Guns, Roses, and the Queen of Hearts 4

A/N – Sorry for the longer than normal delay. I will try to get updates on a weekly to bi-weekly basis from now on. Hope that will water your tasty pallets. Read on.

Chapter 4

Pluto Blues Pt. 3

~Alice yawned and stretched as she flopped herself down on her aged, threadbare couch. She had pulled out of her fuzzy, white parka only moments ago and was making herself perfectly ready to take a long sleep. There were two night moon passes before she had to return to work which was more than eighteen hours in total, if a woman couldn't get enough beauty sleep in that amount of time, than they didn't deserve to be beautiful at all, Alice thought.

~She unstrapped her heeled stilettos and glanced over in the direction of the bandaged man that had followed her home like some worried puppy. He was sitting in her computer desk chair, the back flipped around so he could lay his arms and hands on the back's top edge with his legs straddled out comfortably.

~"So, I'm safe in my own house. It's warm and cozy as you can see. You don't have to watch out for me anymore," she didn't mean to sound rude, but she did want to make Jericho understand that she wasn't the hostessing kind of woman. If he wanted to hang out, he would do what she wanted to do and right now she wanted to strip down naked, crawl into bed and sleep. For a moment she debated asking him to join her, but she brushed the thought away thinking it to have been just been a bad reaction to the tequila from earlier.

~"What do you do at night when you get home?" He asked.

~"You mean aside from fuck whatever man I bring home?" She sighed and pretended to look pensive, "I shower, shit, shave, eat, walk the dog, watch some Big Shot, and sleep. What do you think goes on here on Pluto? This is one of the most desolate back ass planets in the entire solar system. People come here to hide."

~"What are you here hiding from?" Jericho asked with all seriousness. His ski masked face was foreboding in the low light coming from a single lamp on the couch's arm rest table, but for some reason Alice wasn't afraid. His eyes were warm enough, and his body language didn't seem to be hiding anything. He was just an annoyingly curious, more gentlemanly type than she was used to.

~"Nothing. I came here to live out my days, I guess. I buried a lunk head on this rock and I'm a bit attached to him, so I just haven't wanted to leave."

~"Spike?" Jericho asked, remembering the name of the man she had called him hours ago and he was sufficed when she nodded, but was curious when she didn't add more. "Tell me about him."

~"I don't want to."

~"Come on, Alice. You hugged me as if you hadn't seen me in years and called me by some other guy's name, in some cases that's cheating." He smiled through his mask and Alice chuckled lightly, the morbid humor in the joke wasn't all that funny, but for the moment it had tickled her the right way.

~She smiled sadly and looked up towards her ceiling, reaching for her parka she grabbed her cigarettes and offered one to him. He took one obligingly and lit both his then hers.

~"It's a long story."

~"We've got time."

~She inhaled deeply the cancerous stick and let the smoke to swirl about her head before it lifted away and dissipated. She supposed they did, but she wasn't so sure about delving into the long, arduous story set back in times where she didn't know who she was or where she had come from. The memories reeled inside her head like a long lost movie she hadn't seen in years and the edges were fuzzy and aged.

~"I'm older than I look," she began with a feral grin. "I was born in nineteen ninety-four." It was funny to watch Jericho's eyes widen slightly as he digested the information, but said nothing and let her continue. "When I was twenty I was in an accident that caused me to be iced for fifty-four years and when I woke up I had amnesia, so I didn't remember who I was. There was a few years of bumbling around, but when I was twenty-three I was invited to join this ragtag team of bounty hunters on the ship The Bebop. There was just Jet who owned the hunk of junk and his asshole cohort Spike. We did bounties together to make money, although a lot of time we never had anything and living the life we had was never easy."

~She inhaled another long drag and blew it out, "then Ed joined us, some computer techy kid none of us were sure what to do with, and we managed to screw up a bounty and ended up with Ein, Black-Jack's mom." When the dog heard his name called, he looked up from his comfortable position on the other couch end, opposite his mistress and shook his tailless butt.

~"We did bounties, scrounged around for food, were hunted by gangs and in the end we just all drifted apart. Ed left us to go with her dad, taking the stupid dog with her and I left a little bit after Spike died. Jet tried to do bounties by himself but ended up dying from pneumonia." She mirthlessly laughed, "of all things, that hunk of cyborg pieces gave up the ghost thanks to a cold. I always thought he was stronger than that, but I think losing us all made him old and tired."

~Jericho listened with rapt interest and smoked his cig while she talked, "what about Spike? How'd he die?"

