I doan own Trigun.
I took a nap last night that turned into just plain ol' sleeping. Sorry!
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The young man sat anxiously in a antechamber, waiting for his audience. He looked about the walls, hung with generic art prints and painted a non-descript beige. He perched on the edge of his seat, a slightly padded chair identical to all the others that lined the walls. The room had been decorated specifically to be forgettable, and succeeded admirably at its task. He tried to contain his impatience but his tapping toes and fidgeting fingers gave him away to any who might have seen him. Luckily for him, though, the room was empty. Action had always been his strong suit, not patience. He fiddled with the tie at his neck, feeling out of sorts dressed in a suit.
A knock sounded at the door and his head swiveled in time to watch it open. An man of perhaps fifty years stood framed by the opening and beckoned him into the office beyond. He looked like someone's grandfather, paternal in a slightly distant way. His suit was expensive and well tailored, hiding any hint of a paunch. The younger man wasted no time before following him into the room. He ran his hands through his hair as he entered, trying to bleed off some of the nervous tension that consumed him. The older man smiled slightly, but soon grew serious. This was not a matter to be taken lightly.
"You say you've found them?" asked the older man as they settled at his desk.
"Yes. We finally saw them as they headed away from the hotel. They stayed there only last night, and outside of giving us the names of Frank, Joan, and Katharine Franklin, the hotel was quite unhelpful. We are unsure if those name are aliases, but we suspect that they are. The child appeared to be unharmed. She was following the woman quite closely, as if she was enamored of her, and the woman appeared to be watching out for her. The child had on new clothes and looked to have been treated well, cleaned up and such."
"Does it look like they know what she is?" he prompted.
"No, sir. Or at least, if they do know, they do not care. She is being treated like any other child would be, or at least that's what our observation shows."
"Hmm. It's unlikely that they don't know. From the sound of what happened yesterday, the woman could have been seriously injured trying to rescue her. Why would they go through the trouble of rescuing her, if they don't know she's a plant?"
"I don't know, sir," the younger man said respectfully. "There are those rumors of plants mixing with humans," he offered.
The older man didn't bother suppressing a shudder. "Horrible thought. Possible, though. Yesterday, did any of their actions belie. . . superhuman capabilities?" he queried.
"Josh isn't sure. For one thing, he says only the woman fought. The man just stood around and watched. He says that her speed seemed to be more then what would be humanly possible, but she was visibly tired at the end of the attacks, and a plant wouldn't be. Her reactions to what went on around her were equally near or slightly above expected human limits, but not enough to guarantee a positive ID, one way or the other."
"And the man did nothing? That's odd. Normally it is the man who protects and the woman who sits and does nothing helpful. One would think that he would at least help her."
"Josh says that he did nothing but hold up a wall, if I may quote. He says that the man only watched the woman intently, as if her were gauging her abilities, much in the same way he himself was."
"So you're saying that they might not even be a team."
"Yes, sir. They might have banded together only recently, or not even be working together now at all, but only traveling together."
"This is a set of complications we don't need."
"I know, sir. If word got out that plants can pass as humans. . ." began the young man.
"No," interrupted the elder. "I see no problem getting the girl back, or killing her, if necessary. You know that they are not impossible to kill." The younger man nodded as he continued. "Without proof, it doesn't matter who knows about the plants. What we don't need are more players in this game, especially ones we cannot identify. Have we any word back on the descriptions?"
"Nothing, sir. We have found no one that matches either of their descriptions on the list of players and potential players in this game."
"She is much to skilled for no one to have noticed her, seen her train, something."
The younger man shrugged. "We have nothing. She may come from one of the smaller towns, in the city for a lark. There are some of those farm girls that get pretty strong."
"Farmgirls do not take down two armed men with speed and skill. That takes training, and I would have sworn that we had everyone marked."
The younger man shrugged again, no answer forthcoming. The elder one looked at him for a moment, then sighed.
"Go. Take a squad and bring that child back, or kill her if your opposition appears too formidable." He didn't ask if the squad was ready, and didn't need to.
The younger man rose and bowed, a fist over his heart. "We will bring the child back," he promised, looking the man in the eye. Then he turned and strode purposefully from the room, not looking back. He passed through the empty waiting room and into an equally featureless hall. He went quickly to a locker room. The three men inside eyed him as he walked in the door. He loosened his tie and gave them a nod as he moved to a locker.
"We are to bring her back," he said as he began changing. The other three made noises of agreement and checked over their weapons one last time as they prepared to leave.
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"So, you know where Millie's orphanage is?" questioned Kiley as they walked down another random street. She could sense no pattern to the directions they were taking, and wondered if following Knives was really the world's best idea. He turned and they faced the desert. They walked out onto the sands. He was quiet for a long while, long enough that Kiley wondered if he was going to say anything at all, but he finally responded.
