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8
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"Well at least she didn't kick you out." Odd whined a bit, nursing a bump on his head where Sissi had nailed him with Aelita's clock in her embarrassed barrage. It was later in the morning, and the group was sitting at the lunch table. Aelita and Jeremie were across the table from him; to his left were Ulrich and Yumi, all of them working through the mystery food of the day.
Aelita scoffed. "It was my room, and I hadn't done anything wrong."
"Well what about Jeremie? All he got was the pillow in the face!"
"She probably saw him as less of a threat or something. It is Jeremie after all."
"Ouch." Jeremie winced a little.
Aelita patted her boyfriend on the shoulder reassuringly. "Sorry, Jeremie, but at least it was just the pillow. She was no doubt embarrassed by everyone seeing that."
Jeremie began to answer, but Sissi returning to the table with her own tray cut it off. She sat down on Aelita's right, starting in on her food, her cheeks red and her face still mad, pointedly not looking at the others.
Jeremie spoke up quickly. "I'm really sorry for barging in this morning, Sissi. I didn't realize what might be going on."
Sissi put her fork down, looking at him sharply, her voice clipped. "What just what do you think was going on?"
"Umm, nothing! Certainly nothing out of any of Odd's weird manga." Jeremie's cheeks were red again.
Sissi coughed, abruptly choking on a hunk of food. Aelita thumped her back until she had it under control, before dropping a fist on the table and turning to Jeremie, a challenging grin on her face as her tone became mock-accusatory.
"Jeremie Belpois. Exactly what kind of girl do you take me for?"
Jeremie's hands went up defensively. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding!"
The others at the table laughed, and even Sissi couldn't help a small giggle, though her cheeks were still red. She pointed her spoon at Odd a bit threateningly. "Not a word from you."
"What did I do?!" Odd exclaimed. "All I did was walk in at the total wrong time!"
Sissi reached over and whacked him on the head with the spoon. "Not a word!"
"Oww! Hey! My head already has one dent from the clock, it doesn't need one from cutlery too!"
Aelita piped in again. "On that note, I was more surprised finding out how comfortable you were being the 'big spoon' Sissi."
Sissi blushed again and gave Aelita a bop on the head with the spoon too, albeit a much gentler one. "W-Well, I'm always the little one with Odd. I guess it was just…reassuring, being the one doing the snuggling instead."
Ulrich chimed in. "How are you the 'little' one with Odd? You're taller than him."
"Only when she's in heels – oww!" Odd yelped as Sissi whacked him with the spoon again.
Ulrich smirked. "You don't learn very fast, do you Odd?"
"Well how can I learn with her whacking me all the – oww! Stop it!"
"Maybe she'll beat a little common sense into you over time." Yumi offered.
Odd groaned. "Guys, you're not being fair. It was wrong place, wrong time." He looked at Sissi. "And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you."
Sissi sighed, looking at the spoon in her hand, them dumping it on her tray and rubbing the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "No, it's alright…I'm sorry too." She stood from the table and moved around to the opposite side behind Odd, turning his head a bit and kissing his forehead, before hugging him from behind. "I overreacted, and I still am." She sighed, looking around at the others. "I guess I'm still processing yesterday. How did you put it Jeremie?"
"Compiling data?"
"Yeah, that."
Yumi patted her back. "It's alright, we understand. And the fact that you're apologizing for it shows the changes you're already putting effort into making."
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A few tables away, a rather different and decidedly terser conversation was taking place. At that table were Herve Pichon and Nikolas Poliakoff. Herve was watching Sissi and her new friends, his fists clenched and his teeth gritted, seething.
"Come on Herve, you need to calm down. You've been like this for weeks now." Nikolas slow and slightly accented voice tried to console his friend. "Sissi made her choice. We've gotta respect that, as her friends."
Herve laughed derisively. " 'Friends', feh! She's been spending every day with those goodie-goods. We've barely seen her in two weeks, and she never eats lunch with us anymore." Amidst all his anger, he still felt shame. Before Odd's dramatic stunt, he knew Sissi had a boy she was interested in online. He'd never made the connection, but he'd tried confessing his own feelings to her; she'd turned him down, and since then they'd barely spoken.
"Uhh, well I've talked to her." Nikolas said.
"What?! When?"
"Oh, uh, pretty often. I've seen her a few times on campus after dinner, she still talks to me. She's a lot happier than she was before. It's almost kinda weird."
"Why isn't she talking to me then? What's wrong with me that she'd rather talk to you instead?" Herve ground his teeth a bit, rounding on his friend. "And why aren't you mad too? I thought you had a thing for Stones, and now she's all tied up with that loser Belpois!"
