Mid April

Wedding for Friends

"Come on, good buddy, you've got nothing to be nervous about!" Ulrich assured his old roommate.

"W-what are you talking about? Odd the M-Magnificent does NOT get nervous!" The short man defended, though he wasn't fooling anyone.

Jeremy, Ulrich, Odd as well as Mr. Delmas and Mr. Della Robbia were getting ready for Odd and Sissi's wedding. With Odd being Italian, he wanted to get married in a Catholic church, and Sissi agreed because she thought it would be a beautiful place to get married. Currently, the guys in the wedding party were in an out-of-the-way room near the back of the church.

"Of course not, you've only been fidgeting for the last hour from excitement!" Taunted Jeremy, causing both him and Ulrich to laugh.

"Yeah, and you might want to double check your vest!" Teased the large man. Odd looked down and saw that he had misaligned the buttons on his dark purple waistcoat , causing his two friends to laugh harder.

"You're gonna be great kiddo, you're a Della Robbia after all!" Odd's father extolled as he playfully slapped his son on the back.

"OW!" He yelled, startling everyone in the room. "Paintball welt..." Ulrich chuckled for a moment, but then walked over and put his arm around his friend's shoulder.

"Ok, I'm going to be straight with you, you're nervous and that's ok. But when those doors open and you see your beautiful bride coming down that aisle, all the nerves go away and you'll just happy to see her." The reassurance seemed to calm Odd down a bit because when Ulrich stepped away he was able to fix the buttons on his waistcoat with minimal fumbling.

"Mr. Della Robbia," Mr. Delmas spoke while walking up from the edge of the room and the other four men quieted down. "There's something that I've been meaning to tell you for a while now, but I've never seemed to have the opportunity. Now seems as good a time as any, and better than most." Odd listened attentively. "If I'm being honest, when you and Elisabeth started seeing each other, I had some major concerns, both about your personal and academic history." The short blond gulped, his nerves starting to get the better of him again. "But since then I've seen first hand how much you love my daughter, and how happy you make her. The positive influence you've had on her life cannot be overstated, and you yourself have grown into a fine young man... one that I'll be proud to call my son in-law." The aging man's eyes started to moisten. "This might be slightly premature, but I don't think I'll get the opportunity to say this later..." He extended his hand toward Odd and smiled. "Welcome to the family." The short blond broke into a wide grin and enthusiastically shook the offered hand.

"Thanks, pops!" Mr. Delmas' smile faded slightly and he sighed out a chuckle.

"I guess there are some things that will never change after all..."

"And then we left him in the bathroom all night!" Laughed the Della Robbia sister (Elizabeth perhaps...?) as she finished telling her story, causing her sisters to all burst out into obnoxious giggling. While they clearly thought that tormenting Odd was so funny, Aelita thought it was just cruel, and from the look on Sissi's face she thought so too. Even the presence of the girls' mother seemed to have no effect on their storytelling. If anything, she almost seemed to encourage it! Though as bad as the stories were, they were a welcome change from the 'advice' they had been giving beforehand that had both Aelita and Sissi's faces glowing fierce shades of bright red! Even Yumi, being a bit less sensitive due to being married with the private admission of being 'very satisfied' by her husband, couldn't stop blushing a bit from the other girls' 'suggestions.'

The pink-haired woman glanced toward the edge of the room and saw her Japanese friend sitting in a chair, head hanging low while she pinched the bridge of her nose. She'd given up trying to wrangle in the other girls and simply given up until it was time for the ceremony to start. Unable to help Sissi avoid her tormentors, Aelita walked over to her other friend in hopes that she could at least help shoulder some of her frustrations.

"Five female Odds really is a handful, isn't it..." she said after sitting.

"Yep..." Yumi replied without looking up.

"Well, at least Sissi was nice enough to make it so you didn't have to wear pink." Sissi's maid of honor looked down at the rest of the girls clad in the same shade as Aelita's hair, then down at her own purple dress. Sissi herself was in a beautiful gown of silvery white.

"Yeah... at least there's that.. I just can't wait for everything to start. I'm a girl and I think there's too much estrogen in this room!" That caused Aelita to laugh loud enough to unfortunately get the attention of the Della Robbia's.

"Ooohhh! Does the newlywed have some advice for the bride?" One of the girls asked excitedly. Aelita thought it was Pauline, but there were too many identically dressed Della Robbia's for her to be sure!

