Chapter 3: Oh NO!

"XANA's attacking!" Jeremy groaned as the group crawled down the sewer, Jeremy last. He closed the door-trap after himself, and the group continued down in the darkness.

They ran along in the damp corridor of sewer, coming at last to the skate boards and scooters that they had stashed for an occasion such as this. Yumi, Odd and Ulrich grabbed boards and Jeremy and Aelita grabbed scooters. Then they raced toward the factory.

They reached the factory nearly in record time. Yumi, Odd and Aelita were to be virtualized onto Lyoko first. They stepped in, and Jeremy began the progress. The scanner doors closed on the three Lyoko warriors.

The three scanners re-opened with a loud hiiiiiiiisssssss. Ulrich stepped into the one Yumi had been in only a minute ago, the one in the middle. He heard, from the speakers, Jeremy's voice, saying, "Scanner, Ulrich….Transfer, Ulrich….Virtualization!"

The feeling of being suspended engrossed Ulrich, and he felt the feeling of numbness grip him.

Yumi landed in a crouch next to Aelita. Moments later, Ulrich joined them, falling in the same position.

"I see the tower!" Aelita gasped, as the group heard Jeremy from over head, groan about two attacks in one day.

Yumi guessed XANA was angry at the group because they'd de-activated the tower before it had been able to attack.

"Kankrelats, six o' clock!"

The group spun into their fighting stances, prepared to battle.

But there were no enemies in site.

"Are you sure, Jeremy?" Aelita asked tentatively. "I don't see any thing."

Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich nodded, relaxing their weapons. Odd cocked his glove, which was actually very lethal. It contained hundreds of shiny silver arrows that killed an enemy in one good shot. He had one on each wrist.

Ulrich, of course, had his trusty saber. His attire was of a samurai. If he stabbed his enemy, it'd be dead within a few moments.

Yumi was a beautiful geisha. This showed through with her Japanese background. The geisha had dangerous, steel-like fans. When she threw them, they acted like boomerangs. When Yumi's fans sliced an enemy's target, they enemy pixilated. So they basically died.

Aelita was nearly helpless. She could alter the terrain around her by giving up half of her life points. It was risky in dangerous situations. But, when played correctly, this power could win them the battle, or save them from loosing the last of their life points.

The others nodded, agreeing with Aelita. There wasn't a single kankrelat in sight.

"WHAT?" Jeremy exclaimed, pushing his black, round spectacles up the bridge of his nose. The red dots on his screen clearly indicated kankrelats heading towards the group that was now standing in the forest sector. They were there…why couldn't Aelita see them? Why could Yumi, Odd or Ulrich see them? The answer came quickly, within a heart beat.

X.A.N.A.

X.A.N.A. was playing with them! Some how, some way, X.A.N.A. had managed to make it's monsters invisible to the group.

So why could Jeremy see them on the screen?

Once again, the answer came like a bolt of lightning. They were they, physically, and could attack. They merely had a thin code around them, like a membrane, that made them see-through.

In the same instant, Jeremy knew that his friends couldn't fight without a visible enemy. They might harm them selves, or each other. And if they didn't finish these kankrelats, and get to the activated tower to de-activate it, X.A.N.A. would be at a great advantage. It would be able to harm people everywhere! It had to be stopped. The Code Lyoko Warriors were the only ones who could stop it.

Jeremy knew how to make the monsters once again visiable; how ever, he would need Aelita to activate a neutral tower. And X.A.N.A hated it when the gang played with it's toys.

However, they had no choice other than to do so.

"Jeremy?" Aelita's uncertain voice cackled through the ear piece. "You there?"

"I'm here," Jeremy told her. "Listen. You need to get to an inactivated tower and activate it."

"Why?"

"Listen to me, trust me. X.A.N.A. has created some sort code, a membrane that makes its monsters invisible. You can't fight them like this. You'll end up hearting yourself or each other. It isn't wise. I can deactivate it, but only if you can get to the neutral tower. Can you handle it?"

"I don't know," Odd replied warily. "You're the Einstein. You tell me."

"Good," Jeremy said, barely hearing the words Odd had spoken. "The tower is directly north-east."

"Well, how are we going to get there with out" Ulrich began his sentence. He didn't complete it. As he was struck in the shoulder by a red laser shot from an invisible kakrelat, loosing thirty life points.

Ulrich swore under his breath. X.A.N.A was really pushing the envelope now. But what had he expected? A cake walk down mall street on a sunny afternoon? Not when they talking about X.A.N.A, that's for sure.

"Even if we can't see them, they're still lethal," Odd commented in the way of his of sounding light in a serious situation.

Yumi nodded in agreement. "We'll have to run and hope for the best. Our first priority is keeping Aelita safe."

