Holy crap guys... We've been going for over a year! Wow... Just wow. I honestly never thought this story'd be around for more than a few months. And I'm glad it's still going!
Also, I'd like to say that I'm trying my best to get better at writing in the first person. Describing things in a quick yet detailed manner is something that's not so easy. I would HOPE that there's been a difference (even if it's only slight) in this story's quality. I'm hoping that, just like Code Lyoko itself, will heavily improve by the time season 2 is out.
Chapter 16: Just in Time
Yumi, Ulrich, Odd, and I were all hanging out, kind of doing our own things. Ulrich and Yumi were sparring together, Odd was playing fetch with Kiwi, and I was playing on my 3DS.
"Anyone seen Jeremy this morning?" Yumi asked, stopping and looking over at Odd and me. I shrugged in response.
"I think he spent the night in the labrotory. He said he was working on something really important..." Odd explained. We all gave each other a knowing look.
"Aelita!" We all said at once, then laughed. Jeremy might be bright, but he can be very predictable. Ulrich reached up and scratched the back of his head, but was then kicked to the ground with a surprise attack executed by Yumi. I winced at the sight, not at all feeling envious of the brunette. He looked up at her in surprise.
"Hey! I thought it was time out!" Ulrich whined, putting a hand on the spot where he was kicked.
"Oops, guess I forgot." Yumi said innocently, but was giving him a slightly evil look. I laughed and looked back down at my game. However, I found that I was quickly killed by an enemy.
"Aw c'mon! That's the fifth time in a row!" I complained.
"Hey guys!" Jeremy then greeted as he ran up to us. "Guess what I did last night?" He asked once he caught his breath.
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it has to do with materializing Aelita." I guessed, not even bothering to look up from my screen.
"Yeah, that's right. Hey, how did you guess, Emily?" I smirked, then paused my game and looked up at him. "Well guys, I finally did! I decided to tackle the problem in a different way. You wouldn't believe it, but-"
"Well tell us! Did you do it or not?" Ulrich asked impatiently.
"I sure did." Jeremy said happily, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a test tube. We were... less than impressed.
"You materialized a test tube." Ulrich deadpanned. Jeremy sent him an annoyed look in response.
"No, airhead. Look inside, will you?" He raised the tube up so we could a get a closer look. Inside the glass tube, was a single, pink hair.
"A hair?" Odd questioned. "You mean you materialized one hair?"
"Yep, that's right, Odd!" Jeremy confirmed, seeming almost overly cheery about it. "To be exact, it's a hair of Aelita's." He blushed as he looked at the tube. We all gasped at this revealation. Jeremy had acomplished what would be considered an incredible feat for any scientist, and he's two years younger than me!
"What!? A real hair!?" Ulrich exclaimed, at which Jeremy nodded.
"But how did you manage that?" Yumi asked. Jeremy offered no answer, only making a motion to follow him. He led us all the back to the lab in the factory.
"To answer your question, I chose a hair because it's a simple anatomical structure, but which contains Aelita's complete genetic computer code." Unknown to Jeremy, none of us were really paying much attention. The boys were already yawning. "According to a well known fractal, who's recurrences are comparable to the genetic code of a human, which enabled me to make a physiological number transfer onto one part of the program already pretargeted, and defragmented." He looked back at us. "And that's that. Simple enough, right?" He noticed the confused and disinterested looks on our faces. "Do you follow?" I widened my eyes slightly and shook my head in attempt to brush off the headache he had given me.
"No." Odd answered.
"No it's not simple enough or no you don't follow?"
"No means that we take your word for it." Odd explained, which the rest of us agreed on with a nod of the head and hum. Aelita couldn't help but giggle from the computer. Jeremy shrugged.
"No problem. It'll become clear when Aelita's here in flesh and blood. Better get ready, Aelita."
"Ok, Jeremy." We gave Jeremy a shocked expression.
"Huh? You're going to materialize her now!?" Ulrich asked.
"Well what do you think? I'm not going to wait until next year!" Jeremy replied. "The hair was just a test before we do the whole thing!"
"Listen, making a hair appear is one thing, materializing Aelita is not the same." Yumi pointed out.
"Yeah, a hair is much simpler than Aelita, you out of all people should know that." I agreed. Jeremy sighed in annoyance.
