Warning: Rated 'M' for horror-genre violence, adult situations and adult language.

The main characters of this story are based on characters from the cartoon 'Code Lyoko.' I do not own, nor do I claim, any copyright to these characters.

Certain characters have been adapted from 'The Stand,' by Stephen King, and he is the copyright holder of these.

Certain characters are based on 'Hikaru No Go' by Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata. I do not own, nor do I claim, any copyright to these characters.

Brief references are made to a character from 'Watership Down,' by Richard Adams, and he is the copyright holder of this character.

Friday

The Teacher, Mother Abagail Freemantle, walked out the front door of her cabin to her rocking chair on the porch. She stopped at the door's threshold.

Pouring out of the cornfield, all around the house, were huge black rats, and nameless things even worse. And in the middle, standing tall, was the man.

"It's time," was all he said to her before the blackness surged forward and enveloped her.

Oh, Crap! was her last thought.

Saturday

Yumi arrived with her overnight bag in the afternoon. Aelita had set her room up for Yumi's and Sissi's arrival. The girls got themselves settled and spent the rest of the afternoon deep in small talk.

Odd and Ulrich brought a few things along with sheets and pillows over to Jeremie's room. Jeremie was feeling a lot better now, and had actually spent the morning walking the campus grounds with Aelita.

That evening, the six gathered together in Jeremie's room. They ate snacks that Sissi and Odd liberated from the cafeteria, and talked all around the one thing all of them wanted to say, but couldn't.

Goodbye.

Finally, there was nothing else to say, nothing to do. The girls returned to Aelita's room, and the boys settled down to sleep.

The six found themselves standing in the computer laboratory at the factory. At least that's what it looked like to them. But there were some differences. Like the missing wall, that looked out on to the old woman's yard and into the burned remains of the cornfield beyond that.

The old woman herself was sitting in the console seat Jeremie usually sat in when they went to Lyoko. She looked in bad shape.

When each of the children had seen her in their dreams, the Teacher was aged, but not old. As she sat before them now, she looked as if all of the life and vitality had been sucked completely out of her. Her wrinkles were pronounced, her flesh seemed like it was hanging off of her bones. The only part of her that had any life or light was her eyes. She regarded them closely.

"Draw near, children, for my time is short," she told them. She broke out into a coughing fit.

They came to her, surrounding the chair she was sitting in. Each of them touched her, or held her hands, as if by doing that, they could, somehow, transfer a little of their life to her.

She told them, "by now you all know what is at hand, and what the stakes are. You will go into the west. You will travel as you stand here before me now. You will go until you come at last to the man from the cornfield, who is not a man at all, but a vile thing from the depths of the Pit."

"If one of you should fall, the others must continue on. Those that survive, must ultimately Stand against this demon."

Another coughing fit wracked her frame.

She continued, "I have no way of knowing whether any of you will survive to Stand. I have no way of knowing whether or not you will ultimately prevail when you do come against him."

"But I do know that all of you together have the capacity to defeat it. When the time comes, your heart will show you the way. The only advice I can offer you is this: 'the only way that Evil may prevail is for Good Men and Women to do Nothing.' Sometimes, a Good Person Standing up to Evil is the only thing that will defeat it."

"Now, go."

They disappeared.

They found themselves standing in a desert. Five of them were reminded of the Desert Region on Lyoko. Sissi, having never been to there, thought it looked like it was somewhere in the Southwestern United States. There weren't sand dunes for miles around, just hard packed dirt with scrub bushes trying to suck moisture out of the ground. There were also large cactus plants dotting the landscape, their trunks rising like men holding their hands up in surrender to the heat.

And it was hot. Even though the sun looked like it had just risen in the east, the heat beat down on them like a blast furnace.

Off to the west, they saw mountains rising in the distance. The tallest peak had a menacing look to it, like a headsman waiting at the chopping block for his next victims.

