Dunno, sometimes, because the show is geared for a younger audience, I suppose, I just feel like the weight of the situation isn't always pushed down as much as it could and sometimes should be. I mean...Yeah, Yumi saw the direness of the nuclear explosion in "Seeing is Believing" but...

And I mean sure, some episodes really pile it on high, especially in season 3 and the end of season 2, but I dunno...I just kinda felt that "Seeing is Believing" kinda missed the bullet with this one. Also it was set in the desert sector. Deserts are orange. In Lyoko. INSTANT MASTERPIECE.

The dialogue is not precise at all. This is intentional.

Orange

"Well, what are we supposed to do?" Odd whined, whipping his tail back and forth as he plopped his purple butt down on a rock in the Desert Sector, "Wait until Xana paves a yellow brick road to the tower for us? Sorry Jeremy but he's not gonna lead us to the Emerald City, here."

"I know, Odd, just...," Jeremy adjusted his glasses on his nose, pushing the headache to behind his temples, "The holomap says it's there, it has to be there!"

"You sure it's not one of Xana's tricks?" Ulrich asked as Odd idly sharpened his claws against each other.

"It could be...," Jeremy muttered.

"I don't think Xana's powerful enough to hide towers," Aelita mused as she walked about the small oasis they were seated at, scanning the glossy water, "The pulsations lead here, the holomap says it's here, it's got to be here!"

Ulrich gave a quiet scowl and unsheathed his sword, scratching at the ground and kicking up little dust particles around his feet. Odd picked up a fair-sized rock nearby him and scratched his claws on that, tossing it up and catching it every now and then. His purple paw engulfed the rock completely, neither of his friends could hold that rock with just one hand as easily as he could. Aelita watched his bored precision before she returned to pacing back and forth in front of the pool, trying to feel the pulsations beneath her tender, sensitive feet. They were so strong that they tingled up her shins, disappearing somewhere after the region of her knees. It absolutely had to be here. There was no hiding it in the desert sector; flat and orange with little cover, the desert sector didn't offer much concealment.

A frustrated cry from Jeremy's intercom interrupted the short silence.

"Come on you guys! If you don't find the tower now, the pylon's gonna explode!"

"Yeah? Why don't you virtualize yourself and give it a try?" Odd called back. Aelita shot him a glance.

"How much time do you think we have left?"

"Five, maybe seven minutes," Jeremy wailed, "You've got to try something soon!"

"Don't worry, Jer," Odd said, sweeping his tail against the orange sand and rock, "We're on it like Dr. Schreck and his next victim."

Both Ulrich and Aelita glared at him for his monotonous, nonchalant tone.

"Nu-cle-ar explosion," Ulrich sounded out for him, digging his sword into the ground. Odd sighed heavily and passed the rock from paw to paw.

"Come on...," Jeremy chewed nervously on his nails, "At this point it won't even matter that the authorities get here!"

"Calm down, Jeremy," Aelita soothed, though her voice was tense, "We'll find a way out of this. We always do."

He let out a garbled breath of exasperation and collapsed on the keyboard, his weak fingers clawing into his scalp, crumpling his blond hair. Glasses coming askew, he chewed on his bottom lip.

"I don't know, Aelita," he whispered as the pylon began to beep urgently in the background, searing a hole in his brain.

The three virtual forms stood there in the vast orangeness, hearing Jeremy's vague sobs in the distance. The desert, eerily quiet, closed in around them with its vastness and refusal to lead them to the tower. Just a hint, just a clue to where it was could save millions of lives, not just theirs as was per normal. Virtual heat rising off of the hot-colored plateaus blurred their vision, and in their waning time they stood or sat with a slouch, hoping that something would happen, their body and mind still not accepting nor comprehending the colossal catastrophe that was moments from being upon them.

Still, they thought. Xana would never destroy himself. Somehow, underground, the supercomputer would be protected from the blast. While they didn't know how much Jeremy was protected, they knew that their physical bodies (and Aelita's virtual one) were encased, enclosed, cocooned within the calculator's universe. They would be safe as long as Xana was safe, stuck in Lyoko.

And if they weren't stuck in Lyoko, if they were able to return to earth, would they even try? The radiation would blanket them like a damp cloth, seeping disease deep into their bones. They would have to wait years before they wished to emerge, and even then there was problems with that. For one, time could not be accurately calculated from Lyoko. For two, of the survivors of the nuclear explosion, those from the families, what would they think when their children eventually emerged completely unscathed? For Ulrich, that possibility wasn't very grand as his parents lived there with him in France, but Odd's family, his many sisters and two parents, they lived in Italy, and his other relatives lived across the globe in the United States. The guilt he would feel, knowing that all of his friends and their families excluding two were killed in an explosion, and to return to his own family with no scalds, wounds, sickness...It would be far more than just simply 'unethical.' It would be unlivable.

Odd snatched the rock from its mid-air spin and tossed it into the oasis pool. Where he expected a splash of digital water and a ripple in the reflection, a beam of white opened and shot upward, an eruption in the plains of orange. Confused, intrigued, and vaguely enraged, he reached his paw forward and dipped it in the water. What he felt was nothing wet, just simply air surrounded by white light as he broke the surface of Xana's trick.

"Son of a...," Odd whispered in awe and anger, "It's here! The tower is here! There's no water there, Xana fooled us!"

Ulrich and Aelita looked over. Jeremy looked up from the keyboard and fixed his glasses back on his soft nose.

"That's where the tower is!" Odd proclaimed as he stood up, "Come on, let's go!"

Bending his knees, he dove into the illusion and folded his legs underneath him in a canon ball as he fell to the plateau below, followed closely by Ulrich and Aelita. There, glaring as a fiery red pillar in the sea of orange, was the activated tower.

"Yes!" Odd whooped as he leaped into the air, miscalculated his jump, and landed on his rear. Undeterred, he raised his fist and continued to shout, "Give it up for Odd! No one can fool these cat's eyes! Hahaha! Take that Xana, score one for the good guys!"

"Eat sand, Odd," Ulrich interrupted, drawing his sabre as he eyed down the two krabs guarding the tower, "Some of us have work to do."