Has it really been 3 years? Time flies!

Told you all I'd get back to this one eventually!

'Don't open the door!' Harlock yelled at the girl as she ran towards it and reached out a hand.

'But there might be people trapped…'

He strode over to her and pulled her back ungently before she could open the door. 'Brave but not sensible. Never run towards a fire. Or open a door onto one. We've got a few minutes: That door's made of sea-seasoned oak. It'll hold.' He listened for a moment, pushed her back out of the way and pushed a chair under the door handle, then strode back to the window to check for an exit. The sash window opened easily when he pushed it up, and the alleyway beneath was less than a twenty foot drop. There was no sign of smoke or fire from below yet, or any panic in the street that he could hear. He pulled his head back in. 'Grab the sheets,' he told her. He pulled an old waterproofed sack out of the bottom of his trunk and began stuffing the contents into it.'

'Do we have time for your wardrobe?'

'Snippy, snippy… you sound just like my mother,' he muttered. A snort told him she'd heard. He shoved the bag out of the window and winced as it landed with a squelching thump in the muddy alley way. 'Give me those.' He took the sheets and ripped them down the middle, deftly and quickly tying them into a makeshift rope. 'Can you use a rope?'

'I can do almost anything if I try,' she replied pertly. At his unconvinced expression she shrugged, and slung the newly-cleaned rifle over her shoulder. 'I'm not bragging. I just have … a knack.' A muffled thump from outside the door made her jump. 'What…?'

'Someone just put their shoulder out I suspect. Come here.'

'What…?'

He tied the makeshift rope to a stanchion and tugged hard. 'Good job we're both skinny.' He tied one end around her waist. 'Out you go. I'll lower you down then follow - and whatever you do, stay in the alley. Don't move or make a sound.'

She nodded, nibbling on her top lip, and he tried to give her a reassuring grin. 'Chin up, kid. Oh…' he snatched a sabre with a salt-stained leather belt wrapped around its sheathed length from the bottom of the sea chest. 'Hold onto that.' She already had the Winchester slung over her back, but clutched the sword to her chest dutifully.

There was more banging and swearing on the door as he lowered the girl to the ground, and the door began to splinter as he swung a long leg over the windowsill. Smoke was trickling into the room, and from the street he could now begin to hear calls of "fire" ringing out into the night.

'La fillel!' he heard someone call out 'La jeune fille aux chevaux d'or!'

'Girl with the gold horses?' Harlock laughed to himself as he realised his mistake. 'His accent's execrable. But for once it's not me they're after,' he muttered as he swung down to the ground, hand under hand with an ease that belied the length of time he'd spent on land. Faces appeared at the window above him, coarse, loud voices calling out, and he let go about ten feet from the ground to land as lightly as a cat next to his sea bag. Grabbing that in one hand and Kei's hand in the other he hauled her into the shadows cast by the building next door, and pulled her roughly out of the way just before a bullet nicked the wall next to his right cheek.

'Who are those people? What do they want with you?'

'Not me they're after, Kei-chan - unless I've suddenly turned into a golden haired young girl.'

He kept her against the wall, his body shielding her from the sporadic - and mercifully inaccurate - gunfire. 'Try not to wriggle,' he snapped waspishly as her attempts to see around him to get a look at events was pressing parts of her anatomy far too close to parts of his for comfort. 'Christ, I'll burn in hell if you keep this up…'

Flames were now flicking in the windows of the Bar Arcadia, and half-dressed whores and patrons were pouring into the street. He could see Ari shouting orders from across the main thoroughfare, trying to organise a line of buckets from the waterfront, without much luck.

'Frankie!' Ari yelled as he caught sight of him. 'If this is your doing…'

Harlock pushed the girl towards a gaggle of scantily clad women in various stages of undress, and jabbed a finger at the woman who seemed to be in charge. 'You - keep her safe, whatever you do.' He turned to Ari. 'Jones - for once, it's not me. They were after the girl.'

'Burning my place down to get a kid?' Ari snarled. 'Just let me get to 'em…'

Harlock placed a hand on his arm. 'They'll be long gone out the back.' The top floor of the building collapsed with a shower of sparks and a whoosh as the timbers flared. 'I heard them outside my room. Where's Tochiro?'

'Here!'

He looked down to see his friend sitting at the side of the road, clutching his ragged cloak around his small, wiry frame. Sinonoura sat beside him, breasts almost falling out of the top of her borrowed shirt, which seemed to have lost a couple of buttons. 'You okay?'

'Yeah, yeah. I'm fine! Like old times, right, Harlock?'

