I do -- oh, no, wait-- don't own Trigun.
Heh. I need sleep, but I'm writing this instead. So if it's a bit less then wonderful, it's because I'm brain dead, and cold, and tired, and I'm bleeding again. I'm off to find a band-aid. Enjoy the chapter.
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That day saw Kiley teaching Knives the basics of healing. The simplest part was learning how to encourage cell growth. The difficult part was control. Ungoverned growth was just a nicer way of saying cancer, and while it was an attack and therefore what Knives was looking for in her teachings, it wasn't the focus of the day's lesson. When she had broached the theme of the lesson to him, he had wanted to practice on her, so she wouldn't be so broken as to pass out again. While she almost appreciated the sentiment and she didn't doubt that Knives had the ability to learn the necessary degree of control, she also wasn't volunteering to be his first patient. Instead they practiced on some of the native flora. Kiley collected sixteen seeds and placed them in a row on the sand. She linked and showed him how to encourage growth, how to entice a plant to maturity in a matter of moments. She took it slowly so he could see and hopefully understand the entire process.
Knives' first effort was a miserable failure. Looking at the misshapen mass that sat in a lump near the pool was a hard task, but Kiley forced herself to not avert her eyes.
"That-- didn't go as well as it could have," she said tactfully.
Knives merely glared at her and moved on to the next seed. He did better with this one, as it looked like a plant when he was done, but the poor thing was spindly and unwell. Kiley kept her mouth shut as Knives moved on to the next seed.
Twelve plants and almost-plants later, Knives finally grew a plant healthy and hale in all its aspects. Twelve minutes elapsed between seed and full-grown fern, a miniscule period of time when contrasted with the amount of days it took the plants to grow normally. He shot a prideful glance at Kiley, as if her silent presence had been judging his past efforts. She had actually been impressed with the speed of his learning, not that she would ever say so.
"This is simple," he boasted. "When will you teach me something worth learning?"
Kiley merely smiled and picked up the last of the seeds they had gathered. She pushed it into the sand with the tip of her pinky finger and concentrated for a moment. Movement erupted from the ground as she coaxed rapid growth from the seed. Fifteen seconds later, a mature and beautiful specimen of the plant lingered at her fingertips. She brushed them against the full and gorgeous leaves before pulling them away and smiling at Knives.
"Learning something is easy. Learning to do something well takes time," she said simply.
"If I felt that these little tricks of yours were worth my time, I might put in the effort to learn them well. But these are nothing, not worth doing in the first place," he said coldly.
Kiley arched an eyebrow. "Nothing? Knives, I never suspected that you lacked an imagination."
At his affronted look, Kiley laughed. "Everything I have taught you so far have been child's tricks, that's true. But that's because you teach children the basics. From what I have taught you so far, you can inflict great amounts of harm. Yesterday's lights? They are cold, quite cold when they touch flesh. It's an easy weapon. Today? Forced cellular growth can kill. You know that I killed myself merely by growing mold in my lungs. It was a child's trick, but it worked. I died."
He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "I wish to learn how to perform that stasis trick," he demanded.
Kiley looked at him incredulously. "You're kidding me," she said, but the look on his face convinced her otherwise. "There is no way that I'm going to try to teach you how to manipulate the space-time continuum when you have had four days of practice. Do you think I am crazy? You've seen how difficult the easy stuff is to master," she said, pointing the poor mangled almost-plants Knives had created. "Why do you think that a stasis field is going to be a good next step?"
Knives clearly didn't want to listen to anything resembling reason, but she thought she would give it one last try.
"Knives, you have already mastered the first year's worth of training. A year in four days; that isn't shabby. Most people never get advanced enough in their studies to come anywhere near the level of technique required for a stasis field. It took me twenty years of hard study before I was willing to risk my first one. Twenty years after learning the basics that you are learning now, that is. If you think I can impart all that knowledge in one sitting, and if you think you can assimilate it all, think again," she said, pointing at the first mess he had created.
"That would be you. Stasis fields that go wrong don't do anything to the objects they envelop. They destroy you. I was one of three hundred and forty-seven people on earth that ever risked creating a stasis field. One hundred and twenty three of those who tried killed themselves with their first try. Another fifty-three died on their second or third attempt. Three people had ever made more them me, out of over eleven billion. No one has ever tried a stasis field under the sorts of conditions I have, and lived to tell about it. No one else has even tried, has been sure enough of their control to run the risks I do. I made it look easy because I am an expert; I am the very best at their creation, ever.
"Just because I can do something doesn't make it easy. I have studied, and practiced, and have performed and excelled under conditions that you have never even dreamed about, and I am still here to boast of it. I am one of the best at tricks, both in breadth of knowledge and depth, and if you were expecting to pick my brain in a week, or a month, or a year, you were quite mistaken. You think that what I've taught you is nothing? You're wrong. There are people who live their entire lives without knowing as much as what you have learned.
"My job required me to be the best, to be flexible, and intelligent, capable, committed, and above all, I needed to know how to get myself out of every sort of trouble imaginable. There were people who were better then me in almost every area of study, but no one has ever matched me in the number of fields I could be named an expert in. It was my job, and it was my life to be the best I could, to know all that I could, and if you think that just because you are some almighty plant that you can just strip my brain of a lifetime's accumulated perfection, you are so wrong."
She didn't stick around to see his response but huffed off into the desert. She lost herself among the dunes and sat, hiding her head in her knees. What good was being the best if it only got her here?
She sat there, alternately staring at the sand off in the distance and the sand between her feet. If she were the whining type she would be complaining right now, but it seemed sort of pointless to spill out all the things that were bothering her to the desert. It didn't care, and right now what she really needed was something that would at least pretend to empathize with her plight.
