Through the eyes of Alex and Elise.

"You did the right thing you know."

The soft voice was accompanied by a gentle hand placed on the shoulder of a tall, lanky man slouched in a chair of a small cafe. For once his brown eyes weren't gazing off in the distance at things he could only see, instead they were focused upon the back of a tall, slim woman with shoulder lenght hair who was slowly walking away from the table. Reluctantly he turned his attention to the owner of the voice.

He smiled sadly at the conventially pretty woman standing next to him, noting the worry in her warm, doe brown eyes. He patted her sun-kissed brown hand with his paler one. "I know, love. I know. It's just that I worry about her."

Without any fanfare, the slightly plump woman sat down in the recently vacated chair across from him. As was usual she hadn't bothered with appearance, content to wear just jeans and a t-shirt, her golden ringlets bound up into a ponytail. And as usual he thought she was absolutely lovely.

Elise laughed, "And you wouldn't be you if you didn't worry about her. Believe me, dear Alex, you're not the only one to worry about Lani. Or whatever her name is now. I still don't want to know."

Alex chuckled a little ruefully, "I'm not sure why you think you can't keep a secret, but I'll honor your wishes. It's so hard to just let her walk out of my life like that though. She's my sister in every way except blood."

He looked down at the mug of whatever drink he had ordered, it had long since cooled, but debated taking a sip anyway when his fiance spoke again.

"You know, Alex... you never did say how you and Lani met. I know you met at school, but that's about it."

Surprised he leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful expression upon his face. "Huh, you're right. I never really thought about it. Just seems that ever since we met you at Nagelring and you fell right in with us, that I forgot it never came up."

Deciding he wanted a fresh drink after all and knowing Elise would want one, Alex signaled a waiter before starting.

Without thinking about it he almost propped his feet up on the table until he remembered where they were and simply stretched his feet out under the table. "Well, our meeting was a good sign of how our friendship would go."

He took a sip of whatever he'd ordered, it tasted of mint and something else, some sort of tea, as usual such things didn't really make an impact on his life.

"It was a few weeks into our first year at the Tharkad School of Military Science, and needless to say pretty much everyone's favorite punching bag. The folks never could accept that I was never as athletic as my brothers, because they were graduates, meant I should be also."

They shared amused smiles, both families had long standing traditions of shipping their kids to the military, it was rare for one not to do well. Poor Alex being the typical favorite for the bullies to pick on due to being smaller, weaker and brighter was just a disaster waiting to happen, until Lani.

"Anyway, there I was getting the stuffing pummeled out of me as usual, then all of sudden, I wasn't. Even to this day I still don't know if it was a good idea to look up or not, but I did. Standing in front of me was a girl with a look that made me want to shrivel up and die rather than deal with her. And she wasn't even looking at me! Up until then I didn't really know what rage was, but that's what I saw in those eyes."

"She was smaller than the two jerks, hell, she was smaller than me, yet that didn't stop her. The short of the two she kicked in the shin, the other one... It makes me twitch, but she head butted him right in the balls."

Elise stared at him, she knew that Lani was decent at unarmed combat, but had no idea she was that good even at that age. Alex couldn't help himself and laughed.

"No, no, she's not some sort of martial arts master, she didn't even have training at that point. All that was going for her was anger and sheer good luck. The two jerks tried to get her in trouble, she did do an impressive amount of damage, but the school chose to discipline them instead of us due to the fact that other students complained, and just one of them was probably bigger than both of us put together."

"That's how I met Marlana Halas, she kept me from getting killed by punks, and I kept her from killing her mother as well as helping her with some of her lessons. When word spread we'd become best buddies, and she was taking the optional unarmed combat training, the bullies started looking for other targets. Big mistake on their part, as we both know, Lani hates those type of people."

He chuckled a bit from the memories. "She's still a little spitfire, but at least she's got that anger under control. At that time though, the control was a bit shaky. The number of times we got hauled up in front of the dean, fortunately he just lectured us for formality's sake. He never made any reports to her mother, but then again, he knew what she's like and didn't want to make things harder on Lani than they already were. Don't get me wrong, the instructors were tough, but at least they weren't insane."

"There was this one little bitch though, I can't remember her name, but I'm sure Lani has it somewhere in that diary of hers, or her memory. She doesn't forget who her enemies are, thankfully she doesn't forget her friends either. But that one girl, she took an instant dislike to both of us, I'm sure there was a reason, but again I don't remember why. Probably has to do with the fact that Lani was the better of the two."

He shrugged slightly and took another sip of his drink, and smiled as Elise reached out for his free hand. Their conversation turned to their research, yet neither had to mention that their thoughts were more on their friend and what trouble she may get into with her idea of joining a mercenary unit. The thought of Lani as a gun for hire was an image Alex had a hard time imaging, and prayed for his heart-sister's sake that the new commander was everything her father said him to be.

But if he wasn't... well Lani still had more friends than she knew in the LAAF, Alex and Elise weren't the least of them for all that they were more scientists than soldiers.