10-2: Lovebug
Hmmm…this one really is going faster than I planned. I didn't expect to have this part until like chapter 3 or 4. Maybe this whole story will be shorter. Don't worry. I'll do my best to make it last. Anyway, I had no idea everyone missed me so much. 11 reviews on chapter 1! Yippee!
(((-2-)))
Mekri took over Sissy in a heartbeat, muscling the girl out, into Lyoko and the body of a black Megatank.
For a moment she felt the same, and then human sensations registered. What were these things? The heaviness and pinpricks all over this body? How could her host have survived in such a strange world full of tactility?
After a few moments of adjusting, she sat up straight in the chair, still uneasy and confused. But she recalled her instructions and came to her feet. She must seek the Warriors out.
Mekri left the room garnished with pink and walked awkwardly down the hall. But the door at the end opened abruptly and two humans walked in. She instantly tensed. She could almost feel the echoes of their laughter with her sensitive skin. She edged up against the wall in order to let them pass by when she caught sight of the male human's face.
Suddenly the strange physical things bothering her faded from her mind. She knew him! He was someone she had waited for since before she had become aware of her own existence!
"You!" she cried.
He raised an eyebrow. "Yes, Sissy. This is me, and here is Aelita. She's putting your cousin's stuff in her room, all right?" He spoke as if she was an imbecile, but Mekri hardly noticed.
The girl with short pink hair (it was the same shade as the furnishings in her host body's room) gave the boy a quick grin. "Thanks for helping me. I'll be in Jeremy's room after a while. I want to find—" she glanced uneasily at Mekri, "—Janika's notes for Chemistry. Bye, Ulrich." She opened an unlocked door and disappeared inside the room.
His name was Ulrich! He walked away, not even sparing her another glance. She knew he was the one her Master had sent her to destroy, but he was also hers! She would do anything to be with him.
He went upstairs to a room and she followed, keeping a safe distance away. She knew something of human customs and this place called Kadic Academy from what her Master had programmed into her and quickly wrote a note onto the back of a flyer in the hall. Without anything to write with, she substituted her fingernail, tracing words that appeared at her bidding. She slid it under his door, unsigned.
It was possible he would come, so she returned downstairs to the room she had awakened in to prepare herself for him. The nuisances of so much feeling dissipating into images and thoughts of him, only him!
(V)
Jeremy felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up as he walked along the hall toward his room. He froze, listening intently to determine whether he was just hearing noises from outside or in his head, but suddenly his laptop began beeping, interrupting his concentration.
"What the—?" Rushing into his room, he connected directly to Lyoko on his main computer and located the disturbance. "No way. Two Towers?"
Just then Aelita came in through his open door. "Jeremy, something very strange is going on with Janika. She's—what's that?"
"This just showed up on the scanners from Lyoko."
Hurrying over, she practically shoved her friend out of the way. "This data…Jeremy, this is the Tower X.A.N.A. activated two months ago! It's the one forging the differential link to Earth that allows his Pawns access to people. We have to get to Lyoko and shut it down!"
"What about the other one?" he wondered. "Do you think it could be a Pawn?"
"I'm not sure. We could never locate the Pawns' activated Towers before, so probably not. It might be just a habitual attack. The first is more important now anyway. Let's get the others and go to the factory right away!"
"I'll call them," the blonde computer genius volunteered. Ulrich's phone was off, though, as was Yumi's, and Janika, not having a cell, was unreachable. Odd was the only one to pick up, and he sounded ticked off.
"What is it?" he demanded curtly. "This had better be important."
"Oh, nothing too significant. Just that X.A.N.A. seems to have let his guard slip and revealed the hidden Tower that has been causing all the trouble with his Pawns lately. But if you think it's too dull to be worth your time, I understand."
"Are you serious?"
"No Odd, I'm just saying this to hear myself talk! I can't get hold of Yumi or Ulrich for some reason, and Janika is incommunicado as usual. Man, I hate it when this happens! Look, just find everyone, will you?"
There was no reply on the other end for a few seconds. "I don't know where anyone is, but I'll start looking. Ulrich should be right down the hall from you."
