Information

Azael has a minion!

Manta the Namta

Azael
Legacy Name: Azael

The Bloodred Paralix

Owner: Book

Age: 15 years, 7 months, 3 weeks

Born: August 28th, 2008

Adopted: 15 years, 7 months, 3 weeks ago (Legacy)

Adopted: August 28th, 2008 (Legacy)

Statistics

• Level: 2
   
• Strength: 10
   
• Defense: 10
   
• Speed: 10
   
• Health: 12
   
• HP: 12/12
   
• Intelligence: 9
   
• Books Read: 9
• Food Eaten: 0
• Job: Unemployed

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They say that any good weapon can be turned against its wielder. It’s true—I’ve lived it. I lost my humanity and became a weapon, a blade against the necks of those who were once my comrades, my friends… as well as someone who could have been more.

But I’ve lost that chance now, just as they’ve lost the William Dunbar they used to know.

That was my name, once. W-I-L-L-I-A-M, the sprawling signature on the love letters that earned my expulsion from my last school. My parents were worried, thinking I needed more discipline than they could give me. So off I went to boarding school, with a stern warning that if I didn’t shape up it’d be boot camp next time. Needless to say, I’d gotten off the bus scheming about how I could best hijack the school’s intercom for a love ballad. But I forgot all about that when I saw her.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll do crazy things for just about any pretty girl. But it wasn’t just this one’s looks that had my jaw hitting the floor; it was the way she held herself, all proudly lifted chin and poised perfection. And then she smiled at me, meeting me right in the eyes rather than fluttering her lashes or eyeing me up like an especially greasy and delicious burger.

“Hi,” she said, holding out her hand. I took it, realizing only dimly just how strong of a handshake she had. “You’re the new transfer, right? William Dunbar? Welcome to Kadic Junior High.”

I knew from the moment I saw Yumi that I’d buckle down and actually be serious if that’s what I had to do to stay near her. She was more than just one of the girls I'd flirted with back at my old school. I could feel it.

Of course, right after I’d decided that she took me to meet her friends. I was surprised when I realized that they were all younger kids, but then I noticed the way she and the boy who’d introduced herself as Ulrich looked at each other. While Odd described the admittedly impressive swathe he’d cut through the female population of the school, and Jeremie flirted with that cute little Aelita girl using equations that gave me a serious need for aspirin, Ulrich just sat there and scowled at me.

Most guys would have maybe hung around a few more days, a week tops, before giving up on her and moving onto one of the other lovely ladies of Kadic Academy. But I never could turn down a challenge. And man, did that come back to stab me in the back with a blunt butter knife.

Anyways, I stuck around. I gave her roses on Valentine’s Day—she melted over Ulrich’s sappy poem. I waited in line for over four hours to snag a pair of tickets to the Subsonic’s concert, and she skipped out to tutor Ulrich and Odd. And every time the two of them gave each other those soft looks, every time he told me to back off, every time she walked away from me, I found myself smiling. A girl who could love someone like this, who could hold on so tightly to something that neither of them had dared admit to yet… now that was someone worth fighting for. I even started wondering if maybe I’d figured out what the movies meant by soulmates and destiny.

It wasn’t long after that that the dreams started. I’d fall out of bed and scramble to my feet looking for bundles of dynamite, a strange eye symbol, and most of all, Yumi.

It wasn’t just terror that stuck with me when I woke up, though. It was exhilaration. Pride. In the dreams, I’d faced down a ticking time bomb and a crazy possessed janitor and won.

That feeling… I wanted it back.

So I told Yumi. And the next time she had to pull one of her notorious disappearing acts during class I volunteered to cover for her. It wasn't dangerous, there were no explosives or really anything worse than Jim’s lecturing to worry about, but I was still helping her. Helping them. And then, when it was over, the girl of my dreams took me aside, away from our classmates, her friends, even Ulrich.

“Can you keep a secret?”

