A/N I still hope I remember how to do this... Hey everyone! Sorry I've been away for a while, I got really busy. And even when I had free time, I didn't feel like doing this. Putting out a chapter every month was draining my creative juices. Now that I've had some time to breathe, I'm ready to put out more chapters. I'm really busy still so I don't when the next one will be, but hopefully it'll be soon. Thank you for sticking with me! I still really want to see this story through. Oh and happy new year!
Eleanor Veidt sat with her legs curled up on the couch and a glass of wine in her right hand. She was in her apartment, still reeling from the night Marius Basque was assassinated. He was never a reasonable man, quite immoral in fact, but she never really knew why she stayed. Eleanor herself had some skeletons in the closet after working for Basque for years. After everything she didn't know how she really felt about it; was she supposed to mourn? That sort feeling has to come naturally so Eleanor didn't force it.
It was raining outside, the Ganymede sky was gloomy and the air was thin with a cold breeze. She desperately wanted to be back on Mars. Eleanor decided to stay inside all day with the lights dimmed. The company was on a hiatus; she was killing time before things started up and running again. Outside of her apartment she heard elevator doors ding, meaning someone had arrived on her floor. Eleanor sipped her wine and suddenly heard a multiple footsteps on the other side of her wall. They stopped in front of the door. Eleanor stared suspiciously at the door and put down her wine glass on the coffee table. As she continued to stare at the door someone on the other side knocked. Eleanor tensed up and quickly stood up. Breathing uneasily Eleanor reached to the armchair on her right and grabbed her purse. She opened it and took out a pistol and an ammo clip. She slid the clip inside the gun, cocked it, and put it behind her in the waist of her skirt. There was another knock at the door. "Coming." she said. Eleanor walked up to the door and looked through the peephole. She saw one man standing there, but it was so dark she couldn't tell who it was. Eleanor unlocked the door but left the chain lock alone. She opened the door until the chain stopped it from going further. Eleanor looked at the man and said "Yes, can I help you?"
The man standing on the other side of the door was Lee. He straightened his tie and smiled. "Eleanor Veidt?" said Lee. Eleanor suddenly gasped and tried to shut the door. But then Andre suddenly stopped it. Eleanor backed away from the door and grabbed the pistol from her back. Andre pushed the door with his shoulder and broke the chain lock. Eleanor removed the safety and clicked back the hammer of the gun. Lee passed Andre, rapidly stepped forward and grabbed Eleanor from her wrists. Eleanor began panicking and tried shooting the gun. But Lee squeezed her wrists until she let go of the gun. The pistol dropped to the carpeted floor and Eleanor struggled to get out of Lee's hold. She was about to cry out for help.
"Eleanor, think about this rationally sweetheart." said Lee with a pseudo-relaxing voice.
Andre, Shiro, and another Red Dragon member walked inside the apartment and shut the door behind them.
"What the hell do you want Lee?!" she shouted.
"I just want to offer you your old job back, that's all. I didn't come here to hurt you." he said with a menacing grin.
Eleanor continued struggling. "You're lying! The minute I saw your face behind my door I knew you killed him!" she said.
"Very perceptive Eleanor, I guess that's why you're good at your job."
"Let go of me!"
Lee released his grasp around Eleanor's wrists. He backed up and waited for Eleanor to calm down. She bent over and put her hands on her knees, breathing uneasily.
"You… you killed him… and for what? Revenge?" said Eleanor.
"It's more complicated than that I can assure you." said Lee.
"You're a monster Lee."
"Come now Eleanor, don't put on the helpless, innocent woman act. We both know you've done some vile things."
Eleanor's breathing became steady. She stood up straight, glaring at Lee. "What do you know?" she asked.
"Enough to blackmail you." said Lee with a smirk.
Eleanor and Lee sat across from each other with the coffee table in between them. The other Red Dragon members stood around Lee. Lee put up his elbows on the armrests and interlocked his fingers, staring at Eleanor who uncomfortably had her arms crossed.
"Alright, well spit it out Lee." said Eleanor.
"Very well. You did quite a bulk of work for Basque; you had a hand in managing accounts, finances, communications, distribution, and so on. You are very knowledgeable of the company. Now that Basque is gone and Russ is just some figure-head, we're going to need you to do the same things that you did for Basque, for us." said Lee.
