Ad Misericordiam
A Trigun Maximum fanfiction.
Summary: While playing a game of chess, humanity's would-be-destroyer thinks about his relationship with the man standing across the board from him; their past, present, and possible future (mangaverse, NOT slash).
Spoiler Level: Not too bad, if you have any familiarity with the manga whatsoever. There are a few differences (such as the destruction of July) that differ from the anime. Please don't tell me I'm full of it, okay? Also, if you read the notes below and and have no idea what "scene in the manga" I'm talking about, stay away. Otherwise, you're fine.
Disclaimers: I own nothing but the specific events that occur in the story (e.g., I don't own the destruction of July, but I do own my intepretation of it) and Legato's family (Staccato and "his own twin brother"). Everything else belongs to Yasuhiro Nightow and H. P. Lovecraft (the "demon" belongs to him, if you want to know more about that character, read "The Fungi From Yuggoth", specifically sonnets XXI - XXII).
Genre: Angst/Tragedy. I've tried to make Knives as sympethetic as I can, but he's trying to commit premeditated genocide, and he's willing to smash the only person who still has positive feelings for him to do it. In other words, this isn't a happy, uplifting story.
Pairings: None. I'm not sure about my ability to write romance, and even if I was, I find the idea of Knives and Legato as a couple only slightly less disturbing than the idea of Knives/Vash twincest. Okay?
Author's Notes: Hello there, all you happy people! If you're reading this, I'd like to thank you for clicking on my first fanfic. Alright, now that we've got the sappy greeting out of the way, I'm going to rant a bit. Feel free to skip it if you like, just remember that this is not supposed to be an AU fanfic.
Are you still there? Good. This fanfic was written for a couple of reasons. The first and most important is to entertain you, the reader. The second is to dispute what I consider to be two misconceptions about Legato. They are as follows:
One, Legato is Knives's mindless puppet/love slave.
Two, Legato gets his powers from Vash's arm.
I can understand how people might get the first idea if they haven't read the manga. While Legato seems to be doing a kindness in the "Slaughter Cafe" scene, he might simply be reponding to the innate sense of justice in Vash's arm, or to his own bad mood. However, Legato says a few words about his actions afterward, and while Vash might be able to spur his archnemesis to action, I highly doubt he could control what Legato said afterwards. Also, there is a scene in the manga where the psychic defies his master's will rather openly (the results of which are discussed in this happy little story).
As for the second... Who came up with that? Neither Vash nor Knives shows any psychic ability other than basic telepathy, and that only with beings sensitive to such things or during situations of extreme duress. If they had such powers, they would both be using them at every available opportunity, each for his own reasons. Certain people (I won't name names) who flamed another Legato story for deviating from this idea need to ask themselves this simple question.
Why would the arm of a person with only a minor sixth sense give someone else with no innate psychic ability the power to kill an entire town?
Alright, let's get on with the show.
"KILL HIM!" - Legato Bluesummers
"Who said you could kill him! You piece of trash..." - Millions Knives
"Wake up. Are you alive? Will you listen to me?
I'm gonna talk about some freaky shit now.
Someone is gonna die when you listen to me.
Let the living die, let the living die." - Disturbed, "Voices"
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." - The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Playing chess with a telepath is a lot like trying to strangle a sand dune. That's a bizzare, strained analogy if there ever was one, playing chess is quite unlike strangling someone (I have done both), and telepathy does not seem to have much in common with a sand dune, but the mental image is a good one if you consider it carefully. The endless waves of sand that cover this world have no necks to throttle, and if a creature was indeed stupid (or insane) enough to grapple with one, the foolish thing would only have a handful of sand for its trouble.
Playing chess with a telepath is not quite as foolish, but it is just as pointless. He does not try to telepathicly cheat, any more than I try to breathe (our kind can survive, in stasis at least, without air for much, much longer than humans can, however, we are not anaerobic), but he catches the thoughts of a chess player in deep concentration without even trying. Still though, I can take pride in the fact that I have done far better than any spider possibly could against him; I usually manage to win one out of every three or four games, probably due in equal parts to the intensive training I have put myself through in order to control my powers and shield my thoughts and the fact that we are born with natural psionic potential that puts mere humans to shame.
I have never seen him lose to anyone else.
The young man feels betrayed, when he can think through the all-emcompassing pain. There are few things worse than being shot by someone you love; someone you thought loved you in return. Knives is even younger than his childlike face would indicate, but already he has drank deeply of the icy waters of Cocytus, and he has found the water of that treacherous river to be bitter indeed. Rem's lies by omission regarding the sister he had never met were bad enough, but she was only human. Vash was his own brother.
Lying there on the ground in pain both mental and physical, he almost does not notice the man approaching him. Lucky guy. If Knives was in fighting condition, he could shoot the impudent creature three times before it could take another step. As it is, he has lost a fair bit of blood, and though the enhanced healing of his species is begining to kick in, he is barely in condition to sit up, let alone reach for his gun lying on the sand a couple of yards away.
