The Boy in the Computer

by SepticAbzies

Lyoko is back and the heroes have been upgraded, but XANA has shifted its goals yet again. / Jerlita Roleswap AU / Current Episode: Lab Rat / S1-3: Done, S4: WIP

25. 24: Common Interest

A/N: Here is the next installment of my Jerlita Roleswap AU. Hope you all enjoy it~

Disclaimer: I do not own Code Lyoko in any way, shape, or form.

Note: Remember, any episodes not mentioned either as the inspiration for a chapter or just in passing are not part of the AU, mainly because the roleswap makes them useless, and those only mentioned in passing are just filler and/or would be the same no matter who has what role.

Beta read by swordsdownforreview

Note #2: Peter Duncan's name is his French dub name, Pierre Nanquin, but TV's name is the same (Thomas Vincent).

!~~~J~E~R~L~I~T~A~~R~O~L~E~S~W~A~P~~A~U~~~!

"As the others worry about XANA's attacks increasing in intensity and frequency, Jérémie's virus suddenly catches them off-guard."

Episode 24: Common Interest

(Based on Cold War & Common Interest)

"A deadly snowstorm has hit the city," the newscaster said, the supercomputer screen showing the broadcast. "Every building has been buried under ice and snow in a matter of minutes. The authorities are urging everyone to stay indoors next to a fireplace or a boiler as they figure out the problem. Telephones lines will be out shortly–"

Sure enough, the broadcast cut, due to the storm having affected the satellites in orbit by this point.

Now understanding the situation, Aelita rubbed her temples to ease the incoming headache, "Of course XANA would strike right as we're running a diagnostic on the superscan."

The superscan had been bugging up really bad lately, for the past three days. Today, a fed up Aelita had given up her lunch hour to head to the factory and run a diagnostic scan to find the problem, and Jérémie had joined her, just to be close by in case XANA chose this time to attack. In the meantime, the monoscan (the old version) was running in the background constantly.

And right now, it was alerting them to an activated tower in the Ice Sector.

"Send me to Lyoko!" Jérémie told her. "I have to deactivate the tower!"

"But that's exactly what XANA's waiting for!" the pink-ette retorted. "It wants you to go to Lyoko, so it can steal your memory!"

"We don't have a choice, Aelita," he urged. "Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd are trapped in that blizzard and will die of cold, and the entire city with them, if we don't do something."

He was right, she realized. The chances of the other three getting to the factory right now where very slim, and the rest of the city was just as affected as the school was. As much as she wanted to avoid putting Jérémie at risk, everyone else was in much bigger danger.

So she sighed, "You're right. Go on. I'll send you as close to the tower as I can."

Jérémie immediately turned to the ladder, and climbed down a level to where the scanners were. Meanwhile, Aelita chose to stay behind to make sure she didn't miss any calls from the others.

"I'm ready, Aelita."

"Alright," she replied, as she typed in commands to activate the scanners. "Don't engage with any monsters. Head straight for the tower." She brought up his ID card, "Transfer Jérémie." His avatar began loading, "Scanner Jérémie." Once it was finished, she pressed the 'enter' key, "Virtualization!"

His yellow arrow appeared on the holomap, in the Ice Sector and a few meters away from the tower. "Everything looks clear. There's nothing waiting for me."

"I wouldn't wait for that to change," she warned. "Here's the Overbike." She typed in the necessary command to bring up said vehicle near Jérémie's current position, and window popped up on screen showing that it was being virtualized.

It only took two seconds for Jérémie's yellow arrow to speed off.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

In the basement of the school's dormitory building, the boiler was dialed up to full blast, being closely monitored by Jim. The group huddled around the boiler was not the entire school. Ms. Hertz had wisely taken other students to the boiler room of the science building, as did the other teachers, all of them watching a select group of students that just happened to be around them when the blizzard hit.

Mr. Delmas kept a sharp eye on the students he and Jim had gathered, especially on his daughter and her friend Nicolas Poliakoff, both of whom had just come in, ushered by Thomas 'TV' Vincent, who was complaining about his fancy car being smashed under a tree.

TV, the fool, had gone outside to film the snowstorm. Nobody liked him; he had done nothing but disrupt today's classes and demand everything on a silver platter. He even wasted a serving that could've gone to a student, a serving that he alone demanded before spitting out, claiming it was "awful". Mr. Delmas considered TV's fancy car being crushed under a tree as karma.

(And now, TV was stealing the only blanket that Milly and Tamiya were sharing.)

Jim looked at his miniature radio station, having turned it to the weather channel when this whole thing started. Michael Cheng got up from his spot between Tristan Brossard and Xavier Gosselin and sat down next to Jim, "Hey, Jim?" Jim turned to him. "How c-c-cold is it?"

Jim's hand shook as he looked at his device, "Fifty-eight degrees below zero outside, twenty-three degrees above in here."

Michael gasped in shock at how low the temperature was.

Jim reached out a gloved hand and gently pat the boy's head, "Don't worry. It will blow over soon." He then stood up, and clapped his hands to get everybody's attention, "No sleeping, everybody. Listen up, I'm going to tell you a little story. It's from when I was a volunteer research subject for the space exploration program. Alright, yes, some people think that it's not a noble profession. Well, they're wrong! Because if we sent slugs into space, who do we have to thank for it?" He pointed a thumb at himself. "Why, yours truly!"

Mr. Delmas smiled as a shivering Sissi cuddled closer to him, prompting him to wrap an arm around her. Jim never liked talking about his vastly colored past, but if students were in danger, you could always count on Jim to leave all personal feelings behind him.

(And if Delmas also smiled at TV's camerawoman Edna slapping said man, before hissing at him, "No sleeping!", and then given the blanket he stole back to Milly and Tamiya, well, that was just an added bonus.)

Outside was way worse. Kadic's boiler rooms were missing five students. Two of them, Jérémie and Aelita, were at the factory, fixing the problem by confronting the source.

Two more of them were next to TV's fancy car, the one that was crushed under a tree. TV only had himself to blame; he was the one driving the car when he crashed it into said tree. Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd were on their way to the factory when they had seen the commotion and rushed over to help. Fortunately, TV, Sissi, and Nicolas were all saved, but then the tree fell, and Yumi had pushed Ulrich out of the way, making it fall on her instead. Now, she was trapped under it, and Ulrich had left for Mr. Roulier's shed for something to help free her.

He soon came back with a pulley and two chains that were already starting to freeze. When he saw that Yumi's eyes were closed, he immediately knelt beside her and tapped her cheek, "Yumi, wake up!"

She groaned, "Why? Let me...sleep..."

But his constant shaking kept her awake, "You can't! If you sleep now, you may never wake up again! Now, hold on. I think I may have a way to free you."

He got back to his feet and circled the first chain around the tree that had fallen on Yumi. He then threw the first chain over a nearby branch, before connecting both chains to the pulley. Taking the connected chains, he started pulling, ignoring how it was starting to freeze over, complete with ice.

But the tree didn't budge.

Eventually, the chain broke, ruining his efforts, and he kicked the snow in frustration.

"L-Leave me..." Yumi muttered, having seen it all. "You have to g-get warm..."

He sat back down beside her, slinging an arm around her back to keep her warm, "You can't get rid of me that easily." Yumi just smiled, appreciating the company. "Don't worry...I-I'm sure Odd is already on Lyoko."

The fifth missing student, Odd, actually wasn't on Lyoko. But he was approaching the factory, slightly trudging through the snow. He tried using the sewers, but the manhole cover had been frozen in place, so he had to go through the city. He was approaching the bridge now.

"Think about warm things, Della Robbia," he muttered to himself. "Tahiti...uh, sauna...heat wave...fireplace...!"

He, Ulrich, and Yumi had all been decked out in warm winter clothes thanks to Jim, but the longer they remained outside, the more obvious it was that they weren't doing any good at all.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

The tower was in sight, the red aura standing out clearly against the dark blue sky. Just a few more meters, Jérémie thought to himself, as he continued driving the Overbike to his destination.

"Watch out, Jérémie," Aelita warned. "A squadron of three Hornets are behind you."

A shadow passed over him, three actually, but they weren't the shape of Hornets at all. They seemed more...triangle-shaped. The realization immediately hit him, "They're not Hornets, Aelita. They're Mantas!" He glanced up at the sky, and sure enough, there were three Mantas flying above him, moving past to get in front of him.

"What?! But they never leave Sector Five!"

Jérémie just narrowed his eyes and sped up, "I don't like it either, but it's just proof that XANA's getting stronger."

"In front of you!" Aelita warned. "Be careful!"

He watched as the trio of Mantas surrounded the activated tower, flying around it, before stopping right in front of him. He knew that if he tried to go through, he'd be fired at, but right now, the others were in danger. So he continued to speed up.

"Jérémie, don't! There's a fourth monster waiting for you!" Aelita cried.

She was right. From behind the tower emerged the Scyphozoa itself, floating right below the three Mantas. He immediately stopped the Overbike in its tracks, before asking, "Aelita? What should I do?"

The Mantas flew forward, and on their flight path, they began hatching something.

"Flying Mines!" the pink-ette replied. "They plan to trap you in with the Scyphozoa! Get out of there!"

Sure enough, the Mantas began flying around the Scyphozoa, trapped Jérémie inside a circle of mines with it. Aelita was right; he had to escape. And fast.

He revved up the Overbike, a plan forming in his head, before taking off, driving towards the giant jellyfish.

Aelita definitely noticed on the holomap, "Jérémie, what are you doing?! You're heading straight for the Scyphozoa!"

Ignoring the pink-ette's warning, Jérémie focused hard, imagining and then creating a ramp. Once he saw his work was complete, he sped up and took off from the ramp. He flew over the Scyphozoa's bulbous head, but upon landing, he crashed the Overbike, causing it to disappear, and he fell to the ground, sliding on the ice a couple of meters before stopping.

He managed to regain his footing and glanced up in time to see the mines begin to disappear. But his troubles weren't over yet, "Jérémie, behind you!"

He immediately turned around, gasping sharply when he saw the jellyfish quickly approaching him, holding out its tentacles. He turned around and ran in the opposite direction.

But it was quickly gaining on him and his current path was just leading him farther and farther away from the tower he needed to be in.

