like, but I'm not going to tell you," Nancy replied.

"Why not?"

"Because, it's secret," Nancy said defensively.

"Of course it's secret, we're super spies. But I'm trusting you, you can trust me a little too," Johnny said.

"Mr. Clunker, are you coming or not?" the principal asked again with an irritated voice as she stuck her head back out.

"It's your turn, Mr. Clunker," Nancy said, putting the emphasis on his last name, which she knew he hated.

"Fine," Johnny huffed, getting to his feet and preparing to enter the principal's office. "Just let me know one thing before I go in there; how much detention did you end up getting for the cafeteria incident?"

"None," Nancy replied.

"None?" Johnny couldn't believe it.

"Not a single day," Nancy replied smugly.

Johnny brightened up a little. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad. The principal probably knew that this wasn't their fault, and that the Fourth Wall ended up starting everything, like they usually do.

"Were you asked anything?" Johnny inquired.

"She asked me what happened, I told her," Nancy replied.

So it was going to be that easy, Johnny thought to himself as he turned to head into the principal's office. Still, from Johnny's experience he knew that nothing usually went that smoothly. He looked back at Nancy before he went in.

"What, exactly, did you tell her?" he asked.

"I told her it was all your fault," Nancy answered.

# Chapter 3: Department X

"Two weeks of detention!" Johnny cried for what must have been the millionth time. Nancy rolled her eyes as she had to hear about it again.

"Do you know how long that will take to serve?" Johnny asked.

"Two weeks?" Nancy replied.

"Hardly!" Johnny paced away from her in the small cramped confines of the steel elevator they were in.

Before she could breathe a sigh of relief, he walked back over and started up again.

"They might say it's two weeks," Johnny continued, "but every day feels like a year. And since I have to serve ten school days of detention, it will feel like ten years of time!"

"But it will still be over in two weeks," Nancy offered.

Johnny squinted his eyes and gave her a look.

"Weren't you listening?" he asked.

"I was trying not to."

"It was all thanks to you," he declared.

"You don't have to thank me."

"Believe me, I won't!" he yelled.

Johnny's yell reverberated off the walls of the quickly descending elevator. They were traveling down, deep into the Earth, where Johnny's secret spy group, Department X, had one of its main operations centers.

Nancy was quite impressed already, but she tried to appear nonchalant about the whole thing. Johnny had taken her to a garbage dump. And in the garbage dump was a cast off shipping container. There had been a lock on the container that looked too expensive for it to be there. Johnny had entered a code and they had stepped inside the container. The next thing Nancy knew she was in a super sonic elevator traveling at high speeds.

A screen came up on the elevator wall with Ackers' face on it. Nancy was a little taken aback upon seeing all the pimples all over his face, but she did her best to hide her reaction. Ackers was watching her closely; he hated when people looked at his pimples.

"What are you looking at?" Ackers jumped right to the point. Nancy looked away, trying to appear casual, before acting surprised that the question was directed at her.

Johnny knew exactly what was going on.

"Whatever you do, don't say anything about the pimples," he whispered to her. "Or I'll be in even more trouble."

"What did you say?" Ackers asked Johnny.

"Nothing," Johnny also looked around the elevator, trying to look casual. The two of them made an odd couple, with both Johnny and Nancy looking everywhere but at the large wall sized screen with a close up on Ackers' face.

Ackers wasn't very good at social interaction. He looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out what was going on when it should have been obvious. Part of him must have been acting subconsciously, trying to provoke them into responding. Why else would he have projected such a large image of himself?

"How far does this elevator go?" Nancy finally had to ask.

"Far," Agent Ackers responded from the screen. "It wouldn't be much of a secret base if anyone could dig a small hole in the ground and find it, now would it?"

Ackers turned his attention to Johnny.

"And I told you not to bring her down here. It's supposed to be a secret base. Secret, as in we don't introduce everyone we meet to it, as in we do our best to keep people from finding out about it, as in we don't let people in! I don't suppose I'm being clear?"

"Very clear," Johnny said, biting back remarks that would only lead to having to listen to Ackers talk more.

Ackers was always very condescending. Using his exceptional brilliance, which unfortunately everyone had to admit he had or they would hear about it for days, Ackers tended to put on an air of entitlement. It made him hard to get along with most of the time.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, mostly because Ackers was scrutinizing them from the view screen, the elevator finally came to a stop with a sudden lurch.

Nancy lost her balance and Johnny caught her. They held that pose for a moment before she broke free and Johnny started coughing to hide his embarrassment.

"I didn't need any help," she said, looking anywhere but at Johnny or Ackers.

"Of course not," he agreed, trying to get past the moment as quickly as possible.

The doors of the elevator opened to show Agent Ackers standing before them. He was skinny and tall, easily a head above both of them, and he had even more pimples in person than he had on the view screen.

As he spoke, the large image on the wall of the elevator continued to broadcast his image even though he was standing right in front of them. The effect was more than a little unsettling.

"Welcome to Department X," Ackers said.

Nancy mouthed the words without saying them out loud.

"A dreadful name, I know," Ackers confided. "I petitioned to get them to change it. I tried going for Department Z, that's the last letter in the alphabet, and I also tried Department A, but so far I haven't heard back from anyone. Let's face it, if you can't be the first or the last what's the point of being anything in the middle?"

Johnny could see that Nancy was about to ask a question.

"No, don't do it," Johnny warned.

"Do what?" Nancy played innocent.

"Don't make fun of him, or ask any legitimate questions you might have. Whatever you're thinking, it's just not worth it."

Nancy punched Johnny's arm.

"Ow," he said, looking at her warily.

"That was worth it," Nancy smiled.

"Well, what a fine couple you both make. I suppose you'll end up playing this silly game for a while before realizing you like each other. And then the games will get even more embarrassing. It's common practice among your species," Ackers said all in one breath, implying that he somehow did not belong to the human race.

"We don't like each other," Nancy stated defiantly.

"Yeah," was all that Johnny could add.

Ackers raised an eyebrow at his one word response.

Johnny just shrugged, too tired to argue with Ackers.

"Just show us to the debrief area," Johnny said with a tired voice.

Nancy couldn't help it. She kept staring at the pimples on Ackers' face. He noticed her staring out of the corner of his eye and looked directly at her, at which point she looked away. He nodded knowingly.

"I suppose you don't recognize me. I'm the guy from the monitor," Ackers pointed unnecessarily at the view screen where they had been looking at him as the elevator traveled down, and which was still showing a large image of his face as he spoke.

"I was employing a graphical enhancer to subtly alter my face and hide my identity. You never know when you might need to remain anonymous and conceal yourself right in the open so that no one recognizes you in the field," he continued.

It wasn't much of a graphical enhancer because Ackers looked almost exactly the same as he did on the screen except for a few subtle shifts here and there on his face there wasn't much that was different.

Nancy saw the look from Johnny and immediately played along.

"Right, I didn't recognize you. That's a great trick," she managed to say.

"I know," Ackers smugly responded.

"Are you going to stand in the elevator all day? We have important things to discuss," Ackers chastised them, and then, without waiting for their response, he turned and started walking down the hall.

Johnny and Nancy had to hurry to keep up.

They walked down an all white hallway, with white walls, ceilings and floors. It felt like they were in a hospital, except everything around them seemed to be more futuristic and advanced somehow. Even the lights that were in the ceiling didn't look like they were coming from regular light bulbs.

Ackers caught Nancy studying the ceiling as they walked.

"Super sensitive, digital interference probes shoot out of the light. The probes swirl around you, mapping a three dimensional computer representation of you as you walk. That representation is then stored in our computers and cross referenced whenever we need to find out where you are in the world," Ackers said as he walked, never slowing his pace.

Nancy could tell that he enjoyed showing off, he liked trying to appear smarter than everyone else, even if it meant putting them down and making people feel bad.

"Actually, I was wondering why everything is white," she replied, trying to throw Ackers off.

"It's because Ackers has no creativity," Johnny responded.

"I designed this place," Ackers jumped in as soon as he could. "I oversaw almost all aspects of its creation and construction. There was a limited budget and time constraints, and too many variables to meld together an effective color scheme."

"In other words," it was Nancy's turn to interrupt, "you didn't have time to paint."

Ackers lifted an eyebrow at her.

"There are far more important things to worry about than painting," he replied.

As they walked down the white, sterile hallway, the three started to pass rooms on either side with reinforced, plastic windows that allowed you to look in. There were a variety of training exercises and technology testing sites in the different rooms.

Nancy looked in and saw a man standing in front of a large cannon. The cannon erupted a steady stream of fire that completely engulfed the man. Nancy couldn't see him through the flames, but when the cannon was turned off, the man was looking unharmed and vastly relieved.

"We invented sun tan lotion as a byproduct of our fire protection technology," Ackers explained. "We released to the public a much milder dose, of course. Our lotion protects everything from hair to skin; it's the ultimate in fire safety."

Ackers gave her a smug smile that suggested he didn't know how to smile very well. For his extreme intelligence, there seemed to be a lot Ackers didn't know about social interactions.

The next room they passed was completely empty. There was nothing in it at all. As Nancy stopped to watch, water started pouring down like heavy rain from the ceiling. Soon a humanoid shape started to appear in the middle of the rain, with arcs of electricity dancing around it until it finally took shape in the form of a man.

"Invisibility," Ackers said. "Still haven't found a way to make it waterproof. The United Order has a model that works in a similar way, but their model has such a drain on power resources that they can only use it for a small amount of time."

Ackers continued walking, not even waiting to see if they would follow.

"Where are we going?" Nancy had to ask.

"To my office," Ackers explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"We need to figure out how to account for the both of you blundering the last mission and allowing the Super Chip to get away."

"We didn't blunder it away," Johnny started to argue.

"There were more of them than us. Plus, I had to save him," Nancy nudged Johnny.

Ackers gave Johnny a hard, long look.

"I would have known all about it if I wasn't stuck in radio silence land," he pouted with a completely straight face, something that only Ackers could do.

"We're not going to bring that up again, are we?" Johnny asked.

"How can I bring it up again? I wasn't finished bringing it up the first time," Ackers argued. "I have one big complaint with you, as opposed to a grouping of smaller ones, that just never gets resolved."

And with that Ackers marched on ahead, leaving Nancy and Johnny to watch him walk alone up the hall to his office.

"At least he wasn't mad," said Johnny.

"I'd hate to see him when he's mad," Nancy replied.

"Yes, you would," Johnny agreed.

* * *

"Now I'm really mad!" Ackers exclaimed.

Johnny and Nancy had just found their way into his small, cramped office. There were papers everywhere, and several desks to put them on, but there was only one chair. It was clear that Ackers worked alone, possibly because he didn't like working with other people, but more likely because no one wanted to work with him.

The walls were also covered with writing, both on and off the multiple whiteboards around the room. Usually a sentence or equation would start on a white board written in black marker. But after there was no more space, the writing would continue off the board and onto the wall, sometimes even making its way across the wall and onto a new white board. It was clear that Ackers liked to think. It was also clear that there was probably no one alive who could follow his line of thought, at least not very well.

"I left for less than five minutes and my lunch is completely gone!" Ackers whined.

Nancy leaned over to whisper in Johnny's ear.

"Who is he talking to? It's not us, is it?" she asked.

"You'll see," was all he would say back.

"I left my lunch right here, on this very spot. It was a sandwich, with ham and cheese. And now all I see are bread crumbs," Ackers continued.

