Sithking Zero: Heart of a Warrior and all original characters associated with it are mine, use them and die. Megaman, Code: Lyoko and all related properties are not my property and as such should not be considered mine. They are the respective properties of Capcom, Moonscoop, Taffy, France 3, Canal J, Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, Shopro, Viz, and any other companies I may have neglected to mention in my naming bonanza.
Heart of a Warrior III
Warrior's Redemption
Chapter 26:
Meet'n'Greet
Jeremie stared at Jim in shock.
"You… you know?"
"Yes," answered Jim, a slight smile on his face.
"How…?"
"How what? How did I join the Officials? Why am I out here? How do I know?"
Jeremie shrugged. "…yes?" he asked quizzically.
"My father… has a bit of a reputation. I was already part of the Officials when one of his projects… backfired, and I was blacklisted by association." He sighed. "The Officials thought my father was an embarrassment, so they… shunted me somewhere I couldn't do much harm to them politically. Since the 'Net isn't too big out here, I didn't think I'd be doing anything, really."
"What's going on?" Cried Sissi. "Who's XANA? What are Officials? What's Lyoko? I don't understand anything!"
The two officials looked at her with a small degree of pity. They both understood how confusing and disorienting this must be for her.
"Jeremie, you know this better that we do. You explain."
"What? Why should-"
"Her father is working for Wily. I'll explain later," he added quickly, seeing the look of bewilderment on Jeremie's face, "But she deserves to know about Lyoko just as much as the rest of us."
It was at this moment that Ulrich burst open the door and marched in, a boy with blonde hair with a purple splotch in the center in ill-fitting clothes following in his wake. Odd slouched slightly, and his face showed how scared and confused he was.
"You know, you could consider knock…ing…" Jeremie's voice trailed off as he stared at the disheveled boy in borrowed clothes.
The others in the room stared at Odd, who was, as it were, back from the dead. Sissi, remembering the last time she had seen the normally-purple-clad artist, let out a whimper and hid behind Jim. Odd, seeing her reaction, looked miserable
For a long moment, nobody spoke. Finally, Jeremie cleared his throat.
"I think we should call Yumi and Mr. Hopper and talk about this with them."
"Yumi? Why her?" asked Sissi, but with no malice in her voice, simply curiosity. Where once she would have gone into a whining fit about the asian girl trying to steal her 'Darling Ulrich,' Sissi had been thrust into a world of monsters and demons of which she knew little, and she was just beginning to comprehend that there was more to Ulrich-and at this, she paused briefly that she had not referred to him as 'Her' Ulrich- and his friends than met the eye. She was being forced to reconsider a great many things in a very short amount of time. Her belief in the world around her… what was real and what was not… the people around her…
The love of her father…
"… I? Sissi? SISSI!"
She jolted as Jim began snapping his fingers in front of her face.
"Yes?"
"You spaced out. You going to be all right?"
For a second, she gave him a look. Jim chuckled.
"Right, dumb question. Just try to stay focused for now, okay?"
She nodded.
"Sorry. So… why Yumi?"
"You'll find that out in a bit. Ummmm… could you come with us, please?"
"So that's what the cyberworld is?" asked Sissi hesitantly. "I thought it was some sort of online game, like Odd used to play- plays." She corrected swiftly, glancing at the clearly uncomfortable purple-blonde boy in too-large clothes.
The Lyoko Warriors, plus Jim, Sissi, and Franz, were in the living room of the Hermitage, where Franz had helpfully offered the use of his home to provide neutral ground where everything could be explained properly to the two newcomers.
"Basically," said Protoman from Chaud's shoulders, "And unfortunately, that's where your friends come into the picture."
"I wanted to create a way to save the world from its own stupidity, but when that purpose vanished, I just wanted a safe home for my daughter and myself," murmered Franz sadly, "So I called an old friend of mine to help me with my project. He thought that I was insane, that I was crazy, until I told him exactly what I had faced when in the Project. But then things started going wrong."
"XANA," growled Aelita, surprising most of the people in the room. The exception being Chaud and Protoman, because they had witnessed Wily's creations firsthand more than anyone else.
"Precisely. Somehow, Wily found out about our project, and sent XANA in to sabotage it. My daughter," he gestured to Aelita, "And my adopted son Bass managed to stop her, about ten years ago, forcing her to retreat."
"Ten years? But… wouldn't that mean that Aelita was only four years old when she stopped XANA?" asked Jim, suspicion alight in his eyes.
