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.
CONTINUE
[On the Deckard control room main screen, the timer for the key blinks red for the last couple seconds. Then it hits zero.
The room starts rumbling. The two ninjas guarding the entrance look around. Then the floor shifts beneath them. The lip of ground by the door starts slanting turning from a floor into a ramp. The remaining ninjas jump back into the hallway by the door, the only flat surface. They turn to face the creepers onto to see them backing off. The ninjas set their guard…
…Only for the flat section of the floor they are standing on rotate up and smack the ninjas in the face. It acts as a piston arm, launching the ninjas outs of the hallway into the pit.]
Deck hand 1: Sir, the Alpha team of first squad was wiped out.
Tyron: Then send in the second one!
[See William Supersmoke up the elevator shaft, swerving back and forth across the black cross hatching pattern. There are hacking and sawing noises as he gets closer.
The garage was at the top of Carthage. An original addition created by Jeremy, there were only two ways into it. The elevator path added or the hole in the ceiling the ship is supposed to fly out through. Like the rest of Carthage, it had the same curving metal prisms now arcing up and outlining the hole.
The main light source was the ambient light from the hole in the ceiling, placing a spotlight on the main functions of the room. The Skidbladnir, or Skid was the ship that allows travel on the virtual sea and to other virtual worlds. It was purple with a bulbous cockpit and a rod jutting out below as its body. It had two wings, currently folded down, that held the thrusts the ship used to fly. {Just look up a picture, if you have never seen it before, you will never picture it correctly.} There were 4 pods meant to hold passengers attached to the rod.
The only place to stand in the room was an incomplete ring. It surrounded the ship and the magnetic supports that held the ship while it was docked. It was made of the same styled square end arced pieces but at one end was large disc surrounded by 4 smaller ones: The teleportation platform to board the ship. Support rods for the platform and the ends of the magnetic clamps disappeared to the floor far below.
William separates from the elevator shaft as soon as it opens into the room and zips up to where a support splits in two to form a crook.
He reappears on a support strut that holds up the walking platform above. He leans out and checks out what's happening in between the cracks in the platforms.
He sees the ninjas surrounding a couple of the 5 magnetic holders supporting the Skid. They are hacking away at the supports with their swords. One has already been cut. There's a second group working at a third pillar.
As one of the ninjas is winding back for a swing, the smoke cloud whisps in behind him, an arm appears and snatches the ninja's face, then William and the ninja drop into the black puddle and slip down between the cracks in the platforms with quickly disappearing black and green contrails.
William exits the ability to slam the ninja onto his blade he had wedged in the crook of the support beam he was standing on before. William looks back up and preps himself to do it again.]
[Show the ninja that William just defeated viewpoint. He has a list of squads on his display of his helmet. He's suspended on an exoskeleton that's hanging from the ceiling with his arms and legs strapped in and a helmet covering his face.]
Bravo 6: Bravo team, the edge lord assassinated me. I'll join Delta when the next squad arrives.
[The bravo team leader responds in another suit across the room in real life.]
Bravo Leader: Confirmed. Control we've reached strut 2, [view switches to him talking in the virtual world, with the ninja avatar mimicking his gestures.] moving on strut three and four. Gwendolyn, draw out the edge lord. Jove, cover Gwendolyn
[Bravo 6 selects his spawn point, one of the ships, then selects "Join on Delta team", and finally clicks on respawn.
Show him spawning inside the block ship, then exiting outside to join Delta team waiting for another transporter at the edge of the sector. The transporter scopes up Delta team and makes another trip to the arena.]
[At the arena, two more guards are standing watch at the edges of the dome.]
Ninja A: You might want to get away from the center. Someone might drop on your head.
[Two ninjas of this group pause.]
Ninja G: How were we supposed to know their insertion point was right above our heads.
Ninja B: You ever look up?
Ninja A and B laugh as this group advances on the slit that just appeared in the wall.
Ninja K: Hey
Ninja G pauses.
Ninja K: Take it off.
[In the ninja VR room, the ninjas in the harnesses talk. Ninja G stops walking on the curved bowl that tracks his feet and turns to the ninja in the harness besides him. He takes off his helmet and peels away his balaclava from his mouth. The light from the screen in its surface peaks out and into the dimly lit room with the other dozen harness each holding ninjas
Ninja K: Watch out, there's a trap to stop you from standing still if the timer runs out.
