"Are you in the scanners?" Jeremié asked through the intercom.
"Yes Jeremié. You can start the procedure," Aelita called back as she stepped into a scanner. "Good luck, William," she smiled across at the dark haired boy also stepping into a scanner who nodded in reply.
After Odd lost all of his codes and X.A.N.A found a way to manipulate the group even further, Aelita insisted on finding a way to still be able to deactivate towers or share data from within Lyoko. She was able to do it before without codes, why couldn't the others have the same satisfaction? Seeing as Jeremié, Odd and William were the only codeless, they had to test out the program that Aelita and Jeremié came up with – reluctantly with the help of Laura. Jeremié felt there wasn't any point to him doing it so the boys battled it out with a best out of three game of rock, paper, scissors.
Here they were now, with William and Aelita being virtualized onto Lyoko to reach an inactive tower so the program can be installed. Arriving at the nearest one in a puff of smoke and an overwing, the pair made their way to the entrance of the tower, lucky enough to not have been ambushed.
"Listen, William, I'm not promising anything," Jeremié muttered, sounding more worried the closer the pair got to the tower.
"We won't know without taking a risk, right?" he smirked back in reply.
"Hopefully you won't come out in another body," Odd joked, shooting an implied glance towards Yumi who just rolled her eyes.
"I have better things to do than that," William laughed quietly, cracking his knuckles. "Let's do this."
Aelita and William entered the tower and after a moment of reassurance, they began to float to the top podium.
"That was certainly something," William huffed excitedly.
He'd never been to the top of a tower before, and the moment certainly drove his excitement to another level since soon he'd be able to deactivate towers just as the rest of them. It was just a small part of the 'take that, X.A.N.A' revenge plan he'd been personally taking care of. Stepping forward, Aelita started up a holographic panel and began connecting to the supercomputer back at the lab.
"I really hope this works-"
The tower suddenly shook with a loud thud. They glanced at each other in panic and back at the screen.
"Jeremié, what's going on?"
"You are currently surrounded by six- no, seven megatanks."
"We have to take care of them-"
"No, William, there's no point. You're already there. If you install the program quickly we can get it done before having to get into a cage fight with X.A.N.A."
William glanced towards Aelita who simply nodded at him.
"He's right – the quicker the better."
Another heavy thud. William stopped his hesitation and nodded too. He stood on the edge of the top platform and shut his eyes, concentrating on floating again. As he went down, he stopped in between the two platforms in the middle of the tower and hovered, a luminous blue surrounding him. He outstretched his arms and waited for the installation to begin. All noise and movement was then cut off, all he saw was a void of digital numbers in his mind.
Again, there was another thud, and this time the tower began to tilt. Aelita panicked and tried to speed up the installation using her own codes in a rush. Aelita's lost codes began counting down on Jeremié's screen.
"What is she- what are you doing, Aelita?!"
"If we lose the tower, we lose William, and frankly, I don't think any of us can deal with a repeat of that," she yelled back, feeling a light change of gravity within her hearing.
Glancing over the edge of the platform, she saw that William was still intact. Slightly tilted in his hovering, but still intact. However another thud caused him to hover completely sideways.
"Jeremié, the tower can't hold on much longer. Just stop this, devirtualize us, we can't take this kind of risk."
Jeremié paused, and thought about all the wasted codes that Aelita wouldn't be able to get back. Stop the process and gain nothing from it – if anything, lose something from it? Jeremié wasn't going to give up yet. He glanced back at Yumi and Ulrich's watches. Giving a stern nod at them, he told them to plug themselves in, and so they did. Jeremié channelled both of their codes and aimed them at the installation.
"When we do Odd, you're all going to be there protecting the tower," Jeremié huffed as he watched the installation bar almost skyrocket to the end. But a single percent before it could finish, the tower began to fall and the data panel was lost.
"No!" they all yelled in unison – it couldn't be over just like that. "Aelita? William?" Jeremié called in through his headset.
But Aelita didn't reply. She was already gone off the podium and had already jumped down to release William from the trance of the tower. However the luminous blue light began to surround her too and she also began to fall into a trance. The tower had almost completely toppled over until William and Aelita were suddenly devirtualized. No-hit devirtualization was never a good sign if Jeremié hadn't done it.
