The Unexpected

This guy claims to be Vicious, but since Vicious is a fictional character, that's impossible. Please, enlighten me, why haven't I called the cops on this psycho, yet? Warning: self indulgenceImean insert, language, questionable use of alcohol, etc.

I'm writing fanfiction again. Lol. Well, basically, I figure, I've never written one of these sorts of fics. I'm going to do it. And quite frankly, I'm going to do it whether you review or not, but I'd love to hear your opinions (and no, I won't cry like a little bitch if you hate me or the story...you won't be the first or the last, and anyway it hardly matters to me). The names have been changed and a few details have been altered because...well, I haven't asked for permission to use a few people's names, and moreover, since this is a self-insert, some details would be important. Except, notably, for my cat's name. He's got the real one. And my own first name.

It occurs to me to point out that Vicious is twenty-seven during the series, the same age as Spike. Cowboy Bebop does not have the fourteen year old protagonists so common in anime. If I wrote about some seventeen year old...well, that's still kind of creepy, really, when you think about it.

Don't expect updates quickly, or anything approaching like clockwork. I'll get it done when I have time. This is a hobby, and a side hobby at that. I love to write, but yeah, this is an investment of time and energy, time and energy which I don't have much of.

Be patient. No shit, it doesn't look like it has anything to do with Cowboy Bebop...at the moment. That's why this is a prologue, and you're in the introductory stage. You already know Vicious, after all. The whole point of this exercise, this fic, too, is to be as realistic and in character as possible. It's no fun if people aren't in character. So chillax and read.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cowboy Bebop. Don't ask me again.

Prologue

Chapter 1 – Day 0

Chapter 2 – Day 1

Chapter 3 – Day 2

Chapter 4 – Day 3

Chapter 5 – Day 4

Chapter 6 – Day 5

Chapter 7 – Day 6

Chapter 8 – Day 7

Chapter 9 – Day 8

Epilogue

*

Prologue –

Perhaps not insignificantly, the last thing I remembered to take the night I left my parent's house for good was the frame containing my name in cross stitching; it had until then hung undisturbed above my door for most of my twenty-two years, at least the ones in which we lived at that particular house.

It was raining, and late, and when it was still light a few hours ago, the clouds had rolled in almost jet black, flashing lightning that arced between each jagged swell and to the ground. The rain had gentled by now, and thunder was still grumbling in the distance.

This was my favorite kind of weather, incidentally, though my preferred method of enjoying it was from beneath my bed covers. It wasn't really optimal driving weather, especially given that my car was totally unsuited for anything but sunlit highways.

The Miata was loaded down with everything that had somehow managed to avoid transport until the very last minute. My collection of martini glasses—which were hardly just for show—sat at my elbow, packed worrisomely in my trash can for lack of newspaper, and behind my head, the several cheap katanas and now-unwanted wall scrolls I planned to sell on eBay were crammed into a trash bag. Also with me was my television, and stereo, and in the trunk, a bunch of stuff I couldn't quite remember specifically, but didn't want to throw away. Some of it was also to be sold.

I was not terribly anxious about the street conditions, and would not be unless the rain quickened and the streets flooded again when I was still getting across town; I had implicit trust in my own driving skills—though lately I had started to detect faint noises coming from my car, which were so slight and semi-supersonic that I wasn't really sure whether I wasn't just making them up.

Instead I was thinking, and wishing that the radio would play something that didn't suck.

Rent was due tomorrow and I would call the city, or show up in person, to demand when I was to receive the water bill, the only bill that was actually in my name—the others were under one of my roommate's—and therefore a victim of my tendencies towards anal retentiveness.

If it had to do with money, or my livelihood—especially if it was both, especially if a fuck up meant I wasn't going to be able to bathe—I watched it like a very pissed off hawk.

I didn't work tonight. Joy and jubilations!

My original intentions for my night off—I literally worked nights, from dusk till dawn, and I didn't often get a night off, though after tomorrow night I was going to get three whole nights in a row—mostly included pretending work didn't exist, piddling around on the computer, harassing my cat for jollies, or watching a movie.

Instead I spent it vacuuming my room—my former room, never again to be mine, my dad was eager to put it to his use and was probably going to descend upon it come sunrise tomorrow with paint tarp and tape—at my parent's house, and cleaning the bathroom, because they sure as hell weren't going to clean it for me (dad's words, over beer).

At least I got new shoes this afternoon, five pairs of them, and lunch. Hurrah for ultra-badass sales and mothers who loved shopping.

With a yawn, I pulled up to a red light and jabbed at the radio some more. Still no good songs. I needed to get one of those listen-to-your-mp3-player-in-your-car plug ins, but then again I wasn't sure they made such a thing for the off-brand mp3 player I had. They didn't even have any covers for it, which was why the damn thing was all scratched up (well, that and the nail file I left it rolling around in my purse with that one time). The combined strength of an entire childhood's worth of Best Buy gift cards had only added up to that, but I wasn't ungrateful. At least it worked, unlike my brother's.

Well, I had finally fled my parent's house. Whether or not it was a dumb financial move, I couldn't live with them for grad school after having been away for all but the summers and winters of the four years it took to get my Bachelors.

For all I loved them—I loved them better when I wasn't living with them, if that made sense. They were great people, but my dad could be a little too much of an authoritarian jerk, even though he was generally pretty awesome, and my mother...well, my mother was pretty chilled out and fun all the time, though she had occasional subtle nuances to her character that could irritate me. Plus I chafed under an eleven o'clock curfew; it wasn't even that I had anywhere to go that late, but it was the principle of the thing. I wanted the freedom to go somewhere if I damn well pleased at one in the morning, if I wanted.