Ninja G: Can I get a map to where the room is. We should be able to get there in the half the time now that we know where we're going.
Ninja K: Talk to your team leader. Control should have sent it to them.
[Back at the two people on the consoles in the control room that Anthea is watching. They have a map on their screen being compiled as teams explore Carthage.]
Deck hand 2: Bet you 10 franc he's going to brag about how Emerald Guard can infinitely respawn.
Deck hand 1: I'm not gonna take that beat.
Tyron: Those fools, I can never be defeated, I have an infinite army. You strike one down and they'll be back moments later. Ahahah!
Deck hand 2: [sighs] Yeah you're right too obvious.
Jeremy: I'm glad I could be of service today, thank you for choosing Expat IT. Goodbye. [Sighs]
[Presses call on Yumi, Aelita, and Odd's phones on his computer again. His screen is filled on one side with outgoing messages to them all.]
Jeremy's computer rings again.
Jeremy: Are you going to leave me alone?
Laura: I thought people relaxed on their day off.
Jeremy: [surprised] When did you get here?
Laura: [Entering from the door] Just now. I like the quiet environment. If there's an emergency somewhere, you can take off. I can take this.
Jeremy: What really? Thank you that helps so much.
[Quickly packs up his stuff.]
Laura: Is everything alright?
Jeremy: It will be if I get there. I'll try to be back as soon as possible. [yells from offscreen] Thank you Laura.
[Cut back to a room in Carthage, now referred as "the balance beam room". One wall is a collage of blocks of random sizes with a couple of small beams interspersed throughout. The side walls are long thin blocks with that seem to point to this obstacle course to reach the key on one of the blocks near the top. This room is near the outer edge of Carthage so the ceiling is curved and there is only one door facing the strangely designed wall.
Ulrich super sprints in from one door and sees creepers slithering. He dashes in and slices a few in half before noticing something strange. The creepers were backing off and bowing. Then on the right side of the room he saw what the creepers were originally attacking.
Creepers, ignoring Ulrich, resume shooting at ninjas on the right side of the room. Ulrich dashes around a line of sight blocking cube in the center of the room to get behind ninjas. While he's off screen, they hear-]
Ulrich: TRIPLICATE
[Each Ulrich engages with a ninja.]
[The abnormal ninja's head peaks out from a wall, shivers, and seems to be pushes out. She falls straight down. The camera tilts to show a creeper below her. She takes out something, a needle with a handle, and stabs as she lands, flattening and destroying the creeper's head in one move. She looks up to see an Ulrich running up the side of the wall on the other end of the room.]
[Ulrich pushes off the wall and rams into a ninja trying to climb from one beam to a higher one, kicking off the victim to jump to an even higher beam where a second ninja had almost reached the key on the wall. The ninja parries his blow just in time, but now was struggling to keep balance.]
[On the ground, the abnormal ninja redirects a slash by an Ulrich by a hair to the side. Parries a slash with a second hand spike in her other hand and slips down and through the floor to dodge the remainder of the flurry of slashes. He super sprints back to get away from where she disappeared. She surfaces to the side of him and throws one of her senbon. He shatters as it takes him in the leg.]
PHLEW
? LP: 110 - 70
[The abnormal takes damage from a creeper laser and slips back into the floor. The creepers look around for her. She pops up and the creepers slither closer to shoot her. She slips beneath again. She surfaces, points her hand spike at the creepers, now nicely lined up.]
?: Jingu BANG!
[The needle rockets out, growing to a thin, deadly line bisecting each of the creeper's temples, disrupting the heads just slightly as it passes through them before the point THUNKS against the far wall, all the way across the battlefield.]
PNCK PNCK PNCK PNCKER
BANGBANGBOOMBANG.
[Four near simultaneous death throes and explosions.]
[Back downtown, they are in a panoramic room at the top level. There are windows all around them looking out onto the river and skyline. Getting reach to leave. Aelita and Yumi are sitting on a couch that wraps around the exterior of the pavilion.]
Aelita: Did you get what you wanted out of today?
Yumi: No.
Aelita: What were you looking for?
Yumi: Something that wasn't what we do every day.
