In My Father's House
A Trigun fanfiction by the Acolyte of Chaos
Summary: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he shall not depart from it.
Spoiler Level: If you've watched to the middle of the series, no problem. There's one or two little teasers for a spoiler, but nothing you'd really understand unless you'd already seen it anyway.
Disclaimers: I own nothing but the events and an elite team of ninjas that will assassinate anyone who even thinks about suing.
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG
"Hold on just a minute. You've been training twenty years to kill me?" - Vash the Stampede
"Are we there yet?"
It was the fourth time the boy had asked that question. A lesser man would have raised his voice in an attempt to shut the child up, but the man in the front seat prided himself on being above such petty tactics. Yelling only added to chaos; it didn't solve a thing. There were ways to be firm without screaming.
"You should know better than that. We're still moving. We'll be there when we stop."
"When is that, Daddy?"
"In about twenty more minutes."
"That's a long time... I gotta go to the bathroom."
The man's eyes bulged.
"You just went," he said, keeping an even tone with some difficulty.
"Yeah, but I gotta go again."
The man groaned in exasperation. What did he know about child-rearing anyway?
The rest of the ride passed without incident, except for a brief temper-tantrum thrown when the boy wanted another soda, his third in as many hours. His father, however, was firm. No more drinks until we get there. Then you may have some water. This sage wisdom was not well-recieved. But it wasn't so bad, the man reasoned. If the worst he had ever had to deal with had been a noisy five-year-old, he would have been in much better shape. As it stood, he was in dire need of a vacation. But he just had a bit more to do, and then, rest. The world wouldn't end while he spent a week sleeping off his stress headache. On the contrary, a bit of relaxation would put all his problems in perspective. He was sure of it.
The boy stared at the place he would call home from now on. It was taller than most of the other buildings in the town; dark, gloomy, and generally aloof looking. Almost scary.
"Go on," his father said, "Get your things."
The boy didn't have much to get. All his earthly possessions were stuffed into a single suitcase, which he dragged after him. He struggled to lift and balance the rather large piece of baggage. His father walked over and attempted to take it.
"I got it, I got it!" the boy said.
"Alright."
The child staggered with the heavy load. When it is noted that all his belongings could be placed in one piece of luggage, it should also be noted that it was not a small piece of luggage. But he managed to drag and push it to the door.
"He looks like Sisiphus." his father thought.
The house was large outside, and seemed even larger inside. It consisted of two floors and a basement, and the ceilings were high in every part of the building. It seemed massive to the boy.
"Which room is mine, Daddy?"
"You get to pick..."
"Yeah!"
"...but you've got to pick one and stick with it," he finished. God, this was going to be a trial.
It didn't turn out to be so bad. The kid wanted a room to call his own, and his daddy wanted to give it to him. They settled on a big bedroom (one of four) on the first floor, and the man dragged out a self-inflating air mattress (the bedframe and boxsprings were already there). Then he took out a set of bedding and made the bed.
"There you go, now you can sleep on it."
"But I don't want to... I'm not tried."
"You don't have to yet."
They set up the child's things around the room. When they were done it actually looked quite livable. Nice even, if your tastes weren't too extravagant. There was a little bit of work left to do, but this place could be a wonderful place to live.
Yes, it could be done.
The years passed. They didn't pass slowly or swiftly, no matter what poets had to say about it. They passed a year at a time. The boy lived under the care of his mother (supported by his father's friends), as his father was gone for long streches of time. Dad always managed to make it back for the major holidays and his birthday, though, and he got in whenever he could manage otherwise. When the family was together, it was a cause for celebration. And presents. His dad brought more presents then Santa.
And what presents they were. At age six, his dad bought him his first gun, a working replica of the old Earth "Peacemaker" single-action revolver, to be used in the basement exercise room with supervision. Later that year came a little set of weights and a small rifle. After it was judged that he had mastered his other guns came a sub-machine gun and a treadmill. Other guns came too.
