Author's note: Judging by the number of places on the Skid's 'loading dock', I'm assuming the Skidbladnir has space for five Lyoko Warriors: Aelita in the center, with Ulrich, Yumi, Odd, and (eventually?) William in the NavSkids. I thought I'd make that clear before anyone comments to question my decision. If you're completely at a loss as to what I'm talking about, go to the site and watch one of the season 4 episodes when they're boarding the Skid.
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"Sending coordinates," Jeremie said. "How are you doing, Aelita?"
"Everything's running smoothly," Aelita replied. "Coordinates received; inputting data."
The Skidbladnir began to move forward towards the Replika they had set out to investigate. Within the NavSkids, Yumi, Odd, Ulrich, and Luc watched the structures of the Digital Sea pass by.
"I promise," Luc said, "The next time we do this, Mina, you can take the last spot in the NavSkid. You wouldn't believe this view."
Mina said nothing, but Jeremie noticed her knuckles tighten their grip on the arm of his chair.
"I've never seen it up close," Jeremie offered, "But the view from here is pretty sweet, too."
Odd jumped in. "It's way different up close. You should check it out sometime, too, Einstein."
"Let's just focus on the mission for now," said Jeremie. "We're looking for a Replika, remember? Not debating whose turn it is."
Aelita gasped suddenly, and brought the Skid to a stop so quickly that everyone within jolted forward.
"Whoa! How about a little warning, next time?"
Aelita ignored Ulrich. "Look!" she commanded.
In the path of the Skidbladnir was a mangled shape, and for several seconds no one said anything. Then Yumi gasped, too.
"Oh no -- William!"
Yumi's recognition of the mass before them raised a collective horrified moan from the others. The body was twisted and broken, floating in the nothing-substance of the Digital Sea with barely identifiable parts drifting close by. The face was the only part still clearly recognizable, but the eyes were empty.
Mina swallowed hard. "That's the teammate XANA captured?"
Jeremie nodded, eyes wide. After what felt like an age, he sat forward. His voice wavered as he spoke. "I'm scanning the... debris, for any sign of..." he trailed off. There was no life left. If he found anything, it would be nothing more than data on what, exactly, had happened.
The Skid was silent, its inhabitants in shock. Aelita asked, "Should we try to bring him back home?"
"For what?" Ulrich asked bitterly. "We'd be questioned on how he died, and there's no way we can explain what happened."
"But..." Aelita sounded like she was on the verge of tears. "Shouldn't his death be acknowledged? Doesn't William deserve that much?"
No one knew what to say to that.
Jeremie gave a sudden, startling laugh. "It's okay!"
"Jeremie?"
"Don't worry, Aelita," he said, relief evident in his voice. "It's not William. It was never alive to begin with. It's a copy; there's no traces of his DNA -- it's just a lot of data."
The tension within the Skidbladnir broke. Luc, like Jeremie, laughed. "Oh man," he said. "I was really afraid I'd never actually meet the guy, at this rate."
"You're better off," Odd jested. "He's pretty cocky."
Ulrich and Yumi were considerably less amused. "How are you doing, Yumi?"
"I'm fine," she said -- a little too defensively. "Just surprised." She must have heard her tone, and softened it. "You?"
"Scared," Ulrich admitted. "That might not be the real one, but now I'm afraid the next one will be."
"There seems to be an element similar to DNA in the data," Jeremie said. "If I can just --"
The XANA alert sounded.
"Kongres, two o'clock," Aelita announced. "Dispatching NavSkids."
A pack of Kongres swam at them full tilt. As they reached the Skid, several of the fish-headed monsters broke away and attacked the copy-William, tearing it to pieces and eating what was left.
"Drat," said Jeremie. "XANA must have noticed we were out here and didn't want us to find any leftover information." He pounded his fist down on the arm of his chair, frustrated.
"Why would he want to make copies of someone he already has control over?" asked Mina, tearing her eyes away from the screen.
Jeremie sighed, sitting back again. "I don't know. I'll have to look over the data I DID manage to get and see if I can find any hints."
Meanwhile, the NaviSkid team was ripping through the pack of Kongres. The monsters were fast, but when there were so many of them, it was easier to land a hit.
"C'mon, Ugly!" Odd taunted. "Digital Sea-food for dinner tonight!"
"Sounds more like digital food-poisoning," Ulrich commented, firing off a blast that took out two at once.
They wiped out most of the pack, but Jeremie ordered them to regroup. "The power supply is low," he explained. "You'll need to come back and power up before we can continue this mission."
Odd sighed. "Man. Retreating sucks."
"He who fights and runs away..." Aelita began.
"Lives to be called a coward," countered Odd, irritably. "And being called a coward by a computer program is one of the most annoying things I can imagine."
Ulrich snickered. "Being called a coward by Sissy would be worse."
The crew retreated back to Lyoko and devirtualized, returning to the supercomputer room for a conference.
"It'll take me a few hours," Jeremie said, "But I got enough data from the first scan to hopefully understand what happened to the copy-William. If only we'd had three more minutes, I might have been able to run a full diagnostic..."
"Don't trouble yourself with that, Jeremie," soothed Aelita. "You can't help that those Kongres showed up."
"Thanks, Aelita." He smiled at her, then continued. "I don't know what XANA's up to, but this new event makes it that much clearer that we need to find William and bring him back -- fast. The situation has become urgent."