"What did we say about eating my lunch when I'm gone?" Ackers asked.

No one responded. It looked like the three of them were the only ones in the small room.

"Bread Crumbs!" Ackers called out.

Nancy jumped, confused that Ackers wasn't looking at the bread crumbs when he yelled.

There was a low whine that came from under the other desk.

"You know what you did, there's no use hiding," Ackers said. "Well, there's some use hiding, but I'll find you anyway."

A computerized voice responded. It emphasized both syllables with an exaggerated change of pitch going from really high to really low.

"Sorry," it said.

"Naturally you're sorry, but you still have to come out and face what you've done," Ackers said.

Johnny was quickly losing patience.

"What about the Super Chip? That's the reason I came all the way down here. And the reason I brought her along with me," Johnny pointed at Nancy, who was currently enthralled with wondering what manner of creature or machine was hiding under the desk.

"In a moment," Ackers didn't even bother to look at him as he spoke. "I have to address this immediately so that she learns."

Nancy looked over at Johnny. Johnny just shrugged back helplessly.

"Come on out now," Ackers called, "and we can get past this unpleasantness as quickly as possible."

"Sorry," the robotic sounding high and low pitch came again from under the desk.

"Out. Now," Ackers commanded.

Slowly, a hesitant furry face and two paws appeared from under the desk. It dragged its small body out and then came up to stand before the three of them, looking tentatively up at Ackers.

Bread Crumbs, who started panting as she stood there, was a small poodle.

"Sorry," came the robotic voice again while Bread Crumbs continued panting uninterrupted.

As Nancy looked closely at Bread Crumbs, she noticed that there was a small speaker attached to the collar around her neck.

"He taught his dog to speak?" Nancy whispered to Johnny in bewilderment.

"Not exactly," Johnny whispered back.

Ackers smiled, it was one of the rare moments in his life when he did, and patted Bread Crumbs on the head.

"That's a good girl, run along now."

Bread Crumbs started wagging her tail and then bounced off to find more food.

"The only thing she knows how to say is sorry," Johnny finished whispering to Nancy.

Turning to Ackers, Johnny added, "If you know she's going to eat your lunch when you leave, why do you keep leaving it where you know she can get to it?"

Ackers was just finishing wiping the crumbs off the table and onto a napkin. He turned and gave Johnny a condescending stare.

"How else will she learn?" he asked with an obvious huff. "But I suppose I'm partially to blame. By naming her Bread Crumbs I've practically doomed her to identifying with and living out the very behavior I'm trying to eradicate. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for her to try and live up to her name and what she might see as part of her reason for being, her destiny so to speak."

Ackers turned to look at them with a stoic face, "Do you think I should have called her Don't Eat?"

Nancy looked over to Johnny to try and figure out if Ackers was kidding or really asking them their opinion on such a crazy question.

Johnny shrugged. There really was no way to explain Ackers; he was just a person you had to experience for yourself to actually believe someone like him existed.

"No, that's fine. Bread Crumbs is a great name," Johnny said to Ackers.

"Yes, I know. Obviously I couldn't name her Don't Eat; how long do you think she would have lived? No, don't answer that," Ackers turned from the two of them and approached one of his computers.

He typed in a few words and hit enter. A holographic display of a screen emerged in the air along with a keyboard floating beside it.

Ackers started typing on the keyboard and maps began appearing on the screen.

"After you two bungled acquiring the Super Chip, I put my superior intellect into action trying to pinpoint its new location. We now know where the Chip is going to be tested. It's in a United Order base hidden within the city in the basement of a building posing as a bank," Ackers said in one large breath.

"How did you find out where the Chip was?" Nancy asked as she studied the screens.

"I told you, I used my superior intellect," Ackers said with a straight face.

"Don't ask, he never tells," Johnny tried to explain.

"Of course I never tell. First there's the matter that you wouldn't be able to fathom my explanations. Then there's the issue of job security; if anyone else could do what I could then I would be replaced. Now, moving on, your assignment will be to infiltrate the structure."

As Ackers spoke, a three dimensional representation of the building came up on the screen. He zoomed in and out, cycled through the floors of the building and drew X's and lines through different rooms.

"What do you think you're doing?" a female voice came from the computer as Ackers was typing.

An image of a woman wearing a silver body suit appeared beside the display of the bank.

"Are you taking up my resources trying to show little maps of buildings?" the woman continued.

Ackers sighed and went into a frenzy, typing on the three dimensional keyboard at lightning speed.

The woman frowned.

"You don't think you can get rid of me that easily?" she asked.

Suddenly, she disappeared, and the only thing left on the displays was the three dimensional map of the building.

"Actually, I do," Ackers said as he finished entering a string of codes.

"What was that?" Nancy asked.

"That was Ackers' girlfriend, Ayai," Johnny responded.

"She is not my girlfriend. She is a highly advanced form of intelligence that I have been working on. She's going to be the first true artificial intelligence. Ayai will be capable of her own thought and even able to make creative decisions. When she is finished, of course. Right now she only appears life-like because I programmed her to be a real pain in the ass," Ackers added.

Ackers studied the holographic display on the wall.

"It looks like the best course of action would be to sneak in through the front door; they'll never be expecting that. I have a few new gadgets that I've invented that you'll be using." Ackers turned to Nancy after he finished looking over the plan.

"I imagine that your agency, whoever they might be, will also be supporting this operation with equipment and people?"

Nancy looked sideways at Johnny, who looked questioningly back.

"I've got a few gadgets, some things I made on the side, but we won't be joined by anyone else from my organization," she stammered out.

"You mean to tell me you make your own gadgets?" Ackers was appalled. "What kind of second-hand outfit do you work for?"

"It's not second-hand. And yes, I make my own gadgets, so what?" Nancy was getting angry. She didn't come here to be insulted.

Ackers shook his head. He always had to explain everything to everyone.

"The people who invent the gadgets are the top brains in any spy organization, so naturally they never put themselves at risk in the field. That's for people like him," Ackers tilted his head in Johnny's direction. "I guess you could say they are more expendable."

"Hello?" Johnny waved incredulously. "I'm standing right here, hearing everything you say."

Ackers continued on, ignoring him.

"And how can you have no one to add to this mission? We'll be adding four top operatives that will be joining you. The least you could do is lend us a couple of agents in a nice show of cooperation."

Nancy threw up her hands in exasperation.

"There are no other agents on my team!"

Johnny and Ackers turned to each other in stunned silence.

"You work alone?" Johnny managed to finally say.

"No, I have a handler, someone who trains me and plans the missions," Nancy offered.

Ackers narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

"Who is this handler? Perhaps I should look them up in my database. I have a very extensive database; it's one of my pet projects. It's got everything in it."

"You work with me, you get to know nothing about my handler, that's the way it goes," Nancy said guardedly.

"Her handler is probably a criminal. I see this kind of thing all the time," Ackers said. "Some poor lost soul trying to make up for the bad things they've done in their life."

Nancy laughed. "My handler is as far away from lost as someone could be. She's a very capable woman who's taught me all I know."

Ackers nodded happily to himself. "We now know she's a woman; that narrows it down to only half the population."

Ackers shook his head as he switched off his database and computer, "If Agent Seventy-Seven has nothing to add to this mission except herself, then perhaps we don't need any more of her help. I think you should thank her for her time and send her on her way."

Nancy looked incredulously at Ackers, "It's my turn to be in the room, standing right in front of you while you talk about me."

"Don't you hate it when he does that?" Johnny asked.

Ackers shuffled over to the computer on his desk and powered it down also.

"Fine, if I am forced to speak directly to you, without anyone to soften my delivery as to the harshness of my message, then I will. We don't need you," Ackers explained.

Nancy looked wordlessly at Johnny.

Johnny sighed.

"We brought her all the way here, showed her our base. She really helped me out. I think she should be on the team for now," Johnny said.

"If I am forced to work with even more amateurs, while I constantly put up with their shortcomings, then that is what I will do. After all, what difference would one more person make?" Ackers asked while he looked at Nancy.

"Gee, thanks. It's really great to be a part of this team," Nancy replied.

"Oh, don't thank me. Wait until you meet the rest of the team," Ackers said ominously.

* * *

The rest of the team was crazy, Nancy concluded instantly.

She was in a training room surrounded by high tech equipment and lethal weapons watching the group try to kill each other for practice.

Johnny and Ackers were standing beside her, but Nancy couldn't help thinking that they were all in danger just for being this close to the group, which was currently sparring with a robotic army and, as far as Nancy could tell, each other.

Three of the robots attacked Big Petey, a huge giant of a young man with muscles bulging out of his shirt. The robots punched and pummeled Big Petey, but he didn't seem to feel any of the hits. He actually laughed at one of them.

Then the robots tried to all jump on top of him and bring him to the ground. Big Petey waited until they were all on top, then he gathered them together in one giant ball, and threw all three of them into the nearby wall. Nancy watched as they landed in a scrap heap, too twisted and scrunched together to do anything else.

Red crept up behind Big Petey. She was slightly older than him, in her late twenties, and had a fiery temper to match her hair. She decided this was the best time to attack Big Petey. She had various types of explosives strapped to her, and while Big Petey wasn't watching, she came up behind him and slapped some ball-shaped goo onto his back.

Red ducked as Big Petey swung a meaty fist behind him.

"You want to play?" he asked her right before the ball attached to his back exploded.

Instead of sending him flying across the room, the goo pulled Big Petey down toward the ground, anchoring him flat on his back.

"I want to play," Red confirmed as she looked down on him. "Next time watch your back."

Big Petey tried to get up off the ground but he seemed to be stuck there.

"I thought that's what you were for?" he asked, looking up at her.

"Not today, sweetie," she laughed as she walked away.

Ackers turned to regard Nancy, "She's an explosives expert. Except her explosives usually do everything but explode in the conventional sense. She makes them all herself, which should please you immensely, and frustrates me to no end. She's pretty talented for someone who isn't me," he explained.

Nancy turned her attention to the next member of the group. In the middle of the training area stood a skinny looking guy in his mid to late thirties. He was holding a pencil and clipboard in his hand, and he had really thick glasses that looked like they threatened to drive his head down to the ground. His name was Vinnie, and he didn't look very formidable or capable of defending himself.

He mumbled to himself as he walked into harm's way, with a group of robots attacking him from all sides.

"The probability of the next attack," Vinnie mumbled to himself as he ducked a punch from one robot, sidestepped a strike from another, and then put himself right in between the two adversaries, "should be coming from angles relative to the opportunity of best advantage as it is perceived from a mechanical viewpoint."

Both robots pulled out laser pistols and aimed them at Vinnie.

"Hence the most obvious solution, and the only real source of victory..." Vinnie mumbled to himself.

The robots fired just as Vinnie ducked. The laser blasts sailed harmlessly over his head and both robots ended up shooting each other in the chest.

"...is to duck," Vinnie concluded.

The robots stood there for a moment, their circuits sputtering and shorting out, before falling over with a large, heavy clunking sound.

Vinnie kept mumbling to himself as he walked over to Ackers, Nancy and Johnny. He never looked up at them as he walked, he just kept jotting down notes on the clipboard he held in his hand.

"That was very impressive," Nancy commented.

"Not really," Vinnie answered, still looking at his notes. "It was really more of an inevitability; if one knows the proper angles of attack and thought processes of his opponent, there really is only one outcome to ultimately destroy them."

"Vinnie is a probability expert, psychologist and battlefield strategist," Ackers explained to Nancy. "And he thinks he's almost as smart as me."

