Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction ❯ No Nothing ❯ Chapter 5 ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: I'm getting sick of these. See previous chapters.

Much thanks go to Cherry Cheese Head (again), Edward, Sam, and Kit for their wonderful reviews!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And now . . .

Chapter 5

Back aboard the sanctuary of the BeBop, the crew basked in the fact that they had finally caught their bounty, one that they actually intended on turning in. Everyone, that is, except Spike and Jenni.

"Dammit, stop squirming!" Jenni scolded Spike as he writhed his arm in her grasp, inching away.

Spike eyed the bowl in her hand, which contained a paste-like purplish substance, with suspicion. "I don't like the looks of that stuff," he said. With a grin and a raised eyebrow, he commented, "You might just try and kill me, just so you don't have to fix my arm."

Playing along, Jenni replied, "Nah, too messy. The others would notice you were either missing or unusually quiet after a few hours, and then they would definitely turn me in. And besides," she said in all sincerity, "I don't have to fix your arm."

This struck Spike as being a noteworthy comment. "Then why are you?" he asked, his eyes boring into hers.

Jenni didn't blink one bit as she said, "Because I want to." Being as brutally honest as she was, Jenni didn't bother with indirectly addressing what was on her mind. "What the hell was that back in the kitchen?" she asked him quietly.

After a momentary pause, Spike quietly answered, "I don't know." Both he and Jenni stared into each other's eyes with limitless intensity, as if evaluating each other's emotions. Finally, breaking the silence that had formed between them, Spike asked her, "What do you think it was?"

Shaking her head, Jenni answered, "Saying it was lust would be taking the easy way out."

"Are you so sure it wasn't lust?" Somewhere inside himself, the same place where he'd experienced both love and hate in his past, Spike knew what she had said was true. Somehow, though, the idea of feeling one of those emotions again frightened him beyond belief.

"Will you stop questioning me like that if I tell you?" she asked him, Gaze unwavering from his, Jenni responded, "Yes, I'm positive. Everyone knows what lust is like, and that wasn't it." Her answer, filled with immeasurable certainty, caused Spike's defenses against letting his emotions show to collide with the ground beneath his feet. He was almost compelled to spill to Jenni exactly what he was experiencing at that moment, but Jenni did that for both of them. "You'll probably have no idea what I'm talking about, Cowboy, but it's almost like you have some strange magnetism, drawing out every little part of my existence."

Grinning at her openness, Spike said, "I know much better than you think."

Ed chose that precise moment to come cartwheeling into the room. "Toothbrush, toothbrush, shiny and red! Vroom! Jen-Jen, Jet-person and Faye-Faye want to talkie to you!" Having delivered her message, Ed rolled back out of the room, singing one of her nonsense songs about plastic and peanut butter cups.

Grinning, Jenni tied the bandage at Spike's elbow. "You're good to go," she said as she dropped his arm and let it fall to his side. She distractedly tapped the cigarette carton sitting beside her against her hand and placed one between her lips. "Probably wants to give me the low-down on what to do and what not to do while I'm here," she mumbled whilst searching for her lighter. As usual, Spike came to the rescue with his lighter held in front of her. Wordlessly she took it from him and lit the little white stick.

Spike took the lighter from her grasp and said, "Life aboard this piece of junk is pretty easy. Leave Jet's bonsai alone; whenever food comes, no matter how terrible, eat it, since it could be the only food for days; Ed and Ein just kinda seem to blow through the ship, so anything usually taken as strange is normal for those two."

"Why am I not surprised," Jenni commented as a screech from Faye that sounded remarkably like, "Ed, that's my shirt!" could be heard from outside the door. "I'm guessing Faye's the one who causes the most problems, but nobody would dare tell her that."

Spike gave a light laugh. "We've told her, many times. She just never gives up."

"Trouble on Two Legs," she said in understanding. "So tell me what you require to keep the peace aboard here?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Opening the door of a nearby refrigerator, Spike withdrew two Coca-Cola cans. "Three things," he said as he handed one of the cans to Jenni. "No more animals, don't touch my ship, and pissing me off is a very bad idea."

Jenni cracked open the top of the can and said, "Reasonable enough. Now you guys'll have to hear out my standards." She caught a glimpse of Spike's unbelieving stare and said, "Don't worry, they're almost as simple as yours."

His expression softened at her remark, causing her to coyly give him a small grin, one which he returned. As Jenni turned to leave the room, Spike saw the area on her cheek where the bullet had grazed. The blood was still smeared on her pale skin, and the cut still pink and raw. Before he knew what he was doing, Spike found his lips lightly pressed against the scratch. Slowly he backed away, the lingering scent of her skin still fresh in his mind.

"Ahem." Spike slowly turned his head to the origin of the noise, which was an amused Faye, shoulder propped against the wall. "Am I interrupting something here?" she asked with a smirk.

Jenni just walked past both of them and airily replied, "Nothing at all, Faye." She stalked past both of them and went to join Jet at the controls, as he'd requested. "You wanted to talk to me?" she asked while lounging on the floor next to him.

Jet barely seemed to take notice of her as he programmed the ship's course to Ganymede. "Just a few simple regulations," he said offhandedly. "First," he began, "the BeBop is my ship. Therefore, I have control over everything aboard here. Second -"

"You were a cop, weren't you," Jenni inferred. "You talk like a cop."

He glanced at the newest edition to their band of outcasts for the first time since she entered the room. "Yeah. I was with the ISSP back in the day," he informed her. "Second, don't touch the bonsai," he continued, right where he left off.

