**It was an eerily quiet night on the little backwater space-station she was on. She had already forgotten the name of the place, only that she almost died there. She was going from berth to berth trying to book passage to Blue Heaven and hoping to call in a favor from Swanzo once there. Hilda also knew that she was being followed. Emerging from one of the berths, she looked up to see a figure standing on a streetlight above her clad in a black cloak- like the Reaper. With a speed that couldn't possibly be human, the figure leapt down, bearing her talons and fangs. It was a female Ctarl Ctarl- her eyes shining a malevolent green light. Hilda drew her weapon and she felt the beast's talons tear into her side. As Hilda felt the warmth of her own blood spilling out from her abdomen, she squeezed off a shot. The Ctarl Ctarl stumbled backwards, but Hilda didn't notice this as her ears echoed with the sound of gunfire and she collapsed to the ground, expecting the Ctarl Ctarl to finish her off.

To go is death. To stay is death...she said to herself as she slipped further and further into the pitch-black abyss. If she lay still, perhaps the Ctarl Ctarl would mistake her for dead and leave her alone. In the back of her mind, she knew that if she played dead long enough, she really would be dead.

Instead, Hilda summoned up the last of her strength and rolled over to see the beast-girl on her knees clutching her left ear and screaming.

"YOU WHORE!! What did you do to me? I'm deaf....." she angrily cried to Hilda.

In the dim light, Hilda saw that blood was trickling from the Ctarl Ctarl's hands as they were clasped over her ear. There already was a generous amount of her own blood mixed in with the Ctarl Ctarl's. However, Hilda was in no mood to savor this little victory. If she didn't do something quickly, she would black out and bleed to death on the ground. The Outlaw managed to pull herself up and staggered away from the Ctarl Ctarl bounty huntress, who was still wailing in despair and agony.

"NO! I'M DEAF....."

The Ctarl Ctarl now had a difficult choice to make- pursue Hilda and risk losing her hearing, becoming crippled and disfigured or let the Outlaw go so that she could try and patch up her wound as best she could and determine the true extent of her injury. As the Outlaw feebly staggered further and further away, Takana realized that a Tracker-Killer was useless with only one good ear. The Outlaw Hilda had just brought herself a brief reprieve.**

**

"WHAT?!" Takana spat at the screen on the pay-video booth. She was outside of the passenger dock on the Towards Stars slip. "This was NOT the deal we had agreed upon!"

"Don't misunderstand me, I'm still very much interested in your services. I'm glad I caught you when I did. There's been a small change in plans, that's all." the shadowy figure on the other end informed her.

These direct communiques with her latest contractor were a major hassle, since he went out of his way to maintain his anonymity and took numerous precautions to protect his identity. Takana knew exactly who he was, but she couldn't could care less, as long as the money was negotiable. Her contract was more concerned with third parties eavesdropping on their conversation.

She had able to detect trace amounts of Hilda's blood at a place called the Temple Bar- a few drops remained on the counter. She had injured herself somehow, and the bartender was able to clean up most of the blood. But her intuition told Takana that her prey was no longer on the Towards Stars Inn. All indications seemed to point to Hilda leaving for Blue Heaven to contact an old friend of hers. Even if that wasn't the case, Takana felt that she could still get some useful information from this associate of Hilda's. However, the tracker-killer had now come across a major fly in the ointment, namely the previously agreed upon price with her contractor.

"But that's not even half the price of what you first offered!" the tracker-killer snapped. She absently ran her finger over the hole in her left ear, fuming. Her hearing was gradually returning to that ear. The Outlaw did this to her several days prior. Takana had spotted Hilda and was careless; they both were. But Takana was very angry- her prey had never made her bleed before.

"You misunderstand, my dear. You'll only get 100,000 Wong if you bring me a corpse. As much as I'd like to see her depart this plane of existence, there are a few things I'd like to ask her beforehand. Cadavers are terrible at the art of conversation. That is why I'll let you name your own price if you bring her to me alive."

The bounty-huntress blinked in surprise. Alive? This was the first time anybody had instructed her to bring back her prey alive. It wasn't exactly her specialty, but she didn't want such a lucrative job to fall into somebody else's lap. Her own price? One million Wong? Two million? She knew enough about her employer that this wasn't an idle offer on his part. Takana closed her eyes, smiled slightly and started rocking back and forth while hugging herself, thinking how much Iaru root she could get with that kind of money. Five million, a shuttle-load of the strongest, purest iaru root available, her own private cabin with hot spring on Tenrei and first crack at the Outlaw Hilda after he was done with his "conversation" with her. That seemed like a fair price. The Creators were indeed being most generous to her.

