*Code: Refigured*

Here is Chapter two! Hope you all enjoy this one as well.

*S*

Chapter 2: Lyoko and X.A.N.A

"Guys, I think I found the power button." Erick gulped, gawking up at the looming tower of raw technology. Karina rolled her eyes slightly and Daniel looked slightly pale. Karina shivered at the sight of the computer, even though it was no longer cold in the room. The computer had to be using a lot of energy to be producing as much heat as it was. Yet, it was still a magnificent sight, if not slightly scary. Why was it in an old, run down factory?

"Guys, maybe we shouldn't touch it anymore," she said softly. "What if it's like some super-secret government thing. I mean..." She trailed off, walking around the computer. "Who else would have such a large computer?" She marveled in how high-tech this computer worked, and it looked to be in perfect condition despite its dismal home.

Daniel laughed for a moment, "C'mon, this thing can't be government issue." He wrapped the sleeve of his shirt around his hand, and tapped the surface of the device, "Weird... This thing was inactive for God knows how long, and now it's blazing hot." Daniel remarked "This thing must've been pretty well preserved for it to just get up and get going..." Daniel climbed back up back into the room where the computer console was. The console shook for a moment, and beamed to life. Daniel walked into the room and looked at the screen. It was like any normal pc, except it was hooked up to a small nuclear reactor under an abandoned factory. Karina followed him with Erick close behind. The pods in the room had opened up and were glowing, Karina looked at the wearily while waiting for Erick to climb up to the monitor room.

Daniel was sitting in a large chair in front of a monitor. Dirt had gathered all about the steel tile floor and mold formed in the cracks between tiles. A rat squeaked from a corner and skittered out of sight. In the center of the room was a monitor, keyboard, and seat all attached to a sturdy arm that ran to a large dome-like table. Karina frowned as she looked around. Something was off here. The cables were old and worn, but the monitor in the other room had looked newish.

"Something is off," she said softly, turning in a circle, observing the room around her. Behind her Daniel cursed as he again unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the computer.

"Yeah... This place has been abandoned since pagers were invented, but this tech is way ahead of our time." Erick agreed, also getting an uneasy feeling about the facility. Daniel finally drug out a laptop, Karina just now realizing that both boys had their schoolbags with them. She shifted her own, forgetting that she'd had it. She watched as the boy connected the laptop to the bigger monitor by a USB cable.

"Well, one thing's for sure, this was made before 2000." Daniel ran a simple hacking program, and saw in blaring red on the old console ACCESS DENIED. "What?" Daniel said in surprise. "Well, let's see if this'll crack it..." Daniel ran a more advanced program. ACCESS DENIED "Urgh... Well, whoever made the firewall on here was pretty serious about it not being hacked while he wasn't around..." Daniel cracked his knuckles, "Well, time to play." Karina rolled her eyes and grabbed the laptop from him.

"Generic hacking programs will ruin something on the computer," she muttered. "Besides, something on here will possibly put a virus on this one, and we want to leave as little evidence that we were here as possible." She unhooked the laptop from the monitor and motioned for Daniel to move. He did so grudgingly, glaring at her. She sat down and started typing. Each time the words "ACCESS DENIED" popped up on the screen Daniel's smirk grew, but Karina ignored him and typed a few lines of code into it and finally "ACCESS GRANTED. WELCOME JEREMY." She sat back and smiled.

"Who the heck is Jeremy?" Daniel asked, he and Erick were looking over her shoulder. A small window opened up, showing several different character models, "Weird. All of that to just protect a few 3D character designs? Ulrich, Odd, Yumi, Aelita, and William. Quite the strange assortment of names..." He said as Karina hovered over them all.

