Chapter 1 – Life is a Wild Ride, Baby
"Like I said, we gotta ration out this food, it's our only meal until we can catch something!"
"Then just let me eat it. We'll catch something soon, I promise, but I'm starving!"
Amidst the two people fighting, a robot let out a sigh.
"Listen here, cat, I earned this free meal ticket by being a loyal to Boobies, if you want a free meal, then you can go earn your own!"
"Well, if you're going to make promises, at least tell me you have a target in mind before you proceed to starve me to death."
The robot finally spoke up, "Dandy was thinking about getting that rare alien that was stolen from some facility."
"Yeah, it's gotta be worth a ton of woolongs!" Dandy chimed in.
"But isn't that thing with the most elusive group of criminals ever? I can't really take that as a guarantee. So hand over some of that food!" Meow demanded.
"Dandy, just give him some of your food, we really don't have any leads on this thing, or anything else right now for that matter."
Dandy sighed in defeat, "Whatever QT, how hard can it be to track this thing down?"
"The probability of finding the thieves ourselves is one in three billion, not even the best of the best on the police force have any clue about them whatsoever. They're perfect criminals."
During these three's exchange, a waitress came to set a glass of water on the table. As she walked away, Dandy gave her a passing glance from behind, not even listening to the second half of whatever QT was saying.
"Listen! Why don't we try to find something easier to catch first. I really doubt we're gonna find wherever this rare specimen is being kept."
"Hey, QT. Check out the babe over there." Dandy, still ignoring his robot friend, pointed across the restaurant at a woman sitting alone.
While Dandy was distracting himself, Meow stole some of his food for himself. QT, being irritated about getting ignored, decided not to warn Dandy. Now munching down, Meow tried to get Dandy's attention, "Hey man, let's go back to the ship and listen to what QT's saying, huh?"
Meanwhile, the woman sitting alone was growling into a headset of some sort. Of course, Dandy and the gang being quite some distance away couldn't really tell this.
But the woman was definitely irritated.
"Hey, Ed, are you sure one of them is going to be here?"
"Yup, yup, yup!" came the response, "I'm absolutely, entirely positive that someone from Volnus is on lunch break here!"
The woman still had doubts though. As great as her friend was at gathering information, the world was positive there wasn't any on Volnus. But it didn't hurt to try.
Dandy, Meow, and QT were just about to leave Boobies. They passed by the table of the lone woman, and only vaguely heard the mention of Volnus. Interested as they may be, though, they continued to stroll on out and head for their ship.
However, right before they left, a loud sound rang through the building. The sound was followed by screams and the sound of people ducking under tables, then a man shouting. The sound was undoubtedly a gunshot.
"Alright you little punks, this place belongs to Volnus now!" the man shouted and fired another shot into the ceiling. Everyone silenced themselves as the man held the gun at his waist and started to walk about the restaurant.
"So that guy is part of the elusive group?" Dandy asked aloud, though quiet, as he peaked around the corner.
Meow was the one to reply, "Not very elusive, is he?"
As Meow said this, a bullet grazed one of his ears. The feline creature, now frozen in fear, stared in the direction from which the bullet came from.
"You over there, get on the floor! I'll kill ya' without hesitation, I swear!" the man claiming to be a member of Volnus threatened. Dandy, Meow, and QT slowly moved away from their corner and his underneath a table, as most of the patrons were doing.
The table they hid under happened to be next to the lone woman from earlier, as well.
"Damn, it's just another imposter." the woman hissed under her breath.
"Hey old man!"
"..."
"Hey, you! Get on the floor before I blow your goddamn brains out!"
"..."
The fake Volnus member was pointing his gun at the back of another man's head. The man was wearing a raggedy, brown coat and had a hat sitting next to his meal on the table. He didn't seem too concerned about the gun being pointed at him, but that was because virtually everyone looking at him was only seeing him from behind.
In reality, this man was scared out of his wits, but he put up a brave front, slowly calculating.
The man did, after all, have a pistol equipped to his thigh. The question came down to whether or not he was confident enough to draw it, or if he'd be able to draw it faster than the criminal behind him could pull the trigger.
In the end, the man slumped down on the floor, taking his hat with him and concealing the pistol under his coat. After situating himself under the table, the criminal scoffed and turned away to look at the other patrons crouching under their tables.
"All clear!" the criminal shouted, and soon three people exited a back room carrying bags of cash and goods. The criminal laughed and ran over to his partners to check the loot they had obtained.
The man with the old coat pulled out his pistol and quietly aimed it towards the criminals.
"Hey, boss, look out!" a portly member of the gang called out, pointing towards the man with the pistol. The criminal who started it all quickly turned on his heel and aimed his gun where his partner pointed. Soon, all the criminals had guns pulled out and were aiming it in that direction.
The man with the pistol broke out in a cold sweat. Acting quickly, he turned the table above him over and used it as a shield as bullets were now flying towards him.
"You aren't really Volnus, anyone who's been paying attention would know that!" the man shouted to try and throw off the criminals.
"Ha, so you caught me," the criminal said nonchalantly and with no hint of surprise, "The name is Alex Roller, old man."
