Disclaimer: Not mine. No money. Please don't sue.

Anime-verse only. This is set ten months after my previous Trigun fic, Compromise. It was supposed to be a oneshot, but then I got a little email in my inbox containing the cutest little fluffy plotbunny you ever saw! This is a direct sequel to the first story, so I suggest you catch it first before starting this one.

- - -

Ten Months Later

It felt like convulsing, like dry heaving. A need to expunge without the satisfaction of feeling anything go. His muscles writhed and his mouth was stretched wide, but not even sound could be emitted. The cool, curved surface beneath him didn't conform to any comfortable position, no matter where he tried to move. His position within wasn't limited; the wires and tubes were on retractors, to give him run of the entire container without fear of catching or tangling in them.

When his body stopped moving and relinquished control back to him he stirred, his chest heaving and his body slicked with exertion and fluids. It was almost too cold; though he wasn't certain how to make it any warmer he knew, desperately, that he wanted to. Sometimes his body would tremble all over for a time, and it seemed to help.

But now his body was far too tired. It was almost too tired to even move.

His head rolled to the side, and he stared at the gentle curves of his world. Light was dispersed through the walls, making whatever was outside seem diluted and translucent. Sometimes he could make out shapes that looked a little like him. Sometimes the amount of light changed. There didn't seem to be a pattern to either, but he kept watching because it occupied his time.

He felt a twinge, deep within his stomach, the same twinge he always felt when he thought about time. It seemed to him as though time was critical, time was something that made him anxious, but he couldn't fathom why. Time was simply a measurement of his existence, and tracking that existence didn't seem to have purpose. He existed within his rounded, sloped world.

And that was all.

One of his tubes began to change colors, as they often did, and he watched the new shade slide from the ceiling, a deeper pink than it had been before. It collided with the lighter pink; they fought and intermingled and all the while the tube became more and more rose until finally the darker color had won, and rushed to meet him. His mottled arm rarely reacted or changed colors to match the tubes, but this time it seemed to flush slightly, and for the first time he felt heat.

He wondered why he had wanted to be warm. Because if this was heat, it was unpleasant and painful. He felt his mouth open again, but his body struggled equally to produce sound and suppress it. He curled his body around the limb, wishing he had another one like it on the other side. If he had, he could wrap them both up together and the cool of the one could mix and mingle with the searing of the other.

Instead, he had to make due with his legs, folding them up and pinning his burning arm between them and his chest.

It didn't make the hurt go away. His chest started to heat, and he closed his eyes and waited for the darker pink to go away.

- . -

The familiar feel of the paper brought a smile to her face, and she rubbed it between her fingers thoughtfully before she broke the old-fashioned wax seal and opened the thrice-folded letter. She always read them twice, first at a lightning pace to get all the information as quickly as possible, then she'd start again, very slowly, savoring every word.

If Meryl cared, she'd probably think Millie did that because she was afraid of bad news.

But she didn't care. It wasn't her letter.

He didn't send her letters.

He sent Millie letters.

And she sent letters back.

Meryl did her best to ignore her partner, focusing instead on the cross-stitch in her lap. They'd finally hit a city with a loom, and she'd managed to buy thread in an unheard-of seventy shades. It had cost her almost a month's wages, but it was well worth it. Even if what she made wasn't any good, it would still sell for at least a hundred double-dollars.

She kept that thought firmly in mind as Millie sighed, hmmed, giggled, and clucked her tongue at the odd paper in her hands. It was thicker than the stuff Bernardelli used for memos and reports – it was probably made out of real wood. She tried not to think on the irony of a Plant killing a plant to save a Plant.

It just made her angrier.

She flicked the needle through the base fabric, shifting the hoop in her lap to make it a little easier to see. The suns were just starting to touch the horizon, so there was plenty of light coming through the tinted window, but it seemed that the later into the week it got, no matter how much light there was, it was harder for her to see the fine stitching.

His letters always came at the end of the week. And hers always went out at the beginning.

Millie sighed wistfully and the odd paper hissed as she separated the blank sheet from the inked one. Again, if Meryl ever thought about it, she'd figure that that was how Knives was able to tell whether the letter really came from Millie, or it came from another human.

But she didn't think about that, either. No one else was going to write a letter to Vash the Stampede. Certainly not her.

"Sempai –"

"I don't care, Millie," she snapped, and their usual late-week ritual began again.

"Of course you do!" Millie babbled without heat. "Vash is two cities behind us! He's asked us not to make him out as such a dangerous man. He said that when he walked into the Mayor of New Oregon's office, the poor man actually started crying!"

