Code Lyoko: Reincarnated, twenty years later

Chapter 10- The Lyoko Chronicles

"Let's go to the factory!" Daze said eagerly, adjusting his purple framed glasses.

"Not the factory. We're going to my place," Mia said.

"Why your place?" he asked.

"It's like a Lyoko Warrior hangout of sorts," Rick explained. "Let's go through the tunnels."

They began to head off to the park. "Where are you going?" There's a passage through the boiler room by the gym." They all looked at me confused. I led them through to the gym, into the boiler room and down to the sewers and to the hermitage. I opened the metallic door and stepped out.

"This led to the back entrance!" Mia noted. " I could use this path to get to school!"

We headed inside to the living room. "Hey," Yumi greeted. "Crazy day, right?"

"Tell me about it," I said plopping down beside her. "This is killing me. Lyoko, the cortex, them." I gestured the junior warriors.

"Cheer up, Ruby!" Odd smiled. "We'll figure it out, just like we always do."

"Then count me out. Have I told you that in both my lives I've been terrible at figuring things out?"

"This is harder than fighting XANA."

"Leave all the thinking to us," Ulrich's reassured. I wasn't convinced. "William has work and won't come."

"Must be hard being vice principal," I muttered, picking up a croissant from the table and shoving it in my mouth. I saw Odd do the same.

Aelita pulled out a giant whiteboard from another room. She wrote Anthea in big bold words and turned to us, "so. What do we know?"

Jeremie shook his head with a faint smile. "She bought that a while back. I guess this is what it's for."

"The cortex has moving platforms," Kyoko said, snuggling in between her parents.

"And there is a black sphere in the middle," Rick added.

"Don't forget the tower!" Odd said, shoving another croissant into his mouth. "We could go to Tyron and beat them up."

"I don't think that's such a good idea," Yumi said. "For all we know, they may hold Aelita's mother hostage. We can't take the risk."

"Ruby?" Aelita said. "Are we missing something?"

"Yeah," I said, sitting up. "In the show, Tyron married your mother." Aelita mouth dropped. "But remember, it's been 20 years. Your mother is most likely not married to him. I hope." I mumbled the last part.

Aelita shakily turned around and began to write on the board. "Is there anything else?" Yumi asked.

"We'll," I placed a hand on my chin. "There is the novels. It fills in a lot of the plot holes the show had left."

"Show?" Daze questioned. He had been so quiet that I had forgotten that he was there.

"Ruby used to live in a world where Code Lyoko was a show," Ulrich explained. "She was reincarnated into this world and has helped us ever since."

"We're part of a show?" Daze said, eyes twinkling.

"No. They are part of a show," I said gesturing the Lyoko Warriors. "You guys are characters that appear in fan fiction." I gave him a look and he backed away. "Anyway, did you guys renovate the flooring as well?"

"Um... Yeah," Jeremie replied. "But we can cut the carpet open if we have to ."

"Good," I said standing up. "Then could you show me to Franz's, I mean, Waldo's office?"
I felt around the floorboards for a small latch that would take me deeper into the house. I pointed at a specific spot, where Ulrich began to rip open the carpet to reveal a small trapdoor. "How did you miss this?" I asked as I pulled on the latch.

"The latch itself is pretty small," Mia defended. "And you can barely see the edges of the trapdoor.

"There should be something here, a door of sorts. I don't remember too well. A room painted in white? With some video playing." I looked over to the group. "We're getting nowhere with this. How about I just tell you what happens, instead of blindly looking for something that may not even exist anymore?"

I dragged everyone back up to the living room. Instead of coming down with us, the teens had decided to look through my Lyoko journal. "This isn't what it looks like!" Daze screamed.

"Yeah," Kyoko nodded nervously. "We're just researching!"

I snatched the journal off them. Then I grabbed a marker, flipped the whiteboard and began to draw timeline of the book series for as best as I could. The journal was very vague but it had key bits of information.

"The first of the four books summarises the events of the show, because Aelita somehow gets amnesia so the rest of you fill her in. The second book gets a bit more complicated."

*****

The second book goes like this:
Gregory, a man who comes searching for Franz Hopper, comes to the Hermitage. He has two dogs who spot Kiwi and attack him. The next day, the group installs cameras and finds Gregory. But they also see another man, someone called Richard, who had a palm computer that was given to him by Franz Hopper. He was Aelita's classmate back in 1994.

They also find a white room in the cellar below the basement with a video, in the first book. Franz was telling Aelita to search for Anthea. They went to the person who made the rooms, an elderly man named Philippe, who told them about the secret room of the Hermitage and another secret room in Brussels.

Aelita finds another secret room, with a scanner and another supercomputer. Unlike the one at the factory, that one contains Franz Hoppers memories, like a projection.

In Brussels, there was also another supercomputer, but this one could be remotely connected to the one at the factory. They called it the first city. It was where XANA was until he possessed Odd and another girl named Eva Skinner.

Things got even more complicated, as they found out that one of their teachers was special forces agent called Major Steinback. No, not Jim. Someone else. And then there's the introduction of Green Phoenix, the organisation that had initially kidnapped Aelita's mother and brainwashed her, giving her the code name 'Memory'. Ironic.

After teaming up with XANA and the men in black, the Lyoko Warriors ended up destroying the supercomputer and thanks to the men in black having a memory wiping machine, they wiped everyone's memories, except their's.

******

"No matter which of the paths are we end up following, your mother is alive," I concluded. Jeremie readjusted his glasses. Taking a closer look at the timeline I had draw. It was so small, even I had trouble reading it. "So what's our next step."

"Hang on," Odd said. "Let us take this all in." He inhaled deeply. "So in the end, no one will no about Lyoko anyway? Bummer."

I shook my head with a slight smile. Ulrich spoke next. "Do you think that the supercomputer in Brussel is still there?"

I looked back at the board. "Not sure," I replied. "We don't even have an address to follow. All I know is that it's guarded by the men in black."

"Alright," Jeremie said standing up. He walked to the board and faced the others. "There's three things we can do. One: go to the cortex and try to find Aelita's mother. Two: find this mysterious white room under our house and use the scanner. Or three: Find this Major Steinback."

"We should split into three teams," I suggested. "One for each team, at least this way, we'll always have a lead to follow." The others nodded in agreement, glancing over at one another for their opinions. I faced Aelita again. "I promised you we would find your mother and I plan to keep that promise."