Session # 1
"So...is Jet Black really your real name?" It was a simple question, though it seemed odd for a recently-returned-from-the-dead man to ask his old friend. That was probably why it was suitable for one, Spike Spiegel, to ask it, especially since it had already been two weeks since his said resurrection(if it could be called that). In the two weeks since he had returned, Spike observed little changes in the manners he was treated: Jet greeting him with a punch in the jaw before taking him inside the Bebop to have a 'long talk' and Faye avoiding him like he was a walking, talking disease. In fact, the woman with the known nick-name of Poker Alice had stayed in her room for over a day before taking off somewhere in her Redtail.
...go figure.
The question caught the elder man's attention. It was really one he never thought anyone would ask. "What?"
Spike lounged on the couch, watching the ceiling for a moment before looking over at Jet with a bit of a smirk. He really didn't feel like smirking or even talking for that matter, but it was better than anything else, which is why he replied, "Well, your parents must have had a weird sense of humor."
Jet frowned at him. "Hey, don't make fun of my name," he said with a pointed look at the green-haired man who was sitting on his yellow couch...though it might as well belonged to the one lounging on it... "You sound like you were named after the dog."
Spike let out a breathy laugh and looked at the ceiling again. "Who says I was ever really named?"
"Should have guessed," Jet replied, causing his partner to look back at him. "You're like Ed."
Spike's face pulled itself into a partial-grimace, partial-frown, partial-smirk. "Ed?" he couldn't help but to ask dubiously.
"Well, she gave herself her own name," Jet pointed out wiht a bit of amusement.
Spike lowered his feet from their perch on the table and sat up slightly to give his partner a semi-serious look. "For your information," he said with a bit of a haughty tone, though it could have been mistaken for amusement, "I got my name from someone else, not myself." He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it between his lips. "I'm not like Ed."
Just as he was going to light up, something red, tanned, and squealing ran by, causing the small flame produced by the lighter to go out. The one holding the lighter blinked in confusion, not realising why it had gone out until a tanned face with amber eyes stuck itself in his face, grinning like the devil.
"Hello!" the creature shouted, making Spike jump in surprise and Jet chuckle at the actions. It was only Edward Wong Hau Pepeluisko--oh whatever. It was only Ed. "Spike-person called? Balled? Falled...?"
Spike sighed, regaining his composure. "No, Ed."
The answer just didn't seem to register, though. "...sawed, gnawled..."
"Hm..." Jet said with amusement, "I wonder how long she'll go on."
Spike lit his lighter again. "Probably until--"
Ed haulted in her listing of words, cocking her head to the side; and with much of the bewilderment of the two men, she grinned again and rushed off, extinquishing the lighter once more with her passing. Spike looked at the dead lighter and gave up, tossing it onto the table as the hyper-active thirteen--maybe twelve?--year-old heathen-child shouted, "Faye-Faye!"
Then Spike heard it. The click-click of her boots. He groaned mentally. "Great."
There was a sound of someone running to someone else, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor.
Then she spoke, "Why is the kid...smelling my shoe?"
"Don't ask me," Spike answered without looking over, the cigarette still sitting on its perch though it served no purpose if it wasn't lit.
"Oooooooooh!" shouted Ed with a lot of enthusiam. "Faye-Faye been bad-bad girl! Went to grassy place, hm?"
Jet looked over at the scene with a confused look, though Spike didn't see why he would be confused. "Races, Faye?"
"Hey, it was my money," Faye replied with an indignant tone.
"Ewwwwwwwwww..." Ed suddenly exclaimed, making Spike look over to see the red-headed girl on the ground, near Faye's shoe, while Faye was looking exasperated and about ready to kick the strange hacker-kid, who merely proceeded to stick her face even closer to the left shoe. "Is that poo?"
Spike could almost see the vein in her forehead showing as her eye twitched. "Ugh!" she shouted, kicking out. "Get away, Ed!"
Somehow--it was hard to see how it was possible--the wild girl leapt out of striking rang, flipping backwards onto her hands and then jumping to her feet, running off and squealing with laughter. "Whoopah! Ein! Oh, Eiiiiiin!"
The three Bounty Hunters just stared at where the girl had exited the room in just plain wonderment before Faye walked off toward her room--probably to lock herself in it--and Jet and Spike went back to what they were doing before. In other words: Spike reclining on the couch with the unlit cigarette between his lips and Jet looking around the net for any news.
