Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Gotta Knock a Little Harder ❯ Rain (Interlude) ( Chapter 6 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Who really put up the bounty on McKenna? What happened? She carries her guilt with her, and now she needs help from someone she can trust. McKenna's story, continued.

Anime/Manga: Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction / Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Drama | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 09.07.2005 | Updated On: 10.22.2005 | Pages: 6 | Words: 6.4K | Visits: 815 | Status: Completed

Rain (Interlude)

I don't feel a thing; and I stopped remembering; The days are just like moments turned to hours; Mother used to say; if you want, you'll find a way; Bet mother never danced through fire showers ~ Mai Yamane, Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop OST)

She came from a period of superstition, and paganism. Before the birth of a messiah. It was a simpler time, but still deadly. Especially if you were a young girl who'd gotten her first menses. Her father was a clan leader, and he'd used her as a bargaining chip to form an alliance with a rival clan.

The women of her mother's line were reputed for their beauty that didn't fade with age. They were also notorious for stubbornness, and it was whispered that some of her female ancestors had just disappeared in the night when betrothed to a man they weren't pleased with.

But this alliance was vital in order to control the warring factions in the region. Her entire clan became involved in making sure she was never out of anyone's sight from the moment the agreement was made, and the marriage plans were set into motion.

The wedding went off as planned, and she spent the next few years with a man she barely knew. Marriage had always been a business arrangement, love was never in the equation. She considered herself fortunate that he was tolerable, and never cruel.

But several years went by, and no issue resulted. Her husband, a dour, quiet man, became more restive, and angry with her. He took to beating her frequently. Especially if she bled.

He had finally come to the conclusion that she was deliberately preventing pregnancy, and decided the marriage was at an end. Of course, in this clan, ending a marriage was not so simple as cuckolding her. He'd grown very powerful in the region, and he was not going to suffer the humiliation of an estranged wife mocking him.

She was scheduled for execution.

The first time she popped, she was knelt over a wooden stump, and the axe was coming down.

Next thing she knew, she was in a hot, dry, crowded city full of people who had dark skin, and spoke a strange language, one of them walked by, talking to himself, and holding a small object up to his ear. Her terror caused her to pop again, and again, and yet again. She lost count of the places she appeared, and at first thought it was her punishment in death for being a bad wife.

When she finally calmed down, she quickly realized that her movement was based on her fear. And she learned as much as she could about her own ability, albeit through experimentation.

She was never any one place for very long, and she never knew where she would end up next. She did learn that her life depended upon her control of her own fear, though.

She made do, as best as she could. Always remaining a shadow. Always trying to be unseen and unnoticed.

It was not always successful, and she cheated death more than once. Usually by the skin of her teeth.

She had not yet met Hohenheim, and absorbed the stones that enabled her to control her talent. She had been traveling back and forth through time, and had stopped being surprised or shocked at what humankind could accomplish, both for good, and evil.

She'd also learned to assess her surroundings and estimate when she was, when she would pop on Earth. Many times she had arrived `home', only to discover it was long before, or long after her original time. But she had learned to imagine and account for the changes in landscape when she'd arrive. She'd come to actually enjoy these encounters with her own home.

She popped onto a hillside overlooking Loch Fyne. Behind her was the Inveraray Castle. She didn't see mush in the way of `modern' civilization, and couldn't determine her time period. She knew it was long past the time of her clan, though.

She heard a tiny gasp, and looked down to see a child of about four years staring at her in wonderment.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked. “Because mommy and daddy came here to see ghosts!”

She smiled and knelt down. “No, sweetie. I'm real.” She held out her hand to him, and said, “See? Touch me.”

He hesitantly reached for her hand, and touched it with the tip of one tiny finger. He gasped again.

She looked around, wondered where his parents were. But she saw no one. There was a distant rumbling, and she feared a storm was approaching. “Where are your mommy and daddy?” she asked.

He pointed to the castle. She stood, and offered her hand. “Let's go find them, before it rains.”

She led him off toward the castle, and heard the rumbling again. She looked back over the Loch, and saw no clouds approaching.

“It's not going to rain, silly,” the child said. He pointed up at the sky and said, “The weatherman said they were going to make it sunny today.”

He pointed back toward the Loch, and squealed gleefully. “Lookie! They're going to the Moongate!”

