Code: Apocalypse Chapter 9- Team Lyoko vs. Team XANA
July 13, 13:00

"What in Lyoko?" Jeremie yelled in a panic, swerving the van wildly in response.
"It's some sort pink haired freak!" Francis shouted back as he stuck his head partly out the window at the van's roof, earning scowls and a 'humph' from the two pink-heads in the van. "…I didn't mean you guys!" he muttered apologetically to both of them.
"Que ja-" Antea began, obviously angered.
"Shhh!" the child insisted.
"Don't shoot her!" Jeremie shouted to Francis, who was half on the roof, and half in the van.
"I didn't claim 'shotgun' this time to do nothing. This XANA person of yours has given me a lot of trouble- and I hate trouble." Francis shouted back.

With that, he clumsily climbed out of the van's open windows, and readily faced his opponent. Gripping the muzzle of the auto-shotgun he borrowed from William, he struggled to hold onto the roof, while Aelita had claws that easily pierced through the metal to maintain a firm grip on the moving vehicle.

"… What a dumb, stupid, idiot." He heard Jeremie mutter.
"Come here, beastie- I'll show you who is top dog around here." Francis taunted, curling the fingers of an outstretched hand in a 'come on' gesture.

Aelita growled and leapt with a screech, but Francis easily stopped her attack and smacked her away by hitting the butt of the gun against her. Half-blinded, stumbling, and yowling in pain, she managed to cling onto the van with great difficulty and regain her balance. Francis merely smirked and leveled the gun again, aiming straight for her heart. The gun went off, and Aelita pressed close to the van to avoid the fatal spray of bullets from the shotgun. The bullets whizzed over her head, and thus provoked her into attacking in a blind rage.

"Whoa!" Francis shouted as he avoided a deadly swipe of Aelita's lengthened claws. "Psyche!' he shouted, rebounding and slamming the gun into her stomach.

Her breath was forced out of her lungs, and she stumbled backwards, dangerously close to the edge of the van. A hand moved its way to the belt around her waist and fingers curled around a small, sharp metal object. A quick flick of her wrist made the small dagger fly through the air towards Francis, who had to use the gun as a baseball bat and slap the deadly projectile away. He did not see the fist coming, and earned himself an uppercut from his opponent that caught him in the jaw, sending him flying backwards.

The gun flew out of his hands and skittered on the roof. Francis landed near the windshield, and he desperately clung on for his life. The van sped on at 125 Kilometers per Hour, and the ground below them flew past. The vegetation that they drove past was nothing more than green blurs to their eyes. He reached for the automatic shotgun, but the gun had begun to slide away from him in accordance to the laws of motion. He groaned, and watched as it slid off of the roof, and hung by its shoulder strap on the black hook-like things that protruded from the exterior of the van's surface. He sighed in relief at the sight of his gun saved by the van's exterior features and was too distracted to pay attention to his surroundings.

"Francis, watch out!" Ulrich yelled from an open window, jolting him out of his train of thought, and Francis rolled away in time to have claws scratching against the roof of the wan- leaving several deep gouges in the metal- where his head previously was.
"Get off of my property!" Francis yelled as he crouched into a springing position and tackled her.

Caught off guard, Aelita was thrown off of the van, and sent tumbling into the jungle vegetation. Her body slammed into the rocky ground and was sent rolling out of the sight of the Lyoko Warriors until her body hit a large rock and skidded on the ground. Unable to move most of her body for the moment, she only released a howl of anger and slammed a fist on the ground.

Meanwhile, Francis had accidentally gone too far in his tackle and was clinging onto the edge of the van for dear life. He groaned as finger after finger gave way, and would have fallen to his possible death, had the van's side door not opened and several arms roughly grabbed his body and dragged him inside. Panting in exhaustion, he looked up, and into the eyes of his rescuers, who sighed in response to his brash actions.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" Ulrich chided, obviously not pleased that Francis was heavier than he appeared to be.
"Uh…Trespassers will be shot? Err… survivors will be shot again?" Francis grinned sheepishly. "Look, I did not kill her, alright, so stop with the looks."
"Well, at least we won't have to deal with her for a while… I can only guess at the other surprises XANA has in store for us…"
"Speaking of which… look up ahead!" William shouted.

Tires squealing, the van screeched to a stop suddenly, flinging the screaming and unbuckled passengers against the back of the two front seats. Odd made an angry noise that was muffled from the mass of bodies pressing against him from the van's sudden stop. Jeremie wordlessly pointed at the direction of the windshield, mouth agape and sapphire eyes widened in surprise. They righted themselves in time to see a group of large, white buildings that were clustered together in an opening in the woods. They towered above the trees, and though the buildings themselves had deteriorated in their condition considerably, the buildings radiated a sense of power and order among the chaos and the disorderly wilderness of the forest.

