Knockin' On Heaven's Door

Part One

Jet programmed the Bebop to go down for a landing in the water around New York City. It was technically New New York City, seeing as the city was now in Africa, the only fully-functional continent left on Earth. But no one called it that.

Spike and Jet were playing shogi. Well, Jet was. Spike was too sleepy to concentrate.

"Move, already." Spike said, slumped in his seat. I was sprawled in the pilot's chair, watching as the New York bay came up to meet us.

"I can't just move." Jet said. "Shogi is a game that is meant to test a person at their core. Their reactions, their moves, their thoughts!"

"I try not to think." Spike lazily remarked.

"Obviously." Jet replied.

Ein hopped up on the planning table Jet had converted into a shogi board. He moved one of Jet's pieces to the side.

"Yes! That's it!" Jet exclaimed. "I'd love to see you counter-"

Spike was asleep.

"-that." Jet said, quietly.

He walked up next to my seat, watching the view.

"I can't believe you thought he would stay awake." I said.

Jet laughed. "Shogi just isn't his thing, huh?"

"Nah, never has been. I'll play you sometime, just-"

A beeping came from one of the computers next to my seat. I tapped a few buttons, and a small rectangle showing a pretty woman appeared.

"Faye!" I said, jumping up in my seat.

"Hey, hon. The races were a loss, as usual." she said.

"When aren't they?" I remarked, knowing full well that Faye was really just a terrible gambler. "Hey, we've got a nerdy bountyhead for you to grab along the way back. Five mil. Sound good?"

She smiled. "I'll have him in a flash."

I heard Faye playing "Pretty With a Pistol" on her ship's sound system.

"Oh, and Faye?"

She looked up at the screen.

"Yeah?"

"Listen to more jazz. That pop stuff will get you nowhere."

She laughed, and turned off her communicator.

I headed into the living room, grabbing my guitar along the way. I played until Spike sleepily stumbled back into the room. He sat on the couch and rubbed his eyes.

"Have a nice sleep?"

Spike smiled. "It got me out of playing shogi, didn't it?"

I laughed.

Spike flipped the television on, and the local news was reporting something about an explosion on the highway. A chemical agent had been released, apparently, and people three kilometers away were dropping dead.

Jet rushed into the room. He had heard.

We were glued to the television until Faye strolled in. At the time, we were eating noodles; noodles were a large part of our diets at this point.

"What happened to the bounty?" Jet asked.

"Oh, it got all screwed up. You don't wanna know." Faye replied. I kissed Faye, lit up her cigarette, and lit up one of my own, before throwing my noodles away.

She caught sight of the television and sped over to it.

"Whoa, that made the news?" she exclaimed.

All of us jumped back.

"There was a poisonous chemical agent in there!" Jet yelled.

"Germ girl, Faye-Faye! Stay away-way!" Ed said.

"I was in my ship at the time, I'm not infected!" Faye said.

We relaxed.

She tackled Spike. "...or was I?"

We scrambled around the room, trying to get away from her. Judging from the laughing, we figured out pretty quickly that she was kidding.

After calming down, Ed collected video footage from the camera on Faye's ship. She scanned through it while Faye told us what happened.

Apparently, Faye had been tracking the bounty's truck- a tanker- but another man came out of it, a very different man. He blew up the tanker, and disappeared.

"What did he look like?" Spike asked.

"I've got it!" Ed yelled. We looked over at the screen.

There was a low-quality shot of a man with long, scraggly, black hair, and eyes that had to have a story behind them. His forearm was covering half of his face, and on that forearm was a tattoo of a sword in the middle of a circular arrangement of leaves. Some words were written just below the tattoo, but they weren't visible in the shot.

The words were in Latin. The words, "Vincit Omnia", meant "Conquers All". A tattoo was applied to the forearm of any Special Forces soldier from the Titan conflict.

I only knew all of this because I had the very same tattoo.

No one appeared to notice the tattoo; they were focused on the man's face.

"Great shot, Faye." Jet said, sarcastically. "I can definitely identify him now."

"Well, I saw him perfectly." Faye said.

Ed brought up another program, and handed Faye a pencil.

"Faye-Faye, draw! Use the magic pencil!" Ed exclaimed.

Faye picked up the pencil, and looked at the screen. "Well, alright." she said, and went to work.

While Faye drew, the rest of us watched "Big Shot" on television.

They announced a three hundred million Wulong bounty for the terrorist who caused the attack.

All of us went silent. We were stunned.

"Uh, Faye, are you done with the drawing?" I asked. The sooner we got information on this guy, the better.

She moved aside. The drawing didn't reveal any features we couldn't see in the picture. The quality of it didn't help, either.

"Well." Spike said. "If anyone can catch him with that picture, I'll pay you the bounty."

Jet was having a hard time stifling his laughter. I had a grin on my face.

"Well, folks, that's it for today's episode of 'Wasting Time With Faye"!" Jet said.

She stormed out. "You two go ahead and laugh. I'm gonna go find that nerd."

Jet stood up and headed for the hangar. "Bob's gonna meet me at the drive-in anyway. I'll ask him about it." he said.

Spike followed him. "Yeah, I'll do some digging."

I thought about the tattoo. "I... have some stuff to take care of." I said.

Spike waved, and I waved back.

I went into the bathroom that Faye and I shared. I rolled up my sleeve, and looked long and hard at my tattoo. It was the exact same tattoo that the terrorist had.

What bothered me was, each squad on Titan had their own specific tattoo. He was in the squad that Vicious and I had captained. But who was he? There were only a few people that I remembered: Vicious, Gren, Electra...

Colonel Electra Ovirowa... she was my second-in-command, and my first love. We had broken some serious rules due to our relationship, during the war.

But while she loved me, there was another man that she cared for. Another man in the squad.

"My God..." I breathed.

Vincent. It was him.

I didn't have any hard evidence that the bomber was Vincent, but in my gut I knew it to be true. The man was a very, very skilled combatant, and midway into the Titan effort, our higher-ups recruited him for "special training", the same kind that had made Vicious and I almost superhuman. Ever since Titan, I had never tapped into those abilities. I secretly resented them.

When Vincent came back, his anger about the experiments that had been performed on him had made the man a real danger. He killed another man in our squad for no apparent reason, according to him. But Electra stuck with him, breaking my heart in the process.

Titan. Almost every problem in my life stemmed from that goddamned war.