"Of course I do. Do you think I wouldn't keep tabs on the annoying friends of my brother's?" Disgust laced the word friends.
"I would have thought you would prefer to forget that they even existed," she said while shrugging.
"I prefer knowing as much about my enemies as possible," he said slowly, enunciating each word carefully so she couldn't misunderstand him.
"Hmm, and they are your enemies how?"
"They are human," he said, as if that was such an obvious reason that she should not even have asked the question.
"There are lots of humans," she pointed out facetiously.
"Yes, but these two know about my brother and I. That makes them potentially a danger."
She shrugged, and since she was following him and he was unlikely to have seen it asked, "I don't see that it makes then much of a danger. They seem to like your brother. Makes them rather unlikely to try to harm him, don't you think?"
"Today they like him. But what if that woman of his gets in another argument with him, and starts telling people, out of spite? It's a risk."
"And you hate risk. I get it. So Meryl's a risk. What about Millie? She seems harmless."
"Until her hatred of me for that priest's death overcomes her friendship with my brother."
"I don't see that happening."
Knives sniffed, but made no reply. They walked on, moving farther and farther into the desert. Minutes passed until they neared an hour. Kiley had mused over his obvious discomfort, trying to figure out what his problem was now.
"You know what, Knives? You worry too much. Do you really think that anyone would betray your brother? I mean, he makes friends as naturally as breathing and all of them stick up for him, even against horrendous odds, and even against you. And the only people who know of you, know of you through your brother. They can't betray you without betraying him, and they would never do that."
He didn't respond, but she could read the tension in his shoulders. "No," she said thoughtfully, drawing the word out as her thoughts congealed from an clouded mass of feelings. "You aren't afraid of people betraying your brother. You expect that people are going to betray you, and will hurt your brother in the process. Wow, whole world revolves around you, huh?"
"Shut up," he said whirling around and facing her. The raw rage in his face made her take a step backwards, instinctively seeking more space. "You sit and prattle like you know me, like you know anything about me. I am tired of listening to you babble like you have any idea what you are talking about. If you wish to live, shut the hell up!"
Kiley swallowed and nodded, shaken by his obvious rage. She realized that she had hit a sore point and was willing to let the matter rest, for now.
Knives spun on his heel and walked off quickly. She picked Ace up and followed, breaking into a jog for a few paces to catch up.
"I'm sorry," she started quietly. "I have no right to pretend that I know anything about you, or about what you've been through. I can't say I really know much about betrayal, or at least, not like you do. I'll drop the subject, for now."
Suddenly she was flung backwards. Dazed, she found herself on her butt ten feet from where she remembered being with no memory of how she got there, but a quick flaring of pain on her right side clued her in. Her eyes grew round as she looked up at Knives, then regained their normal size as she checked to make sure the girl was alright. Luckily, she hadn't landed on her, and she seemed to be unhurt. Her eyes were filled with tears, though as she looked between them uncomprehendingly.
Kiley looked up at Knives, allowing her face to show none of the anger she felt.
"You will not say anything on this, again," he emphasized. "You may not be bothered by pain, but I promise you, you will feel a lot of it before I allow you to die."
She disregarded his advice. "Get off your damn high horse!" she shouted at him. "Not everything in this world is done with the express purpose of pissing you off, or hurting you, or trying to cause you pain. I realize that this is hard for you to understand, but you really aren't all that important. People do not plan their lives around inconveniencing you or doing things to hurt you. If crap happens to you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's not planned or done with malice. It's just life; life sucks and crappy things happen, and that's just the way it is."
"You say it like you mean it," he sneered.
"Damn straight. But guess what, this crap is meant to hurt," she said as she launched herself at him.
She knocked him down at the knees and grabbed a handful of his hair. She rubbed his face in the sand, making sure to get some up his nose, then jumped back before he could recover from the temporary disorientation. She was mad, but didn't actually want to hurt him, but just piss him off a bit like he had annoyed her. She shifted her weight for her next attack, but paused as she felt something out of place.
Knives recovered and turned to continue the fight, but stopped as he saw her. She was kneeling in the sand, one palm out and her head cocked to one side, listening.
"Oh, shit," was all she had time to say before they were set upon by four strange men.
Kiley watched them run for a moment, gauging the time she had before she needed to react. Figuring that she had nearly one minute, she looked about for a spot that might be a tad more defensive then the middle of the road. The best spot was a sand dune that almost succeeded in masquerading as a hill. The problem with it was that it was a bit off the side of the road and towards the onrushing men. She didn't know if they would be able to reach it in time for it to do them any good, but she had to try.
She grabbed a bewildered Ace and her pack and started a flat out sprint to the hill. Knives didn't waste much time following her. She wondered if he know what this was all about, if these people were after him for some reason, but didn't waste the breath to find out. Whoever they were and for what arcane reasons they might be here, they weren't friendly, and that was all she really needed to know right now.
