Race Against The Clock

Race Against the Clock

(search party / panic attack / "if only we could hold on")

***

"Where is she?!"

"Faye. Calm down. You're hyperventilating."

Wide, wild green eyes stared uncomprehendingly back at him. Faye's breathing did not improve. The thick clouds of dust in the air were no help for breathing or for seeing a damn thing.

"She... she..." Faye gasped.

"Dammit, Spike! Forget about her for a second! Ed needs our help here!" Jet shouted as he continued to furiously dig through the rubble that was settling all around them.

Spike scowled. The circumstances were not great. Faye's panic attack was the most useless thing that could have happened at such a critical juncture. Although, something lurked in the back of Spike's mind about the dangers of attempting a rescue before a structure had finished falling apart. There was a risk that Jet's hasty attempts to dislodge the broken portions of the building would cause more of it to crumble and it's not like they even knew exactly where Ed was in all the disarray.

"Faye." He cupped her face between his hands, palms pressing against her cheeks gently. "You are making things worse. Get your fucking shit together."

Cruel words but he didn't have time to baby her. Besides, Faye tended to react more immediately and aggressively to negative comments than to anything sweet and soothing. Probably something psychological to explore there but this wasn't the place for that.

As he'd hoped, his callous command sparked something in her. She stiffened beneath his touch and jerked back as her spine straightened up. Hurt warred with confusion in her gaze for a moment before her eyes snapped like green fire at him. She shoved past him without a word and started to sift through the wreckage of a different section of the collapsed housing complex.

Worry over the fate of the lost hacker was predominant in Spike's mind as well but he wasn't convinced she was trapped where the others were searching. Ed had discovered a trapdoor leading into shadowy depths underneath the apartments. He'd seen as much for himself in the video feed of her COMM call before the ground began to heave and the signal cut out.

She might be hidden under more debris than the others realized.

A shudder tore through him at the thought that she might not be buried alive at all. She might just be... buried.

No.

NO.

Wrenching his thoughts from that dark avenue, Spike threw himself bodily into heaving aside fragments of concrete and wood and whatever else had once shoddily held the apartment building together. If he could just find the remains of the stairwell... if that section had been built strong enough to remain intact while the hallways and everything else fell apart... if he could just get further down, deeper down...

The dog was with her, after all. The two most clever and resourceful members of the crew, trapped together somewhere in a place where they might not be getting much oxygen. Where they might be wounded or worse. How much time did they have? How long before there wasn't any air at all to breathe? It was a race against the clock - a clock they couldn't even see. A race they might have already lost.

Worst-case scenarios continued to plague his thoughts. He could hear Jet grunting with effort, could practically taste the tears on Faye's cheeks as she choked back sobs and choked also on the dusty air they were breathing in.

No.

Ed and Ein would be fine. They just needed to hold on... Spike and the others would get to them soon... if they could just... if they...

Dammit.

"Hold on, kiddo. We're coming for you." Spike muttered quietly, his throat tight with unwanted emotion and burning from all the nasty shit he was inhaling. "Just... hold on..."

🎶

sin’s birthday celebration; 2024

@laneysmusings; 🎉 + spike spiegel

Forever in love with everything this artist creates 😍😍😍

a bit of summer bebop

First one is from 6 or 7 years ago. Still one of my favorites ^___^

Yes, I know I haven't updated my longfic in weeks. Yes, I know I fell off posting prompts. Life is... a lot sometimes, you see. Stress and depression are hard to push away in order to be productive. There are times when it just can't happen. In light of that, and in the spirit of "spring forward" (for the record I am not a fan of participating in daylight savings time) ...I've decided to cheer myself up by posting a snippet of something that's been written for ages but which I am far from ready to post simply because we're nowhere near this point in the timeline of my longfic. Most of the scenes are patiently awaiting their turn but this one wanted to be shared ahead of time 😘

So, let's spring forward many months! Hope y'all enjoy this sneak peek at the not-too-distant-future of Spike and Faye's "Music Keeps Us Together" family!