~Sadness crept along the edges of her mind and sunk into the emerald green irises. She pushed back the lump in her throat and continued on, "he was an idiot. He used to be in a crime syndicate and when he took his best friend's girl, Spike got himself into more trouble than he could handle."

~"It's always about a girl," he added.

~"She wasn't just any girl. She was…" she paused looking for the right word, "perfect. Smart, good with guns, resourceful, beautiful. The perfect woman for Spike and any guy dumb enough not to see she was dangerous and off limits."

~"The best kind."

~"Yeah, the kind that got you hooked on them before she killed you. Her name was Julia and she was like Spike's drug of choice. He didn't want to leave her, but when she didn't show up to run away with him, he left without her." Alice laughed at the memory of listening to Spike tell his own life story to her and how she had inwardly hated a dead woman she had never met before. "When she came back, I knew that whatever Spike and I had shared didn't mean a damn thing compared to her. I was a fling for him while we were drunk or needed the release, but she was his whole damn life."

~"Sounds like you felt something for him that he didn't return." He crushed his cigarette into the ashtray on the desk, leaning back and interlacing his fingers behind his head.

~Alice was all ready on another cigarette and nodded quickly, "I was a stupid kid, though. A twenty-three year old going for an older man. Spike was too broken for someone like me to fix and honestly, I was all ready too broken to try to fix anyone. But he was the only man I'd ever wanted to be with. You know every girl's wet panty dream, the house with the picket fence, the stupid rugrats running around driving you crazy." She shook her head to drown out the memories and the welling emotions.

~"So, how'd he die?"

~"He refused to let his fucking past go and he walked into the syndicate's front door and blew the place up." She flung herself to her feet and stalked towards her bedroom, leaving Jericho to dumbfoundedly stare down the hall while she threw things around her bedroom and stripped down to her red lacey panties and bra.

~Black-Jack made a moaning sound from his end on the couch and hopped down warily, planting his fuzzy ass beside the only other confused male in the room and waited to see if his mistress would be coming back to join them. She would, but not before dragging out another bottle of hard liquor, taking a long swig, and to search for something long since lost.

~From the bedroom both dog and man could hear Alice cough as she took the first drink and clear her throat after the second. If she was coughing than Jericho knew the alcohol was strong. He climbed to his feet and made his way towards the woman's bedroom, knowing it might not have been the greatest idea in the world, but wanting to make sure she wasn't doing something stupid.

~Alice was stripped down to her sexy lace underwear and was storming around her bedroom in her six inch heels, fully intent on finding something that was lost. She was pulling out drawers from her dresser and throwing out piles of folded clothes while she balanced the bottle of what appeared to be whiskey in her free hand.

~"Looking for something?" Jericho asked and Alice spun to face him.

~"I thought you were leaving."

~"You look like you need the company."

~The woman balked with a snide laugh and handed the man her bottle to dig deeper into her drawers. She heard him sniff the glass and take a swig of his own returning his attention back to her. "Stupid, piece of shit!" She growled, slamming the drawer closed and yanking open another.

~Jericho watched the twenty-something woman bend over, the panties disappearing in all the right places and her supple, heart-shaped ass wiggled enticingly for him. This was first time he'd seen her nakedness to this degree before, she hadn't even stripped on the pole yet while he'd been there in the club, and he relished for a moment the tightening of her leg muscles, the sharp sway of her hips, and how flat and toned her stomach was. If she wasn't so light-skinned or dark haired, she would have looked like some Greek goddess he'd seen in history vids years ago, but none of that took away from seductive beauty Alice literally dripped with. Even the black thigh holster for her rather large gun only added to her zealous appeal.

~"I can't find it!" She jawed, slamming the drawers shut, leaving what she had all ready pulled out on the floor.

~"What?" He asked, nonchalantly taking a third swig of the whiskey. It was one of the better brands and aged to sheer perfection. Another sip or two and he would be holding onto the floor for dear life, praying he wouldn't fall off Pluto and out into space.

~"The pictures," Alice grabbed the bottle back, following her company's lead and downing a larger portion than she should have. She came up for air harshly, coughing and choking almost violently and slammed the bottle down, sloshing much of the liquid around until some of it came out the top and splashed up Alice's arm.

~"Of them?" The question came and the woman nodded, looking curiously at the droplets of alcohol glittering in the low light across her fair skin. Without thinking, she bobbed her head forward and licked up some of the drops, drawing her light pink tongue across the flesh in a motion that was entirely too seductive to be appropriate and Jericho's groin tightened uncomfortably against the tight, thick material of his jeans.

~"Yeah," she breathed out huskily, the beginning effects of the alcohol were affecting her mind.

