Chapter 10:
Chaos at Kadic
Selina drummed her fingers nervously on the table as she waited for the teacher to give them the Physics test scores. Until recently she had always considered herself a good student, but since she had discovered that she was not her parents' biological daughter, anything that didn't have something to do with finding out information about her origins took a back seat. And now she feared that determination had blown up in her face. What if I failed the exam or got a "C" minus? What if Mrs. Hertz talks to my parents and they ask me why I flunked? What if...?
"Selina, are you all right?"
The girl blinked and turned to Laura, who was looking at her with concern. She let out a sigh and put on her I have a little problem I have to tell you about but I'll put on a good face because I don't want you to worry about me smile.
"Yes, I'm fine. I'm just a little worried about the exam. I'm afraid I didn't do well"
Laura snorted in disbelief.
"Are you kidding me? I've seen you explain physics questions to half the class during study sessions in the library! Even if you didn't have much time to study, I'm sure you did very well on the test"
"Thanks for the encouragement, Laura. But I'm not worried about a bad grade. What I'm worried about is my parents finding out about that bad grade and pulling me out of Kadic" her eyes darkened. "And I want to be here. I have you, Aelita, Jeremy, Yumi, Ulrich and Odd. For having, I even have Mr. Cockiness himself, William Dunbar, who loves to tease me but also treats me as an equal"
Laura didn't miss the twinkle in her friend's eye every time she talked about her dark-haired friend. She didn't know much about boys, but it was clear that Selina had a crush on William. But then she remembered the expectations her father had placed on her when he enrolled her at Kadic, and a shiver ran down her spine.
"Hey, what's wrong with you?" Selina put a hand on her arm. "You're afraid you got the test wrong too? If you're as good as Jeremy. I'm sure your worst grade would be a B+"
"Yeah, but for my dad a B is the same as for your parents an F. For him school is just about learning and becoming the best. Having fun is something that is useless" She stirred uncomfortably as she remembered her father's words. "If I get a B, he'll most likely get me out of Kadic"
"And if I meet him, I'll most likely slap him into tomorrow!" Snarled Selina, her eyes glowing with sapphire blue flames. "That it's one thing to want your daughter to make a name for herself, it's quite another to turn her into a fucking robot!"
Laura looked at her shocked, but at the same time moved by her sincerity. It seemed unbelievable that there were people capable of standing up to authority figures who went against their principles and without apologizing for it. Selina may not have been as good at Physics as she or Jeremy, but when it came to expressing her beliefs and acting on them, she was undoubtedly the best.
She smiled inwardly and turned her attention to Mrs. Hertz, who was handing out the exam notes and with an increasingly startled look on her face.
"Della Robbia..." Odd shrugged, readying himself for the announcement of an umpteenth F-grade, but what he heard next shocked him. Him and his teacher, who couldn't believe what she was seeing. "Uh! Top of the class?!"
Hearing this, Selina's jaw nearly dropped. This had to be a joke. Odd Della Robbia, a total disaster in math and any science subject, had gotten the best grade on the Physics exam?
"Huh?!" Odd muttered, in disbelief but with euphoria pouring out of his ears. "Are you sure?"
Selina stared at the teacher, almost expecting her to tell Odd, You fell for it! But Mrs. Hertz kept handing out the physics tests, each one with crazier grades than the last.
"And Nicholas... Excellent results, too!"
At the back of the classroom, Aelita could not believe what she was seeing. She leaned over to Jeremy, who was just as shocked.
"I can't believe it! There has to be a mistake, right?"
Jeremy shook his head. It was all very strange, but not impossible. At least in Odd's case. The boy was very lazy, but when he wanted to, he could be the first of the class.
"You have a sharp tongue! They worked hard, that's all!"
But the chaos had only just begun. Mrs. Hertz continued to hand out the tests, and when she got to Jeremy and Laura's grades, Selina was convinced that this was the day of The world turned upside down.
"Laura, this was very, very bad!" Laura looked at her test and almost died of fright when she saw the F written as a large scarlet letter. "And the same goes for you, Jeremy!" Another F and another scarlet letter that nearly killed a teenager with a heart attack. "Catastrophic results, I don't understand, you are now at the bottom of the class!"
Arriving at Selina's table, Mrs. Hertz grimaced as she handed her test to her.
"Selina, having solved so many physics problems, I was sure you could do better than this!" The girl looked at her exam and held back a swear word as she saw the D- smirking at her. "I know you have a lot of potential"
As Laura and Selina tried to console each other in the face of those notes that seemed like a bad joke, Aelita turned to Jeremy.
"Now do you think that something might be wrong?!"
"Yeah, maybe!" What he really meant was Did Odd and Nicholas exchange their grades with yours, Laura's and mine or what?
While Selina tried to calm Laura, who kept muttering This doesn't make sense! There must be a mistake, terrified of her father's reaction when he found out, Ulrich turned to Odd, who was grinning from ear to ear at his first A in Physics.
"You don't find this strange?!" He whispered, trying to snap his friend out of the euphoria induced by an A-plus that by all accounts looked faker than a plastic coin.
"Come on, these results are perfect!"
As chaos erupted in the face of such surreal grades, Selina looked at her exam again, trying to figure out what didn't add up. When her eyes stopped on the box containing her student ID number, something clicked. With a tremendous feeling of foreboding, she pulled out her school diary and began frantically searching for her student number. When she finally found it, she could see what was wrong. The student ID number on the test was not the one she had written down in the notebook. But what did that have to do with those weird grades? Unless...
Of course! In the school's computer, students' grades are associated with their ID number!
Just as she was beginning to understand what had happened, she heard someone knocking at the door. It was Principal Delmas.
"Uhh... Your attention, please!" Mrs. Hertz looked at him in bewilderment, while Selina's lips broke into the briefest hint of a smile, sensing what he was going to say "We've been having some serious computer issues this morning! It seems a number of these errors effected your grades on your reports!"
Selina almost exclaimed I knew it! while the rest of the students began to groan in frustration, realizing that those A's that seemed to have come out of nowhere were in fact an illusion, the result of a computer error. She could hear Odd's disappointment.
"Oh no..."
"Please stay calm!" Mrs. Hertz said, trying to bring order out of the chaos.
The principal nodded and then turned to his students, trying to regain his authority in that special kind of emergency.
"So, please give them back to me and we'll work to fix this situation as soon as possible!"
"Okay, give me your reports!" Mrs. Hertz said, beginning to collect her students' tests. Odd's heart dropped to his feet.
"No way... this is too depressing!"
When they finished collecting the tests, the principal turned to Mrs. Hertz, trying to speak in a top secret way, but due to the urgency of the matter, he could not lower his voice to a whisper and all the students could hear what was going on.
"Suzanne, I don't know what's going on here today, because nothing is working properly. For example, six tons of hay have just been delivered to the cafeteria!"
"What?!"
"Yes I know, it's incomprehensible!" He shook his head, grimacing in bewilderment. "It's insanity..."
