A semi-AU beginning two years after the 5th Moon incident. Vash the Stampede must rise from the ashes alone. Uses much from the manga. Chapter titles and blurb are done by my brother SephZero.
There is a Legend that is undeniable, the mark on the fifth moon is proof enough. That is the testament of the Humanoid Typhoon, Vash the Stampede. A man must leave to confront the past that he has turned away from and in turn must bury his regrets. So taking his travel bag once more, the Humanoid Typhoon walks down the road alone.
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It was in the dark early morning hour on that fateful day twenty-five years ago that the third of the seven cities disappeared in a brilliant light that left behind nothing but rubble and thousands of destitute people. Both city and month echo in the name given to that incident, Lost July. Two years ago disaster struck again, this time in the city of Augusta and left its mark for all to see on the red fifth moon.
There are some types of news that can spread even quicker than satellite. There are three words that can send chills down the spine, fear into the heart, and a shocking current of electricity through a once blissfully mundane life. Those words are...
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"You're late, Smith!!!" roared the rotund, red-faced, and balding director of the bank. Of course, with his rolled up sleeves, flapping shirttails, and squinty eyes, he didn't look too on time himself. But one never questions authority, even when it was about a foot shorter than you were. "Damn, blond. Why, if you were one of the tellers, I'd pick you up and throw you out myself!"
Smith scratched his head sheepishly and escaped to the back office of the bank where he worked as a clerk. Several co-workers smiled in sympathy at his predicament but were careful to hide behind mounds of paperwork when their boss charged in to continue his tirade on his late employee. Poor Smith bore it with good humor, a slightly strained smile, and a growing sweat drop.
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"Why does he always have to take things out on me?" bemoaned the aforementioned poor Smith to the desk on which his head lay. It was now time for his lunch break, or rather it would have been if his irate boss hadn't loaded him down with a ton of paperwork to finish by the end of today. "I haven't done anything wrong, maman, but he keeps picking on me. Why, maman, why?"
"Stop talking nonsense. If you want to whine, if that is indeed what you are doing, at least do it in a language everyone can understand."
Smith turned his head slightly to look at the person who had plopped down into the seat across from his desk. Like everyone else, or rather, like all of the other male employees, he was dressed in a light brown three-piece suit with a red tie. Except for some reason, he looked exceptionally well in it.
"Hey, buck up. You're bringing in the gloom clouds." He snapped his fingers. "I got it! Here, take a look at this!!"
Smith didn't have much of a choice about looking since his friend Harrison planted several photos a few inches from his face. Though he did wear glasses, it wasn't because he needed them. In the picture was a smiling couple, looking for all the world as if nothing bad was ever going to come their way. Harrison was half of that couple.
"You and Eliza?"
"Exactly! These are the pictures from the engagement party. You know, the one where you made a lovely, hard-to-forget impression on everyone there by throwing up in the punch bowl." Harrison apparently didn't remember that incident with disgust if his wide grin was any indication. Smith just dropped his forehead to his desk again and prayed for the ground to swallow him up. "You know, John, it's things like that that make the ladies stay away from you."
"And exactly what is wrong with me?" asked John P. Smith, taking up the challenge.
Harrison pretended to give that some thought. "Let's see...your inability to keep alcohol down aside, there's that five o'clock shadow, seven o'clock if you look from the right," he pointed out, "the rather long hair you keep tied back which is blond on top and black underneath, how did you get it like that?"
"Heh...it kinda happened naturally..." Smith laughed weakly, self-consciously touching the darkened hair that came up to his temples. "Hey, if I get a shave and a haircut, I'll lose my rugged good lucks."
Harrison snorted.
"Pig."
"Skunk."
"Skunks have a white stripe down the middle."
"Like you've ever seen one."
"Same for you--"
The rest of Smith's retort was lost in the very loud, very audible grumbling of someone's stomach. Harrison looked at his friend. Smith laughed weakly again. The foreboding pile of papers of lunchtime's bane loomed before him. Stomach and brain warred against each other. Harrison settled it.
"I'll buy you something while I'm out," he offered, getting up out of his chair.
