Heart of a Warrior III: Warrior's Redemption. by Sithking Zero
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Author's Chapter Notes:

(Sings) "White is black, and black is white. Right is wrong, and Wrong is right... but nothing ever fills this hole inside your heart..."

Heart of a Warrior III:
Warrior’s Redemption

Chapter 14:
Betrayal
Part II

Jeremie stumbled from his room, laptop clutched to his chest, as the fire alarms began to shriek their siren song. He dashed as fast as he could before making it to the stairwell, than strapped the laptop to his back for safekeeping.

He made his way down the stairs as quickly as possible, pausing at a window to view the chaos below.

It was utter pandemonium. Bloks, suttling back and forth, were firing ice beams and fire rings at will at the students and teachers, who were trying to escape. Some were trying to fight back, though- Jim had grabbed a crowbar and was attempting to bash one to pieces. The remains of two deceased Bloks behind him were proof that the tactic could succeed, though burns were now visible beneath his clothes, and his jacket was smoking in several places. However, even as he bashed away at the cubically-shaped monster, another snuck up behind him and froze him up to his neck in ice.

Jeremie continued down the flights of stairs, pulling out his cell and calling the Supercomputer mainframe.

There were several rings, and Jeremie pressed a few more buttons, and a small circle appeared on the caller ID slot, with a diagonal slash through it.

Jeremie?” came the voice of their ally.

“Bass. It’s awful. There are Bloks everywhere, and we need to get to the factory!”

I’m on my way. Just be careful- things up there might get worse…”

Three beings in Lyoko heard Jeremie’s words. One responded to them verbally, and began to move towards a tower.

Another began her own preparations to activate another tower.

The final one, wrapped in his cape, flickered slightly and vanished.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Aelita hopper was crouched behind an overturned table, hearing the rapid thuds and bangs of laserfire against the door.

Suddenly, her cell rang. She whipped it out, recognizing the caller ID immiediately.

“Jeremie? Where are you?”

I’m heading for the boiler room. Ulrich’s pinned down in the courtyard, and I can’t get hold of Yumi!”

“The Bloks froze her, Jeremie. She took an ice blast for me,” Aelita responded. She glanced next to her, at Odd. He was staring at the door with an icy look in his eyes. Aelita took a moment to respond, unsettled by his seriousness. “Odd’s with me, though. Try to meet us in the Cafeteria. We can get through to the boiler rooms from there.”

Sounds like a plan. And Aelita?”

“Yes?”

Be careful. I just spoke to Bass, and he seems to think that something bad is going to happen. Just… try to stay alive, okay?”

“Of course, Jeremie. I love you.”

I love you too, princess.”

Then, he hung up.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

AT THE FACTORY…

In a secret chamber, hidden from the public eye, a tall scanner opened with a slight hiss, followed by escaping steam.

Out stepped a tall figure. At six foot even, he was an impressive height, and his golden fins made him even more so. His brown cape fluttered in the ventilation of scanner, and he smiled slightly.

Wordlessly, he walked forwards, pressing one button on the elevator on one side of the room. Two huge bars began to retract themselves, and the massive lock in the center of the door sparked, shifted, and twisted. Slowly, the huge doors opened, revealing an unassuming freight elevator. Without any further ceremony, the figure climbed in.

The massive, EMP-proof doors slid shut with astounding precision, only a few small thudding noises marking their closure. But these thuds were intermingled with a whirring hum, followed shortly afterwards by a loud hiss as steam and vapor poured out of a now-open scanner…

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Jeremie, normally the one working behind-the-scenes and away from the action, found himself creeping along the side of the dorm building, trying hard not to be seen by horrible, extradimensional monsters.

For what it was worth, these Bloks were acting strangely, he reflected. They seemed to move in fixed paths, either crawling or blasting anything that got in their way, unless they saw someone. Than, after freezing them, they would be taken to the center of the courtyard by a team of what looked like modified Bloks, with two short arms instead of four-directional eyes.

“What’s going on?” he muttered to himself. He knew that the humans were being rounded up, and he knew that, for some reason, the humans weren’t deliberately being harmed. The true question was, for what purpose?

Jeremie crouched down on the ground, hidden from view of the Blok patrols, and pulled out his laptop. Waiting for it to connect to the school’s wireless network, he set up the superscan, waiting until a secure connection onto the internet could be established before checking Lyoko.

A small light flickered in the bottom-right corner of the screen, indicating a connection was made. Smiling slightly, he hit the enter key. Towers on Lyoko, superimposed over a forest-green screen, flitted across the window, faster and faster. It paused on some, only momentarily, but than continued on with the scan.

Jeremie’s eyes widened in shock as a small message came back:

NO ACTIVATED TOWERS FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTINUE? Y/N?

He frowned, hitting the “Y” key, hoping desperately for results. Several minutes passed, and the same results were yielded. The message was clear: nowhere on Lyoko was there an activated tower.

Jeremie was staring in disbelief at the screen when a loud explosion rocked him back to the real world. Quickly, he slammed the laptop closed, and shot to his feet, ready to make a run for the cafeteria if XANA’s forces were making a move against him.

But when he cautiously peered around the corner, the stretch of ground leading to the cafeteria was littered with pieces of monsters and multiple smoldering craters. Standing in front of the Cafeteria, looking almost bored, was Bass, arms folded over his chest.

Jeremie smiled, but glanced around once more, checking to make sure that no Bloks were visible. When he was sure that there weren’t any there, he jogged out from behind cover to reach the building before any more trouble showed up.

