Originally I had some note here but I had to update this chapter twice due to length, then a few mistakes I realized when looking at it again.
The Return of XANA
"Aelita, Aelita! Help me!"
Aelita desperately reached out to her father, to no avail. He just moved farther away. She couldn't reach him. He began to fade away right before her eyes.
"Daddy! No!" Aelita ran after her fading father. She wouldn't lose him this time. She could almost reach him…
Bang!
"Miss Stones! Others are trying to sleep! If this continues night after night we'll have to see the principal about this!" Jim bellowed, waking Aelita immediately.
It was another nightmare, she realized, regaining her normal breathing pattern. They had started the week after the gang shut the Supercomputer down, and now they wouldn't stop. They only got worse. It had been two weeks now. Everyone on the floor said they could hear her when she had nightmares. Opting to skip on another visit from Jim, Aelita stayed awake until morning.
Downstairs, about four hours later, Odd awoke to Ulrich's complaints and groaning. Kiwi was on the bed of his owner's roommate, drooling and trying to lick Ulrich's face.
"Stop it, you mutt!" Ulrich cried. "I don't know where you put that tongue!" He pushed Kiwi away. "Odd! Control your dog!"
Odd stifled a laugh and patted his thighs. "Come here Kiwi!"
Kiwi leaped off Ulrich's bed and jumped into Odd's lap. Odd scratched his dog's stomach. "That's my diggity-dog."
Ulrich sighed as the dog began twitching its leg. "Kiwi's getting out of control, Odd. All he wants to do is get in my bed now."
"Well, maybe he just wants to be friends. You haven't paid much attention to him lately."
Ulrich lifted his sheets, revealing a large wet spot. "This is how he makes friends?"
"How do I know you didn't do that?" Odd said, laughing hysterically at his friend's bad luck. Ulrich said nothing more; a retort to Odd's comment was pointless.
Odd put on his clothes and headed for the door. "Coming? You won't wanna be late for breakfast; otherwise I'll tell Rosa you said I could have your food."
Ulrich decided to get out of bed, lest he give up on the promise of breakfast. "Alright, I'm coming," he grunted, pulling on his jacket and pants. He followed Odd out of the dormitory and through the courtyard. They arrived at the cafeteria to find it nearly full.
"Wow, did I sleep that late?" Odd asked. Ulrich knew well that the only thing he was worried about was getting any food. The two grabbed trays.
"Yeah, I'd been screaming at you for at least a half-hour when you woke up." Ulrich replied. He got his food and went to go sit with Jeremie and Aelita.
"Good morning everyone. You look rather bright today Aelita," Ulrich said, noting Aelita's rather gloomy expression. She had become progressively more reclusive in the past weeks.
"She won't talk to me," Jeremie explained. "I don't know what's gotten into her."
"I'd rather not talk about it," Aelita said, continuing not to make eye contact with the others.
"Oh, have you been taking lessons from Jim?" Ulrich laughed. Realizing he was the only one laughing and the insensitivity of his joke, he quickly shut up and stared down at the table.
Odd looked at Aelita. "Comon, Princess, you can tell us. We're your friends, we can help. Was it Sissi? I can prank her real good if…"
"I don't want to talk about it!" Aelita screamed, silencing the entire cafeteria. She stormed out. The other students resumed their conversations, as if nothing peculiar had happened. Yumi walked over just about then, and having seen the whole thing, sat down without saying anything.
"Well that was a bit unnecessary," Odd said. "She left her food here." Odd's remark didn't seem to lighten the mood at all.
"If you worried as much about the girls you dated as your stomach, you'd probably have a girlfriend," Yumi said, amazed how everything could revolve around food in Odd's life. "So what happened to Aelita?"
William, on the other side of the cafeteria, stood up and began walking towards the group's table, leaving Christophe and Emmanuel. He sat down next to Yumi. She scooted a few inches away from, giving him a look that clearly said don't even try it.
"Hey guys," William said, ignoring the look from Yumi. He gestured to the door where Aelita had stormed out. "That was pretty alarming, what was that all about?"
"We're about as clueless as you are," Jeremie replied, still shaken by what had just occurred.
"I heard y'all shut down the supercomputer a few weeks ago. Why didn't anyone tell me?"
Well that was unexpected. Odd and Ulrich looked to Jeremie, who was obviously taken aback by the statement.
"Where did you hear that news? I doubt Sissi told you that."
Odd shifted in his seat. "Certainly not from a spiky-haired kid with purple in his hair…"
"It doesn't really matter now anyways. We shut it down and XANA's gone, that's the end of it." Yumi glared at William. "And don't even start with me, after what you put us through with XANA."