"You are hurt," the man says, continuing to walk toward him unhindered, "Let me help you."
Knives makes a hissing, strangled noise. It is the sound of mingled rage, disgust, and (although he would never admit it) fear. Knives would rather die than accept human help. He lunges toward his gun, or at least, tries to. What actually happens is a flop like the kind a dying fish makes as it tries to escape a live-well. The man simply shakes his head (whether in sympathy or condescension is impossible to say), and beckons with his right hand. Knives can only watch in horror as the gun flies to the man and lands in his outstretched hand.
Knives passes out. For a moment the man stands over the fallen plant angel, observing the child's features. It is not a perfect resemblance, but if the hair was longer, darker, the face thiner, the boy might pass for a young version of the man's father. His creator.
"Meet the new boss," the man quotes from a verse he does not remember as he gently lifts the boy into his arms, "Same as the old boss."
He stands, supported by coffin and pallbearer, across the chessboard from me, looking down at the pieces. It is the only way he can stand now, because for all his telepathy, he wasn't expecting me to break his spine in four places and his pelvis in three when he said those two little words. He didn't expect such a thing because I didn't expect such a thing. It all happened in less than a second.
It disturbs me. Not the actual breaking of his shell (it would be wrong to confuse him with the clay he currently resides in), I can fix that. Will fix that, as soon as he gives me my brother (it is not right for a superior being to contridict himself in front of his servants, but I have promised him both forgiveness and a place with my sisters and their healing touch when his mission is completed. The restoration of one man will seem a light burden to my sisters after the bottomless greed of the spiders). It's the loss of control that bothers me. Only madmen crush their most loyal servants on a whim. I'm not mad. I'm not.
He gives a subliminal command and the pallbearer moves a piece. He has just captured my bishop with his knight, and is forcing me to choose between my rook and my king. As anyone who has ever played chess before knows, there is no real choice here. You must save your king if you can. If you cannot, it is checkmate.
He grins at me, and for a terrible moment he appears as he once did, when I was wounded and he was not and I had not learned to control my vast power yet. I was afraid of him then.
"Your move, Master."
The sky is black and starry when Knives regains consciousness. For a moment, he does not remember what happened. Then the pain comes back, dull but deep; it is like being stabbed to death with a sharpened spoon. That jogs his memory.
The man is sitting by what appears to be a portable stove/grill of some kind. He is cooking some sort of meat, although Knives cannot tell exactly what is on the menu. For one wild, paranoid moment, the plant thinks that the man is cooking his flesh, perhaps taken from the area around the gunshot wound. That thought quickly passes as he recognizes the smell of thomas steak. The huge, flightless birds are not exactly his food of choice, but far better than being eaten alive.
"Ah, so you're awake. Our meal will be done shortly," he pauses here long enough to turn the steak over, "You do eat, right?"
"Not with humans," Knives hisses, "Having to worry about poison gives me indisgestion." He has never had indigestion in his life, but it seems like a good thing to say.
"Well then, there will absolutely no problem between us." The man stands up, "I am not human in the conventional sense of the word, and I harbor no love for the creatures." He then tosses Knives's gun into the air, and it hovers there, held by an unseen force. "How many humans do you know who can do a trick like that?"
"Are you... are you a plant?" Knives asks, animosity forgotten. The idea that there might be others like him and Vash walking free is an exciting one.
"No."
"Then," Knives says, frowning, "What are you?"
"Look at me.", he says. Knives looks, three of the planet's five moons giving him light.
The man is tall, but not terribly so. His skin, as far as Knives can tell, is smooth. The right hand that took his gun is alone on its body, the moonlight glints off his obviously prosthetic left arm and the skull strapped to it. His eyes glimmer golden, an eye color that Knives has never seen, even amongst his fellow plants. His hair is slightly out of control, but well groomed. And blue, can't forget that. Blue hair.
"I am a Bluesummers. I was created to serve humans, but my family and I refused to bow to the vermin, and were sent into exile for it. My name is Legato."
"Created by humans..." Knives muses.
"So were you. The only difference is that we were made to provide them with weapons and you were made to give them energy."
"How did you find me?" Knives asks, staring at the creature before him. Legato is currently trying to transfer the steak from the grill to a plate without dropping it or burning his real fingers.
"I dreamed about finding you here. It was fated," he pauses here to put the steak on a plate,"but I don't know your name. That's a major problem with dreams, you don't get any choice about what you see. So, how about it? I've introduced myself, now it's your turn to share." He grins, and although Knives doesn't know it, this is a momentous occasion. The number of times in his life Legato has grinned both without malice and with sincerity can be counted on two hands.
"Millions Knives," the boy says. Legato kneels before him, hand with plate extended towards the child. There are tears in the man's eyes. He looks like he has finally found his purpose in life.