'I'm not too fond of fire,' Harlock replied, hiding a shiver. 'Ari…'

'Burning down my bloody bar! Do you have any idea how much I had sunk into that place! We were making a bloody profit this year, for the first time.'

'Oh, quit your screeching. No-one died, if anyone cares.' The woman Harlock had shoved Kei at strode forward, her long dark hair blowing in the night breeze from the sea. She had Kei in tow, still clutching Harlock's sabre and that old Yellow Boy. 'What did you mean, they were after Kei? Why would anyone go to these lengths for one young girl?'

'Don't ask me. As to how I know, they were yelling orders to grab a young, blonde girl.' He glared at Sinonoura. 'In bad French…'

'Don't look at me. It's not as though I'm privy to everything the Organisation does, or has its fingers in,' she retorted. She eyed the young girl up and down. 'Or to your tastes it seems. Isn't she a little young…?'

'Only by comparison,' Kei replied glibly, meeting the older woman's assessing stare with one of her own.

Harlock stepped between the two. 'I just saved you twice,' he murmured. 'Try not to walk straight into more trouble.'

'I thought she was your friend?'

'Debatable. Now shush. Jones - is there somewhere we can…' the rest of the building collapsed into a flaming pile of fiery timber 'get out of the cold and the smoke?'

A shot slammed into the dirt at his feet. 'And perhaps under cover?' he yelled. He glanced around and up at nearby buildings looking for the shooter. 'Just what the hell is it about you that's so important?' he asked Kei as he pushed her behind him. The dark-haired woman - Luna, if he remembered correctly, stood at his side and calmly pulled a pistol out from under her petticoats from a holster on her thigh. 'Well you're just full of surprises, aren't you?'

She winked. 'Just ask Aristotle here where I keep my knives.' She was about to say something but was interrupted by a sharp crack, shortly followed by a pained cry, and then a heavy thud from a building across the thoroughfare.

Harlock whirled around and glared at Kei, who nonchalantly re-shouldered the Winchester. 'Next to my bloody ear?' He shook his head but it was a tossup as to whether he was trying to clear the ringing in his abused ear, or at the calm professionalism of a shot even he'd have struggled to make under these conditions...

'Don't screech.' She placed a fingertip on the line of one of the scars that marred both cheeks. 'Told you I could shoot. Now he's taken care of, can we get out of here before they…' she pointed down the street, 'get up close and personal?'

Four thugs were forcing their way through the milling crowd of sightseers and occasional firefighters towards them, shoving aside anyone in their way.

'Jones…' Harlock turned his attention to his erstwhile crewman, and tried to ignore the slender little hand that slipped into his. And tried to ignore how cold and trembly it was. Despite her sang froid, she was not as calm as she wanted to appear. He gave it a reassuring squeeze.

'Yattaran's place. Follow me. Luna - take out the trash will ya, darlin'?'

'One of these days you'll do your own dirty work,' she grumbled at him. But she was already yelling at her troops - the entire troop of Ari's "girls" - who were already being organised by a formidable woman who seemed to be as wide as she was tall. 'Anita!'

The woman was already striding into the fray, wielding a belaying pin with a ferocious glee that even Harlock winced at, as she coshed the leading thug to the ground. 'Could have used her in Macau…' he murmured appreciatively.

'My cook,' Ari called out as he led them out of the town at a run. 'Keep up, runt!' he called back to Tochiro, whose shorter legs were struggling to keep pace.

'You're just going to let those women deal with this?'

'Frankie - no-one messes with those girls, trust me. I'd back them in a fight against the usual run of losers and dockside trash you usually end up recruiting. And not to put too fine a point on it, they're better to look at all day. Yattaran's arse continually hanging out the back of his britches could put me right off my food, I can tell ya…'

'Women have no place on board a ship,' Harlock replied tartly. He shifted the unwieldy sea bag on his shoulder, and ignored the jab of a sharp elbow into his ribs on the other side. Little Miss Firefly it seemed had opinions she wasn't shy about sharing.

Ari snorted. 'I wish there was a way I could record those words and have your mother hear you say that!' he called back over his shoulder. He slowed to a jog, to allow the rest to catch up to himself, Harlock and Kei. 'You and yer dad could keep each other company running from her…'

'We find the current situation works better,' Harlock told him breezily. 'With one of us in the Atlantic and the other in the Pacific, realistically she can only go after one of us at a time.'

'Remind me - why is your dad so hellbent on avoiding the Pacific?'

Harlock laughed. 'Actually it's just Malaysia… had a run in about twenty years ago with this dispossessed rajah turned pirate, and his rather too efficient Portugese second in command. Given that they're running around in ironclads against dad's rather rickety old galleon, he decided to give the entire area a wide berth.'