"I'm getting to that. After they beat XANA, the group that I used to work for came after me, so Aelita and I hid inside the supercomputer, but-"
"Wait, inside the computer? How big was this computer?" Sissi blurted at Franz's odd choice of words.
"Oh, only about fifty cubic meters or so, give or take," he waved his hand in an casual manner, "But that's not what I meant," he added as Sissi and Jeremie stared at him. Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd, not knowing what they were talking about, simply stayed silent, while Jim, Chaud, and Protoman, being more familiar with Cyberworld technology, were not surprised at the space requirements for something as large as the Lyoko System.
"What I meant is that inside the computer is a device that I call a scanner, for short. It dematerializes your body and transfers every atom and particle in your form to Zero Point Space, where it then transfers it to anti-space. Once this is completed, it reduces you to an…" he trailed off at the glazed look on most of his audience's faces, "It turns human beings into programs that can run around and interact with the virtual world created by manifesting the computer's programming."
"Huh?" asked Odd.
"It turns humans to programs, and allows you to interact with Lyoko," explained Jeremie, before adding, "And Lyoko is what we call the virtual world inside Franz's supercomputer."
"That still doesn't answer how Aelita was able to defeat the one in charge of the one who nearly killed us all at age four," Growled Jim.
"Actually, it does," piped up Aelita, drawing the attention of the Warriors-plus-six. "When you enter the computer, you stop aging. When I first went in, I was fourteen."
"You aren't aging?" asked Sissi excitedly, "Is this like the fountain of youth?"
Aelita shook her head with a small giggle.
"It only works as long as you are in the computer, it's not permanent… right?"
Franz smiled.
"No, as soon as you leave it, you start aging again at the same rate as anyone else. In fact, if I was to check all of you," he gestured to the Warriors, "You would all be younger than you should be, if only for a few days, or weeks, in your case Odd."
Odd grimaced, and Sissi placed her hand over his. He raised an eyebrow at her actions, and in return she granted him a small, shy smile, removing her hand and placing it in her lap.
A high-pitched sound began to echo through the windows as Franz drew his explanation to a close, leading Jim to walk over and close them. As he slammed down the glass portal, he stopped and stared at the sight cop cars barreling down the driveway, sirens blaring and dirt flying.
"Huh." Jim said as the others came to look out at the commotion, "That's not something you see every day…"
CYBERSPACE
A figure, enshrouded in a cape, stood upon a cube-shaped processing node, deep within the undernet. Behind him stood a second figure, also wrapped securely in a black cloak. Only the tops of their helmets- golden-finned and black, respectively- were visible, as well as their crimson eyes.
Minutes pass. Dozens of minutes. Hours. Finally, the second figure throws the cape off, to gasp desperately for breath.
"How do you DO that?" gasped XANA, "That thing is HOT!"
Bass quirked a smile at his now non-cloaked companion.
"I had no idea you felt that way about me, XANA…" he frowned. "I haven't spoken with Odd since I beat you the first time, and somehow he's still managed to corrupt me."
XANA's raised eyebrow caused a glare to be aimed in her direction. Seeing that it had little to no effect, Bass merely pulled his cloak a little tighter around himself as a sphere of pure incandescence appeared.
The Lord of the Undernet, the woman king of the dark, the most powerful Navi yet created appeared before the only rival she had for her power.
The Black Shadow and the Lord of the Undernet stared at each other. The Lord's eyes flickered to XANA, who was gripping her sword tightly, but had not yet drawn it.
"New friend?"
"Ally of convenience. Nothing more."
"Hey!"
"Shut up."
"Then you know who is responsible."
"Doctor Wily."
"Exactly. How did you find out?"
"His mutant navis tried to kill me in my own home."
"Red ones with the disk heads?"
"Hn."
"Replicons." Chimed XANA.
"They've been infesting the Secret Net for weeks now. My men have just got the last of them taken care of. On the positive side," the dark-skinned female stated with remarkably more pep in her voice, "Darkman finally got his ten thousandth kill, so he's been marginally more manageable."
Bass quirked an eyebrow.
"Marginally?"
"He's still not very social, but at least others can approach him without worrying about being sliced in two."
"Charming," stated XANA deadpan, "But what does that have to do with us?"
A tiny sphere of power slammed into her chest, knocking her back thirty feet.
The two glared at her before returning to their staring match.
