Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction ❯ Hymn for Cowboys Led Astray ❯ Just Tumblin' Along ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: Once again, Cowboy Bebop doesn't belong to me. I'd like to thank Sunrise, Inc. for letting them off the shelf so I can play with them once again. Forgive me if I mess around a little with the timeline and fight scenes. At this point, I'm not exactly sure where Spike's past is leading to on this story, so it should be a blind ride for all of us. Onward, ho!

Chapter 3: Just tumblin' along

I stood in front of the mirror three days later, wearing my heavy trench coat and armed to the teeth. It really didn't make me nervous to know that I had several types of heavy explosives tied to me, although it would now; maybe I've managed to get a little wiser in my age. Sometimes I wonder how I avoided being shipped back to HQ like a jigsaw puzzle. One of my reoccurring dreams had been opening a box to find my face broken into pieces like cheap ceramic. I shook myself out of the horror of the image, and felt for the holster on my side for the reassuring weight of the gun that hung there.

My preferred weapon at the time was a sleek Glock 31. I juggled the gun in one hand, balancing the perfect weight on my palm as my reflection looked on with amusement. With any luck, I wouldn't need any weapons for this "peace delegation", but there were never any guarantees in life; especially mine.

There was a knock at my door. Before I could open my mouth to say "Come in", Vicious was there, gesturing for me to hurry up. I nodded as my black-figured reflection stared back at me. This could be the last time I got to stand in my own apartment for a while; maybe even forever, and I wanted to make the last minutes stretch out just a little longer.

The expensive watch on my wrist beeped gently, and I sighed. This was it.

~

Half an hour later, Vicious and I stood before a large white building similar to our own headquarters. The twenty Dragons with us were probably younger than my own 21 years, and their nervous shifting from foot to foot echoed their youthfulness.

There was a click at the armored door, and a man twice my size stepped through. As he gestured us inside, his arm muscles rippled beneath the fabric of his expensive suit. I gulped, thinking that this guy could probably snap me in half before I could get my gun out.

And then we were inside, in the White Tiger lobby surrounded by members all heavily armored. The business end of each gun tracked our group as we followed the brawn down the hall to a set of large bronze doors, emblazoned with the White Tiger symbol. He pushed them open without any effort, and Vicious, smirking, strode through confidently.

When I moved to follow him, one of my men, Ben Waite grabbed my arm. I turned my head to ask him what he was doing, and then the doors slammed shut. Startled out of my question, I looked up. Every gun in the room was trained on our group.

My mind raced. What the hell? Had Vicious set us all up? There was no way we could expect to get out of this. And Mao? Did he know about this? What was Vicious doing behind those doors? He sure as hell wasn't going to be negotiating with the Tiger leader while all his men were massacred outside.

Above me, an old wrinkled man stepped to the edge of the catwalk that circled the lobby. "If you would all please set your weapons down, I will make sure none of you are harmed during our… negotiations." He smiled down on all of us like a scientist trying to make a rat drink the poison.

"I'll be damned before I let myself be shot like a sucker." I muttered, clutching the Glock in my pocket. Several my men nodded agreement; looking nervously between me and the wrinkled prune on the catwalk. The old man nodded, and I heard the ripple of hammers clicking into place. "Ready?" I mouthed to the Dragon closest to me. He swallowed nervously and nodded.

The pin in my pocket pulled out from the small grenade with a 'click', and I swallowed. Here goes nothing. I thought, and flipped the small object out of my coat. A small nudge sent it rolling across the floor, and I caught myself wondering if I would be coming back from this one in little pieces like my recent dreams had predicted.

A wave of heat and light enveloped me as I was thrown to the ground. There was pain in my head, a blinding white pain a million times worse than the explosion, and I could feel warm blood trickling down my face. My eye! I tried to touch, to stop the bleeding, but the piece of shrapnel embedded there couldn't be moved.

I stood up, woozy, as bullets danced around me. One grazed my right sleeve, and I lost my balance stepping over a body and fell again. This time I rolled until my back touched a wall. I scrambled up, Glock in hand. I was safe from the immediate threat from the catwalk overhead, but the bullet that had shredded my right sleeve had apparently done more damage to my right arm than I originally thought.

The hand worked fine, but blood flowed freely from a thin line over my tricep. I muttered to myself, tearing off a strip of cloth from my shirt and winding it around my arm. Lucky for me no one was shooting into the shadows, or I would have been a dead man long ago.

It was hard to see in the dim light with one good eye. I crouched down, trying to tell my men from the Tigers still fighting. The count wasn't good. There was a handful that was still standing, but even more Red Dragon coats littered the floor. Intent on picking off a few enemies before I collapsed from blood loss, I never heard the Tiger sneaking up behind me. One minute I was aiming at a man about to shoot Ben Waite in the back of the head, and the next, a solid weight came down on the back of my skull. As they say, everything went black.