The Mechanist

I don't own Code Lyoko. Not based on Code Lyoko Evolution. As if it never happened.

BRRRRRRRRRRING! Class for the day ended. "Well, we survived Mrs. Hertz's class again. Trump one up for the former Lyoko warriors," Odd smiled.

"Speak for yourself. I'm sure she's going to fail me for this last quiz," Ulrich said.

"Did you study?"

"Yeah, but you try to study when Odd's doing the boogie-woogie at 12 am," The brown-headed teen answered Aelita.

"I told you my room is free. Now that XANA's gone, I don't have to stay up all night," Jeremie said.

"And yet you still have your keyboard mark," Yumi laughed, poking at his head, "What were you doing last night that you had to stay up for?"

"Um... well I-" His eyes darted over to a blushing pink-haired girl. Yumi grinned wide as they walked into the lunch hall. "It's amazing. A whole week without XANA, I almost don't know what to do with myself."

"Just don't create another super evil monster, and I think we're good, Einstein," Odd snapped his fingers. Rolling his eyes, Jeremie grumbled while the rest laughed, but unknown to them, Sissi listened from behind.

Herb whined, "Sissi, why do you always snoop on their talk but never talk with us?"

"Well, if you must know, Herb, their conversation interests me while you and Nicholas talk about stupid things like the weather or fish."

"Hey, I like fish," Nicholas mumbled. Sissi rolled her eyes.

Ulrich poked around with his fork, jabbed the broccoli, and stuffed it in his mouth. "Speaking of our ex-friend, did you rewire the code to get into the factory?"

"Not yet, but I'm not worried. Even if someone went there, they wouldn't know how to use the supercomputer," Jeremie said.

"What if they start it up? What if they accidentally start a return to the past? Huh?" questioned Yumi.

"We would know because we would remember. As long as the supercomputer remembers our individual biomolecular scans in its deep network hardware it-"

"Because we would notice," Aelita finished, patting the jabbering genius on the back while he glanced at the smirking pink-haired girl through narrowed eyes. The others giggled.

"Well, that means we have some spare time to get your robots working, Einstein! You've been neglecting them. Come on, I say we get started on them. The world needs Kiwi 3.0!" Odd cheered. As they got up from their seats and left, Sissi, tapping her feet and drumming her fingers, got up, and a Cheshire smile tumbled to her lips.

"Let me guess, you're going to stalk them?" Herb snorted.

"Quiet, idiot. What I do is no business of yours." With a flip of her hair and a lifted nose, the dragon queen of the academy huffily left the building. Now, time to see what they've been hiding all these years. After a short run from the mess hall, she arrived at the old factory. Its rusted dark-brown frame made Sissi gulp. With each step, the entrance loomed over her head, swallowing her like an old dragon. "There's nothing to be afraid of, Sissi. They come here all the time. It's no big deal." Her uncontrollable jitters became soft shivers as she approached the ropes. The inky-haired girl rode the line to the ground, quivered to the elevator, and clicked the button. The elevator's working hum completely quieted her fear. Now cheek rose up from her belly. "Hehe, your secret is mine, Ulrich," Sissi rubbed her hands like a cartoon villain as the elevator rolled its old frame to the top. She got in. Her finger hovered over the buttons, saying, "Eenie meanie mine-y moe!" The door shut, the elevator groaned, she braced her hand against the wall, then the elevator stopped, and she finally walked into a dark room: the reactor core. "Huh? This is it? What a FLOP! Just what I suspected. Just some weirdos doing weirdo things in a weirdo place." Before she could say anything else, light exploded from the floor as the floorboards steamed open. A huge black and gold column sprouted forth from the waters. "Wwwhhaat is this place?!" Sissi stepped back and hit her back to the quaking wall. Humming, the supercomputer dripped from its watery basket.

Sissi took small steps towards the supercomputer. She skimmed the entire thing, focusing on the Lyoko insignia, and brushed her hand against the cold shiny metal. "Coooool! Okay, so maybe they aren't lame," Sissi admitted.

Then she saw a small button that her dainty hands pressed, and a lever popped out: the big lever that would turn on the entire thing. She reached out, stopped for a moment, and then grabbed the smooth handle. Her hand trembled; her heart pounded in her brain. You don't have to do this, Sissi. They're your friends, and you shouldn't be snooping. But what if this gets something more than you can ever think of? What if it turns out badly? This thing looks powerful. What if I get crisped to a fry? Thought after thought raced in her head before a small voice simply whispered,

Do it.

What happened next? Up to this day, no one knows. Jeremie, Sissi, and Aelita all have different theories. Aelita thinks it was the way Sissi's shoes slipped into the mechanism. Jeremie believes the shoe helped, but it was mostly because of the scanners. Sissi, on the other hand, thinks it was single-handedly the shoe, the reset theory, and the scanner in combination and nothing else.

