Author's Note – I love Cowboy Bebop and have loved it for a long time, but wasn't exactly happy with the ending. So, thusly! I have changed the ending to suit my own tastes, have fun and R&R. Lots of love.
Disclaimer: I do not own Cowboy Bebop or any of its characters.
Chapter 1
Loveless
~~~~~It was like a bad horror movie with too much gore, not enough action, and entirely no sex. One would think with the a cast of gun toting, hard-core bounty hunting, rowdy bunch of space Cowboys, that the play might have had a better finale. Maybe a happy ending, where the fiendishly attractive wanderer got his girl. You know, the stunningly attractive, picturesque beauty whose looks could kill… Just like that. She could aim the barrel of a gun in your face and you would beg for her to squeeze the trigger. The last thing your vision would take in was the flash, before a stream of cascading long, blonde hair completely erased you from existence. It happened before to countless throes of men who had fallen under her siren's spell. This enchantment that overpowered men's feeble brains and them left stupidly powerless to this harpy's fangs as she sunk them into their soft, yielding flesh under the guise of a gentle kiss. It was sickening.~~~~~
~"Oi! Alice, get your ass out here it's your turn, you dumb bitch!" Rizzoli was a large, burly man who bounced by night and harassed the strippers, using them like fuck posts whenever he wanted, all other times of the day.
~The dark hared, paled skinned woman jumped to her feet and darted for the door, slipping passed Rizzoli's rotund frame like he wasn't even there. She wrapped her fingers around the dark red sash at her waist and slipped out of her smooth, silk robe without hesitation, even as she stalked seductively into the darkened room, shimmering with multi-colored lights aimed directly for the stage. A song was being spun into the player and the music paused only long enough for Alice to mount the platform steps in her eight inch stiletto heels, wearing only a red thong and a lacy, black mesh bra.
~Men were hollering and whistling loud. They had been waiting for this all night, just wading through the mediocre whores who could barely sway their hips to a beat.
~Alice stared down at the floor, a veil of dark, curly tresses covering her vision. The announcer overhead was drum-rolling her name as the roar of the hooting men screamed. A pulse that beat throughout the room thundered in the young women's chest as she waited for her cue to begin.
~A stage light suddenly flicked on, a glaring cherry red that dressed the scantily clad woman in a harsh glow and turned her beautiful curves almost lethally sharp. She lifted her face to the crowd on the song's first note and smiled mysteriously, sending the men wild as she began her routine.
~The stripper danced around the pole provocatively, her thick, cute ass bouncing with each step while her hand gripped tight to her golden post, swiftly flinging herself around. Her muscular legs swung above her head and hooked around the hanging shaft, feeling herself spinning upside-down with hundreds of gawkers ogling over the tantalizing view.
~"'Tell me something…'" There was a glint of a gun as a young woman, maybe only a few years younger than Alice was now, stood in front of someone… A man. He was trying to leave, his eyes set and ready for the onslaught of things to come. There would be violence, lots of people were going to die and the young woman saw it in her love's eye.
~"What about us!" She was still aiming her new age Glock between his eyes, feeling so many all consuming emotions, she wasn't sure what to do with them.
~"You guys are adults. You can manage without me," he sounded so nonchalant about the whole ordeal, throwing a pack over his shoulders that clanked full of loaded weapons for the oncoming destruction.
~"But what about those of us who won't be? What about me?" She took a menacing step forward, hoping for a reaction, any kind of reaction whether it was good or bad, keeping her gun shakily aimed.
~The spiky haired man wasn't in the least bit fazed. He had stared down enough metal gun barrels, begging for them to end it all, but as of yet he had not been so lucky. Drawing in close, he touched his forehead to the weapon's end, "do you see why my eyes are two different colors?" He didn't give a chance for the woman to utter a word, "because my real eye sees the present while my mechanical one replays the past over and over again."