McKenna watched as a shuttle rose in the distance, bound for space.

An instant later, the idyllic setting was shattered by a light as bright as a nuclear explosion in the sky, and the entire Earth shook. Hours later, the flaming rocks started raining down on Earth.

The boy's parents had been killed in the disaster, and the Earth was no longer the seat of modern society. It was the end of the world.

Pieces of the Moon crashed into the earth a little at a time, and the survivors collapsed into anarchy. McKenna spent the next week searching for someone to care for the boy. She knew she never could.

In that time, she picked up bits and pieces of news, and gradually put together what had happened. The Hyperspace gate on the Moon was unstable someone said. It had exploded, and in the process had broken the Moon. Millions had died in the disaster. What a shame they couldn't fix it sooner.

And the worst information of all; Investigations had concluded that what had caused the explosion was a sympathetic vibration of another similar phenomenon. They'd pinpointed the location, and were now searching to find the source.

McKenna sat on a hillside near Loch Fyne at night. She stared up at the broken moon, and then down at her own hands. She would never be able to wash the blood of millions off of them.

In her heartbreak and revulsion, she popped, and arrived in 15th Century Europe. It was not her home, but it was closer to familiar, and she desperately wanted familiar.

It was the middle of the Spanish Inquisition. She thought that the irony was appropriate.

She had told the child that she was not a ghost, but she felt like one, now. She was dead inside, and dreamed the horror she had witnessed every night.

She had learned to be very careful in her travels, but this time, she neglected to pay attention; or perhaps no longer cared. She was never quite sure which.

She had made the mistake of assuming that feeding a stray cat was not going to raise any eyebrows. She neglected to take into account she was living right in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition.

She was yanked out of her bed in the middle of the night, and interrogated. She was not only accused of keeping a servant of the Devil, but also being in communication with him. It was then she learned she was talking in her sleep, and with all the languages she'd picked up in her travels, she was mumbling in Mandarin, Sumerian, Ancient Egyptian, Lakota, as well as her own ancient tongue, and a few languages that hadn't even evolved yet.

They tortured her for days, trying to get her to confess to witchcraft. In the end, she was sentenced to death. They came to her cell in the morning, and sheared off her beautiful red hair, and then took her to the burning grounds in an open cart. The townsfolk threw curses, and rotting vegetables at her. But the humiliation of this was nothing compared to the horribly agony as the flames on the pyre rode up, and licked her feet and legs. She screamed unendingly. Her throat was raw from the smoke and the screams. The pain ripped through her every nerve until she reached overload, and passed out.

When she awoke, she found herself in a soft bed, her wounds dressed.

[1.1.1.1]

She had lost track of time while traveling before she met Hohenheim, but at that point, she estimated she had been moving through time, space, and across universes for about 50 years. She never aged.

Now with the red stones in her body, she could choose her destiny.

And she reveled in it. She had witnessed great moments in history, and shared in some moments that were tragic. She saw incredible wonders, and learned a dozen languages. She spent countless hours in libraries, and on computers. She served brilliant philosophers, and absorbed information like a sponge.

She also learned to lie, very well. It kept her alive. And as she followed humankind out to the stars, she learned how to fake her identity with expertise.

But she didn't learn just for survival. With control, she could learn for the sheer joy of discovery.

She took on lovers. For a night, sometimes for longer. Some declared their hearts for eternity. But she never gave hers. She was ephemeral. Love was not in the cards for her. There was too much pain involved. She couldn't bear the thought of sharing a life with someone, only to watch him grow old and die, while she remained as she always was.

It was better to break their hearts, and move on. She never denied that it was selfish, but it was safer.

Occasionally, she would pop onto Earth to see if it had ever recovered from the devastation of the exploding gate. She could never explain her morbid curiosity, she just accepted it.

But the answer was always the same, Earth had been all but abandoned in the wake of the devastation. She had murdered an entire world.

[2.2.2.2]

She inexplicably found herself on Ganymede, eventually. She went there deliberately, but without a real reason. Curiosity was all there was. There, she met Alisa, and was offered a job at La Fin. Business was steady at the time, but was threatening to fall off with the opening of newer, better ports.

Alisa was the closest thing McKenna had found for a friend in all the travels. Intelligent, open and warm. They spent nights talking philosophy, and history. She also learned that Alisa had a past long before she opened La Fin.

