Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Midvalley's Serenade ❯ Graduation Night--Part Two ( Chapter 22 )

Graduation Night-Part Two

The third set was pure fun. We played lots of silly tunes--polkas, waltzes and a new dance called the "Tomas Strut". The last song we played before the break was a popular party dance called the Sandworm Shuffle. People lined up behind a leader, in this case, Dixie, who had volunteered to start the thing off. Randy, who'd begged Lenny for a break, hurried up behind her and put his hands on her waist. A pretty blonde woman boldly placed hers on his and then Jake Berkis grabbed hold of the blonde's.

Lenny started us up with some crazy rhythm on cowbell, wood block and drums, while Jason filled in with maracas. Silvia joined in with some hot saucy riffs and the shuffle picked up dancers and steam. Eventually, there must have been over fifty people in the weaving line that curved in and around the picnic tables and back to the dance floor.

Music wasn't Dixie's only talent. I could see now that she could shimmy and shake with the best of them. Randy was sure enjoying the show. Halfway down the line, Nick and the little girl in the purple dress were shuffling and giggling with high spirits. Dominique brought up the rear with Grey still following her faithfully and as smitten as ever, his efforts to shimmy heroic but laughable. It was really fun to play and watch the antics of the dancers.

Legato was invited several times to join the group but had no difficulty in resisting. He was fastidious about who he touched and allowed to touch him back. It gave me pause when I realized that I was one of the few in that select group. Then the "Sandworm" passed right by my place at the bandstand and when Nick shuffled by he gave me a big smile. It was all I could do to keep from laughing with my lips on Silvia. God, he was cute tonight.

After fifteen minutes of non-stop percussion, even Lenny's legendary stamina started to waver and we finally wound the song down to the mutual relief of musicians and dancers. All of us were streaming with sweat. Dixie and Randy led the dancers in giving us a big round of applause. Then the line broke up and people milled about, returning to their tables or headed for the beverage tent or toilets.

As I set Silvia down for the break, I saw Legato sitting down in the chair that he had seemed to claim as his own. He was holding a plate of sweets, Turkish Delight, chocolate-covered coffee beans, an éclair and a slice of coconut cream pie.

At the same time, Nick returned from escorting the girl back to her parents.

"I've brought rewards for the songsmith and his muse," announced Legato. "You really should try one of these chocolate-covered coffee beans, Chapel."

"Coffee?"

Nick's ears perked up at this and he held out his hand. Legato handed him five of the beans, all he had.

"And for you, Midvalley, I have a lovely éclair. I seem to recall you enjoy cream filling. This one looks about ready to explode in the mouth."

"I don't think I could eat the whole thing," I said. "Maybe half."

"I really don't mind sharing with you, Midvalley," he smiled as he cut the dessert in half with his fork and handed a portion to me. "It gives me pleasure."

"These coffee beans are wonderful," remarked Nick ignoring the double meanings packed in Legato's last comments.

I took a bite of the pastry and sighed. It really was delicious.

"I took the liberty of telling Oscar to put some of those coffee beans in with the box lunch he is preparing for your departure tomorrow, Chapel," Legato continued. "Tomorrow we will both be leaving the academy. I will rejoin my master and you will be carrying out assignments for him while Midvalley spends the next months making sweet love to Silvia."

"That's my plan," I said serenely as I licked away a bit of chocolate that had clung to my lips. Legato focussed on the movement, but spoke on with the same light tone.

"I have truly enjoyed the music this evening. There is much I despise about that drummer of yours, Midvalley, but he is an extraordinary musician. They all really are quite good. I know I've said it before, but I seem to forget my cares when I hear you play."

Nick pulled out a pack of Black Kat cigarettes and offered the smokes to Legato and me. We each took one and Nick struck a match , cupped his hand around the flame, lit them and then took the chair beside me, exhaling a thin stream of smoke.

"Will Rai-dei be leaving the academy tomorrow as well, Legato?" asked Nick.

"Yes, he plans to. But he believes he has some unfinished business with Zazie the Beast. He always felt that the Beast had extraordinary potential, but the resistance to training was difficult to overcome in the two weeks allotted."

