It was a day just like any other; the night skies of space still covered
the atmosphere around him, the budget was still low, and his stomach was
still constantly empty. Spike Spiegel (a bounty hunter who commonly called
himself an "Old Fashioned Cowboy") laid back on the yellow couch set at the
side of the lounge area. His head still ached from the last bounty head he
caught, and he couldn't help but poke at the deep scar that become embedded
in his forehead. The moment his pointer ran over the scar his left eye
would twitch, but not because of the physical pain, but more the mental
anguish of actually being weakened during a bounty chase.
"Hey Spike, dinners almost ready," Jet hollered joyously from the kitchen area.
Spike only opened his eyes and grunted. He knew that when Jet said 'dinner', what he meant was whatever food was leftover for the last year. The taste was never great and the food was never well prepared, but it kept him alive nonetheless. Following his policy of 'hunger is the greatest spice', he would close his eyes and just eat what was presented to him without giving it a second thought.
He could ear Ed and Ein continue their pointless and inane barking of joy over food already, and again his eye began to twitch. It's amazing how before he got involved with this large group of fellow crew members that he could simply close his eyes and fall asleep at any moment. But with such characters as Ed, Ein, and Faye walking around ihis/i domain, naps were a thing of the past.
"You know, you really do rest too much," the opinionated female voice broke Spike's second silence of the day. He lazily opened his eyes a bit and peered out of the corner of his eye to see Faye Valentine sitting on the couch adjacent to him and picking up the remote. She shot him a glance and without giving his feelings a second thought, "It's not like you got hurt that bad over the last bounty, I highly doubt you need eleven hours of sleep to brush off a little scar"
Spike's eye, again, twitched. He didn't audibly respond, but his dead glare at Faye was enough of a response. Faye responded with a simply 'humph' before lifting the remote up towards the personal computer television and switching it on, making sure to switch to channel 277. Immediately, the tune of 'Big Shot' spread its sound waves throughout the Bebop.
"Howdy y'all, how y'all doing?" introduced the African American cowboy, with the horribly cheap Texas accent.
"Shucks howdy, it's time for Big Shot," said the beautiful Caucasian blonde female, whose cleavage literally spilled from her opened white vest, which immediately caught the attention of Spike. Faye's lip curled in disgust as Spike's eyes opened a bit wider to view the female on the screen.
"Now it's time for today's Hhhhhot news," said the African American cowboy, as a graphic of a wooden sign that said 'Hot News' popped up with a symbol of noose in the center of it. Suddenly, a picture of a handsome young man appeared on the screen before them. The man had long spiked blonde hair, deep blue eyes that a female could immediately fall for, and a comical grin. The next photo that flashed before the screen was one of the same man in a more serious tone, with his beautiful blue eyes hidden behind orange tinted sunglasses. His expression was much angrier, and he held a large Silver Raging Bull against his shoulder.
"Wow, he's cute," Faye commented.
"Wow, what a cutie," chimed in the blonde cowboy.
"All women are the same," grunted Spike.
"What are you saying Ma'am?" asked the African American enthusiastically, "This is one of the biggest criminals of all time in the history of the entire universe and 'joo are calling him cute?"
"I'm well aware of that, sugar, but you have to admit he's quite the looker," said the blonde cowboy behind a blushed face as she looked at the photo in her hand, "Wow, what a dreamy guy, it's a shame he's a wanted criminal"
"Hey guys, food's ready," Jet shouted from the kitchen area as he poked his head out from the room. When he received no audible reply, he couldn't help but peer over and watch the screen that Faye and Spike had found quite interesting.
"but this ain't no ordinary criminal, this here's the biggest in the barn," shouted the African American cowboy, "This man is worth $$60,000,000,000!"
"Sixty million double dollars?" questioned Spike, "How much is that in woo longs?"
"That is 3,000,000,000 Woo longs y'all!"
"Three Billion Woo longs?!" Faye, Jet and Spike questioned in disbelief simultaneously. Ed suddenly appeared from the ceiling, hanging like a bat from one of the ceiling's rafters, as she looked confusedly at the screen before stretching her arms over her head and reading the text underneath the price of this new bounty head.
