Hey everyone, welcome back to this story! I hope you enjoy the new chapter, and by the way, I made a small change to the first chapter, so please check those out. And I am hoping to be more active in writing for my stories from here on out. But we'll see how long that lasts...follow, favorite, and review!

Chapter 3- In the Forest Glades

Setting: Lyoko

Time: Later that afternoon

POV: Sean

On Lyoko, the first dot, the one in the Forest section, started to stir. The boy from the "next" night woke up with a pounding headache. He didn't know where he was, and he was blinking back painful tears as he tried to clear his vision. He felt like his body was laying down on a solid surface, but it was furry, or fuzzy, like hair. He felt something hard near his head, and he reached around to figure out what it was. It felt hard, and rough, like a tree root. So, was the furry thing he was laying on…grass?

"Wha- what's going on…?" his thoughts felt sluggish, like his brain had turned to slime, "Where am I? How long have I been out…?" he voiced aloud, to no one in particular.

"Who…who am I?" he asked, trying to look at his hands. His vision blurred so much that the boy thought that he had gone blind or something. The boy honestly had to admit, he had no idea who he was. Nothing was coming to him, not even an inkling of who he was, where he was, and what he was doing there.

Through his blurry eyes, he squinted to see what was going on, but nothing seemed familiar. With a few more blinks, he could see the tree that he thought he had felt, and bright sunlight.

"At least I haven't lost my sight…" he thought, but still, he didn't feel like praising his luck. He looked around to start to get an idea of where he was at least, and then figure out the rest from there.

The tree in front of him, and the others around him looked oddly straight, the grass looked patchy and odd. To him, it looked like the forest in the park not far from...the factory! A flood of memories came back from him and made his head pound even more.

The first was his name, "Sean…!" he gasped, "My name is Sean," he spat out, curling up into a ball as his brain tried to remember everything all at once.

Sean's brain started to remember things at a rapid rate. There was the whole bit where he ran away from the gang members he used to run with. He groaned as he thought about Marcus, the way he looked at him, and the beating that ensued. His whole body ached from that. Sean held his head in his hands and remained in the fetal position until the headache started to subside. He clenched his eyes tight again due to the pain. The pain then started to leave in waves, and he thought that he was finally OK to try again to see where he was. He opened his eyes, but his vision was still fuzzy, like looking through cloudy water.

Sean figured that if he could at least sit up and lean against the tree, things would be better. He then went to sit up gingerly, but his arms buckled under the stress, causing his eyes to flash a wave of colors as his head hit the ground. He tasted bile, and almost blacked out again. The boy clenched his eyes tighter and tighter to try and keep the pain at bay as his head felt like a jackhammer was inside. The pain would then radiate from his head into the rest of his body, and it felt like he could die at any moment. Sean took a couple shaky breaths at first, and then switched to long, calming breaths to try and steady himself. Then slowly sat up again; his body protested, the gang did a number on him. He realized there was no going back to them unless he wanted another round. He was finally able to push himself up against the trunk of the tree, and he sat there for a second, trying to feel something other than pain.

Sean sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, to try and relax himself. When he pulled his hands away from his face, his vision finally cleared, and he looked around. Something wasn't right...this wasn't the factory...this wasn't even the forest in the park. Where was this? This was a forest, but like a forest that he had seen before...the trees were floating in the air, and the ground was nothing but green and splotchy. Everything looked like he was in a video game. This was not right...he started to panic.

He covered his eyes again and rubbed them like it would change what he was looking at. But when he opened his eyes again, nothing had changed. He was still in the video game world. Starting to hyperventilate, Sean got up on his shaky legs, and like a newborn foal, tired to run as fast as his injured legs could hobble him to try and guess where he was. But that didn't feel right. He looked down and realized he wasn't in the clothes he started out the night with. Before waking up in this weird world, he was wearing a gray t-shirt and a black hoodie, and a pair of ripped blue jeans.

What he was wearing now was not that. He was wearing some sort of medieval, cream colored tunic vest, and a pair of brown pants with a high waist. He was also wearing a pair of stylish brown knee-high boots with large flared knee accents and a series of buckles that all fastened around the inside of each of his upper calves. He also had a pair of brown cuffed gloves with the fingers cut off that looked like the kind that a professional cyclist would wear. Under the tunic, he had a billowy, white shirt with a high collar that jutted up to almost his jawline. And crisscrossing his vest was a system of leather belts that all connected to a big, triangular metal plate. One of the straps started at the plate and then looped under his left armpit and around to his back and connected to a slightly smaller plate, and then back to the plate on the front. The third side of the plate on the front had another strap that wrapped tightly across his chest and looped around his ribs on his right side to his back and then connected to that metal plate on his back.

