Jeremy walked to his door and unlocked it with the key he always kept in his wallet. He walked in, narrowly dodging a cardboard box, and put his laptop down on the desk. As he was about to walk out of the room, he sensed eyes on him. He saw a boy on the fold-out bed, with dark red hair and an eye patch.

"Who are you?"

The kid raised an eyebrow. "I'm your new roommate."

Jeremy let out a hollow laugh. "No. Seriously, who are you?"

"Ulrich didn't tell you?"

"No. You know Ulrich?"

"Yeah. I'm Alan Kimyōna, I just moved here from Korea, You may consider me crazy, and you will avoid a lot of frustration if you don't ask about the eye patch."

Jeremy was shocked that this person was so friendly. "Okay. I'm Jeremy Belpois, I've lived here for a while, I originally requested a single room, and you can avoid a lot of frustration by not touching my stuff."

Alan smiled. "Please don't try to copy me. You won't be able to pull it off." He sat up slowly and seemed to be nursing his left arm. "Would you like to go to dinner?"

"Sure," Jeremy responded. He couldn't keep his eyes off Alan's arm. The sleeve had been torn off to allow somebody access to his shoulder. A clean white bandage had been wrapped tightly over it, but white it was no longer. Most of the material had been stained red with blood. This could have been thought of as being well taken care of, except there was more to it. Alan had apparently positioned five dowel rods on his arm where they completely surrounded the injury, then taped them possibly tighter than the bandage itself. He had covered those with more gauze, bit he could still see the tips sticking up near his shoulder and down about halfway to his elbow.

Alan put a jacket on over the top of the dressings, being careful not to snag anything. Jeremy's focus was broken and he remembered what was going on.

"Is that some kind of splint?"

Alan nodded. "It's a special kind of splint that replaces the durability of the bone inside. I can still move it around, feeling minimal pain from my broken shoulder." To prove his point, he did a couple of shoulder rolls, and hardly winced.

They were already halfway to the lunch room. "How did you break your arm?"

"I fell off a 14-foot ladder while helping Jim with his Halloween decorating." Jeremy noticed that Alan said this with a tone that was not too honest, as to reveal a skillful liar, but enough. His impression was that that may not be the complete truth, but it was a vaguely accurate summary. Like a little child not telling its mother how it broke the vase. Jeremy frowned. He thought that his new friend may have been the one in Lyoko.

They arrived in the lunchroom. Jeremy located his friends: Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich were at their usual table, Aelita was about 9 people in front of them, and William was nowhere to be found. He had moved to another school, his dad fed up with the inconveniences Mr. Delmas had put them through. They accused him of not knowing where their son was for weeks on end, even though William had purposefully evaded his principal.

Jeremy looked at Alan and caught him staring in the direction of Aelita. He almost told him that yes, her hair is naturally that color when both of their attentions were drawn to Hiroki, who was behind them in line.

"I haven't seen you since P.E., and you said you'd tell me what you found in the forest." This is where Jeremy becomes oblivious to everything but Alan and Hiroki. "That is what the voice in your head told you to do, right?"

"Yeah, I was in the forest." Alan glanced away for a moment, looking in the general direction of our table.

"So what did you find?" Hiroki prompted again.

Alan didn't miss a beat. "Trees."

Both Jeremy and Hiroki chuckle, but the former was thinking about what had just been revealed. If Alan was in the forest, could he have seen us?

The line moved forward to let the group get their dinner, breaded chicken strips and a potato, and they went to their respective tables. Aelita had beaten them to the table, and jumped in surprise when she saw Alan, who rolled his eyes. Ulrich tried to fix the situation. "Hey, Alan, have I introduced you to –"

"Aelita?" he asked. Odd made a strange noise at Alan, but, then again, what noise doesn't sound strange coming through at least 3 full chicken strips. Alan took this as a 'How-?' and answered to Odd, "She's the only person that wasn't here at lunch when Ulrich told me that an Aelita wasn't here." That contented Odd. They continued their meal in silence, which was strange. Odd normally breaks the ice by stuffing more food into his mouth and joking about a hinged jaw. There was enough tension in at the table that you could have cut it with a butter knife.

Alan opened his one eye as wide as it could go, a shadow of a smirk on his face. That would have been weird, had it not made Aelita, who had been staring into it, turn away with a flush. Alan then proceeded to inhale his food faster than Odd could chew the mouthful that he had.

"I think that now I'm done, I should leave and let you resume talking." Alan picked up his tray and walked away.

Almost as soon as he walked out of the door, conversation continued at the table.

"His eye was a medium gray, like a ring of steel," Aelita started.

"How could that be possible?" Odd asked. "His eyes were the color of a storm cloud yesterday."

Ulrich thought for a bit. "He said that his eye changes color sometimes."

"Do you think he might be the one we saw…" Yumi didn't have to finish that sentence.

"No, he broke his arm falling off a ladder in gym," said Jeremy. "Halloween decorations."

"I think it's him, but I don't know how he did it," Ulrich said. "If he broke his arm when he fell off a ladder, how would he have been in Lyoko?"

Jeremy realized something. "Hiroki said that he skipped P.E. to explore the forest, and something about a voice in his head." That got everyone's attention. "But how could he have done that if he had broken his arm?" The group thought for a bit, but gave up trying to put the puzzle together.

"I know what we need to do," said Odd.

Ulrich reeled. "What? You have a plan before Einstein does?"

"No, not a plan. A goal. We need to get his eye patch off. That way we can tell for certain."

"How?" asked Yumi. "If we ask him, he'll dodge the question saying his parents forbade him. If we try to trick him, he won't trust us anymore. If he is that guy, we don't want him against us."

"We take it off ourselves."

The group stared at Jeremy. "How?" Ulrich asked at the same time Yumi said "Oh".

"Weren't you saying that he knew karate and tae-kwon-do?"

Ulrich saw the light bulb above his girlfriend's head and felt like his was broken. "I don't get what you're saying."

"We spar him."

"Oh," was his short, embarrassed acknowledgement.