Recap: After the Keroponas bar had been cleaned up and Rock displayed his impressive Raising-A-Storm, Spike and Rock came across Gene and Jim. They were only a brief interruption, and it didn't take long before Spike and Rock got back to where they were headed, the Bebop. So how long is that girl going to stay stuck to the Bebop, anyway?
Chapter Eight: The Ganymeade Blues
"I promise I don't know what you're talking about!" The bartender girl pleaded, tied to a stool by the legs and held at gunpoint by Jet and Faye. Faye blew a bit of her somewhat-dark purple hair out of her green eyes as she grumbled to Jet "Come on, Jet.. we've been trying to get this girl to say something for fifteen minutes already! I think she'd have told us something by now." Jet growled and holstered his pistol. "Fine.. we're gonna let you go now, girl. But if we find anything, and I do mean ANYTHING that shows you've got something to do with those guys shootin' at us, we WILL come after you. Got it?" The girl nodded frightfully as Jet released her restraints, after which she promptly- if somewhat clumsily- ran out of the bar.
Spike sat staring at Rock as if he were some matter of alien lifeform, still in disbelief over what he had just seen. "Hey.... Rock.." Spike began, "how is it that you can just shoot two guys and kill them?" Spike stopped for a moment before continuing. "... You.. ever kill anyone?" Rock shook his head. "No.. but my dad taught me how to fight, and he always told me to do what I had to in order to survive." Spike was taken aback by this, "Sounds like... your dad taught you a lot." Rock nodded a bit, his expression starting to tangle with anger and sadness as thoughts of that killer started to pass through his mind again. He wanted to snap her neck and throw her body to the wolves, but now he didn't know what to do or where to go. Blues was his last hope. The small living area, along with the rest of the Bebop, lurched violently downwards, as if a giant had been sitting on it the whole time and had just now decided to get off it. Outside, a small ship was taking off. "Fuck him." The ship's red haired occupant muttered "Won't bother me either way, I'm getting tired of following him. I ever run into him again though, I'm going to cut his face off." And with that, the red-eyed assassin girl was detached from the Bebop and headed to Earth.
"What the hell was that?" Faye asked to no one in particular as she and Jet entered the room, nearly falling to the ground with the sudden movement. "Don't know," Spike said, looking to his green-eyed counterpart. It didn't take the crew any time at all before they lifted off from Keroponas, one of the renamed moons of Mars, and headed away from Earth, in the direction of Ganymeade, known as the beachside of the galaxy.
Hyperspace travel is a difficult concept to explain, but basically, the closer one travels to the speed of light, the more time slows down. So, after what seemed to be mere moments, the Bebop was entering Ganymeade's atmosphere. Within a few minutes, they were on the planet, and their large ship was left on a commercial landing pad, a sort of parking lot for interplanetary cruisers. "Well.." Jet began, a bit annoyedly, "where do we go from here, Rock?" "I don't know.." was the boy's anxious reply. He had heard 'Ganymeade', but it was a fairly large planet, not very different from Earth, and he didn't have any idea where to go. Looking around, he really didn't see much difference at all. He had only been on Earth for a short while when he was younger, but looking around the tall skyscrapers and concrete webs of city blocks and sidewalks now, he honestly couldn't see much of a difference. "Wait..." Rock said, "why don't you guys just stay here, and let me look around?" Spike, Jet, and Faye all looked at each other and shrugged. They didn't know what they were doing there, and hell if they were going to wander around aimlessly just looking for someone.
Now by himself, Rock stepped into the gray maze of the city of Ganymeade, massive fingers of steel and concrete straining to reach the orange evening sky. He really had no idea what he was doing, and he merely passed from one city street to the other the way all the other pedestrians were. None of them caught his attention, though there weren't very many of them. If one would picture New York City without actually being swarmed with people constantly, one would have a good impression of Ganymeade. The sun was setting, and the streets grew emptier and emptier as Rock was beginning to lose hope in his search, if it could even be called so.
'I think she lives on Ganymeade.' 'The city?' 'No, the planet.'
