"What-" Aelita spun around, frowning. No one was behind her. Jeremie stopped walking, and reached out to her.
"Are you okay, Aelita?" The gentle hand he laid on her shoulder made her jump.
"I..." Glancing about, she shook her head, I thought I heard something, but-"
"That's because, miss, you did hear something." This time, the voice was much louder. Aelita blinked, and looked around again. Then her eyes settled on a figure that just appeared in the hallway. Her eyebrows went up.
Tall and muscular with white-blond hair falling into dark eyes, the man smiled down at them as he pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against.
"You have good ears, little lady, to hear me," he commented as he sauntered over, his hands in his pockets. "And lovely eyes too." He winked. Aelita, although unsure why, felt herself blush furiously at the complement.
"I, I uh..." Confused by her own reaction, she simply smiled nervously.
Next to her, Jeremie crossed his arms, and glancing from Aelita to the man and back again, he raised an eyebrow. "Can we help you, sir?"
The man smiled wryly, cocking his head to one side. "I'm just a lost fellow, same as you. But perhaps I can help you." Jeremie stared at him, but the man shifted his gaze back to Aelita. "A flower for the lady?"
Aelita blinked, still quite red. "E-excuse me?"
The man smiled, and flicking his wrist, handed her a vivid pink rose that he seemed to create out of thin air. Aelita's eyes went as round as saucers, and even Jeremie looked impressed. Seeing the admiring look on Aelita's face as she gingerly took the rose, however, Jeremie's blue eyes narrowed.
"Aelita?"
The pink-haired girl blinked, and looked at Jeremie for the first time since the man appeared. She had to blink again to make her vision work properly. "Yes?" Why did her head hurt? "Jeremie?"
"How can she look at that four-eyed geek when Edwin just gave her a rose?"
A loud mutter echoed down the hall, and suddenly a group of girls, all whispering and giggling, filed out the double doors that lead to the stairs. Sissy Delmas was in the lead, a bright yellow rose dangling from her fingertips." Edwin, dear, isn't your show about to start?" She called, her voice now overly sweet. She twirled a strand of hair on a finger when the blond man turned look at her.
"Of course, Sissy," he replied, smiling at her and winking. At the wink, the group of girls behind him all sighed and started giggling again. When the man looked back, Aelita and Jeremie had vanished. He sighed, then turned back to his fans. "Lead the way, ladies, lead the way."

"So that's the magician everyone was talking about," Aelita mused as she and Jeremie took refuge in the computer room they had slipped into. She looked at him, and raised her eyebrows. "Jeremie..." Smiling a little, she reached and teasingly rubbed the frown line between his eyebrows that caused by his unhappy expression. "You'll get wrinkles."
"It looks like he's giving Odd a run for his money at being the new school flirt," Jeremie muttered, taking a step back from her. Fighting jealousy tooth and nail, he forced the frown to ease from his face.
Aelita blinked, then smiled slightly. The rose the man had given her was still in her hand. She held up, then smelled it.
"Ugh!"
Jeremie stared at her as she clamped a hand to her nose. "Aelita?"
She held out the rose to him, slowly taking her hand from her face. "It smells terrible! That's strange, it was quite nice when he first handed it to me."
Just then, the door to the room slid open, and Yumi and Ulrich came sprinting in. Out of breath, the two leaned heavily against the door, gasping.
"Are you guys okay?" Aelita and Jeremie went toward them. Ulich raised his head first.
"Yeah, we just avoided getting run over by Sissy and her new fan club." He made a face. "Though I'm almost surprised you didn't join them," he added, looking at Yumi. The Japanese girl raised her head, and rolled her eyes.
"As if I'd..." she hesitated, then held up something to her nose- a deep red rose.
"Yumi-"
It was too late for Aelita's warning. Yumi gasped, and started coughing hard. "Wh-what the- just a second ago, I thought it was r-real-"
"Yeah," Ulrich muttered. "He gave you one too, Princess?" He asked, nodded to the pink flower Aelita still held in her hand. Aelita glanced at it, then winced and nodded. Ulrich and Jeremie traded looks for a second. "Cheap flirt," Ulrich muttered, shaking his head. "He makes Odd look like a prince."
