And now another chapter. Taelia's pov.

After what must have been an hour of sailing through the Digital Sea, I finally arrived at the entrance of Morgan's base. I didn't find any opposition on the way. Jeremie said Xana had monsters specifically for fighting off the Skid. That left a few options. The most likely were that Morgan didn't expect me, that she couldn't, for whatever reason, deploy the monsters, or that she wanted me to come. I had seen something small in my peripheral vision. It was so tiny though...I couldn't really tell what it was, or if it was actually there.

I stopped in front of the entrance. It was locked with a Lyoko symbol, just like Jeremie said it would be. I deployed my digital key. There were improvements I could have made upon Jeremie's design, but with the time and danger given, I didn't have time to be fancy. The old designs stayed.

"Taelia? Are you there?"

I jumped at the sudden noise. It was just Jeremie, though. Just Jeremie...I guess he found me and connected to the intercom.

"Yeah. Don't try to stop me. I have to take her out. I have to take out her base."

"Everyone's behind you for backup. Wait a few minutes and you can all take on the base together."

Th...they were following me? No...why?

"Do you hate me?" I could hear my voice crack a little. "I killed her and dumped the body."

There was dead silence. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. If only the chair could have swallowed me up. Everything hurt. I opened my eyes and looked at my semi-reflection in the window hatch of the Skid. Back stared a broken little girl who was afraid to live...and had been stuck like this for far too long. Back stared my face, frozen in time at the age of 13. My face on Lyoko was a face I had before everything bad happened, before everything went wrong, when I was just having fun with my mentor.

Everything, all the problems happening now, they all traced back to what Franz and I did. All of if was my fault. I couldn't just sit here, not one more minute.

I summoned the input screen on my arm, accessed the virtual key, and started to hack it. I got the lock off after a few minutes.

"Taelia! What are you doing?!"

I ignored Jeremie and went into the Replika. I surfaced. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn't like other sectors, where the Digital Sea was far below floating platforms. I surfaced from the Digital Sea and I was immediately above land. Plus, it looked a lot like Carthage, though maybe the color was darker blue? Otherwise it was very very similar. I wondered if there was a countdown I had to counteract. The third thing I noticed was Morgan standing on an island in this sort of Digital Sea lake I was hovering over. She was right by a Tower, crossing her arms.

I briefly noticed that Morgan looked an awful lot like me. Even her Lyoko outfit was reminiscent of mine...sort of.

I quickly oriented myself toward her and put the thrusters on full power. The Skid jerked to life and rammed right into the Tower. Everything shook a little. Morgan wasn't between the Skid and Tower. I looked behind me. She was standing there. She dodged? She must have. I popped up the hatch of the Skid and climbed out, dusting myself off. The gesture was meaningless, since there was no dust in the virtual world. Still, it felt right. I glared at Morgan.

"So, you've come to do battle? To be honest, I've been waiting for a chance to test your skills." Morgan said.

"How could you tell?" I asked. Morgan smirked.

"You aren't very hard to read, Taelia." She put her arms by her side. "And while I'd love to spar with you, a little, I need to talk to you."

This...was different. She wanted to...talk? What was there to talk about? We were supposed to fight. That would do all the talking for us.

"I don't want to talk." I pulled a small cylinder off of the latch on my back. I held it in front of me and pressed a small button on the side. It extended on either side. It was a staff that matched the color scheme of my outfit: black with silver panels and a cyan lens on one end.

"A Bo Staff. I was wondering what sort of weapon you would wield. Very impressive." She said. False praise to try to get my guard down.

"Here, have a closer look!" I swung the staff over my head, running at her. I was going for a roundhouse, but she grabbed it and flipped me. I landed flat on the ground. It hurt...not as much as it would if I was on Earth, but it hurt all the same.

"Don't you have secret service training? You're rusty." Morgan stood over me, and red electricity crackled in her hands. "I've been watching, you know." She grinned and shot at me. I rolled out of the way and got to my feet. She started shooting bursts of electricity at me in an arc as I ran out of the way. "Every glance into the shadows! Every twitch! Every distressed noise! Every scar!" She punctuated each statement with a burst of electricity.

She was watching...she was everywhere...she saw...my scars...she saw...my entire face twitched and I screamed, swinging my staff again and again. Instinct took over. I didn't know what I was doing anymore. And apparently, neither did Morgan. Next thing I knew, she was on the ground. It was the opposite position as we had been a minute ago. She smiled mockingly at me.

"I know how much of a monster you are."

I took the staff in both hands and swung down on her head. All of this was hear fault! All of this was my fault! She had to die! She blocked it with her arms. I pushed harder. It slowly inched closer to her face, but did not reach.

"And, of course, I saw you murder Sissi. You can't go back after that. That's why you came here in such a hurry."

I pushed harder. She moved slightly to the side and let go, the staff lodged itself into the floor. It was stuck!

