Chapter 2 – Changes
All was quiet and peaceful around the abandoned factory. Even though it was an eyesore, it couldn't be torn down – the owner of the property (some guy named Franz Hopper) had explicitly left instructions to leave the factory standing. So it remained for decades as a hangout for delinquents, until a group of teenagers started visiting for an entirely different reason – one more dangerous than anything anyone else could have fathomed.
Outside the factory, across the river and about a block away, a streetlamp flickered.
Jeremy's head throbbed and his chest itched as he slowly awoke. Colors blurred as he opened his eyes, and he fumbled around blearily for his glasses, which must have fallen off after… that light. He struggled to sit up and shove his glasses on his nose in the proper orientation.
The world cleared, and Jeremy whipped his head around as he saw all his friends lying on the floor, unconscious. The movement didn't help his headache, but he could care less. His entire body felt sore, probably from falling and then laying on the ground for some undetermined amount of time. He pushed himself shakily towards William, who was the closest one to him.
"William!" he said, his voice panicky. "William, wake up!" He put a hand on William's shoulder and shook him harder than he probably should have in his worry. But it paid off; William groaned and stirred.
"Wha… happened?" William slurred.
"I don't know. Can you sit up?" Jeremy asked.
William grunted before painstakingly easing his body off the ground. "What about the others?" William asked more clearly.
Jeremy gestured to Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, and Aelita, who were still sprawled, unconscious. "Help me wake them up." Instead of standing – because Jeremy wasn't sure he could manage that at the moment – he crawled toward Ulrich, while William scooted on his butt toward Yumi.
"I feel like I got stepped on by the Kolossus," Ulrich groaned as he awoke, absently scratching at his chest. Jeremy heard something about a bad devirtualization from Yumi, so she was okay, too. Then he crawled over to Aelita and shook her awake. It took her longer than the others to regain consciousness, but she eventually did, mumbling about her father.
"Okay, no more poking at weird things in the supercomputer," Odd said, his face pinched as if he were in pain. If his headache was anything like Jeremy's, he could sympathize.
"Everyone awake?" Yumi called.
There was a chorus of affirmatives, plus a "Not so loud; my head is killing me," from William. Everyone was awake – though perhaps not terribly comfortable, but it was enough to reassure Jeremy.
"How long have we even been out?" Ulrich wondered.
Yumi's eyes widened. "If it's been more than a few hours, my parents will kill me for sneaking out of the house," she moaned.
"Not to mention the detentions we'll get for missing class," Odd added.
"Aelita to the rescue; I've got my phone," Aelita said. "It's… around five in the morning. We came here around nine and spent a couple hours on the supercomputer. We were unconscious for six whole hours!"
"Could be worse," William said. "We have enough time to get back to bed unnoticed if we hurry."
"If we can even stand," Jeremy said. "My legs feel like jelly."
"I'm sure we can make it to our feet in time," Ulrich said, who had already made his way to the wall and was attempting to use it as a crutch to pull himself up.
Aelita suddenly gasped and pointed. "What happened to the supercomputer?!" she cried.
Distracted by their physical problems, the Lyoko Warriors hadn't paid any attention to their surroundings. They swiveled around to examine the supercomputer. There were some gasps and muffled swears from the rest of the warriors.
The supercomputer looked like it had been struck by lightning. The black and gold panels strewn on the ground from their examination had been scorched almost beyond recognition. The insulation around the wires had melted into a giant mess, and the metal within the wires looked like it had warped and glued together with the insulation beyond recognition. The circuit boards hidden deeper in the supercomputer appeared to have been blasted apart. There was no coolant left in the system. Thankfully, the lead compartment for the nuclear battery was still intact, though whether or not the contents had been affected was another story. And now that he was focusing on the devastation, Jeremy could pick up a faint smell of charred plastic and melted metal.
Jeremy heard footsteps before Ulrich hobbled into view, determinedly staying on his feet even though he looked like he wanted to collapse. He held out a hand in front of the supercomputer and grimaced. "This thing is radiating heat," Ulrich informed them.
Meanwhile, Aelita hadn't budged, and she looked like she was about to cry. All her father's hard work… gone. Completely gone. The last link to her father had somehow been rather spectacularly destroyed. Jeremy put a comforting arm around her, and she buried her face into Jeremy's shirt.
"Where's the box? And that stone?" William wondered.
"The box is over there," Ulrich said, pointing at a crumpled black shape along the wall that looked like a giant had stepped on it. "Don't know where the rock went."
