Pirate Bebop

Ch.1

Klaxons roared, the world shook or at least that was my whole world right now. I was thankful that I didn’t need to breathe, because the atmosphere leak was reducing the breathable air to nothing. The sirens were getting duller with every second. That didn’t matter, the attack aimed for my fleeing friends did.

I spun around, the system of my craft responded by lurching into action. I watched as doom came upon me. So this is where it ends, with me taking the parting shot for my friends. With a sneer, I closed my eyes to wait as symbols flashed on the screens, probably pointless alerts…

Where’s the fire and brimstone? I ain’t going to heaven or wherever, so is this Limbo? The Void? It feels like when I go drifting in vacuum for a moment of peace. No, wait, I feel the mattress. Wait, what? I opened my eyes and wondered why death looked like the ceiling of my room. No, wait. What? Why do I feel like I’m looking at my room, but not my room?

I feel like my ceiling, made of some alloy I’ve never bothered to learn much about, was an absolute enigma right now. On one hand, I think it’s just fine. On the other, I’m honestly freaking out about it not being made of white painted sheetrock of all things. Gosh, why would I think an antiquated building material would fit in a spaceship?

Why am I suddenly feeling a mix of terror, awe and confusion about being on a spaceship? Wait, who am I?

I rubbed my face and sat up, to look around my filthy quarters and I scrunched my nose at all of the empty beer bottles. Disgusting! I’m an alcoholic? No, that can’t be, I hate beer! I only drink high-proof liquor and only at best one serving in a day. Then why do I remember being a boozehound too and enjoying the bitter fizziness?

“I’m too damn sober for this...no, wait, ugh!” I growled, surprising myself with how deep and shockingly feral-sounding my voice was. Then I realized my right arm was robotic and yelped in a canine-like way at it. “My arm! It’s...okay? I didn’t have it-.” Then I noticed my left arm was some smooth silver texture. I touched my fingers together to feel a familiar squish, but then my fingers melded like silly putty!

What is going on?! What happened to me?!

I bolted to my feet-paws, then realized one of them was also robotic! I panted as I fought against hyperventilating, only to realize I didn’t feel my diaphragm moving! I can’t breathe! I don’t breathe! I stumbled over the empty booze bottles and looked into a room to find it was a bathroom. I turned on the light switch and saw something both familiar and alien.

A silver anthropomorphic male wolf was looking back at me, save for the lack of fur. I have a similar look of fur, but it’s all one solid liquid metallic silver mass. Other than that, I have a robotic right eye, right ear, right arm starting at the shoulder, along with a quick check under my heart-print boxers to see a robotic right leg starting at the thigh.

This was completely wrong yet familiar, a mind-boggling conflict. I’ve been this way my whole life. Well, not the borg bits of course, but anyway on the other hand I was human when I went to bed and had all of my bits intact! Why and how do I have two different memories?!

“Okay lad, settle your nerves. Retrace. Moments ago, you were about to die. Moments ago, you went to sleep in bed. Obviously, there is something screwy going on here.” I said to myself, my Jamaican-Irish accent made my monochrome left eye and tricloptic yellow robotic right eye narrow into my gaze. Obviously, one is more true than the other, but the fact that I’m not dead-.

“Hey, John, I got my famous omelets! Get them while they're hot! It's the last of our fresh food before we’re stuck eating rations until the next port!” A deep middle-aged man’s voice called over the intercom and I perked at the voice of my friend/the stranger; Jet!

Wait! “The last ones?! Shit! If I don’t get out there, Ed’s gonna steal them all!” I hurried back out to John’s/my room and grabbed some pants, hurriedly sliding my slime leg-I’m a slime-wolf?! No! Panic later, delicious omelets now! I pulled my goo leg out of the moisture-proof pants and put my robot leg through first, then slurped my slime leg down the other one.

I then chose to forgo a shirt to run out into the halls and navigated through the familiar/alien ship towards the mess hall. I dodged a yapping little terror of a normal corgi that surged out of a room and I followed after him, knowing Ed, his chosen person, was sure to be right behind me ready to steal the tasty eggs!

“Breakfast~!” Ed cheered from behind me and I sprinted past Ein to the mess, where I reached the table first and began digging into the omelet at my place at the table. “Hey Jet, are these using any of those funny mushrooms?”

“Naw, you know we swore off of those after the incident.” Jet replied and I looked up from my absolutely divine meal to see the face of my black labrador Diamond Dog best friend, Jet Black, approaching the table with more omelets. He and I are both cyborgs. However, I got mine from a serious injury, Jet got augmented because he was once a military black-ops agent for ISSP.

