Over the next week, the group experienced another return trip. Hiroki said he sensed the return trip, but although they spent the day on alert, nothing happened.

They were just wondering if it was a false alarm, there was nothing on any news or anything about strange goings on.

Then, a return trip ran by, sending them back to that morning.

Hiroki told Milly that X.A.N.A. had only targeted the other factory, so they didn't have to worry about that one.

Meanwhile, Milly and Hiroki had been hard at work with their anti-virus for The Civilian. They had also been working on hacking the materialization and virtualization and polymorph.

They had gotten a few extraneous things, but nothing useful.

More time passed.

Tamiya, not wanting to put pressure on Milly, was coming up with ways that Hiroki could enter society. Milly didn't quite realize how much still had to be done, even after they materialized him.

Heidi and Johnny were constantly sneaking around Ulrich's group.

Johnny had gotten quite good at lockpicking, and his footsteps had become far quieter in the past few weeks.

A few more days later, there was another X.A.N.A. attack, but Tamiya had already warned them not to get into direct contact with Ulrich's group, only help civilians. This attack, involving X.A.N.A. possessing laughing gas, was directed mainly at Ulrich's group, so once again, they had little role in it. And once again, another return trip passed.

A few more attacks passed, where the group was able to do little to help. One thing they could do was occasionally tap into X.A.N.A.'s attacks, to bug them slightly, like in the attack when X.A.N.A. trapped Milly, Tamiya, Sissi's gang, Ulrich and Odd, and another boy, in the cafeteria. Or when X.A.N.A. created a song that played deadly waves into the person listening to it. The original strength could put someone in a coma after listening to it for about a minute, but they were able to weaken it, slightly. However, as time passed, it got too strong for them to do anything. Fortunately, a return trip passed before there was any permanent damage.

There was another attack, one that occurred between these two, but no one in the group remembered it…

Then, one day, while the girls were video-taping the school's robot competition, X.A.N.A. struck again, this time with a large and lethal robot.

The day started off much like the others, though Hiroki warned Milly that X.A.N.A. was stirring.

Tamiya and Milly had just picked up the biggest scoop of the month, when Herb's robot cheated, shooting a small metal gear, exploding Jeremie's.

Things were looking up, Milly was so happy with her news that Tamiya almost didn't have the heart to tell her that Jeremie was about to give the entire thing away by confronting Herb.

Meanwhile, Heidi and Johnny were watching the entrances to the gym. The attacks normally focused on Ulrich's group, and if they were all in the gym, it was anyone's guess as to where X.A.N.A. would attack.

Then, Johnny saw it, entering the gym. It must've been ten feet tall. He yelled to alert Heidi, who, upon seeing it enter, quickly began getting the students in the gym to evacuate.

"Come on, people," she said, ushering them along.

Johnny headed back toward the rest of the school, to inform them. He had taken a few pictures for proof, but the wrecked gym would be proof enough.

He ran into the dorms, where several students where hanging out (despite this being against the rules).

"There's an evacuation going on," he said, in his most authoritative voice. Judging by the expressions on their faces, none of the students were buying it.

He thrust open a curtain.

"Look! At the gym!" He urged them.

A few glances at the gym, which had doors torn off and a large hole in the wall, told these students that Johnny was telling the truth.

"Right," a 9th grader girl said. "Uh, thanks." She hesitated for a minute, before running to evacuate the school grounds, the other students following her.

Back by the gym, Heidi was making sure everyone was out. A few boys had missed the evacuation alert (they had been in the locker rooms), so she helped them out to their stations.

Milly had grabbed her backpack, which her laptop was in, and opened a link to Hiroki.

Milly: There's a giant robot attacking the school! Please tell me there won't be more!

Hiroki: I can't be sure, you know I'm hardly any good at hacking into his attacks! From what I've gathered, X.A.N.A.'s mostly attacking through the possession of a large robotic structure. That'd be your robot, I guess. It seems like he's not manufacturing anymore, so that's good. How are things over there?

Milly: Chaos. You need to ask? Though, seriously, we're helping evacuate. Which isn't exactly fun, because I'd much rather be off the grounds, where it's fairly safe, than looking around for stragglers. But I guess no one said this would be easy.

Hiroki: Do your best, Milly. I've got faith in you :)

Milly: I have to go. The others'll be relieved to hear there won't be more. This one seems mainly after Ulrich's group, so once the students are evacuated, they'll be pretty safe.

She logged off and hurried off to tell Tamiya what she had learned.

