Calla wasn't a huge fan of guessing. In general, it felt like a waste of time, a touch childish, and a lot more work than it was worth. Normally, she'd ask around and get a little help from the citizens in exchange for her work making them safer but lately things had dried up, bounties were lower and criminals were finding more lowkey ways to operate leaving nothing but the largest bounties out there. Like the six million double dollar one hanging over Vash the Stampede. The problem now was that normal people were afraid of the humanoid typhoon and freaks like her, idiots that couldn't find a more decent living than shooting a gun, were out looking for Vash themselves so they weren't going to help.
So, as much as she disliked guessing when an educated guess was possible guessing wasn't so bad. She'd heard about a huge disaster in Jeneora Rock and not far away a few days later a pillar worm was killed in some huge blowout. Given she'd heard Vash was responsible for the loss of the plants in Jeneora Rock he was probably also the killer of the big worm. Provided he didn't take any sudden turns and was a person that craved mayhem or, at least, needed to drink water he'd probably stop here next.
She sighed, propping her boots up on the table in front of her. Waiting like this was the worst part. It made her antsy and made her legs ache where the servos were attached. She hiked up her skirt and got to applying the oil. She'd need her full range of motion, she was sure. Normally, she'd be a little more cautious pulling her skirt up so high and all but Fencepost wasn't a big town if you could even call it a town in the first place, and when word got around that she was a bounty hunter waiting for Vash the Stampede almost everyone went into their homes.
She was halfway through her second leg when Betsy snorted, looking up from the dry grass she'd been chewing on at an advancing cloud of sand. Calla squinted to get a better look, pulling her hat up slightly as though the brim being higher would somehow let her eyes zoom him. It didn't look like much. Just a normal vehicle, even if the driving looked a little haphazard but Betsy huffed, stomping her wide hooves in the sand. Calla dropped the last bit of oil in and closed the container.
"Well," she sighed, standing up and flexing her legs making sure the machinery was working right before it got put to the test, "here's hoping I was right, Betsy."
Betsy snorted but Calla understood the sentiment; 'you better be.'
"Finally," Meryl yelled, laying her head back against her chair, "I feel like I've been driving forever."
"It's been about seven hours," Roberto grumbled, taking another swig from his flask.
"That's a long time! And driving in the sand isn't easy you know!"
"Clearly."
"What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Don't worry about it, Newbie, why don't you keep your eyes in front so you don't hit anyone else? Doesn't look like they've got much room to spare back there, after all."
Meryl's eyes glanced at him in the rearview so Vash forced a smile onto his face even though he could tell it was awkward and slanted. She rolled her eyes away, back toward the road, "Well, whatever, we need to stop anyway we're not going to get much further."
"Good thing there's an outpost there," Roberto pointed.
Vash leaned forward between the chairs letting Nicholas, who had yet again been slumped asleep on his shoulder, fall behind him, "Where?"
"There," Roberto said, pointing at what was very clearly, a hazy cloud of sand and a pile of sticks.
Vash squinted, leaning even further until his nose was nearly touching the windshield, "...oooooh!"
"That shithole?" Nicholas said, sitting up and glancing over the top of Meryl's seat.
"That shithole." Roberto echoed.
"Aw come on," Vash laughed, "I'm sure it's not bad. Just a little camp! I'm sure they'll have everything we need."
"They better," Meryl said, gunning it and making Vash fall backward bringing Nicholas down with him, their heads clacking together painfully, "or we're in real trouble."
"Can't be much worse than the trouble we're already in with you driving," Nicholas muttered, rubbing his head.
"Oh, be quiet!" Meryl yelled, turning to have Nicholas, looking through the gap between the headrest and the door. Nicholas smirked, sticking his tongue out at her and looking down his nose. Vash's hand shot out, hopefully blocking the gesture from Meryl's view as Roberto's hand hovered over the steering wheel just in case. "Honestly," Meryl muttered, turning forward, "you're a child!"
