Cowboy Bebop Fan Fiction ❯ San Francisco ❯ San Francisco ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Session 4 SAN FRANCISCO by jak981125

Note: This work is part of a series. It will make more sense if you have read the previous sessions.

        Jet woke up one morning and felt like he was moving. Now why would the Bebop be moving? A look out of a window confirmed that they were still on Mars. He hand landed them in a lake two days ago. The auto-pilot was on and programmed to keep the ship going in one big circle, flying only a few feet over the water’s surface. The programmed speed was pretty low as well. Faye and Lau were nowhere to be found on the ship. Now what was going on?

        Jet climbed out a hatch and took a look around. Sure enough, there were Lau and Faye. Lau was holding on to a tether and using the Bebop to water ski and Faye was sitting on his shoulders. The two seemed to be having a ball. Jet’s first thought was to scream at both of them, but he thought better of it. It occurred to him that he had been way too grumpy lately and that just wasn’t him. He was a self-proclaimed nice guy. He missed Spike. It had been just him and Spike working together for three years. Now he was working with two people he had known a relatively short time. Well at least they were enjoying each other’s company.

        Jet climbed back into the ship and switched off the auto-pilot. He climbed back out to see Lau and Faye swimming back to the ship. “Party pooper!” shouted Faye.

“How many times do I have to remind people that this is my ship?” asked Jet. He helped both of them climb back in. Mars had no salt water, making it a great place for water sports. Lau and Faye came back in rather chilled. They dried off and got dressed. All three crew member climbed back up top for coffee and cigarettes. It really was a beautiful day. Faye thought about how much Ed would have enjoyed water skiing and it made her feel a little sad. However, Faye alone had no regrets about Ed’s departure. She figured Ed was better off with her father and that it was better that she hadn’t been there to see Spike die. She had gotten a few e-mails from Ed since her departure. She was always on the move because of her father’s work, but she was the type of girl that just couldn’t stay in one place for too long.

        About then, Jet heard a whirring noise. He saw what looked like a small helicopter headed in their direction. He recognized it as a courier service. The automated courier landed on the deck of Bebop, dropped off a telegram for Lau, and then took off. Lau knew it must be from his mother, since she was the only person who knew he was on Bebop. The news in the telegram was not good.

        “Hi sweetie! I am OK but I have some sad news. Danny passed away last night. Please come home. Mom.”

        Lau was silent for a moment. “What’s wrong?” asked Faye. Without waiting for an answer, she took the telegram out of his hand and read it. “Who’s Danny?” she asked.

“Danny Fong. My godfather. He was a good friend of the family and he was the guy who taught me Akido,” replied Lau. He was struggling not to cry. He went back inside. Faye started to follow him but Jet grabbed her arm.

“Let him alone for a while Faye,” he said.

        About ten minutes later, Lau came back up with a suitcase. “I have to go back home to San Francisco. I’ll be back in a few days,” he told Jet.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Jet replied. “You take all the time you need.”

Lau boarded the Swordfish and took off. Before he had even reached the gate, he noticed he was being followed. It was the Redtail. “Faye, what are you doing? Go back,” he ordered.

“No. Let me come with,” she replied. Lau would have far preferred to go alone. But it was touching that Faye wanted to be supportive. He knew she wasn’t coming for the tourism. No one would.

        San Francisco had been a town of grave sadness for many years. The day of the gate accident had been the worst day in the town’s history. Three hours before the gate exploded, the Big One finally hit. It was the biggest earthquake ever recorded. It lasted only 32 seconds but you couldn’t even fathom the destruction or loss of life that it left. Many buildings downtown as well as the Golden Gate Bridge were completely destroyed. The quake caused a title wave that sunk a nearby Navy ship, killing several sailors. There were aftershocks all day long. The emergency crews didn’t even know where to start. Three hours into the rescue effort, it happened. The gate exploded, raining down pieces of the moon all over the earth. San Francisco was hit the worse. People who had survived the earthquake were killed by the asteroids. The whole thing made September 11th look small by comparison. The final death toll was a staggering 20,000.

