2020-01-18: To All the Fools Still Left
- Log: To All the Fools Still Left
- Cast: Gwen Whitlock (as Auntie Frea), Vash the Stampede
- Where: Boot Hill
- Date: January 18th, 2020
- Summary: New developments in Gwen's abilities have Frea concerned. Then again, when you have a nail, why not solve it with the most possibly dangerous hammer you have? PS: the hammer is Vash the Stampede.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The arrival of Gwen back to Filgaia's grasp is noneventful, in that she literally showed up in the other side of the planet, give or take a few degrees. There was the message, the apology for not being able to greet him and Gulliver in person, a long run-down of all the things she saw in stilted, overly formal writing that barely manages to constrain the courier's excitement. After all, Gwen saw a living, breathing metal dragon, battling a giant demon whale and *managing to drive it away*, a feat that couldn't be accomplished by all the combined might of NeoVale, the Spirans, the Drifters, and varous other groups that had combined their might months before. Gwen saw it all, and she saw it up close.
What messages that happened beyond that had been casual, asking about Gulliver's health, how she missed the Badlands, how she hoped everyone over there was doing okay.
And then, there is another message, from a name that has never contacted Vash before: 'Frea Whitlock'.
'Greetings to the one known as 'Mr. Balderdash',
I trust that you know who I am from my surname. My niece has spoken at length about you. While I have been curious to meet you in the past, I am afraid that the reason that I wish to reach out to you is concerning a critical matter regarding Gwen. To this end, I wish to speak to you in private, as this is something that I feel I can only entrust to someone like you. '
The following details how to get to Boot Hill, for Vash to come at night, as well as a choice of dates.
A trap?
Possibly.
There's only one way to find out, and it's to go to that house at the edge of Boot Hill's town lines, hidden against the steep formations that the main part of town is built on.
The one with the rocking chair on the front porch, the copious amounts of strange vegetables, barely ripe in the faint moonlight.
The house with the snaggle-toothed black cat right on the front step, his long hair making him look more like a walking, nasal-sounding mop than a proper cat.
<Pose Tracker> Vash the Stampede has posed.
Not a lot of people send messages of any sort to Vash the Stampede. For one thing, most people don't know who he is; Vash the Stampede, after all, is a legend, a myth, a horror. Vash, on the other hand, is an imbecile. For another, most people who -do- know who he is probably aren't sending him messages so much as trying to hunt him down and sell him off for a nation's bounty in gella or kill him in revenge or both; either way, he's usually getting shot, and bullets are not good messengers (they're just too small~ have YOU ever tried writing a message on a bullet? yes? well......... shut up!).
But when he -does- get messages...
There's increasingly fewer stretches of green in Ignas, and that's increasingly truer the further west one gets. Yet amidst a stubborn patch of green gardens toils a certain blonde-haired, tall man. He's been coming here for the past two weeks after having apparently stumbling in drunk with a very calm, very special horse, sobbing something about 'the horrors of catsketball' and promptly passing out after the owners of this rare farm demanded he explain what a catsketball is.
He never did. But they tended to him anyway, got him water, made sure he didn't die terribly, and gave him a bed to sleep on. Ever since, he's been coming around, helping around the farmstead, never really asking for anything, and only occasionally making an ass of himself. It's a good, simple life. He enjoys it.
He wishes he could stay like this... but he knows he can't.
It's here, during his breaks, that he reads those rare messages that occasionally come in a wild, tangential slew of various adventures from one of the only people who has ever sent him a message. He reads them with a small, relieved smile. Even shares them aloud, for the sake of the horse whose company he keeps for now.
He does voices and everything. It's pretty great. You had to be there.
But then, one day, he gets to another message...
Greetings to the one known as 'Mr. Balderdash',
He reads it. He frowns. Any person with even the minimal pinch of healthy skepticism would see this as questionable at best. A trap at worst. Any person with even a smidge of cynicism in a world that actively breeds reasons for it, would pass up that offer entirely. One would assume doubly so, if that person had the largest bounty in the world on their heads.
---
A tall man with spiky blond hair and a sizable and strikingly red coat comes upon the fringes of Boot Hill, alone, save for the very special horse he brings along with him like a stalwart(ish(they have their disagreements (he's always right and the horse is always wrong))) companion. He comes with a smile on his face, and without any pretenses, orange tinted shades gleaming faintly against the Lunar light as he approaches.