“Aw, but it was so good~.” Ed whined. The ginger-crested Asari runt was an absolute terror of a biotic and engineer. She was only in her twenties, which by Asari standards were practically infants. Thus why she looks and acts like a pre-teen girl. She joined the crew because she’s got nowhere to go and everyone on this ship has a bleeding heart. Myself included.

“Nope. Never again.” Came the deep drone of Spike Spiegel, the Bebop’s ace. The black and brown Dragon strolled into the mess hall with Faye Valentine, the soft pink-feathered busty Hippogriff femme fatale close behind him. Spike always wore a casual suit despite it being a bit highbrow for our line of work, while Faye dressed...well, like a spaceport floozie.

“I hope we’ll be able to pay off our debts soon.” Faye groused before she got a plate. The pink-feathered hipgrif patted Ed’s head to keep her from lunging for her chosen omelet.

“More like your debt.” Spike commented when he started eating by leaning back in the chair and setting his boots on the table.

“Jet! The painting blinked!” Ed shouted while pointing at the old painting that Jet had bought during his whole ‘tribal remedies’ phase when he had his midlife crisis.

“Sure it did, dear. After all, the Chaos Trinity work in weird and mind-boggling ways.” Jet indulgently answered as I rolled my eyes, but then I focused on the painting. Wait. The icons that flashed on the visuals of my craft before I woke up in bed instead of dead. What if-ow! “Hey, you okay, John?” Jet put a hand on my organic goo shoulder as I clutched my head.

Suddenly, trying to remember anything before I woke up today hurt. I mean, I remember last night just fine. I got drunk, as usual. The why of it didn’t matter, it was just routine by that point. I also had just finished playing video games and went to bed since I had work in the morning. Whatever happened to me or rather, to the me that has always existed here, it’s...something…

“Maybe you should go without your borg bits, Silvy. I’ll tinker with them to make sure they’re not giving you nasty feedback.” Ed gently offered and I nodded before willing my slime to let go of my cybernetics, including the eye and ear, leaving me half a man sitting in a chair with a half-finished omelet on my plate. Oddly, that was very relieving.

Suddenly, a depressing trip down memory lane assaulted me. An explosion had robbed me of most of the right side of my body’s mass and forced me to get cyborg parts if I didn’t want to be reduced to a midget. My slime genes are not complete enough to just restore myself from absorbing biomass. Not without ridiculously expensive gene therapy that only a Gov or Corp goon had access to.

“Eat, you should keep your strength up.” Spike insisted and I nodded as Ed took my artificial limbs and sensory organs. I used my remaining hand to keep eating my omelet with the fork. Heh, the me that was human and the me that was, well, me, just shared a kick at the fact that despite how advanced things are, we’re still eating food with forks.

“Sorry for being the infirmed old man again.” I apologized. I felt so conflicted. The me that was human was barely past 25 years, but the me that’s sitting here is centuries old. At least my slime genetics retained their agelessness, so age alone can’t kill me. But Life tends towards Death.

“Hey, if anybody has the right to say that, it’s me, not you mister ageless wolf goo.” Jet snorted and slapped my back, helping me smile as I ate his incredible food. Shame this was the last of it until we reached port and got paid. Wait a second, what were we transporting again?

“Hey, uh, I forgot. What are we doing right now? I woke up completely clueless of last night and I might’ve lost more than a day.” I admitted and Jet shook his head with a sad expression. I know dog, I know. I’m only hurting myself, even if alcohol can’t harm me physically.

“It’s some box of iced meat.” Faye boredly replied and I gasped as a spike of pain struck my mind along with the image of a unicorn I didn’t know.

“It’s pretty bad today. Let’s get you back to bed, John.” Spike got up and I nodded tiredly as I let him shoulder half of my weight on my right side and I let him help me back to my room. “Just relax you old salty dog. It’s not like we need you combat ready for a standard smuggling job.”

“Careful Spike. Murphy is a cruel bastard.” I warned him as I lowered to my bed and sighed before flicking my wrist to summon my Omni-Tool. I can think more later. I’d rather catch up a bit on my reading. At least that was something both of me had in common.

🎺

Wow. Either my tastes suck or the tastes of people in this universe sucks. I mean, sure, I enjoy rampant shameless fetishy smut as much as the next pervert, but the fact it seems that entire genres of this universe’s fiction is based in lewd seems really disturbing. That said, I’ve had time to adjust and accept: I am two people fused into one. The stark contrast between societies really helped hammer it home along with the drastically different lifestyles and personal morals.