        A nutty minister, who had his own radio talk show, made a huge mistake the next day. He compared San Francisco to Sodom and Gomorra. He claimed that the disaster had been sent by God to punish San Francisco for having a population consisting entirely of “queers and heathen Chinese”. He said they got what they had coming to them and urged people not to help with any relief efforts. He was found hanging from a tree the next day.

        From that day on, the worst debris always hit San Francisco. The only building that always stood was the Transamerica Pyramid which became a symbol of hope for the people. The city went into a cycle that lasted for decades. They would raise funds, have a dome built over a portion of the city (something Lau Sr. had taken part in) and then try to raise enough money to fund another section. It took a long time and a staggering amount of effort, but the domes were finally finished after several decades. Even though San Francisco had become one of the safer places on earth to live, it was seen as a town with a curse. It was a moot point anyway. Over seventy percent of earth’s population had left the planet by that time. For the first time, the earth was under-populated. Those who were left had a strong sense of unity.

        Lau and Faye had to observe a rather odd landing procedure. Since the airport had a dome over it, all air and space travelers had to land on runways a mile away from the airport. They would then travel underground into the dome. Parking a small craft was not terribly expensive, as there was not a huge demand in the area.

        As soon as they entered the airport they saw Mrs. Xiang right away. A funny thing about Mrs. Xiang was that even though she had lived in San Francisco for decades, she had never lost her Brooklyn accent. “Lau, sweetie, I’m so glad ta see ya!” said Lau’s mom in a voice loud enough to wake the dead as she grabbed him in a bear hug.

“Mom what happened? Danny wasn’t that old. How did he die?” asked Lau.

“Aw we’ll talk ‘bout that later. Who’s your friend here?” asked Mrs. Xiang.

“Name’s Faye. Faye Valentine. It’s a very common name,” said Faye.

“Well I’m Laverne. Laverne Xiang. Not a common name at all but my late husband was Chinese and I ain’t gonna go back to my maiden name just ‘cause he’s dead,” replied Mrs. Xiang. “So, you two just friends or...?”

Faye and Lau glanced at each other uncomfortably for a moment. “Remains to be seen,” said Faye.

“Hey Lau, I ain’t gettin’ any younger here. Hurry up and make me some grandkids already!” teased Mrs. Xiang. Faye giggled but as for Lau it would be impossible to describe how many shades of red his face turned at that moment .

        It was in the car ride home that Mrs. Xiang got a little more serious. “Look sweetie, I’m trilled that you got out of that lousy syndicate, but couldn’t you have picked a safer job? I mean, this whole bounty hunting thing...”

“Don’t worry Laverne, I’m there to keep an eye on him,” smirked Faye.

“Aw well that makes me feel a hundred times better right there,” replied Mrs. Xiang.

“Ma, you still haven’t answered my question yet. What happened to Danny?” asked Lau impatiently.

Mrs. Xiang sighed. Lau was the youngest of her kids but he had also brought her the most worries. She knew he suffered from a lot of needless guilt, so she was hesitant to tell him what she had to say. “He was murdered,” she finally said.

“What?!” shouted Lau.

“Now honey, don’t get upset. Ain’t nothing we can do about this,” cautioned Mrs. Xiang.

“Nothing we can do about this? You tell me who’s responsible and I’ll go track him down myself and give Danny’s family the bounty!” replied Lau.

“Honey, I feel like I just got you back. Don’t go doing somethin’ crazy now,” said Mrs. Xiang. “There’s no way of knowing exactly who did this. His brother was in the Hong Kong mob and they think maybe a rival gang killed Danny to take revenge on his brother.”

