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 2: A_[N3w]_F1ght (A New Fight)
Narrator: 5 months ago, the Deckard Incident destroyed cities around the world. No one knows what caused it. A group of heroes tried to stop it but failed.
To prevent it from happening again, the Men in Black tracked down a laboratory containing a supercomputer that was reactivated by the effects of the Incident. But they weren't the only ones. A student, Axel, who was distraught after the incident, found the supercomputer, called the Annex, and powered it on fully. This ended up releasing a monster from the virtual world within. He and another student, Inès, entered the virtual world. After surviving the unexplained world and figuring out things work there, they succeeded in killing the golem.
In other words, they beat the tutorial. Let's see how they do with the main game.
[show them surrounded by golems]
Yep, that's about right.
[Opening Theme plays]
[More monsters appear behind the golems. This one looks like a cloud of electricity around a sphere with the monster's weak point in the center. The weak point looks like a circle with a dot in the middle with a chunk of the top and bottom of the circle missing.]
Axel: [stammers] I just just punch and kick now. You have to take care of them.
Inès?: So you want backup? Sure, why not. I'll lend you a hand.
[Axel charges through the golems. They swing at him, he shields his face with his chamber gauntlets. One of the sprites shoot a green electric sphere at him. Inès? jumps on Axel's head (to his displeasure), throws a card to prematurely detonate the projectile, and flip kicks the sprite down onto the ground. It explodes into red pixels. An opening made, they run to the edge of the platform.
Inès? and Axel get ready to jump to the next platform far below them. The sprite behind them turns orange and dive bombs at them. Axel makes it to the next platform below, but the sprite impacts behind them & explodes. The shockwave catches Inès? putting her off balance just before her jump. She hits the edge of the platform and falls toward the blue planet below.]
Axel: [disbelief] Oh. What just. Dark Magician Girl just died like that.
Mysterious Figure: [voice radiates from above] Nooo? Why would she be dead?
Axel: Explosion damage plus cataclysmic fall damage? She has to have lost all her heath after that.
Mysterious Figure: Why would she be dead from that? You don't die when you lose all your Life Points. You're devirtualized.
Axel: Right. Devirtualized, derezzed, erasure. Whatever you call being wiped from existence.
Mysterious Figure: You stop existing here, but you would be fine wherever you came from.
Axel: But. That's not… [pauses to compose himself and takes a breath.] Elaborate.
Mysterious: Okay, when you take damage, you lose LP. If all of your Life Points are gone, you are sent back to reality and appear in a scanner. The thing that sent you here.
Axel: I don't understand how just sending my mindless body back has to do with being alive.
Mysterious Figure: Erggh. Okay. One step at a time. If you die in the game…
Axel: Got it.
Mysterious Figure: You DON'T die in real life.
[beat]
Axel: … That's not how virtual worlds work.
Mysterious Figure: Well, that's how they work here.
[An electric sphere hits the ground next to him. The sprites descend on him.]
Axel: What's your current position?
Mysterious Figure: I'll direct you. Go east and find an elevator platform to take you into a higher orbit.
[He runs over to an elevator platform, a two-story platform with ramps to connect the top and bottom. As the elevator ascends, he notices something else descending in front of him. It's a huge dark, smoldering, structure with a circular door set in the front & level with the platform. It jolts, plunges down, and descending toward the surface of the planet. Its surface parts to allow the bunker-like room to pass through the crust of the planet, disappear into its glowing blue mists, and then the metal skin of the planet closes up behind it.
Axel is interested.]
[Ethan wakes up from being knocked out. He's in the central courtyard with the Administration building that Principal Coraline's office is in. You can see the windows in the pedway he crashed through. He peers through the holes at the fight between Jäger, Lone Elite, and the golem. The golem releases a green blast from its cannon. Ethan sees that the shockwave from the projectile causes its plasma body to quiver and then reform.]
[Ethan sees Coach Zama organizing an evacuation of students to this courtyard while other teachers are contacting police and rescue services making a call to the police.]
Ethan: Coach, I need your balls.
[Without waiting for an answer, he grabs a sack of soccer balls from a wire basket someone had rolled back from the stadium and vaults through the broken window.]
[Jäger is on the ground reaching for his gun. The golem steps on his arm and kicks the gun away. The golem raises its sword. A soccer ball comes flying in and sinks into its body. Ethan jumps out from behind a pillar lining the arcade on the courtyard hallway, rolls under lasers from the golem's blaster and snatches up Jäger's gun. He lands in a crouch and double taps.]
BANG BANG
[The soccer ball explodes outward in a burst of air. The top half collapses off of the golem with a SPLAT. The MIB agents get up.]
Ethan: If you can't kill it, you might as well immobilize it.
Lone Elite: Good thinking, but we knew we couldn't stop it from the beginning.
[The golem starts to reform, its upper body flowing back on top of its legs. Jäger puts a hand to his ear.]
Jäger: We have a situation here. A blue creature has appeared. [He switches to talk to Lone Elite] There's another one of these at the target complex. [He switches back to earpiece] What's that?
