To a small (yet chubby) Welsh corgi, ambling in no particular direction in
a hot, barren desert is not very pleasurable. However, provided you have a
strange, monkey-like girl to provide distraction as you wander aimlessly
around, the former scenario is not half bad.
Of course, Ed could only take acrobatics so far, and so, after performing a quadruple turn in midair perfectly with a flawless landing, she settled gracefully onto the ground directly across from Ein. Ein gave a small whimper; he had forgotten to grab a bite to eat before joining his favorite companion for an adventure in the desert.
"Ein is hungry?" Ed inquired. "Ed is staaaaaaaaaaarving." She drew out the word like Faye-Faye sometimes did when she was bored and annoyed. Ed cupped Ein's face in her hands and drew his face close to hers.
"If Ein is a data dog, Ein should lead Ed to foooooood." The said dog looked mournfully into her eyes and whimpered again. Ed scowled. "Ein is a dumb data dog."
Suddenly her eyes lit up and her mouth broke into one of her huge, famous grins.
"Ed knows what to do! Ed knows what to do! Ed has seen Faye-Faye do it before. Ed and Ein will HITCHHIKE!" Ed whipped out her Tomato. Where had she been hiding it? Ein speculated. She had supposedly left with no possessions. It didn't really matter though, he thought, for Ed had always been known for such feats.
Ed tapped away at the keys. It was made out of technological artifacts, but it had always served her faithfully. After a few moments she gave an approving, "Mm-hmm!" and everything was set.
The pair waited five minutes, ten minutes. Ein lay down restlessly on the ground. It was hot, but as long as he didn't move he figured he couldn't get any hotter. Ed stared into the sky, an expectant, glazed look on her face. Her thumb was perked in the standard hitchhiker position. As suddenly as she had made the Tomato appear, a bright light came into view from the sky. As it got closer, it became evident it was a ship.
Ein got up and walked in a circle around Ed. He glanced at the approaching ship in a wary, dog-ish fashion. It showed no signs of slowing down, though it was getting closer to the ground and headed straight towards the pair.
Very slowly, Ed said to the dog, "Edward suggests that Ein. duck!" They both flattened to the ground just as the ship passed inches above them and touched down not a foot away.
There was a sound of a door opening on the other side of the ship and Edward and Ein curiously paraded around to see who was going to give them a ride. A male voice (a bit like Spike's, thought Edward) called out:
"Do you need a ride?"
Ten minutes later, the dog and the monkey-girl were aboard a strange aircraft. The dog was now satisfied with a long piece of beef jerky and the girl wore yet another of her huge, signature grins on her face.
~
"Spike, you are soooooo immature." Faye gave him a criticizing look. "You too, Jet. You guys are both sick."
"Yo, Faye," Jet called from the kitchen. "I didn't feel like cooking, alright? And we don't have food or any money for food anyway. What happened to that million woolong reward we netted a few weeks ago? You spent it- all of it! You told us you needed to go and 'find yourself'. And we obligingly let you go out. We do know about your screwy past. And you spent our whole bounty reward gambling! Whatever happened to 'Poker Alice'? You got broke and we had to come pick you up from the police station!"
Jet finished his rant and went back to cooking dinner- scrambled eggs with a side dish of eggs and egg sauce. Spike kept reading his book: 12 Steps to Learn How to Handle Grief.* He had fished it out of the trash can a few days ago.
"Faye, you really read this crap while you thought I was dead?" Faye noticed the title and made a desperate lunge for the book. Spike started to quote the book.
"It says here: 'Go on a vacation. Take up a new hobby. If you enjoy your job, dedicate yourself to your work,' (like, who likes their job?) 'After a while, if you were married to the one who passed away, you might find it beneficial to get in a new relationship.' Crap, this is awful, Faye! Did you do any of this stuff?"
Faye growled and leapt for his throat. Only a while back, he had been almost dead** and she would have been just sorry enough to not try and strangle him, but that was months ago and he was back to being the normal, stupid, lunkhead Spike he usually was.
"Lunkhead!" she screamed as he batted her away. "Why the hell don't you ever let anything rest? Like with your girlfriend, Julia? You, like, turned into her stalker. And how can you be so lazy and immature to eat at least twenty raw eggs at once? Can't you get cancer or something from doing that?"
"It's called salmonella," Jet called from the kitchen. "And yeah, maybe we should've cooked 'em first. But I think they're healthy in some way." He came into the room bearing their dinner.
"Oh, perfect," Faye retorted. "More eggs. WELL, unlike some people I'm not going to risk getting salma-whatsit." She overturned her dish onto Spike's hair and stalked off to her room.
"Geez," Jet grumbled, "some women! I swear, she ENJOYS getting her panties in a wad, as long as she annoys us in the process. And if you cook the eggs there's no chance they'll carry salmonella," he added a bit mournfully.
"Uggghhhhh." Spike was helplessly fishing egg out of his hair. "What's her problem anyway? Jesus, this stuff is hard to get off! And I just took a shower, too." he added mournfully.
"Mmmm." Jet murmured thoughtfully, and then he chuckled quietly to himself.
"What?" Spike demanded. "This isn't funny, Jet! Lunkhead I can deal with, but Faye is history if my new name is egghead."
"Oh," Jet replied. "Sorry, I was just thinking how we should count our blessing regarding Faye because if she looked her real age, she'd be an old granny beating us all to pieces." Spike shuddered at the horrible thought.
"Hey, I heard that!" Faye called. "You guys shut up, or the little old granny will come out and kick ass."
Jet sighed. Even if none of them had ever really gotten along together, the past few days had been bad, with everybody in everybody else's hair. What they needed was a big bounty, the kind of bounty that would keep even Faye supported for a week or two. They needed a bounty head that would put up a fight, not some wimpy small-fry. A few chase scenes, a bit of bullet fire, perhaps even some emotional ties would bring the Bebop crew together. If Jet had been a little more insensitive about Spike's personal matters, he would have said they needed another Vicious. But he didn't say that, and he didn't think it.
Nevertheless, when the comm buzzed and Edward's face filled the screen (with Ein peering over her shoulder) Jet's subconscious was relieved. The Bebop's new baddy? Giovanni Fontana, 250 million woolongs.
~
Ein thought the guy that had picked them up was like Spike. There was no denying it; they both had a direct resemblance to each other. Though not physically, so it was kind of strange. Ein thought it was more of a mental connection, they both had that calm aura of, "Don't give me crap and I won't give you crap. Deal?"
Ed thought the guy that had picked them up was like Spike. As in, he was a lunkhead. She was sure Faye-Faye would agree. Ed was also sure he thought like Spike, with that kind of, "I don't give a damn because I've died once before and you are my dream. Got it?"
