Sithking Zero: None of this belongs to me. Go away, foolish humans.

Hi! Today’s chapter will be another attempt to go from “Point A,” to “Point B.” Since I want at least three full chapters for the finale, (because that is what’s next!) this chapter will be pretty short and boring, with an unexpected revelation at the end (Aeilita is carrying Bass’ child. Just kidding!)

Sorry it’s been a little while. I’ve been checking out “Sluggy Freelance,” a really funny online comic. Also, I’ve burned another one of my CD’s. I don’t sing the songs, I just burn songs from I-tunes and stuff to disc.

Anyway…

Heart of a Warrior:
Chapter 19:

Core Strategy

Jeremie looked over his shoulder at the menacing figure. Well, at the tall teen-ager with purple hair, at least.

“Remind me again why you’re helping us recover Aeilita’s missing piece? I thought that you didn’t like humans. So why are you helping us?”

Bass, in human form, was wearing a red shirt with black jeans. His purple marks underneath his eyes were still there, though, and his hair was a lightish purple.

He ran his hand through his hair for a moment before speaking.

“Three reasons, human. One, I have a life-debt to her. She saved me from being deleted from XANA’s virus and healed my scar; I have no choice but to repay it. Two, and this has to do with the first reason…”

He took a breath and sighed. “Even though I nearly scared the Crap out of your warriors, and almost killed you, Aeilita still fixed me and treated me with kindness and affection. In my ten years of wandering, not one person has ever treated me with any respect except as an opponent. Even early in my travels, the only way people would ever talk to me was in insults. Before I killed them, of course.”

“It’s a wonder why no one treated you nicely,” said Jeremie dryly.

Bass ignored that. “However, I nearly vaporize her. I threaten her life. And I try killing her friends. At the bare minimum, I usually get a ‘I will have my revenge, Bass!” by now. But she’s… different. It’s like she can see past someone’s façade and see into your soul.”

“I know,” Jeremie smiled goofily, spacing out for a moment. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

Then he looked back at Bass. “Oh, crap. You’re her brother, right?”

Bass smiled a demonic smile. “Yes. In fact, that’s reason number three.”

“You’re going to hurt me for thinking about your sister, aren’t you?”

“I need a reason?”

Bass had just started moving towards Jeremie when Jim opened the door.

“Jeremie?” Jim asked, looking confused. “Who’s this? And why is he in the dorms?”

“Errr….” Bass stuttered. Jeremie, however, was much better at dealing with this sort of thing.

“This is Forte Stones, sir,” he replied smoothly. “He’s visiting his little sister Aeilita, and he’s also touring the campus. He’s thinking of staying here.”

Jim looked skeptical for a moment. Then, he nodded. “Very well, carry on.”

After waiting until Jim was out of earshot, Bass said the one thing that was most memorable about the occasion.

“Forte? You couldn’t think up anything dumber? Like maybe, ‘Tango’ or ‘Gospel?’”

“I was rushed. Give me a break!”

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“So, Yumi, I was wondering… Would you like to go to the dance tonight?”

“No, William, I have a previous engagement. Sorry!” came Yumi’s chipper response.

“Oh… well… If something comes up…” he muttered.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the courtyard…

“NO.”

“But Ulrich, Dear, I haven’t even asked you yet! How can you know-”

“Sissi, it’s you. There’s a dance tonight. You’re obsessed with me. What else are you going to do but ask me out?”

Sissi straightened slightly. “Well, if you won’t have me as your-”

“My what? My ‘Girlfriend?’ Listen, Sissi, and listen very seriously. I. Don’t. Love. You. You are an annoyance and you’ve caused me nothing but grief and misery since I met you. I would like nothing better then you just LEAVING ME ALONE!” Ulrich shouted.

Sissi stared at him for a moment, tears filling her eyes. Then, she turned and ran.

As she was running away, Bass (or Forte, as we must call him in his human form) and Jeremie walked up to Ulrich.

Jeremie took one look at Sissi and said, “What did you say to her? It sounded kind of harsh.”

Behind Jeremie’s back, Forte was giving Ulrich a nasty glare.

“Hey, Jeremie, who’s this?” Ulrich asked.

“Remember me?” Forte asked, his familiar aloof, cold tone seeping back into his voice.

Ulrich jumped back slightly. “What are you doing in our world?”

“I came to see why humans act the way that they do. I’m looking for a simple answer.”

“Then Bass, you are in for a rude awakening.” Odd had walked up behind the group, “Humans aren’t simple creatures at all.”

“I know.”

“But you just said-”

“You are proof of the fact that humans aren’t simple, Weird.”

“HEY! I take offense to that. And my name’s Odd!”

“Close enough.”

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THAT NIGHT…

“Scanner, Aeilita! Scanner, Ulrich! Scanner, Odd! Scanner, Yumi! Scanner, Bass!”

Jeremie reached out with his pinky finger and hit the enter key.

“Virtualization!”

With practiced ease, Aeilita, Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi fell from the sky, landing gracefully on their feet.

Bass, without any experience being virtualized, managed a spectacular face plant that cracked the ice of the ice sector. (A.N.: If you recall, he has only gone out of Lyoko before. He’s never gone in (except for his first time)).

Aeilita smiled as Odd laughed hard and skated over to him, offering a hand.

Bass took it, pulling himself up.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Now, as for your friend…” he said, floating towards Odd.

“Get away from me!”

Jeremie thankfully broke in at this point, saying, “I’m materializing the vehicles! Sorry Bass, I don’t have one for… Oh, wait, you can fly, right?”

