Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A new alert.

It was the middle of the night and Jeremie received a new alert. XANA never slept.

He sighed. He'd have preferred a good and full night of sleep, but it seems that the evil artificial intelligence had other plans.

He got his glasses up on his nose, got up off his bed, put his shoes on and went to Ulrich and Odd's door. The boys were both sleeping, of course. Jeremie woke them up.

Ulrich called Yumi, his Japanese goth girl friend -not girlfriend, the space is important there- who wasn't in the boarding school, while Odd called Aelita. Jeremie was too busy running.

They meet up on their way to the old Fabric which was hiding a fantastic supercomputer and some stuff that helps the group (minus Jeremie) to go to a virtual world called "Lyoko".

In fact, Jeremie was generally the one behind the computer, the one who sent them to Lyoko.

"Which sector?" Ulrich asked as enters the scanners' room, that big pillar-like technological thing which will send him and his friends to Lyoko.

There were only three scanners in the room, and as one -Ulrich- said: "Ladies first."

So while Yumi and Aelita took places in the scanners in order to go on Lyoko, Jeremie explained: "The forest. Be careful, there seems to be no tower activated yet, but there's still an alert. Something is happening, but I don't know what it is."

"That's so reassuring..." Yumi mumbled sarcastically, while the scanner she was in closed its doors.

A few manipulations later, the girls were on Lyoko. The scanners opened up again, empty, and the boys got into them. Odd was yawning. He shouldn't have stay awake late. Ulrich seemed curious. What had woken them up this time?

The doors closed.

Jeremie's voice was describing what he was doing: "Scanning... Transfer... Virtualization!"

The boys appeared in Lyoko's sky. Around them, there was a green path floating in the air, on top of a mortal numerical sea, the Digital Sea.

The path was surrounded by big trunks with no leaves. The first time he was sent on Lyoko, Odd thought he was in a video game, and it described Lyoko's design well.

Jeremie materialized their vehicles, a flying purple overboard for Odd, the Overbike (Ulrich's one-wheel motorcycle) and Yumi's flying Overwings.

Aelita went with Yumi and they went where Jeremie's alert came from. He didn't materialize near it, in case XANA noticed it.

There was, in fact, a tower, but it wasn't activated. However, there was someone in front of it.

Someone with a pale skin, elf pointed ears, hazel eyes, and very short (almost military short) cold blue hair.

Someone with a red oni mask which was covering his mouth on.

Someone that was wearing a sort of Japanese outfit, a yukata on top and a hakama on bottom, all navy blue-black with some white touch.

Someone that was pointing a red bow at them.

When they saw him, the Lyoko-warriors stopped, confused. Yumi was the most confused of them all, as she was Japanese and understood the codes and symbolism behind the pieces of outfit of the guy in front of them.

They didn't know him, nor did he, as he yelled: "Who are you? Friends or enemies of Lyoko?"

"Who are you?" answered Odd without answering the boy's question.

"I'm Lyoko's Guardian. I was named Pluto. You can call me Hades. Are you friends or enemies of Lyoko?!" he repeated.

"Pluto?" Yumi questioned. "Like Sailor Pluto?"

"I think it's more like Pluto, the Latin god of the Underworld, and Hades, his Greek counterpart," Odd replied.

"Lyoko's Guardian? Who's that?" Ulrich asked, probably to Jeremie, because he answered: "I don't know. Maybe it's a trap from XANA..."

"Stop the gibberish! Are you with XANA or against it?"

"We're against XANA." Yumi stated.

"In that case, we're on the same side," Hades declared, while still pointing his bow armed on them. "Can you prove it?"

"Prove what?" Yumi asked. "That we're against XANA?"

The Guardian nodded.

"We can ask you the same question," Ulrich replied, arming his katana.

"Can't we discuss?" asked Aelita by revealing herself. She was until then hidden behind Yumi.

As soon as he saw the pink-haired-girl, the Guardian acted differently. He lowered his bow, making his arrow fall, before putting a knee on the floor, in a submissive posture.

"Mademoiselle!" he exclaimed. "Please excuse my behavior. I'm sorry for it. I didn't see you. Are those people with you? If they're threatening you, I can take care of that."

"Mademoiselle?" she repeated, confused, and her confusion seemed to confuse the Guardian.

"What did I miss? How long was I inactive?" he asked, seeming almost confused, as he tried to understand something.

"What do you mean by 'inactive'?" Jeremie intervenes. The Guardian ignored him, as if he wasn't hearing him. To be fair, he seemed to only see and care for Aelita now.

"Don't you remember?" he asked Aelita, and his emotionless face seemed almost sad.

She didn't understand. She shook her head. He seemed almost sadder, despite his face didn't seem to be able to visibly express a lot of feelings.

"My first memories go back to when Jeremie turned on the supercomputer," she simply answered.

"Oh. So you forget everything."

It was more a statement than a question, but Aelita still responded: "I don't understand. Have you known me before?"

"I did," Hades confirmed. "But I wasn't programmed for that. Franz coded me to protect you, Mademoiselle, then Lyoko and him. Since he disappeared, my only mission now is to protect you and Lyoko, Mademoiselle."

"Please, call me Aelita."

"I wasn't coded to do that. Would it make you more comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll call you that way, Aelita."

"Thanks."

" No problem."

"When you said 'Franz', you meant Franz Hopper?" Jeremie asked, interested. "You know that Franz Hopper disappeared?"

The Guardian ignored him again.

"You know Franz Hopper disappeared?" Ulrich repeated.

"Yes," Hades finally answered, without looking away from Aelita. "I wasn't there when it happened because I was locked away, but I know it happened."

"How can we trust you?" Yumi asked, suspicious.

"And how can I?" he replied. "I only trust Aelita here, because I was programmed to."

"So you're not a human." Odd noted, not knowing if it was cool or not.

"No, I'm not. Never pretended to be. I'm just an alive bunch of codes, programmed by Franz to protect Aelita and Lyoko," Hades said. "I suppose I'll have to trust you, for you are with Aelita and she seems to trust you. What are your names?"

The warriors looked at each other, confused. Finally, they decided to at least tell him their names. They introduced themselves. The blond cat guy with the blond crest and a violet hair strand was Odd, the brown-hair guy was Ulrich, the Japanese (emo) girl was Yumi and he already knew Aelita.

Hades nodded, before saying: "Great to meet you. As I already stated before, I'm Lyoko's Guardian, and I was called Pluto, but I preferred to be called Hades. You can call me Alexander if you find it a more normal name and that it makes you more comfortable."

That's what he said. What he didn't say is that he didn't like the name Alexander, like, at all. In fact, he hated that name.

"Ok," answered Aelita. "Nice to meet you, Alex."

"Oh, a nickname? It's not a name. That's great. I guess?"

Ulrich smiled and nodded.

"Nah, Pluto is such a cool name! It's a planet, a god and an animated dog name, I'll definitely call you that way." add Odd. "That, or Toto."

"Please don't. My name is Hades, or Pluto, not Toto. I'm not a dog."

"Fine, I'll call you Hades then. Or a mix between Hades and Alex, like Hadex, or Hales, or Hadlexs, or..."

Suddenly the Guardian turned his head, as he heard something.

"XANA sends its beasts."

"What?"

"I was going to tell it to you", said Jeremie. "How did you know?"

Hades ignored him once again, caught back his bow and got in position.

"How can he hear XANA beasts who are far away but not me?" Jeremie exclaimed, clearly vexed.

"Maybe only we can hear you because we come from Earth?" Odd supposed.

"But then how was I able to hear Jeremie the first time?" Aelita asked.

"Who are you talking to?" Hades asked, arming his bow.

"Einstein," replied Odd.

"Isn't he old or dead?" Hades asked, preparing to shot his target. A little closer...

"His real name is Jeremie, but we call him Einstein because he's really smart. Can't you hear him?"

"No," replied Hades, waiting for his target to come a little bit closer to shoot. "Wasn't programmed to."

"He asked how did you notice XANA beasts," Aelita told him.

"Easy. I can hear them with my ears and feel 'em with my skin and my senses," Hades explain, turning his head to look at Aelita. "Can't you?"

"I cannot feel it anymore since the last update."

"The what?" he frowned.

"The update. Jeremie updated Lyoko."

"Oh. That actually explains a lot."

"What do you mean?"

"Well", Hades sights while concentrating again on his targets, "every time I lose all my life points, I won't die or end up on Earth like I suppose they do, but I end up on Lyoko's heart, with my last save. I was programmed that way."

Two cubes appeared in the distance. A little bit closer...

"Last time I went into Lyoko's heart, I was stuck there because of XANA, until I was not," Hades continued to explain while shooting a cube in the eye, resulting in the cube exploding. "Maybe Jeremie's last update helped me to unstuck myself." He shot the other in the eye, who also exploded. "At least, that's my hypothesis. For now."

"Woah!" Odd smiled, impressed.

"That was impressive!" Ulrich exclaimed.

Hades looked puzzled. He didn't seem to be used to being acclaimed. Either it's been a long time since he was last acclaimed, or he never was.

"Thanks," he finally said.

Yumi found him suspicious. After all, it still could be a trap.

"Why was XANA after you?" she asked.

"Because it wanted to erase me, to take what I have and it doesn't. In other words: my Lyoko key and my body, probably to have an avatar in order to do whatever it wants to do. I was coded to attack it, not to understand it."

"Fair enough", Odd judged.

"Jeremie asks what you mean by your 'Lyoko key'," Ulrich told Hades.

"I thought the name was speaking for itself. It's the key. Of Lyoko. Like... How do you want me to be clearer than that? I wasn't informed of their use, since nobody found it relevant for me to know that. The only thing I know is that I have to protect them. I had one. Aelita has or had one. Franz may have or had one. XANA already stole mine, and maybe Franz's one. Probably. Once he'll have the three keys, he'll be able to... I don't know. I never thought about it. But he won't be good. And my mission is to prevent that it'll ever happen."

Chapter Text

The Lyoko Warriors had to go back on Earth to go to school, but they promised they'll come back after school.

Hades went into a tower to wait for them. He meditated and saved himself and his new memories. He also researched on Lyoko codes what changed, and what happened since the last time he was awake.

"So, what do you think?" Yumi asked, at the refectory table. "Do you think we can trust him?"

"Well, could be a trap," Jeremie answered. "But that doesn't click right. Also, Lyoko's keys... I don't know. I never heard of them before. I have to run some tests."

"I think we need to give him a chance", Ulrich argued. "I mean, every one of us had a chance, so why not him?"

Jeremie thought about it.

"Because he's not one of us?" Yumi replied, using logic -something that the others seemed to lack of sometime.

"I agree with Ulrich" Odd stated. "Maybe it would be a good idea to have an ally. Especially one who's already in Lyoko. Could be good for fighting XANA, couldn't it?"

"Yeah, but what if it's a XANA trap?" Yumi insisted. "XANA is intelligent, it's capable of it, right?"

"Yeah, but then, where's the activated tower?"Aelita asked. "It couldn't do anything without activating a tower. And... I don't know, I'm with Odd on this one. And he seems to know things about my past..."

"Hm, that's right." Jeremie said. "Well, I'll do a scan, to find if there is an activated tower and until then, we could play along with his game. If he's a XANA agent, we'll find out."

They all agree. That was the plan. The plan was easy. What could go wrong?

At the end of the day, Jeremie hadn't found anything. There was no activated tower in sight. They went to the fabric to find Hades, in a meditating position, still in the forest sector. His red oni mask had disappeared, letting his mouth appear.

"Greatings," he declared, standing up to salute them. Well, to salute only Aelita actually.

"Welcome back Aelita."

"What were you doing?" Ulrich asked.

"I was meditating to order my thoughts. You should try it, it's great. Is there an attack that I missed?" he suddenly interrogated, seeming almost worried.

"No, why would it be?" Yumi replied, curious but still suspicious.

"If not, then why are you here?"

"We came to see you."

"Oh."

He seemed surprised by their behavior, as if he didn't know, or almost forgot that it was possible for people to respect their words. To come back when they said they would.

"And why did you want to see me?"

"We decided to believe in your story. For now."

"Oh. Okay. Great. What do you want me to do with that information? Because, believe it or not, my story is true."

"Yeah, it seems."

Chapter Text

"Hey Hades! Can you swim in the Digital Sea?" Odd asked once, while Hades and the Lyoko Warriors were running on the Ice Sector to deactivate a tower.

Well, technically, only Hades was running, as the Lyoko-Warrior had their vehicles. Ulrich has his Overbike, Odd his Overboard, and Yumi her Overwing, with Aelita too on it. Odd and Ulrich had asked Hades if he wanted to go on their vehicle, but the Guardian told them it wasn't necessary. He still didn't trusted the vehicles. Yumi, Aelita and Ulrich were ahead, while Odd and Hades were a little behind.

Hades was running fast, but when there was too much distance between him and them, he just took an arrow out of his quiver, transformed it into a lance, charged it with energy and threw it to teleport himself where the lance will fall. The bad point was that he was very exposed when doing this, and that it made him lose a munition, and since he only got ten munitions, he couldn't use it too much.
He thought about Odd's question.

"I can swim in the ice sector's soft water," the blue-haired-boy finally answered.

"Someone told me that once and I had the occasion to verify that I can. But I don't know if I can swim in the Digital Sea, and to be honest, I'm not sure I want to find out. And if you want to know more about my capacities, I can't really fly, so if I fall towards the Digital Sea, I'll have to suppress myself to not enter it."

"What do you mean by 'I can't really fly'?"

"Allow me to demonstrate," Hades declared. "May I?"

"Please do."

The blue-haired-boy jumped on the cat-boy's overboard, and then climbed on an ice cube, before jumping into the wild, with his arm in T-pose which let his sleeves wide open in some sort of fins that allowed him to hovering and gliding to the ground, towards the activate tower.

"That's what I mean," Hades concluded, while hovering. "But that ain't flying, that's falling with style!"

"Isn't that a Toy Story reference?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Arrête ton char, Ben-Hur!* How do you know this movie?"

"For your information, you can connect yourself to Earth's electricity network and the wild Internet in the towers. The rest is between me and my Internet history."

Odd seemed shocked. It was logical if he thought about it for some time. Jeremie and Aelita already mentioned some times that it was possible to connect the Lyoko towers to the Earth electricity network, but Odd never really connected the dots.

The guy with a crest finally gave the blue-haired-boy some movies and shows to watch.

Chapter Text

Hades can felt it. XANA had activated a tower.

He was meditating in a tower, in the Forest Sector -his favorite- when he felt it. According to the pulses, it was in the desert sector.

Aelita was certainly in class right now. He wondered for a second what it was like, to go to school, on Earth. Sounded great.

She told her so much about the human realm, Earth, that he once asked her to take him there. She looked sad, so sad. He felt bad for making her sad. He promised himself to never again be the origin of that expression on her face.

He stood up. A holographic screen appears in the air, at the level of his hand. He puts it on it.

The screen reads "WELCOME HADES". The boy smiled when he saw his name, and sent a message to Jeremie's laptop.

He'd have preferred to have written to Aelita, but she wasn't always with her laptop, contrary to Jeremie. His laptop probably already noticed him about the activate tower, but just in case, Hades sent the coded message they agreed on: "AT here." Simple. Basic. Maximum efficacy. Everything was said: Activated Tower Here. What else was it to say? Nothing.

Once the message was sent, he didn't wait for a response. He armed his bow and got out of the tower.

Sadfully, not every tower was linked to the other territories. Only some of them were, and Hades call them the passage towers, or the portal towers.

The others only took to another part of the sector in which the tower was. Hades knew them well enough to know how to fast travel on Lyoko.

He opened his bow, ready to shoot if XANA ever sent some of its beasts, and followed the pulses in the forest. No time to think. Time to be ready to fight.

The pulses took him to the desert's passage tower. He entered it, and opened the interface. Jeremie saw his message and answered a simple "Ok".

Hades replied by a simple "Desert, on my way" before saving his memory.

He then jumped to the other end of the passage tower. He jumped and fell at first, and then, he felt no more, or he was falling up. The feeling was weird to explain with words, especially to someone who has never experienced it. He wasn't really flying though. He really was falling with style. He arrived in the other tower, in the desert.

He came out of the tower and followed the pulses in the desert. Hades didn't particularly like this sector.

His favorite sectors were, in order: the forest, the ice, the mountain and the desert.

It wasn't because it was hot that he didn't like it, since it never was hot or cold in Lyoko, but more because Hades had not good memories here like he has with other sectors, and there weren't much space to hide.

He saw the tower far away. It was guarded of course. No time to wait. He began to fight the monsters, two mega-tanks, with his bow and arrows. He was fast, but not enough. He wasn't trained to fight those kinds of beasts. These only appear recently.

He almost got hit multiple times. He succeeded in destroying one, but the second almost hit him.

He was trying to contain / restrain / stop the laser vertical wave with his bow when Jeremie's voice asked: "Hades? Everything okay? Oh yeah, right, he can't hear me. Anyway. Scanning! Transfer! Virtualization!"

While Jeremie was materializing Ulrich and Aelita -Odd was at the theater with some girl and Yumi had a history test she couldn't miss-, Hades suddenly got out of the vertical laser wave.

He armed his bow and prepared to shoot, but the mega-tank closed itself in a ball that began to roll towards the boy, who had no choice but to jump in the air to escape it.

The mega-thank suddenly opened and shot his vertical laser wave. He stopped it from hitting him with his bow, before he leant on it, to jump out of the laser wave's way. His bow felt on the ground as him, but not at the same place.

As Ulrich and Aelita were falling to the ground, the blue-haired-boy got out one arrow of his quiver. The arrow grew in his hand like a spear and threw it toward the mega-thank, who closed itself. The arrow-spear ended up on the ground.

"Scheiss," Hades mumble, in the most German way and accent.

"What?" Ulrich reacted.

He did understood, as he had taken German at school, as Jeremie and Aelita did, while Odd and Yumi had took Italian. But how did Hades, who came from a French virtual world, knew how to swear the word "shit" in German with a perfect German accent?

"Franz didn't only teach me to fight with a bow," Hades explained, standing up, facing the mega-tank (never turn your back to beast of XANA, Hades had learn that lesson the hard way).

"Also taught me to swear." he explained, in case they didn't understand.

"He swore in German?" Jeremie asked, surprised.

"Yes he did!" Hades confirmed, after Aelita had repeat what Jeremie just said, with a tone that suggested that Franz did, in fact, swear a lot.

Ulrich was already running toward XANA's beast, while Hades was evaluating how Aelita could pass the mega-thank and go to the tower safely.

The boy with a sword was occupying the monster with a triplicata, his special technique that allowed him to have two clones of him, and so to be three persons for a short amount of time.

"Three in one, you're the Christian God or what?" Odd had even once joked about that.

While the mega-thank was occupied, Hades took Aelita's hand and began to run towards the tower. He took back his bow and suddenly turned around and stopped.

He let Aelita continue alone, in front of her, while he was turning around, expecting Hornets, those hideous flying beasts, to come. It didn't miss: three of them suddenly appeared at the horizon. Hades shot two of them, but had then no arrows left.

Jeremie informed him that he wasn't able to give him arrows back, as he didn't study his codes. Hades still couldn’t hear him. He tried to catch his arrow-spear back, and killed the last flying beast. He only turns around to see Ulrich dematerilizing and the mega-thank preparing to shoot toward the tower and Aelita.

He didn't even think. He began to run towards Aelita. The mega-thank shoot. Hades jumped and faced the vertical laser wave, and tried to stop it in order to let Aelita enter the tower. She didn't stop.

He turned his head to see where she was. She was almost in the tower. His moment of inattention caused him to be hit by the laser wave. He lost his remaining life points, and disappeared, yelling to Aelita to hurry up to deactivate the tower, before he stopped existing.

Chapter Text

In the beginning, all was dark. There was darkness everywhere. And then comes the light, and with it life.

His eyes were closed, but he knew who and where he was and was able to perceive his environment as if he got them open.

He felt the world existing all around him. He was in a fetal position inside the heart of Lyoko, his own heart beating at the same rhythm, as if they were one.

He was feeling Lyoko in his veins and in his cells. He was feeling good here.

He was regenerating, while his last save was charged. Like every time, he revived his whole life. And as always, the beginning was great, and then, it became to be a nightmare. He hated that part. That's why he tried his best to avoid to be killed.

Suddenly, as his regeneration was ending, he had a revelation: there was an activated tower in the desert!

No.

Not anymore.

He couldn't feel it anymore.

The tower was no longer activated.

Great. He hoped all ended well. He wondered what killed him that time. He'll search for that later.

He finally went out of his "cocoon", with his quiver full, and as every time, he felt almost cold, as if Lyoko's heart was warm. But it was only an impression. It was impossible: he couldn't feel heat or coldness on Lyoko. They didn't exist there.

He went out of the Heart Room, as he called it. Except for him, nothing could materialize inside that room.

He arrived in the tube that went outside Sector Five. There, there was a sort of global circle around it, the Celestial Dome. Falling toward it ensured to be irremediably deleted without any comeback chances for anyone, even him who was one with Lyoko and Lyoko was one with him. Furthermore, he doesn't want to try to prove that he may survive that.

It was impossible to get in or out of Sector Five without a flying device. His costume wasn't designed to fly but he was able to hovering and gliding.

However, every time XANA stops someone in there, it sends a flying Manta, in order to eliminate whoever would be there. But they never killed Hades. He couldn't kill or hurt them either.

Contrary to XANA's other beasts, Manta weren't created by it. There were already here before, living peacefully in the Virtual Sea, created with the virtual world in order to help the potential Lyoko travelers to move easier and faster. XANA had other plants for them.

What XANA didn't seem to catch is that even possessed by him, Manta couldn't kill Hades, as his costume made him look like a little Manta: they were wearing the same colors.

Hades made a sound that looked like the one they create when they communicate. A manta came to him and he communicated the manta that he wanted to go to the desert sector, without going on the Virtual Sea.

One answered that they would help him, as he was "Manta's friend". That was the name the Manta gave him.

He got on the back of one Manta, and the other one was confused, but not enough to shot him.

When he arrived in the desert sector, everyone was back on Earth.

He was alone.

He thanked the Mantas who went back to the Virtual Sea. They sang a good bye while jumping into the Digital Sea.

When Hades was younger, he loved to listen to them sing. But since XANA possessed them, they almost never sing. It made him very sad.

He got in a tower, sent a message to Aelita's computer to ask what happened after he got suppressed, and at the same time acted that he was, indeed, alive, before saving himself.

Chapter Text

Hades was running in the mountain sector after some pulses that indicated that there was an activate tower. He had contacted Jeremie and saved himself already. He had no idea of what the attack on Earth was like, as always.

He saw the activate tower, guarded by some Hornets. No sign of the other. He still wasn't able to hear Jeremie. He had to do something. He entered another tower, which wasn't activated.

Jeremie had sent him a message on the online chat they were talking, reading:

Jeremie wrote.

A few seconds after, another message arrived, reading:

replied Hades.

Hades then activated the tower he was in, and became one with the electrical system of the quarter of Kadic school. And as the brain was full of electricity, Hades was able to possessed a police officer. The feeling of possessing someone was very weird, especially because the police officer was fighting to keep his own body in control. Hades finally got the high ground. He was in a human body but he had a better vision and a better hearing. If it wasn't a critical situation, he'd have dance of happiness (he had a human body! not his, but still).

He saw from afar that XANA's possessed guy was in some other building.

He went into the gymnasium (took him some time to found it), found the guys locker room where Aelita and the rest were and knocked on the door. He hit the door two times, each time letting it echoing. Then a hit that didn't. And three hits that echoed. It was the Morse code for "go". He knew that Jeremie knew it, and he hoped it was a signal good enough.

He then locked all the door of the gymnasium to help them stand a few minutes longer and when to fight XANA on the ground, to let Aelita arrived. While the police officer was running in silence to find back his colleagues, Hades took a step back. He was back in the tower. He looked at the chat. Aelita, and Ulrich managed to escape but not Jeremie, who stayed due to his panic attack and the fact that all of them couldn't disappear right now. Odd stayed with him. Someone had to stay and they decided that it'll be them.

Jeremie added that Yumi was in the Fabric, she'll be soon in Lyoko. Hades agreed and explained what he did, and then went back again fully in his possessing. XANA would probably be able to do both, but since Hades wasn't XANA and had no previous experience in possessing anyone or anything, he wasn't really able to do it in the same time.

The police squad was preparing to enter the building. Their mission? Locate the armed guy, stop him, and mainly: secure the pupils and their teachers. And it was it, the squad entered.

Hades felt three materializations. He deactivate the tower, and went to fight with them. They didn't needed him on Earth, for now. Plus, he had no idea how a police intervention squad worked and he didn't wanted it to turn into some Star Wars Sith / Jedi fight between his possessed guy and XANA's.

As soon as they saw him, Ulrich asked if the knocks of the door was his idea.

"Yes," confirmed Hades. "I possessed some guy. The armed guy was in the science department when I left. Shall we go now?"

They were flabbergasted -and Hades had scared the shit out of them by knocking on the door.

They went in the fight. They finally managed to deactivate the tower. The guy with the gun was arrested, and everyone was fine physically. Not mentally thought.
There was no return to the past. Every return to the past made XANA stronger, and the intruder was already in the school when XANA possessed him, meaning that even with a return to the past, that guy would still came again.

The next day, there was some articles in the newspaper. Some pretended that the guy was a crazy man, escaped from an asylum, others declared that he was a lonely old man and that it was just a big misconception as he was obviously innocent due to his big help to the physic world with his works -if he were a woman, they would have called him a "hysteric crazy witch"-, others advanced that he was a physic teacher there long time ago, and others didn't even say anything.

Hades made his own research and found out that the guy really was a biologic teacher, at the same time as Franz Hopper, that his name was Dr Emile Genou, and that he was fired for unknown reasons. Hades suspected that it was due to his dangerous behavior and his irresponsible actions towards the students -which had been reported-, aka he made 12-years-old manipulate acids that could make their skin melt, and once tell to a student who didn't understood how gravity works to jump by the window to found out. They were at the fourth floor, and the student didn't jumped.

Chapter Text

Hades wasn't ready.

It was Friday afternoon, Earth time, and he wasn't ready. How could have he been?

He closed his eyes when he felt like something weird was happening. He was in a tower in the mountain territory. He felt like he was sucked down into the fabrication of Lyoko itself. It was a pretty disturbing feeling.

They were talking about letting him come on Earth for a while now, and even if he was pretty excited about it, he was a little afraid of it. He wasn't sure to materialize with clothes, and when he mentioned that fact, Ulrich proposed to let him borrow some clothes of his, just in case. He had put them in the scanner in which Hades would arrive if everything was fine.

"Welcome to Earth!" Aelita cheered, making Hades open his eyes. He couldn't really believe he was here, on Earth, him, the bunch of codes. Aelita, Ulrich and Odd were standing in front of him. Yumi couldn't come as she had an English exam she couldn't miss.

"You look... different," Hades commented before looking at himself.

"You too," Ulrich finally said. "Since uh since when do you have boobs?" he asked at the same time Odd was stating: "Hadex. Your blue hair became bright red. Or crimson. More crimson to be honest."

"What?" exclaimed Hades, beginning to panic -for the chest part, not the hair. He looked down on his chest. Under Ulrich's khaki shirt, he had boobs. Small, but there were there.

"Are you a girl?" Ulrich asked, confused.

"No!" Hades replied, fast, maybe too fast. "I'm a boy!" He seemed to be about to cry. "I'm a boy", he repeated, as if he was trying to convince them as well as to convince himself. Well, it wasn't always that way, and he was first creating a girl, but they didn't need to know that, right? What has gone wrong? Why had he a girl's body? He was a boy! He re-coded himself in order to appear that way, so why was he not in a boy's body?

"I believe you Hades," said Odd, smiling, trying to be reassuring. "I know what you feel like. I'll show you some stuff". Odd gave him the 'I know how you feel coz I feel the same/ a similar way' look. Hades smiled back a little. "Thanks."

"So. What's the cover story?" he asked while they took the escalator to join Jeremie.

"Well, Hades, to make it short," explains Odd, "you're 13, you're Aelita's twin brother -so you'll be in our class- and my Canadian cousin, since she's my 'Canadian cousin'. Welcome to the family!"

Hades didn't even look shocked. It wasn't the weirdest thing he went through. He just moved up his shoulder, the French way to say either 'I don't know' or 'I don't care'. Odd was looking proud, he taught him well.

"Works for me." the bright-red-hair-teenage-boy add, still shocked by his body.

"Welcome on Earth Alex," welcomed Jeremie as the door of the escalator opened.

"I still like being called Hades," he mumbled to himself, before noticing that it was the first time he heard Jeremie's voice.

The seat on which Jeremie was sitting turned and Hades finally saw the body of the voice he heard for some time now. It was a thin blond boy with glasses, dressed with a blue shirt and brown pants.

Odd put a hand on Hades’ shoulder, and gave him the "do you want me to tell him?" look. Hades slightly shook his head. No, he was fine.

"I think you must know this..." began Hades, looking at the floor.

"What?" asked Jeremie, panicking, thinking he had made a mistake.

He had to/ must said to them but... He wanted to kept it secret for a little longer. He took a deep breath and said, still not looking at them: "I was coded a girl at first, and, as you know, called Pluto. But I didn't feel like a girl -I still like that name. Like, I knew inside I was a boy. I don't know if it makes sense for you? But I'm a boy. I'm not a girl."

The silence was really loud, almost deafening. Hades looked at them. They seemed intrigued, maybe disturbed and shocked but there was no judgment, only questions in their eyes. He wasn't sure he'd be able to answer them all.

"... So?" try Hades. "Is it okay for you or do I go back to Lyoko?"

"No, no, you can stay," said Jeremie. "I mean, we're a bunch of weirdos, and we already have Odd, the odd guy, so everything's fine, I guess? We'll do our best for you to feel welcome."

