Jeremie Belpois sat hunched over a computer monitor in his dorm at Kadic Jr. High. His face was basked in the green glow of the screen, the only source of light in his room. He had not noticed the sun fall and the darkness grow as he worked continuously on his goal.

He would have worked all night, fallen asleep at two in the morning and woken up in time to be late for first period, if it had not been for the nock at the door. He mentally slapped himself. It was Friday. How could he have forgotten? On Fridays, his friend, Aelita Stones, snuck down to his dorm at seven to read however much of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, or some other such science fiction, they could get through. None of their other friends knew of this tradition.

He opened the door and there she was, the beautiful girl in the pink hoody she always wore, a thick, blue book in her hands. Smiling widely, he gestured with his hands for her to come in.

"Please," he said dramatically, "enter, fair lady."

She laughed quietly, stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

"You're to kind," she said, holding up the book and waving it. "I brought it. Do you remember where we left off?"

He thought for a moment. "Yeah, somewhere around 'Ford, you're turning into a penguin, stop it,' right?"

"Yup," she said happily. "Let's see what happens to the survivors of the apocalypse next, shall we?" She opened the book and flipped around until she found the right page, then handed him the book. Noticing the program running on the screen, she added, "You were working on the antivirus."

"Yup. I think I'm really close. I only have a vague understanding how Xana got you tied to him, but think I almost have a program that can tear the bond apart.

"Jeremie," she said with a smile, "just don't overwork yourself."

Aelita Stones was not a real person. She was born and raised in a virtual paradise, a surrealistic realm divided into five sectors.

Last year, in seventh grade, Jeremy had stumbled onto a computer in an abandoned factory. As the school nerd, he had gone there often looking for a quiet place to study. The last thing he expected to find was a super-computer hooked up to three portals to a digital world. This, of course, is exactly what he found or else the story would be very dull.

This computer was gigantic! For a computer, being bigger than a small aircraft is fairly large. It was made up of several monitors and keyboards all hooked up in very purposeful ways. Jeremie felt like he'd died and gone to computer-geek heaven! The difficult part was turning it on, but this proved to be no problem for our young brainiac.

Once he did, he immediately began to wish he hadn't. In a glorious show of lights and sounds, the monitors all switched on.

In the center of the room was a pool of darkness. It was a dish of metal, the walls of which came about three feet out of the ground. This turned out to be a spot for a hologram to appear from several projectors around the side.

A hologram of a planet made of ice, forest, desert and mountain terrain.

One of the monitors showed an elfish girl in a pink, medieval looking outfit.

She explained to Jeremie that her name was Aelita and a great danger to the entire planet approached. A danger named Xana, a computer virus who could bend simple machines to its bidding. It was bent on mass destruction.

Its only weakness was the towers it had to keep active in Lyoko, the virtual paradise, in order to maintain power in the outside world. Only she could de-activate them, and to do that she needed two things.

The first was authorization to mess with the towers, which was mostly paperwork. She literally couldn't affect them without it.

The second was a team to protect her from the monsters that served Xana in the virtual world. They would enter through the scanners located in the floor below.

Jeremie wasted no time assembling such an army. The lyoko gang quickly became great friends, as nothing joins people together quite as strong as fighting side by side.

For almost a year Jeremie worked every day to create a program that would bring Aelita out of Lyoko and into the real world through the scanners. When it was complete, the plan was to bring her straight out and turn the computer back off to destroy Xana once and for all. At the end of the year, he succeeded. Xana, however, had different plans.

It created a virus that would bind Aelita to him. If they destroyed it, they would destroy her. The teams' only hope was for Jeremy to construct an anti-virus to cure her, then finally destroy Xana.

On Lyoko, Aelita was what is known as a blessing elf. Her skills were mainly focused on casting magic, enchanting weapons and wielding weapons that could easily channel mystic energy.

In the real world, she was a normal girl, though slightly more pink than average. She had good grades, nice taste in clothes, a good sense of humor, and four amazing friends, who spent the last year trying to protect and save her.

They were getting close now. With every day that passed, Jeremie was getting more and more work done.