"You're going out?"
"Yeah. Got to pick up something for a very important appointment in three days," winked Harrison, holding up his thumb and pointer finger curled point-to-point like a ring. The hand moved forward to flick Smith on the forehead. "And I expect to see you there in a tux, clean-shaven, and without a mop for a head."
Smith ruefully rubbed his head where Harrison had thonked him. :Shave and a haircut huh?:
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When he first heard the gunshots, then the screams, he thought the bank was being robbed. By the time he reached the office door, he knew that wasn't the case. Footsteps were running out of the building, it was too soon for a bank heist. He ignored the people clustering around the bank's street windows, pushed his way past the people glued to the ground, eyes entranced by something farther down the street.
The jewelry shop was in that direction.
It's amazing how people are fascinated by the horrific, the fantastic. Give them something out of the normal tedium of their life and they'll line up like ants to a picnic to get to it. Or was it flies to rotting meat. Moths to a flame? Something like that. This fascination drove them to do some rather senseless things, like standing around a jewelry store being heisted. Or even more dangerously, standing there dumbly as one of the robbers from said heist raised a gun and fired at the silly pedestrian watching him escape.
Smith couldn't remember the last time he moved that fast, leaping and pushing the frozen observer out of the way of the speeding bullet. Well, okay, actually he could remember but that was less than two years ago. But then, bullet dodging wasn't a required skill for a bank clerk.
The robbers were quick in their getaway; the sheriff was on the other side of town. A part of Smith wanted to chase after them; another part wanted to make sure that no one had gotten hurt. The latter won and he began looking around for any telltale signs of blood.
There's something about blood that you can't just get out of your head once you've tasted it. It wasn't really the color or the smell, not by themselves at any rate. Funny how a red liquid could make you think of metal but it does, especially when your mouth is full of it, blood that is, not metal. Some people retch at the sight or smell of it. Others have the metallic taste of blood and guns intertwined so tightly in their mind they can't tell one or another.
Smith pushed open the untouched doors of the jewelry store. There was both a preternatural calmness and an agitated apprehension in his mind. It was like he knew what he would see, but didn't, couldn't acknowledge it until faced with the bare, stark reality.
The glass displays were broken, mostly empty, their objects either long gone or scattered on the ground. On one of the walls, below the painting of a purple flower, was a blossom of red blood whose equally red stems disappeared behind the ruined counter. The people sprawled on the floor were more obviously dead, probably shot down right when the robbers came in.
Smith ignored the blood seeping into his shoes and pants as he knelt next to one man unfortunate enough to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. No longer were Harrison's eyes overflowing with anticipation and hope, the glassy dull lenses reflected even less than Smith's glasses. The white dress shirt and light brown vest looked like they had been splattered liberally with ketchup, if ketchup also could leave behind dark holes. On one side of him was a fallen bag of donuts. On the other, one hand rested limply, palm up, on the floor next to him, open, grasping or waiting for something to be placed into it.
"Three...days..."
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Criminals tend to be an overconfident lot. Sometimes they have all rights to be, if they've succeeded in avoiding the law, making a clean haul and getaway. Anyone else meeting with success would take some time out to toast his good fortune. Nothing says a criminal can't do the same.
"Bring out your best, bartender!" hollered a member of the rowdy group that just drove in. They were in an exuberant mood to say the least. "We got us plenty of money! Don't be stingy now!!"
:The customer is always right. The customer is always right.: The bartender repeated over and over to himself in his head as he brought down the bottle and walked over to deliver it. "Hey, that a ring you got in that box?" he asked one of them, indicating the small red box resting on the table.
"Oh yeah, a wedding ring. Ain't that right boys?"
The group hooted and the bartender retreated, half-relieved, half-fearful when someone else passed through the swinging doors. A town-dweller from the looks of his clothes, the bartender noted, one of those daisies who toiled away all day at a desk in a lighted office with a fan. A more observant person would have noticed the dust covering his shoes and lower pant legs, the hardened remoteness behind the glasses, the brief rigidity in stance that seemed to melt away as the man entered.
