AUTHOR'S NOTE:
General:
caprice (kah –prees) noun 1 a whim. 2 a piece of music in a lively fanciful style. (source: The Oxford Paperback Dictionary © Oxford University Press, 1994)
The caprices are individual and isolated scenes, varying in time, space, and nature. They are not meant to be complete stories, but relate to larger stories that are usually unfinished and possibly even unstarted. They are generally independent of each other, though one may eventually refer to another. Within themselves they are each intended to be coherent; random silliness is reserved for "Somewhat too silly", which may or may not be expanded in a manner similar to which I intend to expand the caprices.
Disclaimer: Code Lyoko is the property of Antefilms Ltd., to which I am not affiliated in any way beyond being a fan of their product…
Notes for Caprice #2:
The misspelling of Odd's surname is intentional..
Caprice #2: Look behind you.
Ulrich walked heavily up the steps to the apartment building. He had too much to think about and needed to clear his head. He needed to separate his emotions from the facts. He needed to suppress the part of him that kept saying, "He could never have done a thing like that!" and work with the part that would say why he couldn't have… and how he could have.
"Hello, detective," the night guard greeted Ulrich.
"G'night, Claude" replied Ulrich. He saw the flowers behind the desk and said, "I guess there's someone out there who really appreciates you."
"Yer slipping there, detective!" remarked the night man. "Those are fer you! Came in today."
"Really?" asked Ulrich, intrigued. "Who's it from?"
"I can-not tell a lie, detective," said Claude, "'s'not that I didn't look, but there's no way to read the card w'thout breakin' the seal, an' I figgered y'wouldn't like that…"
"You figured right!" exclaimed Ulrich. "Thanks!" He took the flowers from Claude and walked to the staircase.
"Who could be sending me flowers?" he thought. His glory days of second division football were a good four years behind him, and he hadn't been in a relationship for almost a year, no, more than a year. Fourteen months and three days, actually; fourteen months and three days since he was interrupted from an intensely amourous moment with his live-in love by yet another call to attend the scene of yet another grisly misadventure. Hours of tedious interrogation in gory surroundings were followed by going home to find an empty space in the apartment where she had once been. Her clothes, her posters, her rose plants in the baskets that hung from the ceiling, all gone. She had even taken the hooks out of the ceiling. Nothing of her left behind but her note: "I'm sorry, Ulrich, I can't do this anymore. Maybe another day something can happen, but not now, and not this."
He last saw her about nine months ago. She didn't see him, though; she was completely into her new beau, who saw nothing but her… at the time. Whether they were still happy together, whether she had left him flat since, or whether he had left her flat since, was a point of conjecture to which he had no answer. Nor did he want one. He had done without her for more than a year and could easily continue to do without her for the rest of his life.
It was not so much his future that concerned him right now, however. It was his past. More to the point, it was a friend from his past; from a time in his past where a lot of the past didn't happen. They had shared, along with two others, experiences that no-one in the world would believe, most of which were erased by reversals in time, something no-one would think possible.
These days, however, Ulrich's job was to gather what was possible and sift through it to find what was true. And he had learned that a lot of things he never thought of were possible. Most of these were things he would never want to imagine and that he wished he would forget. Some were ingenious, however, and were almost a relief to see.
The Regent was a criminal Ulrich could like. He wasn't into blood or violence. He was simply a man who, whether for fun or profit, could get past the most sophisticated alarm systems and the most observant guards and walk away with the finest treasures known to man. Most recently, he had done so with the Xianzho Treasure, on loan to the Louvre as a gesture of friendship from the South Korean government.
Thousands of people had seen it from behind a velvet rope two metres from the sealed glass case where it was kept in a vacuum. The differential pressure sensor was only one of several systems designed to secure its presence in the Louvre until the South Korean embassy staff came to collect their treasure. None of the security measures were demonstrated to the public, and only about a third of them were demonstrated to the police. Ulrich remembered those demonstrations. They were impressive. Ulrich was certain that the Xianzho Treasure wouldn't go anywhere soon. And it didn't… until it did.
The interrogations of the various security personnel yielded a few leads, most of which disappeared. There may have been some leaks, maybe for money, maybe trying to impress alluring people, but if they were, whoever leaked had clammed up tight. There were suspects still under investigation, but it was not altogether fruitful. The thing was, though, that not one of the suspects knew the whole deal, and even if they were all in on it together, they still had a little less than half the security system to learn, as none of them knew those aspects of the system.
The night before the theft, Ulrich had met an old school friend, Odd de la Robia, for dinner and drinks at a club. It was a quite exclusive club, beyond the reach of current second-division stars much less has-beens working for a living. Odd's fortunes had risen considerably since Kadic, being at the forefront of music and fashion and actually staying there as a manager, producer and designer. Two-thirds of the world may have looked at Odd's flamboyance and thought was gay, but Ulrich knew at least two-thirds of an address book's worth of women who had been convinced otherwise and was sure that investigation could increase that number to two full address books, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to do so.
As usual, they had used the opportunity to catch up on each other's lives, which took less time than usual since they had both settled into a sort of routine, Odd traveling the world while Ulrich walked the beat. It was a far cry from their meetingsix years earlier, in a rather less exclusive and much noisier club, where Ulrich expressed his dissatisfaction with his football career and his interest in his crazy idea of becoming a police detective.
