Disclaimer: Code Lyoko (C) 2002-2012 MoonScoop/France 3
This is a fan-based work of fiction. I make no profit from this beyond my joy at expressing my imagination.
Code Lyoko Secret Files #2 – XANA Tricks and Doesn't Treat
Diary of Jeremy Belpois, Kadic High 8th Grade student – October 30, 2006
Halloween is that one time of year when we welcome the freaky and the creepy to come out and play, and Kadic Jr. High was no exception. Yesterday, Principal Delmas announced that there would be a movie night the night before Halloween and a costume party after, where you would dress up as one of the characters from the movie you would be watching. Odd said he was going to be Godzilla, since he was seeing Godzilla vs. Mothra. It didn't really surprise me. Ulrich said that he and Yumi would be Mina Harker and Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula. I wasn't interested in fantasy productions, but Aelita said it would be fun, so we decided to go to a double feature (and if you say anything about my relationship with Aelita, you'll find yourself rubbing a very uncomfortable place that my foot will make contact with). She told me that she going to be Phineas Fogg's assistant from Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days, and I chose to be the Thing from the Fantastic 4. I didn't watch them for the plots, but because I heard that there were good special effects used in the sets.
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At nine in the evening, the party began. All the students came in costume; even the teachers couldn't resist a little amusement.
"So were they scary enough for you?" Odd asked us in his crudely made dino suit.
"Oh, we were just fine," Yumi chided, "but you probably acted like a scared little baby."
Odd reddened at this. "Well maybe it was less scary because you were on a movie date instead of a monster movie madness, you lovey-doves," he added mockingly.
"Jealous much?" I asked jokingly, at which we all cracked up.
A minute later, Tamiya, the 11-year-old photographer for the school newspaper, came up, in a witch costume, with her camera and said,
"A picture for the front page of the Halloween special?"
"Sure," Aelita said.
The flash was much more intense than I anticipated, and we all shouted like we'd been electrocuted and rubbed our eyes. I thought I was imagining things when I noticed the light bulb flickering before the flash went off, but I could've sworn I saw the camera itself flicker and fade.
"That's weird," Tamiya stated. "It never did that before."
Then, I clutched my stomach.
"Ugh," I groaned. "I don't fell good all of a sudden. Must've been a flash-induced cramp or something. No offense, Tamiya."
Just then, Aelita clenched her throat and Odd was scratching himself all over, but Ulrich and Yumi didn't act different at all.
Is it just me,
I thought, or is something weird going on here?
Suddenly, I felt a pain in my hand. I took off my large foam fists, and noticed a small indent on my palm, which made my eyes widen: the eye of Lyoko.
"Sorry, guys," I stated, "But I gotta go. I think I'm gonna puke."
"I'm going too," Odd added. "Maybe Yolanda has some itch cream or something."
"And maybe she has some lozenges," Aelita put in, but her voice was a little scratchy.
So, we all darted in different directions, Odd and Aelita to the infirmary, and me to the bathroom. As soon as I busted through the door, I felt a trembling in every part of my body. I looked in the mirror, and gasped at what I saw. My skin was turning a deep shade of orange and looked like it was bulging and cracking. Soon after that, the transformation was complete, and what I looked at was a huge hulking rock-like beast in my clothes with ski glasses where my glasses were.
"Oh perfect," I said aloud, and to my surprise, it was in a lower pitch than my normal voice. "XANA's done it again, and this is just the lowest he's gone in a long time."
Then it occurred to me. If this happened to me… I thought, that means something worse could've happened to Aelita, or Odd!
With that, I darted back to the auditorium, gladly not drawing any attention to my new form.
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"I'm worried about them," Ulrich said. "They've been gone a long time."
"That flash must have did something to them really bad," Yumi stated, "but the questions are what and how? That's just a normal camera, right?"
Ulrich shot up. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Before Yumi could respond, a voice rang out,
"If you're thinking XANA is afoot, then you're reading my mind, chap."
Ulrich and Yumi turned around, and saw Aelita, still in her costume, but looking very tense.
"Was that you who said that?" Yumi asked, "Because I don't recall you having a British accent."
