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princesskayjay · 1 year ago

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Butterfly Effect

Fandom: Code Lyoko Word Count: 1953

Ao3 Link

Hi, @sapphicfolch! I'm your Santa for @codesecretsanta! I was going to do holiday celebrations, but then t he idea of Yumi getting possessed by Xana didn't leave me alone. So here we are!

Aelita tapped her foot anxiously against the metal pole on the chair. Ulrich was supposed to tell Odd, and Yumi had to get free of her brother, and Jeremy couldn't get free of Milly and Tamiya. William had answered and said he was already on his way! But it didn't do much to calm her nerves, or the air of unease settling in her bones. The longer that they waited, the more time they gave XANA...

The more risk her father was at...

Aelita rested her forehead against her balled hands. Thankfully for her heart, she heard the tell tale woosh of the old elevator doors creaking open.

"Guys!" She shot up, spinning around in the chair. And it... wasn't all the people she had hoped to see, but it was something. It was William and Yumi. Jeremy was supposed to be on his way, and she trusted that - He'd be able to transfer Odd and Ulrich when they got here.

"I had to promise to do Hiroki's homework for a month..." Yumi seemed a little annoyed, and Aelita couldn't blame her. She could offer to help out with that later...

"A small price for saving the world, right?" William, on the other hand, seemed incredibly enthused, just as much as he had been the day before, when they had made sure he was inducted properly into the warriors.

"Doing sixth grader math isn't my idea of a good time..." But it was a sacrifice she was willing to make, and Aelita wished she could explain properly her thanks that Yumi made all the sacrifices that she did.

Aelita opened the self virtualization program and hopped off the chair. "Hopefully the other boys will be here soon." She joined Yumi and William in the elevator as she hit the button to go down to the scanners. "Thank you guys for getting here."

The air in the elevator was thick and heavy as they descended towards the scanners. And worse yet, Aelita felt in her bones that something was going to go wrong. The same kind of feeling that Odd had to explain that future sight felt like.

And then the scanners opened, and it wasn't time to be worried anymore. It was time for action. ________

“So this is home sweet home, huh?” The voice was right, that was Yumi. But the tone was all wrong. “Yep! Your family is waiting for you!” Aelita was terrified of what came next. They had run into Hiroki at school, and that had been a near disaster that was avoided by the sheer fact that Ulrich was at least familiar in dealing with Yumi’s little brother. But Hiroki had just been willing to accept that his sister was a little sick after a sleepover in the dorms. That she wasn’t supposed to have, but… … Yumi’s parents had been a pain to convince. And sure, mimicking Yumi’s voice was the trivial part. The super computer did that so easily, it was one of the first functions everyone figured out how to use. But acting the part was another story. Nailing just the right level of seriousness without coming off as cold (because Yumi wasn’t.) and still sounding polite and respectful. It was hard to put that into words. And this clone wasn’t it, not really. YUmi had confessed once that her family was already worried about her mental health, and her ‘rebellion’...

“So that’s my mom and dad and… he said his name was Hiroki, right?” The clone checks, resting a finger on her cheek in thought. “Yes.” Aelita was good at being patient, but she couldn’t help the rising feelings of how this shouldn’t be necessary. That someone should have been able to save her.

“Can’t wait to meet them!” “Remember, you already have, okay? Just pretend.” The clone grinned at her. Aelita smiled back. Maybe it’d be okay, just until they saved Yumi. ________

Maybe they should consider themselves lucky that William distracted the mantas for so long. They were able to take him out, but he wasn’t exactly an experienced pilot on the overbike, and he drove pretty recklessly. (No more recklessly than Odd on a good day, sure, but recklessly nonetheless.) Aelita and Yumi fly out to the landing on the back of the Overwing, and with a nod, they both leapt off the vehicle. They’d just have to fight their way up to the core anyway. This way, it’d be faster.

“I’ll handle the closer ones. Aelita, can you get the ones that are further away?” Yumi asked quickly, raising her fans up immediately to catch a laser flying in her direction. “I like to think my aim’s better than Odd’s.” As if to prove her point, her first attack hits true, and the creeper explodes into pixels. Above them, the core is still being attacked, but Aelita is able to relax, just a little bit, now that they’re here defending it. If she and Yumi can so much as delay the attackers, then they would be okay.

Yumi opened her fan by Aelita’s head, successfully blocking an attack headed straight for her, and her other fan was thrown at the offending Manta. It also landed true, and returned safely to her hand. “Let’s keep going.” She turned and began jumping further up the platforms of the core room, and Aelita followed.

There were a lot of enemies, raining lasers down on their heads. And as they ascended higher and higher, a stray shot got lucky, nailing Yumi in the side as she stepped forward to throw her fan. Jeremy’s warning didn’t come fast enough, and Yumi was knocked off. The offending creeper was immediately destroyed by Aelita, but that was too little too late.

