Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction ❯ Prelude ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

On his twelfth birthday, Vicious decided he was ready to roam the streets. Not permanently, but in an exploratory sense. He was ready to test his courage.

His birthday was an arbitrary choice, simply a day so he would have a specific goal. He'd been tall enough to climb in and out of the dormitory windows for over a year, a head taller than any of the other children, even those older than him. There were only two of those now, and every month there were fewer and fewer of the younger kids. Father Paul found reasons and excuses to turn new ones away. As the older ones turned sixteen, they were sent out into the world with a small amount of money and a letter of recommendation to a possible employer. More were being adopted, partly because Father Paul used money meant for the orphanage upkeep to bribe potential parents, while broken plumbing went unfixed and the younger kids wore the older ones' hand-me-downs. Once he'd tried to sell Vicious that way, bringing the couple out onto the playground, since Vicious wouldn't come to them. He kept his head down as they approached and filled his mind with the things he would like to do to Father Paul. Then he looked up at them - and smiled. That was the end of that.

Yet the nuns liked him. They saw him helping the younger kids occasionally, and his behavior had vastly improved, so he had their approval if not their affection. What they didn't know was that his behavior had improved out of boredom. Father Paul was simply too easy. Vicious hated him, although not as much as Father Paul hated him, he knew. Feeding Father Paul's hatred was his only entertainment lately, and it was far too easy to do.

The streets would be more of a challenge.

A few weeks before his birthday, he broke into the kitchen and took a long carving knife, one of the old-fashioned kind that had to be kept sharp. What he really wanted was a sword, like one he'd seen in a weapons shop on one of the orphans' increasingly rare outings. But until he found a way to get one, the knife would have to do.

His first night out, he discovered he would need more than just a knife. Quivering with excitement, nostrils flared at the unfamiliar scents, he crept down the alley behind the church, skipped across the road, and ducked into the shadows of another alley. There he discovered there were more fearsome enemies than rats or even humans. There were dogs. Very hungry, very mean dogs. He ended up clinging to a window sill halfway up a wall until dawn made the wary beasts slink off. He barely made it back through the windows of the dorm before the nuns came in to wake them for breakfast.

He did a lot of thinking that day. That night, he robbed the kitchen of a broom, a mop, a hand saw, a pair of scissors, and a leather apron. The next day, working whenever he could sneak away, he cut the leather into strips and cut off the handle of the broom and a short piece of the smaller mop handle. Wetting the leather, he used it to bind them all together with the knife into a serviceable spear. The piece of mop handle sat crossways over the top of the knife, so that if the first blow didn't kill the dog, it wouldn't be able to work its way up the spear to him, like a medieval boar spear. If he ever got the chance, he decided, he'd heat the knife and hammer the tip back so it worked as a barb, doing more damage when he pulled it out again.

A few days later, when the spear had been tested and the leather looked like it would hold, he waited for the darkness, slipped out the window, over the fence, and back into the alleys.

He remembered the first dog who found him, a big shaggy brute who'd been among the pack that had kept him on the window sill all night. He smiled at it. The dog growled and charged, stupidly, obviously expecting him to turn and run. He waited until the last moment, then set his body and the spear, letting the dog's own weight drive the blade in. For a second he thought the crosspiece wouldn't hold, so insanely furious was the dog's thrashing as it attempted to rid itself of the pain in its chest and bite the boy it knew was responsible. Then, so suddenly it was almost funny, it shuddered and went limp.

He jerked the spear out swiftly, glad now that he hadn't barbed the end, because other dogs had gathered, four of them, just inside the mouth of the alley. They edged closer, heads lowered menacingly, no doubt drawn by the smell of blood. Vicious leaped at them, using the spear as a slashing weapon, cutting across the muzzle of one and the neck of the one next to it, then leaped back, agile as a deer. He felt almost high with his power. Every muscle, every nerve in his young body was alive and vibrant and under his control, and every sense was totally alert. He could hear the dogs panting, smell their meat-eaters' stench, see every muscle ripple.

