Wo-oh, wo-oh, baby, I like your style
Wo-oh, oh, oh, oh baby, I like your style
You don't care what the other kids say, you go real wild

Well you're sexy and seventeen
My little rock-roll queen acts a little bit obscene
Gotta let off a little steam
Dig that sound and shake it around you're mine, mine, mine … - Stray Cats

"Christ in a sidecar."

Spike wasn't listening to this latest epithet uttered by his partner. At the moment, Jet was hunkered down on his haunches, breathing hard, leaning against a wall on one side of a doorway. Spike was sitting on the on the side, waiting to see if their bounty had run out of bullets. Neither one was terribly inclined to simply poke their head through the door and ask. Spike had just checked his clip and he wasn't exactly flush with ammo either.

Jet looked at the ceiling. "Shit. I'm getting too old for this."

Spike grinned. "I can hear Ed's voice right now." He pitched his own voice high a silly, saying, "Language, language, Papa-Jet, something something babble babble."

Jet chuckled. "Do you think he's still in there?"

Spike shrugged, and then yelled into the room, "You still in there?" A single bullet shot rang out in response. "I think so."

"I wish we had that drone that Ed made. We'd be out of here by now."

"What is with you, old man? You're relying too much on technology, and not on the physical senses. Bounty hunting is about the hunt, and the hunt needs you to use your energy forces, your five senses, not nano-bugs and electronics."

"Says the man with only one real eye and a penchant for semi-automatic weapons." Spike didn't respond. He was frowning, listening to movement in the room beyond. There was a metallic clank, and some rustling. "He's moving."

Spike didn't have to be told twice. He leapt to his feet and barreled into the room, gun in front of him. He could see the bounty halfway into an air duct high on the wall, paddling with his feet. Spike popped a cap right into the guy's left buttock. The man screamed and slid out of the air duct, landing in a heap on the floor, clutching his backside, howling in agony.

Spike lit the cigarette he'd been keeping behind his ear. "Going somewhere?"

Jet sighed, and lit a cigarette of his own. "Do you always have to shoot them?"

"Don't mess with a signature style, old man." The bounty continued to howl a high keening wail. Spike gave him a little kick in the uninjured buttock and said, "Hey, if I give you smoke, will you shut up?" The guy stopped yelling and accepted the proffered cigarette. They always take the smoke, thought Spike, as he leaned down again to hold out a light for the bounty.

Jet waved in the general direction of outside. "I'll call this one in and then let Ed know we're on our way back. You'll keep this one company?" Spike nodded, and then sat on a crate, twirling his Jericho on his finger. Jet went outside to call the police and then to put a call out to Ed. At that moment, she had been typing relentlessly on her Tomato, working on some research for the very drones that Jet had been wishing they'd had. Beside her on her desk were also a couple of earpieces for Jet and Spike to wear, in order to stay in better contact inside buildings. That is, if Spike felt the need to wear his. She'd worked hard to make the thing nearly imperceptible when it was clipped in properly, and the microphone was practically invisible in his hair. She'd had a much harder time outfitting Papa and wiring the microphone into his sideburn.

Soon she'd be able to roll out her new project: tiny cameras that could be implanted on the wearer. They would replace those bulky goggles that Spike would wear and were, so far, better for use in low-light. Again, if Spike would actually deign to use them. He's so stubborn, she thought. It's like I'm attacking his masculinity by attempting to assist his bounty hunting through technology.

Ed scowled for a moment. Papa-Jet was making more and more noise lately about stopping bounty hunting. Part of her intention was to create technology that Papa would be able to use to assist Spike, should he want to continue. Or get a government contract. She already had the patents. The feds were just leery of using products developed by the Master Hacker. Seriously, I wouldn't trust me either,thought Ed with a little cackle.

Her comm. buzzed. It was Papa-Jet, with news of the bounty that they'd been after. The haul went well, according to Papa, and then he made her roll her eyes with yet another episode of trigger-happy Spike. "Papa-Jet, can't you do anything with him?"

"I gave up a long time ago. We'll be seeing you soon."