The blonde boy walked around in circles to try and see all that he had on. He thought he looked a lot like a character from one of his favorite video games. All he was missing was the gun that the character had. Usually, the character had the gun on his waist, but Sean checked, there was no gun there. So, this wasn't a video game, it was some sort of different world, or at least he thought it was... why couldn't he have a gun?

"Am I dead...?" he thought. He reached down and pinched himself on the thigh just to make sure.

"Yep," he hissed as he felt the sharp pain shoot through his aching body, "That hurt…"

But that still didn't explain if he was dead or even where he was or what he was doing there. This world seemed so weird. The grassy bits were all confined to small strips of platforms that wound through oddly straight trees that floated in the air. There were a few trees, like the one that he had leaned up against that burrowed into the ground with thin roots, but otherwise, there wasn't anything natural about these trees. There wasn't a single branch on the trees, and not a single leaf either. Staring all the way up, as high as he could see, Sean could tell that the tree looked the same at the top as it did at the bottom, like a group of thin roots that branched out feebly into nothingness. The sun was persistent but didn't seem to be coming from one direct source like a sun. There was just…light. It was like the sky naturally produced light, keeping the whole place lit. Hobbling slowly on his injured legs, Sean inched close to the edge of the platform he was on, and looked down. What looked like miles below, here was an endless body of water that looked like a constantly churning sea. Whatever it was, he knew it probably wasn't good, and it scared him a little to be so close to the edge. So he tried to push away, but on his legs, he ended up just falling backwards and using his poor legs to back pedal away from the edge until he felt safe in the middle of the grassy area.

Having satisfied his curiosity, Sean looked back at his ridiculous outfit and then noticed a small pouch sticking out from under his left armpit that he hadn't noticed before. He lifted his arm and looked at the pouch. It looked like a holster, and inside, was a gun! So, this was just like a video game! He pulled out the metal piece. It felt heavier than he expected it to. From what he could remember about guns, it looked like a Barretta 90two, but with maybe a few small cosmetic changes. Sean waved it around like a gunslinger, and then started to goof off, like a gangster, holding the piece sideways and holding his arm out stiffly in front of him. He laughed as he looked around the world, aiming at all the trees, looking down the simple iron sights, and pretending to pull the trigger. He then got curious and wrapped his finger around the smooth trigger and hesitantly pulled. He braced for a shot, but instead there was a dissatisfying "click".

"Aw, that's lame," he griped.

He looked at the gun, everything seemed to be in order. The safety, even if there was one, looked to be off, and it even looked loaded. He pressed on what he figured was the release and the magazine slid out of the gun, into his waiting hand. The gun had bullets, and he tried to count how many through the side, but he couldn't tell. From the looks of it, he had at least what he considered a decent amount, similar enough to the gun from the game he liked to play. He placed the bullets back into the gun and continued to figure out what went wrong. It didn't look jammed, at least that's what he thought as he cautiously looked down the barrel, which he did as an absolute last resort. He had never actually held or fired a gun before, but he knew a lot about them from video games, and he had a healthy respect for them too. Then he remembered something, and the blonde boy felt dumb for not thinking of this first. He placed his gloved hand on top of the gun and gripped the slide and then pulled back. A bullet popped up from the magazine and into the loader and he sighed as he released the slide to load the cartridge into the gun.

"Riiiight…" he said, a little embarrassed, "Have to rack the slide first."

Sean then pointed the gun again at a nearby tree and squeezed the trigger again, this time bracing for a real shot. The gun gave off a loud report and the bullet flew straight and true, and struck the bark, leaving a large hole in the trunk. He was a little shocked at the recoil, but it wasn't anything that he couldn't handle.

"All right!", the boy thought, excited to have things finally going his way. He pumped his fist up in the air in a cheesy pose. But he forgot about trigger discipline, and as he pumped his hand into the air, his finger engaged the trigger once again and the gun fired into the air. He was scared, and the gun jerked again as he brought it down, firing a round into his own thigh.

"OW! Mother…AHHH!"

What Sean didn't realize after he shot himself was that he was super close to the edge of the grassy platform that he was on. And when he accidentally lowered his other arm and discharged his firearm, it caused him to stumble and fall backwards off the platform into nothingness. Sean screamed, he didn't know what the watery looking thing was below, but he had a feeling that if he were to fall into it was probably not going to be good. He looked around for what to do, and only saw his pistol.

"Great...even if it was helpful for this...", he thought as he continued his uncontrolled free-fall.

Suddenly, an attachment appeared on the bottom of the gun, like some sort of small compartment that at first that looked like some sort of grenade launcher. But then a small, silvery cylinder popped out of it that looked nothing like a grenade.

"What's this?!" he shouted as he continued to fall, hoping fate knew what it was doing, because he certainly didn't.

