Summary: The Merit Society, 2071. On Planet Earth 2.0, in a society where merit is currency, Patrica LaVelle is wanted for a murder that she either did not commit or cannot remember. She enlists the help of Spike and thus draws him into a world of lies, backstabbing, and murder most foul.
Author's Note: Hello all! Welcome and thank you for checking out this story. I hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing it. Just a little disclaimer, I am currently on S1E14 of Cowboy Bebop so I am relatively new to the series. So if this plotline has already been explored or I'm clueless as to small details, I apologize in advance.
Anyway! Enjoy!
Story Tags:
Action/Adventure Murder Mystery Background Relationships Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence Canon-Typical Violence Slow Build Mild Language Canon Compliant Confessions POC OCCharacters:
Spike Spiegel Faye Valentine Jet Black Ed (Cowboy Bebop) OC- Patricia LaVelleX
Planet Earth 2.0, Merit Society
Five deaths occurred on Planet Earth 2.0 that would forever change Patricia LaVelle's life. The first happened during the year 2057, at a gas station near the edge of New New New York. A woman was caught in the crossfires of a standoff between the town Police and a man classified as Harmful. The woman died at the scene. The man - hereby referred to as the Harmful - was also shot, and succumbed to his wound en route to the hospital.
The third death occurred at an unnamed bar in the same town. Two men engaged in a verbal altercation pertaining to the Classification System. The first man will hereby be known by his Classification, Upstanding. And the second man will be known as his Classification, Neutral. At some point during the argument, the Neutral pushed the Upstanding. The Upstanding fell, subsequently hitting his head on the cement. He succumbed to his injury immediately.
The fourth death occurred at the System Maintenance Building within the Bureau of System Management sector. Dany Dempson, Classification: Upstanding, ended his life with a pistol after performing routine maintenance on the System. Dempson was a kind and overly social man with consistently positive merit. His suicide was met with much confusion and despair.
The fifth and final death occurred a year later in the very same building. Mrs. [REDACTED] was shot and killed on the scene. Circumstances remain under evaluation.
These are the events leading up to the trial of one Patricia LaVelle, Classification: Detecting…
Session: [REDACTED]
X
"Come on, pass the ball!"
"In your dreams, monster feet!"
"I'm open, I swear!"
" Ali-oop! "
The young man sprung into the hair and dunked the basketball into the rim with a flourish. He dangled there for a while, swinging his legs through the air and taunting the other players. The young woman put her hands on her hips and huffed. Sweat was running down the side of her face and creating dark rings around her armpits. She lifted the collar of her tee-shirt and ran it along her face.
"Your feet are bigger than mine," she panted, flashing her ringed middle finger at the man hanging from the basketball net. He stuck his tongue out at her.
"Yeah but I'm a man, so it's okay."
"Bad news, buddy. I looked up the word 'man' in the dictionary, and it had your face under the antonym section."
"Bookworm. Nerd. Don't you have somewhere you're supposed to be?"
"I'll go in a minute!"
The boy jumped down, full of adrenaline at having dunked so magnificently on the opposing team. But he didn't see the man running up behind him and ended up crashing down onto his shoulders. The man stood up. He was around the same age as the boy, but easily three times his size. He was a player on the opposite team. The faded green letters on the Device hooked into his wrist read 'Harmful.'
"Watch where you're going, Spud," he growled as his team members ganged up behind him. A man leaning against the broken-down fence flicked a lighter and looked up. The tiny flame met the white edge of the cigarette and he inhaled deeply, one hand shoved in his pocket.
"Why don't you?" Spud spat back, still grounded. The man balled his fist under the boy's shirt and yanked him to his feet.
"Got ourselves a little smart ass here. God, I hate smart asses." He swung his hand back and the young woman threw herself between them. The man's look shifted to one of surprise, but it was too late for him to still his hand. His blow hit her square in the chest and she stumbled back with a cough.
"Huh?" He said in surprise. And then, "oh shit. Sorry, Patty."
"All's fair in love and war," she said simply, massaging her chest. She was okay with letting the moment blow over but Spud was having none of it. He stood up on his tippy toes and proclaimed in his loudest voice "Bren hit a girl! "
"What? I didn't - I mean...she jumped in front of me, I - aw, whatever. I don't wanna play this lame Earth game anyway. Good riddance, goodbye!"
Patty rested her forearm against Spud's head and waved at the man stomping away.
"Great, now we're a man short," a young man from the opposing team whined and threw up his hands.
"Don't worry, you'll lose with or without. How about…" Spud swung his finger in an arc around the court until he was pointing at the man smoking a cigarette. "You! You wanna join us for a game?'"
"Hm?" The man said, pointing to his chest. "Me? I'm not much of a player, kid."
"But you're so tall!" Chimed the young man from the other team, "You'd be perfect! Come on!"
