Disclaimer: This work is a non-profit fan fiction for Code Lyoko. I do not own Code Lyoko nor do I own any of the characters aside from original characters I have created solely for this story. Likewise, the names and or characterization of canon characters may or may not have been altered for the purpose of this fan fiction, but that does not mean I necessarily own them nor does that automatically make them original characters as well. The property of Code Lyoko belongs to Tania Polumbo and Thomas Romain, which in turn is distributed by Antefilms, MoonScoop Group, Taffy Entertainment, and France 3. Please support the official works.
Reflection Code Prologue:
Sometimes you already knew the outcome in a situation. At least, that is, that is what you assume for coming into a situation like this. You've been through this before, all sorts of routine in which you think you already knew the outcome. Day after day, year after year, the repetition of this routine begins to go on, even to this day. Perhaps that maybe this is why things choose not to remain the same; perhaps it is why things are not as fatalistic as they seem.
"Getting a little too confident of yourself, perhaps?" A tall, somewhat old male spoke as he gazed upon a room in which he and some others were sitting within; the sterile nature of the room, as well as the soundproofed windows, meant the room appeared in pristine isolation from the outside world. At the end of the large table, another male, much younger in age with his brown hair simply radiant, sat with his hands folded together as he sighed.
"No, perhaps I'm getting carried away with this more than I think." The younger man spoke, as in the room sat a woman with what appeared to be large, puffy hair akin to pink marshmallows sat as she looked at the two men arguing, as she looked somewhat irritated as to the argument she seeing going on between these men.
"Ken, Akihiko, can you both focus on the situation and think about how reality works? It has been over 90 years since it was sealed away in this facility; at its very core it was reinforced further, and further, until the ultimate prison for it was built which has lasted until this very day." The pinkette simply told off the two men, as one of the scientists worked on calmly walking over with a tray in hand as he set it down on the table; a kettle he took from the from the tray as he set a glass in front of the woman as he poured her a drink first.
"Ms. Hopper… Er, Ms. Schaeffer…? Whatever, point is, here's your coffee you wanted this fine morning." A taller, slender male with blackish brown hair and dark brown eyes spoke up, as the woman picked up her glass and had a calm sniffed of it, before pouring the liquid within onto the man's arm as she heard him yelp and recoil backwards from the burning of it against his skin.
"Mrs. Schaeffer, Nobuyuki; you and that Lowell prick keep thinking I'm single just because my husband is missing, and the fact you had the audacity to put that in my drink is just disgusting you sick fu-"
"Anthea?" Ken and Akihiko both spoke up, as opening the door and entering the room appeared a relatively fine, sharp dressed man; had it not been for his crazed choice of haircut and in its blond, crown-like "glory".
"Mr. Sugou you're lucky no information ever leaves this room or else you'd be in jail a good, what, 5-7 years before now?" Tyron scolded Nobuyuki as he pushed him aside and walked over towards Akihiko. "Personally I don't understand why you're gathering here on a lazy morning like today; the experiments have been inactive, security is all set to go, none of the AI's have-"
Before anybody could shut him up the alarm suddenly began to blare in everyone's ears as the entire, white lit room turned red in lighting.
[Warning. AI breach in the facility. Threat Level: 9. Warning.]
Akihiko smacked his face at Tyron's poor sense of timing. "Oh this had better be important, as in somebody be dying or-" A las the timing on Akihiko, however, was more unfortunate than Lowell's; within seconds, his whole head was reduced to a blown open husk as he dropped to the floor. Everyone was shocked, until the hostile growls of something in the room, alongside a gunshot could be heard as Anthea, Nobuyuki, and Lowell gasped as some large, thin, four digit clawed humanoid with an asymmetrical face had pounced on Ken, before suddenly being kicked off of him and promptly filled with lead once Ken secured the grip of his revolver and fired a well-timed shot into the creature's head.
"Is nobody going to question why Ken had a firearm on hand or-" Tyron asked, as the entire facility suddenly shook underneath their feet as the four adults fell to the ground in shock.
[Warning. AI breaching the outer wall of the facility. Threat Level: 3. Report all personal to the quarantine zone immediately; all armed staff proceed to the impact zone. Warning.]
"Well as much as I hate to run, I'm armed and I'm staff so I'll be making my leave now." Ken said as he didn't waste time in rushing out the door, flat out charging the door off of its frame as he suddenly fired a shot open towards something he turned to suddenly face as various, hawk-like screeching could be heard in sheer aggression.
Anthea, meanwhile, was quick to grab a fire ax from an emergency store case, as Nobuyuki and Lowell gawked at the audacity she was about to put herself through. "Madam I do fear for your life if you're insisting on letting us try and escape alive…" Lowell spoke up, as when Anthea was walking to the door, she casually stomped her foot into the still, semi-alive corpse of the robotic humanoid still in the room attempting to sneak out.
"I'll gladly take that risk just to see him again." Anthea said, rather coldly and without emotion, as she walked out of the room, all the while Nobuyuki looked towards Lowell and looked nervous. As the two men looked out the room, they couldn't see a trace of Anthea despite her slow exit, and Ken could only be heard off in the distance of the facility with his revolver. Down on the lower floor visible from this one, Lowell noticed as the lower floors was having an out of nowhere surge of water pour through them.
