Chapter Nineteen: Rederine the Temaski II
They entered the town holding the science fair, and the professor took his place.
The boy looked in awe at all the people, at all the inventions brought - some many times smaller, some even bigger than theirs.
Meanwhile the professor, with the help of the other men, set up his invention.
When the boy looked back to his father, the pillar of metal had been combined with something huge on top - a glass sphere.
"Father, is that what you spoke of?"
"Yes, son, it is."
The boy looked with wide eyes at the colours inside the sphere. It was a swirling mix of different hues of orange and brown, occasionally flashing red as if in anger. When it did so, large, coppery eyes, dark red features of a face and thin hands pressed against the glass were seen.
Several other people stopped by to look at the spectacular sight.
"Is that a plant?"
The boy asked.
"Yes."
The professor answered, his voice growing quiet.
"Why is it so... angry?"
The boy asked, feeling scared at the sight of the plant.
"It isn't."
The professor replied shortly,
"Plants cannot feel angry."
The boy frowned ever so slightly.
"But it looks angry."
The professor made no reply.
Just then, a voice echoed throughout the place.
"Welcome to the seventeenth science fair of Syron! Each year, new contestants - and old - come to compete for the grand prize of a billion double dollars to help fund their wonderful invention. This year, we have a whopping forty-seven people here, all ready with their wonderful creations. Our first contestant is Dillon McCoy. Let's give big hand to Mr. McCoy!"
The smattering of applause began as the fair finally started, and the boy looked at the first few presentations - a machine that lit lamps using potatoes; a machine that could crush metal scrap into perfectly neat cubes, ready to be rolled out into sheets; one that could recycle paper; a strange contraption that could be used like a radio, but did not require electricity for its usage - there were so many things that could be useful, and the young boy looked in delight at everything.
Just as a machine that could imitate vocal sounds came in, the young boy heard just behind him a clipped voice -
"Is he the guinea pig?"
He heard his father reply,
"Yes. Just the "guinea pig", if you wish to call it so - the main experiment focuses on the fusion."
The boy blinked, and turned around. The man with the clipped voice was one of the men who had come with his father.
The other man came up behind him, and grabbed him roughly.
"What the--"
He struggled, but the man simply swept him up and over to the sliding glass panel of his father's invention.
The clipped-voiced man pressed a few buttons into the control panel at the side, and the doors slid open.
He was roughly shoved in, and although he yelled out, his sounds seemed to be muffled inside of the small compartment. The man who had picked him up held him down this time while the other began to attatch wires to him - onto his temples, his shoulder, collarbone, chest, stomach, legs...
Where was his father?
Confusion and anger filled him.
What was his father doing while he was being forced into his own invention?
Why wasn't he doing anything?
When he was finally released, the young boy attempted to scramble out of the machine, but the doors shut before he could do so.
He pressed his eyes against the glass, looking outside desperately for his father.
To his utter shock, his father was just outside, to the panel. He was completely calm, and he didn't seem to know that his own son was inside of the machine.
"Father!! Father!!!"
He yelled, beating his fists against the thick pane of glass. To his horror, his voice was almost completely muffled inside. He tried to tear the wires out, but when he closed a fist over a red wire connected to his head and was just about to yank it out, he suddenly froze.
He couldn't move.
He tried to move, but he found that he was strangely unable to.
He could move his eyes and his lips, though, and he looked outside the window and let out a gasp of surprise.
His father was kneeling just outside, looking in at him.
He was smiling.
"Father... what is this?"
Fear gripped the young boy's throat, choking his whispered words out.
Yet the professor still seemed to have heard him.
His voice was muffled, but the boy could still hear it.
"It's just an experiment. Don't worry. It's not going to hurt you."
The boy's eyes filled with tears. They began to stream down his cheeks.
"F-father?"
The father had stood up again, back to the control panel. The announcer's voice echoed throughout for the ninth entry - their invention.
"Father!! Stop!! I want to stay human!!"
The boy screamed, tears were spilling all over, but the boy still could not move, and the crowd didn't seem to be able to hear him. He heard his father's voice explain to the crowd what this invention was.
"Stop it!! Father, STOP IT!!"
He watched his father begin to enter the codes into the panel.
The boy felt a strange heat radiate above him, and he was suddenly released from his frozen position.
He rushed to the glass, intending to break free, but he suddenly jerked backwards, screaming in pain. He felt as though he was being torn in half.
Then he was overcome by a sensation like no other - it was as though it was too hot to breathe but too cold to bear, and he felt as though many needles were prickling him. He felt his feet slowly lift off the floor, and he shut his eyes tightly.
"FATHER!!"
He screamed, his throat going raw from the effort. He opened his eyes to be met by huge copper ones, narrowed in obvious anger.
He felt something grip his wrists, the wires beginning to intwine and tangle as the plant and him began to merge slowly and painfully.
The boy closed his eyes, tears still spilling.
The feeling he'd felt for his father while gathering materials for him returned.
He recognised it immediately from that point - it was hatred.
