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
!~~~J~E~R~L~I~T~A~~R~O~L~E~S~W~A~P~~A~U~~~!
"The man is back after years of being missing, and he's on a mission: to defeat XANA once and for all. If that's true, then what's with all the red flags?"
Episode 32: Michel Périn
(Based on Franz Hopper)
Sleeping with your phone pressed to your ear came with the territory of spending the past year and a half fighting an AI hellbent on destroying humanity. So when Yumi's phone vibrated (so as to not wake up her family) in the middle of the night, she stirred awake right away.
Her eyes still closed, she answered with a muttered, "Yes, 'Lita?"
"Sorry, Yumes, but you've gotta get up," the pink-ette sounded supremely stressed. "Come to the factory as soon as you can. The superscan has just picked up an attack from XANA, but with a twist."
"A twist?" Yumi asked, slightly more awake.
"Yeah. Believe it or not, XANA's managed to activate five towers at once!"
The Japanese girl was fully awake now, as she finally sat up in her bed. "What?! I'll be right there!" She then hung up and scrambled out of bed.
Five towers?! Up until now, XANA had only managed to activate one at a time. Jérémie had previously explained it as a possible restriction in its programming, to prevent it from getting too powerful for the creator's control. That actually opened up a completely different can of worms that they would likely get into later once they deciphered Michel Périn's diary, and thus the possible factors that made XANA become self-aware in the first place.
Regardless, five towers at once was just proof that XANA was getting stronger. Unless it was fooling them, because it had done that before, but they'd find out once they got to the lab.
Once Yumi was all dressed, she climbed out of her window and down the cherry blossom tree planted outside. Once her feet were firmly on the ground, she ran as quickly as she could to the factory.
When she arrived, the other four were waiting for her by the elevator, which itself was waiting for them, meaning that Aelita only felt comfortable sending all of them together, tackling one tower at a time.
She slid down the rope, landing safely in front of her friends, "I got here as quickly as I could. You guys weren't waiting too long, were you?"
"Don't worry, Yumi," Ulrich told her. "We just got here."
The five all entered the elevator together, and Aelita pressed the down button, making the door close.
As they were descending, Aelita took a deep breath to steady her nerves before worriedly commenting, "I've got a bad feeling about this one. Five towers at once means XANA has five times the attack power right now, but we haven't been targeted by anything yet."
"That's why we can't wait," Jérémie replied. Yumi took a good look at his expression, and saw that he was tense and stoic. That meant he was all psyched up, ready for whatever XANA had in store for them.
"Relax, Mr. and Mrs. Einstein," Odd reassured them. "We'll take out those five towers in no time."
The elevator finally reached the lab, but when the doors opened, they were surprised that a man was sitting in the chair, typing away. The man was familiar to them, with pale brunette hair and a dark blue turtleneck, crimson pants, a brown trench coat, and black shoes.
The man turned around, revealing his blue eyes, "Ah, there you are. I've been expecting you."
Yumi shared a shocked glance with Ulrich and Odd, as Aelita asked, "Michel Périn?"
He turned his focus back on the computer screen, "So, you do recognize me."
There he was. At last. He was finally in front of them. After almost two years. Took him long enough...
The pink-ette approached the man, suspicious, and asked, "Where have you been? And what are you doing?" She nodded at the screen. For all she knew, he could uploading a virus or bugging up a program or two.
"Isn't it obvious?" the man asked, as if the answer was simple. "I'm deactivating the towers."
A good look at the screen confirmed that. One by one, each of the five towers were turning from red back to the neutral blue.
"Without going to Lyoko?" Ulrich asked, surprised. He didn't even know that was possible. Then again, this guy was Lyoko's creator, so it made sense he'd know more than the five teens did.
"Of course."
Aelita and Jérémie looked back at the other three, both of them looking suspicious. Meanwhile, the fifth and last alert window closed, indicating that all towers had been deactivated. Despite this, Périn continued to type.
"So you created Lyoko," Yumi began, trailing off on purpose.
"I did," the man confessed. "XANA too. I created it to be a program I designed to counter a military project, based on a multi-agent system, but then I lost control of it."
"And what about me?" Jérémie softly asked. Michel Périn, the creator of Lyoko himself, was here in front of him, a once in a lifetime chance. Now he could get answers to the questions that had been plaguing him for so long.
"I created you to be the guardian of Lyoko, an artificial intelligence with my son's appearance, my way of remembering him, you could say."
"So your son...is dead?" Aelita asked.
"Yes. I implanted his memories into Jérémie here to keep him alive, in a way," Périn explained, looking solemn. "But I never thought I'd see him one day in flesh and blood."
That made sense, Jérémie supposed, and certainly explained why he had the son's memories locked away. So, he wasn't a real human being, after all, but an AI just as complex as XANA, like Aelita had initially assumed. Things weren't adding up, but he filed that away for later.
"So where have you been for the past few years?" Ulrich asked, unable to keep the skepticism out of his voice. "We could've used your help a couple times." It was hard to believe that this man, who had admitted to creating XANA, would let his own creation to run free for so long—for almost two years now.
Périn got oddly cagey as he answered, "My apologies. Let's just say I was a sort of...prisoner who finally managed to escape. As Sophie would say, XANA locks the door but leaves the window wide open."
Why did he say his wife's name as if he despised her...?
"That's all I wish to say on the subject," the man continued. "I don't want XANA to overhear. For now, we must focus on destroying XANA once and for all."
"We'd love to," Aelita admitted, "but it's given Jérémie a bug. If we switch the supercomputer off, then he switches off too."
"In that case, our top priority must be the anti-virus," Périn replied. "Though, I must warn you, the connection could be proof that Jérémie was never meant to leave Lyoko. In that case, then we must focus on destroying XANA first and foremost."
Aelita didn't want to believe that. If Périn was right, if Jérémie really was an AI and not human, then he was a very convincing human.
Seeing the pink-ette's reluctance to accept that hard truth, Yumi offered, "Let's go with the anti-virus first, just to make sure."
Périn seemed to understand that, "As you wish. No matter what you choose, defeating XANA for good, and paying for my mistakes," he said that with a strange hint of glee, "is why I am here. The fight has gone on long enough, wouldn't you agree?"
Despite their growing suspicions, no one protested to that fact.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Périn had told them all to go back to sleep; he could handle the work on his own. No one could deny that possibility, given how he had created Lyoko, so they agreed. Besides, sleep was very tempting right now.
That was why Yumi went straight home, and Ulrich and Odd went on ahead back to the dorms. Jérémie and Aelita, on the other hand, had lagged behind, both of their heads spinning with the revelation they had been given.
"I suppose, in a way, he is my father," Jérémie softly admitted, both of them referring to Michel Périn. "He's the one who created me, after all. But it's strange that he was so detached when talking to me. I guess I remind him of his son a little too well."
