The Science of Sleep

The dreams of some Lyoko warriors aren't as peaceful as one would think. Episode 5 of The Reset Arc.

Disclaimer: Code Lyoko was created by Tania Palumbo and Thomas Romain. It was produced by Antefilms and then by MoonScoop. It is aired in France by France 3 and in America by Cartoon Network. The author is neither employed by or affiliated with any of the above companies or entities. All characters, locales, and other non-original entities are property of the parties mentioned above. All rights reserved.

Ulrich Stern ran towards the rock formation, diving past it before rolling to the side and standing up again with his back leaning against the naturally made wall. He leaned out a bit to take a peek before quickly retracting is head, narrowly avoiding a laser blast to the face. As he caught his breath and thanked his lucky stars that he didn't become devirtualized, he began to assess the situation before him.

Earlier ago, he and his friends were sent to the desert sector of Lyoko to deactivate a tower. XANA had used this tower to disable all communications in the area. Television sets produced static snow on screen. Radios broadcast white noise while phones had no signal whatsoever. The group had arrived and were en route to the activated tower when a trio of creepers appeared. Unlike past incarnations, however, these creepers were upgraded with stronger lasers and a faster rate of fire. Overwhelmed, the group split up, each hiding behind a different rock formation that surrounded the creatures.

Ulrich leaned out once more to get a better look at the enemy. He saw that the creatures had stood with their backs against each other, rotating in a clockwise direction and constantly firing off laser blasts in the hopes that they would be able to hit someone. The young samurai leaned on the rock formation once more and cupped his hand over his ear. "Got any ideas on how we can get out of this mess?" he asked.

Jeremie Belpois analyzed his monitor very carefully. As the group's only member not to set foot on Lyoko on a constant basis, he was charged with the task of monitoring everything in the virtual world. From the creatures to the terrain to the fighters, he had to know it all. He tapped on the keys furiously, bringing up window after window of statistics, hoping to find an exploit that would get the group out of trouble. He grit his teeth as he looked over the numbers shown on the screen. "The good news," he said, "is that the creepers still have the same weak spot as before, despite the upgrades."

"Great," Yumi Ishiyama said sarcastically with her back against another stone wall. "And the bad news is..."

"The bad news is that I don't have any idea how you can stop them with their increased rate of fire," he stated.

"You know, for a genius, you sure don't know a whole lot," Odd Della Robbia said. He immediately clutched his tail as he saw a laser blast come dangerously close to it.

Aelita Schaeffer looked up towards the sky. "Anyone else out there have a plan?" she asked.

"We surrender?" Odd quipped.

Yumi shook her head in disgust. "Anyone else have a real plan?"

"Give me a second," Ulrich answered as he pulled out a katana and let the broad side of the weapon face him. He let a small portion of the sword be exposed beyond his cover spot and began using it as a mirror. He saw the creepers still in the center, constantly on patrol with their guns at the ready. He also saw the other rock formations that Aelita and Odd hid behind. He noticed that they were fairly tall and still sturdy. Taking all of this into account, a plan began to formulate in his head. "Aelita, Odd, can you guys get to the tops of those rocks you're hiding behind?" he asked as he cupped his ears once more.

Aelita looked up and saw just how high the rock formation went. While the wings Jeremie programmed for her weren't exactly strong enough to take her to the top in one leap, she calculated that they would still give her some type of advantage in climbing. "I think I can make it and I'm pretty sure Odd can, too," she replied. "What do you have in mind?"

"A distraction," he said. "I need you and Odd to lay down some blind fire and distract our three friends over there. That should give me and Yumi enough time to get in close enough for the killing blows."

"Did you get all that, Odd?" she asked as she activated her wings, preparing for her short flight.

Odd flexed his fingers. "No problem, princess," he said as he dug deep into the rock formation and began his ascent.

Yumi glanced over at Ulrich who was still looking at the reflection on his sword, observing the creepers as the others made the climb. "Why are you sending them so high up there?" she inquired.

Ulrich answered without turning his head. "The creepers might be a little more intelligent this time around and not take the bait so easily," he said. "If that happens, making them aim higher than usual before they notice us might give us a little more time to strike before being blown away."

Yumi nodded. "Makes sense to me."

The young samurai saw that both of his colleagues made it to their destinations. "Everyone ready?" he asked.

"Ready," the other three said simultaneously.

Ulrich began the countdown. "3..."

"2..." Odd continued as he adjusted his wrists.

"1..." Aelita whispered as she began to charge up an energy ball in one hand.

Yumi took a peek from behind her cover spot and saw a volley or laser arrows and energy balls fly at the creepers from opposite sides. Two of the creatures immediately began to open fire on each of the sources of the disturbances. While the blasts came dangerously close to both Odd and Aelita, none of them had gotten injured. She continued to observe the situation and noticed that the third creeper had not done anything since the attack had begun. "I don't think it's working," she relayed to Ulrich.

"Wait for it," he replied as he continued his observations via the reflection from his sword. Just then, he noticed that the two creepers that were attacking Odd and Aelita had stopped firing. For a moment he was wondering whether Yumi was right about this. His fears were subsided when he noticed that the final creeper had finally turned around and turned each of his arms to the directions the blind fire was coming from. His fears returned, however, when he and Yumi noticed that the creepers had chosen to lower their aim and attack the rock formations instead, hoping that they would crumble and take the attackers out with it.