***

"Baby, baby, sweet baby," Spike murmured softly, cradling his infant daughter to his chest. She was so tiny that his palm could press against just about her entire back. Somehow she seemed tinier than Lupin had been at her age and that had already seemed ludicrously small. It blew his mind that human beings grew up from such itty bitty beings.

He tried stroking. He tried patting. The baby was having none of it. Her piercing cries literally made Spike's ears ring. He winced at her effortless volume and glanced worriedly at the forms on the bed but neither stirred.

Faye was sprawled out on her back with a sheet partially wrapped around her head to cover her eyes from the dim light in the room. She was out cold. Little Lupin, with a pale and sweaty face, lay pressed against her right side with his head pillowed on her flung out right arm. The toddler looked miserable in his sleep.

Well that made it unanimous.

At least Spike knew the baby's cries weren't going to wake anyone else on the ship. Jet had gone ahead and added some soundproofing when he'd fixed up the hull sections of the ship. If Spike were to open the door then the sound could travel to the rest of the ship but as long as he kept his squalling daughter in the bedroom it should be fine.

Spike had been around loud noises countless times. Firing guns, exploding buildings, being around ship engine's roaring to life, Faye's piercing shrieks… he'd never worried that he might lose his hearing until now. If he didn't have tinnitus after this baby, he'd be surprised.

At this point though it was fairly obvious what her needs were. The fruitless rooting at his chest was indication enough that his little girl was hungry. Well how about that, she took after him after all. Her eyes were that baby blue that would probably change with age. The mess of dark hair could go either way but that vocal range was 100% inherited from Faye. This appetite though… that had Spiegel all over it.

He moved to the left side of the bed and sat on the edge next to Faye. He tried to gauge her ability to cooperate with his next move but she seemed deeply unconscious which would probably be helpful at this point. With painstaking care he nestled their daughter against her left side, right against her left breast. For the billionth time he found himself feeling grateful for Faye's preference of sleeping topless - if not entirely nude whenever possible.

Her position was somewhat awkward but only for Spike trying to assist the baby in nursing. Alora latched on immediately but Spike couldn't just let her go because she was too tiny to truly support herself to any degree and while Faye could provide sustenance while unconscious she obviously couldn't hold the baby properly in place.

All was peace and quiet for what must have been a stretch of actual minutes. Spike nearly dozed off in the quiet that enveloped the room as Alora ate. But Faye twitched in her sleep suddenly and Spike found himself blinking in that confused state that happens when jerking awake just before falling asleep.

He had approximately two seconds to realize Faye was shifting before her voice reached him. Man, maybe Baby Alora had damaged his ears a bit.

"Spike! Take the baby!" Faye commanded urgently.

He instinctively yanked Alora off Faye's nipple and back towards himself, nearly falling off the bed as he cradled Alora and scrambled away. Faye had pulled her arm free of Lupin's sleeping form and twisted her body enough to hang her head off the bed so she could be noisily sick onto the floor.

Baby Alora, completely unprepared for the sudden loss of tit, and probably confused by Spike's stumble as well, began to wail again with all her tiny might. Whether it was her cries or Faye's vomiting, little Lupin was soon conscious also and in no time joined his mom in throwing up. Unfortunately the little boy wasn't as adept at throwing up over the side of the bed - or rather, no effort had been made at all. He couldn't exactly blame the boy, he was young and hadn't been sick often.

Clutching his bawling baby girl to his chest, Spike backed away from the other half of his family. Fuck, he wished he could plug his nose.

"No more contact with other kids," Spike called over to Faye as she regained control of her stomach and sprawled weakly back onto the mattress. "Those snotty little germ factories got Lupin sick and he passed it on to you."

Faye moaned piteously. "He has to get to know others his age." Eyes clenched shut, she gagged a few times as her stomach tried to purge the nothing that was left.

Spike scoffed. "Baby, he's a toddler. He doesn't need any milk dates."

It was rewarding to hear her chuckle even if it came at the end of a round of dry heaving. Lupin, done puking for the moment, groaned and tried to bury his face under the blankets. Alora remained unmoved by anything going on, the plight of her mother and brother not registering on her radar in the least, and kept on howling.