Leaving the road turned out to be more of a blessing them she had figured on. She and Knives had been walking through untreated sand for weeks, and were used to the effort moving through it entailed, but the men following were obviously not. Their steps slowed a fraction as they floundered, and Kiley blessed every second they gained. Running up the slopes of the dune took more out of her then she would have liked, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that it would hinder her pursuers more.
A shot winged by her, puffing harmlessly in the sand to her left. An extra surge of adrenaline propelled her to the top. She flung herself on the sand, curling around Ace to soften the blow. She rolled off her and almost into Knives as she pulled her gun and aimed at the men who had almost reached the base of the dune. She pulled off a shot, knocking the gun out of the hand of the foremost runner. He almost fell in his haste to stop, and held up a hand to slow his companions.
"We won't be easy to catch," she called down, watching them warily. The other men came no closer, but did begin to circle the dune.
"We only want the girl," called out the one who had lost his gun. He was holding his hand close to his body, but showed no other signs of pain.
Kiley shot a look at Ace. The child was visibly terrified. White showed all around her pupils and her skin was entirely pale. Kiley smiled in reassurance.
"She doesn't seem to want to go with you," she called down. "I'm inclined to follow her wishes in this matter and not yours." She bit her lip as she viewed the other men circling her position.
"Is that girl worth dying for?" asked the man.
"You can ask yourself that same question," she called down. "I'm not giving her up to you while I live, and I promise you, I'm not easy to kill."
He didn't respond with words, but he and his friends began to move closer to the dune. Kiley shot the ground in front of them, quickly enough that the report from the gunfire sounded like one long shot, and they paused.
"I don't want to kill you," she promised. "Don't force me."
The men said nothing, but a great deal of arm-waving and hand-signaling ensued. Kiley sighed, and turned to Knives.
"You could help, you know," she said waspishly as she maneuvered Ace between their bodies.
"They only want the child; what is she to me?" he asked. She glared at him. "You seem to be doing fine on your own."
"Help is always appreciated," she said as she fished in her pack for more ammunition. Her fingers closed around a box and she reloaded, leaving the open container at her side. She kept a wary eye on the men, waiting tensely for their next move.
She didn't have to wait long. The men ceased their waving about, but none of the three she could see were moving. She flipped herself over and drew a bead on the shoulder of the man charging at them. He managed to get a shot off before she could squeeze the trigger, but it hit the sand by her face and did no more harm then showering her with stinging sand.
She felt something wrong as the bullet left the gun, a slight pulling away from her intended target. Instead of hitting the man in the shoulder, the bullet found his heart. Her heart sank as she realized just what she had done, but she was too well trained to lose precious time to shock. Motion to her left teased her eye and she rolled to fire.
This time the gun worked, and the man was hit in the knee. Incapacitated, he hit the sand and rolled down the hill to lie in an unmoving heap. She then spun to her right and tried to shoot the man who was almost halfway up the hill. She pulled the trigger, but the gun was jammed. A scream of frustration was torn from her soul as she flipped the gun so her hand was on the barrel. Ignoring the searing pain of the heated metal against her flesh, she flipped it towards the enemy and was rewarded by seeing him fall as it hit him in the forehead.
She turned again and barely missed being skewered by a knife in the hand of the leader. She grabbed his arm as he passed her by and tried to loosen his grip. Treacherous footing caused him to slip and fall, and her grip on his arm wrenched her down after him. They tumbled down the hill together, still fighting even while being tossed about. Upon arriving at the bottom of the hill the hilt of the knife was in her hand, and the blade was in his leg.
"Shall we talk?" she asked.
His pain-glazed eyes didn't give her the answer she desired.
The man glared defiance and hatred. Kiley was perched with one knee on his chest, one hand stretched to his thigh and the other holding him down at his throat. The arm on his throat shook with suppressed rage, but she tried to calm herself, tried to force herself to deal with the present situation and not her anger with Knives. Tearing her mind back to the present, she noticed that the man was uncommonly silent. Most men would be weeping with pain now, but he stayed silent and stoic. The stoic types amused her with their stubborn insistence that keeping quiet would make anything better. Then again, she was one of the stoic types, so maybe she shouldn't judge.
Kiley shook her head, but kept her eyes locked onto his.
"It would be easier if you speak, no?" she said softly. "This knife, see, is in your leg, as I'm sure you've noticed. I know it's hurting you; you know precisely how much pain it causes. But looking at the blood seeping from the wound, I seemed to have missed the artery. I'm sure if I dug around here a bit, I could find it. How does bleeding your life out here on the sand sound?"
He said nothing, his expression unchanging.
She tried another tactic. "I just recently finished a very exhaustive bit of schooling in the most effective forms of torture. I could try a few of them on you." Her left hand trailed down from his neck and twisted a spot on his shoulder. He couldn't stop a cry of pain, but he quickly broke it off and continued to glare at her.
