LOLOMG CHAPTER 19

Um…yeah. Hi. How are you? Uh… here's Chapter 19. I can't believe I'm almost done with this crazymabober. Again, a big thank you for all the reviews! (gives pie to everyone)

I don't know what else to put up here….tired….zzzz….oh. I guess I should mention that this story, in whatever twisted universe it takes place in, takes place somewhere between Distant Memory and Music Soothes the Savage Beast. That's….kinda important.

Disclaimer: Code Lyoko is not mine. But I have a potato. (holds up potato)

Chapter 19
The Coincidental Alignment of Jeremie's Events

Thirty-one minutes had passed.

Thirty-one minutes, twenty seconds, and ninety-seven milliseconds.

Thirty-one minutes, twenty seconds, and ninety-seven milliseconds that Jeremie was quite sure would remain the same thirty-one minutes, twenty seconds, and ninety-seven milliseconds for all eternity.

He had never been so happy to be back in his room. For most of the time that he had spent in the present, he'd been seated on his bed, covered in a blanket he'd found in the dresser. His friends were there as well; Ulrich was leaning against the door, Yumi was seated against the wall, and Odd was lying on the floor, poking Kiwi, whom he had brought in. Aelita was sitting in the computer chair, looking at him with a sort of unusual curiosity.

They were talking to him. They had been for quite a while.

"Ok, so then, there was this Megatank, right?" Odd balled his hand into a fist, and threw it up into the air. "So the Megatank goes like this-" He swerved his fist around- "And I goes like, oy, bowlin' ball!" He smacked his fist, and it broke apart. "Shazang! How's that?"

Jeremie laughed. He was in that stage of consciousness where one is so tired, they'll laugh at anything. Yumi frowned first at him, then at Odd.

"Odd, you've already told him that story. Six times." She looked back up at Jeremie. "Like I was saying, once the tower was deactivated, we all came back into the interface room, and we were all just wondering where you were when there was this light…and you just showed up. That's…it." She shrugged.

"Yep." Ulrich tilted his head to the side. "Pretty intense battle, though. Whole load of monsters." He slammed one fist into another, but unlike Odd, he did as such with a bit more style.

"…Oh." Jeremie laughed again. "Cool. Very cool."

"Yes." Aelita's voice sounded oddly more magnified compared the others. She paused after she had spoken, briefly. "But, what about you? We've all been waiting for you to tell us what happened to you."

The instant that she had said that, the atmosphere in the room became tense. Yumi and Odd leaned forward in their seats, and Ulrich sat down near them, equally as rapt. This was the moment they had been hoping for. Jeremie felt oddly ill at ease at the sight of them.

He curled the corners of the blanket more tightly around himself, and shuddered. He knew he'd have to spit it all out at some point, but all of it…seven days of confusion, revelation… some revelations he wasn't sure he wanted to spill to everyone in the room, and others he couldn't wait to share. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to organize everything in his head. It wasn't easy. When he opened them again, nothing had changed.

"Well, uh…" He took a deep breath, and began speaking in a tense, hoarse voice. "XANA…well…I guess I've been quite a nuisance to him for a while."

Four heads nodded in succession. He was stalling. They didn't like it.

"He kinda wanted to get rid of me, I guess." He shifted on the bed. "So…he kind of sent me back in time."

"WHAT?" Odd's shout cut across Jeremie's train of thought, derailing it slightly. He opened his mouth, hoping to at least get some gibberish in edgewise, but before he had a chance to speak again, Yumi and Ulrich had absorbed the information. They were about as shocked as Odd was.

"He trapped you in the past? That's amazing! I-I mean awful! Awful and amazing!"

"How far back were you sent? Were you still at Kadic? What did you see?"

Aelita's hand flew over her mouth and her eyes widened, but she said nothing. Jeremie cast her a quick glance, as if inquiring if she would speak. When it appeared that she would not, he continued again.

"Yeah…he must have used the activated the tower to strengthen the RTTP enough to send me, and only me, to a random spot in time. I guess he thought I'd never get out." A small smile played across his face. "It's a good thing that he sent me to a time with all the materials I needed to get home, really."

He looked up at all of them. "He sent me back to 1994. June 6…1994. The day all of Franz Hopper's diary entries are dated." He laughed. "I'm sure XANA didn't mean to do it on purpose, of course, but it's astounding luck. Really astounding luck."

Again, the stunned silence, as the tiny human brains in the room attempted to wrestle sense from his statements.