“Girls, watch out! There’s a Sycphozoa! What could it be planning- YUMI!” Yumi had been snatched out of the air with an agileness that Aelita doesn’t expect from the slow squid like monsters, “Gh… Aelita, you have to do something!” “On it.” Her first attack hit a manta that she was sure wasn’t there before, and with frustration she fired another attack to the same result. They were protecting it…. And yes it whittled down the numbers, but Aelita’s heart sank as the monster dropped Yumi and she slowly stood up.

“Dang it- Just hang in there, Aelita. Odd and Ulrich are on their way.” Jeremy sounded frustrated.

Aelita’s bad feeling was justified wasn’t it, she thought faintly as Yumi turned on her with her fans finally making their way back to her hands. ________

That first night they stood at the gate together, and Aeita pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the time. It was just about when they said they’d check in with her family for dinner. So they could sit down and eat before going upstairs to have a sleepover.

Aelita had stayed over at Yumi’s once, almost a year ago at this point, when she had first come to earth and she was just “Yumi’s Pen Pal”, before she had a solid story for her return to earth and she was Odd’s cousin instead. And if it weren’t for that prior explanation, Aelita didn’t know if her request for a girls night would have gone over nearly as well.

She wanted a girls night, but not like this.

“Let’s roll!” Aelita shook her head. “Yeah. We wouldn’t want to be late, they’d get mad.” And they wanted to try and keep them from being mad as much as possible. Aelita wished she knew Yumi’s family better, that she could in some way know what to expect.

To everyone’s credit, the meal started with all in high spirits. Aelita had only gotten to have traditional Japanese food a handful of times in her life, and she was at least looking forward to that experience… if her stomach would settle down enough to eat.

… The dinner wasn’t as big a mess as Aelita feared it would be, but it wasn’t great either. The clone sucked with Chopsticks for one, and Aelita could only do so much to cover the fact that The clone didn’t know much about the people who were supposedly her family. It was only when the conversation landed on their friends that Aelita could relax a little. And it was at this moment, Aelita learned the clone was, perhaps, a little boy crazy. This would be fuel for Hiroki for weeks… And worse, what her parents would think…

This had to be only a week that it took to save Yumi. What would happen if it wasn't? ________

Aelita’s fingers are gripping the back of Jeremy’s seat tightly. So tightly that it was probably bad for her hands how tightly she was holding. William was asking Jeremy questions as he typed, ones that he was only answering in muttered words as he reluctantly tapped the enter key. The screen lit up as two scanners activated. Odd and Ulrich didn’t make it in time, and so they were forced to return to Earth empty handed, barely avoiding the destruction of Lyoko. But at least they made it home.

Aelita knew what she’d find when she slid down the ladder to the scanner room, but she had to check. (The first sign was that only two scanners were active, the third already sitting open and empty.) But seeing the center and left scanners open confirmed it anyway. There was Ulrich, with his fist balled up against the side of the scanner wall, and there was Odd, immediately sliding to the ground, hitting his head on the back of the scanner.

She had the feeling they already knew. And they would have no choice but to climb up to the main lab and hear it for themselves.

And hear it for themselves they did. With his hands balled against his cheeks, Jeremy makes the terrible awful announcement that he couldn’t bring Yumi back in. Couldn’t even find her on the network. William comforts Jeremy, pointing out he didn’t even get into the core room in a fit of annoyance. He could have done more. Ulrich sulks off to a private corner of the super calculator room, and Aelita slides down the wall now that she’s made it back up the ladder. Odd takes a seat next to her.“At least you were here in time. Ulrich and I didn’t even manage that.” And what a sight it was, when even Odd couldn’t manage to be cheery about it.

Lyoko is destroyed. The kids flee the factory, unable to stay. They can’t bear going back to school right now. At least the Hermitage was private. ________

“They seem like nice people!” Aelita bites the inside of her cheek, trying to not say a word as she takes a cross legged seat on the floor by Yumi’s giant Totoro plush, and the clone sits on Yumi’s- her? - bed. All splayed limbs and relaxation and Aelita couldn’t relate at all.

Dinner had been really difficult to sit through.

“You love them, that’s what you always told me.” Aelita said finally, though she doesn’t know how to even begin to put into words all of the fights she had heard second hand, and the misguided but true worry. Or how much Yumi had been struggling to balance all aspects of her life and how little this was going to help.

When they saved Yumi (they would. They wouldn’t ever leave one of their own behind.), she was going to have fun cleaning up the mess her clone left her. But she would have her friends to do it with. Aelita wasn’t going to leave her.

“I can see why.” The clone agreed. They just had to hang in there.

#code secret santa #code lyoko #kaula does writing

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