"What can I do for you?"
The man flashed the bartender a smile saying 'Nothing, thank you' and walked unerringly toward the rowdy table of celebrating men. Again the mantra floated through the bartender's head, trying to convince himself this time that if that town boy wanted to talk to that rough bunch then so be it. Some lessons could only be learned the hard, and sometimes final, way.
"Um, excuse me..."
His request went unheard. He tried again.
"I don't mean to intrude but..."
Again, the occupants of the table ignored him. He sweatdropped. His eyes fell on the red box on the table and his hand followed. Only to be slammed down onto the table by a gun butt.
"And just what the hell do you think you're doing?" sneered the owner of the gun, his thick intoxicated breath striking this insolent punk in the face. "Didn't your parents ever teach you not to take things that aren't yours?"
The table broke out in raucous laughter again.
"That would be my line," the stranger said calmly, cutting off the laughter like a knife. He didn't flinch as the eyes around the table looked at him closely.
"Hey...it's that wanna-be hero outside of the store."
Smith recognized the speaker as well, as the person who had fired the shot.
"Little mama boy here to be a hero? Come to save the day with nothing but his fine clothes and faith that good always wins. Well guess what boyo. You're a very lucky guy today."
"You'll return everything you stole?"
"No." There was the familiar sound of the hammer pulling back. "You're going to be a hero. A dead one."
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Smith's fingers curled around the red box, popping it open to see, to make sure the two golden bands were still sitting snuggly inside. He snapped the lid close and tucked it away into a pocket. This he would deliver in person, everything else could be left to the sheriff. Smith hoped the bartender had some insurance, those robbers were quite free with their bullets.
"Impressive," clapped a young voice.
Smith turned around, away from the thoroughly trounced robbers all lying on their broken table, to look at the audience he didn't notice he had. The bartender had run out almost immediately after the bullets started flying. So where had this boy come from?
"No need to make such scary eyes," the tanned youth smirked, greenish-gray hair falling messily over his odd green eyes with cat-eye slits appraising the bank clerk. From the looks of it, he had been there for awhile, at least long enough to catch the one-sided gunfight even if it hadn't lasted that long. A pair of belt holsters crossed his waist and though he was sitting rather indolently with one leg propped up on the table, his hands remained near his guns. "Didn't even need a gun. Ne, Vash the Stampede?"
If the boy had been expecting some kind of big denial or big shock, he would have been disappointed with the lack of reaction from the man called John P. Smith. He only stood there, looking at the boy coolly from behind round glasses. For a hot desert-like place, the temperature seemed to drop to the depths it reaches at night.
"...who are you?"
"Gung-Ho Guns 12." The boy's grin was too much like a smug cat's. He let that little announcement have time to sink in. "Zazie the Beast."
"..." The man who hadn't answered to the name 'Vash the Stampede' for the last two years stiffened perceptively. Rusted senses stretched futilely to their limit to perceive a man that had managed to hide in plain sight even when the ex-outlaw was at his best. "I take it then that Legato is here as well."
Zazie shrugged carelessly, the bright orange scarf tied around his neck following the movement. "Bluesummers isn't around though I bet he'd be quite interested in knowing where Vash the Stampede is. I haven't told him yet, since I just discovered you myself." The boy smiled cheerfully. "Did you really think you could hide yourself away here and never be found?"
"You're here to kill me as well?"
Zazie jumped off of the tabletop. "To be honest, something humans rarely are, we found you completely by accident. Rather disappointing you know, the great outlaw gunman living as a pansy bank clerk. But you can't escape." His strange eyes caught and held tight to Vash's. "You can never escape."
They were locked in a staring match, smirking disdain to hardened caution.
Zazie broke it off first, walking nonchalantly to the swinging doors, hands resting easily on his guns. At the door, he paused to toss a word of advice casually over his shoulder. "I'm sure you've managed to keep yourself insulated away these past years but try asking around for the latest news. Entire towns of missing people have been all the rage for quite awhile now. I'm sure you'll find it very enlightening."
