A Price to Pay

by Brother of Serpens

I suck at reviews, so I'll say this instead: I'm the brother of penname "Draco Serpens", and this is my first fanfic. It's a JxA fic, but at the moment the rating is just in case things get a little messy later.

Legal Disclaimer: I know some of you may be shocked by this, but I don't own Outlaw Star. If I did, there would have been more of a romance between Aisha and Jim, the series would have been longer, and I would be a lot richer than I am now. The last of which honestly wouldn't take all that much to do. Now that I've said the painfully obvious, on to what you all came here for - the story. (I hope... Nobody actually opens fanfictions just for the entertainment value of some disclaimers, do they?)

Chapter 1= A Price to Pay

by 'Brother of Serpens' (and yes, that is a reference to the fan-author penname 'Draco Serpens'... if you know who that is...)

//Episode Intro//

Bounty hunting. A career of tracking down and killing or capturing the most dangerous prey in the universe.

They say that eventually luck runs out, strategies fail, and the tables turn. They say that if you play with fire you WILL get burned. They say the hunter easily becomes the hunted.

Bounty hunters know all this, yet they still hunt one bounty after another. Why?

Some do it for the thrill, some for the money, and some for revenge. A few do it to protect and be near loved ones who also do it.

Maybe it is their destiny to live short, frantic lives full of tension, danger, fighting- and adventure and excitement. Regardless of the reason or the sayings, bounty hunters all share one thing in common - a readiness to pay the price for their lifestyle.

Or so the bounty hunters say...

//End Intro.//

As Suzuka used the grappler arm's sword-weapon to knock an incoming missile into another one of their attackers, Jim felt less impressed than he had the first time she managed to do that. He was too busy sending off anti-missiles to admire Suzuka's handiwork.

The Outlaw Star and its crew were in a tight spot, caught in an ambush of 10 grappler ships to their one, though arguably their one was the most advanced grappler in the universe. The fact that their opponents were no lightweight lackey pirates didn't do much for them either.

As the Outlaw Star reached close combat range with one of the five remaining pirate grappler ships, Aisha used the fist of her grappler arm to smash in the "face" of the pirate's ship.

"How much left?" Gene asked.

"Anti-missiles... 5 percent. Missiles... 15 left." Jim didn't look away from his target. He couldn't afford to miss. As he let of two of their missiles at the pirate in his sights, he heard Gene yell his name.

The bridge shook as a cluster of missiles struck the upper-left section of the Outlaw Star, away from the pirate ship Jim had been focused on.

"Gene, the external communications array has been damaged by that explosion." Gilliam reported.

"Great, Jim! Now-" Gene started.

"Less talk. More fight." Suzuka said.

Gene and Jim refocused on the fight before them. Jim's missile attack had been successful, and their list of operational enemy ships to deal with was narrowed to three. The crew was beginning to feel like they would all pull out of this one with little more than a few repairs on the Outlaw Star to worry about.

A bright ball of white light shot out of the missile bay of the pirate ship farthest away. Gene immediately had the ship take evasive action. He would have been satisfied with that, but he noticed that the missile had altered course to follow them. Before he could evade further, Jim let loose the remaining anti-missiles. A few hit dead on and detonated together, detonating the missile and destroying the enemy grappler within the blast radius of it.

The pirate grappler ship that had fired the missile turned and fled, having emptied all its ammo. The Outlaw Star now stood one-to-one with the last remaining pirate grappler.

The kind of odds Gene loved.

Jim fired all their remaining missiles at the last grappler. It quickly countered with anti-missiles, and the Outlaw Star flew through the smokescreen of debris to attack the pirates.

The whole ship jerked to a violent stop as the pirates struck with a mace-like grappler weapon from below- crushing the engines. Suzuka was thrown forward so hard that when she hit the front of the bridge there was a cracking noise and then a sound thud as she fell to the floor, limp.

The crew responded without thought. Gene unloaded everything they had left in their guns and Aisha pounded on the pirates from above. Jim switched Suzuka's arm over to his controls and began wielding the grappler sword-weapon.

Then, in a show of teamwork from their years of experience working together, Aisha grabbed one of the grappler arms of the opponent and pulled up on it while Jim brought the sword down the middle of their enemy from engines to bridge. Gene's gunfire ignited the escaping fuel, and in an instant the enemy grappler exploded violently as the fire reached the inside of its destabilizing engine cores.

Lacking any propulsion systems to keep their stability, The Outlaw Star was hurled into a free-spin away from the explosion and into the vast emptiness of space.

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Nearly two hours later, Jim's calculations and Melfina's controlled bursts of air from small ports in the ship brought the spinning to a stop. The Outlaw Star was still drifting, but now certain members of the crew could look out the windows of the Outlaw Star without feeling the urge to run to the toilet and throw up.

On a more important note, Jim could get on a space suit and take a look at the external communication array to determine if he could fix it with what parts the Outlaw Star could spare.

