Late July 2007. It was a very eventful day, though it didn't start out like anything special; it was like any other Sunday-right-before-the-school-year-begins.
It had been over a year by now since six teenagers had left their old lives and begun living typical high-schooler lives. Four of these teenagers, two blond boys each on a laptop, a brunette boy, and a pink-haired girl, were sitting together at a table in the cafeteria. It was breakfast-time, and between glances at the laptop, the purple-blond would take sloppy bites of croissants dipped in chocolate and honey. Occasionally, he would steal one of the nerd-blond's croissants, taking advantage of his engrossment in whatever he was doing on his laptop. The pinkette occasionally looked over the nerd-blonde's shoulder to see what he was doing, but he turned so that she couldn't. Instead, she turned to the purple-blonde.
"Hey Odd, what are you doing?" she said.
"I'm just surfin' the web, nothin' much," he replied as he stuffed another croissant in his mouth.
She looked at him, tilting her head slightly as she watched him with the croissant. "You know, Odd, it would be a lot easier if you actually took smaller bites and took the time to chew them."
He glared playfully at her, although he looked rather ridiculous due to the croissant still being stuffed in his cheeks like that of a chipmunk. He chewed for a minute, then swallowed enough to retort in a somewhat muffled voice, "You know what, Aelita? If you knew anything about good croissants, you'll know that you've gotta be FAST to get any, and as many as will satisfy a superstar appetite like mine. Slow pokes—" he reached over and stole another one of the Jeremie's croissants, "—like Jeremie here, on the other hand."
"Go ahead, Odd. You can have them." Without looking up from his laptop, Jeremie pushed his plate towards Odd with one hand.
"Thanks, Jeremie!" beamed Odd, as he this time took Aelita's advice and took a smaller bite of one end of Jeremie's croissant. He tapped some more on his keyboard and then shut the laptop, put it away in his bookbag (purple, of course), and leaned back in his chair. "I'm not sure whether I prefer that kind of surfing the web to the kind we used to do on the Skid. I loved shooting down all of XANA's fishy monsters there."
The brunette with the military-style jacket piped in for the first time, "We've had enough close calls and bad times with XANA there that I think I prefer the way you were doing just now. What are you doing anyway, Jeremie? Surely not just idly surfing the web like Odd was."
Jeremie tapped something out on his keyboard, and then shut the laptop on his lap. "Just putting a few finishing touches on the summer assignment."
"Is that the only thing you've been working on this summer?" Ulrich asked.
"Of course not, Ulrich," said Jeremie. "In fact, I've a little something I want to show you guys later on, after we get our schedules and see Yumi."
Odd and Ulrich looked at Aelita, who shrugged. "I have no idea," she said. They stared at her a moment longer, then let it go as the principal and overweight gym teacher dismissed breakfast.
The heroes picked up their trays and cleaned up their table before heading back to the dormitory building. Aelita and friends walked up the stairs inside, and she left them at their floor to continue up to the girls' floor, where her room was located.
To her surprise, however, when she arrived at her room, the door was already slightly ajar. Strange, she thought. I'm sure I locked it this morning.
Slowly, curiously, Aelita pushed the door open to find another girl, who looked to be about sixteen, and a new set of dorm furniture (bed, desk, wardrobe) had been moved in. The girl was unpacking a bright red suitcase on the new bed, her back turned to Aelita, and the pink-haired girl could see a black clip pinning the girl's golden-brown hair to the back of her head, with the leftover hanging out divided into two thick strands that reached down to her shoulders.
She turned around as she heard Aelita shut the door.
The girl was tall, with tanned skin and dark brown eyes. She wore dark blue skinny jeans which showed off her figure quite nicely, a light grey tank top, and a short-sleeve dark purple cardigan, open halfway. Her jeans were held in place with a black belt. Her shoes were grey flats which at first glance looked a bit like Mary-Janes, and she wore no visible socks. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about her outfit was the blue-purple-and-black neckstrap, which Aelita had confused as a scarf initially. She was subtly pretty, and yet her current presence was matter-of-fact and maybe slightly tense. Aelita could tell she was nervous and surprised to see her, but she had wiped her face clean of it as soon as it was noticeable.
"Oh wow, pink hair," she said. Her voice was low, something between an alto and tenor range. "It figures that I get stuck with another weird roommate."
Some first impression, Aelita thought. She already wasn't expecting to be having a new roommate, much less one who seemed quick to judge. Still, she had to try. "You haven't had good experiences with roommates in the past?"