'Wasn't that James Brooke's territory?' Sinonoura asked with false innocence. 'It should be safer these days - he died seven years ago. If I remember correctly, he was none too fond of pirates…'

'There might have been a jailbreak involved,' Harlock confessed. 'Mother's attempts to charm the pants off Brooke went a little bit wrong…'

'I'm not surprised,' Sinonoura said dryly. 'The man might have been drop dead gorgeous, but he never had any interest in the opposite sex, and most people assumed he was what you might call a life-long bachelor…' She arched one elegant golden brow as Harlock gave her a perplexed stare.

'What's that supposed to mean?' he demanded.

'Oh. Nothing. Nothing…' She wandered ahead up the winding pathway that led into the scrubby hills they were heading towards, whistling.

'I think she thinks you're…' Ari began helpfully.

'I do not prefer men,' Harlock snapped at him. 'I'm just…'

'Impossible to live with?' Tochiro opined. The little man danced out of range of a slap. 'Picky?' Kei added. He'd almost forgotten he still held her hand. Or she held his. Her slim fingers were curled around his and showed no inclination to let go.

'You've known me for less than an hour and already you have an opinion?'

She smiled up at him. 'I thought someone should stand up for you, and I didn't think you'd want me to point out you were definitely not uninterested when you had me pinned up against that wall earlier…'

Both Ari and Tochiro made choking noises. The girl's face was a study in innocence, but in her dark eyes there was.. something… a lot older than her years. 'You were right,' she told Ari with a bright laugh. 'He's adorable when he's flustered…'

'I never said adorable,' Ari protested. 'And given his blushes, just how old did you tell him you were anyway?'

'Fifteen,' she replied with a grin.

'Going on fifty,' Harlock muttered darkly. But there was something about the girl that made it impossible to stay irritated for long. 'Were you yanking my chain?'

'Not much. Mr Jones thought you'd choke up if I went with the lower estimate. I wasn't lying - Luna and Anita both think I'm closer to seventeen, based on the few things I remember before Samurai Creek, but I genuinely have no idea how old I am.' She leaned in to him with no warning whatsoever and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. 'So you don't have to feel quite so guilty.'

'Don't do that…' but his grumbling admonishment was half hearted at best. The girl reminded him a lot of his mother, yes, which was both disconcerting and familiar, but there was something else about her. It tugged at him the way he'd felt when he'd met Tochiro for the first time… that sense of deja-vu; that he'd known her - or had been waiting for her - all his life, and something important had slotted into place that he hadn't even known was missing. Rather than examine that too closely, he just mumbled: 'Don't go around kissing men you hardly know, for God's sake. Not all of them will be…' he floundered, flailing mentally for the right word; 'gentlemen.'

She handed his sabre back to him, which he'd forgotten she'd still been carrying, and beamed at him again. 'But I do know you, Captain. I've always known you, and I always will.' And there it was again, that fleeting look in her brown eyes that didn't belong to a girl - or young woman - her age. And with that peculiar statement she ran up the path towards a run down wooden shack, waving to the two men who were loitering outside.

'Is it me,' Tochiro asked, 'Or is she just plain weird?'

'Compared to who, exactly?' Ari muttered, glaring down at the shorter man. 'She's been through a lot. Okay, she gets a bit freaky sometimes, but these days, who doesn't? I see plenty of guys who still haven't gotten over the war, who hold it together worse than she does. But sometimes it's like you're talking to different people…'

'Dissociation isn't unusual, after trauma,' Sinonoura said quietly, rejoining them. 'Although I don't get that sense when I look at her. Her taste in men might be somewhat questionable however…'

'Lady, you got no room to talk,' Ari told her in all seriousness.

Tochiro elbowed Harlock in the ribs. 'At least she'll take your mind off mooning over my sister,' he said pointedly.

'I'm not…'

Tochiro snorted. 'Better not. She's my sister.' He jabbed Harlock in the ribs again for good measure. 'Just saying.'

Taking a leaf out of Kei's book he strode away from the heckling. 'Yattaran! Maji!' He waved at his former first mate and chief engineer, trying to ignore the kibbitzing behind him as Ari pumped Tochiro for details.

'''And he's like "ooh… that's your sister?" like it's some great surprise that she's pretty… couldn't take his hot sticky eyes off her…'

He buckled on his sabre as he walked, trying to drown out the riff-raff by worrying instead about where he was going to get hold of some linseed oil to use on the belt, which was salt-stiffened and cracking from years of neglect.