Xana's days were numbered, and it knew this. It couldn't let this happen. If they destroyed it, it would never own the world of reality. But it had surprises in store for the team.

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At that moment, Ulrich Stern and Odd Della Robbia were sitting cross-legged on their beds in their Kadic Academy dorm. Both held a Gameboy Advanced SP in their hands; attached to the back of both were wireless link devices. These allowed them to face each other in Dragonball Z Taiketsu. Both saw that on the screen, a tall muscular man in an orange outfit with a blue shirt underneath was swinging his fist into the stomach of a green demonic character with a long tail.

"No fair," cried Odd. "There's no way to charge that fast! You cheated!"

"Oh, please," said Ulrich calmly. "How am I supposed to cheat at a game like this? You're just a sore looser."

Odd and Ulrich had been best friends form the day Odd moved into Kadic. Though serious when the situation required, they were both very average, normal teenage boys. They liked to stay up late playing videogames, especially against each other, joke with friends, laugh and just have an all around great time.

The major difference in their personalities was how they reacted under pressure. When face with a world-threatening situation, Ulrich evaluated options, got to the point and terminated the problem. Odd too was useful in that he could do what was needed, but he also used his humorous wit to keep the team from going totally insane.

They faced many world-threatening situations. They were also part of the group of Xana-fighting teenagers that did battle on Lyoko.

Odd's Lyokan character was what is known as a psychic neko, a cat person that could see into the near future on occasion. His skills mostly lied in his agility and his two weapons, the purple gloves that shot arrowhead-shaped darts from the wrists. Though his advanced power was not as useful as that of the other three, his basic capabilities in combat more than compensated.

Ulrich, on the other hand, was a speed samurai. His advanced power was the Super Sprint, an ability that allowed him to reach speeds far beyond anything he could do without it. He wore a yellow suit of armor that covered his chest and fell over his legs in strips. Beside the suits' waist hung his saber, a weapon that pulled out easily, did considerable damage and had nice control.

The fifth and final member of the group was Yumi Ishiyama.

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It was eleven at night, but the book Yumi was reading was to good to put down. It was a humorous story about a teenager whose best friend turned out to be an alien catgirl with golden blonde wings and said that they were leaving the planet that afternoon because her cousin had finally gotten a ship and was coming to pick them up.

She was sitting on her bed with the book in front of her; her back leaned against the wall. Suddenly, her thoughts wandered away from the book and turned to Lyoko.

Her character was more of a guardian than the boys' warriors. Her advanced power was telekinesis, which was mostly used to shield herself and others from blasts with large objects. Her weapons were a pair of fans that could be thrown to slice through opponents, but were more useful for blocking lasers that Xanas' monsters shot at her. Her character was a guardian maid.

Her thoughts headed farther down this road until they reached her friends, the other Lyokan defenders. The name was one Odd had thought up, though a strange one.

As soon as they could get cure Aelita's virus, they would have to destroy Lyoko if they wished to get rid of Xana. There was no way to remove ii from the program, and the entire computer would, therefore, have to be shut down for good the moment Aelita was out of harms way. They were more concerned with Earth than Lyoko, considering that there were a few billion people on Earth and only one on Lyoko. That one person was Xana, and they didn't like him that much.

Her thoughts returned to her friends, specifically Ulrich. She loved Ulrich

That, however, is not a major point of this story. The main focus is the events of the next day, and some of their consequences.

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Kaserht. That was all she knew. Her name was Kaserht, and she existed to serve Xana. She was a warrior elf character, which is a fairly rare combo. Most elves are more skilled with casting spells and blessings than hand-to-hand combat, but she was what she was and that was that.

She looked at her surroundings. She was in some kind of forest, but one unlike anything that had ever existed on Earth. It was the Lyokan forest region, filled with towering, thick trees with branches larger enough for a person to hide in.

She then looked down at herself. Her outfit was a brown jumpsuit covered with a green vest and several green sashes over her arms and legs.

In her hand was a black, padded handle. She remembered that this was her equipment, her weapon. It was attached to a string, which could only be as durable as it was in a world like Lyoko. The string went down about a twentieth of its' length, because her hand was grasping the round, wooden device attached to the end. Most versions of her weapon on Earth were made of plastic, but that was a material that required more technology than Lyoko was currently capable of. It was a yo-yo.

