ACT II

        Ed sat at a computer terminal inside the office with Jet, Lau, Faye, and the two remaining bounty hunters looking over her shoulder. “Let’s see, ISSP database, hmm..Project Tongpu...where are you? Ed found you once, she’ll do it again...huh...”

        “What is it?” asked Faye.

        “It’s just the same footage Ed found last time.”

        “Is there anything else?”

        “Nope...You know, Edward works better when five people aren’t breathing down her neck.”

        All of them backed off. “Jet, I thought there was only one test subject,” said Faye.

        “I don’t know how many there were,” he replied. “Only one test subject was documented.”

        “What happened with that one?” asked Lau.

        “That was the guy we were telling you about; Mad Pierrot,” said Jet. “The man gained amazing powers but his mind regressed to the level of a child and his level of aggression skyrocketed. They knew about the mental regression, and that’s why they canceled the project, but they found out about the aggression the hard way. He killed his guards and escaped from the facility. After that, Mad Pierrot went on a cop-killing spree.”

        “So why did he decide to go after Spike?” asked Lau. “Did he run out of cops to kill and decide to target cowboys?”

        “He would also kill anyone who had ever seen him,” replied Jet. “Spike got lucky. Pierrot could block bullets but he couldn’t block a throwing knife. And when he suffered even mild pain or fear, he was nearly incapacitated because of his immaturity. Strange thing is, I think that girl from today was stronger than Pierrot.”

        Meanwhile near Times Square, a man in jeans and a black tank-top emerged from the subway and hailed a cab. One stopped for him immediately. He climbed in the back. “Take me to Harlem,” he told the driver through the safety glass separating the front seats from the back. The cab drove off. “Hey man, you’re going the wrong way.”

        The driver turned back and smiled. It was Matthew. “Yeah, but I’m going the right way to get to the nearest police station. It’s half a million on you, right?”

        The red eye dealer tried to open the doors or a window but the child-locks on the doors had been activated and the power to the windows could be shut off from the front seat. “Now settle down,” said Matthew. “I have to get this cab back to a buddy of mine and if you damage it, I’ll pull over smack you back to the Stone Age. So sit back, relax, and don’t forget to tip the driver.”

        Matthew pulled up outside of a police station. He turned back to his prisoner. “When I open the door you’d better not try to run. I was a sprinter in high school.” He let the dealer out and cuffed him. Just then, two detectives pulled up in a sedan and took out a prisoner of their own. They nodded politely to Matthew as they headed for the building. Take a wild guess what happened next.

        A green blast of energy struck their prisoner, killing him and burning the two detectives. Matthew grabbed his own prisoner and pushed him behind the cab. He drew a gun and looked all around for the assailant. “She’s up there!” yelled the prisoner. Matthew looked up and sure enough, she was sitting on the roof to the police station. He opened fire on her, only to get the same result that Jet and Lau had. She leapt off the top of the building and landed on the sidewalk right in front of Matthew. The red eye dealer took one look at her and ran off even though he had cuffs on. She grabbed Matthew by the throat, slapped the gun out of his hand, and stared straight into his eyes.

        “Who...who are you?” he gasped.

        “Vera,” she replied with a smile that could have frozen water.

        Just then, a swarm of cop came out of the building with guns drawn. Without releasing Matthew, she used her free hand to blast every single one of them. She turned back to face her captive. “You are no police officer. What are you?”

        “A bounty hunter,” he replied.

“Another one? Don’t you realize justice matters more than money? I am justice incarnate. No one who hurts the innocent can escape me. For that reason, I came into existence. And you...you are in my way. You don’t want to be in my way.”

        Her hand glowed with a pink light. She blasted Matthew in the gut with a pink energy which was unlike the green ones she had been using. Apparently, this one was a non-lethal dosage. It knocked the wind out of him. Three more cops fired at her through open windows. These three were also ruthlessly slaughtered without a moment’s hesitation on Vera’s part. “I’ve had it!” she yelled angrily.

        No one could believe what she did next. She walked into the police station and started killing everyone in sight (and then hunted down those who she couldn’t see). That included cops, prisoners, secretaries, and innocent bystanders. She climbed the stairs up to the detective’s bureau to take them out too.

        BANG!