"That's it? You don't know how to handle a business so you come to me?"
"I'm perfectly capable of that, but you see everything that needs to start running again needs you. I am not trying to start this company up from scratch again. We need what's already available."
"So… you just want me to do my job again?
"Exactly."
Eleanor rubbed her forehead and sighed. "I… I guess I can do that." she said. She looked Lee right in the eyes. "But, how can you not feel strange that you murdered my boss and tell me to work for you? That's just wrong."
"I'm sure you'll get over it. I know you're used to these kinds of things, Basque wasn't exactly a law abiding citizen."
"Yeah but… you… you killed him, I knew him-"
"Eleanor, please don't tell me that you actually cared about Basque."
"I… I…" stuttered Eleanor. She sighed.
"No… you hated him, didn't you?" said Lee.
"I was right of college with a bunch of debts and no money, he-
"Yes, but Marius was a monster. I should know, it was like looking in a mirror."
"If you're just like him, then why should work for you?"
"Because when this is all said and done, I'm going to let you go. Unlike Basque who kept you trapped for too long."
Eleanor had a surprised look on her face. "What? You're just going to let me go?"
"Eventually. I don't need you for that long; just enough to get lift us off the ground and instruct Shiro here. When that's done, you are free to go." said Lee.
Eleanor noticed she was holding her breath and exhaled.
"I'm not completely unreasonable. I'm not going to keep someone around who doesn't want to be here. Those kinds of people become too problematical to deal with, and it only ends horribly. You see these men behind me? They want to be here. They are Red Dragons, and Ms. Veidt you are not. That's why this isn't a bond that will last." said Lee.
Eleanor was still uneasy about the whole situation and even petrified. But that was the life she chose, there was no turning back. The least she could do is see this through and she would be free in no time, so she decided to accept Lee's offer.
"Alright Lee… I'll work for you. But only because the sooner I agree to this the sooner you'll leave me alone." she said.
Lee smirked devilishly. "That's the spirit, Ms. Veidt." Lee stood up from the armchair. "Now, I will contact you in a couple of days. Don't worry, it'll be by phone, us barging in here won't be a regular thing."
"Well how nice of you," said Eleanor sarcastically, "By the way who's going to pay for my door?"
Andre took out his wallet from his back pocket, shelled out a couple of woolongs and dropped them onto the coffee table. "Sorry about that." said Andre.
The Red Dragons headed toward the door. Lee stopped in front of the door. He turned to look at Eleanor. Eleanor looked up from the floor and back at Lee.
"Just for the record, I didn't kill Basque with my own hands. It was another 'employee' of his. Perhaps you know him?" said Lee with a smirk. "Seems like Basque didn't know what kind of powder keg he was sitting on." Lee turned around and opened the door. All of the Red Dragons walked out of Eleanor's apartment and closed the door.
Eleanor sat in complete silence, reeling from what just happened. She was thinking about what Lee had said before left just now. It wasn't supposed to be cryptic; she felt that Lee made it very obvious. Then the thought came into her head, her eyes wide open, "Demetrius." She was hoping never to see him again. But she also wondered why Lee would reveal that to her. Truly the Red Dragons were not afraid of her.
Faye walked up to a bar and pushed the door open. She stepped inside and looked around. The only thing she saw were drunken men inside snickering and gawking at her. Faye then stared at a man with his head planted in his arms at the bar counter, sitting on a stool. She smirked and walked toward him. Faye sat in the stool next to him, put her elbow on the counter and rested her chin on her palm. She turned her eyes and tapped the man on the shoulder. "Hi." she said seductively. The man lifted up his head from his arms and looked at Faye. "Huh?" he said with a drunken expression. Faye winced as she recognized the man. He was the guard that she flirted with at Basque's event.
"Oh, you're that woman." said the guard. He laughed and hiccuped from the alcohol in his system. "I'm glad you're here sweetheart, I was getting awfully lonely." he said reaching over to grasp Faye from her arm.
Faye scowled in disgust. "Alright new approach." she said. She removed her gun from its holster and slammed it across the guard's face. The guard fell off his stool and flew back against the wall. The patrons of the bar stood up to see what was happening. Faye turned her gun to the crowd and yelled "Mind your damn business! Me and this guy have to talk!" The patrons sat back down quietly, afraid of being shot. Faye reached and grabbed the guard from his collar. Pressing the muzzle of the gun under his chin she said "Alright come with me!"
