Xana's Daughter
Disclaimer: I do not own Code Lyoko, nor do I own its characters.
Prologue
Ulrich couldn't really pinpoint when he had given up on pursuing Yumi Ishiyama, a fifteen year old girl of Japanese descent and fellow Lyoko Warrior, it hadn't really been a decision he had thought much on. He had just grown tired of fighting and getting in trouble with William Dunbar, for the heart of a quick tempered and indecisive girl. For a year now, he'd tried to get her to choose him, but she had remained unable or unwilling to choose between them. Ulrich had made his feelings perfectly clear to her six months into his crush on her, so she knew how he felt, but it made no difference.
Once, Odd Robbia, Ulrich's best friend and roommate, had suggested that William and Ulrich share Yumi, but such a thing was impossible to think of for Ulrich, even as William considered the idea. Ulrich wasn't interested in a threesome, all he had wanted was for the girl he liked to like him, and only him, back. He knew that she hated when William and him fought, and he hated that he was willing to hurt someone just to get a girl, no matter how annoying the older teen was. Hurting someone to get what he wanted wasn't like him, and it went against everything he believed in, but jealousy was more powerful than he had ever thought it would be.
So while Ulrich liked Yumi, he didn't like who he became when he was around her. She was pretty, intelligent, funny (in a sarcastic sort of way), and many more things, but she was bad for him. She wasn't a bad person, far from it, but Ulrich was a very possessive guy, and didn't want to share his possible love life with another guy. He needed someone that made him want to be a better person, not some juvenile delinquinte. Someone that brought out his protective instincts, not his brutal fighting instincts that were better off against XANA than a normal teenage boy, no matter he was a year older. Ulrich needed someone that would love him and only him. No confusion, heartache, or self-hatred included. He could do without anymore of that.
So he tried to find ways to keep his mind off her. It was harder than he thought, especially since he routinely saved the world with her. His eidetic memory and ADHD didn't really help either. He tried to throw himself into his school work but he couldn't keep still long enough to finish any of it, which of course was the main reason why his grades were so bad, although XANA was part of the problem too. It took a bit of creative thinking to figure out how to get around his ADHD and put his perfect recall to use.
In the end, Ulrich had to recruit Jeremy Belpois, residential computer nerd and Ulrich's friend, to help him develope a multipurpose program that would do whatever he said. Such as; read an assignment off to him, or type off an essay exactly how he says it, and he didn't even need to sit down to use it. The program was built into his cell phone and required a headset with a mic and voice commands. It was a very complicated program with hundreds of features for him to discover, Jeremy called it a "smart sidekick". They had shared a laugh over that rather lame joke.
After Ulrich began using his "smart sidekick", his grades had shot up from their usual c's and d's to a far more respectable a-b average.
His father had been so surprised and happy that he'd given Ulrich far more privileges than he'd ever given Ulrich in his entire life. For instance, Ulrich was now allowed to choose his own friends, leave campus without permission (so long as he was back before curfew), and he'd been given complete access to a small portion of his inheritance (of which was still more than ten million dollars) to do with what he'd please.
His father had challenged him and told him that if he could double the money that he'd been given access to within a year, then he would match the money that he had earned, give it to Ulrich as a gift to congradulate him, and buy a car of his choice for his sixteenth birthday.
To say Ulrich had been stunned was an understatement, and when he had questioned his father curiousily, his father had laughed and told him that it was the reward his own father had set him when he had been Ulrich's age. It was a rite of passage in the Stern Family.
That had been two weeks ago.