Life just sucked, totally and completely. She sighed, and returned to obsessing over why she was so depressed. She wanted a vacation, a break from the relentless crap that had been pouring over her lately. Why was it too much to ask, that she be given a few days free from conflict? She spent her entire life fighting, and it got her nowhere. Idly, she wondered if a few days of peace were entirely out of the question. Just a week, maybe, where she wasn't fighting for her life or her sanity, or both.
She felt more then heard Knives approach behind her, and watched the disturbed grains of sand tumble down the dune as he came to sit beside her. He didn't say anything, didn't even look at her, but stared off into the desert as well. She stared at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what he was going to do now, but he did nothing. Nothing but stare out over the sand dunes that blanketed the horizon.
"Do you try to be entirely frustrating?" she asked after a few minutes.
He sighed. "What did I do now?"
"Oh, nothing in the past few minutes. Just, you seem to piss me off on the average of twice a day, and I was wondering if it was a native talent or if it was something you had to work at," she explained.
"With you, it's a natural response," he said.
They lapsed into silence for another few minutes.
"I guess we both are good at annoying the crap out of people," she offered. At his thoughtful nod, she continued. "Ever wonder what it would be like to be good at interacting with other people?"
"Sometimes," he replied. "Sometimes I wonder why my brother even bothers with you humans, if he sees something in you that I can't. Then I remember that you exist off the blood of my brothers, and don't care if there is anything in you worth notice. Parasites like you should die."
"Oh, and we're back to that again," she commented. "Knives, can you go a whole hour without obsessing on killing all the humans?"
"No."
"Wow. One hundred forty-nine years old, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year. . ." she started.
"Not on this planet," interjected Knives.
"Whatever. Not the point. You might want to try not thinking about it for a few hours, just to buck the trend."
"How can I?" he asked. "My people are dying, the life sucked out of them by you uncaring humans. My brother may ignore their plight, but I cannot."
Kiley laughed, a short, humorless bark. "One, you can't really be mad at me for any sins against your brethren. I just got here a few months ago, and don't think I've done too much oppressing since then. Two, if it's so hard for you to see plants used as power sources, why don't you teach someone how to use solar power? Or wind power? I mean, there are other resources available to power the cities, even if not as convenient as plant power. Humans do have a history of trying to go the easiest route, but we also don't like the idea of slavery. I know that the majority of people on this planet don't know what exactly is in the plants that makes power, let alone that it's a being, and even less so that the being might be sentient. You are damning an entire race for ignorance."
"They should know," he countered.
"How?" she shot back. "Some racial memory, perhaps? You killed off a good portion of the people in the ships when you crashed them, and then you have the audacity to be peeved when there are gaps in the knowledge that the survivors possess. Plant knowledge wasn't widespread when the ships left the earth, outside of the fact that a new power source had been discovered that could save the race. Then you kill off the people who know what was going on, and you spend the rest of your life slightly ticked off that the humans don't know what is happening under their noses. You want to know the first step to ending the slavery? You have to let people know they are doing something wrong."
He didn't look convinced, but did look thoughtful. She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Super-intelligent, and blinded by hatred. If she had a dollar, or she guessed it would be a double-dollar here, for all the times she had seen that, she would be a very rich woman.
She picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. "There's an abundance of silica and sunshine on this planet. Solar power would work well, and even if it didn't replace the need for plant power, it would certainly ease the burden from their shoulders, giving them a chance to rest. Instead of helping, of looking for a peaceful solution, you automatically sought the greatest amount of bloodshed. For a superior being that sure is a primitive response.
"Knives, don't be willing to kill off an entire race for the actions of a few. You have had your revenge on those who have wronged you, and on their descendents, and unto the seventh generation. That's when the Jewish god finally gives up on punishing those who have done wrong. Maybe you should, too."
"I don't want to forgive you humans your ravages against nature and my brothers," said Knives quietly.
She chuckled. "You can't get too mad at people for ravaging this environment. You crashed the ships here, intending on using the planet to kill off any survivors. That they have managed to carve out a habitable portion of the planet is admirable, not despicable. And, hey, the burden on the surviving plants would have been less if they weren't so desperately needed for daily survival. You didn't think your actions through on the ship, and have spent the last century and a half cursing the humans for doing exactly what you would do in the same situation."
"I would not live off the blood of my brethren," Knives began, but she cut him off before he could say more.
"Yes, you would. You do. That ship of yours is plant powered. The only difference is that you don't need them to survive, and the humans do. So, which of you is the real parasite?"
"Humans." The answer was quick and decisive, and Kiley decided to let the matter drop. Arguing with a fanatic is a waste of your breath and their time, and while they had a surfeit of both, she abruptly found herself not caring.
No, it was much more fun to just be depressed, staring out across the desert then it was trying to argue with Knives.
Kiley was feeling a bit miffed. While Knives wasn't exactly chatty, she had left the oasis to be alone. Alone, not sitting next to the person she really didn't want to be anywhere near at the moment. She had also wanted to fume over the remarks he made earlier, and not the annoying racist behavior he has just exhibited. But since the racist comments made her angrier then his stubborn refusal to see her as anything other then a simpleton, she fumed over those.
She hated racists, hated people who felt that some accident of birth made then ultimately superior to others. Granted, she felt that she was superior to a lot of people, but birthright had little to do with it. It was a combination of hard work, determination, and genetic luck, and she didn't hold with the notion that just because she had been born a genalt that she had any natural superiority over unaltered humans. She had known humans that were superior to genalts, and genalts superior to humans, and had spent her entire life fighting the notion that one was superior to the other. Racism disgusted her. She was much more concerned with what people did, and not how people were born.
