Chapter 33: Kiss and Make Up

I did say late summer.

I'M BACK, BABY! I would have posted a tad bit sooner, but I was so caught up with writing future chapters and watching Rurouni Kenshin, Xiaolin Showdown, Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Abridged, everything by TeamFourStar, etc.

But before I get rolling here, a quick shout out to tploy, who not only followed and favorited this story, but also put me on his favorite authors list/alert. As a thank you for the loyalty, this chapter's for you!

"Is Jim gone?"

"I don't see him… shit, he's around the corner! Hide!"

Odd and I were hiding in the forest, since we were five minutes to curfew and it was going to be hard to sneak out back to the dorms. If Jim found us out now, he'd keep a major eye out on the two of us, which could endanger the team.

It would also be much harder to sneak out and make out with Odd.

What? We're boyfriend and girlfriend. It's to be expected. Our friends knew it, though they didn't ask, and hey, sneaking out was fun. Take now, for instance. This was the third time Odd and I had hid in the forest part of campus, taking pains to make sure no one saw us. Don't worry, we never made it past first base, and for the sake of my scholarship, it would stay that way. At least until we were older.

"…Okay, he's gone past. What the hell was he whistling?" Odd asked me. I shrugged. "Is it safe to come out?" "Yeah, come on." Odd grabbed my hand and lifted me from the bushes. Then we ran to the dorms, while at the same time brushing off leaves and other incriminating evidence.

When we outside my dorm room, I said to Odd, "Remember, no Galactic Battle tonight. We have Phys Ed first thing tomorrow morning." "What would I do without you?" he joked casually. "Stay up all night playing video games," I shot back with a nasty little smile. "Oh, very funny!" he cried as I gently shut the door.

Of course he didn't take my advice. He was Odd, for Christ's sake.

I was dressed for gym in black sweatpants and a plain cotton black shirt with my hair in a ponytail. I was with Ulrich, Jeremy, Devlin, and Aelita in Ulrich's room. Odd was lying in his bed, bags under his eyes, and a game console not too far from his bed.

"I warned you," I sang to the annoyance of Odd. He glared at me and said, "Will you please just cover for me?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm freaking tired!"

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, but you so owe me for this." Odd didn't respond; he was already snoring softly when we left.

"You're so going to regret this," Ulrich told me as the four of us walked down the hall. "Yeah, I probably will," I admitted. "But hey, what are friends for?"

"Don't you mean what girlfriends are for?" Jeremy corrected, making the others burst out laughing. But instead of starting a scene, I did the mature thing; I chased him down the hall and out of the dorm building, screaming, "I AM GOING TO KILL YOU, JEREMY!" I could hear my friends laughing like hyenas as they slowly went down the stairs.

"Della-Robbia! Don't make me repeat myself!" Jim yelled from the track field. "DELLA-ROBBIA!" Before Jim could pop a blood vessel, I raised my hand. "Odd felt sick so he went to the infirmary," I lied. That should cover Odd, at least for now.

Jim blinked. "Oh! Well, if you're sick, then it's a good idea to go to the infirmary." Jim then continued his roll call for Phys Ed. It was early December now, and yet the weather was surprisingly good for winter. It was almost like the weather in San Diego.

As Jim was harping on a student for saying "Yeah" instead of "Present" during roll call, I could hear Nicholas trying to ask girls out. Something about a breath-taking experience in the moonlight tonight. His words, not mine.

And now Jim was demonstrating how to do the high jump, which was today's exercise. I was very thankful when he decided not to go into great length about how it could take us to great heights.

But all that changed when Jim got hurt during the exercise.

He had been running towards the high jump and everything seemed to be going well until he jumped and landed on his back. He first landed on the mat, but then he flew up and landed on the ground next to the mat, throwing out his back.

That meant a trip to the infirmary.

I was so royally screwed.

