Miko was firing at full force towards the lightning cloud in the sky that wasn't too far from the place they found Mitch resetting the fast food worker, but on their way, Bergy and Five saw more mooks of their kind. Some were fire elementals, others water, earth, and wind, but lightning was the big one.

    "That thing from the sky is probably the boss. I don't think I'm ready for something like this!"

    Miko quickly turned back at him! "Quit acting like such a noob! You're a Glitch Tech, you and I are going to have to face bigger and better threats! Are you planning on just sticking to low level XP grinding all the time?!"

    Burgy shuddered. "Well not always, but-"

    "Then shut up and let's take this thing down!"

    "Okay amiga, calm down, that was uncalled for," Five jumped in. "Bergy has a point. This might be one of the most dangerous missions yet, and these mooks are spawning much faster than usual. We need to stop as much players as possible and take down the foot soldiers!"

    "We're wasting time! If this is our most dangerous mission yet, then we need to end this quickly!"

    Bergy raised his hand and adjusted to trying to be more confident. "Well with all these foot soldiers, the more we take down , the more XP we gain. Two of us can focus on fighting them off and the other stops the other players, while the third person clears the way until we get to the boss!"

    Five had a good idea of what he was thinking. "Then we head back to base, level up from all the grinding, and we'll have enough power and HP to take on the boss!"

    "And we might get more weapons to be able to beat these things!"

    "Beat em up quest?"

"Beat em up quest!" Five and Bergy cheered on the name, but this time, Miko wasn't joining in on the fun.

    "I'm not waiting on you too!"

    "No, Miko, you take on the ones in the way, we'll handle the cleanup and troubleshooting."

    "After all," Bergy posed with Five in an attempt to look cool, "that's why we're called Tech Support."

    Miko objected to the play, calling it ridiculous,

    "Besides, we always find a way to clear the game and beat the glitch!"

    Bergy spoke for Five. "True, but you usually have a plan too...that usually fails, but you two always come up with another solution, right?"

    Miko didn't answer, clearly not in the mood to debate it and drove through until as the guys predicted, a large horde of small humanoid demons halted the van from going any further. Shifting the gears to make it go faster only pushed it a few yards away as Miko's attempts to keep it going failed. Too many were blocking their path. Continuing to rely on action over analysis, Miko violently smacked one via a kick to the door, and jumped to the hood, summoning the hammer to smash them all down to bits, swinging it around like a flail and collecting demon body after demon body.

When one grabbed her weapon, Miko simply let her hand go and shot it point black in the face, throwing its head back at it's allies and shooting them with gauntlet blasts after gauntlet blast. Some attempted and got the jump on her, but she charged the blast like she was Mega Man and blasted it, firing a shockwave and blasting them all away, laughing maniacally as she began de-rezzing them!

"Bring it on! You're all getting KO-ed! MUHAHAHAHAHA!"

     Five would've checked on the sanity of his best friend, but Miko seemed to be using it as a form of anger management and chose to help Bergy, given that he was more skilled in glitch combat. Five used the Speed Boost and shield formation to create panels for Bergy to reach the nearby houses. Some of the demons went after him, but Five used the opportunity to use his whip upgrade and slice them up, taking the heads and using them as a flail to knock some of them away. Bergy gave him the signal that he got the person to stop playing and Five jumped on the hoverboard, slicing through body after body on the path to stop more from spawning.

    Helping Bergy with more Speed Boosts, the two nerds managed to jump from house to house, using the fences as cover to shoot them from afar as the two unplugged, reset, and paused as many gamers from the cul de sac and absorbing more XP from them in the process. Bergy even offered trying to do it on his own, summoning a crossbow and striking down some demons until one of them burned through it.

    "Oh nerds! They have elemental powers!?"

    "There's gotta be some system to beat them easier," Five yelled as he analyzed the demons coming after him. Some were absorbing power from the pavement, others were blowing in air, some were rubbing their bodies together and creating fire, and others were turning light blue touching the fire hydrant. Five jumped into the street, pausing neighborhood residents trying to figure out what was going on and keeping them out of harm's way, enough for one of the demons to launch a fireball at him. He ducked, and from behind, a water demon took the hit and was unaffected.

