Hello all. It's your favorite bipolar lazy author all over again. I'm sorry that I've basically put all of my other stories on hiatus, but writer's block has eaten them up D: until I find all the old inspiration in the dark corners of my mind, I won't manage to update soon on those.

This little baby, however, is going to be on here as well as deviantart, so maybe the double pressure will make me focus on the task some more XD I feel awful but happy.

And thus, I bring you my new Jim and Ariel story. Enjoy!

"Five minutes are up, put down your pens."

Jim Hawkins sighed, frustrated, as he set down his writing utensil. In the five minutes they were given to compose a short paragraph about "what they wished to accomplish in their first year of the Space Academy", he had managed to write nothing. Well, nothing of purpose seemed to come to his mind, and as he racked his brain for a quick solution before the robot holding the scanner would reach his cubicle, he found nothing. It wasn't until the robot was a mere two cubicles away when he recalled a detail of his miraculous escape from the exploding Treasure Planet, and hastiliy scrawled it onto the paper.

Just then, the robot rounded his cubicle and held out the scanner. Jim reluctantly placed the paper face down onto the scanner as his answer was absorbed into the robot's memory system, and simultaneously sent to the front of the classroom, where Professor Filomenus recieved the class' collected answers on an electronic notepad and reviewed them with a bored expression on his face. The man had distinct human features, save for the spotted tail that curled around his chair at the moment.

Jim sighed again, and surveyed the Professor's face intently as the robot moved on to his neighbor. The bored expression remained, yet as he flicked his finger across the notepad to move on to the next answer, his expression changed drastically. His lips curled into a small smile, revealing pointed incisors, and his eyes filled themselves with a sort of disdainful humor. He looked up from his notepad straight into the eyes of the worried spacer.

"James Hawkins?" he called, not breaking their gaze. Jim stood up and walked forward when the Professor motioned him to the desk.

"Yes, Professor?" he asked, barely managing to keep the anxiety out of his voice. The Professor smirked at him.

"Mr. Hawkins, you did not write a paragraph about what was requested. This is a mere line. However..." the Professor cut him off, as Jim was about to interject with an apology followed by some excuse or another. "...the subject to which you hinted captures your interest, as well as mine. Why did you write about such a thing?"

It was a rhetorical question, and Jim realized this, so he kept his mouth shut. "I know, of course, about your escapades to Treasure Planet, and how you escaped, yet this one line still puzzles me. You must know, as well as we all do, that Inter-Dimensional travel is not possible and cannot be achieved no matter how much one believes it can. I myself have studied extensively over this subject, and can assure you that such a request would, unfortunately, be denied to you by me and all those scientists that have tried, failed, and given up this attempt."

Jim detected a hint of bitterness in his Professor's voice, but he paid it no mind. The notion that Inter-Dimensional travel could be accomplished had been swimming around in his brain for a while now, ever since the ship had managed to traverse the galaxy in escaping the exploding planet on his great adventure. He quickly voiced these thoughts to his Professor, who seemed genuinely intrigued, yet sadly dispelled the notion with a casual flick of his tail.

"I'm sorry, but we all have known that traversing the galaxy is a different concept entirely, your point still cannot be true. It is a very captivating concept, isn't it?" he said, while giving Jim a sympathetic look. "Yet I wouldn't get too caught up with it. You just might spend the rest of your life dwelling on it, trying to prove me wrong, and your life will pass by much too quickly when you realize that it is all for nothing."

He gave Jim a final sympathetic look, and then dismissed him with another wave of his tail. Jim took the hint and sat down in his seat, anger boiling in his veins all the way there.
Upon reaching his cubicle, he stared down at the little lines of words scrawled in his own handwriting. Interdimensional Travel. He growled softly and pressed his balled up fists into his knees to stop him from hitting something. It could be done, and Jim was going to prove it.

Jim returned to his brother's flat immediately after school let out, slamming the door behind him. Dimitri looked up, startled, from the popcorn that was cooking in the microwave. "Rough first day, huh?"

Jim scowled and hastened to his room. He sat his messenger bag down on the floor next to his solar surfer, which he had been tinkering with the night before. He resumed working on it, ignoring the pile of homework screaming at him from the inside of his bag. 'None from Professor F, though... hmph.' he thought, tightening the sail to the board.

Dimitri had made his way into the room, leaning against the door with a smirk on his handsome face. "I'll take that as affirmative. What happened? Lunch disaster? Girl shun you the second you looked at her funny? Teacher..."

"...just gave me the challenge of a lifetime" Jim mumbled, adjusting the engine's welds with a bit more force than necessary. Dimitri raised an eyebrow.

"Which would be...?"

"To figure out a way to travel between dimensions."

Dimitri's mouth dropped, and he stood there in Jim's doorway for about a minute before walking over to Jim's bed and sitting down. He regained his composure quickly.

