Author's Note(s): Well, I finally decided to continue my fiction again. Yeah, I know it's been a while. Sorry guys, I've been rather busy… heh…

Disclaimer: Jeremie, Aelita, Ulrich, Yumi, Odd and anything else related to Code Lyoko, are copyright to Moonscoop.


Unsolved Mysteries

Chapter 7: Future Tense

The very interior room of Lyoko looked out upon the small ball that floated through the air. It flew down in the center of the room and let it's passengers off right at the very center. The room was completely round, with blue walls on all sides. The floor looked just like a tower, with the symbol of XANA clearly visible on the floor.

Despite the fact that there was no exit at first sight, looking around, one could see a pathway leading off into the wall towards the bottom of the XANA symbol on the floor. Odd was looking straight into it, with Ulrich to his right, Aelita to his left, and Yumi directly behind him.

Without saying a word, all of them quickly found the path and ran up to it. The wall opened up, a long winding path through. Jeremie called out to them from outside of the virtual world. "Alright, guys, the countdown is set. Make sure to find the key, and fast!"

Aelita, Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd stepped out into the room, to the sight of… nothing. The key was on the completely opposite side of the room, but there was absolutely no floor between the exit and the entrance to the room. There were only the two square platforms inside the room, and both were the ones previously noted.

"Well," Ulrich began, "I wonder how we are going to get out of this one."

Odd walked up to the edge of the platform on the left side and sat down along it. He gripped the edge of the platform with his hands and hung down, but felt himself dropping down. His right hand lost its grip and fell to his side. "Whoa," he called out, the only thing left to hold him being one hand.

Yumi quickly rushed to the edge and grabbed his hand, pulling him back out of the abyss. Odd rolled back onto solid ground. "Well, that didn't work…" he stated.

Aelita shook her head in wonder. "Well, there's got to be some way to cross!" She proclaimed. "How are we going to get through, though?"

A bit curious, Ulrich walked over to the right side of the platform, and right up to the edge. Suddenly, a platform shot up from the abyss below. Ulrich backed up a bit in surprise, and fell away from the edge. He looked back as the platform immediately fell down again.

Yumi blinked in surprise. "An invisible maze?" she asked, "You've got to be kidding me!"

Jeremie's warning signal made them quickly rethink their strategy. "Hurry up guys, your time's going down fast. Only two minutes left!"

Odd quickly got back up on his feet and raced over to the edge of the platform, the new platform rising back out again. "Come on guys, let's get going!" He called out, jumping over to the next platform.

Everyone else nodded, and hastily followed Odd.

XXXXX

Odd flipped forward and landed directly onto the center of the platform. Ulrich and Yumi promptly followed, with Aelita tailing in behind. They were now at the very center of the chamber. However, they soon realized that they were quite as close as they had hoped…

"Awe man," Odd proclaimed as he tried balancing himself at the edge of the platform. "I was hoping we were done with this already…"

Yumi laughed and pulled Odd away from the edge. "Come on, Odd, you really expect XANA to make it that easy?" She asked, sarcastically.

Odd shrugged his shoulder. "Heh, well, a guy can hope, can't he?"

"You'd best not hope for something that won't happen," Jeremie called out. "Forget that, though, you're surrounding by Creepers on all sides! Watch your backs out there."

Aelita quickly ran to the center of the platform, while the others surrounding her. Ulrich quickly removed his saber and glanced around the room. However, he saw no monsters in sight. "Uh, Jeremie, I don't see any Creepers…" he proclaimed.

Yumi walked up to the edge opposite of Odd, towards the direction that they came, and glanced down. Suddenly, and shot came flying straight up. It whizzed past Yumi's face, and she promptly backed up away from the platform.

Ulrich heard the shot, and quickly spun around. "Yumi!" he called out.

Ulrich ran up to her, but she pushed herself up on her own. Jeremie chuckled slightly. "There's your confirmation, Ulrich!" he called out. "Now hurry up and dispatch them—you've only got one minute remaining!"

The Creepers crawled up the sides of the platform. There were four of them—one on each side. Odd took it rather positively. "Well, then, this ought to be fun," he proclaimed. "Four against three…? That sounds perfect to me!"

Ulrich rolled his eyes as the legs of the monsters became visible along the edge of the platform. "Yeah, thanks a lot, Odd. You can actually count! That makes me feel so much better," he proclaimed sarcastically.

Odd chuckled a bit. "Thanks, I knew it would help. Ah, nobody can get enough of me, huh?"

Aelita pointed toward the edge in front of Odd. "Watch out, here they come," she proclaimed—a Creeper peeking its head out over the side of the platform.