"June 6, 1994…"

"Sholy hit." Odd was in awe. "That's…that's kind of freakish."

"Yeah, it is," Jeremie agreed. "I-I mean, when I found out what day it was, I was kind of excited, you know? I mean, it was like…like…wow. It's the day that- that-" He tried to wave his arms around to make a point. He didn't appear to be making one.

"Everything happened?" Aelita finally interrupted, with a smile.

Jeremie stopped, mid flail, and turned his head to look at her. "Y-yeah, that everything happened. Good way of putting it, Aelita." He smiled at her. It was one of the few times he'd spoken to her directly since his return.

Her smile did not fade. She looked away from him, to the side, as though she didn't want to look him in the eye. The gesture was frighteningly familiar. "It was the day that my father and I entered the supercomputer, I know that. The day I left my past life." She took a quick glance up at him. "But you already knew that, of course. Come on, tell us what happened to you there. That's really what they all want to hear."

"Of…of course." He dropped his hands, and looked back at the others once more. All three of them looked very curious, almost too much so. And now Aelita was closer among them, paying more attention to him. Him. He shifted again, sitting up straight.

"Well, like Yumi mentioned, I did end up at a past Kadic. Once I found the date off a newspaper, I got curious, so I hacked into the school databases and set myself up as a fake shadow student, so I could explore the area freely. I went through classes, saw the campus...it wasn't as a whole too interesting. It was a school, after all. It was just a little different than it is now. There was an entirely different set of kids, obviously, and many of the teachers weren't the same. Some were, though…" He began counting off on his fingers. "Delmas was still the principal, but he looked a lot younger. Jim was around, of course…Ms. Hertz was actually the secretary, bit of an odd thought…" He stared at his hand, with a look of faint skepticism. He looked up at his friends, as if expecting them to cut in with some sort of remark. They did not.

"But, interesting things did happen. Remember how I just told you that I arrived in the past on June 6, 1994? I was there for seven days, but I never left that date. Six of those seven days do not exist. The reason?" He smirked. "Franz Hopper was reversing time at the end of each day, in order to have more time to work on the supercomputer. That's why all of his diary entries are dated the same day." He looked to the side. "Well, I'm sure you'd already figured that out for yourselves, but it was still really crazy. Each day, I had to reintroduce myself to the same people, follow the same schedule…I could try different outcomes for each day, but that got a little boring after a short while. I can kind of see why Hopper went a little paranoid in the end."

He paused. "He was at the school. Remember how we found out that he was a science teacher there? I had one of his classes."

Ulrich and Yumi still seemed to be absorbing all of this information, as they were silent. Odd was scratching his chin, mumbling the occasional 'hmm' or 'wowza' under his breath. Aelita was leaning dangerously forward on the chair, her eyes wide. She was the first to speak, though her tone was shaky. "Wha…well…what was he like?"

"Oh, he was alright. Good teacher. Creepy, but we already kind of knew that." He smiled. Somehow, the tension had now broken- he knew exactly what to say to everyone. "He was kind of gruff, his mind wasn't always really stable, and he had a bit of an offbeat sense of humor, but underneath it all, he had good intentions. He's a very intelligent and skilled person in more ways than one, and…well, he really did care about you, Aelita." He smiled up at her, blushing ever so slightly.

"I saw you too, you know," he added automatically. "You were a student at Kadic, in the same year as we are now."

"Woah," Yumi interjected, but did not elaborate any further. Odd took it upon himself to do as such.

"Well, whaddya know. Not even supernatural imprisonment can get you away from this dump." He smiled, and did a thumbs-up. Ulrich gave him an unclear look.

"Odd." Aelita glared at her friend. "Now is not the time." She turned back round to face Jeremie, eyes even wider, if that was even possible. Her face twitched. "G-go on."

"Well…" His voice began to crack. "You were kind of different then, you know, because you were raised differently. You were a bit more like your father… quiet, calculating, maybe even a little manipulative. Very mysterious. You didn't open up to people easily. But…you were happy, I guess. You had your school, and your father, and your friends…lots of people that cared about you. You were safe. You had an actual life." His tone had grown somber. Aelita noticed.

"Jeremie, I-" She stopped. Jeremie wasn't even listening. He was lost on his own little train of thought. He stared to the side for a few seconds, and then, slowly, looked up again.

"You know Chris Moralés? Subdigitals drummer?" His smile returned. "He was your best friend."