"They've all either been total snobs or just plain cooky," she continued, twirling a finger around her ear in the crazy symbol.
"O-oh..."
The girl went back to unpacking. "So...I'm Maiana, and you are...?"
"Aelita Stones."
"Pretty name," Maiana nodded.
"Thank you," said Aelita. A bit hesitantly she continued, "If non-annoyingness and pretty names are what you like, then I hope you find me to be a better roommate than all of your past roommates, and especially than Sissi."
"Who's Sissi?"
"Elisabeth Delmas. She's the principal's daughter, and she's the most selfish, stuck-up girl I've ever known."
"Given her name, I should have probably drawn that conclusion immediately. I guess it's a good thing that Mr. Delmas didn't room me with her."
By that point, Maiana had put everything away except for a cardboard box. She dug through the packing popcorn and lifted out a CPU and proceeded to set up a computer on the desk not already occupied by Aelita's computer. Aelita moved over to help her set it up, and before fifteen minutes had passed, it was up and running.
"Thanks..." said Maiana.
"No problem," said Aelita, sounding maybe a little annoyed, but Maiana didn't seem to notice.
"Is it time to go get schedules yet?" asked Maiana, looking at the clock on her cell phone.
"I think so," said Aelita, and the two girls left the dorms to go downstairs.
Upon reaching the administrative building, the pair was met by a crowd of kids, all trying to get their schedules. They had met up with Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich on the way.
"Who's the girl, Aelita?" Odd had said.
"This is Maiana. Apparently Delmas decided I needed a dorm mate, and she's new here, so he roomed her with me," Aelita had replied.
"Hope she has some classes with us." Odd had given Maiana a wink, and she looked away towards the rest of the group.
Aelita had then introduced them, and Maiana had nodded to them respectively, and from there they had all proceeded to make their way to the administration building, where they were now, fighting the crowd of kids to see what was going on.
"Calm down, kids. Let's get into three lines by last name. A's through G's, over at this table on my right. H's through R's to the table just behind me, and S's through Z's at the table to my left!" An overweight gym teacher, the beloved Jim Morales, bellowed out orders with his megaphone as he pointed students to their respective tables. Maiana, Aelita, and Ulrich got in line behind some fifth grader who was looking up and gushing at the red-headed Milly Solovieff just in front of him. Ulrich and Aelita discussed their summer vacations and Maiana just remained silent as they moved closer and closer to the table. Finally, the fifth grader moved away, and Maiana was at the front of the line.
"Your name, please?" The woman sitting at the desk was a blonde-haired lady who looked to be in her forties, with laugh lines and glasses. A name tag on her chest identified her as Nicole Weber. A stack of papers and a stamp stood in front of her.
"Maiana Schaeffer, foreign exchange student."
"Good to see you here. Your test results were phenomenal, and I feel you'll be somewhat pleased with your schedule," said the woman.
"I certainly hope so," Maiana replied with somewhat of a smile.
Aelita stopped talking as Maiana received her papers from the receptionist and moved away, standing awkwardly to one side, as if waiting for Aelita.
"Aelita Stones."
Aelita and then Ulrich both received their papers from the receptionist, and then the three moved away to where several other kids, including Jeremie and Odd, were standing and comparing schedules. As it seemed, Jeremie, Aelita, Ulrich, and Odd all had most of their classes together, save for some electives including art. The other two, a Japanese girl and another guy with blue-black hair, also had most of their classes together. Maiana quietly tried to stay out of their conversations, though she did listen in.
"Hey Miranda!" Odd's voice rung out over the rest of them, catching Maiana's attention, and she looked up from her paper. "What's on your schedule?"
That's a good question, she thought. What is on my schedule? Perusing it, she saw a list of classes and times. On A Days, P.E., Language Arts 11, History, lunch, Spanish, and then music performance. On B Days, P.E., a free period, Literature, lunch, Biology, and musical theory.
"It's Maiana. You know, like My-yah-nah." She corrected him first, and then handed it over to Odd, who perused it intently.
"Cool! We have Language Arts, lunch, Spanish, and music together!" he said, handing the schedule back. "But it looks like you might have a lot of classes with Yumi and William too." He indicated the Asian girl and the other black-haired boy, who lifted their heads respectively at the sounds of their names.
"Hey, Yumi. What classes do you have?" Ulrich asked.
"Oh, nothing particularly interesting. I've got gym, trigonometry, history, lunch, Spanish, and study hall, and then more gym, Languages, Literature, lunch, biology, and world culture."
