Chapter 5: Challenge
As the girl fell, she saw all the icy plates in the room begin to recede and by the time she landed (with catlike grace, naturally), they were gone entirely.
"Hey, you guys had fifteen seconds to spare," Odd's voice came over. "Um, I think there's a new passage opening on the left. Do you see it?"
The wall on one side split, revealing a path to the outside of the Core. Without exchanging any words, the two Warriors raced along the corridor until they came to the elevator. It was a tricky jump, but William timed it right and they made it.
"I'm surprised XANA hasn't sent any of his minions our way. Do you think he's planning something?" the cheetah-girl wondered, her tail twitching nervously as they rode the elevator.
"I wouldn't be surprised. It's rare when he doesn't know what we're up to. That's one thing I definitely remember from my slavery and I doubt anything has changed much since then."
"What should we do?"
Just then the elevator came to a jerky stop and a new passage opened before them. "Just keep a lookout. I'll do what I can to protect you, but I really hope Hopper's program works. From what I remember, Aelita is the only one with any real access to the files in XANA's memory."
"But we don't need that, do we? All we're after is general access to upload the file."
"You never know what you'll need," he threw over his shoulder.
They crossed the bridge, coming out into the Celestial Dome, and Janika raised her hand to touch the interface. It appeared and after a moment the confusing array of diagrams, graphs, and charts started to make sense. She adjusted them, combining several screens that were monitoring something she didn't need to waste time worrying about, and found the mainframe system that connected to all the Towers on Lyoko. She searched for Jeremy's program and then entered her name. It became visible and she quickly inserted it into the main window—but then the digital screen froze.
"Oh no…" She scanned the uploading bar and her heart dropped into her stomach. "This can't be happening… There's not enough power to activate it."
"How much do you need?"
"At least fifty gigajoules. Too much to add manually even if we had someplace to get it." She kicked at nothing and then her catlike ears twitched. "And now XANA is sending his welcoming committee our way."
Three Mantas came flying around the side of the dome, firing as soon as they were in sight of their prey. With hardly any place to take cover, Janika wasn't able to dodge fast enough and a shot hit her in the side. William grabbed her before she could fall off the edge of their platform and then barely managed to avoid another laser as the creatures kept coming.
"Can you defend me while I try to think of something?"
He nodded and used his sword to deflect any shots that got too close. The teenage girl shut her eyes tight and concentrated. Less than thirty seconds later she had an idea. It was risky, but it was the best one she could come up with on such short notice.
"William, I really hope you don't hate me for this, but right now it's all-or-nothing. I've got to get XANA to throw everything he has at us."
"Do you even know what that means?" he asked with a fair amount of distress.
"I have a plan!"
She turned back to the interface and opened a new window, encrypting it so that XANA wouldn't be able to find out what she was sending to Odd. She tried to make it as simple as possible for him by typing out all the data and asking him to copy&paste it into the proper program.
All she could do was thank her lucky stars that Jeremy had sent her those modules to finish. Even better was the fact that she'd sweated over it so long that the formula had practically been burned into her mind.
As soon as Odd confirmed the data was entered, she looked down and saw one of her weapons change. It glowed slightly. At least it seemed to be working properly so far. Jeremy never did check it for bugs due to his already-overwhelming workload, so if there were any problems with it…
"Okay Odd, you did great, but now I need you to find the small black window in the upper left-hand corner. Type 'overboard-dash-William', push Enter. Then 'overwing-dash-Janika' and push Enter again. Got that?"
"Pretty sure. Do I need to capitalize anything?"
"The first letters in our names."
"Is that 'Janika' with a J or a G?"
"Odd!"
"Alright, alright! I was just kidding, you know. They should be there in a second."
None too soon, either. The Overboard was better for William since it was easier to use his sword without also using his hands to steer, then he took off after the flying Mantas. While he hunted each one down and took it out, Janika turned back to the digital console and opened communications directly with their enemy.
"XANA," she said with as close to a cocky grin as she could get, "not even your worst monster can stop us and you know it. In a matter of minutes you'll be history. Give me your best shot!"
There was no response for a moment and she wondered if he even bothered to acknowledge her dare. Then suddenly there was a fold in the fabric of the outer layer of Sector 5. It widened and widened to admit the head of a giant creature with a black exoskeleton and lava-like skin boiling underneath.
