Episode Two : Chasing Memories
Soundtrack: Scandal's "The Warrior" (for Sissi)
This is one of my favorite episodes. Probably third favorite of the 'season.' Why? It follows the proper show format, has a plot that could reasonably be used on the show, doesn't go crazy on the special effects, and manages to completely exclude Kloe. Also, it involves a cool part of the ice sector. Sorry this first chapter is a little late!
Taidine
Chapter One: Paradox
The muted buzz of a hundred chatting was making Kloe's head hurt. Everything, in fact, was making Kloe's head hurt. A blinding, pulsating, vicious migraine had sprung up in a moment of disorientation and lodged itself firmly beneath her jaggedly cut blonde hair. Rubbing her forehead helped not at all, though she persisted in doing so. Light, she had to wrap up this interview and go lie down, the sooner the better.
"I see. Okay, last question: Do you have anything you'd like to say to the students?" She asked wearily.
Her interviewee, black-haired, pink-shirted Elizabeth (alias Sissi) drew breath and Kloe realized this was going to take a while. "Well, first of all…" The shrill voice went straight to her head. Just when she thought this migraine couldn't get any worse.
Not far away, past two long, white tables packed with cheerful students reveling in the joy that is Sunday by discussing absolutely nothing of consequence, an incongruously serious quartet sat hunched over foam trays containing a sauce-drenched substance that was almost certainly meat. "So you have no memory of Odd whatsoever?" Repeated a glasses-wearing boy.
The pink haired girl he was addressing shook her head. "None at all," she replied breathily.
"Wish I could say the same sometimes," teased a boy with brown hair, elbowing the final member of the group who uncharacteristically failed to join the joke.
"It wouldn't be so funny if she'd forgotten you," he told the table at large in high-pitched tones. "I thought I was more memorable then that." Indeed, he was probably the most notable of the bunch: Gravity-defying blonde hair marked with a swatch of purple die and a belly-button tee worn over a long sleeve shirt has that effect.
The pink haired girl tried unsuccessfully to smile. "I'm afraid, Jeremie. What if I forget something else? Something important?"
Odd looked offended. "Hey…"
Jeremie, the boy in glasses, shook his head. "I don't know, Aelita. I'm going to the Factory to try and find out what went wrong." He patted her on the shoulder, then rose, snagging a laptop from under the table. The other three watched him head off through the crowd, dumping his lunch tray and brushing past the trio of journalists taking notes on Sissi before vanishing through the door.
Odd glanced at Aelita's untouched lunch. "Are you going to eat that?"
- - - -
Jeremie sat in a swiveling chair, both hands flying across the keyboard of a computer that would cause a federal technology expert to faint in delight. The immense hard drive in the center of the room had enough processing power to break down a human into computer code or flip the world back days into the past. Sure, Jeremie would probably say the best think about Lyoko was meeting Aelita, but this is the kind of computer geeks like him fantasize about in their most pleasant daydreams.
Right now, the message it displayed was grim.
Pulling up a new window, Jeremie double clicked a picture of a pink-haired girl, causing a pad of buttons not unlike a virtual cell-phone to drop from it. A ring sounded from his earpiece.
Ring ring.
Ring ring.
On the third ring, there was a click, then Aelita's breathy voice said, "Jeremie?"
"I think I found out what happened, and it's not good." Jeremie dragged the cell-phone image to one corner of the screen so it wouldn't obscure the flickering green lines of code he was perusing. "How fast can you guys get here?"
There was a pause and a murmur as Aelita consulted with the others. "We're leaving now, Jeremie," she told him, and he nodded, typing a set of numbers into the program on the screen. "We'll be there in a few minutes."
"Good," said Jeremie, closing the window with a last firm, "Hurry!"
Then he was back to the swarm of brackets and programming, adding in his own shorthand a section here, cutting something there. That ought to do it.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Huh?" Another popup materialized on a screen to the left, showing a tall, pale cylinder wreathed in red. "Impossible!"
- - - -
Three students pounded dirt just outside the cafeteria, barreling towards the woods. Several kids trying to enjoy a relaxing day in the park shouted after them indignantly as they blew past. Sissi stood up from her comfortable seat on a bench to find out what all the fuss was for.
"Where are those three going in such a hurry?" She shrilled. Her usual cronies made various noises to the riff of 'dunno.' With a pout, she crossed her arms across her chest and sat down, only to pop to her feet again an instant later. "I have to… go fix my makeup."
- - - -
Some ways away, Yumi was trying to have a peaceful lunch with her family. Of course, when one has a younger brother, this isn't as easy as it sounds.
"So then William wants to go out with her! Right, Yumi? I bet he's going to duel with Ulrich over it! Hey, Yumi, who would win?"
"Mom, tell him to shut up. Please?" Said Yumi flatly, lifting a noodle to her mouth. Chopsticks are so much more civilized then sporks.
Her mother glanced over wearily. "Some day, your sister will have a car and she won't drive you anywhere because of this," she told him.
