Disclaimers on chapter 1

bebopqoded

"He's what?" Faye asked thinking she had heard wrongly.

"You heard me. He's with some kid who, apparently, is the hacker we're looking for" Jet repeated still not believing it himself.

Faye snorted in frustration. The lazy bum in a slept in suit known as Spike Spiegel seemed to have all the luck even when dealt with a bad hand. If it were possible, she would have stolen that luck from him at the first opportunity and used it to win big at the races clearing her debts in the process.

"How do we know she's not some random kid he found whose taken a shine to him and just wants to brag about the attention she's giving him?" Faye challenged.

"Oh, is that why you're jealous?" Jet countered managing to hold down the laughter at the thought of those two getting together and not killing each other every ten minutes. Ein barked in agreement with him.

"I am not jealous!" Faye snarled her face red as her jacket.

Jet, having more sense than the rest of the crew put together, decided to quit while he was ahead. Right now he was currently looking through an ISSP database showing several bounties including Radical Edward who apparently was being jammed by them in an attempt to capture him, or her, according to what he read. He was about to call Spike again when the screen went hazy before all the letters scrambled and scattered about bouncing around the screen.

"What the..?" He muttered in confusion watching as the letters formed the outline of a smiley face.

'Beeeeeeebop!' A girl's voice could be heard calling before the face of the girl Spike had shown him appeared on screen in an interactive video channel. Something the computer did not have.

"Who is that?" Faye asked looking at the smiling brat on the screen.

'This proof enough for you guys?' A familiar voice asked as the girl on the screen leaned out the way so that Spike could show his face to the surprised crew of the Bebop.

Jet had to grudgingly admit that Spike seemed to have hit pay dirt once again. One could only wonder how that lunkhead does that?

"Okay fine, she's the real deal" He grumbled at the screen. "So what now?"

'I'll tell you once we get back to the ship. It might be easier to explain then' Spike told them ignoring Edward who was jumping about behind him squealing something along the lines of 'fly-fly'.

"Wait a minute!" Faye interrupted. "What do you mean "we"? You're not letting her join us, are you?"

Before Spike could answer the infuriated femme fatale, Edward chose this moment to pounce on him and use his head as a head rest for her own. It was amusing to the two bounty hunters watching the screen at least.

'Edward does not want the reward' She explained. 'Ed wants to become member of Bebop and, in return, Bebop can get all of reward'

Faye was hooked before the girl had finished her explanation and gotten thrown off her disgruntled human cushion. Why couldn't all kids be as good as this one?

"What are you waiting for, lunkhead?" She asked of him. "Get back here quickly"

'Yeah, yeah' Spike grumbled while in the background Edward could now be heard saying 'lunkhead-lunkhead' in a singsong voice before the connection was terminated.

"You were quick to change your game" Jet speculated in amusement.

"When someone offers you a big wad of woolongs, it's only natural that you accept it" Faye said before walking away.

"No wonder you're in so much debt" Jet muttered which had Ein barking in agreement earning him a pat on the head.

An hour later, Spike had returned to the Bebop with Edward in tow and the former fishing vessel was now heading back into space as the eccentric hacker told them all she knew about the satellite whose AI she had been conversing with whilst Spike had been talking to Jet.

"So the CPU on an abandoned satellite just decided to do some laser carvings all on its own, is that right?" Jet asks summing up, what he hoped, what Edward had just told them.

"Uh-huh" Edward replied managing to nod whilst balancing her computer on her head whilst holding the keyboard in her arms.

"That's bizarre" Faye stated.

"It gets even more bizarre: this is a weather satellite, so no one has ever thought of checking it"

Both Faye and Spike, although the latter hid it well, looked both at Jet and Edward in surprise as they realised what this meant. The eight million woolong bounty was on a machine not a person. While that was a shock to their system, the problem now was how to access the satellite given that the codes were lost years before. Fortunately, Edward was on hand to help them with that.