Vinnie pushed the glasses back firmly onto his nose and shifted his center of gravity back a bit.

"You should see my notes on Ackers," Vinnie commented. "He's got inferiority complexes on his inferiority complexes."

Ackers looked like he was trying to figure out what to say next. He stammered and opened his mouth, but then shut it again and turned away.

"Who's the newbie?" a voice came from behind Nancy.

She turned around to see a woman, about eighteen years old, dressed all in black. Her long brown hair was tightly pulled back in a ponytail.

"This," Ackers finally found his voice, "is Silence. And you'll find that she is anything but her code name."

"She looks green. Hate to be with her on the battlefield," Silence continued.

Nancy turned to regard her tormentor.

"I think you'll find that I can hold my own," Nancy said.

Silence walked up to her, unsheathing two long swords and twirling them through the air in wide circles, interchanging them both from hand to hand.

"Really? I highly doubt that," Silence said as she stepped forward, bringing the spinning blades closer to Nancy. "Why don't you show me?"

"Don't worry about her. She likes to talk a lot, but you'll like her better when you get to know her," Johnny tried to put in.

"I don't like her at all so far," Nancy remarked.

"Good," Silence responded as she came in closer with her spinning weapons.

The blades were very close to Nancy, she could feel the air whoosh by as they passed near her through the spinning arc of the attack pattern.

Lightning quick, Nancy's hand shot out and she intercepted Silence's wrist, striking it right on a nerve. Her hand went numb from the impact, and Silence was forced to let go of one of her swords as Nancy kicked the other one to the ground.

The first sword flew out of her hand and sailed through the air. It went right past Ackers' head, narrowly missing him and impaling itself in the wall.

For a moment everyone was frozen. And then Silence and Nancy exploded into a fury of movement. They were attacking and counter attacking each other faster than everyone could keep up. Silence would throw a punch, only to have Nancy duck in underneath it and come up at her side, sweeping her leg low and tripping Silence to the floor.

Silence fell down, but not before grabbing Nancy and flipping her. Both girls went down, and both started attacking and blocking each other before they could even stand up.

Everyone was focused on the fight except for Ackers, who turned his head and looked at the sword sticking out of the wall.

"Did you see how close that came to me?" he asked, but no one was listening.

Nancy threw a series of punches that had Silence barely blocking in time. Silence finally grabbed Nancy's wrist and bent it backward. Nancy yelled out in pain. Silence grabbed the other wrist and bent it back also.

"Yield," Silence demanded.

Nancy stopped trying to fight back and free her wrists. Instead, she twisted her body in an arc, tangling Silence's hands and forcing her arms to cross in an unnatural way.

Silence had no choice but to let go.

Nancy kicked out at Silence, who dodged out of the way and then lunged back at her. Nancy retreated to the wall and waited for Silence to strike again. When she did, Nancy dove aside and let Silence run into the wall. But when Silence got there the wall didn't stop her, she actually ran up the wall and came to a stop, standing on its side.

Ackers was still looking from the blade back to everyone else.

"Don't tell me no one saw it, because you were all looking. That sword came very close to my head and I want an apology," he stated. But again, no one was listening.

Nancy was caught off guard. Silence was actually crouching on the side of the wall!

Before Nancy could really react to what gadget or technique allowed Silence to do this, the attack was on again.

Silence rained down a series of punches and it was all Nancy could do to block or dodge them in time. Whenever Nancy tried to attack back, Silence would just side step up the wall and out of her reach. After a series of exchanges where Nancy could not gain an advantage, she decided to step back away from the wall and break the engagement.

That's when Silence struck the finishing blow. Vaulting herself off the wall and straight at Nancy, Silence extended her hands forward in tight fists. Nancy brought up her own hands to guard, but that's exactly what Silence wanted her to do. At the last instant, Silence opened up her fists and grabbed Nancy's wrists. Silence used her momentum, and Nancy's anchoring hands, to flip over Nancy and come down behind her. Then she continued the movement by bending and pulling while still holding on. Nancy had no way of stopping herself, and the momentum lifted her off the ground and sent her up into the air.

Silence released her grip and everyone watched as Nancy flew through the air and crashed into the far wall. She slid down, landing in a crumpled heap, and lay dazed and out of breath against the wall.

No one moved or said anything. And then Ackers started up again right where he left off, completely oblivious to the tension in the room.

"I'm not kidding, it was really close. I'm still waiting for an apology."

Johnny looked uneasily at Silence, who only smirked back at him in a self-confident stare, and then made his way slowly over to Nancy.

Nancy started using the wall to push herself back up to a standing position.

"So, that's the team," Nancy said as he approached.

Johnny couldn't tell if she was mad or not.

"That's the team," Johnny said weakly. "I hope you don't mind working with them."

"I don't mind at all," Nancy said through clenched teeth while she held her side in pain. "It gives me a chance to even up the score."

# Chapter 4: Second Chance

It was near midnight. The moon was full, casting some light onto the deserted city street. There were a few parked cars but none of the surrounding stores were open and there wasn't a person to be seen in any direction.

Johnny crouched from his position beside one of the cars, looking at the bank doors with a special thermal eye piece. Nancy crouched down beside him.

"Looks like the alarm on the door is standard, shouldn't be a problem," he said.

As Johnny looked through the special eye piece, he was able to see all the electrical wiring through the walls and door of the bank. He could even see the connecting pieces where the electrical circuit was able to monitor the status of the door.

"Of course it shouldn't be a problem," Ackers voice came loud and clear over the ear pieces both Johnny and Nancy were wearing. "Our technology is years ahead of anything you'll find in the common world."

"This is supposed to be a front for the United Order, so the technology will be quite a bit more advanced," Johnny said.

There was a moment of silence on the other end.

"Right, I forgot about that," Ackers admitted.

Silence dropped down out of a tree beside Nancy, giving her a smile.

"Boo," she said, as she skipped on ahead to monitor the area.

Johnny shrugged at Nancy.

"If she picks on you it means she likes you. She bugged me for a year before she finally warmed up to me," Johnny tried to explain.

"I'm used to working alone," was all Nancy would say, keeping a stoic expression.

Johnny nodded, and finally put down the eye piece. He could tell that Nancy's ego was still bruised from their fight earlier.

"Still, she's not that bad. If you get Red mad, on the other hand, I would leave the country. Her good moods are worse than most people's temper," Johnny said.

"Don't talk about me behind my back."

Johnny jumped as he saw Red leading Vinnie toward the doors. Her hair seemed like it was tied back even tighter than normal, making Johnny wonder if the stress on her scalp contributed to her high tension. She had two small square grenades in each hand and checked both sides of the street as she walked.

"What do those do?" Johnny asked, indicating the objects she was holding.

"They go bang."

"I figured they did that, I'm just worried about what type of bang they make," Johnny clarified.

"Guess we'll all find out, if we're lucky," Red smiled back with an eerie looking sparkle in her eyes.

She walked out into the middle of the street, Vinnie following right behind. Together the two walked up to the doors of the closed bank.

Vinnie bent down on one knee and started examining the door. He pulled out a thin glove from his pocket and put it on his hand, pressing the glove against the door and listening.

Johnny rose from his spot behind the car and indicated that Nancy should follow.

"I guess the stealth part of this operation is over," Nancy said. She looked around as they walked toward the front door.

"If Red and Silence aren't worried, it means that the coast is clear for now. But the stealth part will be officially over when Big Petey starts breaking things," Johnny answered.

They walked up to Vinnie and stopped, watching him listening to the glove he had pressed against the door.

Vinnie was sliding the glove around the door in small circular motions, every now and then he would tap one of the fingers of the glove against the door in alternating rhythms.

"What is he doing?" Nancy asked.

"Listening," Vinnie answered before Johnny could. "I can hear what you'd call the heart beat of the electricity. Using this glove I can deaden certain electrical pathways, and trace superficial surface currents for it to follow. The superficial currents won't last more than a minute, but it will be enough time for us to bypass the alarm and slip inside."

Vinnie tapped a few more times.

Big Petey walked up to the group while they were all watching Vinnie intently.

"We done yet?" he almost bellowed at the group.

Everyone jumped with a start. Red flashed him an angry look.

"We're supposed to be doing this the quiet way," she added with a glare.

"I don't know how to do things quiet,' Big Petey responded. "Where's Silence?"

"She's around somewhere. She's always hiding when explosions are ready to go off," Red answered with a sarcastic look around her.

"Okay, it's ready," Vinnie declared as he stepped away from the door.

"About time," Big Petey said.

He grabbed the handle of each door. Everyone took a step away from him.

"I could just pick the lock," Nancy offered.

Big Petey strained all his muscles and then pulled. Both doors were ripped off their hinges as they came apart from the building. Big Petey threw them down to the ground with a yell.

"That's no fun," he replied as he peered into the building.

Red walked forward, still holding her square grenades.

"Hurry up, there's people inside and we still have a Chip to find," she said angrily as she led the way.

They all walked inside, Nancy bringing up the rear of the group and still looking for any traces of Silence.

* * *

As soon as they were in the bank it was obvious that they weren't alone. Johnny held up his hand for everyone to stop. He brought out his eye piece and looked through it. He had to fiddle with the edges and shift the settings around slightly to detect body heat.

"Would you hurry up!" Ackers insisted through the ear piece. "Knowing our luck they heard the door 'open' and are all making a hasty retreat."

Johnny could detect heat signatures coming through the floor.

"They're all in the basement," he declared as he looked down at the ground through his technological gadget.

"There are two sets of stairs and an elevator leading down," Vinnie said beside Johnny as he consulted a schematic of the building. "I suggest we split up. I'll wait up here, of course, as mission specialist."

"I'm the mission specialist!" Ackers screamed from out of everyone's ear piece.

"Yes, thank you for reminding us," Johnny said as he held his ear in pain.

"Alright then, everyone split up and converge on the Chip," Ackers continued, almost repeating exactly what Vinnie had just said.

Johnny and Nancy made their way to one set of stairs, Big Petey and Red walked toward the other.

"I guess I'll guard the elevator. Probably not the best time in the world to be using elevators anyway," Vinnie said as he glanced at his departing teammates.

"Nancy, make sure you stay behind me. We don't know what to expect down there," Johnny said as he held out his hand protectively while peering into the darkness of the descending stairs.

"Seventy-Seven," Nancy replied.

Johnny turned to look at her.

"What?"

"When we're on a mission, my name is Seventy-Seven," she replied with a mild tone of annoyance.

She shouldered past him and started to creep down the stairs. Johnny shook his head and followed after her.

On the opposite end of the building, Big Petey and Red were going down the other flight of stairs.

"What do those do, anyway?" Big Petey asked nervously as he looked at the four square grenades that Red was still holding.

"Have you ever known me to tell and not show?" she asked.

Big Petey shook his head.

"I spent an extra amount of time making these. It should be a neat surprise for everyone when they go off," she smiled wickedly.

"I just want to know. Every time you throw one of your homemade grenades, something different happens. Should I stay near you when you throw them? Should I run away from where you throw them, or should I run toward where you throw them?" Big Petey was tripping over his words trying to get an answer out of Red.

"You're not nervous, are you?" she asked.

Big Petey quickly shook his head, and then realized there was no point in hiding it. He started nodding quickly.

"Big Petey is nervous of a little fireworks?" she asked playfully.

"People I can handle, you can pick them up, throw them, smash them. But the things you make scare me to death," he admitted.

