Chapter 24

As Lacus moved gracefully down the aisle, her veil semi-transparent for her to see where she was going, Cagalli wanted to shout, "Stop crying!"

Almost all the females in the church, regardless of their age or how powerful they were in the society were tearing, and although it made Cagalli quite touched at their adoration and love for her best friend, they were making her want to cry too, and the heavens knew Cagalli really didn't want to cry while she held Lacus's train.

Then she saw Athrun, standing tall next to her twin who was smiling at Lacus as she joined them at the altar and the ceremony started. Cagalli kept trying not to look at Athrun even though she would have liked to, he was just as well-dressed at Kira and his hair had been neatly combed. The ceremony went on and at the end when the minister pronounced her brother and Lacus as husband and wife and Kira flipped the veil delicately over to kiss a blushing Lacus, the whole church erupted into cheers and applause.

Cagalli had enjoyed watching her brother get married to her best friend, but she was terribly hungry by then, so in retrospect, she enjoyed the wedding lunch more. People kept stopping by to compliment Lacus and her on their gowns and the whole works, but she didn't quite care even if she thanked them politely for their kind words.

In comparison though, when Kira left Lacus' side for a minute to catch and whirl her around like she was a young girl, and smiled and told her she was very beautiful, she blushed so madly that she had to punch him on his shoulder and say he was talking rubbish again. But he only laughed and pushed her to where Athrun was standing, whispering something only she could hear, but she caught it fairly well and heard him say, "He'll make you happy."

And Athrun was holding a conversation with some people, including Dearka Elseman, Mirallia Haww and Yzak Joule, who was holding onto Shiho firmly in case she wandered off which she was quite prone to doing. So she joined into their conversation and was at so much ease that she was quite surprised when it ended and she suddenly felt very weary.

By the time the ceremony was over, all of them were exhausted, all except Kira and Lacus who had already greeted the guests and gone off to some exotic island for their honeymoon, the name of which she couldn't quite remember and didn't want to try too hard doing either.

As she stumped into the dressing room, now empty because the others had finished changing into more causal clothes and gone home, she flipped off her heels, threw them into a corner and dropped very ungracefully into the couch in the room, or so she thought.

She heard a pained, "Hey!" and realised that she had dumped her entire weight onto Athrun, and she immediately scrambled off in shock, saying hurriedly, "Sorry, didn't notice you there."

He had been tired out too and dozed in the dressing room for the last twenty minutes, but then she had came in and woken him up by basically collapsing on him.

But then his blurry vision cleared as he shook himself to rid his head of the sleepiness and gazed at her while she tried not to look stupid sitting next to him right after she had collapsed on his lap.

Then he smiled suddenly and took a hand of hers which suddenly felt quite limp, saying softly, "We're leaving for ORB together aren't we?"

Just to spite him, Cagalli wanted to shake her head furiously and say, "No, it's bad enough we had to come here together unlike what I planned for," but she found herself nodding and saying instead, "Alright."

A week had passed almost incredibly quickly after they had gotten back from PLANT, and she thought for the gazillionth time that week that her brother had been absolutely right when he had whispered into her ear.

She thought of what her brother had said during his wedding and stopped looking at the paperwork to glance up and see Athrun at the other end of the table with a line of concentration between his eyebrows that made him look a little fierce.He had been typing maniacally on his QUINd, the way she did when work was concerned.

He sensed her staring at him from the far end of the work table and stopped typing to stare at her too, and then he smiled suddenly, making her turn red in embarrassment.

A knock saved her from having to explain why she had been ogling at him, and she called "Come in!"

A second later, Rainie had marched in and bowed to Cagalli then to Athrun, but she saluted as well, because she was suddenly fascinated with the military drills after ORB and ZAFT had started the military exercise, and just to humour the young girl, he grinned and saluted too.

She chirped brightly that the troops were requesting to see Chairman Zala as soon as possible so they could have some extra-intense training, and abruptly turned to Cagalli who had resumed concentrating on her papers and asked pleadingly, "Can we all go train too, Chairman?"

Cagalli stopped flipping the sheaf of paper and sighed in mock-weariness, then laughed and said, "Alright, we'll all go and train for the next few days if you want to up your combat skills. Just prepare my paperwork and pass it to me first before you go."

The girl leapt a few feet into the air and whooped in excitement, then she dashed out, slamming the door and they heard her shouting to Goebbels to get ready all the paperwork for the next few days.

