I don't know if anyone else headcanons that Yama got the same dumb immortality as Harlock during his little angsting expedition on Earth, but my pals and I headcanon that, so that's what's going on here. Also, I got a question on the last chapter asking what the pairing was (maybe they meant where is the pairing)? I should hope this answers that question.

So I hope everything is okay and you like it and stuff.


Time stopped. At least, it appeared to while we held our breaths. In that instant, no turrets fired. No fingers bashed out commands on consoles. The bridge held complete silence. It wasn't until I blinked that I realized time still moved. It was the fighters outside that had frozen. All at once their engines stopped, leaving them to drift as harmless space debris.

In some ways, it felt like a logical conclusion. Their tight formations fell to pieces a few minutes before. They instead meandered in uneven groups, so easy to pick off we had their hundred down to a dozen. And now, the stragglers just…stopped.

"Okay," Kei said at length, eyes flashing from one dead fighter to the next. As the first sound from the silence, her voice acted like a starting gun. One fighter erupted in a fiery blaze, the nearest to it following its course of self-destruction. They set off a chain reaction, each explosion silent in the void of space, but all as bright and brilliant as a fireworks display.

"Okay," Kei said again, her voice dripping with irritation.

I could relate. "How's the damage?" I asked.

Yattaran hissed as he ran his hand against his jaw. "Even with the dark matter generator, we won't be able to warp for a few days at least. Cheap as that attack was, trying to warp with those holes in our hull will tear us apart."

My glove strained against my grip on the wheel, but I kept my face even. "Every able man should assist with repairs. For now we will set cruising speed. Activate the dark matter generator so we can begin repairs."

This plan of Gaia's, at least what I could make of it, made no sense. Even with our warp ability gone for a few days, a follow-up attack would not be enough to take down the Arcadia. Gaia would be stuck in an endless cycle of trying to send out ships fast enough to beat the speed of our repairs. Besides, they tried a similar tactic thirty years ago. Or was it forty? Either way, it didn't work, and that attack at least had the decency to not waste a hundred cosmo fighters.

While the men grumbled about having to assist with repairs and I considered how spoiled they were, Kei snapped at Yama through her headset. "Hey! Yama! You answer me right now, you asshole." I turned to find her brow pinched as she gnawed her lip. She toed the line of worry beneath her mask of irritation. "If you're just hiding so you don't have to help with repairs, I will track you down," she hissed.

That didn't sound like Yama, but not answering wasn't like Yama either. Maybe I needed to be worried, but I wasn't sure how we could lose Yama in the halls of the ship.

As the door slid open behind us, Kei spun with fire in her eyes. "There you-" The fury vanished in a blink. I turned to find one of the other gunners standing in the doorframe instead. Kei's anger must have startled him, as he stared wide-eyed our way.

"Yes?" I prompted when it was clear no one would speak otherwise.

"Uh." The gunner scratched at the back of his neck. I had a feeling I wouldn't like this report. "So there's a dead woman in the main hall. We figure she must have snuck in on one of those fighters that hit us. Yama was there too, just bleeding all over the place, but we're moving him to the infirmary."

Before the gunner finished, I started his way. "How is he?" I asked as he stepped back to make way for me.

"He'll make it just fine. Lost a lot of blood, so he was a little delirious when we found him. Took him a minute to realize we weren't the enemy. Looked like a hell of a fight."

Yama wasn't the type to drag out a fight. He still cringed every time he had to shoot someone with anything but a turret, so finding the woman dead from a stab wound caught me off guard. I wondered if that had more to do with Yama being delirious than the blood loss. Still, smears and droplets of it stained the floor, while the woman's shirt shone wet around the fatal stab wound, the only scratch on her.

"Looks like she was in a protective pod in the first fighter that hit us," one of the men explained as I stepped closer to her. A few gunners and engineers lingered around the scene out of morbid curiosity. "That band around her head must have been what controlled 'em all, unless there's more Gaia soldiers hiding around here."

"No," I realized. "The self-destruct signal must have been linked to her brain waves. Yama said the fighters were all controlled by one person. Have we scanned for her identity?"

"Of course." The man shrugged. "But it looks like Gaia wiped any information on her. This was definitely made to be a one-way mission."

"But Yama knew her," I said. "We can ask him."

"Good luck with that," another man snorted. "As soon as we dropped him off in the infirmary, the doctor kicked us all out and wouldn't let us ask any more questions. You know how he gets when he has a patient. Besides, I think the kid is knocked on his ass with one of those horse tranquilizers the doc uses."

"Well, we need to take care of the body anyway," I said, hiding a sigh.

I always found the clean-up worse than the killing itself, and this time had the added aspect of Yama's blood all across the hall. By the time I poked my head into the infirmary, the doctor was back to drowning himself in sake.

"Kid's asleep," he said before I could ask.

"How were his wounds?"

"Deep. Ugly. Must have hurt like hell, but he'll recover. If it weren't for the dark matter infecting him, there would be some permanent damage to his hand. You bastards, exposing yourself to all that dark matter." He scoffed, shaking his head. "Anyway, he's in one of the beds if you want to go wait for him to wake up."

