Sorry for the extremely long delay. Well, a lot of drama, but I'll fix that soon enough. Enjoy this chapter, and I hope that school isn't treating anyone badly. It sure is for me. Yeah! The third season is on! It's pretty interesting, but I'm torn between continuing along the second season or combine it with the third. Oh well.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Code Lyoko.
Claimer: Must I repeat it?
-Continual-
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Limping rapidly along Odd's side, Olivia felt somewhat relieved to be able to get out of her room. The rush of pain flooded her legs, and by what she had experienced, it was very dangerous for her knees to be walking. Her favorite white pants were caked with dry, crusting blood from her knees down, and by the look of it, small spots of bright, crimson liquid was adding on to the old layer.
Her breath came out quick and cracked, and the weights of her legs dragging her down. Odd held her arm to keep her up, a cocky smile trying to keep the moment as content as he could make it. She grinned back at him, but the throbbing kept her from answering.
Olivia could hear the soft drumming of footsteps at the end of the hall, coming up the stairs. She backed up behind Odd, not prepared to see who it could be.
The rhythm continued, resounding louder than the speed of Olivia's breathing. A shadowy scar formed at the ceiling, signaling that the party of footsteps was coming closer. Olivia and Odd halted abruptly, watching the scar grow and darken. But the near tip of the scar broke away from the rest of the shadow, running much faster than its companions. A black clad figure broke from the corner, and Olivia prepared herself for the thrashing of arms and demanding questions. But when the identity of the girl was in range, Olivia sighed.
"Hey Yumi," Olivia called over. Her Japanese friend turned to her, her black hair slapping against her widened eyes. She sprinted down the corridor towards the pair, her black boots pushing out long gasps of air with the scent of alien leather. Another pattern of running shoes matched the shadow on the ceiling, and just like Yumi, three more figures rounded the corner.
"What took you so long?" Olivia giggled nervously. After one more attempt to stay a foot, she collapsed to the ground. Her chest hugged against her ribs, then retracting instantly. A rippling wave of spasms lined her spine, and a hoarse, grotesque sound escaped a pair of worn-out lungs. Yumi skidded to a stop, crouching next to her injured friend.
"Odd, what happened?" she demanded. Odd too knelt down, trying to at least get Olivia to sit up.
Odd sighed. "Let's just say that a big rat got into Olivia's room."
When the older boy, Ulrich, had gotten close enough to hear, he ignored the group and slid into Olivia's room instead. A tiny scuffle was heard inside, until the tall brunette appeared with Brian apprehended by his crimson colored jacket. His face was sneering at the cluster, along with some bruises that Odd so gratefully gave above his right eye and another on his forehead across his hairline.
"I guess you were right," Ulrich started, motioning for Jeremie to come and grab his battering arm that tried to wriggle from his jacket. "And it looks like this rat took a pretty big bite from her." He finished bitterly, meaning Olivia's blood-soaked ensemble.
"Olivia!" Aelita cried out, following Jeremie from the stairs. "Are you all right?" Olivia whipped her head to her, about to ignite a nasty glare.
"Does it look like I'm okay?" she spat. Aelita jumped, looking a little hurt from Olivia's rebuke. Olivia's eyes closed, realizing her mistake instantly.
Olivia squirmed from her spot on the floor. "I, uh…sorry Aelita…" She turned from her green gaze, hoping to not let the guilt sink in. The sound of Aelita's hummed breath soothed her. The pink-haired girl reached out and touched her shoulder solemnly.
"Don't worry about it." Brian spitting on the floor in front of her jogged her memory. Aelita turned to him, her once soft eyes rotary into an icy stake. Brian matched it perfectly, his pale, emotionless eyes driving into each teenager like a sword through wet tissue paper. Surprisingly, Aelita looked deathly calmer than any of them under his menacing glare.
She looked back to Ulrich and Jeremie, who seemed to be having a pretty tough time in keeping Brian still. "We should bring him to the principal."
Odd widened his eyes. "Uh, why don't we just call the police?" Everyone could tell he was feigning sarcasm, but the hostile gleam almost gave it away. Each one shot questioning looks, but Jeremie, however, wrinkled his eyebrow, amused.
"You haven't changed too much," he said, referring to Odd's sudden burst of seriousness since Olivia had arrived at the school. All around him, his friends were nodding brusquely in a silent agreement. They had missed their comical friend, and now they had him back.
He opened his mouth in a wide-toothed grin. "Let's go with Aelita's bit. I think alerting the authorities might be a little too drastic…even for me!" Ulrich took a commanding shove at Brian's shoulder to get him moving lethargically down the hall, while Jeremie stayed behind.
"Come one," Yumi barked. She grazed her hand over Olivia's blood crusted pants. "We have to get her to the nurse, fast." Everyone took turns walking Olivia down the hall, turning away from dozens of confused looks by their peers. The attention upset Olivia, very much. Trying to hide her face, tears streamed silently. The salty tang made her cough, but it wasn't near as annoying as the pain in her knees when they had approached the nurse's office.