Athrun snorted in amusement and turned to Cagalli at the far end of the table who was twitching in silent laughter.

"Are all your bodyguards like that?" he said.

"No, only Rainie, that's why she's my favourite." Cagalli declared, laughing out loud, then she said conspiratorially, "Oh but don't say that in front of them, they'll think I'm biased."

He laughed too and asked seriously, "Are you sure you want to let your bodyguards watch me do my work? It's not quite fun, you know."

"That's not the point, Athrun," she interrupted brightly; "They've wanted to learn something ever since Rainie was defeated in the interview, you know, all six of them, because they know they aren't as good as her in spite of her youth and inexperience. I have to pay a visit to the troops for public relations' sake too; I might as well go long. The media has been hounding for us to make an appearance near the training camps so the people can see what's going on from newspapers."

Then she stood up, arranged her papers properly and slipped them into a case and stretched like a cat before swiftly moving out of the room, but she didn't manage to escape fast enough.

As she moved past him to get to the door, he stood up and caught her hand and asked in a would-be-casual voice, "So when do we tell the rest of the world?"

She stared up at him and replied weakly when she realised he wasn't going to let go, "How do we tell them anyway?"

He thought about it for a while and answered, "I could always run into the streets and shout that the ORB chairman and I are together, how's that?"

She heard him and chewed her lip thoughtfully, and was just about to argue that it was too scandalous when she realised that he had been joshing around with her.

"Be serious, you idiot you!" Cagalli insisted, using her free hand to knock his head hard.

"No, really," he said morosely, "I think we should appear around together in public naturally more often, and people will eventually figure out what's going on in the end. Or at least, the tabloids will help them anyway."

It was quite feasible actually, and Cagalli was starting to nod her head when she suddenly thought of something and cried abruptly, "I just thought of something! Why do we even have to come into the open anyway?"

"Because suddenly getting married, which we can't hide, will make the whole world go into a major state of unrest and shock," he said calmly, still not releasing his grip on her hand.

"Since when did I say we were getting hitched?" she snapped irritably, red in the face, still trying to snatch her hand away.

"Alright then," he said seriously, "we won't get married until we've made our combined third billion then, which will be in a few months' time when we get our pay."

"You checked our accounts?' she gasped in shock, looking at Athrun who was appearing to be remarkably unruffled.

"Yes, the inheritance our parents have left behind for both of us, with the both family's fortunes together, added on to our savings all these years and inclusive of our existing wages we get for working like cows are quite sufficient to last us comfortably off until we are a hundred-and ninety-one," he said testily, producing a sheet of paper from his pocket he had gotten from the bank.

She spluttered but couldn't think of anything to say when he waved the paper in front of her nose as proof that money wasn't quite an issue either.

Then he hauled her to him and kissed her fiercely until they heard Rainie bounding up the stairs like a hungry puppy and quickly broke them apart.

When Rainie pulled open the doors, they were already prepared with their briefcases and walked out of the door like nothing had happened while she held it open.

When they were strapped into the vehicle that would take them to the ZAFT and ORB raining grounds, she turned to look at him and hissed, quietly so that the bodyguards in front wouldn't hear her, "Don't do that again!"

He turned to her and asked curiously, "Why not?"

"We'll get caught and it won't be pretty, you idiot!" she snapped, quite forgetting to keep her voice low.

"Oh," he said calmly, watching all the bodyguards turn behind to see if there was any problem, then turn back after seeing there was nothing at all.

"Aren't we planning to?" he whispered again, once they had started the car and concentrated on the driving.

"No, we aren't!" she insisted fiercely, fiddling with the seatbelt and trying to look as calm and composed like him.

"Alright then," he replied easily, and thought stubbornly, "Yes we are."

Of course he didn't say anything, he knew she would lose it and hit him or something dangerous like that, so he kept his mouth shut until they reached the grounds were identification had to be given and security checks were carried out properly.

The plans had been made very ell with proper coordination everywhere. The grounds were enclosed to the public properly so the ORB an ZAFT troops could train undisturbed in forests that would hone their styles of fighting as soldiers able to take harsh environments and guerrilla warfare, which was what Cagalli had learnt she had been a child.

