A/N: Here is yet another request from FP7ETDP43 over on DeviantArt. If you like this story, go and give him some love and kudos too, because this was all his idea. It's only a one-shot (for now, at least), and it's in Anthea's point of view.
Also, by the request of FP7ETDP43: Ulrich and Yumi's Lyoko forms are the ones they have in Garage Kids, and Anthea's Lyoko form is the one drawn by DA's ChornayaDrakoshig (excellent design by the way).
Disclaimer: I do not own Code Lyoko in any way, shape, or form.
!~~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~~!
"A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That's how awful the loss is." — Jay Neugeboren, An Orphan's Tale
Code: MEMORY
In 1987, thirteen years after the start of Project Carthage, a project funded by the Switzerland government, your and your husband Waldo Schaeffer discovered the truth about the project and its unhumane military objective. Both of you vehemently disagreed; it went against your morals. So you decided to leave and inform the government all about the project they were funding. Grateful for your intel, the government assigned Major Steinback to help you two and your five-year-old daughter Aelita evacuate from the military base you worked at, intentionally stealing important documents when you did so.
In order to force you, especially Waldo, into coming back, a group of men under the direction of Mark James Hollenback tried to kidnap you, but somehow, they blundered and instead kidnapped Aelita.
Aelita, your daughter, who would never hurt a fly.
Given the urgent situation, Major Steinback led the search to find your daughter, a minor.
During a cold winter morning of 1988, you and Waldo moved into a charming little villa, the Hermitage, located on the fringes of Paris. Major Steinback gave you two new identities.
From that point on, your husband was now known as Franz Hopper, using his middle name and your maiden name, and he taught science at the nearby Kadic Academy, while the Major took the name of Suzanne Hertz and worked at the same school as his assistant.
You were given a new name as well, but you refused to take it. You felt empty. It was supposed to be you, not Aelita. The Hermitage and your family both felt incomplete. Taking on a new identity would just make it worse.
To cope, you became a novel writer. Most of them were stories written in the perspective of a parent, usually a mother, finding their lost child. Others, however, were written from the view of a lost child finding their parent. Some days, it worked. Some days, it didn't.
You and Waldo (sorry, Franz) were happy now. At least, you should've been. You were now in hiding and you trusted Major Steinback (Suzanne Hertz) with your lives. Despite, as well as in spite, of your apparent happiness, you wished to continue your search for Aelita, and you were genuinely pleased that your husband is on your side.
Because he too felt guilty about your daughter being taken. They were planning to use you as leverage, and there's no way they won't attempt the same with Aelita.
To that end, Major Steinback told you that she was in contact with Renault, an automobile company that owned an abandoned factory nearby of which the underground part could be rebuilt and transformed into a laboratory.
But the search for Aelita seemed to be at a standstill since Hollenback seemed to have just vanished, disappeared off the face of the Earth. The agents trying their best (and failing) to track him down started calling him "The Magician".
Fortunately, you three soon obtained the permission of Renault to turn their factory into a laboratory. Waldo soon met Lowell Tyron, the man he and the Major trusted to finance your project.
Tyron worked for the Green Phoenix, a criminal organization. Since you needed funded to finance your work and create the complex under the factory, the organization ordered Tyron to help you and Waldo by providing them with the necessary money. In exchange for that, Tyron was given permission to relay the results of your research to his higher-ups. The deal went through, and you began working.
The Major hired you some help, bodyguards in the form of Takeho and Akiko Ishiyama (at the time, they weren't married though), and Robert Della Robbia (your little sister's husband), some muscle to help move parts in the form of Walter Stern, and an assistant in the form of Michel Belpois. And all of it was financed by the Green Phoenix through Lowell Tyron.
You began two projects.
The first was called X.A.N.A., a multi-agent program with the ability to grow in power over time, an exponential and endless potential. You created this program for one very specific purpose: to destroy Project Carthage, to prevent it from destroying innocent lives.
The second was a virtual universe run by the supercomputer. You linked your universe to the real world via the scanners (which Michel Belpois invented the logic circuits for) with the ability to convert the entire data of a body and memory of an individual through the scan. From there, you created a method to transfer someone from the real world into the virtual world, or vice versa: virtualization and materialization.
Your new friends helped give you design ideas, and Takeho and Akiko, in celebration of their engagement, provided you with a name: Lyoko, from the Japanese word "ryokō" (meaning 'travel').
But time was ticking for you and your team. However, a lucky discovery of a surprising property of the supercomputer gave you the time you lacked: the Return to the Past.
Through this high-powered process, you could go back in time while still retaining the memory and data stored in the computer. This way, you could all work in peace.
However, it only works if your image is within the supercomputer's database, put there via the scanners. You and Waldo scan yourselves, and you also scan Takeho, Akiko, Robert, Walter, Michel, and Major Steinback.
But not Tyron. None of you trusted him. You didn't why; he just gave off that untrustworthy vibe.
You were right to trust your instincts. On June 25th, 1993, a dispute occurred between you and Tyron. You and Waldo discovered that Tyron was going to use whatever they developed for the Green Phoenix's own benefit. In the end, he was kicked out of your Lyoko team.
Besides your downright illegal activities, Waldo still fulfilled his function as a science teacher named Franz Hopper at Kadic Academy while you continue your work as a novel writer. Both of you were very well aware that your current lives were that of people who were tracked by secret services and the most powerful international organisations. But you had no choice.
