DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

Meryl wiped dirt and blood away; a missed shot had still blasted a chunk of sandbrick right on her arm, leaving a cut that had yet to begin clotting. It wasn't that bad as injuries go, but she was still severely annoyed to be wounded by a shot that hadn't even hit her. She swore to herself, silently and savagely. What the hell had she gotten herself into?

When the excrement had hit the fan, she had moved in the direction of the troughs closest to her for cover. The trouble was, with her partner and the man with the badge apparently having gone opposite her, she was now isolated. And she had been feeling that isolation and her self-imposed limitations ever since, alone with only her derringers.

Meryl was well-trained with her chosen weapons, if the countless hours she had spent mastering them were any indication. And they had always been enough for her in the past.

But here in this battle against extremely numerically superior opposition, at a range too great for her tiny guns and a number of rounds limited enough that she absolutely could not afford to expend any needlessly – a problem, judging by the amount of fire she had heard and been exposed to thus far, the other side certainly did not have – she was forced to accept that all her experience in the past was at relatively close distance in what, compared to this battle, were quick skirmishes. The confidence she had displayed to Ranger in citing the names Bostalk and Nebraska now felt like the cockiness of someone making the kind of rookie mistake Meryl knew better than to make, that of metaphorically mistaking the map for the terrain.

Damn it. Why had she put herself in this situation?

For Vash. Because she – no, they – oh, screw it, she needed him, needed whatever was wrong to be fixed. And if he couldn't find it in himself to be here, then she would pick up his slack.

There was now gunfire of a kind she didn't recognize, not a sidearm and not the rifle Milly had. Staying low, Meryl wasn't willing to risk exposing herself just for the sake of identifying it – one rookie mistake was enough, best not to make any more. But it sounded like it was coming from the little house, so perhaps it was the man they were all here for. Either way, she determined not to concern herself with it as long as none of the shots were coming her way; she was far enough removed from being of significant help that her main concern was staying alive.

Her secondary concern was figuring out how to get close enough to do more than pick off targets as they came within her limited range, but the bigger priority was not being picked off herself. Enough of the enemy was aware of her that already several of them had made a try, or else they were just trying to take her cover for their own, and fled with wounded limbs. Meryl may have underestimated the severity of this battle, but it was still her good fortune that people of ill intent tended to underestimate her.

As much as she wanted to be a bigger help, she was glad when someone let loose the thomases to run wild. No doubt the dust raised was a hindrance for Ranger and Milly, but it offered the same benefit to her as it did their opponents, obscuring sight. Anyone looking to advance to the troughs Meryl was scurrying between now had an even tougher time seeing anyone who might be using them. They had no way of an advantageous approach through this dust, bringing them right into Meryl's own zone of advantage, the close range where her derringers were of best use.

One was coming now, calling loudly through the dust to an unseen partner. Meryl couldn't hear the other one, but she could tell from the volume that the one she heard was getting close.

"Over here!" he called. "Damn your hide, on me, there's cover here!"

Meryl stayed crouched low and moved away from the voice, relocating to the trough behind her. She watched the sand on the side of the trough directly in front of the voice she heard; the worst of the dust being kicked up was away from here, leaving enough sunlight to see shadows. They weren't as long as she would have liked at this time of day, but she knew from prior approaches that the man's shadow would come before him and warn her when he was almost to her.

She held a pair of derringers and reminded herself not to clench too tightly, forcing her breathing slow to counts of four.

"Looks clear so far!" she heard through her plugs. So he would be at the trough in front of this one.

Here came his shadow. As quickly as she could without giving herself away, Meryl moved to the side of the trough, placing its length between her and him.

"This one's clear!"

One…two…three…now! Meryl quickly put herself in the sand, derringers ready. No gunman greeted her sight. Quietly as she could, she pistoned her knees and elbows to move up against the last trough and along its length to its other side, coming up on her target from behind as he checked for anyone behind the trough. She rose up on one knee.

"Hey."

The man turned quickly, showing a bandanna still covering his face as Meryl beat him to the trigger pull. Her bullet hit him in the forearm as he was still bringing his weapon on-sight. He yelled in pain and dropped the gun simultaneously. Meryl dropped her own empty derringer and reached out, flinging his weapon off to her right, along the trough where she could pick it up after this. It was the first weapon she'd been able to retain thus far, and while she truly did prefer her derringers, she was beyond turning anything down now.

She kept her other derringer trained on her target, his off-hand clutching at his wounded arm. "Do you have any other weapons? You'll die if you don't answer true." Which was true in itself, he eventually would die if he lied, of old age or disease or more likely some other gunman. She just made sure to leave out that he wouldn't die at her hand, whether he lied or spoke the truth. A part of her mentally patted herself on the back and pictured Vash grinning at how well she told the non-lie.

"I've got a backup," the gunman confessed through teeth clenched against pain.

"Toss it."

"I'm bleeding here!"

"So make it quick."

Out came a five-shot revolver. It landed next to Meryl.

"You can take off your bandanna and wrap it around your wound," Meryl instructed. "But only when you're well away from me. Get back to your friends now."

"I don't have any guns on me."

"That's the general idea. Now move!"

The man began to trudge away, Meryl's derringer trained on him the whole way as he went back into the fray, calling out that he was unarmed. Satisfied, Meryl moved to gather the two weapons the man had left.

Something thudded in the sand next to her. She looked at it in her peripheral vision, then her head turned to it in a reflexive gesture of making sure she hadn't misidentified it.

It wasn't really her fault; she simply was not accustomed to a full-on combat environment. But it was another mistake – the stun grenade detonated as she was looking right at it.

Her hearing was somewhat protected by her plugs from the loud reports it gave off, but there was no protecting her eyes from its blinding series of flashes. Meryl cried out and fell back, her hand releasing the derringer as her brain was suddenly overwhelmed with disorientation. Bright colors replaced her sight as she landed roughly on her back, the derringers still in her cape bringing their own rough pain as their edges impacted bone and flesh.

Blinking rapidly as her brain struggled to re-impose order on her body, Meryl flailed for her dropped derringer but felt nothing except sand.

Her vision started to clear, colored flashes still imposing over her sight but she could see shapes. Well enough, at least, to make out someone standing over her.

More importantly, to make out the barrel of the revolver its owner had trained on her and his thumb cocking back its hammer. This close, it seemed like looking into a big circle of void.

She needed her derringer, if she had it she could do something. But her hand couldn't find it, perhaps it had been kicked away.

Fear, a true fear she was meeting for the first time, began to fill Meryl.

She had always been certain she would live through every encounter, particularly as she had come to know Vash. And there was so much left to do…what would Milly do without her…and there were things left to tell him that she simply hadn't found the words for yet…

I'm about to die, she realized.