(A/N) I must congradulate all of you who guessed the A, O, U, and Y copies for enemies. I had hoped that it would've been alittle less obvious than that, but I guess that I can't alwaysbe unpredictable.

I don't mean to sound like a whiny little kid, but please REVIEW alittle more! I love reading all your reviews, especially the lengthy ones. They are alwaysvery insightful and point out some errors that I've missed.

Please enjoy this latest chapter. And review!

Ray of Hope

The powerful kick to his gut sent Ulrich flying backward. He landed roughly on his back but his inertia threw him tumbling dangerously near the edge. Pushing himself quickly to his feet, Ulrich held his katana at the ready. Moving quickly away from the edge, he searched for the copies. He stood in the center of a rocky path with high ledges and boulders on either side of him. But they had vanished.

The sudden familiar snaps of Odd's Laser Arrows caused him to jerk to the side. Turning in mid-air, he tried to face his opponent. He was fast, but not fast enough. Three arrows buried themselves into his thigh. The sharp sting brought him involuntarily to his knees.

As he forced himself to his feet again, a sharp kick to his back sent him cart wheeling head over heels uncontrollably. X-Odd took the opportunity to land five more darts in Ulrich's unprotected chest. The repeated stings caused him to lose his grip on his katana hilt. The sword skidded the side away from him as he landed.

Climbing to his feet again, Ulrich noticed a shadow pass over him. Glancing behind himself, he had only enough time to give a gasp of surprise. A giant, three-fingered hand of rock had materialized and grabbed him.

Arms and legs pinned tightly to his body, he couldn't move. The rock hand was squeezing him very tightly. It was crushing him. For the first time since the fight started, Ulrich started to try to use all his strength. For maybe a split second, he felt the grip lessen…then it tightened its grip yet again.

"You know," said X-Yumi as she walked into his field of vision. "It's not as much fun when he doesn't fight back. Maybe we should end this now."

Ulrich could barely hear them. The hand was squeezing…squeezing…squeezing! The pain he was feeling was like that when X-Odd's Laser Arrows hit him, only continuously.

"I'll say when to end it," X-Aelita growled as she dropped down above Ulrich. With malicious grin, she kicked his discarded sword into the digital void. "Let's have a little fun, first. How should we do it?"

Talking amongst themselves, they left Ulrich at the mercy of the rock hand. In his mind memories flashed by so fast he could only get small glimpses. The first time he tied his shoes by himself…his first view of Kadic…meeting Odd…meeting Jeremy…meeting Yumi…finding Lyoko—squeezing—first Virtualization…saving the world dozens of times over…the day before he left—the pain—pulling Yumi and Theo's bodies out of the drowning bus…talking to Yumi in the park…

Her face rose to his mind unbidden. He could see the highlights of the sun in her hair and eyes. A wind he couldn't feel was blowing her hair and locks in her face, which she would absentmindedly brush aside. Her eyes seemed to be gleaming with a secret she was dying to tell him…but couldn't. As she consumed his mind, Ulrich finally stopped struggling. He let the rock crush his body.

"Ulrich!" Yumi's voice cried in his head. "Stop fucking around and kill those things!"

Looking up in surprise, he saw a screen hovering above the landscape. Jeremy sat in the center with Aelita next to him and Odd peeking over his shoulder. Only a shadow on Odd's face and his three friends' occasional glance told him where his dearest love was.

"Wha—?"

"Why aren't you fighting back?" Yumi demanded.

"They're too strong," he said weakly. The rock suddenly gave a crushing squeeze on him, as if to emphasize the point. "I can't beat them."

"Bullshit!" she snapped. "You're not even trying!"

"Wha—" he stuttered. How could she have known that?

"We can see how much attack power you've been using," she said, as if reading his thoughts. "Fifteen percent! Quit playing around!"

Wincing against another wave of pain ripping through him, Ulrich looked up at the screen again. He just wanted to see her again. Just one more time.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't win this fight."

Her voice screamed startlingly loudly in his mind. It was even more painful than the rock. "If you're too scared to try to do your best, then you shouldn't have even bothered coming back! I'm disgusted to have called you 'friend!' Fuck you! You, coward!"

Ulrich didn't need to see her hand giving Jeremy the headset back to know what she was doing. That is, if he wasn't in shock. Time seemed to freeze for him. The pain he'd been experiencing seconds before strangely vanished. He couldn't feel anything, couldn't think. It was like his senses had simply stopped working. The only thing that he was aware of was the last two words Yumi had spoken.

Then, from what seemed a great (almost immeasurable) distance away, a voice giggled quietly.

"I'd say she hates you," X-Aelita said.

-

They were all looking at her with disbelief. She merely crossed her arms and watched the monitor with a small smile. Ulrich's expression was strangely empty; as though Yumi's little speech had torn out the last shred of emotion he had left.

"You weren't serious, were you?" Odd asked when he finally found his voice. He had never thought that he'd be a witness to such a proclamation from either of them. It just didn't seem logical to him that she could be so cold to her best friend when he was so close to death.

Yumi's smile broadened slightly when she noticed something on the monitor that the others didn't see. That was mostly due to the fact that they were staring at her.

"All he needed was a good insult," she said.

(A/N) What does Yumi know that we don't? I can hardly wait to post the next chapter! I thing that this next one is going to make a fair portion of all the previous and approaching chapters seem a little…dull! I promise you that!

Next chapter: Last Words