Yumi thanked Rosa and stepped into the cafeteria’s open space. She quickly scanned the room for her friends when she caught Ulrich’s eye, who in turn motioned for her to join them. She smiled as she approached. “Hey,” she said as she sat down, picking up her fork as she did so. “Hey… where’s Odd?”
Ulrich shrugged. “He ran off right after class back to the room,” he replied. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
Yumi opened her mouth to reply, when a loud voice made her jump. “Surprise!” They all turned to their scrawny friend as he stood at the end of the table, tray in hand, waving several papers in their face. “Guess what I found!”
“Something useless, probably,” Jeremie said, mouth full.
“This is not useless,” Odd stuck his tongue out and sat down beside Yumi. “It’s an application form for a band competition!”
“A band competition?” Ulrich repeated, raising his eyebrow. “What kind of a competition is a band competition? Besides, we don’t even have our own band.”
The little blonde mutt made his ‘you’re stupid’ face at Ulrich and made a screwing motion with his fingers at his temples. “Uh, hello? Ulrich, how bad is your memory? We made a band at the end of the first term!” He jerked his thumb in the direction of Sissi’s table. “Nicholas was our drummer, remember?”
“Oh, right,” Ulrich rolled his eyes and shook his head. Of course he remembered. They hadn’t met after that first formation, and his mind had been elsewhere for the past several months…
“Well, what is this band competition?” Aelita smiled and leaned forward a little, definitely interested.
For once, completely ignoring his food, Odd set down the papers and quickly scanned it. “Well,” he began. “In participating countries, France being one of them, each area holds its own competition with those bands interested. They choose three winners from each participating area, and then they go to nationals. They choose one or two winners from nationals and that leads them to the international competition, which is held in Tokyo!” He grinned. “You guys interested?”
“Tokyo?” Yumi turned completely to Odd’s direction. “You mean Japan, right?” Odd nodded in response, and a small smile appeared on Yumi’s lips. Trying to hide it, she quickly turned back to her food and continued to eat.
“Oh wow, traveling!” Aelita exclaimed, resting on the table. “I’d love to go with you guys. Could I join the band?”
“Well, what would she do?” Ulrich asked, lazily pointing at Odd with his fork. “We’ve already got a vocalist, pianist, drummer, guitarist… What else would we need?”
Odd glanced at Ulrich, at Aelita, then back at Ulrich. “Um, well…” he thought for a second, softly tapping his chin. “I got it. Aelita, you make a great DJ. I wouldn’t mind it if we had someone to add cool effects or add more sounds! Like the effect of having an orchestra in the background, adding more bass, or making it seem like we have more guitars, or…”
“Aelita, don’t do it,” Jeremie protested, folding his arms. “You don’t know what you’re getting into! What if XANA attacks while we’re away? There will be no one here to take care of him!” He frowned as Aelita shrunk back a little and Ulrich and Yumi gave a sigh. Odd leaned forward and began to tap on the table.
“Did you forget something, Einstein?” he said. “XANA escaped from the computer, so now he can attack wherever he wants! And he’s not going to attempt to take over the world without trying to take care of us first. So even if we are in Japan, he’d make a friendly trip over there and greet us like old friends!”
Jeremie sighed as Aelita nodded in agreement, her calm smile gracing her face. “He’s got a point, Jeremie. And plus, we do need a break once in a while, right? Today’s the last day of school. We can go talk to Nicholas once lunch is over and see if he agrees to it, okay? You can come along, too.”
The little genius gave a heavy sigh. “Fine, you guys win. Just, if he attacks, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
Lunch had ended and Odd confronted Sissi’s group. He asked Nicholas if he was interested, and he was, but Sissi was determined to go along, and in turn Herb wanted to go as well. Even though he was slightly frustrated that there were more people to take care of than needed, Odd accepted and met his friends out in the courtyard.
“What kind of song should we write?” Yumi asked.
Sitting himself on the ground, Odd shrugged. “No idea. We’re not allowed to use any pre-existing songs, though.”
“Someone’s going to have to write the lyrics,” Aelita said. “We can’t exactly make up a song without the feel of the lyrics.”
“Oh, then in that case, I’ll do that!” Odd grinned.
