Author's Note:
Hi! Ofelia Nat here. Sorry for the long author's note, but I'm not allowed to post this as its own chapter….
This story is going to be a complete re-do of a story I first started writing in 2015 (when I was a wee teenager). I'm older now and have had a lot of great ideas I've come up with, and at this current juncture the story contains 64 already written chapters (the final chapter count is unknown to me because I'm just riding the plot wave at this point). Each week on Sunday, one chapter will be edited and released for your enjoyment.
All that being said, this story is not for the faint of heart. There are chapters that are purely lemon… even beyond just lemon, honestly, and straight up smut. There's a story line that is dark and triggering and described in detail (the triggering chapter is skippable, and ample trigger warnings will be given in another author's note posted below the preceding chapter). There's hella cussing too, because why not?
One unique thing about this story is that there will sometimes (but not always) be opportunities for immersive listening. You will see in an author's note three asterisks (***) followed by the title of a song. Within the text of the story, you will see three asterisks where the song starts or is in the middle of playing. I am a musician in real life and this is my fun little way of making my story a bit more unique (but hopefully not dated).
Lastly, I have a call-to-action for you. I've had a lot of fun curating face claims and using them as inspiration for my writing. If you, like me, are a person who enjoys seeing face claims, comment/review this first chapter to let me know if I should post my face claims for major and recurring characters on DeviantArt.
I am so excited to bring to you the story of Recalcitrance (formerly Chasm), and I hope you enjoy this purely Willita fanfic as much as I've enjoyed creating it for you.
P.S., for legal reasons, any similarities between characters in this fiction and real-life people/events are purely coincidental! :)
The sound of the late afternoon downpour against the window sill is deafening, and Aelita wakes with a start. Her left arm is numb from being between her body and the cold tile floor. Sitting up and stretching her arm out, she looks around at the state she left the kitchen in when she had dozed off. All of the now clean cabinets are wide open, as are all of the clean drawers beneath them. What was formerly in disarray is now neat and tidy, and much more suitable for a home soon to be lived in full-time. Aelita takes a deep breath as she hoists herself up from the ground, inhaling the smell of the old wood of the Hermitage, now tinged with the scent of citrus-scented wood cleaner.
It is always bittersweet to be in her old childhood home. The negative memories will always remain—the hours of silence to avoid detection from the government, the shame of being unable to tell her friends why she couldn't invite them over for playdates or sleepovers... and the missing presence of her mother, who was kidnapped shortly before her father brought them to this house.
No matter. That is a thing of the past, she tells herself. No time to lament what happened sixteen years ago when I can barely make it through the present.
She isn't wrong in her thinking. The summer vacation is over in one more day, and tomorrow she will be at the somewhat new collegiate level of Kadic Academy, which means the cost of tuition will go up, not to mention the cost of room and board. After forcibly cutting herself off from Jeremie's financial charity, she had taken out a loan in order to pay for the tuition, but didn't want to take out too big of a loan, so she figured she would rather live in the Hermitage than in the dormitories again.
The process of tidying up the house has been quite a grueling one. She started from the top, where the bedrooms and bathrooms are located, because she knows for sure that she will spend most of her time up there anyway. She rearranged furniture to create a study room of sorts, swept, mopped, and vacuumed the entire level of the house, and then proceeded to do the same thing with the main level of the house. That was when she dozed off on the kitchen floor, just after polishing it.
With a sigh, Aelita glances at her wristwatch. 18:49. Soon the sun will begin to set. Closing cupboards and drawers along the way and flipping light switches on to give herself more light, she walks toward a door that has remained untouched throughout the entire cleaning process. It is the door to the basement of the house, a place Aelita has dreaded for the past five years. Memories still too poignant for her to come to terms with lay behind that nondescript door and down the carpeted stairs.
Her hands tremble and her breath catches in her throat as she twists the dusty doorknob and slowly swings open the creaky old door. It takes a whole lot of courage for her to descend the damp staircase, and her hand grips the railing so hard that her palm aches as it becomes filled with splinters from the aging wood.
And then it all hits her.
The memory of the men in black suits storming through the basement door of the house in Switzerland fills her mind, along with the memory of her mother's protests when they grabbed her and dragged her up the stairs. The terror builds up in her chest again, almost like she's experiencing the event for the first time.
Unable to breathe and unable to continue any further into the basement, Aelita slowly sits down and puts her head on her knees, her fingers tangling in her long pink hair. Her heart is pounding so hard that she can hear it in her ears, and her lungs feel like they are about to burst.
"I can't do this," she whispers to herself, her voice cracking. "I can't live here. I can't."
She remains in that position for a few minutes, trying to calm her racing heart and catch her breath. Once she feels like she can stand up again, she does, and begins to ascend the stairs. But something stops her.
Aelita looks back at the darkness of the basement, and then at the light switch on the wall. She knows she has to go down there. She has to.
Taking a deep breath, she flips the switch, and the lights illuminate the basement. Slowly, she descends the stairs again. She can see a wooden chest sitting in the corner of the main room.
As she approaches the chest, she notices that the lock is broken. She opens the lid, and sees a leather-bound book with a black cover. She picks it up, and the word "Recalcitrance" is written on the front in gold lettering.
The pages are yellowed and the ink is faded, but Aelita can just barely make out the words.