"Do we have a deal?" the man asked her through the monitor.

"Certainly." Takana grinned as she ended the call. "I'll dictate my price to you as soon as I have her." 'Alive' didn't necessarily mean 'unscathed'.

**

This was not the joyous reunion anybody had anticipated. Using a pair of handcuffs for those oh-so-rare bounties that were taken alive, Hot Ice Hilda was shackled to Aisha's seat on the bridge. Hilda was quietly fuming. She had so many questions that she was hoping Jim could answer, but instead she was shackled to a chair on what was supposed to be her ship and being baby-sat by a temperamental Ctarl Ctarl.

"Seems I mistook you for somebody else." Hilda said, glancing up at Aisha. This was as close to an apology that Hilda could muster in the past few years.

"Silence, Terran!" Aisha snapped.

To her credit, Aisha was showing a lot of restraint considering the one person who ruined her chances of moving up in the world was sitting helpless in front of her. But sometimes these things had a funny way of working out for the better.

*Is she or isn't she the Outlaw Hilda?* Aisha asked herself. The Ctarl Ctarl took a look at Hilda's right hand, which was supposed to be prosthetic. But there was a fresh-looking gouge along the right palm. Since when do prosthetic limbs bleed? The person in front of her has two good eyes and two arms. From the Wanted posters of Hilda that circulated through the empire and what Gene and Jim told her, she understood that Hilda was short one arm and eye respectively. She was certain that this didn't escape Jim's attention.

**

Gene was brought out of a sound sleep by the ringing of the video-phone. He rolled over, reached past Melfina and groggily fumbled for the receiver. He found it by the seventh ring.

"Hullo...?" he wearily asked. Two thirty in the morning- this had better be good, he grumbled. The screen flickered to life and he was greeted with the image of the beautiful assassin's face.

"Gene, we would not be calling you at this ungodly hour but there's someone here at the spaceport you need to see right away."

"Can't it.....?"

"No, Aniki! It can't wait!" Jim spoke up urgently as he pushed Suzuka aside and his face appeared on the monitor "You HAVE to come down here. NOW!"

"What is it Jim?" Gene asked, a little more awake.

"I don't think telling you about it over the phone is a good idea. Just get down here as soon as you can." Jim said.

Melfina stirred as Gene hung up the phone. The ringing had awaken her as well and she heard every word of the conversation.

"Gene? What's going on?" the sleepy bio-android asked.

"I'm not sure." he said to her as he got up and get dressed "Jim said it was important."

"Let me come with you." Melfina said as she slid out of the bed.

"I don't think that's such a good....."

"Why?" she interrupted "Did Jim specifically say that I shouldn't come?"

"No, I....."

"Then I'm coming with you Gene." the bio-android asserted as she slid into her clothing.

"Damn it, Melfina" the red-haired Outlaw sighed "Since when have you been so stubborn."

"I guess you can blame that on my environment."

**

"Perhaps you were mistaken. Is it possible she somehow survived?" Suzuka told a very shaken Jim Hawking as he hung up. The two of them were in the aft section of the ship. They didn't want their guest eavesdropping on their conversation.

He shook his head. "She blew herself and a bunch of Kei pirates up while falling into a sun. I just don't see how anybody could walk away from that. Even Hilda"

"Then is it likely we have an impostor in our midst?" the assassin hadn't ruled out the possibility of Tao-Magic.

"I honestly don't know..." the boy-genius said. "Why would she wait until now to come back?"

"As you mentioned earlier, she was separated from you. If that is indeed Hilda, then it could have taken her this long simply to find you."

He was paying no attention to her. "Gillium?" he asked one of the pink cans as it whirred by "How did she get on board?"

"I let her on, Jim. She is still a registered crew member of this vessel. The facial and retinal scans I took confirm that they indeed belong to the same person."

"Meaning that if she's an imposter, she's a very good one. But she has two eyes.." he started.

"I'm well aware of that. However, the according to my data banks, the match is conclusive."

"....and they haven't been tampered with?"

Suzuka looked puzzled. She had never met Hilda before or even seen her picture- only heard secondhand about some of her exploits from Gene and Jim.

"Hilda's missing an eye....was missing an eye." Jim explained to the assassin. "She also had a prosthetic arm- I should know, I was the one who repaired it."

"There's a relatively fresh cut on one of her hands....." Suzuka started to say.

"I know- it's the same arm that I worked on." Jim said, clearly bewildered.

"Would it be possible that she had a new eye and arm surgically grafted onto her?" she asked.