A planet is a very large place, and Rock didn't have a clue how many cities were on Ganymeade. Little aimless Rock had now gone so far, that he had exited the city, and now blindly walked along a ground of dark purple stone. The sky was a saturated blue and purple hue, they seemed to be the predominant colors of the landscape. A few stones scattered around made the place look like a desert, but the aforementioned coloring and cool breeze of night kept it from being mistaken as such. Canyons of equally dark coloring where visible in the distance, and the jagged stones and boulders all around didn't make the place look very homely. Rock heard what sounded like a foot shuffle in the direction of his left hand side. He whipped his head to look, but saw nothing. The eerie silence that culminated as he stared only increased with a gentle gust of wind that blew his blond hair to the right side of his head, chilling the left side of his face. He heard the same sound again, from behind this time, and he wasted no time in quickly looking to it. He heard it twice more, coming from behind, then over and over, all around, like every protruding stone from the ground had a dancer practicing their routine behind it. "Who's there!?" The boy cried, and before he knew it, he had heard one last sound of a thud on the ground. He turned to look, and tilted his head back, his ruby red eyes meeting the dark blue gaze of that woman he recognized immediately.
Blues.
To her right ear, there was an odd electronic attachment, like a radio. It had what seemed to be an antenna stemming off the top, and her left eye had an equally advanced looking piece of technology. It defies typical description, but it could best be described as a slightly-rounded but mostly rectangular piece of pink see-through material, held in place over her left eye by a small band on her left ear that worked as a clamp for it, keeping it from moving. Rock couldn't begin to guess what either of these things did, but what concerned him the most was the laser pistol that she held. The red lens at the tip of the barrel stared blankly at Rock, threatening to burn a hole through his skull at any moment. A low grin, almost a smirk, was on her lips, magenta from her lipstick. She wore a revealing leather blouse accompanied with leather pants, a small red vest hanging loosely over her upper body. It was unbuttoned and fairly small, so it did little to hide what her blouse exposed. With a twirl of her gun, she holstered it and looked down at the young Rock, who stood before her without much of a decipherable emotion on his face.
"I knew you'd come look for me," Blues nodded, "You're a lot like your dad, you know that?" Rock's red eyes looked up at Blues, his eyes straining to somehow reach into her mind and draw all the answers he so desperately seeked. The sadness and hatred he held deep within him came forth as he looked up to her, but her expression remained coy. Rock wasted no time in getting right to the point. "Why did you give me that ticket...?" Blues looked him in the eyes. The rocky blue-and-purple canyons in the distance lay almost invisible against the dark of night; Ganymeade had very little illumination after the sun set. "Well.." Blues began, "I'm gonna tell you straight. My mom was the same. A bounty hunter. Class A-3. She got killed, and hell if every bone in my body didn't scream out for me to kill the guy that did it. It ain't a good feeling, kid.. when your own mother trembles in your arms after she's been raped.. and it's not much better when she dies there, either. I looked for years... and let's just say what I found put me somewhere I didn't want to be." Rock's eyes never strayed from hers the whole time she talked. His mind raced to grasp the different motives she could have for telling him this, but her voice was soft and quiet, and Rock could see that she was telling the truth.
It didn't once cross his mind that she may be an expert at feigning things such as this.
Blues went on. "Rock.. I know a lot more about you than you do about me. I knew your pops a while back, and it'd been a while since we talked last.. but we always kept in touch. I know you feel terrible about losing him, you probably want to rip the girl's leg off and beat her to death with it.. but listen.." She set both her hands on Rock's shoulders and leaned down to meet him eye-to-eye, her face only inches from his as she spoke of what could later be known as the strongest thing he had ever felt, "I don't want you to feel what I have... you're too young. You'd be better without it." Rock nodded once.. but was still not completely convinced. Blues noted this. "Look.. just go on to Earth. I promise you'll find what you're really looking for there." Rock nodded again... but stopped to think about what she meant when she said what he was 'really' looking for. He thought about what Blues wanted him to do. On one hand, she made it seem as if he should forget his anger and hate and just live his life. This seemed a little odd to him. Wasn't it Blues herself that sent him on his search in the first place? But on the other hand... maybe she still knew something about the girl that killed Geese. "Blues," Rock asked rather bluntly, "what do you know about the girl that killed Geese? I just want to know... before I go." "In a way I don't know her at all. In another way, I know everything about her, and I could even tell you what's going to happen." With that, she turned and walked away, leaving the dumbfounded Rock to only watch her elegant form slowly disappear into the darkness of the Ganymeade night. With only the cold air to accompany him, Rock turned and began his long walk back to the Bebop.
