Aelita Schaeffer

Aelita Schaeffer (real name), Aelita Stones (college name), Aelita Hopper or Aelita Lyoko

Aelita and the virtual World : Code Lyoko season 1

Thought the firsts episodes of the first Code Lyoko season, we can quickly see who is one of the series main character. With her very uncommon pink hair, her mint-green eyes and always with this smile on her face, Aelita is a 12-year-old, young and cute little girl. Apparently, nothing that strange for now, but what makes her so particular and different is that Aelita isn't really Human. In fact, she lives in a virtual world called Lyoko, and as the main guardian of this virtual world, she is, in an extend, rather linked to it. It's say that while Jérémie and his friends at start, turned on the supercomputer, they all promised one thing together: to be able to materialize Aelita with the help of the scanners, make her security and give her a brand new life on Earth. 

Actually, on Lyoko, Aelita's worst enemy is X.A.N.A. With his monsters, X.A.N.A. wants one thing: to destroy her and then take the control of both the virtual, and the real world. Aelita is the only one that can stop X.A.N.A. in his plans. By deactivating towers on Lyoko, with the so called Code Lyoko, she can stop X.A.N.A. right before he can do anything really wrong. But Aelita is constantly in danger, and if she get hit several times until her live points finally reach 0, or if she unfortunately fall right into the numerical sea, the fact is that she can't come back to Earth that easily unlike the others, and she will disappear forever. It's like a whole game for life, a game that you shouldn't lose... 

While Jérémie, Ulrich, Yumi and Odd are at school, on Lyoko, Aelita still going in circles visiting all four different territories turn by turn. She is overlooking the place in case X.A.N.A. finally shows up some activities. It can be some monsters to make her fall right into a trap while her friends are away, or in the worst case, great pulses that imply an active tower and huge problems to come, both on Earth and Lyoko. Just like X.A.N.A., she can control communication networks on Earth, and then, she is able to warn our Lyoko warriors just in time. Sometimes however, for various reasons, nobody can help her at all. Then, she has to do the dirty work herself, and take huge risks to save her friends, and the World. 

It's a fact, Aelita is weak, but strong at the same time. Her defenses reaches absolute zero, and she can't directly attack X.A.N.A.'s monsters like our others heroes. Anyway, she is very smart, she know very well how X.A.N.A.'s monsters react, their common tactics, and she know exactly too, where to go hide herself from them, just in case. In addition, she has some powers. She can easily mislead X.A.N.A.'s monsters by cloning herself or something else, to lure them. But her best and most spectacular power is certainly the ability to create or destroy some environments blocks. These blocks can open new ways to go and escape, or stop monsters for a little while in their chase, to gain some precious time until our Lyoko warriors finally arrive at the rescue. These amazing powers however, because of their strength, are all supposed to use the half (50) of her own life points. Then, she is unfortunately far from almighty... 

After weeks of hard work, finally, Jérémie found one way to materialize Aelita: the Code Earth. Once on Earth, the fact is that our little Aelita is rather lost: she know about nothing about every-day's life in the real world, and then she start feeling like humans, cold, warm, smell, taste... etc, some things again remaining unknown for her. With the great help of her friends, Aelita try to start her brand new life: she lives at Yumi's home as a pen-friend from Japan, known as Aelita Lyoko, and she assists at college Kadic lessons, as Odd own cousin coming from Holland. This, at least until X.A.N.A. strike again... Before materialization, X.A.N.A. found the way to implement something that looks like a virus inside Aelita. This virus simply permanently link her to the supercomputer, and it appears that there is no way to turn it off without killing Aelita at the same time. And then, Aelita should still on Lyoko until this problem is solved. This is now the start of a new adventure.

Aelita's origins : Code Lyoko season 2

The second season of Code Lyoko is mainly focused on Aelita. After X.A.N.A.'s last attack that sticked her on Lyoko for a while, Jérémie succeed to program a Super Scan, so that his beloved virtual girl can return on Earth without worrying that much about X.A.N.A.'s actions. Now, Aelita is known as Aelita Stones at Kadic school, and is yet again Odd's own cousin. But fastly enough, it appears that Aelita has some mind and memories problems: she feels like she had already lived here, on Earth, even if it's theoretically impossible. Often, she can see her thought visions living in a sweet house called "Hermitage", house now abandoned inside the forest near Kadic school. Several times, she makes nightmares of these visions that seems more and more accurate, and then, some strange things and coincidences are revealed. First, her visions aren't that false at all. To everyone's surprise, she discovered an unknown passage that links the "Hermitage" to the factory through sewers. And, even more important, she discover a small doll, doll that she can even remember its name: "Mister Pück". This doll carried one key that linked our heroes to Franz Hopper's encrypted Diary. All the second season long, Jérémie try to decipher this mysterious Diary, and at the same time, X.A.N.A. changes his strategy. Now, it appears that X.A.N.A., with the help of brand new powerful monsters (like the Medusa), doesn't want to kill Aelita anymore on Lyoko, but instead, he wants to steal her memories... Little by little, more information are displayed, and thanks to the discovery of a new 5th territory on Lyoko, the Carthage territory, even more information about X.A.N.A. and this weird virus are found. Jérémie even manage to decipher Franz Hopper Diary, but at the same time, X.A.N.A. gains more and more powers, and at the end, he succeed in his dark plans... He finally manage to steal all Aelita's own memories with the help of the Medusa, and then, combining this and the Franz Hopper Diary, huge things are revealed once again! First very important thing, Aelita's origins aren't what we were thinking, she is 100 percent Human. She is actually Franz Hopper's own daughter, and her real name is Aelita Hopper. Both were virtualized on Lyoko. But we can only imagine that some events were going wrong: once on Lyoko (hypothesis), Franz Hopper was captured, and Aelita lost all her real life memories rather instantly. At the very end, it's said that both Aelita and Franz carry the Keys of Lyoko, a real gateway between the virtual world and the real world. It appears that because of these Keys, Aelita is linked to the supercomputer, and she was in fact, never infected by X.A.N.A.'s virus. These Keys of Lyoko is actually what X.A.N.A. searched all the season long inside Aelita's memories, and then he succeed to escape the supercomputer once his task accomplished. Hopefully, Franz Hopper managed to gain some extra controls on Lyoko. At the very last minute, he save Aelita from death, and she recover all her memories. Now, she is free to live on Earth, but X.A.N.A. is free too. Here are her past Earth memories: before she was virtualized on Lyoko, Aelita was a cute little girl living with her parents, on a snowy mountain. At Christmas day, she even got "Mister Pück" as a present. As we can see, she was already quite open minded, her father teaching lessons for her. But unfortunately, Aelita lost her mother, supposedly by accident. Then, this little family decided to change their life, and they moved to the "Hermitage" near Kadic school. The end of the story, we already know it: once Aelita was 9 or 10 years old, Franz Hopper, constantly chased by Men in Black because of his actions, run away with his daughter and both, carrying the Keys of Lyoko, they were virtualized, forever...

Sonic Hachelle-Bee (written March 24, 2006) for www.codelyoko.net
Translation by Pete