John, no, wait, we’re both named John so that’s difficult. Or rather, I’m named John. Ugh! Whatever happened, I think John Silver did die. Whatever mystical bullshit happened, I’ve had my mind and soul shoved into John’s body in the past. I think what I remember seeing flashes of are memories of a future that might never happen now. Hopefully. Possibly.

At least, my convoluted conspiracy-theory forming story-writing brain came up with this theory and I think it holds weight. After all, how else can I explain to myself that I’m no longer human and have slipped into the skin...slime, of someone disturbingly similar to me in personality. Well, besides Silver being hundreds of years older than me and being a drunken depressed letch.

I also don’t think I’ll have the stomach to just...do the things Silver has done in the past that he regretted so much. The memories of pillaging, plundering and all sorts of downright rotten things disgusted me! How is it that I’m so similar to this monster of a person that I was reality’s choice to stick in his place? Then again, Silver deeply regretted everything he’d done. I remember everything he did up to the point I woke up with bitter clarity…alcohol sounds nice right now.

Anyway, besides the blackout drunk periods of his long life, which were depressingly large chunks of memory missing. I also had time to think about why this shipment job made my figurative hair stand on end. I’ve gotta check the package.

I sat up and looked at my stump right thigh and sighed as I willed my body to shift. Unable to gain biomass to restore lost mass aside, I’m still slime. I shrunk down until I was maybe four feet tall instead of six feet and dug in my dresser for my ‘dwarf’ clothes. Once in my shorts and vest, I left my room and went down to the cargo bay.

On the way, I checked on Swordfish II and Red Tail, the Bebop’s only Mobile Suits. The Swordfish II was Spike’s customized Taurus painted red instead of the traditional black. The Red Tail was a custom Zaku II painted gray since it was a decommissioned unit Faye got at a rigged auction, but that’s another story. It was nothing special compared to the Swordfish II since it was the go-to military mech in space for most Govs, but Faye was no slouch operator either.

As for Jet, he had his Hammer Head, a utility ship he took as part of his retirement package from the ISSP along with spending his severance money on the Bebop. Then there was my shuttle, the Morph. She’s a crystal-shelled slime ship, though she’s braindead, which was why she was on auction. She could still fly and fight, but her rudimentary argent reactor was unable to generate more argent than what she used.

I’m the Bebop’s mechanic or at least I was before Edward joined up after her father vanished. It’s still my job to make sure our equipment is running though. It was a skill I developed after years of having to make-do with sub-par gear as a pirate. As such, nobody would wonder why I was going this way, nobody would consider that I was about to endanger our payday.

The delivery was an inconspicuous vacuum-sealed shipping container with strict instructions not to open it on threat of death. Typical conditions when working with a Gov or Corp. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for them; I know how to slip into one of these without detection. Perks of having a background in piracy. Not worth the crushing guilt and regret, but I’m not John Silver…well, I am now, ugh! Existential crisis later, moral crisis now.

I stripped naked and looked for the vacuum port. Once I found it, I poured my slime into it and seeped through the seal into the vacuumed interior. This is the easy part since the negative pressure will help pull my body inside, the hard part will be getting out, but that’s later. The only reason this works is because slime is bullshit, science and magic have declared it so.

Inside, I didn’t find frozen meat on pallets. No, it was a cryopod, plated in golden brassy alloy, engraved with birds and trees. It was hooked up to an argent generator and everything about it screamed Relic tech. Those fuckers! This isn’t some mostly illegal poached meat smuggling operation we’d assumed it to be, they’re having us traffic somebody, but who?

I went to the front and wiped my body-heat warm slime over the frosty exterior of the pod’s duraglass to reveal a pink unicorn mare with hyper-busty fertile proportions that the majority of women possessed before the gods left us 1000 or so years ago. Holy shit. She’s-. Flashes, pain both physical and emotional, a name. I wiped down the rim of the duraglass and found the name plaque at the bottom of the front.

Luster Dawn: Protege of Twilight Sparkle.

I really fucking wish I could’ve brought my arm, ear or eye in here to jack into the data port under the plaque which would have more info, but fuck it. I’ve gotta get out of this container and tell the others. Faye won’t stand for this, being a cryo-resuscitation survivor herself. I can at least count on her to help me out here, the others will too out of moral conflict with the job.

“Fuck us, this is going to put us at odds with the Govs and Corps.” I groaned silently to myself, since, y’know, vacuum. I slithered to the port and began forcing my way out of it to discover Jet standing right outside, waiting. The old war dog knows me too well.

“So, are you done risking our necks?” Jet asked me and I leered up at him.