Selina let out a snort, and when she turned her head, she met Jeremy's gaze, who had the same disbelieving, exasperated look. This was not insanity, but an evil AI that had been up to his old tricks.
"What is happening today is quite strange, isn't it?"
Enlivened by a doorbell that sounded as strange as the morning's events, the gang was discussing those very strange notes in general and the fact that the school's electronic system seemed to have gone haywire in particular. No matter what his friends said, Jeremy could tell that something smelled a little fishy.
"Do you really think it's a XANA attack?" Aelita asked, frowning.
"Who else do you think could attack the network like that?!"
Ulrich shook his head. Jeremy may have been a good friend, but when it came to XANA, he was overly paranoid.
"For you, XANA is behind everything. Couldn't it be a mere bug, for once?!"
Selina frowned. Throughout the morning she'd had a strange feeling, a sense of menace hanging in the air, like a fog that was still far away but beginning to blur the horizon. Most likely that feeling was the internal alarm in her brain warning her that XANA was at it again. As she learned more about her powers, she was gradually able to decode the messages her intuition was whispering in her ear. However, what was swirling around in her head like a potion in a witch's cauldron was not intuition. It was a half-baked guess. There was something that eluded her. It was not an answer, but rather a question. But what?
"Yeah, and XANA attacking just to give me some good grades!" Snorted Odd. "I don't think XANA would do that..."
Something in Selina clicked. That was the question that eluded her! XANA wouldn't just alter the school grades or screw up its computer system just to play a practical joke. It was as if he didn't know how to launch organized attacks anymore. Just like a skilled driver who has been in an accident and when he wakes up he can't remember anything and has to relearn how to drive by trial and error.
"Yeah, he wouldn't do that" She thought aloud. "It looks more like a trashy hacker trying to take over the electronic network, but the attempt barely amounted to a practical joke"
Odd blinked, puzzled by the expression. When he looked at Selina, he saw that she had a wrinkle between her brows and her lips were pressed together. He knew that expression all too well. It was the face of I think I know what's going on and I need to say it but now.
"Do you have some theory brewing in your mind?"
"It's not really brewing. More like roasting" The girl replied. "You're right that XANA wouldn't give you an A just for being nice. I don't know if this is a simple computer bug or if XANA has launched an attack. But in the case that the latter is happening, the questions I have are: Why the hell has he has become so clumsy about launching an attack? What if screwing up the school's computer system is just the opening shot for something much bigger?
Everyone was silent, trying to take in what Selina's words were hinting at. It was like one of the chemical reactions they had seen in Mrs. Hertz's class. To a substance that according to the labeling was relatively harmless, a few drops of an unknown catalyst were added, and suddenly, an explosion had occurred.
But the catalyst that Selina's questions had implied was by far not the most potent of all. Jeremy felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Pulling it out and looking at the screen, he saw that his suspicions were not unfounded. XANA had launched an attack.
"Well, you're definitely going to get a chance to find out why XANA has done a rogue hacker attack" Jeremy muttered as he slipped the cell phone into his pocket. "Let's go to the lab!"
Odd's heart sank. As the rest of the gang headed for the sewers, he muttered in disappointment.
"For once XANA was nice to me...!"
Arriving at the lab, the gang, and in particular Jeremy, were anxious to find out in which sector XANA had launched an attack. But when they approached the hologram, they got the surprise of their lives: it was completely blank.
"Why can't we see an activated tower on Lyoko?!" Ulrich frowned, puzzled, pointing to the scanner.
"Don't know... The holoscan doesn't detect anything!"
Aelita looked at Jeremy, trying to figure out what was going on.
"So, then why did your app send you an alert?!"
"I really don't know"
Odd shrugged his shoulders.
"That's easy: either your app is bugged up or the holoscan is malfunctioning"
Selina narrowed her eyes, trying to organize her thoughts. During the drive to the lab she had kept thinking about why XANA had attacked the school's computer system in the same way that a kid who had never attended driving school was trying to use the car based solely on what he remembered about his father driving. She sensed that the holoscan's apparent blankness was the key to answering all the questions, but she didn't know how to put that key in the lock.
"Or one of two" Selina muttered, speaking to herself. "Either the holoscan is malfunctioning or the attack is outside its zone of influence"
"In either case, we need to check it out to see what's going on" Replied Aelita, trying to figure out the meaning of her friend's words.
"Aelita is right. I'd like to check it out too!" Jeremy said, looking at the holoscan out of the corner of his eye "You'll go to Lyoko and scan every sector. Laura and I will check the system. Okay?"
Odd looked at him skeptically.
"But how are we supposed to scan the sectors without the holoscan?"
"Don't worry. You'll find out!
Dude, that might sound good to you, but I think the rest of them would like to know how we're going to manage to detect the origin of this ghost attack. thought Selina shaking her head.
"You'll find out?" Odd repeated incredulously, as he entered the elevator with Aelita and Ulrich. "I don't like when he says that!"
Jeremy pursed his lips and turned to Selina, who was typing on her laptop, with a look of intense concentration.
"Okay, I'll call the others. We may need some reinforcements!" He pulled out his cell phone and typed in a number. "Yumi? Is William with you?"
While Jeremy was trying to get in touch with Yumi, Aelita, Odd and Ulrich had already gone down to the scanner room.
"I'm ready to be transferred, Jeremy!" Aelita said as she stepped into the scanner.
Jeremy typed into the keyboard and started the virtualization process.
"Transfer: Aelita. Transfer: Odd. Transfer: Ulrich"
A few moments later they were virtualized in Lyoko: Aelita in Sector 5, Odd in the Desert sector and Ulrich in the Mountain sector.
"Okay, now listen to me. I'll send you some mini-scanners" Explained Jeremy. "Their range is not very long, but if you move through the sectors, we should find out soon!"
"That's really some mini-stuff indeed" Odd grumbled, looking at the tiny little screen that looked like a radar that had appeared in the palm of his hand. A radar that marked no strange presence. "There's nothing here..."
"I told you, Odd! They are short range! You need to move around a bit!"
"On foot?" He replied in disbelief. If he tried to explore the entire Desert sector on foot, XANA would have already finished messing up all the grades from the Paris schools by the time Odd finished exploring the sector in search of that hypothetical activated tower. "You've never been here for sure! I only have two mini-legs!"
"Alright, Odd. You win"
Two seconds later, his Overboard appeared in front of Odd. This was something else. Elated, he jumped on it.
"Ah! So much better!" He exclaimed as he began to fly with a bird's eye view of the Desert sector. "Your plan had better work, Jeremy!"
"It's the only one I have, so far!" He replied. He then turned to one of the issues that had preoccupied him incessantly since the beginning of the mission. "Aelita, is everything okay?"
The pinkette, who was beginning to scan Sector 5, looked at her mini-scanner.
