Disclaimer: Code Lyoko is copyrighted by Moonscoop.
This chapter was written by me and edited by AeroJester203.
I only own Lila. Mary is owned by AeroJester203. Cameron is owned by Undeadmonkey8.
Mister Puck
Inside Lila and Aelita's room
Late at night
POV Lila's
Opening my eyes, I hear Aelita screaming. From habit of reacting quickly to any loud noises, I swing myself over the rails of the top bunk and drop down to the floor before my mind catches up. I hurry to her side and gently shake her shoulder.
"Aelita, please wake up. You're having another nightmare."
Aelita opens her eyes and fearfully looks around for a moment before catching her breath. "I'm sorry- I-I-"
"Don't apologize," I interrupt with a shake of my head. "I've had my fair share of nightmares when I first arrived here in this timeline. Mary was always there for me, and I'll be here for you. Tell me about it."
Aelita sits up against her pillow, taking some deep breaths to calm herself before looking at me.
"It's the same dream. I'm in a forest somewhere, I'm an elf. A wolf chases me through the trees and I hide in a hollow one before it finds me and is about to bite. Except... except this time, before the wolf attacked me... I found something. Some sort of treasure chest, with energy in it."
"That's... peculiar, I wonder if the treasure chest is a symbol for something? When did these dreams of yours start?" I ask.
She thinks back,
"I... I think it started when I first found the Hermitage."
"Then that's where we need to go," I decide. "Let's talk to the others about it first thing tomorrow."
"Okay," Aelita says.
The Next Day
Vending machines area
"You want to go back to that place?" Odd asks incredulously. "With the flying knives and everything?"
"That was when Xana possessed the house, Odd," I remind him.
Jeremy adjusts his glasses in thought, "If these nightmares started when you found the house, then it makes sense that we should go back there."
"Let's go, then," Yumi says.
"I'm just, really nervous about going there," Aelita says, stammering a little. Jeremy pats her hand, holding it supportively, making her smile in gratitude.
"We'll be there with you," he says, trying to reassure her.
Ulrich nods confidently, "You can count on us Aelita."
Aelita inclines her head slightly in gratitude,
"Thank you, everyone."
At the Hermitage
Opening the gate to the abandoned house, Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, Jeremy, and Aelita enter the yard ahead of me. I close the gate and follow them to the foot of the stairs. Aelita stares at the house, her legs beginning to shake.
"What's wrong with me?" she asks, looking down at the apparently new sensation.
"Why are my legs shaking?"
"You're scared; it's completely normal," Jeremy answers.
Odd jokingly elbows him, "Yeah, it happens to Jeremy all of the time."
"Does not," he scoffs while lightly pushing Odd away.
"Lame-o."
"Guys, let's focus. Come on Aelita," Yumi says. She holds Aelita's hand as we walk up the stairs and open the door to the Hermitage.
We walk inside and close door the behind us, seeing the plain if admittedly dusty and decrepit foyer. Everything seems quiet with nothing out of the ordinary in sight.
"See, Odd? No flying knives," I say.
He rolls his eyes, "I know, I know. Where should we start?"
I look to Aelita and see that her gaze is somewhat vacant. She suddenly focuses again and let's go of Yumi's hand to climb the staircase in front of us.
"Aelita?" Yumi calls in concern.
When she doesn't answer, Ulrich's eyes narrow slightly at the odd behavior and he waves for the rest of us to move,
"Let's follow her."
In agreement with him, we trail Aelita upstairs to the top floor. Looking around, I see a few doors leading to different rooms—enough space for a family. Aelita makes her way to a specific one, and we run to her when she stops in front of it.
"There's- there's something about this room. I'm not sure, but I think we should go in," Aelita says hesitantly.
"If you're sure Aelita, we trust you," Jeremy says. Aelita gingerly grabs the door knob and turns it, slowly easing the door open with a long squeak of the rusty hinges. We walk in with her in the center since she still appears very nervous.
The room was Aelita's room when she lived here… I think. My father used to tell me stories about my mother's dreams… about the men in black, and everything that happened to her and Grandpa Schaeffer. Though he did go by the name of Hopper… I wish I could tell Aelita what these dreams really are. But she needs to learn the truth on her own.