Meryl made a dismissive noise.

"I always liked the Mayor of New Oregon . . ." She trailed off. "Oh! And Mr. Knives is making headway with the terraforming – three square iles already! Can't you just imagine how beautiful it must be?"

Yes, all that green grass floating on the blood of a thousand disemboweled humans. It must be lovely. Meryl clamped her teeth around her tongue and said nothing.

"Three of the other Plants are helping him, but the one from Warrens – she picked Aliya as her name, isn't it beautiful? – is still recovering from the extraction process, and she's still not too sure about them. He says that she reminds him of me! Isn't that an odd thing to say?"

Meryl pictured herself shoving Millie into a giant bulb, and standing outside it in the dark as nothing happened.

"Elizabeth has figured out a way to put the energy gathered by the solar panels into the old Plant hardware without the need for massive modifications, so they've cut down on the pre-production time by more than half! We'll have to be sure to add that to our documentation when we go to Inepral City tomorrow. Isn't that great news?"

Meryl finally looked away from her work, eyes not on Millie but her typewriter. "That's just great, Millie. I just got finished typing up the five copies we needed to hand out an hour ago. Now I have to redo all of them."

"I'll do it!" Millie flounced out of the chair, almost flying over to the typewriter even as Meryl struggled to get her legs out from under her. Lately she'd found the most comfortable position was to sit on one folded leg, but she'd been cross-stitching so long it had fallen asleep.

She blew some dark bangs out of her face in irritation. Okay, so she'd typed them up at noon. And she'd known full well that any news on the production of the solar-based plants Elizabeth, Vash, and Knives had cooked up would be in the letter tonight. She'd expected that they'd made some headway, since apparently just two weeks ago the broom-headed idiot had stumbled across the partial wreckage of a SEEDs ship with schematics for an ancient technology. Of course, ancient Lost Technology was revolutionary to the dry space rock known as Gunsmoke, so the historical engineer's files – the engineer himself having been killed in the Great Fall – had apparently been the most exciting find ever in the universe.

Millie had already started clacking away at the typewriter, but Meryl set aside the cross-stitch hoop and rubbed her temples in irritation, straightening her legs in an effort to get circulation back. There was no point in doing any more work tonight. It would be dark soon enough, and they had an early steamer to catch.

So now they had a way to work the panels into the main Plant hardware, which negated the necessity of the two week demolition and reorganization process. Considering Knives' stipulation that the Plants had to be freed the moment the 'upgrade' began, this would be welcome news indeed. New Phoenix, a relatively small city to have its own Plant, was currently preparing for their offline time thanks to them. The town had been oddly cooperative, however, considering they would be without power – and the ability to generate water, food, and other goods – for two weeks. All the cities were allowed a week to stockpile, and this one was nearing the end of that time. They still had power and the ability to generate anything they needed, but already the quiet peace of the city was being challenged.

Inepral City was, for the first time, not a place she was looking forward to visiting. It was by far the largest settlement they'd even attempted, with four Plants. Two of them were specialized. In their case, several solar plants would need to be constructed, and currently there weren't enough available advanced teams to even get the preparations done. But they'd be much more receptive to the project if it meant a week or less of downtime.

And, in the end, it wasn't as though they really had a choice.

Hondelic had been proof of that.

It was the first and last time she'd seen Vash since he'd left with Knives.

And it was definitely the last time she ever wanted to.

He'd been almost unrecognizable. She'd forgotten, following him as long as she had, that he was truly capable of living up to his ill-earned title. She hadn't forgotten that he could be intimidating if he had to, but –

He hadn't killed. She didn't know if it made her feel better or worse, but it was worth noting. He'd explained very concisely what he was going to do, and then he'd done it.

That was the second Plant he'd freed, but as far as the rest of Gunsmoke was concerned, it was the only one of note. It made her job a joke, more or less – no one dared deny him. Not after that.

Inepral City had all but signed their new contract with Bernardelli, new techniques or not. The solar plants were only meant as a temporary fix for the lack of Plant, but they were turning out to work more efficiently than anyone had dared hope. Fusion reactors were well on their way, something to do with the oxide coating on the silica-rich sand growing much faster under two suns than one, but the hardware and sheer materials necessary to build those reactors were a few years from being marketable.

That was the hurdle they were accustomed to having to navigate as they negotiated the new contracts. The fact that there was going to be a large lag between the removal of the Plant and the introduction of a renewable power source that could produce the same amount of energy.

Cutting that time in half, after only four Plant replacements, showed significant progress. They could put a hell of a spin on this.