As they looked around at their surroundings, the also looked at each other. Ulrich, Odd, Yumi and Aelita were dressed in their Lyoko garb, but with differences. Instead of the bright colors they typically wore, the colors were more muted, more earth toned. In addition, Aelita had a bow with a quiver of arrows on her back.

The emblem on Odd's cat suit was different. Instead a picture of Kiwi the dog, there was a picture of a rabbit standing on its hind legs. The rabbit's ears were also silver and glowing, rather than brown. The other, well, odd, thing was the silver chain that was looped around his neck. It trailed away from him to a similar loop around Sissi's neck.

Sissi was dressed in loose trousers and a tunic that reached down to her knees. The front and back were tied together at the sides with cords. On the front of the tunic was a beautifully intricate illustration of a fox running rampant alongside a rabbit. The strange thing was, the fox wasn't chasing the rabbit, they were running together. Sissi was holding a staff in her hand, about as long as she was tall. Every now and then when you looked at it, it seemed to change from a staff to a spear to a pike to a halberd.

Jeremie, the other one never to have been to Lyoko, was dressed for the desert. He was wearing khaki colored clothing, stout walking boots, and a wide-brimmed hat. He had no weapons other than what looked like a pistol holster on his belt.

Each of them were wearing a belt that held two bottles and a pouch. One of the bottles turned out to be water, about three liters worth each. The other bottle had a red cross on the front of it. When Jeremie held his, something told his mind that it was a healing elixir.

The pouch contained a bunch of wafer like things. Odd instantly ate one.

"Umm, good." He went to eat another one but stopped. "Oh boy! Just one of those things filled me right up. I'm not hungry at all!"

"That's quite a statement from the Stomach That Couldn't Stop," Yumi chided him.

"Okay everyone, we've got to pull ourselves together now," Jeremie finally said, "we have to go west. I'm guessing that that means towards those mountains over there," pointing to the peaks in the distance.

"Even though we have these healing elixirs and the food and water, we need to be real careful. We don't know how long it will take us to reach where we're supposed to go, and what we have here may not even last us the day. So, everybody, conserve your supplies as much as possible."

With that, they set out to the west. Odd and Sissi went first, then Ulrich and Yumi, then Jeremie and Aelita. The chain between Odd and Sissi didn't seem to hinder them at all. It would grow and shrink according to the distance between them. It would also pass through solid objects, like it was more a ghostly apparition than a solid thing.

They walked for what seemed to be hours. The heat continued to beat down on them from all sides. After a while, it was almost like something was pounding on them. They could almost hear the boom, boom, boom of a hammer beating away at them.

The sun was a quarter of the way across the sky when the first attack came.

Odd hollered back that something was coming at them from the west. Sissi also shouted that something was coming from the south. Both Ulrich and Yumi saw something coming at them from the north.

Odd and Sissi ran back to the group, and they formed a protective circle around Jeremie and Aelita. Jeremie had drawn the weapon in his holster, and Aelita nocked an arrow on her bow.

As the creatures closed in on the group, they got their first look at their attackers. The creatures were horrible parodies of people they knew.

Two sets of creatures, with perverted likenesses of Herve and Nicholas, launched them selves at Sissi, shouting, "betrayer!"

Sissi swung her staff at the creatures, striking both. When the end of the staff touched the creatures, it changed to a blade that cut both of the things in half.

Sissi, amazed, said, "I guess cheerleading wasn't a waste of time after all," and set out against the next attackers.

Odd was dealing with creatures shaped like Sissi's father, Principal Delmas.

"How dare you trifle with my daughter's affections! I'm going to feed you your own entrails!" it said, swiping at him with its claws.

Odd activated his energy shield, deflecting the thing's blows, He managed to step back two steps, then fired two Laser Arrows into the thing. He then snapped off a round at a creature about to gore Sissi from behind, killing it.

Yumi was throwing her fans at images of her father, who was raging at her for her disobedience. As she caught a returning fan, she sent it out again to destroy one that looked like William Dunbar, seeking revenge for the humiliation he suffered at her hands.

Ulrich ran into a thicket of creatures, all looking like his father. He savagely hacked at each one, only to have two more replace the fallen one.