In no time at all, it captured him from behind, and Jérémie saw red. He could always feel XANA poking and prodding his mind whenever the Scyphozoa captured him, and he never liked it. It was a very unpleasant experience; it felt like his privacy was being invaded (because it kinda was).

But this time, it seemed like XANA was...angry, almost desperate...

Then he saw a flash of pink, and before he knew it, he was falling from the Scyphozoa's grip, only to land on the Overboard, right behind its current pilot Aelita.

As she helped him to his feet, she jokingly offered, "Can I drop you off at the next activated tower, perhaps?"

He placed his hands on her waist to steady himself, as he shrugged, "I wouldn't say no," while smiling in amusement. Grateful that she had virtualized herself, choosing not to wait for any of the others, he slipped his goggles on. They immediately alerted him to a trio of monsters approaching them from behind, "Behind us!"

Aelita quickly glanced back before focusing in front of her. Of course, it was the Mantas. "They never give up, do they?"

Using the Overboard, she zipped past the lasers behind them, before flying down and spinning in a circle from above. Jérémie gave a small yelp at the sudden loop, and another as Aelita spun another one. The three Mantas flew past them, letting out another field of mines, this time surrounding the tower.

"Hang on," she warned her passenger, before speeding up the Overboard.

Thanks to Odd's tutelage using his skateboard, Aelita was able to slip past all the mines like it was nothing, weaving in and out carefully yet quickly to avoid all of them.

During this, Jérémie's goggles once again warned him of their approaching enemies, "They're behind us again!"

Aelita promptly ducked underneath the mines, hoping it would be safer, and the Mantas quickly followed them. She headed straight for the tower, as one of the Mantas flew too low to the ground, sliding a few meters along the ice, before exploding. The other two, however, were easily able to follow the Overboard.

Eventually, a Manta appeared right in front of them and fired. Aelita just smirked, "Right where I want 'em." She held out her hand, formed an Energy Field, aimed it, and let it go.

The Energy Field grazed the Manta's right wing, but she had missed on purpose, as the graze caused the Manta a great deal of pain. It spun out of control, before accidentally bumping into a nearby mine, causing it to explode, taking out the Manta with it. The explosion then caused a chain reaction, other nearby mines exploding.

Eventually, the chain stopped, revealing an open passage to the tower.

Aelita took this chance and flew towards the base of the tower. Jérémie promptly hopped off and entered the tower.

Meanwhile, the last Manta fired at the Overboard, destroying it, before Aelita quickly summoned her wings. She formed another Energy Field and threw it.

This time, her weapon hit its target, making it explode.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

"A-And so...there I wa–..." Jim never finished that sentence. He instead fell next to his device, shivering, as his body was finally giving up to the cold.

Unfortunately, no one called out to him. No one noticed. They too were starting to give up...

JEREMIE_

Odd was almost there. A couple more steps and he'd be in the elevator. "Hot springs...erupting volcano...m-m-magma..."

But his mantra could only work for so long.

He collapsed right before he could hit the down button.

CODE_

Ulrich continued to embrace Yumi as tightly as he could, but he only had so much body heat to spare. Her breathing was shallow now. "Please, Yumi..." he called out, as he himself tried to keep his eyes open. "Don't give up...we need you..." A tear rolled down his cheek, freezing halfway down, "I need you...!"

Yumi was silent.

LYOKO_

And then, by some miracle (but not really), it started getting warmer. The sun shone down on them, as the clouds XANA had created disappeared, leaving behind nothing but clear blue skies.

As Ulrich felt the top layer of snow starting to melt, he shook Yumi to wake her up. "Yumi?"

But Yumi remained unresponsive.

"Yumi!" he called out, before bending down to hear her heartbeat. It was very low, and she wasn't breathing either.

He immediately took out his phone to call Aelita, but he couldn't even turn it on. The battery had completely frozen over. Plus, there was no guarantee that the phone lines were back up.

"No..." Ulrich tearfully muttered. He dropped his phone onto the snow below as he curled up into a ball, "NOOOOO!"

A sliver of hope came then in the form of a bright white bubble that engulfed everything.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Time rewinded to this morning, very early on when the sun was just beginning to peak its corona out from the horizon. No single snowflake was in sight, exactly as it should be.

Out on the open country roads, a police van was escorting a dangerous criminal from one prison to another, one with tighter security. As the criminal sat in the back, two police officers sat up front, with the male officer on the radio and the female officer driving.

Their radio crackled to life, "HQ transfer calling Car Alpha."

The male officer picked up the receiver and answered, "Car Alpha here, go ahead."

"In five kilometers, you'll meet up with Escort 2 on the RN 7. For the moment, everything's going according to plan. Over to you, Car Alpha!"

On Lyoko, XANA was at it yet again, quickly activating a tower in the Mountain Sector.

Back on Earth, the male officer glanced at the electrocuted fence they were passing by. Once they were gone, a spark of lightning emerged from the fence, and a black spectre followed suit.

"Copy that," the male officer replied, before looking through the small barred window in the metal wall that separated them and their prisoner. "You happy to be going home, Nanquin?"

Pierre Nanquin barely reacted, "I don't talk to cops, so save your breath."

"Typical," the male officer muttered, as he put the radio receiver back on its hook. "That's what you get for trying to be nice."

"If the prisoner sees it as you being condescending, then yes," the female officer replied, not taking her eyes off the road. "Just leave him be."

XANA's spectre entered the back of the van through a tiny crack in between the double doors, before getting to work. It entered Nanquin through his right ear, possessing him quickly before making him slump over.

The male officer saw a flash through the window, and looked through it, only to see Nanquin kneeling over, appearing to be unconscious. "Pull over!" he quickly told his partner. "He's had some kind of attack!"

The female officer came to an abrupt stop. As her partner got out to inspect what had happened, she unhooked the receiver, "Car Alpha to HQ transfer."

"Go ahead, Car Alpha."

The male officer opened the doors, asking, "Nanquin? You okay? What's going on here?"

Nanquin opened his eyes, revealing a glitchy iris, and pulled off the handcuffs with ease, to the officer's shock.

The female officer, unaware of this, continued explaining the situation, "Following code three: the accused is unconscious. We're performing an examination to assess the..." The van suddenly shook with a massive jolt of electricity flowing through it, and the male officer was flung right through the window. "What the...?!"

She stared at her legitimately unconscious partner, as the radio played the response, "Roger, Car Alpha. Standing by for information."

There was a thump in front of her, causing her to look up in shock, only to see Nanquin standing there with a big evil grin.

"Car Alpha, what's going on?"

She could only watch him laugh evilly in shock.

"Come in, please, Car Alpha."

It took both officers a while before they were able to respond. When they finally woke up, Pierre Nanquin was long gone.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

A couple hours later, when the sun was farther up in the sky, Yumi walked through the front gates at Kadic and joined her friends at the coffee machine. This time, she was too troubled to watch Hiroki join up with his own friends like she usually did.

The others immediately noticed her mood.

"You okay, Yumi?" Ulrich asked, having moved forward, clearly intent on greeting her with a hug due to how relieved he was to see her still alive and not freezing to death. But he had stopped when he saw her face.

"Physically, I'm fine," she reassured them all. "Mentally, I don't think so. This morning, I heard a very disturbing news report."

"On your dad's radio?" Aelita asked. Takeho turned on the radio every morning to see if the traffic was going to be particularly bad that day.

Yumi nodded, "Yeah. Apparently, Pierre Nanquin escaped a couple hours ago while they were transporting him to another prison in Italy."

"Another prison?" Odd asked. "What did this guy do?"

"Oh nothing much," Aelita replied. "Just fine art theft, kidnapping, receiving stolen goods, all sorts of trafficking, bank robberies, the list goes on. He's basically France's Public Enemy Number One." She turned to Yumi, "So what happened? Why are you so disturbed by it?"

"Well, the guards that were transporting him explained that he escaped without any outside help, at least from humans, but they did talk about some sort of supernatural force," Yumi explained.

"You think it may be XANA?" Ulrich asked, knowing her thought process and where it was going.

"Yes," the Japanese girl admitted. "That story wasn't on the news the last take. That, plus the supernatural thing...well, with XANA, anything can happen, whether we like it or not."

Aelita, sitting on the nearby planter next to Jérémie, pulled out her pink laptop from her bag, "The superscan didn't pick anything up this morning, but with the way it's been acting lately, that doesn't meant anything." She opened it up and typed in a few commands, only to have the error sound beep back at her three times. "What do you mean 'quack'?!" the pink-ette demanded, addressing her laptop.

"What's wrong?" Ulrich asked.

"The superscan has reset itself again!" Aelita explained, getting angrier and more unruly the more it was obvious that her superscan, the only thing keeping Jérémie here on Earth, was malfunctioning.

Jérémie wordlessly took her laptop from her and placed it in his own lap, before typing in commands to bring up a diagnostic window. After a pause, he shook his head, "The superscan is working just fine, and the diagnostic I'm running isn't picking up any bugs. The only reason something like this would happen is if the supercomputer was shut off incorrectly." Odd raised a confused eyebrow. "Without pulling the lever."

"But you would've felt it by now, right?" Ulrich asked, becoming concerned by the minute.

"Yeah," Jérémie replied. "I mean, I have a headache, but I had one the last take too."

"Do you want to go to the nurse?" Yumi asked.

"I'm fine, guys," the blue-clad blonde immediately answered. "Anyway, we have more important matters to focus on."

"He's right," Aelita agreed, taking her laptop back from Jérémie when he offered it to her. "Whatever's going on with the superscan, we need to fix it right away. The last take, our uncertainty concerning it is what basically trapped so many of us in that snowstorm." Meaning, Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi. "We could've easily lost this time."

"Correction," Yumi cut in. "I was not caught in the snowstorm. I was caught under a tree."

"A tree in a snowstorm," Ulrich gently retorted. "Do me a favor, Ishiyama, and next time, don't sacrifice yourself like that for me."

She sent him a tight smile in return, "Sorry, Stern, but I can't make such a promise." Her body had moved on its own, but she didn't regret it one bit.

Aelita cut in, borderline impatiently, "In any case, we have to check the diagnostic scan run by the supercomputer manually, but we'll have to wait until after science class. We have a test today."

Odd and Ulrich's following groans failed to drown out Jérémie's soft moan of pain.

The other four immediately turned to the one known as the group's nerd, seeing him holding his head in his hands.

