Gwen made her way down the hall, running a hand through her hair. Today had seemed normal enough. The children were too well-behaved, but other than that there didn't seem to be anything weird going on.

Well, except for the one boy who tried to hit on her. But that couldn't be chalked up to the strange readings they had been getting from the Torchwood satellite. Could it?

The readings from the satellite didn't make an inch of sense. Random time fluxes around a small area of France, centering around a boarding school. No rift energy detected anywhere. Where could the fluxes be coming from? 

Jack had said there were other forms of time travel, but he hadn't been getting any readings for that. What could it be?!

Gwen was stumped. There wasn't anything even remotely interesting, no kids with weird illnesses/symptoms, nothing! It was just a boarding school.

As Gwen patted her hair down, she thought of the multitude of teachers they'd had to replace. It took a lot of effort on Ianto's part to get them all out of the school at the same time and to make sure they each had jobs they could actually do convincingly.

Not that Jack actually knew how to teach algebra, but it was the 'best they could do'. 

Gwen was fairly sure Ianto was getting some type of personal satisfaction from the fact that Jack had no idea how to do his job. 

But hey, let the man have his fun.

Gwen smiled and made a right at one of the corridors towards the cafeteria. It was her lunch break, as well as her other teammates' because Ianto was just that amazing. She didn't know how he managed to pull off five teacher absences without the other administrators getting suspicious, but he did it. Right now each of those absent teachers was on a vacation of their choice, all cut off from the others and next in line to have their minds wiped of the spectacular vacation as soon as Torchwood was done at Kadic.

As she entered the cafeteria, Gwen mulled over every detail of her day. Nothing to be considered strange at all.

"Gwen!" Owen called to her, waving a pastry. He lifted it to his mouth and ripped a chunk out of it, crumbs spilling down his white doctor's coat. Gwen made for the Torchwood team's table, smiling thankfully at Ianto for already picking up her lunch.

"Hello everyone." Gwen smiled pleasantly and looked at her lunch. Some sort of pastry, fruit, and jam. She dug in, not realizing how hungry she had been until the warm pastry caressed her tongue. 

"We were just discussing our day so far." Jack said, dipping some fruit in his jam. "I've had no problems."

"That's because you don't do anything." Owen half-laughed, more crumbs spilling from his mouth. Tosh hid a giggle and Ianto simply raised an eyebrow and stared at Owen's unused napkin pointedly. Owen glared at him.

"Nothing too unusual on my end. One purple-haired boy tried to hit on me." Jack's eyes immediately refocused and he dropped the pastry back into the jam.

"Purple hair? Blond with purple highlights?" Gwen snapped to attention too. 

"Yeah. What'd he do to catch your eye?" Jack's eyebrows raised and he gave a light chuckle.

"Dragged some poor boy who couldn't walk without limping out of my class to go make out." Owen let his chair drop and practically spit the bit of pastry left in his mouth out.

"The boy who limped, was he blond with glasses?" Jack and Gwen turned to Owen, surprised.

"Yes, yes he was." Owen's eyebrows flew up as well.

"He came in with a brown-haired friend earlier this morning. Tripped on something or other." Tosh raised her hand politely.

"I had those two late to my class. The dark-haired one seemed suspicious, and they kept exchanging glances all class. It was like they knew almost. Or were really, really suspicious of something out of the ordinary?" Gwen, Jack, and Owen all frowned. Ianto cleared his throat as he used Owen's napkin to clean up the crumbs scattered across the table.

"The purple haired one and the dark-haired boy were in my class as well. Odd and Ulrich I believe." Owen rolled his eyes, irritation breaking through his surprise. Leave it to Ianto to remember shit like that.

"Odd baked a lovely set of muffins. But those boys were quite suspicious, watching me closely." Ianto scrunched the napkin into a ball, tossing it into a trashcan behind them. 

"Odd is definitely gay, so that's not surprising." Gwen and Tosh hid a fit of giggles as Jack practically admitted to the love affair. Owen half choked on his own spit which only served to make Tosh and Gwen completely lose control. They burst out laughing and Ianto's cheeks tinged the slightest bit red. Jack didn't say a word.

"Well, keep an eye on those kids, all of you. Odd, Ulrich, and what was the third one?" Tosh recovered from her laughter to answer Jack's order.

"Jeremie Belpois. He's quite bright, actually. Genius I'd say." Jack nodded thoughtfully at Tosh's interjection. He stood up, tossing his tray in the bin as Ianto had the napkin.

"Just keep an eye out. If anyone finds anything, report back immediately." And with that, Mr. Harkness, the substitute Math teacher, walked out of the cafeteria. Soon to follow were Ms. Sato, the substitute Science teacher, Mr. Jones, the substitute Home Ec teacher, and Doctor Harper, the temporary nurse. Mrs. Cooper, the temporary secretary was the last to leave. 

And, as she did, she could have sworn she saw a flash of purple ducking behind a bush.

Chapter 5

"Ok, five new staff members all arrive on the same day. They all sit together at lunch. I think we can safely assume something is going on." Ulrich stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and stared cooly at Jeremie. Yumi leaned against the smooth wall of the quiet factory and Odd sat cross-legged on the floor. Jeremie swiveled in the giant computer chair, his leg secured against the side.

"Yes, but there are no towers active. Anywhere. Xana isn't behind this." Ulrich approached the giant floating ball that served as a map of Lyoko.

"Something is definitely going on. Whether it's Xana or not is a separate issue. We're the Lyoko Warriors and if something bad is happening, we have to stop it." Ulrich turned to look at his friends. They all nodded in terse agreement.

"What do we do?" Odd asked, stretching on the floor. Jeremy spoke up.

"Just keep an eye on those teachers. If anyone finds anything, report back immediately." The other children nodded and Jeremie turned back to the supercomputer. 

"Aelita?" Jeremie tapped a few keys and menus of technical crap no one could understand popped up and fled to the other screens. After a moment there was an answer.

"Jeremie?" Aelita's face popped up and froze on the main screen as the other windows continued their journey to wherever they were being sent. 

"Hello Aelita." Jeremie smiled shyly and the others gathered around the computer monitor. 

"We're having some trouble, Aelita. We need you to see if you can feel anything strange going on in Lyoko Jeremie may have missed." Yumi explained. 

"Over half of our teachers are mysteriously on vacation." Odd added, scratching the back of his head. Aelita nodded.

"Of course I'll check for you. I can't feel anything strange going on right now, but I'll go outside and have a look around." She smiled at them and they thanked her. The window closed.

"We'd better get back before break ends." Ulrich muttered, and they began to head out, Odd helping Jeremie. Yumi and Ulrich exchanged a glance. 

Why the hell was Jeremie blushing so much?