Merry Christmas! This is my gift to old fans and newcomers alike. The Code : Changes series is finally over, but the beginning needs some work. So, here's the rewritten version of my very first story! There will be longer chapters and more of them, and I'll try to put in more fluff too, since the old story was lacking a bit in that department. Anyway, here's the disclaimer.

Disclaimer: I don't own Code Lyoko, or any characters, locations, or storylines associated with Code Lyoko. I do, however, own the plot for this story and my OC, Kirsten, whom you should know about if you read the original Code : Changes.

Anyway, I finally reread Code : Changes, and I nearly cried in shame. I mean, I keep switching between present and past tense (says/said, runs/ran, etc.), and it's too rushed. Since I've improved a lot since I wrote it more than a year ago, I decided to redo it. There might be some new stuff in here as well!

Anyway, I'll try not to rush it as much as last time.

So, on to Code: Changes Reloaded! Here's more than 2500 words for your enjoyment!

Chapter 1 – A Change of Tactics

Odd grimaced as he leapt behind a tree in the forest sector. They were fighting XANA, as usual, but he had no idea why. XANA had activated a tower, but nobody knew what his attack would entail. Rather than waiting to find out, Jeremie had gone ahead and sent them all to Lyoko to prevent XANA from attacking at all.

When every return to the past increased XANA's power, Jeremie couldn't just do it whenever he wanted. If he could avoid letting XANA begin its attack, then he could avoid risking an increase in XANA's power in order to erase the attack from the world.

Odd's characteristic humor and sarcasm was gone. He was tired and fed up with XANA attacking at night all the time. His overboard had long been devirtualized, and he was running low on life points and arrows, as usual.

"School during the day…fighting XANA at night…" he muttered. "When am I supposed to sleep?!"

With a growl, he threw himself out from behind the tree and yelled "LASER ARROW!" as he fired at a crab. He was careless for a moment as he searched for a new target, and paid for that carelessness when a crab fired at his exposed back and took away his last ten life points. He swore loudly as his virtual body decomposed into a wireframe, then blinked out of existence.

Jeremie watched as Odd's life points fell to zero. He rolled his eyes. Odd was always the first to go. He was just too reckless.

But wait…what was this? Odd's profile card remained on the screen for a moment. Then it faded out as a new window appeared.

SYSTEM ANOMALY: DATA ACCESS ERROR

"Huh?" he muttered quietly. "What's wrong?"

Odd believed that the next thing he would see would be the doors of the scanner, which would promptly open to let him out. You can imagine his surprise when he opened his eyes and saw nothing but whiteness.

"What the…Where am I?" he asked out loud. "Did I actually die?"

When there was no answer, he sniffed and smelled nothing.

"Nah, I don't smell any fire or brimstone."

He abruptly felt himself being tugged in two directions and looked around. On his left was his Lyoko avatar, while on his right was his normal, real-world self. It seemed that he was stuck between them. This occurrence only lasted a moment, but it would affect his life for years to come.

Suddenly, the pulling ceased, and his two selves, real and virtual, came together. After that, he suddenly found himself in the scanner. The doors opened and he tumbled out with a groan, suddenly not feeling well.

Back in Lyoko, Ulrich was locked in a furious battle with a megatank. For some reason, this one was being very cautious, only opening when it was absolutely sure it would get a shot off without exposing its weak point for too long.

Once again, it opened and began to charge. He closed his eyes and leapt to the side the moment he heard the shot. If he were able to feel on Lyoko, he would have felt the heat of the beam passing inches from his face.

He shouted "Triplicate!" and created the usual two clones as the megatank reopened and once again began to charge. As it turned to one of his clones, both he and his other clone supersprinted up to the monster. It fired, and as the clone devirtualized, Ulrich stabbed the megatank right in the center of XANA's emblem. It exploded, but he was already gone, headed towards Yumi, who was fighting a swarm of hornets.

"Be careful you two," Jeremie advised, his voice seeming to come out of nowhere. "You are both low on life points. You can't afford to get hit again. Odd's already gone, as usual, so it's just you and Aelita."

Nobody replied, as Ulrich had already engaged the hornets and neither of them could afford to loose concentration.

After Yumi blocked a laser with one of her fans, she threw the other at one of the five hornets and hit it dead-on. She caught it and immediately threw both of them at two more. She left the other two for Ulrich to handle as she ran for Aelita. Maybe they could sneak towards the tower unnoticed.