"Jer, are you sure you don't need the nurse?" Odd asked, his reluctance to take that science test quickly being drowned out by genuine concern.

"I'm fine," Jérémie tried his best to fake a smile, and would've succeeded if it weren't for the trembling in his voice betraying him. "It's just a headache. I didn't get much sleep last night. By the way, Odd, TV should be here soon. Are you still going to give him 'I Guess Our Guest is a Ghost'? Or are you going with 'Natural Grandeur 2' this time?"

It was obvious he was just trying to change the subject, but it worked.

Odd immediately pouted, "Neither! You saw his personality last take! He didn't want to even entertain the idea of seeing my film! He thinks he's blessing Kadic with his presence, when he's just an omen of bad luck!"

The others just stayed silent during his rant, smiling because they agreed with him one hundred percent. Thomas 'TV' Vincent was just an entitled man not worth anyone's time. The sad part about it was that since time had reset, no one but them knew it.

Yet anyways. Because that would soon change.

The warning bell interrupted them, ringing loudly throughout campus. As the group got up with the other students, Aelita asked Jérémie, "You gonna be alright?"

"No problem," he cheerfully replied. With any luck, he'd finish the test early like he often did and sleep off this irritating headache while waiting for everybody else to finish.

Well, that is, if TV didn't interrupt class like last time...

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

As the students began heading for classes, a fancy high-tech car pulled up to Kadic's parking lot in front of the administrative building. The car door lifted up, revealing Thomas 'TV' Vincent as the driver. As he glanced around at the school he had chosen, he pulled down his glasses with an uninterested frown.

As he approached the building, Jim opened the door for him, letting him inside, where Mr. Delmas was waiting.

In the principal's hands was a hand-written speech, and he began to read from it, "My dear TV, on behalf of the students and faculty, we're very honored that you–"

TV himself cut him off, rudely interrupting, "Yeah, yeah, right. That's nice, thank you. Right, time is money." He introduced the brunette-haired woman that came in right behind him, "This is Edna, my cameraman, uh woman. Person. Whatever! Who cares?! Never on time!" He turned to her, "Show up late one more time and you're finished! I've got a hundred and fifty cameramen who'd kill for a chance to work with me!" Edna glared at him, seriously questioning her life choices up until this point, as TV turned to Jim, "You, sweatshirt! Park my car out of sight from the kids! I may be doing a documentary on them, but that doesn't give them free reign to scratch it!"

Jim barely caught the keys TV threw at him ever so casually. He was confused, but could not ask any questions of his own, as TV walked away, with Edna reluctantly in tow.

When did he become a valet?!

He and Mr. Delmas shared the same glance with each other, one that read: 'We've made a huge mistake letting this guy come to Kadic.'

Meanwhile, Nanquin was using his newly acquired speed to travel to a nearby nuclear power plant. When he got there, he stared at it, almost as though he was here for something in particular...

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Ms. Hertz was preparing the test papers to hand out. As she did so, she gave her students a reminder, "Now, this test is the conclusion of our study of plant life. After our field trip last week, I asked you all to calculate the yield of the field of corn that we visited. Well, that question is on this test, so I hope you're ready."

However, before she could pass out the papers, two strangers appeared in the open door frame. Everyone recognized the man as Thomas 'TV' Vincent.

"Yes?" Ms. Hertz asked them, being polite out of principle.

TV ignored her and turned to Edna, his microphone, "Give me a panoramic shot of the kids."

As Edna set up the camerawork, many students prepared themselves to look good in hopes of impressing TV, as they knew him as a famous news reporter. But when he looked past them all without paying any of them the slightest attention, their shoulders all sunk in disappointment. Sissi, who was among the group, even looked offended.

Ms. Hertz, running out of patience, cleared her throat, "Ahem! Can I help you?"

"Yes, get out of the shot!" TV rudely replied, ignoring how she huffed at his manners, or lack thereof. He turned to the camera instead, "Do our schools still provide a future for our youth? Faced with the teachers' lax attitudes, we have reason to doubt." He walked up to Jérémie, whose headache was evidently getting worse by the minute, but TV ignored this. "To see how bad it's become, all you need to do is pick out a student at random and ask him his grade point average! You, for instance!" He held the microphone out to Jérémie, gesturing that it was his turn to speak. But Jérémie's answer shocked everyone.

"Leave."

That was when his classmates and his teacher, as well as the camerawoman, noticed how he was holding his head in his hands, and he was giving out distressed breathing noises, almost as though he was having trouble. Jérémie was clearly in no shape to talk to anybody, let alone come to class and take a test.

But TV didn't pay that any mind, if he did notice, "Excuse me?! Just answer the question!"

Ulrich, Jérémie's deskmate, snapped, "He said to leave, so go!" He then promptly turned to his friend, "Jer, you okay?"

He was concerned beyond belief, as were Odd and Aelita, as the two cousins shared a worried glance with each other from the desk behind the other two; this didn't happen during the last take.

Jérémie thickly swallowed the lump in his throat, "No."

Ms. Hertz, seeing the tense situation, immediately stepped in, "Mr. Vincent, you really should leave now. Stern, please take Belpois to the infirmary."

Ulrich nodded, and slung Jérémie's deadweight arm around his shoulders. He was starting to suspect that it was no mere headache after all.

TV, on the other hand, rounded on Ms. Hertz, "I have a right to be here! Freedom of the press!"

"I believe my student told you to leave," the science teacher hotly retorted. "Now do so before I call security."

Rather than responding to the angry teacher, TV rounded on Edna, "Turn that camera back on! We're not done here!"

Edna had long since turned off the camera, having the actual decency to know that this wasn't the time or place to keep filming. "Sir, this teacher is right. We should leave. We can come back later." Besides, she really did not feel comfortable filming a student having an actual medical emergency.

Before anyone could respond to that, Ulrich suddenly shouted, sounding afraid, "Ms. Hertz, help! He's not breathing!"

Alarmed, Ms. Hertz stepped to the side to get TV out of her line of sight, only to see Jérémie laying flat on the floor, unconscious. Many students gasped in shock, as Odd and Aelita immediately joined Ulrich in trying to resuscitate their friend. The science teacher promptly ignored TV and dialed Yolanda's number from the phone on her desk.

Farther away, near the nuclear power plant, Pierre Nanquin held his head, as if suddenly gaining the same headache that Jérémie did, before passing out in the middle of the surrounding forest in a very similar fashion...

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Once Yolanda saw how severe the situation was, by feeling Jérémie's pulse and seeing that it was dangerously low, she immediately called an ambulance, knowing an emergency of this type was unfortunately out of her league.

The paramedics only allowed one person to go to the hospital in the ambulance with them and Jérémie, and no one objected to Aelita taking that spot.

The pink-ette didn't take her eyes off of the blonde even for one millisecond. All throughout the trip, he did not regain consciousness, or give any sign that he was about to wake up. He just lay still on that gurney for the entire ride.

She watched as a doctor, whose nametag read 'Delacre', ran out of the double doors leading to the emergency room the moment the paramedics unloaded Jérémie from the ambulance. She hung behind to give them their space.

"Okay, what do we got?" Dr. Delacre asked, putting on his stethoscope to listen to Jérémie's vitals.

"Adolescent," one of the paramedics replied immediately, having obviously done this song and dance before many times, "fourteen years old, unconscious, very weak pulse, irregular heartbeat."

Dr. Delacre immediately ushered them inside the building, "Put him in intensive care. We'll do a full assessment."

Aelita followed them as they wheeled Jérémie's gurney down the hall until they went through the doors reading 'ICU'. She couldn't go any farther; she wasn't allowed. All she could do now was wait...

Inside the ICU, Dr. Delacre was joined by his elder, Dr. Toussaint, and the two quickly got to work. It was sad; such a young adolescent whose heart was already failing.

"He's gone into fibrillation!" Delacre exclaimed as he glanced up at the heart monitor they had the boy hooked up to.

"Ten mils of adrenaline!" Toussaint ordered.

Delacre filled up a syringe of the said drug, before looking back up at the monitor. "Heart's failing!" He quickly inserted the adrenaline directly into Jérémie's IV.

Toussaint just shook his head, "He's going down! Cardiac unit! 160!"

Once Delacre prepared the defibrillator with the appropriate amount of voltage, he put both paddles on Jérémie's chest. "Clear." The boy's body jumped at the amount of electricity being pumped into his body all at once, but he remained unresponsive.

Even worse, his heart rate began to flatline.

"Again! 200!" Toussaint refused to give up.

Delacre tried it again, "Clear," but worse still, nothing happened. The two men gasped in shock as they stared at the flatlining heart rate. They were used to this happening; they were doctors who worked in the Intensive Care Unit, after all.

But it still left them shaken up every time.

In the forest, Pierre Nanquin opened his eyes, before sitting up suddenly, the eye of XANA still flashing, the AI's mission, whatever it was, incomplete. It had to hurry...

In the hospital, the two doctors watched in amazement as Jérémie's heart rate went back up to a healthy, steady spike that repeated over and over.

"That boy's got a real guardian angel, that's for sure," Toussaint muttered, awestruck.

Jérémie struggled to open his eyes, his eyelids feeling strangely heavy. His chest hurt, and he felt dizzy and lightheaded. Where was he? The last thing he remembered was Ms. Hertz telling Ulrich to escort him to the infirmary. He didn't remember passing out, or falling asleep, or whatever had happened.

"Son." The strangely familiar word made him immediately turn his head to who had spoken. It was a man with the nametag of Dr. Toussaint (why did that name sound so familiar?) "Do you know who you are?"

"J-Jérémie..." he answered. His mouth felt dry, like it was full of cotton. He needed a glass of water. "Jérémie Belpois..."

Dr. Toussaint nodded, showing some sort of approval, "Good, good, very good. Do you know where you are?"

"In a...hospital?" he asked. He wasn't sure. This was the first time he'd ever been in one, but he knew that Aelita's mother worked in a hospital as an ICU nurse. Whatever; even thinking was tiring him out. His brain felt like it was moving through molasses.

"That's right," the doctor replied, before noticing something. "Does your chest hurt?"

Jérémie hadn't realized he was rubbing the mentioned sore spot for the past couple minutes. "Yes." He was quiet before confessing, "It's hurt like this before for the past two weeks, but...not this badly..."

