Dear Sir;
Failing to prevent the oblitteration of a small town in the backside of nowhere may seem like an extrordinary event to most people, but you have to consider the kinds of situations I'm accustomed to dealing with on a regular basis. Considering just precisely whom it is I travel around with in a (probably ultimately useless) attempt to keep the damage down to manageable levels, what's the loss of one small town no-one has ever even heard of?
The day itself had started out peacefully enough. The subject ran through his morning routine, this time joined by his brother. Yes, there are two of them now; and it's even odds which of them is worse. Considering the fact that my workload has been effectively doubled, a little raise in my paycheck for compensation wouldn't be unappreciated... but I digress. I believe trouble first started when the subjects brother attempted to leave the resteraunt after eating breakfast without paying; this in and of itself wasn't out of the ordinary, considering that I usually pick up the check anyway. I don't know when damage control started extending to covering the subjects meals but...
The situation would have probably resolved itself peacefully if Knives hadn't told the resteraunt manager that he had a lower position on the evolutionalry totem pole. This statement, naturally, caused an adverse reaction on the part of the resteraunt owner. An adverse reaction that involved the rifle the old man kept behind the bar and a few rounds of buck-shot. Considering the fact that it was his brother getting shot at, the subject reluctantly became involved in the matter. I will say this on his behalf, Vash the Stampede did indeed try to resolve matters peacefully first by offering to pay for the cost of the meal as well as the expended buckshot rounds. Of course, he did offer to pay using my expense fund... but by that point Knives had begun insulting not only the bartender, but also the other customers within the establishment.
How were we supposed to know that they were all in the same gang? Apparently the bar that Vash had so wisely chosen for their breakfast menu hosted that districts chapter of Ricco's Roughnecks. As a biker gang, the Roughnecks enjoy a mediocre reputation. It was to our misfortune that we discovered at that point that the gang had in fact taken over the town.
This would be the point in the story where matters went from "inconvenient" to "bad." They wanted a shoot-out. Vash and Knives to take on all of the members in the gang. Unfortunately for us... Vash had run out of bullets about two towns back. (To be honest I'd helped, a little, with the running out thing. If he didn't have bullets, I reasoned, then he couldn't damage property. Oh, the naivete!) I had grossly under estimated the ability of the Humanoid Typhoon's to attract trouble. I decided that it would be best for all concerned to keep Vash's presence here in this town low key, so in order to keep word out that there was a sixt billion double dollar bounty staring at them from across the table I stood up and told the gang that I'd take them on. That way, I reasoned, none of them would find out that there was a sixty billion double dollar reward under their noses and perhaps we could escape with the little town intact.
You know I consider myself a reasonable and patient woman; but there are some things even the most reasonable and patient of women can't take lying down. Being laughted at was understandable on the part of the roughnecks; I mean, to give them credit they did in fact look like a bunch of tough hombre's. I was prepared to face a modicum of heckling and teasing on the part of the Village Idiot Society until they realized I was serious and meant business. I was even prepared for the usual catcalls and offers for unsolicited sex; hey, I'm a working woman on the rough uncivilized frontier, I haven't been out here for this long without hearing the occassional slur in my direction. What I wasn't prepared for was for the bartender to walk up to me and "test" me to see if I was actually a woman!
Well, like any woman, I take offense to having my breasts fondled casually. So I graciously returned the favor; who would have thought he was sensitive to the presence of a pool-stick placed between his legs? (with extreme prejudice). Now, I only had differences with the bartender, but it seems that in their particular gang and isult to one is an insult to all; so the hombre's in the bar all opened fire. Now, may I say that up until this point the only damage caused had been to the interior of the bar. That little fact swiftly changed when the subject and his brother dove out the door to look for cover ( and probably a good place to start firing from).
That's when the miscellaneous guards they had posted as snipers on rooftops and the water tower all opened fire on the two brothers, thus creating no small amount of collateral damage. This sort of thing, as you know, is usually only partially covered by our policy and was not, in fact the reason for the town's obliteration from the face of the planet. Vash was dacing around in the streets like an idiot while people were firing at him so Knives opened fire with intent to kill, and Vash was kept busy changing the trajectory of his brothers bullets so the wounds were non life threatening, leaving Milly and me to clear out the bar. We had by this point given up hope of resolving matters peacefully and we simply trying to limit the damages as much as humanly possible.
