Summary: And finally... just what is Better Than Ice Cream? Hee.
Thoughts, Author's notes, emphasis, title inspired by the Ice Cream song by Sarah MacLachlan.
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Trigun. That's as far as it goes. :(
Pre-Story Notes: I'm so sorry it took so long for me to finish this! I didn't want to story to end! ::cries:: Anyway, that's not really a valid excuse. How about I couldn't find my notebook because my mom cleaned the house and reorganized everything? Another thing I'm really sorry for is not including more of Knives. I like my version, too.
And I ended with incredible sap. Or fluff. Both, probably. :)
Oh, and I have an actual summary this time. But it does this story no justice.
vashluver1: This chapter is especially fluffy! Thanks for reviewing!
angelarms: ::bows:: Big thanks for reviewing all my chappies! And sorry I couldn't really include Knives without making this chapter even weirder...
PolePeeps25: I'm so sorry! My Knives won't pop up anytime soon! ::cries:: Thanks for reviewing!
Pyro: ::author looks outside window and sees dark figure staring back:: Erm, Hi... Staccato... is it? ::grabs hairdryer:: Back, you! I know how to use this! Anyway, thanks for reviewing!
DecoyNeko: Yes, Knives getting attacked by kuroneko is hilarious. I'm a sucker for V/M too! Thanks for reviewing!
Neptune Butterfly: I see anything with Kuronekosama is good. I will note that. I'm sorry he dislocated his tail! Thanks for reviewing!
"Oh, no!" They've started up again!" Milly cried, slumping over the car door. For a while Milly thought that Meryl had convinced the city of Farland to stop chasing after Mr. Vash, but then all of a sudden the city started rioting once more. "They'll never get out now." Milly moaned.
The black cat napping in the passenger's seat woke. "Nyao!" It mewed up at Milly.
"What's that, Mr. Kitty? You want to help Mr. Vash and Meryl and Ms. Divi?"
"Nyao!" It mewed happily. It jumped over Milly and shot off into the city.
"Mr. Kitty!" Milly shouted after the cat in vain. "It's not fair." She said to herself. "Why do I have to miss out on all the fun?"
"What's the plan now, Mr. Vash?!" Divi yelled angrily as she did her best to keep up with the long-legged blond.
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!"
"Think faster!" Divi growled.
Vash turned his head at her for a moment, amazed at how Meryl-like Divi seemed.
Suddenly a white flash crossed the path Vash and Divi were running in. "I AM NOT STAMPEDE'S WOMAN!" Meryl shouted as she blazed by. With a mob of her won trailing behind, Vash and Divi had no choice but to follow Meryl.
"How long before we outrun them?!" Divi asked, shouting above the noise of the crowd following.
"A really, REALLY long time!" Vash shouted back.
Meryl thought she heard familiar voices behind her, but didn't bother to take a peek back to find out who they were.
"So..." Vash panted as he ran up beside Meryl. "What's up with you?"
"THEY THINK I'M YOUR GIRLFRIEND!!" Meryl screeched.
"Oh." Is it really all that bad? He thought worriedly in his head.
"There they are!" A voice on one of the roofs shouted. "Eat rocket, demons!"
"AHH!!!" Screamed the 3 fugitives as they leapt out of the way just in the nick of time, the rubble falling from the walls of the destroyed buildings conveniently creating a blockade from the bounty-hungry city dwellers.
That dealt with the people from behind, not the mobs coming from both sides.
Another rocket was fired and a sudden black mass with fur appeared right in front of the lagging Divi's foot. Seconds later an explosion sounded off and chunks of the fortress wall fell down.
Meryl and Vash looked behind them but saw nothing but broken concrete blocks. They looked at each other.
"Oh, no." They said in unison.
"Why does the ground have to be so hard?!" Divi whined, clutching her smashed and aching right breast. "Ow!"
"Nyaaaooo!" Screamed in pure agony the black furry mass behind Divi. She turned around and found the familiar black cat on its back, twitching to its right side. Divi looked beyond the injured feline and found a mountain of broken wall. To her left was the windowless backside of a building. To her front another gigantic pile of concrete chunks. To her right was an improbable gaping hole to the outside of the city.
