Sorry that this is late again. This chapter was a challenging write, because it's a bit different. Please bear with us here. The threads all weave together, we promise.

A special thank you to Ways for your kind words. Reviews give us life.

Sunlight crept over Ivy's face as she slept. The first thing she was aware of was confusion. Her room faced west, and she slept with her feet toward the window, anyway. She opened her eyes to stare at an unfamiliar ceiling, and it took her a moment to remember that she was at Yumi's house, and that it must be morning. It took her another moment to remember why it was that this made her so sad. If it was morning, that meant that there had been no call during the night. Michael was still gone.

She sat up slowly from her position stretched out on the couch, more of last night's events returning to her slowly. When they had arrived at the apartment, Odd had declared firmly (and very loudly) that they were "not going through all that crap again". He had insisted that they all eat dinner, that all of them sit down together in the living room area, and, for reasons best known for himself, had stashed Yumi's kitchen clock in the linen closet under all of the towels. They had ordered cheap takeout, which Ivy ate, and turned on the TV with the volume up almost too loudly. If Odd had tried this this first time around, Ivy would have been irritated, perhaps even angry. This time she was grateful. Nothing could be worse than that night of cold silence again. Being here, surrounded by the three Lyoko Warriors, Ivy felt safer than she would have thought possible, given the circumstances. And she was infinitely thankful that all of them were still here.

The older Lyoko Warriors had surrendered the entire couch to Ivy to give her room to lie down. Ulrich and Yumi had curled up together on the futon, and Odd had stretched out on the floor, using the couch as a backrest. Ivy could not remember at what point she had fallen asleep, but it was before Yumi and Ulrich had folded down the futon to lie flat. Ulrich was still curled up on it, asleep. Odd was on the floor, snoring like a chainsaw, and the television was still on, though at some point the sound had been turned down so much that it was nearly on mute.

The door of the flat opening drew Ivy's attention, and she looked around to see Yumi walked back in, pocketing her cell phone. "Oh, Ivy, you're awake," she commented mildly, giving her a small smile. "Did you want any breakfast?"

"No, I'm not very hungry," Ivy replied honestly. "Any word from Jeremie?"

Yumi's smile faded and she heaved a sigh. "Yes, Ivy… I just got off the phone with him, actually."

Ivy knew the answer. She had known it from the second the morning light touched her face. She asked anyway. "And? What did he say?"

Yumi's lips thinned to a serious line. "That we have to go with plan B."

oOo

Michael's clone was identical to him in nearly every way. Same stocky build, same wavy ash brown hair, same solid nose and full lips. Perhaps he was just a shade too tall, his hair a little too long, his eyes ever so slightly a deeper shade of blue than Michael's own icy color. No one but Michael's own mother would ever have known the difference, and no one but Michael knew how unlikely of an occurrence that would ever be. Physically, he was Michael's doppelganger.

The inside was another matter.

The Lyoko warriors had encountered a problem that they had never foreseen. Unlike William all those years ago, Michael's absence could not be explained away by illness or sudden traveling, because he had a roommate who would miss him - and a particularly perceptive one, at that. This was also the reason that they could not just create one of their normal clones. Any "emerging qualities" would be spotted by Lucas in a moment, which would only lead to more questions. The solution that Jeremie devised was logical, if not particularly kind.

The clone was programmed with basic motor functions, to speak and understand French, how to recognize the six universal emotions, and with varying degrees of the five senses, depending on what was relevant at the time. It was also installed with some basics of social pleasantries, to avoid any uncomfortable situations. Above all it had two prime directives. One of these was to observe, which it did very well.

Light flooded from the scanner under its cheek. The clone uncurled itself and got to its feet. Stand. Wait. Take in surroundings. Two people stood in front of them. Jeremie and Aelita. Aelita was doing sadness. Jeremie was doing something else. It catalogued the expression for later.

"He looks about right," Jeremie said. "Nice work, Aelita."

"Thank you," Aelita replied, turning her back on both of them.

"Can you speak?" This was addressed to the clone.

It responded in Michael's husky tones. "Yes."

