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Around midday, a pacifist outlaw and an assassin priest walk into a bar to join a dozen of East-of-May’s finest saloon dwellers. As the joke for them always goes — there’s barely been enough time for Wolfwood to lay down his cross and signal for a beer, when the punchline hits like the old man behind the bar throws his cleaning rag into Vash’s face the moment he sees him.
“Get out of here, Stampede; you’re still banned.”
“Ewgh, can’t we forget about the chickens already? It’s been years!”
“I’ll forget and forgive when I’m dead and buried, you fiend!“
The priest sighs, ignores the inevitable wringing of his traveling partner’s neck, and grabs an old menu.
The other patrons nearby perk up hearing the name of every bounty hunters’ dream. Clicks of guns being raised echo around the bar. A man with multiple empty bottles in front of him springs up, yelling with wordless excitement, and gets a fist in his face.
“Did he say Stampede?”
“Does this mean the $$60 billion bounty is here?”
“I’ll catch him and buy myself a mansion!”
As the saloon erupts into violence over the walking lottery ticket, a red blur dives under the nearest table with a quiet ‘oh man.’
Hooting, a woman with two pistols shoots at the ceiling, and the barkeep’s eye visibly twitches. Her friend grabs a chair with almost as much enthusiasm and throws it on the ground. She frowns when it doesn’t break.
Wolfwood leans down to avoid a half-full bottle of beer being thrown at him and pretends to be highly invested in the menu.
”What's today's special?" he asks.
"Soup,” says the bartender, eyeing the ongoing chaos with a calculating glint.
"Any other lunch options?”
They’ve been camping out in the desert most nights, and thus having canned beans, more canned beans and canned nameless mush that Vash found from the bottom of his bag, so Wolfwood is determined to eat something more substantial today. He squints at the smudged ancient list—there might have even been cocktail options there at some point in the past, when the bartender still had hair and an interest in marketing his bar to a wider clientele.
Someone finally breaks a chair after many unsuccessful attempts at smashing it on various surfaces.
“Yeaah, Jeremy!”
The barkeep scratches his bald head in agitation and raises the shotgun he's been keeping out of sight.
"I could make a stew," he offers, and shoots at one of the ruffians who has rolled too close to his favorite, still-intact chairs.
”M'hat!" The ruffian cries, patting down his now-empty head.
The shotgun goes off again.
“And m’hair,” he continues, dismayed, touching what remains of his singed strands.
"Aw, Mr. Henriks, at least your sideburns didn’t get blasted off!" Says a cheerful voice from under the nearby table, and a red-clad arm reaches out to pat him sympathetically on the back.
Immediately, a bullet blasts the floor next to them, and the arm retreats quickly back into the cover after a startled ‘eek’.
”What's the difference between the soup and the stew?" Wolfwood asks a bit desperately.
The bartender, in the process of aiming his shotgun once more, is preoccupied with thinking about whether one could give someone a close shave by just shooting at them.
"Stew’s thicker than soup," he decides after a while, tracking the still-smoking Mr. Henriks and what remains of his facial hair through the bar as he scampers towards the exit.
Half of the people in the bar seem to have missed what even started this whole ruckus, and some of them are just happy to be included, shooting around randomly and attempting to give their bar besties a beatdown.
Wolfwood, trying to think calming thoughts such as the purring engine of a motorcycle or a homemade spaghetti, registers movement to his left. A bounty-hungry opportunist is attempting to crawl towards the prize from a new angle; he has not forgotten what capturing the legendary outlaw could bring to his table. Casually, Wolfwood lifts up the Punisher and drops it back down. Under the weight of all its mercy, a wheezing ‘hklurgh’ sound can be heard.
“Gimme the stew then, old man. I’ll even get these rowdy guys outta here if you just unban my idiot friend and give him some soup.”
The bartender furrows his brows and reloads.
“I’ll give him until this afternoon, if you just prevent more holes from being made in my ceiling. Otherwise, I’ll shoot you both just for making me remember the chicken thing.”
“Deal.” Wolfwood decides he does not want to know what crimes were being committed against poultry in the past.
