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
[A video request appears on Jeremy's screen.]
Jeremy: Who? Oh, right this is probably Tyron. Ignore.
[A voice rings down from the ceiling.]
Tyron: Hello, Aelita. And her little helpers. I see you found my new virtual world. Was destroying my property once not enough for you?
[Cut to real world. Show the Deckard command center. It's a white room with rows of monitors and workstations. With a giant grid of flat screens front and center and rows of employees at stations.]
Ulrich: Hey, we accomplished our goal of STOPPING XANA. We literally could not care less about you but you keep enabling XANA to come back. Stop turning your computer back on. Destroy it and build a new one.
Tyron: This is a new one.
Ulrich: Oh, I guess…yeah. Then just don't turn any supercomputer on.
Tyron: [continues monologue] But I knew you would return. You insolent spoiled brats ruin other's achievements for your own amusement. My Emerald Guard is ready to punish you.
Aelita: And we have no reason to fight them.
Tyron: Ah but my soldiers have an incentive. To make them motivated, I set up this tournament for the next time you invaded.
Odd: A tournament? Is this. Is this! A TOURNAMENT ARC!?
Tyron: There will be a series of individual bouts. Winner moves onto the next fight until only one winner remains the champion.
William: Oh is this what the "champion" business that Naja ninja was boasting about before.
Tyron: If you win, you go free. If you lose… we'll talk about that when it happens.
Odd: Wait, we have to beat all your ninjas? There's five of us! How's that fair?
Tyron: I can assure the agitated purple feline, which can only be Mr. Della Robbia, that this competition is fair. [sarcastic] Although my forces have the advantage in numbers, you have years of experience fighting on a virtual world. Yes, I was able to deduce that from the limited contact we had.
Jeremy: He literally just looked at the timestamps on some of the files he stole.
Tyron: Oh it appears you have vehicles, now those are against tournament regulation.
[The overwing disappears.]
Yumi: Jeremy
Jeremy: He's controlling the space. He set this up beforehand. That's what the activated tower is for. It's not a simulation bubble or a guardian.
Aelita: This doesn't feel like a time loop sphere we were trapped in before either.
Odd: Einstein, don't let him take my overboard away.
Jeremy: I'll see what I can do. He's controlling what entities get access to the space. So what if it's not a separate entity?
[Overbike disappears.]
Jeremy: Okay, it's quick and dirty. I'll patch it later.
[The overboard stays by Odd.]
Tyron: Hmm. How did he…? [immediately goes over to a technician] You figure out how he did that.
Jeremy: Listen up everyone. He's taking advantage of the fact this is a new virtual world for us. If you get devirtualized you'll be lost in the frontier: an endless white limbo.
William: But all we need to do is complete the tournament and everyone will be fine.
Jeremy: I doubt he's going to play fair. He's not just going to give us the devirtualization relay code if you win. But it's not like he can stop you from taking it from the terminal if all the ninjas are devirtualized. It looks like you each got teleported to a separate instance of the pagoda. If you need to communicate something, just tell me. Just keep in mind he can hear everything you say.
[Ninjas attack them. Ulrich blocks and counters. Aelita dodges up into the air with wings. Yumi stops the blade with telekinesis and kicks the ninja as it attacks her. William dodges with super smoke.]
[Tyron is high reigning over his employees in his white lab with green logos.
Jeremy is clenching his hands in his dark lab with yellow glow from the panels on the walls.
A chat window pops up again. Tyron's voice laughter echoes in the computer lab. Jeremy Ignores it. Instead he activates his voice synthesizer.]
Jeremy: Everyone I'm switching to a channel only you can hear. Everything I say is private to you now.
[William is in the middle of dodging the advancing ninja's slashes.]
William: Smoke screen!
[He blinds the ninja and heaves his sword into a spinning up slash. The ninja just barely blocks at the last second, knocking its sword away.]
William: Sulfur shot.
[He creates a ball of smoke in his hand and shot it out and hits the ninja; it floats into the air as if an invisible hand was dragging it upward.
William charges his blade; the force on the ninja disappears and it falls.]
William: Heaven piercer!
Jeremy: Conserve your resources. We don't know how many members they have.
William: I'll just use my sword more and build it back up. [Gesturing to the tendrils on his blade]
[William absorbs the smoke left by the ninja.]
[Odd is dodging the ninja's swings as it's eagerly pursuing him. He's flying away trying to stay away from the blades while it's spinning them to deflect his arrows.]
Jeremy: You're going to have to attack some time Odd.
Odd: I don't want to lose my board in the first round.
Jeremy: You're not going to lose it; I made it part of your equipment.
Odd: Really?
Jeremy: Yeah, the bottom can absorb hits now.
Odd: Oh cool!
[Odd does a 180 and blocks the ninjas jumping down slash with the board. He peeks over the edge of the board. Ninja looks up to meet his eyes. Odd gets a smug grin.]
Odd: [smug] Lazer arrow.
[Ninja blocks. Odd does a backflip and rams the overboard into the ninja, shoving it backward. He fires arrows while circling it. Ninja deflects some. It throws one sword at him. Odd flips upside down to dodge. While flying upside down, he kick-flips the board at the ninja. (still upside down) It jumps into the air. He does a barrel roll in midair and aims at the ceiling. The board knocks the ninja off its feet and Odd nails it while upside down with a barrage of arrows and finishes his flip to land on the board.]
Odd: So... Ten points landing, nine points? Tell me you saw me take down a ninja with a hoverboard. [laughs]. I love that I can just say things like that and its completely normal.