I was looking forward to having my very own room, belonging to me. I was even looking forward to bills; my job was pretty lucrative—and it had better be, I thought, considering the personal risk of being bitten by a scared or aggressive dog or cat—and I had sufficient financial aid to come out well in the black with tuition. I was looking forward to classes; I liked school and excelled at academics (also at sports, though I used to be far more in shape; a four year roller coaster of weight gain and loss will destroy your muscle mass, trust me, though I was finally managing to take the edges off and look thin; I was butch and muscled all the way through high school and just plain fat in college).

Basically, I was looking forward to living. Residing with my parents and going to grad school would have involved more money in my pocket, but it would have been like going back to high school; even when I was in high school, and hadn't experienced the personal freedom I would at college, it was damn near intolerable.

I put the car in first gear when the light turned green, and pulled out into the intersection, and upshifted at intervals as I sped up and changed lanes. The road was shining in the darkness, and I watched the (most often) yellow-orange ripple-like pattern of lights shift as I passed their sources, and approached new ones.

When I hit a stream of water, the Miata plowed through it, but a bit reluctantly. I slowed down a bit, since I felt the car try to hydroplane.

Still nothing on the radio. How the hell did they manage to do that? Either the talk show hosts were talking, which was boring as hell, or they played crap music that, evidently, somebody had to have requested, since only Jack FM played without requests—and incidentally, that station didn't suck nearly as often.

I finally settled on a song which I liked well enough—well enough. I still thought it was dumb. It was a song that appealed to the most whiny of all female tendencies, and completely foreclosed on the probably unsavory idea that people could get different things in different places.

You say you're fine
I know you better then that
Hey whatcha doing with a girl like that

She wears high heels
I wear sneakers
She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming about the day when you wake up
That what you're looking for has been here the whole time

"I've got three words for you, honey: cheerleaders put out," I muttered, and at the conclusion of that song, I turned off the radio.

Inside of twenty minutes, I pulled into the small parking lot out front of the little complex that housed my apartment. It was surprising how far away my parent's house seemed; it wasn't an unpleasant feeling, however, and was more a product of the different atmospheres produced by different parts of town than any sort of homesickness. And it was accompanied by a funny sensation that felt more like isolation; this was my home, now. Nothing waited for me with my parents. Still, it did not scare me.

I reached over and grabbed my martini glass collection and the trash bag of assorted framed things, and stepped out of the car. It was still raining a little and the parking lot was not very well lit, but it wasn't pitch black, either. The ambient light from across the street—school-subsidized housing—was pretty sufficient to make the lot more than navigable.

Only the deadbolt was locked, a sure sign that one of my roommates was in (if I hadn't already guessed, since their car was in the lot), and I dragged my stuff inside. My cat was waiting for me, sitting in the door to my room. He was a Maine Coon and generally unfriendly (surprisingly, since Wikipedia said Maine Coons were supposed to be friendly), except to myself, my father, and a few random others. He didn't really like my roommates, the giant turd that he was. At least they thought he was funny.

Anyway, Winston followed me around like a dog and liked to sit and watch me, as long as I was in my room.

When he saw me, he meowed, and came forward, slinking like a long-tailed bobcat. I'd given him a cat collar with his rabies tag for living in the apartment, and the little bell attached to it tinkled. It was adorable: orange and brown argyle. Eventually I was going to have to remember to get him a name tag with my phone number on it; maybe tomorrow night, when I went in to work, I'd get it. I'd been meaning to for a week.

"Hi, kitty," I said. "Move, I've got to drag this crap inside."

He hung around for an instant, until I advanced so that I was almost standing on top of him, then he turned and ran back into my room, and jumped up onto my bed. I made a mental note to use tape on my bed cover; it was a cheaper form of lint roller and got the job done just the same.

Winston watched me interestedly as I pulled the bags inside and arranged them so I would still be able to move around. My room looked a bit like it exploded; my books and other such things were arranged neatly on the two bookshelves I'd constructed (my shelves from my parent's house were unable to be moved). Everything else was all over the floor. Tomorrow I'd have to go to World Market to get a jewelry cabinet (I'd always wanted one) and one of those felt storage boxes. I didn't have enough shelf space.

The cat stayed in place as I went in and out, struggling with the heavier items, like the television. Even though I was fairly wet, I couldn't wait until tomorrow; somebody would have broken into my car for want of a TV or a stereo, cheap and small though they were.

When I was done, my already stuffed room looked as if it might never be clean, but it was late at night and I was tired as hell. I went to bed without further ado, and Winston came crawling onto my chest, purring like a freight train.

"What the hell, cat, you're twenty pounds!" I complained, but didn't bother shoving him off.

I went to sleep that night, strangely aware that the only constant—guaranteed?—companion I now had was my cat. Life with my parents had slipped into the very near past—I had been increasingly distant, anyway, and ostensibly been living here for the past week, just moving back and forth in the day—and I wouldn't live forever with my two roommates. Since I currently was not in a relationship, nor had I any real desire to get into one beyond being motivated by the increasingly real—and equally rather selfish—potential for loneliness, which was never a good reason to to be with anyone...well.

It was a concept I found myself shutting my eyes to; not blocking it out, but relaxing into it with a bizarre feeling that was half acceptance, half resignation. I still had a lot of life left to live, after all.

My sleep was dreamless.