Looking at the current state of the room, we see that it looks like a tornado tore it apart. The window was smashed, the bed had its sheets stripped off and ripped, and all the small objects were in disarray around the floor. Aelita looks at a desk that managed to survive despite being overturned and trails her fingers along it.
"Everything is so old here... and I can't help but wonder if-" she starts to say before gasping and holding her temples as if she were struck by a sudden migraine.
"Aelita? Aelita are you okay?" Jeremy asks. We take Aelita to the bed and I brush off some of the dust before helping her sit, giving the vision time to pass. She soon let's go of her head and opens her eyes.
"I was saying there might be a connection to this place. If I'm right... something in here is where my dream is leading me to," Aelita says.
As Odd and Ulrich start looking around, I can't help but notice a framed poster of a forest on the wall. Unlike everything else, it managed to survive whatever upended the rest of the room, probably because of its innocent appearance.
"Aelita... you said your nightmare was in a forest, right?" I ask. Once she nods, I turn to the boys,
"Odd, Ulrich? Can you take that poster off?"
They nod and go to the wall standing on each side of the image. Together they carefully take the poster off the wall, revealing a hole hidden behind it.
Aelita's eyes widen, she goes over to the wall and she steps up to reach inside. Once her arm starts coming back out with something, she gasps at the sight of it. Aelita takes the object out of the hole for us to see and holds it before us.
The item is a fabric doll of a purple haired, tan-skinned elf boy with a long blue hat that tapered into a point. Its outfit consists of a white long-sleeved tunic fastened to the left side of its chest in a black line with a clasp that overlapped with the other half. Puffy shorts ended slightly above its knees, leaving its lower legs exposed with curled ankle-high boots on its feet. A long pink sash with tied tassels at the end dangles from its waist and a lighter purple partial shroud hung over its shoulders, being open in the front and back, making it look like it has fanned sleeves.
"It's... Mister Puck," she smiles.
In Mrs. Meyer's class
Aelita stares at Mister Puck, her head on the desk. She holds Mister Puck in her hand.
"This doesn't make sense; how did I know where to look for him?" she wonders.
"I'm not sure," Jeremy replies. "But it does seem your dreams have some sort of connection to the Hermitage."
"I just wish I knew," Aelita says while taking Mister Puck off the desk. She rubs his face while staring contemplatively, as if the doll had the answer.
"Aw would you look at that?" a voice asks. Turning to it, I see that it's Sissi.
She laughs, "She still plays with dolls! What a laugh!"
Abruptly running up to us, Sissi snatches Mister Puck out of Aelita's hands and runs behind a desk.
"No! Give it back!" Aelita exclaims.
I growl, "Sissi, you're going to get it!"
Sissi smirks and passes Mister Puck to Herb, and he throws it to Nicholas at the other end of the room.
"Give the doll back Polikaff," Ulrich says, going over to the somewhat freckled blond.
Odd covers Nicholas' other side, trying to corner him, "Or else you're going to have to deal with us."
"What are you two talking about? What doll?" Nicholas asks as he tosses it to Sissi.
I prepare to vault over the desk between me and Sissi to intercept the flying doll, but another hand snatches it before it's even halfway across. I look to see it's Cameron who has caught Mister Puck.
"Now I'm not particularly fond of people who bully others," Cameron says, he starts walking to Nicholas and Herb, who starts to back up. "In fact, I'm not fond of them at all. But picking on someone who is supposed to be your classmate? That's just low."
He turns to Sissi and glares at her, "There's nothing wrong if a person plays with dolls. Heck, I know a guy who still plays with action figures. Believe me, he's old. And you know what? Some of these "dolls" are worth quite a bit of money, Sissi."
He walks to Aelita and hands her Mister Puck with a smile, "Here you go, Aelita." Aelita looks up to Cameron, and smiles back to him as she accepts her doll back.
"Thanks, Cameron," she says.
The door opens, and Mrs. Meyer enters the classroom.