"I don't know, Suzuka. It's a possibility." Granted it certainly was possible with the medical science of the day, but it just didn't strike him as something Hilda would do.

**

**"Look at you, Taki!" her father proudly beamed as he lifted up the disheveled little girl "You're going to grow up to be so strong and beautiful- I hope you won't forget your pappa when all those handsome young warriors start lining up and ask to be your mate..."

"Daddy.....!" the little girl blushed. Boys were still "yucky" as far as young Takana Jaci-Jaci was concerned. But nonetheless, Aryo Jaci-Jaci was proud of his only daughter. For her indoctrination as a Tracker-Killer, like so many generations before her, she was left to her own devices for a designated period of time in the forest to hunt and recover an eria berra-berra bird whose wings were clipped. The bird was similar in appearance to a barn-owl, but even flightless it was formidable prey, since it was larger than a condor. For many years, Aryo had been preparing his daughter for this test; teaching how to track her prey, disguising her scent, and crippling her quarry. He looked again at the lifeless eria berra-berra she had dragged into the clearing and then at the little girl in his arms. The time spent with his daughter had just paid off beautifully.

"When I was your age, it took me almost eighteen hours to catch my prey..."

"How long did I take, daddy?"

The tall Ctarl Ctarl man smiled as he checked the ornately decorated stopwatch in his hands one more time. "Not even eleven hours". He had seen it the first time around, but thought he still thought it was too good to be true.

"Really!?"

Her father nodded as he reluctantly put the little girl back on the ground. "Mark these words Taki- someday very soon, you're going to be so strong and pretty...."**

Takana's train of thought shifted as she heard a faint knocking. She looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink in the cramped little restroom on the transport flight she was on. She was getting tense and had retreated to the sancuary that the memories of the happiest day of her life offered her.

"Miss...." a voice from outside called.

The Ctarl Ctarl splashed cold water from the sink onto her face and started wiping it off. The knocking continued as she did this.

"Miss....We're approaching Blue Heaven space..." the voice said. Takana slid the door open a crack and looked at the flight attendant.

"Good. I'll be finished shortly." she said to the attendant. The door slid shut again.

*....so strong and pretty....* her father's voice echoed in her head. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled a little. The smile faded as she turned a little and caught a glimpse of her left ear, just under a quarter of which was missing. What would her father say if he could see her now? Takana seethed for a few seconds, then her fist crashed through the mirror. Shards rained down onto the sink and floor. Hilda was going to pay for this. Takana vowed to the Creators that she would take away everything the Outlaw held dear before collecting her bounty.

**

However groggy he was, Gene could understand why Jim was so excited as soon as he walked onto the bridge. It seemed there was a ghost shackled to Aisha's seat.

"Hilda?" Gene asked dumbfounded. "What are you still doing alive?"

"Well, you see Gene, the trick is to keep breathing..."

It was now 3:30 in the morning and after being rousted out of bed, Gene clearly wasn't in the mood for sarcasm.

"You're sporting a new look. Was the eyepatch some kind of ploy?" Gene asked.

"If I remember correctly, it didn't stop you from trying to get me in the sack, Cherry."

"Why the hell should I believe you're really Hilda? Or should I start calling you Rachel again?"

"Ask me something that only I would know the answer to."

"OK. What are you still doing alive?"

"All right, ask me something else."

Gene scoffed. Evasive as always. Not one straight answer. Not all that different from the Hilda he remembered.

"How do I know you're not......?"

"GODDAMMIT!" Hilda interrupted, tugging on the cuff that kept her shackled to Aisha's seat "If I knew, I'd tell you! Gene, I can't remember anything that happened after we left Blue Heaven. I don't even recall leaving there!" There was a new urgency in her voice- one that couldn't be faked. "I don't know how or why I have a flesh-and-blood arm, and I don't know why my eye decided to reappear! I don't remember a damn thing and there's a long line of people with deep pockets and excellent memories who want my head on a platter!"

The longer the conversation continued, the more convinced Gene was that the person in the seat was indeed Hilda. The shackled Outlaw looked up at Melfina.

"V-S-D-0-2-C. How are they treating you Melfina?"

"I'm fine..." the bio-android started to say.

"How did you get here?" Gene asked "Do you still have Horus?". It seemed like a stupid question, but if Hilda was right there before him in the flesh, it wouldn't be all that unreasonable to assume that Horus had somehow survived as well. Instead, Hilda shook her head.

"I don't know what happened to Horus, either. I've been booking passage on transports- that's how I got here, at least. I wasn't even going to Heiphong until I saw a picture of the XGP on one of the newscasts. Even then, I had no idea if you guys were still alive or if somebody else had the ship." "Nani? What were we doing on the news?" Jim asked.