"Vash the Stampede; oooh, he's a bad man: he caused the complete destruction of two towns.boom boom, bye bye," Ed chimed in as 'Big Shot' continued to explain the man behind the extreme bounty head, "Bad boy Vash- person also is wanted for blasting a hole through one of the moon's on his planet.oo la la"
"Wait, did you say he blasted a hole through a moon?" Faye asked questionably.
"That's what it says," chimed Ed.
"Puh-lease, there is no way a human being could do that," Faye said matter- of-factly, as she pulled a cigarette from the back pocket of her cargo brown shorts (commonly worn after a shower) and lit the cancer stick up to have a good smoke.
"I don't care what he's done and what he hasn't done, the bounties good.I'm going for it," Spike said with a devilish grin before sitting up on the couch and stretching his arms and shoulders out.
"You sure about this, Spike?" asked a concerned Jet, "You know the rules of the bounty hunter game. The higher the bounty, the higher the risk"
And as Jet looked over at Spike, who began indulging in Jet's specialty food 'bell peppers and beef' (which was really only bell peppers drenched in vegetable oil). Spike responded, behind a mouth full of terrible food.
"And the higher the risk, the higher my interest"
***
"Vash the Stampede, the man worth $$60,000,000,000; just the man I've been waiting to see," the voice came from a sturdy man that stood at about 6'5" and weighed in at about three hundred pounds. The man was pure muscle, and the gun he pointed at his adversary was nothing short of trigger happy, as a bullet fired off and only missed the blonde haired bounty by about six inches.
"You've got a pretty little bounty on your head, pretty boy. What I like about you the most has got to be the excitement of finding you little man. Although I am curious how the hell a runt like you could cause so much damage; but why question something so easy to catch?" he said behind an arrogant laugh.
"Now listen, pal, I don't think you have the right guy," the spiky blonde- haired man said with a nervous smile stretched across his face, "If I was Vash the Stampede, wouldn't I be able to escape the predicament by killing you?"
The burly man contemplated what his adversary said, but shook it off with a hint of a laugh, "It's funny how I see your gums flapping, but all that's secreting from your mouth is human excrement. Don't you know by now that your picture is posted all over the universe these days?"
At the moment the mysterious bounty hunter said this, Vash's face simply dropped in shock. His eyes turned to wide open circles, and his jaw literally dropped to the ground. But in a flash of a second, Vash quickly re-composed himself and attempted to come up with another excuse to escape the bounty hunter.
"Hehe, would you believe that it's my evil twin?" Vash jokingly questioned as he scratched the back of his head.
*BANG~!*
"AAAH!" Vash screamed girlishly, as a bullet went straight through his long spiky locks of hair. Vash literally froze in a split legged crouch position, as pieces of blonde hair drifted in front of his face. Sweat beaded down Vash's face, as he slowly lifted his head to look over at the bounty hunter.and to see that the black pistol was now pointed at his head.
"AAAH!" he screamed again as the bullet came free from the pistol, only to completely miss Vash the Stampede. The hunter became frustrated as he quickly aimed once more, only to have Vash dive forward and completely avoid the bullet once again.
"God damn it, stand still!" he shouted as he shot another four bullets towards Vash; everyone of them hitting nothing but the sandy ground below.
In a desperate act to save himself Vash found a large boulder set afar and charged for it as fast as he could as bullets rained from behind him like small bits of hail coming down from the skies. Vash quickly took shelter as fast as he could by diving behind the large rock boulder and pressing his back against it, as bullets continued to fire at him.
"Son of a bitch," the bounty hunter exclaimed as he began to reload.
Vash, instinctively, heard the clicks of the bullet case being release and found his opportunity to get out of harms way. Vash, in a flash of a few mere seconds, shifted his weight to the left. This allowed Vash to roll over to his stomach and push up with his feet, charging towards his adversary. The bounty hunter saw Vash charging as fast as he could and began fumbling with his disarmed pistol, attempting to get the new bullet case into the damn pistol. As he continued to fumble, he suddenly felt a strong force come up from under him. It was in one swift motion that Vash rushed forward and sent his right foot into the air, kicking the pistol clear from the assailant's grasp and sending it about twenty yards away.
