:Sheesh, I'm dead for a month and the whole battelfeild changes,: Wolfwood thought to himself as Meryl finished summing up what had happened since he'd gone MIA.
That wasn't counting what he knew, through listening to Legato and being smeared with that freak's memories while the telepath's mind had been occupying his body, about the secondary GHG squad, their mission and the bit about the other Channel (unfortunately, it was apparent that the guy the Knives had kidnapped and was currently trying to torture into submission and Meryl's brother were the same person) and Knives' mission that he'd sent Vash on after ordering Meryl taken as collateral. He still had yet to bring the poor girl up to speed on what had happened.
:But this was an unexpected development!: he thought to himself in amazement as Meryl related to him her sudden regression into an ability that had been supressed in her late childhood.
It was a bit strange though, most people didn't forget a whole lot by the time they reached ten... usually those memories were ingrained and clear enough to be recalled with ease years later (his own, without a doubt had been). It seemed suspicious that she would just "forget" about an ability she'd grown up using.
:Gonna have to side with Meryl's suspicion on this one then; someone, or something, helped her to forget,: Wolfwood decided.
"... and maybe it was my smallest, least useful finger on my left hand, but it was mine," she grumbled, showing him the tiny abreviated digit wrapped in a torn scrap of white cloth on her left hand.
Wolfwood's eyes widened at that. Legato hadn't been the one who relayed the order or carried it out, so he hadn't known that that bastard had ordered her finger to be removed, he felt his temper flare in sympathetic anger. That was just wrong.
:Vash must be pissed,: Wolfwood thought absently.
The only reason Knives would order it would be to goad his brother.
Meryl continued on with her story telling about how she'd escaped with the Plant Angel that was "bonded" to her brother and that other woman named Remembrance who, so far as Meryl could tell had either grown up under a rock or from some strange religious commune or something.
"She might be from that Sky City place," Wolfwood conjectured aloud. "You know, the ship that was still up in orbit for the last hundred years or so and Leonoff the Puppetmaster and Hopperd the Gauntlet brought it down. I was up there with Vash while it was still floating. Those people... sheesh, it was ridiculous! Just because I was an outsider an' carried a gun, they treated me like I had some kind of infectious disease or something. The entire time I was there I wanted to line them all up, down to the last kid, and knock thier heads together! Anyway, the people there are sheltered, familiar with Lost Technology, and haven't had any contact with the real world."
"Good point, that would also explain how the heck she knew so much about the original project SEEDs and what a Resonant is and does. I mean, she knew more about my ancestry than I did, for crying out loud, and my dad did research on it! I mean, I could understand Marcus not knowing anything, with my uncle bringing him up in ignorance of his heritage and all, but my father actively tried to understand and develop that side of himself and it seems he only scratched the surface."
"How come no-one knew about your family?" he asked next. "I mean, it must have come up... blood tests, DNA screens, even if none of your forebears ever checked into a medlab or a hospital, a lot of the public schools in the larger cities take samples and keep the info on file. It would have had to show up."
"As far as I know my father and grandfather were home-schooled and had tutors. My brother and I went to a private school, to which I understand that my uncle donated large amounts of money."
"I see, money keeps some secrets and lets others go," he said grunting to himself at it.
"Sometimes that's just the way the world works," she agreed. "But in this case I think my uncle did us all a favor in keeping our...aberration a secret. Could you imagine what my life would have been like if you-know-who found out about me and knew where to find me?"
"Good point," he agreed, shivering a little at the thought.
It seemed that the only thing that had kept Meryl and her brother safe was the very fact that no-one knew about them. As long as they didn't start trying to fulfil whatever purpose it was that their ancestors had been changed for, they had been able to fly below the radar.
Wolfwood began to match up some of the timelines in his head. Knives had given orders to Legato during the interim year that Vash had been recovering from the incident at Augusta for him to search for and acquire one of what Meryl was...
"What did she call you again?" he asked curiously.
"A Resonant," Meryl replied. "So anyway, that's not important right now, the important thing is that that guy has my brother. I'm going after him."