For some reason, he couldn't tell this to his friends, but he could tell this man, a complete stranger. Must have had something to do with the fact that this stranger was a doctor and wouldn't overbear him...

Dr. Toussaint looked at his partner, a younger man whose nametag read 'Delacre', before replying, "All the more reason we need to run some tests on you. You coded on our table just now."

"'Coded'?" Jérémie asked, not knowing what that meant.

It was the younger doctor who explained, "It means you died, Mr. Belpois."

Wait, what?!

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Aelita had been sitting on an uncomfortable bench in the waiting room for the past two hours, bordering on three now. Her parents (her mom, mostly) always told her that the longer it took for the family to get news about the patient, the better odds said patient had, but she was still worried. She wouldn't be able to handle her own emotions if anything ever happened to Jérémie.

Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi had remained at Kadic, mostly because only one person could go with Jérémie in the ambulance, but also due to the fact that Yumi, being in a different class, didn't know what had happened. Aelita could've called them, but they were probably still in class, and she didn't want to interrupt any of them until she got word of Jérémie's condition.

Right then, she saw the same doctor (Dr. Delacre) that had begun the work on Jérémie enter the waiting area from the double doors. Not a moment too soon.

She didn't expect the man to walk up to her specifically, "Hello, Miss, you are the young lady who came in with Mr. Belpois, correct?"

Aelita nodded. Her pink hair tended to stand out, so she wasn't surprised, "Yes, sir. Aelita Schaeffer. How is he?"

Dr. Delacre must've seen just how shaken up and worried she was, because he sat down on the bench next to her, to make the following conversation feel more casual than formal, "He'll be alright." She immediately breathed a sigh of relief. "We're keeping him here overnight for the next couple of days, though, because it's an extraordinary case."

"Why? What's wrong?" This caught her attention real quick.

"Because your friend flatlined on our table, only to miraculously come back to life minutes later," the doctor explained. "But according to all the tests we ran on him afterwards, while there are signs of damage from previous attacks, there's no sign of any issue that caused said damage."

"Hold on, did you say...previous attacks?" That's what captured her interest the most.

"Yes, I did," Dr. Delacre carefully explained. "Mr. Belpois has admitted to us, that is my partner and I, that he's had similar attacks to this one during the past two weeks, though not as bad. He specifically described the soreness in his chest, but my partner and I know they are previous attacks due to the damage we've found."

Why didn't he tell her that before? "What kind of damage are we talking about?"

"Nothing particularly bad or life-threatening," the man told her. "At least, not yet. For the moment, it's just evidence that his heart has been straining itself against something for the past couple weeks."

"And you can't find any issue that might be responsible?"

"No. That's what makes it extraordinary. According to the test results, nothing is wrong with him." The man seem genuinely astonished, which is why Aelita chose to believe him. "My partner, Dr. Toussaint, is getting your friend situated into his own room right now. We are allowing him visitors, that is, if you let him rest."

"Thank you, but can I..." she softly asked, "can I make a couple of phone calls first?"

"Of course," the man replied, as he stood back on his feet. "Room 213. Come on by when you're ready, and you can stay as long as you like."

Aelita nodded her thank you as she took out her phone. She waited until the man was gone before she speed-dialed her mother's number. Since her mom worked long hours that were usually at night, it didn't surprise Aelita one bit to hear exhaustion in Anthea's voice when she answered.

"Hello, angel." She must've been in the middle of a nap. "You only call when classes are over. Is something wrong?"

"W-Well, maybe," the pink-haired girl explained the situation. "You remember Jérémie, right?" She should. All throughout that week-long vacation (the one Aelita was reluctant to go on), she and Waldo wouldn't stop asking about their daughter's new friend, since it was the first time they had heard of him.

"Your pen pal? Of course I do. What's wrong? Did something happen to him?"

"Y-Yeah..." She didn't want to say it out loud, because it would be her admitting that it was her current reality. But she had to. "He had a heart attack in the middle of class. He had just been showing signs of a headache, until he just dropped. He's fine now, but the test results show that nothing's wrong with him. Everything's normal. I-I just need a second opinion."

"From me?"

"Yes." She tried hard not to sniff, in fear that she would actually start crying.

Anthea took a deep breath, "Are they keeping him overnight just to be sure?"

"Yes."

"Good. They're smart doctors, then." That was a high compliment coming from Anthea Hopper-Schaeffer. "Listen, I know you don't want to hear this, but sometimes, people's hearts just give out for no reason. Your friend is very lucky to be alive, angel." Aelita nodded; she already knew that. "I know it's hard to be strong in a situation like this, but your friend is likely very scared. He'll need all the support he can get. And given how he's an orphan, that support is going to have to come from you and your friends."

Her mother was right, as usual. She was all Jérémie had. Well, her, plus Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi. Surely the principal would understand and let them skip school for a while.

She smiled softly, "Of course. Thanks, Maman."

"You're welcome, angel. If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to call."

"I won't. Goodbye."

"Bye-bye." And then Anthea hung up.

Thanks to her mom, Aelita no longer felt afraid to face Jérémie after this. He was much more scared than she was, given how it was his life on the line, not hers.

She then promptly speed-dialed Odd's number. She owed the others an update.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Things weren't going very well on Kadic's end, to be honest. TV had not left; he had refused to. He was still focused on his documentary, but had evidently changed the subject. Poor Edna had no choice but to go along with it, if she wanted to keep her job.

Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi found this out the hard way.

They were by the vending machines, hoping to calm themselves with a hot chocolate while they waited for Aelita's call, when they were approached by Sissi and William, along with Hervé and Nicolas, both of whom were tagging along.

"I heard about Jérémie from Jim," William softly admitted. "I'm sorry. I hope he's okay."

"So do we," Yumi muttered.

"You haven't heard anything from Aelita yet?" Sissi asked.

Ulrich shook his head, "Mm-mm. Hopefully the long wait means good news."

William and Sissi both looked uncomfortable, neither quite sure what to do or say now.

They didn't have to stay silent for long as that's when TV made his appearance, announcing his presence to them the way he did in Ms. Hertz's classroom earlier.

"Tragedy has struck Kadic Academy today, as a 13-year-old–"

"Fourteen," Yumi hissed her correction.

TV, however, paid her no mind, "–boy collapsed in the middle of class. He was rushed to the hospital, but why couldn't the school do anything? How would you describe the state of this school's medical staff?"

He held out the microphone to Hervé, who immediately leaned away from it in disgust. But he answered anyway, wisely unbiased, "Yolanda Perraudin is smart and an expert at her job as Kadic's nurse, but she is only one person, so there is only so much that she can do."

"So you're saying that your nurse is underqualified," TV replied, taking back the microphone.

Hervé sputtered, "W-Wait, what?! That's not what I said at all!"

Sissi stepped in before TV could misconstrue anything else, "Beat it, Vincent! Stop acting like you're concerned about Jérémie when you're clearly not! You're just using the incident to paint my daddy's school in a bad light!"

Edna made a choice in that moment and turned the camera off. For good. "Mr. TV, sir, you're just upsetting them. We should leave before we outstay our welcome here." It was clear she was TV's conscience, that is if TV ever took her seriously. At least, Edna the camerawoman was a normal person with morals.

But TV ignored her, instead shoving the mike into Nicolas's face next, "What would you say is your connection with the victim?"

"'The victim'?!" Ulrich cut in. The figurative dam had been building ever since he first saw Jérémie suffering in class, and now, thanks to TV, it had finally burst. "That 'victim' has a name! It's Jérémie, and he's my friend! I won't let you use him for such SELFISH MOTIVES!"

Odd and Yumi immediately grabbed Ulrich's shoulders, preventing him from launching himself at TV and attacking him. They didn't speak any words to their upset friend, because they agreed with him completely, as they led him away to somewhere quieter. They were drawing a crowd, and that was the last thing any of them needed.

"What's going on here?" The principal himself had noticed the commotion, and he had come outside to see what it was. Jim was right behind him, his arms folded to emphasize his size in an intimidating way.

"What's going on here," TV began to rant, "is that your students are not cooperating with me! All they're giving me is emotional outbursts instead of real answers!"

But Mr. Delmas didn't bat a single eye, "I saw everything, Mr. Vincent. I believe it is time for you to leave and never come back. My students are already upset with what has happened to their classmate, and you are only making their pain worse."

Sissi, here, shot a quick worried glance back at Ulrich, who was pacing back and forth in the courtyard by a bench, on which Odd and Yumi were sitting and waiting. She knew from personal experience that it took a lot for Ulrich to break, but once he did, you'd better pray it wasn't aimed at you, because it was often very explosive and it took a long time for him to simmer down.

"Oh, I will be back!" TV protested. "I will get my story somehow! You can't stop me! I have the freedom of the press on my side!"

"If you return, you will be arrested for trespassing," Mr. Delmas coldly replied. "If you choose to fight it in court, you will have numerous witnesses testifying against you that they saw and heard me give you a warning."

At this, William, Sissi, Hervé, and Nicolas all narrowed their glares, showing this guy that their principal was right.

"Fine! I can find my story elsewhere!" TV replied, before storming off. "Let's go, Edna."

"No," was her flat response.

The news reporter turned back to his camerawoman, only to suddenly be facing her death glare. "Excuse me?" He sounded offended.

"You heard me," Edna explained. "This was the last straw. You're on your own from now on. Film your own documentary, because I quit. And if you do return here and get arrested, don't bother calling me, because I will not bail you out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to report your behavior to our higher-ups." The ones at the TV network they were filming this documentary for, that is.

She said this so calmly that it was frightening. But everyone watching felt better knowing she was not afraid to stand her ground.

Good for her. Maybe she'd find a much better job now.

As the two (Edna and TV) left Kadic, going their own separate ways, everyone else breathed a heavy sigh of relief, knowing that TV the pest was gone. For good. With his job complete, Mr. Delmas went back to his office.

But Nicolas looked back at Ulrich, who was still pacing in the courtyard. "Should we...help them or something?"

Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi, despite Jérémie being Aelita's pen pal and not any of theirs, had quickly formed a surprisingly tight bond with the boy, despite not meeting him in person until he came to Kadic. It had quickly become obvious to Kadic as a whole that Jérémie Belpois was under their protection, and always would be (at least, that's how it looked to everybody else). So it was not really a surprise that they were taking it this hard.