"Disappointing, disappointing, that's the word to describe this mess!" Principal Delmas yelled at us in his office. Odd and I were both looking down, arms crossed, glaring at the ground as a sign of repentance.

"I am very disappointed in the both of you!" the headmaster was saying. We looked up then; here comes the punishment.

"Considering that this is Miss Wilder's first infraction, I will only give her two hours of detention. As for you, Mr. Della Robbia, four hours. You are dismissed." We both left before Odd could attempt to argue his way out of this mess.

As the two of us were walking out of that devil's lair, Odd started griping. "Thanks for the lame excuse, Carter!"

"Hey, how was I supposed Jim was going to pull his back out and go to the infirmary?"

"If you'd taken the time to think of a better excuse, I wouldn't have gotten four hours of detention!"

"Well, what about me?" I yelled at him. "Just two hours of detention could ruin my scholarship! And if you were just a little less selfish you'd realize that I got detention too! And for what? Because you needed your sleep, you-you- lazy loser!" I was gasping after my rant. A part of me was ready to apologize to Odd about all of that before a bigger part of me reminded me that it was mostly Odd's fault, and there was no way he was going to apologize, at least not easily.

So I stayed angry.

It was lunch now, and Odd and I refused to sit by each other. It was safe to say the tension was thick.

"Looks like we have the next cold war on our hands," Yumi joked. "This is more of a third world war," Devlin corrected. Yumi looked at him. "Unlike the real cold war, these two will explode at each other," he explained.

"Damn right we will," I grumbled.

"Look," Jeremy said, "why don't you two kiss and make up? We have more important things to worry about." "Like exploring the network with the Skid some more?" Ulrich whispered hopefully. "Right, and to check out that sphere you guys saw on your first trip," Jeremy said quietly. "Great. When do we go?" Yumi asked.

"The longer we wait, the stronger XANA gets," Devlin replied. "Tonight would be best."

"That is, if our two warring lovebirds are ready to bury the hatchet," Aelita said humorously.

"As long as I don't have to talk to her." Odd pointed at me.

"Fine by me. Who'd want to talk to a lazy selfish brat anyway?" I said meanly.

"I guess that's progress. Sort of," Yumi interjected sheepishly.

Stacey was just leaving the cafeteria when she got the message: Your going back home. There was nothing else to explain what was going on. That didn't mean Stacey wasn't ecstatic.

She ran skipping to her room, ready to order suitcases for all her stuff. It didn't matter to her that that meant the scientists no longer needed her here as a spy. All Stacey cared about was going home.

Vivian knew XANA's plan was to continue destroying Lyoko, but Stacey couldn't help. She was no longer considered a part of the Lyoko Warriors, or whatever they called themselves. What little information the subject had was useless. The scientists no longer cared about the other Lyoko. Sure, it could be useful in case something happened to the original, but the scientists now had enough information about it to create numerous replicas.

The new subjects couldn't destroy XANA. Only the old ones and the Lyoko warriors could do it. It would undoubtedly take a while, but they could do it. In the meantime, Vivian could think of ways to get Carter and Devlin back. In fact, she was already planning on sending adults onto the virtual world. It wasn't impossible; it was just that kids were much better at adapting to the environment.

But first Vivian had to get rid of useless Stacey.

It was nighttime now, and the Lyoko warriors were all running towards the factory. Well, except Odd. He was just strolling into the factory like it was no big deal.

"Will you hurry up?" I snapped at him. I was still pretty steamed about the whole detention thing, though I did kind of regret calling Odd a selfish lazy loser, even though it was kind of true. I wasn't regretting it enough to call off the fight, though.

When we were finally getting into the scanners, Odd pushed past me and hurled himself into the scanner nearest me. "Aren't you overdoing it just a little, Odd?" Yumi asked exasperatedly.

"It's obvious who's side your on!" Yumi just sighed.

"I wouldn't make Carter too angry if I were you, Odd," Devlin warned. "She can be unbelievably scary when she wants to be." Odd just shrugged.

