Episode Six : Cats

Soundtrack: Barenakedladies' "It's All Been Done" (Yumi. Ulrich. It's perfect.)

Sissi's Lyoko appearance was something I spent a lot of time debating over. I have a ton of concept sketches but, unfortunately, no way to get them on the computer. Then the actual show went and copped my idea for her weapon… and suddenly Aelita's using pink force fields to fight monsters… As I've said before, I wrote this before I saw Season Three. It's one of those convergent evolution things.

Now, because my vacation starts earlier then I thought, and I don't want to leave this episode unfinished, you get two chapters today! Yup, this is a bonus chapter. And that will be all until August, when I return.

Taidine

Chapter Three: Finale

With a click and a hiss, the weathered metal doors of the elevator slid open. Jeremie stepped out casually into the cavernous space of cables and metal that was the computer lab. Sissi followed, arms crossed over her pink shirt, trying her very hardest to match him for indifference. It wasn't easy; although she had been here before, and, thanks to the software uploaded by Kloe, could now remember those previous visits, it was pretty crazy to think this sat under the Factory every day, passing electricity through its wires, humming gently to itself and clinking out lines of code, utterly unknown to anyone outside the small circle of Ulrich's group, Kloe, and herself.

Pretty crazy, but exhilarating.

Jeremie strode across the room and dropped into his chair. Florescent code reflected off his glasses. "Odd, Aelita, get to the scanner rooms."

Odd held the doors open with one hand. "How about Sissi? She's not half bad in a fight." Sissi looked back with suspicious, narrowed eyes, but the purple-clad boy looked as serious as he ever did (not very).

"I'd rather not," Jeremie answered, typing rapidly. Odd shrugged and stepped backwards into the elevator. The doors shut in front of him, leaving Sissi stranded in the computer lab.

The principal's daughter walked a haughty circuit of the room nose in the air, and pulled to a stop near Jeremie's desk. The computer geek flicked a switch on his earpiece and pulled up a pair of character cards: an elf girl in a hideous shade of pink, followed by a purple-clad boy with cat paws, a tail, and Odd's unmistakable haircut. Sissi knew what the other cards would look like, too – two more video game characters, a girl in a kimono with Yumi's pale, smug face and a boy who looked like Ulrich in dorky samurai armor. Not that Ulrich himself could ever look dorky, but his fashion sense for his character was less then impressive.

"Scanner, Aelita," Jeremie announced, "Scanner, Odd." There was a hum of distant machinery.

"Transfer, Odd. Transfer, Aelita." Sissi plopped down at one edge of the desk with a pout.

"Virtualization," declared Jeremie with evident satisfaction, "Mountain sector today. I'm sending in your vehicles."

If Sissi peered around the edge of the screens, she could see a familiar glowing map, marked with one green blip and one yellow. Not especially interesting, or in fact dangerous. She crossed one leg over the other and wondered what was going on back at school.

- - - -

"How long," Ulrich said, staring at the ceiling grimly. The ground was extremely far away and the stack of boxes he and Yumi were perched on trembled each time the lions below rubbed against it. From their rumbling growls, the felines knew exactly how precarious that was. "How long," Ulrich began after swallowing and taking a deep breath, "do you think it will take?"

Yumi was looking down, holding the front edge of one crate. "I don't know. Let's talk about something else."

The thing that had been bugging Ulrich for the last hour, although it now seemed trivial in comparison, immediately sprang to mind. "Fine. Why did you agree to go to the dance with-"

"Agree?" Clearly, she could already guess where that sentence was going. She cut him off derisively. "Who said anything about agreeing? I said William asked me to go to the dance with him."

One of the felines below rammed into the stack of boxes, making it wobble worryingly. "And… what did you say?" Ulrich prompted through tight lips, hands clasped to the edge of his box, eyes still fixed on the ceiling as though his line of sight was something physical enough to support him.

"I told him to buzz off and not ask me again," Yumi mumbled rapidly.

"Oh."

From outside the door came a muffled voice, heavy with ready sarcasm. "Yeah, they went this way. Tell me, did Odd in any way imply school was more safe then wherever they were going?"

Ulrich recognized that voice, and so, after a moment, did Yumi. "What's Kloe doing here?" She whispered.

There was a click; a handle turned, and the door to the storeroom cracked open. The girl doing the opening was tall, blonde, and wearing an expression of appeased curiosity. "I always wondered what was back here…"

The lions saw her. The person looking over her shoulder – Herve, the more intellectual of Sissi's companions – saw the lions. "Shut the door!" He exclaimed, a flat, nasal twang in his voice, and didn't wait for Kloe to obey, grabbing the handle himself and hauling the door shut. The felines lunged; there was a pair of dull thuds as each of them met thick metal.

