9-7: A Pause in Mid-Stride
Once again, I apologize for the lack of writing on my part, but the hairy Writer's Block demons wouldn't let me do anything until I talked with my moose, but he was of no help so I had to upgrade to a Muse. (bats eyes at Dan)
(((-7-)))
Jeremy couldn't breathe for the longest time, but at last his captor released him. He found himself on hands and knees, coughing and sputtering from the water he had tried to breathe. He looked up and saw Krelle, hair swirling, clothes waving, eyes glowing.
"You are fortunate my Master needs you to complete his plan. The Warriors are blind now and you will be useful to him." He could clearly tell that she was eager to squash him, though.
"Jeremy, what's happening? The guys are saying you just vanished or something. Can you hear me?"
Talia! He could still speak with her! "Don't worry," he projected his thoughts to her. "I just can't talk to my friends. Tell me what's going on where you are."
"Oh sure!"
"But…" Krelle turned back to him with an evil glint in her eyes, "my Master did not say I could not harm you."
Water makes up more than seventy percent of the human body. Krelle sensed this and began to leech it off of him like a vampire…
(V)
Dan's hands shook as he put the earphone on. How was he supposed to do this? His features furrowed into lines of worry and fear. He was not overly proficient at computers and this was no Macintosh. There were three different keyboards and screens, and absolutely no directions.
"Okay, what does the hologram say, Dan?" Aelita's voice came through sounding much different on the earphone.
"Uh…there's a really big red thingy with four green triangle-thingies and a yellow thingy on top of it. I think the big red thingy is something bad." At least he hoped so.
Silence was the only thing that came over the connection for about ten seconds. Dan was just beginning to get a bit worried when Odd spoke up saying, "Dan…unless you've been totally out of it for the past five minutes, we have been riding Talia through the mountains before Einstein was abducted."
"Hey, look! This is one of the weirdest games I've ever heard of and I don't know where you guys are or what that place looks like, but I'm doing my best, all right? Now do you want my help or not?"
"We'll accept all the help we can get," Janika's voice came over. "Right, Odd?"
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
Dan ran a hand through his blonde hair and tried to calm down. Beeping suddenly came from the computer, startling him. He leaned forward to look at the hologram. "Uh, there are seven smaller red thingies coming straight toward you from every direction! I'm pretty sure they're the bad guys. This tab says they're all…Krabs?"
(V)
Seven rusty red Krabs closed in, sealing off all exits. Talia, mute through she was, could only be hyping up for a battle. Hoping she could understand him, Ulrich leaped down beside her, sword drawn.
"Aelita, take cover over there behind those boulders. Talia, you see if you can take on those two monsters. I'll deal with the one over there and the others will take care of the rest. Got it?"
Her slight dip and sudden focus on the two Krabs he pointed out satisfied him enough to confirm that she could hear and understand them. Yumi was glad enough to be off her black shell, anyway, and the two feline warriors flipped to the solid ground, faces radiant with excitement.
Talia's lasers blew up part of the land bridge as well as the two closely spaced Krabs. She turned around and decided to help out her friends. It looked like they were having a hard time anyway. She fired up her larger beam and got ready to fire.
Ulrich was having no trouble at all after he used Triplicate. His clones distracted the Krab long enough for him to leap on top and strike the final blow, then after it exploded he joined Yumi as she dodged the lasers of two monsters.
Odd fired his laser arrows at the quick robot he was handling, easily flipping out of the way when it fired angrily at him. Somersaulting off a projecting rock, he did a double back-flip and fired four arrows in quick succession, all striking home and decimating his enemy.
Janika was having a harder time, though. She was shot once in the chest as soon as she zeroed in on it and got thrown to the ground. The Krab surged forward, firing as it came. She barely evaded the lasers as she closed in on it, finally latching onto a leg and holding on for dear life. Confused, the red robot shook its leg in an attempt to dislodge her, but she clung to it stubbornly, inching her way toward the top of its shell.
The dark-haired girl was almost there, a ninja star ready in her hand, when a humongous beam of light flew toward her! Only her catlike instincts saved her from being devirtualized by Talia's laser as she leapt clear of her opponent. The Krab was not so lucky.
She rolled to a stop beside the edge of the land bridge. "What was that all about?" she demanded angrily. The black Krab appeared to shrug (though Janika was never completely sure how she did it). With a grunt she addressed Dan. "Are there any more Krabs?"
"Nope, only you guys and the big red thingy."
"Okay, thanks. Now let's get back on Talia and keep on trucking!" Odd called in a cheerful tone.
(V)
Dan wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was starting to get the hang of this. All he had to do was tell the guys what he saw on the screen and report on their Lifepoints. It wouldn't be so unnerving if all those warning signs and windows would quit popping up begging for him to fix one thing or another.