~"You should put something warm on. It's going to be a cold night," Jericho instructed, spinning on heel and heading towards the living room. He needed to get out of here before he made a stupid, influence riddled decision he would regret in the morning. He didn't come here to get laid, that was never his intention. A guilty conscious had commanded he take the pretty stripper woman home and that was all he had intended to do. Now she was safe and sound and could handle herself. If she needed him, he was only across the way and could be reached without issue.

~"I'm going to head out," and he made his way to the door, not hearing the scantily clad woman float up behind him and touch his shoulder.

~"Don't," she whispered, her gentle touch sending an array of fuzzy feelings ricocheting though him, starting with his head and ending in his crotch. "Don't go. I do need some company."

~"I didn't mean that kind, Alice." He was firm, but a shard of disillusioned softness must've leaked in because Alice pressed her body flush against his in a vice-grip hug both were sure he wouldn't shake off.

~"Just stay… alittle… longer." Her hands reached up to his face and forced him to turn and face her. She wasn't especially tall, but in her heels her forehead came up to his nose. She tried to remove his black ski mask, but he snatched up her hands tightly, shaking his head.

~"The mask stays." It was a useless rejection that he himself didn't even fully believe, and instead of having the effect of deterring the woman, she stood as erect as her body would allow, kissing the fabric of his mask where his lips hid.

~Without really thinking about it, Jericho's arms wrapped around the small woman, shifting lower and lower, until they could cup her thick bottom half. He lifted her an inch or two off the ground, squeezing the two orbs tightly in his hands while she kissed him. Her tongue had darted out, begging permission to slip passed his own lips, and begrudgingly, against his better judgment, he allowed her access.

~Jericho stalked slowly to the old couch, careful not to drop the light weighted woman on her dog who was moaning and lowly growling as he raced back and forth across the couch. He didn't quite understand what was going on, and was hell bent on figuring it out.

~The man knelt down between Alice's shapely legs, never breaking the crushing kisses they traded tit-for-tat. Her hands were entangled around his neck, while his continued to venture lower. They found her breasts and squished them together, gaining a low chuckle from his female counterpart.

~"Gentle," she murmured, eyes glazed over with waves of wanton lust. She had all ready forgone her inhibitions, even while Jericho continued to fight his. They warned this wasn't a good idea, that he wasn't on this planet to screw strippers. He was here gathering intel. But his long misused lower brain screamed for release, one only a woman of Alice's caliber was able to give.

~He was about to pull away and tell her he couldn't do this, it wasn't right, but as he yanked his face away from a bruising kiss he felt something grab his groin and squeeze it non too gently. He hissed through clenched teeth, bucking his hips against the feeling it pulled out of him. She was good, almost too good at it.

~"Alice," he mumbled, feeling her violent motions turn to soft rousings and he almost lost his mind. "This isn't right."

~Looking up at him, she grinned wickedly, "what do you have your own Julia somewhere? I won't tell her if you won't." Her fingers were skillfully pulling apart his button and slowly unzipping his jeans. If he didn't stop this now, it wasn't going to stop.

~"Yes," he ground out and like a cold splash of freezing water to the face, Alice froze. She pulled her hand away and seemed to be looking for a way out. Her eyes darted like some frightened animal and Jericho was sure he saw a kind of stunned emotion swimming around in her irises. She hadn't been told "no" before, or if she had it was only done so by that man she lovingly had called lout earlier.

~He pulled back from her, turning away to rearrange his throbbing erection that painfully had begun pressing against his pants as it begged to be freed. "I'm sorry, Alice. None of this was intentional." When he turned back to face her, she was all ready gone. The place she had wantingly mewled only seconds ago was empty Black-Jack along with her. And then he heard the bedroom door slam.

~Wincing, Jericho took that as a sign to leave and he dug his keys out from his bomber's jacket pocket and went for the door. His hand hovered over the knob, a wrenching, slimy feeling of disgust with himself was welling up inside him and he had to fight it down to get outside. He wanted to go follow her down the hall to apologize, but his less gentleman-like side won out and he closed the door quietly behind him as he went out into the snow.

~Alice didn't cry, had felt she had done enough of that today to warrant another tear jerking whine fest she wasn't in the mood to entertain at the moment. She sniped and growled from her naked position under the bed sheets, flailing out every few minutes to toss herself over in an never ending struggle to find a comfortable sleeping position. At one point, she'd almost kicked Black-Jack clean off the bed and in an effort to avoid his mistress' mayhem, the poor beaten pooch skittered off the safety of his warm, cozy bed.