"Well, Alex Roller..." the man dragged out his words, trying to stall for time, and also trying to catch the criminals off-guard, "You're..."
The man jumped out from behind the table and began firing at the criminals, "Under arrest!" Bullets began flying back and forth as the man was charging for his next place of cover.
"So, you're a cop, are you old man?"
"Inspector Zenigata, currently working with the bounty division on the case of Volnus."
While all this commotion was going on, Dandy whispered to his friends, "Hey, while that's going on we can slip outta here."
It was true they were very close to the exit where they were, but QT and Meow were too scared to move at the moment.
However, the woman beside them had already moved under tables multiple times. Instead of planning an escape, though, she seemed to be inching towards the criminals.
"Whoa, is she planning to take them on?" Meow asked in disbelief.
"I guess so."
"That's crazy!" QT exclaimed.
Dandy and Meow hushed the robot in unison.
More bullets and gun smoke filled the air.
The woman was now under a counter, mere feet away from the criminals.
The following happened in the blink of an eye.
The woman had made her way close enough to the criminals to jump out and kick the portly one in the back of the head. The man dropped to the floor, his gun sliding under a table some distance away. She then took another criminal in a headlock and aimed his gun at the Alex Roller's last partner. The partner aimed back at the woman showing no mercy for his comrade, and Inspector Zenigata got closer and aimed at Alex Roller, who in turn aimed back at Zenigata.
And the scene froze there.
"Drop the guns." Zenigata commanded. Alex Roller clenched his teeth and tightened his grip on the gun in his possession. While Roller was focused on Zenigata, the woman pulled the trigger of the gun she had in her grip, sending a bullet straight through the partner's shoulder causing him to drop his gun. Then the woman proceeded to knock out the guy in her headlock and take the gun for herself, aiming it at Alex Roller.
"D-damn..." Roller swore.
Zenigata had a huge smirk on his face as he spoke to the woman, "Thank you, Miss. You've been a huge help."
"No problem." the woman responded.
Zenigata looked back at Roller, and signaled him to drop the gun. Roller was hesitant at first, but he loosened his grip and let the gun fall to the floor as he put his arms in the air.
The patrons, waitresses, cooks, everyone in the restaurant stood up and cheered for the two who had taken down the dangerous criminals. Dandy, Meow, and QT let out a sigh of relief as they quietly slipped out.
"I don't think I caught your name." Zenigata sad to the woman.
"Faye," was the woman's response. "Just a bounty hunter."
"Then help me get this guy to a station or something and I'll give you a reward for your assistance."
"Sounds great."
–
Dandy and the gang had boarded their ship, slightly disappointed by the day's events.
"Guess it was just an imposter after all."
"Had to have been. They didn't match the description of Volnus at all, they definitely don't act as openly as that guy did."
"So what now?"
"Guess we'll go figure out something to hunt down. We did use the only meal ticket I had. Any leads, QT?"
"None."
Dandy slumped into his seat and moaned in irritation.
–
On the Bebop ship, after Faye had received her reward.
"I hope you're planning to share that. We're kinda running empty around here." a tall, thin man jabbed as Faye stepped on board.
"No way, Spike. I got this money through my own hard work, it's mine."
"Figures."
"So what now?" a larger man asked the crew. "Ed?"
The girl named Ed was surfing through her computer on new leads. "We could always head to the next Boobies!" she giggled. "Volnus mostly targets Boobies."
"So we'll head to the next one. Sound good, Jet?" Faye asked the larger man.
"It shouldn't be too far from here. Hey, maybe we'll run into another imposter and make a little pocket cash off them again."
"In that case, I'm going in next." Spike announced.
–
Back at the Boobies where the shoot-out had just occurred. Two girls were talking to the manager of the particular venue.
"We'll need a report on all the damages here before we can help you, you know."
"Yes, yes." the manager responded to the smaller of the two girls. The other girl was as tall as a building in comparison. "Most of the damage was done to the tables, luckily, but they did beat up some of our kitchen supplies. I'll get someone on inventory as well to make sure we still have everything after they were caught."
While this conversation was going on, a waitress was attending to a customer who had just walked in. Even after seeing the aftermath of the earlier chaos, this person still sat down at an open table and a waitress nervously took his order.
This person, with blonde, spiky hair and a red coat looked over all the damage and soon spotted an old man, the manager, talking to a couple of girls. He recognized them immediately.
"Hey, it's the insurance girls!" he called out across the restaurant. "Yoohoo!"
The smaller of the two girls nearly winced at hearing this person's voice. "N-no way..." she muttered as she turned around and saw the owner of the voice.
"Oh, hey Vash!" the larger of the two girls called back.
–
"Sir, Alex Roller was recently brought in to a nearby station. They want to know if we have any room here to hold on to him for now."
"Roller? Yeah, we're actually dry over here, plenty of room in the cells if he needs a place to stay until they find a permanent situation. Give them the okay, Tracey, thank you."
"Will do, Sir."
The man who was simply called "Sir" by his assistant smirked.
"I get the feeling... something big is cooking."