He stands up, leaving his cross holding down the flanking crawler, and instead grabs a new weapon, who had been building a small barricade from the not-yet-smashed, good chairs.
“Huh- hey Wolfwood, what-“ Vash the Stampede starts to say before he is chucked at four factory workers turned professional bounty hunters, who have stopped shooting to bicker over bullets. With a surprised squawk, Vash somersaults in the air and lands on the tallest guy’s back, after flailing and kicking so much that two of his coworkers drop their guns.
The fourth factory hunter grabs some of the ammo stashed in her overalls and reloads her gun. She tries to shoot Vash before the humanoid boa constrictor squeezes her buddy to the death with his panicked chokehold. Screeching, Vash yanks at his unfortunate victim’s ear, which makes him throw out his arm and accidentally slap the revolver from the woman’s hand into a nearby pint of beer. Indignant, she looks to her superiors for instruction, but finds they have disappeared into the chaos.
The factory foreman, who lost his gun earlier, has decided to outsource this bounty hunting project to the shift supervisor and is already vacating the premises through a window.
The supervisor however, has just remembered she’s still on her mandatory break and does not have a valid overtime contract. She quietly seizes the rest of Tall-Dan’s lunch, as he seems to be currently distracted with befriending their target on his shoulders.
“Oh yeah, of course I knew your grandma, Daniel! We used to play Bridge whenever I was in May!”
Wolfwood, in the meantime, has started good old-fashioned fisticuffs with one half of the bar, using his current brawling partner as a human shield against the remaining shooters, who are taking pot shots from behind the piano. When most of them pause to reload and curse at him, he grabs his protective barrier from the legs and spins him into the crowd behind the instrument, who fall trying to either catch the guy or scramble away. Someone leans on the piano keys and accidentally plays quite a beautiful F chord.
Taking a chance to light up, Wolfwood takes a deep breath of calming smoke and grabs the Punisher from the bar. The flattened man underneath inhales desperately, resembling a sad paper bag.
“Alright. Everyone who doesn’t want to get shot full of holes or their face kicked in, git,” Wolfwood yells, unraveling the wrappings around the cross-shaped gun. When that doesn’t immediately get everyone’s attention, he shoots stern warning shots into the fray.
Maybe sensing the priest's patience running out when their hats get ripped into pieces by the machine-gun fire, the crowd timidly holsters their guns and fists. Disappointed aws fill the bar. Someone boos.
Wolfwood looks at the booer in the face, and frowns. After a moment of silence, Vash quietly climbs down from Tall-Dan’s shoulders, looking chastised.
“Sorry boys, we have to continue the chicken fight some other time.”
The bartender growls warningly at the mention of the bird.
Vash ignores him and shakes hands with the opposite team consisting of the bar pianist and Jeremy on her shoulders.
“Good game,” they say and head out, Jeremy almost banging his head on the doorway.
The rest of the crowd starts to slowly disperse. Wolfwood pokes the paper bag man on the floor with his shoe, and he also slowly oozes towards the exit.
Wolfwood is enjoying his lunch. It’s a beautiful day and he has a fresh bowl of steaming stew, a cold glass of beer and a quietly grumbling outlaw in a headlock while he eats.
“I said I’m sorry- hgkh!” Vash says for the 5th time and Wolfwood warningly tightens his hold on the peace and not-quiet.
“I don’t want your sorries, I want you to stay put and not explode this bar for half an hour.”
“No exploding my bar again,” the bartender warns while he’s straightening the curtains on a broken window.
“Yeah Spikey, listen to the man and just eat your soup.” Wolfwood pushes a spoonful toward’s Vash’s grumpy face and he begrudgingly accepts it. After tasting the day’s special, his eyebrows rise up in delight and he opens his mouth wide again, expectant. Feeling charitable, Wolfwood continues rewarding his good behavior with soup.
The barkeep’s face darkens after witnessing this reenactment of how to feed a baby bird.
“Remember boys, the ban is only lifted until the afternoon. When the clock hits 3PM, I’ll shoot ya if I see anything red and blond still in here.”