For some reason this game wasn't so fun anymore (not that it was ever really fun). Maybe it was the screams and cries of his new friends, or maybe the sounds of laser-fire and explosions. Either way, he knew there was something really big going on with these guys and he had to do his best to help out.
Just no fiddling with the keys. Who knows what might happen if he did something like that.
(V)
X.A.N.A.'s thoughts turned toward reality as he realized that the Warriors were not blind on Lyoko. Someone was indeed at the console, and not adept at the job, apparently. But he could influence this human easily, though direct attacks were impossible.
His invisible arm reached out and nudged Dan, forcing his hand. To him, it felt like someone pushed him forward and he put his hand down on the keyboard to avoid crashing into the screens.
A window popped up as he recovered, flashing a red exclamation mark. An image of Aelita's digital body appeared and it began to beep warnings at him. "Well, that's definitely not good," he surmised.
(V)
Aelita was just standing up when suddenly a strange look flashed across her face and she froze. She just stood there, immobile.
"C'mon, Aelita. Quit playing around," Janika chastised.
Yumi looked back. "No, something's wrong with her. Aelita? Can you see us?"
No response.
"Dan," Ulrich said, "is something wrong with Aelita?"
The computer's temporary operator sounded nervous. "I don't know what happened! I was sitting here just looking at the screen and something pushed me! I swear I never would have touched the keyboard otherwise!"
"What is wrong with her?" the samurai warrior asked tersely.
"I don't know. This weird program is running. It says something about an individual shut-down system or whatever. I think I need a password or something to unlock the rest of the program, but I'm pretty sure she's out of commission for now."
"This is crazy!" Yumi cried as she heard him say that. "We've got to get you to un-freeze Aelita otherwise we won't be able to shut down the Tower or fix this mess!"
Janika looked over at her friends, biting her lip. "There might be a way…" Without giving it anymore thought, she raced over to Ulrich and grabbed his sword, shoving it into her own stomach!
Odd grabbed for her, but she vanished before his eyes, leaving only Ulrich's sword behind. "What did she do that for?" he protested.
The scanners opened and Janika gripped the sides with her hands, breathing hard. It felt like she had just rammed a poker into her middle. Maybe next time she'd try something different.
The dark-haired girl got into the elevator and made her way to the lab floor, stumbling out as the doors opened. She saw Dan sitting at the computer, head in his hands. Placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, she turned the chair around and coaxed him to his feet.
"I'll take over from here, Dan," she smiled at him weakly.
He relinquished the seat with a grateful sigh, saying, "It's all yours."
"Let's see how you immobilized Aelita…" Her fingers skimmed over the keys easily. "It's been a while since Jeremy let me touch his precious computer, but I can see what went wrong. Whatever you punched was a direct link to Aelita's cerebral connection from this console. There is one chance in about four million thatyou could have done that on your own, so I suspect someone else is to blame. But you didn't do too badly for your first time."
"First time? You mean there's going to be a second?" Dan looked like he was about to have a heart attack.
"Relax! It was supposed to be a compliment. All I have to do is apply the counter-code—or password, as you put it—and Aelita should be all right. But we've wasted valuable time trying to fix this and that could mean the difference between success and failure here."
Dan rubbed his chin as he watched her handle the controls. "Are you a hacker?"
She smirked at him. "However did you guess?" She was too busy repairing Aelita to notice the Krabs on the hologram until it was too late.
(V)
They were climbing steadily and reached the peak of the next mountain. Ulrich and Odd held onto Aelita, still groggy, to keep her from sliding off Talia's black shell.
Suddenly out of nowhere, a barrage of lasers started pounding the mountainous terrain around them! Talia braced herself and turned toward the collection of boulders parallel to them on another mountain where five new Krabs were stationed.
"Aelita, there's the Tower!" Yumi cried, pointing. The red-rimmed Tower glowed evilly as a beacon for them. "Talia, take us straight there. Those Krabs are too far away for us to retaliate."
Clearly reluctant to pass up the challenge, the black Krab almost sullenly headed toward the activated Tower. She stopped as they reached the path that led to it and lowered herself so that the passengers could get off. Aelita took off immediately, her friends guarding her rear as the Krabs continued to shoot lasers at them.
Talia darted toward them, firing her own damaging lasers as she went. But before she got very far, a lucky shot struck her in the joint of one leg. The enormous black Krab was traveling along the slanted mountain slope and collapsed suddenly as her leg refused to work.
The geisha warrior turned around as she heard a crash from behind. Turning around quickly, she saw Talia tumbling down the mountain toward the mist over the digital sea!
And that's that. You'll just have to wait until next time to find out what happens. Just one last chapter left to go and this episode will finally be over. For another poll: what would you do if someone you didn't know told you that you were a "witch" and that everything you posted online was "freakin" stupid? Or you could tell me what you would do in response to discovering little green aliens eating your homework. Either one or both will do.