Work Text:
“Aww, look how cute it is!”
The third incident report of the week sits half-written in Meryl Stryfe’s beloved typewriter, spiting her.
It’s one thing, to have to write the report in the first place. While Bernadelli Insurance Agency may no longer be her primary employers, the design, formatting, and contents of the reports she would send back to them on a monthly basis still stick to her writing habits like year-old, poorly-paying glue. Like the five-paragraph essay, that she only learned how to write in grade school and got to incorporate in introductory seminars before the rest of her education told her to piss off with the structure and write like a real academic. Abstract and freeform and whatever the situation called for. Nobody’s ever changed the world with a five-paragraph essay. Meryl Stryfe may like structure, but she likes changing the world even more.
It’s another, that she has to write the report because the Terran-Corp News Agency — her and Milly’s number-one competitors at No Man’s Land Broadcasting, thank you, even if the head of the Earth company likes to act like Meryl never sent him sixteen requests to meet in person to discuss how they might share the planetary newswaves more equally, instead of allowing an alien planet (Earthmen did not like being called aliens) to monopolize Gunsmoke’s frequencies all for its own — is lying again. They lie a lot. She’s of the opinion that more than sixty percent of the programs they air are blatant horseshit. But you won’t catch her saying that out loud to anyone except Milly while blackout drunk, and maybe Vash if he’s around once in a Worm Moon, and definitely Livio, because he’s pretty good at keeping secrets by virtue of not really liking to talk to very many people, but never Razlo, because he’s a self-proclaimed “tattletaling asshole” just to get under her skin. She could see him running all the way to November to tell the CEO of TCNA she said he’s shit just to prove a point.
This, Meryl thinks angrily, is what that freakshow Millions Knives should’ve been worried about. Forget the war and the subjugation and the interspecific abuse spanning generations. No, no, that all pales in comparison — to the Terran propensity for propaganda. (Okay, she’ll admit, propaganda was involved in all of those things.) (Propaganda is involved in a lot of things. But in this case, it just felt petty on the part of the Terrans, instead of insidious.) The things she has to clear up, because of these people.
Because every single program put on by the TCNA recently has somehow, for some reason or another, decided to start blaming everything on worms.
Bad weather? Worms eating the clouds. Sandstorm coming? Worm gettin’ it on. Crops died? (Nobody in their right mind born on No Man’s Land would try to grows crops on No Man’s Land. Meryl’s starting to think not a single Terran is in their right mind.) Worms eating them too. Earthquakes? Worms gettin’ it on, underground edition. Your wife left you? Taken by a worm. Eloped with a worm. Eaten by a worm. Your kids left you? Also eaten by a worm.
“—What do you think we should name her?”
Milly’s voice echoes from down the hall in the kitchen, hushed but excited. Meryl scratches her head. Usually, Milly helps her with these, but Milly has a habit of swinging unpredictably between being too nice and being too honest in her reports. Honesty is exactly what Meryl needs right now, but the niceness? The polite euphemisms? The don’t worry hon, your puppy’s fine, we just took her to the farm! when Meryl needs to be hitting things (hopefully arrogant men in positions of power, not puppies) with cars? Milly would probably forgive the Terrans for misunderstanding the nuances of living alongside the Wams. They just need some time to adjust, it’ll be fine.
—Like hell they need time to adjust. Meryl holds no affection for either group, worms or Earthmen, and that’s not even accounting for how rude the latter have been to her self-made news network. One freakin’ kidnapped her. The other tried to freakin’ nuke the city she and everyone else left on the planet were hiding in. Time to adjust, her tiny little ass.
“—Dun’ look at me.” That’s Razlo’s voice, Meryl could recognize the heavier drawl from a mile away. “Las’ time I tried ta name somethin’ the lil’ missus veto’d it like ‘er life would end if she didn’ get ‘er way.”
“I’m sure you could come up with very nice names if you gave it your all, Mister Razlo,” Milly replies to him, and Meryl shakes her head to express her unseen doubt. “It’s just that… ma’am isn’t exactly a fan of the edgier styles, ya know? She’s a very classy lady!”
“Meatgrinder can be classy,” Razlo grouses.
Milly giggles. “I thought it was very funny. It just didn’t really suit a cute little kitten like Kuro, Mister Razlo.”
“This thing ain’t all that cute,” Razlo says, and Meryl can hear the grin in his voice, “so maybe it’s time for Meatgrinder 2.0”
“Hey! Don’t be rude!” Milly gasps, affronted. “She’s adorable!”