The launcher seemed even more useless than the gun in this situation, since it wasn't doing anything, and he saw no way to operate whatever it did. But he kept desperately trying for it to do something, seeing as he didn't have any other options. The boy stared at the launcher, expecting something to happen, since the boy didn't know the first thing about operating things in this crazy, messed up world. He pulled the trigger repeatedly, hoping that it would do something, but nothing seemed to happen. He was quickly reaching the water, with useless equipment and nothing to do about it. But suddenly the silvery cylinder sprouted a couple of prongs, and launched itself skyward, attached to a long length of coiled, black rope.

"A grappling hook!" Sean realized, glad that he wasn't going to fall into the water, if the hook reached something, at least before he fell to his death.

The hook caught hold of one of the platforms above his head and stopped his fall with a sudden jerk. It took all his strength to hold onto his gun, but he was glad that he did. He was only about five feet from the surface of the water, and the sea seemed to churn madly, like it wanted to grab hold of him. The line he was connected to then slowly and jerkily pulled the boy up towards the platform. Once he reached the bottom of the platform, he used his own strength to pull himself back up. The boy then followed the rope back to the end of the line and found the hook part. It had grabbed hold of the side of a tree, and sunk deep into the bark, leaving a large gash in the wood. He jerked it out and looked at the cylinder and attached rope. The prongs seemed to seamlessly melt into the cylinder, like they were made of the same stuff, and the rope was long, tough, and was starting to coil itself into knots.

Sean sighed, now that he was safe, he had no idea what to do with the long length of rope protruding out of his gun from the weird launcher he didn't know about until a few moments ago. He had no idea what to do with what seemed like an endless amount of rope, because he noticed that when he pulled on the hook, the more rope would appear. It was like it was producing it out of thin air. But there seemed to be no way to put the rope back. He then looked around for a rock or a sharp corner of a tree to try and cut the rope loose. But then he realized, even if he did cut himself free, he would still have a small length of rope trailing from this launcher...thingy...and he would look kind of silly running around looking like that. The blonde boy sighed and gave up his search.

He then heard a curious beeping, he looked around to see what was going on since he couldn't identify where it was coming from. He then realized it was coming from the launcher. He looked at the little attachment from all sides and then found a small button he hadn't noticed before that was in reach if he was to straighten his finger from where it was curled around the trigger. He pushed the button hesitantly, and then the rope started retracting at an alarming rate back into the launcher. When the hook got back to the launcher, it stopped at the opening and then the beeping noise stopped.

"What the heck was that?" thought Sean.

He wondered how this thing worked. Everything in this crazy world seemed more puzzling than the next, and he still hadn't figured out how the trees were floating in mid-air. Sean turned his attention back to the launcher, and he decided to figure out how this thing worked before continuing.

"It might be important, in some way," he thought hesitantly.

Sean looked over the strange device, hoping some sort of instructions were printed on it, or just in case the instructions seemed to jump out at him from somewhere in his mind, like his memories had done. Nothing happened.

"Well…this is exciting..." the blonde thought sourly.

He wanted to put the gun back into the sheath, so he could figure things about the grappling hook later. But with a big hook now protruding from his gun, there was no way it would fit. He knew he had to figure this thing out, or he'd be carrying around the hefty firearm forever in his hands.

"Close…" he muttered to the gun, like it was listening to him, "Go…back inside," he grumbled. Nothing. This was so not like the gun from the video game.

"Hook…retract? Hook…put-away-acus" he muttered, like trying to cast some sort of magic spell, "Go-go-gadget put hook away?" Now he just felt dumb.

Sean looked at the gun and decided to just do things that might do something. He racked the slide again, but this time, a single bullet popped out of the chamber and clattered to the ground. He couldn't be bothered to try and pick it up though, since he was too worried about putting away the hook. He tried pushing the button that retracted the rope, but the button wouldn't move. It was like once the rope was back in, the button stopped functioning. He thought about pulling the trigger, but that made two thoughts jump to mind. He would either fire the hook again, or he would fire the gun, neither of which he wanted to do. But what else could he do?

The blonde boy scrunched up his face in protest and squeezed the trigger slowly so that if anything did happen, he'd be prepared to react. But he couldn't squeeze the trigger. It was like it was broken because it felt like it was up against the body of the gun. Sean held up the gun to his face and looked at it. And sure enough, the trigger was pressed up against the body of the gun. Since there was nothing else, the only thing he could think about doing, he tried to push it back the other way. The trigger did a little "s" bend as moved away from the back of trigger guard area, and then it clicked back into place. After he did that, the hook parts sprang back into the cylinder and then the whole thing retracted back into the launcher, and the launcher popped back into the gun through a small door that opened in the body of the gun.

"Hey! Come back!"he shouted as he looked to see where the launcher went. How did that whole thing fit in there? The gun was too small for something that large to just fit inside of even an average-sized pistol. "Nothing makes sense in this place!" huffed the blonde boy, throwing his arms up in defeat.

