Episode One : A Time of Madness

Soundtrack: Edie Brickell's "What I am" (for Kloe)

Chapter One: Kloe

Kloe? Who is this Kloe? Oh, another Mary-sueish addition to the Lyoko gang who's going to save the day… No! It' not like that! Well, maybe in the first episode. But please, give me a chance. It gets less cliché, I promise.

Taidine

Sunday, that beautiful day of freedom. Yes, by 'freedom' we really mean 'freedom to study and do all the homework from the past week,' but the fact that no one was caged in class created a cheerful buzz in the cafeteria of Kadic. The imposing lunch lady dished out today's choices of poison with a smile. Knots of friends and classmates drifted briefly together for bursts of jovial conversation. Two teachers chatted in the back, looking considerably less stressed then they did in class. A boy pounded with good-natured frustration on a malfunctioning vending machine. A girl slipped on a tray and was saved from falling on her back by a friend standing behind her, causing both to dissolve into giggles.

In one quiet corner, sitting slightly hunched over a sectioned tray filled with nameless, unidentified bits that were almost certainly meat, was a teenaged female with pale, flyaway hair and an air of intense concentration. She dug into the… food, presumably …with a cheap plastic spork, never once looking down. Instead her eyes were focused straight ahead, staring at either empty air or the 'got milk?' poster at the other end of the cafeteria as though it held the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Or the question, depending on what you believe.

Whatever she was thinking, it was about to be interrupted. A pair of girls, clearly younger, were walking towards her corner at a pace just short of a run.

"Kloe," the first stammered. She was red-haired and slightly shorter then her companion. "The notice board says we have to interview Sissi!"

"Sissi?" Kloe spoke for the first time, in a mid-ranged voice rank with sarcasm in potentia, although what she said now was serious. "Oh, Elizabeth. She's the principal's daughter. QED."

"But she hates us!" Shrilled the redhead, "She's a… she'll never give us an interview!"

Kloe looked down at her lunch tray as if seeing it for the first time. "We have to do a story on this lunch. The school deserves to know what it's eating." The two younger girls stared blankly; Kloe smiled wryly and refocused on the task at hand. "Later. Let's go interview Sissi."

With much aplomb, she snagged her book bag, a purple monstrosity that could have comfortably fit a dog or small child, from under the table. It was also stuffed to the brim with papers. Several spilled out as she shuffled through them, but she successfully located a pen. With the air of a warrior gearing for battle, she tucked it behind her ear, where it nestled snugly amongst jaggedly cut locks of yellow hair.

Prepared and fortified, she rose. Her set expression suggested she had faced down mountains and won, so no mere human could stand before her; it wasn't arrogance, so much as determination and unassailable certainty, but the distinction was a fine one. "Lead on," she instructed the junior reporters, and, exchanging glances, they hesitantly obeyed.

Sissi sat surrounded by her usual cronies, pink-shirted, black-haired, and secure in the ruling of this corner of the cafeteria. Running a jaded eye over the spectacle, Kloe placed the principal's daughter immediately and firmly in the category of Stuck Up Priss. I thought I was going to stop that, she admonished herself; she may be a very nice person. She wished the thought were more convincing.

"Miss Elizabeth? A moment of your time, please?"

Sissi glanced up - deigned to glance up, by her expression. "It's Sissi, and my time is more valuable than anything a newbie has to say to me," she proclaimed in nasal tones, eyes half closed. Kloe realized that Sissi, despite being several feet lower, was managing to stare down her nose.

"My name is Kloe Makhavi," the reporter began, trying to barrel over any objections by sheer force of inertia. "I'm the new editor of the Kadic Herald. We're starting a column on students of note and were hoping to feature you first." Flattery couldn't possibly hurt.

"I get to be featured in a paper read by three students? That's wonderful," said Sissi, too sweetly. "Not. Take your journalist rats and find someone who cares."

"…Thank you for your time?" Said Kloe dubiously. Time to play her trump card. "Milly, Tamia, I guess we'll be interviewing Yumi first."

