; The World is Alive

This is a long one, but it's worth it I think. A lot happens in this chapter. I've packed a ton of action in these next chapters to make up for the slow start.

Click

Yumi folded the phone back into her pocket, now that the power was off.

"Who was that?" William asked, his dark eyes wide with true interest.

"Nobody," Yumi answered, smiling unconvincingly at him. "It was just Ulrich. He won't stop calling me."

"Maybe it was important," William offered.

Yumi bit her lip and scowled at him. "He's just…mad at me. Really, what could be more important than this?" William looked long and hard at her, as if trying to take her apart. Yumi shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, waiting for him to speak.

"You and Ulrich were always…" But he trailed off and shrugged his shoulders. Yumi gave him a once-over and sighed. "So what'd you tell the principal?" he asked, laughing. "I mean, obviously people noticed that I…"

"Dunno," Yumi muttered, lost in her own thoughts. "We convinced everyone that you and Jeremie were on vacation or something." Yumi could hear William laugh, but it was distant and obscured. Her focus wasn't on the room or its guest, but on William's words before. It wasn't the first time that someone had been dumbfounded by the fact that she and Ulrich weren't…well, together. They had never dated—surely everyone knew that—but now that they didn't hang out it was as if the world had ended.

Well, for everyone but Yumi and Ulrich.

She winced and corrected her statement: for everyone but Yumi. Because she didn't know how Ulrich felt. She hadn't talked to him since… She struggled to think, and eventually realized that she hadn't talked to Ulrich since that fight. The fight when they all decided it would be best to just…dissolve.

Unless she counted the incident earlier that same morning, when they had bumped into each other and barely exchanged hellos. But that could hardly be considered a conversation.

William noticed the pained expression drawing onto her face. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Yumi muttered, shaking herself back into the present. "Just bad memories."

"Like what?" She looked at him hard, but he still seemed genuinely interested. "I must have missed a lot, huh?"

"Not really," she admitted. "After that last trip, everyone sort of went their own way, so not much happened. Just schoolwork, I guess." He didn't look like he believed her, and then—to make it worse—he laughed. Yumi froze, and she felt her face pull taut in a scowl. "What?"

"Ah, it's just…" he took a moment to slow down. "For a while I was worried that I'd missed everything. I was convinced that you two had, y'know, gotten together by now, and I would be so out of whack that I'd never get caught up."

"Well, stuff did happen."

"But the whole group went separate ways?" He cocked an eyebrow.

"Yeah."

William smiled. "Like I said! I didn't miss anything."

But you did! Yumi moaned inside. You missed everything! He had missed the crucial decisions, he had missed the pain, he had missed the sunshine and the moonlight. He had missed being alive, and he had missed Yumi.

And then with a sickening awareness, she realized that she had missed everything.

Or, even worse, she had ruined everything. All this time that she had shied away from her friends—her friends, for that's what they were, even through all of this—she had shied away from a part of herself. They were her only friends at Kadic—she knew that beyond a doubt, having experienced these last months without them—and she had been perfectly fine with never seeing any of them again. Even when they tried (and boy had Odd tried) to make amends, she had pushed them away. Why on earth had she done that?! She was as rooted to them as XANA had been rooted to Lyoko. She had missed so much! Months had been wasted trying to push them aside.

Trying, and succeeding now.

How could she ever make up all that lost time? The damage was already done. And besides, though Odd was persistent, none of the others wanted to recompense. Aelita didn't want to. As far as she knew, Ulrich didn't want to.

So nothing she could do would ever bring back those old friendships and trusts.

Nothing she could do.

"Yumi, you okay?"

But the conversation was cut short by a dim hum. It had been growing all this time, but suddenly it became a loud drone, and then an abrasive whine. Yumi folded her hands over her ears and shot William a quizzical glance.

"What's that noise?" she shouted, but it was so loud that even she couldn't hear her own words. She leapt to her feet in distress, looking around the room.

Though before a second had passed, she saw what it was.

