Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Outlaw Star but I wish I did! If then, I would get money for the stuff I write! Money is such a good thing! 3

Of Love of One

Chapter 4

After what ended up being a little confrontation with Aisha in the kitchen and her yelling at him for basically disappearing off the face of the ship, she sent Gene on his way to the others.

With a half-hearted sigh and a quick downing of some rice balls and such, Gene went on his way.

But not without some bad feeling welling up in the pit of his stomach; and it wasn't the week old rice balls acting up either.

'Yeah, yeah I know; my bad for letting this go on so long, but—" but whatever was about to be thought by the red head was cut short with a rough jolt of the ship, a head splitting black-out, and blinding light being turned back on.

Reacting as quickly as he could, Gene raced down a couple hallways and thorough the honeycombs in the ship to the main control room; sliding in thorough the doors, causing the people inside to gasp in both surprise and relief.

But what happy surprise and relief that was there in the beginning was short lived, because it was then that they heard Melfina scream in pain and again the ship blacked out.

When this happened, the sound of a loud explosion could be heard, and afterward a slight popping noise sounded for a few seconds.

"Is everyone okay?" asked Suzuka once the ship's backup generators kicked in and flooded the room in a light neon glow. She quickly checked over the ship's vitals on one of the screens to find the cause of the explosion, but found that no such explosion had occurred.

"No," simply stated Gene as he kneeled down besides Melfina's glass tube. "Mel, you ok?"

The poor girl was knelling down in her glass containment with her head in her hands, mumbling to herself.

"Melfina?" came Suzuka's calming voice.

"…he's gone…"

"What's wrong, Mel?" questioned Aisha. She had been on Gene's heels when he can running down the hallways but it was now that she decided to make her presence known.

"He's gone," came again from the ebony haired girl.

Aisha thought for a second and then replied, "But Gene's right here."

Melfina shook her head in disagreement, but before she could voice what she meant, Suzuka responded for her

"She doesn't mean Gene; she means Jim."

"What?" said the other two.

Suzuka motioned around with a wave of the hand, "Jim's disappeared, and if I'm not mistaken, I did see him a split second before the second blackout but not after."

"Jim disappeared?" questioned Gene.

"It would seem—" started Suzuka but got cut off by Melfina.

"I can't feel his presence anywhere on the ship. Actually, it feels as though he had never been here in the first place."

"You can feel people's presence on the ship?" came Gene's query.

"Yes, that's how I knew that you didn't leave the ship, but I can't pinpoint locations. But in this case I can't feel Jim at all, it's as though his presence got erased from the ship."

"Mel, don't talk like that. All this is starting to freak me out," and it was the truth, all this talk about disappearing was stating to freak this Ctarl-Ctarl out.

"But I thought that great Ctarl-Ctarls like your self never got freaked out."

"Gene, there is no time for those kind of antics," was Suzuka's curt reply to Gene's statement, "we need to find Jim before something bad happens."

"Is something bad going to happen to Jim?" this question came out more worried then Gene hoped it would, but, as far as he knew, none of the crew knew about his little venture with Jim a couple of days ago so it just seemed that he was worried about Jim from a big brother's point of view. 'But is it really just from a big brother's point of view?' was the thought that quickly raced through Gene's mind but got quickly disregarded.

"I don't know Gene. I really don't know."

A/N: Hiya y'all! I know what you're thinking: "Why hasn't this baka author updated in so long!" Well I'll tell ya why! Actually, I have no excuse; I've just been lazy but that's not an excuse. So hopefully now that I have more ideas for this fanficcy, I'll be able to update more often! Happy day! Oh and a gigantic thank you to Moonlight Knight and JojoBlond for being with me since the beginning and are hopefully still there because there is still more to come! And an even bigger thank you to my newest reviewers: Deragonmaji, Angel Sunami, and Kylie-Chan! Thanks to all my reviewers I got so many more reviews then I ever thought I would get! Willow out! See you on the other side of sanity, if I ever get there that is! YAY! 3