"Look, do you want to spend the rest of your lives fighting XANA? Don't you want to find a way back to your world, Emily? Once Aelita's been materialized, we can unplug XANA once and for all and live normal lives." Jeremy said. "So I say it's worth trying." He began typing, and began the program. It didn't work, however, and a big red exclamation point made sure to rub that fact in his face. "How can that be? I planned everything so perfectly..."
"You're almost there, Jeremy. In a few days, you'll be all set, you'll see." Ulrich reassured him. Odd then looked down at his watch and cringed.
"Hey, c'mon! If we don't materialize in a couple of minutes in the classroom, we're not gonna last a few days." Odd warned us. We told Aelita bye, then ran back to Kadic just before classes began.
Lunch
We didn't meet as a whole group again until lunch. Jeremy was eating his food rather quickly, surprising everyone, especially Odd.
"Y'know, I could've sworn that it was going to work this time." He muttered just loud enough for us to hear.
"But, if the computer gene code from the hair gives you enough information for the parameters for materialization, then what's the problem." Yumi asked, making me stare at her.
"I never thought I'd hear anyone except Jeremy talk like that " I admitted, making Yumi shrug sheepishly.
"I wish I knew." Jeremy admitted. "I guess I did something wrong. The only way to find out is to start over."
"No don't do that!" Odd protested, catching all of our attentions. "You're only a hairs breadth away!" He began laughing at his own joke, but he was the only one who did so. Instead of laughing along with him, we gave him an annoyed look.
"Can you ever be serious, Odd?" Yumi asked.
"Yumi, that's one of the many questions the world cannot answer." I replied, making everyone minus Odd laugh. He folded his arms and let out a huff in my direction.
"C'mon Emily! I thought you said you loved cheesy puns!"
"Yes," I responded, poking my fork into a piece of food on my tray. "however, one can only handle so much cheese."
"By the way Odd, speaking of hair, your dog sheds an awful lot of them. Most of them end up on my bed, too." Ulrich said. Odd poked at his food, his head resting on one of his hands, uninterested.
"What's the big deal about two or three hairs?" He asked, making Ulrich mad.
"Two or three?!" He questioned. "With all the hairs he sheds, I could knit you another Kiwi." Yumi, Jeremy, and I began snickering as Ulrich shouted. Unfortunately,our fun halted when Sissi walked up alongside Nicholas and Herb.
"Hello." She said in rather nice tone. "Did you say dog? Oh, I really adore dogs. Can I sit down?" She asked very quickly.
"No." Ulrich deadpanned. A flash of annoyance appeared on Sissi's face for a split second, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. She bent down closer to Ulrich, most likely with some kind of plan in mind.
"You know, I'm so crazy about dogs that I'm ready to keep my mouth shut about the one Odd's hiding in his room. That is, if you promise to be nicer to me of course." A proud smile flashed across her face once she was done speaking. Yumi, who had been taking a sip of water, pulled the glass away from her mouth.
"Listen Sissi," Her grip on her glass tighten, but only slightly. "I'm warning you that if you say anything about Kiwi I'll-" Whatever threat she had planned to make was cut short by the sight and sound of the glass she was holding shattering in her hand. We all gasped at the sight of this; Sissi even left the table without another mention of Kiwi out of fear.
"A-are you ok Yumi?" Jeremy then asked, still slightly shocked. She pulled down her sleeve to reveal three rather large cuts on the palm of her hand, Ulrich looking at them with caring eyes.
"You need to go to the infirmary." He then said, and no objections were made. Both Ulrich and Yumi left the lunchroom without another word. I looked over at Odd and Jeremy, who both had no idea what to say.
"That was... something." Was all I could think of at the time. At that point, we all decided to leave the cafeteria and go off and do our own things. Jeremy went back to his dorm to work on Aelita's materialization, I honestly couldn't tell you where Odd decided to run of too, and I just hung around on one of the benches on campus. I don't know exactly how much time had passed, but after some time, I felt a vibration in my pocket. I pulled my phone out and saw that it was a call from Jeremy, then answered it.
"Hello?"
"Emily! Come to my dorm, quick! Something terrible's happened!" Jeremy exclaimed frantically.
"What? What happened?" I asked, panic and dread beginning to fill my body.
