The next morning promptly at 06:30, Aelita's alarm clock went off, as it had for several nights prior. A song by the Subdigitals came on, though Maiana was too groggy to recognize which song it was.
Aelita jumped up and turned off the alarm, and then grabbed her robe, a towel, and some soap, and ran out the door, probably to get to the showers before Sissi and her gang used up all the hot water. This left Maiana to sleep in peace for another half hour, after which her own alarm would sound. And at precisely 07:00, it did.
Maiana was still too groggy to do anything about it immediately, and she didn't move as the organ and guitar started jamming with the organ (her alarm was the song "Lazy" by Deep Purple). Finally she rolled out of bed, stood up, and hit the 'off' button.
She didn't notice that the power had gone out of the radio at the exact same time. She didn't notice the black spectre that began to encircle her as she looked for a clean shirt in the wardrobe. It wasn't until the spectre had completely entered her through her ears that there was any change in her behavior. She suddenly fell back to the ground and rolled around, coughing, as she phased in and out between flesh and pixels.
For a minute, it looked as if she was winning, and bits of black ghost began to spurt out of her mouth and shut eyes like tears as she continued to cough out the smoky spectre. But suddenly, she went completely still.
Aelita, now dressed in her robe and her pink hair still somewhat wet, came through the door.
"Maiana? Are you alright?" she asked. "I heard a thud and loud coughing a minute or two ago."
"I rolled out of the bed on accident and choked on my own saliva," Maiana replied quietly, her eyes still closed. "I'm okay. I'll be up in just a minute."
Aelita looked at her for a few seconds. "Okay," she said, and got her clothes out of the wardrobe, and left the room to dress in the bathroom.
A few seconds later, Maiana did get up. And when she opened her eyes, her eyes flashed blue and her pupils had been replaced with what was unmistakably the Eye of XANA.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Breakfast was quiet. Aelita and Jeremie talked about a project Mrs. Hertz had assigned to the class the day before. Odd was too busy eating his double portion of scrambled eggs to say anything. Yumi and Ulrich were sitting in stony silence while William tried desperately to make amends with Yumi. And XANA-Maiana just slowly ate her breakfast except for the eggs (which she had given to Odd). It was, all in all, a normal breakfast.
The group broke up to go to their first classes, and the only thing abnormal thing was that Maiana appeared to be sleeping during class, keeping her head down. Yet when she was addressed by the teacher she was fully able to answer the question in a way that was both complete and worded so that even the least adept of the class could understand. It's not that it was strange for her—she'd done it yesterday too, though just slightly less—but it seemed strange to other classmates who could only sleep or pay attention, not both.
"She sure is smart," William whispered to Yumi. "She picks things up well."
"Yeah. It worries me," replied Yumi.
"Why?"
"How many times do you think she would have discovered our secret without us knowing before she finally did something outwardly about it? Do you think she would have joined us anyway, or do you think she would have exposed it all?"
"What are the odds she hears us right now?"
They turned their heads towards Maiana, whose head was still on the desk. She looked like she could have been sleeping, but through the thin curtain of hair over her face, they could see her dark eyes darting around the room.
"Probably very high," Yumi finally admitted.
William nodded, and they turned their attention back to what was being written on the chalkboard.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A window with some complex programming opened on the supercomputer. The line began processing themselves, highlighting themselves and then scrolling down. After a few minutes, the window closed, another one with a generic-looking percent meter opened and began to fill slowly, and the superscan began to flash.
At the exact same instant, in the last ten minutes of their last class before lunch, Jeremie's laptop began to beep. He quickly took it out and opened it discreetly underneath his desk to see that a tower had been activated in the ice sector. Jeremie recognized the coordinates: it was the same tower that had been active when XANA had taken over the military satellite and turned it on Yumi and Odd. This worried Jeremie, and he mused that he shouldn't wait for those nine minutes to pass to go to the factory even though it wasn't likely that XANA was going to try the satellite ordeal again. Still, he didn't want to chance it.
He looked over at Aelita, who had seen it also. She looked at him. He nodded, then glanced at Ulrich, who gave him a questioning look, and Odd, who was on the verge of falling asleep. Jeremie indicated his laptop with a slight inclination of his head. Ulrich nodded and pointed toward the clock, which now dictated seven-and-a-half minutes until the end of class.
Jeremie raised his hand. "Uh, ma'am? May I go to the bathroom?"
"Me too!" Ulrich piped up.
"I have to go, too..." added Aelita.
