Chapter Text
Chapter I: A New Morning
She was falling.
The world was a blur of colors and hues as Aelita sped past; the remains of the overwing dissolved overhead under a shower of red laser fire. Binary digits became infinitesimally small streaks of white among a sea of blue in her vision. There is no air or wind on Lyoko, and yet she can feel her body being battered by the tiniest of forces as it plummets.
Wings!
Her hand hurriedly brushes against the star-shaped bracelet adorning her wrist, and a pair of ethereal pink wings unfurl from her back, immediately halting her descent. She soars gracefully upward and flies among the swarm of mantas chasing after her friends. Charging up an energy field in each hand, she rolls mid-air and slams one into one’s back and fires the other at a second monster’s underbelly.
The remaining mantas screech in surprise as two of their own explode, and quickly break from formation. She soars through the opening and tails one as it changes direction towards her friends, wings beating in time with her racing heart as she strains with all her might to catch up to them. So focused on the monster about to shoot down the overboard and its spiky-haired passenger, she doesn’t see another manta coming back around for a surprise attack.
The laser burns hot against her side, and the force lifting her upwards falters.
Her body strikes against the side of Carthage and limply rolls off the jagged surface as Odd and Ulrich scream her name. Helpless, she could only watch as the blue sphere grew smaller and smaller until her back hit the celestial dome and merged with the flowing data streams.
At that moment, she was everywhere and nowhere. Her consciousness spread thin and wide, stretching to the digital sea, past the vast glaciers of the ice region, and above the misty scapes of the mountains. She felt the thrum of Lyoko’s beating heart as if it were in her own chest, and felt the distant regions shake when she breathed. The digital world was her eyes, and her arteries were the sinuous cords connecting Lyoko and the towers.
A pain suddenly manifests itself somewhere deep in her fragmenting body, hot and wicked like a serrated knife methodically sawing its way through. Aelita screams, but there’s no longer a mouth for the sound to escape.
Then there was nothing, and so was she.
Aelita wakes, her back covered in a layer of sweat and fingers loosely grasping cotton sheets. Her ears feel as hot as coals, pricking in the chilled air underneath a tangled mess of hair. The aches and pains of yesterday’s fight catch up to her, and the muscles in her lower leg hitch. A hiss escapes her lips as she rubs the sore calves under the thick comforter, gingerly passing over the spot where a deep slash existed before the return to the past removed it.
The dream felt so real.
She pauses, confused. Thoughts come to her disjointed and as slow as molasses. Maybe it’s Friday? There was a fight with a specter that had rampaged in a neighboring town in an attempt to sabotage vital air transportation infrastructure—an attack that was just barely averted at the last minute. Then she remembers collapsing onto bed without bothering to change into her night clothes. She’s surprised that she even remembered to kick off her boots before falling asleep.
It’s Sunday, February 8.
Aelita rolls over, squinting at the 04:06 staring back at her in bright, crimson digits. The sky is still dark, and the moonlight catches her window and draws long patterns on her dorm room floor. She looks up at the few stars dotting the inky black skyscape above and imagines for the briefest of moments the mythical Skidbladnir flying past overhead in place of an airplane. Bits and pieces of her father’s voice echoed in her head—a lingering ghost of bedtime stories past. If she closes her eyes and stays still, she can almost feel him sitting at the foot of her bed as he did when she was a child, recounting the legend of the sons of Ivaldi crafting the fine ship on Loki’s behest after the cunning trickster god had mischievously shorn off the locks of Sif’s hair.
Some part of her finds it darkly amusing how the Norse myths and legends returned to her memory faster than things like her own birthday, but she supposes that her former self may not have put much stock in birthdays. In fact, it was immensely difficult for her to remember much about her past life at all aside from the lingering threat of the men in black dogging her and her father’s every step. Maybe it was a side effect from being on a dormant Lyoko for so long.
Her head tips up to gaze further into the stars. Aelita’s thoughts forcefully change to the possibility of alien civilizations- something her father had spoken about occasionally during a few of his homeschooling sessions. Seeing as the universe was splintered off into innumerable factions with countless space-faring species inhabiting countless worlds, there was a chance that contact was inevitable. Of course, given the immensity of space, it would mean that hundreds of millions of years could pass before it happened—if it did, anyway.
