Do or Die, part 2

Karen

I growled at Xana. I knew that my energy stunt would only take out a chunk of his life points at best, so I had to save it.

Xana, on the other hand, had no such inhibitors, and fired a blast of shadows from his mouth at me!

I took off straight up. One advantage I had over him: I could fly, but he was too big to fly in the Forest Sector, for all that his wings were of the right proportions to his body. I just kept diving and swooping, scratching him whenever and wherever I could. He reacted stronger whenever I hit his wings, so I did that mostly. I would throw fireballs, but they didn't do much. My ice balls did more damage, and hindered his movements.

After about five minutes, one of his wings caught me full on in the stomach. I flew back and crashed into a tree, then fell and landed on a branch.

Jeremie's voice came from above. "Karen! You only have fifty life points left! With his strength, you can't let him hit you again!"

I growled as I struggled up to my feet on the branch. Well, now I had no other option. I formed one of my normal ice balls in my right hand, set my left hand on top of it, and pulled up, pushing some more power into it. As I expected, the ball got bigger. When it got about the size of my head, I stopped, took flight again, and took the ice ball in my feet. While I was flying, chased by Xana's shadow blast, I did the same thing on my left hand with my fireball. I grabbed a different branch with my tail, swung upside-down while I grabbed my ice ball from my feet, and using my momentum I spiraled back onto the branch and shoved my two balls together. My focus, the thing I wanted this ball to do, was obvious: destroy Xana, stop his attack, and make sure that he could never return in any shape or form. This was taking all the energy I had. I wasn't sure I could fly again…but fly I must, to slam this thing where it needed to go.

Xana roared. This time, I actually heard words in it: "You are defeated, Karen!"

I leaped from my branch, roaring back, "I'm taking you with me, Xana!"

His next energy blast hit me, but my claws shoved the energy ball squarely on his glowing red eye.

And I remembered nothing more.

William

I fell from the scanner and looked at my hands in disbelief. Was I really free? I ran up to the lab and asked, "What happened?"

Jeremie answered. "Karen made sure that Xana couldn't create any more monsters, and she tied him to a corporal envelope, so he can't attack as a specter."

I tried to match this with his tone. "Um…this is good, right?"

Aelita answered that one. "It would be, but the corporal envelope she chose to bind him to, was a dragon. The dragons of her imagination are fully capable of fighting and killing."

I watched, worried, as the scale for Xana-dragon's life points scrolled downwards, slowly but evenly. Every now and again, we'd hear a roar of anger.

Then, when Xana was down about half, suddenly Karen's life points dropped and I heard a squawk of pain and anger.

Jeremie yelled into his speaker, "Karen! You have only fifty life points left! With his strength, you can't let him hit you again!"

I tensed. This wasn't good. I got really tense when a bunch of alarms started popping up on Jeremie's screen.

Jeremie said, sounding frantic, "Karen's doing it again! She's making that energy surge that freed William!"

"You mean that glowing yellow ball?" I asked.

"Yes. That attack is actually very unstable. Only one alarm came up for your rescue, though. This one is much bigger!"

Xana roared again, and this time I could make out words: "You are defeated, Karen!"

Karen answered with a roar of her own, but I still heard words from it: "I'm taking you with me, Xana!"

Just a moment later, two roars of pain came to our ears. And one was definitely Karen's. All at once, all the alarms disappeared, and so did the image of Xana. Karen's picture lost all its color at the same time, though. I ran down to the scanner room again, vaguely hearing Jeremie answer a phone call.

There was Karen, laying on the floor right outside the scanner. She was wearing a bikini for some reason. I picked her up and carried her to the elevator. As I was going up, I noticed some scaled gloves on her hands, exactly the same color as her hair.

I came into the lab, and Odd immediately said, "So she's human again?"

"Huh?"

Aelita filled me in. "The virus that Xana gave her through you was slowly turning her into a dragon. She had gone to Lyoko as a full dragon."

I looked at her again. Had she really gone through all that? Now she felt cold. Really cold. And she hadn't tried to move since before I got there.

Aelita touched Karen's chest with a worried face.

I asked, "Is she…dead?"