Hunter Moebius and I do not own Code Lyoko, Maximum Ride, or Kaitlyn Belpois. We do own our OC's.
It took us a week, but Hunter and I got back on our feet. Through a few tests, it turned out that I had not broken down due to a new power within me; instead, the stress that he was feeling, that I soon mysteriously felt as well, had happened as a result of empathy—admittedly, I melted down because I didn't want him to go through it alone. While Yumi and Odd had been relieved that I wasn't turning into an empath, Hunter smiled in gratitude.
No matter how homesick we were feeling, we grew accustomed to the tests given to us by the whitecoats. My legs strengthened, even though I was already quite steady on my feet.
The downside was that I still had Reilly assigned to me until the next Tuesday. Jeb, however, promised that Ari would be present, so I wouldn't be hurt. He stood guard around me while the least tedious of tests were performed; yet, when he demanded Reilly remove the plastic shunt in my arm, which I wasn't even accustomed to in the first place, he refused.
"You're kidding!" Odd and Jeremie chorused when I told them the news.
I shook my head. "Ugh… I hate this thing, and I'm afraid of taking it out myself."
Hunter grimaced. "Yeah, that might not be a good idea. Hopefully whoever your next whitecoat will be, they'll take it right out. I hope you get a good one, like mine."
"No kidding, Hunter," I sighed. "I wish I had Georgina as my whitecoat, too."
"Maybe Jeb could get her assigned to both of us?" he shrugged his shoulders. "Or get you one that's just as good? One who won't put shunts into any part of your body?"
"You'll have that removed soon," Yumi soothed. "Just don't think about it."
"I hope so, Yumi. I can't believe that this had only been implemented to me a week ago. I'd rather have my heart-shaped pendant over this," I smiled. "At least it would be easier."
"I'd love to give it to you." Yumi beamed as well.
"I know you do. I just can't believe that we're here. It's not very exciting, especially since we're in California, and Kadic's in Sceaux. And we should be there, and not here."
"Or," Odd suggested, slowly gaining a grin, "we could bring Kadic over here, and that way, instead of being there, we'd be here, while still being there!"
I tilted my head to the side, like the time he said a pun that I never heard before in Sector Five. "Uh…" Did Jeremie teach him quantum physics again?
Einstein, for his part, also looked quite confused. "Odd, could you at least try to make sense? There's absolutely no way that we could transplant Kadic Academy from Sceaux, France, all the way to us here in Death Valley, California, for a variety of reasons; not the least part being that we don't have any means of getting it here! The Supercomputer's the only means I can think of, and it's back there, too, and we don't possess any means of faster-than-light, or interstellar travel, that would allow us to get there, undetected!"
"And I would hate to fly in a chopper again," I moaned, heart about to race from the panic.
It was as if Yumi sensed this, as I soon felt her softly rub my back. "We understand. Even if we do find a way out of here, with or without Ari's and Jeb's help, we're definitely not going to let anyone ride in another chopper, again."
"I still don't get how Ulrich wasn't affected by all that flying," Aelita jumped in.
Ulrich raised an eyebrow, shrugging. "Simple; like we tried to do with Cassidy, I just pretended we were on the ground. The floor was stable enough."
"Pretending that we were on the ground didn't work for me, remember?" I asked calmly, not even half-mad.
"Yeah, but we calmed you down, anyway," Sam added, grinning. "So it doesn't matter how we did it; we just did it."
Nodding, I blinked at my friends. "Reilly even made note of my 'mischief' or 'misbehavior' in Paris."
"Only because we tried to escape, and didn't come peacefully," Yumi rolled her eyes, looking like she was about to laugh.
"And I was the only one who was absent to the rest of the staff," I giggled.
"Oh, that's a real good one!" Odd quipped.
William nodded in agreement. "At the rate things are going, I think the only thing they'll soon find absent from all of us, is our sanity."
"I just don't know what they want to do to us, other than these tests—I still love the gun tests. They adore me there. I blew three hundred out of three hundred one targets the last time," I smiled, before it fell. "Aside from that one time, I can't even get a reading from them still."
"You got a near-perfect score in the shooting range?!" Jeremie's eyes widened, with an excited look popping up not long after.
"I told you guys my dad gave me a gun when I was younger, right? He used the same compliment when he took me to a live shooting range and I shot up so many targets he made. It was so much fun—I was eleven back then, at least two years before I got enrolled in Kadic," I smiled.
William's jaw dropped to the floor. He was nearly flabbergasted.