Whatever Wolfwood had been about to say was brought to a screeching halt as soon as those words left her mouth. There was only one thing he could say to that proposal, and that was
"The hell you are!"
She looked over at him.
"Excuse me?" she said, her eyebrows raising, her face took on it accustomed mulish and determined look.
"There is no way that I'm going to let you-"
"Did you just say let?" she demanded next.
"Go off on a foolish rescue run you haven't a prayer in hell of succeeding in, unarmed, unprepared and unprotected against a guy that can take out Vash the Stampede two battles out of three!" he said, choosing to ignore her interruption. "It's not just crazy, its damn near suicidal. You'd be killed, or even worse, captured."
"He caught me once and I seem to have escaped just fine," she pointed out.
"Correction," Wolfwood argued hotly but with logic. "One of his lesser henchmen caught you, and you escaped."
"I rescued you, didn't I?" she needled.
"You ambushed him," Wolfwood countered. "If Le- if that creep had been at his usual strength, he'd have owned you."
Meryl opened her mouth to object but wolfwood overrode her
"And Le-ga-" he took a breath and forced himself to say the name and release its hold over him. "And Legato has a fraction of the power that Knives can call. Taking him on would be like you arguing with a sandstorm, you can yell all you want but the only thing you're gonna get is a mouthful of sand."
"I can't just leave him there," she replied. "He's my brother. Who knows what kinds of things are happening to him."
Wolfwood knew what kinds of things were happening to her brother, the Channel, but he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her; if she was this determined now and she heard that her brother was being tortured, there was no way he'd be able to talk her out of throwing her life away stupidly. Of course she was worried about her family; Meryl's protective streak, once activated, was wide enough to cover the planet. Milly was it's usual recipient, but he'd bet that once blood got involved she wasn't going to listen to anyone or anything that might prevent her from leaping headfirst down a sandworm hole.
:Keh!: Wolfwood thought in amusement and exasperation. :They seem so different in some ways and so much the same in others.:
"C'mon, Short Girl, use that common sense of yours, you're supposed to be the calm collected one of the group. Use your head."
That seemed to cool her off for a moment. She stared off out into the darkened skies for a long time and Wolfwood slowly relaxed, figuring that maybe some of what he had said had actually managed to get through to her. He was about to congratulate himself on a job well done for once when she broke the silence.
"You're right," she said quietly. "I definitely should use my head in this situation."
"See?" he encouraged with that jovial smile on his face. "I knew you were the smart one Short Girl."
"Because I'm not going to run away or hide," she continued, not skipping a beat. "So the best thing to do would be to use my head and come up with a plan."
"Wha- That's not what I meant and you know it!" he said, exasperated.
"Be that as it may," Meryl replied looking him steadily in the eyes, her gaze unwavering. "I'm not going to leave my brother behind. I'll fight who I have to where I have to; I'll take on bandits, I'll take on Guns, I'll even take on Knives if it comes to that. I don't care if its crazy or even suicidal, I won't leave him. I'm not afraid to stand my ground and be strong, and I'm not about to let him push me around. You can do what you like, but I've made up my mind... now either lead, follow, or stay the hell out of my way."
The former assassin and Gung Ho Gun studied her for a long moment and seriously debated knocking her hard enough over the head to render her unconscious long enough for him to tie her up and stick her in a hole somewhere safe. He knew that that was the only way he was going to get her to not go through with her crazy plan. He reconsidered an instant later when he thought about what his dear Milly's reaction to that would be, and then inwardly cringed at exactly what Meryl would be like once she woke up.
:See, this is what happens when a woman like Meryl decides to follow her heart,: Wolfwood thought to himself. :They just turn out to be ten times scarier and more formidable than anyone else in the entire galaxy.:
He sighed, giving in, but he wasn't going to go along with something that would most likely get him killed (or worse) again without making at least some attempt at making the situation a success.
"Alright, I'll help you," he said. "After all, I do owe Spikey pretty big-time for a few things, the least I can do is make sure you don't get dead on my watch. But you're not going to do any rescuing until two things happen, one, we come up with a plan that actually stands a chance of working, and two, you get some serious training."
