Hey guys this chapter is already in. I don't know whether I should update as often or not. I might start slowing down because once chapter 7 starts, it gets into the actual plot (Yes there is a plot. I'm not building you up for nothing).

I know that most writers take a while before updating and I don't know if that affects the quality of my writing, but I feel like I've edited (as well as my beta reader) this chapter to death and if I don't post it I won't move on. By the way, I'm usually two chapters ahead, so it's not like I'm just coughing this up. Tell me what you think please!

Standard disclaimer applies.

Breaking Point

---6---

"What did you say?" He heard her voice echo from behind him.

"Come and get it." He repeated still walking away from her.

"That's it!" His body stopped, hearing her steps accelerating in his direction. The sounds of her hands jutting towards his neck alerted him and he swung his upper body off to the side watching Faye slightly slide forward and then quickly whipping back around to face him. The look on her face had transformed into that of a furiously alert predator. She truly wanted to kill him and he couldn't help but smile at that. She charged for him and aimed a punch for his face. He gracefully dodged it and it only seemed to fuel her attacks. She followed with several high kicks, kneeing, elbowing, and one choking attempt, all of which he evaded with ease. He found it easy to predict her attacks thanks to her lack of clothing which allowed him to see almost every muscle movement; nevertheless, she was surprisingly skilled and fast, so much that he had almost missed a few dodges no matter how easy she was to predict. It was time to take his fiery opponent seriously, so he began the swift dance coordinating his feet and hands in an offensive approach.

His eyes caught her smirk and the glitter in her emerald eyes as she swung another punch towards him. He effortlessly grabbed her arm and instead of her body tensing up, he felt it become extremely light as he tumbled down on his back pulling her weight over him. The moment he let go of her arm to let her fall, she pulled her weight up and did a back flip. He propelled himself up with a smile. She landed on her feet and immediately crouched down extending one leg and swinging it towards his feet. He jumped and quickly grabbed her arm once again and then the other as she stood up. With his strength and balance he could easily hold her tight as she tried to free herself. Her body suddenly stopped squirming and she deviously smiled at him. She intercepted a kick aimed at his face between both their bodies which Spike barely dodged. His eyes widened with amusement.

"I see you've been practicing." He commented, her leg seductively resting on his body, but he still refused to let go.

"I'm like wine." She smirked.

"An acquired taste?" He cocked an eyebrow.

"I get better with time." She pulled him towards her and flipped him on his back. She landed on a side split atop him, a highly compromising position. Refusing to budge on his grip of her arms, he rolled her to the side while she curled her leg in an attempt to knee him. Now she lay against the cold metal ground, his body hovering over hers.

"I win."

"Please, I had you pinned just two minutes ago."

"Keyword is had." He stared deeply at her now. Her emerald eyes had engulfed with him with their devious gleam and spark of life. He wanted that spark. He wanted to feel that desire and passion within her. She glared back at him with surprise as his face neared hers. Nothing his brain could tell his body would stop him from what he was about to do. Something within him had seized total control and all he could do was go along with it. It wouldn't have mattered how much his mind protested. His lips longed for hers and so he kissed her. The simplicity of the action had attracted him, overlooking the many complications this would muster up. Her red lips were warm, soothing, and she tasted a silky kind of sweet. He felt Faye kiss him back, her tongue approaching his hesitantly. Not a single thought evolved in his mind. Everything had suddenly vanished the minute had had been enveloped in her taste.

However, nothing good or simplistic can stay that way. He felt the cold metal gunpoint against the side of his head. The realization hit him like cold water that he had let her arms slither away and in that time she had pulled the gun from his pants. Their lips unlocked and a stoic expression fell on his face. She urged him with the gun to stand up and he did as she asked. He raised his hands while she glared at him viciously and perhaps a bit confused.

"You…" She uttered with a hint of resentment. "What the hell are you thinking?"

He shrugged and it only angered her more. It was the truth though, he had no idea what he was thinking. His body took over and the impulse acted on its own. He had never desired to kiss her before then and he didn't after it either.

"Why did you come back Spike?" He shrugged again. "I won't let you fuck with me." She pulled her gun from his head.

"I didn't mean anything by it. It just happened." He uttered, before he could wish he hadn't. She laughed at this and glared at him cynically.

"You really are something. You stride in here all smooth and careless, and then you pull that sick sad anxiety shit on me. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" He smirked. Man, she's a bitch.

"I came back as a courtesy. Some guy threatened you using my name. It pissed me off. I figured I'd straighten things out."