        She turned around in surprise. Matthew had recovered. He walked in and fired another shot at her, not knowing what else to do. In response, she fired a blast at him. By some miracle he dodged it but then she then ripped one of the bars off of the handrail and tossed it at him with all her might. This time she was right on target. It hit him right in the head, knocking him out. Perhaps she assumed she had killed him. In any case she grinned and proceeded up the stairs to finish off the detectives. By the time the SWAT team showed up, she was gone. Matthew was the only one left alive in the entire building. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital.

        A doctor in the ER checked his pupils while Matthew held an ice pack onto his own head. “Well your pupils are normal. We should do an X-ray on your head, though. My, you are a lucky fellow. No one else made it out of there alive.”

        “Do I look lucky to you?” asked Matthew. He lifted up the ice pack to reveal one very nasty bump on his head.

        Just then, he looked over and saw Jet and Ed coming in. Jet walked up to him. “Are you OK, son? I heard all about it and...”

        Jet never got a chance to finish. Ed practically jumped on Matthew and gave him about the most passionate kiss he’d ever had in his short life. Jet just stood there with his eyes wide and his mouth wide open.

        “What the hell is this?” asked Jet.

        Ed looked over and grinned. “Um...surprise.”

“Friends in the Village?”

        “He’s a friend.”

        “So I see...”

        “Am I fired?” asked Matthew.

        “Let’s just say I’ll be keeping a very, very, VERY close eye on you from now on,” replied Jet. “You do anything to hurt her and you answer to lefty here.” Jet pointed to his metal arm as he said this.

        “So what was that...thing?” asked Matthew in a desperate attempt to change the subject. I think he would have felt safer angering Vera than angering Jet.

        “We’re not sure,” replied Jet. “That woman may have been the result of a bio-enhancement project gone horrible wrong that ISSP conducted. I’ve already sent for a buddy of mine who might know more about it. In the meantime, you get some rest. I have a feeling we’re going to need you very soon.”

        “Vera...she told me her name was Vera,” said Matthew.

        “That’s fine,” said Jet. “Now we at least have a name. You rest up now.” Jet and Ed turned to leave and practically ran into a pair of detectives. They had been sent to get a statement from Matthew. Resting up would not be an option, not for the present, anyway.

        “Ed, why didn’t you tell me?” asked Jet on their way out of the hospital.

        “Edward thought you wouldn’t understand,” she replied. “He’s older and he’s a bounty hunter. Edward thought you’d be mad.”

        “There’s nothing wrong with Matthew,” replied Jet. “He’s a good hardworking kid who put his butt on the line today for a bunch of total strangers. The only thing that makes me mad is you not being honest with me. Who knows, maybe this is partly my fault. Maybe I was too tough on him and either you or he got the idea I didn’t like him and that I wouldn’t approve. And I said some stuff to him I didn’t mean.”

        “Edward is sorry.”

        “Yeah, well, I’m sorry too if I gave you guys the wrong idea,” said Jet. The idea of Ed going out with Matthew really honestly didn’t bug him. It was the idea of Ed going out with anyone. It hadn’t been that long since she was that innocent little girl on the Bebop. Jet was beginning to think more and more like a father every day.

        Back at MFR, Lau was sitting on a couch in back holding the baby while Faye cleaned blood off his ear. “I really wish you would get this looked at,” she said.

        “It’s not bleeding bad enough to need stitches,” he replied. “So are there by any chance any psychotic maniacs you guys HAVEN’T run across before?”

        “Mad Pierrot was sort of an exceptional case,” said Faye. “Like Jet said, he tried to kill Spike just for looking at him. Of course that lunkhead just couldn’t resist the challenge. I tried to keep him out of it and then tried to save him later but you know how stubborn he could be.”

        “Look who’s talking,” replied Lau with a grin. Faye slugged him in the arm. “Ow! Hey, not when I’m holding the baby!”

        “Sorry,” replied Faye. She took Julia out of his arms and then slugged him again. “Is that better?”

        Just then Jet walked in. He looked at his other two bounty hunters. “I have an assignment for you. It’s a pimp in the Bronx. He killed one of his girls. Go get him.”

        “We were kind of hoping to nail that lady who hurt Matthew,” replied one of them.

        “We don’t mess with her until we know for sure what we’re dealing with,” replied Jet. “In the meantime, I’m not paying you two to sit on your asses and do nothing. Now go.”

        The two of them left without a word. Jet walked over to Lau and Faye. “Apparently she has a name: Vera. The bounty so far is eighty million. From everything the cops have gathered on her so far, she’s a vigilante. Each time she kills, she only intends to target some criminal. But it seems that when she encounters even the slightest resistance, she goes into violent rages where anyone and everyone is her sworn enemy.”

