In the morning, I got ready as usual and met the warriors in the cafeteria for breakfast, handing Jeremie his laptop.
"So, Yumi's house this weekend?" Odd asked me. I smiled sheepishly and nodded. I hadn't talked to him about it yet, oops.
"They are going to help us with our documentary," I told him as he took his seat next to me. He dipped his croissant in his hot chocolate and shoved almost the whole thing into his mouth. "I think it will work, we can cover the lives of students outside of Kadic on weekends. Chardin will love it." I finished, taking a bite out of my own croissant.
"Sounds fun," he replied. "Guess it's a party then, all six of us are going to be hanging out there. She's even letting all of us stay the night just as long as we don't trash the living room."
I raised an eyebrow. Aelita hadn't mentioned that they would all be there. Guess the plans were still being developed. "Anyone else coming?" I asked.
"We asked a few other people but we want to make sure Sissi doesn't find out," Ulrich responded. "That would be a nightmare."
"Well hopefully it turns out well," I replied. I turned my attention back to Odd. "So Odd, let's work on the film in the studio after classes today, sound good?"
He shrugged, finishing off his croissant and moving onto his first banana. "Sounds good to me! I'll meet you there after I take Kiwi for a quick walk."
Classes were terrible, there was a test that I forgot about, I totally screwed up a science lab, and in my final class I tripped and face planted into the ground on my way t my seat. I had a coffee by the vending machines to calm my nerves. Aelita and Yumi joined me and tried helping me calm down.
"Maybe the bad luck I had today is a sign that I shouldn't attempt this today," I wondered.
"No! all that shit you say happened was just an unfortunate series of events. You're just psyching yourself out," Yumi assured. "When you should be psyching yourself up!"
"You're right," I breathed. I took the last swig of my coffee and tossed the cup in the trash. "I've been working on this pretty hard, it will go just fine."
"And now's your time, he's coming out of the dorm building now," Aelita said, watching the building. "He just dropped Kiwi off in his room. Go!"
I jumped up from my spot, squatting on the wall. The studio was not far but I still ran. I set things up quickly in the music room and saw a thumbs up from Aelita through the window and started the music, making sure the volume was up almost full. I took my place at a microphone and smiled when Odd came in. I motioned for him to sit down across from me and turned the music down so it wasn't blaring.
And I sang, I sang the first song and hoped he didn't notice. Like he did, I sang the mashup first and the single song second. When I finished and the music ended, dead silence filled the air. I looked at Odd, waiting for a response.
I got it when he pulled me onto his lap and kissed me furiously. We ended up falling out of the chair but kept it up, kissing for minutes on end before I realized that we had a small audience. I pulled away from Odd, blushing I stood up and straightened my dress out. I looked up at Mr. Chardin and the various members of the film club.
"Um, so are you guys ready to work on the documentary?" Odd asked, getting up as well.
"True passion at such a young age," Chardin speculated, smiling at the two of us. "That makes for truly beautiful art!"
Odd and I laughed at that as we went with the group back to the meeting room. He held my hand the rest of the day.
The rest of the week actually went by smoothly. There were plenty of Sissi attacks but those are easy to handle. No sign of X.A.N.A. though. When Friday rolled around, Jeremie made an announcement at lunch.
"I think I've figured out the materialization from the Replika," he told us. "So Sunday we can go try it out."
"We're going to have the best weekend ever!" Odd said happily. "You'll see, it'll be a blast! Especially if X.A.N.A. doesn't crash the party."
"It would be too kind of him to leave us alone," Ulrich muttered.
"He's done it before, leaving us alone on weekends. He's been quiet this week so maybe he's trying to find a way to beat us," I offered. "Because it's harder than he thought," I said proudly.
"Because we've been kicking his ass lately," Yumi added. "He hasn't thrown us a real curve ball since he put you in a coma."
"Well we'll keep it that way. Jeremie will bring his laptop to Yumi's and we'll stay on top of scans and at the slightest flicker of X.A.N.A. , we'll move in." I offered as a plan. I finished my food and stood up, "Well I am going to get to class early to review the material before the lab. I don't want to screw this one up. See you guys there!"
On my way to class I felt my phone vibrate and saw I had an incoming call from an unknown number. I answered it, wondering who would want to call me. "Hello?" I asked. "Who is this?" I felt something cold enter my body then and looked back at the screen to see the eye of X.A.N.A. . "No!" I hissed, "Get out!"
I felt a struggle inside and when the struggle ended I looked around to see people were looking at me. I blushed and took off for the woods. I didn't know why, but I really wanted to go to The Hermitage. When I got there I felt the cold thing leave my body and I could see in front of me a very big problem. A polymorphic spectre that looked exactly like me.
Sudden understanding washed over me and I backed against the door. X.A.N.A. knew he couldn't possess me long enough to make me do anything big but he knew he'd be able to control me long enough to force me to come here to trap me. This polymorphic spectre was meant to finish that job.
"Hello Emma!" it cackled as the door locked behind me. I tried opening it to get out but the spectre did something that I didn't see and knocked me out cold. The last thing I heard was my voice telling X.A.N.A. that the mission was under way.