This was the path you had chosen.
Everything changed, however, on May 2nd, 1994, when you got a package in the Hermitage's mailbox. Only you were home, so you would show Waldo when he got home later.
On the label were the written words: For Waldo and Anthea Schaeffer.
This was cause for concern already because nobody was supposed to know your real names. The only people who knew were the members of your little Lyoko team (true friends 'til the end) and Major Steinback (for obvious reasons). You had to play it. You had to know who sent it.
On your way to the living room, you picked up a VHS-C Cassette Adapter, and plopped the tape inside it and the adapter into the VHS player.
The TV screen flickered on, showing a date that was about a week ago (April 27, 1994) that this tape was recorded. When the screen showed a bit more color than just black, you took in a deep breath.
It was your daughter. It was Aelita.
She was older now, but that was her unmistakable pink hair that she got from you, dressed in all black, tightly clutching Mister Pück, the doll you gave her, in her arms. She looked tired, and when you stared into her eyes, you noticed that something seemed broken within her.
"At least, they're physically treating her well..." you grimly noted to yourself.
Aelita took a deep breath before quietly beginning to talk. She revealed that she smuggled a camcorder and a tape inside her cell. Now, she was able to tell her parents a lot of things. But she had to make it quick, because she didn't want Mago to know what she was doing. Lest he do horrible things to her.
You wondered who this Mago person was, but you didn't pause the tape even once. You didn't have the heart to.
For the whole duration of the tape, she talked about her life during the past seven years. Aelita revealed that Hollenback had changed his name Hannibal Mago, and that she was forced to follow him while he was on the run. Constantly travelling, she spent years locked in one prison after another alongside Mister Pück. Sometimes, she wished that Mago would trip up every once in a while, giving her a chance to escape, or at least live a better life than the one she was living right now...
Your heart twisted and contracted in pain as you noticed that your daughter's vocabulary was still one of a young child. Aelita was physically twelve years old, but mentally, she was still five.
"No thanks to him," you muttered, with a hint of anger in your voice.
Aelita continued to talk, revealing that she was the Green Phoenix's psychological guinea pig. She was forced to endure experiments on the human mind. "It's a miracle I haven't gone off the deep end..." your daughter admitted, while shaking.
At the end of the tape, Aelita revealed to you that Mago was planning something. Something huge. Something important. She had no proof, but she knew it was true.
"Mommy...Daddy...don't forget...I love you..." Aelita said with tears in her eyes, before tightly hugging Mister Pück.
The video finally ended. You didn't want it to. You felt comforted by the fact that Aelita had not lost her memories of you and Waldo. She wanted to escape.
But as you ejected the tape from the VHS player, you realized with horror two very important things.
One: If you and Waldo successfully received this tape without any issues, it meant that Mago knew all along and was just playing with you.
Two: Through this video, Hannibal Mago intended to force you into taking Project Carthage up again. Just as you and Waldo both had feared.
Though you should've suspected, given Tyron the traitor's connection with Green Phoenix, it meant that the Green Phoenix now knew were you lived.
The tape was later shown to Waldo when he returned, and he later digitized it alongside your video journal. His reaction was the same as yours.
Sure enough, one month later, on June 6th, 1994, the men in black found you and Waldo at the Hermitage. Fortunately, you were prepared, having disbanded the rest of your team for their protection and hiding the discs containing the video journal in a train station locker and the key of this locker on a chain around your neck.
Leaving your home and lives behind, the two of you decided to go to the only place where you would be safe: Lyoko.
You could no longer write novels, but at least you didn't have to pretend to be someone you were not.
But once you arrived in the virtual world, fate played a new twist on you. X.A.N.A., the multi-agent program designed to destroy Carthage had evolved a conscience and a human-like intelligence, thanks to the numerous Returns to the Past you had run. Its primary instinct was to break free of its chains and go after its masters. It attacked you and Waldo to emancipate itself.
You tried to negotiate with your creation, to convince it to live in harmony with you, but you failed.
Unable to contain the evil you had caused, the two of you cut off power to the supercomputer from the inside out, trapping X.A.N.A. in an eternal slumber along with yourselves.
And that's where you sleep for the next ten years.
!~~~A~N~T~H~E~A~~A~E~L~I~T~A~~R~O~L~E~S~W~A~P~~~!
The first thing you see when you wake up next is the face of a young boy with blonde hair and glasses, but with Michel Belpois's eyes. Apparently, he was exploring at the factory for some parts for his miniature robots, only to find the supercomputer instead.
This first thing you ask him is for today's date. He says it's October 9, 2004. It's been ten years, you realize.
The boy is confused, but very intrigued when you tell him, contrary to what he believes, you're not an AI. You're a human and you've been trapped here for ten years. You then introduce yourself as Anthea, no last name given.
The boy, named Jérémie Belpois, takes this as you having some form of amnesia, and you don't bother to correct him. The memories you have are too painful to share. You remember everything, but you don't wish to explain everything to Michel's son.
Michel was your group's moral center, and his kindness seems to have been passed down to his son. Jérémie offers to help you escape the supercomputer, but you advise him to shut it down. You don't tell him about X.A.N.A., but you assure him that you'll be fine.