"Pauline, I don't think there's any advice she can give that'll carry over to our little Odd-ball! Seriously, have you seen her husband? That's one fine hunk of man!" One of the other sisters said (Adele, maybe...?), confirming the identity of the first one. Yumi grit her teeth in a fit of jealousy and Aelita put a comforting hand on her friends shoulder.

"Any other day with anyone else I'd be all for you clobbering her, but this is Sissi's day," the pinkette whispered, but it didn't seem to help much. "And look at it this way, you're giving her a much needed reprieve!" The two girls glanced past the Della Robbia's to see a very frazzled bride with a pleading look on her face. With a light sigh, Yumi unclenched her jaw, then smirked at the gaggle of women all looking at her.

"Yes, he is!" She declared confidently. "And he is all mine!"

"Details!" Exclaimed another Sister (probably Marie...)

"Nuh-uh!" Taunted Yumi, and while she held the attention of the Della Robbia sisters Aelita quietly slipped back over to Sissi.

"I'm sorry, that had to be frustrating and embarressing..." she whispered.

"You have no idea!" Sissi replied as she flashed Yumi grateful look and mouthed thank you. Yumi, in turn, shot her a look that said you owe me. To which Sissi nodded before turning back to Aelita. "Just be grateful that Jeremy is an only child!" The pink haired woman let out a small giggle.

"How are you doing? Are you nervous?" She asked, to which Sissi snorted out a laugh.

"I'm getting married, of course I'm nervous!" Aelita's eyes widened sightly in concern and Sissi quickly added, "don't get me wrong, I'm also excited. It's not like I'm having second thoughts, it's just that it's so... big and important. You'll understand in a few months."

"Yeah, I'm sure I will." The two girls glanced at a clock on the wall and saw it was about time to go. "Well, shall we go rescue your maid of honor." Sissi took a deep breath.

"Yeah, we probably should."

The two sides of the bridal party, except for Odd who was already inside, gathered outside the church sanctuary and lined up in the order that had been rehearsed. When they met up, Jeremy kissed Aelita's cheek.

"You look beautiful," he whispered, causing her to grin.

"Thanks, Jeremy. You look very handsome yourself," she replied, taking a moment to appreciate the rare sight of in Jeremy in a tuxedo. Turning toward Sissi, she added wistfully, "just think, in a few months it's going to finally be us." It was Jeremy's turn to smile without taking his eyes off Aelita.

"Yeah, October 9th..." Aelita looked back and met her fiancé's eyes. "It's kinda crazy to think that we met almost ten years ago." Despite the people around, Jeremy couldn't help tilting her chin up and stealing a soft kiss, making Aelita giggle quietly while both of their cheeks took on a rosy shade. "Turning on that computer was the best decision of my life." The two geniuses continued beaming each other until the doors opened and they had to pay attention.

As the best man and matron of honor, Ulrich and Yumi went first, followed by Jeremy and Aelita, and last came all of Odd's sisters making for a pretty uneven gender split in the bridal party, though that never seemed to bother either Odd or Sissi. The sanctuary was lavishly decorated with pink and purple flowers, bows, and ribbons everywhere, yet still managed to remain tasteful. Approaching the end of the aisle, Jeremy and Aelita could see that Odd was still a bit nervous from the way he kept clenching and unclenching his hands. They gave him reassuring smiles just before they separated and took their places. Minutes later, it was time for Sissi to start making her way down. The large ornate double doors swung open and she started slowly walking down, arm in arm with her father. Jeremy only had eyes for Aelita, but even he had to admit that Sissi looked absolutely stunning! He glanced over toward Odd and saw that his nerves seemed to have disappeared because he was grinning like an idiot at the sight of his bride, just like Ulrich said he would. Soon enough though, everyone was in place and the ceremony was ready to begin.

Due to the service being a Catholic mass, half of the wedding was performed in Latin, so almost no one knew much of what was being said (except Yumi, being a linguist...)! Eventually though, the young couple had taken their vows.

"By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you: man and wife!" The priest said excitedly. "You may kiss the bride!"

"Wait a second!" Shouted one of Odd's sisters (Louise...?) as she was walking up to the newly married couple with a purple step-stool she had somehow gotten from somewhere. She placed it in front of her brother and flashed him a thumbs up and a wink. There was stifled laughter throughout the church and Odd, Sissi, and the priest stared with mouths agape as the bridesmaid returned to her place. The newlyweds looked back to each other for a moment, then Odd shrugged and got on top of the stool, greatly reducing the height difference between himself and his bride, and causing another short outburst of laughter from those gathered. The priest cleared his throat to get everyone's attention again.