"Just get over here quick!" He hung up, leaving me worried.
I wasted to no time in climbing up to Jeremy's dorm. When I opened the door, I found the others already there, crowding around the computer.
"I don't believe it... this is a disaster!" Jeremy exclaimed.
"What is?" Ulrich asked.
"I was trying to figure out why the materialization program didn't work, and I discovered that Aelita's program is all full of bugs!" He began typing on his keyboard again. He brought up Aelita's program, which was glitching heavily, making Yumi gasp. "When I materialized the hair, I... I hit a button I shouldn't have."
"What exactly's been damaged?" I asked.
"The annex program." Yumi face then became one of slight hopefulness.
"Annex? That doesn't sound so bad." It was obvious she was trying to put some light in our gloomy picture. Jeremy, however, knew better.
"That's what you think..." He muttered. "The part of the program linking Aelita to the towers is screwed up." Aelita appeared his screen as spoke. He turned to face her with a depressed look on his face. "If Aelita enters the Lyoko code, she'll be completely reformatted." The four of us looked at one another with a worried look on our face, not exactly knowing what he meant by, 'reformatted.'
"Meaning?" Ulrich finally asked.
"She'll disappear forever." Jeremy closed his eyes as he spoke. His tone alone conveyed the hopelessness that was our situation.
"You know, Jeremy, a program can be debugged. We can do it together." Aelita said, breaking an awkward silence between us. Jeremy gave her a doubtful look.
"But what if XANA attacks before we're done?"
"Shush! You'll give him ideas!" I said, putting my index finger up to my lips in the usual 'be quiet' way.
"You're gonna have to work fast, Jeremy." Odd pointed out.
"Ok, make up a story to tell to the teachers. I'm not leaving this computer until I've solved the problem." Ulrich, Odd, and myself all nodded. We then walked out the door to leave Einstein to his work.
"I'd love to stick around longer, but I've got to go do something. See you guys later!" Yumi said, then ran off with a wave. Odd looked over at Ulrich and me.
"Do you really think they can do it?" He asked.
"What do you think? We've got two geniuses at work." Ulrich reminded him. I gave a halfhearted smile.
"Yeah, but while I hate to play Debby Downer, we all know XANA isn't going to sit idly while this happens. It's just a race between how fast Jeremy can fix everything and how fast XANA will launch an attack." The others sent a grimace my way. As we walked by their dorm, we could hear Kiwi barking from inside of it.
"Hey Odd, if you don't get Kiwi to calm down they're going to find him." Ulrich said. Odd nodded and opened the door to their dorm. Kiwi was standing there, facing the door, barking as loud as he could (or at least it seemed like it was as loud as he could).
"Hey, Kiwi! Quiet down!" He said, but his diggity dog just kept on going. "Quiet down I said!" He bent down and started scratching the mutt. "What's the matter? Did you smell something?" I approached behind Odd and stared scratching him behind the ears, but even that didn't do anything.
"What's wrong with hi-" I was then interrupted by the glass in the window shattering, which caught all of us off guard. Odd dove down to protect himself and Kiwi. I stumbled backwards and landed on my rear in front of Ulrich, just barely avoiding being his by some of the medium sized pieces.
"Whoa..." Ulrich breathed out. Odd looked at the window and gasped. The middle of each panel was completely shattered. As one of the last pieces fell from the window, Odd looked down at Kiwi.
"Did you do that?" Kiwi only offered a whine in response.
Eventually, after hiding Kiwi once again, we told Jim about the broken window. With folded arms, Jim stared down at Odd while Ulrich was sweeping up the broken pieces of glass off of the floor
"Well, maybe it was a ball that did it." Jim said. "And you of course, didn't see anything." He said it in an tone that seemed like he was accusing Odd of something.
"I couldn't have seen anything Jim, because I wasn't here. None of us were." Odd said. I nodded to verify the story. Our gym teacher scratched at his chin.
"Maybe so, but since all the rooms are off limits during the day, how come you knew about the window?" I could hear Ulrich pause in his brushing before speeding it up again. Jim, seeming to know he wouldn't get a good answer from us, began walking out of the dorm. He stopped at the door and looked down at Ulrich's bed.