He wants a couple of days to think it over. He wants to try at least, and you let him, keeping an eye on X.A.N.A. over the next two days.
Your instincts end up being correct. X.A.N.A. goes after Jérémie, first with a vending machine, then one of his miniature robots, and then an electricity monster that three kids, Ulrich Stern (Walter's son), Yumi Ishiyama (Takeho and Akiko's daughter), and Odd Della Robbia (Robert's son) help defend him from.
Once it dies down, for the moment, you explain to them X.A.N.A., how its your creation, and how it went rogue ten years ago. You keep the (painful) details to yourself, but you make sure the four know how dangerous X.A.N.A. is.
But Jérémie still wants to help you, still wants to free you. He reminds you of Aelita, who had her father's curiosity yet your tender heart. Jérémie wants to help, because he knows there's something you're not telling them, something that's too painful, something that you want dearly.
And he's right. You want to find your daughter. Her being kidnapped in your place is the bane of your existence. The last time you saw her, she was being abused and experimented on. You had to rescue her.
Again, you don't tell the four teens any of this, but you let Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd come to Lyoko to help you deactivate X.A.N.A.'s first tower. Jérémie remains in the lab, taking up his future position as your mission control (and it reminds you of Waldo).
Odd's first reaction to seeing you in person is to express surprise. You're his long lost aunt, which you are also surprised by, until you remember that your sister Marguerite had married Robert Della Robbia, so it shouldn't be a surprise. Odd doesn't know about Aelita, though, which is good, because he doesn't ask any questions. The memories are too painful, so you don't bring it up.
Thanks to your Energy Fields, you get through the group of monsters guarding the tower and deactivate it before the AI can further hurt Jérémie.
Since X.A.N.A. didn't hurt anybody but Jérémie, you don't think a Return to the Past is needed, but you have Jérémie scan himself to make him immune to the effects.
During those ten years, X.A.N.A. has trapped you on Lyoko, by taking something from you, from your avatar. Neither you nor Jérémie know what that something is, but the two of you begin working on a special program to materialize you.
You quickly form a bond with these four kids. They are childhood friends, their parents having formed a special bond that the kids don't really understand (you do, however, but you don't say anything). Ulrich and Yumi also have some sparks flying between them, but are both too shy to say anything, which you immediately start teasing them for, the way a mother would.
They fill a void that Aelita being kidnapped had left: you're finally able to be a mother again. Yumi's parents constantly fight, so you represent a safe space to her. Ulrich's father constantly moves the goalpost while his mother just stands there and does nothing, so you represent a parental figure that will always be proud of him. Odd's parents are neglectful due to their many daughters and busy jobs yet are always praising him, so you represent someone who will keep him in line. Jérémie's father is the best but the boy lost his mother at a very young age, so to Jérémie, you're filling a void for him just as much as he is for you.
You have a motherly instinct towards him, which first becomes evident when a couple weeks later, the others convince Jérémie to start training on Lyoko himself. Unfortunately, his first trip results in X.A.N.A. trapping him in a Guardian and replacing him with a clone. You save him, but Jérémie refuses to step foot on Lyoko again. Understanding how shaken up he must be, you agree with him, reassuring him and the others that Jérémie's talents lie with the keyboard, not with a virtual weapon.
X.A.N.A. doesn't shy away from destructive plans. A giant teddy bear, a nuclear explosion via electricity, two trains with one carrying toxic chemicals crashing into each other, a movie monster prop, laughing gas, and even killer music. It doesn't hide the fact that it wants to destroy humanity and the five of you are in the way.
Thanks to you helping Jérémie, it's only four and a half months when you finish the program that brings you back to the real world, despite the piece you're missing.
Unfortunately, while it works, you can't shut down the supercomputer to shut X.A.N.A. down, or else you'll shut down too.
X.A.N.A. also attacks, surprising you guys with an army of materialized Kankrelats. You manage to shut down the tower before anybody is killed, but after the Return, you have to stay on Lyoko until X.A.N.A. is defeated. You can sense X.A.N.A.'s pulsations, but it only works on Lyoko.
Jérémie, though disheartened by this new revelation, doesn't give up. A couple weeks later, he develops a superscan, a program that locates activated towers, so you're no longer needed to keep track of the pulsations. You now have a program that will track them for you.
The teens also get you a job as Kadic's new literature teacher, replacing their old teacher Ms. Kensington, who retired to take care of her new baby. You are allowed to chose your own name, and you go with Anthea Stones, knowing 'Anthea Hopper' is now compromised.
Major Steinback is still teaching there too, as Suzanne Hertz, the school's primary and only science teacher. The two of you rekindle your friendship, because she sees right through your thin disguise. She knows that the supercomputer's been reactivated (remember, she was scanned too), and she's been keeping an eye on the four kids that are helping you, and she offers to join the fight, only to back off when you reassure her that you have things under control.
Happy to see you again and glad you're okay, Steinback agrees to pretend like she doesn't know who you really are.
However, scared that you're going to shut it down, X.A.N.A. begins going after your half of Lyoko's Keys. After the kids save you from the Scyphozoa in Sector Five, you tell them exactly what X.A.N.A.'s after, explaining that the Keys to Lyoko are 'admin controls', so to speak. Getting them will let X.A.N.A. escape the supercomputer. Of course, this cannot happen.
