11-3: Missing Link
First of all, I am really growing tired of these updates. I think I've just lost my stamina. This has GOT to be the very last story and then I'll retire.
(((-3-)))
Janika lay unmoving inside the Tower. According to Aelita it was the best place for her to recover, as it was for herself. But even though it had only been a little while, she was pacing back and forth apprehensively.
The A.I. couldn't tell if Janika would wake up and without the correct codes to devirtualize her, they were helpless to assist. But at long last, Aelita saw her friend's tail twitch and excitedly told Jeremy. He sounded nervous when he answered.
"That's terrific! Um, Odd's coming to Lyoko to see her. He's…a little concerned. I'm virtualizing him near the Tower now."
Less than a minute later the blonde punk charged through the wall just as Janika sat up with Aelita's help. She smiled unsteadily when she saw him and gave a helpless shrug.
"Did you miss me?"
Odd embraced her without answering, or perhaps the hug was his answer. Either way, he didn't really want to let go.
"How long have I been out of the mix?"
"Three full days. Almost four," Aelita said for the panther-Warrior who was overwhelmed with speechless joy. Odd wouldn't release his girlfriend and she was beginning to feel a bit breathless from all the squeezing.
When she finally managed to get loose, Janika posed the question to Jeremy. "Why haven't you devirtualized me? Everything's fine, isn't it?"
The supercomputer's operator paused uncertainly. "Well…you see, the deal is that your DNA code was scrambled when you gave yourself up for Jira."
"Jira!" she gasped as her memory returned. "Is she all right?"
"Perfect. Practically no memory of Lyoko. Don't worry about her. There's plenty of reasons to be concerned about yourself, though. I still have no idea how you managed to survive a system replacement that should have caused you to disintegrate. Plus, you aren't exactly showing up as you on the computer."
"Really? I wonder why not—ack!" she yelped, leaping away from the others.
Jeremy jumped at his console, afraid something had gone wrong. "What is it? What's going on? Aelita, is she okay?"
Janika's friends in the Tower stared at her with confusion as she ran her hands along her fur with disbelief. "What happened to me?" she gasped.
Aelita scratched the back of her head and screwed her mouth into an inquisitive expression. "I was wondering about that, but I couldn't very well ask you while you were asleep and I was more concerned with getting you back here. You do look very odd, I admit."
Janika transferred her glare to the blonde boy. "Oh yeah, it's odd all right. Odd's fault, I should say. Just how exactly did you manage to turn me purple?"
The cheetah-warrior still had her spots, but instead of orange fur, everything was in beautiful shades of plum except for the white cross-halter top, skirt and boots. Odd tried to keep a straight face for about three seconds before he burst out into helpless laughter. Once Aelita saw that, she couldn't help herself either and had to lean against him to keep from falling off the platform.
Luckily Jeremy was in the dark and had to imagine what she looked like. "Jeremy," the pink-haired girl managed to say through her laughter, "I'm sending you a visual."
"Really? Well that's great! Ulrich and Yumi just got in the elevator and are coming down, so we can all see what Janika looks like."
There went her last shred of dignity.
(V)
The elevator opened seconds later as Ulrich half-supported a tired Yumi into the lab.
"Sorry it took me a while, but I had to get Yumi out of bed. She wouldn't answer her phone, then nearly socked me when I climbed up and knocked on her window. She mistook me for a burglar."
Yumi gave him a crooked smile that froze when they saw Janika's figure on the screen. The three of them couldn't hold it in and for the next few minutes, the purple cheetah on Lyoko couldn't get a word in edgewise.
Finally she yelled, "Can somebody tell me why I changed colors or do I have to beat you guys up?"
Jeremy sobered and scanned her several more times with different programs to make sure, but his results were all the same.
"Janika, if I'm not mistaken, when Odd stepped into the Tower to stop you and Jira, he actually saved your life. Your profile is mostly blank except for the scrambled remainder of some of Odd's DNA imprinted onto you right before the transfer. It kept you alive, but he's not the only reason you're around."
He glanced behind him at his other two friends and wondered what they would think of the other news.
(V)
Aelita knew he was going to break the other news to them and stepped back to observe how Janika would take it.
"X.A.N.A. latched onto you right before also and kept you from being sucked into the Digital Sea. If it wasn't for Odd there wouldn't have been anything to grab but there's no doubt about it: X.A.N.A. sacrificed some of his own memory banks to the Void in order to keep you from being deleted."
She leaned heavily against her boyfriend, utterly mystified.
