I watched the pages fluttering in the wind, each of them flapping like the wings of birds, wreathed with fire as they disintegrated into nothing more than ashes, which silently fell like snow in a world where everything is upside-down.

Code: Apocalypse: Chapter III

A clawed finger gently traced the glass tube, making a small impression on the otherwise foggy glass. Most, if not all of them were still asleep, and they were still not ready to be released upon the world to cause destruction and mayhem. Not bothering to fully clear the glass tubes from the fog that covered the glass tubes, XANA-Aelita glanced at the readout on the digital interface provided by the laptop. The data scrolling in the window would have been a completely different language to most people, but the data contained the information needed to create them- since manually forming them with specters would have been too troublesome. They weren't exactly made from either organic or digital matter- they were rather a combination of them, a fusion that had not been easy to create either. There was the matter of the DNA combination and how the digital matter would have to take place of some of the matter in the DNA without fully destroying it, otherwise the transcription of the DNA would never take place, and the experiment would end in a failure. It would either be in a genetic defect that would prove the experiment too useless or deformed to be of any good use to XANA, or they would suffer other defects as well.

The clawed finger pulled away, the arm retreating back to its owner's side. 'How unfortunate the world would be when they are ready to be awakened' Aelita thought. Her hand lightly rubbed against the glass case once more, rubbing away some of the fog to reveal its occupant. Aelita sighed, and looked in the glass, which revealed a small shape curled into a ball. The experiments… these things growing inside of these tubes… Although they certainly didn't look deadly, they would be when they were fully grown, and then could Code: Apocalypse fully be initiated. Only then would they be trained and then released in the hundreds to destroy a large city nearby as a test run. Behind the numerical percentage of success, there was a still a shadow of a doubt residing behind her mind.

Although XANA, in a sense, had taken over her mind and was able to control all of her motor functions at the moment, he could not fully control her mental functions, and that included the thoughts. XANA wasn't pleased that he could not fully contain Aelita's mental attempts of freedom- it was almost impossible to control one's mental self while most of the energy was directed to controlling the physical self. He knew that somewhere, Aelita's conscious self was waiting until there was a gap in his possession, and then choose that moment to fully strike. Despite his best attempts, XANA knew that Aelita's conscious self was gaining power, as well as gaining traction and slowly regaining some of her physical self's willpower and ability to resist his influence. It was annoying in a way, but each time, XANA was able to repel the conscious's self mental assault and make her submit for the time being.

XANA-Aelita furrowed her brows and her eyes glinted angrily at something that was now going on. The infernal pest, the mental part of the free Aelita, was attacking again, struggling with every ounce of willpower left in an attempt at freedom. Aelita roared in what seemed more animalistic than human, and fought to remain in control. Minutes ticked by, and the battle was slowly being lost for the remaining part of Aelita that XANA was never able to control. Once XANA-Aelita was sure the mental part of herself was back into the recesses of the mind, it was only then did she stop her assault, but still remained on guard for any further attacks. A chime echoed throughout the vast room, and Aelita looked behind her, one of the robots standing in the doorway silently. XANA-Aelita stared at it for a moment, before following it to the control center, where XANA had spotted something unusual during his routine scans of the Earth.

The control center had numerous panels, as well as technologically advanced satellite and monitoring systems. One of the robots working in the center had found something that XANA did not expect to find while he was searching for the best place to invade first. On one of the screens, it had a still of the people XANA never expected to see again- Waldo Franz Schaeffer and his wife. Instantly, after looking at them, Aelita quietly jerked in a strange manner, and softened eyes that were nearly brimming with tears in the lapse of control XANA had due to the strong memories associated with her father and mother before it was replaced with the hardened expression once more. Glaring down at the still frame, Aelita resumed the feed that had been captured by a satellite orbiting at the moment, and saw both of them doing something in the skeletal remains of her childhood home.

Both of them looked as young as Aelita remembered them strangely enough, and they looked like they were busy rebuilding the mountain cabin. Aelita blinked again, looking at their expressions and at their efforts, which had proved fruitful due to their perseverance. Although the labor was hard and monumental tasks were laid out before them, both of them were smiling about something, like they were two old buddies sharing a couple of jokes with each other… but what was it? The ghost of their troubles seemed so far away from them at the moment, and it seemed like they were the only people on the Earth, content on building a shelter to house themselves from the brutality of the world. Aelita turned and walked back into the chamber, being careful enough so the robots that constantly patrolled the corridors and rooms of the abandoned laboratory would never see the water that fell from her eyes as she started re-living her memories once more.

