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...