Chapter 11:
Friday the 13th
If the students at Kadic Academy were asked the definition of November, they would all answer in unison: trees with hardly any leaves, tons of exam papers and other messes in sight, and a freezing, damp cold that chilled you to the bone and made you look for the cafeteria even if you didn't eat anything, just to avoid feeling like a hake just taken out of the freezer. And among those who didn't feel like going out to the playground to enjoy half an hour of recess freedom and freeze their butts off were Aelita, Jeremy, Selina, Ulrich and Odd, with the latter looking intently at his cell phone with the same interest as one checking the terms of a contract.
"But what are you looking at?" Muttered Ulrich incredulously as he waved his hand in front of his friend's face, trying to snap him out of that concentration uncharacteristic of him.
"Stop it!" Odd let out a huff and continued to check the sequence of numbers that appeared on the cell phone screen. "24..."
Ulrich looked at his friend and suddenly understood, Why was Odd coming up with hare-brained ideas all the time?
"Oh no, don't tell me you played the lotto!"
"All my savings" He replied proudly. Then he went back to checking the sequence of numbers "36..." At the rolled eyes of his friends, he set out to clarify. "Today is Friday the 13th! I'm sure I'll get lucky! 17..."
"You've got a 1 out of a 76 milllion chances to guess all 5 numbers!" Jeremy explained, trying to counter his superstition with good old-fashioned mathematics.
"Yep, that's why I took precations!" Odd replied showing off a horseshoe, without looking up from his cell phone. "45..."
"Sure, you can't lose with that!" Said Aelita, holding back her laughter.
"And... 44" Odd muttered, finishing reading the sequence of numbers. He frowned, and the cell phone slipped from his hands.
Seeing that expression that looked like pure disappointment, his friends looked at each other with a knowing glance. It was seen: betting one's life savings on the lottery was a sure recipe for disaster.
"Sorry, pal" Jeremy replied sympathetically, briefly looking away from the book he was reading. "Told you!"
"All of your savings..." Ulrich exclaimed, holding back the kind of laughter you get when you see the results of a screw-up that could be seen from miles away.
Odd blinked, trying to make sure what he was seeing wasn't a joke. When he looked at his cell phone again, he saw that he wasn't dreaming: he had made it. A huge smile spread across his face.
"I won!" Hearing this, Jeremy's jaw dropped to the floor, while Selina smiled happily. She loved stories of people winning against all odds. "I won, guys!" Crazed with joy, Odd broke into a victory dance in the middle of the cafeteria. "I won! I won!" In the midst of the euphoria that was pouring out of his ears, Odd remembered a very important detail. "Samantha, where are you?! Samantha!"
Odd shouldered his backpack and bolted out of the cafeteria, ready to talk to his crush and lavish her like a queen, while Aelita, Jeremy and Ulrich grinned at Odd's good fortune and Selina raised her cup of hot cocoa in his honor. At last Friday the 13th was a day of good luck.
"He won!" Jeremy muttered, unable to believe his eyes. "I mean, they won!"
After class, Jeremy had retreated to the privacy of his room to enjoy some alone time, but in the news section, a notification had popped up that millions of people in Europe had won the jackpot, as if a horseshoe told the lottery she could shove the laws of mathematics and economics up her ass.
"There must be a bug!" Aelita exclaimed, seeing the stars that indicated lottery winners appeared on the map of Europe like gremlins after they were dipped in water. "There can't be millions of winners!"
"And it keeps growing...!"
"At this rate, they can't win that much!" Ulrich muttered, frightened. Odd might have won the lottery, but with so many winners the prize wouldn't even buy him a hot cocoa from the vending machine.
"Around 0.00015 cents!" Selina replied, worried. She was great at quick calculations, but at the moment what she was really interested in was warning Odd of the upending disaster.
"And they all think that they're millionares!" Ulrich exclaimed, understanding his friend's concern. "Like Odd!"
"Do you think XANA is behind this?" Aelita asked Jeremy, concerned.
"There's definitely something going on in Lyoko!"
Ulrich shook his head, feeling sorry for his friend. It was bad enough to spend one's life savings playing the lottery, but to have the jackpot value turn into a pittance was possibly one of the cruelest tricks XANA had ever played.
"It's always too good to be true!"
While his friends began to discover that XANA had made a massive mess with the Euromillions, Odd was oblivious to it all, high on the glory of being a (supposed) teenage millionaire all at once. Doing a sprint worthy of winning Olympic gold, he set out to catch up with Sam, who was just leaving the yard.
"Hey, Sam! Wait for me!"