The two wounded dogs had yelped and backed away, but all four were gathering their courage for a rush at him. He smiled again. "Come and get me. No, wait, I'll come and get you." And he jumped on them, slashing and stabbing, dodging the snapping jaws, once vaulting over a hairy back when they almost got him trapped between a trash bin and the alley wall. In a short time, the dogs had enough. They trotted off, bleeding, to look for easier prey.

The rest of the night, he hunted dogs. He also found the dogs' usual prey, rats. These weren't as big as the nuns had threatened him with, but they were big enough and fast enough and wary enough to make for good hunting. He returned to the dorm in the dark of the morning, exhausted, exhilarated, and badly in need of a bath.

After that, he went out at least once a week, honing his skills until he was a better predator than any four-legged alley beast. As the winter wore into the spring, he learned the streets for several miles in all directions from the church. At first the tall bell spire was a landmark for him, but eventually his sense of direction grew so good, he was able to find his way home from anywhere he ended up. He not only learned the haunts of the alley beasts, but those of men as well. He stalked the homeless men who slept on the streets, but only as a game, and could have killed a hundred of them, so stupid and unwary were they. When he grew bored with that, he began to stalk other men, marking those who looked dangerous and playing at how long he could follow them, a dangerous shadow among the shadows, before they saw him.

One spring night, he followed a man a step too far, and he learned a valuable lesson - that just because he didn't win a fight didn't mean he lost it.

Mars, of course, had no real seasons except on calendars, but there were those who swore it rained more in the spring and fall. Vicious had always scoffed at that, but this year he began to wonder. Whatever the reason, the season or simple bad luck, he spent most of the month of April soaking wet. On this particular night, he'd picked a "victim", a seedy-looking man with a knife in his boot, and had followed him for five or six blocks when a rain shower suddenly opened up over them. The man swore colorfully (words Vicious memorized for later use) and ducked into the door of a nearby bar. On impulse, tired of being wet and feeling daring, Vicious did the same.

He stopped just inside the door, staring in wonder. Here was where human civilization sat on the border of the savage world of the rats and the dog packs. The low ceiling was obscured by the haze of cigarettes, cigars, and - his nostrils flared - something else, something more acrid that he couldn't identify. Under those smells was the brisk tang of alcohol, and weaving through it was the rank smell of unwashed men and too-sweet perfumes. The noise was incredible, almost unbearable. Dozens of men and women were talking, most of them at a loud volume, while music blared from the back. On the floor just to his left, seven or eight men were shouting curses at each other, and even as he glanced that way, two of them suddenly came together and began to wrestle and punch each other. All of the men either looked dangerous or wanted to look that way, and the women were dressed like no women he'd ever seen before, even on the streets. For the first time, he wondered what the nuns looked like under their habits.

A very large man, muscled like a rhinoceros, slid from behind the bar and stalked over to the two men fighting. He grabbed them by their collars and dragged them to the door as if they were puppies, tossing them out into the rain. He would have walked right over Vicious, except Vicious had slid deeper into the shadows, away from the door, and was almost invisible.

He felt eyes on him and turned swiftly. The first thing he thought when he saw the man was, He's the real thing. The man wore a long dark coat over dark jeans and shirt, and a dark hat, and his skin was so dark that he was even more invisible than Vicious. He was slender and not particularly tall, and he wasn't doing anything scary, simply staring down at Vicious, smoking a pipe - not a pipe like Father Thomas', but a long-stemmed slender one with a small bowl. The pipe, which was white, and the glow of hot ash in the bowl were the only color about the man except the whites of his eyes. That was all he was, a lean dark man smoking a pipe, but somehow Vicious knew he'd crossed a line and come at last to where the human predators laired. He smiled.

The man took the pipe out of his mouth. "What are you doing here, kid?" His voice was soft and pleasant, almost musical.

"Hunting."

"Hunting what?"

"Just hunting."

"As long as you're here, make yourself useful. Go to the bar and bring me back a bottle of whiskey."

"Get it yourself."