After letting the four teens explore Sector Five (you already knew it existed), Yumi's parents catch her coming home past curfew one too many times. They ask her what's going on, but she attempts to shrug it off as her being in love. They don't buy it, however, so Yumi comes to you, asking you for advice. With no other choice, you reveal yourself to Takeho and Akiko by inviting them (and only them) for coffee. Like Steinback, they are glad to see you and ask what happened. Unlike with the four kids, you explain everything to Takeho and Akiko, how X.A.N.A. broke free of its programming, and how their daughter is currently helping you fight it as she and her friends work on freeing you.
Takeho and Akiko are very wary at getting Yumi involved with all of this, but unable to leave their current jobs, they agree to let her keep fighting X.A.N.A., on the basis that you protect her when they cannot. To this, you easily agree.
This causes Yumi's relationship with her parents to change. They know about X.A.N.A. and Lyoko, which they confess to her after you explain it all to her and the others as well. From that point on, they help her with homework, sometimes even doing it themselves if she's too tired, as well as giving the teachers signed notes to excuse her absences if needed.
Yumi is a little angry at you at first for keeping this from her, but now that her parents know, she's grateful she only has to hide this business from her little brother Hiroki.
Believing it's only fair, you soon call Walter Stern, Robert Della Robbia, and Michel Belpois as well, to let them know what's going on, and to reassure them not to be surprised at all the Returns to the Past lately.
Robert calls Odd and naturally gives him his blessing.
Michel actually visits Jérémie in person and the two share a long heart-to-heart about it.
Walter takes a while to call Ulrich, but when he does, he promises to back off of Ulrich's grades, at least until X.A.N.A. is defeated.
With the help of their parents and Major Steinback (Mrs. Hertz), the four kids now have a few burdens off of their shoulders.
But X.A.N.A.'s frequent attacks are still taking its toll on them. Six months in, the four kids are exhausted, so you worriedly propose that you recruit someone else to help relieve some of that stress. They agree.
You scour the school grounds for someone that's already friends with them, someone they know they can trust. Elizabeth 'Sissi' Delmas is a good candidate, but she's constantly chasing Ulrich, and Yumi doesn't really like her. The others also don't trust her not to squeal like a pig at the first sign of danger. So you move on from her.
William Dunbar, someone in Yumi's classes, is also a good candidate. He's already helped them with a couple of X.A.N.A. attacks before. He likes Yumi, so Ulrich doesn't really like him though. But William is trustworthy, and Ulrich's recently resolved to bury his jealousy in favor of a friendship on Yumi's request. So you ask the four about William, and after a lengthy conversation about it, the vote is unanimous.
William is the sixth Lyokowarrior, and you immediately warn him about the dangers, especially the Scyphozoa, which X.A.N.A. can now use to possess the others when on Lyoko. He takes a liking to you, his own parents, while normal, being somewhat distant due to their jobs, so to him, you represent a parental figure that will always listen to him and won't push him away for the sake of work.
On his first mission, one to Sector Five, the Scyphozoa approaches William, intending on possessing him to take out the others so the Scyphozoa can focus on you and your half of the Keys, but William recalls your advice and stays away from it, letting Yumi slice off its tentacles with her fans.
It's on this mission that you find the thing that X.A.N.A. took from you: your DNA sequence code. It stole it from you during the forced shutdown those ten years ago, and you manage to reclaim it from the interface, and Jérémie downloads it back to you, thus freeing you from Lyoko.
Six months later, you can finally turn the supercomputer off, but you ask that it remain on, which confuses them. You're the one who told them to turn it off when this all started, but you admit to them that now that you're free, you have the power to reunite your family. Waldo, your husband, is trapped on Lyoko, after all. You admit this to them, though you call Waldo by his fake name (Franz Hopper) and you refuse to speak about Aelita when they ask who else you're trying to find.
Despite dodging their questions about Aelita, they agree to keep the supercomputer on for you. You helped them, so now it's their turn. They want you to be happy, so they will help you reunite your family, find your husband and whoever else it is you're looking for. You tearfully thank them for understanding.
The next day, you head to the train station locker and retrieve your husband's diary.
They don't ask where you got it from, understanding that you have secrets you wish to keep. It's also encrypted, which you knew, so you help Jérémie decipher it by using your knowledge of yours and Waldo's cipher key.
Over the next three weeks, however, Jérémie becomes increasingly angry at you guys. He's more curt and snippy than before, refusing anyone's help or assistance when they even suggest offering it to him, and berating them over simple, understandable failures. You don't know what's going on, but you try your best to get him to realize his recent behavior.
One day, you ask Mrs. Hertz (Steinback) about what's going on, but she doesn't know either, only admitting that Jérémie's receiving headaches during class now.
Remembering something your husband had in the journal, a schematic of a certain headset that you vehemently objected to, you realize what's actually going on.
You confront Jérémie one evening after classes, having notes of all the classes he missed to work on decrypting your husband's diary. Like you expected, he denies anything being wrong with him, but you tell him that you know (and you do). He pauses, looking like he's about to tell you something, but X.A.N.A. interrupts in that moment by activating a tower.
The attack forces you to run a Return to erase the damage, but on the other side, Jérémie is now out cold, and you take him to the hospital yourself, leaving Yumi and William in charge of protecting him when X.A.N.A. attacks yet again in order to get rid of him.
