category: Gundam SEED

disclaimer: I don't own it.

THIRTEEN.

The four main members of the Le Creuset Team had known each other for many years before they were stationed together. Childhood friends, they were, although none of them would disagree that 'friend' was a loose term in the situation.

They all met at Yzak Joule's sixth birthday party. His mother doted on him, and the event was a grand spectacle. The children were gathered on the carefully-manicured lawns behind the house to play games before dinner while the adults talked politics inside. Being both the spoiled birthday boy and a hot-headed little horror, Yzak fully expected to win every single game. When he won the scavenger hunt (it was his house, after all), he gloated spitefully. When he finished first in the one-legged race, he pushed the second place winner into the mud in a show of triumphant dominance. When he lost terribly to Athrun Zala in darts, he threw a tantrum in front of the other twenty children and kicked one of the housekeepers squarely in the shin.

Yzak was shepherded to his mother immediately who frowned deeply and told him to behave well at his own party or she'd make sure he got no cake later on. Seeing his crestfallen face, she leaned down to pat his cheek gently and told him that she had a few new people she wanted him to meet later. That didn't please him, because he found children his own age bothersome, but the prospect of missing out on his own cake encouraged him to control his temper.

Dinner started, and Yzak's mother led him to a separate table at the front of the room around which three other boys were being seated.

"Yzak, dear, let me introduce you to some friends I think you'll like." She crouched down to the height of the table and pointed each of them out. "That's Nicol Amalfi, and Dearka Elsman, and Athrun Zala. All fine young gentlemen." She stood up and pushed Yzak's chair in for him, her fingers curling warningly around his shoulder. "Play nice, boys. You'll be seeing plenty of each other from now on. And I hope you have been enjoying yourselves so far."

Athrun looked up at her appreciatively. "Oh yes, Mrs. Joule. This is a very nice party."

She beamed down at him. "Why, thank you, Athrun!" She stroked his hair briefly before heading off to her own table, mumbling to herself. "Such a nice child."

Yzak nodded shortly in greeting at Dearka and Nicol before narrowing his eyes at this last stranger who had the oddest blue hair and made nice to his mother and had better aim than him.

"Are you a girl?" he blurted out as the bisque was being served.

Athrun made a face at him. "What are you talking about? Of course not!"

"You're too pretty to be a boy," Yzak decided conclusively and began to slurp his soup obnoxiously.

"Cut it out!" Athrun agitatedly glanced over at where his parents were eating with Yzak's mother.

Of course, Yzak did the exact opposite. Throughout the entire meal he elbowed Athrun's side and blew irritatingly into his ear and called him every rude name he could think of.

"An octopus has more brains in one of its tentacles than you do in your entire body!" Yzak hollered at Athrun as he was being steered in the direction of his huge cake. "Because you're so stupid!"

"Yzak!" His mother hurried over admonishingly. "We don't call other people stupid!"

He turned big eyes at her in a fake show of apology and her resolve crumbled. "Well, just blow out your candles."

The visits continued. Once a month, Patrick Zala, Tad Elsman, Yuri Amalfi, and Ezalia Joule met at one of their respective estates to talk Supreme Council matters, sons always in tow. And so the four boys grew up knowing that their futures were inevitably tied to one other. They played together in the same sandbox, attended nearby lunar preparatory schools, wound up in adjacent rooms at the ZAFT military academy, were given identical honors upon graduation, and were finally placed on the same team on the field. And so the span of ten years did little to change things.

"How dare you? Heliopolis is in forty-six hours, and you have the gall to ask whether or not I've studied the schematics of my machine! Of course I have, you dimwit! We've all been preparing for this day for months!" Yzak stormed into the main planning room after the Athrun and the others, ignoring Dearka's signals to calm down. It had been a bad day from the start. The biggest operation of their military lives thus far was nearly here, there was some new redcoat on their team named Rusty Mackenzie and change bothered him, he had missed the easiest shot in target practice that morning, and one piece of hair by his left ear would just not lie flat…

"An octopus has more brains in one of its tentacles than you do in your entire body! Because you're so stupid, Zala!"

There was comfort in routine.

notes: Yay for more Yzak! Hope you all enjoyed this. I can totally see Yzak getting all hot and bothered because his hair wasn't cooperating.

NEXT PHASE: Kira roams in search of storms and Lacus waits. They're drifting, she realizes.