Why have you forsaken me?

Group

"Aw, come on Jeremie! We could just get a weapon, pose in a cool manner as we're reloading the firearm, and say 'lock 'n load, baby!' It'll look cool, and we could then just crash into wherever XANA's hiding in one of those big trucks, and jump out into poses as loud explosions occur behind us!" Odd excitedly yelled, waving his hands up and down as he spoke.
"This isn't an action movie, Odd" Jeremie grumbled. "Anyway, Mr. Man-of-Action, where will we get the funds to get actual weapons and an explosion?"
"Well, we can always-"
"No, Odd" Ulrich mumbled in a bored manner, lounging on one of the couches in Jeremie's living room.

Odd pouted and crossed his hands, leaning against the leather covering of the sofa, sulking at his idea being shot down. Ulrich merely shrugged and took another sip of his drink, slightly gagging at the bitterness of the coffee. Yumi wasn't really paying attention to the conversation, as she had been stationed as a lookout in case 'Aelita' came back early from running an errand in town. Spotting the small car coming up the road, she quickly gave a shrill whistle that pierced through the air and shattered the silence that the others shared with each other. Panicking, they started whispering fiercely to each other, wondering what to do at the moment she stepped through the door and saw them.

Jeremie panicked momentarily before resigning himself to fate that 'Aelita' would come in at any moment, instead shrugging nonchalantly and motioning with his hand for them to relax. Jeremie gave them a quick look over, made sure they didn't look too suspicious before fixing a drink of hot tea, which he hoped would look normal enough not to be considered a suspicious figure. 'Aelita', who came in moments later holding several items, gave Jeremie a weird look that plainly said that she was noting his strange tense behavior when she walked by before realizing what he was doing and shrugging, leaving to put the items she was carrying away. Chalking it up as normal behavior due to the stresses of human life, she didn't question him about it, instead resuming the normal routines defined by how the household usually ran through her head. Opening the refrigerator, she slowly blinked before quirking one of her eyebrows in a questioning look.

" … Jeremie? How come the Fridge is empty?" she asked, Ulrich groaning lightly as she said it, realizing what Odd had done.

Later…

"… What does that mean, Jeremie?" as 'Aelita' puzzled over what Jeremie was writing.
"S'envoler…" Jeremie murmured, inking the words onto the back of her hand with a pen. "It means 'to fly away', if you want to translate it into English."
"I want to fly away some day… just break away from everything and… be free…" she murmured, watching as Jeremie continued to carefully re-trace the pen on the back of her hand over the word, adding a more detail as he broadened the letters.
"I don't usually tattoo stuff on the back of people's hands, but I guess some people do it for art, but only with regular ballpoint pen, so that each drawing is special, as each of them are only temporary. …Think of it as an artist's print, only that the artist and some people around them can enjoy it, so it's a rare piece of artwork, because the artist only made one of that kind of artwork." Jeremie explained as he finished the 'R' of the word.

'Aelita' withdrew her hand once he was done putting another layer of ink on the letters, and flexed it, her fingers curling into a fist before uncurling again. It was fascinating how the wording bent and flexed with her muscles, the angel wings at the ends of the word seemingly fluttering slightly up and down as her fist clenched and unclenched. 'Aelita', fascinated with how this could be, ignored the logic and reasoning that was stored in a database somewhere in her, choosing instead to learn on her own about the world.

At times, she questioned whether this was rebellious behavior, ignoring the information XANA would send her on the specific topic, choosing instead to be fascinated with the world. It was simply amazing to learn something on one's own, instead of having one tell you about it. All the natural expressions and reactions to things, the feelings one has when they find out more about the world they live in. Just like Aelita, when she was first materialized out of Lyoko, the specter cared to learn things that it thought was fascinating, like how the body reacted against invading pathogens, and the ways that the mysterious illnesses worked, and what virus or bacteria caused it.

The living organisms' defense system and how it worked made the specter often wonder whether she was a virus as well, as it was basically an invader coming onto another person's territory and fooling the defense systems. Then there was the other fact that she was basically a virus herself, an extension of the will of an artificial intelligence that infected things to do nefarious deeds. Scientists never figured out what the purpose of viruses were except for the virus' need to destroy, reproduce and endure as long as they can by tricking the host cell into making copies of them. Such a thought made 'Aelita' sad, often making her wonder at night whether she was worth nothing, and was nothing but a pathogen to merely carry out the instructions embedded within itself to destroy and deceive.