"Yes Jeremy, I've got it" She replied looking at his mini-scanner, which appeared as calm as a museum on a Monday morning. "But there is nothing here!"
"Go and inspect the labyrinth. If there's an activated tower, it will be there!" Suddenly, his voice lost that tone of a leader on a mission and took on a more shy and concerned edge. "But... Be careful, Aelita! I don't like it when you're alone!"
"I know" She replied with a sweet smile. "Don't worry"
Selina, who was typing on her computer with her thoughts at a million miles per second, held back a laugh. It was past her snack time, but with the amount of sugar between Aelita and Jeremy it would be very difficult for her to end up with hypoglycemia.
In the Mountain sector, Ulrich must have had the same opinion as Selina, because he exclaimed:
"Hey, I'm alone too! Aren't you worried about me?"
"Umm... well... Yes" Replied the blond, feeling like a little kid who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Anything new?"
"No. Nothing" He muttered as he walked towards a ledge that ended in the shape of a platform, almost identical to one of the points they used to catch the Transport Orb that took them to the Sector 5 Arena. "It's really quiet here also. Did you find anything?"
Selina and Jeremy, who were studying the map of Lyoko up and down, shook their heads.
"No, not yet" Replied the boy. "Keep looking"
Just at that moment, Yumi and William entered the lab, having recently received a call from Jeremy about a XANA attack.
"So, what this attack about?" Yumi asked impatiently, approaching the Supercomputer. "Where does it come from?"
"Well, we don't really know" Said the blond, shrugging his shoulders. "The bug at the school may have nothing to do with XANA!"
Selina, hearing his words, had to suppress her urge to shake her head. As she scanned Lyoko for an activated tower, an idea had tentatively peeked into her mind, like almond blossoms taking advantage of a sunny day after a winter blizzard. That idea felt like a rattlesnake slithering down his back, but as she scanned Lyoko's territories without finding anything, the rattle rattled on and on, telling her it was time to find out if what she suspected was true.
In the middle of the infinite nothingness of the Desert sector, Odd was starting to get bored scanning the grounds with the mini-scanner for any sign of an activated tower. So when a red dot appeared on the screen, he almost shouted for joy.
"Jeremy, something at last!" He exclaimed as he glided along the bottom of a gorge. "There's something..."
"What is it, Odd? What did you see?"
Odd looked from side to side, preparing to fire laser arrows if necessary, but all he saw was the walls of the gorge.
"Well, nothing... Actually I can't see a thing!" He heard an earth tremor and barely had time to raise his head to see the rocks hurtling down at full speed. "Ahhh!"
His cry of surprise was heard, but then the Desert Sector fell silent. In the laboratory and in the other sectors, the gang was scared to death. Maybe XANA had attacked after all.
"Odd! Are you okay?!" Jeremy shouted through the earpiece, worried sick.
"Odd?!"
"Odd! Are you here?!"
"Odd, are you okay?!" This time, after Aelita and Ulrich's worried questions, Jeremy finally got an answer from Odd.
"Well, yes, I'm alright" Odd replied, rubbing his head. The rockslide had left him pretty dazed, but other than that he was fine. "It was just... a rock"
Forgetting the fear he had felt for his best friend only seconds before, Ulrich burst out laughing.
"Ha ha! Your friend XANA is playing with your nerves, right?"
As if you weren't scared shitless just now because you thought XANA had showed up and hurt Odd! Selina thought, shaking her head, but as she turned her attention back to her computer screen, she turned pale. She checked again and again hoping it was a mistake, but sadly she was wrong. Her suspicions had been confirmed: XANA had not forgotten to drive Lyoko's car, he had simply decided it was time to switch to a truck. Oblivious to everything, Jeremy was trying to put the brakes on Ulrich's jokes.
"Let's carry on! We still have work to do!"
"You're telling me!" Selina whispered, approaching Jeremy with the laptop in her hand. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. "The holoscan works like a charm. It simply wasn't looking in the right direction" She showed Jeremy the screen of her laptop, showing him the shocking discovery that she had just made. "The attack is coming from Cortex!"
Hearing Selina's words, everyone was stunned. That was crazy, but like crazy people, it was the truth. By attacking from a place other than Lyoko, XANA had made them run in circles.
"From the Cortex?" Exclaimed Aelita unable to believe what she was hearing. "But that's impossible!"
"Yeah, I think too it's batshit crazy, but apparently XANA decided to try and see what he could do with the power he's gained" Selina pursed her lips, her mind working at full speed. "At the moment it's just screwing around with the school's computers, but when he gets the hang of it..."
She didn't need to finish the sentence. Jeremy typed away at the computer, trying to organize his thoughts.
"The first attack came from Cortex, but it was so weak it could have passed for a simple virus on the school computers" Jeremy mused aloud. "But now the signal coming from Cortex has gotten stronger, which means the XANA attack may be much more serious"
"In the end you were right about XANA having launched an attack" commented Ulrich, surrounded by the foggy vastness of the Mountains sector.
"Yes, you're right!" Then he went into troubleshooting mode. "Well, I'll take you all to Sector 5. Then you'll go to the Skid! Yumi, William, go down to the scanners and join them" Yumi and William nodded and went to the elevator. "I'll prepare for the transfers!
Once they were all in the Sector 5 Arena, they took off running towards the Skid. In the lab, while Jeremy was trying to find out more details about XANA's attack from Cortex, he noticed Selina's unusually pensive expression.
"Hey, are you all right? You look worried. Is it because of XANA's attack?"
Selina smiled nervously, her fingers typing at full speed on the keyboard of her laptop.
"XANA's new trick has left me quite impressed, and I'm afraid of what might happen if she gets the hang of this Cortex-launching attacks thing, because then it's going to take a lot longer to get to the attack site and she's going to have more time to cause serious damage, but I'm not worried about just that" She composed an embarrassed expression. "I may be going off on a tangent, but I'm worried about my friend Laura and what might happen to her if her father finds out about her failing Physics, even if it's due to a computer virus. I want to help you eliminate this attack, first because XANA being able to use Cortex to launch attacks as well is very upsetting. And secondly because I don't want to lose my friend because of a dinosaur-minded father who won't tolerate even a computer virus" She cracked a sheepish smile. "Even if that means Odd's A's telling his soon-to-be ex-owner There you go, sucker!"
"Hey!"
"Sorry Odd, but if it's any consolation I'm willing to help you study and do a cheat sheet" She grinned deviously. "Mrs. Hertz is getting on in years and sees less than an old cat, so I doubt very much she can see some formulas written in pencil on the lid of a gray calculator"
Laura Gauthier had never been too fond of history. Perhaps because the past could not be undone and it was better to concentrate on the present, or simply because throughout history mankind had committed so many stupid things that had shown that the genus Homo still had a really long way to go to be considered sapiens. But in those moments she was grateful for the curiosities the history teacher had told her about the French Revolution and the execution of Marie Antoinette. As for example the fact that the unfortunate queen, hours before her execution, in the anguish of knowing that in a matter of hours she was going to die at the guillotine, her hair turned completely white. Having to face her own type of execution at the guillotine -a meeting with her father in the principal's office- while walking through the corridors of the academy Kadic, Laura slyly checked her hair, making sure that some of the locks had not lost their golden color for silvery white. Feeling like one of the Christians about to be thrown to the lions in the Colosseum, she called the principal's office.