[Cut to the woodland showing another golem traveling through the trees]
Jäger: [Voice over] There is also a third creature spotted in the woodland.
[Back to the courtyard]
Jäger: [To Lone Elite] We have confirmed that the head is the only weak point, but our weapons don't seem to be able to harm it. [speaks into earpiece] We were able to temporarily stun the one here by blowing out its body from the inside. Retrieve XM25 Airburst Grenade Launchers from headquarters. [to Lone Elite] The situation there won't last much longer. Rinzler ordered Jackal to shut down the supercomputer, but she's encountering resistance. They might not survive until the launchers get here. [looks at Ethan] [to earpiece] We have a temporary stop gap.
[The golem fully reforms. It charges at a side gate to the residential courtyard holding the main entrance to the school and crashes through. It takes off for the woodland.]
Lone Elite: Damn.
Ethan: Well, if nobody else is going to get in my way, I'll just-
Jäger: We need you to come with us.
Ethan: That wasn't actually an offer. I was just being polite. And now you want me to do more work?
Lone Elite: If it makes you feel better, you don't have a choice.
[Inès? Is falling past platforms in different orbiting layers, getting closer to the planet below. She flips over to the wall on the side of a tall flat floating platform and plants her feet into the metal. The braces on the back of her legs shoot out yellow spikes. Her movement stops the instant the spikes connect. She's attached to the wall with her entire body hanging from her knees. Somehow, her hat stays on.
She looks around while upside down. She spots a glowing red object below on a platform. Inès? pushes off from the wall and retracts her spikes.]
Inès?: [in freefall] Weeeee.
[Inès? lands on the platform with the spikes extended. Just like before, all her momentum is canceled. Inès? lifts up her legs to look at them.]
Inès?: Hey Mabel.
Mabel: Inès? Is that you?
Inès?: Yeah. Sure. I need you to check my Life Points.
Mabel: Um, [looks at the screens] Yeah, you lost some from that explosion before. You're at 90 out of 100.
Inès?: Nothing from the fall?
Mable: Doesn't look like it.
[Inès? Looks over at the red tower.]
Inès?: I see a giant red glowing candle. Can you check that out?
[From behind the tower, 3 huge black metal spheres roll out. They split open to reveal a machine core held together with red colored biomass. In the center of the frame was a symbol, different from the one the golems had. This one was an eye with a long line protruding from the top and 3 smaller lines from the bottom.]
Inès?: [to the monsters] And what are you? Mabel you might want to hurry up. Something else just rolled up. And these ones are weird. [to herself while she perches the side of her face on her hand.] Why do they have a different symbol from the other monsters?
[The elevator platform slides to a stop. Axel sees the tower on the new platform. This one has a blue aura.]
Mysterious Figure: Okay, there's a trick to getting in. You have to be clear of aggressive thou-
[Axel walks right in.]
Axel: Huh, its bigger on the inside.
[He's inside a tower. A circular platform floating in the middle of space with boxes of code running down the walls. There is no top; the sides just extend up to infinity.]
Mysterious Girl: Hmm. That was easy.
[Axel got a look at her.]
[She had waist length silver-white hair and blue eyes.
On her forehead, she had an emerald gem in the shape of an oval with pointed ends like a seed. Her entire face covered in white scars where the top texture on her avatar had been damaged, the interior pale blue wireframe glow seeping through. They crisscrossed across her forehead, her cheeks, over her eyes (only the right eye was undamaged), and up and down her neck.
She wore a tattered, emerald martial arts gi with a neon green liner. The collar had been torn out, as if something had tried to claw out her throat. The feathered ends of the sleeves on the gi barely reached her elbows, but they looked like they must have been much longer originally. She had small bracers around each wrist, but even the ends of those were shattered. Her hands were bare except for the same white scars.
The lower half of the uniform was disconnected from the top. Although the gi should have been one solid piece, it had been damaged so badly that the top ended around her naval and the bottom was maimed. The tail ends of the uniform were only fixed in place by a wire cable that wrapped around her waist twice and then was tucked into itself.
Her legs were covered in a tight material made of the same neon and emerald circuit pattern as the gi, but the bottoms of the pants had been burned away. Her shoes made out of the same material as the rest of her clothing.]
Mysterious Girl: I would like to introduce myself… But I have no idea who I am. [beat] I have LOTS of questions. First, what is this stuff [tugs on her hair] and why is mine so much longer than the stuff you have on your head.
Axel: [stops her] I have some questions too. [turns to look around the tower] Is there anyone else I should know about?
Mysterious Girl: No one but me. Who else with you besides um "Dark magician girl"?
Axel: She's not with me, I'm alone.
Mysterious Girl: [doesn't understand sarcasm] No you're not. I'm here.
Axel: [salty] This is gonna be fun.
[awkward pause]
Mysterious Girl: …Thank you for turning on the supercomputer. Who knows how long I would be here if you hadn't-
Axel: It was mutually beneficial. We've even. You saved me from that faction outside. Speaking of which, what are they doing now? How much control do they have over the supercomputer?
