Chapter 2

Second beginning

A/N: Well, I think that before I start on this chapter, I should clear some things up, before they become an issue with new readers.

I write in such a manner that each chapter features characters from the opposite canon. For this chapter, we have it being Jeremy-centric, the next will be for the wizards, then back to warriors, and so on and so forth.

I release every week, usually on Sunday. I may, on rare occasion, end up updating late, in which case, you have permission to flame me for being lazy. Otherwise, things go like clockwork.

I will have an out of canon pairing, but no spoilers for now.

And on with the show.

It was a dark and stormy night when good faced evil, and a man met his darkest essence.

This, however, did not describe what was happening currently, as it was neither dark nor stormy outside of Kadic academy, or inside Jeremy's head, where he was dreaming.

And Jeremy Belpois was having a most interesting dream.

In the dream, he was hanging on to a flying manta, trapped in the center of a storm, circling past the Hermitage in ever shrinking spirals. Finally, the manta lowered itself to a window, and Jeremy flopped off it. Franz Hopper was sitting in the arm chair in the center of the living room, a Grimm propped out on his lap, his gaze on the newcomer.

"You saved my daughter, but I need you to fight again. Something has come."

Jeremy stared at Hopper, and tried to speak. His voice caught in his throat. Jeremy tried again, and the world began to dissolve.

Jeremy opened his eyes and blinked against the glare of the harsh light overhead, the school nurse leaning over him. "Nice to see that you're back among the waking world mister Belpois. You and your friends had us worrying for a while." The nurse stood up and walked through a set of curtains that obstructed Jeremy's view of his friends. "But with you awake, the rest should come around soon," she added through the curtains.

Jeremy labored to lever his body upright from the medical bed. He, Aelita and the rest seemed to be in the school infirmary. It would make sense that the staff would take them to there, with them five all passing out simultaneously. But how would they react when Jeremy told them that he had to leave. That light could only have been from a return to the past, and those could only happen if the super computer was online. But he and the Lyoko warriors had shut it down six months ago…

"Can I have my laptop, nurse?" Jeremy tried to keep his voice level, but if what he had seen was the same as what he thought, then everything was going to snowball in a matter of hours. And if that happened, he and his friends would be caught up in the middle of the old saving the world business again. Why him?

"I don't see why not. But no messages out of this room, if you would please. And don't leave that bed." The nurse left, and Jeremy tried desperately to not leap up from his cot and check on his friends. He could see anything outside of the curtains, and his body was too stiff to really try and move them. The stiffness was a mystery to. He, Yumi and everyone else had been though over one hundred returns, once several times in a day, but it had never left stiffness.

And another thing; while returning to the past always produced a bright white light, they didn't produce any sensation of pain. But then again, the light only seemed to sweep over them and take them back. This one had left them where they were, frozen in place. Why would that happen?

Jeremy lifted an arm, but let it fall back onto the mattress. He was stiff and exhausted; go figure. That, right there, had not been a normal return to the past, regardless of the zonked out definition of normal that he and his friends had adopted once they found and started fighting Xana.

Jeremy was interrupted from his musings when the door banged open. "Help, please someone help!" A little boy tore through the curtains, and Jeremy was less then surprised to be looking at Yumi's little brother, Hiroki Ishiyama. "Uh, what seems to be the problem?" There was a question that was less then useless, because Jeremy already had a fairly good idea what had happened to Yumi, and it wasn't good.

"She was driving me to the academy, and we pulled up and all of the sudden she had this weird seizure and passed out! Please, you need to come with me and help her." Hiroki grabbed Jeremy by the arm, but all he succeeded in doing was to pull Jeremy onto the floor. Jeremy's legs were, it seemed, asleep.

"Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on," Hiroki chanted as Jeremy came unsteadily to his feet. He was oddly relieved to see he was still wearing his day clothes (blue turtle neck and brown kakis), and not a medical gown that nurses seemed so fond of. Jeremy stepped out of his sectioned off portion of the infirmary, walking into a small corridor of curtains. Jeremy peeked into one at random, and was rewarded with the sight of Odd, fully unconscious and asleep. Jeremy backed out, and was tempted to look in another, but stopped when he realized that he might look in on Aelita.

Aelita… Why, why did he have to be such an idiot? Why did he have to have made that mistake? He shouldn't have even thought of it in the first place, they were both only kids. She shouldn't have agreed to it, and now they were over. They were dead, and there was nothing that they could do about it. Nothing that he could have done to fix it, nothing that a thousand returns to the past would be able to do.

Jeremy opened the door to the infirmary… and was greeted with the sight of one very unhappy nurse. "Mister Belpois, what did I say? I told you to not leave that bed. And now you shouldn't need to." She shoved the laptop into Jeremy's hands, and Hiroki intervened.