Odd thought after all this time, Yumi would trust William again. Apparently not. So the hostility between the two continued on.
Aelita, meanwhile, was at the Factory. She hovered over the supercomputer's main switch. What if XANA attacked her? What XANA wasn't destroyed like they thought it was?
Aelita closed her eyes and pulled the switch down. She shivered as the supercomputer gave off a bright light. Aelita returned to the lab to set up a virtualization. She then hurried to the manhole on the far side of the room.
Aelita climbed down the ladder, about to send herself to Lyoko. She had to find out if her father was still alive. The nightmares had to stop. Aelita stepped in the scanner, and the doors closed behind her.
She landed in blue-walled arena of Sector 5. This was the first place she would look. She made her way to the elevator and took it to the user interface. Aelita looked through data tirelessly, but couldn't find anything suggesting that her father was still alive.
"No, please Daddy, you have to be alive." Aelita looked through more data, desperate for even the slightest bit to suggest that her father wasn't gone. Still nothing.
"No, no. There has to be something. He would never be that unprepared." She still couldn't find anything. It was hopeless. It was just as she had feared.
But then she heard a voice she only knew from her memories.
"Aelita."
It was her father. She knew it—she'd heard that voice so many times in her dreams before. It was something she thought she'd never hear for herself. A purple orb slowly floated up from below, energy swirling within it. It was him.
"Aelita, it's me. Help me."
"Daddy!"
"I am weak, I need power or I will vanish."
Aelita brought the interface back up, diverting power from towers to give to her father. She should have been more careful, but her father was right here before her. She couldn't let him slip away. This wouldn't end like her nightmares had.
"There. That should do it," Aelita said. "Is that better Daddy?"
The purple orb dissolved into a black mist and smoke. "Oh yes. Much better Aelita. Thank you."
Aelita was rendered speechless by shock. No. No, this can't be. XANA is gone. This was worse than her nightmares could ever be.
Aelita shut her eyes. This had to be some dream. She opened them again.
"This can't be! You shouldn't be here! This isn't real!"
"Oh but it is. And now I have enough power to do this." The black mist dissipated.
A white light enveloped Sector 5. The same light emerged from the supercomputer and spread from the lab outward. Aelita then found herself back at breakfast.
"What? How did we get back here?" Jeremie sat dumbfounded.
Yumi walked back over to the table, mouth agape, unable to express her shock in words.
"I saw a white light…but…it…couldn't have been…" Yumi trailed off.
Aelita amidst the confusion slipped out the cafeteria. "This can't be," she repeated to herself, as if saying it would dispel the reality. "How could I be so stupid?" She ran to the dormitory, trying to swallow her guilt and fear.
Meanwhile, the others were still discussing the apparent time jump. William made his way to the table for the second time.
"Either I'm crazier than I thought, or we just went back in time. Like a return to the past," he said, briskly walking over.
"There's no way," Ulrich replied. "You're not suggesting that the supercomputer did this, are you? We're probably just imagining things."
"Who knows, it could have been. It could have been XANA, he wasn't stuck on Lyoko when we shut it down." Odd motioned to the table to their right. "Milly and Tamiya just left before the flash, and now they're back in the cafeteria. With their trays."
"But we destroyed him!" Yumi replied angrily. She was so passionate about this. She stood up and slammed the table to emphasize her point. "Can people rise from the dead? No! Neither can XANA!"
"We should still check it out," William suggested. "Just in case." He looked to Jeremie. "I say we go."
Jeremie looked to the others. "All in favor of going to factory say 'I'."
All but Yumi did so. She looked to the others, and consented grudgingly. "To the factory it is then."
"Aelita can check for any activity by XANA..." Odd turned around. "Wait, where did Aelita go?"
"I'm sure she was here just a few minutes ago," Ulrich said. Or maybe we are just imagining things.
Odd rushed to the door. "I'll go find her."
The remainder of the group made their way to the forest and through the sewers. They arrived at the factory and took the elevator to the lab. Yumi's face became pale when she saw the active monitor.
Jeremie looked at the activated screen. "It's on. But how did it launch a return trip?" He pulled up the security footage. A familiar figure sat down at the monitor and began typing. Jeremie's gut knotted.
Yumi was shocked. "She didn't..."
"She did. But she didn't activate the trip."
Ulrich looked to Jeremie, eyes widening. "What are you suggesting?"
Jeremie looked at William, Yumi, and Ulrich, silenced by the shock. The four of them all knew what it meant. XANA wasn't as gone as anyone thought.