There were red and black forms moving back and forth, back and forth in front of the buildings. Upon a closer look, the Lyoko Warriors were astounded and horrified to see that the forms were themselves- or at least the darker, cloned versions of themselves bred only to kill humanity. The hybrids did not yet detect the van with any of their senses- Jeremie had stopped it as soon as he had noticed the building and the hybrids guarding its well kept secrets.

"They look like… us…" William observed as he looked at the hybrid clone of himself uneasily. "Well, except that they look more evil and deadly."
"Shhh!" Jeremie warned, keeping a wary eye on them.

The hybrids, however, did not pick up on the conversation, mutely walking around the perimeter of the building. The van was well hidden in the dark of the forest due to its black coloring. Jeremie shut off the van, whose engine began to idle, and opened the driver's side door slowly, being careful not to make any sudden noises or movement that might attract the attention of the hybrid clones. Opening the side door of the van, the other members of the group filed out one by one, and remained in the darkness for a period of time, watching, waiting, and scrutinizing the hybrids as they trudged around.

"I say they have to go. I am sure that we want the least amount of interference on our mission" William whispered as he was passing around the weapons he had purchased to the unarmed adults of the group.

Francis gave a sly grin and unhooked the gun from where it was held on the exterior of the van, and fished around the van for ammunition. Fishing out a box of shotgun shells, he reloaded the shotgun to its full holding capacity and stored the remaining ammunition in a leather pouch he had on his belt. Waldo held the UZI up warily, unsure of how to even work the sub-machine gun without causing some sort of friendly fire. Antea strapped the Hunting Rifle to her back and threw him a set of dual pistols at him to use instead. Jeremie's unskilled hands clutched his laser rifle nervously, pointing the rifle in the opposite direction of the clones.

"You idiot!" William angrily hissed to Jeremie. "You're gonna kill us all with the way you're holding that thing. Let me have that-" William made a grab for Jeremie's rifle, and a fight ensued over the said weapon. Somehow during the fight, the rifle was turned towards the clones. Jeremie, noticing this, yelled, his eyes wide in terror.

"William, no!" Jeremie made a desperate snatch for the weapon, but was cut short by the ringing blast of his rifle.

A blue laser shot out of the barrel, and it sped towards the direction of the hybrids. The group stared in mute fascination, their eyes tracking the laser's path as it cut through an arm of one of the Ulrich clones. The hybrid shrieked in pain, as liquid spurted out of its damaged appendage. However, it was not blood that flowed from the wound and collected onto the ground below- it was a substance as black as the night and almost tar-like in appearance. The other hybrids patrolling around the area snapped their heads up in attention, following the trajectory of the laser rifle's path and locating its source to the group of dumbstruck humans hiding under the shade of a bunch of trees. They shrieked upon sighting the humans, and immediately rushed towards them, including the now-injured Ulrich clone.

"Who's the idiot, now?" Jeremie spat bitterly as he positioned his rifle in the direction facing the oncoming horde.
"Einstein… how long… or how durable is this thing?" Odd said, pointing to the purple bracelet on his wrist.
"It should last until you lose all your life points, to which you would be immediately materialized onto Earth. It does not really matter how far away you are from the supercomputer when you are wearing your bracelets… I upgraded the supercomputer to have an improved range…" Jeremie explained nervously.
"Well, then, let's put it to the test. Flèches Laser!" Odd shouted, immediately scoring a hit on a William clone. "Hah ha! This is fun! Hey, can we make this into a contest?"
"Stop fooling around, Odd! We need all hands on deck here." Ulrich muttered, slashing at one of his clones with his sword, but finding his hits blocked by a twisted version of his saber that the clone was holding in its hand.

Ulrich parried the clone's slashes, slashing with his blade and avoiding the slashes of his counterpart. He soon found himself dueling two of his clones, and then three. Though a bit rusty on his fighting skills on sword-fighting, he was able to hold off their attacks for a while. The sound of gunfire and yells echoed distantly around him, but he kept his mind off of them, choosing instead to focus on his three opponents, all of them willing to fight and defeat the enemy with equal fervor. Knowing he was fighting a losing battle, he pushed them back so that they staggered two meters away from him, and shouted the first word that came into his mind.

"Triplicate!" He yelled, and two copies blasted out of him to either side of him, blades drawn. "Supersprint!" He and his copies rushed to engage their opponents- one on one.

