I reached down to my lazily thrown around black shoe laces and began to tie up my tennis shoes. First day of school is today and I wanted to make sure everything great. Being in boarding school was hard enough so avoiding trouble was a key factor. I patted my hair down making sure it was neatly combed out of my eyes. I brushed off my blue t-shirt and cargo shorts and flopped on the bed looking over at Aiden. Aiden is my roommate, and my best friend. He is the one who supplied all of the things for our dorm. A nice mirror, a giant desk with a tall lamp and a Toshiba laptop, almost anything we needed his parents supplied it for us. The keys on the laptop were quickly pressed as Aiden's hand brushed over them, his eyes scanning everything he saw. He cleared his throat and looked away from the screen for a moment making eye contact with me.

"Richard, I want to go to that abandoned factory later," Aiden said as he rolled away from the computer desk grabbing a pair of Vans. He grabbed a hoodie and pulled it over his head. He ran his fingers back through his blonde hair, looking in the mirror with an expression saying, good enough.

"Why do you want to do that?" I said intrigued at the option. Kadic Academy had a giant old factory where work was done at long ago. I bet all that was in there now is scrap metal and trash, useless stuff that probably didn't matter. Not many kids really went there, even though it wasn't off limits

"Well, I guess it would be cool just to go look. It isn't off limits to the school or students so why not."

"I can use the same exact reasoning, so why would we go?"

"Okay, I honestly want to explore through it. Maybe we can find something neat. We can bring Jonathan, Jessica, and Marie. I am sure they wouldn't mind going," Aiden said. Jonathan, Marie, and Aiden were friends from birth, practically raised together. Jessica is his lovely sister, who is brilliant and smart, but not to Aiden's extent.

"Okay we'll go during lunch period but now we need to head off to class, like immediately," I said grabbing my green heavy-filled bag heading for the door. I stopped in front of it looking at Aiden putting his laptop in his bag and following to the door, closing the wall closet on the way. As I put my hand to the door knob, I began to hear a loud knock coming from the other side. I opened it to be surprised by Jonathan.

"You guys ready yet, I am pretty sure Mrs. Goldenberg wouldn't be happy for being late on the first day of sophomore year," Jessica said smiling brightly as she flipped her medium, blonde, straight hair out of her light brown eyes. She was wearing a nice casual purple dress with designer boots. Usually she wore comfy jeans and a t-shirt and a hoodie, but I guess she wanted to look really good for the first day, and if so she was surpassing it by far.

"Yeah, I am pretty sure she wants to see the kid who skipped a grade is in Algebra II, Chemistry, English II Advanced, World History Advanced, Computer and Technology IV Advanced, and knows Japanese, French, Spanish and English fluently," Jonathan said to Aiden wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Aiden is a brilliant kid of course; he doesn't even have to give that much effort to pass a class. We only see him is Physical Education, and Art. Other than that his classes are so advanced we couldn't make it to them. He didn't want to skip up to 11th grade like he could have so he just took some 11th grade classes just to look good for his diploma.

"You make me sound like a mad genius," Aiden said chuckling, "come on lets go to class. We can go somewhere for the extended lunch period we have," Aiden added.

"Well you are a mad genius little brother," Jessica said bumping into him gently. Aiden was the youngest of the group because of his skipping a grade. A group of 15 year olds added along with 14 years old. We didn't mind though, he kept the group interesting.

"Where is Marie?" I asked quickly before Jonathan and Jessica had time for questions.

"She already went to first period, she said she would meet us there eventually," Jessica let out, "let's go now," she finished as she began walking down the hallway.

If they hall monitors saw us together they would have a fit. They treat us like we are a troublesome group but we aren't so we didn't understand how we got the peculiar name. Jonathan pushed his brown hair across his forehead making it cover everything above the bottom of eyebrows. He was unusually tall and had bright green eyes just like his mother, well the photo we saw of her anyway. I made my way down the hallway following her footsteps out of the dorm rooms. It was a cloudy day today, like no other, I was almost positive it would rain. But the weather predictions said that today should be almost perfect without a cloud in sight. I never understood weather in the first place so I am pretty sure mistakes could be made.

I walked into the brightly lit classroom and took a seat in the back of the classroom. The science tables were updated, fresh with their own heaters and sinks and new marbled counter tops. As everyone settled down in the classroom, Marie walked in. She must have not been in here and doing something else, nothing that I was too interested in though. She walked to the seat beside me and climbed up on to dropping her sky blue bag on the ground.

"How have you been Marie?" I asked smiling at her.

She flipped her dark brown wavy hair behind her letting it run down her back. "I have been good actually; I heard Aiden wants to go to the abandoned factory and, explore it I am guessing?"