"Thanks," thanked Hades, feeling relieved.

"By the way," said Jeremie, "I'm finishing your official document, on which I wrote that you're a boy. Just for me to know, do you have any other name?"

"I don't think so. Will my name be Hades Pluto... Alexander?" He hesitated before saying the last name.

"Since you'll be Aelita's brother and her full human name is Aelita Stones, your name will be something like Alexander Pluto Hades Stones."

The now bright-red-haired-boy made a weird face when he heard the name, but he made no comment on it. He simply nodded.

Chapter Text

Hades got a room for himself only at Kadic's boarding school, next to the staircase. It was a small room, on top of Aelita's. It contained a bed, a table and a chair to do homework, an armoire, a shelf and a window. It wasn't much but it was something. It was more than nothing. It was his own room. It was the first time that he had his own room.

Odd knocked at the door before the evening meal. He asked him if he wanted to go out for a walk to talk. Hades accepted. They used the passage in the park to get out of the school and arrived in the streets. It was past 6pm, and the name call had already been done. They told me that they were here before leaving for a walk. It was twilight.

While walking, Odd told Hades about being queer, and especially being a trans person (long story short, being born in a body but don't find you were born in the right body, for example, a boy being born in a girl's body). It was exactly how Hades felt. He felt happy to be able to understand what he felt about his own body and his own identity. He felt happy to be able to put words on how he was feeling.

Odd then explained that they were going to the LGBTea, a coffee that was ruled by the LGBT+ association of the quarter, to find Hades a chest binder on his own --so it'll be at his own size. A chest binder would help him have a flat chest, which was his goal.

The person behind the bar, Sacha, welcomes them in. They helped Hades to find a binder -for free, blessed are them-, and gave him some safety rules and advices: no more binding than 8 hours a day, no binding while doing sport or showering, not binding with bandages, how to wash the binder, that sort of things. And they added that he could come in asking for advice, or ask Odd. Hades thanked them and looked very happy.

On the return way, they went to a supermarket to buy Hades some clothes and pajamas.

Lying down in his bed, in his crimson pajamas (a short and a t-shirt), Hades was looking at the ceiling. If he looked down, he could see his feet, his table and chair, his room and his door. But he was looking at his empty ceiling. He'd like to have stars on his ceiling. He'll ask the others the next day.

That night, for the first time, he saw the stars. She was right, they were beautiful. There were no stars in Lyoko. There was no night either. Lyoko was stuck in an eternal day, with no real sun. It never rains, nor snows, nor is it cloudy. It never was hot, nor cold. Earth climate felt so diverse for Hades! That's what he thought, fixing the ceiling.

It was strange for him to have to sleep at night. To feel tired. To feel anything at all, in fact. He felt the air around him. He felt the hot air or the cold one. He smelt fragrances, perfumes and odors.
He felt alive.
He felt almost human.

Chapter Text

The next day, he had a hard time waking up. Hades could get used to sleeping after all.

On his way to shower, Ulrich or Odd knocked at his door, helping him to totally wake up. Hades did not take a shower that morning, and dressed up with the clothes his friends gave him: Odd offered him some black underwear (they bought that when they came back from the LGBTea), his binder, pink socks (from Aelita), khaki t-shirt and cargo pants (from Ulrich), black Dr Martens (from Yumi) and a navy blue flannel with short sleeves (from Jeremie) that Hades kept open on the khaki t-shirt.

The boys went to eat breakfast, and met Aelita on their way down, in the stairs. After saluting each other, they went to the canteen.
While eating, Ulrich and Odd talked to Hades about some clothes styles. Suddenly, a dark-haired girl arrived and saluted Ulrich as if they have known each other for a long time. Hades had no idea who she was.

"Hi Ulrich-dear! There's that movie you wanted to see soon in the theater, want to see it with m- Wait, who are you? Are those Ulrich's clothes?"

She was pointing at Hades. The boy turned down to see who she was pointing behind him, but she was apparently pointing at him.

"Me?" Hades asked for verification.

"No, the Queen of England! Of course you!"

Hades looked weird at her for a second, as he was asking himself what and where England was. He had no idea that the place had a Queen. Having an internet access doesn't mean he used it wisely.

"I'm no Queen of England, even if a great power implicate great responsibilities. I'm Aelita's twin brother and Odd's cousin, Hades. Great to meet you I suppose. And yes, some of those are Ulrich's clothes. He let me borrow them and they're great actually. Why do you mind, pretty girl?"

"What?!" the girl exclaims with a weird look on her face, like she was trying to process that information -the part about Hades borrowing Ulrich's clothes, not him calling her "pretty girl".

"Are you... uh... gay?" she asked Ulrich, almost whispering the last word, as if it was something to be ashamed of, even if Hades didn't get where someone should be ashamed to love someone else, maybe he wasn't human enough to understand that.

"I'm just not interested in you, Sissi. That doesn't make me gay." Ulrich sights.

Said Sissi had some look on her face that suggests that it could be a hint, since apparently everybody found her beautiful or something like that.

"Sissi, if you have nothing interesting else to add, please move on, not only are you blocking the way but if you stay here, you'll soon become a canteen pillar!" Odd joked.

She furiously moved without adding a thing. She may have mentioned that her father will hear about that. Hades couldn't care less, until he learned her father was the school director. He then thought he was in trouble, but the other reassured him: no he wasn't. Sissi was just a "spoiled dumb girl", according to Ulrich.

"You're too polite for her," Odd laughed. "I'll teach you how to answer her like I teach Aelita."

"Oh. Thanks I guess, " answered Hades. "You didn't need to be that rude with her, though. She was just asking a question."

"Well, that's Sissi," Odd responded, as if it was a good enough reason.

Hades made a hand gesture that was basically meaning either 'wtf?!' or 'and? develop please'. Odd didn't really know how to explain that.

"She's dump and had been rude with us for a long time," Ulrich explained.

"Ah," Hades replied, not really sure if it was a good excuse or not.

Chapter Text

That Saturday morning, Hades had to introduce himself in front of the class, with the director next to him, so he did.

"Greating, my name is Hades, Alexander Pluto Hades Stones, but you can call me Hades. I'm Aelita's twin brother and Odd's cousin. My favorite word is 'great', because apparently I say it all the time, so maybe I am 'Alexander the Great'."

Some people mumbled among them, but the majority didn't care at all. Another classmate, another name to remember. And a new student was definitely not the weirdest thing that has happened in Kadic.

The art teacher -the best according to Odd-, on the other hand, seemed amused by his last comment.

"Welcome 'The Great' then!" he smiled. "My name is Mr Philippe, but I'm not your father."

The man with pepper and salt hair was referring to the fact that Alexander the Great's father was supposedly the Macedonian King Philip the 2nd, even if some sources thought this was non-sens because his father was Zeus, or a male servant or a lover of Alexander's mother.

"Great reference!" Hades smiled. "Great to meet you."

The class was art class, and Hades liked it. The project students were currently working on was to create a representation of their strongest memory, good or bad, and to then explain why they did what they'd have created.

The others had already begun and the teacher assured Hades he wouldn't be held accountable for the fact he probably won't be able to give a finished project, due to the fact he started the project two weeks after the others. The bright-red-haired-boy sat down and began to think about his strongest memory, and to what could fit that criteria.

Finally, after sitting in a meditating pose for like ten good minutes without moving the slightest, he finally got up and began to search for what he needed to work.

He was finishing making small figurines when the bell rang: a little smiling woman with long pink hair and a green outfit, and a little man, with dark gray hair, big glasses and a white lab coat. Both miss their eyes. The woman was in a welcoming position, opening her arms the way you do for a hug, while the man was crossing his arms, in an angry way.

Hades put his figurines next to Aelita's work. She was using a broken mirror, and glued part of it on some binary green code. Some of the numbers were directly put on the mirror. Hades easily guessed it was a reference to the fact she was on Lyoko for so long. She was now creating small translucent tentacles, in order to put them next to the mirror to referencing the Schizophrenia, one of XANA's worst monsters.

During lunch, Hades, curious, asked everybody what they were making. Odd was making a tree with hanging pictures of all his friends, in the place they met. He then excuses himself for not being able to take a picture of Hadex in Lyoko. He had the same problem with Aelita, so he was thinking about maybe just drawing them.

"No problem," the bright-red-hair-boy smiled. "I'm happy you consider me as your friend. Also, if you want, could you take a picture of me in front of the scanners? Because in a way, that's where you met me."

"Clever!" Odd exclaimed.

"One said I am, yes," Hades smiled with his special smile, a truly happy smile with a bit of sadness in his eyes.

"Anyway, what about you Ulrich?" the not-really-human-boy said, like nothing happened.

Ulrich explained that he was not good at art. He had no idea what his strongest memory was. He didn't know what to do, so he decided to do an improvised a demonstrating performance of martial arts, because he liked that. The teacher told him it was a bold and audacious move and that he was looking forward to seeing it. Art teacher were all high, according to Ulrich.

Jeremie declared he wouldn't say it before the class in order to not spoil the surprise. The only thing he said was that he was modeling his project in 3D on his computer (his laptop wasn't strong enough to do that). According to the way he tried to hide that he blushed, Hades deduced that Jeremie's project may have a link with Aelita. Apparently the blond boy was in love with her. Neither the blond boy or the bright-red-hair-boy had no idea if she reciprocated the feeling or not.

Before being totally free for the afternoon, Hades had to go see the director and his secretary to confirm what language classes he wanted to attend, and so on. He chooses to take German, Greek and Latin classes.

After that was done, Hades joined the Lyoko Gang and they went shopping. Jeremie wanted to buy him some books so he accepted and since he had no idea what to buy. Jeremie -and Ulrich-, as the nerd(s) he was / they were, added three books called "The Lord of The Ring". They even bought him small stars that he puts on the ceiling, on top of his bed, and a cellphone. Hades was so happy to have a phone and people to phone to.
Hades was happy to be on Earth, happy to feel alive.

Chapter Text

The next day was a Sunday.

Hades insisted on doing the homework with Aelita and Jeremie for them to explain to him what he missed. He wanted to know it all, all the classes he missed.

At the end of the day, he discovered that on the contrary, he didn't really like math and science, but was more into history, literature, English and especially art. He loved art.

A few minutes before 6pm, Aelita's watch rang: it was time for her to go back to her dormitory. Boys' one was on the first floor, meaning that in order to go to it, one had to climb up one floor level, the earth ground level being the level zero in French or the "rez-de-chaussé". The girls' one was on the second floor. Boys had no right to go to the girls', but nothing was said for the other way around. At 6pm, boys and girls had to be in front of their door for the evening name call.

Aelita went back to her floor, and Hades and Jeremie went in front of their door. All the boys were already there. Jim, the sport / PE (Physical Education) teacher who was also the guardian for the boys' dormitory, entered the corridor precisely at 6pm, while the 6pm bell was ringing. Jim verified that every boy was here, sometimes doing surprise inspections in some boy's room to verify it was clean, or that there was nothing illegal in there.

The same thing was happening at the girls' dormitory, except the examination was made by some woman called Jennifer -everybody called her Jenny-, who was the surveillance woman and who was all the time at the scholar life office. Apparently, she was a big fan of boxing, and according to some rumor, she was a lesbian. Hades had no idea what that was so Odd told him it was when a woman who loves a woman.

Jim decided that evening to enter Hades' room and saw that there was nothing unexpected to see, except fluorescent stars at the ceiling -which wasn't forbidden by any rules.

When the calling was finished, they all went back to their room. Many did some homework, others went in the shower. Hades began to read that book, The Lord of the Ring.

At 7pm, the bell rang again, and it was dinner time. Hades didn't see the time fly. He was into his book, and it was so great!!

They ate potatoes and beef that evening and talked about life in Kadic. Apparently, and according to Ulrich, there were archery classes Wednesday afternoon, which Hades was very excited about.

When he was sure that there would be nobody in the boys showers, Hades went to take one. He was wearing a peignoir in order to hide his body.

As he entered the boy shower room, he ended up in front of a mirror. Odd was right: he had bright red hair.

The water was cold, but Hades didn't care. He was so happy to be able to feel that the water was cold so he didn't care about what it was. He tried to wash his hair for the first time. Aelita, knowing how hard it was to have to deal with all that stuff for the first time, had explained to him how to do it. He was grateful for that.

Once he was clean, he put on his green pajamas, and brushed his teeth.
He then went to bed and continued reading The Lord of the Ring.

Chapter Text

The next two days were basics, according to Ulrich and Odd. For Hades, it was incredible.
Well, some classes were boring, but still. Hades was alive on Earth!

Monday afternoon, he had his first Greek class. Jeremy did Greek too. Thanks for him, Hades was a bunch of codes, so adding old Greek and Latin in his brain was easy. However, he loved these classes.

Monday's evening was the martial art class. Hades wanted to try it. He was the third student, with Yumi and Ulrich. They had to take turns, as Jim didn't want to fight one of them. Hades finds out he wasn't good at martial arts when Yumi won over him. He felt like she was having a personal vengeance for whatever reason that he didn't understand.
Hades didn't really like martial arts. Neither closed-up combats actually.

Chapter Text

Tuesday afternoon, just before the Latin class, as Hades and all the Lyoko Gang except Yumi were in sport class when XANA's attack. Here's what happened.

At first, Hades had the no-pleasure in discovering the boy sport changing room. The odor was... well, according to Ulrich, it wasn't good, but at least it was better than Odd's feet odor. Hades had no comparison, since he never smelled Odd's feet odor, which was probably for the best.

Once they were in the gymnasium in sports clothes, they saw aquariums with fishes in them. Jim told them to not touch them, as they were for some science fair that would happen the next afternoon. Hades was fascinated by these new animals. He never really saw fishes before, or at least, not real ones.

Anyway, they had to do climbing, as it was one of the only things they could do indoors while not moving the aquariums. Hades looked at the top of the climbing wall. It was an almost 20-meters wall, a habitual climbing thing in comparison with some Lyoko's elements Hades had to climb.

As they were five since Yumi wasn't in their class, Hades had to group with Sissi. Neither of them really enjoyed the situation, but they had no other choice. Sissi's two "friends", Nicholas and Hervé, were together in a group, as everyone else. Plus, Sissi didn't want to be in a group with Jim, the teacher.

At first, Jim reminded everyone how to climb safely and how to assure the safety of the one climbing. Then, they began to climb. Sissi went first. Hades was trying his best to assure her safety while she was climbing. She was very slow because she had just "made a manicure and didn't want to ruin her nails". Fair enough, supposed Hades who had never worn nail polish. It sounded fun, though. He'll ask Aelita about that later.

Sissi was climbing while complaining non-stop how climbing would ruin her nails in which she spent so much time, because she wanted to feel and be pretty, especially for Ulrich, and how life was so unfair to her and so on and so forth, which began to seriously get Hades on his nerves.

Suddenly, he shouted: "Sissi, if you don't shut up about your nails, I'm gonna let you down right here, right now, and you're gonna end up as a pancake on the floor! And nobody wants to see you as a flat pancake on the floor. Don't focus on your nails, climb to the top and if your nails are ruined, I engage myself to redo it for you, deal?!"

Everybody turned toward Hades, who had spoken really loud. Sissi, up to like 7 or 8 meters on the wall, looked down to the bright red-haired-boy who just threatened her to let her fall. On the other hand, she thought, learning to know him was a good strategy: she could learn more either about Ulrich or about this mysterious friend group. Or about both, which was even better. A plan was elaborating in her head, while she shot to Hades: "Deal!"

He smiled and she began to climb, in silence. Without her complaints, the gymnasium was really calm, maybe too calm, which was very weird.
What a lot of people tend to forget is that Sissi is actually good at sports, as she was -and still is- a cheerleader and a gymnast. She did ballet or dance or gymnastic or whatever when she was younger, according to Ulrich who once had to listen to her telling him her life for about half an hour, according to him. Sissi arrived on top really fast and tapped the top of the wall, smiling. She was the first.

"On top! Alec, hope you're free tomorrow afternoon for doing my nails!"

"It's Alex, not Alec. And I prefer Hades. I'll manage before or after archery class, yeah."

"Fantastic! Now let me down to the ground! Slowly and safely!" she ordonned.

"Okay."

While Hades was preparing to assure her safely to the ground, Sissi prepared herself too: she sat in her harness, putting her hands on it, and straightened her legs in order for her body to form an L. She then waited for Hades' world that she could de-climb. She looked down, at first at Ulrich who was assuring Odd's safety climb, before taking profit of the view by looking down at the whole gymnasium.

"What's happening with the aquariums?!" she suddenly asked.

Hades, as the majority of the room, turned his head to see that the water of the aquariums was flooding out of the (bocals).
Jim began to run toward the aquariums, while Jeremie was assuring Aelita's safe return on the ground. They both tried to open a door to get out, but all the doors were locked. Jim was trying himself to get out to stop the water from getting out, but he couldn't. Odd was on the ground, so he and Ulrich could try to go out with Aelita and Jeremie. Hades said he'll stay there to help inside. Hopefully for the Lyoko group, the toilet door was still open, which allowed them to get out by the window, well, all except Odd, as the door shut in front of him. But the others managed to get out, as they texted Hades.

The water was getting up fast. Some tried to get out, but all the doors were locked. Everybody began to panic, including Jim with a high-pitched voice. Water was now up to Hades' ankles. He decided to do what Franz coded him to do: protect.

"Everybody, listen!" he shouted in order to get their attention.

They all turned towards him and stopped running.

"We're gonna climb at the climb wall and call help up there." he said

Jim hesitated a second. Should he call the 15 or the 18? The 15 was for the SAMU, the "Service d'Aide Médicale Urgente", the Service of Urgent Medical Help, and the 18 was for the firefighters. He finally decided to call the 18. For now, no one was hurt, and firefighters used to deal with a lot of emergencies, and students stuck in a gymnasium that was slowly flooded, that was definitely an emergency.

They told Jim to not hang up the phone, to stay with the helping line, and that they were sending help. Jim thanked them and they all began to organize themselves to go up there. Jim, Hades and Odd stayed on the ground to help the other to go on top of the wall. Sissi, on top of the wall, was helping others to climb up there.

Most of the students were on top of the wall. Hopefully, there weren't too many: there were only two dozen students. Hades had water up to his hips. He tried his best to keep his feet on the ground. He stuck the end of his feet under the protection rug. He wondered if they would all be able to stay up on the top of the wall, if there was enough space. They'll find out very soon.

Most of the students were up there when they heard the firefighters arriving and beginning to try to open the door. They were struggling and considering using an axe, understood Hades. He had water up to his chest. Hades hoped that the Tower would be deactivated soon.

When they understood that the firefighters were here, some students wanted to jump in the water. Sissi and some retained them for doing so. One of her friends, Hervé, argued that if they do so, since they're so high, the water will be hard as a rock. And nobody wants to jump on a rock.

Firefighters began to hit the door with an axe in order to open it, and free the students. Hades, assisted by Odd, assured Jim into safety. He had water up to his shoulders.

When they were alone, Odd reminded Hades two things: one, if they could avoid return to the past, they will, as it makes XANA stronger; two, if someone died, no return to the past can save them. Hades nodded, and they began to both climb, without anyone to assure them.

Hades would now have water up to his mouth if he was still on the ground, but he had already begun to climb, and since he was still attached to the safety rope, students on top of the wall were drawing Odd and Hades toward them.

When he arrived on top of the wall, people cheered him, and Sissi hugged him. Hades didn't understand anything.

"What's happening?" he asked Odd.

"They're thanking you," Odd replied. "You saved them."

"I didn't do anything special. I just made you go on the higher place of the room, it was the obvious thing to do, wasn't it?"

"Even."

"If you say so. I was trained to protect, remember?"

"You what?" Sissi asked.

"My trainer was an ass," Hades summed, in order to not ruin his cover.

"Oh, you were an athlete?" Jim intervened, curious.

"Sort of. I did archery." Hades replied. "Can you stop holding me, though?"

"Oh yeah. Sorry."

Once she let him go, Hades got his phone in order to send a message to Jeremie, but it had been under water -and hopefully didn't make any
electric reaction, or as one French could say, he didn't make a "Claude François"- but it was unusable now. The water was now up to half the climbing wall.

"What do we do now?" asked Jim to Hades, who gave him back a 'do I look like I know?' look.

"We wait," he simply answers.

"Wasn't there fish in those aquariums?" suddenly ask Nicolas, the other Sissi's friend.

"Wait, he's not wrong though," noted Odd. "Where have they gone?"

"You really want to know that?" asked Sissi, who didn't really understand what those fishes changed. "Why?"

Odd watched Hades and asked him with some looks if he thought that XANA took possession of those fishes. Hades answered without talking by holding up then down his shoulders, expressing he had no idea at all.

"Hey you two, what are you up too?" asked Sissi

"Does anyone know what kind of fish they were?"

"No. Do I look like I care about that kind of things?" she answered

"Piranhas," Hervé replied.

"Oh, verdammt." Hades sight. "That's not good, right?" he asked to Odd.

"Nope. Those are bad fishes."

"I so hate that day."

"Same dude, same."

The water was now up to something to 2/3 of the wall. Out of tiredness and ire, Hades angrily threw his phone in the water. As soon as it hit the water, piranhas jumped on it.

"Well, I think we're fucked." Odd summed up, while other students began to yell out of fear.

Jim was trying to calm them by telling them the time when he was working in the Navy and they deployed him in the jungle and... Hades already stopped to listen to him. He was now putting his interest in knowing what Jim had to say about the world, but he was watching the beams and girders network on top of the building, under the ceiling. Maybe they could use them to go to the windows on the side of the building. Will they be strong enough to support them all? He had to try.

He was very agile and flexible, or so he thought he was, thanks to his life on Lyoko, and thankfully, he was not restrained too much by his earth body. He stood up, took off the rope that linked him to the wall and jumped to grip a beam on top of him, before doing some acrobatics to get up on it.

"What are you doing?!" Jim yelled angrily (but also, somehow, worriedly)

"I'm going to the window to see if it's possible to go out that way. Maybe the firefighters could but a ladder on the other side for us to go out."

"Go down here, you're gonna fall up there!"

"I'm not," Hades simply said while he was straightened stand. He positioned himself like an acrobat, and began to walk.

After a few minutes, he arrived at the window. He tried to open it, but it was stuck.

"Scheiss," he mumble to himself

It was too unstable to try to directly hit it. However, Hades was able to see the firefighter on the other side, who was throwing a lot of axe hits at the door, which wasn't moving at all.

"The window is stuck," Hades yelled to the others.

"Crap," Jim yelled back.

Water was now up to almost the top of the wall. Students began to shout, yell and cry again, especially about how life was unfair and how they were all about to die.

Suddenly, the door opened and all the water went out. Hades and Odd looked at each other: the tower had been deactivated. Will there be a return to the future?

There wasn't. All the students were assured down to the ground and safe by the firefighters, who checked that everyone was okay. They were scared, afraid and traumatized, but physically, no one was hurt.

During midday meal time, Ulrich asked Hades if he really wanted to spend some time with Sissi, and Hades honestly replied: "I don't know. My mouth talked on its own. And it worked well to make her shut up. Also, that can't be that bad! Not worst that XANA. My turn to ask: how did you know that the return to the past can't take back the dead?"

There was a silence. Hades thought about the worse.

"We already experienced it," Yumi confirmed. "His name was Matthias. He was 12. It was like he had never existed in the first place. We are the only ones to remember him. Even his own parents and best friends forgot him. "

"Oh."

What do you want to answer to that?

Chapter Text

That evening, Hades went into Aelita's room to chat with her, about life on Lyoko and life on Earth. Hades enjoyed their chat. They really understand each other, like real siblings.

Hades asked her about wearing nail polish. She only had pink and green nail polish, so they put on nail polish, while discussing. It made him realize that he had no idea at what time Sissi wanted her nails done.

"There is one thing I want to ask you," suddenly said Aelita nervously.

"Go on," Hades answered with a head move.

"When we first met, you declared to me that I 'dont remember anything'," she said by doing quoting marks with her fingers. "What do you meant by that?"

Hades seemed to think and stay silent for a moment.

"I was someone else before Franz made me Alexander the Guardian." It seemed that it was a happy period in his existence as he softly smiled. "I was only Pluto. And I was told about you. Franz didn't like the memories I had before I was the Guardian. He tried to erased them. But I remember. I didn't wanted to forget. It's all I've got."

"Why can't you tell me?"

"I was programmed not to."

"Why?"

"Because I knew..." He suddenly stopped. "... someone," he carefully added. "I knew someone."

"But you can fight your program, right? You already did by not forgetting these memories?"

She seemed desperate to learn more about her own past, as she forgot it all. Her oldest memory was when Jeremie woke up the supercomputer.
And she needed a past, she know she had one, right? Hades was the living proof she had one, that she was someone before. And she wanted to know, she really wanted, you know? She had the right to know, she must know! Right?

"... Yeah. Right. I could tell you," Hades finally conceded, feeling extremely bad for not telling her. But it was too hard for him. "But I don't want to. I don't want to lie to you, Aelita, because you don't deserve to be lied to, but I also don't want to talk about ... that someone. I'm not ready to talk about... her. I'm not ready. I'm sorry. I can't."

He seemed really sorry and hurt and having an inside debate, or a inside fight.

"Okay," Aelita finally sighed.

She seemed sad, but didn't add anything. She understood and respected his decision and he was thankful for that.

"Thanks," he gratefully smiled. "Again, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's okay. Take your time, okay Alex?"

"Thanks. But could you not calling me Alex? I really preferred Hades, or whatever, but not Alex or Alexander. I know I was given that name, but it doesn't have good connotation for me."

"Oh. Okay. I'm sorry Hades."

"Thanks."

"And don't worry, I won't force you to tell me something that you don't want to. And I won't lie to you either. But then you don't lie to me, okay? Truth pact?"

"Yeah. Yeah, truth pact. I'll tell you all the truth I can tell you, and I don't care if you do the same or not. I don't care if you lie to me or not."

"I won't."

"Okay," he said, with a face telling that he didn't believe her, but that he was okay with it. "Thanks Aelita."

"No problem, Hady."

"Oh, a nickname? Great!"

It made her laugh. He laughed with her.

Chapter Text

Next day was Wednesday. They had no classes that day, but had to go in a classroom or in the library to do some school work, at least in the morning. The bright-haired-boy did some homework during the morning, in the same classroom that some younger girls, one red-haired-girl (a really red-hair-girl this one, a in, her hair were red, brown-orange red, not crimson-red like Hades') and a black girl with a green shirt, who were (loudly) discussing about Kadic's newspaper. Hades didn't even know Kadic had a newspaper.

Suddenly, the red-haired-girl said something along the lines of: "What if we interview him?"

"Him?" replied the black girl. "Why him? I don't even know who that is! Millie, you can't just interview every person you meet because you don't know them!"

"But Tamiya..."

So their names were Millie and Tamiya, Hades noted.

"You know that I can hear you, right?" he told them

"Your mother never told you not to listen to others' conversation?" replied Millie

Once, Hades had asked Aelita and the rest what he had to reply if someone asked him questions about his parents and family. He didn't want to ruin the cover they worked on. Aelita told him to tell them that it was "none of their business".

However, when they mentioned his mother, Hades looked sad. Maybe because he didn't have a mother?

"Oh, a sad backstory, I like it," exclaimed Millie. "And let's face it, aren't we all curious about that family? I mean, he's Aelita's twin and Odd's cousin!"

"Really?" Tamiya exclaimed, surprised.

"Uh yes, that's true." Hades confirmed, surprised that they know his cover story -but it was a good thing, right? "How do you know that?"

"We're journalists," Millie answered. "We know everything."

"Hopefully you don't," Hades said, under his breath, without even thinking about it.

"What do you mean?" Tamiya asked.

But Hades didn't answer. He wasn't even sure himself what he meant by that.

"So how about we interview you?" Millie came back.

Hades was thinking. That couldn't be a bad thing, right? But he heard a familiar voice in the back of his head saying 'Don't trust anyone. Only you.'

He turned his head, hoping to see a familiar face. But there was nobody here. Only a wall. It was almost disappointing.

"What just happened?" Tamiya asked Millie.

"I have no idea," Millie answered.

"I thought I heard something," Hades replied. "It was probably nothing. So you just want to ask me some questions in order to put that in your newspaper?"

"Basically, yes," Millie told.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why me?"

"Because Aelita refus-" Tamiya began, before Millie cut her off: "Because you and your family are mysterious and that we want to know you."

"So you asked Aelita, she refused, and then you came here to ask me about her?"

"Well, she escaped us actually," Tamiya explained, which made Hades smile -he could totally see her do that.

"I accept under two conditions."

"What conditions?" Tamiya asked

"One, I may not answer some questions and you won't come back on those."

"And the second one?"

"You'll let me read the article before publishing it, so I'll be able to verify that you didn't modify what I have said. That point is very important to me."

"We need to discuss this," Millie told before taking Tamiya outside of the room. They probably fear that he'll try to censor them, but it really wasn't what he wanted to do.

They argued for something like five minutes, while Hades was finishing some of his math homework. He then puts his head on his arm and looks outside through the window.

He heard the door opening and turned his head. He still had a good hearing on Earth.

"We accept," Millie finally stated. "Tamiya will film you in order to have some pictures to put in our article."

"Works for me. What do I have to do?"

"Just answer my questions. Okay, let's do this. Hi! I'm Millie from Kadic News. You may have noticed that we've got a new face at Kadic, the kind that can't be unseen due to his bright hair color, so let me introduce you to Aelita's Stones' brother, Alex. Alex, could you introduce yourself in a few words?"

"Wait, how do you know that name?"

"Cut. Again, we're journalists, we know a lot. We did some researches, obviously," Millie explained. "Never mind, we'll do some montage. Resume the filming please. So, hi! Can you introduce yourself?"

"Uh, yes I suppose so? So uhm, greating everyone. I'm Hades. Hades Stones."

"Cut! What do you mean, Hades? Your name is Alex, I know it!"

