To the readers
I appreciate any comments on the story.
Notes
[] are used to indicate stage directions
All dialogue follows a "Speaker: dialogue" format
{} are used for author comments.
Episode 20: Let'5 Pl4y: It'5_a_T0URN4M3NT ͡ (Let's Play: It's a TOURNAMENT ARC!)
[Camera zooms and sweeps across the desert sector. Over dunes, ducking under floating islands, weaving through rocky pillars until it focuses on a field of thin dark, vertical rock plates with a tower in the center. The thin slabs completely surround the tower except for a small strip.
William is hiding behind one of those slabs. Odd is by the tower and scanning around, his arm ready. Two versions of Ulrich are standing on guard.
There's a blur. Odd opens fire. William lands across the path between the stones and takes cover on the other side. The camera focuses on William. He slides behind the stone, his head covered as the lazer arrows go whizzing by.
William dodges from rock to rock. POV of Odd's wrist as he follows the movement between the pieces.
SCHWAWAWA CRRSSH
The sword THUNKS into one clone, shattering it. It's hilt glows orange and flies back. William grabs it and immediately blocks the lazer arrows. William jumps back behind the rocks. As the other Ulrich clone super sprints over to his position, William drops a smoke screen. The clone looks around for him. William materializes from its side and slashes through its ribs.
Odd's arrows pierce the cloud.]
William: 120 - 114 - 108
William: Supersmoke
[From the dirty cloud, Williams darker smoke trail zooms out and up a slanted stone. Odd has just enough time to look up as William drops onto him and brings his blade down.
William sprints over to the tower and puts his hand on the tower.]
William: Deactivated
[Pan to Odd's body and from the camera angle, it looks like the zweihander is jutting out of him.]
Odd: You, got me, why, oh the light. It's so beautiful. URHGHGHGHG. Scene.
[Shift camera to show the old "blade is just to the side" false death.]
[Cut to the computer lab.]
Jeremy: And that's how you do a tower deactivation. What did we do?
Sissi: Uh, you duck, dodge, whip it, weave, and glide.
Jeremy: …Sure. Sort of. Typically, XANA's monsters are much stronger than you and you never know what's around the other corner. Assume it's like an old video game. You take three shots and you'll find yourself back in the scanner. What William is trying to get at is play defensively. Look for an opportunity strike and make sure to not overextend yourself. Otherwise you might William it.
William: Yeah, you called?
Jeremy: Only referencing you.
Sissi: Why am I not virtualized?
Jeremy: Because we want you to see what it's like before you're actually there. That's what today's mission is for.
[Opening Theme plays]
[Cut to an outside scene (2d art style). On top of a wooden platform set on a rocky ground with a mountain breeze running through the air. Snow caps mountains behind them and on the horizon. The sun is cresting the mountaintop in the afternoon light.
Aelita is standing against Ulrich on the padded area of the platform. Yumi's watching with her arms crossed.
Yumi: Again.
Aelita attacks Ulrich with some punches. Keeps on doing jabs. Ulrich just keeps his defensive stance pushing aside her punches. He deliberately backs up, makes Aelita step forward, as he parries her swing.
Ulrich: This is Jurus 1: my left hand on your right arm with right arm free. From here, it's a starting point for other moves. One is to pass your arm to my right so my left is here. It's free to hit you from behind, to hook your arm over and elbow you, shove you over, or to reach down and trip you up for a takedown. Or instead of passing, I can redirect it again [pushes off with left arm and parries then grabs Aelita's left arm with his right leaving his left free.] and go to Jurus 2. From there, you can see I can climb [puts leg on her knee as if to boost himself up] or kick [taps her in the back of the knee], or trip. [step behind her, preventing her foot from moving back]
Aelita: It's an endless branching pathway. From any point in the combination I can choose to deviate and then create a new unique combo from that starting point.
Ulrich: Now you're getting it. But try doing it, not just talking.
[Then Ulrich stays back. Aelita does some swings in the same pattern, the same combination she's been practicing. When Aelita tries it a third time, Ulrich parries her punch, grabs her arm, and pulls her forward, then leg locks her and pushes her over with his elbow.]
Yumi: Stop. Ulrich we're trying to teach her. You don't have to win.
Ulrich: I WAS holding back. If I don't punish her openings, how is she going to learn?