"Hey, I've got world cultures too!" said Ulrich. "We actually have a class together this year!"
"Doesn't sound too dissimilar from my schedule," Maiana commented.
"Well then we'll be seeing a lot of each other, won't we," Yumi replied. "I'm Yumi, by the way."
"Maiana. Nice to meet you."
"See you around," she replied with a smile.
The group turned away, chattering happily, and walked off to who-knows-where, leaving Maiana standing where she was. She stared down at her schedule again, and then walked off in a different direction, towards the gates of the school. She had some free time, and she didn't feel like being in the dorms anyway, so why not do a little exploring?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
After wandering through the streets on her own for a short while, she came upon a river, with a bridge leading to what looked like an abandoned factory building. It was open, and despite every screaming voice in her head telling her not to go in there, curiosity whispered in her ear, and she listened to it.
The inside of the building was several stories tall, the entrance she had just come through on the second story. The floor on this story went along just that wall before dropping off in front of her. Immediately in front of the entrance was something which looked like it used to be a staircase but had long since been broken away. It looked as if somebody had installed four ropes in the ceiling to compensate for that. Maiana reached out and grabbed one and swung down to the main floor.
"Hello?" she called after landing. "Is anybody there?" The only sound that answered her was the running water in the river outside.
In front of her and slightly to her left, there was an old-looking freight elevator. It was open, and featured a small keypad and several large round buttons. She looked around quickly, and then stepped into the elevator. The first thing she did was make sure the ceiling hatch was operational, and then she took the elevator down one floor. Apparently the code to the keypad had been disabled, as the door opened at the next level without delay.
Behind the door was a room which was dimly lit. The walls were metal, with a small window near the top of the right wall, which was accessible by a ladder. Another hatch in the ground was also open, and from her angle she could see a ladder going down in there too. Additionally, there was a lab chair and an interface to a super high-tech looking computer. She approached the keyboard and tapped a few keys lightly; nothing showed up on the screen. It must be turned off, speculated Maiana.
Looking around, she noticed a panel in the wall that looked slightly out of place from the other securely-fastened-and-straight panels. She approached it carefully and investigated, finding that it was, indeed, loose. Carefully moving it aside, she discovered a thick journal-like book. She took it out and began skimming through it, stopping to read the dog-eared pages and those which had notes sticking out of them. She stopped on one particular page and read for a few minutes, her eyes widening in interest.
"I've got to try this out for myself."
After replacing the book exactly where she found it, she wandered to the floor hatch and climbed down the ladder into the scanner room, and observed the three tall cylinders. They were dim and dark, and invitingly open. But it became clear very quickly to her that they were connected to the computer in the room above, and so she went back up into the lab and took the elevator down another level.
At this level was another room, much more brightly lit. As she entered, a cylindrical machine rose from the ground, its golden circuitry dim.
Strange, she thought. It's like it knows I'm here…
She approached the machine, and stopped as she noticed a panel open and a lever stick out. She looked around to the left and then to the right for anybody who might be watching. She then tripped the lever, and the computer roared to life.
Hopeful, she took the elevator back up to the laboratory and woke up the supercomputer. A dark blue screen popped up as it connected, and suddenly a holograph map of an alternate world, with four spokes poking out of the center, appeared beside the supercomputer. She looked over at it and studied it, then back at the supercomputer. She stared for another moment before she realized she'd need the journal again. She got up, got it, and sat back down.
Looking down in the book, she found a program for some kind of vehicle, which she tried. A hollow green outline appeared on the screen, and then the window closed itself. Another window opened with a gridded map, and in the middle of it, a generic-looking dot.
Oh, whoop-di-doo, she thought. I can program dots. She shook her head with disinterest and stood up to leave.
As she got up, however, she accidentally hit a few keys with her elbow. Turning around, she looked at the screen to see what her accidental keyings had done, and noticed a countdown timer and an empty slot-window next to each other on the screen. The timer was labeled, "Purple popsicle-head." That's new. What's that supposed to mean?
"I think I'll go explore those cylinders now," she thought aloud, and she took the elevator back down to the scanner room. They were all still invitingly open, but now, to confirm her hypothesis that they were connected to the supercomputer, they were brightly illuminated.
