Things are really kicking up into high gear, huh? We're finally back to Morgan's Point of View. Enjoy, my friends!
T'was curiosity, killed the cat. Or human, in this case.
Oh yes, through all of this, I was watching. I saw Taelia working on the Skidbladnir. I saw her succumb to paranoia. I saw her kill Sissi. I didn't plan for that, but it was certainly fun to watch. Taelia was fun to watch. In some of my research, I had come across the Colosseum battles of Rome. People would fight wild beasts for amusement. The humans could never stand up to the competition, and so died. Taelia was that wild beast, and she was very entertaining.
I watched them track me down. And now they had the means to come find me and fight me in my home turf. Meanwhile, I was working, too.
I watched the readout of a screen in front of a huge orb of blue light. This was Xana, or rather, what was left of him. The multiagent had destroyed him, that was true. However, there were little bits and pieces of him still left floating around. I spent the last two weeks gathering them all and stitching them back together. Every night that wasn't otherwise occupied, I would go out on the network and gather pieces. I tried to revive him using the return to the past as a defibrillator, giving him a massive amount of energy at once. It didn't work.
Something was missing, and I had a feeling that whatever it was I could find by searching Taelia's memories. She helped create Xana, after all. To Hell with Franz and to Hell with Taelia.
The readout finally came to an end. All it said was "Error." Another failed attempt to resurrect my father. Another day alone. Well, not quite alone. I had with me each kind of monster Xana created. The ones that only appeared in the digital sea were in the lake by the Tower. Kanky was, of course, there. He was currently perched on my head. He liked to feel taller than he was. He liked standing on my head.
I wasn't about to give up on reviving my father, though. I still had a few tricks up my sleeve. The main one being to take Taelia's memories about Xana's design and fill in the blanks myself. Even though I spent my entire life with him, I didn't know what his programming looked like. He never allowed me to, and I never had any reason to push for it. Sure, I was curious, but he wanted to keep that privacy. He had seen my programming, of course. He needed to tweak it every so often to make sure I was the best I could be. I had a general idea of what my programming looked like, and what was in it, but I never had the need to take an in depth look.
So let the Lyoko Warriors come, and let Taelia come. I wanted to test my skills.
After all, battle was in my coding. I trained for battle ever since I was created. I trained to battle these specific people. Plus, now there was an unexpected variable. I had no idea what Taelia's sprite looked like, her power, or even her weapon. She was a complete unknown, and that was exciting. Although...I had the sneaking suspicion her weapon would be a gun, or duel pistols. It just seemed to make sense.
It would be a while before they showed up. NegaCarthage was pretty far away from Lyoko in terms of distance on the network. They had to actually get to Lyoko, first. Right now, they were dealing with Sissi Delmas' corpse. Honestly, I had some time to kill. It would be fun to watch them struggle. I tapped into the security cameras around the factory and Kadic. I could see and hear anything they could. While I was watching, I rounded up the monsters to put them someplace safe. They were the main monsters of each kind, from which all others would be copied and pasted. I didn't really feel like losing them and having to program them all over again. The Lyoko Warriors would not touch them. I would fight them myself.
Taelia looked tense, but only if you looked very closely. She seemed to be good at keeping her cool. Except clearly she wasn't. So she went ballistic when she thought her life was in danger, but when someone actually died she was cold? Interesting.
She knelt down near the body and took out the bullet. She took out a handkerchief in her pocket and wiped off the bullet, then took gauze and wrapped her arm so no more blood got on the floor. The bullet wound was in the chest. Wonderful.
Then the elevator started to move upstairs. Ulrich was there, sent to check on Taelia. Jeremie sent him. He was about to see dead Sissi. This was going to be fun.
Taelia froze. What, did she not know what to do in such a situation? Surely she had been in this situation before. Surely she had killed before. Her reaction to a corpse, to a bullet wound. It was not the reaction of someone who made their first kill. Easy, hide the body. There was somewhere perfect to hide it in...if was right in front of her. She didn't do anything, though. She just let the door open. She stared at the floor. Ulrich ran over to Sissi. He stared at her for a while, and checked her pulse. I could tell from the look on his face there was none.
