Sithking Zero: CL and Mega Man me no own. Copyright lawyers, go away.

Bass is in the real world, Bass is in the real world! I have been planning this moment since I started writing this back in the middle of second season.

And now… I (and our heroes) will p4wN.

Heart of a Warrior

Chapter 11:

Love and Loss on the Net

Tears streaked down her face, and she huddled into the corner of the hall farthest from the Memory-sucking abomination of hell.

She felt a tentacle touch her head…

Then a tendril touched her side…

Then an utterly alien scream of pain, accompanied by a brilliant flash of light, visible through her closed eyes.

She carefully looked up.

There was now a crater where there had been a hall. In the center, remains of a monster lay strewn about on the floor.

In the very middle of it all, and looking REALLY ticked, was a tall, cloaked figure with yellow fins on his head.

“We need to talk.” Growled Bass.

For a brief moment, all was silent.

Then, a brief stuttering from the bewildered, stunned, and frightened computer program turned human. And no, it wasn’t Bass.

“Did you just… save me?” she breathed.

He looked at her, regarding her coldly.

“… Yes.”

“Why?”

The most powerful navi in existence hesitated but a moment.

I have absolutely no idea, his brain thought.

“I have my reasons,” was what came out of his mouth.

He glanced back, to where Jeremie was frozen in shock.

Then, he turned back to Aeilita.

“You’re human. You all are.”

Aeilita gave him a curious look.

“Yes… we’re all humans. Except me.”

She looked down.

“I’m the only one who’s a true computer program. Jeremie created a materialization program, and he set me free from the supercomputer.”

Bass turned his back on Aeilita and faced Jeremie, flames in his eyes.

“YOU…” he rumbled, “YOU… TURN PROGRAMS… INTO HUMANS?”

Jeremie, wisely sensing danger, backpedaled furiously.

However, Bass movements were like a blur, and in an instant he had Jeremie by the throat and was strangling him with one hand.

“YOU…” Bass growled, “YOU…”

Probably for the first time, Bass was actually so enraged by this prospect that he was actually speechless.

“To turn a human into a program, that is an improvement,” Bass breathed, “But program to human… those who do should die.”

Jeremie, writhing uselessly in Bass’s steel grip, was turning blue from lack of oxygen.

It is interesting to note that normally, Bass can deflect any sort of attack and annihilate nearly every foe with the same effort it takes to think. That is why it is surprising what Yumi (A.N.: you thought that I had forgotten about them, right?) did to save her friend’s life actually worked.

With a conspicuous crash, a glass bottle grabbed from one of the chemistry labs impacted into the back of Bass’s helmet.

This had no effect on Bass except to drop Jeremie in surprise. He hit the ground with a slight thud, where he greedily drew in a breath of sweet, sweet air.

He turned his hate-filled eyes upon Yumi, purple nimbuses of energy swirling around his hands.

“You die first.”

Had Aeilita not intervened at that precise moment, it is of little doubt that Yumi would have been transformed into a pile of smoking ash.

However, she did intervene by jumping directly into the floating death machine’s path.

“STOP!” she cried, holding out her arms, shielding her friend from what she was sure was the coming onslaught.

However, to everyone’s great surprise, Bass stopped.

He looked starteld.

He held out his hand, pointing it at her, undoubtedly to fry her.

Nothing happened.

He drew back his hand, in the inevitable position of one who is planning to pound another’s head in.

His hand whistled through the air at speeds greater then 500 MPH.

His hand stopped a hair’s breadth from her forehead.

He looked at her, then his hand, then back at her.

Scowling darkly, he turned and walked back the way he had come.

“You live today,” he muttered darkly.

However, before he got ten feet, the pink-haired program called his name.

Turning, Bass saw her hesitantly hold out her hand.

“Bass…” she said quietly, “Please help us.”

Bass stared at her hand for a moment.

“Why should I help you humans?”

“Because those monsters could kill innocent people.” Aeilita replied, startled at his angry response.

Bass stared back at her hand for one moment, before doing the one thing that would- and should- signify the end of the world.

“Yes. I’ll help you.” Reaching out slowly, he took her hand firmly in his and shook it.

“Thanks?” said Yumi, quizzically.

Correctly interpreting the look of confusion in her eyes, he responded, in typical Bass fashion, “I’m not being nice. If anyone’s going to kill humans, it’s going to be me.”

And leaving on this high note, he floated through the hole in the wall where the Skipazoa had made its dramatic (if last) entrance into Aeilita’s life.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Jeremie cleared his throat, wincing slightly at the effort (he was strangled earlier, remember?)