"Aelita…" A voice whispered in her ear, the soft voice resounding in her head.
"Who… who said that?" 'Aelita', asked turning her head around to look at the occupants of the home, utterly bemused on who it was, as it was not the voice that XANA chose to use when communicating with her.
"Who said what, princess?" Ulrich asked, slightly wondering if the clone was trying to catch them off guard, and then kill them when they were not looking.
"…Someone said my name…" 'Aelita' muttered, still looking around the room.
"Aelita, there's nobody here but us…" Jeremie replied, sharing almost the same thought as Ulrich, except he thought that the clone was playing dumb.
"We'll talk again later" the voice whispered again, leaving the specter to wonder if the systems for the proper functioning were acting up again.

Waldo and Antea

Waldo gazed sadly upon the relic of the past, staring at its horribly disfigured form as it lay on the dusty floor, as if it were a once living thing that had died, taking all the beauty it once had with it. The piano's legs had rotten away long ago, the body of the grand piano crashing with what was probably a tremendous thud and the horrible sounds of a dying piano as it fell, the wood weakened enough to be unable to support the heavy instrument anymore. The normally white keys were blackened with time and from the lack of being maintained; the black cover of the piano was nowhere to be found in the surrounding area, which was because it was probably destroyed as time passed as well. Some keys were pulled up; others were broken and lying on the top of the rest of the keys. Waldo looked down upon what was once one of the pianos he taught his daughter with and could not let out a small sigh. Vandals probably came into their home earlier in the years of the home's owners' absence, along with some arsonists, judging by the way most of the things in the household were damaged in some sort of way. Some parts of the house were burnt, including some of the furniture that used to stand out in its elegance. Waldo was thankful that the groups that had come through the home had not destroyed the most important parts of his way to shut down XANA as he stared upon the piano.

Suddenly curious, his hands gravitated towards the keys, and he depressed them, surprised when the piano still made a note, though it was all but drowned from the years of no tuning, non-maintenance and disuse. The muffled note made a soft noise, and Waldo started to play part of his favorite song on the piano as a test run to see how the piano performed, the song in question being 12 Variations. The notes of the piano were still slightly audible in between the sounds Antea's war against the microorganisms that infested the household, though some notes played sharper and louder than others. Sometimes the keys stuck a little, and caused an irritating pause for the professional piano player, which required him to jiggle the keys a little until he was able to press them down, or they plainly wouldn't be depressed no matter what Waldo tried. Some keys had broken off during Waldo's playing, leaving him to sigh in disbelief and skip the part of the song which contained those notes.

Waldo moved an octave higher, and started to play the prelude the 12 Variations, the two lines of notes he memorized playing in his head as memories and visions of the past. His fingers danced over the white keys, the unturned piano making slightly off-key noises when he depressed some keys. Antea soon came over to where he was playing and looked behind her to see the chair that she had sat in while she enjoyed her husband's musical performances a long time ago. She sighed as well, and continued to throw out the rotted wood after breaking it into smaller pieces. Though the song itself was nice, it seemed as if it was a rendition of a song playing out their miseries, instead of what it was supposed to come off as to its listeners.

The song stopped abruptly, as Waldo couldn't continue to the first variations because the piano had simply stopped making sounds that were deemed to be within his levels of expectations. Waldo continued to stare at the piano, silently and thoughtfully thinking for a while. Antea knew that the piano held too many memories for them to simply throw it away, and Waldo thought the same thing, thinking over the bittersweet moments with his daughter when everything was simple, and there was no fear of the government trying to interfere with their life. Now it seemed like everything was going wrong in their life as their living spiraled rapidly downwards into a series of more than unfortunate occurrences. It only seemed that though it was about twenty years ago, he was sitting next to his daughter, teaching her his favorite song by Mozart. That particular memory played over and over ago in his mind, the memory making the scene seem as if it were yesterday, that he was playing piano with her while his wife smiled and sipped her hot chocolate in the background. It made him wonder if their life was going to be ever the same again.

End of Chapter

AN: Waldo did have a black Grand Piano, as shown in XANA's Simulation Bubble Replica of the Mountain Cabin. This piano is not to be confused with the upright one that used to be in the Hermitage. What happened to the piano in the Hermitage is a mystery, though it was most likely destroyed with time or by other means.