"Excellent." Jeremie nodded. "He should do just fine."

Odd and Ulrich came to take it away. Their expressions were quite blank and they were both very quiet, and spoke to Jeremie in clipped tones. They did not speak to the clone at all, except to tell it to get into the car. It did as it was asked. Sit. Wait.

After two minutes and thirty four seconds, Odd turned to Ulrich, and the blonde man was doing anger. "I don't like this," he stated. "I don't like this at all."

"I don't either." Judging from his tone, Ulrich was doing anger too. He gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles started to turn white. "But it's the best plan we've got, if we want to avoid questions. I just wish it wasn't, because I don't want to put her through this."

"Ivy's not going to be happy," Odd pointed out.

"I know." They drove in silence.

The car stopped about a block away from the school. Two people were waiting for them, leaning against a black car. One of them was a tall woman with short black hair. The other was a girl with wavy golden brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks, and emerald green eyes. The clone knew her at once, for she was at the center of its programming. As Ulrich and Odd let it out of the car, the clone did joy, fixing a smile on its face and extending a hand. "Ivy," it said.

Ivy did surprise, then a mild form of anger, turning to Ulrich and Odd. "This isn't going to work. He's all wrong."

And so they told her.

The clone before her was a learning clone. It had been programmed to learn from Ivy, and only from Ivy. Its instructions were to observe day to day life and how people reacted to it, and to report back to Ivy with its findings and various hypotheses about how it felt it needed to change its programming. However, it was not permitted to enact a change in behavior until Ivy had given permission.

Odd and Ulrich's prediction proved accurate, the clone noted, as it watched Ivy. The girl shook her head again and again. "I'm not doing this. You can't make me do this. Why couldn't one of you teach him?"

"Jeremie was concerned that if he had more than one person instructing him, he might start to generalize and receive instructions from other people," Ulrich explained. "I know this is really hard, Ivy, and I'm so sorry. You're the one who knows him best. Jeremie said it would be a week of instruction at the most, and then perhaps a few occasional questions. For the most part, once this week is over you can ignore him all you want. I promise."

Ivy eyed the clone, and it stared back at her, still smiling pleasantly. "Stop smiling like that," she said. The clone obeyed. Ivy looked back at Ulrich, fixing him with an intense stare. "One week. You promise?"

"Well, we're just going off what Jeremie said…" Odd mumbled.

"Then make sure it gets back to him," Ivy said, her eyes not moving from Ulrich's face. "One week. That's all I'm agreeing to."

"Okay." Ulrich nodded his agreement.

"Don't worry," interjected Yumi. "I'll hold Jeremie to it. We're already asking a lot of you."

"I know," Ivy said shortly, then gestured to the clone. "Come on, let's get going."

The clone moved over to walk beside her toward the school without looking back. "That's not how Michael walks," Ivy said after they had gone no more than five steps. "He drags his feet."

"I see," Michael's clone said, altering his gate so the sole of his shoe never left the ground, sliding along instead.

Ivy heaved a sigh. "This is going to be a long week."

That first day, the clone learned several things and the most important, according to Ivy, was that it was not to speak to her during school hours. Since the two of them were not expected back until late morning, Ivy brought the clone out to sit under a tree at the park and instructed it on a few basic things. The clone spent the next half hour mimicking her facial expressions. "It will be easiest if he's sulking," Ivy explained. "At least for now. It will explain why he's so quiet." When she was satisfied that the clone could mimic the expressions believably, Ivy switched topics. "Do you know what Lucas looks like?"

The clone considered this question. "He is tall and has pale blonde hair with brown eyes," it responded. "I have not seen a picture, however, and I will need you to point him out to me."

"Fine," Ivy said dismissively. "But I need you to know that he's very inquisitive. Don't answer any of his questions."

"I could not. even if I wished to," the clone pointed out mildly.

Ivy considered this. "Good point," she said, giving a small laugh. "That may be the best solution to dealing with Lucas I've ever heard." And they spent the next quarter of an hour practicing saying "Leave me alone" and other similar phrases in the appropriately sullen way.