"Anyone else find this super creepy and want to get out of here?" Odd said as Ulrich shuffled around the wrecked supercomputer.
"I want to check on the scanners and the interface. Maybe we can figure out what happened from clues up there," Jeremy said reasonably as William finally stood on shaky legs before helping Yumi up. Ulrich nearly fell over helping Odd, and Aelita and Jeremy both sank to the ground a number of times before they could get their feet underneath them and stumble into the elevator – which, thankfully, still worked.
The scanners weren't in much better condition than the supercomputer. One bulged in the center, like something had exploded inside of it. Another was leaning precariously, looking like it was about to fall over, and the last one had torn completely in two. There was hardly any yellowish paneling visible underneath the scorch marks, and the wiring was similarly destroyed as in the supercomputer.
The interface was almost completely gone. The hologram projector in the center of the room had warped almost beyond recognition, and the computer console looked like someone had tried to disintegrate it before giving up and merely blowing it apart.
"What a mess," Odd said, wrinkling his nose. "Let's get out of here."
"But we need to figure out what happened here!" Aelita protested, obviously upset.
"Home, remember? We can't be caught out. We can come back later," Yumi said. Reluctantly, everyone agreed, and the elevator dropped them off at the ground floor of the factory. At one end of the factory was a set of stairs that the warriors could use to return to the second level. The more athletic of the group would usually shimmy up the ropes, but weakened as they were, it would probably be a bad idea to try climbing.
Legs strengthened and headaches diminished as they continued walking, and in no time they were running back to their respective bedrooms. By some miracle, no one was caught out – Sissi hadn't tattled on them, thankfully.
Jeremy, still fully clothed, pulled the bed covers up over his head and waited for dawn.
"Didn't any of you sleep last night?" Ulrich wondered as he took in the sight of his friends at breakfast, all of whom had bags under their eyes. (Though he really couldn't say anything, as he was sure his lower eyelids were similarly bruised.) Their clothes were also rumpled – no one had changed from the clothes they'd worn the day before. Too unnerved, or perhaps there had been no time.
"You think we could sleep after seeing what happened to the supercomputer?" Odd said incredulously, picking unenthusiastically at his food in an uncharacteristic display.
"We were unconscious for a while," Yumi offered.
"Unconsciousness doesn't count as sleep, unfortunately," Jeremy informed them.
"Ugh," Odd groaned. "What even happened to the supercomputer?"
"Was it XANA?" William wondered, scowling at the thought of the AI and scratching absentmindedly at his chest.
"Couldn't have been. XANA's dead," Jeremy said with confidence.
Ulrich made the mistake of looking up past the group. Sissi glared at them from across the cafeteria, Nicholas and Herb sitting on each side of her and offering condolences. Noticing Ulrich's gaze, she decided to stomp over to the Lyoko Warriors. "I'm onto you," she growled. "And I'll have you know that I've returned to my real friends, thanks."
"Look, Sissi…" William tried.
"Save it," she snapped. "I'm done listening to your excuses!" Then she returned to her table in a huff, where Nicholas and Herb tried to comfort her.
"You know, when I came to this place, I was not expecting to get sucked into a giant battle between good and evil on a virtual world – or to deal with all the secrets involved," Odd groaned, holding his head up with one hand.
"Do you regret it?" Aelita asked quietly. She'd been dealt the worst blow with the supercomputer gone, and it was showing.
Odd looked startled. "Of course not! I got the adventure of a lifetime, plus we got to save you," he replied, winking.
"So if it's not XANA, what else could have destroyed the supercomputer like that?" William asked.
"I don't know," Jeremy said, looking troubled. "An electrical surge powerful enough to destroy the supercomputer like that would have killed us, too."
"Maybe it was magic?" Ulrich suggested.
"What, like the Miraculous?" Jeremy said, startled. They'd been dealing with solid facts and figures for so long with the supercomputer that it was sometimes hard to remember that there were more forces in the world than just science. "Well… it's possible. But I find it hard to believe that Franz Hopper, a scientist through and through, would dabble in the mystical."
"You did say the other day that there was something about the supercomputer you didn't understand," Yumi pointed out.
"A lot of Franz Hopper's experiments were out of my reach," Jeremy replied defensively.
While Yumi and Jeremy discussed magic and its implications on the supercomputer, the other boys were having a different conversation entirely. "Chat Noir is totally stealing my style," Odd grumbled, reminded of just who was using the Miraculous by Jeremy's mention of it.
