Chapter 2: Ambush
No one said anything as they made their way through the sewers. It wasn't until they were all packed in the elevator that Odd finally spoke up. "Y'know, we didn't have to do that."
Everyone turned to look at him.
"What makes you think it was a simple decision?" Jeremy demanded.
Yumi added, "Both Janika and William could be problems for us. Who knows if she can fight anymore and he doesn't hardly remember anything. They'd just burden us."
Ulrich gave a confused grunt. "Wait, did it ever occur to anyone that we might be doing it for the wrong reason?"
"Ulrich, it's true," Jeremy said. "Logically, inviting them here could be suicide."
"Okay, okay, I get that and I would have agreed with you if Janika hadn't shown up. Maybe it's because I don't feel the same way about her that I do about William, but it just seems like we went out of our way to make sure they knew we didn't want them at the factory."
Aelita was silent the whole time and didn't say a word one way or the other. Jeremy cleared his throat and muttered that they should save worrying about the others for later. By then the door to the lab opened and they rushed across to the computer. The pink-haired girl stared over her friend's shoulder as he opened up the program.
"Looks like it really is your father, Aelita. He's sending a signal to us from the Ice Sector. Are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," she said a little breathlessly.
They hurried downstairs, but even as they stood waiting to step into the scanners no words passed between them. Yumi cast a glare at Ulrich and Odd, but Odd was the only one who returned the look. The other boy wouldn't even meet her eyes.
%*%
Less than a minute later they were standing on a frozen landscape. They started toward the coordinates Jeremy had given, but as he was monitoring their progress a new window appeared on the screen.
"Guys, Hopper just sent me a message. He had to move because that place wasn't secure enough. He's now about eighty meters southeast toward a large glacier. It's not far but I can get you the vehicles if you need them."
"It's alright, Jeremy," Aelita said before the others could give their opinions. She seemed so eager and yet afraid.
The others didn't say anything but they turned away from the iceberg and its waterfall, taking off at a run for a nearby mountain. When the Warriors were nearly there, the computer's operator suddenly focused on a blip the screen seemed to be experiencing. There was a cave where Hopper was hiding but the angle prevented his instruments from seeing clearly inside.
His friends were nearly there by the time he managed to adjust the computer's rotation enough to view it well enough. The signals that popped up were such a surprise that for an instant he could hardly say anything more than, "Stop! Stop!"
But the monsters were already spilling out of the entrance. Every one of them was a Scyphozoa, and as the Warriors began to use their assorted weapons more started virtualizing out of the air around them.
Aelita skidded to a stop and gaped as the monsters came floating forward. "But how? There's only one Scyphozoa!"
"Princess," Odd warned as he raised his glove and took aim, "I would suggest you simply deal with the problem instead of analyzing it right now."
Yumi's fans went spinning in two directions, severing at least four of the jellyfish's arms but not dispatching any. As she was leaping up to catch her first fan, one monster grabbed her from behind. The other whirling disc came back, slicing into the face of the one holding her. It almost staggered back and then exploded, but before she dropped to the icy ground another Scyphozoa nabbed her.
Odd's arrows were having just about the same effect. One monster died and then two more took its place. Ulrich's speed and twin sabers kept him from the noose until he was surrounded by more than he could kill off, then their tentacles were wrapped around him before he knew it.
Aelita threw out her energy fields as fast as she could, but the creatures never seemed to get any fewer. One wrapped its coils around her from the side and she glanced at the others, hoping one of them would attack her captor—but all three of her friends were ensnared and unable to look away from the creatures now combing through their minds…
%*%
Jeremy wasn't sure what to do on his end. His fingers flew over the keyboard while he desperately searched for some way to combat all the Scyphozoas' effects. How had XANA been able to get so many? Maybe it had something to do with the other supercomputers he controlled…
The computer genius was so busy that he didn't notice the warning that a tower on Lyoko itself had been activated. A minute later the sound of the elevator moving upward made him pause. In a flash he knew it had to be a surprise of XANA's and he opened the multi-agent system's program.
"Sorry, Franz Hopper," he said quickly as the program underwent a sudden encryption, "but I'm not so sure I can deal with this on my own. It looks like you might have to wait a while longer."