NOTE: White spaces added thanks to suggestions by Venatrix Avia. Hope they make your reading a little easier! I'll be going back and doing the same to the other chapters.
Chapter Eight: The Ganymeade Blues
"I promise I don't know what you're talking about!" The bartender girl pleaded, tied to a stool by the legs and held at gunpoint by Jet and Faye. Faye blew a bit of her somewhat-dark purple hair out of her green eyes as she grumbled to Jet "Come on, Jet.. we've been trying to get this girl to say something for fifteen minutes already! I think she'd have told us something by now." Jet growled and holstered his pistol. "Fine.. we're gonna let you go now, girl. But if we find anything, and I do mean ANYTHING that shows you've got something to do with those guys shootin' at us, we WILL come after you. Got it?" The girl nodded frightfully as Jet released her restraints, after which she promptly- if somewhat clumsily- ran out of the bar.
Spike sat staring at Rock as if he were some matter of alien lifeform, still in disbelief over what he had just seen. "Hey.... Rock.." Spike began, "how is it that you can just shoot two guys and kill them?" Spike stopped for a moment before continuing. "... You.. ever kill anyone?" Rock shook his head. "No.. but my dad taught me how to fight, and he always told me to do what I had to in order to survive." Spike was taken aback by this, "Sounds like... your dad taught you a lot." Rock nodded a bit, his expression starting to tangle with anger and sadness as thoughts of that killer started to pass through his mind again. He wanted to snap her neck and throw her body to the wolves, but now he didn't know what to do or where to go. Blues was his last hope. The small living area, along with the rest of the Bebop, lurched violently downwards, as if a giant had been sitting on it the whole time and had just now decided to get off it. Outside, a small ship was taking off. "Fuck him." The ship's red haired occupant muttered "Won't bother me either way, I'm getting tired of following him. I ever run into him again though, I'm going to cut his face off." And with that, the red-eyed assassin girl was detached from the Bebop and headed to Earth.
"What the hell was that?" Faye asked to no one in particular as she and Jet entered the room, nearly falling to the ground with the sudden movement. "Don't know," Spike said, looking to his green-eyed counterpart. It didn't take the crew any time at all before they lifted off from Keroponas, one of the renamed moons of Mars, and headed away from Earth, in the direction of Ganymeade, known as the beachside of the galaxy.
Hyperspace travel is a difficult concept to explain, but basically, the closer one travels to the speed of light, the more time slows down. So, after what seemed to be mere moments, the Bebop was entering Ganymeade's atmosphere. Within a few minutes, they were on the planet, and their large ship was left on a commercial landing pad, a sort of parking lot for interplanetary cruisers. "Well.." Jet began, a bit annoyedly, "where do we go from here, Rock?" "I don't know.." was the boy's anxious reply. He had heard 'Ganymeade', but it was a fairly large planet, not very different from Earth, and he didn't have any idea where to go. Looking around, he really didn't see much difference at all. He had only been on Earth for a short while when he was younger, but looking around the tall skyscrapers and concrete webs of city blocks and sidewalks now, he honestly couldn't see much of a difference. "Wait..." Rock said, "why don't you guys just stay here, and let me look around?" Spike, Jet, and Faye all looked at each other and shrugged. They didn't know what they were doing there, and hell if they were going to wander around aimlessly just looking for someone.
Now by himself, Rock stepped into the gray maze of the city of Ganymeade, massive fingers of steel and concrete straining to reach the orange evening sky. He really had no idea what he was doing, and he merely passed from one city street to the other the way all the other pedestrians were. None of them caught his attention, though there weren't very many of them. If one would picture New York City without actually being swarmed with people constantly, one would have a good impression of Ganymeade. The sun was setting, and the streets grew emptier and emptier as Rock was beginning to lose hope in his search, if it could even be called so.
'I think she lives on Ganymeade.' 'The city?' 'No, the planet.'
