A Growing Family
A Code: Lyoko Fanfiction by BenRG
Disclaimer
Code: Lyoko, and the canon characters, situations, technologies and events depicted therein are the property of Antefilms Productions and Moonscope.
The character of Anya Belhopper was created by Son-Neko (aka Kat) over on DeviantArt.
Author's Notes
This is a vicious, uncontrollable plot bunny that has come to life. After seeing a series of comic strips about some unanticipated consequences of Aelita's Season 2 naiveté, I feel compelled to tell the story of how a pair of 14-year-olds suddenly became parents to a 8-year-old girl.
Kat, I thank you for the inspiration and words of encouragement.
Remember that, at this point, everyone thinks that Aelita is an embodied AI computer program, including her. She thinks that she is a piece of software; she will therefore think in software terms when addressing problems of the physical world.
Continuity
This is set some time in Season 2 and rapidly goes hyper-AU. I will feel free to play heck with the established continuity of the show in any way that pleases me as this is a fanfic and that makes me KING, at least as far as this tiny corner of the fan-verse is concerned. :-p Just call me XANA to the canon and you will be fine.
Censor: T - Just for safety's sake
Chapter 3 – Meet the Family
Anya looked around at the woods surrounding the manhole, her pretty face reflecting wonder that Aelita bet would have been seen on her face just five months ago. "Mama! It's like the Forest Zone but…!" the little girl murmured.
"But it is truly alive, I know Little One," Aelita said with a smile, keeping a firm grip on the child's hand. "Where are they going to meet us Jeremie?"
"By Ulrich's tree." Aelita nodded. Everyone knew the tree where the often-haunted brown-haired warrior often went to meditate when his personal ghosts became too powerful. More than once Aelita had been responsible for discreetly watching over Ulrich as the boy had struggled to hold in strange sounds of pain. Right now, the tree was a useful meeting spot.
"Hey! There they are! Einstein! Princess! Over here! Hey! Who's that? Does the Princess have a kid sister or something?" Odd could easily get a job as a warning siren, his voice was so loud.
Ulrich and Yumi turned around to look at Jeremie, Aelita and their… companion. Yumi's delicate dark eyebrows drew together in confusion and Ulrich's eyebrows shot towards his hairline. Aelita gulped. Jeremie shot her a cynical look. "Why should I deprive you of the pleasure?" he muttered. Aelita glowered at her boyfriend and started listing in her head methods of revenge in order of sadism and permanent physical disfigurement.
"So… Who's the kid?" Ulrich asked in his usual quiet, measured tone of voice.
"I'm not a kid, I'm Anya," Anya replied, outraged at being reduced to an impersonal noun.
Anya's response, earning a grin from Yumi and a nudge in the ribs for Ulrich from Odd, also spurred Aelita into action. "Ah, yes. This is, as you have already heard, Anya, Anya Belhopper." Not the most brilliant surname available, but Aelita thought it was good for a spur-of-the-moment decision. Use either 'Stones' or 'Belpois' and they would have to deal with explaining how they suddenly got a younger sibling that had never been mentioned before. "Anya is another AI from Lyoko; I was able to materialise her this morning and…"
"Hey, I know you three!" Anya's loud and sweet voice overrode Aelita's explanation. "You're my uncle Ulrich, you're my auntie Yumi…. Gee! You look so different without all that white stuff on your face! And you're my funny uncle Odd! Where's your tail?"
Jeremie decided that death would, at this point, be a mercy. Someone once warned him that children younger than 10 years old had no real concept of tact and Anya was proving it right now. Odd, Ulrich and Yumi were looking at each other in confusion. A strange smirk slowly appeared on Odd's face as he thought about Anya's comments about their appearance. "Well," Ulrich said with a suspicious twitch at the corner of his mouth, "I guess that confirms that she's from Lyoko."
"So, where did she come from Einstein?" Odd asked. "How did you find her?"
