About ten iles out of Bering, Vash stopped at the ridge of a steep dune. He gestured down the side. "We should camp here till sunrise." He began a controlled slide down the dune, toma toeing gracefully after him.

Vanessa braced herself against the saddle, grip tight on the leather edge of it. "And tomorrow?"

Upon reaching the flat, Vash dropped his pack into the sand. "Not sure. There are some settlements not too far from here. Gravois in particular, it's a den of thugs, but it'd be a good place to hide for a while." He held out a hand to help her from the mount.

"Ridiculous," Knives scoffed, stepping deliberately down the slope. "Running from one hive to another? There are several places I used to stay. One is approximately a 2 days walk north from May City. Completely isolated."

"That's nowhere near here, past some really treacherous terrain," Vash argued, watching as Vanessa ignored his hand and plopped down into the sand on her own. She faltered and fell on one knee. "The places you're talking about, where you kept your fanatics and your gang – those terrible people? There's surely somebody still living there, and I don't want to meet them. Even if they were a reasonable distance from here. Not to mention, they're bulb-less aren't they? No water supply."

"We'll discuss this tomorrow. Suffice to say I'm glad to be away from that forsaken place." Knives stepped toward the toma. "Where did you pack the flint; I want to make a fire."

"Don't," Vanessa snapped. "Someone might see the smoke."

"Let them," Knives replied dismissively. "If they come, I've a good reason to slay the fools."

Vanessa narrowed her eyes at him, trying to judge how serious he was. She tugged the folds of sandy-colored cloak about her in the cold, desert night.

"Let's just get some sleep," Vash suggested.

"Where's my bag," she murmured.

Vash obliged to pull her bag from his own and handed it to her, then tossed Knives a sleeping roll.

Stepping unsteadily several yards away, Vanessa curled up on the sand with her head resting on her bag.

"Tell me what they did to her," Knives demanded, staring down at the sleeping bag he'd unrolled.

"We're tired."

"And we're sleeping in the desert tonight. Why is that, hmm?"

Vash sighed as though the story was boring to tell. "There was a misunderstanding. They saw her ears and they were afraid. I'm sure everything would have worked out soundly. But I told them all who I was, because I figured you'd just kill them all without a thought if I didn't end the whole thing right away. I scared them, and it worked and now we're out here. Change of scenery."

"Don't be so blase. She's hurt. I said I didn't want her to leave us; look what happened-"

"Everything's fine, now, okay?" Vash insisted, pulling away the ties on his own sleeping bag. "Drop it, we're tired!"

"To what great end, to what justice does your misguided philosophy lead you?" his twin argued further, voice rising in anger. "It's bad enough you've endangered yourself with this nonsense, now she-"

"I didn't cause it, I ended it. But whatever, blame me if that's what you have to do."

"I blame you, and I blame them, and I blame her, too," Knives snarled, thrusting his pointed finger toward her. "Have either of you any sense of self-preservation in you? You let them-"

"Shut up!" she yelled. "Both of you – shut! Up!" Her fists tugged her cloak over her face.

It seemed to Vash that Knives looked rather flustered, his expression screwed up in anger and discomfort. He stood staring off at the dune.

Vash ran his hands through his spiked hair and sighed. He stepped a few feet closer to where she lay in the sand and held out his sleeping bag. He gently offered, "Here, take my-"

"Don't want it." Her voice was muffled beneath the fold of her cloak.

Frowning, he rubbed his hair and walked back. He lay out his bag beside his brother's, climbed into it, and shut his eyes. He listened for Knives to finally climb into his own, and once he heard the slow breathing of sleep beside him, he let himself do the same.

Vash's dreams were troubled and left him confused and queasy once first sunrise over the edge of the dune prompted him to wake. He turned his head to the side, noting that Knives was still asleep, arm thrown over his eyes. Rolling his head to the other side, he yawned aloud, but stopped mid-way when he saw her bag lying alone in the sand. Jolting awake, he rose up on his elbows, and breathed relief when he spotted her past his feet, sitting in the sand with her knees drawn up. Her eyes met his, over the tops of her knees. For a moment, Vash sat there, propped on his arms, awkward.

She broke the silence first. "Which one of you is actually The Stampede? The one in the wanted posters?"

"Um, well, my name is Vash."

"He's the one snarling about killing people and slaying people and all of this. I'm guessing he did some of that, and it got pinned on his twin brother."

