I'm only three years late, no biggie.

For the very obvious start of: "What could have been different when I wrote this?" as I said in the beginning, I wrote this story twice. The other variation of the story was Danielle being a boy instead. His name in that story was Fabian. Much of it was the same, but there are a few reasons I went with Danielle over Fabian.

1. Fabian was Jeremie's roommate, and they didn't have the chemistry Danielle and Aelita did. It makes perfect sense to ask Aelita for advice, but who realistically would ask Jeremie for dating advice.

2. Fabian is far more aloof than Danielle. What made Danielle an absolute joy to write was her self aware naivety. She knew she was clueless, unlike Fabian who was more robotic, until…

3. Fabian likes Milly, but has no idea on how to approach her. Milly says she just wants to be friends when he finally works up the courage, and he completely ignores Tamiya who becomes his best friend. The person he goes to for advice is Odd, and that goes as well as you would expect, because as Yumi tells him later, "Odd isn't good with girls. If he was, he'd have one girlfriend instead of thirty exes."

4. One of the endings was Fabian getting hurt by Milly and returning to Lyoko like Elliot did. Aelita talks him down, as she's better than anyone what it feels like to be alone. Realizes he just needs to accept it, and painfully moves on from the heartache.

5. Another ending was Fabian being revealed to be bad guy, XANA naming himself Fabian as a hint to his delayed betrayal, as Fabious was notable for his tactics of delaying his enemy in a war of attrition.

After I went to Danielle I still changed a few things from the original outline.

Alternate Events

1. Elliot wasn't originally created by Danielle on purpose. Originally Danielle's left over information went rogue, the entire gang assuming it was her plan all along. Danielle helps them fight and she gains their trust. Elliot was created as a side effect of her doubling her data, and combining it to form a new body to prevent her code from coming back.

2. Danielle was supposed to have a moment like Elliot where she's returns to the computer in a moment of duress. I found this unnecessary because of how good her support group with Aelita and Ulrich was.

3. Ulrich and Aelita was not in the original outline. The more these two spoke with each other, and interacted, it was just so organic, I felt I couldn't not do it.

4. Danielle wasn't supposed to forgive Hiroki, because Hiroki never apologized. I've never done anything good with Hiroki, and I wanted to show a maturity that Danielle brings out in him. Also it allows Danielle to have another first. The first time she forgave someone.

5. Danielle originally began to like Jeremie, because he was the first person who ever challenged her back when she was still XANA. I scrapped this because it was, well kind of weird, and it displayed an element of XANA that was still very much there. That is something I wanted to show Danielle wasn't anymore.

6. The original ending was Danielle running away, leaving behind a note thanking the group for giving her a chance.

I actually have one more XANA becomes a human story. Completely new premise, and I think this will surprise people.

Thanks for being patient. If patience is a virtue, you're all saints.