"Master Knives, would you like some steak?"
I remember the times before the Gung-Ho-Guns and July, when we walked this dusty planet alone. So does he, though I think he tries to avoid thinking about walking now. We made a strange pair, master and servant, and wherever we went, the townspeople would practically trip over themselves to get out of our way. It was funny in a grim way, watching them lower their eyes as they stuttered an apology for jostling one of us, serving us substandard meals in their restaurant, or some other petty offense when their real crimes against Vash and my sisters went unexcused. Had I been able to without attracting undue attention, I would have rewarded each and every one of those hypocrites by ripping out their black hearts with my bare hands.
I move my king, he takes my rook, the game continues. It is getting brutal now. I am not doing as badly as I sometimes do, but I am not doing as well as I do during those few winning games either. I think this match is his, but I intend to go down fighting. He sighs, he has overheard my intent, and found it good. He does not smile or frown over such a petty thing as a chess match, but his eyes telegraph his emotions, if you can read them. I am one of the few who can. He is happy.
He enjoys a good fight. Some people mistake that trait for masochism, but it isn't. When he first met Vash (the time I hacked my brother's arm off doesn't count), he thought Monev the Gale would be enough to destroy him. When Vash defeated E. G. Mine and Dominque the Cyclops, he grew concerned, but very, very excited as well. It had been forever since someone had been able to defeat the least of his minions, and here was someone who could possibly give him trouble. It must have made him tremble with joy.
He still wants Vash dead, that much I'm sure of, but beyond that I'm not sure of his motives. I know that he will no longer dare to openly defy me in matters concerning my brother, but... it was better when he could take his desire to kill things elsewhere. I don't believe he enjoys killing in and of itself, but it serves as a release for him, and any human who gets in his way when he is angry is lucky to get an open casket funeral. Around here, he doesn't have much to kill.
Except his subordinates.
"Legato, remind me, why are doing this?" Knives asks as he removes the burlap sacks from the storage compartment of what he calls, for lack of a better word, the Legatomobile. His eyes are masked by extremely dark sunglasses, his skin darkened by copious amounts of makeup.
"Because Master, we are quite low on funds, and we need a great deal of money to secure land and resources without attracting attention," Legato replies, pulling his mass of hair into a black skullcap, and putting on his own sunglasses, "You yourself have said that it is important that the vermin not know of our activities until we are ready to destroy them."
"It was a retorical question, Legato."
"I apologize Master."
The two walk into the bank. In an ironic twist of fate, this is the very bank that Vash will take cover in during his fight with Monev the Gale some seventy-three years hence, and the current owner of the establishment is the grandfather of the man who will own it during that future battle. This is rather sad for the owners, as both of them were/are/will be decent men, upstanding, law-abiding citizens, people who don't deserve to encounter the Seibrem twins.
Fate doesn't give a damn.
They walk in. Knives speaks first.
"This is a hold up. Everyone will surrender their valubles, and the safe will be open in two minutes or there will be hell to pay. Understood?"
A security guard apparently does not understand, the stupid human lifts his six-shooter to fire at Millions Knives, who is apparently unarmed. The shot goes into the ceiling. The guard stares at his rebellious hand, which once won a quick draw tournament for its owner. It does not make a habit of flying up of its own violition.
"Pathetic worm," Legato says, steel in his soft voice. He does not have to concentrate on keeping the man bound, he did not even consciously send that unfortunate shot into the ceiling, such are his mental reflexes. "You would dare to strike down a superior being? You could have lived longer, perhaps to the end of your insect lifespan, had you stood down," he pauses here to glance around and confirm that the other guards (as well as the innocents who chose a very bad day to go to the bank) are staring in horror, "May I have your attention please? This is what will happen if you attack us or attempt to escape."
The guard has enough time to scream, but not much. His traitor hand lifts the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger. However, when brain and bone fragments splatter on a nearby woman, she has enough time to go into hysterics before the guard's corpse, still standing like a marionette with half of its strings cut, shoots her once in the chest. The remaining four bullets are then used to strike down another brave (or foolish) guard and a trigger-happy citizen who tries to help. They both die instantly, but the woman continues to suck air and whimper, unable to scream due to a punctured lung. Legato's expression, one of utter apathy bordering on distaste, does not change at all, even when his own prosthetic arm shifts into a semiautomatic weapon and shoots her once more in the head. All is deathly quiet when the telepath finally speaks again.
"We need access to your safe. Open. That. Safe." Legato favors the trembling creatures on the floor before him with a smile that might slay the weak of heart, then makes a final command.
"NOW!"
Knives laughs. In a moment, Legato joins him.
He is winning. No, that is an understatement. Let me try again.
He is kicking my superior ass.
See, I can admit defeat, graciously, no less. Shout it from the rooftops, Millions Knives has just admitted his apparent inability to consistently defeat his right-hand man. No one will care, there are very few people (human or otherwise) living on this dustball that know my name, but it might serve as a terrific source of exercise.