"That doesn't make any sense," Ulrich protested beside Jeremy. "X.A.N.A.'s been trying to kill us for months, but when he gets a chance to see one of our team out of the battle for good, he chokes and lets her live? Call it what you will, but I never considered him to be much of the compassionate sort and I seriously doubt he's going soft."
"He might be trying to use her as a weapon. When Aelita discovered her on ice, she might have disrupted his plans."
Odd was helping Janika get to her feet again (she'd fallen down weakly after leaping about from discovering her new color) and she gave her pink-haired friend a remorseful smile. "Sorry if you had to battle through a legion of robots to free me."
"I didn't…" she replied with surprise. "Jeremy, X.A.N.A. didn't make a mistake when we located her. He wanted us to find her."
"Okay, I think I may need a break or something. This is just getting too weird, and I trust this sudden benevolence less than you guys." Even as he spoke, a new window appeared on the screen. "Um…I'm going to devirtualize you both, all right?"
"Why? What's happening up there?" Odd asked, holding tightly to Janika's shoulders. "What about her?"
"She'll be fine. You probably need to rest anyway, Janika. I'm bringing you guys back to Earth in three, two, one."
(V)
Aelita and Odd joined the other members of the gang upstairs just as the computer whiz finished uploading something. He waved them over, his face nearly gray despite the green glow from Lyoko's orb.
"We just received a message from our enemy. X.A.N.A. contacted me using a safe method, so I know he's not trying to infect the supercomputer. Still, it's in code and I'm trying to figure out what he wants."
"That's some weird gobbledygook," Yumi noted. The symbols looked like something an alien race would have dreamed up.
As she caught sight of the screen everyone was staring at, Aelita gasped, "I know that code!"
Jeremy turned to her in astonishment. "What? How?"
"If you ever get caught by X.A.N.A. and have your memories poked through, you might be able to understand," she told him crossly. "I don't trust it."
"Could you at least translate it for us?"
Her glare and turned back answered his question.
"Never mind, then. I'll do it myself." A few minutes later he finished deciphering most of it with the supercomputer's help and the others looked on with interest.
"A pretty short message for all those symbols, isn't it?" Odd noted.
Jeremy ignored him and read the note aloud to the others. "It says, 'You have found the Warrior and I allowed you to take her so that you know for certain that she is indeed your missing partner. I can delete her at a moment's notice if my command is not obeyed: bring me the…' I can't translate this last row of symbols."
"The fire-maiden," Aelita spoke up behind them. "He wants Mekri."
"But Mekri was destroyed when the Tower was deactivated!" Yumi protested. "I saw her leave Sissy's body, and we all know there's no way she could have survived on Earth without it."
"Yumi, you're forgetting I didn't deactivate that Tower. It's possible Mekri could have remained in her host's body, hidden somewhere maybe."
"Nope," Ulrich shook his head. "Sissy is Sissy all right. She cornered me yesterday…and the day before. No weird dresses or phrases or referring to her 'Master.' She's not Mekri, whatever you think. No worries on that account, believe me."
Jeremy spoke up again, "Then how do you explain X.A.N.A. holding Janika hostage until he gets someone who doesn't even exist anymore? He's not stupid. What other 'fire-maiden' could there possibly be that we could hand over to him?"
Before he had even completed the sentence, Jeremy wanted to swallow his words, but it was impossible. Aelita's hair wasn't exactly fiery, but just now her temper was.
"But that doesn't matter anyway because we're not going to be giving up anyone to X.A.N.A.," he amended.
She didn't look very relieved or forgiving, and talked to the others rather than including him in the conversation. "We can't do anything else here tonight. Janika will be fine until morning and then we can begin working on a way to free her from X.A.N.A.'s control. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I haven't slept in a proper bed in days and I need some real sleep, not to mention something besides Chinese food in my stomach."
They all agreed and Jeremy let Janika know what the plan was before leaving with his friends. The lavender cheetah-girl sat down inside the Tower and idly twiddled her thumbs.
"Hmm. Now what?"
Fox: "If you would be so kind as to set me free, Sire…"
King: "Set you free? What do you take me for? A fool?" (crickets begin to chirp) "I said, what do you take me for?"
Fox: "A wise and noble king, of course!"
That's one of my favorite lines from my sister's high school play. The theater department did "My Friend, the Fox" and she was the lead role. So tell me, if you were a fox talking to a king and wanted him to help you get out of a trap, what would you say? (I'd try to act sexy and use my feminine wiles to flabbergast him)