Why Don't You Use Me?

I was and still am a large fan of Code Lyoko, mostly the games. The Wii game is the one that I play the most of, though. I don't know why, either, because I have already completed it about three times and counting. I guess that it is because the controls are simple and easy to use, though. However, when I was doing my seccond playthrough of the entire game, things were a little bit... Odd.

It started with the color palletes in Kadic and in the factory. They looked as if they had more saturation to them than usual, although it could have easily been my screen glitching. The hues of the colors were also slightly brighter than usual, which, with the saturation, made it look as if everything was made with pastel colors instead of the usual graphics. To be honest, I was about to turn off the game, just because I thought that coming back the next day would solve the issue. I decided to play on instead. To me, it was just a small glitch that wouldn't annoy me too much.

In Lyoko, however, the color palletes were slightly more intense but darker, a contrast to the bright color pallete in Kadic and in the factory. The color palette differences would continue into the cut scenes, as well. It was annoying when the monsters were pretty much the same color as the background. More than once I would accidentally get hit by a monster that I couldn't see. I decided to take it in my stride, just because playing exactly the same game twice would probably bore me halfway through.

The color palettes changed back to their usual hues and saturation values when I had completed the Mountain Boss. I was slightly upset that the new experience of the adjusted color palettes had disappeared, but when I noticed what had happened to the playable characters, I was intrigued once more.

Ulrich Samurai swords' blades were pure white, whilst the handles were golden. His hair was darker than usual. The headband that he wore was only yellow, instead of having the white symbol in the middle. His clothing was slightly more saturated whilst his boots were a light grey with black symbols on the sides, which reminded me of the one that he should have had on his headband.

Odd was a blue cat instead of a purple. The white had turned to violet whilst his hair, other than the now blue dyed part, had turned a slight hue of ginger. His claws were a dark grey with white tips. The stripes on his face were silver, and the symbol on his suit had completely disappeared. However, the symbol was nowpart of the tips of his ears, similar to how Ulrich's symbol on his headband had appeared on his boots instead.

Once I had started the next mission, I saw that Yumi was pretty much untouched, other than the fact that the shades of her clothing were lighter and her hair was a deper black. Her fans were exactly the same as usual. I guessed that the changes had only really affected the boys that much, until I switched to Aelita.

Everything that used to be pink on Aelita turned a pinkish red. Her skin was extremely pale. When I shot an energy field, I found that they were also slightly tinged with red with a darker aura around them. When they hit, they disappeared into the same particles that appeared when a character devirtualised and virtualised. Aelita's eyes had visibly dark green irises, despite the fact that you usually couldn't see them whilst playing. Aelita was probably the most affected by the change for some reason, and I only found out that one reason later on.

The characters regained their normal colorations about halfway through the game, which took me three hours including breaks to reach. Well, all other than Aelita. She remained glitched in Lyoko, but now she was also different in Kadic and in the factory. Her hair was darker, her skin was paler, her clothes were black and her expression never changed from an upset look. As well as that, her voice-over sounded depressed and quiet compared to how it normally sounded. I dismissed it as a character glitch, although it didn't happen before, and continued onwards into the game for a while before turning my Wii off to play something else, because I had been playing Code Lyoko for about four or five hours.

The next morning, after turning on my Wii for more Code Lyoko action I noticed that the Photo Channel was installed, although I didn't install it on my own. I decided that my Wii was glitching, but wanted to see what the entire thing was about. I hadn't used it before, ever since my Wii was a gaming-only thing, and curiosity was something that I had way too much of at times.

Upon entering, I noticed that there was one image inside of it. It was of Aelita talking about something to Jeremy. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that there were words below Aelita. Guessing that the words were what she was saying, I came closer to the screen to read them. 'Why do they never use me? I am just as good as the rest, if only they spent more time upgrading me instead of Yumi and Odd.' I was slightly confused. I knew that barely anyone used Aelita to play the game, but seriously? Who was stupid enough to make an image like that? It's not like game characters have feelings. I exited out of the Photo Channel and selected 'Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity', hoping that the glitches had went away overnight.

It seemed like everything was fine at first, other than Aelita's slightly depressed voice-over. Everyone behaved just as usual, before I entered Lyoko. I virtualised as Aelita instead of Ulrich, which I found strange, because you always virtualise as Ulrich unless he isn't a playable character at that point in the game. I changed to Odd and saw that Ulrich was playable, as well as Yumi. Why did I virtualise as Aelita, then? I shrugged it off as a glitch, despite the amount of strange occurences that I had dismissed as a glitch, and continued playing.

The next mission, Odd wasn't there. Aelita's character had a bit of red on her gloves, and she looked guilty and as if she had been crying. The gameplay wasn't altered other than that, so I guessed that my memory card was messing the game up. At least it was a new experience to me, although it was, to put it simply, rather strange.

Yumi went in the next mission. This time, Aelita's face had a long scar on it, just below her right eye. Her gloves were now redder than before. Aelita herself looked even more guilty, as if she had killed Odd and Yumi. I shook my head and laughed at the thought. That couldn't have happened! It was just a coloration glitch paired with a character glitch! By now, though, things were beginning to piece together in my mind. Maybe Aelita had murdered Odd and Yumi? I mean, Odd didn't appear where he should have when he went, same as Yumi. Then again, blood didn't exist in Lyoko, and Aelita's overworld character was unaltered other than the upset voice. This time, I just couldn't take it as a glitch. I turned off the game and went off to play some Team Fortress, just so that the game would repair itself.

I decided to play more Code Lyoko halfway through the next day. I hoped that the game was back to normal and that Aelita didn't look like a crazed murderer. I was disappointed.

