Trigun: Reflections
Chapter 4
The next morning Kaisa is woken up by a loud yawn from Vash; she sits up and looks around with nervousness and tiredness all in one. "Good morning! Sleep well? Oh… guess not, you look awful." Vash starts to laugh but then stops when he sees Kaisa doesn't find it funny at all. "Hey, I'm only teasing, you know that." He puts his arm around her shoulders and tilts his head. "What's wrong?" Kaisa shakes her head and rubs her eyes "N-nothing, I just didn't sleep well that's all… Nightmares…" Kaisa had had nightmares all night, but this time they were mixed of her usual ones and now with this woman. Instead of no one coming to save her from being turned into a horrible monster, the woman shows up and shoots her with that long and lethal spike. She'd had the dream at least three times during the night. She shivered at the memory of it. Suddenly there was a soft knock at the door and Kaisa twitched. "Ericks, Kaisa, Breakfast is ready!" Lina called through the door. Vash didn't seem to notice how she had jerked at the knock and nearly knocked down the door trying to get out. Kaisa got up and sighed, brushing her hair and making sure she looked decent before going into the other room for breakfast.
"Morning sleepy head," Uyoku says quietly looking at Kaisa as she comes out to the dining area yawning. Kaisa gives her a tired and bland look, Uyoku chuckles quietly. "Or perhaps not…" Kaisa sits down silently and helps herself to a piece of toast, beginning to literally nibble at it. She leaned on the table quietly and then jumped up, remembering she had to feed her pokémon. "Oh! I've got to go do something that I forgot, I'll be right back!" she got up before anyone could say anything and went into the bedroom she and Vash had shared, shutting and locking the door behind her. She pulled out her pokéballs and released her Mewtwo, Gengar, Charizard, Lapras, Dragonair, Ditto and Latios. She pulled out a huge bowl and a bag of pokémon food, pouring it all into the bowl. Then she set aside a few smaller bowls with a few more things in them, for a little variety. "I'll be back you guys… Just try and be quiet and…" she looked at the window with a nervous look. What is it? Mewtwo asked her in his psychic voice. Kaisa keeps staring at the window for a second then shakes her head. "Oh, it's nothing, don't worry about it." She smiled and hugged them each one by one before unlocking the door and going back out to breakfast. She smiled back at mewtwo and motioned for him to lock it after she left, so no one would walk in on them. "There… Sorry about that… I had to check on something." Kaisa felt very uneasy and a bit sick to her stomach at the thought of that disturbing woman watching her. She was afraid to say or do anything that might invite her to kill her without a good reason, she had a feeling she wouldn't hesitate in the slightest bit to do just that, a valid reason or not.
After breakfast and sitting around for awhile, Lina came into the room with a wide smile on her face. "So, are you two ready to go?" The group looks up at her in confusion. "Who us"? Vash looks around and points to himself and Kaisa with a purely idiotic grin on his face. Kaisa giggled quietly, she had been silent all morning since last night's events. She wanted to tell someone about what had happened, but she wasn't quite sure what the woman had wanted in the first place, other than she was there, in Kaisa and Vash's bedroom at a very late hour. "Of course you Ericks, I wanted to show you something in town today." Meryl crosses her arms with a stern look. "Don't you think we should come along to? Who knows what he is bound to get you into." Uyoku rolls her eyes as Lina laughs a bit. "Oh don't worry about them Meryl, Kaisa's good at making sure they don't get into too much trouble…" Uyoku grins, just teasing, but Kaisa didn't seem too amused by it, she gave a half-hearted laugh and got up, stretching. "So what do you want to show us Lina?" She asks, avoiding the subject of what was bothering her.
Setsuna raises a brow at Uyoku who nods slightly and both of them get up. "Where are you two going?" Meryl asks in a stern tone, giving them both one of her agitated looks. "Gee Meryl; can't you back off a bit? You know she can be really bitchy…" Vash says this with an utterly innocent look, and gets a vicious look from Meryl and laughter from Setsuna, Uyoku, Lina and Kaisa. Milly chuckles quietly and just smiles widely, her overly happy nature never wavering. "Oh! You pin-headed moron! Humph!" Meryl crosses her arms and turns away, looking rather agitated. "Well let's go!" Lina says before hopping up and walking out the door rather fast. Kaisa squeaks in surprise from the suddenness and follows, Vash right behind her with his goofy happy-go-lucky smile. Setsuna and Uyoku follow them, but start walking down the road toward the saloon.
"You know things haven't changed all that much since you were here Ericks, though y'know that building the gang was using to terrorize us all from back then? They never rebuilt it, I guess they figured it would be too welcoming for another group of bandits to find all-too-convenient to use for another hide out." Lina shrugs as they continue to walk out toward the outskirts of the town. "Well now that's a shame, it could have made a nice bar, or entertainment club…" Vash gets a goofy look on his face at the thought and both Lina and Kaisa glare at him, Lina gives him a firm smack for the comment. "Ericks! Now I see why Meryl is so uptight about you… You are a troublemaker aren't you?" Lina laughs and Vash rubs his cheek where he was slapped. "Oh, c'mon, she's just too high strung and I'm just teasing ya, you know that?" Kaisa hugs Vash tightly and giggles. Her mood was improving as they continued to walk, finally reaching the outskirts of the town. "You're so silly…" Kaisa giggles and looks at the demolished building. "Wow you did this? I guess this is why they—" She stops, realizing what she almost had done, revealing that he was really Vash the Stampede. She didn't know if Lina or anyone in this town knew, but she was always careful before bringing out his nickname.
"Well here we are! All that's left of that old building is ruins. Not even a single room stands still, just a few crumbling walls. Go ahead and look around if you want, not much out here aside from little desert creatures, nothing that'll hurt ya too bad if they bit ya." Lina smiled and Kaisa gulped, and psychopathic-trigger-happy-stalking-lunatics, Kaisa added to Lina's statement mentally. Kaisa tried to stick near Vash, but she was curious about the area, so she went to investigate only one of the standing walls left, which was full of bullet holes. She peered through a few. Wow… he did all this alone…? Kaisa was in awe of the sight, she didn't know Vash was so destructive, but she also didn't know the whole story, that someone else had been with him the day he'd saved Lina. If anything, most of these bullet holes were from Nicholas D. Wolfwood, who had been his accomplice in the rescue mission. Kaisa also didn't know that she had also seen the weapon Wolfwood had used, but the story was never brought up in full detail. Kaisa walked behind the large wall piece and leaned against the cool mud-stone in the shade of it. She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, but suddenly opened them again as she thought she heard the sound of a gun being cocked. She looked around, quivering slightly. "Just being paranoid…" she said, reassuring herself. "Oh you really think so?" said a cold quiet voice that turned Kaisa's blood like ice and her skin pale and white