Second Visit

Karen

Small Brown showed up Large Brown in gym class and got a lot of smoke in his face. Then later, Strong Bronze sent a serious smoky dare at Small Brown, and the little guy agreed. Much later, they went to the factory and…blue.

The day ended peacefully.

I opened my eyes. Did Odd get in trouble with Jim again?

At gym class, Jim was going through the list again. "One: run. Two: jump off the spring board. Three: set your hands on the horse. Four:" and I can't remember four. "Five: land on your feet on the mat." He gave a demonstration, but he ended up falling practically on his head!

Odd laughed, "He went to five without passing four!"

Then Herve tried it. He went clean over the horse and landed on his back on the mat!

"How did he do that?" I asked. "I think it would take a genius to miss like that!"

Odd tried it next and did it perfectly. Then he said, very snobbishly, "You're right, Jim: only a half-wit couldn't do it."

Bingo. He got detention. Then Ulrich made a dare to him: "I bet you a week of desserts that you can't go twenty-four hours without bragging."

"You're on!"

Jeremie got them both back on track by telling us, basically, that we were going back to the jungle.

Ulrich

We made it to the Replika, and Aelita docked the Skid on a tower. This time, Yumi and I went in. We found the door, but, we couldn't get it open. Okay, okay, I smashed the control panel when it didn't open for Yumi. "What do we do now?"

"Uh, get to the power generator and neutralize it."

Yumi smiled at me. "I'll stay here and guard the door. You go find the generator."

I dashed off on Jeremie's direction and found it.

"What does it look like, Ulrich?"

"Well, uh…like this big machine with a bunch of flashing thingamajigs all over it."

That got him to laugh, at least. "Do you see a red button?"

"There's not just one, there's a lot of them! This thing's lit up like a pinball machine!"

"Just go by elimination."

"No. I'd rather do this my way."

"Your way, huh Ulrich? Like, smashing it with your saber and short-circuiting the supercomputer?"

"You guessed it."

"Uh, give me a minute to think it over."

It did take about a minute for Jeremie to get back to me. "Ulrich? Your plan may lack finesse, but it should work. Do it."

I slammed it with both sabers and jumped back as it sparked.

"Great work, guys. Head back to the Skid. Mission accomplished."

Suddenly, power started up all over the room! "Uh, hold on, Jeremie, something's up."

"What is it, Ulrich?"

"The power's back on."

"Ulrich, there's gotta be a backup generator somewhere!"

"Gee, you think? Even I could have figured that out, only where is it?"

"How should I know? I'm looking for it!"

"Well, you'd better hurry. I'm heading back to Yumi."

I got there just in time to save Yumi from a spider, and then we were both running from the spiders. Jeremie did find the backup, but by then, well…

Odd

I took out William all by myself! "Jeremie, what happened to the two lovebirds?" I looked up at the Skid. "Oh, I see. They knocked each other out!"

Karen asked, "Does this mean the mission's a failure?"

"Not at all! I found the auxiliary generator, but there's no one to destroy it."

I piped up. "Not to sound like I'm bragging, but…there's me."

"All right, Odd. You and Karen get back in the Skid. I'll teleport you both."

"No, Jeremie. Someone has to protect the Skid, and Odd volunteered to go."

I yelled, "When this is over, don't say I went just to show off!"

I dropped into the lab and followed Jeremie's directions to find the generator. One big problem, though, was that the generator was surrounded by spiders. Then Jeremie gave the bad news: "You're on your own, and you have to act fast or we'll lose the Skid, Ulrich, and Yumi!"

I lunged around the corner. "Geronimo!"

Well, to make a long story short, I took out all the spiders and shot out the generator with my last arrow. Then Einstein beamed me back to the Skid – in Aelita's place, actually. "Nice place you got here, Aelita!"

Ulrich woke up right about then. "Huh? What's happening?"

"Nothing, Ulrich. Everything's cool. Go back to sleep."

Jeremie beamed Karen back to the Skid, and I flew it out. Piece of cake – for someone like me.

A/N: This chapter is kind of fast, but it will be the last one that coincides almost perfectly with the episode. The others will definitely be a bit stranger.