"Well, yes, I was named Alexander, but I preferred being called Hades. That's one of my name actually. "

"Oh. Okay. Let's resume then. Introduce yourself."

"Okay. Uh, hi?" he said, making a move with his hand to the camera. "I'm Hades. My full name is Alexander Pluto Hades Stones. I'm Aelita's twin brother and Odd's cousin," Hades recited.

"Stop stop stop," Millie interrupted. "Ale- I mean, Hades, what are you doing?"

"Introducing myself?" He wasn't getting it. Was it not how people introduced themselves? By giving their name and some people who they were related to and that the others may know?

"Can't you put some emotions in it?" Millie asked. "It's like you were reading a text!"

"Oh. Really? Sorry. Do I have to redo it?"

"Yes please."

"Ok. So greating, everybody who's looking!" he began, more energically. "Name's Alexander Pluto Hades if you want the full package, but you can call me Hades! No, you can't just call me yours! Just arrived from Canada, where I grew up with Aelita, my twin sister. And Odd's our cousin. Was it better?" he asked, dropping all his (fake) enthusiasm on the last question.

Millie looked at Tamiya. Her eyes look up to the ceiling in order to show her exasperation.

"Should do the trick," Millie sighed. "So what's it like?"

"What?"

"Canada! Pay attention!"

"Ah. Hum, it's big. There is at least a forest and a mountain, and some ice. I used to live in a forest."

"What is it like, your family?" Millie asked.

"Well, I mean.. It's a family like another one I suppose. There are people I like and people I don't like. People who are funny and others who are not. People who are alive and... Well, you get it. I don't think I need to do my whole generational three. In any case, I won't. I'm not only defined by what my family is or was or did. I'm my own person."

Millie seemed sad but also determined to find more.

"Are Pluto and Hades really your second names?" Tamiya asked, curious.

"Yep they are. It's respectively from the Latin and the Greek God of the Underworld, not the God of the Death, common mistake, the God of War is Thanathos, whose name are respectively Pluto in Latin and Hades in Greek, and he got a really cool and great three-head dog, Cerberus, and also a..."

"You have bright red hair, but what is your natural hair color?" suddenly questioned Millie, cutting him, which confused him as he wasn't used anymore to being interrupt when he talked. It was annoying, but he didn't mentioned it. He didn't wanted to seems not polite. Politeness was very important, he was taught.

He looked up at his hair.

"I don't know. Got blue hair before. To be fair, I don't know if I prefer to have blue or bright red hair. I may go on purple."

"No but like... What's the color your hair had when you were born?"

"I don't know. I had no hair. And I have had blue hair for as long as I remember. Bright red hair is new, I only got it since... last Friday? Since I got there actually."

"Really? You had blue hair for a long time then!"

"Yeah. Same as Aelita. She has had pink hair for as long as I know her, and it's been a long time!"

"I imagine, yeah, she's your twin sister after all," Millie smiled. Hades smiled but didn't comment on it.

"Wow, your parents really are into dying hair!" Tamiya joked.

"In a way, yeah."

"So it's a family thing?"

"Yeah. I mean, you've seen Odd and his purple hair strand!" Hades joked, not fully comfortable.

"Yeah! By the way, what about your parents?" Hades tried his best not to put a face at that question. Mille seemed oblivious as she asked her next question: "Do they have dyed their hair too?"

"Yes and no, depending of which parent and the period of their life. I won't elaborate. Do you have other questions or could I go now?"

It was evident that he wanted to avoid that subject, the family topic, for whatever reason. Maybe because he didn't really have a family since he was technically only a bunch of codes who grew up in a virtual world. Maybe.

"Oh yeah, two lasts," claimed Millie, unaware or ignoring how Hades didn't seem as comfortable as before. "First, why didn't you arrive at the same time as your sister? And then, who's the older?"

"We don't know," the boy simply replied.

"Pardon?"

"We don't know who is the older between us two," explained Hades. "Maybe I am? Maybe she is? Who knows?"

"You never asked your parents?" Tamiya asked, surprised.

"No." Hades simply answered. "If we're finished..."

He wanted to get out of here. He needed some air. Talking about family made him sick.

"Oh. Just one last, you didn't answer the question about why you arrived way after Aelita!"

"Oh. Family reasons. None of your business. Please, let me know when your article will be out."

"Sure thing! Thanks for your time Hades!"

He didn't answered anything. He went to the art class to work a little more on his project before midday meal time. He had it to be finished by the end of next Saturday's session.

Chapter Text

After eating, Hades went to Sissi's room to help her with her nails. She was listening to a CD of some boys band when he knocked on her door. The subdigitals, or something like that.

Sissi had a lot of nail polishes. Hades didn't know why, but while he was doing his best to apply glitter pink and yellow ocher nail polish on her nails, she began to talk about Ulrich, how they met, how she felt in love with him and so on and so forth. Hades didn't really care about all of that, to be fair. He simply pretended to listen to her, by sometimes nodding and saying "uh uh".

"What do you think?" she suddenly ask.

"About what?" he replied, finishing to polish one of her fingers.

"What I just told you! Weren't you paying attention?"

"I'm focusing on your nails Sissi."

She seemed exasperated. She sighted and repeated: "About my opinion on Clover from Totally Spies! Don't you think she kinda looks like Sailor Venus from Sailor Moon? Those are my favorites!"

"Oh. I don't know. I never watched Totally Spies. Nor Sailor Moon. But I read it. I like Sailor Pluto for obvious reasons -Pluto is my second name- but my true favorite is Sailor Uranus."

"Really? Nah, Sailor Venus is the best. She's powerful, a singer, and she shines, she's the perfection. And also, you never?! But do you live in a cave?! Ah no, that's right, you're a boy, you're not interested in that, only Nicholas is."

"If you say so. Also, random fact, did you know your favorite characters in a show are often linked to who you are? For example, if you have abandonment issues, you may like superheroes because you also want for someone to save you. I learned that on the internet."

"Well, that just mean that I like a popular blonde girl with a good mode opinion then," Sissi simply said, without really thinking about it. "She's like me, really! Popular. And with a good taste in mode."

"Hum. If you say so."

"Well, you can't say anything, your favorite is a girl who pretend to be a boy except when she's a magical girl, or a boy who is a girl when he's transforming into a magical girl, that's so weird and gross!"

Sissi's comment hurt Hades more that it should have. Maybe because he related (deeply) in a way to Sailor Uranus. A way Sissi could never truly understand.

"I have to go," he declared without any tact, already standing up.

"What? So soon? Why?"

"Because I want to go in the archery class Sissi."

"But... What about me? You didn't finish my nails, it was the deal Hades!"

"I have made the most of it, and I think you're old enough to be able to put some nails polish on your pinky finger Sissi. Moreover, you're not the main character of my life, and I want to go to the archery class."

"Then get out!" she said angrily.

He went out and asked if she wanted him to get back after to finish her nails, but she just told him to "fuck off, or I'll tell my father a human traffic light is trying to force her door!".

Hades looked down on himself: red bright hair, orange shirt, khaki cargo pants and black shoes. He really looked like a human traffic light...

"Ok. I'll go out now."

And he did.

He went to archery class, which took place outside, near to the gymnasium. There were five students already. Jim was explaining safety rules. In order to not hurt anyone, there were a lot of safety rules. There were only seven so they took turns and shot at the target. As he arrived the last, Hades was the last to shoot.

When he took the bow, he found it weird to not have his habitual bow with its habitual weight. He frowned, but didn't say anything. The others were pressing him to shoot fast, so their turn to shoot again could come faster.

Out of reflex, Hades tried to catch an arrow in his quiver on his back, and was disappointed when he grab the air, as he didn't have it on him.

When he saw him doing those things, Jim, who was watching him, asked, while giving him an arrow: "Do you already have some experience?"

The teenager shoots in the middle of the target before replying: "Yes."

The others exclaimed surprised or impressed or appreciation sounds. Hades didn't find it hard: there was only one target, staying still, and it wasn't trying to harm him. So, despite his limited Earth-body ability, it wasn't that hard. He passed the bow to a brunette girl. Laura, he thought she was called. He knew her from afar because she was in Odd's Italian class. And she may have dumped Odd at some point, due to him being odd. And Hades may have heard someone telling the story.

"Do you do archery outside of school?" asked Jim

Hades was tempted to say "yes", because he technically does, on Lyoko, but as Jim doesn't know about Lyoko, and that Hades couldn't take him there to show him, to prove him. Because he'll have to prove it, right? So he answered: "It's complicated. I did."

He wasn't really lying, was he?

Jim looked happy. Hades and Laura were good, really good. The port teacher proposed to train them to go to some concourses, regional, or even national if they were good enough, to gain trophies! And then, Jim could be the teacher who teach good students, and he'll meet sport celebrities and they'll know him, and that could help him go to see some sport competitions and... and first, he'll have to wait for their responses.

Laura said she had to think about that and Hades said something like: "Uh, yeah, same." He didn't know if it was something he was able to do, with XANA's attacks. He'll have to ask Jeremie and the Lyoko warriors for their approval. He thought about that and his foot took him on a walk in the street.

Chapter Text

While walking in the streets, Hades saw Yumi, wearing a tracksuit. He saluted her, and she gave him back his salute. He looked right, looked left, and crossed the street to join her.

"What are you doing?" he asked

"Running."

"For what?"

"Fun. It helps me to keep the pressure down. I need it with everything going on."

She implicitly began to walk again in a way, and invited him to do so, so he did.

"Oh. And so you run?" he asks, interested.

"Yes. Everyone of us finds a thing that helps us to not turn crazy. Because it's so much bigger than us! I run, but I know others have found other activities. For example, I know that Odd takes care of Kiwi, his dog."

"Aren't dogs not allowed in Kadic?"

"They aren't," Yumi confirmed with a smile.

"I never saw Odd's dog," Hades said.

"He's often in Odd and Ulrich's room. You can ask him to see Kiwi later, if you want."

"Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks."

After a little silence, Hades asked: "So what do the others do, in order to stress out?"

"I run with music in my ears. Usually, metal, rock, or J-pop. I'll make you listen some stuff that you could like. Odd takes care of his dog and plays video games. I think he also does skate and graffiti paintings in the Fabric. Ulrich does martial arts and plays the drums. I know he likes to listen to music too. Jeremie likes to play chess in a club, outside of school. I think it's in a retirement house, with elderly people. I know that before, he liked to build robots, but since you-know-who happened, he can't really stand it anymore. He fears that it could be used against him. And Aelita does crochet and sings," she summed up, counting on his fingers.

Yumi was the most cautious one about not talking too much about Lyoko and XANA in public. Once, Odd joked about XANA being Voldemort.

"We all found something," Yumi noted. "Except you."

"I may have," Hades declared. "Archery. And drawing. And Greek and Latin. These make me happy. I went to the archery class just before, and Jim told me that I was great. He asked me and another girl, Laura I think, if we wanted to do some concourses, at regional level first, but he believes that we can go to the national contests. And... I don't know. I said I needed time to think. I needed to ask you all."

"What is it that you don't know?" Yumi asked as they entered a walk-only street with a lot of shops on its sides.

"If I can do it. I mean, archery? No problem, I'm able to do that. But concourses? With you-know-who? I don't know if I can do it, if I have the permission to do it."

"You're your own person, Hades. You know that, right? You don't have someone who can decide better for you than you. If you think it'll make you happy, then try it. What's the worst case scenario? You fail at the first concourse? Well at least, you'll have to try it."

"Thanks," smiled Hades shyly.

She was right. He wasn't "the Guardian" anymore. He was beginning to be Hades Stones. He was himself, and he was able to make his own decisions. That thought made him happy and stressful. Taking decisions for himself could be terrifying, and it was a lot more stressful than letting someone else decide for him, but it was also exciting.

Yumi made Hades listen to some rock songs, and affined (if not defined) his musical taste.

Hades answered to Jim that he was okay to begin to do archery in competition. The teacher thought he could distinguish himself by being his mentor so he did so, but he doesn't have much to teach to Hades. One could have argue that it was cheating, because Hades was programmed to be good at archery, but he could then have replied that, sure, he may have been, but that doesn't stop him from training.

Chapter Text

"Allergic to nuts? How can I be allergic to nuts?" Hades asked the nurse at the hospital.

After their last discussion on Wednesday, Sissi offered Hades almond chocolate, because it was her favorite and she liked how their discussions and wanted that he keep talking with her, because, she liked Nicolas and Hervé, but it wasn't the same, she couldn't discuss with them like she did with him. And she didn't know how to make him stay friend with her, because she didn't know what went wrong and why he ignored her for the next two days -he was still mad about her comment and had others things in mind.

So Saturday morning, while everyone was walking there and here, working on their art project, she had put an almond chocolate bar on his table, with a post-it apologizing and asking if he wanted to watch Totally Spies episodes with her. He had nodded to her, and she had smile. Hades too.

On their way to the canteen, Odd, who had seen Hades putting the chocolate bar in his bag, had tried to take it from Hades, and Hades had stopped him for doing so.

"Hey!" Odd had said. "You could share!"

"Why?"

"Because that's what friends do," Odd had argue.

"Really?" Hades had frowned, oblivious.

"Yup."

"Oh. Okay. Then, here, have some."

And Hades had give Odd some. And according to him, who had name himself a "chocolate connoisseur", it was some good chocolate. Hades had no idea how chocolate tasted, so he had tried it. And it didn't turned well. Because it turned out that Hades was allergic to nuts. Or nuts intolerant, he hadn't really paid attention to the semantics. Because he wasn't supposed to be, right? Since he wasn't even... well, human.

"How did you even get that chocolate?" Jeremie asked, already wondering if it was some XANA's evil plan.

"Oh, uh, Sissi gave it to me. It was an apology actually."

"Sissi? Apologizing? She was probably trying to poison you!" Odd stated.

Hades loudly sighed. "Leave her alone, Odd. It's not her fault I'm allergic to nuts. And now we know I am. It's great that we learned it now and not in some situation implying you-know-who."

They couldn't help but agree.

Since Aelita was "Hades' twin", the hospital ran some tests to verify that Aelita wasn't allergic or intolerant to nuts too.
Turn out she wasn't. Good for her.

Chapter Text

"Pawn in G4," Jeremie stated.

"Queen in E1. Check," Hades answered after some reflection.

Jeremie took some time to think about it.

"No," he finally respond. "King in B2."

"What are you doing?" interrupted Ulrich, arriving in Jeremie's room, where Jeremie and Hades were, the blond guy being sit on his desk chair and looking at Hades who was sat leg-crossed on the floor with his back on the bed, looking at the ceiling.

"Playing chess," Hades replied. "But since we don't have a chessboard, we do it in our head. Bishop in D2, say goodbye to your precious rook."

"Ah! Well done!" Jeremie replied.

"I know, I know."

"... Then, rook in C8."

"Do you thing it'll be long?" asked Ulrich, interrupting again. "It's dinner time. You both need to feed your brain."

"Already?!" Jeremie exclaimed, surprised. He didn't even noticed. Neither did Hades, but Hades grew up on Lyoko and therefore had a very bad notion of time.

"It's over," Hades smiled. " Bishop in C1."

"What?! No! How did I missed that?!" He sighed.

"Well play," Hades congratulated him, standing up.

"You too!" replied the blond boy.

They shook their hand.

"It was an interesting game," Jeremie said, walking out of his bedroom. "One of the best I've play yet actually!"

"Thanks. But I've got no merit, I studied a lot of games for hours and hours to get it right."

"So it's like cheating?" Ulrich asked in the staircase, raising an eyebrow.

"No, because I've never played again Jeremie until tonight. My victory is still mine. It's like studying before a test if you want. Also, we could argue that your arrival, Ulrich, stressed him out."

"Sorry," Ulrich said, not really sorry.

"Could you explained me how you win?" Jeremie asked Hades.

"Well, I had planned that when I put my..."

"Time out Big Brains! Let's go eat!"

"Yeah, we're going, and as soon as we're in the canteen, we'll stop talking about that."

"Okay. Then I'll run so I won't hear you!"

Chapter Text

During the evening meal, as they were eating, Hades asked: "What are those little yellow flat and sweet-looking donuts?"

"It's gold," Odd joked.

"You eat gold?!" Hades exclaimed, confused.

"He's joking," Ulrich said.

"It's pineapple," Jeremie explained.

Hades tasted it. He loved it. Aelita didn't, so she had took a banana instead. She liked it better.

Chapter Text

Since he arrived on Earth, more than a month before, Hades had become a fan of sleeping, and especially the feeling of being asleep (which reminded him of the feeling of being in the heart of Lyoko). It was comfy and felt safe. That’s why he hated being woken up.

But that’s what Jeremie did, by knocking on his door. Hades instantly woke up and went out of bed, ready to do his job, his mission. Protecting Aelita and Lyoko. He opened the door on Jeremie, who was telling him that XANA activated not one but five towers! It was suspicious, and Hades couldn’t put words on what was weird in all of this. He went to wake up Aelita while Jeremie went to wake up Ulrich and Odd. They then went all of them to the Fabric, in their pajamas. No time to dress up. Ulrich had called Yumi. She rejoined them while they were waiting for her in front of the elevator.

When they arrived in the room where Jeremie guides them, they found his seat taken by a man. An old man, with gray hair. He didn’t even have to face them for Hades to recognize him. The boy was shaking, and seemed like he was having a panic or an anxiety attack, because it was exactly what was happening.

“Ah, you’re finally there,” the gray-haired-man said with a voice that Hades would have preferred to never hear again in his life.

"Franz?" the crimson-hair-boy asked, without really believing it. He wanted to hear a "no", or a "surprise! this is a (very bad) joke!", or it to be a bad dream or a nightmare. He had this nightmare before, after all. That was the bad part is sleeping. The nightmares.

In any case, he wanted it to be someone else. Anybody else. But Franz’s voice and the one of the man in front of him were exactly the same.

The man behind the computer looked at him when he confirmed: "Yes? I see that you’re a clever one.”

“Franz? Like in Franz Hopper?” asked someone, who could have been Yumi or Jeremie, Hades didn’t know, he was too shocked by Franz's presence for that. The sound was blurry.

“The one and only,” the man answered. “I was in fact the one who created Lyoko. I was a prisoner of XANA, but I escaped him. That’s paradoxical in a way: I created XANA and it escaped my control.”

‘It wasn’t the only one who escaped you…’ angrily thought Hades, who wanted to call him a liar but couldn’t speak. He was too angry with the man to articulate clear words.

He took a deep breath.
Inspire. One. Two. Three. Four.
Expire. Four. Three. Two. One.
Breath.

“At the beginning, XANA was only a program that I conceived, a multi-agent system which was destined to counter a military project," Franz explain, clueless to Hades' inside panic.

Hades was calming himself, trying to ignore the memories of the Carthage project to rise up in his mind.

“And me?” asked Aelita. “What am I in that?”

“You Aelita,” the man said, “I imagined and created you to be Lyoko’s Guardian. But even in my craziest dreams, I would never have imagined seeing you in flesh and blood.”

That was the thing that made Hades burst out laughing. Maybe it was a way of realizing all of the pressure accumulated due to the stress of sawing the adult. Or maybe not. Who knows? But the whole situation was just so laughable. The others watched him without understanding. What was so funny?

"I thought it was Hades' role," Ulrich frowned, at Franz's mention of Lyoko's Guardian.

“Are you okay?” Aelita asked Hades, worried (probably about his mental state).

Hades proceeded to calm himself really fast to look at her and nodded. He shouldn't laugh in front of Franz. Even after freeing himself from the man, he was still afraid of an punishment. But it won't happened there. It was Earth. Franz could do no harm to him.

“Don’t worry Aelita. I’m okay,” Hades said to her, before turning to Franz or whoever was in front of him and confidently declaring: “You’re a liar.”

“Why are you calling your creator a liar, Alexander?”

Hades couldn't breathe anymore. He knew who he was? All of his senses were yelling him to get out, get the hell out of there, but he couldn't move. Hades wanted to face him, but that voice… That damned voice! And that fucking name! He hated it. He hated it so much! He wasn't Alexander, he was Hades! He was Pluto! Plus, Franz didn't create him! He only re-coded him!

“You’re the one openly lying here, Alexander,” the man stated. “Do they know what you did? Do they know that you’re responsible for what happened to her?”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Hades shouted, but his voice was broken. He tried to stay calm and confident, but it was obvious that he was panicking and his voice was full of despair.

"Was it?" Franz said, rubbing salt in the wound.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Hades repeated, again and again, less and less loud each time, until his voice was just a murmur. As if he was more trying to convince himself than the others in the room. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t hers either. It was the bad luck’s fault. Not their own. Right?
Would he ever be forgiven?

The rest of the Lyoko gang didn’t understand a thing that was happening in front of them. It only brings their suspicions back about Hades, or rather Alexander. What did he do that could make him feel so guilty? And who was “her”? Was it Aelita? Did Alexander hurt Aelita? Was he responsible for her memory loss?

"Well, we'll see that later," Jeremie finally declared. "We have to deactivate these towers first."

"I'm doing it," Franz answered, tapping on the keyboard.

"You can do it from here?" Ulrich exclaimed, probably wondering if things would have been easier that way.

"Can he?" asked Odd to Hades, who seemed to be about to cry, holding back his tears.

"I'm no Lyoko expert," answered Hades, his voice shaking and trembling. It wasn’t his fault, right? "I never really envisaged that, because I thought it was impossible."

"Really? Why?"

"Because you need a Lyoko key to activate or deactivate the towers. That's why Aelita is needed and why XANA wants to hurt her to have it back."
He was looking away while talking, because of the pressure of having Franz in front of him. They were all looking at him, who was breathing the least he possibly can, in order to disappear. He wanted to disappear. It wasn't it fault.

“Alexander, I told you not to lie, didn’t I?” Franz ordered with a paternalist and authoritarian voice. “But I also told you to protect Lyoko, and you failed…”

Hades wanted to shout: "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" But no sound came out of his mouth. He just wanted Franz to shut up. He just wanted to be alone. He wanted to run away and to cry. He wanted to do all of that, but his legs weren’t working. He couldn't move. He was stuck there. It wasn't his fault!

“But that’s the past,” Franz then said, as if it wasn’t important for now, and that, in his magnanimous spirit, he was forgiving Hades, for something that wasn't even his fault. Well, Hades was sure it wasn't his fault, because it wasn't, right?

“Now, we have to annihilate XANA,” Franz stated, as if it was the most normal thing to say.

“Well, we would like to do so,” Jeremie explained, “but XANA had transferred a virus to Aelita. If we ever shut down the supercomputer, Aelita will be shut down with it. And Hades too, I think,” he added.

Hades looked at him. Jeremie thought about him? Someone cared about him? He felt a good feeling inside with that thought in mind. Someone cared, at least a little, about him. He wasn't alone.

“Well then, we simply have to find the antivirus for Aelita," declared Franz as if it was the easiest thing in the world. "Who is Hades?"

Hades looked away, but he felt the looks on him.

"Alexander, did you changed your name?" Franz's voice said, with... disappointment in his voice. After all, he was the one who gave him that name.

"My name is Hades," Hades whispered between his teeth.

"That's obvious that we need to find the antivirus," Jeremie affirmed. "But how?"

“That, my young friend, is the reason why I’m here. I'm here to help. To help you.”

Hades couldn’t bear it any longer. He took the elevator back, and went to breathe the fresh air of the night, outside. He sat down at the edge of the bridge, watching the water running under him. The city at night was peaceful. The silence was soothing him. He was alive. He was on Earth. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t, right?

He slowly began to cry, in silence, as he was thinking about that. What if he was wrong? What if it was his fault? Maybe it was?
He was sorry, so sorry!

Some moments after, the rest of the Lyoko gang went outside of the Fabric too. He heard them approaching so he stood up, rubbed his eyes with his arm hoping that it would hide the fact that he cried, and rejoined them.
They went back to their bed in silence.

The next day, Hades wanted to stay in his bed. According to the radioman, it was Thursday, May 22nd, 2003, and it was going to be a sunny day for the region, even if some other places in France would be on red alert for rain and flooding risk. Then, while the radioman was stating the news of the day, Hades, without really listening to the news, put on some clothes. Purple underwear. His white binder, under a black shirt. His now usual black cargo pants. Pink socks. His black Dr Marteens. He liked wearing black, even if it means that some people called him a "goth" or an "emo" for that. Hades just liked wearing black. And listening to rock. And some emo songs. Yumi's style had influenced his a lot.

He went to brush his teeth, and rejoined Aelita, Ulrich, Odd and Yumi behind Jeremie’s door. Hades didn’t get why they called him all “Einstein”, and wasn’t ready to do it. Anyway, they entered his room while wishing him a happy birthday. He seemed happy.

They offer him their gifts. Hades offered him a portable chess game that he had made him himself in his free time with the supply of the art class. Jeremie smiled, they could have a game later. Odd drew him a drawing of the friend group, the Lyoko gang. Hades was happy that he was on the drawing.

However, he was less happy when Jeremie suggested that they all went to the Fabric to see Franz. They all seemed to like him. Hades told them that it would be without him. He liked them all very much, but it was too much for him, he couldn’t bear the man. That’s how he ended up being the only one of the Lyoko gang in class that morning. When the teachers asked him where the rest of his friend group was, he simply pretended that he had no idea.

He ate lunch with Sissi -and Nicholas and Hervé-, and they talked about magical girls, and more specifically Card Captor Sakura. Well, Sissi and Nicholas were talking about it, while Hades and Hervé had absolutely no clues about what they were talking about. The difference between Hades and Hervé was that Hades was actually pretending he understand what they were talking about, or at least, was paying attention to the whole exchange.

Nicholas was a simplistic dude, but he wasn’t actually a bad guy. Hervé on the other hand... He was reading his Greek notes, because they would have an exam during the Greek hour of the Friday afternoon. He was complaining about the teacher being an old man so old he could have known the times he was teaching about, and that archaic Greek was hard to learn. Hades hold his shoulder up before releasing them, as a sign that he didn't found it that hard. Hervé gave him a dark look. Hades had proposed to help him, and Hervé, due to his own pride, had refused.

He then asked where Hades' “friends” were, doing air quotation marks with his finger when he asked. Hades looked sad and hurt when he answered that it was “none of his business”.

“They abandoned you, didn’t they?” Hervé joked, knowing perfectly that it would hurt Hades.

Hades didn’t answer him. He didn't spend his saliva to do so. He just took his tray, put it in the storage place and went out of the canteen. He ended up in the school playground, thinking about the conversation he just had. He sat down on a bench.

‘Well at least, I didn’t beg for their friendship!’ he responded to Hervé in his head. Yeah, that’s what he should have answered to that stupid mean idiot.

He was still in a bad mood when the rest of the gang arrived and sat down next to him. They told him that Franz… but Hades interrupted them:
“I don’t want to hear anything about that man, thanks. My day is already ruined enough. If I could avoid the man, I will. So now, if you excuse me, I’m gonna go for a walk, while you're discussing about him. Or not. I don't care. Happy birthday again Jeremie.”

While he was leaving, Ulrich asked him why he didn’t like Franz. Hades, trying his best to get his anger inside him, simply told him he has "his reasons". They may have asked him to explain himself but he didn’t. He left. That was none of their business. He already felt guilty enough. He was angry enough.

He walked in the park. He ended up in art class, where he continued to work on his project. When the bells rang, he went to class. Alone. In a class of 22, minus four. Lonely. He had almost forgotten how it felt to be alone and lonely. That was the downside of friendship. He had let himself tricked into believing he had friends and that he wasn't alone, and would never be either alone or lonely anymore. He was wrong. And it hurt to be felt that again.

He ate alone in the evening, in order to avoid group confrontation and more discussion about Franz. He felt alone, lonely and empty inside. As if he was missing something. Some friends maybe. Suddenly, Sissi sat down in front of him.

“Hi,” she said.

It was nothing. It was everything.

“Hi Sissi,” he replied. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Just eating my dinner.”

She was followed by Nicholas and Hervé, as usual. They sat down too. Hades couldn’t help but smile a little. Sissi was equal to herself: she was there, like a lifeline or a lighthouse. She seemed so normal that he reassured Hades. Some people didn’t have to bear a lot of pressure on their shoulders, and it was reassuring for him.

Nicholas excitedly said that he had finally beaten the Elite Four and the Pokémon Master, Lance, and that he had become the new Champion of the region of Johto. Sissi and Hades had no clue of what he was talking about but they congratulated him anyway. He seemed so happy. He then proceeded to talk to them during the entirety of dinner time about Pokémon. Hervé seemed annoyed by it, but didn't said anything, still reading, again and again, his Greek notes.

Hades felt well. He felt… normal. Alive. He felt like a normal teenager in the year 2003, and not like an outcast, a computer program that was mimicking a human being.

The next day, the gang went to the Fabric, minus Hades. He went in class.

At some point, when he looked out the window, he saw Jeremie outside, going back to his room. He asked if he could go to the toilet, pretending a strong urge. The math teacher sight and let him go. He went to Jeremie’s room, asking him what happened and if he felt alright.

The blond boy summed up: Franz told him all of it was his fault and now the others were going to Lyoko to find some stuff about Aelita’s antivirus on Sector Five, ignoring what the man said the day before, aka the scanners are dangerous for humans. Hades told him it was bullshit, and that something was wrong, he could sense it. That, plus the fact he couldn’t bear Franz.

Jeremie told him that the man was suspicious, as Franz told the blond guy he was responsible for the destruction of his journal, but Franz couldn’t know that! It was XANA who was behind it all!

With that in mind, they both went to the fabric, running as fast as they could. They went into the scanner room directly, just as when Aelita was about to be materialized.

Jeremie and Hades then went to the directing room, facing Franz, who was actually XANA. What a surprise. Even with that knowledge, Hades had a hard time facing the image of Franz, even if it had planned to block his friends on Lyoko, in order to make them disappear, for real.

