Vash the Stampede belongs to the amazingly creative Mr. Yasuhiro Nightow, not me.

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Apprentice

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Year 1712 month 8 day 6

Kamila grinned to herself in the quiet peace of her own hidden chambers. It was surprisingly easy.

These humans, they simply could not live long enough to learn a fraction of what she already knew. She could bend their puny minds with words almost effortlessly.

If any showed a streak of stubbornness, she could bend their minds... or their bodies... with her power.

At the age of 1500, she had already lived long enough to know it was useful to have some human pets trained to do her bidding. Master Knives had been correct about that. It limited how much she needed to interact directly with untrained humans, which could be distinctly unpleasant.

Untrained humans failed to show proper respect to her superior existence. Using trained humans also kept her in the shadows, unknown and therefore not hunted.

Her lip curled at that thought of being hunted, for it reminded her of the infamous Stampede. She'd never completely believed that he was dead, when the official declaration came.

She was only 8 years old at that time, but it had felt too unlikely. He was too clever, and he had already evaded death too many times. It seemed far more rational to expect that he was merely doing a more elaborate evasion.

She couldn't get far with Seeds villagers, though. They were exceedingly stubborn, and tended to die under the amount of power it took to bend their minds to her will. They were more trouble than they were worth. After she bent all other towns and cities to her will, if Seeds still resisted... she would erase them.

She stroked her own arms, smiling at the thought. It wouldn't be the first time she erased uncooperative humans. However, before she could do that, most of the adult Plants who tried to live like humans must die. Else, they would interfere.

Nate Saverem, now that one had been a puzzle. Most believed him the son of the Stampede. He'd appeared 25 years after the humanoid typhoon was declared dead, and looked to be about mid-twenties in age. But with Plant blood flowing through his veins, his age could be very different from his appearance.

His middle name, Vash, was suggestive. When anyone asked him about his father, he always responded that he'd never known a father. If one pressed him with further questions, he would say that those women who were mothers to him had never mentioned anything about a father.

His hair was black, highly unusual for human-Plant hybrids. They were usually blond, and had very little of the power inherent in pureblood Plants. They didn't usually live more than several hundred years, either. Nate was nearly her own age, now, if one believed his ID's assertion that he was born a year after the death of the Stampede.

Kamila no longer believed that. Short-lived humans might be fooled, but she was no fool.

Nate Saverem had to be Vash the Stampede. It was the only logical explanation. She had suspected, and then she had proven it to her own satisfaction. His capture of Knives, allowing her to meet the ultimate Plant, was further proof.

Vash had joined the Humans' law enforcement system as a deputy marshal. She used to find it interesting that he never sought promotion to full marshal.

However, in reconsidering, she'd realized that promotion would restrict him to functioning within a single district. As a deputy, he could be temporarily assigned anywhere... and he often was. That was likely the method to his madness.

He never displayed any Plant power, but he had the reflexes of a pureblood Plant. She had seen to it that some of her pets had killed enough untrained humans to attract his attention, and she had watched the resulting battles. No half-blood was ever that fast.

Either he would change to please her, or else he would simply become yet another obstacle that she removed from her path on the way to fulfilling her own potential. His seed had value, though. Perhaps she would keep him to help her create new generations of Plants that would hold her ideals, instead of his.

Vash professed that wanted the humans to live unrestrained, as if he was foolishly hoping that humans would grow as a species. She didn't know where he'd acquired such ridiculous notions, but she hoped to change his mind. In fact, she expected to change his mind. Nearly all males were slaves to their sex drives. With that leverage, she could compel him to do whatever she wished.

Given how close he kept his wife, it seemed likely that he was at least as inclined toward that activity as any other healthy male. He would dance to her tune, or else he would spend a great deal of time caged up and being shown exactly what he was missing.

Kamila's smile showed her teeth. The town where she originally appeared was perhaps the most corrupt on the planet. She had been purchased by the owner of the largest brothel in that town, when she was less than a year old.

He'd known exactly what she was, and had often held the price he paid to purchase her over her head. As if his expenditure made her more valuable than she was simply by being herself, or as if she owed him something after he spent so much money on her. Ridiculous.

The "lessons" had begun immediately after she was purchased, before she had even completed her first year of life. Those earliest "lessons" had been extremely unpleasant.

