There was a crash, and Yumi and Odd smiled as another lamppost fell down. The specters coming out of it pixilated and disappeared, and then Odd backed up the car and went for another lamppost, where more specters were pouring out.
"Ha Ha! You picked the wrong day to mess with us, you freaky black clouds!" Odd shouted.
The words seemed to have a curious effect on the specters. Rather than going to embrace the nearest building, they turned to the car Yumi and Odd were in.
"Uh oh." Said Odd. "What happened? Did I make them mad?"
The specters signaled that, yes, he had made them mad, by picking up the car and wrenching it in two. The right specter shook the right half of the car, and Yumi and Odd tumbled out onto the pavement. They stared upward at the swirling electronic black clouds.
"Err... RUN!" Shouted Yumi. Odd did not hesitate to obey, and the two of them got up and ran as fast as they could, the specters still chasing them.
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Ulrich slowly opened one eye. He saw the familiar floor of the scanner room beneath him, and at once realized what had happened. His eyes flew open, and he scrambled to his feet. There was only one thought on his mind.
"Aelita." He said to himself in a horrified whisper.
He dashed over to the elevator, hurriedly pressing the big red button to make it rise. He watched the scanner room's fancy metal door close, seal, and lock, and then the elevator's regular wooden door fall in front of it, all the while dreading what he would see when he got up to the computer room.
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Yumi and Odd dashed through the streets. they were empty now, all the people having already fled and all the buildings having already been stolen by the specters. They dared to look behind them for a second, and wished they hadn't. The four specters that had begun chasing them had morphed from simple black clouds of smoke to versions of the monstrous creature Xana had made to attack them when Sissi had tried to summon a ghost from beneath the school. They were coming after them fast, in a motion that can only be described as "flowing". They flowed after them, getting nearer all the time.
"The factory!" Yelled Yumi, indicating the large abandoned building on the riverbank they were coming to. "We must make it to the factory!"
They ran across the bridge, swung from the cables down to the ground floor, and Odd pressed the button for the elevator. Nothing happened.
"What's going on?" Yumi said, frustrated. "Is it being used?"
It was. At that very moment, the elevator dropped Ulrich off in the lab, and it was free to pick up Odd and Yumi.
They could hear the elevator coming up, but they could also see the specters flowing down from the level of the bridge and settle on the factory floor. Odd and Yumi watched them warily. Odd couldn't take the suspense and started pressing the elevator button again and again to see if it would make it rise any faster. The specters rushed at them, and it was that moment that the elevator opened. They rushed inside and shut the door before the specters could get in with them, and the elevator dropped them to the level of the computer room.
When Ulrich stepped out of the elevator, before it went to pick up Odd and Yumi, he walked cautiously over to the computer.
"Jeremie?" He said.
Jeremie was sitting at the computer, crying. Ulrich turned around at the sound of the elevator opening.
"Jeremie! Yumi shouted. "The specters are- What? Ulrich? What are you doing here?"
Jeremie turned to them, great sadness in his eyes. "Aelita.. Is all alone on Lyoko... With the Scipizoa and Xana's army."
Yumi and Odd gasped. On Lyoko, the Scipizoa was done gloating, and it picked Aelita up and held its tentacles to her head. A screen appeared on the supercomputer's screen, showing the progress the Scipizoa was making. "There's no one who can help her now." Jeremie said sadly. Yumi broke down, sobbing on Ulrich's shoulder. He held her close, while continuing to stare angrily at the screen.
"A while ago I said things couldn't get worse. I was wrong. Now things can't get any worse." Jeremie said.
"But things just did, Jeremie." Said Odd. "Look."
On Lyoko, there was a humming noise, and three flying saucers flew up over the edge of the glacier. They hovered up and over the ranks of monsters, casting their humongous shadows over the creatures. But either they didn't notice, or they didn't think the saucers were worth paying attention to. Every single electronic eye was fixed on the Scipizoa and its prisoner.
"That's funny." Said Xana to himself, a little surprised but not in the least bit suspicious. "I didn't order any saucers to come here."
That was when the hatches on the bottoms of the saucers opened, the cannons came out, and the ships started vaporizing the monsters below.
"WHAT!" Shouted Jeremie, Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi in unison.
"WHAT!" Shouted Xana, slamming his fists on either side of his keyboard.
"wwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttttttttttt" The saucers went, as they fired mercilessly down on the unfortunate monsters below. The result was instantaneous and catastrophic. The strictly regimented ranks of monsters broke up into total anarchy and chaos as they tripped over and crushed one another to get out of the way of the deadly blasts from above. A few of the Krabes and Kankrelats started firing upward at the ships, but their lasers bounced uselessly off the UFOs' armor.
"COME IN SAUCERS 62, 63, AND 64!" Shouted Xana, desperately trying to get in contact with the pilots. "DO YOU READ ME! STOP THIS AT ONCE!"
But the response was nothing like he suspected. The face of a young girl came onto the screen. She stared at Xana for a moment, then stuck out her tongue and put her fingers in her ears and made a "phbtttt" sound before cutting the connection.
The three saucers landed, and twenty of Kadic's students ran out of each of them, wielding crude weapons they had made, yelling and whooping like banshees. They fell upon the remaining monsters, and they were all too dead or too confused to fight back. A rock from a slingshot flew through the air and imbedded itself in the head of the tarantula on top of the tower. It fell off, screaming, hit the side of the tower on the way down, and exploded upon hitting the ground.
Jeremie, Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd watched this scene in stunned silence for a moment, then began cheering and laughing.
"Well, looks like after all the times we've saved Kadic, they decided to save us for once." Said Odd, smiling.
The Scipizoa, seeing the kids rushing toward it, panicked, released Aelita, and fled before the kids could reach it. Aelita dropped to the ground, unconscious. Milly and Tamiya knelt beside her on the ice, and woke her up.
"It's Aelita!" Aelita heard her name called by a far off sounding voice. She opened her eyes with a start, and looked up into Milly's face. She got up, looking confusedly around her.
"Wha..?" She said, looking at the faces around her. "You... you... how did you all get here?"
"Well, when the aliens attacked for the third time, they decided to land their ships on the playing field." William said. "We managed to beat them, just barely, even destroying the aliens inside the saucers themselves. So we decided to come over here and help you. Learning how to fly those things wasn't that hard."
"But... what about that fleet of saucers we saw heading for the school?"
William's face suddenly turned grim. "They will be there soon. And there are still many kids at the school, not to mention the people in the other buildings that joined us recently."
"In that case, there's no time to lose." Said Aelita. She indicated the glowing red tower behind them. "See that tower? I have to go inside it and deactivate it. Its the only way to stop this madness."
"Then go. Good luck Aelita. Get us home."
Sissi stood with her father inside a classroom in the science building.
"Do you think that William and the others made it safely to that place?" She asked.
"We can only hope, Sissi. We can only hope." Mr. Delmas said in reply.
There was silence for a moment. Then they heard a muffled explosion.
"What was that?" He said, worriedly.
They ran outside, looked up at the sky, and gasped in horror. The sky was filled with flying saucers, completely surrounding the floating school. Three of them broke off and flew in in manta formation. The cannons of the first one opened up, fired, and blasted a giant hole in the roof of the library. The kids inside ran outside, screaming. The saucers flew up, around, flew at the library, and pulverized the remains.
This was the other saucers' cue to all start firing at once. The kids of Kadic ran around desperately, trying to avoid the total obliteration. The landmass, pushed to its limits and beyond, couldn't take anymore, and it started to break up. It wound up in five large pieces and many smaller ones, with the remains of the school buildings on them. Sissi and Mr. Delmas found themselves on a floating rock no more than twenty feet across with several other students.
"Oh no..." Said Sissi, looking over the edge, on the verge of tears.
Meanwhile, Aelita had run the length of the rest of the field to the tower. She walked up to the wall, and then through it. Inside she walked over both rings of the Xana eye inside the tower, and they lit up beneath her. On the center dot, she rose up into the air, towards the higher platform with the interface.
One of the flying saucers hovered over and stopped over the little landmass Sissi and the others were stranded on. The hatches opened up, the cannons extended, and one began to charge up. Aelita landed on the platform, extended her hand, and placed it on the interface. The tower verified her identity, and asked for a code. The cannon fired.
Sissi screamed. Aelita entered "Lyoko" into the interface. The laser, as big as her head, stopped just inches from her face.
The screens in the tower started falling downward into the abyss, while Xana sighed at another plan foiled. For a momment there was total darkness in the tower. Then there was a speck of white at the bottom, and the quantum foam generated by the computer rose up to engulf her.
"Return to the past now." Jeremie said, pressing the enter key on his keyboard. The foam rose out of the hole in the floor behind them and expanded, engulfing the factory, then the city, then the entire world in its grasp. There was a rewinding sound, and everything disappeared into whiteness.