"Yeah, he wants to go see something. I have a feeling he found something on that laptop of his, maybe a story from Jeremie, his dad," I replied.

"Agreed, I know his dad; our dads have been friends for years. Anyways, I got in Advanced Archery this year. I was surprised. I heard Jessica is in Advanced Color Guard, and Jonathan is in Advanced Powerlifting. Are there any extracurricular activities that you are participating in this year?"

"I am sticking with the Art Club and Advanced Art. We did a lot of work last year to get in these advanced classes it usually takes people a lot more time than it would take us," I loved to draw but I wasn't a very athletic person. People called me a nerd for it but with the way how Aiden did all of that computer tech stuff, there is no way I am the nerd.

"Everyone quiet down while I call roll," Mrs. Goldenberg said as she grabbed the brown clipboard off her science table. She began scrolling through the names as I tuned her out listening for the names that I wanted to hear.

"Belpois, Aiden and Jessica," she yelled out. "Present," they said in unison springing their hands in the air. "I heard a lot about you two, son of Jeremie and Aelita, you guys must be geniuses."

After a couple of more names I heard, "Della Robbia, Jonathan," as Jonathan lifted his hand. "Your father, Odd, is a trouble maker, we'll see about you."

"Richard Jones," I lifted my hand in the air as a response to my name quickly.

"Marie Stern," "Here," Marie said quickly. "Yumi was an excellent student, your father was a bit spacey though," she said as she dropped the clipboard on her desk

She began talking giving us a lecture about the do's and don'ts of her classroom; you know the typical first day thing that teachers are required to do. Promising you lies and stuff that is going to happen during the year that doesn't happen. The rest of the day stayed the same until lunch came.

I walked out of the classroom standing beside the door until I could detect the rest of the gang. Several freshman ran out of there classes rushing to the cafeteria as quick as they could. I had a feeling that we were going to ditch Phys Ed next hour but Coach James wouldn't really mind. As the hallways began to empty I began noticing the familiar faces heading outside. I grabbed my bag off the ground and sped walk to the end of the hall way catching Aiden by his bag trying to get him to acknowledge me.

"Oh, hey, we are heading to the old factory right now," Aiden said as he led us to a woods trail.

"Why are you going that way, isn't it on the other side of the campus," I said pointing over at the artificial island the abandoned factory was on.

"We're taking the sewer path there. I am sure that way we wouldn't cause any sorts of suspicion," Marie added on before Aiden could speak.

"Wait, we're missing lunch, I am hungry though!" Jonathan yelled.

"You definitely are your father's child," Marie chuckled.

Aiden nodded his head, giggling along, and began starting a light jog entering into the woods line. The woods around Kadic Academy were very thin and spacious, not like a thick rainforest. The lawn workers cleared most of it out so the Academy didn't have to be worried about the animals that were quite harmful and liked that sort of habitat. After a while of jogging we reached a clearing and in the middle there was a sewer cap Aiden ran and lifted it slightly moving it over so he could climb down. He waved his hand signaling us to come down. After the others slowly made their way down the ladder I followed. As I was going down I slid the lid back shut so no one knew anyone had come here. Once we reached the bottom of the ladder they had an assortment of scooters and skateboards. Aiden and I grabbed the scooters quickly and the others picked up the skateboards.

"Follow me, I have done this before," Aiden said as he pushed his left foot out giving the scooter some speed. We all followed him going through the many tunnels of the sewer beside the green dirty water. After about 4 minutes we reached an end with another ladder; Aiden dropped the scooter and began climbing up. We followed his signal and were amazed at what we saw when he opened the lid.

As we came out the sewers we were on the bridge leading to the factory. All the rumors about this old building quickly ran to my head about it being a torture place and infections of rats and etc. Aiden ran down the bridge to the garage entrance of the factory and grabbed a rope swinging down to the bottom. Jonathan's mouth dropped, "You are telling me nerdy Aiden is doing all of this exercise. I must be in a dream."

We ran through the garage grabbing the ropes swinging down to the bottom landing in front of a giant rusty elevator.

He walked into the elevator and punched in a code waiting on us to enter before he pressed the activation button. He slammed the down button and pressed 3. The old elevator doors creaked and squeaked and loudly began slamming closed and locking on the outside.

"How do you know all of this?" Jessica asked after finally breaking down, "It sounds like the stories dad told us about a Supercomputer or something."

"Well that is exactly it, our dad used to tell me stories about him and his friends and how they went to the old factory and went to this place called Lyoko. I found some of his notes in his bag one day and it all looked real. So I tried it out another day and I saw the computer but I didn't touch it. And I want to send you guys to Lyoko so I can be like my dad."

"What is Lyoko?" I asked.