But she began to learn. Oh, how well she learned! It wasn't long before she could control any male that crossed her path. That's when she had killed her first "instructor," for he was of no further use to her.

She had lost none of her skills. Occasionally, she made use of one of her pets to stay in practice. As a result, over the years, she'd had five children. Four of those were now dead; some of old age. The fifth was currently working at Sheriff Central. Through that pawn, she would learn when to strike.

She sometimes regretted that she had never known Knives that way. They had always only communicated telepathically. He'd insisted that she not draw attention to herself until their plans were ripe. So she had waited, and then his escape plan had failed. Instead of escaping, he had died.

From that time forward, she had begun formulating her own plans. She would learn from his mistakes, and become greater than he had been. She left the town where he had been imprisoned, and she slowly began building her own empire.

Conquering Knives' brother would be proof that she had exceeded her erstwhile master, for he had never achieved that. She glanced around the room, and chose a perfect place to put a cage that would contain the infamous Stampede. She might even keep him there regardless of his degree of cooperation. It could be fun to keep him as a living, breathing, helpless trophy.

Kamila anticipated that it wouldn't be long before Knives' brother bowed to her wishes, though. She smiled again, savoring the imagined images of Vash the Stampede begging to do her will, if for no other reason than that he might be permitted to share her bed.

Regardless of what she decided to do with Vash, though, his wife had to go. That excessively quiet, boring, human-loving healer was a disgrace to Plant kind. Oh, humans viewed Shyla as a natural resource, which was laughable. Any Plant could do what she did, but why should they?

Let the humans die. Get the human population down to a manageable level, and let the Plants rule them. This should be the natural order of things. That is why she had chosen a crooked leaf as her emblem. Nature had been twisted, and that needed correction.

Kamila meant to correct the current situation on No Man's Land, and reform it into the more natural order of Plants ruling humans. She rose from her ornate upholstered chair and paced restlessly around her spacious rooms a few times. The first significant meeting would be tonight, a gathering of all the cell leaders.

She paused before a full-length mirror, and admired her own reflection. Long blonde hair framed her flawless face and tumbled down her back past her waist and on down to her knees. Her curvaceous body was moderately slender but strong. She was taller than most human females, but so well-proportioned that few noticed that until they had to look up to meet her gaze. Her amber eyes were cold and strong, not meltingly soft the way that Shyla's pale eyes were.

Kamila's lip curled again. She'd met that healer Plant, and her husband, more than once. She had no use for Shyla, the cause of Knives' downfall. She would rid this world of that human-loving healer, and claim her husband for her own. He, at least, could contribute toward the creation of new generations of Plants.

She passed out of her elaborately decorated chambers and into the tunnels. The cave system had proven a useful find, near to towns and cities but entirely unknown to them. She could step into these caves and disappear from human knowledge any time she wished.

Between having the caves to stay in anytime she wished to disappear, and changing her name regularly, there were no records of her existence as a Plant. That would change, but only when everything was ready.

She walked leisurely through the tunnels to the largest cave near the most obvious entrance. Many entrances had been hidden, and the passage out of this cave to the deeper tunnels was well-concealed. All had been accomplished by prior generations of human pets, destroyed thereafter to preserve the secrets.

The large cave had been cleaned up by several of her pets, and kept cleaned thereby for many generations of their kind. One of the best-trained among her current pets would be speaking this evening. He would outline her plans, and rally the others to act.

It was highly amusing how easy it was to prey upon their xenophobic tendencies. They had no idea that they worked for a Plant. They thought they were going to exterminate the creatures that unfairly had longer lifespans than their own. They thought they were preventing too many of No Man's Land's few resources from being used unfairly by those who lived too long.

Oh, she would install a lifespan limit enforcement procedure for humans. They sometimes grew clever if they lived too long, and that would prevent misuse of resources.

After the revolution was complete, and the Plants with troublesome notions were either eliminated or pressed into useful service, the new generations of Plants would live out their natural lifespans unshackled by humans or their nonsense.

The gathering would begin in an hour, to command the extermination of all female Plants descended from "Nate Saverem," along with any other females that got in their way.

Shyla was specifically targeted, though those assassins were carefully instructed not to harm her husband under pain of death.

Kamila smiled again. This was going to be fun.