Odd's advice then had been simple: "If that's what you really want to do, and you can do it, then go for it!"
Now, however, Ulrich wondered what Odd really wanted to do. His mind ran back on Odd's travels and they still read like an itinerary of Regent heists, even more so when he realized the coincidence went further back, to Odd's days performing on stage and Ulrich's days on football fields throughout France.
Could Odd really be The Regent? He certainly didn't need the money; maybe he was addicted to the thrill? While it was easy to think of Odd winding his way through the security systems, even though he wouldn't really be as agile as he was at Kadic (and he was never "really" as agile as he was on Lyoko), it was impossible to reconcile The Regent with the boy he knew whose greatest virtue was honesty. True, he had liberated their cellular 'phones from Mrs. Hertz's locker, and he had forged a letter from his parents in order to get Aelita into Kadic, but those had been extraordinary incidents in response to an extraordinary threat.
Or was that what he was really like?
He had pondered all this as he walked up the staircase to his apartment. Wherever the facts would lead him, they would lead him there in the morning; now he needed to recharge. "Recharge," he thought. "That's what Aelita used to call sleep, recharging. Are all of my thoughts going to take me back to Kadic tonight? I hope so; I could use some good dreams."
He opened his door, went into his apartment, and locked the door behind him. He went to the kitchen and got a glass of water to put the flowers in. He had a vase once, but his ex-girlfriend took it with her when she moved out. It didn't matter; she used it more often than he did and he hadn't needed one since she left. Not until now, anyway.
He took the flowers out of the wrapping and put them into the water. He picked up the card, wondering who would have sent him flowers.
The note on the card said: "Look behind you."
Ulrich did not look behind him. He dropped almost to the floor instead, swinging his leg in an arc behind him, kicking his assailant behind the knee of the one leg being used for support, the other being occupied with a kick that sliced by where Ulrich's head had just been.
The assailant fell, then rolled out of Ulrich's reach. As Ulrich faced his opponent, he looked at someone almost his height but otherwise unrecognizable in black clothing and a ski mask. The next attack was parried, though not as easily as Ulrich had hoped; the invader was highly skilled. Ulrich dodged the next assault and jumped onto the table, but he misjudged his landing, upsetting the table and crashing to the floor, where the intruder quickly pinned him.
"All right, Yumi; you got me," he said.
Yumi removed the ski mask. "How did you know it was me?"
"C'mon, give me some credit!" replied Ulrich from the floor. "I've been a police detective for a few years now. No regular crook was going to wait for me to read the note before attacking me. They wouldn't give me a warning either, especially not one wrapped up with flowers. The only person I know who'd send me flowers and then attack me is you. Besides, d'you think I'd ever forget your fighting style?"
"So you were holding back, then…"
"No way! That was everything I've got! I wanted to show you what rigorous training as a professional athlete combined with police training could do, which, as it turns out, wasn't much against you. The only thing I held back on was drawing my gun!"
"Gun, huh?" Yumi took Ulrich's gun from his shoulder holster. It was a small-calibre semi-automatic pistol, the same type that was standard issue to the uniformed gendarmes.
"Yumi, cut that out!" It didn't matter to Ulrich that Yumi was an old and close friend; he was completely unnerved by the fact that he was immobilized and his assailant was now armed. A quick aim and a pull of the trigger would be all it would take for it to be all over.
Paying no attention to Ulrich's frantic plea, Yumi continued to inspect Ulrich's firearm. She ejected the magazine and put it down on the floor to the left of his head. She then opened the firing chamber, ejecting the cartridge that was there.
"Wow!" she exclaimed as she put the pistol on the floor to the right of his head. "One in the chamber. You really are prepared!"
She then put her had into his pants pocket and withdrew his wallet.
"So, what," said Ulrich, " did'ya come here to mug me?"
Giving no response to Ulrich's question, Yumi examined the contents of his wallet. She then gave Ulrich a knowing glance and said, "Well, I guess you weren't prepared for every eventuality, were you?"
Ulrich then did something he hadn't done in at least a decade. With all he had done in his wild days as a second-division striker, with all he had seen in his four years as a police detective, Ulrich had thought of himself as terminally jaded. He certainly never thought anything would ever be shocking enough to cause him to blush. Yet here he was, his face beet red, as he looked up in embarrassment and wonder at the assailant who had him at her mercy, the first girl he ever loved, maybe the only woman he ever loved.
"Well, uh, I wasn't, uh, expecting…"
"Don't worry, Ulrich," she replied. "I was."
It occurred to him, as she took her knees off his shoulders and lowered herself into his embrace, that ownership of the Xianzho treasure was disputed not only by both Korean governments but also by Japan, which claimed that a Japanese dignitary had purchased the item before the invasion of Korea. It further occurred to him that the last time he had heard of Yumi, she was working with a section of the Japanese Foreign Ministry that did things that needed to be done but did not need to be spoken about. It was entirely possible for her to have stolen the artifact. He should look into it…
Yumi kissed his cheek and rubbed her nose against his. "Penny for your thoughts," she whispered.
"They're not worth it," replied Ulrich. Those were thoughts for tomorrow. Yumi was with him now, and that was all that mattered to him.