Staff struggling to fend off the robotic humanoids who were on the next floor below, became caught in the crossfire of the incoming surge of water and were quickly washed away by the current. Lowell looked over towards Nobuyuki, noticing how he was quickly typing away on some kind of device on his right arm.
"Nobuyuki what are you-" Lowell asked in a quiet tone, as the sudden dimness of the lights before him were suddenly what caused him to turn to face the way to the lower floors; in front of him appeared to be the side of something's skull-like face; giving off the appearance of a whale skull covered in human skin, heavily exposed pores for nostrils, and having its eyes fish eyed and having an empty, distracted look in its eye visible towards the two men on the side of its huge head.
Slowly opening its maw inch by inch as it seemingly flat out ignored the duo, deliberate or not, an immense glow appeared in the darkening of the facility's lights from the creature's maul and pores in the creature's armored backside.
"NOBUYUKI GET DOWN!" Lowell shouted as Nobuyuki was merely standing like a deer in the headlights at the sight of this giant monstrosity in the middle of the room, as the giant beast exhaled from its breath an immense wave of fog from its mouth with an electrical surge surrounding the particles it breathed out. Suddenly, the area behind the creature collapsed as what appeared to be the creature's massive, spike tipped tail raised itself up, before dropping back to the ground with a tremendous quake that shook the entire foundation once more.
In the immediate aftershock of the breath of smog exhaled towards the front, the stray particles exploded upon the sudden force of energy exerted by the entity's tail; destroying virtually every part of the facility in its path, the creature proceeded forward as its footsteps were loud as it didn't make much other sounds as it moved. Nobuyuki moved to stand up as Lowell slowly got up as well after just witnessing what had happened, which the alarms made all the more clear.
[Warning. All security offline during AI breach. Threat Level: 1. War-]
That was all the alarm could finish before even the backup reserves of power failed on it; cutting offline as Lowell's eyes widened in horror, he looked around and moved to run down the hall towards the right. "ANTHEA!" Lowell shouted as Nobuyuki looked upon Lowell's act of foolishness; the right was also the way the giant creature was heading. Nobuyuki, at first, was about to turn the other way and run.
Until confronted face to face with a humanoid, pitch black entity, that suddenly began to glow with an immense light as on its small, featureless head formed a glowing, eye-like marking before and it suddenly materialized a baton-like weapon from its left arm. Nobuyuki, turning the opposite way and running away from the humanoid entity, was greeted to Ken retreating out towards the destroyed hall as he could be heard simply grabbing whatever weapon he could get himself a hold of; right now holding off a swarm of the reptilian robots from before, he was quick to fire with his revolver using both of his arms to steady his arm as he nailed each of them through their heads with a single, well placed bullet.
Nobuyuki, though, was pushed from the boundaries of the railing and lunged upon by a shining, pristine silver specimen of the same robotic life-forms, as it turned to face Nobuyuki up as the droid's eyes ignited into a bright, cyan blue. As Ken moved to shoot at the silver specimen, it moved with speed even he couldn't comprehend as the silver specimen, without even giving Ken the chance to react, hacked off Ken's legs without him even getting chance to respond to its swift movements. Nobuyuki, screaming as he backed into a corner in the wall as he watched Ken get his legs butchered off by the entity, was forcefully grabbed with haste by the silver specimen as it dragged him along at an incredible pace towards the outer wall.
"Hands off ladies, the ringer wants this one!" The droid shouted in an obscene, Russian accent with a butch voice, as Nobuyuki was tossed out into the open yard and was watched by numerous, gray colored copies of the silver specimen that suddenly stopped in movement to watch what was about to unfold.
At the gate of the facility, appeared the massive, lumbering form of a borderline Kaiju-esque monster of sorts; it didn't move an inch from where it stood, as its stance on all fours didn't change at all. Its eyes, appearing to be dulled as its attention seemed rather distant from the waking world, were suddenly all being aimed at with tracking lasers by the reptilian droids right behind Nobuyuki. The silver specimen's voice, though…
"FIRE ON MY BEHALF!" The silver specimen spoke, not in its own voice, but in Nobuyuki's voice as the hive of clawed reptilians opened fire with their eye beams as even with the concentrated firepower from them, it still didn't cause the giant entity to budge, giving Nobuyuki just enough time to continue typing away at a device on his wrist.
"OVERIDE OVERIDE OVERIDE!" Nobuyuki shouted at once as before he could even realize it his own body began to quickly dissipate into particles, as Nobuyuki disappeared from sight all the while he was chuckling madly as he did. Appearing in his place landed a relatively short, normal looking human wearing a black robe that landed with a loud thud and pained groan.
"Huh… wha-… why did that guy kick me out of…" The man, speaking in a naïve, near child-like voice, spoke, appearing no older than 18 in appearance as he slowly moved to stand, slowly looked on with his eyes widening in immense horror upon seeing the monster facing him directly; having turned its massive form around when the others weren't paying attention.