Divi blinked. Several times.
"Wow. Maybe Milly was right about me being lucky... or maybe you're the lucky one," she smiled at the cat, picking it up gently. "Are you alright?" Divi asked, getting a soft affirmative mew in response. "Let's go find Milly, then."
"Come on, Vash, we're so close to the gates!" Meryl shouted.
The Humanoid Typhoon looked behind him in hopes of finding his "daughter".
And then alarms rang off. "Stop right there," a male voice boomed over the city intercom. "We have you surrounded."
Vash and Meryl stopped in their tracks and saw the government agents encircling them and guarding the city gates. The agents were oddly uniformed in black suits with black ties, black sunglasses and weird transmitter things in one ear. Every one of them had a pistol aimed right at the pair. Matrix meets Trigun?
"I told you!" A person from the Farland crowd behind the agents yelled. "That girlie is Stampede's woman!"
Another random person added "She could be the mother!"
Meryl growled in embarrassment (and also because she was highly insulted... She didn't look old!) and was about to storm off to those persons had not Vash stopped her.
"Don't," he pleaded, smiling nervously. "You'll just provoke them."
Damn straight she was going to provoke them! Provoke them into thinking twice about her. Why would she ever want to be Vash the Stampede's –wait, he wasn't even trying to deny those allegations?
Meryl blinked at him, too confused to be angry.
A shot fired suddenly. Vash grabbed Meryl and covered her protectively.
A large, metallic THUD resounded through the wide arena of Farland Vash and Meryl were currently located in. Vash blinked and made sure nothing hurt, then looked down at Meryl, who looked shocked and slightly embarrassed –but not in pain. He looked up at the gates with apparently metallic doors and found a large, embossed "X" in the middle of the left gate.
4 more shots followed soon after, 1 more hitting the left gate, 2 hitting the right and the final one hitting right in between. A rusty screech served as the only warning of the doors' failure to keep upright.
Vash and Meryl were right in the path of its fall.
It landed with a loud crash and kicked up a storm of sand. When the dust cleared the city people found the 2 doors did not fall properly at all... the 2 pieces fell away from each other, creating a "V" with an angle wide enough to just barely miss the renegade pair.
Two blurry figures ran from the city.
"Don't worry!" One of the residents shouted. "I'll take care of them!"
He tried to aim the rocket launcher but another resident yelled "No, you idiot, you'll just destroy the city!" And pushed away the weapon. Unfortunately, it fired.
No one was harmed, but the only official opening to the city was covered with rubble.
"How many missiles can they have?!" Vash screamed, running toward the jeep with Meryl's hand in his death grip.
A blast of rock spewed out as both Vash and Meryl dove into the backseat of the jeep (Or rather, Vash dove and pulled Meryl with him). After the explosion subsided Milly started the jeep and Divi turned in the front passenger seat to look at the couple and her eyes widened in surprise.
Meryl sat up on Vash's stomach.
They looked at each other half a second longer than they needed to before they realized what had happened.
"You're bleeding." Both said simultaneously.
"Huh?" Vash asked, feeling a small stinging sensation right above his left eye. He touched that place gingerly and found blood on his glove fingers. "Oh." How did that happen? Oh. Explosion. Rock. Bad luck.
"Where's the first aid kit?" Meryl asked aloud as she searched the backseat for the kit, oblivious to where she was sitting.
"Here." Divi held up for Meryl the white metal box with a red cross.
"Divi, you're okay!"
"Yep." Divi smiled.
"What happened?" Vash asked.
Divi pondered that herself. "The kitty saved me." She held up the black kitten to show to the bewildered blond.
Meryl opened the kit and began to dress Vash's injury after a long pause.
"You should treat your shoulder first," Vash protested, pointing to the reddened area with fresh blood seeping into the gauze.
"You have a head injury. I think that takes precedence over a superficial shoulder wound." Meryl growled.
"You shouldn't have to worry about me, I've had a lot of these before," Vash smiled, wincing slightly as it dawned on him that he had set himself up for a retort from that small insurance girl on how those head injuries contributed to his idiocy.
