pretending to be the supply warehouse of the nightclub. Aldebaran was more than just a pawn-mover, as he knew exactly his way around the warehouse, and without even looking, he turned the lights on.
"Nice place" Spike said.
"Thanks" Aldebaran answered, "okay, so when would you like to start?"
"You just say."
And Aldebaran did say.
Spike ducked Aldebran firsat hit, which finished smasing a wooden box.
Spike, still low, made a high kick to try to smash Aldebaran's face.
Aldebaran just picked his leg and threw it foward, sending Spike there
too. Spike balanced himself up immediately and went to give it a try
again. Aldebaran tried to hit him still, but Spike evaded and opnce
again tried to get his face, this time with his left fist. He did hit
him, but he barely tilted his head.
Aldebaran tried again to strike, but this time, as soon as he failed,
he sent his elbow to Spike's ribs, sending him a few steps behind. As
soon as Spike got himself together again, he started mixing punches
and kicks, but they all seemed to have short effect on Aldebaran.
'He isn't that toned-up' Spike complained to his mind, 'yet he seems like he can drill steel panels'. He tried to think about it while the fighting went on. That's when he thought of a plan. As the kicks and punches dragged on, he left him push him step by step. Finally, at the right point, Spike charged up a serious blow, Aldebaran did too, and when both hits were about to meet (Aldebaran's fist would certainly taer down Spike's), Spike pushed himself to his left, disappearing from Aldebaran's sight and making him smash another wooden box. But this he had hit so hard half of his right arm was stuck inside the box.
Spike took the chance and took the spin for a flying kick right on Aldebaran's head. Partly unconcious, Aldebaran stumbuled his arm out of the box and fell to the floor, with several empty Bloody Eye tubes falling over him.
He got up on his feet in a few seconds and charged to finish off Spike. Spike got a hold on Aldebaran's fist to impulse himself up and land behind him. Aldebaran once again charged against him, and this time too quick for Spike to evade. Another wooden box was broken, but this time Spike's back did the job.
Spike rolled to the left to evade getting up in front of Aldebaran.
Anyway, Aldebaran chased him to avoid him from getting up, and before
he could hit him, Spike jumped up to avoid a direct punch in the face.
When he could finally stretch, he quickly retracted due to a huge pain
near his stomach, where Aldebaran hit him the last time.
Spike tried to lead the attack this time, but once again his normal hits and kicks didn't seem to hurt him much. He made up another plan.
He avoided Aldebaran's punches abd then responded with a series of hits to the face and then a kick, while he was still confused for the hits. When he tried it for the first time, Aldebaran started to bleed down from the face and nose and started moving more clumsily. Spike wasn't in quite an advantage either, since too much stretching with his kicks worsened the pain from Aldebaran's last attack. He got to do it one last time before he made it to the point he couldn't risk another kick or he would be left uncapable to move. Just in that moment, Aldebaran started backing off, but not to run away.
"You got some good moves, lad" Aldebaran babbled out, "but there is a
reason why I'm here today. I'm just too strong a business to tear
apart. Even of you lock up all my man, as long as the merchandise
keeps moving, you'll have me here. And I got the motive right here.
He showed Spike a tool to apply the eye-consumption drugs. Then he
picked one of the Bloody Eye tubes left on the ground. Before Spike
could make an ingenious remark, Aldebaran was already appying the
Bloody eye to his right eye.
Jet got sick of the beating lights and shot one of them as a way of saying to the DJ to turn them off. The DJ got the message and the normal lights were back on in some seconds. Then, suddently, one man broke inside the door and pointed a gun at Jet's head. Jet stayed still, raised his arms, and dropped his guns.
"That's a good boy" the false bum said, "I want to see no more strange people messing with the party before it even starts."
"Start with this!"
Jet ducked and, by the time the bum fired his pistol, Jet was already
grabbing his arm and he threw him foward. The bum, turning in mid-air,
landed on his face. The blood started to flow from his mouth to the
ground when Jet picked him up and starte looking for some answers.
"Where are the drugs?" he asked yelling staright to his right ear.
"Don't know!!" the bum shouted.
"Sorry, couldn't haer that one right" he said and send the guy's head to collision with his forehead, then let him fall. He watched not to step on him and went down to the end of the hall, where Spike had gone.
Spike was backing off this time, but he was trying avoid Aldebaran. He had never dealed with a guy that was using the Bloody Eye, and if it made him more strong than what he already was, that meant no good.
Aldebaran was indeed a bit more fast and strong, but now he had a slower reaction to things, as he seemed a bit clumsy when he chased Spike and couldn't cut corners in time. With that in mind, Spike got another idea, this time to wipe him out. Getting the best of his footworrk, he lost Aldebaran long enough to get above the piles of boxes. Confused, Aldebaran searched freneticaly around.
Then, in the right moment, he would jump back down and make a kick in front of Aldebaran, surprising him. And he wouldn't be able to react on time to avoid it.
That was the plan. Plans and reality don't match this time. Why? Jet.
Just in the moment he had Aldebaran where he wanted, Jet showed up at
the entrance, just to the left of where Aldebaran was standing. So,
when Jet said "Hey!" and got Aldebaran's attention, Spike made his
kick in the wrong place, only taking him down, but not knocking him
unconcious.
However, Aldebaran's fall made him hit the wooden box at the bottom of the pile, making a whole column go down. Spike bearly made it out in time.
The Zodiac Nightclub and the street that lead to it were the only
affected sites, but the whole satellite was closed down by the ISSP.
Jet and Spike tried to get ahead of it and turned the guy to the
police booth near the terminal, took the money, and took off.
Maybe something Spike didn't notice at the time was that the bounty had been cut half due to the huge disturbance caused, besides the fact that Jet had blown off a couple of walls with the grenade. Checking out all the expenses, Jet and Spike had made some lousy 1,376,000 woolongs for the guy. The only thing Spike ever noticed was the fine for taking the BeBop inside Cosmos.
With that, the bounty at the other side of the system was just worth 756,320 woolongs.
Back at the BeBop, Jet finally decided to leave aside his coffee-time existencialism chats and fall for some sleep. Spike went to the cockpit to meditate, but before that, he picked Jet's thermus flask of coffee and threw it to the trash can, with anything that Jet used or could use to make more.
"Buddy" Spike murmured to Jet when he was already sleeping, "smoking is already too bad a habbit for you. Let's leave it that way".
A.J