"Ulrich, clean up your bed. There's hair all over it." Ulrich stopped once again to give a look at Odd from behind his back. I couldn't help but let out a giggle at Odd's obliviousness.
Later
Once Ulrich was done with cleaning the glass up and disposed of it properly, we went back down out the the campus again. Yumi, who had been waiting for us under a tree, approached us.
"What happened?" She asked, as I had sent a quick text to her before Jim had arrived.
"Everything's cool, Jim didn't spot Kiwi." Ulrich assured her.
"Yeah, but it was close. Kiwi's going to have to stay in my room for a little while." I explained. Odd had originally wanted to place Kiwi in Jeremy's room, but when I reminded him about our little problem, we decided it would be best not to disturb him.
Girl Dorms Hallways, 3rd Person POV
Sissi was walking down the hallway, her diary held closely in her arms. She happened to walk past Emily's door and heard Kiwi howling and scratching at her door. She rolled her eyes at the door.
"Oh that mutt." She muttered. She found their attempts at hiding Odd's mangy mutt laughable. After all, she could rat them out at any time about it. Any thoughts of ruining the group were interrupted, however, when a large crack started forming in the ceiling. Small pieces started falling from the cracks, and Sissi took that as her cue to run away, letting out a yelp as the piece of ceiling landed behind her with a thud.
First Person POV
"I was just passing by and..." Sissi said to a group of kids.
"I always said Sissi's head was full of plaster." Odd commented sarcastically. Yumi, Ulrich, and I all smiled at his comment as Jeremy approached us.
"I'm going to the lab." Jeremy reported. "With the school falling apart, I can't work in my room. See you."
"I hope he finds the right solution before XANA attacks again." Ulrich said as he watched Jeremy walk away.
"I'll see you guys tomorrow." Yumi then said, giving us all a smile and wave as she walked away. Ulrich seemed very focused on her, making Odd and me smirk at him. I waved my hand in front of him to make him flinch.
"Earth to Ulrich, you still there?" I asked. Once I got his attention, he looked down at his shoes.
"All these things happening are really weird." Ulrich stated. "First Yumi's glass breaks, then the window shatters, and now the ceiling. You guys think it's XANA?" Odd shrugged.
"Maybe it's just coincidence." He tried. I looked over at the dorm building.
"Odd, if there's one thing I've learned since the supercomputers activation, and my arrival here, it's this: I can no longer belied in coincidences."
Later...
"It's XANA, for sure." Ulrich said as Odd and I walked beside him. We had heard the full story, and it was just too perfect to be a coincident.
"Oh yeah, it's him alright. How does he do it?" Odd questioned.
"I don't know, but you both heard Sissi: Kiwi started barking just before the ceiling fell." I said.
"That might be a lead." Odd realized. "With the window it was the same."
"Maybe Kiwi can feel the attacks coming." Ulrich suggested.
"Or maybe he can hear them, like a kind of ultrasound." Ulrich pulled his mobile out as it rang in his pocket.
"Jeremy?"
"XANA alert!"
"That's what we thought."
"Warn Yumi!"
"Be right there." Ulrich ended the call and looked at us. "It's for real this time. XANA has woken up." The intercom suddenly crackled to life around us.
"You're attention please. Due to the danger of a structural accident, please evacuate calmly, and leave the immediate area. No one will be permitted to enter the building until further notice." Mr. Delmas said. Odd gasped at this news.
"Kiwi! He's still in your room, Emily!"
"Right, then lets go get him." I said, and started running back into the dorms with him.
"Meet you at the lab." Ulrich said.
The two of us ran up the stairs and hopped over a newly formed crack right next to my dorm. I pulled out my key and quickly unlocked the door. Odd opened it, frantically searching for Kiwi, who almost instantly jumped up at him.
"Alright, now let's get out of here before something worse happens." I said, which Odd agreed with. We started back to the stairs, when we noticed something we hadn't before: a light on in one of the dorms. Odd offered no hesitation in opening the door, much to the chagrin to the two girls inside, Milly and Tamiya.
"Hey! Didn't anyone teach you how to knock!?" Milly shouted.
"Didn't you two hear the principal?" I asked. They gave us a confused look.
"You gotta get out! The whole building could collapse!" Odd exclaimed. Milly gave is an unamused look.
"C'mon, cut it out!"