“Jet. This has a cryopod with someone on ice in it.” I bluntly informed him and rather than be surprised, the black diamond dog ran a hand down his face and sighed in resignation.

“I knew it. My guy at the last port hinted that this job was a setup. We were desperate, John. It was either this or end up signing a damn contract to work as a fishing trawler on Na-Na XVII.” Jet growled defeatedly, because we knew damn well that a ‘contract’ was another word for ‘slavery’. We’d at best have been ‘indentured servants’ working off a substantial treadmill loan that would never legally get paid off if we took that.

“Well, we’re not going through with this job, right? I used to be a pirate, I know how we can-.” I was interrupted by Jet kneeling down and putting his hands on my shoulders. Curse my dwarfism! If I didn’t lose half my limbs! Grr~!

“What’s up?!” Ed asked from a vent when she crawled out of it. Now, I know she’s not a slime like her mindfuck asari psionics are trying to fool me into believing, but seeing the red-crested blue slime-dog worm from the vent was just uncanny. “I’ve got your limbs, eye, ear and Captain Flint!” Ed cheerfully declared as she tugged the collar of her bodysuit forward and pulled my borg bits from her magic Inventory, then retrieved Flint!

“Ah, Flint! There ya are! Where ya been you little blob of mischief?!” I happily demanded from my pet, Flint. She was a mutant little pink slime creature that passively used telekinesis to fly around. She flew up to me and nuzzled my cheek before turning into a buxom figure to smooch my cheek properly. “Ah, lass, I luv ya dearly~.” I grabbed her in a hand and nuzzled her happily.

“*Ahem.*” Jet’s deep voice-clear pulled me from my pet-induced joy and I looked at his apologetic expression. “John. I’m not a pirate. I don’t know the motions to avoid the Govs and Corps. I need my First-Mate to step up as temporary Captain right now.”

“Um...are we in danger?” Ed asked with a bit of the maturity this cruel universe forced on the child leaking through. Before I responded, I morphed back to my true shape and reattached my borg bits before retrieving a utility jumpsuit from between my thighs. This whole magic Inventory accessed in the cleavage or groin region for women and men respectively or herms for both was a novel thing to me, yet incredibly awesome at the same time. Damn divergence.

“I’m afraid so, lass. Go hurry on to the crew quarters and get the others. Jet and I are gonna crack open this box.” I told the young asari and the girl sprinted away with all the energy youth gave her. “Flint: prybar.” My beloved little lady saluted adorably and then turned into a perfect mimicry of the age-old box-breaking tool.

“Uh, John, we can just-.” I interrupted Jet by jamming Flint into the emergency release on the side of the container and popped it open with a harsh jerk. This caused the atmosphere of the cargo hold to suddenly get a lot lighter from the violent suction of the pocket of vacuum sucking away the pressure for a brief moment. “Damn it, John! The life-support is gonna have to chug for hours to get this evened out!”

“A bit of light air won’t kill anybody on this ship, don’t be bellyaching.” I chuffed before taking Flint to the lock and popping it with a few jimmies of her wedge. A cold fog dumped out of the container when I flung open the doors and entered it.

“Whoa, this is...this is a lot older than the one Faye was in.” Jet observed with concern as I knelt at the front of the cryopod and held up my robotic right hand to jack into the port since these things were made to be resistant or incompatible with Omni-tools for security purposes.

[Unauthorized Entry. Access-*******-Granted.] Huh...I wasn’t really expecting the first scramble to work. [Subject: Luster Dawn. Condition: Stable. Treatment: Success. Release Date: ERROR] Well fuck, she’s obviously overdue to be out. Let’s get her free. [Beginning Thaw]

“Hey, John, do you normally use a scrambler called Mai-Go?” Jet asked as he looked at the control panel. Mai-Go? I use...well, that’s new. It must be something to do with my dual personalities and that vision of the future.

My musing on the matter ended when the lid hissed and swung open, dumping fog everywhere. Shortly after, the pink bodacious basketball-breasted bootyful beauty sat up with a blink of her big bright orange eyes. “Um...you two...don’t look like doctors.” I held up the largest shirt I own that I had promptly taken from my Inventory. “Thank you...I don’t think it’s big enough though…”

“I’m afraid that’s the best we’ve got, my dear. People of your beauty are a rarity in this day and age.” Jet said apologetically and the mare blinked before looking between us.

“I think I may have been asleep longer than planned…” At least Luster has a big brain to go with her incredibly big boobs. I wonder when-. “Ah~! My mane! It’s gone!” There’s the drama.