Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ The Cat's Meow ❯ To Gather ( Chapter 1 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: SiriousB1 
A first look at how to commit the perfect murder. Also, a drunken Vash learns of the first murder in the town.
Anime/Manga: Trigun Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Suspense / Thriller | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 06.23.2004 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.7K | Visits: 286 | Status: Completed
A first look at how to commit the perfect murder. Also, a drunken Vash learns of the first murder in the town.
Anime/Manga: Trigun Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Suspense / Thriller | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 06.23.2004 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.7K | Visits: 286 | Status: Completed
The Cat’s Meow
Chapter One: To Gather
The first think that you have to do is make them believe that you’re innocent. Meander cautiously over to them and give them the idea that you’re a poor, lost soul. Be sweet and kind…suck up to them, if you will.
Continue until they offer you temporary shelter. Let them take you under their wing. But don’t be too quick to accept! Oh no; wouldn’t want them to think that you’re up to something. Make like you don’t want to be a burden; like you don’t want to be a hassle.
But, when they persist (which, I assure you, they will), give them your dearest thanks and follow them home. They’ll feed you, build you a sturdy fire and give you a nice place to rest for the night. Be gracious when they pamper you. You might as well get what you can out of them while their brains still provide their bodies with the necessary signal to move.
It’s when the lights go out and the sun sets that the real fun begins.
They’ll be resting their eyes after a final goodnight to you. They’ll feel happy and proud of themselves that they were able to helps such a small, weak wanderer from the cold desert night. It’s almost as if they’ve secured their spots among the stars when their hourglass finally runs out of sand. It’s almost amusing. That is, the fact that the final grains of their time are almost used up and they wasted them on someone else.
Be quiet when you sneak up on them. The most crucial part of the plan requires them not knowing that you are there. Slip ups are not tolerated in this line of work. If you aren’t sly, devious, cunning and have feet that can walk on air, then you should change your job and fast. No one likes a sloppy murderer.
So, you get to the point where you can see their chests rising and falling slowly as they slumber. The quiet sound of breathing confirms that a deep sleep has taken over their body. Once this is certain to you, the rest is quite simple.
Draw your hand back and slash across the throat. Make sure you hit a vain; the faster they bleed to death, the better. Continue cutting them until you are positive they live no more and their body is completely mutilated. So much, perhaps, that no one will be able to identify it. The dead man lying in bed could be the owner of the house, or a complete stranger who broke in during the night. Only you can confirm.
And that, my friends, is just one method that I use to commit a perfect murder.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The man sitting at the table in the corner of the inn’s bar looked completely dreadful. His blond hair was mussed and hung down into his pure green eyes that had lost their usual cheerful glow. Huge rings under them made him look ten years older than he really was. His skin was a pale white that made him look sickened. Which, of course, he was.
“Ohhhh!” he moaned as he slammed his head on the table. His hands hung limp at his sides and his long legs were tucked under his chair. His head rolled to one side…only to face a steaming mug that had just been slammed down onto the table. Little drips of black coffee trickled down the sides of the cup.
“What?” he said meekly. “No cream? Aha, aha…” Even in his weakened state he could manage to whip out a wise crack and a soft laugh that sounded much like a dying hyena.
“Don’t start making jokes, Vash the Stampede!” snapped the woman who had put the mug down. She pulled out the chair across from the hung-over man so violently that it fell over. Her hair was short and dark blue in color, and a white coat hung loose about her body. She had on a white skirt with a matching top and light colored tights with a hint of purple. Her gold earrings were thing cylinders that almost reached her shoulders. She was small, both vertically and horizontally, but her no-nonsense attitude stretched on for miles. “You’re the one who decided to celebrate the birth of that little girl with seven rounds of whiskey. For the whole bar, no less! And then you had us pay for it all!”
