Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ How'd He Do It? ❯ Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing...not even pudding. But I really wish I could own Vash...::sighs:::

A/N: I've never seen a story that tries to explain how Vash wrecks Milly and Meryl's car before the beginning of Demon's Eye. I thought it would be a cute idea, and the story kind of wrote itself. Hopefully you enjoy it! ^_^ Just as a side note, I have Meryl being kinda mean to Vash, but I want you all to know that I am Vash/Meryl...but I wouldn't be able to make this very convincing if I brought that into it. Hopefully, the characters all stay fairly true to their original selves.

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How'd He Do It?

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"Do you have any right to say that after wrecking our car? I think not! You're going to take full responsibility!"

Meryl's voice echoed sternly in Vash's head. He sighed. It's not like it was *his* fault the car had been wrecked. Those insurance girls were so unreasonable. He sighed again. Well, at least they weren't going to write him up for it. At least, they'd better not... What exactly was Meryl's definition of "full responsibility," anyway? Once again, he sighed.

"Would you stop with the sighing already? Sheesh! It's really getting on my nerves," Meryl leaned down right in front of him.

"Alright, alright already!" Vash exclaimed. As Meryl sat back up in her seat, Vash muttered under his breath. "It's not like it was my fault. I didn't mean to wreak the car."

"You never mean to wreak anything! But you manage somehow. Why do you think we're out here in the first place?" Meryl argued from her seat, not bothering to lean over to face Vash.

"Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't even be here if you didn't cause so much trouble. Then you'd be all alone. Wouldn't that be sad, Mr. Vash?" Milly asked brightly.

"Oh, yeah. Real sad," Vash grumbled good-naturedly as he continued walking toward the next town, Jeneora Rock, which was still several iles away. Just as he was about to sigh loudly one last time, Meryl leaned over.

"If I hear you sigh one more time, Mister, we're going to file that report saying just who destroyed our car," she threatened.

"Jeez, you're mean," Vash whined, but wisely, he refrained from sighing for the rest of the trip. Instead, he thought back to how the newly acquired car had become wrecked in the first place.

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Yesterday, Kyle City

Vash casually strolled out of the hotel he had been staying at, looking around for the two insurance girls who followed him everywhere. They hadn't been down for breakfast that morning, and when he had checked their room before leaving, they hadn't been there, either. As he looked around the main street running through the small town, Vash felt something he hadn't felt for several months.

"FREEDOM!!" The shout that rang out from the doorway of the hotel was so loud it startled several birds from their perches along the edges of buildings. On the railing of the hotel's porch, a small black cat let out a startled mew before glaring at the offender and running away.

Darting nervous glances back down the street, Vash made his way out of Kyle City. Once he was in the desert, he breathed a sigh of relief and began to relax. Finally, he was away from those two insurance girls. They were supposedly assigned to him to keep him from causing damage, but as far as he could tell, their presence wasn't helping much. Why, just the other day, they had knocked over a vehicle and had taken out part of a building.

"They'd better not blame that on me," Vash said aloud to himself. Before Meryl and Milly had attached themselves to him, Vash had traveled by himself for most of his life. As a result, he'd developed some pretty strange habits. But he didn't consider talking to himself to be one of them.

"I wonder if I can see those reports that Meryl keeps writing. Nah, she'd never show me. I know! I'll bribe Milly somehow! Then she'll let me see them. Wait! What am I saying! I don't ever have to see those reports because I'll never see the insurance girls again!" With that, Vash started laughing. "I'm FREE!!!" He shouted gleefully.

"Free from what, Mr. Vash?" the innocently voiced question caused him to spin around, trip, and fall face first in the sand.

"Oh, no. Just when I thought I was free," Vash whimpered into the sand.

"Are you going to get up, or are you going to just lie there all day?" Meryl asked from the driver's seat of the car that had somehow caught up to him without his notice.

"Can I just stay here?" Vash's muffled voice asked.

"No, you can't!" Meryl argued back, irritated.

"But you asked!" Vash whined, getting up nonetheless. "Where'd you guys get this, anyway?"

"We bought it from a nice man in town," Milly explained. "He sure seemed happy to sell it to us, didn't he, Meryl?"

"Yeah, he did, Milly, but I'm sure he just wanted the money. Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Meryl cried out as Vash opened her door. "Who said you could drive?"

"Well, no one, but since I am the only one who knows where I'm going, and you're supposed to be following me then you should let me drive." Vash looked expectantly at Meryl, waiting for her to acknowledge the validity of his statement.

Instead, she only stared at him blankly. "Huh?"

"I said-"

"I know what you said, but it didn't make any sense! Milly and I bought this car, so one of us is going to drive it!" Meryl grabbed onto the steering wheel tightly.

"But how can you follow me if you're driving?" Vash asked.

"You can tell me where you're going, but you're even more insane than I believed if you think I'm going to let you get behind the wheel of this car!" Meryl glared defiantly at Vash, who had a determined look on his face that told her he was about five seconds away from trying to physically remove her from the car. "Don't even think about it!" She warned again.

Suddenly, two gunshots rang out loudly, startling them. All three looked back toward the town they had just left. A group townsfolk was running to meet a man standing about two hundred yars from where the car was.

"There they are!" shouted the man closest to them. "Get them! Come on; they're getting away!"

Vash had taken this opportunity to slide into the driver's seat of the car. When he heard the man shout, Vash slammed the door shut, and started the engine again. Meryl looked over in surprise and irritation.