The bounty hunter, astonished at the speed and quickness of Vash the Stampede, froze for a moment and stared at his bounty head in complete amazement. If it weren't for the fact that Vash was his target, he would've happily applauded the man in his extreme fighting skills. But as he stared in awe at Vash, the stare soon turned from awe into embarrassment.
"Oh yeah, field goal kick.it's GOOD! Oh yeah!" Vash said enthusiastically as he began to do a victory dance in front of his adversary, "Now what you going to do? Huh? You can't hurt me without your gun.HA HA HA HA HA HA HA H."
Suddenly, the arrogant and annoyingly laugh of Vash the Stampede was cut off. His mouth suddenly shifted to the side, along with his jaw, as a powerful force came careening into his jaw. It was a stiff right handed closed fist punch by the bounty hunter that immediately sent Vash into the air backwards and ending with a crash landing into the ground. Vash quickly began squirming on the ground, holding his jaw and complaining out loud.
"Ow! What the heck did you do that for?" he said behind a whine, "I was only kidding around, you don't have to play so rough!"
"Do you think this is some kind of game?" the hunter grunted out angrily, "I'm going to kick your sorry ass"
The nameless hunter clenched his right fist into a ball and swung forward towards Vash, but the red cloaked wonder quickly did a cartwheel to the left to avoid the hit. The hunter quickly switched his focus and threw a left uppercut towards Vash's jaw, but the Stampede bent his head and neck backward to avoid the impact. And, as if in slow motion, Vash grabbed the hunter's left arm that he had just swung, placed his boot into the hunter's stomach and flipped the anonymous bounty hunter over his head with a standard one legged monkey toss. The hunter landed back-first into the sand, as Vash quickly got to his feet and begged the hunter off.
"I really don't like fighting, mister, so maybe we should just stop. I don't want anyone to get hurt here," Vash said with great innocence in his voice, and all around concern behind a joyous smile.
***
"You both ready?"
Both Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine entered their respective ships, as Jet controlled it all from the control room of the Bebop. With a transistor radio in his grasp, Jet asked both members of the Bebop of their status as the cargo ship hovered over the uncharted planet of Vash the Stampede. It took quite some hacking on Ed's part to attempt to find the home village of the $$60,000,000,000 reward, but after breaking into the Earth Police Forces' data banks, Ed had cracked the location of the rebuilding planet. It was located in a completely different solar system, one that took the Bebop crew quite sometime to reach. To be exact, it was three galaxies away from their home galaxy.quite a trip.
"For the time we spent on the ship, this guy better be there," Faye said in a frustrated tone.
"I repeat, are you ready?" Jet asked once more.
"I'm ready to go, Jet," Spike said calmly as he began to put on his black driver gloves while whistling a soft tune within the confines of the Swordfish II.
"And you, Faye?"
"I was born ready," Faye responded.
"Okay, now remember, we need to use the transistor radios for this mission to reach one another. Unfortunately, this planet has yet to build satellites for electronic communications. But we can use the radio waves of their routine radio dishes to keep in contact, make sure not to damage any of the dishes I installed on your ships, got it?" Jet ordered.
"No electronic communications, what is this place anyway? It's like we've taken a blast from the past," Faye complained.
"Well, seeing as you yourself are a blast from the past, maybe you should tell us what kind of a place this is," joked Spike as he grinned devilishly. Jet also responded with a slight chuckle, as Faye only huffed in anger at both men and gave them the complementary reaction of.
"Blow out it your ass"
"Okay, okay; let's get going on this one. This is a big one, so let's not blow it. If you need me for anything, contact me," Jet said professionally, "I'm opening the gates now, I'll be available on Line 2.Spike, Faye.good luck"
It was at that moment that Jet tuned his radio to the second line of communication, muting himself from Faye and Spike for a moment. Jet lit a cigarette and placed the flamed cancer stick into his mouth and sucked the ash from its contents. Meanwhile, on line 1, Faye and Spike remained connected.
"Hey Spike, you think this guy's as bad as they say he is?" Faye asked curiously.
Spike responded with a continuation of his soft whistle tune before audibly responding to Faye's question, "For some reason, I don't think this is going to be that hard."