"Yeah. Grief tends to turn you into a different person, especially if you're a grieving parent," Aelita replied, her voice just as quiet, since the two were on campus, approaching the dormitories, late at night. "In any case, you being modeled after his son, as well as you having that son's memories, does explain a few things. Like the nightmares, for example."
"Yeah..."
He trailed off, looking not very reassured, and she noticed. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," he shot her an obviously fake smile. "I was just hoping for confirmation that I was in fact a human being, rather than an AI modeled after one."
Aelita inwardly cringed, remembering how quickly Jérémie accepted the fact that the coding on his digital profile indicated that he was a human being like his friends. It made sense, because back then, he didn't have many worries as the AI on Lyoko whose job it was to keep XANA in check. But when he finally got to Earth, he suddenly had many more things to worry about.
So for him to suddenly be told that he was actually an AI the whole time, it was understandably devastating to hear and difficult to accept.
By now, the two had reached the dormitory building.
As they climbed the stairs, Aelita asked, "Can I tell you a secret?"
"Sure."
She took a deep breath, her nerves still feeling jumpy, "I don't trust Périn, and I'm not sure why. Something about him just rubs me the wrong way."
"It could be that you just don't want to accept the fact that I'm not actually a human like you."
"I don't think that's it," she replied. "It may be because of him showing up without warning and just in time to be a hero and deactivate all five of those towers without breaking a sweat, or because he was weirdly closed off with his explanation of his whereabouts the past few years and how he escaped, or maybe even because of the lack of mentions of Sophie when we know for a fact that she was a lot more involved with Lyoko than we initially believed."
Aelita had a point, Jérémie admitted. Sophie Périn was the one who had invented the neuronal headset, after all.
The two reached the second floor—the boys' floor—and stopped. Jérémie placed a hand on the door handle, but he didn't open the door. He instead turned around and quietly told the pink-ette, "They could be red flags, but they could also be because of trauma. Let's not jump to conclusions just yet." She nodded in acceptance. He continued, "If Michel is indeed who he says he is, then we're very lucky to have found such a skilled ally."
She nodded once more, unable to deny that.
Jérémie opened the door, and she softly called out to him before he could walk away, "You know, Jérémie, human or AI, I don't care. You're still human to me."
The blonde warmly smiled at her in return, an expression filled with love and gratitude. "Good night, Aelita."
"Good night, Jérémie."
He then went through the door, softly closing it behind him, before Aelita climbed up to the third floor, where her own dorm was located.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
The next morning, Aelita woke up to her phone ringing. She found herself in her bed, still in her day clothes (minus her boots). She was confused until she remembered that she was so tired last night that she had decided to forego pajamas and just snooze.
Speaking of snooze, she looked at her alarm clock and saw that it was 6:59 AM, one minute away from her alarm going off. She answered the call, "Hello?", as she quickly silenced her alarm before it could go off.
"Aelita?"
It was a male's voice, and her mind still being groggy, she asked, "Michel?"
The man chuckled, "No, angel. It's me, your father."
"And mother!" a woman's voice chimed in. Both of them sounded happy. "You know what day it is, right?"
Aelita stood up from her bed and wandered over to her calendar. Of course, her parents were calling her for a specific reason. It was 16 June!
She smiled, "I think I have an idea, but remind me anyways."
Waldo and Anthea both exclaimed simultaneously, "Happy birthday, angel!", as her door quietly opened and in poured her four friends, all of them wearing big and broad smiles. Odd was also hiding something behind his back.
Today was 16 June, 2007, her 16th birthday.
She held a finger up to her friends, a motion for them to wait, before pointing to her phone, "Thanks for the birthday wishes, but I have to go now. My friends are here, and they clearly want something."
"Okay," Waldo replied. "Enjoy yourself today. Our gift will be arriving by mail some time this week."
"I'll be on the lookout for it," she reassured her parents. "Love you. I'll call you later. Bye." She then hung up and turned her attention to her friends, who were patiently waiting. Although, judging by Odd's fidgeting, they were getting kind of antsy. "Now, you four may speak."
"Okay, okay, your highness," Odd joked, before the four all spoke simultaneously.
"Happy birthday, Aelita!"
She smiled, "Thanks guys." Thank goodness her parents and friends had remembered. With all the craziness with XANA, the anti-virus, recently Jérémie's strange visions, and now Michel, it had slipped her mind.
Jérémie pressed a kiss to her cheek, "You're welcome."
Odd stepped forward, holding out a crudely-wrapped, flat rectangular-shaped present, "Here. Our gift to you."
Aelita's smile was wide as she took the present from her cousin.
"What are you waiting for? Go on and open it," Ulrich encouraged her. Odd chuckled with anticipation as Aelita unwrapped the gift.
It was a sketch of the five of them all laughing and smiling together, with the Odd in the drawing also holding Kiwi. It was yet another symbol of their friendship, evidence of how close the five of them really were.
"Thanks, guys. It's great!" she exclaimed.
"You're welcome," her cousin replied, crossing his arms with pride. "I drew it from memory. I even stayed up late last night to make sure it was done."
"So you can imagine how much effort it took," Ulrich joked.
The others began to chuckle, even Odd himself.
"It's perfect," the pink-ette said. "Hey, how about going over to the factory now? Let's see how Michel is doing."
The others were reluctant, but they eventually all nodded in agreement. In the pit of their stomachs, they all had a bad feeling about him, but it was a healthy thing. Given XANA's track record, it never hurt to be cautious.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
"You use the scanners to virtualize human beings?" Michel asked in surprise.
Aelita raised an eyebrow in confusion at his question, "Well, yes. It's the only way we can deactivate towers on Lyoko. It's our main method of fighting it."
"The virtualization process was not yet ready for that when I was taken prisoner," Périn explained. "We had never tested it on a human being before. It's a very dangerous procedure with serious side-effects."
"Such as?" Yumi asked. Other than the all-too familiar pins and needles when virtualized, there was no physical effects that suggested something was wrong with the process. All five of them had been using those scanners for almost two years now. Surely, if there was a problem, they would've caught it by now, right?
"Cellular degeneration..." Michel revealed.
None of them liked the sound of that, not even Odd, who asked amidst his own confusion, "W-What is that?"
"Cancer," Jérémie coldly answered. The other four took a look at his expression and were immediately surprised to see him trembling with anger. "That is a lie, Périn, and you know it!"
He took a step towards the man, who immediately and visibly flinched. Aelita quickly stepped in and held Jérémie back. She didn't know if Jérémie was actually going to punch this man, but she personally did not want to find out.
"Take it easy," she quietly told him. "If what he's saying is true, then it's better to catch it now."
"He won't find anything," Jérémie growled through gritted teeth, not taking his fiery gaze off of Périn.
"Maybe, maybe not," she softly replied. "Just let him check. It can't hurt."
Jérémie's cheeks puffed out in annoyance, before he finally relented, "Fine."
The two Einsteins carefully watched the screen as Michel scanned the other three.