Another Return is not needed, fortunately, when you deactivate the tower. Jérémie's fine. His heart is still beating, though he's still in the coma.
You're the only one in the room when he wakes up the next day. This time, you don't shy away from explaining the dangers of that headset. Waldo attempted to use it, hoping it would increase his intelligence and thus, your chances of finding Aelita (but you don't say that out loud), but while it worked, somewhat, it did a lot of damage to Waldo's mental and physical health.
That's why you objected to it then, and why you're objecting to it now.
Jérémie finally speaks, giving a whispered apology as unshed tears fill his eyes. You ask him why he felt the need to try something so dangerous.
And he confesses to you that he doesn't feel smart enough. Despite your help, he's the only one in the lab during attacks, the only one who can type in commands to save the lives of the others. And that's a lot of pressure, he admits.
He's crying by the time he's finished, and all you can do is wrap him in a tight hug.
Jérémie needs to stay a couple of nights in the hospital for observation, so during this time, you take charge and propose to the other four that you guys recruit someone else, someone to help Jérémie this time. You don't feel comfortable revealing exactly what Jérémie said to you, all the pain he feels, so you just admit to them, when they ask, that he's feeling some stress too, which is a massive understatement.
But it works. The group begins taking a closer look at the other smart kids in school. You brush past Hervé Pichon, Jérémie's academic rival, and instead focus on a girl named Laura Gauthier.
Like William, Laura is new, and she's also very interested in what you guys are hiding. She's the second smartest student, behind Jérémie, but she doesn't seem to have any friends.
When you ask Jérémie what he thinks about recruiting Laura, he gives you his permission. He doesn't mind it; in fact, he agrees with it. So you move in on Laura.
Even though you prepare a Return to the Past in case she doesn't believe you, you catch her sneaking out after the group when they leave campus for a movie day (Odd's idea; it's to help Jérémie relax after his health crisis). When you have her in your sights, she admits that she knows Jérémie, the boy she's interested in platonically (not romantically, surprisingly), and his friends have a secret, and she wants to know what it is. She wants to be his friend too.
You object to her following him, however, telling her that it's wrong, and further advising her to just talk to him.
Laura accurately guesses that you're in on the secret, but you're not surprised. Laura's very perceptive, even if she doesn't understand emotions just yet.
So you don't deny it, instead inviting her to see the secret for herself.
She excitedly follows you to the factory, where you show her the supercomputer and Lyoko. Once you're done explaining everything to her, she's very excited. The others return at this time, and Laura immediately asks them to let her into the group. According to her, this is the coolest secret to have, and she genuinely wants to help.
The following vote is unanimous, and Laura Gauthier becomes the seventh Lyokowarrior.
Like Jérémie, she only goes to Lyoko once, to get scanned and get those codes that protect her from X.A.N.A. possession onto her avatar. Her greatest strength is hacking and coding, just like Jérémie. She doesn't possess Jérémie's leadership skills (which he received due to being sort of forced into his current position), but she is a decent enough back-up, and more importantly, she helps relieve some stress that Jérémie feels. And that's all that matters to you and the others.
Thanks to their alone time in the lab, Jérémie and Laura become rather close friends, as they connect with only really knowing their fathers (though Laura's is always driving her to be the best), with Laura's mother dying during childbirth. It's for this reason that Laura connects with you, as you represent a mother figure for her to become attached to.
You wouldn't change being the team mom for anything, but you can only hope that when you find Aelita that she won't get jealous of her sudden and vast competition.
Seven and a half months into your journey, you finally have the cipher key. You need to activate a tower to decrypt the diary, though, because it will require a lot of energy. But just as X.A.N.A. is about to take over Jérémie's tower, the tower's aura suddenly becomes white, and someone else deciphers the rest of the diary at full speed.
Waldo. Your husband. After all this time, you finally have the knowledge that he's still alive, still out there somewhere.
Like you expected (and dreaded), the diary reveals the existence of Aelita, and how she was kidnapped by Hollenback (Mago) instead of you. It reveals the entire backstory of Lyoko and the supercomputer, how Tyron betrayed you and how you were helped by Major Steinback (Mrs. Hertz) and Jérémie, Odd, and Ulrich's fathers, and Yumi's parents.
Within the diary, you also find the digitized recording of your last contact with Aelita, the VHS-C that Mago mailed to you. You barely hold back your tears as the six teens carefully watch Aelita explain how broken she is, how she's the Green Phoenix's guinea pig, how she misses her parents...how she's still a five year old in a then-twelve year old body...
At the end of the diary, however, is a message directly from your husband, and it's dated the day you deciphered the diary (which at this point is a couple of days ago). The message reads:
"There's still hope, Anthea. I think I've found her. – Waldo"
And you immediately break down, onto your knees with ugly sobbing. There's no way that's true. You want to believe it, desperately so. You miss your daughter so much, for seventeen years. Her getting kidnapped in your place is the bane of your existence, always has been and always will be.
You want to believe your husband. You know that during these past seven and a half months, he would've been scouring the worldwide network for any trace of Aelita, and you trust him to let you know when he thinks he's found something.
You snap out of it when you feel six kids hugging you.
"We'll find her," Jérémie vows. "No matter how long it takes."
He doesn't even know her, you tearfully admit out loud. How can he be willing to dedicate his whole life to finding a complete stranger?