Flipping through the notebook yields no answers; the writing is mostly unintelligible but for a few choice words and phrases. She is able to see the word "X.A.N.A." scrawled down in her father's characteristic handwriting, written down far too many times throughout the notebook.
XANA. Now there is a name she never thought she would hear again. After shutting down the Supercomputer, the Lyoko Warriors had vowed never to talk about anything having to do with the virtual world ever again. With the discovery of this notebook comes a frenzy of confusing choices for Aelita: hide it away forever, and never uncover what it holds? Keep it for herself as a sort of keepsake to remind her of her father's unique peculiarity? Or give it to Jeremie and risk having another blowout argument?
I would rather find out more about my father, even if it means risking what little I have left with Jeremie, she inwardly convinces herself.
"Man, I hate school."
"Odd, we haven't even started our first day of classes yet. Chill." Ulrich picks at the sleeves of his shirt as he says this, rolling his eyes at his dramatic blonde best friend.
Odd whines. "But I don't want to. I have Dr. Fumet as my history teacher today. Am I even going to learn anything before one day before the final exam? Why do I even have to take history if it isn't art history? If I have to listen to a whole semester of World War II history, I am going to die."
"You'll be fine, Odd. Just use the class time as nap time instead!"
The whole group bursts out laughing at Jeremie's words, because they are true. Dr. Fumet has a tendency to go off on deep tangents during his lectures, and sometimes they gets so long-winded that some students fall into such a deep state of sleep that they experience REM.
Aelita forces a smile onto her face. It isn't that she's not enjoying herself, but she just is not feeling the mirth like she used to before. Not with what happened between her and Jeremie. And not with the notebook in her bag, waiting to be revealed.
"Hey, Lita, are you going to eat that?"
"What kind of a stupid ass question is that, Odd? She's a vegetarian; of course she isn't going to eat it!" Sissi retorts, poking her boyfriend in the shoulder and making a face at him.
That coaxes a chuckle from Aelita. "Wrong, Sissi. I'm not a vegetarian so much as a flexitarian. I eat according to my cycle. Lucky you, Odd, you can have my bacon today."
Odd wolfs down the bacon on her tray without another word, and Sissi throws her head back in laughter at her boyfriend.
It has been almost a year since Odd and Sissi started dating. When they officially announced that they were couple, it was campus-wide news. How had the headmaster's daughter managed to land the ultimate Casanova of the school, the breaker of all hearts? The truth is, they always were interested in one another but were stuck in a perpetually never-ending love-hate relationship. Even now, there are remnants of that dynamic between the two of them.
As for "Stone-Faced Stern," as all the ladies refer to him, all these years later and he is still adamant against pursuing Yumi's affections, and still just as oblivious when it comes to acknowledging his growing fanbase among the younger girls of the school.
As her friends talk and laugh together, Aelita takes a sip of her tea and takes a perfunctory glance over at Jeremie. She nearly chokes at what she sees—he's already looking right at her and frowning, eyebrows furrowed as though he wants to say something. She quickly averts her eyes from his.
"I'm going to head to class now. I'll see you," she says abruptly, pushing her tray closer to Odd and standing up. Before she leaves, however, she reaches into her bag and plops the notebook down in front of Jeremie, right onto his laptop—she is well aware that this is one of Jeremie's pet peeves, and he hisses in response. Before anyone can have time to protest, she's out of the cafeteria and on her way across the campus grounds. Confusion flickers across Jeremie's features as he stares at the offending notebook in front of him.
"Whaz tha' 'bout?" Odd questions him with a mouth full of bacon, earning him a non-verbal scolding from Sissi.
"Not really sure," he answers. Realizing that Odd might actually be referring to Aelita's behavior and not the notebook, he looks up to interpret Odd's facial expression but finds no sign of suspicion on his face.
Jeremie opens the notebook. When he does, his eyes widen.
"What?" Ulrich asks almost immediately, his curiosity getting the better of him.
"It's... it's her father's handwriting," Jeremie replies, his voice barely above a whisper. "There's all kinds of stuff in here. Writings on Lyo—" Jeremie stops himself. Not only is he not willing to be the one to bring up the forbidden topic, he can't. Not while Sissi is around, at least.
"On what?" asks Sissi.
Jeremie fumbles over his words. "On… on an online game that we used to play together." Hopefully the lie is convincing enough for Sissi.
Ulrich and Odd share a look, but say nothing more.
Mathematics is a bore, as usual. Jeremie groans and lays his head down on his desk. It has been just over a half hour of his two-hour long business calculus class. It is one of those courses that everybody is required to take at some point in their college career. Not even a student as gifted as he is can be permitted to skip the class. So there he sits, finished in thirty minutes what it will take some others in the room two hours to complete.
He recalls the notebook given to him earlier by Aelita. I suppose I can skim through it now, while I have some time, he thinks. "None of this makes any sense," he mumbles.
Indeed, other than the occasional "X.A.N.A." written out, the entire notebook appears to be encrypted in some kind of cypher.
Jeremie spends an hour of class "reading" through the notebook before he gets to the end, in which it is written in plaintext:
IN SHORT, X.A.N.A. CAN NOT BE
TRULY DEFEATED WITHOUT
THE RECALCITRANCE CODE!