"Incredible," Ulrich remarked. "You'd think they were back in kindergarten." Luckily for Ulrich, the scanner doors closed before I could snap at him too.

Not even five minutes later, Aelita, Devlin, and I were in Sector Five. I looked at Odd and gave him the finger. He just shook his head at the virtual sky.

"I really think you need to cut down on the swearing," Aelita told me in private.

"But I didn't say anything."

"You know what I mean."

We ran to the elevator and quickly jumped on it. After the ride, we hurried to the loading dock and onto our transporter spots, where we then energized. Once we were all safely inside the Skid, we quickly got out of the dock, which is an experience that takes time to get used to.

Aelita skillfully piloted us to a portal, which quickly led us to the sphere.

"Okay, J-man, we're at the sphere," Devlin said as we approached the colossal monster.

"Check the south pole for an entry portal, like on Lyoko," Jeremy ordered from his cushy chair in the lab.

"I've got a visual on it," Aelita said. Unfortunately, it was locked. Fortunately, Jeremy was able to discover the access code to get us inside the sphere.

For a minute, I thought we had re-entered Lyoko.

"I don't believe it!" Jeremy explained. "You guys are on an exact copy of Lyoko! Only this has one sector, the forest sector."

"XANA created another Lyoko on the network?" Devlin asked rhetorically.

"But what's the point?" Aelita asked Jeremy. "I have no idea," he admitted. "But you can bet it's not to save humanity. And knowing our buddy XANA, he's made plenty of copies just like this one."

"So what, do we just check it out?" Devlin asked.

"You bet!" Jeremy said. "I want as much data as possible on this new virtual world."

"All right. Energize!" I was then blanketed by white light. When I opened my eyes, I was in the forest.

"Oh, we're in another forest territory? I guess we're not out of the woods yet!" Odd's lame jokes were really starting to get on my nerves.

"If we don't want him freaking out and crying, I guess someone should laugh at his horrible jokes," I said rather meanly. The others looked at each other.

Jeremy must have sensed the discomfort, because he said, "I've got an idea. We'll work in groups of two. Two groups will go out exploring while the third stays here to protect the Skid."

Odd raised a finger. "I'll work with anyone besides Carter!" "For once he has a decent idea, unlike this morning," I snapped at him.

"Okay, that's it, I'm done!" Devlin suddenly cried. "I am sick and tired of you two fighting! You two will stay here and work out your goddamn differences while the rest of us take a vacation from the two of you!" The others nodded in agreement.

"Here are the vehicles," Jeremy interjected, materializing the over bike and wing. Aelita got on the overbike with Ulrich while Devlin joined Yumi on the Overwing. They couldn't have left fast enough.

Odd were sitting far away from each other, occasionally peeking over our shoulders at one another. I was sick of the fighting at this point and was about to apologize when Odd said, "You could have picked a different excuse, you know."

"You could have listened to me and not stayed up all night playing Galactic Battle," I countered.

"Odd, megatank at three o'clock!" Jeremy cried out suddenly, making us both look to our right. Odd got up in time to dodge the ridiculously huge laser. Unfortunately, it hit the Skid.

"My favorite challenge," I said as I got out my daggers. I then suicide charged to the tank just as it was about to strike again. I dodged the next attack and, before it could close up its weakness, threw a dagger into the eye. It exploded in two seconds.

"Nice one, Carter!" I could hear Odd cheering my name. That made me smile. The second megatank wiped it off, though.

Odd took care of this one. He did the same thing I did, only with a laser arrow. Megatanks were not known for their superior intellect.

"I'm putting in some extra power for the Skid's shield from the supercomputer," Jeremy said. "It's risky, but we don't have a choice."

"Cool. Now we'll be able to see the light of day again." I smirked at Odd. "Oh, ha ha," he said sarcastically.

And then: "Nicholas and Herve are in the factory. They're about to discover the supercomputer and it doesn't have enough power for a return to the past!" Jeremy was really freaking out over there.