As time went on they got bigger.
When he was ten, his mother left him. Not forever, or without a trace; she visited once a month for about three days at a time. Most of the time however, the boy was left with one of several tutors, or simply left to his own devices (the huge pantries nearly always had enough food for two months in them, and he was never alone that long). In any case, his day was strictly regulatated. Get up at 6:00. Begin the day with thirty minutes of meditation on the weapons he would be training with. Spend fifteen minutes on breakfast (remembering to take the special pills Daddy had told him would make him big and strong). Fifteen more minutes to prepare for the day. Then go to the living room to spend five hours studying under one of the tutors, or reading in the books they gave him if he was alone. Then came lunch and an hour of free time with it (and another pill). After that, go down to the cellar to spend three hours training with his guns, followed by three hours of exercise. Then came supper at 7:00 (and a shot to supplement the ever-present pill). If Daddy was home, he might make corrections he saw fit to make, but otherwise he was free to do as he pleased until 10:00, bedtime. This routine was broken once a week because Daddy was a firm believer in the principle of the sabbath day. The day before his weekly day off, he got a different shot. The routine was also broken for his birthday and important holidays, and once his schedule was interrupted for an entire two weeks when a weak piece of the basement ceiling fell on his head, nearly killing him, and Daddy had needed to make a special plate to put over his brains. But Daddy could fix him,and the basement too, and he wasn't even brain-damaged because Daddy had shots that could fix stuff like that. Other then that, the schedule was his law.
This was only boring until he reached fifteen years of age. After that came the realization that...
"I couldn't get out of here even if I wanted to, could I?" the boy asked his tutor, "Dad wouldn't let me."
"No," the old man agreed, "probably not. What do you want to see up there? It's all sand really."
"That's what Dad says, but I'd like to walk around and see new people. See the stars, too, that'd be cool."
The old man considered this.
"You can see them from your balcony fine. Stars and people both."
"It isn't the same." He hesitated, then decided to continue, "Mr. Emilio, may I ask you a couple of questions?"
"Ask."
"First, what's your full name?"
"Emilio Triballius. I told you that when we met, remember?"
"Then why does Dad call you Leonof?"
Emilio paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to explain one of the more complicated aspects of his life to the boy. It could be either easy or completely truthful, but not both. After a few seconds, he decided on the former. "It's only a little white lie," he reasoned, "because I'm not really dangerous
"I have a couple of names," the old man said. "You know the real one. I use Leonof for special occasions. It's like a suit that you'd wear to a formal occasion. My 'dress name', as it were."
"Oh." Having been confined to the house since he was five, the boy didn't know if this was the usual way of doing things or not, but it made sense to him. "Emilio?"
"Yes?"
"Who is Knives? Dad told Mom that Knives was getting better, but I don't know what he was talking about."
"Well... Knives is a long story. Esentially, he's our boss. Your boss too, when you're done here. He was hurt ten years ago in a bad accident, but he's healing."
"Did he get shot?" This was, as far as the boy could tell from the stories of his mother and father, the way people were usually hurt or killed in the outside world. Nothing unnatural about it.
"Yes."
"Who did it?"
"I thought you said a couple of questions. Vash the Stampede did it. Now, get back to your Algebra."
"Wow! You mean the-"
"Algebra!"
The boy grew quickly. By his eighteenth birthday (and at this point, we really must start calling him a man) he was six-feet-seven-inches tall, and could bench 320 pounds. By the age of twenty-two, when his growth ended, he was an eight-foot-two behemoth who could lift nearly five hundred pounds with ease. Despite his incredible strength however, training was hell. He still got days off, there was that much to be thankful for, and his parents still came to see him, but the days of training were incredibly grueling, and the punishments for failure to complete a task were spectacular. Common penalties were five thousand jumping jacks, a thousand push-ups, and (for particularly dire failings) one to three days without food.