I nodded to assure him I wouldn't try to wake Yama. He didn't need to remind me. I learned my lesson after the last time he hit me with a tranquilizer for bothering a patient.

In the next room, Yama slept on his side, a puddle of drool forming on his pillow. Though he didn't usually snore, his breath rattled like a chainsaw. He held his right hand close to his chest, wrapped in restrictive bandages. Any other damage was hidden under one of the paper-thin infirmary blankets. I pulled up a chair and waited.

A snort alerted me to Yama's consciousness not fifteen minutes later. "I'm cold," he slurred like a drunk as he peeled his eyes open. Raising his head, he smeared the drool across his cheek with the back of his bandaged hand. "S'cold," he repeated. If his bare shoulders were any indication, he wasn't wearing much, if anything, under that blanket. Surgery meant bare skin against a metal slab as icy as death, so of course he was cold.

Standing from my chair, I walked to the cabinet for another blanket. "Are you conscious enough to explain what happened and who that woman was?" I asked. He answered with a noncommittal hum. Whatever drug the doctor gave him was still coursing through his system. Every attempt to rub his eye missed the mark, his hand lolling all over his face instead.

"How are you feeling?" I asked in an attempt to ease him into reality.

"Like I got stabbed," he huffed. Even when I placed the second blanket over him, he pouted like a spoiled child. "Cold."

"You'll warm up in a bit. Can you tell me who that woman was?"

His eye wandered from me to the blanket then back again. With that same pout, he reached unsteady arms up toward me. "Come here," he said.

"We're in the infirmary, Yama." No one else was around for the moment, but I didn't want Yama drooling on me when someone did come in. "Just tell me what you know, and then you can get back to sleep."

This only made him huff through his nose like an angry bull. He grabbed at my shirt, tugging. "I'll tell you if you come here."

I was left with no choice. At least I did learn that he was, in-fact, not wearing anything. I guessed the wound on his leg bled through his boxers, and the doctor just didn't feel like trying to roll him into a gown.

Yama curled up at my side, using my chest as his pillow. The two of us fit on the bed with no room to spare, but he looked content with the cramped quarters. "Now," I said once the blankets were all settled back in place. "What can you tell me?"

"About what?" he asked as his eye slid closed.

"The woman who tried to kill you."

"Oh." He took a deep, slow breath. "Her name's Marina."

It was clear to see I was losing him. He would be out any second now, and trying to shake him awake wouldn't divert that for long. It also had the chance of earning me a tranquilizer. "Marina…?" I prompted.

"Oki," he murmured. "Marina Oki, rank two."

Once his breathing evened out, I slipped away and eased him down to keep from disturbing his sleep. His snore started up again as soon as his head hit the pillow. It would be a while before I could get any information from him, so I decided to kill some time, ignoring the doctor snickering at my back as I walked out.

A quick browse of the ship showed repairs coming along slowly but surely. Kei barked orders at anyone who tried to slack off, while our head mechanic threw wrenches at anyone who complained. I stayed out of their way.

The computer room was a few degrees warmer than usual as my friend whirred in anger. He did this every time an intruder managed to sneak in without him noticing, not that it happened often. I reminded him even he couldn't keep an eye on everything, especially during a battle, but the computer lights still buzzed in hues of red.

"Are you just upset about Yama?" I asked, my brows raised. Tochiro seemed to like Yama. Really, he liked every crewman, but he'd liked our traitor from the beginning. And if Tochiro liked someone, they had to have some merit to them, and they were worth saving from the bottom of a deadly canyon, even if I didn't believe it at first.

"He's fine," I said with a slight wave of my hand. "No need to overheat the ship. He's so out of it right now he can't feel any pain anyway."

The heat eased just enough to stop my clothes from sticking to my skin, but the lights still buzzed.

"I know I should have sent someone to check on him sooner," I sighed. "But our hands were full. Even Kei didn't realize something had gone wrong. He just stopped responding. He didn't ask for help."

I folded my arms as he scolded me again. Sometimes he acted more like a lecturing mom than a friend.

"I'll do better," I said. "I need to go check on him anyway."

It was an excuse to get away, but one that required me to return to the infirmary. At some point Yama had stopped snoring, but he gave a growl like a lazy dog as I neared his bed. "Awake?" I asked.

His eye opened halfway to glare at the ceiling. "Unfortunately," he grumbled. "Your spurs are loud." A slur still laced his syllables together, but he appeared more aware than before. When his gaze rolled to me, it focused in without wandering to the walls or floor.

"Feel like talking to me this time?" I asked as I returned to my chair.

His brows pinched. "This time?"

"You don't remember the first time you woke up?"

"No."

He didn't sound as though he wanted to be reminded, and I didn't feel like talking about that anyway, so I decided to move onto the matter at hand. "Who was that woman?" I felt like I'd asked the question a dozen times.