Alas, it was not to be. One of the hornets shot a laser towards her and hit her in the shoulder. She was quickly devirtualized. Aelita gasped and immediately ran for the tower. Ulrich glanced over just as she ran into it and smiled, surrendering to the hornets. He was promptly sent back to the real world.

Aelita walked towards the center of the platform. When she reached it, she felt as if the gravity around her had been turned off, and she pushed off gently to rise up to the top of the tower. As she passed by the second platform, she gradually felt herself lose her weightless feeling.

When she was standing on the platform, she walked forward until a screen appeared. She placed her hand on it.

AELITA, the screen read in big blue letters. Her name faded to be replaced by a new word:

CODE

Without moving a finger, she typed in the word LYOKO.

Jeremie started as a window appeared on his screen.

"What the…" he said. "How did XANA gain control of—"

Any other words he might have spoken were drowned in a wave of white light.

Odd woke up in the morning when Ulrich slapped his face.

"Wake up sleepy," he told his friend and roommate. "Guess what day it is!"

"Saturday," came the muffled answer. "Now why in the name of XANA did you wake me up so early?"

"Because it's still Friday," Ulrich answered.

"Oh."

One...two...three...four...five—

"WHAT?!" Odd exclaimed as he shot out of bed.

"And it's a new record!" Ulrich announced with a deep voice. "Five seconds, one of Odd's shortest morning reaction times ever!"

"Since when were you the joker?" Odd asked his friend.

"Since I met Sissi," Ulrich replied smartly. "You usually just beat me to the punchline."

Odd began to laugh, then stopped as something intruded into his sleep-filled mind.

"Say, Ulrich," he began. "When you were devirtualized, did anything weird happen? Like anything that doesn't usually happen?"

Ulrich raised an eyebrow. "Actually, yeah," he answered. "Everything went white. I felt myself being pulled apart, and saw my real world self on one side and my Lyoko self on the other side. And then—"

"Your two selves came together, right?" Odd finished. "The same thing happened to me."

"Let's go see if Jeremie knows anything about it," Ulrich suggested.

Odd nodded. "Great idea," he answered. "He should know…oh crud."

"What?"

"I have to redo the entire day of classes!!! This sucks!!!"

Ulrich smiled. "You're telling me?" he asked. "Maybe I'll do better on that math test this time."

"Hmm…" Odd pretended to think. "Nah. You'll still fail, even if you repeat it another ten times. Math just isn't right for you."

"At least my grades aren't as low as yours."

"I never said it was right for me, either."

When they arrived at Jeremie's room, they found Yumi and Aelita already there.

"Jeremie—" Ulrich tried to say.

"Yes, I know," Jeremie interrupted as he was typing on his computer. "Something weird happened during the devirtualization. I'm working on it. XANA somehow managed to break past my barrier to run the return to the past too."

They waited as Jeremie typed. Odd and Ulrich began talking about the test they were going to have that day.

"Come on, Jeremie," Yumi urged. "School starts soon!"

He nodded. "Okay, I think I've got it," he began to explain. "Well, you know that when you are virtualized, your genetic code is copied into the computer, matched with your profile, then stored in memory until you are devirtualized. Your body is also deconstructed and information about every molecule is stored as well. Basically, parts of your genetic code were deleted, so the supercomputer had to splice in parts of your virtual DNA, or vDNA, which is the genetic code that determines what you are on Lyoko and is stored in your profile."

Aelita nodded, while the other three just exchanged confused glances. Odd was the first to speak up.

"Um, Jeremie, I'm sure you and Aelita both understand what you're talking about, but as for the rest of us, I would like to ask you something," He said. "And that is…huh?"

Jeremie sighed. "Basically," he said. "You have small parts of your Lyoko selves inside you now. I don't know what parts were replaced, but I expect you soon will. Now, we have to go get breakfast before it's too late."

All five of them stood up and left Jeremie's room, headed towards the cafeteria.

The next morning, Ulrich was walking back from the cafeteria when he saw Yumi walking towards the dorms with a big box. Curious, he followed her until he saw her walk into an empty dorm. He raised an eyebrow and followed her.

"Yumi?" he asked.

She put down the box and turned around. "Yeah?" she replied. "Oh, you're probably wondering what I'm doing. Well, my parents are moving out to Marseille, but they decided to get me a dorm and let me stay here."

Ulrich smiled. "That's great! I'm glad you're staying," he said. "Um…because…we need you to help us fight XANA…yeah…" He blushed lightly.

