[IC] Code Lyoko: Red Menace

[Experiment 249]

Kadic Academy, a place for young minds from all over the world, form Japan, The United States and, mostly, the people of France wherein it is located. The school itself lacks very many notable qualities, it's students aren't all geniuses and it's athletes only ok, but it harbors a group of students who have gone above and beyond what the school expects of them. Near the school is an abandoned factory, with a super computer containing another world. The world of Lyoko. A boy is trapped in this world, Julius, who looks no older than 17, and the group plans on getting him out. The trouble is, there is a program known as XANA in Lyoko that is willing to do whatever it takes to stop them, going so far as to affecting the physical world. Today, is one of those days.

Kadic Academy, Thursday, 11:00 AM local time. The weather is fairly nice today, the weather is warm the birds are chirping. A siren howls in the distance, chasing after an animal control vehicle, but other than that nothing seems to disturb the students between their classes. It's lunch time and everyone seems to be heading for their usual tables. A new friend group seemed to have formed almost overnight it seems as the Lyoko warriors had previously not spent very much time talking to one another, but now seem very interested in one another. Lunch today is mashed potatoes, carrots, turkey with gravy, and a piece of garlic bread, the cooking is ok. No sign of XANA at this time

---

Lyoko. A world inside a supercomputer. It has different zones, the one that Julius is in today is the forest zone. Floating strips of land covered in trees with roots that spring up here and there. Julius just sits, feeling the world he woke up in just last week with no memory of his life at all, or any clue at whether or not he ever existed outside of it. He just knows his Name, due to the fact when he deactivated a tower, it said "Julius. Code: Lyoko" and he figured Lyoko, nor Code could be his name, so he stuck with Julius. The world felt calm, if not a little stranger than normal today, no sign of XANA, but he couldn't shake the feeling of something being wrong.

He would have to wait for Matthew to load up a computer to mention anything.

[AirBender]

Saya wasn't a big fan of math. There were certain sciences that couldn't hold her interest. But what she hated most about her school day was lunch. The food in the cafeteria was appalling. Not just because Saya's upbringing gave her a refined taste, but because before coming to Kadic Academy, she cooked most of her meals herself. Unfortunately, she didn't have access to a kitchen here and had no choice but to eat the cafeteria food or starve, which some days was very tempting. As she went through the line receiving her food, she kept a neutral expression on her face, hiding her disgust with practiced ease. She politely declined the gray goop that was being passed off as gravy, as she would rather eat her turkey dry than with that crap on there.

Finally she had her poor excuse for a meal. Normally Saya would have eaten outside, alone, but after XANA's first attack and her introduction to her comrades at arms, she had a duty to sit with them. She had yet to call them friends, or even trust them to have her back in battle, but you didn't choose your allies sometimes. It would take time, but Saya believed she would come to trust her allies. She scanned the room for any of her comrades, but didn't find them. They must have still been in line, or had decided starving would be better than the so called food that was being served. Saya scoped out an empty table and made her way over to it. She took a seat and for a moment did nothing but stare at the food in front of her.

Reluctantly she picked up her utensils and got a scoop of her mashed potatoes. They were bad, she found, but very obviously instant and not home made. They had that powdered, from a box taste to them. The carrots were overcooked and mushy, but at least they weren't overly salty this time. The turkey was dry, but had decent flavor. The garlic bread was bland and not really worth mentioning. It wasn't the worst meal she had eaten since coming her, but it certainly wasn't the best either. At least everything was warm and semi-edible. As she began to mix everything on her plate together, in hopes to make it a little better, Saya glanced around the room again. She scanned for any of her comrades, or anything out of the ordinary, ever vigilant and keeping an eye out for anything that could have been a XANA attack.