"Naw, man, he's all legs. He'll probably be tripping the whole game."
"Actually, on second thought, I think I'll join."
The team cheered as the man removed his jacket and tossed it at Patty. She smiled as she caught it and tucked it under her arm. She was amused by the man's sudden willingness to play and wondered if the insult to his legs had been what spurred him on. She was about to discard his jacket on the bench and rush in to play but intuition stopped her and she glanced at the Device hooked to her arm. Below the words 'Detecting,' her clock read 10:34 pm, six minutes before her show was set to start.
"Shoot. Hey guys, I gotta dash! Sorry!" She called over her shoulder as she ran away from the courtyard. The tall man who had been smoking the cigarette startled and called something after her, but it was drowned out by the cries of her teammates bemoaning the loss of yet another player.
It was only when she reached the door of the barroom that she realized that she was still carrying the unfamiliar man's jacket.
"Oops," she said before pushing open the backdoor and entering into a completely different scene.
X
" I'm having a blue Christmas...la da di da dad da! " she breathed in deeply and then sighed into the microphone. She wrapped one hand around the stand and then snaked the other one through the air, her glittery red nail polish catching the light. Cigarette smoke curled around her fingers and slid down her wrists, partially obscuring the Device. She was intoning now and harmonizing with the saxophone. She was far off-key from the rhythm of the original song. But this was Earth 2.0. They liked to do things a little differently.
Most of the bar patrons were busy staring into their drinks or each other's eyes. But a few heads were turned her way and she preferred it like that. The TV behind the bar was playing repeats of a late-night bounty hunter show that held no interest to the patrons. The System implemented on Earth 2.0 did not allow for much degeneracy, and thus a bounty had never before been set on its people before.
She caught the eye of a patron at the very far end of the bar and her breath hitched. Her shoulders tensed and then relaxed beneath the blue jacket that belonged to the man staring back at her. She gave a little wave and a smile, and he sighed in return, his eyes closing in exasperation. She'd have to give him the jacket later. At the moment, it just fit so well with her red dress. That, and it was currently hiding the residual pit stains leftover from her basketball game.
Exciting , she thought as she continued to sing and watch the man. He had turned away from her and was downing a shot. While part of her strove to impress and lull her audience, the other wandered off into a daydream whereby they were two partners in crime. He was a detective and she was the elusive damsel, and they were fated to meet that night over a blue jacket and Whiskey Bitters. Maybe…
He stood and ambled towards the back. Right before he opened the door, he slid a cigarette from the box in his pocket and put it in his mouth. But not before casting one more warning glance over his shoulder.
I want my jacket, his eyes said before he closed the door behind him.
" I'll be so blue just thinking about you...decorations of red on a green Christmas tree won't be the same dear if you're not here with me… " she traced her fingernail along the microphone stand. Up and down and up and down it went as her eyes shifted to the empty spot that he had once occupied. Then, for no particular reason at all, she looked up and saw her face shining on the TV screen.
At first, she didn't even recognize her own image. But, when she did, her heart gave a stutter. Somehow, she managed to keep singing as her heart began to beat faster and faster in her chest. There was no doubt about it - her picture was being featured on the bounty hunter channel. She couldn't hear the sound of the TV over the music coming from the band, so she wasn't able to ascertain whether or not some horrible joke was being played. The sound in her ears became distorted as if she were underwater, and all of the faces around her seemed to blur into the barroom light. A price flashed above the image of her face on the TV. A hefty one.
And it was at that precise point she realized that a bounty had been put on her head.
No one else had noticed Patricia LaVelle on the screen yet. Everybody was staring at her now, and she realized that she had stopped singing. Her band had fallen silent, their groovy rhythm interrupted by her sudden muteness. It was surreal, seeing everybody staring at her while only a few feet away a small TV declared her a criminal and a runaway. Any second, someone would look up and realize what had happened.
And that is exactly what the bartender did.
She watched in shock as he lifted his head as if in slow motion. He had seen her staring slack-jawed at the TV and was curious as to why. The glass that he had been polishing slipped from his hands and descended towards the floor. She turned, realizing that the sound of it shattering would make everybody turn towards the TV, and began to run.
The bartender cried out but she didn't hear what he said. There was the sound of chairs being scraped back and people climbing to their feet. And still, she ran as fast as she could in her heels. Off the stage, through the halls, past the bathrooms. She didn't know where she was going, she just knew that she had to go.
She burst through the backdoors and looked around wildly. There was no one there, or so she thought. A man stepped forward from the shadows, and she saw that it was the same man that she had been eyeing at the bar.
"Hey you," he said cordially. His expression fell when he saw her wild eyes and heaving chest. "Something wrong?"