Yumi leaned out over the edge of the boxes, trying to hear their conversation. Ulrich resisted the urge to pull her closer to the wall and tried to listen himself. "What was it?" asked a third voice, this one guttural and unpracticed. It belonged to Nicolas – apparently Sissi's whole gang was here, with the possible exception of Sissi herself.

"You wouldn't believe us if we told you," said Kloe. The shortness of breath brought on by dangerous situations narrowly escaped was audible as she spoke.

"Lions," said Herve, uninflected and matter-of-fact.

Ulrich could almost hear Kloe pulling out the pen she kept behind her ear; her reporter's instincts must have been buzzing. "The lions from the displays, unless someone busted out the dummies and brought in replacements to confuse us. I think there must have been a mix up between the museum and the zoo, because these are quite alive."

"Yes, I saw that," Herve agreed. There was a hint of a 'thank you, miss obvious' glare in his voice. "But how?"

There was a pause, then Kloe breathed a word that sounded suspiciously like, "XANA."

"Wha?" asked Nicolas' thuggish voice.

"I'll explain as we go, but we have to get out of the cafeteria," Kloe said quickly.

Yumi and Ulrich exchanged glances. The felines lurking by the door growled and resumed their pacing. "Yumi, do you have your cell phone?" Ulrich asked. At her nod, he breathed out in relief, never looking away from the ceiling. "Call Jeremie."

- - - -

In Lyoko, a single hovering rectangle of pink-and-purple plastic sped along the narrow pathways of the mountain sector. A cat boy with the same color scheme and haircut as Odd perched upon it; arms tipped with four-fingered, paw like gloves spread to either side for balance, and a striped tail fluttered behind him. Holding tight to his waist was the second passenger, a girl with pink hair and pointed ears.

The paths on which they traveled were a thick mass of arching trails, riddled with intersections and dead ends. High, sheer walls of rock enclosed them, creating a mazelike structure. Fortunately, they had a guide.

"Turn left at the next junction," instructed Jeremie's disembodied voice, for all the world like the automatic GPS-guidance system of some fancy car. "There should be a turnoff onto a downward-sloping ramp. And – ah! – two blocks, dead ahead!"

"We're not going to make it without backup, Jeremie," Odd piped, "XANA's put out quite the welcoming committee. Laser arrow!" That last wasn't for Jeremie. Two cubes-on-legs, each marked with the concentric-circles symbol of XANA, loomed suddenly ahead. At Odd's words, a pair of his trademark projectiles were released from one gauntlet, expertly taking the obstacles out – but not before one fired off a laser that grazed the catboy's side in a crackle of blue lightning. "How many life points have I got left?"

Jeremie grimaced at the depressing figure on the screen. "Not enough," he allowed finally. He didn't have to look up to see the cat-in-the-creamery smile spreading across Sissi's face.

There was a beep; a cell phone-shaped panel popped up suddenly on the screen, an inset of a black haired, Asian girl just above it. Jeremie allowed himself a smile of his own. "Thank goodness. Yumi?"

"Hi. " The girl's voice sounded uneasy and apologetic. "Ulrich and I have some problems. I don't think we can make it. But you might have company soon."

"Who?" Jeremie asked, scooting the cell phone window over so he could see the map, "Odd, Aelita, take the right fork."

"Kloe," Yumi responded unhappily, "Hurry it up over there."

Jeremie glanced over his glasses at Sissi and paused his frenzied typing for a moment to rub his temples. "Got it," he told his earpiece. There was a click as Yumi hung up. "Odd, Aelita, the tunnel up ahead is clear. Go through it and it's straight on to the Tower." At times like this, one had to choose the lesser of two evils. "I have to code a character for Sissi."

"Hmph. I wondered how long it would take you." He glanced over his shoulder. Sissi had replaced her smug grin with a haughty glare, but Jeremie was already regretting this.

"Weapon?"

"Mm? Unarmed, I guess," she hazarded.

"She took a few classes to impress Ulrich," Odd clarified, voice squeaky in Jeremie's earpiece. "Actually, I think she took a lot of classes to impress Ulrich."

"Fine," said Jeremie tersely, pulling up a new program, "Get down to the scanner room – that's the lowest level."

Sissi tapped the elevator button. "Make the outfit pink and orange," she commanded as she stepped inside.