"I guess they were the last people to use it..?" Erick thought out loud, looking at the 3D models on the screen. They each had a list of stats, what appeared to be abilities, and a few other lines of information. "It's weird, though." Erick said, scratching the back of his head, "If these models say anything, the people couldn't have been any older than us. But how on earth could a bunch of kids have made such a massive machine?" Karina turned to watch as he started pacing. "On top of that, what are those big pods over there for? They certainly aren't for gasoline or any other fuel, or else they'd wouldn't have been moved like that. And who's this Jeremy guy? Is he the one who made this?" Erick was now pacing back and forth between the console and the pods, nearly pulling his hair out as he tried to process the information and wrap his mind around it. But how could he? It's not like he'd ever found a secret computer or anything underground before. Karina and Daniel looked at each other and then back at Erick.

"But what if Karina is right?" Now he was just plain rambling to himself. "That's the only logical solution... There's no civilian organization out there that's got this level of technology. And crack my back if its aliens that made it! But how did high schoolers get their hands on it?" Karina coughed slightly, the boy certainly looked like he was going through an internal debate. Suddenly he looked up and threw a fist in the air. His face lifted towards the ceiling. He stood there for several minutes.

"Um, dude?" Daniel said walking over to him, leaving Karina alone at the monitor.

"Er, what I mean is that I think I know what all this is." He said rather sheepishly, feeling quite foolish and embarrassed. "See, I like reading about tall tales and local legends like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. And no, I don't believe in them, I just like to see how wild people's imaginations are, that's all. Anyways, since I was coming to France, I thought I'd look up some legends and folk tales involving the area and found one popular- not to mention quite recent, one call The Secret of Kadic." He tried to explain, "I thought it was just a coincidence that there was a legend with the same name as my new school but I soon learned that it was about Kadic Academy. I thought it was too far-fetched and unsubstantiated to be true, just like all the others."

"Well, there are many legends about Kadic," Karina said. "Giant Teddy Bears, technology going crazy, doubles of people, hornet attacks," she said listing them off on her fingers. "The list could go on really, but it's all just myth."

"But I was wrong!" Erick said to her. Have you heard the legend?" Daniel shook his head but Karina nodded. "Basically, the legend goes like this: Four students from Kadic Academy explore an abandoned factory and find within it a supercomputer! They turn it on, not knowing the consequences, and awaken the computer's corrupted AI. The AI then proceeds to use its connection to electronics to seize control of things in order to kill the students. If it succeeded, then it would have full control of every electronic device in the world and no one would be able to stop it, for it had sat hidden and forgotten for years. The kids take up arms against it and fight the AI in a digital world within the computer itself. They were able to overcome the AI and shut down the computer. In order to keep their secret, they swore an oath of silence and went their separate ways. Some say that one or two of them are at this school to this very day. Call me crazy, but I think we may have found the computer."

"Erick, if that legend has any truth to it, we need to shut this down NOW!" Daniel yelled aloud. He had started to panic slightly half-way through his story.

"But it's just that, a legend," Karina said. She realized where she was and bit her lip and stayed silent for a moment. "Well I guess it isn't, but it was because of that legend that the Factory was made forbidden, some kid broke his leg trying to get in here to see if it was true. Eventually it died down. I haven't heard about it since half-way through last year."

"Slow down, bro. It's not like everything in it is true. For one, it said there were four students. But there are five very distinct models right here and there was probably a sixth person manning the computer." Erick said coolly, too fascinated by the huge coincidence and the discovery too really give much thought to details. Karina looked back at the screen and at the names and faces that were there. She frowned and tapped her chin for a moment. Something still felt off to her. . Some of those kids looked vaguely familiar, and she half-listened to Erick's tale. She'd seen a few of these kids. Not in person, she would have remembered that. But somewhere...

"Dude, if there's a highly advanced computer, powered by a nuclear reactor, under an abandoned factory, that could, be possessed by a virus with a vendetta. I'm not taking any chances." Daniel unplugged his computer USB and ran towards the reactor room.

"Daniel no!" She shouted, hearing the tail end of their argument. She chased after him and stood in front of the computer. "Please! If what Erick says is true, I want to try this thing out. I don't know about you, but my real life sucks. My parents hate me, I'm invisible to everyone at school even though I've been going here for a few years..." A light bulb flickered in her head. "Years... YEARS! THAT'S IT!" She dug around in her bag and pulled out last year's yearbook. She flipped through it and found what she wanted. "Erick!" She called as the boy hadn't followed them.

