The original Lyoko gang minus Odd, who was ordering seconds, and Sissi were sitting at their normal table in the cafeteria. It was the beginning of lunchtime on the first school day of the year. There were three available seats left, and Sissi, who had dumped Herve and Nicolas long ago for the Lyoko group, had declared that Herve and Nicolas would not be sitting there. Jeremie was explaining a new math theorem they'd been learning in class to the table's inhabitants. Aelita was adding in examples, while the rest of the table paid close attention because, truth be told, most of them were horrible in math. Maiana was nowhere to be found.
The kids therefore didn't notice when one William Dunbar approached Odd as he was about to head to the table.
"Odd, do you have a moment?" William inquired.
"Uh, yeah. Sure, William." Odd looked a bit surprised, but just stood there and began to stuff spoonfuls of mashed potatoes in his mouth and listened.
"Good," said William firmly. "I know the supercomputer's been restarted."
"Yeah, 'at wa' 'ar' 'o figur ou'," said Odd through a mouthful of potatoes. He swallowed and continued. "We ran a return to the past after Yumi was attacked by her XANAfied parents. You were involved in the attack. Since your image is still in the supercomputer, you would've noticed it. Plus, you were in the meeting."
"That's not all it, though. I want to be a part of the group again.
"Obviously," said Odd between mouthfuls of gravy. "If XANA's managed to come back, you want to help fight him until he's gone forever. We understand that."
"No you don't, and that's not what I meant anyway," William growled. He took a deep breath and continued, this time less angrily. "Ever since you guys got me back from XANA, for the most part you've all treated me like... like I'm still XANA's slave. The whole school thinks I'm crazy because of that dimwitted clone you replaced me with. I've tried to make amends with everyone, but the only one really willing to listen is Aelita."
"I'm listening, aren't I?"
"Well, yeah. But you never listened when your friends were around."
"I tried." Odd lowered his head. "They didn't want to listen. But that doesn't make things right."
"I want us all to be friends again."
Odd nodded and swallowed another mouthful of potatoes. "Yeah, sure, whatever. But you gotta tell them that." He motioned toward the table.
"I want to tell them now, but not with Sissi there," William said. "Could you maybe lure away Sissi just long enough so I could talk to them?"
"I don't know. You'd have better luck keeping her away longer with Ulrich than me."
"Please, Odd. I don't want to postpone this at all."
"Hmm... I'll see what I can do." He then proceeded to eat a piece of some kind of green from his tray and waltz over to his table, sitting down across from Sissi.
"So Sissi!" said Odd casually. "I've been trying this new toothpaste out, it's supposed to make my smile all white and sparkly. How's it look to you?" He grinned toothily at her, and of course, there was a dark green leaf entangled in his front teeth.
"That is so gross, Odd!" she shouted, revolted. She picked up her tray and started to move to another table, but not without adding, "I bet you didn't even brush your teeth this morning."
"How did you know?" said Odd, milking it even more by stuffing another spoonful of mashed potatoes and gravy in his mouth.
Sissi hissed at him and walked away.
Ulrich leaned over towards Odd. "Thanks for getting rid of her. I was getting sick of her staring at me."
"No problem," Odd whispered back. "But you might not thank me for the next part."
Ulrich looked a bit surprised. "What do you mea—"
"Hi guys," said William, apparently trying to act casual. He took the seat across from Odd where Sissi had been sitting. "What's up?"
"Oh," said Ulrich.
William didn't miss it, and dropped the small talk. "You guys are still holding a grudge against me for what happened last year, aren't you?"
There was no response.
"Well, obviously I'm a part of the team."
"We know," said Yumi coldly.
"And I'd like to help out in more ways than just trying to save people on Earth."
"What if you get possessed again?" Ulrich blurted out.
"Don't you think that if XANA was going to do that that he would've attempted it in the last attack?" Aelita pointed out.
"That begs the question as to why he didn't. What is XANA waiting for?" mused Yumi.
"That's what we're taking advantage of. Build up his resistance to XANA while we still can," Jeremie interjected. "Let's just put that past behind us and focus on our current problem: XANA."
Just then the bell rang to end lunch. William and Jeremie threw their heads against the table.
"I'd rather focus on trying to survive double physics with Mrs. Hertz this very moment," Odd commented as he picked up his tray and stacked it on top of some others.
-xx-
Yumi and William walked together to Spanish class, only because they had to. The atmosphere between them seemed to glisten with tangible frost.
Maiana was there and had already taken her seat in the front right corner. William took the only open seat in the back, and since everyone else had already taken their seats, Yumi was forced to sit next to the American. It seemed the icicles weren't to melt anytime soon. Maybe Jeremie would choose to do their training session in the desert today, mused Maiana.
"¡Buenas tardes, chicos y chicas!" A high-pitched female voice came from the hallway. Its owner, a short, pale-skinned, black-haired woman, came through the door half a second later. She continued to talk as she walked briskly to her desk.
