It was a typical Friday morning at Kadic. It was sunny out, and many of the students were having breakfast, including Jeremie, Aelita, and Yumi.
"Where are Ulrich and Odd today?", Yumi asked. "They're usually here by now."
In response to her question, Odd walked up to the table and sat down, his tray laden with food. He said "Good morning." To the three of them and then dug into his plate without another word.
"Odd, where's Ulrich?", Yumi asked.
"Ulrich? I think he's on his way down. I wanted to wake him up so we wouldn't miss breakfast, but when I did, he sat bolt upright screaming. Scared me half to death too."
Yumi raised an eyebrow at this strange explanation.
"See? He's right over there.", Odd said, pointing.
Ulrich was walking over to their table with a tray, his head down. He sat down without a word to any of his friends, and began to pick at the food on his plate. He didn't look very happy.
"Ulrich? Are you okay?", Yumi asked, concerned.
"Yeah. I'm fine.", Ulrich said glumly.
"Ulrich, you've been like this for days now.", Jeremie said. "What's wrong?"
Ulrich sighed. "Do you really want to know?", he said.
The others nodded.
"Well," he began, "It's just this... dream... I've been having."
"A what?" Jeremie asked.
"A dream!" Ulrich said, loudly enough to make some of the other students turn and look at him. Ulrich turned to glare at them, and they all turned back to what they were doing. All except three people who they knew well but didn't like very much. Neither Ulrich or his friends saw that they were still listening.
Ulrich went on and told them about the dream. Yumi and Odd blanched when he told them that they were a couple, Jeremie let out a disbelieving "pftttt!" When he told them about William and Sissi coming with them to fight Xana, and when they forgot who Xana was, and Aelita shivered when he described the monster that nearly ate him.
"And I've been having this nightmare every night for two weeks straight. Whenever I'm dreaming, I don't remember having dreamed it before, so it never fails to scare me."
Yumi, Aelita, Jeremie, and Odd looked around at each other, feeling sorry for Ulrich.
"Jeremie," said Aelita, "Do you think it means anything? Like my dreams, which led us to find Franz's diary?"
"I don't think so. Reoccurring nightmares happen to a lot of people, and Ulrich doesn't have a nasty virus in him that can be used to induce visions."
"I hope you're right, Einstein," said Odd, "Because I'd hate to come face to face with that thing in real life."
The three eavesdroppers decided at this point to come over to talk to them. Ulrich was never happy to see Sissi, Nicholas, and Herve, and he wanted to see them today least of all.
"So..." Sissi began, "Having some trouble sleeping, huh, Ulrich dear?"
"Maybe he needs a teddy bear.", said Nicholas, with a chuckle. Sissi glared at him to keep quiet.
"Tell you what.." Sissi said, "If you go out on a date with me, I'll keep quiet about the fact our brave soccer star Ulrich gets scared of nighttime baddies!"
"Sissi.." Ulrich said, quietly but with venom dripping from his voice, "First, I will not go out with you, not even if you are the last girl on Earth. Second," And here his voice increased slightly, "If you ever tell anyone, I will personally beat both you and those two goons back there to a pulp. Literally." He squeezed the glass he was holding so tightly that it broke into shards. His hand didn't bleed.
Both Ulrich's friends and enemies looked at him in pure horror. Sissi's left eye twitched for a moment, and then she, Nicholas, and Herve ran. Fast.
Yumi, Jeremie, Aelita, and Odd stared at him a moment longer. Ulrich got up from his chair, having hardly eaten anything, and walked out the door without another word.
Ulrich didn't talk to anyone for the rest of the day. He seemed withdrawn, lamenting over his predicament. His friends tried to cheer him up several times, but nothing worked. And it didn't help, when, during second period gym class, Herve drew mean looking eyes all over the white volleyball, and served it over the net directly to Ulrich. The first thing Ulrich saw, of course, was the monster's head, and when he caught it, he threw it away, nearly screaming before he realized what it really was.
