Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ What If ❯ Revelations ( Chapter 9 )

"What are we going to do now, Vash?" Meryl asked from behind him.

His eyes were constantly scanning the street and rooftops. "You and Millie need to help your parents gather some of their things and move into the inn. The house isn't very suitable for living in right now." The cold look on his face faded to something more companionable when he smiled at her. "I'll go reserve a handful of rooms for all of us. Meet me there, and keep your eyes open."

With that, Vash the Stampede picked up Chapel the Evergreen's Cross Punisher. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Millie making a beeline for Wolfwood's cross. He walked swiftly and surely down the four blocks separating the inn from Meryl's parent's house. The innkeeper was more than accommodating, since he didn't want to be responsible for offending the already bothered Humanoid Typhoon. He gave Vash three rooms on the top floor, which Vash carefully went over, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

After dinner that night, they separated into two groups. Vash and Meryl took the middle room; on one side was Millie's room, and on the other was Meryl's parents'. Millie accompanied Vash and Meryl for a nightcap.

"How are you going to handle this one, Mr. Vash?" Millie asked, her speech starting to slur after her third drink.

Vash was sitting on the bed, leaning back against the wall. He was wearing just his pants; his shirt was hanging on a peg on the wall next to his jacket and his socks and boots were set in one of the room's corners. His pistols, however, were sitting on either side of him on the bed.

It went without saying that Meryl was by now comfortable with the scars and metal crisscrossing Vash's upper body but, to his surprise, Millie was also comfortable with it. When he had asked her about it, just before his fight with Knives while she and Meryl were nursing him back to health, she had called him silly. "The three of us are family," she had said with a laugh. "It's like Meryl's one of my big sisters, and you are my big big BIG brother. There's nothing else to it."

"I'm not sure, Millie," he sighed, taking a deep drink out of a tankard of beer.

Meryl gave him a disapproving look and swirled her orange juice around in her cup. "We obviously need to find out who this man is," she pointed out. When she noticed Millie pouring herself another drink, she grabbed the bottle out of the larger woman's hands. "That's enough, Millie," she said. "If we're going to figure out where we're going, we can't do it drunk. Don't you agree, Vash?"

The gunman was staring blankly at the wall, the now empty tankard lying on the bed. "Before we can decide where to go," he told the two of them quietly, "we need to figure out who our stalker is."

Meryl turned her frown on him. "I don't like your tone, Vash," she told him. "Do you have an ideas on who it is?

Vash turned to gaze at his lover. "I have some ideas," he allowed. "But I don't know anything. We'll just have to wait for him to make his next move."

"When ish that gonta be?" Millie's question was so slurred he could hardly understand her.

"I don't know. I really don't."

"Well," Meryl stood up. "It's getting late. I'll take Millie back to her room."

Vash didn't move; he stayed sitting on the bed against the wall. I wonder, he thought, if this guy could be a clone. Knives certainly could have done that, but so quickly? This clone would have been made before Knives died, but how could he have done it then? As was his habit when he was deep in thought, Vash donned his yellow sunglasses. With his keen eyes, the sunglasses did nothing to inhibit his eyesight, but he found that it helped him to think.

A scream from out in the hallway brought him out of his reverie. He jumped off of the bed, grabbing one pistol in each hand and heading towards the door. When he kicked the barrier open, Millie and Meryl were clutching each other in the hall in front of Millie's room, the larger girl's inebriation suddenly gone.

"What's wrong?" the gunman demanded, holding both pistols up next to his head. Wordlessly, Meryl pointed at Millie's room while the other woman just cried. Behind him, Vash heard Meryl's parents gasp and dimly realized that they had never seen his scars before. He ignored their stuttered questions and jumped through the door.

Halfway through the window on the other side of the room, their unknown attacker paused in his escape. In his right hand was the still wrapped form of Wolfwood's Cross Punisher.

Vash pointed both pistols at the shadow. "Don't move!"

"Or what?" Even in the dark, the other man's sneer was obvious. "Are you going to shoot me, Vash the Stampede?"

"That depends on you. Why don't you step away from the window and we'll discuss it?"

A small knife appeared in the other man's left hand, which he promptly threw at Vash. In the time it took the gunman to duck away, the attacker ducked out the window. "Damn," Vash cursed, running towards the window. He leaned out the opening and fired a shot down the fire escape at the fleeing figure.

"Vash!" Meryl called out to him. He ignored her and jumped out the window. He slid down two levels of the fire escape's ladder, then jumped the last fifteen feet to the ground. Barefoot, shirtless, and holding two pistols, he took off at a dead run.

With it's signature hydraulic sound, the Cross Punisher transformed into a missile launcher in his attacker's hands. The missile came screaming in at him from down the street, flying at an incredible speed. Vash didn't blink: he simply raised one of his pistols and triggered a single shot. With a brilliant explosion of light, the missile blew up in mid air. Vash dove to the side of the cloud of smoke and hit the ground running. He fired two more shots, blasting a hole in the man's shoulder and knocking the cross out of it's carrier's hands.

"I'll say it again," he said in a cold voice. "Do not move."

The shadow raised it's hands. Back where they had come from, Vash heard the bang of the inn's front door slamming closed. He stepped closer to his opponent, pistols trained on his chest.

Behind him, Millie and Meryl slid to a halt. "Now we'll find out who you are," Meryl announced triumphantly, turning on the flashlight she held. She played the beam across the man's face.

Vash didn't react. He had expected this. Millie gasped, and Meryl just stood there with her mouth hanging open.

"Nicholas D. Wolfwood," Vash stated.

"Mr. Priest?" Millie asked in a trembling voice.

The calm expression on Wolfwood's face turned into a snarl, and he shook his head. "That is not a name I know," he answered them both. "Maybe I was that in the past, but I am now Chapel the Evergreen, the last Gun-Ho Gun. That is what I am, that is who I am." The ex-priest crossed his arms, wincing at the pain.

"But . . ." Millie started, but no words could come out. Vash's eyes narrowed at the movement he saw behind Wolfwood's arm.

"Surely you remember us?" Meryl asked. "If you didn't die-"

Wolfwood's eyes narrowed. "My master says I died. But he alone had the power to bring me back." As the words finished coming out of his mouth, he pulled his hand out of his sleeve and threw something at the three of them. It hit Millie in the chest, then fell straight to the ground.

On the top of the cylinder that had been thrown, a red light began to flash. Frozen in surprise, none of them were able to prevent Wolfwood from picking the cross back up and running away.

Vash stuck the two pistols under his waistband, and grabbed one woman under each arm. Without waiting, he started running, half carrying half dragging his friends with him. They were barely twenty feet away from the bomb when it erupted in argent flames.