Unfortunately, Sam would have to sit and wait. Just as Odd was walking through the academy doors, he bumped into the gym teacher, who was looking at him with a grim face.
"Della Robbia!" Jim growled, furious, pointing to a line on the ground. "What do you see here?!"
"Your finger, Sir!" Odd replied, hoping he would let it go and be able to talk to Sam.
"This is as far as you can go!" Replied the gym teacher, cutting off any chance Odd had of finding loopholes so he could talk to Sam. "Here, it's not good! There, it's good!"
"Okay, can I go now?" Odd didn't gave a damn about what Jim had said.
"You're not a day student I believe!"
"Yeah, but that's going to change because I just won!" With a pile of newly earned millions, instead of asking his parents for his pocket money, his parents would have to ask him for their pocket money. And Odd could well take advantage of that by getting his parents to give him a permission slip that would allow him to leave the academy after school whenever he wanted.
"Won?" Jim repeated in disbelief. "The only thing you won is the right to go back to the yard!" When Odd opened his mouth to respond, he warned him. "And if you insist, you may even win some hours of detention!"
Resigned, Odd set out to return to the courtyard. But as he turned his head to take one last look at Sam, he noticed the heart pierced by a rose like Cupid's arrow adorning her denim jacket. A smirk spread across his face. He might not been able to talk to Sam, but certainly the gift he was going to give her was going to be one of the best romantic gestures ever.
When the gang arrived at the lab, Jeremy ran to the Supercomputer, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the Euromillions. On the screen appeared the proof he needed that XANA had been up to his tricks again.
"I was right, XANA attacked!" Exclaimed the blond. "There's an activated tower in the Labyrinth of Sector 5!" Then he turned to his friends, who were in the scanners. "Are you ready?"
"Ready!" Aelita exclaimed from her scanner.
Jeremy typed on the keyboard and prepared to virtualize Aelita and Ulrich in Sector 5. A flash of light later and Aelita and Ulrich landed in the Sector 5 Arena. Just then Yumi and William entered the lab, having received Jeremy's message. Selina, who was standing next to the blond, greeted them with a brief smile. Let's see if with enough help they could solve this mess before Odd started spending like a millionaire.
"So, where is the tower?" Asked Yumi, having found out about XANA's lottery trick.
"In the Labyrinth in Sector 5" Jeremy replied as he prepared the virtualization process for the newcomers. "There is a tower activated!"
"Here we go!" William smirked mischievously as the elevator doors closed.
Arriving at the scanner room, William and Yumi practically jumped into them. In the lab Jeremy was putting the finishing touches on virtualizing his friends to Sector 5.
"Transfer: William. Transfer: Yumi. Virtualization!"
A few seconds later, William and Yumi landed in the Sector 5 Arena, a safe distance away from Aelita and Ulrich, since sometimes the two-by-two virtualization meant that the second group would fall on top of the one that had arrived first. As they began to take their first steps through the Labyrinth, a question arose in William's mind.
"The jackpot... haven't you ever dreamt of it?" Asked the dark-haired boy, looking at his friends. "What would you do with it?"
Ulrich shrugged his shoulders.
"That can't happen to me" He replied as his mind unconsciously flashed back to the time he cheated the lottery using Return to the Past. "I only played once..."
"So what? Can't you dream?!" He exclaimed in bewilderment. Then he turned to his ninja friend. "And what about you, Yumi? What would you do with all that money?"
"I'd give everything to charity organizations"
"And you wouldn't keep just one or two small millions for yourself?" William smiled impishly, trying to draw a trace of greed from his friend.
"Not one cent!"
William shrugged, a little disappointed that Yumi was always thinking of others and not herself, but then another idea occurred to him.
"Selina, if you won the lottery, what would you do?"
The girl, who was texting Odd warning him that XANA had cheated the lottery and therefore not to even think about spending like crazy on wooing Sam, raised her head, a little uneasy at her friend's question.
"I would keep it in an account so that when I came of age, if my parents are not willing to pay for my music studies, to become independent and study at the Paris Conservatory" She flashed a smile between ironic and bitter. "Although believe me if I tell you that I would trade that winning lottery ticket in a heartbeat for my parents supporting me in my dreams, being able to find my biological family, do the same with Aelita and on a more frivolous note, having the gift of flirting with the guys I like, since according to several sources I'm quite hot, but that's not worth a shit to me if I'm so damn blind that I need a guide dog when it comes to guys"
William closed his mouth, feeling sad at his friend's words. If Yumi's answer about donating the prize to charity was a bit naive alturism, Selina's was almost depressing, with that level of maturity more typical of a seasoned adult than that of a teenager with her whole life ahead of her. Although the response of Selina having the ability to flirt with boys had almost made him laugh, since she already had those abilities, being smoking hot and having a wit and sass that would be able to charm the pants off the Pope; that thinking that money in comparison to other things was worthless, filled him with admiration and at the same time saddened him a little. He wished Selina could get all those things without thinking she needed crazy luck, but only herself.