Meryl smirked. "That doesn't stop them from bleeding, Vash." The outlaw smiled as he finally let down his defenses. The small woman treated his hurt tenderly, and the only thing Vash found himself wanting to do was smile.
Milly looked up briefly to the rear view mirror to spy on the unsuspecting couple. She smiled brightly when she saw that Vash didn't seem to mind where Meryl was sitting at all.
The bell rang above the double door entrance of the shop Meryl and Vash walked through in the exact same fashion only a week earlier.
"Deja vú." Said an alerted Divi.
"Hopefully not everything will happen again," Meryl sighed. A full week later she still had no clue how they made it out of the government city alive. A full week later she still had no clue why Vash had kissed her.
She was taken completely off guard by that kiss. He had leaned over, cut her off thoroughly from speaking, pulled back, smiled at her, and took off as if Hell's dogs were biting at his heels.
He had never bothered to explain. Well, maybe it was to get her to stop thinking for a few minutes. If that was his goal, he had sure succeeded well.
And it wasn't like she could ask him back then... What kind of obsessive freak would think about stuff like that when she was being chased by a large, bazooka-armed angry mob? Then again, what kind of obsessive freak would still be thinking about a little thing like a kiss a week later?
"Hey, Divi!" Vash greeted the teenager.
"Hi, Daddy!" Divi beamed.
"Isn't that getting kind of old?" Vash sighed.
"No." The girl giggled. "Okay, so we look nothing alike. I take more after Meryl."
Meryl looked up and glared at the girl.
"Yeah, I guess you're right." Said Vash. Meryl turned to Vash, perplexed.
"Anyway, where's Milly?" Asked Divi, putting in front of the now Stampede duo a banana sundae.
Meryl sighed, taking a spoonful of ice cream. "She's conveniently taken time off to see her family."
Divi smiled. "Well, you can't blame her. All of us nearly got killed. Twice." She looked at Vash. "More so, even."
"Yeah, but none of us are dead." Meryl said quickly. "Which means we can protect ourselves," she clarified to both Divi and Vash before he could start blaming himself.
"Erm, yeah. Now that I think about it, it was actually kind of fun!"
"Fun?" Vash asked. "You have some serious thrill issues."
Divi smiled again. "Yeah. My boyfriend will have problems trying to entertain me." A black cat strolled up onto the counter, laid on his back, and started pawing at the orange seahorse pendant Divi wore.
"Hey, Mr. Cat," Vash greeted. Promptly the cat flipped over onto its paws and jumped on Vash's face.
Great. Even Divi had a boyfriend. It wasn't that Meryl could never get one for herself, it was just that the current object of her affections could never love her back seriously. And if he could why would he go after a scary, short, "bitchy" insurance claims investigator when he, being the legend that he was, could have probably any woman he wanted if he actually tried? Then again, that guy had major issues. Like being Vash the Stampede. Like being a Plant. Like having a black cat hanging off his face and wrestling with it to get it off.
"Um, Ms. Meryl...? Shouldn't you help Vash?"
Help Vash? All Meryl ever wanted to do now was help that humanoid typhoon idiot. That was why she stood her ground when she tried to protect him from Monev, that was why she came back to him after he disappeared for 2 years, and that was why she got between him and the gun when that town resident tried to kill him. Didn't last week prove that too? She had loyalty and dedication, didn't he see that? Or was that too "clingy"?
"Insurance Girl! Please help!"
Now that Meryl thought about it, that nickname was... sort of cute. Taking another bite of the sundae, she thought it would actually be an adorable term of endearment.
If she ever was "dear" to him.
No matter. If he still refused to call her by name (which he proved he knew, as he exhibited that knowledge when he told her the meaning of it), "Insurance Girl" served well enough. Only from him, though.
She was getting really desperate now, wasn't she?
Meryl sighed and took another bite of the banana sundae before she was run into by the tall blond, who finally managed to fling off the offensive black mass of fur and claws back to the teenage owner.
