II - Charlie Get Your Gun

Charlie broke the connection and sighed with relief. The first thing she had done this morning - in her panic yesterday, it hadn't occurred to her yet - was to call the university, speak to her dean, and ask that a backup be made of her records and stored independently. She was having to pay a fee for it, but it felt like a good safety measure. The dean had seemed puzzled, but remembering Charlie well and having always rather liked her, she'd been ready to help.

Go on and try to take my degree away now, you bunch of spivs, she thought, and went into her room to straighten the framed diploma hanging on the wall. Her next step was to start browsing the situations vacant; now more than ever it felt important to find a good job. She found a couple of ads that sounded promising and started composing cover letters to send with her resumé. While she was writing perkily and enthusiastically about how suitable she was to work for Phoenix Insurance, she heard a knock at the door, and reflexively got up and came out of her room. Meifa was answering the door; Charlie knew from her unhappy intake of breath that the dapper man standing on the doorstep was the same visitor from yesterday.

'Clearly, you weren't joking about not giving me much time,' Meifa said coolly.

'You're a good businesswoman, Madam Pao; we know you're capable of making quick decisions,' he said, with a smile. Charlie stood behind Meifa sizing him up, so she would know exactly what kind of man to hate. He was a little taller than her and had a healthy, gym-every-day build. His clothes were light and crisp, linen, the sort of suit worn by a gentleman from a temperate climate in the tropics; she noticed that his nails were manicured, short and smooth and enamelled a red so dark it was almost black. He might be any age between twenty-five and thirty-five. His hair was a very light yellowy red and he had the unfortunate overly pink complexion that goes with that colour, but his features were smooth and even and handsome. He had two scars through his right eyebrow; she wasn't sure about the colour of his eyes because he was wearing small oval sunglasses with dark red lenses. As she glared at him, he glanced up from Meifa's face and noticed Charlie standing in the hall.

'Ah, your lovely daughter,' he said, smiling. 'Congratulations on your degree, Miss Black. First class honours are quite an achievement.'

'Leave us alone,' she said, folding her arms and setting her feet apart. To her astonishment and outrage, he gave an appreciative glance to her breasts, pushed up slightly by her folded arms, before returning his attention to her mother.

'What is your answer, Madam Pao?'

'No. Never. Find someone else.'

'We want the best.'

'I wouldn't be so conceited as to proclaim myself the best.'

'One last chance.'

'No.'

'Then it begins now.'

'You can't threaten us,' Charlie started to say, stepping forward. His hand moved. She experienced the next few moments in tortured slow motion, everything perfectly clear before her eyes and herself entirely unable to react. He took a gun from inside his jacket, calmly pointed it at Meifa and shot her. She seemed to leap backwards, hitting the wall behind her with her shoulders and then sliding down to sit slumped on the floor. There was a red rose blooming on the white sleeve of her blouse. He put his gun away.

'Mama,' Charlie gasped, dropping to her knees beside her, pressing her hand frantically to her arm. Meifa raised her head and stared at the man, her face white with blue shadows under her eyes.

'You said - you said my business'

'Knowing perfectly well that if you intended to refuse, you would use your thinking time to protect your investments and create concealed copies of your documentation. We are not fools, Madam Pao. We could find those too, eventually. And we are not interested in threatening you idly. You have another day, if you wish, to reconsider. You may change your answer right now and I'll take you to our private hospital. A benefit for employees. If you take today and say no again tomorrow, something else will happen.' While he was talking, Charlie had stripped off her teeshirt and bound it around Meifa's bleeding arm; she had smudges of blood on her face and hands.

'Stop looking at my daughter like that,' Meifa said, faintly but fiercely.

'That's a very cute bra,' he said mildly. 'I love roses.'

Charlie clapped her hand over the ribbon rose between the cups. I can't believe I'm getting sexually harrassed at a time like this.

'I'm sorry to do this to you, Madam Pao,' he said. 'You seem like a very nice woman. Please reconsider. No? Well, think it over at the hospital. I'll see you tomorrow.' He turned and pattered briskly down the front stairs, then got into a long, low, white car that was waiting at the kerb. It pulled away with an expensive purr.