The creatures were starting to swamp the fighters.

Aelita took aim at images of Franz Hopper with her bow, and let fly. As soon as the arrow left the bow, it multiplied, and each arrow struck a creature. She quickly nocked another arrow and fired again.

Jeremie aimed the pistol-like weapon at creatures looking like him, and fired. A bright white beam burst from the weapon, spreading out and destroying everything in front of the barrel. Jeremie was startled, not only by the blast, but the fact that even though Aelita was directly in the path of the beam, it didn't touch her. Putting two and two together, he turned to the others and fired.

All of the creatures were instantly destroyed, leaving his friends unharmed by the blast.

The remaining creatures broke ranks and fled. Aelita raised the aiming point of her bow and fired the arrow at the retreating monsters. The arrow multiplied again and cut down every fleeing attacker.

The took stock of their situation. No one was seriously injured, but Sissi had suffered a slash wound to her shoulder from the creature that Odd killed. The only other damage was that Sissi's water bottle had been ripped open during the battle, spilling out all of her water.

Odd was standing next to her, looking at the wound. "Hey, Einstein, how does that healing potion work?"

Sissi took her bottle of potion, opened it, and took a drink. Instantly, the laceration on her shoulder was gone. She replaced the stopper on the bottle.

"How did you know to do that," Ulrich asked her.

"I just touched the bottle, and something told me to take a drink," she replied.

Odd marveled, "wow, that's about the simplest field manual you could have. Just grab it and it tells you what to do!"

"Yeah, and Einstein's ray gun is pretty slick too," Yumi added, "and how did you know that those arrows could do what they did, Aelita?"

"I didn't," she replied, "I just fired. I was as surprised as everyone when it did what it did."

"Yeah, it's great we have these things," Jeremie broke in, "but we only have a limited amount of ammo for them. Look at this."

He showed them a meter on the ray gun.

"That needle was pegged all the way on the right when I pulled this thing out," Jeremie said, "but now it's an eighth of the way to empty, and I only fired two shots. It's a powerful weapon, but it has a limited capacity, and I don't see any way of reloading it."

Aelita had removed the quiver at her back and was checking her arrow inventory.

"I've got thirty-three arrows left, Jeremie," she informed him, "I used three in the fighting."

"Three dozen arrows to start," Jeremie said, "okay, Aelita, take a look around and see if you can recover any of the arrows you shot. Then we all need to unclench a little bit before moving on."

The next attack came just after midday. By that time, the heat was starting to take its toll on the team. Sissi was having the worst time of it, since she had lost her water bottle. Odd helped her by giving her some of his water, and Jeremie suggested that she pick up a stone and suck on it, to keep moisture in her mouth. She gave him a disgusted look when he suggested it, but later on Jeremie noticed that she had found a pebble and was sucking on it.

Once again, they had advance warning about what was coming. This time, they approached the attack differently.

The attackers were coming from north, south and west again. This time, just when they came into sight, Jeremie fired one round from his ray gun at each formation. Each time, the beam spread out and destroyed the attackers as far back as they could see.

No more came from the south, but there was another formation charging them from the north and the west. This time, Aelita provided their response. She aimed high up into the air, and let an arrow fly loose to the north. The arrow multiplied and multiplied and struck every attacker coming down on them, killing them.

She then turned to the west group and fired another arrow. It too wiped all of the attackers out.

They were down to thirty-one arrows and three-quarters of a charge left on Jeremie's gun.

"You know, Jeremie, I think we've got this thing worked out now," Odd said confidently.

He was wrong.

Soon after the midday attack, they were attacked again. Once again, Jeremie and Aelita destroyed their attackers from a distance. But this time, as soon as the first attack was repelled, another one took place.

Each time, they would repel the attack, and another one would spring up. The demon seemed to have an endless supply of monsters, and wasn't afraid to use them.

Jeremie's ray gun gave out first. He had turned it on an advancing force from the west and fired when it went click! and disappeared.

