For Every Action
By Red Tenko
"Of all the times, why now?" Faye demanded to the Red Tail's computer, which was currently telling her half the systems were broken and she was-obviously-going down. A malfunction was one thing, a malfunction on a collision course to Earth was another. She could see it straight ahead, the great blue marble getting bigger as she neared it, and even closer in her path was the ring of moon fragments in orbit.
"If I don't crash into those it'll be the planet," she grumbled to herself. Staring at the display, Faye bitterly noticed that having Jet repair the ship so often had spoiled her from learning to fix anything herself. She couldn't even tell how bad the problem was, but she did know she couldn't fly and that was enough information.
Cursing once, twice, maybe fifty times (but very quickly), Faye slammed her hand down on the communicator. "You're an idiot, you know that?" she growled at the small, black-blue monocraft that had fired on her. The pilot was, she at least assumed, someone she owed money to. "I can't pay you if I'm dead!"
The planet was getting close. The ring was getting closer.
"But fine then, let's make a deal."
~~*earlier*~~
"It's been six hours," Jet announced, speaking for the first time since Spike left the ship. "I guess this means he's not coming back."
Dead. He wouldn't say "dead", and he could feel Faye's eyes on the back of his neck for just that reason.
Faye wouldn't say anything at all.
She sat in Spike's old chair next to the backlit table, staring out the door and into the blackness of space though the nearest window in view.
She wasn't like Spike, she couldn't just sit still. After the Swordfish vanished in the Martian atmosphere, she'd gone to her room but only stayed for about a half hour and Jet heard her pacing the whole time.
She then barged into Spike's room. Jet hadn't tried to stop her, and he heard the bumps and clangs as she rifled through the drawers in the bureau, emerging moments later with practically Spike's entire stash of cigarettes.
It took two packs for Faye to calm down, and now there she was, sitting and staring and dead still save the deck of cards she absently shuffled.
Even then, Jet couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for her. He probably would later, but not right now, not right after the event.
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
Faye's eyes flicked from the window to Jet, her face looking odd in the Shougi board's neon lighting. She looked at him for a moment, then dropped her gaze to the card deck; taking off the top card, she examined it briefly before letting it drop to the floor.
The Ace of Spades.
"What's to say?"
~~~**~~~
When the ship had fired on her, Fay of course dodged the entourage of missiles. She wasn't born yesterday. These missiles, however, seemed to be just that recent. They detonated without contact to the Red Tail, and the explosion had damaged her ship seriously. The technology behind the explosives looked as expensive as the ship, and whoever this person was, Faye could understand why she hadn't paid him. She probably couldn't afford it.
"You don't have my price," said an unfamiliar male voice over her communicator, telling her what she already knew as an answer to her offer.
He fired another set of missiles, although Faye didn't see the use for she was crippled enough already. Without flight control to save her, she quickly emptied one of her oxygen tanks, letting momentum push her out of the weapon's direct path. Once again the missiles exploded anyway, blowing off the Red Tail's landing struts but thankfully nothing more.
But still, one oxygen tank left, and it wasn't as if she could evade like that again without suffocating.
Dammit! Faye pulled out her mobile comm. and tried to call the Bebop, but found she couldn't get a signal through.
"Who are you anyway?" she demanded to the dark ship's pilot. "Do I owe you something? Or were you a bounty I put away?"
"Neither," said the disembodied voice. "We've never met. Sorry about this, you sound hot, but I'm not getting paid to date you."
Faye would have responded with all sorts of interesting names and phrases she'd picked up over the years, but suddenly her ship began to shake, then violently lurch forward as she caught a glimpse of another missile out the window.
~~*earlier*~~
Five days. Jet sort of expected to hear some news of what had become of the Syndicate by now, but none came, and he really didn't feel like calling up old friends in the ISSP. When Spike left, Jet hadn't expected him to come back, but at the very least he wanted to know if Vicious was dead along with his friend. Not having all the information was something that always bothered Jet.
Another bother, but the usual bother, was Faye. It seemed that now he couldn't decide if he was glad of her company or if he wanted to hurt her. Something about her had changed. It wasn't her personality-no, he was positive the same, brash Faye he'd accepted was in there somewhere-but her actions were different, as if she was taking new personalities out for a test flight.
At first she'd stayed quiet, but in her usual manner of lounging or sleeping. Normally when she got bored she sought someone out to play cards with, but it wasn't until the third quiet day when she showed up in the doorway complaining of the lack of bounties and such and such, offering him a game of poker.
For a moment he thought of agreeing to a game-the bonsai trees weren't helping his mood anyway-but a sudden flash of anger entered him instead. Women were emotional, and Faye was no different, so how could she just act like nothing had happened? She'd practically given him the 21-handgun salute when Spike left, but now it was business as usual? She was being the leech again, using the Bebop's food and water until her money ran out and she needed to find a bounty...
"I don't have the budget to loose to you right now," he told her.
But then again, he hadn't been hunting recently either.
The anger faded as quickly as it had come. Listening to Faye's voice was better than listening to the daylong quiet which had plagued the ship. Although no sweetheart, she wasn't so bad; she just took more getting used to than most people and Jet was almost as used to her as he'd been to Spike. It wasn't as if things had been terribly loud before, but they'd been more active-at least it seemed with four people and a dog on board. This new kind of quiet was eerie, and far too sudden; it would get worse if Faye left.
He stared at a beat up bonsai tree and inwardly sighed.
"Why don't we play Shougi instead?"
She looked dissatisfied but not disappointed. "Play for what?"
"There's no betting in Shougi." (Author's note: Shougi is Japanese chess)
Faye, pocketing the cards, smiled with her poker face and reminded him, "You can bet on anything."
