When Odd, Jeremie, and Ulrich got to class they saw Emma sitting in the front row, reading a handout that Mrs. Hertz handed out as students entered the room. Odd took his seat next to Emma, Jeremie sat with Ulrich and Aelita sat at a table alone.
"So what's the lab?" Odd asked Emma, looking over the paper with little, almost no interest.
"We're going to dissect a rat and take a sample of blood for cultures that we'll check Monday," she replied without looking at him. "And we're supposed to take out its organs and tape them down to a piece of paper and label them."
"Sounds gross," Ulrich said from behind them.
"It's science," Emma replied simply. "And you of all people should enjoy this, you cut into creatures all the time on Lyoko."
"They are virtual, no blood involved," Ulrich responded. "Big difference."
"Just imagine this is virtual too," Odd suggested.
"It won't be bad, this actually looks like an easy lab," Aelita said. "I don't feel so bad about working alone now!"
"Easy for you to say, Princess, you have a solid A+ in this class," Odd replied. "I need a good grade on this."
"Don't worry Odd, I'll do it all," Emma offered, giving Odd a look as she went to the front lab table to get the supplies. Odd joined her and grabbed the petri dishes and the frog while Emma grabbed the scalpel and swabs.
Emma set everything up quickly, her eyes gleaming as she restrained the dead frog and began cutting into its soft underbelly. Odd watched in awe as she did every step of the lab without double checking the procedure once. When she was done the frog had all of its innards taken out and she scribbled down the names while Odd called the teacher over.
"You can't be done already!" Mrs. Hertz protested. Her jaw dropped when she saw the work was all done.
"Yeah," Odd said, kind of shocked too. "She memorized everything before class, I guess. Emma did pretty much everything… I would have helped but she was just way ahead of me."
Jeremie, Aelita, and Ulrich were watching them as Mrs. Hertz checked everything over. "Well, Miss. Kozlov, this is a very nice job! I'll give you both an A for today… next time let Mr. Della Robbia do some work as well," she said when she was done. "Class, come see Emma and Odd's lab if you get stuck."
"That was pretty cool, how you handled the lab," Odd said to Emma when Mrs. Hertz walked away to monitor the rest of the class. "Didn't know you were so good with knives."
"It's hard not to be good with them," Emma replied calmly, looking down at her work.
Odd shrugged, thinking nothing of it. He turned around to see Jeremie and Ulrich's project. Ulrich was doing the dissecting while Jeremie told him what to do. It was a lot messier than Emma's work, but it was going pretty well. Odd looked to see that Aelita was having no trouble on her own. He sighed, putting his head down on the empty space on his lab table. He wondered what he would do for the remainder of the class; there was nothing left to do.
"We need to clean up," Emma said suddenly and Odd jumped up, glad to be doing something. He took the bloody scalpel from Emma and went to clean it off while Emma took care of the bloody paper and petri dishes. Odd wiped the table down and washed his hands of the blood that had clung to his skin while he cleaned. He grimaced as he washed it from his hands; blood was never his favorite thing to see.
When he returned to his seat Emma was reading a book, obviously not interested in talking. Odd decided to doodle for the rest of class.
Classes ended and the next class went by as slowly as the last. When classes finally ended Odd felt a wave of eager excitement wash over him. Time to party!
He, Jeremie, and Ulrich were all at hanging around on the bench waiting for the girls to be ready to go when Jeremie cursed, looking at his laptop.
"X.A.N.A. activated a tower! A few hours ago too… at the end of lunch. I wonder why the scan didn't pick it up?" He wondered, typing furiously.
"No!" Odd whined, devastated. "Right before a party? How rude!"
"We need to go check it out. Maybe if we take care of this quickly we can still get to Yumi's," Jeremie said hopefully. "Call Emma and have her meet us there."
"No need, I'm here," Emma said from behind the boys. "Aelita is still uo in her room getting ready."
"Okay. Someone call her and tell her to meet us. Let's get to the factory," Jeremie said and they took off for the park. Ulrich called Aelita and Yumi to let them know what was going on. Yumi stayed home because other friends were also coming over and she didn't want to ditch them. When everyone else got to the factory Jeremie virtualized Odd, Ulrich, and Aelita first.
"Ready Emma?" Jeremie asked when a scanner opened up.
"All set, I'm in the scanner," Emma's voice called up to Jeremie. He proceeded with her virtualization. An error message pupped up in her virtualization and Jeremie clenched his fist.
"Emma!" He called. "Something happened during the transfer. Are you there?"
"Everything's okay, Jeremie, I'm on Lyoko," came her calm reply.
Odd looked around the mountain sector and scratched his head. "Where's the activated tower?"
"It… it just deactivated itself. Something's wrong, I think X.A.N.A. lured us here," Jeremie replied. Ulrich took out his katanas and everyone stood, facing different directions, standing in offensive positions.
"Why would X.A.N.A. lure us onto Lyoko?" Ulrich asked. Glancing around at other platforms to see if anything was coming.
"Hornets are coming to put on an air show," Jeremie blurted.
Odd looked around to see where the hornets were coming from. He turned just as Emma turned toward Ulrich and fired two laser bullets at him. The bullets that were usually a light orange were darker, and they were faster. Ulrich devirtualized in a flash and Odd sprung into action, putting himself between Emma and Aelita before anything could happen to her.
"Jeremie! Emma is attacking us!" Aelita shouted, activating her wings to help her evade the hornet attacks. She fired energy fields at one of them but missed.
"What?" Jeremie asked, shocked. "But... is she being controlled by X.A.N.A.?"
Emma was firing continuous shots at Odd, while Odd held his shield up. "She's obviously X.A.N.A.-fied! Why else would she attack us?"
Ulrich went up to the lab to join Jeremie then, completely confused. "Why did Emma just attack me?"
Jeremie looked at the scanner feed from Emma's virtualization and came up with the explanation. "It's not Emma, it can't be… She should be immune to X.A.N.A…. It's a Polymorphic Spectre."
"So where's the real Emma? I'll go find her," Ulrich said, heading back toward the elevator.
"I have a tracker on all of our phones, I'll find where her phone is and hopefully she's near it," Jeremie offered. Ulrich waited while Jeremie tracked down her phone. He heard Odd yelling and swearing at hornets and Aelita screaming at the Polymorphic Spectre to let her go.
"The Hermitage. Go!" Jeremie commanded and Ulrich rushed into the elevator and took off, giving Yumi a call to let her know what was going on. Meanwhile on Lyoko, Odd had managed to get rid of the hornets, while the polymorphic spectre was trying to throw Aelita into the digital sea.