I'm decided that, since everyone loved Code ANGEL so much, I'm going to write another epic serial of the series. The new series is in no way related to Code ANGEL (no Zaber character at all). It will be called Code SPIRAL, and will be a cross-over between the Code LYOKO series and an obscure, but awesome anime called "Spiral".
But I can't take all the credit for the storyline. Much of the story will be lifted directly from the storyline of Spiral, but cleverly adapted into the Lyoko universe. Seven new characters will join the cast... but Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd have moved away at the time of the story, leaving just Jeremy and Aelita.
But... if you assume those seven new characters will be on their side... you may be dead wrong...
01 - spiral of destiny
The new school year was beginning. It was now their Junior year, and much had changed. For one reason or another, the group has been split. Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd had either moved or been transferred to other schools. It was just Jeremy and Aelita now, and things were far more difficult. Aelita had changed most drastically... she had begun to grow her hair long, and it now stretched to slightly below her shoulders. She had also found herself near sighted, and now wore glasses strictly for reading and the like. Xana's attacks had become no less frequent, but they seemed less intense, as if Xana was for some strange reason compensating for their lack of numbers.
On the first day of school, Jeremy sat at the breakfast table. Many unfamiliar students were present in the cafeteria. A school in the next town over had burned down over the summer, and many of the students had been temporarily transfrerred to Catic. One had spiky red hair, yellow tinted sunglasses, and wore a long-sleeve shirt colored both dark green and black. He was not eating, and simply sat there, idly playing with a deck of cards stitting on the table in front of him. A freshman girl sat at the far end of their own table, her silver pigtails flailing as she eagerly chomped into a piece of watermelon. About a dozen others he didn't recognize dotted the room. Jeremy glanced at the clock on his computer. It was 7:58. If Aelita didn't get here soon, she would have no time to get any breakfast. Little did he know, breakfast was the least of Aelita's worries.
Aelita wasn't the only student missing from the cafeteria. One of the new
transfer students was taking a nap on the open roof of the science
building. He had eratic brown hair, and wore a pair of blue pants and a
blue jacket/blazer, with a cream color shirt beneath it. He snored gently,
but was awoken when an alarm went off on his watch. It was 8:00, and he figured he should probably go and get some breakfast. His name was Ayumu Narumi, and he was a junior at the academy as of today... having come from the burned school. He had a thing for rooftops... he found sleeping on top of them quiet and peaceful... and no one bothered him there. He made his way to the edge of the building, intending to take the small ladder down from the roof to the third floor landing.
Aelita hurried up the stairs of the science building towards the third
floor landing. She panted as she quickned her pace even more... she was
late, a small piece of paper clenched tightly in her hand. She arrived on
the third floor landing, she said, "OK Jeremy! I'm here!" But found
herself alone on the landing. She looked around confused... she hadn't
expected Jeremy to skip out on something like this... She stared off into
the distance, but could not see it clearly without her glasses. She pulled her glasses case from her hoody pocket...
As Ayumu stepped onto the last rung of the short ladder, he heard a scream from nearby.
"Huh?" He exclaimed as he stepped onto the floor and quickly rounded the
corner. The landing was empty... the guard rail missing. "That's dangerous..." He muttered as he stepped towards the edge and looked over it. A delivery truck was parked below, a large dent had appeared on the edge opposite the building. A small crowd was encircling the small area from around the truck, and someone screamed. Jim stood there, crouched over a pink haired girl Ayumu didn't know, who had apparently fallen. Shattered fragments of her glasses had flown several yards... and the guard rail lay a few feet away from her. Jim looked up from Aelita, who was completely unconcious, up to the landing upon which Ayumu stood.
"YOU! DID YOU DO THIS?!?! DID YOU PUSH HER OFF THERE?!?!" Jim screamed up at him, and every eye and acusatory finger in the crowd shot towards Ayumu, who simply stared down in shock.
Nearly a half-hour later, Ayumu sat in the principal's office. He had been detained by Jim almost immediately after the incident, and Aelita had been carried by ambulance to the hospital. The truck below had acted as a cushion, and for the most part, her injuries were minor. She was unconcious, but the doctors said she would be fine. Jim stood in the corner, glaring at him, as the principal sat inside his office, conversing with the police. Ayumu groaned. He hadn't done anything, but he knew that it didn't look good for him. Another police officer arrived, with Jeremy in tow. Jeremy had learned of Aelita's accident mere minutes after it had happened, but had for some reason been detained by the police, and wasn't allowed to go with Aelita to the hospital. Jeremy glared at Ayumu. As far as Jeremy was concerned, Ayumu HAD pushed Aelita... and the first opportunity he had alone with the guy, things were going to get violent. The officer who had brought Jeremy stepped into the office, conversed with the principal for a breif moment, and then two officer stepped out, gesturing for Jeremy and Ayumu to enter as the flanked the door. Jim followed them in and shut the door behind them. The officer who had brought Jeremy sat at one end of the principals table with a tablet, ready to take notes. The prinicpal sat grimly with his arms crossed as Jeremy and Ayumu sat down at the two chairs, and there was an awkward silence.