Hades couldn’t let that happen and began to fight XANA, or rather the nightmarish image of Franz, to try to distract it from its purpose. He was electrocuted, but charged again, and again, using all his repressed anger toward Franz, until the electric charge knocked him out.

When he came back to his senses, Franz was out of the picture. The tower was deactivated. Aelita asked him how he felt and he said that it was like a Thursday. Odd appreciated his funny sarcasm.
And in the end, Yumi hadn’t any degeneration or whatever due to the materialization.

They also asked Hades more info about why he reacted that way when he saw Franz, and who was the "her" that Franz was talking about. Hades summed up by saying that Franz was a douchebag who treated him badly, and that it hurt. And the "her" Franz talked about was none of their business, but it couldn't Aelita, as he'll never hurt Aelita. Not consciously at least. He didn't add that last part.

Friday, there was a Greek exam for Jeremie, Hades and Hervé. Hades found it simple, of course. He loved Greek mythology. Latin was great too, but Greek one? Banger. Period.

Days passed. Hades felt that the rest of the gang was suspicious about him, because they knew he wasn’t telling them everything, especially about "her", but he couldn’t help but not telling the plain truth. Not only because he was programmed to do so and fighting that program hurt him physically, but also because he wasn’t ready to talk about that. 

Chapter Text

Saturday morning was the time of the presentation of their art project and how they represented their "strongest memory, good or bad."

Jeremie projected his. He tried to represent himself in 3D in front of a computer (the one of the Fabric), and on the screen was Aelita's face. That was his strongest and happiest memory: his meeting with Aelita. As Aelita's cover was that she came from Canada, the logical thing to understand was that they met online. He even called his project "Online meeting".

Just after him, Aelita presented her project that had no title. It was a broken mirror, on top of some binary green code, zeros and ones falling like a cascade, on what seemed to be a black screen. Some of the zeros and ones were directly put on the mirror. Small translucent tentacles were emerging next to the mirror referencing the Scyphozoa, one of XANA's worst monsters that she encountered too many times. She wasn't really able to explain it, but the art teacher found an explanation: it was a metaphor of the danger of the Internet which can grab you with its tentacles. Aelita agreed, of course.

Odd presented a small tree with hanging pictures of all his friends, in the place they met. Most of them were pictures, except for Aelita and Hades, represented by drawings (he didn't take pictures of the scanners). He called it: "Tree of friendship". The art teacher interpreted it as friendship being like roots, and the friendship being a strong tree that grows with each new friend you've got. Odd hadn’t even thought about that under that angle: he was interested and took notes.

Ulrich improvised his demonstration of dance fighting, explaining that martial art was one of the most important things in his life. The art teacher saw it as an "alive expression of a passionate subject". Ulrich didn't laughed about it openly, but he still thought that the art teacher was some flavor of crazy.

Sissi, who asked to pass after Ulrich -maybe believing that it'll bring her luck-, presented a Disney Castle in cardboard. She had put in front of it a child Barbie doll with black hair, an adult Barbie doll with brown hair and no face, and a Ken adult doll with gray hair and glasses. The dolls were customized in order to look like Sissi's family, Hades supposed. She explained it was the Disneyland Paris trip she made for her fifth birthday. The art teacher was really passionate about his (psychological) interpretation of Sissi's work, and in the end, no one really listened anymore to what he was saying, partly because he was mumbling and rambling to himself more than anyone else.

Hades then passed to present his art project. It was a sculpture in a transparent dome, containing a forest similar to Lyoko's one, with inside a small sculpture of a girl or a woman, or rather an fae or a fairy, as the pink-haired lady had wings on her back. She was wearing a green costume with a crimson ribbon around her neck, and had her arms open as if she was ready to give someone a hug. On the other side was a desert, with a scientific guy with his head toward the ground due to gravity, with gray hair, big round opaque glasses, holding toward someone a bow and a quiver with arrows. Hades refused to give any explanation.
His art was called: "Parents".

Chapter Text

Sunday.
There was no XANA attack.

Jeremie worked on his math homework.

Ulrich slept til 11am.

Odd went out with some girl in the morning to see some movie in the theater. By now, the employees knew him by his name, even if he often came with a different girl.
What Odd didn't know was that some employees were having a betting pool about him, about whether or not he'll come twice (or more) with the same girl. One of the employees even joked that the guy will probably end up to go out with an employee in the end.

Yumi spend time with her own family. She beat her little brother in Mario Kart, and would proudly talk about it the next day to her friends.

Aelita did crochet in her room, while Hades was designing some bag on his drawing book. He liked to design clothes and stuff.

"See," he explained to Aelita who was listening to him, while he was coloring the drawing with some orange pencil, "I want to have a cool bag, but I don't find any bag that satisfy me, so I'll do it myself, you know?"

She nodded and made a sound of approbation, a small "hm hm", to show him that she was listening to him.

"So what will you do?" she eventually asked him, as he was waiting impatiently for her to ask, excited like a little child.

"So I drew this," he resumed showing her his design. "Basically, it's a bag, which some pockets inside but each pocket is for one specific thing so you know where to search for things, like there is a pocket for a lamp torch, a pocket for the wallet, a pocket for the toothbrush and toothpaste, a pocket for the keys, a card game, some tissues, well, you get it. Then, on the outside of the bag, there are two pocket on the side, one for the water bottle and one for the retractable umbrella. And you can hold it like a tote bag, but the lanners can also be moved in order for you to hold it like a satchel or like a backpack! Isn't that great?!"

"Yeah, that's really good actually. But do you really need to carry all these things? Why do you need so much pockets?"

Hades seemed outraged.

"Because pockets are like?! So great?! You can hold so many things in there!"

"Not in mine..."

"Your pockets are little. Do you want me to sew you larger pockets? Pockets are great. And useful. Long live the pockets!!"

That made her chuckles.

"Perhaps, yeah," she smiled. "And you really need all that stuff with you?"

"Uh yeah? It could be useful sometimes. Especially the 'spoonifork'. Always trust the 'spoonifork'."

Aelita looked dubious.

Chapter Text

Saturday.
Jeremie had the feeling that he didn’t advance on anything. He wasn’t able to decrypt Franz’s journal. He spent all his free time at the lab, and Aelita, Yumi and Ulrich had to took him out during the evening, as Odd was presenting his new short film, which was about Sissi turning into a giant and terrorizing Odd and a small version of Jim. Everybody was laughing except Hades, who wasn’t having it, and understood nothing about why others found it so funny. He found it even mean. He really had a hard time understanding social behavior, but he often put that on the fact that he wasn't, you know, a human.

Suddenly, Sissi turned the prjector off. She was about to yell at Odd what she thought about his short film, but she suddenly went back covering her eyes, as if she was blinded by some camera’s flashes. She then said incoherent sounds, like a radio that wasn’t capturing any radio waves.
She put a hand on her face and repeated: “Contact, contact.”

She then went to Jeremie and said “contact, contact, Franz Hopper, Franz Hopper can help”, interrupted by some sounds.

The whole gang frowned. They all asked silently themselves 'Was it… XANA?' while Hades was wondering what would be the worse: Xana possessing Sissi, Franz possessing Sissi or Sissi being possessed.

Sissi’s father, the director, asked her if she was okay, and Jim, repeating word for word what his mini him said in Odd’s movie declared that he thought that she had lost her mind, he knew that kind of thing, and he’ll take her to the nursery. It made some people laughed. The director then announced that everybody had to go back to their room in silence, before telling Jim to manage about that, and that he’ll take care about taking Sissi to the nursery. The movies evening was turned short, after only one short movie which wasn’t even played in projected fully.

Yumi had to go back to her house, as she wasn’t in the boarding school, but the other promised to keep her alert about whatever might be happening.

Back in his room, Jeremie searched but found no activated tower. According to the nurse that Hades went to see, Sissi was shocked due to some electrical shock, maybe when she touched the projector, but she’ll be fine.

Odd joked that he understood Sissi’s shock to see herself on the big screen, but not to the point of having an electrical shock!

“What’s your problem with Sissi?” Hades suddenly asked.

“What?”

“You seem all mean to her, but she isn’t that bad when you know her,” Hades explained. He really didn't getting it.

“Believe me, she’s unbearable,” Ulrich sighing.

“Because she is in love with you! And she thinks that how she acts is the only way to make you fall in love with her!”

“What?” Ulrich reacted. “I mean, I know she's in love with me, she told me at least twenty times, but I'm not, and she knows it! And what would you know about it?”

“Because, unlike you, I listen and talk with her, you know. And that's how I know that she isn’t that mean!”

“If you say so,” Ulrich concluded, not convinced.

The next day, Jeremie woke them up early to ask them to come to the fabric. He seems to like to do that, waking them up early. Sissi had come into his room during the night, leaving him a coded message that the supercomputer worked all night to decrypt. Jeremie shows them the result: a voice said that they wanted to contact them and that they wanted to help them. But it couldn’t be a trap, as Aelita wasn’t involved or forced in a way or another to go to Lyoko. But then, who could it be?

“I hate that I’m going to say that but… couldn’t it be Franz?” Hades offered. "After all, it's not like if Sissi was saying his name yesterday..." he sarcastically added.

“That’s a possibility, yes,” Jeremie replied. “But we’d need Sissi to know more about it.”

“I’ll take her back,” Yumi declared. “Someone to come with me?”

“I’m your man! Well, not literally obviously,” Odd joked, winking at Ulrich, who simply rolled his eyes.

“I’ll go to Lyoko to be sure that all of that isn’t a XANA attack,” the brown-haired-boy only answered.

“I’ll go with you,” Aelita declared.

“Really?” Jeremie was surprised. “With the Schizophrenia?”

They argue for a bit, while Hades was saying that he’ll come with them to Lyoko, even if he didn’t sense any XANA’s attack for now. He liked Sissi, but he'll be more of use near Aelita.

They arrived in the Forest sector, with the Overbike, Ulrich’s one wheel motorcycle, and Odd’s overboard, waiting for them. Each can only bear two people.

However, Hades didn’t like being on vehicles, and he could more or less fly with his costume and was fine about running behind. But they didn’t have time for this. Hades hated it, but went on the overboard, while Aelita went behind Ulrich on his Overbike.

They saw a tower with a white halo, and thought it might have a link with Sissi’s possession.

Suddenly, Hades shouted: “Watch out! Behind us!”

There were two mega tanks. They escaped thanks to Aelita materialization power. But the mega tanks couldn’t care less about them, as they went to the tower with a white halo. They attacked it. So the Lyoko warriors attacked them in return. Ulrich killed one, but then two other ones arrived. Aelita and Hades went to deactivate the activated tower while Ulrich was dealing with the mega tanks. Odd then came to help them on Lyoko. The Schizophrenia was there, obviously, hidden behind some crabs. Hades and Odd attacked them to let Aelita an access to the tower and deactivate it.

The next day, Sissi went out of the hospital -Hades and Yumi had took her back: Hades was the one holding Sissi, while Yumi took the nurse back.

During the evening, Sissi went to complain to Odd that she didn't knew his movie will be about mocking her, and Odd had to apologize -more or less sincerely- before he offered to Sissi another role in a movie, about a girl being the receptacle of an entity that tries to reach out humanity, with the action taking place in a virtual world with a lot of dangers. She told him that nobody would ever believe such a story!

Then Jeremy arrived with the decryption of what Sissi had written under the influence of whoever was possessing her.
Spoilers, it was actually Franz Hopper, as Hades theorized it. He hated that he was right, but also that nobody believed him or even listen to him.

Chapter Text

The Lyoko Warriors were collecting some data on Sector Five. Mantas were around them, attacking them all except Hades, who wasn’t attacking them either. He couldn’t do it. Not that he had anything that technically prevent him to do so; it was more a moral issue there. He had said to the others that he wasn’t able to fight in here, that he was coded that way. It was bullshit obviously, but they didn’t know so he didn’t care. He didn't even cared enough to explain, despite their questions. He just meditated there.

The data they collected was beyond great, according to Jeremie who looked at them when the rest of the Lyoko gang was back on Earth. It may even be enough to decipher Franz’ journal. Hades was totally oblivious that the date that was collected didn't only concern Franz Hopper but that Jeremie was also searching for more datas and infos on Hades the Guardian.

During the midday lunch, they talked about their notes in school, and Aelita was actually pretty good, especially in math. Ulrich said that it was impressive for someone who wasn’t totally… He stopped himself before saying more, realizing how offensive it could be. Hades choked on his glass of water of surprise, but added nothing.

“Don’t worry,” Aelita said. “I know I’m not fully human. But you know… sometimes I feel like I’ve already been here…” she added, in a wondering voice.

Odd said that it was the “Odd effect”: you saw him once and you felt like you’ve known him and what was around him all your life. Hades gave him an unimpressed look. Ulrich joked about him having mashed potatoes on the nose, and they changed the subject of the discussion.

When they went out of the canteen, Odd received a message from a girl who gave him a rendez-vous in the forest near the school. He went there, and the rest went to the coffee machine.

"Do you want something?" Ulrich asked Hades.

"No, thanks," Hades politely respond.

"You sure? Nuts coffee is the best!" the brown-hair-boy stated, as he was making one pour for himself.

"Ulrich. I'm allergic to nuts," Hades reminded him. "So, no, I won't drink that."

"Right, sorry. I have forgot."

"Well, I didn't."

There was a silence, only interrupted by the coffee machine pouring Ulrich his nuts coffee.

"Eh," Hades frowned his nose, "the nuts smell is so strong that it can get into my allergy!"

He then went a few feet away, for safety reasons.

A few moment later, Jeremie signaled an activated tower. Ulrich texted Odd, Aelita texted Yumi, and both with Hades went to the fabric. But Odd wasn’t there.

They went to Lyoko, in the mountain sector. Odd arrived a few minutes later. Something was wrong, Hades could feel it, but he couldn’t place words on it. He frowned his nose.

"Everything's okay?" Aelita asked him.

"Hm. Just a weird feeling."

"You sure it's not the nuts coffee?" Ulrich asked, now worried.

"Maybe," Hades stated.

Suddenly, the activated tower deactivated itself. Hades frowned. Something wasn't right, but what? Hades couldn't put the finger on it. Maybe it was just the heavy nuts odor from Ulrich's coffee that had him confuse.

They went to some tower to decrypt Franz’ journal. They needed the power of an activate tower to do so. The tower grew a green halo.

All of a sudden, a fog appeared on the sector, and XANA sent its beasts. But then, Odd shooted Yumi with a laser arrow, which made her devirtualized. Without hesitating, Hades shot Odd, or whoever it was, in the chest with one of his arrows. The arrows entered his chest and disappeared in here, it didn't get stuck in there, like if would have it they were on Earth. It weakened the other but didn’t dematerialize it.

“What?!” Ulrich reacted, ready to attack Hades.

“It’s not Odd. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not him. I think it’s under XANA’s order,” Hades cold-heady declared with a calm tone.

“You sure?” Jeremie asked, as the one having the appearance of Odd began to shoot Ulrich and Hades.

Hades shoots him again, in the head this time. Again, the arrow entered inside him, or it. Ulrich yelled “No!” without even thinking about it. The picture of his best friend with an arrow in his chest and then another one in his head will haunt him for a long time. The corpse felt and devirtualized.

“I’m sure,” Hades completed. “I’ll take the blame in case of a failure. If he was really Odd, he would be back in the scanner by now. Is he, Jeremie?”

“He’s not,” Jeremie said, shocked. “There’s nobody! What does that mean?”

“Where is the real Odd then?” Yumi's voice asked. She was probably next to Jeremie.

Jeremie told her where his phone was -in the forest near the school, where he was suppose to go for his date- and she went there, while Ulrich was still under shock. He was fighting alongside Hades against XANA beasts, while XANA was trying to possess the tower Jeremie activated. If XANA succeeded, it would have access to all of the program Jeremie created, including Aelita and Hades’ materialization.

They tried to cut the tower out of the alimenting cables, but it was well made, and the cables were hard to cut. Ulrich was trying, while Hades was killing the monsters that came more and more. Hades was finally killed.
By a wound in his back.

All was dark. In the beginning, all was dark. There was darkness everywhere.
And then comes the light, and with it life.

Hades woke up in the Heart Room. The last thing he remember was that he was in a tower from the ice sector, ready to go to collect some data on Sector Five in order to decrypt Franz’ journal. He had no idea how much time was spent between his last save and the moment he was killed. He didn’t even know what killed him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Jeremie?” he called.

No one answered him. Obviously. Sector Five has its own voice channel and he wasn’t sure that Jeremie was in here. XANA didn’t send any Mantas, so Hades had to climb Sector Five’s globe to arrive at the interface in the Celestial Dome. He didn’t look to the Outer Sphere, and tried not to think about what would happen to him if he felt. He used the interface to materialize Odd’s overboard and to open a passage to allow him to go back on the ice sector.

There, he went into a tower, saved himself before checking around. No one was materialized on Lyoko, so he dematerialized himself. He arrived just in time to catch Jeremie, Aelita and Ulrich in lab.

“What did I miss?” he asked them.

“Not that much,” Jeremie answered. “After you… were erased, we managed to decipher Franz’s journal!”

“Oh. That’s great. I'm not sure I want to know but... did you catch how I was erased?”

Neither Jeremie nor Ulrich answered him. Aelita was as oblivious as Hades.

“And where are Odd and Yumi?” Hades finally asked, not seeing them around.

“In the forest near the school. They’re both fine,” Jeremie said while Ulrich was frowning.

“Oh. Okay. Great.”

Hades seemed a little bit lost, and it made Ulrich angry, because he couldn’t unsee his best friend with an arrow in the chest and another one in the head.

“Don’t you feel guilty?” the brown-haired-teenage ask angrily.

“For what?” Hades asked, looking genuinely confused.

“You know what I mean!” Ulrich was so angry he was about to throw hands on Hades.

“No I don’t!” the crimson-haired-boy replied, losing for one of the the first time his usual calm temper, before bursting: “If you want to know the truth, I don’t even know what day we are! I don’t know what happened between the moment where we were on the Ice Sector and ready to go to Sector Five to collect data and this moment right now! So no, Ulrich, I have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to!”

Ulrich was baffled. He didn’t know what to answer. He didn't expected that answer.

“We collected the data two days ago, Hades," Aelita explained, now looking concerned. She seemed liked she wanted to hug Hades, but she knew he wasn't comfortable with these.

"You lost your memories?” Jeremie asked, as if he was studying some math problem, and not a real person in front of him, which only ended up annoying Hades even more.

But the not-so-human-boy finally sighed as he declared: “As always, Jeremie. When I die on Lyoko, because that's what I do, I regenerate on Sector Five, with my last save as my last memories. Everything in between my last save and my erasure is lost for me.”

After a short silence, he added, more calmly: “I’m gonna go and assume I did something bad since Ulrich seems angry. I’m sorry about it. Truly.”

“You killed a XANA specter who looked exactly like Odd. One arrow in the chest and another in the head,” Ulrich finally told him.

“Oh.”

Hades didn’t know how to react. Not having memory some times could be a good and a bad point: good, because he doesn't remember that so it won't haunt him, and bad, because he doesn't remember, so he didn't knew what really happened, and was dependent of the others for what happened.
That also was why he couldn't be 100% sure that he wasn't guilty, about her.

Chapter Text

Jeremie watched some of the video that composed Franz's journal and then asked for a group reunion in his room the next day, on Sunday's afternoon. He was excited, and they didn't if it was because of what was in the journal or because he hadn't sleep and was running on coffee and sugar.

"So you finally decipher the journal?" Ulrich asked.

"Yes," Jeremie stated.

"And what to you learned?" Yumi asked.

"Well, before going on Lyoko, he had a life on Earth."

"Yeah, we know that Einstein," Odd commented sarcastically.

"But what we didn't know is that he had a child, a daughter,” Jeremie added, building up a dramatic tension, more or less intentionally.

"Two," Hades stated absently, his mind being probably more focused on the strawberry lollipop he had just stolen from Jeremie's candies bag. He loved the strawberry taste.

"Pardon?"

"Franz had two daughters. And a wife." Hades corrected, beginning to have a headache and trying his best to hide it, while fighting against the annoying protecting plastic around the lollipop.

"What?" Jeremie exclaimed. Even that was new for him. Not the wife, he knew about the wife, but about the second daughter… He had no idea there was a second daughter.

"One died. I'll explain it after you're finished with your dramatic effect and build up. Ha ah!" He exclaimed, as he finally achieve to free the lollipop from the plastic. The victory was his! He smiled as he put the lollipop in his mouth.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh cut it Jeremie! Long story short, Franz Hopper had a daughter…” He had to stop due to a sudden ache in his head. Scheisse. “He had a daughter alive… that he put on Lyoko in order to protect her."

"Impossible," reacted Aelita. "If he had a daughter in Lyoko, I'd have seen... her..."

She was slowly realizing what that meant. Was she...?

"The mission Franz gave me… was -and still is-... to protect his daughter," told Hades in a calm and soft way, still holding his head due to some headaches. "My mission… was to protect you, Aelita."

"I'm... I'm Franz's daughter?" She wasn't having it. She was the daughter of Lyoko's creator. She couldn't be, could she? No, she couldn't, she'll remember it, right?

"Can we go back to the second daughter, though? The one who died?" Odd asked, who was not having it. "Is it a way to reveal to us you're his child as well Hadex? Because we already know you're trans."

"Yes and no." He took a deep breath, taking some time to enjoy breathing freely and his strawberry lollipop taste. He got why Jeremie put som dramatic build up, now. "You may want to sit for this."

They all sit down and Hades stays standing up, supported on Jeremie's desk. He wasn't looking at them, and his voice seemed coming from far away when he began to tell the story he must tell, even with his headache.

"Once upon a time, there was a married couple named Anthea and Franz. They had a daughter, Aelita, who was alive and well, and they had another daughter, who was dead at birth, called Persephone. I have no idea if she was older or younger than Aelita. Out of sadness and grief, Anthea created life on Lyoko. She created another child, an immortal one that she could go to see and raise. And that child was Pluto. It was me."

Hades shut down for a moment to let the others process the information he just gave them. His headaches became more and more violent.

"I was born because of their dead daughter. Franz didn't really like the way M... Anthea made her mourning and so he never really liked me. In order to him not deleting me, Mo… Anthea ended up giving me the role of "Protector of Lyoko". After... After she disappeared, Franz, out of sadness, he modified my codes. He renamed me "Alexander the Guardian". He wanted me to erase all the memories I have with Mom... Anthea. But I wouldn't. I couldn't. So I use the last part of my free will that he was deleting in order to save those memories directly in my codes, in order to not forget her."

"So, yes, in a way, I am the kid of Anthea. And Franz."

There was a silence. Nobody knew what to add. They were happy to be seated, or they could have fallen.

"So technically, you're somehow really Aelita's sibling," Yumi finally stated.

"Yes," Hades confirmed. "And I do consider Anthea as my mom."

"But not Franz as your father?"

"Not really, no. Franz was a real douchebag with m-"

And he felt, due to his headaches.

"He has a fever!" someone may have said. Hades wasn't even sure about what he was hearing now. His head ached. He finally fainted and fell into darkness. Fighting his codes wasn't an easy thing to do.

Chapter Text

All was dark. In the beginning, all was dark. There was darkness everywhere.
And then came the light, and with it life.

Hades was floating in a dark place. He didn't open his eyes but he saw anyway. He heard his mom's voice. She was playing violin, as she often did when Hades was younger. On Lyoko, she even had a bow that was both a literal bow to shot arrows with and a violin bow. Her favorite piece was the Autumn of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons".

"Mom? Mom!" he called. "Mom, it's me! It's Pluto! Mom! Can you hear me, Mom? Mooom!"

But she didn't hear him or answer. The violin was getting louder and louder, faster and faster, and suddenly it stopped.
The silence was deafening.

Then the boy was sucked up back to his own body. He felt violently back in it, before waking up. He sat down, breathing heavily.

While he was breathing to get his normal breath back, he noticed that he was in Kadic's nursery and that his headaches were gone. How did he get there? Where was Aelita? Was she safe?

"Welcome back Alexander," smiled the nurse, a blond woman with big blue earrings. "Are you feeling better?"

"Where is Aelita?" he asked, looking everywhere for her, ready to get out of the bed.

"Stay here, I'll call her," the nurse stated. Aelita was behind the door, waiting in the corridor.

Hades hugged her. She hugged him back.

Chapter Text

The end of the year was coming. The atmosphere was getting hotter and hotter. Radioman more or less said that it will be one of a hellish hot summer, with probable heatwaves and all.

Jeremie had changed his turtleneck shirt with a blue flannel with short sleeves. Odd wore a purple t-shirt. Hades was wearing an orange shirt, or a purple one, or a red one. Aelita and Yumi however still wore long sleeves, even if they wore thinner shirts than in winter. Hades was honestly impressed by Yumi wearing black clothes all year long.

The Lyoko Warriors went in the lab to find Jeremie who had spend most of his free time, and even some nights, like he just did. Not just because it was fresh in here while it was becoming hotter and hotter outside, but mostly to watch the thousand of hours of videos that composed Franz' journal.

The thing was that there had class that day, and even if it was the end of the year, and so they won't work a lot, they had to go.
After some salutations, Jeremie declared "Listen.", before he played a video extract of Franz’s journal. The man was seated in the directing seat that Jeremie was in right now, a white mug on the armrest next to him. Hades shivered when he saw the man on the screen. He knew it was just a video but... still. Aelita put her hand on his shoulder to reassure him. She was one of the only one he was comfortable having physical contact with.

"June 6th, 1994. Day 67," the man stated. "I understood that Carthage project was a military project destined to block the enemy’s communications."

"Day 67?" Ulrich asked, surprised.

"Yeah, Franz repeated that day like 2,546 times, to have more time to... work. And experiment. Aelita didn’t even realized that she lived the same day over and over for almost seven years," Hades explained, with an unease tone.

"What?" Aelita asked, surprised.

"Well, return to the past doesn’t really affect Lyoko, so you can tell when Earth days are the same, while on Earth, only the ones who went on Lyoko noticed it," Hades developed.

"Hm."

While they were talking, Jeremie had speed up a little the video, in order to find a specific passage.

" … so I built that supercomputer," Franz said. "Then I created Lyoko, and finally I programmed XANA to destroy Carthage."

Hades said nothing but he didn't think less. The supercomputer was based on some super calculator that Anthea created. Franz was a thief. But he definitely wasn't the first -nor the last- man to stole a woman's invention and to make it his own.

Jeremie speed up the video again. They saw Franz grabbing the mug on the chair's arm next to him.

"June 6th, 1994. Day 639," Franz said.

"That’s after…" Jeremie told.

"June 6th, 1994. Day 1265," Franz said. "Someone is spying on me. Someone who wants to eliminate me."

Yumi, Aelita, Ulrich and Odd were surprised. Hades and Jeremie weren't. Jeremie had already heard it, and Hades had to listen directly to the paranoiac psychotic mad man, asking him to exploring the electric web to found whoever may be following him. And he found them.

"The men in black," Hades declared. "That's how he called them, because they were men and they wore black. That's a bit simplistic, but who am I to judge?" he rhetorically asked.

Jeremie speed it up again.

"... I tried to destroyed the supercomputer and to erased any record on my activity," Franz pursued.

Yeah, Hades remembered that moment. He remembered having begged Franz not to do so, in the mountain sector. He remembered the ground disappearing under his feet. The feeling of falling. The thought of taking an arrow to suppressing himself before entering the Numeric/ Digital Sea, in order to save himself. The arrow in his palm. The sea approaching fast. The shiver that went through him when he asked himself if he already did that before. The sudden reappearance of a ground under him. The shock of the impact. The pain he felt in his body. The joy he felt to be alive. The fear he felt that it could have happened and that it might happen. Again.
Shock. Pain. Joy. Fear.

But more importantly, the brutal realization that Franz couldn't really care less about him, that he was just a puppet for him. A toy that could be broken or destroy, and he won't care at all. He'll just make another one. Had they been others? Hades often asked himself that. He had never found out any else. But he know they could have existed.

"That’s how I discovered one of its most fascination property, the return to the past," Franz pursued, ignoring Hades's thoughts. "That gave me all the time I needed to set up my great plan. My only solution to escape my enemies."

Hades wanted to laugh at Franz's face. He didn't. Jeremie speed up the video again.

"June 6th, 1994. Day 2546," Franz said.

"Here, that’s it," Jeremie told.

"That's the last day," Hades added.

"Scanners and visualizations programs are ready," Franz continued. "In a few hours, I’ll run away to Lyoko with Aelita. The Guardian will welcome us there. Like me, Aelita will detain the keys of Lyoko. And together, we will be its absolute master. Alexander will serve us while we will live there hidden, her and I, forever."

"That was a bad plan from the beginning, but again, who am I to judge?" Hades rhetorically asked, on a bitter and sarcastically tone. "Also, believe me now? I told you he was a douchebag."

The journal closed itself, as it was the end of the record.

"Well, now we know that Hades is not a XANA trap," Yumi concluded.

"Seriously?" Hades exclaimed, flabbergasted.

Yumi gave him a sorry look. It had been a few months that they knew each others, after all.

"Lyoko’s keys…" Jeremie thought out loud. "That’s what XANA wants in Aelita’s memory."

"That’s what I told you the first day we met, remember?" Hades told. "Why nobody never listen to what I said?"

"And then?" Ulrich intervened. "What would it use it for?"

"To evade the supercomputer," declared Aelita, "and to take over the world."

And then, she ran away. Hades followed her, as he had nothing else to say to the others.

"Hey," he just said. "Do you want to talk about what just happened?"

"No."

"Ok."

And they felt silence. The silence wasn't loud or oppressive. It was just there. They went to the canteen for breakfast. A few minutes after they arrived and while they were eating in silence, Jeremie, Odd and Yumi arrived.

"Aelita!" Jeremie exclaimed. "You could have wait for me to finish. I didn’t have the time to announce you the great thing. You know, I have been on the wrong path since the beginning!"