Okay, what the hell did they find? Last time Meryl left them alone together for too long, Milly and Razlo came back with the little black cat living in her house now they dubbed Kuroneko (after name suggestions including but not limited to: Pudding, Meatgrinder, Gateau, and Razor Blade). The time before that, they came home with the neighbor’s dog. Accidentally. (Allegedly). They were lucky the neighbors were understanding of the mistake.
Meryl pushes her chair back and groans when her shoulders make a pop, pop! noise when she rolls them. She cracks her knuckles and then wrists in quick succession, shaking out her hands and feeling the blood return to her fingertips. Sweet, sweet movement; hunching over a desk might’ve been fine in her teenage years, but age catches up quickly when you spend most of your early twenties hyped up on stress-inducing, heart-pumping, life-or-death situations. And also when the world tries to end. Vash the Stampede made an adrenaline junkie out of her and Meryl doesn’t really see that addiction fading away any time soon.
“Sure. In an ugly kinda way,” Razlo snorts. Leave it to Milly Thompson to make the Tri-Punisher attempt to compromise. “Weird lil’ ugly things can be cute.”
Padding out of her room on socked feet, Meryl walks down towards the kitchen and rubs her eyes as she goes. A break wouldn’t hurt; some water, a nice snack, and maybe one of Miss Melanie’s lemon bars if she’s feeling devious could revitalize her creativity in her moment of need. She has companies to criticize. She’s being withheld from her divine calling by fatigue and her sleep-deprived mortal shell. Tragedy, tragedy.
“Don’t insult her, Mister Razlo, she’s very sensitive,” Milly sniffs. Meryl hears her move around in the kitchen to turn on the faucet, and the sound of Razlo following after her. “Didn’t you see her start to cry earlier when that barking dog startled her?”
Razlo makes a strange noise (but to be fair, Razlo makes a lot of strange noises) to signal his disagreement. “Mills, I don’ think she’s got any tear ducts in that face a’ ‘ers.”
Oh, God. Meryl feels a sense of dread bloom in her empty stomach. What did they find this time.
“Still: be nice,” Milly says.
Milly tends to get defensive over small, helpless little creatures. Milly also tends to get defensive over large, perfectly-capable-of-handling-themselves creatures. So Meryl’s got no idea what’s put her on the protective side this time, and she’s got a bad feeling that she isn’t going to like it.
“‘M always nice,” Razlo lies.
Milly’s laughter and her response are the complete opposite of mean-spirited, despite the words and the choking sound from Razlo she receives for them: “We both know that’s an awfully big fib, Mister Razlo!”
(Milly’s the kind of person who can get away with saying “Oh, bless your heart!” without a single repercussion or retaliation against her. Because she means it. She really does want to bless your heart. Her blessings, unfortunately, tend to make Meryl have to reach for a derringer on the off chance Milly’s comment is taken the wrong way by the wrong crowd.)
Meryl pushes open the swinging door to the kitchen, bracing herself for the worst. Instead of the horrors, however, she comes face to face with a pair of broad backs hunching over the sink together, murmuring to whatever thing they’d found together. Meryl waits in the doorway for all of four seconds before her tapping foot gets Razlo’s attention, and he turns around to smile at her with a normal amount of teeth and gums. Too nicely. Too innocently. Meryl narrows her eyes.
“Heya, missus,” Razlo says, too polite for her liking.
“Hello, Razlo,” says Meryl. “—Show me the cat.”
Razlo’s grin stretches wider. “No cat, ma’am.”
“I know there’s a cat. An ugly one,” Meryl insists, crossing her arms. “If it’s a mess, it might have worms. I could hear you two talking down the hall. What did you find?”
Milly whips around to proudly display the bundle of terror in her arms. “Oh, no! It’s a different kind of worm, Miss Meryl – take a look!”
—Meryl shrieks.
(It’s not every day that the idiots in your house come home with a giant worm larva, and it’s especially not every day they discuss what to name the poor, kidnapped invertebrate, as if they intend to keep it as a pet. Coincidentally, it also had to be on the very same day that Meryl had to struggle through watching recordings of a red-faced Terran reporting about the sandstorms and the earthquakes on television channels that her broadcast was supposed to occupy, so she could fact-check his blatantly false statements and tear him a new one with her trusty typewriter.
Meatgrinder 2.0 was a lovely shade of crimson red, covered in wriggling legs, and boasting six pairs of panicked compound eyes. Milly had swaddled it up in a blanket. It was, Meryl had to admit, a little bit cute.
Since neither Milly nor Razlo seemed all that inclined to abandon their newfound, honorary daughter, Meryl had to be the responsible bad guy — as usual — and sneak Meatgrinder 2.0 out the back door in the middle of the night, so neither of them could stop her. She’ll just tell Milly that she took her out to the farm, and hope that it doesn’t make Milly start to cry.)