A|N: Inspired by QuinSeparable's "Things Change" oneshot. This is also a oneshot, and I probably won't ever update it.
in medias res
"All of a sudden that tower looks a lot farther away."
Odd couldn't have been more right, and the three Lyoko warriors took off towards the nearest group of rocks they could hide behind. From there they took turns launching themselves at the tarantula only to be pushed back, and neither Odd's nor Aelita's projectiles were aimed well enough to hit and destroy the monsters due to the barrage of lasers that threatened to devirtualize them any time they dared to stick their hands out for more than half a second.
"It's no use. We'll never make it through!" Aelita gasped.
xXxXx
Meanwhile back in the factory, Jeremie sat impatiently facing his computer screen, waiting for the window that would tell him whether or not he was successful in hacking into the defense department's satellite-related programs. He tapped the tips of his fingers against the edge of the armrest while he watched the meteorite - and certain destruction - slowly edge its way towards the earth.
"Bingo!" he said after several minutes had passed, when his program popped up accompanied with the telltale beep that told him he'd been granted access. "Now all I need is a relay." He pulled up Yumi's card and clicked the small telephone icon underneath.
xXx
At the school, Yumi had successfully convinced Mrs. Hertz, Jim, and Mr. Delmas that the school needed to be evacuated due to the meteorite, and so under the careful and calm guise of a fire drill, Jim was leading them away, towards the forest. She walked behind them, a few meters from Johnny and Hiroki.
She took two steps off campus and her phone rang. She silenced the ringer and stopped to let the line of fifth graders gain a few extra steps, then answered.
"Hey, Yumi, it's Jeremie."
"Oh, hey Jeremie. I'm sorry I haven't left the school. I had to do something really important."
"Don't worry about it, Yumi. In fact, I'm glad you haven't left school yet. Here's what I need you to do. Go up to my room and get my laptop."
"Your laptop?"
"Yeah."
"Alright. I'm on my way." Yumi held her cell phone in one hand, still on the line with Jeremie, and took off towards the dormitories.
Johnny noticed and nudged Hiroki. "Hey. Where's your sister going?"
"Only one way to find out," the young Japanese boy replied, pointing in her direction. The two boys checked ahead to make sure nobody in line was watching, and then took off after her.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
On Lyoko, things weren't getting any better. Ulrich, Odd, and Aelita had been forced to abandon their rock fortress and were now backed up on a small tongue of land beyond which was nothing but the digital sea.
"Stay behind us, Aelita!" Ulrich shouted as he took a defensive stance in front of the pinkette. "If you get devirtualized, then we'll never be able to deactivate the tower!" How ironically true.
Odd rushed out from behind him and leapt into the air, gauntlets out to fire. "How can anyone be such a bad shot?!" he shouted as he was shot down.
"Odd!" Aelita yelled as the purple cat made made speedy acquaintance with the ground. She ran forward and knelt down next to him to see if he was okay. Then rational thought kicked in, and she looked up to dodge whatever lasers the tarantulas might be sending her way.
But what she saw took her by surprise. The tarantula stared, almost glared displeasingly, if tarantula androids could have facial expressions, at her, and then turned and concentrated its attention and lasers on Ulrich, away from her. In the distance, Aelita could tell that William wasn't too happy about it either.
She couldn't think about that right now. Taking advantage in the tarantula's diverted attention, she helped Odd to his feet while Ulrich stepped in front of them blocking lasers.
"The tarantulas haven't fired at me even once," she realized aloud.
"That's because you've got a couple of great bodyguards," Odd confidently reassured her. But Aelita did not look reassured, only confused.
xXxXx
During this exchange, Yumi had argued with her brothers and finally made it to the top of the science building. She'd connected the cable as per Jeremie's instructions, and Jeremie began his war with XANA over control of the satellite. At this moment, as he was trying a new code to counteract the code XANA had used to block him before, he looked over at his side screen which was showing the layers of atmosphere and the projected path of the meteor.