For his part, he is very gracious about his victories. Losing a game of chess to a telepath does not lessen your worthiness as a superior being, he says, nor your worthiness to destroy the pathetic creatures that feed on the suffering of your kind. Do not let it disturb you. But I am disturbed.
To understand what he is, you must understand what he was. Once, he possessed a sort of majesty about him; he understood that his place in the Eden that I was (and still am) creating was second only to Vash and myself, and acted accordingly. He was graceful and constantly poised, even the few spiders he walked among that knew his name noted this and called him "El Gato", playing on the Spanish words for "the cat" (he wasn't fond of the name, but he didn't kill those who called him by it). He was a master of rhetoric, we often discussed things like God (he is a believer, I am an agnostic, but he gives me no trouble about it; he does not believe in the traditional Christian view of God) and the meaning of life (if there is such a thing), and he could actually leave me at a loss for words upon occasion. He was the picture of freedom, a born slave who had taken his destiny into his own hands, and though he served me, it was only because he chose to. Above all though, he did not serve out of fear or religious belief, he served because he loved me as his brother and best friend.
I think he was the only friend I ever had, other than my hopelessly misguided brother.
His majesty is gone now, it is impossible to be majestic when you must eat by falling down onto your plate. He can't move anything but his head now, and while I have tried to give him some mobility, the cybernetic pallbearer created to drag him around is not graceful. He doesn't talk much anymore, and when he does he often sounds slightly confused (I think that perhaps he occasionally loses precise control of his powers, and is simply reading all thoughts in the area at once, making him unsure of his precise location, but he does not say). He drools sometimes, though he tries not to when I am present. He is imprisoned within his coffin, and will remain there until I have my sisters restore him. He still loves me, but now his love is mixed with something that was not there before, anxiety and a desperate desire to appease me. His mouth says he believes I will fix him when I have triumphed, but his eyes say that he fears I will finish the job I started in a fit of rage before that occurs.
He still loves me, but he is no longer my friend.
The second fight between the twins occured less than three years after the robbery in May City.
Amazingly, their meeting at all was an absolute coincidence, as far as Legato believes in such a thing (and Legato's is the opinion that matters right now, his master is unconcious and badly wounded; Legato will have to devote a large amount of psionic power toward the task of merely keeping him alive for the next few hours, and there will be no traveling for weeks). In any case, the psychic is sure that neither twin wanted the encounter to end in bloodshed, especially not the pious, holier-than-thou Vash.
Maybe it wasn't coincidence. Now there was a reassuring thought. It was a long shot that the two plants would both come to the same little town on the sand ocean's Melca Border (Melca's south border faces a vast stretch of desert where the sand becomes too powdery to support weight; walking on the sand ocean would be a bit like walking on a two hundred foot deep snowdrift) at the same time, but the alternative was far more unsettling. Without any knowledge of what they were doing, the twins somehow psychicly tracked each other down across a planet.
The fact that the twins could have used their extrordinary abilities to trail each other doesn't disturb Legato at all. One might hear of dogs and such doing the same thing on his homeworld (not here, of course, no mere pet could ever survive this world's deserts). But those animals seemed, for the most part, to understand what they were doing if not how they were doing it. Neither one of the twins had seemed to have the faintest idea that they were on a collision course with each other. And that was disturbing.
The brothers met outside the town around sunset. He was getting a room in a motel on the outskirts of town while Knives (who was prone to become violent if forced into close proximity with humans for long periods of time) took a walk in the desert. Legato does not know what happened exactly in the desert, but he felt the force of the battle. Unfortunately, he has arrived too late to intervene, but he did arrive in time to find his master still alive, though shot several times and badly burned, collaspsed on the ground, where he had passed out trying to crawl back to town after the battle. He picks up his master, taking care not to worsen the plant's injuries. He bandages Knives carefully and places him in his climate-controlled vehicle (the "Legatomobile") He then uses his powers to stabilize his master as best he can; only after he is certain that Knives is in no immediate danger does he drive into the desert where his master crawled from. He finds Vash half a mile further into the desert, at what is presumeably the site of the battle. The other plant looks fairly decent, except for his terribly torn coat, a new gaping wound on his chest to add to a growing collection of scars, and the fact that his arm is lying ten feet away from his body.
He remembers the demon. Not a fallen angel, not really, but demon is a good word for it. The literal translation of demon is "wise one", and the conotation of the term fits the creature well. His love for his master is almost matched by the revulsion he feels whenever that thing comes near, and that says a great deal. But he has taken care to remember every word it has said in his presence. He remembers that the creature said some astounding things about the properties of divine flesh.
Legato can sense the power still held within the severed limb, and remembers the regenerative power of his master's species. He has a horrible and wonderful idea. As if in confirmation of this, a voice in his head that cannot quite be called his own or his master's (though it is similar to both) speaks.