"What's going on in here? Everyone settle down, now!" Mrs. Meyer orders.
She notices us gathered with Sissi and her group, she gives us a stern look,
"Jeremy, Cameron? Care to explain?"
"Um... see, the thing is Mrs. Meyer-" Jeremy starts, but Cameron interrupts him.
"I was just giving a lesson to the class ma'am. An important one."
"Oh really?" Mrs. Meyer asks. She walks over to her desk and goes to one of the drawers. Opening a drawer, she takes out a stack of papers, and puts them on the desk.
"Well then here's another lesson: pop quiz!" Mrs. Meyer exclaims.
The rest of the class groans. Someone says,
"Thanks a lot Cameron."
Vending machines area
Aelita, Jeremy, Odd, Ulrich, and I are by the vending machines area.
Oof… that pop quiz was rough. Though something tells me we would have gotten it either way, even if Sissi and her group didn't cause a commotion, I think.
Aelita holds Mister Puck tightly. Cameron walks up to us.
"Hey guys, did any of you lose a train station locker key by any chance?" he asks, holding up a key.
"A train station locker key?" Jeremy asks. Cameron gives the item to Jeremy, and he looks at it closely.
"I wonder... could it have been..." he mutters musingly before his eyes widen in realization.
"Oh, of course! Cameron thanks a million!"
"You're welcome, Jeremy. Aelita, how are you doing? If you need any help with Sissi and her groupies, I'd be more than happy to teach them a lesson again," Cameron offers.
Aelita nods, "Thanks, Cameron. I appreciate that."
"Anytime. Anyways, I'd better get going," Cameron waves his hand goodbye, and starts walking away. Yumi walks up to him and passes by him.
"Yumi, good to see you," Cameron nods, and continues to walk away.
"Uh hey Cameron," Yumi says, nodding. She walks to us and asks,
"What was that about?"
"I believe Cameron just gave us a very important key to this mystery," Jeremy says.
"Ha! Good one Einstein!" Odd laughs.
Train Station
Following the number on the train station key, we reach the locker.
"Would you like to do the honors?" Jeremy asks Aelita. She puts the key in the slot and turns it, opening the locker. Two suitcases are in it. One black and one silver. We gasp. Looking at each case, there are two sets of initials. FH and MB.
I know FH stands for Franz Hopper… but I have no idea who MB is… I think.
"FH? MB?" Ulrich asks, "What does that stand for?"
"Fuzzy hands? Money Banks?" Odd jokes.
Aelita takes the black suitcase and I take the silver suitcase. Aelita unlocks the suitcase and I unlock the silver suitcase. The black suitcase reveals what looks like cases of CDs. The silver suitcase reveals a sleek looking laptop.
"A laptop? What's a laptop doing in a suitcase?" Odd asks.
"No idea, let me check the CDs first," Jeremy says. He takes one the CDs. He takes his laptop, out of his bag and opens the disk drive. He places the CD in it, and the disk drive closes. He starts typing on his laptop, as a digital folder with the name Franz Hopper appears on his screen.
"Franz Hopper's diary," Jeremy says.
"Great, maybe we'll find out more about the Hermitage's mysterious owner," Yumi says. She puts her hand on Aelita's shoulder. Jeremy continues to type on his laptop, and a few strings of numbers appear on it.
Jeremy narrows his eyes as he analyzes the code, "Not right away. The diary is encrypted; I'm going to have to decode it."
"How much time do you need? One, maybe two hours?" Ulrich asks.
"More like one or two years. Let's see if this laptop holds some good news," Jeremy replies. He takes the laptop out of the suitcase and opens it. Powering it on, it seems to boot up rather quickly and he stares at it before adjusting his glasses.
"Huh, that's... unexpected," Jeremy says.
Ulrich moves beside him, "What is?"
We all gather to look at the laptop and gasp,
"A password? That's it?" Odd asks as we look at eight empty hyphens on the screen. "I was expecting some sort of super firewall."
"An eight-digit code… that's roughly 40,000 combinations," Jeremy says.
I shake my head and correct him, "40,320 to be precise."