They both thought he was cool.
The Spike-alike had a long face, not at all like Vicious's thin, drawn face, but he looked like he needed a few hours of sleep. A slowly burning cigarette dangled from his mouth as he concentrated on steering. He had shaggy long hair, dark blue in color. He needed a haircut. His eyes were a bright blue, lighter than his hair. It looked a little weird to Ed, but it somehow strangely fit him. Ein couldn't comment. He was colorblind.
Spike-alike's clothes were ill matched. Tight jeans and a baggy shirt that read "HERO". he wore suede cowboy boots that were scuffed on the heel and the toe. The spurs dug into the floor.
"So, ummm, where are you guys aiming to go?"
"Ed and Ein want to go to Ganymede," Ed declared.
"Ed and Ein, huh?" Spike-alike said. "What's Ed stand for, Edissa or something?"
"Ed's full name is Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV!" she said proudly.
"Edward. say, you're not one of those boys in choirs that had their. no, I guess not. You're too much like a girl."
"Ed is a girl," she clarified for him. "And Ein is a dog." She climbed into the cockpit next to Spike-alike. "Does Spike-alike-person have a name?"
"My name is. uh." He paused as if he hadn't had to tell anybody his name in a long time. "My name is. Blay. Blay Hunter."
"Will Blay-person take us to Ganymede?"
He nodded his consent and Edward gave him a show of one of her fabulous grins.
"Does Blay-person have a comm Ed could use? Ed wants to watch TV."
"Um, yeah, sure. It's on the table." Ed skipped over to the comm and switched it on just in time for the Bigshot show. The cowboy music floated around the room and Judy said her line. "Hi to all you 300,000 bounty hunters in the solar system!"
"Yo, I thought that show was being canceled!" Blay called.
"Is Blay-person a bounty hunter?" Ed inquired.
"No, I work with ISSP. A lot of times I have to call them up and tell them who to feature next. I know everything ahead of time."
Ed turned off the show and flipped over so she was standing on her hands. "Could Blay-person tell Ed who will have a big bounty on them?"
"Look, that's classified information. I'm not allowed to leak that." There was a long pause. "What are you, a cowboy? You don't even have a gun or something to get anybody."
"Ed wants to tell Ed's friends. Ed wants to tell Spike-person and Jet- person and Faye-Faye. Ed thinks Bebop-Bebop needs to go on an adventure."
"What's the Bebop?"
"Bebop-Bebop is Jet's ship. Faye and Spike live on it for free. Jet pays for everything and fixes everybody's ships. Ed knows Bebop-Bebop needs a new bounty. Faye-Faye just spent all the woolongs they just got."
"So they're bounty hunters." Blay thought long and hard. There was one assignment. ISSP would do anything to catch the guy. And everybody in ISSP knew that their organization really depended on the bounty hunters the most to catch the criminals.
"Okay, there is one guy. But he doesn't have a bounty on him yet or anything! His name is Giovanni Fontana. If we get any real evidence against him he'll go up for 250 million woolongs. You see, we don't have any evidence against him. Any witnesses to his crimes have been killed. He's the head of a crime syndicate that sells cocaine and he has a secret stash somewhere. He charges sky-high prices for a five-ounce bottle, but it's rumored in the underground that it's the best stuff anybody can get. Anybody that can't pay up is killed and he hunts down the victim's family so they can pay the bill. If they can't pay, he kills them too. It's a hard deal."
"Why isn't there already a boooooouuuuuuuntyyyyyyyy?" Ed inquired.
"We don't have any evidence that can hold up in court. Nobody in ISSP knows what he looks like and he has multiple names. Anybody that's seen him is either part of his syndicate or one of his customers. What we need is evidence. Can your friend's on the Bebop snoop really well?"
"Bebop-Bebop loooooooooooooves to snooooooooooooooop."
~
Jet was the one who answered the comm. Giovanni Fontana, huh? So this was the guy who was going to bring the Bebop back together.
~
"Hi, Jet-person! This is Edward speeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaking! Is Spike dead yet?"
"HI there, Ed. Where are you? Do you want me to pick you up?"
"Nooooooooo, Ed and Ein are on an adventure with Blay-person. We are going to Ganymede!"
"Okay, I'm coming around to pick you up. Is this Blay guy trustable? Who is he?"
"ISSP-person. Blay is like Spike-person. Has Spike-person died yet?"
"For the last time, Ed, no! Spike is fine! Why do you keep asking?"
"Ed knows how Spike is. Spike is okay and then Spike is not okay. Ed DOES care."
"So, why are you calling, Ed? You sure you don't want me to pick you up?"
"Jet-person!"
"Okay, I get the point. So what is it?"
"Ed has a bounty for Bebop-Bebop! Giovanni Fontana, 250 million woolongs!"
"Come on, Ed! I just finished watching Bigshot (I thought that show was closing). There is no such bounty out right now, they would have mentioned it at the very beginning."
"Jet. is. right!"
"Ed, look at me. Now, why are you calling?"
"Giovanni Fontana is head of a drug syndicate! That sells cocaine! No evidence! So no bounty! Yet!"
"Okay, go on."
"If. Bebop. Snoops. For. Evidence. Bounty. Is. On. IMMEDIATELY."
"And we nag him in the process of getting evidence. Okay, can you tell me anything more?"
"Syndicate is the Crimson Crows. Try Ganymede."
"Wait, wait, wait. Ganymede is where you're going to. Right? The guy's there too?"
"Edward was also surprised. Blay-person says it was destined."
"Yeah, tell me a little more about this Blay. Like his last name."
"Blay Hunter."
"Mmmm. Hunter. Well, THAT'S appropriate for ISSP. Listen, Ed, I gotta go. I have to fix the shower, according to Faye."
"IS SPIKE-PERSON DEAD YET?"
"NO, HE'S NOT! SORRY!"
~
The shower had this thing about Faye Valentine. Somewhere along the line it had made up its mind that Faye was the enemy. Spike was passable (after all, he was the one who always landed up with egg in his hair), but Faye was not allowed to wash in peace. It hated her with whatever passion a shower can have and went out of its way to hinder her. Run out of hot water? Check. Start spraying water in every direction? Check. Turn the water on so hot it was boiling? Check. Start squeaking when the water pressure got too high? Check. Pretend to run out of water? Check.
Faye hated its little metal guts.
"Jet! This stupid thing is broken again! Crap, crap, crap!!!" Faye stepped out of the shower and shuddered. Nothing accepted her anymore, not even the shower. Spike hated her, Jet couldn't understand her, and Edward had decided to take off. Which, at the moment, didn't seem like such a bad idea to Faye.