"Stay out of trouble. I'll start dinner." Ed chuckled to herself and got up from her chair, stretching on her tip-toes. She said she'd start dinner, so she better get cracking. Spike was always ravenous after bringing down a bounty. She checked herself quickly in a mirror: looking good.

Sexy and seventeen, you little rock-n-roll queen.

And even better: her eighteenth birthday wasn't too far away. She and Spike had some unfinished business.

As Ed tossed stir-fry makings into the old battered wok, her mind drifted back to a conversation that she and Spike had nearly four years ago. Wait, scratch that. Spike had done all the talking. And she remembered every word, every syllable, every nuance and inflection in his voice on an evening just before the stars came out.

. . .Spike looked at me, and then placed his ice cream aside and turned to me. I couldn't look at him, so I played with my ice cream. "Ed, listen." He paused. He took a breath. "I don't want you to think that your feelings don't matter, or that you don't matter. Because you do matter, to us . . . to me."

And I thought my heart stopped beating.

"And your feelings are very real, even if you are only fourteen. I know that. And I don't want you to think that I'm discounting your feelings because of your age. But . . . think about it from my point of view. I'm going to be twenty-eight in a few days. Right now, that age difference is huge. Do you understand?"

Of course I understood. He was saying, 'not right now', not 'never'.

Spike continued. "Ed, in four years, you're going to be eighteen. In four years, if you want, we will revisit this conversation. I promise, we'll have a serious chat about it, if that's what you want. . ."

And of course, that was what Ed wanted. Soon, so soon. She could barely wait.

Jet strode out of the police station towards Spike, who was just finishing up a cigarette. "The police have asked me to ask you to stop shooting people."

Spike snorted. "I can't have any fun anymore. Did we get the full bounty anyway?"

"Yes, but they're going to start charging a fee for the medical bills that always get incurred because of your happy trigger finger," replied Jet as he electronically transferred monies into Spike's account.

"Finger's gotta be happy somewhere."

"Up your own ass isn't doing it for you anymore?"

"You'd prefer it up yours?"

Jet looked at Spike for a long moment, a scowl on his face, and then he burst out laughing. "I can't respond to that."

"Losing your touch, old man. Give me my money. I have a date with a very tall drink."

"Ed's cooking."

"Save some for me." And Spike strolled off into the night. Jet watched him go. Ed's going to be disappointed, he thought. Goddamn him, anyway. Faye was bad enough. I should have nipped this in the bud ages ago.

Faye, at that moment, was tapping her long fingernails on the cards places in front of her. She was tired. Scratch that, she was exhausted. Faye had been at this table, with the exception of a few short breaks, for nine hours. Her underwire from her bra has been poking her in the armpit for at least six of those nine hours, and she'd somehow gotten one of her pantyhose legs twisted during the last break, so now her left leg was losing circulation as the nylon cut into her upper thigh. She'd practically had nothing to eat the entire time besides bourbon, cola, and cigarettes, and her mouth felt like the bottom of an ashtray. However, it wasn't as if those nine hours had been for nothing. The whole long day was winding down, and her only opponent was a man who, if Faye had been pressed to describe him in one word, was nothing short of ewwww. He was short, fat, balding – but with a massive comb over – and he wore a tropical flowered shirt that looked like it hadn't been washed, and satin pants that looked as if they had, but on the heavy-duty cycle in an industrial laundry with a bag of rocks. He was scruffy. His nose hair was long. His ear hair was even longer. He wore an enormous crucifix that looked like he'd stolen it from an actual sacristy. And unfortunately, he had a slight lead over Faye at this moment.

Faye was ready to call it a night. She stumped out her cigarette and leaned further over her crossed arms, shoving her breasts, already straining against the embroidered silk of her spaghetti strap top, into better view. "Well, fellah? What's the call?" The guy didn't respond, but he looked at her, and then her breasts, and then he scratched the scruff on his face that he presumably called a beard, and a drift of dandruff fell to the felt of the table.

Ewwww.

Faye sat quietly, waiting for the guy to call or fold. Not that he was going to fold. Faye started hearing the clicks of a few more cameras, and she lifted herself a bit in her seat, and she tilted her head in a more attractive manner. This is still much better than being shot at, she thought.

