Disclaimer:  Cowboy Bebop is not mine, I wish it were, but alas, it belongs to Bandai/Sunrise…(if it were mine, I wouldn't be sitting here contemplating buying everyone in my family tube socks and underwear for Christmas).

Author's note: Sorry that this one is so short.  I have no idea where this is going…but as long as people keep reading it, I guess I'll keep writing it.

OTHER CHOICES (PART 5)

"If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water." – Bulgarian proverb

Spike Spiegel sat, looking at a snapshot, nursing a whiskey, in a smoke filled bar in one of the many seedy casinos run by the Blue Snake Clan on Tijuana.  The lounge was nearly empty despite the fact that the band, an old style jazz combo, was wailing.  TJ, he decided, taking a drag on his cigarette, had to be the armpit of the Solar System.  The asteroid was extremely bucolic, with farms spreading up from TJ's one city to the sharply curved horizon.  Even the traffic lights were slow here.  All and all, it was the perfect place to hide…except that he was bored out of his mind.  Julia had been so right, he was an adrenaline junkie, and he needed the rush.  Boredom was the only excuse that he could find for the trouble that he found himself in now.

"Spike, are you listening to me?" Mao had asked him with some asperity on the way to Tharsis starport.  Spike, his head still against the window, had opened one eye.

"Why does everybody ask me that?" he had groused; the death of some of the members of his cohort as well as being hung over had served to make him more than a little grouchy.  God damn conscious, he had thought.

"Because you are an impulsive hothead who never listens, that's why," was Mao's answer.  Spike had closed his eye again and sighed, he couldn't deny the truth.

"You said that I am to disappear, not drawing any attention to myself."  Spike had said in order to prove that he had indeed been listening.

"Spike," Mao's voice had sounded almost fatherly, "I know that you want to sink into your grief, and that you think that I'm a nagging old man, but this is important.  I won't be able to help you much once you are off planet.  I know you have the independence of mind, courage and the skill to get yourself out of almost any trouble, but I'm also hoping that you have the wits not to get into trouble in the first place."

So, it was definitely ironic that Spike found himself in a Blue Snake casino, surrounded by casual seeming Blue Snake enforcers ready to beat the living shit out of him the moment he left the premises.  In fact, there was only one true civilian in the lounge watching the band.  He smiled wistfully at the photograph, the last shot of his cohort together, as he took another sip of his whiskey.  He couldn't be blamed if he could see right through the ways that they were cheating their patrons, he rationalized for the people in the picture.  It was one of the advantages of his fake eye.  Of course, it wasn't being very circumspect to break the bank at four different casinos in less than a week, but really, there wasn't anything else to do on TJ.

The Blue Snakes were small fries.  Honestly, any member of his cohort, even Julia, as bad a shot as she was, could have come in and taken over this place within two weeks.  He sighed as he put the photograph back into his wallet, his heart constricting just a little.  God damned conscious.  He stubbed out the cigarette, drained the last of the whiskey, and left a chip under the glass as a tip for the cocktail waitress.  It was time to see if his wits, courage and skills could actually get him out of this mess.

He sauntered nonchalantly out of the lounge and into the casino proper.  He dropped a few coins into a slot machine near the door as he waited for the Blue Snakes to follow him.  The six thugs did not disappoint.  Spike shook his head as he watched all of them leave the lounge as a group:  they obviously had no subtly.  He felt his evil smirk coming out as he left the slot machine and walked through the front door.  He whistled to himself as he turned down the alley, making sure that he made enough noise for his would be assailants to follow him by.  Three came up from behind him, while the other three had circled the building to block his path.  He nodded to the leader, and with a casualness meant to infuriate, said: "Yo."

"Our boss would like to speak to you," said the leader, a burly guy who looked like he was used to getting his way a lot.  Spike raised his eyebrow.  Every move he made from now until the end of the fight was calculated to enrage his opponents, make them do foolish things.

"I don't know your boss, and frankly, I don't care what he would like.  You're in my way, so if you would, please step aside, I have somewhere I need to be."  And just like that, that fight was on.  Spike rarely actually took the first swing in any fight, generally he let his opponent's momentum carry him into a situation that he couldn't get out of.  Spike easily threw the leader into two of his own men.  A roundhouse kick, a leg sweep and a right cross later, he could tell that this wasn't going to be much of a fight.  He decided to end it quickly; it really wasn't a lot of fun to fight someone so outmatched. 

Spike was surprised to hear the sound of a single person clapping when the last of the Blue Snakes went down in a groaning heap.  He turned quickly to find the civilian from the lounge leaning against a wall.  "I saw them following you out, and I came to see if you needed any help, kid.  Obviously not."  Spike lit a cigarette as the balding stranger began efficiently tying up the Blue Snake muscle using ISSP issue flex-cufs.

"You ISSP?" he asked cautiously.

"Nope, I'm a bounty hunter," the stranger drawled as he toed the leader.  "These six are collectively worth three hundred thousand woolongs."  Spike smirked down at the now trussed up Snakes.

"Small fries," he murmured.  The bounty hunter grinned at him.

"Yep, they're small fries, unlike you, Spike Spiegel," he said pulling a gun.  "You just happen to be worth eight million back on Mars."  Spike felt his jaw sag in amazement.  "Don't move, and no one gets hurt."

"What the Hell?!" he asked, stunned, the cigarette almost dropping from his lips.  For half a second his brain refused to work, but then his body took over.  He quickly kicked the gun away, and just as quickly dropped the bounty hunter with a kick to the temple.  Spike started to leave when something made him look back at the seven people lying dazed in the alley.  He really couldn't just leave them there for the vultures to pick clean.  The six Blue Snakes were worth money, and the bounty hunter had information that he needed.

God damn conscious, he thought as he leaned against the alley wall and tried to figure out how he was going the move them all.