XXXXX

"Impact!" Ulrich's saber pierced through the head of the Creeper as it peeked up over the edge. It exploded on the spot, but its tail fell into the abyss before it was able to disappear.

He heard a scream behind him, and quickly spun around to see a Creeper approaching Aelita. He dashed back over to her and cut through the Creeper, destroying it.

Odd and Yumi managed to take out the other two Creepers and retreated to the center of the platform. "What do we do now?" Yumi asked.

"Guys," Jeremie called out, "you'd better hurry yourselves up down there! Get to the switch, quickly!"

Odd glanced over at Ulrich and nodded. Ulrich nodded in return, and turned to Yumi and Aelita. "Stand back, you guys." They listened and backed away. Aelita glanced at Yumi curiously, but she simply shrugged her shoulders.

Odd dashed toward Ulrich and jumped into the air. Ulrich held out his hands and Odd stepped down on top of them lightly. Ulrich flung his hands upward and behind him, and Odd went flying over the gap and to the platform.

The countdown on Jeremie's screen read ten seconds when Odd slammed his palm onto the switch. The door opened, and all the platforms in the room rose up. The exact alignment from the start to the end was right, left, left, forward, forward, right, forward, right.

Jeremie congratulated them as Ulrich, Aelita, and Yumi finished going along the path. "Nice work, guys! Good, quick thinking, Odd and Ulrich."

Odd nodded and bowed. "Why thank you, Jeremie. It was my finest hour!"

Ulrich groaned. "Quit your mumbling and get on with it. We've got to get that information, and quickly."

Jeremie nodded. "Yeah, hurry up, guys. Head for the Celestial Sphere, and hurry up. The faster you get there, the quicker we can get time aligned back properly."

XXXXX

The elevator lowered and stopped right in front of another platform. Ulrich, Odd, Yumi, and Aelita were standing on the elevator, but quickly jumped over to the next platform ahead. They ran out through the doorway in front of them, and out into the area known as the Celestial Sphere.

This is the outer edge of Carthage. It is a large, round sphere, with four openings around it that led into the Way Towers. 'Way Towers,' as they are called, are towers within one of the four outer sectors of Lyoko that allowed a person to travel to one of the other three sectors.

The path ended a short ways ahead, and nothing but an abyss surrounded it. Aelita rushed to the end of the platform, and a viewing screen appeared. She used her hands to scroll through the various files to see if she could uncover anything.

Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd simply waited behind while she was working on it. However, they armed there weapons, ready to fight. "The mantas should be coming out any minute now," Ulrich proclaimed.

Sure enough, from the outer surroundings of Carthage, three flying mantas came out. "Here come your vehicles!" Jeremie called out. The Overboard and Overwing appeared to the right of the platform, and the Overbike appeared just to the left of it.

The three of them hopped onto their proper vehicles—Odd on the Overboard, Yumi on the Overwing, and Ulrich on the Overbike—and flew off toward the mantas ahead. Aelita stayed behind to search for the required data.

"Keep the mantas distracted while Aelita searched for the code," Jeremie called out. "Remember, Aelita can't get devirtualized!"

The mantas flew in a V-Formation and starting shooting beams at Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi. Odd aimed his hand at the center mantas back and fired three shots. They hit the XANA symbol dead on, destroying the monster. "Yeah, yeah, Einstein, that's what we're doing!" he stated in reply.

"Well, be careful!" Jeremie yelled back. "Aelita can't last long on her own. More importantly, though, the Scyphozoa is undoubtedly still around. If it appears, you must stop it!"

Odd nodded in reply. "Off course, you got me! I'm all over it."

"Jeremie, I got the data," Aelita called out from the platform. "However, I seem to have a little problem," she finished.

"Aelita, what's going on?!" He demanded. However, upon seeing it on the screen, he cried out, "Oh no!"

Down on the platform where Aelita stood, a large, pink squid-like monster was chasing her. She backed away toward the edge, but quickly stopped when she was forced to balance herself along it. The Scyphozoa wrapped it's tentacles around her and lifted her into the air. The remaining two tentacles were placed at both the left and right side of her head.

"Aelita!" Jeremie cried out. "Guys, hurry up. The Scyphozoa has captured Aelita!"

The squid-like Scyphozoa was a monster XANA created to capture something, and steal data from it. One time it had taken a fragment of Yumi's DNA code, but most of the time it tries to steal Aelita's memory. If the Scyphozoa is stopped before the process is completed, all the information it stole is returned to the owner.

Right now, the Scyphozoa had again taken hold of Aelita, and was slowly draining away her memory. She could do nothing to stop it, as the process makes her completely immobile. Cutting the Scyphozoa's tentacles will cause it to lose hold of the captured person. It could also lose its grip if it was attacked in its jelly-like head.

