10-6: The Penalty

Well, Christmas was wonderful! My cousin is going to have a baby in August and I got tons of loot! I also went to this wonderful Midnight Mass w/ my mom and little sister. Anyway, this is one of those chapters that leaves you going "Huh? No way!" so try not to bug me too much about that.

(((-6-)))

The bolt on the elevator released and Jeremy snapped his head around as Janika lurched in.

"That was totally insane! It took me twenty minutes to get here thanks to all the police and firefighters lined up and down the streets trying to figure out how to stop Yumi and that new Pawn. And then I got sick about five minutes ago. Ugh! Good thing I skipped lunch." She stopped talking abruptly as she looked around. "Hey, where is she? I know Jira's here someplace."

The supercomputer's operator glared at her despite the fact that he seemed a little green himself. "I'll give you one guess."

Janika's legs went weak and she leaned against the console. "You let her waltz in here and go to Lyoko? How could you guys not realize that she wasn't me?"

His eyes narrowed even farther. "First of all, we had no reason to doubt that anyone who looked like you wouldn't be you. Secondly, when was the last time you were trapped alone with Sissy? She wouldn't get out of my head! I swear if Aelita hadn't deactivated the Tower when she did, I would have committed suicide. I had no idea there were so many uses for eye shadow, though. I also told her that mascara was made from bat guano and old tires."

"I honestly didn't want to know that. But why haven't we gone back in time? Usually you do that immediately."

"Well, I would have, but we have a major problem here thanks to your twin sister. If I trigger the return to the past sequence, Jira will wind up with her face on a milk carton."

Janika stared at him blankly. "What does milk have to do with anything going on here?"

"I mean she'll vanish."

She pushed past Jeremy to get a closer look at the monitor. He moved aside as she spoke, "The longer she stays on Lyoko, the more she'll be able to remember."

Jeremy looked at her, puzzled. "What? How do you know that?"

She gave him a half-smile and shrugged. "How do you think I was able to remember my first mission? Not that I remember much except a vague idea and you guys, but that's beside the point. We need to get her out ASAP because the biggest secret in the world and my sister do not go together. She is incapable of hiding anything. How long has she been there?"

"It doesn't matter," he said softly.

Janika turned, prepared to bite his head off, but he held up a hand.

"There's no way to reverse the process. Every minute on Lyoko is killing her. Soon she'll just fade away completely. Returning to the past only accelerates the development."

The dark-haired girl stared at the screens, seemingly oblivious to everything. She stood there silently for several minutes. He didn't have the heart to interrupt her thoughts.

"Jeremy," she said suddenly, "do the central analog converters have enough capacity to replace one contaminated atypical variable by a direct-transference modulator?"

The blonde computer whiz rubbed his chin as he considered the possibility. "I'm pretty sure they do, but if I try to give Jira the missing links from your profile from here, it would probably retaliate and destroy all her data instantaneously."

"No…" Janika murmured quietly, "…I mean directly."

He was on his feet clutching her shoulders the second the words were out of her mouth.

"It's too dangerous, Janika! She might be able to leave, but you would either be trapped there in her place or your virtual character would break down from the sudden decrease in essential data density. You could die!"

The dark-haired girl stared at him, no emotion crossing her face. "I know. But I'll never be able to live with myself knowing I could have saved her life and didn't. What if she was your mother?"

She knew how much Jeremy's mother meant to him.

He looked away. "You'd better get down there before I change my mind."

She didn't hug him or race to the elevator. Janika merely turned and walked into it calmly as if she didn't care.

"Don't tell them until afterward. It's better this way."

The blonde boy leaned heavily against his computer. As he raised his eyes again, an expression of confusion crossed his face.

"What in the world? How did the second Tower deactivate by itself? Wait…if Aelita deactivated the one that made the second link from Lyoko to earth, how was it also able to return Sissy to her own body?"

The indirect procedure in which the Tower had been deactivated would only result in some sort of…hiccup! A mistake had to have been made during the transfer. But what could it be? The conundrum puzzled him.

(V)

Odd and Ulrich were keeping a close eye on Jira as she tried to sneak around them to explore. They weren't falling for anything. Not even the look of horror on her face as she pointed behind them screaming, "Godzilla!"

When Janika virtualized in the air nearby and landed neatly on the ground, the boys let out sighs of relief, glad their work was done. Jira stared at her with a glare, as did her twin.

"Nika."

"Jiranda."

Her twin held one ninja star dangerously, her expression becoming deadly. "You know how much I hate that name."