"If there aren't any further interruptions," he glared at Odd's sisters who were barely reigning in their giggles, "you may now kiss the bride!"

The couple kissed and everybody cheered and clapped. A few seconds later Odd tried to break the kiss, but Sissi took his face in her hands and pulled him back for another one, eliciting another round of chuckling from the crowd! When they finally broke away from one another, they held their hands up like they just won a contest, both of them grinning widely while a chorus of cheers broke out. Without another word, Sissi scooped her small husband into her arms right off the stool, and started carrying him back up the aisle, the both of them laughing and smiling the whole way!

After dinner at the reception, everyone in the room quieted down to the sound of Yumi tapping her glass with a spoon.

"Hello everyone, I'm Sissi's matron of honor, Yumi Stern, and I've got a few things to say." She took a long look around the crowd for a little bit of added theatrics before turning to the newlywed couple with an amused smirk. "I hope you don't mind me airing out a little bit of dirty laundry..." Sissi snorted out a laugh.

"Of course not! I did at your wedding!" Yumi snickered, remembering her friend's toast at her wedding. Sissi had gotten the entire room howling with laughter with an entire stand-up routine about the role she played in getting her and Ulrich talking again while they were broke up.

"Alright then! I first met Sissi almost ten years ago. Sure, I'd seen her in passing before that, but she was a grade lower than me so we'd never had any reason to talk. The day we met was the day after her and Odd met for the first time. For those of you who didn't know us back then, it wasn't pretty... for the next couple of years, there were five of us that were pretty much inseparable: Jeremy, Odd, Ulrich, me, and Aelita came about a year later." Yumi gestured to each person as she was mentioning them. "You might have noticed that Sissi was not one of the five. Rather, we were often at odds with each other, especially her and me, and her and Odd. Her and me because we had eyes for the same guy..." Yumi gestured back to Ulrich, "the guy I ended up marrying!" She leered at the bride teasingly. "No hard feelings, right?" Sissi said nothing and glared at her matron of honor. Yumi's smile faded and she gulped as the two of them stared at each other in silence. Several awkward seconds later Sissi laughed loudly and slung her arm around her husband, pulling him into her side

"Yumi, you can have him! If you two hadn't started seeing each other I don't think I'd have ever ended up with this little cutie!" There was a ripple of laughter throughout the reception hall and Sissi took a moment to kiss her new husband. Yumi scowled at her for a second before laughing along with the crowd while shaking her head for being fooled so easily.

"Odd, on the other hand," Yumi said when the the laughter died down, "he just seemed to enjoy tormenting her!"

"Don't sugarcoat it Yumi, I was a spoiled brat who deserved it!" Sissi interrupted with a giggle. A few laughs were heard again.

"I was trying to be nice! Anyway, even I don't know the whole story as to why, but at some point the two of them started being nicer to each other and over the next couple months they's somehow became best friends. It was around that time I'd been," Yumi put her fingers up to make air-quotes, "'persuaded' to invite Sissi to a pre-Christmas break sleepover that the five of us were going to be having at my place. I was convinced that it was going to be a mistake..." Yumi smiled at the bride. "But I couldn't have been more wrong. That was the night I saw the first signs that Odd and Sissi were starting to fall in love, even if they weren't ready to take that step yet. Later that same night she and I had a very revealing heart to heart and became friends ourselves. In the following months, the five of us became the six of us. Since then, we've only grown closer, and you can see that the same is even more true for them!" Yumi picked up and raised the glass of wine that was in front of her and smiled. "You guys are two of my best friends. May you have many long years of happiness together. To Odd and Sissi!" There was a round of cheers as everyone toasted the newlyweds, and when the room quieted again, Ulrich stood up.

"So... I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to top that!" There was a low rumble of laughter while Ulrich turned to Yumi. "And I'm not just saying that because you're my wife!" The laughter got louder but only for a minute. "Anyway, here goes! Odd was my roommate at Kadic Academy. The first time I met him, he told me that by the end of the day I wasn't going to be able to do without him. While I thought he was just really annoying, I'll be darned if that isn't exactly what happened!" The large man gestured to Sissi. "You were there too." The dark haired woman looked confused until Odd whispered into her ear. Her brow furrowed and her eyes darted back and forth for a second as she appeared to be sifting through her recovered memories until she nodded slightly when she must have found the right one. "While he never stopped being annoying..." Ulrich leered at his best friend, but a moment later his expression softened, "he turned out to be a very good friend that could absolutely be counted on when you needed him." He paused and looked around the room for a moment before continuing.

