The main characters of this story are based on characters from the cartoon 'Code Lyoko.' I do not own, nor do I claim, any copyright to these characters.

Jeremie felt like banging his head against a wall. At least he would feel better when he stopped...

Jeremie had been looking at the memdiagobj.cpp file for a week now, and hadn't been able to determine a thing about it. Jeremie thought he knew C, but this code was doing things he'd never seen before!

Not only that, it was almost totally unreadable. It was so bad, it probably could win an award for The Most Obfuscated C+ Code in the world! Franz Hopper may have been a genius, but he was a lousy coder.

Aelita had no better luck understanding it either. She looked at the code for an hour before giving up in disgust, muttering things about abusing minors that way wasn't a nice thing to do, and she never thought Jeremie was into that kind of thing.

Jeremie didn't think she'd be too pleased with what he was about to suggest, either.

Friday afternoon, Jeremie gathered the team together.

"Guys, I've been looking at that program for a week now, and I'm no closer to figuring it out than I was Sunday. That program is so convoluted, I'm not sure what reality is anymore. Aelita looked at it for an hour and thought it was a perverted joke."

The others, except for Aelita, chuckled at that.

"You wouldn't laugh if you saw what I saw," she told them.

"Anyway," Jeremie continued, "it looks like the only way we're going to find Franz Hopper is by asking the Scyphozoa."

"No, Jeremie, you can't be serious!" Aelita exclaimed, "I can't do it! won't do it!" Panic was rising up within her even at the suggestion of Jeremie's plan.

"We'll protect you," Odd said, and the others echoed.

"If you really can't face it, and I understand completely if you can't, you can supervise from the console. I'll go in," Jeremie told her.

"No, don't," Aelita cried, tears starting to flow, "I can't bear to think about losing you! Please, don't do this!"

"This may be the only way to rescue your father," Jeremie replied.

"But, but, what if it's a trap? Maybe XANA has returned and it's not my father at all! Maybe..."

Jeremie walked over to Aelita and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her to silence her. He broke the embrace and hugged her close while she sobbed a while longer. All the while he rocked her softly back and forth, stroking her hair and the back of her neck as he did so.

After a moment, Aelita settled down. Jeremie hugged her one last time, then kissed her forehead.

"You know we have to do this," he told her softly.

"Yes," she replied, choking back a sob, "but I don't have to like it."

Jeremie decided that they would attempt to locate a Scyphozoa that Sunday. In the meantime, Jeremie and Aelita began searching the supercomputer again, trying to learn as much about their quarry as they could.

With system administrator privileges now, Jeremie had unprecedented access to the supercomputer. He was able to query processes, memory utilization, hardware status. And he could access any file on the system.

He whooped for joy when he found the source code for all of the monsters in Lyoko, including their quarry. The code for the Scyphozoa was a lot more readable than the memdiagobj file was. The first thing Jeremie learned was that it wasn't really a monster. It had no ingrained obedience to XANA, none of the 'monsters' in Lyoko had. Whoever called a creature was its master. That would make life much easier.

Aelita was harder to convince. She poured over the code for twice as long as Jeremie had, before she came to the same conclusion. Not that she liked it.

Sunday morning came and the group gathered at the factory. Desmond Hopper was there, and would be sitting at the console for this mission, his first time. Jeremie would be going with the others when they confronted the Scyphozoa.

Before they left, Jeremie made them all do something unusual. Desmond produced some vials, and Jeremie made each of them scrape the insides of their mouth with a sterile pin to remove some tissue. The tissue was then carefully placed in a vial, and the donor's name written on the vial. Jeremie did the same thing himself, after everyone else had.

"Why did we just do that," Odd asked.

"Insurance," Jeremie replied, "if something happens to us and we can't be recovered, these tissue samples can be used to rebuild us in the real world. Mr. Hopper, you have the instructions I gave you, right."

"Yes I do," Desmond replied, "I just pray I don't have to use them."

"Okay, let's get this over with," Jeremie said, "we're going to Carthage."

Since there were only three scanners, they entered Lyoko in two groups. Ulrich, Odd and Jeremie went first, then Yumi, Sissi and Aelita. They arrived at the central entrance to Carthage with no trouble.