- - - -

Odd and Aelita glided through the dark interior of the tunnel. Purple shadows pooled in the folds of the rock and shifted on the virtual bodies of the two warriors, periodically obscuring them altogether, but only that slow change of light and shadow betrayed their movement.

"So, Aelita, you're the other computer genius. How long will Jeremie take?" Odd piped. His voice echoed strangely in the tunnels.

"I don't know," Aelita breathed, carefully shifting her weight behind him to keep the 'board balanced. "A lot of the character process is automated. Unless he decides to program a power, he's just going to be suggesting weapons and an outfit, really. It all depends on how much he leaves to the computer."

"Oh," Odd said, as if he understood. "You mean I don't have to wear this purple cat thing? I've sort of gotten attached to it-"

A spark of light appeared in front of them and rapidly widened into the mouth of the tunnel. The pair glided out onto a broad, flat circle of land. Ahead, the pale shaft of the Tower sprang towards the sky. It was nearly obscured by laser fire.

Just outside the tunnel, a single white tarantule took deadly aim with its gun arms. A pair of krabes flanked it, preventing sideways escape. "Doesn't this make you feel special?" Odd asked sarcastically.

"Odd, if you take out a krab, I'll try to dodge around," Aelita said, leaping off the edge of the overboard and deftly dodging scattered laser fire.

"My pleasure," Odd replied with a feral, tattooed grin. He took aim at the krab on the right. "Laser arrow!" It was a good shot, taking the creature on one jointed leg, but it didn't let its volley of lasers falter. Aelita dodged, wove, and darted between XANA's monsters. They didn't seem to care, focusing their fire on Odd; he loosed another arrow at the second krab, to little effect.

Aelita leaned forward, feet pounding the virtual ground. She could see something ahead – a very unwelcome something, large, luminous, and multitentacled, like a jellyfish of alien seas. She would have to go around. Focused on the scipazoa, Aelita cut right…

What she failed to realize was that the scipazoa hovered above a very narrow strip of land, bridging the island she and Odd had emerged on and the much smaller island containing the Tower. Without this small tidbit, it came as a total surprise to the elf when her feet met nothing but air, and she was suddenly falling off the edge of the world.

Odd leapt off his overboard to avoid a laser, ran two steps, and managed to leap back on. Being the sole target of three monsters with deadly aim was never fun, but past the bone white, articulated limbs of the tarantule, he had just glimpsed the great, pulsating form of the scipazoa.

- - - -

In the scanner room, a golden tube cracked open. Sissi peered dubiously into its faintly luminous interior, hands clasped behind her back, then stepped in with utmost care and turned to face the doors. "Scanner," Jeremie's voice said, making her start. The doors shut with the clang of doom. "Sissi."

- - - -

Tentacles lashed out, snagging the falling elf with a suddenness that drove the breath out of her virtual frame. She struggled futilely for a moment, but her limbs were pinned to her sides; the creature was holding her helpless.

- - - -

There was a flash of brilliant light. Sissi squinted her mascara'd eyes, frowning as if trying to block it out. A strange tingling swept across her body, followed by a strong updraft that made her hair float like some dark seaweed, nearly tearing it free of her headband. "Transfer, Sissi," said Jeremie's voice.

- - - -

Aelita's eyes were wide as the scipazoa adjusted its hold, positioning a tentacle to either side of her head. A faint, paralyzing glow pulsed through her.

On Jeremie's screen, a box appeared, obscuring one corner of his currently running program. He ignored it, or tried to, although his face grew grim. He could see, out of the corner of one eye, the translucent, monochromatic image of Aelita rotate into position, and the countdown began. With a twitch, he stabbed the enter key. "Virtualization!"

Odd dodged another pair of lasers; one singed his tail. With a shrill growl, he took aim at the krab. "Laser arrow!" It exploded into mechanical components, offering him a brief but painful glimpse of Aelita frozen in the grip of the scipazoa's tentacles, before a rain of laser fire from the tarantule closed the gap. "Great," he muttered, trying to dodge and aim at the same time, "Jeremie, about that – oh."

She came from behind XANA's lines, moving gracefully through the air. A black leotard, sprinkled with sequins, clung to her body, glinting from low neckline to short skirt. Some kind of filmy pink scarf was bound to both wrists and wrapped about her neck so it flowed behind in a pair of diaphanous loops. A faint glow, a scintillating pink corona, outlined her hands: when she touched down, one slipper-clad toe finding purchase atop the tarantule's smooth carapace, and chopped at the boldly outlined symbol of XANA decorating it with one stiffened hand, there was a flash like a lens flare and the monster collapsed, then vanished.