Aelita: Sometimes doing nothing is the exactly the thing you're looking for.
Yumi: Doing nothing isn't that fun. Doing it with someone else is. Seeing what's on the other side of the coin, is nice sometimes.
Aelita: You can punch something when we get back.
Yumi: [sarcasm] Thanks mom.
Aelita: Ooh, don't call me that. I'm not old enough to be someone's mom.
Yumi: …Well technically.
Aelita: Nonono. No technically.
[Sees sissi emerge from the bathrooms and head back toward them. Aelita and Yumi ready their bags to leave.]
Yumi: Want to do this again?
Aelita: Sure, let's do this a lot after Lyoko stuff is over.
Yumi: Well, one of us should pick the location. We can't keep letting her lead us around on these trips.
Sissi: [arriving] You guys got your things?
[Aelita shows the equipment she bought. A microphone boom arm sticks out of one of the bags and Aelita catches it as its about to fall out]
Sissi: Cool we're off. Oh, right your phones.
[Aelita hesitates before turning her phone back on.]
Yumi: Come on, rip the band aid off.
[Storm of notification pings.]
Aelita: We need to go.
Sissi: Okay.
Yumi: It's about-
Sissi: If it's an emergency, just go.
Aelita: Thanks um hanging today was fun see you later-
Yumi: No.
Aelita: Huh.
Yumi: …Sissi. Today was fun so I really don't want to lie to you or leave you feeling left out of the loop.
Sissi: [starts sarcastic] Omg that's… [genuine] that's never happened before.
Yumi: I know.
Yumi and Aelita give each other a look.
Yumi: We kinda, we just hated each other for what feels like a misunderstanding for so long.
Aelita: [half a question] And we shouldn't go back to that.
Yumi: Do you want to come help us?
Sissi: Eh… s…sure!
Aelita: [realizes they ARE doing this] You can come but you have to promise not to ask any questions until it's over.
Odd: Sam I really love you and want to keep this relationship going. I know exactly what you're thinking.
Sam: [looks behind Odd to where Diva is standing by the TV] Oh that's how it is.
Odd: Believe me this is the exact situation I was trying to avoid.
[The door bangs open. Jim struts in and eyes Odd.]
Jim: How did I know it was you making all this racket Della Robbia. Do you have any idea how much noise you've been making? You're going to come with me and answer for this.
Odd: Wait, no Jimbo! I-
Jim: I'm not hearing any of it.
[Jim uses his presence to force Odd to walk back through the door, Odd walking sheepishly backwards while protesting. Jim slams the door behind him.]
Odd: I just need to-
Jim: Come up with a better apology than that.
Odd: …Comeagain?
Jim: Oh please. Anyone with half an eye [points to his eye] can see you got caught two timing and now you're in the thick of it. And I had hopes Knight was going to straighten you out.
Odd: Uh, wow. Thanks Jim. I didn't know you cared about young love.
Jim: As a matter of fact, I find that the ones that keep getting on my nerve are the ones always complaining about being single. Tell Stern to get on that will ya.
Odd: Let me guess, you went through something similar, but you'd rather not talk about it.
Jim: [hrumphs] Your jokes are getting worse. I have never been even remotely close to where you are with those two before. [gestures inside the rec room]
I'll hold the fort and keep them in there until you can find a way to solve this. The only thing you do better than getting yourself into trouble is getting yourself out of it.
Odd: [brightens up with a grin and salutes] Thanks Sargent Jimbo.
[The abnormal Ninja finishes retracting her weapon and spots the yellow bandana figure up on the beams above having a fencing match against one of the ninjas going for the key on the wall. The ninja turns around to reach for the key, but Ulrich cuts him down and he only barely grabs onto the beam. Ulrich approaches carefully to finish him off.
The ninja leader appears behind him. She's rising in the air, grabbing the handle end of the spike and forcing it to extend making a lift of a sort.]
?: Jingu bang
[The extending spike forces him to jump away. The spear cracks the beam where it impacts, breaking off the part Ulrich was just standing on. He jumps back, but the dangling ninja swipes out his feat as he lands, scattering the second clone with its blade.
The ninja leader helps her subordinate up and he stands guard as she activates the key.