"Or, I could just kill you now and go ask one of your men," she continued. "You may think that you are too tough to break, but I shot out the knee of one of your friends; there's a lot of pain there. He should be easy enough to coerce. Or perhaps your fellow I knocked out; with a head injury it should be easy to make him talk. Anyway, I should finally get some practice with these torture forms I've learned. It would be interesting to see if they actually work."
He glared at her with undiminished hatred, and she sighed. She awkwardly pulled a knife from her boot. It's a great place to carry one, but difficult to get to while kneeling on someone. She fumbled with it until she felt sure of her grip, then brought it out before her body and made to slice his throat.
"Fine, woman. I will talk, if you promise to leave my men alone," he grated out through clenched teeth. She successfully bit back a smile. Few good leaders will allow their men to come to harm in their place. Of course, it could be just that he knew his men would break, but she found herself willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was that stoic thing, or maybe the rage in his brown eyes just made him too cute to resist. Or maybe she was just getting soft in her old age. Death can change a person.
"If you tell me what I want to hear, I will have no reason to harm them," she promised, lifting a little weight off his chest to make it easier for him to breathe. "My questions are simple enough. Why do you want the girl?"
"Why are you so determined to protect her?" he countered.
She moved closer with the knife. "I don't see that you're in much of a position to be asking questions," she said with a smile that held only passing resemblance to one of humor.
"She is dangerous," he said solemnly, as if this was an acceptable answer. Did he truly think that she would let him take Ace after three little words?
"Dangerous?" she repeated, scorn lacing the word. "How is a five year old so dangerous that four men are sent to bring her back? Four great big men oozing dangerous, to be precise. You know, maybe you would fare better if you didn't let all that danger ooze out your pores," she said facetiously.
"You don't know what she is," he told her, and Kiley began to get a bad feeling. Surely, fate was not so unkind.
"That is the point of this little exercise," she informed him. "You're supposed to be telling me why she is so important to you."
"You aren't going to believe me," he told her.
"Well, why don't you try me," she coaxed. "If I don't believe you, I'll let you know."
"Fine, woman. That little girl you are so anxious to protect isn't even human." Nope, fate hated her. Boy, was Knives just going to love this. At that thought her blood ran cold. Knives, allowed to mold another plant in the image he desired? The planet would not survive. Years of practice kept her shock from her face, but nothing could ease the cold sweat that prickled the back of her neck.
Kiley allowed herself to look taken aback, and then amused. "Not human? What is she supposed to be then, some sort of robot? I have seen the bruises on her; she's quite alive."
"She's a plant," he gasped out, as she had been idly twisting the knife in his leg as a form of encouragement.
"A plant," she repeated flatly. "Impossible. Plants aren't alive. They're just machines," she said, hoping that this was the accepted common knowledge. His look of distaste told her that she had guessed a little wrong.
"Do they still teach that out in the boonies?" he asked. "No plants are living creatures, mindless, soulless automatons who can mimic humans to a point. I'm sure you think she likes you." Her face must have betrayed something he was looking for, and she truly hoped so, because she was trying to look a little shocked. "She may seem to show affection, but it's a sham, playacting. Plants can't feel emotions."
"You lie," she said, her voice not shaking but betraying a slight quiver. He said nothing more, and she was tired of playacting and torture.
Abruptly she stood up, leaving the knife in his leg. "Take your men and go."
He looked up and her incredulously. "What do you mean?"
"I swore that I would protect that child. I will not go back on my word."
"You swore? To whom?"
"To myself." She wiped the sand off her hands.
"She isn't human," he whispered urgently. "She won't even remain a child for another two years. They grow at the speed of a year a month. You'll see, she isn't human. I can't leave her with you."
"And where would you and your broken friends take her, if she is such a danger?"
"We are not alone; we know how to take care of her kind. You can't hope to handle her on your own, and that man of yours doesn't seem to be much help."
She snorted. "That man isn't mine, and I think I can take care of a child. I took care of you well enough, didn't I?"
"You have no clue what these monsters are capable of. You can't possibly even hope to control her."
"Well, looks like you folks thought you could control her, and I managed against you well enough. Thank you for your concern, but I'll take my chances. You can take your men and go back to your truck, and back to your city and back to your friends and you can tell them that this isn't their problem anymore." She turned to walk back up the hill.
"You can't! It's too much for you!" he called after her, panic in his voice.
She turned at let some of the assassin show through. "I have only met one thing that was too much for me to handle, and it was not a young girl. It will not be her, you, your friends, your cause, or whatever fantasies you concoct to try to coerce my acceptance of your desires. If I say I can handle her, I will, and nothing in this world will stop me. Now go, and take your friends while I am still inclined to spare your lives."