"I didn't know they taught such advanced stuff to first years at the Academy" he joked, although a bit less light-heartedly than before. Jim snorted.

"They aren't teaching it. I'm just gonna figure out how to do it. To prove my Professor and all those who have tried before him wrong." he stated firmly. Dimitri shook his head at his little brother. That kid was a genius, all right, but some things were just too dangerous to mess with. Scientists, and some of the most advanced, had died attempting this type of travel, and he didn't want his little brother to perish on some fool's quest. Sure, they had both come close to dying on the RLS Legacy a few months ago, but that was different. Dimitri had at least some control over what his brother was doing. His brother continued tinkering, absorbed in his work, while Dimitri thought of a plan to make his brother give up his plan. And of course, having a brilliant mind that ran in the family, Dimitri thought of an answer.

"Do it in two weeks." Jim dropped his welder and stared at his older brother like he had grown three other heads. "You heard me. You are definitely genius enough to pull it off, and you could wow the entire world if you manage in such a short time." Jim spluttered, looking for words to describe how crazy impossible this task would become, and was once again at a loss.

"How?" was his intelligent response. Dimitri laughed.

"You are the inventor of this family! You tell me! Actually don't. I'd be stuck in here for hours, when I could be spending quality time with Anya." In saying this, he got up from Jim's bed and walked out the door to where the front door suddenly opened to let in his girlfriend Anya, who he had been working up the courage to propose to sometime soon. "Good luck, my brother!" he called out, and dissapeared.

Jim stared at his hands, looking at them with an intense desire for them to just get up and build the stupid thing for him. How would he have the time to do that, his homework, and keep up with school all at once? He got up and immediately rushed through his fairly easy first-day homework, and decided what aspect of his life to give up. 'I could give up school, just not pay attention and use that time to work on this and rack my brain for answers... But that would dissappoint my family, can't have that... I'll give up solar surfing, that's easy enough...' he thought, looking down at his board wistfully. And then it hit him.

He rushed out of his room to see Dimitri and Anya engaged in a hologram movie with popcorn spilling on the couch. "Dimitri, I know what I'm going to do about... Oh hi Anya." he said, not wanting to be rude to his brother's girlfriend. He just didn't like her much, what with the constant pressure on Dimitri to buy her things and keep her entertained. "Anyways, I might be a little socially reserved for the next two weeks, so don't expect me to pay you any attention or go visit the Benbow with you... Don't look at me like that, just tell mom I'm super busy with school... Ok? Good." he finished, and ran right back to his room and slammed the door.

He wasn't seen except to grab a quick meal, go to school, or use the bathroom for the next week. Dimitri shook his head every time his genius of a brother emerged from his cavern of a bedroom. He visited his mother on the weekend at the Benbow Inn, yet when Jim wasn't there to accompany her oldest son, Sarah Hawkins nearly had a heart attack. Dimitri managed to explain the situation to his hyperventilating mother, although he left out a few key details regarding the danger of the project itself. This relaxed Sarah almost immediately; Jim preoccupied with a school project? Fine with her, by all means!

As the end of the two weeks drew nearer, Jim worked with a fervor that affected his brother as well. He felt the tension in the air, thick enough to cut a chunk out of it. Since the beginning of week two, noises of construction and metal being hurled across the room resonated throughout the flat, and they increased until finally, one night, they ceased.

Jim emerged from his room, weary yet with a huge grin on his face, ran to Dimitri's room and promptly began banging on the door. "What? What is it?" the annoyed older brother yelled. He was about as ready for these two weeks to end just as much as Jim was eager to open his brother's door to show him the final product. Dimitri opened the door and nearly started when an obnoxious Jim thrust a curious device in the general direction of Dimitri's face.

"It's done." he said triumphantly. Dimitri swatted Jim's arm away from his face while grabbing the device from him to inspect it. Jim shrieked and snatched it back tenderly, cradling it in such a way that made Dimitri laugh out loud.

"That is the final product? That is what you've been working on for two solid weeks? A funky looking necklace?" Jim arrogantly glared at his brother.

"It's not just a necklace, you idiot. once you twist the dial fully around the front of the orb, it creates a... a wormhole of sorts? A kind of tear in our dimension, I guess, and enables us to be pulled through into another one!" Dimitri was frankly impressed by Jim's words, yet looking at the metal thing he couldn't honestly believe that it would work.

"Are there, like, some sort of safety precautions to it? How do you kow you won't be transported to some new dimension in their version of outer space?" Jim shrugged.

"It has a chip in it that I programmed to cause a pull of the dimension's gravity to hold the traveler in place until it locates somewhere solid for a safe landing." Now Dimitri was beginning to look more like he believed his younger brother, and Jim knew it. He couldn't resist the smug grin that bloomed across his features.

