Title: Rationalization
Written for the 2006 Knives' Day Challenge
Pairings: Knives x Vash, Knives x Legato, slight Wolfwood/Vash implied.
Mangaverse
Warnings: yaoi, violence, darkfic, language, first person Knives POV, messed up religious concepts (for example, Knives thinking of himself as a god), implied noncon incest, implied abuse, implied BDSM, implied nastiness in general, and spoilers.
"Rationalization"
Most likely, one would say that it is the action of an insane man to destroy millions of human souls, to laugh as the ships carrying their worthless flesh reach terminal velocity and explode like so many beautiful fireworks in space, never reaching the planet they intended to invade and destroy like the sickness they are. Though is it insane? Or is it more insane to stand by and watch as a species of destructive, noxious parasites slip one by one into the flesh of a helpless planet, after one has seen how they have destroyed their own, how they have destroyed any race, any being, even one entirely superior to themselves?
I, Millions Knives, did not commit such an act as murder. It was self-defense, and that against creatures who are nothing. Humans do not deserve life, vile, brutal beasts they are. They are like animals, but animals only fit for the slaughter, as a sacrifice to their god. As I, no, we are above them, as we are their gods, it is our right and our privilege to sacrifice their flesh to ourselves. It is no more than the burning of insects on a funeral pyre, or the swatting of nettlesome vermin.
The books and that woman both said it is the thought of a sick man to be sexually attracted to his relatives. Almost any human one would ask would say that forcing oneself on one's twin brother is an act of depravity and sickness deserving punishment, possibly even unto death. They refer to it as "rape," such an unbecoming and ill-suited term for the gifts of love I provided my dear beloved brother. Even he refers to it as such, now, after the priest told him that it was, and this positively sickens me.
I, Millions Knives, gave my beloved Vash a gift that no one else could give him. It was the seal of our love, the proof that he was mine and I am his. I desired him more than he could have possibly known, so I made the decision to take the initiative, just as men do with their wives. The love we shared was and is no different. Humanity simply cannot understand the bond between the only two beings who deserve to rule over them. They do not understand nor care that we are one. They wish to separate us, just like that filthy whore Rem Saverem. It is not as if my beloved brother taking her as his own, as he was beginning to want, before I made sure he could not, would have been any better than my taking him as I did. I only wished to keep him pure from the pollution of humans, and for that I am called a rapist and sick by these ungrateful and deluded insects and even my love himself.
The books say that one who believes himself to be a god is suffering from "grandiose delusion." But is it not humanity that suffers from grandiose delusion? Every single one of these monsters and deformed insects claims to be important, claims to be worth something, claims to have feelings and thoughts and a life of its own, when it is merely part of a buzzing herd of sameness. Humans, like flies, like spiders, are all alike. They do the same sickening things, say the same inane words, and go on the next day to do the same. My brother, my beloved Vash, and I are both above them, for all his wanting to throw it all away. He may be fallen, but I will never fall, I will never fail, and I will mete out the judgment I was born to provide, with my wings, my guns, and my blades.
I, Millions Knives, do not suffer from "delusions." I am above delusion, and only I possess the truth that these worthless beings have given up in order to serve their delusions, their delusions of goodness and normality and peace and love and everyone deserving a chance. I see them for what they really are, vermin. I see Vash and my sisters for whom we really are, and I see this planet as a place only we can leave, because we can live forever, unless we are depleted by the humans. It is fully within my rights as a higher, superior being to accept the worship of this trash, as worshiping me is the only thing that can give it meaning.
Making weapons capable of destroying a planet and all the creatures upon it has often been seen as an act of the insane. What sane man, after all, would create something solely to destroy himself and others? What sane creature would destroy everything in existence? What sane creature would use its own life energy to do so?