The blue haired man looked thoughtful as he seemed to consider this fact and then after a pause said, "Resistance to following orders is a pet peeve of Master Knives. He has no patience for it."

I wondered why Legato even brought the subject up. Surely not for my benefit, but for Nick's?

"I have no trouble following Master Knives' orders," I said and brought up a thought that I'd been curious about since my discussion with Leonof that morning. "I heard through Leonof that Knives had a relapse. He seemed to do better when you were there to care for him."

Legato seemed subdued as he responded. "I had hoped that with the progress he had made, my master's health would improve rapidly. He may have pushed himself too hard in my absence. I should not have left him so long, but he encouraged me to come for the good of the academy and though I have successes to report, he will be deeply disappointed in Zazie. He expected great things from him. I fear he will take my failure badly."

"Ah," I said.

"But he is quite excited by your potential, Chapel. He is looking forward to reading your field reports of the missions he has assigned you. He has offered to increase your pay, if future reports are more comprehensive."

"I could do that," said Nick.

Then Legato stood and headed back to the refreshment tent, chewing on a bite of éclair.

I saw Lenny on stage give me a subtle look that meant it was time to begin again. He hadn't wanted to interrupt my conversation with Legato. I stood up, stretched and went up to join the band.

Our playing the last set was as good as it gets when we're all warmed up. Sometimes a fourth set is a bit of a let down, but the evening had been special to me and I had mixed feelings when the last song was over. When the music is flowing well, I never want it to end, but I also knew that this was my last night with Nick for a while and I wanted to be with him. I felt a thrill run through me as I remembered the passion promised by our interrupted kiss as I packed up Silvia. I looked up and saw Nick contemplating me with a sexy grin that made me hot.

I made my good-byes to the band and told Lenny I'd meet him tomorrow to make plans for the tour, then stepped down to the ground and fell in step with Nick. Exactly where we were walking I hadn't a clue. I just wanted to enjoy the coolness of the evening breezes, the beauty of the heavenly bodies and the company of the man who strolled beside me.

"Let's not rush," I said. "Let's get away from this crowd and be together for a while just like this."

"We could stay up all night," he whispered in my ear.

"I'd like nothing better," I sighed.

We walked under the light of the moons with soft breezes flowing. Picnickers were exiting the grounds, sleepy toddlers nestled in parents' arms. The band loaded their instruments including Miss Adelaide's piano into a large van and drove off with Dave at the wheel. The crowds thinned, then disappeared and we continued to walk.

Finally, we were completely alone in an area just inside the entry wall of the academy grounds. There was something erotic about the dark and quiet with the only sounds the wind and each others breathing. My hands moved under his jacket feeling the firm muscled flesh, so warm and solid. His fingers unbuttoned my jacket and pulled out my shirt-tail. His hands pushed up under the shirt and came to rest on my nipples, which he brushed with the feather-light touch of his fingertips. The sensation stirred my groin.

"Ah, Midvalley," he sighed and put his arms around me. He pressed close to me. I loved the way our bodies fit each other and we stood gently rubbing sex against sex while the play of our tongues licked our passion into flames. And then he stopped dead in the middle of a touch, his body suddenly wired with tension.

"Listen," he hissed.

I had heard only his soft whispers of pleasure as my passion rose, but now my ears caught the rattle and clink of chains, the scrape of heavy boots on pavement, harsh laughter, the chunk of fists on flesh and moans of pain. Nick was already in motion yarz ahead of me with his pistol drawn. I was right after him on the run pulling Silvia from her case. I followed him through the gates of the school and out into the dusty street where in the moonlight, I saw a group of toughs had ganged up on a couple who had left their departure from the dance too late.

One glance told the story. A man struggled fiercely in the middle of a pack of five thugs, while another group of three raped his girl friend. The man kicked at his assailants, trying his best to get free and rescue the girl, but there were too many. The woman was naked pinned to the ground by a big man in biker leather who rode her hard with savage grunts while his accomplices held her wrists and ankles.

