#amoirsetpacis giant challenge

[punishercross]

[text]: It's bad [text]: Dont go [text]: Out today OK [text]: Pls

[text] between you and the old bastard i don't know who's more concernin

[text] but despite the 'pls' i kinda find it hard to just listen to that

Especially since it sounds like you're in trouble.

This shit about the vials. Now this. Something was going on.

[text] i slept at a lake last night so you better answer cuz im not even in a house

[punisheye]

[ text ] Liv aryuou [ text ] fck [ text ] Areoyh

Texting while running is fucking impossible, so he instead opts to send a voice message instead: "Are you home? Stay inside. I'm comin' over. I'll tell ya everything when I'm there."

Livio's in Archimedes. He's been there enough. Meryl's there, too, so he can pop over to her next easy enough. If the other Vash is home, well, they just might run into each other, or maybe his Vash'll get to him first. Vash's brother lives there now, too.

He has to catch a train into Archimedes. Lucky for him, there's no dead people waiting in the train cars for him, but he still keeps the Punisher held close. It's still early in the morning, and people are beginning to head to work, and he must be quite the sight to the early morning commuters. Sitting there in a hoodie and sweatpants with his massive cross-shaped gun.

Wolfwood rents a motorcycle for the day, holding up his phone to send off the required amount of Dust, and then probably breaks multiple traffic laws getting to the residential area as quickly as possible.

He sags heavily against the wall next to the front door of Livio's condo, breathing hard. Wolfwood lifts his hand then, giving a few steady knocks.

"Liv, it's me. Open up."

@deathpacito

[deathpacito]

[Text] Livio. I need your help. Did you see the dead walking this morning?

[txt] LEGATO where are you?? whats going on now

[deadlydevotion]

He'd opened his eye to a world so far removed from the one he'd only just left, or had he been lingering between for years? He doesn't know and finds he doesn't care, not when he's been called from his well-deserved and supposedly final rest to....

To hunt Vash the Stampede.

Yes, that makes sense. He'd finally earned his rest and somehow or another Vash was the reason he was walking this pointless and horrific life again. In a manner of speaking, anyway.

He's not alive, not breathing, the gunshot that had ended his life a gaping hole in the side of his head oozing blood. It doesn't slow him down, doesn't make his threads any less effective. He can feel the city breathe but there's only certain points that stand out, that he's drawn to like a Worm to a light. Bright, living, ripe for torture and torment and pain but there's only one of them that deserves the worst he can offer.

He stalks off, intent on finding his prey, chasing that bright light in order to rip it apart.

"Vash the Stampede. It's been a while. I've come to bring you ultimate suffering, are you ready?"

[blankticket]

Bang!

With a rumbling groan, metal chunks of Fibonacci-architecture crash down to block the path behind him, a collapse of rusted scaffolding, AC units, and a screen of dirt to buy him time from a growing mob of the undead. Peace Bringer is holstered, and Vash tucks himself away behind a wall, taking advantage of the temporary respite he's made for himself.

Panting heavy, the Stampede brushes aside any plans of making sense of the situation in favor of warning who he could: Meryl is first, fingers sliding along his shattered phone's keyboard in a rush. Wolfwood's next; the messages turn briefer, hurried by the sound of collective footfall, rushing to detour his escape routes. Unable to afford staying still for much more, he's forced to leave a breathless audio message for his mother, with the hopeless hope that it wouldn't make his panic contagious to her of all people.

The feeling of being watched strikes him—he turns, finds nothing, and turns again. Something or someone apart from the mass of enraged ghosts had slipped past, he's sure, but his eyes can't verify that paranoia.

It's at once his waking nightmare and someone else's; his attackers had cried out murderer, Humanoid Typhoon, Vash the Stampede, but he couldn't recognize their warped faces, put a name to any of them.

The pacifist isn't typically opposed to allowing others to vent out their frustration out on him—he can attest to multiple instances of getting mugged in practically every Ward, now—but the surreal appearance and behavior of these familiar strangers had kicked his instincts of self-preservation into higher gear than normal. They wouldn't listen to his usual light-hearted attempts at peaceful negotiation.

Everything was wrong. A flood of panic and dread fuels his pace further down his path, with little of a future plan to operate on besides getting away—

No. The hair on the back of his neck raises. Whatever had broken out of formation was right behind him, had caught up to him past the collapse.