"Come in!" The girl's blonde head peeked timidly through the door, trying to gauge the danger before entering. "Please sit down, Laura!"
Laura took a deep breath and entered the headmaster's office. In the seat across from Mr. Delmas was her father, who showed his usual grimace of disgust every time her grades were a tenth below his expectations, only this time it was multiplied by a thousand.
"My dear Laura, I am here because I received your wonderful test!"
"I know dad..." The girl smiled sheepishly. Although the grade she had been given on the exam horrified her father in the same way a vampire would flee in terror from a crucifix, Laura knew that wasn't her real grade. She was going to get out of this one.
But her father wouldn't even let her have a chance to explain. With an expression so acidic it could corrode concrete, he turned to the girl.
"Let me finish! Mr. Delmas told me about these computer issues" He said, tracing quotation marks in the air. The principal looked at his computer screen, which was still, like the rest of the computers in the school, with a virus worse than the flu: just when you thought it was gone, it came back with even more strength. "Obviously this school doesn't meet my expectations!"
"I can assure you, Mr. Gauthier, that this situation is only temporary!" Said the principal, raising his hands in a reassuring gesture, but Mr. Gauthier looked at him as if he were something stuck in his shoe.
"But you do admit that you are unable to figure out the cause of this disaster!" Principal Delmas stirred in his seat as if the leather of the chair had been transformed into a bed of nettles. "So you will understand if I believe that this school is not the right place for my daughter!"
Hearing this, Laura felt as if she had been hit in the chest with a baseball bat. No, it can't be. It was OK that her father wanted to pull her out of school for getting a bad grade, but to pull her out of school for a bad grade that was the fault of a computer virus that could happen not only at school, but at her father's workplace? Did he get a zap from one of the computers at work and end up with all his brain cells more fried than the hairstyles in the 80's?
Oblivious to the train wreck that was going on inside Laura's head, the principal was trying to get Mr. Gauthier out of his ravings induced by the cult of the god of productivity who didn't give a shit about his daughter's wellbeing.
"But your daughter is very successful here" He exclaimed while typing on the computer, hoping that the computer would get rid of the bug at once. Damn you, get well at once, or else I'll have to say goodbye to one of the best students this school has had in years! "She's pretty well integrated! She seems quite happy here"
"I'm happy for her. However, she's not here to have fun, but to learn!" The principal looked sideways at the computer screen, considering the possibility that hey, if the electronics were already unusable because of a shitty virus, what less than to give them a final use and stamp them on the heads of idiot parents. "And to become extremely efficient!"
"I agree, but as I said, we are in the process of fixing the problem right now!" He replied, trying to remain calm and hoping that as if by magic the computers would appear virus-free and he could meet the expectations of that unga-unga parental-minded computer scientist who happened to be Mr. Gauthier. But before he could figure out which god he had to pray to in order to get out of this predicament, he heard someone knocking at the door. "Yes, come in"
"Mr. Delmas?" Asked the gym teacher, his hair so full of twigs it looked as if it had fallen from the top of a tree.
"Yes"
"We just received 1000 pairs of pink flip-flops!" He exclaimed, holding up a pair of sandals made of cheap pink plastic. "What should we do with them?"
Not to have walked in with them having to deal with the father of a student who is out of his mind! The principal mentally shouted to Jim. But it was too late. Mr. Gauthier, with a look of contempt that could have rivaled that of a person who had stepped in dog poop, turned to his daughter.
"Mr. Delmas, I shall now leave!" Then he turned to his daughter, who looked like she was about to burst into tears. "Laura, I'll give you 5 minutes, to go to your room and pack" He gave one last shark-like smile to the principal of the Kadic Academy. "Goodbye, Mr. Delmas"
While Laura had to deal with her own particular train wreck, things were not much better at the Digital Sea. Although the Digital Sea was quieter than a museum on a Monday morning, the occupants of the Skid had no idea where to start looking for the tower that XANA had activated on Cortex. As they approached the entrance to the Cortex in the Digital Sea, Aelita tried to settle their doubts once and for all.
"Jeremy, do you think you'll be able to locate the tower?"
"I think so," Jeremy replied, as he racked his brain for some strategy. If Cortex bore such a resemblance to Lyoko, maybe XANA was producing pulsations in Cortex. If that was so, he would have a thread to pull from. "But for that I'll need you to be in the Megapod"
"Okay" Aelita said as she pulled the Skid into position. "We'll let you know when we get there"
As the Skid entered the portal that communicated with Cortex, back in the lab Selina was trying to bring order to the brainstorm that was taking over her mind. While she tried to find some explanation as to how XANA had managed to start launching attacks from Cortex, a much more interesting question arose in her mind. What was so special about Lyoko that an AI could launch attacks from there? Lyoko was nothing more than a virtual reality, only that virtual reality somehow had towers that gave access to all existing electronics. Franz Hopper had somehow managed to get Lyoko to have that peculiarity, but why?
She went over everything her friends had told her about Lyoko, Franz Hopper and Project Carthage. Franz Hopper along with his wife, Anthea and his brother, Andrew, plus Tyron, had worked on Project Carthage, whose goal was to destroy enemy electronic communications. When he saw what the sponsors of the Carthage project really intended, the group defected, and after Anthea was kidnapped, Franz and Aelita lived incognito, and while the girl was growing up, Franz, Andrew and Tyron built Lyoko, to isolate the Carthage project and render it useless. But Tyron became rogue and was expelled from the project. Finally, as a precautionary measure, Hopper had created XANA to act as Lyoko's guardian and destroy the Carthage project. But XANA had gone mad and threatened to destroy the world. The rest was history, but what was the question that answered that story?
Franz Hopper, Tyron, Lyoko, Cortex, XANA and the Project Carthage. They were all pieces of the same puzzle that needed to be put into place, but the mess made it impossible to see anything. Selina frowned, trying to see what she was missing. Why was XANA able to attack from Cortex? Why had Tyron stolen Lyoko's plans to build Cortex? Why...?
¡Holy shit!
That was the detail that escaped her! Professor Tyron would never steal Lyoko's plans without a reason, and that reason was to be able to access the Project Carthage. Lyoko acted as the Project Carthage's gate, so he figured that if he replicated a similar gate, he could gain access to Carthage. The problem was that although Lyoko acted as a wall and gate for Carthage, the only one who could use that gate was XANA. And with Cortex being a modification of Lyoko, that gate had an inferior quality. But XANA could still get into Carthage and screw up electronic communications on Earth in a big way. Since after all, between destroying enemy electronic communications and using electronic communications to destroy your enemies, there wasn't a big difference.
