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A man walks into a bar.
It's a seedy-looking bar, but this is a seedy-looking man. Blue suit, green hair, stained fingers. The bar's underground, in the most literal sense. No windows, one door in the front, one door in the back leading to wonders unknown. There are a few metal tables and chairs scattered across the floor. A handful of patrons are scattered just as randomly around, minding their own goddamn business for everything it's worth. Abandon all hope ye who enter here and all that jazz.
He casually flops down on a bar stool, flags down the bartender, and wraps both hands around the pint that's slid down to him like it's the most precious thing in the world. Not much happens after that. He nurses his drink for a good half hour or so. Watches the tiny people on the tiny TV set behind the bar play some kind of sport game. Time passes, he orders another drink. Somewhere in the middle of his third beer and his second hour at the bar, he gets up and pushes through the door in the back and through another swinging door bearing the word 'MEN' written in permanent marker.
15 seconds later--no less and no more--a second figure stuffs a handheld gaming device into a backpack and shoves back from one of the tables. This person is short, 160cm at most, with short-cropped red hair, a black bomber jacket, and a strawberry pink backpack with cat ears sewn on top. They shoulder through both doors, hand still rummaging through the pack, and look around the men's room. The man with the suit is just closing the door to a stall. The second person strides over, lifts a bare foot up to about stomach height and kicks the door back open. Suit-man freezes for a fraction of a second before he brings his arms up, ready for a fight. Redhead is ready too, though, ducks under his arms, (finally) whips a stun gun out of that backpack, presses it to his hip in the same motion, and pulls the trigger. He slumps over and the smaller figure staggers back before catching his full weight. "Don't worry. Ed's gotcha," she mutters.
0.55 minutes later, she's whistling through her teeth as she drags her unresponsive quarry through the back alley. Nobody seems to care.
Four blocks and six flights of stairs down, he's twitching on a tiled kitchen floor with a knee in his back while she ties his hands tight together. A small dog runs circles around them both, yapping.
Ed finally stands up and rolls him onto his back with her foot. She drags a chair over and sits down, one foot hooked in the rungs and one arm draped over the back, and stares at him.
"Ed..." he mumbles finally, teeth chattering as he gets his muscles back under control. Little by little he stills.
She stands up, kicks the chair back, and comes over to squat beside him with an unreadable expression on her face. "Spike Spiegel. Born 2044, June 26th on Tharsis City, Mars. Died 2071, Tharsis City, Mars." The man doesn't speak. She tries again. "Spike Spiegel," she says as she reaches out and pokes his elbow, "died. At the hands of the old Red Dragon Syndicate. Probably killed by Vicious himself. He collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood in front of 26 witnesses total, who each swore an affidavit that he was dead. There is a death certificate on file. He's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. He is an ex-bounty hunter." Another long silence.
"So." This time, the gun she pulls out of her backpack isn't of the stun variety. She points it at the man on the floor and gives him a long look. "Option one: you're a fake. In which case I have a hard choice between handing you over to the cops for whatever you've got for a bounty under your real identity or shooting you in the head for the sheer offense of impersonating my late friend. Or option two: you're really, truly the actual Spike Spiegel, and you just kinda sorta went ahead and let your friends, aka the only family you've got, think you were dead for the last ten years. And if that's what it turns out to be, I might just go ahead and shoot you."
The Spike Spiegel on the floor blinks. Twice. Three times. Then what might be called a misty smile comes over his face. "Ten years already, huh? Boy, you've really grown."
Ed throws her hands up in exasperation. Gun and all.
"Not literally grown, though, I notice. Did we not feed you enough or something?"
"Look." She shoves her handheld computer in his face. "Facial recognition software. 59 points of articulation say that yes, you do indeed match archival photographs of Spike. --And yes, I've forgotten your goddamn face to the point where I needed to match it up with the pictures." She pulls her computer back and presses another couple of buttons. "But yeah, that could easily be done with plastic surgery for the right amount of money. And...okay, Ed hasn't found any surgical records matching that face in the month or so prior to you using your credit on this planet, but that doesn't mean it wasn't done off book."
"Can't say I'm surprised you're this thorough. Although the pain compliance is a little...you know what? I'm just gonna say it. Scary. You're a little scary, kid." He shifts his hip and winces.
"Your fingerprints match Spike Spiegel's records completely."
"So are you gonna untie me, or what?"
"Not until my search query for fingerprint surgery matching those specific parameters comes back. And trust me, if it happened, I will find it."
Spike knocks his head back against the floor and groaned. "How long is this going to take? I've been chasing someone."