Enrico Fermi would have been over the moon if he had been alive to witness it—both figuratively and literally.
Aelita yawns and stretches, flopping onto her back and training her gaze on the blank ceiling. Fingers tapped impatiently at the embroidered duvet. Sure, she could try to go to sleep again, but she knew if she did it, she’d have a harder time getting up when her alarm would ring in a few hours. She briefly considers pulling an Odd—skipping today’s scheduled material review and choosing to stay in bed for a little while longer instead. Surely, missing one day wouldn’t hurt that much, would it? Her grades were second-best in the class, after all.
She’s standing up and already starting to rummage through her closet for a fresh change of clothes before she even realizes it.
Her body is on full autopilot as she pads down the hall as if it had memorized the exact number of steps needed for its destination. And if Aelita was more awake, she would have supposed it would have, given the nightmares that never stopped plaguing her. Pushing the heavy metal door open, the girl’s bathroom lies empty, with only the occasional drop of water breaking the silence. The faint scent of recently-applied bleach hangs in the humid air, stinging the pink-haired girl’s nose.
The cold water splashing across her face is a welcome sensation. Aelita stands before the mirror, tracing her face with exhausted eyes and staring at the dark shadows that started to become more prominent above her cheeks. Sodden strands of tangled and mussed hair frame her angular face, only adding to her haggard appearance.
When was the last time she’d gotten a full night’s rest?
XANA’s attacks were only growing in intensity and frequency. The recent discovery of the robotic spiders only added to the torrent of worries she and Jeremie were having. What use could XANA possibly have for them?
Aelita pauses and considers her options as the water droplets behind her splash like a metronome.
Maybe a short walk wouldn’t be a bad idea.
The cool air streams over her as she strolls down the sidewalk, a blessed contrast against her overheating skin. Houses and buildings meld into a smear of white and tans and browns, functionally cookie-cutter copies of each other in slightly different coats of paint and plaster. Insects quietly chirp and forage in the sparse undergrowth, burrowing in soil made damp by morning dew.
Kadic sleeps behind her, nestled in a blanket made of thin streaks of fog. So too are its inhabitants cocooned in blankets. The outskirts of campus are less than a stone’s throw away, and the path towards the factory was a clear, direct route. Her hands dig deeper in her pockets, and the bulky shape of her cell phone presses against her palm reassuringly. She takes comfort in the text she sent to Jeremie informing him of what she was planning to do and the fact that he could easily reach her in case of an emergency.
Aelita decides to take another path today. This path guides her away from the bustling town center with its glass skyscrapers and perpetually twinkling lights. Boulogne-Billancourt is quiet, its breathing matched by the ebb and flow of the human inhabitants nestled within. In another hour, a new day would start, and hundreds of people one after the other would wake and get ready for the day. In the meantime, suburbia gives way to a grassy field, where trees started to thin out. Shadows of the top edge of the cityscape peeked over the horizon, where silent monoliths both old and new dominated the landscape.
Without consciously thinking, she stops at the foot of a park. Tall, black metal bars surround the space, with a wrought iron fence decorated with graceful curves and swirls. It’s too dark to make anything out except for the playground, where a sliver of fading moonlight rests.
“Oh, this is so much fun, daddy! I want to reach the sky!”
Aelita seizes her head as a pounding headache throbs in her temples, and a memory swims before her eyes, melding with reality.
In front of her is her younger self and her father. Her long dark pink sweater loosely billows in the wind, almost giving her the appearance of tiny wings. Franz smiles reassuringly at the younger Aelita, giving the pink-haired girl another push on the swing. Little Aelita shrieks in glee, and Franz laughs along with her. The lines on her father’s face aren’t as prominent, and the older girl wonders briefly if this took place before the supercomputer was built.
In the distance, she can hear the echoes of the Parisian city as it was. Echoes of music accompany the splash of water fountains long-gone. The ghost of the smell of freshly-baked goods wafts across her nose. Faceless people old and young populate the playground and run between the wood and metal structures, but their forms are abstract and blurry. Nondescript conversations from said faceless people surround her, words lost to the ebb and flow of time.
