To be honest, I'm not sure if I can trust this guy. At this point, I don't think there's anyone in the world I can trust. At least that's how I feel. But this guy's making it sound like I really saved the world from mortal peril or something! It's obviously made up; what's a XANA? A super-storm? He told me that I didn't remember anything because he set the world back in time. What a crock of crap, really.

But what disturbs me is the fact that he knew about my program, Bridge. I hadn't even finished it before the guy told me that he could find a use for it and that it did, in fact, save the world. How did he know? I mean, I had only been hacking for about a week, figuring out the programming language, and even that, I had just started Bridge.

This man of mystery is something else, and I find myself drawn to it. I'm playing his game. Like it or not.

~~~

"So, Jeremie," the voice called from behind, "have you found any new uses for that program?"

Jeremie Belpois, the genius of the group, looked over his shoulder and adjusted his glasses. Walking toward him was Yumi Ishiyama, one of his good friends, and a substantial warrior.

"Well, Yumi," replied Jeremie, who adjusted his glasses once more, perhaps trying to look good, "The only test I conducted was 'bridging' some small values together. It was pretty cool, actually." A smile appeared on Jeremie's face. "It freed a lot of space on the supercomputer, enough so that programming your vehicles on Lyoko and virtualizing you and the others is a lot faster, among other things."

"That's pretty cool, I guess." Yumi looked down at her boots, then looked up at Jeremie again, brushing her jet black hair out of her face.

"What about that...guy? The guy who made the program?" she asked, innocently trying to spark a converstaion.

Jeremie turned to face a vending machine, trotting over to it and staring at the buttons.

"He claims to be American, and calls himself Jack Fawzi. I don't think that's his real name though. No self-respecting hacker would go by their birth name."

Jeremie pushed one of the buttons, and after a short period of rumbling, the machine dispersed a small, green bottle with a "plunk" as it hit the bottom. Jeremie picked the bottle up, but didn't bother to open it.

"He really got us out of that big mess we were in, with that program of his."

It was still fresh in Yumi's mind. Under the water, the freezing water, rain pounded the surface like a million mallets. She couldn't breathe; there was no air, live-giving air. And on top of that, she had almost lost her younger brother.

Not to mention herself.

"Don't forget," she said, falling into a vengeful mood and tone, "he led us right into the mess as well."

"You're lying to me."

"No, it's exactly as Jeremie said! Jeremie seperated the SCANNER.LYO segment from the other value and put Odd and I in Lyoko, where I deactivated the tower and stopped the storm. Then we went back in time and since you weren't directly involved, you didn't remember anything."

"Oh, please. I'm not going to fall for that load of crap. Tell me the real story, how this Jeremie of yours knows of my program."

"It's just like he said!!"

Aelita simply could not convince Jack that what had happened was entirely truthful, no matter how hard she tried.

She hadn't snuck out to the control room just to argue. She had originally come  down to run a systems check after a boring day; giving her something to do. When she arrives, Jack was just...there. Knowing what Jack did for the team, she wanted to at least get to know him a little. Was it working?

Not a bit. 

She had set up a live voice translation system to rid them of the inconvienience of physically translating every sentence. It seemed to be working.

Jeremie would be pleased, she thought.

"Listen, whatever-your-name-is, if you're just going to leave me this pile of lies and not give me the truth, then maybe I'll just stop programming new plugins altogether," said a frustrated Jack, the voice tearing into Aelita's headset.

"But you can't do that, Jack," Aelita replied. "What if it happens again? What if we need you like last time?"

"It won't happen again," yelled Jack, "because it never happened in the first place!!"

Then he was gone. Aelita flopped back in the control seat, the headset still on, just wondering. Wondering if they could get along without him.

We got along without him before, but last time we couldn't have finished off the storm without him. Without his program, the supercomputer wouldn't have had enough free memory to support all those Hornets without major slowdown. XANA would have won. And we all would have died.

She threw the thought out of her mind and sat upright, staring at the screen.

And there it was. An activated tower. 

It seems to me that this little game has gone a bit too far for my taste. I wish I'd just had the truth handed to me instead of this "time travel" lunacy. It's not like I actually did anything with Bridge. Is this Jeremie mad at me for some reason? Ah, that must be it! This Jeremie is mad because I hacked into his system and he's lying to me to try and drive me away. And it was working! What a fool I am! Well, I'll show him, him and that other girl just what I can do. Tonight, I start a new little project, one that will make these two undoubtedly regret ever trying to one-up me!

Aelita buried her head in her palms in frustration. Of all times, she thought, this had to happen now. Just awesome. She took a deep breath and glaanced up at the screen. The activated tower was on the far side of the Ice sector.

Oh, great. XANA's probably already put a Scyphozoa halfway there.

Sighing again, Aelita accessed the supercomputer's telephone module.

/-CONNECT CALL SYSTEM
(-Connected.
/-RUN CALL SYSTEM

~~~

"And as you can see, class, the prokaryotic cell does not caontain a defined nucleus. Instead, there is a tangled strand of DNA..."