“Correct.”

“Okay. All of you need to head north-northwest for the fastest route to the edge of the sector. Just say when you’re there and I’ll type in the code.”

And so, they left.

After a couple of minutes, they finally came to the very edge of the ice sector.

“So… now what?” asked Bass. “I mean aside from the view.”

Jeremie smiled as he typed in the code.

SCIPIO

Within seconds, a large ball swooped in behind our heroes, taking Bass totally by surprise. The others by now were used to it, so they weren’t really fazed.

After a few minutes of whirling and twisting through the Ice Sector, the sphere dove into the brilliant light of the digital sea that surrounded Carthage.

After that, the gigantic blue sphere of Carthage came into view, surrounded by the thousands of thousands of information panels. For a moment, Carthage hovered there, suspended in the view of the transit orb.

Then, it flew directly towards a massive rift in the upper hemisphere, making its way through the giant orb to the core: a large open spherical area with a massive eye of XANA on the floor.

The transport orb slowly stopped spinning, dividing itself and dropping the warriors.

Odd broke the silence (aside from the whirring of the sphere that surrounded them on all sides) by crying out, “I don’t feel sick!”

“Don’t you usually feel sick when we go to sector five?” asked Ulrich, puzzled at the turn of events.

“Yeah, but I feel fine.” He said, glad but puzzled as well.

“Heads up, the room is stabilizing and the path is opening up,” called Jeremie.

A gap in the sphere was rotating along with the room, and was now vertically aligned with a randomly selected path. With a gentle clunk noise, it docked with the room and the rest of sector five.

As one, the group jumped forwards, across the thin bridge to sector five and it’s infinite dangers and shifting land.

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Power for me.

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“Hurry, Yumi, you only have ten seconds left to press the key!”

Jeremie’s panicked tone was of no concern to Yumi, she was completely focused on the task at hand. The Creeper in front of her, directly in front of the key that would prevent the sector from re-configuring itself, was charging a laser blast that would send her back to the real world.

Doing an elegant spin kick, she effortlessly kicked the creeper off the nearby ledge and to its untimely demise. Then, she slammed her hand into the key, opening a massive hole in the floor.

“Okay, Jeremie, where to next?” came Odd’s chipper querry, watching as chunks of the floor re-arranged themselves into steps.

“Down, actually. That path takes you almost exactly to Aeilita’s fragment.”

And down they went, almost a mile, actually.

Once at the bottom, they entered a very large room. It was fairly straightforward, with a very long path and Aeilita’s memory fragment at the end.

However, the six creepers in the path looked as if they would impede our heroes progress.

That is, until Bass blasted them out of the way with his Earthbreaker attack.

Then, he turned. “Look out!” he yelled, as several tarantulas marched in through the entryway.

He turned to Ulrich and the others. “You take the monsters! I’ll take Aeilita to the memory fragment!”

With that, he grabbed Aeilita around the waist, a cruel smile in place.

Then, he threw her at her friends, knocking them over like bowling pins.

With his left hand, he blasted all the monsters in the doorway, then hovered above the Lyokoans.

“You pathetic human fools. You actually believed I was helping you?”

“You’re possessed by XANA, aren’t you!” cried Aeilita.

“I don’t need XANA!” he roared. “I don’t need anyone! Actually, now that I think about it…”

He turned to the Aeilita fragment. “I do need that.”

“WHY?” came Jeremie’s voice from above.

“You truly are fools.” Bass chuckled, the same dark laugh he always got before killing a helpless foe. “Human coding, when given to a Net Navi, such as myself, is the same as producing a nuclear reaction. It gives the navi in question massive amounts of power unrivaled by anything else. And that amount of human coding…”

He paused for a moment. “I would become a GOD, able to travel to both worlds. Then, all humans will like dead at my feet.”

“So, I must thank you for leading me to the one thing that will damn your race to oblivion.”

And with that, he leapt into the air, soaring to the fragment of the pink-haired girl in less then ten seconds.

“And god said, let there be light.” Muttered Bass as he touched down next to the data fragment. It wasn’t much to look at , mostly like a yellow ball with a Barbie-sized version of Aeilita inside of it. “GET ABILITY!” he cried, slamming his hands into the data.

Have you ever had one of those moments where time seems to slow down before a catastrophe happens, even though you don’t know why? Aeilita was experiencing this now as she watched Bass try to absorb the data.

In an instant, she found out why. As soon as Bass slammed his hands into the ball of data, it turned from an Aeilita fragment into an equally sized gray ball with red goo in the middle.

Bass’ eyes widened in horror when he saw the transformation occurred.

“Oh, Fu-” was all he had time to say before the ball exploded.

A massive wave of red goo exploded outwards, enveloping Bass and Aeilita in its goopy clutches. The ball, however, was rising on a massive wave of goo, into the center of a tall pillar of the stuff. It formed a protective cocoon around itself, then materialized two metal spikes on its shoulders. Then, two giant metal free-floating claws rose out of the goo, floating at about waist-height, before a giant metal cylinder with many metal fans and a single glowing red eye settled itself where the head would be (if it were human.)

“WHAT THE HELL? WHY THE HELL IS ALPHA HERE!” Screamed Bass in fear.

“He’s here because I willed him to be,” came an evil, yet feminine, voice.

A samurai-armor clad female with XANA eyes all over hopped onto Alpha’s shoulder.

“Hello, humans.” Cried the figure, “I am XANA!”