Well, after a long wait (by my updating standards) the pivotal chapter 6 is here. So…here you go!
Disclaimer: If I owned CL, this wouldn't be a fanfic, would it?
Claimer: Everything in here that is not part of Code Lyoko is mine.
Okay, one little announcement. I'd like you all to read "Code : Kouken" by Akito Shaoku Mizukouken. It's a good story that deserves more reviews than it's getting.
Anyway, this chapter is really long, so enjoy it! Chapter 7 will be finished soon (later today or tomorrow). After chapter 7…well…you will probably have a bit of a wait for the next one. Keep reviewing and I'll write faster and better.
So? Why are you still reading this? Get to the story already!
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Chapter 6 – The Truth Uncovered
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"Hey! We look like a rainbow…woah…"
Eric looked at the others with a questioning glance. "What happened?"
John looked around. "I…I don't know…was it just a dream?"
Rena shrugged. "If it was, I think we all had the same dream!"
"Not only that, but it was about that story that we all like, 'Code Lyoko.'"
Eric shrugged. "What if it really happened and we went back in time just like in the story! Wouldn't that be cool?"
"Yeah, right. Shut up Eric."
"Hey! Now why does that sound familiar?" The six turned and saw their parents walking towards them, just like before. Odd looked as if he was trying to remember something again. Ulrich chuckled. "Maybe because you've heard part of it so many times. Does 'shut up Odd' ring a bell?"
Odd raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, it actually does! I wonder why?" He grinned at the others, who rolled their eyes, wondering why they were repeating exactly what they had said before the return trip.
The kids looked at them with confused expressions, then shrugged and began muttering excitedly to each other. The adults caught this and glanced at each other. Why were the kids acting differently from last time?
They continued on with their tour, with Jim popping out at the same moment, everything going the exact same way. Then they reached the corner. John reached it first and peeked around.
"John, what are you doing?"
John whirled around and focused his green eyes on Ulrich. "Huh? Oh…Dad? I wanted to ask you something. Do you know anything about…um…well…these…monsters…attacking the school? They were like the tarantulas from 'Code Lyoko.' And you and Mom turned into two of the people from the story. It was a dream…I think…"
Ulrich gasped. "Uh…I don't know…it must have been a dream…" He gathered his thoughts. "Yeah, who ever heard of monsters attacking the school? I suppose it was that story that caused it in the first place." He shot the other adults a look and walked over to Jeremie, whispering something in his ear.
"They remember. They remember everything."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes Jeremie."
"…I'll have a look at the RTTP subroutines after the open house. I'll see what's going on."
"Okay."
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They finished the open house and their parents said goodbye. Jeremie shot them all a familiar look that they all knew the meaning of:
Meet me at the factory.
They nodded and got into their cars. If the teens had been paying attention, they would have noticed that their parents went the wrong direction. They were occupied with other things.
John scratched his head. "There's no way that it actually happened…right?"
Dan shook his head. "I don't know. The fact that we all had the same dream is weird, and that we woke up at the same time…"
Eric smiled. "If it was a dream, why did we fall asleep while we were waiting for our parents? It seemed so real…"
"I don't know. Not only that, but everything happened again, up until the monster attack, with your dad called Mrs. Hertz an old bat, and when Jim came out…"
Nina looked inquisitively at her brother with her light gray, almost white, eyes. "Dan, what if that story is true?"
Dan pushed up his glasses. "That's impossible…"
She sighed. "So is this, bro. All of this Déjà Vu, with everything happening the same way twice, is impossible. Just assume that it is true…there will be some sort of secret passageway leading from here to that factory!"
John looked up. "Yeah, that factory…what if it's real?"
Rena rolled her eyes. "Of course it's real. We went past it a couple times in the car. The question is: does it have a supercomputer like in the story?"
"That's what I meant."
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Once everybody was at the factory, everybody piled into the elevator.
Ulrich sighed. "Okay. My son remembers the attack. But he thinks it's just a dream. The other kids look like they remembered too."