She had told him before how Uzumi Nara Atha had approved of the time when she had marched into his office when she was seven to request, in front of all the ministers, that she wanted to learn self-defense too. So she had learnt fighting from Amagi, a "guerrilla toughie" she called him, and how to use a gun and a knife and bazookas, "that kind of thing" she laughed.

As they stepped out of the car in his navy suit and her maroon Emir attire respectively, they saw the ZAFT and ORB troops already at attention.

"At ease." He ordered, and they obeyed instantly.

He sighed inwardly, thinking how difficult it would be to handle them in the military style he had been trained in and to finish his paperwork all at the same time, but cheered instantly as he watched Cagalli step forward and say clearly that the Chairman Zala would, as they had requested, train them that entire day.

Well, he'd be doing it for the next ten years anyway; he might as well get started to the double workload while he was at it.

So his secretary who had been in another car took his briefcase, and a Section Leader of ZAFT led him to a tent to change into something more suitable for training the troops. He saw, amongst the uniforms hung up everywhere, the redcoat uniform which he hadn't worn for ages.

But he was handed a white and black one instead, quite similar to Yzak's, since they were of about the same ranking now, about the same as Kira's after Kira had been accepted into ZAFT as an honoury commander. But Kira was still an ORB citizen of course, just that living in PLANT made it much easier to live with Lacus. When he got out, the soldiers had broken into their companies and were sparring with each other using their knives already.

He watched as Amagi, dressed in his attire he had worn when he had accompanied Cagalli to fight with the Desert Dawn Resistance troops bark out orders to the battalions to put in some improvements they could make to the way the fought.

Amagi noticed him standing there and promptly singled out a young ZAFT officer who had been struggling to fend himself with only his knife.

"Cole there, he's a brilliant sniper," he whispered conspiratorially to Athrun, "but his knife control is terrible, which is a waste. The only reason why he could become a future redcoat is because he's unrivalled when it comes to guns and programming systems. If there were someone who came up to him and tried to stab him at a close range though, and if he were to only have a knife and no gun with him, he'd be a dead kitty by now."

Athrun watched all the soldiers sparring in pairs in front of him and muttered back to Amagi, "Shall I?"

When he saw Amagi nodding form he corner of his eye as they conversed quietly, he slipped a knife out of a weapon rack next to them and headed over to where the blonde boy was sparring with an elder female ORB officer who was thrashing him silly.

He stood in front of them and they paused, both panting heavily in their uniforms and holding their knives in their hands.

"May I?" he requested politely to the female ORB officer. She blushed like mad and nodded eagerly and stepped aside to let him spar with the Redcoat. He vaguely noticed from the corner of his eye that some pairs had actually stopped sparring to watch him duel with the young redcoat.

He held the knife lightly in his hands and watched the youth blush in embarrassment. The boy must have been mortified for being singled out, and was obviously quite young. Athrun felt a little sorry for him and asked cheerfully, "What's your name, Officer?"

The soldier stammered and answered nervously, "Nick Cole sir."

The girl who had been watching started laughing and Nick Cole spun towards her angrily, retorting, "What's so funny about my name, you?"

She placed her hand over her mouth and choked through her gasps of laughter while Athrun watched helplessly, "Your name sounds like a girl's when you string it all together, like Nicole, you know?"

The boy started blushing again because he had been beaten sorely by the girl when it came to handling the knife, but Athrun cut in, saying coolly, "I had a friend named Nicole, and he was an ace when it came to guns and knives."

His reply made the girl grow silent and the boy turned gratefully to him. He allowed himself a smile then picked up his knife in his defensive stance and ordered, "Now show me what you can do with the knife, Officer."

The boy leapt at him wildly, not even bothering to plan his line of attack or even thinking how he would handle the knife once he got close to Athrun. That was his fatal flaw, Athrun decided as he easily leapt out of the way and allowed the boy to lunge at him wildly again. He stopped the boy this time by using his own knife to knock it high until it plunged into the ground and Nick Cole was left defenceless.

He turned to the boy and said, "Well, your speed and stamina aren't bad at all, but you need to plan your attacks with better accuracy."

Then he walked to the knife, picked it up, and handed it back to the boy and said quite warmly, "Why don't you try attacking me again, but this time, aim for the areas which you think are weak spots. And before you do that, you must think of what I might try to do to avoid the knife, and then if I do avoid it, what can you do to recover without exposing your back to the enemy?"

