I went back and did the revising and editing that I had neither time nor inclination for last time so if anyone wants to go back and read it without being plagues with "teh" feel free. Just please keep in mind, this isn't the only story I post and I do have a (sadly) busy life outside the posting thing so I don't always have time for fifteen to twenty thousand words of edit. If anyone wants to volunteer to take some of the work load... anyway, sorry it's late this week, I've had a hectic week and people wouldn't leave me alone long enough for my final edit and polish all week, so I had to put it off.

The purple light shining up at him from the floor was even creepier in its own way than the green had been. The blue he could handle, it was somewhat familiar to him, but the purple was in no-way even a little bit familiar. He ignored all of that in favor of solving the puzzle placed before him.

Walk down the lighted way to the next pedestal, insert the correct glyph shere and continue on until he reached the end. A pad underneath the pedestal automatically teleported him and his friends back to the center room with the three axes. he'd broken down a while ago and grudgingly sat down for lunch though he hadn't wanted to spend the time on it. Even Milly was starting to get a little tired, even though she wasn't solving the puzzles, she was still doing the leg-work for them and all of the walking was taking its toll.

Jessica had given up on trying to make small talk with him after a while and Doc was engrossed in his recording devices. Milly, trooper that she was, seemed to be taking it all in stride. They were almost done with this section of passage, Vash had only three little spheres circling about his head and by the distance he'd traveled between each pedestal previously, it shouldn't be a whole lot longer.

Then he would only have two more passages to go.

"What time is it?" Jessica asked Milly pleadingly. The taller Insurance Girl looked at her wrist watch and announced

"Ten at night."

Vash didn't flick an eyebrow, even though he was a little surprised, they'd been at this all day. It was easy to loose track of time down in the caverns under the ground, with only the steady light of the tunnels to light your way. Vash had a pretty good internal timekeeper, but with all of the other things on his mind he didn't really care what time it was exactly, the only thing that mattered to him was getting it done as soon as possible.

The black winds of the midnight sand-wind did much more than moan or murmur in between the jagged rocks and precipices of the basalt rocks. It didn't even howl... no, it was a full blown scream, like the cry of a madwoman screeching and shrieking her rage out into the world. Blast wind scoured over the rocks, solving the slight mystery of exactly how some of those jagged formations had gotten such a strangely smooth-polished surface in some places. Legato's new thralls had been forced to take shelter in the traveling vessel that Legato himself had been granted use of by the Master. It was inconvenient, but he allowed it because thralls were no good to him dead because then he'd have to do all of the searching himself (and the Master would have fewer people to use in his plot). The seeming-thin walls of the vessel shook and shuddered with each new blast of wind, but if the outside could take the heat and friction of entry into planetary orbit then a little sandstorm was nothing to it. The storm was unnerving his thralls though, he could tell by the nervous glances around every time the wind buffeted the vessel and made it shudder. That was fine, it was easier to keep them in line that way, easier to control a mind distracted by fear, easier when he was the only one to seek shelter with.

The only downside of the situation was that he was no closer to finding his master's missing acquisitions while they waited out the storm. It hardly mattered though, he doubted that those three females were going anywhere right then anyway, if they were able to survive the storm at all.

The most recent acquisition, Master's Brother's female, the shorter of the two women who followed him around, was interesting to him. He'd seen her from far away on a few occasions that he'd had contact with Master's Brother, always calm, always collected, even on that day when he'd held her in his thrall. It interested him that she'd started to resist him. He'd had his own power wrapped around the closed box that was her mind, holding it frimly in his grip along with all of the others, so he hadn't paid muct attention to it at first... but when he felt her start to pull away. That was when he came to notice that the "texture" of the box that was her mind was different from the people around her. The mind of an ordinary person, such as Meryl Stryfe was supposed to be, felt much like a loose, jumbled pile of yarn, thoughts and whispers sticking out willy nilly, but that woman's mind... her mind was neat, like a precisely wound clock. He'd been hesitant to probe it too deeply, afraid that his metaphysical fingers would get pinched in the gears.