Jenni took a sip from her drink. "Lemme guess," she said, "third thing is eat whatever comes aboard, since it may be the only stuff for a loooong time. And fourth, Ed and Ein are just plain weird."

Watching her out of the corner of his eye, Jet said, "Spike told you already, didn't he."

She slowly stood up and replied with a short "Yep." Coming to stand so she was almost in front of Jet, Jenni delivered her marching orders to him, and unaware to the rest of the crew. "I don't know if it's bad luck or my damn Romany blood -"

"Hey Faye," Spike said to the woman standing next to him, "we have a real Romany with us now." Instead of retaliating, Faye turned her nose up at him and let her attention slip back to Jenni. Spike followed suit by declaring, "As you were saying, my dear."

Jenni arched an eyebrow at her new partners. "Nice of you guys to join us. Now I don't know what it is, but I never seem to be able to stay in one place for a very long time. However, I have a feeling I'll be here for quite a while." Ed could be seen cheering at the delivery of this news and swinging Ein around in the air. "While I'm here, I have a few simple guidelines to keep all hell from breaking loose." While Jet and Faye gawked at her nerve, Spike just sat by and patiently waited to hear what these 'simple guidelines' were. "The following actions will earn you a severe ass-kicking: waking me up before a decent time, walking in on me while I'm taking a shower, and messing with my firepower. Other than that, I think we'll get along just fine." With those final words she brushed past Spike and off to another part of the ship.

Faye looked about ready to burst. "Who the hell does she think she is?! We offer her a place to stay, and she goes and sets up -"

"I think they're reasonable requests," Jet said simply. "Besides, she held up her end of the deal, so why not?"

Smiling at Jet, she said, "I always pull my own weight around here, so how about I make up some ridiculous rules? After all, I've been here much longer than she has."

Spike downed the last of his Coke before speaking. "You were never asked to stay, Faye. You just showed up one day and never left. And don't give us that bullshit about you pulling your own weight," he warned. "You usually leave about twice as much trouble than you're worth for us to clean up."

"Well excuse the hell out of me, Mister Come-Back-In-A-Million-Pieces!" Faye yelled into Spike's face. "Seriously, you can't even go pick up a pack of cigarettes without shooting at someone!"

"Can it, you two," Jet ordered gruffly. "You two are so obnoxious."

Rolling his eyes at Jet, Spike said, "How many times have we heard that one . . ." He casually threw his jacket over his shoulder and pulled a thin disk out of his pocket. Twirling it between his fingers, Spike said, "Here. This just upped our reward by one million," before tossing it to Jet and leaving the room.

Sauntering through a small span of the ship, Spike didn't notice the occupants until one of them spoke up. "Sounded like Family Feud in there," Jenni commented from her laying-down position on the yellow couch, cigarette still jutting from her mouth.

"That's normal around here," Spike said tiredly as he picked up Jenni's feet to make room for himself on the couch. He placed them on the ground next to them, where she promptly removed them from and placed on Spike's lap. "Great. I'm a footrest now, too," he remarked, a bit irritated at this recent development.

Jenni grinned at him and said, "You're multi-talented, my dear," stressing the last part. Spike raised an eyebrow at her before swiftly removing the cigarette from Jenni's mouth and taking a drag from it. In retribution, she kicked his hand so the stick went flying through the air and back towards her, where she easily caught it between her index and middle finger.

A slight commotion behind them caught their attention. Kolossi, who had been cuffed to a pipe while in his state of unconsciousness, was starting to wake up. "Uuugghh . . . Where am I?" he asked groggily, as if waking up from a drunken stupor.

"Where you are is not important," Spike answered shortly. "But you're on your way to pay a visit to the Ganymede Police."

At these words, Kolossi immediately started flipping out, to put it lightly. "WHAT?! B-B-But the aliens!!!!! I'm supposed to meet them!!!!!! I should be just outside Venus, not on Ganymede!!!! They're gonna get to my ship and find it empty, and then they'll destroy the entire galaxy!!!! Do you hear me?! All life here will end unless you bring me back!!! . . . "

Spike groaned and put a hand to his forehead. "Why don't we knock him out for the rest of the way there?" he wined.

"I'm one step ahead of you," Jenni said in an equally annoyed voice. Reaching for her holster on the table, she withdrew the tranquilizer gun from earlier and held it at an upward angle. After taking aim, she pulled the trigger. Kolossi's ramblings drifted to a halt as he passed out on the ground for the second time that day. "Finally, peace and quiet."

The two sat enjoying the silence for a few minutes, until Faye's constant whine could be heard. Spike growled at the disturbance, and then noticed that Jenni still had the gun in her hand. Taking hold of the pistol he got up and started to walk off in the direction of Faye's presence. "I'll be back in a few minutes, so don't get too comfortable," he mentioned to Jenni.

She sat up so she could see him walk through the door. "What in the hell are you doing?" she asked quite innocently.

Faye's complaints reached their ears once again, causing Spike's grip on the gun to tighten. He paused and replied, "Something I should have done a long time ago."

Jenni just laid back down and said, "Carry on. But hurry up; you make a good footrest."

Where this would almost always make Spike give the person who said something like that a threat of some sort, he instead found himself grinning. Damn, this girl messes with my head, and without meaning to, he thought to himself. However, the constant complaining from another part of the ship caught his interest more than his thoughts at the moment. Gun in his hand, Spike set off to achieve the impossible: make Faye shut up for at least five minutes.

Well, what did you think?????? Ya know, you can always let me know in a review **hint, hint**