--- Raye Johnsen <raye_j@yahoo.com> wrote:

Since Mr. Tynes has not taken up the gauntlet....

Not _yet_.  Some of us are busy during the day, you know.  ;)

Akane nodded decisively.  "Right.  I'll have to
reformat it into HTML or something and then send it to
a plain-text ML and print it out from there, to
totally muck up the formatting."

Nabiki blinked.  "Why would you do that?"

Akane giggled.  "Because the assignment is to write a
story using the worst things a writer can do, of
course!"

Incompetence is fairly neutral.  Exceptionally bad (or good) results in
writing, as in most things, are easier to achieve for the
uber-competent...

---

Knives strolled through the dead city, grin gleaming in the sunlight as
he reflected on how this had come to pass.

Perhaps, had things gone differently, he might have used guns or
similar weapons to do this deed.  And perhaps, technically, he had -
just not his own.  The right posters here, plant a rumor there, and it
was so easy to set cityfolk at each others' throats.  Give properly
doctored stories to both sides - after creating the sides in the first
place - and they would meet expecting violence.  Inevitably, some
nervous or brash sort would fire the first shot, and...well, he was
pretty certain there were few survivors.

And to think, his sister bore most of the blame.  Her words could twist
mens' souls just as well as his could.  In fact, she had taught him how
to write and how to persuade, back when the colony fleet crashed on
Gunsmoke.  She had gone with him despite his orders to stay put, and
talked him out of taking weapons from the wreck.  It had been so long
since they had actually seen one another, but by subtly twisting their
war of words in the local newspaper, Knives had...ah, no more time for
reminiscence.  Dear sister lay ahead.

"You know they'll blame you for it," he called from hiding.

She looked up, but could not spot him.

"You never could bring yourself to kill someone, but now you have all
these murders on your head.  How big do you think the bounty will be,
Yom-"

"DON'T."

Knives blinked.

She scowled in his approximate direction.  "You no longer have the
right to call me by that name."

"Oh?  Then what should I call you?"

The plain-looking woman - nothing at all like what the legends were
already saying about her - stood up, anger welling up to force out any
sorrow remaining in her heart.  "You can call me what everyone else
calls me.  The name that this CURSE you and I share has earned for me."

Tears flowed from her eyes as Knives heard her assert herself for...it
might have been the first time ever, now that he thought about it.

"You can call me The Paper."

---

Because the truest evils in our world rarely raise their own fingers to
befoul things.

Neither Trigun nor Read Or Die, nor the characters or settings from
them, are my property.

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