"Uh…" She bent down and began to remove her high heel. She wouldn't be able to run in them. The sole of her bare foot crunched against the icy ground and she winced.
There's a bounty on me, she thought to herself as she undid the clasp of her second heel. Someone actually put a bounty on me! Her watering eyes rolled towards the misty moon as if she could find answers there and she sighed shakily, her breath turning white and then disappearing in the night.
"What did I do?" She mumbled to herself. The heel came off and she flung it away. She could hear loud voices approaching the backdoor. "I can't remember what..." Her eyes rolled back down and met those of the shocked stranger. "Here," she said shakily, "I'll trade you."
She twirled his blue jacket around his shoulders and plucked the cigarette from his dry, parted lips. Then, before he could muster a word of complaint, she was off and running again.
She took the back roads. She scurried down alleys and then reappeared at the entrance. She doubled back, retracing her steps, and then changing her route completely. It was an odd and frenzied sort of planning that took a while. But when she was sure that she had lost her pursuers, she made her way back home to the apartment that she shared with her roommate.
She stared up at the grimy three-story building from an adjacent alleyway, breathing heavily, her face cloaked beneath fabric torn from her dress. It was a terrible idea for her to go to the one place where bounty hunters and police were sure to flock. But if her assumption was correct about the airing of the bounty channel, she had precious little time before the flock arrived. And she needed some things if she were to survive on the run.
On the run.
Those were the words that got to her. Sniffling, she quickly made her way through the snow and pushed open the lobby door. There was no one there, thankfully, and she jumped in the elevator, jamming the 'close door' button as soon as she did. Her thoughts were like a tornado in her mind. What would happen if she turned herself in? Was it all just a big mistake? At what point would the Device on her arm begin to transmit her location? And most importantly….what had she done to become a Wanted Criminal?
The elevator doors opened and she threw herself into the hallway. She was panting again, her vision blurry with tears. Still, somehow, she managed to slide the key into the lock and push the door to her apartment open. Rats scurried away as the light from the hallway shined into her living room, and she quickly closed the door behind her.
"Hello?" she said softly, her voice a hollow whine. "Angela?"
The only light in the living room came from their small TV. That cursed bounty hunter show was still playing, except this time it was showing a round-up of all Wanted Criminals at the moment. She stood rooted to the spot, hypnotized by her image in the far left corner of the screen. There was her name, displayed between the image of a man who had gone on a murderous spree and a woman who had blown up a government building. It was a picture of her from a poster displayed at her very first performance. She was younger then, her smile full of innocent mirth, but the likeliness was quite unmistakable.
She shook her head and roused herself. Quickly, she began to move about the apartment, grabbing essential items and stuffing them into a large bag. A police siren wailed and then passed beneath her window. Choking, and gasping beneath her tears, she stumbled on her cut and swollen feet and fell to her knees on the carpet.
A door opened and she whipped her head up, fear constricting her throat. There, at the end of the hall, stood Angela. Her expression wavered between pity and disgust as she grasped the door frame. Shadows concealed half of her face, revealing only one eye gleaming beneath her shock of blonde hair.
Patty put her hands up, as if in supplication. "Angie, please…"
"I saw you on TV," Angela said tonelessly. She took a step forward and Patty scooted away on her bottom until her back was against the wall. Angela knelt in front of her, her eyes unblinking as one hand moved around in her pocket. "What a terrible mess of things. I'm so...so sorry."
Patty screamed in horror as her roommate withdrew a thin metal slip from her pajama coat pocket. She grabbed Patty's wrist with a vice-like grip and yanked it towards her.
"Stay still," she said in a voice so devoid of emotion that, for a moment, Patty wondered if the woman before her was her roommate at all. She tucked Patty's hand beneath her armpit and held it there as she inserted the metal slip into a small slot in the Device on her arm. She slid the metal slip back and forth numerous times before taking it out and reinserting it again. The lights on the Device flickered and Patty looked up at her in wonder.
"Angie, what…" she breathed but Angela was avoiding her eyes. Her mouth was set in a grim line and she gave the metal slip another shake. The Device gave a staticky groan and as Patty watched in pure wonder, the lights went out.
Her Device was dead, something that she had never seen or heard of before.
Finally, Angela looked up at her. She was biting her lip as she lifted Patty to a standing position. She undid her pajama coat as blue and red lights began to flash in their window.
"Go," she said, placing her coat around Patty's shoulders.
"Angie, wait, what did you do? What happened to my Device?"
"I disabled it. For now. They won't be able to track you. I don't know when or if it'll come back on but you…" tears streamed down both women's cheeks and Angela pushed Patty out the front door. "You need to leave. Go as far away as you can before that thing comes back on."
"But how-?"
"Patricia," Angela said before closing the door, before the police stormed up the stairs, before Patty made a daring escape through an emergency window, "You'll never understand how much I regret this."