[The room flashes for each LW and a new ninja appears.]
Jeremy: How did he do that? That wasn't virtualization. I think it's safe to say that its due to the activated tower. So XANA didn't activate it. This is the second time Tyron did this.
Yumi: Jeremy, I got the different one.
[The special ninja, Naja, looks mostly the same as the other ninjas: Green black with white arrows. But unlike the regular ninjas this one had a humanoid face. The eyes were just pale white blank and expressionless. Short, trimmed hair. Looks like it was wearing a vest and leggings with elbow spikes.]
Yumi: Wait, before we fight, I have a proposal for you.
[Naja attacks. Yumi throws her fans. Naja falls through the ground. As Yumi is looking around for her, the ninja pops up from behind her. It's push spike flies out at Yumi's head. Yumi cartwheels away just as her fans return to her and the spike THUNKs into the second story wooden support above them, breaking it off. The ninja rolls to the left behind a post as two fans cut the ground. Yumi slashes the post apart with two more fans from her satchel on the back of her Obi sash. The ninja rolls away…
Right into the path of the first two fans as they travel back to Yumi.]
Naja LP: 110 - 100 - 90
[Naja looks around for Yumi, but she's nowhere to be seen.]
VSHUR
[Naja bats away a fan and its wizzes into the wall and flutters onto the ground. Ninja jumps up onto the tower platform. She doesn't see Yumi whose hiding along the tower platform's side.]
Yumi: Your boss is endangering everyone.
[Naja looks up and sees the fans in the air high above near orbiting the top of the tower. While the ninja is looking up, an Orange glow covers the debris in the arena, including the damaged pieces of the pillar and post from the previous clash begin to float. Naja looks at where Yumi's voice is, behind the tower platform.]
Yumi: Including you. [Naja aims her spike at the platform.] And all the ninjas. [Naja hesitates, but still decides to attack.]
Naja: Jingu Bang.
[Shoots out her extended spear into the edge of the platform. It pierces through the mat and continues to the ground level. Angled in such a way to take out anyone hiding there.
No one jumps out and no devirtualization SFX.
Yumi, on another side, relaxes her outstretched hand. The debris fall on the ninja's head. Focus on the head, which the debris seem to pass through. Yumi sees the debris clatter the ground and mid fan throw, she stops herself. The ninja is gone. Yumi coils down and backflips up to the second floor onto a wooden crossbeam between the balconies, surveying the area.
Naja crawls out of the wall behind Yumi and goes for her back. Yumi whips her arm around and catches Naja with a fan to the chest mid stride. The fan passes right through and hits the wall where Naja emerged. Naja herself falls out of her run and through the balcony and passes right through the ground floor. Yumi tugs her fan back to her with telekinesis. Naja rockets out of the floor.]
Naja LP: 90 - 88
[Yumi notices her as Naja hits the apex of her jump and swings at Yumi's unprotected back.]
Naja: JINGU-
WHIFF
[Yumi slams her Yumi stick (the green staff) into the ninjas face. It passes right through. It falls back through the ground floor. Yumi backflips onto the railing and springboards up into the air to catch her fans.]
Yumi: I can't hit her.
Jeremy: What do you mean?
Yumi: I mean my attacks just pass right through it.
[she lands on top of the tower. There's a green flash on the floor and blur streaking toward Yumi. She jumps out of the ground. She throws her fans, but they pass right through. Naja reaches out. Yumi snaps open her fans to intercept. The arm passes right through.]
Naja: [whispers] Jingu BANG
[A spike exits Yumi's back.]
Yumi LP: 180 - 0
CRRSSH
[Yumi is devirtualized as Naja lands on the tower platform with its hand spike in its spear form, skewered through Yumi's disappearing avatar.]
Tyron: Use the tower. Restore your Life Points to full before the next fight.
[Naja enters the tower.]
[Aelita sees Odd teleport in.]
Odd: Uh, I get the point of tournament arcs is to have interesting matchups, but this isn't what I had in mind.
[William stabs a ninja, reducing it to its wireframe form.]
DRRZZZN
[The room flashes.]
William: Come on. This is getting boring. Send me a challenge.
Ulrich: Hope you're looking for a good time.
[William whirls around to see Ulrich.]
Aelita throws an energy field against the wall, and it splinters open. Aelita tries reaching out the hole, but her arm hits an invisible wall.
Aelita: What!
Odd: [Exits the tower] I tried taking a dive in the tower, but it just brought me back up.
Aelita: There's a boundary. We can't get out. [Holds up her hand and starts to use creativity to delete the barrier]
Tyron: I admire your creativity, but it's pointless. The rules of this world have been altered. You cannot exit this area. Even if you removed that boundary, even if you teleported yourself out, you'll just find yourself right back in there.
Jeremy: So that's what he's using the tower's energy for.
Tyron: And I'm afraid you're out of time.
Aelita LP: 130 - 30
Odd LP: 150 - 50
Ulrich: So?
William: So…
[beat]
[Both their avatars spark]
William LP: 120 - 20
Ulrich LP: 170 - 70
Jeremy: [from above] Everyone hang on. I'll figure out a way around this.
[beat]
William: Hey.
Ulrich: Hmm.
William: [give it to me gesture/come at me bro] Let's end this. [Ulrich focuses on him] No dumb arguments. No more half measures. You. Me. Same reward as before.
Ulrich: Here?
William: This isn't passion. This is just a good opportunity to do what's necessary.
Ulrich: …What about rules?
William: Well, that was when we had to hold back.
Ulrich: [nods. Raises both swords] There can be only one.
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