Mrs. Hertz scowled. "There are less than ten minutes left in class. Unless you're dead or dying, I'm sure you can all wait until then."
Jeremie sat down, slightly red-faced for being publicly scolded and for the fact that she was right and he was in the wrong. And it irritated him that even though he wasn't dead or dying at that instant, someone could end up that way because of the extra seven minutes it would take to get to the factory and deactivate the tower. When XANA was attacking, seven minutes was a lot of time.
Aelita laid her hand on his understandingly, and he took a deep breath, and the red disappeared from his cheeks. In fact, had he not known the urgency of the situation, he might have even smiled. Her presence gave him just enough patience to last the next six-and-three-quarters minutes of class.
And just as things always do when you're anxiously waiting for something, those four-hundred-five seconds ticked by ever so slowly, as if the ever-steady tempo of the tick of the second hand on the clock had been deliberately halved and was on an everlasting rallentando. Mrs. Hertz's words seemed to become more and more drone-like, and slowly disappeared as the ticking crescendo'ed in volume, taunting the Lyoko warriors.
That clock looks too scarily like an eye, thought Jeremie at somewhere around three-hundred twenty-eight seconds; it was one of those clocks that had an extra circle in the middle of the clock face to notate the minutes and seconds. The Eye of XANA.
Is this how he plans to do it? Possess the clock and have it start sparking battery shocks from it? It seemed a bit of a weak attack, but one could never tell when it came to XANA.
As twelve-thirty ticked closer and closer, Jeremie began to fidget in his seat. His eyes appeared to dilate as his attention shifted more and more completely towards the clock. His legs began to shake like those of a person with severe restless legs syndrome as he itched to get out and stop XANA.
With seventy-three-and-two-fifths seconds left in class, Aelita tightened her grip on his shoulder, and he calmed down a bit. Mrs. Hertz had finally stopped talking, which meant Aelita could use her right hand to grasp Jeremie's hand, which by this point was also shaking. This seemed to bring him back to the point of mild sanity, and he tore his eyes from the clock to Aelita. She gave him a reassuring smile, and before he knew it, he was also smiling, and then the bell rang.
He was up immediately, and the four of them dashed out of the room to run by the other three's classroom. Yumi, William, and Maiana met them halfway there, though.
"I got your text," Yumi said to Ulrich. Jeremie had been so focused on the clock that he hadn't noticed anything else besides Aelita.
"Good. Jeremie says it's bad," replied Ulrich.
"I'll explain on the way," Jeremie mumbled as the seven exited the building and made their way to the building with the boiler, and within seven minutes they were at the factory, and Ulrich, William, and Aelita were being virtualized into the ice sector, on top of a large, flat glacier.
"So Jeremie, you still haven't given us that explanation yet," Yumi commented as she, Maiana, and Odd stepped into the scanners once the other three were gone.
"Right..." said Jeremie as the scanner doors closed and they began to hum. "As soon as you're all virtualized." He virtualized them, and they landed on the ground with the other three. A red spinning exclamation point appeared on Maiana's virtual envelope.
"Uh, Maiana, there was a bug in your transfer," said Jeremie.
"Yeah, I know," Maiana replied. "My garb is red, but it should be blue." Indeed her shawl, shoes, and other effects which had been icy blue yesterday were almost scarlet red today. The only blue now was in the streaks in her hair.
"How do you know?" asked Odd.
"I trained here just yesterday, remember? I was blue, not this icky red color."
"Oh, that's right."
"Well, do you feel anything wrong?" Jeremie asked. "The supercomputer's not telling me anything."
She stood there for a moment, considering. "No," she finally said.
"Alright," sighed Jeremie. "The activated tower is due west of your current position. Aelita, if you remember, it's not on top of the block; it's inside it, behind a waterfall."
"Jeremie, isn't that the same tower XANA activated when he took control over that satellite and tried to kill Yumi and Odd?" asked Ulrich.
"He did WHAT?" William cried. "Nobody ever told me about this!"
"It happened a long time before you, William," Odd stated.
"Yep," Jeremie replied to Ulrich's question. "That's what concerns me. What does he plans to do with it this time?"
"Who knows? Our biggest job right now is to stop him. Anyway, the welcoming committee just arrived," announced Odd.
"We've got a whole seafood platter!" Yumi added as she threw her fans at a Manta and missed. "Aw, darnn it, I missed."
"Mmm, sushi," mused Maiana as she began to concentrate.
"How can you people stand that stuff?" Odd inquired as he began firing arrows.