"Hey, Ex-y! Your uncle showed you how to disarm bombs, I got to shoot with a gun. Simple as all that," I giggled at his expression.
"At least both of your relatives taught you something," Ulrich commented, with a laugh.
Aelita giggled, grinning. "As well as my own."
"And you're a DJ to boot," I praised.
She closed her eyes, blushing, yet still smiling.
"And what about you, Cat Girl?" Odd pointed out, a mischievous smile taking over his face. "You think we've forgotten about the other famous DJ we know? Or did that Moody Blues song you and Princess sang cancel that out?"
I felt my own cheeks heat up. "B-but she's—I mean…" I still hated bragging about myself. Even if my friends put me up to it, I always liked to step back, and let someone else have the spotlight. I still remembered that awful bet that Ulrich and Odd made.
"Oh, come on, dear sister. You know that you have talent, too," Sister smiled. "Even I was mystified by your performance of that song. Especially that ghostly angelic note Aelita did to amplify the whole thing… And you did so beautifully…"
I gulped, managing a small smile. "I just sing the songs…"
"C'mon!" Jeremie interjected. "You can't tell me that you don't put any ability into your performances, Cassidy! Have you ever listened to yourself?"
"Just think, Cat Girl. You're awesome, too," my wildcard nudged me gently. "Why would you want to hide it?"
"I don't like to blow my own horn, Jeremie and Odd," I giggled.
Yumi nodded. "You're certainly more modest than somebody else in this room, that's for sure. But there's a difference between humility and narcissism."
"I just worry that too much bragging would cause negative consequences," I shivered. "Sure, I used to talk about my powers a lot when we started out, but realizing that I was helpless to defy Aelita's fate, I swore I wouldn't talk about it unless something else was going on—before I clammed up about my nightmares."
"I don't think you have anything to worry about, Cassidy," Jeremie reassured me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "If negative consequences were going to happen whenever someone bragged, we'd have put a strip of masking tape over Odd's mouth, long before now."
"Hey!" Odd shouted defensively. "A guy's gotta eat sometime!"
Ulrich chuckled. "Yeah, you'd be like that guy we saw on TV the last time we lounged in the rec room."
"That guy was creepy."
As Aelita shivered, I shook my head to clear it of the image. "Those eyes tried to pierce my soul!"
"He was creepy," Yumi agreed, giving my back a soft, soothing rub.
Seeing how everyone was reacting to that memory, Jeremie raised his hands up to chest level. "I think that's enough talk about that guy for one day. Why don't we… talk about Kiwi or something else?"
"Yeah. Speaking of dogs, Angel has one, too. His name is Total, a black talking Scottie with wings," I brought up, then looked at Kiwi. "He's not out to steal your lady friend, little diggity dog. He already has one of his own."
Odd's eyes immediately widened. "Huh?! Total can talk?! And-and-and fly?!"
Yumi and I nodded, identical smiles upon our faces.
"Wow!" his eyes lit up. "That's fantastic! I just gotta keep training my own little diggity-dog, and soon he'll be able to talk to more than just Cat Girl!"
"A talking dog…" Hunter's eyes darted toward the ceiling, like he was deep in thought. "I wonder what Kiwi would talk about? And I wonder what he would sound like… anything like Ulrich, maybe?"
"I don't know. Besides, I love his little mind conversations with me, Odd, honey," I smiled. "He has a wide vocabulary range when he wants to use it. He even knows what a nonagenarian is. Even I didn't know at first."
"I wonder where he learned all that?" Aelita cocked an eyebrow.
"Maybe Odd was right when he told us that Kiwi's just special," I shrugged.
Nearby, Kiwi just slept peacefully atop Odd's bed, completely oblivious to everything we were talking about.
Giggling, I looked at the door, calming myself down. "I wonder if the teachers are doing a widespread search for us. I mean, it's been a week. They must be worried sick about us."
"Oh, there's no doubt about that, I'm sure." Jeremie pushed his glasses upon the ridge of his nose. "The real question is, how long before they realize we were smuggled out of the country?"
"Wait!" Aelita whispered, eyes widening. "The Erasers revealed that they have clearance from their boss here to Jim! Maybe there's a chance he'll remember!"
That fact immediately hit me over the head. She was right! "I didn't think about it that way. But then again, my mind was a bundle of nerves."
"We were all quite tense," Jeremie reminded me. "We were trying to escape from the Erasers, so that's all we were concentrating on."
"So, if Jim remembers, then maybe we can be saved," I blinked, a smile forming upon my face. "Aelita, you're—" I stopped myself, remembering what had happened the last time I said that. The last thing I needed was a team of Erasers barging in, and forcefully pulling us out of our room, for whatever reason.