"Yo soy la Señora Vega, y soy vuestra profesora de español."
"Hola, Señora," repeated Maiana. Sra. Vega smiled, and proceeded to talk about the lesson plan for the semester and to hand out worksheets for the day.
"Hey, why weren't you at lunch today?" Yumi whispered when the teacher was in another part of the classroom.
"I was talking to Mrs. Meyer," Maiana replied.
Ew, math. The thought went through Yumi's mind before she could stop it. She had to admit that even while it wasn't her favorite subject (and that she was only mediocre at it) it had saved her life in the past. Or, rather, Jeremie's ability to use it quickly and efficiently had saved her life. Rather than discuss such a tedious subject, however, Yumi took a different direction.
"Did you eat anything?"
Maiana shrugged. "I ate an apple and some stale plantain chips. What's with the small talk?"
Yumi, slightly taken aback at how strangely natural the sentence had sounded, grimaced and turned back to her worksheet. "Just wondered."
A Chinese girl sitting behind the pair turned her head toward the blonde girl next to her while keeping her eye on Yumi and Maiana, and murmured, just loud enough for them to hear, "Awkwaaaaard."
Yumi glared. Maiana ignored them both.
-xx-
The end of the school day finally came, and the Lyoko gang said their goodbyes to Sissi before heading to the factory. Since XANA wasn't attacking, and Maiana and William didn't have any transportation yet, they walked through the sewers.
Once at the lab, Jeremie began what would have become a huge questionnaire had Odd not interrupted. Maiana, William, and Aelita stepped into the scanners, and Jeremie began the virtualization process.
Three hollow blue outlines appeared in mid-air, followed by a surface layer, and the three dropped to their feet and examined their surroundings.
Ice. Lots and lots of ice.
Half a minute later, Jeremie's voice echoed "virtualization", and Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi joined them.
"Well this is a shocker," said Yumi upon seeing William.
Indeed, it was a shocking sight. The Lyoko warriors had expected William to be in his light blue Lyoko form like the first time he had set foot there, just as had been shown on his card and his hollow green outline on the supercomputer monitor. But they did not really expect him to look exactly as he did when he was XANA's faithful servant, down to the spiked bracer and the XANA eyes on his chest and his forehead and his sword.
"Wow, I've never seen myself in this before," William commented after a few seconds of awkward silence. "XANA has good fashion sense."
"The eye needs to go, though." Maiana dismissed his comment with a wave of her right hand. "It's creepy."
"Enough about fashion sense. Get going!"
"Hey, Maiana. Ever learn that it's not a good habit to smoke?" Ulrich pointed at her hand.
"Jeremie, remember there's no tower?" Odd reminded Jeremie at the same time.
"Oh...right," Jeremie stammered.
"Well looky what we have here." Maiana studied her right hand, which was emitting light blue smoke and travelling to and surrounding Ulrich's sabres. The digital metal blades seemed to absorb the smoke, glowing bright blue for a second, and then they faded back to normal as the smoke disappeared altogether. Ulrich took out his blades and examined them.
"Look, your hair's glowing too, like LSD." Odd pointed at Maiana's hair streaks, which were glowing an icy blue color, just like the rest of her outfit.
Ulrich looked up from his sabres. "LED, Odd," he corrected as Maiana began humming 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. He experimentally swung one of his blades, but it seemed perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened. "Jeremie, what happened?"
"Well, first of all, XANA has spotted you. Four tarantulas approaching from the north!"
"Alright, then," said Odd, and he leapt towards the incoming tarantulas, firing some arrows. One arrow and a fan hit a target, and the tarantula exploded. He jumped up, shouting, "YEAH!"
And was almost immediately pelted in the back by another laser. The source was quickly taken care of by Ulrich, whose now-glowing sabres had sliced through the tarantula like butter. He stared again at his weapons and grinned. "Cool."
"It seems as if Maiana has enchanted your swords, Ulrich," said Jeremie. "It took a lot of mana to do it, though."
The remaining two tarantulas were taken care of by Aelita distracting them and William cleaving through them with his giant sword.
Aelita retreated to the ground, and was immediately put off by what she felt beneath her feet.
"Pulsations!" she gasped.
"XANA," Yumi growled.
"Hey, guys, there's an activated tower right now in the desert sector. Can you take care of it?"
"Of course, Jeremie!" Ulrich's voice was like that of a master gamer accepting a challenge to beat a blind three-year-old at Tetris.
"We're on our way now," said Aelita as she took off in the direction of a way tower. Everyone else ran after her across the frozen wasteland.
It wasn't long before they were joined by two megatanks and seven hornets. Ulrich cheered as he tried his enchanted swords out on a megatank and was able to slip his blade between the two halves of the shell thus destroying the megatank. Odd and Yumi took over hornet duty, while Aelita just fired energy fields wherever she could get them in, William blocked shots, and Maiana just kind of tried not to get hit. But as quickly as the monsters were destroyed, they were replaced.
