"You know, wouldn't it be good if we knew if William's Lyoko form has anything hidden in its sleeves?" Ulrich asked.
"I've been thinking about that, but Cassandra has been too busy with training William's sword skills and I haven't bothered to try interrupt them," Jeremy told and looked at William before sipping his soda.
"Maybe you could ask Cass if there's time for that," William noted. "If you find something that'd help me fight on Lyoko, I bet she'd agree." He still remembered what the girl had been after he had been Xanafied via a tower. The Lyoko-bound girl was afraid of something he did not fathom; was it him?
"By the way, William, any ideas why Cassandra allows you to call her Cass but no one else?" Odd asked.
"Because she doesn't want anyone to call her anything else than her name," William answered.
"But you still get to call her Cass," Odd reminded. Still, William repeated in his mind; the realization had seeped into his mind slowly. Not everything was lost, he realized it even better now.
"Since she hasn't shown any objections against that, I guess she still... accepts me as a close friend," the black-haired boy guessed. "As far as I know, I'm the only one whom she has allowed to get that far."
"Does she even think of us others as her friends?" Aelita wondered. William felt awkward about all these questions which he felt like he was bombarded with. Yes, he knew Cassandra better than anyone else, but it was not like he had dove into her psyche and found out everything there.
"That I can't answer," he said. "You could ask from her, y'know."
"I don't think she'd give an answer," Aelita said. "Maybe she hasn't thought about it."
"Maybe," William noted. "Maybe she just has fully occupied herself with teaching me."
"Isn't she a rather bad teacher? I mean, she is not that nice to even you, out of all people. Has she actually even taught you something?" Yumi asked.
"Yes, she has taught me quite a lot despite of her unkindness. She knows her stuff well," William said. "She was in a swordplay club in Riverein. And I was too, for some time."
"Really?" Ulrich asked in surprise. "That'll help you with your sword, doesn't it?"
"Not really. We used completely different swords and I didn't learn enough to be able to apply my skills to Zweihänder now," William explained. "But Cass's skills at even teaching the stuff are from there, in the end."
"What was it like?" Ulrich asked.
"Well, that's when I first saw something different about Cass." William reminisced.

"C'mon, William, would you even come to try it?" Mathieu asked once again. "Just once?"

It must have been the eight time he had asked that. And William was out of patience. It was better to give up, it seemed; Mathieu was persistent about everything.
"Fine, I'll come, this once," he said.
"Great!" Mathieu smiled. "You're gonna like it for sure!"

William was not as sure as his friend was about it. He believed that swordplay was not his cup of tea. But since Mathieu insisted, he would try it. After that he could always decline and have a proper argument for his decision.

In the evening, William followed Mathieu to the school gym where the swordplay club was held. He saw immediately the reason for Mathieu to be there in the first place: Cassandra. The girl was clad in dark turquoise and black clothes, covering her body fully, while other girls' clothes were colored differently from hers, but they all had the same type of clothing; the school had the protective clothing for fencing so that students could participate in the swordplay club safely even if they could not pay for the clothes.

"Mister Bouchard, I brought a new person to the club," Mathieu told. The dark-haired man whom William had learned to know on the PE lessons turned to look at the three coming boys, Mathieu, William and Aidan. Aidan, a friend whom William had learned to know via Allen, often came to watch the club's sessions; he was not able to participate himself due to some sort of an inborn trauma. William had chosen not to ask about it, as it seemed to be a rather sensitive topic for the red-haired boy.
"Mathieu insisted that I'd try this out," William explained and took a look at the people who were there already. He avoided Cassandra's eyes and tried to recognize other people there instead. Few were familiar to him yet, but he could recognize some students.
"Good to see new students coming to try out things," mister Bouchard said. "We'll go through some basic things then, some of them with you individually when others will do their stuff. You'll be fine here with us."

William nodded.
"Plus, if you choose to continue, I can beat you and maybe gain Cassandra's favor," Mathieu said.
"There's nothing honorable, cool whatsoever in beating beginners. Why don't you try pick on someone of your own level or over it?" a girl's voice asked thornily.
"Well I'll challenge you to a duel, then!" Mathieu said, then turned to look at the talking girl. It was Cassandra; the girl had walked closer to mister Bouchard when the teacher had talked with the boys. "Oh... Cassandra... It's you..."
"A duel? It's good to see them here. We'll have it at the end of this session, if it's fine by you all," mister Bouchard said cheerily.
"S-sure," Mathieu said, regretting what he had done, but he did not want to look like a wimp in front of Cassandra's eyes, so he could not draw his challenge back.
"And don't you dare go easy on me because I'm a girl or because you are infatuated with me," Cassandra said with her eyes squinting with hostility.
"I-I wasn't even going to!" Mathieu said. Some nearby girls snickered.
"William, since we will have some pair exercises here, I think you could work with Cassandra. I bet you've got to know her well enough," mister Bouchard noted.
"Actually... I really don't feel like we've gotten that well along," William said, eyeing the now expressionless Cassandra carefully. "Isn't there anyone who's, like, closer to my level?"
"Yes, there is, but for a newcomer like you it'll be more beneficial to train with Cassandra. She is our best sword player," mister Bouchard explained it. Behind his back, Cassandra's eyes blinked with unforeseen joy and she straightened herself proudly. This was something William had ever seen before; the girl got top grades from the tests, but she always nonchalantly and uncaringly put it away, as if it meant nothing to her. Now she was fully proud of her achievements for some reason. Mister Bouchard turned to look at Cassandra and asked her, "Is that okay to you?"
"Sure," Cassandra said, now more neutral. There was a hint of something positive, maybe eagerness, in her demeanor.
"Then let us begin, it's time," mister Bouchard said. "William will be with us this time, and he'll undergo some of the things with me individually while you do other things."