"Get ready everyone, we've got to find that switch fast!" Ulrich said.

"No, we don't," Jeremie replied, "Aelita and I came here after the Autumn Harvest Dance a few weeks ago and deactivated it. There is no more timer."

"Now you tell us," Odd said, "and I bet the next thing you're going to tell us is there's no monsters waiting for us."

"That's right," came the voice of Desmond Hopper, "the display here shows nothing. The corridor is opening. You may proceed."

They made their way down the corridor and into the arena. I was basically a hollow space.

"Mr. Hopper, is the arena still configured the way we configured it last?" Jeremie asked.

"Yes, it seems to be. Gravity is one-tenth normal at the floors, decreasing to zero in the center. Gravity is also relative to the walls."

Odd found this out the hard way when he stepped out of the corridor and fell sideways onto the wall.

"Oops! Be careful of that transition, guys," Jeremie said.

They made their way onto the wall and looked up at the corridor on the other end, the one that led to the interface panel.

"Alright, Einstein, how are we going to get there," Ulrich asked.

"Simple," Jeremie replied as he and Aelita kicked off.

They flew up and away from the rest of the gang. As they did, the adjusted their flightpath so they joined each other. As they flew to the other side, they started twirling around in each other's arms.

They passed through the center of the room and were pulled to the other side by gravity. They adjusted themselves and softly landed on the far wall. Then they made their way to the opposite corridor.

"Showoffs!" Odd shouted.

"C'mon, it's easy!" Jeremie shouted back, "let's go!"

The others kicked off and joined the couple. Their progress wasn't quite as polished as Jeremie and Aelita's was. They tumbled and landed sprawled out on the far wall.

When they joined Jeremie and Aelita, Jeremie said, "well, we have done this before."

They walked to the elevator, and then made it to the interface panel. Odd, Yumi, Ulrich and Sissi formed a protective crescent between the door and Jeremie and Aelita. Aelita went to the interface and started manipulating it.

She got to a certain point, then stopped. "I don't know if I can do this, Jeremie," she said.

"Then let me," he replied. He stepped up to the interface and made the final entries.

Seconds later, a Scyphozoa appeared, floating in the space just beyond the interface panel.

Aelita shrieked and backpedaled from the panel. The others, hearing her cry, turned around and got between her and her nightmare incarnate.

Jeremie, however, remained before the interface. The display had cleared, replaced with one word, 'Command'.

Jeremie said, "help."

The display responded by displaying a stream of words. Jeremie read the display, pausing it at points, backing up and rereading certain parts. Jeremie then said, "AI mode. Interactive Audio. Run."

"I am a System Memory Diagnostic," the Scyphozoa said, "I can examine and repair any memory region in the system. I have comprehensive searching capabilities."

"Can you examine memory regions without erasing them?" Jeremie asked.

"Yes. Non-destructive testing is available. Default is destructive memory testing."

"Does that mean that XANA could have gotten what he wanted without killing Aelita," Yumi asked.

"Evidently," Jeremie replied, "yet one more reason to destroy it."

To the Scyphozoa, Jeremie said, "I'm looking for something, for someone. His name is Franz Hopper."

"Franz Hopper is located in the external access tower located in Carthage sector."

"But I was in that tower! He wasn't there!" Aelita shouted.

"Franz Hopper is located in the external access tower located in Carthage sector."

"How can we access Franz Hopper?" Jeremie asked.

"Tower access restricted," the Scyphozoa replied.

"I have system administrator access. Access id is 'root' password is 'KuU93N'," Jeremie said.

"Access Denied. Only XANA can access tower."

"Great, the only way we can save Franz Hopper is by asking our worst enemy to let us in. You wouldn't happen to have XANA's access id would you?" Jeremie said to no one in particular.

"Access id 'XANA', password '12345,'" replied the Scyphozoa.

Jeremie's jaw dropped at the reply.

"Access external access tower, Carthage sector. Access id 'XANA' password is '12345'," Jeremie said after a moment.

"Access granted."

As the tower materialized behind the Scyphozoa, it said, "just because we served XANA doesn't mean we liked doing so."