"Good," she said as they walked down into the depths of the building.

* * *

The glow from the monitor illuminated Scar's face, making him look even more menacing and threatening than normal.

"Tell me again what it is you are doing," he said as he stood with arms crossed, studying the strings of numbers flashing down the screen in rapid procession. Sitting in a chair beside him, a nervous bald man was typing furiously on a keyboard, pausing now and then to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He was trying to keep it from running down into his eyes and fogging up his large glasses, and he was failing miserably.

Around them were rows and rows of unused computers. Multiple guards were posted throughout the basement; all of them had laser rifles.

"I don't like to wait," Scar said, leaning over the shoulder of the nervous computer operator who everyone in the United Order just referred to as The Operator. His rampant nervousness was nothing that the guards and Scar had not seen before. He was always nervous when he was using computers, even though he was one of the best hackers and security protection experts in the world. The Operator had mentioned that he got nervous because of a traumatic experience he had as a child when he claimed a computer had tried to kill him by electrocuting him. Ever since that moment he was always worried whenever he touched a keyboard, screen or holographic work station.

"Yes, well, I'm, I mean, it is currently hacking into multiple accounts all over the world," The Operator said as his fingers danced nervously across the keyboard. The computer he was using was connected to a transparent plastic box beside him. The box was filled with computer components and wires. The Super Chip rested on the top of the box, plugged in and boosting the technological power that The Operator was using.

"We are working with the Super Chip to convince the bank's computers to take ten dollars from five million different accounts and place it in our own, anonymous offshore account. It's a small step for the Chip's abilities, but we are testing out the possibilities slowly because..." The Operator jumped back from the computer with a sudden yelp.

"Did you feel that?" he asked with fright as he stared at the keyboard. "I thought I felt something."

"I'm sure it was just in your mind," Scar said impatiently.

"Yes, you're probably right," The Operator said as he cautiously poked the keyboard and then jumped back quickly. When he didn't feel a shock, he tested it again, touching the keyboard for a longer amount of time before quickly pulling his hand back again.

"We are on a deadline," Scar emphasized the word 'dead,' making sure The Operator understood the hidden meaning.

Reluctantly, The Operator started typing on the keyboard. As nervous as the computer made him, Scar scared him even more. Between the computer in front of him and Scar behind, The Operator started sweating worse than before. His glasses began fogging up and he had to wipe them several times so he could see.

"We are telling the bank accounts that the ten dollars we are taking from them is due to a maintenance charge," The Operator finally finished explaining.

Scar peered intently at the gibberish on the monitor, trying to make sense of the words and numbers appearing and disappearing in rapid procession.

"And is it working?" Scar asked.

"Normally this kind of procedure would take hours of time and then even more hours to make the hack harder to trace," The Operator explained. "But with the Super Chip plugged in, I am able to circumvent all security in a matter of seconds." He beamed with pride as if it were him that was getting through the security instead of the Super Chip.

"It's working exactly as it's supposed to. May I ask who invented it?" The Operator asked as he kept his attention focused on the screen.

"No you may not," a woman's voice responded. A sword appeared from behind Scar, its edge held close across his neck.

The Operator turned around to see Silence standing behind them.

"Oh my," was all he could say.

All the guards rushed forward with their laser rifles up and ready to fire, but they had no clear shot as Silence made sure to keep herself hidden behind Scar while only allowing her sword arm to be visible as a target.

Silence applied some pressure with her sword on Scar's neck.

"Step back," Scar managed to say.

"Smart," Silence smiled as she saw the guards look to each other, uncertain as to what to do.

"Now!" Scar barked as a trickle of blood ran down his neck. The guards did as they were told. Scar tried to turn his head to look back at Silence.

"Eyes front, don't move a muscle," she warned him.

Scar was not used to being told what to do, especially not by the enemy.

"How did you get in here?" he asked, doing his best to keep the anger and frustration out of his voice.

"You're really hating this, aren't you?" Silence teased. She loved to flaunt her skill and never missed an opportunity to do it. "Big, strong guy like you being shown up by little, old me?" she purred in his ear.

The Operator fidgeted, wiping away at the sweat on his forehead to keep it out of his eyes.

"I'm not going to tell you how I got in here. It would ruin the fun for next time," Silence mocked.

The guards still looked back and forth at one another, trying to somehow figure out what they all thought should be done. Since no one thought of anything, they just kept looking back and forth dumbly at each other.

"Since we know you can all follow instructions, I'm going to give you a few more. Take the Chip out of that box," Silence ordered.

The Operator looked to Scar helplessly. Scar wasn't any help; he kept his look stoic and unreadable.

"Do it, I haven't got all day," Silence added.

The Operator reached out a trembling, sweat-soaked hand and unplugged the Chip from the plastic box.

"I've got it," he said needlessly as he held it up for everyone to see.

"Pass it slowly to me," Silence said.

The Operator held out the Super Chip for Silence to take. Scar, the sword still at his throat, decided he had had enough. He couldn't let this woman get the Chip that the United Order had worked and sacrificed so much for. With his hands at his side, he slowly reached down and unclipped his laser gun. Silence was directly behind him so she couldn't see what he was doing. She held out her hand for the Chip. The Operator reached out even further to give it to her.

Scar slowly raised his gun and pointed it above his shoulder, aiming it roughly at her face. Silence looked down and saw the gun just at the last moment. She bent low as Scar fired and the shot passed harmlessly over her head.

Before she could react any further, Scar spun free of her sword and kicked out, catching Silence in the stomach and sending her flying backward.

"Guard the Chip," Scar yelled.

The Operator pulled the Chip back toward himself and held it close, not sure what he was going to do to effectively guard it.

The United Order soldiers sprang into action, bringing up their laser rifles and aiming them at Silence. Scar inadvertently blocked their aim as he advanced on her with his gun. Recovering quickly from the attack, Silence kicked the gun out of his hand. But it wasn't enough. Scar and all the guards in the room had Silence trapped against the wall. There was nowhere for her to go.

"Looks like a party!" Big Petey hollered as he came out of the stairwell and charged the guards.

Before they could react, Big Petey had barreled into the group, sending bodies flying in all directions as he wrestled with all of them at the same time. He was too close, and they were scrambling all over each other, which helped make their laser rifles practically useless against Big Petey. This was the type of fight he lived for.

Red stepped into the basement, still clutching her four square grenades, and scanned the room, taking stock of everything that was going on.

From the opposite end of the basement, Johnny and Nancy also entered the room.

"Looks like we finally found Silence," Johnny said.

"Looks like your friends could use some help," Nancy responded as she watched Big Petey get surrounded by all the guards.

Johnny dodged aside as a thrown guard crashed into the wall beside him.

"I'm not so sure about that," Johnny remarked as he looked down at the unconscious guard.

"This is play time for me!" Big Petey yelled as he grabbed another guard and started spinning him over his head before throwing him into another group and knocking them all down.

The Operator was looking at all the chaos around him with wide eyes. He was so scared and dumbfounded he even forgot to sweat for a while.

"Oh my," he said as he watched it all while holding the Super Chip up in his hand for anyone to notice.

Scar advanced on Silence who was watching him in a ready fighting stance.

"I'm going to make you pay for your interference," Scar said.

Silence laughed at him, and indicated that he was welcome to try with a gesture of her hand. In truth, she was a little worried. Her attack hadn't gone as she had expected, and she hadn't thought that Scar was nearly as strong as he was. But the last thing she was going to do was let anyone see her doubt.

Scar charged and Silence jumped to the side, kicking out at his ankle as she went. He fell to one knee, but not before he grabbed a hold of her leg. He swung with all his might and threw her at the wall. Silence landed on the wall and stuck to it, orientating herself and getting ready to pounce.

Scar nodded at her agility and remarkable skill.

"Impressive," he admitted. "But it will not save you."

From across the room, Big Petey was running out of guards to attack. The few remaining people around him that could still stand had become wary of charging at him. One of them still had his laser rifle. He aimed at Big Petey and then fell to the ground from a karate chop from Red.

"About time you showed up," Big Petey yelled as he finished fighting with another two guards.

"You're welcome. Now quit complaining," Red responded with a snarl. Even at the best of times she seemed to always be in a bad temper. It was what had led her to study the field of explosives with such passion and tireless commitment. Causing chaos in unexpected ways was the only thing that cheered her up.

"Will you tell me what your new toys will do now?" Big Petey asked, indicating the four square grenades that Red still hadn't used yet.

"First we get the Chip, and then these will help us get away," she said.

"Get away from what? I've handled all there is to handle right here," Big Petey replied with a laugh.

Red pointed over his shoulder and Big Petey turned to see a new host of soldiers enter the room from the elevator.

"Oh, them," was all he could say.

The soldiers instantly swarmed him and attacked at the same time.

"Alright," Big Petey admitted as he ducked, weaved, and dodged through the army of soldiers, "I think I could use some help now."

Back upstairs, Vinnie held a portable computer which was projecting a holographic keyboard and screen. The only part of the computer that was physical was the small, rectangular case he held up in his left hand. Vinnie's fingers from his right hand danced across the holographic keyboard as he tried to pull up any communication from his team.

"What's happening? Can any of you read me?" Vinnie asked as he looked at displays of the bank's basement floor.

"It's terrible when they ignore you, isn't it?" Ackers' voice came through the earpiece Vinnie was wearing. "I've been trying to get used to it for over forty years."

"You haven't even been alive for forty years," Vinnie retorted as he shook his head in frustration. He couldn't reach anyone.

"True, but with all the stress that they've caused me, I feel like I'm over a hundred. You really should leave this job to me, some people just aren't good at overseeing missions."

"Do you know what's going on?" Vinnie asked, biting back several cruel responses that he was just dying to say.

"No," Ackers had to admit. "But I would have had a much easier job of it if you hadn't opted to change the mission parameters by staying upstairs to monitor the team that I was already monitoring."

Vinnie tried to slam his hand on the holographic keyboard, but it just went right through.

"What would you have done differently?" Vinnie challenged him.

"Lots," Ackers replied.

"Really?" Vinnie shot back. "If you're worried about keeping your mission specialist job, I just want to assure you that you should be, even though there is no point in worrying about it."

"I'm not worried, not in the slightest," Ackers shot back with a slight tremble in his voice.

"Good, because there's no point in worrying about what's inevitable," Vinnie concluded.

Vinnie smiled to himself at the silence that greeted him on the other end, he loved putting Ackers in his place. The fact was that he was too smart to have to deal with people like Ackers, people who thought they were great in their own little worlds, but couldn't really do anything useful.

"It's not inevitable, you aren't managing anything at all from where I'm sitting," Ackers finally thought of something to say.

"Watch and learn, my hopeless friend." It was time to show Ackers who he was dealing with. "I'll show you what a real mission specialist does! A real mission specialist is not someone who's too scared to even go out on a mission," Vinnie said.

"I'm not too scared to go out on missions," Ackers vainly tried to defend himself.

Entering a series of commands, Vinnie effectively cut off Ackers from all further communication. He then pushed a button on his box and the computer's screen and keyboard disappeared. He slipped the computer into his pocket and headed for the stairs leading into the basement. Vinnie was going to move up in the world, it was only a matter of time.

Back downstairs, Scar was watching Silence with a measure of disgust. She continued to cling to the wall, her feet and one hand used to hold her up, she still had her other sword strapped to her back, waiting for the opportunity to use it but feeling helpless without both weapons in her possession. Scar couldn't tell how she was able to stick to the wall like that, but it mattered little.

