Day 19

Live Long And Love Longer

(established Mei-Mei/Nile)

It was today.

"I think you're ready, Mei-Mei," Madoka said, looking satisfied with her handiwork as she tied off the last ribbon. "Shall we go?"

Mei-Mei took a deep breath. Frankly, she wasn't ready. Who was ever ready for their own wedding? But she was a blader of true heart and mind, and she wasn't going to back down from this.

She nodded, and around her the girls she had chosen as her bridesmaids relaxed a little. "If I'm not ready now, I never will be," she said, trying to hide how her voice was shaking. The three girls looked at each other.

"You'll be fine," Hikaru assured her. "You love him. He loves you. This is just a way of saying it publicly, right?"

"I don't like publicly," she muttered, and both Sophie and Madoka laughed.

"Neither does he," Madoka pointed out. "Now, let's go."

Mei-Mei swallowed and stepped over to the door of the tent she had been getting prepared in. This was it. The culmination of everything.

She had never expected to fall in love with someone from another country, let alone one who could have been her opponent in the World Championships had things gone a little differently. She'd been introduced to him almost by accident, when Kyouya had come barging into the Temple looking for Gingka, who had apparently vanished just before they were due to have a battle. Upon discovering that Gingka had not in fact disappeared from the face of the earth and was in fact in Koma Village, Kyouya had stomped off again with Benkei in tow, leaving Nile to explain and apologise.

To her surprise, that had not been the last she had seen of him. A few weeks later, they had run into each other at a local tournament. He had challenged Chao Xin to a very even battle in the final that had ended in Chao Xin's victory as Nile hadn't managed to activate Mystic Zone before Virgo pounced, and afterwards stayed to talk to her as he waited to be called up to receive his second-place prize.

After that, they had stayed in contact, gradually growing closer and closer. Eventually, she had invited him to come and study at Beylin Temple for a while to learn how to fight defensively. In return, he had taken her out across the plains of his homeland to learn how to survive by defending aggressively. She had taught him how to fight in a proper tag-team so that two became one.

He had asked her to marry him so that two would become one.

And the ceremony was today.

It was a small, private affair, conducted in the inner courtyard of Beylin Temple both for privacy and for the beauty of the location. The bride's tent had been erected just outside the main walls, leaving Mei-Mei with a walk no longer than two minutes between this sheltered fabric shell and the rest of her life.

"Mei-Mei?" Sophie asked softly.

"I'm ready," she said firmly. "Let's go."

As she stepped out of the tent and into the outer courtyard, she saw a flash of brown material out of the corner of her eye, and the dark yellow that marked the uniform of the Hundred Schools of Beylin Fist, and none other than Bao came prowling out of the shadows like a wolf.

Instantly, the entire bridal party tensed.

Ever since Gingka and Madoka's wedding had been interrupted by a group of artificially-enhanced bladers with yet another world-domination plan based (apparently) on obtaining Madoka's knowledge of beys, Mei-Mei had been more than a little worried about her own wedding. They still didn't know where these powerful bladers had come from, or whether there were more of them, but she really didn't want to be kidnapped at the altar, as it were. Even if that didn't happen, she didn't want Madoka to be kidnapped either (having your maid-of-honour stolen from the wedding was almost as bad as having it happen to the bride).

Da Shan had been considering asking for volunteers from the Temple to stand guard, at the cost of missing the actual wedding, when Aguma and Bao had stepped forwards to insist that Beylin Fist would protect the outside of the venue. Shocked, Da Shan had agreed before he managed to register that he had just turned over the wedding defences to Beylin Temple's traditional foes. Not that it mattered in the end. Mei-Mei had never felt safer than when she spotted the flare of the fawn-coloured cloaks favoured by the members of Beylin Fist just to the side of the entrance, and heard the whispered "No problems; go on in," in her ear as Bao swept past her, heading for the outer gates.

It really was a mystery how saving the world together built bridges between communities that had spent millennia at war, even if Beylin Temple hadn't been directly involved with the battle against Nemesis. Since the battle with Nemesis, Beylin Fist and Beylin Temple at least treated each other with a form of civility that hadn't existed before.

It was another form of love, she decided. It wasn't really a case of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." In fact, it seemed to be closer to "The enemy of my friend is my enemy." It was certainly one of the most surprising things to come out of the wedding planning.