His voice was cheerful. Aelita just wanted to end that conversation. Hades look at Jeremie with a dark look, but the blond guy didn't saw it, as he was too happy throwing himself flowers for whatever reason. Ulrich just sat down.

"No shit!" Ulrich exclaimed, reacting to what Jeremie just said. "Why?"

"I believe that XANA had transmitted a virus to Aelita so I started to search an antivirus," replied Jeremie. "But thanks to Franz Hopper’s journal…"

"And my analyze that you didn’t care of," Hades sarcastically intervened.

"… I ended up by understanding," Jeremie continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "XANA didn’t transferred anything to Aelita. No, actually, he took something from her."

"Really? And what is it?" Yumi asked.

"That, I’m not exactly sure," Jeremie answered. "It’s a fragment, a part of her. And I located it on Sector Five."

As Aelita was clearly done with that discussion, Hades choose to intervened: "Is it too much if I ask you to shut up to have a quiet breakfast? Plus, we're in the middle of the canteen, and it's like, one of the less intimate place you can found to talk about that, Jeremie."

Jeremie seemed touched by Hades comment, but the bright-red-haired-boy couldn't care less, because he knew he was right.

"What is your problem?" the blond boy asked.

"You are right now, Einstein," Hades declared, putting all of his anger of the last word. He never really called Jeremie Einstein, but when he did, it wasn't a good sign.

Aelita made a small head move, and Hades looked at her. She moved her eyes in a way that expressed 'never mind, but thanks'. Hades frowned in a way that expressed 'are you sure?' and she moved again her eyes to tell 'yeah, don't worry'. Hades made another eyes move to express that he did, in fact, care, and he was interrupt by Jeremie asking: "What are you two doing?"

"You would know if you had siblings," Odd replied, who had five older sisters.

"What do you mean?" asked Ulrich who, just like Jeremie, had no siblings.

"Siblings can communicate without talking," summed up Yumi, who had a little brother. "However, each siblings have their own language."

Silence felt down on the table for a moment.

"Coming back on the fragment," Odd told, "we could go search it this evening, uh? After the end of the year's ball!"

The end year ball. Hades had almost forgot it. He had no idea who he’ll go with. He’ll have to find a girl if he wanted to enter the ball. He found it stupid, to have to be paired with someone -and especially someone of the other gender- to enter, but he wasn’t the one making the rules. He’ll ask Sissi after. He was pretty sure Yumi will go with Ulrich and he couldn’t go with his sister, who will probably go with Jeremie -if he was intelligent enough to shut up. It was something like two months that Hades had arrived on Earth, and he wished that his biggest problem was to find a girl from the end year ball.

"Awesome!" reacted Ulrich to Odd's proposition. "That’ll be our last mission. And after that, it’ll be the well-deserved summer holidays for everyone!"

"That’s out of the question!" Aelita declared.

Only Hades understood her point of view. The rest of the group was surprised, as they didn't understood why she said that. She walked out.

"Next time," Hades told standing up, "imagine being in her shoes before planning for her, or let her makes her own decisions for herself."

And he left too.

The pink-haired-girl just asked him for peace, and for the rest of the gang to leave them alone. Hades agreed, and stayed a little bit away from her.

A few second after, Jeremie, who was apparently stupid enough to still follow Aelita after Hades' advert, went out of the canteen calling her.

"Aelita! Wait!" Einstein called.

"I refuse to put back one feet on Lyoko, that’s over!" she declared, without looking at him. Hades blocked his way, so he couldn't touch her or approach her.

"Why? I mean, what’s going on with you?"

Hades wanted to give him a punch in the nose, but he didn't want any trouble. Plus, it was Aelita’s discussion, and he had no right to talk for her.

"Do you realize that my father has stole me my life by playing sorcerer’s apprentice and the crazy scientist? Because of him, I’m no longer anything or no one," Aelita stated.

"Well, forget that, that’s in the past," Jeremie declared, without any tact.

Hades gave him the 'watch out buddy, that’s my sister you’re messing up with, you’re crossing a line right there, continue on that way and I’ll intervene and it’ll hurt' look. Jeremie didn't even notice.

"We’ll get back your missing part that XANA stole and we’ll shut down the supercomputer. And then you’ll be free," the blond guy declared.

"And what if there’s a problem?" Aelita asked, who was rational on that topic.

She walked a few steps away.

"What if XANA succeed into having my memory and the keys of Lyoko?" she continued, before walking away.

"Hades, don’t follow me please, I want to be alone," she concluded.

"Received loud and clear," answered Hades. "Hope you’ll get better soon!"

When Jeremie understood that he won't approach Aelita, he went back to the canteen to end his breakfast, even if he wasn't hungry anymore.

Hades went also back towards the canteen, just in time to see Sissi asked Ulrich to be her partner for the ball, and Ulrich accepting. He didn’t knew why, but he had hoped that Ulrich would refused -he couldn't compete with Ulrich, and he knew it-, and the fact that he didn't refuse hurt Hades.

He turned his head to see Yumi with some dark-haired-guy, William he thinks. Great. He didn’t really know any other girls. Maybe he’ll try his chance with Laura, the girl he was doing archery with.

He left the place. He needed to refresh his mind. He didn’t know why, but his feet took him to the Hermitage, Franz’s old house. He knew his Mom never really lived there, but he couldn’t help but hope to find something that had been hers.

He was looking at the library in the living room, when he felt his heart stopping. Literally. He collapsed into the floor. No, no, no!

He took out his phone and had just the time to press 'call' to Aelita's number before his vision darkened. His last thought before getting out of the picture was that it was probably a XANA attack, that Aelita was in danger and that he’ll need to be with her.

All was dark. In the beginning, all was dark. There was darkness everywhere.
And then came...

Nothing.

A coffee smell. A strong coffee smell.

And suddenly, a bell like the one that can be found in small shops tingled. The air was fresh and it felt like it was early in the morning. The sun was rising. He didn’t know how he knew it but he did. There was some music, jazzy one.

Hades thought he would be back in his body and expected to be sucked up, but he wasn’t. For whatever reason, that time, he stayed. Maybe that time he was dead for real? What about Aelita? He had to find her! He had to verify that she was safe! He had to…

His look was suddenly attracted by some woman with crimson hair, for whatever reason. He couldn’t see her face. He only knew that she got two earrings, one pinky pearl and one blue pearl. She wore a violin case on her back. The image was blurry, like in a dream, and Hades had no idea who she was or where he was. He couldn’t move.

The women went to the counter to command the attractive black man with a tag name that Hades couldn’t read an apple pie and the blackest coffee he’s got. He smiled, and told her: “On my way milady!”

She chuckled, and that sound was precious to Hades heart. That sound makes him feel alive, like it was regenerating his whole body and soul, and his he could have bottle up this sound to keep it near to his heart, he'd have done it. He wanted to hear more. They began to discuss about the weather, her violin classes, or whatever. They seemed to know each other. Hades grew an interest in their discussion. And then, suddenly, he was sucked back in his body.

It was hard. The floor was hard. And cold. And dusty. Hades slowly opened his eyes.

He was lying on the dusty floor of the Hermitage. He looked at his phone. No text messages. No phone calls. Nobody noticed that he was gone. That thought was terrifying in itself. As soon as his mind was clear, he decided to go to the Fabric, because his attack was due to a XANA attack, right? He called Aelita. She answered his call.

“Aelita! Hi! Are you okay?” he asked, worried.

“Hi Hady. Yes, I am. Don’t worry.”

“Of course I worry! I’m worried about you! You’re my sister! You’re precious to me. What happened? Did XANA attack?”

She felt silent for a moment.

“No,” she finally answered. He voice sounded strange. “But I’ve finally decided that I’ll go search for my fragment.”

“Okay. We could talk about the rest later, if you want to. By the way, I know you’re not the messenger, and I'm very sorry you'll have to be, my sweet adored sister that I'll love to the moon and back whatever could happen, but if Jeremie is still near you, could you remind him that I’m still linked to the supercomputer and so if it’s shut down, I’m still affected?”

“I’ll do it, yeah,” Aelita said.

“Thank you Aelita. I’m on my way to the Fabric. Love you! See you later! Bye!”

“Bye.”

And they hang up the phone.

They were all in the lab.

"That time, it’s the good one," Jeremie said. "We’ll get back Aelita’s missing fragment, and we’ll be finish with XANA for good."

"Did Aelita told you about my little problem?" Hades asked. "I'd very much like not dying. Not in a permanent way, I mean."

"Yes, she told me," Jeremie replied, "and I think I’ll be able to disconnect you from the supercomputer before we shut it down. We could do that right after we got Aelita's fragment back."

"Great!"

"Cool!" completed Odd. "Let’s go then! I’ll lead the dance!"

As they were leaving the room, Jeremie asked them to be careful. Of course they'll be.

Ulrich, Odd and Hades were the first ones who materialized on Lyoko. While Jeremie was materializing the girls and the vehicles, Hades went into the nearest tower to save himself, just in case, and to address a message to himself, in case he’ll die: whatever happen, search for Aelita first!  He knew what they were about to do, so it’ll be enough for him.

They went into Sector Five and deactivated the key to stop the countdown. The ground then opened in front of them into a giant staircase that was sinking into the ground. Odd said it was like a descent into Hell.

“Luckily for you, I’m Hades, god of Hell,” the blue-haired-boy joked. “And hopefully, we’ll end up better than Orpheus and Eurydice.”

Ulrich didn't get it, so Odd and Yumi explained it as they all began to go down the stairs. Hades was hovering and gliding around the stairs. There was a big hole in the center, but since he had no idea what was at the end of it, he didn’t risk jumping in it.

At the end of the stairs, there was a gateway with a luminous bubble at the end of it. Jeremie confirmed that it was Aelita’s missing fragment. Hades didn't sensed anything weird about it. They all ran towards it, until some Creepers began to arrive on the side of the gateway, because of some flying piece of ground.

The fighting began, while Ulrich told Aelita to leave. The Creepers arrived more and more, like a Hydra: kill one and two other ones will appear. Odd was devirtualized.

“Construct a bridge with your power!” Hades told Aelita who didn’t know what to, facing a hole in the gateway.

“If I do so, they’ll be able to follow us!” she argued.

“Fine,” he sighted. “Jump, I’ll cover you.”

“What about you?”

“I can more or less fly, remember? And I’m kinda immortal on Lyoko.”

“Oh yes. That’s right.”

Hades couldn’t believe that they keep forgetting that they get some special abilities on Lyoko. Yumi, Aelita and Ulrich jumped to the other side. Yumi and Ulrich propulsed Aelita who made it to the other side. The other two fell in the hole, and the boy clutched at the edge, gripping Yumi’s hand.

Hades killed three Creepers that were crawling towards them, and jumped to the other side of the hole. He helped Ulrich and Yumi getting up on the gateway. Yumi was devirtualized due to some shoot while she arrived on the ground.

Aelita was running to her missing fragment.
It was a bait. It was a trap.

Ulrich was devirtualized. Hades too, at some point. He regenerated into Lyoko's heart, and arrived back when the Schizophrenia was hurting his sister. He shot it, one time, two times, three times, enough to hurt it and make it go back.

"Take me instead!" he yelled, putting himself between his sister and XANA's beast, holding an arrow in his right hand. "Leave her alone!"

The beast didn't let him tell it two times. The Schizophrenia took him. He almost let the arrow fall but grabbed it stronger. XANA possessed him. It had an avatar!

What XANA hadn't planned was that Hades will use the last part of his free will to kill himself. It wasn't enough to kill XANA, but enough to weaken it.

Hades came back, and tried to revive Aelita, before the Schizophrenia came back. XANA couldn't kill Hades, as it had moved away the ground pieces so the Creeppers couldn't touch him and Mantas wouldn't attack him. He successfully gained her some time, by giving her all his life points and a big part of his memory so she could survive him. He then died. Again.

After Hades regenerate, he had to climb the climb the external wall of the Five Sector's globe.

When Hades arrived in the room where Aelita was, Franz, who had the form of a big light ball, was reviving his favorite child and only daughter, more or less sacrificing himself in the process. 'Good riddance', Hades thought, and wasn't even ashamed to think it.
Everything became darker. XANA had won. He had Lyoko's keys.

Hades fly to his sister, that he hugged to comfort her. She started to cry in his arms and couldn't stopped.
Jeremie took them back to Earth, and they came home, all in a bad mood.

They all (minus Hades) went to the end of the year ball. Aelita went with Jeremie, Yumi went with Ulrich, Odd went with Millie, who wanted to come to film for the school newspaper. Hades didn't came. He had neither a will to go after what just happened and also no girl to go with. He cry himself to sleep that night.

Chapter Text

Saturday afternoon, Hades went to Aelita's room with some white chocolate with strawberry inside. She loved it, and he knew it. He wanted to make sure that she was okay, because she didn't looked fine, but he didn't want to push her outside her comfort zone, so at first, he just asked her how she felt. She said that she was fine but Hades could perfectly see that she wasn't.

"You know," he suddenly said, "after having meeting you and the rest, I did some researches to found out what happened while I was out of the picture. And uhm... I'm sorry for all you've been through. I should have been here."

"Don't worry, it's okay. It's not your fault," Aelita reassured him, understanding more or less what he was referring to.

The last sentence break him, but he tried to ignore it.

"That doesn't mean that it didn't hurt you," Hades gently stated, with a comforting voice. "I really do care about you. Not only just because Franz programmed me to do. And I couldn't help but noticed that you wear long sleeves..."

He didn't end his sentence, nor asked the innuendo question, but she understood what he meant. There was no judgment in his voice, just compassion and empathy, as he really was worried for her. She instinctively grabbed her arms, and slowly rubbed them up and down, as if she was trying to warm herself. As if she was cold. She didn't answer.

"Do you want to talk about how you felt when the supercomputer shut down?" softly asked Hades.

She felt silent for a moment.

"You can say no if you're not comfortable with it," the boy added.

"I felt it," she finally answered. "Every time. I felt my heart stop. I felt myself dying. Most of the time, I didn't have anything to do with it but..."

"But?" softly encouraged Hades, with a bad feeling growing in his chest. He almost knew what she wanted to say but even if it was hard for her, he had to heard it for her mouth.

"The other day..." she began. "It was me. Who shut it down... I thought it was the best solution... I thought... I didn't know it would affect you too... I'm sorry..."

Her anxiety was rising, while tears were coming into her eyes. That subject was hard for her.

"Hey, Hey. Hey. No problem Pinky Pie. I was mainly worried about you to be honest. Do you need or want a hug?" he simply asked.

She nodded, and he hugged her, tightly, but not in a way that would make her feel trapped, in a way that she felt safe in his arms. She then began to cry, releasing the pressure that she was holding on her shoulders. She wasn't pretty or beautiful when she cried. She was ugly crying, but Hades felt that it was a good thing for her, that it was freeing.
She had the power to save the world, but before the rest, she was only a thirteen-years-old-girl. She was too young for that. She was only a teenager. A lost one. One who needed to hear that she was loved, that one was proud of her, and that it wasn't her fault. That she did her best and that one loved her for who she was and not for what she was able to do. And Hades decided to say that to her.

"Hey," he softly began, with a warm and comforting voice that he only have for her. "I can't promise that everything is gonna be okay, but I can promise that I'll do everything in my power to help you get better. I'll do my best to stay with you to protect you and look after you, Pinky Pie. Because you matter to me. Because you're wonderful. Because you're great. And that's why I'm proud of what you accomplished until there. I'm proud of who you are and what you do."

"You only care because you were coded to do it," Aelita cried on his chest, externalizing her fear.

"... No," he replied after a little hesitation. "At first, yes, I did it because I was programmed to. But then, I learned how to feel more and more like a real human, to have human behaviors, to have my own feelings, ideas and opinions. And in the end, I really like you, like a sibling. I was programmed but I'm still alive, you know that Pinky Pie?"

"I'm sorry!" she cried. "I didn't want to hurt you! Please forgive me! I'm sorry!"

"Hey, hey, hey. It's okay Pinky Pie. It's okay," he told her with his warm and comforting voice. "It's okay. It'll be okay. Don't be sorry for that, it's not really important, okay? It doesn't matter, okay? It's only me. It doesn't matter. I don't matter. Only you do. I'm not important. I'm nobody. I'm just a bunch of codes. You're a human being. You matters. I'm proud of you."

"Don't say that Hady!" she exclaimed. "Don't say that you're not important or that you don't matter. You matter! At least to me. I'm happy you're here, I'm happy you're like my brother. Don't say you're not important, because you are. I don't care that you're a bunch of codes, you're my brother! I don't want you to always protect me, you too need protection sometimes, Hady. You're not invincible, you're only you! It's okay to be you, it's okay to cry, and to be sad. It's okay..." she was hugging him, and she was crying.

Hades couldn't even add anything. He was crying on the floor, hiding his face. He was okay with the action of crying, but he didn't want her to see him like that, in such as weak and pathetic position.

"Why did you say these things to me?" he finally asked, when he felt better. "If you're aware of those feelings, why can't you think that way about you?"

"Because... because... because... I don't know," she suddenly realized, stopping crying. She said to him exactly what she wanted to hear.

"By the way," she finally asked, "why do you call me Pinky Pie?"

"Because you have pink hair and for whatever reason you remind me of an apple pie, with a lot of cinnamon," Hades simply replied, as if it was the most natural and normal thing ever.

Aelita smiled. She sometimes was a cinnamon roll.

After a small time of silence, he added: "I'm sorry I have to come back to this, but do you still feel that it would be better if you didn't exist?"

She was saddened and didn't say anything for a small time, before finally dropping: "Sometimes, I feel like the only purpose of my existence is to fight XANA, that I didn't exist for any other reasons. For a very long time, I didn't know who I was, and even if I now know I had a life before, I almost can't remember that time."

"You existed before," he confirmed. "I know it, I was there."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Well, I never went to Earth before the moment Jeremie materialized me, but I knew about you. She told me a lot about you."

She finally asked back a question she asked a long time ago. She already knew the answer, but she needed to hear it from him.

"Who is 'she'?" Aelita questioned, making the quotation marks with her fingers.

"Our mom," Hades smiled. "Anthea," he added, in case she hadn't get it. "She was kind. And her smile was bright. I was happy when she came to see me. She taught me the most of my knowledge. She watched me run and jumped, crawl and dance, talk and sing, she loved my singing. She taught me how to create and how to design. Sometimes, she would create a bubble-world, and we would have somehow an almost normal life. I couldn't go on Earth thought. Franz never wanted me to. Said it would be to hard for his own mourning of their death child. He also said it was impossible to materialize a bunch of codes."

"She seemed great," noticed Aelita, smiling sadly because she didn't remembered her.

"Hey, that's my word," Hades smiled softly. He had a headache, but he couldn't care less at that point.

"And you know," he said seriously, "sometimes, I'm afraid too. Sometimes I ask myself: do I do that because I want to or because I was programmed to? And it's scary to not be sure if you have free will or if you just follow some order they put in your head. That's actually terrifying."

Aelita didn't know what to add to that.

"And you know Pinky Pie... " he began after a moment. "You're not the only one who tried to suppress yourself."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

His eyes seemed to look something far away, that Aelita couldn't see. They didn't fix on something precise.

"Franz was... experimenting on me. Because he wanted to see all my capacities. He... he killed me a lot of times. With a lot of different manners. To see how many things I could survive. And it hurt. A lot. The only thing you can feel on Lyoko is pain. I'm sure you noticed it. And I felt it."

He stopped a little, and breathe.

"Once, he made me fall towards the Digital Sea, to see if I could survive the fall. I used my free will to suppress myself with a lance before touching it. After that, he tried to suppress my free will. But I couldn't let him do that, so he tried to suppress me. Again. But he couldn't do it. So he put me away. Locked me in Lyoko's codes. I was locked down there, and I was hurt. I was alone. He couldn't care less. He wasn't nice to me. He wanted me to stop existing. He only let me out because he was too lazy to re-code some Guardian from scraps. And at the end of the day, I was alone in the dark, and I couldn't even cry for help -you can't cry in Lyoko- and he went back home to see his family. For him, I was just a computer program."

"That's horrible! I'm so sorry you had to live that!"

She hugged him, and Hades didn't get it. He knew it wasn't a normal thing to do, what Franz did to him. But he realized thanks to Aelita's reaction that it was worse than he thought it was.

"Well, it's Franz," Hades stated, holding up his shoulder before releasing it, expressing that, it was normal for him. "After all, it's also his fault you ended up stuck on Lyoko."

"Yeah. Don't tell me about that. Franz is a bad man."

"Not entirely. I know he liked you: he taught you piano. Mom told me."

"Hm. That doesn't erased what he did to you."

"Sure."

They agreed not to tell the others about what they discussed that evening. They also agreed to continue to talk about how they feel, and not to lie to each other.

Chapter Text

Next day was a Sunday, the first day of the summer holidays.

Yumi would go with her family in Bretagne to see some cousin in August, but until then, she'll stay in the quarter.

Ulrich will go to his parent's flat in Paris for the whole summer, but he'll have to have some math classes during the whole summer. Odd will go to his parents' house in July, and with his older sisters and cousins to his grandma's house in Italy in August.

Jeremie would go to his grandparents' house in the Pyrenees Mountain, with his cousins. He wanted to organized that the Stones siblings went in a summer camp near the school for the two holidays summer months. Well, it was half an hour in bike to the school.

However, Odd proposed that they came with him in his house in July or to her grandma's in Italy in August. Jeremie said it was too risked, because in case of an attack, Aelita would be too far from the supercomputer, but Odd argued that everyone needed some holidays, especially Aelita. Plus, he lived only half an hour away from the school, in a big house, with his large family.

And except Yumi, they will all be away for July. Jeremie then asked if Yumi could take Aelita -and Hades- at her home, and Hades asked again about the Hermitage. Jeremie began to consider the idea of legally buying it, with some computer shenanigans that only he knew.
And then it was settled. Aelita and Hades will go to "cousin" Odd's house in July, and in summer camp in August, when Odd would go in Italy to see his family. Hades didn't wanted to go to summer camp, and he would have preferred to spend a whole month on Lyoko, or even in the Hermitage, but Jeremie said it was "not possible" and "too dangerous".

It was weird for Hades to do his packages. Since it was possible to stay at Kadic for the all the holidays except the summer ones, Hades never went away from the boarding school. It has been four months that he was on Earth and that this was his home. He had never slept in another bed. He'll live in another places for two months, and it felt weird.

When he was finished, he went out of his room, closed his door and met Odd who was waiting for him in the corridor. The gang made their holidays goodbye at the breakfast table. Jeremie's father went to search his son earlier in the morning, and so did Ulrich's parents.
They went down to meet Aelita.

Suddenly, Sissi appeared out of nowhere (a janitor's closet?) and pointed Hades, stating: "I want to talk to you. Now. In private."

He accepted, but she had to be fast, the bus will leave in half an hour.

Chapter Text

"Follow me," Sissi declared, "I know a place."

She took Hades to an empty classroom, and closed the door behind him. He went to sat down on a table, near a window. They were on the ground floor, so it was technically possible to get out by some windows, in case he needed to. He hated the feeling of being trapped.

"I know your little secret," she declared.

"Which one?" Hades questioned, very seriously.

What had she discovered? That he wasn't human? That he had a girl's body? That he was older than he pretended to be? Or something about his parents?

"You can stop pretending with me, Pinocchio."

Hades frowned. Pinocchio was a wooden boy who ended up being a real boy. Hades was a bunch of codes who ended up being a boy. He didn't like the parallel that was creating there...

"What do you mean?" Hades asked, frowning and worried. He was panicking inside, but was also tired by the corruption of Lyoko by XANA and its escaping.

"I know you're a girl, you've got a girl's body."

"Well, that's a big shortcut, but whatever. And no, I'm a boy Sissi. How did you discover that I've got a girl's body?"

"I... I have my ways. I'm the one asking the questions here!" she blushed.

"Did you spy on me when I was in the shower?" he frowned.

"No!" she was now blushing to a point that she was almost the same color as Hades' bright red hair.

"I think you have some explanation to do, Sissi."

"You too! You're the one pretending to be a boy, Pinocchio! But I have to admit that you'll hide it well."

She was looking on his chest. He frowned.

"Are you looking on my chest?" he asked

"I'm not!" she said, blushing and looking the ceiling. She clearly was looking that part of his body two seconds before.

"You won't see any boobs, if that's what you're searching. And I'm not pretending Sissi. I AM a boy. I just happened to get a girl's body. I did not choose it. Believe me, if I could, I would have chosen to have a boy's body. So the Pinocchio comparison is actually better than you probably thought it'll be."

Sissi wouldn't believe it. She didn't get it.

"But you were born a girl..."

"No. I was born myself. Humans' newborns are babies, Sissi. A lot of things change for them to turn into adults. Humans are basically like Nicholas' Pokémon, they evolve. "

She considered it. He got a point. She was born a baby and she was now a teenage girl.

"And you didn't answer my question," the boy added. "How did you discover it?"

She seemed embarrassed about it now.

"I won't judge you too hard, I promise," he told her, with a comforting voice -but not the comforting voice which was reserved for Aelita. "And we're alone here, so nobody will hear you."

"You promise that you won't judge?" she hesitated

"Yep. I don't think you're a fully mean girl Sissi. I know you can be rude, but also know you can be really nice sometimes."

She looks like she was getting emotional about what he just said.

"You promised you won't tell anyone and you won't get mad?" she asked

"I promise. On my heart," he declares by putting a hand on his own heart, beating as the same rhythm as Lyoko's heart.

"I was jealous of you," she began. "You entered Ulrich's friend group and I didn't. I know you're Aelita's twin sis- brother and Odd's cousin, but still. I just wanted to be friend with them, but they seem to be linked with some secret I don't know, which causes them to reject me."

"Yeah, that's a fair point. Also, apparently you're rude and mean to them sometimes."

"Them too! But I know I'm not perfect. I just want to be... you know. The best. The main character. That one girl that is not the same, that is different. The one that everybody looks up to, and wants to be friend with. I wanted to be a popular girl."

"Hm," nodded Hades, understanding more or less what she was saying or referring to.

"But I'm not that girl apparently. It seems that I'm the mean girl that nobody likes."

She really seemed sad when she said that. Hades didn't move, but he said: "That's not true. Some people like you."

"Yeah? Who?"

"Well, I do. And I think Nicholas and Hervé do too. And I assume that your father too."

"You do? And Nicholas and Hervé look up to me, they don't like me, they adore me. It fell good but weird some times. And my dad like me, but I hope he would still love my mom."

"Hm. I'd like my father never meet my mom."

"But then you and Aelita wouldn't be born."

"Sometimes I wish... But it's too late now," Hades sadly stated. "But don't change the subject."

"Yesterday evening, I wanted to prank you. I wanted to find something in your room, a journal or whatever, because I wanted to know that secret, that thing that links you all. You weren't there, and I thought it was my chance. I wasn't finding anything when suddenly, Nicholas sent me a text that you were coming back."

Hades remembered crossing paths with Nicholas in the staircase the evening before. The bright-red-hair-boy and the rest of the Lyoko boys didn't think too much about it then, as they were too moved by what just happened, and that it wasn't abnormal to find a boarding student in the boarding school staircase. What wasn't normal was that Nicholas wasn't moving in the staircase, he was just... there. But then, they didn't think about it.

"So I hide in your armoire," continued Sissi. "It wasn't the best hiding place, but it was better than nothing. So I saw you enter your room, and take off your shirt... I saw whatever you had under it and I saw your chest when you took it off..."

She was embarrassed. Hades too, but not for the same reason. She had seen his chest. She had seen his chest, and since he hadn't seen her getting out, she had to wait for him to fall asleep before getting out. Which means that she saw him crying. She saw him crying because of what happened Friday afternoon. Not the part about his father dying, that hadn't really moved him actually. But Aelita was hurt. Aelita almost died. And him too. They both died actually. Him more than her, but still. In the end, he couldn't protect her. He failed. And XANA escaped. That's why he cried.

At this point, he almost even cared when she saw his chest. He was erased three times that day. He took a deep sight.
"Trust no one." had said his mother.

"So? What will you do now?" he finally asks Sissi, who was looking away now.

"Well, I wanted to tell my father that you were a girl disguised as a boy but... The way you cried... It had me wondering. What happened Hades?" she asked, and her voice softened.

Hades didn't answer. He had lost his home in one way. Now, XANA would be unstoppable, or hardly. He had fought almost all his life against it, and now it was free. He had lost. He looked away. He was shameful. He wasn't able to do the only mission which was given to him: protect Aelita and Lyoko. He tried to save them both, or at least Aelita, but he couldn't... He failed miserably. He was a failure. Franz was right.

"I failed," he just said, lowering his voice and his eyes.

"What did you fail?" mumble Sissi, listening

'My mission and my life.' he wanted to say.

"I can't tell you," he simply answered.

"Why?"

"I'm sorry. I can't tell you."

She seemed about to explode in anger, but suddenly she calmed down. Hades frown, suspicious. What was she up to?

"Is it linked to why you disappear for some time, all of you?"

"Yes."

"But you know that if I was part of the group, I could help you?"

"Sissi. Quit it. I know you want to be friend with us, I get it. But believe me. Our secret isn't worth it. You won't feel better after learning it. You don't need that on your shoulder. I can be your friend if you want me to be. But I can't betray my friends and family because you ask me to, just so you'll be part of the band."

"Really?"

"Uh yeah? I mean, I'm not the one deciding if you can join or not the whole friend group, but I know you're my friend, Sissi."

"I am?"

" Yeah? I thought you knew it? But it won't guarantee you to know our secret, you know that?"

"... Yeah. I know. Also uhm. Hades?"

She was looking away, embarrassed.

"Yeah?"

“I uh. I saw Millie’ and Tamiya’s interview and uhm…”

She adds nothing but gets out of her back pocket a pot of blue hair dying product. Hades was touched by that gesture. He went to Sissi who put the pot in his hands. He was grateful and thanked her. She slightly blush and said it was nothing.