Meanwhile, Yumi was a bit unsettled about fighting. Though she normally had no qualms about fighting XANA and beating him and his minions time after time, she knew there was something different about the opponents they were fighting this time- and this thought stopped her from pulling out all the stops and slaying them like a gung-ho type of warrior would. She noticed that they acted too human to be purely made of the stuff XANA created them from- these things were not pure polymorphic specters. They had emotions- basic human ones, but emotions nonetheless- like anger, pain, and the desire and determination to kill no matter what the cost was. They were fierce, and rightly feared.

With a slight hesitation, she threw a fan, and winced as the clones cried in pain upon the impact of the sharp metal on their skin. Black substance dripped from their wounded bodies, and they hissed in anger before rushing. A mere flick of the wrist, a toss of another fan, and their lifeless bodies lay on their floor, wounds oozing with the black substance. Yumi bit back a cry of horror as she caught her retuning fans. She had realized that she had committed murder- what small percentage of human there were in the clones, they were still human nonetheless. However, the screech of an oncoming enemy caught her attention, and she forced her thoughts away from her.

"I'm getting too old for this." Waldo said as he took down a Yumi clone. "Let's hope there's no Aelita clones besides the one helping us- I simply cannot bring myself to shoot at my daughter- no matter if it is a clone or not."

Odd was shooting Laser Arrows left and right, taking down multiple clones, and groaned when he finally heard the clicking sounds of an empty weapon. Groaning, he hid behind a tree as metal fans whizzed over his hair- the fans nicking some of it off as they passed by. William tossed him a pistol that he had just finished reloading, and Odd expertly caught it in his hand and started to fire at the clones, using the tree as a cover. He heard something bang behind him and a small gust of wind pass over his head, and he, startled, whirled around into a sitting position and dropped the pistol on the ground. He turned around just in time for him to come face to face with a clone of himself leveling its Laser arrow shooting glove to his forehead. Odd's hand scrambled for the pistol, but Odd suddenly found that he couldn't reach it anymore- the clone had kicked it away. Just before the clone could fire, a loud bang sounded out, and the Odd clone collapsed into nothing more than a large puddle of a black substance. Behind Odd, Ulrich stood proudly, holding one of Waldo's guns, the barrel still smoking slightly.

"What did you do that for? I totally had him!" Odd protested, turning around to face him. "… besides, why did you shoot it in the- I mean my face?"
"One, because you were about to have your butt handed to you. Two, because it's amusing to pick on you and get you so worked up about something. Three, it's because I still have not forgiven you for telling everyone about the incident in the pool."
"Oh, yeah…" Odd scratched the back of his head.
"No time, we have to retreat. There's too many of them."

Ulrich roughly picked Odd up to his feet and snatched the fallen pistol from the ground, tossing it to Odd again. Odd fumbled the pistol a little before he was able to maintain a grip on it, and the two stole away into the woods, followed by the other members of the group. The children were thrust into the middle of the semi-circle the group had made for protection. The adults fired at the pursuing clones and, finding a small cave half-buried by the dead leaves accumulated over the years, ducked inside and moved to the farthest recesses of the cave to stay hidden from the clones' sight.

Footsteps fell around them, and the group fell silent, not daring to even breathe, for fear that somehow, their enemies might pick those sounds up, and trace the location to the cave that the group currently inhabited. A jumble of angry snarls and voices speaking in crude, short sentences echoed around in the forest, eventually fading away into silence as the clones moved on in search for the foes they had been fighting just moments ago. The group breathed a sigh of relief as the last of the clones moved away from their area. Francis in particular gave a loud sigh, and pulled something out of his pocket- a bundle wrapped in brown paper.

"Francis isn't that what you picked up along the ride here?" Jeremie whispered.
"Yeah, it is. I got it from an old friend of mine."
"What is it?"
"It's something that will go boom and literally blow the roof off of this XANA's base of operations."
"Wait, what?"
"It's a bomb, smart one. You know, a bunch of explosives packed into a container to be later detonated?"
"I know what a bomb is." Jeremie snapped back, obviously annoyed.
"He calls himself… well…"
"That's not important."
"Hey!" Francis interjected, angered at not being able to finish his sentence. "I'll have you know that-"
"Shh!" Yumi hissed, freezing in position as footsteps padded by almost silently.

The group held their breath again, and waited until the footsteps padded away. They waited for several minutes in case the clones decided to check around the area they were hiding in before they poked their heads out and looked around.

"Looks clear…" said Jeremie as he cleared the low cave.
"I say we should have put on a camouflage disguise over our regular clothing." Ulrich muttered under his breath.
"I second that."
"Just roll around in the mud and leaves here."
"No, Ulrich. That won't help. Just… follow my lead."

