~*~

"This is your room. At 600 hrs I will expect you to be ready to start your day. Your first class will be battle commanding, but right now we have dinner. Afterward we will have weapons training. Be prepared for anything to happen. There are few rules. Are you ready to eat, or should I come back in ten minutes?"

"I'm ready."

"Okay, the commander's mess hall is to the left and is the second set of double doors. I'll be with you in a moment." Sextant turned and left, leaving her, for the second time, to catch up with him.

~*~

"Sextant, what am I going to be trained as? I though I was going to learn how to drive a mobile suit?"

"You are, but now you're going to learn how to command a strike team and an army." He added as an afterthought.

She frowned. "Why would they teach me that? I'm as new to this as anyone."

"Come on, I'll tell you." She stood up and dumped his food. He had barely touched it, she noticed.

He led her down a hallway, into a bare metallic room. Their foot steps echoed bare as the door slid closed behind them. Storm was afraid to touch anything. It seemed so sterile. The controls in this room were strange and unknown to her. She stared stupidly at them. As if reading her mind, Sextant said "When I first walked into this room I felt the same way. I didn't know then what they had planned for me, us. I was as innocent hen as you are now." Sextant sighed "They say ignorance is bliss, I can't say that's right, but sometimes it's better than knowing the truth. I wish for it back sometimes, and sometimes I hate them for taking it. That is, until I remember that they didn't steal it. I let it go. I let it go." He whispered his last words.

Leera walked up behind him and touched his shoulder, letting her hand slide down to be firmly clasped in his. Showing in that one touch, that she understood and that she didn't care what he was or became, she would always stand by him.

"When I was three, they brought me here it was then that I learned what I was, and would become. At first I was...afraid and fought them, but later on I came to accept and then, eventually, embrace it and become it. It is bloodshed and war. When I did that I lost my innocence. I learned what they taught me, hoping that I could please them. I also learned that I was the result of a bioengineering experiment. It was then that I stopped being the perfect soldier and brilliant combat engineer. I demanded that I be sent back to Earth. I was 12. Now they brought me back, but they've brought others who are like me, Bioengineered."

"Is that what I am?" She choked over the words. She had to push them past the lump in her throat. She dreaded the answer, but she had to know.

"Yes."

She trembled and tears slipped down her cheeks. She remembered hearing people talk about how evil bioengineered people were. They were monsters, evil and corrupt. It hurt to realize that she was a monster. Words of pain raced through her mind. Her les gave out from beneath her. Storm expected to hit the ground, but she didn't Instead she was pulled into the embrace of supporting arms. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into his chest.

"Leera, Leera come on. It's all right. You're not a monster. You're human. I felt the same way when I found out, but...I've come to accept the knowledge of what I am. you have a heart, brain, four limbs, you're as human as the next person is. Besides, there are some advantages to being what we are, we're faster, stronger, and especially fast learners. You have the right to know. Everyone one of us does, but some of us might not be able to handle it. You are from the second generation of the bioengineered. I was from the first. I was the only survivor. Bad genetics. The scientists discovered what they did wrong with my group and made yours. There were more survivors, at least 20. They're doing this so they'll have brilliant commanders in case war breaks out. Please say you understand, Leera."

"You called me Leera." puzzlement showed through her voice. Sextant just raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, I don't mind. It seems that I've almost forgotten what my first name was. I haven't heard it for a very long time. You know, it seems that they don't want us to be close." Leera replied hastily

"That's right."

"What is?"

"The reason we call each other by our last names is to reduce familiarity. The less you feel, the less you hurt or are disappointed , and the less you make stupid mistakes. They don't want you to feel hurt when you lose a comrade. They send you Earthward to live with military friendly families, to get you to understand emotions, later on they teach you not to be affected by them. I thought that was what I was, one of those new mobile suits, no feelings at all, then...I met you. You seemed to awaken something that was kept hidden deep inside me. At first, I didn't like it. I was frightened of it. The more I was around you , the more I felt. I've gotten used to these new things and now I'm happy," He grinned wirily at her, "that I feel."

"Thank you for trusting me with this." But she wasn't sure she meant it. she wasn't sure she'd wanted to know. She looked up into his face. What she saw made her bite her bottom lip to keep from crying again. His face was twisted into one that was barely his. It seemed as if his face was trying to show all the feelings he had kept inside, at the same time. The masquerade of feelings ended with his face going stoic. Shining objects slipped from his eyes, slowly tracing tracks of wet along his cheeks. He was baring his soul to her showing him just as much as her what he was feeling. Leera reached up and touched the tears so that they fell onto her fingers. She used that finger to copy his tear tracks onto her own face. He leaned forward and kissed her. It was a devouring and hungry one. It pulled her into the sweet bliss of a mad torrent of emotions. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself closer to him, wanting, no needing more of him. He pulled away suddenly, slightly startled by the new emotion he felt. He finally turned away from her and walked over to the control board and pushed a few buttons. A steel plate in front of him slid open to show space.

"Leera come closer. What do you see?" First, she looked at him then through the glass.

"I see black, stars...space." She turned to him, "What do you see?"

"It's not what I see, it's what they see."

"Who are they."

"They being leaders of the world and they don't see the perfectness of space they see it as another place to spread their people to. I love outer space. It's silent, I could drift forever in space and not care. I don't begrudge the people wanting to move to a colony to escape the crowdedness of Earth, but I do begrudge the people who think that it's something to conquer and own. You can't own it, it's too large." He sighed and shook his head

"Leera there's going to be a war soon. In the next eight years at least. The WCP is breaking apart. The Chinese say they need the next three colonies, that are being built. They're over populated they say, but the WCP says you can only request one colony after every major continent has a colony. Right now North and South America and Europe have one. Others are being built. Chinese and Russian officials are probably going to band together to try to press WCP into building them a colony, at the threat of war. Europe and the Americas aren't going to budge in their standings. And because of that greed, there is going to be war and bloodshed."

"Sextant, Storm report to your weapons class." The intercom clicked off and there was silence.

"Well, it seems that we're late." Sextant said as he headed for the door, with storm following him, "One more thing," He said detaining her, "Don't tell anyone what I've told you and...never mind." He quickly opened the door and let her go through, his facial expression showing nothing that it had revealed before to her. The mask was back in place. Storm stared at the back of his head, as they walked down the hall. She had so many more questions to ask him, but she knew he wasn't going to say anything else, at least not tonight. He had bared a part of himself that he had never shown anyone. He was trusting her to keep his secrets, and she meant to.

He stopped in front of a door that was marked with a number on the door. "This number means weapons training room. In one of our classes you will earn this number code. For now, I will help you decipher them, but you'll have to memorize them later. you will also learn the codes to open the doors." He frowned slightly, then leaned forward and kissed her. She though she heard him say "I love you", but it might have been her brain trying to convince her that he loved her. The door slid open and they stepped through together.