[Double]

Amidst the bustling of the cafeteria, a certain group of students sat at a corner table, right near the main doors in fact. They were a trio of jocks and a cheerleader, mostly from the track team. One of them, though, was a little more than that. Francis Williams, or Brick as he demanded everyone call him, was team captain, as well as captain of one or two of the other sports teams the Academy had to offer. He and his merry little band recently proclaimed themselves the Unofficial Disciplinary Committee. They were unofficial because, well, no faculty in their right minds would let these jerks come within a thousand miles of ever having actual authority. Didn't stop them from singling out the students they had something against and doing whatever it took to get them in trouble or just to make them miserable in general. In fact, one of their targets was one Ronald Richter, track team member and former "friend" of theirs. Brick patted his backpack and chuckled knowingly. For you see, earlier, he had broken into Ronnie's locker and swiped the clothes within before the aforementioned Ronnie could change out of his gym clothes.

Speaking of Ronnie, he came into the cafeteria right around that time. But something wasn't right. He was wearing his usual clothes, which were supposed to be in Brick's possession. Needless to say, this got Brick suspicious and he went to open his bag to check. Before he could open it though, Ronnie noticed his odd behavior and spoke up, "Hey Brick, what's the matter? Misplace something? Or maybe you're just wondering how I got my clothes back? Well..." as if right on cue, a familiar voice boomed from outside.

"Alright, which one of you hooligans took it?!" Jim burst through the door angrily and seemed to eye everyone with suspicion. Jim Morales was the Physical Education Teacher. He was also the campus supervisor, among other seemingly endless amounts of jobs he did at the Academy. But there he stood, in his usual red sweat shirt, a band-aid on his cheek that he never seemed to remove, and a white headband tightly around his forehead.

"Good afternoon, Jim." said Ronnie innocently, "Took what, exactly?" Jim, however, didn't seem amused.

"Don't play dumb, Mr. Richter, my spare uniform! Seems like the kind of prank you'd pull!" he was moving closer to Ronnie and pointing at him in an accusing manner.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Jim, honest. I didn't - Hmm..." Ronnie stopped himself and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "...actually what would explain why I found it there."

"Found what? Spit it out, Ronald!" Jim was getting impatient.

"This." Ronnie produced a small rectangular object from his pocket. It was white and had the name "Jim Morales" printed on it, "It's one of your name tags, right? I found it on the floor in the locker room just before the lunch bell. I was meaning to give it back to you."

"Gimme that," Jim swiped the tag from Ronnie and looked it over, "this is it alright, now cough up the rest of my spare uniform! Where was this tag exactly?"

"Like I said it was on the floor... right in front Brick's locker, now that I think about it." he moved his gaze over to Brick, who now realized what was happening.

"Oh no you don't, Richter! No way you're pinning this on me!" Brick stood up to protest.

"Whatever do you mean by that, Brick?" said Ronnie with a sheepish smile, "Hey! Is what why you were nervously checking your bag a second ago?"

"What?" exclaimed Jim, who rushed over and took Brick's bag before the jock could protest, "Well well well, looks like we have ourselves a smoking gun, as it were." he produced his spare uniform from Brick's bag. Somehow, against all the odds and seemingly against all logic, Ronnie somehow swapped his clothes for Jim's spare uniform. Of course, good luck to Brick or anyone who wanted to try and prove that, "You're coming with me, Francis, we're gonna have ourselves a chat with Mr. Delmas."

"But, no! That's not possible!" Brick protested.

"Why's that, Francis? Was there supposed to be someone else's clothes in your bag?" asked Ronnie, who at this point was almost cackling evilly as Jim dragged Brick away to Delmas' office.

Once they were gone, Ronnie practically gave a bow to the cafeteria, like a Magician who just pulled the world's greatest magic trick, "And that, kids, is why you don't mess with the master." Oh sure, Ronnie could have just directly confronted Brick, he had before. In fact, in probably one of the few times they ever actually came to blows, Ronnie knocked him flat on his butt. He wasn't the founder/president of the Kickboxing Club for nothing, after all. But just starting a fight and then winning without any real effort was no fun at all.

By now he was making his way over to the table were Saya was sitting. No, Ronnie wasn't going through the lunch line, no need to since he smuggled brought his own food in. It was technically not allowed, but a lot of students did it regardless and no one seemed to care enough to really enforce the rule anyway, "Ah, I love the smell of justice in the afternoon, don't you?" of course, what he called "justice" was probably closer to revenge. But whatever, semantic details.

[Pie Flavor]

'One... Two... Three...'