"Knock it off, Odd," Ulrich said, rolling his eyes. It wasn't the first time Odd had complained about Chat Noir.
"What? Afraid I'm going to get akumatized?" Odd teased.
"Akumatizations only really occur downtown," William pointed out. "I've never heard of an akuma as far south as we are in Sceaux."
"There's a first time for everything," Ulrich said pessimistically.
"Okay, it might be magic, but we also can't rule out a more scientific explanation for what happened to the supercomputer," Jeremy said.
"That's fair," Yumi agreed. "Are we going back to the factory after class?"
"Of course," Jeremy confirmed before turning his attention to Aelita, who was picking despondently at her food. "Uh, Aelita, are you okay?"
"No," she replied humorlessly. "I want to know what destroyed my father's work." It was a reasonable desire.
"You heard that we're going back to the factory after class? We'll figure it out then," Jeremy said reassuringly.
It was hard getting through the school day, pretending everything was normal, but the warriors put in an admirable effort. Everything was fine until PE – or, rather, until the boys changed in the locker rooms for PE.
"Nice tattoo, Jeremy," Nicholas snickered.
"Huh?" Jeremy asked confusedly, looking down at his chest. At what should have been his bare chest – except that there was a colored mark directly over his heart. He stared at it with growing fear. The mark was blue, with what looked like thin veins connecting to it. But what was worrisome was that the mark was shaped exactly like the Eye of XANA – except upside-down, from everyone but Jeremy's perspective. There was no other way to interpret its appearance except as being related to the incident the night before.
He looked up and met the wide eyes of Ulrich and Odd, who were both horrified. Without answering Nicholas, Jeremy threw on his shirt and all three boys tore through the locker room to the mirrors, ignoring the confused exclamations from their classmates. Ulrich and Odd all but ripped out of their shirts, and Jeremy raised his to get a better look. They all were marked with an upside-down Eye of XANA – Jeremy's in blue, Ulrich's in yellow, and Odd's in purple. They gaped for a bit before they drew too much attention from their classmates and had to put their shirts back on.
"We have to get back to the factory and figure out what happened," Jeremy breathed.
"Belpois! Stern! Della Robbia! Quit lazing around and get out there!" Jim bellowed before the boys could run off.
"Jim, we have to go to the infirmary!" Ulrich said, still pale.
Jim scowled at them. "No excuses! You've used that enough times to skip PE in the past! Get out there!" So Odd, Ulrich, and Jeremy trudged nervously out to the track, where the rest of their classmates waited. Nicholas and Herb were snickering to each other.
"I mean, nothing weird has happened so far," Odd said hopefully. "Maybe it's just a superficial thing?"
Jeremy grunted. "Just because nothing's happened so far doesn't mean that nothing will. I have no idea what these markings are."
"Stern! Lacroix! Pichon! Ducrocq! You're up!" Jim hollered, gesturing for the four boys to take their places in the lanes of the track. Antoine Lacroix, hands down the fastest boy in the grade and a rising track star, smirked at the others. Herb Pichon looked intimidated while Matthieu Ducrocq was as unaffected as ever. Ulrich just rolled his eyes. In his opinion, Antoine could benefit from deflating his head a little.
"And… go!" Jim announced, blowing his whistle. Ulrich and Antoine were off like a shot, with Mattheiu following behind in lanky strides and Herb struggling to keep from falling on his face.
"Wow, Ulrich's really in top form today," Odd noted. "But… there goes Antoine. He's seriously fast."
Jeremy saw a flash of frustration on Ulrich's face as Antoine pulled ahead. "It's not a huge surprise."
"Do you think the girls and William have the mark on them, too?" Odd asked, lowering his voice so he wouldn't be overheard.
"Probably. We need to tell them as soon as possible, if they haven't found them already," Jeremy answered, his eyes tracking Ulrich's form.
"Well, lunch isn't too far off – wait a – whoa!" Odd exclaimed as Ulrich suddenly picked up speed, passing Antoine easily and advancing toward the finish line. "I don't think I've ever seen him move that fast, not even when we were being chased by XANA's monsters!"
Jeremy was about to respond when suddenly his vision was assaulted by glowing blue binary, which floated through the air and gathered around anything electrically powered and, for some reason, Ulrich and Odd. A blink, and the binary was gone. Jeremy shook his head, dismissing what he'd seen as an illusion caused by too little sleep.
