Guess what?

I'M BAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, here's the next chapter! Sorry for the excruciatingly long wait, but I haven't been able to write much for a while. I know you're tired of hearing this, but I'm going to finish this as soon as I can.

Anyway, I don't own Code Lyoko, but I own all my OCs, etc, etc, whatever...

On to the story!!!

Chapter 22 – Sector Zero

Nina watched as the waterspout shrank, then disappeared, revealing Eric and Amy, both soaked to the skin and glowing brightly.

She noticed a dim spark of light off to the side. She glanced at it, wondering what it was. Suddenly it grew into a ball of light that would have blinded her if her powers didn't help by dimming her vision. She reached out to touch it, and it disappeared. She suddenly felt power flowing through her veins, a white hot light that filled her body. Soon she was glowing like the others.

Dan and Rena sped into the scanner room.

"Dad!" Dan yelled. "Rena and I are down by the scanners! The others are on the way!"

"Good," Jeremie said over the intercom. "Get in the scanners fast. Everybody needs to be on Lyoko today."

"Got it," Rena affirmed as she ran to a scanner. It shut the moment she was inside and lit up as usual. A moment later, both of them were in Lyoko.

Eric John, Amy, and Nina arrived at the factory, all glowing brightly. They sped straight into the elevator and went down, arriving at the scanner room moments later. They were taken aback to see Jeremie standing in the center of the triangle formed by the three scanners.

"Dad?" Nina asked, surprised to see him. "Why are you on this level?"

"All twelve of us need to be in Lyoko," he said. "That means I'm going to. Before you ask, I automated the virtualization procedure, so I don't need to be at the terminal. Now go! John, Eric, Amy, you guys go first. Nina and I will follow."

Amy nodded and stepped into a scanner. John and Eric leapt for theirs. The doors shut and the sound of air blowing could be heard by all of them.

"Detecting..." a computerized voice said over the intercom. "DNA match confirmed. Subjects identified as John, Eric, Amy. Initializing Virtualization Process."

"Transfer...Scanner...Virtualization," it said a moment later.

The sound died down and the doors opened to reveal empty scanners. Nina and her father were in them in just a moment. The doors closed again.

The voice went through the same speech again, just with different names. Then, with a whoosh of air, the last two Lyoko warriors left the real world, one of them for the first time in many years.

They all gathered at the edge of the sector. When Jeremie arrived, the six teenagers all stared at his costume. The adults took just one glance, to remind themselves what it looked like all those years ago.

He was wearing a blood-red short-sleeved shirt with chain mail over it, and black pants with armor plates on the front. His glasses were gone, and he had slightly more visible muscles. There was a crossbow strapped to his back and a quiver on his waist.

He pulled the crossbow from its bindings and loaded it. He smiled. He hadn't done that for years, but he still hadn't lost the knowledge.

Like riding a bike, he thought. It was only when the others snickered slightly that he realized that he must have said it out loud.

"Wow, Jeremie!" Aelita complimented. "You look good!"

He blushed and all of the adults laughed. The teens just glanced at each other and shrugged.

"So, since you're here, Jeremie," Ulrich said, interrupting the quiet laughter, "how are we getting to sector five?"

Jeremie just grinned. "System! Activate the transporter!"

"Activating sector five transporter," the same robotic voice said. "Password entered…Scipio."

A moment later, the usual white sphere appeared and took them all, once again, to Carthage.

They landed in Carthage in the usual semi-spherical room. The kids stared at the spinning dome above them.

"Where are we?" Dan asked. "I've never seen this part of Lyoko before."

"This," Odd began, "is sector five! Also known as Carthage, home of Creepers, the Scyphozoa, and architecture that never really wants to stay the same! Isn't it amazing folks?"

"Shut up, Odd," they all said in unison.

"This is also the core—huh?" he cut himself off.

"Shut…up…Odd," Ulrich said slowly, as if he was talking to a three-year-old.