In her time as the leader of the Parameds, she had tried to sway people to her belief in superiority of actions, and not of birth, or race, or intelligence, or anything other then what you did with what you had. It was more important that you work well with those around you, not letting them down when they needed you to survive, then it was to be super smart or fast, or strong. Being better did no one any good if you couldn't apply your talents to help others. Most of the time, she succeeded in passing along her philosophy, and those rare cases that she couldn't sway to her cause, well, they didn't live much longer. She couldn't tolerate racists in her unit, and while she didn't set out to get them killed, trust in your fellows was an integral part of staying alive. If the people around you didn't have an active interest in seeing you come back alive, you generally didn't. Darwinian survival at it's most obvious, that was war. If it worked, you lived. If it didn't, well, chances of survival dwindled rapidly.
No, she hated racists, hated those who thought they were better then humans because their ancestors had been engineered to be better, and she hated the humans who felt they were better because no one had ever manipulated their genes. The conflict generated was a waste of time. People were people, no matter how they were born, or to what supposed race. Since the genalts and the humans could interbreed, she saw the protestations of separate races to be ludicrous, but the unending wars showed that few people shared her views. From full-out battles to guerilla warfare, the belief in birth superiority merely bled the best from both sides. If she could have stopped it, she would, but the best she could do was save the lives of the people who fought with her for equality, and pray that it made a difference.
She died fighting for equality, and since the universe possessed a sense of irony, she ended up with another racist. She glanced at Knives out of the corner of her eye, and wondered if maybe this time he was right. He really was a different race. An alien being, however difficult that was for her to fathom. He had been created as well, but for a different purpose then her ancestors. No one had tried to keep humanity in him, had thought that humanity would even be needed in a creature that would spend its entire life separated from the rest of the world. She wished she could figure out how his mind worked, find out if he thought differently from humans. His formative -- year -- had been spent among humans, and that obviously helped impress the human thought patterns on his mind. She knew they couldn't be too different, as they were able to link. No human had managed to link with any other type of mammal, not even the great apes, so they really could not think too differently, but every time she thought she might have figured out how he thought, he changed the rules on her. It was frustrating, maddening, and completely his style. She wondered if he did it on purpose.
She brought her thoughts back to the topic du jour. Racism. She hated it with every fiber of her being. Knives embraced it with every fiber of his. She could put up with the constant put downs and little entendres that he directed her way to put her in her place. What she was having fresh problems with was teaching a racist how to better achieve genocide. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, but she couldn't see what choice she had. If she left now, if she could get away to a town, even, and that was unlikely, he would find her. She didn't want to contemplate the loss of life that would ensue if he was pissed off when he came after her. She didn't want to be responsible for those deaths.
But staying wasn't a great option, either. Teaching him only gave him the means to kill more people faster when he was finally done with her. The deaths after she trained him would dwarf the number he would kill if she left now. No one on this planet would be safe, not for long. Giving a fanatic weapons of mass destruction was never a good idea. They tended to use them and not care about the consequences.
The easiest route would be killing herself, right now, before she taught him anything else. The danger was the knowledge she possessed, and if she was no longer here, that danger would pass. She searched her soul, trying to find the courage to end her life again. It was there, but she didn't have the necessary degree of determination. She wasn't afraid to leave this world, but she couldn't find the desire to do so. She had been running on willpower alone for a long time now, and was not surprised to find herself almost tapped out. While not ready to give up and not care at all, or at least not precisely ready for such ennui, she just couldn't care enough about the plight of the world to take the correct step.
She wondered if that made her weak, or just tired. She should care, and she did, abstractly, but she didn't know enough people on this world to force herself to suicide for them. She was here, and real, but beyond the sands she could conceive of other people, but she could not see them as real, as existing with lives and hopes and dreams. Maybe she should try to believe in them, but she couldn't. Not to the degree that was needed for sacrifice.
It was weird, not wanting to live, but not wanting to die, either. If she had a little more energy she might have enjoyed the freedom that gave her, but right now all she could see were the shackles that kept her here, near a man she loathed, and doing things that made her hate herself.
She wondered anew why she had ever believed that dying would change anything in her life.
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Knives glanced at the female out of the corner of his eye. Her mien was pensive, and she was obviously thinking deeply on a subject that disturbed her. He wondered what upset her, and while he felt it likely had something to do with him, he was unwilling to assume anything when it came to her. Anytime he assumed something about her, she did her best to prove him wrong. It was cute, in an annoying sort of way. Much like her.
There was something about this woman irritated him. Actually, many things about her irritated him, but there were things about her that annoyed him that he couldn't even put a name to, and that aggravated him. Something made him come out here after her, something that he didn't understand. He had watched her leave, unconcerned, secure in the knowledge that she could not escape, sure that she was intelligent enough to not even try. But not much time elapsed before the oasis began to feel, wrong, empty. The space that seemed so small when she was there was suddenly echoingly large, as if his presence alone was not enough to fill it up. It was different without her, and when she left and stayed gone for a few minutes some feeling nagged at him. This feeling he couldn't name forced him out into the desert after her, and kept him here, even after he knew that she was not trying to get away.
He sat there and wondered if he should kill her now. She was beginning to affect him in ways that he could neither understand or control, and that made her dangerous. Idly her tried to think of what he would lose if he killed her off now, listing the possible assets against this uneasy feeling that plagued him. While he hadn't yet managed to gain much knowledge from her, he had learned of a new world of study and was confident that he could explore it. He might not learn on his own as fast as she could teach him, but she claimed that he had learned the basics, and he was inclined to believe that she had told him the truth. She was not as irreplaceable as she might like to believe, but it was true that killing her now would not be in his best interests.