They were silent for a moment.
Click.
"Yep, I was right," Jet said, closing one net page and going to another.
"Didn't we go over this already?" Spike asked, looking over to him with a small frown, still not liking the idea of being compared to the freaky girl that could have been mistaken for a boy if it wasn't for the fact that they knew she was a girl.
Jet frowned at the screen he was looking at before closing off of the net and looking over to his partner with curiosity. "Well, if you didn't name yourself, who did?" he asked.
Spike looked away from Jet, back toward the ceiling, blowing an inaudible sigh. "Someone I knew," he answered, looking as though he really didn't want to remember whoever the person was. "Happy?"
Jet frowned again, hearing the tone his partner was using. It was the tone he always used whenever he was asked questions that related to his past. It was a tone that gave the impression that the subject should be dropped and should never be brought up again. So, just as always, Jet replied with a simple, "Not especially, but I'll let it go."
Spike seemed to like this arrangement because he actually gave a small grin and said without looking back over, "Good."
Again there was a moment of silence in which Jet got back onto the net, clicking around to see if there was any Bounty tips. Things were a little bit harder now since Big Shot had been cancelled--something that still didn't make any sense to the Bounty Hunters of the galaxy.
"Spike?" Jet finally asked, not looking up from the screen.
"Hm?"
There was a brief pause before the ex-ISSP officer said something that was slightly out-of-character for him to say, "Sorry."
Brow furrowing, the tall, lanky, green-haired man on the old yellow couch looked over to him with mild confusion. "For what?" he asked, not understanding why Jet was the one apologizing.
It should have been the other way 'round, right?
The elder man sighed, rubbing his temple with his real hand. "Trying to get you to talk about your past." Spike sat up a bit at the confession--if that's what it was. "I already know a small part of it, and it was awful." Jet looked over to the younger man seriously. "I don't mean to bring back painful memories for you or something."
Spike chewed on the end of his cigarette for a moment, looking away as he felt slightly guilty for making the older man apologize when they both knew fairly well who should have been the one to apologize. "Hey," he said lightly, still not looking back over, "it was fair. I pestered you about your name."
Naturally, Jet didn't know what his partner was thinking and must have mistaken his movements and tone for something else. "Still," he said, lowering his hand and smiling a bit, "I feel bad about it."
"Don't sweat it, Jet," Spike insisted, taking the cigarette from its perch and studying it intently. "Sure it was one big melodrama, but..." He flicked the cigarette into the nearest thing resembling a garabage can, "my past does include some happy moment, you know."
"Such as?" The guy's curiosity was really getting the better of him, if he was first apologizing and then asking more questions about what he had apologized for.
"...well..." Spike drawled.
"That's not including the one's that fell apart in the end," Jet put in with some seriousness.
Spike frowned. "Well, damn..." He looked up at the ceiling once more to ponder over memories. "I guess that leaves at least two things."
"What are those?"
Spike smirked a little, closing his eyes thoughtfully. "The times I was too young to remember and, well..." He opened his eyes and looked over to Jet. "You guys, I guess."
Jet frowned. "No others besides those?"
Now the question was rewarded with a full, typical, semi-mysterious, semi-annoying smirk. "They're all you're getting out of me today."
Jet grunted, turning back to the screen, still searching for a Bounty. "You're still the vaguest person I've ever met," he informed his partner.
Spike gave a look of surprise. "Am I?" He chuckled. "I thought someone would take that title when I was gone."
"Nope." Jet looked over the screen for a moment, a puzzle look on his face, before going back to what he was doing. "You still take the cake."
"Speaking of cake," Spike commented, turning in the couch so he could lie down. "when's dinner?"
Jet sighed. It was the most casual thing that could be asked, which was why the younger man asked it. "After I go out for a few hours," the elder man answered, shutting down the net once more before standing.
"For what?"
Jet looked over to his partner for a moment, noticing that the green-haired man once again had his eyes closed. "You keep your secrets," he said, walking over to the hanger, "and I'll keep mine."
"Fair enough," Spike replied with a smirk. "See you then, Jet."
"Sure thing," Jet responded with a bit of a smile, pausing only a slight second as if he was still getting used to saying what he then said, "Spike."