"Well..." The principal said. "I have no clue where to begin here." The principal stood up and closed the blinds of the large picture window behind his desk. "You two are crazy to think you would get away with this."
"Pardon me?" Jeremy asked.
"The two of you planned this." The principal said. "He pushed her while you lured her onto the balcony with this." The principal passed him a piece of paper that had been found on Aelita.
Aelita... meet me on the fifth floor landing of the Science building at 8:00. I have a surprise for you. Love, Jeremy
Jeremy stared at the note.
"I... I didn't write this!!!" Jeremy exclaimed angrilly.
"DO NOT RAISE YOUR VOICE!" Jim shouted at him as he nudged the back of Jeremy's chair violently. Jim was unusually grim and serious.
"I had nothing to do with this either." Ayumu said with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.
"Who the hell do you think you're fooling!?!?" Jim said as he stepped in front of Ayumu's chair and gripped him on the shoulders, shaking him. "I saw everything!"
"Jim!" The principal rose out of his seat. "Calm yourself!" Jim relaxed slightly and released his grip on Ayumu. The principal sighed. "Ayumu Narumi, yes?" The principal asked his name.
"That's me." Ayumu muttered. "I just transferred here."
"That's why I can't understand it. You didn't even know her, so why did you try to kill her?"
"I didn't. I was taking a nap on the roof and I was on my way down when I heard a scream, so I ran to see what had happen and then I found the empty landing with the guard rail missing."
"You claim you were the only one on the landing?" The principal asked him suspiciously.
"I was the only one. It was only me." Ayumu said non-chalantly.
"Then is had to have been you!" Jeremy shouted at him.
"Well?" The principal offered Ayumu a chance to respond.
"I was the only one who could have pushed her." Ayumu said.
"Ah ha! A confession!" Jim exclaimed.
"No. I'm just saying I'm the only who could have PUSHED her."
"So... wait... are you saying she just... fell?" Jim said, confused.
"Brilliant deduction... you get a cookie." Ayumu shot at him sarcastically.
"Why you little!!!" Jim stepped towards Ayumu menacingly.
"Jim! Why don't you just go stand outside? You're a little bit too worked up over this..." The principal ordered him, and Jim stepped out of the room with a grunt of dissent.
"Even if you didn't push her, that still leaves the matter of the note." The principal turned to Jeremy. "I'll admit it was a bit premature of me to jump to the conclusion that you wrote the note. I'll ask the police to run a handwriting comparrison between the note and some of your papers, and if you're telling the truth it will come up negative. Samantha did tell me you were very close to Aelita, so I was a bit suspicous of a motive in you anyway. Is there anyone you can think of that might want to do this to her?" The principal asked him. Jeremy knew of one perfect candiate... Xana. And to be honest, the specs made sense... a dissapearing murderer, luring Aelita up to the landing... Jeremy suddenedly realized that Ayumu was most likely telling the truth, and was just a bystander in all of this. But he coulnd't tell anyone who the real culprit was.
"No sir. No one." Jeremy answered.
"Then I'm afraid you, Mr. Narumi... are the prime suspect." The principal turned from Jeremy to Ayumu.
"I don't know how many time you want me to say it. I didn't do it." Ayumu mutterred. "And you don't have any concrete proof to have me arrested either." The police officer, who had been transcribing the entire conversation, glanced up at him with a glare. Ayumu had hit the nail on the head. The principal folded his arms.
"If that's all you have to say... then fine. When Aelita regains conciousness, we will know what really happened." The principal gestured them towards the door. "For now you are both free to go." Ayumu and Jeremy stood up and walked out of the room, passing a mutterring Jim who was sitting in the waiting room, his arms crossed.
Jeremy immediately made his way to the hospital. The incident had prompted the delay of the school year until the next day. When he arrived, he found Aelita resting peacefully. The nurses refused to allow him to wake her, but assured him she was fine. As Jeremy sat at the bedside, he pulled out his laptop. To his surprise, he found that no tower had been activated. Xana's lack of involvement was distubring to Jeremy. It could only mean one thing... Ayumu has to be involved. He remained with Aelita for about half-an-hour, and then made his way back to the school. He located Ayumu's dorm room, which was located in the old room of Odd and Ulrich. He knocked on the door, and Ayumu answered it, opening the door only a crack.
