Odd, Jeremy, Ulrich and William were all gathered at their usual dining spot in the cafeteria, Odd whining insistently.

"Come on, you never eat your pudding." Odd protested, William pealing open the silver foil lid.

"Well, I'm going to this time." William commented, grabbing a spoon off of his tray. He dipped it into the dark-colored pudding, taking a moderately sized piece out of the smooth, uniform blob. As he raised the plastic utensil to his mouth, Odd cringed, knowing his chances at free dessert were over.

"Just eat it, can't you see you're torturing Odd." Jeremy said, causing everyone to laugh except Odd, a glum frown plastered on his face.

Aelita walked up, tray in hand, and noticed the amusement of her friends.

"What's so funny?" She asked, taking a seat next to Odd, siting directly across from Jeremy.

"Their just laughing at the fact that I have to go take a test in Ms. Hertz class after only having one pudding cup. I'm gonna fail due to pudding deficiency." Odd complained.

"Odd, I doubt you've ever had a deficiency of any kind of food." Ulrich commented, Jeremy standing up next to him.

Jeremy yawned and picked up his tray, it's indentions bare. "Well, I think I'm gonna head to the factory and help Franz with a few small things we've been working on. If we can fill in a couple segments of code, we should have a good alpha version of a total X.A.N.A. destruction program."

"That's great Jeremy!" Aelita exclaimed. "Would you like me to go with you to help?"

"No," Jeremy replied, "I think you should go to class and take Ms. Hertz test. Besides, she would get suspicious if both of us were missing."

Aelita was slightly disappointed by his response. Early on, Jeremy had trusted her with complex tasks, asked for her help often, of not every time he worked on something important like this. Now, she has hardly even seen a fragment of what he has completed, left totally in the dark. She knows he still trusts her, but he has seemed more distant with his work, and that has bothered her over the last few days.

"Okay, I guess you're right." She said, looking down at her food.

Jeremy walked away, placed his tray in the collection area and left the cafeteria, someone walking in just as he exited.

Odd perked up suddenly, standing up abruptly as a girl ran over towards him with a beaming smile expressed on her face.

"Naomi, did you get them?" Odd asked, tension building inside his mind as he awaited an answer.

"Yes! I have the Subdigitals tickets right here!" She screamed at a moderate volume, revealing two tickets from behind her back.

"Wow, this is great!" Odd said, all thoughts of pudding far from his mind.

*RING* *RING* *RING*

"Well, gotta get to class." Ulrich said, picking up his tray. William and Aelita followed suit while Odd got up to inspect the tickets Naomi was holding.

"I can't wait for the concert!" Odd said, finally realizing he should head to class when he noticed his friends exiting the cafeteria. "I'll come by your room tonight to get you."

And with that, Odd was off. He ran through the doors to catch up with his friends who were already halfway towards their destination.

"So, are you and Naomi N'guyen dating?" William asked.

"Yes, it's actually a funny story of how I convinced her to go out with me..." Odd said, trailing off. "Well, to make a long story short, her uncle manages the Subdigitals finances or something, so she was able to get two free tickets for us to go."

"Well, if only I had taken Sissi up on her offer, we could have a double date." Ulrich said sarcastically.

As they reached the doors to the Science Building, they parted ways with William whose class was in a nearby location.

William, who didn't care as much as he probably should about his attendance, decided to enjoy his walk to class. As he walked, he noticed Yumi running across the courtyard, her hair slightly frazzled and out of place. As he got closer to her, she dropped one of her books, causing her to stop.

Her hands were full, and bending down to pick up the thick conglomerate of text was no easy task. She heard footsteps, and looked over to see William next to her, bending over to grab her book.

"Where have to been?" He asked, adding the dropped book to her stack.

She huffed, her arms tired from carrying and her legs tired from standing. "I had a lot of studying to do last night and my homework also piled up. To make things worse, Hiroki was up most of the night playing his stupid games, making so much noise I wanted to just strangle him."

"Well, sounds like you had a rough night." William said, grabbing half of the stack from her. "We should probably get to math before the bell rings," William looked down at his phone, "which is in about two minutes."

That's all it took for a high-strung Yumi to freak out, causing her to run for it.

William was unprepared for her sudden departure, ditching his earlier laziness to catch up to her.

"Hey Yumi, wait up!" He yelled as they both ran off to math.

—

"So, in short, I think X.A.N.A. is planning something big." Franz said, sitting at the helm of the Supercomputer, Jeremy at his side. "He has been draining and re-distributing power from the Replikas for over three hours, something that I won't take lightly."

Jeremy looked at the readings on the screen, astonished by the sheer extremes he was witnessing.

"I hate to think of what X.A.N.A. is planning to do with all this extra power."

Jeremy looked around the room for a moment, then back at the monitor. "But knowing X.A.N.A., I'm sure it won't be too long before he shows us exactly what he has planned."

—

Wow, this took long. I am sorry for the delay, recent family troubles and illness have kept me from writing, but I made an effort tonight to deliver a good chapter, and I hope I did that. Tell me what you think with a review!

Btw, we broke 10,000 views! Great job everyone, and it hope you all continue the ride with me as we come near to the end of Season 5