He advanced on her and threw out a punch. Silence blocked the punch and skipped up the wall a bit higher before jumping off it and hurling herself through the air at him. But Scar was incredibly strong, far stronger than any normal person should be. He actually caught her in the air, held her up for a moment, and then threw her to the ground at his feet. The wind was knocked out of Silence. She tried to roll back up to a standing position, but he kicked her before she could move.

"This is why I hate facing people as weak as you," Scar told her as he extended his hand and picked up his gun. "There's no challenge in it."

He raised the gun at Silence. All she could do was look back helplessly. A flash of steel blurred through her line of sight, and then half of Scar's gun fell uselessly to the floor, leaving him holding a stump where his gun used to be.

He looked down at it in amazement, and then up at Nancy. Nancy was standing protectively in front of Silence, using Silence's own dropped sword to save her life.

"I can't believe how sharp you keep this thing," Nancy commented as she kept her eyes locked on Scar.

Scar snarled and charged, Nancy swung the sword and nicked his face on the other side of his original scar.

Silence got to her feet and stood behind Nancy.

"Don't think that this changes anything between us. I still strongly dislike you," Silence commented.

"Glad to hear it," Nancy said as the two women backed away from the seething Scar. "Now let's go help them get that Chip and get out of here."

The Operator was still holding the Chip up in the air. His head was turned away from it as he was watching Scar fight Nancy and Silence.

"Thank you."

The Operator turned around to find that Johnny had taken the Super Chip right out of his hand.

"That isn't yours," The Operator managed to say.

"It isn't yours either," Johnny replied.

For someone as smart as The Operator was supposed to be, Johnny's simple comment had completely stumped him. He stammered and stuttered, trying to think of what to say. In the end he just ended up shrugging and wiping away the sweat from his eyes.

"He's got it!" Red yelled from across the room.

"Does this mean we have to stop?" Big Petey shouted back as he wrestled with numerous guards. He currently had one guard clamped to his back, and two more trying to hold his legs to the ground. Big Petey kicked them off and then reached back over his shoulder to lift the guard off his back and launch him through the air.

Red brought up one of her four square grenades.

"It means it's time to leave, and I've got the perfect diversion."

Seeing the grenades, Big Petey got visibly nervous. You never knew what one of Red's grenades was going to do until it was too late, and then you didn't want to know.

"Is it going to hurt?" Big Petey asked as he tossed another guard aside.

Red smiled; it was a frightening sight.

"Not much. And it will only last long enough to disorientate everyone and allow us to get away," she said with a glint in her eye.

Vinnie entered the basement from the other side of the room. He saw Johnny with the Chip, and Red ready with one of her grenades, the remaining three nestled tightly in her other arm. Vinnie pulled out a small remote controlled device.

"I think it's going to take all four of them," he said to himself as he pointed the device at Red while walking quickly toward Johnny and the Chip.

Nancy and Silence were still backing away from Scar. It didn't help that he kept cutting off any potential escape route; he was always just at arms length away. Silence had both swords in her hands, and was threatening him with small swipes through the air.

"If you want to extend that scar on your face, keep getting closer," she told him.

Red brought up her grenade, ready to activate it. Vinnie was almost at Johnny now, who had his attention on Red and her dangerous grenade. Vinnie pointed the remote controlled device at her grenades and pressed a button. Red let out a gasp as all four square grenades started blinking and beeping at the same time.

"I thought you were only going to use one of them!" Big Petey yelled in alarm.

"I was, I don't know what just happened!" she exclaimed.

"What's going to happen now?" Big Petey asked with wide eyes as Red continued to hold all four of the beeping and flashing square grenades.

"Get down!" Red yelled as she threw the grenades as far away from her as possible. The four square objects sailed through the air in all directions. Everyone in the basement now had their eyes on them, watching in frozen anticipation for what would happen when they landed.

"Oh my," The Operator said as he saw one of the grenades heading straight for him.

Johnny grabbed The Operator and pulled him out of his seat, throwing him to the floor and using his own body to shield him.

The grenades all landed on the floor, gave out a harsh, high-pitched sound, and then a white light shot out in all directions. For a moment, nobody moved.

Big Petey found that he was cowering on the ground with his hands over his head. He peeked out and saw that everything was okay. He got back to his feet and looked around.

"That wasn't so bad," he said. He looked over to see that Red still looked extremely worried.

Everything started rising off the floor at the same time, desks, people, weapons, garbage, it all flew up into the air. Big Petey gave a little yell as he tried to grab onto a column beside him as he lifted up off the ground.

Johnny, who was still protecting The Operator, realized he was floating off the ground and heading toward the ceiling at an accelerating rate. He landed on the ceiling with a groan, just before The Operator landed on top of him and knocked the wind out of his lungs. He let go of the Chip, which now also lay on the ceiling along with everything and everyone else.

"What did you do?" Big Petey hollered as he tried to crawl around on the ceiling and look up, or down, at the floor.

"I reversed gravity," Red exclaimed unnecessarily as she punched out a nearby guard.

Nearby, Scar, Nancy and Silence still watched each other warily, their standoff a bit lessened now that they were trying to get used to standing on the ceiling and having the floor above them.

Vinnie was being careful to walk quickly with bent knees in a hunkered down position. He was ready for the gravity shift, and was making his way with single-minded purpose toward the Chip that had fallen free of Johnny's grasp.

Johnny pushed The Operator off of him.

"Thank you," The Operator said meekly. "That fall would have hurt a lot more if you weren't there to soften the impact."

"Shut up," Johnny said hoarsely as he just started to get air back into his lungs.

Guards made their way to Johnny's location, trying to get used to their new predicament. They were after the Chip. Vinnie was almost there too.

Nancy swooped in and kicked the nearest guard who bent down to get the Chip. The guard stumbled forward into several others, sending them all falling back up to the ceiling.

"You dropped this," she said as she held up the Chip for Johnny to see.

"I'm not sure it's possible to drop anything right now," Johnny commented as he stood on shaking legs.

Vinnie cursed, he had been so close to getting the Super Chip for himself. He pulled out a small black boomerang and got closer to the two of them.

"We better get out of here," Nancy said as the guards continued their fight with Big Petey and the rest of the team.

Johnny was about to agree when he noticed the three guards that stood between them and the nearest exit. Johnny pulled out his yo-yo device, Nancy pulled out a rubber ball.

"Just like old times," she said, remembering the gadgets they used when they met on their first mission only days earlier.

Vinnie saw what was going to happen; he knew what both gadgets did. He had to use his black boomerang now or risk letting Johnny, Nancy and the Super Chip get away.

Vinnie couldn't let that happen. The Chip was going to be his!

Johnny unraveled the yo-yo, Nancy pulled her arm back, ready to throw.

Vinnie readied his black boomerang.

"Have you finished the mission yet?" Ackers voice came through in thunderous vibrations through Vinnie's ear piece. He had been tired of being ignored, so Ackers had found a way to cut through the volume controls and punish Vinnie for treating him with so little respect. Vinnie stifled a yell and grabbed his ear in pain, dropping the unused boomerang.

Johnny and Nancy threw their yo-yo and rubber ball at the same time. The yo-yo string elongated and caught the guards and Vinnie, who was grabbing his ear in pain behind them, and wrapped them all up. Then Nancy's rubber ball exploded, letting out the electric net that covered the trapped group and gave them all little jolts of electricity.

Johnny and Nancy never saw Vinnie behind the guards, so they didn't pause at all to check up on him. They grabbed each other's hands and dashed for the exit. Everyone in the mission knew that the number one priority was to get the Super Chip and get out of there. The team had agreed beforehand that if anyone got it they had to escape the area immediately.

Johnny and Nancy both looked down and realized they were holding hands. They instantly let go and continued running. Before they had time to acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation, two guards managed to get to their feet before them. Johnny dodged to the left, sidestepping a punch and returning one of his own. Nancy leaped straight up, or what was now down, at the guard. The guard followed her jump and ended up catching sight of the ground below, getting disorientated all over again. Nancy landed on him with a kick, sending him sprawling and unconscious to join the guard that Johnny took down.

Both Nancy and Johnny took a moment to admire their speed and effectiveness.

"Not bad, B. Fast," Nancy commented.

"You did alright yourself, Seventy-Seven," Johnny returned.

More guards made their way toward them, and Johnny could see that the Department X team was winning the battle against what was left of the United Order guards.

"Come on, we better get out of here," Johnny said as both he and Nancy made their way to the stairwell.

They stopped at the edge and peered out.

"Where do you think the gravity returns to normal?" Nancy asked hesitantly.

"I don't know, but we can't go back and ask Red," Johnny said. "Just be careful as you walk, and get ready to fall back down to the ground."

The two of them walked up the slanted ceiling of the stairwell, keeping their eyes on the dangerously, jagged steps above them.

They left the chaos behind as they moved quickly but cautiously up to the ground floor. After a while they could finally see the door ahead of and above them.

"We're going to have to jump when we get to the door, the handle is too far above us," Johnny commented as they neared the door.

Before they had a chance to align themselves to jump for the door handle, they ended up leaving the grenades' area of gravity influence. They fell down to the real floor, crashing on the ground right beside the door. Nancy landed on Johnny, so he ended up taking the worst of the fall for the second time that day. They lay together on the ground for a moment, arms and legs intertwined in an undecipherable mix.

"Are you alright?" Johnny asked, wincing in pain.

Their faces were only inches apart and they slowly began to realize how interlocked they both were. They looked at each other, embarrassed, not knowing what to do, then quickly got up and untangled themselves.

"Yeah, fine," Nancy coughed in embarrassment.

"Good," Johnny said as he rotated his arm, trying to work the pain out of his limbs.

"We better get out of here," Nancy commented.

They were doing their best not to make eye contact as they spoke, each of them not knowing what to make of the weird butterflies in their stomachs.

"Right, yeah, let's get out of here. Good idea," Johnny said.

He reached over and turned the doorknob, and the two of them dashed out into the lobby of the bank. They ran toward the entrance and over the broken doors that Big Petey had ripped off their hinges.

Outside the sun was coming up, birds started their annoying early morning chirps, annoying if you had been up the entire night before and didn't get any sleep.

Johnny and Nancy kept running, trying to put more distance between themselves and the United Order, doing everything they could to keep the Chip safe.

After running down several blocks, they came to a stop and tried to catch their breath.

"We did it," Nancy said, reaching into her pocket to find the Chip.

"Yes, we did," Johnny said, bringing out the Chip from his own pocket.

"When did you get that?" she asked.

"You must have dropped it while the gravity was shifting back to normal," Johnny commented, putting the Chip back in his pocket.

Nancy eyed the Chip then eyed Johnny.

"We got it, that's all that matters," she said.

Johnny caught the look, but dismissed it. Nancy had agreed to let Department X research and figure out how the Chip was able to do everything it did when other computerchips couldn't hope to keep up. Johnny still didn't know who she worked for, or what the name of her own organization was, but he had concluded that it didn't really matter. She was one of the good guys, and that meant Johnny could trust her.

"What now?" Nancy asked, breaking Johnny out of his thoughts.

Johnny brought up his hand to the earpiece, it must have broken during the fight because he couldn't hear Ackers whining and yelling at him.

"I think my earpiece broke, Ackers is going to kill me," Johnny said as he looked at the small device.

"He seems to do most of his damage by talking, so at least you're safe for the time being," Nancy laughed.