Nick sized up the situation at once. His lethal automatic spat lead, rapid-fire. I feared to use Silvia because she might harm the victims, but I watched sickened, as a brawny tough in patched denim snapped the man's neck back with a chain, just before Nick's bullet took his life. In just a few more seconds, all the attackers were dead or dying. We went over to help the woman.

I didn't recognize her but saw she was very tall and almost ethereally slender with exquisite features and small delicate breasts with nipples like seed pearls that jutted up. Nick had already taken off his jacket and slipped it over her. Silent tears spilled from her eyes as she crawled on her knees over to her lover. She wailed softly when she saw his neck twisted at an impossible angle. It was then that I saw the man's face. It was Ned Pitts, so the woman weeping softly in the moonlight had to be Caine. I have never seen such grief. I don't know whether it was her apparent fragility or the vulnerability of her nudity that evoked my pity, but my heart went out to her.

I saw she was going into shock from the rape and the death of the man she loved, so I picked her up-she weighed very little--and began to carry her back towards the infirmary. Nick's face, I saw with a backward glance, was as grim as I had ever seen it as he took charge of Ned Pitts' corpse.

When I got to the infirmary, I woke the nurse, settled Caine into one of the beds and retrieved Nick's jacket. The nurse injected Caine with a hypodermic, covered her shivering body with more blankets and agreed to keep a close eye on her condition.

Even before I joined Nick at the infirmary's morgue room I was surprised by my own falling tears. Through my link with him, I felt my friend was deeply sad. I pushed through the door of the room where he was sitting hunched over in pain, his right hand hiding the tears I knew were there. His left hand held a lit cigarette with an ash so long I knew he hadn't taken a single drag. I took the cigarette from his fingers before he got burned and put it out in the ash tray on the table next to where he was sitting. I hadn't known he was so fond of Pitts. Although I was upset that he had been killed, Pitts was in many ways a stranger to me and try as I would I couldn't seem to feel his loss with the same intensity as Nick did.

But the silent weeping continued and I felt his pain as if it was my own.

"Oh, God, Nick. I can't stand to see you like this. What's the matter?" I asked him.

He just gestured with his left hand to the beds in the room.

It was then that I understood that there were two beds, a body in each, covered by sheets.

Two bodies. The one nearest the door held Pitts. I walked over to the other with a sinking feeling in my gut, pulled the sheet on the other bed back and saw Bernie Welch's body. He lay there with the stillness of death on him, his face and exposed arms swollen and covered with welts from more bee stings than I have ever seen on one person. Though the temperature outside was beginning to cool, the room we were in had held on to the heat that had built up earlier in the day. Welch's body must have been in the room for some time. I gagged a bit at the smell that came off him.

"Zazie killed him," I murmured to myself.

"What did you say, Midvalley?" asked Nick lifting his head to look at me.

Just then, Legato glided through the door.

"I came as soon as I heard," he said.

He pulled back the sheet that covered Pitts and sighed when he saw the body.

"What a shame," he said. "I thought my master would be angry about Zazie the Beast, but this will come as a blow to him. He had already put together some assignments… It can't be helped. I shall just have to bite the bullet. And Welch is dead, I understand?" he said as he came to stand beside me and viewed the body.

"What happened to his face?" he asked.

"Bee stings."

"Strange."

"Not strange. Zazie killed him, I think."

"That's a serious accusation, Midvalley. Do you have any proof?"

"Just bee stings, a body, and a gut instinct, plus I heard him this afternoon swearing he was `gonna show fucking Welch.'"

"It's unfortunate, but Chapel the Evergreen and Leonof will have to deal with discipline. I can delay my departure no longer. My master needs me. And you, Chapel, have a full schedule of assignments that start tomorrow. Oh, what has happened to the air cooler? These two must be buried as soon as possible. It stinks of death in here."

Somehow I felt sorry for the man. I could see he had a lot on his mind and volunteered, "I'll handle the arrangements."

"Thank you, Midvalley. I appreciate it," he said and left the room.