"You crazy wench! What do you want from me?" said the guard.
"It's about the other night, now come on!" said Faye.
Later on Jet was at the far end of an inner city by the sea. He leaned on his Hammerhead with a cigarette in his metal hand. He looked up and saw Faye's Redtail descending. She landed her ship close to his and exited out of the pod. Faye slammed the pod door shut and walked up to Jet. She gestured toward Jet for a cigarette. Jet reached for his carton inside his pocket waved it front of Faye. Faye grabbed a cigarette and lit it.
"How'd it go?" asked Jet.
Faye puffed the cigarette and inhaled the smoke. She exhaled and said "It could've gone better, he recognized me."
"Huh?" said Jet scratching his head.
"He was that guard I teased to get into Basque's building."
Jet chuckled. "See that kind of behavior does come back to bite you." he said with a smirk.
"Well anyways, it worked out better in the end. Pointing a gun at him was much faster than flirting information out of him."
"What'd you get?"
"I don't think he knew Demetrius was there other night. But he did know him."
"Really? Anything useful?"
Faye explained that the guard said that Basque and Demetrius had a long history together. Demetrius worked for Basque for years, hired to be there when back-door deals went wrong. Demetrius would take care of people who stole from Basque, tried selling his weapons in the black market, taking shop in his territory, or didn't pay Basque on time. And in rare instances take down someone who was in politics and getting in the way. But not Senator Moore. Although Demetrius's bounty was on the basis that he assassinated the senator, the guard revealed to Faye that it was not Demetrius. Demetrius was framed by Basque.
"What? Demetrius was framed? Man, this thing's a big mess." said Jet.
"You're telling me! If Demetrius didn't kill that senator then is the $25 million still going to count?!"
"Take it easy Faye! Look, we're getting the reward for bringing him in. If he didn't commit the crime, then that's the police's problem, not ours."
"Police's problem, huh? Then wouldn't it be your girlfriend's problem too? That's not very chivalrous."
Jet growled. "I don't see why get such a kick out of toying with me Faye; you and Spike can be so infuriating." he said. "I'm going back to the Bebop." Jet threw his cigarette and stomped it. He climbed up the ladder of his Hammerhead into the pod.
"Don't get all huffy Jet, I'm with you on this." said Faye.
Jet mumbled to himself.
"Wait speaking of Spike, what's he been doing?" asked Faye.
"Absolutely nothing." said Jet. He closed the pod and started up his Hammerhead.
"Hmm…" said Faye to herself. The Hammerhead and Redtail flew off, back to The Bebop.
Jet entered inside the main room through the unnecessarily small door and Faye following close behind. Spike sat on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table. He turned his head to look at Jet and Faye walking inside.
"Yo." said Spike nonchalantly.
Jet scoffed and ignored Spike. He continued down the steps and into his quarters. Faye crossed her arms as she watched Jet brush Spike off.
"It never ceases to amaze me how you two could go from drinking buddies one day and be complete babies the next." said Faye.
"I'm not the one who stomped out of the room. I tried doing the right thing and said hi." said Spike.
Faye kept her arms crossed and looked at Spike. "You only did it to spite him." she said.
"If that's how you want to look at it." said Spike shrugging his shoulders.
Faye sighed. She sat next Spike on the couch and crossed her arms behind her head. "What've you been up to all day?"
"This. Not much else to do." said Spike flatly.
Faye turned her head and gazed at Spike. "Spike… are you feeling okay?" she asked tenderly.
Spike gave her a confused look. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?" he said defensively.
"Just a few weeks ago you were itching to get out of this tin can and now you're just cooped up in here all day?"
Spike sighed. "There's nothing out there for me."
"You could help Jet and I with this bounty, it's going to get pretty tough."
"You two are underestimating yourselves. What'd you guys do when I was in a coma?"
"Well, we went for really easy bounties. A lot of them. But it eventually added up."
Spike looked directly into Faye's eyes. "This one won't be easy. Don't go after Demetrius." he said.