A planet is a very large place, and Rock didn't have a clue how many cities were on Ganymeade. Little aimless Rock had now gone so far, that he had exited the city, and now blindly walked along a ground of dark purple stone. The sky was a saturated blue and purple hue, they seemed to be the predominant colors of the landscape. A few stones scattered around made the place look like a desert, but the aforementioned coloring and cool breeze of night kept it from being mistaken as such. Canyons of equally dark coloring where visible in the distance, and the jagged stones and boulders all around didn't make the place look very homely. Rock heard what sounded like a foot shuffle in the direction of his left hand side. He whipped his head to look, but saw nothing. The eerie silence that culminated as he stared only increased with a gentle gust of wind that blew his blond hair to the right side of his head, chilling the left side of his face. He heard the same sound again, from behind this time, and he wasted no time in quickly looking to it. He heard it twice more, coming from behind, then over and over, all around, like every protruding stone from the ground had a dancer practicing their routine behind it. "Who's there!?" The boy cried, and before he knew it, he had heard one last sound of a thud on the ground. He turned to look, and tilted his head back, his ruby red eyes meeting the dark blue gaze of that woman he recognized immediately.
Blues.
To her right ear, there was an odd electronic attachment, like a radio. It had what seemed to be an antenna stemming off the top, and her left eye had an equally advanced looking piece of technology. It defies typical description, but it could best be described as a slightly-rounded but mostly rectangular piece of pink see-through material, held in place over her left eye by a small band on her left ear that worked as a clamp for it, keeping it from moving. Rock couldn't begin to guess what either of these things did, but what concerned him the most was the laser pistol that she held. The red lens at the tip of the barrel stared blankly at Rock, threatening to burn a hole through his skull at any moment. A low grin, almost a smirk, was on her lips, magenta from her lipstick. She wore a revealing leather blouse accompanied with leather pants, a small red vest hanging loosely over her upper body. It was unbuttoned and fairly small, so it did little to hide what her blouse exposed. With a twirl of her gun, she holstered it and looked down at the young Rock, who stood before her without much of a decipherable emotion on his face.
"I knew you'd come look for me," Blues nodded, "You're a lot like your dad, you know that?" Rock's red eyes looked up at Blues, his eyes straining to somehow reach into her mind and draw all the answers he so desperately seeked. The sadness and hatred he held deep within him came forth as he looked up to her, but her expression remained coy. Rock wasted no time in getting right to the point. "Why did you give me that ticket...?" Blues looked him in the eyes. The rocky blue-and-purple canyons in the distance lay almost invisible against the dark of night; Ganymeade had very little illumination after the sun set. "Well.." Blues began, "I'm gonna tell you straight. My mom was the same. A bounty hunter. Class A-3. She got killed, and hell if every bone in my body didn't scream out for me to kill the guy that did it. It ain't a good feeling, kid.. when your own mother trembles in your arms after she's been raped.. and it's not much better when she dies there, either. I looked for years... and let's just say what I found put me somewhere I didn't want to be." Rock's eyes never strayed from hers the whole time she talked. His mind raced to grasp the different motives she could have for telling him this, but her voice was soft and quiet, and Rock could see that she was telling the truth.
It didn't once cross his mind that she may be an expert at feigning things such as this.
Blues went on. "Rock.. I know a lot more about you than you do about me. I knew your pops a while back, and it'd been a while since we talked last.. but we always kept in touch. I know you feel terrible about losing him, you probably want to rip the girl's leg off and beat her to death with it.. but listen.." She set both her hands on Rock's shoulders and leaned down to meet him eye-to-eye, her face only inches from his as she spoke of what could later be known as the strongest thing he had ever felt, "I don't want you to feel what I have... you're too young. You'd be better without it." Rock nodded once.. but was still not completely convinced. Blues noted this. "Look.. just go on to Earth. I promise you'll find what you're really looking for there." Rock nodded again... but stopped to think about what she meant when she said what he was 'really' looking for. He thought about what Blues wanted him to do. On one hand, she made it seem as if he should forget his anger and hate and just live his life. This seemed a little odd to him. Wasn't it Blues herself that sent him on his search in the first place? But on the other hand... maybe she still knew something about the girl that killed Geese. "Blues," Rock asked rather bluntly, "what do you know about the girl that killed Geese? I just want to know... before I go." "In a way I don't know her at all. In another way, I know everything about her, and I could even tell you what's going to happen." With that, she turned and walked away, leaving the dumbfounded Rock to only watch her elegant form slowly disappear into the darkness of the Ganymeade night. With only the cold air to accompany him, Rock turned and began his long walk back to the Bebop.
NOTE: White spaces added thanks to suggestions by Venatrix Avia. Hope they make your reading a little easier! I'll be going back and doing the same to the other chapters.