"That's why Tyron stole the Lyoko plans from Franz Hopper!" exclaimed Selina, unable to contain her stupefaction at what she had discovered.
Jeremy stopped typing, trying to understand his friend's outburst.
"Selina, what you are talking about?"
The girl took a deep breath, trying to avoid a nuclear meltdown in her brain. Even though they were in the middle of a mission, what she had just discovered was too important to set aside. Clearing her throat, she began to talk about what she had discovered.
"Tyron stole Lyoko's plans to build his own version of Lyoko to gain access to the Project Carthage" Upon hearing this, Aelita, who was typing in the Skid the order to materialize on Cortex's surface, almost hit the wrong button of fright. "Aelita, you explained to me that your father built Lyoko in order to isolate the Proyect Carthage from the network, since it was fucking dangerous" Aelita nodded, not quite understanding what her friend was getting at. "And for good measure, he created XANA to act as a sentry between Carthage and Lyoko. But XANA went berserk and started using Carthage through Lyoko in order to destroy humanity. Lyoko is XANA's way of being able to access the Internet and basically any electronic device on Earth" She paused before continuing, trying to clarify the crux of the matter. "I think what Tyron intended by stealing Lyoko's plans and creating Cortex was to have his own particular access to the Proyect Carthage, but all he got was that XANA had from his safehouse a secondary way to access Carthage"
Aelita and the others, who had just disembarked from the Skid, were dumbfounded. It had never crossed her mind why Tyron had stolen Lyoko's plans, but what Selina was saying explained a great deal. Tyron wanted access to Carthage, that's why he built Cortex, but XANA ended up being the only one to benefit. This raised some really disturbing questions, the answers to which were even more disturbing, the main one being Tyron's interest in the project Carthage, but they would have to answer those questions later, not now when they had a tower to deactivate.
"Jeremy, if this thing about both Lyoko and Cortex giving access to the Carthage project is true, that means that with XANA's source codes we could disable the tower at Cortex!" Exclaimed Yumi, looking around, searching for any threats in her surroundings.
"I'd say is very likely" Jeremy admitted.
Before the conversation could drift into theories about Cortex, Lyoko and Project Carthage, Odd jumped to the more practical matters of the mission.
"Hey Jeremy, please send us the Mega-thing on wheels!"
"Just a second!" Some sort of unknown figures appeared on the radar. He wasn't sure if they were Ninjas or XANA monsters, but in any case he doubted they were going to greet his friends with flowers and congratulations for deigning to visit Cortex. "I have detected some hostile activity around you..." He began to type in the materialization of the Megapod. "I am sending it right now!"
No sooner had he said those words than the Megapod appeared in front of the Lyoko warriors, like a tour bus. But before they could materialize inside it, the ship's horn indicating that Cortex was about to reorganize, boomed through the air. The ground began to shake and the gang almost fell to the ground.
"It's changing!" UIrich exclaimed, trying to stand up.
Thanks for the information, Captain Obvious thought Odd, but the trouble had only just begun. The platform on which the Megapod was standing began to tip, with the vehicle about to take a dive into the Digital Sea, but the gang was oblivious to this danger, as they had an even bigger problem to deal with. Without warning, a crack opened up in the ground and Aelita fell into the void. Yumi, trying to help her, with the tremors in the ground, also lost her balance and fell through the same crack through which Aelita had fallen. The only thing that prevented them from ending up taking a dip in the Digital Sea were the proverbial reflexes of William, who managed to reach the edge of the cliff and grab Yumi's arm, from which Aelita was hanging by her legs. They looked like a macabre virtual Christmas ornament. Once William managed to pull her friends off the cliff, and Odd helped pull Ulrich off the edge of the abyss (at least he was only hanging on the edge with two hands and holding his own weight, compared to the Christmas ornament that was Aelita hanging from Yumi's legs, who in turn was hanging by one hand on the edge of the cliff), and they managed to catch their breath a bit, Odd even started joking.
"Well, that's a good start!"
"Are you okay?" Asked Jeremy, concerned. "Is the Megapod still there?"
When Odd turned around, he saw the Megapod sliding down the platform, downhill and without brakes, straight into the Digital Sea. Shit. This was what he got for pushing his luck.
"It's going to fall into the Digital Sea!" Odd shouted frantically. He was possibly sticking his neck out with the plan he had in mind, but when there was no choice there was no choice. "Jeremy, quick, transfer me into it!"
"Just a second!" As Jeremy typed, the wheels on the left side of the Megapod were on the edge of the cliff. "Transfer!"
As soon as he appeared at the controls of the Megapod, Odd did one of his illegal racing driver's stunts. Putting the pedal to the metal, the Megapod raced up the inclined platform and hit such an speedup that it flew off the platform like in a mountain bike competition and ended up in front of the not-so-astonished eyes of Aelita, Yumi, Ulrich and William, who were more than used to Odd's antics at the Megapod's wheel.
"Phew, that was a close call!"
"Odd" Shouted Jeremy, cutting short his illusions that he would finally have some peace of mind and be able to lead his friends to the activated tower without mishap. "Two Megatanks are approaching you!"
"Got it!" He replied, preparing to use the Megapod as a broom to sweep away those pesky black marbles that were the Megatanks. "Transfer the other and we'll take care of them!"
Laura had never had so much difficulty packing simple suitcases, but at that moment she could not open the suitcase she had brought to the Kadic Academy without her shoulders beginning to shake from the sobs that threatened to overflow her. In Mrs. Hertz's classes she had learned a good bit about black holes, with their main characteristic being objects so heavy that they warped space-time, and she wondered how light didn't escape the gravitational field that produced the enormous weight she carried in her heart. Never in her worst nightmares could she have imagined that a simple computer virus would expel her from school, but in those moments when her father was waiting outside her room for her to pack her bags and say goodbye forever to Kadic Academy, she felt tears rolling down her cheeks. In a matter of months she had managed for the first time to fit in at school, to feel not like a hothouse flower bombarded with chemicals to reach her full potential, but like a wildflower growing into her own pace and taking advantage of what life gave her. And what life had given her was a good friend, Selina, as smart and bold as she was chaotic, but warm and caring, who hadn't seen her as a bar graph, but as a real person. And now she was about to lose it all.
"Laura, will you hurry up, please..." Oblivious to the fact that his daughter was about to burst into tears, Mr. Gauthier knocked on her bedroom's door, eager to tear his daughter away from that unworthy place once and for all. "It's incredible how long it takes you to pack! You look like your mother!"
Ignoring her father's demands, Laura pulled out her cell phone. Although she might not get to say goodbye to her in the flesh, her best friend deserved to know everything that had happened. Putting it on missed call mode, she began to talk.