Down below, Ulrich prime finishes a lethal stab on one of the ninjas when the ground plates start shifting under him. The floor splits in two while sections on each wall start to slide. Three of the doors seal up and another one opens on the wall with the key into the space between the shells of Carthage.
Sections of the ground start dropping while the cube in the center of the room rises to the ceiling creating a ring shaped chasm with platforms along the center and walls.
The abnormal ninja has extended one of her hand spikes. She and the ninja she saved from the Ulrich clone are sliding down it. The ninja she protected makes a break for the revealed doorway.
The leader jumps off her elongated needle, lengthens the other hand spike to the length of a spear while in mid air and slams it down as Ulrich blocks. Ulrich's guard is shoved aside and he falls to one knee from the force. As he rises, the other ninja slips past him toward the door where another ninja is waiting on the elevator.
He sweeps his swords along the length of the staff to try to slice the weapon out of her hands.
She turns temporary intangible to pass the blades through her and her weapon. She falls away from the strike at the same time, turns tangible as she hits the ground, rolls, and picks up the end of her first senbon on the ground.
?: Jingu shrink.
It collapses back into the size of a hand spike and she sheaths it and it disappears into her pointed sleeve.
She twirls the staff around. With each sweeping attack, Ulrich redirects it but it as if he's trying to parry a flagpole. His swords keep getting thrown around, knocked out of his stance, and absorb impact after impact as they turn from blue to red. The last horizontal attack is a grand slam that shattered the red sabers.
TINGZZZRN
Seeing that her ninjas have left with the elevator, the ninja leader activates her ability and phases through the ground.]
[Jeremy arrives in the elevator at the factory and is just about to close it when he hears-]
Aelita: Stop. Hold it for us.
[Jeremy steps back as the girls dash into the elevator.]
Yumi: You're just getting here? You're the one who told us.
Jeremy: I was at work.
Sissi: [looking around] It's our day off.
Jeremy: I like the environment.
[Aelita just gives a "yeah he's like that" look to Sissi.]
Jeremy: Oh. Hi Sissi. Nice to see you.
Sissi: Uh, back at ya. So, what is the emergency exactly?
Yumi: Well, let me put it this way. I get to punch things.
[The elevator opens into the lab.]
[Aelita is whispering something to Jeremy.]
Jeremy: …Okay we'll see how it goes. [sits down at the computer terminal. Chair spins over to the keyboard]
Jeremy: It looks like Ulrich is cut off. [to mic] Ulrich I opened up another path to the celestial dome for you. Also, Aelita and Yumi are in the scanners.
Ulrich: Great, but I'm down a weapon. Also… I have a plan. I can't do this alone. The special ninja. We need to take it down together. Tell everyone to move to these marks.
[William smoke ball curls around the inside of the room up along the hull of the skid opposite of where the ninjas are working. William exits into a plunging stab at a ninja slashing at the strut.
Just before he hits the ninja a green light shoots out and hold William in place. Another ninja had hidden behind one of the pillars and is shooting a green beam out of its hand that surrounds William and suspends him.]
William: How did you know I was, I'm an idiot. Supersmoke.
[William disappears briefly, reappearing solid with a clank on the metal plates. A partition of ninjas separates from demolition duty to flank him on either side.]
Jeremy: Remembered they can warn their teammates in real life, did you?
William: When did you get here?
Jeremy: Just now.
William: I know I know, I slipped up. I thought it would be really cool if I could just take them out one at a time from the shadows.
[One ninja bobs its head as if it was talking and the other ninjas respond with an oscillating growl. As if they were laughing.]
[One of the struts gives against the onslaught of ninja attacks, banging against the garage loading platform before clattering against the square stalagmites below.]
Jeremy: William you have to take out all the ninjas before they crash the skid. If it goes, we don't have a way of shutting down wherever Tyron sent them from anytime soon.
William: I know. If I play this carefully-
Jeremy: You don't have time. One strut can't support the skid. We can't afford to lose another.
[William super smokes around a quiver of ninjas blundering at him. As he reappears, one cuts him in the back.]
William LP 120 - 110
[He falls onto the teleportation platform.]
[William looks at it. He smiles.]
William: Teleport me.
Jeremy: Even if we save the skid, we'll have no way to recharge it and it will disappear once it runs out of energy.
William: That's not the point, teleport me.
[William is teleported into the skid cabin just as the ninjas strike at him. They look around confused for a second.]
