Well, here's the next chapter. I don't own Code Lyoko, nor do I own anything from the show. I just own Kirsten, her Lyoko outfit, the plot of this story, and various things like that.

Anyway, I would really like it if you REVIEWED at the end of this chapter. PLEASE!!! Seriously, I can see exactly how many people are reading without reviewing on my stats page, and it's really bothering me. Even if you just say "good job, update soon" or something, I don't care. I just want a review!

Anyway, on to the chapter!!! This one's definitely a pivotal chapter, so go read it!!!

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Chapter 5 – A Change of Members

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Kirsten found herself in the forest again, sitting on the same fallen log, her tears soaking Odd's shirt. She gasped and wiped the tears from her eyes. When her eyes were dry, she turned her gaze to Odd.

"What the..." she muttered. As she looked into Odd's face, she could tell that he knew something. She jabbed her index finger into his forehead.

"Okay, Odd," she said, anger obvious in her voice. "I know that you know exactly what's happening, and I want to know now!" She sniffed again as a sobering thought surfaced. "I'm going crazy!" she screamed suddenly. "I'm hallucinating! I keep seeing the future! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!?!"

"Calm down!" Odd said loud enough to get her attention. "I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if we can tell you everything. I have to call the others. Either way, you're not hallucinating or seeing the future or anything. Don't worry."

He pulled out his cell phone and was about to dial Jeremie's number when it rang. Ironically enough, Jeremie was the caller.

"She remembered, didn't she?" Jeremie asked. "She remembered the XANA attack."

"Yeah, she did," Odd replied. "We need to tell her everything! She thinks she's going crazy! If we don't tell her, she probably will!"

"Calm down," the computer nerd replied. "I'll call the others for a quick meeting in my dorm. Come right now and try to get Kirsten to stay in her dorm or something."

"Aye, Captain," the joker replied. He hung up before Jeremie could tell him off.

"Kirsten," Odd said after he turned back to face her, "I need you to wait in your dorm for a little bit. I'll come get you soon. I have to talk about something secret with the others."

"Okay," she answered. Odd raised an eyebrow, surprised that she was so agreeable.

He had a right to be suspicious. She had every intention of spying on the gang during their "secret meeting."

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Kirsten crept up to Jeremie's dorm and pressed her ear to the door. She could barely make out what they were saying, because they were all speaking quietly. Still, she leaned against the door and eventually caught the conversation.

"Wait," Ulrich said, "you can't delete her profile?"

"Nope," Jeremie replied. "It's protected or something. I haven't been able to access it. I might be able to find a way to get rid of it, but until then, she'll remember everything."

I'll remember what? she asked herself. What's the big secret?

"So, let me get this straight," Yumi said. "When she was possessed by XANA and took Aelita to Lyoko, her profile was created on the supercomputer. XANA did something to it, so you can't delete it, and as long as she has a profile, she'll remember the attacks. Right?"

"Yes," Jeremie replied.

Kirsten heard two unknown words during that part of the conversation: XANA and Lyoko. Lyoko sounded like some sort of place, from what they said. Maybe it was that place she went to in one of her dreams! As for XANA, that must have been that thing that possessed her!

"We have two options," Aelita said. "Either we tell her nothing, and she continues to think she is completely nuts, or we tell her everything, and make her a part of the team. What do you think?"

"Why don't we vote?" Odd asked.

Kirsten shifted, but froze as her shoe squeaked on the floor of the hallway. She heard footsteps in the room, so she ran back to her room and quietly closed the door. She'd heard enough, so she decided to just wait it out and see what happened.

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"I vote for," Aelita said immediately. Jeremie looked at him and sighed.

"Against," the genius said. "We can't trust anybody with this."

"For," Odd said. "We may not be able to trust her, but we can't leave her thinking she's crazy!"

"Against," Yumi said. "Jeremie's right. We can't just go telling everybody."

"Since when is one person everybody?" Odd asked. Yumi didn't answer, instead looking at Ulrich.

"Why is it always me?" Ulrich complained with a groan. "I don't know! We can't trust her yet, but she'll go insane if she keeps remembering! I don't know!!!"

"Calm down Ulrich," Jeremie said. "If you can't decide, we'll find another way to vote."

Ulrich shook his head. "No," he said. "I've decided."