~"Stop it! Stop letting it take you over then. Just let the past go, Spike!" She saw the man's eyes dance, the living one full of regret and sadness, while the fake merely taunted Faye with insanity and mirthful laughter. He snatched up her hands in his own, this bitch of a woman he had never given so much as a passing thought to was the only one fighting his death, when not even he could do that.
~"Let me go," he whispered, somewhere in his mind there was a wandering thought that vaguely marveled upon the what ifs and would haves. The what if Faye Valentine had been in Julia's place, would he have loved her as much as the blonde? And the would have of Faye being a good replacement for the leather clad mistress he'd taken so long ago from the Syndicate leader. He wanted to know Faye's touch, the feel of her beneath him, on him, all around him. But as quickly as the thought came, he squelched it. There was no room here for thoughts of regret for things he might've have wanted. His time in this existence had passed, as had the life of his enemy. His star was falling and fading, there was nothing left.
~"I can't!" She chewed on her lower lip, tasting the copperyness of her own blood, "I can't… because I think…"
~His eyes suddenly went cold and emotionless. He didn't need this right now, not at the end. There was no turning back from this point on and he pushed through her, hearing the hammer cock and her clothes rustle just behind him.
~"I'll shoot! I'll do it, Spike Spiegal!"
~He didn't even pause, breezing through the living area even as his two other comrades watched on without a word. That only served to irritate the all ready irate female bounty hunter more.
~A string of gunshots fired off into the ceiling then, one right after the other. Just three. Bang… Bang… Bang… And the aching woman fell into a rack of sobs as she sunk to her knees, fighting hard to make the green-haired monkey of the Bebop stay. He needed to stop fighting it, should've just forgotten about his past and the long dead blonde temptress along with it, but he couldn't and Faye knew that.
~Just as Spike was about to leave for his airship's hangar, he stopped to chance a small glance down the hall to the gun toting woman. She continued to hold herself tightly, curled up against the wall like some beaten dog, "...good bye, Faye Valentine..."
~The sounds Alice had been trying so hard to block out came on full force again, drilling into her head the screaming voices of horny criminals all begging for the blissful human surrender they all craved, knowing this sultry dancer was the only one with the skills to relieve them of the strain.
~She was slowly removing her bra, easily unclipping it and swaying her body to the beat, playing dutifully coy as she hid herself momentarily. The crowd grew insanely restless. They cried out for more, one greasy bastard flashing a few hundred cred chips to the stage's starlit as if to furtively ask for the precious sheer undergarment.
~He deposited the precious cash on the rim of the stage and watched in awed fascination while the beautiful woman teased him agonizingly with the mesh bra. She brushed it over his face and down his chest, swooping her stiletto heel expertly over the money to bring it into the safety of the stage. It was hers now in exchange for a pair of barely used underclothes. She thought it to be a fair trade and finally tossed the garment towards her pleasantly shaking customer, the thin, gossamer material floating through the air for a second before landing right on the man's head and shifting down slightly to rest on his ear and brow. A hilarious image to Alice, yet the only expression change she made was the slight upturn in her pretty, puckered lips.
~She watched bemused as the man with her newly acquired bra rocked back and forth in his seat, the rock hard erection obviously pressing against his tight jeans. He was like the other troves of male cattle paraded through this damn club and absolutely no different in the eyes of the dark-haired stripper. He would get no relief from her and was best to try the other club whores before he even considered Alice again.
~Her practiced fingers, danced along the edges of her thong, taunting her still ogling audience with only slight peeks of her naked ass and she felt the rising bellow for more from the crowd coming to a rising surge in the pit of her gut. They wouldn't last much more, and honestly, neither would she. She was all ready bored of this song and its tactless meaning in her life, looking forward to getting off the stage when the soonest possible opportunity presented itself.
~The song was coming to a crescendo, her cream colored hips in constant motion as the deliciously sinful pair of scarlet red panties drifted further and further down. They hit her ankles, her delicate hands ghosting over the porcelain flesh while her onlookers went mad. She stepped from the garment and kicked them aside, getting down to the real hardcore stuff now.
