Season Three : Episode Ten : Point of No Return, Part II
Soundtrack: Green Day's "Closing Time" (In a metaphorical sense)
Chapter One: In Xanadu
"Jeremie!" Aelita called. Her voice was thin and hoarse.
"There's no one out there," Ulrich said dully. Yumi nodded in agreement.
The three were at the edge of the virtual jungle, at the point where the thick foliage loosened and faded onto airy pathways and periodic trees. Yumi stood by her hovercraft, Ulrich by his bike; Aelita had been pacing around them in an uneven, restless circle; now she stopped and squared her shoulders, staring out at the criss-crossing paths of the forest sector. "You're right," she announced firmly, then turned to face the other two. "We have to get to Sector Five on our own."
"If Ulrich devirtualizes me…" Yumi began, looking at the samurai.
"It won't work," Ulrich interrupted her flatly. "Didn't you hear Jeremie? We're locked out."
"Sector Five…" Aelita murmured, reminded of something. Her mind spun through the dense foliage behind them, along the spiraling pathway, to where the ground dropped away into the void and the waterfall poured out, foaming and crashing, into the river in the sky. "Five." Back in what passed for reality, Aelita opened her eyes. "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion…"
Through wood and dale, the sacred river ran/And reached the caverns measureless to man,/Then sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
The poem was being recited in her memory now, by a gruff but affectionate voice. She closed her eyes again, surrendering fully to the flashback.
A hand rested on her shoulder, although she couldn't see the face it belonged to. Whoever it was stood behind her, or kneeled; his voice was near to her ear. "The Orbs and the Towers will take you between the sectors, but if there's no one out there – and there usually won't be – take the River Alph."
"How?" Aelita-of-memory breathed, excited, intrigued by the secrets of this new world she was slowly becoming a part of.
"I'll show you," said the voice, and for a second she thought it sounded familiar, not just from the hazy flashbacks, but from the memories she could be sure of. The phantom presence behind her rose ponderously to his feet…
"Aelita?" Yumi interrupted. "Are you all right?"
Jolted out of her trancelike state, Aelita looked up into the concerned, white-painted face of her friend. "We have to get back to the river," said the pink-haired girl earnestly.
"Huh?" Yumi's expression was a study in confusion. Ulrich, standing behind her, looked equally puzzled, but Aelita ignored them both, climbing onto Yumi's overwing. Exchanging glances with Ulrich, Yumi clambered up behind her. "Okay, you dri-"
Aelita grabbed the handlebars, and the vehicle leapt forward. Yumi was nearly knocked off by the sudden acceleration, but managed to catch hold of one of the upraised sides. The overbike's purr faded into the ambient noise as Ulrich took up pursuit; Aelita sped onto the path between the trees, careening around the curve of the road and narrowly missing the low, smooth wall bordering it. "Slow down!" Yumi called as the overwing made a too-tight turn and scraped against the inner wall; had this been Earth, there would have been a long streak of paint left behind. As it was, the drawn-out shriek of stone on metal made Yumi wince, although Aelita stoically ignored it.
The curve of the path tightened as it spiraled in like a snailshell; Ulrich was left behind them. "Aelita, we have to slow down," Yumi pleaded again.
The ground dropped. Yumi jumped, grabbing Aelita; the elf let go of the vehicle with a squeak, and the overwing plummeted into the void beneath them. The force of Yumi's leap saved the two warriors from the same fate, but not by much. When everything stopped moving, Aelita was pinned against an outcrop of virtual land, her arms around Yumi's neck in a stranglehold, and Yumi was clinging to the jut of land with both hands, feet dangling over nothingness.
There was a whrr, and a skidding, as Ulrich came around the bend and braked his bike hard. "Yumi?" He leapt down from the bike, leaving it floating half a foot above the ground. "Aelita?"
"Over here!" Yumi called, sounding more then a little choked.
"We could use a hand," Aelita added, giddy from fear and exertion.
Ulrich looked down, raised one eyebrow, and grabbed both of Yumi's wrists. She clasped her hands around his arms, and both pulled; Aelita's feet, then Yumi's, found footing on the ground, and all three warriors were safely on solid turf once again. "Next time, I drive," Yumi panted sardonically.
Aelita smiled apologetically. "I had to get here before I lost it."
"Lost what?" Ulrich asked.
"The verse." Aelita paused, staring at the rushing column of inverted water. "The river is a back door into Sector Five."
Yumi and Ulrich followed her gaze. Yumi was the first to ask the obvious question. "How do we get up there?"
Aelita pointed. "We can climb the fragments. Yumi?"