It was a mystery. An ordinary woman, like her partner, would have been completely helpless but that woman had had some kind of protection in place around her mind. It had been a thin, flexible shell, like the sacking around an embryo, events had already went according to his masters plans and Legato had had to stick to the script. Legato had been able to take control of her limbs not by ordinary telepathic mind control as he'd excersisced with everyone else, but by creating telekinetic bonds around her body. There had been something exquisitely interesting about her, a feeling he recognized now as being similar to the Master's latest aqqusition, the mostly-human creature that Master would use to gain control of the great machine. They had thought that Resonants only bred to the male, but here was a possible female!

The Master could on occasion by generous, especially when he intended to dispose of the human later on, sometimes he would give a few of them to Legato first to work out a new technique or refine an old one on. It was always a shame when one of them broke since that meant that Legato had to wait until an new one might be acquired, but there were always more, especially after Master had ordered that the Southern Cornelia region should be cleared of all human filth and the beasts put into cages for later use. It would be a small matter for Master to give the woman over into Legato's keeping while the Master's Brother went about the quest that Master had set him. Granted, Legato might not get as much time to enjoy working on her as he would like (the Master had a number of tasks for him after all) but it would certainly help him while away those hours in between assignments, to have some new project to work on.

It went without saying that he hoped this new project might benefit his master. Master Knives, though he was in all ways a perfect and superior being to a mere human, seemed to be having difficulties in persuading the Resonant around to his point of view. Perhaps it was that the creature was not entirely human anymore, perhaps it was that the thing had had some contact with a member of the masters superior species, but whatever the reason... while the thing might cry out, weeping and begging for mercy, it would not do what the master ordered it to do, which was to turn its Channels over to him. Legato wondered if there might be something stopping it. In all other ways the creature was submissive, but with regards to its channels, it was like there was some force outside of its will protecting it. The master was most displeased. Perhaps Legato might find something else to amuse the Master with.

Perhaps the resonant woman, if indeed she is a resonant, will amuse him. If nothing else, there is the possibility of breeding more of her kind from her eggs.

More Resonants, properly raised and trained to obedience to Master would certainly be a worthwhile project for the future. Meryl Stryfe was unlikely to cooperate with the idea but that would also be an interesting project, over the years bringing her sort to the proper way of thinking had become something of a specialty of his.

The Master had no interest in the women of the lower species, naturally... the mere thought of copulating with one quite rightly disgusted him. However, he did seem to enjoy watching them in pain, and he seemed to have a particular type that he favored. The kind the master liked to watch be brought to heel best were males of the tall brawny type, broad of shoulder with a certain ape-ish cast to their features and it was important that they have brown hair.

The women were creatures that he enjoyed toying with on another level... the men were a quick fix, straight physical injuries and various methods of physical harm, but the women... Master liked to own them, he liked to lock them up in bare white rooms by themselves and watch them as they called out for someone to help them or feed them and demand to know where they were and who had taken them. He denied them food and water and sleep. After a sufficient amount of time had passed, master liked to test them, ask them questions, impossible questions until they wept with fear and exhaustion. He especially liked the ones who fought back, who stood up to him and stood their ground with words; well-argued, logical, heartfelt, defiant. He liked those ones the best. He liked to watch the hope die in their eyes as they realized that help was not going to come for them and they would die there alone. He liked to watch as gradually their lives to flickered and faded to nothing.

It would be well to offer the master the shorter of the Master's Brothers pets as an amusement to Master Knive to while away the hours while they waited for Vash to finish his task and return to his brother's side. By Legato's observances, she seemed stubborn enough and of the right kind of character to provide the Master with a most satisfying amusement for quite some time. She even seemed to be about the same physical type he enjoyed the best; dark hair, a certain cast to her features. Not only would she amuse the master, but in breaking her delicately from the inside and handing her back to Vash, whole in body but shattered in spirit, he would be dealing a greivous blow to the masters brother! A fitting chastisement for not coming to realize the rightness of the Masters plans. After all, Master had only promised his brother that he would not harm the creature, he'd said nothing of her mental state when Vash finally got her back. Eternal suffering to Vash the Stampede. Legato could lay the ground work for the Master's later amusement, and explore the mystery of how she was protected from mental attack all in one swoop. Elegant.