"And how exactly did you get it to work?" Of course. The pivotal, most important question of all. Jim smirked, feeling astounded again by his own cleverness.

"You know how Flint built his planet out of some sort of metal stuff that connected it in the end to the map?" Dimitri nodded. He remembered. "Well, I collected some of the dust from the metal in the side of the planet, you know when I surfed along the edge of the crevice to get my surfer's engine started? Some of the dust was residing in my surfer's engine, and i scraped it off, tweaked it with some of that stuff Doppler uses to send tin cans to other parts of his study, and here we are!" he finished with a grin that he hadn't sported in a long time. Dimitri grinned back.

"Well, little bro, looks like you've got yourself quite the invention there!" he said, and clapped Jim on the shoulder.

Suddenly a knock on their front door was heard, resonating through the house in an odd fashion. Dimitri ran to open it with Jim close behind him. It was the two robot police officers that Jim knew all too well, and he shrank a bit behind his older brother.

"Dimitri and James Hawkins?" the first officer stated. He knew who they were, so it was more of a statement than an inquiry. "I have unsettling news for you both. Your mother, Sarah Hawkins, has vanished."

Jim caught the breath leaving his throat in a rush, as if he had been punched in the stomach. He looked to Dimitri, whose knuckles had turned as white as his blanched face.

"How..." Dimitri began, yet he couldn't finish the question as he was at a loss of words. Jim, feeling much the same, kept his mouth into a firmly pressed line.

"She was apprehended by...something unknown a few hours ago in the orchard of the Benbow Inn. No one saw her, and it was only discovered that she was missing when she did not answer her message hails from Dr. Doppler or Captain Amelia. This locket was found in the orchard." the officer stated this mechanically, and now presented the boys with the locket their mother always wore around her neck.

Jim numbly reached out for it, his fingers closing around the cool metal before letting his hand drop to his side. He couldn't bear to look at it.

"You are requested to meet with Dr. Doppler shortly, he is on his way here from the Benbow and will arrive in approximately 10 minutes." Ten minutes to compose themselves, Jim thought hurriedly, his fingers tightening around the locket. He didn't think it would be enough.

Yet before his eyes time flew much too quickly, and ten minutes passed in a blur of doors closing, sitting numbly on the couch, picturing his poor mother in some creature's grasp, and Dimitri cursing until he realized that the Doctor was there, sitting across from him, babbling nervously and fidgeting with his spectacles.

"Jim, have you been listening to a word I've been saying?" he finally blurted, exasperated. Jim fell out of his trance, abruptly, and dropped the locket onto the couch.

"What did you say, Doctor?" he mumbled, his tone laced with an apology. The Doctor sighed, yet gave a small smile.

"It's ok, Jim. Everything will turn out for the better?" he said, turning this last statement into a fearful question. Jim gave him a puzzled look. "Jim, Dimitri... You see, that locket is much more than it seems."

Jim snorted, and Dimitri, who had been standing with his head against the hearth of the fireplace, snorted almost simultaneously. The Doctor looked indignant. "Boys! Really! It isn't just a hologram necklace, it's a life-tracking device! It keeps tabs on your mother's life and wellbeing no matter where she is!"

This made Dimitri turn to face their canine friend. "And how did that thing get installed into our mother's locket?" Doppler suddenly became quite interested in his shoes, and mumbled something unintelligible. "Hmm?" Dimitri prodded.

"Well, your...father asked me to install it a while ago, when Jim was born. He gave me his key to it when he..left" the Doctor managed to choke out. Jim's eyes narrowed.

"Why would that... Why would he care about her? Why would he... do that?" Jim spat angrily, his fists clenching until he was given a warning look by his brother. The Doctor looked genuinely distressed.

"I have no idea, Jim. I didn't ask questions. But I am asking them now... for, the detector says that she is in perfect health, but it appears as if she's..." he trailed off, not wanting to finish such a rediculous statement.

"She's?" Dimitri and Jim growled together.

"...not in this dimension anymore. She has vanished, POOF! Right off of the detector's capability to track her in any part of the galaxy."

Jim's hands became clammy. He had trouble swallowing. He slowly pulled his recently completed invention out of his pocket, and then turned his eyes toward his brother, whose expression mirrored his. Of course. The answer to finding their mother was in the palm of their hands.

:D so tell me what you think! I hope to God and Jesus that I find the time to write this story fully until completion... And please poke me for updates when I get lazy. I will probably respond to each PM I get, so please feel free :D

And also remember, this is SO going to be JimxAriel. Warning all those who expect something else (though why would you? XD theyre the cutest thing ever!) Yet i don't know around what time she'll be introduced to our lovely Jim. But she will, if you keep poking me for updates! :D

I'm going to try to update every month, so be happy if I manage to get in a couple of chapters before the month is up finished. Pray for me! :D