~~**~~
The turbulence, or whatever that had been, either hit her head or ruptured the oxygen tank. Either way, Faye was dizzy and not in the state of mind to tell which one. All she really knew right now, was that the lights on the console looked very pretty. Lights everywhere...spinning...
She shook her head, but found an unwelcome pain in her neck. She reclined back to her blissful, fuzzy musings and watched the lights. Fragments of glass and metal from her ship floated above her head along with food wrappers. Was she floating too? Zero gravity...how had she gotten out of the seat harness? Must've been a hard knock, but no matter. Why think about that when the lights were so pretty?
And the earth... it was shining all nice and blue and brown and white. She'd never noticed how nice everything was until now, and her home planet... it was close! She reached out to grasp it in her fingers, but found herself looking at the blurry image of her hand, stained in red all the way down her arm. A very nice color, but not a nice sign, she knew, but still couldn't bring herself to do anything about it.
She couldn't tell if she was alive or dead. She couldn't feel a thing-my! There's a thought! Now where had she head that before...
~"I'm not going to die..."~
Oh, that's right.
~"I'm going to see if I'm still alive."~
So what had he been feeling until then-how she felt now? Dizzy but warm, but with a comfortable mix of bright light and shadowy blotches fighting for control of her eyes...
"How many times did you die?" she asked. Faye was unsure who exactly she was asking, but nobody answered. "Is this what it feels like?"
Whatever was happening to her, Faye felt drained of all will to fight it. She was glad she was floating, that chair was too uncomfortable. Everything was too uncomfortable...
It's nice, she decided in that weak sense of mind, to just sit and watch everything. Little droplets of water-red water, coming from somewhere close by-floated alongside an empty cup of instant ramen. Everything looked so wonderful in the glow of the earth. Everything looked so wonderful in the moonlight. All she wanted to do was close her eyes...
Wait.
Moonlight? But the moon was gone, wasn't it?
~~*earlier*~~
It didn't take Faye long to grasp the basics of Shougi. She seemed to have a talent for picking up games, gambling or otherwise. Her only apparent problem was that she was so new to it, she had yet to figure out how to cheat, and Jet found out she was a very sore looser. But she was persistent, and they ended up playing often although she never won.
Between her fits of frustration however, Jet noticed a bit of skill starting to develop in her game. He half expected her to say something like "I'm picking this up fast, I won't be loosing to you for much longer," but she instead ignored the building talent altogether.
Often she would lie about not understanding the rules as an excuse to take back a bad move she'd made. When those times happened, although Jet knew she'd mastered the basics, he found himself repeating them again and again in a professorial voice.
Thinking back on it, Jet began to wonder if she'd just been humoring him. Normally Faye would never stand to be spoken to like she knew no better, like a child, but she'd been letting him do it anyway and all along wearing that same look she'd given Spike when she couldn't win an argument.
It wasn't exactly like Jet didn't know what people thought his problem was. A control freak-he couldn't help it, he had to do everything himself. He had to feel like he was taking care of someone. Faye knew this, he realized, and had let him rant on and on. She allowed herself to become a minor replacement for Ed, while she satisfied her own want of a certain missing know-it-all to find fault with her.
Once again, Jet couldn't decide between anger or pity towards the woman. He had a feeling that she was acting manageable around him as if she owed it to Spike to keep an old man company. It was degrading, in a way, towards him-but then again it was the only memorial she seemed to be giving to Spike, and the only evidence in her favor in Jet's secret question if she missed him or not. If she was heartless or not.
But there were so many times when he was convinced that Faye's natural womanly tendency to betray people had been thrown onto Spike's memory. She would sit in his old place on the couch, but watch television or read a book, or something that was more "Faye" than "Spike" all the while reclining like the former occupant had in that spot. She'd taken it over, like some kind of territorial animal.
Jet, on his way to the hanger, past her in the living area one afternoon and once again Faye was laying back with her feet up and arms behind her head. A cigarette-one of Spike's last--dangled from her lips and she appeared to be asleep (although Jet doubted it). Somehow, maybe from the way she lay or just because the repressed emotions were finally getting to him, Faye really reminded him of Spike at that moment.
He was filled with a sudden anger, as if she'd been doing something wrong on purpose and right then he wouldn't have considered it out of character. For some reason-any psychiatrist would say depression but Jet would never ask one's opinion-his mood, his emotions, and even his opinions had been going up and down.
At times, everything she did whether eating or sleeping or saying something sarcastic seemed to be something personally against him. Or Spike. Those were the times when he felt something should be done about the memory of their lost shipmate, but he wouldn't have been a man to express his feelings too far. But for some reason he really hated her right then-no, it was just anger, but a lot of anger.
"What are you doing?" he asked, but his tone was gruff and rather imposing.
She didn't even open her eyes, but replied quickly, "Nothing at all."
"Obviously. You haven't done a thing in a long time."
She shrugged as much as she could with her arms behind her head. "Bounty Hunting is mostly waiting."
Jet stared at the wisps of smoke that curled around above her head and disappeared into the ceiling. The carton the cigarette came from sat on the coffee table next to the ashtray. He knew she still had plenty of her own left, but she seemed determined on finishing off those that Spike had left.
"I thought I could figure it out but I couldn't," Jet conceded in a low voice as he stared at the ashes. "I don't know why, but there's something wrong with you." She half opened her eyes and watched the slow ceiling fan. "There's always been something wrong with you, probably since before you came on board, but it hasn't shown its face until now."
She turned her half open eyes on him, but still said nothing.
"What kind of a woman are you anyway?" he found himself accusing her. "You've always been ungrateful, but for all the times he saved your life you didn't even cry, and that's heartless!"