"Training?" she asked. "I know how to fire a weapon Mister Wolfwood. I know I may not exactly be in your or Mr V-" She smiled briefly and then said "Spikey's league, but I'm not defenseless."
"We're not going on a picnic Miss Stryfe," he replied coolly. "What you're talking about doing probably couldn't be done with all of us plus Spikey. Don't forget who we're up against. This guy routinely out-thinks and outmanuvers Spikey on a regular basis. We're talking about storming his stronghold and snatching one of the vital peices to his little endgame. There's no way I'm going in there with just me, a pacifist, an angel who doesn't seem to be living in the same reality as the rest of us most of the time, and you only half-trained at best. You don't even have any of your derringers on you. Not that it would make a difference if you did."
Meryl was about to protest hotly when Wolfwood cut in
"Think about it. Think about the kinds of fighters that Spikey had to face the last time around."
That at least, seemed to give her pause to consider. She hadn't actively been there through many of the battles but he knew she'd had to investigate and report damages after some of them, she was a smart woman, she was more than capable of following a trail of destruction and deconstructing the events that would have had to have taken place in order for them to happen. She knew the mechanics of the fights Vash had been in.
"Can you honestly say you're ready to take on people with that kind of skill at their call?" Wolfwood pressed, trying not to sound like he was desperately trying to talk her out of her fools quest.
"I don't know," she said after a moment.
"C'mon insurance girl," he prodded. "You work in insurance, you're not trained to handle this kind of situation."
She paused, seeming to mull over what he had just said and a glimmer of something appeared in her eyes. Wolfwood got the sinking feeling that his momentary victory had led to his oncoming defeat.
"What if my work is exactly what we need to win?" Meryl questioned aloud. "I minimize risks and prevent disasters by any means at my disposal for a living. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is my departments motto; if this guy is planning a disaster on such a massive scale then it's more than just personal..."
:Oh, god...: Wolfwood hung his head as he saw her getting fired up. :Please deliver me from crazed career women and thier insane work ethics!:
"It's a matter of professional integrity. How could I call myself Class A-1 if I didn't do everything in my power to prevent the biggest global disaster to strike since the Great Fall?"
"You can't collect your pay if you're pushin' up daisies Short Girl," he pointed out. "If you go at him as you are, we'll all meeting our maker a lot sooner than any of us had planned."
He hated to do it but someone had to before she got herself in so deep she wouldn't be able to see the surface. If she wouldn't listen to reason then he was just going to have to scare her off with the truth. Some days, he hated having to play the bad guy.
"Except maybe you," he added deliberately with thought. "He'll probably keep you around as a spare in case things don't pan out with your brother."
She blanched at that, as well she should. The kinds of things he might do to her to cow her into submission didn't even bear thinking about. If Legato was one twisted bastard, Knives had to be ten times worse.
"And Miss Remembrance would definitely be killed. Angelina he might let live simply because she's what she is. I'm out, naturally."
"Mister Wolfwood," she said severely, looking him directly in the eye. "I know exactly what you're trying to do. I know also the concern that's motivating it. I assure you I have no intention of sticking us all in an untenable situation unless there is absolutely no other way to go about it. The first thing you learn in insurance work is that often the most straightforward approach is not the best one. I was thinking more along the lines of an indirect approach before we go in there guns blazing and getting killed."
She paused and allowed a smile to appear.
"Attacking your enemies plans is always preferable to attacking your enemy. If I can get a bargaining chip on Knives, I can get my brother away from him. Now, is there any other target that Knives values? Preferably one that will be left with a minimal guard now that the cat is away."
Wolfwood found himself with a matching pleased smile stretching across his face.
"Short Girl, I know just the place..."
Writing Meryl and Wolfwood is surprisingly fun. As a bit of trivia, did you all know what the D. in Wolfwoods name stands for? If you don't you should look it up... it's surprising and it made me laugh ( I had always assumed that it was short for something normal, like Daniel or David). I hope you all enjoyed, please read and reveiw.
