a/n: Due to a lack of competence in the Australian educational system, I may not be able to update until late next week. We'll see how things go…-_-()

A little shout out to:

SCREECHING DRAGON ( What are you talking about? You do not have bad spelling! ^_^) &

LUNA/JESS (Thank-you!) &

TYGER-CHAN (of course. * Shrug * I like spicy food, so there! * Pokes tongue out * And why can't ramen be spicy? ^_^ :P There's no law, dammit! )

VERBYOU, (Assuming you use MS Word to type your stories in, just type it normally, paragraph, and use the italic button, etc. Once you've saved the initial document, click: FILE, then, SAVE AS HTML. That'll save all of your hard work exactly the way you typed it! And posting it on FF.net won't mess it up! Hopefully…^_^() )

SENSHICHAN14 & (Dun dun dun…mysteries, they are all. Keep reading to find out!)

NAE ( Heh. Glad to see that out of the zillions of fanfics, you chose mine to read. Thanks to you, as well!)

MAELGWYN! (Good buddy from fanfics of yore. Thankies much!) &

ROSE OF OSIRIS (^_____^ Pretty name!)

Thanks for reviewing guys. The more reviews I see, the more I feel loved, get hyper and type more story for everyone.

CHERRY TOMATO

Session Two

Edward looked slightly bewildered as the stalls and shops in the street packed up and closed for the night. Trains carrying people home from work pulled out of the station, and the streetlights cast their greasy orange light over dark forms of buildings. Whores and their 'managers' hung around the outside of nightclubs, smoking cheap cigarettes and swilling third rate beer by the bottle.

Spike had vanished from the face of the planet, without even saying goodbye. Edward shrugged. If there were no Spike-persons to take her home, she'd just have to find someone else. Maybe that man over there, by the traffic lights, and holding a really big gun?

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Jet rolled over, smothering his face in his pillow so he wouldn't have to see the empty knotted rope hammock above his bed, in which Ed usually slept. He remembered the first night the little monster slept on board the Bebop. After issuing her with a hammock, and the command, "Just tie it anywhere it'll hold.", the crew each retired into their separate rooms. Laying awake, they could here scrabbling noises, barks from Ein, and a resounding crash which the next morning, proved to be the sofa up-turning on the coffee table and crushing the TV. Fearlessly, Ed opened Jet's door, took a flying leap at his bed, and stood on Jet's stomach and chest to reach the steel rafters overhead. Just having dozed off, then awoken rudely by a toe or three up his nostrils, Jet tried to remove the pestilence. There was stubborn indifference, begging, then tired wailing as if Ed were a two year old toddler whom Jet had poked awake in her cot. To shut her up, and to ward off a disgruntled looking Spike and Faye (plastered liberally with the latest green, gooey beauty mask) leaning against his doorframe, Jet folded like a card table. Then that night onwards, Ed insisted that she continued to stay in Jet's room, often falling out of the hammock, but now only accidentally did she land a foot in Jet's face climbing back up.

The irritating need to breathe rolled Jet's body over again.

Without the lanky tanned limbs hanging over the side, incoherent ramblings about pudding and other deserts from above, he couldn't sleep . . .

"Jet? Man, what hole did you crawl out of this morning?" Spike paused in trying to tune in the TV, to stare at his partner in bounty hunting, disbelievingly.

"Shut up Spike. I'm not in the freakin' mood." The ex-cop moodily stomped into the kitchen, and began to make extra strong black coffee, slamming things down and shutting cupboard doors a little harder than was necessary. Faye was lured out of her room by the smell. She yawned widely, then stretched in turn.

"Mmmm…hey, is that coffee that you're making, Jet?"

"…Yes."

"Can you pour me a cup? Thanks, you're a darling."

"No. You want coffee, you pay for and make it yourself, dammit."

"Huh? What the hell's gotten into you all of a sudden?" Jet dropped the coffee pot on the floor. Swearing enough that would make any sailor blush, he mopped up the scolding mess and stood.

"Rrr..SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO?" Flinging the dishcloth into the sink, he kicked the cold locker. "Fff..DAMMIT!"

Faye was cautious as she withdrew behind the protective form of Spike.

"What's with him? It's only coffee. He can always go and buy some more." Spike had a strange look on his face.

"I don't think it's about coffee anymore." Cringing together, they held their breath as an enraged Jet hobbled as fast as he could, out of the room. With a small sigh of relief, Faye went back into the kitchen to investigate the supply of edible substances.

"You don't mean…he's upset about Ed being lost?" Spike joined her, his hands deep in his suit pockets, which he never really took off. His theory of keeping clean was to walk through the local car wash once every couple of weeks.

"Seems that way."

"But she's been on her own hundreds of times! For God's sake, she was living on Earth when we found her!"

"Yeah well, maybe he's becoming soft in his old age. Either that or he's finally reached the stage of senility…" The pair smirked at one another.

"Hey! That's my bagel you're eating!" Spike adopted an air of wounded innocence.

"What? Me steal food from the mouths of my comrades? I would never-"

"Don't play with me, Spiegel, I know you did it."

A huge grin on his face, Spike swallowed the rest of the baked good and licked his fingers.

"Ahhh…delicious." He held up a steaming mug, and pointed to it enquiringly,

"I guess this would be your coffee, then?"

"Yes." Faye angrily held out her hand, "Give it to me." Spike wagged his finger at her.

"What's the magic word?"

The other ground her teeth together, "Now."

"Sorry, you lose!" In three monstrous gulps, Faye watched her coffee vanish from existence.

"Spike Spiegel, you disgust me."

"Thank-you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

Smiling fiendishly, Spike sauntered out, patting his appeased belly.

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"Get away Kid. Go on, shoo." Ed clung to the gun toting man's trouser leg.

"Can you take Edward home? Please?" Trying to shake her off proved to be in vain.

"How the hell should I know where you live? Now scat. Don't you know it's dangerous out on the night streets for little kids?" Huffily, Ed stood up on tiptoe and stretched her arms high above her head.

"Edward is not little! See? Hey, mister! Mwwah! You're not looking!" The man's attention was drawn away, across the pitch-black street. Following his line of sight, Edward saw another man, dappled in shadow and streetlight, with white blonde hair, tinged grey in the darkness.

Whispering hoarsely, Ed's companion said a single word, his voice barely masking his rising fear, so that it made the air tremble and hang expectantly-

"Vicious!"