That turned Sissi's head almost as quickly as 'Elizabeth' had. "Yumi?" She all but shrieked, scorn in her voice thick enough to make the younger girls shrink back. Kloe wondered if her hair was burning under Sissi's hateful glare. Whoever Yumi was - Kloe only knew her as Sissi's rival - she could almost pity the girl. "Well, if you're that desperate, perhaps I could spare a moment."

Two tables down, a boy with improbably spiked hair grinned at his glasses-wearing companion on the other side of the table. "Whaddya know? Sissi's speaking to the journalists."

With the air of one not wishing to get involved, the boy with the glasses glanced over his shoulder and nodded vaguely. "Didn't she swear she'd never do a piece for their paper?"

"Looks like someone made them forget," chimed in the pink-haired girl sitting next to him. She sounded pleased. "That's the new girl - Kloe. She's in my language class."

"If she wants to knock Sissi down a peg, best of luck to her," said the first speaker, saluting.

"Fine," muttered he final member of the group, a brown-haired boy, "as long as she doesn't try to but into our business."

All three others nodded. The last thing you need when trying to save the world in secret is a nosy journalist.

An electronic chirp sounded from under the table. The boy with the glasses leaned down and snagged an austere laptop. "Uh-oh. Looks like XANA's activated a Tower."

Two tables away, Kloe watched as the group of four stood to leave, the brown-haired boy pulling out a cell phone. "Milly? Tamia? Finish the interview."

- - - - -

The principal's office is a place every student dreads. The troublemakers know it well, like an old rival. The more appropriate students, or the wiliest of the rebels, feared it as a vaguer threat. They didn't know the square, claustrophobic layout, the stiff chairs for visitors, the stark desk at which the principal himself, supreme ruler of the school, sat like a grey-haired harbinger of doom…

"James? You can go now," said the principal, putting down his phone. "And tell whoever's outside to come in."

Tingling with the shock of reprieve, a small boy with darting eyes and an overactive imagination rose from his uncomfortable seat, nodding to the principal and thanking whatever higher powers might exist for this unexpected salvation. He hardly glanced at the tight-lipped policewoman outside who strode in as he left, expression suggesting the principal was about to receive a taste of his own medicine.

"Sir?" She said as soon as she had entered fully, voice crisp and militant. The principal nodded with just a touch of trepidation. She was an imposing woman, tall and solidly built, with age adding a touch of grey to her hair but not marring the muscular physique her uniform emphasized rather than concealed. "We've found a… rather inexplicable paper trail leading to this school. First is a report about…" she pulled a palm-sized notepad from her pocket as though not trusting such ludicrous claims to memory, "living dead, or zombies? The officer who filed it, when questioned, refuses to admit to any knowledge of the document. Then…" The principal listened, or at least gave the impression of listening, and his thick eyebrows drew steadily closer together as she talked. He wouldn't look directly at the policewoman, but he was either giving her his full attention or lost in thought - he certainly didn't notice the blue sparks crackling from a light bulb overhead.

"…mechanical monsters, but the snapshot referred to in the report was never found and I think I would have remembered a thing like that…"

Blue light crackled convulsively, and the light bulb gave a chime of breaking glass. The policewoman stopped and looked up; the principal made a puzzled "Hmm?" noise.

Shapeless black billowed out of the now-bare socket, reaching out inky tendrils to taste the air. For a frozen moment the nebulous black stain hung suspended in midair, then plunged towards the policewoman.

In seconds, it had vanished.

"Umm…" essayed the principal. The policewoman stood with her eyes closed. "Officer? Are you all right? Officer?"

Her eyes blinked open. The pupils flickered weirdly, solid one moment, some alien symbol of concentric circles the next. Or was he imagining that? He must have imagined the black cloud too, something like that was just silly… "Officer?"

The last thing he saw was her fist before the world went black and he slumped forward across his unnaturally clean, polished desk, breathing shallowly.

The policewoman rubbed her knuckles reflectively. Then, eyes flickering, she turned and headed out the door, searching.