"Okay, Selina, but cross out of the pack having skills to pick up guys" If William had had Selina in front of him, he would have given her a flirtatious smile. "I assure you that in that aspect you are more than enough"
Selina, hearing those words, had to make a supreme effort not to giggle like an idiot. Was she imagining things, or had William really dropped a hint that he thought she was hot?
Jeremy, sensing that things were getting out of hand and that if he didn't put a stop to it the mission would turn into a flirting contest, picked up the conversation about what he would do if he won the lottery.
"If I won the jackpot, I'd buy..."
"Mantas!" Exclaimed Ulrich.
"Certainly not!" The boy laughed, but when he looked at the radar his laughter in his throat.
Two Mantas had emerged from a corner of the Labyrinth and after doing their usual reconnaissance dance, they began firing. Now the lottery was to bet on whether they would make it to the tower before the Mantas knocked them out of points. Aelita, Yumi, Ulrich and William started running through the passages of the Labyrinth, while the Mantas were on their heels.
"Your getting closer to the tower" Jeremy announced as he watched his friends' avatars move at full speed through the Labyrinth.
"So are the Mantas!" That consolation was of little use to Ulrich.
The gang hurried down some stairs attached to the wall, trying to get to the tower before the Mantas jumped on them, but when William jumped the last step, he stopped dead in his tracks. The Mantas were flying, but compared to his Super Smoke they were slower than a parade of lame people.
"I've got an idea" He looked at Aelita and Yumi who were running away toward the activated tower. "Run to the tower, I'll stay here and hold them off!"
"What are you doing?" Ulrich asked, a little worried about what kind of recklessness William might have in mind
"Go on! Don't worry about me, Ulrich!"
You don't believe that yourself thought Ulrich. Besides, he couldn't let William save everyone's skin solely on his own. He stood next to the dark-haired boy and began to move his arms. It was about time to play the decoy.
"We're here! Come on!"
Aelita and Yumi, who were about to run into a passageway, looked at the scene a little frightened, but Jeremy's voice snapped them out of their worries.
"I'm sure you would love to stay and enjoy the show, but don't forget about the tower!"
The girls snapped out of their worries and ran towards the tower, which was quietly waiting for them, while Ulrich and William got into a fight with the Mantas. The Mantas tendency to fly so low was frustrating for William, since it gave the false impression that he could thrust his sword at it without needing to jump, but that was not the case. He activated his Super Smoke and began to chase one of the Mantas like a black kite tail. On the monster's back, William returned to his human form and thrust his sword into XANA's Eye, using his Super Smoke again before the Manta exploded. One down.
Meanwhile, Ulrich was running along a catwalk next to a Manta flying underneath and waiting for the right moment to riddle him with lasers. Just as the Manta passed under the walkway, Ulrich jumped and landed on the monster's back, plunging his katanas into it. He jumped off the Manta just as it exploded and landed next to William, who was looking at him with a half-smile. Then he turned to Aelita and Yumi, who were climbing down to reach the tower.
"What about you, girls?"
"It's okay, we're here" Aelita replied as she and Yumi entered the tower.
"They've made it. Jeremy" William announced. "Time to go home"
"I could devirtualize you, if you wish!" Teased Ulrich in a It's a joke, but if you want it's not a joke tone.
"In your dreams!" He replied as they were devirtualized.
"Too roosters..." Jeremy muttered resigned to his friends' rivalry, which was more like that of elementary school kids than high school teenagers. Then he turned to Aelita and Yumi. "Are you okay, chicks? I mean, girls?"
The blue light had deposited Aelita and Yumi on the top platform of the tower, where a screen awaited them. The red-haired girl gave way to her friend, who was looking at the screen expectantly.
"Please go ahead"
Yumi put her hand on the screen and typed CODE LYOKO. A blue light emerged from the bottom of the tower and engulfed everything, taking with it the havoc in the Euromillion lottery caused by XANA.
With Aelita, Yumi, Ulrich and William back in the lab, Jeremy slumped back in his seat and let out a sigh of relief. They had managed to clean up the lottery mess before things got out of hand.
"The draw has been cancelled, no money will be awarded! Everything is back to normal!" He turned to Ulrich and William. "As for you two..."
