"It sure is getting cold" said Athrun as he sat at the foot of his bed, glancing out to the heavy rain outside while fiddling with various armaments from the black bag entrusted by Waltfeld. It consisted of 6 handguns, 4 semi-auto rifles, 2 heavy-assault rifles, 2 RPG launchers, 2 air-to-air shoulder missile launchers, several construction parts, flashbangs, many ammo clips and several rockets. Both boys loaded 2 handguns each, cocked and holstered them on the back of their waists. They each then put on the dark green/black coats bearing the school's emblem on the right chest.

"Nothing obvious" Athrun said as he glanced at the back of Kira's waist.

"Yours look fine too" said the other.

After putting off the coats, Kira ejected the magazines from the guns' handles, held them in his hands for a moment before tossing all four towards Athrun. Based on the lighter weight of the guns and of the magazine clips, the former are constructed free from metal attributes while the bullets loaded are DARTH's tranquilizer-gel blanks, which upon contact, broke apart and the gel in it vaporizes on the target's skin, rapidly entering and disabling their nervous systems.

Athrun went on to check the rest of the armament, a job which he enjoys most. Kira, on the other hand, went on to tidy the tangling cables of his three main laptops up, tucking them under the beds and on the edges of the floor. He then set the three and the antenna on the study table which is leaning against the west wall and beside his bed.

Athrun looked around as Kira finished. For the first time since his friend invaded the room, he finally managed to get a clear glimpse of the room's layout. It was a large enough 120 square feet room to accommodate a bathroom and shower, a closet, 2 single beds, a medium-sized study table, a bedside cabinet, and several square feet of walking space, excluding several more on the balcony. The bathroom is located on the right side right after the north entrance door with the closet directly opposite it. Athrun's bed is next the bathroom wall, followed by a cabinet, and then Kira's bed, with the study table to its side; all of them facing the east.

His way cleared, Athrun proceeded to set up a sniper rifle toward the south window. By the time he finished and managed to get a view across, Kira tossed him the sports wrist-watch he had programmed as a multi-functional device including a sensor for monitoring Athha's movements and voice. As for himself, he has a pair of large-lens glasses for tracking the other. "The watch and glasses are linked up to the system" he said as he switched the left laptop screen to audio mode of the room, and then the right one to video, and the last one to both.

"Cagalli, don't do that. You're going to catch a cold" said Clyne right on the moment both boys tested the devices' audio, which matches the laptop's. Upon testing the video reception, they abruptly turned it off due to a rather inappropriate scene. "…anyway, as long as Athha kept her watch on and Cylne, her hairpin, they would constantly be under watch" informed Kira to break the sudden silence.

Three days ago, at the day their targets first arrived in the complex, Athrun and he purposely bumped into them and planted the bugs on each of their most worn items. At that time, too, Athrun's predetermined outlook of Athha shattered into pieces. He expected that the princess of ORB would be gentle and nice, but he was almost kneed in between the legs by her. Kira, however, suffered a worst fate. By even daring to touch Clyne, he was bombarded by death glares and scorns from her adoring fans which kept tailing her a distance away. What a fine first step.

Though both of them knew that planting the monitoring devices in their room and the targets themselves would violate their privacy, it is imperative for the success of the mission. Furthermore, there's no reason to regret their actions as they had been doing this for countless times. "I sure hope we don't look like perverted peeping toms this way" said Athrun as he looks through the sniper scope towards the curtained glass doors of the target's room.

Kira shook his head in disbelief.

Beginning Complications

The whole Institution complex, being a school and a home altogether, provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining hall at the central sector. Since the school's breakfast is the most enjoyed meal of the day, the hall would be packed but more than enough to accommodate all students from grade school up to college.

Travels in between sectors are provided with a light-rail system. As an alternative, students are allowed to have bikes. However, only the best few could drive the school's small coupe electric cars, which is part of the school's new privilege in an attempt to ease travel between sectors. Only 400 out of 5000 middle school through college students, who scored the best scores in a safe driving test, which was conducted two days back, were granted a vehicle each; Athrun and Kira came in the last 2 places out of 400. Although both of them could easily occupy the first two places, they decided that by doing so would attract too much attention to themselves, and that isn't favorable.