Sissi rose distastefully from the wreckage. "Jeremie got the colors wrong."

Capitalizing on the distraction, despite being perhaps more then a little distracted himself, Odd aimed at the remaining krab. "Laser arrow!" The monster managed to get in a single shot, collapsing Odd's board, but Odd's arrow flew true; a moment later, the krab had likewise been destroyed.

"Good job," said Jeremie. Sissi looked around for the source of the disembodied voice; Odd, being more accustomed to the phenomena, grabbed her wrist and began running. "The scipazoa is alone. Guess XANA wasn't counting on you escaping."

Sissi looked pleased for a scant moment, then began to frown again. "I said pink and orange. This is pink and black!"

"Sorry about that," Jeremie said. He sounded more trite then penitent.

Odd took careful aim at the jellyfishlike scipazoa. "Laser arrow!"

Sissi cut left. "I'll-"

Odd experienced a sudden flash of prescience. "Wait!" He shouted. The scipazoa was, of course, still on a narrow land bridge.

Perception shifted. The world slowed, as if everything was traveling through glue. Odd's arrow froze halfway to its target, carving a slow arc through the virtual atmosphere. He turned, dreamlike, to see Sissi tumbling off the edge of the path with excruciating slowness. Odd launched himself forward with one foot…

Everything was going at normal speed again. Not that it had ever stopped, but it certainly felt that way to Odd as his leap reached its zenith and he plummeted. He closed his eyes and pointed his toes, straining for speed. The arrow took the scipazoa in the center of its dome, and it released Aelita with a flailing convulsion of tentacles. One striped purple paw grabbed Sissi's wrist. The other snatched a virtual protrusion of rock. The principal's daughter looked upward, terror slowly fading. "Huh?"

"Digital sea," squeaked Odd conversationally between short, sharp breaths, jerking his hair at the misty depths below. He had a look of strain on his face; claws on one paw dug into the rocky virtual terrain, maintaining a tenuous hold. "You run out of life points, you just devirtualize. You fall down there, game over. Nothing we can do." The clinging purple claws slipped a notch. Sissi swayed dangerously, then reached up with her free hand to get a better grip on Odd's dangling wrist; there was a screeching noise as he lost another few inches, claws leaving furrows in the rock.

A pair of delicate hands, attacked to arms swathed in beige cloth, reached down, grasped Odd's arm firmly near the shoulder and, with a little escape of breath, yanked.

Sissi and Odd fell in a heap next to a winded Aelita, who gave them a quirky smile.

"Thanks," said Odd, disentangling himself from Sissi, standing casually, and rolling his shoulders. He looked very much like someone who had not just flirted with death. "Now let's get to the Tower before XANA throws any more surprises at us."

Sissi, on the other hand, was quite aware of her own mortality at the moment, and it showed. Her virtual form happened to have a pair of tattoos, black spirals extending outward from the corner of each eye and looping over her temples, so her wide-eyed stare was very pathetic indeed. However, nothing is effective without an audience, and since Odd and Aelita were already racing towards the Tower, she darted after them.

- - - -

"'Scuse me?" Nicolas asked the grey haired teacher guarding the door, "Uh… Ms. Hertz?"

"Hm?" She looked down at the orange-haired boy, brows knit as she tried to remember his name. Not one of her brighter students. "Yes… um… Nicolas?"

He nodded his head. "Yeah. Uh…" Now that he had her attention, he didn't know exactly what to do with it. "I, uh, had to use the bathroom, and the door was locked."

Behind him, the cafeteria doors swung open under the deft hands of Kloe, releasing the coral-shirted reporter and her companion, a rather dismal Herve, onto the school grounds.

Shutting the door, Kloe breathed a sigh of relief, made a come-hither gesture, and darted across the lawn. Herve followed at a shambling gait, a ridiculous sight in his preppy outfit and haircut that persisted in looking like a wig.

They hit the edge of the woods, panting, and Kloe slowed. "So?" Herve demanded flatly. "You said you would explain. Explain away."

""Sure thing," Kloe answered brusquely, picking her way over a fallen log. "There's an evil supercomputer trying to take over the world, Jeremie and his gang fight it, Aelita has some weird connection to it, people can actually go into it, and any time you feel like disbelieving me remember a display of stuffed cats came alive about an hour ago." She dropped to her knees, leaving Herve stuttering at the top of her choppy blonde haircut, and began to pry open the hatch.

"Speaking of cats," Herve said, "and let's just say I believe you for now – where's the one that was out here?"