"Hi Selina, it's me, Laura. Well, I know you'll know because my number is sure to be on your contact list, so that's an idiotic explanation" She laughed nervously, pushing away for a moment of ridiculousness the sadness that was threatening to overflow her. "Remember what you told me, about if you ran into my father, you would slap him until tomorrow, because he's trying to turn me into a robot? It's quite ironic that you said that, since my father, seeing how the school's computer system was down, decided that the academy is not a suitable place for me and this very afternoon he is going to take me out of school. My father thinks that being like a robot is the best and it turns out that it was the robots that let him down!" She let out a humorless laugh before continuing. "When I tried to talk him out of it, that I was happy here and had made new friends, that I had met you and discovered how amazing it was to have a real friend, he told me that didn't mean anything and friends are useless to become the best. But you are wrong. Although having you as a friend won't guarantee me a scholarship at MIT, during the time I knew you it did guarantee me a reason to smile every day, to be able to say everything that came into my head and not have anyone judge me for it, but to come up with ideas even crazier than mine, to feel at ease with myself. In short, you gave me every reason to be myself" Her voice faltered. "My father says he's thinking of enrolling me in a high-end boarding school in Brussels, and although he joked that if the school's electronic systems were fixed again before five o'clock he'd rethink that about taking me out of school, unless a miracle happens I may never see you again. But even if I can only see you on summer break, I'll make sure all my classmates know that at my old school I knew a redhead who dressed like life was nothing more than a night adventure, who no video game or computer could resist her and who saw rules as projects to cross off the list of the things she wanted to do in her life, and her name was Selina Levesque" With tears slipping down her cheeks, she finished the message. "I love you Selina. You have been like a sister to me"
As soon as she finished the message, Laura put the cell phone away, to prevent it from being ruined by the tears that rolled down her cheeks. In the solitude of her bedroom she cried and cried until she almost fainted from exhaustion. But she couldn't faint from exhaustion, not when her father was about to break down the door to make her pack her damn bags. Anesthetized with grief, she mechanically folded the clothes in her closet and the few keepsakes she had taken from home. Opening the door, she found her father staring at her in exasperation.
"At last! What on earth were you doing in there?" Snarled Mr Gauthier, oblivious to his daughter's red, swollen face from crying. "The parking lot is about to expire!"
Grabbing his daughter's suitcases, he strode through the halls of residence as if fleeing a fire. Laura followed a short distance behind her, shuffling her feet. If only the weight of her heart would once and for all transform into a black hole and take away the pain in her heart. And if given the choice take away that piece of rusted metal that was her father's heart.
In bowling alley games the bowling ball was big and heavy to throw at the skittles that got in its way. Odd had never wondered what the skittles felt like when a bowling ball came at them, but as he stomped on the Megapod's throttle in a desperate attempt to dodge the Megatanks that were hot on their heels, he was starting to get a good idea.
"Jeremy, where's that activated tower?" Shouted Odd as he circled the Megapod through a gorge, fleeing like hell. "The Megatanks are about to hit us!"
"The location should show up on your radar..." At this time Jeremy was very thankful that XANA produced pulses in Cortex and for the help of Selina, who detected XANA's signals as well as a bloodhound would detect its prey. "Now!"
Well, at least now he knew what address to put in the GPS. But that didn't take away from the fact that the Megatanks were trying to blast the Megapod from both sides. William couldn't wait to jump into action, but it was a tall order considering he was inside a car. Still, he was willing to take advantage of what he was given. With the controls of the Megapod's weaponry in his hands, he began firing at the Megatanks, but they were so close that the lasers were passing over the monsters like balls over the goalie in a soccer game.
"Jeremy, find something!" Ulrich shouted in despair. They could not go on like this for long.
"Give me a minute! I'm calculating the next seismic wave!" He hated how Cortex was reorganizing out of nowhere, but if his plan worked, they could get rid of the Megatanks in no time."You might be able to take advantage of it!" When he turned his head, he found Selina with her headphones connected to her cell phone and the face of someone who has just received very bad news. "¿Hey, are you all right?"
"I will be when we disable that tower," She replied grimly. "By the way, what time is it?
"It's a quarter to five in the afternoon" Jeremy replied. He didn't understand what his friend's question was about. "If you're thinking we'll be late for dinner, don't worry. I figure we'll have the tower more than deactivated by quarter past-five"
"Thank you, Jeremy. Let me know if you need anything"
"Okay" Jeremy went back to his calculations to figure out at what point he could use Cortex's earthquakes to sweep away the Megatanks.
By quarter past five in the afternoon Laura would be home and with her father making arrangements to put her in a boarding school in Brussels. Selina took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. She had never imagined that her best friend's father would pull her out of school for something as silly as a computer virus, but after Laura's missed call she had learned that horrible parents didn't exist just in Disney movies and soap operas, they also existed in real life. At that moment she was dying to grab Laura's father and electrocute him to the point of giving him an X-ray like in the cartoons, but that would not solve Laura's problem. Although the conditional that her father had put in place would. Mr. Gauthier had jokingly said that if the computers were fixed by five o'clock, he would reconsider taking his daughter out of the Kadic Academy. The poor man did not realize that for Selina, it was nothing more than a challenge against the clock. Putting aside her duties as Jeremy's assistant, she began to hack into the school's computer network, trying to find out what exactly was the crap that XANA had put into Kadic's computers. A couple of minutes later she found the answer. She blinked in surprise. The computers weren't actually infected with a virus at all. XANA had tried to completely take over the computers, but the attack from Cortex was so weak that the firewall had managed to absorb the worst of it and the effects did not go beyond disorganized files and locked computers, concentrating all her energies on containing the infection. Selina let out a sigh of relief: that was an easy fix.
Typing furiously, she concentrated on keeping the virus at bay, the firewall growing in strength until the infection was expelled. The XANA attack would still lurk, but at least he would manage to exile it from the school's computers long enough for the tower to be deactivated. Her shoulders were starting to feel sore, as if she were leaning against a door that someone was threatening to break down, but she didn't hesitate. She was going to get XANA off the school's computers no matter what. And if she could get Mr. Gauthier to fuck off in the process, then great!
Principal Delmas glanced nervously at the wall clock. It was still half an hour before the technical service would arrive and try to remove the computer virus, but instead of waiting for the experts to arrive, he was doing things like preparing the forms that Mr. Gauthier would need to discharge his daughter from the Kadic Academy. He pinched the bridge of her nose. It was normal to meet parents who thought their children were much more talented than they really were. But here was a father who believed his daughter was far less talented than she really was, and by the way had insulted the school. He smiled wistfully, pulling the photocopies out of the filing cabinet. Look on the bright side, Delmas, you learn something new every day, even if it's stuff you don't wish you'd known. he thought.
But his ramblings were interrupted by a buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from his computer. Turning around, he thought his imagination was playing tricks on him. The codes indicating an infected computer were disappearing at breakneck speed, and as he checked the files, he saw that they were back in place. It was a miracle. Unable to contain his joy at seeing that the computer virus had finally disappeared, he burst out laughing so loudly that he woke Jim from his nap.
