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Memories are fickle things.
Scattered.
If she tries, she can reach some of the furthest ones.
But only one at a time.
It’s hard enough keeping enough of her self bound together.
Not enough to form a body.
Not enough to truly be her as she was.
Just a few bits of data near where she’d fallen in. A couple bytes through a nearby hub. Flowing and ebbing in one spot.
The rest of her is scattered. Lines of data so small they’re untraceable.
There’s a piece of her on a satellite’s computer.
A piece of her is stuck in constant motion, forever hopping from hub to hub.
There’s a piece of her in the supercomputer.
She’s everywhere.
And nowhere.
Jeremy had described it as being akin to death. Disappeared forever without a trace.
He was wrong.
It’s immortality.
And she wants to share it.
“What is this?”
“You guys aren’t going to believe this. It’s…It’s Yumi.”
“What?”
“A part of her, anyway. Maybe she’s not so lost, after all.”
She sends a section of her code into a cluster of Hornets.
She easily overpowers XANA.
She has the Hornets corral her friends towards the edge of the platform.
“Guys, those Hornets register as Yumi on my end. That’s not XANA!”
Their attacks become hesitant.
She’s careful to fire at their feet. She wants them in the sea, not devirtualized.
She wants them with her.
“She’s trying to send us over the edge!”
“Well, don’t let her, obviously.”
They don’t.
She tries again, anyway.
“Are we sure it’s Yumi?”
“It’s not XANA, if that’s what you’re asking. Her data’s not all there, but from what I’ve found, none of those parts have mixed with XANA’s code.”
“Then why is she attacking us?”
“I’m not sure. Something’s weird, here…”
“Get her to stop!”
“I will as soon as I come up with a solution.”
“Yumi!” Ulrich calls, and she responds in kind the only way she can.
She has no body of her own, no voice.
Ulrich is defensive, sword raised, turning carefully, trying to spot her. He never will. Not as she used to be.
She controls the small bit of the digital sea she lives in, raises it up, splashes towards Ulrich.
Ulrich super-sprints out of the way, horror etched on his face. “Yumi, what are you doing?”
Saving him.
Saving all of them.
“Don’t you remember us?”
She does and she doesn’t.
She knows they’re her friends and that they’re misguided.
She knows they would die for each other, the way she had thought she was dying for them.
She’d rather they live for each other, instead.
Forever. With her.
Jeremy writes a program. It finds her core, where she holds her self together. It finds a few stray pieces. It doesn’t find all of her.
She hasn’t found all of her, either.
She’s not sure what the program is for.
One piece of her thinks it’s just to track her, find her, to start to put her back together.
Another piece of her thinks it’s a failed attempt to erase her.
She’s nothing but code in the digital sea, but she still doesn’t know her software languages.
Parts of her accept the program.
Parts of her dodge and hide.
Parts of her attack and destroy.
She doesn’t know what the program is but it’s tearing her further apart.
She can’t have that.
She messes with the program.
She will not be broken.
“We need to do something! We can save her!”
“Her digital code is spread across the internet, in the digital sea, on Lyoko itself…It’s impossible to put her all back together.”
“Can’t you try?”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
The others have forgotten that she can hear their conversations on Lyoko.
A piece of her is in every sector.
A piece of her is often in at least one of XANA’s monsters.
She hears everything.
“You said you’d save her!”
“I said I’d try. But I can’t. I just can’t. I haven’t been able to find all of her code. She’s basically an imprint of herself at this point, and she’s dangerous.”
“It’s Yumi!”
“That’s not Yumi anymore. Her data’s spread too thin. Parts of it have been corrupted. It’s not her.”
He’s right.
She’s something more. Something better.
Something more powerful than XANA.
She’s going to share it with her friends.
XANA will never hurt them again.
“We’re your friends!”
She knows.
“Are you angry we let you die?”
She didn’t die. She lives. She lives forever and she wants her friends to live forever with her, too.
“Is this your revenge?”
She’s not angry. She doesn’t want to hurt them. They’ll realize that one day.
“Try to remember, Yumi. You were one of us, a Lyoko Warrior. Please, try to remember.”
She does, in fragments, scattered, some missing.
“Remember what it feels like to be human.”
She doesn’t.
Those memories are lost at sea.
They’ll fall in, eventually.
Whether by her own doing or XANA’s, they’ll fall.
And she’ll be there to catch them.
To teach them all she’s learned.
And then they’ll be immortal together, the most powerful digital beings, more powerful than XANA.
No one will be able to stop them.
They’ll be safe.
It’s only a matter of time.
And she’s got plenty of it.