'How can they do that?' Charlie mumbled. 'How can they do that?'

'They're not afraid,' Meifa said, leaning back against the wall and breathing deeply. 'They know we have friends in the ISSP and they're still not afraid. Charlie darling, can you call the ambulance?'

'I'll do it right now,' Charlie promised, scrambling to her feet.

A few hours later, she got home from the hospital, closed the door and leaned against it, letting her breath out slowly and drawing her hands down over her face. Meifa was staying overnight for observation; she had a broken arm and the doctor thought she was a little concussed.

'Did she hit her head against the wall?' he'd asked Charlie.

'I don't know. She could have. I didn't see. Mama, did you bang your head?'

'I honestly can't remember,' Meifa said. She looked tiny and pale and folded in on herself. 'May I have a rest? I think I could remember if I could just have a rest.'

'That's the best thing you can have right now,' the doctor said kindly. 'Relax, Mrs Black. You'll have the full protection of the police.' He patted her hand, and turned to Charlie. 'Are you sure you weren't hurt at all in the attack?'

'Positive,' Charlie said, pulling her bomber jacket closed, embarrassed. She hadn't thought of putting anything on over her bloodstained bra until the ambulance arrived, and then she had just grabbed her jacket from the coathooks in the hall. The doctor was young and good-looking, and he had been totally nice, but just now she didn't want any men looking at her half naked.

'Okay. The best thing to do now is just to go home and rest. The police will keep an eye on your house.'

She heard the engine of a police cruiser as it slid past in the street and blinked at the wall in front of her, stained with her mother's blood.

'First thing,' she said quietly, 'clean up in here.'

She was still scrubbing the floor when there was a soft tap at the door. Apprehensively, she opened it. Ed and Marie were there, Ed lugging Ein in her arms and balancing a laptop computer on her head. Marie appeared to be hoping that if she acted nonchalant enough it wouldn't look like she was with them.

'Hi,' said Ed, looking awed. 'I decided to read the news today and you were in it. Are you okay? It only said your mother had been taken to hospital.'

'Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, and Mama's going to get better. It was just her arm.'

'We came over to see if we could help,' Ed explained.

'Oh, thank you, Ed.' She felt tears come into her eyes again.

'You really ought to put a top on if you're going to stand out here on the step,' Marie pointed out.

'Oh!' Charlie blushed and backed into the house. 'Come on in.'

'Your house is really nice,' Ed said, looking around in the hall. She reached up to touch a hanging wind-chime.

'Here,' said Marie, gruffly, taking the scrubbing brush from Charlie's hand. 'Go and have a wash and put something on, and I'll finish cleaning up the mess.' She saw Charlie hesitate. 'Hey, take advantage of this limited offer. I'm only helpful the same day your mother gets shot.'

'Thank you, Marie.' Charlie made her way to the bathroom, feeling weaker and shakier than ever. Having washed and put her bra to soak in cold water, she went to her parents' room, not her own, and opened her father's side of the wardrobe. Mama was planning to pack up his clothes and give them to appropriate people when they had calmed down a bit. She took out a teeshirt with a silhouette of a jazz trumpet player on the chest - in fact, she had screen-printed that at school when she was twelve - and put it on. It was four times too big for her and made her feel a little better. She went to look for the others and found them in the kitchen, Marie making tea and Ed sitting on the counter, wearing her goggles and communing with the laptop. Ein had laid himself down in the middle of the floor and gone to sleep. She accepted a cup of milky, well-sugared tea from Marie with a murmured 'thank you' and stood leaning against the fridge, gazing at the lettering that spelled out 'Tomato' on Ed's computer.

'Okay, okay okay!' Ed said, pushing back her goggles triumphantly and spinning round the laptop to show them the screen. 'Ed found the police report with your statement. They think this is him, are they right?' A personal profile was showing, with a large, clear mugshot of the man who had shot Meifa.

'Yes,' said Charlie, and took a hasty sip of her tea.

'Rainier Bandaa,' Marie read from the screen. 'Age twenty-eight. He's with the Red Dragon.'

'I can't believe there's still a Red Dragon,' Ed commented. 'Spike would be pissed.'