Aelita clamped a hand over her mouth, and made an odd, strangled noise in her throat. Two feet over, another odd noise broke the silence in the peanut gallery- Odd had just shouted, startling Kiwi again.

"You're-oh, c'mon, Kiwi, settle down before somebody hears ya-" He caught Kiwi and gave him a few quick pats, and then redirected his attention towards Jeremie and Aelita. "You're serious? You're not serious, are you?"

"Of course I'm serious," he replied, still smiling. "He had brown hair and he was about six inches shorter, but it was definitely him."

"That's just insane," Ulrich said, speaking for the first time in several minutes. He stepped away from the wall and seated himself next to Odd. "I mean, not only that he happened to be going to Kadic at the same time as her, but…"

"All of the Subdigitals went to Kadic. Read it in an interview." Yumi had slid into line with Ulrich and Odd, creating a semicircle around Jeremie's place on the bed. "It kind of makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, Jim's his uncle. And yet…that's amazing, Aelita."

"Well, I don't-" Aelita looked round the room. "It's not that I-"

"Dude, think about if you'd stayed!" Odd interrupted. "You could've gone and been all famous together, eh?"

"Yes, yes, Odd, be quiet." Jeremie cast a glare at him, and he quieted instantly. "But, yeah, close friends. Nice and friendly, like friends should be…" He didn't want to go too deep into this topic. "Um…what else was ther-oh!" He smacked himself on the forehead. "Medea! I can't believe I haven't mentioned her yet."

"Meda-whozzywhat?" Ulrich arched an eyebrow.

"Medea. Medea Delmas. Sissi's mother. She taught the English class." He waited for the reaction. As he had predicted, his audience sat dumbfounded for perhaps the thirtieth time that night.

"Holy crap," Odd finally said. "She actually exists!"

"Yep, she exists. I was kind of surprised when I found out who she was. She isn't anything like the woman you'd expect to be married to, well…you know…Jean-Pierre Delmas." He laughed. "She was nearly his exact opposite. Spirited, free-thinking…clever, too. You could call her crazy, but not Franz Hopper crazy…it was a different kind of crazy. It was like she saw life as more of a game than anything. Great person to be around. I wonder why Sissi never inherited any of that greatness. Speaking of Sissi, she was around the campus, too. She was only about two years old, of course, but she was actually kind of…" He struggled to admit it. "Cute. But, yanno, they say that the really cute little kids end up being really ugly people."

This got a laugh out of everyone, even Aelita. Jeremie just smiled. "Yep. One big happy family, they were." He looked to the side. "Was kind of a shock when she went and died."

The laughter died instantly. Yumi squeaked in horror, and all four of them sat immediately at attention again. "Died?"

"Yeah." The fun of the descriptions was gone instantly. "The first six days, she was alright. But, the seventh day…they just found her dead on the floor of her house. I have no idea why. Mr. Delmas was in hysterics…he kept accusing Franz Hopper of murdering her. It was all such a confusing blur…nobody really knew what they were doing. I tried to get away from it all, but then…"

"Then?" The three of them looked absolutely horrified.

A bead of sweat fell down Jeremie's temple. He wasn't sure if he wanted the rest of them to know what had happened next. He sighed. "I-I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the factory, with all of you guys around me." He made a short, awkward pause. "That-that's it."

There was a short silence, interrupted only by a cough from Aelita, and a whimper from Kiwi. Finally, breaking the tension, Ulrich stood up.

"Well, I, uh…I can't really find any other way to say how amazing this all is. I mean, now you pretty much know everything that happened just before Aelita got trapped in Lyoko, don't you?"

"I-I suppose-"

"And this information could probably help us understand the supercomputer a bit more, right?" Odd stretched on the floor, like a cat, and then jumped up. Both he and Ulrich began to inch their way towards the door.

"M-maybe, I don't know-"

"Look, guys, don't bombard him now. He's been through a lot. It's late, and we can all sort this out in the morning." Yumi stood slowly, walked over to him, and gave him a pat on the back. "Right now, Jeremie, you need rest. I don't think I even need to tell you that you've had a long day."

"I-I…yeah, I guess so. I will." He smiled at the floor. "Thank you."