"They said something about this ship finishing fourth overall in last year's Heiphong Space Race." she smirked as she looked at Gene. "Not bad for a cherry..."

"You mean you don't remember what happened at Farfallas?" Gene said, changing the subject.

"No- I just remember that I was supposed to meet up with Marx and O'Malley and pick up this..." she tapped the side of the ship's interior wall with her foot "....but like I said, I can't remember doing anything after we left Blue Heaven." Hot Ice paused, looking hopefully at Gene, Jim and Mel "do you know what happened to them?"

"Dead" Gene announced somberly. "Looks like they were killed by pirates before we even got to Farfallas."

"Damn" Hilda looked disappointed, but not all that surprised. That would explain why she was unable to come into contact with either the Leprechaun or Purgatory for almost a year. "...and what about the Galactic Leiline?"

Gene, Jim and Mel nervously looked at each other. Assuming that it was Hilda in front of them, then she would be the one responsible for their coming into possession of the ship. That would mean she was entitled to an explanation, even if she didn't like what she was going to hear.

**

"I'm looking for somebody, perhaps you can help me." Takana said. Her voice and footfalls echoed as she surveyed the cavernous maintenance bay inside Blue Heaven.

"Can't say we'll be much help. Is it another Ctarl Ctarl?" Mikey asked as he stepped out from underneath a derelict spaceship that was being stripped for parts.

"Nope." Takana shook her head. "It's a Terran female." she reached down and produced a picture from a pocket on her cloak. This unannounced guest had Swanzo's attention as well.

Swanzo and Mikey looked down at the picture in disbelief. It was a picture of the one-eyed Outlaw known as Hot Ice Hilda- Swanzo's all-time favorite Terran.

"Is this some kind of sick joke?" Mikey asked the Ctarl Ctarl angrily.

"You're wasting your time. Hilda's been dead for well over a year, lady. Now if you'll excuse us, we have work to do". With great indignation, Swanzo began to walk off. Takana figured she had been polite long enough. She grabbed the little Corbonite and spun him around.

"I assure you that Hilda is very much alive! She did this to me less than a week ago, and I don't believe in ghosts." the tracker-killer snarled as she ran a finger over the portion of her ear that Hilda's bullet tore away.

"Let me go! What do you think you're.....AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!" Swanzo cried out. Takana was twisting his little arm to the breaking point.

"You CAN feel pain through that suit of yours, can't you Corbonite?" she smiled. "Let me tell you that this is going to be as good as it gets until you give me the answers I'm looking for."

"My arm! You broke my arm...." Swanzo said.

Suddenly, she relaxed her grip on Swanzo. The tracker-killer's good ear twitched and she reflexively held out the forearm of her free hand above her shoulder and few inches away from the side of her head. An instant later, a pipe-wrench swung by Mikey glanced off of her forearm and stopped a few inches shy of the Ctarl Ctarl's skull.

"Pick on somebody your own size!" Mikey yelled.

"You? That's not very challenging." the sadistic cat-girl pouted. Her other hand clamped around Mikey's wrist and began applying pressure until the mechanic dropped the wrench. She shoved Swanzo to the ground as she turned around to deal with the Terran. Instead of letting go, Takana pulled Mikey close and kneed him in the groin. As he was doubled over, Takana grabbed his hair and lifted his head up. For a moment, it looked as though she were going to kiss him on the neck. Instead, her fangs sliced through the mechanic's jugular vein.

"What....did....you.....do.....to.....me?" the mechanic gasped as the blood rushed out. He pulled away from her and was already feeling woozy.

"Mmmmm......tasty." Takana sighed happily as she lapped up some of Mikey's blood from the corner of her mouth.

"MIKEY!" Swanzo yelled out.

Takana saw that the bleeding mechanic was now staggering towards the pipe-wrench that he had dropped earlier, intending to bludgeon her with it. *Let him try* she smirked. Already his movements slowed down considerably. As he got down to pick up the wrench, he realized he wouldn't be able to get back up. Ever. As his life flowed out, blackness flooded in. The last thing he saw when he looked up was the chestnut-haired Ctarl Ctarl looking down on him. She was by no means finished with Mikey as she straddled him and pinned the one hand with the wrench to the floor.

"You poor thing- I really should put you out of your misery. Don't worry, it will all be over soon." she smiled sweetly at the mechanic.