"Poor Taelia...the weight of the entire world on your shoulders and no end in sight." She sounded...genuine. There was genuine sympathy in her voice. "So, I have an offer to make you." I sighed. The staff wouldn't come out of the ground and she wouldn't leave me alone until I talked to her.

"What is it, Morgan?" I finally asked.

"Work with me. Get back at the world that took from you. I can take away all of your troubles. You won't have to feel the pain anymore. If you're going to be a monster, be a monster. I can make it all go away."

A chance to escape. I would have been lying if I said I wasn't tempted. I would just be able to turn off my consciousness. No pain. No nothing. I pulled my staff out of the ground and raised it high above my head.

"I'd rather kill myself!" I yelled, and swung. Morgan got up mid swing, but I changed direction and it smacked right into. She went flying into a wall. That was satisfying. She got back up and grinned.

"Well, you had a chance to do this by choice." Morgan made some gesture and the ground disappeared underneath me. My eyes widened. I was falling...falling...and something soft caught me. Wait...wait it was...wrapping around me. I looked down. There were clear tentacles wrapping around me. Oh no! Not this! I wanted no part of this! No sir! No tentacles for this girl! I tried to break free, they were too strong. I twisted around to see where the tentacles were coming from. There was this...brain...squid...jellyfish...thing. My eyes twitched. It was ugly and brightly colored. I saw more tentacles coming at my head. I tried to get away, tried to escape. I couldn't. The tentacles reached my brain. The world blurred and then hyperfocused. I could feel something draining from me...Morgan's face was in front of my own.

"This is your retribution."

BAM! Morgan flew to the side.

"Did somebody call for a rescue team?" I could hear a high, somewhat whiny voice. It was Odd! So they came for me...even after what I did. Ulrich ran up to the monster holding me captive and cut through the tentacles with his katana. They broke easily and I collapsed to the ground. My eyes remained open, but I couldn't move, couldn't speak. My energy was drained away from me...what did she do to me? But wait...I could think my own thoughts. That was better than I was expecting. She could not control me. She would never control me. Everything hurt so much...I closed my eyes.

I could hear...the sound of battle...grunts...shots, things firing through the air...shouts, screams...some one liners. There were definitely some one liners. Lasers fired, electricity crackled. I could hear Morgan say something about turrets? She had turrets? So not only did they have to fight her, but they had to dodge lasers. These kids were something else. Morgan sure knew how to put on a show, huh? Too bad I didn't have the strength to see it.

It felt like 30 minutes before I could pull myself to my feet, again. It was probably more like 3 minutes. I looked around. Everyone was gone except William and Morgan. I hobbled over to a staircase, there was a cluster of screens and a chair. It looked vaguely like the Control room in the factory. If anything was Xana's control base, this was it. He would never admit it, but he always wanted to be Franz so bad. I started to poke around, and found information about the firewalls on this place. Powerful stuff. I sent it to Jeremie.

"Who are you to me?!" William demanded. He had his Zweihander in both hands, over his shoulder, ready to strike. It was impressive he was able to hold that thing, it was so huge compared to his body. I wondered what kind of subconscious thoughts my scanners made that out of. Morgan leaned forward and smiled teasingly.

"You really want to know?"

"Ever since you showed up, I've had nightmares. Worse than before. I feel like I'm gonna explode! Yes. I want to know."

"I'm Morgan Xanthos. I'm Xana's child." She slowly moved into a fighting stance. She looked slightly upset. Was she...bothered, by what he said? She said this last part real slowly, watching the expression on his face as she did. "And I was your lover." She motioned for him to come at her. "En guarde."

William ran at her, sword swinging. Morgan jumped onto the sword and used it as a springboard to do a backflip, kicking William square in the jaw as she did. It didn't knock him down, but it stunned him. As she did the backflip, she caught sight of me, and her face darkened. She crouched on the ground when she landed and launched herself toward William. She charged up red electricity into her pointer and middle finger, which pierced directly into William's chest. He started devirtualizing immediately. Morgan whispered something to him, I couldn't hear it.

"Oh, Taelia." Morgan said, turning to face me. "You know you shouldn't be messing with that."

"Yeah, yeah." I got up. "Now we can have some fun."

"I'd like to see how fast your reflexes are." Morgan said. Then she started going all around really fast. Really with this? Was she actually for real? She wasn't even using the most efficient ways to kill. She was showing off. Was she...trying to impress us? Intimidate us? Or was this just her twisted version of fun?

And then I saw her coming for me out of the corner of my eye, on a backward diagonal to me. I pointed my staff at her, lens first, and shot cyan electricity right at her gut. She devirtualized. Nice! I defeated her! Now I could-

And then I was in the scanner room in a heap. Everything hurt. I dragged myself to the elevator and went up to the control room.

"What got me...?" I groaned.

"The Kankrelat." Jeremie said, then turned around to face me. "Now, about Sissi."

Time elapsed since last chapter: idk, a few hours if that

Time elapsed since ch1: still 2 weeks

Hope you enjoyed, I'd love to hear from you guys! have an awesome day!