Chapter 31: They're Back!
The group of four near the tree look towards the tree scanners to see Ulrich, Odd, Aelita, Shikamaru, and Sasuke standing in front of them.
"Hey! You guys are back!" Yumi said gladly.
"What took you all so long?" Sakura asked. "It's been an entire day!"
"Please forgive us." Aelita said. "Jeremie got a bit shocked with Sasuke's power and wanted to test how strong he was."
"Sasuke being Sasuke, he beat every obstacle that Jeremie threw at him." Shikamaru said.
"How did you get so strong?!" Odd asked with great awe towards Sasuke. "That looked like nothing to you! Even the Scyphozoa seemed easy for you! And those decoys had the power of X.A.N.A.'s actual monsters!"
"Looks like Odd found yet another person who's better than him." Ulrich said with a smirk.
"Ulrich! This is different!"
"How different? You find a new idol about every other week. If it's not another idol, it's Samantha." The Lyoko Warriors laughed. It was true. Odd would either fangirl about a new idol of his or Samantha.
"Who's Samantha?" Naruto asked.
"This girl in our world that Odd likes. To be honest, she's probably no different than the million other girls Odd liked." Yumi said. There was even more laughing.
"Gu-uys! She is different! Not like the so-said million other girls!" Odd said, blushing.
"Have you ever asked yourself how, Odd?" Aelita said, knowing Odd's answer already.
"Well… no… but still!" Odd said.
"What point do you have without any evidence?" Aelita said. She knew that Odd wouldn't have any comeback to her cunning remark. "Oh, who am I fooling? It's not like you even bother to listen in class anyway. You'd rather spend your time drawing her!"
Now everyone was dying of laughter.
"It's not like you listen in class!" Odd said.
"The reason I don't listen in class is because my dad taught me everything I needed to know. The reason you don't listen in class is because you'd rather focus on your status with your million girlfriends. Odd the dense bachelor. I can see it now."
"My dad did this, my dad did that! Stop it with that, why don't you?" Odd was mad.
"It's not like she's bragging. It's the truth. Her father pretty much taught her everything she needed to know, Odd." Yumi said. "You can't be mad at her for that. You might as well be mad at the guy who even got us to know each other then."
"WELL THEN, I AM!" Odd yelled.
"Dude, chill!" Naruto said.
"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CHILL WHEN ALL YOU GUYS CAN DO IS LAUGH AND MAKE FUN OF ME?!"
"Odd, I'm sorry, it's just that I thought we could make fun of each other… since you always seem to do that, I thought it'd be fine."
"Odd, seriously, if you always make fun of me, you shouldn't be mad at us." Ulrich said.
"True… but still… I don't tease you about Yumi all the time!" Odd said.
"Odd, if there's anything that you tease me and Ulrich about, it's shipping us." Yumi said. "There's no way you can deny that."
"T-true… but… never mind then I guess…"
"Well then, what did you guys have to face on Lyoko?" Sakura asked.
"Let's see… we had a few megatanks, a swarm of hornets, and a group of Bloks. That's it." Odd said.
"You make it sound easy for them. After your scrambling, around with laser arrows, you shouldn't really take that tone." Sasuke said. "Ulrich and I were the ones who took down most of the swarm."
"Why do you all have to be so much better than me?" Odd asked. Sasuke had told the truth. He had only defeated a Hornet and a Megatank.
"You need more practice, Odd. You're infallible when dodging with your overboard, but you're not really good at anything else." Aelita said. "But your dodging skills did come in use when I didn't have my energy fields. You get some glory there."
"But it's not like we're gonna get someone who doesn't have any attacks anymore!" Odd said. He knew that he wouldn't have to help the "Elemental ninja" (He was going to call them that until he could find a better name…), and Aelita wasn't defenseless anymore, so he was of no use now.
"Odd, if you want to get better like us, you're gonna have to train." Ulrich said.
"Yeah, that's what I did to get better… that's also how I master my Shadow Clones!" Naruto said as he demonstrated by creating enough clones to surround the group.
"Woah… that's cool dude!" Odd said, fascinated by the scene. "It's like that one movie… Ultima 24!" (A/N: I looked it up, I wanted to include Ultima in it, so I looked for a number that wouldn't make it seem like I was stealing a game. Also, it turns out that Ultima is its own game series…)
"Ultima 24? That's such an old series. I thought you always looked out for new releases." Ulrich said. He had watched the Ultima movies when he was a child.