Anyhow, the supercomputer roared and threw Sissi back, knocking her shoe off. It sunk into the reactor's cracks. It sent electric sparks dancing all over the place; fireworks shooting off in the worse possible way. "I gotta get out of here!" Sissi yeeted to the elevator and mobbed the buttons. "Come on, you stupid thing! Work!" But the elevator wouldn't. Sissi snapped her neck to the rungs on the other side of the room. She ran up the ladder and stumbled into the scanner room. "What the heck are these things?" The core hummed louder as violent sparks splashed out. Then she heard the whirring supercomputer shrill. "Oh no!" Sissi dropped into the scanner and huddled up like a ball.

Unbeknownst to her, the computer interface randomly performed recovery procedures. A count down started up and the scanner doors closed Sissi in. "What?! No! Let me out!" Soon the computer calculated the damage done to itself and formulated a repair plan that would change Sissi's life. As the scanner scanned the teen's body, Sissi felt something giving her a jolt of energy straight to her brain and stuffing her mind a mile a minute. "AAAAHH!" She screamed as she felt lightning suddenly coursing through her. "HEEEELPP!"

Then life went black.

Suddenly, Sissi's eyes popped open. The familiar ceiling of her room filled her sight. She looked to the left and right before hesitantly getting out of bed. "It… it was just a dream?" Sissi rubbed her eyes and stretched her body, feeling unusual stiffness in her neck. She caressed it before getting up and looking in the mirror nearby. "Well, I guess I had too much ravioli for dinner. I'm just glad it's over," Sissi sighed. Then she looked in her closet for clothes. "Huh, that's weird. Where're my blue jeans and red shoes? Ugh, now I have to wear the old black ones I have. Lame." Sissi reluctantly put on her clothes; it was the orangish pink T-shirt with the yellow heart on. Grabbing her backpack, she opened the door and saw Herb and Nicholas right outside, smiling. She rolled her eyes.

"Hey, Sissi," Herb said.

"What do you two want?" Her tone was a little less harsh than normal.

"We were waiting for you so we could go to the gym. The annual school prom is coming up and you wanted to be in charge of the decorations." Sissi's eyes widened at Herb.

"The school prom? What are you dorks talking about?" Herb pulled out a poster. Snatching it, Sissi glazed her eyes over the poster. Each word filled her heart with dread. Then she saw the year; it was three years ago. "That's impossible! What's today's date?"

"Uhh, the fifth of Febr-"

"I mean the year!"

"Oh! 2004," Herb finished. Sissi's eyes broadened out of their sockets as she pushed past Herb and Nicholas and darted for the double doors. "Sissi, what's wrong!"

"It can't be, it can't be!" She hopelessly wailed. She ran to the next person in the schoolyard. "You, tell me! What's the year?"

"Uh, 2004?"

"No, no! You're lying!" Sissi pulled her hair. Crackles of lightning flashed in her head. Her brain crashed at the truth. "There's no way!" She ferociously shook her head and gritted her teeth to their cracking point. Dark thoughts flew through her mind, the world spun fast, and she wobbly raced across the campus. She didn't know where she was going. She couldn't process what was happening. The groundskeeper Michael Rouiler saw Sissi blindly running out to the streets

"Sissi! Don't!" Sissi couldn't hear him. She rushed out to the streets and the next sound she heard was screeching bus tires. Everything went black again.

Later, Milly and Tamiya were packing up their equipment just outside the gym. Odd spotted them leaving. "Hey, you two, why are you packing up? I thought you wanted to get some footage of the dance?"

"We do, but we just heard Sissi had an accident," Milly said.

"What?!" Ulrich, Yumi, and Odd all exclaimed.

"Yeah, I heard from Emily, who heard from Joan, who heard from Herb, who-"

"Okay, we get it, skip to Sissi's accident," Ulrich interrupted.

"Well, the source said that she was very hysterical when she just ran out to the street and got hit by a bus. Herb is really bummed about it," Tamiya said, pointing over to a familiar green shirt nerd sitting on the steps.

"What about Sissi? Is she going to be okay?" Yumi asked.

"Nurse Yolanda said she didn't seem too hurt, but she was still sent to the hospital. Principal Delmas says that the prom is still going to happen, but he won't come. Jim will be helping around." As Milly finished her sentence, the big bowl of pudge burst through the doors.

"Alright everyone, it's time to get these decorations in gear, hop to it! And you two, didn't I tell you no 6-graders allowed" Jim bellowed. While Milly and Tamiya left, Odd, Yumi, and Ulrich looked at each other.

"Do you think it could be XANA?" Yumi whispered.

"I don't know, let's go visit Jeremie," suggested Ulrich.