"You acted stupid!" Aelita cut him off, saying what she really thought of their antics rather than Jeremy's polite euphemisms.
"Childish!" Seconded Yumi.
"Dangerous!" Aelita was pretty angry with them. "Selfish!"
"You turned the mission into a dick-measuring contest and by sheer miracle you didn't lose it in the process!" Finished Selina, who didn't mince words.
"We were pretty good!" William replied, proudly, despite the fact that even though she was still a bit blunt, Selina had been absolutely right about their motivations.
"Even excellent!" Ulrich supported the dark-haired boy. It may have been in Selina's unforgettable words, a dick-measuring contest, but when he and William were in agreement to take out as many XANA monsters as possible they were unbeatable.
Before any more speeches could be made about recklessness in Lyoko, the elevator door opened and revealed Odd who had his head down and was basically the spitting image of despair.
"Odd?" Aelita murmured, putting a hand on his shoulder, trying to give him some comfort. "Are you okay?"
"I'm broke..."
"Everything's okay, Odd" "Aelita assured him, as she accompanied him to his friends. "The draw has been cancelled, and they will refund your ticket!"
"I'm broke... Broke...!"
Selina, laptop in hand, began to suspect what had happened. She looked at Odd and asked quietly You didn't read my message? Odd shook his head, wishing he'd had his cell phone on when he'd commissioned that romantic gesture that wasn't going to break his heart, but it was certainly going to break his wallet.
"You can't be broke" Ulrich exclaimed, not understanding anything at all. "You didn't even win in the first place!"
"Sure, but I didn't know that when I ordered a thousand red roses for Samantha!"
Hearing this, the gang burst out in disbelieving giggles. At last Odd had upgraded his flirting techniques, but the money to pay for them that had appeared so unexpectedly had so unfortunately vanished. They knew it was impolite to laugh, but at the same time they couldn't help it, just as laughter escapes when you see someone slip on a banana peel.
"A thousand?!" Ulrich exclaimed in disbelief.
"When you love, you don't count the cost!" Odd replied, justifying himself.
"And how much did it cost?
"I said I didn't count!"
"At least Samantha isn't allergic to roses!" Ulrich joked, smiling mischievously.
"Go on, mock me..."
Selina mainly felt sorry for Odd. On the crap scale, it was much better to mess with test scores than mess with the lottery, because at least a bullshit A didn't make you spend money you didn't have. If she could have presented XANA with Odd's bill at the florist and ordered him to pay it, she would have done it in a hearbeat.
"Come on, that's not such a big deal!" Jeremy exclaimed, although Selina couldn't wait for them to stop the teasing and start finding out the terms of the order and if there was some sort of discount for large orders that would keep Odd from going broke. "According to my calculations, you should be able to repay your roses in... 200 years!"
"You're evil...!"
Before Selina could ask him about the terms of the rose order, an alarm went off on the Supercomputer. Reading it, Jeremy realized that roses Odd couldn't afford were the least of their problems.
"We've got a problem!"
"You don't say...!" Mumbled Odd, seeing the alarm signals beeping on the Holomap.
"XANA tricked us! The attack against the lottery was just a decoy!" He exclaimed, pointing to the screen, where a schematic of the Skid was displayed with a red dot indicating an infection. "XANA took the opportunity to inject a virus into the Skid!"
"The Skid?" Asked Aelita, worried. "But without it, we won't be able to reach the Cortex!"
"That's certainly XANA's goal!"
"Okay, it's annoying, but if we lose the Skid, it's only temporary, right?" Odd asked, looking at his friends, to see if they would calm down over a little virus and move on to more important matters. "Jeremy could program another one. The only important matter is: what about my roses?"
"Stop it, Odd!" Snarled Ulrich, exasperated. "Programing another Skid would take several weeks!
"And we can't afford to give so much time to XANA!" Warned Aelita.
"What do we do?" Ulrich muttered, looking at the computer screen with concern.
"There's nothing to do!" Odd replied, not understanding that the mess they were discussing had nothing to do with roses. "I can't cancel my order!"
"We have not choice" Jeremy said, typing on the computer to see if he could find out more about the kind of crap XANA had embedded in the Skid. "We've go to free the Skid form it's tie to Lyoko! It's the only way to prevent the virus form propagating!"
"But we can't be virtualized for 12 more hours, since we all came back from the mission!" Answered Aelita, worried.
"Not all of us!" He replied, looking at Odd out of the corner of his eye.