"Gah," he heaved after the exercise. "Cats hate me! Especially the black ones! I swear, no matter where I go there's always one following me, it's really creepy!"
Am I creepy for following you too? She asked mentally. Meryl turned to him and pulled out her handkerchief when she saw the newly formed scratches on his face. She didn't know how it would really help, but she didn't care because she was touching him and that was reason enough. He felt warm, especially since he was blushing. That's odd, why would he be blushing?
It was clear to him that she wasn't going to listen to him ramble. She had totally ignored him when he was attacked by that cat, but seeing how she didn't react at all when he bumped into her, she must have been in deep thought. And besides, he probably deserved that attack in some way in her mind.
So why was she taking care of him personally right now? And with her "special" handkerchief, too. The same one from after the second sand steamer incident :) She was so close, he could feel the softness of her touch, the heat radiating off her delicate fingers – well, the last may just have been from him because he was blushing.
"It's everywhere, even at the hotels..." Vash continued, out of fear that Meryl would start asking questions about his odd behavior. "And sometimes I see a kitten with it so there's definitely more than one of them because this is a male and usually kittens follow around their mother, right?" How was it that she could make him babble like a fool?
She kept her gaze steady, and with the questioning look in her eyes he knew she had been listening to every word he said.
"Vash?"
In that moment he suddenly wanted to feel her arms around him, to hold her close, and to kiss her again! Once wasn't enough, it would never be, and a second one would well be worth the consequences. He had never meant to kiss her back in the government city, but since he had he hadn't been able to get it off his mind.
"Vash?" Meryl asked again, more worriedly as his entire demeanor changed in an instant. Before he was rambling on happily, but then something struck him and he ceased speaking. He had his mouth slightly open and he gazed with an intensity that silently spoke multitudes of what she dared not name.
Next he simply put his arms around her waist, pulled her to him, and kissed her. In other words, he got what he wanted.
Shocked beyond measure Meryl almost pulled back. But it was he who ended the kiss.
That may have been an incredibly stupid move, he thought to himself. So much for trying to be subtle again...
"I'm sorry," Vash sighed.
"What are you sorry about?" Meryl asked. It was now her turn to blush. Well, the only thing she was sorry about was that he didn't explain why. "Vash," she began cautiously. "Why did you kiss me?" Again, she wanted to add.
Confession time. He could almost see the miniature white church being shoved in his face. He didn't really want to admit it—now without knowing how she felt about it first. So he delayed the only way he knew how.
"I wanted to?" He smiled.
She furrowed her eyebrows. "Why did you want to?"
"Because I thought it'd be nice," he continued.
"So it wasn't because..." Okay. Stop, Meryl.
"Because what?" He saw something in her eyes and smiled to himself.
What have you gotten yourself into, Stryfe?! "Um, nevermind."
He raised an eyebrow. "You mean to say, 'so it wasn't because you love me,' or something like that, right?" She could only blush and face away from him, not able to escape the embrace he still held her in. "Right." He smiled.
"I know it sounds pathetic--"
"Wait." Vash interrupted. "Don't say anything. But consider this: what if I did?"
Meryl turned back to him, totally caught off guard.
He loved her?
Through the reprimands, the insults, and her controlling nature he still loved her?
There was only one way to deal with that.
She flung her arms around him and kissed him back. It was Vash's turn to be caught off guard. "Wow," said he after they broke their kiss. "I wasn't expecting that," he laughed sheepishly.
"Well, you told me not to say anything, what else could I do?" Meryl smirked. She leaned forward and rested her head against his chest, sighing as he tightened the embrace.
"This feels nice," he said quietly. She snuggled closer.
"You kids," Divi laughed, rolling her eyes. "Your ice cream is melting."
Meryl closed her eyes. She could skip the dessert. This... was much better than ice cream.
XD Yay, it's DONE! [Well, maybe not... hmm...] A long-winded story, sorry! ::smiles nervously:: I was trying to get this story finished in/under 5 chapters, since it was supposed to be a short story, but I tend to keep rambling, as I'm doing now. Hee.
Thank all of you beautiful people for enjoying (or trying to) my story! I love you all!