"That's true, I don't know her at all," he admits. "But you do. I promised to help you find your family, and I intend to keep that promise."
One by one, Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, William, and Laura all agree with Jérémie's sentiment.
Touched by their loyalty and wishing it's not false hope, the seven of you get to work, focusing on destroying X.A.N.A. first.
For the next two weeks, you and Waldo tell Jérémie and Laura everything about the supercomputer, every nook and cranny, every program and how to use it, and Waldo trusts Jérémie so much that he gives him the portion of Lyoko's Keys meant for Aelita. Now, Jérémie has all of the 'admin controls' that you and Waldo do (including tower deactivation). That way, if anything happens to you or Waldo, he and the other teens aren't screwed.
Speaking of the Keys, X.A.N.A.'s still after your third, but it never manages to get its hands on it. Because by the end of those two weeks, you, Waldo, and Jérémie have created an Anti-X.A.N.A. program. You three have worked on it nonstop while Laura has led any and all missions to deactivate towers (with you only breaking away to deactivate those towers).
It takes a few sleepless nights, but it's done. Thanks to Jérémie's talent for coding, and how thorough Waldo is, it works. X.A.N.A. doesn't go down quietly, but it's weak enough that it doesn't need anyone sacrificing their life to power the program. Eight months later, and X.A.N.A.'s finally gone. For good.
Now safe from X.A.N.A., Waldo finally shows himself on Lyoko, emerging from the Digital Sea, the network, as a bright ball of light.
Once you and Jérémie are able to materialize him, then the real hard work begins.
!~~~A~N~T~H~E~A~~A~E~L~I~T~A~~R~O~L~E~S~W~A~P~~~!
Major Steinback (Mrs. Hertz, you keep forgetting that's her name now) helps you and Waldo (now forever known as Franz Stones, taking up your fake name and becoming Mrs. Hertz's assistant science teacher) get settled back into the Hermitage. Like before, it still feels empty thanks to Aelita being gone, but hopefully, it won't remain that way for long.
Waldo finally tells you where he thinks Aelita is, on another virtual world on the network named the Cortex. You and him help Jérémie build a virtual submarine, called the Skidbladnir, named after the Norse ship Aelita loved to read about, to reach it.
With this ship, you travel to the Cortex, which is a virtual world with only one sector, the core. It constantly shifts to get rid of any and all intruders, but thanks to the Overbike, Overwing, and Overboard, you guys manage to reach the core, a spherical complex.
There's an interface inside that sphere, and when you activate it, the first thing that greets you is a red-haired woman that looks a lot like Aelita. The man you recognize as Tyron notices the woman become confused as to why the interface has been activated without their guards, the Ninjas, and immediately demands to know who you are.
You call out Aelita's name, and the woman freezes up, but as she tells you that's not her name, Tyron immediately tells you all to go away before shutting off the connection.
Disheartened, Waldo forces you to return with the Skid. That night, you explain to your husband how you know it's Aelita, but she didn't recognize you. She asked you not to call her that, despite you only calling her that name once. You didn't age one day while on Lyoko, so she should've recognized you. Waldo reassures you that you'll go back tomorrow.
Waldo keeps that promise, as after classes the next day, you guys return to the Cortex. This time, Jérémie and Laura have a hacking bug ready, which you insert first before activating the interface. Once you do, like before, there's someone there on the other side. It's not Aelita, though. Instead, it's Hollenback, or rather, Hannibal Mago.
He denies ever knowing an Aelita, and tells you that you upset Tyron's wife, Memory, yesterday, so they'd like an apology. But you, on the verge of another breakdown, call him out on his BS. His front falters as he warns you to stay alert. He's not done with you yet.
He then cuts the connection, thus cutting off Jérémie and Laura's hacking bug as well, but when you return to the real world, the two are pleased with their bug's success. With it, they've managed to gain some intel, so you continue to use the bug (which they perfect along the way) over the next four months.
The first piece of information they manage to download is a video clip of Tyron using a pair of strange mechanical gloves on a twelve-year-old Aelita, with her hair dyed red instead of pink. The interesting thing is that after using the gloves on her, Aelita, in the clip, seems to have lost all of her memories, as she asks Mago and Tyron where she is and who they are. Like all threatening villains, they pretend to be friendly as they reassure her that they're her friends that she was involved in an accident.
After the clip is shown, Jérémie and Laura show you another piece of information, this one a schematic of the gloves. Apparently, Tyron calls them "memory snatching" gloves, and its purpose is exactly what it sounds like. It's a tool that enables someone to steal a person's memories and then re-inject them into the digital world.
So your own daughter doesn't remember you because of these gloves. Hatred boils deep in your gut for Tyron and Mago, as Jérémie and Laura promise to find a way to reverse the effects of these gloves.
Over the next four months, the hacking bug gives you enough pieces of the puzzle to start putting everything together:
The reason the trail on Hollenback went cold is because he changed his name to Hannibal Mago. He managed to confuse the agents looking for him by being clever and putting up a smokescreen. And since he had kidnapped Aelita, she was forced to follow him while he was on the run. Constantly travelling, she spent years locked in one prison after another until he changed his name and joined the criminal organization, the Green Phoenix, the very organization you and Waldo got the funds for Lyoko from.