Nikolas paused, mulling over thoughts slowly; the speed at which he usually did everything. "Actually, I'm sort of over that now a little, it helped me think too. Like, I was angry when Belpois and Aelita got together, you know, 'cause I like her. But talking with Sissi got me thinking, like, I liked this version of Aelita in my head, you know? Not the real thing. So I wasn't thinking about what she might like." He shrugged. "I mean, I still like her, but I have to try and respect that choice, even if I don't get it, or really like Belpois."
"Ugh. Since when were you the mushy, feely-feely type?" Herve sounded disgusted.
Nikolas shrugged, proceeding dumbly. "Maybe that's why Sissi doesn't talk to you now. Because it feels like you're not respecting her choice."
"I'm not!" Herve exclaimed. A few heads turned nearby and he dropped his voice lower, repeating himself in a slightly more dangerous tone. "I'm not respecting it. Della Robbia must have done something to her, blackmailed her or something. They hated each other. Once she remembers that, she'll break it off with him."
Nikolas frowned. He wasn't always the quickest in thinking, but he'd known Herve long enough to know trouble when it was coming. "Herve. Hey, man, as your friend. Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't. Don't try and meddle in it."
"Oh like you're one to talk! We both meddled in everything for Sissi!"
"Yeah, I know. And we probably still would if she asked. But right now, that's not what she wants. She's happy. I've never seen her so happy. You can't just ignore that."
Herve gripped his fork firmly. Like heck I can't. I'm the only one worthy of Sissi. She'll realize that. I'll make sure she can see that.
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Back at the table, Jeremie's bag began to beep steadily. The scattered laughter that had spread around the table suddenly came to a halt, and Sissi felt the mood shift to sudden seriousness as everyone looked to the bag. Jeremie opened it and pulled his laptop out, opening the device and tapping away at it.
"What is it?" Sissi asked.
Jeremie's voice was low. "It's a XANA attack, I think. A tower's been activated on Lyoko. It's not a Replika this time. But the signal is coming in weird."
"Replika?"
Odd explained to her quickly. "When XANA broke out of the supercomputer, he started making clones of parts of Lyoko across the Internet, which we call Replikas. He uses those to launch attacks now usually, though he still sometimes gets into our Lyoko too, since we can't disconnect it from the net completely or we wouldn't be able to fight him."
"What's weird about it?" Ulrich leaned across the table, keeping his own voice low.
Aelita leaned over to look at the computer. "Hmm…usually the data transmission is both ways when XANA's trying to control something or affect something. But this data is all flowing one way; outward from Lyoko. There's no return information."
Jeremie closed the computer. "Well, whatever it is, we need to get it shut down." He went to stand from the table, as did everyone else.
Sissi quickly spoke up, trying to balance her voice for quiet but also keeping it audible. "Hang on! If you all leave at once, people will notice something is up, won't they?"
There was a long pause, then everyone sat back down slowly. A couple of odd looks shot around the table, and Sissi had an abrupt and unpleasant realization. "Oh…that's probably how I found you guys once before, isn't it?"
Yumi shrugged. "It's a fair guess. But you're right anyways. And classes start in thirty minutes, so we can't all be missing from them, that would be suspicious too."
"Alright. Well, we know Jeremie has to go." Ulrich added. "So, who else is on cleanup duty for this thing?"
Aelita raised a hand. "I'll need to deactivate the tower."
Odd raised his hand. "I'll go too."
Sissi paused, before she raised a hand as well. The others looked surprised. Jeremie looked up at her. "Are you sure?"
"Sort of. I don't think I'm ready to try and do any of the stuff you guys do yet…all the fighting and stuff. But maybe seeing what you do, maybe that'll help me get a better grasp on all of this, since it's still kind of abstract in my head." She looked at Odd. "Besides, it might be better for the cover story if it's Odd and me both missing rather than just him."
Odd grinned. "What, like we skived off class to go make out somewhere?"
"Something like that." Sissi answered with a nonchalant tone and a small smile.
"Alright then, that makes sense." Jeremie slipped the laptop back into his bag and stood. "Aelita and I will head out first. After a few minutes, Odd and you can come a different way. And Ulrich and Yumi will head to classes." He looked to the latter two. "If either of you see or hear anything weird going on, or any sign of what XANA might be doing, call our cells if you can."
Yumi nodded. "Will do. We'll wait here until lunch finishes, to avoid suspicion."
Aelita rose as well, her voice back at normal levels. "Alright, we'll see you all later then. Come on Jeremie, let's get to studying." She took him by the hand and led him off; a few heads turned as they passed, but students quickly went back to their food, unconcerned.
Sissi held her hands together, counting down time in her head, her food forgotten. Yumi looked across at her. "Relax, Sissi. It's going to be fine. Whatever's going on, we'll deal with it. We always have. And we've done it without the full group plenty of times." Her voice was confident and reassuring, and Sissi reminded herself again of the strange notion that she was sitting at a table with people who had apparently been fighting in this secret battle for a long time.
"Alright. I believe you."
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