One night, she had been invited to join her after work for dinner. There were pictures all over the small apartment; friends, her boyfriend Rhint. But one stuck out.

It was all but buried behind a cluster of other photographs in pretty frames, and was of a bearded man in uniform.

“Who is that?” McKenna asked.

Alisa picked the picture up in the simple black frame, and softened. A small, sad smile touched her lips, as she said, “Oh. I'd almost forgotten I had that.” She touched the picture, as if to draw the memories closer. “That's Jet. We were… a couple. Once. Long ago.” She placed the picture back in the back of the cluster, but remained staring at it for a moment. “He was a cop with the ISSP.” She faced McKenna. “I have no idea what he's doing now. I'd heard he'd quit the force.”

“I'm sorry, Alisa, I didn't mean…”

Alisa smiled. “That's okay. I was the one who left.”

She never mentioned his name again, until McKenna had escaped from Gate Corp R & D.

Things had begun to slow down drastically at La Fin, and Alisa was worried. Some regulars had kept coming, but most of them found more lively entertainment elsewhere. And the sailors just stopped.

One evening, as they were planning to shut down early, a distinguished gentleman arrived. McKenna could see he was clearly distressed over something, but she didn't ask. She just kept the liquor coming, and hoped that it would validate the doors remaining unlocked for the time he was here. He was no trouble, at least. He just spent his time sullenly drinking in a corner booth.

She thought she must have done something right, because he came at the same time every night for the next two weeks, sometimes bringing others with him. And always, even when he was accompanied by others, he was quiet. She never thought much about being watched by him, or any of the others. There really wasn't much else to keep the attention of customers in the small bar.

But one night, he decided to sit at the bar, itself, and started talking to her. She discovered then that he was from Gate Corp, and they talked a bit about quantum physics, and hyperspace gates.

By this point in her life, she had learned as much as she could. She wanted to make sure she didn't make another disastrous mistake. She surprised him when she was able to keep up with the technical end of the conversation.

He was under some pressure, he revealed, to advance the technology. She made an offhand comment about possibilities and directions, careful to avoid saying something out of time.

He offered her a job.

When she told Alisa the next day, her friend told her to take it, because she was languishing in this little bar, and the doors would probably be closing soon.

It was the worst decision she had ever made.

Her first day; Alisa had help scrounge up a nice outfit for her to wear. She arrived at the R & D building in Theriot excited and ready to do something other than the usual “just getting by”.

She would later admit that the wages offered was seductive.

He was there to greet her in the Main Entrance, and he escorted her to the lab she would be working in.

She grew suspicious as she rode down in the elevator with him, and the door opened to tight security. He grabbed her arm in an iron grip. He produced a gun from somewhere, and shoved it into her ribs, then led her into a lab that held a cell.

She was locked into the cell, and he told her over an intercom that this was where she was going to remain.

“Why?” she cried.

Her horror grew when he told her of a little boy visiting Scotland the day the Moon Gate exploded. Of meeting a magical woman that saved him, and cursed him to a life on Hell. And how, as he grew older, he began to understand just what she was, and what she could do.

He was obsessed, and as he grew, he learned everything he could about Hyperspace gates. He was determined to make a place for himself at Gate Corp, and he would have the personnel available to research the possibilities of biological Rosenberg-Einstein bridges. It would be the way to reach the stars.

He also blamed her for the deaths of his parents.

“Imagine my joy and shock at seeing you at La Fin,” he said. “You'll advance our research by years.”

She glared at him, and tried to phase away. Fire ripped through her body, and she collapsed.

When she came to, he was still outside her little cell. “You can't escape. I designed this cell on the technology that already controls the gates.” He smiled, and it chilled her. “Without the controls, the hyperspace gates would be impossible.”

She was poked, prodded, and studied. They drew blood and cell samples, and fitted her with a tracker. They told her where to go, and if she tried to go elsewhere, they yanked her right back. She attempted to phase to freedom one time, but the resulting forced return was so brutal on her body, she didn't attempt again.

She finally gave up. She just went through the motions. She considered it payment for the lives she ended and destroyed when the Moon Gate exploded. Her guilt would be paid for with her own blood.

She had not phased as frequently, in so short of time since she was given the red stones. But here, she was given no choice. Somehow, they had managed to make her go when and where they wanted.

