Chapter Twenty-four: Too Easy
Milly was not having too much fun at the moment.
Her back was starting to ache as she crawled through the metal ventilation system, and her fingers kept slipping, resulting in several bruises on her chin.
"Am I going the right way?"
She wondered out loud as she continued down the pipe-like system. Her stungun was in front of her, properly loaded in case she met any obstacle.
"Araa? Is that an opening?"
She eagerly crawled towards the one end of the pipe, hoping all the choices she had made with all the forks in the twists and turns she'd met hadn't been unlucky. She pressed her fingers against the grating, and sighed when she found it nailed down securely.
"Oh well, here goes..."
The cross-shot blasted the grating away easily, and Milly started to make her way out when she heard several voices outside.
"Wh-what is this??"
Milly sweatdropped.
"Halt!!"
A voice cried as Milly slowly stood up from a space just outside the vent opening,
"Who goes there?"
They looked like a bunch of uniformed guards - three of them, to be exact.
"Hi, I'm Milly! Nice to meet you!"
Milly said brightly with a smile. The guards stared at her blankly as she hitched her stungun up.
"Sorry, but I'm in a hurry!"
Her shot slammed into one guard right in the stomach, who fell onto another guard, and her second shot hit the third guard squarely on the chest. Before they knew what was happening, their weapons were shot away from their reach, and they were winded and bruised.
"Sorry again!"
Milly called out as she hurried down a path. She was met with a dead-end, and thus retraced her footsteps back to the fallen guards and rushed down the opposite direction.
"H-halt!"
Croaked a guard weakly before his head flopped weakly onto the floor in defeat.
"Yeah, Lydia was pretty out last night,"
One guard laughed,
"said she didn't feel like seeing him."
"Poor Paul,"
tutted his companion,
"She's been ignoring him lately--"
He stopped abruptly with his partner when their eyes fell upon several other guards scattered across the floor, groaning weakly.
"C-Craig! And Raust and Garten!!"
They rushed up to the fallen guards in shock, shaking them into conciousness.
"What happened?? Is there an intruder??"
The second guard cried.
"No,"
One of the fallen guards croaked,
"that--, that girl... the tall one. She escaped."
"What?!"
Asked the first guard, stricken,
"Are you saying that she's so powerful she overthrew three grown men?!"
"Of course not,"
Said the fallen guard hastily,
"She was armed with a stungun."
"She was armed?! --And you let her blast you?"
The second guard said in surprise.
"We were specifically told by Rederine the Temaski not to hurt her,"
Whimpered another guard when the loudspeaker suddenly sounded, echoing around the metal walls.
"May I have your attention please."
All six guards looked up in surprise.
"The laboratory is to be off-limits ten minutes from now. I repeat; the laboratory is to be off-limits ten minutes from now."
"Isn't that Rederine the Temaski's voice?"
Asked the first guard, frowning.
"And I have something to say."
There was no formality; there was only regret.
"This laboratory has been failing since years and years ago. Everyone knew it."
The guards stared silently at the speaker. He was speaking the truth.
"All of you knew it. However, you chose to stay; especially those who came when the plan of holding Vash the Stampede as an experiment was introduced. You believed we could win back the glory the name 'Corman' used to bring. Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen."
A deep, shaky breath was taken before it continued,
"The time has come for you to leave... permanently."
The guards looked terribly confused as the voice paused before speaking again in a low, harsh voice,
"Evacuate the premises as quickly as possible. It's going to end."
Another shaky breath and Rederine the Temaski concluded,
"Everything is going to end. Right now. "
A click, and the voice was gone. The guards looked at each other, confused and wondering when the lights started to blink on and off, white to red to white, and a high-pitched siren began to wail.
Alarmed and shocked, the guards let out gasps and cries as they grabbed hold of their companians and ran as fast as they could to the nearest exit.
Vash opened his eyes groggily, and blinked. His eyes focussed properly on the ceiling, and he sat up.
No restrictions.
"What the--"
Memories were clear and in sharp relief in his mind, but he was not clamped onto the metal platform. He checked himself in surprise, his wrists and ankles red where the strange silvery material and held him, and he had new stitches on his side where he hadn't had any before. But he was not held down, and his body and mind did not feel weighed down with drugs.
Even more surprising, there was a familiarly red coat at one side of the metal platform, draped across a metal stand. Wondering if this was a sadistic trap, Vash cautiously pressed a bare foot onto the floor below. It was cold, chilling Vash, but he could sense no danger.
His eyes widened in pure surprise and confusion when he saw that his buckles, boots, belts and even his sunglasses were laid out.
"What are they playing at...?"
Vash muttered, gingerly picking at his clothes. They seemed perfectly intact and unaffected by anything. Vash pulled on a boot, still confused.
"Too easy,"
He grumbled as he pulled on the other boot,
"way too easy."
"Okay,"
Meryl said as she and Wolfwood came up to a metal pathway,
"I'll look at all the doors on the left side of the corridoor while you look on the right."
Wolfwood nudged a guard on the floor, patting his now open and used cross.
"Sounds okay to me."
He replied, and they split directions to look at the opposite sides of the corridoor.
Meryl looked into the room, and coughed. It was dusty, and it looked like a room that held only glass vials and test tubes.
"Nope, dead end here,"
She muttered, and backed out of the room. Shutting the metal door, she entered the next room, which yielded several delivery tubes and bungs of all sorts.
Wolfwood entered the room on the right, and looked in surprise at the bright light that shone onto him. It was such a tiny room it seemed like a broom cupboard. He might have thought it was one if it hadn't been for the light and the buttons on the back of the wall.
"Buttons?"
He walked into the room curiously, leaving his cross outside, and examined the black buttons interestedly.
Suddenly, the lights began to flash red, blinking on and off while a siren shrilly sounded. Startled, Wolfwood stumbled a little forward and his shoulder pressed in a button.
"Uh oh. Oi, small girl! I think I'm onto something here..."
He didn't notice the door close behind him, but he did feel the sudden drop in level.
"What the--"
He turned around, his eyes widening when he realised he was in an elevator.
"Wolfwood-san, what did you--"
Meryl stopped short when she saw that the door Wolfwood had opened revealed cables, pulleys and a very dark room.
"Uh... Wolfwood-san?"
She looked nervously at the cross that lay outside, by the door, and looked at the elevator with a sweatdrop.
"He could have waited for me,"
Meryl muttered. First the lights went crazy, then her ear-drums were nearly blown out by a close-by siren and now her companion had disappeared. Maybe I should call him a friend, she mused to herself, when she heard footsteps echo lightly across the corridoor.
She had never felt so glad to hear a familiar voice call out,
"Sempai!!"
Rederine stood in a large, open room that held all the loudspeaker equipment. There were lights above that shone very brightly, but at the moment, were flashing red. The siren was a faint wail in the distance, and Rederine stood, remembering the meetings this room used to hold.
He closed his eyes, but his body was tense as he waited.
[A/N: An incredibly short, unedited, very horrible chapter. It might be re-edited later... I don't know... I've planned the whole ending out properly now, but it's still gotta be several more chapters till that. ^^;; Thanks for you reviews. ^^*]