Jim, who had remained behind, was the one who replied to him, "No, I think those three need to be alone right now. Maybe it's best to leave them be."

The four students had no choice but to reluctantly obey.

Ulrich took seven minutes to stop pacing, and it was only because his feet were starting to ache. He sat down on the bench in between Odd and Yumi, taking up the space they had deliberately left for him.

He was still breathing hard, a clear indication of his anger, as he asked, "Why aren't you two trying to talk me down?"

"Because then we'd be hypocrites," Odd quietly replied, before his cellphone rang.

As he pulled his phone from his pocket, Yumi slung a comforting arm around Ulrich's shoulders, "Trust us. We're upset too, and we have every right to be. We just held you back because that guy wasn't worth the effort."

Ulrich leaned into Yumi's touch as Odd greeted the person who had called him, "Oh, Aelita! I take you have news!" A pause, where she gave a response. "Hold on. Let me put you on speaker." He took the phone away from his ear and pressed a button. "Okay, now you may speak."

"Aelita?" Yumi spoke up. "Please tell me your news is good." TV had soured everyone's moods even more than they already were, so they all needed a palette cleanser.

"Don't worry. Jérémie's fine."

The other three immediately breathed heavy sighs of relief. Those were the words they really needed to hear, so they were grateful to Aelita for getting right to the point.

"That's great news, 'Lita," Odd replied. "So what's wrong with him?"

"Not over the phone," the pink-ette quietly replied. "He's allowed visitors. Room 213. I'm about to head over there. Please tell me you guys are coming."

"No worries. We're ready, willing, and able to ditch," Ulrich reassured her.

"Thank you." Despite being unable to see her, they could feel her soft smile, knowing the truth in that statement. "The doctors say we can visit as long as we like as long as we're calm and don't stress Jérémie out."

"Relax, cuz," Odd joked. "'Calm' is my middle name."

Yumi rolled her eyes, though a smile was (finally) tugging at her lips, "We're on our way, Aelita."

"Okay. I'll see you then."

Just as Aelita hung up, Jim walked up to them. "Hey, you three."

"Jim," Ulrich apologetically replied, "if you are going to give us sympathy, please save it."

"Don't worry," their phys. ed. teacher quickly replied. "I know that's the last thing you guys need right now. But you will need these." He held out his hand, in which four passes signed by Mr. Delmas himself.

Yumi took them and realized what they were, "We've been excused from classes today?"

Jim nodded, "All of them. You three plus Schaeffer. Mr. Delmas knew you guys would want to visit Belpois at the hospital so much you'd be willing to ditch, so he decided to give you guys his permission to do so."

"That's very...nice of him," Yumi commented.

"Yeah, well, he doesn't do it very often," Jim confessed. "At least, not without the student asking first, and he also had to get permission from each of your parents. But today has been hard on all of you, so go ahead. But just remember that those passes are only for today."

"Thank you, Jim," Ulrich let slip a smile, a real one albeit small, before he led the other two off campus.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

It was about thirty-five to forty minutes later, before Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi reached Room 213. Jérémie and Aelita were already there waiting for them, with Jérémie relaxing in his hospital bed and looking healthy if a bit tired, and Aelita aggressively typing on her laptop.

Yumi's first reaction to seeing Jérémie was wordlessly give him a tight hug, which he immediately returned without a protest. Eventually, after he apologized for scaring everyone, she let him go and allowed him to explain what his diagnosis was. Occasionally, he'd reach up to rub at his chest, where his heart was, as if it still felt sore.

"What about your test results?" Ulrich asked. Now that Jérémie was fine and in his sights again, he wasn't going to let the blonde genius go so easily.

"Inconclusive," Jérémie quietly, solemnly replied. "According to the doctors, there's nothing wrong with me."

"But your body shut down, Jer," Yumi argued. "Human bodies don't just do that for no reason. Something has to be wrong."

Jérémie just shrugged, unable to give them an answer.

"Do you think it could be your virus?" Odd asked, frowning deeply.

"Why?" Jérémie asked. "XANA, for whatever reason, needs me alive. So why would it take the risk?"

"Aelita?" Yumi turned to the pink-ette, who was still typing commands into her laptop's database.

"Something is definitely wrong," she replied. "The superscan has reset itself yet again. This is no longer a coincidence. I hate to leave you here, Jérémie," she closed her laptop and got to her feet, "but I have to go the factory and check it out. I have...a theory, and I need to see if I'm right."

"Then go," he gently reassured her. "I'll be fine."

"Do all of us need to go with you?" Ulrich asked her, hoping she'd say no.

"No," the pink-ette admitted, to Ulrich's inner delight. "In fact, I prefer that at least one of you stays here." 'For Jérémie's sake', went unspoken.

"I'll stay then," the German boy immediately cut in. "My current emotional state is not a stable one."

Jérémie glanced at his brunette friend with concern, while the other three barely restrained themselves in giving him a look of sympathy. Ulrich knew they understood; Jérémie had passed out in his arms, and the experience had left him shaken up, even now.

Ulrich needed some alone time, preferably with Jérémie, just so he could smooth out his control on his emotions.

Understanding this, Yumi stood up from her chair, "Then, I'll go with you, Aelita."

"Me too," Odd followed suit. "No offense, Jer, but hospitals give me bad memories." Not a lie, but it was something Odd would never reveal, the pain too deep. Not even Aelita knew why.

The blonde in the hospital bed offered a weak smile. "Don't worry. I'm not finding it particularly enjoyable myself. Good luck," he offered as the other three left the room.

"Don't worry," Ulrich quietly offered. "I'm here to keep you company."

Jérémie returned the brunette's soft and (hopefully) comforting smile with one of his own.

Once they were out of the room, Yumi took a shot in the dark, "So, what's your theory, Aelita?"

"I can't explain all the details right now," Aelita confessed, "so I'll only explain it in full if I'm right. But I will tell you that normally, XANA's attacks are generally well thought-out and executed. We've seen that pattern many, many times. It's usually careful with its work and how it attacks. Last take's blizzard attack seemed rather rushed to me, like XANA was trying to attack just to get Jérémie to Lyoko as quickly as possible, and I don't know why."

"You think XANA's getting desperate?" Yumi asked, part of her understanding the younger girl's thought process and where it was going.

"And if so," Odd added, "why?"

"That's what we're going to find out," the pink-ette told them. "Hopefully. It's the only thing that makes sense." But she wasn't going to spill, so the other two decided not to ask.

The trio passed by a hallway, down which were the two doctors placed in charge of Jérémie's case, Doctors Toussaint and Delacre. Normally, the trio wouldn't have paid any attention to this kind of thing, but the doctors' conversation was surprisingly incredibly interesting.

"There's no way you treated Belpois before," Delacre was saying, sounding as if he didn't believe it. "According to his records, he just moved here from an orphanage in La Rochelle."

"I swear he looks just like that Périn boy with the tumor," Toussaint softly explained, before shaking his head in disbelief. "I've been a doctor for over twenty years, but I remember every single one of my patients."

"You treated Périn how many years ago?" Delacre asked.

"Ten," Toussaint sighed. "I know, I know. It's impossible. Belpois is ten years younger than Périn, but they look so much alike, I swear it's like they were the same person."

"They're probably just related," Delacre seemed more level-headed. "After all, Belpois is here due to heart issues, while Périn was dying from a tumor. Two vastly different cases."

Toussaint sighed again, "You're probably right. C'mon, let's get back to work."

That was when the conversation ended. The trio continued on their way, only waiting until they were outside before they shared a knowing glance with each other.

Dr. Toussaint mentioned the surname 'Périn', which the group already knew was the surname of the man most likely to be Lyoko's creator. If the doctor said Périn and Belpois looked alike, then that sure was not a coincidence. But at the moment, they pushed it to the back of their minds.

After all, they had a more pressing issue to attend to.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

A transport truck was leaving the power plant that Nanquin was approaching. XANA was–what was this feeling?–relieved when it saw the truck, so it possessed Nanquin, puppeteering his body to block the truck's path right as it made a left turn out of the facility.

The driver attempted to stop, but it was too late, and he accidentally ran the guy over.

In reality, though, Nanquin was fine, having merely phased through the truck, like a ghost.

It had to hurry. It had no idea when the next attack would be.

XANA then moved Nanquin's body to the back of the truck and used electricity to hack into the keypad. He easily cracked the lock, probably because the password was 123456. XANA rolled its figurative eyes at how lack the security around this thing was.

The back door opened, revealing two guards already prepared to deal with the intruder, with their guns out and ready to fire. "Don't move!"

"Put your hands in the air!"

Nanquin just smirked at the order.

The driver, still panicking up front, then heard someone getting beat up. He gasped, looking into the rearview mirror in time to see a hand disappearing back into the truck. Knowing what he had to do, he stepped out of the driver's seat, his gun out and at the ready.

When he approached the back, he emerged from around the corner with his gun pointed at the intruder, "Hands up!"

But there was nobody. The two guards in the back were unconscious, no visible wounds except for bumps on their heads where they had been struck. The intruder was gone. Peeking inside, he saw that one of the uranium rods they were transporting had also disappeared...

Why? What did this guy need it for?

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Odd and Yumi carefully watched as Aelita worked intently on the superscan's debugging. "Jérémie was right."

Both raised a confused eyebrow at the pink-ette's confession. "Right about what?" Yumi asked.

"The superscan," Aelita explained. "Earlier, he said that it wasn't bugged up, that it was working fine. He's right. The superscan, for whatever reason, just reset itself, so all I have to do is properly shut it down before reactivating it..." She typed in the commands to do just that. "And..."

A window popped up on the superscan, a familiar and, at this point, a very welcome sight.

"There we go!" For once, Aelita was finally smiling. Something was going right today. "Activated tower found in the Mountain Sector, 78 degrees South, 19 degrees West."

"Great!" Odd joined in on the little celebration, happening only in their heads. "Now, all we have to do is bring Jérémie here to deactivate it."

Yumi didn't want to rain on the parade, but she had to ask, "But what made it reset itself in the first place?"

Aelita's smile immediately faded. It seemed like she really didn't want to answer that question. "You guys know my theory?" Odd and Yumi both nodded. "Well, I think Jérémie's also right about the reason..."

