Liana couldn't really understand how she'd fallen into such an easy routine with just her and Vash there alone in the house. Part of her felt like it would be more awkward than it was, like they'd sit there staring at one another in silence for hours on end, but that wasn't the case at all. In between hunting down new jobs, the two of them did chores and Vash even took to joining her on a morning jog every now and then just to work out some of the pent up energy of being stuck at home. They never spoke about what happened in Jenora and she wasn't even sure they needed to. The ease in which he'd handled the robbers put her to shame and she felt like when they did take on another job she would be nothing more than a glorified babysitter for him than anything else.
Only a few mundane days had passed before they picked up a new job, the two of them visibly excited to be getting out and doing something other than laundry and endless dusting. It was some small town out in the middle of nowhere, a place she was sure she'd never been before and even Vash couldn't recall passing through. They were to investigate a missing persons report that seemed rather odd. People reporting seeing strange figures hiding in shadows around town, mist rolling in before someone went missing in other areas from where the figure was sighted. It was all very mysterious and it was something that was at least going to help the passing of time.
"What if it's a ghost?" Vash asked, his teeth chattering as he spoke up from the passenger seat while they drove along the barren road. "How do we catch a ghost?!"
"It's not a ghost, Vash, pay attention," she grumbled, reaching out her right hand to swat at the map he was holding upside down. He was supposed to be directing her on which direction they were going since neither of them had known where the place was located until they saw it on the map that morning. "Ghosts don't exist."
"Have you ever seen one?" he asked quietly, righting the map and tracing along the road with his finger. "We're still ten miles out from the turn off."
"No, I've never seen a ghost. Is it a right, or a left?"
"Uh, left. Then, how do you know they don't exist if you've never seen one. I think it's spooky…."
She chuckled softly, rolling her eyes as she kept scanning the road just to be sure she didn't miss anything. The turn off was still a few minutes out but it would be easy to miss if there wasn't any kind of landmarks to make the road stand out. Everything was always the same boring shade of brown or tan and while it had never really seemed like an issue to her before she was becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of variation in her life. Always whites or khaki's. Blue in the sky. And that was about it. Just plain, boring colors to go along with a plain and boring life.
"Spooky? What are you ten?" she asked, glancing over at him as he laid the map out in his lap. "Ghosts do not exist. It's likely two people running a con. One of them distracts most of the people in town and while their attention is on the shadow…thing, the other person snatches someone."
"Well I guess that sounds more likely, but we wont know until we see it for ourselves. If it is a ghost what do we do?"
"Throw a sheet on it and chain it up."
It was utterly ridiculous to think that there was actually some kind of ghost lurking around that could make people vanish into thin air. Vash had unique gifts sure, but nothing ethereal like that. Nothing truly supernatural. He seemed to realize she was being sarcastic with her sheet and chain comment and fell silent, looking out the passenger window at the bland world passing by. For a moment it seemed that his feelings were hurt that she wasn't taking his concerns seriously, but after a moment the soft sounds of his snoring revealed that he'd just fallen asleep. Honestly she wasn't that shocked, he was always sleeping in the truck and she wondered how he could sleep so much. Or how the bumpy roads even let him get any sleep at all, but he managed it somehow. After she found the turn off road she had to grapple the map out of Vash's lap to ensure they were actually going in the right direction still since her navigator was now drooling on the window.
The rest of the ride into town was uneventful, the same boring landscape rolling past until they rolled into town. It didn't look much different than any other place they'd been, a few people passing by here and there as they parked near the inn and unloaded their bags from the back of the truck. They paused there for a moment, Vash still yawning as he glanced over at her and she pointed at the wall beside him. When he followed the trail of her finger he came face to face with a picture of himself plastered on the wall.
"Aw come on! I've never even been here," he groaned, reaching out to tear the poster down off the wall. "They can't have that many around here, right?"
Liana shrugged her shoulders, heading past the truck toward the entrance of the building. She could hear Vash grumbling behind her as he followed along. The moment they stepped into the little bar she paused, feeling Vash slam into her back abruptly with a yelp. The entire room turned to look at them, several of the people inside mumbling under their breaths as they came face to face with walls covered in identical posters like the one Vash had torn down outside. Some of them were pictures she'd seen here and there posted up in other bars and some of them were Vash's face. She half expected all of them to instantly turn on them, guns pointed and ready to drag Vash off to jail. But everyone slowly turned back to their own conversations and tables like they didn't even really see him standing there lurking behind her.