Kadic's seventh grade science teacher, Mrs. Hertz, was giving another lecture to the class. The class was supposed to be taking notes, but the vast majority of them were not at all interested in the anatomy of a prokaryotic cell in the first place. After all, who really wanted to learn about cells that were the undisputed champion culprits of bacterial diseases? It makes for a depressing lecture.

Sissi Delmas, the daughter of Kadic's principal, sat in the middle of the room, pretending to write down some of the seemingly useless facts monotonously emanating from Mrs. Hertz. In fact, she was doodling a rough and slightly inaccurate drawing of Ulrich, the boy who had saved the wannabe anchorwomen Milly and Tamiya from XANA's vicious storm that had occured -- or didn't occur, thanks to the wonders of time travel.

Sissi glanced to her right at Ulrich, who was nonchalantly seated next to Odd and behind Jeremie. His chin was rested on his fist, staring at a quarter angle out the window, a pencil in his free hand, a blank piece of lined paper below it. Sissi bit her tongue and resumed her drawing.

Ulrich hadn't exactly been himself lately. His grades were slowly falling, and his soccer game seemed to be escaping form his athletic midset. Sissi hadn't heard him talk aloud for quite a while.

It was anyone's guess of what had come over Ulrich, but the Lyoko team wasn't hesitant to think that he miht have been traumatized by XANA's storm.

"Huh?" Jeremie yelped under his breath. His cell phone was vibrating in his pocket. Either Yumi or Aelita was trying to reach him, he decided. It was three minutes until the bell that signaled the end of class.

Three minutes that could mean everything, Jeremie thought. He contemplated the situation that he was in when the storm hit, and what it would have been like if he was three minutes late.

I would have drowned, he thought. I would have drowned and I would have been dead and XANA would have won.

XANA would have won.

"Is there a problem, Mr. Belpois?" asked Mrs. Hertz.

"Huh?" Jeremie awakened from his daytime nightmare.

Mrs. Hertz turned back to the board to finish her lecture. Odd had bedcome aware once Jeremie's name came up. He leaned forward, and whispered, "Anything on your mind, Einstein?"

Those three minutes were up. The bell sang a song of sweet relief and freedom to the class. Jeremie rushed out, Odd following him, and Ulrich taking his time. When Jeremie was in the hall, he pulled out his mobile to see who had called him. Indeed, it was Aelita. Stepping outside, Jeremie made the call back.

"Aelita, you called me. What do you need?"

"Jeremie, XANA's attacking. Gather eveyone and go to the factory. I'm already there."

"Sure thing, Aelita."

Jeremie hung up and turned to see Odd stepping out of the doorway toward him.

"XANA alert," Jeremie informed him. We need to go now. Call Yumi and Ulrich.

Sprinting off into the woods, Odd did as he was told, and soon Yumi joined them in the control room as they arrived. Ulrich, however, never picked up. Jeremie took over Aelita's position and sent them down to the scanner room, where he caried out the usual process.

/-RUN SCANNER.LYO
(-Running.

"Scanner; Yumi. Scanner; Odd. Scanner; Aelita."

"Transfer; Yumi. Transfer; Odd. Transfer; Aelita."

"Virtualization."

~~~

I'm going to bait that lying sucker... He won't resist falling for this! Hahaha...

(-Welcome to Source Edit 4.0. Edit page 1?
YES_NO_
{-BORDER
{-CENTER
{-TEXT "Inverse 0.1 by Jack Fawzi" /-XT TEXT "Press "R" to begin"

Here we go...

~~~

The fight on Lyoko was a simple one. A few Kankrelats here and there, but nothing the team couldn't handle with the superior processing speed of the supercomputer after Bridge's effects. Not even the Scyphozoa matched up to its infamy this round. The tower was deactivated without anyone getting devirtualized or even hit. XANA's attack hadn't even affected the real world yet. An easy victory.

Perhaps too easy...