"No, I'm serious!" Odd countered, which was enough to convince them. We once again made way to the stairs, but Kiwi started barking again.
"That's not a good sign!" I thought, thinking back to what Ulrich and Odd had speculated earlier.
"Hey, what's wrong with your dog?" Tamiya asked, just before the entire building started shaking. I was unable to keep my balance, and started stumbling as I tried to stay standing. When it all stopped, XANA had shaken the building so hard that debris from the ceiling had crushed the stairs. I was in a bad spot, and had fallen forward to the sudden stop of the earthquake. I nearly fell off, though Odd and Tamiya had manage to catch me by the hood and sleeves of my jacket, though my phone did fall out of my small pockets in the the depths bellow. I let out a sigh of relief and looked at them gratefully.
"Thanks." I looked back down at the ruins. "Damn you XANA, making our escape this much harder." I looked over at Odd.
"About face." Was all he said, and we started running back from where we came. XANA had shaken the building pretty badly, and it was probably on purpose considering Odd and I were in there. A big part of the floor had completely collapsed. Odd gulped and looked at me.
Lab
The elevator door opened to reveal Ulrich being it's sole passenger.
"Ulrich!" Jeremy exclaimed as the brunette ran over to him. "How are things going over there?"
"There are cracks in the school building. It may cave in." Ulrich quickly explained. "XANA's using some kind of ultrasound system."
"Ultrasound huh? That's possible." Jeremy said as he typed. "He could be using the electrical sockets."
"Listen, he may attack the factory. Odd and Emily are on their way and I've warned Yumi." Jeremy looked down.
"Let's hope XANA gives me enough time to finish my program..." He muttered, but then had his attention caught by Ulrich cell phone ringing.
"Yes, Odd?" There was a pause." What!?"
Kadic
"We're stuck. With Milly and Tamiya if you must know." Odd said over his phone. "The fire fighters will be here any minute, so we can't meet you right now." There was a pause as Ulrich spoke. "No, don't wait, go to Lyoko." Kiwi started barking once more, another bad sign. Only a second later did the floor start shaking. Kiwi jumped into Odd's arms as Odd took his mutt back to a safer distance. The floor then started tilting to the side, making all four of us fall, and unfortunately, it also caused Odd to drop his phone. "No!"
Lab
"Odd!? ODD!" Ulrich exclaimed, but received no answer other than the call going dead. He looked over at Jeremy with a worried glance. "There's no time to lose, Jeremy."
"But I'm not finished fixing the program!" Jeremy protested.
"Odd and Emily are in danger! Transfer me right now!" Jeremy looked back at his computer screen and internally sighed. He knew Ulrich was right, as much as he didn't want to start before he finished, he knew Ulrich was right. He slowly nodded his head, then Ulrich rushed over to the ladder.
"Transfer, Ulrich. Scanner, Ulrich. VIRTUALIZATION!"
Ulrich landed in the Forest Sector witg a hand ready on his blade. He turned and saw Aelita, and slightly unsheathed his katana out of instinct.
"Ulrich." Aelita said.
"Aelita." Ulrich then replied, silently praying that they could fix her programs. She raised a finger to her lips.
"Shh. They're here." She said quietly. Ulrich look behind him and scanned over the area. No matter how hard he looked, however, he found nothing.
"There's nothing on my holomap for now." Jeremy chimed in. Ulrich took another look around, just to be sure.
"Things seem pretty calm." He commented.
"That's not what the pulsations say." Aelita said, pointing down at the red rings shaking and sounding out all throughout the sector.
"If we follow them, they're bound to lead to where the tower is." Aelita nodded her head, then began running after Ulrich as he led them acoss the forest sector, unaware that they were being followed.
Kadic
The building started shaking once again, making Milly cry out in fear,
"Oh, why aren't they here yet?!" The ground started tilting more, revealing a floor beneath us, looking relatively intact. Odd bit his bottom lip then looked over at us as the shuttering temporarily stopped.
"Look, we can't stay here! We've gotta cross to the over side!" Odd shouted. I nodded, but the younger girls in our company weren't so keen on the idea.
"You're out of your mind Odd! That's at least a ten meter drop!" Tamiya cried. Odd sent a reassuring glance back at the two.