Odd, as Aelita and Yumi led him to the elevator, felt like the sucker who had just been picked to bell the cat. As his friends led him to the elevator, he asked the question that kept hammering in his head.
"What happen with my roses?"
"We'll take care of your roses!" Aelita assured him as the elevator doors closed.
The elevator door opened and Odd entered the scanner room resigned but wanting assurances that he wasn't going to have to declare bankruptcy before he turned sixteen.
"Yumi, I'm counting on you!" Exclaimed as he stepped inside the scanner, thinking of her friend, who had rushed off to Kadic to try to sort out this mess.
"Transfer: Odd" In the lab, Jeremy was typing on his keyboard, preparing for a virtualization in the Sector 5. Then he pressed a button. "Virtualization!"
A few seconds later a purple cat in a state-of-the-art uniform appeared in the Arena in Sector 5. As Odd took his first steps through the Arena, an idea popped into his mind.
"I've been thinking about something for my roses..." But before he could continue with his grand plans, Jeremy's voice interrupted him.
"Odd, now is not the time! Just get to the elevator!"
"Okay! Okay, I'm going..." Odd answered, waving his hand while walking to the beginning of the Labyrinth.
As the elevator transported him to the Skid Hangar, Selina's voice brought him out of his musings about the roses.
"Hey, Odd, could you tell me where you ordered the roses and in what format? I'm sure an order in that category must have some sort of discount"
"I ordered them from Florajet Florist. I ordered 100 bouquets with 10 roses each. The total price is 2590 euros. No way can I afford that" Odd replied, not quite understanding what her friend's plan was.
"You can't cancel the order, but you can modify the format" Selina muttered, looking at the florist's offer page and doing calculations at full speed. "Odd, I can't cancel your order, because roses are perishable products, but I can modify the order form. Instead of 100 bouquets with 10 roses each, I will alter your order to 10 bouquets with 100 roses each"
"But isn't that going to cost me an awful lot?" Asked Odd, concerned as he approached the hangar.
"Not at all!" Replied Selina with a laugh. "According to the florist's website, in that store 10 bouquets of 100 roses cost 699 euros. I think they presented you with the standard and most expensive option, and you bought it. Classic shop trick"
Hearing this, Odd couldn't help but let out a laugh of relief. Almost seven hundred euros seemed a shit-ton of money, but in reality it was the price of an expensive computer. If he used the returned savings from the lottery ticket he had bought and saved his pay and the extras the family gave him for Christmas, when he returned from Christmas holidays he would have the roses paid for.
"Thank you very much Selina!" The redhead, hearing this, hacked at the order. For her to alter the format of an online order, even though there remained a paper record (Thank goodness the store's packing slip did not specify the format in which the roses should appear), was a no-brainer. In less than a minute, 1000 roses had gone from costing 2590 euros to a comparatively paltry 699 euros.
Before Odd had more time on how to plan cheap Christmas gifts for his parents and sister, he found himself in the Skid's hangar. A sort of red elctricity was running across the surface of the submarine, as if it were an electric mosquito trap.
"Well, it doesn't look good..." The boy muttered, almost afraid that when he entered the Skid, it would give him a electric shock.
Odd walked along a walkway until he reached his usual spot on the teleportation platform, but Jeremy's voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Odd, you need to go to the driver's spot!"
"Hey, I have only piloted the Skid once!" Replied Odd, worried. What would happen if he stalled the Skid's engine or drove it out of the hangar and slammed it into a wall? "And it has been a long time..."
"Don't worry, it's like riding a bike, you never forget!" Jeremy assured him with a smile. And then, with a hint of irony, he added. "And more importantly, this is your lucky day!"
"Very funny, Jeremy!" He replied as he jumped into the central platform.
"Transfer!"
A moment later, Odd appeared inside the Skid's cockpit, where the screens confirmed that no matter where he looked, the Skid had more viruses than the school in flu season.
"This is a hopeless mission!" He exclaimed, not understanding anything that appeared except the fact that the Skid was a complete mess. "The Skid is messed up!"
"It can still be saved, but you must hurry!" Aelita assured him. "You've got to free the Skid form its docking, this is where the virus is propagaing from...!"
"Okay, but how?" Odd had no damn idea how to cast off the Skid's moorings.
"Push the white button on the right of the console"
"All the buttons are white" He replied exasperated as he looked at the grid of white buttons, which had no number, letter or anything to indicate what they were for. "Could you be a bit more specific?"
"It's the sixth one on the right"
Odd pressed the button and the Skid was released from its moorings, cutting off the flow of infection.
"Found it! What's next?"
"You have to take the Skid out of its garage" Answered Jeremy.