Yumi nodded hesitantly. "Um…yeah…okay…"

They stared at each other for a few moments before Yumi snapped out of it. "So…I gotta finish moving in, okay?"

Ulrich nodded and left, leaving a red-faced Yumi standing completely still, staring vaguely in the direction of her open doorway. After a few moments, she shook herself out of her stupor and began unpacking the various boxes around the room.

Yumi took a break after finishing her unpacking on Monday morning. She sat on her bed with her legs crossed and tried to clear her chaotic mind.

She was only able to use her telekinesis on Lyoko when her mind was clear, and she'd had a lot on her mind for the past week or two. She could barely concentrate enough to tip over a kankrelat.

So, she cleared her mind, then opened her eyes and picked an object in her room, a pencil in this case. Then she pretended she was on Lyoko and tried to lift it. Usually, when she used her telekinesis on Lyoko, she felt some sort of shift in her mind. Obviously, she never felt it in the real world.

Except this time, she felt it. Her eyes snapped open just in time to see her pencil fall down on her desk from two feet above it.

"No way," she muttered. "Did I just…"

She tried it again with a book on her bed, but kept her eyes opened, and was rewarded with the sight of it floating right before her eyes!

Then the bell rang and the book fell.

"I have to tell Jeremie after school."

Odd really tried to stay awake during Science class. He really did! But he couldn't resist the sweet temptation of sleep, and his head began to droop. A minute later, he was already asleep.

He felt himself wake up and saw that he was in math class.

"Huh?" he asked out loud. "How did I get here? Did I sleepwalk again?"

He turned and looked at Ulrich, who was sitting next to him. "Did you—" he began to ask.

Then he saw that Ulrich was showing him a paper with a large "B–" written on it.

"Awesome!" he heard himself say, without actually saying it. "I guess taking a test twice actually does improve your grade! Who would've known? Good job."

Then he woke up again and was back in science class.

Woah...that was weird, he thought.

"Here are your tests from yesterday," the math teacher told her class. "Most of you did not do well at all, but some of you, surprisingly, managed to score above an eighty percent, and two people scored above a hundred."

"Let me guess," Odd whispered to Ulrich, rubbing his temples. "Einstein and Herb."

"Of course," was Ulrich's reply. "Let's see what we got."

"Did you get a C for once?" Odd asked him.

Ulrich just handed him his paper without a word. There was a "B–" written in red ink at the top.

"Awesome!" he said. "I guess taking a test twice actually does improve your grade! Who would've known? Good job."

Then he gasped. "Woah," he muttered quietly. "Déjà vu."

"What?" Ulrich asked.

"Nothing," was the reply. "Never mind."

After the last bell rang, Odd and Ulrich started walking back to their dorm. On the way, Ulrich's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and answered it.

"Hello?" he said. "Yes...okay...be right there...bye."

He hung up and turned to Odd. "Let's go to Jeremie's room."

When they arrived, Yumi was sitting on the bed looking extremely confused, Jeremie was typing on his computer, as usual, and Aelita was watching him. He heard them enter and turned around.

"Ulrich, I need to see something." He said. "Just pretend you're on Lyoko for a second and use your Triplicate power, okay?"

Ulrich raised an eyebrow. "Um...okay," he said. "Triplicate!"

There were suddenly three Ulrichs standing in the room, side-by-side.

"Holy…Jeremie, what the hell is going on?!" he half-yelled.

"Well," Jeremie began, "apparently you are all now able to use your Lyoko powers in the real world. That's the part of your virtual selves that was fused with your real selves. That's also why nothing happened in the real world during XANA's attack. He tried to delete your DNA from the scanner memory so you would disappear forever if you were devirtualized."

Odd gasped. "Oh, so that's what happened! I had a vision during science class that came true, but I just thought I had fallen asleep and dreamed it."

"Anyway, now all four of you can use your powers outside of Lyoko," Jeremie repeated. "Ulrich, I suggest you get rid of your clones before Jim walks in on us. He might not be able to handle seeing three of you."

Ulrich nodded. "Right…Fusion!"

The other two Ulrichs disappeared.

Well, that's it for chapter one! Man, it's SOOO much longer than the original! Like...more than twice as long! Anyway, tell me what you think! I can't wait to hear from you!

So, there were a few changes and stuff, but it's mostly the same at this point. Later on I might add some stuff, just to confuse those of you who read the original. I've changed all the chapter titles too, and some chapters might be divided differently from before. Combat situations and the like are probably gonna change too.

Please review and tell me what you think!!!