A/N1-19-09: My apologies all RMP readers who were waiting for the sequel. You see I finished RMP, decided to take a writing break (never again), and got lost on the path of life…
And for all newbies to the story, yes this is a sequel. The prequel is Return My Past: Lyoko the Second Generation. While I have planned to have a brief recap in the opening chapters of the major events if Return my Past, it would be best if you read RMP first, but hey, who am I to dictate to you what to read.
Without further ado, here is the first chapter of Return My Heart: Lyoko the Second Generation!
Return My Heart: Lyoko the Second Generation
Chapter 1:
"MAN IN THE HALL!"
Drew and Riley paled visibly at both the shout and sight surrounding them. Who knew that the very same female race notorious for taking infinity and beyond primping could assemble so quickly at a simple shout? They should be called the minute woman. They certainly were armed to the teeth. Were those pitchforks?
The two solitary, foolish, and simple, teenage boys both exchanged uneasy glances while avoiding eye contact with what seemed to be the entire female boarder population at Kaddic High Academy. Somehow, purses had never seemed as lethal as the majority of those bags did now. Drew could only guess how many bricks were stuffed inside those black holes along with nail files, make-up bags, pocket knives, hair dryers, straighteners, and dictionaries, for the more studious.
This had the makings of a XANA attack written all over it. The two guys weren't sure which would be worse: a XANA attack centered on this group of gathered girls while their current Code Lyoko code user was halfway across the Mediterranean, or said group of gathered girls forming of their volition at the mere presence of two guys in the girls' dormitory.
The two upperclassmen had simply been responding to an "urgent" text message from Sakura. 'COME QUICKLY!', it had said. Urgent text messages sent between Riley Stern, Sakura Stern, and Drew Della Robia usually entailed the gravity of an attack from a demonic A.I. program bent on taking over the world a.k.a. XANA. So, like good Lyoko Warriors concerned with the world remaining free, the two guys sprinted over post haste to the girls dorms ready to confer and take action.
Their arrival had not gone well.
One solitary teenage female spotted the two and screamed bloody murder. Now the bloodthirsty females loomed around with death in their eyes and heavy purses. Drew and Riley would never underestimate the female gender again, if they survived this.
"Riley, I'll have you know that it's been a pleasure having you as my friend for the past two years." Drew said seriously. The two teens were standing back to back in the hall. The female mob hovered mere feet away out of striking distance, but with every escape route blocked off.
"Knock it off Drew. They're just girls. We've been through worse. We'll come out of this alive," Riley replied as he subconsciously brushed a stray lock of brown hair out of his stormy grey eyes. "Look at their eyes."
Drew looked, gulped, and reaffirmed his resolve. No pulsing XANA symbols were in those eyes. Great, the entire female boarder population was ganging up on them on their own free will.
"Well, they may just be girls to you, but we are clearly at a disadvantage," Drew retorted, "There are too many of them, and they seem very eager to take a chunk out of our hide." Drew's shaggy blonde hair and hazel eyes had caused many of the same girls surrounding him to swoon once upon a time, but clearly an intrusion into the hallowed girls' dormitory negated any past attraction.
Drew nervously eyed the girls again. They weren't talking. Why were they silent? Why?
"Hey gals, it's ok. The noobs are with me."
A stir passed through the gathered girls indicating a change from the former hostile mood to a new mood of curiosity. The circle of girls parted and through the newly created passageway came…
"Sakura," Riley stated, the relief clear in his voice.
Drew relaxed immediately. It was just Sakura, Riley's younger sister. The danger was over. Or so he thought.
With a scowl on her face and distaste in her gaze, Sakura shot Drew and Riley the look. "When I said to come quickly, I didn't mean come inside the girls' dorms, noobs. You know guys aren't allowed in here."
"It's never stopped us before," Drew spouted off cheekily. He regretted it when Sakura clipped his arm with a slug. Drew immediately winced and rubbed his arm. "I see you still have your violent tendencies," he muttered ignoring Sakura's eye roll.
She was the same old Sakura, a feisty black-haired, brown-eyed half Japanese girl with a mean right hook and a short temper. More often then not Drew was her temper's punching back 24:7 through wind, snow, sleet, hail, XANA attacks, , class, love…
As long as Sakura was herself, Drew would be her stress ball whether he wanted to or not. Hazel eyes narrowed. That would change.
Never one to let anything dampen his spirits for long, Drew changed the subject. "So if guys aren't allowed in here, then why are we still here?"
Sakura snorted as she paused in front of her dorm, room 217. "If you haven't noticed, the two of you are being watched like hawks." So that explained the hair raising prickle the two guys were picking up between their shoulder blades. "Besides, we aren't staying. We have places to go and people to see. I just need to pick something up from my room."
Riley and Drew exchanged glances. Did they dare bring up the nagging question of why Sakura had urgently summoned them for what seemed as an increasingly less urgent matter? Of course. They had to beat some type of discipline into Sakura, even if only verbally.