"I've got it!" William yelled as he ran forward and sliced through two Mantas with his broadsword.
"Nice one!" Aelita congratulated as she struck a Krab with an energy field.
Maiana's concentration finally paid off, and she cast a blue aura that surrounded the monsters like smoke. On the supercomputer, her mana points went down to 400, and Jeremie could see the life points ever so slowly being depleted from monsters.
"Great cast, Maiana!" he applauded. "I don't think I've seen that be—hey, what's this?"
The percent meter had just appeared on the screen where he could see it, and had just jumped from 47 to 67 percent.
"Well, that's a dead Krab," said Odd as he pointed and fired a laser arrow at a Krab, destroying it. "And this is a dead Manta," he continued, shooting the Manta. "And that's another seafood platter," he added as another group of Krabs and Mantas, all engulfed by Maiana's blue smoky aura, made their way over and began firing. "You're going to have to be more specific, Einstein."
"Very funny, Odd," came Jeremie's voice. "What I can't figure out is this percent meter. I wonder if it's part of XANA's attack."
"Or maybe XANA's tapped into you, and the percent meter is showing how close you are to snapping from the paranoia," Maiana said, with an air of sarcasm.
"Maybe so... In that case, Aelita, go ahead and break off; I want that tower deactivated before it hits 100%. Take Maiana with you. Since she seems to have better control over her powers now maybe she'll be a bit of a help to you in case you run into any more problems."
"Don't worry, Jeremie. I'll take good care of her," Maiana replied, and the two broke off from the rest of the group.
"The rest of you guys cover for them," Jeremie ordered to the rest of them.
"We'll do our best, but we haven't finished the job here yet," responded Ulrich.
"They just keep coming!" Odd added. "Jeremie, load me up; I'm out of arrows."
"Really? That's a lot of arrows. Hold on," said Jeremie.
"Ahhhhhhhh! Too late," Odd yelled as he was devirtualized.
"Sorry," Jeremie muttered.
While Ulrich, Yumi, and William continued to fight the monsters, Maiana and Aelita made it to the waterfall that was in front of the entrance to the cavern where the tower was located; the red glow could be seen through the sheet of water.
"This is it," said Aelita.
"Do you want me to go in with you?" Maiana asked.
"You can stay here if you like. I'll be just fine."
"Whatever you say."
Aelita ran into the cave and hopped the ice chunks to get into the tower.
As soon as she passed through the tower membrane, another sound was heard, something of a low screech, and ketchup being squeezed out of its packet. Maiana turned around.
"And here we have our grand master topping of our seafood platter: the jellyfish, scientifically known as the Scyphozoa," she murmured, cutting off the audio between her and Jeremie. But that didn't stop Ulrich from noticing the last word.
"Did Maiana just say... Scyphozoa?"
"WHAT?!" Jeremie's voice came.
Maiana was too busy trying to cast some aura while simultaneously dodging the Scyphozoa's tentacles. Blue smoke began to emit out of the tips of her fingers, but it was too late, and she was captured. Her glowing blue streaks turned to red, and began to glow as the monster began the data transfer. A few Krabs came to guard her.
The tower in the cavern turned back to a neutral blue color.
"Guys!" shouted Jeremie. "Maiana's been captured by the Scyphozoa!"
"Oh great, great, just great," muttered Yumi.
"YAAAAAAaAAAAAAAHHHH!" William let out something of a war cry as he sliced through a line of monsters like cucumbers, leaving only a Manta and two Krabs.
"Wow, nice going, William," Jeremie congratulated.
"Jeremie? Are you there?" Aelita's voice came.
"Aelita! What's going on?"
"Well, I just left the tower, and Maiana's been captured by the Scyphozoa."
"Oh yeah... You took care of the Krabs?"
"Yes, they're gone, but my energy fields are useless against the Scyphozoa itself."
At the exact same moment, the percent meter on Jeremie's screen, which had stopped climbing when Aelita had deactivated the tower, jumped to 98%. "Well keep trying! The others are on their way, I hope. It's strange; the supercomputer's picked up that the Scyphozoa had captured Maiana, but it's not showing any data transfer whatsoever."
"XANA could be inputting data into her at the same rate as he's stealing data so that the numbers stay stagnant?"
"Maybe. Well, hurry!"
"Hurry for what?" Odd inquired as he moved from the elevator into the supercomputer room.
"Maiana's been captured by the Scyphozoa, but the supercomputer isn't detecting any data transfers. It's really strange."
"Sounds like it. Are the others on their way to help?"
