Ein

Time passed strangely on the Bebop, when there were things going on, the time passed quickly. Jessica helped in every way that she could. Managing money, doing the grocery shopping (because Jet knew next to nothing about it and Faye and Spike didn’t care), taking care of some of the cleaning, although she refused to do Jet and Faye’s laundry, and even keeping Ed and Ein (whom Spike referred to as the pests) busy; but she balked when she was offered the opportunity to come along on a bounty, they may have gotten plenty of money from her selling her useless possessions, but that wasn’t enough for them all to retire on (plus Faye was slowly squandering her share gambling, convinced that she could win if she just played long enough). She tried making excuses: the housework needed done, who would keep Ed and Ein from tearing the place apart while they were gone, she had no experience, she couldn’t shoot a gun; and they provided answers: the work could wait, Ed and Ein had been alone before and had been just fine, experience was gotten by doing, and she could be taught to shoot a gun. The last was offered by Spike, but she just didn’t feel comfortable with the cold, hard barrel of a gun in her hands and her finger resting on a small little sliver of metal that could decide whether a man lived or died with just one little squeeze.

“I can’t, I can’t do it!” she yelled, frustrated, during her first lesson, throwing the gun onto the table. “I can’t sit here and listen to you say those things, ‘this is how you hold it, this is how you aim, always be sure to aim for an arm or a leg unless you’re shooting to kill and then you aim for the heart or the head!’ I just can’t, ok. It’s not that I don’t want to go with you; I just could not use a gun. Give me my fists and feet, or hell even a sword and some throwing knives or shuriken and I could be deadly. I feel kind of silly going out there with a gun when I was trained to use everything but that. I could kill a guy with a freakin’ paperclip for Christ’s sake!” she stopped, breathing heavily when she realized that Spike was looking at her with a mixture of shock and admiration and that Jet and Faye were peeking in through the doorway.

“Sorry,” she muttered; her face red and her ears burning as she walked out the door and
into the rotating hallway. She stepped into an empty room and sat there, hugging herself as she slowly realized how stupid she had been for yelling when she could have just as easily have explained it calmly and quietly. She remembered what her therapist had told her about bottling up her feelings, and realized that she had been doing that ever since she had gotten over the shock of being teleported into the future. She took a deep breath that turned into a sob and hen she broke down and cried for the life that she had lost.

Jessica lifted her head from where it was sitting in her lap, her head aching and her nose stopped from where she had been crying for so long. Her eyes were puffy and red. She looked down to see the sweet brown eyes of Ein looking up at her. He wagged his little stump of a tail when he saw her looking and barked quietly.

“My nieces used to have a corgi that looked exactly like you.” She told him, fluffing up the short, thick hairs around his neck as she scratched it. “You are much calmer, and much smarter. He went out and got hit by a car, but you would never do something like that would you?”

No, of course not.

Jessica froze, she had been talking to the dog absently, something that she did with most animals. Not really in an annoying baby-talk sort of voice that most people use when talking to dogs, just a Normal conversational tone, but she hadn’t expected an answer.

“W-what?”she whispered, “I must be dreaming, did you just talk?”

Not in the sense that you or the others can, but yes, I am able to communicate through telepathy. Ein was right, his mouth definitely wasn’t moving, so no sound was coming out of his mouth, but Jessica could hear him clear as day in her mind.

“Does everyone else know? Are Jet and Spike and Faye and Ed in on it too? Or is it just me?”

Just you, I haven’t really tried it on the others yet, I don’t even know if they are susceptible yet, you must be very sensitive.

“Oh, how nice for me; I did always want a talking dog.” She wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or hysterical, but Jessica sensed that it was time to end the conversation. “Um, I uh, need to go get dinner started ok? So I’m gonna go now.” She smiled weakly and tentatively patted him on the head.

Alright, can you make the noodles again? Ein begged, dancing on his back legs in a way that had seemed cute before but now was strangely unnerving.

“Um, sure.”