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2

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"And…so yeah, that's my pitch I guess."

Odd felt sheepish at his lame finish. Outside the windows, it was almost dark; though the spring weather of early April meant the days were getting longer, it still meant that in a few minutes by eight 'o'clock it would be completely nighttime. He was sitting in Jeremie's room, surrounded by his friends. Aelita was standing next to Jeremie, who had turned his chair away from his laptop to focus on the conversation. Ulrich and Yumi were sitting on Jeremie's bed; Yumi had a hand over Ulrich's. All four had listened as he'd made his case, letting him ramble to get all of it out.

Now there was an awkward silence. Each of his friends looked to each other, eyes meeting and silent contacts being made, like everyone was communicating without a word being spoken. The bond between these five was strong enough that they could almost always tell what the others were thinking.

Then Aelita spoke. "I think we'll have to tell her."

Odd did a double take. Almost always! "Are you sure?" he asked.

She looked to him, a small smile on her face. "Wasn't it your idea in the first place Odd?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't expect…"

Aelita held up a finger, continuing. "Keep in mind, I started talking to Sissi before any of you really did, at least outside of our daily interactions. I've had a lot of time to get a read on what kind of person she is at heart."

Next to her, Jeremie looked contemplative. "Admittedly I've been thinking the same thing for a while now. We've been pretty lucky thus far in terms of this whole secret and relationships."

"Just don't make any 'keeping it in the family' jokes, Jeremie." Yumi added, a wry grin on her face.

Jeremie grinned a bit in return. But he certainly had the point; he and Aelita had, of course, hit it off, and Yumi and Ulrich had finally gotten through their own unresolved romantic tension not long before Odd had started seeing Sissi. So, thus far, relationships forming had not threatened to spread the secret.

Yumi looked to Odd, her grin fading into a somewhat embarrassed look. "Admittedly, we never really discussed it as a group when it came to your dating life, because you were always bouncing from one girl to another, so it didn't seem like it would be an issue."

Odd winced a bit and put a hand over his heart. "Oww, Yumi, from China's heart doth you stab at me!" He then quickly ducked the thick math textbook book she'd grabbed off Jeremie's shelf and nonchalantly thrown at him in response to the joke; in truth he knew it was probably more out of the deliberate swapping of her Japanese nationality than the terrible pun.

Ulrich sat looking at the floor, clearly deep in thought. The others looked to him, and Odd held his breath a bit; of them all, Ulrich certainly had the most experience with Sissi, and certainly the most reason to distrust her.

Finally, Ulrich spoke up.

"If we're going to do this, we're going to have to be careful how we go about it. This secret is certainly bigger than any of us, but we can't tell half a truth and half a lie. If we tell her, we'll have to tell her all of it, or she'll never get it." He looked up at Odd, his gaze firm. "And if she doesn't react well, or it goes badly, you know we'll have to wipe everything. We can't risk what's happened the last time that she found out, even with what's changed between then and now between you and her."

Odd looked down and nodded slowly; he'd almost forgotten that she'd actually found out before, though Return to the Past had undone that. "Yeah…I know that if it doesn't work out…it's…not really a good sign for our relationship." He looked back up at them. "I don't like the idea of having to relive days and redo things with her over and over to hide it from her. But I can't lie to her either; it doesn't feel right at all, even though we're so used to lying to almost everyone."

The rest of the group seemed to give an uncomfortable shudder at that; the fact that they weren't far off from being child soldiers fighting a secret war, and had been for years, wasn't lost on any of them. All of them had become exceedingly good liars. Until the dam had broken and the hookups between each of them had started happening all at once, they hadn't quite realized that they'd even become adept at lying to themselves and each other about their own feelings. The result was that the group had suddenly become even more tightly knit in the last handful of weeks than they'd ever been, which was saying an awful lot after so much time together.

Jeremie spoke up. "So then. All in favor of bringing Sissi into this story?" He raised his hand. Aelita raised hers, as did Odd. Yumi thought for only a moment, before hers went up as well; a strong endorsement coming from her.

Ulrich looked around to the others, then to Odd. "Do you trust her?"

Odd nodded. "Yes."

Ulrich raised his hand too.

"It's unanimous then." Jeremie said, as they all put their hands down. "So, when do we do it?"

Aelita pulled a phone out of her pocket, tapping at it. "Sunday. Tomorrow."

Ulrich looked up, surprised. "That's pretty soon. Will we be ready by then?"

Aelita hit another key and a small 'ding' sounded. "Well, I just texted her asking her to meet us near the bench at the nature trail tomorrow at noon." Her answer was firm and decisive.

Ulrich looked to Jeremie. "Well then. Guess we'll have to be ready by then."

Jeremie nodded, turning back to his computer and turning it on. "Well, we'd better get started on what we're going to say then."

The group began to offer suggestions, each chiming in with phrases or corrections, advice and guidelines.

Odd watched as his friends put their honest effort into the process, and once again, he felt enormous gratitude for the friends he'd made on this wild adventure.

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That evening, after everyone had finally gone to sleep, sometime past three in the morning, something stirred on Lyoko...