Yumi watched her brother close his mouth with a satisfying click, but a minute later he was sticking his tongue out, so it wasn't much of an improvement. She was almost glad when her phone started ringing.
"Excuse me," she said, dropping from the chair. Taking the stairs two at a time, she rapidly reached the refuge of her room, snatched up her austere black cell-phone, and flipped it open. "Hello?"
It was Jeremie's choked voice at the other end, and he didn't sound happy. "Yumi? We need you at the factory. XANA's launched another attack, and– "
"What? How?" Yumi sounded as horrified as she looked, and that wasn't a patch on how she felt.
"I don't know. It should take longer to regroup, but XANA gets stronger every time we go back in time, so who knows what it's capable of?"
"I'll be right over," Yumi breathed, flipping the phone closed with a grim expression promising painful death to XANA's latest monsters.
- - - -
"So," quipped Odd as the trio entered the woods, slowing down to catch their breath, "Let's play 'Guess XANA's attack'."
Aelita, breathing heavily, only looked confused, but Ulrich barked an oxygen-deprived laugh. "What's left? Pixelized super-elite paratroopers?"
"I was thinking evil mechanical birds," Odd tossed back.
Aelita glanced around uneasily; something wasn't right. She couldn't say exactly what it was or how she knew – it wasn't a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach or a prickling on the back of her neck. It came from the same part of her that sensed pulsations or changed the landscape of Lyoko (those memories were still in tact – perhaps she hadn't lost as much as she feared).
"Too many trees," she whispered, spinning slowly, trying to get a better location. Ulrich and Odd broke off their good-natured banter, leaving Aelita in silence as she felt fruitlessly for the underlying code. As always on Earth, there was nothing too feel, as if the overload of sensory information flooding her nose, ears, and skin blanked out the subtler feeling of order. But there was… something… there.
Aelita was staring at a spot of woods behind the boys when it erupted in blue sparks.
"Looks like our curiosity is about to be satisfied," Odd grinned. "You go ahead, Aelita. We'll deal with whatever XANA's dished up."
The pink-haired girl glanced at Ulrich for confirmation. At his nod, she hurried off.
- - - -
Odd broke away from Ulrich a few feet away from Aelita, making a circling gesture. His friend nodded and headed to the right, leaving Odd to curve left into the woods. The autumnal detritus on the ground wasn't the best medium to move silently through, but Odd's Lyoko form wasn't cat-based for nothing. Even if he wasn't as graceful here as in Lyoko, dried leaves weren't much hindrance.
Judging the circle wide enough, he turned and headed towards the place Aelita had seen a light show. Hopefully Princess there could remember how to get to the Factory… Well, whatever XANA's threat, one of them could probably deal with it. He'd send Ulrich after Aelita once – speaking of Ulrich, there he was, on the other side of a small clearing, directing at him a puzzled expression. Odd responded with an exaggerated shrug. He didn't see any evil XANA-controlled monsters either. For a moment, both boys stared at and around the clearing; besides a pile of leaves raked into the center of it, it hardly looked different from the one they had just left.
After a long moment of confusion, Odd walked towards his friend on the other side. "Well, I– "
FWAARP!
With a very strange, deep, and difficult to transcribe sound, the pile of leaves rose up into the vaguely humanoid shape XANA seemed to favor.
" –wasn't expecting that," Odd finished. The leafmonster let out a crackling roar.
- - - -
Aelita began running again as soon as the boys vanished into the woods, gasping for air and far from pleased. She worried about them – at least, she worried about Ulrich, and Yumi and Jeremie. She probably worried about Odd, too, though she couldn't remember at the moment. And, perhaps a touch uncharitably, she worried about herself. If XANA had spaced out his attacks, she might be running right for a trap.
Suddenly, a humanoid shape detached itself from behind a tree. Aelita tried to halt her forward motion, but her feet had other ideas. Next thing she knew she was sprawled in an ungainly heap on the ground, staring helplessly upwards.
Fortunately, the figure she had almost collided with didn't appear to be a creation of XANA. It was a rather short girl with long, sleek black hair, heavily mascara-ed eyes, and a supercilious expression. "Aelita," said the stranger in shrill, nasal tones. "Weren't Odd and Ulrich with you?"
To her growing horror, Aelita began to realize while she didn't know his pink-shirted stranger, the other girl knew her, and there was only one explanation for that: another gaping hole in her memory, shaped like the girl in front of her. Aelita's mind raced. I don't know who she is. She's asking about the boys. She might be on the team. It's only fair to warn her.
"Aelita. Yoo-hoo! Did you hit your head when you fell, or do you always look like that?"
"Odd and Ulrich went back that way when XANA attacked," said Aelita, ignoring the taunts. Well, she hadn't broken anything in the fall… "They might need your help."
The girl she couldn't remember looked at her strangely. "XANA? Odd's rock group?" Before Aelita could respond, though, she stuck her prim nose in the air and vanished between a pair of tree-trunks.
Aelita stared into the woods for a long moment and hoped she hadn't made a grievous mistake.