"I got into some old movies recently after I found the disc set at the game store. I decided to watch it because I couldn't find the new Omega game..."
"What's a moo-vie?" Sakura asked.
"Oh, right. I forgot that you guys didn't have modern tech here." Odd said. "A movie is basically a story put into video. Video is the thing you get when you record something with a camera. Movies are mainly for entertainment, but there's different kinds. It can go from scary ones to silly kid's ones."
"Oh… okay…" Sakura said, alienated by all this "modern technology" stuff.
"You'll understand when you get to our world. Jeremie and I both know a lot about tech, but you'll need to see it to understand it."
"Whelp… What now?" Naruto asked after a few moments of silence.
"To be honest, I'd like to go back onto Lyoko and fight some of X.A.N.A.'s actual monsters." Sakura said.
"You're going to have to wait until X.A.N.A. rears its ugly head again… I'd never thought I'd say this, but a X.A.N.A. attack might be able to benefit us if calming your urge to fight it is a good thing." Aelita said.
"But a X.A.N.A. attack is probably gonna cause more bad than good, so…." Naruto said. After Hinata had been hurt so much, the last thing he wanted was another X.A.N.A. attack causing more harm to others.
"Wait… doesn't Jeremie have those monster prototypes he made to help us train in case something happened?" Yumi asked. "He talked about at lunch a few weeks after we shut off the supercomputer, saying that if X.A.N.A. was reincarnated we would have a way to polish our skills…"
"Oh yeah!" Aelita said. "That means that we can go back to Lyoko and you can fight some monsters! They're not X.A.N.A.'s, but they look the same and they have the same amount of strength!"
"Aelita, Jeremie never told us that… how do you know so much?" Ulrich asked.
"Me and Jeremie kind of snuck back to the factory to see if X.A.N.A. left anything dangerous behind, and he said I should try it out… even if there wasn't any activity now, there could've been later, and he wanted to make sure that the monsters were on par with X.A.N.A.'s, so if we ever needed it, it would be the equivalent of fighting a load of X.A.N.A.'s creatures." Aelita said with a guilty look on her face.
"When did you guys go? You didn't miss any classes after we shut the supercomputer down, did you?" Odd asked.
"We went the night after we told you."
"Ooooo, sounds like it was a pretty good evening, if you know what I mean…" Odd said with a smirk on his face.
Yumi slapped Odd… hard. So hard that he fell, his back on the fresh grass. "You're lucky I only had half a mind to knock you out completely."
Everyone laughed. "Maybe you should've gone all the way." Aelita said.
"Want the honors? He mocked you." Yumi said.
"No, go ahead. You got him first anyway." Aelita said.
Yumi slapped Odd twice as hard as she did before. "OW! Ulrich, help me! Please! You're on good terms with Yumi, right? Help!" Odd pleaded.
"Nah, it's your problem, not mine. I don't wanna get slapped like that, and if you keep up your fangirl acts, I might ask Yumi to slap you again, since I'm on 'such good terms' with her." Ulrich said. To be honest, Odd deserved it.
"Please, Yumi, I get it, I get it!" Odd said in pain.
"Get what? The fact that you deserve a slap?" Yumi asked.
"No! Well, yes, but I get that I'll get a slap whenever I act out of hand!" Odd said, vowing to himself that he would probably never do that again.
"And you better believe it." Yumi said, offering Odd her hand. Odd gladly accepted it, and she helped him up. Odd now had crimson red slap marks on both sides on his face.
"Well… are we all going to Lyoko then?" Aelita asked.
"I guess so…" Ulrich said.
"I'll go tell Kakashi Sensei that we went to Lyoko, just in case he wonders where we are." Sasuke said. "I'll go on Lyoko later."
"Alright then." Aelita said. Just as Sasuke left to the trees, Naruto asked, "Who's going first?"
"I will." Practically everyone said.
"Well, we have a dilemma here, don't we?" Aelita said.
"We should do ladies first… so… Sakura, Yumi, Aelita, and Hinata… and then another person." Ulrich said.
"I'll go." Odd said.
"Alright then. When the scanners open, you guys can go in." Aelita said.
"We know." Naruto said.
Aelita, Hinata, Sakura, Yumi, and Odd went into their scanners. The wooden sliding doors closed. After a few seconds, the scanners opened again. Naruto, Ulrich, Shikamaru, and Sasuke (Sasuke had returned after Kakashi gave them an all clear) stepped into the scanners. Everyone had been sent to Lyoko.
A/N:
And I'm back too.
