Ever since Aelita and Mr. Puck had set off, supposedly toward the city gates, they had been talking animatedly about this and that. They got along well together, just as Mr. Puck hoped they would. On the way, he told her everything he knew about the city.
It seemed that the original colonists had come from across the digital sea, fleeing a distant virtual homeland called Telleursia. Telleursia had been a small and peaceful independent republic until it was annexed by the massive Drakkar Empire. The only group of free Telleursians that had existed after that was a group of about two thousand people who had been sailing across the sea in the Arcon 5, a ship that was built for long voyages across the void.
When they next made port, they were informed by the locals that their country had been taken over, and the emperor wanted them captured. They were encouraged to flee, and they did, far into uncharted territory, and never seen by the rest of Cyberspace again.
Searching for a place to live, they eventually found Lyoko, which had only been newly made at the time. There were several consciousnesses present on Lyoko already at the time, but they managed to slip in without attracting their attention. (Aelita guessed that the beings already present on Lyoko were none other than Xana and herself, and possibly Franz Hopper.)
They settled on the plateau, and built the city they were standing in now- Arcotopolis, named after the ship that brought them there. It was much smaller at the time, but as the years passed, their numbers grew, until it was a city of almost five million people. The city existed in peace for nearly 40,000 years, until all the people mysteriously vanished.
"But how could they just vanish?" Aelita asked. "How could an entire city of people just disappear?"
"I honestly do not know, Aelita." Mr. Puck lied. Aelita fell silent for a while, thinking about all Mr. Puck had told her.
"One more thing I don't understand. I lived on Lyoko for most of my life, and explored all of it. How could I have missed the city? And how can the city have existed for 40,000 years while Lyoko hasn't existed much more than ten?"
"I believe that was the fault of The Bubble."
"What's The Bubble?"
"Its a shield they put up around the plateau, to hide it from view from the outside world and to protect it as well, just in case the empire ever found them. From the outside, the plateau would be completely invisible. Not only that, but to make the bubble stronger, they could make time inside the bubble go faster. For every day that passed in the rest of Lyoko, a century passed inside."
"Wow... they must have had some pretty sophisticated technology to do that."
"The flying cars should have told you as much. Lets keep going."
As they continued to walk, The personified virus sent a telepathic message to all its minions.
It read: "I have the girl. Proceed to phase two."
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From everywhere at once, bodiless voices came pouring, spewing out a stream of gibberish. This had happened many times already, and Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich had figured out that every time the Whispers started speaking, something dream related was going to happen, almost like a warning. They still didn't know what exactly the Whispers were, but the three kids looked around warily at each other anyway.
Right now, they were at the edge of a huge pit, right in the middle of a wide road. They couldn't see the bottom, but they could see a sign by the edge of the pit.
"Here there be Demons?" Yumi said, reading the sign.
"No, it says 'here there be Nightmares.' See? The word 'demons' is crossed out." Ulrich said, pointing.
"Uh oh... do you think there are really nightmares down there?" Said, Odd, backing away from the pit slightly. They noticed that the Whispers, although still inunderstandable, seemed to be getting more frantic. "After all, the last sign spoke very literally."
As they spoke, three things rose from the pit. Three silver orbs, to be exact. Their eyes shone with determination and anger.
"They don't look too happy to see us." Ulrich said.
The three kids backed away from the pit, as the orbs flew up and over the ridge and then settled a few feet off the ground in front of them.
Suddenly, the front orb changed. It became as brown as a hot dog bun. The orb started rapidly changing, growing and shifting shape, Two feet appeared, and two arms, and it seemed to separate into two halves with some sort of different colored material in between. The one eye became two, and when it stopped growing, it was at least 25 feet tall.
It had become a creature literally out of someone's nightmares; in particularly, the orb had chosen a creature from a nightmare Odd had had recently. It had transformed into a gigantic hamburger.
The three of them stared up at it, as it looked down at them and opened the space between the two buns, but instead of meat and vegetables inside, there was a huge, gaping mouth with many sharp teeth.
"Now, everyone, don't panic." Ulrich said, even though he clearly was very close to doing just that. "Odd, you said that if you ever got to fight this thing, you would kick it to Timbuktu, right? Odd?"
He looked around to see that Odd and Yumi were already gone, running in the opposite direction as fast as they could, screaming at the top of their lungs.
"Uh..." Ulrich said, then looked back up at the Nightmare.
It roared at him, spewing spittle and creating a mighty wind that blew his hair back.
"HEY! WAIT UP!" Ulrich shouted, as he ran after his two friends. The Nightmare gave chase, trying to grab Ulrich with a giant tongue as he dodged this way and that. With super sprint he caught up to them quickly.
"Hey, GUYS!" He shouted, to get their attention. "We need to fight it! It'll catch up to us long before we run out of energy!"
"This isn't one of Xana's monsters, Ulrich!" Odd shouted. "How do you propose to beat it?"
Ulrich turned around to look at the Nightmare, its eyes full of hunger and tongue rolling in its cavern-like mouth. He looked down, to see where its spindly but very fast legs were pumping as fast as they could, trying to catch up with them.
"I have an idea! Yumi! Throw your fans at the legs!" Ulrich shouted.
Yumi threw her fans, which sailed at the Nightmare's legs, slicing them in half before they returned to her. the giant hamburger screamed in pain, as some sort of thick brown juice spewed out of the wound. It crashed to the ground, and bellowing like only a gigantic living hamburger can, it clawed its way forward on its two arms, mouth gaping.
"Odd! Shoot arrows into its eyes!"
Odd shot off two arrows, which flew through the air and pierced the two eyes going far enough to lodge themselves in the Nightmare's brain. The creature screamed in tortured agony, as the same brown juice flowed out of the eyes. The arms gave one last shudder before they fell to the ground, never to move again.
"Uhh... Is that grease?" Said Yumi, breathing heavily, staring at the sticky brown mess. "I prefer fighting the monsters, thank you very much. Less messy, and much less frightening."
"It was a giant hamburger, what did you expect?" Odd said. "Now look, see? I told you if I ever fought that thing in real life, I would beat it!" He seemed to forget that he had run screaming from it at first, but Ulrich decided to let it pass. They had other things to worry about.
"Hey... Wait a minute. What happened to the other two orbs we saw?" Odd said, looking around wildly.
"Uh oh. Look." Said Yumi, pointing.
The two other orbs were arriving, and they had brought at least ten more with them. For now, they were not dangerous, but they had a vast repotire of nightmares to choose to transform into, memories not only taken from the Lyoko gang, but also from the past inhabitants of Arcotopolis, and a hundred worlds they had been to beforehand with their master and destroyed. The orbs advanced, confident that Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi were going to be lunch.
"Oh shoot. RUN!" Ulrich shouted.