“Trick or treat!” Edward shouted enthusiastically, wearing a yellow shower curtain around her shoulders and a carved jack-o’-lantern over her head. With Ein playfully tailing behind her, she pushed the old, open pillowcase towards the sitting Faye. “Gimme somethin’ good to eat!”
“You can eat the same crud as the rest of us!” Faye answered back, swatting Ed away with one hand while forking another helping of boiled pumpkin into her mouth with the other.
“Ooh, Faye-Faye wants a trick…” Ed said, wiggling her fingers at the older woman and making ghost noises before lurking off to the others.
Like usual, dinner in the living area of the Bebop was not an elaborate affair, and Jet was only able to acquire marked-down pumpkins as food for the next week. Also like usual, some members of the crew were more open to the situation than others.
“Alright, how about this one…” Jet began, leaning forward in his chair, “…I once heard a story about shumai dumplings made from human flesh…”
“Oh come on, Jet,” Spike said passively from his stretched-out position on the couch, “this story’s older than sin…” Ed made her way to Spike as he finished, causing the bounty hunter to hold back her advances for treats with the bottom of his raised foot.
“Spike wants a trick too! Oooh…” Ed ran another quick lap around the couch, shower curtain flapping and pumpkin bobbing from side to side, before stopping in front of Jet. “Trick or treat!”
“In a second,” Jet answered, “I’m in the middle of a story…” Ed cocked her jack-o’-lantern to one side, dejected.
“Give Ed the haunted shumai!” she said, her wide smile hidden behind the large pumpkin on her head.
“They’re not haunted,” Spike said, “they’re just stuck to the box lid.” Spike ate another mouthful of boiled pumpkin and closed his eyes as Jet protested the spoiling of his story.
“Fail fail fail, Jet gets the axe!” Ed chanted before running off down the corridor with Ein happily following. “He gets a trick too…”
“Why can’t you just get into the spirit of the season?” Jet asked Spike once Ed was out of the room.
“We’re all adults here, Jet,” Spire replied. “Eating pumpkin is where I draw the line…” Faye could only nod absently in agreement. “Besides, I think they’ve gone bad…”
“Alright then…” Jet said, smiling slowly as he did, “…I promise you’ve never heard this next one before, and it’ll scare you so bad you’ll crap your pants…”
Before Jet could begin his next ghost story, Ein frantically charged back up the corridor and into the living area. He hopped across the coffee table, rattling Spike’s plate of boiled pumpkin in the process, and leapt into Jet’s lap – he was whining and visibly uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong, boy?” Jet asked him, holding his own plate up and out of the small corgi’s way; Jet did not have to wait long for an answer. Already, Ein was growling and barking at the corridor.
“Oh Ein, it’s just Edward!”
Standing in the corridor, Ed was no longer wearing the shower curtain or jack-o’-lantern. Instead, she wore but a ragged, greasy tunic and a heavy miner’s mask that still hid her entire head. Ein continued to bark.
“Heh, funny puppy…” Ed said before walking towards the still-eating adults. Spike perked up upon hearing Ed speak – it was as if she were masking her voice as well as her face now.
Again, she made her way to Faye.
“Gimme eat, gimme eat!” she said.
Didn’t we just go over this?” Faye asked, annoyed. “I told you, I… hey!” Faye pulled back fiercely as Ed pawed at her jacket. “You’re filthy! Where the hell have you been?!” Ed let out a high pitched growl before shoving Faye’s arm one last time and slamming a palm into the last of her boiled pumpkin, splattering the mushy vegetable down over the plate.
Below the din of Faye’s cursing and Ein’s barking, Jet smirked.
“Actually, this reminds me of another story I’ve heard,” he said. “A story about a girl… no, a boy… born on a ship not unlike our own and left for dead by a mother too poor to raise him…”
Faye barely listened, still upset about her greasy, ruined dinner. Spike, meanwhile, had begun playing keep-away with the soiled child, gracefully gliding his plate of boiled pumpkin around on his hand while Ed grabbed at it.
“Gimme eat!” Ed repeated, an angry tone forming in her deepened voice.
“You had yours, this is mine,” Spike said as he sat up on the couch and swung his plate back.
“So this boy,” Jet continued, “he spent his whole life on that ship, scavenging what he could, raiding supplies or eating all manner of vermin he could get his hands on…”
Ed, frustrated, gave up on Spike but not before slamming her whole body into him violently, sending the plate upwards. Spike scrambled as best he could, catching some chunks of his falling dinner with a free hand or his teeth. Ultimately, most of his dinner was on the floor. He too was done.