~The was finally a moment of listless surrender when Alice found herself flat on her back, staring up at her ceiling and she asked herself what in the name of whatever god existed possessed her to think it was even a remotely good idea to push herself on a man she'd just barely met. Aside from the fact that alcohol was involved. She was normally good with her liquor, even if her stupid conscious told her she was lying. When it came down to the wire, she didn't sleep with random men, didn't do blatantly stupid things… lately, and she only made bad choices with a man long since dead.

~That was what bothered her the most. It had been a few years since Spike's death. A few years since she watched the man she wanted to be more than a once in awhile fuck buddy, fade away right in front of her, and since then she had prided herself on only one, one night stand. She hadn't touched a man… figuratively, since. So she wondered within the inner turmoil of herself what had possessed her to feel up Jericho. He wasn't handsome that she could see and though she could plainly tell he was fit and active, it wasn't so much his physique she was interested in. It was the way her heart pounded when she stood near him, even the second she'd met him, her heart wanted to throb out of her chest and bleed out all over the floor. Something about the odd, ski masked man just mad her blood simmer underneath her skin.

~When she finally drifted off into slumber, Alice felt the memory reel of things better left dead and buried begin. She dreamed about Edward, Ein, and Jet, mostly things that weren't important and some things that were. The conversations and poorly constructed meals Jet used to make. The nonsensical verbal vomiting Ed always seemed to do. And even a one-sided conversation with Ein that ended up with the small Corgi dog cocking his head at her much like her puppy-dog son did to his mistress now. But what effected her the most, the dreams that sunk in and caused the most volatile reactions inside Alice's mind, were the ones with Spike. Everything seemed to always center around that louse of a man and as much as that fact infuriated her, it also comforted her. The problem was… she still loved a dead man and that made all the difference…

~Her work week started off as any other one had. Alice got into uniform where she then presently stripped it off. She collected her money, paid Ricky what he was due and went home at night. Every time she was at work, there was Jericho, watching her and keeping his distance. He didn't seem much inclined to talk since their nearly too close contact and that was fine with the stripper. She ignored him as much as he avoided her, but she knew he was watching and could feel his heated mahogany colored gaze constantly following her.

~Alice occupied her down time with television and sleeping, though she tried to sleep less and keep herself busy more. When she slept, she had a bad habit of having the same nightmarish memory of Spike's final moments on earth put on auto-replay every time she closed her eyes. The images felt as if they had been burned on the back of her eyelids and she couldn't stand the old remembrances.

~Days eeked by and passed into nearly a month and Alice found herself less and less inclined to find the gumption to get herself up for work every night. It was then that she realized she was in a funk that she didn't want to be in and needed to find a way out. She needed to make money and if all these Spike and Jericho issues weren't going to work themselves out in her mind like everything else in her life she managed to will away, then she would fix it, or at least try to.

~The night of her normal early night off, Alice finished her routine as she always did, a dance without a promise of another. Her cloudy thoughts had been especially loud today, but she quieted them when she went to her dressing room to change. Outside was Jericho, guarding the doorway to the stripper's hall and today he sported a highly unstylish face covered with bandages and though the young dark-hair woman always wondered what he was hiding underneath the masks and the wrappings, she never asked.

~Alice floated passed Jericho without a word, eyes focused ahead on her dressing room and she didn't even stop when the man made a throat clearing noise as if catch her attention. She ignored him and closed the door behind her. Right now wasn't the time to be fixing her relationship -if what the two of them had could be called that- with Jericho. Tonight was for Spike and Faye.

~In a moment she was a flurry of action, slipping from her silk robe and climbing into her warm winter gear, decked out with a thicker, fur-lined parka with hood, thick gloves, pants and snow boots that came up to her knees. Pluto was having an especially freezing blizzard outside and though the wise choice would have been to make Spike and Faye wait until the weather let up a bit, but Alice couldn't bring herself to skip even one day.

~She stormed passed Jericho with her bundle of roses in hand and paused only long enough to smile at the man quietly guarding the door and make her way out the back.

~The storm outside was as restless as waves of bombarding ocean water in a typhoon. The wind whipped up crazily, slamming hard into Alice with angry fury. This wasn't a night she should have be out, but her heart didn't have strength to leave Faye Valentine and Spike Speigal out in the cold on a night she has promised them she would be there to visit.

~ Staggering out into the street and off the barely shielding overhang of Loveless' wildly flapping tent that flashed the building's neon sign, Alice wandered into the frigid night, tightly grasping the edges of her coat together around her neck to keep out the wind.