"Odd seems okay," the man relayed the results to them. "Ulrich, too. But Yumi..." Said girl's ID card began sounding an alarm.
Jérémie covered his mouth in horror, as Aelita just stood there numb.
It couldn't be...
How did her own scans not show this sooner?
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Michel had sent the five back to school (it was still a Saturday, after all), right after he had strongly implied Yumi's diagnosis to be terminal. It was as if he wanted them to stew in this news all day. They were now seated in the courtyard, on a bench beneath a tree.
Yumi was trying hard not to cry, "I can't believe it. What a nightmare!" She could feel a sort of phantom pain in her head now, ever since Michel had broken the news to them.
"Nice one, Miss Einstein," Odd retorted to his cousin. "Dr. Shrank transplants animal limbs onto human beings, but compared to you, he's small time!"
"How is this my fault?!" she demanded. "I've been keeping track of all of our scans since Yumi first brought up her concerns about the scanners causing health issues almost two years ago! And the last time I checked, all five of us were clean!"
"The least you can say is 'sorry', Aelita," Ulrich told her, in disbelief and anger. "But unfortunately, even that won't cure Yumi."
"I'm going to double-check my readings," the pink-ette vowed. "If it's true, I'll find a cure. I promise."
Yumi stood up. "Just leave me alone, Aelita. I need to be by myself." The pink-ette relented, knowing the elder was likely scared, hurt, and resentful. "You coming, Ulrich?" Resentful of Aelita, that is.
She then walked away, and Ulrich followed her after sending Aelita a death glare.
Jérémie, meanwhile, remained silent, only moving to send Aelita a concerned glance.
The others' anger, he felt, was misplaced. If any blame was to be given out, it should all go to Michel Périn. After all, he was the one who built the scanners in the first place.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
The silent treatment continued on until dinner. Tension was still in the air, as Aelita repeatedly stabbed a meatball on her tray with her fork, her appetite currently missing.
Odd finally broke it, "Okay, say there is hope for Yumi," addressing his cousin. "We don't even know what exactly is wrong with her."
To Jérémie, it felt as though Odd's anger towards this whole thing had subsided. Or at least, he was no longer blaming Aelita or choosing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
"There's nothing wrong with her," Jérémie found himself snapping.
"If there is," Aelita solemnly replied, "then the scanners would tell us. Although...given how the scan results I've been saving don't show anything...that means nothing..."
"So you admit," Ulrich coldly cut in, "it is your fault."
Odd shot him a glare, "No, she didn't!"
"Michel possibly knows more ins and outs of the supercomputer than I do," Aelita muttered. "If he is who he says he is, then it makes sense, and he'd obviously know how to read the results with more thoroughness than I do."
"So is there hope for Yumi?" Odd asked, his concern for his friend clear in his face.
The pink-ette took a deep shaky breath, "I–...I don't know. I need more information. Tomorrow, I'm going to ask Michel for help."
"I think you've gone enough damage as it is," Ulrich coldly retorted.
"So, you think," Aelita met his glare with one of her own, "that everything is my fault? And has been from the start?!"
"Isn't it obvious? You're the brains of this outfit," the brunette reminded her.
Aelita simply huffed before standing up and left the table, her tray in hand, and soon after, the cafeteria.
Jérémie gave Ulrich a look of disapproval, as he grabbed his own tray and stood up. "Without Aelita and the scanners," he growled at the brunette, "I wouldn't be standing here in front of you! Don't forget that, Stern!"
He then left as well, clearly following after Aelita.
Odd leaned in towards his roommate and hissed, "Calm your jets, Romeo. Saving Yumi's life takes precedence over debating who to place the blame on. So grow up, you jerk!"
He then also stood up, his own tray in hand, leaving Ulrich alone at the table, his mouth hanging open in shock.
On his way out of the cafeteria, Odd rant into Rosa, who noticed that his place was barely touched. That itself was a testament to how upset he was.
"You're not eating today, Odd?" she asked, in mild surprise. "You're going to stay all scrawny..."
The response was automatic, "I'm not scrawny, I'm–..." He sighed. "I'm just not hungry today."
He then left the cafeteria as well.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Takeho took a bite out of his noodles, slurping them down. Akiko and Hiroki were also eating away without any worries, but Yumi just stared into her bowl. Her life had just fallen apart (or at least, it felt like it), and her family did not know that.
Her mother noticed, "Yumi, are you okay?" On the woman's face was a concerned expression.
The girl weakly smiled, "I'm...not very hungry tonight." She was about to say that she was fine, but decided not to. She was clearly not okay.
She couldn't bring herself to tell her family the bad news. There was no guarantee that they wouldn't overreact.
Hiroki began to laugh at her. "Oh, Ulrich, I wuuuv youuuu!" He teased.
Akiko shot him a stern look, "Hiroki, shush!"
"Thank you for the meal," Yumi quietly told her family, "but I'm tired. I'm going to bed now."
She then walked off, not hearing her parents say the following:
Akiko sighed, "That's it, then. We're in the thick of it now."
"Of what?" Takeho asked in confusion.
"A teenage crisis."
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
That night was pure agony for all five teens.
Aelita was typing away at her computer, looking for anything that would help her find or develop a cure for her friend. She had turned her birthday gift around so that it wasn't facing her. She couldn't look at any of their faces, not until she made things right...
Jérémie just tossed and turned in his bed, unable to sleep. And it wasn't the owl that was hooting outside his window that was at fault.
Odd and Ulrich were wide awake, with their backs turned to each other. Kiwi, on the other hand, was snoring away. Despite their argument earlier, both boys were jealous that the dog had so little worries that it had no issues falling asleep.
Yumi laid on her bed, staring out the window. Honestly, she was starting to understand why Jérémie did that so often—it was reminding her that there was a whole other world out there than besides what was going on inside her own head. It prevented her from getting too lost.
Her reverie was broken by her phone ringing. She took her time picking up, not wanting to talk to anyone right now. "Hello?"
"Yumi, it's Michel. I have some good news. Tell the others to meet me first thing tomorrow at the factory."
"Okay, we'll be there."
He hung up, allowing her to resume her pensive thoughts.
Her phone rang again, and once again, she took her time answering, "Hello?"
"It's Jérémie," came the response. "Listen, Aelita and I know the truth, and we have proof."
"I don't feel like hearing any excuses," she warned.
"They're not excuses. I promise," he told her. "Hear us out, at least, before you make your choice."
Something finally returned to her mind, a shred of logic that made her feel better. Jérémie's outbursts to certain things from Michel Périn's past and research were things the group had collectively agreed to pay attention to. Despite the boy unable to remember the reason he reacted the way did, he was usually right.
'That is a lie, Périn, and you know it!'
But then again, Michel Périn created Lyoko, and Périn himself had revealed that Jérémie was just an AI modeled after the man's deceased son, so what did Jérémie know?
Yet Jérémie did sound like he was being honest, and in his voice was an immense amount of earnesty.
In that moment, she made her choice...