“Don’t be so hard on him, Meryl. Poor Mr. Vash…” A second girl named Millie, sat down in the remaining seat at the table and began to eat a small ice-cream sundae. To the say the very least, she was almost the exact opposite of the first woman. She was just as tall as Meryl was short and the hair fell far past her broad shoulders was a light shade of brown. She had on pants that were slightly lighter than her hair, with a tan vest over her white shirt. Her traveler’s coat was a little greener than turquoise and it went down almost to her knees. Unlike her partner, she was very polite and soft-spoken, but her voice was so high-pitched that it could make anyone want to scream. The only similarity between the two was that she was also very slim.
“Would you two please stop shouting?” said Vash, putting his gloved hands over his ears. “You’re making my head hurt even more than it already did!” He groaned again and picked his head up off the table, as well as the coffee. He put the mug to his lips and took a big gulp. Oops…that was a mistake!
Vash’s face turned a bright red, almost as red as his coat. “YEEOWWW!!” he hollered as he spit out the coffee. It was almost as if steam would come bursting out of his ears and nostrils. “HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT!” He fanned his tongue violently with his hand and continued to chant the word. He grabbed the bowl that contained Millie’s sundae and swallowed what was left of it in one tremendous gulp.
Millie sighed and repeated, “Poor Mr. Vash…”
Meryl, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking something totally different. This was quite easy to understand, however, as coffee dripped from her hair and ran down her pink cheekbones. They were not pink, however, from heat or embarrassment, but from pure, unquestionable anger. “Grrr,” she growled as she clenched her fists. And then…“VASH!!”
The blue haired priest that entered the inn via its swinging doors found himself seeing a very bizarre sight. That is, as soon as he passed through the doors, he saw a short girl strangling a tall man in a red coat and another girl, just as tall as the man, circling them trying to figure out the right course of action to get her friend to stop her aggressive antics. Though this was an oddity to the rest of the people in the room, who were staring at the three as if they were complete lunatics, it brought no surprise to the man whatsoever.
As Millie circled her two friends, she spied the man in a midnight blue suit enter the inn. His nose was slightly large, as were his eyes, but neither could match the size of the smile implanted upon his face. A fag burned slowly to one side of his mouth, and he shuffled over to them with one hand waving enthusiastically in the air.
“Well, well, well!” he laughed as he approached them. “What did you do this time, Vash? Sexual harassment? Adultery? Rape? Murder in the first degree? Or, dare I say it…” He paused here and glanced at a very red Meryl, “…possibly try and kiss this fine young insurance girl?”
Vash (who was clutching madly at his throat) was still at a loss for breath, so Meryl allowed her hands to rest on her hips and huffed, “He was drinking again, no thanks to you!”
The priest looked falsely puzzled by now, so Millie added, “Remember last night when Darla and Michael gave birth to that little girl? Well, you were one of the first to know because you blessed her, and then you came here with that bottle of whisky to celebrate. And, well, let’s just say that Mr. Vash got carried away. Poor Mr. Vash…” She brightened up suddenly. “So, how has your morning been, Mr. Wolfwood?”
Wolfwood scratched the stubble on his beard thoughtfully. “I told him not to have more than a few shots.” He started laughing loudly and with his head thrown back said, “I knew you could never hold your liquor very well! And I thought I told you to call me Nicholas, Millie-baby?”
“Oh, yeah,” giggled the smiling brown-haired woman, placing a hand behind her head, “I forgot! Sorry, Mr. Wolfwood!”
The priest sighed and dropped his shoulders. “That’s all right…” Then, he stood straight up and his expression turned surprisingly serious. “Hey, did you guys hear about what happened to Sam Cloe?”
“Isn’t that the town’s blacksmith?” asked Vash. He was now sitting down at the table with his legs crossed. The coffee mug was at his lips and was, thankfully, no longer steaming. It appeared to the other three that he had suddenly gone from a crazy, hung-over traveler to a macho superhero. Which, in a way, he was.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood rolled his yes and said, “Nice of you to join us, Stampede. And I think you mean ‘wasn’t’ he the town’s blacksmith. He was found dead in his house this morning.” Meryl and Millie exchanged worried glances, while Vash set his coffee down on the table, perhaps a little harder than he had intended. “Dreadful sight, I hear,” continued the priest. “Apparently, his entire body had been mutilated! It wasn’t like he was cut up into little pieces or anything, but almost like someone had taken a knife and slashed it all across his clothes and skin. They say that his face looked like it was covered by a red spider web!”