"But he committed all those crimes, you heard what Ed said"
"I know that.but for some reason, I almost feel at ease. You know what they say; a trouble thought leads to a troubled event, but a mind that's calm leads to easy traveling," Spike said arrogantly as he started his engine and began to thrusters.
"That was an awful attempt at sounding poetic, Spike"
"Yeah.I know"
"Hey Spike, dinners almost ready," Jet hollered joyously from the kitchen area.
Spike only opened his eyes and grunted. He knew that when Jet said 'dinner', what he meant was whatever food was leftover for the last year. The taste was never great and the food was never well prepared, but it kept him alive nonetheless. Following his policy of 'hunger is the greatest spice', he would close his eyes and just eat what was presented to him without giving it a second thought.
He could ear Ed and Ein continue their pointless and inane barking of joy over food already, and again his eye began to twitch. It's amazing how before he got involved with this large group of fellow crew members that he could simply close his eyes and fall asleep at any moment. But with such characters as Ed, Ein, and Faye walking around ihis/i domain, naps were a thing of the past.
"You know, you really do rest too much," the opinionated female voice broke Spike's second silence of the day. He lazily opened his eyes a bit and peered out of the corner of his eye to see Faye Valentine sitting on the couch adjacent to him and picking up the remote. She shot him a glance and without giving his feelings a second thought, "It's not like you got hurt that bad over the last bounty, I highly doubt you need eleven hours of sleep to brush off a little scar"
Spike's eye, again, twitched. He didn't audibly respond, but his dead glare at Faye was enough of a response. Faye responded with a simply 'humph' before lifting the remote up towards the personal computer television and switching it on, making sure to switch to channel 277. Immediately, the tune of 'Big Shot' spread its sound waves throughout the Bebop.
"Howdy y'all, how y'all doing?" introduced the African American cowboy, with the horribly cheap Texas accent.
"Shucks howdy, it's time for Big Shot," said the beautiful Caucasian blonde female, whose cleavage literally spilled from her opened white vest, which immediately caught the attention of Spike. Faye's lip curled in disgust as Spike's eyes opened a bit wider to view the female on the screen.
"Now it's time for today's Hhhhhot news," said the African American cowboy, as a graphic of a wooden sign that said 'Hot News' popped up with a symbol of noose in the center of it. Suddenly, a picture of a handsome young man appeared on the screen before them. The man had long spiked blonde hair, deep blue eyes that a female could immediately fall for, and a comical grin. The next photo that flashed before the screen was one of the same man in a more serious tone, with his beautiful blue eyes hidden behind orange tinted sunglasses. His expression was much angrier, and he held a large Silver Raging Bull against his shoulder.
"Wow, he's cute," Faye commented.
"Wow, what a cutie," chimed in the blonde cowboy.
"All women are the same," grunted Spike.
"What are you saying Ma'am?" asked the African American enthusiastically, "This is one of the biggest criminals of all time in the history of the entire universe and 'joo are calling him cute?"
"I'm well aware of that, sugar, but you have to admit he's quite the looker," said the blonde cowboy behind a blushed face as she looked at the photo in her hand, "Wow, what a dreamy guy, it's a shame he's a wanted criminal"
"Hey guys, food's ready," Jet shouted from the kitchen area as he poked his head out from the room. When he received no audible reply, he couldn't help but peer over and watch the screen that Faye and Spike had found quite interesting.
"but this ain't no ordinary criminal, this here's the biggest in the barn," shouted the African American cowboy, "This man is worth $$60,000,000,000!"
"Sixty million double dollars?" questioned Spike, "How much is that in woo longs?"
"That is 3,000,000,000 Woo longs y'all!"
"Three Billion Woo longs?!" Faye, Jet and Spike questioned in disbelief simultaneously. Ed suddenly appeared from the ceiling, hanging like a bat from one of the ceiling's rafters, as she looked confusedly at the screen before stretching her arms over her head and reading the text underneath the price of this new bounty head.
"Vash the Stampede; oooh, he's a bad man: he caused the complete destruction of two towns.boom boom, bye bye," Ed chimed in as 'Big Shot' continued to explain the man behind the extreme bounty head, "Bad boy Vash- person also is wanted for blasting a hole through one of the moon's on his planet.oo la la"
"Wait, did you say he blasted a hole through a moon?" Faye asked questionably.