"No problemo, Einstein," Odd said, reassuringly. "Oh- wait! Almost forgot!" He bounded over to Jeremie's desk, and picked up the deluxe bucket of popcorn that had sat on the edge of it ever since, almost three hours earlier, the gang had discovered his empty chair. He walked to the bedside, wearing a manic smile. "I've been waiting to do this all afternoon. Welcome back to civilization, good buddy!"

He overturned the bucket onto his head. "G'night!" He picked up Kiwi, stuffed him into his sack, and then followed Ulrich, and Yumi as they all said their goodbyes and left.

Jeremie yanked the greasy popcorn bucket off his head, attempting to keep as much popcorn in it as possible, and set it on the floor. He was only vaguely aware of the fact that Aelita was still in the room, looking at him from his chair. He brushed some more popcorn out of his hair and off his bed, and then looked up at her. "Um…hi."

"Hi." She had a smile, perhaps amusement from Odd's actions, but it was beginning to fade. Within seconds, she stood. "Uh…bye."

"Bye." Jeremie watched as she walked from the seat without another word. Going…going…gone. A pang of guilt struck him. He needed to talk to her.

He leapt up from the bed, throwing off the blanket. "Uh-wait!"

Aelita stopped just a foot out of the open door. She turned her head back towards him. "Hm?"

"Ah-" He walked to the doorway, facing Aelita. He twisted his hands on his lap, and looked at the ground. "Well…what I said to everyone tonight…it wasn't really the whole truth. Not really lying…ok, maybe a little bit of lying…more stuff happened that was important, and I didn't know how the others would handle it. But, since it kind of concerns you…" His voice trailed off. "Uh, I'm sorry…"

Perhaps risking his life, he looked up at her face. She did not look angry, as he might have expected, but simply confused. She stared down into his eyes for a moment, surveying him harshly. Finally, she smiled.

"Well…I guess that'd be alright. But, before you do that, I have something I should tell you first." She reached over his shoulder, closed the door to his dorm, and then stepped back, still smiling.

"I've just received a new memory from my past. Well…no. It isn't really a new memory…I've had it for a long time, but it's just tonight that it's started to make sense." She turned away from him, and began to wander up the hall. "It's a memory from just before I entered the supercomputer. It would be perfectly sensical…if not for this odd, unfamiliar boy."

Jeremie was confused. "Uh…unfamiliar boy?" A bead of sweat ran down his face. "Uh, well, maybe it's Chris. Like I said, the two of you were good friends-"

"No, it's not Chris. I'm sure of that. It's definitely someone else." She stopped before she could get too far away from him. "He flickers in and out of certain memories, just a few of them, near the end. Even now, he isn't always very clear. I can see his body, I can tell he exists…but I can never remember his face. I've always wondered who he was…why I had this odd feeling…as though he was very important to me. Now, I know." She turned to face him. "He was a silly little time-traveler, who just couldn't stand to let the past be."

Jeremie froze. He had no idea how to respond. He knew what she was talking about, but could hardly bring himself to accept his own stupidity. Of course Aelita had recovered her memories! He didn't see how he could have forgotten. His mouth began to make dumb noises of its own accord. "Guh- gah- no, no I- well- ah." He paused, took a deep breath to steady himself, and began again in a much more confident voice. "Look, Aelita, I didn't realize-"

"Yeah, you probably didn't…whatever you didn't realize," she interrupted. "I guess that the temptation to see the event that changed all of our lives forever…it must have been enormous." She glanced to the side. "You probably wanted to find out all you could."

"Well, yes, but…well, you don't remember all of it. You don't understand how it all happened." He took a step towards her. "I couldn't abandon them…you…well…You're alright now, aren't you? I didn't screw up the past too much, did I?" He felt an angry tone seep into his voice, against his wishes.

"Jeremie, calm down. I'm not trying to start a fight here." She smiled weakly at him. "Right now, that's the last thing I want. I just wanted you to know that I knew that you were lying. I guess I can kind of see why you didn't want the others to know. The way you told the story, it was like you were just sitting and observing, not actually joining the action. It's a bit of a big bombshell to drop on them, even directly after several smaller ones."

"I know. I see." He paused, calming himself. "Do you…do you remember anything else from around that time? From your time at Kadic?"

"Well…not too much." She looked back at him again, which, Jeremie guessed, bode well for the conversation. "It's not as clear as, say, my early childhood, which I remember really well. And then there's this gap in the middle…where it's completely blank. Nothing." She sighed. "But I'm straying from the topic. I remember attending Kadic, and living with my father in the Hermitage…"

"Anything specific? Like, anything I mentioned?"