        “How’s Matthew?” asked Lau.

        “Mild concussion,” replied Jet. “They’ll release him tomorrow. Man, he put up one hell of a fight, though.”

        “Where’s Ed?” asked Faye.

        “I sent her home, that is if she didn’t sneak back to the hospital to see Matthew. Did you guy know they’ve been dating behind my back all this time?”

        “You’re kidding me!” replied Faye. “Ed did that? I mean, I kind of suspected Matthew had a thing for Ed but I didn’t know she had it in her to pull something off like that. I’ll never look at her the same way again.”

        That night, Faye sat on the deck of the Bebop looking at the sky. Part of her longed to be back in space. From here, she couldn’t even see the stars. She started having flashbacks of what little mayhem she had witnessed from Mad Pierrot. That was terrifying enough.

        She climbed back down into the ship. She found Lau asleep on the couch. Poor man never got enough sleep. Since he was a far lighter sleeper than Faye, if the baby cried during the night, it would wake him up and he’d wind up seeing to her every single time. Faye had told him it would be OK if he nudged her and had her take care of it every so often but he wouldn’t do it. Well tonight would be different she vowed. She decided she’d sleep in the baby’s room that night.

        As dawn approached the next day, a ship from Venus arrived at JFK Airport. Two very familiar figures stepped out of it. They were none other than Bob and Fatty River. Jet came up to greet them as soon as he saw them in the terminal. “Bob, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for you coming on such short notice. Fatty, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

        “Well Bob and I are business partners now,” replied Fatty. “Where he goes, I go.”

        “And that eighty million had absolutely nothing to do with it,” joked Bob. “So Jet, let me get this straight. You think there was another subject of Project Tongpu that escaped and is going around killing off thugs right here in New York?”

        “That’s the theory,” he replied. “Pierrot wasn’t the only one, was he?”

        “I’m not sure. Most of what the rest of us at ISSP heard about that project were just rumors. One of those rumors was that a small group of homeless teenagers from Tharsis were brought in voluntarily to be tested. Pierrot was what convinced them to stop. His modifications proceeded the farthest. But you know what happened. His damaged mind was enough to convince them that the risk was unacceptable. These kids were supposed to be trained killers with one function. If they couldn’t keep their heads, what good were they? Pierrot was supposed to be taken to a research facility on Callisto to live out the rest of his days. We all know he escaped but rumor has it that the other subjects were also sent to that same facility.”

        “Bob, this one is different,” replied Jet. “This one is more powerful and she has a different goal. She goes on manhunts for violent criminals instead of police personnel.”

        “But I thought she took out an entire police precinct,” replied Fatty.

        “That’s just the thing,” said Jet. “She doesn’t go after anyone else unless someone interferes. And then it’s like she can’t hold it in and has this urge to kill everyone around her.”

        “You know what it sounds like to me, Jet,” said Bob. “It sounds like one of those discontinued test subjects was obtained and further experiments were conducted. This one was specifically programmed to destroy violent criminals.”

        “But I thought ISSP terminated the whole thing,” said Jet.

        “Someone could have acted without their knowledge or authority. It would have to be someone who was arrogant enough to think that they could avoid the results they had with Pierrot. They avoided creating one sort of monster, only to create another. The sort of behavior that this woman has been taught wouldn’t be condoned by ISSP even if they had been trying to create assassins so obviously they failed again.”

        The Swordfish and Redtail were flying routes over New York. Lau and Faye were searching for Vera. “You know what this reminds me of?” asked Faye. “This reminds me of when we had to follow all those syndicate members around to find Lin. But this is much worse. There have got to be a million criminals in this town. Finding the one she’ll target next would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

        “Finding her isn’t what I’m quite as worried about,” replied Lau. “If we do find her, how do we stop her? You said Pierrot could block bullets but not knives?”

        “That’s right.”

        “I wish I hadn’t thrown my katana away. What are we supposed to do if we do find her? We should have put more thought into this.”

        “There’s something else,” replied Faye. “Pierrot was psychologically unstable. Given the right stimulus, he could be incapacitated by his own fear. There’s got to be something that will set her off too...I hope.”

        In the parking lot at JFK, Jet loaded Bob and Fatty’s things into the back of Lau’s sedan. They climbed in and headed for Manhattan. “So besides that police station, who has this lady killed so far?” asked Bob.