"Since MPU's access codes can't be used, you'll have to go to the satellite itself, destroy the transmitters then create a direct link and download MPU" Edward explained typing on the keyboard in her arms as pictures of the transmitters and access drive were shown on her computer's vid-screen. "But you'll have to do it without using your computers for shooting and flying"

"You mean, do it all manually?" Jet asked in shock.

"If you don't, all the attack satellites will pick up your signal and attack. There's zillions and they've all got kill-lasers" Ed told them looking excitedly at each of the three cowboys in turn. "Wow, is that too hard for you?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say hard" Jet replied after a moment sarcasm dripping from each word. "More like impossible! It's like trying to play baseball without a bat!"

While Faye nodded in agreement, Spike just grinned getting more gungho about what was once a boring hunt.

"Now this is the kind of stuff I like" Spike proclaimed causing Jet and Faye to stare at him as if he was insane as he walked off towards the hanger and his mono-racer.

Several hours later, after a brief but intense space battle with the attack satellites before successfully managing to download Edward's friend MPU, the Bebop was once again drifting through space towards the space gate to Mars after a successful hunt. There was a slight drawback to the celebrations however.

"And once again, we have no bounty. Not a single woolong" Jet grumbled turning off the vid-screen where Big Shot was playing stating that machine's cannot be declared bounties. "Like I said: nothing good ever comes from Earth anymore"

"I wouldn't say that" Spike disagreed walking up to the former detective who was currently sitting in the ships pilot seat. "We got ourselves a bona fide, grade A hacker"

Jet had to agree with him on that. With Edward now with them, they would hopefully be able to find and capture bigger bounties before one of the other three hundred thousand odd bounty hunter rivals of theirs got to them. Probably a less than fair trade but a good compensation none the less. It still did not answer one question though.

"Why did you let her join us? I though kids was one of your biggest hates" He asked the fuzzy haired cowboy knowing that there was now one of each of said dislikes neatly gathered on his ship.

"You'll see" Was all Spike said as he lit a cigarette and began inhaling the death stick's incense.

"Jet! Turn this thing around!" Faye's voice echoed from the main room where she had probably just heard about what had happened to their reward.

It was easy to guess that, seeing as there was no longer any money in it Edward's stay on the Bebop had come to a quick end. And yet, Spike was smiling as if waiting for this very moment.

As curious as Jet was about what his partner was grinning about, his attention was brought elsewhere by a bright yellow smiley face appearing on his monitor followed by the sound of the hanger door opening. Unable to figure out what was going on, Jet turned to look at Edward who had appeared with her computer balanced on top of her head again, a piyoko firmly clenched in her teeth and some sort of controller in her hands.

"I'd take that back if I were you, Faye" Spike advised obviously knowing what was about to happen.

Faye arrived on the bridge just in time to see her own Redtail take off and start careering through space trying to mimic what Spike had done in his Swordfish earlier on by itself. She only realised Edward was controlling it due to the airplane noises she was making as she steered the mono-carrier this way and that in an unrefined pattern that could result in a crash at any moment.

Jet meanwhile was staring at Spike with a questioning look in his eye. He had no idea that the cowboy in question had noticed the very same controller Edward had in her hands back at the dilapidated building next to a small replica of the Bebop made out of junk and had connected it to the crashed patrol cruiser outside said building. Needless to say, Spike decided to just let her come along instead of being forced back by the hacker in question.

"How does that lunkhead do it?" He could not help but mutter as he watched the man walk away to his favourite couch for a little shut eye.

Making himself comfortable on the couch, Spike allowed himself to drift into dreamland knowing full well that the new addition would definitely make life a bit more interesting on the ship. He would come to regret it the moment Edward landed on him as she vaulted the couch in an attempt to run away from a fuming Faye.

See you, Space Cowboy…

Hope you liked it.

Review if possible & 'til next time

Watch this space & peace out!