Over the next two months Warren fell into a good friendship with the rest of the group. XANA had attacked seven times and had been driven back each and every time by the combined efforts of the group. Warren learned a lot of stuff from the efforts of everyone, improving his math skills with Jeremie and Aelita, improving his swordsmanship with Urich on Lyoko, learning who everyone was with Yumi, and getting new jokes from Odd. Life was going real well, except for the handful of verbal fights with Sissy’s group.
The training was especially fun, at Warren’s suggestion Jeremie made “Shadow” copies of the monsters that XANA normally put against them, as practice targets. It took a while but eventually they were able to go onto Lyoko and Jeremie would give them situations to solve. Some times he would time it and others he would set it up different each and every time. Warren and the others enjoyed this because this was fun and helped them out when they got onto Lyoko. Sometimes Jeremie put them into situations that required a group effort and if you lost a specific person you failed. He even once had a Person verses Person trial to see what would happen if people were put ageist each other, as often happened when XANA managed to make a good copy of people…in mock fights. Warren got especially close to Yumi, but not close enough to be FRIEND friends, Warren knew that Urich was the person she wanted. Yumi always had the time to talk with him when he just wanted to vent at someone…or just wanted to talk. Yumi, like Warren, tended to show her tough side more often around others than her softer side. Warren understood that it was sometimes hard to do so and they would get together in the park sometimes just to discus what was going on in their lives… sometimes Yumi would tell him stuff that she wouldn’t tell anyone else, even the others in the group; Warren would listen and give her suggestions on what to do.
Warren was in his room, a vast array of sheet music in front of him, and his CD player bringing the music of Pachelbel’s Kanon into the room. He was enjoying his weekend day. It was a little to hot out to really enjoy the day but with the window open as he had it his room was wonderful. Someone knocked on the door and Warren looked up. “It’s open.” He said, the door opened and there was Aelita. “Hey, how you doing?”
“I’m doing ok.” She said. “My history teacher is getting to be a pain.”
“School takes its toll on people…”Warren said, and then looked back to the sheet music. Aelita came over to look at it with him.
“I still can’t understand how you can listen to this music and still understand what you are reading here.” She said, picking up the first page.
“It takes practice…and the ability to multitask.” Warren said.
“I can understand that…’Where go the boats’ huh?”
“Yeah it is for choir…I’ve done this song before, and we were also doing the song ‘My Heart Will go on’ from the titanic movie. The joke was that we should have sung this before we did that one…”Warren smiled and said, “Where go the boats? straight to the bottom that is where.” Aelita smiled.
“Jeremie and I wanted to know if you wanted to come and see the mall for a bit, just to scan.” She said
“I wouldn’t have thought that you guys were really into going shopping.” Warren said.
“We’re not, Jeremie just wants to go and get some parts for that computer that he is building.”
Warren shrugged. “Why not, I could see if they have any good books out or if they have some reasonable music for sale.” He went around the room gathering his wallet and a small list of books that had interested him. Aelita walked out of the dorm with Warren heading to the front, where Jeremie was waiting for them.
“Good you came…I wanted to talk to you about some of the math stuff we were talking about yesterday.” Jeremie said.
Warren groaned, “Can you give it a rest Jeremie? It is the weekend and I had been looking forward to another day where I could just relax and NOT think about school.” He said, Jeremie laughed.
“Yeah I think that it can wait for a bit…lets go.” Jeremie said and then started walking toward the mall. Along the way they debated about what book was more realistic, ‘Rules of the Road’ or ‘Hope Was Here’. When they finally arrived a the mall they split up, Warren going to look for new books and music, the other two for the computer parts. Warren browsed the isles, looking at some of the RP books, a few of the manga books, and several chapter books. In the end he settled for two chapter books and a RP book, which took up a good amount of his money, but he would enjoy them. After getting the books he went to the meeting place that they had set up, and waited for the others to get there. He had just seated himself with one of the books when they came up…carrying the bags of parts.
”What happened to you guys? Get lost?” Warren teased.
“Yeah we did, lost in deciding which type of hardware to get.” Aelita said, Warren laughed. “So what did you get?”
“The three-point-five version of the Dungeon Master’s manual, a Circle of Magic book, a copy of the Quillen Games, and a copy of House of the Scorpion.” Warren said, walking with them toward the door.
“Didn’t you already have a copy of the Dungeon Master’s?” Jeremie asked
“I have version three, and this is the latest one here.” Warren said. “It has more information in it about stuff than the last one did.”
“Oh, ok.” Jeremie said as they got outside…the mall was minorly crowded, as usual; it was the weekend after all. They had to maneuver around people a good amount of the time…and then ran smack into Sissy and her group. Though people glared at each other, they didn’t start a fight here, they didn’t want to be kicked out of the mall. Warren and the other two moved past quickly and started back to the dorms. The trio split up when they got to the stairs and Warren went to his room to organize his new books, while Jeremie and Aelita went to her room to work on the computer. Warren got to his room and settled down to read some of the updates that they had put into the Dungeon Master’s Manuel…when he heard something, like electricity crackling…and made a connection…
“Oh sh!t…” was all that he got to say before a shadow covered his body, and his mind
