Not Mine, I told you guys that right?

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Odana stood there her mouth hanging slightly open as she watched Hayth go up against the ogre. Leaping across the beast with his sword drawn, Hayth executed a series of slashes against the beast, each perpendicular to the previous strike. After the tenth hit, Hayth pulled his blade back, the point of the sword pointing directly at the monster's chest.

"Diamond Strike!" With that battle cry he plunged his blade deep into the creatures chest killing it near instantly. After pulling the sword from the corpse he turned to grin at the cleric behind him.

"Diamond strike?"

"Well I thought it needed a name. Diamond Strike just seemed right" he said chuckling.

"You're in a good mood today." Odana said, a puzzled look on her face.

"I had a good day. Finally got a job finished that my associates and I have been working on for a couple of weeks now." Hayth sat on the dungeon floor, resting his back against the wall and laying his sword on the floor next to him. "Which means, I'll be able to spend little more time here for a while." Odana sat next to him and rested her head on his shoulder, her bronze locks falling down his armour.

"mmm that'll be nice" she said as she closed her eyes, sighing contentadly. Hayth shifted slightly and wrapped his arm around her. After a few minutes where both stayed like that, the Knight began gently rubbing the back of Odana's neck which caused his companion to release a low soft purr. Hayth looked down at her a mixture of puzzlement and mirth. It wasn't long before a snore escaped from her mouth. Hayth didn't move, he just sat there watching her sleep. He stayed like that for the rest of the night, himself soon falling asleep as well.

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After the latest bounty hunting job, Gene had decided that the crew should get some R&R time. Gene and Melfina had both gone to one of the coastal resorts and had left the ship in the hands of Jim, Suzuka and Aisha. Aisha had spent the week dragging Jim around, to some of the nicer places in the city

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It was about 3 days into their vacation that the ex-abassador and the hacker were sitting in a park eating Ice-creams, watching the world go by. Steeling himself he turned to look at his companion who was devouring her icecream in a series of fast small licks.

"Aisha can I ask you a question?" Aisha turned to him and looked at him, a curious expression on her face. "Why are you always doing things like this with me?" Jim's face was focusing on the grass beneath them as he said this. Aisha looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before answering.

"Are you enjoying youself?"

"Well yeah, I'm having a great time."

"Thats the answer to your question then" Aisha raised her face and looked into the sky. "You work too hard Jimmy. You are fifteen years old, you should be going out on dates, hanging out with your friends, being a 'normal' teenager. Instead you have to manage Gene, Fix the ship, work the accounts. You have got to get out more, have some fun." She turned to Jim to see his reaction

"B-but I do have fun. I get to hang out with my friends 24 hours a day and i do enjoy work sometimes," Reaching out he took one of her hands in his. "but, thank you Aisha. I've really enjoyed myself these past few days." Aisha looked incredibly pleased, both with herself and her friend's reaction"

"Good" Pulling him to his feet, Aisha began leading JIm out of the park and towards the town.

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It was one of the nicer places that Jim had been into to eat, it had even required them to go back to the ship to get a change of clothes before entering. The decorum was similar to Fred Lowe's office, a mixture of fine works of art and ancient weaponary adorning the walls. The reservation and meal was a thank you from their previous employer and as Gene and Melfina were away and Suzuka flat out refused, it meant that Jim and Aisha would be the only one's attending. The blonde hacker had changed from his usual clothes to a charcol grey suit, a gift from Fred, and Aisha had changed from her uniform to a strapless green dress.

Needless to say they made a strange sight as they walked into the restaurant and took a seat at the table. They had been seated near one of the far walls out of the way of most of the other customers and so had a little privacy. For the first 20 minutes they absently chatted about the ship and their friends, that is until their food turned up, at which point any conversation Jim started would have been ignored as Aisha had began eating. Jim could only sit there and watch at the speed of which she consumed the massive meal in front of her. Absentmindedly he cut up and ate his own meal as he watched his companion eat.

Finishing her meal, Aisha leaned back into her chair and patted her stomach, a satisfied expression plastered across her face.

"That was a good meal" she said sighing contentadly. Jim couldn't help but laugh at her expression, which prompted Aisha to give him a questioning look. "What's so funny?"

"Sorry its just I've never seen anyone eat like you do."

"Heh, you should visit the C'tarl C'tarl homeworld, back there I'm considered a slow eater"

"Well maybe i'll need to visit there someday."

Before Aisha could reply there was a huge explosion coming from the direction of the doorway. Standing in the entrance were three large mechanised suits.

Each of them had breen sprayed black with a large red demon painted onto their chests. The suits appeared more humanly proportioned than the ones that Jim remembered attacking the XGP long ago, but they appeared a lot more heavily armoured. On their left side was a large minigun-like device with barels about an inch and a half in diameter. Their right arm ended in a large metal fist which had been painted red on each of the machines. From a speaker on the lead mecha's head a voice said:

"Allright everyone, no-one does anything stupid, no-one get's hurt. Everyone bring their jewlery and valubles and put them into this bag. He tossed a large sack infront of him. Pointing to one of the frightened waiters "You go and get all the cash from the register and bring it here NOW!"

Aisha looked across at Jim a broad grin on her face. "Could this night get any better?!" Without waiting for an answer she leapt up across at the nearest enemy, smashing her fist through the screen mounted on the mecha's head. Satisfied that her first opponent was down, Aisha leapt over to the next suit.

Jim smacked his head in frustration and began to scan the walls. His eyes lit up as he found a broadsword mounted above a table quite close to him. Sprinting over to it Jim reached up over the shocked couple eating there and pulled down the blade. Hefting it for a few seconds to get used to the weight, Jim grinned and charged the remaining suit not in combat with Aisha. The pilot was more than a little surprised when he saw a blonde fifteen teenager charging into combat with him. That said, Aisha was as well.

"Jim what the hell do you think you're doing?" she screamed at him, still paying most of her attention to her opponent.

"Well i can't let you have all the fun, now can I?" Aisha was impressed with Jim's skills. She knew that he had been spending quite a bit of time training with Suzuka but she didn't know that he was that good. Something was troubling her though, there was something very familiar about Jim's fighting style, something that she couldn't put her finger on. Putting her mind back to the task in hand she continued trying to beat through the armour of the exo-suit that she was currently fighting.

Jim had left a couple of deep gashs, exposing the microcircitry, in his previous swings when an idea entered his head. Grinning he leapt into the air and executed a series of slashes, each perpendicular to the last. When he started falling back to the ground he landed sword first stabbing through the thick armour and killing the pilot within, letting out the battle cry of "Diamond Strike!"

Aisha's blood ran cold, as all her attention was focused on Jim. It wasn't possible, she couldn't believe it, he couldn't be...... This was as far as the platinum blonde got before the remaining suit used her distraction to his advantage and shot a rocket at Aisha at point blank range throwing her across the restaurant into the wall behind her.

Jim hadn't seen her reaction but he had seen Aisha get shot. With a cry of rage the hacker leaped forward the sword held behind his head. In the midst of a full blown rage, he brought the sword down, splitting the suit and its occupant completly in two. Dropping the blade as soon as he had finished, he rushed over to Aisha and cradled her still form in his arms.

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duh duh duuuuuuuuh! First Cliffhanger Ever. Hope everyone likes this coz i sure as hell enjoyed writing it. Special thanks to Breakaway Republic, without who this and the previous chapter would have really sucked.