Milly and Tamiya were crossing the field to get to the gym. Milly was holding on tightly to Tamiya's arm, scared that if she walked too fast she would simply float away into the endless oblivion above them. But the landmass they were on had too much gravity for that to happen, as a certain house was about to find out.
The two girls watched in silent amazement as the outline of Yumi's house started to appear over the soccer field, began to fill blue, turned the right colors, and then fell twenty feet to the ground with a crash. Milly and Tamiya covered their ears as a small cloud of dust and plaster rose from the landing site. Inside, Yumi coughed and waved away the smoke.
"Hiroki!" She called. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Yumi!" He called out from his room. Yumi cleared away the fallen debris to get to her brother and then took him down to the living room.
"Nice costume! Where'd you get it?"
"Umm.." She looked down at herself. "I must be virtual." She muttered to herself. "Hold on, Hiroki, I'll be right back."
She went back up to her room to get some normal clothes, then led Hiroki outside.
"Yumi?" Said Milly. "Where'd you come from?"
"Long story." She said in reply. "What's going on?"
"The school's in outer space, or something like that." Said Tamiya. "The principal's called a meeting in the gym. You should come with us."
Meanwhile, Ulrich, Odd, and Aelita were already there. The students around them were exchanging excited, worried, and mostly panicked whispers.
"Quiet down, quiet down." Said Mr. Delmas, stepping up to the podium. "As you all know, some otherworldly force seems to have catapulted us into some alternate dimension. But I advise you not to panic, as I am sure that rescue is forthcoming, and we have enough emergency stores at the school to last us several weeks until that happens." The principal didn't seem too sure of himself, despite his words.
The principal continued speaking, but Ulrich and the others were no longer paying attention, as Yumi had just walked into the gym with Hiroki, Tamiya, and Milly. She sat down next to Ulrich.
"Xana virtualized my house." She said.
"Where are your parents?" Asked Ulrich.
"They went out. They're going to freak out when they see that we're gone." She buried her face in her arms, and Ulrich put his arm around her to comfort her.
"So I ask you to please go back to your- what was that?" The principal said. He and everybody else in the gym had heard it too- a low rumbling that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Suddenly, a huge oblong shape crossed the windows at the far end of the gym.
"Jim. Come with me." Mr. Delmas beckoned. "We have to see what is going on."
They carefully opened the back door to the gym and stepped out, scanning the sky with their eyes and ears. But they were looking in the wrong direction. The shape flew out from beyond the edge of the ground, revealing itself as a green disk as least as big around as Yumi's house. The eye of Xanawas printed on the flying saucer's top, and the bottom had eight small squares that, as Jim and Mr. Delmas stared at, opened up, revealing long black cylinders. They pointed at the building they had just left, and began to light up.
Jim and Mr. Delmas burst back through the doors.
"Everyone out of the gymnasium! NOW!" He shouted.
There was a wave of human bodies as everyone in the gym stampeded for the exits.
"What's going on?" Shouted Yumi. It was that moment that one of the UFO's laser cannons fired, blasting a gigantic hole in the roof., raining bits of ceiling down on the kids inside.
Jeremie felt the aftershock of the explosion up in his dormitory room. Looking out the window, he was surprised to see the crowd of students fleeing the gymnasium building. He was even more surprised to see Yumi's house resting on the soccer field, and even more surprised to see the enormous UFO metholodically blasting the gym to bits.
"Jeremie," Said Odd, bursting into the room with the others. "We've got a problem!"