Numerous attacks have hit the head, which is also the location of its "eye." If the Eye of XANA is hit on any of the monsters, the monster takes greater damage than normal. The Eye of XANA for the Scyphozoa is located on its forehead. However, despite how many times it had been hit in the past, the Scyphozoa was never destroyed.

Having now turned around on his board, Odd now raced back towards Aelita. He aimed his hand toward the Scyphozoa's head. "Laser Arrow!" he called out.

Three arrows struck the squid-like monster in the head. The monster backed away a little bit, but the monster clearly wasn't fazed by this attack. It didn't let go of Aelita, either. Odd shot a few more arrows at it, and now it started to take the heat.

It dropped Aelita and backed away a bit. It recovered from the attack after a few seconds, though, and floated closer to Aelita again—who was now standing up again. As it reached out its tentacles toward her, Ulrich flew in on his Overbike and slashed downward across the tentacles of the Scyphozoa, cutting them off completely.

The Scyphozoa retreated, and Aelita quickly got back to the monitor. "Whew, nice save," Jeremie called out."

Aelita finished her modifications to the coding, and the screen disappeared. "Alright, Jeremie, you're back in now. The timetables have been reset, now, so the return to the past should work fine now."

Jeremie nodded and quickly typed the code into his computer, not worrying about having the others get out of Lyoko first. "Alright, then, here goes nothing. Return to the past now!" he called out. His index finger pressed down onto the Enter key on his keyboard, and a bright ball of light consumed all.

XXXXX

Back in the school, Jeremie arrived at the infirmary where Odd and Ulrich were waiting. Ulrich was standing there, looking straight at Jeremie, but Odd was standing their and playing his game. "Is she alright?" Jeremie asked.

Ulrich nodded. "According to the nurse, it's only a mild sprain. It should heal up in a few days. Until then, though, Aelita will have to use a pair of crutches to support her, and she shouldn't walk around too much," he explained.

Jeremie gave off a sigh of relief, just as Aelita walked out using her new pair of crutches. Upon coming out, though, she came to the surprise of everyone's expressions. "Wow, I didn't expect such a warm welcome," she said.

"Are you alright, Aelita," Jeremie asked.

She nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. However, I was hoping to not have to go through this a second time…"

Jeremie nodded, but then he remembered something. He slapped his face from his foolishness, and looked back up at the others. "Oh yes, I almost forgot. I'm going to need your guys' help a little later. Meet me in my room later, and I'll explain everything that happened."

Aelita nodded. "Alright, I'll try and get over there."

"Sounds good to me," Ulrich stated. "I'll get Yumi later, but right now I need to get to class."

Ulrich and Odd turned to leave, but then Ulrich heard a familiar voice behind him. "Ah, what a pity," the voice called out.

Ulrich, Aelita, and Jeremie turned back down the hallway, and saw none other that Elizabeth Delmas, better known by the nickname 'Sissy.'

She trudged down the hallway with her wide smirk along her face. Her two cronies—Herve and Nicolas—were following along as usual. She walked passed Jeremie and glanced over at Aelita. Her smirk widened. "Well, well, well, if it isn't a maiden in need of rescuing. Did your Jeremie come here to save you?"

Ulrich groaned. "We don't need any of your smooth talk, Sissy. None of us are in the mood right now," he proclaimed.

Sissy laughed. "Awe, don't worry Ulrich dear, you'll have your own chance soon enough. Once I fall, I know who will be there to catch me…"

Aelita chuckled a bit. "Yeah, so do I. That'd be Herve over there, right? Or maybe even Nicolas?"

That got Sissy's attention. She snorted and trudged off, Herve and Nicolas following behind. Before they left, though, Ulrich thought he heard Herve mumble something on the lines of "I could agree with that" … Nah, that couldn't be.

Ulrich continued making his way for his class, and Jeremie took Aelita in the opposite direction. Odd was so caught up in his game that he didn't see everyone leave. After a few seconds, his eyes lit up.

Odd jumped up and through his fists into the air. "Yahoo!" he called out. Just then, he noticed that everyone was gone. "W-wait, where did everybody go?" He looked in both directions, and then finally ran off in the direction Ulrich went. "Wait!" He called out as he ran.


Chapter Profile:

Elizabeth "Sissy" Delmas: Elizabeth is the daughter of the Kadec Academy principle, but prefers to go by the name "Sissy." She often uses her cunning to get her father to do her bidding. Sissy is the local brat of Kadec, and often teases other students. Though she treats the Lyoko crew badly, she secretly wants to be apart of their group. She also has a soft spot for Ulrich, and no one is able to shut her up about it.