Using the cover of the trees and their surroundings, Jeremie made his way over the aging buildings. Silently sneaking to a back door, they hesitated in going into the building- before them lay weight sensors lying on the ground around the entranceway, along with other protective measures. Groaning, they backtracked and moved away from the door, wary of accidentally setting it off and alarming XANA to its unwanted guests. Odd found a small window a little ways away from the doorway, and a few old metal 55-gallon barrels that could be used as leverage to get to that point. Stabilizing his weight on the barrels and peering through a small, dusty window and deeming it safe, Odd made hand gestures towards the other members of the group to alert them to the possibility of entering through the said window.

William, whose father was an expert on security and bomb mechanics, shooed Odd away from the barrels before balancing himself on it, and checked around the window pane for any pressure sensors. Grinning after a moment's inspection, he gave the thumbs-up sign, and started to press his palm against the center of the pane of glass. Scowling when the window refused to give way, he applied more and more pressure until he heard the wood around it start cracking. Several hard shoves later, and the window pane gave way, the wood splintered into pieces and clattered almost silently onto the floor. The glass however, was an exception- William had pushed too hard, and made the glass push out of the pane and smash onto the floor below with a loud, tinkling sound.

"Oops." William apologetically said; slightly sweat dropping when he turned around to see the group glaring at him.
"Just shut up and get inside before XANA's clones get here."

With that, the group pushed him through the window, and he landed, his boots crunching the class into smaller fragments. One by one, they entered, keeping guard and suspiciously looking at all corners of the room with their weapons drawn. The last one to go through the window waved his weapon slowly, scanning the wooded area before he joined the rest of the group. Sighing and relaxing the grip on his weapon, Jeremie let his arm drop and took a good look of the room they were in. It was room that resembled a modern mad scientist's lab from a horror movie.

Various beakers and flasks were scattered around the room on metal tables, choked with dust from years of not being used. Outdated computers on the same table lay silent, the blank screens facing them like eyes- making the Lyoko Warriors feel like they were being constantly watched by their enemy. On the other side of the room, where it appeared as if it was used more recently, newer computers were active, their command panels opened with their symbols and codes scrolling around their screen in green, against a completely black background.

"Kind of makes you think of the matrix, huh, Jeremie?" Odd asked, staring at the codes and wondering what they meant.
"This is neither the time, nor the place, Odd." Jeremie replied, checking the ammunition gauge.
"I'm happy that I have a larger ammunition storage for my laser rifle."
"Well, what about me? I'm out of laser arrows and I only have to rely on a pistol. Can't you program me some more Laser Arrows?"
"This is not Lyoko, Odd." Jeremie countered as he loaded a full clip. "I cannot program you a new batch of Laser Arrows any time you wish."
"Here you go." William tossed Odd an empty UZI, and Odd loaded ammunition into the gun. "This should last you… let's hope that you don't have that much of an itchy trigger finger, otherwise you're gonna waste the whole ammo cache within a few seconds."
"I promise nothing." Odd gave a sly grin.
"Mother of Mercy…"

Clone Aelita cautiously pressed her hand against the touch-panel and stifled a cry of happiness when it responded by glowing green and allowed the door to slide open for them. Two by two, they exited the room, cautiously checking around them for any sign of potential trouble for them. Nodding curtly to each other, they walked- backs against the wall with their heads turned slightly to the intersection of corridors. The halls were deathly silent, save for the sounds of their feet lightly hitting the ground, the clinking sounds of their guns on their shoulder straps, and ammunition lightly hitting each other in their pockets.

A loud clunk behind them unnerved them, however, and they looked around when cautiously like trapped animals, their heads whipping around in their perseverance to locate and identify who or what made the sound. The source remained hidden, however, though the sounds were getting louder and louder, coming closer and closer to their location. Beads of sweat formed on their foreheads and cascaded down their faces.

They held their breath- they dared not breathe as panic seized their minds and bodies. Their heads whipped around to face a corridor leading off into the dark. They silently gasped as the heavy footsteps stopped, and a pair of bright red eyes glowed maliciously in the dark. With frightened cries, silence and secrecy were forgotten as the group thundered down the corridor. The scarlet eyes narrowed before their owner gave pursuit. Light glinted off of its blue-tinted metal armor, and as the group looked behind them, their eyes widened when they saw a menacing robot chasing after them with an almost inhuman speed.

"You didn't tell me about these things!" Jeremie cried to Clone Aelita, struggling to catch his breath.
"I didn't know!" Clone Aelita easily picked Jeremie up and ran without any hesitation in her running.

TSSEWW!

The robot had lifted one of its arms in their direction and had fired a blast of energy at their retreating backs. It hit the William directly in the back, causing him to stumble and attempt to run awkwardly.

