A/N: Hello my friends! So, if you haven't noticed, "How It Should Be" is a piece of craptastic junk. So, my mission is to completely re-write it. I actually have it finished, on paper, from the first time around. But, of course, that sucks. A lot. I hope to actually complete it this time. New title, new vocab, new grammar, same basic plot, but a whole lot better. Enjoy :3
It was an average day for the Lyoko team; a XANA attack at high noon, no surprise. Jeremie typed away at the keyboard as he watched the little yellow triangles that were his best friends on the supercomputer screen alertly. "Odd, you only have ten life points left; be careful!" he warned, despite his knowledge of Odd's tendencies to blow off his premonitions. "Don't sweat, Einstein!" Odd sing-songed, blowing off Jeremie's advice just as he'd expected. "Yumi, you get Aelita to the tower; I'll hold off these bloks." Ulrich directed. They'd been surrounded, but there were few enough for Ulrich to defeat on his own if Odd played another one of his stupid tricks and got himself devirtualized again. Yumi nodded and turned towards Aelita, who had already taken off towards the tower, almost halfway there. Luckily, there were no monsters chasing her. Not her smartest move, but not her stupidest. Yumi followed just in case. Aelita reached the tower in time, a blok deciding to crawl after them. She rose up into the tower gracefully, as she always did. She lifted her hand to be scanned. 'Code:' appeared onto the screen. 'LYOKO,' Aelita entered, thus deactivating the tower and foiling XANA's plans once again. "Tower deactivated," she announced to no one in particular, sounding almost pleased with herself. Back on Earth, Jeremie noticed the tower's deactivation and initialized a return to the past, returning things exactly to the way they were before the attack; Jeremie, Aelita, Odd, and Ulrich back in Mrs. Hertz's science room, Yumi back in her seat next to William in Italian.
A few seconds passed before the school bell rung angrily at the anxiously awaiting students. Luckily, the return to the past had returned them to the end of the day. Students left in an excited rush, a river streaming out the door, ready to start their weekend. Aelita, on the other hand, stayed behind for a moment. Jeremie decided it best to wait for Aelita outside the classroom. A few moments later, his pink-haired friend strolled out, at first unaware of his presence. "Oh, hey Jeremie," she smiled, "You didn't have to wait on me, you know." Jeremie shrugged. "I wanted to," he offered, genuinely. "Alright, then," she giggled slightly, "Thanks."
"You don't have to thank me," he said, his cheeks tinting slightly pink. She smiled again. "Okay then…" A moment of silence. He looked at her curiously. "Hey, Jeremie?" she cocked her head. "Yeah?" he responded, unaware of Aelita's thought process. "So, I was talking to Yumi and, um…" she began to stammer, "She, uh, she said I should ask you on a date." Aelita blushed, as she averted her gaze. Jeremie was caught off guard. His large brain was being slightly dysfunctional at the moment; at first he thought he'd heard her wrong. "Yumi… told you to…?" he stammered, blushing madly, unable to complete his sentence. 'Ask me out?' he would've said, simply for confirmation, had he been able to. But he wasn't quite able to choke it out. "Well… yeah…" Aelita confirmed, now slightly unsure of herself. Maybe she shouldn't have said anything after all…
"Oh." Jeremie reddened some more. Aelita simply stared at him. "Oh?" she repeated, questioningly; her heart sinking inside her chest. Was this Jeremie's nice way of saying he wasn't interested? "I, uh…" Jeremie began, unsure how to react, "I- I mean… If that's what you want…" he blushed more than Aelita had originally thought possible, trying not to sound as painfully eager as he was. Aelita studied him carefully. "I wouldn't have said anything if it wasn't…" she murmured. "Um… alright, then…" Jeremie agreed quietly.
They hadn't quite realized it, but a sufficient amount of time had passed since school had ended. Aelita glanced around and noticed the lack of students in the nearly silent hallways. "Maybe we should get going…" she suggested. Jeremie simply nodded. "Perhaps." He concurred.
Aelita's legs felt kind of rubbery, but she was sure she could just walk it off. Her insides vibrated happily; she'd done it. Exactly what she'd set out to do. She felt triumphant, and almost smug. She and Jeremie hadn't necessarily planned anything yet, but it was going to happen, and she could feel it in her bones that this was a night that neither of them would ever forget.
A/N: It's not significantly longer, but it is a bit more so than the original chapter. This was almost prologue-ish… Blah. My old writing infuriates me, really. I want to hit my younger self over the head with the folder I kept all my old stories in, which is pretty heavy. It would hurt, at least. All the crap I dared call "fluff" from before should be burned. This is more of a mission to prove to myself that I have in fact improved, but it's painfully obvious due to all the criticism I'm dishing out.
Anywho, I'm gonna try to combine some chapters or something to make them longer, if I can. The thing is that my chapters are significantly different therefore I have logic in separating them where I did. They're just… painfully short. That's all I can say, really. Okay, I'll let y'all get on with your lives now. Bai bai.
~Aechigo