Aelita flung herself into her pillow and cried. All of this was her fault. She had just given power to the domination-obsessed virus that they had worked so hard to get rid of.
"Aelita?" Odd knocked at her door. Another pang of guilt flowed over her. "I know you're in there."
"Come in." Aelita dried her face and sat up in her bed.
"Do you know what's going on Aelita? With the return trip out of nowhere?"
"The supercomputer must have been it." Aelita tried to avoid the obvious answer, and Odd probably knew without asking anyway.
"Was it you that reactivated the supercomputer?" Aelita bit her lip and looked at Odd. He added, "It's alright to tell me, I like fighting on Lyoko anyway."
Aelita just nodded and remained silent, the guilt eating away at her.
"I'm not mad, I promise. But why did you do it exactly?" Odd always saw Aelita as the most fragile of his friends. He tried not to pry.
"I had to know if my father was alive. You guys don't know what it's like. On holidays you go home to your families and have fun. Often I sit in the Hermitage by myself. When XANA tricked me into giving him power, I couldn't bear to tell you all because you're the only people there for me. I just can't..."
The door flied open.
"Aelita!" Jeremie stormed in the room, followed by William, who unsuccessfully tried to hold him back. "How could you undo all that work we did to destroy XANA! What were you thinking?" The shouting was completely unnecessary, Odd thought.
He immediately stepped between Aelita and Jeremie. "Cool it, Einstein. She was looking for the only family she has. Try understanding. I know you're mad, but try to see her story."
"We worked for more than two years fighting XANA! I flunked classes, Ulrich gave up playing soccer, and Yumi almost completely lost the trust of her parents! William got taken as a slave!" Odd glanced to William as he looked to the floor. "Yet she'd rather let us go through that again than accept that XANA killed her father!"
"I – I didn't mean to…" Aelita couldn't find any words to defend herself.
Odd pushed William into the room. "Stay in here." He grabbed Jeremie and dragged him into the hallway, shutting the door.
"What is your problem?" Odd yelled. He had slipped into an uncontrollable rage. Had it been anyone else being victimized, he probably wouldn't be this mad.
"Are you trying to be a detriment to all the progress we've had too? Don't you remember how many times XANA threatened our lives?"
Odd recalled all the times XANA had possessed someone, or tried killing one of them, or tried to imprison Aelita. He found himself strangely at a lack for words. He was choking on his anger. It was pure instinct, he didn't think. Odd's fist flew and hit Jeremie in the stomach.
"For working for a year to free her, you act like you don't care at all." Jeremie clutched his gut. "Say anything like that again and I'll do worse than bruise your gut, you hear me?" Odd hands shook as he stood over his friend.
Jeremie silently got up and left. Odd tried calming down, breathing forcefully from his mouth. William opened the door and approached Odd.
"So, XANA's back. Does this mean we have to fight again?" Avoiding the obvious as usual, William.
Odd fell back into a casual state. "I don't know if Jeremie will at this point. But if he attacks, I'll go with Aelita. I'm sure Ulrich will too."
William sighed. Odd realized just how much of a slap in the face this was for him. "I can get XANA back now at least."
"Yeah. And I kind of missed Lyoko, to tell the truth. After we shut it down, no video game interested me. It's like torture. I mean, having XANA back is not something I'm happy about, but at least we'll be fighting again."
"I hear ya. I hear you asked that new girl Catherine out. What'd she say?" There was another unexpected twist to the conversation.
The new girl, Catherine Yves, had hardly been at school a day before Odd starting asking her out. Once he got to know a little about her, he was genuinely interested.
"Actually she said that once she gets settled in here, she'd be happy to. And this was after the other girls told her all the stuff about me." Odd almost completely forgot, as usual.
"Sounds like a keeper. See you around, Odd." William strolled off.
"Yeah, see you William." Odd stuffed his hands in his pockets. What had he just done…?
At breakfast the next morning, the tension in the air was palpable. Jeremie and Yumi made a point to sit across from Aelita and Odd. Ulrich and William sat on either side, attempting to make conversation, clearly trying to stay without an opinion on the matter.
William was first to break the silence. "How are we going to know if XANA is attacking?"
Jeremie nearly growled the words, staring daggers at Odd and Aelita. "I spent all night reprogramming my computer to hook up to the SuperScan." He then looked to William. "And who said you could come to Lyoko? Let's not forget what happened last time."
William said nothing more, not wanting to start any more disputes.
The gang finished their meal in silence and headed to class. It had been a year since they had gone to class having to worry about a XANA attack. And most of those weren't good memories.