The little white dots quickly turned red as they signalled that the meteorite had officially entered the Earth's atmosphere.
"Too late," he whispered.
Now it was only a matter of minutes, and Jeremie realized that even if he did manage to take control of the satellite, the chances that he would be able to alter the angle of the laser on the satellite to either destroy or divert the mass of the comet in such a method that it would not strike Earth in such a short amount of time was little to none.
"I'll never make it. XANA is a flawless program, and I am only human."
Jeremie's proclamation of surrender echoed over the Lyokoans' heads, as Ulrich and Odd were backed up as far as they could go without pushing Aelita into the digital sea. "This time, it's all over," Ulrich shouted, his fear and rage giving him energy for a final stand.
Aelita shook her head. "No, Ulrich. It's not over. We'll deactivate the tower! We have to!" She sprouted wings and flew over the two boys, energy fields in her hands, and threw them at the tarantulas.
Suddenly William was there with his giant sword, and he blocked the first energy field and absorbed the second one, which lit pink sparks around his sword as he rerouted the energy, launching it at Odd and Ulrich. Ulrich was able to jump away, but the pink energy singed Odd tail and the last of his lifepoints.
"No! Odd!"
xXxXx
Yumi didn't need to be an astronomist or rocket scientist or even a meteorologist to know that the fireball that had appeared in the sky that was gradually getting bigger meant that Jeremie wasn't going to be able to take control of the satellite, and so the only two potential outcomes were death and the graceful white bubble that would erase everything and restart the day, as if XANA had never sent that comet pummelling their way in the first place.
She abandoned her grip on the laptop and the cable, praying she was somehow wrong and that Jeremie would be able to connect anyway despite the timing and logistical issues with the technology. From what Jeremie had said on the phone before, things weren't looking good on Lyoko, and so she couldn't realistically expect that a return to the past would come in time.
Which meant they would all die.
Yumi's heart suddenly lurched, and she felt compelled to hug her little brother and his friend whom she knew had a crush on her. She held her arms out. They were quick to oblige her unspoken request, and she held them tight as they hugged her, begging for strength and some day-saving heroics that they all knew wouldn't come.
Hiroki's eyes grew wide as they fixed themselves on the ever expanding fireball, while Johnny's and Yumi's were squeezed shut as they braced themselves for the inevitable. Why hadn't it come yet? How much longer? Yumi whispered sweet nothings and prayers as the grim reaper rode in on his fiery chariot.
xXxXx
"Jeremie, you have to get out of there," said Aelita as she flew under the platform, attempting to sneak up on the tower while carrying Ulrich. It wasn't working so well; William kept digging his sword into the thin platform, threatening to pierce the couple and send them plummeting to the digital sea. Aelita had had to fly low, and her arms were getting very sore.
"I can't do that, Aelita! I can't leave Odd alone!" Jeremie shouted back.
"Hurry, Jeremie!" Aelita pleaded.
"No! Maybe..." The blond genius fumbled for words as to what he was going to do to save the day. "I'll... I'll launch a return to the past. That'll give us more time!"
"No it won't, and you know that," Aelita pleaded again.
"Maybe there'll be a fluke!"
"Jeremie, do what she says! Hurry!" Ulrich shouted. "I'm sorry, Odd..."
"It's okay, Ulrich," Odd mumbled quietly. "Jeremie, head for the scanners. I'll virtualize you."
Jeremie stared at him incredulously.
"Go! I might not live to see tomorrow, but we need you more than me to fight XANA, and I can't go back to Lyoko, not now," Odd argued. "I'm replaceable. You're not! Go!"
"But-"
"Go!" Odd pushed Jeremie out of his seat and sat down, pulling up the virtualization program and attaching the coding linked to Jeremie's card. After taking a second to reorient himself, Jeremie ran to the ladder to the scanner room, not willing to wait for the elevator.