"On it," replied the kimono-ed warrior, placing her hands on her temples. A glowing, honey-gold aura sprung into being about one of the huge rocks rotating about the upside-down waterfall, and it pulled away from its slow orbit, swinging ponderously towards the mainland.
It was within a yard of their position when Yumi dropped her hands to her sides with a gasp. "Jump!" she directed, backing up for a running start. The fragment of virtual ground hung rock-steady in the air for a second before beginning its drift back towards the waterfall.
"Supersprint!" Ulrich declared; a moment later, his blurred form caught Aelita around the waist, momentum easily carrying them both across the widening gap. Yumi followed a beat behind, racing right to the edge of the void, hands slicing the air for speed. Although not as quick as Ulrich, she had only her own weight to propel over the chasm; she easily made it, turning a neat somersault and landing with precision on the edge of the rock.
Ulrich looked back at the land. "Aw, man. I left my bike," he complained facetiously. He looked over at his friends, suddenly concerned – Yumi looked worn, worse then he could remember seeing her in Lyoko. But of course. No amount of running or fighting could tire one as thoroughly as using their powers, and she had been moving rocks all day – for three long crossings of this cursed void.
Ulrich impulsively grabbed one of her hands in both of his, giving a quick, comforting squeeze. Aelita was watching the waterfall ahead, so he held on a second longer then camaraderie required. "Guess I don't get to crash anything this time around."
Yumi smiled back now, tired and wan, but still a smile. "I'll crash the bike for you if you push this rock around," she quipped.
Aelita turned back to face the other two, and Ulrich let Yumi's hand drop, sheepish, yet reluctant. "Ready?"
Their rock had nearly reached the cloud of similar fragments orbiting the waterfall now, and Ulrich instantly saw what she meant; they would have to jump soon if they wanted to catch the next highest rock. "Ready," Yumi proclaimed at his side; he nodded as well, sizing up the gap. They drew closer, closer…
That was as close as they would get. Ulrich flung himself towards the next rock, madcap leap nearly bearing him over the side; Yumi, touching down more precisely after a neat tumble, grabbed his arm to steady him as he wobbled dangerously on the edge. "Go!" Aelita panted, landing lightly on the same fragment, but she hardly found solid footing before she leapt again, towards the next floating rock. Jump, and jump again; it was a hectic trampoline, a life-threatening game of frogger in three dimensions, timing the leaps to Aelita's breathily gasped "Now"s. The pink-haired elf was using her preternatural sense of the Lyokan landscape to its utmost, almost trancelike in her concentration. She and Yumi must have stopped Ulrich from losing his footing on a botched jump and plummeting into the void half a dozen times, and he returned the favor almost as often, although both girls, with their precise, gymnastic leaps, were slightly less likely to overshoot the treacherous landings.
Then they were on the last fragment, and the world flipped.
Ulrich was nearly sick for a long, precarious moment. He was standing on what had been the bottom of a fragment; above him, the waterfall dropped from a gap in the landscape, and trees hung like spider plants from a ceiling, leafy tops lower then their trunks, higher then his head. A few yards below, a foaming pool of blue, virtual water rippled in even, fractal patterns. A queasy moan escaped Ulrich's taut mouth; then the moment of nauseous vertigo had passed and he was just winded, breathing heavily and slightly out of sync with the girls to either side of him.
When the rush of the climb had worn off, Ulrich chanced a comment. "That looks an awful lot like the digital sea. Are we sure about this?"
"Completely." Aelita gauged the distance between fragment and river, then lowered herself to sit, feet dangling over the edge, "Xanadu was a safehouse, not a prison; it wouldn't make sense to lock the people inside out of the most important sector."
"Xanadu?" asked Yumi. Ulrich was curious too, especially since the name sounded hauntingly familiar. "What's that?"
"Oh – I meant Lyoko," Aelita responded, and pushed herself over the edge.
There was a heart-stopping instant, as she plummeted, when it looked like she would splash down into the virtual sea. But when she hit, it was something solid and smooth atop the water, like a truly invisible sheet of glass. She looked up at her friends with a weak, shaky smile, as if she hadn't been quite as certain as she had acted. "Come on in; the water's fine."
Ulrich reached for Yumi's hand, more to comfort himself then her. Their fingers met, and they dropped in unison towards the pool below, landing lightly on the solid surface. The samurai made the mistake of looking down; his feet were on thin air, inches above perfectly blue, lapping virtual water. "Hey. We're alive."
Yumi bounced up and down on the invisible surface. "Which way?" she asked Aelita.
"Down the river." The elf paced along the pool noiselessly until she reached the edge, where it narrowed into a river that wound out, almost like a road, against the sky. With a wary look, she stepped onto it.
And vanished.