"Ah-huh," She licked her lips. "What a real gentleman you are. By the way Spike, those pills you're taking for your fits? Yeah, they're anxiety pills. I would have never guessed that you were done in the head. Your fits…they're fake." She paused with a cynical smile curling on her lips. "They're all in your head, because apparently you can't handle whatever it is you can't handle. They're called Non-Epileptic Seizures, but maybe you already knew that." She cocked her head to the side. "Are you having any delusions too? You seeing your dead relatives?" She chuckled. "Man, you really really are something."

His heart pounded like a thousand drums from the anger the flowed within him. She had hit a sore wound and he hated it. He snapped and decided to return the favor.

"What about you? You and your little sullen apartment, crying in a corner like a little girl and taking your sleeping pills so you can forget about it all." Her eyes immediately widened.

"You bastard." She aimed her gun at his head. "You spied on me! You were alive and spying on me! I could kill you." She shouted. His face had been glossed over with numbness.

"Do it." Her eyelids trembled. "If you want to do it so much, then do it." He said as his eyes fixated on hers. She pulled the trigger and the gun went off. Jet's head quickly peered from the lounge staring in disbelief.

"Oi, you two! What the hell is going on?" He yelled.

"Do you really wish you were dead that much?" The bullet had impacted the beam behind, only an inch away from the path to his head. She fixated her glare upon his mechanical eye, the one that could see the past according to him.

"I didn't ask to be brought back." He simply uttered.

"Neither did I!" A sullen and prideful Faye left for the hangar. Jet opened his mouth as if to say something, but he seemingly decided against it. He sighed exasperatedly and left Spike alone in the hall to deal with his inner turmoil. He lit a cigarette and stared blankly at the empty hall recalling Faye's furiously hurt eyes from a moment ago. That glint of emotion and passion had always resided in her verdant orbs. Carefree and passionate as well, that was Faye Valentine. He spit his cigarette out with a disgusted look on his face. He envied her. He had always disliked her because of that, because she had realized something when she awoke from her death that he had not. She wanted to live. Despite the fact that she had nothing, no memories, no past, nothing to live for, Faye was conceited enough to want to live for herself.

"Faye has something you don't." Julia interjected. Her figure walked down the hall like just another normal person deciding to join him for a chat.

"What would that be?" He had resigned to how real she always appeared to be.

"Faith. She has suffered just like everyone else. There aren't degrees of suffering, but different types. She has faith deep inside her that she was brought back for a reason and that's good enough for her. Why isn't for you?" She leaned against the cold metal wall with her tragic sapphire glare seeping into him.

"I guess because I never had a reason to live until you came along." She shook her head.

"All of us have wanted to die at some point in time. I stayed alive for you," she said.

"Don't you dare blame me!" Figures that the first time he would ever raise his voice at Julia would be when she was dead. Was she really saying what he thought she was? She stayed alive because it comforted him, but he made a choice. He chose to fight Vicious and it got the point where she couldn't stay alive anymore.

"Nothing you can do for a dead woman." She whispered and walked away fading into the distance.

He sighed. He hoped he would at least sleep that night.

They rushed into the house like roaches invading in the night. The other men searched for any documents and rampaged the house to shade their crime as a petty robbery. What they planned to do would be much worse than the damage they were already causing. Spike scouted out the smaller rooms, a predator searching for his prey in a cold calculated way. He scurried from room to room until he finally ended up in the bedroom at the end of the hall. Details of the room were vague. He could see a desk with large shelves attached and many books with little ornaments neatly placed for decoration. The twin bed had covers of some kind of light pastel color and a small doll at the head lying on the pillow.

Spike heard the cocking of gun and turned his head to the side. The man stood there in a corner, the shadows shielding his face.

"What do you want?" He aimed his weapon at Spike. "I won't do a thing for you syndicate bastards."

Spike woke up with groan. The dream had come again with the little sleep he would obtain from night to night. He yawned and lazily stretched his arms behind him hearing every joint from his spine to his knuckles crack. He winced, what else could he expect from the restless sleep? He scoffed, sure he was sleeping now, but it only made him feel even more tired than when he went to bed. Grabbing his metal cup and toothbrush, he headed for the bathroom. He figured that they would probably be en route back to Mars again. He ached to take a break from the Bebop by now. The last three weeks had been less than pleasant. After the incident with Faye, she had disappeared for a week and then had come back apparently with the sole purpose to aggravate him. They had already gone for two bounties and he had no idea why he had come along. The last thing he had wanted was to deal with her. Is this why I came back? He stared at himself in the small mirror Faye had hung there and shrugged.