(V)
Yumi heard her cell phone ring, but ignored it when she saw it was Jeremy. For some reason she couldn't tell him. What if another headache came on when she was looking at one of her friends? What if it was worse than before? What if she hit them so hard that they died?
She couldn't bear the idea. It was safest just to stay away from them.
Another headache began to harass her. She sat down and put her head between her knees, keeping her eyes shut tightly. It wouldn't stop, just kept pounding and battering and growing until—
"Yumi, are you okay?"
She barely managed to look away from the speaker, her eyes latching onto the tree limbs above. The headache vanished just as several limbs practically exploded!
The boy standing there threw himself atop her to protect Yumi from the flying debris, receiving a few nasty cuts and splinters for his trouble.
"How the heck did that happen?" he wondered in awe. "You're not hurt, are you?"
"William? What are you doing here?" She stared back down at the woodchips and shredded leaves littered everywhere. Her Telekinesis did that!
"Are you feeling all right? You look pale, not that I blame you after something crazy like this. Do you need to see the nurse?" he seemed sincerely worried.
"Don't touch me. I don't want to hurt you," she whispered.
(V)
Ulrich didn't hear his cell because he had it switched off. The note under his door was really strange. It sounded like it was from Yumi, saying to meet him at the garden shed in fifteen minutes.
Instantly he jumped to the conclusion that she wanted to confess something (not that he had any idea of what it could be, but boys think like boys). He sprinted to the garden shed ten minutes later and carefully eased the door open. Someone was definitely there, way in the back.
"Yumi, I got your note. What's wrong?" he asked closing the door behind him.
The brown-haired boy walked farther into the shed, wondering what she wanted to say. Then she turned slightly.
"Sissy? What are you doing here?"
She was wearing black, which was why he got her mixed up with Yumi, but it was such a skimpy outfit that Ulrich was getting just a little freaked out. She was completely silent. None of that sappy 'Oh Ulricky, don't you like my new clothes?' or anything. She just stared at him…lovingly.
"What are you doing here?" he repeated, a bit more alarmed. He held his ground as she came closer, determined not to show his dislike. "Did you give me that note?"
She eased her hands up onto his jacket. "Do you feel it?"
"What?" the teenager wondered, humoring her slightly to gain a little time.
She pressed up against him, trailing her polished fingernails along his cheek.
"Fire," came her whisper. "Fire deep in here." She laid a hand delicately over her heart and then shifted her hand to his chest. "Do you feel it there the way I do?"
He gulped and moved away, delicately lifting her hands off his clothes and putting them at her sides.
"Sissy, I think you might be a little high or something. Are you sure you don't want to go see the nurse or anything?"
She smiled dreamily at him. "Call me what you will as long as you're mine."
"Excuse me? Um…I'm getting some really weird vibes here, and I need to go see my friends, so if you'll just let me by…"
He slipped past her and made it to the door, but it refused to budge. Ulrich turned back around and saw Sissy leaning against a crate with a placid smile on her face.
"What did you do to the door?"
"The lock is secure. We can be alone here. Don't worry. Your little friends won't bother us. They don't even know you're missing, and now you can't speak with them."
He had pulled out his cell while she talked, but even as he pushed the buttons, they melted! The phone grew hot in his hand and he dropped it, waving his fingers about to cool them off. Looking down at it, Ulrich watched the plastic and metal dissolve on the cement floor of the garden shed. He turned his head slowly to look at the girl behind him.
For the first time since he got there, he noticed that her voice was strange, not her own. The dark-haired boy backed as far away from her as he could. It finally struck him that Sissy wasn't who or what she seemed.
"Who are you?"
"Your shadow," she murmured, standing up straight.
"Your vassal," she began to saunter toward him.
"Your admirer," she was a meter away. Her eyes glowed a soft ruby shade as she halted mere centimeters from him.
"I am Mekri."
She was a Pawn!
Well, just about everyone seems to be looking forward to Narnia, but according to what I've seen on Disney Channel it looks like the movie will be slightly different from the book (did anyone expect less?). I'm not too fond of the girl who plays Lucy, personally, but we'll have to wait and see how she acts this weekend.
New poll: what would you do if your best friend was really an alien?