"Wily is not done. This was not the full extent of his plan. To annoy children, yes, but this has only been a diversion. What you truly seek…"
"Could I not be the one to tell him? Why did you need us both here! Why did you attack me?" Cried XANA, drawing her sword, continuing, "I have been privy to Wily's most secret thoughts and plans! Why must you be the one to-"
"Then tell them, Virus!" roared Serenade, "Tell us of where he goes or what he does. Tell us all of his plots and schemes, of how he plans to execute these machinations!"
"I-" XANA cried back, before stopping, terror spreading across her face, absolute horror crawling across her bones, "I… I don't know… Why don't I know?"
"And that is the reason you have been brought here, Daughter of Wily, to learn the truth," whispered Serenade, "The truth that though you seek to be rid of the connections between yourself and your father, they run deeper than you would like to admit, even to yourself. Even your memories are partitioned when he does not wish them to be accessed. This is something that you must confront, little one, sooner rather than later."
Serenade turned back to Bass, fixing him with a glare that could melt and freeze steel and the same time.
"You wish to know where to find the Doctor? Check the Underground."
"Why are you being so mysterious?"
"Are you actually asking me that, Oh Cloaked One?"
"…"
"Fine. It is because I can't access his systems."
"You are the one being who has more power than me. I refuse to believe you."
"Then explain the Replicons."
"…Hn?"
"You didn't notice that they had increasing immunity to your particular brand of power? That each time you fought them, they grew more and more resistant to your signature energy?"
Bass stopped cold. "You can't mean…"
"The Replicons have the Get Ability, stolen from you by XANA."
"Which I did restore to you at the first chance I got! Please remember that!" XANA interrupted, sounding almost desperate.
"… Damn."
"I agree. You must return to Lyoko, without the two of you, the events of today will make it nearly impossible to win the fight against Wily."
"Wait, what events? What is going ON?" bellowed Bass, as Serenade vanished in a flash of light once again.
Behind him, XANA stiffened, realization pulsing over her like a wave.
"We have to get back."
"Wha-"
"NOW."
Bass' aura automatically sprung up.
"I don't take orders from anyone, especially not pathetic little viruses like you. We are not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on."
XANA winced, and acquiesced.
She reached one arm behind her back and rubbed her opposite arm, looking down.
"It was a plan I came up with a while ago, back before Aelita could leave the computer and I could possess people. I didn't realize that it was happening before now…"
She trailed off. Bass shot her a deadpan look.
"I could still kill you and say you were the bad guy, since Wily drained part of your powers."
"Speeding up then! I've been feeling weird twinges all day today, ever since the day… restarted, I guess. I didn't realize what they were before because before, I was the only one doing it, so I never really noticed, but when Forte did it, I first felt the twinge and I figured out what it was by cross-referencing the moment I first registered the emotion with the moment it happened.
"My patience is rapidly wearing thin…"
"The twinges are towers activating. Someone's activating towers."
"Do you think it's XANA?" asked Ulrich as more police vehicles came closer and closer to the old house.
"I'm sure that whatever it is, it can be easily explained. We're officers of the law ourselves, so this is probably just a big misunderstanding," Jim boasted, drawing Chaud's ire.
"One, they have what appear to be a regiment of the French Special Forces with them. Two, as you said, the Net is not very big here, so our jurisdiction isn't very strong on a good day. Aren't you the special operations commander?"
Jim winced at the accusation. "Sorry, but when you've been playing a cover for so long, it's hard to slip out of it, you know?"
Protoman nodded.
It was at this moment that the rear door imploded violently, and armored special forces agents swarmed through the windows.
"SCATTER!" roared Odd, diving to the floor in the direction of the kitchen, dragging the shell-shocked French drama queen with him. Franz tried to rise, but ceased when a gloved fist slammed into his face, resulting in a spurt of blood and a disturbingly loud cracking noise. At this, he slumped bonelessly to the ground.
Ulrich and Yumi managed to get out of the living room, but were now desperately trying to avoid several officers in a mad dash through the kitchen at gunpoint.
Jeremie was shoved to the ground, and he felt hands pressing handcuffs to his wrists, until suddenly, the weight dramatically lessened. Rolling onto his back Jeremie looked up to see his savior.
There stood the slightly pudgy Physical Education teacher, Jim, wrestling the special forces agent, still wielding handcuffs, to the ground.
