Six

Gah, I've tried writing this chapter three times, and it keeps deleting itself. Let's try again…

The gang headed out of the forest, toward town. After a lazy afternoon of touring Amazone, trying out some of the less dangerous gadgets the Nightshades had acquired, and just hanging out, the group had decided to eat out.

They were heading for a predestined pickup spot, where Odd had gotten a ride.

Jeremie's eyebrows went waaaay up, disapprovingly, at the stretch limo Odd had ordered.

"Aw, come on, Einstein! It's not every day we get to ride one of these things!"

Jeremie saw the pleading looks on the others eyes, and sighed. "Alright, fine fine. But so you guys know, we're trying to keep a low profile. Try not to draw attention to yourselves."

As they filed in, Aelita whispered to Jeremie, "You should have said something before we left."

He sighed again. "That wouldn't have stopped Odd. You know how he is on Lyoko, should give you an idea how he usually is."

Aelita smiled, rolling her eyes. "Yes, alright, I can see how that'd work out."

Soon the group had pulled into a restaurant, one of Bella's choosing.

"I'm the one who lives here the most, I know the best places!" She said, as the limo pulled into the fancy restaurant's parking lot. "Besides," she muttered to Yumi, "Panthy already got to choose, and you do not wanna let Icy be in charge of food." She rolled her eyes.

Yumi smirked. "Did Odd usually eat Jeremie's food?"

Bella frowned. "Not usually. Panthy usually just got as much as he wanted."

Yumi laughed. "No wonder he's always hungry. He's not used to rations."

Bella frowned, a look of concern on her face. "Panthy? Rations…" she bit down a smile. "Has he ever gone feral on the person handing out lunches?"

"Rosa? Noooo… Why?"

Bella laughed, rolling her eyes. "He's crazy about food, you probably know. But once I stole the food and we got into a full-fledged fight over it. Weapons, fists, the whole she-bang." The group entered the restaurant, and Bella lowered her voice as the group headed to their table. "It was pretty intense. 'Course, we were only eight, but that's what I think of whenever I think about depriving Panthy of his food."

"No one deprives me of my chow," Odd growled from the other side of the table.

Aelita frowned. "When do you eat? If you don't right before missions, or before training, and you train every day…"

Odd shook his head, mouth already full of bread that they had handed out. "Well, no, you've almost got it. But we do eat before training. Well, Jeremie doesn't, but that's something else entirely. Now sleep? That's not something we do a lot of. We have the most bizarre sleep schedule-"

"One that we're going to be sticking to, again," Jeremie cut in, smiling.

Odd shrugged. "Eh well! I never really fell off it, you know!" He turned to the others. "See, the thing is, we don't really sleep at night."

Bella nodded. "A good night's sleep can set you bad a week. Sleeping really screws up mission mode."

Jeremie shrugged. "So we don't. Well, not really. Usually we do about two cycles at off times. A single sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes, so doing two of those takes about 3 hours, and that's really the longest you wanna sleep at a time. Otherwise, you get off track. This way keeps you always alert. And if you do a two cycles in the morning, and two at night, or thereabouts, you'll end up with an accurate amount of sleep."

Ulrich frowned. "Is that why Odd only sleeps a few hours at night, some during the day at classes, that kind of thing?"

Jeremie raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you stayed on top of things?"

Odd smirked. "You're not the only one who stayed on top of things, ya know."

Jeremie nodded, approvingly.

Bella rolled her eyes. "You two wouldn't have had the trouble of staying on top of things if you'd never left." Yumi noted the sound of hurt in Bella's voice, and realized it must've been hard when she learned her two best friends were leaving her to go to school.

Jeremie looked down, shrugging. "Our parents were getting suspicious."

"But you could have kept going! Especially at a boarding school! How hard would it have been to tell the school you were leaving and tell your parents you were staying? How hard would it have bee, Icy, Panthy?"

Odd frowned. "You're being unfair, Bella. You know why we made our decisions. I thought Icy explained it to you."

"Oh, he did. He did. And now I know where your priorities lie. I get it. Those six years meant nothing in the end. Because you were willing to drop everything because you needed to get out."

Jeremie frowned. "I didn't know you felt this way. I thought you were okay with us leaving."

"I-"

Bella's words were cut short by the manager coming to see what was wrong.

The three regained their composer with lightning speed, claiming it was just an argument, and yes they were ready to order, if they'd please send a waiter over.

The subject wasn't broached for the rest of the night, and eventually the group set to chattering. Yumi worried that the argument might negatively impact their battle. It seemed realistic to assume that the group probably had fights before which didn't hurt their fighting, but she was still worried.

After they got back home, Jeremie, Bella, and Odd were gonna hit the sac for a few hours, just to keep themselves refreshed. Then would come more planning and research.

Jeremie and Bella would leave at 3:00 PM, to scout out their next target's base, while Odd ran control on their mission, assessing and sorting the information they dug up on their Chinese hating friend.

That night, the group turned in at the same time.

.

Yumi woke up at 2:30 AM, in a cold sweat. She had just had a dream, a nightmare, involving her friends. She couldn't remember it, but she knew it had something to do with this assassin thing.

She tiptoed out of her room, unable to sleep, and knocked on Ulrich's door.

"Erg," he groaned, opening the door. "Yumi, what is it?"

"I-I," she trailed off, looking down. "I don't know. I just-I mean…"

He smiled, sleepily. "Come it," he said, gesturing inward.

Yumi followed him in, sitting next to him on the bed. "I'm sorry, I… had a dream…" she paused before blurting, "I'm just really not used to this. I understand, I get what they're doing, but I'm just freaked out. I can quell it, but I just as I feel I'm getting used to Lyoko, some new obstacle comes up, and just as I'm getting used to that, something else… and then this! It's just mind boggling. I feel the time that I take to get used to this is getting longer. Like before long, any time something new comes up, I'll just be 'I can't deal with this!'"

Ulrich smiled. "I'm in the same boat, Yumi. This whole thing… it's like, ack. How did this happen?"

Yumi sighed, resting her head on his shoulder.

He put his arm around her. "I'm glad it's not just me."

She smiled, putting a hand over his. "Life never does slow down. My parents are always bugging me about getting my homework and chores done. They always threaten that when I move out to college, I'll never keep up." She heaved a sigh, with a tired laugh. "If they knew what I was going through, they'd realize that, seriously, college is gonna be a cakewalk. At least you don't need to get up at 2:30 in the morning and trudge through three feet of snow, to deactivate a tower."

He grinned, tightening his arm around her shoulders. "Or learn that your roommate's an assassin, who's been hiding bombs in his closet for two years."

Yumi laughed quietly, 'til she realized he was serious. "Sometimes I try to picture my life if I had run the other direction from that electricity ball, that first day." She shook her head, frowning. "It's so hard."

"Yeah," he whispered.

Yumi yawned, standing up. "Well, I should head to bed. Bella promised to show me the watchtower before her and Jeremie head out." She turned, smiling at him, only illuminated by the lights filtering under the door.

"Thanks for talking," she said, smiling. "I'll see you in the morning."

Ulrich nodded. "Good night, Yumi." He didn't say it, but he was glad for her talking to him too. It helped to know that he wasn't the only person who had trouble getting used to things.

Eh, kinda short. Still, please, I'm begging you, tell me what you think in a review! Not much happened here, I know. Still, please review!