Last Chapter. I've enjoyed writing this story, and I hope you all've enjoyed reading it, sothanks to everyone who reviewed.
Epilogue: Adding to the Message
It was a night darker than most, with no trace of a moon. Four figures ran swiftly through the black woods. They stopped near the backyard of a house, and waited.
At the prearranged time, one more figure stole out of the back door of the house. She signaled to her friends, and they came out of the woods to meet in the center of her backyard.
"Here." Yumi whispered, handing each of her friends a shovel. "You know what we have to do."
Jeremie had decided that a return trip of two days would be needed to firmly erase all memories of aliens and monsters. They had had a long talk about the Grail, and they had all agreed what must be done. It was far to dangerous to be allowed to exist.
Five shovels dug into the ground, their work lit by the light of a single flashlight- ironically, the same one Yumi used when she and her mom first discovered the underground chamber. Yumi's parents and neighbors slept soundly, with no reason to suspect that anyone was doing anything suspicious in their neighborhood.
It wasn't long before metal struck stone. They uncovered the large, flat stone that concealed the hidden chamber, moved it aside, and descended.
The Grail sat placidly on its little stone table. The security system lay, defunct, in one corner. The message was still on the wall. Everything was as it should be, and the Grail showed no sign of damage from what happened to it in the previous timeline.
Ulrich put the security system and the Grail in a bag, then looked up to see what Yumi was doing. She was using a small chisel to carve something on the wall, below Canto's message.
"Yumi, what are you doing?" Odd whispered urgently. "we have to get out of here before anyone sees us!"
"Someday, Odd, someone may discover this place again. And when they do, I want them to know what happened."
She finished quickly, then they all hustled out of the chamber. They lifted the stone off the ground, then placed it carefully over the entrance. Then they reburied it. "Good job, guys." Jeremie said. "We'll see you tomorrow, Yumi. We'll take care of this."
"Okay, then, goodnight." She said, waving, as Odd, Ulrich, Jeremie, and Aelita ran back into the woods.
Yumi took the shovels and the chisel and placed them back in the garage. Then she placed the flashlight on the nightstand where she left it, and went to bed. In the morning, she and her mom would start on a garden in the back yard, and they wouldn't find any groundbreaking archeological discoveries this time. She would make sure of that.
A mile away, four figures stole into an abandoned factory. They rode an elevator down one level, where one of the figures got off. Then the elevator rode down another level, and the rest of them got off. Jeremie typed quickly and efficiently, while Odd got into a scanner and Ulrich and Aelita loaded the alien artifacts into another scanner.
In the forest region of Lyoko, Odd appeared and solidified in midair. He plopped to the ground, and the bag with the Grail fell next to him. Odd picked up the bag, walked to the edge, and hurled it as far as he could.
"Bye bye, you little mechanical death monger." Odd said, waving at it, as it fell into the digital sea and disappeared in a flash of light. "I hope we don't ever see you again!"
His task done, Jeremie devirtualized Odd, and the four of them headed back to school. Tomorrow was a weekend, and in the morning, they would surprise Yumi and her mom by showing up to help with the garden. They smiled a little at the thought. They were looking forward to it.
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The ship descended into the atmosphere slowly. It was a massive thing, golden and triangular, and its mission was simple. To find out more about the lost civilization that existed on this planet.
Whatever sentients had existed on the planet disappeared a long time ago. The alien scientists on board had been to this planet before, and had pretty good idea of what happened to the people who lived there. It looked like they had used up so many of the planet's resources that they had to leave the planet. Their current whereabouts were unknown, and one of the goals of the expedition was to find out where they went.
A few cities still stood on the wind-blasted landscape, and it was over one such city that the ship was descending. An opening appeared in the bottom of the ship, and thousands of small probes flew out, exploring the landscape. One of them discovered a small, buried, and unusual looking underground chamber, and a small ship was sent down from the large one to investigate.
Five figures, all Yakanomere, got out of the ship. They went over to where the chamber was buried, and dug. It wasn't long before they broke through, and entered the room below ground.
"What do you make of this, Zan?" One of them said.
"This place looks old. I mean really old, dug long before this city was built."
"You sure?"
"That's what my instruments say." Zan was referring, of course, to certain mechanical implants in his body, not anything he was holding.
Zan glanced over to the far wall, and noticed writing. The equipment in his head swiftly translated it, and he gasped when he read what it said.
"Barb! All of you! Look at this!"
The five creatures read what was on the wall and gasped as well.
"So. The legendary Grail of Harakon-Zeth was buried here, of all places." One of them finally said.
"But where is it, then?" Another one said.
"You haven't seen the last part yet. It's in another language." Zan said.
They looked at the last part, and the translator did its work.
"Guess that explains it." Barb said, sighing.
THE GRAIL YOU SEEK IS NO LONGER HERE
IT WAS DESTROYED, FOR IT IS AN OBJECT OF FEAR.
WHAT ONCE HAD THE POWER TO GIVE AND DESTROY,
NOW IS GONE, INTO THE MAW OF THE VOID.
-YUMI ISHIYAMA, A DEFENDER OF EARTH
The End