"Talking about Odd," Jeremie started, smiling a little. "Did you ever catch him?"
Ulrich and Yumi blushed a little, and shook their heads. "He got swept up by the fan girls," Yumi explained as she tossed her rose into a garbage can. Aelita copied her. "Last thing I heard, he was shouting questions at that blond guy they're following, something about 'upping his own magic show'."
"Talking about the show," Aelita said softly, glancing at her friends. "Do you guys want to go see it?" She looked at Jeremie. "I know you're not into smoke and mirrors, but it might be..."
Jeremie hesitated, then seeing the hopefulness on her face, smiled and relented. "Well, he did pull a flower out of thin air, didn't he?"
Ulrich rolled his eyes. "Maybe we'll get to see him try to cut Sissy in half."
"Maybe he'll succeed!" Yumi remarked, her expression extremely hopeful. The other three laughed and walked out of the room.
It took them far longer than they expected to find a seat in the auditorium. The whole place was packed, mostly with girls, from tiny sixth graders giggling nervously to high schoolers loudly yelling boasts back and forth about how attractive they thought the magician found them. Halfway down the room, Yumi almost ran headlong into Odd.
"There you are!" He spun and put his hands on his hips. "I've been looking for you guys for ages!" Ulrich raised his eyebrows at his roommate.
"I thought you were running from us," he remarked dryly, but Odd ignored him.
"You should see this guy! He's insane! He's really good."
"I think Odd wants to join his fan club," Jeremie muttered under his breath, and Aelita giggled.
"That's what we're here to do, Odd," she reminded him, still smiling. Where are you sitting?" Odd pointed towards the front, then disappeared through the crowd. The others followed him, and eventually found a tiny group of seats in one corner that were empty. As they slid into the seats, Aelita hesitated, then turned to Jeremie.
"Jeremie, I almost forgot to tell you, I found some papers of my..my father's the other day when we were cleaning up the Hermitage." Jeremie nodded. This was no surprise. They had been steadily cleaning up Aelita's old home for months now, hoping to hide every scrape of evidence that Franz Hopper as the creator of Lyoko and XANA, had ever existed. Every time they cleaned, they found more and more papers to hide. It was quite the task.
Aelita fidgeted a little in her seat. "You...I should have brought them back to school. You might not..." she winced. "What they contain is pretty unbelievable, even for what we've seen. It's about who Daddy...who he worked with in the Carthage Project...but..."
Jeremie watched her closely, concerned. He knew Aelita still missed her father, but she rarely acted so nervous and uncomfortable when talking about the research he had done. Concerned, he hesitated, then took her hand. Ignoring the jump of his heartbeat that happened as it always did when he touched her, he meet her eyes.
"Aelita, what ever you found, I'm sure it's-"
Just then, a loud boom echoed throughout the auditorium, and a hush went over the crowd.
"Ladies and gentleman-" bellowed a voice from everywhere at once. "Prepare to be amazed, astounded and astonished, as you are about to witness one of the greatest magic shows on Earth! Kadic Academy, I present to you- Professor Edwin Strix!"
The reply from the crowd was deafening. Girls screamed and screamed. Many stood on their seats, heedless to the yells of teachers who told them sit. The blond man from before, now dressed in a pure white trench coat trimmed with black, strode onto the stage, and bowed low. When he straightened, he waited patiently, smirking, until the din mellowed out.
"Thank you, my friends," he said, his clear voice smoothing itself through the ears of the listeners. "I can promise you to be astounded, amazed, astonished, practically possessed by what you will see in this performance." His smile widened, and with a flick of his wrist, a bright white rose appeared in his hand. He kissed it, then held it over his head. "Magic, like love, like youth itself, can only last for a short while, and can only be seen by those who are ready to believe." He smiled, and a few girls sighed loud enough to create giggling. "Are you ready, my friends?" When the crowd's reply to the question died down, Strix's smile widened. "Then let the show begin!"