"Fuck she better not get sick," Faye muttered. "Her poor little throat is already raw from screaming."

Spike, who had been about to approach, paused in thought. Alora was basically still a newborn - could she handle being as sick as her mom and brother? Spike didn't think so. But on the other hand they'd all been in this room for hours now, since Lupin had first started feeling clammy and ill. Was it already too late to quarantine? Most likely. And anyway Spike needed Faye to feed Alora - there wasn't much milk stored yet and no formula whatsoever because neither of the kids seemed able to stomach it.

He sighed. Nope, this was just going to be life for the foreseeable future and that's all there was to it. At least he could contact Ed and have her leave a dead drop outside the door. And, well, Alora couldn't cry forever after all.

Right?

Again

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

This time it was supposed to be a win!

SHE was the one going in to con them! To catch Londes and rake in all that bounty and start to whittle down her entirely unjust debt.

How the fuck had it all gotten twisted around? How had she become the victim AGAIN?

She was Faye Fucking Valentine, dammit!

It had seemed so simple. Masquerade as one of many gullible fools seeking enlightenment or absolution or whatever the hell these people were enticed by. She just wanted a life free of debt. A slate scraped clean. A fucking chance at making her own mistakes instead of being held hostage by bullshit beyond her control.

The decrepit building should have been the first red flag. And, truthfully, it had been. Her hackles had been raised.

But it had also made sense. If you were conning folks out of a fortune by getting them to sign over their life rights and whatever... tricking people into paying out the ass for the "latest and greatest" gaming technology... why wouldn't you be holed up in some abandoned warehouse waiting for the dust to settle before emerging to lord your riches over the masses like the mastermind you were?

So she had swallowed her fear and ventured in. Crept past the rooms with doors blown off or otherwise unhinged, slipped underneath the tentacles of technology that reached down from the dislodged ceiling tiles to dangle in the air of hallways and vacant rooms alike. The sense of ill ease had ramped up when she came across the first body. But she hadn't been without protection. Her trusty Glock always had her back - was always tucked away behind her back until the gun was needed, in fact.

Who was the corpse? Who knew? The body was relatively fresh, so to speak. The air of the interior of the building was thickly cloying with the disturbing scent of decay, though this particular body showed no signs of that yet. So he wasn't the first, whoever he had been. But he certainly hadn't been killed in whatever disaster had left most of this quadrant of the city in disarray. Someone else searching for the man behind the program. Someone else hunting the bounty that Faye herself was after.

Her heartbeat pounded in her chest, all her senses straining. Perhaps it had been an overconfident oversight to chase this tech-whiz, this supposed guru, on her own. Like so many times before, the dollar signs of the bountyhead had filled her mind with all the ways she could spend said money after turning this yahoo in. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, wasn't that the saying? Well, Faye had the tendency to not only count her chickens but to daydream up all the ways she'd cook those birds too.

And now, poised on the brink of success... or else about to plunge into the time of doom that had met the other corpses she was encountering... now she was feeling regrets.

And... something more than that. There was a whine in the air, not quite like Ein's favorite way to voice his complaints... something more like... a high pitched hum, perhaps? It tickled at her fragmented memory. Something to do with televisions?

The combination of the sound-that-wasn't-exactly-a-sound and the rotting flesh of half a dozen unfortunate souls was beginning to take its toll.

Without warning her vision blurred. Stumbling, panting with abrupt fear, Faye continued forward. This was a mistake, her mind told her. You've fallen into a trap again... again... again...

Suddenly she was terrified right down to her boots. The enormity of the error loomed over her like the damaged ceiling tiles so far above that they were lost in shadow. She was a stranger in a strange land, utterly alone. No one knew where she was. No one was looking for her. No one would be coming to save her. Alone... alone... alone...

Alone again. Tricked again. No hope for you here, no hope at all...