His tone was calculated to provoke. He'd honed that to an art with Father Paul. But what he provoked was nothing like what he expected, and it happened so swiftly that even he never saw it coming. One moment he was sneering up at the dark man, who was what he thought a safe distance away, and the next he'd been spun around to face the bar, one of his arms pulled up behind his back and his throat imprisoned in a vice. He'd never experienced pain like it before, not even with the cracked rib. His arm felt as if it were being torn off at the shoulder by a beast with a hundred sharp teeth, his wrist felt as if all the bones were being crushed, and his hand burned like a torch. He almost whimpered, and had to grind his teeth to stop the sound from coming from his throat. "You want to try another answer, kid?" the dark man asked pleasantly.

"Go to hell," he managed to rasp out.

The arm around his neck loosened, and he heard a metallic snick. He jerked his chin until he was looking up at the smoke-obscured ceiling, trying to avoid the sharp prick of the knife under the point of his jaw. The pleasant voice said, "You know, I could cut your throat, and nobody here would even notice."

His arm was still screaming in pain. And he was scared. Pissing scared. But he'd be torn apart before he'd admit to either one. He reached down inside himself and pulled up the last bit of courage he had left. "Go ahead. It might be interesting," he retorted coolly.

For a second, neither of them moved at all, and he knew that he was on a balance, and that any small thing would mean the difference between getting to go back home or having to watch while his blood spurted across the table in front of them. Then a woman laughed across the room, and the knife fell away, and his arm, blessedly, was released. The man rose, and with the same movement spun him around to face him. "Shit, kid. You've got guts. What's your name?"

"Vicious."

"That ain't a name."

"It's mine."

Teeth flashed, and to Vicious' surprise, the man started to laugh. "Son of a bitch. Want a drink?"

Vicious was dazed by the sudden turn of mood, but that was something else he wouldn't show. "Sure."

"You drink whisky? Now, don't lie to me, boy, you'll piss me off."

He didn't want to piss this guy off. "I drink wine."

The man made an inelegant noise. "You must be from that church orphanage. What are you doing out at this hour?"

"I told you. Hunting."

"That's right, you did. Sit down." The table he gestured to had two men and a woman already seated at it, but they got up and left as soon as the dark man looked their way. Feeling both dizzy and giddy at the same time, Vicious slid into a chair, and the dark man bent, picked up the pipe from where he'd dropped it, and sat down opposite. He waved a hand at the bar, and a moment later a woman appeared with a bottle and two small glasses. "What in the world have you got here, Rafe? You're gonna cost us our license." Her words were severe, but she sounded amused, and beamed at Vicious as if he were a nephew or something.

"This is a friend of mine, Sally my sweet, and we're about to have a little man-to-man conversation. Put the bottle down and take your cute little butt back to the bar."

The woman grinned, put a glass in front of each of them, poured from the bottle into both glasses, and set the bottle next to the dark man, all with smooth efficiency. Then she took the bill the dark man was holding out and walked off, her hips swinging.

"First thing you've got to learn," Rafe said to Vicious. "Don't be rude unless you've got something to gain from it."

He was serious. He was talking to him as if he weren't just a kid, but another man. Vicious just nodded. He wasn't sure how to speak to an adult who wasn't patronizing him.

"My name's Rafe. You might've figured that out. I'm also known as Black Rafe. You run into any trouble around here, and you drop that name, it might get you out with a whole skin. But I don't think you'll do that. You got the look of a guy who wants to win his own fights. So… what do you find, when you go hunting in the night like this?" he asked amiably.

To his own surprise, Vicious opened his mouth and told him. He spoke about what he was doing and what he felt, while Black Rafe repacked and lit his pipe and listened without a single interruption, with only an occasional word to keep Vicious talking. Vicious got thirsty, telling it, and drank the whiskey, forgetting what it was, which made for a long interruption while his eyes watered, his insides burned, and he choked and tried not to be sick, while Rafe's chuckles flowed richly around him. Valiantly, he kept talking despite a now-raw throat, and when Rafe filled his glass again, he drank that, too. Only more slowly.

By the time he was finished talking, he was an apprentice who had found his master. No such words were spoken, but he knew it, in the same way he'd known that his life had been, literally and figuratively, on a knife's edge tonight. He knew he would come back tomorrow night, and Rafe would be here, and they would talk and drink whiskey, and he would begin to learn.