Not that it mattered. Not that Chief gave a damn, as long as they kept to their schedule and made sure they got to the cities before Vash the Stampede did.

Meryl rubbed her temples harder, trying to squish the thoughts into oblivion. Millie, still cheerfully clattering away on the typewriter, was not helping. She tended to do her typing in spurts, so that there would a pause before a violent flurry of noise. It was nothing like the rhythmic, almost measured pattering in the office, and it was slowly driving her crazy.

No, scratch that; it was quickly driving her crazy.

"Stop, Millie," she heard herself snap, again without really meaning to. "I'll do it. You might as well write your letter back. We have to leave very early in the morning, and we both need to be at our best when we reach Inepral City. We can't have you droopy-eyed and yawning like you were in Warrens. It was just embarrassing."

"Okay, sempai. Thanks!" Meryl stood, limping slightly on her still-tingling leg, and waited for Millie to almost apologetically gather up her favorite pen and the special paper before taking her seat at the desk.

Typos. She yanked the ruined page out of the typewriter, crumpling it and tossing it at the trashcan. If Millie noticed her sourer than usual mood, she said nothing. She curled up on the odd, two-person sofa in their hotel room and started scribbling.

It wasn't fair to call it scribbling, Meryl chided herself, feeling guilty but not apologizing. Millie had some of the most beautiful, flowing handwriting she'd ever seen. It was almost like artwork. When Millie would be in the middle of the Millie Monthly, when they couldn't afford separate rooms, she'd sometimes lay facing the other girl, eyes half-lidded and watching the way her delicate wrists flicked, the way the pen traveled across the page as though it were drawing out the very path the letter would later take to eventually get to her big little sister and little little brother.

And now it was drawing out the magical path that would take that letter to a place where no human, not even Millie, was allowed to go. How the hell the letters got from the nearest town to the Plants' domain was something Millie either didn't know or was sworn not to tell. Then again, Meryl had never really pressed her for the information, just mentioning it in grumbles now and then.

After all, she thought, jamming a new, thin, dingy white piece of paper into her cherished typewriter, she didn't care. It wasn't as though she'd send that creep a letter, even if his psychopathic murdering twin of a brother would actually let him read it.

He hadn't even said goodbye.

And she didn't see a need to. Not anymore. Not after so many months.

He didn't even ask about her. Millie would tell her if he asked about her in his letters, and she'd never mentioned it. Not once.

Not that she'd read them, even when Millie offered. Not that Millie offered, anymore. No matter how she allowed the insults and churlish behavior to bounce off her, Millie wasn't completely blind to how much this arrangement had hurt her. Clearly the taller girl had come to the conclusion that it would be easier on everyone if she just passed on the pertinent information and kept the rest of the letter's contents to herself.

And she'd come to the conclusion that it was much better for everyone if she just didn't care.

And so she didn't.

Dammit.

- . -

Millie tried not to appear to be paying attention, and after a long pause and a series of deep breaths, the steady, soothing clatter of metal hammers on ink ribbon broke the oppressive silence. She hid a little smile, and relaxed into the couch. She'd carried her Bernadelli insurance form handbook over from the desk, and she placed it on the overstuffed armrest, smoothing the blank page of paper down on the hard cover before picking up her pen.

Mr Vash,

It was good to hear from you! I'm glad that the pre-production time has been cut; Elizabeth's teams were falling behind our schedule, and I think it's going to be two days before the advance preparation team here will be able to follow us to Inepral City. We're taking the sand steamer out tomorrow, so I'll have to be sure to put this in the mail tonight, otherwise it'll be late arriving and I know how much I like getting your letters, so I hope you like getting mine just the same!

Tell Elizabeth thank you for the job offers, but I think we'll have to pass. I would love an engineering position eventually, but for now we have our work cut out for us renegotiating all the Bernardelli contracts. We're meeting less resistance now, I think partly due to all your hard work getting the solar plants to work so well! And eventually we'll run out of cities with Plants, and then all the contracts will be renegotiated so I won't have much to do, and there will be the fusion reactors to build, so of course then I'd be happy to help.

Meryl also says thank you, but she feels the same way I do – we have a lot of work to do and I just don't think Sempai trusts it to anyone else. She's just started taking up cross-stitch again, and she won't let me see what she's sewing. I bet it's a landscape; she bought so many colors of thread that I just don't think it could be anything else. As soon as it's finished I'll try to sneak a picture of it to you.

