Well, here goes. I can't think of much to say, apart from the obvious apology for lateness, so I guess I won't increase the word count this way :P

It was so easy for him to be hopeful about her newfound freedom for once. A week later hope was replaced by a whole different set of considerations.

The first world that she had managed to get into... The first world she had almost managed to kill someone in... The first world she actually found someone she liked... Someone not him...

It was a world she could not be allowed to go to now. Yet all these worries paled in comparison to what she was going through now. He almost relented.

"You really think so, Jeremie?" she spoke. From somewhere in the datastreams of sector 5, her voice came back to me, tinnily audible through the headset. It sounded occupied, as if she was communing with something else and I was but a mere distraction... I probably was, all things considered. Even her question did not have a context to it; I knew not what she was asking me about.

"Of course I do, Aelita. I'll leave you to it. The way to the forest sector's open, so go back whenever you want." She stayed silent for a long while, and I stayed where I was, hands on the keypad, waiting for her answer. An answer that, if I had learnt anything over the past week, I would be extremely lucky to get.

I mean, she had bags under her eyes. In a virtual world.

"Bye, Jeremie." I took that as my cue to leave, and with a few practiced jabs at some keys, a twirl of my seat, a jump to the ground and a wistful gaze behind me, I was ready to go. I couldn't say that going back to school held any point now, seeing as even there I wouldn't really sleep on the bed.

But then I stumbled on the ladder going down to the sewer and the jolt of adrenaline made me tighten my grip around the handlebars, possibly saving my life. My eyes cleared of their fatigue in one burst, reminded of how important it was to be at your best at all times. Not that I honestly believed that, but a fall, even a prevented one, makes you re-evaluate your priorities.

Maybe I would sleep today, I decided. A nice, long, 5 hour sleep. Uninterrupted 5 hours, laying down on a fluffy mattress, eyeglasses off for once. It sounded delicious... It sounded like unnecessary luxury. Both of time and materialistic comfort.

I contemplated how to best spend the next 3 hours until midnight before I tried to sleep. I thought on it, as I made my way out of the sewer, snuck back into the dormitory under the rather large nose of Jim, dodged past Yumi walking around in front of the archway leading into said dorm...

Yumi was away from home at 9:00 PM.

That alone jerked me up into greater awareness than a fall from the ladder would have. To think that her straight-from-puritan-britain-era strict parents weren't after her was hard to comprehend. Unless she'd snuck out.

Wouldn't be surprised about that.

I turned back, anyways, and paused for a moment before alerting her to my presence.

She sat on what little porch the gateway had to offer, playing with her hands. She would fold them, unfold them, intertwine her fingers, then shake them back out. An intricately crafted habit of boredom, so I knew she must've been waiting for quite a while. I walked over to where she sat and took a seat next to her.

"Jeremie." A slight shift in her curtain of hair told me she'd looked at me, but drooped her head again, maybe too tired to care about eye-contact.

She'd been oddly withdrawn for the past few days... Well, they'd all been withdrawn from me, even though they wouldn't be inclined to admit it. I couldn't just up and confront them about it, though. I could imagine how that would go...

'Oh no, Jeremie, we would never even think of it, we're just too busy resting and... stuff. But don't worry! We'll be back tomorrow.'

'Oh sorry Jeremie, we couldn't come yesterday, there was this bundle of homework we had to do... Yeah...'

Hah. I wasn't just booksmart, Goddamnit. I could tell disgust when I saw it. All that my only friends in the whole wide world were seeing me as nowadays was a jailor; of Aelita, specifically, who had been going through something akin to withdrawal symptoms.

But I couldn't let her go back, not again, not when the first time was such a failure of control. Aelita wouldn't have been able to live with herself if she had managed to kill Naruto, and now she couldn't live with herself not seeing him.

The intensity of her desire was incomprehensible... She wasn't even as smitten with this kid as Sissi was with Ulrich, for a matter of comparison. They had behaved only a little more intimately than two very good friends everytime I'd observed them, and still...

I focused on Yumi's weakened face. She was resting her chest on her knees, rubbing her temples. The closest description of her posture I could give was that she was hugging herself. Strange vulnerability in one so strongwilled.

Then again, they weren't doing all that great either. I guess they just didn't want to hang around a living ball of sadness and sorrow such as myself anymore than they had to... With a tinge of regret, I felt as if I shouldn't have thought so badly of them. They were all drawn into a fight no kid should be drawn into.

"Something wrong, huh?" I asked. She shook her head, sitting up slightly.

"I'm fine. Just stayed late for some pencak-silat practise."