"Oh…" he mumbled. "Whatever…"

The dome started to slow its rotation. Within moments, it was completely stopped, and a doorway was in front of them.

"Let's go!" Kirsten shouted as she took the lead, sprinting down the hallway. She was soon passed by Ulrich, to her displeasure. He was supersprinting, as usual.

The others followed her, stopping only for a moment as the wall at the other end of the path opened. Then they ran down the stairs and ended up in a large room. Jeremie explained as much as he could about Carthage as they ran to the other side.

After going through a doorway, they reached another room. This one had no floor, except the ledge they were all standing on at the moment and another one in front of the door on the other side. A complicated system of conveyor belts crisscrossed over the gap. All of the belts were moving in different directions at different speeds.

"It's a puzzle," Dan said. "We have to pick the correct path to reach the other side."

Eric grinned. "Well, have fun you guys! I'm just going to fly over! Ha!"

He shot up into the air as Dan yelled for him to stop, and flew out over the belts. At first he seemed to be doing fine, but then he began to sink slowly, gradually speeding up. He fell flat on his face on a fast-moving belt, and was promptly deposited at their feet.

"I tried to tell you," Dan said. "There's no way it could be that easy."

Amy shook her head. "Oh, little bro, what am I going to do with you?" she asked with a sigh.

"We're twins!" Eric shouted, still angry that his plan hadn't worked.

"I'm older by five minutes," she replied. "Anyway, you should have known it wouldn't work."

"Why?" he asked.

"You bragged and made fun of us," she explained. "It's only logical that your plan wouldn't work, so we could make fun of you. And then there's Murphy's law…"

"Okay, okay," he muttered. "I get it."

Dan cleared his throat loudly to get their attention. "Excuse me, if you two are done bickering, it's about time that we crossed this. Follow us."

That said, he and his father leapt onto the first belt.

With Dan and Jeremie's help, they easily reached the other side. When they reached the other side of the room, Aelita tapped a switch on the wall and opened the doorway. They ran through it and the door shut, locking them in.

Nina walked forward to a rectangular panel that stuck out from the wall. It had 23 red lights on it, in two rows of eleven and twelve, and there were some strange symbols and slots on it.

"What's this?" she asked.

Jeremie walked up to the panel and took a close look at it. He looked at the shapes of the slots and smiled.

"We need to do a couple things to move on to sector zero," He explained. "First thing's first. Everybody, put your weapons into the corresponding slots. There are only eleven spots because Aelita doesn't have a weapon."

The others looked at him with confusion until he realized that he still hadn't told them about the message. He quickly filled them in.

"Oh," Odd realized, "so that's what the change of plans meant. It also explains why you're here."

"Exactly," Jeremie confirmed. "All twelve of us are needed to get to the sector."

Eric shrugged and took out his shuriken. He saw a slot that would accommodate them all, and pushed them in. One of the lights turned green, so the others realized that Jeremie was right. One by one, they followed suit. Soon all eleven lights in the first row were green.

It took them a while to figure out how to change the other lights, but when Rena found a symbol that looked like a flame, she touched it and another light turned green. The others found their corresponding symbols and touched them.

When all of the lights were green, the ground started to rumble. John caught Amy as she fell over, then fell over with her on top of him. There was a bright flash and they were gone from Carthage.

Nina was the first to open her eyes. She looked around and saw that she was in some place that looked even more like a videogame than Lyoko. The world occasionally blurred slightly as the sound of static made itself heard. She was on some sort of island, very far above the water. She turned around and saw a gigantic tower, at least ten times the size of the one on Lyoko. She turned back around and saw the others sprawled on the ground. One by one, they stood up and looked around, confused.

"Where are we?" John asked.

"Xanadu."

All twelve of them twitched and spun around to see the man who spoke to them. He was tall, with gray hair and a beard. He wore a suit of armor and carried a giant spear.

All of the adults except Kirsten gasped. "Franz…Franz Hopper?" Jeremie asked.