"What do you want?" Ayumu asked him.
"I want to talk to you." Jeremy said calmly. Ayumu opened the door the rest of the way.
"Alright, what?"
"I was checking up on another lead about what happened to her, and it came up empty. You're the only suspect I have left." Jeremy said, trying to stay calm and resisting the urge to deck the guy.
"I told you before, I didn't do it."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Look... will you get off my case if I help you figure this thing out?" Ayumu offered. "Fighting amongst ourselves isn't going to do anything. Jeremy stared at him suspicously.
"Fine." Jeremy stepped out of the room, and Ayumu followed him, shutting the door. "What do you think you'll find anyway?"
"We're going to go back and examine the scene more closely... maybe we can find something the police missed." Ayumu muttered. "The question is time. If someone actually pushed her, they would have to have reached the bottom of the staircase before she hit the ground. That's physically impossible unless they jumped down the five stories safely without anyone seeing them." Jeremy suddenedly froze in his tracks, slapping himself on the forehead. Time. Of course. All he had to do was launch a return to the past and Aelita wouldn't get injured at all, and they could lay a trap for her attacker. But, as if to respond to his thoughts, his laptop alarm went off. Jeremy ripped it off his shoulders and flipped it open, revealing the super-scan displaying an activated tower. His mind emmitted an explative. He couldn't launch a return without deactivating the tower. He couldn't deactivate the tower without Aelita, who was currently detained at the hospital. Jeremy grimmaced at the dire actions Xana could carry out with that tower while he could do nothing.
"Hey! Are you coming or not?" Ayumu called to him from the end of the hall. Jeremy shook himself out of it and shut his laptop as he hurried down the hall. There was simply nothing he could do about the tower, but he could still further investigate Aelita's "accident".
Jeremy walked up to the third floor landing from which Aelita had fallen, where Ayumu was already standing, surverying the area. Jeremy had been examining things closely down below. He had only found the shards of Aelita's glasses lying about. He had expected to perhaps find some clues, but he found nothing else out of the ordinary. Ayumu turned to him from the missing guard rail.
"Well?" Ayumu asked him.
"Nothing." Jeremy replied. Ayumu shut his eyes and groaned.
"Can you think of anything else out of the ordinary?" He asked. Jeremy pondered this for a moment. He stuck his hands in his pockets, which brushed against the plastic bag in which he was sealed the glass shards he had recovered.
"Well... when she fell, she was wearing her glasses. She hates wearing them... she only puts them on when she needs to see something far away..." Jeremy said quitely as he continued to think. "But what was she trying to see from up here?" Ayumu and Jeremy both stared at the ground below, but Ayumu was suddenedly struck with a realization.
"That's it." He said quietely as he turned and walked back down the stairs. Jeremy followed him with surprise.
"What do you mean?"
"The notes of truth are starting to play. Call the principal... I've solved this crime."
An hour later, Ayumu and Jeremy stood in the principal's office. Jim and the police officer from earlier stood behind him, the sun beginning to set through the large picture window behind his desk.
"OK... what is this about boys?" The principal asked them.
"I've solved this crime." Ayumu said.
"We solved this crime." Jeremy added.
"No, I solved it. You just ran a chemical test to verify something." Ayumu shot back. "The point is... we know who is really responsible for this attempted murder."
"So you've come to confess?!?!" Jim said as he stepped up to the desk.
"Not today." Ayumu smiled. "Jeremy, if you'd care to begin..."
"We know that Aelita wasn't pushed... she fell." Jeremy picked up.
"You've got some strange theories..." The policeman responded.
"Because what happened was unique..." Ayumu answered. "And behind every unique occurance is something so normal that most people don't see it." Ayumu drew a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket. "This is the trick the criminal used. The invisible hands that were used to push Aelita off that landing." He placed the glasses on his face.
"What are you talking about?" The principal questioned him.
"It all began with the note." Ayumu ignored him.
"The criminal forged the note from me and had it reach Aelita." Jeremy broke in. "That got her to the scene of the crime. But when she got there, she was expecting to meet me, but there was no one there."
"But then she saw someone waving up to her three stories below. She couldn't tell who it was." Ayumu picked up. "She's near-sighted, so to see who it was off in the distance, she pulled out her glasses and put them on. That's the trick."
"What?" Jim asked. "You're not making any sense."
"Imagine what would happen if you switched out a near-sighted girl's glasses with a far-sighted prescription... it can be incredibly disorienting." Ayumu explained.