"Funny how you never seem to remember how much I loathe my own nickname."

"See? There you go again with all the fancy words. It's no wonder you never had any friends back home. I'm surprised you managed to make any here."

"At least my friends care about me and don't just hang around because I'm popular. All yours do is dance around with compliments and then stab you in the back!"

With the last word, Jira leaped straight up in the air to avoid a spinning ninja star and let fly one of her own. Janika executed a perfect double back flip, casting two more of her weapons halfway through the stunt as she dodged her sister's. The other took cover behind a rock and cast four shurikens in rapid succession, then leaped from her rock to attack Janika with her claws.

The guys, meanwhile, were totally confused. Ulrich was prepared to sit back and watch, strangely enough. "A real catfight," he winked at his friend. But Odd punched him in the shoulder and told him to help out.

They grabbed the cheetahs as they tussled back and forth, trying their best to claw each other's eyes out. Odd grabbed one by the braid and tail, yanking her out of the fray at such an awkward position that she screamed more out of humiliation than pain.

Ulrich seized the other twin by the arms and pulled her off. His captive yelled several obscenities as they were separated, so he knew she wasn't Janika. He turned to Aelita as she exited the Tower and said, "Cover your ears, would you?"

"Let me go, Odd!" Janika screeched at him.

"Are you going to fight with her again?" he asked.

She sullenly shook her head.

"Fine," Odd said, depositing her on the Desert sand.

The samurai also released his prisoner and she walked purposely toward her sister. The boys were ready to grab them again when the two sisters embraced more warmly than should have been possible after they had just tried to kick the snot out of each other.

"What a welcome!" Jira laughed. "Usually we just throw each other on the floor, but this is way more fun!"

Janika had an affectionate smile on her face as she hugged her twin, but she spoke to Aelita. "Is everything ready inside?"

"Jeremy briefed me, so I did what I could, but you'll have to finish it yourself because no one else can be in the Tower with you when you materialize her."

"I know what to do." She seemed to force a smile as she went over to the two guys and gave them hugs. "Pray that my sister makes it back all right, won't you?"

They shrugged, not sure exactly why Janika was acting slightly morbid.

"Come on, Jira."

(V)

They stood inside. Janika worked with the digital console hovering in the air and pressed several options. Finally she turned back to her sister.

"Why on earth did you come here? Did you think it would be fun to play a joke on my friends?"

"I don't know. They thought I was you. I just went along. Didn't really think about it."

"You never really did. Why should I have expected you to do that today?" she finished her work at the screen and faced the other girl again.

"Why did you attack me?" Jira wondered. "You were always my opposite, weren't you? Shy and booksmart, thinking for hours before you made the simplest decision. What were you trying to do?"

"I was just acting the way I really am now in front of you for once. I'm not the goody-two-shoes you remember, Jira. That's not me anymore. I'm a Warrior, and I won't let you die if I can prevent it. Even if it means I won't live."

Jira grabbed her sister and clutched her shoulders tightly. "What? No! Janika, you can't do this! You're my sister, my twin! You can't give up your life for me. I won't be able to live knowing you died because of my stupidity."

Janika moved faster than the eye could see, twisting out of the other girl's grip and throwing her to the floor where she was held down beneath a knee. The foreigner grunted "Mercy!" before she was allowed up.

"You won't even remember this, sis. And you can't stop me. Not now. I love you so much, I'd sacrifice myself a thousand times over for you. I know you'd do the same for me if you could."

Jira stared at her, saddened. "Why can't I cry? I want to…but I can't."

Janika pressed a final option onto the digital console and gripped her twin's hands in her own. The Tower began to hum around them and the twins hugged one final time. They floated like Aelita, but only a little ways above the platform.

And that was about the time that Odd forced Aelita to tell him what was going on. Before anyone could stop him, the panther-Warrior charged into the Tower shouting, "Janika, stop!"

The mechanical hum escalated suddenly with the addition of a new person in the Tower. Both girls jerked their heads about at his cry and he couldn't tell which was which. Light from all over the Tower gathered to them until it was too bright to see.

Odd was forced to shield his eyes and then Jeremy activated the return to the past sequence…

Well, that's the end of that. Don't worry. There's still one more chappie for this episode. Everybody have a happy New Year's! Poll time: if you were to walk the "road less traveled" where would it take you? It's not really a philosophical question. (I'd probably end up falling off a cliff or a bridge or a balcony or some other precipice; that tends to happen to me)