'One... Two... Three... One... Two... Thr- God dammit...'

Those were the thoughts strangely on Matthew's mind as he was walking towards the dining hall, or cafeteria if that whatever you wished to call it. Of course, those thoughts weren't just any regular thought that were going through his head as he was playing a game on his phone called 'Ragey Bird' which was quite the aggravating game but was popular at the moment. He found it a while ago but the sheer simplicity and the amount of sodium chloride he got from the game was not worth it and by the time he reached the cafeteria, it was off his phone...

Peering up from his phone, he grabbed at tray at the front of the factory line that was dispensing the food, in order was the mashed potatoes. Which by their density, texture on the surface and simply in general how it appeared was an indicator that they were bad. Next was the carrots which he usually liked although a bit less mushy and simply washed but it'll do. The turkey was usually dry like any meat that they served here and the garlic bread he doubted they would've had put any effort tossed into them. On top of all of this was the grey goop that they shoved onto his plate as he was pushed down the line before he could protest... Well he wasn't going to eat any of this at all. Sighing at the monstrosity of the grey goo on his platter that turned the edible thing into something that could be mistaken as X.A.N.A's work, he left the line and simply placed the plate on the table with the more... bigger kids as they liked eating this stuff surprisingly but at least they weren't wasteful. Kids in Africa wont need to worry about those bunch wasting food...

With the garlic bread that was miraculously saved from the grey goop, he took a munch out of the crispy thing and he felt nothing... No emotional stimuli besides confusion and growing distaste for the piece of bread. Swallowing his bite but tossing the rest of the thing into the trash, he'll get something else to eat later, what could go wrong on a diet of instant noodles its only 50% of your daily intake of sodium, hahaha...

Taking a seat near Saya, she was... one of the two silent ones in the group, three if Matthew included himself but she was the one who wasn't as serious. He plopped down on the opposite side of the table as he pulled out his laptop from his backpack, which clearly cost a bit of money than the simple ones intended for school work. It was more suited for intensive gaming or graphic software like photoshop and things like that but on a portable scale. In his room, he would have another computer similar but simply better in intensive usage where as his laptop provided ease of portability. Then the computer in the Abandoned Factory which was simply a piece of art that surpassed his two machines both combined easily, one day he'll get a computer like that... Either way for right now, what he had was enough and suited his needs and more.

---

Moving away from his thoughts, Matthew opened the laptop as he navigated through the screen as he clicked a few things, typed a few sentences and ran a few programs but after he was done... Inside the virtual computer inside his laptop which created for safety, as a new screen popped out openning a window into Lyoko, one to talk to Julius since he should be pretty bored in Lyoko with nothing to do besides the small chance he wants to be chased around by X.A.N.A's monsters for entertainment which doesn't seem likely...

Clearing his throat for a second before he spoked "Julius I'm testing to see if this channel works, can you respond?" He asked as he checked over the finer details of the program he was running. He had to make sure that it was secure so that X.A.N.A wouldn't peeve into their conversation like a pervert in a bathroom. This was some delicate content they were handling in here that would be bad if it got out. The trick of the whole entire thing was to make sure the channel wouldn't be discovered in the first place, if so then it was encrypted after a decent amount of proxies layers, was lined with a firewall he had been creating for the last few weeks. The encyrption however was something he was working on for a few months now, it was a project he was using for... devious purposes but it would work to hide both his location by having whatever that tried to find him pinging multiple places in country as well as a few spots in other countries. It also would scramble the voices of whomever was speaking and distort the audio into different frequencies that would take months for a human to piece back together. It was honestly a beautiful piece of a program that could be used for a variety of purposes such as spying, terrorism, secret government conversation but in this case, to save the world.

The progam was simply known as 'Encryption' as its name on the program on his screen, it use was more intended for humans as X.A.N.A already knows where they are obviously but it would have to work hard to try and break into this chat room. Either way it was a project he was working on but eventually, he would have each Lyoko Warrior be connect to Julius and Lyoko in some shape or form through whatever piece of technology they had but preferably the phone or a laptop. If it didn't work the idea would be scrapped except for the foundation and improved from its inferior version until it was too much of a hassle for X.A.N.A to invest resources into this.