She wandered into her room and glumly put her clothes back on. She would just have to wallow in her own filth for a few more hours, until Jet was finished making the shower do a decent job. The odds were that Spike would grab it before she did and use up all the hot water. It was all so depressing she decided to split.
"Guys, I'm going out! See you in a few centuries!" She slammed the hatch to her Redtail and started it, looking out of the window just in time to see Jet running towards her.
"Faye, we got a bounty! 250 million woolongs! Come on, don't."
She sneered at him through the window. "Jet! Goodbye! I'm leaving now!" And with that said, she took off.
~
Faye was out of fuel. For the last few hours the Redtail had been steadily going slower and slower, until it had stopped altogether. At the moment, she was orbiting Mars. The whole situation was a bit too suggestive of how Jet and Spike had picked her up. Well, she thought to herself, I hope I just have better luck than last time. To be picked up by such idiots again would be pure misery.
The comm showed that a ship was getting closer. Faye decided to try her old lines.
"Hi there! I seem to have run out of fuel, so could you give me a ride? Or if you could just fill my tank up, that would be great. Thanks!"
A voice filled the Redtail.
"Sure. I don't have any extra fuel at the moment, but I'll give you a lift. You can go ahead and land."
"Sorry, but I'm totally out. Can you tow me in?"
"All right, just give me a minute."
In a moment a chain with a hook on the end got a grip on the Redtail and began to haul her in. The chain was amazingly similar to the high-tech bounty hunter gear that you had to get custom installed. This guy had to be rich. Just Faye's type of man.
In roughly two minutes she had entered the larger ship and was set gently on the ground. If it had been between two people instead of two ships, Faye thought, it might have been a bit romantic. She got out of the Redtail expectantly. She was anxious to meet whoever had picked her up.
Glancing around the hold she noticed it was nicer than the Bebop's. It was cleaner and less beat up; the architecture was more elegant. But perhaps, she thought, less useful. Beauty was only skin-deep after all and the Bebop had seen more than enough of its share of difficulties to prove it could withstand almost anything. This ship compared to the Bebop was like a newborn baby.
Of course the other fighter in the hold was a completely different story. It was so beat up that if it could talk it would be saying, Screw your Bebop, if you had any idea what I've gone through. Geez, the nerve of young pilots these days!
Faye hated anybody that talked like that.
"I see you've met my Barracuda. Still works like a dream, though it would seem a miracle."
Faye turned to face the speaker. He stood at the top of a flight of stairs to her left, looking at her from over the railing. He descended the stairs and she got a better look at him.
The man's dark brown hair came down to his shoulders. It was glossy and stick-straight. His eyes were a light amber color, masked by a pair of thin glasses. His skin was a light olive tint. Overall he looked a bit Italian, though it was hard to tell now in 2071. There were so many people in the solar system now that race was beginning to be a non-factor.
"Hi, I'm Faye. Thanks for picking me up, I'm just totally out!"
"Mmm-hmm. Where do you want to go?"
"Ganymede." Faye was surprised at her answer. She hadn't been traveling in one particular direction, but "Ganymede" had just rolled off her tongue.
"Ganymede," he repeated. "What a coincidence! I'm heading that way as well. Well, Faye, you can call me Orlondo. Happy to be of service."
Faye, surprisingly charmed, was taken aback by this man's quick words. He was so unlike her green-haired pet peeve that she didn't know quite what to think. She dazedly let him lead her upstairs to the main room. It was built in the same elegant style as the hold.
"Do you want something to eat?" Orlondo walked over to a refrigerator in a corner of the room and took a look inside. "There's pasta with shrimp, rye bread, salami, and. umm. some gum."
One more point for Italian boy - he had good food.
"No, it's okay. I'm not hungry."
"Okay," he replied. "Do you have any stuff on your fighter? You can move it into the spare bedroom on the right in the hall; it'll take us a few days by Phase Gate to get to Ganymede."
Faye mindlessly walked back to the Redtail to get her luggage (and also the 500 woolongs she had found hidden under one of Jet's bonsai pots).
What a charmer!
~
"Damn!" Jet stomped angrily on his usually neatly stacked, used bonsai pots. "Damn!"
"What's wrong?" Spike wandered nonchalantly into the room. "Faye skipped out on us again. Shouldn't this be a moment of elation instead of anger?"
Jet swore and then looked up. "And guess what she took?"
"Oh no, not my Swordfish?!"
"No, you fool, the money. She took our secret stash of money!"
"Soooo, we're broke?"
"YES, we're broke!"
Spike sighed and then smiled slightly. "No biggie, it's happened before." He started to walk out of the room, but Jet's voice stopped him.
"It's a biggie when you have to pay for Phase Gate passage, fighter repair costs, food, fuel, ship upkeep, firearms, ammunition."
"All right, all right, I give up." Spike silenced a laugh. "How much cash do we need?"
"We need to survive long enough to get to Ganymede, I'll say that much."
Spike looked at Jet curiously. "Why Ganymede?"
"Because there's a bounty -almost- of 250 million woolongs on someone's head in Ganymede. And for the time being we're the only ones that know about it."
"WHAT?"
~
Ed cheered. "Bebop is in TROUBLE!"
Blay looked at the strange girl with a questioning glance. "And that's a good thing?"
"Ed knows that Spike-person is broke and Jet-person is too. So Spike and Jet-person need money to get to Ganymede. And Ed knows how to help them!"
~
"Ummm. Spike?" Jet scratched his head inquisitively. "Do you have an aunt by the name of Drewda Gnow Uah Peelup Ritvusky VI?"
Spike blinked, gradually coming out of his state of paralysis that had developed while he was reading (but not comprehending) 12 Steps to Learn How to Handle Grief. "Jet, what do you think? I don't even have parents, do you think I have an aunt by the name of Drewda?"
"Just wondering."
After a long pause Spike blinked again and opened his mouth to talk. "Ummm, why do you ask?"
"Aha! I knew you had an aunt, you just didn't want to admit it!"
"No, Jet, you got me all wrong. It's just such a strange name I thought."
"WELL," Jet replied with stiff smugness, "It says in this message that your aunt Drewda just died and left you 1000 woolongs."
"Well, I'll take the reward. Nothing wrong or dishonest about that, right?"
"Right."
~
"And just up from the press room, 1000 woolongs have mysteriously just gone missing from Earth's primary bank, StarSafe Money. Not so safe as it may seem from the name, huh, Rob?"
"Yes, Rebecca, just so. The event is rumored to have been caused by someone of the pseudonym Radical Edward, who hacked into the bank's main computer."
~
"How far is it to Ganymede?" Ed asked in a fake soprano voice. "Ed and Ein want some action!"