Nicholas smirked at Vash as though they were sharing a laugh about his behavior and Vash managed yet another awkward smile. He'd decided Nicholas was a good guy and he stood by that. He could feel it deep down in his heart, it was unexplainable but he was sure Nicholas was a good person. That said, he wasn't exactly nice. Or rather, he was just very rough in his manner and his speech.
Meryl was slowing down, the town coming into better view. Vash wasn't quick to make harsh judgments but maybe Nicholas hadn't been so far off. The settlement seemed to be ringed by an old-looking wooden fence, the few buildings were sunk halfway down into the sand and none of them were more than two stories tall. Some toma were tied up to posts and absolutely nothing else was moving around but the small tornadoes of sand.
The car fell quiet. No one wanted to say it but there was no way this was a good sign. Silence was never a good sign for them. Vash glanced at Nicholas who nodded, looking out the window suddenly serious. Vash's hand ghosted over his gun, maybe he should make sure it was loaded, even if he hated to use it.
"Sure we can't get anywhere else?" Roberto asked, unafraid to say what they were all thinking as always.
Meryl sighed, turning to look at him, "No way, we need to charge now or we're going to be walking. That charging station back by the worm didn't hold, maybe something wrong with the charge port on the truck."
"Hey, walkings not so bad," Nicholas offered, a sarcastic grin spread on his face.
"Well," Vash said quickly before they could get to arguing, "why don't we hop out and see? Whatever is going on I'm sure we can handle it. And if we need to charge, we need to charge, you know?"
Meryl sighed again, louder this time as she hung her head but she didn't say anything. Just threw her door open at the same time as Roberto and slid from the tall cab of their vehicle.
Vash hopped down and cautiously walked toward the fence, "Hello?"
"VASH!" Meryl whispered harshly, giving him a stern look and pressing her finger to her mouth. Vash shrugged at her, unsure of what he'd done wrong.
"I mean," Nicholas said in a voice slightly louder than his usual seemingly just to annoy Meryl by the smirk he gave her when she spun around to face him, "we're going to need to find someone. 'Less you wanna steal."
Meryl pouted, folding her arms in front of her. Vash couldn't help but snort slightly. For someone that had joined him quickly with little proof, he wasn't a bad person she sure was a stringent rule follower. At least, when she decided it was a rule that should be followed.
"Watch out!" Roberto yelled, just in time for Vash to catch a shape falling from the sky and landing on the hood of the truck.
Meryl yelled, ducking reflexively behind Roberto whose hand shot inside his coat. Nicholas pulled the wrap on his cross, eye's holding on the woman now standing on the hood. She poked her hat up, grinning down at Vash, "You're coming with me, bud."
"Oh," Vash said, blushing slightly on instinct, "uh...no. I'm not." And then he leaped over the fence and made a run for it.
He heard a laugh, her's he guessed, and the sound of metal scraping as a shadow passed over him and the woman landed in front of him once again, pistol drawn. She smiled, tilting her head as if to dare him to do something else. How had she jumped so far so fast? His eyes caught a glint of silver peaking out from the fringe at the bottom of her calf-length skirt. His mouth hung open slightly. It looked like metal braces were bolted to her legs, some sort of external bio-enhancement. She cocked the pistol, the foot-long barrel never moving from where she pointed it at his leg.
He dodged up an alley as a bullet soared, glancing into the sand. He turned the first corner he found, looking for some sort of cover so she couldn't jump down in front of him again. He hopped into an open window, clambered over a set dinner table, and then fell flat on his chest, he rolled over and made eye contact with a family. A mother holding two small children, another older child sitting by her with a gun that she was fumbling to cock, "Oh. Oh! So sorry! I'm going! Going!"
"Calla!" The mother yelled and Vash again heard the woman's loud laughter.
He leaped up, foot catching on their table cloth making him race in place for a moment before he finally got his footing and took off through their house looking for another window to leap through shouting over his shoulder, "I'm so sorry! I'll come back and fix this in a second!"