"Taelia..." Ulrich said. His voice was like a low growl. He ran at her for an attack, but Taelia pinned him to the ground with seemingly no effort on her part. She wasn't lying about her training. I listened to all of her stories that she told the Lyoko Warriors. She told them her backstory. She told them her skills. She put in so much effort to get them to trust her. And now she killed a classmate. I chuckled a little.
"Why did you do it?! Why did you KILL HER?!" Ulrich was infuriated. Taelia's eyes widened, as if she just realized she had taken him down. Taelia backed off. Ulrich got up and dusted himself off.
"I'm a monster..." Taelia muttered.
Wait a second...that gave me an idea! I had to get Taelia to Lyoko.
"I have to fix this..." Taelia was still muttering.
"Get out of here! You're dangerous! Leave us alone!" Ulrich had clearly had enough of her antics. "I don't care if Morgan won't let you leave or how much you can help! I don't care what excuse you have! I don't care how much you want to protect us or how much you care about Aelita! If you really want to protect her, then leave! You can't stay here!" He was blinded with rage. He swung at her, and she just took it. It was a solid hit to the stomach. She lurched and doubled over. "We all think that! I'm just the only one with the guts to say something!"
Taelia just crossed her arms and glanced from him to the computer screen to the ladder. She started up the delayed virtualization process and then grabbed the corpse and headed down the ladder to the scanner room. She was coming for me. That was easier than expected!
Ulrich went to stop her, but it was too late to stop her. By the time he reacted to her dropping the body down the ladder and climbing down herself, they were each in a scanner. Sissi was finally going to Lyoko, like she was supposed to when the Lyoko Warriors first formed, but she was going as a dead body. The irony was delicious.
This was exciting. I would get to see both Sissi's Lyoko form and Taelia's. They landed on Lyoko. Taelia looked like something between Tron and Iron Man attire with silver and black metallic panel and bright blue lights. Her hair was long and black. Sissi...just looked like Sissi on Earth. There was no subconscious to project an avatar onto her body. Of course she didn't have a Lyoko form.
And then Taelia threw the corpse into the Digital Sea. Yes, that was what I was thinking. That was the most complete way to get rid of a body. As long as they cleaned up the blood, there was no way to find any evidence of murder. Not unless you knew about the Digital Sea. Even then, there was no way to prove anything. Clever girl.
Taelia started to run. It was most likely she was running to the edge of the sector in order to go to Carthage. She was in the Mountain Sector, now. How was she going to enter the code to get the transporter to show up. I watched as she got to the edge of the sector, stopped, and looked at her wrist like there was a watch there. A holographic screen popped up. It looked like the one in the Towers. She typed Scipio onto that screen. The Supercomputer actually responded! What? Could she...could she operate the Supercomputer from the inside?!
Didn't that seem a bit overpowered? Though I guessed it made sense for her to have a power like that. She helped create the Supercomputer. She probably tested things on Lyoko as both the tester and the test subject. After all, it didn't seem like a very useful combat ability. She would have to divert her attention to the keyboard in order to make anything happen. It seemed like it was just a remote keyboard for the Supercomputer. Did that even count as a power, then? Did she have another?
Well, I'd find out soon enough. Even checking on that was probably cheating. Oh well. I was excited to fight her. I was excited to fight in general. Combat training was always the best part of the day, the most interesting and fun.
I swiped my hand over the ground and a panel opened up.
"Alright guys, everybody in." I said, and all the monsters, one by one, walked into the room I made for them. It was inaccessible unless you broke the floor. My monsters would be safe. I gave each of them a little pat as they passed me. Kanky was last. I picked him up off my head and gently put him down. He scampered into the room and I sealed it.
Then I sat and I waited. I wondered what the Lyoko Warriors were up to. I looked through the Factory cameras.
Oh. The Lyoko Warriors were coming after me. All of them. Including William. How were they going to get here? Taelia took the Skid. I looked into Carthage. Oh. She didn't make one complete Skid, she made multiple NavSkids. That was probably how she got it done so quickly.
And now I just needed to wait. One could only travel so fast through the digital sea. It didn't bother me to just sit and watch. I was patient. I could wait.
Everyone's going after Morgan. That oughta be a good fight. So good I'm dedicating a whole chapter to it, the next chapter. Hope you guys have an awesome day!
Time elapsed since last chapter: like an hour?
Time elapsed since ch1: 2 weeks