Disclaimer: No, I am not a forty-year-old Japanese man named Shinichiro Watanabe.

...Though that would be cool.

Chapter 13: Cosmos

In that single moment, time seemed to stop.

Faye's heart pounded slowly and loudly in her ears as she frowned at the image her eyes were trying to send to her brain. She saw it right before her, but she didn't, couldn't see it. That hadn't just happened, had it? No, couldn't have...those kinds of things didn't happen to Jet.

It wasn't until Sabertooth turned towards her, as if in slow motion, and jerked down and to the right, making Hammerhead slide off the blades...when her eyes followed it down from the sky...when she saw that the insides of two of the blades were smeared with red, that her heart dropped into her stomach and her mouth went dry, and everything became all too clear.

All at once, the world sprang back to life. "...Oh my God..." she heard herself whisper; then in one movement her hand had snatched up her communicator and she was drawing breath, and practically screaming the words: "...JET? Jet, if you can hear me, answer!"

Only static came in reply. And Hammerhead was still falling.

It was then that Spike finally broke from his stupor and grabbed the communicator out of Faye's hands, nearly scaring her out of her skin in the process. When she looked at him desperately, she saw that his eyes held the same desperation, but it was well-masked by a glacial expression that he may very well have picked up from Vicious earlier in life. Like lightning he switched the communicator's channel and barked into it: "Ed, get Hammerhead, NOW!"

"Gots it!" came the reply, laced with static, and he tossed the communicator down, watching as Hammerhead's plunge slowed to a stop, and was directed to land gently on the ground below.

It was right about then that the two were torn away from their concern by the roar of Swordfish II as it zoomed past them, nearly catching Red Tail at the wing but swerving dangerously to the side at the last second. It flew directly into the small collection of remaining Crow ships—that in fact, Faye realized, could have shot them down at any given moment in their distraction with Hammerhead, if Swordfish II hadn't been keeping the Crows back the whole time. However, it didn't take anything so drastic as the near-collision they'd just had for Faye to see that something was seriously wrong. Even as her quick eyes followed the ship, it seemed unable to stay on a straight course, and every now and then would pitch abruptly to one side or another. What is he doing?

Faye turned to Spike to ask that very question, but in that instant her eye caught a flash of silver, and she just barely managed to throw the steering and maneuver Red Tail out of the way in time to keep from being skewered by Sabertooth's deadly blades. She slammed on the acceleration and flew in a wide arc around Sabertooth, even as it followed her. "Shit, shit, shit..." she muttered to herself, her mind racing in search of a weak point on the ship.

"Faye..." She glanced over in response to her name, but Spike wasn't looking at her. His eyes were glued to his ship as its movements became more and more erratic. "...turn right."

"What?" she snapped back; to go right was to enter directly into the remaining Crow ships that Swordfish II was holding back. "Like hell I will! Are you insane? I've got enough to deal wi—SPIKE!" But it was too late for her to do anything; Spike had shoved her out of the way and taken the controls. Whether purposely or unwittingly, his body had her pinned in the corner where her seat met the side of the ship's interior, unable to regain the controls. "GOD DAMNIT, SPIKE!" she shouted in his ear, but he didn't bat an eye. "Get off me! YOU'RE GOING TO GET US BOTH KI—"

"Just trust me, alright?" he snapped back, tightening his good hand on the controls. His eyes were still locked onto Swordfish II as they neared it, following its every move with a churning intensity. Finally he tore his eyes away to glance at Faye, then moved back to his side, returning full control of the steering to her. "Stay on this course, Faye," he said softly, and when she shot an incredulous glare at him, the fierce desperation in his eyes shocked her. She grabbed the controls begrudgingly, but did stay on course towards Spike's ship.

"Just what the hell are you trying to pull?" she demanded, but Spike ignored her, instead snatching up her communicator again. He switched its channel and raised it to his mouth.

"Pull back," he said into it quietly but firmly, then switched it off and once again tossed it to the side. His eyes returned to Swordfish II and he watched carefully as it slowed and did as Spike said. Faye observed in disbelief; now Vicious was listening to Spike, after trying to kill him less than a week ago? Daring a glance into the cockpit of Swordfish II, she began to see the reason for the ship's unstable course: the drugs were beginning to have an effect on Vicious. Even at a distance she could see how tightly his hands were gripping the controls, so hard that his arms were trembling, and how his jaw was completely tense with concentration, and the way his eyes seemed to be having trouble staying open.

