Hey guys! Thanks for the reviews! I noticed some concerns with the whole Odd and Aelita thing. I know it seems a little weird, but I don't really think Odd's feelings for Aelita are going to be anything that will be known by anybody who thinks that they are cousins, so the whole fake cousin thing doesn't really matter.

And as far as Jeremie goes, he has no idea that Odd has feelings for Aelita, but once he does find out I promise that there will bea bitof Jeremie and Odd conflict. The main reason I chose the pairing was because Odd is my favorite character and there's just such a limited selection of girls for him. I don't like OCs for him and I really don't think that Sam was important enough in the show for me to want to pair him with her. I do like the OddxSissi pairing, but for this story it wouldn't work. As far as JxA is concerned, I accept the pairing because it is an obvious one on the show, but by personalities, I would pair Aelita with Odd before Jeremie. Jeremie is just no fun.

So it's taken me a while to update. The reason is mostly because I wanted to plan out all of the important details of the story carefully before continuing it. I actually have parts of different chapters typed up already.And now chapter two is finally done.Read and review!

Odd filming his documentary


Odd once again sat with his camera in front of him as he reviewed the day's events. "So, Jeremie and Franz called us up to head to the Factory earlier today. And for the first time in a while they actually needed us to go to Lyoko…"

Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi went towards the very familiar underground way to the Factory. After so many years of skateboarding in the sewers, they knew every single bump, nick, and crack in their path. It was a boring ride every time anymore for Odd. As they grabbed their boards, Odd glanced at the fourth skateboard leaning against the wall, untouched for two years.

Sighing, Odd set his skateboard on the ground and followed his friends through the sewers. He'd been thinking about Aelita a lot lately. Everything reminded him of her and of just how much he missed her. Back when he'd first started to make the trip to the Factory and Lyoko, he'd had no idea that this girl would be on his mind so constantly. Sometimes these days, Odd believed that he thought about her more than even Jeremie did.

Jeremie seemed less concerned with Aelita now and more obsessed with just beating Xana. It was like his grudge against the computer virus surpassed his feelings for the girl, and Odd wondered if Jeremie might even be holding a grudge against Aelita as well. Odd hated to hear Jeremie talk to Aelita as if she were the enemy, just like he had always hated how Jeremie had been fascinated with her mostly because he'd thought she was an AI. Had Jeremie lost interest in her since discovering that she was actually the daughter of Franz Hopper?

Odd at least realized that Aelita was much more than a computer program. He hated to consider her that way, as if she was just a thing. Jeremie had never seen her as human enough to care for her most human needs, like her need to enjoy herself. Odd could think back to many times when Jeremie had neglected her needs for entertainment, and it made him angry that Jeremie always considered the fight on Lyoko the most important thing about her. She was just a computer that needed to lose a virus in Jeremie's eyes.

It had always been up to Odd to make sure Aelita had a good time. He'd always been the one to take her to the park or go with her to the pool. He'd been the one who'd taught her how to eat a snow cone just slow enough so that she wouldn't get a brain freeze. He'd taught her how to find shapes in the clouds and constellations among the stars. He'd shown her how to make the perfect snowball to throw at Ulrich's face and he'd helped her make her first snow angel. It's essential to living, he'd told her wisely. And when she'd said that she thought only breathing, eating and drinking were essential, he'd argued with the statement. That's what you need to have life, but you need to enjoy yourself to say you lived it.

Odd had wanted so badly to show her what it meant to really live, to experience happiness and freedom. He'd wanted to show her what she made living mean to him. And he swore to himself that he would save her one day and do just that.

Once the three of them arrived at the Factory, they stepped into the elevator and Ulrich pressed the button to make it go down. "So what is this about again?" Odd asked him.

"Jeremie said that there was an attack or something that Franz couldn't stop," the brunette explained.

"Great," Odd muttered. "And I bet we get to clean up the mess. I think I liked it a lot better when we had to actually go into Lyoko to do our part. Now with Franz around we don't ever get to go."

Yumi sighed and shook her head at Odd's complaint. "Would you rather us be without him?" Yumi asked. "If it weren't for Franz, we'd have given up by now. We would have had to shut down Lyoko entirely to stop Xana and Aelita."

"No," Odd replied sharply, feeling angry at the mere mention of that as an option. "I would never let that happen. And if any of you would, you're traitors. Aelita's our friend, and she hasn't done any of this of her own free will. We could never turn our backs on her like that."

"I'm not saying we're going to do that," Yumi said defensively.

"You just said we would have," Odd snapped. "Maybe you would do it… But I at least won't give-"

"Chill out Odd," Ulrich interrupted. "It's not going to happen. We would never do that to Aelita. We care about her too."

