Odd Times Three!?

Karen

The white dragon went in to the lunch room to suddenly see – in sequence of each other – three brown dragons that looked exactly the same! The dragon just happened to be the one with the funny patch on its head.

The wing of dragons without Little Brown dashed off, and then smoke came billowing through, turning any dragon it touched into stone, including one of the Little Browns. It touched over White -

Lunch went by, without anything different happening, and only one Little Brown.

I looked up at the ceiling. Why did I have to have another funky-time dream? And what was with the triple-Odd thing?

"So what was your dream?" I hopped up and looked at the other bed. Aelita was sitting up looking at me.

"It was another crazy time dream," I sighed. "For some bizarre reason, there was three of Odd's dragon."

"What? I wonder what that's all about." Aelita looked startled, to say the least.

"I agree. But the craziest stuff in my screwy time dreams never happen, so maybe there won't be any big deal."

Aelita

I wasn't so sure that there was no big deal. Maybe it would have something to do with a XANA attack. Though of course I didn't say that.

At the breakfast table, Jeremie told an unhappy Odd that he had a new ability for Odd to test out: Teleportation. We would go to the factory in order to test it out. Odd was thrilled, but I wasn't sure that this ability would work. I mean, Karen's dream made me wonder.

In Lyoko, my suspicions were confirmed: the program had a bug that created clones of Odd! Now we had to figure out how to hide the three of them.

"I think Karen's going to wind up seeing all of you, so I wouldn't worry too much about hiding from her. But please, try not to get into trouble!"

Jeremie

I stayed at the factory, trying to figure out just what went wrong with the program, while everyone else went back to school. I could just imagine the chaos that could ensue while there were three identical boys running around the school.

A couple of hours later, it seemed, I found the problem and immediately called Odd. Or, well, one of them.

"Odd, the problem is that none of you are entirely whole right now – basically, you've been split into three parts, and it's very unstable. Eventually, all three of you are gong to vanish altogether! You have to find your clones and get them to the factory now! Once you're here, I'm going to virtualize all of you to Lyoko. Now that I've fixed your program, I should be able to put you three back together."

"Uh, how am I supposed to find them all? I lost track of them at school!"

"Well, where would you go if you suddenly found out that you had no school?"

Karen

I was watching Jim showing us how to throw a discus, when suddenly, this strange cloud of purple-gray smoke billowed in, and when it touched Jim he turned to stone, looking almost exactly like one of those Greek statues. It didn't take me long to figure out where this was in my dream. I started trying to outrun the smoke when I suddenly saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks: one Odd turning to stone, and another Odd sliding down on a fire hose in order to get the first, and craning my head up, I saw a third Odd holding onto the hose. I guess I stayed in one place too long, because I suddenly felt myself stiffening…

Aelita

I waited anxiously for them. Surely they would get to the factory in time. Finally, Odd dashed in to destroy all the monsters that were preventing me from getting at the tower, and I ran in.

"Tower deactivated." I watched the data fall to the bottom of the tower in relief. Then I heard Jeremie's voice say very welcome words:

"Return to the past now."

I found myself with Karen. She immediately lifted her hand up to her head.

"Headache?" I asked. I couldn't think of any other way to ask her what she felt.

"Um, actually, I always feel like this when I have a screwy time dream. I don't know why."

"Um…" I knew I had to tell her now; she noticed the return trip this time, and I didn't know when I would get another chance. "I know why you react this way. First of all, the computer game you asked me about?..."

Karen

I sat through Aelita's explanation in stunned silence. The computer game was actually a computer world? And XANA was a virus trying to destroy the earth? The computer game characters were virtualized kids that Aelita and I both knew? The headaches and weird dreams were caused by return trips? And she told me before that it was a computer game?!

Well, come on, Karen. Aelita didn't tell you that, you assumed that. There's a difference.

"And you're telling me all this because..."

"Because you already told me your secret. I couldn't very well keep this one from you. You're my friend. What more could I do?"

I smiled. I figured I knew what she felt like for the past couple of weeks, trying to keep the secret from me and not wanting to.

"Um…are you going to tell Jeremie?"

"Maybe not quite yet. I will, though."

I grinned almost as big as Odd does. "And do you want to bet that when you do, he'll have a litter of kittens?"

That sent both of us into hysterics. It sounded like Aelita was laughing with relief as well. I guess she figured out that she was forgiven for holding back for so long.

And she truly was. There was nothing that would change that.