“Uh, no.” Ulrich gave a look at the smaller. “With the stuff you come up with, I don’t think we’ll even get past auditions.”
“But there are no auditions.”
“Exactly.”
There was a short silence as Ulrich smirked a smirk of victory as Odd sat dumbfounded, his brain trying to process what he just said. Jeremie, Aelita, and Yumi giggled.
“Well, if the finals are taking place in Japan, why not have me write them?” Yumi offered. “I’m not the best songwriter, but give me a night and I’ll think up something.”
“It’s settled, then,” Ulrich butted in without waiting for Odd’s consent. “Odd, you mail in the form tonight, and tomorrow we’ll meet in the gym at three, is that okay?”
The others agreed to this plan. The boarders headed off to Jeremie’s room as Yumi headed home.
~~~
Odd collapsed on the lone bed, right beneath Jeremie’s picture of Einstein, Ulrich leaned on the nearby desk and Aelita knelt beside Jeremie’s chair. “What are you up to now?” She asked curiously.
“If we’re going to travel, we need to bring the supercomputer with us in a way,” Jeremie began to type. “And since XANA’s free of the supercomputer, there’s no way deactivating towers on Lyoko will help us.”
“So what do you have in mind?” Ulrich raised his eyebrow, slightly afraid of the outcome.
“I’m going to try to combine some of your virtual traits to your human traits so it’d be easier to fight here on Earth,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “I gave it a lot of thought, and I think it wouldn’t be too bad.”
“Woah, woah,” Odd sat himself up. “I sense a crazy experiment, Einstein,” he warned. “You better run about a thousand test runs before I decide to be modified.”
Jeremie paused and swiveled around to face Odd. “I was planning on running a thousand test runs. There’s no way I would risk your lives because of my stupidity.” With that, he turned back to his screen and continued programming.
“So, what exactly do you mean by ‘combining virtual traits with our human traits’?” Aelita asked, completely curious and watching the programming dash across the screen.
“Well, look at it this way: When the program is finished, I’ll ask Ulrich to get into the scanner to modify him. What I’d do is add his super fast speed into his human traits. When the modification is done, he’ll be able to run almost as fast as his avatar. Unfortunately, normal human traits like strain and exhaustion will still exist, because there’s nothing I can do about that.”
There was a short pause before Odd got up and leaned over Jeremie’s shoulder. “What about me?”
“Er, well, logically, you’d be like a cat.”
Ulrich snorted and Aelita smiled. Odd was quiet as he frowned at Jeremie, who wasn’t paying any attention to him. “And next you’ll tell me I’ll grow a tail and ears, right?”
“Hah, I’m not going that far,” Jeremie finished typing up one line and turned to his friend. “…Unless you want me to…” he said slowly.
Frowning, Odd stood up straight. “Yeah, the chances of me letting you do that is about as big of a chance as me passing a math test!”
Aelita giggled and leaned back so she had a better view of Odd. “You know, if you put your mind to it, I’d guess that’d be a pretty big chance!”
Odd huffed and lay back down on the bed, his back facing them. “You know I was joking, Odd,” Jeremie said loudly. There was no response for a short while.
“I’m not talking to you!”
~~~
“Gochisousama deshita,” (I’m finished eating.) Yumi said quietly, standing up and taking her plate to the sink.
"Dezaato wo tabemasen ka?" (Don't you want desert?) She heard her mother call after her.
“Aa, chotto..." she trailed off. "Totemo nemuin da yo…” (No, I’m too tired) she gave a slight nod to her parents as she closed the door behind her. “Oyasumi.” (G’night) Without waiting for a response, she quietly jogged up to her room and sat at her desk. She grabbed a pencil and several sheets of blank paper. She leaned over the papers and breathed in the cool summer night air. What should she write about? It had to be something that would let her visit her home country for a bit, even if only a week. Tapping her pencil on her cheek, she thought. It had to be something that they all could relate to her, or something she needed to get out of her system. She curiously watched as she saw a shooting star leave a faint trail across the black sky and gave a sigh. ‘If only I could become a shooting star…’ she thought to herself, when it suddenly clicked to her. A song that anyone could relate to, but a song that she alone was letting out of her system, a song in which she was indirectly confessing…
Licking her lips, she leaned over her paper and began to write.
“Alone, I saw a shooting star in the night sky…”