Warren was in his room, working on some Chemistry homework when the door burst open…there stood Odd.
“XANA again?” Warren asked, getting up. Odd nodded, Warren smiled. “Well looks like I get to have some time to beat the sh!t out of our cybernetic friend. C’mon lets go!” he said and then hurried out the door.
The two hurried along and were joined by Urich after a few minutes, and they all headed toward the factory.
“Haven’t seen you a lot Warren how you been?” Urich asked
“I'm doing better than I was before.” Warren said…the group had gotten so accustomed to the attacks that some had started small talk on the way to the factory.
Aleisha was amazed; she never would have guessed that these kids were in charge of saving the world from an artificial intelligence! It was insane, even that Aelita girl was actually a computer program!
”You guys are insane! This has to be a prank!” She said, looking around the room “Whoever is taping this come out! I know you are there.”
“This isn’t a prank. Just calm down, the situation is under control.” Jeremie said, he was the last person in the room with her…the rest of them had gone back into the elevators.
“This better not be a prank, or you all will regret it.” Aleisha said, coming over to look over Jeremie’s shoulder out of pure curiosity. On the screens was a jumble of data streams, a digital area, and a few things that looked like cards, but they had pictures of Aelita and Yumi on them. Suddenly she heard the sound of the elevator door opening and looked up, there stood Odd, Urich and… “Warren? What are you doing here?” she stammered, running over to him.
“My job.” Warren said in a business like tone. Then he turned to Jeremie “Nothing is happening that I can tell just yet, but I am going up top to see what I can do to slow him down if he sends anything our way.”
“Odd and I are going down to the scanners to see what damage we can do to XANA’s plan.” Urich said.
Aleisha grabbed his arm, looking at him scared. “What is going on?” she asked, her voice tinged with fear. She had never seen him in this sort of fervor about something before.
“Nothing of dire importance…just wait with Jeremie and you will be fine.” Warren said and kissed her quickly. “We will all explain after this is over, I promise you.”
She drew him closer and kissed him long and hard. “Stay safe.” She whispered when they separated, still hanging on his arm.
“I always am. Stay here, normally this place doesn’t get hit.” Warren said and then walked over to the elevator. Just when he was about to press the button to call the thing the doors burst open. The kid inside leapt out of the elevator and attacked Warren.
The boy was just a little shorter than Warren was, and had wild black hair. He was wearing a black shirt over a red long sleeve T-shirt, with jeans that were rolled up past military looking boots. Aleisha didn’t recognize the kid but apparently Warren and Jeremie did, because she noticed that Warren was using most of the disabling techniques that he knew…not most of the harmful ones that he would have used if he didn’t know the person. Jeremie was practically screaming into the microphone that he had clipped to his ear.
“XANA has William, Warren is taking care of him though.” She heard Jeremie said
Warren ended up overpowering William and pinning him to the ground and sitting on him…looking minorly bored.
“You’d think that XANA would try something different, other than the same moves over and over again.” Warren said, looking at the kid that he was sitting on. “I mean same opening, same middle game, Checkmate.”
“Yeah I know. It is kind of funny that he is the super computer AI and he still can’t come up with something that will actually work on us. The group is at the tower.” Jeremie said, “We won’t use the time reversal, just take him back and say he passed out in the lunchroom.”
Warren shrugged “Sounds cool.” He said then turned to Aleisha. “So what do you think of what we do?”
Aleisha smiled. “It’s insane, but fun from the stuff that you say. I’m in.”
Warren smiled, and Jeremie looked up from the computer. “You can get off him now, she is in the tower…” Jeremie said and the kid stopped struggling and went limp.
Warren immediately got off him and stretched. “Now to get back to the real world.” He sighed…and waited for a second for the rest of the team. They arrived just a little bit later, looking tired, but alive.
“Welcome back everyone.” Warren said, watching the rest of the group recovering from devirtulization. “Now who is going to help me carry William back to school?” Urich came up and they made a seat for him out of their arms and then left for the school.