On the way through the sewer system back to the park, Luc caught up to Yumi. "Hey," he said, over the roar of skateboard wheels echoing in the tunnels. "I just wanted to say that you kicked major butt back there."
Yumi stopped moving to look at him. Luc, on his wheel-shoes, stopped as well.
"Don't get any ideas," she stated bluntly. "The only reason I accepted you and your sister into the Warriors is because you knew about it already anyway. I'd rather have you where I can keep an eye on you than risk letting you expose us. If I could take it back, I'd never have suggested inviting you and Whitehawk to sit with us at lunch."
She didn't give him any time to respond, zipping off again as soon as the last word left her mouth. Luc followed her with his eyes.
"So much for making peace," he mumbled. He sighed and began rolling forward again.
Mina, as soon as she noticed Luc had fallen behind, stopped on her own wheel-shoes to wait for him. He rolled up to her slowly, and she noticed his depressed expression immediately.
"She chewed you out good, didn't she?"
"How'd you know?"
"If the look on your face wasn't enough, the sound of her angry-voice echoing off the walls drove it home."
Luc winced. "So now everyone knows exactly why she's mad?"
Mina nodded, then began skating on down the walkway again. Luc matched his pace to hers.
"I'm really glad it wasn't you in the Skid today," Luc said. "I know I said it was cool and all, but I'd rather be the one to witness something like... that... instead of putting you through it. At least on the screen, it's not quite so vivid."
"That's very chivalrous of you," replied Mina courteously. "Thank you."
"I do what I can."
Yumi had sped down the hall at a pace she didn't know she could set, slowing only when she caught up to Odd, Ulrich, Aelita and Jeremie. No one said anything, which didn't seem suspicious until they got to the manhole that led to the park.
"What's wrong?"
"We could all hear you chewing out Luc," Ulrich said. "I know you don't love the idea of company, but you could lighten up a little."
Yumi took a breath to retort, but Odd spoke up first.
"They're part of the team, now, Yumi. They aren't bad people, and you okayed them, too. You don't have to love them, but acting like that is going too far."
Yumi hunched defensively and didn't say anything. When he put it that way, she knew Odd was right; she'd overreacted. Admitting it, though, was harder than recognizing it.
She hesitated outside the manhole, torn between apologizing and just going home. As she heard the distant sound of Mina and Luc -- moving much slower than the rest of them, talking quietly to each other -- coming closer, she decided she couldn't face him just yet. When Luc and Mina surfaced, Yumi stood on the far side of the group and didn't look up.
"We're going to the movies," Odd said. "Do you wanna come with us?"
Luc smiled, and carefully avoided looking a Yumi. "Thanks for asking, but we should get home. Mom and Dad wanted us to make dinner tonight, and if we don't get home early it'll be dinnertime before we're done arguing about what to make."
Odd looked impressed. "Wow, you guys cook?"
"Well," Mina began. "If the dinner bell was the fire alarm, then yes, we can cook."
The group split: Luc and Mina towards home, Aelita, Jeremie, Odd and Ulrich toward the school, and Yumi into the park itself. Her home was in the same direction as Luc and Mina, but she didn't want to walk with them. Instead, she wandered through the park. She needed time to think.
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Jeremie arrived at breakfast with a slightly mad, sleep-deprived, but decidedly victorious gleam in his eye. Predictably, he'd spent most of the night at his computer. Ulrich, Odd, Yumi and Aelita braced themselves for whatever technical jargon he was about to spew at an hour when brains were not supposed to function.
"I went over the data I managed to pick up during last night's adventure," he said.
Aelita, the only one most capable of understanding computer speak, asked, "What'd you find?"
"First, I should explain that when someone is virtualized, they aren't turned into a bunch of ones and zeroes. It's a very complicated process of registering DNA as a computer program unto itself. This is why we can trace DNA on Lyoko or in the Digital Sea: we're effectively scanning for a program."
Everyone nodded.
"What we found yesterday wasn't a DNA program. It was an attempt at copying DNA and combining it with actual data. XANA is trying to replicate a human using a digital base -- something that could virtualize on Earth. He'd no longer need to possess people because he'd be the sole entity within the body. His own flesh-and-blood form."
There was a pause as the others considered this.
"Why would he need to do that, though?" Ulrich asked. "I mean, possessing someone is a lot more effective, isn't it? They're a lot more subtle than a person running around committing acts of violence."
Yumi remembered her first run-in with William after his XANAfication, when he hesitated before pushing her off the cliff. Then a later incident, when he remembered her long enough to stop his attack. XANA regained control, but Aelita caught up with them before he could devirtualize her.
She could definitely understand why XANA would want a body with no soul already inside.
"Hypothetically, XANA wouldn't have to put all his power into one body," Jeremie continued. "One could act as leader while the others would be the usual mindless zombies."
The warning bell that class would start soon began to ring. Jeremie looked up, startled, then began shoving breakfast into his mouth as fast as he could.
"Geez, man," Ulrich said. "You finally make it on time for breakfast, and you end up talking through it anyway."
"I could help you finish that," offered Odd.
Jeremie didn't stop eating, and glared angrily at Odd. "Touf mah food, Derra Robbia, an I will kill you."
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Author's Note:
Eternal gratitude to LeaMarie for beta-reading and canon-checking for me, and to everyone who has reviewed. Knowing someone is reading and enjoying what I've written makes it all worthwhile!
Next update scheduled for Saturday, September 22.