My dreams weren’t dreams—they were memories. I’d really fought alongside of Yumi. I’d actually disarmed a bomb with Ulrich and Odd. And I could help save the world with a girl who just kept getting more and more beautiful and brave with every second. She told me about a supercomputer that could turn back time and held an entire virtual world called Lyoko. I listened to the story about how they’d learned to enter that world in order to protect Aelita, and how the cute pink-haired girl was actually a former computer program. She told me about the Towers and monsters, and the sentient virus that used them to lash out at our world.

“X.A.N.A.,” she called it, and that Eye flickered through my memories.

The Towers were apparently a link between Lyoko and the real world, and X.A.N.A. had a bad habit of activating them so that he could hijack that link and use it to turn people into zombies, mess with the electrical system, and even turn off gravity! Don’t ask me, I never managed to get a clear answer on he managed that one, even from him…

When the conversation was over, I shook her hand, just as I had when we first met. This time, I couldn’t help but marvel at how very strong her grip was. We went back to the others, and over the congratulations and Odd’s bad jokes was a silence that could have only come from one person.

I’ll admit that the expression on Ulrich’s face, the way he looked like he was about to spit fire and spit up at the same time, made me feel pretty damn satisfied. We’d been fighting for so long, and I was finally, finally at his level. I matched his scowl with a smirk, and threw my arm around Yumi’s shoulders as they led me to the factory.

For a while, things were great. No, things were better than great. I took to Lyoko and the war against X.A.N.A. like I’d spent a year there instead of Aelita.

My subconscious gave my Lyoko avatar a massive sword, just like the ones I remembered from all of those Saturday morning cartoons I’d watched as a kid. My Zweihander. Way cooler than that dinky little toothpick Ulrich had. Jeremie worked his computer wizardry and gave me an ability he called Super Smoke, which let me turn myself into smoke and outrace even Ulrich’s precious Super Sprint. I could also send out tendrils of smoke to hold X.A.N.A.’s monsters long enough for someone to take them down. I swear, when the monsters I restrained were sliced to ribbons by Yumi’s razor fans… I don’t know what was better, the way she smiled at me as I watched her catch it or how I could practically hear my fellow swordsman grinding his teeth from the other side of the sector.

Yeah, life was good. Even when Ulrich finally snapped and tried to ruin my life, our friends—my friends—didn’t buy it for a second. Even Odd stopped speaking to him for a while, which had to have been awkward considering that they shared not only a room, but also dog-walking duties. He was a millimeter away from being kicked out of the group. While on Lyoko, most of us didn’t talk to him—Yumi wouldn’t even look at him if she could help it. Even after what he tried to do, I would have felt bad for him, but, well, she was looking at me instead now. There was no way I was going to risk that.

Maybe if I had, if I’d tried to reach out to him… maybe things would have been different then. But I didn’t, and sometime when my back was turned his sullen silence spawned a scheme. He started staying behind after missions, closeting himself in Jeremie’s room with both Einsteins until lights-out, and I even saw him sneak off-campus without being prompted by a X.A.N.A. attack. He stopped trying to screw me over at every opportunity, and started getting such bad bags and shadows under his eyes that he looked more like a raccoon than a kid. The two whiz kids didn’t seem to be faring much better, either. Despite the tensions in the group, everyone couldn’t help but worry about them, especially Ulrich—Odd even cautiously began trying to reach out and reconnect with his roommate again, and had it gone on much longer Yumi would have as well. And frankly, by then I wouldn’t have cared as much…jealousy issues aside, Ulrich was a good guy, and he’d been saving the world since before I had even heard of Kadic.

Maybe if things had gone on like a bit longer, and the rest of us had patched things up with Ulrich on our own… but they didn’t, and we didn’t. Instead, Jeremie and Aelita unveiled the venture that had been taking such a toll on the three of them.

They called it Project: ANIMA.