~ "I should have brought the ship tonight," Alice complained bitterly, feeling herself making little progress in the icy cold and turning back for only a second to shield her eyes from the biting snow that stung and froze her eyelids every time she blinked. She noticed the neon sign of the strip club was finally out of sight, but with the blizzarding wall of snow coming down Alice couldn't have been sure exactly how far away she had gone.

~A skeletal shattering shiver raced up the stripper's spine and her pearly white teeth chattered as if in a frenzy, "dammit!" She growled out, voice cracking from the cold, but she refused to turn back. By the time she got back to either her home or the club, the graveyard would be closed and for tonight, as Alice felt her insides chipping and cracking, she needed the warmth of the two sleeping dead that they spiritually offered.

~Another tearing gust of wind, blasted in Alice's face, throwing her off balance and sending her careening into the ankle high snow. The fragile roses, covered in plastic wrap to protect the delicate petals from the wind was sent sprawling from her grasp and the loosely tied ribbon holding the stems together unraveled. Roses whipped everywhere, the crimson red against the pure white of the snow looked more like droplets of blood rather than delicate plants.

~ Alice floundered momentarily on the ground, fighting against the wind to right herself, and as she climbed to her feet she launched herself towards the nearest rose that was blowing away in the wind. "No!" She was squealing over the gale of the storm and fumbling around for the plant, but just as he fingers would have reached out for it, it sunk beneath the frigid cold snow dunes that were quickly growing all around her.

~ "What are you doing out here?" Someone familiar yelled out to her and a pair of strong, thick gloved hands reached around Alice's middle and hoisted her into a standing position. She tried to flop herself back down, the frantic search for even one red rose was nearly all consuming. So much so that the young woman hardly even noticed the man standing behind her and holding her steady.

~ "Let me go!" She hollered, but the grip around her waist was like iron, "I have to give him one! Let go!"

~"Look at me, Alice!" Jericho bellowed and spun the young stripper around to face him. "You're shaking. Your lips are blue. If you're out any longer you're going to die. Get in my ship, I'll take you where you want to go." He watched Alice's eyes fall back towards the roses, but they were now out of sight, all of them completely gone.

~ "I don't have anything for them anymore," she hung her head.

~ "They're dead, Alice. I don't think they give a shit." He hauled her up and onto his shoulder even as she kicked and squalled. Her fists beat against his back, but they were shaking so badly that Jericho hardly noticed. He threw her unceremoniously into his two-person cockpit and climbed infront of her.

~The glass whooshed overhead of them and the engine roared, blasting white hot air in Alice's direction. It wasn't until that very moment that she realized just how cold she really was. Her entire body was racked with shivers, but she had been so cold she had gone numb.

~ "Where am I going?" Jericho asked, the obvious distaste for this whole situation apparent in his voice.

~ "The-the ceme-t-t-tary." She stuttered out through clattering teeth.

~ "You mean he's buried here!?"

~ Alice looked up from her feet towards Jericho's bandaged face, "why d-do you think I-I'm out here? Where did you think I was going with a bunch of off planet flowers? A wedding?" The blazing heat from the cockpit's heater had all ready warmed her body back up to the proper temperature, and the rising redness in her face was testament to that

~ Her hair was a wind flustered mess and the sticking snow had now melted and wetted her parka fur. All in all, Alice looked like still shiver, hot mess.

~ Jericho grunted angrily, bitching under his breath how much of a pain in the ass this woman was and kicked his cruiser into gear before jetting off into the storm.

~ There was all consuming silence while they drove, neither one wanting to break the tension they could tangibly feel. And it wasn't until the gates of the cemetery poked through the blizzard that Alice finally spoke.

~ "There," she murmured, pointing over the man's shoulder. Her well manicured, bright red nail polished fingers glistened in the low lights from the cockpit controls and for a second, Jericho was transfixed on her hand. They looked like the hands of a still young woman. Soft from lotion, smelling just lightly like a flowery fragrance the man couldn't place, and a creamy complected color that gave away her heritage, he suddenly wanted them to touch him, or he touch them.

~ He shook away the thoughts and landed a few steps away from the cemetery's entrance, opening the top to let Alice meander out.

~ She seemed boneless for a moment, the heat and cold turning her legs to jelly while she acclimated to the freeze right out of the warmth of the cruiser.

~ Jericho made no move to join her, keeping his hand firmly grasped to the ship's steering wheel. He wasn't going to follow, it wasn't his place, but he would be damned if he didn't say he was curious to see the graves. The reason that forced this idiotic, careless woman to nearly freeze herself to death.

~ "Dammit," he growled under his breath, glaring at his ship's mechanical vid-screen and jumped out of the cruiser to appease his curiosity.