[ReaptheMusic]

Coming in last from the rest of the group, Deija made her way toward the lunch table while holding a medium sized cookbook up to her face, flipping through the contents casually. She made her way to the table and sat a little more than a foot away from Saya, all the while not dropping her book from her face. At that time both Mathhew and Ronnie had already taken their seats, and both evidently eaten while Saya unhappily picked at her food.

"Ah, I love the smell of justice in the afternoon, don't you?" Ronnie asked, taking a seat. Deija slowly lowered her cake-cook book with luscious and stylish illustrations on the cover. Her solid chocolate eyes became visible as she looked over the table at Ronnie. Her mouth hidden from view in this way, she spoke up.

"It smells like sweat and cheap, spray-on deodorant to me."

Deija spoke this behind her book, and hid a small smirk until the book was pulled down and sat on the table, showing her expression to the others. The book was folded neatly onto the poorly cleaned tables and she fished for something in her pocket, brandishing a pear. She took a bite out of the green skin, juice running down the fruit from her bite. The dark haired Austrian girl looked over a the respectively more intellectual of the two boys.

"Have you heard from Julius yet, Matthew?"

[Experiment 249]

Julius sat, lying back in the forest zone. He tried carving his name into a root on the ground with a rock but after enough cuts it just exploded into pixels. He brushed the imaginary dirt off his shirt and stood up to look around for, well, anything. He was bored out of his mind waiting for something, anything to happen. XANA hadn't done anything yet, he would have felt it, so that was off the list, the warriors were at school so he was SOL there too. He would meditate but he had just finished a lengthy session. Life without sleep and nothing to do was a prison in itself, but to be imprisoned in Lyoko just added insult to injury.

But then something made him jump, as all of a sudden, seemingly from every direction a voiced called to him. "Julius I'm testing to see if this channel works, can you respond?" to which he fell right back onto the hard dirt/rock combo that was the floor of the forest zone. A smaller than usual rectangular screen appeared in front of him with Matthew's face in it. "Ah, uh, Matthew why are you smaller this time? And.. Why are there so many people behind you?" He asked, rubbing his lower back. It was loud wherever he was and he could hear Deija asking about him. "And Deija, I suppose I answered your question?" He started to chuckle but was cut off. "No... I hate to kill the mood, you all look so, well, sad about something. But I just felt XANA. Have you all noticed anything?" He held his lower back and looked toward the tower to his right, and proceeded to scan the area. None of XANA's monsters were around, so the tower must not have been in this zone.

---

The whole lunchroom giggled as Francis was pulled by his ear all the way out of the cafeteria by Jim. The level on noise never settled from that moment, as conversation stacked onto the laughter and soon enough everyone had raised their voices. A regular high school cafeteria volume, nothing out of the ordinary. It was weirdly normal considering the information Julius just relayed to Matthew. In the madness, however, a few voices could be heard. "Yeah, the hot water in my dorm is way too hot, I swear the shower just sprayed out steam this morning! I had to get these stupid bandages because I burned myself on it!" From some jock who was sitting by Francis. "Did you see Nick went to the infirmary? That dog he hides in his room bit him, I'd like to see him keep it hidden after this!" from some girls giggling a table over. "Haha, didja see that guy's car in the sinkhole out front? I hope it was Mrs. Meyers, I failed her test last week." Said one of the more rebellious students.

[AirBender]

One by one Saya's comrades in arms showed up at the table. First was Ronnie, who made quite an entrance for himself. Though she felt that she herself was beyond such childish behavior as that, it was still very amusing. The corners of her mouth twitched upward into a small smile as he approached, mentioning something about the smell of justice. "Justice is a criminal getting arrested, that was a childish prank." She scolded, though judging from the smile that was still on her lips, she was mostly just teasing. Seeing bullies get was they deserve was very satisfying. She felt a small pang of jealously at the homemade lunch that Ronnie was holding. Being in the dorms, she didn't really have access to cooking equipment.

