"Ma'am, please stay still," Milly begged, trailing after Meryl with her hands full of cotton balls and a bottle of antiseptic.
Meryl was too busy fuming. She was pacing across the floor of the only cramped, two-bed room she and Milly had managed to find left standing in Felnarl, and she was livid. Her leg ached with each step but she was just too damned angry to stay put.
"That idiot," she said, picturing the man's face in its most infuriating ridiculous expression. He had practically destroyed the whole town! Well, he'd been involved, anyway. He was around at the time, and certainly got in the way. In her way. "That man," she snarled. "Who the hell is he?"
"You mean Mr. Vash?" asked Milly, trying to catch hold of Meryl's arm as she stomped past. "Oh Ma'am, please let me clean that cut above your eye."
"For the last time," Meryl said, now fixated on the man in red and greatly annoyed by Milly's continued obstinacy. How long could that girl keep believing something so ridiculous? Meryl turned on Milly to set her straight—again—but glanced up and gasped in surprise.
"Gotcha!" said Milly triumphantly, snagging Meryl in a loose choke-hold. Meryl squeaked in alarm and then winced when the antiseptic Milly daubed on the cut stung her.
"Ow!" Meryl hissed, trying to pull free of the younger woman's grasp.
"If you'd just stop fidgeting," chided Milly patiently, tightening her grip slightly to hold Meryl in place.
Meryl gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. Honestly, she really was a big baby about the small things... Pain flared in her leg each time she put weight on it, but she was complaining more about a little antiseptic.
"There," Milly said finally, sounding pleased. Meryl felt a final brief pressure on her eyebrow before Milly released her and when she reached up she felt a soft fabric band-aid covering the cut.
She glanced at Milly's face, where the woman had already seen to her own small injury—probably while Meryl was first stomping around and refusing to be cared for. She noted the color of the band-aid Milly wore and reached up to touch hers again, grimacing.
"It's neon pink, isn't it," Meryl muttered.
"I like pink," said Milly, defensively. "What's wrong with pink?"
The younger woman was putting the bottle of antiseptic back into the leather bag she kept stocked for just such occasions, which they ran into a lot, come to think of it... Meryl wondered where she kept finding the medicinal supplies, especially with their (very, very) limited budget.
"I'm going to fetch the laundry," Milly said cheerfully, standing up again. "The woman downstairs did the washing for us!"
As Milly stood, Meryl caught sight of something flashing through the room, just out of the corner of her eye. Instinctively, she drew a derringer from where her cloak rested over the back of the chair at the desk.
"No!" cried Milly, jumping forward to push Meryl's hand down.
"What the hell was that?" Meryl demanded. She watched, confused, as Milly dropped to all fours and looked under Meryl's bed. The taller woman wriggled halfway under the bed and Meryl marveled that she could fit her broad shoulders down there at all.
"Here, kitty!" came Milly's muffled voice.
Oh, dear...
"Gotcha!" said Milly, sounding as pleased as she had when she snatched Meryl earlier. She backed out from under the bed, a wide-eyed black cat in her arms. Meryl stared at it, and it seemed to stare back.
"Nyao..."
"I named him Kuroneko!" Milly said, smiling and rubbing her nose against the cat's.
"We're not keeping the cat, Milly," said Meryl, closing her eyes and massaging her forehead.
"But I named him," said Milly, pouting, as though this was irrefutable proof that the cat belonged with them.
"I don't care—"
"You just don't know him well enough," Milly said, decisively. She dumped the cat in Meryl's arms, saying, "Hold him while I get our clothes," and vanished.
Meryl was left holding the cat, rather awkwardly. She'd never actually held one before, and wasn't sure she was doing it right. Kurone—the cat, just the cat—lay in her arms, its spindly legs splayed about at odd angles, its wide eyes staring up into hers.
"Um," she said.
"Nyao," it replied.
This is ridiculous.
Meryl hunkered down on her toes and put the cat down on the floor, but before she could stand up again it had leapt into the sort-of lap presented by her thighs, parallel to the floor.
"Um," she said, again, startled as it settled itself on her legs.
"Nyao," again.
"Shoo," Meryl said, apprehensively. She didn't want to make it angry, cats had claws. She made a face; that would mean more antiseptic. "Shoo," she said, waving her hands away without touching it. The cat just started purring, curled up and looking up at her now with half-closed, pleased-looking eyes.
Sitting on her heels like this was starting to get painful, so finally she made the decision to scoop the cat up again and carry it (quickly) to Milly's bed. It went limp in her arms—("Nyao...")—and allowed her to set it down with no incident. Milly walked in just as Meryl had set it down, and it must have looked like she had been caught in the act of petting it because Milly beamed at her.
"I knew he'd grow on you, Ma'am," she said, sounding pleased with herself. She sat on the bed next to the cat, balancing a basket of laundry in her lap, freeing a hand to pet the cat, which rubbed its head into her hand, purring even more loudly.
"He didn't—I mean, it didn't," Meryl started, but Milly just smiled up at her. "I'm just going to write the report," she grumbled.