Faye didn't blink. She inhaled deeply from Spike's cigarette, then extinguished it in the ashtray. "Jet," she said, and he already didn't like the sound of it. Her voice was quiet, and that alone was a red flag from a woman who loves to yell when upset. "Are you angry at me for not grieving," she stood up and plucked the last cigarette from the pack. "or for grieving like a man?"
~~**~~
It was really there: the moon. It hung in earth's orbit just as it should have, just as Faye remembered it, and that vision alone was enough to pull her from her dream and back to a reality full of pain. Cuts crossed her body in any feasible direction, although she couldn't remember what had caused them exactly.
Some part of her kept reminding her, she'd probably not survive this one. But then again she'd thought that many times, although the last few she'd been unable to save herself and instead he'd rescued her...
Nobody would come for her this time, but she didn't want to think about that.
So instead all she saw, or all she chose to see, was the moon.
There were so many things wrong with the image. For one thing, technically from her angle Faye should be seeing the dark side of the moon, but it glowed in full. Another obvious problem was that the moon was surrounded by a ring of it's own fragments. Whatever it was, it couldn't be real. Or if it was real in the sense it existed, it was still a fake.
But why?
Faye knew that reasons didn't matter, but she still felt curious. The curiosity was something to focus on over the pain... but maybe that was just it. Maybe she'd lost too much blood, and was now caught up in her own hallucination.
Real or not, there or not, the Red Tail was flying right towards it.
The moon glowed-it glowed so brightly! But everything seemed to be glowing, and Faye tried to warn herself not to go into the light, however inviting it may look. But she didn't have a choice. Flight control was down, and she kept floating closer.
Closer and closer, brighter and brighter, until something seemed to have burned itself out and everything began to turn dark. Earth was gone, the stars were gone, even the inside of her ship had vanished and the bright moon was just a dot growing smaller.
But was it the moon, or she that was fading? Faye was unconscious before she could answer herself.
~~*earlier*~~
Jet regretted loosing his composure like that. He and Faye hadn't exactly avoided each other, but they hadn't talked a lot either. An old friend from the ISSP called up. Since Big Shot's cancellation, finding a decent bounty was harder than usual, and apparently the folks back at the Ganymede station were worried about him.
"We'll give you a tip-can't have you starving you know," detective Asmerik chuckled over the communicator. The Bebop was far out of range so the video connection came out fuzzy. Audio was fine, though, and set loud enough for Faye to hear when she walked in.
"There's a drug dealer recently out," Asmerik continued, "he's broken his parole by starting up again."
Faye snickered. "For a drug dealer to be caught in this day and age, he has to be pretty bad at his job."
Asmerik apparently heard her. "I'll say," the man laughed. "He's trying to revive the opium industry, even though the modern stuff drove it out of business ages ago."
Jet frowned. "Where's he getting the poppies? I though any place on earth that grew them got panned out by now."
The detective nodded, bobbing his head like a parakeet. "Apparently they grow on Venus as well-which is where he got them that is, not necessarily where he has them now."
Jet nodded too, but without the head bob. He felt sluggish right now, but they needed some money and exercise would do him good. "We'll take it," he conceded without asking Faye, knowing he could throw her debts to him in her face if she wouldn't comply. "What are the specifics?"
"You've only got two days before he's posted on the YMCA list," Asmerik reminded him as the mug shot transmitted. The image of a short, red-haired man only half as muscular as Jet appeared on the screen. Yolan Davis was his name, age unknown but around thirty-five. "You can't see it in the picture, but his prison barcode is on the back of his neck."
Jet thanked him, and after a bit more small talk disconnected.
"What's the reward?" Faye asked. She had that last cigarette in her mouth, but it was unlit. Jet dimly wondered if she'd smoke it or not.
He crossed his large arms. "The reward is food, fuel, and repairs to the Bebop."
Faye frowned at the though of a bounty so small there'd be nothing left to splurge with. "Does repairs include the water heater?"
"Yes."
"Fine, I'm in." Jet decided to let her have that one instead of pointing out he'd have made her take it anyway. "He couldn't be on Venus now---wouldn't be able to afford any place that could grow a poppy."
Jet reclined back in the chair. He was glad of the bounty now, it made conversation seem more normal. That last real conversation hadn't gone too well at all, but he had to admit it was his own fault for letting his temper get away. Despite that, it was sort of comforting to know that she was, some way, grieving.
That's what he'd been after all along, Jet supposed. A bit of recognition, for Spike's sake. Jet wasn't going to cry, even after a loss, it just wasn't his way. But still, Spike had been a good friend and a generally good man; it felt like somebody should be crying for him, and frankly he'd expected the woman to do what most women did.
"They need a lot of sun, Poppies." Faye continued. "He couldn't grow enough for opium on a ship."
Jet swept his animatronic hand over his bald spot. "I suppose there might be some place left on earth where he could plant a few..." He trailed off as he noticed something about Faye change when he'd mentioned her home planet.
He couldn't put his finger on it, it was like a shadow over her face. But with a shake of her head she shoved whatever feeling it had been away and looked normal, but more distracted than before. As if she was reliving something in her mind.
"I suppose there might be..." she said, referring to the poppies. "Not all of California sunk into the ocean, and I think the poppy was their official flower."
"You can check there, then," Jet instructed.
"Why don't you do it?" she bit back, attitude returning.
Jet grew thoughtful. It seemed that Faye did not want to go to earth, and Jet found himself trying to remember the last time she'd even stepped off the ship and onto that wrecked planet. "The last time you left," he asked slowly, "Where did you go?"
"None of your business."
"It's my business if it effects your ability to catch a bounty."
She sent him a horrible glare, and Jet involuntarily winced. However, somewhere on the inside, he was happy to see a face that could only be described as "classic Faye", a face he hadn't seen in a while.