"4-6 hours at the most. But probably way less if it comes back with a match."
"FOUR to SIX hours? Chained up on the floor like this? Are you serious?!" He might be yelling a bit.
She leans in again. "Deadly." She stands up, then, and flops back in the chair. "And since I know zip ties probably aren't a big issue for you, Ed's gonna be right here with you the whole time. Just a girl and her gun."
The dog barked.
"...Just a girl and her gun and her dog."
Spike groans again. Ein waddles over and licks his face. He turns to the dog. "At least you believe me."
Ein tilts his head and gives a little whimper. Don't push it, bud.
Silence falls. Spike taps his feet together impatiently. After a few minutes, he tries to indicate the fridge to his right with his nose. "Hey, I, uh, don't suppose you've got anything to eat in there, huh?"
Ed gestures with her gun. "Nope. Zip ties. Shoulda eaten at the bar."
"I would have if I thought I was going to get kidnapped and hog tied by a horror-show leprechaun," he grumbled. "How'd you find me, anyway?"
Ed grins. "Call me sentimental. I have an old alert set up to flag it if your ID or any other cards that belonged to you get used anywhere on the grid I'm currently hooked to, and I never bothered to take it down. Imagine my surprise when I get the notification that you paid a week up front for a room at the Lazy Dog motel down on Fifth."
He wrinkles his nose. "I don't like being hunted."
"Serves you right."
"Does it, though?" He shifts around so that he's almost sitting up. "If I remember correctly, you took off a few times. Now that I think about it."
"Not the same." Ed looks away, though.
"Why not?"
"It's just not." She shrugs and looks back, narrowing her eyes. "Besides, I never stayed gone. Like, ever. Not that you would know that, since you tailed it out about a month before I came back."
It's Spike's turn to look away. "I never meant to. It just...happened. I got busy. And then it felt like it was too late."
"Spike-person, it was never too late." Her voice is dripping with equal amounts of warmth and pain. She abruptly gets up. Opens up a cabinet. Five minutes later, she sits back down with an energy bar in one hand and a cup of ramen in the other. She wordlessly peels the packaging off the bar with her teeth, then tosses it. It lands on his chest.
He looks down at it. "Seriously?!"
She gestures to her computer with a set of chopsticks. "Fingerprint scan."
"Fine." He studiously ignores the bar on his chest. Until it gets too much for him and he struggles to maneuver his head and eventually grabs it with his teeth.
She pulls the cord on her Rocket Noodles and doesn't comment.
"So...you went back?" he asks when he's about halfway through the energy bar.
"Yeah." She nods and pushes food into her cheek to talk. "Spent a few more years on board the Bebop. Good years. Decided I wanted to try striking out on my own again, so I came back here to Earth."
"How's it going?"
"It's going."
"And...Jet and Faye?" He sounds hesitant, like he's afraid to know the answer.
"Oh! They got married a couple of years ago. They got a kid now."
"They what?!" His jaw drops.
"Nah. I'm just messing with ya." She grins as wide as her face can stretch.
"Wh--"
"Or am I?" She tries to look mysterious. Then she stuffs her mouth completely full of noodles.
"You are one evil kid, do you know that?"
"I'm just saying, this is something you woulda known about if you'd stuck around."
He tries to rearrange his arms to be more comfortable, but gives up. "Eh. Sounds like you all turned out fine. Whether I was there to see it or not."
"Dammit, Spike." Her voice is a mix of exasperated, wistful, and sad. She points her chopsticks at him. "You were never that smart, were you?"
"Hey! That's not fair."
"No. It wasn't. I'm sorry. Smart's not the right word." She slumps back in her chair, thinking. "It's not about smart. It's like you had this glitch in your head. Damn, I wish I could remember you more. Maybe then I could say this better. But it was like you couldn't see yourself, I guess? Looking back. Like you wished you were gone and were just waiting around until it happened. And you thought it wouldn't matter." She stabs her noodles and takes another bite. "I was just a kid. But I think maybe even then I got it better than you."
"Oh, really? Tell me, then." His brow knits together and his voice comes out all sarcastic. "What's the big secret of life?"