"Well, that isn't really important, Odd," Jeremie responded. "Suffice to say that I guarantee that she isn't a plant or a trap set by XANA."
"I found her," Aelita said, stretching the truth slightly. "I've spent all my time on Lyoko for the last few months preparing her to come to Earth."
"And telling me all about your cool adventures!" Anya added excitedly. "The next time you go to chase XANA off, can I come and watch? Huh? Can I?"
"I'm getting flashbacks to Hiroki," Yumi said with a slight giggle.
"Absolutely not!" Jeremie said, glaring at Anya. "Lyoko is a dangerous environment during combat operations. If you are anywhere near the Supercomputer, young lady, you will stay in the operations chamber with me."
"Aw!" Anya stuck her bottom lip out at Jeremie. His heart lurched; Aelita always got her way when she did that.
"Don't try that, Anya," Jeremie snapped. "This is for your own safety."
"Okay, Papa," Anya sighed in a tone of martyrdom.
Aelita winced and hoped that the others would miss her daughter's hideous faux pas. "Anyway, Jeremie has created a false identity for her. As you know, I am supposed to be Odd's second cousin on his mother's side. Anya's cover story is that she is an orphan to whom my alleged parents recently became foster carers. She is being enrolled in Kadic's new elementary school. That way, Jeremie can intercept any queries and communications about her using the same fake voicemail boxes and email accounts that he uses for me."
Ulrich nodded. "That's a good idea. She'll be in the younger kids' dorms on the floor below ours, so we can keep an eye on her. As she is Aelita's 'kid sister' it will be easy for us to get to her when needed."
"I did try to cover all the bases, Ulrich," Jeremie said in a tone of injured professional dignity.
Yumi had dropped onto one knee in front of Anya. The little girl and the young Japanese woman were looking at each other in an assessing fashion. "You are pretty," Anya said at last. "But you'd look a lot better in something other than black." Jeremie and Aelita winced in unison.
Somehow, Yumi managed to reign in her irritation, reminding herself that the child was new to Earth and had to be forgiven for the occasional lapse. "I've found that black suits me in a lot of ways, Anya," she replied. "It's more than a fashion statement, it's a way of… life…" Yumi frowned and glared at a pair of sparkling green eyes. "You're teasing me, aren't you?"
Anya giggled and grinned unrepentantly. "Of course. It's fun to watch older kids 'try not to upset the little one'."
Odd grinned. "Li'l Princess, you and I are going to get along just fine!" The blond boy suddenly cocked his head in thought. "You know, now that I look at her, she reminds me of someone."
"Well, we ought to get to the Principal's office today," Jeremie began but Odd interrupted him before he could continue.
"She looks just like you, Einstein. She's got the Princess' eyes and hair, but her face… It's you!" Yumi frowned at Odd's pronouncement and began to shift her gaze between Anya, Jeremie and Aelita. She gasped as she realised that the goofy blond was right.
"She called you 'Papa', Jeremie," Ulrich said into the sudden silence. "Is… there something that you two feel that you ought to tell us?"
Odd didn't wait for a reply. He practically leapt across the distance separating him from Jeremie and pounded the other boy on the back. "Einstein, you little Casanova you! You work so fast! So, tell me your secret! Is it the small talk? Is it the smile? No, let me guess, it's the size of your RAM cache!"
Jeremie staggered, adjusted his glasses and turned to his hyperactive friend. "Odd, you incredible buffoon! It's nothing like that!"
Odd sneered good-naturedly. "Einstein, little girls don't grow on trees. If they did, the likes of me would be investing in orchards!"
Yumi had stood up and took the opportunity (always welcome) to slap Odd upside the head. "Odd-baka! Let them explain before you ask more questions!" Yumi stopped and looked down at Anya. Much to her surprise and discomfort, Anya had taken her hand and was looking up at her, her expression combining several aspects of trust and hero-worship.