She turned so he could not see the pain on her face, but she could not keep it all from her voice. "I am sorry that one of your men died. I would not have killed him. Had I known that someone had been messing with my ammunition I would not have used my gun." With that she walked away from him and back to a new pile of troubles.
What was she going to do about Knives?
She walked past Knives and to the man she had shot in the heart. She wasn't hoping, precisely, that he might still be alive, but some not small part of her really wanted to see some small shred of life.
All of her was disappointed. The man's eyes stared sightlessly into the full glare of the suns, and his limbs lay sprawled in a unruly manner that life could not mimic. The sand beneath him was stained by his blood and tacky with the drying moisture of it. Kiley knelt by him, a little uphill, and placed her hand on his neck, ostensibly feeling for a pulse. She sent her mind into his body and gauged the damage to his heart, and the amount of decay to his mind.
There was the most outside of chances that she could bring him back to life. She could heal the damage to his heart and chest and make it beat. The sticking point would be if his mind were still intact enough to return, or if oxygen deprivation would have her reviving a vegetable. He was nearing the border of no return and the time when she could not help was almost upon her.
Sighing, she knelt there as her mind weighed the consequences of her possible actions. While she might be able to help him, she could not answer the questions that his miraculous return to heath would raise. These men were looking for plants; they would not believe her story that she was just a genetically altered human from another dimension, and she could not blame them. It was rather farfetched. She knew that they were going to pursue her and Ace until they either recaptured her or gave up trying. If they thought she was a plant as well, and with some as yet undiscovered powers they would never give up or give them a moment of peace.
She could predict their next move already. The men would return to their base, or headquarters, or whatever staging area they came from, and they would give a report to someone else. That someone else might be powerful enough to make a decision as to the next course of action, or he might have to relay today's information to his boss, but whoever learned of what she did this morning, they would think over her, her actions, her place in the world, and what she might possibly want with a plant. His twisty mind would examine the problem from every possible angle, shadowing her actions with his agendas until he could explain her.
She knew how that sort of person thought. He would not let then get far, but they would have a day or three before the next squad was sent out, time she could use to try to get her and Ace to disappear.
If she looked to be a plant, they would be lucky to gain a span of hours before the next squad came out after them. A human's motivations would need to be examined; a plant is just a danger. They would be beset by wave after wave of soldiers ready to die for their fight against a terrible evil, and she would have to either kill them all or face another fun bout of capture and torture.
Besides, she thought as she tired to convince her conscience that leaving the man was the right course of action, he knew the risks. He trained with weapons and had made himself one, by the look of his body. A man conditioned to violence accepts that he might die at the end of a violent act. Acceptance of this is what allows one to charge a shallow hill in the face of a gun, allows a man to try to distract the enemy so his friends can win. Maybe he underestimated her; people on this planet had a tendency towards subtle sexual discrimination. He must have thought that he had a chance.
She wasn't proud to have killed him; whatever part of her that gloried in taking a life had gutted out and died a very log time ago. She accepted that his death at her hands was something that she would have to live with, and that her total of lives taken had crept up another notch. She accepted that she wasn't going to save him, that the time in which she could have done so had slipped away while she convinced herself that she shouldn't. She lifted her hand from his neck and brushed away a traitor tear that threatened to fall.
She didn't cry.
She stood and walked to the unconscious man. She grabbed him by the collar and slapped him on the face a couple times, the action a cover for her slipping under his skin and easing the swelling on his brain. She brought him carefully back to consciousness. Her angry eyes met his as they fluttered open. A groan passed his lips and she slapped him one more time to help wake him up.
"Take your friends back to your truck and go home," she ordered coldly.
He looked at her, still disoriented, then lunged, his hands going for her neck. She stepped back and allowed him to fall, then pounced on his back. With a hand tangled in his hair, she whispered in his ear. "Your friends are all either dead or crippled. I'm allowing you to live, as long as you leave now." She forced him to see where his leader lay in the sand. He was tying off a bandage around his thigh but was obviously in no condition to fight. "Your other friend is worse; he has no knee," she informed him, letting his head fall into the sand once more.
His shoulders shuddered, and he sighed.
"You win," he told her. "Today, you win."
She stepped off him and back out of an easy lunge's reach. "I win today, and I'll win tomorrow and the day after that. Keep that in mind as you decide to come after me and mine again. I will defend to the death and that death will not necessarily be mine."
He nodded distractedly, and she knew that her words had no impact on him. But he would report them, and maybe they would have an impact on the person he told.
Unlikely, it's true, but she could hope.
She picked up her gun from where it lay in the sand and walked back to the top of the hill.
"You should have killed them all. I would have," said Knives, offering helpful advice from the sidelines.
"Probably," was her response. "But since I did the fighting, their lives were in my hands, and not yours. They do not know how lucky they were," she said distractedly as she dug in her bag for the cleaning kit. She opened the weapon and saw that it was only jammed, and that fixing would be easy.