~ Alice had all ready made it nearly to the grave markers, plainly seen in her tan colored parka and brown fur. The wind had almost eerily died down now, leaving only bits of swirling air to kick up bits of snow and twirl them across the landscape, before gently dropping them back down.

~ This place was terrifyingly still and it made the hairs on the back of Jericho's neck stand on end. He didn't like this place and it sat uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach.

~ Alice flopped down onto her knees in front of a gravestone and reached out with her ungloved hands to touch the granite. "I'm late," she whispered softly, "but I made it."

~ It was strange to Jericho, watching this woman talk to the slab of cold rock like it was a real person, and though he wasn't intentionally trying to listen in, he heard her talk to a man long since dead.

~ The banter was light, Alice cracked a joke and laughed at herself over it, describing the welling feelings she had causing a torrential flood of emotions within her. This wasn't how the young man had thought Alice talked or looked like when she was alone. He'd imagined her harder, colder, more jaded and less… girlie. She acted more like a broken fangirl, then a woman who toted a gun and used it.

~ Alice, at length, kissed her hand and touched the marker lovingly and touched the rock beside Spike's which Jericho could only guess to be another lost loved one. She climbed to her feet and spun to face him, a look of extreme calm having come over her and she looked completely serene.

~ "I'm ready."

~ "Good, 'cuz I'm cold," Jericho took his hands out of his pocket and turned to head towards the waiting ship, stopping dead in his tracks at the awaiting sight of four black trench coated men walked towards them.

~ A reel of thoughts clashed into Jericho then, mostly apprehension and cautiousness. These men weren't here to mourn the dead, they weren't dressed for it and they collectively had eyes set straight for Alice and him. They looked dangerous.

~ Without saying a word, one of them reached inside his coat and pulled out a black gun, taking aim quickly and firing the first shot.

~ Jericho was all ready in motion, even as the gun was being pulled. He snatched up Alice's hand and jerked her sideways into the snow, rolling them both behind a nearby gravestone.

~ The loud, booming sound echoed off the graves, leaving no doubt in either of the duo's mind what these men were here to do.

~ "What the fuck!?" Alice shrieked, crawling to better cover herself behind a large marble angel statue a few feet away. She was answered by a hail of bullets, most of them hitting the statue and tearing away chunks of frozen rock even as the woman cowered and hid.

~ She looked to Jericho who was all ready cocked and aimed, returning fire without a sound and something within Alice clicked. Her hand snatched up the large handgun strapped to her leg and glanced over her hiding place to get a better shot.

~ A bullet grazed by her head and she ducked instinctively, these guys weren't messing around, they were here to kill them. But for the life of Alice, she couldn't figure out why.

~ The black coated men had spread out by now and from the corner of Alice's mind she could see one coming around the corner nonchalantly and aimed to fire at her.

~ Dodging and diving for a new hiding place, Alice looked up from the snow dune she had taken cover behind to see Jericho racing head long through the graveyard, firing as he went. He had downed one of the four men, leaving only three left, but he seemed to be struggling. His left arm sleeve was drenched in blood and Alice knew instantly he had been hit, but the extent of the damage she couldn't be sure about.

~ Another wave of bullets streaked over her head, one piercing the snow hill she hid behind and startling her to action. She flung herself into motion and was sent careening to the metal gate, turning to glance in her enemy's direction and firing for his chest.

~ A sense of ill placed excitement washed over her when she got the man in the shoulder and he tucked and rolled across the aisle way and behind another grave marker to hide himself. His shooting arm may have been out of commission, but Alice didn't hold her breath against hope that he couldn't use the other.

~ She stood out in the open now, like a deer caught in the headlights of a fast oncoming car and she didn't know what to do when another man caught sight of her and aimed to kill.

~ Jericho flung himself on her, knocking them both to the ground, "get down, moron!" He yelled, rolling off her and struggling to get to his feet. He'd smashed into something hard hidden underneath the white blanket and his shoulder was now shrieking with pain. A gush of blood dribbled down his arm and he was gritting his teeth against the wash of writhing anger that crawled and simpered beneath the surface.

~ "We're pinned," he ground out.

~ Alice glared at Jericho, "I'm am not going to die here." And for added measure, "neither are you. You still have your own Julia to get back to."

~ She stood up straight from where they crouched and fired directly into the face of one of the men, watching in almost slow motion as the man's facial features seemed to disintegrate away to nothingness and blood and brain matter splattered on the snow behind him. He fell and was motionless.

~ There was only two of them left, one of which was rounding a nearby aisle in a crouched position and aiming a rather large automatic rifle at them while the other was no where to be found.