[William's theme starts playing.]
[They all turn around, look up and see him waving at them from the cockpit with a hand on one trigger-
WRRRRRRRRRR
-and the machine guns rip and tear through all the ninjas in front of him.
[He rotates the skid, banging it against the interior of the ring platform, clearing out all the ninjas who were up until just now cutting the remaining 2 struts.]
William: Why don't we use this thing more? It annihilates everything!
[The leader and her group of ninjas step out from the elevator into the celestial dome. The void around the sphere that was Carthage was rimmed with an uncountable number of screens displaying the processes of all the functions of Lyoko. The slit in its side allowed access to a small balcony with no railing. The leader walks up until the terminal appears in front of her, and she sticks in a DMA card (direct memory access). The other ninjas take up point behind her.]
{Direct Memory Access (DMA) is a data transfer strategy that bypasses the CPU, instead using a dedicated DMA controller to transfer data between memory and a device.}
[Ulrich appears in the light from the crack in the shell.]
Ulrich: Hey, I don't appreciate opponents who drop out. Are we going to finish this? [come at me gesture]
[IRL back in Deckard.]
Ninja S: He's playing you
?: Yeah. But I'm the only fair match for him. No point in you getting derezzed.
[The leader steps between the two ninjas who shuffle back to the terminal, never taking their eyes off Ulrich. The abnormal just has her hand spikes clenched in her fists.]
Ulrich: Super sprint
[Blue contrails ribbon out, the movement faster than the ninjas can track. She blocks with staff form to prevent instant assassination from Ulrich's kick throwing her off the edge. Ulrich lands 3 jabs before the abnormal can swipe with her weapon.
Ulrich pushes her strike away, takes control of her other arm as it comes around, knees her, kicks out her legs and elbows her in the face and ends the combo with pushing off and spinning with his back foot around and into the back of her head.]
? LP 70 - 64 - 62 - 59 - 55 - 49
[The leader's avatar sparks as she gets punched in the face, but spikes Ulrich in the arm and releases her hand spike.]
? LP 49 - 43
Ulrich LP: 100 - 90
[His arm drops and surprisingly the rest of his body goes with it. Ulrich tries to rise, but his arm is stuck, as if the hand spike was a giant magnet pinning his arm to the ground. She points her other push spike at Ulrich's head.]
?: Jingu ba-
Super Smoke-Smoke screen!
SWISH SWISH STAB
[The ninja leader turns around just to catch a blast of ash in her face. The two ninjas guarding and an extra nearby go down in one continuous swing of the zweihander William twisting around in a ribbon of fading light as he drops down from above.]
The abnormal bursts out of the smoke and goes for a head stab. Ulrich reels back but he's still pinned to the ground.
BING
Actualization Synchronization % Increase
Epiphany:
Taking the initiative to cooperate with others.
Unlock:
Karambits
[A belt is spawned around Ulrich's waist. It's two circles on his back with a familiar spiral pattern on the wheels that look like Ulrich's logo from the season 1 opening. Handle sticks out to the side as each weapon is tucked into one of the three curls of the spiral symbol.
Ulrich whips out the new weapon, notching the weapon and spinning it into his hand with the finger ring on the hilt and curving it up to protect himself. The spike clashes and sparks against the small, curved blade, then sweeps past Ulrich against the ground.
Ulrich stabs the leader's hand, then yanks down and loops the finger ring onto the T shaped grip of the hand spike and pulls upward. Now that its owner was touching it, the weapon's weight disappeared, and it leaped up.]
? LP: 43 - 38
[They both pull backward, the abnormal ninja dislodging herself from Ulrich's weapon and grabbing her own as it was twirling midair.]
Deck hand 1: Naja, we don't yet have the 1st objective. Retreat to retrieval point B. Highest priority.
[Naja reaches for her card and yanks it out. William turns from clashing with the remaining guard ninjas to attack her with a backhand swing, but she phases through it and into the ground. She reappears at the end of the balcony and lands on the elevator. It lurches and quickly descends.
William takes off after Naja.
Ulrich and William look at each other.]
Ulrich: You've got her.
William: You've got them.
[Slow mo high five before they each activate their respective abilities.]
Ulrich: Super sprint!
William: Supersmoke!
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