"Yes, it is your rightful reward as a good and faithful servant. Take it and become stronger for Knives."
Legato hesitates.
"Come on, be a man. You can become far greater than you are. Think of how good it will feel to be connected to your master in this way, and all for only a little pain. Vash deserves a lasting mark to remind him of his foolishness, and you deserve to be part of Knives's family more than this wretched human-lover. Now take what is rightfully yours."
Legato nods to himself, and only pauses to check on Master Knives before taking off his prosthetic arm, drawing a knife, and going to work cutting the skin and upper layer of muscle from the stump of his left arm.
We got the report today. Vash is alive and well, and tomorrow the Gung-Ho-Guns will be given the order to mobilize and start throwing themselves at him.
He is ready. I can see it in his eyes. Tommorrow the assassins will gather to resume their business, and he will give them the order to bring Vash the Stampede to me alive and reasonably well in a tone of voice that will say (I've heard it before), "Once you've gunned him down, shoot him once or twice in the head to make sure." He and I both know this is what will happen, but I have yet to give him the official order, and he is considerate enough never to pass on orders he has overheard with his telepathy.
"Legato," I say, looking up from the pieces as I make my move, "Tomorrow the Gung-Ho-Guns will arrive here. You are to order them to take him alive. However, they are not to take it easy on him."
"Of course, Master."
"He has to learn the truth about humanity. It hurts me, but they must make him suffer."
"I understand perfectly, Master."
His voice sounds like he has just woken up in the hospital to find out that his spine was crushed by his best friend (ha ha ha). Why does he hate Vash so much?
As he cuts into his own maimed flesh, Legato realizes something for the first time. He loves his master, but he despises the involuntary amputee that has given him this... wonderful gift. Why? Knives loves his brother, and Legato wants to make his master happy, but something about Vash repulses him. He contemplates this as he bleeds all over the sand and the pain becomes bad (but he can handle it, his hand is steady). It takes him a while to reach an understanding, but when he does, enlightenment hits like a bolt of lightning. It is the contempt of a former slave for a slave who could easily escape a cruel master but does not, and in fact makes it his business to capture any other slave who tries to escape. And who is Vash's master? The whole of humanity, in general, and more specificly, Rem Seibrem, a woman who has been dead for eighty-four years.
Worse, Vash is a hypocrite. He advocates "Love and Peace" but turns a blind eye to the suffering caused by men that he would spare. If he so wished, he could walk into a plant facility and demonstrate the fact that the plants are alive and sentinent, at least try to get them better treatment if not freedom, but he does not. Even among the humans he so loves, he would give a second chance to the robbers, murderers and (worst of all to Legato) slave traders who victimize this dusty world's few innocents. He lets these people keep on destroying because he does not want to spill their blood. He will not recognize that some creatures are incapable of change, and that letting them live causes pain to those who sincerely want a peaceful life.
Legato grits his teeth in anger, trims a bit off of Vash's severed arm to make it the correct length, holds the arm to his stump,then uses his power to jumpstart the arm's nerves and make sure everything is correctly aligned. He feels a tingling, pins-and-needles sensation as the arm starts to reattach itself, and then a surge of power as doors open within his mind, leading him to abilities he didn't know he had. He was powerful before, perhaps the second greatest psychic of his entire unholy family, but now, with the flesh of this young god attached to him, he may yet surpass his psychotic older brother (it does not occur to him that thinking about someone who has technically been dead more than a thousand years as a rival is perhaps deranged in its own right). Now his instincts are getting sharper as well, he can feel everything around him.
'How do they go through life without training to block out some of this?' he thinks, with something resembling wonder, 'Do they not feel it, have they built up a barrier of some sort, or do they just grin and bear it whenever they near a large population center?" He makes a mental note to ask Knives when his master has fully recovered.
Legato's graft sets within thirty minutes. While he waits, he divides his time between keeping his master alive and deciding whether or not to shoot Vash . By the time he has healed, gratitude to Vash for the gift has won out over his hate. In a rare moment of generosity, he stops the plant's bleeding and leaves his own now unneeded artificial arm for the plant's use, along with a note informing him that any competent mechanic should be able to figure it out.
He saved me in the city of July. No doubt about it, even when all the others left me for dead and I thought that they were probably right to do so, he never ceased caring about me. So why did I smash him? Was it because he gave Vash all those new scars? Was it because he screamed for Vash's death? Those things had something (a great deal, in fact) to do with it, but they weren't the only reasons. I might have beat him down for those things, but if they were all of it, I wouldn't have put him in the coffin. I think I did it because of the way he said it, like he both hated and feared Vash. That scared me. If Legato had known what was coming, he could have held me off, would have done so, because even if he is a servant, he is also a warrior. There has always been that understanding between us. But he was scared of Vash. Was he scared that Vash would try and reenact the July catastrophe? If so, that fear came to pass, thanks to me. But the disaster was averted. I think he had something to do with that, but I can't be sure. What set him off?