The session begun and William waited with Aidan that mister Bouchard would get everyone else's exercise started. Cassandra out of all even helped some with it.
"I've heard a lot about Cassandra's meanness, but to be honest, I've seen her most here, and I don't think she's that bad," Aidan said.
"Really? I've found her quite nasty during my time here," William said. "It felt like hate on first sight."
"She's different here," Aidan said. "Just look at her, isn't she different?"

William had already seen the difference, but with the girl taking some time of her own doing to help others and also take mister Bouchard's place as the teacher for the time the teacher taught William the basics, he could not deny the vast difference. He just did not know why she was like that: on both edges of the spectrum.

When William could join the others, he was placed next to Cassandra. He was wary of the girl especially since she paid lots of attention to him, but for some reason she was more patient with him and instructed him along his beginner level. She looked happier than ever before during his time.

When the pair exercises came and they could discuss with each other, Cassandra talked quite a lot. She talked about swords, how to handle them, their history, different swordplay styles and so on. William could not talk about them much, but he listened to the girl not to annoy her. He spotted a glance of Mathieu, who was certainly very jealous. What he heard was, however, interesting, and he had no problems with listening to Cassandra.

As the ending exercise for the full group they had a practice match, which made William even more nervous than he already was; Cassandra was unusually amiable but he doubted it would last.
"Don't worry, I'll go easy on you," Cassandra reassured him. "I won't beat you up like I'm going to do with Mathieu soon."
"Okay..." William said and raised his sword – a sabre, Cassandra had told him – to the salute before the match. Cassandra allowed him to begin, and he carefully tried a simple attack he had been taught; it was not his fear of hurting the girl but his own unsureness about his skills that held him back. The girl blocked his pathetic attack with ease and prompted, "Come on, I know you can do better than this. Believe in yourself!"

William took in a breath and attacked again. Cassandra blocked his attack again with the same ease but said, "That's more like it!" She attacked, and it was William's turn to block. The hard impact he braced for never came, as the green-haired girl had scaled her attacks to his level; he hardly felt anything else than the weight of the girl's blade on his.
"Don't wait, retaliate," she noted before taking her sword away to go from his blocking to attack further. "Or just do something to react to me after blocking, don't stand still!"

William attempted to block the attack that was coming to him from his earlier defense, but he was too slow for the calm attack that came almost peacefully at him. He could feel the touch of the point of the sabre at his shoulder before it left back to the side of its user.
"Point," Cassandra noted and returned to the en garde position and William followed her example. Then he allowed the girl to attack, and the practice match continued until mister Bouchard ended the exercise with "Halt!" By then, Cassandra already had 12 points, while William had somehow luckily got one point.
"That was a good match," Cassandra said and mustered a small smile which William could not respond by any other means than nodding, he was that surprised.
"For the last thing, Cassandra has been challenged by Mathieu to a duel, which was saved for the last. So why don't you two come here," mister Bouchard told. Aidan gestured William to come next to him.
"This'll be interesting," William noted.
"Cassandra beats him," Aidan noted. "Mister Bouchard did not exaggerate when he said that she's our best."
"I bet he didn't," William said. The girl's completely different demeanor was still foreign, but now he wondered if this was what Mathieu had seen in her. The difference.

Most of the people cheered for Mathieu, but some of the girls cheered for Cassandra even though she was friends with no one. When William asked them, they told that Mathieu tended to be smug especially when he attempted to get Cassandra interested in him. That was why they chose to cheer for Cassandra; it would be refreshing to have someone kick his butt for once.

Just like Aidan had said, Cassandra beat Mathieu, quite easily even! She bowed to her small and cheering audience with glee and happiness shining from her eyes. She enjoyed it, William saw it clearly.

The session was over then, and as the girl had received her congratulations, she left for the showers.

Later William tried to catch up with her. "Cassandra, wait, please!" The girl stopped and asked mildly, "What is it, William?"
"I just wanted to thank you for helping me," William said. In the dark which concealed part of the expression and after seeing the happy side of the girl, he felt that it was a bit easier to talk with her.
"No problem. I hope you'll choose to continue with us," Cassandra said, her tone still quite mild but her eyes could not hide the hint of happiness.
"I'll think about it," William said. "Swordplay is your passion, isn't it?" The girl smiled again, fondly this time.
"Yes. Swords, swordplay, all about it. It is my passion, indeed," she said. "And for a beginner, you weren't so bad. Just so you know."

With those words she turned her back on William and disappeared into the darkness.

But in the next morning, she was just the same irritable and nasty Cassandra William had to learn to know her as. William did not know if he was imagining it, but she seemed just a tiny bit kinder towards him than before.

Yet part of him wondered if the swordplay club had been just a dream.

"Well, was it a dream?" Aelita asked.
"No. I decided to continue in the club, and the change happened every single time. I think that was where we first started to get closer as she started to accept me slowly through it. And when I expressed some interested in the same topic, it just got better," William told. "Suddenly we were talking about swords as if there was no rift between us." I just wish it had lasted through the months of our separation...

/Code Lyoko (c) Moonscoop, Cassandra Delorien, Riverain and the rest of its original characters (c) Me/