HOAW III Chapter 24

Heart of a Warrior III:

Warrior's Redemption

Chapter 24:

Fire and Rain

WWW COMPUTER

Lightning crackled over the armor-clad samurai female's form, a wordless cry escaping from her lips.

After an eternity, the pain stopped. She fell to the ground, gasping for air that she, as an AI, did not need, but felt better anyway.

"Don't," growled the old man, "Fail. Again."

She gazed in despair at her father. "B-but why-"

"We are closing in on the end of an age. A dawning of a new era where I take the reins from the pathetic net-obsessed twits that dominate our society, and in this new era, I will expect my minions to be able to kill half a dozen children!"

"But, Fath-"

"Don't you dare call me that! You sicken me." The old man turned on one heel and jabbed his cane through the floor-to-ceiling holochamber that XANA was projecting into. While this did not harm her as a) she was in another reality, b) this was a hologram, and c) this was merely a hologram of a being dwelling in another reality, proximity sensors combined with feedback programs to make it feel as though XANA was being stabbed with a sword made of a delicate combination of electricity and pain.

Wily stormed from the room, cane clicking slightly against the ground as he stormed away. The holopad deactivated, but XANA remained lying on the ground where she had fallen after the torture.

An hour passed before, groaning as she did so, she picked herself up off the floor. Her eyes were red and swollen, unshed tears glistening in them. Loss and emptiness, she shuffled away to her quarters, which took her back to Carthage. Listlessly, she passed by monsters and Replicons on her way to her chambers, where she settled into the coffin-like recuperation chamber. And there, she let her mind wander.

It may surprise many that XANA was not an angry person. Yes, she did get frustrated when her plans did not come together. The Warriors who fought against her irked her to no end. The incompetence of her warriors filled her with annoyance. Forte, though, was one of the few beings or things that filled her with anger.

But now, something new began to fill XANA as the repair programs did their work. Something that curled under the despair that flooded her mind and heart upon hearing that she was "Useless," from her own father. Something that seared all it touched, sending acrid smoke up into her soul.

It was wild. It was chaotic. It was uncontrollable. It was full of pain. It was full of glee.

It was hate.

Granted, the hate wasn't all that strong, but hate was hate, and it spurred XANA into action, her processors calculating plans and options…

Forte, oblivious to XANA's return, stood before a tower in the Ice Sector. A psychotic smile dominated his features, eyes open wide and pupils dilated to their minimum width. Sparks of black lightning cascaded down his wings and into the ground, causing the ice to hiss as it was flashed to steam. His razor-edged wings, almost glowing purple, quivered in anticipation as he stared at the cream-colored, blue-glowing tower.

"Heh."

A grunt, not even considered standard syntax of any language, was all that Lyoko had before Forte shattered the laws and rules governing the virtual world. He raised his arms, and black lightning spilled out from his fingertips. The crackling bolts of pure evil wrapped themselves around the cream pillar, penetrating the blue smog that wreathed the tower's upper portion. Monsters for miles around fell to their knees, mentally screaming as the land they were tied to was forced to accept energies it was never meant to.

And slowly, the tower… began to absorb light, as if it was glowing black.

It was, so far, a quiet day in the Kadic Dorms. It was Saturday, so there were no classes.

And for once, all was right in Ulrich's world.

Intellectually, he knew about all of the problems. Odd being gone, the school under investigation for the 'mysterious' deaths, an internationally wanted madman who controlled his worst nemesis, and that he could tell no one about this, so he still had to take tests and exams.

However, it was a lovely day, so he and Yumi had decided to spend it studying outside. Time passed, and eventually the two of them had stopped, just enjoying each other's company.

Everything was absolutely perfect.

He signed as he laid on the grass, wondering if things could get any better.

Of course, as Ulrich foolishly chose to invoke Murphy's Law, meaning that things were about to get far, far worse.

Not too far from Kadic, there was an old Renault factory on an artificial island. The only way to get to it was a bridge that lead straight to the front door of the factory.

For years, this factory had remained silent, after the owners had sold it to a man named Franz Hopper. Franz had immediately closed it down and began his experiments in quantum computation with his friend, Mikhael Cossack. Through their efforts, the Supercomputer, Lyoko, and Bass were all created. And in order to determine if the lesser defensive programs would function, they contacted a man who was known for his genius in the field of robotics, Albert Wily. They had wanted to base their defensive creations off of robots, so they figured that he would be the best one to turn to. Wily, who was down on his luck after the designs for Net Society had trumped his designs for a robotically based society, had little choice but to accept in order to make enough money to survive.

However, Cossack and Hopper were unaware of the hatred and rage festering in Wily's heart, and the three of them worked on the designs for the programs. They didn't tell him that they were programs, but after so many clues, Wily figured it out. It was than that he took Hopper out for a few drinks. Having worked with Cossack before, he knew that Cossack could drink slightly more than an adult bull elephant without toppling, so he went to Hopper instead.

As Jeremie would find out someday with Hopper's daughter, Hopper may have been able to calculate quantum functions, but he was an extreme lightweight when it came to alcohol. Over the course of Happy Hour, Wily managed to weasel every scrap of data on the Lyoko Project out of Hopper that he could, and he immediately began to set up his long-term plans.