Odd quickly started firing Laser Arrows at the oncoming horde. The rounds Odd fired didn't multiply or take out multiple attackers at once, but every monster hit dropped dead instantly.

Seeing Jeremie no longer could defend them, Aelita turned to fire at the oncoming line. But Jeremie shouted, "No! Conserve your arrows! Let the others help!" Aelita relented, but stayed at the ready.

Once again, Ulrich, Odd, Yumi and Sissi were in the fight. Blades flashed, fans flew, Laser Arrows struck, staves pounded. Finally, the attack was over.

This time the damage was worse. Aelita was kneeling over Jeremie, cradling him in her arms. A monster had ripped his abdomen open, and he was spilling viscera out on the ground. Yumi quickly grabbed her bottle of elixir, and poured the whole bottle onto Jeremie's wound.

Immediately, his intestines snaked their way back into his body, cleaning themselves as they did. Finally, the gash in his belly closed up, leaving no scar. Jeremie passed out.

"Yumi, why did you dump the whole bottle on him," Ulrich said.

"Because that's what the bottle told me to do, it was the only thing that would save him," she replied.

Jeremie came around a few moments later, but was still very weak. Yumi and Ulrich picked him up and helped him to walk along.

The sun was three-quarters the way across the sky when they came to the wadi. The water in it looked cool and inviting. Sissi dropped her staff and ran to the edge.

"Don't drink it!" Odd shouted, pointing.

Sissi stopped, using all of her will power, and looked where Odd was pointing. So did everybody else.

At the edge of the water, lay one of creatures, writhing in agony. It would convulse, and black, brackish fluid would vomit out if its mouth. It looked like the foul stuff was coming out of every orifice the thing had. From the way the ground looked around it, the thing had been dying that way for hours.

Sissi jumped up and backed away from the water. She gathered up her staff, and they moved on. Odd gave her the last drink from his bottle.

After they had moved away from the poisoned water, they stopped. They all took drinks from their bottles, then divided the rest among them all, refilling Odd's bottle in the process.

They also ate the wafers they had been carrying. After eating one, each of them was renewed like they had just ate a full meal. Even Sissi's thirst was slaked for a time.

The final assault came as the sun started setting in the west. This time, the creatures came at them from all sides. Aelita had no choice but to fire her arrows all around. Towards the end, she was firing them straight up into the air, with a veritable rainstorm of arrows falling down upon their enemies.

And still, they came.

Their strategy this time seemed to be to exhaust Aelita's arrow supply, then rush in and crush them. So they would pour in, even with hundred, or even thousands, of them falling, it seemed that just as many took their place as fell.

Aelita finally came to her last arrow.

The others surrounded her and Jeremie. And they let the monsters close in.

It seemed like they were swimming in a sea of horrors, all trying to get at them. Ulrich and Sissi were slashing left and right, Yumi's fans were flying everywhere. Odd was alternating between his Laser Arrows and energy shield. And the monsters pressed in closer.

Jeremie finally shouted to Aelita, "fire the last one straight up, it's our only hope now!"

Aelita did.

The sky was black with the falling arrows. It seemed like millions fell around them, in them, amongst them. All of the creatures within eyesight were felled, but none of them were even scratched by an arrow.

Aelita dropped her bow, exhausted and relieved it was over. It, and her quiver disappeared.

Then the next wave came.

The six never had a chance. The creatures quickly overwhelmed them. Their weapons were quickly lost, and the things savaged them all, but stopped well short of killing them.

Jeremie looked up, through the haze of his own blood, at the peak that reminded him of an executioner. The sun was setting behind that peak now, and two rays of blood red sunlight shone through two breaks in the skyline, looking for all the world like two menacing eyes.

And the two shafts of light did become two red eyes. And the shadow of the peak coalesced into the shape of a man wearing an executioner's hood on his head.

That shape stepped forward in his cowboy boots, his big cowboy buckle glinting in the light of the rising moon behind them. He removed his hood.

It was the man in the cornfield.