"Speaking of action, what were you just doing on the computer? You were typing like mad." Blay was starting to regret his decision to pick up monkey-girl and her pet dog. The dog by itself was strange - a few hours ago they'd been in a Phase Gate and Blay had wanted a snack, but also didn't want to leave the controls. Edward had told him she would take care of it and when he came back into the room with a leftover ham sandwich, he'd found Ein operating the controls. It had been strange, but oddly amusing.
Ed thought for a second and then countered Blay's question with one of her own. "Blay is an ISSP officer?"
"That's already been established."
"Then Ed will not talk." As she said this she pretended to zipper up her mouth, so it came out more like, "Then Ed ill ot lk."
Recognition shone in Blay's eyes. "Oh, so it's THAT type of job. Don't worry, I won't tell."
"No!" Ed insisted. "Ed is invisible. Ed wants to stay invisible! Ed wants Bebop to stay invisible." She added that bit as an afterthought.
"From what I hear, that would be pretty hard. The Bebop is pretty notorious among bounty hunters, mostly for getting the criminals and not the reward. Staying invisible is tough."
Ed's amber eyes took on a more serious look. "Bebop-Bebop needs help. Ed can help and so Ed does. Edward is not BAD." She said this with a "DUH!" kind of voice. Then Edward went into lecture mode. "Ed knows that ISSP makes things messy. Jet-person says so. Spike-person says so. Faye-Faye says so. Ein says so-" The dog barked his agreement. "And Ed says so. SO ED WILL NOT TALK!"
Blay sighed. He could find out what she had done sooner or later, in some way or other. Then a thought occurred to him.
"Ed," he ventured cautiously. He had seen how big her teeth were and he was sure if she got mad they would hurt. "Ed, why did you leave the Bebop? Was it about your father?" Ed had let slip about this not so long ago to Blay. "Or were you tired of the crew? Why did you go?"
"Ed's time was up. Ed had to go." The girl looked a bit sadly at the floor. "Ein knew it was time to go. Ed did not want to leave. But it was time for Ed."
There was a silence for a long while after that.
Blay was thinking hard and fast. This girl had an internal weight. This bouncy, cheerful, strange, half-monkey, half-girl creature had a heavy pain somewhere. He had to lift it off of her, he knew this much. Ed had to be free.
~
"Someone once told me this funny thing." Faye's voice was a softly harsh murmur. "They told me if you sneeze and someone doesn't tell you to take care that you'll turn into a fairy. And I told them they could save their breath because I was already a fairy. But I'm not anything." She sighed in a wistful way. "You know, I wish I could amount to something. I've had all the time in the world to do something about my life and I've gambled it all away. Literally speaking!" Faye's voice rose to a fevered pitch and then dropped again. "You know what, Orlondo? I'm sorry. Do you want to know why? I lied to you. I'm not really 21. I'm 77 years old. I was in a shuttle accident in 2014 and was put in cold sleep for 54 years. I woke up three years ago. The doctor gave me a debt of more than 300,000,000 woolongs as a gift. Stupid bastard. I'm almost penniless. I bet if you need some quick cash you could turn me over to the authorities. Are you going to turn me in?"
"No." Orlondo had been listening to Faye talk for about an hour. He had also watched her get more and more drunk on the plentiful beer bottles in the refrigerator. "Faye, I think it's time for you to go to bed. Here, it's just down the hall." He carefully helped her get up off the cracked leather couch and into her room.
"Okay, there's the bed. If you need anything, you know, just get me. My room is at the end of the hall on the left. The bathroom is right next door to my room. Goodnight, Faye."
Checking to make sure she was alright, he quietly slipped out of the room.
***
Faye awoke with a start and regretted it a second later. She was lying face down on a bed with a massive crick in her neck. She also had an insistent feeling in her throat that she was going to vomit.
Faye had a vague memory of Orlondo telling her where the bathroom was, and she ran out of the room. Had he said it was at the end of the hall? In the main room? Geez, why were there so many frigging doors in this place?! After a mad rush down the hall opening doors she finally found it, and waited miserably as every beer she had drunk to get away from her self-pity and despair came back up. Wow, had she been right. Not even alcohol liked her anymore.
After a time she felt a bit better and sat, breathing heavily, on the edge of the bathtub. Looking into the adjacent mirror, she grimaced at her disheveled, sweaty reflection. Suddenly she heard a voice and started, thinking an intruder (and pervert) was entering the room. But the voice was coming from another room and she realized it belonged to Orlondo.
"Yeah, don't come by. She might get suspicious. yeah, she's a bounty hunter. No. Why would I have a new stash? I won't have anything new until you pay. Yes, of course I'm lying. But to you it's no stash. I know how you work. I think you know how you work."
Faye stared blankly ahead into the mirror. Orlondo, her one friend in the solar system at the moment, was a drug dealer. He knew her past, her present. He probably knew her future by now. And he knew her life; all she had ever known about herself. All spent talking in a single, drunken evening.
Faye put her head in her hands and realized they were cold and shaking from anger. This man, Orlondo, had stolen her identity. Not the kind of theft that would work in court, but one that hit Faye hard. She had been violated.
"You have two more days, no more extensions. Mm-hmmm, she'll be gone by then, I promise. You know better than anyone I never break a promise."
Faye had had enough. She crept swiftly and quietly back to her room and hunted through her possessions until she found her perfume bottle that doubled as a communicator. It was time to contact the Bebop.
After two rings Jet picked up the comm., blearily staring at the screen. Faye couldn't remember the last time she'd been so happy to see his pale, stupid face.
"Jet, have I got a surprise for you!"
The little old granny was preparing to kick some tough Italian ass.
~
The Black Dog himself was definitely not prepared for, "Jet, have I got a surprise for you!" Faye Valentine was certainly not something he wanted to hear at 3 A.M. in the morning. At this time his brain did not (and could not) compute anything, especially the previously mentioned equation. It just didn't work.
Faye was making it work.
"Jet, have I got a surprise for you!"
Why was it always him that got these calls? Spike seemed to have a special intuition about which calls on the comm to not answer; mainly, all of them. And the conversation with Ed had definitely put Jet out of sorts.
"Jet, have I got a surprise for you!"
Here it comes.
"Good morning, Faye." There, that wasn't so bad.
"Jet, I kind of need your help." That was not so good. "You see, I ran out of fuel and this guy picked me up. Turns out he's an Italian drug dealer and might have a bounty on his head. He knows I'm a bounty hunter. So, could you, like, help me out?" Faye grimaced. She must really hate having to ask him for help like this.
*This book was mentioned in Agent Orange's phenomenal short story, Steps. Check out her great Cowboy Bebop fan fictions!
**I like to believe that Spike did live in the end, even though I'm pretty sure he died. If you feel that Spike dying is too tragic for the end of Cowboy Bebop, then check out Agent Orange's story, The Ballad of John Doe. It should be sufficient in cheering you up and does justice to the original series.
