Chapter 7:

The Shadow’s legacy Part 1:

The Beginning of the End

Bass walked unhurriedly through the ice sector.

His destination? A wide field, where the corpses of several monsters lay, victims of friendly fire.

However, that was still about ten minutes away, but Bass needed the time to think.

Why did he faint? What were those… thoughts… that passed through his head as he lay unconscious? And most importantly, how was he to return home?

The most interesting/weird thing was, to him, that he had the feeling that this had happened to him before. However, he was pretty sure that he would remember something like that.

The worst part was, in his own, slightly opinionated view, that whenever he thought back to the memories that had flashed by his mind, he somehow knew that the memories- if that was what they were, and not hallucinations brought on by his agony- were incomplete. Something was amiss, and only he could find out what.

These thoughts, on the other hand, had to be put on hold temporarily, as he had finally arrived. There were dead and dying monsters everywhere, and it was towards a dead tarantula that the messenger of darkness floated towards.

The tarantula’s nostrils, which usually dilated open and shut as a sort of way to see infrared waves, a “sixth sense,” if you will, were now sealed shut, save for one that had been blasted off by a laser bolt.

Moving down the corpse, Bass studied several holes in the body, each one coated with carbon-scoring.

Emotionlessly, he moved along to the next body, then the next, then the next. Every single wounded monster there had similar wounds, and Bass knew that no human could have produced these wounds.

He knew that the human, “Ulrich,” would have left slash marks.

“Yumi,” would have either crushed them with boulders or left slash marks.

“Odd,” had long-range weapons, but these wounds were done by laser, and what he fired was more like arrows of the medieval ages.

That left Aeilita, but she didn’t have any sort of weapon.

Hmmm… he hummed, trying to ponder what could have done this.

That is, until he noticed the nearest tower.

A dark idea occurred to Bass, and he let out an evil smile. The type that would make Dracula running to mommy.

If I can’t figure out who did this, he thought, perhaps a human does.

And with that, he moved to the nearest tower, dark thoughts in mind.

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AT KADIC ACCADAMY…

It was twelve o’clock at night. Everyone, from Principal Delmas to Odd, was sound asleep. There was no noise anywhere.

Nowhere, save for one room occupied by a solitary blond-haired computer genius.

In this room, hands as slender and trained as a pianist’s danced across the keyboard. It was graceful, in a strange sort of way.

Then, though barely noticeable to the untrained ear, there came a pause in the dance. It lasted but a fraction of a second, but that was a long time, if you knew the boy genius like Yumi, Aeilita, Odd, and Ulrich did.

And if you knew him, and you saw this, you would know that that signified a brainwave.

Almost instantly, the blond-haired boy’s efforts redoubled, his hands becoming a blur on the keyboard.

As suddenly as he had started, he stopped, wringing his hands, but just for a second.

Slowly, reverently, he then reached down and pressed the Enter key with a slender pointer finger.

The computer’s hard drive whirred, clicked, hummed, and then stopped.

Within seconds, the screen showed the most horrifying image imaginable.

ATTENTION!

The following error OE has occurred.

Insufficient memory to complete requested action:

Allyourbase.gigas/sithkingzerorocks/decode-diaryexe.

To complete action, please upgrade for more memory.

Memory needed to complete action:

8,796,546,765 G.B.

To continue, please click anywhere.

The boy genius, giving a small, tight-lipped smile, clicked the Blue Screen of Death away, saved his work to his Laptop, and went to bed.

SIX HOURS LATER…

Odd and Ulrich pounded against their friend’s door.

It had become kind of a routine for them, dragging Jeremie away from his work on Aeilita’s antivirus long enough to force him to bathe and eat.

However, when they barged in today, they found, for the first time in a month, Jeremie face-down on his bed, fast asleep.

ONE HOUR LATER…

“A way to decode Franz Hopper’s Diary?”

Yumi had arrived only recently, say in the last five minutes. Her hair was still a little damp from the shower, and she was still blinking sleep from her eyes.

Jeremie nodded in answer to Yumi’s question.

“Yeah. I spent all night working on it. It should work, but I’ll need some real computing power. I think that I might need to activate a few towers.”

Odd gave a small start in the middle of shoveling down a massive spoonful of cereal, resulting in the need for Ulrich and Yumi pounding their friend on the back in order to stop him from choking to death.

Once he had suitably recovered, Odd managed to gasp out:

“Jeremie, do you remember the last time you activated a tower? I nearly bought the farm on that one.”

Jeremie nodded his agreement to Odd’s inquiry.

“Yes, I remember. Don’t worry about it; I’ll have you guys in Lyoko to stop anything from going wrong.” A.N. and we all know how effective Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich are at keeping things from going wrong in Lyoko.

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IN LYOKO…

Bass’s hands swiftly and deftly moved vast amounts of data from side to side, searching for just the right chunk.

Like a miner, he searched, looking for the diamond in the rough, the one thing that would make sure that he would get exactly what he was searching for.

After ten hours of searching, his patience was wearing threadbare thin, but still, he looked.

And then, like finding the Hope diamond in a grab bag, he found it.

Reaching in, he pulled the program out, admiring it for a moment.

Then using only two fingers, he moved sections of its data: removing a piece here, adding stuff there, merely moving other things.

After less then a minute was up, the navi known as Bass held it aloft to admire his work.

Suddenly, the tower rocked in the throes of a massive explosion. Bass leapt into the air as a bolt of energy as thick as a young tree trunk tore a hole through the tower. However, even though he dodged the first bolt, he was not fast enough to stop another from slamming into his chest.

--- TO BE CONTINUED… ---