Aelita leapt into the gap to offer an explanation. "Odd is right in some ways but wrong in others. Anya wasn't conceived biologically. We would have been only six years old and that would have been impossible. She is an AI, based on my higher functions but with a body that I designed based on a fusion of my and Jeremie's virtual forms."
Ulrich processed this. "Wait a minute. You designed?"
Aelita grinned in an embarrassed way, rubbing the back of her neck. "I took that conversation we had a few months ago about babies a bit too seriously, I guess," she admitted. Jeremie later swore that great sweatdrops appeared beside the heads of all the others.
Yumi looked from Jeremie, to Aelita and then back to Anya. She looked down at the little girl who looked back up boldly and with a genuinely friendly smile. Yumi couldn't help but smile back. "Once you get over the shock, it's cool in a way," she said at last.
"Thanks Auntie Yumi," Anya said.
"That's 'Yumi-Onee-chan'," Yumi corrected quietly.
Ulrich sighed. "I can think of a thousand ways that this could go horribly wrong. What the hell were you thinking Aelita?"
Aelita sighed. "I was operating under the impression that we were a family and that families were sometimes incomplete when there were no young children part of them." Both Ulrich and Jeremie went a bit red when they realised their own words were being thrown back in their faces. Yumi noticed this and made a mental note to get Ulrich to explain what happened later. "By the time that I realised that I was misunderstanding a lot of things, it was too late to turn back."
"Are you sorry that you wrote me, Mama?" Anya asked quietly.
Aelita stepped over to Anya and stroked the back of her hand along the little girl's cheek. "Never, Little One. My mistakes are my own but you are a blessing, no matter how you came to be with us."
"So," Ulrich said. "What happens now?"
"Anya is completely free of XANA's influence," Jeremie announced. "That means that she never has to return to Lyoko. Like Aelita, her body will mature and age just like any other human's. She will grow up, live her life and be happy." He looked at his watch. "That will include schooling. We have an appointment with Principal Delmas that we need to keep."
"That's my cue," Aelita said. "As you are my 'foster baby sister', after all." Anya giggled at that thought but Aelita knew that the little girl was smart enough to play her part in this charade.
"Mama, do I have to go to school? It sounds boring!"
"There goes a kid after my own heart," Odd said as Aelita towed Anya off towards the grounds of Kadic Academy. "You know, I've long wanted an apprentice in the ways of Odd-ness. Maybe the wait is at last over!"
"Odd Della Robbia." Odd looked at Jeremie, hearing the cold tone of his voice. "If I see, hear or even just encounter a rumour of you influencing my daughter to be a slacker and a prankster… Well, there are things that I can do that you don't want to know about. Maybe I'll just 'lose' your pattern between Lyoko and the Scanner some time."
"You wouldn't do that, would you Einstein?" Odd asked nervously.
"As far as you know? Yes." Jeremie smiled at Odd in a dangerous fashion before turning and walking off towards the Academy.
"Jeremie an over-protective dad!" Odd muttered. "Who would have thought it?"
"I've still got a bad feeling about this," Ulrich growled.
"Me too," Yumi added. "She is really vulnerable to an attack by XANA. On the flip side though, I've got a feeling that raising Anya is going to be a lot of fun." She grinned. "Aelita and I are going to enjoy having a little girl to fuss over!"
Odd looked at Ulrich significantly, his cynical expression making the German boy roll his eyes. He was used to girls getting… well, 'girlie' about such things. Suddenly, Odd spoke up. "Ulrich, I've just realised something."
"What?"
"We aren't a majority anymore." He saw Ulrich's lack of comprehension. "From now on, there are as many boys as girls in our little club. And two of them know how to twist Jeremie around their little finger already. That means we're outnumbered!"
Ulrich snorted. He would never tell Odd that, if Yumi tried, she could probably convince him to dance in the Great Hall in a pink tutu. "Interesting times indeed," was all he said.
The End