It was true that his occupation of being a PE teacher was merely cover for his true activities, and one assigned as punishment, at that, but somewhere along the line Jim had truly started to enjoy the job and position. He liked teaching kids, and running around and showing them how to play sports. Most of all, he enjoyed being a pillar of support for the student body. As the school guidance counselor in addition to his physical education position, he was a voice of somewhat blunt and uncouth reason in many student's daily lives. This had instilled a sense of protectiveness for his students above and beyond the proverbial call of duty. These feelings were most certainly being brought out now.
Jeremie, though not in any way what one would call "athletic," or "strong," or "good in any sort of physical activity other than speed typing," attempted to add his own two cents to the fight, attempting to tackle the SF agent from behind. Unfortunately, all this got him was a taser to the backside from one of the local police.
It didn't hurt as much as one of XANA's possessed minions giving their version of a taser, but it was still enough to knock him unconscious.
Aelita had been grabbed fairly early in the fight, and was currently being wrestled into a police van.
And from the sidelines, a man with grey hair and a grey beard watched from the sidelines with a concerned mask, but inside, he was smiling in manner most sinister.
The two super-powered navis raced through the cyberworld, one in his own form, cloak snapping behind him, and the other as a plume of thick black smoke.
"So the towers aren't staying on?"
"No. I devised this plan a while ago, as I said, when the supercomputer couldn't possess people. I thought up a way to activate and deactivate the towers quickly, so that the kids wouldn't know what was going on, and without a reason to suspect, they woudn't go to Lyoko. The idea is to use the towers to quickly change bits of data in certain computers before turning the computers off, altering things like generators, traffic signals, hydroelectric plants, hospitals… Set them to overload or to do bad things, you see? And since," and here XANA let out a chuckle, "Bad old XANA couldn't be behind it, I could get away with it relatively easily. You know how much is online these days?"
"…"
"Right, dumb question. Anyway, I ran it past Wily, and even though he liked it, he said there were two problems with it."
"Sounds ingenious to me."
"First problem: even though it was genius, don't underestimate the Belpois boy. He should be right up there with the Hikaris, Cossack, Wily, and Gates in terms of programming genius. He took a computer of such complexity that it can turn back time itself, and makes it do the impossible on a daily basis. If I went through with that method of attack, he'd probably find some way to keep me from activating the towers for at least a week, then a month, and then he'd find some way to keep me out of the tower system altogether. And with Lyoko, the only two ways to do anything are through the towers, and through the main control console in the real world."
"So you were afraid of being beaten by a brat?" Bass scoffed. "Pitiful."
"How's Hikari doing, by the WAULGHKK!" Bass' arm rocketed out, grabbing the supposedly immaterial smoke at what seemed to be a random point, and it immediately solidified into XANA's neck. The rest of her fully materialized in the proper places, leaving her hands scrambling at her neck, trying desperately to pry Bass' hands off her neck.
"Do not." He growled, "Mention. Hikari. Again." He released her. "You may have turned over a new leaf, but you still have no right to speak to me in such a way. I am not your friend. You tried to kill me. You enabled a pretender to take my place. You framed me for crimes I did not commit. And you sucked me into Lyoko when I was recovering from the last battle with Hikari. You have no right to try to joke around with me. You are only alive because I have deemed that you still have a purpose to me. DO NOT," he snarled, "Mistake my intentions."
"All right, all right," croaked XANA, rubbing her throat reflexively.
A long pause settled in between the two.
"The second part was…?"
"Oh… right. The second reason why it wasn't a good plan was because we were using Lyoko to drain power from local power sources for…"
"That thing you can't remember."
"Yeah. And only draining about three seconds worth of electricity isn't all that much in the long run, so we worked on the new stealth programs for the towers instead."
Suddenly, she made a gesture with her arm, and the portal opened. The two quickly vanished inside.
What they found inside did not inspire XANA with confidence, and horror spread across her face. Bass… merely floated next to her, his eyes narrowing at what was happening around him.
Lyoko was breaking. Not the calm, systemic deletion that was the result of the ubiquitous "Code XANA" in another reality, but far more violent, far more destructive, and altogether more evil.
Lyoko was designed by Franz to be a "World Without Danger," as it were. A world of peace and security. That meant that no matter what, it was nearly impossible to get hurt here. There was no weather or tectonic movements, so storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes were out of the question. The "Monsters," of Franz's original design were as harmless as rabbits (though XANA quickly deleted these in favor of her own, far more lethal, creations.) Even the Digital Sea, before it was modified by XANA, was relatively harmless, merely acting as water would in the physical world. There was no sickness or death. It was a virtual Garden of Eden, pardon the pun.