"Karina! Listen to yourself! If that legend IS true, you'd be risking thousands of lives, because your life sucks." Daniel shoved her out of the way, and laid a hand on the switch "OW! THE HECK WAS THAT?!" strange, purplish electricity was covering the power switch. The fizzling electricity wasn't going away anytime soon, Daniel backed away from it, "Well, it looks like we don't have a choice at this point..." Karina stared up at him in shock, when he had shoved her she'd fallen and her yearbook had skidded across the room. Erick had entered the room right when Daniel had shoved Karina.

"You'd better watch yourself, Daniel. I don't take kindly to what you just did." He warned, clenching his teeth and resisting the urge to lash out at Danial as he walked past his fellow student to help Karina to her feet. He reached down and took her hand, pulling her up with one tug. "You okay?" He asked, though he was almost certain she was, "What is it you wanted to show me?"

"I'm fine Karina said quietly. She walked over to her yearbook and picked it up, barely glancing up when Daniel walked over to her. He reviewed his actions, up to the point of him forcing Karina out of the way, and bowed his head.

"I- I apologize, the way I acted towards you was inappropriate, I pray you will accept my apology." He said, regret laced his voice.

"It's okay," Karina said. "Let's go back to the monitor, so I can show you." She led the way up the ladder, threatening both boys with death if they looked up. She reached the screen and held her yearbook out, showing the senior class of last year. Erick looked at the pictures Karina was pointing at and his jaw nearly dropped to the floor.

"Are you cheesin' me? That Ulrich Stern guy looks just like the ninja dude on the computer. And Odd Della Robbia looks like the cat dude." Erick looked from the yearbook to the screen several times and rubbed his eyes to make sure they weren't playing tricks on him. Karina nodded.

"They had a few more friends, I remember now, and look," she pointed at the screen. "The names all match."

"And these guys graduated last year?" He asked, his mind was now officially blown.

"Mmmm…" Karina said nodding. She plopped down in the chair and started typing. "I think those tubes down below are some sort of scanner," she said looking through an assortment of documents. The computer in the other room was beginning to sound an alarm, and all three teens covered their ears.

"Tower detected? The heck is that supposed to be?" Daniel asked over the noise. A whirring noise below them startled them all as the alarm died down. On the screen a red light still flashed and the round table beside them suddenly projected a hologram. Karina looked from the screen to the hologram and pulled up something that was blinking at the edge of the page. "Launch sequence?" Daniel said reading over her shoulder. "Y'know what? Fine, let's do this, don't know about you guys, but it wouldn't do to leave this virus to its work. You aid those things below s are scanners right?" He started down the ladder in the corner of the room. "C'mon now, we might as well dive head first into this while we're here!" He disappeared and left Karina gaping at him.

"I don't even know how this works!" She yelled after him. The dumbfounded Erick stared blankly at the wall, trying to piece together everything in his mind. After several moments of silences from him, he inhaled deeply and popped his knuckles and neck.

"If they went in and everything turned out okay, then so can we." He said determinedly, "Let's do this!" Then he too disappeared. "Uhh. How do we start this thing?" He asked, "Do you just tell it to? Like, shout 'computer, start' or something?" Apparently there were microphones in the scanner tubes because Karina could hear them perfectly.

"Ummm," she muttered. She started typing, trying to do something. Something prompted her to run a program and against her better decision, she did. She heard a hiss like noise and then heard the boys yelp and she leaped from her chair and down the ladder. By the time she got there, the tubes had opened again and neither boy was to be seen. She hightailed it back to the monitor in time to hear a series of short screams followed by groans of pain from the headpiece beside the keyboard. Karina picked it up and stared at the screen.

"Karina?" She heard Erick ask.

"Yeah, I hear you guys loud and clear," Karina said. "So why were you screaming?" She asked with a grin as she began to look through things, trying to figure out what to do.

"Shut up," she heard Daniel growl. He took the time to look down at his clothing and found himself in very mage-like attire, a tattered cloak with a hood, in his hand was a long wooden rod. He noticed the rod had a red, a green, a blue, a light blue, and a brown crystal floating around the top of the staff.

