"Let's go deactivate the tower," Aelita hisses. "Since I have to be the operator, we'll need to cut the tower's cables, aka isolation." "I remember that," Xana injects. "You tried that on me once but failed because of my polymorphic clone and Tarantulas."

I see Odd look at the ground.

Atilea taps my shoulder. "Wait, what about your clone, Aelita? She's right next to me." Odd and Aelita turn and stare. "Ah, she'll do. Atilea, Odd, Jeremie, go to the scanner room, one floor below."

I clamber down the ladder and see the scanners. Another scene from my dream, but this one frightens me for some reason.

"What is it?" Xana asks, seeming to stumble over his words like loose stones...I shake my head. "It's nothing, promise," I whisper, stepping into the scanning thingy.

"Here we go," calls Aelita's voice. "Transfer..." The scanning thingy hums to life, a metal ring sliding up and down, seemingly identifying me. "Scanner..." I'm floating now, and it seems so familiar...just like my first imprisonment...

"Virtualization!" A white flash of light engulfs me...sending me somewhere else.

The feeling of falling apart, bit by bit
Traveling through a long copper tube with various colors
Being scanned very quickly once more
Hurriedly being put back together
Then free-falling...

BAM. I hit the ground with one fist, my legs bent. The landscape seems...familiar. The glacier I had seen was there, but how? Did I have a real vision?

"Oh...my..." Atilea tugs at my back, and it's only then I look at myself.

White scales dot my skin, making me shiny. My hands have long claws. Looking into the ice, I see my face is bulged out and is sharpened to a point, my eyes evenly set on both sides of my nose, my glasses gone.
Two black horns stick out of my head and a tail coils to the ground. Twisting to see my back, I see two turquoise-leather wings as well. What am I? I do note that I'm around my average height though...

A voice answers for me. "You are a dragon, Jeremie. That's what you wanted to be." I turn to see a red-and-spiky-haired male with blue eyes, clothed in black robes. My interest spikes as Odd gasps. "XANA?!" "That's your Lyoko form?!" Atilea sputters. (1)

Xana shakes his head. "My normal form is a wisp of black. I merely took on this form so you could identify me. I am simply projecting myself onto the environment. However, I can kick ass in this form! But when Jeremie goes back to Earth, so must I, for we are connected."

I finally look at Odd. He's a half-human, half-cat creature, with four fingers and claws sticking out of them, a purple tail and ears, and strange marks on his face. Decked out in what looks to be futuristic clothing, he looks pretty cool. His cat-ears twitch a couple of times.

Atilea is in an elfin form, two pointy ears emerging from her pink hair, a mark underneath both her eyes. She's wearing a split pink full-body jumpsuit, even though I don't know what that is, but I digress...(2)

An annoying humming noise snaps me out of my profiling and makes me look towards the sky. A strange wasp-like creature is there.
"Frelions! (3)" Aelita calls, from somewhere distant. There's no time for me to muse, as fear bubbles in my throat. Suddenly, a bright red flickers out of my mouth and scorches the bug, melting its wings and making the creature topple to the ground.

Xana whips out an unique sword and stabs the writhing monster. The sword is a strange onyx color, with red at the tip and an engraving of his sign in the middle.

"There's sure to be more," Atilea mutters angrily. "You're right, Frelions move in packs of up to five." "Here it comes!" Odd yells, putting one paw on the other. Another Frelion thing flies up and lunges at Xana, firing a strange red laser.

"Xana, that's eighty life points left for you!" Aelita calls, this time from above. "Odd, look out! There's one behind you!"

"I know," Odd mumbles, turning and hollering 'Laser Arrow!' In a flash, the Frelion who tried to shoot at him is gone. "Wow, your weapon is Laser Arrow?" He shakes his head. "No, Jer. You say Lay-ZER. Make the 's' sound like a 'z', ok?"

"Ouch!" There's a stinging pain in my shoulder. I whirl about and shoot a stream of the burniness at my foe, scorching it to death. "Jeremie, 90 left." Another shot and Atilea cries out. "Oh my God! 60 for Atilea! Get out of there!"

"I'll distract them!" Xana booms. "It's the least I can do for making you suffer this kind of box-in in the past!"

Atilea points at the tower. "Let's go!" A red arc slams into her, making Atilea disappear herself. "Oh, no!" Aelita cries, shock clear in her voice. I turn to see Xana disappear as well, but Odd hesitates. Something about him just isn't right.

"Hey...J-Jeremie? I think we'd better...g-go..." Odd stammers, as two other Frelions fly up to us, studying us. "Jeremie, get to the tower! With Xana in you, you might be able to manipulate the interface and cancel out Zahnne's attack!" he spits.

That was it. I had a sneaking suspicion that Odd...wasn't really Odd.

Xana snorts. "Yes, I agree with your suspicion." Wow, Xana didn't disappear, he came back to my head. Cool. But, anyway...