Nick was still sad. I knew I could take his mind off things if I gave him a job, but it wasn't just busy work. I needed his help.

"Can you prepare a funeral service, Nick?" I asked him. "These boys will have to be buried soon. This is going to hit Berkis and Evans hard, and Caine is distraught. Someone needs to say something."

"I'll start working on it."

"Good," I said and then I left for the dining facility to find ice to preserve the bodies from further decomposition.

It all took time. The hours slipped away.

Nick and I were in harness again. We split up the work load and got the job done. Finally we met up at the dining facility where Leonof's puppets were engaged in breakfast preparations. Nick was sitting at a table reading some papers while he sipped a mug of coffee. He looked up at me when I came in the door. He was feeling better, I could tell. Nick was not one to stay depressed. I went to the coffee percolator, got myself a cup of coffee and went over to sit with him.

"I worked out the eulogies. Maybe my father will conduct the service. I don't know how much time I have before I need to leave. I should head over to the office and pick up my assignments packet and start planning."

"I'll go with you, if you don't mind."

We walked over to the administration building and went into the mailroom. Nick picked up his packet, opened it and began to read. I walked up the hallway to see if Legato was in. In one of the offices, I heard voices. Nick emerged from the mailroom and joined me where I had stopped quietly.

We heard Chapel the Evergreen speaking.

"So, it finally worked out after all, and of course you will receive your full bonus as your student is graduating. He will go out on assignments immediately with you as his mentor. Your briefing packets are in the mailroom. We knew your student was gifted, but it always seemed that he was all bark and no bite. We despaired that he would ever develop the killer instinct, but Master Knives suggested that you might be of help. Who better for the task than a man trained in the art of shi-ai? But I always thought that shi-ai implied a fair fight. How does it sit with your sense of honor that your student used stealth to kill his opponent?"

"The art of shi-ai is misunderstood. I was not born yesterday. Do you think that everyone I fight to the death is an honorable man? I suppose that if I ever met an honorable man, my conscience might bother me, but as I haven't met one yet," Rai-dei laughed harshly, "I can't say that it does. Deception is just another weapon in the arsenal. So, tell me, Chapel the Evergreen, how do you think that Master Knives' will take Welch's death? I would think he would be pleased by it."

"I don't think he cares one way or the other about Welch. When I contacted him about the matter all he told me was that he was pleased that Zazie finally proved himself. So, on behalf of Master Knives, I thank you, Rai-dei the Blade. The funds and the generous bonus have been deposited in your account."

I could feel anger building in Chapel. He turned and walked quietly towards the exit and pushed through the door. I followed him.

The sky was quite light on the horizon as dawn was about to break.

"So, my own father was in on it, but I can't say I'm surprised. He plays the game with the best of them and Bernie Welch's death means nothing. If I got in my father's way or if he felt I failed him, I doubt he'd think twice about killing me."

"That's a little morose. Face the facts. We all take orders from Master Knives and it isn't healthy to second-guess him. Sometimes a pawn is sacrificed to win the game."

Nick reacted badly to that phrase.

"So , Bernie was just a pawn?"

"We're all pawns in the game. Master Knives has a powerful enemy out there in Vash the Stampede. If it weren't for Knives, there would be no one to oppose that madman. I believe that Knives Millions, in his own way, is the best friend the human species ever had and the only one with the power to prevent every other city on this planet from ending up destroyed the way July City was."

Nick made no reply. He was still thinking about Bernie.

"He wasn't any older than some of the kids at the orphanage in December," he said, with the slightest hint of trembling in his voice.

"I'm sorry, Nick," I said and meant it.

Just then Rai-dei swaggered out the door, down the steps and laughed when he saw us standing there.

"I suppose you heard everything we said, Chapel. I knew it was you out in the corridor. So now you know that Zazie the Beast killed your precious protege. It was the hardest thing to do to push Zazie enough to get him to kill. Despite his foul mouth, when it came to getting the job done, he was as tender as a girl at first, a real sissy, but I finally cured him of that. Your failure is my success."

