Urma, like most people, had only read about the desert and its harsh heat. It was intriguing for Urma to learn a place that never had winter or not a lot of downpours in general. But here on Lyoko there was no such climate, only a mild, still 'air' that could not even be described as lukewarm, more so… nothing. The desert of the Desert Sector was merely set dressing; it might as well have been anything else: a forest, a savanna, a… frozen tundra. Despite this realization, she couldn't help but play along with the fake world.
As Urma crossed over to the next island, a sharp sense sprung up in the back of her head. She turned around to see several figures spawn in the middle of the air over where she started. Not wanting to see what could happen, she picked up her pace.
Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich stuck another landing on Lyoko's ground and immediately began to scan their immediate surroundings for the intruder.
"I see them," said Ulrich, "Their face is covered but they're making a run for it."
"Just a second," said Jeremy, "I'm sending you your vehicles."
In a brief moment, the Overvehicles materialized along with Aelita and William. The warriors got on their respective vehicles while Aelita spread her wings and William sat backseat on the Overbike with Ulrich. Once everyone was ready, they all immediately sped off towards Urma, easily closing the gap.
Urma, knowing that the others were gaining on her, quickly spotted a tight canyon ahead. She figured that the geography would prevent her pursuers from encircling her and increase her chances of escape. She just needed to slow them down.
Reaching into one of her belt pockets, Urma's hand felt the handles of a kunai. Pulling one of the weapons out, she inspected the weapon only for the blade's reflective material to show that Ulrich's Overbike was leading the charge. Going off of the reflection, Urma instinctively threw the kunai behind her at Ulrich.
Ulrich, seeing the kunai, weaved out of the way of its trajectory, "Our guest certainly doesn't seem friendly."
Scrambling for a better option, she reached into a smaller belt pocket and brushed her fingers against several shuriken, "Let's try this."
She grabbed one of the shuriken and threw it as fast as she drew it out. With the less telegraphed attack, the shuriken landed on the front of the Overbike.
"What the-?" wondered Ulrich as he leaned over the hood of the bike.
The shuriken began to glow and swallow its gleam all over the Overbike.
"I think it's time to bail!" suggested William.
The Overbike was enveloped with a golden glow that resulted in an explosion. Thou the duo had dismounted from the vehicle; they were still caught in the blast.
Ulrich, William, you're both down to 40 life points," stated Jeremy, "Be careful."
"OK. Not doing that again," Urma noted to herself.
With the two swordsmen staggered, the other Lyoko Warriors took the lead and started bombarding Urma with their projectiles. While Aelita's energy fields missed, Yumi's fans and Odd's laser arrows managed hit to make partial hits on Urma.
"You got them down to sixty life points," relayed Jeremy.
With the canyon getting nearer and fewer life points to spare, Urma started to dodge the energy fields and block the fans and arrows with her kunai. When the time was given for an opening, Urma returned fire, hitting Odd's arm. By then, Urma's maneuvers were enough to reach the canyon.
Not letting up her momentum, Urma started to wall jump side to side to gain altitude. On her second wall jump, she threw two kunai; one hitting Yumi's Overwing and the other giving a huge scratch to the Overboard causing Odd to lose altitude.
Not wasting a moment, Odd extended his claws, jumped to a wall, started running on his hands and feet. Aelita swopped down and caught Yumi, lowering her down to the ground gently before continuing to chase Urma. By now, Ulrich and William had caught up by using their respective abilities: super sprint and super smoke. With the canyon ending as quickly as it started, Urma started to run down the canyon wall with Odd trailing behind her.
"They're coming to the edge of the sector, said Jeremy, "There's no chance for escape."
Realizing the incoming edge, Urma ground to a halt, the sudden drop in momentum caused her scarf to unravel and fall off. Trapped between the advancing warriors and the Digital Sea, the infiltrator could only stand around as Odd caught up to her, allowing him to see who he was chasing.
"Urma!?" a surprised Odd gasped. Quickly accounting for the reveal, he attempted to sympathize with her, "Urma, I know this place is weird, but you need to calm down."
"Odd, just devirtualize her before she can do anything, like jump into the Digital Sea," ordered Jeremy.
Odd ignored his friend's words and pushed his attempt further, "Urma… please."
Urma considered responding but before she could say anything, a giant white orb with a blue X.A.N.A. symbol flew up, scooped Urma, and Odd away, and flew away.
"Jeremy, why did you send them to Sector 5?" asked Ulrich.
"I didn't do that," said a confused Jeremy, "I don't know what happened."
"We'll just have to follow them," said Aelita.
The ambient echo of Sector 5 rang through the landing zone for the orb. The object dropped Urma and Odd, landing them on the chrome and blue floor. Odd, on cue, crouched to the ground feeling sick. Urma was about to ask Odd if he was all right, but something stopped her. She looked up to see another orb coming down and decided to go deeper into the maze.
"Odd, you're losing her!" said Jeremy.
The incoming orb dropped the other Lyoko Warriors.
"You still get sick from that thing?" asked Ulrich.
"I can't help it," said Odd, "The orb and I just don't get along."
