I do not own Code Lyoko.
()()()() Canon Level: ~33%: Set in the same AU as Culmination. ()()()()
The town is quiet.
In most towns, that wouldn't be a surprise, in theory. But here, the rarity of that fact makes silence a blessing. The factory down the road operates at all hours, most days, belching smoke into the air, trucks carrying materials to and from the factory filling even the dead of night with the growl of their engines. It's a small town, so even the furthest houses are disturbed by the noise.
That isn't the worrying part, though. The factory was in operation for years, this isn't new to anyone but the youngest members of the town. The worrying part is that the factory had been closed down years ago, and no indication of a new company moving in had made the news - in such a small town, everyone would have known within an hour if they had.
So now the town waits, listens to the sounds of the Factory. No one is seen entering or leaving, at most some of the townsfolk get glimpses of shadowy figures moving crates into trucks from the docking bays, but they aren't locals. No one knows who works at the Factory now, no one knows what it makes. Where the trucks go. The town is on edge, sleepless nights mixed with a foreboding menace in the air. Some families leave, unwilling to put up with the haze of tension in the air. Most stay. The ones whose families have lived there for generations. The ones too stubborn or too set to pick up and move away. The void left by the families who moved feels like a tipping point - like a snowball has been tossed from the mountain peak, and now everyone left was just waiting for the town to give its last gasps.
Then, they arrive.
Half a dozen young adults -no, not even out of their teens. Freshly moved in from Paris, only two of them speak English with any proficiency. They move in to one of the newly empty houses and start asking questions, investigating the Factory and any of the legends that have sprung up around it. No one answers their questions. The Factory has been louder since they arrived - something is going on, and no one wants to get caught up in it.
People start going missing, disappearing into the night. No signs of forced entry or fights, just a burn mark around electrical outlets, and then they seemed to wake up and walk out on their own. At first, the newcomers are blamed. They invite people to look through the house they moved into, though, and it is empty. They don't know the area well enough to hide the missing people anywhere else. One of the older women, a few days later, notices her husband loading one of the trucks that drive away from the Factory. Something has happened, and the missing people are all working there, now. When people gather to demand answers from the Factory, there is no response. The doors are bolted, loading bays locked, windows barred. There is no way in for the people of the town. No way out for those who have gone in.
When the mob disperses hours later, hopeless, half a dozen teenagers remain in front of the factory. They converse for a while in hushed french whispers, before, eventually, they too, return to the house they have taken. That night, near midnight, the factory lights up, flashes of intense white blazing through the windows and broken boards. A crack of thunder ripples across the town, accompanied by neither clouds nor lightning, as the town's electronics begin to go haywire.
The next morning, the foreign teens are gone, and the doors to the factory hang open, barely clinging to their hinges. One by one, people who went missing wander out of the factory as the sun breaks over the horizon. Dazed, confused, they don't know what happened. Where they were, or what they were doing is a complete mystery, even to them. When the townsfolk investigate the factory, the only clue they find are obliterated assembly lines and the smoking ruin of a massive computer. When it becomes clear that there's no recovering any data from the Factory, the town boards it back up and schedules it to be demolished. The tension fades from the air, people who left begin to move back, one by one.
The town is quiet.
()()()()
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Honestly, please do. So far I'm working with prompts from my writing class, but that'll run out in a few weeks, at which point I'll have time to work on reader requests!