(Ducks as a textbook flies overhead) Sorry! I didn't mean to leave it this long! I'm really sorry for that long wait. I was going to write this sooner, but real life unfortunately got in the way. As I said in the last chapter, I no longer set deadlines, because I always miss them, as this chapter probably proves.
Anyway, I got stuck in the middle of this chapter, then scrapped the whole thing and rewrote it. I hope you like it! It's kinda short compared to most of my other chapters, but still nearly twice as long as any chapter in the original, so I suppose that's just fine.
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Chapter 6 – A Change of Power
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Odd grinned widely and threw his arms out wide. "Welcome to Lyoko!" he shouted grandly.
Kirsten laughed at Odd's usual antics, while the others sighed.
"Odd, what's with the theatrics?" Ulrich asked his friend. "She's been here before."
"I suppose so," Kirsten answered, beating Odd to the answer, "but I only remember that weird blue place."
"That would be Carthage," Jeremie answered. "It's one of the five sectors of Lyoko. You're in the Polar sector at the moment. There's also mountains, a forest, and a desert."
"Oh." She looked at the others and realized that only Ulrich and Odd seemed to have weapons. "Yumi? Aelita? Why don't you guys have weapons?"
Yumi smiled and pulled out two fans from behind her back, flicking them open. "These are my weapons," she said. Kirsten noted the sharp edges of the fans, and decided to avoid pissing off the Japanese teenager.
She looked at Aelita next. The pink-haired elf just shrugged. "I am originally from Lyoko, so I never got any weapons."
"As much as I'd like to stand around and chat, we should get some training time in!" Odd shouted. "Materialize our vehicles, Jeremie!"
"Of course. Just a second…huh?"
Ulrich frowned. "Is 'huh?' bad?" he asked.
"I…I don't know," Jeremie replied. "There's a new vehicle here. It looks like a hang-glider."
"Oh," Aelita said quietly, before speaking louder. "When Kirsten was possessed, I think she made it or something."
Back on Earth, Jeremie shrugged. "Well, I guess she can use that then. I'll virtualize it with the others," he decided, his fingers already flying across the keyboard.
On Lyoko, all four of the vehicles appeared. Kirsten's jaw dropped as she ran over to the glider. It was somewhat like a normal hang-glider, but without the usual straps and such. In addition, there were two small jets attached, one at the end of each wing. She grabbed the bar that hung down from the glider, and gasped as her feet left the ground.
Odd grinned as he jumped on his overboard. He heard Kirsten whoop with glee as the glider took off, and smiled as he followed.
Kirsten was having the time of her life. She was flying around in the air, doing loops and rolls and just generally having fun. Odd came up beside her on a flying hoverboard, soon followed by Ulrich on a one-wheeled flying motorcycle and Yumi and Aelita on some sort of hovercraft.
"Hehe, looks like she's got the hang of it," Odd pointed out with a wide grin. "Get it? The HANG of it?"
The others, even Kirsten, glanced at him, then looked away, muttering "Shut up, Odd," in unison.
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After exploring for a while and showing Kirsten a tower, they got down to the serious training. Since Ulrich's weapon was the closest to hers, she sparred with him the most. Odd was just being a general nuisance, hopping around and offering useless advice, while the other girls trained her in acrobatics and other things like that.
Eventually, the training turned into just having fun. Ulrich played supersonic tag with his clones while Kirsten and Odd played chicken in the air. Yumi and Aelita were having some sort of battle of wills. From what the others could see, Aelita was putting her strength into holding up a wall of ice, while Yumi was trying to use her telekinesis to break it.
Jeremie managed to open a window to see what they were doing, and was watching with a smile on his face. They didn't exactly get to relax so often, so he was glad they were enjoying it. Even he was enjoying it, just from watching them!
However, the temptation of the half-finished antivirus was too much for him to bear, and he eventually succumbed, opening a new window to work on his code.
Eventually though, as usual, XANA interrupted their fun in the form of an activated tower. Jeremie muttered a curse as the window he was working in was minimized and the superscanner appeared, showing an activated tower in the forest sector.
"Guys," Jeremie announced, "XANA activated a tower again! It's in the forest sector. Take the way tower, then head north!"
"Got it!" the other five affirmed. Kirsten and Odd waited a moment for the others to get on their vehicles, then headed off towards the way tower.
Kirsten looked back at Odd for a moment, then pulled back until she was level with him. The three others were up ahead. She took a moment to enjoy flying around, not afraid of the height. First of all, it was not real anyway. She was also only afraid of heights when she was standing on something tall and looking over the edge. That was just another strange quirk of hers.
"So, Odd, Yumi and Ulrich were blushing when we met up before going to the factory," she finally said to the blond-haired cat-boy next to him. "Is there any reason why?"
Odd grinned. "Well, I suppose I should tell you the whole story," he said as his grin grew even wider. "Be patient. It will take a while to tell, as it is quite a spectacular story, with all sorts of twists and turns and such…"
Kirsten waited for a moment, then grew impatient. "So?" she asked when she could no longer take the suspense. "Aren't you going to tell me the story?"
"I walked in on them kissing."