What was beginning to bother him was the fact that it was getting harder for him to picture the world without her around. While he may not have spent many days in her company, he had relived a good portion of her lifetime, and he would be lying to say that he had emerged untouched by what he had seen. He had quickly grown used to her presence, how quickly he could hardly believe, and a world without her seemed. . . odd. Not right. He had only spent time with her for a little over a week, but so much had happened in those days that they seemed to hold more time then they possibly could. He could still picture an Eden with only him and Vash, the plants rescued from the tyranny of the humans, but he could not picture the remainder of the human race's time on this planet without her around, somewhere. Likely, they would be enemies, and strangely he could picture himself fighting against her. Fighting, not merely killing.
Somehow, she had been elevated from vermin to opponent in his mind, a place that he had never conceived of being filled by a mere human. The problem was, she kept showing herself as more then a mere vermin, kept surprising him with her insight and potential. If he could only convince her to work with him towards the eradication of the vermin, these odd feelings would not bother him so much. She would be such an asset to his cause, it would be a shame to kill her before he was certain that he could not change her mind.
Every time he felt he understood her enough to manipulate her, she either changed the rules or showed strength that she should not possess. It was obvious that she hated herself, but every time he tried to pry into that hole in her psyche, she ignored the weakness, somehow able to pretend that it wasn't there. She should be weak, he should be able to influence her, but somehow she managed to defend herself against everything he tired.
By all rights, she should hate humans as much as he did. With what she had lived through, it was unbelievable that she could want to save anyone. They all deserted her, destroyed her, did nothing for her. That she could feel anything nearing compassion was amazing, let alone the degree of empathy that she showed. She should not care about anyone but herself, yet she did. It was so frustrating.
He could not have designed a better childhood, had his goal been to create someone who would help him in his crusade. That she could sit there and try to reason with him, to convince him that humans didn't need eradication, was amazing, and horribly annoying. She should be willing to help him, not trying to talk him out of the correct course of action.
It suddenly occurred to him that he had neglected to ask her a question that day. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye again. She was so obviously miserable, and seemed to be wrestling with some inner demon. Words sprang unbidden to his lips, tripping out into the silence before he had a chance to think on them or call them back.
"Why do you hate yourself so much?" he asked, then wondered why that could have been important to him, even for an instant. He debated taking the words back, but decided he would rather not let her know how much she was affecting his ability to reason. Perhaps it was only a temporary form of insanity, and would pass soon.
Knives' question caught Kiley off guard. She turned and looked at him, unable to completely hide the shock she felt. Judging by the smirk on his face, he could see the shock in her eyes and was amused. Her eyes narrowed as the shock transmuted to anger.
"What makes you think I hate myself?" she retorted.
"Did you think it didn't show?" he asked sardonically. "Every time you spoke of your death, there was no regret, only pride. You treat the end of your life as the last move of your final piece in some game, instead of with horror or regret. You feel that you deserved the death you received, and considering that it was a horrible way to die, you must hate yourself. If you didn't, you would be angered by the way you met your end, the torture and betrayal, but you treat it like something you were due."
"Hmm," she said, then fell into a thoughtful silence. Knives didn't interrupt, but kept the peace, willing to wait while she collected her thoughts. Kiley stared down at her knees, trying to find the words to express her feelings, trying to find some way to put her sins into words that didn't demean them. Finally, she raised her head, her eyes focused on the horizon, but seeing something inside her heart.
"I killed ten thousand people over the course of ten years," she said, then lapsed into silence again. Knives said nothing, willing her to continue, but aware that anything he might say could shut her up prematurely.
"I left my parent's house a little after midnight on my eighteenth birthday, and I joined the army. My stepfather had planned out my life. I was to be his assistant, his secretary, helping him in his daily tasks. He thought me effectively cowed, the perfect shadow. What he didn't know was that I had spent the past year plotting how to get out of his grasp. My days were monitored to the second, but I managed to gather the information needed without alerting anyone of my intention to bolt.
"There was to be a large celebration in the morning, as I was accepted into the upper echelons of higher learning. Once firmly ensconced in the halls of university, I would be out of the reach of the draft, and therefore forever under his control. I had four hours between midnight and when they would notice I was missing from my room, and I used then to get myself near the closest army recruiting station. I managed to hide until it opened at eight in the morning, and by 8:10 I was in the army. I had escaped my stepfather's control; even he could not take me out of the army's clutches.
"But life didn't get easy for me just because I had escaped one hell. Basic training is a hell of a different sort, and it was harder on me then the average recruit. My school years had been spent learning things a woman should know, how to run a family, and a household, and things of that type. It didn't prepare me in any way for early morning ten mile runs, or weapons training, or anything that the army was trying to instill in me. In my first day I earned the nickname Princess, both for my lineage and my inability to do any of the tasks required.
"But I was very motivated. If I washed out, I would be going back to my stepfather's, and he would make my life even harder for having had the audacity to try to escape. By the end of the first week I was no longer in danger of being forced to leave. By the end of the second week I was in the top quarter of the recruits in my class. By the end of the fourth week, I was the all-around best, and the best in hand-to-hand combat and weapons use. I was defeating people who had received years of martial arts training, and I had come to the rapt attention of certain elements within the army.
"As I entered the army, I was already being evaluated differently from those around me. My father, my biological father, was a bit of a hero. He was from a genalt line, but not a pure one. Something had mixed in him, creating a new talent, unique to him alone. He could sense danger, could tell when someone was trying to harm him and what direction the attack was coming from. This, coupled with the excellent reflexes that were his developed genalt heritage, were passed on to me, his only child. They avidly wanted to know if the genes bred true, but my stepfather had kept them from finding out. He claimed that it was wrong to test a child's reflexes, that they might not be fully developed until I was. As soon as I entered training, they threw tests my way, trying to determine the extent of what I had inherited. And they were pleased.
"It had bred true in me, and my reflexes made me more valuable then a normal recruit. After the second week, when it became obvious that I was a natural fighter, I began to be groomed for a very dangerous job.