"Any chance they can't read?" Vash asked, his voice close enough to her ear to cause her to flinch.
"Let's just…see if they have rooms," she sighed, stepping away from him toward the bar.
The man behind it ignored them as he continued to clean the bar top absently, Liana having to clear her throat loudly to get him to look up at them. He just sighed heavily, shuffling down the bar to stand in front of her like he just wanted to get this over with as fast as he could so he could go back to his clearly demanding task of cleaning the bar top.
"What d'you want?" he asked, staring at her blankly. "A room?"
"Two," she corrected, jerking her thumb toward Vash. "Any chance you can tell us anything about what's been going on around here? We're here to try and keep it from happening again."
The bartender glanced between the two of them, turning to grab two sets of keys from the row on the wall and sat them down on the bar in front of her. Thank god they wouldn't be roughing it in a tent in this sad little place. She wasn't sure she could take not having a good nights rest, especially if they were likely to turn on them when it sank in who Vash was.
"It's fifty a night," the bartender grumbled as Liana reached for her pocket and started to fish out bills to pay for their rooms. "And you come in before dark and you don't leave until it's morning. You miss curfew you'll get locked out. Other than that, I suggest you and your friend leave town as quick as possible. We don't need tourists sticking their noses in our business."
"Oh, we're not tourists," Vash started, reaching out to grab one of the keys on the bar top. "We're here to catch the ghost."
The room around them went silent and Liana reached out to jab him in the side with her elbow. He really didn't get the art of being very subtle and she doubted getting everyone around them riled up was going to help them get to the bottom of whatever was going on. She just collected her key and paid the man behind the bar, thanking him for the information. Vash didn't speak again as she stalked away from the bar toward the stairs, following along behind her until they reached the top of the stairs and she wheeled on him suddenly.
"Are you stupid?" she hissed watching him shrink back from her. "Those people down there are clearly bothered by the current events enough to ignore you are the most valuable thing on two legs! Let's not draw any more attention to your very substantial bounty and try to get in and out as fast as we can, okay?"
Vash just nodded at her seriously, keeping his mouth closed for once which she was thankful for. They made a quick plan to settle into their rooms and meet back down in the bar just before sundown. Whatever was going on didn't start until it got dark so they had time to kill and she couldn't let Vash wander around and give people the chance to start taking an interest in him. Whatever was going on seemed to have the townspeople freaked out enough to set a curfew, so it must have been serious somehow. It was hard to think they they believed there was an actual ghost amongst them, but what did she know? Vash seemed fairly worried about the idea of ghosts and she hadn't thought what he could do was possible, so maybe she'd be proven wrong. Highly unlikely, but all they could do was wait and see.
With nightfall quickly approaching the two of them left their rooms to sit in the bar, listening to all the townspeople's whispered conversations about the ghost. A small group in the corner were talking about how someone random would go missing whenever the ghost appeared if they were caught out after dark, a young woman in the group reporting that she'd heard some of the missing people had been returned without any memories of where they'd been. It didn't seem likely that anyone would just return people they had abducted after going through so much trouble or that the missing people couldn't remember anything about their abduction. Vash was sitting beside her looking rather pale as they listened, shifting in his seat nervously. Did he really think that this was some kind of haunting?
"Sun's about to go down," she murmured, watching as most of the people started settling their tabs so they could get home and inside before nightfall. "It's time to go find our ghost."
Vash made a small squeaking noise as she tugged him out of his chair and the two of them headed toward the door. She could hear the bartender yelling after her that they were going to be locked out if they left now. Liana didn't even look back as they stepped out into the street, looking up at the darkening sky. The streets were quickly emptying around them, the sounds of doors shutting and locking echoing from every direction. There was no way to tell when or where the so called ghost was going to show itself, so they would have to resort to wandering around the streets in hopes of finding something.
"Are you sure we can't just go back inside the inn?" Vash asked, shuffling along down the street beside her. "I mean, I don't see anything so we should definitely go back."
"We've been out here for ten minutes, Vash. The sun hasn't even fully set just give it time."
"But I don't wanna give it time! What if a ghost really does appear? It could abduct you!"