"I uh, I have to go. The bus, you know."

"Oh. Yes, the bus!"

"But we could stay in touch if you want. After all, I've got your number."

"Yeah. I'll be in Spain in August, so I'm not sure the phone will pass. But uh, you could write me?"

"Okay. Great for you! Yeah, sure? I'll send you Odd's address, we'll stay at his home for the summer."

"You don't go back to Canada? To see your family?"

"It's... it's complicated."

"Okay."

Before 11am, Odd, Aelita and Hades went to the bus station, to take a bus. Once they were in there, Odd and Aelita next to each other and Hades behind them, Odd let out of his bag Kiwi, his dog, and began to talk about his family. His father was an opera singer and his mother a writer, and he had five older sisters: Adele, Elizabeth, Marie, Pauline and Louise.

He then asked what did Sissi wanted. Hades told them she wanted to give him “blue dying hair product” and also that she found out about being him being trans. Not the "how Sissi found it out", the "she knows" part. Aelita noticed out loud that Sissi seemed to like him and Hades nodded, too happy to be able to gain back his blue hair to think to anything else.

Chapter Text

Half and hour later, they arrived at Odd's station. They walked for ten-ish minutes, and they arrived in front of a big house.

"Welcome to the Della Robbia house!" Odd said.

He entered and yelled: "I'm home!"

"Hi Odd! We're in the dinning room!"

The house was nothing like the Hermitage, it was much more alive. They let their packages in the entry, took off their shoes, and went in the dinning room, where three empty chair were waiting for them.

They arrived in a big room, with a lot of people. Seven, actually. They all introduced themselves while Hades, Aelita and Odd where sitting down. At the end of the table were Odd's parents, Roger and Margaret, who ask the Stones siblings to call them by their name and to talk to them in a familiar and colloquial way. No formality between them, they said.

Then, Odd's five elder sisters introduced themselves, in the order of their age: the brown-haired with glasses was Adele, the dark-haired wearing alternative clothes was "Liz", the one with braces who took their pictures was Marie, and her twin sister Pauline was wearing a pair of overalls. Louise, who was only half and a year older than Odd, was wearing a tutu, as she just went out of her dance class. They were all dark or brown-haired.

Aelita and Hades then introduced themselves as the Stones siblings -and they failed to mention the part where Odd was theoretically their cousin.
Odd's mother then asked them what they parents were doing, in like, what was they job. Aelita froze and look down. Hades simply stop to eat his salad to answer.

"Our mother disappeared a long time ago, and we know that she was kidnapped. We didn't found her. Yet. And our father died recently. I personally thought he wasn't a good man."

The whole Della Robbia -minus Odd- was shocked by what Hades just said in a such detached voice.

"Oh, and also," the bright-red-haired-boy said, "since our father was a toxic man, we don't have any other family link. That's why we're here today. Thanks to let us stay by the way. Your salad is great. Very uh... tasty."

The parent began to talk among them in Italian, and all the sisters came with their own comments, before asked them something in Italian.

Hades and Aelita didn't understand Italian the slightest, but thanks to them being French and having Latin classes, they were able to understand more or less what the conversation was about: them.

Basically, the Della Robbia family, being some variant of the Weasley family, was wondering if the twins could stay in the house for the whole summer, like some cousins.

The house was so big that all of the Della Robbia children had their own bedroom. Aelita and Hades ended up sharing the guests room.
There was a tree in the garden, and in it, there was a cabin. Hades liked to meditating there. He listen to "Adiemus" on his Ipod on repeat while doing so.

When it was shower time, Hades got back his blue hair.

He then was surprised to heard the mother yelling in the staircase: "Mangiamo!!"

"Stiamo arrivando!" answered some voice somewhere.

"Did they yell all the time?" Aelita asked Odd.

She was walking down the stairs while Hades and Odd where going downstairs sliding like on a toboggan on the banister of the stairs.

"Of course they yell all around the house, we're Italians, Aeltia! And they don't yell all the time, sometimes they sang!"

Later on the evening, he talk about that with Aelita, who also was overwhelmed by all those people so strongly alive. They weren't normal, but it was that which made them exceptional and so great, in the blue-haired-boy opinion.

The next morning, Hades and Aelita were woke up by some trumpet sound. Both panicked, thinking it was an alarm, but it was just Roger waking up the household, as they discovered at the breakfast.

Then, for no other reason, the whole house became a part of some musical comedy or a Disney movie, as the father began to sang on some opera air that it was time to wake up. A heavy voice yelled back in the most metal way that it wasn't, and it was too early. The mother sang la-la-la. Some pop voice intervened for asking who had took all the hot water, and a voice out-of-tone answered that it was "Odd the Magnific". Aelita and Hades burst out laughing. Odd arrived at this exact moment, and he was vexed.

"That's why I asked to go to the boarding school," he simply said on the tone of confidence. "My house is a musical."

"Is it like that every morning?" Aelita asked, amazed.

Odd gave her the 'don't ask please' look, while one of his sister, Pauline -or maybe it was Marie?- confirmed.

Most of the Della Robbia arrived in the dinning room singing some harmonies, and Aelita, in the mood, began to harmonize with them. They all looked happy and look at Hades, who made some had move: "Not even in your dreams. I can't sing properly and I don't want to break your windows with my voice. I'm not good at singing. I'm only good at 'slam'."

"Slam?" asked Aelita, curious

"It's like rap, but without music. Poetry but faster. Rhythm, more than you would dream for. There's always a refrain, a tune. It's kinda underground to be honest. I hope one day it'll be popular."

"Could you show us some example?"

"Right there, right now? Without coffee? Okay... Uhm. Give me a second."

He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. In his mind, he was in the Forest Sector.

"Seul dans une foule, foulé par les gens comme par les sentiments,
Ment aux autres comme tu t'mens à toi-même,
Même le vent tu lui mens, menthe à l'eau en terrasse,
terrassé par la peur, peur du vide et des gens, j'attends.
Seul dans une foule.
L'attente se fait en silence, comme le silence autour de moi, silence vide ou rempli de mots.
Je cherche les tiens, mais ils ne viennent pas.
Mes mots sont coupants, les tiens sont inexistants.
J'aimerai te parler, mais je suis muet, et tu reste sourde à mes appels.
Incommunicabilité. C'est ça l'mot clé.
Seul dans une foule.
J'ai vingt-et-un ans, j'en ai sept, j'en ai treize, quatre-vingt deux, jeune ou vieux, t'est toujours pas là, tu r'viens pas. Seul dans la foule. Seul. Manque. Manque d'espoir, manque de rêve, manque d'humanité. Manque de société. J'ai tant rêvé qu'mes rêves se sont échappés, effacés, délavés, détraqués, jusqu'à en devenir des cauchemars.
Seul dans la foule.
La noirceur m'envahit, le monde se tait, je perds la clef, retour à l'océan, seul, au fond de l'espace, comme une étoile perdue loin d'son soleil. J'me meurs, je m'éteins, et toi tu brilles loin de moi. D'étoile en étoile, Petit Prince perdu, je me transferts, je me transforme, étoile filante dans un corps d'homme, je reprends le souffle, je reprends le pas, je reprends la vie sans toi. La vie s'arrête, elle s'accélère, elle recommence, et le cœur bim bam bat, car si seul dans la foule je suis, seul je ne suis pas."

"Wow," was the only said that Odd's mother said.

Hades open his eyes. He had forgotten they were there. He had written this during some nights he couldn't sleep. He couldn't have believe he'll actually perform it or that people would like it, because that what seemed to have happened. Marie had filmed him.

"Well, I thought you would give us an artist, not that you'll do us a show!" Roger commented. "You're very talented young boy!"
"Thanks," Hades felt his face warm up. He (rightly) assumed he was blushing.
Marie took a picture of him.

The air was getting hotter and hotter. There was the most hot heatwave since a very long time, experts declared.
The teenagers went to the quarter swimming pool, where the pool lady knew them as "the Della Robbia tribe". She was shocked that there were more of them. The sisters said it was Aelita and Hades, some cousins. Aelita and Hades were now part of the Della Robbia family and experience.
They spend some good times in the swimming pool.

Liz and Marie played respectively guitar and drums in the garage, which was one of the freshest place of the house during the heat waves. Aelita joined them in the piano and the sing. After all, her singing abilities had been recognized by the Subdigitals. Odd filmed the small concert and Hades was the emotional support guy who cheered them up loudly. He was a whole crowd.
Louise went in the garage, open the freezer and told them that the cherry ice cream that she had made was now well froze so they could eat it. They all cheered to that, and Liz hit the cymbals to shows her joy.

They did a barbecue one evening, which ended up in a vigil around the campfire. Marie took a lot of pictures that she developed and put on some mechanic tree that Pauline build: the branched slowly turned to show different pictures. Hades and Aelita were happy to be here, to experience having cousins and a large family.

Aelita called Jeremie almost every evening, before or after the evening meal. During these time periods, the other teenagers played board games together. Hades liked it, even if he rarely lose.

Hades began to draw everything that was around him. He loved drawing and designing. He especially loved to draw and design in 3D landscapes. Hades began to create a small game, inspired by Lyoko. Odd proposed to beta-test it and Hades gladly accepted.

On the afternoon of Saturday June 28th, Odd, Liz and Marie took Hades to Paris Gay Pride. Hades had never saw so many persons like him. He saw Sacha from the LGBTea and went to salute them. He thought he saw Jenny, a Kadic supervisor, but he wasn't sure.

During some August afternoon, the Della Robbia tribe went to see some movie. Well, they went to see more than one actually, both because some of Odd's siblings wanted to see some movies and because the theater was air-conditioned (and with the current heatwave they were facing, it was something they enjoyed). They went to see almost every movie that was proposed to be seen. They had a good time.

Chapter Text

The vacations were pretty calm, as for XANA's activity. Maybe too calm.

On the afternoon of Monday September 1st, Odd, Aelita and Hades went back to the boarding schools. The back-to-school was only the next day, but the boarders were allowed to arrive one day prior it, during the afternoon. They saw some teachers in the corridors, as their back-to-school was that day.

Odd and the Stone siblings verified at the board in the hall of the boarding school: they had the same rooms. They went to install their stuff.
Hades stopped a moment before his own door. He felt a weird feeling in his chest. It was like... Coming to a place you cherish after a long time. It was like coming home.

He opened the door. Nothing has changed. Nothing had moved. His room was still there, the same way as he left it, almost two months ago. There was some dust particles floating in the air, almost shining in the twilight sun ray that was coming through the window. Hades couldn't help but feel happy to see it. It felt good. It felt home.

He reinstalled his stuffs, put his clothes in his armoire and put the pictures Marie gave him on his wall. As he was sticking one of them, there was a knock on his door.

"Enter!" Hades said loudly, fighting with a piece of tape.

The door was opened by Odd.

"Time to eat!" the blond said.

Hades smiled and nodded. He let down the annoying piece of tape half hanging on the wall and the pictures on his bed. He'll finish that later.

There wasn't that many students in the canteen that evening, only a few boarders. Most of them will arrive the next day. It was Jeremie and Ulrich's case. Sissi was there, alone. Hervé and Nicholas would probably arrive the next day too. Hades asked Odd and Aelita if they wanted to eat with her, and if Sissi if she would agreed.

Something you have to know, if you don't already: Hades is bad at reading social clues. Like, very bad. He doesn't understand well facial expressions, so he ignore them most of the time, as they are irrelevant for him. At that precise moment, Odd, Aelita and Sissi's face express that they had very few will to eat all together but had no idea how to said it to Hades without hurting his feelings. So they all ended up eating together.

Sissi complimented Hades about his blue hair, saying he fitted him well. It made him smile. Aelita and Odd had never saw him smiled like that. They both looked at each other with a knowing smile.

Finally, the diner was just Sissi telling her holidays to Hades, featuring Odd's side eyes and sarcastic comments, and Aelita rolling her eyes. To be honest, when Odd and Aelita actually forgot that Sissi was Sissi, the discussion went well.

At some point, Sissi lost the words she wanted to said, so she just began to speak Spanish. The only one who understand -slightly- what she was saying was Odd -who only understood because he spoke Italian. Hades, despite not understood anything, seemed passionate about what she was saying. He nodded sometimes, when he felt it was the right time. He was fascinated by the way she seemed passionate about what she was saying, about how her look soften when she talked about her vacation with her mother's family.

Aelita did gave him an amused look when they parted. Hades had just bow down good night to Sissi. He hadn't kissed her hand, but it was obvious -except for Hades and her apparently- that she was moved and pleased by Hades way of acting.

The next day, September 2nd, the whole Lyoko gang reunited at the Fabric for the first time since June. They were happy to see each others. They told each others what they did in their vacations, before Jeremie changed the subject to talk about the elephant in the room, the subject they were all more or less conscientiously avoiding. Jeremie talked about XANA. It didn't attacked during the summer. It was planning something, it was obvious, but what?

Jeremie has thought about it all summer long. Hades too, but not as much as Jeremie -to be honest, Hades also thought about others things. The blond had even developed an updated version of the Superscan which would allows him to track XANA around the world through the internet.

On these good words, they parted. The boarder students decided to go back to the boarding school to finish to install themselves. On the way, Yumi told Ulrich she wanted to have a private conversation with him. Hades couldn't care less -he wasn't the one Yumi wanted to talked to after all. The others (rightly) thought it was about their (ambiguous) relationship.

They had their timetable/ schedule just before lunch. And if, as the previous year, Jeremie, Ulrich and Aelita were in the same class, both Odd and Hades were together in another class. Odd was flabbergasted, and very fast rose the argument that it could pose a problem when organizing counterattacks against XANA. Odd decided to go to see the principal to rearrange his schedule, and dragged Hades with him.

Odd found out that the request about him having a different schedule between his and his friend is due to Jim, as he found Odd disruptive. And about Hades, the director wanted to apply a new rule. As Hades and Aelita were the first twins of the school, he and the administration team decided to not put twins siblings in the same class, to facilitate the teachers' lives.

"But my friends are in the other class..." Hades noted sadly.

"You could see them outside the classrooms," the principal answered.

At the same time, the voice of Sissi was heard. She was complaining about something and entered the room.

"Daddy, I want to change class, with Nicholas, Hervé and Ulrich!"

"What do you mean?" her father asked, confused.

"Hades isn't in my class!"

"Who?"

"Me," Hades said, making a small hand move.

"Ah, Alexander. Sissi, I can't change the class of four people just because you want me to."

"Mom would have done it!" Sissi argued back, trying to blackmail her dad.

"Don't bring your mom in this!"

"I know you never loved me!"

"This has nothing to do with the conversation!"

"This has everything to do with the conversation Daddy!"

The tone rose up, and instinctively, Hades straighten and looked down, like the perfect soldier his father trained him to be. He couldn't help but slightly shaken. His breath became erratic while trying to be the less noticeable possible. If he didn't move, they wouldn't notice him. If they thought he was listening, that he was the perfect soldier he was trained to be, then the shouting will stop.

He wanted to curl up on himself in a ball, to put his hands on his ears and to cry, but if couldn't move. He had to stay still, he must stay still. The sound was blurry around him. Stay still. Anxiety rose up in his chest. He couldn't move. He must not move.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and reflexively, he took a step back, protecting his chest and head with his arms.

Then, he realized what was happening. It was just Odd. They were in the director's office. And both the director and his daughter were looking at him. They were... worried? No, they couldn't be, could they? People weren't worried for him, could they? Hades often forget that people could be worried for him. He had no idea what to do or how to breath. He was panicking.

"Hades?" he heard Sissi's voice said, for it seemed to him far far away. "Are you okay?"

It was the most laughable thing he heard that day. He exploded of laughter. And then he started to cry. He didn't even know why he was crying. But he was. They were all concerned in the room, and nobody knew what to do.

Until Sissi took Hades' hand. She seemed to have act naturally, and having no idea why she did that. But she did. And it seemed to help. Hades closed his eyes. And concentrated on Sissi's breathe.
Inspire. One, two, three, four.
Expire. Four, three, two, one.
His breathe calmed down. He opened his eyes again, only to drown in Sissi's brown eyes. She seemed to be worried. He couldn't even imagine her being worried about him.

"Do you feel better?" she asked.

He nodded. He didn't felt like talking. Because talking was hard.

Long story short: Hades was finally put back in the same class as Sissi -and Aelita and the rest. The director tried to change Aelita, but Jeremie intervened and finally, all of them were still in the same class.

Sissi then took Hades to her room to try some nail polish. He had a weird feeling in her heart, but had no idea what it was. Sissi's cousin bought her a new nail polish for her birthday, and she wanted Hades to give her his opinion about it.

When Hades entered Sissi's room, he noticed a new poster in her room, with a woman rapper called Diam's and her single "Brut de femme". Sissi noticed Hades curious look.

"I'm not usually into rap," she explained, "but her words talk to me."

Hades was interested. Sissi put the CD on.

During the fifth song, Hades' phone rang. It was Aelita. He frowned and pick up. Sissi paused the music.

The Superscan had detected XANA's presence somewhere in North America, and Jeremie's scan found a lot of monsters have congregated in the chamber of Sector Five. Hades felt like he was falling. He already know. That was his weird feeling. He finally got it. XANA was about to attacks the Heart's room. He excused himself to Sissi, promised her he'll come back after the emergency he had to face, to listen to the end of the CD.

Hades asked to be one of the first to be virtualized, with Aelita and Yumi, so he had the opportunity to save himself while Jeremie was virtualizing the others.

On the edge of the Ice Sector, Odd revealed that he found out that Jim played in an obscure 1970's movie called "Paco, The King Of Disco", that he got a copy of it on a DVD and attempted to blackmail Jim into changing his schedule.

The group pointed out that blackmailing somebody else was a bad idea, but Odd didn't seemed to care at all of what they think. He defended his action by saying that the ends justify the means.

Jeremie activated the Transport Orb, sending the five of them into Sector Five. Hades didn't particularly like said Orb, but it was not as bad as Odd who, as usual, wanted to vomit. Hades didn't wait, he was in the first line, ready to go. Jeremie didn't even have to guide them, Hades knew where to go.

As the enter the Core Zone, a 6-minute countdown began. Hades felt an ache in his chest, and knelt due to the pain.

"Are you okay?" Yumi asked, while Aelita was traversing the uneven floor of the room to reach the key on the opposite wall.

"Yeah," Hades said, but he couldn't hide a pic of pain on his face.

"You're sure?"

"The heart is attacked," he managed to said, teeth clenched.

"Can you feel it?" Ulrich asked.

Hades nodded slightly. Fuck, it hurt! Why pain was the only thing that can be felt on Lyoko?!

The key was activated, so the floor cleared itself and the group accessed the Celestial Dome. Jeremie materialized their vehicles and the Mantas arrived. Hades, who was weaken by the attack of the Heart, went behind Ulrich, and hold him tightly. Hades had no envy to fall. The Mantas didn't attacked Ulrich, as he was with Hades, the "Manta's friend".

They finally all arrived in the Heart Room. On top of it, hovering in the center, there was a sort of blue ball. Each time a monster shot it, Hades flinched. They understood it was Lyoko's Heart. Hades' heart. If XANA destroys it, Lyoko and Hades will disappear. Forever. They must protect it, they had to do it.

Hades knew he should have down something to protect the Heart, but he was too weak, too slow. His vision and hear were blurry. He had to crouch down for a moment, while the other went to protect the Heart.

He barely noticed Yumi and Odd getting dematerialized. And then, he was hit by the energy of despair. He straighten his chest, armed his bow, tried to target with the blurry sound and vision, took a deep breath and... he shoot one of XANA's monster. Well, towards it. It hit it, but didn't killed it.

He armed his bow again. He couldn't shot. A protection field of the Heart was just destroyed, letting the Heart almost defenseless. Ulrich was devirutalized. Hades was panting. He had to go up there, he had to protect the Heart, it was his mission, he hat to do it... If he didn't do it, Lyoko will disappear... Everything his mom worked so hard for will disappear. He will disappear.

And at the second he realized that, he saw Aelita's face in his mind. He needed to live. For her. She had already lost enough people. She couldn't lose him. He couldn't do that to her. So he put himself together to arm his bow again, and, using almost all of his remaining energy, he shoot a last time toward XANA last monster in the room, a Creeper.

He missed it, but he never knew that. He had fainted on the ground. He had almost no life point remaining, and the tiniest hit would have killed him.

He didn't saw Aelia using an Energy Field, killing the last Creeper, saving the Core and being devirtualized in the process.

He didn't saw Jeremie panicking for Aelita's devirtualization, or the absolute relief the blond boy felt when the scanner activated for someone's return on Earth.

He didn't saw Jeremie running to the scanner room to assure that Aelita was safe and sound. She was. Since she was no longer linked to the Supercomputer -she has no longer any Lyoko Key and had regain all her "humanness" with her human memories-, she didn't needed the "Code Earth" program anymore to get back on Earth.

He didn't hear Aelita commenting about that discovery that it was very useful since XANA wants to destroy Lyoko now.

He didn't hear them starting to wonder where he was and what happened to him.

He did hear something at some point. A voice. A voice that was calling him.
He felt that he was on his back. Someone was shaking him. The sound was still blurry, but less and less.
He saw something, someone. His vision was slowly returning.

"Jeremie?" he asked, unsure of what he was seeing.

"He's awake!" Jeremie stated.

All was blurry for Hades. He had only one certitude: the Heart was safe. And for an obscure reason, he was regaining life points.

He slowly came back to his senses, and noticed that Jeremie had a hand on his shoulder. That Jeremie was in Lyoko.

"What the -" he started, frowning. He didn't finished his sentence. Jeremie still get it.

"All the others had already been materialized once today."

"Oh. Yeah. Right. Two questions. One. Are you healing me?"

"Yeah," Jeremie confirmed. "That's my power. I'm only good as a support."

"Disagree. Two: Is that Fantomette's costume?"

Jeremie blushed.

"You know her?"

"Mom was a big fan. She read me all her stories when I was little. She also told me it was the first book she made Aelita read. So, yeah, I know it."

"Really? That was one of my first too! It was on the shelves on my grandparents house where I spend all my summer and... Anyway. Since you're better now, we can go to a tower to be devirtualized."

"Works for me," the blue-hair-boy nodded while standing up.

They returned safe and sound on Earth. Jeremie told Hades that he'll work on a program to separate him from Lyoko. It was now one of his priority.

On the evening lunch, Odd affirmed happily that everything was resolved and that he will have the same schedule as his friends. They all cheered.

Chapter Text

Summer break and heatwaves hadn't stopped Jeremie for searching and working on a way to sent the Lyoko Warriors to the wild internet, but hadn't found anything yet. He had contacted Hades during the holidays to know if the boy who was once the Guardian knew something, but Hades didn't. He had never had to face something like that before and was not program to. However, he had helped Jeremie as far as he could, by backing him up on his researches.

"It hurts to admit it," Hades had said, "but maybe we'll find something in Franz's notes? Or, you know, in whatever he left behind him? In his journal or something?"

Jeremie had agree, and was kind enough to not ask Hades to watch Franz's journal, as he knew the blue-haired-boy wasn't comfortable around the image of Franz. They had still worked on that, while attempting school.

On Wednesday September 10th, 2003, as every Wednesday in France, there was the release on the new movies of the week. And that day, a German movie called "Good Bye, Lenin!" came out.

Kadic's German teacher took the German students to see it in the theater, and that's how Jeremie, Aelita, Hades and Ulrich went to the theater on Saturday 13th. Ulrich wasn't good in German, and sadly for him, the movie was in German with French subtitles. And he had to watch it entirely, as there was no XANA attacks during the whole movie, nor the afternoon.

Chapter Text

For the first time in ages, they had a full week without any attacks of XANA, which was 'both great and not great', as Hades depicted it: great, as they could experience the true teenage school experience, and not great, because knowing XANA, it was planning something. What? They didn't know. But it wasn't good. It frustrated Hades so much that he missed the center of the target in his archery class, which annoyed him even more.

A few days after being back to school, here was the election of the class representative. Unsurprisingly, the heads of the class, Jeremie and Hervé, ran for it. More surprisingly, Odd did too. And he had good arguments (which were basically: "the heads of the class don't understand the common students' problems, I can").

Before Jeremie can say anything about his program for the year, he was notified of a XANA's attack by Yumi, who was facing the consequences of the attack -aka her whole class being possessed by the Artificial Intelligence. The blond pretends that he had forgot his program notes in his room, so asked to go search it and went away. Then, all the gang use a variation of "I'm gonna go help him", "I have to observe my rival" (Odd) or "I'm gonna assure that they don't fight" (Ulrich) to also get out.

Hades sometimes wonder how all the teachers let them going away so many times for so long with such bad excuses. But most of the time, he didn't even thought about it, as the rest of the band probably do.

They split up, Ulrich going to the forest to help Yumi, while Jeremie, Odd, Aelita and Hades went to the Fabric.

"The activate tower is in the Forest," Jeremie stated as he was beginning the procedures. "I'm virtualising you as close as I can."

"Arschlor!" Hades exclaimed under his breath.

"What?" Odd asked, as he was the only one who didn't understood -again, he did Italian, not German.

Jeremie hadn't hear him, as there was no mic in the Scanners Room, but Odd and Aelita did, and neither her or Hades took the time to translate it to him.

Once they were on Lyoko, it was obvious that Hades was pissed. The first attack in two months and it was the Forest, his favorite sector. Of course it was the Forest, it had to be the forest! It was highly symbolical he guessed: after all, the Forest was the first sector -after the Fifth- that her mother had coded and created.

He was so pissed off that he didn't pay any attention to Jeremie talking about the tower, or him materializing Odd's Overboard. Jeremie didn't materialize any vehicle for Hades, as he know that the virtual boy enjoyed more flying with his own wings.

He was so pissed off that he didn't realized until he was confronting them that XANA had send six Tarentulas. And then, it hit him. He needed to stop being being that angry. He could wait until later. Now, he had a mission. A job to do. His anger and temperament could wait. Being human had made him weaker. Before, he would just have done what he was programmed to, but now, he had feelings, he felt feelings, and it made him weak.

He forced himself to took deep breathes, and to reconnect himself with the reality of the situation. Odd and Jeremie were making silly jokes among them.

The moment he came back to his senses was also the moment when Aelita was touched by a Tarentula's shot. Hades manage to not see red, and instead shot dead one of the Tarentulas. Odd did the same.

Odd liked ridding his Overboard, as he liked to ride his skateboard. He had just forgotten that, since she was injured, Aelita wasn't able to grab him as tight as she may have wanted to. So she felt. Hades didn't even think. His bow felt on the ground, but he couldn't care less, as he dive to grab Aelita. He cushion her fall.

The four remaining Tarentulas were approaching. Without his bow, Hades could only fire his arrows by hand, as if it were spears. It was less precise, but he still manage to kill one beast, using two arrows.

"Run to the tower!" He yelled to Aelita, who created herself a way with her power/ energy fields, while Hades was grabbing his bow to shoot the remaining beasts.

"Let's take them out!" Odd stated to Hades.

"Yup," the virtual boy answered, without making any jokes about a diner first, or whatever he could have said, as they all know about Odd's romantic life -that would have been Ulrich's job.

Suddenly, the Scyphozoa was there. Hidden behind the tower. Hades hated himself. How could he had not be able to feel it? He should have been able to feel it! Why couldn't he?!

Also, why would the Scyphozoa be there?

Better safe than sorry, Aelita ran away from it. Or tried to, as Odd and Hades were busy killing Tarentulas. To be fair, Hades was clearly distracted by Aelita being attacked and therefore his shoots were less straight.

"Scheiss drauf, I'm gonna help her," he finally told Odd. Aelita was more important, and Odd could manage the two remaining Tarentulas, right?

Odd nodded, and Hades glided to Aelita, just before she was grabbed by the Scyphozoa. It was the second time it happened. But unlike the first time around, Hades couldn't do anything. He felt the lose of control. He couldn't even voice it to the rest of the team. He couldn't even move. He was now prisoner of his own body. He felt falling on the ground. Aelita coming towards him to see how it was.

"Kill... me..." was all he was able to say. But she couldn't do it.

XANA took the control of Hades' body, and made it go to a way tower. Odd and Aelita had to stop him.

Odd armed his fist, ready to fire, but Aelita stopped him, grabbing his wrist (?), exclaiming: "No!"

"He can come back!" Odd stated. "If he's erased, he'll come back in Lyoko's Heart, he said it himself, remember?"

"I know, but I don't think he saved himself since before the summer!"

Odd realized what it meant: If he made Hades lose all his life point, the virtual boy's last save will be the one he made before they went to search what they thought was Aelita's lost fragment. He won't remember the two summer months, or anything else. Odd couldn't shot at him. He had to find another solution.

"Go deactivate the tower!" he said to Aelita, "I'll get him."

She nodded and began to run to the tower, while Odd was running behind Hades.

It wasn't enough. Aelita managed to deactivate the tower at the same moment Hades entered the way tower.

Hades wanted to yell. To kick XANA, to make him out of his body. But he was feeling numb, so numb. And tired... He wasn't supposed to feel tired on Lyoko, but he was. He was feeling so weak... Maybe he'll take a short nap...

NO. He had to fight. He had to stay awake. Not to fall asleep. He had watch that medical show with one of Odd's sister. He couldn't remember her name. He couldn't even remember his own name at that moment. Only a few things. A few feelings. Diverse feelings. Not only pain. Pain is the only feeling that one can feel on Lyoko.

He had to move, to use every fiber of his free will to not being possessed. But the worse was happening: XANA was typing the "Code XANA" on the tower.

Hades had nightmare of his moment. But never, ever, would have he thought that XANA would have possess his body to delete and destroy the Forest territory.

He had no idea if it was the end for him. Probably, because there was no way that now that he had his body, XANA would let go of it. It finally had an avatar. But now, would it really need it?