"Hopefully," said Jeremie.
Meanwhile on Lyoko, William and Ulrich were taking out the ever-growing multitude of Krabs and Mantas, while Yumi ran off to attack the Scyphozoa.
"Jeremie, I've caught up to her. I don't know what you're seeing, but it sure does look like the thing is stealing something from her," said Yumi.
"It's definitely picking something up now, but I'm not sure what. Hurry and cut it off!" ordered Jeremie.
"Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhh!" Yumi cried as she threw her fans which cut through the tentacles attached to Maiana's head. Her streaks stopped glowing, and she was dropped to the ground, unconscious, as the Scyphozoa floated away. Before the girl, probably possessed now, could get up, Aelita fired an energy field and devirtualized her. Simultaneously, the percent meter, which had been frozen at 99%, reached 100% and then promptly closed before Jeremie could see exactly what it had done.
"Jeremie. Hurry. Run the materialization program now," Aelita huffed.
"Right. Materialization Yumi! Materialization Aelita!" The two ladies were devirtualized from Lyoko. "Ulrich and William, you guys are next."
"Good to know. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stomach seafood ever again," Ulrich grumbled. "Did you deactivate the tower?"
"Yeah, it's done."
"So why are we still here, then?"
"Because you haven't gotten devirtualized yet?"
"Jeremie! There's something wrong with Maiana." This time it was Yumi's voice.
"What? What's wrong?"
"Well, for starters, she's unconscious."
"What is it, Jeremie?" asked Odd, next to Jeremie.
"Go down to the scanner room and find out," replied Jeremie. "I've got to devirtualize the other two." He began typing more code. "Materialization Ulrich! Materialization William!"
"Finally!" Jeremie heard Ulrich say as he was devirtualized.
Odd made his way down the ladder into the scanner room and beheld the sight of Maiana curled up in one scanner, with Yumi and Aelita around her, and Ulrich and William emerging from the other two scanners.
"Is she sleeping?" he asked.
"I guess so," replied Aelita. "I don't really know why we were freaking out. She was barely awake the last two times she was materialized, and being attacked by the scyphozoa isn't exactly an energizing ordeal."
William tried to rush forward to look, but was held back by Ulrich's arm.
"Is she okay?" Jeremie's voice came from somewhere above.
"Yeah, she's just asleep," Odd replied.
"You guys had me worried. I'm glad it's nothing serious."
"Can we go to lunch now? I'm starving!"
"Uh, lunch is over, Odd. Wow, that was a long battle."
"In that case, we'd better hurry up and get to class," said Yumi.
"With Maiana still asleep?" asked William as he began to help Yumi support Maiana's weight on their shoulders.
"We'll drop her off in the infirmary if she's still asleep when we get there," Yumi replied as they got Maiana settled and began moving to the elevator.
The elevator rose and they picked up Jeremie, and then got back to the school with nothing to report. As planned, Maiana was left in the infirmary, fast asleep, leaving Yolande with the story that she had fainted in the lunchroom.
As soon as the Lyoko warriors had gone away, Yolande checked her vitals, and found them to be normal for someone who was, quite simply, asleep. But since passing out usually meant a bigger problem, she turned to rummage through a drawer. She located a small box of ammonia salts, took out one of the tiny pungent packets, and squeezed it under Maiana's nose.
As soon as the salt's aroma had founds its way into the girl's nose, her face wrinkled, eyes squinting. This was a good sign, the nurse thought to herself. Several seconds later, Maiana's eyes opened and her facial expression immediately indicated irritation at the sudden bright light and awful aroma in her sinuses. She'd never be able to get that taste out, she grumbled internally.
"Ugh," she groaned aloud. "What happened?"
"Your friends tell me you passed out at lunch. Are you feeling okay now?" Yolande asked.
"Lunch? I haven't even had breakfast." Oops, apparently the wrong thing to say. Yolande's eyes registered concern. "Yet," she added. Now the blonde nurse was confused too.
"I'll see if Rosa can bring some of the lunch leftovers down. Until then, you stay there and rest," she ordered as she left the room.
Alone with her thoughts, Maiana fished through her pockets for her cell phone. She found Aelita's number and typed a quick message.
xXxXxXx
A|N: Apologies for the delay in posting... again. My beta reader took a bit longer than usual to get back to me, but it's done. I'd promise that the next chapter is going to be posted soon, but it already seems I can't keep such promises, and so all I can promise is that it'll be good.
Disclaimer: I do not own the song "Lazy" by Deep Purple.