~"I'm going after him!" Faye screamed to Jet, receiving an eye-roll in return. The older, retired cop knew dramatics when he saw them and wasn't in the least bit surprised that the dark haired beauty felt so unrighteously vexed with Spike's departure, that she had to follow. He knew the woman's deep, in lain feelings for the old geezer's younger counterpart, probably before she even did, but Spiegal's soul had all ready been stolen away, leaving the leftover shell of a man that was the cop's best friend these past few years.
~"Let me out!" She was bellowing, banging her fists uselessly against the hangar's locked door, where just beyond, laid her ship sitting almost quarantined away in the corner. All she wanted to do was to follow Spike, to show him he didn't have to throw away his life, but Jet was insistent the young male bounty hunter was at the end of the road and that was something Faye just refused to accept.
"We're dropping Ed off with her dad, Faye. Then you can do whatever you want, but I'm not letting your bitchy ass—" he was cut off when Faye cocked her hammer, the barrel touching the back of jet's head.
~"Open the door or I will kill you," her eyes danced crazily, mouth hanging slightly agape. She played every bit the insane mental patient, gone mad with rage and she wasn't going to accept 'no' as an answer anymore. Jet knew if he denied the woman, she would shoot him and still leave. It was better for himself and his head if he just did as she asked, Spike had gotten a large enough lead that she would never catch up anyway. She was all ready too late.
~Sighing, he pushed the hangar's release button and watched as Faye retreated for her ship, taking only minutes to get her hunk of metal junk into gear before racing off into the silent expanse of space. She sped away as if Lucifer himself were on her heels, and thought nothing of the oncoming consequences for her actions to come. All that mattered was Spike, finding him, hurting him something fierce, and bringing him back even if he didn't want to.
~Alice felt her routine wrapping up, the last few seconds of the song coming to a quick close and she was glad for it. She smiled giddily as she slipped provocatively into the splits and flashed her hot core to her biggest tipper, receiving almost five grand in creds as the song closed. The announcer then crackled onto the microphone and the lights came up to a dulling gray so as not to hurt the customers eyes, but signaled the end of Alice's unforgettable dance.
~The woman reached for her robe and threw it on, heading down the steps while her adoring public of criminals and murderers and rapists continued to throw cash at her, all in the hopes that she would do one of her blue-moon rare encores. Though, with this many men tonight, she generally did. It put an extra few thousand creds of her stage, but tonight was different. Tonight was a special night for her that Poker Alice habitually took off, never working past midnight. It pissed off her boss, Ricky Carillo, though that young woman hardly cared what that fat tub of lard thought, she wasn't going to give up tonight for a few extra bucks. Years ago, she might have done that, but not anymore. She was a different person than the woman she used to be, and had hell of a lot more prideful in that even if she didn't exactly have a moral based career choice. It still meant something to her, no matter how miniscule, something like happy satisfaction blossomed in her chest when she knew she wasn't gambling to make her next buck or whoring herself out for food. Yes, this was much better than all that.
~"Where do you want your cash?" Angel asked, the stripper who always seemed to follow Alice around. She was a genuine girl, honest and kind, never a good combo in this industry. Most times, nice girls were eaten, chewed up, and spit out before they could even blink, and adding Angel's few problems into the mix, Alice knew the girl was going to go down in a swift hole that likely ended up in her being dead. Stripping and whoring one's self out were two things that went hand-in-hand in this industry, which Angel did frequently to make money for her bad habits, but doing and selling drugs was another monster entirely and not a smart one to go up against on a planet full of seedy men all wanting to make a few bucks as well.
~Solar Nectar, a raging liquid poison made from all kinds of nasty things not meant for human consumption, and thrown in with the lot of hallucinogen and powerful aphrodisiac. Some even called it a love potion due strictly to the way it raised the body's self awareness and more lustful instincts. Though it didn't work like a charm every time, if taken within a few minutes of seeing someone of the opposite sex, or even the same sex, the effects were astronomical. In most cases it was used as an endorphin releaser that brought out the more hallucinogenic properties of the liquid drug, which couldn't be made into any other form or it would lose its potency, but it was highly addictive and nearly an impossible habit to break.
