Stranded

Chapter One

Sylviana cursed her rotten luck. She was in the middle of nowhere, on a backwater planet, and, somewhere on that planet, Harlock the space pirate had also crash-landed.

"I don't believe this." Sylviana grumbled, for the thousandth time that day, as she attempted to render repairs to her damaged ship. After an hour of trying, she sighed and threw her tools aside. There was no saving her ship; it was now scrap metal.

"You know, you should consider yourself lucky. You walked away from that unharmed." A male voice said, from behind her. Sylviana whirled around, guns held at ready. There stood Harlock, giving her an extremely annoying, patronizing look. A patronizing look that had a tinge of humor in it.

"Don't look at me like that, pirate!" Sylviana demanded.

"Then how should I look at you?" Harlock asked, not bothering to hide his amusement at the obviously miffed huntress.

"Shut up, or I'll kill you where you stand." Sylviana threatened, angry that he was not taking her seriously. He smirked, and took a step closer.

"Don't move!" Sylviana shouted, firing a shot that barely missed the pirate's head. He arched an eyebrow.

"Good shot, but it still missed." Harlock said, as he walked past her and took a good look at her ship.

"Well, that settles it. This ship is a goner. Not even Tochiro could make this machine fly again. Nor mine, for that matter." Harlock mused, as he ran his gloved hand along one of the twisted wings of the crumpled space fighter.

"You're ship is that bad a shape too?" Sylviana asked. Harlock sighed and nodded.

"One thing's certain, we're not going anywhere for a while. Does your ship have a survival pack?" Harlock asked, as he looked at Sylviana.

"Yeah. I got it out right after I crashed. I also got the tool kit out, for what good it did me." Sylviana replied, bitterly, forgetting for a moment who she was talking to.

"Then you should be all right." Harlock said, as he started to depart.

"Wait, where are you going?" Sylviana asked, suddenly coming to herself.

"Back to my campsite. I'm trying to set up a distress beacon." Harlock replied, as he looked over his shoulder at her. As he started to walk in the direction he'd come, he paused and looked back again.

"Well? Are you coming or not?" Harlock asked.

"Why should I go with you?" Sylviana asked, stubbornly.

"This isn't a very safe place to camp alone. Neither of us really knows what's out there, or whether or not they eat people, or worse. I would rather not wake up in the morning and come here to find your remains scattered all over this clearing." Harlock said, quietly, his usual seriousness settling back onto his features again. He watched as uncertainty crossed the huntress' face, then she grumbled a curse under breath and stepped towards him, her face a mix of irritation and something else.

"Okay, I'll come with you, just don't try anything." Sylviana threatened.

"I'm not Tochiro, so you don't have to worry." Harlock replied, dryly. Sylviana felt her face flush as she remembered the day Tochiro had sliced the front of her dress open in the bar.

"You're blushing, huntress." Harlock commented, quietly. This got an immediate response.

"I am not!" Sylviana snapped.

"Then why is your face red?" Harlock asked, his expression deadpan.

"None of your business!" Sylviana retorted, as she shouldered her pack and stomped past Harlock, still blushing as she did so.

"Wrong way, Huntress." Harlock called, after her.

"My name is Sylviana!" Sylviana shouted.

"Okay, okay, Sylviana. Though you're still going the wrong way." Harlock said, sighing as the stubborn huntress stomped back into view.

"Lead the way then, pirate." Sylviana growled, hating having to look to a man for anything.

"Sure………………just one thing though, my name is Harlock. I would appreciate it if you showed me some common courtesy by calling me by name, instead of calling me 'pirate' all the time." Harlock said, as he started leading the way.

"Whatever." Sylviana grumbled, sulkily. The walk to Harlock's campsite was a surprisingly short distance away from where Sylviana's ship had crashed.

"This is only temporary." Sylviana snapped.

"Of course." Harlock replied, his patience surprising even the belligerent Sylviana. As the afternoon waned into evening, Sylviana could see that the space pirate was working his fingers to the bone, trying to get the distress beacon to work. She quirked up an eyebrow when the beacon sparked and he cursed softly in German.

"Having trouble, Harlock?" Sylviana asked, with a little amusement in her voice.

"No more than usual. Dammit, it would take a technological genius to put this thing together. Why the hell Tochiro didn't put an instruction manual in here with this is beyond me." Harlock grumbled, as the beacon once again shorted out, burning his fingers again.

"Sounds like the strange little man with the equally strange laugh is a bit of a scatterbrain as well." Sylviana quipped, as Harlock threw his tools down and walked away from the beacon to sit by the fire he'd made.

"Seems that way. Care for anything to eat?" Harlock asked, changing the subject to get away from his irritation.

"No thanks." Sylviana replied. Harlock shrugged, then got some of his rations out, tore a food packet open, and started eating. Comfortable silence descended onto the camp, and, as Sylviana watched, Harlock settled his back against a tree and closed his eyes. After a while, his breathing evened out, and Sylviana knew that he'd fallen asleep.

"He fell asleep?! And after he told me how dangerous this world is?! " Sylviana thought, as she edged closer to the sleeping space pirate. Then she saw how tired and drawn his face looked.

"He looks exhausted. I wonder why he looks so tired? We haven't been here longer than a day, so he shouldn't look like this unless……………he spent the whole day searching for me? Was he actually worried about me?" Sylviana wondered, as she gazed at the peaceful face of the most feared space pirate in the Sea of Stars. She was starting to see the ruffian in a different light. With a sigh of resignation, she went, grabbed one of the blankets from Harlock's pack, and draped it over him. Then she went back to her own belongings, retrieved a bedroll, then prepared to go to sleep as well. Yet, even as she lay there, she stared at Harlock, with some disbelief and confusion on her face. What was he thinking? How could he trust someone, who had tried to kill him in the past, by sleeping within distance of a single shot? She was stumped.

"I'll think more on this in the morning." Sylviana thought, as she then turned over and looked away from the slumbering pirate, going to sleep with all her questions still circling around in her mind.