Chapter 5 - Part 5-Similar DNA

Odd, Ulrich, and Natalie ran around the Polar Region at top speed trying to fend off all of the Wasp Monsters blocking the tower. Aelita hid behind a glacier and watched as each of the fighters did his or her best. Jeremy sat in the Factory with Yumi at his side. (She had lost in Lyoko.) Yumi made fists and started shouting at the computer when everyone was losing life points.

“Ulrich!” she cried. “That poison is killing you!”

“It's not Ulrich we have to worry about,” Jeremy reminded her. “He still has eighty life points. Natalie only has forty. Odd is down to his last ten.”

“LASER ARROW!!!” Odd shouted, shooting his last ammo at a wasp flying for him. The wasp hit him just as the arrow shot its XANA symbol.

“Odd!” Natalie called, in denial that he had lost. She turned to a wasp flying for Aelita and aimed. “BULLET HAPPY!!!” She shot a few bullets at that wasp and a second one. Both exploded on the spot.

“Nice shot, Natalie,” Ulrich rewarded. “Now watch this one! TRIANGULATE!!!” He ran around the last wasp at full speed in a triangular form. Confused, the wasp shot its poison at a fake one. The real Ulrich ran up to the monster with his sword held high. “IMPACT!!!”

Aelita let out a sigh of relief when she saw the last monster was gone. She ran across an icy ledge and melted into the tower. Once inside, she floated up to the top level and gave the screen the code.

“RETURN TO THE PAST, NOW!!!”



Sissy, Herb, and Nicholas walked over to Jeremy, Odd, Ulrich, Yumi, and Natalie. Flipping her hair behind her shoulder, Sissy grabbed onto Natalie's shoulder.

“Would you like to-“

“Sit with you at lunch?” Natalie finished. “No. And another thing: I'm no good at Physics. Maybe you should ask Odd to help you study.”

“ODD??” Sissy exploded, turning to Natalie's friend. Odd smiled his big, goofy smile and gave the peace sign. Sissy gave a sour face and stomped off to get away from the strange boy. Herb and Nicholas followed just as the others started to laugh.

“I did that to Sissy once,” Ulrich told Natalie. “It was pretty funny to see the look of shock on her face when she thought I read her mind.”

“Oh yeah!” Jeremy remembered. “I told Aelita that she should come for a visit today. Let's go to the Factory and see if we can start up the materialization program for her.” Jeremy turned and walked off towards the lab. His friends followed him, but Yumi stopped short when she realized something was not right. She watched Natalie walk ahead with the rest of the boys. For a split-second, Yumi could have sworn that she saw something on Natalie's forehead. It reminded her of the time when the gang had to fight her clone. Still suspicious and not satisfied, she reluctantly agreed to herself to keep moving with the rest of her friends.

“Are you okay, Yumi?” Natalie asked, seeing the look on her face.

“It's nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“It's nothing!”

Natalie jumped back from the snappy remark and joined up with Odd, Ulrich, and Jeremy. Looking behind herself, she saw the look of anger and betrayal in Yumi's eyes. They scared her. She bit her lip and refused to look any longer.



In the Factory, the gang stood around a single scanner waiting for their virtual friend to arrive. The scanner doors opened with a whoosh, and Aelita lay in a pile on the floor of the machine. She looked up and smiled at the gang as Jeremy held out his hand. She took it and stood to her feet.

“It feels good to be on Earth again,” she told them. “Besides, I wanted to interact with the Human form of Natalie.”

“Hey! Look at this thing!” Natalie cheered, walking next to the materialized Aelita. “Is it a prize for winning in Lyoko??”

Aelita cocked an eyebrow when Natalie started to poke her in the arm. She seemed amused. Yumi, feeling some annoyance growing, grabbed Natalie's arm and stopped her poking torture.

“That's enough, okay?” she asked. “Do be so silly. That's Aelita…!” Yumi stopped and stared at the two girls standing next to each other. She let go of Natalie's arm and stepped back in shock. She covered her mouth a mumbled, “Same…faces…”

“What?” Ulrich asked. “Are you okay, Yumi?”

“Don't you see?” she shouted, indicating Natalie and Aelita. “They have the same faces! They look almost exactly alike!”

The boys jerked their heads to the two girls and tried to observe them. Yumi had a point. Both Natalie and Aelita had similar face shapes as well as the same eyes. Their ears were the same shape, and their mouths looked alike in form. The thing most different about the girls was their hair. Aelita's was the pink color; Natalie's was bright red with brown tips.

Curious, Jeremy decided to investigate. Thinking fast, he told the group, “I'm going to work on the Anti-Virus for Aelita. Why don't the rest of you go to class? I have all the information in the computer I need. Besides, the four of you missed the last lesson because of the squabble in Lyoko.”

“Yeah, I guess we should go,” Odd agreed. “Mrs. Hertz is giving a lecture on mass today! It'll be a perfect opportunity for me to brush up on some drawing skills!”

“And I need to study,” Ulrich chimed in. “Are you coming, Natalie? You missed the notes from your last math class.”

“Let me come, too!” Aelita begged. “I'd like to see how the science here works.”

“I'll show you all my notes after class.”

