Xana's POV
I have been inactive for a long time now. I know when I will make my first move, but the time is not right yet. In the meantime, I wait. And I watch.
Since I am no longer bound to the virtual prison Lyoko, I thought that I would no longer need the mechanos as my minions. I continue to monitor the humans though, and it was through them that I became aware of the so called "Monster of a Problem", the incident where Jeremie and Tetrox switched bodies, and where the Scipizoa tried to hatch his own evil plot.
I watch the Scipizoa now, through the eye of a digital security camera. He is in the dungeons in the central cone, now, a week after the incident, one of the few places in it that survived the explosion of Scipi-Zilla. Tetrox and his friends would never have survived the explosion if Aelita had not programmed some enlarged vehicles for them at the last minute.
They were lucky that the basement dungeons survived, so that they had some place to put the traitor. I still don't know why the Scipizoa continued to want to help me after I left Lyoko. I thought that all the mechanos wanted was to protect their home.
I see Yumi and two Kankrelats through the lens. They enter the cell, Yumi with a tray of food. She sets it down, and then the three of them leave, leaving the Scipizoa to sit glumly in a corner of the cell to eat his meal. He looks up, and I see him nearly have a digital heart attack when he sees my symbol, glowing red in the security lens.
He raises a tentacle in supplication, with a pleading look. I nearly laugh. Why should I help him now? He wanted to prove his usefulness after his primary use became void; all he has proved is his uselessness. Besides, what kind of game did he think he was playing? I would have never accepted an army of zombies. Free will is what gave the mechanos what strength they had; the Tarantula guard that the Lyoko warriors tricked is proof of how easy it is to outwit a mindless opponent.
I can easily free him, but I will leave him here to rot, if a creature made of metal can rot, until I can find a use for him, if I ever do.
I suspect that I will not.
Yumi's POV
I walked out from the basement of the central cone, climbing the temporary stairs up to ground level. Here, I could hear the sounds of reconstruction clearly, as the mechanos hammered, sawed, and welded to rebuild the stricken central cone, which had been neatly leveled by Scipi-Zilla. I had no idea that a machine could explode with such force!
The two Kankrelats nodded to me, and then left to see to their own business. With the duty of feeding our prisoner done, I walked over to where Jeremie, Tetrox, and a few others stood, discussing the blueprints for the new central cone with several of the nest leaders.
"I'm telling you, that wing C needs to be over here!" shouted T-75, leader of the Tarantulas, pointing at a section of the blueprints.
"And I'm telling you that wing C needs to be over here!" shouted K-250, leader of the Krabes, pointing to a different section.
Metra had confided in me that the leaders of the nests were always bickering amongst themselves over the littlest thing, and that, ironically, this meant all the rest of the mechanos got along well with very little argument most of the time.
"So, how goes the reconstruction effort?" I asked, coming up to the group.
"Slowly," said Tetrox, one of the new "official heroes" of the mechanos (appointed to the new position by the nest leaders), with a slight smile. I had learned from Jeremie how to read the mechanos' expressions even when their faces were totally immobile. "But thanks for your concern. We really appreciate the help you've been giving us too," he said, gesturing over to where Odd and Ulrich were standing on two Krabe's backs to put some rivets in a steel girder.
"Hey, Jeremie!" shouted Ulrich. "We need more rivets! Can you get K-23 and Ralph to bring us some more? They're supposed to be doing that anyway, but they keep disappearing!"
"The two of them are out over near Nesta Bloka, joking around as usual," said Aelita from the computer lab in the real world, where she could monitor everything that was going on.
Ralph was a Krabe. The idea of normal names instead of identification numbers had caught on somewhat, although there were still plenty of mechanos who had chosen to stick with the system, like K-23.
"I'll look for them in just a bit!" Jeremie shouted back, before turning back to me and Tetrox.
"I've been meaning to ask..." I said. "Where do you and the rest of the mechanos plan to go from here? You no longer have to obey Xana, and you no longer have to battle us. What are you going to do?"
"To be honest, Yumi, most of us don't really know. Fighting you has always given us a sense of purpose. Now that we have peace, well... well, maybe we can find something else."
"Be careful what it is you do, though," said Jeremie. "I mean, just look at the Scipizoa. He took the loss of his sense of purpose harder than most, and look at what it drove him to do."
"True, true, very true," replied Tetrox.
Jeremie looked up.
"Aelita, what time is it?" he asked.
"8:00 pm," Aelita replied.
"We'd better go then. Start up the devirtualization process."
Jeremie then turned to Tetrox.
"Well, we'll be seeing you," he said.
"You'll be here at the same time tomorrow to continue to help, right?" said Tetrox.
"Right."
"Good. Oh, and Jeremie?"
"Yes?"
"Give me and my friends a call if you need help fighting Xana. You never know, and after all, we are still pretty good fighters."
"I'll keep that in mind," said Jeremie, with a smile, as we devirtualized.
Jeremie, Ulrich, Odd, Aelita and I walked out of the factory and went home.
And that brings our story to a close.
I think. I get the feeling that I'm forgetting something...
Mr. Delmas' POV
"Possessed?" I said, raising an eyebrow, looking at my daughter and her two friends in my office.
"Yes! It's true! Like by ghosts, or demons, or something!" shouted Sissi, continuing to rant.
"And this happened to Herve and Jeremie a week ago? The same day we had to send out a search party to find you in the sewers because you had somehow gotten lost down there?"
"Yes!"
"I see. And if Herve and Jeremie were, as you say, possessed, then how come Jeremie hasn't come here to report this with you, like Herve did? Hmm?"
"Uh..."
I shuffled the papers on my desk, the universal signal to my students that I was too busy to deal with whatever the current issue was. I only used it when I thought the students were trying to play a practical joke, because usually I was receptive anytime a student wanted to talk to me.
"Sissi, dearest," I said, "I think you and your friends had better run along now. I believe this has all been a product of you imaginations."
I stood up, walked around my desk, and ushered the three of them out of the room.
"Now, go find something else to do. I am a very busy man."
I slammed the door behind them.
As I walked back to my desk, I heard Herve say, "Hey... I just realized something. Have any of you seen my cell phone?"
END