The entity, suddenly charging forward with its jaws opened wide as it lunged at the poor sap, quickly shook the child-like entity around in its mouth as it closed its mouth and made a swallowing motion…
Before near immediately regretting the decision; as an immense, powerful surge of energy suddenly erupted from its left eye as it was completely incinerated upon contact with this uncontained beam of energy forging into a giant blade; the silver specimen, beginning to flee the scene with all of the others, was only to leave too late to know the giant had collapsed onto the ground as it forcefully vomited up the child-like entity into the air above.
In the wake of everything that had happened, though, from the child-like entity was dropped a large, single shard of some kind of crystal that descended to the ground below and entered into the hole in the giant's eye as it was attempting to regenerate. All it would ever see from that eye again was a bright flash as its agonizing roar echoed in the distance for what appeared to be miles away from here.
From who knows how far away it could be heard unleashing its pained howl; in the crater left behind of the facility, the creature appeared near dead as it lay with its jaws open on the ground. A small amount of movement caused the giant to give a loud, agonizing growl as it moved to try and process what exactly had happened. As its giant form was degenerating into a much smaller, compressed form as its right eye was watering with how it was trying to regain its sight to look around, the creature could feel the downpour of rain upon it from which it didn't know truly how long it had lasted.
By the time it was able to open its now sole eye, it could vaguely see the image of something, very, very slowly, walking up towards it; the crater appeared to be long gone; the creature appeared to have wondered off aimlessly with no ability to recall where was what and who was who before it.
"A-Are… are you hurt?" The sound of an innocent, child's voice asked out towards the entity. The entity, now in a more humanoid form, albeit towering over the small child still, tried to rub its eye with its wrist as it tried to regain its sense of clear vision towards the small child before it.
"M… m… m-my…" The entity was dryly attempting to speak, as it suddenly fell on one knee from sudden, immense pain it now felt there as it looked to see the sheer amount of blood having been spilt onto its whole left side. The child, moving to carefully lay a hand on the creature's forehead, was met with a hostile gaze, quickly shedding away to an odd form of concern.
"W-w-hy…" The entity spoke out, as pained as it was able to do so, before completely falling unconscious onto the ground before the child in its presence. The child, very calmly and very gently, moved to check on the creature's vitals as it investigated whether it was still alive. As the rain showed no sign of stopping, the boy moved to try and carefully pick up one of its left arm, moving to try and drag its body out of the rain and into somewhere safe. Seeing an abandoned den up ahead, the child didn't stop dragging the entity's body until it was completely within the safe, semi-bedded covering of the den before it.
"Hiroki! Hiroki, where'd you run off to? You'll catch a cold out there!" A woman's voice called out, as the child appeared to turn his head to respond. He didn't speak at all, but the boy moved to take off his coat as he moved to place it over the creature before him. He simply looked over towards where he had heard the voice.
"I'm coming mom, just give me a moment!" Hiroki said, as he looked upon the entity before him with a concerned look for the creature's wellbeing.
"I wish I knew why I had this gut feeling to save you after what just happened when you stumbled across me… Was I taking advantage of some fool who was too out of it to realize what he was doing? Was I genuinely looking out for someone who saved my in return even if they didn't truly mean it? What was my reason you ask…?" The boy, named Hiroki asked towards the unconscious, unmoving form of the creature before him.
"As much as we would all like to know that answer, I-I'm.. I'm sorry; I wish I knew why myself. I've already had to lie to bail out my older sister as it is… maybe you're just like her in some ways… who knows, either way, I'll come back for you in the morning to check on you… if you're still even alive, that is… Either way, please do me a favor and wait for me to show up, alright?" Hiroki spoke up towards the dormant creature, as Hiroki moved to back away, and slowly began to walk off, before heading off in a running sprint to get himself out of the rain as well.
Hours would pass, and the rain continued to fall, and appearing before the creature in its comatose state appeared to be small amounts of movement coming from it; suddenly, its eye shot open as its violet form analyzed the surroundings it now had before it, all the while letting out a pained, exhausted and raspy sounding growl.
The rain had stopped by this point, soon having given way to various insects chirping at the late night hours, sometimes accompanied by another animal's late night call. The entity remained still, as it simply took in the starry skies before its view outside of the den. The creature remained motionless outside of its pained, raspy breathing, as it looked straight into the cosmic void of space the night sky was able to show as the creature's thoughts were beginning to stir.
"W-Why… Why I am allowed to live…?"
AN: Took me long enough but as promised, I'm back into writing again in the wake of the aftermath of finishing Truth and Ideals. I kind of wish I didn't suffer the immense fatigue of having finished the story after over three years of working on it, but it was kind of inevitable at this point. What you're all probably asking is why I decided to open Reflection Code in the manner I did considering I've been trying my best to keep awfully quiet as to what the plot would remotely be like all things considered, but I assure you the prologue will be important in the long run, but I'll also have to warn that considering introducing the characters from the series proper will be in the next chapter, that there isn't a whole lot I can immediately do to continue the story as to where the focal point is on one of its major players just yet. He'll have his chance, but now's not the time to be stealing the spotlight away from the canon characters next, so stay tuned for more hopefully once I wake up tomorrow and get back to work.