Bass’ eyes widened as he saw the blonde running towards him.

“Ah, Jeremie!” he called pleasantly. “It’s a good thing you’re here. I need to discuss something with you.”

Jeremie slowed and stopped a few feet from the caped Navi. “Sure, what’s up?”

Bass clapped his hands together in front of himself.

“Jeremie, are you familiar with the concept of bait?”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Aelita heard the explosions, but because the students had piled a large amount of garbage and tables against the wall, was unable to see exactly what had happened.

Carefully, and ignoring the protests of some of the other students, she carefully pulled a piece of wood aside. It didn’t do much, but she could see Bass and Jeremie standing outside, and heard the muffled sound of them talking to each other. It was fairly quiet outside. Still, she wondered why the two didn’t just enter and take her and Odd to the factory, and stop this madness.

These thoughts and fears were banished in an instant as she watched Bass slam his fist into Jeremie’s stomach, lifting him off the ground and throwing him twenty feet, where he lay on the ground, curled in a ball.

Aelita began to desperately claw at the pile of debris blocking the door, and after a moment, Odd joined in.

Outside, Bass was punishing Jeremie in ways that seemed hellish. Black lightning raced along his arms, causing the boy to arch his back and scream. The screams continued as he reached out to the teen’s arms, breaking them square in the middle of the bones, before making a fist around the computer genius’ hand, pulverizing the boy’s fingers. His legs were immobilized with swift downward kicks, causing loud cracking sounds that echoed off of the walls of the buildings.

In order to give the boy a respite, the navi tore the laptop from his back and, with a flash of power, vaporized it. After that, he pumped more black lightning into the prone boy’s form. Screams wrenched themselves from the boy’s tortured body, and bruises blossomed across his body, the sub-dermal bloodloss growing quickly.

The creature’s perverse, demonic “Fun” was interrupted by a shrill shrieking. A pink blur raced past the navi, and dropped to her knees besides Jeremie. Aelita was staring in horror at Jeremie’s horrid appearance, tears seeping down her face.

She finally spun around, rage in her eyes. “BASS!! What is the matter with you? Why did you-”

Her tirade was cut off as the cloaked navi backhanded her across the face, sending her flying. She hit the ground and rolled, finally coming to a stop. She scrambled to her feet, but she was shaky.

The navi stared at her, a dark, perverse glee permeating his violet eyes.

“You’re wrong, my dear,” came his voice, and the cloak dropped away. His jumpsuit was slowly beginning to turn purple, and the fins were gaining spikes. Two huge skeletal bird’s wings stretched from his back, and the golden sections of his armor turned to silver. His fins were glowing purple, and his canines were elongating slightly.

“You’re wrong because you can’t grasp how utterly stupid you are.” His voice was now several shades higher than before, and almost had a reverb. “You have been calling me by that name for months now, and you still can’t grasp who I am. You never noticed. Ever.”

He began to walk over, deliberately grinding his foot into Jeremie’s hand as he passed. “You haven’t seen Bass since he left after the Battle in Sector Five. He’s been gone and hasn’t looked back once.” His hostile look gave way to a sympathetic one. “Though in your defense, I do rather look like him, don’t I?” he laughed as he approached, and Aelita backed away as fast as she could.

“Wh…who are…” she stammered, before she tripped into one of the holes blasted into the ground by the new person mere minutes earlier.

She rolled to the bottom, and the navi stood at the edge of the crater. She pointed at him.

“You’re working for XANA, aren’t you?” She cried.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Aaaaahhh… just the person I wanted to see. Though not exactly in that position…

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

“Working for XANA?” he burst out laughing after this accusation.

“We’re partners, for the moment,” he stated, after gaining control of his laughter. “But I think, after you die, I’ll change that slightly.”

He raised one hand above his head. A ball of condensed black lightning and yellow lightning began to coalesce in his hand, swirling and twisting upon itself.

“Do you have any idea what it was like? Pretending?” he snarled softly. “Every moment of that was torture. I had to pretend to be everything that I was not. I am not sympathetic. I am not a friend. I am a conqueror. An Emperor-to-be. I do not love. I do not regret. And I do not show mercy.”

The ball of energy was as big as a basketball now. It was glowing faintly, but in such a way that it appeared to absorb light.

“My name is Forte. And it will be the last name that you will ever hear.”

He reared his arm back. “DARKNESS….”

Aelita screamed, screwing her eyes shut against the inevitable.

“OVERLO-”

“EARTHBREAKER!!”

A sudden brilliance erupted, brilliantly enough to hurt her eyes even behind the closed lids.

When she opened them again, Forte was gone. The Administration building was now partially collapsed, and her crater was now part of a much larger crater.

There was a soft tapping noise, and Aelita spun around to see the source.

A tall figure was standing behind her on the lip of the hole. A long, brown cloak fluttered in the slight breeze. A circular symbol stood in the middle of his chest, in the shape of a lowercase “F.” Golden gauntlets and white gloves adorned his hands, and twin golden fins seemed to glow in the sun. Gold-and-black boots covered his feet, and two lightning-bolt designs ran up the sides of his black jumpsuit.

The figure had two purple marks below his crimson eyes, but those eyes were trained on the administration building’s ruins.

Suddenly, they flickered downwards to her prone form.

The two locked eyes, and for a moment, a connection between the two was forged.

Then, he spoke.

“Hello, Aelita.” Came his deep voice. “Unlike Forte…”

He returned his gaze to the ruins, out of which a clawed hand could be seen.

“My name is Bass,” He began,

“We need to talk.”

~ Table of Contents ~
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