Fumbling lethargically for her COMM device, Faye struggled to keep standing. She wouldn't give in to whatever was happening. She couldn't let this bastard win. Just a few more paces and she'd be in the room where all the intact cords seemed to be leading. Oh, wouldn't Ed be overjoyed to discover whatever lay at the end of this maze of wire? Ed... maybe just... Ed... if she called Ed, well, maybe she wouldn't have to share the bounty very much. Ed never cared about woolongs. Ed might be able to unravel the mystery... or at least let Spike and Jet know that...

"Help... I need... help..." Faye activated the COMM as she managed to enter the room at the end of the hall, dread tingling down her spine. So many bodies.

Was she about to become the latest? It wasn't fair. It wasn't FAIR!

The COMM made a little noise as the connection was made. A sliver of hope shot through her and Faye grasped onto consciousness desperately. "I'm... in a little... trouble..."

"What... what..." Jet's mouth continued to move although his brain had given up on providing words to properly articulate his confusion at the scene spread before his eyes.

"It is Bebop's birthday, Jet-person! Ed has decorated! Celebrations shall commence at 0800!" Edward cried jubilantly, grabbing Jet's hands and swinging them violently up and down.

The train yard in his mind was home to a few different trains now moving smoothly out along their tracks, or trying to at least. Rumbling along like a hearty chuckle, an engine built of dark amusement at how cranky their other shipmates would be if Ed truly did plan to wake Spike and Faye at 8 in the morning Ganymede time. The notion of the ship having a birthday was a small, quiet train engine chugging along without many train cars of additional questions, though he felt strongly that it was the safest inquisition to proceed with. And then there was the currently derailed train that represented his bafflement at what had happened to his ship.

Oblong balloons in a variety of colors were clumsily tied off or taped up to anything that would host the... er... repurposed condoms that Ed had scavenged from who knew where. The fact that each was slightly buoyant against the subtle breeze indicated the fact that she must have found a helium tank to fill the latex rubbers with. It was a small comfort to him that she hadn't blown them up using her own oxygen and mouth. Never mind that she wouldn't have known their true purpose, though at least they were obviously unused.

She had shredded the wrappers and turned them into confetti which she had blown out of a funnel when Jet had first stepped onto the deck with the simple relaxing idea of watching the sun rise on his home world. The funnel had not been unused - it had left a ring of black on Ed's lips from the oil that had been poured through it most recently.

His first task, before even getting any answers, would have to be to wipe that crud off her face.

There were chalk drawings EVERYWHERE. He could identify a collection of box shapes for hop scotch and a few different tic-tac-toe boards awaiting the X's and O's, and drawings of Ein and the rest of the crew. It looked like she had tried to sketch out some of their bounties. All the zipcraft were parked on the deck along the edges of the flight deck and each one was liberally covered in tassels made of whatever clothing Ed had been able to procure from within the ship or elsewhere for all he knew.

She had set up a table as well, he recognized it as the one they'd used on Io when camping outside of the ship while repairs were underway. It was loaded with Piyoko and eggs (raw? boiled? no way to know) and with every ashtray from inside, still loaded with remnants of cigarettes and stogies and even a few cannabis joints. Dozens of open beer cans were set out also, fallen soldiers from whenever they'd been able to afford a case of beer and, rather embarrassingly, passed out before finishing the goods. There were also a handful of grimy glass bottles, which she dragged him over to, and gestured proudly at her findings.

"The bottles are dusty but the liquor is clean!" She gleefully proclaimed. "Bebop was absatively posilutely full of treasures for the crew! Ed saved treats from our last Earth visit and dug through all the storage rooms for the rest! No hiding place was left undisturbed!"

A click-clack sound reached their ears as Ein emerged from the interior of the ship and made his way on puppy paws in need of a nail trim over to the pair by the "refreshments." Jet looked down at the new arrival and noticed that the dog had been outfitted with one of Spike's thin ties, dragging along the dirty deck under Ein's belly, and had Faye's headband perched in front of his ears. Judging by the way he kept flicking his ears, it wasn't something he was a fan of.

Of course, Faye and Spike wouldn't appreciate the costume either.