"I raise." The crowd around them breathed a sigh of relief. Faye turned on her best beatific smile and set about to figuring out what she was going to do now. The truth was that her cards stank worse than a fish in a hubcap in high summer. She had an ace high, which might work, but this jerk across from her had a face that, if they weren't playing poker, might make her think of the politically incorrect phrase mentally retarded.

I'm tired. I'm hungry. And I'm ready to call it a day. Faye shifted a bit in her chair. Spike had once told her that in long tournaments, the players had been known to urinate in their chairs rather than leave their cards on the table for a few minutes. Once hearing that tidbit of information, not caring whether or not it was true, Faye had taken to wearing two pairs of underwear, pantyhose, and a waterproof girdle. No sense in taking any chances.

Faye took another long look at her opponent. There may be times to not take any chances, but she was feeling a bit punchy now. The light flashed off her opponent's crucifix. Faye took a breath, and decided to have a little chat with the higher power that may or may not exist. God, are you there? It's me, Margaret. Faye almost giggled. Look, I don't ask for much. . . ah, you know that's not true. I ask for one big butt-load of stuff, and truth be told, you don't exactly come through like I think you should. Not that I should be bargaining, here. But look. Let me pass on to the next round of competition, and I'll make a promise that I may even be able to keep. At that moment, her eye flashed on the hand not holding the cards. It was her right hand, the hand that had been holding the cigarettes for the past nine hours, and even in the bad lighting of the casino, her hand looked horrible. There were cracks in the skin near the first knuckles, and the skin was also the yellow of a week old bruise. She could even smell her hand from here. And her response again was ewwww, but now that was targeted at herself.

Okay, God, here's the deal. Let me go on to the next round, and I'll give up smoking.And after making this promise, she felt a weight lifted from her weary shoulders. Faye was surprised. It was as if her prayer had not only been heard, but granted. She looked at her poor cards again, and then grinned at her opponent. "All in, then."

A loud titter went through the crowd. She'd just woken them up with some gutsy playing. And her opponent went all in as well. Perhaps he was ready to get out of his horrible satin pants. Perhaps he was done with urinating in his chair. That's gotta chafe, thought Faye.

The dealer told Faye to set down her hand, and with a slight tremble, Faye spread out her cards, showing nothing better than an ace-high. Her opponent frowned, and then cursed. Miraculously for Faye, he had nothing better than a queen-high.

The cheer that went up was deafening. Faye quite forgot how to smile, she was so shocked. Then she squealed like a schoolgirl, grabbed the cards from the table, and threw them up in the air with triumph. Everything went a little crazy after that: Faye was taken from the table to an interview by a handsome young man in a beautiful suit, where Faye charmed her way through the interviewer's questions. The same young man escorted her to a table in the casino's best restaurant, where she was wined and dined by a few older executives who wanted to sponsor her, actually sponsor her, in the next round of competition. All around her, the cameras kept clicking. Then the young man returned with a casino check for the chips that she'd just won. The executive closest to her offered her a cigar, the scent of which, even unburned, was expensive and exquisite. Faye looked at her check, which had lots of zeros and commas in the number, and then at the cigar, and she closed her eyes for a moment in reverence for her good fortune. Opening them again, she turned her dazzling smile to the executive with the proffered cigar and said, "No, thank you. I don't smoke anymore."

Back on Mars, on the Bebop, Ed had just set the wok to simmer into honey-orange succulence when she heard Papa's voice ring out: "Hello, honey, I'm home!"

Ed squealed and flew to meet him. "Papa!" she cried, and smothered him in a hug.

Jet chuckled. "Geez, Ed, you're getting too tall. You're going to bowl me over one of these days."

Ed, still, holding on to Jet, looked around for the other Bebop resident. "Where's Spike?"

"He had other plans." Jet saw the girl's exuberance fade. "We could call Faye."

"She's on Venus. She made it through to the quarterfinals."

"Did she? We'll have to call her later. We got the bounty though. Where's your credit book?"

"You don't have to give me a cut."

"Yes, I do. You're as much a part of this team as anyone else on this ship. Maybe even more so, because you really do the hard work of finding these jerks for us. Besides, your college fund won't grow otherwise."

Ed sighed. "Papa, not the college thing again."