"Not that you've earned or paid for this information," she growled, standing up. "But I made the stupid decision to go back to my past, thinking I might avoid the usual bad luck about it that seems to contaminate this ship." She held her death-stare to him for another moment or two, then stomped back up the stairs.
It seemed that the Faye who wanted, but was too proud to look for someone to talk to had returned, and this time the dog wasn't there to confide in. She stopped at the circular doorway that leads to the hanger. "I believed him when he said the past didn't matter," she said slowly. "But he was just a lunkhead."
A few minutes later, the Red Tail took off. Judging by the direction, Faye was flying back to earth, but Jet couldn't figure out if it was really the bounty she'd gone after.
~~**~~
A dog was barking, steadily louder and louder until Faye heard it right above her face. Opening her eyes a little, she looked at the source of the sound. A three headed dog? So she'd arrived at hell....wait... her vision corrected itself and the three heads melded into the face of Einstein himself.
"Welcome back, Faye-Faye!" a familiar voice sang. "Welcome! Welcome!"
Edward ran over to where she lay and stuck her face so close that her hair tickled Faye's forehead. "Has Faye-Faye come back?" asked the child sort of worriedly as she balanced on her heels.
"Ed..." Faye found her voice was nearly gone, her throat was so dry. "Uggh.. do you have any water?" she asked, in to much pain to bother with the pleasantries of "hello" and "how are you" and "Move already".
Ed pulled out a canteen and began to dump the water on Faye's face. She sat up quickly, only then realizing how many bruises she had, and grabbed the bottle before the girl could empty it all. She drank what was left, and only afterward did she feel good enough to be grateful.
She was sitting in the shade of an overhang on a rock structure. The sound of the sea came from somewhere near by, but the ground on which she sat felt dry as a desert. She looked around and noticed the Red Tail, sideways in the sand. It looked generally in one piece but she couldn't tell if it would fly until she checked it herself.
Edward and Ein stared at her with matching expressions, as if they expected her to do something. Faye looked around again and saw no sign of the father Ed had gone to find. "How'd I get here," she asked, starting to feel suspicious for some reason. "And how long have I been asleep?"
"Ed brought you," said Ed, pointing to a face stretched out like her computer icon. "Three days ago Ed did."
"Three days..." Faye repeated, lifting a hand to her forehead. She had a slight fever, which wasn't surprising for she doubted Ed knew how to treat her. It was lucky she'd woken when she did, for she wouldn't have survived much longer without water.
"How did you bring me, Ed?" she asked. Most of her didn't care about the how, just as long as she was alive, but right now she felt like hearing the girl's voice.
"Ed flew Faye-Faye's ship," the kid announced proudly, holding up her special remote control. "Not a big crash, Ed is getting better."
Faye felt herself smile. "Yeah..." Who ever had fired on her hadn't come after her in the three days, so she was probably safe. Probably.
"Faye-Faye?"
"What?"
"The Bebop isn't here yet." Edward looked rather disappointed. Faye began to wonder what kind of sense of family this girl really had. Ein whined in his doglike way.
"Jet doesn't know I'm here."
Ed crossed her arms and legs and began to sway like a daruma doll, staring upward as if watching for a ship. "Does Spike-person know where Faye-Faye is?"
Faye felt her throat contract. She was thirsty again. The kid didn't know... "Ed..." she started, but didn't know how to finish. Did this child-this very smart but very odd child-even understand what death was? "Ed..." she tried again, wondering how she could word such news.
Unable to think, she crawled out from under the overhang and paced in the hot sun. It probably wasn't the healthiest thing she could do, but she needed to get her blood circulating. "Ed, here's the thing," she began, putting her hands behind her head and looking up at the sky. "Spike is-what the hell?!"
There, straight above her in the glare of the afternoon sun, was the moon. So it hadn't been a dream... "Ed!" she shouted. "What is that?"
Ed smiled, hopped up, and ran sideways to her computer chanting, "Something in the sky, something in the sky," she flipped over and typed with her toes, "not a cloud, not a ship, what is it indeed?" Returning to a semi-normal sitting position Ed fixed her goggles over her eyes and pointed upward. "Moon came back. When Faye-Faye did. Tomato doesn't tell Ed it is there."
Faye didn't know what to think of it, but she did know she really needed a cigarette.
A ship flew quickly overhead, leaving a white trail of smoke in the sky. "Spike-person?" asked Ed.
Sighing, Faye reminded herself to take one step at a time, but she'd lost the energy to put things lightly. "Ed, Spike died a couple weeks ago."
Edward made a buzzing sound. "Wrong!"
"Ed!" she tried, finding herself saying things she'd screamed about if someone said them to her. "I know it's hard to accept but it's true!"
"Wrong, wrong," The girl chanted, doing another flip and typing with her toes again. "Tomato says so."
Faye felt more tired than ever, and she walked over to the computer to take a look at Ed's findings. The Young Man's Cowboy Association website was on the screen, and it looked like Radical Edward had hacked the system. "Spike-person is here!" said Ed, pointing to the screen.
Pushing the child out of the way, and suddenly feeling very cold, Faye stared at "Tomato" with an obvious degree of shock. The screen displayed a record of dates and times each registered Cowboy and Cowgirl had turned in a bounty, and for what amount.
And there was Spike Spiegel's name, still active on the server. According to this information, he'd turned in a bounty on Mars the day before yesterday.
Spike was alive.
To be continued
Authors note- hey, I'll make this quick since this chapter was already long enough. I hoped you liked it, I know the scenes on the Bebop were kind of strange, but I tried to make them as realistic as possible. I think I did a good job too, because I based it on my own actions and observations of behavior during a family tragedy. (oh and I hope the flashbacks weren't too confusing)
Anywho, this chapter was to set things up and the plot will pick up from here. Hope you like what I have so far and please review!
