"Alright team, here we go. This is it. Get to the Skid. It's time to save the world."
"Right!" the five warriors shout before they set off to the elevator.
The team arrives in the Skid hangar, and they walk over to their transporter spots. Aelita looks sadly at the empty spot directly in front of her.
He should be here for this. He should get to see that his suffering is almost over, she thinks to herself as the rest of her team gets in position. She looks around at her teammates who are all in position and ready to go. "We're in position, Jeremie. On your go."
"Copy that. Energize!" he shouts pressing the enter key.
Each warrior materializes in their respective pods and Aelita and Jeremie begin the takeoff sequence for the last time.
"Here we go, team. Everyone ready?" Jeremie asks.
"Ready on our end," Aelita responds.
"Alright. Supports away. Good luck, team."
The Skid flies out of the hangar and navigates through the Tunnel. Aelita makes her final checks before the dive into the Digital Sea. "Everything looks good. We're ready for the dive."
"Copy that," Jeremie responds.
The Skid shoots down into the Digital Sea and their journey begins.
"Rotation. Turbo propellers operational. Lights operational. And away we go!" Aelita throws the throttle as far forward as it can go, and the Skid blasts off through the Sea.
"Holy shit. Hang on there, Flash! My face is melting!" Odd quips through the comms.
"Oh, shut it, Odd. I don't want any surprises catching us this time," Aelita retorts. "The faster we can get there, the faster we can accomplish our mission."
"Don't worry, Princess. We're with you," Ulrich says, his voice calm and level.
"Thanks, Ulrich. At least someone understands."
The Skid continues its flight through the Sea and eventually they reach the Replika.
"Digital Key activated," Aelita calls out. "Sending you the signal, Jeremie."
"Got it," he types on his keyboard. "The path is open."
The Replika opens with the usual monstrous creaking and shaking, and the Skid enters. Aelita expertly navigates the unpredictable terrain of Sector Five and docks with the tower.
Jeremie smirks at his screen. "Let's make this one count. Energize! Translation!"
Yumi, Odd, and Sissi materialize outside NASA Mission Control.
"Alright, Sis. You're up. We'll be right behind you," Odd says as they duck inside the building.
Sissi nods and closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath and begins to fade out of existence. She gives an unseen thumbs up and starts off down the hallway.
"Sissi. The supercomputer is one floor below you on the opposite end of the building, in the northeast wing. I've got your signal on my screens. I can loosely guide you, but Americans love hyper-encrypting everything, so I can't access the building blueprints just yet."
"Wow, something Einstein can't do with regards to hacking and computers? Damn, America is scary," Odd says with a laugh.
Yumi slaps Odd's shoulder. "Focus, dumbass. And be quiet. This place is crawling with people that I'm sure would find two people in colorful bodysuits weird."
Sissi continues on her path. "I haven't encountered major resistance yet, you two. Come on."
"On our way, Sissi. Thanks," Yumi responds.
They follow the invisible Sissi down the hall, until she suddenly stops. "You two hang back. There's a scientist in this lab. He's facing the door, I'll lure him out. It looks like there's another hallway on the other side. Once he's gone, cut through this lab."
"Copy. On your signal," Yumi responds.
Sissi sets about distracting the scientist. She knocks on the door a few times, and the man's head snaps up. He furrows his brow and looks around, before getting up from his chair and opening the door.
"That's weird," he says, noticing no one there, even though Sissi is no more than three feet in front of his face. He goes back to his desk. As soon as he sits down, Sissi knocks again. and runs off to another room, conveniently closing the door when he investigates the hall.
"What the hell? I know that's you, Plummer!" He shouts at the closing door before stomping across the hall and looking in the room opposite his. Yumi and Odd take advantage of the empty lab and sprint through it to the other door. The scientist sees nothing in the other lab and just shakes his head. "I've been working too long. I need a break. I'm starting to hear things."
"Heh. Sucker," Sissi mocks under her breath as he leaves the room and continues on her way. She walks down a long hallway, surveying every room and office space for a quicker route downstairs. She comes to a three-way intersection. the hallway she just came from stretches behind her and one to either side of her. She's so focused on trying to figure out which way to go that she doesn't notice someone walking up behind her.
The man, seeing nothing in his way, bumps into her, startling her. She momentarily loses focus on her invisibility and becomes visible but see through. "Wha... Who?" the scientist asks, seeing the ghost-like image of Sissi.
"Fuck. Shit," she panics. She can't risk the man raising an alarm and ruining their plan, so she does the only thing she can think of: she decks the man square in the jaw.
"Ugh," the man grunts. He stumbles and falls to the floor, knocked out cold.