Again, Legato felt another stirring in the back of his mind, like something in him protested violently, but it was gone before he could pin it down. The telepath made a mental note to go over his host body's mental wards more carefully when he had time. It wouldn't do for any of his host's idiotic morals to be lingering about when Legato had work for the Master to do.

Vash was nearly sprinting down the last few turnings in the passage that would lead to the end and then back to the little elevator in his eagerness to have the puzzle solved and the reward of another piece of the keystone bestowed upon him. Milly and Doc were barely keeping up and Jessica had already called it quits and was waiting back in the room with the lift in it that had taken them down through the three levels. It was almost done! Just a little more and he'd have the third piece.

Vash controlled his impatience, barely, as he all but thrust the last glyph-shpere into the little niche on top of the pedestal at the end of the catacomb. The pedestal slid into the wall, revealing a teleport pad at the end of it. Vash hesitated not a moment, but stepped on it along with Doc and Milly, and they were brought again back to the place where the three axes met. Jessica stood as soon as she saw them, yawning and blinking. It was already well past one by then but Vash couldn't care less.

"Let's go," was all he said as he stepped toward the circular lift pad in the center.

All three of the grids on the floor of the lift were glowing brightly now, for every time that Vash had solved a three-axis maze, its layer on the grid-sigil on the floor of the lift had lit up. Jessica trudged over, looking a little bit like a sulky child up past her bedtime, and the four of them stepped onto the elevator. The silvery ring in the stone around the pad between it and the floor faded away in a gleam and the pad started upwards again. Vash frowned a bit at that, but had to trust that the trial knew what it was doing. He'd partly expected that he would have to go downwards again as they had before. Perhaps it was only psychological, but he felt better about having to go upwards, less of that tightened-stress feeling of going deeper into the maw of the beast.

Shortly, they reached the large cylindrical chamber they had first entered in, with the winding staircase around the outer wall leading up to the door outside, and the three niches for the three colored spheres lining the wall at equal points from each other. The three niches were no longer empty as they had been at first. The one Milly had picked with the green sphere still occupied its niche, but now the other two were full as well, the blue and the purple spheres taking their places inside the wall-niches.

"Now what?" Jessica asked, looking around her.

Nothing was happening.

They didn't have long to wait for the answer to that question for as soon as the platform pulled up fully flush with the surface and the silver ring appeared anchoring it to the floor, there was a flash of light. The three globes in their niches along the wall flashed brightly and each of them shone out a beam of quasi-colored light, mostly white with a hint of violet or blue or green to it. The three lights beamed out and up, meeting at a point between their heads and then wrapped around each other in a spiral of light shining directly upwards into the ceiling of the chamber. Abruptly, the lights cut off, leaving behind only the soft glow of the sigil, but it was only for a moment. From the top of the ceiling there came a nimbus of white light, floating down gently, straightforwardly. In the center of the light was another uneven tetrahedron of glassy black stone, exactly like the first two had been, spinning lazily and with no particular pattern, like a toy in zero-gravity. Vash pulled out the larger piece of the keystone and the third piece flew directly over to it, settling in its place with a soft click. A greyish light pulsed over the surface as it fused together with the rest of the keystone.

Vash didn't tell anyone about the strange shiver and pulse that seemed to run through him. He closed his eyes for a second with a strange feeling that he wasn't in his own body anymore but was looking out through someone else's eyes. The hands before him were tiny, and there was a white cotton-gauze bandage over the finger of her/his left hand. She was tapping away at the strange, ephemeral keypad made of colored light in front of her. Her mind worried and distracted but not really distressed. Vash felt a strange pulse run through him, exactly the same one that he had felt when he touched the third piece of the keystone (and the other two now that he thought about it). The delicate female hand on the other body flew to her stomach and Vash was aware of a sharp, painful, burning feeling, like someone had taken a hot brand and touched it to her/his skin.

