Changes

Aelita and Jeremie stayed up all night long working on the program to free Ulrich. They'd both decided that it was much easier to do since Ulrich had only just been possessed and they had some ideas as to how it had happen.

"Do you think it'll work?" Aelita asked as the two watched the screen as Jeremie ran a trial program.

"It had better work. We put a lot of work into this and we need to get Ulrich back as quickly as possible," Jeremie replied, keeping his eyes glued to the screen until the green plus sign came up.

Aelita let out a yell of triumph and then quickly covered her mouth. It was still early and she wasn't supposed to be in Jeremie's room.

"Alright, after breakfast we'll head down to the Factory. Getting Ulrich back is much more important than going to classes today," Jeremie told her as he copied the program to a DVD and placed it in a case and then into his laptop bag. He looked over at the clock.

"It's almost time for breakfast now, Jeremie," Aelita told him with a small yawn, going to sit on his bed.

"Yeah, so let's go get the Odd up and get breakfast. I'll call Yumi and let her know to meet us at the Factory instead of here."

Aelita nodded and silently left the room to go wake up Odd.

It wasn't much later that the three friends were headed to the cafeteria.

"So do you guys think that this will really work?" Odd asked, sitting down at their table.

"It should, Odd. We triple checked the program. Ulrich should be back with us before lunch if all goes well," Aelita told him, knowing the blond was just worried about food.

"I know what you're thinking and I'd fight all day long just to get Ulrich back, so don't give me that look Jeremie," Odd stated, pointing his messy fork at the genius.

They all hurriedly finished breakfast and headed to the Factory.

(*)(*)(*)(*) Lyoko (*)(*)(*)(*)

-Yumi-

"Ulrich is near the way tower. It seems he just got here," Jeremie told them as they were all virtualized.

"Alright Einstein, we're headed that way. Vehicles?" Odd asked, looking toward Yumi and Aelita with a smile.

"One step ahead of you," Jeremie replied as the Overboard and Overwing materialized in front of them.

They hopped on their respective vehicles, with Aelita choosing to go with Yumi, and made their way toward Ulrich.

"I think he knows you're coming. He's stopped moving and is just sitting there," Jeremie warned. "Be careful."

"Is everything ready for when we get there?" Aelita asked , watching ahead of them.

"Yeah, it should be as long as the program doesn't crash or anything, then you'll just have to hang on until I get it running again," Jeremie explained as they neared Ulrich.

"Odd, you go circle around the tower to get behind him. Aelita and I will distract him up front," Yumi stated.

Odd nodded and raced ahead, getting in position behind the tower.

"Alright, the program is running you guys, so go ahead and try to get him," Jeremie told them.

"We can do this, Yumi. It's to save him," Aelita told her as the pinkette felt Yumi tense up a bit.

"Thanks."

The two neared Ulrich and before they could even think about getting off the Overwing he slashed it causing it to disappear and the two on it to fall.

"My master wishes for me to give you my humblest greetings," Ulrich said, sword drawn in front of him.

"That's strange…" Yumi muttered to herself, but still loud enough for Aelita to hear and give a questioning look. "Normally people possessed by Xana have voices that sound all static-y. His doesn't."

"I have a few theories on that that I'll share when we're done," Jeremie told them.

Ulrich smiled. "It's nice to see you guys came. We've been planning for your arrival." With a snap of his fingers Odd came being dragged from behind the tower by the monster Ulrich had fought the day before.

"I like this monster. Updated version of the Kalamar from the Sea and this version is more fun, too," Ulrich stated, turning a little and looking at the monster.

It nodded its head and then forced Odd to look into its eyes.

Ulrich super sprinted toward Yumi and nearly caught her off guard, but she quickly guarded with her fans as Aelita sent an energy field toward the monster, which moved slightly to avoid it.

"It won't be that easy to defeat, Princess," Ulrich told her as he pushed Yumi away from him and charged for Aelita.

Yumi looked between Odd and Aelita. She knew Aelita could hold her own for a small bit of time while she freed Odd and she hoped she'd have enough time. When she got close enough she sent one of her fans at the monster, who lost one tentacle. She sent the other one toward Ulrich as he and Aelita were struggling for their footing. Aelita was blocking him decently.

As Yumi got another tentacle off her fan hit Ulrich and caused him to falter and gave Aelita enough time to push him back and hit him with an energy field.

The monster dropped Odd, who then was encased in a red field of energy.

-Ulrich-

He looked back as best as he could and saw that Yumi had freed Odd. It didn't matter. He'd been with the monster long enough that Odd would be devirtualized in mere seconds, but he knew at this point that he'd lost. He could feel memories rushing back and Xana's voice getting farther and farther away as his body continued to be covered in the pink energy of Aelita's attack.

Second later Odd was devirtualized and Ulrich was laying on the ground of Lyoko. The only thing he could compare this to was getting beaten by Yumi and then wanting nothing more than to take a hot shower to ease the pain of his aching muscles.

"Get him inside the Way Tower. I'm going to run a scan on him to make sure that Xana is completely gone from him," Jeremie told them as Odd joined him in the computer lab.

As Aelita and Yumi helped him up he began to feel dizzy. There was something wrong….

"We'll explain everything when we get back home, okay?" Yumi asked him, offering a small smile.

He tried his best to nod, but that made the dizziness worse.

=Odd=

He waited for Jeremie to finish with the scan asked, "So what's the verdict, Einstein."

"A few missing bits of data here and there, which explains why he apparently feels so weak, but luckily I was working on a recovery program. I just need to run it and he'll be fine to bring back here."

Odd smiled. It'd hadn't been too hard and they'd managed it.

It wasn't long before the three made their way up to the computer lab.

"We need to talk," Jeremie said, looking straight at Ulrich.

Odd could tell, this was long from being over….

A/N: I almost changed my mind and was about to make this take place in season four, but I decided not to, because as a writer I need to practice on fighting scenes and I'm not going to let Aelita just fly away from all her problems yet. xD

So, Ulrich's back to normal, but Odd thinks that this is far from over. What do you guys think?

Something else to note, I really think that I should try and use more Odd, because I don't use him a lot. It's mostly Yumi and Ulrich. Realistically Odd should be a secondary character in this, because he's extremely important to the storyline. William is, too. So expect to see William popping up soon. =3

Also, sorry for taking so long. I had some issues coming up with ideas to write about. ^-^

Read and review!

~MoonlitxAngel