“I heard that he had quit some sort of coven, cult thing and the other members killed him for quitting!” interjected one of the men sitting at the bar.
“No way, Bob! I heard that there was some sort of conspiracy against him for making bogus weapons or something,” said another.
“Well, I heard…”
Pretty soon, the whole bar was full of talk about the murder of Sam Cloe the Blacksmith. Each idea that the civilians came up with became weirder and weirder as time went on. Some said it was a planned death, others said it was an argument of some sort that had brewed between him and a drinking partner. Still others said that he and a friend had discovered a new kind of ecstasy that drove them both mad and they ended up killing each other.
Wolfwood put out his cigarette and immediately lit another one that he had produced from a pack in his pocket. After inhaling deeply, he sat on the edge of the table and said, “Whatever the cause or reason, one thing’s for sure: Same Cloe is as alive as the meat we buy from the butchers and it was no accident. Someone wanted him dead.”
Meryl stared into her cup of tea and Millie whispered, “That’s terrible.” Vash was on the verge of tears and his coffee was cold and forgotten. Rather odd, actually.
You see, Vash the Stampede was the most hunted for criminal on Planet Gunsmoke. He had a price on his head for $$60 billion. It was to everyone’s knowledge that he had blown up the city of July with one shot from an unknown sort of weapon, destroying everything. Many said that more innocent lives had been stolen that night than any other explosion or shoot-out had caused. The truth of the matter was that, though there had been a numerous number of injuries, not a single person had died.
Vash does not deny his being accused of such an attack. He does, however, claim that he had been forced into doing so by a person or force that he refuses to name. This, of course, leads some to believe even stronger in his guilt. And yet, still others have seen Vash for who he really is and they are incapable of even letting the thought of his dealing with July cross their minds. That is, unless the thought contains the question, “How can THIS man be that same man?”
And so, Vash sat in his chair at the little table in the inn and bar of the town of May, silent tears staining his face for a man that he had never known. It was common knowledge throughout the town by now that Sam Cloe the Blacksmith was dead. But, sadly, Vash was alone in mourning. Sam, though kind and generous, had a history of drinking problems and, therefore, his “friends” had all been drinking buddies who would only see his death as a sign to find another poor fool with money. Everyone else merely regrets that they have lost the only smith in town.
“How…how could s-someone do th-that?” stammered Vash. His nose was the color of a cherry and his eyes were puffy and swollen. “H-how could someone b-be so cruel!?” A loud ‘BANG’ echoed through the room as Vash stood up forcefully, making his chair topple to the ground. The customers at the inn became quiet and all eyes turned to him when he said, “I will solve the murder of Sam Cloe if it’s the last thing I do!”
Millie squeaked with glee. “That’s wonderful, Mr. Vash! Won’t everyone be surprised when they find out that Detective Vash the Stampede is on the…oops…”
If you could hear crickets chirping in the silence before, then you could hear a mouse fart now. Everyone’s eyes widened at the name “Vash the Stampede” and it was almost as if a single intake of breath went about the whole room. Vash the Stampede in the small town of May? Inconceivable! And yet, hadn’t a man guilty of nothing but forging items out of metals and drinking some whiskey just been murdered the night before? The day after the mysterious man with blond hair and a red coat had arrived in town with his three friends?
“Ahahahahahahahahaha!” laughed the tall man. “A real joker, isn’t she?” He smiled broadly at them all as he put a hand over Millie’s mouth and led her quickly out of the inn. They were followed moments later by Meryl and Wolfwood, who backed out, trying to assure the room that the man wasn’t actually Vash the Stampede, the man wanted for leaving an entire town in rubble.