"After basic training, I went immediately into a more advanced training regime; I entered assassin school. It didn't bother me that I was learning how to kill other people; I didn't see then as anything special. I hated everyone, and I believed that my superiors knew who needed to be killed. I allowed then to make me into nothing more then a tool. They sent me out on missions that grew ever deadlier, and I kept coming back. I did not care how much blood I spilled in pursuit of my victim; I didn't have the common honor that many male assassins shared. I killed women and children with impunity, but only if they got in my way. I didn't allow emotions to rule me, or obsessions to fuel me, but accepted my assignments and did not rest until they were completed.
"I was the perfect tool, committed to the cause, dedicated to my goals, and unaffected by anything resembling a moral code. That's why I hate myself. I let go of my own soul, and didn't even recognize the loss until it was too late to get it back."
"So why did you stop killing?" asked Knives. "Did you have an epiphany, or a spiritual experience, leaving you with the notion that all life is sacred? Did you meet someone who convinced you that killing is wrong? Or did you just grow tired of the blood on you hands?" His tone was sardonic, faintly mocking her pain.
Anger flashed through her, but it died in a heartbeat. As its ashes fell, a ironic humor took its place. Her tone was droll as she responded. "Knives, what sort of crap fiction do you read? I didn't stop killing because I suddenly grew a conscience, or looked at my bloodstained hands and saw something horribly wrong. That might sound really neat, but it's a bit farfetched.
"I just got bored. There was no challenge anymore, no difficulty. That razor line where the adrenaline pumps and you must perform at your peak or die had disappeared, lost under a level of skill that was unparalleled, and reflexes that were inhuman. I was given a task, a kill, a series of kills, or a bloody massacre, and instead of exciting me, it bored me. I had been dissatisfied for over a year before I stopped, but I had set my goal of ten thousand lives in ten years. It seemed like such a nice number, one that no one would be able to beat."
He interrupted. "I killed more then that in ten hours," he said, not quite bragging, but definitely implying that releasing ten thousand souls was not difficult.
"Mmm. Well, I didn't have ships full of sleeping people I could crash into a harsh and barren world," she retorted. "And for such an easy set-up, you sure did a crappy job of execution. I mean, you left the ships with one stinking person awake, and she managed to screw you over royally, didn't she?"
"Shut up," he said, his voice cold. "Underestimating Rem because she was merely human is a mistake I have had to live with for years. I have not repeated it."
"No, you merely underestimate your brother," she said sardonically. "But I'm talking about me now, so stop with the interrupting.
"Anyway, I only killed people in my way, between me and my goal, and who were actually trying to harm me, plant boy, so ten thousand is not an insignificant number. So. I reached it, and afterwards had no reason to be their killer anymore. It was boring, and while I hadn't developed a conscience, I had realized that I was merely being used. While I was off playing assassin, my stepfather was consolidating his political power. A month before my tenth anniversary, I learned that he was now on the council that determined who I was sent after next.
"Like hell was I working for him. So I quit. When they came for me, when it was time for my next assignment, I refused to go. Since a reluctant assassin is a useless tool, I was reassigned by the end of the week.
"I found myself in the Parameds, the unit comprised of the dregs of the entire world army. This is where those who could not be silently or easily disposed of ended up. Assassins didn't get to retire because they were bored; we knew too many secrets to leave the army. Ever. Since the average life expectancy of a Paramed was four months, retirement wasn't going to be a problem for them. Also, and I think I might have said this before, Parameds were soldiers, but we were not allowed to use lethal force. When I was placed there, those who were trying to get rid of me thought that they had found the perfect solution. Either I would be killed because I couldn't fight back, or I would fight back, kill someone, and be legally sentenced to death.
"They underestimated me. They had thought of me a tool for killing for so long, that they could not conceive that I would be able to survive without taking a life. But I was a killer because it excited me, because I enjoyed the rush. When I was reassigned, my past was blacked out. No one knew I had been an assassin. People figured that I had been in one of the elite special forces units, and had gone bad. I could leave the killing behind easily because I had discovered something new that excited me.
"I found the rush again when I walked death's edge and could not fight back. With that handicap, I felt that satisfaction you get when you know that you are the best, the rush that had been lacking, and with every mission that I returned from, I pissed off people who wanted to see me dead. It was a fun life, for a while. Months passed, and due to the large percentage of fatalities, I was promoted into a command position. It was only over a small squad, but keeping my people alive was a challenge, and I wanted to see if I could do what no one else had ever achieved.
"I wanted to keep my people alive for a whole month. On my first day in command, we trained, and I tried to make them work together. That same day we were called out, and one of them died."
"Is that what made you value life?" interrupted Knives, clearly impatient.
Kiley punched his shoulder, almost lightly. "No, now shut up. It just annoyed me. First day, and I failed. So, the second day, I got another body, and I trained them again, trying to force them into a team. Since moral was understandably in the toilet in the Parameds, my efforts were not appreciated, but since I was in charge and had a reputation of someone you don't annoy, they listened. We had two whole days to train before our next deployment, and I worked them hard.
"But they all came back. And they all came back the time after that, and they began to work harder when I trained them, accepting me. I used them, found their strengths and their weaknesses, and I managed to keep my unit together without a casualty for three weeks. Then I met my goal of a month, and a few days after that I was promoted again, and I got to start trying to train people all over again.
"Somewhere in the next year, I began to place a value on human life again, or at least on the lives of my people. To begin with, it was purely selfish; they were damned hard to replace when they died on me, but after I was forced to interact with them, I began to miss some of them after they died, first for physical skills that added to the unit, and then for how the deaths of some affected the moral of the unit. Then I actually grew to almost like someone, and when she died, something in me broke, and I lost the detachment that had kept the world from affecting me.
