Chapter Text
"No, no, no... it can't be..."
Curly walked through the corridors of the Tulpar, his heart racing, beating like a machine gun. He just couldn't believe what he had just heard from Anya, couldn't believe his childhood friend could do something like this. Of course, Jimmy was hard to deal with, he could be rough and frightening most of the time but... this?... this was beyond what he could imagine, not even in his darkest thoughts on Jimmy. But this was not the only thing on Curly's mind... the guilt... the guilt was punching on his consciousness like the hook of a heavywheight champion... he could have seen it, the clues were all there but still he turned a blind eye, because Jimmy was his friend, because Jimmy was grumpy but would never harm anyone of the crew.... Curly wanted to vomit.
A turn on the corridor and there he went, heavy rushed steps towards the cockpit. Curly knew Jimmy would be there, it was their refugee, the place where they went to cool their heads amidst all the work.
As Curly attempted to open the door, he was met with a beep and a red light
>"access door locked"<
He was confused, Jimmy never locked the door, on the contrary, he used to always let it wide open so he wouldn't have to bother to open it himself...but now...he locked it.
"Captain request! Unlock door now!" Curly said in a calm tone yet filled with authority.
As the door unlocked and opened, Curly rushed inside the cockpit, finding Jimmy at the controls, static, paralised, but Curly wasn't there to look at him, they needed to talk.
"Jimmy... Jimmy! Look at me!" Curly said, his tone slowly fading from the authority of moments ago to a frail melancholic tone, the one of a friend who didn't want to believe his best friend had done something so terrible. "Jimmy look at me now!"
No answer, Jimmy was facing forward, one could swear he wasn't even blinking, his expression was frozen between despear and absolute bliss...it was terrifying...he didn't move an inch, almost like if he was dead.
"Jimmy... Jimmy tell me you didn't....i...i should've..." the breakdown was imminent, he couldn't hold it anymore.
"It doesn't matter anymore..."
Jimmy's voice echoed like a gunshot. Cold, direct... lifeless.
"How the fuck it doesn't matter anymore?! Jimmy, Anya told me what you did to her! How do you tell me it doesn't matter?!"
Curly said, his hands shaking, his heart racing, until some minutes ago he could never imagine himself facing Jimmy like that but now it was all very real.
"It will all be fixed soon..." Jimmy's words couldn't come colder than that.
"Jimmy what the hell are you talking abou-" Looking at the screen, Curly finally realised. His eyes quickly moving to Jimmy's hands at the controls, then back to the screen where a trail of huge asteroids could be seen getting closer and closer. "Jimmy... JIMMY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"
"Fixing....everything...." Jimmy's voice now had a cold bliss to it, his eyes slowly tearing up. Curly finally realised. It wasn't Jimmy's usual coldness...it was the resolve of a dead man.
Without a second thought, Curly jumped at Jimmy, grabbing his hands, trying desperatedly to get them off the steering controls. Jimmy, however, was holding on tight.
"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!" Curly screamed, in an thunderous mix of anger and despair. "YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US ALL!!"
Curly tried to pull Jimmy's hands from the control, however he wasn't trying his best. Deep inside, he didn't wanna hurt his friend, he didn't want to go that far.
"JIMMY!! LET GO!!!" He screamed, looking at Jimmy's watering, blank eyes. "PLEASE!!!"
"Fix....everything..." Jimmy closed his eyes, as if just waiting for the moment he wouldn't open them anymore.
Curly looked at the scream, the ship's computer sprung the alarms "IMMINENT IMPACT, PULL UP! IMMINENT IMPACT, PULL UP!". Curly's heart raced like a dragster, he needed to do something, he was the captain! He had to act or else everyone would die! Suddenly, for the fraction of a second, his heart calmed down, everything went silent, his mind seemed to snap... he wasn't just a captain anymore, Pony Express was dead, his crew wasn't a dead company's responsibility anymore, it was his', he was THE Captain.
As the alarms got louder again, Curly's expression faded to a cold determined one, his fist tightly closed as it landed with a powerfull jab onto Jimmy's face. The force of the punch was enough to knock Jimmy out, his hands finally letting go of the controls which Curly quickly held onto, pulling up as hard as he could and pushing the engines throttles to full speed.
"COME ON....COME ON!!!" He clenched his teeth, sweat pouring from him like a waterfall, his face getting a bright red as the ship began to go up, the meteor just a few meters away. "COME ON!!!"
The Tulpar's metal strucure screamed as the ship's belly hit the surface of the asteroid, scratching it badly and rocking up anything inside the vessel that wasn't nailed to the floor. The impact, however, launched the ship up with enough strenght combined with the engines to throw it out of the asteroid field.
Curly looked at the screen with his eyes almost popping out of his head, his breath heavy and loud, his heartbeat could be heard through the cockpit and his hands were still holding tight at the controls. He did it, the ship was safe...or was it?
Suddenly, several error messages appeared on the screen, among them there was a common word: "engine". With a sudden, loud bang and a vibration, the Tulpar's engines stopped, the emergency retro-rockets activated and then the ship came to a dead stop. Instinctively, Curly reached for the fireup switches of the engines, attempting to get them going again, but everything was off-line, the engines were gone.
A deep breath came from behind, although Curly could hear it, he was still in an shock state, unable to do anything other than try to restart the engines in vain.
"What in Sam Hill happend 'ere?!" Swansea exclaimed, looking around, clearly scared and confused by what had just unfolded and by what he was seeing.
Curly's hands finally gave up, he slowly turned to face the older man, his eyelids easing up and his face going pale, his skin almost looked like a porcelain doll: white and shiny due to sweat.
"Swansea...." Curly said in a sigh, still panting heavily.
"Captain! What happend?!" The older man asked, now getting worried about the state of the blonde.
Curly slowly turned his head and eyes towards the unconscious Jimmy, lying on the cockpit's floor.
"Tie...him....up...." Curly sighed, his voice, though tired and faint, recovered it's authority. "He's....under...arrest"
Curly's eyes rolled back as he feel forwards, being quickly held by Swansea who screamed for Anya and Daisuke to help him. Whatever had happend, they would be wait for the men to wake up to find out.