She can almost smell the earthy cologne her father wore mixed with the strong chemical scent of paint, most likely from the pair just finishing decorating her room at the Hermitage. How comfortable he tried to make her! How he’d tried to give her some sense of normalcy after her mother was taken away from her before her eyes!
Aelita comes closer to the fence and stares longingly at the pair, a pit of wistful envy twisting in her heart. Her hands tightly grip the metal fence and she leans in as far as she can, as if at any moment she would phase through the bars and join them. The smaller Aelita giggles happily as Franz pushes her higher and higher.
“I’m flying! I’m flying!”
She blinks, and the image is gone. Franz and her younger self’s laughter continue to echo in her head.
The yearning sensation in her heart writhes like a snake. Unbidden, tears come to her eyes, and she stubbornly wipes them away.
The phone in her pocket buzzes insistently, and it takes Aelita a second before it occurs to her that she should answer it.
“Aelita!” Jeremie’s sleepy voice crackles through the tiny speaker. “XANA’s attacking. I’ve alerted Odd and Ulrich, and Yumi’s on the way. I’ll meet you at the factory.”
Aelita was running before Jeremie finished his sentence.
“I’m on my way!”
The tarantulas roared, adjusting their positions and sending a new barrage of laser fire at the four warriors hiding behind a snowdrift. Mantas screeched overhead, elegantly soaring through the air towards the team.
“Guys, hurry up! Things are getting hot over here!” Jeremie yelled, voice straining with panic.
Distantly, the warriors could hear through the microphone the sounds of metal creaking and concrete collapsing.
“Aelita, go!” Yumi shouted.
Wasting no time, the pink-haired girl raised an arm and the iceberg under the monsters’ feet split. A thick wall of ice raced towards the tarantulas on one half, while the other half shuddered violently, sinking into the frigid water. The tarantulas roared as they were knocked apart and sent skittering in different directions.
The warriors yelled and they mounted the snowdrift and charged. Twin tessen fans whirred as they were flung high, slicing through a manta’s wings. Ulrich disappeared in a yellow blur and reappeared with his sword stabbing through a tarantula’s muzzle. Odd came up from behind on his overboard, surfing past the downed manta as it struck the ice and exploded in a flurry of giblets. Firing off a volley of laser arrows, he curved around a tarantula as it struggled to gain purchase on the slippery ground and slammed the overboard into the third tarantula, sending it plummeting into the waters below.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Aelita rushed to the tower. Briefly savoring the cool ripple as her body passed through the tower’s wall, she ascended to the top platform. AELITA , the interface greeted as she pressed her palm against its surface.
“Tower deactivated,” she sighed instinctively in relief as the interface wiped clean and the text changed to CODE LYOKO . Walls of blue windows around her swept down to parts unknown, and the atmosphere inside of the tower seemed more peaceful, somehow.
She waited for the wave of white that would invariably tear her and everything that existed apart molecule by molecule and turn back time.
But nothing came.
Something was wrong. The return to the past would have been triggered by now.
“Jeremie?” she called out, voice thick with worry, “Jeremie, are you there? What’s happening?”
So preoccupied, it came as an absolute shock to her when she was suddenly knocked off the platform and sent tumbling below. Slamming hard against the hard circular surface, she only had a fraction of a second to roll to the side before a pair of jet black boots came crashing down where her head used to be.
“William!” she cried in shock, quickly readying herself.
William didn’t say anything. Furrowing his brows, the possessed warrior summoned his Zweihander and hefted it. The large blade sang as it swept through the air and left an arcing trail of energy behind. Aelita quickly summoned two energy fields and absorbed it just in time. Half-blinded by the resulting flash of light, she felt a heavy blow land square in her stomach and stumbled back, losing her footing. The tower pulled and she was suddenly inverted, sucked into the data stream.
Aelita tumbled, disoriented. The tower’s internal gravity shifted granularly, and it was only thanks to her years of living on Lyoko that she was able to adjust. The pink-haired Lyoko warrior looked beneath her, and saw a mass of dark smoke speeding in her direction. Quickly, she swipes at the star-shaped bracelet, and a pair of ethereal pink wings sprout from her back just as William emerges from the smoke, sword stabbing the area where her chest had been mere seconds ago.