After eating an orange for breakfast, he headed towards the bridge to see the progress of their course back to Mars. He passed by the stairs near the lounge spotting Faye sitting there filing her nails. The mere presence of her now irritated him, but before he could say something to annoy her back, Jet had entered into the lounge from the hall that led to the bridge.

"Oh good, you both are here." Jet said. Spike raised an eyebrow at him and Faye simply lifted her head to stare at the old comrade.

"What is it? How long until we get to Mars?" Faye asked tapping the nail filer against one of the rails on the staircase. Spike twitched.

"Would you stop that!" He shouted back at Faye.

"What the hell did I do?" She spat back.

"Hey!" Jet called to them, but both of them ignored him. "Hey! You two, enough!" Spike and Faye focused their eyes on the angry man. Spike noted Jet's squinting eyes and the curling of his mouth that he did when he felt irritated. The man was beyond annoyed. "I have had it with you two. You've been at it nonstop for two weeks!"

"Been at it?" Spike

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Faye commented and continued filing her nails. Jet's face contorted in such a way that Spike thought he would scream.

"You have no idea? What about the broken remote to begin with?"

Both Faye and Spike winced at that. Spike remembered quite well what had happened. He had simply wanted to watch some old classics, nothing that Faye could ever appreciate and she had suddenly interrupted him with some pretentious idea to watch the news.

"Hey, I was watching that!" Spike had shouted when she had taken the remote and changed the channel.

"I want to watch the news. We need to look out for bounties you know." Spike grumbled loudly and then snatched the remote back from her.

"I said, I was watching that." He changed it back to the kung fu channel. Faye pried the remote from him.

"And I don't care. I want the news." It changed back to the news.

"Figures that a woman like you could never appreciate Bruce Lee!" And then it changed back.

"Screw Bruce pissin Lee, I said news!" Then it changed again. Finally, the face off started and they both tugged at the remote until it snapped in two.

Spike had to admit that it had been a stupid senseless fight and he could see why Jet would be pissed. Nevertheless, it had all been Faye's fault, if she hadn't come and interrupted his show none of it would have happened.

"It was all his fault! We needed to watch the news and he wouldn't let me." Faye immediately defended herself. Spike grumbled and whined until Jet told them both to shut up once again.

"And that time with the damn coffee?" Jet muttered and Faye snickered. Spike twitched at the thought of the memory. It had been early in the morning and all he had wanted was some coffee. So he asked Faye for some coffee, she seemed cozy making it, and out of nowhere she threw a hot cup of it in his lap. Okay, so maybe he shouldn't have said he wanted some of her 'crappy' coffee, but still, she could have seriously injured him

"Can we help if she's psycho?" Spike simply commented.

"You asked for it!" Faye shouted and threw her nail filer at his head. Spike caught it and he mockingly filed his nails as well.

"Mattaku," was all that Jet could utter. "And let's not forget your constant fights over food."

At this Spike stood up and pointed menacingly at Faye. "She hid food from us! I simply took back what was rightfully mine!"

"Rightfully yours! I had one apple hidden. One apple! It doesn't excuse you running off with my plate of food and eating it in one swallow!"

"Unbelievable, what about you shrinking her clothes Spike?" Jet seemed frustrated at the fact he had to play daddy. Spike snickered at both this and the shrinking of Faye's clothing.

"It's not funny!" She yelled at him.

"Well, who the hell uses tumble dry? It was taking too long, so I was considerate and decided to speed up the process." Of course, by speeding up the process he had shrunken half of her clothes to one third of her size. "You'd probably still wear them."

"See, he's done horrible things to me none stop!"

"Faye, you bolted his ship to the hull of MY ship. That's taken some serious money and repairs." Jet ran a hand on his bald head. Spike nodded righteously and Jet glared at him. "You put coffee grind in her cockpit and her fuel tank."

"Hello, I think bolting of a ship caused much more damage than that." Spike replied in defense. He didn't know how the shrew had done it, but she had bolted the tail of his Swordfish II with a chain to the hull. When he tried to take off he fell backwards like a little bug scratching the hull fiercely and damaging parts of his ship.

"Jesus, I don't believe this. Less than a week ago, I thought things were looking up. You both working together for that bounty."