"Easier said than done!" He replied, looking at the myriad of buttons and wishing Jeremy had programmed the Skid with an autopilot that would allow him to exit the hangar with the push of a button.
"There are two joysticks in front of you" Explained Aelita. Odd gripped the joysticks and wished that all his stunts on the Megapod were going to do him some good on this one. "Pull them gently!"
Odd took the controls, and thinking that the Skid was very heavy and needed more force when changing position, he twisted them to the maximum. But in reality the Skid was quite light, and crashed sideways into one of the moorings. It took a few moments of the Skid crashing like a bumper car into the moorings before Odd finally mastered the controls and was able to pull it out of the hangar. In the lab, Jeremy was typing to open the hangar dome.
"Launch in 3... 2... 1..."
"Ahhhh!"
Odd's piercing scream, as if he had fallen off a mountain, and the subsequent silence made his friends' hair stand on end. Had he slammed the Skid against one of the hangar walls, or had something more serious happened to him?
"Odd, are you okay?" Asked Aelita, deeply worried.
"I'm just greaaat...!" Exclaimed Odd, elated. The Skid's controls, due to the influence of the virus, were extremely difficult to move, but Odd, by sheer brute force and some skill, had managed to get the Skid out of the hangar, now floating in the Lyoko sky. "Yeah, we did it, Jeremy!" Amidst the relieved laughter of his friends, Odd joked. "Aelita, you know, you have a serious competitor now"
Jeremy, still in the midst of rejoicing that the virus had not damaged the Skid to the point where it was impossible to get it out of the hangar, saw a notification that cut his laughter short. They might have pulled the Skid out of the hangar just in time to keep it from being unsailable, but not enough to get it screwed up in other, far more dangerous ways.
"The virus damaged the Skid's shileds!
"The Skid is no longer protected!" Aelita corrected, looking at the Holomap worriedly.
"So, if the Skid falls into the Digital Sea..." Ulrich muttered, beginning to understand the danger his friend was in. "Odd..."
"Anybody there?" Odd's voice brought him out of his musings. His friend was alive and safe, at least for the moment. "Can you hear me?"
"Odd, keep your altitude at 800 feet and activate the auto pilot" Aelita told him, worried. The first thing was to keep him safe, then they would explain to Odd that without knowing it, he was putting his ass on the line.
"You know what?" Odd murmured, looking at the Digital Sea that stretched tantalizingly below him. "I'd like to take a dip!"
"You can't!"
"Wait, what's going on?" At Aelita's panicked refusal, Odd realized that something was wrong. "Aelita? Is there something wrong?"
"The Skid's protection system is down, but don't worry, we're working on it!"
"Okay, I'm not worried, you're working on it..." He was actually quite worried, and was beginning to curse the timing of his lottery gambling on such an unlucky day. Now the lottery was to get the combination right that would prevent the Skid from being completely disabled and Odd from taking a dip in the Digital Sea. He pressed the autopilot button.. "Automatic pilot: activated!" He then looked around, enjoying the beauty of Lyoko's scenery and letting his mind be flooded with more pressing questions. "As we have a bit of time, where's Yumi with my roses?"
Yumi, making a sprint worthy of an Olympic runner, ran to the exit of the Kadic Academy, where the manager was depositing huge bouquets of roses that they could not afford.
"Stop, stop!" Between the mission in Lyoko and the little run from the sewers, Yumi felt her heart trying to demolish her rib cage, but it was not the time to faint now. "We can't pay for them, please stop unloading the car!" The florist, oblivious to everything, kept pulling giant bouquets of roses out of the van. "As I said, we can't..."
The florist, who had finished unloading the roses, turned to Yumi, with a professional smile on his face.
"Tell your friend thank you from me for the order. It's 699 euros" Hearing that, Yumi thought he was talking about another order. Odd's order cost 2569 euros!. "Oh, and due to the volume of the purchase, he has earned the right to a 260 euros gift card, which he can spend whenever he wants"
The florist got into the van and drove off, leaving Yumi with ten ginormous bouquets of roses, a generous gift card and a puzzling question: what the hell had just happened?
In the lab, things were starting to get concerning. Jeremy, Aelita and Selina were working on their computers like crazy, trying to figure out which Skid codes had been damaged by the virus so they could restore them, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"Why can't we find the damaged code?!" Exclaimed Aelita, frustrated and at the same time very worried. The autopilot could not last forever.
"I'm not getting bored at all, but may I know how far you have gotten?" Odd inquired, a bit bored of looking at the digital sky, but in those moments the Skid fell several feet as if it had forgotten that there was a step in the air. "What was that?"