We figured that if we got all of the men out into the streets then the snipers on the rooftop would have to stop firing or risk taking out some of thier comrades. To that end Milly and I decided to draw them out, using ourselves as bait and quickly ducked out of the bar, shooting behind us as we went. One of Milly's stun-gun crosses accidentally hit one of the lanterns on the interior of the bar, sending it flying across the room and into the mess of shattered whiskey bottles. The lantern broke and the unsheilded flame ignited the very flamable alcohol and a conflagaration soon followed.
Now... what kind of an idiot would put a fireworks and dynamite shop next to a saloon? I think something like that should be filed under "accident waiting to happen". I'm certain you can guess what happened next. The fire in the saloon spread quickly through the cheap daub-and-wattle of the first building and onto the one next to it. And things went boom.
That was the point when things went from 'bad' to 'worse' and if there is one thing I've learned in my time of working around Vash the Stampede it that Murphy's Law hangs about his neck like an albatross. When ever you think that things can't possibly get any worse than they already have something new happenes to prove you wrong.
The morning sky was lit up by various kinds of fireworks flying this way and that with no real aim or purpose, which for our side wasn't entirely bad because it had the salubrious effect of distracting th esnipers on the roof. On the downside of the argument it also caused massive property damage, the full billing and all accompanying paperwork and forms for which have been attached to this report.
But that was not the end of the matter. At this point there was still most of a town intact. That fact was quick to change. There was already fire and explosions, now add to that a riot.
All of the townspeople, who had up until then been ground firmly under the bootheels of the Roughnecks, saw weakness in their oppressors and came out of the wood-work (guns blazing I might add). And Milly, Knives, Vash and I were all caught int he crossfire as they began exchanging bullets with the biker gang. I decided at this point to urge Vash not to become further involved in a now purely local affair but Vash, do-gooder idiot that he is, wouldn't hear of it. He said that if he didn't help then people were going to get hurt. He made a dash over to the fireworks shop to see if he couldn't find a way to negate the fireworks. He was going to soak them with water which as we all know would render the gunpowder useless. Sadly, what he assumed were water barrels at the time were in fact filled with nitro glycerin.
Vash realized his mistake with the first barrel he dumped over into the shop and the subsequent increase in explosive force that followed. The blast radius increased by another fifteen to twenty feet I'd say; just enough to take out one of the legs on the water tower.
Before that moment there was fire, but it was confined to only the two buildings, and riots that were confined only two parties but then... there came flood. The water stored in ther town tower flooded through the streets of the entire town creating a soggy mess. If it had been water alone, things would have been just fine, but it wasn't only just water... oh no. That would have been too simple for The Vash Effect.
This water was joined by that nitro glycerin I mentioned earlier, which had leaked out from the other barrels that Vash so carefully had not thrown in through the window of the fireworks shop. It floated on top of the water, a skin of rainbow... until it, too, caught fire from the flames leaping from the saloon and gunpowder shop.
Which in turn made all of the other buildings catch fire.
Riots, floods, and raining fire from the sky. I wonder if armageddon is covered on our policy. I think we should change Vash's nickname from "Humanoid Typhoon" to "Fifth Rider of the Apocalypse." But, as usual, please make all damages payable to the town Governor, Mister Dorian Lauren by return of post. All neccessary forms have been filled out in triplicate as per the usual.
Yours faithfully,
Meryl Stryfe, Class A-1 Disaster Investigator.
Hope Springs, New Lacoda Territory.
The end.
Just a funny one-shot. I know Meryl is always having to send in reports about her charge so I decided to write a fic about what an unusually usual day in her life following the Source of All Chaos around might be like, and the kinds of things she would have to tell her employer about him. Her co-workers must feel so sorry for her. Even with a small disaster, the paperwork's gotta be a pain in the butt!