Tumbling

Ulrich sat with his back to a tree watching the clouds roll by. There was nothing better to do. His friends were seemingly ignoring him and his grades continued to keep slipping down into the ground and into oblivion. Not good. Only ones that ever talked to him were Kiwi and Sissi. And Kiwi didn't count since Kiwi was a dog and couldn't talk back.

"Hey Ulrich!" Sissi called to him, waving her hand as she neared.

"I'm not in the mood to deal with you, Sissi," he said, his eyes not leaving the sky.

"I just came to tell you that Jeremie is looking for you. I don't know what he wanted, but he looked all worried about something," she told him with a 'hmph'.

Ulrich nodded and got up. Ulrich wasn't sure why Jeremie was looking for him. It's not like the four of them had taken much interest in him the past few days. When Ulrich opened the door to Jeremie's room all his friend's eyes were on him, as if expecting him to jump at them at any moment, but he didn't. He closed the door and leaned against the wall.

"Now that we're all here I wanted to say that scanners are bugged up. After the issue with materializing Ulrich I realized that there might be something wrong with the scanners, so I've been running checks and scans. Every person that went to Lyoko that day may have something wrong with them, so I need to run a scan on each of you. It won't take long or anything, I just need to make sure that everything is alright with all of you," Jeremie stated.

"Is that all? You could have texted that or called. You asked Sissi to get me here just to tell us that? I was actually starting to think that you were taking an interest in talking to me again since you've been basically ignoring me since Xana's last attack," Ulrich stated, letting off some of his pent up anger.

"Ulrich, we thought you just wanted some time to yourself. After everything that happened that day we wanted to give you a few days reprieve. You haven't been doing as well and everyone thought you could use a break. Also, those things work both ways. We didn't try to find you, but you didn't try to find us, either. Nor did you try to engage in conversation at lunch," Aelita told him gently.

She's always been the nice one. This is just her watered down way of saying 'we've forgotten all about you'.

"Sure, blame me. I've always been the one out in the group anyway," he stated, leaving the room and going to his and Odd's dorm with Odd trailing close behind.

"You know that's not true, Ulrich. You're our friend and we'd never purposely leave you out…" Odd said, picking up Kiwi and sitting on his bed when Ulrich sat at the desk.

"Just leave me alone, okay?"

Odd sighed and complied, but seconds later his phone went off with Jeremie on the other end. "Slow down, Einstein. What happened? …. I'll see if I can get Ulrich to come along and we'll meet you at the Factory."

Ulrich turned around and gave Odd a questioning look.

"A specter just kidnapped Aelita. Burst in through the window and just took her, jumping back out and heading to the Factory. Are you coming?" Odd asked, setting Kiwi down and getting up to go.

He sighed and nodded, following Odd as quickly as he could manage out of the school and toward the factory.

Ulrich slammed his fist against the pavement of the road and watched as the specter took Aelita into the Factory. He'd failed to get her back, but luckily they'd had a plan. Since Ulrich and Yumi were the two strongest fighters they were stationed at the opening of the Factory and Yumi was a bit farther in, Jeremie had blocked out the bridge, so that if Ulrich lost then Yumi'd be back-up. He just hoped that Yumi didn't lose.

It wasn't but a few minutes later that Yumi and Aelita walked up to where Ulrich was resting.

"You lost against that thing?" Yumi asked, astonishment coating her voice.

"What do you mean? How'd you win so quickly?" Ulrich asked, staring at her in disbelief.

"It was easy to beat. I don't understand why I had to take it down. You beat me last time we fought."
Ulrich got off the ground and swayed a little bit. This was ridiculous. How could he have lost if Yumi had won? It was strange to say the least.

"We should probably go tell Jeremie, so that we can go and deactivated whatever tower was activated," Aelita said, giving Ulrich an apologetic smile.

When they got down to the computer lab Jeremie showed them the screen. No activated tower.

"Seems that as soon as Yumi beat the specter the tower deactivated…" Aelita said, looking at the code on the screen.

They don't need you anymore, Ulrich….

Maybe the voice was right…. They didn't need his help anymore. He was more of a hindrance that anything else….

As they all left the Factory Ulrich began to think over everything. He wasn't a Lyoko Warrior anymore. He was a wannabe hero and that was all. His time in the limelight was up.

"Ulrich, I can't believe you got your butt whooped by that specter!" Odd teased, laughing and then smiling at Yumi.

"Yeah, yeah…" he grumbled, speeding up so as to get away from the others and hurry to the school. Before heading to the school, though, he took a detour and headed into the forest, his favorite place to think.

It was true. He was below average. He was nothing special. He couldn't beat a simple specter and he couldn't even beat Odd in a race. His grades were falling to below Odd level and his Lyoko performance was suffering. What's more even his friends were starting to abandon him. Maybe quitting the Lyoko Warriors was a good idea…. Maybe he was meant to do something else….

Join me and you can be great….

A/N: This is annoying. -_-"""" I'm documenting my stay here at my sister's for you. =3 I have to share a room with my mom and she went to bed a half hour ago, so I've been having to type slowly so that I don't keep her up/wake her up. Hopefully we find somewhere soon. D=

~MoonlitxAngel