Season Two has me unbelievably re-interested in Code Lyoko, though I'd fallen out of interest last year; so despite having incredible amounts of real-life issues preventing me from writing much, I had to at least write this to prove that I've regain inspiration. …Sort of.

Oh, and with the events of Season Two, Every Step I Willed (my chaptered CL story, available in my profile) is now an Alternate Universe story. Is anyone at all still interested in my continuing it? I have half of chapter four written, if so.

Set slightly in the future; mild speculation-fic.

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He found it most ironic that the time when they could best be together, when there were no barriers, no pretenses, no confusing bundles of issues with other people—

(like William, he gritted. Like Sissy, she groaned. The other two were discordant on their color wheel, out of place and jarring. And at the same time, both Ulrich and Yumi knew that they were excuses, because even Odd had smacked them both upside their heads one day and told them to "kiss and make out—I mean, make up."

Clearly, they still hadn't.)

--was when they were fighting.

For one- fighting back-to-back, in danger of cruel and unusual and very much virtualized deaths.

But they complemented each other so well, you see. She made up for his short-range deficiencies, his work on the ground alternated with her dominance of the air, and their matching speed and agility only made them a more formidable pair. Take the crab: he got the legs, she got the eye-symbol. Where he couldn't reach, she reached for him. When she couldn't keep up with it, he did it for her. While he dispatched targets with swiftness, it was her limber form that found the openings. Easy and simple. Caught up in the heat of battle, she could smile at him and he could smile back at her without either of them being interrupted by anything—well, other than malicious programming bits out to erase both their existences.

(Thusly proving that dealing with real people is much harder than dealing with life-threatening situations.)

For two- even back in the real world, they were most comfortable in the fight. (Not to mention, it scared nearly everyone else away.) They could be found sparring on a daily basis. Their relationship sounded beautiful set to the rhythm of kick, parry, dodge, roundhouse, uppercut, block, backflip, left hook, "Ow, that's going to bruise like heck in the morning."

Jeremie shook his head and called them abusive. Odd cuffed him on the shoulder and raised their favorite ages-old adage. (Opposites go well together.)

And then he asked him good-naturedly if what he and Aelita did wasn't the same, if only mental sparring.

That much was true. Those two tossed trivia back and forth like a well-worn hackey-sack, and exchanged bits of information reflexively. They had computer programming skills on par with each other (and honestly, with a great deal of the technology industry as well. Somewhere on the other side of the world, Bill Gates shivered.); their natural environment was knowledge and surrounded by it, they mutually thrived. Most couples cuddled in cafés on street corners and parks.

(Odd cursed his relatively lesser intelligence at times like this, but it made no difference- for on the color wheel that was life, the color that he was couldn't match hers.)

They'd more likely be found in a library—tea could be spilled on their work accidentally, and they found no reason to go to the park unless it was to collect samples and find a good place to theorize and scrutinize (and avoid the Hermitage because after all was said and done, dead memories should remain dead).

Likes attracted as well.

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.:some colors, you see, are complementary
because love is your canvas and every color adorns it:.

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Revised, 29 September '05. Thanks for reading!