By Red Tenko
"Of all the times, why now?" Faye demanded to the Red Tail's computer, which was currently telling her half the systems were broken and she was-obviously-going down. A malfunction was one thing, a malfunction on a collision course to Earth was another. She could see it straight ahead, the great blue marble getting bigger as she neared it, and even closer in her path was the ring of moon fragments in orbit.
"If I don't crash into those it'll be the planet," she grumbled to herself. Staring at the display, Faye bitterly noticed that having Jet repair the ship so often had spoiled her from learning to fix anything herself. She couldn't even tell how bad the problem was, but she did know she couldn't fly and that was enough information.
Cursing once, twice, maybe fifty times (but very quickly), Faye slammed her hand down on the communicator. "You're an idiot, you know that?" she growled at the small, black-blue monocraft that had fired on her. The pilot was, she at least assumed, someone she owed money to. "I can't pay you if I'm dead!"
The planet was getting close. The ring was getting closer.
"But fine then, let's make a deal."
~~*earlier*~~
"It's been six hours," Jet announced, speaking for the first time since Spike left the ship. "I guess this means he's not coming back."
Dead. He wouldn't say "dead", and he could feel Faye's eyes on the back of his neck for just that reason.
Faye wouldn't say anything at all.
She sat in Spike's old chair next to the backlit table, staring out the door and into the blackness of space though the nearest window in view.
She wasn't like Spike, she couldn't just sit still. After the Swordfish vanished in the Martian atmosphere, she'd gone to her room but only stayed for about a half hour and Jet heard her pacing the whole time.
She then barged into Spike's room. Jet hadn't tried to stop her, and he heard the bumps and clangs as she rifled through the drawers in the bureau, emerging moments later with practically Spike's entire stash of cigarettes.
It took two packs for Faye to calm down, and now there she was, sitting and staring and dead still save the deck of cards she absently shuffled.
Even then, Jet couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for her. He probably would later, but not right now, not right after the event.
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
Faye's eyes flicked from the window to Jet, her face looking odd in the Shougi board's neon lighting. She looked at him for a moment, then dropped her gaze to the card deck; taking off the top card, she examined it briefly before letting it drop to the floor.
The Ace of Spades.
"What's to say?"
~~~**~~~
When the ship had fired on her, Fay of course dodged the entourage of missiles. She wasn't born yesterday. These missiles, however, seemed to be just that recent. They detonated without contact to the Red Tail, and the explosion had damaged her ship seriously. The technology behind the explosives looked as expensive as the ship, and whoever this person was, Faye could understand why she hadn't paid him. She probably couldn't afford it.
"You don't have my price," said an unfamiliar male voice over her communicator, telling her what she already knew as an answer to her offer.
He fired another set of missiles, although Faye didn't see the use for she was crippled enough already. Without flight control to save her, she quickly emptied one of her oxygen tanks, letting momentum push her out of the weapon's direct path. Once again the missiles exploded anyway, blowing off the Red Tail's landing struts but thankfully nothing more.
But still, one oxygen tank left, and it wasn't as if she could evade like that again without suffocating.
Dammit! Faye pulled out her mobile comm. and tried to call the Bebop, but found she couldn't get a signal through.
"Who are you anyway?" she demanded to the dark ship's pilot. "Do I owe you something? Or were you a bounty I put away?"
"Neither," said the disembodied voice. "We've never met. Sorry about this, you sound hot, but I'm not getting paid to date you."
Faye would have responded with all sorts of interesting names and phrases she'd picked up over the years, but suddenly her ship began to shake, then violently lurch forward as she caught a glimpse of another missile out the window.
~~*earlier*~~
Five days. Jet sort of expected to hear some news of what had become of the Syndicate by now, but none came, and he really didn't feel like calling up old friends in the ISSP. When Spike left, Jet hadn't expected him to come back, but at the very least he wanted to know if Vicious was dead along with his friend. Not having all the information was something that always bothered Jet.
Another bother, but the usual bother, was Faye. It seemed that now he couldn't decide if he was glad of her company or if he wanted to hurt her. Something about her had changed. It wasn't her personality-no, he was positive the same, brash Faye he'd accepted was in there somewhere-but her actions were different, as if she was taking new personalities out for a test flight.
At first she'd stayed quiet, but in her usual manner of lounging or sleeping. Normally when she got bored she sought someone out to play cards with, but it wasn't until the third quiet day when she showed up in the doorway complaining of the lack of bounties and such and such, offering him a game of poker.
For a moment he thought of agreeing to a game-the bonsai trees weren't helping his mood anyway-but a sudden flash of anger entered him instead. Women were emotional, and Faye was no different, so how could she just act like nothing had happened? She'd practically given him the 21-handgun salute when Spike left, but now it was business as usual? She was being the leech again, using the Bebop's food and water until her money ran out and she needed to find a bounty...
"I don't have the budget to loose to you right now," he told her.
But then again, he hadn't been hunting recently either.
The anger faded as quickly as it had come. Listening to Faye's voice was better than listening to the daylong quiet which had plagued the ship. Although no sweetheart, she wasn't so bad; she just took more getting used to than most people and Jet was almost as used to her as he'd been to Spike. It wasn't as if things had been terribly loud before, but they'd been more active-at least it seemed with four people and a dog on board. This new kind of quiet was eerie, and far too sudden; it would get worse if Faye left.
He stared at a beat up bonsai tree and inwardly sighed.
"Why don't we play Shougi instead?"
She looked dissatisfied but not disappointed. "Play for what?"
"There's no betting in Shougi." (Author's note: Shougi is Japanese chess)
Faye, pocketing the cards, smiled with her poker face and reminded him, "You can bet on anything."