Against the far side of the wall, a stereo system and racks of CDs cluttered William's desk. The power light was flashing green, and the volume was turned as high as it could go. A loud pounding filled her ringing ears, and she thought it was her own beating heart, except that her heart had stopped, and these pulsations were clearly nothing human-generated. Static white noise ripped through the drone, but the pulsations continued to fluctuate menacingly.

Then it all happened very fast.

Yumi saw four things happen at once. The first thing was the CD rack, which toppled over and scattered CD cases and discs into the air. The second thing was the vents, which began to spew hot, sticky steam around them. Next were the ceiling fan and the lights—the bulbs flickered out while the fan whirred to life in a frenzy above them. The fourth and last thing flashed through the darkness, obscured by the steam but recognizable anywhere. It was William's television screen, and the enormous red eye of XANA that flickered onto it through the black.

Yumi stifled a scream, and she heart William cry out beside her.

She stumbled through the darkness and felt cold metal brush against her body—she thrashed out with a side-long kick and knocked the thing aside, but there was so much happening at once, and she was completely blind in the pitch-black. She stumbled against something, and crashed head-first into a hardwood corner of something else. She heard a whir above her, and felt a breeze tease her hair, but it was distant. She instinctively curled into a tight ball with her hands wrapped above her head, and then a heavy weight came down on her cowering body. In the darkness she couldn't tell what it was, but once the furniture touched her, a thousand things fell from it and toppled onto her and around her as well. Smothered in what felt like books or maybe cases, she was afraid to move, and she could hear nothing above the noise.

Yumi screamed for William, but she couldn't hear a thing.

Too soon, the noise was beginning to fade away, and a hazy film was overwhelming her mind. She struggled to stay awake, but her head was throbbing where it had crashed into that sharp corner. She tasted something warm like copper, and then she didn't taste anything at all; she had been dragged out of consciousness.

A week may have passed for all Yumi knew—it certainly felt like it had been an eternity since she's opened her eyes. She blinked to confirm that her eyes were indeed open; it was still dark as night in her rubbish pile. But—yes—she was awake. Something above her moved, and the noise died abruptly. Her ears were ringing so loudly that she couldn't hear anything for several minutes (and at first she wasn't sure if the noise really had faded), but eventually she could make out coherent words—anxious, pained words, but something articulate at least! Then she recognized the voice, and she struggled out of the pile.

"Ulrich," she breathed, meaning for it to sound like a question, then unsure of how his name should have sounded. She was dizzy and disoriented, but she was quickly becoming more and more aware of what was happening. The bookcase had been dragged off of her body, and now she was being pulled from the pile of books and papers and all sorts of the random things that had been placed on the shelves. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the light, but once she could see, she wished she couldn't. Ulrich had hold of her arms, but he was fighting for breath and spattered with scarlet red.

"Oh…thank God…" he moaned when he felt her moving and saw her open eyes. He fell back and let her kick away the odds and ends on her own, because her strength was returning and his was quickly draining. She collapsed against him and immediately scoured the room in search of William. She spotted his motionless body against the adjacent wall and cried out. His black hair was matted with dark red, but his face was turned away from her.

Ulrich felt her panic and held her wrist firmly. "He's alive," he said, holding her fast. "But we've got to get him help…" Two students had entered the room, shock and fear splayed across their faces. Yumi only just noticed them, but they had obviously noticed her for some time.

"Justin and I will get help," the taller boy said immediately. Ulrich nodded in thanks, and the two boys tore out of the room without delay. Yumi heard other whispers, but she ignored them.

"Why didn't you answer your phone?" Ulrich grunted, pulling himself up.

"If it was so important," she muttered, standing and drawing herself away, "you should have come and told me yourself."

"It's XANA!" he shouted angrily.

"Obviously," she quipped.

They stood staring at each other intensely for several minutes, neither one willing to relinquish his or her anger. Ulrich looked like he was waiting for something, but what? He looked disappointed—and angry!—but why? He had never cared about anything to do with her since—

"Well, let's go!" he said suddenly, matter-of-factly. Yumi blinked.