"Jeremie would do it," Odd muttered as he crossed his arms stubbornly and glared at the wall. "He doesn't give a shit about her…"

Yumi and Ulrich stared at him incredulously. "What are you talking about, Odd?" Yumi asked. "That's a horrible thing to say!"

There was no time to discuss it any further, though, as the doors of the elevator opened. Odd brusquely walked past his friends, bumping into Yumi's shoulder a bit rudely as he got out of the elevator. "Hey Jer," he said in his normal friendly voice. "Hey Franz. What's the deal?"

Franz Hopper was sitting in the chair in front of the Supercomputer with Jeremie standing by his side. They both turned around to acknowledge the arrival of the others. "We found something interesting in the footage of the attack yesterday."

"What was the attack anyway?" Ulrich asked. "Was it really big enough to make the news?"

Jeremie looked at Ulrich. "Yes, big enough to make the news," he replied. "However, the authorities have no idea just how big it is."

"No one died did they?" Yumi asked fearfully.

"Fortunately not," Franz told her. "It was a robbery."

"That's big?" Odd asked skeptically. "That's probably not even Xana."

"We're sure it was Xana for two very good reasons," Jeremie explained. "The first being the man who was robbed. Gauthier D'Arcy is a retired scientist who worked for the military, one of the ones who got involved in Project Xana. Xana must have stolen some secret files from D'Arcy's computer."

"There's no way the military would just let him keep top secret files like that in his own home," Yumi protested.

"That's what I thought," Franz said. "But D'Arcy is a very smart man, perhaps smarter than me. I don't doubt his ability to get such information without being discovered. Unfortunately, Xana suspected it before I did."

"What kind of files are we talking about here?" Ulrich asked worriedly. "How valuable would they be to Xana?"

"That's what we need you guys to find out," Jeremie said. "Any data that Xana acquires can be accessed through the Supercomputer, but we can't get to it from here."

"So we're making a trip to Sector Five then?" Yumi asked.

"What's the other reason?" Odd asked suddenly.

"Other reason?" Jeremie repeated confusedly.

"You said that you had two very good reasons to be sure of Xana's involvement in the robbery," Odd said. "What was the other one?"

"Oh yes," Franz said. "You three will find this very interesting. We were looking at the footage that the news was showing of the crime scene, and we found something- or someone, rather- that we were shocked to see."

"Two people in fact," Jeremie said while Franz brought up the file on the computer.

The footage began to play, showing a reporter talking about the robbery with a crowd of people behind her, trying to get a good look at the crime scene. "What's so interesting about this?" Ulrich asked when the footage was paused.

Yumi didn't see it either, but Odd did. He was staring at the screen in surprise, while the other two watched it vacantly. "Aelita," he whispered as he looked at the emotionless face of the pink-haired girl.

"Yes, it's Aelita," Jeremie said dismissively, causing Odd to grimace at him slightly, noticed only to by a very attentive Yumi. "But the person we are more interested in is the man standing beside her."

Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich all looked more closely at the man wearing a long black trench coat. He was a rather tall man with straight, jet-black hair that hung over his shoulders down to his mid-torso. His skin was extremely pale, as if he had not seen the sun in years, and his eyes were pale blue. They had an wild look to them, as if humanity had gone from him long ago, leaving him uncultivated and untamed, or perhaps it was the look of one who had never known how to be human in the first place. Yumi gasped. "Is that…?"

Jeremie simply nodded as a very serious look set over his features. "Xana."

"How does he have a body?" Ulrich asked.

"He's never had his own unique form before," Yumi said.

"That's what baffles us," Franz said. "I think that whatever information he stole from D'Arcy helped him create his own form. I just don't know how. I'm hoping that this body is only a temporary one."

"Let's get that information then," Ulrich said decidedly.

"We'll head down to the scanner room," Yumi said as she and the other two boys began to make their way to the elevator.

"Hold on a second," Jeremie said, causing them all to turn back. "Only two of you will have to go to Sector Five."

"Is one of us staying here?" Odd asked.

"No," Franz said. "Only Aelita and I have the have the capability to transfer information from Carthage straight to the Supercomputer. We are going to need one of you to find a tower and access the system from there. One of the pair that goes to Sector Five will transfer the files to the tower, and from the tower we can transfer it to here."

"We'll guide you through the process," Jeremie said. "But it's imperative that everything is done correctly. If this doesn't go smoothly, Xana will stop us and we will be in a lot of trouble."

"Well, I'm hopeless with computers," Ulrich said. "You remember the disaster with my laptop a couple months ago. It took even you forever to fix it for me."

"Which is why we already decided that Yumi and Odd will be the ones to complete the transfers," Jeremie replied. "I know Yumi is pretty good with computers, and I'm hoping Odd can handle himself well enough."