Meryl sat heavily in front of the typewriter and let out a long breath. This was the worst part about her job, she had decided long ago. And even now, having been strung up and shot down and neon-pink-band-aid-ed, this task still held that special place of ultimate loathing in her heart. She stared briefly at the blank page in the typewriter, trying to imagine putting into words everything that had happened that day.
It all seemed to flash through her mind, and she saw every agonizing detail, how everything had just gone from bad to worse faster than she could even imagine possible. And she saw that man in the long red jacket, and it made her press the heels of her hands into her eyes. If he hadn't been there, things would have gone differently. Maybe. If he had just gone back to the town like she said, everyone could have evacuated (though, to be fair, no one was hurt anyway). If he had just gone back to the town like she said, those two men wouldn't have gone to war with one another and with him. If he had just gone back to town...
"Argh, this is all my fault," Meryl groaned, sitting back and massaging her forehead again.
"How could this possibly be your fault?" Milly asked. She looked up from where she was meticulously folding her clothes, sounding incredulous. "Ma'am, you're writing the report yourself," she went on, pointing at the typewriter in front of Meryl. "You know it was that man, Ruth Loose!"
"Yes, yes," Meryl allowed, shaking her head, "but if I hadn't given that idiot my Thomas—"
"Then we'd both be dead!" Milly said, jumping to her feet. The cat rolled off her lap into the basket of Meryl's laundry, still purring. "Or worse! Mr. Vash saved us, Ma'am!"
Meryl thought suddenly of the rope that had bound her, the end that had been severed. Looking back now, she couldn't possibly believe that her original theory held any water at all. No one, no one, was that good a shot.
Not even Vash the Stampede.
"Mr. Vash is kind of handsome, though," said Milly, apropos of nothing. She was sitting down again.
What?
Meryl thought perhaps she had blacked out for several minutes of conversation. And wondered how the hell it could have gone in this direction.
Milly continued, unfazed by Meryl's reaction, "Don't you think, Ma'am?"
Meryl had jerked slightly in surprise, and then let her face meet her palm with a satisfying thwack!
Of all the men Milly could have taken a liking to... Why? Why?
"Don't you?" Milly prompted, again, when Meryl hadn't answered.
"No, of course—" Meryl began testily, turning in her seat, but as she said it her mind de-railed slightly. She thought of the stranger's arms around her waist, his chest warm at her back. She thought of the look in his eyes when turned to find her in the distance, somehow knowing she had intervened in the middle of the gunfight.
Then she came to her senses, shaking her head as though to knock out those stray thoughts. "No!" said Meryl. "Milly, that man is nothing but trouble! If we have any luck at all, this will be the last time we cross paths!"
"Oh, I don't think you really mean that, Ma'am," said Milly, absently. She had started folding Meryl's clothes now, setting them out on the bed, humming to herself. Meryl stared at the back of Milly's head in disbelief, unable to come up with any kind of response.
She gave up trying, and turned back to the typewriter.
Meryl sighed. Twisting her head from side to side until her neck popped loudly—("Ma'am!")—Meryl sighed again and put fingers to keys:
Disaster report:
We have detremin
Growling, Meryl ripped the page out of the typewriter and crumpled it in her hands, throwing toward the trash bin in the corner. She missed.
It didn't take too long for the trash bin (and the corner) to fill up and Meryl once again cursed her tiny fingers, which were so easily prone to slipping between the keys, causing typing errors and scraping her knuckles all to hell when she pulled them free.
Finally, finally, finally, she sat back in the chair and looked down at her work, satisfied that it included everything she needed to report and had no major spelling or grammar problems—yet horrified it had taken her so long to write.
Disaster report:
We have determined that the landslide which destroyed Felnarl was caused by the illegal use of explosives by a man named Ruth Loose, also known as the bounty hunter "Constance Rifle." Please pay the insurance owed. Please also note: another outlaw known only as "The Boss" was apprehended also, after ultimately playing a role in the town's destruction as well. We will remain in Felnarl until the morning, at which time the cavalry arrives to move these two criminals to a higher security location, before returning to our search for Vash the Stampede.
"Ma'am?"
Meryl started in surprise, then pressed one hand over her rapidly beating heart as she turned away from the desk.
"Milly?"
"Sorry Ma'am," Milly said, looking apologetic. "I didn't mean to interrupt..."
"It's alright, Milly," said Meryl, glad for the break. She stood and stretched, glancing out the window to see that night had fallen without her noticing. "What is it?" she asked Milly.
"Probably nothing," the younger woman said. "But apparently these were posted all over town this morning, and had been taken down already by this afternoon." She handed Meryl a crumpled piece of paper smoothed flat.
It was an advertisement of a man in a city 80 iles away, looking for a hired gun to protect his property. The broad heading of the flyer read:
WANTED FOR HIRE: VASH THE STAMPEDE
"If they've been taken down," Milly said, "do you think he answered the ad?"
Meryl was still looking down at the paper. She couldn't imagine anything like this could ever intrigue the Humanoid Typhoon. Could he actually be that stupid?
"We'd better check it out," Meryl sighed. "And we're not taking the cat," she added.