Next was the computer expert Matthew, who didn't say anything, just sat down and starting working on some computer stuff. Saya didn't mind really, she enjoyed her solitude, despite the fact that she was raised on social events. Or maybe because of that. Finally it was Deija, who had her nose in a cookbook again. The moment she sat down there was a rude comment coming out of her mouth and a smirk on her face. The girl was lucky that Saya had gone through so many etiquette classes growing up. Or else she may have smacked that smirk off her face. Instead she spoke just a single word. "Classy." She said before eating her last forkful of the barely edible cafeteria meal.

With her meal eaten, she pulled out her smart phone, the newest model of course, her parents insisted. They were already talking about sending her a nice laptop, after hearing about the school provided ones. A laptop that she was planning on giving to Matthew if she couldn't convince her parents to not send one at all. She opened up her emails see if there was anything important, at least to her. There was just one that held her interest. It was Jacob, or Jake as he preferred. Jake was the son of another very wealthy company owner, and Saya's fiancé of sorts. It had already been decided that the two would be married once Saya was finished with high school, Jake was a year older, thus finished already. Saya liked Jake, he was sweet, caring, a champion archer, but she hadn't known him long enough to love him. Still, there were far worse people she could be forced to marry. As far as choices went, he wasn't bad.

His email spoke about visiting her over their next holiday break, since she wouldn't be leaving. After hearing her complain about the food, he was planning on bringing her a few things that she would be able to use to cook in her room. Saya was busy responding to him, when she heard Julius' voice and looked up. At the mention of XANA, Saya glanced around, listening and looking for anything out of place. A few pieces of conversations reached her ears, but nothing majorly concerning. "Nothing yet, but I'll keep an eye out." Saya was a very well trained fighter, if anything went down, she felt that it was her responsibility to keep people on the outside safe, while the others fought in Lyoko. She had no problem sacrificing herself for cause, especially since wounds healed when they went back in time.

[Double]

Ronnie made a face when Deija spoke up. Honestly he didn't even notice that she'd showed up until that moment, but he had the look of a performer who was just told his performance was a sham, "You're obviously talking about Jim or Brick, because I know that comment isn't meant for me, right?" he sniffed his own armpit for good measure, "Nope, no sweat. And..." he dug around his bag for a second before dropping an actual roll of deodorant on the table, "...nope, that's a legit brand of deodorant and not at all spray-on so, yeah, look who just proved you wrong." he stuck his tongue out playfully and quickly threw the deodorant back into his bag. Ronnie was strange in that he seemed to go out of his way to either bend or just outright break most of the stereotypes typically attributed to athletes like him. Of course, then there were certain other students who reinforced the stereotype all over again so perhaps it was just canceling him out?

Saya made her remark about Justice being criminals getting arrested, and Ronnie just shrugged innocently, "You mean watching Jim drag poor Francis away wasn't at least kind of reminiscent of a cop making an arrest?" he asked thoughtfully but then quickly added, "Besides, you know I only dish out the punishment people have coming to them. He tried to get me first, I just so happened to sniff out his lame excuse for a prank, and so I countered it with my own little masterpiece to make sure he remembered who he was dealing with. It's not like Delmas won't punish him with whatever amounts of detention he would have gotten for pranking me in the first place. All I did was provide a little... nudge to speed things along."

Looking over Matthew typing away on a laptop, Ronnie leaned over curious, "So what are you inventing for us today, brainiac? Some cool new weapon we can smack XANA around with? Sounds like a-" hearing Julius' voice made him stop and he blinked, "Or, ya know, a portable way to communicate with J, that works too. Hey J, what's up?" but unfortunately Julius wasn't talking to them for leisure. He warned them that he sensed XANA and suddenly Ronnie tensed up a bit. Great, that's just what they needed. If there was a XANA attack and they had to return to the past then Ronnie would have to go to all the trouble of pulling his counter prank all over again, except it wouldn't be nearly as fun when he could already know how it would go down and how everyone would react. Oh well, he had to keep his priorities straight, saving the world had to come first.

