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Session 4: If You've Got Trouble

kasei no ue no neko mitai ni
watashi no kokoro wa kawarimasen
shinjinaide ne uso dakara

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Faye leaned against the table, her fourth cigarette for that evening burning in her hand.
The small Phobos café was one of the last few public places that allowed smoking, probably
because of all the truck drivers that came through this area. In the window outside, the
rusty blood colored planet Mars easily filled most of the heavens, arching over the horizon
in a dark crescent of burnt sienna.

It was in the middle of the day, as Phobos time goes, and the place was nearly empty save a
teenager in the booth next to Faye's. The girl was fairly young, with fair skin common to
the Martian area. She peered through a pair of sim goggles attached to a purple laptop
computer in front of her, swinging her head from side to side as she traveled through the
virtual world of the Internet, tossing her dirty blond braid around like a whip. So many of
these juvenile computer junkies were around now, it seemed. The goggle kids, as they were
sometimes called.

Though Faye had no interest in such adolescents, she could not help but listen in as she
heard the youth babbling away to the inanimate object in front of her, like a senile old
woman who mistook a fire hydrant for a loved one. But of course there must have been someone
at the other end of this purple piece of metal and plastic. The girl talked quite cheerfully,
using some strange terms that Faye was not familiar with. Slang, of course. It was hard
to keep up with in this day and age.

"Oi! Foot-boy! Switch over to your microphone, 'cause I can't stand your nully spelling
errors. I don't care how good a haxer you are, I'm tired of seeing you call Wild a shape.
If I wanted to learn about math, I wouldn't be skipping school to talk to you bakagai. So
what did you mean when you said TJ had a barrier around it? I thought you said you could
get into anything. Well I know how advanced Edward's system is, but we're just gonna have
to get around that."

At that moment Faye felt a jolt rush through her. Of course, if Ed was a hacker, who was to
say that she did not know others like herself? More intently than ever, she listened to the
one-sided conversation.

"Won't work, won't work. The Radical one never sleeps, remember? The few times she does
disconnect for a while, the Dog is usually there to take her place. We just gotta be
discrete, real quiet-like."

It was at that moment that the teenage girl squealed a word that sounded like "spoon" except
with a "k" sound in place of the "p". What the word meant, and what implications it had
towards the direction of the conversation, Faye had not the foggiest idea. Scoon the word
was, and scoon the word meant.

"Oh scoon baby, that's a great idea! I'll meet you guys tonight and we'll do all that
shibittyblahblah then, ne? Baibai!" The girl pulled her goggles off and set them aside,
then fell to swaying to the radio as she typed at the keyboard.

Faye crushed her cigarette in the ashtray beside her and, leaving her empty plate on the
table, rose and approached the eccentric child. The girl was in the midst of singing her
own made-up lyrics to the radio song-something about cockroaches and fishbones-when she
noticed the green eyed woman leaning against her table. Faye gave her a small smile.
"Can I buy you something, kid?"

The goggle girl stared at her strangely for a moment before a huge grin crossed her face
and she cheerfully replied. "Sorry lady, I don't swing that way!"

For a moment Faye was thrown quite off guard and wondered whether she should really go
through with this. But, she was doing this for Ed after all. She laughed off the girl's
comment with her deep smooth voice. "I think you've misunderstood me. What's your name,
kid?"

"Caci desu."

She slid into the opposite seat and leaned across the table. "Well Caci, I've been
searching for a certain friend of mine, and was hoping you may be able to help me. She
sometimes goes by the name Radical Edward."

Recognition filled the girl's grey eyes and she suddenly became slightly more serious.
"Are you a bounty hunter?"

"Not exactly. I'm trying to find her so I can keep her away from the bounty hunters."

Caci seemed to be processing this in her mind, tilting her head back and forth in an
offbeat sort of way that made her whole body sway. The music had stopped, and was replaced
by a radio announcer rambling about some "sweet-potate paste period" style music. Faye was
unable to catch the name of the artist, but it sounded kind of like "Wai Kei".

Finally the girl replied, "finding the Radical One is harder than it sounds, ya know. She's
got one heck of a spoofy defense system. Even with my chikin helpin' me out, I dunno if I
can access her vegetable."

Faye smirked. "What if I made it worth your while?"

The girl gave her a lopsided grin. "What've you got?"

Faye casually ran her fingers through her violet black hair. "How would you like to know
what Ed's real name is?"

Caci squealed, attracting the attention of some of the other customers. She stuck out a
hand. "It's a deal!"

***

Smoke drifted upwards, curling and rolling upon itself, vanishing into the stars above.
Hands of worn leather cupped expertly around the long pipe, placing it between equally
rough lips. A face that appeared to be as old as the mountains themselves-mountains that
have looked on as the world around them experienced all the incarnations of pain, joy,
bitterness, sadness, and happiness-looked at Jet gravely. Of course, there was never a
time when the ancient Indian was not grave.

Jet was not overly sure of what he was doing here. He had never much enjoyed all that stuff
about prophecies and other such nonsense. The hard facts were what he depended on. They did
not change, needed no interpretation, and did not involve smoking God-knows-what in the
middle of the night with some old guy who speaks only in riddles.

In the past it had always been Spike who paid Bull the occasional visit, coming back with
some seemingly half-baked idea that usually turned out to be right. Somehow it fit his
impulsive behavior, the "Swimming Bird" as Bull called him. Jet was never sure whether
this was in reference to Spike's ship, which in itself was both a bird and a fish, or his
personality. Perhaps it was both. Or maybe neither.

But Swimming Bird was not here now, and Jet was out of options. He was no closer to
finding Ed than any other cowboy out there. A few hours earlier he had learned that the
bounty on her head had more than tripled after one of the Earth satellites was damaged beyond
repair. He knew he could no longer afford to be stubborn. For that little stray cat of a
girl, he was willing to put aside his pride and go to the old Indian.

A handful of sand sifted between Bull's fingers, sliding into four small piles on the
ground below. The grains shifted and rolled with one another, fluidly flowing as one
body, before coming to rest in a heap on the rough brightly colored blanket. His equally
rough voice, though soft, piercingly broke the silence. "Running Rock-"

"I told you not to call me that."

"The fox knows many ways to fool his hunters. He disguises his hole with many tricks and
hides until no one is looking."

"I came here to ask where Ed is, not to hear your own rendition of the Discovery Channel."
This was pointless after all. He rose to leave, rather wishing he had not wasted so much
time here.

"Sometimes," Bull continued, "a cat appears to be a fox."

Jet threw him a sidelong glance. If anyone he knew resembled a stray cat, it was Ed. "I'm
listening."

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Author's notes: Ah, sorry I took so long to get this one up. Caci's dialogue is rather hard
to keep up with and really has to be written when one is in the right mood. Her speech is a
really weird mixture of made-up words, Japanese puns, and inside jokes. ^_^;;