"Death stopped being my friend and started being my enemy. I didn't grow a heart of a conscience overnight, but after that day I began to hate death. Valuing life came even later, but it all started when I lost someone I could have liked, had I given myself the chance."
Kiley lapsed into silence for a moment and pulled her thoughts out of the past. She pushed herself to her feet and stretched, feeling the vertebrae in her back pop as she pulled them up. Knives moved to stand as well, but she put a hand on his shoulder and firmly pushed him back down.
"You stay here," she commanded, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder and carefully not meeting his eyes so she could keep her tone flippant. If the tension under her fingers was any indication, she was on very dangerous ground. It would do for her to lose her nerve now. "I came out here to be alone for a while so I could mope. You interrupted me, and caught me in a talkative mood, so I suppose it was good for you. But I still need to mope, and I can't properly mope with someone else around. I'm going to go lose myself, and you can do whatever it is you do when you're alone. I'll be back when I'm done."
With that she took her hand off his shoulder and turned to walk away. She started off and suddenly found her face in the sand. Sputtering and blowing sand out of her nose, she kicked the leg that Knives had grabbed, trying to get him to let go. His grip only tightened, and began to move up her leg. She tried to flip on her back, but couldn't squirm into a better position before Knives had climbed on her back. He pressed one knee hard into her lower back, effectively pinning her in place. He grabbed her left arm and held it to the sand. She tucked her right arm under her body to keep it out of his grasp, so he substituted grabbing the back of her neck and shaking her head until her teeth rattled.
"You have no right to do anything I do not allow you to do. You will go nowhere unless I allow it. You will do nothing if I do not tell you to. You will feel nothing I do not tell you to feel. And you will never touch me or try to hold me somewhere against my will. Is that clear, human?" The last word was an epithet, spit from his mouth like something vile. Each sentence was punctuated by another shake, and her eyes began to tear from having her nose smashed to the ground so many times.
Kiley spared a moment to realize that he was learning more then she had thought. By keeping her from being able to concentrate he neutralized the threat of her tricks. Or so he thought.
Knives found himself sprawled twenty feet away with no recollection of how he got there. Kiley was kneeling on his back, and his right arm was pinned to the ground. Her hand was on his neck, grinding his face into the sand.
"Let's get something straight here. I have the right to do anything I feel like doing. I have the right to go anywhere I damn well please, and I will do whatever the hell I feel like doing. I will feel happy or sad if I feel like being happy or sad. But I do promise to not touch you ever again. I am not the sort of human you can boss around, plant boy, and is that clear?" Her voice was calm as she informed him of her version of the rules, but there was an underlying hiss that gave away her rage.
She jumped back off of him, bruising his back, but more importantly getting out of his reach before he could get up. Knives stood up slowly and brushed the sand from his clothes. He spent a minute putting everything back in its place, then looked directly at her. She had expected that he would be upset, enraged, or even on the stringent side of pissed off. She hadn't predicted what she saw in his eyes, and she wasn't prepared for what he did next.
He was undeniably amused. When he took in the shock on her face, he began to chuckle. Even stranger, there was nothing remotely evil about the sound. Unsure, she backed up another couple paces. Knives began to laugh.
"Such spirit! I have never met anyone like you," he forced out through the chuckles.
"I'm not surprised," she said slowly, looking for a reaction. "Not many people can actually fight back."
Knives laughed harder and wiped something from his eye. "That's not it. You take my words and throw them in my face." He laughed even harder, bending over with the force of the laughter. Kiley stared at him, not relaxing one iota. Whatever was so amusing was a joke whose punch line was beyond her.
The laughter stopped suddenly, and Knives stood up straight. This time there was no mirth in his eyes.
"You need to learn that there are people in this life that are more powerful then you," he said seriously.
Kiley snorted. "Is that all? You need to learn that there are people you can't boss about. And that just because you are powerful doesn't mean you have the right to dictate how people are going to live their lives. And that just because you're strong doesn't mean you're right all the time."
Knives cocked his head to the side and asked, "Is that all?"
"No," replied Kiley seriously. "But those are the important ones for this conversation."
He looked at her seriously. She stared back, willing to let the stalemate last as long as possible. Something changed in his eyes, and he turned and walked back to the oasis. Kiley didn't relax until she lost sight of him, and even then only slowly descended from her readiness to fight.
Finally, she pulled as much air into her lungs as she could, then let it out in a huge sigh, forcing the tension to leave her body with it. She threw herself onto the sand and tried to sulk again. It's difficult to feel sorry for yourself when you are trying to puzzle out the behavior of a crazy alien, but she was willing to give it the old college try.
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Knives was in a good humor as he walked back to the oasis. The human was actually quite amusing, with her kittenish defiance, all spitting fury and tiny claws. But like the kitten she resembled, she was powerless before his might. Had he so chosen he could have beaten her into the ground again and again, however many times it might have taken to make his point, but he decided to abstain. She might be frustrating, but she was also spirited. He enjoyed the thought of breaking that spirit slowly, carefully paring away the layers of her defenses until she suddenly realized that she had no choice but to obey his commands. It had been so long since his last challenge; rushing this one would be a waste of an opportunity. It wasn't like he didn't have all the time he might possibly need, or anything else he needed to be doing at the moment.
Upon reentering the area they had claimed, he strolled over to her pack and rummaged through what she had. She wasn't likely returning for awhile, so he might as well take the opportunity to learn a little more about her. Carefully he pulled items out of the bag and laid them before him, looking for something he could not define. He sat back on his heels and pondered what he saw. Little defined what he could gather from what she possessed, as she left him with nothing that he had not seen before.
