Mischief Mage: Here's the title that i had wanted, but that silly thing won't let me have a title that long. So this chapter gets two titles! Isn't it exciting? Yeah...i thought so too...

Chapter IV: Numb extremities, hypersensitivity and blood loss

The day of the wedding finally dawned. Heero stared at the sun from his apartment window, wondering whether blowing up the sun would postpone the wedding a day or two so that he would compose himself. He sighed and began to pull his suit on. Duo, the best man, was due to be there in about half-an-hour and he didn't want his help when it came to clothes. Last time he had taken Duo's advice on clothes, he had been swarmed at from all directions by girls and girly boys alike. He had come home, clothes hanging in shreds from his shoulders, with a charge for indecent exposure waiting for him.

The door bell rang just as Heero was brushing his hair, not that it was making any difference of course.

Duo was his usual ecstatic self and looked prepared to dance with every bridesmaid and affront every mother; the moment he entered the small, one bedroom apartment, he shot straight for Heero's front to re-adjust his boutonniere, which was upside down. Heero stood still, allowing Duo to straighten his jacket after flowers had been straightened to his satisfaction; prod his hair, giving up after he found that Heero's hair didn't comply with the wishes of hair gel, spray or gravity, not that his hair was anything compared to Trowa's; Heero even let Duo shine his shoes so much that he had to wear sunglasses whenever they caught the sunlight and also allowed him to apply copious amounts of cologne to his body, but he stopped Duo with a swift whack on the side of the head when his friend had tried to pour the cologne in his pants.

'It's your wedding night tonight' he explained whilst he rubbed the bulging lump on the side his head.

'I don't think anyone will be down there Duo.'

The sensible hemisphere of Duo's brain forced him to keep his mouth shut and shrug while it violently pelted the dirty hemisphere with neural-atom bombs; if Heero had been looking at Duo rather than kneading his temples with his eyes squeezed shut, he would have seen the left side of the long haired pilot twitching every few seconds.

But Heero's mind was clearly occupied by other thoughts. He was sitting down on his single bed almost forlornly. Duo sat down beside him.

'I don't understand, Duo, I was so sure that this was the right decision. But now I'm not so sure.'

'That, my friend, is called "cold feet". You're just nervous, just don't think about it. You have to trust the decision that you made when you weren't about to take a flying leap into a world where every one of Relena's concerns become yours as well.

Heero didn't look very convinced.

'But what if I really have made the wrong decision?'

'Well, there's always divorce'

Heero continued looking depressed. Duo took the opportunity to grasp Heero's shoulder in a brotherhood-of-men way with one hand, and stuff and air freshener down his friend's pants with the other.

'Glorious' 'Breath taking' 'Captivating' 'Gorgeous'

Four bridesmaids, cooed in chorus as Relena did minor twirls in front of the mirror in her wedding dress. For a brief moment, there was a sudden darkness accompanied with a great deal of swearing and clicking. Within seconds, the room was relit by the flashes of scores of photographers after they had replaced the film in their high power cameras.

Relena whirled around to face them upon seeing the reflection Pagan crawling out from amongst the mob in the mirror.

'Miss Relena, I have your copy of the guest list' he told her, bowing and panting slightly.

'Thank you Pagan. Do each of the gate men have one?'

'Yes, Miss Relena'

'And how many of the press have arrived?'

'About two thirds of them I believe'

Relena nodded in satisfaction, there was no need to hire a photographer when you were as close to being Queen of the world as mortally possible.

'But there is one matter that needs attention Miss Relena'

'What is that?' Relena asked quickly, concerned, this was her wedding day and everything had to be perfect.

'The ambassador from Africa's wedding gift is eating all the garden tables and is soiling all the waiters.'

'Lock it in the back room for now, when Trowa and Catherine Bloom arrive we can ask them how to look after it.'

'Miss, it's and hippopotamus.'

'Just as well we have a big back room then'

Pagan bowed dutifully and began to make his way to the door through the tempest of camera-men.

Relena returned to the mirror and smoothed out her dress.

Perfect, everything has to be perfect. She thought as she rubbed at an itch in her side.

'…25…26…27…28…29…30, yep, that's all of you, in you go.'

Quatre and his 29 sisters flowed into through the gate like water of a burst damn. The girls dispersed to find their own amusement and Quatre shot straight for Trowa and Wufei who, already inside the gates, were standing to one side in their pressed suits and, unbeknownst to them, receiving flirtatious looks from Relena's friends who were also at the wedding.