In an instant, she suddenly knew what was going on.

"Spike, tell me you aren't going to do what I think you are," she said in a low voice, keeping her eyes to the front. Receiving no answer, she shook her head. "What is wrong with you?" she exclaimed, glancing at him quickly. "You think you're going to save him? Him, of all people? He tried to kill you, Spike! More than once! And you're going to help him? Why?" For a seemingly endless moment, he gave no reply. Then:

"...Because I have to." Faye felt a strong inclination to snap back at him with something particularly vulgar, but bit her tongue and waited. Spike's eyes had become clouded, as though he was in the middle of a waking dream. "He could have killed me before. Minutes ago, and I could have killed him. But we didn't." He seemed to consider how to put more of his thought into words. "It's...like an obligation. I won't let myself see it end right in front of me. I can't."

Faye continued to shake her head. "I don't understand," she replied firmly, and Spike looked at her.

"You don't have to." His gaze returned briefly to the current pilot of his ship, to which they were coming closer and closer, and Faye could practically hear the single meaning of that glance: He does. He understands.

And this royally pissed her off.

Faye's hands gripped the steering tightly for a short moment. They were nearly on top of Swordfish II now. Finally, she took a sorry attempt at a deep breath. "If you two understand each other so well," she pressed on in frustration, "then why do you hate each other so much?"

For a moment, Faye wondered if she had overstepped a boundary. A shadow seemed to pass over Spike's features while he hesitated; but as quickly as it had appeared, it vanished with the moment and he was lunkhead-Spike again, looking straight into her eyes with an expression that both fascinated and infuriated her. Going to the opposite extreme, Faye's face pulled into a suspicious frown. "...Well?"

Spike visibly paused for a moment, looking at her very oddly, as though he was actually considering the question; then, he looked directly at her. And he smiled.

Before Faye's brain had time to wrap around the expression, Spike's hand had darted around her and jabbed a button on her side of the control panel. Immediately Red Tail's dome began to retract and Spike was out of his seatbelt, out of his seat, crouching on Red Tail's rim and measuring the distance between their ship and Swordfish II. At first Faye could only gape at what he was clearly about to do, and he took the opportunity to send her a halfhearted wave. "Later."

And he jumped.

Faye's reflexes moved much faster than her voice; by the time she managed to shout "SPIKE!" at the top of her lungs, she'd already zipped in his direction with Red Tail just in time to see him perform his strange flying, flailing, flapping, falling leap onto Swordfish II's dome. Faye barely had the time to compare him to a suicidal fly on a windshield before a wave of machine-gun fire—courtesy of Sabertooth, of course—wiped the thought from her memory. "Aggh!" she finally groaned in frustration, putting Red Tail's dome back up as she sped away and out of Sabertooth's range.

Right away Spike could see that he hadn't wasted any time. A brief moment of panic brought the thought that Vicious may not even be conscious enough to retract the dome for him; but his dread was calmed when Vicious looked up, finally. His eyes met Spike's for a second, then they glanced quickly to the side and back. Spike got the message clearly and moved carefully to Swordfish II's wing; Vicious then retracted the dome, tilting the ship to the side opposite Spike, to keep the balance, and Spike clumsily pulled himself in.

With hardly a glance in Vicious' direction, Spike took hold of the controls with his good hand, making due with the newly cramped cockpit. A moment of familiarizing himself with the ship again, and they were off. Working the controls as best he could, Spike launched in the direction of the two remaining ships, his route clumsy but true.

Taking advantage of his own instability, Spike began to weave in wide arcs around each ship, slowly drawing them closer to each other. True enough, he could only use one hand, but damnit, he would put that hand to good use if it killed him.

From the corner of his eye, Spike could see the twin blurs that were Red Tail and Sabertooth as they shot past him, the Crow right on Faye's tail.

"...The back." Spike's eyes shot to his right, where Vicious had his eyes raised to follow the two ships in their cat-and-mouse engagement. Keeping his focus on them, he elaborated. "The back of the ship. Unprotected," he explained, his voice slowly beginning to weaken with each word.

His eyes returning to the front, Spike took another glance at the ships. "She tried that already," he replied lowly, keeping his eyes on his flight path.