"I feel like you're more worried it will abduct you than me," she snorted, watching him fidget out of the corner of her eye. "Besides, the ghost isn't the one taking people, right? It just appears and someone vanishes somewhere else in town. If we find the ghost, we wont be the ones-"
Her voice trailed off as they turned the corner of the street, watching in awe as a cloud of fog seemed to billow out of the nearby alleyway onto the street. All around them the street lamps started to flicker on, casting dark shadows in the nooks between the buildings and there near the edge of the fog, Liana spotted a dark hooded figure lurking just outside the ring of light on the ground. She lifted her hand to point at the shadow, feeling Vash duck himself behind her like her tiny frame was going to somehow shield him from the figure before them.
"It is a ghost!" he whined, gripping the back of her shirt like a child holding onto their mothers skirts.
"You can't seriously-look," she huffed, reaching back to blindly smack at his hands to get him to let go of her shirt. "I will take care of the ghost. Why don't you go make sure that if there is anyone else out here that they don't get snatched up, hm?"
He seemed relieved to be given a job that didn't involve him having to come face to face with the shadowy figure that was still just lurking in the alleyway before them. Giving her a swift nod he turned on his heel and quickly headed back up the street they had come down leaving her alone to deal with the apparition. Liana took a deep breath as she set her sights on the shadow, inching toward it slowly. The figure didn't move from it's spot as she moved closer, the edges of it seemed to swirl and blur into the dark alleyway surrounding it like it wasn't entirely there. With the fog billowing around her and the swaying image of the shadow in front of her she was starting to worry that maybe there was something to the whole ghost nonsense after all.
Thinking that it would be better to come around from behind the figure, Liana slipped off of the main road and moved down along the building beside her, leading her around the other side of the alleyway where the shadow had been standing. When she peered around the corner to see if it had moved she found that it was still positioned near the other end facing the road, the fog steadily billowing out from where they stood. The fact that it hadn't moved at all was a little odd and she found her legs hesitating a touch as she slowly inched up the alleyway toward it. If it was a ghost, it surely would have known she was sneaking around behind it, but it didn't move at all aside from the edges of it fluttering in the air.
As she moved closer however she realized that what she had thought was wisps of shadow fluttering around the figure was just thin fabric of a shroud flapping in the gentle breeze. The closer she moved the easier it was for her to make out the solidness of the figure standing there and now she was certain that it was someone just posing as a ghostly figure to scare the already paranoid townspeople. The hesitation she'd felt before faded quickly, her lips tightening into a thin line of irritation as she reached out and grabbed at the back of the figures cloak with her hand and heard a distinct gasp of shock as her hand closed around a very solid shoulder and wheeled the figure around. Having surprised them, Liana was able to keep them off balance enough to shove them against the brick wall of the building, reaching out with her free hand to rip the hood off the figures head.
There in the darkness she came face to face with a young woman about her age, thin and pale like she imagined a ghost really would have looked if she wasn't clearly solid beneath Liana's arm where she kept her pinned against the wall by her neck. She could hear the faint whir of a machine, glancing down where the woman had been standing to see a small black box that was steadily pumping out fog. The entire thing had been a set up like she'd thought and if she hadn't been so annoyed with it, she could have admired the thought the woman had put into making herself seem like a real ghost. The fog, the wispy fabric of her cloak, the stillness in which she'd just stood there watching.
"Some ghost you are," Liana bit, watching the woman try to struggle under her. "So what is the deal? You spook the people and what, you have a partner that snatches someone up as they run?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," the woman cried, reaching up to try and pry Liana's arm away from her neck. "Let me go!"
"Not until you tell me where all of the missing people who didn't come back went. Where are you keeping them?" To get her point across she shoved her arm farther up into the woman's throat causing her to choke on her breath. "Did you kill them?"
"Not-me-" the woman coughed and Liana just pushed harder. "-partner! My partner! She takes them to a warehouse. Outside of town. It's abandoned."
"And are they still there?" The woman shook her head no feverishly. Some of the people had been returned safely, the ones whose families had enough money to offer rewards for their safe return, but not the others. She had a sinking feeling that the ones that didn't have anyone to pay for them didn't make it back out of that warehouse alive or else the townspeople wouldn't have been so scared of this so called ghost in the first place. She had one half of the duo and now all she needed was to find the other one before they could turn them in and put an end to the whole charade. "And where is your partner now?"
"Searching the streets-for anyone-not inside-" the woman croaked and it dawned on her that the only other person out on the streets with them was Vash. Someone who was indeed worth a lot of money if they were to be turned in.