"Just trust me, ok? I can't tell you how yet, but we're gonna make it! In the mean time, we've gotta get across where we'll be safe." Odd then allowed himself to slide across the tilted floor. Tamiya cried out when Odd slid off, but he stuck the landing pretty easily. "No problem, your turn now!" He then said, setting down Kiwi. The girls looked over at me. I gave them both a smile.
"You'll be fine. Just follow me." I then scooter forward slightly and allowed momentum to act on me. I landed next to Odd, then turned to face Milly and Tamiya.
Lyoko
Ulrich and Aelita had not stopped running since Ulrich had arrived. They kept following the narrow path with the red rings as their guide across the sector. The samurai looked around and noted the paths alongside them.
"We're coming to the parallel paths!" He reported, but he felt something was off. They hadn't run into any monsters yet, and it wasn't at all like XANA to just give up, not unless he would somehow have a type of benefit from it. Then, Ulrich found himself tumbling forward thanks to taking laser to his shin."Jeremy, how many life points do I have left?" He asked, pulled out his saber and putting an arm in front of Aelita as lasers whizzed by.
"Hold on, 70!" Jeremy said, then out a confused noise. "Um no wait, 60!" Ulrich let out an aggravated sigh.
"Make up your mind Jeremy! I gotta know!" He reminded him. He and Aelita were caught by surprise thanks to another laser. "Take cover, Aelita!" He ordered her, which she obliged by.
"I can't do a million things at once! Dodge the lasers and you won't have to keep count!" Jeremy shouted. Ulrich jumped around a few times to avoid some more lasers provided by the Roachsters, and even had to use he sword to deflect a blast. He leaned against a tree to catch his breath, but then had to roll to his left as he barely avoided getting hit smack dab in the face. He looked over at Aelita.
"I can't handle them right now. We've gotta get out of here!" He grabbed her hand and ran as fast as he could in the direction of the pulsations. They eventually stopped when the path had three more paths in separate directions. Ulrich looked down and frowned. "The pulsations are separating in two directions now!
"Head east! The monsters you managed to dodge before aren't too far away." Jeremy's voice rang out above them. Ulrich clutched his katana tightly as a Roachster approached.
"Ok Jeremy, we'll try to find another path." Aelita said.
"Too late." Ulrich said, watching as the monster charged it's laser. It went past them both, as it hadn't been a good shot. They started running forward, only to met with three more Roachsters. They were surrounded with the three in front of them and the one behind them. The leader in the front was about to fire another laser, but a fan intercepted those plans. "Yumi!" Ulrich exclaimed as the geisha jumped up to catch her fan.
"Need a hand around here?" Yumi asked, then threw her fan like a frisbee to take out the other two in front of them. Ulrich then used his super sprint to jump over her and get closer to the Roachster. He jumped over two more lasers, then stabbed it in the eye, with his typical shout of, "Impact!"They started running once more. "Here we go!" Yumi exclaimed. As they ran, the tower came into view.
Kadic
Tamiya had found the courage to slide down thanks to our example. Odd managed to catch her and set her down next to me and Kiwi. I looked up at Milly, who was still cowering at the idea of sliding.
"It's your turn Mill!" I called. She shook her head with tears streaming down her face.
"No! I'll never make it!"
"Sure you will!" Odd assured her. The building started shaking again, the floor she was holding onto tilting even further, forcing ber to slide down. Screaming all the way down at the unexpected ride, she managed to land on her feet, but nearly fell due to a lack of balance and being on the edge with little ground. Odd and I managed to catch her right before, thankfully. "Ok, great going girls! Now lets get out of here!"
"Now there's an idea I'm down with." I commented. We continued on to the exit, but it was blocked by large pieces of rubble. "Great, XANA's thought of everything." I glowered.
The building started shaking around us once again. I looked up at the ceiling. There were tons of cracks, at looking down, things didn't seem very stable. If things didn't go well on Lyoko, we were done for.
Lyoko
Things weren't going well on Lyoko either. The group had been cornered by three Krabs in a sort of tree dome. Aelita had also just taken a hit to the arm, though thankfully the other had been blocked by Yumi's fan. Jeremy typed away on his keyboard as he prepared his program.
"We're all set. Hang on, Aelita. I'm starting up the repair program."