"Well…" She thought for a moment. "That woman you mentioned, Medea. Did she have long black hair?"

"Uh…yeah."

"Ok, I kind of remember her. I had no idea she was Sissi's mother, though, and I don't remember her dying. I kind of feel sorry for Sissi, though…growing up without a mother…" A sad look crossed her face. "I don't really remember her at all, either. Did I ever meet her?"

"Oh, yeah. The two of you were very close. You loved her to pieces. Ironic, hm?" He laughed. "Speaking of closeness…what about Chris?" His voice became uneasy again.

"He was news. Well, the fact that he was my friend, anyway. I suppose I remember him somewhat…but every time I try to picture him mentally, I come up with white hair and a Subdigitals logo." She laughed. Jeremie chuckled a little.

"Yeah, I figured you would." He began twisting his hands much more fervently. "I…I kind of lied about him, too. He liked you more than a friend. A…a lot more. You know…a lot."

He waited for her reaction. It wasn't as dramatic as he might have expected (or hoped), but there definitely was one. Her left eyelid twitched, and she took a step back. Her hand made a motion as though to fly up to her mouth again, but it didn't. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. He was in love with you. He was actually going to confess his feelings to you that day, but he kind of got interrupted by the final result." He had a feeling as though he had said too much. He couldn't tell if Aelita shared this feeling.

"That…that's…wow." She gave a small, shocked laugh. "That much? He must have been crushed when I left." She smiled at the ground coyly.

"That's pretty likely." Jeremie also smiled, genuinely, for the first time in the whole conversation. "He was definitely the jealous type."

"Hahah…oh, dear." She shook her head. "This is going to be awkward now. I'm going to be his opening act in less than a month. I mean, it must be hard for him to work with someone that looks the spit of his lost childhood love. And it's going to be hard for me, knowing that."

"Well, I dunno, he might have forgotten about you…" He sighed. He never wanted to stay on the topic of Chris for too long. "Did you…remember anything else?"

"Actually, yes." Her smile widened ridiculously. She walked closer to Jeremie, until they were barely a few inches apart. "You're an awful kisser."

If Jeremie was being entirely honest with himself, he didn't care whether Aelita remembered that he was in the past or not. This was all that he had been afraid of. He blushed, hopefully not as much as he thought he was blushing, and took a few steps back. "Uh…wait, no, I can explain…"

"You don't really have-" she began, but it was no use. Jeremie was already on a roll.

"Look, I'm sorry. You don't know- I hardly knew what I was doing down there. If I've done anything wrong-" He choked, and hung his head. "Why am I kidding myself? I've done loads of stuff wrong. Everything I did in the past- in Lyoko- everything I've done since I met you, really." His voice fell to a mumble. "I've been so pathetic, so ignorant…I bet I'm even being pathetic right now…"

"Um, just a little bit." She leaned forward, and gave him a light tap on the forehead. "Come on, stand up. You put too much stress on yourself, and it's showing."

"Mm." He raised his head, but still twisted his hands, as he had throughout the conversation. "Uh, I, uh…"

"Huh? What is it?"

"Well, I was going to tell you what happened in the factory, but you already remembered all that…" He looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know if you remember this, but, I, uh…I was almost going to change the past while I was there. Like…more dramatically than I already did. I was trying to convince you and your father to abandon the supercomputer, so you could be safe from XANA…but there were some time paradoxes that would have come up. You talked me out of it, in fact…" He now looked directly at her. "Aelita, are you really happy here at Kadic with us? Even having no family, living a lie to the entire school, having XANA out to kill you…and all of the foolish mistakes I've made?"

They stood in silence for a long time. Aelita appeared to be thinking over her answer, while Jeremie was just sweating, waiting for her answer. Finally, she seemed to relax a bit- a sort of unconscious sign that she was ready to talk.

"Jeremie, I've been happy ever since the first day I met you. You were, of course, the first human I really remembered seeing, and that really did have a big influence on me. I guess I should have been afraid of you, but for some reason, I was able to trust you…maybe because, in some shut-off part of my mind, I remembered you from your little journey into the past."

Her eyes misted over as she was remembering. "And then you went and did so much for me, doing anything you could to make sure I was safe. I consider myself very lucky to have been found by someone as understanding and dedicated as you, even in a situation that we did and still do understand very little about. Ulrich, Odd, Yumi, and you- you're all very dedicated. I couldn't ask for better friends- not even Chris Moralés." She rolled her eyes. "We've been through a lot, I know…good, bad, downright terrible…but we've survived so far, haven't we? We can definitely win against XANA. In all…I'm happy you didn't change the past. If you had…well…" Now it was her turn to blush. "I never would have met you."