Kirsten gasped. "They did? Oh, this is going to be interesting…"
Jeremie sighed. "Yeah. Let me check the computer. I think it's because of something happening when we were scanned into the supercomputer. It changed something in our DNA to make us immune. Since our children are our biological children, they inherited the changed DNA from us, so they remember too."
Aelita nodded. "Makes sense."
The others nodded too, and Odd smiled. "Hey! I actually got what you said!"
Everybody laughed and Ulrich looked at him. "We all did, but I wasn't expecting you to understand as well…"
Odd frowned. "Well, I've changed for the better."
"True…and to this day I still don't understand how."
"Haha…funny… Anyway, I forgot to mention this before, but when we went back to Lyoko, I sorta expected that we would reappear as our 13-year-old selves. But we were still the same age! Even Aelita!"
Jeremie raised an eyebrow, shrugging. "Then how come Aelita didn't age while she was stuck in Lyoko? Oh, it must have been because she was unable to be materialized, so she didn't have a physical body that aged…or something…"
Odd rolled his eyes. "Okay…enough about that. So what do we do about the kids?"
Aelita shrugged. "Let's keep it quiet for now, but if XANA attacks again, and I don't doubt that he will, we'll have to tell them."
Jeremie nodded. "Okay."
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On Saturday morning, Eric woke up and sighed.
"I can't take it any more! I have to find out what the heck happened!"
John smiled as he pulled on a t-shirt, having woken up earlier. "Yeah, I know. We'll explore today."
"Awesome!"
"Go have a shower first. Then we'll go meet the others."
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They walked down and talked to the others. Rena was missing. They had just started wondering about it when she ran up to them. She had been running hard, and was panting heavily. She caught her breath and looked up. She had some interesting news for them.
"Hey guys, guess what! I found a passage to the sewers from the boiler room!"
The others looked at each other in shock. Eric smiled. "And the adventure begins…"
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The door creaked as it opened. The six kids looked down the stairs beyond the door, but couldn't see the bottom because the passage turned up ahead.
They were standing in the school's boiler room, and had just opened the door to the sewers.
They looked at each other, nodded, and went down the stairs. They reached the bottom and hopped over an ankle-high pipe to find that they were in a sewer. They walked until they reached a ladder that led up to a manhole, with four old skateboards and two rusted scooters leaning against the wall next to it. The wooden decks of the skateboards were soft and rotten.
John climbed up the ladder and looked around in shock. "Hey! Rena!" he called back down. "This is right next to our sparring spot!"
He climbed back down as Rena nodded. "Okay, we'll have to remember that." Amy called them over to the skateboards and scooters.
"Guys…look…" Her bright blue eyes were wide open in shock. Her voice was barely a whisper as she pointed at a spot on the old skateboard she was holding. Scratched into one of the axles was a name…
Odd Della Robbia.
Eric gasped as the others grabbed the other skateboards and scooters. They had names as well…
Yumi Ishiyama.
Ulrich Stern.
Kirsten Anderson.
Jeremie Belpois.
Aelita Stones.
Dan looked up at them. "Our parents…"
They continued slowly through the sewers, following footprints that had been left there recently, probably by their parents during the monster attack, if it really happened.
That was looking more and more likely as the children stopped after going down a short set of stairs and found themselves at a dead end with a giant grate. They looked through and saw a river flowing past, with the underside of a bridge blocking the sky and anything else beyond the grate.
There was a ladder next to the grate. They climbed up and turned around slowly, looking at the city around them. Eventually, they saw the factory.
It looked old and unused. With a quick glance at each other, they ran inside to find themselves on top of a tall balcony. There had once been stairs and a ramp going down to the factory floor, but both were long gone. There were more footprints, leading to the edge of the balcony.
They started inspecting the balcony, careful not to go close to the edge since the railing had rotted out long ago. Nobody could find a way down. Eric looked down at the footprints, following them right to the edge. He wasn't scared of heights at all, and looked down at the floor. He slowly tilted his head, looking up, until he spotted several old steel cables hanging from a crossbeam. He called to the others, and they walked back to where he was. He smiled and pointed at the cables.
"Voila!" Everybody looked in the direction that he had pointed and saw the cables. John took one look and stepped back, shooting Eric a look that obviously said Are you crazy?