        Mrs. Xiang hadn’t wanted Lau to continue feeling bad over being a former mobster himself now that he was out. Both she and Danny had begged Lau not to get involved with the Red Dragons, but he hadn’t listened to them. He was determined not to struggle the way his father had. Danny had never once mentioned having a brother who was in a syndicate. It would have made an impact on Lau if he had. He wondered why he hadn’t said anything. Maybe it was because Danny was a man who believed in honor and saw it as a dishonor that his brother was in that line of work. Lau could only imagine how badly he had dishonored his own loved ones. What he was feeling was exactly what his mother was trying to avoid.

        Lau’s mother no longer lived in the home he had grown up in. She lived alone in a townhouse by the coast. The coast looked at lot different in those days. The tide had been severely affected by the moon’s explosion. The water level seemed a lot lower. Lau remembered all the times that Danny and his dad had taken him and his brothers fishing out in the San Francisco Bay. Now they were both gone. A loud bang shattered his train of thought. That was something you had to get used to if you were going to live in that area. A meteor had just hit the dome. It was a sound that Lau hadn’t heard in years. Believe it or not, to him it was a comforting sound. It meant that he was home. It wasn’t so comforting to Faye, though. If she hadn’t had a seatbelt on, she would have jumped twenty feet in the air.

        Lau hadn’t seen his three older brothers for a while. It’s sad to say that none of them were too happy to see him. They were a stubborn bunch and slow to forgive. They hardly said a word to him at dinner. At the end of the evening they kissed their mother good-bye and left without so much a wave to Lau. Faye felt like strangling every single one of them. She didn’t though. For once she said nothing. The last thing on earth she had wanted to do was to embarrass Lau in front of his family. All they had really discussed amongst each other that night was Danny. “Remember all the times he took us fishing?” “Remember that time he drove a hundred miles just to see my baseball team compete?” “Remember the time he took us in for two weeks when mom and dad were in the hospital?” This was safe enough territory. Lau learned from his brothers that Danny had been shot while catching up on some paper work at his martial arts studio. There had been no witnesses.

        That night Lau couldn’t sleep. He had wondered about the people he himself had killed as a syndicate man. Sure he had repented from the whole damn business but new things were disturbing his mind. What about the people those victims had left behind? It was certain that none of these guys had been innocents like Danny. All three of them had been Mafia thugs. All three of them would have been glad to see Lau die. But who was to say that they hadn’t left someone behind who was hurting over the loss? Vicious had been a slimeball and Lau had felt sad over his death. He knew his wife would have been miserable. If a guy like Vicious could be mourned by someone, who was to say that these guys hadn’t been missed as well? Had Spike ever felt like this? Had he felt such disgust with himself that he couldn’t take it anymore? Lau wished he had talked to Spike while he was still alive. He would have given anything to know why he had quit the Dragons.

        Lau had to get out. He needed to clear his mind. Maybe a walk would do him good. He wished he was in his old neighborhood. That was a good place for a stroll. Here, there were reminders of doom and disaster everywhere. There was the low tide and the occasional bang as a meteor hit the dome. Then there was the moon. It had never looked the same since the explosion. What was left of it still shone but it looked mutilated up in the sky. Every year it orbited farther away from the earth. Someday it might be a thing of the past. This was just too depressing. About that time, Lau finally saw something familiar. It was the strip mall where Danny had his old studio.

        There were police barricades on the sidewalk and police tape across the door. No one was around. Danny pushed on the door with his metal hand, so as not to leave any prints. It was unlocked. He ripped the police tape off the door and entered the quiet studio. It wasn’t like the nonsense you see in Hollywood. There were no chalk outlines, no blood on the floor. Well there had been but it was washed away now. What did remain was a broken mirror. The walls had been mirrored and a bullet had shattered one of them.