"A digital air pocket" Jeremy replied, relieved that for the moment the autopilot was working.
"Cool..."
Although the Skid was not at risk of plunging into the Digital Sea for the time being, the virus appeared to be invisible. Jeremy's head was beginning to spin from so much typing.
"I can't find the code!" He exclaimed exhausted, his eyes tired from so much concentration on the computer.
"Neither do I" Replied Aelita, seeing the same lack of clues on the screen. "Selina, you how are you doing?"
"Nothing at all" Replied the redhead, her head running at full speed. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm starting to think that to find the virus and eliminate it, instead of rummaging around like idiots in the attic to see if we can find it, we should tear down the roof and its walls, because if the virus is hidden in a very narrow gap between a bunch of boxes and the wall, it's sure as hell the virus is visible if there are no walls"
Jeremy looked at Selina, understanding where she was going with her analogy.
"You're telling me that we should deactivate the gateway firewall, reconfigure the intrusion detection system, and reroute everything?"
"I'm afraid so" Selina muttered, looking at the computer screen, eager to give Odd good news. "Odd, don't worry, that even though it looks complicated, what we're going to do can be translated in the form of typing instructions, okay?"
"At least you've explained what it's all about" Odd replied, thinking of the attic analogy.
At that moment Yumi entered the lab, a gift card in hand and a bunch of news as varied as a bouquet of wildflowers.
"How did it go?" Asked Ulrich, hopefully.
"Really weird" Replied the girl, shaking her head. "The florist discounted the price of the roses 1870 euros and gave me a gift card for 260 euros. But you can't look a gift horse in the mouth. Plus, now your room smells like roses"
Ulrich let out a laugh. At last Selina's hacking antics to get discounts had paid off.
"Thanks Selina!" Exclaimed Odd, relieved and elated. "Now, let's see if I can get rid of this bad luck that haunts me every time I try my best with Samantha. Every time I get something, boom! a disaster comes along!"
"You'll get over it Odd" Replied the girl, who was busy tearing down the attic to find the virus hidden between the boxes and the wall. "Besides, you can always present the florist's bill to XANA and have him pay it, huh?" Despite the mess he was in, Odd couldn't help but hold back a smile. But Selina's voice snapped him into action. "Odd, go to the system settings, once you are there defragment the data packets and then reactivate the new firewall.
"Okay" Said Odd, typing into the keyboard. "Defragmentation in progress!" But as soon as the data packets were defragmented, Skid plummeted. "The auto pilot just went down!" Frightened, he typed trying to activate the vertical rockets, which would prevent the Skid from making the angel's leap into the Digital Sea. With an impressive dose of black humor he added "The good news is: if I dive, at least it will be my last unlucky day!"
"Forget about the Skid!" Jeremy replied, scared out of his wits. "I'll devirtualize Odd and bring him back!
Frantic, Jeremy typed on the computer trying to activate the devirtualization protocol, but nothing happened.
"What are you waiting for, Jeremy?" Ulrich was about to panic. "Do it!"
"I can't! The signal is too weak!" He then turned to the occupant of the Skid, trying to reassure him. "Odd, you're doing great, but I still can't bring you back! I can't bring him back, but maybe I could do the opposite and virtualize someone inside of the Skid?!" He muttered, with the hint of a plan sketching in his mind.
"But nobody can be virtualized right now, you know that!" Replied Aelita.
"You forgot someone!" Said Jeremy, looking at Selina out of the corner of his eye. "Someone able to reprogram the Skid in no time!"
Hearing this, Selina's jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Her? On a mission against the clock to save the Skid?
"Me?!" She replied, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Do you really think I can reprogram the Skid from the inside?"
"I know you can Selina" Jeremy assured her, thinking of all the times the girl had saved their skins, both in Lyoko and on Earth. "Go to the scanners! We have no choice!" As the redhead ran toward the elevator, Jeremy turned to Odd. "Odd, are you okay?"
Definitely he wasn't okay. The Skid's vertical rockets were being affected by the virus and the Skid was beginning to lose altitude at a terriyfing rate. Aelita swallowed. Although Jeremy was preparing the virtualization process, she didn't know if Selina would arrive in time. Trying to remain calm, she started talking to Odd.
"Odd, I know you can do it. Friday the 13th is nothing more than a superstition. You can deactivate the virus!" The pinkette told him, trying to get his friend to listen to her. "I know you can do it"
"Okay, Aelita" Odd said, summoning up his courage. "Tell me how to do it"
"First, eject the Navskids!"