He has a twin brother of his own who keeps in touch through their mutual aquaintance, Leonof the Puppetmaster. After he was smashed, his brother offered to fix him if he would admit that I was a monster, unworthy of ruling this or any other planet. He has told me that much. Leonof told me more, that the two of them had an older brother who was completely crazy, and, if the old man is telling the truth, massively disfigured. Like Vash? I don't know. I think his older brother was a victim of birth defects. I do know that the older brother was responsible for removing his original left arm, though. Following this, Legato was responsible for removing his brother's head, and putting the skull on the stump of said arm, where it remained until I smashed him and found that it couldn't fit in the coffin. He asked me about it once.
Food for thought.
Legato Bluesummers stares at the metropolis of July, watches the sunset from outside town. He is uneasy. Not afraid, such as he does not fear when faced with all the demons in Hell, but he is more uneasy then he has ever been in his entire life... no, there has been worse on two occasions and another was as bad. The one that was as bad happened first, it was when his own twin brother had gotten his eyes ripped out of his skull, and Legato had to come to come to terms with his own vunerability. The two worse came after that, in chronological order, they are the day he realized that another one of his brothers had not just gone insane from his countless years of confinement but utterly psychotic (Staccato raved about how he wished he could be as pretty as Legato and then hacked his younger brother's left arm off, thus leading Legato to this conclusion), and the day he... no, don't think about that. Not now.
In a few minutes, the confrontation will be over. More than a century of training on the part of his master will soon be rewarded. The experiments conducted by Knives's doctor might discourage Vash from taking an active role in his brother's crusade, but Legato has prepared for that.
The vehicle dubbed the "Legatomobile" by Knives is a massive, ungainly looking contraption. It is only after the person watching it has a moment to see it in action that he or she realizes it is a marvel of engineering. If Legato so desires, the foolish creatures do not get the required time to make that discovery before they are cut down. It looks like a navy blue sports car doubled in size that extends back into the shape of an extremely low van instead of the small backseats and trunk of the typical sports car. At close examination, it becomes apparent that the car is heavily armored, what is not apparent is the fact that that the car can survive a shot from a tank at point blank range with very little damage. It looks very slow, but it can cross the desert sands at speeds of up to one hundred twenty miles-per-hour. Its windowless back half (except for a heavily tinted rear window) contains mounted guns and small peepholes to aim (and fire) through. It also has a lot of storage space. This is important.
In the back of this strange machine is another one just as strange. It is a coffin/full body cast, about the size of Vash. It is designed to hold the foolish plant until Knives can convince him to help, or at least to not interfere. Legato also had plans to build a robotic carrier for the coffin, but Knives told him it would not be necessary. Knives does not think his freedom-loving brother will be able to last three days in the device before begging to be let out.
Legato thinks that his master is underestimating the Plant In Red, and has privately prepared for the worst. His gun, a magazine loading nine-shot pistol (black with various eldritch symbols engraved, it is a nice gun), is loaded with hollow-point bullets, designed to blow very large holes in unarmored targets. Legato's precision with guns is almost legendary among those who know him; though he prefers using his powers when he can, he thinks that the plant will be able to resist enough to make the task of killing him in this manner throughly unpleasant. It will be far easier just to blow the top of Vash's head off. It might, no, probably, won't come to that, but Legato is prepared to shoot first and rationalize the decision to his master later. Just in case.
"It won't come to that," a pleasant, androgynous voice says from behind him.
Legato makes a three-quarter turn to his left in terror. Now he is afraid. As sometimes happens to beings in crises capable of destroying them utterly, his mind makes an irrelevant observation to save him from having to think too much about it: it is easy to see where the twins got their red fetish.
The demon, one that does not come from Hell, smiles as he walks to Legato's side. At the moment, he looks like the perfect human male. He is six feet six inches tall, with platinum blonde hair that goes down to the middle of his back. He is unclothed from the waist up, showcasing an upper body like those found in Greek sculpture. From the waist down, he is covered in a flowing crimson garment that reaches to his ankles. On his head sits a type of crown Legato is not entirely familiar with, though he knows that it probably came from an old Earth tradition.
"No," he says again, softly, "it won't come to that. Knives isn't just going to try to capture Vash, he's going to try to get Vash to activate his Angel Arm. In fact, he is doing so as we speak."
Legato stares, horrified.
"Yes," the demon says, "In about thirty seconds, things are going to get extrordinarily ugly for the few surviving inhabitants of July."
"He wouldn't do anything that foolish," Legato whispers, "The doctor says that Vash's Angel Arm is half again as powerful as master's."
"Watch."
