Chapter 3
That night, I dreamed. I dreamed of what life would be like if XANA took over the planet.
I saw in a store, selling only basic necessities, people paying with coins that had a XANA eye on it. Every person had a XANA eye scorched onto their forehead.
As I watched the scene unfold, a group of rebels attacked a patrol of robots, and they were mercilessly eliminated. The cold efficiency of those robots still shakes me up when I think about it.
Soon, I awoke from the nightmare. I was breathing hard. I looked over at the clock, and saw that I only had an hour before my alarm would go off, telling me that I was time to get up and face the day.
After school was over, I brought my laptop over to the Factory. I plugged it into one of the inputs on the interface. After some looking around, and started the process I had come to do.
I backed up my data, and wiped the hard drive of my laptop. I installed the new BIOS, and connected the two computers wirelessly. Then I restored my data. This way, I could scan for activated Towers from my laptop. My laptop would now function better for everything, since the BIOS of the SuperComputer is highly advanced.
Then I did a little searching on the memory banks. I found the avatars of the original Lyoko Warriors, Ulrich, Yumi, Aelita, Odd, and William. It was hard to believe that my grandfather had been in the same position I was in only 50 or so years ago.
I thought about asking him for help, but he had moved out of the area, and I never bothered to ask for a phone number. Besides, Grandpa was so old by this point; there was probably nothing he could do. Most of the programs he had written had been deleted by XANA. I doubted that Jeremy could reprogram them.
I checked out my Lyoko avatar, as well as Tennent’s and Sean’s. Sean’s weapons have already been listed, but I discovered that he had a special Lyoko Power. Temporary invisibility. I don’t know how long he could sustain it though.
I checked out Tennent’s next. He had the same skills of Odd. He could shoot Laser Arrows, and he had a low power energy shield which could block monsters’ attacks. His Lyoko Power was climbing. He could climb up almost any surface, no matter how steep or smooth it was.
I opened my file. I found that I had some type of energy claws that came out of the back of my hands at will. There were three 1 ½ foot long blades that came out of each hand. As a secondary weapon, I had two rockets that I could shoot from the metal gauntlet I had seen on my forearm. I tried to override the function that only let me have two, but I could do nothing. My Lyoko Power was Jumping. I could jump about 20 times higher that I could on earth. That explained my mis-jump in the Tower.
I then did a little programming. I transferred a Lyoko Interface onto my left forearm. This way, even while we were on Lyoko trying to deactivate a Tower, I could look at the radar, and do other things, that I’m sure we would need later.
For the rest of the day, I worked at figuring out the Interface. It didn’t come with a help file, so it was slow going. By the end of the day though, I felt a lot more confident with the controls.
***
Days passed. No activated Towers. I had been thinking of a way to destroy XANA, but nothing came to mind. He seemed to have no source. There was nothing I could do to weaken him further. I had no idea where he drew power from.
One day, in the middle of Science class, my laptop beeped at me. It was the set sound that meant there was an activated Tower!
There was only a few minutes left in the class, so I decided that it could wait. Afterward, I whispered to Sean and Tennent that we needed to deactivate a Tower. They ran off. I was about the follow them, when someone caught my arm. It was Alyssa Schaeffer.
“Hey!” She said. “Where are you going in such a hurry?” She inquired. “Today was the day you promised me help with my math, remember?” Rats! I thought. I really regretted that promise now.
I had no excuse, and Sean and Tennent wouldn’t be able to get to Lyoko without me. “Look Alyssa, I’m sorry. I can’t do that right now.”
“Why not?” She asked.
“Well... um...” I couldn’t think up of anything to say. I’m really not good at coming up with excuses. The rest of the students had cleared the area by now.
I figured I had nothing to lose. I told her about Lyoko. I knew that Alyssa didn’t know enough about legal issues to see the magnitude of it. When I was finished, she looked at me all wide eyed. “You’re serious? A virtual world? I’ve got to see this!” Sighing, I led her to the factory.
When we got there, I was surprised to see that I was not the only one who had picked up a friend.
It turns out that Sean and Tennent had tried to take a short-cut through the gym, and ran into another student, Brittany Stern. They too had no choice but to explain.
When they were through explaining, I nodded. “What are we waiting for?” I asked.
When we got to the Lab both of our new friends were looking around curiously.
“Tennent, do you mind staying on Earth? We need someone here to monitor the attack.”
“Alright,” He agreed.
I got into my chair and configured the transfers. The activated Tower was in the Ice Sector. We had never been there before.
Soon, Sean and I dropped down onto Lyoko. I configured the girls’ transfer via the LI (Lyoko Interface). Soon they too dropped down onto Lyoko. I have a hard time explaining what they looked like on Lyoko, so a picture is necessary.
Alyssa on Lyoko
Brittany on Lyoko (Her fans are actually purple, not black.)
Alyssa had no visible weapons, but Brittany had two metal fans. I wonder if somehow she was related to Yumi and Ulrich Stern...
I had virtualized us as close to the tower as I could.
I pointed as I said, “There’s the Tower. See how it’s dark blue? That means it’s activated. I don’t know what ANAX and XANA plan on doing with it, but if we’re lucky, we can thwart the attack before it starts.”
Coming up beside me, Sean said, “It looks like we’re going to have to fight for it!” He motioned to three Bloks coming our way.