Chapter 1: XANA's Return
Six years after the incident at his father's lab Ashal was sitting in a small cramped room in the back of his aunt's mansion. Dusk was sitting on the desk beside him, watching while he sketched scenes from the lab.
A knock on the door made him growl as he glanced up. "Go away!" he shouted.
Of course his oldest cousin Tina ignored him and opened the door anyway. She was only eight but almost as bad as Aunt Elna.
"Mom says you have to come get your food now or you'll go hungry tonight." Tina said as she stepped into the room, followed by six-year-old Abigail, or Abby as she was called.
Ashal sighed and put his sketch book out of their reach before he and Dusk forced their way out of the room. Living in a house with nothing but girls was frustrating enough but the fact that his aunt hated him made it worse.
As he entered the kitchen he spotted his aunt sitting at the table feeding the five-month-old Elizabeth, Lizzy. She was a tall, unnatural woman with dyed red hair and strange faded purple eyes. She had plenty of money from the fancy dress and jewelry shop she owned in the nearby city but she hated men and had divorced her husband before Lizzy was born for unknown reasons.
Now she turned and glared at him, her unnatural purple eyes revealing every scrap of hatred she had for him. "I've found a nice little school to ship you off to just outside of Paris." She was blunt, the one thing he liked about her.
"Really?" He kept the anger out of his voice as he rummaged in the fridge and began making a sandwich, he would much rather be shipped off somewhere than spend another year locked in the back room.
"Yes, it's called Kadic Academy. I'm sure you'll have the chance to interact with children your own age."
He sighed, she was referring to the kids he had started hanging with any time he could get outside. They were all years older than him and his aunt loved to call them the 'bad crowd.' It wasn't his fault no one else lived anywhere near this country mansion of hers.
"You're going to go, this is your last chance Ash."
"Don't call me that." He growled and turned to glare at her, she might have been his mother's sister but they were two completely different people "I'll go or whatever, when?"
Aunt Elna shook her head and went back to feeding Lizzy "The bus runs at 6a.m."
'No warning huh?' He sighed again and grabbed his sandwich before retreating back to his room with Dusk; thankfully the girls were gone now.
Cathy Bergner stood at the bottom of the elevator staring at the supercomputer before her. She wasn't sure what had led her to this old factory but she was glad she had come.
'I wonder if it works.' Her hand hovered over the power switch as she studied the massive piece of technology. 'Come on, don't be a wimp now.'
She yanked the switch up and gasped as the supercomputer flashed to life in front of her. 'This is amazing, how long has this thing been down here?'
She dashed back to the elevator and went up two floors to the Lab, almost breathless as she rushed to the interface.
The screen blinked to life as she sat down and soon a thin line of code was scrolling across it.
'What is this? I hope my coding skills aren't rusty…' Cathy began typing away at the computer, pulling up program after program of data until a video screen opened up and shut everything else down.
A boy who couldn't be more than seventeen appeared on the video screen, his blonde hair a mess and his glasses falling off his face as he adjusted the screen "Is it working yet Aelita?"
"Yes Jeremy but we'd better hurry." a girl's voice in the background replied.
The boy nodded then and turned back to the screen, resetting his glasses as he did so "I had hoped we wouldn't have to do this but there is evidence that XANA is not dead. If he should awaken again then this supercomputer is vital to the safety of the world."
Cathy jerked back from the screen as she felt a presence at her shoulder and turned to see a ghostly shadow hovering behind her "Wha-?"
Before she could finish her sentence the shadow reached out for her and she had the sudden feeling of being suffocated.
Meanwhile the video continued to play on the screen behind her, only the words vaguely ringing in her head.
"It has to be protected from XANA's ghost, he could easily use it to regain his power!" the boy's voice seemed louder now.
"Jeremy, watch out!" the girl's voice shouted and the video suddenly went static.
Cathy collapsed to her knees, her eyes blurring as she tried to fight whatever it was that wanted her. But no sooner than she tried did the shadow take over and her eyes flashed with the sign of XANA.
"Finally" the voice was not Cathy's but XANA's and it held a chilly echo to it "This will be the real ending."