A large grey ball rolls up to us. "Megatank!" Aelita cries. "Jeremie, get away! Now! You're our only hope!" "Odd, kill it!" Xana yells. Odd hesitates.

I turn to the 'Warrior,' a fierce scowl on my face. "Aren't we warriors? Shouldn't we be risking life and limb to save...uh...Earth?!" "Uh..." Odd doesn't finish. I dart in front of him to see Zahnne's symbol on Odd's chest...remembering what it means...as I put two and two together, Xana and I shout: "ZAHNNE!"

A dreadfully calm voice that entwines with both Odd's and another unearthly voice speaks. "How very perceptive of you. However, you're rather slow on the draw, aren't you, Jeremie?" He makes a 'tsk' noise at me. One of the Frelions fires at me and I quickly kill it, throwing a ball of red at my adversary.

Aelita gasps. "Wh-what?!" "This isn't the real Odd!" Xana yells, using my voice again. "It's a polymorph, which means Odd and Ulrich are in trouble right now, possibly grave danger!" "SHIT!" yells Atilea's voice, which fades.

Another monster looms over us. "Wait, Jeremie. Don't fire. This one is with me," Xana hisses mentally in my head. "He'll hold off the Mecho, this Tarantula." Xana raises his voice. "Metro T-18! Permission given!" T-18 rears up on two legs and fires with his front ones. "It is a Tarantula, one of the two types of Metros that is on our side."

Throughout this whole time, I've been slowly backing away as Odd matches my speed, a smirk on his face, claws flexed. Ugh, it's part of Zahnne's method to scare his prey. Craft. (I hate craft.)

Xana glares angrily at Odd. "What have you done with the real Odd and Ulrich?! I know you aren't him, when you looked guiltily down at your shoes while I mentioned the POLYMORPH!" he spits, justified anger sparking in his voice.

Odd leers at us. "You want to know where THEY are?" I nod firmly, something bubbling up from the darkest depths of my half of my soul. The Tarantula kills off the last Frelion and retreats.

"Jeremie, get to the tower, NOW!" Aelita yells, fury in her voice.

Trying to be obedient, I tear myself away, but my feet skid on the ice. "Fly!" Atilea calls. Discovering I can flap my wings, I take off, not even having to think about flapping because I'm simply doing something called 'coasting' along the surface.

Something stings my side and makes me fall. I slide across the ice, watching a furious fake-Odd run towards us, his face contorted into a purely evil expression. "You'll never make it in time!" he sneers.

I stop a few feet away from the tower and wobble to my feet, running into the pillar of red. "Odd'll be dead before you can save him from his little trip into the sewers!"

"WHAT?!" Aelita screams, as I slowly ripple through the tower and walk towards the center by instinct.

Something pulls me upwards and takes me to the second floor, one I had seen before. I place my hand on the interface in front of me.

XANA
CODE:

Xana grunts. "Not Code Xana (4)...Code Lyoko...Code Lyoko..."

CODE:
It stays blank for a few seconds, but the letters finally begin to come.

CODE: LYOK-
Suddenly the letters stop. It wasn't programmed to do that. Something tells me that's not supposed to happen. Ever.

"Wait, huh?" I mumble, pressing my hand to the screen again. The wording adds a different letter.
CODE: LYOKX
I make a face. The dumb program made a spelling error, I bet.

The programs around us turn the deep black-red that I'd observed in my blood and drop to the bottom of the tower. "Return to the past, now!" Aelita calls. "Aelita, WAIT!" Xana screams, before a white light consumes us.

You must hate me for these cliffies.

1: I turn to see a red-and-spiky-haired male with blue-green eyes, clothed in black robes. My interest spikes as Odd gasps. "XANA?!" "That's your Lyoko form?!" Atilea sputters.
Auugh...when I made Xana's human-like form, I didn't know someone else already looked like him...think of Axel from Kingdom Hearts.
2: Atilea is in an elfin form, two pointy ears emerging from her pink hair, a mark underneath both her eyes. She's wearing a split pink full-body jumpsuit, even though I don't know what that is, but I digress...
Atilea's Lyoko form is shared with Aelita's. Since Atilea is Aelita's dead clone, she should probably have the same form on Lyoko.
3: Frelions are the gigantic alien-like Lyoko wasps which are called 'Wasps' and sometimes 'Hornets' but I think their French name, 'Frelion' is a lot more catchy.
4: 'Code Xana' is what deletes a sector. Xana is programmed to key in just that, and changing it to 'Code Lyoko' is making Xana override his original instructions.

Preview:

What I saw was what would become of my friend.
And I have to say that I didn't like what I saw.

A flicker of flame is all that remains as I come out of my trance, the white fog lifting. I see Aelita's face come into focus.
"Odd, are you ok?!"
And the first thing I say is "Aelita, you're a little too close..."