"Stay here, okay?" he requests of Gulliver. He looks sidelong at the cat. A second passes.
"Don't start anything with the cat, either. I'm not having a repeat of the [Catsketball Incident]!"
A Flashback to the Catsketball Incident
[FOOTAGE NOT FOUND]
it really happened ok
Regardless, he leaves his companion there, and approaches the home. He pauses near the vegetables; strange though they may be, he crouches and inspects them with the fond familiarity of someone born with a green thumb before he rises once more to make his way within. Wood creaks against the press of heavy soles. He swings open the door with a flourish, a dramatic gush of wind kicking up his coattails and whispering tails of accumulated sand into the air as his spiky hair ripples in its wake, his expression one of grim stoicism.
"Are you the one," he begins without even checking if there's anyone there, "who dares to summon MISTER SANDYSPLASH-- AUGH GOD SAND SPLASHED IN MY EYE"
And so it was that the legend, the menace, the monster Vash the Stampede, Mister Sandysplash(???), has his dramatic moment ruined as he knocks off his sunglasses to start rubbing at his eyes in agony, bawling like the saddest child with the most scrapediest knee in all the world.
"WAAAAAGGGH WHERE THE HELL DID THAT BREEZE COME FROM ANYWAY OH MY GOD IT HURTS IT HURTS SO MUCH"
it's
it's a little pathetic
seriously he's really crying what even
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
At close inspection, the vegetables are definitely Filgaian, some baring distant relation to crops Vash may have encountered before in his travels around Ignas. Most favor the colorations and shape of species more adapted to drier climates, rather than the shiner, more water-needy cousins imported from better climates. There are gourds of different shapes. There are chilis.
There's a lot of chilis, in fact, with markers with creative names like 'Experiment M8568784' and 'Hybrid H765 x G865a'.
Gulliver regards Vash with the patience of a very spoiled saint, nickering softly as he moseys to a trough with the ease of familiarity. Yep, this is Gwen's place
that, or Gulliver just knows all the troughs here
Vash makes his dramatic declaration and is defeated by his immortal enemy, the fiendish breeze, knocking him down in his finest hour, just before-
The door creaks open. A black lacquered cane dully thuds against the wood of the porch two times, before a woman clears her throat. "It is common courtesy to knock on a person's door, at the very least."
And there is the legendary 'Auntie Frea': an aged willow of a woman, dressed in a high-collar grey dress that would look more in fashion if this wasn't the middle of the Badlands. Her grey braid falls from her shoulder as dull amber eyes glance over Vash's crying, and then away, possibly because she could not bear to look at a man in such pain! (no this is not the reason)
"... Good evening, Mr.... Sandysplash." One can hear the actual, searing pain that comes from the actual act of that woman properly pronouncing Vash's new name.
'okay, so, yeah, I just try to call him by whatever name he chooses, though sometimes I make up a few, and he doesn't seem to mind. No, I don't think I've ever actually said his name aloud, why do you ask-'
The cat, having _stalked_ Vash to the doorstep, bellows a grimey meow as he flops on his back, proudly challenging the only survivor of the Catsketball Incident with his dusty belly fur.
Frea sighs. "Cat, I just brushed you." Cat raspily chirps in reply, half-heartedly bathing the top tufts of fur on his chest.
"... As for you, Mr..." She waves a hand. "Bandersnap. I would appreciate it you come in before you attract the attention of Widow Miller. If she saw that I was bringing in a young man into my house at this time of night, I'd never hear the end of it."
Through the doorway and beyond, now visible as Frea moves back in, Vash could see a modest house, rigorously kept clean as any house could be expected to. The main room is decorated with all sorts of artifacts: a hung blanket from a northern Baskar tribe, shelves of interesting trinkets and ores, like some glittering fool's gold from the southwestern end of the Badlands, a hanging wall ornament made of curling black iron, with turqoise and carelian stone laid into it.
Framed photos, most lacking color, of Frea and Gwen, though mostly just Gwen, showing a progression of dour short newly adopted child to the photo of a laughing fifteen year old, her face blurred as a younger Gulliver nudges the side of her head.
