The Heart of the Bounty
A fanfiction
Prologue
"SPIKE!"
Jet yells for Spike in vain. Only one person on the ship knows where he is. Maybe two. Maybe three, if you count non-humans.
"THAT STUPID LUNKHEAD!" Faye's whiny drone calls out from the common room.
"Huh?" Jet asks himself. He was cruising the halls of the ship. Faye's responding yell led him to her.
He enters the room to see Faye in the most outrageous fit he's seen yet. She has their computer in the clutches of her hands, her face is scrunched up and flaming red. Jet can almost see the steam rising above her head and out her ears.
"Whoa, what the hell's the matter with you? Put that down before we have a repair debt on our hands!" Jet says, with a fearful anxiety.
Faye turns to Jet, slowly, for dramatic effect. "Do you know where Spike is right now?"
Jet raises his eyebrow in confusion. He's not sure if this is a rhetorical question or if she's serious. "I thought you kne…"
"He's going after the latest bountyhead!" Faye says, angrily and exasperated.
Jet, now totally lost, scratches his head. Ein, who has now perched next to his side, lowers and shakes his head in shame of his master's confusion. How can Jet not realize?
"Shouldn't that be a good thing?" Jet asks, his voice rising higher in pitch with every word he spoke.
Faye is finding it harder and harder to hold in her anger. Her chest is heaving heavily and rapidly, as if she were going to explode any second. She set down the computer, yet her hands were clasped into fists, fists so tight it seemed she could break her own hands with the force within her.
Before Faye opens her mouth, Ed hollers from her unofficially designated hacking corner, "Spike-person is hunting for dragons!"
Even with this misinterpreted message, Jet understands completely. "WHAT? He's after those former Red Dragon thugs?"
"Yeah, the stubborn, arrogant fool," Faye mutters under her breath. "Even without Vicious present there, Spike knows what they're capable of. And there's more than one of them. He'll barely make it alive, if he even can make it out of there! I told him to drop it with them, but he won't listen to me. He'll go to great lengths to revisit his godforsaken past!" Faye sighs with grief and anger, continuing the pace of her unhealthy heaving.
Jet turns for one second, saying, "We have to go…" He's cut off when he turns and finds Faye gone. He sees the trace of wind she left behind as she bolted out the door, and he catches a glimpse of her white boot out the doorway. He shakes his head and turns to Ein. "Either she's as crazy as Spike, or there's something more between them that we're all missing."
--
In a desert on Mars, Spike hides behind a crater. There's a dust storm kicking up, so his self-concealment is twice as effective. He's growing breathless, after having combated and run from his former friends, his newfound ruthless enemies. With the noise of the uprising dust and gusts of winds, Spike tries to calm himself to a more silent breathing pattern. He needs to hear if they're coming, where they're coming from.
Hawke and Sliver came prepared; they cloak themselves in leather trenchcoats and plate-glass masks so they may go forth against the wind more easily. They maneuver themselves with ease, holding up their coats and masks in one hand and their swords in the next. Just moments ago, they knocked Spike's gun and a stray bamboo stick out of his hands. As far as Spike knows, Hawke and Sliver only have swords in their hands.. They make their approach with as much stealth as they can manage, glancing left and right to find Spike, to finish him off…
--
Zooming through hyperspace to get to Mars, Faye frantically keeps contact with the Bebop. Somehow, Ed placed a homing device on Spike. She says she was testing something she had created a year or so ago. Insane though she may be, Ed definitely has her uses. Faye is subconsciously grateful for Ed's keen technological skill. She screams into the intercom, "Ed, where is he?"
"Spike-person in Agoda Desert in Mars!" Ed sings loudly and discordantly. "He's 40 degrees northwest of the capital city Maaaaar-sheee-aaaah!"
"Damn those Red Dragons!" Faye mutters to herself. She picks up speed as she closes in on Mars' atmosphere. She clicks on a navigator to make her descent more direct. With one hand, she steers her ship, with the other, she struggles to punch in the coordinates of Spike's location as quickly and efficiently as possible. "What's worse than losing this bountyhead is having to lose our bounty hunter!"
--
Within a matter of seconds, Spike begins to turn paranoid, envisioning mirages of his two traitors. He doesn't want to admit it, but he's afraid; these hunts, especially for anyone affiliated with Red Dragon Syndicate, are harder than he wants to give them credit for. What makes him the most fearful, somewhere under his feigned cool, brave exterior, is the fact that he is at a loss for his weapons. His martial arts won't get him far with these two. He knows they must have some trick up their sleeve, but he can't fathom what.
The dust storm doesn't help him much at all, either; the winds grow stronger, blowing dust into his face more rapidly. No matter how much he squints, he catches bits of dust in his eyes. These bits grow bigger in size the more the storm progresses. Too many grains have crashed onto his special eye; his vision grows hazier on his past-fixated eye. The storm is too strong for that eye to handle now; he has no choice but to close it. Closing it gives him no relief, but to keep it open would bring upon him greater damage; he feels the grains of sand seeping into his blood vessels, stinging every part of his eye. With one eye barely open, he looks quickly left and right, blinking more if he thinks he sees his adversaries. He holds his right wrist in his left palm, gripping it to stop the bleeding; they already sliced part of his arm.