~ "Get up!" Alice yelled and helped haul Jericho's nearly dead weight bulk to a standing position, tearing off towards the cemetery entrance.

~ The rifle went off beside them, annihilating a cherub statue to pieces and spraying the rock bits in all directions. They were so close, Alice couldn't stop now. She gripped tighter to Jericho's hand and as they came to a skidding stop beside the cruiser, she almost threw the tall man in.

~ Climbing into the pilot seat herself, she jerked the ship into action, the top gliding on just as another rifle blast bounced harmlessly off the ship's side and window. They were safe… for now.

~ She lifted off shakily, cursing loudly about the touchiness of the pilot controls. In the second seat she heard her cohort climbing out of his jacket to take a better look at his wounds and maybe get them patched up to keep from bleeding all over his fire engine red, leather seats.

~ Alice turned on the afterburner rockets and blazed passed the ship of the men whom they had managed to escape from, but not before the stripper paid them back. She slammed Jericho's ship's right wing into their glass cockpit and smiled when the wing tore through the glass and made it impossible to follow them.

~ The entire ship jerked hard, causing Jericho to cuss up a storm in the back seat, but he quieted afterward, focusing his attention solely on the bleeding.

~ They drove for a few minutes, not really heading anywhere in particular, and all in silence, until, "I'm sorry," Alice murmured. "They'e after me." She looked down at her lap.

~ Jericho was tightening his makeshift bandages with his teeth and glanced in the woman's direction, "why would they be after you?" He reached beside her and pulled out his black ski mask and yanked it over his face to cover the scraggly bandages that were barely covering his face anymore. Alice hadn't yet seen his face, that was a good thing, it might have terrified her.

~ "Why else would men with guns come chasing after someone?" She was steering them towards Loveless, that much they both knew. "I stole something I shouldn't have."

~ This perked the passenger's attention, he looked carefully at Alice, but said nothing.

~ "After Spike died, I heard that the syndicate he was working for was merging with the Black Dogs crime mafia. I was on Mars then and Jet was all ready dead. Ein and Ed were gone and I was alone, bar tending for scraps." She said all this bitterly and turned away so Jericho couldn't see her placid expression, her long hair covering much of her face.

~ "I broke into their base and stole back something that was mine."

~ "What'd you take?"

~ Alice reached into her lap and held up the large barreled cannon that was almost comically too big for her small hands. "This was Spike's gun. He would have wanted me to have it, but even after I was told I could have it, the Red Dragons took it from me."

~ "So, you broke in to steal a gun? And now you're being followed because of an old pea shooter that belonged to a dead guy?"

~ She glared at him lethally, effectively shutting him up, but after a minute her expression softened, "it's not just the gun. It's what's in the gun." She haltingly handed her firearm over, dropping it into the young man's hands.

~ Jericho stared and held the weapon up to his face, "you've lost me. What's in it?"

~ "A microchip. They were going to give it to the next Black Dogs leader."

~ "But you said they were merging."

~ Alice flipped her hair and smiled genuinely at the man with a bit of white hot crazy dancing around in her pretty green eyes. "They were going to kill off the Red Dragon's leader and take over. This was the first prize they took. They implanted a microchip of all the Red Dragons personal information in this."

~ "Why was this gun so special? Why not something worth more?"

~ "They were trying to steal the ex-leader's sword, but when I broke into their building I guess they hadn't been able to get it. So I suppose this is the next best thing." Alice turned her gaze back to the road and her eyes widened when she saw a brightly glowing orange halo encircling several buildings up ahead.

~ "What the…?" Jericho leaned forward, glancing past Alice, "fire."

~ Loveless was engulfed in flames and out on the front steps was a chess pool of gore, the likes of which Alice hadn't ever seen before. Bodies of the strippers, the other bouncer Mac, and the friendly bar tender Alice had grown lay strewn out into street while people looked on from their apartment buildings and did nothing to help.

~ "Oh my god…" Alice mumbled. She cranked the steering wheel and made ready to land, but her partner grabbed her shoulder and pointed to the end of street where another cruiser ship seemed to be lying in wait.

~ "We need to get out of here," Jericho ground out, and in an instant Alice was all ready revving the ship's engines to race home. She turned the aircraft slowly, but a pair of headlights down the street came on and without warning came at them.

~ "Shit!" Alice was yelling, "Hold on!" She saw the first hail of bullets from the other cruiser come whizzing by, a few grazing the ship's paint.

~ Yanking the craft away, Alice felt the engine roar to life as she burned the slower cruiser and left the horrendous scene as quickly as she was able to.