Mikey slowly put his free hand up to her face. He was almost completely gone now, but he was trying to push the tracker-killer off of him. Takana glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Swanzo would see what she was going to do next. Using her talons, the Ctarl Ctarl slashed the mechanic's throat. He spasmed and bled for a few seconds before he was completely still.

"You murdering bitch! What did you do?" Swanzo yelled as he futilely tried to get back up.

"Come come- you saw the whole thing. I was simply defending myself." she shrugged.

She was now up on her feet, casually walking towards Swanzo. Her hands and face were smeared with blood- his good friend's blood. He continued trying to get back on his feet but Takana placed her foot directly on top of his suit, pinning him to the floor.

"Now listen up, Corbonite." She snarled. "Hilda's whereabouts is worth a lot of money to me, and it just may be worth your life. I'm going to ask you again where she is, and I want you to consider your next answer *very* carefully."

"She's......dead......."

Takana shook her head. How she truly detested liars. With a swift kick, she sent the little Corbonite in his suit tumbling across the mainenance bay floor.

"OK, Corbonite. I'll play along." Takana said as she took her time in catching up to the helpless mechanic. "Hilda's dead. How did she die?" she paused to wipe some of Mikey's blood off of her face. It looked almost like warpaint. "Did a lot of people show up at the wake? What does her grave look like?". She was now towering over the dimunitive mechanic as she pouted her lips "Did you cry at her funeral? It's OK- I won't tell anybody."

Swanzo sighed in despair. Mikey was already dead, and if this bitch wanted to waste her time chasing after more dead people then so be it. He had nothing to hide.

"About a year an a half ago, Hilda comes here with some kids from this rock called Sentinel-3. She was supposed to meet up with some people here, but they backed out. Hilda and those kids left in a big hurry after these other outlaws started shit with her in the middle of the night...." he paused as he tried to sit upright, but Takana gently tapped his exo-suit with her foot and he was on his back again. Swanzo correctly assumed that this meant 'Continue'. "The thing is, they left on her ship Horus. But they came back on a different ship and Hilda wasn't with them. These kids told me that Hilda died fighting some Kei pirates near a star called Farfallas and that Horus was destroyed, too."

Takana couldn't believe it. She had underestimated how truly crafty her prey was. Hilda had engineered her death so convincingly that she even fooled some of her longtime friends and associates. Get rid of Horus and start travelling with new partners and a new ship. Bodies and ships eventually burn up in a sun, so the story couldn't really be disproved. This Corbonite really believed that Hilda was dead and Takana was one of the few people who knew otherwise. Takana also felt that the missing eye and prosthetic limb was an act on Hilda's part, although she wasn't quite sure how it benefited the Outlaw. The Hilda who shot her had two very good hands and eyes. How she desperately wanted to change that.

"The name of the ship....." she said as she absently helped herself to a pinch of the root kept in her necklace. Sawanzo was hesitating.

"THE NAME OF THE SHIP!" she heard herself yell.

"It's......it's a red grappler ship called the Outlaw Star...." Swanzo said glumly. Takana's attention slipped for a moment as her body happily shuddered from the root entering her system. She didn't need it at the moment, but she thought she would feel better after another hit.

"What's that again?" the tracker-killer asked, almost apologetically.

"The name of the ship is the Outlaw Star."

"So tell me, where's the crew from?"

"These kids that were with Hilda said they were from Sentinel-3 and they were going back there to get their grappler outfitted, but I took care of the registration and paint here. That was close to two years ago. I haven't seem them since."

Takana bared her fangs again- they were still streaked with some of Mikey's blood. Swanzo didn't know it, but she was smiling. She got down on her haunches and looked at the little Corbonite.

"The Outlaw Star out of Blue Heaven...?" she asked. Wether he knew it or not, this friend of Hilda's was now being most co-operative and helpful.

Swanzo nodded. The Ctarl Ctarl's smile widened as she briefly looked around and saw a computer terminal in the maintenence bay.

"Excellent!" she happily squealed as she clapped her hands together. "That means you'll have all I need to know about the Outlaw Star on file right here!". The next thing Swanzo knew, he was roughly being dragged to the computer terminal by the tracker-killer.

"Bring up all registry information on the Outlaw Star that you have in there" she ordered.

Swanzo slowly pecked away at the keyboard with his one good hand. An image of the red grappler ship and it's red-haired captain showed up on the screen.

"This is the Outlaw Star....and Captain Gene Starwind?" she said as she grabbed a printout.

"Uh-huh."

"Very good." She said as she walked off. Takana had what she needed. "Might I suggest that while offering your prayers to whatever reptilian diety you Corbonites worship, you give thanks for the fact that I've decided to spare your life today."