It wasn't long after the spinning stopped that Aisha found Jim laying on his back, his head, chest, and arms hidden in the panel he had removed from the wall near his room's door to get a chip from behind some wires and pipes in there.

In the three years since the Galactic Leyline, Aisha had changed little in appearance, one C'tarl C'tarl year being nine Terran years long and all, but Jim's growth spurts had raised him to just an inch under Gene, and with only a little less muscle. His face even sported some peach fuzz, which he would have shaved off - if it hadn't been for him finding out that Fred Lou 'preferred' clean-shaven guys more. He didn't yet have Gene's best and newest defense against Fred's advances - his recent marriage to Melfina.

At that moment, both Aisha and Jim were thinking about being married to someone - well, Jim was on more of a "daydreaming about being married" approach. Jim dreamed of no more Fred-based worries, settling on a planet with his wife, having kids, making a less dangerous living as a repairman, programmer, or private eye without worrying about bounties, pirates, or dying in space, and then he felt Aisha's presence over him, heard her say something he didn't quite make out.

Aisha wondered over whether she'd ever find a man, what qualities he'd have to have, where they would live, what spending their life together would be like, what their children would be like, and then she saw Jimmy laying there working.

As Aisha stood, watching Jim as he worked, the realization gradually dawned on her that all of the qualities she wanted in a man were right there in front of her. Hard-working, honest, loyal, caring, intelligent, a good listener, a close friend, trustworthy, pure, and strong of heart. "Cute, too," she admitted to herself out loud.

Jim's head pulled down, and his hand came out with the chip in it, but his eyes were on Aisha, not it. He lay there for several minutes trying to decipher the look she was looking at him with, a look he knew he had seen somewhere else on another girl's face. Not quite being able to place it, he decided to bring her out of her daze. "Hey, Aisha. Wong for your thoughts?"

Aisha jumped nearly to the ceiling at the mention of her name, having been lost in a world of daydreaming about her and Jimmy sitting on a tree limb behind her old house, sharing intimate secrets with each other, sometimes kissing, hugging, rubbing the other's back, or just leaning against each other side by side, with her head laying on his shoulder, always doing these things when the other person needed it most for comfort, encouragement, and security. It clashed with her teenage dates with male C'tarl C'tarl who were really wanting only one thing, but that was just how Jimmy was - he was different. He was special, her 'special someone' - and now she just had to figure out how to make him see her that way, too.

Back in present reality, Aisha quickly realized that telling Jimmy her feelings straight out might not be best right then, so she went for another way. Yawning and stretching, she leaned against the wall opposite where Jimmy was working. "What you doing?" she used her face to mask her emotions, avoiding gazing into Jimmy's eyes.

"Just getting a spare power regulator chip to use on my repairs of the comm array. Looks like I'll be the only one going out there, since Gene's arm broke from a stress fracture about an hour ago," Jim said, using an explanatory tone.

"Gene's arm broke?"

"Yeah. When the ship got hit and Suzuka went flying, all his weight was being held in place by his left arm. He didn't break it then, but it sure must have weakened it. About an hour ago he was moving heavy boxes in the cargo hold to balance our weight from side to side, and the stress broke his left arm," Jim said, still explaining.

Too bad for Gene. This isn't the funnest thing, but it is with Jim... Aisha thought before speaking. "Then I'll go out there with you."

**********************************************************************************

As he watched Aisha turn and walk off muttering to herself, "Now where are the spacesuits at?", Jim felt like sighing. He knew calling her back to tell her he didn't need help with this would be pointless - Aisha always managed to get her way with him, which he could never figure out. He wondered, though, why Aisha would volunteer to work on something mechanical and electronic - it just wasn't something he thought she would find fun.

She's usually content to leave the engineering and repairs to Gene or me or both of us. I wonder what's really up. Not that he wouldn't enjoy her being there - he always had, which was another thing he never could figure out.

Jim sighed, then put the chip inside another empty compartment on his space tool belt and sealed it shut. As he got up to go ahead and suit up, he said out loud to himself, "No wonder Gwen Khan asked to understand the mysteries of the universe. I've got only a few mysteries of my own to solve, and they're driving me crazy."

**********************************************************************************

"Jimmy…"

Jim looked over at Aisha, whose hands were resting on the stomach of her space suit as she looked down at them and moved her weight from one foot to the other slowly.

"Hmmm?"

"… does this suit make me look fat?" Aisha looked earnestly at Jim as she asked.

"… no, Aisha. Even if it did, I wouldn't pay it any mind. You're thin, and even if you weren't, you'd be you," Jim said. He gave her a quizzical glance, but it was met with a smile that went well with the look Aisha had given him in the hallway.

"Thank you," Aisha said in a voice softer than any Jim had ever heard her use before.