When Tyron was kicked off of your first team, during the years 1993 and 1996, he built his own supercomputer using your schematics, creating the Cortex. This is when he also invented the "memory snatching" gloves, and not even a month after Mago sent you and Waldo that video from Aelita, Tyron used these gloves to take your daughter's memories away.
From that point on, Aelita died, forgetting her name and past, and Memory, Mago's assistant and eventually Tyron's wife, was born.
In the video clips, when she's known as Memory, you notice how your daughter is no longer extroverted and curious, but rather introverted and reserved. Her hair seemed to have been dyed red (and in some cases blonde) without her knowledge. This isn't your daughter; this woman is too damaged.
But it is Aelita, you remind yourself. It's not Aelita's fault that she's like this. Memory doesn't know the truth, doesn't know who she really is, so it's up to you and Waldo to tell her.
All of the video clips, of both Aelita and Memory, have one thing in common, however, and that's Mister Pück. In one clip, Mago and Tyron both discuss amongst themselves how they don't even try to take Pück away from Memory because they know she'd go ballistic if he ever went missing.
And that gives you hope. Deep down within Memory, Aelita is still alive. She still knows that the doll is important, even if she doesn't remember why. Even if it is sad, because it's a sign that Aelita is still a five-year-old girl in her adult body.
Despite your newfound hope, you still have to tread carefully. Mago and Tyron are much scarier antagonists than X.A.N.A.
The AI was just that, an artificial intelligence, which used many schemes where it pretended to be human, and its main goal was to destroy humanity, but if focused on you and your team so much because you were in its way.
Mago and Tyron, however, are actually humans, demonstrating how evil and selfish humanity can actually be. They also have a motive that's way more personal. They are both equal partners in the Green Phoenix organization as well as best friends, as well as incredibly crafty.
Four months later, one year has officially passed, and you guys are ready to translate yourselves (Waldo figured out how to send someone from Lyoko to Earth and still retain their avatar) to the Green Phoenix's headquarters and starting taking them all down. Jérémie has also figured out how to reverse the memory snatching gloves, but he needs you to place on Aelita a beacon before he can.
And that's exactly what you do.
While Odd, William, Yumi, and Ulrich focus on taking down the organization (and they're doing extremely well for themselves; they've come a long way since that first trip to Lyoko), you focus on finding Aelita.
You find her in hers and Tyron's shared room. Tyron is nowhere in sight, nor is Mago for that matter, but your daughter is there, hiding in a corner, hugging Mister Pück like it's her last lifeline.
"Aelita," you softly call out.
"Stop calling me that!" she snaps at you.
"No, I won't," you reply. "That's your name. Aelita Schaeffer."
"No, it's not! It's Memory! Memory Tyron! I don't know you!"
"Memory doesn't," your voice is still soft. You're not giving up now. "But Aelita does." You take a deep breath, as you kneel in front of her. "And so does Mister Pück."
She falters, "W-What? H-How do you know his name?"
"Because I'm the one who gave him to you," you explain. "I'm the one who made him."
She's trembling, "I-I don't know...what's going on...please help me."
"I will," you promise. "All you have to do is take my hand."
In your hand is the beacon. It's a very small chip that will attach to Aelita like a piece of tape, unable to be seen unless by a magnifying glass, but very effective (hopefully; you trust Jérémie).
Your daughter hesitates, her forest green eyes (identical to her father's) not being taken off of you as she clutches Mister Pück even tighter. She wants to trust you, but you keep calling her by a name that she doesn't remember having.
But she does take your hand. You place the beacon on her as you tighten your grip on her hand, not willing to let go now that you have her. You're so close.
"You're safe now," you whisper, which is your cue to Jérémie to begin the reversal process.
Apparently, Jérémie gets to work right away, as pretty soon, your daughter gains an uncontrollable headache, and she almost lets go of Mister Pück when it hits. When the pain fades, she looks back up at you, her green eyes full of childlike fear.
"Mommy?" she asks, her voice sounding like a child's.
And for once, it makes you smile. You'd take that over her not remembering you at all any day. "Yes, Aelita. I'm here. Daddy's here too. We're here to bring you home again."
She returns your smile with one of her own, right in time to Waldo to tell you, "Anthea, the translation timer is thirty seconds away from ending. Say what you need to say quickly."
"You'll have to escape on your own, though, my dear," you tell Aelita, sadly. The translation was certainly a milestone for Waldo, but he could only make it work if there was a time limit. "You should have an opening to escape now. There are no guards, and Mago and Tyron are preoccupied."
"But what about you?" Aelita asks, not wanting you to leave so soon.
"I'll be fine," you reassure her. "You just focus on getting out of here."
"To a police station?"
You shrug, "Sure, that could work." Your translation wears off here, in the worst possible moment, and soon, you're back in the main cockpit of the Skid.
"Mommy!"
But your comm link is still connected to Jérémie's, so you can hear him tell Aelita through the beacon still on the palm of her hand, "Don't worry. Your mother's fine."
Waldo tells you to get out of there, since Tyron is setting his supercomputer to self-destruct, therefore destroying the Cortex with it. So you have no choice but to leave. Leave Aelita behind.
But you can still hear her talk to Jérémie, "Who are you? Are you the one who got my memories back?"
"Yes," Jérémie replies. "I'm Jérémie. Jérémie Belpois."