"I should kill Zazie for what he did to a classmate. He's just a cold-blooded murderer," said Nick.

"Cold-blooded murderer?" Rai-dei laughed with contempt. "That's our job description or have you forgotten? And don't waste a bullet. You can't kill Zazie the Beast. His body is just a vessel for the hive mind, a mind that has the will and power to find another body to inhabit if you kill that one. Maybe he's less of a threat in the body he's in now. After all, what could be more harmless than a small child? Though I believe that Master Knives' knows that nothing can be more deadly than an apparently innocent child who no one suspects has been trained in the art of murder. In certain situations, it's irresistible. What is it that your father says, Chapel? `The right tool for the job?' By, the way, I thought you ought to know, Chapel, your father thinks that I should have gotten the "Instructor of the Year" award instead of you."

The anger I felt through my link with Nick was red hot now.

Then Rai-dei addressed me.

"Thank you, Midvalley the Hornfreak, for the music. Your skill is amazing, but you waste your talents on Chapel. He will never understand you the way I do. If you ever tire of your plaything," he jerked his thumb at Nick contemptuously, "come to me and I will show you how a real man does it."

Nick dropped the assignment packet on the ground and launched himself like a rabid wolf at Rai-dei with intent to do serious mayhem, but I threw my arms around his chest to hold him back.

Just then, Legato's armored car stopped in front of headquarters and he stepped out into the light of the first sunrise. I was sure he had seen the drama between the two play out but couldn't resist a little mockery at our expense.

I released Nick who controlled himself in Legato's presence but continued to glare at Rai-dei.

"Ah, I see you and Chapel were enjoying a last hug before you part. How very romantic, Midvalley. As for you, Rai-dei, you may as well give up on trying to seduce our beloved Sax God. You haven't the talent for it, but Chapel does. And we thought he had no talent. Perhaps, Chapel used his "Demon's Eye" on Midvalley, for the former libertine has become the very heart and soul of fidelity now, more's the pity."

Legato addressed the three of us.

"Good-bye, Rai-dei, and good luck. I doubt you'll need luck, Chapel. Just remember all the money that's going to be rolling into your bank account and keep up the good work. Midvalley, I've enjoyed the time we've spent together. Thank you for stepping in to handle the funeral details. I really must rejoin my master without further delay. I regret that we may have to cut your music tour short by just a bit, due to the loss of Pitts and Welch. But I will contact you in the next month or so depending on Master Knives' requirements."

"Legato-sama, a moment please before you go?" asked the samurai.

"Yes?"

"About the teaching contest you proposed. You never said who won. Was it Chapel or me?"

Despite the humble air the samurai affected when he posed the question, the expression in his eyes showed supreme confidence.

"Does it mean so much to you then, Rai-dei the Blade?" asked Legato with just the faintest touch of impatience.

"Yes," the samurai said, with his head bowed.

"Rest assured, Rai-dei," Legato said in a languid tone and he paused, while a smug smile covered the samurai's face, "that it wasn't you."

With that last remark, which hit Rai-dei hard, Legato stepped back into his vehicle, closed the door after him and his driver pulled away.

Rai-dei gave Chapel a disgusted look, turned on his heel and walked off in search of Zazie.

Nick picked up his packet, pulled out his first assignment sheet and started to read it again. He looked troubled.

"What's the matter, Nick?"

"I have to go."

"I know."

"I mean I have to go now. This is it, Midvalley. This is good-bye. I've got to be in Mei City by noon today to kill a man. I've got to pack and leave in a half-hour."

He pulled the eulogies he had written out of his breast pocket and handed them to me.

"Please have my father read this for their friends and for Caine," he said in a voice husky with emotion. "I'm going to miss you, Midvalley."

He put his arms around me and kissed me one last time. I could feel the throbbing of his heart through his chest pressed so tightly against my mine. I kissed him back ardently, my heart full of pangs of regret already. I fought to hold back tears.

"I have to go," he whispered again in a choked voice and tore himself away.

"Good-bye, lover," I whispered back. He smiled at me one last time over his shoulder when he heard those words and walked away.