It wasn't long before everyone was out of the school. The toughest part had been actually convincing people that there was a giant homicidal robot on school grounds, but the thing had caused enough damage to be apparent.

After a while, it had gone quiet on the school grounds. Milly and Tamiya, who had since joined the group of 7th graders, exchanged looks. This silence either meant that the monster had been defeated, it had followed Ulrich's group off academy grounds, or… it had finished its work.

Milly was just debating whether or not to call Heidi, to ask if she knew anything, when a familiar wall of light appeared in the distance.

Please be at the competition, Milly silently begged Ulrich's group at the light washed over them.

The next thing she knew, she was standing in the gym.

Tamiya did a quick count, and smiled. They were all alive and accounted for.

.

That night, Milly was in for a surprise. While Hiroki had been trying to hack into X.A.N.A.'s attack, he had managed something else.

Hiroki had managed to get info on the basic polymorphic spector, as well as the return trip.

Hiroki: Milly, Tamiya and I have been talking. She's been telling me how much legal stuff I'm gonna need on Earth, once I get here, and how difficult that's gonna be. She's not sure how much we can get it to fly, pretending that I've been here all along.

Milly: Oh?

Hiroki: So, we've been talking, and she wondered if we could create a sort of mental altercation that would create a role for me in your world. False memories, birth certificate, that sorta thing.

Milly was quiet, thinking about it.

Milly: It seems impossibly difficult.

Hiroki: It actually wouldn't be. Because here's the thing. Once this is implanted it becomes fact. Even if the paperwork isn't perfect, it won't matter, because they have their memories, which is the strongest thing. Even if we're not 100% thorough, they have enough memories that they'll just attribute it to memory loss. Not to mention, we have the programs. It'll be tough, but very permanent.

Milly: I'm willing to give it a shot! At least we have a concrete plan! And I was also looking through the polymorph program. It's heavily based off the first polymorph created by X.A.N.A., which is, I think, one of Yumi Ishyama. Since you're Japanese, won't this help?

Hiroki: I think so. Although, even after we change it, I'll possibly bear a slight resemblance to her.

Milly stared at this for a minute, an idea working its way into her head. Suddenly, she typed back,

Milly: Hiroki, which would be easier, to program a false memory into Ulrich's group, or a normal person?

Hiroki: Hmm, interesting question. I believe it would be easier to implant false memories into someone in Ulrich's group than someone else, due to the fact that they've already had their memories modified a lot.

Milly: So, perhaps it would be better to insert you in a role that relies heavily on them. Say… a sibling?

Hiroki: …. What are you getting at?

Milly: I'm saying: I think that your role on Earth should be as Yumi's 'brother'. You're already gonna look like her and share some DNA, because your physical form is based off of a clone of hers. It would be easiest to give her memories because of the fact that her mind's been modified before. It also would be easy to keep an eye on your 'family life', because they live so close to the school. If any legal problems start to crop up, we can catch it before it becomes a big deal. It's a perfect solution!

Hiroki: … wow. That might actually work! That might work! Actually, I think it will!

Milly grinned. They had a plan. They had the methods. This would actually work!

.

Time passed. There was an attack in which Tamiya risked her life saving someone from plummeting into the sky when X.A.N.A. reversed the gravitational force.

But they were, again, saved by a return trip in the nick of time.

Another passed a few days later, reversing an attack, which Hiroki said was very centered on the other factory, and didn't affect them.

Then, right before they went on a three day vacation, Milly succeeded in giving her laptop a strong connection to the supercomputer, one that would stay steady over several hundred miles away. It would help for times that she wasn't able to be at the factory (break periods, meals, times she didn't want to waste twenty minutes getting to and from the factory).

Then they all went home for a long vacation.

Milly got quite a lot of work done over this time (it didn't hurt that a return trip ran half way through, allowing for them to get extra time working, though according to Heidi, the city their school was at nearly sunk entirely into the ground due to a X.A.N.A. attack). Also, her parents didn't mind if she worked through the night, they were very lax about bedtime rules.

Though her parents did wish she spent at least some time outside of her room while she was there.

On the last night, they had a breakthrough.

Hiroki: Milly, I think this is it.

Milly: Well, we're gonna have to run a few updates, and I'll have to write a new program, but each failed attempt will definitely help in making a new-

Hiroki: No, Milly, I mean, I seriously think this is it.

Milly: Well it'll definitely-

She stopped as Hiroki forwarded the program to her. He had run it through all the courses, and it came back as compatible, for the human mind, for the return trip, for the specifically written documents they had already forged.

Milly: Oh. You mean, we did it?