Of course, Ed could only take acrobatics so far, and so, after performing a quadruple turn in midair perfectly with a flawless landing, she settled gracefully onto the ground directly across from Ein. Ein gave a small whimper; he had forgotten to grab a bite to eat before joining his favorite companion for an adventure in the desert.
"Ein is hungry?" Ed inquired. "Ed is staaaaaaaaaaarving." She drew out the word like Faye-Faye sometimes did when she was bored and annoyed. Ed cupped Ein's face in her hands and drew his face close to hers.
"If Ein is a data dog, Ein should lead Ed to foooooood." The said dog looked mournfully into her eyes and whimpered again. Ed scowled. "Ein is a dumb data dog."
Suddenly her eyes lit up and her mouth broke into one of her huge, famous grins.
"Ed knows what to do! Ed knows what to do! Ed has seen Faye-Faye do it before. Ed and Ein will HITCHHIKE!" Ed whipped out her Tomato. Where had she been hiding it? Ein speculated. She had supposedly left with no possessions. It didn't really matter though, he thought, for Ed had always been known for such feats.
Ed tapped away at the keys. It was made out of technological artifacts, but it had always served her faithfully. After a few moments she gave an approving, "Mm-hmm!" and everything was set.
The pair waited five minutes, ten minutes. Ein lay down restlessly on the ground. It was hot, but as long as he didn't move he figured he couldn't get any hotter. Ed stared into the sky, an expectant, glazed look on her face. Her thumb was perked in the standard hitchhiker position. As suddenly as she had made the Tomato appear, a bright light came into view from the sky. As it got closer, it became evident it was a ship.
Ein got up and walked in a circle around Ed. He glanced at the approaching ship in a wary, dog-ish fashion. It showed no signs of slowing down, though it was getting closer to the ground and headed straight towards the pair.
Very slowly, Ed said to the dog, "Edward suggests that Ein. duck!" They both flattened to the ground just as the ship passed inches above them and touched down not a foot away.
There was a sound of a door opening on the other side of the ship and Edward and Ein curiously paraded around to see who was going to give them a ride. A male voice (a bit like Spike's, thought Edward) called out:
"Do you need a ride?"
Ten minutes later, the dog and the monkey-girl were aboard a strange aircraft. The dog was now satisfied with a long piece of beef jerky and the girl wore yet another of her huge, signature grins on her face.
~
"Spike, you are soooooo immature." Faye gave him a criticizing look. "You too, Jet. You guys are both sick."
"Yo, Faye," Jet called from the kitchen. "I didn't feel like cooking, alright? And we don't have food or any money for food anyway. What happened to that million woolong reward we netted a few weeks ago? You spent it- all of it! You told us you needed to go and 'find yourself'. And we obligingly let you go out. We do know about your screwy past. And you spent our whole bounty reward gambling! Whatever happened to 'Poker Alice'? You got broke and we had to come pick you up from the police station!"
Jet finished his rant and went back to cooking dinner- scrambled eggs with a side dish of eggs and egg sauce. Spike kept reading his book: 12 Steps to Learn How to Handle Grief.* He had fished it out of the trash can a few days ago.
"Faye, you really read this crap while you thought I was dead?" Faye noticed the title and made a desperate lunge for the book. Spike started to quote the book.
"It says here: 'Go on a vacation. Take up a new hobby. If you enjoy your job, dedicate yourself to your work,' (like, who likes their job?) 'After a while, if you were married to the one who passed away, you might find it beneficial to get in a new relationship.' Crap, this is awful, Faye! Did you do any of this stuff?"
Faye growled and leapt for his throat. Only a while back, he had been almost dead** and she would have been just sorry enough to not try and strangle him, but that was months ago and he was back to being the normal, stupid, lunkhead Spike he usually was.
"Lunkhead!" she screamed as he batted her away. "Why the hell don't you ever let anything rest? Like with your girlfriend, Julia? You, like, turned into her stalker. And how can you be so lazy and immature to eat at least twenty raw eggs at once? Can't you get cancer or something from doing that?"
"It's called salmonella," Jet called from the kitchen. "And yeah, maybe we should've cooked 'em first. But I think they're healthy in some way." He came into the room bearing their dinner.
"Oh, perfect," Faye retorted. "More eggs. WELL, unlike some people I'm not going to risk getting salma-whatsit." She overturned her dish onto Spike's hair and stalked off to her room.
"Geez," Jet grumbled, "some women! I swear, she ENJOYS getting her panties in a wad, as long as she annoys us in the process. And if you cook the eggs there's no chance they'll carry salmonella," he added a bit mournfully.
"Uggghhhhh." Spike was helplessly fishing egg out of his hair. "What's her problem anyway? Jesus, this stuff is hard to get off! And I just took a shower, too." he added mournfully.
"Mmmm." Jet murmured thoughtfully, and then he chuckled quietly to himself.
"What?" Spike demanded. "This isn't funny, Jet! Lunkhead I can deal with, but Faye is history if my new name is egghead."
"Oh," Jet replied. "Sorry, I was just thinking how we should count our blessing regarding Faye because if she looked her real age, she'd be an old granny beating us all to pieces." Spike shuddered at the horrible thought.
"Hey, I heard that!" Faye called. "You guys shut up, or the little old granny will come out and kick ass."
Jet sighed. Even if none of them had ever really gotten along together, the past few days had been bad, with everybody in everybody else's hair. What they needed was a big bounty, the kind of bounty that would keep even Faye supported for a week or two. They needed a bounty head that would put up a fight, not some wimpy small-fry. A few chase scenes, a bit of bullet fire, perhaps even some emotional ties would bring the Bebop crew together. If Jet had been a little more insensitive about Spike's personal matters, he would have said they needed another Vicious. But he didn't say that, and he didn't think it.
Nevertheless, when the comm buzzed and Edward's face filled the screen (with Ein peering over her shoulder) Jet's subconscious was relieved. The Bebop's new baddy? Giovanni Fontana, 250 million woolongs.
~
Ein thought the guy that had picked them up was like Spike. There was no denying it; they both had a direct resemblance to each other. Though not physically, so it was kind of strange. Ein thought it was more of a mental connection, they both had that calm aura of, "Don't give me crap and I won't give you crap. Deal?"
Ed thought the guy that had picked them up was like Spike. As in, he was a lunkhead. She was sure Faye-Faye would agree. Ed was also sure he thought like Spike, with that kind of, "I don't give a damn because I've died once before and you are my dream. Got it?"
They both thought he was cool.
