The Bebop bounty hunters are on the trail of someone (or maybe a gang of someones) that are robbing the interstellar toll booths. They are not alone in searching for these bandits. They catch many of the people known to have stolen money via the toll booths but none of them have the money they stole or much information about how it was done. The criminal mastermind behind it all remains on the loose.
Faye, Jet, and Spike all return to the Bebop from their individual searches and compares notes. One thing they have in common is that they returned with a chess piece, a white king. Ed does some digging around in cyberspace and starts a chess game on an ancient game network. Jet goes to visit the company that posted the bounty. They refuse to give out any more information but he plants a bug in their office which gets him the name of the possible person behind it all, Chessmaster Hex.
A little bit of research turns up some information about Chessmaster Hex. He is 98 years old. When he was much younger he was a genius chess player. He went on to develop the technology that powers the interstellar gates. After decades of working on that technology he realized there was a fatal flaw in it. He tried to tell the company that was running the gates but they would listen. He left, disappeared.
Ed reveals that she is playing chess with Hex. Faye and Spike go looking for Hex. Jonathan, another bounty hunter, an acquaintance of Jet, follows them. They are headed to an area filled with space debris. They find Chessmaster Hex but he's not all there mentally. It turns out that he is behind it all but what's happening now is because of time-delay traps he set 50 years before. He is completely unaware of what it is going on. All he knows is that he is having fun playing chess with Ed, whom he eventually beats.
I love this ending. It was all a wild goose chase. (Nothing really matters. Anyone can see.) The fun is in watching it unfold. It was all too good to be true. Any ending which showed them capture the culprit would probably have felt hollow. This feels real.
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