Author's note: I don't own Code Lyoko, but I own this story. As the President Sylar, I reserve the right to devour your brain if you steal my work.

This is rated T for future character death and violence (even after the next chapter), and this story contains or hints at most pairings in the Lyokoverse.

This Introduction is written by Ulrich, years after the actual story takes place. It's called framing. I'm so wasted on you... Anyway, this opening should set off several flashing lights in your head. Yes, your proper reaction should be "what the deuce?! I don't understand," because by the last chapter, you will understand where the Introduction came from.

At this current point in time I have six or seven chapters written out of an expected eleven or twelve. Therefore, I have no excuse for not updating except for the suspense. :-)

A Beautiful Collison; An Introduction

I discovered this tome by chance one evening--it was the same evening, it happened, that the author of the content died. Age didn't kill him, nor did he chance to pass in his sleep. Jeremie Belpois' life ended when a drunk driver slammed into his car a few weeks after his forty-first birthday, and his own car plummeted into the ravine that winded beneath the bridge that had carried his car. I would like to say that he died at the impact, but, I was told, he most likely drowned. It was an ironic death, considering the subject I'm about to show you, but it tore my heart open. Apparently I was his closest friend. Jeremie never married, nor did he have any family left, so I was allowed into his apartment and told to look through his things for anything I might find significant. I searched through his belongings until I came upon his laptop. It was much newer than the one that always accompanies my memories of him, but it was so like the Jeremie I remember. That's how I found this narrative.

It seemed strange that Jeremie counted me as his closest friend; in reality, I had only tried to be kind to him when we were children, and I hadn't spoken to him in at least twenty years. After I married, Jeremie dropped all contact with me. I thought it might have been out of spite--he never did seem to approve of my wife, Lisa Stern--and I suppose I was right in my assumption. Jeremie had also been close to Odd, my roommate from long ago, but I assume he was still closer to me than anyone else. I think a lot of it had to do with the fantastic stories he wrote.

On his laptop there were several stories similar to this one, most of them extraordinary tales about our childhood, which usually involved the three of us--Odd, Jeremie, and myself--plus a few others that I have never met. He wrote about that Japanese girl in the grade above us, and of the pink-haired computer program "cousin" of Odd (I later asked him about this, and Odd responded that none of his cousins had pink hair, and none had the name "Aelita") with whom Jeremie apparently fell in love. I would have thought these stories bizarre fabrications, except that he described us all so accurately that it is hard to believe they are fiction. It is so real that it almost seemed to come alive as I read, especially this particular story, which touched me more than any of the others. This tale was almost heartbreaking, and it made me wonder--though it may seem absurd--if maybe there is some truth to these entries buried on Jeremie's hard drive. He hadn't titled this, but I hope I have done him right by calling it "A Beautiful Collision," for that really is what this tragedy is about. I have since looked up each person in this tale (it seems nostalgia brought on by this story has forced me to look up these old classmates), and even returned to the factory he writes so passionately about. The computers and scanners do not exist, but, though it is still disappointing, that is exactly what I had expected. Jeremie himself wrote that they were long gone.

The following preface did not belong to the original story, but I believe this part is necessary in order to fully grasp the tale. I only hope that others may enjoy this as much as I, especially those few whom it involves.

-Ulrich Stern

In dedication to "Aelita"