"Go where?"

"To the factory." He stared at her hard, confused and irritated. "Lyoko is there," he told her, desperation crawling into his voice. Yumi froze. "XANA's activated a tower—several towers I think, oh hell, I don't know! But here's the thing; two scanners were activated too—and that was after William showed up. I don't know if Jeremie's back, but there are two people on Lyoko right now. I'm pretty sure one of them is Aelita. And we've got to go fight!"

Yumi's face was frozen in a blank, dumbfounded stare. "No," she said simply, stubbornly.

"Why not?"

"Because—" her voice cracked, and she swallowed before continuing. "Because I don't want to get involved. Not again. We've already lost… we lost so much the first time…"

"But you're already involved!" he cried. "Do you really think not helping is going to make it better? Geez—I've never seen XANA attack like this. We're going to need everyone…"

"I just got William back." Ulrich stopped, his heart pounding. Yumi folded her arms, fighting away tears—those floods of traitorous saline. "I don't want to…to go back…" She shook her head miserably, torn at her core, and walked out of the room. She'd gone several feet down the hall, pushing past awed peers, before she heard his footsteps pad after her in pursuit. She hurried her pace, but it wasn't any use.

"Yumi, stop!" Ulrich cried powerfully, forcing her suddenly and fiercely against the wall. Yumi stood hushed and petrified as she watched his face in front of her own, and she couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. His arms pinned her effectively against her barricade, but his face had gone entirely blank. She searched his eyes for some sign, but found only his loss of words and his abrupt loss of anger.

What? Why did he suddenly care so much?

Without warning, Ulrich thrust his lips against hers, and the contact ignited sparks through every nerve in her body. Shocked, Yumi felt her body burst into flame, but when she closed her eyes and lost herself in the kiss, his lips quickly parted from hers. She opened her eyes and looked sadly into his face, meeting his forlorn eyes.

No…don't stop… her mind whispered, her heart pounded. She leaned into him this time, and he eagerly joined her passion. The unspoken weight of their hearts poured out for the first time, and as their tongues battled fiercely and their hearts ached furiously, Yumi let her delight well into her eyes and burst over the brim as tears of joy. His hands tenderly touched the bare skin of her waist, and the places where his fingers lighted on her skin burned with fiery electricity. She touched his face with her own fingers, drawing him deeper into the kiss, and though his arms no longer held her in her spot, she had long abandoned the thought of escape. Yumi felt his body draw closer, but their mouths parted as his body shuddered violently. Yumi leaned against the wall and supported Ulrich's body as he suddenly collapsed. Her heart imploded when she saw the cause of his weakness, and tenderly she helped him to the floor.

Yumi knelt beside him and pressed desperately against the ragged side wound with her palm, but his crimson blood continued to boil out. She would not give up on him.

"Ow," Ulrich complained between gasping breaths. "You're…hurting-OW!"

"Sorry," she said. "I…I don't know what else to do…You need to stop bleeding."

"It's not…exactly something…I can control!" he gasped, chuckling. "It doesn't matter. Just…help me to the factory…" Yumi dropped her hands and stared at him, completely taken aback.

"You're not actually going to fight XANA like this, are you?" Her stricken face spoke more than her words. "There's no way you can fight. You…I'm not going to let you." Her final words were defiant, but so was his face.

"Aelita needs us," said Ulrich. "I'm not going to let them down." Yumi surrendered to his determination and smiled sadly at him. "You look like crap," he muttered, touching the streak of dried blood where she'd hit her head.

"You're no better," she retaliated, burying her head in the crook of his warm neck. They cherished the moment, clinging to each other in sincere, shameless love. Without another word, she lifted him onto his feet, and together they made their way toward the factory.

Toward the factory, and toward Lyoko—that thing which had brought them together in the first place, and which had returned them to each other at long last.