"What the hell did you do now? And why are you driving the car? I thought I told you-"

"I didn't do anything! But we should still get out of here!" Vash cut off Meryl's irate questioning.

Meryl simply glared at him before looking over apologetically at Milly, who was squished into the opposite door. Vash chanced a glance behind him when more shots were fired, some of them coming close to hitting the car. Meryl, noticing where Vash's attention was, looked behind them as well.

"Oh, great. They have cars, too. And they're probably faster," she said angrily.

"You worry too much," Vash told her. "We'll be fine." Suddenly, he started swerving the car back and forth to avoid being hit by the pursuing vehicles. Meryl screeched and grabbed onto his arm with a death grip. Milly clutched the seat, trying not to lean against the door too hard, in case it wasn't as secure as it looked.

After a few minutes of Vash's erratic driving, the gunshots began to taper off, the gunmen in the other cars either running out of bullets or patience. As he looked back to make sure the last of the cars had stopped following them, Vash failed to notice the large rock their car was fast approaching.

Meryl, however, did not. She reached over and swung the wheel to the right. Vash turned back in alarm, accidentally hitting her hand with his elbow. She yelped in alarm, letting go of the wheel. Before either could regain control of the car, it hit the edge of the rock and tipped over onto its side.

The car was quiet for a moment, the passengers all taking in what had just happened. Vash was stuck against the door with Meryl and Milly on top of him. Meryl, who had apparently realized just who she was smashed against, started to get red in the face. Vash looked around nervously. If she exploded now, there was no way he could escape. Silently, he urged Milly to get off Meryl as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, Milly was taking her sweet time getting out of the car. "Meryl? Mr. Vash? Are you both alright?"

"I'm fine, Milly, just get out of the car," Meryl growled.

"Uh, yeah, I'm fine here. You guys are just a little, you know, heavy…" Vash trailed off as he realized that was *not* the thing to say to Meryl when she was already so mad. He closed his eyes and wished he could move his hands up far enough to cover his ears.

"What the hell do you mean, heavy? We are not heavy! And for your information, we're only in this mess because of YOUR terrible driving skills!" Meryl simply couldn't hold in her anger for any longer. Vash cringed and looked around desperately for a distraction. Milly ended up finding one for him as she finally climbed out of the car.

"Um, Meryl? I think you should really take a look at this," Milly called. Meryl looked up after a moment and accepted Milly's help out of the car. Vash breathed a very quiet sigh of relief. It would be a miracle if he could hear at all after that. Slowly, he stood up and saw what Milly had noticed.

Apparently, they had been close enough to the group of angry men from town that their little accident had been noticed. As the three watched, the group got closer and closer.

When they got within hearing range, Vash shouted, "What do you want?"

Their leader, the man who had first fired at them as they were leaving the city, was riding in the first car. He glared at Vash. "We have no business with you. Those two stole from us! We want our money!"

"They stole from you? These two would never steal anything. I think you're mistaken," Vash replied calmly, surprised at the accusation, and the target of the group's anger.

"It was that one! The tall one!" cried out a voice from a different car. "She's the one who didn't pay!"

Milly's eyes widened as everyone focused on her. "I don't know what you're talking about! I didn't steal anything! My little big brother taught me never to steal from anybody!"

"Wait a minute!" Vash shouted. "What exactly did she steal? The girls told me they paid for the car..."

"The car? Why would we want that piece of junk back?" the man said scornfully. "No, she knows what she stole! She knows her crime!"

"But I didn't steal anything!" Milly looked as if she was on the verge of tears

"You did!"

"No I didn't!"

"What did she supposedly steal?" Meryl shouted, breaking through the argument before it could turn even more childish.

The man in the car glared at Milly. "She stole pudding."

Meryl and Vash simply gaped at the man.

The other men in the group kept their guns trained on the trio.

Milly blushed.

"Oops! I guess I did forget to pay for it! I was so excited that I'd found a store that sold pudding that I forgot all about paying! Here, can I pay you now?" Milly walked over to the man in the car and paid him for the pudding. He counted the money, then nodded at the rest of the townsfolk. Their cars turned around and drove back to the city, with Milly waving goodbye.

"All that...because of pudding?" Meryl asked in a quiet, stunned voice.

"Yeah, I guess it was pretty silly of me to forget that, huh?" Milly laughed.

"Well, now what do we do? The car's ruined! Look at that; the rock went clear through the hood and dented the engine, too. We won't get it to run again without a lot of work," Vash observed.

Meryl turned to face him slowly. "Well, we wouldn't have to worry about fixing it if you hadn't crashed it in the first place!"

"Me? I didn't crash it! You were the one jerking the wheel around!" Vash protested indignantly.

"You crashed the car. That's all there is to it! And you're going to be held responsible!" Meryl yelled back.

"What!! Wait, what do you mean, held responsible? You're not going to file another one of your reports on this, are you? C'mon, don't be like that!" Vash pleaded.

Meryl looked at the car, then back at Vash. Slowly, a smile began to form on her face. "Well, I don't *have* to file the report, Vash," she said sweetly, causing Vash to look at her suspiciously.

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Two iles from Jeneora Rock...

Vash caught himself right before he was about to sigh again. After all, if Meryl filed the report, then all this carting around of Milly and Meryl would be for nothing. Instead, he let out a frustrated yell.

"Are we there yet???!!!"

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THE END!