"Mother of Mercy- it hurts!"
"Hold on, I got you!"

With that, Ulrich put on of Williams arms on his shoulder, assisting in William's stabilization. With Odd's help, William was able to run at almost his normal speed. Waldo whipped around, running backwards, and pulled out his UZI. Shifting his body to miss another blast of energy that came from the robot in its attempts to stop them, Waldo fired a round from his weapons, emptying the ammunition in his weapon in a matter of a few seconds by keeping his finger firmly placed on the UZI's trigger.

"I need a reload!"

The UZI was tossed towards his wife, who caught it with a little difficulty, and tossed him hers, so he could continue to fire. With hands shaking, she made the slow reload of Waldo's weapon. Waldo continued to fire in short bursts, dismayed when the robot showed no signs of slowing down, even with the large amount of damage it had sustained from his attacks. Francis was busy running and fumbling through his pockets for ammunition to attempt to make his attack on the robot.

"Daddy!" Antea yelled, slowing down from the toll running took on her small body.
"Grab on!" Jeremie extended his hand. Their hands met, and Jeremie's hand curled around hers to pull her up.
"Yumi, take care of Akihito!" Ulrich shouted. "William, can you run with only Odd's help?"
"I think I can manage…" William replied weakly.

Yumi whirled around and threw both of her fans with a warrior's cry. The fans whizzed through the air and made contact with the robot's front armor, leaving two small scratches on its armor. The robot did not seem bothered at all- in fact, it seemed more determined now to put down the nuisances. With a dismayed cry, she caught both of her fans and picked Akihito up as she whirled around again to dodge another blast. Ulrich broke away from supporting William, securing Waldo on his back before continuing on. From his mouth escaped a surprised cry when he saw another robot patrolling the halls in front of them.

"WHOA!"

The group stumbled as they attempted to dodge the other robot. With a mechanical cry, it started to chase the group, hissing angrily with loud clicking noises when it was pushed aside by its damaged companion.

"Oh man, now there are two of them." Odd groaned.
"I think we can lose them if… *huff* we can… *huff* hide in a *huff* secure room *huff* *huff* … man, you humans are heavy!"
"Tell me about it…" Odd muttered.
"Sorry…" Jeremie replied apologetically.
"… and how do we do that?" William replied, attempting to shift more of his weight off of Odd and onto his legs instead.
"Simple- when we turn a corner, I *huff* will press my hand against a panel and *pant* we will use it to escape these jerks…"
"Let's deux it!"

Clone Aelita nodded, and abruptly changed direction into a corner. Slamming her hand onto the panel, a green light moved up and down, scanning her handprint before flashing green and allowing the metal door to slide open for the group. Skidding and almost sliding, they made their way to Clone Aelita's location and in through the door. It worked- the robots were thrown off- thanks to the speed they were going- they were unable to stop their momentum efficiently.

"Go! Get in here!" she yelled, waving an impatient hand to signal the adults to go this way.

Shoving the last of them in roughly, she watched with growing apprehension as the two robots made their way towards their location again, after going in the wrong direction for several seconds.

'Smash the panel…' the voice said.
"Huh?" Clone Aelita said out loud.
'Smash the panel…'
"If you say so…" Clone Aelita replied uncertainly.

Her left hand closed into a fist, and smashed into the green-lit hand-scanning panel, sending sparks and broken shards of glass everywhere. Red lights around the door flashed, and an alarm sounded. The door began to close, and Clone Aelita leapt in without fanfare, landing in a heap. Loud clangs echoed from behind the door- the robots obviously were unable to stop themselves from colliding with the metal door. Panting, she sighed with relief and shakily made her way up. The group was still looking at the door at a safe distance of at least 3 meters away, which now had two dents in it, and wondering how long it would take before their hiding place was breached by XANA's minions.

"Where are we…?" Jeremie asked, stunned at the electronics around them.
"The supercomputer room…" Clone Aelita responded, also in awe. "Let's deux this?" she asked Odd, turning to him with one eyebrow raised.
"It's a pun, okay. There were two of them, we're in France, and it's a play on the words 'let's do-'"
"Alright, enough, before you ruin the pun." Ulrich muttered.
"Too late!" Odd gave a wide grin.

Ulrich rolled his eyes, and turned around, eyes widening when he came face to face with XANA-Aelita, the human incarnation of XANA not too far from her.

"You didn't possibly think that you were going to get rid of me that easily." She gave a wide grin and pushed off of the wall she was leaning on, approaching them menacingly.
"Oh, crap…" was all Odd could say.

They had walked straight into the lion's den.