She took the invitation and stepped inside. But what she was not expecting was for it to close immediately around her, trapping her. She might have felt claustrophobic if the strong, powerful wind hadn't started to blow from somewhere below, and with the increasing sensation that the photons of light she was seeing were going through her physical being. The next thing she knew, one of the inner-rings of the scanner was glowing brightly, and she was floating and spinning through it. Finally, everything around her disappeared in a deafening roar and a blast of blinding light, and all sensations were lost.
It had all happened so quickly, though. One second she was being engulfed in light, and after the next blink, she was midair in what appeared to be the middle of Antarctica, minus penguins and fish. Two seconds later, she fell to the ground, landing ungracefully on her backside. "Ow," she muttered as she stood up, trying to rub the pain away. No, not pain—it was a strange numbness and tingling that was gone almost as soon as she had put a name to it.
She took a gander at her surroundings, with no visible light source. It was dark. Maiana would have guessed that it was night-time were it not for the fact that despite the darkness she could still see perfectly clearly. She spotted the vehicle she'd materialized, a floating purple hoverboard, decorated to look like some sort of cat.
Taking a breath, she discovered there was no bodily satisfaction in breathing, but no suffocating feeling without. For habit's sake, she decided to keep breathing normally. She took a step forward.
"Hello? Is anybody out there?" she called.
She stopped as soon as she noticed her feet: ice-blue skin-tight boots with a thin yet sturdy and flexible sole. From her feet, her gaze travelled upwards to her legs, which were covered in dark-grayish-navy-and-ice-blue-striped spandex leggings. Her entire body, save for her face and hands, in fact, was covered in this dark gray-blue skin-tight spandex material. Hanging from her hips was a mini-skirt of the same color, separated from her top by what appeared to be a thin ice-blue belt that came down to a point in the middle of her front, and draped over her shoulders was a pale ice-blue shawl. The edges of the shawl and skirt were cut in a way that they came to points in what looked like uniform, deep, upside-down waves. Her hands were pale gray, much paler than in the real world. They moved up to her face, and then to her hair, which she discovered had been pinned up, into something of a braided-crown. Three ice-blue lumps on her head went from her hairline to the braid-crown: one right on top and one on each side just above her ears.
Some sort of a witch or sorceress.
Not just any witch, she mused. I look like Jinx from the Teen Titans comics, minus her crazy hair. How did I get here again?
She stepped forward again, and this time a noise not unlike a gunshot interrupted her. Her right shoulder stung, tingled and began to fill with a dull ache. She grabbed at it, and turned to find the source of the sound.
Two hideously ugly monsters that looked like a cross between deformed skulls and cockroaches had found her. They were kankrelats, but of course Maiana didn't know that. The small yet bulbous creatures were making for her with great speed. Sensing the danger of the situation, she turned and ran towards the hovering purple board. She was surprised at how easy it was to run in this virtual world; it seemed like it followed the same laws as Earth in physics, just with different numerical values, and it was almost liberating to be able to move this easily.
Unfortunately, she realized, the monsters also had this advantage. She reached the hoverboard, jumped on, and tried to fly away. She wobbled on it trying to keep balance, especially as each tiny wobble would send the board flying in a new angle or direction. But the cockroaches shot the purple board, which disappeared from under her feet. She fell, got up, and ran.
She found shelter in a large ice cave, but another sound sent shivers down her virtual spine. She turned around, and in came a jellyfish-like creature. Not knowing what it was there for, Maiana tried to run, but was foiled by the roaches and the jellyfish, which scooped her up, paralyzing her, and placed three tentacles to her head. They lit up, with translucent blobs of bright crimson moving away from her head. However, the jellyfish did not keep her long, and released her, causing her to fall to the ground, nearly unconscious.
She forced herself awake, holding her head, and as she tried to make for the entrance of the cave, she was blocked by the two kankrelats, and was quickly devirtualized. A tingling numbness spread from her feet to her body, and everything was engulfed in a bright light, her ears filled with a roaring sound again. It stopped soon, and she found herself in the scanner, barely able to keep her balance. The doors opened, and she used the sides to hold her balance while the world stopped spinning around her. Then, quickly, she stepped away from the scanner.
"This thing...," she mustered, "is incredible. I've got to find more about it." She checked her phone. "But not now. Later, at a more decent hour." By decent, she meant a time when nobody would be looking for her.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The whole Lyoko gang and Sissi were all sitting at a table in the cafeteria, eating spaghetti lunch, chatting idly.
"Hey, Aelita. Where's your new roommate, uhh, Mikayla?" inquired Odd.
"Yeah...I haven't seen her since we went and got our schedules," added Ulrich.