"What happened?" muttered Jim, sleepily.
The principal's smile was so big it looked like his face was going to split in two. After all, Miss Gauthier was going to stay at the school.
"The computers work! This is a miracle! Jim, a miracle!"
"Jeremy...!" Odd shouted, increasingly frightened.
Although Odd was a champion in the Galactic Destroyer, in the video game he had never learned how to get rid of two Megatanks trying to strip the Megapod of its paint and plating. Their only hope was that Jeremy would tell them when the next earthquake was and they could get rid of the Megatanks, but it seemed that seismology was not Jeremy's strong suit. If they didn't find a solution soon, they were screwed.
"Got it!" Odd mentally withdrew everything he had been thinking about Jeremy being a bullshit virtual seismologist. "Next tremor in two minutes!"
"We don't have time!" Ulrich shouted. They barely had twenty seconds, let alone two minutes before the Megatanks make short work of the Megapod. "We won't be able to hold them off til then!"
"Okay, forget it!" With Odd, Aelita had learned a lot of ways to save the day by doing batshit-crazy things behind the wheel that would make a fool of a racing driver who worked in the circus, and the plan she had in mind was one of them. "Odd, at the next block, turn left!"
"Uhh..." Odd was looking for a polite way to tell her that if he did that, the Megapod would end up doing the angel leap into the Digital Sea. "Are you sure?"
"Just do it. Now!"
Praying to all the saints that his friend was right and did not end up condemning the Megapod to a plunge into the Digital Sea, Odd stepped on the Megapod's accelerator and it shot like an arrow towards the abyss, but a second before the Megapod did the angel leap, he turned left, avoiding a splash. But the nearest Megatank was not so lucky. With the same ability to deviate from the path as a charging rhinoceros, the Megatank went flying and ended up smashing against the opposite wall, in the purest style of a fly hitting the windshield.
"One down!" In the end his friend wasn't wrong, Odd thought, she had simply learned from the best. "Well done, Aelita!"
But the battle was not yet over. As they drove along a walkway with beautiful views of the Digital Sea, the remaining Megatank rammed like a bull at the San Fermin festival, almost throwing the Megapod off the walkway, although thanks to Odd's driving skills the only thing that threatened to get thrown off was the passengers' lunch.
"An what about the second one?" William grunted, trying to stop his bones from bouncing like bouncing balls.
Undeterred in the slightest, Odd put the pedal to the metal, ready to do his own variation of Aelita's trick. A wall was bearing down on them, but for him it was a godsend. A few meters before impact, the Megapod spun around like a champion ice skater and rolled to the side, giving way to the Megatank, which was about to shoot and ended up slamming into the wall.
"Yes!" Another mission saved thanks to the heroic power of being a nutcase behind the wheel.
"Odd..." Jeremy asked a bit worried. "Still there?"
"Yeah, we're fine Jeremy!" Replied the boy, trying to get his heart rate back to normal. "But it was a close call!"
"Hurry up and deactivate the tower before the next tremor!"
Said and done. Without the two Megatanks trying to dispatch the Megapod, getting Aelita to the tower was as easy as a cab driver taking his client to the destination. Within minutes (and a few sharp turns that made passengers bounce in their seats like marbles) they were in front of the activated tower. As soon as she materialized outside the Megapod, Aelita started running towards the tower. Let's see if it was true that an activated tower was an activated tower, regardless of whether it was in Lyoko or Cortex.
"Laura, hurry up a bit, we don't have all day" growled Mr Gauthier as he tried to load the suitcases into the trunk of the car, to the complete apathy of his daughter.
The girl shook her head. Although the message she had left Selina explained everything that had happened, she would give anything to be able to say goodbye to her friend in the flesh. Burning the last cartridge of hope, she asked:
"Dad, I know I have to leave Kadic Academy, but couldn't I at least have dinner there and be able to say goodbye to my friend?"
"I told you no. I don't want you in that school one minute longer than necessary. Least of all if you intend to say goodbye to that troublemaker you call a friend" Replied Mr. Gauthier, implacably. In the pocket of his jacket, the phone rang. Puzzled, he pulled it out. "Hello?"
Laura saw him sneer at first. Perhaps he was talking to Director Delmas. But then his expression changed. He looked very pale, as if he had been bleached.
"Are you... sure?" Mr. Gauthier could barely articulate a word.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
Laura was prepared for anything but that. The unthinkable.
"It's Principal Delmas" Mr. Gauthier stammered with wide-open eyes. "He said that at two minutes to five an antivirus was activated on the school's computers that completely eliminated the effects of the virus. He's looking for the grades in the files, but he told me that your grade was one of the best in the class"
A huge smile appeared on Laura's face. She had only asked to say goodbye to her friend and had managed to stay with her. Unable to contain her joy, she grabbed her bags from the car and headed back to the Kadic Academy.
"Laura, where are you going?"
"You said that if the school's computers were fixed before five o'clock I could stay at Kadic" She replied as she set off for the dorm. She had never been so excited to unpack.
"I said I'd rethink it!" As he thought about the best way to apologize to the principal without dying of embarrassment, his daughter walked back to school happier than a clam. "Laura, come back here!"
Inside the tower, a blue light enveloped Aelita and lifted her into the air, raising her to the upper platform. When she got there, she walked toward the center.
Selina typed on her computer, with a mischievous grin worthy of the Joker. She may have solved Laura's problem, but it couldn't end without teaching Mr. Gauthier a lesson. And there was nothing better than technology to tell someone to fuck off.
A screen appeared in front of her. Aelita placed her hand on it and typed CODE CORTEX.
Mr. Gauthier, sulking, drived through the streets of Paris. It seemed that fate had decided to laugh in his face, as he had miraculously recovered the computers of the Kadic academy before the deadline he had joked about, since infected computers could not get rid of a computer virus so easily. He had made a fool of himself in front of the director and his daughter Laura. He typed the address of his favorite coffee shop into the car's GPS navigator and started the engine. Let's see if a cappuccino with vanilla would make him forget his sorrows. Too bad someone else told the navigator that this was not the place Mr. Gauthier should go.
"Tower deactivated" Aelita announced, letting out a sigh of relief as she watched the binary codes drag down. As it turned out, Cortex did indeed look a lot like Lyoko, both good and bad.
Back in the lab, the gang was trying to review the situation. On paper, the mission had gone pretty well, but the reality was that the mission should never have happened. That XANA could attack from Cortex, albeit in a rather sloppy way, was a very serious matter.
"If XANA can attack from Cortex, that means he's gotten stronger" He muttered, trying to get to the crux of the matter. "But what I don't understand is why it didn't attack from Cortex within days of getting new source codes"
"Maybe he had no idea that the towers in Cortex worked the same as in Lyoko" Ulrich suggested. From what Odd had told him, sometimes in new versions of video games bonuses appeared from previous versions that you didn't know existed. The same could apply to an updated copy of a virtual reality.