Jeremie had devirtualized manually Odd and Aelita back to Earth. Ulrich had took back William to his detention room. Yumi had already gaslight her class into thinking nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

But something had, indeed, happened. The Forest territory didn't exist anymore. And Hades was taken by XANA. It will probably intent to destroy the integrity of Lyoko, to avoid them to stop it doing whatever it wants to do.

At the dinner, Sissi came towards the table of the Lyoko Warriors who weren't in a good mood. They thought it was about the elections: it was well known that she had asked to Hervé to present himself because she couldn't, as she was the director's daughter. But before anyone can tell her to back off, she asked: "Do you know where Hades is? He doesn't respond to his phone."

And she sounded... worried. The gang's mood darkened even more.

"He's gone," Aelita said. And she tried her best not to cry.

"Oh. He hadn't told me he'll leave. Do you know how he is and when he'll come back?"

"No," Odd stated, now pissed off. "Now, back off Sissi."

"Hey, he's my friend too, I'll let you know!"

"Sure, whatever."

The next day, Odd is elected as class representative because Jeremie decided to drop his candidacy in order to focus on finding a way to virtualize the group directly into Sector Five, and to find a way to tack Hades back.

Chapter Text

Hades was battling inside his own head, his own body, to take back its control. Fighting XANA with a bow and arrows was a thing, fighting it mentally to get back the control and possession of his own body was something else. Something he'd have like to never experience. Like, never ever.

That would have avoid him to destroy his favorite sector, the Forest. And to be on his way to destroy the mountain sector.

The scary thing is that it almost worked perfectly: XANA had almost succeeded into trapping the Lyoko Warriors and to stop them to intervene. Something with rats and food, if Hades had keep up with XANA's actions. To be fair, he was fighting to take back the control of his body and to not be erased out, the rest was secondary for now.

He had no clues what the body was doing. He saw pink.

Wait. Pink? As in 'Pinky Pie' pink? Aelita?!

But he was shut down immediately after that.

The mantas were singing. Or he thought they were.

Digital Sea was rising. Or has been? Time didn't make sense. Not anymore.

Mountain.

Why was he thinking about that? Fight. Fight. What? Why? Who? He didn't get it. Pain. Pain was the only thing he can feel on Lyoko, and paradoxically, what made him feel weak, human.

Someone had injured him, and even XANA was surprised that someone attacked and hit Hades' body.

Hades saw the light. And with it, life, freedom. He knew it won't be long. He was in the Fifth sector. Facing Aelita and Odd. The time seemed to have stop.

"Are you okay?" Hades asked to Aelita. It has been in his mind during all this time.

"Hady?" Aelita asked, unsure.

"We don't... I don't have a lot of time," he stated, so they shut up to let him talk. " I don't know its plans. I'm fighting for control. It wants to destroy all of Lyoko so you won't be able to stop him. It doesn't let me see what it wants. I don't know if it'll have control of my body if I regenerate, if it puts something in me or-"

But he couldn't finish his sentence. XANA had took the control back.

Time passed, or Hades supposed it did. He had no way of knowing. He was still trying to have back the control. And suddenly, he had it.

What?

He had the control on his own body? What? Was it a trap? Had he succeeded into taking back his body? Or had XANA gave it back to him, because he didn't needed him anymore? Hades had no idea.

He was in a tower. He ran some tests, to see if XANA had put some virus or any similar stuff inside him, or if it had took something from him. He didn't found anything. Which didn't mean there was nothing, but only that he found nothing.

He contacted Aelita, and then, Jeremie. He ran some tests and send Odd, Ulrich and Yumi on Lyoko to meet Hades.

And it was their first meeting all over again, but in the desert. Hades hated the desert. But he hated more to see the defiance in his friends eyes. He put his bow and all the arrows from his quiver on the ground and quick them toward the Lyoko Warriors, before putting his hands in the air, to show that he wanted peace and not war.

"I don't want to fight," Hades stated.

"How can we trust you?" Yumi asked, suspicious. Was it really her friend in front of her, or only the image of her friend?

"Oh come on!" Hades exclaimed. "I mean, fair, I've been possessed, but damn, I hate that situation. You'll never fully trust me, will you?"

Yumi wanted to smile, because she thought it was her friend, but she couldn't let herself be trapped by an image.

"I can't take the risk," she simply replied.

"Okay. I can get that. I can't prove that XANA didn't put any virus in me or whatever. What I know is that it's not possessing me right now. I don't know for how long it'll leave me alone. Maybe it won't be able to possess me if I charge my last save? It was from before I was possessed after all."

Hades was thinking out loud now.

"But you'll lose all your summer memories!" Odd exclaimed.

"True," Hades conceded. "But it's probably worth trying, right? I mean, I hadn't planned that. Or maybe I can do like the Scyphozoa do, like taking out of my head these memories, and put them aside for sometimes, and then get out, and come back? But maybe XANA corrupted these files? I don't know..."

The situation seemed desperate. Jeremie stated he'll ran some tests. The Lyoko Warriors went away, and Hades was again alone on Lyoko.

Jeremie couldn't find anything wrong. The gang discussed for a long time about whether or not Hades could came back on Earth or not. Finally, they agreed to it, only if he stayed away from Lyoko. They couldn't take the risk for him to be possessed again by XANA. Hades agreed to that, even if it broke his heart. He came back on a Tuesday late afternoon and early evening.

Chapter Text

Hades had missed a few days. Almost a week actually. He had no idea what Jeremie had said to them. Apparently, he had some medical appointment, or emergency or whatever.

After everything, Aelita offered a walk to Hades, and he accepted. They avoided carefully talking about the whole XANA possession thing, and instead, talked about their mom. Hades had more memories of her, after all.

They ended up in front of this house, the Hermitage. It was Franz and Aelita's home. It was never Anthea or Hades's house. They went in. Aelita rediscovered her old house, damaged by time and squatters and Hades discovered it. Aelita showed Hades her old room. She took some decorations items that hadn't been stolen and that were still usable after almost a dozen year there without any use.

Under their parent's bed, they found a box with a name wrote on it: Anthea. They took it down in the living room, and opened it. Inside were some stuff that had belong to Anthea. When they open the box, Aelita immediately told him that it smell like her. Hades had no idea, as he only saw her on Lyoko, where it wasn't possible to smell her scent.

He found a red (crimson?) square tissue, that the boy recognized: his mom wore a similar one tied around her neck on Lyoko. He asked Aelita if he could take it and she accepted. He wears it around his neck too, as a neckerchief.

Inside the box there were also books, especially drawings books and drawing supplies. Hades was beyond happiness, as he liked drawing. There also was a couture kit that Aelita took.

At the bottom of the box, there was a black leather jacket, reinforced pads on the elbows, two chains on the right shoulders, upon a patch showing a cherry bomb (literally), a red heart on the left part of the chest, surrounded by words reading, in English: "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention", and on the back, written in white in capital letter: "Cherry". On the left shoulder, there was a crossed 88. Hades smiled like a child at Christmas when he saw the jacket. He found it so beautiful!

Aelita let him keep it. She pretended it would suits him best so he wouldn't have any culpability by taking it. After all, Anthea was the mom to the both of them, not only one of them. Hades tried the jacket. It was too big, of course, but it still fit him. He was happy to have some physical evidence that his mom was real. She existed.

Chapter Text

On Wednesday, the Lyoko gang made a picnic in a park. They talked about everything and nothing, and about their own feelings about the whole situation. They went to the swimming pool in the afternoon, and after, in karaoke. Aelita beats them all, no surprise.

Chapter Text

The next day, a Thursday, Hades wore his mom's jacket at school, on top of a black shirt and black chest binder. He was still wearing his black cargo pants, purple underwear, pink socks and black Dr Martens. Needless to say that it wasn't unnoticed.

During the first two hours of class, every thing was fine. Well, the history teacher could help but noticed Hades' new jacket, but didn't made any comment.

Which wasn't the case of the French teacher. He asked Hades to take of his jacket, because it as a bomb on it. Hades didn't get it. He was sent to the principal's office.

When he arrived in the waiting room, the secretary gave him a weird look. She probably didn't expected what she thought to be a 13-year-old to wear a jacket with a bomb drew on it, even if it was a cherry bomb. She made him wait for fifteen minutes before sending him to the director.

Hades knocked, waited for an answer and entered.

"Hello young man," the director said. "Why are you here?"

"I don't know. I think Mr Lamaison don't like my jacket. I think it's because of the cherry bomb on the shoulder," Hades explained, showing the logo.

"Why are you wearing this?"

"It's a clothe, sir, I don't I understand the problem?"

The director sighed.

"Sit down, Alexander."

"Please, call me Hades," Hades replied while sitting.

"Hm. Is is written on your files that your name is Alexander, so I'll call you that way. So, Alexander. I'm gonna make this clear for you: with your dying hair and your jacket, you look like a delinquent. Now, I know you're not, you have good notes. But why would you wear a bomb on your shoulder? Because it is concerning."

"It's my mother's jacket. I believe she customized it when she was young. She's far away and I miss her," Hades said, truthfully while managing not to blow up his cover. "It's a piece of her I carry with me."

"I can understand that. But you can't wear a bomb symbol in school. It could scare others students and teachers."

"Why would they scare them? It's only a reference to a song, I haven't planned to bomb the school!"

"If you say so. Please, cover it."

"Why? It's not harming anyone."

"You could. We don't know that. That symbol is forbidden, so just don't wear it. Please, just follow the rules Alexander."

"Hades. Fine, I'll cover it."

"Marvelous. I won't put you detention hours."

Hades restrained himself to make any comments on that, but he couldn't help to think it was stupid to get detention hours for that.

During the evening, he put a black patch on top of the painted cherry bomb that was depicting some drawing surrounding on top and bottom of it by the words "Xanadu crew".

Chapter Text

Hades was helping Sissi with some Latin homework in the library. She was bad at it and only did it because her father wanted her to. She also wanted Hades to do Spanish with her, but first of all, she was good at Spanish thanks to her mother's family being Spanish, and besides, Hades did German.

He was trying his best to explain to her how Latin declinations worked when Jim came in and asked the blue-hair-boy to follow him as the director wanted to see him. Hades frowned and asked why. Jim said he didn’t know but that it seemed urgent.

Hades sighted and decided to follow him. Just in case, because better safe than sorry, he gave Sissi a paper reading “If I’m not back in ten minutes, contact Ulrich, he’ll know what to do”. He didn’t need to join Ulrich’s contact, as Sissi had it. It was the only phone number of the gang -other than Hades’- that she had. She didn’t ask why. She only smiled with an accomplice grin and nod. She must really like his bad boy look and jacket, Hades thought, smiling back at her. He followed Jim outside of the library. There, two men in black were waiting for him.

Despite not being there when it happened, Hades knew that his mom was taken away by some men in black. Aelita said there were wolf. Hades understood that they were federals. He had no idea if the men in black in front of him were from the same office or not. He didn't wanted to find out. His legs reacted before him and he ran away, panicking.

He didn’t want to be kidnapped. He didn’t wanted to disappear. Not again. Not like that.
He had finally a life for himself, he didn't want it to get away, to lose his family. Not like that.

He had the advantage of knowing the place better than them. He searched for his phone and remembered that he left it in his vest, which was still on the chair he was seated in in the library. He swore under his breath.

Suddenly, he saw Jim at the other hand of the corridor.

Shit shit shit.

He didn’t even think.

His mind didn’t answer. The window was open.
He jumped by it.
It was the first floor, so it wasn’t too high.

What he didn’t plan was that a third man in black would arrive to block him. Panicking, he gave him the martial art grip that Yumi told him, get rid of the man in black but was caught up by the two others -he had lost time fighting this man.

He struggled for form, but he had inside abandoned: he had lost, they caught him. It was the end. He couldn't even said goodbye to Aelita, and now, he was going to disappear. He was going to be kidnapped. He was going to... the director's office?

The men in black sat Hades on a chair in the director’s office. They thought he could help them to find Jeremie or at least revealed some things about him: the blond was accused of being a terrorist who stole some really sensible numeric files.

Hades was internally relieved. They weren't here for him, or at least, not directly.

However, he knew exactly that the whole situation was pretty fucked up for him. He just tried to run away at the sight of federal agents... How suspicious was it?
It was pointed out by one of the agent: it was pretty suspect that he tried to run away.

“In case you didn’t know,” Hades simply responded, “it’s scary to see you.”

“We are. That’s our job,” one of the men in black replied.

They then asked him to introduce himself. He didn’t answer their question but asked: “Will everything that I’ll say could be turned against me later on?”

Yes, it was even more suspicious, he was aware of that, thanks. But he couldn't risk it.

“Well, young man, you watch too many police shows,” Mister Delmas, the director, said.

“No, he’s right actually,” one of the men in black answered.

“So I won’t tell you anything. You can’t force me to talk. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.”

“And why don’t you want to talk?”

“Why would I? I’ve nothing to tell you.”

“Not even your name?”

Hades ignored him and began to look outside. It was a sunny day. He wonder when it will rain for the next time. He loved rain. It was incredible. It was only water that fall off the sky, but it was really poetic and sweet for him, who had never experience it before coming on Earth. He loved rain. Moreover, after the record-beating heatwaves they had during the summer, some rain would be great.

“I don’t know what he’s doing this,” the director excused himself while Hades was falling in his happy rainy thoughts. “Here’s his file, if you want.”

“Thanks Mister Delmas.”

They read his file, and send one of them to verify the info in it, who went out of the room.

“So you come from Canada,” began one of the two men in black who were still in the office.

Hades continues to ignore them. His mind was far away from the office his body was in. He wasn’t really thinking about anything yet, he was simply watching the cloud slowly and peacefully passing outside. He almost wanted to be a cloud. It sounded fun. And peaceful.

“Why did you arrive almost a year after your twin sister Alexander?”

Hades didn’t even react to that name. It wasn’t his after all. He had chosen to not recognize himself in it. The man in black frowned when the boy didn’t react to his own name, according to that file. That was very suspicious. Also, what had they all with that question? Why do they all care so much about him arriving in Kadic after Aelita? Couldn't they all mind their business?

The federal agent frowned when he saw that a few days priors, the boy sat in front of them had been into to director's office because he was wearing a patch with a bomb on his jacket. How suspicious is that?

“What do you think about all of this, Pluto?” the federal suddenly asked.

Hades jumped out. It has been a while that nobody called him that. The last time he remember being called that way was when his mom... Was the last time he had saw her. If he had know then... Remembering that moment hurt him. He hided it. Since he was on Earth, he was becoming use to human emotions, and it was harder and harder to hide them, but he was still good at it. Or at least, he thought he was.

“Pluto eh. Interesting. What does the following world inspire you: Carthage?”

Hades frozen. Carthage. They knew about Carthage? No, they were probably talking about the ancient city, right? Right. They didn't knew. They couldn't knew. Everything was fine. He was just having a panic attack. But it was fine. They were talking about the ancient city. Hades decided to play it that way. Hopefully for him, he was a pro at hiding what was in his mind.

“You mean the capital of the Punic Empire?” he asked, and he surprised himself of the innocent and genuine questioning tone he was using. "Do you want me to explains to you the Punic Wars? We talked about them in Latin, it's actually very interes-"

“Uhm. No, I don't want hear you talking about it.”

"Oh. Ok."

A silence felt. Hades think that probably more than ten minutes had passed now. Sissi probably had texted Ulrich. Hades hoped he'll read that text.

Suddenly, the virtual boy felt a shiver in all his body. Something like goosebumps, but not fully that. It was a weird feeling. The feeling that something was happening. He didn't know what, but it was happening. He felt like he had to go, that he couldn't stay.

"Can I go to the toilets?" he asked

The federal noticed his attitude change, and frowned. What game was that teenager playing? Who was that Jeremie Belpois? He couldn't be as innocent as Mister Delmas pretended it, he seemed too intelligent. Heck, that Belpois had hacked a government supposed secured site after all! And that Alexander was acting in a really weird and suspicious way. And he had a bomb patch. Also, he replied to name link to the god of the underworld. Was he in some sort of sect? Or in a terrorist movement with all of his friends? That would explain why they planned to do something to Jean-Pierre, the director. And why Hades was trying to come closer to the director's daughter, Sissi.

"No," the man in black simply replied. Where was his colleague? He should have been back by now. Catching Belpois couldn't be that difficult, could it?

"I really don't want to pee on the chair I'm in, sir," Hades stated, emphasizing the last word by putting all the sass in his body in it.

"Fine, I'll come with you," one man in black said.

"We both have too. We've seen he likes to run away," the other man in black declared.

'Scheiss." Hades thought. How would he be able to escape them?

They went into the teacher toilets, the closest to the director office. The two men stand in front of the door of the toilets cabin Hades was in. He couldn't escape. There was no windows in the cabin he was in. He was trapped. Great, really.
He needed to go away, but how?

Now that he was there, he peed. Then, he washed his hands, still thinking about how he could escape. Hades could have punched one and tried to run, but if there wasn't any back to the past, he'll have a lot of explanation to do, and he hadn't the energy to do so. He'll have to ask Jeremie to do one, hoping that he would accept.

While they were walking to the director's office again, they came across Sissi, who was holding in her arms Hades' jacket. With one look, Hades knew she came to help him. She pretended to fall and sprained her ankle, so one of the men in black come to help her. Hades punched the other in the stomach, and then in the intimate part, before running away. Sissi put perfume in the eye of the one who had come to help her, before she run after him.

They met again in the gym changing rooms.

"What is happening Hads?" she asked him, grabbing his wrist.

He turned around to face her, verify she wasn't followed, and stated: "I'm sorry. I can't explain. It's complicated, and I don't have the time to..."

And then he remembered. He wasn't allowed near Lyoko.

"Scheiss," he swear under his breath.

He send a text to all the gang, reading: "Important: text or call as soon as you can."

A few moments later, Ulrich was calling. Hades picked up.

"What's happening?" Ulrich asked.

"You tell me," Hades replied. "I have the feds trying to catch me."

"What?!"

"Yup. So, what the hell is happening?"

"We don't know. Jeremie was taken away and I had to use Pencak Silat on Jim who was in the scanner room."

"What the fuck. Well, then it's no big deal that I've punched a fed."

"What?"

"What? He'll live, get over it. Sissi put perfume in the eye of the other," Hades said, with pride in his voice.

"You're impossible. Wait, is Sissi with you?"

"Yup, she's near me and trying to listening to what I say but can't hear what you say."

"Okay. I'm gonna have to guide the other to the tower."

"There's one activate now?"

"Yes. We thought there was one before, but there wasn't, and now there's one."

"Okay. Do you need me to come?"

"You know you can't go on Lyoko."

"Yeah, I know that, I'm not stupid," Hades said, rolling his eyes. "But I can monitor y'all. I know how to do it. More or less."

"Yeah, it'll be great."

"Okay, I'm coming."

"Where are you going?" Sissi asked before Hades hung up the phone. "Can I come with you?"

"Ulrich? You're still there?"

"Yeah, why?"

"We're gonna have to go back, right?"

"Yeah? Why?"

"Sissi wants to come."

"Seriously? Can't you lost her?"

"Rude. And she won't remember so, no harm done?"

Ulrich sighed loudly.

"She will be useless. We told you how it end when we tried to have her in the group the first time."

"Yeah, you told me. My point is, there's two feds behind us, and the clock is ticking so..."

"Do whatever you want, but don't let her stop you."

"Get it. See you."

And the phone was hung up.

"What is happening?" Sissi asked.

"No time to explain, follow me," Hades stated, beginning to go to the boiler room. Sissi simply nodded and followed him.

There, Hades opened the passage to the sewer, where he began to run, Sissi behind him.

When they arrived near the exit of the park, he asked her: "Do you know how to skate?"

She shook her head.

"Great, me neither. Let's use scooters then."

And so they did. Sissi was pretty much lost in the sewer and just followed Hades. They finally arrived at the Factory, and then, at the lab, where Ulrich was guiding the rest of them.

"Move," Hades declared, before he added: "Please."

Ulrich get out of the chair, and gave him the headset.

"Thanks," the blue-haired-boy stated while putting it on. "What did I missed?" he then asked.

"Oh Hady, hi!"

"Hi Aelita."

"Basically, there was an alert for an activate tower, then no tower, then a tower, and Ulrich was guiding us to the tower."

"Okay. Do you need your vehicles?"

"You could materialized them?"

"I could try, yeah?"

"Great!"

"Hey, that's my word!"

"Also, the whole sector is having some bugs, could you search why?"

"I'll do a scan, yeah. While I do that, Ulrich, could you go to the Supercomputer room?"

"Okay."

"And me?" Sissi asked. "What do I do?"

"Was that Sissi's voice?" Odd asked in Hades' ear.

"Yes it was, get over it y'all. She was with me and she helped me when I was trapped with the feds."

"You were with the feds?!" Yumi exclaimed.

"Yeah. Not the point right now. We'll have to get back any way, so it doesn't change anything."

"If you say so." Odd said, no convinced.

"Sorry Sissi, you can't do anything right now."

"Okay," she nodded before watching Hades working on the keyboard, trying his best to help the rest of them. Guiding them to the tower in the Mountain. Telling them the scanners were damaged. Trying his best to keep contact with Ulrich and Jeremie, both of them being attacked by specters, from what he can see on the security cameras.

One of the specter tried to attack Hades, but Sissi protected him, by trying to shield him with her body. She was thrown to a wall. Hades didn't had the time to worry for her, as the specter was ready to attack him. Hades kicked him in the chest. It made him go a few feet backward. Enough for Ulrich to get him in the elevator. And they were both out.

Hades ran worriedly to Sissi, to see how she was. She had fainted.

Aelita finally managed to get into the tower and to deactivate it with the Code Lyoko. Hades activated a back in the past, to return in time. And nothing else mattered. There was no federal agents. No government hacking. Just normal students doing normal students things.

Well, Odd's tamagochi, Jean-Pierre, was still out of the picture. And Hades was still repeating the same things about Latin declinations to Sissi, but he didn't seemed to care.

No one had no idea what files were missing. Do they had a link with project Carthage? Do they profited to XANA? Nobody knew.

Chapter Text

October 10th.

It was (theoretically) at day like another. So Hades was confused when he arrived at the canteen with Aelita and all the gang began to sing "Happy birthday".
The whole canteen soon followed, of course.

"What is happening?" the boy asked Aelita, whispering with perplexity.

"They're singing," Aelita replied, in the tone of an obvious statement. Hades gave her 'the fuck girl?' look. "Today is our birthday," she added, reminding him the cover story.

"Oh. Yes. Our birthday. Sure."

Since Hades was officially Aelita’s twin, his official birthday was on the date Jeremie chose to gave Aelita at first, to keep it coherent.
They both sat down, and the whole gang wished them a happy birthday again.

"Why today, thought?" Hades asked to Aelita.

"It's the day I met Jeremie," she said. "We didn't knew the real date at the time."

"February the 16th," Hades simply replied, before drinking a sip of his hot chocolate milk. He looked satisfied.

"What?" Aelita asked.

"Your birthday. It's February the 16th. That's what mom told me."

"I now know," Aelita replied, smiling in a way Hades couldn't fully understand.

“So you have two birthday dates?” Ulrich asked.

“Well, technically yes,” she replied.

“Would you want us to celebrate both?” Odd asked.

“We could do that, yes,” she smiled. “And you Hady? Do you have more than one birthday?”

“Technically, I now get three or four,” the coded boy answered, as if it was a normal thing, to have multiple birthdays.

“What?!” reacted Odd, who was listening all the time but didn’t intervene until then.

Jeremie and Ulrich were listening too, as they were at the same breakfast table, even if Ulrich was having a harder time waking up.

"How?" Yumi asked

“Well, my first one is the day I was born, six months after Persephone’s birth and death, April 2nd. The second one could be when Franz re-coded me to be Alexander the Guardian, but I don’t want to celebrate or remember that day, so we can forget it. The third one would be when I met y’all, but since it's also April 2nd, let's keep it in one, right? So the real third would be when I arrived on Earth. And the fourth, the legal one, would be October 10th.”

“Wow, you really collect birthday dates!” Odd joked.

“Not my fault I was born more than once,” Hades replied in the same tone.

"Wait, so the first day we met you was your birthday?" Jeremie tilted, while Sissi, who was arriving, cheered: “Hi Hads! I've heard it's your birthday! Happy birthday!”

"Thanks Sissi." He simply replied with a smile.

"You're welcome! Just so you know, my birthday is on July the 26th."

"Okay. I'll remember that." He noted that in his mind with serious, still smiling. She smiled too and went away to join Nicholas and Hervé who were waiting her to eat their breakfast.

“Hads?” asked Ulrich, turning towards Hades. “Since when does she have a nickname for you?”

“It's been some times now,” he answers, not batting an eye. “Also, why do you care so much? When Aelita calls me ‘Hady’ or Odd, ‘Hadex’, you don’t even notice.”

“Because it’s the first time Sissi calls you that in front of me, that’s it. Can you pass me the water pot?”

Hades gave him.

"And yes, Jeremie," Hades finally answered the question the blond asked a few minutes prior, "we first met on my birthday. But nobody celebrates it on that day since... Mom."

.

People wished the Stones siblings a "happy birthday" all day long.

.

Sissi offered Hades a gift at the end of the day: a small coupon that read "Coupon to watch Sailor Moon (or else) with me <3 ". It made Hades smile. It made him happy. Life was good, on Earth.

Chapter Text

One night of October, Hades managed to go to an open scene of slam in a bar in Paris, who was something like 45 minutes away from the school on a bike -it was Sissi's and she didn't knew he took it.

It was one of the best night of his life.

He had pretended to be an adult to enter, despite having the body of a thirtheen-ish-year-old, thanks to some make up and a fake identity card. After all, he was technically born in the 80s, and so he was in his twenties.
He knew making a false ID card could came handy at some point. For that night, he was legally "Hades Cherryson" who was 21, which was illegal -the false ID, not his name-, but he technically had no legal ID: even the one Jeremie made him was an illegal one.

He saw a lot of greats artists, and one that marked Hades. He called himself "Grand Corps Malade" (which roughly translate in "Big Sick Body"), and slammed a text called "Cassiopeia". Hades was very fan.

Also, he didn't only lied on his age to enter the bar where the open scene was but also to declaim a slam. He choose "Hadestin" for his scene name, even if he also thought about "Pluto Pas".

"J'ai le coeur qui bim bam bat.
J'ai le coeur qui danse, le coeur qui bat, le coeur qui s'bat.
Bim bam bat comme le tic tac d'une horloge,
Mon coeur bat.
Plus vite que le temps, plus vite que le vent,
J'ai le coeur qui bim bam bat.

Mais le rythme n'est pas le mien,
C'est celui du monde, qui vit, qui crie, qui rit, qui survit,
Mon coeur qui bim bam bat
au rythme des temps, des vents, des saisons.

Plus grand qu'une maison,
mon coeur héberge l'amour des gens.
J'ai le coeur qui bim bam bat.

Mon coeur est le noyau d'une totalité,
d'une terre dans son entièreté.
Je suis la Terre, père, mère,
Parent d'une société et des gens qui sont d'dans,
Mais je me meurs, et vous n'en avez pas conscience!
Vous m'chantez, m'honorez, me dansez,
Mais vous me tuez, me polluez, m'exterminez !
Mère nature, mais nature morte,
Vous tuez mon coeur, qui bim bam bat pour vous.

Et pourtant ! J'ai le coeur qui bim bam bat,
Encore et toujours pour vous, il ne s'arrêtera pas,
mais prenez soin de moi!"

Hadestin had a mixed success: his slam was either loved or detested. Some founded that he had good words but a boring subject.

While he came back to the boarding school, Hades couldn't smile more. The streets were calm as the night, and it took him thirty-seven to go back to the boarding school. He laughed.
He was alive, and he just performed his slam poetry!
He felt ecstatic, like he was able to do anything and everything.

Chapter Text

XANA attacked.

One more time.

With the almost regular teenage-like life he had, Hades sometimes almost forgot about it.

This time, it possessed an entire rugby team who attacked them. Hades managed to knock the players that chased him out, before escaping.

He was with Sissi when it happened and couldn’t persuade her to leave him alone. Don't get him wrong, he liked that girl, but damn, that wasn't the moment. Like, girl, get your ass into safety?!

He finally managed to put her safe, and escape her, before going to the Fabric. He felt sorry for a second, before he got his mind back to his job. You know, saving the world (and his life, too, supplementary).

As he arrived in the Fabric, he met Odd and a black girl with a red hair strand.

“A quarterback was after us, we locked him in the back of the fabric, it won’t take him long to escape.” Odd explained to Hades, who frowned to the stranger.

"Who's she?" he asked, regaining his breath. He sometimes hated having a real body. It was impossible to be out of breath on Lyoko, as you technically didn't breath there.

"Sam, a friend," Odd replied. "She was with me when I was attacked. We were skating and doing graffiti and…”

“Ok," Hades said in a cold tone. It wasn't that he didn't care, but rather that it wasn't the moment for that. Save the world, met Odd's friend and hear about his life, later.
"Are the others here?”

“Jeremie called me, he was doing homework with Aelita, they’re on their way. Ulrich was playing drums, and Yumi was running outside, they’re on their way too.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam asked, curious.

“Can’t explain right now. We got to go.” Odd told her, a sorry look on his face.

“No, you’re not going anywhere before explaining!”

“We don’t have the time!” Hades sighted, that girl clearly starting to waste his patience.

“What the hell is happening Odd?!”

“Uh, long story short, they want us out of the game,” Odd summed up.

“No only the game Odd,” Hades said, without putting the correct amount of emotions for such a revelation. He told that as if it was something mundane, of no importance. “Life too. Now that it doesn’t need Aelita’s anymore, it wants us dead. And it won’t stop before we are. Believe me, I know it.”

“What?!” exclaimed Odd and Sam at the same time.

“That’s crazy!” Odd said.

“Who wants to kill you? What did you do?” Sam assumed. Odd wasn't exactly knew for his good behavior.