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
The next morning, when the group arrived at the lab, the tension between the group finally boiled over.
"I now know how to program the anti-virus," Périn said as soon as they stepped inside the lab from the elevator. "We're very close to freeing Jérémie. All I need now is data from Sector Five."
"Great!" Jérémie replied with great relief. "We'll go and get it, then."
Aelita, meanwhile, hung back by the elevator, her arms crossed. Her four friends were gathered around the monitor, all smiling widely despite the bad news they received yesterday. She slowly approached them, however, with, "I thought the scanners were too dangerous for human use."
"If we want to get to Sector Five, then we have no choice," Périn replied, without turning around to look at her.
"Right! It'll be our final mission!" Odd declared. "Our farewell performance, you could say!"
"I suppose you do have a point, Mr. Michel," Aelita said. "In that case, I'm staying with you in the lab to make sure the others' health doesn't get worse."
"If I were you, I'd stay out of the way," was Périn's immediate response, filled with a level of hostility the teens had never seen from him before.
To Aelita, this was the last straw, as she cried, "It's not fair! Why is everyone blaming me for everything?! You guys could've backed out at any time, and yet you haven't! And now you all would rather believe the words of a complete stranger over your own friend!"
"That was before we found out about the scanners," Yumi coldly replied. "You should've known they were dangerous. I even warned you, but did you ever take my concerns seriously? Obviously not." The glares on Odd and Ulrich's faces told Aelita that they agreed with Yumi, one-hundred percent.
Périn turned to address the pink-ette fully. "They're right. You're the one who played sorcerer's apprentice. You're the one who put your friends' lives at risk, time and time again. And you're the one who let XANA destroy my diary!"
"Fine," she growled. If the others didn't want to give her the benefit of the doubt, if they didn't want her here, then there was no point in staying. "I get it." She then stormed off to the elevator.
"Aelita, wait!" Jérémie immediately ran after her, but she closed the elevator doors before he could reach her. He paused there for a moment, taking in what had just happened, before turning around to face the other three.
Périn had turned back towards the monitor, while his three supposed friends were just standing there with their arms crossed and angry expressions on their faces. He shot them all glares of shame, which seemed to work.
The man seated at the computer paid no attention to this, "Well, shall we?"
"No!" was Jérémie's immediate response, and it caused Périn to turn around in surprise. "I told you that the scanners don't cause cancer! I don't know how I'm aware that's a lie, but it is! You may have created me, but Aelita was the one who brought me here to Earth!" By this time, he was trembling with anger and despair. "I'm not getting inside any of those scanners, not while you're the one at the keyboard!"
That certainly caught Périn's attention, as he replied in shock, "You can't do that, Jérémie!"
"I'd rather have her at the controls than you!" And he meant it. Until the end of time.
A very close look at Périn revealed him to also be shaking with anger. However, the other three teens stepped towards Jérémie, with Yumi wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulder.
"We know you don't trust Michel," she told him, calmly and reassuringly, "but do you still trust us?"
"Call Aelita back here and apologize," he promptly replied, almost in a growl. "Then, we'll talk."
"We will," Ulrich promised. "When all this is over."
Périn couldn't see the expressions on any of their faces, but he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when Jérémie finally relented, "Fine. But I'm holding all three of you to that."
"We know," was Odd's response.
The four then turned back to Périn, though Jérémie was still glaring at the man. "We're ready, Michel," Yumi said.
"Good. Then let's begin. The sooner we get that information, the sooner we can shut down XANA."
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Aelita was still fuming as she returned to her dorm. Seeing how angry she was, it was understandable why her classmates were staying away from her. She obviously wanted to be alone.
That was why when her phone started ringing, she answered by snapping, "What?!"
"Aelita?" It was her father, Waldo. It was here that Aelita realized that she had promised to call her parents back yesterday, but never did. "I've never heard you that angry before. Are you alright?"
She immediately paused, and took a deep breath to calm herself, "I–..." Relax, Schaeffer, she told herself. You can still fix things. "I'm fine, just frustrated." Her father deserved an answer, though.
"About what?"
"W-Well..." She couldn't tell her dad the truth, at least not the specific details. "There's this guy who's visiting Kadic, and he's taken a real liking to our group, but he tends to tell lies to fit in. The catch is that I'm the only one who knows he's lying; my friends don't believe me."
Waldo took a deep breath, "I don't envy your position, angel, but I do know that the truth always has to come out sometime. And if you're the only one who knows what that truth is, then it falls on you to reveal it."
That made sense.
"I know. It's just hard when you know you're by yourself."
"But you're not. If you and your friends are as close as you say you are, they'll believe you." Those were surprising words coming from her father, who was usually stoic and scientific. Advice like this usually came from her mother.
Then again, maybe her pain and frustration was just that obvious.
A door suddenly opened on what must've been her father's end, given how Aelita herself was still in the courtyard, still heading towards the dorm building. "You got a hold of Aelita?" Of course, her mother was home; she usually worked the night shift after all. "Are you okay, angel? You didn't call back yesterday."
"I'm fine, Maman. I was just frustrated about something. I'll let Papa tell you all about it," on her face was a smile. Finally. "Right now, I need figure out how to save my friends from a dirty liar. I love you both." She then hung up as she entered the dorm building.
She could always leave it to her parents to cheer her up. However late and busy their hours were, they would always be on her side.
She went straight to her room on the third floor. Rather than her computer, however, she marched straight to her closet, at the bottom of which was the dinged up case with the initials 'M.S.J.'. She placed the case on her bed and opened it, staring hard at the destroyed CDs.
'And you're the one who let XANA destroy my diary!'
But on her face was a gleeful expression.
"You gave yourself away..."
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
"Virtualization."
Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi dropped from the sky to the rotating ground of Sector Five. While Odd immediately tensed up, the other two looked around at their surroundings with surprise.
"Hey!" Ulrich exclaimed. "We've arrived directly in Sector Five!"
They didn't even know this was possible. Before this moment, they would have to travel to the very edge of one of the four surface sectors and the one in the lab would have to type in the password 'SCIPIO', which was the only way to summon the Transporter.
"Of course," Périn replied. "There's a direct access that only I know about, understandably. The Transporter's a little...outdated."
As the wall spun, Odd's world had turned sepia-toned, as his mind showed him the cruel image of the fearsome Scyphozoa releasing his blue elf friend, having finally retrieved what its AI overlord was after.
"Odd!" He was brought back to reality by Ulrich shaking his shoulder, with Yumi on the cat boy's other side, both of them concerned. "You okay?" his roommate asked.
"Yeah! I-I'm fine," he faked a smile. "I'm just hungry. I didn't get to eat breakfast." Truth; he had no appetite. Odd addressed Périn next, "Hey, Michel, are you sure Jérémie can't come with us?"
A wave of understanding immediately came across the duo's eyes. Odd had received a Future Flash that concerned him—one about Jérémie, the one person the Lyokowarriors always protected with their very lives.