William gaped. "You baited him into sending the Kolossus!"
Even Janika was rendered speechless as the giant let out a deep roar like an earthquake. Aelita had told her XANA's new monster was a real killer—but she hadn't been descriptive enough.
"William, do you think you can distract it while I go for its target?"
"It has two, Janika," he called as he swooped closer on the Overboard. "We can't see its left arm yet, but that's where it is. Do you want me to attack its face?"
"Sure, but just make sure I do the killing blow, alright? It's not for my self-esteem! It's the only way to accomplish what we came here to do."
The boy cracked a half-smile her way before zooming off to harry the monster. She followed a second after, just pausing long enough to make sure she had the special shuriken in hand, then she and her Overwing headed for their new enemy.
The wall continued to split open, this time to allow the Kolossus's arm through. Its size and weight seemed to slow it down, but it swung the sword in an unalterable path directly toward the main dome. There was a thick crunching sound and Janika looked back to see a slice had been chopped right out of Carthage. It looked like XANA knew he couldn't go after them directly, but if he destroyed the dome all their plans would be in shambles anyway.
Two more Mantas came sailing toward William, distracting him from the major problem emerging out of the wall. But he couldn't let himself get hit from behind simply because they were less of a threat than the Kolossus.
Its chest was nearly all inside now, and its large blade-arm slowly started pulling free of the wide gash in Sector 5's dome. They had to stop it before it took out the area where the interface was!
Janika veered toward William's attackers and made sure her special shuriken was stashed safely away (she would have been more impressed that her old straps were replaced by a magnetized belt if there had been time to admire the feature in less pressing circumstances). Wielding one of her ordinary weapons, she began tailing one that was firing at her companion.
The Manta arced upward, trying to get behind her, but Janika swerved aside and rose to meet it. Before its laser was fully-charged she threw her shuriken directly at its nose—and the effect it produced could be easily compared to a plugged rifle being fired: the manta exploded in all directions.
Meanwhile William had managed to rid himself of his own tagalong and refocused his efforts on the Kolossus, driving his broadsword directly into the middle of its face. There was a rumbling growl from the monster, then it slowed to a complete stop. Janika took the opportunity to leap onto its arm. She carefully made her way to the blade and saw three smaller targets beside the large one.
She attacked the little ones with her glowing shuriken, then stared at the final target for a split second (relishing the victory) before stabbing her weapon directly into its center. The monster groaned another roar before its body began to go limp, the lava fading slowly to black, and it started slipping back through the wall where it came from. Her shuriken's glow turned red as she raced to the tip of the Kolossus's arm, only to find she couldn't see the Overwing.
"Janika!" William called as he came flying up toward her.
She looked back and saw the wall looming too close, so she took a running leap off the edge, meeting the other Lyoko Warrior in midair. He held her by the middle and headed back toward the interface.
"Did you get what you needed?"
"More than we'll ever use. XANA used power from many different supercomputers to make that thing, so I just absorbed it all into my shuriken. I'm pretty sure it's the answer to our problem. Hurry up!"
He pulled to a halt beside the interface and she jumped off, raising the weapon until it touched the frozen screen. Instantly it glowed blue as her energy-thievery module funneled hundreds of gigajoules directly into the stalled program. Instantly the multi-agent system activated.
Glowing sparks swept out of Lyoko's Core, multiplying and seeking out all XANA's creatures and supercomputers.
"Hey, Janika?" Odd's voice came over their link. "A new box just popped up. All these little glowing things are turning black, or whatever. Is that a good or bad thing?"
William grinned at her. "His control over the supercomputers in the world is lost. Definitely a good thing."
%*%
The Scyphozoa still chasing students at the school spasmed, its tentacles lashing in every direction. A screech issued from its body as it twisted and writhed, then a plume of dark mist rose from it, contorting into something like a face crying out in pain…then it drifted away.
XANA was finally gone for good.
Personally I think using XANA's own monster against him was an awesome idea, and the kind of thing I don't think they did very often in the series…if at all. Why is it sometimes I can come up with better plots than them?
Sorry I've been out of the loop for so long. I would have updated this a while back, but I was feeling so terrible at the end of the year and then just simply dead tired most of this year that I just never seemed to get around to working on any of my fics. I guess that's what happens when you get pregnant. My husband is so ecstatic!