"Oof… I'm not sure if I can enter the right code. And there's no way of knowing if this laptop has any security measures…" Jeremy trails off.
Ulrich raises an eyebrow, "Like what?"
"If we enter the wrong code too many times… something might happen," I explain.
"What do you think is on this laptop Jeremy?" Aelita asks.
Jeremy shakes his head, "I'm not sure… There must be some kind of information on it that's valuable, yet not too valuable."
"Well it seems to me whoever this MB person is, he or she must have left it for someone to find," Yumi guesses.
"Should we take it?"
Looking at the laptop, I nod and say,
"Yeah… I'm not sure why, but if it was purposely left in Franz Hopper's locker. I think there must be some sort of connection with him or Lyoko. Jeremy, I'll take that laptop off your hands."
He nods and closes the laptop before handing it to me,
"Sure thing, Lila."
I'll find out what's on this laptop… I know I will, I think.
"How long do you it will take you to crack the code?" Ulrich asks.
Looking at him, I say, "I might be able to decode it, but it'll take a while. Less than a year or two though, maybe six months?"
"Six months?" he repeats incredulously.
"Math was always my best subject during homeschooling," I idly explain.
"But honestly… I have no idea how long this could take. I can't work on this laptop on a daily basis; none of us have that kind of time. But in case it's important, I'll try to work on it when I can."
"Okay," Ulrich nods.
Inside Lila and Aelita's room
It's late at night. I'm staring at the ceiling, as my thoughts wander about the MB's laptop we found earlier today.
An eight-digit coded laptop… So many possibilities… and more mysteries it could be hiding… I think.
The Next Day
We're all in Mrs. Meyer's class with her writing on the blackboard. For some reason, Odd appears to be concentrating on the lesson and even taking notes.
Odd's concentrating in class? This is new… I trail off.
After a while, he raises his hand, "Ma'am, may I be excused?"
Mrs. Meyer turns to him, "Is everything okay Odd?"
"I'm not feeling well ma'am. Can Lila and Aelita take me to the infirmary?" Odd asks.
"Huh?" Jeremy and Ulrich asks.
"Um... very well," she hesitantly answers at the strange request. "But Lila, Aelita, please come back as soon as you can."
Aelita and I get up along with Odd. We walk out of the room and make our way to the nurse's office.
In the courtyard
"Odd what's wrong? Did you finally eat too much?" I joke in an effort to fill the weird silence from him.
Odd stops walking. Aelita and I look at each other, wondering if he took offense to the jab at his eating habits. My instincts also start warning me that something is very wrong with the situation.
"Odd, she was just joking. Tell us... what's wrong?" Aelita asks. Odd turns to us with his head down. He brings his head up and his eyes flicker with Xana's symbol in them as he scowls at us.
"Odd... no!" Aelita gasps. Odd's hands light up with purple sparks, and he launches electricity at us. I react and shove Aelita out of the way while jumping in the opposite direction as the bolts fly past before striking the walls of the school.
Deciding to thank myself later for picking up my exercise again, I rush right at Odd and slide across the ground, taking his legs out from under him along the way. Quickly rolling on top of his back, I pin his hands to the ground, so he can't fire out of them. Xana is very intelligent, but lacks innovation at times, using only the hands as conduits for his possessed victims' electric attacks.
Glancing at Aelita, who's still paralyzed with disbelief, I decide to urge her along.
"Aelita, run!" I call as the possessed boy struggles beneath me. I take my cell phone out of my pocket, and toss it to her. She manages to catch it.
"Text 'SOS Xana' to the others and head to the factory; I'll hold him off!"
"O-okay!" Aelita exclaims, stammering slightly, and holding onto my cell phone, she starts dialing one of the others.
Odd's body becomes black, grey and blurry as his supercharged speed allows him to start struggling at a quicker pace, soon throwing me off.
Having to trust that Aelita followed my instructions, I use the momentum to spin on my shoulders and roll perpendicular to my course as another blast of electricity hits where I landed. Kicking up to my feet, I regard Odd again, who seems angry now.
I make sure to keep myself between him and Aelita's path while saying,
"Now the others will know that you're attacking and stop you."
