Kassiber

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Spike's bargain basement bounty is an eightysomething old woman living on Mars. Easy money, right? Disaster ensues, and suddenly he's mixed up in a government coverup.

I'm not particularly experienced with characterizing the Bebop characters, but I've tried to be okay with all of them. I'm not entirely sure I've succeeded, so please do give the concrit if you see a need for it!!

Why is Absinthe named Absinthe? Don't think too hard on it. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

I don't own Cowboy Bebop.

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So, Absinthe's grandmother had a secret which she kept for sixty years, then dropped it like a bombshell on her grandniece last week, before dropping off the face of the solar system two days ago.

"She was pretty capable for how old she was," Absinthe said, placing a picture of a thin, pale old woman with a slight hunch on the coffee table. Her white hair was short and stuck close to her pruny head. She was drinking a margarita, and not smiling. "I mean, recently she's needed help, we were going to get her a live-in nurse, until we settled on a nice nursing home on Europa, but until about five years ago—I'm sorry, are you listening?"

In fact, Spike was not really listening, he was looking at a photograph, on the wall. It was of young people in front of the Eiffel Tower. That had been on Earth. Yeah. Venus had vegetation, Ganymede had the blue-blue sky and water, Mars was a series of hits and misses and was already run down, but Earth had the stuff. But the picture was of people on a lush lawn, with the Tower in the background, and the clothes were out of style. Pre-Gate Accident, obviously.

"Is this her house?" he asked, and looked back at the grandniece. Absinthe nodded. Spike lit a cigarette. It was a cluttered house, but then again it was full of moving boxes. It smelled like old things, but wasn't homey.

"Um—I'm sorry, but could you not smoke in here? Gramma Julie used to say it made everything smell like shit—smell bad, I mean."

That made Spike wonder why there was a small, shallow bowl on the coffee table, and a matching one on the back porch table, but he said nothing. Then he wondered why they were still there, being that the house was in the process of being boxed up.

"How old is she?"

"About eighty," Absinthe said. "All we want you to do is find her and bring her back to us. She's too old to go running around the solar system. It's not safe."

Spike absently wondered at the almost-scared evasiveness Absinthe showed. There was something she didn't want asked about. It flared up the worst when asked about Julie's secret—that was the one thing she wouldn't share, except that it was a family matter. A private one, and no, he wasn't in any danger because of it.

In fact, the whole situation just felt a little rotten, like an annoyed, independent old woman—but there was an ₩800,000 reward, and Spike was really hard up for cash. All he had to do was find one geriatric biddy and bring her back here. Easy money.

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Spike docked the Swordfish unceremoniously in the Bebop's hold, in the Mars dock, and jumped out.

He had all the information that Absinthe could provide on her grandaunt, she had been totally cooperative. And now he had a definite lead and it took only two stops: she booked a commercial flight two days ago for a shuttle bound for Earth, for the day she had disappeared. She boarded an hour after paying. From there he tracked her to a small hotel in the former city of Paris, France, on the European continent. It was all paid for electronically, and he had verbal confirmation of her presence by speaking with the hotel, pretending to be a creditor.

The problem was, no activity in any of Julie's several accounts corresponded to the purchase of the shuttle ticket, any food, or the room in Paris (that had been his first stop to track her). The last traceable credit transaction was on the day of her disappearance: she bought a Diet Coke and a Pay Day at the corner store near her home. Spike had passed the Quik-E-Mart coming and going.

So Spike had had to use her name to track her down, which was somewhat slower and interested him enough to follow up on it.

"Where'd you run off to," Faye asked. "Hey, what's your problem?" She stopped, and watched him continue walking without acknowledging her at all. She stood up a little straighter when he suddenly turned around. "What?"

"Where's Jet and the kid?"

"How should I know," Faye shot back, shrugged, and walked off. Gaucho. He could at least say hello!

Spike was lost in thought, walking to the main room of the Bebop: most likely, there was a secret account. It made sense, especially if Absinthe's grandaunt was determined to maintain some independence from her family. They had commandeered, through a court order, command of basically every aspect of her life; all her generation was dead. Absinthe had lived with her for seven years, and expected to inherit the house upon Gramma's death.

The other option was that it was paid for with somebody else's money, and in which case: whose? Spike stopped at the round door, and looked around the main room. It seemed empty.

"Ed? Hey, Ed! Where are you!"

A fluffy red head of hair appeared first, followed by Ed's clambering stickish body.

"I need you to find something for me."

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"That's the shuttle. How was it paid for?" Spike asked, leaning over Ed's shoulder as she flailed, zooming through cyberspace, first hacking the shuttle company for its records. Ein was watching too, ears up. Jet was looking over Ed's other shoulder. An itinerary with passenger photographs flashed across the screen, but blanked out to be replaced with a textual wall.

"Oooooooh! What's this Ed sees!" Ed's fingers danced on the keys. "It's Soo-issss!"

"What?"

"And it's encrypted!" She leaned over Tomato with ravenous excitement. "Ooh! That's weird!"

"What?" Spike snapped, his eyes darting from Ed to the screen and back. The numbers—and it was all numbers now—meant nothing to him.

Ed jumped, and her headset popped and began to smoke. Ed fell back, twitching. Ein whined, and his ears lay flat against his head.

"What the hell happened?" Spike demanded.

"Ed got kicked off," she sulked. Ed sat up and tried to retrace her steps. "And can't find it again! No fair! Hey, why is Tomato so slow..."

"Did you find anything?" Spike asked, hovering between surprise and irritation. Now he was interested. Bank security wasn't usually that insistent.

"It's a Swiss bank account that's got no numbers," Ed said. "No numbers at all! Ed's never seen something like that before!"

"It's got no numbers? What does that mean? Is it Julie's account?"

"Maybe," Jet said. "Swiss banks use numbers instead of names for their accounts to preserve the anonymity of their clients. Only a planetary court can order them to lift their security measures, now. But I've never heard of one having no numbers, and in their private records I would think they would have the names of the account holders. Did it list when the account was opened?"

"Nope! Everything was empty. 0-0-0-0!"

"Everything?" Jet asked.

"Everything. Yep."

"Are you gonna go after some government official?" Faye piped in, sounding sneakily interested. She was reading a magazine, and painting her toenails.

"It's not a government official," Spike shot back, glancing over at her.

"Don't be so touchy," Faye teased. "We're supposed to be partners, remember? Who cares if he's got some hidden money. Just bag him and bring him in."

"Who is this bounty, anyway?" Jet asked.

"Some old woman from Mars," Spike said.

"It's probably just rainy day money," Faye put in, rubbing out a misstroke with a fingernail. "A lot of women these days have some."

Very likely. Julie had more than enough motivation.

"It might be that they're having problems with its system," Jet suggested, slowly. It was a logical theory, enough so that Spike let it go there. It didn't even matter, so long as Spike could track Julie down and claim the bounty.

And so far that answer was simple: she was in Paris, on Earth.