        “They think her first victim might have been a rapist in Central Park,” replied Jet. “Ed saw Vera just a few moments after the rapist was killed with his own knife. The next one was a car-jacker who pistol whipped some eighty year old woman that was reluctant to surrender her car. Poor lady spent nearly a month in a coma. I know that because we were trying to catch the car-jacker ourselves. The last guy she got was when that precinct got hit. She nailed a guy that two detectives were bringing in for molesting a bunch of girls at a day care center.”

        “Wait a minute,” said Fatty. “Does anyone but me notice a pattern? This Vera only seems to go after criminals who victimize females.”

        “You may be on to something,” replied Jet. All of the sudden he remembered something. “OH NO!”

        Lau and Faye were still on patrol when they saw something familiar. “Hey, aren’t those two of our guys?” asked Faye.

        Sure enough, the two other young bounty hunters from MFR were chasing their pimp on the street below. Faye quickly descended and fired her net launcher trapping the pimp. The two bounty hunters smiled and waved in appreciation. She headed airborne again. Just then, a streak of green light flashed past her left side. When she looked back down, the pimp had been reduced to ash. Vera was floating in the air on Faye’s left side.

        It didn’t take more than a moment for the two bounty hunters on the street to realize that the woman in the air twenty feet above them who had just killed their bounty-head was the same one who had injured their friend. They immediately opened fire on her.

        “No wait!” screamed Faye over her loudspeaker. The bullets were blocked by Vera’s force field. Two more blasts of green light killed the two young bounty hunters. All Faye could do was watch in horror. Just then, Vera turned her attention to the Redtail. Faye was terrified. She fired every weapon she had but not one of them even put a dent into Vera. Faye decided to take evasive maneuvers at once. She flew away from Vera as quickly as she could. Vera was fast enough to keep up with the Redtail at top speed, but not enough to overtake it. She fired blast after blast but Faye was an excellent pilot and dodged every one of them. Lau had seen how Faye’s bullets and missiles had no effect on Vera at all. He got a lock on her with his plasma cannon and fired. Vera saw the blast coming at her but wasn’t quite fast enough to completely dodge it. Nor was she able to block it with her force field. The blast sliced through her left shoulder, causing quite a bit of bleeding.

        Vera was furious. She tossed blast after blast at the Swordfish but Lau dodged every single one as Faye had. Just then, Vera flew straight at him. They were on a collision course. At the last moment, she veered off to her left and crashed her body into his right wing as hard as she could. The wing came off and Lau crashed onto the street below. Faye saw him emerge from the wreck shaken but otherwise unharmed.

        Just then, a familiar looking sedan showed up on the street below. Jet, Bob, and Fatty all jumped out. They watched in horror as Vera jumped onto the top of the Redtail and punched through it. She reached into the huge hole that she had created and pulled Faye out by her hair. The Redtail also crashed onto the street below. Vera floated in midair holding a terrified Faye by the hair. Faye was in terrible pain. Vera looked Faye straight in the eye and smiled that sick smile of hers. Her eyes glowed green again.

        Just then a brick hit Vera in the forehead. Jet had thrown it with his metal arm. He knew bullets wouldn’t work and he didn’t know what else to do. Vera dropped Faye. Luckily for her, Fatty’s stomach broke her fall. The two of them picked themselves up only to witness Vera attacking Jet. She tossed another blast at him which he was not able to completely dodge. It hit his metal arm causing it to explode. Pieces of it flew everywhere, one of which cut Lau’s arm. Sparks flew out of the stump of metal arm that was left.

        Vera raised one arm over her head. A green orb of energy appeared above her hand. Slowly the orb grew bigger and bigger as more energy was packed into it. As the orb grew, several police units showed up as well as a police helicopter. The orb immediately disappeared. Vera flew straight up and grabbed the helicopter by it’s landing gear. She used two more blasts to destroy the two rotors. She swung the crippled helicopter around in the air and finally flung it down at the police units below. A gigantic explosion resulted. Pleased with her work, she raised her arm once again. The orb immediately re-appeared. It continued to grow until it was the size of a house. With a grin she tossed it to the street below. The police units that remained exploded. Every living thing in a two block radius was killed immediately.

        Lau never lost his head for a moment. When he realized what she was about to do, he signaled for everyone to run into the nearest subway entrance. The members of the Bebop crew along with Bob and Fatty were the only survivors.

END OF ACT II

(c) 2004 Joseph Kerner