At least it doesn't seem to be a trap. YET.
"Would you like some tea?"
SO MUCH A TRAP
<Pose Tracker> Vash the Stampede has posed.
Strangely enough, creative names like 'Experiment M8568784' and 'Hybrid H765 x G865a' just inspire a kind of nostalgic feeling in Vash. It's a bittersweet remembrance.
"AM I BLIND?! AAAIIIEEEEEEEE I THINK I'M BLIND, OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
And likely one best not indulged in when the man is so clearly in bitter suffering not the least bit sweet.
That OH NO is still prolonging into a very impressively stretched "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" that would lead one to question just what kind of freakish lung capacity this young (??) man has when the door opens with the creaking greeting of hinges and the faint 'whump' of a cane's butt on wood.
ENTER: AUNTIE FREA
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIWASKNOCKINGWITHMYVOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIICE--uh??"
Mr.... Sandysplash, currently rolling around the ground probably kicking up way more dirt in the process as he palms his face and rubs his eyes with agonized enthusiasm, pauses. His eyes, bloodshot with his manly tears and not because he was rubbing at them way too aggressively, squint with a vaguely uncomprehending stare at the willowy, blurry silhouette before him. Squints. Squints harder. Squints until his eyes are a pair of sea blue slits.
"uhhhhhhh"
What Auntie Frea is: an aged willow of a woman badass enough to wear high collars in a dying desert.
What Vash sees:
"Oh thank you, grayish blob, you've saved me!"
And so Vash weeps anew, because he has been saved by the indistinct figure who may or may not be Frea Whitlock.
Also because of the sand still.
He's in the midst of weeping those newer, better tears of joypain when the cat flops before him, belly presented, with a crackly meow. He blinks again. Purses his lips.
"H-how dare you taunt me while the memories are still fresh! I'll never forget that day--!"
VASH'S MEMORIES OF THAT DAY
a tumble weed floating across a broad blank white panorama of literally nothing
Vash glares at the indistinct form of Cat, because he knows what horrible things he's evoked.
But! Frea speaks once more, and Vash once more snaps to attention, kind of, on the ground. "Yes! That's me! Mister Gingersnap!" can't he at least get the mistaken name right "I'll try my best, mysterious silhouette, but my world is going dark...!" It might be because it's night. "But I'll do... what I can...!!"
And so it was that Vash the Stampede dragged himself into Frea's home. Literally, of course, because he has yet to get back up onto his feet, which means the entire trek is more or less Vash pathetically crawling across the ground kind of like a worm. It's impressive, and a little alarming, how he manages to slither his way up the porch and across wood ("ow ow ow" is his mantra here) to a degree that some might question whether he has a spine (in a both figurative and literal fashion) but eventually, inevitably, he makes it in, flopped on his back, gasping croaked, dusty breathes of parched air.
"de...hydrated... too much sand... in eyes...!" This doesn't stop him, of course, from opening said eyes to peer at the home around him. And for someone who proclaims himself to be one foot in the door to being completely blinded --
He still smiles, just a little, at the sight of those perfectly arranged photos, and the progression of a dour ginger-haired girl to one much more exuberant and familiar.
Would you like some tea?
Vash blinks again. Squints. Again. This is clearly a trap. Obviously. It couldn't help but be. A very clever person would think of a way to turn the tables or confirm this is a legitimate offer --
"Oh thank god for you, ma'am, I'm so thirsty, please, I'll drink it all in one gulp!!"
Vash is not any of those people.
But at least it gets him springing back onto his feet, praising the Frea Blob's good graces.
So that's something??
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"... So you received my message." Frea clears her throat. "And I see you located Cat for me. There has been a rat in the garden that has been vexing him all day."
What follows inside is the surreal parade consisting of (1) grumpy woman, (1) snaggle-toothed long-haired black cat, and (1) Vashsnake, accompanied by the rhythmic taps of lacquered cane against squeaking wooden boards, which similarly complain at the sinuous weight of the Vashsnake.