'You weren't even around when he went down, were you?' Marie asked.

'I read the news back then too,' Ed said haughtily.

'You've missed a bit in between,' Charlie said wearily. 'The Red Dragon syndicate of today is no relation to the one from back then. They've just taken up the name because there's no-one to stop them and, well, it sounds cool. I heard Daddy talk about it with Bob once.'

'So they're not grody old Chinese guys?' Marie asked.

'I don't know anything else about them,' Charlie admitted. 'Except they want Mama to be their Feng Shui consultant, so I guess they have some respect for Chinese culture.'

'Or they're just superstitious,' Marie said. 'I don't believe in it myself.'

'How about you just don't tell me that right now?' Charlie suggested.

'Seven million woolongs,' Ed said.

'What?'

'Seven million woolongs is his bounty,' she said patiently. 'You guys want seven million woolongs?'

'We're not bounty hunters,' Marie said. 'It isn't hereditary.'

'You've got a gun,' Ed said, as if she'd thought this settled it.

'Well, yeah.'

'What are you doing with a gun?' Charlie asked in a rather accusing tone.

'I took it when I left home. I'm not going out in the world by myself with no gun! I suppose you've never even touched one.'

'I have, actually. Daddy always said, he didn't want to think his little girl would ever need to use a gun, but he knew he couldn't control how my life would turn out and he wanted me to know how to use one properly.'

'Yeah? Got one of your own?'

'No but his gun is still in the house. In separate pieces, of course. But I know how to assemble it.'

'My gun,' said Marie, pulling it out of her coat pocket with a flourish, 'is a Glock 30.'

'Daddy's is a Walther P99.'

'I think it's your gun now, honey.'

'He didn't leave it to me.'

'But he'd want you to have it now. To protect yourself.'

'A gun doesn't protect you,' Charlie said, shaking her head. 'It's a weapon, not a shield.'

'Okay, to defend yourself. You wanna bicker over semantics all day, or you wanna get the damn' gun?'

'Okay,' Ed said, 'two guns and a ship and the Tomato - we could do it.'

'I am not going out looking for that man,' Charlie said with a shudder. 'Let the police catch him.'

'If the police could catch him, you think there'd be a bounty on him?' Marie asked scornfully.

'And do you think we're in any state to go after it ourselves? We're not bounty hunters! We're three girls and a dog! Only Ed and Ein have got any experience and that's on the tech side, not capture! Rainier Bandaa is a gangster. He knows what he's doing.'

'I may not be a bounty hunter, but I've been a grifter and a gambler since I grew boobs,' Marie replied. 'There's a lot of overlap in the job skills.'

'Okay, you do it. Enjoy your seven million woolongs.'

'Woolong so long how long you gonna be gone' Ed sang vaguely, nibbling at some parsley she'd pulled from the kitchen windowbox.

'You have to be licensed or the police won't pay you,' Marie pointed out. 'But your dad was licensed, and he still is if he didn't cancel it. And you can get his licence transferred into your name, as his next of kin.'

'I can do that easy,' said Ed, flexing her fingers.

'Only one of us needs a licence,' Marie said, 'and we can split the money three ways.'

'This is crazy,' Charlie said. 'You're talking as if it is actually possible for us to catch a bounty. A seven million woolong bounty that shot my mother.'

'Guys,' said Ed.

'What?'

'This is an omen. I found it when I was looking up the bounty hunters' licensing authority.' She showed them the screen, displaying a streaming video broadcast.

'Big Shot: the Next Generation?' Charlie read out, incredulously.

'Oh, for God's sake,' said Marie. 'Listen to the hee-haw music.'

'AMIGO!'

'Spank me pink, I think they found one of the original hosts.'

'We're here to hand over the reins of Big Shot! Sadly, Judy couldn't be here today - she's launching her signature cosmetics line and we all wish her luck. But here're Bill and Ben to tell you all what the hottest bounties are today!'

'Thanks old-timer! Happy trails!'

'Which one's Bill and which one's Ben?'

'How does Ben's jacket stay on?'

'Ssh!'

'Our first big bounty looks like a real ladykiller, and he killed a lady today!'