My family is great – thank you for asking! The panels you sent them have been installed, although Big Little Brother fell off the roof and had to take it easy for a few days afterwards. They said they're working wonderfully, and they even have hot running water now! Little Little Sister loves using the hot tap to make her tea at night. She doesn't understand how boiling water could just come out without using the stove! They've tried to explain it to her, but Big Big Brother once told her it was magic and for some reason that stuck.

Well, that's all for now. I'm sure I'll have lots to tell you about Inepral City as soon as we arrive, so I'll be sure to ask for an extra piece of paper, just in case! Take care, and don't worry about hurrying. Sempai is pretty sure the city council in Inepral City will try to stall for a little while, which should make all the schedules line right back up again. Well, I guess it's good night, then! Sleep well.

Millie

Mr Knives,

Thank you for sending this letter on to me. I'm glad to hear that your terraforming is going so well! Three square iles already! It sounds really beautiful – I hope it's exactly what you always pictured. It's nice that your sisters are helping out. Had they ever seen grass before? I'm sure Aliya will warm right up as soon as she feels better. I know that your sisters don't have the same needs to sleep and eat as we humans do, but my mother always felt that a nice cup of tea was a wonderful way to relax. My family is using the solar panels you sent us in part to help the garden, and they're growing several kinds of teas. If you'd like, I'd be happy to include some of the leaves when the crop comes in, so you and Mr. Vash and your sisters can try out several kinds and pick your favorites!

It's late, and I want to make sure that this letter gets to you and Mr. Vash on time, so I'm going to wrap it up for now. If it's not too much trouble, can you include another piece of paper in the next letter? I've tried to make my handwriting smaller so I don't waste this beautiful paper, but I'm afraid if I make it much smaller the head of the pen will be too big in comparison and the words will start to run together. If you can't, I completely understand! We're about to take a sand steamer to Inepral City, and it's such a big and wonderful place, I'm sure we'll have all kinds of interesting things to tell you and your brother about next week!

Thank you again for passing these letters back and forth, and please let me know what kinds of tea you and your family would like to try.

Millie

She grinned at the letter, waiting for the absorptive paper to completely draw in the ink before she carefully folded it along the lines already pressed into the page. Mr. Knives hadn't ever once responded to her, though apparently he spoke – or thought – responses at Mr. Vash, because he always included them. Then again, Mr. Vash could be doing the same thing she was doing with Meryl, and taking his best guess. Either way, she was certain that Mr. Knives carefully read the correspondences before he forwarded them on to his brother.

Maybe not now, though. Maybe he was starting to trust Mr. Vash again. That would be nice, if they could start to trust one another like they must have when they were little boys.

Of course, that trust would never extend to her. Not in her lifetime. Compared to how long they had lived, the best she could hope for was that her care would create a road for other humans to walk, long after she had passed on. It was enough for her to express honest concern and caring, and know that even if he didn't believe her, and it was for all the wrong reasons, he was reading.

It was more credit than she could give Meryl.

But that wasn't fair. Sempai was hurting very much, and every time she'd offered a letter and Meryl had refused, it had seemed like a little more of her was breaking. It wasn't as though Meryl was not allowed to read Mr. Vash's letters – Knives had never said she couldn't. He'd simply said only Millie was allowed to communicate directly with his brother, and Mr. Vash had confirmed that request. She knew why, and she knew Meryl understood why.

She also understood that it didn't help.

It had been almost ten months since Knives and Vash had left, to free their sisters and build their Eden. It might as well have been ten years – time didn't seem to wear on grief like everyone said. Her own was still fresh and hot in her heart, and seeing Meryl so sad only made her own pain worse. At least she had known that he loved her back.

Her Mr. Priest. Her Nicholas D. Wolfwood. At least she'd had the chance to explain to him, to show him that she cared. At least he'd gotten the chance to respond. Even if he had been snatched from her the very next morning, at least they'd had those precious, precious hours.

In a way, she'd gotten her goodbye. It didn't help yet, but she was sure someday it would.

Meryl hadn't gotten her chance. She'd had all the opportunities she could ever have wanted, but she hadn't taken any of them. And now it didn't look like there'd be many more, not anytime soon.

She knew that Mr. Vash had a very fine line to walk, that Mr. Knives was still afraid of betrayal. But she also knew that eventually, Mr. Vash would win his brother's trust. When that happened, he would be able to talk to Meryl again. They couldn't be together, in the traditional sense – Mr. Knives would never allow it. And after what she'd seen in the few cities they'd already visited, she wouldn't be surprised if even the thought of a human walking beside them disgusted the freed Plants.