"Cassidy?" Yumi asked in concern. "You can say it. The Erasers aren't going to barrel in, and take us someplace we don't want to go."
"Yeah," Kaitlyn agreed.
"Okay…" I took a deep breath. "...Aelita, you're a genius."
Aelita grinned, giggling modestly as a slight blush overtook her cheeks. But that was it; just like the others had suggested, nothing else happened. The door wasn't knocked down. Erasers didn't pop out of the wood—er, stone… work. We weren't suddenly transported to the middle of Tanzania. Everything stayed absolutely the same as it was, before I said that.
"See?" Sam smiled. "You were worrying for nothing."
"I guess I was still worried about tempting fate," I muttered sheepishly.
"It was just a matter of chance," Yumi remarked, placing her hands upon my shoulders. "You could've said anything else, and the Erasers still would have come after us. They still would have heard us, anyway."
"Like if one of us snapped a twig. I know that's cliché, but it's the first one I thought of," I muttered.
"Exactly what I mean," Yumi nodded, grinning.
"We don't need to worry too much," Aelita reassured.
That was definitely relieving to hear. I'm usually one to assume that, if something special happens the first time I do something, it's probably going to happen the next time, and the time after that. Hopefully this was the start of something better, where I didn't have to worry about the same thing happening the same time I do something. That would be really nice.
"I am glad that the tests are going our way, at least," I smiled.
"That's for sure," Ulrich agreed.
Almost as if on cue, the door opened, revealing Georgina Markson. Normally we expected her to walk over to Hunter, but surprisingly, she came to me, instead. I could just about guess what Hunter's reaction to that was going to be.
"Cassidy, could you come with me for a moment?" she calmly asked, with a calm smile on her face to match.
"O-of course, Ma'am," I looked into her soothing blue eyes, hopping off my bed.
Following her out of the big room, she led me down a short hallway, and into the examination room.
"Jeb finally got Reilly unassigned to you. I don't know what Mandy thought when she pointed him to you last week, but you and Hunter will be mine from now on. Now I understand that you really want that shunt removed," Georgina nodded.
I nodded. "It has been a literal thorn in my arm."
She immediately went to work. The entire time, she kept me calm and relaxed, and worked with a very gentle touch. The next thing I knew, she had taken it out, and held it in her other hand for me to see.
"Reilly really had a bad opinion of you, didn't he?" she asked, pressing on the side of my right wrist with a cotton ball. "I've never seen him do this to any of his subjects, before."
"I guess he had 'learned' from Angel," I blinked. "He must've thought that since I was so 'bad' when being smuggled to here, he didn't want to take any chances in case I would bite."
Georgina rolled her eyes, an annoyed look forming on her face. "Right, because to him, everyone is expected to just sit back, and let themselves be abducted. He's always felt like that. He thinks coming here is supposedly a 'privilege,' and that everyone should be proud to have an Eraser put them into a sedan."
"I was more afraid of the chopper."
The look of annoyance became concern. "Are you afraid of heights, or afraid of flying?"
"Both, but I sucked up my heights fear for a time, and I really hate flying. Bad experience with a fighter jet."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Her voice was filled with regret, as she grimaced. "And I'm sorry if the chopper ride made you feel even worse than you had been, before we kidnapped you."
"It's okay. What's done is done. But if I ever get back to Kadic, I hope I could go by boat," I blushed.
"I could see about arranging that," she replied, as she gently wrapped a bandage around the wound. "I'm sure Jeb would help me."
I then felt her soothingly rub my back, her tone turning comforting. "And when you get out of here, you should be able to take any method of transport you want to, provided it's been invented in this country already."
In no time at all, I returned to the big room. Yumi was the first one to see me, and I could tell she looked quite concerned, before she looked me over. Her concern turned into happiness once she found the shunt was gone.
I grinned. "Turns out they finally assigned me to a better whitecoat."
"That's great, Cassidy!" Even her voice sounded happy. "So they gave you Hunter's, now?"
"Apparently so. You were right about her. She's very soothing." I turned to Hunter.
He nodded, smiling calmly. "She definitely is. You'll like her a lot. But now I wonder if she's going to be assigned to both of us, or if they assigned me a new one?"
"She says that we're both going to her," I announced. "You still have her."
His smile increased when I told him that. "That's great! And a relief. I was afraid they were gonna give me somebody worse."
"Nope. You and I will be with her," I smiled.