As soon as they left, the talk arose and the rumors of the Humanoid Typhoon staying in the town of May began.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A/N: OW, MY HANDS HURT!! I really shouldn’t type this whole thing in one shot…ow! Anyway, I wrote this last summer and was going to enter it for a magazine, but vacation ended as soon as it had begun and I never managed to finish the final chapter. Regardless, I decided that I’d post it because the magazine that I was going to send it into “went under”, for lack of a better phrase. Oh well. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story. I don’t normally write this stuff, but I guess I had a sadistic urge when I began it. Go figure, huh?
Chapter One: To Gather
The first think that you have to do is make them believe that you’re innocent. Meander cautiously over to them and give them the idea that you’re a poor, lost soul. Be sweet and kind…suck up to them, if you will.
Continue until they offer you temporary shelter. Let them take you under their wing. But don’t be too quick to accept! Oh no; wouldn’t want them to think that you’re up to something. Make like you don’t want to be a burden; like you don’t want to be a hassle.
But, when they persist (which, I assure you, they will), give them your dearest thanks and follow them home. They’ll feed you, build you a sturdy fire and give you a nice place to rest for the night. Be gracious when they pamper you. You might as well get what you can out of them while their brains still provide their bodies with the necessary signal to move.
It’s when the lights go out and the sun sets that the real fun begins.
They’ll be resting their eyes after a final goodnight to you. They’ll feel happy and proud of themselves that they were able to helps such a small, weak wanderer from the cold desert night. It’s almost as if they’ve secured their spots among the stars when their hourglass finally runs out of sand. It’s almost amusing. That is, the fact that the final grains of their time are almost used up and they wasted them on someone else.
Be quiet when you sneak up on them. The most crucial part of the plan requires them not knowing that you are there. Slip ups are not tolerated in this line of work. If you aren’t sly, devious, cunning and have feet that can walk on air, then you should change your job and fast. No one likes a sloppy murderer.
So, you get to the point where you can see their chests rising and falling slowly as they slumber. The quiet sound of breathing confirms that a deep sleep has taken over their body. Once this is certain to you, the rest is quite simple.
Draw your hand back and slash across the throat. Make sure you hit a vain; the faster they bleed to death, the better. Continue cutting them until you are positive they live no more and their body is completely mutilated. So much, perhaps, that no one will be able to identify it. The dead man lying in bed could be the owner of the house, or a complete stranger who broke in during the night. Only you can confirm.
And that, my friends, is just one method that I use to commit a perfect murder.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The man sitting at the table in the corner of the inn’s bar looked completely dreadful. His blond hair was mussed and hung down into his pure green eyes that had lost their usual cheerful glow. Huge rings under them made him look ten years older than he really was. His skin was a pale white that made him look sickened. Which, of course, he was.
“Ohhhh!” he moaned as he slammed his head on the table. His hands hung limp at his sides and his long legs were tucked under his chair. His head rolled to one side…only to face a steaming mug that had just been slammed down onto the table. Little drips of black coffee trickled down the sides of the cup.
“What?” he said meekly. “No cream? Aha, aha…” Even in his weakened state he could manage to whip out a wise crack and a soft laugh that sounded much like a dying hyena.
“Don’t start making jokes, Vash the Stampede!” snapped the woman who had put the mug down. She pulled out the chair across from the hung-over man so violently that it fell over. Her hair was short and dark blue in color, and a white coat hung loose about her body. She had on a white skirt with a matching top and light colored tights with a hint of purple. Her gold earrings were thing cylinders that almost reached her shoulders. She was small, both vertically and horizontally, but her no-nonsense attitude stretched on for miles. “You’re the one who decided to celebrate the birth of that little girl with seven rounds of whiskey. For the whole bar, no less! And then you had us pay for it all!”
“Don’t be so hard on him, Meryl. Poor Mr. Vash…” A second girl named Millie, sat down in the remaining seat at the table and began to eat a small ice-cream sundae. To the say the very least, she was almost the exact opposite of the first woman. She was just as tall as Meryl was short and the hair fell far past her broad shoulders was a light shade of brown. She had on pants that were slightly lighter than her hair, with a tan vest over her white shirt. Her traveler’s coat was a little greener than turquoise and it went down almost to her knees. Unlike her partner, she was very polite and soft-spoken, but her voice was so high-pitched that it could make anyone want to scream. The only similarity between the two was that she was also very slim.