"He-" Stopping himself, Vash looked back at Knives, who was still breathing deeply, calm, only a few feet away. He dropped his voice. "We've both done a lot of very bad things. That's in the past, when he was going by 'Millions Knives' and-"

"Never heard of him." Her eyes glanced down at her lap again. "But you – I've seen the posters, I've heard stories. Your head is worth sixty billion."

Smiling, he itched his neck. "You don't want to collect, do you?"

"The hole in the moon. July."

Vash frowned.

"I saw July, after. Since then, I've wondered how anyone could be so stupid as to think one man could do that. Does it have to do with what we are? I mean, we're not human. At all. Are we..."

Clutching his right hand to his chest, he didn't look up. "We're just people. If we want to be."

"And he doesn't want to be," she added. "He thinks he's a god or something."

Vash held his finger to his lips.

"He leveled July, right? With what, a bomb?"

Tossing his head to the side, Vash gestured at his brother.

She kept speaking, and not quietly. "You made it sound like you're old criminals, brothers with a disagreement. But you said something about him having fanatics? Like an army? So, this argument about humans is a big deal, is it?"

"Yes, it is. It's very important."

"Tell me what you're trying to change his mind about."

"Knives, you can stop pretending to be asleep," Vash mumbled.

"How can he deserve a second chance, after destroying July?" she continued.

"Vanessa, he can hear every word." He poked his brother with his elbow, but he didn't stir.

"I won't be kept in the dark," she murmured, eyes turned down to her lap again.

Vash saw Knives' arm draw slowly away from his face, saw him blink awake. He didn't turn to see his brother scoot up from the ground. But in his peripheral, he thought Knives looked surprised, to see her sitting there, facing them like this.

"Are we ready to leave?" Knives asked, yawning, rolling up his sleeping bag. "Shall we discuss where we're headed?"

"Let's not," Vanessa replied, voice tinged with aggression. She stood and closed her book, fastening it at her belt. "You won't listen to suggestions anyway."

"Hmph. Leave the book behind. If you're going to carry weight it should be something necessary," he lectured. "Materialism is a human weakness we have no need for. Objects are merely that – things to be used and discarded as they become useless to us."

She tugged on her backpack and, struggling against the slope, stormed up and away to the west.

"Turn around, we're going east!" Knives shouted. "North and east!" He started to shout, but, seeing his brother packing their things on the toma, he relented. Knives assisted so they would hurry. She was out of his sight and he did not seem to like it.

The brothers climbed the slope of the dune, Vash again holding the toma leash, both with lighter loads than before because the toma took most of their burden. At the top, they saw the cloaked woman in the distance, due west.

"Go. Retrieve her," Knives commanded.

"Why? 'Let's follow Knives' orders,' and she'll say, 'Oh, sure, whatever Knives wants'? No. I think we're going west today. It's the opposite of what you said, and she's got every reason to be angry with you."

"And what good is west?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm just saying, today can go one of two ways. We make her do what you want to do, take that much more away from her. Or, we go west." He started after her.

Knives followed, gesturing out toward the girl in the distance. "You realize there's nothing out this way. There's Westwood, which is obviously not hospitable anymore, and nothingness."

"Yeah, I know that. She does, too."

His twin was silent, thoughtful for a good while. Finally, he sighed, "I suppose if it puts her in less of a sour mood, it'd be worth it."

OXO

Vanessa expected to be stopped. When they did not, instead following at a comfortable distance, the tension in her chest loosened some. For a couple of hours she walked, the suns beating down on her. She became thirsty, and the toma following Vash carried all of the water. Her stomach ached from the blow the night before. Every step took her further from a source of water or shelter better than a tent. There would be nothing in this direction. Reluctantly, she halted.

She looked over her shoulder, seeing they were a comfortable distance back, and no longer walking either. Waiting.

Working her dry tongue around her mouth, she trudged back. She stepped around them, letting her hood obscure her face as she lifted a canteen from the toma's saddle and drank half of it in greedy gulps. Screwing its top back into place, she asked to no one in particular, "Where did you want to go?"

Vash and Knives looked at each other. Vash cleared his throat. "We have water for four more days, then we'll need to stop in a town to refill. Westwood and Bering aren't options from here, so we have Vale and Lobos to choose from if we head either straight east from here or straight northeast."

"I meant, long-run. Where are we going to end up."

"Our most viable options are all east of here," Knives offered. "We have plenty of time to talk about it."

Vanessa began to walk east, and heard them do the same, not quite so far behind as before. She smiled, in spite of herself, but then drew her mouth back, wondering why she had smiled in the first place.