"Please help, my sisters unconscious out in the drive, and I can't carry her on my-"

"WHAT!" shrieked the nurse. "Where out in the drive. You'll need me to take her in- and you won't leave this room," she added at Jeremy, a glint in her eyes. "Now where is she?" the nurse continued with Hiroki in a much lighter tone of voice. Hiroki led her out of the room, and Jeremy was left alone in a room full of catatonic friends.

Jeremy sat back down, and opened his laptop. The computer asked for the standard password, something that changed from day to day to keep people from hacking into it. Jeremy had to mentally rewind to remember the password, and opened it with some trepidation. If he saw what was probably there, then he could kiss any attempt at a normal life good bye until they shut down the supercomputer for good. Jeremy opened through a selection of news pages. "…Stocks rose in anticipation of widespread …", "…the storm, the largest in India's history…", "… we seem to be having some technical difficulties due to the electrical…", and normal websites, before finally finding the files he was looking for.

Several screens into the computer, and Jeremy had to admit defeat. Somehow, the supercomputer was online, and something seemed to inhabit it. Jeremy groaned into his palm, tired beyond his years. It had been a blast really. He and the Lyoko warriors had never fully considered that at any moment they could possible die. Sure, they had come close at times, and once Yumi had really died, but at the end of the day, everyone walked clean. Then Franz Hopper had sacrificed himself to power the multi-agent program that had killed Xana, and then they were faced with something that they couldn't simply repair with a return to the past.

And now they would have to risk their lives again, and again, and again…

Jeremy opened though a collection of pages, looking for what was happening on Lyoko exactly, when he opened a map screen, and then breezed over it, and stopped. Jeremy reopened the last few screens, and looked back at the map of Lyoko. Sitting in the center of the mountain sector, was a large transportation tower, connected to the forest sector. And just three kilometers from it, a small collection of three green squares. Jeremy blinked and brushed off his glasses to make sure that he wasn't imagining this. Three green squares meant three people.

Three living people on Lyoko. This was not good.

Jeremy shut down his computer and placed it onto his bed, his mind running a mile-a-minute. If there were people on Lyoko, actual people that had restarted the supercomputer, then that meant that it was full possible that the return to the past was just a fluke, and that Xana wasn't really back. If Jeremy could just get to the factory and contact them and resolve the situation, then there really was no reason to be worried.

Jeremy opened the door to the infirmary tentatively. The hall outside was mostly empty, but two people were coming down toward the room. Jeremy nearly ducked back in, but came out fully when he recognized Sissi and her boyfriend, David.

"Jeremy, what happened? Emily and Tamiya said that you and the others were eating in the cafeteria and you all fainted." Sissi had been a good friend for the last few months, ever since they had reintroduced her to the super computer. Since then, they had been treating her well, and she was been helping them out with her father, the school's principal, who had suddenly taken a rather strong interest in Odd, or more specifically, the idea that Odd had a dog on campus, and that was against the rules.

"I need to get down to the… uh… computer lab, and fix some glitches in there. Can you stay here and keep the others company?" Jeremy gulped silently. While he could have out right told Sissi that he needed to get to the factory and that what had happened had something to do with Lyoko, David didn't need to know about Lyoko and the supercomputer. He would have to speak elliptically and hope that Sissi got the idea.

"Oh, the computers are on the fritz. Well, ere, you best get to it." Sissi seemed to understand, and Jeremy didn't waste any time.

Outside, Jeremy spotted Miss Hertz and Jim Morales, the school custodian, carrying a stretcher between them, Hiroki on the side of them. Jeremy hoped that whatever had happened to Odd, Ulrich and the others wasn't permanent. It wasn't in his case, but was probably the exception that proved the rule.

The forest manhole cover was still unlocked for entry. Jeremy took an edge and gave and experimental tug. Man, this thing was heavy! Jeremy locked his fingers on the rim, and put his back into it. The manhole was soon on the side, and Jeremy was down in the pipes. It had been at Yumi's insistence that they leave a skateboard and a scooter down to let them get back was fast as possible to the factory if anything happened.

The pipes ran for miles underneath the city. Odd had thought that you could have taken them instead of driving and get anywhere you needed to much faster. Jeremy didn't really think this was the case, but hey! who could say no. A rug ladder loomed ahead, the pipe draining into the industrial river.

Hand over hand, Jeremy ascended the ladder, and almost fully opened the cover when, with a shriek that sounded eerily human, it snapped shut. A tight grip was all that kept Jeremy from crashing back down onto his scooter. Jeremy grabbed the bottom of the cover, and slammed it open. The bridge before Jeremy was deserted, but when Jeremy turned, he spotted a young girl in a green skirt sprinting full speed away from the old Renault factory. Jeremy opened his mouth to call to her, but she turned a corner and vanished from his line of sight.

