Character Profile: Meryl Stryfe

Meryl is a field agent for the Bernardelli Insurance Society. Like most insurance firms, Bernardelli wants to verify the claims filed by its clients, so Meryl and her partner Milly head out to see the situations for themselves.

Their current running case involves a long list of incidents supposedly caused by someone named "Vash the Stampede". Due to the vast amounts of damage being claimed, she and Milly are supposed to locate Vash and keep him under constant watch in an attempt to minimize further damage. Because of Vash's seeming clumsiness, she's hard pressed to admit that the tall man in the red coat really is the Humanoid Typhoon. It's a bit hard for her to admit that what she's thinking is wrong. Part of this is due to her bullet-like focus on whatever she happens to be doing, whether it's the job at hand or whatever else she's concerned about.

Her one-track mind comes from her one great desire: order. She's a very logical woman who's used to seeing thing A-to-B-to-C, etc... Her early encounters with Vash, though, literally trample her ideal sense of the world into the hot, dry ground. And you wonder why she didn't particularly like the idea that he could be the man she's been hunting down all this time. It just doesn't make sense. Perhaps it's due, though. Meryl could use with a nice dose of reality. She could come out of this adventure a better woman if she realizes it.

Since life on the road can be hard (especially when it's as lawless a planet as this, where the nearest friendly face may be iles away), Meryl carries concealed weapons under her cloak. Her preferred firearm is a single-shot Derringer pistol (hence her nickname, "Derringer Meryl"). But she doesn't have a problem when it comes to dealing with multiple enemies, as her coat is literally packed with them (50 of them in total), which she'll fire off one after another with remarkable accuracy.

Editor's Note: The term "iles" isn't a typo, it's a unit of measurement used in Trigun that is similar to "miles".