Ulrich was just a blur when he crossed the finish line. Once he'd stopped, he bent over and panted a bit, but he recovered remarkably quickly for someone who'd run that fast, even taking all the running he'd done during XANA's attacks into consideration.
"I… think you just set a new record for the 400-meter dash, Stern," Jim said weakly, staring at the timer in his hand.
Then Antoine crossed the finish line, a snarl on his face. After he'd recovered from running, he stomped up to Ulrich and accused, "You cheated!"
"I didn't! How would you even cheat at running, anyway?" Ulrich defended.
"What did you take?" Antoine asked, voice lowering dangerously. "I'll tell the principal you're on drugs."
Odd, having moved to break up the argument, caught the tail end of that statement. "How dare you!" he hissed, flexing his fingers and resisting the sudden confusing urge to rake his nails across the other boy's face.
"Look, I'm not taking anything. I think it was just a fluke. I'm sure you'll beat me like usual next time we race," Ulrich said reasonably, trying to diffuse the situation.
"Fine," Antoine agreed. "But don't think I'm not going to keep an eye on you."
"Good riddance," Odd grumbled, leading Ulrich back to Jeremy, who'd been watching the entire exchange.
"Did you see that, Jeremy? What a dick! Can't take a loss gracefully, can he?" Odd said, still steaming.
"You're not all that much of a graceful loser yourself, Odd," Ulrich pointed out.
"Please, Ulrich, I am the definition of humility and grace," Odd sniffed.
"Hey Odd, could I see your hands?" Jeremy asked, eyes wide.
"Sure thing, Einstein. I – huh?" Odd stared down at his outstretched hands in confusion. Was it just him, or were those claws on the tips of his fingers? Then he blinked, and his fingernails were back to normal.
"Jeremy, I think I'm hallucinating," Odd said, turning his hands over.
"If you're hallucinating, you're not the only one," Jeremy said grimly, thinking of the binary he'd seen for a split second. "We need to get back to the factory. Call the others."
Meanwhile, Yumi and William were having problems in chemistry class. It was an experiment day, with students required to combine six different solutions in pairs and to figure out the content of each solution based on the reaction that occurred.
"Ugh! This is impossible," William grumbled, adjusting the straps on his lab goggles.
"It's not all that bad – whoops," Yumi said, spilling almost the entire beaker of one solution into another. There was a split second where both warriors wondered if they'd get off lucky, but then the second beaker started fizzing, and an explosion of foam splattered all over the ceiling and all over William and Yumi. There was some screaming as the foam made its way to other work tables.
"Sorry, Mrs. Hertz," Yumi said as she and William made their way to the emergency shower. They were drenched with cold water in short order, Mrs. Hertz glaring at them while trying to rein in the other students.
"Well, class is dismissed for the day," Mrs. Hertz finally sighed. "Dunbar, Ishiyama, is there any more of the experiment on you? No? Then go get changed into some dry clothes. I'll excuse you from the rest of your classes today."
"Thanks, Mrs. Hertz," William said as he slipped his hand into Yumi's and started dragging her from the classroom. "We'll do that."
"Wh-what are you doing?" Yumi asked through chattering teeth.
"My dorm's closer," William explained, shaking from the cold. "You can change into something of mine. We're about the same size. I figured it would be better than trying to walk home like that."
"Uh, yeah," Yumi agreed, blushing. She liked Ulrich, despite his stubborn insistence on let's-just-be-friends. But going into William's dorm room and wearing some of his clothes… Even if it was the most practical solution, taking William's crush into account, it was still embarrassing.
Hopefully, Ulrich wouldn't find out about this.
Yumi fidgeted and shivered in her wet clothes as William rifled around in his closet. She'd been in his dorm room before while reigning in his supercomputer-generated clone, but it was a lot different with William himself occupying it.
"Huh?" William said, dragging Yumi from her thoughts. His arm was still buried in his closet, but then he pulled his arm completely from it and stared at it in confusion.
"What's wrong? Find the doorway to Narnia back there?" Yumi teased, still shivering.
"I – don't think so," William replied. He slowly returned his arm into the closet, and now that she was looking, she could see the way the shadows seemed to thicken and mist around his hand. It reminded her of the Super Smoke he'd been able to utilize under XANA's control – or maybe it had been his inherent technique in his Lyoko form that he hadn't been able to figure out before XANA got him. Either way, she was chilled for a reason other than her sopping clothes.
"We should probably tell Jeremy about that," Yumi said.