"Sorry, dude," Sissi apologizes. "Nothing personal. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." She takes a moment to catch her breath. That was close, she thinks. I need to focus and concentrate. She closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing again as she regains control of her invisibility.
"Uh. Houston, we have a problem," Sissi says quietly as she picks a hallway.
"Ha ha, Sissi. Cute. What's the problem?" Jeremie asks.
"I may or may not have been seen by someone. And, uh, I may have just knocked said someone out."
"Shit. Alright. No time to lose. I just got access to the blueprints and floor plans. You're heading in the right direction. There's a staircase about fifteen meters up on your right. Take that downstairs. I'll call the other two."
"We heard loud and clear, Einstein. Right behind her," Odd says, following his girlfriend's path. He sees the man she just knocked out in the center of the intersection. "Should we get him help?"
"Leave him, Odd. He'll wake up eventually. You guys need to go," Jeremie commands.
The three warriors run downstairs and make their way through the maze of the basement. The arrive at the supercomputer without any more issue.
"We're here, Jeremie. Starting up the terminal," Yumi says, booting up the computer in front of her.
"Great job, you three. Aelita, Ulrich! The others are in position. How are you two doing?"
"Not great, Jeremie! The Scyphozoa just reared its ugly, see-through head," Ulrich shouts swiping his swords at the tentacles it has aimed at Aelita. "Princess, get out of here and find some cover!"
She nods and runs towards the hallway they entered the area through. As she ducks behind the wall and catches her breath, and interesting plan dawns on her. "Ulrich!" she yells across the sector. "Get over here. I might have a way to take care of our tentacle-y friend!"
"Right! Super Sprint!"
He skids to a stop in front of Aelita and she lays out her plan. "We can both throw attacks around the same speed, and both of which the Scyphozoa can dodge and counter. What if we used my Energy Fields to accelerate your swords. If we can aim it properly, we could shoot straight through its head and take it out."
"Aelita, that's crazy. But crazy may just be what we need. Tell me what I have to do."
"Okay. I want you to go back out and engage with its tentacles again, but do you best not to cut any or it will run away as normal. When I give the signal, throw one of your swords up and I'll blast it with an Energy Field right into its head."
"Got it," he nods and unsheathes his swords as he runs. "Super Sprint!"
Aelita watches from afar, amassing energy as Ulrich fends off the monster. She waits for the perfect moment for its focus to be only on him. Ulrich looks back and sees how focused she is and gets an idea himself.
"Triplicate!" He and his clones run around in circles underneath the Scyphozoa, it can't keep up and starts getting visibly confused. It prepares an attack against the three swordsmen underneath it.
"Ulrich! Now!"
Each clone tosses one of his swords up. The Scyphozoa doesn't know where to look.
"Energy Field!"
The ball of red energy shoots across the sector at the katana closest to her. It makes contact directly with the end of the handle, propelling it forward at lightning speed, embedding itself in the wall behind the Scyphozoa. Just as suddenly as the attack happened, the monster's head explodes and the rest of its body fizzles out of existence.
"Nice shot, Princess. That was a great idea!"
"Honestly, I can't believe it worked!" Aelita says, surprised. "Jeremie, Scyphozoa is down! Heading for the tower."
"Wow… we've never taken that thing out with direct combat before. Good job, you two!"
Aelita enters the tower and floats up to the upper platform. The interface opens up.
"In position, Jeremie."
"Great. Yumi, it's time. Both of you, enter the destruction code for the Carthage Sector."
Fingers fly across keyboards as command after command is written.
carthagelink-init
cd/carsec/replikas
sync-all
0x2A0F7B
carthagelink-exec-destroy
firewall-bypass-init
launch-sync-virus
overload-rep-cores
exec-erase-protocol
As the last lines of code flash onto the screens the windows close. The Replika begins to shake.
"That's it! We did it!" Aelita shouts.
"I'm bringing everyone back in. Let's get you guys home," Jeremie says through the comms. "Energize!"
The five warriors appear in their Nav Skids and Aelita pilots them out of the Replika as it explodes into oblivion.
"We did it!" Aelita exclaims again triumphantly, guiding the Skid back toward Lyoko.
"Yes, we did!" Yumi agrees.
"It's about damn time!" Ulrich chimes in.
They land in the Skid hangar and disembark.
"We did it!" Sissi repeats, hugging Odd.
"Thanks to you, Princess," Odd adds as he turns and looks at Aelita.
"I couldn't have done it without all of you," she insists.
"Alright, team. I'm proud of you all, but we have one last thing to do. Aelita, go to the interface in the Celestial Dome. I need your help to run some exploits."