Riley silently cocked his head to the side in a slight motion toward where Sakura stood unlocking her dorm room. Drew raised his eyebrows and gave a slight shake of his head. Riley nodded in return.
"Sakura," Riley began stepping into the domineering role as the eldest Stern child, "If you were lonely, you could have asked—,"
"Aha!" Sakura chirped happily as the doorknob turned, "It works! I swear, this stupid door just simply won't unlock at times. I'll just be a sec." she disappeared inside the room.
Riley's face fell into a dangerously neutral façade. Drew could already sense his next marching orders. Move out regardless of any feminine appeals, apologies, and ploys starting with, and not limited to, tears.
Before either disrespected guys (respectively) could beat a frigid retreat out of the girls' dorm, Sakura had emerged out of her dorm room, a radiant smile on her face, and towing her ambiguous something from her room.
"Now," Sakura said cheekily as she took in the shocked faces of her brother and his amigo, "tell me you don't love me right now. C'mon, try."
Drew reflected briefly during the next seconds of explosive thoughts and emotional shows of exuberance that Sakura, though possessing annoying tendencies and a commandeering assertiveness, was also a good friend deep down and full of wonderful surprises.
Dumbstruck hazel and shocked grey met forest green. The silence was stretched as tight as a snare drum head until cut by a slightly hesitant voice.
"Uh…hi guys."
There right before their eyes was the last member of the current group of Lyoko Warriors. The member who had fallen into the digital sea, had been pulled out, and hidden away by her parents for the past four months.
Released from their trance, Riley and Drew pounced.
"Hallie!"
Sakura just stood by with the biggest grin on her face.
-
After much enthusiastic hugging, being swung around in the air, and the time old back-slap, Hallie was besieged by a torrent of questions.
"When did you get back?"
"You wear glasses? Weird."
"I never really pictured you as a ginger. So you're a bubblegum naturally, eh?"
"Guys!" Hallie cut in raising her hands in a defensive maneuver, "I promise to answer your questions as soon as I finish Sakura's. We never did finish, or even start for the matter, our girl chat. She felt obligated to share the love with you guys."
Cue dumping the conversation back into Sakura's lap. Sakura rolled her eyes good naturedly. Same old Hallie, tenaciously trying to stay out of the spotlight that was continually thrust onto her.
"Who's hungry for pizza?"
-
Students not yet prepared to return to school filled the local pizzeria with bustle, clamor, and business. After much debate the party of four had ordered a large, thick crusted meat lover's pizza. Hallie was carrying the main conversation while Drew, Riley, and Sakura peppered in with questions. Before she steered the conversation back onto her three friends, Hallie answered all questions to the best of her ability.
Her summer had been interesting including a hospital visit and visiting her paternal grandparents. No, she wouldn't be boarding at Kaddic High Academy. Yes, she was going to be a student at KHA. Her family had moved in recently close to the school. Yes, her hair was naturally this hue of pink. No, he-Drew-could not see her roots, and so on and so forth.
Eventually, the topic of conversation moved over onto Riley, Sakura, and Drew's summer. Drew had returned home to the states for the summer, Riley had been hired for a summer job at a deli, and Sakura had been hired repeatedly for numerous babysitting jobs.
The pizza arrived in all its carnivorous glory and conversation halted long enough for the four teens to dig in. Sakura and Hallie hastily staked out their claims on their individual pieces of pizza before the slices could disappear into the all-consuming black holes that Riley and Drew claimed were their stomachs.
Hallie sat back and fondly watched her friends. Riley and Drew were debating over who was entitled to the last piece of pizza. The conversation was centered around how Drew was entitled to the last slice since Riley had eaten the last breadstick, but Drew had eaten more pieces of the pizza then Riley…and while the two argued Sakura eased the lone Helen of meat lover's pizza away. Hallie waited to see when the guys would catch on that the object of their appetite was being consumed even as they still debated ownership rights.
Sakura had finished half of the slice of pizza before the guys got a clue.
Drew stared at the strings of cheese dangling from the last and sadly lost piece of pizza. "Not cool. Definitely, not cool."
Sakura shrugged and continued eating.
Hallie, finding the need to intervene, spoke up, "You know, you can always buy another slice."
Riley and Drew just looked at Hallie in a state of minor disbelief at her utter naïveté before switching to a new topic.
"This place needs is bring back the pizza buffet." Drew stated.
Hallie let out a pfft. "You guys would eat them out of house and home. Wait, bring back the buffet? As in there was one before?"
Sakura nodded. "At the beginning of the summer there was an all you can eat buffet, until the gluttons—a.k.a Riley, Drew, and Dante—decimated the pizza buffet. We were nearly kicked out and permanently banned."
Hallie stared at Riley and Drew with a rapt fascination. She could see it: those three attacking the buffet, cramming their plates, depleting the pizzas, and never quite filling their stomachs. So that explained the evil glares she had felt when they had first entered. "What stopped their exile?"
"Dante," Riley said simply between a sip of Coke, "and Sakura. Apparently, she agreed to baby-sit the owner's kids for half her usual rate, and Dante debugged and modified the restaurants main computer frame."