They were in the middle of a lecture from Mr. Boudreaux when Jeremie's computer beeped.
"Mr. Belpois, is there a problem?"
"No sir, please continue."
Spanish class finished ten minutes later. Jeremie and Ulrich rushed to the lunchroom to meet the others. This was all they needed, first the shock of the supercomputer's reactivation, now an attack from XANA to further ruin things.
"XANA's launched his first attack guys," Jeremie informed the others, who were at the table, still playing the cold-war-game. The others suddenly took on another attitude, forgetting the dispute.
Jeremie knew that he had been too harsh on Aelita, and he knew he couldn't keep blaming her. XANA would have turned up sooner or later if it wasn't finished off. Jeremie just hated that he'd have to admit that sooner or later. But for now, he needed to get the others to Lyoko.
Sissi's scream echoed through the lunchroom. "What are you doing Nicholas? Get away!" She ran up to Ulrich, grabbing his arm. "Help me. Nicholas attacked me."
"Sissi, just because we let you hang out with us doesn't mean you get exclusive touching rights, please let go." Ulrich pushed Sissi a little to make his point. Now was definitely not the time to deal with Sissi.
Nicholas ran at Ulrich and tackled him. Ulrich fought back, using defensive moves he learned in Pencack Silat. He noted the eye of XANA in his eyes. Ulrich's gut dropped.
No. It's not true. He hadn't believed it before, he couldn't. He just had gotten his life back together. Ulrich landed a ferocious low kick to Nicholas' chest, powered by his intense emotion. "He's possessed by XANA, get to the factory!" he commanded the others, implying he could take on Nicholas by himself. He had to, there was no choice now but to fight.
"Let's go," Jeremie said. Leaving Sissi, Ulrich, and the possessed Nicholas in the cafeteria, the group made their way to the manhole and through the sewers to the factory.
Upon arriving at the lab, Jeremie sent William, Odd, and Yumi first, then Aelita.
"Ah, the Mountains. Can we go skiing?" Odd noted some minor changes to his outfit. "These yours, Jeremie?"
"Yes, I gave each of you something new to use. I'll give you the details later. You and William should be able to figure it out for yourself."
Crisis had forced Jeremie back into the leader role. Odd knew that it might not last long after the attack had ended. He studied his gloves, now a metallic purple. Odd clenched his hand in a fist. To his surprise, his claws extended from the tips a good six inches.
William studied his outfit, unable to find any improvements to the XANA avatar. So I guess I'm stuck with this. Wonderful. He put one hand on his hip, only to find a sheath there. He pulled out a dagger fashioned much like his old sword. There was another on the other hip.
"Pretty tight, Jeremie." William said. At least he wouldn't be fighting with XANA powers alone. "Where's the tower?"
"It's very close, in fact it's below you."
Aelita walked over to a small hole in the middle of the platform, spotting the tower. It was, as Jeremie said, right below them. Hopefully this would be simple enough to not cause any more tension
"It's down there," Aelita confirmed. "But we'll need the vehicles." She noted the lack of monsters on the platform below. It was odd of XANA to not send any monsters to guard his tower.
"I'm on it. Materializing the Overvehicles. Aelita can fly down." Was that another jab at her, or was he just informing her that she didn't need a vehicle? Aelita shook the thought away and concentrated on the immediate situation.
The Overbike, Overboard, and Overwing materialized. Aelita activated her wings and flew up, surveying the surrounding area. She still spotted no monsters. Could this be a trap?
"Oh how I missed you Overboard," Odd said as he climbed on and began to fly on the unwheeled skateboard to the platform below.
Upon landing at the tower, Aelita approached it warily. The other three stood guard.
"I don't like this," Yumi said, noting the dead silence upon the sector. The only evidence that XANA had any presence in it was the ghastly red aura surrounding the tower, a blanket of thick red smoke that contrasted with the pure white of the tower.
"If there aren't any monsters, seize the opportunity and deactivate the tower," Jeremie suggested. Maybe Ulrich was keeping XANA busy enough to prevent it from sending monsters. Either way, Jeremie didn't want to wait around to find out.
Aelita proceeded to enter the tower and floated up to the second platform. She placed her hand on the interface and deactivated the tower.
"Why were there no monsters Jeremie?" She said as the screens fell around her.
Jeremie sighed loudly. "I don't know. You certainly gave XANA enough power to materialize monsters on your little excursion." Oh no, that was a horrible choice of words… "I'll just launch the return trip." He started the program, about the only thing he could do now without offending anyone. "Return to the past...now."
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