Nicholas groaned, he'd been tight on that woman's tail be she'd noticed him and leaped into the air with seemingly no effort, then flipped over a building and vanished from his sight. Worse, he couldn't find Vash either and with her advantage, he was sure she was going to spot him first and a pacifist like him would get killed way too quickly if he wasn't there to intervene.
"Damn it!" he swore when he slid up to yet another dead end. He paused, taking a deep breath and shutting his eyes. Trying to listen for any sound of movement in a town that seemed completely abandoned otherwise.
He heard rustling in the building beside him. Too soft to be Vash or the woman that was chasing him. He leaned his ear against the door and heard hushed voices. He pulled on the door knob but it was locked. Inside children screamed.
"Hey! Hey!" He shouted, rattling the doorknob, "you're all right!"
A bullet shot through the door, narrowly missing his ear, "Hey! Watch it! I'm not here to hurt you, damn it! Is it that woman?! Are you okay in there?"
Three more bullets fired through the door, each narrowly missing Nicholas, he fell back in the dirt. Obviously, they were too scared to let him help. He'd have to kill that woman before she did anything to Vash. She couldn't be good news if she had an entire town on lockdown.
Scrambling to his feet he threw the punisher over his shoulder, rushing up to the main street. Finally, he spotted her, leaping from building to building with ease, "Heh. You're out in the open."
He flipped the cross around onto his shoulder, ready to shoot when she flipped over and turned her long gun on him, firing a shot at his hand and making him drop the end of the cross down in order to dodge it. He grimaced, if she was that aware and that accurate mid-flip and at a distance, she was going to be a challenge.
Vash was yelling and dodging her, "Let's talk! I don't even know what you want! Please!"
Nicholas rolled his eyes. What was the point of talking to people like her anyway? Why would Vash even think something like that would work? Had it before?
"Wait! Vash!" he yelled, seeing the dead end Vash was heading for but it was too late. The woman landed, half crouched on a box in front of Vash.
She looked down at him with a satisfied smirk, the barrel of her gun on his forehead, "Gotcha."
Vash put his hands up instinctively, sweating in a way that gave Nicholas secondhand embarrassment. He raised the punisher up again and the woman spoke without looking at him, "Think you can get me before I get him?"
"Think I care?"
She blinked. Then looked at him with her eyebrows furrowed as she gave him a sort of confused frown, "I mean…obviously. You've been trying to catch me the whole time I was trying to catch him. You and that ol' guy who think I don't know he's hiding behind the water reservoir."
Nicholas glanced over and sure enough, Roberto was there, staying hidden even though he was clearly annoyed he'd been spotted.
"Your name is Calla, right?" Vash asked, looking up at the woman without even a shred of concern for the gun resting between his eyes.
The woman looked down at him, her cocky expression melting into a stern stare, "You hurt any townsfolk?"
"Me?! No. No. I mean. I jumped in their house cause I thought it was abandoned and then, well, I said I was sorry but I did promise to go back and fix things. Once I…uh. Well once we get this sorted out, I mean," Vash explained. He smiled at her. Because he smiled too easily. Nicholas tilted his head back. He couldn't think of anyone he'd ever met that thought of every stranger as a friend. It seemed foolish. Dangerous.
"You're the one that's got all these people hiding in their homes!" Nicholas yelled, "what's the idea here, huh?!"
Once again she turned at looked at him. Staring at him like he was stupid, "Me?! They're hiding from you! Or. From him!"
"From me?" Vash said, frowning.
"From you!" The woman, Calla, yelled in exasperation, "You're the humanoid typhoon, right?! Huge bounty. Path of destruction in your wake. Yada, yada?"
"Ah…haha," Vash rubbed the back of his head, "that's what they say but I-"
Nicholas was sick of this. Why bother talking with her? He could shoot her and be down with it. He knew he could get her before she got Vash. Especially when that needle-headed idiot was so good at confusing people. Sure enough, he lifted his gun and she didn't look at him. Didn't make another threat. Instead, she shut her eyes and dropped the gun to her side, sighing loudly as she rolled her head back and then back down to look at him.