A figure stepped out from behind a nearby tree. It was a large, masculine figure, but the exact age and gender were indeterminable, due to the fact that it seemed to be made of a pitch-black smoke that had only begun to condense into a solid form. A voice came from it. That chin and cheeks moved as though a mouth was forming the words, but showed no other sign that it was speaking.

"I have created you Kaserht. Do you understand why?" It asked.

Kaserht shook her head no. It was all she could do.

"You are to help me destroy my enemies. They would have Lyoko be destroyed rather than have me come into power in their realm. For this, they must be punished." Its' voice was definite. There was something there that made her think it was not being totally honest, but she could not allow Lyoko to be destroyed.

She nodded, pledging to aid this creature. The story was not unbelievable. She had seen the world be erased before, but, knowing only her name, she did not know how.

"Good," it said. "I have command over races of creatures that can assist you in meeting our goal." It stuck its hand into the air and pulled. A hole opened in the empty space, through which she could see a blue area of large, rectangular surfaces and pillars. "Destroy twenty of the creatures you find inside for today's training. Fail, and you will be punished."

She didn't like the way it spoke, but something made her feel that she had to protect her home. It was most likely her sense of duty that caused her to step forward, jump through the hole and throw her weapon at the first thing she saw, a large, metallic crab with no eyes, a flat surface and only four legs. The word "krabe" popped into her mind, and she knew this to be the monsters name.

On its back was a black symbol. It was a single dot inside two circles made of thick lines. Another line stuck out of the top, and three from the bottom in a shape resembling an "m." This she knew to be the Eye of Xana.

Her yo-yo struck the symbol and the creature shattered, dieing in much the same way one would expect a virtual monster to die.

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Xana swung its leg into Kaserhts' side, throwing her backwards into the black landscape. All that was around them was darkness. The ground was flat and smooth, and there was nothing to block their view of the terrain. There was no light, but neither of them had any trouble seeing. There was simply nothing to see.

"You failed!" it cried out in rage. She didn't really. It was simply bad luck that prevented her from filling her quota. She had slain nineteen monsters, before one shot her in the back and her life-points had been drained. She was sent straight to the judgment field, but only Xana was there. There was no one to judge her and decide what should happen to her next, whether she should be allowed another life or sent to oblivion and replaced with a new consciousness. She was grateful for this, having no idea if she would be worthy. The scales and coins were thrown to the ground, having been thrown at her rather than used to weigh the worth of her previous life.

"A simple task it was, and you allowed yourself to be slain rather than finish it! I am sickened to have an apprentice like you!" If she could have spoken, she would have explained that it was an accident.

Instead, she buckled over in pain and clenched her stomach. She felt like she had been run over by a train, soreness rushing through her body. Lyoko being the virtual world it was, those present had no sense of touch. There was, however, a sensation of pressure that could alert Lyokans that they were touching something. She was feeling quite a lot of that sensation, and it was not a pleasant one.

A short while later, which seemed like forever, she noticed that the beating had stopped. There was still much leftover pain, but nothing was being added. She hazarded a glance up. Xana was standing over her, its face tilted as though it were looking at her.

"Stand," he said. "We shall study our foes that we may be prepared for their next attack." She stood, though her body gave a shriek of torture. Xana led her to a spot just like the rest of them. A screen appeared out of nowhere. They stood and watched as a video began playing. It began with four warriors on Lyoko, fighting Xanas' monsters.

Kaserht noted that the warriors did not appear as though they were trying to destroy anything. Instead, the fought like a team of defenders. Their fighting style was not harsh or merciless, no, it was that of a group who would rather be playing a game.

The thought that Xana was lying to her approached her mind, and she regarded it as a distinct possibility.

The video ended.

"I leave you to heal," said Xana, and disappeared as though a wind had blown away its' gaseous form.

She approached the screen and ran her hand over the space in front of it. A keyboard appeared in that space. If she had understood the video correctly, the easiest one to contact would be "Jeremie".