Hallie whistled. Between the below minimum wage labor and a computer worth of a sci-fi novel, the owner would have been an idiot to turn down the pretty sweet bribe unless he was really angry. "Sounds like a close call."
"Eh, not so much," Drew said, "when is the Emo Prince supposed to return from vacation anyway?"
"School starts in two days, so soon," Riley replied.
"…tomorrow, I thought," Hallie commented. She then froze unexpectedly as if catching herself either before or after making a mistake.
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Sakura continued, bouncing off of Hallie's statement yet unaware of Hallie's new mood. Riley was the one who caught on first. "Hal?"
"Uh, yeah Riles?"
"Don't call me Riles," he said flatly (shoot, attempt of distraction equals miserable failure) "I thought you hadn't been in contact with any of us since the spring?"
"I haven't," Hallie replied honestly.
Sakura picked up on her brother's keen observation. "So how do you know when Dante's returning from vacation, much less that he was already on vacation?"
"You shouted it in my ear after I first caught up with you," Hallie, again, replied honestly. The point was true. Sakura at the first sight of Hallie had squeezed the living daylights out of the Belpois while summarizing a summer's worth of memories, events, chronology, and highlights into one sentence. Sakura relented dissatisfiedly satisfied with Hallie's explanation.
"Lucky boy," Sakura muttered as she began eyeing the garlic dipping sauce, "his family won this random sweepstakes for a two week cruise in the Mediterranean. He left two weeks ago to the day. He should be home mid-afternoon tomorrow." Hallie nodded.
Drew flagged down the waitress. "As previously agreed, the pizza's my treat, but you three are my personal slaves for the next week."
"Fat chance," muttered Sakura prompting the launch of a slightly heated but very interesting conversation between herself and Drew.
Hallie internally winced as she felt the inner spotlight of Riley's attention train on her. He was a determined fellow, doggedly so.
"Hey," she smiled, attempting to diffuse whatever questions he was about to send her way. "'sup?"
"When exactly did your family move in?" he asked calmly while discreetly monitoring Sakura and Drew's conversation.
"eh…two weeks ago?" Hallie offered hesitantly.
Riley nodded, a knowing look beginning to emerge in his eyes. "are you still unpacking?"
Hallie, relieved, followed the topic, "Of course. The move has made us really busy. Sorting out school records, claiming mom's inheritance, and all that jazz. My room is a spectacular abomination of cleanliness."
"I suppose Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Aelita are busy moving in, out and about, also."
"More then you know."
"I'm surprised you didn't look us up sooner." Riley said, the skepticism beginning to slightly entering his demeanor.
"Like I said before. No time. So many things to do, so little time."
"Been back on Lyoko?"
Hallie shook her head. "I have not. I haven't set foot on Lyoko since this past April."
Riley nodded but before he could pursue further the inquiries, the waitress came back with the bill and the teens unanimously pooled their money, rose, and left. The four parted paths soon after. Riley, Sakura and Drew headed for the dorms, and Hallie headed for home leaving Riley with an abrupt closure to his prying. The image of the lighthearted pink-haired teen waving a cheerful good-bye squashed, temporarily, any other mild suspicions he entertained.
Maybe he had imagined the emphasis on the word "I" in the last sentence of their conversation. Maybe he hadn't. Regardless of whatever new plots that pink-haired imp possessed, Riley, along with Sakura and Drew, was just happy to see the Hallie they knew restored to them.
-
At the hour of midnight guided Riley navigated the subterranean sewer passages, his only light a flashlight. He would need to be back by 2:30am or else risk being locked out of his room and dorm for the rest of the night.
Riley, as a rule, was never overtly distrusting of any of his fellow Lyoko Warriors, but his trust in Hallie had been shaken four months ago in the spring. He had seen what lengths she would go to in order to protect a secret, including putting herself in harms way.
There was also the coincidence of when the Belpois family had moved in and when Dante left on vacation. The two events were too coincidental to be a coincidence, or so Riley led himself to believe. After the earlier scene in the dormitory, Riley felt he was entitled to check out the supercomputer in order to be absolutely sure that nothing amiss or bizarre was occurring.
A/N 1-23-09: Yo, 'sup? Well if you're reading this, thank you. Usually as per custom I publish the first two chapters of any new story I publish, but...in four short words major upcoming schedule conflict. For the next three weeks I will be doing all that I can to survive school and band and drivers ed without keeling over in exhaustion, sickness, and/or death. So for the sake of my sanity (and if you think about it all upcoming chapters and their quality of writing) I will be cutting down and prioritizing my time in order to use it efficiently. Which in short means less computer and fanfiction time. (sweatdrop) Well, I warned you.
Also, please send MythBuster a thank you PM. MB is one of the main influences for why this story has been published at this date. If MB hadn't spoken up then I might have done something bizarre (like not publish the first chapter of RMH until the anniversary of the date I first published RMP which was in June...) So send MythBuster lots of love if you have taken the time to read this. Until later, Ta!