"So what's it like there?" Karina asked finally managing to get a screen up with two green blips that were labeled as Erick and Daniel. There were several tiny red blips heading towards them. "So, in my usual gaming experience green is good and red," she said to them. "So, if that's the case here, you guys have some enemies approaching."

"You know, I feel so relieved that you're there," Daniel said sarcastically while looking around him. A scene straight out of science fiction had unfolded before him and Erick. Huge islands of stone and jagged "mountains" floated in the grey sky all around him. "This is pretty cool," he said right before a bug looking creature came out from behind a rock, several more right behind it.

"Are these things what you mean Karina?" Erick asked watching the bug thing warily, barely dodging a red laser that it shot at them. "I take that as a yes." He muttered ducking behind a rock. He also took the time to check out his new gear. He was some sort of ninja, judging by the hood, mask, and tunic. Leather bracers were bound about his wrists by cloth strips and grey wrappings covered his hands and fingers. He had baggy pants on that were stuff into black leather greaves that went up to his knees. He wore tightly fitting shoes of the same black leather and beneath his tunic he could feel the weight of a chainmail vest. He also had hard caldrons on his shoulders and tight leather bands on his biceps. He reached behind him and found that there was also a sword secured to his back. His fingers wrapped around the grip and he drew the sword from its sheath. It was a simple Gin sword, by the look of it and its black blade gave off a cold aura.

"Yeah, the stat card says they're called Kankrelots," Karina said. She typed a few things and pulled up Erick and Daniel's own stat cards. "You guys have these stat card things as well," she said, she could hear them both fighting the Kankrelots, and hoped that they would know what to do. "Oh hey you guys also have this thing called a Mega Tank coming your way too." She could tell that Erick and Daniel were two different style fighters just by what she could hear. She could hear Daniel laughing and yelling in joy, but got mostly silence from Erick.

"Would the Mega Tank thing be a round sphere?" She heard Erick ask.

"Can someone get the number of that truck?" She heard Daniel ask right after he lost ten life points.

"Yeah, that would be it," Karina said looking at its stat card.

"Great," Erick muttered as he took off at a run towards the dark sphere. He drew back his sword as he ran and rammed it into the left wheel of the thing as its eye began to glow. The force of himself and his sword hitting it turned the thing aside, but Erick's sword simply bounced off its hard surface. The thing, with its shot already charged up, fired, releasing a massive disk-like wall of red plasma. The wall expanded like a ripple from the eye and surged at least twenty yards in every direction before receding back into the eye. "Get off your face, Daniel, and help me take this thing out! My sword's not doing a thing!" Erick roared as he hacked and slashed at the metallic wheel of the tank.

Daniel stood up and mumbled to himself "Now, if my theory is correct..." He shot a bolt of ice from his rod and watched the ball-like creature attempt to charge up another blast, but was halted by the creeping ice, which soon consumed its entire body. Daniel kicked it off of the "path" and watched a pillar of light signaling its demise. Daniel watched as two more hornets flew up from under the floating path, "Hmm..." he held up his wand and watched the green crystal illuminate, a small tornado whipped the hornet into an uncontrollable spin. Further reducing, it's already horrible aim, it shot off multiple shots, as if in a hopeless thought it could hit him. Daniel laughed, and wondered to himself, "What if I did this?" he lit up two of the jewels, one of fire and one of water, he created an intense cloud of steam, "Well, that didn't do what I hoped for..." He summoned a small tornado and watched it whip up the steam. "Hmm..." he said with a sly grin, the air and fire crystals lit up, and a tornado of fire was before him. "HAHAHAHAHHA! THIS IS AMAZING!" he swung the flaming vortex and watched the hornet disintegrate, "Can I do three?" he concentrated and attempted to create a tornado of water, and he threw it at the other hornet and froze it over. Watching the creature fall into the digital sea. "This, now this is power!" he said while raising himself up on a small plate of rock. "Erick! This is awesome!" he said while floating around on his stone plate.