"Just a friendly visit, hmm?" I chuckled at the absurdity. This was the first time Yumi had 'come by', and I knew that she wouldn't do so just for kicks. She'd drop a bombshell pretty soon... I didn't think she'd last long under pressure.

"Yeah."

Crickets chirped rather heavily in the background. The air was humid and heavy, and I noticed that I was breathing faster than usual; France sure had awesome summers. Considering that we'd had about 4 returns to the past in the last two months alone, each taking us a week back, we'd just spent 3 months in some pretty sweltering weather. The only one of us happy with it was Odd, and that only because he was used to the heat.

I dug some leftover bubblegum (there courtesy of Odd) out from my pockets and offered some to my silent companion, and chewed on some myself. Then we just continued to sit there in silence, staring at a street lamp on the other side of the road.

"This has to stop Jeremie." Yumi had finally surfaced from wherever her mind was wandering.

I pretended to not know what she was talking about.

She knew I knew though. But she stated it anyways.

"Aelita. You need to let her go back."

Oh of course. And suddenly Yumi could judge this mess of a situation better than I could, hmm? My left fist clenched where it was clutching the cuff of my blue turtleneck.

"I can't just- Gaah. Yumi, I still haven't been able to figure out why she went berserk in the first place. Risking her return would be... Well, I don't want people to die." I resolutely turned back to the streetlight, not wanting to argue this further. I was surprised about her opinion though. It wasn't like she would've been willing to consider the risk either. Her putting the happiness of a friend above other's lives was just... Not Yumi.

She sighed though, looking every bit as exasperated as she probably felt.

"She almost killed Naruto herself," she forcefully stated, looking straight into my eyes. My lower lip seemed to become extremely chewable all of a sudden.

"Don't you see what this is doing to her? For all she knows, she killed Naruto and we haven't been able to go back and see what happened after the return to the past. He just may have died," Yumi almost hissed.

We all knew that death was irreversible; even the returns to the past couldn't change the fact that a person was dead. It was something I still couldn't explain at all, and I was extremely wary to sink to religious explanations so I just steered clear of that problem.

But I could sympathize with Aelita perhaps even more than Yumi could.

I knew exactly what Aelita was meditating for nowadays; finding a way to open the portal tower again, without me.

So far she hadn't succeeded. But she was very close to doing so. And knowing what she was going through... Stopping her from reaching it by resetting the ciphers on the tower each night took a lot out of my moral fibre than I liked to give. But it was necessary.

"He didn't. I launched the program in time, I know it." I needlessly reassured her, knowing it wasn't the point of the conversation, but too tired to care.

I got up, dusted my pants and said goodbye to the silent black-haired hunched-over girl that was sitting on the porch to the boys' dorm, eager to get to my bed without falling midstep.

"-a year of trying to figure out exactly what this device truly is and I'm still no closer to truly understanding it. I mean, I figured that all it does is build a connection into a world that is only slightly dissimilar from our own, and off it goes and makes a world as different as... this one."

I stopped, slightly at a loss for material to fill my video diary with. Not a huge surprise, since barely anything had happened that day, but still. I had to say something, be it speculation.

I kept rambling on.

"The first world we went to, it was exactly the same. Just the fact that France had an empire beneath it was new... quite significant, but we were still in existence. Us five, living our lives, Kadic academy..."

It was quite funny, I recalled. Even in the midst of XANA-induced anarchy, when Odd met Odd and Yumi met Yumi... Haha.

Aelita wasn't there though. Aelita seemed to be just as unique to our little instance of reality as the Supercomputer itself.

"-with Jim still being Jim, and most cultural landmarks of France present. But the super computer just wasn't there. The factory was actually still in order, and XANA had targeted the city's power grid from a location quite far from it. I can't help but think that we've been missing something crucial all this time regarding what exactly XANA collects or visits in these worlds, and what his purpose is, apart from the obvious..."

I felt a strong urge to just close up the recording equipment and call Aelita, but I couldn't bring myself to do that either. Call it nerves, call it frustration, I just knew nothing good would come of it. No matter how much I wanted it to. I hastily bit into a bar of super-sweetened chocolate; for the stress, you know. Couldn't let myself spiral into depression now. The world would collapse without me there to save it.

"My first argument about our involvement in this entire mess was with Odd, surprisingly. I proposed that we let this all lie where it was, reasoning that the people in those other dimensions did not truly exist until the tunnel was made; honestly, any fool versed in Multiversal mechanics would know that, but Odd said it was tantamount to murder. I found that very hard to agree with, naturally."

