Well, it's been an atrociously long absence and I hope all my readers will forgive me. I am prepared to resort to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts' Crouch of the Wild Tiger to gain your forgiveness (which, for those of you who aren't Ranma savvy involves crying and begging). But the point is I've restored some semblance of order into my life and I'm back. I'll get to my Good Omens fic soon, I've a lot of ideas just screaming to be put on paper for that story. As for my Avatar fic, well, time will tell. For now I hope you'll accept this Cowboy Bebop fic that I finally got around to posting as both an apology and evidence that rumors of my demise had been grossly exaggerated. Read and enjoy!

Upon its tilted axis, the blue planet turns ponderously. Deliberately. Relentlessly. It never stops for anyone or anything. Even the Gateway Disaster that shattered its moon couldn't cease Earth's imperfect spinning as she clumsily wobbled her way around Sol for another circuit. Planets are like that. Life is like that. The whole goddamn universe is like that.

Stray Cat Swing

(verse one) Jet Black

I take another drag from my cigarette, and sigh out a plume of smoke as I stare at the holo-monitor. It's been three months since Big Shot was cancelled (of course that's neither here nor there), so nowadays, I search for leads on new bounty-heads online, or through my contacts in the ISSP. Mug shots of murders, thieves, swindlers, and fugitives panned out across the flickering screen of light and colored spots that came together to form an image.

Beau Billingslea. Two counts of assault and possession of narcotics. W9,000

Melissa Fahn. Fraud and digital piracy. W3,000.

Ken Watanabe. Industrial espionage and embezzlement. W8,000.

Damn smallfry.

I jerk my head from side to side in surprise before smiling ruefully and returning my attention to the monitor.

Wendee Lee. Selling of stolen goods. W2,000.

My eye twitches.

Yoko Kanno. Identity theft. W1,050.

I rub my forehead in hopes of banishing the migraine that threatened to form behind my eyes.

Jack Sparrow. Impersonating a priest. W400.

"ALRIGHT! THAT DOES IT!" I shouted at the holo-monitor. Almost as an afterthought, I threw the half-empty can of Pippiགྲྭ through the image of the W400 bounty, only to have it sail harmlessly through the screen, empty its dark carbonated contents onto the floor, and bounce a few times before rolling to a stop.

After staring flatly at the mess I had made, I switched off the monitor, got up from the couch and went to the chamber that held my bonsai, resolving to clean it up after I had calmed down a bit. Faye was out for the evening - bar-hopping no doubt - so there was no one around to complain about the sticky floor.

No one around.

I sigh again. After months of hopping around the Solar System with a slacker, a gambling addict, a teenage girl in serious need of some Ritalin, and a Welsh Corgi that "went" wherever it damn well pleased, even a fishing barge like the Bebop could feel crowded.

But now that Ed and Ein weren't around to sow any more chaos, and Faye was usually out either tracking down bounty-heads, losing her share of the earnings at the tracks or the Galactic Lotto, or getting wasted at the nearest available bar, the ship seemed empty.

Before going to the bonsai chamber, I went to the bridge, activated the on-board DAP, made my mood music selection, and then headed toward my room, the deep, raspy voice of Louie Armstrong following my down the corridor.

I see trees of green...red roses too

I see 'em bloom...for me and for you

And I think to myself...what a wonderful world

I always liked that song. Sure it's more than two hundred years old. A real antique (but then so is Charlie Parker), and I've heard it performed by other more modern artists, but there was just something particular about the way ol' Satch performed it that struck a chord with me, and it just wasn't the same the way anyone else did it.

No matter what was going on in my life, I could just turn up the Satchmo and let his voice and trumpet carry me away.

I see skies of blue...clouds of white

Bright blessed days...dark sacred nights

And I think to myself...what a wonderful world

I seat myself on my stool, shears in hand, and I scrutinize all my pretty bonsai, determined to find some growth out of place, some branch in need of trimming, some flaw in need of mending. A problem in need of a solution.

The colors of a rainbow...so pretty... in the sky

Are also on faces... of people... going by

I see friends shaking hands...sayin'... how do you do

They're really sayin'... I love you

I could find nothing. Every branch was perfect. Anything I did would just be butchery. All I could do was sit back and hope that what they said about plants and good music was true. So much for finding an outlet for my frustration.

I hear babies cry... I watch them grow

They'll learn much more... than I'll never know

And I think to myself... what a wonderful world

With nothing else to do, with no problem to solve, my thoughts drifted as they often did to Spike while Satch played his trumpet through his song's intermission. I first met him three years ago now, just after the watch Alisa left behind finally stopped. I had just bought the Bebop with my pension and got a deal on the Hammerhead from an old colleague of mine from the force, and I was ready to make my living as a bounty hunter. My first mark was a murderer named Drake Dugan, a 12 thousand woolong bounty.

Maybe too big a fish for any other beginner, but I had fifteen years experience as an ISSP Detective under my belt. Besides, I was the Black Dog, from whom noone escapes. I tracked him to the 4 Vesta asteroid colony, where he frequented a bar called Le Chanteuse. Inside there were only three old guys playing poker - one of them inventing new profanities as he lost to the other two geezers - a lanky gentleman in a cheap suit, and a mop of dark greenish hair, passed out drunk over another table close to the bar, and the barkeep serving another scotch to my target.