Odd had the courage to say the actual words out loud, "That the supercomputer keeps getting shut off incorrectly?" Aelita just nodded. "Well, that would explain his heart attack today, and all the ones he admits to having the past two weeks."

"But why?" Yumi asked the crucial question. "Why is the supercomputer just shutting down?"

"I don't know," Aelita solemnly replied. "I'm running a diagnostic scan on the entire system now, not just the superscan, so we'll find out why in a minute."

A minute immediately became a second. Right as she said that, the computer screen suddenly went black, cutting off everything, the holomap projector included.

"What's wrong with this darn supercomputer?!" the pink-ette demanded, slightly slamming down on the keyboard in frustration.

"Let's head downstairs," Yumi suggested. "It's the only way to find out."

"Right, work directly on the hardware."

Fortunately, the elevator was still working (it probably had a different power source than the supercomputer), which told them that the supercomputer was the problem, not because this power grid was malfunctioning throughout the city.

The trio went down two more levels, and in Aelita's opinion, the elevator doors took way too long to open (they didn't; it just felt like it). When they finally did, the trio gasped in shock.

The supercomputer, whose copper panels normally gleamed to show it was running, stood there like a silent black obelisk, completely dead.

"Oh no!" Yumi gasped.

Jérémie was right...

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

"A man enters a pun contest in his local newspaper. He sends in ten puns, hoping at least one of them would win, but unfortunately, no pun in ten did."

Jérémie laughed at Ulrich's one-liner. As it turned out, he really liked jokes based on wordplay. Fortunately for him, Ulrich had plenty, mostly thanks to Odd.

"That's one of Odd's better jokes," Ulrich admitted.

He needed this distraction; they both did. Ulrich had been shaken up since this morning, while Jérémie apparently had a fear of hospitals, despite never being in one before. So, what better way to pass the time until the others returned than to lighten the mood with jokes, good or bad? And it was working.

But Jérémie's laughs were turning into wheezes, the same distressed breathing he was making this morning. His hand was also pressed to his chest where his heart was, as tightly as he could as if that would make the pain go away.

Ulrich's smile immediately fell. This was bringing up bad memories of this morning. "Jérémie, are you okay?"

"No..."

"It's happening again..."

It was more of a statement, a realization, than a question, but Jérémie nodded anyway, cringing through the pain.

"Hold on, I'll get the doctor," Ulrich urged, before rushing out of the room, only to hear low beep of the heart monitor flatlining as he did so.

But he didn't stop on his mission. His friend's life depended on it.

Elsewhere in France, in a forest close by Boulogne-Billancourt, Nanquin collapsed as well, dropping the uranium rod he stole...

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Aelita ran up to the supercomputer and immediately pulled the lever to restart it, but all she got was the sound of the supercomputer trying and failing. It seemed like it wanted to turn on, but it just didn't have the energy to do so.

She tried again, and again, and again. She was not going to give up that easily. This thing being off meant Jérémie was in danger.

Yumi's phone rang, and she answered, she and Odd unable to do anything to help, "Yes, Ulrich?"

"Jérémie's having another attack!" He sounded incredibly panicked, which was understandable given what he had just told her.

She was certain her response just chilled Ulrich to the bone, "We know. We're trying our best to fix it."

The boy on the other end of the line was silent as Aelita frustratingly yelled out, "C'mon! Start up, you stupid computer!" Yumi knew it was because the realization was starting to hit him, what was really going on, what the problem actually was.

She and Odd could only stand there and watch Aelita repeatedly pull that lever, getting increasingly frustrated with every try. There was only one lever, after all.

At last, the supercomputer jolted to life.

"Finally!" the pink-ette exclaimed in relief.

Yumi turned to Ulrich, who had not hung up yet, "Is Jérémie okay?"

"Yes," the German boy breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "His heart is beating again."

At the hospital, Dr. Toussaint watched the heart rate monitor return from the awful flat line back to healthy spikes. He shook his head as he muttered, "In all my years, this is the first time I've ever seen that. It's like the attack never happened." He turned to Dr. Delacre, "Prepare another round of tests. There has to be something we missed."

"Yes, sir." Dr. Delacre then turned to Ulrich, who was hovering by the doorframe, out of the way to give the doctors room to do what they needed to do. "You alright there, son?"

It took a couple of seconds for the brunette to realize the man was talking to him. He offered a weak smile, his phone still in hand and still connected with Yumi's, "I will be."

"Why don't you take a break?" Dr. Delacre gently told him. "Grab some water and food while we run the tests. We'll be done by the time you return. Let's let your friend rest for now."

Ulrich just nodded.

In the forest, Nanquin woke up, his irises flashing with the eye of XANA's. He sat up, quickly regaining his bearings, before picking the uranium rod back up and continuing on to his destination...

Odd had fallen to his knees in relief when Aelita managed to get the supercomputer back up and running. As Yumi reassured Ulrich over the phone, he asked his cousin, "We're doing okay now, right? You fixed it?"

"No," the pink-ette solemnly replied. "We're not out of the woods yet."

She couldn't take her eyes off of the panel indicating the amount of battery this machine still had, how it was blinking with only one bar...

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Jérémie's head was hurting as he opened his eyes. He was still in the hospital, still sick. This wasn't fair; he wanted to leave, to go home. At least his surroundings there were familiar and colorful, rather than the painfully dull off-color white of this place.

He turned his gaze to his right and saw the woman from the Hermitage sitting there, carefully watching him. Despite not knowing who she was, he found himself happy to see her there, to know that she hadn't left.

(Left? Where did she go?)

Since she was watching him closely, she knew when his eyes had opened, that he was awake now. A soft smile on her face, she slowly leaned forward and began stroking his hairline. "How do you feel, mon chéri?"

"My head still hurts," Jérémie found himself replying, his voice indicating that he was still exhausted, despite constantly sleeping lately.

"I'm sorry," she was almost whispering. "The medicine and treatments they're giving you are just not working." She continued to stroke his hairline, which he found pleasant. It always relaxed him. "There's only so much they can do."

(What was wrong with him, though? Why was he sick?)

Someone entered the room. It was the man from the Hermitage.

These two were the couple Jérémie had been seeing in a lot of his nightmares lately, and he wasn't sure why they were important. If only he could remember his nightmares in the first place...

The man immediately sat on Jérémie's other side (the left) the moment he saw the boy's eyes were open. "You're awake! Are you feeling any better? The doctor said it was a rough surgery. They almost lost you. Twice."

Jérémie shook his head, "My head still hurts and I'm still tired..." Nothing was working. Nothing would ever work. He would be sick for the rest of his life, wouldn't he?

(Why did he have no hope left? Why did he need surgery? What was wrong with him?)

"Don't worry," the man's eyes were filled with determination, and Jérémie noticed for the first time that they were an identical blue to his own. "There's still hope. Your pain will all go away soon, we promise."

Jérémie believed him. He felt safe enough in that belief to fall asleep without responding.

But then he woke up again as soon as he closed his eyes. He was in the hospital, staring up at the ceiling, and due to the cold sweat all over his body, he was aware he just had a nightmare. About what? He wasn't sure.

Like always, a black endless abyss was all that came up.

"I'm sorry, son," Dr. Delacre was in here, by the heart monitor with a clipboard in hand. He was obviously in the middle of taking Jérémie's vitals when he woke up. "Did I wake you up?"

"No," Jérémie replied. "I just had a nightmare." He paused, remembering the last memory filed away being Ulrich running off to get a doctor. "Did I...did I have another attack?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Dr. Delacre answered, solemnly. "It was the same deal as last time. Your heart just stopped, until it miraculously started beating again. We ran another series of tests in case we missed anything the first time, but the results were all the same. There's nothing wrong with you."

"And Ulrich?"

"We sent him downstairs to get some food and water," the man explained. "He seemed pretty shaken up. You've been sleeping ever since that last attack, but none of us had the heart to wake you up. You needed the rest." He paused as he finished taking the boy's vitals. As he put the clipboard back on the edge of the bed, he continued, "Your friends are outside, hoping to talk to you. Do you feel up to any visitors right now?"

Jérémie vehemently nodded. There was no way he would ever feel safe alone in a hospital room, not when he was the one in the bed. He hated it, but he didn't know why.

Dr. Delacre offered a gentle smile, "Alright. I'll go and get them."

A couple minutes later, Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd all filed into the room, with Aelita trailing close behind them, but looking she was about to sentence one of her friends to death.

"Jérémie!" Ulrich immediately ran to his side and embraced him in a hug. "I'm so glad you're okay! You had another attack!"

The blonde was solemn as he replied, "I know. I'm sorry." He didn't pry Ulrich off of him; he didn't dare to. "I didn't mean to scare you like that."

Aelita suddenly cut in, "We need to talk, all of us." Jérémie didn't want to push her. At the moment, it looked like she really didn't want to.

But he had a feeling this was important, "Is this about your theory? Were you able to prove it?"

"Yes, and unfortunately, yes."

Ulrich broke the hug and sat down in one of the chairs, as they all quieted down to let Aelita speak, to say what she needed to say.

"The supercomputer's nuclear battery is dying," she revealed, staring at the floor, obviously not wanting to see any of her friends' faces as she broke the news. She forced herself to continue, "If we don't replace it immediately, soon the supercomputer will turn off and stay off."

"So?" Odd asked. "We'll just get another one. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal, Odd," Aelita explained, "is that the supercomputer is not the same as a gaming console. Uranium's kind of hard to come by at your local corner store."

"And Uranium means there's no way we can replace it ourselves," Ulrich finished, sounding like he wanted to punch something. Aelita just nodded.

"Isn't there an emergency backup battery?" Odd asked, trying hard not to give up so quickly. Getting uranium as teenagers would be impossible.

"No. I checked." Aelita sighed. "Running the supercomputer for a little over year now nonstop along with however many Returns to the Past there have been managed to drain the battery faster than anticipated."

"So that was why XANA was so desperate the first take," Yumi quietly realized. "It knew it was dying."

"Definitely," the pink-ette confirmed. "Whatever it wanted from Jérémie, it was making a last ditch effort to obtain it before the end."

The entire room was silent, the only sound being Ulrich angrily stomping his foot against the ground in frustration. Their biggest problem was never confirmed aloud, but it didn't need to be. It was obvious.

XANA was dying, and so was Jérémie, all on account of that miserable virus.