Kirsten waited for a moment again, then sighed. "That was the whole story, wasn't it?" she said with a sigh. Odd nodded, and she sighed again, rolling her eyes. "What was the point of—"
"LOOK OUT!" Odd shouted, cutting off her question. She looked forward again and shouted as she swerved to avoid a pillar of ice. Odd started laughing, and continued to do so, even with her glaring at him.
"Odd…" she snarled without any real venom in her voice. The boy in question continued to laugh as if he hadn't heard her. She finally gave up and her frown turned into a smile. She let out a chuckle of her own.
"Now look what you've done," he said. "We're way behind the others!"
With another sigh, Kirsten sped up, Odd following behind her.
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After a minute or two of riding, they came within sight of the tower. It was glowing red, as usual. There were also the obligatory monsters guarding it. Kirsten pulled back slightly so she could stay out of sight, the others stopping next to her.
"Two Tarantulas and three Crabs," Odd said. "This shouldn't be too hard."
Ulrich looked around, frowning. "Has XANA started attacking in the real world yet?" he asked Jeremie.
"No, not as far as I know," was his reply. "Be careful."
"When am I not?" Odd asked with a smile. He looked at the others as they started laughing. "What? I'm serious!" he exclaimed, which just had them laughing harder. Rolling his eyes, he sped off towards the tower, the others trying to hold in their laughter as they followed.
Kirsten decided to take care of the Crabs. She flew towards them, letting go of the glider with one hand to hold her naginata. Holding it below her, she dove down towards them. She managed to slice the top of the Crab, but it didn't even seem phased by her attack.
"Kirsten!" Odd shouted. "You have to hit the symbol to kill it!"
She looked at the top of the Crab and saw what he was talking about. She circled around and dove again, managing to slice open the symbol this time. The Crab disappeared, leaving her free to take care of the other two with Odd's help.
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Ulrich had his hands full dealing with one of the Tarantulas. It kept shooting at just the wrong times, forcing him to dodge and swerve off just before he would have destroyed it. He came around for another charge, and his overbike was immediately devirtualized, throwing him face-first into the frozen ground.
"Triplicate!" he shouted, splitting into three. He and his two clones circled the Tarantula, then sprinted straight towards it. It managed to pick off just one of them, but it was a clone, and the other two leapt on top of it, stabbing it in the head.
He glanced around as he fused back together. Kirsten and Odd had each taken care of one of the Crabs, and were working together on the last one. He glanced at Yumi, watching as she dodged several lasers on foot. The overwing had apparently already been devirtualized. Just as he was about to go help her, she flipped up over the monster and tossed a fan, hitting her target perfectly and destroying the second Tarantula. An explosion from his left told him that the last Crab was gone as well. He was about to call Aelita when he noticed that she was already running for the tower.
Just when he relaxed, everything went straight to hell. The Scyphozoa appeared from nowhere and grabbed her. She froze as it pressed three tentacles to her forehead. Ulrich swore and supersprinted towards her, followed by Yumi, Kirsten, and Odd.
"…drains her memory, but we don't know why…" he heard Odd explain to Kirsten.
"Hurry! Her memory is almost gone!" Jeremie shouted. Nobody bothered replying as they reached the monster. Ulrich jumped up and sliced off the tentacles with Kirsten's help as Odd and Yumi drove it off. Aelita dropped to the ground and stopped moving.
Kirsten walked up to Aelita once the Scyphozoa had disappeared, prodding the elfin girl with the butt of her naginata several times. Aelita remained unconscious on the ground. She raised an eyebrow and shouted "Jeremie! She's still not moving!"
"Her life points dropped while the Scyphozoa had her. Somehow it hurt her so much that she only has five points left," Jeremie said. "With her life that low, she doesn't have enough energy to wake up!"
Kirsten groaned as she kneeled next to her roommate. She went to shake the pink-haired girl's shoulders to wake her up, but stopped with her hands a couple inches above her. Her hands had started glowing blue for some reason. Before she had time to wonder what was going on, she noticed that Aelita's body had started glowing blue as well.
"What's going—" she started to ask, but she cut herself off when Aelita opened her eyes. "Aelita! You're awake!"
"Her life points just went back to a hundred!" Jeremie exclaimed happily, though he also sounded confused.
"I think Kirsten healed her," Odd explained. "I guess that's her power! Aelita, no time to lose!"
She nodded and ran into the tower. A moment later, it shifted from red to blue, and Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi were devirtualized, shortly followed by Aelita and Kirsten.
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"Quick!" Odd exclaimed when they were all together in the elevator. "We have to get back to school! They've got meatballs and gravy tonight!"
"It doesn't matter what they have," Kirsten muttered, shaking her head. "Even if it was barely edible, you'd be just as excited." She stopped for a moment, then turned to Jeremie. "Why didn't we go back to the past?"
"Nothing happened in the real world, so there's no point. We didn't miss any classes or anything," he said. "Going back to the past increases XANA's power, so we only do it when we have to."
"Come on!" Odd shouted, already far ahead in the sewers. "We're gonna miss the food!"
"Odd!" everybody yelled in unison. "Will you shut up!"
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Well, that's it for this chapter. Please review and all that! Of course, most people don't read these things, so…yeah. Anyway, I have no idea when I'll update again. It could be up in a week, or it might take a month. Who knows? Hopefully it's not too long. I want to try to finish this story before summer vacation, so I'm free to work on other stuff.