"You've been falsely accused haven't you?"
"Eh-heh. Yeah."
Calla went silent for a moment and then turned, punching the air and shouting in frustration. Nicholas blinked. He looked at Roberto who was already looking at him. Then at Vash who smiled and gestured for him to put his gun down which he did. Only because shooting an adult woman having what he could only describe as a tantrum would be embarrassing.
When Calla calmed down she turned and faced him, taking her wide-brimmed hat off as she did and fanning herself with it. Now that she wasn't chasing him he could see she actually looked like a pretty nice person, she gave him a crooked smile that suited her freckled face and sat down, swinging her legs off the box, "Well. That. Sucks!"
He laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head, "So you're…not going to collect my bounty."
He sighed, aggressively loudly this time, "Nope."
"Uh…why?"
She shut one eye, squinting at him, "I mean. You seem…sorta shrimpy."
"Shrimpy?"
"And," Roberto said, walking up beside Vash, "what does that have to do with the bounty or not."
"I got two rules," Calla said, leaning back on her hands, "I take people in alive and I don't take in anyone that doesn't deserve it."
Vash smiled. As annoyed as she clearly was about missing out on his bounty she seemed nice. She'd been worried about the townsfolk and even though he'd been running the whole time he could tell the shots she'd taken had all been intended to be non-lethal. She'd aimed for his feet each time. Now he understood she'd just meant to cripple him in order to catch him.
"Why's that then, huh? You too noble to kill or sumthin'?" Nicholas asked, scowling at her.
Calla blinked, unbothered by Nicholas's rough way of talking, "Oh. Nah. Corpses just scare Betsy."
"...Betsy?" the three men asked in unison.
The woman grinned, showing all her teeth, and then jammed two fingers in her mouth and whistled, a high noise that seemed to carry all through the town. They waited in silence for a moment and then they heard hooves approaching over the sand, a weird sort of whinnying noise that echoed off the walls, and then the most bizarre animal Vash had ever seen rounded the corner.
Calla smiled and hopped down, jogging over to the animal she called Betsy. Even though Calla was pretty tall her head barely reached the animal's shoulder. Betsy had tan fur and a long thick tail with a tuft of fur on the end. Her feet were broad and cloven into two toe-like points. Her neck was long and thick but it was the animal's face that caught the most attention. Betsy's eyes were large and brown, with thick lashes, The rest of her face was hidden by a long trunk that hung down about six inches. It was a broad-chested animal with a saddle strapped in front around the chest and somewhere under her body too.
"What is that ugly thing?" Nicholas asked.
"Never seen a kow before?" Calla asked, patting Betsy affectionately as the animal made a noise Vash could only describe as a honk.
"A 'kow'?" Nicholas repeated incredulously.
"I've heard of 'em," Roberto said, opening his flask, "native to the planet but overhunted way back when. Not many of 'em now. How'd you get one?"
"My ma had one," Calla smiled, "her ma before her. It's a family tradition."
"...So you don't have a vehicle?" Roberto asked, raising an eyebrow.
Calla pointed her thumb at Betsy.
Roberto sighed, half rolling his eyes, "Okay but then how are you bringing bounties in alive? You keep 'em knocked out or something? I don't imagine a prisoner's gonna be keen on holding on tight while you ride them off to jail."
"OH!" Calla shouted, "that reminds me. Betsy; drop."
Suddenly, Betsy made a terrible growling noise and then a terrifying pouch that looked more like a second mouth opened on her stomach. It was as though the poor animal broke open briefly, an odd slime-like substance leaking into the sand as Meryl tumbled out looking shell-shocked.
"Sorry bout that," Calla said as Betsy closed back up, whinnying innocuously as though she hadn't just done the most terrifying thing Vash had ever seen. All four of them were stunned into silence. Everyone except for Calla who offered Meryl a hand, "Just couldn't have you doing anything crazy when I thought y'all were criminals. Don't worry. It doesn't stain or anything."