Odd blurs forward, but I manage to brace myself and grab his waist, angling backwards and suplexing his head into the ground with his own momentum.
I roll away to avoid any counterattack, and Xana turns to his stomach with a growl through Odd's mouth as he supports his upper body with one hand on the ground and an arm under his chest. Slight blood runs down the top of his head from the harsh blow. While keeping my focus, I can't help but wince on the inside.
Sorry, Odd, I think. If I damage your body, the spectre is more likely to leave since it can only optimize so much.
As if to prove my point, Odd gets up again, but is a little unsteady from a likely concussion. A few body blows or a bruise to the leg would probably make it evacuate, if the tower doesn't get deactivated first.
"Smith!" Jim yells out from nearby. "What's going on here?! Shouldn't you two be in class?!"
My eyes widen before a black miasma leaks out of Odd. He falls over unconscious. I turn and yell,
"Jim, run!"
But he's stunned at the sight of the spectre and it zooms over to him, enveloping him as he shouts in surprise and pain.
Knowing what's coming next, I hurriedly pull Odd onto my shoulders piggyback style and start running. Xana probably knows that the original plan is lost, so now he'll be coming for us to cut down on our numbers.
I don't hear but so much as feel Xana's eyes trained on me once again as I leave the school to head for cover in the park. It's the only defendable spot where I can have space to fight and possibly get something to fight with. A fourteen-year-old body against a possessed, fully grown and fit – if husky – gym teacher wouldn't end well without some kind of advantage.
But I need to be careful not to seriously hurt Jim, I remind myself. We can't afford a return trip on just anything, and if he's injured badly, he might question what happened. I need to stall him.
Once I'm in the trees, I set Odd down near a trunk far away from the entrance and grab a shovel left behind in a wheelbarrow, probably by the groundskeeper.
I then head back to the main path where I know Xana will see me. Sure enough, he arrives at the entrance, the monochromatic aura fading as he stops his dash.
I brandish the tool like a two-handed club and say,
"Bring it on, you lousy computer virus. This is payback for last time."
Jim blurs forward again with a fist reared back, but I duck down to the opposite side and dive away, planting the shovel head into the ground so that I could use the handle as a lever to spin around and stay on my feet afterwards.
He tries to kick me afterwards, but I keep the pole between me and his leg, blocking it by supporting my whole weight behind the grounded tool.
Growling, the possessed man shoots more electricity from his hand, a larger spread than with Odd. I wrench the shovel upward, taking a chunk of the dirt path up and heaving it, creating a gap in the attack from it grounding in the airborne earth.
But Jim's other hand lashes forward and grabs the shovel, wrenching it out of my grasp before throwing it away.
Internally cursing, I backpedal to put some distance between us and head away from the path to the trees opposite of Odd's direction. Jim catches up in an instant with his hand sparking, but I dive and tumble between his legs to dodge an electric blast, taking advantage of my smaller size. Supporting my upper body with my arms after I'm clear, I spring upwards with my feet to land a double bronco kick in his lower back while he's off guard, sending him off balance and lurching forward into the tree he just zapped.
I take that opportunity to run past him and further into the cluster of trees, climbing up one of them and holding still.
Jim walks into the area, eyes looking around with the symbols pulsing. Eventually, he appears to lose his patience and more electricity starts gathering into his hands, forming a large sphere of energy that appears ready to burst and zap the whole park in an effort to find me.
I silently cross my fingers as I edge to the other side of the trunk from him, hoping that I wouldn't have to explain all the damage to the park.
My hopes are answered as the electricity fizzles out and Jim drops down unconscious. I let out a sigh of relief and jump down from the tree, knowing that I will still have to come up with a cover story.
Dragging Jim's unconscious body with a bit of difficulty to a tree and hooking one of his feet so that the toes were over a particularly pronounced root, I start shaking him.
"Jim. Jim!" I quietly call. "Please, wake up!"
He groans and opens his eyes, thankfully clear of the Xana symbol. Narrowing them in slight confusion, he mutters,
"Smith…?"