And that’s when everything changed. The next time a Tower was activated, Ulrich was the first one into the scanners. And when the rest of us were finally virtualized, it wasn’t a samurai who was waiting for us: instead, a two-tailed, fiery cat-like beast smirked at us over the cooling ashes that had apparently once been a pair of Krabes All of those late nights and long hours had been spent developing a powerful new form, one that made him faster and stronger than he’d ever been before.

And those flames curling around his legs and tails? Let me put it this way: they weren’t just for show.

And he wasn’t the only one with an upgrade. Odd could now go from having the tail, grace, and grin of a Cheshire cat to becoming the mischievous cat’s long-lost twin—with the addition of a pair of bat-like wings, almost comically tiny but more than adequate for a place with Lyoko’s lackadaisal laws of physics. And in the middle of a battle, we’d often look up and see Aelita as an elegant blossom-hued bird, one that almost seemed to dance with the mantas and hornets that tried futilely to strike her down.

And Yumi—Yumi was intense. There’s really no other way to put it. She was given the ability to become powerful feline creature, clad in armor and wreathed in a purple aura. Excitedly, I called out to Jeremie, urging him to transform my avatar as well, so that I could fight alongside of the rest of the team. His answer echoed down from the virtual sky, as damning as any of the powers of heaven and hell. “I’m sorry William… we haven’t finished your new form yet, the code is a bit more complicated.”

A few seconds later, I stumbled out of the scanner, having been too startled by those words to notice the Krabe until it’s pointed foot came down on my head. The others followed me back to reality soon afterwards, and I watched as Odd and Ulrich shared the first high-five I’d seen them either of them do in months. The former noticed my silence and slapped me on the back, grinning and telling me to cheer up, that next time I’d be kicking almost much monster butt as him, while Ulrich just smiled.

It didn’t take me long to find out what that smile meant. My upgrade was still incomplete the next time X.A.N.A. attacked. Days turned into weeks and I found myself bringing up the rear in our missions, the last and least to join the fight. I wasn’t useless—the new forms had their disadvantages, just like anything else. Activating Project: ANIMA took time, and I had to stand guard while the others shifted. There were also times when Jeremie had to switch the others between their forms so frequently that Odd complained about it making him nauseous.

But even when we were all human, something had changed in the way the group saw me. I don’t even know if they noticed it themselves, but I was no longer on the same tier as they were. I was separate, lower…weak.

How long would it be before they started leaving me behind? Jeremie avoided my gaze whenever I asked about his progress with my upgrade, and changed the subject as quickly as he could. Every night, when I walked Yumi home, all she could talk about was how amazing the latest mission had been, and in her glee she barely noticed that my silence. Our conversations would have been the same had they been between her and a tree. How long before she realized this and turned away from me, back to her precious Ulrich?

So I stopped waiting, stopped giving the others time to order me back. I leapt into each battle with a greater and greater fury. Until, one day, I broke off from the group while they transformed. We were in Carthage for a reconnaissance mission, just to gather a bit of data, but Lyoko’s secret Sector had a countdown that caused it to change every few minutes, unless someone pressed a certain button. The transporter that we used to get to Sector Five would not allow anyone to board while in their alternate forms, but the need for speed had prompted Jeremie to activate Project Anima immediately after we arrived.

It was expected that I would watch and wait, just like I always did. But there was no danger, no monsters had ever shown up in the arena. Besides, I knew I could find the Key and beat the countdown before they even passed through the door. I’d remind them that I wasn’t just dead weight; I was a Lyoko Warrior, just like all of them!

Aelita, whose avian mode was too clumsy on the ground and in close quarters to risk in a room they hadn’t yet seen, saw me sprinting out of the arena. I heard her calling my name, as Jeremie ordered me back. By then, I had already thrown myself into a knot of Creepers. Who needed claws when they had Zweihander?