There was a lot of pain, a lot of hurt. A lot of wrong. It would take a long time for all the wounds to close over, for the pain to abate. It wouldn't happen overnight. But it would happen.

They just had to be patient.

Millie tucked the letter back into the envelope, glancing around the room for the lighter. She found it where she'd left it, winking at her with the last of the sun's rays on the windowsill. It only took a few seconds for that flame to soften the crimson wax that had previously bound the letter closed, and she resealed it exactly the way Mr. Vash had shown her.

She didn't wonder at it; she knew well why she had to use Nicholas' lighter, and it had to be done this way. There was also the matter of the powder on the paper, the thickness of it. She wasn't sure whether it absorbed her sweat and thus confirmed her identity with genetic material, or it somehow reacted to the ink in the pens he'd given her.

Maybe it was something darker than that. She didn't think so, but every once in a while she was too trusting and she didn't want this to be one of those times.

She knew Mr. Vash would never hurt her, but she had already thought of the loophole she was sure he must have realized Knives had put into their agreement. She'd negotiated too many insurance contracts to have missed it.

She was the only human Mr. Vash was allowed to directly communicate with. When Mr. Knives determined the project had been completed, or completed enough, the easiest way to sever that communication to the humans without violating Mr. Vash's trust would be to kill her.

And the only way to prevent that was to give Mr. Knives a reason not to do it. Even if that reason was nothing more than homegrown Ceylon tea, or the fact that stories of her Little Little Brother and Little Big Sister made Mr. Vash smile. Even if she could never convince him to let Mr. Vash write letters to Meryl, at the very least she could not get killed. She wasn't sure Meryl could survive losing another loved one.

The wax cooled slowly, the air was still hot though the twin suns had finally, reluctantly sunk below the horizon. The ratcheting of the typewriter told her that Meryl had finished re-writing the first report. The other four would go much faster as she simply copied the first. Meryl'd probably be done with them before she could get back from the post.

"I'm going to mail this letter," she chirped, not surprised when Meryl didn't respond. There wasn't even a hesitation in the typing. "Do you need anything while I'm out?"

Meryl muttered something that might have been "A new life" or "A Mr. Stryfe" or "A big knife" or even "A chocolate pudding." It was too low to tell. She chose not to repeat any of the things she thought she might have heard, and just hesitated a second by the door before heading through, closing it gently behind her.

She waited by the closed door a moment more, but the steady typing continued, and with a sad frown, she headed down the hall of their hotel.

- . -

She barely gave the man a glance, accepting the strip of paper he offered her without looking at it. Her eyes and her brain were trained on the meters in front of her.

They were not cooperating.

"Try releasing the fifth coupling."

John didn't so much as twitch one of his massive shoulders. "It will reduce the amount of resistance, but it'll also-"

"Do it."

"No."

She smiled sweetly, hoping he could see her reflection in the glass of the monitor. "I know exactly what it will do, John. Disobey me again and you're off the project."

The control room, nestled deep in the facility, looked slightly green in the dusk. Power was flowing to the countless screens and machines steadily, but they shouldn't be seeing drops in the batteries this quickly. The suns had barely set an hour ago. They shouldn't have noted the power dip for hours. She knew the moonlight would help, since luckily all five moons would be visible for the next week or so, but they needed to find the bleed and clip it off.

And dropping the fifth coupling would tell her if it were anywhere along the first six couplings.

If it was, it meant no solar power to the control room or anywhere else until they manually re-engaged the coupling. Which would take hours, and be extremely dangerous.

Luckily, that was not her job. And it wasn't John's job, either.

This apparently occurred to him, because after a huff he entered the proper key combination.

The control room was fairly sturdily built, probably to survive if one of the Plants ever powered up out of control and blew. Not that she was sure it would have withstood it, and she was certain it wouldn't now. It was very odd to hear any outside sounds through the glass, however, so she almost jumped when she actually heard the distant ka-thunk that signaled the releasing coupling.

And, as that deafening noise would have indicated, there had been the energy leak.

There was the very distant sound of an explosion, and the room was plunged into a blue darkness. Not so much as a single LED retained power more than a few seconds.

"Out of fifty-two couplings, how did you know it was number five?"

She felt herself grin in the darkness, and leaned over his huge frame to input her password. Nothing.

"I've been workingwith Plants for a long time," she said softly. And while channeling the energy a solar panel could collect through the Plant technology was absolutely not what the original engineers had had in mind, it worked surprisingly well. Most of the same management software could at least monitor the type of energy produced and the levels, even if they were far below what a Plant should be generating. And it had been a bonus that they could use the same hardware to modify that energy into the production generators. They could generate water with sunlight. Not finished goods, and not food, but at least water.