He heaved a sigh, running his good hand across his face. "Right-right. That was Marina Oki." He appeared to be cringing under the weight of his hand. "I don't know where to start with this. She was- uh…" He dragged his fingers down his cheek with another growl. "So you know I wasn't the best assassin."

I nodded. "Obviously." I was still very much alive.

"No," he hissed. "I mean, I wasn't the best of the bunch. I was the last pick. I barely made it to the team to begin with."

"Team?" I echoed. He made it sound like something for a sport.

"Not a team, exactly, but Gaia held trials for the assassins without telling us what it was or what job we'd be doing. Obviously, when planning a mission with a rat, you want as few people as possible to know. They ended up with seven of us, and we all trained against each other until they had us ordered from one to seven." He held his hands out like scales, gesturing to each degree. "One being the most likely to remain undercover and kill you, seven being the least. You really didn't know this?"

"No," I said. "I just knew you were an assassin the moment you showed up. It was obvious."

His hands dropped to his sides, and he stared at his lap with a tinge of pink warming his cheeks. "Just obvious to you," he muttered. "Anyway, I was rank seven. Marina was rank two. I trained with her, and she always beat me. Her assassination skills would have put her at one, but they factored in how well we would fit in as pirates too. She wasn't all that good at pretending to be a pirate, so she ended up on the planet Gaia calculated as the second most likely for you to stop on."

I blinked. "And you ended up on the seventh?"

With another soft sigh, he tugged at his bangs. "They didn't know where you might stop to get new crewmen. They only had a handful of guesses, and out of all of them, you picked the one they thought you wouldn't. That's why I figured you knew about the whole operation."

"It just happened to be the nearest inhabited planet without a military force," I said with a shrug.

"Of course." An invisible laugh left him as he shook his head. "I don't know why I expected anything different."

He started to tug at his bangs again, so I reached up to pet his hair down against the cowlicks. "So they sent Marina in as another attempt to kill me?" I asked as his hand fluttered away.

"They probably sent her because of that trick she could do with the fighters. She said her assignment was to kill the traitors. I wanted to take her in alive." His voice faded to a whisper. "I tried to, but…"

"An assassin should die rather than fail," I said.

"Victory," he murmured, leaning into my touch. "If not victory, then death." His hands trembled in his lap, and his eye shut tight against whatever thoughts assaulted him.

"You did what you had to," I said. "If she hadn't died, she would have killed you, and then I would have killed her anyway." I couldn't stop my voice from darkening. My chest tightened at the mere thought.

Despite his smile, he sighed again. "Give her more credit. I won on pure luck."

By the next day, any discomfort he felt was hidden or buried away. He sat at his position on the bridge with a cane leaning against his bad leg. The doctor didn't want him to move, but he soaked up more dark matter when near the generator. It continued to run as the holes in the hull mended, poisoning Yama's bones just as it healed him. He was either very lucky or unlucky his body adapted to it, instead of outright dying from full exposure like most. Now he was stuck like me, but he didn't seem to mind.

"Captain," Kei said, breaking the ease of the bridge. "There's a fighter headed our way."

A slew of different expressions turned toward her, none of which were pleased. "Just one?" Yama asked.

"Looks like it. Gaia class. Should we just go ahead and get rid of it?"

Other than Yama, the men grumbled in agreement with the idea. "No," I said over them. "Unless it gets too close, just leave it be."

Kei muttered something about how I was no fun as Yama breathed a sigh of relief. For another minute, silence held over all of us. Then Kei's console gave a beep.

"It wants to open a channel to us," she said, almost as a question.

I didn't see why not. "Go ahead," I said with a shrug.

The display on the overhead changed to show the cockpit of the lone fighter. Yama spat a startled curse, and I almost did the same. The only thing that stopped me was the pilot's blood-red eyes. Sharp lashes hung low over them as a smile tugged at her lips. Waves of hair the color of red clay fell around her and out of frame. But so much of her, from the shape of her face to the way she sat, was all so familiar.

"What are you doing here, Bainas?" Yama demanded. His voice wavered as he spoke again. "If you came to get the body, we already sent it out in a coffin."

Bainas chuckled. "No. I wouldn't use a fighter with so little fuel storage just to get a body. But if you feel like refilling this piece of junk, I would appreciate it." She leaned in, hands resting on her crossed knee. "I actually came here to duel."

Yama looked like he'd taken a blow to the head. "So when Marina said 'the others,' she was talking about the other assassins?" he asked in a daze. "Gaia is sending all the assassins here?"

Bainas shook her head. "Not all the assassins, Yama. Give me some credit. I'll be the last one. Like I said, Harlock," she turned to me, "I'm here to challenge you to a duel of swords. No tricks, no games, just a fight to the death - the good old-fashioned kind."

Her gaze never wavered as she stared me down. I stared right back, while the crew denied the challenge without waiting for my decision. Luckily, I didn't take orders from them.

"Alright," I said. "I accept your challenge."


Has anyone actually watched Ozma? I love Bainas. She is so precious.