Confused out of their minds, Jeremié, Ulrich, Odd and Yumi rushed down to the scanner room as quick as they could. Jeremié could only hope they returned in one piece, safe and sound. The scanners hissed and steam escaped as the doors jerked open. They stepped out of the scanners looking slightly woozy, grabbing onto the edges of the large containments.
"Oh no..." Jeremié whispered, Ulrich, Yumi, Odd and he looking on in horror.
Sure they came back in one piece, but perhaps in the wrong pieces.
"Did we... did we do it?" William asked, his voice resembling that of a females instead of his usual voice. "Wait, what?"
Aelita- or, well, the boy with the pink hair glanced at William, the girl with black hair, eyes widening by the second. William glanced in Aelita's direction too and did the same. Immediately the both of them grabbed their own chests.
"Wh-"
"I-"
"This-"
"No-"
The rest of them could only watch the scene unfold in absolute silence.
After the initial shock had gone, they were all back at the laboratory, this time with Laura – who had quite the episode herself when she saw Aelita and William completely swapped in their genders. The pair had agreed to switch their clothes for the time being, seeing as how William's clothes were way too big and revealing for his new body and Aelita's skirt and tank top was too much for her male body to handle. Jeremié, Laura and Aelita were set on finding what the problem was and how they could fix it – fast. Meanwhile the others were taking turns in eyeing both William's and Aelita's new appearances. To say the least, it was the longest time they'd ever stayed silent.
"I-I don't understand. Your DNA structure has been messed up, yes, and that would be easy to take care of- but it has been reconstructed to the point of your chromosomes switching around. I didn't think that could be possible. What exactly happened on Lyoko?"
"We were installing the-" Aelita cut herself off, still freaked out by her own voice. "The... program. The megatanks began to attack and suddenly the tower was falling – we haven't had an incident like that since the Kolossus. So I did what I could and stopped the procedure before William was completely lost again. When I went to remove the tower link from him, for some reason it engulfed me too. Then we were devirtualized and... this happened," she motioned to all of herself.
Jeremie and Laura had to take a moment to look away and get back on track after the motion.
"Well, Yumi, you did want more female friends, I recall you saying..." Odd tried with a hesitant laugh.
Sure Yumi was used to clones and swapping bodies and zombies and no gravity – but to see two of her friends completely gender swapped was something she would not get over so quickly.
"You know, Odd. You've upset almost every girl in the school and now you have me as an extra shot – too bad you've just pushed it," William snapped back.
Odd sighed and sat back, leaning on his elbows.
"If you really were born a girl, what would you call yourself?"
William ignored him and continued to fiddle with his now feminine hands – they sure are soft, he thought.
"Willa... Willette... Willianne," Odd began listing off under his breath until a click of Jeremié's finger caught them all off guard.
"I've got it!" William almost sprung up from the ground and reached Jeremie, Laura and Aelita before the others could even get up. "The program to let you deactivate towers used some of Aelita's already implanted codes to work. It also used her DNA as she was first virtualized as a key to Lyoko, and seeing as how she was still able to deactivate towers then, she could do it now even if she lost all her codes."
"Thanks for being fair, X.A.N.A," Aelita mused sarcastically.
"Anyway, to bring your DNA back together, we'd have to do a merge of your two chromosome types within your DNA and retract both from one another."
"Which in human speak means...?" Ulrich mused.
"William and Aelita go into a tower, make them one virtual being, take out each of their respectable DNA genes one by one and recreate them."
"I'm going to be morphed?" William put out, raising an eyebrow.
"Hey, I'm going to be morphed too," Aelita cut in.
"You won't lose your bodies – they'll be safe in the scanners. If anything bad happens, it'll happen to your virtual copies, which won't really matter."
"I think having a pair of wings to get around sounds like fun," William mused.
"Sprinting around in the smoke, however, isn't that pleasing."
William rolled his eyes before turning back to Jeremié. "Let's do it then."
"That's the problem," Jeremié turned in his chair to face the swapped pair. "You've just been to Lyoko; I can't virtualize you until tomorrow."
William and Aelita shared yet another worried look of horror – how would they even face Kadic for one night?
"I've got it!" Odd yelled out, smacking his fist into his palm, almost imitating Jeremié's previous outburst.
Everyone looked to Odd, wondering how he of all people would have a decent plan.
"Willow," he pointed at William. "And Aeden," he pointed at Aelita.