Sithking Zero: Megaman, Code: Lyoko, and all affiliated companies, characters, products, or voice actors do not belong to me. Cadance and the Replicons belong to me, though.

Well, it’s a little soon, but here is Heart of a Warrior Chapter numero uno! LET’S ROCK!!!

Heart of a Warrior 3:
Warrior’s Redemption

Chapter 1:
Origins and Explanation

If one was to read a story, one would naturally assume that the story begins on page one and ends on the last page. That is a gross injustice against those who wrote the story in question. People who do this fail to ask, “Why was the character like this?” “How did the villain become so twisted?” “Could something have been done differently?”

The same is true with “Heart of a Warrior.” The story did not begin with Bass’ entrance to Lyoko, it did not begin when Bass was crippled at Scilabs, and it did not begin when Franz and his only daughter fled to Lyoko while Doctor Cossak fled to Japan with the Lyokoan Prototype defensive program, Bass.

This particular epic began almost twenty years ago, when a science teacher by the name of Franz Hopper began work on a great and powerful project, which he called Project Lyoko. It’s purpose was to destroy a French government project, called Project Carthage. However, time and military cutbacks canceled Project Carthage, and Project Lyoko was left open-ended, without a purpose.

Then, when Franz’s wife was killed in a car crash, he was left alone with his daughter, Aelita, who was eight at the time. And it hit him like a tidal wave:

The world was a corrupt and dangerous place. And so he set out to remake the world he had made, the world of Lyoko, into a world without danger, where he and his daughter could be safe forever. So he repeated the same day over two thousand times using the return to the past program, and at the end, he had a feeling. Aelita was getting it too, but not as strong, that they were both being watched by something.

In desperation, Franz turned to his close friend, Dr. Mikhael Cossak, in order for him to design a program to defend Lyoko from viruses and the like. And thusly, for the next year, Dr. Cossak worked tirelessly on a new program, one whose potential was nearly limitless. His name was Bass.EXE.

However, it was shortly after Bass was brought online that a new, dark program known as XANA struck. Her power was unbelievable, and nearly overwhelmed Bass. However, Franz used his newest program, the Heart of a Warrior program, to fuse his daughter with Bass in order to ensure everyone’s survival. The result was an awesome being known as Cadance, who beat XANA in about five minutes. However, once the two defused, the program could not be removed.

Shortly after that, XANA proved she was still alive and well, creating a series of false leads and accusations that pointed to Franz as an anti-government terrorist. In horror, Franz and his twelve-year old daughter fled to Lyoko, expecting to be greeted by Dr. Cossak and Bass.

However, Dr. Cossak and Bass were out in one of Cossak’s labs, and Dr. Cossak, fearing for the program that he had created and considered almost his son, fled for Japan, where the newly created internet system was a perfect new home for the revolutionary program Bass.

However, XANA was not done yet. After capturing Franz Hopper and erasing Aelita’s memories, she went after the only other person who had ever stood in her way: Bass.EXE. Using a tower, she possessed the core of the Alpha internet system prototype, causing it to go haywire. Bass, who already had a bit of a reputation of being reckless and powerful, was blamed, and nearly killed. This one simple act set Bass against humanity forever.

Fast forward ten years. A young boy named Lan Hikari receives a custom-made net navi, named Megaman.EXE. Together, they were very powerful. They defeated villains such as Dr. Albert Wily, who planned to delete the internet, Gospel, who had planned to flood the net with Bass clones, and Wily and Alpha again. However, in the process of defeating Wily a second time, both Megaman and Dr. Wily were absorbed into Alpha’s bulky goo-body.

At around the same time that Lan Hikari and Megaman.exe were brought together, however, another group was coming together for the first time nearly half a world away.

A 12-year old boy, Jeremie Belpois, was rummaging through an old, abandoned factory for robot parts when he stumbled upon a massive supercomputer in the basement. He turned it on and discovered Lyoko, a virtual world, and Aelita, who had amnesia and could not remember her true origins, and believed herself to be a computer program.

XANA was also awakened through the supercomputer’s reactivation, and almost immiediately started to attack the real world using towers, which were interface ports from the Real world to Lyoko. Jeremie and his friends, Ulrich Stern, Yumi Ishiyama, and Odd Della Robia worked together, and each time that XANA rose her ugly head, saved the world through use of Aelita’s tower-deactivating ability, her friends (and the scanners that allowed them to enter and exit Lyoko), and sheer dumb luck. However, Jeremie and his friends had an ultimate goal: Bring Aelita to the Real world as a human being, and thusly, allow them to shut down the supercomputer and kill XANA. The problem was, once they did bring Aelita to the real world, XANA infected her with a computer virus, linking them. If XANA died, Aelita would go too. (Sadly, the reverse was not true).

No person, on either side of the conflict, could have predicted what happened next, or how it would turn out.

Net agents went to Dr. Wily’s island and recovered the remnants of Alpha, including the core, which still contained much valuable data. From this, Megaman.EXE was recovered.

About a week after that, Megaman and Bass, who had been absorbed by Alpha but had escaped and fused with the remaints of the bug-born Gospel beast, faced off once again. Megaman triumphed again over Bass, whose increased power came to naught.