Hiroki: Yeah! This will actually work! This is it!

Milly just stared at the program for a minute. Then she let out a squeal of pure happiness, and quickly called Tamiya.

"Tamiya Tamiya Tamiya TAMIYA!" She shrieked into her phone. "We did it!"

"Milly, what are you talking about," Tamiya's sleepy voice came over the other end.

"We've completed the entire mental altercation program! And what with the progress we've been making on the polymorph/virtualization/materialization coupling, we could have this done really soon!"

"Soon? How soon?"

"A week or two soon! Can you believe it!"

Then there was a bang at her door.

"Milly, darling, please," her mother's slightly accented voice called through the door. "Your father and I are trying to get some sleep."

She glanced at the door. "Sorry, mom," she called back.

"Don't know how she heard me on the other side of the house," Milly muttered over the phone.

Tamiya sighed, smiling. "Your mom? Doesn't she hate France? I'll bet she just wishes she was back in Russia, your house there is tons bigger than the one here. But seriously Milly, you found something."

"Something?" Milly said, her voice raising again in excitement. "More than something! Weren't you listening? We could have this done in a few WEEKS!"

Tamiya yawned loudly over the line.

Milly sighed, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'll call Johnny. He knows how to bee excited."

She hung up and quickly called Johnny. "Johnny! You'll never guess! Know how you were just telling me before we left how you couldn't wait for Hiroki to be out so you two could get back at Sissi? Well, it may happen sooner than you think!"

"Huh?"

"We've been having so much progress, it's incredible! We could get him out soon! We could-"

There was another bang at her door. This time it was her father.

"Milly! Do I have to confiscate your phone to get you to quiet down?" He thundered.

Milly put her phone down and opened the door, staring innocently up at her father, who towered over his tiny red haired daughter.

"I'm sorry, papa," she said, her eyes wide with innocence. "I've just had some good luck that's been evading me all year. I'll be quiet, I promise."

He glowered down at her, but she continued to stare up at him, until a smile broke through his fierce stare. He ruffled her hair slightly. "Alright, Milly. But you're not the only person in the house, remember that." He walked off, chuckling slightly. "How you avoid getting in trouble at school is beyond me."

Milly watched after him, until he disappeared down the vast hallway.

She returned into her room to find Johnny had hung up. There was a text from him, reading.

Sry I had to hang up. My sister was yelling at me to b quiet. C u tmr!

Milly texted back, no prob, c u 2!

Then she called Heidi, to spread the good news.

"Hey Heidi," she whispered. "You'll never guess who just succeeded in creating a mental altercation that'll allow for Hiroki to live among us, with no notice of his sudden appearance!"

Heidi frowned, trying to make sense of Milly's convoluted sentence. "Um, you?"

"Right!" She lowered her voice, which had gotten louder. "We completed it. Meaning, it'll work. We still need to couple it to the return trip. And work on the materialization. It's strange, that last one. We managed to hack it a few months ago, and there was next to no information, just a little bit about sending humans back from Lyoko. Since then, it's grown, incredibly quickly. But I don't think it's X.A.N.A. who's expanding it, which means it must be someone from Ulrich's group." Milly shook her head in wonderment. "To be that genius at only 8th grade. This is advanced stuff, Heidi. Most of our expert scientists don't even think it's possible, and one of the 8th graders are actually creating it."

Heidi paused for a minute. "Probably Belpois. But let's not brush over your achievements. Creating a person from a computer program? Changing the entire world to believe he's always existed? You're quite the genius yourself."

Milly blushed, not used to such a compliment, especially coming from Heidi. "Well," she said, "most of the world will hardly be affected. It's only people like the Ishyama family, and people who would be close to Hiroki who really call for extensive changes."

Heidi laughed. "Downplay it all you want Milly. I'm happy for you. You're not the only one who can't wait to see him. He's all of our friend."

Milly smiled still happy. "You know, I'm probably gonna get some rest. I should get some sleep, or I won't preform at my peek."

Heidi rolled her eyes. "Really? You need sleep? Tell me something I haven't been trying to convince you over the last several months."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Milly said, laughing. "See you tomorrow."

"See ya."

Milly said goodnight to Hiroki, before crawling under her covers.

She wondered briefly what Hiroki would look like. He had been completely in charge of creating his physical form, since only he knew what it would look like. But it was strange for him, she knew. He couldn't see, he could hear, or feel or anything. He was only 'aware'. But she had to trust that he would make a complete figure for himself.

She fell asleep, and when she did, her dreams were full of her and Hiroki on Lyoko…