"Oh no!" The nurse cried out. "Not again." She extended her hand reassuringly, gesturing with her other hand that her friends could let go. Cautiously, they obeyed, but followed Olivia and the nurse into the room, wrinkling their noses at the acrid scent of toothpaste and disinfectant. Olivia, being so used to it, still couldn't help but mutter and "Ugh!" of recognizable disgust.
Dorothy guided her to a leather covered bed in the middle of the room. She smoothed it for comfort. "Olivia, I have no choice. Either you move back in with your parents, or I'll have to hang over you like a storm cloud. You have been in more accidents this week than any other student in history!"
"But she got hurt at school. How would making her go home change anything?" Yumi objected, a hint of depreciatory. Dorothy stared at the Japanese teenager for a brief moment before straightening her white jacket. Again she focused her attention to Olivia.
"I have to call your parents. They need to figure out what's going on." She began dialing before Olivia could protest. 'If they learn about Brian, they'll make me go back to New York!' she screamed to herself, but the words never escaped her mouth. Odd grabbed her outstretched hand, rubbing it with his thumb, smiling.
Dorothy grinned suddenly. "Ah, hello Mrs. Allen, this is the school nurse. I have your daughter with me right now, and I…" She had been cut off by her mother's crying voice, full of sadness and fear that even Olivia could hear through the half-room distance.
"Calm yourself, Mrs. Allen! What do you mean the principal already called you?" Dorothy asked. Her eyes were serious and concerned. As she reverted her gaze between Olivia and the ground, Olivia was fearful of what might be heard on the other line. The nurse walked slowly to the window that overlooked the steel entrance of the school.
Yumi nudged Aelita's arm while her back was turned. "I'm going to go look for Ulrich, okay?" Everyone nodded in approval and watched her jogging away to the door. When it closed, everyone mechanically looked back at Dorothy.
She didn't seem to be listening to Mrs. Allen's explanation of the queer events going on with her daughter. Her eyes were distant, listening to the faintest sound she could hear. Slowly, she brought down the phone, until it was hugging against her neck and the far cuff of her nurses jacket. The sound of sirens was coming closer, along with a pair of lights. They filled Dorothy's pale face into a circled mixture of blue and red, blinking in turn with each other against the window.
Her jacket inflated with air as she turned swiftly on her heel. "Your mother is outside, with the police!"
"What!" Olivia jumped from the bed, trying to run to the door, but she never made it. She fell to the ground, grabbing her wounds in pain and frustration that no one had proceeded to cover it up protectively. The spasms broke out, almost on line, and she prayed that they would stop.
Dorothy sneered at her dumbstruck friends. "Don't just stand there," she snapped, "Help her up!" Jolting out of confusion, Odd gently grabbed one arm, while Aelita and Jeremie gingerly hoisted her up.
"I want to see my mom," Olivia admitted through tears. Nodding, the quartet moved out of the school doors that were ahead of the nurse's office. It was slow moving, but it was worth it, considering the commotion outside awaiting them. Everyone moved around like dominoes: each energetic child knocked into another, passing on information for it to strike against the next play piece and keep the river of gossip thriving.
In the open steel archway was a blonde haired boy being put into a silenced police car. The lights continued to rotate, blinking like two colorful ghosts, welcoming Brian into their car. A little ways ahead was the familiar postures of Ulrich and Yumi, looking up at a chunky policeman with an overhanging mustache that covered his entire mouth. From a distance, no one was sure if he was talking or not.
But one person made Olivia's eyes and heart brighten. Next to the policeman was healthy skinny woman, strikingly pretty for someone around her mid or late thirties. Her hair was a light brown, wavy and face-framed, with two pairs of bright greens eyes gazing thankfully at Olivia's two friends who were explaining something to the policeman.
"Mom!" Olivia called out, but it was muffled by the slamming of a minivan parked next to the police car. She moved her cerulean eyes to the familiar vehicle, wild-eyed. A man came jumping from the driver's seat. He was tall and broad-shouldered with a navy work shirt on and a mop of sandy-blonde hair that was covered with a few strands of silver. Seeing the recognizable blue eyes, she squealed with joy. It was her dad! And her sisters!
"We're going to go look for Olivia, 'kay Dad?" One of the twin girls, one with piercing jade green eyes, said to the man. He nodded in worried consent, running to his wife's side and tossing glances at the policeman and the two kids on front of them. Dad looked like he was going through is mid-life crisis, but the subject matter was his daughter, not the silver hairs.
The green-eyed twin motioned for her blue-eyed look-alike to follow her, scouting the academy grounds like a hoard of hawks. They stopped the river of whispers, questioning its flow and its reasons for it. Olivia was surprised that they hadn't brought a whole military unit with them. "Kayla, Kathryn, over here!" she called out again, breaking away from her friends.
The green-eyed twin, hearing her name called first, twist around on her running sneaker heel. By her bi-colored uniform, she must have been pulled out of an after-school track meeting that she and Olivia had talked about earlier.