Finally, he hears distinctive footsteps crunching into the mahogany sand. Their flare for style is their downfall now, or so Spike thinks. He knows they're near, and he becomes more alert. His own self-preparations are still too feeble to protect him from what comes next.
Just as he turns his head to find Hawke, his chest is met with the point of a cold, jagged sword. It doesn't pierce further into his body; it merely cuts through his shirt. Before Spike can even protect his body with his gripped hands, the blunt, steel handle of Hawke's sword plunges right into the center of Spike's ribcage. He doubles over in pain, now completely weak. Sliver stands by from a short distance, waiting to fire the hidden gun within his sword. Hawke proceeds to kick Spike in the stomach; Spike only realizes now that Hawke is wearing steel-toed boots. He feels his bones crushing underneath his skin. Hawke's foot nudges Spike over, leaving Spike facing upward toward the sky. "God, this is a cheap shot," Spike thinks. Regardless, Spike knows Hawke ultimately won.
Hawke grunts as he forcefully kicks every bone, every muscle, every joint on Spike's lower body. Spike begins to cough up blood, heaving in pain, gasping for air. His head is spinning as Hawke stomps on his legs with the heels of those lethal steel-toed shoes. Within seconds, Spike feels fully paralyzed. For a minute, the beating pauses. Spike, though relieved, knows there's only worse coming. He faintly hears the two conversing in the wind.
"He's going to turn," Hawke yells against the wind. "When he does, shoot!"
Without thinking, Spike turns to glare at his enemies. He wants to glare with disappointment, with anger, with shame. Just before his head turns to see them five feet away, he shoots a quick glance upward. He hears fire jets propelling. Someone's coming…
"ARGH!" Faye yells, trying to balance a fast approach and a safe landing.
Sliver and Hawke look up to Faye's ship, both in confusion. They see it rapidly approach Spike's body. Sliver stares hypnotized, while Hawke nudges his jacket. "Shoot him! Before that thing—"
Spike finally turns his head to see Sliver pointing his sword. "Dammit, I knew there was a catch," Spike thinks to himself. He turns his head upward again, and for the first time since he took to hiding his eyes open, gaping at the metal claws coming toward him. He recognized the ship as Faye's, but never realized she had it fixed up to include these … he supposes they are claws. They grip his body just as the gunshot fires. Before he is raised into the safety of Faye's ship, the bullet grazes his side, right above his pelvis. As soon as the ship seals him in, he faints. His fatigue and weakness subdue him into an comatose slumber. Somewhere, his thoughts preserve his hopes of being alive.
Faye struggles to get the ship airborne again. Without thinking, she sets the ship to accelerate to hyperspace while on land. The ship propels her forward, making her nauseous instantly. She doesn't care that she's being fired at by Hawke and Sliver; all she wants is to get the hell out of there, no matter how reckless. When the ship escapes the atmosphere of Mars, she lets the ship stall in space. "He better still be alive!"
She squeezes through the ship to find Spike's body. Her sudden concern for his life surprises her a little. "It's only natural to hope for the wellness of another human," she thinks, "especially if he'll cost you a hell of a lot of money." This detached approach to her concern for Spike reassures her until she finally sees him. This is the most helpless and beaten she's ever seen him, and she's always seen him after these terrible accidents. She stops herself from thinking, "He should've seen this coming," when she notices little movement from his chest. Is he still breathing?
She bends her head over his chest. Phew! Though his breathing is faint, he's still alive. Somewhere inside. "All this for a girl … a girl who Hawke and Sliver have told him has turned away from him, betrayed him!" Faye thinks to herself. "Here I am, someone who's annoyed with him more and more each day, taking care of him…"
These thoughts stop her amidst her attempts to resume her seat in the cockpit. Sure, she was annoyed with him. She was annoyed that he eagerly wanted to chase after this bounty. She was annoyed as she watched him work his way toward finding those two ingrates. She was annoyed with the stories she heard as she gathered her own pieces of the same puzzle. What annoyed her almost as much as Spike was the way Julia dismissed the relationship; it's unfair for a relationship one cherishes to be discarded so easily. "Spike deserves better… Wait, did I actually think that? I must be going crazy," Faye thinks aloud now. "This innate girly sympathy can really drive a woman nuts."
Faye steers the ship toward the Bebop again. "I'm NOT looking forward to explaining this one to Jet. Dammit, we're going to have to land somewhere again." As she pilots her ship, something stirs inside her. Even after all the times Faye has found Spike in these fatal accidents, this one feels different. It almost feels like a wind of change. Little does she (and Spike) realize how much a relationship can change course.