She had a lot of ammunition, a few clothes, some food, and not much else. Practical, except for the garish pattern on her blanket, and completely lacking in any sort of clues to her preferences, save the obvious one of anonymity, and her desire to be well prepared for violence. He picked up a box of the ammunition and weighed it in his hand. A slow smile crept over his face, and he got to work sabotaging a few of her bullets. He took the powder out of a few, and mixed then back in the box. Her reaction to his tampering would be interesting, as well as how well she dealt with equipment failure. This box went on top when he carefully repacked her bag.
He stood up and brushed his hands on his legs, wanting the feel of the things he had touched to leave his fingertips and not quite succeeding. Had he been a bit less of an asshole, he might have been feeling guilt, but instead he felt only the slightest shadow of discomfort, which he easily brushed aside from his conscience. His gaze wandered the area, and he wondered what he should do now. His eye was caught by the spire that she liked to climb so much. He wondered if there might be something up there that he should know about, and so, after peering up the sides in search of the easiest route up, started to climb. When he reached the top, it was with renewed appreciation for her physical skills. The climb had not been hard, precisely, and was quite doable by a superior being, but he was more tired when he reached the end then he had expected to be. She made it look so easy that he was surprised that he wasn't as adept, and Knives resolved to practice a little more until his skills improved.
He stood and paced the top, looking for anything that might be out of place, but her found nothing. There were tracks all over the place, but he had already suspected that she was practicing her skills up here so as to be outside his attention; he received confirmation but learned nothing new. He wished that he could watch her again someday, and eyed the surrounding spires contemplatively.
He finally sat and looked out into the desert. The horizon was very far away, and he idly computed the distance to the edge of the world. Iles and iles lay before him, iles and iles of almost featureless sand. He could see a small speck in the sand below that was most likely her, and he watched her do nothing for a while. The suns moved in the sky, and nothing of any account happened at all.
Ah, this was boring! He practiced some of the things she had taught him, but grew quickly jaded creating lights. A breeze was more practical under the heat of the suns, but after figuring out how to move the air without having to concentrate, he grew bored again.
Abruptly he stood up and walked to the edge of the spire. He looked down into the oasis, and contemplated the look of their temporary residence from this perspective for a moment. It was different from his regular view, but told him nothing new. No confidences were spilled by shifting his point of view, no secrets were written down there to be read from this vantage. He stared for a moment, willing to wait to see if anything changed, but realized the ludicrous nature of that idea. He sighed and climbed down to the desert floor, and wondered just what was so enjoyable about rock climbing that the woman would practice it at every opportunity.
He was restless and could not understand why. He had spent years alone, with no contact with any other being, even one as lowly developed as a vermin. And now, a few minutes out of the presence of that woman he was pacing and unable to concentrate. What was it about her that did this to him?
He wanted was to possess her, her secrets, her actions, her knowledge, and her soul. Having her near but not under his control was maddening. The thought of her running off into the desert and not returning was making him edgy. This vermin was his, whether she acceded to the reality yet or not, and he did not let his things go lightly.
He sat down by his less mobile possessions and closed his eyes. He contemplated the myriad ways that he could subdue that fighting spirit of hers without breaking the parts that would be useful to him.
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Kiley stared out into the desert, trying to bring some sense of closure to her life. It was hard for to admit to herself that she had actually died, that she had killed herself and left her old life behind completely. There was a not insignificant part of her that believed that this world was only a dream, a phantasm created by a broken mind. She was more then a little afraid that any second she might be torn from here and returned to the shambles that her life had become, returned to a broken mind and body in a broken world. She could almost envision her eyes closing here and opening back in her featureless cell, with maybe the leering face of one of her captors on the screen taking his pleasure in her destruction. Then the wind would blow past her, and they dry scent of this planet would remind her of just how different is truly was.
And then there were moments that she wished she were only dreaming, and when she wished she could leave this dead planet behind and return to the verdant one that she had loved once upon a time. If sometimes she wondered if this place were real or not, the rest of the time the alien nature of this planet grated on her soul. She had been surrounded by life and never noticed that it was a luxury. Now, she was surrounded by a great emptiness that mirrored the condition of her soul. Not alive and not dead, it was just a barren plain where nothing could ever grow. She leaned back and stared up at the sky, squinting into the glare that bounced from the suns to the sand and back. No wonder people aged quickly on this planet; she thought. The heat was enough to leech the life from you.
She didn't really want to go back home, but she liked it there better then here. She slipped into her favorite daydream for a moment, of a place far away from people who wanted to use her, and the places that were drenched in blood and war, a place of trees and flowers, and with only one other person. She dreamed of her sanctuary, of her place of peace, filled only with her and her one true love.
The funny thing was she had never pictured the face of her one true love. No, when she dreamed, she imagined arms that held her tight, protecting her from the evils of the world, or a laugh that shared both her humor and her pain in equal measure, a partner who would compliment her, and succor her, and hold her close because he loved being near her. It was a dream that heartened her, and that betrayed her in equal measure, as it was what she wanted more then anything else and was what she knew she would never have.
She hated her hopes. Her mind was incredibly practical and capable, and she had worked hard to make sure that she needed no one to take care of her in any way, not to save her, or protect her, or to do anything for her. She was a completely independent spirit, needing no one to make her whole. But her heart was tainted by dreams of romance, dreams of a life where she didn't need to be the strongest or the best or the fastest or the superlative anything, because she had someone else who would support her enough that she could be less vigilant and not suffer from it.
But that was only a dream. A happy dream, and one that eased her heart, but she was practical enough to know that dreams don't come true. She was plopped down on this world and told that she would fall in love with the first person she saw. Knives. Sure, why shouldn't one psychopathic killer fall in love with another? She was sure they could make great anarchy together, if it weren't for a few trivial details like she didn't enjoy killing, death, or destruction anymore, and he hated humans with an obsession. Other then that, and a few trifling other details like them both being too strong willed to ever make a couple, her too used to getting her own way, and him too used to forcing his way on everyone he meets, they would just be perfect together. Right, sure, and heavy on the sarcasm.