Aelita was the only playable character. Jeremy seemed wary around her, as well. In the first mission that I had to complete, I saw that Aelita fought with Ulrich's swords and used Odd's shield to protect herself. Her hair was black like Yumi's and she had Yumi's shoulder pads. On top of that, the script had altered, along with the voice-overs. Jeremy sounded slightly scared when talking to Aelita, whilst Aelita spoke with a strange mixture of guilt and joy. Even Herb, Mrs Hertz and everyone else you can talk to were wary around Aelita. Sissi wouldn't talk to Aelita; she just displayed '...' where she would usually talk.

I did one mission as the messed-up Aelita before going to the Photo Channel. It was just instinct, but it payed off. There was a video there now, instead of the image. I played it, and was surprised and slightly disturbed by what I saw. It was Aelita, like she looked like in her previous mission, but bloodied slightly with a laser arrow in her right arms, her left side cut open and the long scar on her face, but it was bleeding. Aelita was in Lyoko, with the outlines of Yumi, Ulrich and Odd lying on the floor behind her, devirtualised. They were all in Sector 5, but it was darker, and fog lined the edges. Aelita smiled slightly at the camera before looking up.

"Maybe now they will use me and not the others," Aelita said, smiling.

"Aelita, no! What have you done! They are gone now!" Jeremy exclaimed.

"But I was bored. Nobody was using me because they thought that I was too weak. Now I can be as strong as all of them put together!" Aelita remarked.

"Aelita, you didn't have to-"

"Be quiet! I am sick of all of you trying to tell me what I should do! I did what I wanted to, and that's that! No going back!" Aelita interrupted, before flying up using her wings.

I turned off my Wii and leaned back in my chair, processing what had happened. Aelita had killed the other Lyoko warriors because she was not being used. She must have messed with Lyoko and made it that once killed, you couldn't go back to Earth. Instead, you just died. Of course that was practically impossible in the game. All that I knew was that I would clear my save file off of the SD card, along with the video.

I left the game for about two days before convincing myself that nothing would be glitched and messed up because I had cleared the SD card, and that would have gotten rid of Aelita's crazy behavior for sure. It turned out that I was completely wrong. This time, Kadic was abandoned and everything was darker other than Aelita, who had tons more slightly disturbing details on her than usual.

On Earth, she had dark circles under her eyes and extremely pale skin. Her irises were visibly a dark green color. Her clothing had small specks of blood over it, as if she had killed off everyone and everything in the area. She was wearing Yumi's clothes and had red hair, with a splotch of violet where Odd usually had his. She had Ulrich's jacket over Yumi's shirt. Aelita was smiling softly, and a knife was slipping out of the pocket of Ulrich's jacket.

In Lyoko, it was worse. Aelita's markings were red, along with her hair, and she had Odd's cat gloves and shield, Yumi's shoulder pads and backpack and Ulrich's headband and swords. She had splatters of blood on her, both her own and not her own. The scar was bleeding profusely down her face and dripping onto her clothes. Where the laser arrow was embedded in the video was now a hole, surrounded by dried blood. The massive scar in the side was closing up but the hole in the clothes was still visible. Aelita's skin was a sickly white with grey under her eyes, as if she hadn't slept in weeks. I didn't have the strength to play so I turned off the Wii and ran upstairs to calm myself down.

It took about two weeks for me to even go to the title screen of 'Code Lyoko: Quest for Infinity'. At least I had had enough time to make up some sort of credible reason for what I had seen. That reason was that my cousin, a master hacker, had somehow hacked my game. Despite the fact that I hadn't seen him for a month or so because he was at college, it was a good enough reason to make me believe that what had happened in the game meant nothing and wasn't actually real.

I was relieved to see that the game was normal, after I had removed the data from the SD card and checked to see if any other channels had been downloaded without my knowledge. The characters were all back, Aelita didn't look like a cold-blooded murderer and none of the color palettes were adjusted in any way, shape or form. It was all well and good. For a while, of course, because the game couldn't resist giving me another million disturbing thoughts.

It all went bad when I reached the final boss. Once again, Aelita was the only playable character. At least she wasn't covered in blood. I simply took it as a new challenge, although I still was a bit wary because of what had happened before.

The boss was, to say the very least, slightly underwhelming. Aelita needed to hit it two or three times to get through each stage of the battle, until the boss fell. That was a slight warning sign for me. I hadn't bothered to upgrade Aelita's energy fields at all throughout the duration of the game. Even with fully upgraded energy fields, Aelita wouldn't be capable of defeating the boss that quickly. I knew that I should turn off the Wii and hope that the game wasn't completely butchered again, but my mind convined me that no jumpscare would stop me from sleeping for the next ten days or so. Nothing in this game could give me nightmares, anyway. It could just leave me disturbed for the next couple of weeks. It was just a game. I waited for the cutscene to play, hoping that I was right.

The cutscene consisted of Aelita complaining to Jeremy about how she was never used before she turned her attention to the camera and said, "See? I am just as good as they are. So why do you never use me, other than in places where it is necessary to use me? I tried to get your attention by making their powers available to me, but that obviously didn't work. Just tell me why you and so many others never use me! Am I that worthless to you? A waste of time after everything that I could do? Why can't you see that I am the most powerful, not the weakest! Why can't you just useme for once? Why?" I stopped listening at that point. Aelita was crying by now, and sounded as if she was choking on her tears. I eventually turned off my Wii and removed the disc, making a silent promise that I would use her a bit more.

Now I still play the game, but I use Aelita a bit more. Whenever I don't use her for an entire mission I can see her character take on a darker coloration. Sometimes, one other character vanishes for an entire mission, and Aelita's voice becomes quieter, slightly depressed. Some people would call me crazy for my actions, but seriously; if you had seen what I had seen, you would do the same. I just hope that nothing like that happens in any other game...

Nat5105 (talk) 14:41, April 21, 2014 (UTC)