        “Danny, if you can hear me, I’m sorry. I hope they told you that I got out before you died,” said Lau out loud. Lau began practicing his old moves in front of the mirror. It was dark but he could see that he hadn’t lost his old skill. Faster and faster he fought with an invisible opponent. He never practiced with the same sort of frequency that Spike had but the moves came naturally and instinctively. It occurred to him that at this point, Danny would have been proud. Danny was not like the older Xiang brothers. He didn’t hang on to the past the way some people do. Lau closed his eyes and remembered his days as a youth in this studio.

BANG!

        That was no meteor. It was a gunshot and the bullet had inflicted a flesh wound in Lau’s left arm. The lights went on. Lau turned around and to his horror saw Akira standing in the doorway accompanied by two thugs from the syndicate.

        Akira was a muscular Japanese man of about thirty years. He was about six feet tall, had a full beard and slicked-back hair. Akira was normally an easy-going guy who liked to crack disgusting jokes and was only a wee bit on the sadistic side. But standing in that doorway, Lau could literally see small fires of rage, glowing in his eyes.

        Akira’s face remained unchanged but he began to clap his hands in mock applause. “I have to hand it to you Lau. I’ve seen people do all sorts of things to get out of syndicates, but faking your own kidnapping, now that was original. You should be proud of yourself.” His voice would have made even Vicious afraid.

“Akira...I...”

“Shut up!” thundered Akira. “You had us worried sick. When your body didn’t show up we kept waiting for the people who had taken you to contact us with demands but no one ever did. I can forgive that, I can even overlook you leaving. WHAT I CANNOT AND WILL NOT OVERLOOK IS THE FACT THAT YOUR LITTLE STUNT GOT SEVERAL OF MY PEOPLE KILLED!”

        Lau knew he had no opportunity to explain the truth about what happened. He toyed with the idea of going for his own gun and shooting it out with these guys, but he was outnumbered three to one.

“I knew you would come here,” Akira continued. “We baited the trap and you walked right in and got caught like the little rat you are.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lau.

“Who do you think took out your sensei? Don’t looked so shocked Lau. It wasn’t our idea, but when the Hong Kong mob offered us thirty million to do the job, it occurred to me we could kill two birds with one stone.”

Lau had been fearful for his own life until he heard that. Now he just wanted to end this like a man. He went for his gun. At that moment, some shots rang out from across the street and the two goons went down. It was Faye! Akira had been a fool to turn the lights on. Had it been dark, she wouldn’t have been able to hit anything. Akira himself had not gone down but dove behind a desk and Lau hid behind some lockers. He signaled Faye not to approach.

        Akira stood straight up from behind his cover and started firing. Lau returned fire. He could have sworn he had hit him but Akira seemed unharmed. Two traded gunfire again. The same result occurred. But this time Lau had seen something that he hadn’t noticed before. Akira had on a black trench coat and it had come open for just a moment while they were shooting. He was wearing body armor! Faye fired three more shots into the studio but missed. Akira fired back at her through the glass door. Lau took a shot and hit him in the back of the neck. This too was just a flesh wound. He could hear Akira reloading and figured he should do the same. He produced a clip that was gold in color from his back pocket that he had saved for just such an occasion. It was loaded with armor-piercing bullets. Faye fired again, and again Akira rose to shoot but this time he never got the chance. Lau was a crack shot and nailed him right in the lower chest. Akira dropped his gun and collapsed.

        Lau stood up and walked over to the fallen Red Dragon. Upon seeing him do this, Faye entered the studio. Lau stood over the fallen Akira. “Do it,” snarled Akira. “Kill me now!” It was tempting. It really was. For a moment Faye thought Lau was really going to do it. But no! Lau holstered his Lueger.

“I don’t have that right,” he said. “Neither do you.” He kicked Akira’s gun away from him. He took Faye by the arm and started to walk away.

“Remember this!” Akira shouted after him. “You had a chance to end this once and for all, right here and now, and you didn’t take it. Remember that when I do eventually kill you, Lau!” It was certainly a frightening possibility. Lau couldn’t help but think of the fate Spike had suffered. But at that moment, having spared Akira, he felt some sense of redemption for the first time in a long time. He wasn’t going to blow that now.

