Oh, hello there.  I didn't expect anyone - almost nobody comes this way in the museum anymore.  You may not believe it, but Phantoms weren't always a thing in our world.  So, if you can, stay a while and listen..<br/><br/>Our world has known the Phantoms for only a century out of its six thousand years of recorded history.  That's not to say, though, that the Phantoms weren't always believed in: ghosts, spirits, angels, demons, gods - the Phantoms have gone under many names invented by man.  No one knows why they disappeared, either, nor why they chose to return.  What is known is that as time went on, and Phantoms became less perceptible by men, doubts as to their existence arose, were believed, and then dominated.  This was the Renaissance, the time when religion began its slow waning death and the discipline called science, and its companions empiricism and rationality, emerged.<br/><br/>Writings concerning the nature of the supernatural began to be dismissed, the thoughts of men who believed in irrational things not proven to exist.  The supernatural became fiction.  Until the Phantoms returned, in the year 1984.  Though, it would not be correct to say they returned.  The term you've heard is that they were Realized.  See, the Phantoms had never really<em>left</em>- Man just became less capable of perceiving them.  And as that ability diminished, so did the power of the Phantoms - for you see, the Phantoms draw strength from people realizing what they are.  The more that acknowledge the existence of a Phantom, the more powerful that Phantom can become.<br/><br/>So when Realization took place, and now all in our world were made capable of seeing Phantoms once more, they experienced an upswell in power unlike anything they had ever experienced.  And with their new power, they set about their goals.  Phantoms, you see, borrow a bit from lore given about ghosts - they exist because there is something keeping them here, something that brought them to being, something unfinished.  They exist to carry out that task, but they can never truly complete it; it happens, over and over and over again, in an endless cycle.  That can be beneficial, if the task is, say, opening the front door of a specific building.  But far, far more often, it becomes twisted, destructive, disruptive to human society.<br/><br/>That is where the Phantom Hunters come in.  Along with Phantoms being Realized, men and women were, too - they found themselves endowed with special power to fight against the Phantoms, to combat them and banish them back to the Phantom Realm they hail from.  However, being a Phantom Hunter - being Realized - has a price.  Some part of you changes as a result of it, a sign that this is not just a simple person anymore.  Now, for most Hunters, the change is small - hair color, eye color, something purely cosmetic.  For others, though, this change is great, and far more noticeable.<br/><br/>Phantom Hunters come in five - and only five - varieties.  There are the Wardens - they are the public image of the Hunters - those whose powers allow them to combat Phantoms directly, or protect others from their wrath.  There are the Chasers - capable of superhuman feats of agility and speed, who track a Phantom when it flees.  There are the Artificers - their talents lie in objects.  They are the craftsmen, the engineers, the rebuilders.  There are the Arbiters - trained in Phantom lore and possessing supernatural senses to judge the Phantoms.  And then there are the Wizards - rarest of all Hunters.  The Wizards are the most powerful, capable of doing the jobs of all the other Hunters themselves.  A team of Wizards is capable of nearly<em>anything</em>.<br/><br/>The world responded differently to Phantom Realization.  In the Far East, where lore of such things was part of the culture, and other similar places around the world, human response came quickly.  Here in the West - and in our United States in particular - the urge to cling to science and rationality and dismiss these Phantoms as mass hallucinations or similar delusions was strong.  Even after the 1989 acknowledgment of Phantoms as real beings by President Bush - an announcement that preceded the fall of the Soviet Union by a mere three weeks - persons denying the existence of Phantoms remained, and retained positions of power for some time after.  They believed Phantoms were just some branch of science that we failed to understand yet, like how Man of old failed to understand bacteria, viruses, and atoms.  These were the Scullies - named after a figure in media who retained a similar outlook.  The Scullies are almost all gone now...the last remnants of their age.<br/><br/>Once the United States had recognized that Realization did occur, Phantom Hunters - who had been operating privately for years in the dark - came out into the light.  They organized into companies, and Phantom Hunting became a full-time business.  There were those who argued that dealing with Phantoms should be an extension of local law enforcement - a special division, like SWAT.  The problem was was that not only were the Phantoms so different compared to anything else the police dealt with, but also that<em>technically</em>the job of police was to investigate crime.  And while no one debated that Phantoms were destructive...criminals?  It seemed a bit of a stretch.<br/><br/>So, Hunter companies became a private industry.  And in their wake grew new opportunities - schools for training nascent Phantom Hunters, positions on Phantom lore opened at various mundane organizations, manufacturing for Phantom Hunter equipment...the list goes on.  What was more, those that had argued in the United States for Hunters to be a public service got a punch in the nose when the 2008 housing market collapse happened.  The strength and vitality - in an economic sense - of the Phantom Hunter industry saved the domestic economy and what could have been a recession that lasted for over a decade instead was over in three short years.<br/><br/>That's not to say, though, that the industry has been all positives.  It was only a few years after 2008 that that the Social Justice movement began - and the companies were caught in it, too.  Hunter companies accused of racism, of failing to employ enough persons of...oh, pick a race, it was probably said at some point.  This, even though it was widely known that you could not<em>choose</em>to be Realized, to be a Phantom Hunter.  Within five years of its emergence, the Social Justice movement was dead - recognized for the authoritarian power grab that it was - but old resentments still lingered for some time on.<br/><br/>Which brings me to the story I wish to tell you today - that of San Francisco, and of one particular group of Hunters.  For you see, in the year 2031, as the next Presidential election cycle began to slowly spin up, a conspiracy targeted San Francisco.  Their goal?  Nothing short of the destruction of the whole city...or so the story goes.  This is the story of those Hunters who stopped the conspiracy, and saved the city...<br/><br/><hr/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br/>Sammy Reagan (https://img2.gelbooru.com//images/c1/7c/c17c5050a972128afc270ed26bb1ce75.png)</span><br/><em>Arbiter par Excellence</em>- 5<br/><em>Holy Moonlight Blade</em>- 4<br/><em>Expert Profiler</em>- 4<br/>Weakness:<em>Actually a Boy</em><br/><br/><hr/><br/>Today was the day that they were supposed to be getting someone new.  And as the 'FNG' of Dogpatch Municipal Protection Services, Sammy had been assigned the duty of going to the airport to pick them up.  Of course, Sammy had been the FNG for the last five years since he had managed to wrangle a recruitment with one of San Francisco's biggest Phantom Hunter outfits.  It had helped that Sammy had graduated from an excellent Phantom Hunter school with top marks and one of the highest Arbiter ratings<em>ever</em>in the history of the school.  His talent at profiling Esoterrorists - those rare individuals who intentionally invoked a Phantom - was a bonus.  Still, even with the job (which paid quite well), it hadn't all been good.<br/><br/>Partly because of his particular Realization - Sammy was what the online world termed a 'trap.'  That was, a boy who looked and sounded like a girl.  (With one major exception.)  People actually had to check his ID twice to make sure that the big M printed on it for gender was not a mistake.  And part of it had been that while he had technically been assigned to a team, he never really had a partner, per se.  Some of the older Hunters refused to work with the 'she-boy,' and the younger teams (like the one he was on) already had an even number of Hunters, and management was reluctant to break up a team that worked.  Plus, as an Aribter, they were one of the more solo types to begin with.<br/><br/>But that was changing, today.  Dogpatch was supposed to be getting a new Hunter, and they had determined she would be assigned to work with Sammy as his partner.  Which is why he was standing at San Francisco International, near the company car he'd taken to get here, holding a sign:<br/><br/>'Julie Scoterrin'