"Now we all have kind whitecoats taking care of us!" Odd commented. "That should make things a lot easier!"
"Yeah, except Jeremie's is a little rough," I pointed out.
Jeremie grimaced a little. "He's…not too bad. He just doesn't have the softest touch, is all. Other than that, he's acceptable. But he's definitely not as gentle as yours and Hunter's."
"Jeremie, if he's bothering you so much…" Aelita began.
He turned to look at her, cutting her off. "...I'll tell Jeb, and ask him if he can be replaced. But I don't know how many others are as kind and gentle as Georgina Markson. And like I said, other than that one bit, he's fine."
"That's true," Yumi nodded, "but we like to keep an eye on things. We're still miles from Kadic."
"Yumi's right," Ulrich agreed. "And if we have to stay here for a long time, who says we can't make the most of it?"
"It'll be like a new adventure," Odd agreed.
"I hardly call being kidnapped an adventure, Odd," Sam replied.
Hunter let out a slight chuckle, one that sounded more bitter than humorous, as he shook his head. "Yeah, really… unless they were trying to do their own version of one of those reality shows on TV…"
That's almost what it sounded like, to me. Getting randomly abducted from a French boarding school, to be taken back to the United States, except to California, rather than Illinois or Nebraska, wasn't exactly what I would call an "adventure." Besides, from what Hunter described, that about hit the nail on the head. I wonder where he came from, when the Erasers found him? "I'd have to agree with Sam and Hunter, Odd."
"Oh, alright," Odd waved his hand dismissively. "But at least you're back in the United States, even if it's not exactly Illinois or Nebraska, Cat Girl."
"I'm in unfamiliar ground. California and New Mexico are states that I never visited before all this came onto me—my grandparents say that I have been to New Mex, but I must've been a baby when that happened. Being in the School, too, is not exactly where I would like to be at any time at all," I blushed.
"Well, neither have we," Odd wasn't about to back down, "unless Hunter's secretly been near here, and hasn't told any of us!"
He shook his head. "Nah… I've seen most of Maryland, including Baltimore, and the farthest I've ever gone is West Virginia. Never seen the West Coast before now."
"Join the purple jacket club," I muttered. "Aside from moving to Kadic, I never visited either coast. I was more landlocked than seafaring."
"Interesting," he remarked. "So we have a lot more in common than I thought. Oh, and do those jackets come in green, by any chance?"
"I think they're expanding their color options. I was just going off of what Ulrich told Odd sarcastically," I giggled.
"Uh—wha-wha?" Ulrich blinked, taking a step backward. "I-I mean, they, uh… well, sure. I… I-I mean, I… I think…"
"It's okay, Ulrich. We were just playing around," I smiled.
He rubbed the back of his head. "Right… I… I knew that."
The room became uncomfortably quiet for a few seconds after that, as if nobody was sure what to talk about next. That was when the door opened once more, revealing Jeb.
"Alright, everyone," he began. "Follow me. I'm gonna take you to your next test, and this one will have all of you working together."
"What kind of test is it?" Sister was curious.
"You'll probably find it's a lot like missions to Lyoko," Jeb replied with a grin.
"Alright!" Odd cheered.
"Been a little while since we all went and enjoyed a group work test," Kaitlyn agreed.
And with that, Jeb led us all out of the big room, down a long hallway, and into another room. I could tell Odd and Kaitlyn were quite excited about the test itself. I started to wonder if it was just well-hidden nervousness.
It turned out to be just like mi novio expected it to be: a piece of cake. Just like he did when we fought against XANA, Jeremie stayed behind and acted as tactician, giving each of us tasks to complete. It only took Hunter a few tries to catch on, and once he did, he was able to pull off each task that Einstein gave him quite well. They even let us pretend to use weapons, so it almost was, like Jeb said, a mission to Lyoko. Why couldn't they give us more tests like this?
Once the test was over, most of us were a bit tired out afterward, but I could tell a few of us really enjoyed that. After we got back to the big room, we all had a meal and went to bed, except for me. I couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding, which stopped me from falling asleep right away. That test was too easy, in my opinion. There was something just off about it. I don't want to think they tailored it specifically to us, but I could just feel something strange, the entire time. I couldn't put a finger on it; either there were too few monsters, or almost no strong monsters, like MegaTanks and Krabes, or even memory stealing jellyfish, or did the plots not seem complex enough? It was like there was some sort of secret message… and I wish I knew what it was.
Little did I know that I was going to find out. And it was exactly what I had feared, going by the first book in the series.