This was not the Lyoko that XANA and Bass saw now. This was less of "A World Without Danger," and more of "A World With An Excessively Large Amount of Danger, Coupled With Surprisingly Large Amounts of Lethality."
The Forest, which had steadily grown more green since Jeremie had reactivated the computer, was decimated. Trees snapped and shattered like they were made of ice. Bolts of cobalt lightning flew across the bright purple sky, occasionally touching the ground and causing it to burst into black flames. All around them, the walkways crumbled and were rent asunder by the titanic amount of force being forced through them.
XANA's horror-stricken face shifted to rage.
"I know this… it's Dark Power."
"Hn."
"You knew this, didn't you?"
"That this is the work of Dark Power, yes. That it would be used at all, no. I had no more knowledge of this event than you."
"You handled this once before. What do we do now?"
"The way that the children handled it was by disrupting the Dark Aura around my Imposter," he snapped slightly at the last word, "which in turn was connected to the tower itself. That was completely different from… this," he gestured, showing the mass destruction of the beautiful forest sector.
"Perhaps if we were to deactivate the tower responsible while it's in its 'On' phase, that would shut down the tower long enough to shut down the computer," XANA mused, tapping a slender finger to her chin as she dodged an obsidian electrical discharge from the violet sky.
"Can you access tower records and identify what the purpose of this was?"
"Yeah, let's see… Forte accessed the police database, and it looks like the children have criminal records now, saying… woah."
XANA held a data window up to Forte, and his eyes widened.
"That seems… excessive."
"I'll say. It looks like they're now linked to every major terrorist or extremist group in the Eastern Hemisphere." A pause. "I find this pretty impressive, you know, making sure not to put them on groups with opposing ideals lists, so no one can ask questions as to how they can be members of, say, Suni and Shiite groups at the same time." Another pause. "And there's the glare again. Do you have any other expressions?"
"Earth…"
"All right, all right. Looks like at least three divisions of French Special Forces, the entire police forces for the closest three towns, and… wow, is that an Armored Personal Carrier? Pretty impressive… oh, crud…"
A soft growl was emitted from the cloaked navi.
"Replicons…"
"Transit tower. NOW," snarled Bass.
The children, Jim, and Franz Hopper were all wearing handcuffs and leg manacles. Two very angry guards were pointing guns of various caliber at them, their stances showing their perfect training, their utter commitment to the task, and the undeniable fact that if any of the prisoners twitched in a way they did not like, they would die swiftly in a rain of lead.
Jeremie, Franz, Yumi, and Sissi had been laid unconscious. Ulrich was suffering from a concussion, but Jim, Odd, Chaud (and by extension, Protoman) and Aelita were more or less conscious. In Aelita's case, it was more conscious, and fighting mad.
"Where… take us?" mumbled Ulrich.
"SHUT UP!" snapped guard one. Guard two applied an extra-heavy dose of his scowl to the concussed boy.
For many minutes the children, adults, and guards rumbled along in the back of a police van, escorted by dozens of Special Forces vehicles, police cars, and an APC.
Hidden along the side of the road, and hurrying as fast as they could to keep up, Replicons dashed forwards, making sure to keep out of sight. And bringing up the rear of the entourage was a Jean-Pierre Delmas, playing the role of concerned father, driving along in a light blue station wagon.
None of this was known by the Warriors and their allies, however, as they made their way to a maximum security prison.
Suddenly, from the inside of the van, a thumping noise could be heard, and equally suddenly, the van swerved as if to avoid something. More thumps and bangs began to echo in the van's compartments, and suddenly the vehicle came to an abrupt halt, throwing the guards forward and knocking them unconscious. The walls of their prison buckled and rippled briefly, before settling into their previous shape.
There was silence.
Then, sounds of automatic, semi-automatic, and non-automatic weapons began their buzzsaw chorus somewhere beyond the heavy steel walls. The van rocked up on two wheels for a moment, and the shooting ceased abruptly.
Screams echoed, before being silenced by a massive explosion that rattled the van.
As though grasped by the hand of god, the rear doors crumpled inwards as though made of tissue paper, before they were thrown aside like garbage.
The culprit looked briefly towards the location of the ruined door pieces, before turning back to the occupants. His eyes, as well as one of the four that was conscious, met and widened in shock and anger.
"YOU!" Roared James Cossack-Morales and Bass. EXE .
Sithking Zero: Ummm… does anyone know the name of the French special forces, if they have any?
Sorry for the delay. Wish I could say it was for a specific reason.