They started walking down the street, Johnny looked at his watch.

"We're going to be late for school," Johnny said.

"Don't you think this is more important?" Nancy asked.

"Of course it is, but I'm in big trouble, thanks to you getting the cafeteria fight blamed on me. I have to be on time and show up for detention or they're going to suspend me."

Nancy's mouth dropped open.

"That's a little severe, even for our principal," she commented.

Johnny shook his head in frustration, recalling the events in the principal's office. Everything had been going alright, he was even going to get away with a light slap on the wrist, but then Ms. Sniders had come in. She told the principal how disruptive Johnny was in class, and how he kept the other kids from learning with his practical jokes.

None of it was true, and Johnny couldn't figure out why she was lying. Maybe Ms. Sniders believed what she was saying? Maybe in her eyes Johnny really was that bad. He had tried to go over his experiences in her class to find out what had gotten her so mad, but he was never able to pinpoint what he did that was so disruptive.

"Severe or not, I have to be on time," Johnny said.

"What are we going to do about the Chip?" Nancy asked.

They kept walking down the street. None of the nearby stores were open yet and there was a soft morning mist that added to the eerie calm that contrasted strongly with all the fighting and explosions they had just left behind.

"I'll hide it at my house and then pick it up after school," Johnny concluded after some thought. Nancy shook her head.

"That's too dangerous!" she said.

"No one knows my real identity, so there's no reason to think anyone will look for it there," he reasoned.

Nancy thought he was taking an awfully dangerous risk. The Super Chip was one of the most deadly and powerful items in the world, it was not something that was just left hiding at home until you could get to it. Still, she had her reasons for wanting him to separate from it, so Nancy was going to do her best to play along.

"Ackers isn't going to be happy about that," Nancy said.

"Ackers is never happy about anything. But I don't have a choice. I can't deliver it now and be late, I might be suspended. Then my dad would just kill me."

Nancy laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh; it was a playful and inviting one.

"What?" he demanded.

"Johnny B. Fast, the great super spy, is afraid of his dad," she teased.

"I'm not afraid of him," he shot her a nasty look.

"Yes you are," she pressed.

They turned left at the next street, walking onto the sidewalk, and Johnny kicked at a stray pebble.

"Like I said before, my dad doesn't know what I do. I kind of fell into the spy business by accident when I met Ackers," Johnny explained. "My mom passed away two years ago. It was a hard time for both of us and we had to rely on each other a lot. He wouldn't handle it very well if I got suspended. I think he would blame himself for not doing a good enough job."

Johnny looked at the ground as he talked, avoiding looking anywhere near Nancy. She felt bad instantly. She only meant to lightly tease him, not hurt him by bringing up painful memories. Nancy had too many of those in her own life.

"I guess you wouldn't know anything about that kind of stuff since you were adopted," Johnny said, a little more angrily than he meant to.

"I never knew my parents because they both passed away when I was young," Nancy said in a quiet voice.

Johnny stopped walking. He didn't remember how their conversation had gotten so serious and sad. This was supposed to be a happy time. They had just retrieved the Super Chip from the United Order, they should be celebrating!

She saw that he was struggling with what he should say next, "It's okay, you didn't know," Nancy said.

Johnny still felt bad. He should have known, somehow, and he really didn't know how he should have known. She deserved that much.

All he could do was nod. There was a new understanding between them. They walked on in silence, a good silence, feeling closer to each other than ever before.

# Chapter 5: Responsibilities

Johnny rushed into his room, shoving the door closed behind him. He ran over and quickly opened his closet, revealing piles of clothes heaped on top of each other in the middle of the floor. Johnny started to dig a hole through his clothes, placing the Super Chip in the center of the hole. He then pushed everything back on top of it, burying the Chip under a mountain of dirty clothes.

"I just hope I'll be able to find it after," he said to himself as he closed the closet door.

He glanced at his watch; he had to be quick to get to school in time.

He walked over to the old computer on his desk and typed in the password. The panels in the ceiling and wall slid back and the holographic keyboard display materialized in the middle of the room.

He entered some commands on the holographic keyboard and then waited a moment while Ackers' flustered face appears.

"Where have you been?" Ackers demanded as soon as the auditory connection was complete.

"Right where you've been expecting me to be: getting the Super Chip," Johnny responded in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Ackers wrung his hands in the air in frustration, looking very silly and clichéd.

"I know that! Where have you been since? Why aren't you here? Where's the Super Chip? What happened to Seventy-Seven?" Ackers practically tripped over himself trying to get all his questions out in one breath.

Johnny paused a moment, not sure which question to answer first.

"I don't know," he said at last as he took off his spy outfit and got changed into school clothes.

"You don't know? How can you not know? Which part don't you know?" Ackers demanded.

Johnny pulled a shirt on over his head and sighed when he could see Ackers' angry face again.

"I didn't know which question to answer first," Johnny clarified.

Ackers looked like his head was going to explode.

"Just tell me you have the Super Chip!" he demanded.

"I do," Johnny assured him.

Ackers let all the breath out of his lungs in one giant sigh. He reached over and grabbed a glass of water, drinking it all down in one large gulp and letting half of it spill out and run down his shirt. He slammed the glass down and wiped the remaining water off his chin.

"Now you have to get back to base," Ackers noticed that Johnny wasn't paying attention; he was still getting ready to go to school.

"This is important," Ackers yelled at the top of his voice.

Johnny quickly darted over to his holographic keyboard and turned down the volume.

"Would you be quiet, my dad could hear you!" Johnny said angrily.

"I don't care about your dad! This Chip is more important than your life and all the things that happen in it. You have a duty to Department X above all other duties!" Ackers said in a much quieter voice.

"Everything all right up there?" Henry called from downstairs.

"Fine dad, just getting ready for school," Johnny called back, while giving Ackers an I Told You So look. Ackers just shrugged in response.

Johnny got his school backpack from under his bed and opened it up to make sure there were some books in it. Everything looked right, some of the textbooks even looked familiar.

"Are you listening to me?" Ackers said, breaking Johnny out of his focus.

"No," Johnny said as he zipped up his backpack.

"What else is new?" Ackers replied in frustration.

Johnny slung the backpack on his shoulder and walked over to the three dimensional keyboard display, typing in some commands and getting ready to shut down.

"I contacted you to let you know what happened with the mission, and to tell you that you don't have to worry. The Chip is safe and I will get it to you at the end of the day," Johnny explained.

"I need the Chip now!" Ackers pressed.

Johnny sighed. Ackers was being more annoying than usual.

"You can't have it now, I already told you," Johnny explained for the millionth time.

"This is a life and death matter! How can you be so flippant and causal about this? I'm going to have to come over and get it," Ackers threatened.

"Fine, whatever," Johnny said as he shut down the connection. He knew that Ackers never left the base, and the chances of him actually coming to Johnny's house were the same as the chances of the United Order knowing that Johnny Clunker was Johnny B. Fast.

* * *

Johnny bounced down the stairs of his house two at a time, landing on the main floor with a loud thump that took him into a slide toward the kitchen.

"Hey dad," he called as he dropped his backpack onto the floor and started digging around in the fridge for something to eat.

Henry was lost in a stack of papers, still trying to find the missing reports that he had failed to turn in to Mr. Underling. There was a cold, untouched piece of toast on the table beside him. Henry looked up to his right where Johnny had just come in, and then turned to look to the left as Johnny walked back around to the other side again. Henry looked to the right one more time as Johnny sat down at the table with some cereal and a jug of milk. Finally managing to catch a glimpse of his son, Henry gave him a warm smile.

"Hi son. Did you have a good night's rest?"

Johnny froze in the act of pouring the milk onto his cereal. He looked up to see that his dad's attention was back on the stack of papers. For a moment Johnny thought that his dad had found out that Johnny was out all night. Looking back down, Johnny saw that he was about to overfill his cereal with the milk. He was able to stop pouring just before the milk spilled out of the bowl.

"Yeah, I'm all ready for school."

Henry was holding up two different pieces of paper and trying to look at both of them at the same time.

"That doesn't seem right," Henry said as he crossed his eyes comparing the two texts.

Johnny glanced up again with a spoonful of cereal in his mouth. Henry finally uncrossed his eyes and put the papers back down on the kitchen table, inadvertently placing one of the papers right onto his toast.

"Not again," Henry said as he lifted up the paper and got a napkin, trying in vain to wipe the jam off the paper and succeeding only in smearing it around even more.

Frustrated, Henry put the paper down on top of another piece of toast and got the jam on that one too, although he didn't notice it yet.

"Rough time at work?" Johnny asked.

Henry let out a long held breath.

"I just don't seem to fit in well there with my other colleagues. I try hard, but I can't get used to organizing everything on the computers. You know, maybe one day you could show me some pointers on that machine you have upstairs," Henry said.

Henry was referring to the really old computer Johnny had in his room. He didn't know his son had a state of the art holographic computer with processors faster than anything anyone could buy from a store. Of course, even that paled in comparison to the speed of the Super Chip.

"Sure dad, we'll see what we can do," Johnny said.

His dad gave him a smile.

"Everything going well with math class so far?" his dad asked.

"It was English class. Too early to tell, but I'll let you know how I do on any upcoming tests or assignments," Johnny replied.

Henry cleared his throat, getting serious for a moment and giving Johnny his full attention.

"I know that times have been hard for you since your mom passed. But you've got to keep trying your best, you've got to keep doing well, it's what she would have wanted," Henry stumbled over his words, but he forced himself to press on. "I just want you to know that if there's anything on your mind, you can tell me. I'm here for you, and it isn't always easy for me to be a good parent, there's a lot I still have to learn, but I'll do my best."

"I know dad," Johnny said as Henry searched for his next words.

Johnny hated when his dad got so hard on himself. Henry Clunker wasn't exactly someone who made his way easily through life, he struggled in a lot of ways, but he had a good heart and always tried to do the right thing, even when other stronger people might be tempted to do otherwise.

"I want you to know that I'll always keep trying, I'm always in your corner, right or wrong," Henry concluded.

That was one area where no one could compete with Henry; he had a big heart and wasn't afraid to show that he cared. Johnny often wondered how his dad would feel if he ever found out that Johnny was a super spy and that he was concealing so many things from him. Johnny imagined that his dad would be crushed, and it was a moment that Johnny wanted to do his best to spare him from ever having to go through.

"Thanks dad," Johnny said, mostly because he didn't really know what else to say. He wanted to say that his dad didn't have anything to worry about, that Johnny was not only doing fine, but thriving in his newfound profession. But he couldn't. He had to keep it a secret. There was a moment of awkward silence between them where both father and son cleared their throat at the same time.

Johnny pushed back his chair and headed for the sink with his bowl.

"I better get going," Johnny said as he started rinsing it.

"Don't worry about that, I've got it," Henry said as he went back to comparing the different reports in his hand.

Johnny smiled to himself. His dad always said that, but if Johnny never helped with the dishes, quite frankly, they would never get done. His dad tended to forget things like that.

Johnny picked up his backpack and headed for the door.

"Have a good day," father and son said at the same time, and then, "Thanks," also in unison.

Johnny headed out the door.

* * *

The room was draped in shadows, the only light coming from an entire wall of regular monitors. Off to the side were multiple holographic workstations displayed in the air from hidden projectors around the room.

There was a sense of royalty about the room. The carpet was rich with red, and there were large, expensive paintings hidden in the darkness of the walls.

