Crazy Roots

Karen

The white dragon met up with the wing of dragon friends, and they flew together to the big cave for their meal.

Then they split up, and White flew alone for a short time. Then she heard roars of panic and frustration, and she flew towards the sound. Vines had come alive and were tying up the strong bronze and the small brown! The kind bronze was trying to break them free, and succeeded with the strong bronze, but then he was tied up himself. While Husky flew off, White started trying to help Little Brown. Then vines tied about her and pinned her to the ground!

White was dragged away from the two dragon boys, and she clung for dear life at the edge of a crack in the ground. After what seemed like an eternity, the vines just…disappeared. She climbed out and flew slowly back to the school, where she was met by the little brown dragon. They had a conversation, where White was looking more and more nervous.

I opened my eyes slowly this time. That was a crazy dream, and it seemed as though this one was going to make sense. Or as much sense as they ever would. How literal would this dream turn out to be? And why would I be confronted by Odd?

"Are you all right, Karen?" I turned. Aelita was there this time.

"Yeah. I'm just a little confused. My dream was very strange." Well, that was something I could tell her. What I couldn't tell her was that I had had increasingly strange dreams since coming to Kadic.

"Well, dreams aren't supposed to make sense anyway. Let's go find Jeremie and the others."

"Sure, why not?"

Jeremie looked cross. I looked at Ulrich with my eyes wide.

"Jim found Jeremie's room a mess." He looked annoyed as well.

Odd didn't seem to think there was any problem at all. But Yumi did, and that was a bit strange.

Maybe they had plans for the day, and this messy-room problem was throwing everything off. Oh, well.

Ulrich

We had to get the supercomputer fixed if we were going to fight against XANA. At least Karen wasn't acting like she was going to be a problem.

Aelita went off to the factory to see if she could fix it, and Odd and I went for a walk.

"Karen is a very pretty girl, isn't she?" Odd was probably trying to find some safe subject on the school grounds.

"Yeah, but I would take my time in flirting with her. Did you notice how she acted when we all first met her? She was jumpy."

Suddenly, we were both tied up in roots and pulled over!

Karen

I was walking around the school, getting extremely bored. Suddenly, I heard a yell from the forest.

All I was thinking about was my dream as I ran in to investigate. When I got there, I couldn't believe my eyes: Odd and Ulrich were bound down by roots, and Jeremie was wielding a shovel for them! I mean, sure I was expecting to see that, with my dream and all, but seeing Jeremie holding a shovel and being aggressive was just…wrong!

He cut through the roots holding Ulrich and yelled, "Get to the factory!"

As Ulrich ran, roots came up with a vengeance and tied down Jeremie as well. I decided to try to free a surprised Odd since I was there. Funny that he was surprised about my trying to help him. Yes, that was how I thought about it; I wasn't scared at all.

At least, I wasn't scared until I felt roots twining around my waist and pulling back! I heard Odd shout my name, which in a way was very gratifying. But for the first time since coming there and meeting new people, I experienced extreme terror.

Jeremie

I lay there, staring as Karen was dragged out of sight. Incredibly, she didn't scream, even though she was plainly terrified.

Odd looked at me and asked, "Now what are we supposed to do?"

I thought for a minute. But then I noticed that the roots were starting to flicker. "I have an idea!"

We got free and ran to the factory. But we couldn't reboot the system or deactivate the tower. Then Aelita said that we should destroy the ice sector.

I didn't want to, but Aelita said that we had no choice. So she entered that fatal code, they devirtualized each other, and I rebooted the system. Simple enough for me.

Odd

I looked off to my right. There was Karen, coming back towards the school with a lot of scrapes on her face and she was even limping a little.

"Are you okay, Karen?" I just had to ask.

She looked at me and smiled nervously. "Oh, it's really nothing."

But I was not about to just let that go. "Oh, come on. You were attacked by crazy roots and you are just going to blow it off as nothing?"

She definitely looked scared as I went on, "And what's more, you were acting like you knew all that was going to happen! Now I want to know why, like right now!"

Karen stared at me in fear for a minute. I could understand that – I was getting kind of loud. But what she did next surprised me.

She covered one of the scrapes on her face with her hand and mumbled something. It sounded like she said, "So this is what he was going to confront me about."

I had to ask. "You knew that I was going to be getting on your back about something?"

That got her to speak to me again. "Yes…no…I knew that you would want to talk, but not about what."

Then I asked the big question that had grown from a small seed of curiosity in my mind: "How?"

Aelita

I was waiting in Jeremie's room for Odd to arrive. We were all there getting ready to talk about our situation with the supercomputer, and Odd was late.

Finally, Odd came in. "Sorry I'm late. I had an unscheduled appointment with the very elusive Fairy of Light. She had to tell me a special secret."

Ulrich looked at Odd in disgust. "Very funny, Odd."

After we talked about what had happened, and Odd sparked our confidence again, Yumi asked, "Odd, did you mean what you said about the light fairy or whatever?"

Odd looked at her with big innocent eyes. "Hmm?"

Suddenly, I figured I knew what was up. "You were talking to Karen, weren't you?"

Odd turned the look at me, but I went on, "What did she tell you?"

Ulrich remarked, "Of all the things I would call Karen, 'fairy of light' is not one of them."

Odd chose to ignore him, and so did the rest of us. Jeremie asked, "Well, Odd? What did she say?"

Odd's answer was a shock to all of us, and we all stayed silent until he finished.

"She told me that she dreams about how her next day will go. She had seen the possessed roots in a dream last night, so she knew it would really happen. However, her dreams have people as dragons, and she can't hear anything except roars and growls, so she is left in the dark about that. She has had these dreams for as long as she can remember, and she doesn't know why she has them."

Suddenly, I remembered something. "When I sent her off to find Yumi, she was acting a little like she was flying! That would be –"

Odd grinned. "All the dragons in her dreams have wings, and she sometimes pretends that she is her dream dragon. She told me what my dragon looked like, and maybe if the rest of you ask her nicely, she'll tell you what yours look like, too."

Ulrich asked, "What did yours look like?"

"It was a svelte brown dragon with an, and I quote, 'funny-colored patch on its head'."

That was when we all laughed at Odd's description of his own dragon and we all went to our own rooms.

I found Karen braiding her hair in my room. "Hey."

Karen looked at me and smiled. "Hey."

It seems like Karen is getting used to me; she didn't seem as jumpy as usual. "Odd told me about your dreams."

"Really?" She didn't sound at all surprised.

"Really. And I was hoping you could tell me two things."

She sat up higher and cocked her head.

"One: what did my dragon look like, and two: could you maybe tell me what your dreams were each morning? I might be able to explain them better." I couldn't very well tell her that I wanted to see if I could spot a XANA attack in her dreams.

Karen grinned and told me, "Sometimes I think I'm the only person who could understand my dreams. But your dragon is pinkish-gold. Otherwise, it doesn't look much different from other dragons in my dreams. And…" she sighed. It was a tired sigh, though. She was probably going to answer me and then go to bed.

"Yes, I'll tell you what my dream is tomorrow. There have been times when I would wish that I could tell someone other than my parents about my dreams."

We both went to bed, and I felt as if I had scored some kind of victory. But I also felt a little worried. Now I had no choice but to tell her about Lyoko. How could I not return the favor of sharing a closely guarded secret?

Author's Note: There is a point back to chapter 2 in this. Did you see that?

Interesting. Will Aelita tell Karen the jealously guarded secret of Lyoko?