"Just in time too. It's starting to get a little hot around here." Yumi was then forced to the ground to dodge a laser that nearly hit her head.
"Here we go!" Jeremy said hopefully as he hit the enter key. His hopes were dashed when he saw a red exclamation mark. "No! This can't be!" Aelita looked down at the ground. They had tried, but there was no use trying to delay the inevitable. While still holding her arm, she stood up, catching Ulrich and Yumi's attention.
"Jeremy... I've got to deactivate the tower." She said, surprising the others.
"No! Give me a little more time!" Jeremy begged. "I'll start over again!" She brought up her visual to Jeremy.
"Jeremy, you know there's no choice." She said calmly.
"But you'll be reformatted and disappear, Aelita!" Jeremy reminded her. He could already feel tears threatening to spill out. "I-I can't let you do that!"
"Are you ready for one last run?" Aelita asked the others.
"No Aelita! Don't do it!" Yumi simply responded by pulling out her fans.
"I'll be in front." Ulrich said as he unsheathed his katana. He ran out to do battle while Yumi lead Aelita to the tower for one final trip. Ulrich jumped up and killed one of the Krabs, but was ultimately devirtualized by the second.
As the two girls approached the tower, Aelita stopped and gave Yumi a sad look, but still gave her a small wave before running to the tower. Yumi gave the Krab approaching the evil eye and pulled out her fans. She ran over to them and threw a fan at one of them, destroying it. She looked back, and when she saw Aelita enter the tower, she allowed herself to be devirtualized for a final time.
Kadic
The building around us was quickly crumbling and descending into the ground. I looked over at Odd, who had Milly and Tamiya crying into his chest. He clutched them tightly. Then, I found myself loosing my balance again as the floor titlted to a mich further drop, one that would likely kill me. I fell and started sliding face first towards the edge.
"Emily! No!" The others shouted. I then found myself tumbling through the air, a dark ground coming closer and closer. I braced myself for impact, but it never came. It was instead replace by the white glow pf the return trip filling the whole area.
"Aelita... Thank you."
Lab
We had gathered in the lab again, where we had been before everything had happened. Unlike this time, however, there was a notable lack of a certain pink haired elf with is. Yumi wiped some tears from her eyes, while Ulrich and Odd let out depressed sighs. I was sitting down on the floor with my knees curled up to my face. Jeremy was completely silent, but we could all see him shaking in his seat with grief.
"Jeremy... it wasn't your fault." Ulrich tried to assure him, but it was no use.
"It was..." Jeremy said with a quivering voice. "And all that, for a strand of hair." He pulled of his glasses to wiped away the tears threatening to fall while letting out a sniffle.
"Hey, the hair!" Yumi suddenly exclaimed. "Jeremy! Didn't you say that the hair contained Aelita's entire genetic code?" She asked with a hope filled voice.
"Her computer code yes but-"
"Is it possible to reverse things and recreate Aelita's code from the strand of her hair!?" Jeremy gasped, most likely having never have thought that would be a possibility. But when you have a supercomputer harboring a virtual world, lost of things were possible. He pulled out the test tube and handed it to Yumi. She ran climbed down to the scanner room and place it in one other scanners as Jeremy began the process.
"It works!" Jeremy shouted in shock. "Her codes are getting restored! Let's hope that-" Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a familiar beep and screen popping up.
"Jeremy. I'm ready for my materialization now." Aelita sang.
"Aelita!" We all shouted in glee. Ulrich and Yumi hugged one another in excitement while Odd and I high-fived. I didn't even care that it had hurt my hand, we had Aelita back, and that was what mattered. Jeremy could no longer hold back his tears, but they were no longer for grief. No, they were out of the joy Aelita being back.
"Jeremy, did I miss something? Why is there water on your face?" She asked, not yet knowing what crying was.
"I'll tell you later Aelita." He promised her, wiping the tears away. He looked at us with a smile. "This time we only missed, by a hair." We all couldn't help but laugh. Was it corny? Yeah. But given the situation, we all needed the laugh.
Phew, I think this is one of my longest chapters yet! Unfortunately, there wasn't a WHOLE lot of time spent with Odd, so I just decided to focus more on the Lyoko bits.
Anyways, next time we'll be doing The Trap, another decent episode.