Meryl seemed to come back suddenly, scrambling out from under Betsy the other way. She still looked wide-eyed and horrified and Calla smiled at her bashfully. Meryl looked at him, clearly trying to understand what was happening, "Uh…she was going to take me in and collect my bounty but turns out…she's not! Yay?"
Meryl blinked, then looked at the woman who was still giving her an apologetic smile, "Okay," Meryl said weakly. Seemingly stripped of her normal feisty personality in the face of the incredibly bizarre thing that had just happened.
"Whyyyy don't we…have something to eat," Calla suggested, "and we can uh…figure everything out. Huh?"
They'd learned that this settlement was called Fencepost, an apt name given the fence that ringed the city. It was some special sort of wood, able to suck even the tiniest bit of moisture from the air allowing the citizens to collect it for drinking water. The wood also gave the water a sort of minty taste that Nicholas was slowly adjusting to as he sipped.
It hadn't taken Calla long to explain the situation to the citizens and, for whatever reason, they all decided to go along with it. He wondered if this red-headed woman was like Vash. If she found herself frequently charming entire towns work of people into agreeing with her opinions with little effort. He glanced over at her through the fire. She wore a dusty pair of red leather boots with white stars on the sides and a long splotch-patterned black and white skirt with a short black fringe along the bottom. The skirt was long enough that he wondered how she was able to jump in it so easily, it barely stopped above the boots, showing only one of the silver circles where the metal exoskeleton she'd been wearing to make her jumps so terrifyingly powerful. He wondered if that enhancement was her choice. At least, now that she was free of it it didn't seem like she needed it in order to get around.
Her skirt may be long, stretching from the smallest part of her waist to just below her knee but her shirt was tiny. He half wondered if she was running around in a bra. It laced in the middle, he could see that much, and the shape of it seemed bra-like to his experience but she wore an oversized denim jacket that, even though it was open, hid most of the details from view. She'd abandoned her hat somewhere, letting her long frizzy looking red hair loose, two scrawny pieces twisted and pinned at the back of her head to keep it out of her eyes he assumed. A rusty-colored bandana that matched her dirty boots was tied around her neck obscuring the cream-colored pattern on it.
He thought her outfit was a bit extravagant, maybe even a little costumey but for all that, she didn't have much on her face, just a ton of freckles and some dark lipstick that made her mouth seem more animated as she talked and laughed with citizens. Vash was right there with her, laughing and talking loudly with a kid. Even Meryl seemed to have calmed down from the kow situation and was chatting happily with a woman that had explained how Fencepost had come to be to them as they started the meal. Nicholas glanced over to Roberto, the only other one of their group who was keeping somewhat to himself but even he was drinking a beer the townsfolk had handed him.
"Well! Calla!" A man shouted over the fire loud enough to accidentally quiet everyone, "what are you gonna do now?!"
Calla laughed, smoothing a hand over her hair, "Well…I figured…I'm not the only one dumb enough to try and catch Vash the Stampede."
"Oh you're not-" Vash tried to interrupt but she kept talking.
"And I bet some of 'em will have bounties too," she continued. Nicholas didn't like where this was going.
"So…I figured I might follow him around and see if I can't pick up some scraps!" she laughed, grinning as the townsfolk broke into laughter and cheers.
"Huh!?" Meryl yelled, "You're just gonna join us without asking."
"Well! I did say follow…not join per se but," Calla pulled her gun, flipping it around and spinning it over her hand, making a big show before turning it and shooting a worm from the sky some 700 yards off, "I'm pretty useful."
Nicholas looked at Vash hopefully, hoping against hope that needle-noggin would display some sense for once even if he knew he didn't have any. He'd let Nicholas join him after all, "Sure!"
He sighed, pinching her brow. Just great that's all he needed, another person to keep fooled. Meryl started yelling at Vash and Roberto downed his drink, and through the flames of the campfire, he could swear he saw Calla's eyes staring at him hard before she turned away.