Gritting her teeth she balled her free hand into a fist and struck the woman hard across the jaw, feeling her slump under her arm as she fell unconscious. Liana let her slide down the wall to the ground as she wrestled the handcuffs she'd brought along out of her back pockets and stooped down to restrain the woman to a metal pipe sticking out from the building. First she would find Vash and this woman's partner, then they could come back for her and turn the pair of them over together. She just needed to make sure that Vash didn't do something stupid and end up getting himself captured. He was the type not to fight back for fear of hurting someone and if it was indeed a woman snatching people up she knew from experience that he would likely just let her to avoid hurting her.
Running through the streets of the town she didn't worry about the fact that someone could have jumped out at her and tried to kidnap her, all she was worried about was the fact that Vash could have been that person to go missing. Would the girl's partner take him to July and turn him over for the bounty? Or kill him first? He was wanted either way so there was a good chance they would just kill him in order to not have to deal with him possibly getting away in transit. It's what any sane person would have done if they knew the kinds of things Vash could do and it made her heart hurt at the thought of someone putting a bullet in his head because he refused to put up a fight. Hopefully he had enough self preservation in him to not just sit there and die without even trying to get away.
The farther she ran the more worried she became, finding nothing but empty streets everywhere she turned. She was starting to lose hope when each corner she turned was another dead empty street, cursing under her breath loudly as she flat out pushed herself into a sprint even though her legs were starting to burn. The last place she could think of him going back to was the inn, thinking maybe he had gone back to try and get in and maybe they'd let him. Maybe he was safe back in his room and-.
Cutting a random corner she stopped dead in her tracks, her breath catching as she spotted a familiar woman crouching over Vash as she tied his hands tightly behind his back along the curb. It was the same woman from the bar who had been talking about the returned people. Of course it would be her, she'd been there to see Vash in the bar and knew the two of them would be out and about looking for the ghost. He was likely her target the entire time and she was just biding her time to separate the two of them so she could capture him. And they'd given her exactly what she wanted.
"Get away from him!" Liana shouted, drawing her gun and aiming at the woman steadily. Vash cocked his head back to look around the woman blocking his view and just smiled at her like he wasn't in a possibly dangerous situation.
"Oh, what do we have here?" the woman scoffed, straightening up to look at Liana like she was nothing but a speck of dirt to be wiped away. "Have you come to rescue your little boyfriend? I'm afraid I can't hand him over, he's quite valuable, y'know?"
"I'm not here for him," she hissed, following the woman as she stepped out into the middle of the street with her gun. "I'm here for you."
"Me? And what are you going to do? Shoot and unarmed woman?"
Vash just sat there, glancing between the two of them with a strained look. Sure she could just shoot the woman and be done with it, but she knew that it would do nothing more than upset Vash. He'd shown her that he wasn't okay with taking lives even though it would have been a much easier route. Lowering her gun slowly, Liana dropped it onto the street at her feet and just pointed over at the woman, earning a surprised scoff from her.
"I don't need a gun, I'm going to kick your ass the old fashioned way," she grumbled, repeating the exact words Vash had used when he took down the leader of the robbers in Jenora with a single punch to the jaw. If the woman wasn't armed, she didn't need to be either. "You messed with my friend and for that, you deserve every bit of this."
Without another word she started forward toward the woman, amazed that she didn't just turn and run from her, the two of them circling one another slightly as she neared close enough to reach out and actually hit the woman. Liana didn't need to make the first move as the woman reached out to try and punch her in the face, leaning back out of her range before dipping forward again and landing a solid punch of her own to the woman's jaw. Beside them she heard Vash making a sharp hissing noise when her fist collided with the woman. She didn't give her a chance to recover, stepping farther into her space and swinging again against the woman's ribs. The woman doubled over with a cough, jerking back away from Liana as best she could as she tried to regain her footing.
"Come on then, hit me," Liana taunted, waving her hand for the woman to come forward. "Or are you only good for tricking people?"
The next swing from the woman she let connect, a weak blow that struck her on the left side of her face like the woman had no idea how to throw her weight behind a strike and actually follow through with it. Liana had been part of the police at one point and she had been in her share of fistfights and shootouts so it was nothing for her to shrug the strike off, reaching out to grab the woman by the shirt before she struck her in the jaw again so forcefully that the woman spun back from her. She tumbled on shaky feet, falling to the ground face down in a little heap that was almost sad to look at, but Liana wasn't there to pity her.