"Yeah," William agreed shakily. He hastily rooted around in his closet once more, steadfastly ignoring how the shadows danced around his arm, and emerged with a t-shirt for some rock band he enjoyed and jeans, which he tossed at Yumi, who held an arm out to catch them.
The clothes never made it to Yumi. Instead, they stopped about halfway between William and Yumi, floating five feet off the ground. There was a moment of silence before Yumi squeaked and withdrew her hand, and the clothes fell to the floor in a heap.
"Uh," William said weakly. Then his phone started buzzing, and he snatched it up from where he'd deposited it on his desk. "Jeremy?" he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. "Meet at the factory?... Yeah. We've had some incidents here, too… A mark…? Let me check." For some reason, William peered down the front of his shirt and paled. "Yeah, I've got one, it's silver… Hang on a sec." William turned to face Yumi, completely serious. "Jeremy says we've all got the Eye of XANA on our chests. I have one. Can you check yours?"
"Give me a moment," Yumi said, turning around. Normally, asking a girl to peek down the front of her shirt would be considered highly rude, but this was an emergency, so Yumi really couldn't care less about propriety. She saw nothing until she lifted the edge of her bra – and there, on her left breast, was the mark she'd been told to look for.
"You got one?" William asked lowly.
"Yeah, it's dark purple. No, call it plum," Yumi replied, shaken.
"Yeah, she's got one, plum colored…" William relayed to Jeremy. "We'll come as soon as we can." William took a deep breath as he hung up and met Yumi's gaze.
"Factory?" she asked.
William nodded. "Get changed, fast," he said. He respectfully turned around while he pulled out a change of clothes for himself.
Instead of going to the communal bathroom to change, Yumi turned her back on William and started stripping out of her wet clothes. This was a crisis, and embarrassment about social transgressions could come later. Thankfully, her underwear wasn't too badly soaked. She'd just have to deal until she got home. Although…
"If you're looking, I will punch you in the nose," Yumi threatened while slipping the slightly baggy t-shirt over her head.
"I'm not!" William quickly reassured.
Aelita sulked in her room, curled up on her bed. She should have gone to class, but she was feeling miserable, and she didn't want to try to put in the effort to act like nothing was wrong.
Her father was gone, as well as her last link to him. She didn't know what had happened to her mother following her kidnapping, but she was probably dead after all these years. All the others had families, but she had no one left. Just a decrepit house hidden in the woods and a ruined supercomputer.
She thought a little more about her mother, conjuring in her mind what she could remember of her. Her hair was pink, though a different shade than Aelita's. She had a nice smile, really enjoyed snowball fights, was fantastic at cooking meatloaf but burned just about everything else… and that was it. Her memory had faded over all the years she'd spent dormant on Lyoko. Aelita struggled not to cry.
…Her father had once said that she looked a lot like her mother. Maybe, if she looked in a mirror hard enough, she'd remember something more?
Aelita rolled off her bed and shakily made her way over to the stool in front of the vanity. She peered into the mirror. Pink hair. Light hazel eyes. Small nose. Heart-shaped face. She looked the same as ever – except something was wrong, distracting her from the thoughts of her family. She stared at her reflection in the mirror for a few moments before she realized what was off about it.
Her ears. Her ears were pointed like an elf's – or, rather, pointed like her Lyoko form's ears. Closing her eyes, she reached up to feel at her right ear and found it to be rounded, no pointiness that she'd been expecting. And when she opened her eyes and looked back in the mirror, her reflection appeared normal.
"I've lost so much sleep I'm losing my mind," Aelita mumbled, scrubbing her hands over her face. She stood from her vanity and flopped onto her bed, an arm over her eyes.
She would have been content to lay there until dinnertime when she got a frantic call from Jeremy. Aelita immediately sat up as Jeremy relayed what had happened during gym. Maybe she hadn't been hallucinating about her ears. And when she peeked down her shirt – yep, there was a pink upside-down mark of XANA tattooed over her heart.
Aelita immediately grabbed some of the electronic equipment in her room and scrambled to get to the factory.
First mention of the Miraculous and magic! It's been specifically said that there are more superheroes in canon!ML than just those with the Miraculous, so I'm delving into that here.
Sceaux is a suburb south of downtown Paris and beyond the arrondissements. Since we don't see akuma attacks too far from downtown, I thought it would be reasonable that none of the Kadic students have been akumatized – yet.
Hope you enjoyed! And thank you for all your nice reviews! Next chapter should be out in a few days.
-HM