“Would you two please stop shouting?” said Vash, putting his gloved hands over his ears. “You’re making my head hurt even more than it already did!” He groaned again and picked his head up off the table, as well as the coffee. He put the mug to his lips and took a big gulp. Oops…that was a mistake!
Vash’s face turned a bright red, almost as red as his coat. “YEEOWWW!!” he hollered as he spit out the coffee. It was almost as if steam would come bursting out of his ears and nostrils. “HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT!” He fanned his tongue violently with his hand and continued to chant the word. He grabbed the bowl that contained Millie’s sundae and swallowed what was left of it in one tremendous gulp.
Millie sighed and repeated, “Poor Mr. Vash…”
Meryl, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking something totally different. This was quite easy to understand, however, as coffee dripped from her hair and ran down her pink cheekbones. They were not pink, however, from heat or embarrassment, but from pure, unquestionable anger. “Grrr,” she growled as she clenched her fists. And then…“VASH!!”
The blue haired priest that entered the inn via its swinging doors found himself seeing a very bizarre sight. That is, as soon as he passed through the doors, he saw a short girl strangling a tall man in a red coat and another girl, just as tall as the man, circling them trying to figure out the right course of action to get her friend to stop her aggressive antics. Though this was an oddity to the rest of the people in the room, who were staring at the three as if they were complete lunatics, it brought no surprise to the man whatsoever.
As Millie circled her two friends, she spied the man in a midnight blue suit enter the inn. His nose was slightly large, as were his eyes, but neither could match the size of the smile implanted upon his face. A fag burned slowly to one side of his mouth, and he shuffled over to them with one hand waving enthusiastically in the air.
“Well, well, well!” he laughed as he approached them. “What did you do this time, Vash? Sexual harassment? Adultery? Rape? Murder in the first degree? Or, dare I say it…” He paused here and glanced at a very red Meryl, “…possibly try and kiss this fine young insurance girl?”
Vash (who was clutching madly at his throat) was still at a loss for breath, so Meryl allowed her hands to rest on her hips and huffed, “He was drinking again, no thanks to you!”
The priest looked falsely puzzled by now, so Millie added, “Remember last night when Darla and Michael gave birth to that little girl? Well, you were one of the first to know because you blessed her, and then you came here with that bottle of whisky to celebrate. And, well, let’s just say that Mr. Vash got carried away. Poor Mr. Vash…” She brightened up suddenly. “So, how has your morning been, Mr. Wolfwood?”
Wolfwood scratched the stubble on his beard thoughtfully. “I told him not to have more than a few shots.” He started laughing loudly and with his head thrown back said, “I knew you could never hold your liquor very well! And I thought I told you to call me Nicholas, Millie-baby?”
“Oh, yeah,” giggled the smiling brown-haired woman, placing a hand behind her head, “I forgot! Sorry, Mr. Wolfwood!”
The priest sighed and dropped his shoulders. “That’s all right…” Then, he stood straight up and his expression turned surprisingly serious. “Hey, did you guys hear about what happened to Sam Cloe?”
“Isn’t that the town’s blacksmith?” asked Vash. He was now sitting down at the table with his legs crossed. The coffee mug was at his lips and was, thankfully, no longer steaming. It appeared to the other three that he had suddenly gone from a crazy, hung-over traveler to a macho superhero. Which, in a way, he was.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood rolled his yes and said, “Nice of you to join us, Stampede. And I think you mean ‘wasn’t’ he the town’s blacksmith. He was found dead in his house this morning.” Meryl and Millie exchanged worried glances, while Vash set his coffee down on the table, perhaps a little harder than he had intended. “Dreadful sight, I hear,” continued the priest. “Apparently, his entire body had been mutilated! It wasn’t like he was cut up into little pieces or anything, but almost like someone had taken a knife and slashed it all across his clothes and skin. They say that his face looked like it was covered by a red spider web!”
“I heard that he had quit some sort of coven, cult thing and the other members killed him for quitting!” interjected one of the men sitting at the bar.
