Code July day 3 - Protect
Yumi Ishiyama was peacefully sleeping in her room like any regular student would at 3:30 in the morning, that is until her rest was quickly interrupted by a ringing sound. Still very sleepy, Yumi reached for her alarm clock, but that wasn’t the source, it was her phone. She picked it up and answered, a very familiar voice came through the speaker.
“Yumi, we need you at the factory right now!”
“Jeremy, you know what time it is?!” Yumi asked rhetorically, not quite awake yet.
“Yumi, XANA has taken control of the bulldozers.”
“Bulldozers? What bulldozers?”
“The ones that were parked at Kadic when the principal told us about the new equipment, remember? Ulrich and Odd are following them, trying to figure out what’s XANA up to.” With this the Japanese girl fully woke up.
“What?! Ok, I’ll be there ASAP.” She answered ending the call. She wasn’t quite in the best attire to head outside, so she got ready as fast as she could, while making sure she didn’t wake up her family, and headed outside.
Fortunately for her, Yumi was quite the fast runner, so it only took her a couple minutes to reach the factory. But before reaching it she got another call from Jeremy, which probably didn’t mean good news, so she answered while still running towards the bridge.
“Yumi, I’ve lost contact with Ulrich!” Jeremy said panicking slightly.
“Were was he when you last spoke to him?” Yumi asked, trying to keep calm.
“He was heading for the factory with the bulldozers.”
“Right, I’m almost there, I’ll find him.” With that she ended the call and finally reached her destination.
Upon entering the building Yumi was shocked and had to stop for a second. In just a few minutes XANA had manage to destroy half of the factory, columns were bend over or completely broken, platforms had crumble to the floor, bits of the roof were falling over… And in the middle of the chaos, she saw it, an arm hanging limp from the broken window of one bulldozer. A gasp escaped her mouth as fear for the worst possible scenario took over her, but she quickly returned to herself and jumped into action.
Yumi ran towards the possessed machine, avoiding the debris constantly falling around her. After dodging a couple swings from XANA she finally reached the window. Ulrich was lying on the door, unconscious. She screamed his name, but to no avail, meanwhile the bulldozer started picking up speed with the intention to crash against a wall.
With no more options, Yumi jumped inside the cabin and put her body around Ulrich’s, shielding him as much as possible. The impact brought part of the wall down, so the machine backed up getting ready for another assault, meanwhile Yumi got up, grabbed Ulrich and jumped out, they roll on the floor several times barely avoid some more debris that fell over after the second impact.
As quickly as she could, Yumi grabbed Ulrich again and got to cover behind some fallen piece of concrete.
“Ulrich! You gotta get up!” She screamed once more, this time managing to wake up her unconscious friend.
The bulldozer found them and started approaching, and Ulrich was in no condition to run, still Yumi grabbed his hand and together they ran as fast as they could. Fortunately, they fell through a small hole that allowed them to go one floor down, where XANA couldn’t reach them.
Yumi, completely out of breath, looked up to see the bulldozer passing over them, but when she looked to her side, Ulrich had fallen back unconscious. Worried she called his name, to no response. Seeing as they were safe for now, she decided to take a better look at her partner while she recovered her breath. Ulrich had a distress look on his face, his hair was all messy and his clothes were full of dust, to the young girl’s relief he didn’t seem to have any cuts from the broken windows or other visible injuries.
Yumi realized she had been just staring at him while caressing his cheek for the last minute. Blushing slightly, she got up, grabbed Ulrich’s unconscious body and continued towards the lab.
They finally arrived at the top of the laboratory, Yumi brought Ulrich down with Jeremy’s help and they sat him on the wall besides the ladder. Yumi kneeled down beside him still checking on his state, but after a couple seconds, one of Odds sarcastic messages made it clear that he needed help, so Yumi ran for the scanner room, not before giving Ulrich one last glance.