Aelita: When are you going to teach me that one? That thing with your leg.
Ulrich: Single leg takedown?
Aelita: I tried that [does a repetition of jabs, shadow grab, steps down, and twists to pull something] and it didn't work.
Yumi: Well you made it obvious. You're not supposed to do the whole repetition in sparing.
Aelita: Well if I'm not supposed to do what you teach me, how do I fight?
Ulrich: Hey you knew what you were getting into. I'm not the best student, so don't go expecting me to be a great teacher.
Aelita: Can you at least teach me the technique you beat me with. That seems like a way to go about it.
Yumi: We're trying to get you in the "fighting mindset." Knowing the basics and mastering what you can do is more important than adding new techniques.
Ulrich: And techniques aren't that big of a deal.
Aelita: Says the guy who can steal a ninja's sword in his "sword holder thing" and then beat him with it.
Yumi: Yeah, we get it, movies, tv, anime: they all try to paint out these secret techniques or ultimate forms. But honestly those will rarely win a fight.
Ulrich: Yeah, they're more like like [looks to Yumi]
Yumi: Tools in a box?
Ulrich: Yeah, it's useful, but the point isn't the tool. It's the thing that you're trying to fix…um.
Aelita: So it's more about process of thinking horizontally. You learn what the opponent is trying to do and play around the problem by outplaying them.
Ulrich and Yumi: Exactly.
Aelita: And I do that how?
Yumi: Actually you might be better at it than us. We've got to use our weapons (holds up her fans, which she has despite being in her IRL gi uniform) all this time, but for a while you only had creativity. You had to use that and whatever was around you to beat monsters.
Aelita: Which I barely did.
Yumi: Yeah, but when we weren't there, you did.
[Then the world around them shudders, shatters, freezes, and blinks to white before flashing away revealing one of the rooms of Carthage around them. During the flash, they switched back to their 3D avatars.]
Aelita: Hmm, what happened?
Jeremy: Oh hang on, sorry. I'll fix that shortly. Besides the simulation bubble crashing was everything else okay?
Ulrich: Yeah. View was gorgeous. You should really make the trip yourself and see it now.
Jeremy: No, I'll fix it and see it later. Besides this is a good point to break at.
Ulrich: Whatever, let's get going.
[Montage of them going to the garage, getting teleported into the ship, flying out of the Carthage garage, and exiting into the desert sector.]
[William and Odd are doing an overdramatic mock battle, Odd's missing his shots on purpose, William's telegraphing his giant sword swings, Odd is bouncing off the plates to dodge.]
Odd: So why did you volunteer for the tower practice?
William: I just… don't want her to go through what I went through.
Jeremy: Ah guys. Your ride is waiting.
[The skid drifts down. Odd and William don't stop their mock fight.]
[Jeremy sighs and hits a button.]
[William and Odd are teleported into the nav skids.]
Odd: Hey we were in the third act. You've got to have a winner in the third act.
[Queue the usual footage of the skid diving into the digital sea, then a POV of a floodgate with the expanding tines and a cap that slides off. Upon seeing the view of the digital sea Sissi gasps.]
Sissi: It's beautiful. You made this yourself?
Jeremy: No, this is just the internet. We're just able to view it thanks to the supercomputer.
Sissi: Oh.
Jeremy: Yeah, it's better looking than you would think.
Sissi: Any websites worth visiting from this side.
Jeremy: There's a few we stay away from. Mostly we try to make the trip as fast as possible. The virtual sea is a hostile environment. So we can protect ourselves and travel in it, we ride in a submarine.
Sissi: So why leave if it's dangerous?
Jeremy: We're traveling to another virtual world. The reason these attacks are happening is because our enemy we chased out of Lyoko found another supercomputer to house itself it. So we're going to find out how it's here and shut down that computer.
Sissi: Your enemy wouldn't happen to the popstar XANA you kept whispering about?
William: Who told her XANA was a popstar.
Jeremy: In my defense, it was an obvious lie.
Sissi: What makes you think it's here? Can't it just put itself in a flash drive? Or turn off Wi-Fi on the computer?
Jeremy: It's a little more complicated than that. This is just conjecture, but XANA should only be able to survive in a specific container. Fortunately for us, we found if not destroyed all the supercomputers XANA could use before, so there's limited number of places it could hide. Also, once it turns the supercomputer back on and tries something, we know where it is and can shut that computer down.