~~**~~
The turbulence, or whatever that had been, either hit her head or ruptured the oxygen tank. Either way, Faye was dizzy and not in the state of mind to tell which one. All she really knew right now, was that the lights on the console looked very pretty. Lights everywhere...spinning...
She shook her head, but found an unwelcome pain in her neck. She reclined back to her blissful, fuzzy musings and watched the lights. Fragments of glass and metal from her ship floated above her head along with food wrappers. Was she floating too? Zero gravity...how had she gotten out of the seat harness? Must've been a hard knock, but no matter. Why think about that when the lights were so pretty?
And the earth... it was shining all nice and blue and brown and white. She'd never noticed how nice everything was until now, and her home planet... it was close! She reached out to grasp it in her fingers, but found herself looking at the blurry image of her hand, stained in red all the way down her arm. A very nice color, but not a nice sign, she knew, but still couldn't bring herself to do anything about it.
She couldn't tell if she was alive or dead. She couldn't feel a thing-my! There's a thought! Now where had she head that before...
~"I'm not going to die..."~
Oh, that's right.
~"I'm going to see if I'm still alive."~
So what had he been feeling until then-how she felt now? Dizzy but warm, but with a comfortable mix of bright light and shadowy blotches fighting for control of her eyes...
"How many times did you die?" she asked. Faye was unsure who exactly she was asking, but nobody answered. "Is this what it feels like?"
Whatever was happening to her, Faye felt drained of all will to fight it. She was glad she was floating, that chair was too uncomfortable. Everything was too uncomfortable...
It's nice, she decided in that weak sense of mind, to just sit and watch everything. Little droplets of water-red water, coming from somewhere close by-floated alongside an empty cup of instant ramen. Everything looked so wonderful in the glow of the earth. Everything looked so wonderful in the moonlight. All she wanted to do was close her eyes...
Wait.
Moonlight? But the moon was gone, wasn't it?
~~*earlier*~~
It didn't take Faye long to grasp the basics of Shougi. She seemed to have a talent for picking up games, gambling or otherwise. Her only apparent problem was that she was so new to it, she had yet to figure out how to cheat, and Jet found out she was a very sore looser. But she was persistent, and they ended up playing often although she never won.
Between her fits of frustration however, Jet noticed a bit of skill starting to develop in her game. He half expected her to say something like "I'm picking this up fast, I won't be loosing to you for much longer," but she instead ignored the building talent altogether.
Often she would lie about not understanding the rules as an excuse to take back a bad move she'd made. When those times happened, although Jet knew she'd mastered the basics, he found himself repeating them again and again in a professorial voice.
Thinking back on it, Jet began to wonder if she'd just been humoring him. Normally Faye would never stand to be spoken to like she knew no better, like a child, but she'd been letting him do it anyway and all along wearing that same look she'd given Spike when she couldn't win an argument.
It wasn't exactly like Jet didn't know what people thought his problem was. A control freak-he couldn't help it, he had to do everything himself. He had to feel like he was taking care of someone. Faye knew this, he realized, and had let him rant on and on. She allowed herself to become a minor replacement for Ed, while she satisfied her own want of a certain missing know-it-all to find fault with her.
Once again, Jet couldn't decide between anger or pity towards the woman. He had a feeling that she was acting manageable around him as if she owed it to Spike to keep an old man company. It was degrading, in a way, towards him-but then again it was the only memorial she seemed to be giving to Spike, and the only evidence in her favor in Jet's secret question if she missed him or not. If she was heartless or not.
But there were so many times when he was convinced that Faye's natural womanly tendency to betray people had been thrown onto Spike's memory. She would sit in his old place on the couch, but watch television or read a book, or something that was more "Faye" than "Spike" all the while reclining like the former occupant had in that spot. She'd taken it over, like some kind of territorial animal.
Jet, on his way to the hanger, past her in the living area one afternoon and once again Faye was laying back with her feet up and arms behind her head. A cigarette-one of Spike's last--dangled from her lips and she appeared to be asleep (although Jet doubted it). Somehow, maybe from the way she lay or just because the repressed emotions were finally getting to him, Faye really reminded him of Spike at that moment.
He was filled with a sudden anger, as if she'd been doing something wrong on purpose and right then he wouldn't have considered it out of character. For some reason-any psychiatrist would say depression but Jet would never ask one's opinion-his mood, his emotions, and even his opinions had been going up and down.
At times, everything she did whether eating or sleeping or saying something sarcastic seemed to be something personally against him. Or Spike. Those were the times when he felt something should be done about the memory of their lost shipmate, but he wouldn't have been a man to express his feelings too far. But for some reason he really hated her right then-no, it was just anger, but a lot of anger.
"What are you doing?" he asked, but his tone was gruff and rather imposing.
She didn't even open her eyes, but replied quickly, "Nothing at all."
"Obviously. You haven't done a thing in a long time."
She shrugged as much as she could with her arms behind her head. "Bounty Hunting is mostly waiting."
Jet stared at the wisps of smoke that curled around above her head and disappeared into the ceiling. The carton the cigarette came from sat on the coffee table next to the ashtray. He knew she still had plenty of her own left, but she seemed determined on finishing off those that Spike had left.
"I thought I could figure it out but I couldn't," Jet conceded in a low voice as he stared at the ashes. "I don't know why, but there's something wrong with you." She half opened her eyes and watched the slow ceiling fan. "There's always been something wrong with you, probably since before you came on board, but it hasn't shown its face until now."
She turned her half open eyes on him, but still said nothing.
"What kind of a woman are you anyway?" he found himself accusing her. "You've always been ungrateful, but for all the times he saved your life you didn't even cry, and that's heartless!"