"We have to move!" she exclaimed as Ulrich nodded in agreement. Both of the warriors left their hiding spots and charged towards the creepers, hoping to take them out from behind. Yumi took out both of her fans and threw them both at the creeper aiming for Aelita. The razor sharp edges of the fans sliced through the top of creature, cutting through the eye and causing it to collapse and shatter into millions of lines of code.

Ulrich, meanwhile, unsheathed his katanas and activated his super sprint maneuver. He sped towards the creeper in the middle and leaped high into the air, landing on the monster's back. Before the creature could react, the warrior raced to the top and plunged both of his blades into the creeper's eye, destroying it and propelling him in a freefall towards the ground. Before any celebrating could be done, however, the final creeper that was aiming for Odd swung his left arm, knocking Ulrich back several feet.

Yumi looked back briefly and saw that he was alright. Catching her fans as they returned to her, she growled and lunged forward, throwing both of her fans at the monster. Instead of simply standing there and waiting for the weapons to make contact, however, the creeper swatted away both fans with one arm and began firing at Yumi with the other. The kunoichi stopped in her tracks and began flipping from side to side, trying to dodge the laser blasts to the best of her ability. She had managed to dodge every shot thrown at her when the creeper eventually stopped firing to cool itself down. Noticing her chance, Yumi ran towards her fallen weapons and tried to grab them in time to perform another attack. As she retrieved her last fan, she turned around and saw that the creeper had not only gotten its guns to cool down, it had already taken aim at Yumi and prepared to fire another volley of shots. Just when she thought she was done for, she saw the creeper shatter into millions of lines of code. When the binary digits had finally faded away, she had seen both Odd and Aelita emerge from the creature's resting place. Odd blew the smoke away from his wrists while Aelita discharged the last bit of energy from her fists.

"Are you OK?" Aelita asked as she approached Yumi.

Yumi nodded and smiled, grateful to still be in one piece. Meanwhile, Odd grabbed Ulrich's arm and helped him get back up. Like Yumi, he was shaken but still functional. Once she confirmed that everyone was fine, Aelita ran towards the tower and leaped inside to begin the deactivation process.

"And so ends another adventure on the virtual world of Lyoko," Odd said triumphantly as he and his friends looked at the tower. "So, who's hungry?"

"Odd, it's kinda late," Yumi argued.

The purple cat nodded. "That's why I'm starving. Anyone want to stop somewhere before we head back home?"

"I could go for some..." Ulrich's speech stopped suddenly. Yumi and Odd turned to him and saw that a long stinger was protruding from his mouth. To their surprise, the stinger was attached to a red hornet that was clasped to the back of the warrior's head. As Ulrich began to disintegrate, the red hornet exploded, knocking Odd and Yumi away while accelerating Ulrich's devirtualization process.

Yumi cupped her ear just as Odd shook his head, trying to regain his bearings. "Thanks for the warning, Jeremie," she said sarcastically.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"The red hornet," she responded. "The one that just took out Ulrich before it exploded. You did catch that on the radar, right?"

Jeremie opened up another window and brought up his recording program. After XANA had returned, Jeremie had begun to take recordings of his monitor for the purposes of studying the program's AI and patterns. He reviewed the last minutes of footage and found nothing out of the ordinary. "Sorry, Yumi, I've got nothing," he replied.

Before Yumi could say anything, two more red hornets appeared on the horizon. "Tell me you see this on the radar," she pleaded.

The boy genius placed his focus back on the radar once more. Like before, he saw nothing unusual happening. Knowing that something was amiss, he opened a terminal window and got into the code of the radar program itself. With the furious tapping of the keys heard throughout the control center, he modified a bit of the code to give him a more accurate search. He restarted the program before finally seeing the enemies in question. "Looks like XANA went ahead and did some modifications on some of his monsters. Since Aelita's not done deactivating the tower yet, I could send you some help but it'll take some time," he added.

Yumi unfurled her fans and stood, ready for a fight. "Odd, stay here and protect the tower," she ordered. Without waiting for a response, she lunged forward and threw both of her fans at the creatures, hoping that at least one of the fans would connect and kill the new monsters. Unfortunately for her, both of the creatures dodged the fans and increased their speed. Before she could catch at least one of the fans that were returning to her, one of the red hornets had already plunged it's stinger into Yumi's stomach, exploding to ensure that her devirtualization would be complete.

Odd took aim at the last red hornet left behind. His arms moved back and forth wildly, trying to get a clear shot at the insect. With the enemy drawing closer, Odd decided to forgo precision aiming and went with a relentless assault instead. He fired a stream of arrows as the hornet weaved around each of them with ease. As Aelita exited the tower, completing the deactivation process, one of the arrows hit the hornet directly in the thorax, causing it to explode. The force of the explosion was strong enough to knock Odd back, slamming him head first into a rock wall, depleting him of his life points. The explosion also sent out flying debris and the creature's body parts, including the hornet's stinger, which cut Aelita's cheek before she devirtualized from Lyoko.

Author's Notes

And so begins Story #13, also known as Episode 5 of The Reset Arc. Once again I'm employing the posting format that I used in my last oneshot fic, Unattainable. Even though the reviews consisted mostly of the same people posting over and over again, the overall response was positive as was the number of people coming back to the story to read new chapters. I'm doing the same thing here to see if I can get the same results.

-Slow posting: Call it writer's block or lack of time or what have you but this is, by far, the hardest story I've had to write yet. The story is brewing in my head but for some reason I can't seem to make it flow from my head into the digital paper. I'm determined to finish it since I still have story ideas floating in my head but I only hope that finally posting chapter 1 will kick my in the behind and force me to get my spark for writing back.

Till next time.