He chased Herve right out the gym doors, and all over the school campus. Herve was up a tree, scared stiff, while Ulrich was climbing up, intending to fulfill his lunchroom threat, before Jim finally caught up with them and bodily carried both of them to the principal's office. He gave each of them three hours of detention, which didn't help Ulrich's mood.
He was nowhere to be seen at lunchtime.
"Where could he be?" Odd asked, frustrated, as they looked all over both lunchrooms for him. Yumi thought for a moment.
"He's probably sulking again.", she said with a sigh. "I'll go look for him."
Yumi found him sitting beneath a tree in the school's park. He was absentmindedly snapping twigs, and looking up into the sky. She sat next to him. They were both silent for a moment.
"You're not going to let Sissi and her goons get to you, are you Ulrich"
"Well, no, of course not." Ulrich replied. Yumi was pleased to see that Ulrich seemed to be enjoying talking to her alone. "They don't scare me. The nightmare does."
"Tell me, Ulrich, do you think a giant hamburger would scare Odd?"
"Hmm? No."
"Right. Odd was telling us earlier about one of his own nightmares, where he was being chased by a giant hamburger. He was pretty scared in the dream, but he said that if he ever met the hamburger in real life, he would eat it before it could eat him."
Yumi saw Ulrich visibly brighten, as he thought about the absurdity of Odd being chased by a giant hamburger.
"You fight monsters every other day on Lyoko, and they don't scare you. Why should that one? If you ever get the chance to fight it, I'm sure you'll kick its behind clear across the city." Ulrich smiled at this.
"And besides," she finished, "You're not ever going to lose me to Odd."
This left both of them cracking up in laughter.
"Yeah," said Ulrich, "I guess I've been acting stupid. Want to go get some lunch?" He held out his hand, and Yumi took it, getting up. They didn't let go until they were out of the park again.
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Two tarantulas made their way across the desert region of Lyoko. They were out on a routine patrol mission, making sure that the humans didn't make any unexpected visits. From where they stood, they could see many small platforms surrounding a vast emptiness. A single tower was visible, but from where they were standing, it looked as small at a thumbnail. Everything was quiet. But the two monsters were about to see something that would drive their sensors wild.
In the middle of the emptiness, something flickered. The two monsters turned to see what was happening, only to see a gigantic blue ball, nearly as big as Sector 5 itself, appear for half a second in the empty space. It flickered in and out of existence rapidly, and the air around the ball began buzzing with electricity.
The monsters frantically tried to figure out what was going on, and where the ball had come from. A quick analysis determined that the ball was there even when they couldn't see it. The monsters were frustrated to see that the analysis showed that the ball had always been there.
They did a deeper analysis, and this time it showed that the reason the ball seemed to be flickering in and out of existence was that the ball was rapidly losing the power to stay invisible. The reason for that was simple. The ball ran on electric energy, and was badly in need of recharging.
The tarantulas watched, fascinated, as the ball stopped flickering. It was a deep, swirling blue, with electricity buzzing all over its surface. As they watched, the frequency of the electrical charges began to decrease. They decided they had better show what they were seeing to Xana. But it was too late. What the analysis failed to turn up was that the ball needed power to maintain its structural integrity as well as invisibility.
Moments later, the sphere violently imploded, sending a tremendous shockwave out in all directions, shaking the platforms, toppling boulder formations, and nearly knocking the tower off its base. The two tarantulas were instantly ripped to pieces, which flew over the edge and toppled into the digital void, leaving Xana completely unaware of what had happened in his domain.
With the sphere gone, its contents were visible for miles. There was a great plateau, much bigger that those around it, with high natural sandstone walls around the edges. There was a narrow opening in the front. It went perfectly with the desert lands around it; if you hadn't seen what had happened, you would say that it had always been part of Lyoko.
However, that landmass had been isolated from the rest of Lyoko for twelve years. From the outside, it was impossible to see what lay behind the outer walls.
Deep inside, something stirred.