At least inside the international tribunal, there was silence from the constant glare of cameras, reporters and microphones, eager for news, a photo, a word from the two prodigal cadets. Once they had stepped from the car that brought them to the courthouse, the paperazzi had dogged their heels. After all, this was a most newsworthy worthy event-- two cadets enabling the arrest of terrorists, leading eventually to the capture of the terrorist leader himself. Certainly they could not have missed it, not if there were this many photogenic people around.

Like, for example, Captain-- now Colonel-- Treize Khrushenada, a mere 17 years of age, the leader of OZ Squadron 33rd that made the final capture. Daring, dashing, debonair, he favoured the press with his signature smile before entering the hushed silence of the court halls.

But truly, today even Colonel Khrushenada was eclipsed. Lo, from the second car stepped the cadets. The cameras went crazy.

Even at this age, he could pull the attention of everyone to him. The long, much-too-silver hair? The ice blue eyes, unamused? The harsh set of his still childish lips? He was as beautiful as summer, decorated, brilliant. Even his aloofness was allure.

The other cadet was largely ignored, much to the relief of the other cadet. Only a tom girl, with a limp because of an unimportant leg wound. Only someone incident to the whole affair. An unimportant player, given the man and the boy.

Noin slowly limped towards the door. Zechs, noticing the pace of his fellow classmate, slowed, offered her his arm. She merely gritted her teeth, shook her head and walked faster. Inside the men who had killed her family awaited. Her eyes narrowed. She would not fall now, before the world, as the daughter of her mother, the daughter of her father.

Finally she was in the shadow of the hall, and breathed deeply of the air. They walked along, in the dim lighting, through the antechamber. Many heads turned to stare at them, the presence of two children among this room of high-ranking men, generals and admirals and commanders of the Alliance military. They continued on, heedless, toward the main doors of the courtroom. An uniformed officer showed him to their seats among the witness panels.

They had barely taken their seats when a tall, stately general had crossed the floor to stand in front of them. Noin began to rise, as Zech did, as it was proper, but the general smiled and waved at them to sit down. "You're hurt, Cadet. Don't exert yourself."

"General Noventa," Zech said, his voice cool. He did not salute, as proper, but spoke the name as equal. Standing, he was a head shorter than the man, but somehow he seemed taller.

There was surprise and another, stranger look in General Noventa's eyes as he acknowledged the cadet's response. There was respect in his voice when he answered, "Cadet Merquise."

Noin saluted again, eyes wide.

"At ease, Cadet Noin." He started his congratulations. "You both deserve the awards for the courage and innovation displayed on the battlefield. There are many that believe the Specials and Operation Zenith is a failure, but cadets such as yourself prove them entirely wrong."

"I thank you for your kind words, General," Zechs replied coldly. "OZ is honoured to be praised by General Noventa."

Noin looked from the man to the boy. The bulk of what was being said wasn't vocalized.

Finally, General Noventa turned to Noin. "My condolences on the death of your family. I knew your father, Captain Noin, and he always was an honourable soldier and a wonderful friend." He reached out to pat her hand. "Doubtlessly your father would be extremely happy with the progress his daughter is making, such that she is able to avenge her family."

The mention of her family brought the cold lump of rage and tears into her throat again. "Thank you, General," she managed.

Noventa smiled sadly at them both. "Nevertheless, I'm not here just to cause you pain. On the behalf of the council, I'm here to extend an invitation to the both of you to undergo special training under General Catalonia. Obviously both of you are officer material, and much advanced beyond your fellow compatriots. However, you both are very young, and the psychologists do think there is a possibility of--of psych damage if you are introduced the realities of... real war... at such a young age." Noventa stumbled over the words. There was shame in his eyes, unexplicably. He looked away, hard, pretending that the rustle of people taking their seats had temporally diverted his attention. "The council has decided to rest upon your decision. You need not give me your answers now, cadets. But please think about it carefully." With that, he went to his seat.

"'Real war'?" Cadet Merquise's voice, bitter as she had never heard before. "'Damage'?"

There was grief and outrage and something entirely undescribable in his eyes. She stared at him. "Cadet Merquise?" she said, unsure of what had just passed between the man and the boy.

A moment passed as the grief triumphed over the boy's control, and flickered on his face. Then the cold mask he wore slammed down again, cool, flawless, controlled. He turned his attention to the court, face hardened into its usual glittering facade.