“No way, Bob! I heard that there was some sort of conspiracy against him for making bogus weapons or something,” said another.
“Well, I heard…”
Pretty soon, the whole bar was full of talk about the murder of Sam Cloe the Blacksmith. Each idea that the civilians came up with became weirder and weirder as time went on. Some said it was a planned death, others said it was an argument of some sort that had brewed between him and a drinking partner. Still others said that he and a friend had discovered a new kind of ecstasy that drove them both mad and they ended up killing each other.
Wolfwood put out his cigarette and immediately lit another one that he had produced from a pack in his pocket. After inhaling deeply, he sat on the edge of the table and said, “Whatever the cause or reason, one thing’s for sure: Same Cloe is as alive as the meat we buy from the butchers and it was no accident. Someone wanted him dead.”
Meryl stared into her cup of tea and Millie whispered, “That’s terrible.” Vash was on the verge of tears and his coffee was cold and forgotten. Rather odd, actually.
You see, Vash the Stampede was the most hunted for criminal on Planet Gunsmoke. He had a price on his head for $$60 billion. It was to everyone’s knowledge that he had blown up the city of July with one shot from an unknown sort of weapon, destroying everything. Many said that more innocent lives had been stolen that night than any other explosion or shoot-out had caused. The truth of the matter was that, though there had been a numerous number of injuries, not a single person had died.
Vash does not deny his being accused of such an attack. He does, however, claim that he had been forced into doing so by a person or force that he refuses to name. This, of course, leads some to believe even stronger in his guilt. And yet, still others have seen Vash for who he really is and they are incapable of even letting the thought of his dealing with July cross their minds. That is, unless the thought contains the question, “How can THIS man be that same man?”
And so, Vash sat in his chair at the little table in the inn and bar of the town of May, silent tears staining his face for a man that he had never known. It was common knowledge throughout the town by now that Sam Cloe the Blacksmith was dead. But, sadly, Vash was alone in mourning. Sam, though kind and generous, had a history of drinking problems and, therefore, his “friends” had all been drinking buddies who would only see his death as a sign to find another poor fool with money. Everyone else merely regrets that they have lost the only smith in town.
“How…how could s-someone do th-that?” stammered Vash. His nose was the color of a cherry and his eyes were puffy and swollen. “H-how could someone b-be so cruel!?” A loud ‘BANG’ echoed through the room as Vash stood up forcefully, making his chair topple to the ground. The customers at the inn became quiet and all eyes turned to him when he said, “I will solve the murder of Sam Cloe if it’s the last thing I do!”
Millie squeaked with glee. “That’s wonderful, Mr. Vash! Won’t everyone be surprised when they find out that Detective Vash the Stampede is on the…oops…”
If you could hear crickets chirping in the silence before, then you could hear a mouse fart now. Everyone’s eyes widened at the name “Vash the Stampede” and it was almost as if a single intake of breath went about the whole room. Vash the Stampede in the small town of May? Inconceivable! And yet, hadn’t a man guilty of nothing but forging items out of metals and drinking some whiskey just been murdered the night before? The day after the mysterious man with blond hair and a red coat had arrived in town with his three friends?
“Ahahahahahahahahaha!” laughed the tall man. “A real joker, isn’t she?” He smiled broadly at them all as he put a hand over Millie’s mouth and led her quickly out of the inn. They were followed moments later by Meryl and Wolfwood, who backed out, trying to assure the room that the man wasn’t actually Vash the Stampede, the man wanted for leaving an entire town in rubble.
As soon as they left, the talk arose and the rumors of the Humanoid Typhoon staying in the town of May began.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A/N: OW, MY HANDS HURT!! I really shouldn’t type this whole thing in one shot…ow! Anyway, I wrote this last summer and was going to enter it for a magazine, but vacation ended as soon as it had begun and I never managed to finish the final chapter. Regardless, I decided that I’d post it because the magazine that I was going to send it into “went under”, for lack of a better phrase. Oh well. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story. I don’t normally write this stuff, but I guess I had a sadistic urge when I began it. Go figure, huh?