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When Kirsten got bored waiting, she pulled out her diary and began writing about what had happened lately. When she finished, she put it away. She was bored again within seconds, so she opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a sketchbook and pencil starting to draw. She sketched out a picture of Aelita, but as the elfin girl that she had been in Kirsten's dream, or whatever it had been. When she was done, she added Ulrich the samurai and Yumi the geisha standing next to each other a little ways from Aelita, and Odd the cat standing off on the other side, grinning as usual.

After staring at the picture for a moment, she realized that something was missing. She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was something that should be in the picture that wasn't. She started sketching randomly, and eventually ended up with a picture of herself standing right next to Odd, also dressed differently. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a tank-top with a crescent moon on it, and jeans. She had a silver belt with a large blue sapphire on the buckle, and a small silver earring with a little sapphire on it as well. She also had gloves and boots on. There was a naginata attached to her back.

It was the same outfit she had worn in her dream, she realized. When she finished, she started drawing the background, having found that she could vividly remember it. When she finished that, she went over the lines with a darker pencil and pulled out a set of colored pencils. Before she started coloring, there was a knock on her door.

She hid the sketchbook back in a drawer and went to answer it. Aelita was standing there.

"You know, it's your dorm too, Aelita," Kirsten said. "You can come in if you want."

"Maybe," her roommate replied, "but you might have been doing something private that you didn't want me to see."

The brunette grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, actually, I was," she said. "I was working on a drawing. I'll show you when I'm done. So, why are you here?"

"To take you over to talk to the others," Aelita replied. "Come on."

Kirsten shrugged and left the room with the pink-haired girl.

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Odd stood up when Kirsten entered the room and smiled. He walked over to her and shook her hand.

"Welcome to the gang, Kirsten," he said. She looked at him, confused.

"The gang?" she asked. "Okay, is this some sort of secret club or something?"

"Something like that," Jeremie said. "Odd? You and Aelita know her best. I have to talk to Aelita about something, so you explain as much as you can. We'll take her to Lyoko tomorrow."

Odd nodded and led her out the dorm. Ulrich and Yumi followed, leaving just Jeremie and Aelita alone in the room. Aelita smiled at Jeremie.

"So?" she asked. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Um…" Jeremie muttered. "I want to talk about…us…"

"About what I said before?" Aelita asked.

Jeremie nodded. "Yes," he mumbled quietly. "What you said...did you mean it?"

"With all my heart," the girl admitted. "I am absolutely in love with you. I had Yumi explain love to me, and I feel the same way about you that she feels about Ulrich."

Jeremie smiled shakily and stood up. He planted a quick kiss on her lips, taking the initiative for once. They broke apart quickly, both blushing, and Jeremie smiled.

"I feel the same way," he whispered.

Aelita grinned and pulled his head closer for a longer kiss.

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"So, Odd, what exactly are you supposed to explain?" Kirsten asked. Odd just sighed.

"Well, first you have to promise you'll at least try to believe what I'm telling you," he said. "It'll sound pretty crazy, but I'll be able to prove it to you tomorrow. Do you promise?"

Kirsten shrugged. "Sure, whatever," she agreed, sounding like she wasn't really taking him seriously. "I'm pretty open-minded. Plus, anything that proves I'm not going insane is good."

Odd took a deep breath. "Well, the first thing you have to know is that your dreams or visions or whatever actually happened," he said. "You were really possessed, and that William kid was possessed too. You can tell when you look into the eyes, a symbol appears there. Anyway, there's this supercomputer in an abandoned factory. There's a virtual world inside the supercomputer. You were there in your first "dream." Anyway..."

He continued to explain everything about Lyoko, XANA, and the attacks. He said that XANA was a virus that could use towers in Lyoko to possess objects or people. They didn't know what the virus wanted to do, but they knew that it wanted the gang out of its way.

"So, how do you fight this...XANA?" she asked.

Odd slapped his forehead. "There you go! I just skipped the whole point!" he exclaimed. "So, we get into these giant scanners in the factory and get sent to Lyoko to fight off the monsters that XANA puts there. We have to guard Aelita and keep her from being sent back to Earth, and bring her to a tower, so she can deactivate it. Then, if the attack is bad enough, we go back in time so it never happened..."

"You mentioned that you can use your powers on Earth," Kirsten said after Odd trailed off. "How?"

"Well, Jeremie said something about XANA attacking and trying to delete our DNA code while we were on Lyoko. If XANA had succeeded, we probably would have died for real instead of going back to earth when running out of life points," Odd explained as well as he could. "Somehow, the supercomputer took the DNA for our Lyoko selves and filled in the missing pieces that had been deleted. One of those pieces lets us use our powers."