Life wasn't totally without pleasure though. For his twenty-third birthday, his dad got him a set of arm-mounted cannons, a six-foot long gattling gun, and a cybernetic suit made of bulletproof yet flexible material his dad refered to as "an advanced, adamantium-reniforced, second skin." It was fantastic.
The best gift of all came the next year though.
"Young man, you are now twenty-four years of age. As you well know, mycolleagues and I are in a special club. Everyone in the group has a codename and number, based on their unique talents. After much consideration, we have decided to make you a member."
The man's eyes widened. He ran across the room to his father and lifted the shorter man into a crushing embrace.
"Argh, my... ribs! ...IloveyoutoobutLETMEGO!" The man stared at his dad, who was turning purple, and then put him down gently.
"Sorry, Dad."
"You're forgiven." The flustered man paused to recollect himself, then continued. "After considering your proficiency with a large variety of weaponry, your immense strength and pain threshold, and the endurance you have demonstrated for the past nineteen years of training, we've decided on 'The Hurricane.' What do you think?"
"How about 'The Hurricane Gale?' An unstoppable wind!" The man had learned about storms from his tutors and was fasicinated by them.
"I like that, actually." The smaller man looked up at his son's face and smiled. "The Hurricane Gale it is. And son?"
"Yes?'
"You're number one. Happy Birthday."
The time came at last, three months after his twenty-fifth.
He knew this for a fact, because Emilio had told him a week ago that his father was coming in a week to let him out, into the wide world. He wondered what waited for him out there. Now that it came down to it. he was almost... scared. Before he could go and do whatever he wanted, he'd have to shoot the man that his dad told him to shoot, but that would just be the first part of his new life. After that, he'd probably have to find a job (maybe someone would see him shoot this first man and be impressed enough to hire him to shoot others; it was a good job up there from what he heard), and then get a nice house, and maybe even get married (he was vaguely aware that his mother wanted grandchildren, and his Dad had told him how to make them nearly five years ago). Would the people up there like him? Surely they'd give him a chance. He was a respectable assassin, after all, but he was rather big, and he'd have to wear a hat in church so the people behind him wouldn't be grossed out by his transparent brain-cover. And he didn't know how to talk to new people either. Was there a certain thing you had to say, a certain way to carry your gun? What if he made a mistake?
He didn't know what to do on this last day of confinement, so he just did the usual after putting on the second skin, which Emilio had told him he'd need. He had lifted the massive weights nearly a hundred fifty times when he saw his dad standing by the window in the above-ground part of the wall. The uncanny stealth with which he had entered, conbined with his strange eyes, hair, and mode of dress, would have unnerved anyone else, but the man wasn't scared. It was just Dad, after all.
"So," he said, "You really did show up."
"Did you think it was just the rambling of a drunken old man?"
"I didn't know what to think, being stuck in this cellar, smelling nothing but gunpowder for twenty years." He grinned. "Who am I hunting? No, I don't care."
His dad told him anyway. The man laughed as his father pressed a half coin into his hand.
"I have faith in you, Monev. Do whatever it takes. For twenty years of your master's benevolence, it's time to repay him."
Author's Notes: Well, that was... interesting. I wrote this mainly because I feel sorry for Monev the Gale. Really. Think about it, if he's been in that house for twenty years, he can't have been older than ten when they put him in there; unless he's immortal, like mangaverse Legato apparently is (I'll put that explanation on Ad Mis. if anyone asks). He's so pathetic, especially in the anime, when he does the little "I'm free!" victory dance when he thinks he's won. And when he says that the man he thought was his father was just an agent, well... Come to your own conclusions here.
This is technically mangaverse, because of Emilio/Leonof, the coin and Legato, but it could work just fine in the anime, so don't worry about it (a bit late now, MWAHAHAHAHAHA!). Yeah, I know that last conversation is wrong, but it's pretty close, and I'll fix it soon. Please REVIEW. It makes the ninjas working for me happy. You want them to be happy. Believe me.