"I'm sure," the man replied. "It's safer for him if you three clean up first before I send him over."
"Don't worry, Odd," Yumi reassured the boy. "You can eat later." It was code—all three knew that—to reassure the purple cat that everything would be fine.
He sighed, "Okay," as the wall opened up, revealing the path.
"The countdown has begun," Périn warned them. "Hurry and clean up, and then I'll send Jérémie to you once the coast is clear."
"Alright," Ulrich called out, before leading the way down the open pathway.
When they reached the core zone, they were greeted by more than a 'few' Creepers. They had faced large numbers of monsters before, but never in Sector Five. At least a dozen Creepers were waiting for them, all growling at the trio.
The three teens halted to an immediate stop, gasping at the sight.
"Uh, Michel?" Odd said. "We don't mind cleaning up, but we're gonna need some industrial strength detergent for this!"
"XANA must be aware that it's close to the end, and we all know it won't go down quietly. But there's no problem. I've reprogrammed each of your weapons."
Odd looked over his paws, before looking over at Ulrich and Yumi as they pulled out their respective weapons. "Sorry, but I don't see what's new about this," he replied. Everything seemed normal.
The purple cat then fired an Arrow at the Creeper about to attack, only for said Arrow to destroy one Creeper before flying up towards one up on a higher platform and destroying it, and then gliding through the air and taking out a third monster behind him.
He cheered, "Cool! Homing darts!"
A Creeper fired at him, and he managed to dodge it before firing another Arrow. It soared to a Creeper on the platform above the trio, before zipping past Odd and hitting two more Creepers behind him.
Ulrich raised his katana and white energy began to charge up. Once his weapon was glowing, he swung it, causing a wave of energy to slice through the two Creepers in front of him. "Wow..." He stared at his katana in awe.
Yumi threw her fan, watching it fly around much like Odd's Laser Arrows, homing around to slice through three Creepers before it returned to her.
It made sense for Michel Périn to know how to upgrade weapons, being the creator of Lyoko. So, Aelita was correct in that fact that he would know how to better read the supercomputer's data than her.
Ulrich, meanwhile, had spotted the key mechanism high up on the wall in front of them, and he used Super Sprint to run up to said wall.
Odd fired a couple more Arrows as Yumi landed in front of him and threw her fans, destroying two more Creepers.
The samurai swung his katana again, getting rid of the duo of Creepers protecting the key with his new Energy Slash, before jumping up with Super Sprint, and hitting the key in no time flat. He landed as the door opened on his left.
"Well done, Ulrich," came Périn's voice.
The door leading back to the Arena closed as the remaining Creepers continued to fire. Yumi, however, studied her nails as she blocked all shots with a single fan.
Odd landed next to her and aimed his paw at the Creeper before choosing to fire his next Arrow into the air. It glided and before hitting the remaining two Creepers from behind.
No more enemies remained, but the virtual equivalent of adrenaline was still pumping through Odd's systems. "It's almost too easy! I want more Creepers!"
"Don't worry, Odd," Périn reassured him. "It's not over yet. I've got more surprises in store for you all."
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
"Jérémie, are you ready for virtualization?"
Périn's question brought the blonde out of his reverie. He had been waiting in the scanner room for a few minutes now, debating whether or not to just leave. No one was around to stop him and he wanted to make sure Aelita was okay. He trusted her at the controls the most, after all, and he did not want to complete this 'final mission' without her. It didn't feel right.
Whether Michel Périn despised her or not, he could not deny that, as the one who turned the supercomputer back on, Aelita deserved to fulfill her promise to free Jérémie from the supercomputer before turning it off.
But it was too late now.
"Yes, I'm ready," he softly replied, as one of the scanners opened its doors.
Behind him, the elevator doors also opened. He turned around to see who had just arrived, and he immediately smiled when he saw a familiar head of pink hair, her laptop underneath her arm.
"Ae–!"
She cut him with a finger to her lips, "Shhh..." She then handed him her laptop before whispering in his ear, "It's go time."
Understanding, he nodded, now determined.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Périn pressed the 'enter' key the moment Jérémie's ID was fully loaded. The holomap read that the boy had been transferred to a different sector than his friends, however.
"Yumi? Ulrich? Odd?" the man heard Jérémie asked, his yellow arrow showing him glancing around. "Um, Michel? I'm not in Sector Five. What's going on?"
More specifically, he was in the Desert Sector, having landed on a very small, very isolated plateau. He was alone, exactly what Périn wanted.
"Don't worry," Périn replied. "Everything's under control." Of course it was. He was in charge, after all, having gotten rid of his primary competition earlier.
The elevators opened in that moment. Speak of the devil...
"Aelita. What are you doing here?" he was cold. He thought he'd made it clear that she was not welcome here. So what had possessed her to come back?
"I just came to see how you're managing," the pink-ette shrugged as she approached him, "XANA." She was sending him a glare now.
Périn turned around to face her, finally revealing the eye of XANA that had replaced his irises. "What gave me away?" His voice was doubled with a robotic tone—a clear sign that it was actually XANA.
Aelita's mind went back to earlier this morning, when Yumi had arrived early at Aelita's dorm to take them all to the lab like Périn had asked her to do.
The Japanese girl was somewhat surprised to see Ulrich and Odd already there by the time she reached the pink-ette's dorm. She had chosen to hear Aelita and Jérémie out, and it seemed as though Ulrich and Odd were given the same choice.
As she closed the door behind her, Yumi asked, "You two said you had proof of the truth?"
"Yeah, that's why we're here, too," Ulrich admitted. "But whether or not we believe you is a different matter altogether."
"We know," Aelita confessed. She was sitting at her computer, though turned around in her seat. "Thank you for at least hearing me out." She then turned to her monitor and opened up the Lyoko folder on her desktop. In it, she then opened yet another folder titled 'Health Scans'. In that folder were five more, each labeled with a different person's name. But not just any names.
Their names—Aelita, Jérémie, Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd.
The folders were also clearly shown to have all been updated last night around midnight or so.
"What are these?" Odd asked.
"These are our bioschematics that the supercomputer records during every single one of our virtualizations, devirtualizations, and materializations," Aelita explained.
She then opened up Yumi's folder and brought up an overall results page (the asset that had been updated last night), one that was interactive via the time bar at the bottom that you could adjust to simulate time dilation.
The pink-ette set the bar towards the beginning (marked around two and a half years), "This is Yumi's health when she first started using the scanners." The Yumi wireframe was all clear. Small red spots appeared on her torso, arms, and legs as Aelita slowly moved the bar forward, but the spots were all random and none of them stuck for more than a split second (an hour, in real time).
"What are those spots?" Ulrich pointed them out.
"Where you were devirtualized at the time," Jérémie replied.
"You mean the spot where the laser that sent us back to Earth hit us?" Odd asked.
Jérémie nodded, as Aelita answered, "Yes. According to the scans, it's where your blood is rushing to because your brain knows you've been hit there."