~"They probably know where you live if they're after you," Jericho said at length, watching as buildings flashed by and became more and more sparse the further into the empty business district they went.

~ "I don't care. I have to get Black-Jack."

~ "It's a dog, Alice. He isn't worth an ambush."

~ "Then when we get there, I'll get out and you can leave, but I'm not leaving my dog alone."

~ There was silence for a long time, neither of them talking while the stripper raced head long for the only other friend it seemed that was still alive. She wouldn't take 'no' for an answer and if this asshole didn't like that then he could leave as soon as she was home, but until then he was along for the ride.

~ Her building seemed quiet, nothing moved. Even the wind had quieted down and the snow was no longer falling. If Loveless hadn't been in flames, Alice might have thought there wasn't anything amiss.

~ She parked the cruiser and dashed across the yard to her front door, carefully looking around to make sure that no one could sneak up on her. She slammed into her heavy, metal door and shockingly tried to jam her keys into the lock. The bolt gave way to the keys and the young woman threw the door open just as Jericho came dawdling along behind her.

~ "Black-Jack!" Alice yelled, reaching for the light switch so she could see.

~ Her apartment was in shambles, items were strewn across the floor, things ripped from their hiding places and shoved wherever was convenient. Glass was broken and her computer tossed to the floor in a mess of mechanical parts and pieces.

~ Alice's eyes widened and she dashed down the hall to her bedroom, calling the name of her little dog over and over again.

~ "I can't find him, Jericho!" She yelled back through the house.

~ "He's probably gone. When they got in here they really tore this place apart." He picked up the remains of a music box that must have been pushed over in the pursuit of the object of their attentions.

~ "Black-Jack! Come here, you little shit!" Alice sounded frantic now. She was moving blankets and clothes in her bedroom now, looking underneath for the poor pup's hiding place.

~ "We should get out of here, Alice. They're coming for you. They know where you live."

~ Alice came racing around the corner, a sack in one hand while she was cramming random things into it with the other. She snatched up the music box and threw it into her bag, "I'm not going anywhere without him."

~ A few moments of hurried cramming and picking up a large black box from the floor of the living room that had been hiding beneath a pushed over bookcase, Alice stalked towards the kitchen.

~ "Lights on… Shit," she had forgotten her computer lay in shambles on the floor. She angrily slapped on the lights and slipped on the pool of blood sitting just out of her not-yet adjusted eyes. Sent careening to the floor, Alice squealed as she went and slammed hard into the concrete, seeing a bursting of stars and fireworks flash across her vision as she hit.

~ Groaning, she heard in an almost a far away voice, Jericho call her name and try to help her to a sitting position. She looked around dazed and amidst the now scrambled haze of her thoughts, she saw Black-Jack lying motionless a few inches away from her calf.

~ "NO!" She screamed, wrenching herself out of the man's arms and clambering over to her poor puppy's body. Scooping him up, she could see and feel the blood sinking into her jacket, but she didn't care. "Black-Jack," Alice whimpered, hugging him tightly and praying for him to be all right.

~ She couldn't hear a heartbeat, couldn't feel his breath and within the small violet-headed woman, a bit more of herself seemed to crack away from her.

~ "He's gone," Jericho's voice was gentle and he was carefully trying to help Alice put the small, furry creature back down. He could hear the tell-tale signs of a large cruiser coming this way and the best choice would have been to leave now, before they were killed themselves.

~ "No," Alice was blubbering, hesitantly trying to put Black-Jack down, but her heart couldn't seem to wrap around that decision.

~ "Come on, Alice. We need to go." He was standing now and trying to pull her, but she wouldn't budge. "Please, Alice. Don't make me have to drag you."

~ After placing a light kiss to the poor dog's head, Alice finally let him go and let Jericho drag her back to the red cruiser in the yard. She watched longingly as her building's front door was soon out of sight and a kind of numbness washed over her.

~ As the cruiser climbed in altitude, Alice slowly began to realize that she was leaving now. The place she had buried her dead, made a home, had a job, was now being left behind. For the first time in years, Alice felt alone.

~ She watched as they left Pluto's man-made atmosphere, feeling the gentle gliding of the craft floating out into starry space and she laid back into her seat as exhaustion and numbs washed over her.

~ "Where am I taking you," Jericho asked quietly, sensing the heaviness in the ship.

~ "Jupiter," Alice whispered, "to the Bebop…"

A/N - And now comes the Bebop. Thought we'd never get to it did ya? YAY! TIME FOR BOUNTY HUNTING AND SYNDICATE ESCAPING!