"If you're quite done playing," Karina muttered over Daniel's excited yelling. Man, if Belpois knew how to work this he was smarter than I gave him credit for." She tapped her chin, she was still trying to figure out how to work everything. It did explain all the missed computer club meetings. She started typing and looked through all the programs and found a folder labeled "Jeremy Belpois Video Diary" and she burst out laughing. Hopefully he had mentioned how to work everything.

"Don't get too caught up, Daniel. We still don't know what else is out here, where these things are coming from, or why they're trying to kill us!" Erick shouted. He charged at a blocky creature with spindly legs, ducking and dive away from its lasers and ice beams. With a yell, he jumped up and landed on top of the creature before flipping his sword and ramming its black blade into the creature's eye. "What's so funny?" He asked hearing Karina laugh.

"Maybe this is just a video game? Albeit an extremely realistic one, but still a videogame. Because this feels strangely similar to all of the FPS survival modes I've played." Daniel said, effectively ignoring Karina. Another mega-tank rolled around the corner, Daniel flung another ice crystal at it, it missed and he watched as it charged up a blast. Daniel barely dodged the disk of energy. Daniel threw the orb and it knocked the mega-tank back a bit, "The eye looks like its weak point... Hmm..." Daniel raised up a chunk of earth, and shattered it. The fire gem lit up as the earth caught aflame. He hurled the storm of flaming earth and watched as it simply ricocheted off of the mega-tanks' shell. "Well that didn't do crap." The mega-tank charged up a shot, it fired the burst of energy at Daniel and he dodged it again, Daniel watched it revert to its ball form, it barreled towards Daniel, he waited at the edge of the "path" and watched it charge towards him, at the last few moments, he dove away from the mega-tank's path, and watched it fall off of the edge. "One thing's for sure, the AI's on these things need to learn how to stop." he laughed to himself.

"You know," Karina started. "Perhaps you could I don't know, use your staff sometimes?" She rolled her eyes as she looked over his stat card. "You only have a certain amount of that energy stuff and you're almost done with it." She paused before typing a few things again, still going through everything. "Also, I was laughing at nothing. I promise, just trying to figure this thing out." She typed a few words and the computer started a search. "The few things I have learned though are topped with, you guys suck." A loud alarm went off and Karina covered her ears. She looked over to see the hologram start a scan. "That is so not what I meant to do," she groaned, but stopped as a tower looking object showed up on the hologram, glowing in red. "Well... Maybe that's a good thing..."

"What do you mean we suck!? I'd like to see you try this!" Erick yelled back, barely avoiding another shot from the last remaining Blok. "Screw this! Daniel! Give me some cover fire!" He yelled as he charged at the creature. Shards of ice zipped past his head and pelted the Blok as it was charging another shot. The thing fired and missed by a longshot just before Erick got there. With an angry cry, he rammed his sword into the eye in the center of the creature. The thing cracked and shuddered before exploding into thousands of tiny shards. "Now... What in the blue blazes are we supposed to do here?! There's no menu, no pause, not even a power button! What idiot makes a video game like this?" Erick fumed.

"Duh," Karina looked to the side, at the hologram. "You find the tower. I'm not sure what you do once there, but that's what this computer keeps indicating."

*S*

Elsewhere, at his apartment closer to the heart of Paris, a certain former Kadic Academy student was frozen with fear and confusion. He never thought he would hear that sound again. Jeremy Belpois dropped the hand-held machine he was working on and ran to his room. He threw open the closet and pulled a metal brief case from the back of the highest shelf. A loud alarm was blaring from within. Quickly, he set the case on his bed and punched in the code on the keypad lock. The case opened and Jeremy took the laptop computer out and opened it up. Large, red, flashing letters spelled out the very words he feared: Tower Activated

"Oh no..." He breathed.

*S*

And that is the end of chapter two! What did you guys really think we wouldn't involve the original characters? Anyway, thank for all of you wonderful readers. Please feel free to leave a review and if you like this please go check out FeralFront and its sister site Xanje.

Shimmerz (Never Forget)