The man nodded. "Yes. I am Franz Hopper. I believe some of you may already know me, albeit indirectly. And let me tell you now, I'm not one of XANA's polymorphic clones, like last time you supposedly met me.

"Um…Odd?" Kirsten asked. "Who is he?"

"He's Franz Hopper," her husband answered. "He created Lyoko. He's also Aelita's father, and has been stuck in Lyoko for more than ten years."

"The cat-boy is correct," Franz said. "I've been trapped here, waiting and growing in power. This place is the core of Lyoko, yet it is not actually part of it. Jeremie, I believe you know what I am talking about."

Jeremie nodded and turned to the others. "Let me explain. I kept this secret so long that I forgot, but this place reminded me. Long before we discovered Lyoko, we discovered a different virtual world. This virtual world, which is called Xanadu. It had a primitive form of XANA trapped within, though we just thought it was a part of the world. We fought it for two years, then I discovered the return to the past function and used it. Somewhere in transit, something went wrong, and everything changed. The entire world was different in small ways."

"For example, the school and the factory were built differently, and in a different part of France. All three of you lost your memory, but I remembered for some reason. I found the factory again, discovered Aelita, and decided to call you all in to see what was different about Xanadu. That's when I discovered that the world was now Lyoko, and that it was completely different from before, with actual monsters instead of these black cloud things on Xanadu—"

"Speaking of which," Ulrich said. "Here come some now!"

The others spun around and saw several black shadowy clouds speeding towards them. Ulrich was the first to pull out his weapons, dual katanas. He noticed that they were both glowing blue and had ones and zeroes running down them.

He gave it no thought, being used to strange things like that, and ran at a shadow, slicing it once. It disappeared.

"Well, that was easy," he said.

The others pulled out their weapons and fought the shadows. Franz proved indispensable in the fight, using his spear like a giant scythe, slicing the shadows open.

Eric saw a shadow pass through his stomach, leaving the area sparking and causing a mild pain.

"Be careful guys!" he yelled. "These things can still hurt us, and we don't know how much damage they cause!"

"Right, bro!" Amy yelled back. The others were too engaged in fighting to respond, but he was confident that they had heard him.

They made short work of the creatures and gathered back together, where Franz began to explain why he had called them there.

"Well, ever since I've been stuck here, my power has grown. I'm able to interface very well with the supercomputer. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for me, XANA would have a lot more power than I do. I've been taking about half of the power after each return to the past. This time, when XANA attacked, I had enough power to send you that message. And now that you are here, we can destroy XANA for good.

"There are thirteen towers in Xanadu. They are all activated to keep the AI in this system running. If they are all deactivated within seconds of each other in a certain order, XANA will be destroyed. That's why all of you had to be here, so that there would be thirteen of us. However, this sector will also be destroyed, so you have to get back to Carthage within seconds of the last tower deactivating…"

After that, he began to explain exactly how they would go about shutting the towers off.

How's that, huh? More than two and a half thousand words! Is this an adequate apology for most, if not all, of the delays? If not, I'll try to make the next chapter just as long, but I'm not guaranteeing anything. Also, the next chapter should be the last. Yes, I know you want to see more (those of you who are left), but personally, I'm happy to see it end. I've been meaning to move on to other projects outside the Lyoko fandom, and now I can!

Anyway, just to let you know in advance, don't expect any more CL fics for a long time after I finish this one. Actually, don't expect anything at all for a while. I'm taking a break to work on some new stories. I'm going to try to finish them before posting them from now on. I mean, it's been nearly a year since I wrote chapter 1 of this story! Yes, I know that it's not long for some of you, but it's hard for me to stay inspired after that long. So the next chapter might not be that spectacular. I'm trying to come up with a final battle, because I originally was just going to end it with an easy run to the towers. That's just too boring. I need to figure out what happens.

So, I'm going to try to update soon, but I'm not guaranteeing anything, unlike all my broken promises before. I'll update when the next chapter is ready, and not a moment before. So don't hold your breath.

Anyway, please review!