        The funeral was two days later. Lau had to decline being a pall- bearer because of the injury to his arm. Taking the casket from the hearse to the grave was a job would have required the use of both arms. In the days before the funeral he walked around with his left sleeve rolled up so everyone could see the bandage. He wore that thing like a badge of honor. Everyone tried to make the funeral as traditionally Chinese as possible. For one thing, everyone wore white instead of black. The absences of color in the clothing was supposed to symbolize an absence of life. A black and white photo of Danny in an Akido stance was taken from his studio and placed on his casket. Lau’s brothers and Danny’s sons looked so noble as they laid the man to rest. To Lau, Danny was like the uncle he never had. Lau was filled with a lot of grief that day. This is why Faye came along. She was really starting to like Lau and wanted to be of some comfort to him, despite Jet’s advice to leave him alone. Mrs. Xiang eulogized Danny as being a modern day warrior of the highest virtue. She stressed how proud he had been of all his students, especially Lau. Danny was quite sure she had put that one in for his brothers to hear. They had still said very little to him. He wasn’t sure if there was still any hostility there as the three of them had always been a fairly quiet bunch.

        A banquet was held afterwards at Danny’s favorite Chinese restaurant. Truth be told, the food was probably not very authentically Chinese but it sure was tasty. People need a time like that to sort of decompress after a stressful event. It’s a time for everyone to be able to sit down together and say “this bites.” It was then that Lau’s three brothers gathered in front of the table where he was sitting. They still didn’t say a word but all three bowed to him. Well actions certainly do speak louder than words and Lau got the message loud and clear. Lau wasn’t sure if it was his actions at the studio, or his mother’s words that had given them a change of heart. Or maybe they had come to their senses on their own. He didn’t ask. It didn’t matter. He simply bowed back out of respect as did Faye.

        “You were supposed to fold your hands,” whispered Lau with a grin.

“What?”

“Women are supposed to fold their hands when they bow,” repeated Lau.

“Next you’ll be telling me I’m eating with the wrong pair of chopsticks,” retorted Faye. She stepped outside for a smoke.

        In the meantime, back on Mars, Jet was walking through a small gate into the very cemetery where Spike and Julia had been reunited. He had owned a plot there but gave it up so that Spike and Julia could be buried in their old hangout. Jet approached their resting place with a single red rose. “I know I haven’t been here in a while Spike, but I’ve been busy breaking in the new guy,” he said out loud. “Faye has really dropped the attitude around him and he’s turning out to be one hell of a bounty hunter. I hope you won’t mind me letting him have the Swordfish. I just don’t want you to think that somehow this guy is taking your place. No one could ever do that. You were the greatest.” As he placed the rose by the headstone, he noticed that someone had also put a pinwheel there. Jet smiled. He knew Ed must have come to Mars and put that there herself.

        Back on earth, as Faye was finishing her cigarette, she heard a voice behind her. “I could never give these things up either.”

Faye turned around to see who was speaking. It was Mrs. Xiang who was having a smoke herself. “Does it still remain to be seen or have you made up your mind?” asked Mrs. Xiang.

“What... oh, that.” Faye remembered the conversation in the car.

“I want you to promise me something, hon. Promise me that as long as my boy’s a bounty hunter, you’ll always have his back like you did that night. You told me in the car that you were keeping an eye on him. I meant it when I said that was a comfort. If I know someone like you is with him, I’ll sleep a lot better at night.”

“I won’t let him out of my sight,” promised Faye with a grin. She went back inside, sat down at the table and stared right into Lau’s eyes.

“What are you doing?” asked Lau with a grin.

“Keeping a promise to an old friend,” replied Faye with the sweetest of smiles.

SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY

(c) 2004 Joseph Kerner jak981125@catholic.org

Disclaimer: I did not create Cowboy Bebop. I wish I had, but I didn’t. This is just fanfiction.