With enough water, they could eventually terraform this sandy stone in the universe, and producing food out of energy would be as distant as the thought of growing it was now.

"Lefferts!"

They needed to get the backup generator on-line. Obviously three successful conversions had made them all a little over-confident.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Did you ever find out where that broom-head went?"

Not that his presence would have changed anything. It wasn't like Vash could magically force the cracks in a coupling to vanish. Well, she supposed he could always melt the thing to slag, but it wouldn't actually help. He usually split for his secret desert base as soon as he'd extracted the resident Plant, but he also usually returned the day after that. She was almost certain she'd seen him in town a few days ago, so she knew he was back.

Unless he'd gone on ahead to Collins? She really needed him to wait for this team, since Collins had a GeoPlant and slightly different systems –

Or maybe he was goofing off in town, stuffing himself full of donuts and playing in the street like a child. Hopefully he'd had the sense to ditch the coat, considering his old reputation was coming back with a vengeance and it was only a matter of time before someone else came after him.

Though, thanks to Bernardelli, it wasn't like the federal government would pay anyone the bounty. He was a force of Nature, all right. The kind that forced you to the restroom after eating bad salmon sandwiches.

"Y-Yes, ma'am!"

She rolled her eyes, waiting for them to become adjusted to the darkness and moonlight. "And?"

"I gave you the message, ma'am!"

Oh. She rubbed her fingers together, the forgotten slip of paper still between them.

"And I can't very well read it right now, can I?"

"Oh! Of course not, ma'am! The Bluestar Hotel said that Eriks Saverem checked out three nights ago."

She frowned at the darkness, and her team chose at that moment to kick the backup generators on-line. The green of the monitors flicked up first, followed by the overhead lights, and found her standing there, staring at the slip of paper.

It said the same thing.

Checked out? Without telling her?

Did that mean he'd already headed on to Collins, or that he was just hiding until their team finished up here? That coupling was going to take all night to replace, and then they'd need to remain an extra day to ensure the batteries took the charge properly. They were supposed to be in Collins tomorrow, but now it just didn't look like it was going to happen.

Trust that adult child to hide when she actually had something important to tell him.

"Slacker," Elizabeth grumbled, then turned back around to John. Despite his massive size, he was a fairly gentle man, and his stony face looked as though it was melting slightly into concern.

"Send down the specs. We need to get that coupling replaced. Lefferts, send a message on to Collins, addressed to Eriks Saverem. Tell him we're going to be a little late."

- . -

Meryl Stryfe glanced at the window again.

She glanced down at the book in her hands.

She glanced at the clock.

She glanced at the window again.

This was getting ridiculous.

"Dammit!" she swore aloud, flinging the light sheet off her bare legs and slamming the book down on the lumpy mattress. It was over an hour since Millie had left. It didn't take that long to mail a damn letter, and even if Millie had decided for some stupid reason to go to bar and buy a beer, usually it was just one to help her sleep. She should have been back.

But no. She was probably sitting in a bar, drowning herself. She hadn't drunk to that extent since – since he died. It was probably time.

Meryl kicked herself for the thought, yanking off her nightshirt and tossing it onto the rumpled sheets behind her. Her clothes were laid out for the morning, so she slipped into her uniform as quickly as possible, grabbing her cloak on the way out the door. She didn't expect trouble, but given how flighty the town was getting as their deadline neared . . . and Millie hadn't taken her weapon. It was still propped up in the corner where she'd left it.

Then again, she might be carrying a pair of Wolfwood's pistols. Meryl hadn't asked, and Millie hadn't volunteered, but the last time they'd accidentally collided she'd definitely felt something hard on the other girl's hip.

Of course, she'd been a little more distracted by the massive, swine-shaped man that had caused the 'colliding.' There hadn't been a need for Millie to draw, so she'd never figured out what the hard object had been. Hadn't really thought about it much.

Should have. She should have expected things to get hairy. After all, Vash the Stampede, the Humanoid Typhoon, was only two cities behind. Trouble was starting to run from him, sometimes arriving before he did.

Meryl trotted down the long hallway, taking the stairs two at a time. There were half a dozen bars in town, at least, and that wasn't counting the mom and pop places that weren't exactly labeled. She'd barely have time to get the other girl sober before they were supposed to be on that sand steamer.

Dammit!