"How long?" was what broke the silence. It was a question that none of them wanted to hear asked aloud, nor hear the answer to. Only for Jérémie to ask it himself.

Because he was basically asking for his own death sentence: 'How much longer do I have left to live?'

The other four immediately turned to him, surprised at his outburst. "Jer–" Yumi attempted.

But the blonde refused to let her speak. "You heard me. How. Long." He had wrapped both arms around himself, either to comfort himself or give himself warmth (it was probably both). Either way, he was refusing to look at any of them, instead staring out the only window in the room.

"I-I'm not sure," Aelita stammered, clearly not wanting to answer him, "but the time between attacks will likely decrease until we can't restart the supercomputer again. My best estimate is...two days...if we're lucky..." She then started shaking her head, as she closed her eyes to prevent the tears from spilling. "I'm sorry. I need some air."

She then bolted out of the room, and Jérémie immediately felt guilty for making her answer his question. Saying it out loud forced her to accept it, whether she wanted to or not...

"Aelita!" Odd called out, moving towards the open door frame.

"Maybe we should...leave her alone for now," Yumi quietly suggested. Odd paused for a moment, before reluctantly nodding.

Ulrich, meanwhile, noticed Jérémie turn away from them, lying on his side as he continued staring intently out of the room's window. He placed a hand on his friend's shoulder and was slightly surprised to see that Jérémie was cold, like physically cold. His skin was almost frozen to the touch.

Worried, he asked, "Jer, are you okay?"

The blonde was quiet for a moment, before quietly answering, "No...", his voice almost in a whisper and trembling. "I'm scared..."

And he had every right to be.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Aelita paced back and forth outside of the hospital. It was around the back, so not much traffic came through here. Here, she had a good deal of privacy. She knew she had to go back to Jérémie's room (Room 213; she would always remember it), but she didn't want to unless she had a solution.

And right now, the only solution was to ask XANA for help. She was nowhere close to finding the anti-virus, and if the AI really was aware that it was dying, then maybe they could convince it to use its currently activated tower in the Mountain Sector to steal a bar of uranium. After all, its life was on the line too.

But what would the others say? If they did that, they'd essentially be helping their enemy. They currently already were by not deactivating that aforementioned tower, by leaving it standing. But it was the only way to save Jérémie...

She had to bring it up at the very least, but they had to decide and act fast. Jérémie didn't have much longer to live.

She turned back to the building, intent on going back inside now, but before she could take even one step, a pair of hands grabbed her from behind, with one hand over her mouth. She gave a muffled scream as she was dragged backward into the surrounding trees of the nearby park.

She fought her best against her attacker's grip and got a glimpse of his face before she was knocked out by a light dose of electricity suddenly moving through her body. Unfortunately, her screams were muffled by the man's hand over her mouth.

It was a bald man with glasses, his face very familiar, as he had been on the news all day today.

But the last thing she saw was the eye of XANA where his irises should've been...

When the pink-haired girl came to, she felt rather sluggish, but it went away the longer she was awake. Once she was alert enough, she quickly studied her surroundings.

She was in the supercomputer room, next to the giant black obelisk that was thankfully still running at the moment. She was slumped against the wall, but not tied up, with her attacker intently watching her.

Pierre Nanquin. Now that she was getting a good look at his face, she knew for sure that's who had attacked her.

"What do you want from me, XANA?" she asked.

The AI moved Nanquin's body in order to point his finger at the cylindrical container filled with a bright green substance that was on the ground and resting against the supercomputer's base. "Repair."

That was...! "Uranium." Exactly what they needed to fix the supercomputer. So that's what XANA had been doing all day. It was indeed using that tower to obtain a bar of uranium. And now, it had kidnapped her to change the battery, because in order to do so, the supercomputer had to be shut off.

And to think, she was just thinking about asking XANA for help when it had kidnapped her itself for the exact same reason. Talk about a common interest...

Hope filled her entire being as she realized that she could save Jérémie now. He would still be able to live.

Her mind made up, she turned back to the AI-possessed Nanquin, "I'll need a hazmat suit."

XANA surprised her by walking towards the nearby wall, pressing Nanquin's hand into it and then letting go. When it did so, a secret compartment opened up. Inside was a closet full of cleaning and repairing supplies, those one would use to maintain a regular computer, including numerous boxes filled with circuit boards. Among all of those, there were three orange-colored hazmat suits, two adult-sized and the third (surprisingly) child-sized.

Despite being taken back by this revelation (seriously, how did she not know this was here?!), Aelita put on a determined expression and immediately got to work.

As she took the child-sized hazmat suit from the closet, she admitted with a smile, "You know, XANA, the next time you need our help, the polite and human thing to do is ask."

It may have been just her imagination, but it seemed like XANA was mildly flustered by her words, as it just puppeteered Nanquin's face to turn away, avoiding eye contact, and reply with, "Just repair."

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Odd was also pacing back and forth, though more out of concern for his cousin than anything else.

"Where is she?" he asked. "It's been thirty minutes!"

"I'm sure she's fine," Ulrich said.

"There's no guarantee of that!" Odd retorted. "What if something's happened to her?"

"Then call her," Yumi offered. "Why are you just pacing?"

Right as Odd reached into his pocket for his phone, however, said phone started ringing. Seeing the caller ID, he quickly answered it, "Aelita! Finally!" A pause. "Speakerphone? Sure, hold on." He took the phone away from his ear and pressed a button. "Alright, go ahead."

"Is everybody in the room?" came the pink-ette's voice.

"We sure are," Ulrich replied, having remained in his seat at Jérémie's bedside, refusing to leave. "What's going on?"

"You guys need to get Jérémie out of the hospital immediately. He's going to have another attack soon."

"How do you know?" Yumi was alarmed.

"Because I'm about to shut down the supercomputer."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ulrich could see Jérémie suddenly freeze up, unable to believe what Aelita just told them.

Odd, meanwhile, was immediately enraged, "We've still got time left, Aelita!"

"We've got more time than you think." There was something in her voice. It was an emotion, indicating that she wanted to cry, but not out of sorrow.

It was hope. She wasn't giving up; she knew something they didn't.

Aelita continued, "Listen up. Pierre Nanquin is under XANA's control. It stole a replacement battery and then kidnapped me to change it, but I have to shut the supercomputer down in order to do so."

"That's right," Yumi realized. "XANA's running on the same time frame as we are."

"'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'," Ulrich quoted.

"Exactly," Aelita replied. "Now, when the computer's shut off, Jérémie's heart will stop, which will bring the doctors in. You guys have to be out of the room by then. Come to the factory, because I don't trust XANA not to kill me using Nanquin once the new battery is in."

"Don't worry, 'Lita," Odd reassured her, he and the others now energized. "We're on it."

"I know. I'm giving you guys ten minutes, but text me when you guys are outside."

"We will," Yumi replied. "But you don't drag your feet either. The doctors say if he keeps having these attacks, Jérémie's heart could be permanently damaged."

"I won't."

Aelita hung up seconds before Mr. Delacre entered the room.

"Hello, Mr. Belpois," the doctor offered a smile, "how are you feeling?"

"I'm fine for now," Jérémie returned the gesture with a smile of his own. "But it is a bit stuffy in here. Do you think my friends could take me outside to the courtyard?"

As Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich tried hard not to smile at Jérémie's cleverness, Dr. Delacre hesitated. But after a few seconds of thinking, he gave it, "Very well, but be careful."

The four were outside within three minutes.

Odd texted Aelita like they promised, and not even a minute later, Jérémie went limp against Yumi's back, her carrying him piggyback. He gave a small choke, before his breathing suddenly halted.

Yumi had almost stumbled out of shock, and would have if Odd and Ulrich weren't behind her, each of them having a hand on the blonde genius's back.

Jérémie was cold to the touch, and Yumi wished hard that Aelita would hurry up and give him his warmth back. Battery or not, the human heart could only take so much abuse or go without oxygen for so long. If the pink-ette took too long, regardless of the supercomputer coming back online, Jérémie may never wake up again.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Once Aelita got the text from Odd a mere three minutes later, telling her that they were on their way now, she texted back her response (a simple 'ok'), before pocketing her phone and linking eyes with XANA-Nanquin as she finally pulled the lever.

Nanquin immediately collapsed, out cold.

Working as quickly as she could, she pressed a button to open the panel hiding the slot for the nuclear battery.

She carefully pulled the spent uranium rod out of the large, completely black machine, ignoring the unconscious Nanquin lying on the ground behind her. She staggered for a moment as she pulled the old battery out of its slot. It was heavy. Grunting from the strain, she set it carefully to the side.

Her first attempt to pick up the new battery wasn't successful. It was even heavier than the empty one. But she wasn't going to give up now.

She readjusted her grip before trying again, slowly lifting it up and moving it into position. Once it was properly lined up, she pushed it in. For a moment, it didn't seem to want to move, but it did, slowly but surely, once she put her full weight into it.

Once it was securely in place, she pressed the button to close the panel.

Her hand hovered over the lever, as she pleaded, "Please...please, let Jérémie still be alive..." before pulling the lever.

The black obelisk immediately came to life, lighting up and the fan whirring, a stark contrast to its unwillingness earlier.

She didn't have much time to relish in her victory, however. As she quickly shrugged off the hazmat suit, Nanquin regained consciousness, his irises flashing with the eye of XANA.

He got to his feet and turned his frightening gaze towards her just as she pressed the up button on the elevator.

Fortunately, the doors closed before Nanquin could even move.

Odd was waiting in the lab when she arrived. The moment the doors swung open to reveal her, he slapped on a playful smile, "My dear Princess, there you are. Mayhaps you would like some protection from the evil man downstairs?"

"Well, y-yeah, that would be nice, but..." she paused, a concerned frown across her features, "Odd, tell me the truth, is he–...?"

Odd's smile never faded. "You want to know so badly, then ask him yourself." He nodded his head towards the computer screen, which was fortunately filled with numerous windows, ready to be used.

Aelita sat down in the chair and slipped on the earpiece, "Jérémie...? Please tell me you're there."

"You're there." There it was. That was his voice alright.

She smiled, tears of joy and relief threatening to fall, "You idiot. Don't use Odd's jokes. You're better than that." She was joking; he knew that.

Odd was filled with too much relief to act offended by that.

Jérémie just chuckled, "Thanks, Aelita. I've never felt better."