He tried to make the grappling hook come out again. By tipping the gun upside-down, he was able to see that there was a small groove that the trigger was laid into. There was one that went straight back, and that was the path for the regular gun. Then he noticed a slight gap where, if he slid the trigger to the left, there was a path that the trigger could slide into another groove, and then be pulled back, then seated it again. Sean then made that change. When he did, the launcher appeared from out of the gun body and the cylinder appeared, deployed its hooks, and looked ready to fire. He decided to test it, just to see if he could figure it out. Not wanting to have to wind up the rope forever again, he aimed it nearby to his feet, and pulled the trigger. There was a small "hiss" as the hook launched, and it thudded into the ground, and then laid limp. The button that retracted the rope lit up and beeped like it did before, and he pushed it. The rope zipped back into the launcher. But then that raised the question, what if he wanted to fire the hook again, and not go back to firing bullets? He looked again, and then realized that the trigger, in its launcher mode, just needed to be pushed forward again. He flicked the trigger forward and pulled it again, and the rope launched right on queue. Satisfied, Sean reset the gun so that it would fire bullets again. He then holstered the gun and felt a little bit more prepared to face whatever was out there.

But what was out there? So far, this world seemed to be completely empty and devoid of any other life. The blonde then looked around and decided to explore more to see what this world was all about. He hobbled down the only path he saw and continued to walk until he saw something up ahead. He had to squint, but it looked like a cloud of white bubbles. His ears perked up because it seemed like the bubbles were making a buzzing sound as they made their way towards him, and they sounded like a big, angry swarm of bees. Sean gasped and hid behind a nearby tree, since he didn't know what they were, or if they saw him. He peeked around the corner and saw that the bubbles had stopped about ten feet off from where he was hiding. He didn't know whether they were the enemy of this world, or some sort of friend, seeing that this world seemed a lot like a video game. The boy decided he would go talk to the bubbles. Then the boy stopped and did a double-take when he considered what he was about to do.

"I'm going to talk to some…bubbles?" he muttered. Sean shook his head at the ridiculous idea. Yet, this wouldn't have been the first crazy thing he had done today.

Just to be cautious, he drew his pistol, then quietly walked around the trunk of the tree to face the buzzing swarm.

"H...h...hello?" said the boy nervously.

The bubbles seemed to all turn and face him. They all seemed to be about the size of his fist and varied in size from the size of his head, to the size of marbles. Many of them would pop, but out of the remains, the bubble seemed to blink back into life, in the same size as it was before. The whole swarm seemed to act like a single mind, built up of individual pieces. The blonde boy hesitantly edged forward towards the bubbles, deciding not to make the first move until they did.

"D...do you know where I am? I'm kind of lost..." the realized how weak that sounded, like he was a scared child talking to a police officer asking if he had seen his mommy.

"What...is...this...place..." the boy enunciated. He still couldn't believe he was talking to bubbles. The bubbles seemed to just float in place, and the buzzing continued to drone on as they floated in the air.

He decided it was hopeless to try and communicate with the bubbles and turned to slowly walk away down another path he saw. He hoped he didn't disturb them and tiptoed away. However, like a lost puppy, the bubbles started to follow him. The blonde picked up his pace, but the bubbles then matched pace. Sean then broke into a weak run. His legs still weren't in any shape for an all-out sprint like he did to get away from the gang, so he hoped he could lose the bubbles before it had to come to that. But they were right behind him, he could still hear them buzzing. Then Sean wondered why he was running...from bubbles. It was stupid, what could they do to him?

He stopped and turned to face the bubbles. The bubbles stopped and hovered about five feet away from him. The boy reached out a hand in a bit of a mock handshake. One of the bubbles slowly bobbed forward and then hovered a couple inches in front of his fingers. The bubble pulsed, almost like it was sniffing him, or at least it seemed like that as the bubble expanded and contracted as it hovered there. He rotated his hand so that he could allow the bubble to float above his hand. He held his fingers open, almost hoping that the bubble would land there, and then he could see what would happen. The bubble then darted down onto his hand and popped. There was a sharp pain that appeared in his hand, right where the bubble popped. And it didn't feel good, it was like being stung by a bee. The boy clenched his hand in pain and then held it in his other as he looked up at the cloud of bubbles. They started to buzz around in angry patterns, like an organized mob that had decided he was their next target.

The bubble that had popped reappeared, and then turned red in hue. Sean gasped and then turned on his heel and ran as fast as he could. But it wasn't good enough. The blonde's legs weren't good enough for running, and he stumbled and fell. The bubbles caught up to him and surrounded his figure. The bubbles hurt as they popped all over him, every time they popped, he felt a sting, followed by a feeling of numbness. Sean thought that this was going to be the end of his short time on this strange world and had only one thought on his mind.

"What the heck is going on here?!"