"But the damage is virtual," Ulrich reminded her.
"Exactly," Aelita continued. "So the scans just record it as adrenaline, you could say. The proper explanation is supremely long and very boring, but that's the gist of it. Jérémie and I have also programmed cell degeneration to show up here as completely black spots."
The time bar on Yumi's avatar slowly but finally reached the end, with the last time Yumi remembered being virtualized showing on the screen next to her wireframe.
And not once did a black spot show anywhere on the avatar.
"I'm clean..." Yumi muttered. "I'm fine..."
The pink-ette then brought up the other four overall results pages from her, Ulrich, Odd, and Jérémie's folders. The time bars on those also showed, from start to the most recent visit, no single black spot on any of the wireframes.
"We all are," Aelita continued, earnesty showing clearly on her face. "None of our scans show any sign of cell degeneration whatsoever. I've been keeping track this whole time, ever since Yumi first brought up her concerns. In fact, that's why the supercomputer has an hour-long cooldown period. Whether you're devirtualized—as in sent back by force—or materialized—as in I bring you back—you cannot be sent back to Lyoko until the supercomputer recharges your avatar, which usually takes about an hour. The entire system was designed specifically to prevent any health problems, even cure them if the scanners are set up properly."
"In other words, Jérémie was right," Ulrich replied. "The scanners don't cause cancer." Said genius could only solemnly nod, looking as if he'd like to yell but was holding back.
"Yeah," the pink-ette replied. "Actually, his heated proclamation is what led me to double-check these scans in the first place." She turned to the eldest of them, "Yumi, you have every right to freak out—cancer of any kind is no joke—but my scans indicate that you are perfectly healthy. We all are."
Yumi wanted to cry tears of relief, and it showed on her face. "Thank goodness," she muttered. "I'd never been so scared in my life...that Michel Périn."
"That false Michel Périn," Aelita corrected. "I could be wrong, but I suspect that the real one is still trapped on Lyoko somewhere."
"Of course," Odd realized. "XANA's pulled this trick on us before, first with that Ulrich clone, then that Simulation Bubble, and more recently with that poly-dorking clone."
"Polymorphic," his cousin corrected yet again. "But yes. Whether it's XANA or not, either way, Périn is certainly not who he says he is."
"How do we prove it is XANA?" Ulrich asked.
"Aelita and I have theorized that, if XANA is behind this like we're assuming," Jérémie replied, "then it's likely using a tower that the superscan is not programmed to pick up."
"To hide it from us," Yumi realized.
"Exactly," Aelita said. "And the only way that's possible is if it created a new tower. Unless XANA managed to crack that firewall that also hides Michel Périn's diary specifically to keep it safe, then our only option is to, unfortunately, go along with its plot."
"But its plot is likely to send us to Lyoko and make it so we're permanently deleted if we lose all of our lifepoints," Odd admitted, "and send Jérémie, whose hanging back for 'his safety', to a completely different sector so we can't interfere with the Scyphozoa. All while we've apparently ostracized Aelita, convinced that Michel Périn is better than her, making it so she's unlikely to come back and save us."
The mentioned pink-ette smirked, "Glad you guys caught on so fast. I know it's a trap, but we need to find that tower, and right now, the scanners are being constantly monitored by Périn. We don't really have a choice."
"I can use a laptop to create a decoy of myself," Jérémie offered. "As long as that laptop is connected to the supercomputer, of course. We'd have to bring it in discretely though, or Périn might become suspicious."
"Then, let's give him exactly what he wants," Aelita suggested. "It's obvious he wants us to have a fall-out where you guys drive me away from the group."
"And when you storm out, it'll fool Périn into thinking he's succeeded," Odd continued, "when in reality, you're really just heading to your room to get your laptop for Jérémie."
"Exactly."
"Sounds like a plan," Jérémie agreed.
"We'd still be taking a massive risk," Yumi sounded hesitant.
"Do you guys trust me?" Aelita asked.
A pause, before Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd all nodded.
The pink-ette smiled, "Good. But you guys can apologize once this is over." The other three shut their mouths, about to do just that. "The fallout needs to be believable, after all."
But Aelita didn't share any of this. She only replied with, "The real Michel Périn wouldn't know that his diary was destroyed, much less who destroyed it or allowed it to be destroyed."
'And you're the one who let XANA destroy my diary!'
Thanks to that, she was definitely sure it was XANA behind this Michel Périn mask.
XANA-Périn, in response, just raised his hand and send a jolt of electricity at her. She was knocked back into the wall behind her.
Her entire body was in pain as XANA-Périn told her, "You're very clever, Aelita Schaeffer, but you're too late."
She slowly sat up as he began typing rapid-fire commands in the keyboard, clearly intent on modifying a program. He then pressed the 'Enter' key.
"Unfortunately, I've just fixed things so that your friends can never rematerialize. No more life points and it's goodbye."
Just as they all suspected XANA to do.
"And now for the grand finale..."
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd entered another room in the Core Zone, and where instantly greeted with more Creepers, approximately three.
"Hey, you guys wanna make this a contest?" Odd asked, raising his paw. "Whoever gets the most wins!" He prepared to fire.
But no single Arrow launched.
He stared at both of his paws with shock. "Huh?" It was like they were jammed.
Ulrich and Yumi had pulled out their respective weapons, and Odd glanced back at them just in time to see those weapons suddenly disappear from their hands by bursting into pixels.
"What's going on?" Yumi asked.
A Creeper suddenly fired a shot, hitting Ulrich in the stomach. The samurai immediately hunched over, the pain clearly lingering.
"This is it," Yumi whispered in realization.
A Creeper fired at Odd, who backflipped over the edge of the walkway and barely landed on a platform below. Once he managed to find his footing, he called up to the other two, "Let's get out of here!"
Yumi and Ulrich both jumped down onto the platform Odd was on, and Ulrich led the way to the exit on the other side. The Creepers continued to fire at them, even as Ulrich used Super Sprint to jump up to the exit, with Yumi flipping and Odd climbing.
The cat followed up the rear and he saluted to the three monsters, "Ciao!", before leaving the room.
But the Creepers quickly followed them, as evidenced by them continuing the fire at the three teens.
"Périn is XANA!" Yumi told the other two. "Ulrich felt pain from that laser, when only Jérémie is able to!" Because his digital profile was 'incomplete', according to Aelita.
"So, we have indeed been double-crossed!" Ulrich added, as they approached another room, the contents of which only served to prove them right.
Odd smirked, "Tower spotted."
Sure enough, there it was. A tower with the cables going into the ground below them and the halo surrounding it a bright red. There was no way to enter it, but they would let Jérémie worry about that when he got here.
"Moron," the cat commented. "Never send us to the same sector your tower is hiding in!"
Ulrich let out a chuckle (it sounded a little nervous), before asking, "What now?"