And so they continued strolling around the campus for a few more hours. Odd explained everything he could think of, while Kirsten occasionally asked a couple questions to get the rest of the story.

She went to bed that night with a full mind. Most of it was taken up by Odd's explanations. She was also feeling apprehensive. She was going to Lyoko tomorrow.

What would the virtual world have in store for her?

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Odd sat up in bed, wide awake. Ulrich had fallen asleep long ago, but Odd wasn't able to sleep, as usual. He always slept late and in class because he never fell asleep on time at night. He was practically becoming a borderline insomniac.

This night in particular was especially hard on him. The day after tomorrow was the fifth anniversary of the day his life changed forever. His world had shattered, and his old life had ended. People believed that he was just a joker, somebody with a twisted sense of humor. In reality, that humor was covering up an emptiness and loneliness that no amount of friends could fill.

During the day, his mask never slipped. He used his great sense of humor to keep himself sane. He went on with life as usual for him. Sure, he made lots of enemies with his pranks, but he didn't care.

At night though, the mask came off. Odd revealed, to everybody who could see him, who he really was. As his dorm usually consisted of himself, a sleeping Kiwi, and a sleeping Ulrich, nobody ever saw him without the mask. It was always on again by the time morning came.

He drew his knees up to his chest and let a few tears fall from his eyes. Then he thought of Kirsten, and her inner pain. Misery loves company, and this was no exception. He began to feel better immediately as he thought of the girl.

What is this feeling? he asked himself just before he fell asleep. The thought had surfaced while he was already half-asleep, so it was already forgotten the next morning, when he put his mask back on and showed his false face to the world.

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Kirsten sniffed as her tears finally stopped falling. She sat up to give her damp pillow time to dry, and reflected on the past several days. For some strange reason, she had told Odd about her past, about her sadness. He had been very mature about it for once, just holding her while she was crying, and helping her through it.

He was so similar to Adam, her old boyfriend. It was scary, thinking that he was like the boy who had been ripped away from her. She didn't want to lose anybody else.

"Don't let me lose you," she whispered, careful not to wake up Aelita. "Not again."

Just thinking of Odd made her smile. It was hard not to. The boy was so carefree and funny that it rubbed off on everybody nearby, especially her. Despite her sadness and pain, Odd always cheered her up and brought out her better side. She no longer had trouble hiding the pain away, not when she was with him.

What is this feeling? she asked herself, not knowing that her thoughts were echoing Odd's. Still wondering, she fell into a deep sleep.

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The next morning, Kirsten was woken by Aelita. She rubbed her eyes and blinked slowly, gradually sitting up to look at Aelita.

"G'mrnin," she muttered. Aelita laughed.

"Still tired?" she asked. Kirsten just nodded and slowly swung her legs off her bed. She grabbed her robe and stumbled out the door towards the showers.

She reached the showers, went inside, and immediately turned on some cold water. She took a deep breath and stood under it. The intense cold woke her up immediately, and she turned it hotter as fast as she could.

When she was done with her shower, she made her way back to her dorm and got dressed. Aelita was waiting. She had already taken her shower and gotten ready for the day.

"So, today's the big day, huh?" She asked Aelita as they left the dorm. Aelita turned around and locked the door, then looked at Kirsten.

"Yes. We're bringing you to Lyoko today after school," Aelita answered. "Can you wait that long?"

Kirsten yawned. "Maybe," she answered. "But I might take a leaf from Odd's book and sleep during class today, or I'll fall asleep before we even get to Lyoko! As you can tell, I'm not much of a morning person." The pink-haired girl chuckled.

"Okay then. Anyway, let's hurry up and go get breakfast!

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"Well, I made another paper crane today," Odd said. "It was fun and all, but my grades are suffering because of it."

Kirsten laughed. She had turned in her English essay and come back to see Odd folding a paper crane from the paper with the essay prompt on it. When he had handed it to Mrs. Wooding, the math teacher, she had seemed unfazed, just shaking her head as she took it and placed it on top of the pile of tests.

"Maybe if you found something more constructive to do with the test," Kirsten pointed out, "your grades would improve. Maybe you should try taking it next time."

"Well, I'll either not try at all and get a zero, or try really hard and get a five," Odd said. "It's not really worth the effort, since I'll fail anyway."

"Anyway," Kirsten said, "we're going to Lyoko today, right?"

Odd nodded. "Yeah."

"Let's go find the others then."

They split up to gather Ulrich, Yumi, Jeremie, and Aelita up from wherever they were.