Spike lay back down on the couch grumbling about his stomach as Jet went on.
“Once the rats and bugs run out, though,” he said, “he will finally reveal himself to the crew of the ship…” With a trail of ruined pumpkin in her wake, the masked Ed finally came to Jet.
Ein growled and barked again.
“Gimme eat…” she snarled, her voice deepening further. Jet smiled, reached into his breast pocket and retrieved a handful of assorted candies.
“I was going to wait after the story to share these with everyone, but how can I refuse the mysterious scavenger boy of…” Jet did not have a chance to finish before the candies were snatched from his hand and the dirty, masked child was running away down a different corridor.
Ein stopped barking but continued to whine.
“Oh well, no harm done,” Jet said to the chagrin of the other two who never got to finish eating. The older man’s face turned serious and he leaned forward. “You know what happens if you refuse the boy, right?” Spike just pretended to listen while Faye cocked an eyebrow skeptically. Jet took a deep breath.
“The child…… plucks out your eyes while you sleep and eats them!”
No reaction. Spike kept his eyes closed while Faye stared back listlessly with a raised eyebrow.
“Jet…” Spike said with a sigh, “…that was really weak, even for you… especially for you…”
“Well at least I tried,” Jet said, turning his nose up a little. “Let’s see you tell a really good scary story with such little time to prepare it.” The younger bounty hunter only smirked and shook his head. Ein, meanwhile, jumped out from Jet’s lap suddenly and looked onwards down the corridor, panting happily and wagging his tailless rear.
A sharp, steady hiss and burst of heat twisted Faye’s body and attention behind herself.
Ed jumped up, howling like a banshee.
“Clippity-clop! Lookin’ for a head to chop!” she cried out as she pounced onto the back of Faye’s chair.
A small handheld blowtorch growled in Ed’s left hand, illuminating the yellow shower curtain and jack-o’-lantern with flickering orange light. A whirling hatchet filled her right, circling uncomfortably close to Faye's face.
Nothing could have prepared Faye for the cackling girl on her chair. She shrieked, flailed her limbs out involuntarily, and fell hard to the floor.
“Damn it Edward!” Faye screamed, shooting up to her feet, “what the hell is wrong with you?!” She chased the little girl and her dog around the living area. Jet only chuckled at the chaos ensuing on his ship.
“That’s what you get for not giving in to her demands for treats, my dear,” he said warmly. “Right, Ed?”
Edward stopped in her tracks, ducked under Faye once more, and pulled the jack-o’-lantern off her head.
“Nya?” she said with a puzzled look. “Jet gave Edward treats?” Faye swatted at the girl once again.
“Don’t even pretend to forget, you… you greedy little…” Faye was at a loss of words.
Ed continued to dance around Faye’s swiping arms, but kept a confused look upon her face.
“Ed didn’t get any candy,” she stated plainly. “Ed was in the hangar looking for things to trick Faye-Faye and Spike with.”
As the adults paused and perked up, Ein immediately began whining sourly once more. Faye did a double-take, looking back and forth from Ed wrapped in her yellow shower curtain and her own jacket soiled by the greasy fingers from earlier.
“So that wasn’t you who came in here with the breathing mask?” Jet asked, completely at attention.
“Nuh uh!” Edward replied. “That’s Kimkim! He’s super-super funny fun!”
Spike, Faye and Jet froze on their spots completely dumbstruck by what they were hearing, but could not say anything before Edward continued. “Kimkim played with the rats in the storage room… he asked them nicely for food… then he bit their heads off, even the ones who talked back nice-like!”
Ed flashed a wide smile as she giggled and went back to running around in circles, swinging her blowtorch and hatchet to some unheard song in her head. Faye just sank down to her knees, still dumbstruck and looking somewhat ill. Jet tried to find words amongst the torrent of thoughts in his mind yearning for answers.
Spike merely stood up and started walking away, down the corridor.
“Ed!” Jet started, “How long have… where did… hey, Spike! Where ya goin’, I might need you if…”
“I’m outta here…” Spike interrupted.
“We could have a dangerous stowaway onboard! Where could you possibly go that’s more important right now?!”
“How about the can?” Spike answered, never once looking back. “Y’know, stick my finger down my throat, gag and retch a little… those were definitely bad pumpkins, Jet…”
“Trick or Treat, Space Cowboy…”