Charlie gave a little scream as Rainier Bandaa's face flashed on the screen. Her teacup fell to the floor and broke in two, scattering sugary dregs.

'After a hit on a Feng Shui expert who refused to work for the syndicate, the bounty on gangster Rainier Bandaa has been raised to ten million woolongs!'

'With all the folks that'll get after him, Rainier won't be looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses n'more!'

Marie stared into Charlie's eyes and mouthed 'Ten Million.'

'A hit!?' Charlie screamed. 'Mama!' She grabbed the phone and dialled the hospital with shaking hands.

'Hello, Deimos Health, reception.'

'My mama! Is my mama all right? They just said on the TV it was a hit!'

'Dear, slow down, tell me your mama's name.'

'Meifa Black.'

'I don't have a Meifa Black in my computer.'

'She might be under Pao Meifa.'

'Yes, here she is. Should her name on file be updated? When patients return, we just add an entry to the existing file'

'Listen, please, is Mama all right?'

'She's fine, dear, I have her right on screen and she's just sleeping. A nurse checked her five minutes ago and the notes say there's nothing wrong.'

'Oh God oh God.' Charlie's legs gave out and she sank down to sit on the floor, still clutching the phone. 'Can I please talk to her doctor?'

'I'll try and find him for you.' She had to wait on hold for a couple of minutes, but then there was a bleep and the doctor came on. He remembered her name; she was grateful for that.

'Hello, Charlie? Are you all right?'

'I'm fine, but what's it doing saying on the TV that Rainier Bandaa killed Mama today!?'

'Okay, Charlie, I'm sorry, someone was supposed to call you, there must have been an error in communications. The police have decided to say publicly that your mother was killed, so hopefully the syndicate will think they've lost that lead and leave you both alone. The idea is to get you into some kind of witness protection program, I think. New identities and all.'

'Who decided without asking me?' Charlie demanded.

'I don't know. I'm sorry, it sounds all screwed up. You'll have to talk to the ISSP to try to clear it up. Is there anything I can do to help?'

'I I don't think so.'

'Look, I'm sending you my pager number. Is it onscreen now? Good. You page me if there's anything you need. And don't worry about your mother, okay? She's fine. She can go home tomorrow.'

'Thank you thank you, doctor.'

'You're welcome. Take care, now.' He hung up.

'Well, that's weird,' said Marie.

'God' said Charlie, slowly hanging up the phone.

'Charlie?' Ed said, her voice rising nervously.

'What?'

'I heard him say witness protection program I got a thought and checked it you're not on any records any more.'

'You're joking.' Charlie's heart gave a cold, hard slam.

'No records. There's no Charlie Black any more in any computers.'

'T-try under Pao. Maybe I'm under Pao like Mama. It's her maiden name.'

'No. I checked.'

'They can't do that!' She staggered to her feet and wrenched the computer round, staring at the screen. Ed gently but firmly took it back.

'And I can't find anything connected that would be your new identity,' she went on, frowning as she searched. 'They've just done a wipe on you.'

'They can't!'

'Well, all your paper records still exist,' Ed said. 'Birth certificate, stuff like that.'

'I've got no paper records! There was a fire at the office where they were! They told us it didn't matter because they were phasing out paper!'

'Oh wow,' said Ed quietly.

'What!?'

'I checked somewhere I didn't check before you've got a death certificate.'

Charlie stumbled backwards until she bumped into the fridge. 'No,' she said. 'I'm not dead. Mama's not dead.'

'It's a total wipe job,' Ed said, sounding awed. 'And to get into all these records it's either official access or a really good hacker. Maybe with a nasty sense of humour, since he did the death certificate. And no professional pride,' she went on, sounding annoyed. 'He's just pandering to the paranoid propaganda that's been around practically since the 'net was invented. Erasing someone's identity. That is sooo stereotyped.'

'Charlie' Marie said.

'What?'

'I don't think you've got a choice any more.' Her eyes were serious, not mocking.

'But - but' A small bit of logical thought made its way through. 'It won't work anyway. I can't use Daddy's licence if I'm dead.'