"Aha!" He taunted the water demon and ducked underneath him as it extinguished the fire demon. "Makes sense, now what about the other three?"

He started spraying spider webs to ground the lightning demons, weakening them via gauntlet blasts and kicking into the hydrants where all the demons attempting to transform into water were located. The lightning demon attempted to free, only to touch the leaky faucet and electrocute all the others in the area, paralyzing them quick enough for Five to defeat, and the earth demons nearby quickly exploded. Some of the earth demons attempted to reform themselves, only for Five to blow up the pieces and de-Rez them, ASAP. The wind demons were the hard part, firing air bullets at Five and from the distance, Bergy was keeping his distance against the similar creatures. Even firing gaunlet blasts would only stalemate the situation as Five was forced to jump behind a car for cover.

"I need something fire related. Ally!" He tried calling Miko. "Hey, summon Ally and give her the berry!"

"No, I might need it for later!"

"You collected more didn't you?! It's an emergency!"

"Fine!"

A few seconds, the demons carved through the car, intending to slice Five down to his bare flesh. The blueberry head shaped hero was forced to roll underneath the car and shoot down ones fast approaching him, but two pinned him to the floor. He couldn't move, as two wind demons began charging up an elemental blast.

Then the shadow of a phoenix emerged above them, as Ally emerged in her Fire Form, shooting fireballs from her mouth and burning most of the wind demons into rotting corpses for Ally to de-rez.

"Thanks girl!" Ally gleefully picked him up as the two teamed up to easily blast and eliminate the remaining demons on the blocks, which looked possible until the two noticed a handful remaining: the fire demons, enhanced by most of the their ashes from Ally's attacks and absorbing them into powerful streams of lava and magma Five and Ally narrowly dodged.

"Darn it! There's gotta be a way out of this!"

Suddenly, a massive turtle shell was spinning straight towards the demons, knocking and crushing them like they were bowling pins. Five and Ally veered their heads, confused, until Bergy came out of the shell.

"Oh, I used the turtle glitch we found from the Collection Quest and with the XP, I leveled it up to make a turtle shell to transform into Shell Bergy!"

"And the higher level means it can make you go bigger!"

"Exactly! Now let's go help Miko!"

The two rolled and flew their way back to the van where Miko seemed to be done, heavily breathing and dropped the hammer, heading into the van and about to drive off.

"Wait for us!"

Miko only remembered them, taking Ally back and grabbing Five before he could fall on the floor and threw him into the back while kicking the other door open so Bergy could enter. Unfortunately, Bergy forgot to deactivate the shell upgrade, only doing so as Miko drove off and he stumbled to hold onto the railing until he found his footing and jumped in, closing the door behind him.

"Miko, not cool! Leave no Tech behind!"

"Pick up the pace then! We're running out of time before that thing drops down! Mitch is not going to steal from us again!"

"Dream Team, we might have to make a detour!"

"What, why?"

"Because," Bergy explained, "Mama Miyamoto's Spaghetti in a Bucket is under attack!"

Miko sighed. "To think this day started with me doing bad at Doki Doki Dreamboat!"

"Ooh I love that game. I just wish I could find someone irl that'll find me a dreamboat."

Miko laughed it off, but Five assured him that the person could be right around the corner.

"And ignore Miko, she's just salty she can't beat it."

"Hey!" She parked the car, crushed other demons underneath it. The three proceeded to jump out, finding most of the fast food restaurant's pedestrians under attack.

The Factory

Odd was finding joy playing the online multiplayer of Boom Infinity, using the elements of the other demon underlings around to weaken the main devil his opponent picked before finishing them off, adding onto his win streak. William Clone also seemed impressed, though was mostly following what Odd was doing. But then Odd addressed the rest of the team barring Jeremy, who was upstairs finishing the upgrades to Clone William's abilities.

"Hey so in the game, there's different demons based on the elements, fire, water, wind, lightning and water. Which ones would the five of us be under?"

"Well Jeremy would obviously be lightning, computers and all. He hacks and masters machines like lightning anyways," Ulrich claimed.

"Huh, I thought electric guys were kind of the crazy ones."

Aelita cleared it up. "I think you're referring to villains. But Jeremy definitely knows how to shock us when we least expect it."

Yumi had a good feeling Aelita meant that in more than one way, evident by the rose-haired girl's excitement. Something must've happened when they weren't around.