"We should run in a diamond shape, with Aelita in the middle. That way we can deflect any lasers, or take the hits." Ulrich cringed at the picture he had painted in his own mind.

"Hmph," Aelita pouted. "I'm not completely helpless, you know," She said, fake-moodily. "And I'm right here."

"The guys are right, Aelita," Jeremy's voice came from somewhere above, making the warriors look up despite the situation. "You are our first priority."

If they had been on earth, Aelita would have been blushing redder than blood red rose.

Ulrich sensed it before he heard it. Despite knowing he wouldn't see it, he looked over his shoulder towards the sound. The soft whiiiiiirrrrrrrrr of a laser warming up gave away the kankrelat. Ulrich could see the faint red glow of where the monster was. Using his eyes to calculate, the samurai knew that the thing was aiming at Aelita. From then, every to Ulrich seemed to move in slow-motion. Really, it all happen within a matter of seconds, but the boy, it felt like days.

The laser was fired. It moved towards the group, and silently, Ulrich jumped. The laser kept coming. Just as the laser was about to hit Aelita, Ulrich intercepted it's path. Instead of hitting Aelita in the head, it hit Ulrich's torso.

The blast hadn't been the regular beam. This had been one of the kankrelat's rarely used de-vertulize beams. This one had drained Ulrich of the rest of his life points. Now he had begun to disintegrate.

"Thanks," Aelita told the samurai before he disappeared completely.

Ulrich came up behind Jeremy, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Now what?"

"We wait," Jeremy told him. "Once Aelita activates that tower, I can decode the invisibility shield. Once I launch the program, we'll be good to go.

In the mean time, you can never trust X.A.N.A to not launch an attack right away. You should probably go make sure to town is okay, as well as Yumi parents."

"Sounds like a good idea," agreed Ulrich. "I'm on it."

***

Ulrich's heart pounded in his ears as he ran. The forest around him had become a green a brown blur.

He slowed to a walk gradually as he neared the edge of the forest. He poked his head from between two trees, and confirming no one was around, came out from the shelter that the trees had provided for him.

Ulrich glanced at his watch. Class was about to end, and currently the grounds were empty. Not a soul in sight. Ulrich continued towards the science building to check things out.

Not too far from where Ulrich was checking up on everyone, Marc was seeing double vision.

Yup. Double vision. That's right.

Marc saw the teacher standing at the front of the class. But he also saw him stand outside the window. Marc blinked and rubbed his eyes. However, when he opened them, he found everything as it should be. With Marc's mind trying to unravel this strange happening, Ulrich peered into class after class.

Clear…clean…nothing unusual…normal…So far, each class had been non-X.A.N.A-fied.

Ulrich finished the hall, and pushed out the door at the opposite end of the hall, at the same time glancing at his watch.

1:23

Class would be out in seven minutes. He didn't have very much time until the grounds and halls would be flooded with students attending Kadic. He pushed out of the door and came outside. The school had a very open plan with walkways, arches, benches and many plant potters. There were also vending machines, water fountains and so on. Ulrich turned right, following a walk way to get to the next building.

Ulrich checked each class, and exited on the opposite side of the hall. Ulrich new this was pointless---X.A.N.A. always centered it's attacks at the gang. There was no point in it being in any of the other class rooms that a member of the gang wasn't in.

That's what Ulrich thought.

But he was wrong.

***

Jeremy finally had gotten access to X.A.N.A.'s codes for its monsters. The trip to the tower had been surprisingly successful, as if Ulrich's sacrifice had given the rest of the group a reason to be on the edge. What ever it was that had but their teeth there, it worked. No one else was de-virtualized as the boy and two girls ran across the landscape. Now Aelita waited in the blue tower as Jeremy's fingers tapped rapidly on his keyboard. The boy was busy unraveling the key to the invisible monsters. With a ping, Jeremy completed the long string of numbers. A green exclamation point appeared and, once again, it was a job well done.

Right before Odd's eyes, the barren landscape became inhabited. Across the way, he could see several kankrelats appear, as if out of nowhere. The same thing was happening else where.

"So I'm guessing Jeremy did a good job?" Yumi said, relaxing her fans. Odd nodded, agreeing. His purple striped tail swished as Aelita came out of the tower behind them,

"Now the only problem is getting to the activated tower," she said grimly. Before the others could respond, she continued. "X.A.N.A. is really on a roll today. Not only did it make its monsters invisible, but it upgraded them. Jeremy just found out. One shot from its laser, and we're back to earth."

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, that's the end of chapter 3! Man, that took a long time. I want to thank everyone who's read this! I'd really appreciate anything you guys have to say about it. Questions? Comments? You know where to put them!

Gee, I feel like an ad. Ya know, buy one get one free kinda thing? Anyway, R&C!

~Elena Forest