Meryl? he wondered to himself. Their combined presence felt familiar, as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. Vash felt a feeling of rightness at the sensation, as if the world, which had been spinning and tilting crazily all of this time had suddenly righted itself and he'd fond his center once again.

Vash? a familiar voice echoed in his own mind, like she was standing there whispering directly into his ear.

He blinked, startled, and as soon as the moment came, it was gone. Vash found himself alone in his own body. He was left feeling suddenly alone and bereft, and gave a small hurt whimper of loss as he stared down at his hand, holding an odd looking peice of keystone. He had felt her. For a single moment she had been there with him, in his mind and part of his being, intwined as intimately, perhaps even more so, than he ever had been with his twin. He thirsted for that contact, as much as any dying man ever longed for an oasis in the desert. The sudden, gripping loss and solitude was as real a wound on his soul as any of the wounds that had caused the scars on his body.

Vash shook himself out of it and sternly reminded himself to concentrate. There would be time for contemplation later, but right then, he had a job to do and the sooner her did it, the sooner her would get her safely back with him.

He studied the stone curiously for a brief moment. It was all planes and angles. It looked like someone had taken a pyramid and cut out a quarter-section of it from the base on up to the tip. He nodded to himself, here and there, things were beginning to take shape.

At least I know she's still alive somewhere, and safe he thought to himself. That had not been a comfort he had had up until this point and the knowledge, no matter how it had gotten to him, was an enormous relief. It felt like he was breathing a little more easily for the first time in days.

"Good. Lets' go," was all Vash said upon receiving the rock, and he stepped off the pedestal and hurried up the stone steps.

He heard the sound of the others footsteps echoing on the bare stone, following him up to the surface.

They emerged into starlight, the uninhibited skies of the world glowing cold and bright in the chill night air. Vash looked over at the moons, absently counting them and judging their distance from the horizon; he'd had over a century of practice at it so he'd developed a pretty good internal clock by the stars and satellites. Vash ignored the pang he got when the last time he'd looked at the stars with someone ghosted into his mind. It had been after Legato, when he'd gone out the the cliffs at night, looking for some kind of solace, and she had come to him. Accompanyed with the pang of missing Meryl was also the thought that if he hadn't dragged her into his mess then she wouldn't currently be in danger. And hard on the heels of that thought was the darker thought that the only real reason she was in danger was that Knives had put her in it, had stolen her from him, had-

Vash cut off his thoughts with the ease of long practice. That way lay darkness, though Vash was coming to the realization that that other part of him was getting more insistent and harder to ignore. Legato had done his work well, alright. Vash no longer had that sacred moral base to start from, and he felt lost without that anchor. Always before Vash had been able to claim that there was no slippery slope for him to stand on, and that if he worked at it hard enough, was fast enough, was strong enough; he would be able to find a way to make it work. Leagto, the bastard, had proved otherwise.

He'd unlocked the secret box hin Vash's heart, the one filled with the twisted dark emotions of pain and anger and hatred, the one Vash always very carefully left alone. It had been torn open and now all of Vash's demons had come out to play. He was able to put a leash on them, but for how long? The incident with that other part of him, Crimson Diablo, had destroyed a town in a fit of rage... it wasn't safe for Vash to be around people anymore. Not until he'd found a way to gather up all those demons, stuff them back in that box slam down the lid, lock it, and thow away the key. But that would have to wait until he'd gotten Meryl back.

:Still, it raises the question,: Vash thought as they paced back toward the shuttle.

If he had to face his brother before he brought himself fully back under control what would happen? His former impeccable armor was now only hanging on by a thread and with a hole in it big enough to drive a SEEDs ship through. What if Knives did something that just pushed him over the edge? It seemed that Crimson Diablo wasn't disposed to like Vash's twin and Crimson was a part of him. He didn't like that fact; Vash didn't want to know that there was a part of him that failed to live up to Rem's teachings, that there was darkness and anger and rage and even hatred within his soul as well as the kindness and love and joy he nurtured. Much as Vash didn't want to admit to it, he was going to have to face up to the fact that deep down he resented Knives and saw him as a threat. But he also loved his brother and wanted to help him. Vash had won the day the last time, but that had been with the help of his friends, what would happen this time? It wasn't that Vash didn't have friends helping him, it was that it seemed there was a key component missing and Vash had a rpetty good idea just who that key componant was.

