Chapter Text
Wolfwood expected… a lot of things to happen when he accepted the mission.
He expected the usual fare of “Find the demon, exorcise the demon, get chewed up for destroying half the city, cash in, finished”, he expected being stuck in this god forsaken city for a few weeks, looking for a myth, not finding anything, taking another week off to go on a paid vacation and then coming back and getting chewed out for shrinking his duties.
He expected nothing out of the ordinary.
Well.
Nicholas Dangerous Wolfwood will be the first man to say that he might have fucked up. Big time.
Roberto will never let him live this down, not to mention Millie .
How exactly is he supposed to explain that he might have bound himself to a demon? And it would have been fine if it had been the usual run of the mill demon! Shoot the fucker, bond dissolved, no one needs to know, but no.
It’s not just any demon, it’s Vash the motherfucking Stampede . The very same thing he was supposed to find and exorcise.
Who also saved his life, chained his life force to Wolfwood to get them out of a tight spot and maybe, just maybe, might be the most adorable demon in existence.
So yeah.
Wolfwood fucked up.
“What do you want, old man?” Wolfwood is still pulling at his collar when he enters the church and finds Roberto in front of the altar, both a bible and a banged up folder in his hands, “It’s my day off, why the fuck am I being dragged here at godless o’clock?!”
A smoke sounds nice, but if he lights one now, he will be dead meat. And probably one hand poorer.
“Your day off was yesterday, Wolfwood.” Roberto sighs and waves at one of the side doors, “Let’s talk outside, I need a smoke after this morning’s news.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Murder spree in Julai and we think it's Vash the Stampede, what do you think? ”
Oh.
Fuck.
Wolfwood has a bad feeling about this.
“And when we checked whether or not we have someone available to send there, you were our only option.”
Yep, there it is.
Wolfwood digs out the cigarette pack the second they are out of the building and offers Roberto one of them, “Let me guess, saying no is not an option?”
“Do you want me to send in a squad of newbies? Then sure. I can do that, we can take bets on who will come back alive and who will be brought back in a casket.”
Meaning, he is the only one capable of surviving the mission, maybe aside from Millie, who should still be here as well.
“What about Thompson?” He can try .
“Millie is still stuck in the infirmary for the foreseeable future. Her last mission went even more haywire than anticipated.”
Woldfood wants to ask, he really, really wants to, but he also knows his colleague and best friend enough to know that there are some things he is better off not knowing.
Still, to be the fly on the wall when they are discussing reparation and damage control reports. Millie’s are known to be legendary. And Wolfwood is the one with the giant ass gun.
“So… What exactly is going on over there? Do I get more than murder spree, Julai and Stampede .”
Roberto doesn't answer, instead he opts to light his own cigarette and offers Wolfwood the folder, “Several witch covens that practise demon summoning have been found completely wiped out by what looks like a whole ass demon invasion. Then there’s a group of nobles that have been found killed the same way during an illegal summoning, a few solitary people, three known survivors that had enough time to name the culprit before their mind caught up with them and they decided to finish the job.”
Meaning, all of the victims are dead.
Wolfwood looks at a photograph of a drawing, some sort of scrawled void with glowing eyes? Maybe horns and strange lines that seem to resemble face markings. He’s heard of those, of course. Who hasn’t?
The humanoid Typhoon, the demon on an eternal rampage, who appeared a few decades ago, wiped out all of Julai and then disappeared, Vash the Stampede. From what Wolfwood knows, the city is recovering from the losses to this day, what with all of north Julai still being rebuilt and most of the population dead. He’s heard of people moving there for the cheap rent prices and such, but there is little to say about a city constructed on the bones of the dead.
“You want me to find him.”
“Find him, exorcise him, see to it that he stays down there, I don’t want a repeat performance of the first time.”
Translation: be faster with the exorcism that he is with destroying things.
“Awful lot of confidence you’ve got in my skills, old man.” Wolfwood takes off his glasses, tries to clean them with the heavy woolen coat draped over his usual ensemble of black shirt and pants and finds the material severely lacking, “Please tell me you took care of my sleeping arrangements this time.”
“We have a safe house you can use, just don't leave it like you did the last one. I don’t feel like sending yet another cleaning crew to a place that is supposed to be secret . Or else my oversight over your sleeping arrangements will be a permanent one.” Roberto turns his back to Wolfwood, the dismissal abundantly clear.
“Yeah. Sure, sir.” The sir comes out with a somewhat wry, complicated subtone, one Wolfwood can’t quite swallow fast enough and he moves to leave the premises as fast as he can, before he does something much more embarrassing.
He still needs to get his gun back from maintenance, maybe visit Millie on the way out. If he’s lucky, she might be awake.
He doesn’t stay for a prayer.
These days, the only god he is willing to follow is the one he can find at the bottom of a glass.