"Fucking Callisto," Faye hissed after the Bebop crew returned to the ship, their endeavor a failure.

The atmosphere reminded Edward very much of the crew's failed attempts of capturing Hutch Varlet, especially considering that Hutch Varlet had just been a smoke screen for hiding Edward and Spike's true intentions of smuggling Vicious to planet Earth. And this bounty had been a smoke screen, too, really.

Except that unlike the time with Hutch Varlet, everyone was in on the joke, rather than only her and Spike.

"How'd it go?" Jet asked, ignoring Faye's sour mood. While disappointed that they wouldn't be cashing in on this particular criminal, he understood what their real priorities were.

Edward flashed the vial of Blue Goop at him in response.

Spike swore when he caught sight of the vial. "He already has access to that stuff? He's already smuggled some off of Titan?" he asked. "It took Vicious years to even get into the manufacturing facility!"

"I doubt Vicious had the training or experience that Charley has," Edward pointed out. "Or the help. And this is all he could get. This is all he will get," she said with a sigh. "And even for this much, Charley has demanded compensation."

"What kind of compensation?" Faye asked slowly.

"He wants me to shut down all operations on Titan," Edward answered.

And Edward wasn't surprised when her declaration received a chorus of groans.

"This is worth it," she promised before anyone could begin voicing their arguments.


There was no real rush, no immediate pressure. And so the Bebop traveled to the other side of the solar system, and the crew went on as normal.

The four of them went out on bounties. Edward and Faye spent their share on gambling, food and shopping, while Jet and Spike spent their share on alcohol, food, and smokes. Ein began spending most of his time with Tide, and Tide began making sounds similar to barking whenever anyone entered a room he was in.

Edward did her work for the hospital, and she discreetly used the technology the hospital sent her to analyze the single vial of Blue Goop that Charley had managed to smuggle out to her.

And with every test she ran, the less Edward really wanted to understand. Because what she was seeing... It wasn't humane. It wasn't right.

When the other members of the Bebop crew asked for an explanation of the substance, she tried her best to give it to them.

"Blue Goop is made by combining a chemical mixture with natural ingredients," Edward told them. "And when I say natural ingredients, I mean... I mean that aspects of the Goop are drawn directly from the source."

"Directly...?" Faye asked, while Spike and Jet gave Edward hard blank stares in response to her statement.

"They're harvesting human body parts," Edward said plainly. "And I don't mean that they're recycling blood or plasma. The reason Blue Goop works so well is because it's basically a concentrated formula of all of the components of the body which work towards healing. But some of the components would have to be... in effect... while being harvested. So during some parts of the process, the people they're taking the materials from would have to have been severely injured... And probably awake... And according to Charley, they're getting these parts from criminals and prisoners of war."

This explanation was met by a brief silence. And then, slowly, Faye asked, "You're saying that they're torturing innocent people, aren't you?"

"Exactly," Edward confirmed.

"Damn it, Ed," Jet sighed. "You were supposed to be the safe one."

Edwards didn't know what that meant, because she had never been safe. Not once in her entire life.


They didn't ignore it. They just didn't talk about it often.

The Bebop chased after bounties.

Faye made noise about staying out of the casinos, and instead she and Ed went shopping or had in-home spa days.

Jet showed Edward how to tune up the zip crafts, but he maintained that she wasn't allowed near his bonsi plants.

Spike worked on his form, or he smoked, or he and Edward went to pool halls.

Ein fell in love with Tide and began spending all of his time finding food for the alligator to eat (within weeks, the cargo bay was conspicuously free of rats, and Jet had to install an actual door to the kitchen because Ein kept getting into the freezer).

And Edward pretended that she didn't spend most of her time analyzing the Blue Goop.

Because it was ingenious, really. It was amazing. It was a miracle of science. She had never seen anything like it, and she doubted that she would ever see anything like it again.

Except that it was also a tragedy. Because for every layer that she analyzed, she found another reason that Blue Goop should not exist.

But then Spike was stabbed in the leg while chasing a bounty.

Then, Jet's malfunctioning arm began to disconnect from his shoulder socket at random intervals, and it began happening so frequently that the mechanical joint implanted in his shoulder was jarred and became infected.

Then, it was discovered that one of the bones in Faye's leg had healed wrong while she was in chryo; she went to visit a specialist when she began to limp, and the doctor told her that the bone would have to be broken and reset if she didn't want to end up in a wheelchair in a few short months.

And Edward determined that if she wanted the people she cared about to survive, she had to have Blue Goop.

Or, she had to have a suitable alternative.


They were on Mars, and Spike found someone to talk to at the bar that evening. The bar closed at midnight, though, so he wasn't as intoxicated as some nights. Edward didn't need to assist him in climbing into the Swordfish, and he didn't immediately fall asleep after collapsing into the seat.

As Edward climbed in to sit between his legs, Spike said, "I can sit behind the seat."

"You don't fit," Edward answered dismissively.

She knew how to pilot the Swordfish now, because this was not an uncommon event, and she steered the star ship from the docking bay with ease.

However, this situation didn't happen often enough in Edward's opinion, and after getting a hang of the controls, Edward found that piloting the Swordfish could be exhilarating. Spike's ship went fast, and even though it's controls weren't quite as sensitive as her Sailfin or Faye's Redtail, the Swordfish could preform some pretty fancy moves at high speeds, she took her time weaving the ship through the city and towards the airways.

Spike chuckled when she flew a loop over and under a bridge. "I always admired you," he told Edward, his words only a little slurred.

"Really?" she asked, surprised. "Why?"

"Because we live in a dream where nothing is real. But you've always been able to take insignificant and unimportant things and make them real to you. I bet your world is colorful."

"It is," Edward affirmed, no longer interested in playing with Spike's ship. Now, she was flying within legal airways, mindless of the world around her as she listened for Spike to speak again.

"I envy you for that," he told her with a bitter chuckle. "It doesn't feel as if anything in my world is real."

For a moment, Edward was unable to respond. She stared strait ahead, her chest uncomfortably tight.

"You know, you've always been real to me," she finally told him. "You've always seemed real in whatever… whatever colorful world I see."

"I know," Spike answered. "I can see it in your eyes."


A/N: That final scene was one of the very first things I wrote for this story. I've been waiting six years, almost 200 pages, and untold numbers of drafts and rewrites to post that little blip which was basically the inspiration for this entire story. Let's all just take a moment.