Strolling forward she kneeled herself beside the woman, grabbing a fistful of her dark hair and jerked her head up off the ground to see the blood trailing from her nose steadily. She just scoffed at her, pulling the woman's head to the side so that she was looking at Vash through squinted eyes. He was watching them in shock, like he hadn't expected Liana to be so brutal or efficient in a fight, but he was still seated there on the curb like he was just waiting for it to be over.
"You see that man, right there?" Liana asked, jerking on the woman's hair hard enough to hear her hiss. "You think that he needs me to come save him? He does not need saving. You see, you tied his hands, didn't you? Like an absolute idiot." She pointed over at Vash with her free hand then reached down to grab the woman to hold her by the chin to keep her from trying to get away from her grasp. "He has a metal arm, you dumbass. Whatever you tied his hands with he's just going to break out of."
Vash just gave them a small, nervous laugh, slowly lifting his left hand from behind his back to give them a little wave, showing that he had indeed already broken free of the restraints she had put him in. How anyone thought they could tie him up like that and expect him to actually stay tied up was beyond her. Sure she doubted that most people saw people the way she did, but it should have been common sense just looking at him.
"So yeah, he doesn't need my help. Like I said, I'm here because you decided to fuck with my friend," Liana bit, shoving the woman back down to the ground before she stood herself back up. "And I don't like people trying to hurt my friends."
Without another word she shuffled over to Vash, brushing her hand along the side of her face where she'd actually taken a hit to be sure she wasn't bleeding before she reached out her hand to him. He glanced between the woman on the ground and Liana's hand for a second, reaching out to grab her hand with his right as she gently tugged him up to his feet with a bright smile.
"You let her tie you up?" she huffed, crossing her arms over her chest once he was on his feet towering over her. "What were you thinking?"
"Well she was pretty insistent and I was scared I might accidentally hurt her if I struggled too much," he laughed, watching the look on her face only grow more and more irritated with him. "I wasn't gonna let her take me anywhere though. Did you get the ghost?"
"Yeah you mean her little friend in a black cloak? Tied up already over-."
He voice was cut off by Vash reaching out to grab her arm tightly, turning them so that his body was between her and the woman on the street as a shot rang out. She just stood there gawking at Vash's chest where he'd tugged her into him unsure of what had just happened. After a moment he released his grasp on her, turning slowly to look back at the woman in the street. When Liana looked around him she could see the woman was still laying on the street, but she was several feet away from where Liana had left her, holding her gun. She'd shot at them and Vash had put himself between her and the bullet.
White hot rage shot through her as she marched around Vash's body, barreling straight for the woman on the ground who just dropped the gun and tried to fumble to her feet to get away. Liana was standing over her in a few short strides, reaching out to grab her by the hair again before she slammed the woman's head into the ground, watching as she fell unconscious in the dirt before she turned to scoop up her gun and looked over at Vash.
"You're hit," she breathed, marching back over to him to see what damage had been done and if they needed to get him to a doctor as soon as possible. "Where?"
Without waiting for him to respond she grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him, checking his jacket for any kind of entry point for the bullet, but as far as she could tell there wasn't one? Had the woman missed? No she'd heard the bullet hit but-his arm. Letting go of his jacket she grabbed him by the left arm, hearing him yelp slightly as she turned the metal this way and that trying to see where he'd been struck. There was a small indent in the bluish gray metal along what would have been his forearm and she just sighed heavily and dropped his arm.
"Damn it, Vash! You could have been hurt," she hissed, reaching out to swat him on the back. "You can't just put yourself in the middle of things like that!"
"But…," he muttered, turning to face her with a little frown. "It would have hit you. And I can't let people shoot my friends."
She flinched back away from him as if his words were like a slap, shaking her head lightly. It wasn't his responsibility to protect her by any means and if he had been shot in her stead she wasn't sure she could deal with the guilt of it very well. He had clearly taken more than enough damage for people that anyone should have been able to and the last thing she wanted was to add onto it in any way. Instead of arguing with him, which she knew was going to be a losing battle she pointed toward the unconscious woman and started off down the street back toward the area she'd left her partner tied up.
"Grab her," she sighed, hearing him groan behind her. "I'll get the other one and meet you back at the inn."