Sithking Zero: And so it begins… the end of our little journey…

In the following chapter, stuff will happen. Big stuff. Important stuff. Not too much Bass stuff, but lots of stuff. If you’ve seen the episode “the Key,” you’ll know a bunch of the stuff that goes on, but for others, it’ll be all-new stuff! It will… oh, damn, this sucks. Let’s just get on with it.

Disclaimer: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor wind, nor rain, change the fact that I don’t own Bass and Code: Lyoko.

Heart of a Warrior

Chapter 18:

Distress of the Princess

Aeilita stumbled back to her room, Bass’ voice following her all the way down the hall to the staircase. My brother, she thought numbly.

In all honesty, who could blame her? Everything that she ever considered to be true, from how she came to be, to who Franz Hopper was, was a lie. A lie that had been forcibly (and quite painfully) removed not ten minutes ago.

She was at her room before she really knew it, so numb from shock was she.

Too tired to even change, Aeilita flopped down on her bed and fell asleep.

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

ON LYOKO…

Bass stood alone, solitary on the peak of a mountain in the mountain sector.

Damn it… he cursed mentally.

Why didn’t Dr. Cossak tell me about any of this? Why did he keep me in the dark as to my true origins?

Bass squatted down on the rock and sighed.

“Okay, let’s review your situation. You are trapped in an unfamiliar system with a demonic AI that’s trying to kill you with near-limitless soldiers of all shapes and sizes. Your only hope lies with humans, who you’ve sworn to destroy, but one of them is your long-lost sister, who is somewhere along the lines of twelve years older then me. Also, you have physically assaulted their leader.”

Bass considered it for a moment. “Yes, time to painc.”

It was about then that Bass was hit in the back of the head with a thin laser.

He turned, to see one hundred hornets all charging shots and taking aim.

Bass sighed. Then smiled, darkly. “At least I get to work out some anger management issues…”

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

SEVERAL HOURS LATER… (9:30 A.M., to be absolutely precise)

The five heroes of Lyoko ate their breakfast in silence.

It wasn’t a gloomy silence, though it would have been appropriate, as it was quite foggy out. It was more of an awkward silence. Seriously, what was there to talk about? “Hi Aeilita, I hear that the human-hating artificial intelegence is your brother and a computer genius is your dad, how do you feel?”

Yeah, THAT conversation would go over really swell.

Finally, Jeremie broke the silence, saying quietly, “I found other stuff in the diary as well.”

If nothing else, the change in the atmosphere was noticeable.

Everyone seemed to straighten at this, but Aeilita especially seemed to tense up.

Jeremie continued, aware of his suddenly-attentive friends.

“After everyone left yesterday, I worked on analyzing the rest of the diary. What I found is that Aeilita does not actually have a virus. XANA merely took something out of you, tying you to him.”

Aeilita listened to this in silence.

“I figure that if we go to sector five, we’ll be able to find this fragment of you, Aeilita. Then, we can save both you and Franz Hopper wi-”

“No.” The pink-haired girl’s angry tone was a surprise to everyone sitting at the cafeteria table.

“Bass was right; Franz Hopper is not my father. Would anyone who loved me seal me away in a computer for so long?”

She got up, her breakfast barely half done. “I need to be alone,” she stated simply.

As she walked away, Ulrich’s gaze followed the girl. “I don’t think that she’s feeling all that great.” He noted.

“I know,” said Odd. “Normally, she loves oatmeal.”

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

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” came the roar as Bass fired a massive beam of light, disintegrating the Megatanks that were firing on his position.

Bass then slumped down behind a rock, chest heaving.

“Twelve… Damn… hours…” he gasped.

“CAN I HAVE A MOMENT’S PEACE?” he screamed at the tarantulas that had taken up firing positions next to him.

“I’ve been killing you guys for twelve hours now;” he muttered to himself as he punched a tarantula in the face, crushing its skull.

Heaving the monster’s corpse at the other monsters, knocking them off the edge and into the digital sea, he stated wearily but angrily, “why aren’t you getting the picture?”

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

Aeilita stepped out of the elevator and watched as the massive central core of the supercomputer rose into view. It took a few seconds as the core was about fifteen feet tall, but eventually, the core revealed itself completely.

Aeilita stepped forwards, pressing a button in the center of a black Eye of XANA. This caused a panel to slide back, revealing a large, conspicuous, mad-scientist style lever.

Hesitantly, Aeilita reached out and grabbed it.

“Goodbye, XANA.” She whispered, and as she pulled, her strength weakened, and she fell to the ground, dead as the computer next to her.

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

Bass was finished with a group of blocks when suddenly, all the monsters vanished.

Looking around, Bass realized that he was finally free, at least for a moment.

“Finally! I can get some sle- AAAUGHHHH!” he yelled, as the ground vanished underneath him .

He struggled as he fell, finally activating his flight power a mere one hundred feet above the digital sea.

Racing as fast as he possibly could, he flew back over the land he had fallen off of, only now realizing that it was being deleted.

As he flew past the wave of deletion, watching monsters fall into the digital sea (and steering clear of the pillars of light that followed) he made a very acute observation:

“Damn, I really hate this place.”