People were scrambling all over the room to work at different work stations and conversing with each other in low voices.

A set of stairs led up to a large chair, shaped like a throne, where the Widow Black sat and watched all her worker bees buzz with activity. The throne had numerous small holographic keypads where the Widow could efficiently enter commands to change the work flow of the many people around her.

Scar entered the dimly lit room, making sure to keep a wide berth around the many people in the room. He made his way across the rich carpet and toward the stairs that would lead to the throne. When one of the workers got too close, Scar couldn't help snarling at it to keep its distance. The worker looked at him with an impassive face and went about its business. It was their faces that unnerved him the most, Scar concluded. None of the workers had any muscular control of their faces. They were locked in a neutral expression, and couldn't move their mouths or any other part of their head besides their neck and eyes. As such, they were always turning and looking impassively at things, and it gave Scar the creeps like nothing else in the world. Of course, the reason the workers were like that was because they were androids, built for accomplishing tasks and not for looking realistic.

Another one got too close, and Scar stared it down. It was a pointless gesture doomed to failure because the android couldn't even blink its eyes, even if it had facial muscular control, as it had no eye lids.

"Just get out of the way!" Scar said at last, shoving the android aside and continuing on his way to the throne.

The android fell over with a clang. All the other androids, noticing their companion had fallen down, immediately stopped what they were doing and turned their lidless eyes to Scar.

One by one, they left their work and fell into line behind him, closing off his movements and hemming him in toward the throne. As Scar continued his walk, he began to become aware of what was happening, and was stealing glances out of the corner of his eye. As big and strong as he was, he didn't like the prospect of having to fight down an army of androids. Surely the Widow Black would call them off before they got too far out of line?

But she wasn't calling them off. She turned to smile at him with a dangerous gleam in her eye. Scar continued to walk toward the throne and the androids continued to close in on him. They had already completely cut off his way back out. Not that it mattered, Scar never ran from anything, ever.

He held his head high and walked right up to stand before the Widow Black. The androids moved like zombies, reaching out their grasping hands toward Scar in a slow, methodical precision. He tensed, bent slightly low to the ground and prepared for the onslaught. They might take him down, but he wasn't going to go without a fight, he would take as many of them with him as he could. He might even lash out at her, if the opportunity presented itself.

Scar could understand what she was doing; failure could not be tolerated and he had lost a very valuable artifact. He would do the same thing in her place. Even so, he would fight back until he died, and she would probably expect no less.

Scar and the Widow Black just stared at each other, the unsaid understanding hanging like a serpent between them, ready to strike Scar down at the press of a button. He broke eye contact and looked down at her finger, poised above the holopad button that would bring life back to the androids and a sure death to him.

For a moment he thought she pressed the button, thought he saw her finger move and a corresponding light emit from the holographic display beneath her hand.

But nothing happened, and he realized his eyes had played a trick on him. He could feel himself getting jittery, the waiting was becoming too much. If she was going to do it, then let her do it already.

But that was part of her cruelty, part of the fear she instilled in others. The Widow Black understood that the anticipation was almost always worse than the punishment, and she did her best to make it as much a part of the punishment as it could become.

Scar forced himself to look back up and meet her cold, hard gaze. Slowly, she moved her hand away from the holopad that controlled the androids. Scar judged the distance between him and the throne. If he wanted, he could try and charge her before she got her hand back near the activation button.

The Widow Black stood up from her throne and took a step toward Scar and the frozen army of androids around him.

Scar's breath caught in his throat. She was well away from her command controls now and there would be nothing she could do in time before he got to her. He was strong, incredibly strong. He had no doubt that he could probably overpower her.

She continued to walk toward him, the malice evident in her eyes. The throne was well behind her now. The Widow Black walked up to him, almost casually, but brimming with anger. She was delivering a message; she didn't need her androids to take care of him. It was also an invitation; let him try to attack her if he felt he could, if he dared.

He hesitated, unsure. Physical power was one thing, but he had no real idea of what she was capable of, he didn't know what other tricks she could be hiding. In fact, he really didn't know anything about her at all. The only thing Scar felt he knew for sure was that if he attacked her and failed, it would be the end of him.

Staring into her cold, dark eyes, Scar wondered if it was already too late.

The Widow Black lifted her arm and struck him across the face with the back of her hand. Scar stumbled, and had to take a balancing step to keep himself from falling.

She hit hard, and Scar had to reassess what he thought her strength could be. He could taste the blood in his mouth. Was he willing to risk an all out fight?

Scar straightened up and met her gaze once more. The moment was over, he was subdued, he wasn't going to challenge her authority or her power.

She didn't say anything, she just looked at him. But the message was clear, the Widow Black was a dangerous woman, far more dangerous than anyone had ever realized. And if Scar valued his life, it was a lesson he would do well to remember.

* * *

Ackers was going to kill him.

That was the main thought that kept racing through Johnny's mind while he sat in class. He kept trying to push the thought out, but it kept coming back again. Realistically, the most Ackers would do was lecture his brain away into a melted pile of unrecognizable goo. It was probably one of the worst forms of torture, and Ackers was particularly good at it. And thanks to technology, he could do it from anywhere, and at anytime. Johnny realized again that he was thinking about it, and tried again to push it out of his mind. He brought his attention back to the class. Ms. Sniders walked around the room with a menacing stare. She was wearing another one of her loud polka dot dresses and Johnny couldn't understand how someone could wear such ugly clothes that made them stand out to such a high degree; it was almost as if the dots and varied colors were specifically made to clash as much as possible.

Ms. Sniders looked his way. Johnny did his best to act like he was paying attention. He remembered how foul her breath had been, and he didn't want to do anything to call her attention and bring her nearer. It was already bad enough that he had to have detention with her, he didn't want anything to make it worse. Finally, her attention wandered to other students and Johnny was free to stop pretending.

He glanced over at Nancy's empty desk. She hadn't come to school that day, and Johnny couldn't help thinking that something had gone terribly wrong. Where could she be?

That was the second thought going through Johnny's mind, competing with Ackers wanting to kill him. He looked at the time; she was more than an hour late. Johnny started to wonder if something bad had happened to her. She was obviously concerned that Johnny chose to go to school before delivering the Super Chip to Department X. Both Nancy and Ackers agreed on that point, and the two of them joining sides to lecture him was beginning to look like a crazy nightmare about to come true.

Was she going to try and take the Chip from his house while he was at school? Johnny couldn't believe that. He knew he had only been working with her a short time, but he trusted her enough to believe she would never try anything like that. But then again, she had gone along with him without any qualms about handing the Chip over once they got it. Wouldn't her handler, whoever that was, want it for themselves?

Johnny was beginning to worry.

"Mr. Clunker?"

Johnny shook himself out of his thoughts to see that Ms. Sniders and the entire class were looking at him.

"Day dreaming again, are we?" Ms. Sniders continued.

Johnny bent low over his notebook and pretended to write something down.

"No, I'm listening," he said, somewhat pathetically.

Johnny's mind was racing. The last thing he wanted was for Ms. Sniders to come close to him and make him smell her horrid breath again.

"Then I suppose you would like to enlighten us with the answer?" Ms. Sniders asked.

Great, thought Johnny, she just never gave him a break.

"I don't know the answer," he admitted, breaking eye contact and staring at the floor.

Ms. Sniders gave an exaggerated sigh.

"It seems you make it a habit of wasting our time. It is fortunate that you will be spending detention time with me, where I can perhaps find a way to get that one track mind of yours on the right track."

Ms. Sniders went on with her English lesson.

Johnny just shook his head; this was going to be a long day.

* * *

Ackers stood outside Johnny's front door. He looked nervous, and took frequent quick glances around to see if anyone was watching him. This was preposterous; no one knew he was here. Ackers tried to stop looking so out of place, he had to focus on the task at hand, compartmentalize each step, and follow through to his goal.

He glanced at his next objective, getting past the front door. In all likelihood, there was no one at home. Johnny B. Fast would be at school, and his dad would have gone to work. The lack of a car on the driveway confirmed this. Ackers gave himself a moment to pat himself on the back for his acute, observational skills.

So now the next step had to do with bypassing the locked door. Ackers reached out his hand and tried to turn the door handle, it didn't move. It was definitely locked. Of course it was, but Ackers couldn't take it for granted. Some things had to be investigated instead of assumed, and now that he knew for sure the door was locked, he knew exactly how to proceed. He checked the driveway again to make sure the car was still gone.

Ackers gave out a loud sigh; he was stalling and he knew it. Then he glanced around the street quickly to see if anyone saw him sigh and would think that he was out of place. Then he berated himself for acting so foolish and amateurish. He tried to turn the handle again, just to be sure. Still locked, and still no car in the driveway.

Enough of this, it was time to get down to business. Ackers took the backpack off his shoulders and put it on the ground. Zipping it open, he dug through a series of gadgets and food rations, looking for a particular device.

Having found it, he brought out what looked like a large thermometer with handles. It had a line of blue, instead of red, liquid trapped inside a see-through tube. Ackers carefully inserted the device into the crack on the door, and then he squeezed what looked like the blue mercury down the tube, out of the device and into the door. He kept squeezing until there was no more blue liquid in his device. Then he got back up and waited, watching as a stream of smoke came out of the door.

"Now, I should have applied just enough that the liquid will bypass the lock's structural integrity for a matter of moments, allowing me to bend it like rubber and open the door before the lock returns to a solid state," Ackers thought out loud.

As he was thinking, he realized there was a presence behind him. He froze. He couldn't believe it; there was definitely someone standing behind him on the porch.

He was caught already! How did this happen? The United Order wasn't supposed to know any of their real identities, let alone where Johnny lived. Perhaps Ackers had slipped up on security somewhere? Was that even possible?

Ackers slowly turned around to see a paper delivery boy standing on the porch with his mouth hanging open in surprise. Ackers immediately sprang into action, using nothing but words to try and confuse and misdirect the potential assassin.

"What are you doing there?" Ackers said.

The boy held out the paper in answer, his mouth still open as he looked at the weird gadget sticking out of the front door.

"Yes, thank you, I was looking for this," Ackers said as he took the paper out of the paper boy's hands and then dropped it to the ground.

"You're a little late, aren't you? Isn't this supposed to be delivered first thing in the morning? While it is morning, it most certainly is not first thing," Ackers rambled, trying to get some sort of information out of the paper boy while confusing him at the same time.

The boy continued to stare at the gadget. Ackers had a sneaking suspicion that this wasn't an assassin after all.

He was so relieved he almost fainted right there. But then he was immediately proud of himself. Look how well he had handled the situation! Of course the boy was nothing but a civilian, and there really wasn't much of a situation to handle, but Ackers was too relieved to think about any of these things.

"I am just locked out of my house. Don't worry, the situation will resolve itself in a moment," Ackers said, thinking quickly that he now had to appear as normal as possible so as not to arouse too much suspicion and have the paper boy call in any authorities.

Ackers gave the front door a small push. The bolt from the lock bent like rubber and allowed the door to swing open into the house.

"You see? I'm back in my house, not a problem to concern yourself with," Ackers said with his biggest and most uncomfortable looking smile. It almost looked like Ackers was straining his facial muscles to spread his lips far enough across his face. Ackers rarely smiled, and it was entirely possible that his muscles had atrophied from lack of use. His face started twitching with the effort of keeping his lips spread wide enough to hold the smile.

The paper boy became slightly more alarmed the longer he stayed with Ackers. He started taking a few steps back off the porch.