'Hey guys. You both look great' Quatre called out cheerfully as he approached them.

'Sally picked it out for me.' Wufei sniffed, glancing down at himself.

Trowa on the other hand, didn't seem to notice Quatre at all. He looked decidedly pale and was swaying on his feet, eyes dim.

'Trowa? What's wrong?' the blonde ex-gundam-pilot asked, concerned, shaking him slightly.

'He's suffering from blood loss.' Wufei said matter-of-factly

'What?'

'Since the stag night, Catherine has been giving him blood tests every five minutes...'

It was then that Quatre noticed the puncture marks in Trowa's wrist.

'Every time he gets something to eat or drink, she gives him one every two minutes…'

Trowa's wristwatch beeped eerily and his green eyes, duller then usually, widened in panic.

'…and whenever Duo is within ten feet of him, every twenty seconds.'

Trowa cried on in a tortured voice as a pink blur wrestled him to the ground. Face down on the grass and with his wrist behind his back, Catherine was able to remove another half-syringe of blood from her de facto- brother. She pulled out a small rectangular device and deposited Trowa's blood into it. It beeped and a green light flashed. Satisfied, she got up off him, brushed herself down and walking off.

Quatre was almost sick with shock.

'It's been going on for the last half-hour now. At this rate, he'll be as dry as a raisin before the ceremony even begins'

'There must be something we can do!'

'One questions. Why? It's none of our business what goes on between them, besides…what are you looking at?'

Quatre had caught sight of Duo who was chatting to the arriving guests. He turned his body in that direction and began to head straight for him.

'You idiot!' Wufei screamed after him, 'he is the last person that you need!'

Quatre skidded to a halt in front of Duo who, along with the two infamous reporters he had been talking to, stared at him. The blonde pilot gulped, he really wished that those reporters weren't there; they didn't need to hear anything about Trowa, one of the Gundam pilots, being sucked dry by his blood-thirsty 'sister', they also didn't' need to think that Quatre's attentions to him were anything other than concern that Trowa may very soon have the same consistency of a potato chip.

'What's up Quatre?'

He hesitated, and then began to invent.

'Ummm…Duo, there's something wrong with the entertainment, the guy we hired is having trouble, the company he works for…they're…um….facing attacks from a sister company.'

Duo looked puzzled and the reporters looked interested, but there was nothing to do but press on.

'By the end of the day, the company might be drained entirely.'

Duo was still clueless. Quatre almost cried out in pent up frustration.

'He reckons that if we don't pull him out and cancel the engagement, he will look like a real clown.'

The penny finally seemed to drop; either the 'clown' thing had made sense or Catherine making another attack on Trowa in the background with the syringe the size of the drink bottle had caught his eye.

Duo recovered quickly.

'Don't worry about it Kat. I'll go sort it out with that sister company now. Naturally, the sister company fears for the assets of the minor companies within their connections, by draining it, they can bring any wealth back into the fold so that they can manage it themselves. When one organisation screws up, naturally, they are open to the criticism of those who have their best interests at heart as well as their own. Fortune will come around, once the mighty have fallen upon the same step that the first did, they will suffer even more derision than the first and they will no longer have any right to suck the funds of minor companies. I'm sure that there must be some dirt that we can dig up on them. So this case is being worked through as we speak? Yes? Good. Well then, if I and my team can find anything on them, we can communicate it to those who most require it immediately, and if we can't find anything, we know this group intimately, we know how to manage them and induce them to act in such a way that will most efficiently reinstate the independence of the first company in question, and probably ensure their freedom from censure from the antagonist of this story.'

He said all this very quickly, and with that, Duo turned on his heel and headed into the midst of the gathered party guests.

Quatre blinked his blue eyes. Most of Duo's speech had gone straight over his head. So, either, Duo's worked a lot faster than Quatre had previously given him credit for and he was off to help Trowa, or Duo had poured a basin-full of drivel from his mouth and escaped, leaving Quatre alone with the reporters.

The reporters were scribbling on their notepads, to Quatre, it seemed as though they were decoding the message that had passed between himself and Duo, but they were really only playing hangman.

Quatre sometimes wished that he could lie as imaginatively as Duo could. It was a matter of practice he supposed.

Mischief Mage: Sorry for the lack of descriptions of clothes but...that is one area where i fail miserably. Won't tell you what happens in the next chapter because, as a i have recently discovered, i'm not very good at it.