Mysterious Girl: I don't know what they are doing. As soon as someone else tried to access it after you, I cut contact. The only other person I talked with was-
[There is a pop and buzz as someone joins their audio channel]
Mabel: Hey, person who was virtualized earlier. Name. Gimme. Now!
Axel: Don't say-
Mysterious Girl: He's Sherlock.
Mabel: Not a nickname. Actual name.
Axel: [reluctantly] Axel.
Mabel: Any last?
Axel: How do I know I can trust you?
Mabel: Because the person standing next to you saved my friend. Also, [holds up the binder Maggie had] I have the Men in Black's notes.
Mysterious Girl: [points at sky where the voice is coming from.] She's got info. Why don't you cooperate?
Axel: And where are the Men in Black now? Why are you here?
Mabel: The people who swarmed this place as soon as they got some kind of signal. They were guarding this room like a treasure vault. Now they're all off fighting. But there was this "Jackal" woman. She might be back to check on us any minute. I wanted to see what they were up to, but they caught me and my friend Inès and locked us in a storage closet. Where are you now?
Axel: Okay, quick version. I'm inside a virtual world. There are monsters here to fight and the world doesn't obey the laws of physics. [turns to the girl] Did I get all that right?
Mysterious Girl: As far as I can tell. I've been in existence for all of 20 minutes!
Axel: Why are they fighting?
Mabel: Blue monster showed up.
Axel: [stammers] Wait?! The golems can go, go to real life through the scanners!?
Mabel: No, they just appeared out of nowhere. Inès found this weird candle looking thing. According to the MIB's notes it's called a "tower". Plus, the notes basically spell out that these things [reads outloud from the notes] "each interact with the physical world using virtual energy" so that's probably what brought the golems to life.
Axel: Did you know about this?
Ai: Actually, that's why I called you here. I think you can use this to stop the monsters. [holds up a screen with the words "Code Lyoko"] It's an ability that can return any system or program to a previous state.
Axel: A factory reset. Even for deleted data?
[She nods.]
Axel: [smiles] Perfect I know just how we can use it. [continues] What's a Lyoko?
Mabel: Huh, it could relate to the Japanese word for "travel", Ryoko-
Axel: Mabel, I know you're trying to contribute, but we don't need crazy talk right now. I need quiet if I'm going to come up with a plan.
Mysterious Girl: We have a plan. Take me down to the tower and I can punch in the code. The golem goes "Bye-Bye". [she starts to leave]
Axel: Hold it.
Mysterious Girl: But there are people in danger. We have to move fast.
Axel: The MIB are in danger. We have to move carefully. If the golem disappears, the MIB will just come and capture all of us. So how can we get rid of them and the golem?
Mysterious Girl: I … I, we can…
Axel: [To Mabel] If they locked you two up, they must not want anyone to know about the lab. We have to get rid of them somehow. [thinking out loud to himself] Maybe the golem can do that for us.
Mysterious Girl: We can't leave them to mercy of the monster.
Axel: I don't think they have mercy.
Mabel: Neither do the MIB.
Mysterious Girl: Everyone should be saved.
Axel: Then do you have a better idea?
Ai: Well, I do have this. [she curls her finger and a screen detaches from the stream on the tower wall. She passes it to him.]
Axel: [reads the screen. Surprised.] Oh. That might actually work.
[Jackal is taking cover behind the stairs to the supercomputer on the bottom level. She whirls around the corner to see the same floating electric sparks that Inès? and Axel had run into. They all focus on her and fire tiny spheres of green energy at her while moving. No matter which way Jackal sprinted toward the supercomputer room door, the sparks hit her, knocking her back. A last desperate charge was met with a huge volley that blew her back to the foot of the staircase, her uniform ruined. She reaches for her earpiece as she retreats.]
Jackal: There is a second type of monsters guarding the supercomputer. I can't deactivate it.
The Boss: [over comms] Fine. Return to guarding Maggie and the prisoners.
Jackal: [as she runs back up the stairs] I was actually on my way to the medical station. Maggie was wounded during the counterattack. Currently unconscious, not life threatening.
The Boss: Who is guarding the prisoners then?
Jackal: Grand total of 0 agents. I know exactly what you're going to say, but you wanted me to do this and if we shut off the supercomputer, then we won't need to wake her up. Should I try to remove the civilian from the virtual world again.
The Boss: Try when you return, but if an opportunity presents itself to shut down or destroy the supercomputer, proceed even if there is anyone still inside the computer.
Jackal: [a little sad] Understood. [She's almost at the top.] Why don't we just get the Lyoko Warriors to deactivate the tower?
The Boss: That isn't an option.
Jackal: If it's the security of the operation you're worried about-
The Boss: As of right now, the situation is classified "Red Tabula Rasa". It's not the security of the operation I'm concerned with. It's not even a question of whether I want to get the Warriors to help us or if they will. They cannot.
Jackal: They've been helping us with deactivating towers for the past few months.
The Boss: [sighs. Makes up her mind.] They haven't been deactivating them. They've been destroying them.
[Jackal is so stunned that she stops in the middle of the hallway]
Jackal: Why?
The Boss: Because Angelo lost Code Lyoko.
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