Ed chuckles at his tone. She puts the ramen down, and shakes her head. Her elbows come down to rest gently on her knees and she leans in. "You want the secret?" she says, voice as soft as death. "Well, here it is. Everyone matters. Everyone fits." She knits her fingers together as a sort of illustration. "And nobody's ever really gone. Even when they're dead. Even when they leave you. The shape they left in the pattern's still there. The changes they made just by existing are still there. The things they taught you are still a part of you. Even if they thought they didn't matter, even if they thought they left no trace--that's bullshit. Just by being born, just by moving through life, just by scraping out a living...everything they ever touched, even briefly, without thought...there's still a part of them there. And anywhere those people you touched go...they carry you with them. Forever. And there's a part of that that's really sad, you know? That it's just the traces. That maybe I even forget what you looked like or the sound of your voice or what color your eyes were and I don't get to see them again, except in pictures. But at the same time, it means that nothing ever really dies, and it means that whether you ever get to know it or not, I carry you with me. You shaped me. I became who I am in a big part because of you. It's why I'm a bounty hunter. You're in my face. You're in my smile. You're in the way I act around girls--although sometimes that's not a good thing, let me tell you--and in how I talk. And every trace I leave on someone else, you're there too. And Jet, and Faye, and the kids back in the orphanage...they're with me too. Always. I carry them with me--"
She stops as her computer beeps. She grabs it and swings it back onto her lap and taps through her notifications.
Spike is perfectly silent.
Ed very carefully, very gently puts the computer back down on the ground. She stands up and slowly walks over to Spike. She sits down on his chest. And points her gun directly at his face.
"Ed, what are you doing?"
"My fingerprint search came back."
Spike stares silently at the gun.
She looks him straight in the eye. "Two months ago, a man paid cash to a small, independent clinic on a small island near Mare Vaporum. He paid an extra bonus to keep silent. I just paid even more for the doctor to talk. He received fingerprint surgery to the exact specifications of the search string I just ran." She tilts her head up at him. "The same fingerprints that you now have."
He breaks eye contact.
She watches him, completely still.
"It's what I do," he says finally. "I gather information about the identity of someone who's been dead for at least seven years, use that identity for a while, then move on. I try not to take any money that's rightfully somebody else's, I try not to do it anywhere near where they lived...and I try to pick someone with no loved ones left to get hurt. I am truly sorry. I didn't think there was anyone around here to catch me. If I wasn't afraid of getting killed, I would never have kept up the act like this. I'm...really, really sorry. You didn't deserve this." He swallows. "I...hope your friend is out there, I really do."
Ed shuts her eyes for a moment. Then presses her gun against the skin of his forehead. She slowly pulls back the hammer.
"Bang," she whispers.
***
It's the middle of the night shift at the local police station. Under a flickering fluorescent light, an officer sits typing at his computer. Behind him, a night janitor is mopping the floor. The officer's heavyset, blond, and doesn't look like he'd pry himself out of his chair for anything short of a fire alarm. The janitor's tall, thin, with wild black hair and a look about him like he's been dragged behind a vehicle for most of his life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a lull in the young hours of the morning.
The janitor's path eventually takes him closer to the man still sitting there. Just out of curiosity, he peers at the computer. "What's that all about?" He upnods at the screen.
The officer looks back, then idly shifts a little so the janitor can see better. "Oh, hey, Julio. Just a bounty we took in." The screen shows a man with bright green hair and a blue suit holding up a sign with a bunch of numbers for the camera. He doesn't look happy. "Some identity fraud guy we've been looking for on a bunch of counts."
Julio leans in closer. "Hey, he looks familiar, though? I swear I've seen his face before."
"Yeah, that's one of the identities he took. Spike Spiegel. Long dead, though. Used to be a bounty hunter, if you can believe this guy's stones. Guess it was one of Spiegel's old pals who brought him in." The officer chuckles. "Must've been rightly pissed."
"Huh! Yeah, I bet. ...Who was the pal that brought him in?"
"Some white-hat hacker, goes by the name of Radical Edward. She brings skips in sometimes, I'm surprised you haven't run into her before. Guess she tends to come in more in daylight, though."
"Radical Edward, huh?" The janitor muses to himself. "That's right, I remember hearing about them, back in the day. Wow, that's a memory." He chuckles and runs a hand through his hair. "Good for her. Glad to hear she's doing well for herself. Bet it didn't take her long to figure this joker out, though."
"Yeah? Why'd you figure?"
"His eyes." Julio grins.
"His eyes?" The officer frowns and peers at the picture one more time, trying to spot...whatever it is.
"Yup! Spike Spiegel had an artificial eye." Julio grins and puts a finger on his cheekbone. "Just like mine."
At this point, the officer's nose is about an inch away from the picture. "Say...you're right! This guy has two all natural eyes. I don't remember hearing that, though. How'd you know that?"
"Oh...must be something I read." Julio turns away, his curiosity satisfied.
The officer goes back to finishing his paperwork. Julio whistles cheerfully and mops his way slowly across to the other side of the room.