"Each lesson period lasts 50 minutes with 5 minutes breaks in between to allow time to switch classes. Excluding the 10 minutes high school homeroom at the start of each day at 0700, sophomores have the first 3 periods together; English Literature, Algebra & Geometry, and World History. The rest of 7 lessons are mixed with other high school students. The day should end at 1700 the latest" briefed Kira as he read through the screen of another of his notebooks; it's a smaller, more compact version this time.

"Are you going to carry that around?" asked the driver at his side.

"It's easier and more practical to have a remote source like this. Signal reception between the three laptops and our devices will be greatly enhanced with this as the medium" replied the computer geek, as what Athrun calls him.

Kira brushed it off, brought up a map with 2 tiny yellow and pink dots each, and then a camera feed of the homeroom class where the targets were.

"As usual. She is surrounded" said Athrun, glancing at the screen. "You like her?" asked Kira, noticing that his friend had been acting strangely ever since he met her and whenever she's in view. "Wh-whatever made you think so? You said it yourself, 'don't get involved'. I stare at her because she's pretty. That's all" answered the driver in an unusually rapid pace.

The boys tidied their uniform, which consisted of a white long-sleeve collared shirt, dark green tie, black long pants, and coat, as they walked along the locker-filled corridor towards homeroom. "They are decent here, at least" Kira stated upon noticing the uniform of some girls. Unlike the current world trend of skimpy, short-skirted, indecent attire, the school's female uniform consists of less revealing dark green long-skirt and bluish white long-sleeve blouse.

Most of the students were already in the seminar room when the two entered. They stopped their chatter and stared at the two. It was not until both had taken their seats at the top end of the room that they resumed whatever they were doing. "About 1200 of them here" said Athrun, to which Kira agreed. A few moments later, the class fell silent again when a tall, short-haired, sloppily dressed blond man, followed by a red-haired girl, who caught Kira's attention, walked into the room.

After she sat down, the man started, "Well, it's the start of another curriculum, kids. I presumed you had a great summer. Believe we have a number of new additions to our high school this year. My name is Mu La Flaga, Dean of Students for this Institution's high school" he stopped to look at the computer screen to the side of the podium he's standing, "It's my custom that students under me get to know each other. So, where's Kira Yamato?" Kira stood up in response to the call, and all heads turned towards his direction. Athrun followed after, and another boy and 3 girls. "lastly, Flay Allster" said Flaga. Kira's and Athrun's heads snapped in the direction of the red-haired girl, who looked back at Kira in return.

"Well, that's that…I don't feel like doing anything on the first day, do you?" asked Flaga, which invited many approvals from the students, "but too bad this is school nevertheless, and you come here to study" The students groaned in return.

"The students seemed to like this joker of a teacher a lot" whispered Athrun, before Flaga resumed, "I might as well dismiss you early to your next class" he yawned, "I need to catch up on my sleep"

Athrun and Kira blinked in disbelief at Flaga. How could this school hire such a staff? Then, again, the students seemed to respect him and none dared to rebel. Maybe he's that type that likes to joke around but can turn extremely serious and strict at the right time.

As the rest of the high school exited the room, the red-haired girl approached the two, who pretended not to notice her.

"Kira, don't…" warned Athrun.

"Kira? Are you the same Kira?" asked Flay, catching Kira's right arm.

"…hey…" started Kira, stopping Athrun dead in his tracks.

He turned his head to see Kira almost say her name, but, fortunately, a spectacled, orange-brown haired boy cut in between them. "Come on, Flay. Let's go"

"Kira…" she said beneath her breath as the boy, whom both boys recognized Sai, a high school junior, led her away.

Athrun approached his friend. "Are you nuts? You almost blew your cover" he said, gritting his teeth in agitation.

"Sorry, Athrun. I, I wasn't thinking" Athrun let out a breath, threw his right arm on Kira's shoulder and let him out of the seminar room. "I wasn't expecting that either"

Kira suddenly stumbled on a round object and almost fell flat on his face. He turned around to find a pink ball laying on the floor. Upon touching it, the ball came to life, saying 'nice to meet you', 'Lacus', 'dammit' and 'Haro' all over again.