Countless simulations later, he had it. He had his own plans for how to deal with Network Society, but should they fail, he would require a fallback plan. XANA would be his inside woman, hidden from the Lyoko Program's internal defenses until she could initiate her master work.

Once he gave the go-ahead, XANA worked quickly, striking with a brute-force attack against her human and virtual foes. Unfortunately, the same standards of quality that Wily put into making her had also gone into the designs of the defense programs, which would later be called "Monsters," by the Warriors of Lyoko. They were not able to fight her off, but were able to delay her until Aelita was able to team up with the Bass defense program to enable the "Heart of a Warrior" program, creating the fusion being Cadence. To put it mildly, XANA barely survived the encounter. Still, even as she licked her wounds, she prepared to strike back swiftly and with a vengeance.

Framing Cossack and Hopper for treason to the French Government, she quickly took over the defensive programs- the so-called "Monsters,"- and used them to capture Franz and Aelita, removing the genetically-linked programs that allowed the two to rule the virtual space. However, Aelita managed to escape from XANA's clutches, though at the cost of losing her memories of her own humanity. In a last-ditch attempt to stop the program, Franz initiated a manual shutdown, trapping the three inside the computer, but not before XANA initiated her final act: the corruption of the Alpha-Internet program, making sure to make it look like the dangerous Lyoko-Defense AI MK-MM7-0, AKA Bass, was a violent psychopath. While this did not succeed in destroying Bass, it did set the stage for all future interactions between him and the rest of the world, as well as the unexpected benefit of ruining Cossack's reputation and driving a wedge in between himself and his creation.

Wily found out about XANA's defeat via an e-mail sent by the program herself in her last moments of awareness, but knew that reactivating the computer so soon after his own founding of a terrorist organization, a radical rebellion of the Alpha-Internet system, and the French's crackdown on the Kadic area would make doing it nearly impossible.

A crackling array of lightning split through the failing light, centered on the bridge leading to the old factory. It was just visible from one of the buildings on Kadic campus, and it was from here that a man watched the growing storm that would consume all of the fools who would stand in the way of Lord Wily's glorious Net Society.

He raised one hand, a small beeper clutched in his fingers. With a deft movement, he pressed the sole button.

Loud buzzers began to sound, echoing off the walls of the courtyard as the doors to the dorm rooms were locked and bolted shut automatically.

Smirking slightly, he turned back towards his desk, where he pulled out two bottles, a rag, and a glass. From one bottle, he drizzled the liquid on the rag, while the second bottle was poured into the tumbler.

He didn't have to wait long before his next guest came. The doors sprung open and a pink-shirted girl with long, black hair rushed in.

"Daddy, what's going on?" asked the girl. "There are alarms going off and I can't get to my MMMMFFF!!!"

As the girl had been talking, he had walked around the desk and placed the rag over her mouth.

"Don't worry, my princess, my darling," spoke the man to his daughter as her struggles slowly ceased. "You won't be hurt, and we'll live together in the utopia that awaits us."

As she dropped to the floor, he carefully pulled her to the side, so that she wouldn't be in the way. He then pulled out a cell phone and pressed the appropriate speed dial option, connecting him to a certain man.

"It is as you have commanded, Lord Wily," he intoned, "We are ready for the next step."

"Excellent," rasped the voice out of the phone, "You shall be rewarded excellently. For the downfall of Society!" and with a click, the mad doctor hung up the phone.

Professor Jean-Pierre Delmas, Principle of Kadic Academy and commander of all WWW operations in France, grinned as he whispered the final word.

"Delete."

Bass picked himself from the ground, slightly confused, though his face remained a mask.

"What… was that?"

Bolts of black lightning and plumes of smoke rose from the roof and inside of the old factory, streaming out like a tidal wave of electricity and soot. Strangely, they did not follow any sort of laws that lightning and smoke would normally follow, as they converged directly on the center of the bridge. And slowly, they began to take physical form.

Two silver boots. Purple-black jumpsuit. Skeletal, razor-sharp metal wings. Silver gauntlets. Purple eyes. Jagged purple marks under his eyes. Fanged teeth. Jagged, finned helmet.

But the creation process did not stop there. Dozens upon dozens of claw-legged cylinders with disc-shaped heads also took form as power grids nationwide began to overload and burst into flames, casting vast regions of France into darkness.

Once all of the Replicons were materialized, one last construct began to form. Clad in armor, with a blade-tipped tail, the creature looked feral. Claws and blood-colored eyes only added to the impression.

The last figure, an extremely strange boy who had been declared missing almost a month previously, growled slightly as a replicon marched up to him.

"Commander Della Robia, Sir," it greeted with a mechanical voice, "We have received confirmation from Lord Wily. We may begin our assault on Kadic at any time. We are to leave no child alive, with priority targets being the Net Agent and the Warriors."

Odd chuckled, and began to softly sing,

"Be it ever so heinous…"

As one, the monstrous group began to move forwards.

"There's no place like… Home."