Faye didn't blink. She inhaled deeply from Spike's cigarette, then extinguished it in the ashtray. "Jet," she said, and he already didn't like the sound of it. Her voice was quiet, and that alone was a red flag from a woman who loves to yell when upset. "Are you angry at me for not grieving," she stood up and plucked the last cigarette from the pack. "or for grieving like a man?"
~~**~~
It was really there: the moon. It hung in earth's orbit just as it should have, just as Faye remembered it, and that vision alone was enough to pull her from her dream and back to a reality full of pain. Cuts crossed her body in any feasible direction, although she couldn't remember what had caused them exactly.
Some part of her kept reminding her, she'd probably not survive this one. But then again she'd thought that many times, although the last few she'd been unable to save herself and instead he'd rescued her...
Nobody would come for her this time, but she didn't want to think about that.
So instead all she saw, or all she chose to see, was the moon.
There were so many things wrong with the image. For one thing, technically from her angle Faye should be seeing the dark side of the moon, but it glowed in full. Another obvious problem was that the moon was surrounded by a ring of it's own fragments. Whatever it was, it couldn't be real. Or if it was real in the sense it existed, it was still a fake.
But why?
Faye knew that reasons didn't matter, but she still felt curious. The curiosity was something to focus on over the pain... but maybe that was just it. Maybe she'd lost too much blood, and was now caught up in her own hallucination.
Real or not, there or not, the Red Tail was flying right towards it.
The moon glowed-it glowed so brightly! But everything seemed to be glowing, and Faye tried to warn herself not to go into the light, however inviting it may look. But she didn't have a choice. Flight control was down, and she kept floating closer.
Closer and closer, brighter and brighter, until something seemed to have burned itself out and everything began to turn dark. Earth was gone, the stars were gone, even the inside of her ship had vanished and the bright moon was just a dot growing smaller.
But was it the moon, or she that was fading? Faye was unconscious before she could answer herself.
~~*earlier*~~
Jet regretted loosing his composure like that. He and Faye hadn't exactly avoided each other, but they hadn't talked a lot either. An old friend from the ISSP called up. Since Big Shot's cancellation, finding a decent bounty was harder than usual, and apparently the folks back at the Ganymede station were worried about him.
"We'll give you a tip-can't have you starving you know," detective Asmerik chuckled over the communicator. The Bebop was far out of range so the video connection came out fuzzy. Audio was fine, though, and set loud enough for Faye to hear when she walked in.
"There's a drug dealer recently out," Asmerik continued, "he's broken his parole by starting up again."
Faye snickered. "For a drug dealer to be caught in this day and age, he has to be pretty bad at his job."
Asmerik apparently heard her. "I'll say," the man laughed. "He's trying to revive the opium industry, even though the modern stuff drove it out of business ages ago."
Jet frowned. "Where's he getting the poppies? I though any place on earth that grew them got panned out by now."
The detective nodded, bobbing his head like a parakeet. "Apparently they grow on Venus as well-which is where he got them that is, not necessarily where he has them now."
Jet nodded too, but without the head bob. He felt sluggish right now, but they needed some money and exercise would do him good. "We'll take it," he conceded without asking Faye, knowing he could throw her debts to him in her face if she wouldn't comply. "What are the specifics?"
"You've only got two days before he's posted on the YMCA list," Asmerik reminded him as the mug shot transmitted. The image of a short, red-haired man only half as muscular as Jet appeared on the screen. Yolan Davis was his name, age unknown but around thirty-five. "You can't see it in the picture, but his prison barcode is on the back of his neck."
Jet thanked him, and after a bit more small talk disconnected.
"What's the reward?" Faye asked. She had that last cigarette in her mouth, but it was unlit. Jet dimly wondered if she'd smoke it or not.
He crossed his large arms. "The reward is food, fuel, and repairs to the Bebop."
Faye frowned at the though of a bounty so small there'd be nothing left to splurge with. "Does repairs include the water heater?"
"Yes."
"Fine, I'm in." Jet decided to let her have that one instead of pointing out he'd have made her take it anyway. "He couldn't be on Venus now---wouldn't be able to afford any place that could grow a poppy."
Jet reclined back in the chair. He was glad of the bounty now, it made conversation seem more normal. That last real conversation hadn't gone too well at all, but he had to admit it was his own fault for letting his temper get away. Despite that, it was sort of comforting to know that she was, some way, grieving.
That's what he'd been after all along, Jet supposed. A bit of recognition, for Spike's sake. Jet wasn't going to cry, even after a loss, it just wasn't his way. But still, Spike had been a good friend and a generally good man; it felt like somebody should be crying for him, and frankly he'd expected the woman to do what most women did.
"They need a lot of sun, Poppies." Faye continued. "He couldn't grow enough for opium on a ship."
Jet swept his animatronic hand over his bald spot. "I suppose there might be some place left on earth where he could plant a few..." He trailed off as he noticed something about Faye change when he'd mentioned her home planet.
He couldn't put his finger on it, it was like a shadow over her face. But with a shake of her head she shoved whatever feeling it had been away and looked normal, but more distracted than before. As if she was reliving something in her mind.
"I suppose there might be..." she said, referring to the poppies. "Not all of California sunk into the ocean, and I think the poppy was their official flower."
"You can check there, then," Jet instructed.
"Why don't you do it?" she bit back, attitude returning.
Jet grew thoughtful. It seemed that Faye did not want to go to earth, and Jet found himself trying to remember the last time she'd even stepped off the ship and onto that wrecked planet. "The last time you left," he asked slowly, "Where did you go?"
"None of your business."
"It's my business if it effects your ability to catch a bounty."
She sent him a horrible glare, and Jet involuntarily winced. However, somewhere on the inside, he was happy to see a face that could only be described as "classic Faye", a face he hadn't seen in a while.
