Just so you know, each scene change is a change in the character who sees the scene unfurl, and may or may not displace the reader temporally. Example: you see the same scene multiple times from multiple different perspectives.
Yumi fell to her knees, and looked down at the sword in her gut. As her digital structure disintegrated, she watched helplessly as William retrieved his weapon to kill off Ulrich and Odd. The path to Aelita now cleared, he evaporated into a cloud of black smoke and closed in on her at a frightening pace. As the last fragment of Yumi's wireframe vanished from Lyoko, Aelita disappeared into the tower, leaving William screaming with rage at his defeat.
But instead of materializing on Earth as she usually did, she awoke in a vast expanse of… nothing. Yumi was nowhere. She had no body, no avatar, nothing, yet she felt the strange sensation of falling.
Then she was back in the scanner. Gasping for breath, she leaned on the door until it opened. When it did, she fell to the ground, a terrible pain pulsating through her body.
Something was not right.
If Ulrich had possessed a mouth, he would have screamed as he fell through… whatever it was that he was falling through. Unfortunately, his mouth seemed to be missing for some strange reason.
Come to think, so did he.
Where was he? Or where wasn't he? Was this the Digital Sea? No, he hadn't fallen; he'd been shot with an energy blast from William's sword. So the question remained: What was going on?
But, a moment later, it was over and Ulrich fell the the floor of the scanner, feeling incongruously sick to his stomach. As he instinctively reached for it, gasps of shock were added to his cries of pain.
Odd gleefully skipped out the scanner, satisfied with the feeling of a job well done.
Sure, he'd died, but Aelita made it to the tower, and that was all that mattered.
"What? You?" Ulrich screamed from the floor of other scanner, shocked and confused. "What'd I do?" Odd whined in reply. "But if you're you," Yumi pondered aloud from behind, "and that's me…" Ulrich somehow managed to follow her line of thought – unlike Odd – and they both spoke in unison.
"Then I must be…"
As Yumi looked into the scanner opposite hers, she instantly knew what her intuition was trying to tell her.
"Oh, no," she moaned, "not again!"
But as the next scanner opened, it revealed the last person she expected to see. "What?" she screamed in shock and confusion, "You?"
"What?" screamed the creature in the scanner opposite Ulrich. "You?"
"What'd I do?" an oblivious Odd griped. Ulrich ignored him.
He couldn't believe what he was seeing. "But if you're you," he pondered aloud, realizing what must have happened, "and that's me…"
Now, the other Ulrich joined in the realization. "Then I must be…"
"You!" Yumi and Ulrich screamed together, looking down at themselves.
"WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE?" Odd screamed to nobody in particular, confused as to why everybody was making such obvious statements as "I'm me," "you're you," and "Odd is odd."
Instead of answering, Ulrich and Yumi looked up and spoke in unison. One word (well, name, actually) was all they had to say for Odd to understand that something was horribly wrong.
"XANA…"
Aelita placed her hand on the screen. "AELITA" it read, as usual. After the "CODE:" prompt appeared, she touched it again, thinking the program to it. "LYOKO" she inputted telepathically. But after it displayed the code, just before resetting itself, it fluctuated. It was only for a second before she rematerialized, but Aelita was certain she saw her name change to "XANA" and the code change to "TRANSPOSE."
But then it was all gone, and she was on Earth again. She ran out of the scanner, intending to inform Jeremie of what was likely another XANA attack.
Instead, she found herself plowing into Odd. Aelita let out an "EEP!" as she tumbled over him, finally landing with her leg in his spine and his face in hers.
"GEEEEAAAAHHHH!" Odd screamed as his gorgeous figure toppled over like a svelte, purple bowling pin. The reason for his toppling was quickly revealed when a large pink lump landed upon his head, smothering him.
"My face!" Odd yelled from beneath what he hoped was Aelita's lower back, "My beautiful face! I can't feel my beautiful, wonderful, magical face!" Not only was he likely to need plastic surgery to repair his nose, but his spine felt like Rosa's spaghetti.
Ulrich and Yumi laughed hysterically as Aelita removed herself from Odd's person. "All right, all right, very funny, now CUT IT OUT!" a furious Odd screamed. The two stopped laughing instantly. "Now what's the problem?" he asked again. "You said a bunch of weird things, but all I caught was 'XANA.' Now spill it!"
"Well…" Ulrich began, only for Yumi to shock everyone else in the room by finishing for him. "Yumi and I have switched bodies…"
And that's the cliffhanger for ya. Hopefully, you can decipher what part is from what character's perspective… In case you haven't noticed, this story is "A Fine Mess" all over again. XD
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