"Please. Make yourself comfortable." The words themselves would be genial, but coming out of Frea's mouth, they almost sound like a subtle command. Yet, as she turns to the kitchen, there is a small hesitation. Maybe it's just a trick of the light, but as she faces away from the crying Vash, there is a quirk of a smile, a soft exhale that could be interpreted as holding back a laugh. This absurd, outrageous clown, coming at her like this over such a serious matter-
No wonder Gwen liked him, in spite of everything.
And that's what complicates everything, as she assesses the myraid of storage jars as the kettle is set to boil. The hand hovers over one jar, then another, then another, as the kettle begins to sing-
There's a knock on the door. THE TRAP HAS BEEN SPRUNG "Frea-dearrrrr, is something the matter?" Why, it's Widow Miller, letting herself in like the terrible gossip she is! She looks friendly enough, there in her shawl and lantern. "There was a commotion, and the door was unlocked so I thought I might let myself iiin- oh, oh dear-"
And there, in the doorway, like what some might imagine the cool disdain of the Ice Queen if it was made incarnate (and made somehow into a women who looks to be in her eighties), is Frea. With a tray of tea.
Setting her tray down on the old wood table, in that awkward silence, Frea turns to the woman who kindly let herself into her homw, and clears her throat.
"He is a colleague of my niece."
"But why does he look like V-"
"Are you implying that my niece associates herself with deadly criminals?"
"Well, there *was* that bounty placed on her a few years back, but it was pretty low compared to my nephew, guardians bless him, did you hear about the one time-"
"Madam, how am I supposed to treat my niece's dear friend of his eye infection if I am interrupted? He could be going blind at this very second. Does this person even register to you as a dangerous man?"
Frea gestures to Vash, irregardless of his current state, as if giving some sort of cue.
<Pose Tracker> Vash the Stampede has posed.
Truly it's disconcertingly sprightly, the way the man who is absolutely not Vash the Stampede just kind of hops onto his feet nigh-instantaneously in a show of nigh-cartoonish athleticism. His (definitely going blind) sea green eyes sweep the room with the wide-eyed clarity of someone who is one hundred percent on the verge of total unending darkness, stroking his chin with deep, perplexed thought.
"Hm yes, indeed, I found your dog Cat," he muses, with great solemnity, clearly unable to distinguish between cats and dogs and cats named Cat and dogs named Cat due to his blindness, a fact one can tell due to his shut eyes, despite that he had only just recently been lamenting Cat's very cat-like ways.
"You know, I'm not sure I've ever encountered that breed before. Are blobby, formless masses of smearing color a usual kind of pet here...?" Vash reflects on Gulliver for a moment. His brows furrow as Frea sets about making the tea.
"... maybe it's some sort of advanced cross-breeding, or..."
But Frea has recommended - subtly demanded with a tone of iron - that Vash make himself comfortable, and so he does. He makes himself comfortable -so hard- it makes the level of effort he exerts seem positively stressful. Perhaps that is why he is very stiffly leaning himself against a wall in what looks like an adonis pose (somehow no longer crying), sparkling with the perfection of his poise.
Also trembling a bit because wow he's holding himself really stiffly right now and it seems like it's taking a lot out of him in what way is this comfortable
And it is like this that he -very gradually- inches towards the kettle with all the single-minded intent of a man who has been dragging himself through the desert for god knows how long, just sort of appearing closer and closer like he was a monster in a horror movie.
By the time Widow Miller is knocking at that door, he is looming over Frea menacingly, eyes shining with Evil Intent--!
"Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" he groans like a zombie, hungering for brains, as his head slowly ratchets to look over his shoulder at Widow Miller.
It goes without saying that his eyes are still gleaming, somehow. Also, his face is dramatically, horrifyingly overshadowed. Where did this lighting come from--?!
A second passes by. And Vash, unable to hold that disturbingly perfect pose any more, just sort of -- deflates. "Too much energy being comfortable," complains the man, apparently too exhausted, or blind, or dehydrated, or all or none of the above, to notice the newcomer and her HORRIFYING ACCUSATIONS THAT COULD BE VERY BAD. "Must... refuel...!"
And it is here that Vash swipes his serving of tea and, just as promised --
"*GULP*"
-- downs it all in one gulp.