The Spike-alike had a long face, not at all like Vicious's thin, drawn face, but he looked like he needed a few hours of sleep. A slowly burning cigarette dangled from his mouth as he concentrated on steering. He had shaggy long hair, dark blue in color. He needed a haircut. His eyes were a bright blue, lighter than his hair. It looked a little weird to Ed, but it somehow strangely fit him. Ein couldn't comment. He was colorblind.
Spike-alike's clothes were ill matched. Tight jeans and a baggy shirt that read "HERO". he wore suede cowboy boots that were scuffed on the heel and the toe. The spurs dug into the floor.
"So, ummm, where are you guys aiming to go?"
"Ed and Ein want to go to Ganymede," Ed declared.
"Ed and Ein, huh?" Spike-alike said. "What's Ed stand for, Edissa or something?"
"Ed's full name is Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV!" she said proudly.
"Edward. say, you're not one of those boys in choirs that had their. no, I guess not. You're too much like a girl."
"Ed is a girl," she clarified for him. "And Ein is a dog." She climbed into the cockpit next to Spike-alike. "Does Spike-alike-person have a name?"
"My name is. uh." He paused as if he hadn't had to tell anybody his name in a long time. "My name is. Blay. Blay Hunter."
"Will Blay-person take us to Ganymede?"
He nodded his consent and Edward gave him a show of one of her fabulous grins.
"Does Blay-person have a comm Ed could use? Ed wants to watch TV."
"Um, yeah, sure. It's on the table." Ed skipped over to the comm and switched it on just in time for the Bigshot show. The cowboy music floated around the room and Judy said her line. "Hi to all you 300,000 bounty hunters in the solar system!"
"Yo, I thought that show was being canceled!" Blay called.
"Is Blay-person a bounty hunter?" Ed inquired.
"No, I work with ISSP. A lot of times I have to call them up and tell them who to feature next. I know everything ahead of time."
Ed turned off the show and flipped over so she was standing on her hands. "Could Blay-person tell Ed who will have a big bounty on them?"
"Look, that's classified information. I'm not allowed to leak that." There was a long pause. "What are you, a cowboy? You don't even have a gun or something to get anybody."
"Ed wants to tell Ed's friends. Ed wants to tell Spike-person and Jet- person and Faye-Faye. Ed thinks Bebop-Bebop needs to go on an adventure."
"What's the Bebop?"
"Bebop-Bebop is Jet's ship. Faye and Spike live on it for free. Jet pays for everything and fixes everybody's ships. Ed knows Bebop-Bebop needs a new bounty. Faye-Faye just spent all the woolongs they just got."
"So they're bounty hunters." Blay thought long and hard. There was one assignment. ISSP would do anything to catch the guy. And everybody in ISSP knew that their organization really depended on the bounty hunters the most to catch the criminals.
"Okay, there is one guy. But he doesn't have a bounty on him yet or anything! His name is Giovanni Fontana. If we get any real evidence against him he'll go up for 250 million woolongs. You see, we don't have any evidence against him. Any witnesses to his crimes have been killed. He's the head of a crime syndicate that sells cocaine and he has a secret stash somewhere. He charges sky-high prices for a five-ounce bottle, but it's rumored in the underground that it's the best stuff anybody can get. Anybody that can't pay up is killed and he hunts down the victim's family so they can pay the bill. If they can't pay, he kills them too. It's a hard deal."
"Why isn't there already a boooooouuuuuuuntyyyyyyyy?" Ed inquired.
"We don't have any evidence that can hold up in court. Nobody in ISSP knows what he looks like and he has multiple names. Anybody that's seen him is either part of his syndicate or one of his customers. What we need is evidence. Can your friend's on the Bebop snoop really well?"
"Bebop-Bebop loooooooooooooves to snooooooooooooooop."
~
Jet was the one who answered the comm. Giovanni Fontana, huh? So this was the guy who was going to bring the Bebop back together.
~
"Hi, Jet-person! This is Edward speeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaking! Is Spike dead yet?"
"HI there, Ed. Where are you? Do you want me to pick you up?"
"Nooooooooo, Ed and Ein are on an adventure with Blay-person. We are going to Ganymede!"
"Okay, I'm coming around to pick you up. Is this Blay guy trustable? Who is he?"
"ISSP-person. Blay is like Spike-person. Has Spike-person died yet?"
"For the last time, Ed, no! Spike is fine! Why do you keep asking?"
"Ed knows how Spike is. Spike is okay and then Spike is not okay. Ed DOES care."
"So, why are you calling, Ed? You sure you don't want me to pick you up?"
"Jet-person!"
"Okay, I get the point. So what is it?"
"Ed has a bounty for Bebop-Bebop! Giovanni Fontana, 250 million woolongs!"
"Come on, Ed! I just finished watching Bigshot (I thought that show was closing). There is no such bounty out right now, they would have mentioned it at the very beginning."
"Jet. is. right!"
"Ed, look at me. Now, why are you calling?"
"Giovanni Fontana is head of a drug syndicate! That sells cocaine! No evidence! So no bounty! Yet!"
"Okay, go on."
"If. Bebop. Snoops. For. Evidence. Bounty. Is. On. IMMEDIATELY."
"And we nag him in the process of getting evidence. Okay, can you tell me anything more?"
"Syndicate is the Crimson Crows. Try Ganymede."
"Wait, wait, wait. Ganymede is where you're going to. Right? The guy's there too?"
"Edward was also surprised. Blay-person says it was destined."
"Yeah, tell me a little more about this Blay. Like his last name."
"Blay Hunter."
"Mmmm. Hunter. Well, THAT'S appropriate for ISSP. Listen, Ed, I gotta go. I have to fix the shower, according to Faye."
"IS SPIKE-PERSON DEAD YET?"
"NO, HE'S NOT! SORRY!"
~
The shower had this thing about Faye Valentine. Somewhere along the line it had made up its mind that Faye was the enemy. Spike was passable (after all, he was the one who always landed up with egg in his hair), but Faye was not allowed to wash in peace. It hated her with whatever passion a shower can have and went out of its way to hinder her. Run out of hot water? Check. Start spraying water in every direction? Check. Turn the water on so hot it was boiling? Check. Start squeaking when the water pressure got too high? Check. Pretend to run out of water? Check.
Faye hated its little metal guts.
"Jet! This stupid thing is broken again! Crap, crap, crap!!!" Faye stepped out of the shower and shuddered. Nothing accepted her anymore, not even the shower. Spike hated her, Jet couldn't understand her, and Edward had decided to take off. Which, at the moment, didn't seem like such a bad idea to Faye.
She wandered into her room and glumly put her clothes back on. She would just have to wallow in her own filth for a few more hours, until Jet was finished making the shower do a decent job. The odds were that Spike would grab it before she did and use up all the hot water. It was all so depressing she decided to split.