It was an odd type of silence--one rarely heard or enjoyed on the ship--even though it had been punctuated by Ed's activities in the back of the hall as she had played with Ein, who had tried and failed several times to escape the little red-headed girl's hyperness when it had became too much for him to bare. While this occurred, however, the lanky man on the couch ignored it all, lying on the yellow couch and staring at the familiar ceiling fan with his mismatched eyes. Just stared and followed one of the blades idly with his eyes, reflecting on the past conversations he had had with his...friends.
True enough, they were all confused by him(it wasn't everyday that a guy came back from the 'dead' and act as though nothing had happened even though a whole, long year had passed before he got the nerve to do such a thing). True enough, they were all stepping on eggshells around him, trying to find out more of what had happened and find out about more of himself while trying not to get him upset with them. True enough, he admired their attempts but was becoming quickly reminded of why he had waited so long until he had returned to the Bebop.
It had taken him a whole year to pull himself together enough to even look the crew in the face, let alone living with them again--which had taken him by total surprise, by the way. Perhaps he didn't do such a good job at doing the 'pulling together.' He had the scars to prove it.
At that thought, he lifted his left arm and looked at it for a moment, just staring. A small shifting noise caught his attention and he casually slid the hand behind his head and under the other, looking back up at the fan. A small thwump told him that the woman that had remained onboard with him and the crazy kid named Edward had flopped down in the chair next to the couch. A tink told him that she was either drinking something or had something glass in her hands.
He assumed the former.
"I find it odd," Faye finally spoke up after a moment of comfortable silence.
There was a drawn-out silence in which Spike wondered if she was finished locking herself in her room before he sighed and gave the expected reply, "What?"
He listened as the young woman shifted in her seat, sinking deeper into the comfortable folds of the furniture.
"That it's so quiet in here." That brought the oh-so-common smirk onto his face, and he gave her an equivallent of a shrug.
"Ed's passed out on the refrigerator--" He could hear Ein's whining from the kitchen and Ed's snores and occassion 'wack' of her hands hitting the metal machine. "--and Jet's out."
The woman seemed satisfied with the answer for the moment and settled more into her chair, giving Spike more silence to think in. It was odd, actually. Just how Faye had said. Only, the silence itself wasn't odd; it was odd how it was more comfortable to be in than the constant talking with a person--namely, Jet or Faye. Ed...well...Ed was Ed and probably only took in half of what everyone said.
'No, no, no!' a voice in the back of his mind shouted in annoyance, taking on the tone of someone he had once known. 'You never listen do you? You always listen to half of what was said, leaving the rest to imagination! Will you listen for once?'
Hm...maybe Jet was more right than he thought. Maybe--in a distant, totally non-related, really twisted way--they were slightly alike. A thud from the kitchen made him wince before sighing and looking exasperatedly at the ceiling.
Maybe not...
"What's your excuse?" Faye asked, breaking the silence and causing Spike to shift his head to look over at her. She was leaned against the back and the edge of the chair, legs crossed and dangling off the other end, with one hand propping her chin up in a bored fashion, and the other holding a glass of liquid. For a moment, he pondered what over her question before realizing she was referring to her old topic.
"I'm thinking," he said simply, looking back at the ceiling fan, and lazily watched as the blades swished in circles.
"Oh?" she asked, sounding the least bit curious. "You can do that?"
Everyday bickering.
"Unlike you."
Faye snorted none-too-lady-like. "Very funny." She paused. "So...what are you thinking about?"
Spike gave her a slight shrug. "Events."
"That all?"
Here there was a lengthy pause. One that Spike knew would alert the female Bounty Hunter that there was something more to this silence than she had thought. He knew this but continued to let the void of sound continue for a moment longer. "...people," was the eventual answer.
"A girl?" The question was asked almost immediately,.
"No," he answered dully.
"Not Julia?" she questioned with surprise.
"No." This time his tone was annoyance and exasperation. She just had to assume that, didn't she? Oh, sure. It wasn't like he went a year pulling himself together, struggling to pull himself out of the state he had been in when...
"Hm..." she murmured quietly, knowing to back off of that topic. "Who then?"
Spike lowered his left hand and turned toward the back of the couch, closing his eyes. "None of your business, Valentine."
A pause. "Fine."
And then, once again, there was silence. A comfortable, relaxing presence that was beginning to beckon him to slumber...
And he would have easily fallen asleep, if the soft sound of humming hadn't floated to his hearing. Curious, yet annoyed, Spike listened to it for a moment before asking, "What is that?"