She looked at Jeremie, waiting for his response. Throughout her speech, he had frozen to the spot, absorbing every word she said, and twitching every so often. As she had finished, he was still doing this, except now, his face held a tentative smile.

"You…you really mean all that, Aelita?"

"Sure I do." She laughed. "You may have your flaws, Jeremie, but you're nowhere near as horrible as you're making yourself out to be. You may be a bit stubborn, and thick-willed, and more than a bit self-critical, but that doesn't make you any less of a person in my eyes." Suddenly, her smile faded a bit. "I'm sorry that I got snippy with you earlier. I was…being selfish."

"Huh?" Jeremie did a double take. "No, no, Aelita, you weren't being selfish. You had every reason to be angry. No one likes being ignored." He paused, thinking, for a moment. "Oh, tell you what. Tomorrow's Saturday, isn't it?"

"Uh…yes, yes it is."

"Good, then." He smiled. "Tomorrow afternoon, after class is over, you, me, and the others can go…um…see a movie or something. You know, to make up for lost time. It can even be one of those really bloody ones Odd likes…I don't really mind." He shrugged. "That okay?"

"Um…" Aelita appeared to be taken aback by this announcement, but pleasantly so. "Yeah, that sounds like a good start."

"Big change from sitting in my room all day. And…oh!" A bit tentatively, he walked a few steps closer to her. "The day after Saturday…is Sunday."

"Sunday? What about it?"

"We have the whole day to ourselves then, huh? With 'we', as in you and me?" He pointed to each of them respectively, and winked. "How does that sound?"

"That…" She skipped a beat for a moment, absorbing the information, and then her face broke into a wide smile. "That'd be wonderful! But…you, you really don't have to do that…"

"Um, yeah, I kind of do." Trembling slightly, he slipped his hand onto hers. "You know I do."

"Yeah, you do." She squeezed his hand, gently, and placed her free hand on his shoulder. "But for now, you really should get to sleep. Like Yumi said, you've had a stressful day."

"That's way too true." He allowed himself to blush. "But, at least it's over. Personally, I'm really just happy that I didn't do anything too catastrophic to affect the future, like, worldwide." He scratched his head with his free hand. "I mean, like, what if I'd caused us all to be turned into orange paperclips or something?"

"Uh, yeah, that's great, Jeremie," Aelita said, taking her hand off his shoulder. "I just have one question."

"Anything."

She arched an eyebrow. "What's a paperclip?"

There was silence for about two heartbeats.

"Uh, I'm kidding."

Jeremie didn't react negatively to this- he just smiled a sort of lopsided smile. Before reason could stop him, he leaned over towards her, and gave her a small, quick kiss on the cheek. He pulled away quickly, and just watched her blush for a moment.

"Ah…erm…goodbye." He turned around away from her, and opened his door.

"'Bye. See you tomorrow." She smiled at him one last time, and then walked away from the door. He watched her go for a few moments, and then disappeared into his room.

The room looked almost the same as it had all day, minus the popcorn mess on the floor. There was his bed. There was his bag. And there was his computer. Right there, in front of him. It was before midnight. He could get so much done…

He walked up to the computer, and smiled at it. "Hello, little friend. You've caused me a lot of pain, you know that?"

The computer said nothing.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. Shut up." He stuck his tongue out at the machine. Then, he went to his closet, took out his pajamas, changed into them, climbed into his bed (after brushing a few more popcorn crumbs away), and laid down.

It was another beautiful day at Kadic Academy.

The sun was still shining, as it should, and the birds were singing, with a few odd dog barks mixed in for variety. Jim's bugle rested safely in its case underneath his dorm bed, not to be taken out for quite some time. The grounds were quiet, not yet full of small children wandering aimlessly on their great and deadly mission to reach an education. One of these small children was a blond little boy named Jeremie Belpois.

He was in his room, in his bed, fast asleep. He liked it that way.

THE END…except not. Still have one more chapter- the epilogue- to go, and then…holy crap! It'll be over.

- Carth

(PS- Finally saw Wrong Exposure. Yep, RTTP's officially been torn to shreds. Expected that from the beginning, though. Meh.)