"Heading there now." Aelita breaks through firewall after firewall in XANA's security at lightning speed. Every new finger tap on the translucent screen is a new vulnerability exploited. "It's all yours, Jeremie. I've done about all I can."
He cracks his knuckles and speaks over his shoulders. "Here we go, Herve. Wanna watch?"
"Of course!" He jumps up and leans over Jeremie's shoulder and watches him type as if his fingers were supposed to make him take flight.
After about ten minutes straight of typing, Jeremie leans back in the chair. "Is everybody ready?"
He is met with a chorus of "ready" in response, and with that he slams his finger down onto the enter key, running the Recalcitrance Code to take care of XANA once and for all.
Back on Lyoko, white waves of energy emanate from the core of Sector Five like shockwaves, blowing the warriors off balance. At the same time, the entire sector begins shaking.
"Get back into the Arena!" Yumi shouts, leading the team back to safety.
"What's going on?" Sissi questions, looking around the sector nervously.
"This must be the system's way of purging XANA once and for all," Aelita says, pondering the events.
"Look at the floor! The Eye of XANA is disappearing!" Odd shouts. "So it's getting rid of every trace of XANA everywhere?"
"Must be," Aelita says, starting to get a little choked up.
Jeremie and Herve sit and wait for confirmation from Lyoko that everything worked properly. "All readings look great, but why haven't we heard from them yet?"
Suddenly a beam of white light shoots out of the supercomputer.
"Did you accidentally run a Return to the Past?" Herve shouts nervously.
"No! I don't know what's happening! I didn't do that!" Jeremie responds, searching every monitor for information.
The light begins expanding and envelops them as it continues to get bigger and more powerful. It expands out from the factory and starts moving outwards over Boulogne-Billancourt and regions south of the Seine.
"What the hell is that light?" Bastien asks, looking out the window of the dorm room. "Are we getting nuked? Is this World War III?!"
"They must have succeeded. They did it," William says wistfully. He gets up from his chair and steps into his shoes by the door. "I gotta go, man. I'll be back!"
"What did you—hey! Where are you going, man?" Bastien yells to William even though he's already running down the hallway.
Meanwhile, the warriors are stepping out of the scanners, cheering and shouting about having finally ended this fight for good. XANA is gone and Lyoko and the world are safe from his digital tyranny.
The elevator opens, revealing Jeremie and Herve, both wearing huge ear-to-ear smiles.
"Let's go shut this computer down, once and for all!" Jeremie shouts at the team.
They all look at each other and crowd into the elevator. It follows its path down to the room holding the supercomputer.
They all step out walking towards the monolithic device.
"This is it, guys. This is the culmination of all our hard work and friendship throughout the past decade. It's hard to believe this is it," Jeremie says starting to tear up a little. He starts to reach for the power lever when the elevator opens again, causing everyone to turn and look at who just walked into the room.
"You didn't think you could just beat XANA and then turn this hunk o' junk off without me, did you?"
"Will!" Aelita screams, leaping into his arms.
Sissi makes a noise not unlike a dog yelping in pain as she cowers behind Odd.
"Why are you here, William?" Sissi asks over Odd's shoulder.
"I saw the enormous light coming from the direction of the factory and ran straight here. I figured that it must have something to do with the end of this fight."
"And right you are. Glad to have you back," Jeremie says sincerely.
"Glad to be back. Now are you going to shut this thing off or not, Einstein?"
Jeremie nods and walks up to the super computer and presses a few buttons and pulls the power lever, causing it to start descending into the ground.
"Now we don't have to worry about it ever again," Aelita says, smiling at her friends.
"Finally," Sissi sighs, visibly relieved.
"I guess this is the part where we go celebrate," Yumi chuckles.
"Oh, yeah. There's no doubt about that. You better believe I'm hitting up the clubs tonight," Odd replies.
"I don't think anyone's gonna argue against that. Right, guys?" Sissi says, turning to the rest of the group.
"As long as Odd doesn't force me to dance, I'm down," Ulrich says.
"How about instead of all that, we have a little party the Hermitage?" Aelita suggests. "Tomorrow night. Just for us?"
"That sounds like a great idea," Yumi says.
"I'm so down," Odd and Ulrich say in unison.
Sissi gives an unenthusiastic cheer.
The team begins to leave the factory for the last time, smiles and laughter abound.
In his office overlooking Zurich, Malachi Voss smokes a cigar while he stands at one of the north-facing windows and looks directly towards Paris.
He takes a couple big puffs of the cigar before taking it out of his mouth and blowing the smoke at the window. "I knew it. I knew it existed. Waldo, you son-of-a-bitch, I'm coming to take my revenge."