“Ummm… Shouldn’t we head to the factory?”

There was a general tone of consent among the bewildered and confused warriors of Lyoko, but even as they turned to leave, grateful for Bass’s assistance, Aeilita turned back and glanced at the hole in the wall.

Suddenly, with a jolt of extreme agony, she collapsed to the ground, clutching her head against the horrible pain that assaulted it.

She opened her mouth in a horrible scream of pain, summoning her friends to her, but she was lost in memory, and her attention was not on this world…

AEILITA’S DREAM

She was in the middle of a very large and spacious room, with banks of computers and monitors covering the walls.

She heard the noise of a door slamming shut behind her, and she turned and saw a tall man with gray hair, beard, and moustache stride in, a small young girl hurrying along in his wake. A young girl with a very familiar shade of pink hair.

Real Aeilita nearly did a double take, seeing the girl’s true identity,

It was her. Younger and smaller, to be sure, but her nonetheless.

The man she was following walked hurriedly up to the blond-haired man.

“How are the preparations on your defense program coming?” he asked, slightly out of breath.

“They’re going well, Mr. Hopper,” chimed the blond-haired man cheerfully.

“He should be able to protect Lyoko for many years to come.”

Mr. Hopper walked over to the console, so Real Aeilita and Dream Aeilita’s attentions were naturally drawn to the console, as well.

Real Aeilita, without the others hearing, let out a gasp.

A very familiar being’s image was on the console.

“I must admit,” Mr. Hopper’s voice came, making Real Aeilita jump slightly, “This all looks very impressive, but what does this program do?”

As he said this, he indicated a computer screen to the left of the main one, with strange glyphs, graphs, and equations continually self-checked themselves, moving constantly.

“That’s an experimental program I’ve designed that should, in theory, allow for the ability to duplicate the powers of any foe that he faces.”

Mr. Hopper’s eyes widened slightly.

“Would there be any way to duplicate this program and install it on a human, Mr. Cossak?”

Mr. Cossak shook his head.

“Sorry, sir, but not without suffering major brain damage.”

“Yes, father?” She called back, as she turned back towards her father.

“I want you to come meet your new brother.” He said, gesturing towards the screen where a finned program’s image floated in the middle of the screen.

Real Aeilita’s vision slowly dissolved away into a white blur as her dream self looked again on the figure on the screen.

THE REAL WORLD…

Jeremie was gently splashing a little bit of water from a leaking pipe on Aeilita’s face, which, after ten minutes of him trying to wake her up, finally happened.

The look of tender care and gentleness turned to one of elation as she began to stir.

Recovering quickly, Jeremie, being the chivalrous man he was, helped her into a sitting position, with him kneeling but a few feet away to help her.

Helping her up with one hand, he gently asked her, “Aeilita? Are you all right? What happened?”

She wobbled, slightly weakened from the whole experience.

“I’m fine… I think,” she murmured. “Where am I?”

“At the factory. Ulrich and I helped to carry you here.” He looked a little sheepish for a moment. “We figured that you’d be safer here.”

“I had another vision.” She blurted out suddenly.

Jeremie looked at her, his caring nature still there, but shock and interest took their place.

“Are you sure?” he asked, lowering his voice and leaning a little closer. “Are they like the ones that you had at the Hermitage?”

The Hermitage was an old house in the woods, about halfway between Kadic Academy and the factory. A short while after moving into Kadic, Aeilita, driven by visions of wolves and other frightening things, found the Hermitage, where she experienced strange visions of rooms she had never seen, strange men, and (for real) had nearly been killed by XANA doing a “Poltergeist” impression (making things fly around and try to kill people, not by opening a portal into hell.)

“Sort of,” she admitted, a little shyly.

“What was it about?” Jeremie pressed, while simultaneously dabbing her forehead with a damp cloth.

She hesitated for a moment, possibilities racing through her mind. If she was wrong in her suspicion, she would be considered crazy, as was what she thought. If she was right, it would be very weird.

“I don’t really know,” she murmured, telling the truth. “I saw Franz Hopper, and someone called ‘Mr. Cossak,’ and they were working on a program for Lyoko, but I don’t know what for.”

It was as close to the truth as she dared tread.

Jeremie, however, was not a mind reader, and as such believed what she had said.

“Wow…” he muttered.

“Yeah…” she said, a little disappointed.

A long awkward silence reigned after that.