"You can't let those nerds get near the supercomputer!" Odd yelled at him. Jeremy went silent; he must have gone to get rid of the two snoops.

And of course Captain Cocky just had to make an appearance.

"Uh-oh," Odd said. "The Skid's done for if handsome gets his hands on it." He gestured to the furious William.

William then tried to devirtualize me with his over sized sword, but Odd shot a laser arrow at his neck. William then went after Odd. I went after William when his back was turned.

I stabbed him once in the back and heard him scream. Odd shot him again in the neck. William went after me first, slicing at both my wrists so I'd have to drop my weapons. I did, and he went after Odd again.

Odd was doing a pretty good job of dodging Zweihander before William sent him over the edge. He devirtualized his weapon and was about to stomp on Odd's hand when I stabbed him in the back for the second time. I had retrieved my daggers when no one was paying attention.

That didn't stop Odd from falling, though. But before he could fall into the Digital Sea, I threw my other dagger at him, devirtualizing him to safety. I used telekinesis to get both my weapons back. William had virtualized Zweihander into his hand by then. It was now me and him.

That is, until reinforcements came. A fan came at William, distracting him. Aelita had flown off the overbike and threw an energy blast at William while Devlin was covering her. Ulrich had dismounted and had nearly successfully crashed the overbike into William had he not dodged just in time. The overbike fell into the Digital Sea.

Ulrich then used his super speed and stood next to me, sabers out. "Everyone knows speeding is really dangerous," he joked. And then we all began to corner him. Not even possessed William could take on so many people. So instead, he opted to turn into smoke and disappear.

That's when Jeremy cut in. "Ulrich, we got an emergency here. I need you to devirtualized Carter."

"Uh, why?"

"Just do it!" Ulrich looked at me and I shrugged. He said, "I'll devirtualized you on three. One… two…" He then slashed me with both of his sabers. I had just enough time to say, "Holy crap, that smarts!" before getting devirtualized.

When the scanners opened again, I was staring at the smiling face of Odd. "Hello!" he announced. I had to smile at him. I was still smiling a little when he told me his plan. "I guess it was about time we made it public," I admitted. "But I still don't want to do that in public."

"Fine by me," Odd said with a leer.

When Nicholas and Herve found us, Odd and I were tangled together on the elevator floor, obviously making out.

In retrospect, we could have been a little less intense.

We could hear Herve pretend to retch and Nicholas's confused questions as they walked away, their suspicions supposedly answered. I couldn't resist calling out, "Did you guys enjoy the show?" after them.

Odd was laughing hysterically, and it was contagious. After we had stopped our immature giggling, we high-fived each other. We then rode the elevator to the supercomputer room to wait for the others.

When the others found us, Jeremy was brooding in his chair, and Odd and I were standing very close to each other, arms crossed, and with identical grins plastered on our faces.

Yumi asked, "What's wrong, Jeremy?"

"I'm worried about this Lyoko copy," he admitted softly. "If there's one out there, it means there's another supercomputer infected with XANA somewhere else on Earth. To destroy this new one, I'm going to have to figure out some sort of way to materialize you guys into the real world from the copy."

"You guys already did that once, though," Devlin pointed out.

"We had our friend from the project helping us," Jeremy countered. "It was only for a limited amount of time and I could only send you to San Diego and to our Lyoko. I can still use the basic schematics, but it's going to take a while for me to send you guys anywhere else."

"Yeah, well, we can figure that out when the time comes," Ulrich said with a casual smile. He turned to the Odd and me. "And you two seem awfully chummy."

"We just got over our differences is all," I said.

I just noticed the amount of line breaks in this chapter. Sorry if it bothered you.

So no apologies were said out loud. That's just how Odd and Carter roll, I guess.

If your wondering about the scene with Carter and her old school enemies, I'm still working on it. It won't happen for a while still.