"Aelita lost her balance because of it, so she grabbed the nearest thing by instinct, which was the railing." Jeremy continued.
"But the would-be-killer moddified the railing beforehand... making it no sturdier than a leaf in the breeze." Ayumu finished.
"But that still doesn't explain who did it! It could have been anyone at that point!" The policeman exclaimed. "And what proof do you have?"
"Jeremy's analysis shows that glass shards found at the secene match the far-sighted prescription." Ayumu explained.
"And I found Aelita's real glasses intact in her hoody pocket, even though her glasses shattered when she fell.
"But that was the criminal's one mistake. After she fell, he tried to switch the doctored glasses with her usual pair." Ayumu pulled the glasses off and put them back in his pocket. "There was only one person who was close enough to her after she fell to make the switch." Ayumu glanced at Jim, who was standing in the corner, hands in his pockets. "And I noticed when you dragged Jeremy in earlier..." Ayumu grabbed Jim by the wrist and wrenched his hand out of his pocket, holding it up for all to see. All his fingers but the thumb and pinky had fresh bandages. "You cut your fingers on the shattered glass!" Jim girtted his teeth as he ripped his arm away from Ayumu as the principal and the police officer bolted upright.
"As a plus, he was in a perfect position to plant the note during his nighttime patrols." Ayumu said as he placed his own hands in his pockets and walked towards the door. Jeremy was still stunned. Although Ayumu had explained everything to him over the phone while he had run the analysis, it still blew his mind. But there was still one, critical piece missing from the puzzle. But before Jeremy could ask it, the principal beat him to the punch.
"But Jim... why?!?!" The principle exclaimed in disbelief as the policeman approached Jim with handcuffs. Jim closed his eyes for an instant, still gitting his teeth. When his eyes opened, Jeremy scarcely had time to glimpse the Xana-marks in his eyes before Jim thrust himself through the large window, which shattered with ease. Jim bolted across the grounds as the policeman pulled his gun and fired at him, but every shot missed. The principal, officer, and Ayumu stared with awe. Jeremy was not nearly as surprised... he had seen this before... but it was still an unexpected turn of events. The officer was the first to shake himself from the shock, pulling out a walkie-talkie.
"Calling all cars, this is an all-points bulletin. Subject is Jim Morales, wanted for assault and attempted murder." The officer spoke into the device as he hurried out of the room. "Physical description... an overweight, middle-aged man in a red t-shirt and blue shorts with brown hair. Subject is dangerous and may be armed. Approach with caution." The officer's voice faded away as he went down the hall. The principal fell backwards into his chair, breathless. Ayumu turned towards Jeremy.
"What the hell was that?" Ayumu tried to ask him, but Jeremy had slipped out of the room before the officer had.
Jeremy sat in his room, worriedly keying on his computer. It was simple... Xana had found a hole in the super-scan. There had been an activated tower since last night, and it's appearence on the super-scan had been delayed. That meant that Xana had controlled Jim throughout the entire thing, and that the real Jim had no part in this but as a puppet. Jeremy patched the hole, but it was no good. Aelita wouldn't be able to go to Lyoko to deactiavte the tower until she was let out of the hospital in two days. And by that time, the window in which they could launch a return to the past would have expired. Xana had beaten them.
Jim stood, hunched over in a phone booth several miles away in the next town over, having evaded the police with his Xanafied powers. A strong, steady rain had begun. Jim dialed a number, and the phone rang thrice before it was picked up.
"Hello?" A male voice spoke in a slight British accent.
"I am looking for... the blade children." Jim spoke, his voice twisted by possession.
"Are you a hunter?" The voice responded
"No... my name is Xana. I require your... assistance. Your organization specializes in making people... dissapear."
"And why should we help you?"
"I know you are in sore need of funding... but that's not all. I also have information."
"Regarding what?"
"Kiyotaka's brother... and more importantly... Franz Hopper." Jim said with a grin. The voice on the other end of the line gasped slightly, but then quickly regained his composure.
"Very well." The voice responded. "What are the details?"
"There are three targets... two boys and a girl... at Catic Academy..."
"It will be easy... three of our number are already present at that school."
"You need not worry about police involvement... I will assist you in that respect. I have... resources."
"I do not understand why you require OUR assistance..." The voice muttered. "If you are indeed the Xana of which Hopper spoke of... something so simple should be easy for you."
"I will contact you again when it is time to carry out the job. I shall explain at length then. When the job is done... you will get your information."
"Very well. We... the blade children... will carry out your will." The connection died, as the other side of the line hung up the phone. Jim grinned as he hung up the phone, then walked out of the phone booth into the torrential rains... dissapearing into the mist and spray.