Legato watches, there is no time to do anything else. Then he hears a pircing shriek, as a beam of light shoots up through the roof of a large building, which turns to a dull roar as the beam grows wider. Then it cuts entirely out for less than half a second, and Legato has just enough time to see that the people on the street have turned to look at their death. Then the explosion comes; briliant white death to every man, woman, and child in July, and he must avert his eyes. He cannot avert his mind though, he hears the psychic screams of more than a hundred fifty thousand inhabitants, growing all at once into a awful cacophony, and then a single, terrible scream louder than anything, mental or physical, he has ever experienced. Then there is silence.
The Event (that is how Legato will always refer to it from now on, capital letters and all) lasted less than half a minute from begining to end, but in that short time, much has changed. The city of July, once the third largest city on this desolate planet, is now nothing but rubble. Legato is unable to see any corpses, but he knows that this is not because everyone he saw staring at the beam of light got to safety. It is because they were vaporized. Radiation levels in the city have increased only slightly (he is equiped to track such things), and standing in it would be no more hazardous for a normal human than standing near a microwave, but the sky itself smells burnt and tastes stale. It takes a moment for Legato to realize that radiation levels are slowly increasing, and a moment more for him to realize that Vash's weapon wasn't nuclear at all. It simply burned a hole in the ozone layer.
Legato does not flinch. He could withstand the amount of radiation that will be hitting the burned city at noon tomorrow if he needed to do so (he was designed to take a great deal of punishment), but he does not need to. He will go into the city now, and see if the last century of his life has been a waste of time. If it has, he will spend a long time in mourning for his master, but he must assess the situation first. He begins to walk, but hears the voice of the demon before he can take five steps.
"Legato." Legato pauses.
"Yes?"
"You are about the same size as Vash, correct?" Legato whirls around to respond, but the creature is gone, disappeared back to where he came from, and perhaps he was nothing more than a hullucination in the first place.
"You don't have to handle him gently, you know," I say to the ruined telepath across the table, "If you do that, he'll never learn the true nature of humanity. Batter him, bruise him. Just don't kill him, and leave him an arm and a leg, if you can." That will cheer him up.
He bursts out laughing. What the HELL!
"I... apologize... for my insolence in advance, master," he says, when the giggles have mostly stopped, "but what will you do to me if I kill him? Kill me? That would be an act of mercy. Castrate me, maybe? Wouldn't matter much, I can't feel anything down there anymore anyway, and I don't think there's much you could do in the way of torture. Perhaps you could have my eyes put out, yes, that might work."
"I expect," I respond, showing slightly more malice than I mean to, "that I would just leave you as you are. But if you bring him back alive, you'll walk again, I promise."
"Master," he says, and for a moment I carelessly mistake the choking in his voice for gratitude, "You've always lacked something. Do you know what it is?"
"What?" I ask, trying to keep my rising anger out of my voice, and only partly suceeding.
"You show a distressing lack of an ability to take your opponent's point of view." He speaks calmly, with no trace of fear, to the being that put him in his coffin.
"You are out of line," I hiss, "You would be wise to remember your place!" There is no keeping the anger out of my voice now, and if he keeps going I will probably beat the hell out of him, not that it matters much. He can't feel anything below the neck.
"Master, I am not threatening to purposefully kill your brother. I would not be so foolish as to even try that. I merely think that Vash will not be taken alive."
I begin to calm down a bit. I can see the truth in his eyes, he does not intend to try to kill Vash. This can be worked around.
Legato nearly breaks down when he finally finds the brutally burned but still living body of his master. A few tears do in fact show themselves, but his usual stoicism finally triumphs. His master is still alive. He can be fixed, though the telepath will not be able to keep him alive and carry both of the twins out. What a pity. Speaking of his master's twin, Vash is lying (unconcious but quite alive) on the floor less than thirty feet away.
He stares at the ruin he has called master for more than a century. It is hard. Every inch of the plant's body has been burned beyong recognition. It was only because Knives tried to activate his own weapon to defend himself that he wasn't incinerated outright.
Just like everyone else in the town.
They're too powerful. Self-control, even to the point of not slaughtering everything around them, is a task beyond their capacity. He realizes that now. He was foolish to think that he could ever make Millions Knives anything other than what the plant has always admited being. A god of destruction.
Vash is even worse. He genuinely seems not to care about the power he just used to destroy all of July. From long experience, Legato knows that it is impossible to control what you couldn't care less about. Even if Vash realizes that he smashed the city, he certainly won't ever try to harness his phenomenal powers. He'll just hide until Knives finds him again and repeats this experiment.
He has the power to end this twisted tragicomedy though. Knives survived the Angel Arm, but he is unconcious, and so is Vash. Two hollow points. One in the head for each. When the investigators finally arrive, let them find nothing but two corpses, guns pointed at each other, both killed by a third gun unlike the gun they are holding. The murderer would be gone like everyone else in the city. It would be a mystery, the answer known only by himself, a few old comrades, and the members of the group he is only now beginning to call the Gung-Ho-Guns. Eventually, it would become a legend. He draws his gun, and wonders which to kill first.