Bass, his pride and body wounded, fled to the safety of the undernet, in order to regain his strength.

However, XANA, knowing that she was vulnerable to Bass and Aelita (who were still gaining strength), set into motion new plans to destroy Bass, whom she considered to be the bigger threat. In an attempt to destroy him on her home turf, where she was strongest, XANA opened up a link portal to Lyoko, which Bass moved into. XANA attacked about a day later, deliberately choosing a tower that was very close to Bass, hoping that this would put Bass into contact with Aelita and cause her destruction, allowing XANA to move in and destroy Bass quite easily.

Needless to say, this plan failed. Bass merely talked to the humans, then left. Fortunately for XANA, neither Bass nor Aelita remembered each other, but XANA decided to cripple the power of the Black Shadow, as he was known, by planting a virus inside of him with a Scyphizoa. Later, during a XANA attack, Yumi found him lying prone on the ground, being attacked by a variety of monsters. She defeated the monsters and took him to a tower to be healed.

However, the act of viral implantation activated the Heart of a Warrior program, forcing him to protect Aelita from harm. This was evident two weeks later, when Aelita was attacked by an army of monsters, Bass remotely sent her his aura force field. In the process, he was knocked unconscious, but Aelita managed to complete the mission solo.

About 2.5 weeks later, Jeremie concocted a plan to decode Franz Hopper’s diary. It would take a little while to load, so he just set it to download.

XANA didn’t like this, and sent four Scyphizoas to the real world to destroy the Lyoko gang. Bass took this time to make a trip to the real world, and saved Aelita’s life from a tentacled monster in the process. Bass then formed a deal with Aelita to help save the world, though he would love nothing better then to destroy the humans infecting the earth. However, before Aelita got ten steps from Bass, she fell unconscious, and had a flashback of her father, her, and Dr. Cossak creating Bass. When she woke up, she was sent to Lyoko and the world was saved once again by a bunch of kids.

A day later, XANA hacked into the Scilab mainframe in Japan and stole the remnants of the Alpha-internet system. After engaging with an official, Protoman.EXE, XANA fled back to the portal’s entrance, with several captured computer viruses waiting. After possessing them, she marched them into Lyoko.

The next day, Franz Hopper’s diary was decoded. XANA tried to stop it by first sending tarantulas, and after those were deleted, sent in her viruses, which were scuttlists, one of the strongest type of virus in existence. After Odd and Yumi were devirtualized, Ulrich alone was there to stand up to them, and he nearly was devirtualized as well. Bass managed to save him at the last second, though.

However, XANA was not quite done yet. She attacked one last time with Polymorphic clones made to look like Bass and Ulrich. Bass vs. Bass lasted a long time, but Bass won by using the Gospel cannon, his second-most powerful move, on the foul copy. Ulrich won his fight too, but was devirtualized when a tarantula took him from behind.

XANA finally decided to just take over Jeremie’s activated tower, but Franz decided that this was a bad thing, and overrode XANA’s possession of the tower, decoding the diary in a matter of seconds.

The next day, Jeremie revealed two particularly interesting pieces of gossip from the diary to the gang: Franz Hopper was Aelita’s father and Bass was technically her brother.

Bass denied these claims by saying that Dr. Cossak was his father, as he was the one who created him. Then, he gave them the history of his life, or at least why he hated humans.

After he was done, Bass went to Lyoko to think about the various revelations of the past day, when he was attacked by a huge army of XANA monsters. Bass leapt into the fray, which lasted over twelve hours.

The next day, Aelita, willing to sacrifice her own life rather then have others pay for hers, turned off the supercomputer, thusly ending her own life.

Jeremie, noticing the break in his connection to the supercomputer, raced to the factory to find the problem. Noticing that Aelita was dead on the floor, he quickly turned on the Supercomputer, bringing her back to life. Then they kissed.

However, their moment of bliss was shattered by Bass’ swearing, because the ground had started to disappear beneath him.

That night, the gang went to sector five, in order to get Aelita’s missing piece. However, the data was a trap, and it turned out to be Alpha, the same goo-beast that had bested Bass twice in the past. XANA then revealed herself to be a girl, and with Alpha’s help, devirtualized everyone but Bass and Aelita, whom XANA had absorbed into Alpha.

Bass and Aelita were rescued by Franz Hopper, who fused them together into the being known as Cadance. Cadance blew her way out of Alpha, then destroyed XANA and sector five with the most powerful move in the arsenal, Vanishing World.

Bass then materialized the humans in the real world and explained what had happened, before leaving with the promise that “We will meet again.”

Two weeks later, Bass visited his father in the hospital, filling in more of his past and asking his father for forgiveness.

Two months after that, XANA brought her father out of the Supercomputer, and into the real world.

Four weeks after that, Bass faced off against a squad of beings known as “Replicons,” who bore a type of hybred XANA symbol. At the same time, XANA recruited the help of a Darkchip-addicted Bass clone, known as Forte.

Now, the pieces are falling into place for the forces of darkness, and Lyoko, Aelita, Bass, and the rest are at the core of a vast conspiracy to bring down humanity.

And that is where our story begins…

Sithking Zero: That’s the first chapter! Hope you like what I’ve got coming down the tubes in the future.

Read and Review, People!