The boy was blushing so much in awe that Athrun was tempted to call for some cold water to douse over him to see if the redness would subside, but a minute later, the boy had leapt at him again, and Athrun had to admit he was a fast learner.

The knife was held in a less clumsy angle than before, and he leapt at Athrun's knees and not the face this time, so Athrun was forced to jump into the air when the boy came darting and slicing at his knees. Obviously, the boy had taken his advice well and heeded it as accurately as possible, he was ready for Athrun's leap into the air and thrust the knife upwards when Athrun leapt upwards to avoid it, but Athrun did a back flip and kicked him from behind. He had a long way to go, but now he was on the correct path.

He lay facedown in the dirt, then Athrun tossed the knife into the ground, squatted, and pulled him up.

"Well done, Officer," he said gently, and watched the boy, now dirtied and muddy, smile shyly.

There was applause from all areas, and he realised suddenly that everyone had stopped to watch him spar.

Amagi bustled up to them and said loudly, "Alright, who wants to be next?"

There were loud whoops of assent as the soldiers clambered to Amagi and Athrun to request for help with certain quirks they showed when they handled their knives, and Athrun spent the rest of the day coaching and teaching until he didn't want to see a knife ever again.

He stumbled into a tent during the hour's break they had given the troops, and spotted Cagalli busily typing at the side. Not quite caring that he was sweating like a pig and probably didn't smell like daffodils, he strode over and stood over her until she looked up and saw him.

"Having fun?" she asked jokingly.

"It's work on top of my paperwork, how fun can it be?' he responded lightly.

"Same here," she sighed, as she snapped the QUINd shut and turned face him while seated on the chair.

"Why don't you join us at the firing range later then," he asked, watching her rub her eyes and try to rid them of the sleepiness she felt in the blazing afternoon.

Cagalli immediately paused and snorted, "I haven't been practising my aiming for two years, if I go there, I'll look like a fool." She then proceeded to stretch a little and crack her knuckles like a gangster, although she probably didn't realise that he thought it was pretty cool.

He laughed and fetched a towel to wipe away the sweat, commenting, "How bad can you have gotten?"

She cleared her throat and grinned at him, "Remember when I fired a bullet and threw away the gun at the same time?"

He stopped in his tracks and chuckled, remembering her rash ways and hotheadedness when she ha been sixteen. He looked at Cagalli and wondered if she still had as much of that as she did int the past, then concluded to himself that she had lost a little of the rashness, but was still terribly fierce in her pride. He didn't mind though. He quite liked it, actually.

Cagalli sighed as Athrun started to wheedle her into following he troops to the firing range, until she couldn't take his attempts to make her go any longer and just agreed to shut him up a little. The next thing she knew, he had grabbed her hand and pulled her out of her chair and the shady tent into the sun where they marched, now not holding hands because she pulled it away in case anyone saw, into the firing range.

The soldiers were taking turns to fire in a simulation range with the ORB firearms specialists and ZAFT crack-shots correcting their stances and trying to work out the best wy to avoid rebounds.

As far as they could see, Officer Cole's shooting was perfect. He didn't need any coaching, in fact, Amagi had requested for him to coach the others, and his shy, appealing nature made him a perfect coach anyway.

When he told Cagalli what he thought of Nick Cole, Cagalli laughed brightly and whispered teasing, but quietly so nobody would see that they were talking, "Oh, but you make a good teacher too, Chairman. Lunamaria Hawke told me that nobody, including Shinn, dared to question our authority when you lectured them."

He was embarrassed that she had heard about his stint in ZAFT, so he quickly walked forward and took a gun that a soldier offered to him, and proceeded to obtain a perfect score with the simulation game. The soldiers were gasping and pointing excitedly, quite alike the way Lunamaria, Shin and Rey had reacted when he had tried to help Lunamaria with her abysmal aiming.

Ignoring them, Athrun finished the last round, and as Amagi called to the soldiers to gather around and listen up while he explained how the Chairman Zala had managed to get a perfect round of shooting, he heard another call from the other end of the long, firing range the soldiers had formed.

"Chairman Atha's got a perfect score too!" someone cried.

The soldiers cleared away and he saw her, clad neatly in her Emir suit and holding a rifle in her hands ,clearly at the other end of the extensive line grinning at him and giving him a triumphant thumbs-up. He returned it, and Amagi roared with laughter and shouted that it was up to the soldiers to get hold of the two chairmen and learn a little shooting smarts from the both of them.