In the end though, he can't go through with it. He loves his master. He can't even kill Vash, because Knives loves his brother. So he picks up Knives, holding the plant to life with his force of will, and walks away. The last thing he notices on the way out is that Vash has a new artificial arm. He briefly wonders who made it and where his old one went. He puts the thought out of his mind quickly.
He has better things to worry about.
"What do you need?" I ask, my voice the paragon of reason, "If you can give me a list of what you'll need to take him alive and mostly unharmed, I'll give it to you. I want you out of that thing almost as much as you do. I miss walking with you and talking philosophy. Those were good times." I mean every word of this, and he knows it.
"Master, you still do not understand. Vash will not join us. Never in a million years will he do so. If he ever meets a Gung-Ho-Gun he cannot beat outright, he will not surrender. He will continue to fight until either he or his opponent makes a fatal error, and since he refuses to kill, it will finally be him that falls. If he is somehow captured and made helpless in spite of this, he will probably simply go into catatonia or something similar to avoid giving you the satisfaction of victory or helping you in any way whatsoever. If you meet him in battle again, he will kill you."
"What!" I roar, "Vash would never kill me! He can't even kill someone trying to kill him, let alone his own brother!"
"Have you already forgotten July? He cooked you alive. Had you been an ordinary plant, you would have been dead. Every other plant in July was incinerated. Do you understand now, Master? I don't think he was trying that time, but he means it now. He told me that he will not rest until you are dead." Now the last straw is delivered in the voice of a man trying to explain a rather easy math problem to a very slow student. "He hates you."
This has gone too far! I lunge across the table, knocking over our game, tear him from his coffin, and throw him down. He does not struggle, cannot struggle, he merely falls to the floor, utterly limp except for a neck and back brace designed to keep him from falling over in the coffin, and this enrages me more. I kick and stomp his ruined carcass, in the legs, in the ribs, in the back, in the balls, and he doesn't even flinch. I crouch to pummel him with my fists and perhaps break his nose (one of his few remaining functional body parts), and as I do a thought hits me.
What the hell am I doing?
I immediately stop and stand up. I dust myself off and motion to the pallbearer to pick him up and put him back in his shell. I begin putting the chess pieces back the way they were before I was upset. My memory is fantastic, far better than that any human's.
"It isn't that he hates me," I say, shaken but doing my best not to let it into my voice, "He still doesn't get it. We'll show him the true nature of the humans that he so desperately protects. Fuse the futility of his purpose into his very bones."
"Master Knives, with your permission, I would like to retire for the evening. If the remaining Gung-Ho-Guns are going to be here tommorrow, I need to be well rested."
I am tempted to say no, stay and talk some more, nevermind the homicidial outburst, it won't happen again, but I reply that it is fine, ask him to pardon me for my excess of emotion in matters concerning my brother, and tell him that our doctor will be with him shortly to make sure there is no serious damage.
"Thank you Master," he says when I am finished. "If you really want to know how that game would have gone," he looks at my face to see if I do, then continues, "set up the pieces after I have left. Checkmate in three moves, no matter what you do." I wait for him to say more but he does not, he is lifted up by the pallbearer and is gone. I set up the pieces and stare and try to figure a way out of checkmate, I can see it coming now that Legato has called my attention to it. I sit and I think and I move the pieces, trying to figure a way out of my predicament.
Who is Legato Bluesummers?
Checkmate.
Why did he seek me out in the first place?
Checkmate.
What is his true agenda?
Checkmate.
Who are the Gung-Ho-Guns? The group was formed on his recomendation, the members handpicked by him. Who do they really serve?
Checkmate.
I am not scared of Legato. He is loyal. He still loves me, even if he no longer likes me. And besides, if he does try something (something I strongly doubt) I can beat him. He was stronger than me once, but I have grown since then, and I have long since surpassed my teacher. He is more than a mere spider, but he is still not enough to destroy a superior being such as myself.
Checkmate.
Even the smallest of spiders sometimes has deadly venom in its fangs.
Checkmate.
The blue-haired man in the white coat is feeling particularly good today. He has recieved word that the doctor has found a way to revive his master, and he has found the person he has spent the better part of the past decade looking for. Nevermind that the shoemaker who gave him his final piece of information is now dead, his head in a bag sealed by the man's powers, it won't be traced back to him anyhow. Today is a good day, and now he will sit down and eat a hot dog. While on the way to a nearby bench, he slams into his quarry, an action he has found to be a wonderful conversation starter, especially if you don't like the person you are planning to start a conversation with.
Sensing that he has his target's attention, he walks to a bench and sits down before speaking the words that signal the end of the world. They are mundane words, but full of power; with six words he brings death and destruction to countless multitudes and ends any hopes he ever had of leading a normal existence.
"I've found you, Vash the Stampede."