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Chapter 1: Evil Minds are Never Idle

Deep in the uncharted backwaters of cyberspace, there is a group of small, insignificant looking landmasses. The uninhabited mountains, glaciers, forests, deserts, and central sphere of this place, known collectively as Lyoko, are far off from the rest of virtual civilization, and known to none but a small group of kids from an alternate universe.

But from this isolated place there would one day arise a great evil, one that would one day threaten all of virtual civilization, as well as the heroes that would come to stop it. This day has not happened yet.

At present that evil entity, was well, for lack of a better word, bored. Xana paced about his complex deep in the bowels of Sector 5. He walked by the gigantic monster hives, his minions bowing to him as he went by. But Xana paid no attention to them.

Xana had long ago created a virtual form for himself on Lyoko, but the kids had never met him in person. He was a tall, somewhat muscular humanoid, dressed in long, flowing black robes and a metal helmet that contained plenty of computerized inner workings. He sulked, banging his metal staff's glass ball on the walls of the hives he passed, eventually coming to the big door that separated his quarters from the great room with the monster hives.

Inside, he walked past the creeper guards posted at the door, past the throne on the raised dais, and to the door on the far wall, which he flung open unceremoniously. The room beyond was his private control room, an exact copy of the lab on earth. He seated himself at the controls and booted the computer up, determined to find something to do before he went crazy.

Perhaps you are wondering what an evil supercomputer does with its spare time. Well, to be honest, Xana does the same things any human would. He reads online newspapers and books. He watches TV. He goes into internet chat rooms to talk to the people there, and the humans on the other end have no idea that the person they are talking to is a computer. But Xana does not do these sorts of things for the same reasons you would. Whereas the human primary goal is entertainment, Xana is driven by a desire to learn more about his self-declared enemies.

And sometimes what he finds gives him very good ideas. On this particular Wednesday, Xana found an old horror movie on the internet. It was about a group of space explorers who get stranded in a distant galaxy when their spaceship ran out of gas. They had to fend off hordes of flesh-eating aliens while simultaneously trying to figure out how in the world they were going to get home. The movie ended with all the main characters getting eaten.

The movie had horrible special effects, acting, and plot, but it interested Xana anyway, particularly what happened to the heroes at the end. So Xana, with the kernel of an idea of what horrible plan he was going to put into action next, started to do what he liked best; he plotted.

Determining that actually launching the kids into outer space was impossible, Xana had to refine the idea a little. He drew up some calculations on the amount of power he needed, saw that he didn't have enough, decided to cheat a little to get enough, and started the necessary programming. He called forth on his specters to get ready to go on the offensive, and finally, fingers twitching a little, he pressed the big red button next to the keyboard.

With the push of that button, one of Lyoko's forty towers began to light up. Using the little "cheat code" Xana had made for himself, Xana was able to press the button again, and again, and again, winding up with a total of five activated towers. He had used this trick once before, but instead of being decoys, these five towers would actually be programmed with deadly data.

In his computer room, Xana watched a small wire frame of Odd appear on the screen and start to fill up with blue. The same thing happened with Ulrich. Then Yumi. In fifteen seconds, at least a hundred filling wire frames filled the screen. And more were still appearing.

The students and faculty of Kadic Academy, sleeping peacefully in their dorm rooms at the current late hour, never saw the specters flowing out of the street lamps around the school. The hundreds of specters merged into a hollow cylinder ten stories high around the school grounds, complete with a circular ceiling. The inside walls began to glow brightly, and with a flash of pure energy, the school and the specters were gone, leaving nothing but a wide swath of barren dirt behind.

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And there you have it. All reviews are welcome. I will continue soon.