The trio heard a low growl, before two shots fired. Fortunately, those lasers didn't hit anyone, but they did bring the teens' attention to the three Creepers that had followed them.
"'What now', you ask?" Yumi replied. "Now, we just survive."
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Jérémie glanced around at the open desert, still confused as to why he was here and not in Sector Five. He also didn't understand why the plateau he landed on was so small and far away from the others.
Just then, he felt a powerful, and familiar, magnetic field, and he turned around to see, sure enough, the Scyphozoa heading straight towards him.
He backed away in fear. At least until his foot accidentally kicked a small pebble into the Digital Sea below, reminding him that this plateau was small on purpose.
The monster wrapped its tentacles around him, not meeting any resistance whatsoever. Believing it to be total surrender—of course the boy was smart enough to realize when he'd been defeated—XANA began invading his mind.
No one could stand in its way now.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Of course. Survive. Buy time until the plan succeeded. Hopefully they hadn't made that fall-out too realistic...
The three teens each split up to keep a Creeper occupied.
Odd ducked a laser aimed at him. He studied his opponent, keeping in mind his lack of weapon. No Arrows, no Shield, maybe even his Future Flash was gone too—he didn't know.
An idea then came to mind.
He smirked before pretending like he was in a boxing match. His enemy growled at him as he punched the air repeatedly, before imagining a bell ringing.
Round one.
He ducked another laser as he got closer.
The Creeper just stared at him, obviously wondering what he was doing. It roared and fired another shot, but he ducked his head easily to avoid it.
He then punched the monster in the face, before punching it again and again. He rolled his fists together, knocking it in the face some more, before holding its head and slamming his own head into it. He waved at it as it was disoriented, before gingerly lifting its head up and giving it an uppercut.
The Creeper's head stayed up in the air. Despite the situation, it was quite amusing.
"Hello? Had enough?" he asked, before imitating the monster's stance.
Meanwhile, Yumi flipped over a laser, and backflipped when another was fired at her feet. She then flipped over to Ulrich, landing back to back with him.
The Creeper Ulrich was facing fired and hit the samurai in the stomach yet again, prompting Yumi to flip over and kick that monster in the head to knock it to the ground below. Ulrich sent her a relieved smile as she landed near him.
Odd's Creeper had recovered by this point and it roared at him, prompting him to roar back—though it really came out more as a 'meow' than anything else. He then rolled his eyes, shrugging, before reassuming his fighting stance.
Round two.
He pointed at the Creeper, before motioning it to come forward, egging it on.
It fired, only for him to punch it again. He stared at it in the eye (figuratively, of course) before kicking it.
It rolled its head around as Odd beat on his chest, "Yeah!", feeling hyped at the moment. He could do this.
Another laser was fired, but this time, Odd wasn't so lucky, as the shot hit him in the chest, knocking him to the ground.
Before it could crawl any further to him, Ulrich suddenly landed in between them, knocking it over with his foot. He briefly glanced back at Odd, mostly out of relief that his roommate was still alive, before turning back to their enemy.
It fired another shot, which the samurai easily dodged, before twirling around and sending a back kick to its neck, knocking it off the platform.
"Ciao!" the cat waved to it.
"Uh, guys...?" Yumi softly called out to them.
The two boys turned around, only to see three more Creepers surrounding her...
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
XANA-Périn leaned back, showing Aelita the window that relayed how much memory Jérémie had left. "Admit your defeat, Aelita Schaeffer."
Surprisingly, she had not moved one inch, aside from getting back to her feet. And now she was smirking, of all things. "No. Not this time."
XANA-Périn narrowed his eyes suspiciously, before turning back to the monitor as a short alarm sounded, signaling that, by all intents and purposes, Jérémie had no memory left, and thus no more lifepoints.
On Lyoko, Jérémie fell to the ground when the Scyphozoa released him, but to his amazement, he was still alive. What? He should be dead.
Moreover, the Scyphozoa was acting strange. Its brain seemed to be getting fried with white-colored electricity. Almost as if it was bugging up because it had received the wrong information...
An alert, shown via a red exclamation mark, appeared on the screen, and XANA-Périn turned back to Aelita, angered, "What's the meaning of this?!"
Aelita was smug as she asked, "You really have to ask? The false data you're currently receiving should obviously be telling you that it was a decoy you captured, and not the real deal."
Down in the scanner, the real Jérémie had Aelita's laptop hooked up to one of the scanners, controlling his clone from it. He was equally pleased; their plan was working.
"NOOOO!" XANA-Périn yelled, his humanoid form quickly losing structure the more false information it processed from the clone.
Aelita watched in amazement as the spectre's black cloud form was revealed and forced to leave the lab through the cables above.
The monitor was now open. It was free from XANA's control. Knowing this, Aelita quickly ran up to the chair and sat down before typing away, intent on fixing everything XANA had messed up before it was too late.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
The trio couldn't back up any farther. The Creepers were in front of them, and the empty space was behind them. Looming over them all was XANA's tower.
"Any last words?" Ulrich softly asked. This appeared to be the end of everything.
"It's not," Yumi muttered, before exclaiming, "It's not the end! Not yet!"
The Creepers all fired at the teens, who each dodged the shots. Despite Yumi's hope, even she could not deny that they couldn't hold on for much longer.
The monsters crawled closer to the teens before firing yet again, this time being too close for them to dodge so easily. As a result, all three shots landed on their shoulders.
However, Yumi wobbled before falling off the platform, devirtualizing on the way.
"YUMI!" Ulrich immediately cried. "NO!"
Odd felt choked up, and for the first time, he cursed not being able to cry on Lyoko. "It can't be..."
"Come on, guys. Don't be so pessimistic. You did say you trusted me, after all."
Odd and Ulrich both looked up at the sky with bright, hopeful smiles. "Aelita!" the cat exclaimed.
"So Yumi's okay?" the samurai asked.
"Yep, she's home," the pink-ette replied. "I managed to reprogram the materialization just in time. Now, come on. Let's start over."
Pixels appeared next to Ulrich's hand and they reformed back into his katana. He promptly turned around and blocked the next laser that was fired at him, this time deflecting it back to the Creeper that shot it, destroying it.
Odd also turned around firing an Arrow to destroy a second monster, this time aiming directly at it. He then fired an Arrow at the third, destroying it and leaving the path clear.
"Perfect!" Odd exclaimed. "Nothing like my trusty, old gear!"
As the two boys guarded the tower, Ulrich addressed their mission control, "Aelita, as you can probably tell, we've found the tower."
"I know. Great job! I've already recorded its position into the superscan. Now all we have to do is deactivate it. I'm sending you Jérémie." A pause. "Watch out. Manta right behind you."
Said Manta hit Odd in the back, prompting Ulrich to turn around, only to get shot in the back by a Creeper standing in the entrance. Odd quickly shot an Arrow at the Creeper, destroying it.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
"Virtualization!"
The real Jérémie landed on the ground of the Ice Sector, very near the edge of the sector already, so he didn't have far to run.