A few days later Shiro and Lee walked through a warehouse filled with weapons and ammunition inside wooden boxes. Shiro was taking inventory of all of them. Lee was preparing to send them to Mars for Dodge and the rest of the Red Dragon members. Eleanor Veidt got Lee the transportation method to send it. A hauling company that had been with Basque for years. Soon enough Lee would have control over all the shipments through Veidt and contracts through Leandro Russ.
Eleanor walked into the warehouse. She looked around, startled by the amount of crates were in there. She walked down the long concrete path, with the sound of her clicking high heels echoing throughout the warehouse and bouncing off the walls. Lee heard this and turned to see her walking toward Shiro and him.
"Ah, Ms. Veidt, I have to thank you again. All of this couldn't have been done without you." said Lee, smirking with his teeth.
Eleanor kept looking around as she got to where they were standing. "Lee, this is all going to one place?" asked Eleanor.
Lee shrugged his shoulders. "Well they're going to multiple places on Mars but one, you could say, organization."
Eleanor raised an eyebrow and sealed her mouth tight. "What organization would that be?" she asked suspiciously.
"Do the math Eleanor." said Lee in a pandering tone.
Eleanor crossed her arms and kept her eyebrow raised. "Is it your Red Dragons on Mars?"
"It's not that obvious, is it?"
"Well you're sending them to multiple addresses, on paper I think you're safe."
"No one will suspect anything." said Shiro as he continued to write down the product information.
Eleanor took the files from her briefcase. She shifted through them. "Okay Shiro, what are some of these places? My transport company didn't recognize any of them."
"They're fake business fronts I created. They're really just abandoned buildings that I rented out under a pseudonym."
"Okay, that covers up who gets them but these shipments will still be traced back from us."
"That's where the hauling company database becomes useful."
Shiro showed Eleanor the electronic device that was in his hand. He pressed a button and relayed a presentation. Four rectangular outlines which represented the delivery ships displayed on the screen.
"See here, when our shipments are entered into their database I'm able to pull them from the system and they vanish, almost like the shipments never existed." said Shiro. He pressed another button and an animation played: square boxes that represented shipments hovered onto the delivery ships and disappeared. "I fill them with legitimate shipments so they delivery ships still have something in them, making it less suspicious." The animation continued and the squares that represented legitimate shipments filled up the rectangles that represented delivery ships.
Eleanor raised her eyebrow and looked straight at Shiro. "You hacked into the hauling company's database?" she said.
Shiro shrugged his shoulders. "Do you want to get caught?" he said.
"No, but the hauling company is going to be upset about this."
Lee interjected. "Shiro's very keen on these type of things, I wouldn't worry about them finding out."
Eleanor sighed. "Well that's one way to do it, Basque used to bribe the delivery guys, they were on a payroll… along with many, many other people."
"Now we get to keep some of that money." said Shiro.
Lee turned to Eleanor. "Now, you keep the hauling company in the dark about us, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah I already know you guys don't want to get caught." said Eleanor.
"See, you're coming around." said Lee with a grin.
The shipments took a few days but they finally arrived on Mars. Lee had called Dodge to give him a head's up. Dodge was anticipating the shipments to be weapons, at least he really hoped they would be. Dodge opened the door to an abandoned building. He turned on a flashlight and walked inside. Five other Red Dragon members walked in behind him with their flashlights on as well. Dodge located the wooden boxes in the middle of the room. He shined his flashlight on the stacked boxes. They all walked up toward them and stopped to examine them. Dodge handed his flashlight to one of the men next to him and another handed him a crowbar. Dodge inserted the crowbar underneath the lid of the box that was on top as the flashlights helped him see. The wooden lid separated from the box and made a cracking sound. Dodge put the crowbar and the lid on the ground. He looked inside the box and smirked. He reached inside and got a heavy machine gun. He turned around to the men and showed off the weapon with a devilish smirk. The men started cheering with "yeah's" and one even whistled.
"Is it someone's birthday?" said Dodge sarcastically. The men chuckled.
"For the man who has everything." one of them commented.
Dodge put the weapon back inside the box and hammered down the lid with the crowbar. "Alright, we got a couple more places with shipments just like these. Now come one and lift these things onto the truck." The men put away their flashlights and lifted the shipments outside the door. Dodge watched with a sinister grin. "Wait'll Blue Snake gets a load of this."