Chapter 7: Bad News

Jeremie was awaken by Sky Radio at 7:30, on the dot, just as he had programmed his alarm to do. But while he usually heard a song playing, this time there was a news report just starting. At first Jeremie wasn't paying much attention, but slowly, he began to be transfixed by it in horror.

"Our primary story today isabout therecent strange happenings that happened some distance north of here in a town in the mountains called Murphy's Creek. Late last night, a bizarre electrical failure resulted in at least 200 monstrous robots rising out of the ground, in the middle of the street, according to the local townspeople.

The robots marched down main street, and from where I am standing, I can clearly make out the footprints their metal left in the asphalt. They went higher into the mountains, and the locals reported strange flashes of light and the sounds of gunfire from above, as well as a blast of dynamite.

Police dispatched this morning found a secret military base in the mountains, wrecked, with clear signs of battle. 50 of the robots' 'corpses' have been recovered and are being placed under careful study, and the most significant discovery so far is that they were designed to fire laser beams. There is no sign of the soldiers manning the base, but it is our hope that they are alive. The government official position as of now is that the said military base does not actually exist, but that is expected to change. We'll have more on this story as it comes out."

Jeremie didn't hear the last part. He was too busy frantically getting dressed and dashing out the door.

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"Hey, Ulrich, Aelita, have you seen Jeremie?" Odd asked. Aelita and Ulrich began to shake their heads, but they didn't get to finish, for Jeremie had just burst through the doors on one end of the cafeteria and Yumi had just burst through the doors on the other end. They screeched to a halt in front of one another.
"Bad news!" They both said at once. In response to her friends' questioning looks, Yumi slammed something down on the table they were sitting at.

It was a newspaper, one that Yumi had brought from home. There was a big picture displaying a police officer standing next to a slightly mangled and deactivated Krabe. The headline screamed KILLER ROBOTS ATTACK SECRET MILITARY BASE.

"That is bad news." Ulrich said, stating the obvious for everyone.
"Well, don't just sit there!" Jeremie exclaimed. "We've got to go to the factory now!"

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"Well, Jeremie?" Aelita asked.
"This is insane. Xana corrupted the superscan AGAIN!"
"That thing has become much too vulnerable to hacking, Jeremie." Odd said. "Maybe you need to create an ultrascan instead." He joked.
"Good idea." Jeremie mused, not realizing that Odd was joking, and so taking him seriously instead. "But for another time. This will only take a minute to fix..."

The scan popped up, clearly showing an activated tower in the desert region.
"What I don't get," Yumi said, "Is why Xana would bother to attack a military base?"
"I don't get it either." Jeremie said. He turned the supercalculator's TV capability on, hoping for information. The screen was currently playing the footage Mark, the UFO enthusiast, had shot of the monsters emerging, while a calm voice spoke in the background.

"As you can see here, the robots were not dropped off by UFOs, as some have claimed, emerging instead from a strange electrical anomaly. Why they attacked the military base is still unknown. The search for General Dantam and the 200 soldiers under his command is still underway." the reporter said.

"Hey, Jeremie," Aelita said, "Wasn't General Dantam that guy who took the Grail?"
"Why yes, he..." Jeremie broke off, sudden understanding dawning on him.
"What's the matter Jeremie?" Aelita asked, a little concerned at Jeremie's expression.
"I think I've got it! Xana attacked the base so that he could steal the Grail!"
"What?" Yumi exclaimed. "But how could he have known about it?"
"He must have seen it, maybe tried to infect it, during the attack with the flying pickaxes. Anyway, he must know of its power somehow to want to steal it, and if the Grail is really as powerful as Canto's warning implies, then we're in big trouble."

Jeremie started typing furiously.
"Should we go to the scanners?" Yumi asked, a very serious edge to her voice.
"I don't think that's a good idea. I was a little suspicious about the disappearance of the military personnel, so I looked around for sources of Xana's activity. And I found one." Jeremie pointed to the screen, where a black and green map of the Earth's surface was displayed. He was pointing to four blinking red dots.

"What are those?" Yumi asked.
"Helicopters. Big ones, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and heading west toward the United States. Helicopters like those don't carry enough fuel to cross oceans on their own, so Xana must be keeping them in the air by his own power, not the helicopters'. If my guess is correct, then those vehicles contain the rest of the monsters and the soldiers kidnapped from the military base. I'm sure that they're all possessed."
"Xana couldn't possess 200 people at once." Odd pointed out.
"Not directly, no, but he could have used the monsters as a carrier for his virus. Remember Kiwi and the zombies? Its probably similar to that. Anyway, the point is, if we deactivate the tower now, they will crash into the ocean and drown, and I'm sure we don't want that on our conscience."
They all winced, since Jeremie had a good point there.

"So what are we going to do?" Ulrich asked. "And why are they heading west?"
"I don't know for sure, but maybe the Grail somehow told Xana where the Sword was hidden, and it must be somewhere in the US. As for what we're going to do, you three are going to chase them and try and stop them. Aelita and I will stay here and wait till its safe, then I'll transfer her so she can deactivate the tower. We'll stay in touch by cell phone."
"But Jeremie, what about the monsters on Lyoko? We can't send Aelita there unprotected! And what do you mean 'chase them and try to stop them'? how?" Yumi objected angrily, growing frustrated, for every second they wasted here was spent by Xana getting closer to his target.

"Well, I agree with you about sending Aelita unprotected, but don't worry, she won't be that way." Jeremie said. Yumi opened her mouth again, but Jeremie interrupted her before she could speak again. "Don't worry. I'm going to use a trick I learned from Franz Hopper. I was hoping I would never have to use it, but, you know the saying. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Aelita, I hope you don't mind if your protectors aren't, well, human."

Aelita cracked a smile, as her mind grappled with a mental image of three tarantulas standing in front of her, blasting away at Xana's defenders.
"You still haven't told us how we're supposed to stop the helicopters." Ulrich said impatiently.
Jeremie grinned. "Leave that to me."