Unleashing Valor
By: Tellemicus Sundance
Wavering Loyalties?
Clouds had begun appearing in dusk approached on silent wings. Propelled an eerie wind, the growing cloud cover brought a cold chill down the backs of many. Starting as a small sprinkle, it quickly became a freezing fall shower.
Odd failed to notice the threatening conditions and now was running back to Kadic in the mud and rain. He would've gotten there sooner if he didn't have to stop at a dumpster to lighten his load of prizes.
William and Yumi had just arrived at her house when the downpour finally fell. But she didn't really take notice. In her head was the scene of her trying to talk to Ulrich not so long ago. She just couldn't get one quote from her mind. 'Because…you have changed… for the best.'
Just what the heck did that mean? It had almost sounded like he said that he'd not changed since he'd disappeared while the rest of the world did. Along that line of thought, she grew angry. Of course she'd changed, everyone did, including him. So where did he get the godforsaken right to judge her? This seemed to be a brand of arrogance he was exhibiting; it was astounding.
"Yumi?" William's voice roused her from her contemplations. Looking up at him without really seeing him, she muttered a muffled 'what' before trying to return to her thoughts.
"Did you have fun today?" he asked, catching her glazed over eyes.
"Uh-huh," she mumbled.
He sighed quietly to himself. Something really big must've been on her mind if she was this deep in thought. He had growing pit of fear he knew what it was that was bringing it about. Ulrich.
"You don't have to lie to me," he said quietly, yet surprisingly forceful that it snapped Yumi from her thoughts. "You've been absentminded for a while now. I don't know…but I don't think you really saw me today."
Well, Yumi was certainly staring at him now; in disbelief. Had she been so preoccupied by Ulrich that she'd completely ignored William while in the middle of their most anticipated date yet? The cold truth was simple and painful. Yes, she had.
Nodding to himself, William sighed again. He was fighting a losing battle. He could see that. He'd known it would probably get to be like this when Ulrich returned. But it was still painful to be proven right.
"Bye, Yumi," he said quietly before walking back out into the rain.
Aelita and Jeremy were stranded in the factory. Jeremy was once again buried in the hardware of the super computer. Aelita sat in his chair in front of the monitor and was idly scanning for any disturbances. So far there were none, thankfully.
With a small smile, Aelita opened up the character profiles of herself and the others. She looked over them with a critical eye. No new alterations to their codes, no detected viruses, everything was good here.
Gazing over Odd's character, she spotted something that Jeremy had missed or neglected to upgrade. He could've increased the number of Laser Arrows that Odd could shoot to twice the current number. Why hadn't he done that? Oh well, she was quick to fix the problem.
Glancing over at Ulrich's character, she was more than a little surprised. His character hadn't been altered in the least since the last time he'd been in Lyoko! Bringing up the basic code for him, Aelita began modifying it to her heart's content.
Increased speed was the first that she added. She enhanced his Triplicate clones to be able to take greater damage. She contemplated giving him a secondary katana, but decided against it. After all, he did just fine with the one he had. Then she upgraded his clothing very slightly. It went from being a simple uniform to having light chest, shoulder, forearm, and shin guards.
She was lucky that she decided to end the update program when she did. For immediately after she had finished downloading to file into the supercomputer's memory, an alarm blared to life.
Xana had awoken.
(A/N) Whoa. How's this? To be honest, I don't think that this is really up to speed on what it could be. I suppose that it's my fault. I've been unable to write this nearly as much as I'd thought that I could and so I think I'm slipping on their personalities. Dang it!
On a different note, check this!
Chapter 20 for Unleashing Valor, we are only now arriving to the crisis of the story; where everything starts to go wrong. Currently we are at 32,676 words, counting all author notes, disclaimers, and titles. While in The Weak Link, we are at the first battle phase of Ulrich versus the copies alone and he's trapped. Up to that point in the story, there are (I don't know the exact number, but a lot less) words. Whoa, huh?
Yeah, this story is definitely longer than its predecessor.