"oh no"
This proves to be a mistake.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH MUH DUNG"
And this is about when Frea gestures at Vash, currently rolling on the ground pathetically as if stop drop and roll procedure might work on a scalded tongue, sobbing his eyes out as he proclaims to the heavens,
"WHY DIH NO ONE WAHN ME THEA WATH HOTH?!"
right on cue.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The good news is that the tea is not poisoned or somehow infused with some terrible elixer meant to somehow throw Vash into unconsciousness.
The bad news: it's a kettle full of piping hot liquid, so maybe this is worse.
Widow Miller is stunned into silence, the minute flame of her lantern quietly flickering as a contrast to the mighty rolling of the Man Who is Not Vash the Stampede. And what this Clearly Not Vash the Stampede presents is a different sort of danger: one of the utterly inept and luckless, able to throw the world into chaos just by their attempts at being a person who is existing.
"You see," Frea states with confidence, as if (not)Vash hadn't been threatening to attack her for her delicious teastuffs a few moments ago, "he needs the utmost in care. I expect you shall keep this a secret between us two?"
Widow Miller takes a look at Frea, then slowly turns to the man in the tattered cloak, then back. "Weeelll, I suppose that's for the best. I mean, this is a friend of your niece."
As a final seal of approval, Cat the apparent dog(?) is rubbing against Miller's shoes, loudly complaining.
"... Yes. He is."
There's another span of awkward silence, to which Miller coughs, and wraps the shawl around her more tightly. "Well, I shall be seeing you... soon, I suppose! Good night! Pleasefillmeonallthedetailslaterbye-"
Cat now stands abandoned, rolling on the ground, as if to mock Vash in his hour of pain.
Waiting a polite span of time before engaging the lock, Frea adjusts the collar of her shirt with her free hand as she turns. "... I'm beginning to see the logic in your act, and I am rather scared to ponder what it implies about my own mental state. But yes, I know who you are." Tapping her cane along the floor, she continues, "fifty years is a rather long time for a man to somehow evade the brutal spector of age, yet here you are. I wonder why it took so long for them to decide to throw a warrant up for your arrest."
The grim note in Frea's words is suddenly offput by the yowling of Cat, who displays his dusty belly for the two of them to behold.
Frea clears her throat. "... I'll get to the point. I need someone to keep an eye on my niece. You know her current state, and..." She stops, giving a sigh of resignation as she sits in her seat. "... well, I have you to thank for saving her life, a year ago."
Somehow, that act alone seems to have balanced all of the man's crimes, in Frea's book.
<Pose Tracker> Vash the Stampede has posed.
Oh, the horror! Oh, the agony! Oh, the... overwhelming... sadness...
... yeah really it's just sad, the way Vash is flailing around like his arms were noodles and sputtering his tongue into the open air as if desperately wagging out some invisible flame afflicting it. He's also got his hands wringing at his throat -- for effect.
Really, painfully awkward.
He keeps this going for quite a while - he even reaches out to Miller as she rapidly retreats from the house with a wailing call of "heeeeeeeeeeeehp meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" because he commits and certainly not because he is in a large amount of terrible, agonizing pain, but the deed is done -- and soon enough, there's nothing more than a vacant spot where once was Widow Miller, with Vash staring with tear-stained eye at the doorframe she once was invading.
"--Huh," he breathes out, when all he sees is Cat (debatably; how -are- his eyes? they seem to exist in a quantum state of blindness), "maybe I wath jutht theeing thingth."
The flailing slowly stops. And, as if he were never even horribly burned at all, the spiky-haired youth (??) just flops easily onto his back, all pretense of pain and spectacle of suffering foregone as he stares upwards towards the ceiling of Frea's abode.
He catches Cat, rolling on the ground. His frown is most severe.
"Monthter," he declares, gravely, "see if I help you when you have tea next time...!"
Somewhere in there, Vash seems to have lost his scalded lisp. He's in the middle of threateningly shaking his fist at Cat, upside-down when Frea speaks up; he pauses, wide, sea blue eyes blinking in bemusement as he turns his inverted stare at the old (??) woman. "Logic...??" he wonders aloud, with a tone that makes it sound like he has never, -ever- heard the word before. Honestly -- it seems completely possible.