"What did they want?" he asked. "That first one seemed chatty."
"None of your damn business," she said as she began to clean her gun.
She worked on her gun while waiting for the men to collect themselves and leave. She was the very picture of unconcern as they shot looks loaded with hatred her way, and even hazarded a small wave to their retreating backs as the last two hobbled away. She finished fixing the jam and continued to clean the gun. Since the weapon was already broken down and she had a few minutes on her hands, then was as good a time as any.
She continued to ignore Knives while she mended some of the problem he had caused, and while he pretended nonchalance, she could tell that her silence was bothering him. Ace, on the other hand, seemed entirely unconcerned over the whole incident, although Kiley watched some tension leave her shoulders as the men finally left. Kiley put her hand on Ace's knee and gave a small, encouraging squeeze. She was rewarded with only a tiny smile, but it did reach her eyes as well as her face, and Kiley's heart was happy.
When the men had left and a plume of dust announced the beginning of their trip back to December, Kiley turned to Knives and calmly said, "You do understand that I am extremely annoyed with you."
He turned to her with a look of bored superiority. "Your annoyance does not bother me, human."
She bit back a sigh. "Why did you think that tampering with my ammo might possibly be a good idea? What was going on in that blonde little head of yours?"
He shrugged, his gaze moving from her eyes to look across the sands. "I wanted to see what you would do, if your weapon didn't work."
"And you didn't care if someone might die? If I might die?" She answered her own question. "No, you wouldn't care about that. You were just curious, weren't you? You just wanted to know more of what I was capable of. You wanted to see some more tricks, and you don't care who dies or who gets hurt as long as you get what you want."
He turned his gaze to her again, and she saw the emptiness in his eyes.
"One of these days you are going to have to pay the price for your curiosity, instead of always foisting the cost off onto others. That habit of yours is getting to be a pet peeve of mine."
He again didn't respond, but she knew what he was thinking. Her feelings were of no consequence to him.
"No, his death isn't why I'm annoyed." she said softly.
"Then why are you?" he asked. "I was sure it was his death that bothered you."
She laughed, a quick humorless bark. "No, senseless death isn't what annoys me. It saddens me. What annoys me is, thanks to you, I now have enemies. My favorite thing about this planet was that I finally wasn't anyone's enemy."
"You are my enemy," he pointed out.
"No," she denied, shaking her head. "I might be your opponent, but there isn't that needed level of enmity that makes an enemy. Those men, however? I just killed their friend, and for one of them, their kin. The ones alive now hate me, and it would make them happy to see me dead. That makes them my enemies, and that annoys me."
"I would be happy to see you dead," he said.
"Would you? Not quite, not now, I'm thinking. You still want things from me, which means you want me alive. Maybe later we'll be enemies, but right now we're just antagonists."
She fell silent. Her foot pushed at her pack absently and it slid down the hill a few feet. She picked up Ace and propped her on one hip, then stepped down to get it. As soon as she was six feet from Knives she turned and shot him in the right thigh.
He looked down at the wound and back up at her, uncomprehending, pain chiseled on his features, rage burning in his eyes. She backed away a few more paces, then leaned over to pick up her pack. He tried to leap at her, but wasn't able to reach her before his leg crumbled beneath him.
She looked at the wound dispassionately. "Hmm. That's the second time today I've missed the femoral artery. I must be slipping."
"Why?" Knives asked through teeth clenched tight with pain. Little beads of sweat appeared on his brow as he clutched the wound. His entire body was tensed with the pain of it.
"Why?" she repeated, mockingly. "Why? Because you are a threat." At his lack of comprehension she explained. "I was willing to travel with you while you were only a danger. It would be a little hypocritical of me to discriminate against just being dangerous, but as soon as you became a threat, both to my welfare and to that of this child, I am no longer willing to put up with what you bring along with you. I'll be going now, and it would be better for you if you didn't try to follow."
His eyes narrowed. "Human, you will not get away with this. You have no idea what you are dealing with." He tried to keep his voice clear, but the hurt crept in.
She smiled at him, a sly little smile that held only humor at his expense. "No, Knives, you don't know what you're dealing with. You think I am just a human with a few little tricks. I'm a Genalt, a genetically modified being who is more then capable of dealing with a barely trained excuse for a being like you. It amused me to let you think that I was powerless. It amused me to play the weakling, to let you continue to feel superior, as if your birth gave you some right to do whatever you pleased with the lives of everyone you meet.
"Everyone has the right to do with their lives as they will. Maybe you'll learn this now and leave me and Ace alone to pursue our own destinies. Maybe you'll need me to teach this lesson to you a few more times before you finally get it, and I don't have much problem with that. As I said, you have annoyed me; teaching you a lesson causes me no pain."