"A couple years later, just after I started dating Yumi he started leaving in the evenings. I asked him about it, but he would only ever say that he was visiting a friend. Most of the time I didn't mind because it gave me time to privately talk to my then-new girlfriend! A few weeks later, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to follow him. When I ended up seeing him and Sissi hugging before they went into her room to hang out, I was shocked! After all, as my wife mentioned earlier they had been at each other's throats for years! Like an idiot I barged in demanding to know what was going on... turns out they were just innocently talking and joking like the good friends that they'd become, and they were rightfully pretty annoyed at me. Afterwards I felt awful, and that guilt may have played a significant part in me 'persuading' Yumi to invite her to that sleepover that she mentioned earlier!" There was a light ripple of chuckling before Ulrich took a deep breath and cracked a wide grin and continued.

"Yumi did a good job of telling the rest of the story so I'm just going to finish with this," he turned toward the couple dramatically, "after you have kids, either leave the door open or keep it down whenever you have Chinese food. You wouldn't want them getting the wrong impression!" After a moment Jeremy and Aelita burst out into laughter when they realized what he meant, Odd and Sissi did the same about a second later while the rest of the room just stared at the hysterical young adults in confusion. Without even waiting for his friends to stop laughing, Ulrich raised a glass. "To the happy couple!"

Once dinner and the toasts were finished, Odd and Sissi had their 'first dances,' and afterwards the dance floor was opened up to everyone. While Jeremy and Aelita mostly stayed with each other, there were a few times that Jeremy danced with Yumi or Sissi, and sometimes Aelita danced with Ulrich or Odd. They only did fast dances with the others though. Aelita had discovered that she loved resting her head on Jeremy's chest while swaying back and forth to slow songs at Ulrich and Yumi's wedding. She took advantage of every opportunity to do so at this wedding.

Later on that evening, Odd and Sissi were saying their goodbyes and they saved Jeremy, Aelita, Ulrich, and Yumi for last.

"Congratulations you two!" Exclaimed Yumi while giving the newlyweds both a hug.

"Yeah, we are very happy for you," added Aelita when it was her turn, hugging both of them in turn.

"Good luck, you two. It's still funny to sometimes think about how much you two couldn't stand each other!" Remarked Ulrich while giving Odd a handshake/bro-hug, causing Sissi to laugh.

"I know right!" She exclaimed.

"Best of luck," said Jeremy, "and we'll see you guys at the reunion!" With the reminder that it was going to be several months until they saw each other again, Sissi wrapped Jeremy in tight hug, and pulled Aelita in with it! Odd and Aelita hugged again after.

"See you later Einsteins!" Odd said while giving Jeremy a playful and affectionate punch in the arm. The short blond and his wife turned to each other with matching gleams in their eyes. "Right now theres something we need to go do!" As they turned and left Odd quietly said "now you don't have to worry about figuring out where to hide the body." Sissi snorted and laughed, as the other four young adults watched in confusion at what seemed to be an inside joke.

After the wedding, Jeremy and Aelita rode back to Ulrich and Yumi's apartment with them and were just crawling into bed.

"I hope our wedding is just as happy as Odd and Sissi's," said Aelita, snuggling under the covers. Jeremy grinned.

"It'll be happier..." he replied. Aelita looked over to her fiancé. "Because it'll be ours." She broke out her own wide smile for a moment, but then it fell and she sighed.

"Yeah, but tomorrow it's back to Boston, and back to the grind the next day..." Jeremy sighed as well.

"Yeah... Goodnight, Aelita."

"Goodnight, Jeremy."

The exhaustion of the day had the two of them out cold almost immediately.

A/N: Since it'd been a while since I did any major OxSi stuff, I kinda wanted to take some extra time and effort on their wedding. I also wanted to make it both heartfelt and funny, and really I hope you liked it. Just in case you were wondering why Sissi remembered the first XANA attack, Jeremy and Aelita were able to recover her memories near the end of my story Keeping in Touch.

Also... the intro chapters are done, on to the main story (I know... 6 chapters for an intro!?)! Writing these last chapters has really given me time to get my thoughts on this story a bit more organized.