"A penny for your thought's Mister Vash?" Milly asked.

He looked over at her, not even bothering to try to cover it up with his usual grin. It wouldn't fool her anyway and he knew better than to try. It was Milly after all.

"I'm worried," he mumbled.

He was going to leave it at that but it was almost like some kind of magical force just pulled the words out of him and he found himself elaborating.

"I haven't been the same inside since... since Legato. I faced down my brother and the better half of me won out. I thought that was the end of the matter. I thought that it was the end of the war both with my brother and with myself. I thought... I thought I'd be done with this. But I'm not and it's worse than ever. Before, I could always fall back on what Rem told me and it always gave me hope and strength no matter what happened to me. Now I don't have that anymore and I miss it. The demons are out of the box and I don't know how to fight them."

Were it anyone else, Vash's words probably would have been something of a nonsequiter, but it was Milly and she understood what he was saying perfectly. They'd reached the ship and Vash, rather than go inside with Doc and Jessica, climbed one of the steel-rung maintenance ladders to the prow of the ship and sat on it looking out at the dark stars wheeling by overhead.

"What time is it Mister Vash?" Milly asked suddenly.

"Um... a little after two in the morning," he said mystified and a little hurt that she didn't seem to be paying attention to what he was saying.

But he should have known better.

"You know what time that is? Sempai told me," Milly said seriously.

"No... ah, early morning?" he guessed.

"She said it's the "hour of the wolf." It's that time between two and three in the morning when all of your fears are magnified and all you see is your regrets. She said her father used to take care of the problem with a large glass of whiskey for the wolf and a few shots more, in case it had puppies. And she told me a story about the wolf."

"What wolf?" Vash asked, having a hard time following her.

His mind caught momentarily on Milly's casual mention that Meryl's father had apparently been a drinker. That explained a lot.

'You only drink like that when you have something you want to forget,' she had once said plainly to him, with disgust after he'd spend a long night out drinking with a new friend named Frank Marlon early in thier association. She was such a tea-totaler, it seemed like there was a reason why.

"The wolf that the hour is for," Milly said as if it should be obvious. "Sempai told me that in every person's heart there are two wolves, one is made of hope and kindness and love and the other wolf is made of depair and rage and hatred, and that the two of them constantly fight one another for territory, as all dogs will."

"Huh? Did she tell you which one wins in the end?" he asked curiously.

"The one you feed," Milly replied as she slipped into the sliding door of the ship.

Vash smiled a little to himself. The one he fed huh? That sounded about right. It was better than pretending it didn't exist... because that wolf had come round about literally to bite him in the butt.

Let's just keep moving.

Vash pulled out the softly gleaming stone that Meryl had given to him for safekeeping and looked at it for a moment. Moonlight white with traces of other colors in it flashing like opals with a liquid sheen like oil over water, the stone was warm to the touch probably from his own body heat but it was a small comfort to him having a connection to her however tenuous it was. It was also the way he had to get her back. vash pulled the black obsidian keystone out of his pocket.

:If this thing gets much bigger,: he thought to himself. :It's not going to fit in my pocket.:

He might have to get some kind of satchel for it or something. Vash tried very hard not to think the words man-purse. There was just no-way that he was letting such an object of obvious importance out of his sight for very long and he didn't know what further challenges awaited him to attain the next peice of the keystone, or any of the ones after that.

Vash dangled Meryl's necklace over the tip of the keystone and soft white light crawled in random patterns over the surface and a strong beam of white light shot out from the tip facing northward and a little to the east. They had their heading.

Vash got to his feet and took the access hatch down into the main part of the ship, ducked into the cockpit, started the ship and tapped in the commands to make best speed in that direction. It was time to go.