With that, she shifted Ace to a piggyback position and took off towards the road at a lope. Behind her she left an apoplectic Knives beating his hands on the sand. His blood slowly leaked out onto the thirsty ground, and he gave off trying to threaten her and allowed the tears of pain and rage to join the salty red liquid.
She was going to pay for this, and pay dear.
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Kiley loped down the road for about an hour, moving away from Knives as quickly as she could. Ace had bounced on her back for a couple minutes before falling into the rhythm of her movement, at which point they moved together like one body. It was easy to fall into a trance brought on by the physical nature of running, but Kiley's mind was too full of worries to be lulled.
What was she going to do about Knives? She had slowed him down, but if she wanted to get him out of her life she should have shot to kill. She had wounded his pride as much as his body, and he wasn't likely to let either slight go punished. She figured she had a couple days before he recovered enough to be coming after her again, and this time she wasn't likely to turn his wrath with the promise of teaching. He would be out for blood this time, to replace what she had shed. Likely, he would just try to shoot her on sight, or worse, Ace, just to cause her pain.
And for that matter, what was she going to do about Ace? She knew nothing about the proper way to raise a child. She knew it was important to teach this child well; Knives and Vash had changed the course of human history before they were two. While this girl didn't have quite the same possibilities for mayhem that had been presented to the boys, it was undeniable that she shared their power. Somehow, someone had failed to instill in Knives a sense of responsibility for the consequences of his actions, a sense of fairness, a sense that strength gives responsibility and not the chance to do whatever one pleases. The result was easy to determine, and painful to see.
Then there was Vash. What had Rem done to screw up that boy so badly that he felt that every being was worthy of protection but him? The man spends over a hundred years roaming the face of the planet saving lives and doing the best he can, and for what? To do it again the next day, and the next? He spent his entire life trying to atone for his brother's crimes. While she appreciated his sense of responsibility, that was not the sort of life she wished Ace to have. There had to be some course available that would let her live a happy life, one where she was responsible for her actions, but only hers. Saving others was all well and good, but it should not be done at the expense of your own happiness.
Kiley smiled wryly to herself. Like she was one to talk. She had spent a significant portion of her life doing just that. But in her defense, she didn't deserve happiness. Evil people like her could only hope to atone for their actions, never move past them. Her deeds weighed on her like an albatross on her neck, and she had needed every chance to try to balance the scales of her life. One impossible mission for every life taken; that was what it took. Using that reckoning, she had worked off over half of the lives she had stolen before their time before she died. While here she had managed to balance the ledger even further, but now it looked like the bad side was beginning to creep up again.
She shook her head and tried to get her mind back on track. How was she supposed to raise a child? She was a killer, that was all. She might try to deny the fact, but it was her essential nature. When confronted with a problem, her first inclination is always just to eliminate it. Stopping her inclination towards senseless slaughter was a daily task, made barely easier by the passing of time. Just look at what she did back there; maybe she allowed three of the men to leave, but even more tellingly, she let one man die because it was easier.
She sickened herself, but had long since learned to live with her failures as a human being. The point was, how could she raise another life and even hold a prayer of that life turning out well? The answer was, she couldn't.
Her pace slackened and she slung Ace to the ground. Going to one knee, she waited a moment for her breath to still. Ace stood nervously by her, and Kiley spared a moment to wonder what she was thinking.
"The man back there said you're a plant," she started.
Ace stared into her eyes, neither affirming or denying.
Kiley smiled. "I'll take your lack of a response to be agreement. I don't care what breed of person you are; you should know that. I like you, whatever you are. But being a plant does raise a few problems we need to work through. You do know that Knives is a plant as well, right?"
She gave a cautious nod.
"I had a feeling you did. That quiet act of your hides great depths, doesn't it? What I need to know is who you want to be with. I won't be putting up with Knives in the state he is now, and I'll not be telling him your secret if you don't want me to. It's your secret, not that it's one we can keep from him for long; he's going to notice you're growing faster then a human, and appearances aside, he's not stupid. He's just crazy. But what I need to know now is who you want to grow up with. I'll take you back to him and move on, if that's what you'd like.
"And if you do prefer Knives, I won't mind. He is your kind, after all, and I know how much of a bond that creates. He doesn't like you now, but I promise that will change after he learns what you are. I'm not a plant, but I do love you. The choice is up to you."
Ace leaned in close and gave her a rib-bending hug.
"You," she whispered in Kiley's ear. Kiley laughed with unfeigned glee, and returned the hug.
"You don't know how happy that makes me," she informed her. "I would give you up if that's what you wanted, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it one bit." Her heart eased, she moved on to the next question.
"I guess leaving you behind while I roam across the sands isn't such a good idea now," she started. "You were born in trouble, and I sticking with me isn't going to drag you into more of it. Do you mind, though, if we swing by Millie's place first? I definitely need some pointers on how to raise a child, and she seems to be my best bet to ask."
Ace considered the matter solemnly, then nodded.