"That's what it says," chimed Ed.
"Puh-lease, there is no way a human being could do that," Faye said matter- of-factly, as she pulled a cigarette from the back pocket of her cargo brown shorts (commonly worn after a shower) and lit the cancer stick up to have a good smoke.
"I don't care what he's done and what he hasn't done, the bounties good.I'm going for it," Spike said with a devilish grin before sitting up on the couch and stretching his arms and shoulders out.
"You sure about this, Spike?" asked a concerned Jet, "You know the rules of the bounty hunter game. The higher the bounty, the higher the risk"
And as Jet looked over at Spike, who began indulging in Jet's specialty food 'bell peppers and beef' (which was really only bell peppers drenched in vegetable oil). Spike responded, behind a mouth full of terrible food.
"And the higher the risk, the higher my interest"
***
"Vash the Stampede, the man worth $$60,000,000,000; just the man I've been waiting to see," the voice came from a sturdy man that stood at about 6'5" and weighed in at about three hundred pounds. The man was pure muscle, and the gun he pointed at his adversary was nothing short of trigger happy, as a bullet fired off and only missed the blonde haired bounty by about six inches.
"You've got a pretty little bounty on your head, pretty boy. What I like about you the most has got to be the excitement of finding you little man. Although I am curious how the hell a runt like you could cause so much damage; but why question something so easy to catch?" he said behind an arrogant laugh.
"Now listen, pal, I don't think you have the right guy," the spiky blonde- haired man said with a nervous smile stretched across his face, "If I was Vash the Stampede, wouldn't I be able to escape the predicament by killing you?"
The burly man contemplated what his adversary said, but shook it off with a hint of a laugh, "It's funny how I see your gums flapping, but all that's secreting from your mouth is human excrement. Don't you know by now that your picture is posted all over the universe these days?"
At the moment the mysterious bounty hunter said this, Vash's face simply dropped in shock. His eyes turned to wide open circles, and his jaw literally dropped to the ground. But in a flash of a second, Vash quickly re-composed himself and attempted to come up with another excuse to escape the bounty hunter.
"Hehe, would you believe that it's my evil twin?" Vash jokingly questioned as he scratched the back of his head.
*BANG~!*
"AAAH!" Vash screamed girlishly, as a bullet went straight through his long spiky locks of hair. Vash literally froze in a split legged crouch position, as pieces of blonde hair drifted in front of his face. Sweat beaded down Vash's face, as he slowly lifted his head to look over at the bounty hunter.and to see that the black pistol was now pointed at his head.
"AAAH!" he screamed again as the bullet came free from the pistol, only to completely miss Vash the Stampede. The hunter became frustrated as he quickly aimed once more, only to have Vash dive forward and completely avoid the bullet once again.
"God damn it, stand still!" he shouted as he shot another four bullets towards Vash; everyone of them hitting nothing but the sandy ground below.
In a desperate act to save himself Vash found a large boulder set afar and charged for it as fast as he could as bullets rained from behind him like small bits of hail coming down from the skies. Vash quickly took shelter as fast as he could by diving behind the large rock boulder and pressing his back against it, as bullets continued to fire at him.
"Son of a bitch," the bounty hunter exclaimed as he began to reload.
Vash, instinctively, heard the clicks of the bullet case being release and found his opportunity to get out of harms way. Vash, in a flash of a few mere seconds, shifted his weight to the left. This allowed Vash to roll over to his stomach and push up with his feet, charging towards his adversary. The bounty hunter saw Vash charging as fast as he could and began fumbling with his disarmed pistol, attempting to get the new bullet case into the damn pistol. As he continued to fumble, he suddenly felt a strong force come up from under him. It was in one swift motion that Vash rushed forward and sent his right foot into the air, kicking the pistol clear from the assailant's grasp and sending it about twenty yards away.
The bounty hunter, astonished at the speed and quickness of Vash the Stampede, froze for a moment and stared at his bounty head in complete amazement. If it weren't for the fact that Vash was his target, he would've happily applauded the man in his extreme fighting skills. But as he stared in awe at Vash, the stare soon turned from awe into embarrassment.