I was almost finished when the room changed, parts of the floor rising up to the ceiling. I could hear the others shouting from where the entrance had been, which was now cut off as surely as if it had always been another room. But I wasn’t alone… I turned around to see it floating towards me: the Scyphozoa, the stuff of Odd’s tall tales of the ‘old days’ on Lyoko. X.A.NA.’s most dreaded monster, the one nobody had ever been able to truly defeat.

It looked like a giant jellyfish. Weird, definitely, but not worth the way Jeremie was freaking out in my ear and screaming at me to run away. I’d just taken out over a dozen Creepers—one flying fish-thing would be a piece of cake.

The last thing I can remember clearly was a tentacle, glowing red, coming up to my forehead.

At least, that’s what I told the others. But I’ve been dreaming about what happened for a while now—how X.A.N.A. used the Scyphozoa to take control of me, to tie the strings that turned me into his puppet. How he raised my sword when the others finally made their way through the labyrinthine room. And most of all, how much sense it all made.

This is what they think of you, the puppeteer told me while my teammates rallied themselves against me. This is what you can do, he said as I knocked Ulrich back against the wall and watched him shatter into pixels. This is what must be done. My Zweihander, crashing through the last shield and into the glowing sphere that was the Core of Lyoko.

—the world—

—everything—

—breaking around me—

—crushing—

I remember darkness. I remember a coolness almost like water against my skin. But then, after a time that seemed so long I had forgotten anything or anyone else had ever existed, something changed in my environment. It became almost familiar.

Before I could realize how, or why, something else reminded me: I was back in Lyoko. And X.A.N.A. was back with me.

There were a few flashes as I opened new eyes; damp ink on my fingers, a cool breeze scented with rust and explosives, telling bad jokes to a beautiful girl with such dark hair… nothing that made sense. Not with the ones who had excluded me from their precious Project, who had taken one look at the new me and charged in with blades drawn.

But X.A.N.A., X.A.N.A. made sense. As long as I remembered that, everything would be fine. Those flashes, and the feelings that came with them, none of that mattered. They could cut me down, but X.A.N.A. always brought me back. He needed me, but they never had.

”NO WILLIAM!”

Had they?

”You’re a Lyoko Warrior, you swore to it!”

Those words made me freeze, and for a moment I had doubts.

No! What I felt, what she made me feel was beyond doubt: the sense, the surety—I’d sworn. I’d said I’d fight. I’d told her… I’d…

I’d fail.

X.A.N.A. took over completely then. Once in a while, I got a few flickers, but they were as faint and few as the flashes had been. Until the day I found my eyes opened again, and looked down to see my hands holding a sword embedded in Ulrich’s gut. But my Zweihander was not the only thing I saw; there was another, slimmer gleam alongside it.

I tried to stumble back, to dislodge my massive sword from his stomach or his from mine, I’m still not sure. But as quickly as I was there again, I was gone. But it wasn’t like when I was being controlled by X.A.N.A. It was brighter, white, almost as if I was—

I’d never been so relieved to hit the factory floor, and for days afterwards I reveled in the bump on my forehead. But the joy quickly broke under the wave of fear. Ulrich!

But he was alright. I stumbled the monitor room just and heard the cries of joy, the shouts of relief, and it was all I could manage to fall against the back of Jeremie’s chair and gabble out my apology.

They came back. All of them, Ulrich tired but whole and grinning. Things were awkward for a while, but I never found the hatred in their eyes that I had feared. I would never have what I could have had from Yumi, but she and Ulrich deserved their happiness. I was catching up in class, thanks to Jeremie and Aelita, and Odd had offered his services as my ‘personal coolness savior’.

The future of my social life aside, life seemed to be looking up. William Dunbar had found his happy ending.

Too bad I wasn’t him anymore.

I dreamed of Lyoko. No—that wasn’t it. I closed my eyes to go to sleep and I opened them there. I could feel the data streams on the wind, the course binary of the ground beneath my feet, all of the things that a mere Lyoko Warrior could never know.