There was a high-pitched sound coming from somewhere inside the house. Ackers turned away from the paper boy and peered into the house. What was that sound?

"The alarm!" Ackers yelled to the paper boy as soon as he figured it out. "It is most likely giving me a thirty second delay to enter the proper code to let the computer and the alarm monitoring station know that I have returned home to the house that I live in."

Ackers was simply no good at this, but he thought he was doing a splendid job of putting the paper boy at ease. If anything, the paper boy would have probably been less alarmed if he had stumbled upon a group of people wearing masks and trying to openly burglarize the house.

The paper boy took a stumbling step back, and then another, and ended up almost tripping and tumbling down the stairs. Ackers turned his attention back to the alarm. He stepped inside the house, and then went back outside again to pick up the paper that was just delivered and the thermometer gadget he had just used to open the door.

"Don't want to forget this," Ackers held up the paper as he called out. The paper boy hurried away. Satisfied that he had done his best to appear like he lived in the house, Ackers went back inside and slammed the door behind him.

He approached the alarm keypad that was emitting the noise and inspected it from a distance. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a square box that had its own keypad on the front of it. He placed the box over the alarm keypad, completely covering it, and then started entering random number combinations on his own keypad.

He worked methodically, trying all different sorts of numbers in different orders and observing the display on his box as he typed. Soon the display told him that he had three out of four numbers correct. Ackers didn't have much time left, the alarm was about to go off. He got the fourth number! Almost there, now he had to find the right order. Perfection! The job was done and the high-pitched noise stopped.

Ackers slumped against the wall, exhausted. No wonder he stayed back at the base; how was anyone supposed to think clearly when they were out in the field with all these distractions?

He got a good look at the combination of numbers that he had just used to turn the alarm off.

"Four, three, two, one? What kind of a code is that? They might as well have left the door open."

Ackers detached his keypad box and threw both it and his lock picking gadget into his backpack. Now that he was inside, his next step was finding the Super Chip.

* * *

He found the Super Chip! Ackers held it up in his hand, staring at it with awe. It was such a small and harmless looking thing, yet Ackers knew that whoever held that Chip had the power to circumvent the world's technological safeguards. It was like the ultimate skeleton key, able to open any lock. All around Ackers, Johnny's room was a complete mess. Ackers had turned over every moveable item that he could lift and dumped its contents all over the floor, he had tossed all Johnny's clothes from the closet, he had even taken apart Johnny's old computer and made sure that the Chip wasn't hidden anywhere in that prehistoric machine. But Ackers had finally found it buried at the bottom of the closet. He knew instantly that it was the Super Chip; there was no hiding the amount of connections and registers the Chip held from Ackers' x-ray glasses.

Ackers took off the glasses and continued to stare at the Chip. A tear started welling up in his eye; it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever stared at. It was art, perfection, ultimate... Ackers stopped in his unrestrained admiration. Was that a noise?

Ackers listened more intently. Someone was opening the window to Johnny's room!

Looking wildly around the room, Ackers spotted the only place he could instantly hide. He dove under the desk of the old computer and held his breath, not daring to move a muscle and give himself or the Chip away. He must protect it at all costs, the safety of the world depended on it. Well, of course he had to protect himself as well. The world wouldn't want him to get seriously hurt or injured or incapacitated in any way while he was saving it. Ackers swallowed a large lump in his throat. Outside field work really wasn't meant for someone as important as him.

* * *

Nancy pried the window open and dropped lightly into Johnny's room. She looked around in disgust, unable to believe that Johnny was as messy as he appeared to be. She brought up her hand and started keying an entry into a small computer strapped onto her wrist. The wrist computer started emitting a series of beeps like a sonar.

Nancy walked around the room, listening to the beeps get faster as she approached different pieces of technology. She went around the room once, listening to the series of beeps before deciding on where to refine her search. The old computer desk was one area, so was the alarm clock by Johnny's bed, and oddly enough there was something in the ceiling attracting the device's attention. She decided to start with the desk. She walked over to the old computer, listening as the beeps got quicker and louder.

Underneath the desk, Ackers was frozen in wide-eyed fear. He couldn't see who had snuck in through the window, but he knew a technological radar when he heard one. He listened as the beeps came closer; he was about to be caught.

Nancy walked forward, holding the wrist computer ahead of her as the beeps reached a frantic pitch. There was something powerful somewhere around the desk.

A large explosion from downstairs rocked the house. Nancy lost her footing and had to grab the desk to steady herself. She heard the sound of booted feet running over carpet. Someone was yelling orders. Nancy was going to have to abort; this mission was compromised. She keyed in a series of commands into her computer, turning off the beeping, and then headed back to the window.

A quick look outside told her that there was no one covering that side of the house, at least she hoped there wasn't. In any case she didn't have much else left to her; she had to try and escape.

Nancy dove out the window.

* * *

Ackers clutched his heart in fear, as if he could try and stop it from beating out of his chest. Where did that explosion come from? What was going on? Who had authorized all of this? With no answers to any of his questions, Ackers was forced to take some kind of action or wait under the desk to be caught by someone. His first order of business was to find out who was in the room without being caught. As cautiously and spy-like as he could, Ackers peeked out from under the desk and looked around the room. There was no one in sight; whoever was there before was gone now. The window was still open but there was no other trace that anyone had been there.

Ackers heard the sound of furniture breaking and glass shattering from downstairs. Clearly there were two different groups breaking in to steal the Chip and they had nothing to do with each other. At least that was as clear as he could get without having seen either of them. Which brought him to his next order of business; he had to find out who he was dealing with and how best to deal with them. In other words, although Ackers would never have admitted it this way, he had to find out how best to get away from whoever was now in the house.

Ackers crept over to the door and opened it a crack, trying to look out into the hallway for any signs of the intruders. The upstairs was completely empty; it looked like they were all still downstairs for now. He opened the door and walked as quietly as he could to the banister. Ackers looked downstairs.

There was a flurry of ordered chaos down there. Soldiers were destroying everything in sight to find the Super Chip. They were barely getting out of their own way as they smashed and shot up every hiding place they could find. Even the walls weren't safe as they blasted them with laser guns and searched the holes for any trace of the technological wonder that Ackers had clutched tightly in his hand. He opened his fist and looked down at the simple looking thing. He would have to defend it, he knew that. He would have to risk his life and put himself between them and the Chip, using every gadget and skill at his disposal to save the precious artifact. In other words, he was probably going to die. But that was what heroes did; they died defending what they believed in. Ackers closed his fist tightly again, his resolve strengthened.

The soldiers turned their attention toward the stairs leading up. Ackers shrank back into the shadows out of sight. Perhaps heroes could find a way to avoid dying while still defending their beliefs? Maybe hiding was the best thing Ackers could do at this moment? His resolve quickly fading, Ackers turned and bolted back into Johnny's room, softly closing the door behind him. He had to think of something fast; they were going to be upstairs at any moment.

Ackers glanced toward the window and thought about throwing the Chip outside. It wouldn't be his problem anymore; maybe they would find it, maybe they wouldn't. One thing was for sure, they were definitely going to find it if he kept it. No, he admonished himself, he couldn't think like that. He had to protect it, he couldn't give it up. The world was counting on him, there would be no surrender, no throwing away his responsibility. Like it or not, he was the one in this situation and he was going to have to do the right thing. Ackers held the Super Chip up, looking at it resting gently in his palm. Any minute they were going to break through the door, so Ackers did the only thing he could think of. He opened his mouth wide and swallowed the Super Chip. It was like a lump in his throat, and for a moment it got stuck and Ackers choked. He fell to his knees and his face went red. And then it was over, the Chip was safely in his stomach. It was only at that moment that Ackers hoped his stomach acids wouldn't destroy it. He cursed himself for not thinking about that sooner, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Ackers struggled back to his feet and faced the door. He could hear the soldiers on the other side. His time had run out, Ackers knew that. There was nothing to do but wait to be caught. But at least he wouldn't surrender the Chip; he couldn't. No matter what happened now there was no giving up. Ackers tried to steady his nerves and his breathing while he kept his head up high. He was ready to face his fate, a true hero to the end.

* * *

Nancy watched the attack on Johnny's house from a safe distance away. She was partially hidden behind a large oak tree very much like the one she had zip lined up into the night she and Johnny had walked home after their failed attempt to get the Chip. There were multiple vans parked sporadically all over the street in front of Johnny's house, their back doors were still wide open from where the army of soldiers had poured out. Several of them were still on guard around the vans, keeping watch around the neighborhood for any signs of resistance. Nancy shook her head. It was like a full scale invasion. If she had only shown up a bit earlier she probably would have had enough time to find the Chip and leave before anyone got there. Nancy brought a small device up and clipped it to her ear. She activated it with two quick taps and then waited while a connection was established.

It was a nice day out, with barely a cloud in the sky. It wasn't too hot or too cold, perfect weather. You'd never know that anything bad could be happening on such a peaceful, sunny day. But if the United Order got the Chip back, it would be a day that none of them would ever forget. The United Order would never make the mistake of letting them steal the Chip back a second time. It would be moved to a super secure location and guarded by the best people and technology that the Order could afford. Then they would use it to get whatever they wanted. They would build their wealth quickly and their power would increase just as fast. Soon, there would be few people who could stand up to them, and soon after that there would be no one that could defy them openly. They would be an unstoppable force upon the world.

Nancy heard a series of beeps that told her the link was established through several layers of advanced encryptions, making it almost impossible for anyone to listen into her conversation.

A voice spoke to her from the other end of the line, it said only one word, "Yes?"

The voice was modulated and scrambled, making it pointless to try and figure out who the person on the other end of the line was. Not that anyone would have been able to break through all the security of the connection, but even if they did they wouldn't find anything that was worth knowing.

"I wasn't able to retrieve the Chip. The United Order showed up with over two dozen soldiers who are now tearing the house apart to find it," Nancy said as she continued to watch the house.

On the other end of the line, her handler stayed silent. Nancy waited, knowing that her handler didn't like to be interrupted when given bad news.

Nancy's handler meant the world to her. The handler had found her just over two years ago, had helped train her and shown her how to make and use the most advanced technological gadgets the world had ever seen. Given enough time, Nancy could probably turn a toaster into a jetpack, a laser gun or a radar scrambler. Her handler had also taught her how to fight; both how to handle crowds of people and one on one against the most expert martial arts masters.

Her handler had given her a new life away from her all-too-cold foster family and the orphanage before that. She had also given Nancy the spy name of Seventy-Seven, and the identity and sense of purpose that went along with it.

Nancy didn't have an entire organization behind her like Johnny and Ackers. She had just one person, and as far as Nancy was concerned, that was enough.

"All might not be lost if the Chip is not found. Does B. Fast suspect anything?" Her handler's voice came through the other line, disrupting Nancy's thoughts.

"No, he thinks I'm helping him," Nancy replied.

She felt guilty about her deception. Nancy liked Johnny, maybe even more than she wanted to admit, and deceiving him like this made her stomach feel empty and hollow.

Would he ever forgive her? Would she ever forgive herself?

Nancy tried to push the thoughts away as her handler began speaking again.

"Stay by the house. When Johnny arrives, do what you can to help him. If the United Order gets the Chip there won't be much we can do other than a full scale attack."

"I understand," Nancy replied.

The connection was dropped and Nancy found herself alone again. She took the device away from her ear and slipped it back into her pocket. Johnny had to understand. In the end, this was all just part of being a super spy.

**End of Part One**