"Not that you've earned or paid for this information," she growled, standing up. "But I made the stupid decision to go back to my past, thinking I might avoid the usual bad luck about it that seems to contaminate this ship." She held her death-stare to him for another moment or two, then stomped back up the stairs.
It seemed that the Faye who wanted, but was too proud to look for someone to talk to had returned, and this time the dog wasn't there to confide in. She stopped at the circular doorway that leads to the hanger. "I believed him when he said the past didn't matter," she said slowly. "But he was just a lunkhead."
A few minutes later, the Red Tail took off. Judging by the direction, Faye was flying back to earth, but Jet couldn't figure out if it was really the bounty she'd gone after.
~~**~~
A dog was barking, steadily louder and louder until Faye heard it right above her face. Opening her eyes a little, she looked at the source of the sound. A three headed dog? So she'd arrived at hell....wait... her vision corrected itself and the three heads melded into the face of Einstein himself.
"Welcome back, Faye-Faye!" a familiar voice sang. "Welcome! Welcome!"
Edward ran over to where she lay and stuck her face so close that her hair tickled Faye's forehead. "Has Faye-Faye come back?" asked the child sort of worriedly as she balanced on her heels.
"Ed..." Faye found her voice was nearly gone, her throat was so dry. "Uggh.. do you have any water?" she asked, in to much pain to bother with the pleasantries of "hello" and "how are you" and "Move already".
Ed pulled out a canteen and began to dump the water on Faye's face. She sat up quickly, only then realizing how many bruises she had, and grabbed the bottle before the girl could empty it all. She drank what was left, and only afterward did she feel good enough to be grateful.
She was sitting in the shade of an overhang on a rock structure. The sound of the sea came from somewhere near by, but the ground on which she sat felt dry as a desert. She looked around and noticed the Red Tail, sideways in the sand. It looked generally in one piece but she couldn't tell if it would fly until she checked it herself.
Edward and Ein stared at her with matching expressions, as if they expected her to do something. Faye looked around again and saw no sign of the father Ed had gone to find. "How'd I get here," she asked, starting to feel suspicious for some reason. "And how long have I been asleep?"
"Ed brought you," said Ed, pointing to a face stretched out like her computer icon. "Three days ago Ed did."
"Three days..." Faye repeated, lifting a hand to her forehead. She had a slight fever, which wasn't surprising for she doubted Ed knew how to treat her. It was lucky she'd woken when she did, for she wouldn't have survived much longer without water.
"How did you bring me, Ed?" she asked. Most of her didn't care about the how, just as long as she was alive, but right now she felt like hearing the girl's voice.
"Ed flew Faye-Faye's ship," the kid announced proudly, holding up her special remote control. "Not a big crash, Ed is getting better."
Faye felt herself smile. "Yeah..." Who ever had fired on her hadn't come after her in the three days, so she was probably safe. Probably.
"Faye-Faye?"
"What?"
"The Bebop isn't here yet." Edward looked rather disappointed. Faye began to wonder what kind of sense of family this girl really had. Ein whined in his doglike way.
"Jet doesn't know I'm here."
Ed crossed her arms and legs and began to sway like a daruma doll, staring upward as if watching for a ship. "Does Spike-person know where Faye-Faye is?"
Faye felt her throat contract. She was thirsty again. The kid didn't know... "Ed..." she started, but didn't know how to finish. Did this child-this very smart but very odd child-even understand what death was? "Ed..." she tried again, wondering how she could word such news.
Unable to think, she crawled out from under the overhang and paced in the hot sun. It probably wasn't the healthiest thing she could do, but she needed to get her blood circulating. "Ed, here's the thing," she began, putting her hands behind her head and looking up at the sky. "Spike is-what the hell?!"
There, straight above her in the glare of the afternoon sun, was the moon. So it hadn't been a dream... "Ed!" she shouted. "What is that?"
Ed smiled, hopped up, and ran sideways to her computer chanting, "Something in the sky, something in the sky," she flipped over and typed with her toes, "not a cloud, not a ship, what is it indeed?" Returning to a semi-normal sitting position Ed fixed her goggles over her eyes and pointed upward. "Moon came back. When Faye-Faye did. Tomato doesn't tell Ed it is there."
Faye didn't know what to think of it, but she did know she really needed a cigarette.
A ship flew quickly overhead, leaving a white trail of smoke in the sky. "Spike-person?" asked Ed.
Sighing, Faye reminded herself to take one step at a time, but she'd lost the energy to put things lightly. "Ed, Spike died a couple weeks ago."
Edward made a buzzing sound. "Wrong!"
"Ed!" she tried, finding herself saying things she'd screamed about if someone said them to her. "I know it's hard to accept but it's true!"
"Wrong, wrong," The girl chanted, doing another flip and typing with her toes again. "Tomato says so."
Faye felt more tired than ever, and she walked over to the computer to take a look at Ed's findings. The Young Man's Cowboy Association website was on the screen, and it looked like Radical Edward had hacked the system. "Spike-person is here!" said Ed, pointing to the screen.
Pushing the child out of the way, and suddenly feeling very cold, Faye stared at "Tomato" with an obvious degree of shock. The screen displayed a record of dates and times each registered Cowboy and Cowgirl had turned in a bounty, and for what amount.
And there was Spike Spiegel's name, still active on the server. According to this information, he'd turned in a bounty on Mars the day before yesterday.
Spike was alive.
To be continued
Authors note- hey, I'll make this quick since this chapter was already long enough. I hoped you liked it, I know the scenes on the Bebop were kind of strange, but I tried to make them as realistic as possible. I think I did a good job too, because I based it on my own actions and observations of behavior during a family tragedy. (oh and I hope the flashbacks weren't too confusing)
Anywho, this chapter was to set things up and the plot will pick up from here. Hope you like what I have so far and please review!