The thing that shocked her the most though, was just how many people were actually there, as she turned through the inner gate and was faced with an avenue of chairs, every single one of them occupied.

Of course, the members of Gan Gan Galaxy and their friends had insisted on being there. Gingka, grinning broadly, was sitting as close to the front as he could without accidentally joining the wedding party. Beside him, Kenta smiled happily as he turned to look back. On Gingka's other side, Tsubasa had just tugged at Yuu's collar to get him to stand up, and Mei-Mei could just make out Tithi and Yuki beyond the blonde-haired young man. In the row behind stood Team Dungeon, Masamune flanked by his two best friends. Toby's hair was slowly returning to the brown it had been before the Arrangement System had bleached it, meaning that it was currently tipped with silver just as Zeo's was with yellow-gold. Beyond Zeo, Chris stood, a little awkwardly but still with his head held high.

On the other side of the avenue of chairs, a trio of men stood, dressed in suits that probably cost as much as everyone else's clothes combined. She had thought at first that Julian, Wales and Klaus were only coming to be polite, and because Sophie was one of the bridesmaids. But when she'd told Sophie that they didn't have to come if they had better things to do, the other girl had looked shocked.

"What are you talking about, Mei-Mei?" she'd asked. "Excalibur wouldn't miss this for the world."

So it seemed that Excalibur were there to support her and Nile too.

Chao Xin smiled at her from the near end of the avenue, and she spotted the white cloak of Dynamis over his shoulder. The Guardian of Mist Mountain very rarely appeared outside of his mountain any more, but Nile had suggested they send an invitation anyway. To Mei-Mei's shock, Dynamis had appeared the following day, before the invitation had even left China.

"I follow the will of the heavens," was all he had said when asked, and it had taken her until the night before the actual wedding to work out that he actually meant I kept an eye out, just in case.

Taking up the rest of the seats were all the members of Beylin Temple, even those who had completed its training and gone out into the world. They had all returned to stand present at the wedding of one of their own.

And there was Kyouya, standing in the front row and looking incredibly smart as he glanced sideways at his friend. When Nile had asked him to stand up with him at the wedding, Kyouya had muttered about "foolish traditions" and "lone lions" for about thirty seconds before Nile fixed him with a look and Kyouya had just grinned.

Of course, Benkei and Demure were there, standing just behind their team-mates. She'd discovered that it was almost impossible to have one of Wild Fang without the others. They were bound together like brothers, a kind of unbreakable love holding them together through thick and thin, through fire and storm and the end of the world.

Then again, her team were the same. Maybe she wasn't marrying them, maybe she wasn't related by blood to any of them, but they were still her family.

Chao Xin, who had sat up with her for five nights in a row going over the words and vows in the service so that she wouldn't make a mistake on the day.

Chi-Yun, who had shown remarkable flair for organisation and had managed to sort out the venue, the invitations, the music, the decorations and the refreshments on his own. Okay, with some help from Sophie. But still.

Da Shan, who had not only sought to protect the wedding (and therefore the happiness) of his only female team-mate, but had offered to lead the service himself. There was no-one she would rather have, and Nile agreed that he was certainly the wisest choice.

She thanked any divine being that might be listening that they had accepted Nile as her choice. More than that; they'd all but adopted him. Da Shan in particular was very fond of the slender, stern, Egyptian man, and considered him to be an extra brother.

Gan Gan Galaxy, Excalibur, the Temple bladers, Wild Fang, Wang Hu Zhong, the Legendary Bladers and their friends, even Bao and the bladers from the Beylin Fist. All of them loved her and Nile in their own way. They were all here, all for them, because they were bladers, rivals, friends.

But none of them loved her quite the way that Nile loved her, and she didn't love any of them quite the way that she loved him.

That was why he was the one standing at the far end of the avenue – so short, so short that walk that seemed to take forever - with a smile on his face that could have lit up the sun as he watched his bride come towards him. That was why he was the one that she would wake up next to tomorrow and for the rest of their lives. That was why, even though there had been barriers of language, culture, training style, even personality between them, he was the only one she would ever and could ever want to give herself to completely, and in return accept his equal gift of himself.

That was why he was the one she was marrying.