The humming stopped and Faye responded with annoyance and slight anger, "What? You're gonna tell me I'm off-key again?" Spike turned himself over and watched her patiently as she glared at him with flashing green eyes. "Well, screw it," she said, turning her nose into the air, "I like this song, and I'll sing it if I want to--!"
"Seriously," Spike interrupted blantantly. "Don't get so defensive. I was curious."
The purple-haired woman looked back down at him, eyes softening as she realized that he was, in fact, being serious. "I don't know it very well," she confessed, "but I like the rhythm."
Again Spike shrugged, turning back toward the back of the couch. "Okay."
This time the pause wasn't nearly as long as the others. "So what are you thinking about now?"
Spike restrained a groan of frustration as he was once again prevented from taking a small cat-nap. "Nursery rhymes," he answered without really thinking.
"What?"
He chuckled a little as he realized what he had said and then replied thoughtfully, "I don't think I've heard very many."
"Okay..." Faye said slowly as he turned back toward her. "This is random."
"Not really," Spike said, sitting up with a small yawn.
"Well, I think it is," Faye responded, crossing her arms before Spike stretched his above his head, stifling a yawn. Figuring he wouldn't get any sleep, he then turned in his couch, letting his feet touch the floor.
"Well?" he asked, searching his pockets for his cigarettes only to see a hand dangle it in his face. He snatched at them and managed to get them before they got tugged away. "Do you remember any?"
Faye hesitated as she sat back in her seat, the now-smoking cancer-stick between her fingers. "Yes...I've got most of my memories back, so I remember some from when I was little."
Spike nodded slightly, elbows on his knees as he lit up, a cloud of smoke rising as he inhaled and then exhaled. "So tell me one," he said, tossing the pack onto the table.
"Um..." murmured the Huntress thoughtfully. "'Hey Dittle-Dittle'? No...wait...you don't like cats, or animals for that matter, do you?"
"Do a lot of them have animals?" he asked from around his cigarette as he leaned back in his seat, arms behind his head.
"Kind of."
Spike rolled his eyes. "Then just pick one."
"Okay," Faye said as she sat up and put her own elbows on her knees. "Let's see...Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/All the King's horses and all the King's men/Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again."
When she looked up she was surprised to see that Spike was staring at her with semi-wide eyes and his cigarette was slipping from its perch between his lips. It fell and quickly got him to snap out of whatever it was that he was in. Snubbing out the smoke, he demanded, "What the hell was that? They make up songs about a guy bashing their head in when they fall off a wall?"
"No!" Faye shouted, almost laughing at his expression.
"That's traumatizing for a child to hear!" Spike continued, giving her an accusing look.
"You don't get it," she said with a small snicker. "Humpty Dumpty's supposed to make kids think about eggs, I think. You know, you can't put one back together after it hits the ground."
Spike blinked in confusion. "So Humpty Dumpty's an egg?"
"That's what I've seen him as," Faye answered with a shrug. "None of the nursery rhymes have any real meaning. Just nonsense like...'Little Boy Blue.'"
"Huh?" He had no clue what she was going on about.
"Little Boy Blue come blow your horn," Faye began to recite, smiling a little as she recalled the silly rhymes. "The sheep's in the meadow, the cows' in the corn/Where's the Little Boy who looks after the sheep?/He's under the haystack fast asleep."
The tall, green-haired man stared at her for a moment before managing to say, "Maybe I shouldn't try to even listen to these. There's too much Earth references."
Faye considered this. "That's true...wait." She sat up straight, thinking for a moment. "I think I know one that doesn't have much of an Earth reference."
Now Spike was curious again. "What is it?"
This time there wasn't even a hesitation. "It's raining, it's pouring/The old man is snoring/He bumped his head/And he went to bed/And he couldn't get up in the morning."
The smirk came onto his face without him even thinking about it. "That sounds suiting for Mars at times," he said before thinking about it. "Minus the old man."
"Yeah, replace him with a drunk guy," Faye said with a smirk of her own, which only caused Spike's to diminish somewhat.
"Or..." he began to say, but decided against it as he leaned back into the couch, his eyes closed.
Faye paused. "Maybe these kind of songs aren't very cheerful right now," she commented before the sound of the liquid in the glass she held being swished around filled the air. "Most of them come from sad comings anyway."
"Really?" Spike asked without too much enthusiam. Most of it had left with his own mentioning of Mars.