"Oh yeah, field goal kick.it's GOOD! Oh yeah!" Vash said enthusiastically as he began to do a victory dance in front of his adversary, "Now what you going to do? Huh? You can't hurt me without your gun.HA HA HA HA HA HA HA H."
Suddenly, the arrogant and annoyingly laugh of Vash the Stampede was cut off. His mouth suddenly shifted to the side, along with his jaw, as a powerful force came careening into his jaw. It was a stiff right handed closed fist punch by the bounty hunter that immediately sent Vash into the air backwards and ending with a crash landing into the ground. Vash quickly began squirming on the ground, holding his jaw and complaining out loud.
"Ow! What the heck did you do that for?" he said behind a whine, "I was only kidding around, you don't have to play so rough!"
"Do you think this is some kind of game?" the hunter grunted out angrily, "I'm going to kick your sorry ass"
The nameless hunter clenched his right fist into a ball and swung forward towards Vash, but the red cloaked wonder quickly did a cartwheel to the left to avoid the hit. The hunter quickly switched his focus and threw a left uppercut towards Vash's jaw, but the Stampede bent his head and neck backward to avoid the impact. And, as if in slow motion, Vash grabbed the hunter's left arm that he had just swung, placed his boot into the hunter's stomach and flipped the anonymous bounty hunter over his head with a standard one legged monkey toss. The hunter landed back-first into the sand, as Vash quickly got to his feet and begged the hunter off.
"I really don't like fighting, mister, so maybe we should just stop. I don't want anyone to get hurt here," Vash said with great innocence in his voice, and all around concern behind a joyous smile.
***
"You both ready?"
Both Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine entered their respective ships, as Jet controlled it all from the control room of the Bebop. With a transistor radio in his grasp, Jet asked both members of the Bebop of their status as the cargo ship hovered over the uncharted planet of Vash the Stampede. It took quite some hacking on Ed's part to attempt to find the home village of the $$60,000,000,000 reward, but after breaking into the Earth Police Forces' data banks, Ed had cracked the location of the rebuilding planet. It was located in a completely different solar system, one that took the Bebop crew quite sometime to reach. To be exact, it was three galaxies away from their home galaxy.quite a trip.
"For the time we spent on the ship, this guy better be there," Faye said in a frustrated tone.
"I repeat, are you ready?" Jet asked once more.
"I'm ready to go, Jet," Spike said calmly as he began to put on his black driver gloves while whistling a soft tune within the confines of the Swordfish II.
"And you, Faye?"
"I was born ready," Faye responded.
"Okay, now remember, we need to use the transistor radios for this mission to reach one another. Unfortunately, this planet has yet to build satellites for electronic communications. But we can use the radio waves of their routine radio dishes to keep in contact, make sure not to damage any of the dishes I installed on your ships, got it?" Jet ordered.
"No electronic communications, what is this place anyway? It's like we've taken a blast from the past," Faye complained.
"Well, seeing as you yourself are a blast from the past, maybe you should tell us what kind of a place this is," joked Spike as he grinned devilishly. Jet also responded with a slight chuckle, as Faye only huffed in anger at both men and gave them the complementary reaction of.
"Blow out it your ass"
"Okay, okay; let's get going on this one. This is a big one, so let's not blow it. If you need me for anything, contact me," Jet said professionally, "I'm opening the gates now, I'll be available on Line 2.Spike, Faye.good luck"
It was at that moment that Jet tuned his radio to the second line of communication, muting himself from Faye and Spike for a moment. Jet lit a cigarette and placed the flamed cancer stick into his mouth and sucked the ash from its contents. Meanwhile, on line 1, Faye and Spike remained connected.
"Hey Spike, you think this guy's as bad as they say he is?" Faye asked curiously.
Spike responded with a continuation of his soft whistle tune before audibly responding to Faye's question, "For some reason, I don't think this is going to be that hard."
"But he committed all those crimes, you heard what Ed said"
"I know that.but for some reason, I almost feel at ease. You know what they say; a trouble thought leads to a troubled event, but a mind that's calm leads to easy traveling," Spike said arrogantly as he started his engine and began to thrusters.
"That was an awful attempt at sounding poetic, Spike"
"Yeah.I know"