~Alice was glad she had only ever tried the drug once, never really getting too much more of a taste of it when it landed her in hot water with a few of the poison's dealers when she couldn't pay up in creds, so they took it out of her hide. She had marring scars still pinkening to white even more than three years later, and though she didn't make Solar Nectar a habit as Angel had, the dark haired woman hadn't been able to kick her chain smoking or drinking, two other bad habits. Though in retrospect, Alice's addictions were dwarfed in comparison to the blonde's.
~"Thanks," Alice warmly said, appreciative to have at least one friend in this dark shit hole where only criminals and their well-paid girlfriends, who pretended not to know about their boyfriends strippers habits, seemed to only dwell. It was rough to carve out a living here on Pluto, it tended to end up killing most who didn't have the stomach to tolerate daily muggings, rapes, and drunk and murdered dead bodies, though it was one of the few places that allowed people like Alice to live without any kind of identification.
She took her wads of creds and dumped them unceremoniously into her safe, knowing she didn't have long before itclosed until tomorrow, but by then is would be too late. Only tonight would do, no other time was right.
~Angel chewed on her nails, not quite comprehending they were all ready gnawed down to the bleeding nubs, "where do you always go?" She managed to venture at length, watching the dark haired, lighter complected woman throwing her hair into a ponytail and pulling on some warm street clothes.
~Alice shrugged, "nowhere."
~"If it was nowhere, you wouldn't take off one night a month. The only night where the two moons are full." She scratched her sandy head and straightened her cashmere robe as Alice pulled on her white trench coat.
~"Call it… my werewolf night," Alice laughed jokingly, pretending to be a frightening monster by sarcastically flailing her arms and wiggling her fingers like claws.
~"Alice! I'm not a baby, where do you go?"
~Chuckling quietly, the older female went to her mini refrigerator and pulled out a bouquet of red Castle roses, a rare find on Pluto that Alice had to import monthly as no vegetation could grow here on Pluto unless in a greenhouse.
~"To visit a friend." There was a tiny, sad smile dancing at the corners of her lips and Angel bit back the rising questions that continued to plague her.
~"I'll talk to you later," Alice whispered, heading for the door and leaving the scantily clad stripper behind to chew on her nails nervously.
~Cold, freezing air tore into Alice's flesh, chilling her down to her very core as she took her first steps outside into the deserted snow riddled streets of Pluto's biggest town, Titan. The vast white littered the ground lightly, crunching softly underneath her fur-lined boots and she left footprints in her wake, being the only traces of life that night in the city off the platelets of Pluto's meridian.
~The glow from the club's only working neon sign blinked once or twice at Alice, as if to pathetically beg her to return. It read, "Loveless" and the name had weedled itself into the woman's mind after so many years of soulless stripping, taking off her clothes for the hordes of disgusting men who raped, pillaged, and murdered for a living.
~A sound made its way to Alice's ears and she spun around to meet the chilling gaze of a feral monster, grinning viciously and promising pain. "I've caught a little kitten, boys," the man muttered to his cohorts who melded from the darkness. They too had frighteningly wild smiles, forcing a disgusted shudder to crawl up the stripper's spine, but she calmly reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a tazer.
~"I wouldn't come any closer, I might hurt you guys," she threatened coolly, a dangerous smile crossing her perfect, rose-red lips just then.
~"Oh," the ring-leader remarked in amusement, "kitty's got claws." They all laughed arrogantly at the joke, hardly realizing how much pain they were about to be in.
~Reaching out for Alice, the leader growled when she side-stepped easily, smacking him away with the quickly placed hand holding her tazer. "I said don't. Now go slink away before I break you three." Her words only served to enrage the gang leader more and he snarled as he reached for her again.