Meanwhile, it was going to take awhile to replace the devirtualized Odd.
They persisted all the way to the way tower, until all five remaining warriors were inside and travelling to the desert sector. They exited and found themselves on a plateau littered with large diagonal slabs of brown rock; the activated tower was just across a ridge on two plateaus over.
Immediately when Maiana stepped out (she was one of the last to have exited the way tower) she was devirtualized by a megatank hiding behind a rock. Without thinking or listening to Yumi's sudden cry of "No wait!", William held up his blade, charged it with an energy shot, and swung it out, releasing the energy wave that both destroyed the megatank and devirtualized Yumi, as well as knocking a few life points off of Ulrich and Aelita.
"Why can't he just stop and listen for once?" a miffed Yumi grumbled as she stepped out of the scanner.
"Uh, oops," murmured William.
"Ulrich and Aelita, be careful. You're both low on life points and the tower's still too far away," said Jeremie.
"Can you call up some vehicles?" Ulrich requested.
"Vehicles are on the way." In front of them just seconds later, two vehicles materialized: the overbike and the overwing. William hesitantly took the overwing while Aelita and Ulrich shared the overbike, and they made for the tower.
"It's strange that XANA seems to have not launched an Earth attack," Odd commented.
"I know. That's why I want this tower taken care of as soon as possible," replied Jeremie.
"Look, they're almost there," Yumi said, a bit hopeful.
"Yeah, but look what else is there," Maiana pointed. "Ew, what are those?"
"Krabbes. And the scyphozoa."
-xx-
Indeed, on Lyoko, XANA had sent a small army of krabbes to guard the tower. And the centerpiece of their formation was the scyphozoa.
"What could XANA possibly want from you now, Aelita?!" Ulrich shouted upon seeing the giant jellyfish.
"I don't know, and I'd rather not find out," murmured Aelita as she readied an energy field.
"Jump when I say so, Aelita," said Ulrich, and he directed his Overbike directly at the scyphozoa. William, meanwhile, took his sword and began thinning out the crowd of krabbes.
About five meters from the jellyfish, Ulrich yelled and jumped while Aelita sprouted wings and took to the air. Ulrich unsheathed both sabres and attacked the bulbous head of the scyphozoa.
And he basically bounced right off, while the digital jellyfish raised its tentacles so that the speeding bike passed harmlessly beneath it and exploded into digital dust against the activated tower. Ulrich landed about three meters away on one side, his sabres broken and gone, and sprawled out awkwardly as the rest of him disintegrated into virtual dust.
"No...!" Aelita gasped before forming energy fields to fire at the creature.
William had seen it all, and now he was going to do things his way. He held up his giant sword, let out something of a battle cry, and ran full speed towards the scyphozoa. His intent was obviously to cut the tentacles, but it didn't work. He was knocked aside, and then picked up by two tentacles. Three more were placed to his head.
Aelita screamed. There was no way she was going to let XANA have William again. She conjured a supercharged energy field and dropped it on the dark warrior and his sea-creature-y captor. William was devirtualized, and the scyphozoa was knocked back long enough for Aelita to get inside the tower.
"That was some quick thinking, Aelita," Jeremie complimented as the pinkette made her ascent up the tower. Moments later the angry red smoke around the tower faded to neutral white.
She joined them all a minute or two later in the lab.
"So...that seemed random," Ulrich mustered.
"Do we even know what XANA's attack on Earth was?" asked Yumi.
"If you ask me," Jeremie began, "he wanted to put a wrench in our Lyoko training sessions, and what better way to do that than to possess someone, especially someone as powerful as William."
"So... XANA needs the tower's energy to send the scyphozoa?" Maiana inquired.
"Uh, not quite," mused Aelita. "I've seen a few instances that he didn't need it. Like when he stole the keys in my memory. There weren't any activated towers until after it had gotten to me."
"So why did he activate a tower?" Ulrich repeated.
If there had been crickets, they would have been chirping in the silence that followed his question.
Finally, Jeremie spoke up. "If XANA's going to play total secrecy with us, it can only be because he's planning something huge."
"When is he ever not planning something big?" Yumi retorted.
"...When he's shut off?" William mused.
"Quiet, William," Yumi glared.
"Actually, William's right, which is why I'm going to start work on a new antiXANA program right away," declared Jeremie. "Starting tonight."
Aelita raised her hand to object, then thought differently and lowered it. Instead, she gave Jeremie a sad, solemn look. The same look everyone else was sharing.
A|N: So, I feel so bad for not updating this now, especially since I had all of these huge plans since last year of where the story was going to go and everything. I promise chapter 3 is not far behind - I've had that one written for several months now.
Disclaimers: I don't own Code Lyoko. I don't own Maiana's outfit design since it is technically Jinx. And I do not seek to make any material profit from posting my stories here. I do not own the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Also, I don't own the two girls (OCs) sitting behind Yumi and Maiana in Spanish class.