"Aelita Schaeffer. It's nice to meet you," she founds cheerful, just like a child would when meeting a new friend. Her voice quickly gets quiet, however, "Please, don't leave me. I'm scared." And your heart twists painfully. You didn't mean to leave her.
"I won't," Jérémie promises. "Try to get outside. According to the layout I have on my screen, there should be a corridor you can walk through."
"Where's the exit?" You commend your daughter for being brave.
"In the main lab. Be careful. I can't see if anyone's already in there."
There's a pause on that comm link. Meanwhile, you manage to successfully make it out of the Cortex, right before it explodes. You, Ulrich, Yumi, Odd, and William are safe for another day.
But now you're concerned about your daughter.
Because Aelita suddenly interrupts the silence with a shriek of horror, "Jérémie! Help!"
"What's going on?"
But the one who responds isn't Jérémie or Aelita. "Hello, Memory." It's Mago. And your blood runs cold.
"It's Aelita!" your daughter immediately snaps. "My name has been and always will be Aelita Schaeffer! Get it right!"
"So you remember." That's Tyron. "That's bad. Because it means that we'll just have to punish your parents and their friends for trying to save you."
Aelita screams again, "Jérémie, help me! Mago's wearing those gloves! He's going to take my memories again!"
"Defend yourself!" Jérémie immediately tells her.
There's rustling and then a faint clicking, and Mago asks, "What are you going to do with that, Memory?"
"Aelita!" your daughter corrects. "And Jérémie told me to defend myself!"
"Well, your friend Jérémie is wrong," Tyron tells her, before the comm link cuts, just as a shot from a gun rings out.
You're shaken up. So is your husband. So is Laura, and William, and Odd, and Ulrich, and Yumi, all of whom could hear the comm link too.
Jérémie's trembling rivals yours. He kept that link open to reassure you and Waldo that Aelita was still alive. He wasn't counting on Tyron and Mago to cut it, leaving Aelita all by herself. Jérémie apologizes for not keeping his promise to your daughter; he feels guilty for not doing more, but you and Waldo both hug him.
Your daughter went out remembering who she really was. If she is dead, then you can live with that.
One week later, however, just as you're beginning work on a new novel to cope with your new loss, you get a call from Mrs. Hertz, who addresses herself in this call as Major Steinback, telling you that it's government-related. She tells you that the D.G.S.E. (General Directorate for External Security) needs to see you and Waldo.
When you get there, you see your daughter, a healthy young woman with no bullet holes, with pink hair fading back from red. She greets you and Waldo with a smile and a tight hug, and she's still tightly hugging Mister Pück.
The D.G.S.E. tells you what happened:
Aelita managed to escape the facility unharmed and went to the nearby police station, and when she told them what had happened and who she really was, they forwarded her to the D.G.S.E., in France where her parents were.
They also reveal that Hannibal Mago and Lowell Tyron were found dead in the Green Phoenix's headquarters in Switzerland (so it ends where it all started; a nice bookend), and that Aelita's prints were on the gun that was found there. They asked Aelita about it, and she's adamant that it was self-defense (and you believe her, remembering Jérémie telling her to 'defend herself'). Due to the security footage they recovered, the D.G.S.E. has to agree, because it backs up Aelita's side of the story. They're also not pressing charges, since their killer is a little girl trapped in a young woman's body thanks to trauma and the two victims were her abusers, as also shown by the security footage, and two criminals on the run from the law.
They release her into your custody, with Major Steinback giving her a new name: Aelita Stones.
There are no words to express how happy you are to have your daughter back. You take her back to the Hermitage, and Aelita loves it, though seeing as how her previous residence was a facility in which she was a prisoner, it takes sense. She finds it nice and quiet, and free.
When your six teen teammates come over to visit, Aelita takes an immediate liking to Jérémie, as evidenced by her actually letting him hold Mister Pück for a minute while she gets a glass of water for the boy. You smile when she thanks him for staying with her "over the phone" (the comm link, actually, but these are her exact words), for giving her memories and life back.
You always knew that if Aelita and Jérémie ever met that they would become best friends (probably more than that if their ages matched), and you love (for once) that your instincts are right about that.
Aelita's not jealous about her sudden competition for your attention. Actually, she's happy that she has six siblings to play with now.
She doesn't remember her life between December 1987 (when she was kidnapped) and May 1994 (when Mago and Tyron used the memory snatching gloves on her), mostly due to trauma (those seven years as a guinea pig weren't the best for her), as well as regaining her memory of her true identity (as Jérémie explains), but Aelita doesn't care. She thinks it's best that way.
And the sad part?
No one disagrees with her. Not you, not Waldo, not Jérémie. Nobody.
She's happy the way she is now, and that's all anyone can ask for.
!~~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~~!
A/N: The family tree of Odd and Anthea is the same as the one from my Jerlita Roleswap AU, again at the request of FP7ETDP43. Most (if not all) of the ideas presented in this story are from him.
Instead of taking two years, the whole adventure takes place within one single year, thanks to Anthea still retaining her knowledge and her memories. Therefore, the Lyokowarriors make fewer mistakes here and X.A.N.A. doesn't escape the supercomputer, because it's far weaker than in canon.
The DGSE is General Directorate for External Security, the French equivalent of the American CIA, and the closest equivalent to the American FBI I could find.
Again, if you love this, go to DeviantArt and give the requester FP7ETDP43 some love and kudos too. This was all his idea, not mine.