There was a growl, and a flicker of movement from the shadows of the trees behind them. Kloe hauled the cover aside in a sudden burst of strength and dropped her legs into the dark shaft thus revealed. "You just had to ask, didn't you?"

Herve glanced back, mildly frightened, then gave a forced, nasal laugh. "That's not a lynx."

Indeed, it was not. The feline escaping from the woods was a small grey tabby. Kloe pursed her lips. "Oo-kay. I didn't know anyone kept cats around here." She began climbing down the ladder.

The tabby minced out of the undergrowth, wending herself around Herve's ankles. He sneezed, pushed the animal away, and followed Kloe down the shaft.

The cat leapt down, landing on her feet near a pair of skateboards, and streaked off down the tunnel. Herve followed it with a skeptical gaze until he was forced to return his attention to shutting the hatch.

- - - -

Aelita stopped in front of the Tower, looking left and right. Nothing. With mounting confidence, she placed both hands on the smooth white exterior; it rippled like water, then parted. Plunging in with a single deep breath, she found herself in a familiar cylindrical room of deep blue shadow. The three concentric rings of XANA's symbol were set into the floor, and as she stepped over each, it lit with a single melodious note. At the center, she closed her eyes, feeling the ground drop away under her.

- - - -

Jeremie pulled up the return-to-the-past program; the yellow dot of Aelita rested firmly in the center of the red activated Tower on his map. It wasn't that he wanted to keep Sissi or Kloe or anyone else from sharing the secret of Lyoko – Ulrich and Yumi had sounded like they were in real danger. This was prudence. Mostly.

There was a hiss behind him, and he turned just in time to see the elevator doors slide open. "Huh?" He had a momentary glimpse of Kloe, coral shirt, smug expression and all, and one of Sissi's cronies, a black-haired boy with glasses and bad acne, before a streak of grey hurtled out from between their feet.

Herve sneezed, again. Kloe grabbed his wrist and pulled – "You're allergic to cats, aren't you?" She didn't know how the tabby had gotten into the elevator, but it had knocked Jeremie off his chair from sheer inertia and appeared to be trying to claw out his eyes.

"Kloe!" Jeremie shouted, grappling with a creature that, while small, was composed entirely of claw and muscle. "I need you to launch… return to the past!"

- - - -

Aelita touched down gracefully on the platform near the top of the Tower and rested one palm on the tilted blue screen of the computer.

IDENTIFICATION: AELITA

- - - -

Kloe sat down at the computer dubiously, positioning her hands over the keyboard. She was competent computerwise, insofar as she could use Microsoft Word and surf the web, but whatever was on the screen now was completely incomprehensible to her. Herve would have been a better candidate, if he hadn't been doubled up against the wall, red eyed and sneezing. "Okay, what do I do?"

- - - -

CODE: LYOKO

"Tower deactivated," said Aelita, as the numbers around her faded to black.

- - - -

"Type return!" Jeremie called. The cat pinning him stiffened, digging its claws into his cheek. "Then hit enter!"

"Oh," said Kloe, tapping a few keys with both index fingers, "is that all?" She stabbed down the enter button.

White light exploded outward.

- - - -

Yumi and Ulrich sat back to back on the boxes. The lions had been throwing themselves against the stacks without success but, with a sudden glint of intelligence, the tawny female extended a broad paw, hooked her claws into the cardboard, and pulled.

The stack gave way, boxes tumbling outward from the wall, spilling pizzas and hamburgers and untrustworthy vegetables. Ulrich grabbed Yumi's hand as they fell.

A sheet of white light rammed into them.

- - - -

The crowd of students swept on towards the lunchroom with cheerful ignorance, but five on the edge of the crowd exchanged glances with more relief then simply the end of today's classes would account for.

"Oh, excuse me!" called a shrill voice. Moving towards the pleased Lyoko group through a narrow gap in the crowd was Sissi, looking fresher and dryer then they had seen her last.

Ulrich shoved past Yumi to stand between the two girls, face grim under a square of brown hair. "Sissi, I'm not going to the dance with you," he said flatly.

She arched one dark eyebrow in his direction. "Who asked you?" She shrilled, shouldering past. "Oh, Odd. Dance coming up, and I know you want to come with me."

"Huh?" The purple-clad boy was momentarily nonplussed. Yes, he had been in a similar situation before and had sharply, insultingly refused. But that had been then – before every other girl in the school had stopped talking to him, before Princessofhearts. And – remembering her in Lyoko – she's probably a good dancer.

He could hear the suppressed snickers of his friends. It was some effort to block them out. "I'll… think about it."

– Fin –