He had enough on his mind trying to figure out just why his employer had apparently tried to eat someone, and then tried to eat him. He really wasn't in the right state of mind to figure out this map he'd been given.
"Do you need help?" someone asked. Vash turned to see a crewman looking at him suspectly.
"Oh, yes, thanks," Vash said. "Can you tell me how to get to my cabin? I'm having troubles with this map."
"Sure," the man said. He pointed down the corridor. "You're almost there, take this corridor to the second ladder, climb up two levels and then you want the...third cabin on your right, heading for the bow, got it?"
"Yeah," Vash said, nodding. "Thanks."
It was only a couple minutes later that Vash was standing before the cabin number that coincided with what he was assigned. Sighing in relief that he was, at last, where he could take a rest before having to deal with this new situation. Hopefully he wouldn't get lost trying to get back to where he was supposed to be.
The door slid open, like something out of star trek, and he walked in to look over what would likely be his new home.
It was relatively small, perhaps half the size of the smallest motel room he'd ever seen, but he didn't notice this. He, instead was fixated on the form lying on one of the two bunks in the room. The reddish-blonde haired girl lay on the bed, over the covers, looking colorless and not moving at all, not even to breathe.
He didn't stop to think why a dead girl would be lying in the bed on his bunk, he just rushed to the girl's bed and checked closely for any discernable sign of a pulse or breath. He found neither, and her skin was cold, much colder than a living body, but warmer than a corpse and not cooling at all. He hoped that meant that she wasn't dead yet.
Which meant he could still save her if he acted quickly. There wasn't enough room in the bunk to apply CPR or anything like that, so the gunfighter quickly pulled in the insensate young woman out of the bunk onto the floor.
He saw an old scar through the center of her neck, as if she had been stabbed there once before. She must have survived since it was mostly healed, leaving only a scar behind. He couldn't see any sign of what caused her state right now.
Looking about the room in a hurry gave no other clue. There were no needles to indicate a drug problem, maybe, then again that was the problem, a lack of drugs. There was a pack of medical blood in a portable freezer, but that didn't give him any clues as to what was the matter.
With no clues as to her condition, Vash refused to wait any longer, the couple of minutes he'd already spent were too much already. He straddled the motionless woman and pressed the heels in to her solidly, just under the sternum and pumping several times.
When that produced no response he bent down over her and opened her mouth in order to force air into her lungs. A couple seconds of this certainly brought a response.
The girl's blood-red eyes snapped open wide and, in short order, her fist snapped up into Vash's stomach doubling the gunman over for a moment as the poor, dying girl snapped her head up into Vash's face while angrily shouting.
"Get the bloody hell off of me!!" She got to her seat as the dazed gunman fell back and nearly growled. "What the hell do you think you're doing bloomin' perverted yank?"
"Not breathing, CPR," Vash gasped clutching at his head and stomach.
The blonde blinked for a moment in confusion as she worked that around for a moment.
"You were trying to save my life?" she asked, curiously.
"Yeah," Vash said, recovering. "You weren't breathing and had no pulse."
"Well, thanks," the woman said sheepishly, suddenly understanding the situation. "And sorry about...hitting you, but you shouldn't have gone to that trouble."
"Shouldn't have gone to the trouble?" Vash repeated. "Were you trying to kill yourself?" The blonde laughed at that for a moment.
"I only breathe if I'm talking or looking for a scent," she explained. "And my heart doesn't beat, even now." She offered her wrist to him for him to check for himself.
Vash hesitantly reached out to take the offer and, finding no pulse, felt around a little more to the woman's apparent amusement for a few seconds as she giggled with a mixture of sadness and humor. Of course, that smiling countenance vanished in an instant as...
"You can't get a pulse out of my arse," the girl said dangerously, prompting Vash to pull his hand away.
"Well, had to check," he said, giggling self-consciously. "So, who are you?" The woman was holding herself in a hostile manner again as she dusted off the offended portion of her anatomy.
"Sargeant Victoria Seras," she said. "I'm the sniper for our little uni...hang on...What the bloody hell are you doing in my bunk in the first place?!"
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Sat, 19 Jul 2003 13:06)
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