And tried very, very hard to pay attention to the greetings from his former crewmen, and not the way that long legs and a tight, pert bottom filled out his old pants far too snugly for his peace of mind.

By the time Ari's "ladies" and enforcers turned up, having dispatched the Organisation's minions, Yattaran had a second batch of bacon, eggs and fried bread on the griddle, the first batch having ended up mostly in the bottomless pit Tochiro laughingly referred to as a stomach. Levary had stayed behind to oversee rescuing whatever they could from the ruin of the Bar Arcadia - which included, Luna had told a nervously pacing Aristotle Jones - the contents of the safe. Over Ari's objections Harlock placed two of his men - a couple of knuckleheads of uncertain ancestry rejoicing in the names "Sabu" and Yasu" - on lookout, and sat down to breakfast and to catch up with events of the past few years.

'Like Ari said - we searched up and down the bloody coast for ya,' Yattaran told him, as he heaped another greasy pile onto his plate. 'Then the Arcadia sank, and we were stuck here. Plenty of work around, but it ain't the same, Cap'n. You got a new ship?'

Harlock didn't look up from his plate, giving his attention to the last piece of crispy bacon. 'Not… exactly.'

He did look up just in time to see Significant Looks exchanged between Ari, Maji and Yattaran. 'But I'm in the market for one.'

'With no money,' Ari added. 'What do you plan to do, steal one?'

'You have a better idea?' Harlock asked. 'If we weren't in such a hurry, I could head for San Francisco and pick up some funds from the family account, but we're already several weeks behind them…'

'Wait - you have an account? What kind of pirate has a bank account?' Ari asked.

'One with prudent parents.'

'The same parents who regard chasing each other around the seven seas and turning each other in to collect the reward money as foreplay?' Ari asked innocently. Harlock flipped him the finger.

'Behind who?' Yattaran asked.

'More what,' Tochiro told him, around a mouthful of sausage and eggs. 'See, there's this organisation, and they seem to be gathering up scientists and engineers, and building all sorts of stuff - advanced weapons, stuff using electricity. And they took my sister, who's a brilliant metallurgist and engineer. And they have this airship, and this creepy looking guy kidnapped her - only it wasn't really a guy, coz he didn't look fully human - he had weird greenish-grey skin, and these white bushy eyebrows that met in the middle, and they flew off with her…'

'Airship?' Both Maji and Yattaran leaned forwards in their seats, having spoken in unison.

'Yeah. Kind of this big balloon, with a gondola underneath? And weapons all over…'

'I always said it was possible,' Maji told Yattaran with a smug smirk on his bearded face. 'And you were like, "noo… can't be done…"' He frowned thoughtfully. 'What kind of speed was it doing?' he asked his captain.

'Had to tell - maybe ten, fifteen knots? It was still building up speed when we lost sight of it, and against the wind as well. This was no balloon - it had some kind of engine, and it wasn't steam.'

'Some kind of electrical turbine, 'Maji mused. He grinned at Yattaran. 'Oh boy… if we could get hold of that…'

'Yes, well we need to catch it first, or find a way to get to where it was heading. We tracked it this far, and we think it headed out over the ocean somewhere around here. It doesn't seem to need to land to refuel, so they're weeks ahead of us - but Sinonoura here says they have a base off the coast of Japan - one of the smaller islands. I just need a fast ship, and a crew…'

'Both of which are in short supply,' Yattaran pointed out. 'The crew split up years ago, most of 'em shipped out when they could, or moved on. There's just us, and Jones here. And not a lot of likely prospects in that shanty town…' He watched as Kei deftly slipped a few more pieces of sausage onto Harlock's empty plate. 'Though you seem to have found yerself a cabin boy… lass, rather.' He chuckled. 'Trust you… though I thought after that debacle off Yokohama you weren't goin' ta ship out with a woman on board again?'

'I'm starting to think I'd ship out with a crew of octopi if I had to,' Harlock replied testily. 'I promised Tochiro I'd help him…'

'So God help the rest of us, right?' Ari grunted.

'There's plenty of lasses from the bar not afraid of hard work,' Luna pointed out. 'Especially if it means they're not spending most of the day on their backs.'

'Landlubbers?' Yattaran sounded horrified.

'We can learn,' Anita assured him.

'Yeah, but…'

Anita was sitting next to the large, rotund first mate, and shoulder bumped him gently, with a wink thrown in for good measure. 'There's other advantages,' she said slyly.

'Ulp.'