John looked back at the cables and shuddered slightly. He had never liked heights. He watched as Eric leapt off the platform and seemed to hang in the air for a moment before grabbing a cable and swinging down.
Amy was next. She jumped and swung fluidly down to the ground. Rena and Nina were next. Dan hung back in the shadow of the wall for a moment, then ran, jumped, grabbed a cable, and slid down to the ground. John peered over the edge and leaned back, remembering some good advice long after it would have been useful:
Don't look down.
He took a deep breath, jumped, and grabbed one of the cables. He slid down and smiled as his feet touched the floor again.
Nina smiled knowingly, the smile lighting up her entire face until one could describe it as glowing. Eric sighed. "Scared of heights?"
Rena glared at him with her fiery red eyes. "Don't make fun of my brother."
John rolled his eyes. "Shut up Rena, it doesn't matter."
Eric nodded. "Yeah, what he said. I was just asking an innocent question.
Dan decided to stay out of the conversation, until he noticed something about Rena.
"Um…are your eyes naturally red?"
Her anger dissipated and she cursed her hotheadedness, which was quick to bring her to anger about the littlest thing. She turned to look into his dark brown, almost black, eyes.
"Yes. I know it's weird, but it's true."
Eric smiled. "Well, that makes two of us." He pointed to his own eyes. "My eyes are yellow for some reason. But that doesn't matter. Come on! Let's see if this old thing still works!" He gestured to the elevator and the six teens piled in.
The doors opened on a huge empty room with some sort of circular metallic door in the center of the floor. However, no matter what they did, they couldn't open it. They gave up and went back into the elevator and went down to the next level. The elevator didn't open, so they went down one more floor.
The doors opened on a huge room with three giant metal cylinders. They all left the elevator and looked around, eyes wide with wonder. The room looked exactly like the scanner room from the book!
Amy looked at the others. "No…way…"
Eric smiled and jumped into one of the open scanners. "Hey look! Virtualization! I'm going to Lyoko! Hahaha!"
Everybody groaned unanimously. "Shut up Eric."
They all went back into the elevator, except for Eric, who elected to stay there for a little while longer and look around, and went to the locked level.
Dan found the keypad and stared at it for a moment, then looked at the back of his hand, poking it a couple times. Everybody leaned over his shoulder to figure out what he was doing.
He turned back and saw everybody staring at him. He smiled.
"I'm hacking into the lock."
John frowned. "Uh…how?"
Danpointed to the back of his hand. Everybody looked closely at it and shrugged. It seemed normal to them.
He sighed. "It's like a miniature computer." Nina nodded, looking at her own hand. "Tiny nano-projecters are embedded in my skin, and project a screen onto the back of my hand. I can manipulate it like a touch-screen. See?"
He poked a spot on the back of his hand, and a lighter square with a black outline faded into existence, with black numbers scrolling across it. "There are nanometer-sized circuits and components implanted into my hand." (A/N: Remember who his parents are, and that this is many years in the future. This is completely possible.)
The numbers stopped scrolling to show a six-digit number. He looked at it and entered the number on the keypad.
The door slid open and everybody walked out of the elevator. Their eyes roved around the room for a second, before settling on the large object in the center of the room.'
It was a hologram that showed a central sphere and four sets of interconnected platforms and pathways jutting off in different directions.
Nina gasped. "It's……real……"
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Yet another cliffie…sorta… Sorry.
Okay, by now it's obvious that they are going to Lyoko. I gave you hints to the Lyoko powers of all six kids during this chapter. There are some very obscure hints in another chapter too. Keep your guesses to yourselves or PM me about them. Don't mention them in reviews. I don't want to ruin the story for anybody who decides to read my reviews for some reason.
You'll find out what their outfits and powers are in the next chapter. Jeremie's Lyoko form will be revealed as well! Until then, here's a preview:
He poked the ground with a finger and vaguely felt pressure. He punched his arm. He felt a sort of vague pain that disappeared quickly. He saw a rock nearby and ran over to it. He got there much faster than he should have, but he didn't notice. He tried to jump to climb up, and found himself sailing up through the air to land on top.
And with that, I leave you with one final word:
REVIEW!