"Not normally," she replied, with the unmistakable accent, "but remember when that blooming flash happened, I said my throat felt scratchy."
"And it caused you to not only speak with that accent," Ulrich observed, "but to talk like a British person as well, which explains that new British speaking pattern."
"And now I have an inexplicable desire for buttered scones and tea," Aelita said. "This could pose a problem," However, just as she said this, I lumbered into view.
"Please! If you think you've got problems," I said indignantly, "then you don't even know the meaning of the word 'problem'!"
"Jeremy?" Aelita gasped. "What the devil happened to you?"
The same thing that happened to you," I responded. "Before I came back here, I checked the super scan on my computer, and XANA's on the move again. Fortunately, I didn't break the keys."
"Just a tick," Aelita jolted, "You, me and Odd all dressed up as different fictional characters, and XANA seems to have turned us into them, or at least made us look like them."
"What are you getting at?" I asked.
"Oh, bugger," she muttered, "If you've become what you're wearing, then…what about Odd?"
I didn't answer, and there wasn't any need because Ulrich's cell phone rang.
"It's Odd. I'll put it on speaker," he said before answering. "Yeah? What's up?"
"Oh, seriously? 'What's up'? That's the last thing I want to hear!" a very angry Odd answered. We could hear lasers firing and explosions going off, so things didn't sound good. "Get to the factory ASAP! We've got trouble!"
With that, we nodded and charged off.
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"Bloody hell," Aelita said, stunned at what we were witnessing.
What we were witnessing was a dozen Kankerlats, and about five Bloks swarming the bridge to try and invade the city. The thing that kept them at bay, and the thing that Aelita had expressed such profanities about was Odd, but he had dark green scales where his skin would be, claws instead of nails, bright yellow eyes, a long tail, and to top it all off, he was now over 15 meters tall, which is about 50 feet if any Americans are reading this, which served as the reasons to make us gape all the more.
"Okay," I said after a while, "XANA's pulled some crazy stunts in the past, but I think he went a little too far this time, don't you think?"
"That's not funny, Jeremy!" Odd glared down at me. "You call this a little too far?"
"I wasn't trying to be funny, Odd," I shot back, "I'm being realistic! Now you can't get to Lyoko and I can't send them there!" I looked back at the others. "Yumi, you, Ulrich and Aelita will have to take care of the tower alone. It's in the Ice Sector, so it'll be well guarded."
"What about you and Odd, eh?" Aelita asked.
"We'll handle the monster situation," I answered. "You just focus on getting all this back to normal."
She nodded and headed off with Ulrich and Yumi. While they slid down the ropes, I looked first at the row of monsters, and then up at Odd.
"You ready for this?" I said, balling up my fists.
"Oh, I was born ready!" he said, eagerly.
With that said, we charged forward together.
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Following the auto-virtualization sequence, Ulrich, Yumi, and Aelita appeared on the frigid tundra of the Ice Sector, thankfully in their digital avatars.
"Thank goodness," Aelita commented, still with the accent.
Take a look," Ulrich said, pointing to the front. The tower was there, but it was on an island with absolutely no bridge or other way to get to it.
"Right, I'll see if I can make a new one," Aelita said, but before she started singing, which would activate her materialization abilities, a horde of Creepers and Crabs showed up out of nowhere and blasted at them without a moment's waste. Luckily, Aelita was faster and created a plasma shield to reflect the attacks back at the monsters.
"Let's see if that program of Jeremy's still works!" she shouted, charging up a plasma blast, which she fired at the monsters. The translucent pink sphere made contact with the first Creeper and the blast enlarged to destroy the other monsters, leaving only one Crab left, but Ulrich and Yumi made short work of it. However, their victory was short lived, as a Manta rose from the crevasse with William riding it.
"Aelita, you focus on making the bridge," Yumi shouted, "Ulrich and I will take care of William."
