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Session 3: Take the "A" Train

Confusion creeps inside me raining doubt
Gotta get to you
But I don't know how

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Faye sat up in bed. It was no use; her guilty conscience refused to allow her to sleep.
Outside, the wind had picked up, changing the weather from the gentle drifting of flakes to
something resembling the inside of a brutally shaken snow globe. She gathered her blanket
around her, covering the thin T-shirt that she had worn to bed, and crossed the closet sized
bedroom. It was there, in the third drawer of her dresser, right where she had left it. She
reached a slender hand in and picked up the black Austrian Glock 30. Carefully, she aimed it
at the window by her bed, then sighed. "Damn nuisance," she grumbled.

The clouds were turning a slightly lighter shade of grey, indicating an attempt at a sunrise,
when the Redtail rushed skyward, sending a few half-asleep crows into a frenzy.

***

Leaning over his bonsai trees, he grumbled to himself in an angry manner that was unbefitting
such a past time. Women. Stupid lying selfish women. Their lack of gratitude is legendary.

He did not track down Faye for nothing. He had already tried to find Ed himself, but that
proved to be somewhat unsuccessful. Despite being her old friend, he had no more leads than
any other bounty hunter out there. She was a hard kid to find. He even tracked down
Appledelhi, her very large and very strange father. Just as Jet had suspected, the Earthling
mapmaker could not even recall whether he had a daughter.

But Faye, she seemed a little closer to the wild hacker in those last few days they spent
on the Bebop together. Surely she would have some vague idea of where Ed might have gone.
They disappeared at the same time, after all. They must have talked about it, at least.

He gasped and caught his hand, millimeters away from chopping off one of the miniature
tree's branches.

"Women..."

***

Faye shouted a curse before kicking the heel of her boot hard against the nearest blunt
object. It couldn't be helped, she supposed. It had been several months since she took
the Redtail out. Something or other was broken inside, not that she had any clue as to what
that might be. What she did know, however, was that she was currently in orbit of Jupiter
and she certainly was not going to get anywhere at the moment.

She slumped back in her seat, repressing the urge to break something. Jupiter was an active
place, after all. Someone would come along eventually.

As she lit a cigarette, she glanced down at the clothes she wore. She'd given up her
yellow vinyl, deciding it made her too easy a target for drunks and psychos. She wore the
same hotpants as before, except in a nicely glossy black, and a matching top that was
sleeveless with buttons down the front. Her boots laced up the sides and rose three
quarters of the way up her long slender calves. Over top all of this was a black trench
coat, a necessity in the cold Temasek winters.

In the vastness of space, something caught her eye. A light. Someone was coming. She
rushed to punch a few commands into her computer. "Hello, can you hear me out there? This
is the Redtail. My ship is broken down and I'm stranded. Can you give me a lift?"

An androgynous voice answered cheerfully, "Redtail, this is Heavy Metal Queen. I can help
you out."

Heavy Metal Queen? Why did that name sound so familiar? "Ne…you wouldn't, by any chance,
be a friend of Spike's would you?"

For a moment there was no reply. Finally she heard, "Faye Valentine, isn't it?"

***

The ship known as the Tarpon hovered in Earth's orbit, carefully avoiding the many satellites
nearby. Directly below it was the vast desert-like continent once known as South America.
"Radical Edward's signal has been tracked to this area," muttered one of the passengers.

The other man nodded. "They say that he lives like an animal down below the Earth's surface.
No one has ever seen him. Some think he's some sort of monster, others think that he's
merely an eccentric old man."

"Whatever he is, he's been cornered. This'll be an easy job." He tapped the controls to
move down into Earth's atmosphere, but the Tarpon would not budge.

"Something wrong?"

"It's not responding." He tapped at the computer in front of him. At first nothing happened,
then suddenly little dots began to rush across the screen.

"What the heck is that?"

The two leaned forward and suddenly realized that what they were seeing was a myriad of tiny
smiley faces. One of them grew bigger, as though it was rushing forward, until it filled the
entire screen with a big toothy grin. "Sayonara!" Came a high pitched female voice from the
computer. The two men looked at each other apprehensively as to their horror the ship began
to move on its own. It turned away from Earth and bolted in the opposite direction, vanishing
in the blackness of space.

***

VT liked her music, and she liked it loud. A large middle aged woman, she looked and spoke
like the males she worked with-indeed, was typically mistaken for a man. Being that she had
been listening to the din that she called heavy metal for the past few hours, and because she
was feeling rather nice today, she spared Faye's eardrums and turned the stereo down to a
less painful level. As they drove, VT's fluffy grey cat, Zeros, seemed to take a liking to
Faye and climbed up on top of her head, where he sat quite contentedly, draped over her like
a fuzzy hat.

"So you're heading to Earth, ne? I can take you as far as Phobos. You'll be able to get
your ship fixed up there."

Faye nodded slightly, careful not to wake up the sleeping beast. "Thanks."

"You after some big bounty on Earth?"

"I gave up that business a long time ago. I'm just visiting an old friend."

"Was it because of Spike?" Faye glanced up in her direction, somewhat caught off guard by
the truck driver's forwardness. VT only shrugged. "I read about it in the paper. It's just
like a bounty hunter to run off and get himself killed, isn't it? To let someone love him,
only to abandon them."

Faye could not help but feel that the scruffy blond was speaking from experience. She had
only met VT briefly when she and Spike had been trying to catch a pyrotechnic named Decker.
They did not exactly get along. She never even paused to wonder what the elusive two-letter
name stood for. Now she felt herself wishing that she knew this person better.

"I suppose you're right. It's not like he was ever kind to me anyway. Always treating me
like I was nothing. He was just…"

"a stupid lying shameless scum of a bounty hunter." She gave Faye a soft smile. "Am I
right?"

Faye absentmindedly ran her fingers through the silken fur of the large feline slumbering on
her head. Outside, stars rushed past them at such a pace that they were seen only as long
threads of light. "Almost too right."

"In any case, I know that he went to a good place." She glanced at Faye's confused look and
flashed her a small grin. "He promised me that he'd treat my husband to a Prairie Oyster."

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Author's notes: To answer some people's questions about the "mismatched eyes" in Session 2,
yes that was Spike. His eyes were two different shades of brown, and were described by Julia
and Gren as being two different colors, so technically they were mismatched. Sorry if that
was an obscure reference. To answer another question, yes I did watch the sub. I actually
don't even get Cartoon Network so I've only watched a few dubbed episodes out of interest.
On a sidenote, I have no idea what gender Zeros is; as far as I know, it was never stated
anywhere. I figured he was fat enough that he could pass for male.