The tone made Jim blush, but he still couldn't place the feeling it was giving him. Instead of trying to figure out what it was, he figured he'd better get back to what he knew and what he needed to do - fixing stuff. He put his helmet on, and then, remembering his manners, told Aisha she was welcome as soon as they had both turned on their inter-communication links.

Before he threw the switch that would open the door to deep space, Jim took a few deep breaths and let them out. Ever since the time - a year and a half ago, he thought it was - he had to go out and defuse a bomb attached to the side of the ship while they were in deep space, he got all sweaty and cold every time he 'suited up.' Having prepared himself for the unneeded rush of adrenaline, Jim reached out to throw the switch.

"JIM!" Gene shouted over the inter-comm link.

"AHHHH!" Jim's heart pounded itself straight into his esophagus. The scream, however, had come from the sensitive-eared Aisha, who immediately moved from surprised and pained to very perturbed.

"Gene! I'm coming up there right now. Don't you know how much that hurts my ears? Insensitive baka!" Aisha about snarled the words through her end of the link. She looked at Jim and immediately noticed his face was quite flushed. "And as for how you startled Jimmy, I'll give you a reason to not do that again."

Jim looked at her with an eyebrow raised more than a little. She had never been that defensive of him, not over something so relatively small. The day was just full of firsts, as far as he was concerned.

"I NEED YOU BOTH ON THE BRIDGE! NOW!" Gene continued shouting, seemingly oblivious to Aisha's warnings.

Aisha, now more than perturbed, began to dash for the bridge. "This had better be good," was all she snarled.

Jim walked slowly behind her until his heart calmed down and his chest stopped hurting, then he picked up his pace. Of course, Aisha beat him there.

**********************************************************************************

The first thing that caught Aisha's attention when she got to the bridge was the several bright, flashing lights on Gene's piloting console. Curiosity immediately overwhelmed her desire for avenging her ears.

"What's going on here?" she asked in her usual loud, demanding tone.

"Aisha! Come here," was all Gene said.

While Aisha didn't like being ordered around, least of all by Gene, she figured it was an emergency and let it slide. In a second she was standing next to Gene.

"We're going to crash," was the first thing he said when she came over to him.

"WHAT!" Aisha's scream grated on Gene's ears.

"It'll be about fifteen minutes before we drift into the outer atmosphere and are pulled into the gravity well," Gilliam informed them. "After that, it will be impossible to launch any of the escape pods due to the heat shields on them preventing firing off while active."

"Where are the escape pods?" Gene asked.

"You don't know?" Aisha said, a bit stunned.

"I didn't figure we would ever use them."

"Well, then, I'll tell you. We got three. First, there's the one by the engines. Another on the left side, and the third is hidden in the topside," Aisha said, using her lecturing voice.

"The one on the left side has a short caused by a power surge that followed the destruction of external long-range communications equipment. The one near the engines is completely crushed. The hidden escape ship is being supplied as we speak, but there would seem to be a problem, Gene," Gilliam addressed his captain.

"What?" Gene and Aisha asked at the same time.

"The escape ship was designed for an absolute maximum of two adults. It will be insufficient to save the entire crew."

For a moment, the bridge was so quiet that Aisha could hear the hum of electricity in the rails the Gilliam-bot was hanging from.

"Gene, what's going on?" Jim asked as he finally made it to the bridge.

Jim was more surprised than ever when he saw Gene turn around, his eyes letting tears fall, yet with more courage and determination than the blonde-haired genius had ever seen before.

**********************************************************************************

So what do you think? It's my first OLS fic, and my first fanfic ever. I love Jim and Aisha stories, and I decided my first fic should be about them, you know? However, I am seriously considering doing, just for fun and laughs, a series of stories on the most unlikely and underused OLS pairings I can think up stories for. Tell me what you think of that idea, if you want to.

By the way, for those who are waiting on my sibling, penname of "Draco Serpens", to put out the next chapter of Outlaw Star: Drakeem Sraconid of the Dragon, Serpens asked me to ask you to be patient. My sibling's had to deal with writer's block, surgery recovery, work, finals, and the like (though not in that order) since the release of the third chapter of the afore-mentioned piece. In addition, Serpens has been helping me to make this since I got the idea for it but have difficulty with writing the actual stories. Though I come up with excellent ideas and plot outlines, according to Serpens.

If you've got any advice for me - excluding anything completely unrelated to this fic or others I write in the future - please, PLEASE tell me (by reviewing, of course). If you want to tell me my piece is good so far or it stinks like an overused toilet plunger from a men's public restroom, feel free to do so by reviewing. Any review will be much appreciated. Please review. Did I say it enough? Good.

Enjoy as many fics as you can, especially the ones you write. Goodbye for now. Hopefully Serpens and I will have our next chapters done soon, but if we don't, know that we're trying to get them done well. Oh, and Ansem Revived, Serpens says "Trying to come up with a detailed review for you, but I want you to know that I like what I've read from both Part I and II of your piece."