Jeremy moved as quickly as he could into the factory. The old Renault factory that had once been a major industrial center of the city, as now abandoned. Jeremy passed old machinery and conveyor belts, rapidly returning to the large elevator. Jeremy was fast enough to input the descent code from memory, even though it was ten digits long.

What followed was the most agonizing sixty seconds of Jeremy's life. Though he was praying to be wrong about what was almost assuredly not there, he really only had one choice; to know.

The blast doors slowly opened, Jeremy squeezing between the doors to get to the computer. Slipping into the ready seat, Jeremy experienced a slight note of Nostalgia at how the seat swung from in front of the door to the computer interface. Jeremy reached to open the screen… and froze.

'Well, now. Here's the great Jeremy Belpois, about to turn the supercomputer back on and make his life hell all over. You know, you don't really know the people in the supercomputer, you don't even know if they're human. You could just go down into the computer chamber and shut the computer down and let the next batch of kiddies find it. No one knows that the supercomputers even powered up, you can lie well enough to let them think that it was never on.' Said a darkened part of Jeremy's mind.

'Shut up, you.' Said the other, morally charged half. 'It would be condemnation. We can't do that.'

'Oh, but you can. You could just turn it off and lie. No one would ever need to know.'

'But we can't lie. We can't.'

'You lied to Aelita.'

Jeremy's head snapped up. One way or the other, he was not going to mess this up like he did with Aelita. Jeremy opened the computer, and looked at his greatest fear. The computer emotionlessly showed the same three people, still virtualized in Lyoko, but now they had an even greater problem of being surrounded by several of Xana's old monsters. Jeremy went through his options. Several different programs had been damaged or deleted, but devirtualization was still intact. Sorely, communication wasn't. Jeremy opened a set of data pictures, and looked other the people. One seemed to be a youthful Gandalf, but in green. Another was dressed up like Van Helsing, cowboy hat and all. A third, the only girl in the group, was a knight in shining armor.

Jeremy examined their weapons, then opened a separate screen for devirutalizing them. He couldn't speak to them (the communication program was on of the damaged ones), so the return to reality would be a shock. Jeremy input the code for digital breakdown, and stood up to go down into the scanner room and greet them.

Down in the scanner room though, Jeremy could help but think that he was the receptor of some bad joke. Sure, they were unconscious, but why were they wearing bathrobes? Jeremy came to the nearest, a blond roughly one year his senior, and rolled him over. Gray-blue eyes stared back at him, and Jeremy head a distant shout.

Stupefy!

Yumi slowly came to. Harsh white lights were staring down at her, but that wasn't what caught her attention. No, what caught her attention was the note card on her forehead. Yumi snatched it off, and read it over. It was a short note; Factory.

Yumi stiffly lifted herself up. Across the room, Odd and Ulrich were doing the same. Ulrich seemed to be having an easier time, he deep toned musculature easily handling the task of moving his equally developed body. Yumi quickly wondered if they were in the infirmary for the same reason she was. The white light had penetrated her car like she had been hurled into her own personal sun. But Hiroki hadn't seen it, and Yumi had desperately hoped that whatever it was, it wouldn't hurt her brother.

"Ulrich, what-?"

"Light. White light, caught us all off guard." Ulrich levered himself off his bed and pointed at the note in Yumi's hand. "Where's Jeremy? Did he leave you that note?" Yumi shook her head. "I don't recognize the writing, but I think it's from Sissi."

"Why's that?"

"She drew her face on it." Yumi let Ulrich read the note. Jeremy was already gone, obviously off to deal with the supercomputer. Odd was sleepy eyed, but intact. Behind some hanging curtains though, Aelita and William were still unconscious on their beds. Yumi walked over to the girl that was like her sister. Aelita was quietly snoozing, almost peaceful. William though, was making slight groaning noises, as though he was in pain. Yumi put her hand to his head, but didn't feel a fever. Whatever was happening to William, he was dreaming it.

"Come on, better sooner than later if the supercomputer is involved." Odd spoke up for the first time, quiet irony flavoring his voice. "Einstein's going to need us any time now to go fight Xana." Ulrich and Yumi shared a glance. If it came to that, then they would need to get back to sparring with each other.

"Let's go!"

Yumi, Ulrich and Odd's trip was slower. Both boys had opted to leave their skate boards in their rooms, and Yumi wasn't going to take hers if they weren't. This mostly left them to jump the various gaps in the sewers, something that twice resulted in Ulrich falling backward into the slowly moving water, but Odd and Yumi were quick to drag their disheveled and soaked friend onto higher ground.

Yumi, with Ulrich on her heals and Odd trailing behind them, was the first up onto the bridge. And subsequently, the first to see Jeremy, unconscious, slung over the shoulder of someone in a bathrobe.

'Crap.'

A/N: Well, Two down, twenty-eight to go. And as a question, how many people read these. If you do, sound off and leave a message.

Otherwise, good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.