Then his gaze clears, and he stands up with his arms crossed after brushing the grass and dirt off his face, "Wait… I remember now! You and Della Robbia were causing some kind of trouble at school. You're supposed to be in class!"
"We were on our way to Miss Yolanda's office. He mentioned he wasn't feeling well in class. Then, we ended up fighting, because I said that magenta's a cooler color than purple," I falsely explain.
"After I managed to beat him, you showed up, but I didn't want to get in trouble, so I ran to the park. You tripped on that root there and were out for a bit. But I'll accept responsibility for starting the incident; I'm sorry you got hurt."
"Well, I think Principal Delmas will want to see you about fighting and evading authority," he says, grabbing me around one of the wrists as he leads me back to Kadic.
While he drags me away, I discreetly text the others that Odd is unconscious in the park and that I would be at Delmas's office.
Inside the principal's office
"I must say that I'm very disappointed in you, Ms. Smith," Principal Delmas says with a stern expression. "Starting a fight over such an insignificant reason, I thought that you were smarter than that."
"I apologize, Mr. Delmas," I reply with my head bowed. "I promise it won't happen again."
"See that it doesn't," he warns. "You'll be serving detention with Jim tomorrow afternoon."
"Yes sir."
Once I leave the office and the reception hall, Yumi meets me outside and gestures for me to follow.
Later in Jeremy's room
When we arrive at Jeremy's room, Aelita is sitting on Jeremy's bed while Odd and Ulrich are on the ground the blond with a bandage over his head. Jeremy faces us as we arrive.
I turn to Odd, "Sorry about the head injury. I was trying to force the spectre out of you by making you unconscious. Then it just leaped to Jim when he came. Don't worry, though, I told them that I started it."
"It's cool," he replies easily. "But out of curiosity, what did you say we went at it over?"
"That we were fighting over whether magenta or purple was the cooler color."
"What?" he asks in disbelief. "That's dumb. Everybody knows that purple is cooler."
We share a laugh over the joke before he frowns a bit.
"The bad news is, now that I think about it, I remember destroying those CDs we found right before I went after Lila and Aelita," Odd explains.
Jeremy sighs in relief,
"Phew, is that all?"
"'Is that all?' That's terrible news!" Odd exclaims.
"Not really," Jeremy replies, shaking his head. "Last night when we got back from the train station, I copied the CDs onto a restricted part of the supercomputer. Only I know how to access it."
"Jeremy, you're a genius," Aelita says.
I cross my arms, "I can't help but wonder why Xana didn't go after the laptop we found."
"Maybe the laptop wasn't as much of a threat as Hopper's notes were," Ulrich guesses,
"Seems to me Xana had a problem with them more."
"There's something about this laptop, Ulrich. I can't put my finger on it..." I trail off.
Odd nods, "Yeah, it is strange."
"I'm sure that, in time, we'll find out more about MB's laptop," Yumi reassures.
"We need to be careful, you guys," Jeremy warns,
"Xana is getting more and more powerful, especially since he's been able to possess Odd and me. We need to make sure he doesn't get a chance to possess all of us. If he one day succeeds… then after that, there's no telling what he could accomplish from there. Now it seems any of us are in danger, even with the immunity we thought we would have by going to Lyoko…" he trails off.
I nod agreeing with him, "It's certainly going to get tougher from here on out, Jeremy."
Later that night
Inside Lila and Aelita's room
I'm sitting on my chair from my desk, I look at Aelita. We're both in our pajamas.
"Are you doing okay from what you saw earlier today?" I ask her.
"I am. Took a while to understand that. How are you such a good fighter?" Aelita asks.
"I'm not sure honestly… instinct I guess," I reply.
"Ah okay," Aelita nods. "We should get going to bed right?" she asks.
"Yeah. I don't want Jim to see that we're staying up late. He usually does his rounds right about now. I already gave him enough trouble today," I reply.
"Okay, good night Lila," Aelita smiles.
"Good night Aelita," I smile and go up my ladder. Aelita goes over to shut the light off and she does, she then returns to her bed. Today has a certainly been an eventful day.
And done!
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LyokoWarrior1994