WOW, I didn't think anyone would get that, Ameria, and all I was looking for was Francoise. :::gives Ameria a gold star:::
And Faye would be an adorable little girl of ten (which doesn't make sense because there was that one episode where she was on the Beta tape, and she looked to be about ten, which would be right now... but Beta was dying when I was a kid, so... weird). Bebop takes place in 2071 and it's mentioned that Faye isn't twenty, as she appears, but rather 77, making her year of birth 1994.
I'm not a nerd, I swear!
It must be purified so that she can defeat the demons with whom she locked in combat inside the jewel. Tainted, evil energy makes the demons stronger. Pure energy makes her stronger.
See, now I feel stupid, but things just weren't connecting in my brain. I thought back to the episode where we first meet Midoriko and thought about the hole in her chest and how she's all stuck inside the Shikon no Tama and everything else EXCEPT purification.