Eventually, though, his gaze slides back towards the ceiling. He could continue pretense fairly easily, really -- he has a knack for it. He could also just leave and never appear again for some fifty years. He's good at that too. Instead... he just looks up, as if he could see the stars past the barrier of the roof presented to him, hands lacing together at the back of his head.
... fifty years is a rather long time for a man to somehow evade the brutal spector of age, yet here you are.
"Well, I'm pretty good at running!"
... is the first thing he says. It lacks the absurdity in tone that his other words did; this time, it has an almost self-effacing quality, especially when coupled with his good-natured, if melancholy grin. He rubs the back of his neck, considering the details of the ceiling.
"Kinda wonder that too. Guess I'm just not that popular, huh? Ha ha!"
It's the tone that says it all. It's unusual.
But to him, only unusual because it should have come much sooner.
He falls quiet, though, expression an impressive poker mask of unreadability as Frea continues on. The mystery man in the tattered cloak clucks his tongue once, gaze half-lidding with memories and guilt all at once. It takes only a few seconds longer for them to shut entirely.
"... I was kinda planning to already," he says, after a while, and his smile is a small but genuine thing. "I owe her a horse, after all! But you know -- she's pretty strong, all on her own. I think she's finding her footing."
There's a fond note to that. Maybe something like pride, but not quite.
Happiness, at seeing how far someone important to you has come.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"..." Again, a rare softness washes over Frea's face, naked in its relief before she stuffs it away in defense of her pride. "She has grown, yes. And there are friends. I cannot dismiss them, anymore than I can dismiss your influence." She lifts the tea kettle, intending to pour her own cup of tea, then remembers, as she hefts the empty weight, that there is none.
Her right eyebrow twitches, but even she cannot bring herself to lament her state in front of Vash's lidding stare up at the ceiling.
"It's about Gwen's ARM, the Mockingbird. When I installed it, I installed a device of my own. A friend of hers called it a 'safety lock', and I admit, that's exactly what it was, in a sense. That ARM has a nasty habit of sucking its previous owners dry. All in their lust for power, of course. Being human limits the ARM's potential greatly." She rattles on with the ease of a scholar all too eager to disappear into the realm of history and science, before her lack of a teacup to drink from distracts her from her muchly-missed reverie.
"That safety lock is gone. And so is the natural limit of her physical human heart. She still has a human body, so her ability to fully access her abilities is still limited. A human body can only take so much before it shuts down as a protective measure. But I cannot leave things to chance. She has surprised me many, many times. I'd like this to *not* be one of those times."
She stands up, straightening. "I need you to ensure she does not..." A rare moment of hesitation stills her lips. "... Well, in learning about you, through her, I have come to the selfish conclusion that not everything is what it may have seemed. As a man who knows what it feels like, I wish for you to ensure she does not commit anything near what may have happened, all those years ago."
Cat, sensing the still body that Vash has presented before him, makes this his moment to come over and sniff at one of Vash's hands, eager for some form of attention.
"There is another thing, more long term," Frea continues. "There are certain things I have done to ensure her safety. When these come to light, I would imagine her friends to distance themselves from her, for their own... well-being. As for you, to be frank, I cannot see you as doing the same." Silence. "A third thing. Stay away from anything to do directly with the Veruni, for your own sake."
Is that an odd bit of... fondness, in her voice? Concern? "... She's said many, many things about you. As well as your beliefs." Her eyes travel to Vash's face. "... 'this world is made of love and peace', was it not?"
<Pose Tracker> Vash the Stampede has posed.
Cat nudges at Vash's left hand with sniffing, twitching nostrils. The fingers twitch in reflexive response, but their owner does not respond until he sees the twitch of a tail past his field of vision. The lanky man glances down and aside, staring at the feline with a little smile bereft of his usual manic antics.
He shifts, just enough, so that he can reach Cat with his right hand to scratch fondly at the top of his head.
He listens, though. Even as he gives Cat that much-sought after attention, he listens to what Frea has to say with none of the frustrating levels of ignorance and confusion that would normally wreathe him when people start to go into an even slightly technical conversation. There's not even a hint that the man might be lagging behind Frea's words.
Those eyes are too gentle to be sharp, but they are completely clear. Vash is picking up everything the woman is saying.
To his mind, there's just no reason to be obfuscating, right now.