"It's possible, but we have no evidence to disprove or confirm it" Jeremy hated having so little information about Cortex and its creator, beyond Franz Hopper's mentions.
Yumi shrugged. There was no use guessing with so little information.
"Well, we'll just have to find out" The raven-haired girl replied. "We could go through Franz Hopper's files again, see if they provide any clues we may have overlooked"
"And I could try to find out his digital footprints" Replied Selina, a smile playing on her lips. "We know his name, and a name indicates many things. Hospital records have been digitized in Europe and North America for many years now. And considering the looks of Tyron, I'll bet you anything he's of Caucasian descent. I'll start looking for his birth certificate in Switzerland, and if it's not there in France. From there I will gather enough information to give you a biography and his movements over the last few years"
"Good idea" Aelita commented, holding back a smile. She knew that when she put her mind to it, Selina would stop at nothing. The terms white hat hacker or black hat hacker to her meant nothing. The redhead's mentality was basically I'll do what I have to do and to hell with what anyone else thinks. Then an idea crossed her mind. "Do you think you could look up some information on my mother?
"If you tell me her full name and birthplace, it wouldn't take me more than an afternoon to make you a mini biography on her" She replied, her mind running at full throttle already thinking up a plan of action.
"Okay" She replied, with a bubble of hope rising in her chest, but at the same time a tad frightened at her friend's problem-solving ability. Sometimes she thought Selina was a robot that had escaped from a super-secret CIA facility. You've been watching too many Marvel movies with Odd, she thought, shaking her head.
But beyond the ramblings about Cortex and Professor Tyron, there were issues so ridiculously simple that they might have been overlooked at the time when XANA was actively trying to kill them, but when a mission was to prevent XANA from taking their source codes, they took on monumental importance. Odd was the one who voiced those concerns aloud.
"Hey, this is all very interesting, but I have a question: how long will it take for the effects of XANA's attack to wear off?" The blonde asked, trying to figure out how much time he had before the disaster.
"With the tower deactivated, by now the files will have been sorted out and put back in place" Jeremy replied, immediately noticing his friend's disappointed expression.
Selina, placing a hand on his shoulder, smiled sweetly at him.
"Don't worry Odd, I have a foolproof plan" She whispered like a witch brewing a potion in her cauldron. "Remember: personalized study classes, teacher who sees less than a mole and invisible cheat sheet on the calculator"
"I'd rather you sneak into the school records and give me an A" Odd replied as they got on the elevator.
As they walked through the park on their way back to the academy, William noticed Selina's unusually wide smile. It was that I've done something fucking cool and quite possibly illegal smile.
"Why are you smiling like that?"
"Thanks to the deactivated tower, the files are back in place and my friend Laura is going to stay at the school" She replied, brimming with happiness. "Lyoko Warriors 1. Cave Father 0. Officially, Mr. Gauthier can go to shit"
William let out a laugh at his friend's frankness. Selina was the definition of small but dangerous.
"Okay, but I'm sure you wouldn't dare tell him in person" He said, chuckling. Selina looked at him dead serious.
"Who said anything about telling?"
He looked at her in astonishment. Was she implying...? No, he must have misunderstood her!
"You've got to be kidding me" He muttered dumbfounded, but Selina shook her head, and William seeing that yes, she really had, laughed so hard he almost fell to the ground. "Girl, you are wicked!"
"You have got to be shitting me?!" Mr Gauthier yelled when he saw where his car's navigator had driven him.
Laura's father was pretty sure he had typed the name of his favorite coffee shop into the car's GPS navigator, but apparently the navigator had mistaken it for the name of an organic compost company (read: soil with both animal and human poop) and at that moment he was surrounded by bales and bales full of shit. To get the stench out of the car, he was going to need at least ten washes in a car wash booth.
"Well, at least it can't get any worse"
Unfortunately, it could get worse. A truck carrying several bales, had a bug in the electronic mechanism that kept the tipper in place and tons of bales full of compost rushed over Mr. Gauthier's car, filling it with shit. His screams of rage were heard even on the boats full of tourists crossing the Seine.
"My God, are you serious?" Whispered Selina, holding back her laughter.
"Yes, really" Replied Laura, almost crying with laughter. "My father always bragged about how his car's technology is state-of-the-art, that his GPS is infallible, and it turns out yesterday afternoon the car sent him into an organic compost plant, and even on top of that a truck dropped several bales of compost on him. The GPS in his car is infallible, that's for sure. It sent him to shit!"
Selina guffawed loudly, imagining Mr. Gauthier's face when he saw where his car's navigator had sent him. Truth to be told, hacking into Laura's father's car and getting the navigator to set the route she wanted had been a piece of cake, with so many computer chips in it. Although having the compost delivery truck arrive at the factory just as Mr. Gauthier had arrived had been a matter of luck, manipulating the system that kept the dump truck with the bales of compost in place had been the icing on the cake. No wonder Odd likes to prank people. It is a hoot!
Laughing out loud at her joke, worthy of an honorable mention on Cracked, Selina turned her attention back to the teacher. Today they would finally know what the real grades on the Physics test were.
"Della Robia" Mrs. Hertz announced as she gave Odd his exam with an F- with a certificate of origin. "Bottom of the class"
"Are you sure?"
Ignoring how Odd's heart sank, Mrs. Hertz continued handing out test scores. The day of the world upside down was over.
"Jeremy Belpois" When he raised his head, he found the proud smile of the teacher, who handed him a test with a brand new and radiant A-plus. "You're at the top, that's good!" Another desk ahead and another student receiving the grade that truly corresponded her. "Laura" The girl raised her head. Despite everything, she still wanted to show her father that at the Kadic Academy she could develop her full potential. "Second!" Seeing the A-plus on her test, the girl smiled from ear to ear. "That's good too!"
Selina, despite being an atheist, was praying to anyone who would watch over the students who had to cut study time because they had to research their origins, when Mrs. Hertz gave her her test.
"Selina!" The girl gulped, startled. "Very good job!" Exclaimed the teacher as she handed her exam to her with a beautiful, beaming A. "Keep it up!"
Take that! thought Selina, elated. A problem to cross off the list. Now she could really jump on Tyron's research. She was going to get that birth certificate no matter what and reconstruct his life. Professor Tyron might as well get ready, because she wasn't going to leave no stone unturned.
But unfortunately there was someone who had developed a huge problem that could not be crossed off the list. Someone knocked on the classroom door and the gym teacher appeared, looking like a messenger bearing bad news.
"Della Robbia!" Exclaimed Jim. "You need to go and see the Principal!"
"Really?" He asked, playing dumb, although deep in his heart he knew the disaster that was coming. "Why?"
"Your parents are here" He looked at him with pity, knowing the shit that was coming down on him. "Looks like they got your report..."
Even though he was Odd's best friend and shouldn't have found it funny in the least, Ulrich couldn't help but burst out laughing. But Odd's heart dropped.
"Oh no...!"