Aelita merely shrugged. "I don't know."
"What do you think of her?" asked Jeremie.
"I think she's a bit strange. The first thing she commented on was my pink hair. I bet she thinks I dyed it," Aelita replied.
"It's probably not like she comes across people with pink hair every day anyway. Does she think you dyed your eyebrows, too? How could she not tell it's natural?"
"Well like I said, I only think that's what she thinks. I have no idea."
Yumi suddenly pointed. "Look, there she is." And sure enough, Maiana was entering the cafeteria, late, but not too late to get a little spaghetti, which she did. After obtaining a tray and a scoop of spaghetti, she stood there awkwardly, scanning tables. She started walking towards a mostly-empty table until Aelita waved, catching Maiana's attention. She went and joined them at the table, sitting down next to Aelita and across from Odd.
"Hi, Michelle!" Odd greeted, in a pleasant voice.
"Maiana," she corrected quietly. "Hello, Odd."
Sissi studied Maiana for a minute, and then turns away with a "Hmph!" Odd leaned across the table and whispered in Maiana's ear, "That's Sissi. Don't worry about her. I think she dislikes any girl who hangs around near Ulrich." Maiana nodded understandingly, and sat back, taking a bite of her spaghetti, effectively choking it down.
Aelita, meanwhile, brought a hand to her temple, suddenly leaning forward, her eyes closed. Jeremie noticed and was immediately at her side. "Something wrong, Aelita?"
Aelita retained her position, and then shook her head. "No, nothing at all. I'm fine. I just felt dizzy for a moment, that's all."
"Do you need to go to the infirmary?" Jeremie asked.
She shook her head again and looked at him, her voice still sounding a bit strained. "No, I'm okay."
Odd leaned across the table again. "So Marianne. Where'd you disappear to after we got our schedules?"
Maiana looked up at Odd from her half-eaten spaghetti, where the meatballs had been pushed to one side. "I decided to walk around town for awhile."
"Oh really? Where'd you go?" asked Odd.
"I don't really know. I got lost, but I used landmarks to find my way back."
"What kind of landmarks?"
"A bridge, some street signs and corner stores, a river. Nothing much."
Odd gave her a contemplative look. Maiana wondered briefly if she might have revealed too much about where she actually was. After all, how many rivers were there in Boulogne-Billancourt? She actually had no idea. He finally nodded and sat back, seeming to be able to tell that that was the most helpful information he was going to get from her. She breathed an internal sigh of relief.
After lunch, she disappeared again from right under the noses of the Lyoko group, and made her way back to the factory to search through files and programs in the supercomputer. One set of files caught her eye.
"The Diary of Jeremie Belpois, Kadic Academy, eighth grade student, October ninth."
"Interesting..." muttered Maiana. She set an alarm on her cell phone and then proceeded to continue watching the videos.
-xx-
"Hi. Well, find anything?"
"Yes. XANA."
"XANA? What's that?"
"A super dangerous program, like a virus, which can control electricity and activates towers on Lyoko to gain access to your world."
"So, the red tower, the electricity monster, the weird symbol, the monsters on Lyoko? All that was XANA?"
"Yes. Only Aelita can counter it by deactivating the tower that it uses for attacks in the real world."
"That's great. And what about materializing Aelita?"
"I could do it, but I need some time. It's dangerous. XANA can attack at any moment."
"Be reasonable, Jeremie. We'd better just shut this thing down."
"Listen. Now that we know how to neutralize XANA, we just have to get Aelita to the activated tower."
"Mmhm."
"We can find a way to counter the attacks while Einstein figures out how to bring Aelita to Earth, right?"
"It's risky, but I think we should. After all, we're all Lyoko warriors, aren't we?"
"Yeah!"
"You really think you can do it?"
"They don't call me Einstein for nothing. In a few weeks, I'll have it all figured out. Meanwhile, let's not forget about our pact, huh?"
"Hey, relax. We all know how to keep a secret."
Oh my God, thought Maiana. What have I just woken up? She failed to recognize her roommate's voice in the recording, but she recognized the name.
Aelita can't find out I was here. Ever.
She closed the video entry, and opened a program launch window, typing in a code for some other program, the notes open by her side.
I've got to erase what I've done and eradicate this thing now.
On the screen, a green window opened with a hollow outline of Earth, and beneath it, a time. She entered the coordinates for that morning, and hit Enter to initiate the program. Five seconds later, a bright white light came from the holomap, and the world was lost in bright white light.
"Return to the past now!"