Jet scowled. "You're going. And don't give me that guff about how you could teach all the professors a thing or two. There are many classes and activites to experience . . ."

"And the experience will do me good and give me a well-rounded personality, blah, blah, blah, I know." Ed turned her back and moved back to the kitchen.

"This discussion is not over, kiddo," Jet called at her retreating form.

"Dinner's ready." Ed disappeared into the other room.

Jet shook his head. Another thing to bicker with her about. Sometimes, even the Master Hacker was as bratty as any typical teenager. He really did want her to go to school, not only to learn, but to get off this barnacle breeder and be with kids her own age. It wasn't right that her only social contacts were an old beyond his years man for a pseudo-father and one extremely bad influence whom he firmly believed that the girl had more than a healthy crush on. The girl had the smarts to have the most amazing future ahead of her, more than he could ever even imagine.

And if the past was any indicator of the future, Spike's future was very dim and dangerous. Definitely not a place for an up and coming genius girl like his.

Meanwhile, Spike was belly-up to the brass rail at one of his favorite smoky locals. They served the Irish whiskey the way he liked it: very large, and very straight. The taste was off tonight, though. He knew that Ed probably cooked a good spread just for him, and here he was instead. And actually, the missed dinner was disappointing to him as well. Jet had never mastered cooking beyond edible sustenance, but Ed was a magician in the kitchen. Furthermore, she could stretch a woolong until it screamed for mercy, and the result was that they were eating better meals than ever before. And it didn't hurt that Faye was no longer around on a regular basis.

Faye. The name still made him pause. She had recently broken her way in the professional poker circuit, and was the shooting star of this particular fifteen minutes, if the bookie's guilds were to be believed. Ed made sure that every single one of Faye's movements were catalogued, and so Spike had been barraged with images of Faye. And damned if she didn't look fantastic. And happy. Christ, she sounded like a million woolongs whenever Ed made him talk to her.

That could have been yours, Spike mused fleetingly before he crushed the wayward thought like a cigarette butt. No way, no how. The two of them had had it out a long time ago, and it was unanimously decided that a romance between the two of them would have been unhealthy and destructive to the both of them and to the universe in general. At least, that had been his justification at the time.

But now there was the problem of Ed.

Her eighteenth birthday was coming up, and Spike was dreading that she would request a chat with him. A chat that he'd promised her when she had just turned fourteen. He might be a man, but he still remembered certain things with definite and fearful clarity.

. . .I looked at her. She was such a little girl, but certain words needed to be said. "Ed, listen." Christ, how could I put this that wouldn't break her heart? "I don't want you to think that your feelings don't matter, or that you don't matter. Because you do matter, to us . . . to me."

No answer.

"And your feelings are very real, even if you are only fourteen. I know that. And I don't want you to think that I'm discounting your feelings because of your age. But . . . think about it from my point of view. I'm going to be twenty-eight in a few days. Right now, that age difference is huge. Do you understand?"

Still no answer. Damnit. I need a save, something to bail me out of his. Let's try procrastination, that usually works.

"Ed, in four years, you're going to be eighteen. In four years, if you want, we will revisit this conversation. I promise, we'll have a serious chat about it, if that's what you want. . ."

And damn, damn, damn, now he believed that she had been banking on that promise. That she'd be able to pour out her heart to him once she ceased being jailbait.

Women. He'd have to add this to his ever-growing file that he personally called What the Hell were Women Up To? The creatures were beyond him. They fell in love at the drop of a hat, they made themselves miserable on purpose with sad books and movies, and they always asked the same damn kinds of questions: Does this make me look fat? Once Julia had asked him if he'd love her if she gained 150 pounds. He had looked at her and asked her if that was her life's goal or something, and then she'd punched him a good one in the arm.

Spike rubbed his arm absently. He lit a new cigarette. The barman refilled his glass. Spike's eyes drifted to the television at the end of the bar, which was tuned to the poker match on Venus. On the screen was Faye, smiling coyly at her opponent – a rather scruffy looking loser, with a flower-print shirt and really long nasal hair – and Faye was pushing her breasts into a better view upon her crossed arms. Never misses a trick, that one, thought Spike as he returned his focus to the drink in front of him.