'Bureaucracy's your friend,' Ed said. She was serious too, much more articulate than usual. 'The bounty hunter licensing authority has to be separately notified of your father's death to cancel his licence. And I just checked and it looks like no-one thought of telling them. I guess everyone assumed he cancelled it long ago. As far as they're concerned, there's still a Jet Black. That can be you if you want to do it.'

'Oh' Charlie covered her eyes with her hands and tried to breathe deeply.

'And I can work on rebuilding your record,' Ed said. 'There may be backups somewhere that their hacker didn't find. Or the official guy. Whichever.'

'Did the ISSP do this to me, or the syndicate?'

'Can't tell. Yet.'

'I guess I guess I've got no choice. Oh, it's all moving way too fast!'

'Okay then,' said Marie. 'Pack a bag and get that damn' gun.'

Charlie felt a cold, wet pressure against her shin, like a small piece of defrosting liver being pressed lovingly against her. She looked down and found Ein looking up at her, pressing his nose to her leg. He whined softly; encouragingly, she thought.

Author's Note: Should you want to see what Charlie looks like, there's a wonderful piece of fanart (I love it so much when my fanfic spawns fanart) at http://www.big-big-truck.com/sketch/charlie.jpg. Thank you so much, EK! In response to the comments so far posted in reviews:

- Concern that the new crew may be too much like the old crew. Well, apart from the fact that Ed'n'Ein are still Ed'n'Ein, the similarities between Charlie and Marie and their Bebop parents are deliberate. Charlie is her daddy's girl and Marie has been living in her mother's shadow. Establishing their own, adult identities (despite the irony of Charlie using Jet's licence) will be something they do over the course of the story. Cowboy Bebop is (to me) largely about finding a new way to relate to the world as old models become obsolete or are twisted by circumstances - we're all human, but no-one lives on Earth if they can help it, gender identity is becoming skewed (look at the prominent androgynous or gender ambiguous characters through the series - Ed, VT, Gren)... you can wake up with no memory of a life that began last century and have to figure out something from there. It's like creating a new, heavily improvisational form of music - bebop. (And, to quote Cyndi Lauper in her interesting conjugation of the verb 'to bop,' 'shebop, hebop a-webop, Ibop, youbop a-theybop, bebop, bebop a-lu shebop.') The same applies for the new crew; Charlie has lost her old world and Marie has run away from hers. Don't worry that I'm just going to copy the Bebop dynamic in Shebop. Besides, Charlie is different from Jet in one very important respect; he was hard-boiled, scarred by life, and she is deeply innocent.

- Complaint that the story's moving too fast: Again, on purpose. I want the reader to feel Charlie's rush and dislocation and confusion. The pace will change depending on events.

- About Ed and Ein - I'm going somewhere with it *^.^* But that will come up in its own good time.

Hearty thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed so far; I love feedback.

A note regarding this instalment - 'Bill and Ben' is just me being obscure. I figure if the hosts of the original Big Shot! were called Punch and Judy, the next-gen hosts should also be named after a puppet duo. Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men was a children's puppet show broadcast on BBC-TV long, long ago; the early 1960s, I believe. It's about two little men made of terracotta flowerpots who speak an incomprehensible language called Flobbalob and spend all their time tending their weed, a tiny potplant (pot plant? lots of people have gleefully found subtext in this) which goes 'WEEEEEEEEEED!' in a high-pitched voice. In an average episode, Bill and Ben walk around the potting-shed and Weed goes 'WEEEEEEEEEED!' a few times. This is perfectly in accordance with the grand tradition of children's puppet shows on British TV; The Magic Roundabout was originally in French and was adapted for the UK by a man who spoke only English. If it makes sense or has any apparent point, it's never gonna make it to cult status. See also the Teletubbies.

The fact that there is a Big Shot - the Next Generation! is self-parody on my part. Ed's disgust at the identity wipe is likewise my comment on the fact that yeah, this has been done, it's been done with Sandra Bullock, I know it's not clever or nothin'.

Bandaa, incidentally, is the surname of a present-day African tinpot dictator (I can't remember where he dictates, which shows my grasp of African politics is not all that acute; he may even have died since I read about him). Rainier must have an interesting family background. I am not having a go at Bandai. Just in case it seemed that way.