"Guys, I'm going out! See you in a few centuries!" She slammed the hatch to her Redtail and started it, looking out of the window just in time to see Jet running towards her.
"Faye, we got a bounty! 250 million woolongs! Come on, don't."
She sneered at him through the window. "Jet! Goodbye! I'm leaving now!" And with that said, she took off.
~
Faye was out of fuel. For the last few hours the Redtail had been steadily going slower and slower, until it had stopped altogether. At the moment, she was orbiting Mars. The whole situation was a bit too suggestive of how Jet and Spike had picked her up. Well, she thought to herself, I hope I just have better luck than last time. To be picked up by such idiots again would be pure misery.
The comm showed that a ship was getting closer. Faye decided to try her old lines.
"Hi there! I seem to have run out of fuel, so could you give me a ride? Or if you could just fill my tank up, that would be great. Thanks!"
A voice filled the Redtail.
"Sure. I don't have any extra fuel at the moment, but I'll give you a lift. You can go ahead and land."
"Sorry, but I'm totally out. Can you tow me in?"
"All right, just give me a minute."
In a moment a chain with a hook on the end got a grip on the Redtail and began to haul her in. The chain was amazingly similar to the high-tech bounty hunter gear that you had to get custom installed. This guy had to be rich. Just Faye's type of man.
In roughly two minutes she had entered the larger ship and was set gently on the ground. If it had been between two people instead of two ships, Faye thought, it might have been a bit romantic. She got out of the Redtail expectantly. She was anxious to meet whoever had picked her up.
Glancing around the hold she noticed it was nicer than the Bebop's. It was cleaner and less beat up; the architecture was more elegant. But perhaps, she thought, less useful. Beauty was only skin-deep after all and the Bebop had seen more than enough of its share of difficulties to prove it could withstand almost anything. This ship compared to the Bebop was like a newborn baby.
Of course the other fighter in the hold was a completely different story. It was so beat up that if it could talk it would be saying, Screw your Bebop, if you had any idea what I've gone through. Geez, the nerve of young pilots these days!
Faye hated anybody that talked like that.
"I see you've met my Barracuda. Still works like a dream, though it would seem a miracle."
Faye turned to face the speaker. He stood at the top of a flight of stairs to her left, looking at her from over the railing. He descended the stairs and she got a better look at him.
The man's dark brown hair came down to his shoulders. It was glossy and stick-straight. His eyes were a light amber color, masked by a pair of thin glasses. His skin was a light olive tint. Overall he looked a bit Italian, though it was hard to tell now in 2071. There were so many people in the solar system now that race was beginning to be a non-factor.
"Hi, I'm Faye. Thanks for picking me up, I'm just totally out!"
"Mmm-hmm. Where do you want to go?"
"Ganymede." Faye was surprised at her answer. She hadn't been traveling in one particular direction, but "Ganymede" had just rolled off her tongue.
"Ganymede," he repeated. "What a coincidence! I'm heading that way as well. Well, Faye, you can call me Orlondo. Happy to be of service."
Faye, surprisingly charmed, was taken aback by this man's quick words. He was so unlike her green-haired pet peeve that she didn't know quite what to think. She dazedly let him lead her upstairs to the main room. It was built in the same elegant style as the hold.
"Do you want something to eat?" Orlondo walked over to a refrigerator in a corner of the room and took a look inside. "There's pasta with shrimp, rye bread, salami, and. umm. some gum."
One more point for Italian boy - he had good food.
"No, it's okay. I'm not hungry."
"Okay," he replied. "Do you have any stuff on your fighter? You can move it into the spare bedroom on the right in the hall; it'll take us a few days by Phase Gate to get to Ganymede."
Faye mindlessly walked back to the Redtail to get her luggage (and also the 500 woolongs she had found hidden under one of Jet's bonsai pots).
What a charmer!
~
"Damn!" Jet stomped angrily on his usually neatly stacked, used bonsai pots. "Damn!"
"What's wrong?" Spike wandered nonchalantly into the room. "Faye skipped out on us again. Shouldn't this be a moment of elation instead of anger?"
Jet swore and then looked up. "And guess what she took?"
"Oh no, not my Swordfish?!"
"No, you fool, the money. She took our secret stash of money!"
"Soooo, we're broke?"
"YES, we're broke!"
Spike sighed and then smiled slightly. "No biggie, it's happened before." He started to walk out of the room, but Jet's voice stopped him.
"It's a biggie when you have to pay for Phase Gate passage, fighter repair costs, food, fuel, ship upkeep, firearms, ammunition."
"All right, all right, I give up." Spike silenced a laugh. "How much cash do we need?"
"We need to survive long enough to get to Ganymede, I'll say that much."
Spike looked at Jet curiously. "Why Ganymede?"
"Because there's a bounty -almost- of 250 million woolongs on someone's head in Ganymede. And for the time being we're the only ones that know about it."
"WHAT?"
~
Ed cheered. "Bebop is in TROUBLE!"
Blay looked at the strange girl with a questioning glance. "And that's a good thing?"
"Ed knows that Spike-person is broke and Jet-person is too. So Spike and Jet-person need money to get to Ganymede. And Ed knows how to help them!"
~
"Ummm. Spike?" Jet scratched his head inquisitively. "Do you have an aunt by the name of Drewda Gnow Uah Peelup Ritvusky VI?"
Spike blinked, gradually coming out of his state of paralysis that had developed while he was reading (but not comprehending) 12 Steps to Learn How to Handle Grief. "Jet, what do you think? I don't even have parents, do you think I have an aunt by the name of Drewda?"
"Just wondering."
After a long pause Spike blinked again and opened his mouth to talk. "Ummm, why do you ask?"
"Aha! I knew you had an aunt, you just didn't want to admit it!"
"No, Jet, you got me all wrong. It's just such a strange name I thought."
"WELL," Jet replied with stiff smugness, "It says in this message that your aunt Drewda just died and left you 1000 woolongs."
"Well, I'll take the reward. Nothing wrong or dishonest about that, right?"
"Right."
~
"And just up from the press room, 1000 woolongs have mysteriously just gone missing from Earth's primary bank, StarSafe Money. Not so safe as it may seem from the name, huh, Rob?"
"Yes, Rebecca, just so. The event is rumored to have been caused by someone of the pseudonym Radical Edward, who hacked into the bank's main computer."
~
"How far is it to Ganymede?" Ed asked in a fake soprano voice. "Ed and Ein want some action!"
"Speaking of action, what were you just doing on the computer? You were typing like mad." Blay was starting to regret his decision to pick up monkey-girl and her pet dog. The dog by itself was strange - a few hours ago they'd been in a Phase Gate and Blay had wanted a snack, but also didn't want to leave the controls. Edward had told him she would take care of it and when he came back into the room with a leftover ham sandwich, he'd found Ein operating the controls. It had been strange, but oddly amusing.