Her wings beat furiously, straining as their owner pushed them to their limit. The sound of scraping metal reached pointed ears, and the elven warrior rolled to the side just as another white slash of energy screamed past her. A gray circle marked with a familiar symbol rapidly approached. Aelita, recognizing it for what it was, twirled mid-air so she soared past it, then doubled back in an inverted roll to skim past its top. The cool rippling of the tower walls passed her by once more as she was ejected from its confines, and the stark emptiness of the mountain region greeted her.
Aelita soared, immediately clearing the mountain tops. Seeing nothing following her, she sped towards a nearby rock formation, hoping to hide herself within the surrounding mist.
“Jeremie!” she cried, fervently wishing with all her heart to hear his voice, that he would tell her that he was okay.
Again, there was nothing but uncomfortable silence.
Aelita hovered once the fog securely wrapped around her. She fidgeted, feeling a million thoughts rush past her a minute. Pressing up against a particularly craggy mountain side, she tried to curl into herself and hide within its cover.
William would invariably try to throw her into the digital sea. Jeremie wasn’t responding and needed help. As far as she knew, Ulrich, Odd, and Yumi didn’t know about William’s ambush and probably would have devirtualized each other to try to help Jeremie. Her best bet would be to devirtualize herself as well. Twin orbs of pink energy sprung to life in her palms, and Aelita readies herself.
Just as she was about to strike, her ears twitched. The crackling smoke associated with William’s presence buzzed nearby. It hummed lowly on one side of the mountain, and then suddenly disappeared.
Her wings flapped once, and Aelita flew in a small circle, confused. Her eyes flitted.
Where did William—?
Her train of thought was cut off as something heavy suddenly jabbed into the small of her back.
Her wings and energy fields vanished with soft twinkles of light. William grabs a wrist, firmly wedging a boot against her back. Aelita grazes the mountain side and lands as a crumpled heap at its base, the harsh impact jarring William loose. She lets out a quiet moan, bracing an arm against the rocky ground and struggling to push herself up.
The world spins again as her body seizes. Thick black smoke snakes around it, pinioning her arms to the side. She is helpless as she is flung against the jagged rock, the impact jarring her vision and causing it to darken at the edges. William casually strolls towards her, an arm outstretched and keeping her trapped within his grasp.
Black and green stare at each other. William’s face betrays nothing as he raises his hand, trapping her mid-air. Aelita’s head lolls forward as if in prayer and her body relaxes, slumping lethargically. Triumphant, the black-suited warrior approaches her.
An angelic chorus rings through the air, the airy notes punctuating the stillness of the sector. A pulse travels the length of the land, causing jagged cracks to spring forth. Mountains trembled and rocks skittered into the depths below. William pauses in his stride, uncertain.
The pinkette’s head suddenly snaps up, and the black smoke around her vanishes with a hiss.
“Energy field!”
William groans as he is knocked towards the cliff’s edge, body crackling with writhing pink electricity. The large sword skids past him, threatening to also fall off. Without missing a beat, Aelita summons two more energy fields, preparing to finish him off.
A familiar, indescribable cry rings out behind her, and the Lyoko warrior freezes in a panic, her opponent all but forgotten. Aelita yelped as the Scyphozoa swiftly wrapped its tentacles around her and hoisted her up. Paralyzed, she could do nothing but stare at the monster face-to-face as it started to root around in her brain. A wave of ice-cold fear swept through her, replaced by a growing sensation of razor-sharp pain that radiated from her skull to the rest of her body.
An invisible force pulled at her. The pain in her skull throbbed and intensified. Her vision became hazy and separate. In that instant, it was as if she were in two places at once, looking down at her ensnared body with William attentively standing guard at her side, and looking up at the Scyphozoa at the same time. A heavy weight settled upon her mind, dimming her senses.
She could feel herself slipping…
Away…
As her consciousness darkened and narrowed to a needle-thin point, a dome of white blossomed from the heart of Lyoko and spread outward, enveloping the world in a flash.