He hit the recording program and spoke as quickly as he could. Maybe by some miracle Janika and William would come…because the possibility that he would get away scott free was slim at this point. He'd taken too long here and the others were definitely not coming to his aid this time.
The door slid open and a floating creature entered the room, tentacles waving menacingly. Jeremy threw himself out of his chair and ran to the far side where the other exit was. However, the Scyphozoa was much quicker. He had hardly climbed the first few rungs of the ladder when he was yanked off and—
%*%
The two missing Lyoko Warriors had finished their orange sodas and were talking about less life-threatening topics as they crossed campus when a startled cry interrupted their conversation. They looked up at the same time and both went rigid.
William gripped Janika's arm and started dragging her in the opposite direction from the jellyfish-monster that had come out from behind the dorm building. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be anywhere worth running.
"That's the football field!" she yelled. She risked a glance back and gasped. "Omigosh! That thing is not slow at all! It's going to catch us before we make it far!"
With that in mind, they made a sharp turn and cut straight toward the French literacy building. Janika's short-sleeve jacket flapped wildly, its little buttons slapping her arms as she ran, but the adrenaline rush hardly seemed to allow her to notice such minor pinpricks.
They burst through the door and slammed it shut behind them, breathing hard and looking around to see if anyone was in sight. A couple students down the hallway looked their direction but didn't seem too startled. Most of them didn't even bother to glance over as they continued their conversations.
Janika peeked out the door's little window. "William, it's gone! I know it was right on our tails when we were running, but now it's—"
She hardly had time to say that much when there was the sound of breaking glass. All the oblivious students suddenly grew alarmed and started screaming when tentacles came creeping into the hall from the library.
William yanked open the door to head back outside but then shut it again, his face white. "There's another Scyphozoa about ten meters away!"
"So XANA sent at least two of them after us," she called as they ran along with the other students. She pulled to a sudden halt and pointed towards the stairwell. "That way!"
They barreled up, hardly pausing for breath until they made it to the second floor. There at the head of the first set of stairs they took great gulps of air, hoping the creature had lost them during the turmoil.
A strange warbling noise echoed from downstairs and they froze. The sound grew louder and the end of a tentacle crept around the corner of the stairs below them. William took off, taking the steps two at a time to the third floor, and even then he didn't stop until he had made it all the way to the roof.
Janika was slower, but she was still there beside him in less than a minute. She shut the door and looked around for something to jam it with, but the building's roof was bare.
"This is no place to hide for long. I don't know if that thing can open doors, but this only locks from the inside. We're sitting ducks out here unless—William?"
For the first time she realized how pale he was and that he seemed to be so tense that he was shuddering. His eyes were wide and he had backed to the farthest corner of the roof, as far as he could get from the door.
"Hey, look at me." She waited until he did. "What's wrong? I've never seen one of those Skippos or whatever. What kind of monster is it that it scares you so much?"
"It can make you do anything—things you would never do! It takes hold of your mind and makes you think things are different. You believe it and you never question what it tells you." He said each sentence in a short gasp and at the end he closed his eyes, putting one hand to his head. "It went through my memories until it knew all my weaknesses… It broke my mind to pieces so that I could never put anything together long enough to think what I wanted… And XANA used everything against my friends!"
Janika finally remembered what the others had told her about the Scyphozoa. It hadn't seemed that dangerous to her, especially since it had no real weapons…but William seemed to think it was the most horrible thing he'd ever seen. She looked out over the edge of the building for the second one, but didn't see it. Most likely it was inside looking for them too.
"William, those things float, right?"
"Yeah."
"How high?"
"Just above the ground, I think. Maybe a little higher."
She cast one more look over the side and bit her lip. The ground was really far away and she wasn't sure if… "I really hope you're right because that's what I'll be counting on if those things manage to find us up he—"
She might not have even bothered to say anything. At that moment there was a jiggling noise and the door was pushed open. They stared at the monster and it stared back.
It always confused me the way XANA would only ever use one Zoa even though he had practically unlimited resources once he escaped Lyoko. And it's also funny the way even though its target is right smack-dab in the middle of its oversized head, none of the gang is ever able to kill it. Weird.