Her heart had learned to dream in silence a long time ago. She wasn't going to look for love. Looking for love made you weak; trying to let someone close only increased the chances that you would be stabbed in the back. Love itself didn't scare her, but trying to find it did. Her soul was fragile and broken, and she didn't want to give anyone a chance to break it because she wasn't certain that she could survive the pain again.
She was honest enough with herself to realize that she wouldn't pine away with loss, or kill herself because she couldn't go on alone. But she did know that there was a part of her that could die inside, that part of her that enjoyed life, that could see and appreciate beauty. She did not want to live with that part of her dead, so she protected it the only way she knew how.
She had been told once, after being tested for a soul, that she was close to being Broken. She could feel for others, but couldn't relay her feelings to them. The end result was that she appeared soulless while her heart lived alone inside. The tester had advised her to learn how to relate to other people, and she would have tried, but there was never a chance. Between being betrayed by everyone around her, torture, death, and Knives, she just hadn't found the time to try to connect with other people. Maybe there was such a thing as fate, and some god like the thought of her lying in the warm sand, dreaming of love and misery.
She could picture that, a god manipulating space and time and universes, just to bring her here, just for this moment of dreams and depression. Maybe that's what gods did, why they created people in the first place, or allowed them to live after their genesis. Maybe it was like some cosmic game of playing with dolls, of manipulating lives to some great artistic goal.
She hated gods, and hated art, and hated her life.
Then she got up and returned to the oasis, not happier, but a bit calmer inside, her depression eased by rage at the uncaring universe.
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The next few days passed without much happening. Kiley taught Knives other ways of using an energy net to affect the physical world and a few more tricks of cell manipulation. Knives learned these tricks much like the others, with relative ease and a great deal of superiority directed towards his teacher. She did her best to not let Knives get under her skin, and tried to ignore him as much as she could.
The only problem was that there was not much to do at the oasis. She hadn't brought anything with her to occupy her mind or her hands, and there was only so much exercise one could do before slowly sliding into madness. She did spend a great deal of time trying to regain the edge of her skills, which had begun to lapse a small amount. Upon arriving on this planet her skills had been near their peak, but she had neglected to keep them there while she was running from Knives. So she trained herself, slowly regaining that edge, and tried daydreaming to fill the rest of the time.
Thinking about nothing was hard for her. She had spent too many years scheming and plotting to have wasted much time dreaming and imagining how her life might have been different. Her days had been full of tension and terror for the most part, her spare time spent trying to change the world. None of her former life applied here; all her plans were dashed to nothing. She didn't know enough about the power structure on this world to even begin to try to picture herself in it, and found herself reluctant to pursue that line of thought. Here she was anonymous, a nonentity, a nobody. It was kind of nice to not have to worry about what other people were scheming. She realized that hadn't sought power for its own sake, but to try to bring about an end to the war. There was no war here, and no real threat of one that she knew of. The biggest threat to this planet was her student, and she still didn't know how to neutralize it. She didn't spend too much time dwelling on it; a solution would either present itself or not, and only time would tell. She would do her best, and likely that would be enough. It had been, up until now, and there was no reason to begin thinking that she might be outclassed now. No, no reason at all.
No, instead she spent her time daydreaming, thinking of things that she had never allowed herself to luxury to contemplate. Things like how nice it would be to own a pet, a kitten, maybe, or a dog. Something that she could take care of, but wouldn't need too much looking after. That might be nice. And a dog would probably like her, too, if she fed it enough. It might be nice to be liked. She spent some time imagining the feel of fur against her fingers, or a warm tongue on her face, or sweet puppy breath. But mostly she tried to picture what it would be like to be loved by something. It must be nice, she decided, and a dog would be safe to love. A dog wouldn't break your heart just to see if it could; it would love you if you fed it and loved it back. She had been told she could love. Maybe she should get a dog. Just for practice.
While Kiley pondered puppies, Knives thought on deeper and darker things. He noticed that the woman had almost entirely ceased to speak after she returned from the desert. She did her best to have no contact with him, and for the most part he was fine with being left alone. It was strange, however, to be around a human who didn't try to chatter on at him all the time. You could not get most of them to shut up, and those who didn't talk tended to have something wrong with them.
He would have enjoyed the silence more if he hadn't wanted to get more information from her. The things she had told him had given him more information he could use against her, but he still did not know what he could do to manipulate her. There was something, he was sure of it, but whatever it was still escaped him. Regardless, he spent his time trying to figure her out, and trying to learn as much as he could about what she was teaching him. Every new thing she taught him opened many new doors of opportunity, and his plans were multiplying at a rapid pace. Already he had discarded perfectly workable plans of death, mayhem, and destruction in favor of ones that would kill the humans faster.
At the end of the second day, he again contemplated killing her, but for different reasons then before. While he didn't doubt his ability to take care of her whenever the need might arise, he had gathered enough knowledge to almost assure success when he went against the vermin again. Even his brother would have no chance against him. The trouble with her was the unpredictability of her actions. She might, at any minute, decide to try to destroy him. That would be bothersome. She might try to escape him, and teach his brother these same tricks. That might actually be dangerous. As a human, she could not possess the skills needed to beat him, but his brother might become a threat again if he could learn these special tricks of hers.
In the end, he just resolved to keep an eye on her. No human would be able to successfully deceive him, and any attempts at perfidy would be dealt with as they deserved. He remember the sight of her collapsed and dying body as she tried to reach the water and smiled. She would come to wish that she had died there; it would have been a much easier death then the one he had planned for her when all this was through.