!! Short Summary
The Bebop crew bust their butts taking down bounties, but unless they catch the mastermind behind a money laundering scheme, they can't collect the reward. The only clue they have to go on is a chess piece they got off their perps.

!! Long Summary

Jet, Spike and Faye catch all of the bountys in a hyperspace tollbooth cybercrime ring, but they don't get any reward money until they can find the mastermind behind the scheme. The only thing consistent between any of the hackers is some of them carried chess pieces.

Ed shows them that each chess piece is a digital token to enter an online chess game. They let Ed play some cyber chess against someone while Jet goes to question the [=CEOs=] who run the hyperspace gates. He greets another bounty hunter, Jonathan, leaving as Jet enters: Jonathan says this case is "not as easy as it looks". Jet gets no answers directly, but he plants a bug in their office and they soon begin talking among themselves once he leaves, about a cover-up involving a former employee: Chessmaster Hex.

According to his profile, Hex was a chess prodigy and programmer who worked on the Hyperspace Gate program, but once he expressed doubts in the robustness of the gate designs (the gates that later caused a catastrophe) he was fired.

Ed realises that her chess opponent is Chessmaster Hex himself (who currently consider his opponent "an idiot or a genius"). They follow a trace from Ed's game and find a floating space scrapyard, full of animals and homeless people that formed their own commune. Spike and Faye board a ship with a tracker. Jonathan, having followed the Bebop, also boards the floating community, saying he has a score to settle with Hex.

Spike and Faye find old man Hex first, shortly followed by Jonathan, who wildly demands back the money that he lost as a victim of this scheme. Ignoring them all, Hex discusses chess strategies and lunch with some other elders in the room. Jonathan cracks, shooting the place up while laughing manically until Spike punches him out.

Jet summarizes what has transpired in one more meeting with the [=CEOs=]: After being fired, Hex set his trap to kick off at the next automatic tech upgrade. That took 50 years, and now Hex is senile and doesn't even remember his own plan. So, now the only ones who could expose the [=CEOs=] for their criminal negligence are the Bebop crew. Jet blackmails them into calling off the old man's bounty, to leave him in peace.

Jonathan is shown to now be living in the scrapyard community, taking some of their "medication" and chilling out.

Later on the Bebop, Ed looks frustrated and Faye asks why. Turns out Ed has been playing the same game of chess for a week. Hex finally beats her with checkmate, and Ed screams in despair. Hex then lays back in his chair satisfied and closes his eyes.

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* AllForNothing: Jet waives any reward/blackmail money for uncovering Hex and the Gate Corporation in exchange for leaving Hex in peace so he and Ed can keep playing chess. Ed suffers this when she loses to the old guy in their week-long match before Hex kicks the bucket.
* BoomTown: Sorta, Spike and Faye investigate an old satellite where Hex may be hiding out, only to find it houses many homeless people who have made the place their own.
* CoolOldGuy: He may have gone senile but Hex can still work his way around a chess board.
* CrazyPeoplePlayChess: He isn't called Chessmaster Hex for nothing. And [[{{CloudcuckooLander}} Ed]] is his opponent. She ''could'' have gone for the checkmate and knows it, but instead wants to keep playing, astounding Hex.
* DarkSecret: The Gate Corporation drummed out Hex rather than address his concerns that there were defects in the hypergate technology, leading to the catastrophe which necessitated space colonization. Hex enacts a plan to expose them, scheduled to go into effect fifty years later, but grows senile beforehand.
* DespairEventHorizon: Jonathan, a bounty hunter who lost all his money due to collateral damage from Hex's revenge scheme, hunts Hex down to get it back, only to find a senile old man. After a brief despair-fueled FreakOut, he ultimately settles down to the local bohemian lifestyle.
* KeepTheReward: Having solved the mystery of Hex's scheme, the Bebop crew are in a position where they can get anything from the Gate Corporation in exchange for their silence about what really happened about the warp gate. Jet only requests they cancel the bounty on Hex so he may continue his chess match with Ed.
* {{Revenge}}: Hex's motive, with good reason, as he was in charge of making the warp gate that would allow space travel, but was kicked off the team before the kinks could be ironed out, leading to the gate explosion. His revenge was meant to coincide with the gate's anniversary, but it wound up being a long waiting time before his plan came to fruition. By the time it did, he had grown old and senile, ultimately forgetting about the plan he had put into place.
* SurpriseCheckMate: Hex and Ed surprise one another through their chess match with unpredictable moves. So much so that the game goes on for about a week. Ultimately Hex wins before passing on.
* TheStoner: While exploring the satellite shanty town, Faye finds herself floating through some conspicuous smoke. That's when she runs into a couple of hippie-looking types:
-->'''Male hippie''': Hi! Peace to the whole galaxy, and to my bank account, love love!
--> '''Female hippie''': *holding out what looks very much like a joint* Want one?
* TalkingThroughTechnique: Subverted in this case, the crew of the Bebop thought that the chess pieces they found on apprehended thieves might hold some secret message, but they were merely a signal from Hex to his former employers that he was the one pulling the jobs. He had a reputation as a chess lover.
* ThatManIsDead: Spike pretty much says this near the end. By the time he is found, Hex the criminal mastermind is gone. Now he is just a senile old man who likes to play chess.
* TitledAfterTheSong: The episode takes its name from Music/{{Queen|Band}}'s 1975 song [[Music/ANightAtTheOpera "Bohemian Rhapsody"]].
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