In time, it started to tell on her. She was never given time to recover from each jump.

When the experiment went badly one time, she knew that she had started losing the charge on the stones. Soon, she would be dead. She was ready for that.

She found herself returning to the old rituals and invocations of her childhood, at least as best as she could. She was given no altar, nor accoutrements for the rituals. But the words gave her some measure of peace. One day, she asked if she could be taken back home, to die on Earth, in sight of Loch Fyne. She was denied.

Her horror was not going to end that easily. They began to experiment with different substances to stabilize her. Eventually, they settled on the Red Eye. It reacted differently on her than everyone else. Possibly because of her unique physiology, Red Eye had a sedative effect. Keeping her calm and pliable was exactly what they needed.

She became addicted, of course.

But she knew that the only way she would be allowed to die, would be to escape. She had spent more than two years watching and absorbing information. It was what she had done all her life.

She knew that Ganymede experienced incredible geomagnetic storms that would temporarily knock out the power grid around Ganymede. Gate Corp was prepared, and always had a back up generator ready to go. The system would automatically switch over to it within seconds after the power would go out. But they were seconds that McKenna knew might afford her escape. Unfortunately, they had planned for that eventuality, and the control grid around her cell was partially powered independently. She could tell by the dimming of the light it emitted that it was weaker. But what had stopped her previous, was the memory of the sheer agony she experienced when she phased.

She had also reached a point that her ability to control where she went, was growing weaker. She feared phasing. But she saw little choice. Death…any death, was preferable at this point, but if she could get home, that would be the best way.

So she watched and waited.

In a moment of neglect, the intercom was left on, and she overheard something she shouldn't have. The plans were going to go beyond just seeing if they could improve the technology of the gates by studying her. It was moving to a mesh of cloning, and mechanical. And the army was involved. The idea of expansion, and conquering other worlds, and the life forms on those worlds made her physically sick.

Now she had to escape, and remain alive. And she had to make damn sure that she ended up where she needed to be.

She watched even more closely from then on. She knew that they took a hard copy of any data they had gathered that day, and manually stored it elsewhere. Because moving that kind of information through the system would make it easier for someone to find out, she thought.

She watched as the last tech would pop out the small hard drive each evening, and leave the lab. She noticed before the door slid shut which way he turned. And she timed how long it took to dump the information in storage, and to return with the cleaned hard drive.

She watched every little detail.

One night, her opportunity came. The lab was empty for the night when a storm hit. She watched as the illumination of the control grid dimmed, telling her that it was at it's weakest point, and then she phased.

The pain was exquisite, but not nearly as debilitating as the first time she tried to phase out of her cell.

She decided to take small hops. It was less stressful. She popped in the lab, on the outside of her cell. Gasping for breath, she fell to her knees at willed herself to move on, before she was caught. She nearly crawled to the computer bank, and struggled through blurred vision to pop the fresh hard drive out. The exertion took more out of her than she was expecting, and she sat on the floor a moment, immobile; sweating and gasping. Praying that she would not be caught.

After what seemed an eternity, but was actually a few seconds, the back-up power kicked in. She knew her time was limited. She calculated the location of the information storage, and popped again. She stunned to find herself actually in the room, itself. She never thought she could be quite so accurate.

She didn't waste any time marveling at her fortune, but took a memorized access code, and located the files she wanted. She copied them all onto the hard drive, and filled it to capacity. Then she gave it the order to delete from the main storage unit.

Failsafes had been installed on the system, and the main computer protested at her suggestion. Trembling in terror, she quickly found a way to reroute the information, and was then able to give it the kill order.

She heard the sound of several people running toward the room, and she immediately phased. She could think of only one person she could go to, now.

The short hops were wearing on her. She collapsed inside the doorway of La Fin.

She learned when she woke up, that Alisa had Rhint get her to a safe place that couldn't be connected to any of them.

Messages were relayed, and McKenna was told what to do. Alisa and Rhint both knew the seriousness of the information she had. It was also not long before word got out on the street that she was being looked for. Or more particularly, the information she had. A bounty, yes. But not a `legal' one. Only a certain sector of the population knew, and none of them were cops, or legitimate bounty hunters.

Alisa managed to get a message to her that there was a reward on her head, and there was one way she was going to get out of it. McKenna made her escape off-planet the next night.