[They see another world. A beam shoots out from the skid and connects with the cover on the floodgate.]
Jeremy: Okay, I'm going to break the code. This one looks complex. It might be a challenge.
[Hits one key.]
Jeremy: Broke the code.
Odd: Really?
Jeremy: What? It's a program. I write it once, then all you have to do is activate it.
[They exit out the side of a giant hole in the wall. The digital sea is kept in place by the gravity of the shell. The ship is moving "up" but appears as if it's emerging out the water into the world from the side of its sphere. The ship rotates to match the world's orientation. The hole the overflow valve was attached to was part of a giant oppressive black wall.]
Yumi: Rain?
Sissi: Is that weird for virtual worlds?
Jeremy: Any weather is weird for virtual worlds.
Odd: Is that…Is that Jazz trombone playing?
[Green smog covers the sky. Is it constantly raining and it drums the sides of the skid. Giant shapes in the sky piercing down from the clouds above and below. It looked like parts of buildings. As they got closer, they could see giant spires draped in shadows lit by flashes of lightning. Only outer islands of what must be many can be seen, the plateaus with structures further in are obscured.]
Aelita: is there another city upside down above the clouds?
Odd: What if there's people living there who are upside down and people down here living right side up. And both think it's completely normal.
Ulrich: I think I saw a movie like that once.
Jeremy: Dunno, check it out if we have the chance.
[As they near and enter the foggy zone, shapes became clear. The tops of the skyscrapers. Two things connected all the skyscrapers. Ribbons and wires. Above them all were ribbons of green light, bridges that connected the taller buildings and wove around them to create pathways from one end of the city to another. Roads that cross the sky. Shaped like they were blown by the wind. No columns or any supports to hold it up.
But the strangest thing about it was the sense of being incomplete. Some sections are just missing: a highway that suddenly stops midair, clumps of a crystal forest ripped up, skeleton buildings with exposed steel beam structure and thin lattice scaffolding around the outside. While the buildings all existed on plateaus as their base, some looked like cracked off pieces of larger campuses while others looked designed to incorporate their missing bridges.
The city architecture is a melting pot of structures: Chinese, Russian, modern skyscrapers, and Mosques.
The web of ribbon bridges starts to converge toward something in what could only be the "center" of the world.]
Jeremy: They've been doing their best to keep us out so far. Make it to those towers as a start.
Aelita: We'll park as close as we can, then we'll have to walk to that pagoda over there.
[They drift down and settle on the deep sapphire colored roofing of the pagoda. It looked similar to real life version at a distance. But as the skid flew closer, perspective revealed that these were actually much larger. The skid was able to rest on the false roof, the mokoshi, with plenty of room on the short side. It would actually be quite a walk from the center to adjacent end of the roof. The ornate decorating on the roof tiles was actually pathways and structures sized for their normal avatars.]
Ulrich: How are we supposed to get in there if there aren't any doors?
Yumi: Maybe there's a secret entrance we can sneak in.
William: We've riding in a battering ram. The direct approach is usually the best.
Odd: We can't risk the paint job.
Aelita: Um, I don't see a parking space. Maybe Odd can give us a hint with Future Flash from there.
Jeremy: The tower is inside. I can see it on my screens. We don't need visual contact. You're close enough to dock.
[Energy of flowing pink threads shoot out from the skid and through the wall to the tower on the other side. Aelita hits the buttons to teleport everyone off the skid.]
Jeremy: I'm calling your vehicles. You're going to take a north, northwest heading, travel along the ribbons until you reach that central structure-
[Inside the pagoda, Odd appears with his board?]
Odd: Guys?
[Yumi appears in a different room.]
Yumi: Uh was that on purpose?
Ulrich: Hey where did everyone go?
[William is looking around another identical, but empty version of the inside of the pagoda.
The floor beneath their feet was a style of woven padding. And in the center, there is a circular wooden platform with ornate stairs leading up to it with Tyron's version of a tower on it. Pitch black rectangular prism with white neon lines on it. There is a second story level with a hole in it for the tower. The platforms are connected horizontally by a wooden cross braces across the hole for the tower and supported by wooden posts into the mat below. The cross braces connected around the tower. There are dull matte grey wires connecting the walls of the pagoda to the tower.]
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