"Edward will wake the others now! Party time, woo woo!" She announced. Releasing Jet's hands, she bounded over to the RedTail and leapt into the cockpit, activating the stereo system with a screech of delight.

The sudden blast of music made Jet wince at the unexpected volume - he hadn't realized Faye's ship could even produce sounds that loud. Once he acclimated though he realized it wasn't terribly overpowering as long as you were standing in the open air.

Ed was cackling madly as she dove from the ship, landing in a somersault and then vaulting to her feet so she could rub her hands together like a maniacal villain.

"What even is all this, Ed? How'd you get all this stuff up here?" Jet asked, stepping over to her and taking Spike's jacket down from the gun of Faye's ship so he could use the sleeve to finally address the issue of the oil on Ed's face.

"Easy peasy! Spike-person leaves his key in the ignition for quick escapes. Faye-Faye was snoring so she didn't notice Ed taking the bracelet to activate her ship. All the stuff was, well, all over! The laundry room, the bridge, the work shop... clutter clutter everywhere but Ed has made it into artful decorations! Oh! The balloons came from Spike-person's room but he never sleeps in there so Ed was able to loot the place while he was on the couch." She nodded in self satisfaction. "While researching everyone's birthdays, Ed realized even the ship has a day of celebration! Today is the day that the Bebop was first commissioned for fishing! What a long strange trip it's been, eh?"

"Huh. Well... that, uh, that makes sense." Logical indeed.

"Ed thinks that the Bebop deserves a present. A new baby!"

And just like that she'd lost him again.

"Sorry, what?"

Grinning wildly, Ed pointed at the Hammerhead and then the Swordfish II and then the RedTail. "These are the babies, of course! Ed would like one too, please!"

"I... uh... huh..." Jet couldn't deny the usefulness of Ed having her own craft but the idea of finding one in decent shape that was also affordable was daunting.

"Ed discovered many interesting things while finding when everyone's welcome to the world day." Ed said then, adopting an air of casualness that immediately made Jet nervous. She hummed briefly and then gave him a wicked look. "Ed is not entirely sure how to blackmail but... well..." She paused and cleared her throat before beginning to sing.

When you're falling awake And you take stock of the new day And you hear your voice croak As you choke on what you need to say Well, don't you fret, don't you fear I will give you good cheer

Life's a long song -

Jet's jaw dropped. His chin literally hit his chest. No!

Ed stooped down to scoop Ein into her arms and smirked at Jet.

"As Edward suspected... Jet-person's parents must have had a nostalgic draw to more than just blues and jazz, eh, Jethro?" She snickered.

"Ed, if you breathe a WORD of this to the others..." He trailed off, no threat springing to mind in the wake of the shock of having someone notice and realize who he'd been named for. Despite having written Jethro on the birth certificate, no one in his family had ever actually called him by his full name. As a baby, it must have seemed too big to attach to someone so small and so he'd been just Jet since he could remember.

"A baby for the Bebop?" Ed said again, changing her expression to one of pure innocence as she snuggled Ein up under her chin to further impress upon him the cuteness of the duo.

"What the fuck is going on out here?" Faye's voice, raised in a holler, came to them from the open hangar. "Why is my ship parked out here? What the fuck music are you desecrating my speakers with?!"

Jet ground his teeth together. Time was running out.

"Okay, Ed. Just hold your horses and sit tight, all right? I can't say when we can make it happen but I promise we will." He hurriedly assured her.

Ed dropped Ein to the deck, a move that merely startled the corgi who dashed off once he'd gotten his legs under him, so she could spit on her palm and hold it out towards him. Jet grimaced.

"A dry handshake would have done fine." He muttered.

"The spit is tied to the words of the promise!" Ed informed him.

Sighing, Jet spat on his own hand and shook.

"Was he wearing one of my ties?" Spike's voice reached them now as well. "ED! What did you do to my ship?!"

Cartwheeling off towards the newcomers, Ed shrieked with happiness.

"Happy birthday, Bebop! Come, friends! It is a time of celebration! Let the rejoicing begin!"