I took another bite of the chocolate bar. I looked outside the window for a moment, looking at the nearly-setted sun, and yawned. And then resumed my monologuing.

"That all changed when I found Aelita, however. Strange that she shouldn't be the first thing to greet me when the supercomputer was first turned on, but we had to find her ourselves. Buried deep into the heart of Lyoko, in the central chamber of Carthage, she was just... Sitting there. Waving her legs. Smiling."

A few seconds later I noticed that I too was smiling. I wiped the grin off my face and thought about whether or not I should continue. The bed looked awfully inviting.

"Anyways, after we found her I couldn't just shut the computer down. We had to Extract Aelita first, or else it would indeed have become tantamount to murder. I foresaw us all becoming dangerously attached to her, it would only be natural. But the things I started to feel for her..."

Diaries are a strange thing. I've always been a little afraid of storing all my thoughts and secrets in a format that other people can view at their leisure, but then again, What use would the life of Jeremie Belpois be if no one ever came to know about the things he had done? It's a sentiment I'm sure my friends would object to, what with me telling them to keep Lyoko a secret but- That's a matter for later.

"But attaching myself so strongly to a person quite literally at my mercy is ethically wrong. I mean, reversing roles, what would I feel if the one person who could rescue me is also expecting something in return? For fear of not being rescued, I would comply regardless of what I actually felt. And so the certainty of sincerety goes out of the window in this particular relationship. But sometimes, I can't help but think that despite all this, maybe she does feel something in return. Gratitude, at the very least. Admiration at most. But Naruto... Why him, seriously?"

Hmm. How petulant of me to be jealous. I needed to go to sleep, but there was so much to take into account before making decisions that it was hard to decide anything at all. To fight or not to fight? To sleep or not to sleep? To think or not to think? To let Aelita go back to Naruto's world or not? Was I even the one who deserved to make all these decisions?

My mind instantly ran in a loop of thought that it is probably sick of repeating to itself, consoling and disgusting at the same time.

Yes, I am the best person for the job. Because I'm the only one who can ensure that we don't all die, or that Aelita makes it out of Lyoko alive. Because I'm the only one who can comprehend multiversal Quantum Dynamics. Because I'm the only one who can code in trinary logic. Because I'm the only one who has the least amount of social pretences to maintain, and thus the one with the most time on his hands.

The only one, I am. How deliciously arrogant of me to presume so. But so true, all the same.

"I will continue this later. But for now, I do need to get some sleep. I must look into a program that would accomplish all that sleep does in a moment; honestly, this bodily function takes a little too much time to complete."

I shut the recording programs and equipment and lay back on the bed. I closed my eyes. The darkness at the back of my lids stared back at me. And then it was not just darkness. Flashes of the entire day swam past my eyes. Yumi, looking as if she expected better of me. Aelita, looking as if she had lost all purpose to live. Odd, screwing around. Always pleasant to think of Odd, strangely. Ulrich did not appear.

Random bites of sound dipped their way into my conscious; Yumi telling me that Aelita killed Naruto, Mrs. Hertz's last science lecture where she was wrong at least four times...

I really hate my mind. I really do. It's the most chaotic thing I have ever had the misfortune of possessing. If only I could... If only... No. Too much thinking. I needed to sleep.

I did not sleep for another hour.

When I woke up the next day, I felt as if I was reborn. It was as if someone had taken my weedy nerd-edition limbs and switched them with an athlete's. Like Someone had taken my metabolism and switched it with Odd's. Wow. It felt good to sleep.

I moved around my room, rubbing my eyes, grabbing some clothes from where they were strewn under my bed, and sat on my swivel chair, finally wearing my glasses.

I felt as if I could jump ten feet high, eat a dozen plates of food. I felt like I could call Aelita with a face she'd be happy to see.

I did so. I wore a shiny new grin, polished the way only rest could polish it. But it died when I was met with silence.

Was she ignoring me? I checked on her current location in the supercomputer from my laptop. I searched again. I wiped my glasses with my sleeve, then wore them again, not wanting to believe what I was seeing.

Aelita wasn't there.

I sat and stared at the laptop for a moment while I gathered my wits about me. Having gathered them, I burst to my feet, toppling the chair and rushing out the door. It was back to the factory again, because I was more than 90% sure that Aelita had done it.

She'd opened the way, and she was already in the alternate reality.

In the midst of my rush, I couldn't help thinking ruefully that at least Yumi had gotten her wish.

I dunno. Nothin' 'bout nothin'. Read and have fun, I guess.