"Must be hers" said Kira, picking the ball up, before teasing Athrun again, "want to return this, Athrun?"

The other replied in an unusually rapid pace again, "wh, why me? You do it. You're responsible for her" Kira sniggered at him before planting another of the invisible tactical bug on the ball.

"Hey sophies! We meet again. I'm your World History instructor this year" said Flaga waltzing into the seminar room of 350 sophomores. "I wanna see your world history knowledge, so I'm gonna give you some easy warm-up questions before we get into the real thing, alright? First: what caused World War 1?"

"Assasination of Archduke Ferdinand" whispered Kira under his breath with his right elbow resting on the table and his chin on the fist, while his left hand is aimlessly punching the keys of the school's table laptop in front of him. Athrun knows that the behavior meant that Kira's bored with whatever he's doing. There was silence for a few seconds before a girl, whose voice both boys recognized as Athha's, yelled out the same answer as Kira.

"Name 2 opposing leaders of Cold War"

"Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev" whispered Kira again in an instant. Athrun grinned, nudged his friend, and said, "Show off smart-alex"

This time, rather than shouting out the answer, a hand shot up, and another girl, Clyne, answered similarly. Athrun suddenly became tense at the voice, which invited Kira to nudge and tease him back.

"Which 2 countries' established doctrines of human rights are similar?"

"American Declaration of Independence and French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens" whispered Athrun and Kira at the same time quickly, which made the latter scoff at the former.

"The gentlemen at the back" called Flaga, "you two seemed, preoccupied. Do you know the answer?" Some of the girls started giggling. Athrun and Kira sighed before answering the question.

"Wrong" said Flaga, making both boys' eyes wide and their chins drop. "Just kidding, you're right. Man, you should have seen your faces, haha" teased the strange teacher.

Athrun and Kira slumped back down on their seats while the rest of the class laughed at them.

The sunset's beautiful scarlet ray bathed the complex and its surroundings, a soothing light signaling the end of the day. As the natural lighting fades and was replaced by the moon, only 2 souls remained outside, accompanied by the dribbling sound of a ball.

"The day went well so far" said Athrun as he attempted to drive the ball past his comrade, who stuck his hand out and tipped the ball out of bounds.

"Yeah….so far there's no sign of trouble, except one" responded Kira, who rejected an attempted three-pointer.

"Creuset?" asked Athrun as he ran to retrieve the ball.

"Hmm" agreed the other.

"Athrun" said Kira, switching off his glasses' camera monitoring of the girls standing on the balcony and watching them play.

"Yeah?" asked the other, scoring a basket over his friend. "Tell me truthfully, do you like Cylne?"

The question made Athrun airballed another shot. "I don't know…maybe…but what I do know is that I cannot let emotions get in the way"

"Don't become like me…I thought I have gotten over Flay, but the incident earlier today…It scares me" said Kira, allowing Athrun to lay the ball up the basket. Both fell silent from then on as they concentrated on the game. Neither did they know that right at the moment Kira switched of the camera monitoring, that the girls talked about them.

Lacus and Cagalli sat down on their balcony chairs to watch the one-on-one basketball match at the court to the north-west.

"Those two, they seemed strange, don't they?" asked the blond.

"Really? Mr. Yamato seemed nice" replied the pink-haired, to which Cagalli responded in a frown and Lacus' pink ball started cursing.

"Haro, quiet. Don't say such things. Come here" Lacus said. Haro leaped from Lacus' bed to her hands.

"Be careful, Lacus. You're a famous celebrity. Guys just act nice in front of you to get close to you" warned Cagalli, looking at the ball which Kira returned her earlier during the day.

"…maybe…but I think I like him. What about you, Cagalli? You seemed to act strange since the day that you bumped into Mr. Zala. I also heard your classes are exactly the same as his, right? How was it?"

Cagalli started blushing and tried to defend herself but ended up stuttering. Lacus grinned at her innocence. When they focused their attention back to the basketball court, it was already empty, prompting both girls to settle in for the day.

A/N: Phew! I finally managed to state the first conflict of the story. How is it? Maybe I need to improve on it, huh? Thanks for the reviews. Looking forward to more feedbacks.