"You know Aelita, I think you would be water."

"Really? How so?"

"Because when you're around Jeremy, he gets you paralyzed," Odd laughed, intending to get a certain face out of her, which somewhat worked. Ulrich tried a more reasonable approach.

"No matter how hard things have been for you, you've always found a way to stay calm and adapt to the situation."

    "You've changed so much from when you first came to Earth."

    Yumi raised a finger. "Float in the times of pain or dance like waves along the wind, which touches its surface."

    Odd took a break from the game. "You needed me to diss Sissi, and now you can trash talk her on the fly."

    Aelita had to think about it. "Well, it's thanks to you all. I thought Lyoko was my only home. When I got here, I was worried I couldn't face the waves. But you all helped me through that. Thank you all."

    Ulrich and Yumi hugged her while Odd continued to play, thinking he really wasn't a part of that.

    "So three of us left, who would Fire be? Wait, Fire beats Air? How does that work? I thought Air blows fire away."

    "If you fan and harness the flames," Yumi explained, "then the fire user can burn the energy harnessed by wind. It's 50/50 depending on what I choose to do."

    "Then, Yumi, I think fire, is well, you."

    All eyes were on Ulrich, particularly Yumi, and the former realized he probably should phrase it better.

    "Well you're smart, passionate, and it takes a lot of skills to use fire without hurting people, right? And you know how to handle yourself when someone tries to burn you," hoping that made the most sense. "Fire's pretty strong so if any of us are mature enough to handle it, I think it'd be you."

    Yumi held her face. "How flattering."

    Aelita wanted to jump in. "So Ulrich would be earth right?"

    Ulrich didn't seem to keen on that. "I'm not exactly the solid type."

    Yumi defended the thought. "You're headstrong but you're very down to earth. And you've got a heart of stone."

"She's right," Odd said, "plus you're better on the ground than in the air."

Ulrich attributed that to his fear of heights, which he was slightly getting better at, annoyed that outside of the Overbike, he wasn't the best at aerial combat when not using Super Sprint.

"Though my swords are made out of metal. Hey, most people used to make swords from rocks and stuff, right?"

"Like your katanas."

"Yeah," realizing that martial arts helped him be grounded and calmer, especially with his family issues. "I guess you're right. That just leaves air, wind."

"Odd sighed. So I have the weakest ele-" only to be interrupted by Jeremy.

"Everyone get ready to go to the scanners. I'm sending William out now," who came out of one of the Scanners, more Jeremified than Odd was trying to get into Tip-Top Shape.

"I'm out. Good luck guys!"

C-William faded into the wall and they could hear him wall bounce from the elevator interior.

"Hope he can slow them down."

    Then a huge lightning strike hit the factory, shaking everyone up inside.

"It's really risky using that much energy with a thunderstorm like this out in the open. So I'm transferring you one at a time! Aelita, you're up first."

Aelita headed into the Scanner first.

"Scanner Aelita. Transfer Aelita, Virtualization!"

However, the process took longer than usual. Jeremy panicked, but Aelita ended up arriving on Lyoko a few minutes later.

"There must be a delay with the virtualization effect. Everyone give me a few seconds."

Aelita's defenders waited while Odd continued playing, trying to ignore what Ulrich and Yumi were going to say. Air was the weakest element, and as the Boom Stopper, he was burning away the wind devil with little difficulty, seeing the creature as fragile and running away, much like his fighting style.

"I really am the weakest Warrior."

    Yumi and Ulrich didn't outright hear him, thinking Odd was talking to himself about the game.

Bailley, Northwestern US.

Miko was first to attack the demons on the outside, climbing up the replica of a bucket holder and shooting down a volley of energy blasts before swinging down from her legs and smashing one straight into the pavement, throwing one she hadn't derezzed into a bowling to strike down before shooting the hapless ones in their path.

"We need a game plan," Five yelled. "One of us takes out the creeps trying to break in, the other stops the ones getting in through the roof, the third clears inside!"

Then he and Bergy rose their heads to see Miko racing up the bucket walls and attacking the demons on the roof of the spaghetti model.

"Alright then. Techs, move out!"

Now, it was time for a counterstrike. In this case, a community offensive.