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

Jeremie typed a few keys onto the computer. He was hoping to check out more of the diary.

However, the message he was greeted with was a little different.

Would you like to try again?

So he did.

Again, he got the same message.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered to himself. “The only way that I couldn’t be able to access the supercomputer is if…”

Suddenly, the implications of what his inability to access the supercomputer meant hit him.

“Oh, damn,” he whispered, unknowingly mirroring the emotions and the words of Bass only two days ago.

Within seconds, he was already down the hall and on his way to the sewers.

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

FIVE MINUTES LATER…

Jeremie raced out of the elevator.

“AEILITA!” he cried. He immiediately dashed over to the supercomputer main core, slamming the lever into the “On” position.

He then dashed to Aeilita, scooping her near-lifeless body up and holding her in his arms.

He was rewarded with a faint heartbeat and a small, but growing, sense of warmth creeping back into her outer extremities (hands and feet.)

After a few minutes, Aeilita’s eyes fluttered open.

“Am I in heaven?” she murmured.

Jeremie smiled at her. “No, you’re back on Earth.”

He then grew concerned. “Aeilita, why would you do this? You knew that you would die, so…” his voice trailed off as her eyes probed his.

“I did it to get rid of XANA.” She responded simply. “I would rather die then have someone else suffer for my sake.”

“Aeilita…” Jeremie whispered. They were both staring into each other’s eyes. The space between the two closed slowly. They were less then an inch apart. Then, they connected.

For both of them, it was a moment that lasted an eternity, laced with the sort of bliss the soft, sweet kiss of two lovers can bring. For a moment in time, the worlds of Jeremie and Aeilita were merged into one world through the contact of their lips. Everything was right in their little world..

Or, at least, until the sound of a large amount of swearing coming from upstairs.

“What the-?” Aeilita looked up at the ceiling of the place, wondering what the source of this was.

She got up, striding quickly to the elevator. Jeremie followed right behind, then he pressed the “Up” button.

Both their faces were noticeably red.

Jeremie turned to Aeilita.

“We don’t tell Odd.”

“Agreed.”

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

Once the elevator doors opened, both Jeremie and Aeilita stepped out, seeing a familiar finned figure screaming.

“THAT B XANA! I OUGHT TO & $( (#$Y# #(#$#$ AND-”

Jeremie quickly hit the “headphone”, which allowed the voices to only come through the headphones and not the recently installed speakers.

“Bass?” he asked. “Is that you?”

A pause. “Why were you cussing?”

Another pause. “Fighting XANA creatures for twelve hours straight? And then Lyoko started to disintegrate?”

After a long moment, Aeilita saw Jeremie jump out of the seat, yelling, “MY GOD!”

He was very pale and was shaking slightly.

He then turned to Aeilita. “You really don’t want to know.”

Nonetheless, Aeilita placed the headphones on her head and began to speak.

“Bass? Are you there?”

“NO. This is XANA. I just happen to look and sound exactly like him. OF COURSE IT’S ME YOU IDIOT!”

“Well, what are you so mad about?”

“I was spending some time to myself, and all of a sudden, all these hornets start attacking me. It wouldn’t stop. They just kept coming and coming and coming. That lasted for about twelve hours. Then, they all went away. I was about to sleep, when-

“You can sleep?”

“Yeah. Can’t you?”

“Not in Lyoko. Only on Earth.”

“Weird. Anyways, I was about to sleep, when all of a sudden, the ground drops out from underneath me. This continued for about an hour, then it stopped, and I got to a tower. Thought I’d be safe. Then I start swearing and you show up.”

Aeilita looked uncomfortable.

Bass looked at her. “Why did Lyoko start to vanish? It’s almost like it was turned off.”

Aeilita looked for an excuse. “Umm… the battery was dead. We… got a new one!” she said. She did not want to face him after he learned what really happened.

Bass was skeptical for a moment, then decided to believe her.

“…Okay. I guess that makes sense.” He said, crossly.

Aeilita then asked him, “By the way, what did you say to Jeremie?”

“You don’t want to know.”

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

THE NEXT DAY…

Jeremie had called an emergency meeting. Everyone in the group, even Bass, was there (though Bass was on a small window in the corner, due to dimensional reasons.)

Jeremie cleared his throat, and the chatter died quickly.

“As most of you know, Aeilita had a piece of her removed by XANA. This means that if XANA dies, so does Aeilita.”

Bass looked up. “Really?”

Jeremie nodded. “Recently, while doing a search on Lyoko, I found the location of the piece in sector five. After school today, we can go and get it.”

That turned a few (human) heads. Odd was one of the most vocal opponents of the plan. “Jeremie, tonight’s the big end-of-year dance! Can’t we go?”

Ulrich was of the same mind, but after over an hour, both were outvoted.

The Lyoko Gang was going to Sector Five.

Sithking Zero:

MAN, that sucked. I really hated that chapter. Don’t bother trying to tell me what I did wrong, because this chapter only serves to get us from point A to point B. The big stuff will start happening next chapter. It will be shorter, but it will be awesome.

Please review!