In return, he received little more than a weary shake of the head. "Missed."

Now that he thought about it, Spike recalled that he really hadn't been paying attention at the time, having been too busy moving as far away from Faye as he could. Hell, whatever worked.

Flipping on the commlink in his ship, Spike set it to Red Tail's channel and relayed the information, then turned his full attention back to the other two ships on his hands. By now, his little tactic had done well, and the ships were in the same vicinity. Now or never.

Quickly, Spike maneuvered his way around until he was satisfied with his position. The Crow ships were fast, but they were lightweights; one shot of the plasma cannon should do the job. That decided, Spike gunned it in their direction, firing up the cannon as he went. One hit, that was all he needed.

He fired. A ship went down.

Unfortunately, it was only one. The other one got off with no more than a slightly mutilated wing, and turning away, it fled.

Shit. Where there's one left behind, there's ten more on the way. Honestly, Spike didn't know how much more his body would take. He could feel the crudely-stitched gash in his gut starting to bleed freely from the exertion, which he knew wasn't a good thing.

He was only brought out of his thoughts when his eye caught something plummeting from the air; looking up, he wasn't surprised at the sight of Red Tail hovering where it was for a minute as Sabertooth crashed to the ground. Knowing Faye, she was probably dolling out a last few profanities in the Crow's direction. After the few seconds had passed, Red Tail took a nosedive downward, heading straight for Hammerhead. "That all of them?" her voice suddenly crackled through the commlink.

"One got away," he replied in weary annoyance. "Probably gonna come back with Wave Tw..." He abruptly cut himself off then; he could swear he heard something, a sound that he had been trained to recognize in another life.

"Spike? What's going on?" came Faye's voice again, now with a clear note of anxiety.

At first he didn't answer as he listened again—and it was gone now...weird. Paying no more attention to it, he instead shifted his focus to the direction the last stray Crow had gone.

Once he'd done that, he half wished he hadn't. There they were, just like he'd known they would be. The reinforcements. Damnit.

"Heads up, Faye," he finally responded, tightening his good hand on the controls, his morale sinking lower with every additional ship that appeared on the horizon. There was no way they would get out of this.

...And there it was again! This time Spike looked over toward that sound he'd heard before, and from the corner of his eye he noticed that Vicious had stiffened as well, glancing weakly in the same direction.

Vicious knew that he had a matter of minutes left before the drug in his system knocked him out. He knew that his senses were dulling by the second, his hearing included. But at the same time, he knew that he was hearing it. He didn't know what it meant, or whether this would be his break or his downfall because of it, but he did know that it was there, and it was coming in their direction as fast as it could. No...not it, them. There was more than one. Spike had heard it before, and now he did again.

His chest gave a throb then, which sent a shockwave through him potent enough to make him wince. The three-day-old bulletwound had started to bleed again as soon as it was struck, which wasn't helping with anything. He could feel his body beginning to shut down. The last thing that penetrated his dulling senses as his vision went dark was an unfamiliar voice, backed by the now-deafening scream of a dozen sirens:

"Attention! Land your vehicles and step out of them immediately, by order of the ISSP!"

VanillaRose- o.o Don't hyperventilate! (looks around frantically, then throws you a paper bag) ...Ahem. Anyway, I'm glad you're so into it! (beams at compliments) Yes, Sabertooth is quite fun. If only I could do more than just describe it...a real one would be such fun to play with. n.n And it's wonderful to hear (/read) that these scenes are as much fun to read as they were to write!

jdchs-(shrinks back just a bit) I know, I know, I knew when I wrote it that that cliffhanger would be evil as sin, but what can I say, my muse knows what it wants when it decides to be helpful. My lips are sealed. :X

Shteve-...Did I really manage to do that in only one sentence? o.O (goes to look) o.o Huh. How about that. Cool. XD Kidding, kidding...I heart Jet, you know that...then again I do tend to do bad things to the characters I like the most...hmmm. .

phoenix521-I love that you're enjoying all this so much! I do agree with at least one thing: tension is definitely what these last few chapters have revolved around. Action sequences are fun, though. Hope you're still enjoying!

Bob the barbarian-You're a very unique individual, you know that? n.n Anyway, I'm sensing a little hostility towards Vicious, based on this and another of your reviews...but anyway, sorry, can't tell ya what's in store. Glad you're still entertained, though. :)