I tried to be casual, but Dugan saw me enter, sized me up, and decided that I might give him trouble, so he made for the door, just as I made to grab my gun. That was when the lanky "drunk" shot up from the table, did a somersault over his chair back and landed a kick in Dugan's face, sending him sprawling into the jukebox which started playing Johnny Cash's In the Jailhouse Now. That was when he saw me with my Walther P99 and he decided that I was a threat. With a liquid motion right out of a Bruce Lee flick he disarmed me and sent my weapon sliding across the barroom floor.

In retrospect, maybe if I had talked it out with him things wouldn't have gotten so out of hand. But when someone keeps throwing karate punches at you - most of which connect - it tends to get real old real fast. Besides, he looked pretty shady, so I had him pegged for Dugan's accomplice.

So Spike and I ended up having a no holds barred fistfight. He was no poser either; an experienced grappler. Of course, I'm no slouch either, but Spike was almost liquid when he fought hand-to-hand. He almost flowed between my punches. At we gave one another a decent thrashing before we noticed that 6 thousand woolongs was crawling for the door.

That when we clicked and tackled and cuffed the bastard. Six grand in the bag baby! Or so I thought before the barkeep billed us for the damages. That left five hundred between the two of us.

After that he took me out for drinks as a peace offering. That was the only time he would ever treat me. We really hit it off after that. Maybe it was the alcohol doing my thinking for me. Maybe we were just two lonely people drawn together by fate or some feng shui bullshit. But I think the real reason we got along so well was that we both believed a man's history was his own business. He didn't want to talk about his past? Fair enough, I didn't want to talk about mine.

It was an unspoken agreement between us, but those old detective instincts could never be completely turned off and I couldn't help noticing things about my partner.

For one he had sharp eyes. Much sharper than the average person's, indicating a false cybernetic eye; knowing Spike, it likely lost during a fight. Why he never drew that Jericho 941 of his during our initial fight, I'll never know, but I'm glad he didn't. He didn't miss often.

He was also a skilled thief, though he never took money, and he seemed to do it more so to entertain himself than for any other reason, and more often than not he returned everything he "borrowed".

I noticed these things and, for a while anyway, I never called him on it. Then he suddenly up and decided to search for info on Mao Yenrai, one of the most infamous Syndicate bosses in the Solar System. He was always reckless but he wasn't stupid. That meant he had some personal stake. So I started probing gently, and he casually deflected my questioning by confronting me about my arm. When I found out Mao had been assassinated in one of the mafia's eternal power struggles, I just flat out asked him. When he deflected again, I told him about my arm hoping that maybe he'd finally talk to me, but of course all I got in return was cocky, rueful smirk and a simple, "Let's just say, my past is finally catching up to me".

The same thing happened when he went searching for this Julia woman on Callisto. I had managed to deduce that he had some past connection with Mao and the Red Dragons and that when he tried to leave they set him up and he somehow got away. Julia was probably tied in there somehow but I was never able to figure out anything beyond that she had a hold on Spike that he could never shake. I know the feeling.

Finally, the night he left my ship for the last time, I looked at him and, though he still had that devil-may-care smirk fixed on his face, the look in his eye was different, like he had lost something. Something irreplaceable. And I knew. I knew his Julia was gone.

I cooked him a meager meal and we joked about the sad state of the Bebop. He told me an old fairy tale about an immortal cat that lost the one thing he cared about in all his lifetimes - a white female cat - and died, this time never to return. That was probably the closest thing I'd ever get to his life's story.

Then he made his usual smart ass remark, and we laughed. It was long ironic and mirthless, we just laughed for the sake of laughter. We laughed because we couldn't find any words to say. In the end all it was, was a delay tactic, to keep him from leaving for a long as possible. I think that was the first time we laughed together like that. And of course it was the last...

The colors of a rainbow...so pretty... in the sky

Are there on the faces...of people...goin' by

I see friends shakin' hands...sayin'...how do you do

They're really sayin'...

"I..." I whispered to noone. "...love...you..."

We weren't friends. At least not in the way most people would define the term. He did whatever the hell he wanted, came back whenever he needed something - which, more often than not, was to eat all my food, sleep on my couch, or watch my satellite TV - and then left again, like a stray cat. But I trusted him - he was probably the only person in my life that never abused that trust - and he, in turn, trusted me. I don't know if that meant anything to him or not, but it meant a hell of a lot to me.

I hear babies cry...I watch 'em grow

You know they're gonna learn

A whole lot more than I'll never know

And I think to myself... what a wonderful world

"Yes, I think to myself..." I sang along softy. "What a wonderful world..."

Ohhhh yeaaaaaaaaaah...

Suddenly the Bebop's engines activated, and the ship lurched, sending me sprawling to the deck.

"The hell?!"

I dashed to the bridge, rubbing my bruised ass as I went. I leapt into my seat in time to see that I was in a downward drift towards Earth. Frantically, I reached for the controls but realized how futile and useless that would be when I saw what was displayed on the monitor, the familiar image of a yellow, rosy-cheeked face grinning ear-to-ear.

"Here! Here!" cried the cheery voice of Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV over the scratchy static of the PA. "Edward and Ein are here!"

All I could do was fasten my restraints, brace myself for the inevitable turbulence and crash, and laugh out loud. Two of my strays had found their way back.

SHE'S BAAAACK! LOL! I hope that song works for this story, I've always been a big Satchmo fan. Be on the lookout for the next verse featuring the always fabulous Faye Valentine! Until then R/R or I will abandon this fic! Shibui out! It's good to be back!