Listening around, he heard one of Brick's lackeys talk about Nick and his secret dog biting him. That didn't sound particularly out of the ordinary, dogs had teeth and could bite just like any animal. But had Nick's little pup ever bitten him? Ronnie tried to think but couldn't immediately recall any previous incidents. But come on, what were the chances that an evil Supercomputer AI would calculate that controlling a puppy of all things would help him take over the world? It just sounded way too far'fetched to be legit. Nope, it was a different conversation that caught his ear for real. Some girls giggling about a car in a sinkhole. That... didn't sound natural, "Car in a sinkhole? Since when did we have any of those around here on campus?" he whispered in a low voice.

[Pie Flavor]

"X.A.N.A again?" He said in a neutral tone as he wonder when the AI would stop its schemes, the problems it produce was hassle when it started leaking into the real world. Until then, they would have to work their fastest to prevent the situation from blowing up in the real world otherwise a Return to the Past would be needed... An option they should use if they had no choice, as research from what his initial observation noticed the increase of X.A.N.A's powers increasing slightly but noticeable after each restart. If they could stop the events from doing any major harm into the real world, it was recommended to leave it alone despite the small moral problem with that part. In the long run if they could do this, the extent of which X.A.N.A can exert itself will be limited...

"I am materializing some Orbs into Lyoko to scout out the tower, can you give me the general direction of the vibrations? You can wait for the other to materialize while they go on ahead." He said looking at Julius, through the screen before reducing the video feed of him to the corner while he reached into his backpack. Pulling out an orange thin box which could be mistaken for a flat canteen, it in reality was a usb which he plugged to the laptop as he opened it in. Picking out a file that said 'Orb' it opened up a jumble of coding jargon that most people didn't know. Really it was copying and pasting that he was doing, just like X.A.N.A did itself with the amount of creatures it spawned. Opening up another tab into Lyoko, after a few clicks here and there the command console popped up connected into Lyoko.

Pasting a single copy of the code into the console, he edited the specification of what the creatures would do once materialized into Lyoko. Once the general direction from Julius was given, he would paste the first copy of the code that he edited two more times as the orbs would be materialized in a group of 3. Each one containing 20 Hp each and doing 5 dmg per shot, they were simple creatures but in return for their weak abilities were fast and agile. Capable of dodging lasers and with their aiming capable of destroying smaller creatures with the combined efforts of their fire power, or disabling certain creatures by destroying their body parts which were their lasers by targeting limb connections. They while not really good for combat were great scouts to find towers and disable or even destroy weaker monsters that X.A.N.A produces but eventually a stray shot or crash too hard into the environment would dematerialize their weak structures as they were the size of 75 cm. The orbs would be connected to the laptop by video streaming whatever it saw through the camera.

Looking at the rest of the group he rose up from his seat "If you guys aren't concerned you can come with me to the base. We'll see each other there later if you decide to stay." He said with a brief pause as he looked at everyone to confirm that they heard him before leaving his seat. He wasn't overly concerned that he left during lunchtime and be absent for his classes later but he didn't really care. He would pass them at the end of the year and that's all that mattered. "I'll meet you in a second Julius, give me a second" He said through the laptop before he stood up and picked the machine with him before leaving.

[Cinderella Man]

1s and 0s. Rigs, meshes, polygons and code. All XANA bore witness to, day in and day out, as it watched over the inside of its digital holding cell. The same four lands, and its heart. The digital sea and it's near endless bounds. But now it had something else to watch out for. What it registered as children. French high schoolers determined to protect that which XANA considered a virus in what was an otherwise perfect world. It needed to be removed. But so far, opportunities were slim. But now? XANA was quite ready to spring.

A quick superscan would show that the mountain biome's fourth tower was activated and XANA was most definitely active. Its influence was spreading into the real world, and it created somewhat a bit of trouble around Kadic Academy.

The sinkhole outside the school crumbled a bit, causing it to become quite a bit larger although not ridiculously so. Like someone held down a terraform button, then let go when they were pleased with the increase in size. A couple of wild dogs looked around the edge of the hole, apparently smelling something that was drawing them towards the school. Kids walked back and forth, gawking at the hole only to notice a bit of steam rising from it. A few of them went back into the school and began talking about it in the hallway, speaking on how it grew with genuine surprise.