The young Gung-Ho Gun brushed through the doors, leaving behind the ruined bar, a pile of still unconscious robbers, and one man who couldn't escape from his past.
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"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." the priest murmured over the open grave. If it bothered him that he could barely be heard over the muffled sobbing of the departed's nearest and dearest, it didn't move him enough to raise his voice. The rest of the prayer, and in truth everything before it, was lost to Vash's ears, standing near the back of the gathered mourners.
It was three days after the jewelry heist in which Michael Harrison was shot and killed. The only reason he had been there was to pick up the wedding bands for the wedding that, if there was any sanity in the world, should have been held today. Instead, they were burying him.
"Thank you, Mr. Smith," Eliza tried to smile amidst her tears. The service had ended and the guests were beginning to drift back to town for the wake. To his perplexed expression and protests of having done nothing, she explained, "You brought back our rings." Caught up in another rush of choking emotions, Eliza gripped her hands tightly, especially the ring finger as if that was her only link to reality. It was certainly perhaps her only remaining physical link to Harrison.
Vash watched as Eliza's parents hurried her away. The gravedigger was already beginning to shovel in the sand into the hole. There was a wind today and it kind of tickled across the back of his neck. It had been some time since he felt it that well.
"Excuse me," Vash smiled at the gravedigger, it was an empty smile but few people bothered to notice. "I'd like to have some last words with my friend here."
The gravedigger snorted and planted his shovel in the ground. Pulling out a cigarette, he meandered over to another grave marker outside of eavesdropping distance and proceeded to smoke while leaning against it. Perhaps with dealing with the dead everyday he's grown insensitive to it.
"Well, Harrison... here I am. Hair cut, face shaved. I think you'll forgive me if I didn't wear the tux, though the suit is black. ...three days ago, who would have thought that this would be where we'd be standing?" Vash's eyes strayed to the distant horizon, feeling the wind move through his hair, unable to convince it to stay down. He wore no glasses now.
"If you hadn't offered to pick some food for me, or even if you had decided to get the ring first and the food after, perhaps you wouldn't have been in the jewelry store when it was robbed."
"I'm sure you, or someone, would be insisting that I'm crazy to be blaming myself for this. I can't help it. I can't stand it when people die like this. I can't stand being completely unable to something about it. Did you know? There was a time when I was able to do something about it. But then I found out I was capable of something even worse and I ran away. I ran away from everything."
"I thought...that perhaps the world would be better off without someone like me. That perhaps...things would have been better off if we had never been born. Then none of you would be forced to live on this planet. Rem...and everyone would still be alive."
"I really can't do anything can I? I got your rings back but I couldn't save you from dying. I know I'm capable of doing something terrible, and all I can do is run away and hide. Was it wrong? Was it wrong to run away? Wrong to wish for a quiet life where each day is the same as the next and the one before?"
"I had two years...and I guess that has to be enough. My past is catching up to me, in more ways than one. I met a boy when I went to get back your rings. I don't know if he'll reveal where I am. But now that he's found me, it's probably best that I get moving."
"Don't worry about me, I'm not running away again. No, he's made sure I won't. I'm kind of surprised I didn't hear about it earlier, the missing townspeople. Towns abandoned for no reason as if for some reason people suddenly got the idea to get up and leave. There are no clues about where they've gone or why. There's only one thing. One name that might make any difference at all but only to the right person. The name written in blood on the monument of each ghost town. Knives."
"It's a lure to draw me out, draw me in. I know it. He knows it. But I can't stay away anymore." Vash looked back down at the coffin, for one last final time. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to do anything. Good bye."
Brushing the sand off of his pants, Vash gave a signal to the gravedigger that he was done and picked up his black travel bag. It'll be a bit tight to catch the bus to the next town but he should be able to make it if he ran. He couldn't stay here any longer. Still, he had the nagging feeling he had forgotten something.
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"Smith? Smith, where the hell are you?!" the bank director hollered, the veins in his pudgy throat bulging. He was waving something in his hand and swearing profusely at his favorite target.
"Um, sir? Smith resigned remember?"
"I remember that. The imbecile forgot to pick up his last paycheck!!"