"No use complaining about… orb… sickness," said Yumi, "We should focus on catching up Odd's friend."
The group started to go through the hall into a larger room of the maze with only enough time to see Urma going to the next room. The chase continued this way until the group reached the edge of the maze and found Urma jumping onto the elevator.
"She's heading toward the Skid!" shouted Jeremy.
The Lyoko Warriors could only stand around for the next lift to come by. After what felt like an eternity, they entered the Skid's Garage and hurried down the hall. As they got closer to the docking bay, the sound of voices started to come within earshot.
"As much as we are against the idea, it is the only option left," spoke a synthetic voice, "We will keep casualties to a minimum, but if people such as you warriors get in the way, things will get messy."
When the Warriors finally turned the corner, they were taken aback by what populated the room. Along with several Mantas and a pack of Creepers surrounding the Skid Mk. 2, stood Urma face-to-face with Kat, whose virtualized form was no different from her real-world counterpart.
"You're crazy," shouted a bewildered Urma, "You're insane to do such a thing!"
"Urma, what are you doing here!?" yelled Odd.
Urma jumped in shock at the sudden appearance of her pursuers, as if she had completely forgotten about them.
"Jeremy, care to explain why a bunch of monsters and Kat are in the Garage?" asked Yumi.
"What are you talking about? There's nothing-" Just then, the window displaying Jeremy's bird's-eye-view of the Garage began to jitter until the dots of the missing intruders popped into the display. Shortly after, the window for the Skid's security system popped up.
"What the-. Guys, the Skid's shield is down 50%," said Jeremy.
"Can the Skid's defense system do anything?" asked Aelita.
Jeremy attempted to activate the system but received an error. Jeremy read the error log only to find himself between perplexed and irritated by the log's content: 'I'm not letting you go off that easily. –Dr. Wagner'
"Wagner is blocking the commands," explained Jeremy, "Whatever's going on, one thing's certain: these monsters have got to go."
"What will it be, Urma?" asked Kat, ignoring the interruptions.
Urma pulled out two kunai and lunged out at Kat. The metallic beast shuffled to the side as Urma landed onto the ground feet first. Kat began a pounce, but Urma charged at Kat, extending her arm out with a kunai skewering Kat while she scratched Urma. Urma quickly turned to the group, "Why are you just standing there? Attack!"
Snapping out of the strange daze, Odd, Yumi, and Aelita charged at the minions while Ulrich and William went to help Urma. Urma, focused on Kat, threw a shuriken between the front feet of her opponent. Ulrich and William, not noticing the star, continued to close the gap. But the robotic panther did not wait for them. She leapt onto the Skid, quickly scaling to the top of it, and left Ulrich and William to run into the explosion.
"You're both down to ten life points!" relayed Jeremy.
"Whoops," Urma sheepishly apologized.
On the other side of the battle, Yumi took out a pair of Mantas with her fans while Odd and Aelita fired a barrage of laser arrows and energy fields at the griefers. As they quickly swept up the last minions, Kat lunged into the middle of the group.
Before the three could react, Kat slashed her claws at Yumi, kicked Aelita in the stomach to knock her down, grabbed Odd on the arm with her apposable claw-tail, and tossed him at Urma, knocking them to the ground. She then grabbed Aelita, twisted her right arm, tossed the angel over her quadrupedal body, and knocked Aelita down using both of her hind legs, stabbing into the pink angel, and devirtualizing her. By then, Yumi got up and Kat mauled the remaining life points out of the geisha.
As Odd got up off of Urma, he took the chance to confront the girl, now that her attention was somewhat on him, "So how have you been your first time on Lyoko?"
Urma could only stumble on her words trying to explain herself.
"Now's not the time," interrupted Jeremy, "Yumi and Aelita are devirtualized, and Odd only has thirty life points."
Kat lunged at the two swordsmen to finish them, but Urma charged at him and stabbed him. Kat landed on the ground and Urma rolled off of him. Urma started to charge at Kat and slashed her with two kunai at once, then kicked the creature up, and finally elbowed her.
"She's down to forty life points," stated Jeremy.
"Impressive. Never lost this many life points so fast," complimented Kat as she stood back up, "But it's all over. You can't win. Reinforcements will arrive in thirty seconds."
Urma had a worried look on her face, but then she realized something.
"Guys, hold her off," requested Urma, "There is only one way we can win and need you to keep that… thing busy."
"What makes you think you have a plan?" asked Ulrich.
"Just trust me," insisted Urma.
As hesitant as the boys were at the request, they couldn't think of anything better. Ulrich and William charged at Kat, with William getting the first swing off his weapon. Unfortunately, Kat jumped on the blade, somersaulted over William, and clawed the final blow off of Ulrich. Using the momentum of his wide swing, William slammed his sword down, but Kat sidestepped the attack and slashed him to digital bits. As William's body withered away, Kat took his Zweihander with his tail claw and blocked Odd's volley of laser arrows before the weapon went away with its master.
By then, the sound of primate-like screeches of Mantas filled the Garage. The monsters began encircling the dock. Between a wounded Odd and a rookie, there was no way out.