Vash's heels skid against the pavement. The deadeye whirls around with Peace Bringer levelled at the ghost haunting him.

[punishercross]

A quick voice message that's just: "Where are ya? Angry ghosts liable to rip any of us apart and you don't got a gun. We're holin' up in Archimedes. Need me to drag yer ass out here?"

Not that he was one to talk, but all these half-truths had started to piss him off until, none other than the bastard himself was finally upfront with him.

"Fucking hell. Gotta be him, huh..."

Both a little too late and right on time - at least he knew why the fuck he was getting dirty looks from the guy about 50 yards away. He taps the microphone, keeping up his original pace.

"Already on my way to Archimedes. Vash -," a pause, likely generating an ellipses before adding "- blonde one - sent me a cryptic ass message right after you sent your dumb shit. Hasn't responded. Not holin' up anywhere 'til I find him." It was the least he could do, anyway.

[punisheye]

@merynger, from here.

The last message nearly makes him groan at his phone. He's tense and exhausted and worried, the hair on the back of his neck prickling because he thinks he can feel eyes on him from the street. Wolfwood glances over his shoulder.

Someone is walking with an awkward gait along the sidewalk. The brown of rusted, dried blood is stuck to their clothes. They haven't seen him yet.

[ text ] no. Last thing you should do

Probably not comforting.

[ text ] my Vash is going to find him [ text ] You ever hear of a zombie apocalypse?

He only knows about them from movies he found here.

[punisheye]

The motorcycle is left behind.

Wolfwood walks the residential streets of Fibonacci like he has many times. They're more than familiar now, and he navigates them easily even in his daze.

There is blood on his clothes, on his face. People give him a wide berth. Holding the heavy Punisher over his shoulder does little to make him forget the weight of Vash's body in his arms. All he wants to do is go home, have a cigarette, wash the blood and dirt away, and then sleep until Vash comes back.

All he does is send Livio a text that says 'it's ok', and he can share that with Meryl, who can share it with the other him.

The door is still caved in when Wolfwood arrives at the house. When he steps inside, he can see a mess left behind by the mob of ghosts. He just walks over it, uncaring, but something feels wrong, out of place, and he doesn't know why until he makes his way up the stairs and reaches the bedroom.

The cold, empty bedroom save for the bed (with plain, basic bedding, the comforter he had woken up under nowhere in sight), the wardrobe, and the nightstand. All of Vash's belongings are gone— his clothes, his little knick-knacks, his plants, disappeared without a trace, taking all the life from the room. A few of Wolfwood's own things are still there: the phone charger in the outlet by the bed, some clothes in the closet, his jacket still tossed on the floor.

Sudden panic lances through him, straight into his heart.

Why is everything gone?

Because it should all still be here, because Vash will be back, and why would it all be gone unless he wasn't coming back?

Is he really dead, for good? Or did the Stars decide to send him back home, away from Wolfwood, from everyone, after they finally carved out a piece in this city for them?

After things were finally okay.

Wolfwood doesn't outwardly react. He walks out of the bedroom to go downstairs and get two large plastic bags from the kitchen. The clothes that didn't disappear with Vash's things are thrown into one, and everything else is tossed into the other. Everything of his from the bathroom, the coffee he bought in the kitchen, all the little things he had gotten to actually feel at home, too.

He doesn't want to stay in this room to wait on the chance Vash does return here. It's too silent. Lifeless. So he walks back to the house he was given, the house he rarely returns to, and he goes to his room there, which also barely has anything that makes it feel like home. Vash's gun is dropped on the bedside table.

Wolfwood showers. Changes clothes. Makes a pot of coffee and then goes out onto the balcony to smoke, but he tries no less than ten times to get the lighter to ignite before he just gives up and lets the unlit cigarette hang from his lips.

Staring across the streets as the morning goes on, the numbness begins to fade, and his senses are returning to him, and the anger and grief are bubbling up in his chest, in his throat, and he can feel tears streaking down his cheeks.

And a howl rips from him, furious and pained, uncaring of who hears.

Until his throat is raw. Until it peters off into a pitiful little whine and he can only turn around, go inside, and sit—alone—with only his thoughts for company.