"I'm better than Ulrich if that's what you mean," Odd said. "Anyone is better than Ulrich." Ulrich glared at Odd, who had a satisfied smirk on his face. "In fact, I would even venture to say I'm better with computers than Yumi is."

"Ok," Franz said. "Which one of you two will stay at the tower of the sector you are virtualized to? It should be the one with the most computer skills, because the tower is the link between Carthage and us."

"Well, I'll gladly do it," Odd volunteered. "Saves me a nauseating trip in that horrible giant ball."

"Ok, let's do this," Jeremie said with a nod.


Ten minutes later, Odd was standing inside a tower in the Forest Sector, waiting for Yumi and Ulrich to get past some monsters and access the files. "What's taking them so long?" he asked impatiently. "Have they at least gotten past the countdown yet?"

"Yea, but they ran into some Creepers," Jeremie's voice said. "They'll be done soon."

No sooner had he spoke than the screen of the tower's computer popped up showing Yumi's face. Odd saw Ulrich standing behind her, keeping a lookout for Flying Mantas. "You ready on your end for the transfer Odd?" Yumi asked.

Odd nodded. "Go ahead."

Odd watched the screen in boredom as the window showing Yumi disappeared and was replaced by a data transfer screen ten minutes later, Yumi having finally finished Jeremie's instructions. Odd had listened intently as well as Jeremie took her through every step. "Ok, Einstein," he said when he knew it was his turn. "Am I just pressing 'accept' on this window and then doing the same stuff as Yumi?"

"Yea," Jeremie's voice said. "Did you pay attention to what I told her before?"

"Eh, a little bit," Odd said nonchalantly as he pressed where the screen said the word 'accept.'

He could hear Jeremie's sigh of frustration. "You should be taking this much more seriously Odd. If you mess one thing up, you could seriously jeopardize our mission."

"Don't worry about it," Odd said as he began typing in more things, exactly as Jeremie had explained it to Yumi just before. "I've got everything under control."

There was a moment of silence from the blond on earth, before he spoke in astonishment at what was appearing on the Supercomputer's screen. "W-wow Odd," Jeremie said slowly. "You're flying through this. I didn't know you were so good with computers."

"Well I do work on my laptop all of the time," Odd said, thinking, 'especially now without Aelita around to entertain.' "I always work with those music and movie editing programs, and I do some of my graphic art on there. And don't forget all of the video games. So naturally, I picked up a few things. I'm no computer expert, but I'm a hell of a fast learner."

"I'm very impressed," Franz's voice said proudly.

"Why are you failing so many classes, Odd?" Jeremie's voice said, reprimanding him. Odd rolled his eyes, knowing that he was about to get a lecture. "You are far from stupid Odd. You could be doing much better if you would just try to learn."

Odd ignored him as he finished off the rest of his job, occasionally asking Jeremie about codes. "Done," he said a few minutes later. "The files should be getting to you any second now. Have Ulrich and Yumi made it out of Sector Five yet?"

"They're actually headed toward your tower as we speak. We'll get you three de-virtualized once they get there."

A couple minutes later, Yumi and Ulrich entered the tower and stood beside Odd. "Ok Jer," Yumi said. "We're ready."

However, nothing happened and the trio was still standing in the center of the tower. After waiting a couple moments, Ulrich became impatient. "Hello? Jeremie? Franz? We're ready to come back."

"What's going on over there?" Yumi asked curiously.

When they heard Jeremie's voice, they could hardly believe the way it wavered. "We… we just got the files…"

"Did I do something wrong?" Odd asked fearfully, wishing he hadn't been so confident in himself before. 'Damn it… I screw everything up.'

"No," Franz said. "You transferred it perfectly… The information is just a little… shocking…"


"Franz was right," Odd said to the camera. "What we found was really shocking. It's going to end up changing this entire fight, and not for the better. Basically, what Xana stole from D'Arcy were files of information on how they linked Xana's power to the real world years back.

"I guess it doesn't really sound so bad, but Xana can do a lot with that information… and he has. Ulrich, Yumi, and I didn't really understand at first, but Franz and Einstein explained it to us. Xana got his new body by using the new information and he managed to even keep his powers. Jeremie told us that we can't use the Supercomputer to get rid of Xana anymore, and honestly… I'm relieved. We no longer have the option of doing that and killing Aelita, and I'm pretty sure Jeremie was nearing the point where he'd do it too.

"I guess I should probably mention the other thing Xana did with his new information. He gave Aelita her Lyoko powers in our world, so she can do just about anything now. It's pretty clear now that Xana's preparing her to be a weapon and not just a shield to keep us from shutting him down. I'm going to save her though. I refuse to let Xana use Aelita like that."