That first day was when the clone met Lucas for the first time, as well. No matter what the clone did, looking back on it, it had the feeling that Lucas was never completely fooled. He certainly always seemed quite wary around the clone and several times the clone caught him watching it out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps it was the fact that the clone was only permitted to recycle a handful of phrases, like an action figure, or else just grunt and shrug. Perhaps it was the fact that the clone did not use any of Michael's usual mannerisms, and its facial expressions were not yet perfected. The clone thought it was the fact that it did not make Michael's bed when it came back.

Evening had fallen, and Lucas had not been in the room when Michael's clone arrived there. The clone would later learn that the boy had been receiving a lecture from Principal Delmas after Jim had found Lucas skipping class to stay in the room that day. After several attempts to gain information were rebuffed, Lucas surrendered and started in on his homework on his bed. Since the clone had not yet been instructed to do so, the program did not do the same, but sat down on the bed that belonged to Michael and took off its shoes. Lucas gave it a strange look. "What, you're breaking the habit?"

The clone was not permitted to inquire, so merely grunted and shrugged, hypothesizing that its lack of articulation would serve as an appropriate answer. Lucas shook his head disbelievingly. "Never thought I'd live to see the day you would sit on that bed without making it," he remarked. The clone just shrugged again and took the time to examine rest of Michael's spotless half of the room, making a mental note to bring it up with Ivy when it saw her for their next teaching session in the morning.

As promised, Michael's clone did see Ivy the next day, but only briefly. She was waiting for the clone when it arrived, shivering and looking quite glum. The clone allowed Michael's sullen expression to melt away from its face as it approached, taking in her appearance. "You are cold," it noted.

"It's cold," Ivy pointed out impatiently. "Look, I'm changing the plan a little bit. My training has been cancelled in the evenings."

"I see."

"They didn't even tell me why..." Ivy was doing anger again. She shook her head and closed her eyes. "I'm guessing it's because they want me to teach you. So, here is what you'll do. You come to my room tonight after dinner for a 'study session', okay? The sooner we can get this done, the better."

"I would be delighted," the clone said tonelessly, drawing from its knowledge of human pleasantries.

"Yeah, we have a lot of work to do," Ivy muttered under her breath as she trudged off.

The clone arrived precisely five minutes before its scheduled meeting with Ivy. The fact that Ivy was not inside her room when it came in did not bother it in the slightest. Instead, it gazed around the room, taking it in and mentally comparing it to Michael's. In contrast to Michael's Spartan room, with only a bare minimum of personal possessions and immaculately tidy, Ivy's was very different. She had a bookshelf, packed full with books and various knick-knacks. The wardrobe was half open, revealing an overflowing laundry hamper with a few articles of clothing spilling out onto the floor. Her bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets, not only the standard Kadic issue but a soft lime green blanket as well. The girl had also set up an additional lamp in the corner next to the unused desk, and various photographs of people standing with past versions of Ivy were on the walls. Her desk was littered with pens, papers, and small ceramic pots.

The clone moved over and picked up one of these, holding it up to eye level to examine the withered and brown plant it held. A leaf fell off even as Michael's doppelganger studied the sad little plant, drifting to join its many companions on Ivy's desk.

The door shut as Ivy walked back into the room, holding an armful of books from the library. The clone looked around but did not say anything until her eyes locked on him. The girl jumped and nearly dropped her books everywhere. "Don't do that!" she scolded when she had recovered herself, doing anger once more. It was all she seemed to do around him. The clone catalogued this information to ask Ivy to explain it to him,

"I apologize," it replied calmly. "I was under the impression that it was polite to be early."

"It's polite to wait outside if you are early and you're going somewhere you haven't been invited in," Ivy retorted, dumping her books unceremoniously on her bed and flopping down on it.

"I apologize," the clone reiterated. "I assumed that your permission was implicit." It paused, replacing the plant on the desk. "It is dying," it remarked.

"Yes," Ivy agreed. "They always die. Go sit," she added, pointing to the unused bed. "We can get started."

