Code Lyoko: Revolutions and Evolutions

Chapter 80

AN: This chapter is one of the very best I feel I've written. It's thanks to God alone this chapter exists, and I'm more than pleased with the results. I hope you all enjoy this first chapter, the build-up to the season finale.

I look forward to your readership, and I hope you read, review, and as always, enjoy.

Pagliacci-11

The day of class commencement had come. The Lyoko warriors had done the very best they could to adapt to the two-day reversal, but admittedly, it was more challenging than they thought it would be. All the Lyoko warriors across Lyoko's activation felt the effects, and it had taken the better part of a full day to come to grips with the effects. It had knocked most of them out, making them extremely lethargic at best. Even Jeremy noticed the horrid aspect of losing nearly an entire evening of potential work and progress to find a chink in North-Gate's armor.

He'd gone to bed at either twelve or one in the afternoon, even that he couldn't be sure of, and he'd woken at half-past ten at night. The same had happened to Aelita, Odd, and all involved. Even Jim, despite his suspicions, thought them to be ill and asked for Yolanda to give them an overview.

She'd performed a courtesy inspection for the sake of appearances and explained to Jim; it simply was as it was, a genuine case of unexpected fatigue, and they would wake in their own times. So, they did, and even then, the reset's last lingering residue knocked them out after only an hour awake. They awoke again at three in the morning, and this time they had no fatigue in them whatsoever and were fully alert.

Jeremy of all the warriors was dismayed. The reset was one thing, and he had learned mainly to accept this newfound ability of the supercomputer, but something still felt genuinely off. He couldn't explain what it was, but something had been altered. He couldn't tell if it were good or bad, but it was unease to say the very least.

The resulting Sunday was used by the warriors to get the very finishing touches and attempt to coordinate a plan of escape should it be required. That said, even though all knew that Sylvia said she'd get them out of their classes if need be, they felt it better to have a plan in case Sylvia couldn't be trusted, which was in their minds most likely, or communications went down as in the event of the blackout.

The blackout itself was a curious thing. Aelita more than knew that this was Sylvia's doing and had told her fellow warriors as much. But something in of itself made Aelita suspicious. She remembered the dream beforehand, the horrid dream and the feeling of being used as genuine autopiloted puppet. It was horrifying. She didn't dare tell the warriors the dream, at least not yet. It was hard enough for Aelita herself to comprehend. Additionally, she'd tried getting into contact with Sylvia through thought in a desperate attempt to figure out what was going on. But there was no response and for the first time, Aelita didn't feel the lack of the response was intentional.

As Aelita reflected on this in her Sunday afternoon in her dorm, she felt a bizarre sense of satisfaction. It was derived from the knowledge and the confirmation that Sylvia was, in fact, human. There was something that despite her power and strength and skills with the North-Gate program, she was still prone to enemies outside of herself, outside the warriors, and this was comforting. It was comforting because Sylvia was not a machine pretending to be human. She had a powerful machine and program at her behest, and that was something but she wasn't Artificial Intelligence. This comforted Aelita because it showed that Sylvia, whoever she was, or in fact stood at present, she could be negotiated with, she could be reasoned with.

But—who was Natasha? Natasha seemed in her dream to be a great object of Sylvia's venom and just how they yelled back and forth, showed that they knew each other from tactics to mindset and philosophy. It was terrifying. But equally, neither of them as Aelita had listened to their barbed banter, seemed desirable for leaders. Natasha from her own lips sounded truly angry with Sylvia's games. Yet, Sylvia called Natasha her sister. How?