“Crazy? Really?” Hades replied, ignoring Sam. “Will it be the first time it tries? Think about it and tell me I'm wrong, Odd.”

Odd lost his color when he realizes Hades was right.

They were in the elevator and Hades stopped the closing of the door to Jeremie and Aelita coming in.

“What’s happening?” asked Sam, no understanding the slightest thing

“Long story short,” summed up Jeremie, “They’re the bad guys and we’re gonna stop them.”

“We’ll have to do some RTP,” Hades casually dropped, as if he was talking about taking some fancy breakfast and not about literally returning into the past.

“Odd? What does RTP means?” Sam understood next to nothing and she hated that with all the fiber of her being. She also hated that everyone around her seemed to both ignore her and talk in code so she wouldn't be able to understand.

“Why?” Jeremie argued, putting back his glasses on his nose.

“Because she saw us and we can’t explain why an entire rugby team began to chase us down, aka the random teenage gang.”

Jeremie sighted. Hades was right.

Sam protested but couldn’t help but be curious. What was it all about?!

"Fine." Jeremie finally agreed. "Then Odd and her can stay out to occupy them while we deal with that."

All the group agreed. Then, Yumi and Ulrich began a shi-fu-mi (a fancy rock - paper - scissor) to know who would stay with Odd and Sam. As often, Ulrich lost by doing rock. He always started with rock. Yumi was persuaded he was too stubborn to change it. But he had once told Hades that he always did the same move to let her win. Hades had no idea if he was lying or not.

So while a majority of the team took the elevator down to save the day, Ulrich stayed behind.

And the rest was his story.

Chapter Text

November 17th, 2003.

Hades was excited. He was near Aelita and Ulrich, behind a couch, in Yumi's living room.

Not so far on his right, there were Yumi's parents and brother, behind another couch.

The light was off. But soon, it'll be on.

Suddenly, the light came out. Yumi had entered the room. She had received a text from her dad asking her to came to see him in that room. Yet it was all dark. She frowned, anxious.

They all popped up out of their hiding places, singing “Happy birthday to you!”

They all stopped when they saw that Yumi instinctively went into a combat posture. She even took Hades and throw him to the ground, as he was the closest to him. He felt to the ground but didn't complain.

For a second, she thought it was a XANA attack. It had become so deeply rooted in her that she totally forgot how the external world worked.

As soon as she realized, she took a more normal posture, and apologized to Hades, who assured her it was nothing, really, and asked her if she was okay.

Aelita went to hug her, while Hades, Ulrich and Jeremie stayed back, not wanting to overwhelm her. Odd was trying to bullshit Yumi's family into believing it wasn't a too weird reaction.

As soon as the pink-haired touched Yumi, she fell into tears. Not happy ones. She kept saying she was sorry, and they tried to reassure her. Her family was clueless of what was happening.

After that, they sent her into therapies (yes, plural) that really help her. Even if Sarah, her therapist, was persuaded that she was using metaphor for teenage hood when she was talking about saving the world.

Chapter Text

It had snowed.

It was the first thing Hades had noticed when he had open his curtain. It was the first time he saw snow. It was so clear, and beautiful !

That's it, he wanted white hair.

But before that, he ran to the girl's floor, and knocked at Aelita's door. She opened, anxious.

"Hady? What are you doing here? Something happened?"

"It snowed!" Hades exclaimed with the candor of a child.

But contrary to what he had expected, Aelita didn't smile. She wasn't fond of snow. Hades frowned. He didn't get it.

"There was snow, that day. When Mom..."

"Oh."

Hades didn't knew that. How could he have? No one never told him about that day. He wasn't there, after all. He just knew it happened.

"I'm sorry." He apologized. He didn't meant to remind his sister of possibly one of the worst day of her life.

"It's okay." She lied.

"No it's not." He replied. He was clueless to a lot of social situation, but he wasn't stupid. And she wasn't okay. He opened his arms, as an invitation. She hugged him, in the way a drowning person grabs a lifebuoy. Hades just comforted her for some time, not saying anything. He didn't break the hug, and let Aelita hold him as long as she needed it.

"You're right," she finally admitted. "It's not. But snow will still be there, and she won't. But I'm gonna get new memories with you all, and it could get better?"

"I should hope so! I'll be my best to help you with that, and I'm sure the other too, somehow."

She smiled. He was reassured.

"You should go before Jess find you here."

"Yup," he nodded.

Aelita closed her door.

As he was leaving, Sissi came in the corridor, and saluted him.

"Hi Hads! What are you doing here?"

"Oh, hi Sissi!" He turned around to see her. "It snowed!" He beamed.

"Really?!"

"Yeah!"

"That's so cool!"

"Yeah, right?"

She was happy now, and Hades too.

In the canteen, Jim got everyone's attention and reminded them that snowball fights were strictly forbidden, retelling them all the story they've heard every time it snowed (about that snowball with rocks in it and that kid who got blind due to the hit) in hope it traumatized them enough not to throw snowballs.

Of course, some still managed to trow snowballs. They've got detention, of course.
Odd being one of them surprised no one, really. But Jeremie? Well, that wasn't expected. Aelita was caught too.

Hades was weirdly fascinated by the snow, as it was the first time ever in his life he ever saw some.

"Never see snow before?" Hervé mocked him.

"Actually I don't," Hades replied the more naturally in the world, without even thinking about it.

"Don't you come from Canada?" Nicholas pointed out.

'Shit.' Was all Hades could think about. To be perfectly honest, he had totally forgot about his cover story. He had forgot he came from Snow-land.

"Not like that," he lied to get back on tracks with his cover story. "I mean, I love snow and I missed it, that's it. But Canadian snow and French snow are different."

"Really?" Sissi exclaimed. "What's the differences?" She asked, genuinely curious.

"Uh... It's more of a feeling?" Hades tried. "But with a weather like that, what about we drink some hot chocolate later in the day?" He offered, changing the subject.

She accepted, and Hades could breath again. He couldn't let her find he wasn't really from Canada.

But before they could do that, XANA attacked. During the third class hour of the morning, the temperature dropped. The radiators broke down, the doors locked themselves and the windows exploded.

Thankfully, Jeremie, Aelita and Odd had managed to escaped the director's office where they had gone to report to their acts (throwing snowballs).

Locked in a room and freezing to death, Hades realized how powerless he was, and how bad it made him felt. They had all regrouped in a big ball of humans to try to get some warm, waiting for the firefighters to come help them.

But the firefighters didn't arrived before the return to the past.

And Hades got to see snow another day.

Chapter Text

Time had passed.

It was the end.

Xana was destroyed and out of the game for good.

Grand Corps Malade was slowly becoming famous.

They were all entering the first year of lycée (high school), and Yumi was in the 2nd year of it.

It was time to shut the supercomputer down. To carry on with their life. To go to therapies.

Lyoko was now pointless and it was time for the Lyoko Gang to do what they promised to each other a long time ago: it was time to shut down the supercomputer.

But Jeremie couldn't stop it. It was what created their friendship, he couldn't stop it like that. It was too precious for him to shut it like that.

Even if the supercomputer cemented down their friendship, it wasn't the only link between them, and their friend group won't felt apart without Lyoko, Yumi arged. They'll still be friends, even without the supercomputer. But she wanted it to be a fair decision, so, as always when they needed to take a decision concerning the whole group, they voted.

Yumi voted in favor of turning the supercomputer down.

But she was surprised to discover that the vote wasn't in favor of shutting the supercomputer down.

So for now, they considered it a drew out and they decided they all needed time to think. They parted, with all that in mind.

Hades had voted against. The purple-haired boy had told them all he needed a walk to think. Breath out. But despite loving to breath, he went to the only place breathing was impossible, as it didn't exist.

He went to Lyoko for maybe the last time. He materialized in the forest sector. It was there that, a long time ago, he met Aelita and the Lyoko Warriors. It was only a few Earth years, but it felt more. Way more. Maybe due to the return to the past.

He sat down in a fetal position on the ground, a hand on it, feeling Lyoko's heart beating in a slow rhythm that calmed him. Since the complete destruction of Lyoko a few years ago and its rebuilding, he wasn't linked to that whole world anymore. It was so weird to felt Lyoko's heart and his beat to different rhythms.

As he was born here and not on Earth, he didn't had the reflex to simulate the take of a deep breath to... to do what exactly? Calm down? Express his sadness? He didn't know. He wasn't sure about it.

Hearing Lyoko's slow heart beat calmed him downed. So much he almost felt asleep. Despite it was impossible to really sleep on Lyoko; it was more of an hibernation than a sleep, but semantics, really.

Maybe it was only an impression, an illusion, but he felt like Lyoko was still somehow connected to him and that his heart and Lyoko's were slowly according to beat in the same rhythm, in unity.

He wanted to go home.

The feeling of crying filled him.

But crying was impossible here, on Lyoko.

He had lost his home. Lyoko was his home. His mom was his home. And he had lost both. They had rebuild Lyoko, but... It wasn't truly Lyoko. It wasn't the place he had grew up in with his mom. It wasn't the place where he learned to hate Frank. It wasn't the place he met Aelita for the first time. It wasn't there.

Here was merely a copy of there.

And that thought filled him with an incommensurate sadness.

After some time, he heard someone materializing. He opened his eyes, but didn't moved. Not yet.

It was Aelita.

She said nothing.

Hades didn't know if Jeremie and the others were listening to him or not. He decided he didn't care at all.

Aelita sat down next to him, watching in the same direction. A peaceful silence felt down around them, full of potentiality for the future and regrets and memories from the past.

"It was here, you know?" Hades finally spoke, in a voice that contained all the marvel and the experience of the past years. "Well, not here, here, but I've remade that place almost identical, except for something like one rock."

"Why was this place so important to you?" Aelita asked.

"Because it was here that I first appeared on Lyoko. Here that Mom and I used to met. And here that we first met, Pinky Pie."

"Yeah. I remember," Aelita smiled. "You threatened us with your bow."

"You're still small," Hades returned her smile, closing his eyes again. He felt at peace.

Aelita was almost vexed. "I'm not small, you're tall, and not that much! We're almost the same height!"

"Yeah. But I'm slightly taller."

"Slightly."

"Hm hm," he grinned.

"Hey," she suddenly declared.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think about shutting down Lyoko for good? For real. Truth pact and all."

"Oh, a sensible question!"

"Sorry."

"No, don't be! I prefer a sensible question to a insensitive one."

"Yeah, but you know what they say: 'it's sensitive to be insensitive!'," she cracked a smiled.

"Oh shut up," Hades grinned, turning to lay on his back. "But now, without XANA," he resumed more seriously, opening his eyes and fixing the virtual sky, "you could do concerts without the fear of a XANA attacks." "Yeah. That's true." "Hm. Yeah, I know. But to be honest, it'll be hard. For the others. For you. For me. I lived here for a long time. But I wasn't born here, you know?"

"What do you mean? You are the child mom and dad had and who's not dead after all? How was she called again, Persephone?"

"No, that daughter really died and it wasn't me in any way," Hades answered. "But before Lyoko, there was another world, called Xanadu. Mom was the one who created it."

"Mom created a lot for Lyoko," Aelita noticed out loud.

"Yeah," Hades confirmed. "But Franz got all the honors and merits... That's so unfair! But he's a man, so meh," he said, making a face that was resuming his thoughts (which was that the patriarchy sucks).

“You know, at first I was just a voice with no body,” he continued. “It was the 80s. Then I’ve got a body, and a world to live in. It was called Xanadu. It was a way smaller place on top of a big pillar, with only five towers. It was way more like Earth, with mountains, vegetation, cascades, and so on. At that time, XANA took form of dark black spirits. At first, it was enough, and then, Franz asked for more place in order to run some experiences and to develop the Carthage project, so Mom had to do some redesign.
So at first, she created Lyoko's forest, and called it Eden. Then, all the other five sectors. The only other one who had a name was Carthage, you know, Sector Five. Each Xanadu's tower was linked to a sector.
When XANA became evil, it destroyed Xanadu. I tried every tower but I never found it back. Mom confirmed to me it had been destroyed. She was really sad about it."

Aelita didn't know what to say to this.

"All those memories..." the boy softly stated. "All those eleven-ish Earth years spent on Lyoko... I know it won't disappear if we shut Lyoko down, but I fear it might. I don't want to forget. I don't want to let go. I know I have to, but I can't... I can't let go..."

Tears began to appears in his eyes. She put a reassuring hand on his bag and slowly cuddle him.

"I'm afraid, Pinky Pie, that's the truth," he told her. "I'm scared about Lyoko disappearing. I'm scared that I'll forget things. I'm scared about you, and about Mom. I'm scared I'll never see her again and that I'll forget her. I'm scared that one day, I will have lived longer on Earth than on Lyoko, even counting the time I was out. Because by then, I will have all the time of the world to forget Mom."

"Hey. Hady. We'll find her. One way or another. I promise. And we will be together to not forget her," she tried to reassure him.

She added that even if Lyoko will stop existing, they will still be there. They will continue to exist. Them, their friends and families. They will continue to live.

Life would go on, bringing them with it. It was the end, yet it wasn't. It was also the start. The start of something else. It wasn't over.

Aelita was thinking about going out with Jeremie. Hades will have his video game project and the mission to find their Mom.

They weren't Aelita Schaffer and Hades anymore. They were Aelita and Hades Stones, twin siblings from Canada. And they will be forever now.

They went back to Earth. When the scanner opened, Hades sighted loudly.

"Good bye old friend," the purple boy sadly told Lyoko. He almost hear a plaintive song, and had some ache in his heart. He would never hear the mantas sing anymore.

Chapter Text

At the end of the day, they shut down the supercomputer. Hades felt that a part of him was dying with it, but a new life was beginning. As far as he would love to have it stay on, he realized that it was time to grow up and out of it.

It was hard to grow up, but they had to. Life went on. Not everything could stay the same forever. Things moved and changed, and life goes on, even if it hurts, even if you don't like it or don't want it. Life doesn't care. Life goes on.

But they will always remember those adventures, and will cherish their friendship forever, or as long as they're able to remember it. They took the elevator up in silence.

Hades suddenly exclaimed: "Lyoko!"

"Gang!" shouted the others, without even thinking of it.

When they realized it, they all began to laugh, and some cried. Some were happy tears, others were tears of sadness. It was a good bye. But it wasn't the end.

When they all breathe the air outside the fabric, they know a big chapter of their life has just closed.
They were confident that they would write a lot of others.

At the canteen, they decided to invite Sissi to their table.

She was so happy! Since she was friends with Hades she seemed to had became nicer, and had stopped running after Ulrich. Yet, she still face some mistrust, due to their common past.

The rest of the gang mostly accepted Sissi, who couldn't be happier.

They also welcomed Nicholas -not Hervé thought, he was still mean.

Odd and Nicholas discovered they both liked Pokémon and began to talk about it for hours, loosing every one around them.

The Lyoko Gang were all traumatized and needed therapies.

Hades dyed his hair crimson, symbolizing for him a change. He had let go of his blue and the purple hair and Lyoko. He still use his mother's crimson tissue as a neckerchief.

Aelita and Jeremie began to go out together. Odd and Sam, and Ulrich and Yumi were still in an ambiguous situation. Hades abandoned even the idea of trying to understand these two pairs of humans.

Jeremie arranged himself to legally attribute The Hermitage to "Hades Gardian" until Hades and Aelita are 18 according to their new identities that Jeremie created for them. The Stones siblings couldn't be more grateful. They all began to renovate the house to make it a nice and great place where they could go, a home for them all.

That was all thanks to Jeremie and his ability to defrauding illegal funds (no one was going to ask the blond where and when he started to virtually rob banks).

Chapter Text

The Saturday afternoon after they shut down the supercomputer, they all went out in the park, and they discuss about their future, what field of study they will take, and what job they planed to do. They had three choices of studies field in the "lycée" which lead them to a different "baccalauréat", or "bac", the final exam of the mandatory scholarship. They could chose between a scientific field (focused on math, physic and science), aka "bac S", a literature field (focused on French literature, English, and another language: German, Spanish or else), aka "bac L", or a social-economic field aka "bac éco".

Jeremie choose, to no one's surprise, to go in scientific field studies, as Aelita, Ulrich, Sissi and Hervé did. Ulrich went there because it was the field where the one who didn't knew what to do take, as it open the most doors after, for his future. Sissi hated that field, but wanted to be a nurse so she had to keep math, despite hating it.

Yumi, Odd, Hades and Nicholas choose the literature field. Well, Yumi had chose a year prior the rest, but still.

William too had chose a year prior. He did economic studies.

Jeremie still wanted to work in the informatics field, maybe as an engineer, even after some traumas due to all the XANA-Lyoko stuff. He was still playing chess. Hades and him still played sometimes.

Aelita wanted to become a singer and a DJ, and she had all the capacities to became so, but didn't wanted to close doors for her, so she used her cleverness for her scientific studies -and she was good at it.

Ulrich wanted to become a martial art teacher. He couldn't imagine any other field. His father wanted him to be in the military, but he already had enough PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) due to, again, the whole XANA-Lyoko stuff, so he refused. His father was furious. He couldn't care less. If his blood family couldn't accept it, then he'll go with his friendmily, his family of friends.

Odd wanted to become a skate seller, or a graffiti artist, or a photograph, or a film maker, or all of the above. He was young, he could be anything. He knew that his family will support him.

Yumi wanted to become an English teacher.

Hades wanted to work in the video game field, more specifically in game design.

William wanted to work in a video game store, or in a music store, or as a commercial.

Sissi wanted to become a nurse.

Nicholas wanted to work in a music store, or in a video game store, or in a cinema.

.

Life went on.

Life without Lyoko could seem weird, sometimes flat and actionless, but it definitely wasn't. There were meetings, homework and grades, and since they didn't have to save the world anymore, all the Lyoko gang's notes began to rise up.

For the prom of the end of the year, Sissi asked Hades out, and he accepted. They began to go out together. It was 2007, and their prom's first dance was on the song "Every time we touched". And nobody cared that the song came out the year prior, because it was fire, and the best way to start a party.

It became their song.

Chapter Text

At the end of 2007 and towards early 2008, as Hades and the rest of his fellow of the group were discovering the lycée experience and when the Tektonik movement lives its finest hours, a project to destroy the Fabric raised up.

Despite having the supercomputer and Lyoko closed, Hades militated in order to the Fabric to stay there. He couldn't see the work of his parents -his Mom particularly- being destroy that way, or risks someone to find out about the supercomputer. Especially not to build some covered parking.

Well, in the end, his and the other's demonstrations and petitions didn't do nothing. But they managed to forbid the access to the underground part of the Fabric (yes, it involved some return to the past), and to close the Labs to no one who wasn't them, thanks to prints detectors.

.

Hades began to search more about his Mom, but he couldn't find anything. Anthea Schaeffer had disappeared. Same as Anthea Hopper. She had probably changed her name, and could now be anywhere on the planet, living or death. Maybe even in space.

Chapter Text

June 2008.

The gang went to Paris for the Pride march. They mainly went to support Hades, who was walking with a trans flag on his back, like a cape.

Odd was holding a big rainbow banner, slaying as often.

He felt so content to be here, surrounded by his friends, his sister and his girlfriend. He could hold her hand, and both were beaming. And thanks (or due) to her Spanish origins, Sissi was ready to throw hands to anyone being mean with Hades. Never ever underestimate the power of a Spanish woman with a chancla.

If you value your life, of course. Just saying. Because you have never see someone get a chancla out of her feet to throw it in some supernatural angles than a Spanish woman some dumbass made angry.

They sang songs, yelled slogans, and so on and so forth.

It was a great afternoon.

What wasn't was the reaction of Sissi's dad the next day, when he read the newspaper where a photo of Sissi and Hades' backs was featured. Hades had the face turned towards the camera in a defying way, as if he was going to say "I'm here, you can't ignore me now, can you?". Behind them, in the background, there was the rainbow banner Odd was holding.

Well, guess what? Mr Delmas wasn't fond of the LGBT+ community. So when he discovered his daughter's boyfriend was part of it and took his girlfriend, Mr Delmas' daughter, to the gay pride, well he wasn't please. Like, not at all.

But it wasn't like he could fire Hades, since the lycée wasn't his juridiction. And he could not fire him from his daughter's life either, since, you know, it wasn't his life nor business.

So, despite his repulsed reaction to Hades, Mr Delmas didn't really had a choice except to accept him, if he wanted to stay in a good relationship with his daughter. Because she had been very clear. If she had to chose between him and Hades, she wasn't sure she would chose him, despite loving her father.

Chapter Text

They still called themselves the Lyoko Gang, despite Lyoko being down for two years now, and Sissi having no clues what Lyoko was. Yumi only told her it meant "travel" in Japanese because it did.

During the scholar year of 2010-2011, as Hades and all were in the last class of lycée and Yumi in the first class of superior studies, there was a convention in Paris.

The whole gang went to that convention, for different reasons, but mostly because Aelita was singing in it. William and Sam, as geek / nerd, also came.

They didn't really do cosplay. The Stones siblings, Hades and Aelita, were wearing elf ears.

Aelita had a concert and sung really well, just before the Subdigitals. She had a lot of success. Or, as Hades put it, she was "very super great".

Ten minutes after the concert, there was a conference from a Canadian video game studio team. Hades wanted to attend to it so he stayed. He asked Aelita to stay too, because he said he wanted to make her a surprise after, so she stayed, with Jeremy, Sissi, Odd and Sam, who was maybe Odd's girlfriend, nobody really knew.

Ulrich, Yumi and William went to explore the convention. Nicholas too, but not with them -and Hervé didn't even came, as he claimed he had some revisions to do. He wasn't invited but he still pretended (to himself at least) that he was. Since Sissi had joined the Lyoko group, he was alone most of the time. Nicholas was still his friend, despite Hervé's attitude hadn't changed.

Some people in the crowd asked autographs form Aelita who gave some, until the video game team came on stage. They announced that it was directed by a woman called "Athena Cherry Crimson", who arrived on the stage.

In front of them, appeared Anthea Schaeffer, born Hopper. She was older, of course, and had another name but it was her. Her hair was dyed in crimson and she wear two pears as earrings: soft pink on the right and soft blue on the left.

Hades had tears in his eyes. Aelita froze herself. She was about to cry. They were both getting emotional.

After a lot of researches, Hades had found a few people that could have be their mom, and send a lot of mail, but never get any satisfying answer. But he hadn't abandoned. He had pursued his researched and had found some people who could be their mom, and they try to contact them, but without a lot of results.

Jeremie asked Aelita what was wrong and Hades answered: "It's our mother." Jeremie was shocked. Sissi too, but not for the same reason, as it made more or less sense for her, as Hades was "Aelita's twin brother, and Odd's Canadian cousin" -they hadn't told her about Lyoko, yet. Yet, she knew Hades' mother had disappeared, so she got it, more or less.

Hades took notes from the conference.

When it was possible, he asked for the micro in order to asks a question.

"Hi," he said, nervous as ever. "I designed a small video game because I want to became a game designer, is it okay if I gave you my CD?"

The team accepted to have his CD and asked him to came after at their stand to gave it to them.

At the end of the conference, there was a time where it was possible to meet the interventionists on a stand. Hades, Aelita, Jeremie and Sissi went on the queue. Odd and Sam went into the convention.

Aelita and Hades couldn't talk, as they were getting ready to finally met her, after all this time. They were really nervous. Would she recognize them? What if she won't?

Finally, it was their turn. Hades gave them his CD, and then asked for a photo with Anthea, with Aelita. They told her they were great fan of her work. She accepted and Jeremie took a picture.

Anthea said that Aelita reminded her someone she loved once and that she liked Hades' red neckerchief. Aelita was too emotional to say anything. Hades too, but he managed to said a small "thanks".

Suddenly, the pink-and-blue-haired-woman noticed the embroidered design Hades had on the back of his jacket. It was the profile of Xanadu, with an embroidery on top that read: "Lyoko Xanadu Crew". He had added the "Lyoko" part after they had shut down the supercomputor.

This couldn't be a coincidence. Nobody knew about Lyoko, she thought, and even less about Xanadu. Not in that context. She looked at Hades in the eyes, surprised and confused.

"How?" was the only thing she managed to say, getting tears in her eyes. She couldn't believe it. Was it really...?

"What?" Hades' voice was small. Sissi had never saw him like that.

"Hady?" She asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's just-" He turned to the woman he believed to be his mother. "She reminds me of my mom."

"Hadn't your mom disappeared years ago?"

"Hm."

"Do my eyes deceived me?" the older woman asked, filled with a new hope.

"If they see me, never," Hades replied to his mom with the code they always used when they met again on the virtual world. "I'm really here, mom."

People were confused, but they couldn't care less.

"In my arms," she said. And she proceed to hug him. "You changed so much Pluto!"

"I grew up. And I met Aelita (he showed her) and her friends. I go by Hades now."

His mom smiled and nodded. She couldn't be happier. She told her crew members that she'll leave earlier, to reunite with her family.

Sissi wondered if she had to let them between them, in family. She did, and Hades was grateful for it. She just told him they'll met again later, and he agreed. She kissed Hades goodbye and went way, trying to find back Yumi and Ulrich in the convention.

Hades was smiling like an idiot who would have reach Heaven, with blush on his cheeks. He turned toward his mom, sister and sister's boyfriend.

"What?" he said, confused by her mom proud look.

"Nothing," she smiled

"Mom, I know you. Yes, she is my girlfriend." He couldn't help but smile at the last word.

They began to walk towards an ice cream place in the convention. They bought some and went outside, to find a place where they would be alone and have a nice talk.

"Does she knows that you're..." There was uncertainty in his mom's voice.

"A trans man? Yes, she know."

"What?" Her mom asked on a 'beg your pardon' tone.

"What?" Hades was confused. And then he realized that his mom didn't knew that he was, in fact, a trans man. Damn. This could be awkward. She left a little girl to find a teenage boy.

"You're trans?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Oh. Okay. No, I was talking about the fact that you're not... human born."

"Ah. No, she doesn't know about that part. Not yet."

"Oh. Okay. Well, in any way, she seems lovely."

"Yes, she is."

"Is that my jacket?"

"Yep. Do you want it back?"

"No, it's fine, thanks, you can keep it, it fits you well."

"Right?" Aelita said. "I told him the same thing."

They sat down and began to discuss about their life, principally. Aelita and Hades talked about theirs. About what happened all those years. Jeremie sometimes intervened. The pink-haired-teenage-girl presented to her mother her boyfriend Jeremie, and Anthea was happy to met him. She also told them that she got someone in her life.

"What? Who?" asked Hades, curious.

So she told them all the story, since the last time they saw her. She was kidnapped when Aelita and Hades were ten-ish years old by the federals due to project Carthage, to make pressure on Franz. But guess what? Franz couldn't care less, he only fear for himself and his daughter.

When he and Aelita disappeared -they didn't knew about Hades, of course-, and after five years of intensive researches, they finally released her, in Canada. She rebuilded her life there, and become a video game 3D animator.

When she had enough money, she searched for her children and husband for the following ten years, without founding them. The supercomputer was off and she didn't manage to turn it on. She never remarried, and at first didn't get out with anyone and made her grief, telling everyone who asked that her husband and children where gone.

However, five years ago, she meet someone, a nice Canadian barista named...

"Steven?" Hades guessed.

"How did you know?!" Anthea asked, shocked.

"An intuition," Hades stated. "Please, pursue."

"I'm happy with them. He's perfect. We have a cat, whose name is Puck."

"Like my lutin!" reacts Aelita.

"Yes," smiled Anthea.

They continued to talk for hours, and even ended up inviting her to have a meal with them, at the Hermitage. She accepted. She had no idea what the Hermitage was.

Sissi joined them. Hades and her began to prepare the dinner, joking and laughing, listening to the radio, while Aelita took her mom to the living room to explain her it was the house she lived in after Anthea was gone, and that, thanks to Jeremie, it was theirs again.

Yumi, Ulrich, and Odd arrived, and they began to prepare the evening meal. They all ate together, retelling out loud memories of past Lyoko times, without never mentioning it directly.

Sissi felt like even if she was well integrated, she was missing something, an important part of it all. A central element to the story. The thing that linked them all. Except the family component.

She talked about it during the night, while Hades was holding her in his arm in the bed they were sleeping in. He took a deep sight. And he began to talk.

"Well, you're right. There is something linking us all. But I never told you about it, because I was too afraid to do so. Because I fear you couldn't like me after that. And it scares me. So I'm going to tell you. The others are okay with it. And if you want to take a distance after that, I could totally understand."

"I don't think I could ever hate you, or not like you."

"Hm."

"I swear. You can tell me. I promise I won't tell anyone."

Hades sighted.

"Okay. So, I'm not fully human."

"What?"

"Let me elaborate, please."

"Yeah, I'm gonna need you to develop."

"Well, it all started when my parents got that child, Persephone-"

Chapter Text

The year was 2010.

Things went out of hand: Sissi became a 1D (One Direction) fan.

Hades secretly enjoyed it, and learned the choreography with Sissi. Yet, he never got to beat her on Just Dance.

2011.

Hades discovered the French group M83 with their album "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming". He liked the music, the sonority of it. It reminded him of Lyoko, of that weird feeling, of home.

The movie How To Train Your Dragon (called only "Dragon" in French) came out. The gang went to see it.

Hades loved it. Hiccup and Toothless' relationship reminded Hades of the mantas of Lyoko. He loved to go to the aquarium to see mantas.

They had their bac final exam. They all got it.

2012.

Max Richter revealed to the world his adaptation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
The Stones -Anthea adopted the name- couldn't be more happier.

2013.

Hades discovered Woodkid, also a French musician, with his album "The Golden Age". He also loved it.

.

Hades became a 3D game designer, for Ubisoft Paris. It was technically in Montreuil, but "Paris" sounded fancier, Hades supposed. He was still living in The Hermitage. Sissi had moved in with him.

Life continued.

They grew up.

They grew old.

And the XANA alert never rang any more.