“Oh, right, time was reversed. I can't go back to school.”

“Why not go to the ice cream parlor?” Ulrich pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Go ahead. It's my treat. You must be hungry.”

“I am.”

Ulrich, Natalie, Odd, and Aelita walked towards the elevator and pressed the button to go down. Once the doors closed, Yumi turned to Jeremy with serious eyes.

“I'm not going,” she announced. “I'm getting a little suspicious about our friend Natalie. She just appeared one day and suddenly was able to go into Lyoko. How can we be so sure she's not a spy for XANA?”

“She was able to break past that impossible firewall,” Jeremy remembered, scratching his chin. “I wasn't even able to decode it. How come a new student that just appeared could get past it? She doesn't even know anything about computers!”

“You can say that again,” Yumi agreed. “She barely knows anything in any of our classes. I have English, math, science, and history with her. I've never seen her in French, P.E., art, or computers…wait! I did see her in computers once. I was walking by to get back to my class when I passed by the classroom she was in. I stopped to wave to her, but I didn't at the last second. She seemed to be talking to the rest of the class a lot, and I heard her recite some of the most complicated calculations I ever heard! It was as if she was…”

“Aelita?” Jeremy finished. “There's no way she could have anything to do with Aelita! Natalie just moved to this town a few-“

“If she and her family moved to this town, how come she doesn't live at home like I do? She should be living with her parents. The only reason you guys have rooms here is because your families live in different towns, states, or countries.”

“You're right. You're absolutely right! Why didn't I see it before? We must have been blinded by the joy of Natalie being here.”

“Let's go to the super computer. I have a hunch we've got a XANA monster here.”

Jeremy nodded and the two of them ran into the elevator. Jeremy pressed the button, and they came to the upper level. As soon as the doors opened, Jeremy ran to the computer and typed in whatever he could.

“I'm bringing up the data on both Natalie and Aelita,” he explained as their information came up. “If Natalie does have something to do with Aelita or Lyoko, we could find it out here.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Yumi begged. “I like Natalie. I think she's a great friend. I'm only concerned for everyone else's sake. What if she is a XANA spy? She could be gathering so much data and use it to find out our weaknesses and destroy us all!”

“Don't even talk like that, Yumi!” Jeremy shouted. “How dare you think a person that has been fighting for us this whole time could be a Monster of XANA?!” Jeremy continued to type and brought up the information screen for Natalie. He looked at some of her information and realized a lot of it was unknown. Things like her birthday, her age, her parents, her siblings, and other personal information did not have a definite answer.

“Does she have a birth certificate?” Yumi asked. “That would explain a lot.”

“I'll check.” Jeremy clicked for the other information to come up. He searched through the entire data bank, but the findings for a birth certificate, a birth date, a time of birth, and a birthplace were unfruitful. Scratching his head, Jeremy went back to the main screen for the two girls. He sat back in his chair and looked at the main information. “Both of them have the same factors unknown,” he announced. “We know that Aelita does not have any personal information, but Natalie has the same information missing! Now that's weird.”

“A coincidence or a clue?”

“I don't know.” Jeremy looked over the same data again and again. His brain started to buzz with confusion and frustration. He leaned over the keyboard and held his face in his hands with his elbows down on the table. He studied the computer screen with his glasses sliding down to the tip of his nose.

“Aelita, Natalie,” Yumi murmured, “Aelita, Natalie…”

Jeremy perked up just as Yumi said that single chant. His eyes grew wide, and his hands started to shake. Yumi cocked her head and watched Jeremy's nimble fingers go to work. She saw him go to a typing screen.

“This is it!” he announced, unable to hold his excitement. “Why didn't we see this before? It's so obvious! Their names are the connection!” He typed in “Natalie” on the blank screen. Yumi watched with increasing curiosity. Jeremy continued, “Look at Natalie's name. It's a seven-letter word, right? Well, look what happens when you take the `N' away. Now we have six letters. That's the same amount as the number of letters in `Aelita'. You might think it's just a coincidence, but look at what happens when you mix up the letters. If you scramble the letters in `Natalie' without the `N', you get…”

“Aelita…” Yumi whispered, seeing Jeremy move the letters around. She gritted her teeth and pushed some hair behind her ears. “What else is there?” she finally managed to ask. “Does the bank have anymore valuable data?”

“I'm checking.” Jeremy clicked on the DNA sample and brought both strings at a close-up on the screen. He smirked and showed them to Yumi. “That explains a lot. When materialized, they have exact same DNA! That can't be a coincidence.”

“Natalie came from Lyoko…” Yumi mumbled. “She was once an inhabitant. I don't…believe it.”

“It's shocking,” Jeremy agreed. “I don't know how hard that will be for everyone else to accept.”

“How do we get her to admit it?”

“I'm just worried about how Odd will feel.”

“That's another primal concern.”

“There's no need to worry.”

Jeremy and Yumi jerked their heads up towards the elevator and saw Natalie walking towards them. She had a stern and serious expression on her face as she turned to face the computer. Jeremy looked up at her with upset eyes and frowned. Natalie's gaze didn't move from the screen.

“I think it's time I should tell you about my past.”

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