"'Ring Around the Rosie' and 'London Bridge' for example," the Huntress answered. ""Ring Around the Rosie' was a song people sung so they wouldn't get the Plague, a disease in the old days." Again there was a moment of nothing but the sound of the liquid swishing in the glass. "'London Bridge' is about how a bridge in England that kept falling into the river."
Spike opened an eye to look at her curiously. "Kids liked these songs?" he asked, dubiously.
"They were games to them," Faye responded with a sigh. "Like they understood why the songs were made."
Neither were prepared for yet another entrance made by the hyper-active hacker as she rolled into the room. Literally, not figuratively. She had her legs tucked into her chest and her arms wrapped over her legs and was rolling head over heels to the table before sitting up.
"Ed hears 'London Briiiiiiiiidddddddddddddgggggggggggggggeeeeeeeeeeeee!" she shouted, making both adults blink at her.
Faye was the first to snap out of it as she smiled somewhat-excitedly at Ed. "You know 'London Bridge' and how to play?"
Ed nodded with a little too much enthusiam for Spike's taste before shouting, "Play, stay, 'kay!"
Faye set her glass onto the table, catching Spike's attention as she stood. "Great," she said before smirking in the lanky man's direction with a malicious glint in her eye. "Let's teach the lunkhead how to play it."
"I'd rather not," Spike said nonchalant, though the look she gave him was making him wonder if she was still upset at him for coming back to the Bebop after being 'dead' for a year.
"Oh, but it's easy, Lunkhead--" Second time of using that horrible nick-name. Couldn't be a mistake. Yep, she was still sore about it. "--What's the matter? Embarrassed that you'd look like a little kid?"
"Hell, yes," was the expected answer, though it was really because he wanted to stay as far from Faye as he could get. Who knows? She might have been armed.
"How 'bout 'Ring Around the Rosie'?" she suggested, still giving him that evil look.
Having the new knowledge of where the song had come from was the key reason that he then answered, "No."
"Ed likes Rosie!" Ed said, waving a hand into the air to get their attention, but was--for the most part--ignored as one adult was looking at the other with a murderous expression and the one that was on the receiving end of the look wondered if she had her Glock with her.
Spike, however, did gesture over to the red-head. "And that's why." He gave Faye a narrowed-eyed look, not allowing her to get away with her threatening look. "I hate kids," he reminded her pointedly, crossing his arms. "Why act like one?"
He had just gotten up from his spot on the couch when he heard her response, "Because you never were one?"
Spike froze and he knew by doing that he had given her the advantage. "...don't talk about things you don't know, Valentine," he told her lowly, covering his irritation.
"But aren't I right?" Faye's tone was innocent, but her meaning was anything but that.
There was a moment of silence before Spike reached over and grabbed his blue jacket, slinging it over his right shoulder and walking off with his left hand in his pocket. "I don't owe you anything."
When he had escaped Faye's view, he paused to listen to what the woman would say. Surprisingly, Faye's voice just gave a sigh and asked, "So much for that, right, Ed?"
Snorting for a moment, he continued on toward his room, which he normally wouldn't have gone to. All the way there, he could hear Ed singing, "Ring around the rosie-rosie!/Pockets full of posie-posie!/Ashes! Ashes!/We all fall down!"
Coming Episode:
Spike: Yeah, things are starting all over again. Makes you wonder if there's a point to this...
Faye: Of course there's a point.
Spike: Well, what is it then?
Jet: Maybe we should just wait for the next part.
Spike: That's just boring--
Faye: Hey, waiting for you to come back was boring.
Spike: Waiting for a more witty comment from you is boring.
Faye: Why you--!
Jet: Don't fight...
Spike: Next episode: Bounty Jam. Hm...makes you wonder about the point of the title, doesn't it?
Author's Notes: Eh...yeah, this doesn't have much of anything. It's just something to get the story going. Actually, if you keep in mind what you've read in this session, it'll be useful when later sessions are posted ^.^" I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. I know it's not written in a standard form. It's kind of written like Spike's telling it from a third-person perspective. Not all of this story's going to be from Spike's POV. It'll be amongst the whole Bebop crew. Hope you all will stick around for the later sessions! Until next time! Ja~! ^.~!
Notes: I'm almost sure about the pasts behind the nursery rhymes mentioned. If I'm mistakened, please inform me. ^.^' Thanks! ^.~!