The third day was interrupted halfway through by a call from Jeremie midway through science. Ivy's hand was in the air in an instant, asking to go to the infirmary. As it had been instructed to do, Michael's clone raised its hand a moment later to volunteer to take her. They met outside for only the briefest of moments before both turned to head in opposite directions.

As Ivy raced toward the factory, the clone went to the dorms. It had been agreed upon that if the attack were to come during the daytime that the clone would hide out in the dorms, where it would have the least chance of encountering another student and potentially hurting them, should its code become corrupted by XANA. The clone recognized that this was a flimsy defense, but it was the best one that they could devise. The clone locked the door and barricaded it with the chairs and desks and mattresses. This would only provide perhaps ten seconds of extra protection, but it was possible that those ten seconds could be crucial. Having no other ideas for how to further protect the world from itself, the clone took the time to search all the drawers of the room and glean what it could from the contents. This served to fill all of ten minutes. Left with nothing to do, the clone sat on the floor, turning Michael's paperback science fiction book that it had uncovered over and over in its hands. It waited for Ivy to return, and it wondered what it would be like if XANA tried to possess it.

Half an hour later, there was a quiet knock on the door, and it heard Ivy murmur "It's me". As predicted, it took the program perhaps forty-five seconds to remove the barriers, and that was because it was being careful not to damage anything. "Ivy," Michael's clone greeted her, and did joy for her. "You have returned. Is all well?"

"It was another false alarm," she answered, lingering outside the door instead of coming inside. "We had just arrived at the tower when it deactivated itself."

The clone studied her and its smile diminished. "You are…" The clone did its best to imitate her expression and body language. "... doing anger," it finished, though it knew that this was not the right word.

Ivy did surprise, then frowned at the clone. "Doing anger?" she echoed. "I'm not angry, I'm… anxious, I suppose, because we just had a XANA attack that lead nowhere. But that's not really something that you do, you just… are."

"You… are anger?" the clone asked, confused.

"Close enough."

"But… how do you do that?" Michael's doppelganger did not understand. "Am I anger when I make the face like Michael?"

"No." The girl shook her head. "You… well, we.. feel it. It's not just a facial expression it's a mood, it's a physical change in the body's chemistry… We really should get back to class, alright? I'll try to explain more to you later."

The clone obeyed, and to Ivy's credit she really did try to explain her comments further that evening. However, try as it might, the clone could not bring itself to summon what Ivy had described. It suspected that Jeremie simply had left that part out of the program. That night as it lay in the state that it used to imitate sleep, sorting the many stimuli of the day and processing them according to their importance, the clone considered Ivy's words again. It decided that the sensation when Ivy had come to tell him that the threat had passed was as close as he had come to being something. The notion that everyone was safe and that the clone would not suddenly lose control and attack someone… Perhaps this was what it was like to be joy.

"Lucas has instructed me to bathe," Michael's clone informed Ivy on the evening of the fourth day.

The girl, who had been puzzling over a math problem, paused. "I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"Lucas has instructed me to bathe," the clone repeated. "He said…" The clone slipped into an uncanny imitation of Lucas' voice. "'Look, I don't know what's going on with you, but you have to take a shower. That's just common courtesy. I have to live with you, and this room is tiny.' Lucas, of course, is unaware that I lack sweat glands," the clone finished in its own voice.

"You haven't been… of course you haven't been, I didn't tell you to." Ivy groaned and shook her head. "Well, you should shower at least once a day. I don't know if Michael showers in the morning or the evening, but pick one and do that. You should definitely shower tonight and make sure Lucas knows it."

"I will," agreed the clone. "How shall I do that?"

Ivy did, no, she was surprised. Her mouth hung open as she stared at the clone. At last she shut it, closing her math book loudly. "No," she said simply. "No. I am drawing the line."

"Okay," the clone said. "Where?"

"He doesn't know how to shower, Jeremie?" Ivy demanded fifteen minutes later at the factory. The clone stood in the back of the room and observed as Ivy turned her rage on Jeremie.

The man took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I must have overlooked it in the initial programming. I had quite a lot to do, you know."

"Yeah, well, now you need to fix him," Ivy snarled.

