I'll be damned

You know who the best damn person to have in a Quick Draw contest is? The guy who's known everywhere as the sharpest gunman in the world: someone who stopped the Nebraska family with six shots, someone whose name alone can send the population of a city into a panicked frenzy.

And if it happens that this same guy happens to be a soft touch for a little kid, a beautiful woman, and a good cause...well, then, that's just some good luck right there.

Honestly, he's a little amazed at how quickly Vash was won over by his little plan, but maybe he shouldn't have been. After all, this is the guy who jumped out of a moving bus to help save a little girl in the desert--hardly the monster everyone seems to think he is.

It was a piece of cake, really.


...Right up till the part where it turned out that Vash had signed him up for the damn thing, too.

"What?!?"

Goddammit.

---

Should have just turned the idiot in. Oh, jeez. $$60,000,000,000 would have been more than enough, hell, she just needs a few thousand to get back on her feet.

The suns are bright in his eyes, and they glint off the dusty bottles balanced on the remainder of someone's old house or bar here on the outskirts of town. He huffs a sigh. Off to his right, he catches a flash of red and he can see that big girl's waving hand from behind Vash's pointy head.

"Tch." For love and peace.

Yeah, right.

One, two, three, four, five: it's hardly an effort at all to break a few stupid bottles, even using someone else's gun. This can't be worth the trouble. It isn't as though Vash isn't going to win the damn thing anyway, after all.

And once he gets back to the sidelines, that insurance girl won't stop squealing in his ear. It's giving him a headache. "How come you're so good at that?"

Well, at least someone's happy about this whole mess. "We live in a dangerous world. It's for self-protection."

She claps her hands together, suddenly enough to make him jump. "Maybe you're an ex-gunman!"

He can feel Vash watching him, and even his snarled "Get real!" doesn't make the sensation go away.

It doesn't make her shut up, either.

---

"You guys are pretty good."

They both look up. It's hard to see the man's face at this angle with the suns behind him, but it doesn't matter. He's just got a message for them. "But your spree is at an end. You're not up against no liquor bottles this time around."

Wolfwood squints at him. There's something funny about the way he walks off...a kind of shuffle in his stride...

"What?!?"

Uh, that's not so good.

Vash, looking panicked, practically has him by the throat, and Wolfwood loses the other guy in all the shaking and noise. "What did he mean?"

What...

He can feel his own eyes widen. "You mean you didn't know? Listen, you dragged me into this..."

"Live one on one combat?!?"

Ow. What a decibel level.

He wrenches himself free, and sits back in his chair with his arms crossed. "Look, this is hardly my fault."

It's another four rounds before Vash decides to talk to him again at all.

TOUCH SCREEN TO START YOUR AVAILABLE DESTINATIONS

It made Wolfwood feel kind of foolish when he'd discovered this place, knowing that this stupid room has been just sitting here and and he just hadn't really noticed. He must have gone over every inch of this hotel in that time, but he missed this?

Not like it matters, anyway. He'd been having too much fun at the time to leave right away.

WOLFWOOD, NICHOLAS D., YOUR DESTINATIONS ARE

1. GUNSMOKE MEI CITY 9.17.26

His hand hovers over the screen.

Maybe he hadn't missed it. Maybe he just had been too damn happy to take a break from the sun and the sand. There are no orders here and no shootouts. No annoying legendary gunman with $$60,000,000,000 on his head. Instead, there's trees and grass and a city that isn't falling slowly to pieces--but that doesn't change the facts, and the fact is that he's been here too long. Not to mention he's curious as to what's going on back at home. His stomach growls audibly and he pats it. "Okay, okay. Food first, information later. You're the boss."



The walk out of here is a lot shorter than the one in--or at least it feels that way and he's got only a few seconds of cool air that tastes like metal before the door opens before his hand and he's got to squint to block out the suns. High noon and it feels like a million degrees; he can't even look straight until the dark glasses are safely over his eyes.

The horizon stretches: long, flat, shimmering, empty. The people who pass by wear clothing as colorless as the buildings are, brown and gray and tan, stumping up out of the sand and the hard dirt road like they were piled there by the wind, just a few more lumps of dune. The only thing with color in it is the sky, and that's as brassy and blue and mercilessly clear as ever.

Hey, it turns out that absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. Still, there's something good about being back here, and the rumble from his stomach that accompanies that thought reinforces it. Time for some grub.

---

Unfortunately for him, it seems as though no one told the restuarant owners that they needed to have some food out...and the others weren't so keen on his staying after they'd seen the contents of his pockets. So woolongs don't actually get you anything here, what the hell happened to giving out of the goodness of your heart?

So much for charity.

There's another place, near the center of town, and he ambles towards it as some kids run by, playing and kicking up dust that turns orange and red in the setting sun, and at first he thinks that the shouts and squeals that he hears are coming from them. It's the scream that really catches his attention.

"What're you doing to my mom?!?"

It's dark and bare inside the little restaurant, and it takes a second for his eyes to adjust from the sunshine outside, but what's there is easy enough to see: two large men, one little kid tugging at an arm and kicking at a leg, and--oh, man--the most beautiful woman in the world being held between them, pleading. "Please," she begs, "please, I'll pay you the money, just wait a little longer!"

It's enough to melt a heart of stone, which is apparently not what these two have. "Lady," one of them says, annoyed, "you're long past your deadline. Unless you pay off your debt in full, we can't make any money, either."

The other one, finding this funny, laughs, and nudges the woman in the ribs with his elbow.

"Hey," says Wolfwood, taking off his glasses and tucking them into his jacket pocket (don't want them to get scratched, right?), "is this place open, or what?" He can practically see the poor woman trembling from here. It's hard to keep his voice even.

"Beat it," says the thinner of the two thugs, gripping her wrist even harder. "This is none of your business, preacher man."

"Oh, now," Wolfwood tells him, over the clank of the Punisher's foot hitting the floor, "that's just not true. After all, the Good Lord says that charity shall cover the multitude of sins, and I just happen to be an expert on that sort of thing. You've really got to embrace the spirit of giving; here, let me show you."

He gives. He's a generous soul, in that way.