"Jeremie, Odd, hurry!" Aelita breathed as she flew back up, behind the Skid and away from William. She used her creativity to will herself and Ulrich inside, and stared through the window waiting for Jeremie's arrival.
"Transfer: Jeremie!"
The scanner doors shut around him.
"Scanner: Jeremie!"
Lights began flashing around the claustrophobic boy in the scanner.
"Virtualization!"
Odd's voice echoed in the scanner and over Lyoko, and Aelita knew that the fight would go on. She held her fingers over the proper keys, ready to beam Jeremie into the Skid as soon as she saw that telltale blue outline.
It didn't come right away.
The moment Aelita began to wonder if Odd had been on time in virtualizing Jeremie, Lyoko suddenly shook violently, as if XANA had taken a giant virtual sledge hammer and hit the far end of the sector over a lever so that the rest of the sector would flip like a catapault. The Skid was flung in the air and was about to have a crash landing when Aelita activated the vertical propulsion system, which was enough to suspend them in midair.
As they steadied themselves, Aelita noticed something strange. It was as if the Desert sector was slowly but surely becoming victim to a giant invisible eraser.
"We're too late," Ulrich realized out loud.
"Noo..." Aelita whimpered, sitting forward in utter shock.
"Aelita, we have to get out of here," Ulrich managed to say through shaky breath.
"No!" Aelita shouted. "We've lost! Don't you get it?! We let the whole world down! So now we're going down with it!"
"No, Aelita! Don't do this! We can still fight XANA! He hasn't won completely yet!"
"And how is that?!" Aelita sobbed.
"Look he... he hasn't captured you. That's been his goal the whole time, right? So, as long as he keeps his grimy virtual hands off of you, we still having a fighting chance. Do you get it? Get us to a replika!"
Aelita knew that Ulrich was right, but without Jeremie, Odd, and Yumi, everything seemed so pointless. Still, though, she had to listen to rationality. Taking one last look at the disappearing world she used to know, she put her hands on the joysticks and dove the Skid into the digital sea.
She flew out the floodgate, and seconds later, the Lyoko sphere behind her burst into tiny blocks and data that slowly drifted down into the forgotten depths of the digital sea. Looking around, Aelita noticed many of the blocks around her were disintegrating too, results of their host computers being destroyed in the havoc brought by the meteorite. There was a hub in the distance, but it looked like it was slowly falling apart. She sighed. Finding a new replika was not going to be easy, and anyway how would she know what awaited her and Ulrich there anyway?
A red dot found its way onto Aelita's sonar, and recognizing the coding that was tagged with it, she directed her skid towards the dot. Several minutes later she saw what the red dot represented: a replika. This one was intact, so its supercomputer was probably nowhere near the site of the meteor crashing.
She got inside without much trouble and found herself in a replika of the forest. It wasn't long before she realized this was the same replika they had already been in before. As she piloted the Skid towards a tower to moor, she saw no monsters or pulsations. Good.
"Energize," she whispered as she transported Ulrich and herself out of the submarine, and the two Lyoko warriors, each low on life points from the battle before, crossed into the tower.
"So what do we do now?" Ulrich asked, trying to keep his virtual tears out of his voice.
Aelita understood what he meant, and immediately she leaned forward to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his shoulder. It felt strange to be doing this to Ulrich instead of Jeremie, but it was still a shoulder to cry on. Ulrich, slightly surprised and yet not surprised, awkwardly began to rub her back with one hand while virtual sobs wracked the pinkette's body. He wasn't sure, but he thought he was beginning to feel a wet spot on his shoulder where Aelita's eyes were, and allowed his own virtual tears to run down his face. (So it was possible to physically cry on Lyoko.)
After a few minutes she lifted her head from his shoulder, and her expression was dull yet determined, her eyes black with cold thirst for vengeance, her lips drawn back into a snarl.
"We destroy XANA."