Clink, clink, another drink, plenty in the cellar when it's gone, he mused as he gazed at the glass full of amber love.

Later, after dinner, Ed escaped back to her room before Papa could lecture her more about going to college. There was actually a very good university in the city where they tended to dock, but she didn't have a lot of desire to go. She had already been through the initial testing and she had basically tested as "completed" on every single subject with the exception of English, which she then completed over the course of a fortnight on a correspondence course. She currently held four patents, and had the equivalent of not only a high school education, but also an associate's degree. What did she need school for, anyway?

Ed sighed. Papa wanted her to get off the Bebop and to experience a life outside of bounty hunting and hacking, she knew. Find a better niche to be in, and not follow in his footsteps.To make friends her own age,he said. To have a future, to have a life.

A life away from Spike, you mean, thought Ed. She was aware that Papa was aware of how she felt about Spike, had probably been aware since her fourteenth birthday. But the way she felt about Spike went back to way before then. She knew about him before she ever met him. That was one of the reasons she had pulled the Bebop down in the first place, to meet the one and only Spike Spiegel. Spike Spiegel of the Red Dragons. Spike Spiegel, the man who was dead but still walked as if he were alive. Spike Spiegel, the man who had been killed several times but would not die. And once she had met that Spike Spiegel, her life as she knew it would never be the same again.

Ed sat at her desk and pulled out a book filled with pictures and clippings. So many photographs. She'd gone kind of crazy with those disposable cameras on several occasions, so there would be a zillion pictures of one moment in time, and then a huge gap before the next set. There were some snaps of each of her birthdays, once they started celebrating them. She especially liked the one from her fourteenth birthday, which showed herself and Spike astride the motorcycle in their leather jackets and helmets. Another one was of her and Papa-Jet, and she was showing off the necklace with the pearl that he had given her.

She turned the page and smiled at the next set of photos, from when she turned fifteen. This one was a huge deal, and she always felt a little misty-eyed when she thought about it. Papa-Jet had taken her to the large building downtown, where a judge had asked her if she wished to be emancipated from her father. Having only seen her father once in the past ten years or so, she replied that she did. What she didn't expect was that her father was losing all of his parental rights due to non-communication. Papa-Jet then signed papers that placed him as her legal guardian, with full custody.

What a day that had been, thought Ed, as she dashed a tear off her cheek. There was the whole scene in the courthouse, and then there was a huge celebration that night. Faye had told her all about quinceaneras, and how she had gone to a friend's back on Earth, and how much fun they were. Faye had bought her a pretty new dress, a white one that was very grown-up looking. They had all gone out to this traditional Hispanic restaurant, where a sort-of quinceanera was held in her honor, complete with a dance with Papa-Jet, who put her first pair of high-heels on her feet to celebrate her new status as an almost-grown-up. And Spike had bowed to her, kissed her hand, and asked her for a dance.

If that hadn't been enough, her sixteenth birthday was a complete blow-out. Faye knew how to throw a party, and this one had all the trimmings. Faye put together a sort-of four person prom, complete with formal gowns for the two of them. Papa-Jet had taught Ed how to really ballroom dance, and they all went out to a beautiful restaurant where an orchestra played Big Band music next to a huge dance floor. She even had a spotlight dance with Papa-Jet, and she'd also danced with a couple of teenaged boys who were there with their parents. But the best dancing partner that night was Spike, who had twirled her across the floor so fast that she thought that the floor would slip away from underneath her. Ed glanced up to the shelf above her desk, where her corsage from that night, now dried out, sat in a place of honor.

Ed's seventeenth birthday was completely sedate by comparison. She had talked so much about how she loved riding on Spike's motorcycle that they had gotten together, and bought her a little Vespa, bright blue with orange flames. Spike had then taken her out on it to teach her how to drive it, and then they met up with Papa-Jet and Faye at a billiards parlor, and they all ate pizza and taught Ed how to play pool.

So different, each of her birthdays were. And all of them had been such a wonderful surprise for her. But if Ed had her way, she'd be doing the planning for this one. All she was waiting for was the question, What do you want to do for your birthday, Ed?

And she had the answer all ready.