Which might be clear with how the man's brows furrow inward into a neat knot of understanding consternation as Frea talks about the safety lock's disablement, or perhaps removal, on Gwen's ARM. Why that smile becomes a brief frown of thought. He looks briefly down toward the tattered remains of his cloak -- where that heavy gun weighs within the thick bright red coat beneath.
I need you to ensure she does not...
When Frea next looks towards Vash, he is wearing a smile again. A small one. Wreathed with a certain, existential kind of sadness.
"... I know."
She doesn't need to explain further.
For someone so prone to raucous enthusiasm, though, it's almost off-putting how Vash can so easily slide into that solemn silence as well. There's a weight of experience to him, from the little smile he gives Cat before he pulls up onto his feet, or the look to him when he finishes straightening, and turns his gaze towards Frea. It's not a hardened thing -- nothing about him seems particularly hardened. More like a thing weathered down by experience, yet refusing to callus all the same.
"I think you might be underestimating them," he says after a moment, once he's straightened. "... But I'm not going anywhere." He shrugs, helplessly. "No one should be alone, right?"
The fact that he can say that is perhaps a little hypocritical -- but if nothing else...
... Vash tends to think of others before he ever thinks of himself.
Which might be why her next request is met with a self-recriminatingly jovial, "I mean, I'll try, but weird and dangerous stuff has a tendency to find me most of the time no matter how far I bury my head into the sand, ha ha ha!"
... which is probably the best way he can put 'that's probably not going to happen - but I'll give it the old college try (maybe).'
He stops. He looks towards the door again. And it is only as Frea speaks that he looks back to her once more with a little blink. "She told you--?" he begins, before a warm smile of his own manages to break at his lips. Unlike the ones before...
... this one, at least, is not forced at all.
"Here. Like this. This world is made of..."
And here, Vash very shamelessly, and very unapologetically, thrusts his hand out, index and middle finger upraised.
"... LOVE AND PEACE!"
He beams. Brilliantly. But it's not the goofy kind, this time. It's more... terribly earnest.
he does sparkle a bit though
where on earth did those come from
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'I know.'
Like the peg of a violin carefully loosened, the stiff line presented by Frea's spine slackens, every so slightly. "... Thank you."
Cat, upon recieving Vash's much-valued attention, leans his fuzzy, dusty head against the lanky man's hand, followed by a loud rusty purr.
When Vash straightens, delivering his defense, Frea stiffens, then deflates under the weight of his gaze, a soft chuckle under her breath. "Perhaps, you are right. There may be some more fools left in the world." The word would be derisive out of context, but the fondness hidden behind that one syllable speaks louder.
Frea's lips crook upwards in a half smile. "So, then. That settles it. I shall pay for your travel fees to go to the Aquvy region, where all the fools currently are. As well as many of their enemies. Gwen has mentioned that some acquaintances of hers are having trouble with a group called 'Odessa'. Perhaps that group could see what it's like to have their self-righteousness thrown straight back at them with your antics? And also-" wait she never mentioned going anywhere or doing anything-
At the mention of 'weird and dangerous stuff' having a tendency to find him, Frea's wry smile widens. "Well then. You'll be in good company. Do this, and, in return-"
She stops, finding an awkward void where a ready answer should be. She narrows her eyes at the open air.
"Whatever you have come out of hiding to do, I may, perhaps, offer a hand. I am an accomplished scholar, after all, far more than what my surroundings may claim. A question, a pursuit, a challenge. Yes, that's what I shall offer you, if you have something-!"
She stops, her small burst of scholarly enthusiasm overshadowed by the might of Vash's sudden, very earnest grin. As well as the demonstration, in all its sparkly glory.
did he just sparkle
"... and here I thought she was kidding, when she tried to mime that for me, once." She coughs into her hand, moving backwards to settle back into her chair a little too quickly. "Well, that's enough theatre for me, it seems. It would be a shame to throw you out into the Badlands at this ungodly hour, so. You are welcome to stay the night here. In the morning, I shall prepare arrangements for your leave." Another cough, before she manages another wry grin. "... I would suggest you pick a consistent name. I'm putting my own safety on the line. I suppose, if you do manage to blow your cover... I should perhaps invest some time in some theatre of my own."