I had to go back. But Ulrich, Yumi, Jeremie, Odd, Aelita—they’d never let me back in to the factory, much less Lyoko. But I had to go back. I had to go back.

IhadtogobackIhadtogobackhadtogogogogo.

My grades started slipping back down. Just talking with anyone became an ordeal, something to be endured and avoided. The Warriors never noticed—they’d gotten a lot busier lately thanks to X.A.N.A., and as long as I kept covering for them in class I knew they wouldn’t bother to give me more than a quick hi-thanks-see-you-later. The dreams came more and more frequently, to the point where I started falling asleep in class.

Yumi, then Ulrich, and finally the rest, started giving me weird looks. But they were too busy. Then the dreams changed. I no longer carried Zweihander, and looking down I could see why. Rather than my feet on the programmed dirt and sand, I dug claws and talons into the coding and felt them rip through.

I stopped going to class. Said I was sick. The nurse agreed when they got me to the infirmary. I tried to sleep. Couldn’t. Tried to be awake. Couldn’t.

They were there. Left. There were cool fingers running through my hair, I think, but I may have managed to dream just for those few moments. What would you say, Yumi, to have been my last dream?

I don’t know how long I was there. But the bed was drenched in sweat when I sat up. My head was clear, clearer than it had been ever since I’d last been in Lyoko. I remember climbing out through the window. I remember walking the familiar route to the factory, clambering down into the sewers. I didn’t take any of the skateboards or scooters. I just kept walking.

I remember sitting down at the terminal, knowing exactly what to type. I saw alarm program activate, and let it. It didn’t matter anymore. I was finally going back, the scanner doors were opening, it was—

“WILLIAM!”

Yumi…

I turned around, one foot on the clean floor of the scanner. She stood at the door, gasping for breath, one hand shoved against it to help hold herself up. Ulrich leapt more than climbed down the ladder, Odd a few steps behind, both landing on their feet like the cats they could be, and I heard Aelita and Jeremie shouting from above.

“William!” Ulrich, this time. He looked as hurt as Yumi—were he and I that close, now? Or had she grown so distant, so near to him instead? “William, what are you doing?”

I smiled at him. Then, without even looking at any of the others, I turned around and took that last half-step into the cylinder. I heard them run after me, listened to fists pounding the tube, and closed my eyes against the inevitable light. Heard the start of someone screaming my name—

X.A.N.A. had already sent an entourage by the time I materialized. I landed on a familiar monochromatic back, and sat in silence until my Manta drifted in a an almost unsettlingly gentle stop outside of a smooth sphere: Sector 5.

I raised my head to see a single glow-tipped tentacle extended before me, as if in offering. As if I still had a choice. A handshake with the devil. A god of demons to his worshipper.

I was laughing as I was lifted into the air, laughing and laughing until virtualized lungs were ripped apart with the changing of my body. And when I opened the eyes that I remembered from my dreams, and uncoiled my new form to tower above the mewling kittens and hound and fluttering little bird that were all those fools could muster, I smiled at them. Finally, finally I knew what I was.

I was no longer human. I was no longer weak. I was my Master’s. And Master knew exactly what to call his new pet demon.

"My name is Azael. I'm going rip this world and all of you silly little humans apart for X.A.N.A., and I'm going to do it soon. So you’d better get a head start at running while you still can."

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CODENAME Ravaged - How does it feel, to know you almost died to save me only to find I was lost all along? Come on, Ulrich, I want to know before I kill you.

CODENAME Keystone - My Master wants a few words with you, 'princess'.

CODENAME Peculiarity - Bad jokes won't get you out of this one.

CODENAME Stronghold - Yumi... good-bye...

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Fanpet for the X.A.N.A.-fied William Dunbar from the French animation Code Lyoko; I do not own the character. Overlay, layout, and coding by the amazing User not found: ulrich.

| Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V |

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CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR
SUBJECT WILLIAM LOST
WARNING SUPERCOMPUTER SHUTDOWN IMMINENT WARNING WARNING