Odd pulled down a little lever to his right and the Navskids detached from the Skid and fell into the sea.
The elevator opened and Selina ran into one of the scanners. Through the megaphone she heard Jeremy's voice.
"Virtualization activated!"
Selina took a deep breath and stepped into the scanner. There was no time to waste.
"Focus, Odd!" In the lab, Aelita was doing her best to keep a cool head. "You can't make any mistakes! Ready?"
"This time I hope it's really going to work!" Odd said as he reached for the Skid's keyboard. He didn't feel like ending Friday the 13th with a one-way trip to the Digital Sea.
"7XAM873PPV/32" Aelita began to dictate.
Hearing this, Odd typed in the same way he would send an urgent message, only this time without missing a single letter or number.
"Faster, faster..." Mumbled worried.
"22-43/676SQVT34"
Odd typed frantically, hoping the thing would work or that at least Selina would arrive in time to keep the Skid from plunging into the Digital Sea. In the lab, Jeremy was preparing Selina's virtualization.
"Ready to transfer!" Jeremy announced, and prepared to press the start button."Transfer: Selina!"
But before Selina was virtualized in the Skid, Aelita held Jeremy's wrist. Looking at the screen, he saw that the Skid's virus had been removed. Odd had managed to remove the virus from the Skid just in time.
"I did it!" Suddenly, for Odd, Friday the 13th was no longer such an unlucky day. "It worked! Wahoo!"
Odd took the controls of the Skid and headed back to the Sector 5 hangar. In one day he had renewed his driver's license and learned how to remove viruses from the vehicle, all on his own. Back in the lab he was met with congratulations from his friends, especially Ulrich, who greeted him with a bear hug.
"I was so worried about you!" The brunette exclaimed, sighing with relief as he felt the warmth of his friend, who bumped his fist, trying to take the heat off the situation.
Odd didn't seem to particularly mind having been on the verge of a dip in the Digital Sea, as he turned to Aelita with a smirk and bow.
"You're my princess!" Exclaimed the boy, bowing courteously.
"You're the king!" The pinkette replied, in an equally pompous tone of mockery.
"That was a pretty close call!" Jeremy exclaimed, looking at Selina, who was looking at Odd with a relieved smile, grateful that she didn't have to virtualize in the Skid. "I need to program something to check the Skid's protection system every hour! That should help avoid any nasty surprises, right?" Turning around, he saw that his friends had left the factory. "Huh?!"
With his friends having vanished, Jeremy returned to work. He would have no problem creating an Avast Free Antivirus for the Supercomputer, but Odd needed the help of his friends to figure what to do with all those roses.
Back at Kadic Academy, Odd was surrounded by huge bouquets of roses of which he had little idea what to make of. Even if Samantha accepted a bouquet, what would he do next. How would he dispose of so many flowers and how could he pay for them?
"There's no way I can sell all these roses..." He mumbled, shaking his head. "This is really not my day!"
But before he had more time to complain, Aelita, Yumi, Ulrich, William and Selina appeared from a corner of the park. They were next to Samantha, who was carrying a huge bouquet of red roses and a smile on her face. The girl sat on the bench next to Odd, holding the roses as if they were something precious.
"These roses are really great!" The girl exclaimed, overjoyed, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, Odd!"
Samantha gave him a sweet smile and walked away, inhaling the roses and leaving Odd thinking that life was full of ups and downs. Aelita, with a small smile, sat down next to him.
"So, you got what you wanted, right?" The pinkette congratulated him, smiling.
"Yeah, sure..." Yes, Samantha had been delighted with his detail, but the bite to his wallet had been brutal, and even with his savings recovered and the gift card he could cash in, he wasn't sure if he could pay for the roses.
"She looked quite happy!" Yumi told him, trying to cheer him up. "Aren't you?"
"Yes. Well..." He said exactly the problem he had in mind. "When I get to pay for all these roses! That even with my savings and the gift card Selina got me and I can trade to one of my sisters or my parents for cash" The redhead who was close to William, gave Odd a proud, kind smile. "It's still not enough to pay for it all!"
"You may not have enough" Began Aelita, with a sympathetic smile on her face. "But if we all put in a part of our savings, we might..."
"You mean that...?!"
"Yeah" Yumi smiled, with that smile of hers that indicated that all problems had a solution. "So it will be Friday the 13th for everyone here!"
The gang burst out laughing, and as Odd looked at the roses he couldn't help but think that life was, indeed, full of ups and downs, and although he didn't know which things were the ups of life and which were the downs, he was clear about one thing: true friends were the life's ups.