"Checkmate, warriors," said Kat.
"Not quite," retorted Urma.
Urma threw her third and final shuriken at the Skidbladiner, attaching to its shield. The projectile charged up as the shield began to glow and the energy was released, devirtualizing everyone in the room.
The scanner opened for Urma, as she became unbalanced and collapsed to the ground. She looked up to see Ulrich, Yumi, and William blocking her exit from the scanners. Reading the room, Urma complied with the escort to the computer lab for questioning.
"So," began Jeremy, "How did you get here?"
"I went down the elevator?" answered Urma coyly.
"I'm not talking about how you got in the computer room; people find this place all the time," said Jeremy, "I'm talking about how you got on Lyoko. The virtual world. You launched a Timed-Virtualization. That isn't something you can just press a few keys to do."
"Wait was that what I did?" asked Urma, "All I remembered was panicking when the elevator started coming down, hitting the keyboard on accident and next thing I know, I'm trying to break out of a big metal tube I decided to hide in."
"So- and interrupt me if I'm wrong," began Jeremy, "You started a program, that requires several specific inputs in order to work, with a random stroke of the keyboard.
"…Yes," said Urma.
Jeremy could only scrunch his face and twitch his eye in cringe at the fact that there was now a third case where random inputs into the Supercomputer outputted a convenient result instead of an error message. First, it was candy, then Kiwi, and now this. Odd's look was not helping.
"Anyways," Jeremy said while taking a deep breath, "Moving on, how did you take out all those Mantas?"
"I used my exploding ninja stars. I figured out that the explosion changes depending on what gets hit by them. I figured the shields on that ship would create enough of a charge to take them all out."
"Well, you definitely took everything out," said Jeremy with an annoyed tone, "Thankfully the Skid itself took minimal damage; repairing will be no problem. What's more concerning is Dr. Wagner's security breach. I don't know how he's doing it, but he's making monsters undetectable on the map. He also was probably responsible for triggering the Sector 5 warp and elevator. You were having a conversation with Kat when we found you. It's obvious he set up some sort of meeting with you. What happened?"
"Well… what happened was that…," Urma struggled to formulate a sentence but at this point confusion and panic swelled her face.
"Jeremy, I think you're scaring her," chimed Yumi.
Jeremy was too focused to hear her, "What did he tell you?"
"A-about that…"
"Jeremy, stop," interjected Aelita, "Whatever happened, we heard her answer, she wanted nothing to do with it. He probably gave her the same pitch we got a week ago."
"A- a world without danger," Urma softly spoke as everyone turned to her, "No desperation. No suffering. Only prosperity without the cycle of sin. Sounded too good to be true, but… it didn't sit right."
Urma started to slowly breathe heavily, prompting Aelita to try and comfort her.
Urma began apologizing, "I'm sorry. It's… just been."
"It's okay," said Aelita giving a warm hug, "It's been a rough night for all of us."
The scene that lay before Jeremy caused him to reconsider his outlook, "…We should all get some rest," he said as got off his chair, "and Urma, thank you for saving the Skid."
"So… am I off the hook?" asked Urma.
"For now," said Jeremy, "but we need to continue this conversation tomorrow."
With all the Lyoko Warriors checking in for the night, Urma returned to her room. The night had made here exhausted from the battle and heavy from the lies. Finally alone, she began to question Did she really get away with that? Did she really hide the fact that she had been immune to the Return to the Past, or that she already knew about the Supercomputer? Did they really suspect nothing? With tired eyes and a sleepy mind, she collapsed onto her bed before she could think about her questions.
Another morning came with another meeting in the cafeteria. When Urma sat down with the group, there was an awkward pause at the table. Jeremy started to break the silence.
"First off, I would like to apologize about last night," said Jeremy breaking the silence, "You have to understand that the Supercomputer is a very dangerous machine, and it is important that we keep it a secret."
"Understandable," said Urma.
"Secondly, due to your little adventure on Lyoko, you're now fully registered into the Supercomputer's system," explained Jeremy, "Because of what you did last night, we are willing to add you on our team in our fight against Dr. Wagner. But before you make an answer, we need to make something clear, what we are doing is very dangerous. If you make a mistake, you may not get a second chance."
"Of course, I'll join you guys," said Urma, "I can't imagine myself ignoring some guy trying to take over the world when I can do something about it."
"Just like that?" asked William, "No questions? No concerns?"
"No, not really."
"Okay then, but we need to lay some temporary ground rules. For one, you can't go on Lyoko without two of us accompanying you unless said otherwise," explained Jeremy, "Also, we don't want you pulling any stunts like what you did with the Skid."
"Fair enough."
"In that case, welcome aboard," said Jeremy.
"That could have gone better," said Katherine laying on a table as Dr. Wagner performed maintenance, "We may have lost our entire operation with that stunt."
"Don't worry," said Dr. Wagner as he continued to solder another circuit board, "She'll come around in time."
Kat could only stare at the calendar in front of her, with the crossed off days counting down to a marked date at the tail end of the month, "It may not be soon enough. Time is running out."