I, Millions Knives, am not insane, and I had the best of reasons for my actions. The Angel Arms are our heritage, the one aspect of our Plant nature that makes us truly capable of meting out the vengeance for which these human insects have so long cried out. They alone give us true meaning, and they alone will decide the future of the universe. Will we as Plants survive, take root, and grow as our brothers and sisters back in the rec room, the apple trees? Or will we be drained of our energy for the pointless uses of these insects? Tell me, is it not better to swat mosquitoes than to let them slowly drain away one's own lifeblood?
Some would use my choice of a companion as a condemnation of my state of mind. According to these, massacring the slave market that once flourished in the desert and taking a sex slave from it is a sign that I must be a true psychopath, due to their belief that only crazed psychopaths would kill everyone else in sight and take a vulnerable, wounded boy as their slave.
I, Millions Knives, am not a psychopath. Psychopaths lack feelings of any sort, do they not, and it was my feelings that drove me to seek out a companion, to defile myself with the very same human flesh I prohibit my brother from touching on any condition. Unlike a psychopath, I did not kill my slave. I bestowed even his name upon him, I gave him clothing and wealth and the food he so craves. I even grafted my brother's arm onto him. My Vash will not return to me, will not even acknowledge my love for him, yet this human, this inferior being, does what he will not. I have given Legato sixty years of life rather than allowing him to die under some owner with no idea of his own strength, as I know how to take him to the very limits of his existence, yet allow him life enough to serve me for as long as I wish. What I do for Legato, for my servant, are acts of mercy and love befitting myself.
It is undeniable, my beloved twin claims, that I am out of my mind. Who but a man with no capacity for rational thought would force his own flesh and blood to destroy a city, to kill many thousands of innocent human beings -even thinking of pairing those words makes me ill- while knowing that the result could kill his brother?
I, Millions Knives, am not out of my mind. It was a perfectly rational decision to force my beloved Vash to destroy July on that day, as the city was beginning experimentation on Plants once more, and as there was no way I could have taken on the blame myself, because if I were wanted and captured, who would defend us then? Would he have defended his own race, have recognized his higher allegiance above humanity? I think not. I, then, merely had to make him express his feelings, much as I did when he hesitated to show me the love I knew he felt for me. This time, I only drew out his own anger, and how was I to know he would aim at me and the city rather than the sky?
No rational man, they say, gathers to himself thirteen assassins and an entire religious sect, then sends them out to cause someone he claims to love and want eternal suffering until the day the fallen admits his helplessness and finally returns to his loving brother, to the only one who will ever care for him.
I, Millions Knives, am not a man. I am a Plant Angel, and above all humans as their deity and judge. Those thirteen assassins, the Gung Ho Guns, were my very own gift toward my brother, my attempt to show him the errors of his human-loving ways. Humans are nothing but trash and vermin, and they were the finest examples of it all, of avarice and fear, of rage and lust, of all the impure motivations and emotions these herd insects seem to possess. How can they claim to feel, when my feelings are higher, are more attuned than theirs will ever be?
The allegation brought with the most emotion, by my beloved brother himself as his reason for why he no longer cares if I live or die, as his reason for wishing he himself could send me to hell -the nerve!- is that I am inhuman for having systematically killed anyone who has ever loved him and whom he has ever loved. Of course by this he means only two people, Rem Saverem, that evil bitch who watched as my departed Tessla drew her last breaths as a result of their experiments, and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, that uncouth assassin who doublecrossed me and his very own vow to me in order to "love" him. How can a filthy insect love a higher being? It was nothing but impure desire, and though I share that desire, thus my need for Bluesummers, I can stop it in him. I must stop it in him, lest he leave me alone for these vermin.
I, Millions Knives, am inhuman, and I am happy that he finally recognized our nature, after all I have done to make him see it. We are not humans, and there is no need for us to hold to their standards. I am above humanity, above these weak attachments the humans and Vash share with each other. We as Plants can join consciousness, can connect into one consciousness, we have no need for such weaknesses as communication and so-called "love," and this is not insanity, psychopathy, or anything of the kind. We are higher beings, and we will show you. . . we will show you. . .