"Send Yumi, Jérémie, and me to Lyoko," Ulrich cut in. "It's time to deactivate that darn tower."

"Roger that," Aelita replied, before warming up the virtualization process, Odd watching her do so. "Transfer Jérémie, transfer Yumi, transfer Ulrich." One by one, she selected their ID cards, and watched as their avatars loaded in, "Scanner Jérémie, scanner Yumi, scanner Ulrich." Once they were fully loaded, she pressed the 'enter' key, "Virtualization!"

Three arrows appeared on the holomap, two green and one yellow, in the Mountain Sector.

"You should see the tower from your position," she told them.

"Tower spotted," Yumi confirmed.

As the three arrows began moving down the narrow path, Aelita typed in a couple of codes to bring up, on the monitor, the security camera footage of the supercomputer room to keep track of their visitor to the factory.

To the two cousins' surprise, Pierre Nanquin was just sitting against the wall. He connected eyes with the camera, showing the two that he was still possessed by XANA, before closing them and leaning his head against the wall.

XANA was...waiting...

But for what?

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Ulrich, Yumi, and Jérémie reached the tower, as Aelita warned them, "Be careful. You have two Tarantulas waiting for you."

The trio immediately took cover behind a couple of large boulders, the samurai hiding behind one and the geisha and elf hiding behind the other. All of them leaned to the side to get a better view on their welcoming committee.

Ulrich narrowed his gaze, "Just two? Nothing else? Is this some kind of trick?"

"Aelita, are you sure the Scyphozoa isn't lurking somewhere?" Yumi asked, genuinely concerned, not trusting XANA at all to not turn on them now that it no longer needed them to change the battery.

"I'm sure. It's just two Tarantulas."

"Confirmed," Odd added. "A weird sidenote, but XANA is also not attacking us with Nanquin. It's just making him wait in the supercomputer room."

"Weird, indeed," Yumi commented, before turning to the elf beside her. "Any insight as to what XANA's planning now, Jer?"

"I'm not...sure..." he quietly confessed, keeping his eyes centered on the two monsters in front of the tower. They were just waiting in front of the tower, not kneeling or pointing their front leg lasers at anything or anyone, not taking any motion whatsoever to protect the tower they had been positioned in front of.

"There's nothing in place for an assault," Aelita relayed. "I don't like this."

"I don't like it either," Ulrich muttered.

Jérémie suddenly stepped out from his cover, and this action was immediately met with protests from all sides. "Jérémie!"

"What are you doing?!" Yumi demanded.

"I don't think they're going to attack," Jérémie replied, as he began walking towards the two monsters.

"Did your brain get fried after all those attacks or something?!" Odd raged. "It's probably a trap!"

The elf paused in his tracks, "XANA is probably weak after all the effort it put into this tower's attack. By not going after Odd and Aelita despite them currently being easy targets almost suggests that XANA's...giving us this one."

"And if you're wrong?" Ulrich asked, caution clear in his voice.

"Then I trust you guys to shoot first," was Jérémie's response.

Ulrich and Yumi both hesitated, before Yumi addressed their de facto leader, "Aelita?"

Aelita sighed, "It's worth a shot. I'll keep an eye out for an ambush, just in case."

"Fair enough," Jérémie softly relented, before continuing his trek towards the tower.

Ulrich and Yumi quickly fell in step behind him, and he could hear them unsheathing their respective weapons as they did so.

Jérémie approached the two Tarantulas, and to the others' surprise, the monsters bowed their heads before backing away.

"Holy–!" Yumi cut herself off. "Aelita, XANA's actually letting him pass."

She and Ulrich were completely awestruck as they watched Jérémie phase through the tower wall, without a single shot being fired.

Jérémie didn't find himself in any big rush as he let the data stream carry him from the bottom platform to the top one, or when he approached the center of the second platform. The interface greeted him, and he placed his hand on it. It accepted his handprint.

JEREMIE_

CODE_

LYOKO_

He glanced at the data windows that lined the wall of the tower and watched them all start falling. Once they started doing so, he smiled and relayed to Aelita, "Tower deactivated."

"Return to the past, now," Aelita replied.

From the bottom of the tower, where the screens had fallen to, a white light suddenly flashed to life, before engulfing the entire tower, then all of Lyoko, and eventually, the entire world as well.

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Time rewinded to this morning, yet again. Jérémie, Aelita, Odd, and Ulrich found themselves back in science class, where Ms. Hertz was preparing to hand out the test papers for the third time.

As she did so, she gave her students a reminder, "Now, this test is the conclusion of our study of plant life. After our field trip last week, I asked you all to calculate the yield of the field of corn that we visited. Well, that question is on this test, so I hope you're ready."

However, before she could pass out the papers, two strangers appeared in the open door frame. Everyone recognized the man as Thomas 'TV' Vincent.

"Yes?" Ms. Hertz asked them, being polite out of principle.

TV ignored her and turned to Edna, his microphone, "Give me a panoramic shot of the kids."

As Edna set up the camerawork, many students prepared themselves to look good in hopes of impressing TV, as they knew him as a famous news reporter. But when he looked past them all without paying any of them the slightest attention, their shoulders all sunk in disappointment. Sissi, who was among the group, even looked offended.

Ms. Hertz, running out of patience, cleared her throat, "Ahem! Can I help you?"

"Yes, get out of the shot!" TV rudely replied, ignoring how she huffed at his manners, or lack thereof. He turned to the camera instead, "Do our schools still provide a future for our youth? Faced with the teachers' lax attitudes, we have reason to doubt." He walked up to Jérémie. "To see how bad it's become, all you need to do is pick out a student at random and ask him his grade point average! You, for instance!" He held the microphone out to Jérémie, gesturing that it was his turn to speak.

The blonde in blue calmly replied, "At the moment, I am at 19.87 out of 20."

TV looked at him at shock, while Ms. Hertz beamed proudly. If it weren't for him being bad at phys. ed., Jérémie's GPA would actually be a perfect 20 out of 20.

"Okay, cut!" the man demanded. "That's too high!" Edna cut and rolled take two, rolling her eyes as she did so, "Who here has a below 10 average?"

"No one. Everyone here is passing," Jérémie raised an eyebrow in confusion. Most people would assume he was serious, but his three friends knew he was acting as he rounded on TV in his own way. "Why are you trying to make this school look bad? Do you really have that little faith in teachers?" He leaned in closer to the man, "You can be honest. Were you bullied?"

TV immediately leaned back, stammering out his flustered response, "Stop this nonsense, boy! I ask the questions around here? Now, does anyone here have an average that's less than 10?!"

No one raised their hands, and Ms. Hertz hummed in pride. She knew her students like the back of her hand, and even the not-so-smart students were still passing her class.

"Seriously?!" TV asked. "No one?!"

"Nope," Ms. Hertz replied. "No one. I suggest going to another class and asking them. Now, if you'll excuse me, these students still have a test to take."

TV groaned, "Oh, this cannot be happening! What's with this bunch of–?"

He was cut off by the bell ringing, signaling the end of classes.

As her class cheered, Ms. Hertz accepted defeat, "Very well. You students are lucky to have one extra day to study. But you will take the test tomorrow."

!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!

Yumi practically skipped into the cafeteria, joining her friends in the lunchline as she entered it right behind them. She gave Jérémie a quick, yet tight hug, before grabbing her tray.

"Good news. Pierre Nanquin's transport this morning was successful," she relayed.

Aelita breathed a sigh of relief, "Good. That's one less thing to worry about."

"The superscan has also been fixed," Jérémie added, giving her a smile.

The pink-ette nodded, "That too. Thank goodness."

Behind them, Edna the camerawoman entered the line. As she grabbed a tray herself, she addressed the four whose class she and TV intruded, "Hey, I wanted to apologize for interrupting your class time, especially since you were about to take a test. TV always does that. I swear, he has no regard for other people's personal space."

"It's okay," Ulrich reassured her, with a gentle smile. "It's not your fault." It really wasn't.

"You also gave us an extra day to study," Odd reminded her, grinning. "So we should be thanking you."

Edna merely smiled, "In that case, young man, you're welcome."

Odd was up next, but he barely managed to maintain his grimace when TV cut in the lunch line, just as he did the first take. Rosa rolled her eyes at the lack of manners as she scooped up a small portion of meatballs and gravy on his tray.

"What's with these little mini servings?" TV asked, snapping his fingers in Rosa's direction. "Come on, sweetheart! Be nice and don't be shy! Load up those meatballs I love so much!"

Odd winked at Rosa, wordlessly reminding her what he had told her earlier.

Rosa smirked in response to Odd's wink before sending TV a dry look, "Do you really want it?"

"Of course I do! What, are you deaf, too?" He narrowed his eyes in annoyance. Rosa promptly gave him his extra serving of meatballs, but did so by dumping them on his head. "What the–?"

"Don't worry, TV, sir," Odd quipped, savoring this sweet, sweet revenge. "If you're still hungry, there's seconds."

He began laughing, and his friends immediately joined in on the mirth, with Edna unable to help herself as she giggled too.

Who knew the famous Thomas 'TV' Vincent would be humbled by a little serving of meatballs?

!~~~J~E~R~L~I~T~A~~R~O~L~E~S~W~A~P~~A~U~~~!

Next Episode: 25 - Attack of the Zombies / Hans Klotz, Kadic's psychologist, takes note of Jérémie's high GPA, as XANA takes inspiration from cheesy horror movies.

A/N: For those of you aghast by TV's behavior in this chapter, I'm just going off of what canon showed us. Remember, he was perfectly willing to steal Milly and Tamiya's blanket just to keep warm, and his so-called 'news report', 'documentary', whatever, was just to paint Kadic in a bad light.

Of the two doctors that treat Aelita in the canon episode, only the younger one is named (Delacre). Dr. Toussaint is my name for the elder one. As for the drug they give her at the start, I dug high and low for its name, because I always hear it as 'adrection', but I couldn't find anything else. So I did a bit of research, and I feel pretty confident that they actually meant, if not said, 'adrenaline'. If I am wrong, though, please tell me.

"Mon chéri" is a pet name commonly used in France. It translates to "my dear". Also, lots of lore in this one, and more of XANA's thoughts during the titular dilemma. Secondly, in France, the students' GPA is out of 20, rather than 100, and according to my research, 10 and above is passing.