“They’ll be weaker, sure…” Odd mumbled to himself as he walked from the cafeteria. The Salisbury steak was not exactly sitting well in his stomach. It left precious little room for all the butterflies that had appeared as the fight got closer. Odd clamped a hand to his middle and grimaced.
“What, you need help walking now?” Ulrich said as he tailed behind Odd. The others had gone to the factory as planned after lunch, electing Ulrich to stay behind with Odd for “clean-up duty”, as they’d called it.
The problem was, they couldn’t find a trace of anything out of the ordinary. No other Odds were poking their heads out of windows or making themselves visible in any way.
“How long is this going to take?” The cheesy smile did not match the dead tone of Odd’s voice.
“As long as it takes,” Ulrich said resolutely. “We need to do this before you collapse or someone really finds out what’s going on.”
“You’re right,” Odd agreed. “But how are we supposed to find all these me’s? They’re not predictable; I didn’t order them to do anything.”
“Can you concentrate really hard, and try to feel them out?” Ulrich theorized. “You said you think they’re draining your energy, so maybe the link works both ways.”
“Yeah…” Odd grew silent and stopped walking, clenching his eyes shut. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. Suddenly, he fell flat on his backside. “Oww…” Odd moaned.
“What the heck was that?” Ulrich asked, helping the other boy up.
“I think they’re up to some mischief,” Odd said. “All this red swam in my vision, and they I felt like someone was shoving me.” He shrugged.
“So, they’re on to us,” Ulrich frowned. “Great.”
xxxx
“It’s as I thought,” Jeremie turned away from the console. “The clones have been intermittently coming out though the scanners.”
“So, this is a bad thing, right?” Aelita said, only questioning because Jeremie had sounded a bit too positive.
“Yes and no. Because they’re coming from Lyoko’s power source, XANA knows about them. He is probably going to use them for some sort of attack, soon,” Jeremie said.
“So, where’s the good part?” Yumi scowled.
“XANA has to stretch his resources so thin that he is especially vulnerable right now. He’s had a growing number of Odd clones running around Kadic for days now. He’s never tried this prolonged of an attack.” Jeremie pushed his glasses up his nose and continued. “I stopped the cloning program Odd started, so no more clones will be coming, but we still have a small army to deal with. And, we should try to strike XANA while he’s down, too…” Jeremie trailed off, lost in thought.
“Any battle plans, general?” Aelita sent a coy grin at Jeremie, who blushed.
“Permission to kick butt, sir?” Yumi cracked a devilish grin of her own.
“Patience, patience,” Jeremie preached, but the choir was mostly deaf. “I need to come up with a way to locate all the clones first. I’ll try to get a program to trace their DNA pattern. It should be different, having some signs of XANA infiltration. Once I get that done, we can go and help Odd and Ulrich.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Get to it!” the girls said in unison.
“Sheesh, alright already…” And Jeremie bent down over the keyboard once more.
xxxx
Odd had led Ulrich to the locker room off the side of the soccer pitch.
“You think one of them’s in here?” Ulrich said, unsure. “Why would an Odd be here? You don’t play soccer much at all…”
“But I want to. The clones came out of a want to be able to do more on my part, so it makes sense they’d do all the things I’d want to but can’t,” Odd finished as he got to the door. “You better kick it in. I’ll need the strength to kick his butt.” Ulrich shrugged, but complied.
The door slammed into the opposite wall, splintered down the middle. “Whoops…” Ulrich minutely blushed, but grinned anyway.
A set of eyes gleamed from behind the bank of steel lockers, cat-like in their intensity. A hand reached out to kill the lights, and bedlam erupted.