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"Ow, ow, ow, ow..." Noin complained to no one in general. Sleeping slumped over the computer terminal had given her a crick in the neck, so when she straightened up, her neck muscles protested. She stared at the clock on the computer screen. Three am. What an auspicious hour, she thought darkly.

Hmm, she had apparently left the monitoring program still on. Well, might as well check on what everybody's been up to in the last couple hours. Room 156, the fifth year's boy dorm has been mostly going to porn sites. Except some correspondence issued to a student to Luxemborg base. Odd. Why would a bunch of boys contact Luxemborg, especially in the middle of downloading porn flicks? Noin yawned. Some really industrious student. Or...?

A couple commands brought up the suspect message. A request to Luxemborg base, that apparently was never answered. What?

She traced the message back to the hub and through to dorm. Apparently it was engaged as an attachment of some sort to some application the boys were downloading. From there, back to a well established porn site and to a maze of virtual connections. . . making it virtually impossible to trace back. Suspious. She brought up one of the messages. It was lightly encrypted, typical of any normal communication-- all it took was several minutes to crack. Inside-- only a formula claiming to an answer to some sort of problem something named "P.C." had requested. And also a file (corrupted apparently) that was an scan or something of some solution. Pretty normal stuff. But why then was it so hard to trace?

Ok. So whoever this is, it's a very subtle attack... but I have more than one trick up my sleeve. Noin took the message and modified it slightly so that it registered her as a sender. And then, she sent it as a request to Luxemborg base, but with a request to see each hub where this message went to. A dangerous move. It might alert the other person to have the requested action repeated twice, but seeing how it worked the first time, maybe I can see where the second reply goes...

To her surprise, it went to Luxemborg base, and then was bounced to North Africa and then to Shanghai, where it disappeared. Minutes later, a message returned to her with a failure notice and the original message. But given the speed of the fibre-optics network nowadays, it really shouldn't take that long... Curious, Noin opened the original message. It was timestamped only a couple seconds ago-- meaning that the message had spent quite a while at the Shanghai base. Where it could have done something...? She brought up the bounced message and examined it. But when she tried to open the image again, a different sort of internal viewer error appeared. Alarmed, she did a diff between the two messages--

They were different.

Bingo.

Very clever though-- the two images were the same size, and apparently bore the same characteristics. She sat back and rubbed her eyes. Now, why is the difference significant? To her, it didn't look encrypted at all, or did it bears signs of any known encryption strategy, unless you counted things like one-time pads and those were proven to be uncrackable...The equation! It must be it!

For the next three hours she tried everything with the equation sent in the mail- as a encryption key, a hash function, as a filter. But nothing worked. The message still remain exactly as it was: a random string of bits. Rubbing her eyes, she tried one more thing: XOR-ing the equation with the image. The output flashed by her terminal-- oh shoot, I've forgotten to specify the end of the string to XOR by, she thought. And then, coherent words began to appear.

"A one-time pad consisting of the original image... clever..." Noin said out loud. "Plus an equation as a trap." She smiled. I should have thought of that sooner. Her brow furrowed. The style... it was familiar?

She redirected the output to a text file and began to read it. "Itinerary of Lt. General O'Neguil..."

Her eyes widened in shock.

Zech's cold blue gaze following the man, eyes narrowing.

She shook her head. It had to be a coincidence, merely a coincidence. But a very small voice said: there are no such things as coincidences. But what did Zechs want with this information? What had Zechs against this man? Noin bit her lip and tried to recall what she knew of her former classmate's background. Cadet Merquise had been pretty reserved most of the time, distanced from everybody. She didn't think she heard much of his background, not even where he came from... good point, she thought. I never heard him mention anything about his nationality, or even where his home was. During the summer vacation, I recalled, he stayed here in the Academy. Just like me, after---She bit that thought off and allowed the wave of sadness to pass.

What do both men have in their past, that brought them together? Zech's records should still be in the database. As an instructor, she should be able to access the information. Noin felt a pang of guilt over abusing her instructor's rights like that, but it appeared to be the only way. She queried the database and in an instant she had the records. Zechs Merquise, permanent address: none. Parents: none. She skimmed over the fields. He didn't seem to have a lot of information in the records, besides grades from various exams and various awards. She continued. Nationality claimed: Sanq Kingdom.

Noin stared at the screen, at the two words. Her words at the ball, echoed as if from a far distance: Lt. General Diego O'Neguil...the commander who launched the attack on the Sanq kingdom.