Once outside, it was obvious that the tone of the town was changing. There was less laughter, and what could be heard was tight and not the kind that expressed amusement. Mothers held their little ones in a death grip, openly watching tall shadows that slunk from building to building. A pair of old men, the kind every one of the towns of Gunsmoke seemed to have, creaked softly on their rocking chairs. They'd probably seen which way Millie had headed, and probably would be happy to tell her – for a price. She considered it for a few seconds before dismissing the thought with a shake of her head.

She wasn't in the mood to be social this evening. She just wanted Millie back and in bed. She couldn't do any more work tonight, but she could bury herself in it tomorrow.

That was what she had to look forward to. That was the only reason she was still getting up in the morning.

All those years of telling herself it was the job, now maybe she finally believed it.

Meryl headed to her right, remembering passing a post office as they walked into town from the steamer port. She wasn't sure it was the closest – cities like New Phoenix usually had more than one, but it wasn't as though Millie had had any more time to wander the city than she had. Besides, usually the location of the others was printed on a flier on the board, even if no one was working the office. It was as good a starting point as any.

The night was finally starting to chill, the only warmth radiating from the sand in the street and the buildings. All five moons were out, casting a pretty substantial glow on things. There were people everywhere, finally coming out of hiding now that the night was cool. As always, she kept an ear cocked to random conversations, a habit she'd picked up long ago and one she saw no need to tarnish with disuse.

She wasn't listening for reports of Vash the Stampede, anymore, but she was still an insurance investigator.

"They say Monday that the plant's gonna get shut down-"

"-craziest damn thing you ever heard –"

"He's such a waste of carbon, Silvia! Let him get himself killed-"

"-New Johnson City's got a new one, too. Heard they weren't having such good luck though –"

". . . then just add some of those flavoring packets, and you got yerself the best damn chili you ever set your tongue afire with!"

It was only perhaps two blocks from the hotel to the post office, and she covered it quickly. The office itself didn't jut quite as far into the street as the larger, more important buildings around it. A federal bureau building loomed to one side, and a credit union sprawled on the other. Despite the shadows these buildings cast, it was easy to see that no one was standing on the low porch of the post office.

Not that she expected Millie had been waiting there for the last hour, staring at the drop chute until the magical mail fairy came to carry the letter off to Knives' paradise.

New Phoenix was one of the older settlements, and that was obvious from the way it had grown up. While the old mail building was probably the original, made of common cement and brick, the buildings surrounding it had cannibalized the space from smaller, more modest structures. If one looked closely, they would be able to see that the credit union had merely built around a shoebox-shaped structure. Probably an old general store.

She stopped at the stairs of the post office, noting the yellow light coming from inside. The bars across the teller's window segmented that light, so that as it fell across the faux wooden porch it was too divided to really brighten anything. Just enough to ruin a person's night vision.

She could always ask if he'd had any visitors in the last hour.

She checked the board first, noting the location of the other two branches in New Phoenix before walking up confidently to the window. Given the atmosphere of the town, she didn't want to be mistaken for someone sneaking, or worse.

She narrowed her eyes slightly as she stepped into the bright beam of light, squinting into the small, one-room structure. Letters and small parcels lay scattered in separately marked bins, somehow neat and orderly thought none of the bins were the same shape or even the same material. A small, backless black stool stood near the teller window, but it was quite empty.

"Hello?" she called, scanning the back wall and finding a door. It wasn't far enough back to be the door to the street behind, but it made sense they'd have a small back room for supplies and the like. The door was slightly open, but it showed only a strip of darkness. She waited several breaths, but didn't hear anything besides the hum of the overhead lights.

"Can you help me?" she tried again, projecting her voice to the far back of the room.

No one responded.

Meryl frowned, scanning the room again through the metal bars. She saw the largest bin was the one marked 'New Phoenix,' obviously for incoming mail. There were others – Inepril City looked pretty full, as did December. A very small sack, marked April, caught her attention only because it was so dingy. At first she'd thought the fabric was ivory, but with that alabaster white corner sticking out of the top of the bag, she could see now it was significantly more filthy –

Meryl stared hard at that white corner. It was brighter even than the paper she'd carefully tucked into her portfolio a little over an hour ago. She'd only seen paper that bright –

That was Millie's letter.

Millie's letter was going to April.

Millie had been here. And a teller had been here, to put the letter into the sack.

"Hello, please come out, I need to speak with you!"

She waited only a few seconds more, not expecting a reply, and turned on her heels, blinking as her eyes readjusted to the dim streets. So Millie had mailed her letter.

Where was she now?

- . -

"Any progress?"