'I cannot unsee that image,' Kei whispered next to Harlock's ear, as he choked slightly on his coffee, Maji's heavy, bitter brew going down the wrong hole. She patted him between the shoulder blades until he waved her off weakly. 'I didn't need it either,' he whispered back, grinning a little as she giggled. 'First mate - once you've stopped flirting - Trader's Fork has a reputation as a dropping off point for smuggling vessels - there must be something we could take easily enough.'

'Only one ship docked here in the past week, and she sets sail tomorrow on the tide, once she's finished repairs to her wheel. And good luck taking her - she's an ironclad steamer. Been anchored around the point for the past few days, rather coming into port. The captain's a canny hard case, with a tough crew. And you know her, Captain - it's the Virginia Hawk II.'

Sinonoura's spittake went all over Harlock remaining sausage, and he pushed the coffee drenched plate away with a sigh of regret. 'Friends of yours?' he asked blandly.

'Belongs to Snell Armaments,' Ari added in an equally amiable tone. 'You know, that guy you're not related to that you resemble so much?'

'Sinonoura?' Tochiro gazed at his lover with his best puppy dog eyes, and she sighed heavily and took his hand in hers.

'Fine. I own the damned ship, all right?'

'So you are related to Edward Snell?' Ari pressed. 'I knew you were lying!'

'I wasn't lying… at least, not about that. I'm not related to Edward. I am Edward…'

All eyes in the room were fixed on her. No-one said a word, until Ari sniggered and stared pointedly at the way her shirt was stretched tightly over her breasts. 'Well… gotta say, it's one hell of a disguise…' He reached out and tried to poke one of them, only to have his finger slapped away by Tochiro with a growl. 'Just checking to see if they're real…'

'Well don't.' Tochiro looked up at Sinonoura. 'I guess this is where you finally tell us who you really are?'

She took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. 'My real name is Henrietta Snell. I used to help my brother out with the business in America, whilst he stayed in Japan, and it made sense to travel as a man, so we invented a younger brother - Edward. Several years ago we realised there was a conspiracy trying to disrupt the new government of Japan, shipping advanced arms into the country - and not just ordinary weapons. These are years ahead of even the best factories in Europe or America. Henry - my brother - left Japan a few years ago for Europe, to try and follow the trail from that end, and I tried to do the same from the Japanese side, but… well… things went a bit wrong.'

'This would be "Darkmeister"?' Harlock asked.

She nodded. 'I infiltrated their organisation under this identity, but I think they were onto me from the start. Which isn't exactly surprising, since I found out they weren't what I thought they were at all. Henry and I thought they were just a consortium of industrialists with big pockets and a lot of scientists on the payroll. But it's a lot worse than that.' She smiled sadly at Tochiro. 'I would have told you the whole story before we found a ship - you need to know what you're up against.'

He shrugged. 'They have Shizuku. It wouldn't matter,' he told her firmly. 'Shinpai shinaide.' He patted her knee. 'Right, Harlock?'

Harlock nodded, keeping his eyes on Sinonoura's - Henrietta's - face. 'Just how bad is it?'

'Aliens from another world - I think from the future, trying to change the past,' she said, looking him straight in the eye.

Harlock frowned, but said nothing. Given the events of the last couple of years it wasn't the daftest suggestion he'd heard.

'Uso!' Tochiro exclaimed. 'Seriously?'

Everybody else in the small room looked equally sceptical. Except, Harlock noticed, for Kei, who was nibbling on her bottom lip and staring thoroughly at the older woman. 'Have you got a pencil and some paper?' she asked Yattaran. The items being duly purloined from Maji's stash, she scribbled on a piece of paper and showed the result to Harlock. 'Do they look like this?' she asked.

He stared at the rendition - the pointed, wrinkled face, with its dead eyes and strange hairline, and the eyebrows that ran across heavy brow ridges and down the sides of the face to curl around a cruel, thin-lipped mouth. The proportions were ever so slightly wrong, and not due to lack of skill from the artist. He nodded.

'They're called "Illumidas",' she said flatly. 'But they're just a front, a shell for something much, much worse.'

'How much worse could it be?' Harlock asked her. 'What do they want?'

Kei stared right through him for a moment, as though looking at something no-one else could see, then blinked and looked more focussed. 'To change the future,' she told him. 'To change it so that one man never gets born.'

'And you know this how?' Sinonoura asked.

'Because I've seen him. In dreams, my whole life. I just never knew who he was, until now.' She placed her hand over Harlock's again.

'Me?'

'Him?'

'Captain?'

'This lunatic?'

'Well, his descendent,' Kei clarified.

Henrietta-formerly-Sinonoura groaned and placed her head in her hands. 'We're fucked.'