"Kathryn, there she is!" The two fifteen year old girls ran across the grass like a pair of blonde haired gazelles being chased by a mad lion…except one was out running the other by a long-shot distance. Wincing, Olivia remembered when she used to run like that, whether it was in joy or sadness, the exhilaration was what she loved the most. Kayla engulfed her little sister in a hug, twisting and turning like Olivia was about to die in her arms.
Kathryn jogged, out of breath, up to her sisters, grasping her chest in fatigue. Her more aqua based eyes were burning themselves into Olivia. "We heard…" she stopped suddenly, trying to catch the last gasp of air she could manage to take in, "…heard that Brian showed his face."
Olivia couldn't help but take in the depth of her family's inheritance of outstanding eyes. Even her little grandparents, as old and wrinkled as dried apricots, still had something to live up to: their eyes. For a brief second, Olivia was caught in that thought. What was it that made her eyes so aloof? So…uninviting? Was it the texture, or the color? Was it just the way they turned and saw things that were frightening? Out of everyone in the Allen family, Olivia was the only one with eyes that were almost distorted, or even, scary.
Kathryn shook her shoulder roughly. "Snap out of it, Olivia! Geez, did that devil get to your brain?" Olivia saw that her sister was trying to be as serious as possible, but she could hear some muffled hold-backs of giggling.
"Sorry," Olivia shrunk back into the encirclement of her friends. "I really am…" A choking sensation clung to her throat as she tried to restrain the tears that were slowly drizzling from her red eyes. Both of her sisters' eyes widened, pulling Olivia into a hug of depression.
Kayla looked up briefly to catch the eyes of a boy closest to Olivia. "Hey, whatever your name is, watch her while me and Kathryn go get our parents," she ordered. Odd immediately rushed to Olivia's side, keeping one arm over her hunched shoulders and whispering something to her soothingly.
The twins turned and walked quickly to the couple dismissing Olivia's friends and thanking the pudgy police officer for his help. Merely adjusting his hat in acknowledgment, the policeman shut the door to Brian's seat and positioned himself in the front, turning off the sirens as the black and white door clicked. A rumble moaned from the engine, and in a few slow moments, Brian was staring out of his window, anger almost about to melt the glass. But the car no longer mattered. Brian was gone, and that's what everyone thought about.
A quartet of similar people brushed past Ulrich and Yumi, causing the two to bump into each other. The brunette woman held Olivia in a tight embrace, eyes squinting and lips quivering. "Oh my god…I can't believe this happened! How did he get here?" she muttered. Olivia nodded. "I'm so glad you're okay…" Lillian trailed off, not bearing to let go of her daughter.
Kayla angrily ceased a rock, chucking it towards the steel archway. "Stupid New Yorkers!" Everyone seemed a little shocked by Kayla's reaction, even Olivia's friends; she herself was born and grew up her whole life in Manhattan, the Big Apple of all New York State.
"Don't you get it? If Brian got expelled, why would they allow him to transfer here to France, to this same school with a girl with a restraining order against him? It's unfair!" Kayla snarled furiously. She kicked and stabbed with her running sneaker heel on the grass, mumbling under her breath.
Kathryn reproachfully objected, in English this time. "The restraining order was made in the United States, and we no longer live there. Now that we live in France, the protection from that crazy idiot means absolutely nothing." Kayla stuck her nose into her face before looking at her dad, begging for back-up.
But Jake did nothing but shake his head sadly. "She's right," he assisted Kathryn's opinion, continuing in his native language. "Any document in the United States used for individual protection deals with United States citizens alone. They don't want to keep track of every person that left, especially New York." Olivia sighed, scratching her head confusingly. She was as vulnerable as the beetle Kayla had just squashed in an attempt to infuriate herself even more.
Aelita reached over and tapped her shoulder. "What are they saying?" Obviously, some of her other friends didn't look too clear on what all the bickering was about too.
"Just about the United States," she began, glancing at her fighting sisters. "Anything I had that kept Brian away from me, doesn't apply here, I guess. To be honest, I'm not following that well either."
Jake waved his hands between the girls, pushing them back and putting his fingers to his temples, muttering something about college. "Cease fire, now! If I have to talk to you two clowns again about fighting with each other, you're grounded!" Kayla and Kathryn glared at each other before dividing themselves among their parents.
Jake looked at Olivia with solemn eyes. He reassuringly rubbed her shoulder. "We'll talk about this later." Olivia bobbed her head up and down, feeling herself growing tired.
"Dad?" Olivia looked down at the ground, looking at her blood-crusted pants, noticing every detail and curve it made. "Can I go home?"
Horrible ending, I know, no need to say otherwise. Anyway, what do my readers want to see? Should she go home? Until next time!
-O.D.R
P.S. Purpletail, my story, SunClan, was accidentally deleted and is now re-posted as The Light. And, I hate doing this, but anyone who has ever seen the X-Men movies (geez, I feel nerdy) I've put up a Fanfic about it. Reviews greatly needed.