"Good, then that's where we're off to now. On the back with you!" she said, and hoisted the girl into the air. She giggled as she flew, and snuggled close as they began to move down the road again. Kiley's heart was eased on one count, and she tried to ignore her other problems for the moment, savoring the thought of being preferred.
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Roger was cleaning up after himself when he heard a soft knock on the door. He was curious as to who it might be; he rarely got visitors way out here near the middle of nowhere. He wasn't expecting anyone and his family wasn't due back home for another week. He walked over the door, wiping a few stray specks of sand from his hands with an old hand towel snagged from the back of a chair. Maybe it was a neighbor come to keep him company while he was alone.
His curiosity deepened when he opened it. On his front porch stood a slightly sweaty woman in her early twenties and a very small child who looked to be her daughter. He had never seen either of them before.
"Can I help you?" he asked politely.
The woman looked at him with a sheepish grin, and he fought the urge to smile in return. She was a pretty lady when her face was solemn, but the shy smile made her beautiful. "We seem to be a little lost," she explained. "We're looking for the Thompson Orphanage, and I'm afraid that my directions were a bit vague."
"They would have to be, for you to end up here," he said, surprised. "The orphanage is some fifteen isles away. You'll need to go back to the road and continue on another ten iles or so until you reach the hills. About an ile in, there will be a spur road on your left. You'll need to follow that for another five iles, maybe a little less, and then take the path on the right. It's rather protected, nestled in those hills as it is, but it's not to hard to find if you know the way." His hands spoke along with his mouth, gesturing this way and that, fingers tracing the curves of the road.
"Thank you," she said. "I was merely pointed in this direction and informed that it was around 100 iles outside December. You have been very helpful." She hesitated, her face growing serious. "I'd ask another favor, if I may."
"You can always ask," he told her. She seemed ready to leave now that she had directions, and he wasn't ready to let her go. "You can come in and ask, if you like. It will get you out of the heat, at least, and I can provide some refreshment."
She hesitated, and if he had the fleeting thought that she was assessing if he was a threat of some sort, but it passed when she smiled again and took him up on his offer. He backed out of the doorway to let them pass, and didn't miss the way the woman was careful to keep her body between him and the girl.
He hid his smile at her caution as he turned to get them both some water. "Find a chair and sit; sorry about the mess. I'm on my own at the moment, and I'm afraid I tend to take up all available space whenever I get the chance.
"You call this a mess?" the woman asked wryly as she glanced around the uncluttered home. Gingerly, she sat in the chair nearest the door, pulling the girl up onto her lap. He brought the water to her and the child and pulled over another chair.
"Ask, and I'll let you know if I can help."
"It's not difficult," she started. "I'm fairly sure that we will be followed. I don't know if it will be in a few days or a week, but it's quite likely that you will be visited by some men who will have a nice story in which I am evil and they are good."
"Such as?" he prompted.
"My best guess is that they will say I have kidnapped this kid, but they may call me a murderer or a robber or some such."
"Did you kidnap her?"
"Not…exactly. Do you mind?" she asked the child. The girl slid to the ground and lifted her shirt, showing a back that was covered with the fading remains of bruises. "She was like this when I found her. The men who are looking for us are responsible for what you see." She pulled the girl back up into her lap and held her close.
He was horrified that anyone would do that to another living being, let alone a child. "I'll not tell them I saw you," he promised.
"They may try to bribe you, but I doubt that they will try to force the information out of you. If they do try money…"
"I'll tell them the same again. This isn't my trouble, but I'll help as I can."
"Thank you," she said with a smile. "That's really all I can ask, and is more then I expect. They shouldn't cause you too much of a bother, as they'll have no suspicion that you would have a reason to lie. But if they do resort to trying to harm you, give them the information they want. We don't wish pain to arise out of your kindness."
"What kindness?" he asked. "I've not done anything worth praising. Common decency, that's all. I have two daughters and remember when they were that age. Any man who laid a finger on them would have much to answer for."
She smiled again, but it was a sad smile. "That is kindness, and I've not found common decency to be a common thing."
"Then you've been looking in the wrong places. You're too young to be so jaded. People are better then you seem to think."
"People generally are what I think they are. Sadly, I'm rarely surprised by their actions." She finished her glass of water and stood. "Thank you, but we must be going now. I want to reach the orphanage before it gets dark, and you say it's still almost twenty iles before we get there."
He walked her to the door. "I don't see your thomas," he commented.
"That's because we don't have one," she said. "Don't worry about us; I'm light on my feet."
He watched, bemused, as she ran off into the desert. What an interesting woman. He wished he knew more about what was going on. She seemed to have things under control, and he hoped that appearances weren't deceiving in this case. It was a sad thing, what had happened to that child, and he hoped that she could keep her out of the grasp of whoever was after them.
Wishing her luck, he went back inside to try to tidy things up a bit before his wife came back.