Ed thought for a second and then countered Blay's question with one of her own. "Blay is an ISSP officer?"
"That's already been established."
"Then Ed will not talk." As she said this she pretended to zipper up her mouth, so it came out more like, "Then Ed ill ot lk."
Recognition shone in Blay's eyes. "Oh, so it's THAT type of job. Don't worry, I won't tell."
"No!" Ed insisted. "Ed is invisible. Ed wants to stay invisible! Ed wants Bebop to stay invisible." She added that bit as an afterthought.
"From what I hear, that would be pretty hard. The Bebop is pretty notorious among bounty hunters, mostly for getting the criminals and not the reward. Staying invisible is tough."
Ed's amber eyes took on a more serious look. "Bebop-Bebop needs help. Ed can help and so Ed does. Edward is not BAD." She said this with a "DUH!" kind of voice. Then Edward went into lecture mode. "Ed knows that ISSP makes things messy. Jet-person says so. Spike-person says so. Faye-Faye says so. Ein says so-" The dog barked his agreement. "And Ed says so. SO ED WILL NOT TALK!"
Blay sighed. He could find out what she had done sooner or later, in some way or other. Then a thought occurred to him.
"Ed," he ventured cautiously. He had seen how big her teeth were and he was sure if she got mad they would hurt. "Ed, why did you leave the Bebop? Was it about your father?" Ed had let slip about this not so long ago to Blay. "Or were you tired of the crew? Why did you go?"
"Ed's time was up. Ed had to go." The girl looked a bit sadly at the floor. "Ein knew it was time to go. Ed did not want to leave. But it was time for Ed."
There was a silence for a long while after that.
Blay was thinking hard and fast. This girl had an internal weight. This bouncy, cheerful, strange, half-monkey, half-girl creature had a heavy pain somewhere. He had to lift it off of her, he knew this much. Ed had to be free.
~
"Someone once told me this funny thing." Faye's voice was a softly harsh murmur. "They told me if you sneeze and someone doesn't tell you to take care that you'll turn into a fairy. And I told them they could save their breath because I was already a fairy. But I'm not anything." She sighed in a wistful way. "You know, I wish I could amount to something. I've had all the time in the world to do something about my life and I've gambled it all away. Literally speaking!" Faye's voice rose to a fevered pitch and then dropped again. "You know what, Orlondo? I'm sorry. Do you want to know why? I lied to you. I'm not really 21. I'm 77 years old. I was in a shuttle accident in 2014 and was put in cold sleep for 54 years. I woke up three years ago. The doctor gave me a debt of more than 300,000,000 woolongs as a gift. Stupid bastard. I'm almost penniless. I bet if you need some quick cash you could turn me over to the authorities. Are you going to turn me in?"
"No." Orlondo had been listening to Faye talk for about an hour. He had also watched her get more and more drunk on the plentiful beer bottles in the refrigerator. "Faye, I think it's time for you to go to bed. Here, it's just down the hall." He carefully helped her get up off the cracked leather couch and into her room.
"Okay, there's the bed. If you need anything, you know, just get me. My room is at the end of the hall on the left. The bathroom is right next door to my room. Goodnight, Faye."
Checking to make sure she was alright, he quietly slipped out of the room.
***
Faye awoke with a start and regretted it a second later. She was lying face down on a bed with a massive crick in her neck. She also had an insistent feeling in her throat that she was going to vomit.
Faye had a vague memory of Orlondo telling her where the bathroom was, and she ran out of the room. Had he said it was at the end of the hall? In the main room? Geez, why were there so many frigging doors in this place?! After a mad rush down the hall opening doors she finally found it, and waited miserably as every beer she had drunk to get away from her self-pity and despair came back up. Wow, had she been right. Not even alcohol liked her anymore.
After a time she felt a bit better and sat, breathing heavily, on the edge of the bathtub. Looking into the adjacent mirror, she grimaced at her disheveled, sweaty reflection. Suddenly she heard a voice and started, thinking an intruder (and pervert) was entering the room. But the voice was coming from another room and she realized it belonged to Orlondo.
"Yeah, don't come by. She might get suspicious. yeah, she's a bounty hunter. No. Why would I have a new stash? I won't have anything new until you pay. Yes, of course I'm lying. But to you it's no stash. I know how you work. I think you know how you work."
Faye stared blankly ahead into the mirror. Orlondo, her one friend in the solar system at the moment, was a drug dealer. He knew her past, her present. He probably knew her future by now. And he knew her life; all she had ever known about herself. All spent talking in a single, drunken evening.
Faye put her head in her hands and realized they were cold and shaking from anger. This man, Orlondo, had stolen her identity. Not the kind of theft that would work in court, but one that hit Faye hard. She had been violated.
"You have two more days, no more extensions. Mm-hmmm, she'll be gone by then, I promise. You know better than anyone I never break a promise."
Faye had had enough. She crept swiftly and quietly back to her room and hunted through her possessions until she found her perfume bottle that doubled as a communicator. It was time to contact the Bebop.
After two rings Jet picked up the comm., blearily staring at the screen. Faye couldn't remember the last time she'd been so happy to see his pale, stupid face.
"Jet, have I got a surprise for you!"
The little old granny was preparing to kick some tough Italian ass.
~
The Black Dog himself was definitely not prepared for, "Jet, have I got a surprise for you!" Faye Valentine was certainly not something he wanted to hear at 3 A.M. in the morning. At this time his brain did not (and could not) compute anything, especially the previously mentioned equation. It just didn't work.
Faye was making it work.
"Jet, have I got a surprise for you!"
Why was it always him that got these calls? Spike seemed to have a special intuition about which calls on the comm to not answer; mainly, all of them. And the conversation with Ed had definitely put Jet out of sorts.
"Jet, have I got a surprise for you!"
Here it comes.
"Good morning, Faye." There, that wasn't so bad.
"Jet, I kind of need your help." That was not so good. "You see, I ran out of fuel and this guy picked me up. Turns out he's an Italian drug dealer and might have a bounty on his head. He knows I'm a bounty hunter. So, could you, like, help me out?" Faye grimaced. She must really hate having to ask him for help like this.
*This book was mentioned in Agent Orange's phenomenal short story, Steps. Check out her great Cowboy Bebop fan fictions!
**I like to believe that Spike did live in the end, even though I'm pretty sure he died. If you feel that Spike dying is too tragic for the end of Cowboy Bebop, then check out Agent Orange's story, The Ballad of John Doe. It should be sufficient in cheering you up and does justice to the original series.