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Kirsten had looked in her own dorm, but Aelita wasn't there. There was only one other place she would be. So, she walked up to Jeremie's door and knocked. She heard something shuffle around inside, then Jeremie called "Come in!"

She opened the door and saw Jeremie working on the computer. Aelita looked like she was doing her homework. Both had bright red faces. Kirsten tried to hold in a laugh.

"I'm going to Lyoko today, remember?" she asked. "That is, unless you two were busy..."

Success! she shouts inwardly when their faces grew redder. "No," Jeremie said. "We...uh...I was working on a program...Aelita was just doing some homework."

"I..." Aelita began, stuttering. "I can do it later...right Jeremie?"

He smiled. "Of course," he explained. "We...I mean...you can do it later."

Kirsten grinned and ran off to see if Odd had found Ulrich and Yumi yet.

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Once they were all together, everybody but Odd and Kirsten blushing furiously, they climbed down the sewer main and went towards the factory. Kirsten sighed when they passed the spot where XANA had tried to possess her through William, but she did her best not to think about what she was getting in to as she followed the others up the ladder.

She climbed out and looked around to get her bearings. She was standing on a bridge that crossed part of the Seine. It connected an old abandoned Renault Auto Factory on an island to the land on one side of the river. She looked down at the water rushing past, then heard Odd call her from inside the factory. She blinked and followed him into the factory.

She looked around and saw that she was standing on a balcony overlooking a gigantic empty factory floor. All of the machinery was gone. The others swung down to the floor on cables hanging from the ceiling, so she followed, still looking around as they got into the elevator. They stopped at a floor with what looked like a computer console and a holographic map. Jeremie got out, and the rest of them took the elevator down to the scanner room.

When the doors opened, Kirsten stared around in wonder. The room had metallic walls that were a muted golden color. The floor was the same. Spaced in a triangle around the center of the room were three gigantic cylinders.

"Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi, you three get in the scanners first," Jeremie said over some sort of intercom. The three of them got into the cylinders and the doors shut. There were a lot of whooshing noises as Jeremie spoke what seemed like random words over the intercom. Then the scanners, as Jeremie had called them, reopened. All three were empty. Aelita got in one and turned around to look at Kirsten.

"Are you coming?" she asked. "Don't worry, it's completely safe."

Kirsten nodded and shakily climbed into a scanner. She let out a little "eep!" when the doors closed. She shut her eyes as the thing whirred into life.

Why did it have to be this? she asked herself. Why do I have to be claustrophobic?

She kept her eyes closed, so she wouldn't see exactly how small the inside of the scanner was. She had suffered from claustrophobia her entire life. It was usually pretty mild, but the scanner was pretty small, and there was clearly no way for her to leave without Jeremie reopening the door himself. Because of that, she was terrified.

She felt her sense of touch go first, then her sense of smell. Though she didn't notice, her taste was gone as well. All of the whooshing noises stopped, so she thought she had gone deaf as well. She forced open her eyes just to make sure that her sense of sight wasn't also gone, doing her best to ignore the claustrophobia. What she saw made her completely forget her claustrophobia.

There was a huge ice field, with various pathways of ice jutting off of it. Off to one side, she could see the edge of the ice and the beginning of what Odd had called the "digital sea" during his long-winded explanation. She looked down and saw that she was floating fifteen feet above the ground, and that everything below her waist was just a wireframe. That area quickly filled in with texture and she stopped floating, dropping to the ground below.

She screamed just as she hit the ground flat on her stomach. It only took her a moment to realize that she hadn't felt any pain. Her sense of touch was still gone.

She stood up and turned around to see Odd standing there, looking exactly like he had in her dream-that-was-not-a-dream, tail and all. She looked at her body and discovered that she was also dressed like she was when she fought off XANA's possession.

She smiled at Odd. "Where are the others?" she asked. Odd just pointed off to the side. She looked and saw Ulrich, Yumi, and Aelita grinning at her, also dressed differently.

"That was a spectacular entrance," Aelita said as she snickered slightly. "Though we were all the same the first time."

Kirsten grinned as well, then turned and looked around. "So, where are we?

Odd grinned widely and threw his arms out wide. "Welcome to Lyoko!" he shouted grandly.

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As I said before, PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!!! That's all I ask for. I just want to know how you like the chapter. Many of you are reading without reviewing, and that really bothers me. Just click the little button in the lower-left corner of the window and tell me what you think. It can be something simple, or a detailed review. I don't care.

Next chapter is already in progress, though I'm not giving a deadline, because I always miss them.