With that, the Manta flew down to confront the two rushing to meet it, and William jumped off its back and swung at Ulrich. Ulrich was faster, though, and countered with his Triangulate ability, and got a good hit on him. Yumi fired her fans, which turned into razor-sharp buzz saws as they flew towards William, but he dodged them before they hit. Aelita, meanwhile, had just finished with the bridge materialization and dashed across it. Fortunately for her, that power remained intact and unchanged. Furious that his barricade had failed, William called the Manta back and retreated without another word, leaving Yumi downhearted.
"It's all right, Yumi," Ulrich reassured her, "We'll get him back one day."
"Right," Yumi nodded.
"Let's hope Jeremy and Odd are good on their end," Ulrich said as Aelita rushed into the tower.
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Meanwhile, on our end, Odd kicked another Blok into the lake, while my fists made contact with another Tarantula.
"I gotta give you guys credit, Odd," I said, "This monster-mashing is harder than it looks."
"Well, it's about to get harder," Odd stated, pointing to a nearby playground on the edge of town, where a straggling Tarantula marched towards two little kids who were playing around in a sandbox.
"I'm on it!" I shouted, darting after the monster. The kids noticed it when it got within 2.75 meters, which would be 9 feet of them, and started to scream, but fortunately, I got there before it blasted them, and jumped on it, smashing its head off with a large nearby stick.
"Wow!" one of the boys said, "Thanks, Mr. The Thing, sir."
"Naw, that's not the Thing," the other boy scolded, "this guy's got hair, and he's wearing a shirt."
"You're right, I'm not him," I said, "but we're…friends. Now go on, before more come back, okay?"
"Yes, sir!" they both responded enthusiastically. As they left, I noticed their newly made sandcastle, which was pretty good for their age.
"Nice sandcastle," I said, but then I felt something tug in the back of my mind, and another vision swept me away.
I was three years old, and I was in that same spot as those kids, and I was making a sandcastle that looked just like that one. Just then, I saw someone come up to me, who my present self recognized as the person from my previous vision, the one from my birth.
"Hi there," she said.
"Hi," my three-year-old self said back.
She then observed my work. "Nice sandcastle."
"Thanks," I said back, scratching the back of my head. "I'm Jeremy. What's your name?"
But before she answered, a white-dressed man with dark shades came up to her and said,
"Sorry, honey, but it's time for us to go."
"Okay, daddy," she nodded. With that, she looked back to me and said, "Don't worry, we'll see each other again soon, and I'll tell you my name then!" and then left.
After they left, my dad came up to me and said,
"She looked nice, son. Did you catch her name?"
"No," I regretted, "but I won't forget her face, 'cause it's really pretty."
With that, the vision faded as quickly as it came, and when I looked around, the monsters that were left were falling down one by one, which meant that Aelita had deactivated the tower. I breathed a sigh of relief and soon after that, a huge white field enveloped the factory and became bigger as the Return to the Past was initiated.
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I caught up with Aelita at the vending machine in the gym. I was out of my costume, and so was she.
"Hey," I said.
"Oh, hi, Jeremy," she said, looking up from her drink dispensing. I looked at her and realized something, something that I had to tell to Aelita.
"Remember back in September," I said after a while, "when I said that I saw a vision from my past?"
"Yeah," she replied.
"I saw another one just today, while saving two kids at a playground from those monsters. I was three at that same playground, I was making a sandcastle, and someone came up to me and said hi, commenting me on my work. That person had the same face I saw in my previous vision, and it was a twelve-year-old girl that wore it. I never knew her name, but I always remembered her face, because I told my dad that she was really pretty."
"What's your point?" Aelita asked.
"I think…" I paused, "that the person from both my visions was you, Aelita."
Her eyes widened. "Me? How can that be? If I was, then I would remember meeting you before Lyoko, but I don't."
"Exactly, you don't remember." I repeated. "You barely remember anything from before XANA forced your father to shut down Lyoko, right?"
"Yeah…" she answered, distantly.
"Think about it," I said, "You're really nine years older than me, right? So what if we did meet before that whole incident happened?"
"I…don't know," she responded, still hazily.
"All I can say is that there may be more to this than we know," I stated, and then grinned. "Now, let's get back to the party before Odd gets into the food!"
With that, Aelita smiled and we dashed back to the gym for some well-earned relaxation.