"Ivy." Jeremie's voice was colored by an emotion that Ivy had taught the clone meant impatience or irritation. "I have to go through every line of the SuperScan to ensure that these repeated false alarms are not being caused by a bug of some kind, I'm still looking for Michael, and now I have to deal with William too."

"William?" Ivy asked, momentarily derailed.

"Nothing," Jeremie said quickly. "Just an old friend. He was supposed to be here yesterday morning but now none of us can contact him. We think he may be on the run from us. Anyway, the point is that I have quite enough on my plate."

"You're going to do one more," Ivy stated firmly, narrowing her eyes. "Or else you're going to erase him and make a new one."

Jeremie sighed and hit a few buttons on the keyboard to change screens. "Fine," he groused. "You two head back to campus. I can access the code here, and the moment I change this code, he should change too. Satisfied?"

Ivy nodded, then gestured to the clone. "Come on. We are leaving." As always, the clone followed obediently.

With showering resolved and five days of a dutiful student and excellent teacher, the clone had progressed rapidly. It had mastered Michael's facial expressions, his walk, some of his mannerisms, and some of his speech patterns. It was enough to call into question the sanity of the person that challenged the clone, at the very least. However, there were still a few final touches that needed to be addressed.

"You sit too still," Ivy stated, frowning at the clone in what it had learned was a thoughtful manner. "Michael fidgets pretty much constantly."

"How so?" the clone asked.

"I don't know." Ivy let out a huff of breath, chewing on her lip. "Like… If he has a pencil he'll tap it. He might pick at the edge of his piece of paper. Shift his weight back and forth between his feet. Kick the dirt."

So she went on, listing off a long string of things that Michael might do. When she had finished, the clone looked at her expectantly. "Is that all?" it inquired.

"I mean, all I can think of. Let's see you do them before I decide that's the whole list."

"Alright," the clone agreed amicably. "Like this?"

And it did them all at once.

Ivy's laughter was cut short as she clapped a hand over her mouth, and try as Michael's clone might, it could not get Ivy to say more than a few words to it for the rest of the night.

Pretending to be Michael was not hard. Ivy was a good teacher, and the clone knew its role well. If it had been acting a little strangely at first, any tension had long since been smoothed away. Even Lucas had stopped watching Michael's clone quite so closely. Michael's clone was satisfied, in its own way, that they were doing their job well. Even so, it still appreciated not having to put on this act around Ivy. Ivy, who would help the world make sense, since it was not allowed to make any decisions on its own. After tonight, it would not speak to her again except in instances of the most dire emergency.

The thought was clearly on Ivy's mind as well. As she finished her last set of instructions to him, she sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Well, that's it," she announced. "I don't think there's anything else I really know to teach you. Honestly, I guess I knew more about him than I thought that I did…" This thought seemed to be troubling to Ivy for some reason. The clone did not know why, but it was not in its parameters to ask. Only about Michael and itself, unless it was phrased as a statement rather than a question. It was just about to compose this when Ivy shook her head and closed her eyes. "Now things can go back to the way that they were before."

The clone considered this comment. "How were things before?"

Ivy shrugged slightly. "He ignored me, I ignored him. Everyone was happy."

"I was under the impression that you two were friends," the clone stated carefully.

Ivy's eyes opened, and she blinked a few times in rapid succession. "So was I," she said quietly. "At least until…"

"Until," the clone echoed, still not phrasing it as a question, but it had been programmed with a natural curiosity and a desire to make sense of a situation.

Ivy shook her head. "I can't talk about this. Not with you. Not with you looking…" She gestured to him, then looked away. Silence fell, and the clone hypothesized that this would be the end of the conversation until Ivy began to speak again in a soft, shaky voice. "I think he hates me," she said softly. "I don't know why. I thought he liked me, but… he said some things about me and I got angry and... " She sniffled. "If he didn't hate me before, I bet he does now. It's my fault that he's lost."

"It is?" The clone raised its eyebrows in the perfect picture of surprise, the appropriate reaction to previously unknown information.

Ivy nodded weakly, still not looking at the clone. "He f-fell…"

"You pushed him."