Long legs were loosely draped across a desk strewn with metal boxes and scraps of graphing paper. The screen was quite bright in the dim room, so nothing else was readily visible but a silhouette. Only the crown of his head was visible, one more dune on the rounded hill of his chairback. His arms were nowhere to be seen, which mean he probably had them crossed across his chest.

Which meant that he wasn't happy.

And he hadn't heard the report yet.

Terry stopped hesitating, knowing that was just adding to his master's already negative mood.

"Not really. I could have copied yesterday's results and no one would be the wiser."

The dune didn't move. "I see."

"They've guaranteed that the psionic buffers are working as designed. The stimulants, however, don't seem to be doing the trick. They've moved on to human trial, but of course it's harder to judge what will be successful. They're really just using that research as a symptoms chart."

He waited for a beat, giving his master time to speak. More than anything, he hated both to interrupt and be interrupted, so it was best to break the information down into small, less than thirty second blocks in case there needed to be commentary interjected.

But his master remained silent, which was equivalent to assent to continue.

"The team dispatched to Warrens reported back – so far they haven't raised eyebrows, and can delay as long as necessary. The backup team's about an hour late for a scheduled satellite check-in."

The last piece of information was really the reason he'd reported at all. It was either very good news, or very bad news. Though, in their case, even worst-case scenario news was good news. As long as they somehow got a location, a place to start, whatever the cost in cannon fodder it would be worth it.

After all, so much had happened to the poor thing –

There was no getting around the fact that it was exactly the same as those human subjects. It was the test run, nothing more than something to build a symptoms chart with. A dress rehearsal.

For all of them.

"I see," the man repeated. "You may send that report in the usual way. I will not be needing you this evening, Terry. You should get some rest."

Terry stopped, willing his feet not to move further into the room. That was not the response he had been expecting. Nor was it welcome.

"Are you feeling ill, sir?"

A quiet sound, maybe a chuckle. "We should rest while we have the luxury to do so. I will do so as well, do not worry for me."

Terry hesitated, but when the voice didn't respond to his pause, he simply inclined his head and backed out into the hallway. He'd never fully entered the room, he usually stood in the doorjamb to prevent the automated doors from closing. They were nearly soundless; he took special pains to ensure the mechanisms worked to highest efficiency, and that included removing superfluous noise. Most people considered them silent, but his ear had long been tuned to a vibration he could not eliminate. Now he wasn't sure he would even if he could, as it told him more surely than anything when his master had entered or left his quarters.

Or when someone else had.

The doors closed softly, and he padded across the metal floors to his own quarters, just next door. He had taken his evening meal some time ago, pouring over the reports that were sent on to his master for review. Technically, it wasn't his job. In fact, he could probably be killed for it. Most of those reports were made by men far more powerful and higher-ranking than he was. In fact, he wasn't sure he hadn't been assigned this position just because a higher-up had disliked his attitude and wanted him to get killed.

He'd been his master's assistant for almost four months now. Three months longer than anyone else.

Probably in part due to his attention to detail, but he truly believed his master was now too busy to be irritated by all the tiny things in life that had previously held his attention. As his project progressed, there were far larger things to worry about. Terry was quiet, he didn't interrupt, and he did his job to the best of his ability. He prepared meals for his master when he worked late into the morning. He intercepted and edited the reports, cutting out the childish babble and bias of the information. And the typos. Fully half the officers would probably have been discharged by now just for their lack of grammar.

Bad grammar was definitely something that would irritate his master. It irritated him.

Terry curled up in the nest of spare blankets he'd made on the floor of his quarters, and idly picked up his forgotten mug of tea. As soon as he'd heard the telltale hum of the doors beside him, he'd abandoned the last few reports to update his master, and there was still work to be done.

Not that these last three contained any significantly useful information, but they should be passed on nonetheless. Even a report of no progress was still progress.

He stretched himself out, sipping the lukewarm tea before propping the mug up onto the nearby, extraordinarily uncomfortable chair. It was intended to be seat, though he preferred using it as a table. It was nearly as flat as one, and as uncomfortable. He preferred his seat on the floor. It also helped his current appearance of being extremely subservient.

Terry dragged the portable computer closer and opened one of the leftover reports, wincing at the very first sentence.

"Town are not helpful."

- . -

Author's Note: Sorry about all the OCs. It couldn't be helped, if I was sticking to the anime-verse. I do have plans to borrow one image from the manga, however. I can't find anything on the web that would indicate I'm reusing a plot out of the manga, but should this start looking like something that's already done, point me at the done product and I will merrily run in another direction. )