As he approached the edge, Aelita told him, "I'm entering the code 'SCIPIO' now."
The Transporter didn't take long to arrive, descending from the sky and enveloping him, before taking him to the center of the virtual world.
Hopefully, he wasn't too late.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Right as she hit the 'Enter' key, Aelita suddenly felt her ears clog up. The painful ache that resulted immediately went for her throat. She tried to breathe, only to find out that she couldn't.
XANA had recovered and sent the spectre back to block her airways, clearly wanting revenge for her causing its plan to fail.
She felt herself starting to black out as she gasped for a breath that her greatest enemy was refusing to let her take.
Yumi entered the lab from the elevator, only for the doors to open on the scene of Aelita falling to the ground, the earpiece being forced out of her ear. Her friend was crawling on the ground, practically writhing as she was struggling to breathe, her hands clawing at her throat as if that would help (it didn't).
Alarmed, she ran up and knelt at the pink-ette's side, "Aelita! What's going on?! What can I do?!"
"Aelita," came Jérémie's voice from the earpiece, "I'm in the Arena now."
Yumi grabbed the earpiece and slipped it on, before telling him, "There's no timer, Jérémie. Just hurry up and deactivate the tower!"
She then threw the microphone back onto the chair without bothering to wait for his response.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Ulrich carefully watched the Manta as it flew around, obviously hunting for its next target.
Both he and Odd were caught off-guard by Jérémie running past them both as if something was after him.
"Jérémie?"
"Hurry!" the elf exclaimed. "Aelita's in trouble!"
But he had to halt in his tracks when he came upon the edge of the platform, gasping as he took a good look at the large gap between it and the base of the tower.
To their amazement, something else seemed to take over the Manta's AI, a faint white glow surrounding it, and puppeteered it over to the gap between the platform and the tower.
Meanwhile, Jérémie saw this and began backing up, calculating what he had to do now. Once he saw his chance, he ran forward before jumping off the platform, ignoring Odd and Ulrich both calling out to him in concern.
The elf landed on the Manta, which he used as a bouncing pad. He flew through the air, before phasing through the tower wall and landing in the middle of the first platform.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
Aelita's skin was clammy and pale, and she was barely moving anymore. She was choking to death. Suffocating.
And Yumi couldn't do anything except watch.
"Hang in there," she pleaded, unable to keep the desperation out of her voice as she took the pink-ette in her arms and cradled her close. "Please..."
JEREMIE_
CODE_
"Don't you dare die on us," the elder girl threatened. "You can't."
She still had so much to say, so much to apologize for. She couldn't do that if Aelita...
LYOKO_
Aelita suddenly let out another gasp, but this one sounded different. Yumi barely managed to hide her gasp of horror, reeling back, as XANA's spectre began pouring out of Aelita's mouth and ears. The trail was long, too long, but it was all stemming from the pink-ette's throat.
No wonder she couldn't breathe.
"Tower deactivated," Jérémie announced. Thank goodness, Yumi thought. He succeeded.
They did it. XANA failed once again.
Aelita blinked up at Yumi in confusion, still recovering from being asphyxiated by XANA itself. "Y-Yumi...?"
Yumi smiled, feeling tears of relief falling down her cheeks, before she wrapped the younger in a tight hug, as if afraid she would disappear if the elder let go for one millisecond. "Don't worry, 'Lita." She sniffed. "Everything's okay now."
She still hadn't let go of Aelita by the time the boys returned from Lyoko a few minutes later, but no one said anything.
!~~C~O~D~E~~L~Y~O~K~O~~!
It was well past lunch by the time the group returned to the school. Now they were taking refuge inside of Aelita's dorm. Speaking of whom, her first move when entering the room was turning Odd's sketch back around. Now everything had been fixed, and she could look at her friends in the eyes again.
"Of course I don't blame you guys," the pink-ette reassured them. "Least of all you, Yumi. Again, cancer is no joke."
"But the scanners don't cause cancer," Jérémie growled through gritted teeth. It really seemed as though the outburst was uncontrollable.
"We know," Yumi softly replied. "And we believe you, Jérémie. You and Aelita both." She turned to the pink-haired girl. "I'm still sorry. Looking back on it, you seemed genuinely surprised at the fake diagnosis, like you weren't expecting it. That should've, at least, told me that you cared."
"I do, and I always will," Aelita vowed. "I keep track of all of our scans, and I will continue to do so until we shut the supercomputer down. Until then, trust our bond like we did today, and we'll get through anything. There's a reason XANA keeps trying to break us up."
"True," Ulrich added. "But that doesn't change how sorry we are." He then changed the subject, "So, knowing the scanners don't actually cause cell degeneration, what else did XANA tell us that is probably a lie?"
"I don't know," Aelita admitted. "But given its disgust when saying Sophie's name and its glee when it had Michel admit he made a mistake concerning XANA makes me believe that it despises them. It may be even deeper than that."
"It also said Sophie's name only once," Odd reminded the others, "despite the diary admitting she built the neural headset."
"Neuronal," Aelita corrected. "But very true. That's a detail we should probably keep in mind."
Ulrich cleared his throat, "Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of XANA claiming that Jérémie's an AI too, like we initially assumed, instead of a human being."
All eyes turned to the aforementioned genius, who was shaking his head. "I don't know...I want to believe that I'm human, but I can't ignore what my nightmares are about either."
"Whatever the case," Yumi replied, "all of this is just further proof that deciphering that diary is our top priority."
The group remained quiet, none of them unable to deny the truth in that.
!~~~J~E~R~L~I~T~A~~R~O~L~E~S~W~A~P~~A~U~~~!
Next Episode: 33 - The White Tower / Someone wants to get into contact with the group, and it's not XANA.
A/N: Remember, Yumi first brought up her concerns about the scanners in "Double Trouble". Also, Jérémie denouncing XANA-Michel's claim that the scanners cause cancer (vehemently and repeatedly) will be important later. In that vein, everything XANA says to the group lore-wise using Michel's image is entirely misdirection, including the significant lack of Sophie mentions. Yes, it knows who Jérémie really is and why Lyoko and XANA itself were created, but it doesn't want the truth to get out there; that's why it destroyed Périn's diary in Chapter 20 in the first place.
Since you guys already figured the Michel in this chapter was likely a XANA spectre in disguise, I had to figure out another plot twist. The end result is the reveal that the group already knows that Michel isn't who he says he is by the time the 'final mission' scene comes up. If you were paying attention, in the chapter, XANA-Michel is referred to by "Périn" in the narrative when the group doesn't trust him, and when they do, the narrative refers to him as "Michel", with the real one being referred to solely by his full name. You could also say that the twist is my catharsis after watching the original episode to prepare myself for this chapter.
However, if any of you still need a catharsis after this, then go read 'That's What Friends Are For' by YoshiStack on AO3. It's an excellent read (and in the canon continuity) where Jérémie finally gets the closure he needs.