"What?" This seemed to snap Ivy out of her trance, and she looked back at Michael's clone. "No, of course I didn't. I just yelled at him."

"But it's your fault?" Confusion now. The picture was unclear.

"I scared him. It's hard to explain." Ivy shook her head again, and her expression was doing something else, something too complex for the clone to understand. It did not ask for clarification. "The point is, he fell, it's my fault, and… and everyone just keeps telling me not to feel bad about it." Anger crept into her voice now. "Everyone keeps saying that it's not my fault, there's nothing I could have done, blah blah blah… It's like they're all lying to me, or they're all pretending that it's true. I know they're just trying to make me feel better, but it's just…" Ivy made a gesture of frustration and fell silent.

The clone looked at her for a long time, trying to put together the pieces. "You are angry," it said slowly.

"Yes," Ivy said impatiently.

"You are sad."

Ivy met the clone's eyes, less angry now. "Yes," she agreed in a quieter tone.

"Your friends say you should not be sad, and that makes you angry." Ivy did not say anything, just nodded this time. "You could just… be sad," the clone said haltingly. "Michael is gone, and you are sad. This seems to be within reason." Ivy was staring at it now, with an expression that was unreadable. "This seems a normal reaction until he has returned," continued the clone. "At that point, I believe when there is wrongdoing you it is customary for the guilty party to apologize."

Ivy nodded in a jerky, uneven sort of way, still staring at Michael's clone. "Y-yeah…" she breathed. "When he's back, I'll tell him that I'm sorry… I…"

The clone did not understand what had happened. One moment Ivy was sitting on the opposite bed, staring at it. The next moment, she had thrown herself into its arms, knocking it backwards so it leaned against the wall with Ivy half on top of it as she sobbed into its sweatshirt. "Please, just hold on to me," she begged quietly. "Just for a minute, I promise."

As always, the clone obeyed, wrapping its arms around her and waiting as she cried. The girl kept whimpering "I'm sorry" again and again, but the clone was baffled as to what she had done to him that would merit an apology. When she stopped at last, the clone opened its mouth to ask, only to find her pressing her own mouth against it. She drew back, staring at it with eyes still bright with tears and seemingly waiting.

"What does that mean?" the clone asked her.

Ivy closed her eyes and drew away further, hugging herself and shaking slightly. "It means I miss him."

The morning of the seventh day dawned. Michael's clone waited for Ivy for the last time. She had decided to put him through his paces one more time to be sure that its facade was convincing. For the first time, the clone had been instructed to show the full Michael act while only she was present. "If you can fool me, you can fool anyone," Ivy had told it last night as she showed it out of her room, having cleaned herself up slightly. 'Ivy is cautious,' the doppelganger thought to itself. 'She is also very thorough.' If it could have, the clone might have admired that about her. Instead, it simply catalogued this knowledge for later and waited for her in the park in the spot that she had brought the clone on the very first day.

It heard Ivy approaching with ears far better than a normal human's, and could tell in an instant that it was her just by her very gait. The clone took a breath and, though no one was there to see it, the transformation was instantaneous. Its broad shoulders hunched forward into a slouch, its brows shifted to give the barest hint of a scowl. Its hands sunk deep in its pockets, and it scuffed at the ground with its shoe. The clone was Michael completely, and it was prepared for Ivy, prepared to keep up this act for the rest of its existence unless otherwise instructed.

And then

something inside of it

snapped.

The clone caught its breath and nearly fell to its knees. Shakily, its grabbed onto a tree as it looked around at the world, a world that it had never really seen before. Up until now the world had consisted of only what it needed to carry out the mission, but now… now it was everywhere. The chill on its skin and the gray of the sky that threatened snow even though it was not yet winter, the way that its breath made small fog dance in front of its face, the bark beneath its fingertips and the light layer of frost on the grass that would surely melt the moment the sun came out and the silence of the early morning that was broken by the occasional rustling of the leaves and… and it was all so beautiful… and it was all so big… and it was all too much. The clone put its hands over its (his? Michael's?) ears and screwed its eyes shut as it started to scream.