“We should probably get going. Ulrich and Yumi have probably got their hands full already with the monsters on Lyoko.” Jeremie spoke abruptly, making Aeilita jump slightly.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” She said, still slightly starteled.

ON LYOKO…

As it turned out, Ulrich and Yumi were fighting their best against twelve Krabs, and were not faring so good. Even though Ulrich had used his triplicate maneuver, they were still outnumbered three to one, and they were all at minimal health. Each of Ulrich’s clones had ten life points, and Yumi only had twenty.

“This doesn’t look good,” growled Ulrich.

“What’s taking them so long?” asked Yumi, a trace of worry evident, but mostly angry.

As if her words carried immeasurable magic across Lyoko, Jeremie chose that moment to log in.

“Somebody call me?”

“Jeremie!” cried the four warriors, even as one of the Ulrich clones was annihilated by a Krab’s laser blast.

“Stay sharp; I’m sending Aeilita.”

However, perhaps it was Murphy’s Law, perhaps it was fate, perhaps Jeremie screwed up something royal, but Jeremie managed to virtualize her exactly on top of one of the Krabs, crumpling its legs with the sudden increase of weight on top.

Natrually, the Ulrich twins leapt at the chance, stabbing the creature from another universe through the ugly target-shaped crest.

However, in another second, both of the Ulrichs were destroyed by three well-placed laser blasts. Yumi quickly followed, but she took down three more with her fans.

Aeilita, seeing that this was a fight that she could not win, ran as fast as her legs would carry her from the eight remaining monsters, while at the same time summoning her reality-altering powers, the Krabs in hot pursuit.

Focusing her power into spiked shapes, she closed her eyes and let out a siren song, at the same time creating several stone spikes thirty feet in the air. As they completed, they dropped from the sky, deadly rocks from heaven.

Fortunately for Aeilita, she had planned this exactly.

First one, then another, then four more of the Krabs succumbed to the falling stones from heaven. It would have been comical, as it was so like a Loony Toons Cartoon. Each monster, running as fast as it could, was suddenly smashed into the ground by a huge stone spike.

Eventually, the last two Krabs were racing after the pink-haired girl, chasing her as fast as their reverse-articulated legs would allow them to run on the desert plain.

Another fortunate option was fast approaching for Aeilita, however.

After running as fast as she could for at least a mile, she veered to the left, racing towards the Oasis that was fast approaching.

She had been to this oasis before; it had been on one of her first excursions with her friends over a year ago.

At first glance, it was rather plain: a tree, and some dying shrub grasses clustered around a small hole of water.

However, Odd had discovered the true secret of this oasis: there was no water.

The “water” was an illusion, a hologram, if you will. If you fell through this, it would be only a short fall down until you reached a long, vaguely-oval shaped patch of land. At one end, the place where you fell. At the other was a tower, well-hidden, but there.

This particular tower was guarded by two more Krabs, at the sight of which Aeilita gave an exasperated growl.

“Would it kill XANA to just let me have it easy for JUST ONCE?” she grumbled.

At this point, she had been stalked by Skipazoa in the real world, nearly killed by Krabs, suffered a splitting headache, caused by a bizarre vision, the fate of her friends was unknown, and she was REALLY tired and desperate to go home.

So, in her desperation, she tried a really stupid move.

In the real world, Jeremie nearly ripped his headset off as Aeilita gave an earsplitting yell.

“AAAIIEEE!” She shrieked. “IT’S BASS!” she cried, while pointing off to her left.

Shockingly, the oldest trick in the book worked, and the Krabs turned to face this new threat.

Aeilita stifled a giggle as she sneaked past the two stupid monsters, slipping gently into the tower.

Within seconds, the tower was deactivated.

IN THE REAL WORLD…

Milly and Tamiya, the two freshmen reporters who wrote the school newspaper, huddled together in what they were sure was their last moments.

Two huge bunches of tentacles wrapped around their legs, dragging them out from the tables in the lunchroom they had been hiding under.

The tentacles were repositioned so that the two freshmen were positioned upright, then the last Skipazoa placed its tentacles on their foreheads.

However, as it was about to do so, it stopped.

The tentacles lost their power, becoming as weak as ropes.

As they hit the ground, a brilliant white light overtook them.

Bass turned from his musings over the carcass of a deceased monster in time to witness the light that overtook him.

And so, the day began anew…

Sithking Zero: Hi! I’m BAAACK! Did anyone miss me?

I’m not grounded, I’m not grounded, I’m not grounded…

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