Spike smiled. That had been a good one. It was the only time in two weeks that Faye and he had cooperated in anything. They had found themselves in a lot of trouble over what should have been a simple catch. They had expected this bounty to be nothing too complicated. An embezzler that committed up to 100 million woolongs worth of fraud would probably turn out to be a nice scared boy in a suit looking for money to save him. But with that money, he had purchased some heavy muscle with a grand display of artillery to protect him. The Bebop crew had traced an old hidden account from which he bought an old mansion in Tijuana and they headed that way. Faye had charmed her way in, but soon after she found herself in the middle of crossfire.

Spike had rushed in the house shooting and dodging, trying to make his way to Faye. He finally stumbled upon her in a long hall. He sneaked up on her and she responded by aiming the gun at his head.

"You're late." She whispered and he smirked.

"I guess he wasn't into your kind of charm."

"No, he knew who I was. I'm becoming a little too popular in the bounty world." She responded calmly. She then suddenly pulled him off to the side and started shooting. He saw some men at the opposite side of the hall and started shooting at them. They stood back to back each shooting respectively at both ends of the hall.

They caught the bounty and the man was worth a total of 50 million woolongs, half of what he owed. After damages both Faye and Spike had cause mainly to each other the few days before, the expendable sum barely came to two million. Nevertheless, it had been their best bounty yet.

"But then, yesterday happened." Jet interrupted the memory, his brow twitching fiercely. "Because you two were bickering like an old married couple we let the bounty get away and Faye, you gambled most of the money we had left."

"I put myself in some serious risk for that money. I feel I earned it." Faye smiled and Spike only shook his head. Jet took a deep breath and sighed exasperatedly.

"I can't deal with this anymore. You either both get married and have an excuse for fighting, or you get off my ship before you blow it up!"

"I would never marry…" Spike and Faye said simultaneously.

"A good for nothing, lost in his misery, inconsiderate prick…"

"A slutty, one night stand, pretentious tomboy…"

"Like him!"

"Like her!"

Jet flailed his arms with frustration and left the lounge. Spike looked after him and ran his fingers through his frizzled dark hair.

"I think we pissed him off good." Faye commented standing and heading for the small fridge in the hall. She pulled out two cans of Pippu and handed one to Spike. Both of them barely noticed her gesture and he simply nodded to thank her. She sat across from him.

"Yeah, well, he's right we have been behaving like babies." He opened his can and took a sip. He almost choked and then laughed. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"What's so funny?"

He shook his head wiping the bit of soda that had escaped his lips. "You should have seen your face when you saw your clothes all shrunken up." Instead of handing him an angry retort, Faye Valentine laughed.

"You should have seen yours when I bolted your ship. I had touched your precious baby and you freaked like an old lady." They laughed in unison. After their laughter had ceased she stood up and began to walk towards the bridge.

"You know, we should buy some ginger tea." She said momentarily halting and turning back to face him.

"Tea?"

"Yeah, it will probably be better than those pills you're taking. I've always found it soothing."

"Yeah maybe." She smiled so sincerely that it caught Spike off guard. Her features had suddenly become so gentle and beautiful. His heart suddenly stopped and his eyes widened. Her brow furrowed and she glanced at him with sudden worry in her emerald orbs. She took a few steps back towards him.

"Hey Spike, what's wrong?" She asked. His eyes could only focus momentarily on her and then back at the figure walking towards them. Julia. It was the first time he saw Julia and Faye in the same room. For some reason, this disturbed him more than he could bear. "Spike!" She glanced behind her at the empty hall as if trying to catch a glimpse of what Spike was seeing. Julia smiled at him and then walked up the stairs to the cabin area. He sighed.

"What is wrong with you?" Faye tried to grasp his attention once again.

"It's nothing." He whispered.

"Then why?" She barely voiced, confused and lost as to what she had witnessed.

"I thought I saw Julia." Her eyes widened and she took a few steps back almost frightened by him.

"Don't be stupid and joke like that." She turned around and headed for her room. He heard the door slide open and then shut close.

My reactions never cease to amaze me.

Ch. 7 Preview:

His heart raced and his tremors threatened to resurface. He read the line written diabolically on the paper. It hadn't registered at first and after several times of re-reading it, Spike Spiegel swallowed hard, an ominous feeling mounting up in ball in his throat.

"There he is. The dead catch, Henri Reve." Jet muttered and Spike's eyes shot up towards the computer screen. The man's dark hair, eyes and the round features of his face registered immediately.

Did you guys mind the preview? It'll probably be the only time I'll do this. I just wanted to give you a little something, because it might take me more than a week to get the next chapter out just because I like staying two chapters ahead. Sorry it was such a long chapter. :D/

Thanks for reading!