~There was a brief second where Alice debated the intelligence behind her actions and words, but continued to fluidly avoid the grabbing hands that wanted to snatch and hurt her. She felt the slimy man's hands clutch at her scarf and yank, succeeding in catching her off-guard. Her roses tumbled from her grip, hitting the snowy pavement, amazingly undamaged despite their harsh fall, except for one single petal that slipped from it's home.
~Alice felt a wave of rage violently spasm up her spine and she moved her fist back, throwing it full-force into her captor's face. It was a crushing blow that shattered his nose and cheekbone, and the first of many raining down punches that Poker Alice hailed upon her overly stupid opponents. She found a distinct pleasure in the pools of blood staining the once pure white snow, droplets of spraying life essence flying through the air and splattering her face and clothes, but she hardly noticed.
~When at last everything went quiet, three motionless bodies were stretched out on the ice and snow covered ground. All unconscious, a solace away from the blinding pain they would likely be in had they been able to stay awake ad feel their bodies being crunched to pieces.
~"I warned you," Alice hissed, licking away the blood staining her knuckles from her own wounds. She looked down at her hands, seeing the showing prostatic metal implants just beneath the surface of broken dermis. Her fringing anger was ebbing away from her and she reached into her inner chest pocket to pull out a glistening, smoke gray handgun. These men were dangerous, ones who could just as easily have picked one of the lesser fighting inclined girls of the club and ripped them to shreds. They all needed to be dealt with accordingly.
~Alice went over to the first broken grunt, taking her aim at his forehead and cocking the hammer back. The shot rang off loud, disturbing no one who would care enough to do anything about it. The man's features had been just an irritating blur of indistinct facial construction she didn't care to carve to memory and was now just a dead pile of soon to be rotting flesh. She moved on from him without an emotion crossing her façade and stood over the second lackey, finding him equally as unresponsive as his comrade.
This one had been the first one downed of his other two poorly picked friends, different only because Alice took note of his young age, deducing him to not even be of legal age. Still just a pup in her eyes, barely even old enough to have felt a woman's wrapping warmth. It sickened her, "barely old enough to fuck and all ready a killer? Kid…" she whispered angrily, "you picked shitty role models." She sighed heavily, debating on the boy's options, but found herself unable to put a bullet into his pretty and young face, appeasing herself by putting cold steel into his legs instead. On this rock, if the cold didn't kill you and the gangs didn't send you out to the slaughter, being too poor to get prosthetics meant you were useless. But, it was better to be useless than dead in her mind.
~She watched him jerk wildly and begin to scream, but ignored the sound to finally come to rest on the boss lying a few feet off to the side. He was the final man, the instigator, and was a sore-eyed mess, barely hanging onto life as he gurgled and struggled in vain to crawl away. His blood-encrusted eyes were swollen shit, blinding him, but he knew the sound of a gun being shot and the hammer clicking into place. He'd shot enough humans to remember that sound and carve it to memory. With his men dead and/or injured, there was no one around now to protect him, no one to use as a shield. He was all alone.
~Her footsteps were coming closer and that told him his seconds were numbered, that thought alone made him freeze in terror.
~"Because you're awake, I'll tell you what I tell every man I've ever killed." She knelt down beside the leader and forced him onto his back even as he fought her. "My name is Alice. I have been a gambler, a drinker, a smoker, a bounty hunter, and a stripper. This gun that I'm holding belongs to a dead man and I call her Judgment. She determines who lives and who dies. If she misfires, you live. If she doesn't," Alice paused to reload her prized firearm, the ensuing clicks made the bleeding man flinch and accidentally release his bladder. "You die." She aimed the handgun and cocked it, that frightening sound shocking him to his black-hearted core.
~"H-how many times has s-s-she misfired," he bubbled through the blood and tears, his mouth trembling with raw fear and a shred of hope fighting to show through.
~Alice laughed. "Never," and the gun went off...
Author's Ending Note - As always, leave me some R&R to tell me what you think. This is just the first chapter and I have another one waiting in the wings whenever I hear how you guys liked this first chapter. Lots of love!
Lady A.R.R.O.
