Losing Battle

The 'monsters' were copies. They looked exactly like his friends and one like himself. However there were significant changes to their clothing, faces, and attitudes. They all wore the same type of clothing as their human counterparts had while in Lyoko. But they all wore some shade of red rather than the kids' original colors. The creatures all shared a black tattoo of Xana's eye around their right eyes. Each of the copies had a wicked sneer on their face.

They walked forward until they were ten paces away from Ulrich. Smirking at his shocked expression, X-Yumi spoke up. Her words had the same pitch as the real Yumi, but there was a subtle undertone of a mechanical speaker.

"You like our new look, Ulrich?" she asked. "You should: our master went to great lengths to create us."

"What's the matter?" X-Odd demanded, smirking. "Not afraid of us, are you? Ha! You should be: we're faster…we're stronger…and we're ready to pommel your ass!"

"I hope your fists are as quick as your mouths," Ulrich said quietly. He kept his hands on his katana, ready to fight at any moment.

"Yeah?" said X-Aelita. "Well, we'll see."

Unsheathing his swords, Ulrich placed himself into an instinctive fighting stance. With a stoic face, he said, "Let's go."

He ran forward with his katana swept back. The copies divided as he neared; X-Odd leapt on to a high boulder, X-Yumi dashed around Ulrich's flank, X-Aelita held her ground, and X-Ulrich ran forward to meet him.

Swinging and slashing as hard as he could, Ulrich hit only air. His copy danced and ducked out of the deadly swords' paths like he knew where they would be coming from. Taking advantage of Ulrich's accidental guard drop in his frenzied assault, he landed a punch to the boy's gut.

The force of the blow momentarily knocked Ulrich senseless. That was more than enough time for X-Ulrich to jump up and bring his fists down on Ulrich's head. He slammed into the ground as his copy landed on top of him, careful to do as much damage as he could.

As they separated, a rope of what looked like liquid rock materialized around Ulrich's ankle. The rope sprouted from the ground near X-Aelita. It suddenly yanked him off the ground, swung him straight up into the air, and smashed him face-first into the ground on the opposite side of X-Aelita. Grasping his face, Ulrich almost didn't notice that he was being hauled back into the air again.

He was slammed into the ground several more times. Ulrich could almost feel his Life Points draining from his body. While he was being hurled up for another hit, his katana flashed in a brilliant arc. The rock-rope was cut clean, but his momentum was built up so much that he was thrown a fair distance away.

Slamming into the ground with a crushing impact, Ulrich would've died if he'd been on Earth. Instead, he lost a large percentage of his Life. Skidding along the path, he barely managed to stop himself from falling into the void.

Standing, he hefted up his katanas up. This was about to get worse, he knew.

A flash of dark red was streaking toward. Instinctively raising his swords, Ulrich waited. X-Odd slid to a stop a fair distance away and raised his arms. In the span of only a few seconds, almost a dozen Laser Arrows were shot and deflected.

Hoping to charge X-Odd, Ulrich stumbled. His feet wouldn't move! Loud laughter behind him distracted him long enough for the second wave of Laser Arrows to connect. The stinging sensations he felt reminded him of being hit by lasers, but much more severe. The hold on his feet relaxed as he fell forward onto his hands and knees.

Looking up, he saw two more flashes of red fast approaching.

"Great," he groaned.

-

Due to the poor monitoring screen, they couldn't really understand how the fight was going. All they could see were the icons moving about the landscape at startling speeds, Ulrich's dwindling Life Points, and a special new gauge. The gauge measured the percent of effort that Ulrich was capable of doing and what he was using.

Program ULRICH: status 15 Capable Attack/20 Capable Defense/35 Capable Speed/56 Life Points

"What is he doing?" Yumi demanded.

"I don't know," Jeremy said. "He is much faster and stronger than what he's using."

"Man," Odd whined. "This stinks! We can't even see what's going on!"

"There is a way to," Aelita said.

"How?"

With a small smile, she said, "Open a video screen over the area. It won't be a very clear picture, I'm afraid. But we'll able to watch."

With a laugh, Odd said, "That's perfect! Jeremy, can you?"

"I'm trying to De-Virtualize Ulrich," Jeremy said impatiently. "So not right now."

"Why haven't you done that already?" Yumi demanded.

"Technical problems," he answered. "They need to recharge."

Suddenly the screen that held the fight scene blinked red with Xana's black symbol. Then an image of the three scanners outlined in red filled the bottom half.

Scanner One: Status Disabled

Scanner Two: Status Disabled

Scanner Three: Status Disabled

They stared dumbly at the monitor for a moment.

"We are in very serious trouble," Yumi said quietly.

(A/N) Trouble, trouble, trouble! How much more can they possibly get into? Find out next time in RAY OF HOPE