Suddenly, the plant seemed to draw back from him.
He blinked, and saw that the plant seemed afraid of him.
He didn't know why, but he knew that he didn't want the plant to merge with him at all.
It had seemed to draw back when he'd felt a hot surge of anger towards his father, so he concentrated on the feeling of hatred, and the plant slowly began to withdraw from him.
Just when things looked like the two wouldn't be able to fuse together, the strange sensation suddenly returned, and the plant was unwillingly drawn back to him. The boy could no longer struggle; he was frozen, once again. The plant's eyes were filled with fear as it was forced into him, but the boy's feelings of hatred were obviously creating friction between him and it.
But in a blinding flash of bright light, the two had somewhat become one, and the next thing the boy knew, he was on the ground.
He slowly lifted himself off the ground, and looked around.
He was not on the ground but at the back of a truck, a jacket covering him, as he found himself naked.
He looked at himself, and felt a chill run down his spine. He seemed... older.
He turned back to look at the driver's side of the truck, and saw his father driving.
He also caught himself in the rear-view mirror - but he didn't know it was him until he blinked. Amber eyes looked at him, and his fringe of brown was now red.
His father also caught him in the rear-view mirror, and stopped the truck.
The man got out of the driver's seat, and went to the back of the truck.
The first thing he did was slap the boy straight across the face.
"You fool!!"
He shouted.
"What did you do in there? Everything was going perfectly fine until you started to reject the plant, and so I had to use the emergency device to force you two together. Plants were not made to forced, but I had no choice - you were nearly merged with it, so I went on. But what do you think happened? It exploded!!"
He climbed onto the truck and gave the boy a swift kick in the stomach.
"Do you have any idea how long I worked on this experiment? What the hell were you thinking? Look at you! You're not properly merged. The plant died during the process, and now you're messed up! You're probably still three quarters human!!"
The boy spoke for the first time, and now he found his voice deeper and much more different.
"But father--"
"Don't you call me 'father'! I don't know who you are now, but you are no longer my son. You got it? You're some hideous freak I created! My own son would not mess something as important as this up!"
The boy felt the hot surge of anger from the pillar inside him again.
"So what are you going to do now, 'professor'?"
He spat.
"I'm going to start working on something else now. Something that will be based on the first ideas of my grandfather."
The boy glared at the professor.
"And that, 'sir', would be?"
"It'll be about Vash the Stampede. Remember him?"
The boy blinked in confusion.
"Vash the Stampede?"
"My grandfather's friend worked on the drafts that created him. Two plants, created into human form. Vash the Stampede is one of the two, according to the journal. The friend recognised Vash the Stampede, as he was the one who'd planned how the two would look like. So the journal has everything to do with that. I thought it would be too complicated, but now thanks to you, it's all I've got left."
The boy still didn't understand.
"I don't get you, fa-.. sir."
"It's very simple. My grandfather based his idea of an invention to merge human and plant together on his friend's paper drafts. So Vash the Stampede is really a plant in human form! All I need to do is get Vash the Stampede back, and use him for a couple of experiments to get a proper idea on how to recreate the machine from the paper drafts. I mean, the first invention my grandfather and I created... it had too many faults, I should think. It had the intention of creating a being similar to Vash the Stampede... but I failed,"
The professor looked disgustedly at the boy. The boy's eyes widened.
"Are you saying that you created that foul device because of Vash the Stampede?! Because he, a plant in human form, exists?! You wanted - and still want - another one like Vash the Stampede??"
The man hit him to the floor.
"He will possess powers you will never have!!"
He hissed.
"You're a failure, whereas, Vash the Stampede is a successful experiment carried out!"
The words struck the boy much harder than his father had just done.
The professor jumped out of the back of the truck, and was about to open the door to the driver's seat when he heard the boy's low voice.
"Who are you?"
"I'm a professor."
"...Who... who am I?"
The professor turned to face him with narrowed eyes.
"You're... a Temaski. Rederine the... Temaski."
Rederine opened his eyes. He was in the middle of a desert, sandy winds whipping against his face. He'd fallen asleep again.
"Damn it."
He muttered. He didn't know how many times he was going to dream that nightmare, but he felt that he'd never have peace until he'd killed the main reason for it.
His anger and hatred had shifted from his father to Vash the Stampede.
The contrasts forever being made between him and Vash the Stampede - it made Rederine want to kill Vash the Stampede already.
But it wasn't the contrasts that made Rederine truly hate Vash the Stampede - it was who Vash killed.
Vash the Stampede had killed his father in the worst way - he hadn't killed him physically, no, but the father he had once known, once had, was no more.
The professor was now just an empty shell, its insides devoured and killed by the mere thought of creating another like Vash the Stampede.
He'd never called the professor father since that day on the truck.
He let out a bitter laugh.
"You're... a Temaski. Rederine the... Temaski."
Temaski, indeed. The professor sure was creative.
Rederine remembered the day he'd written out TEMASKI into the sand, trying to work out it meant, before realising what the word was.
Rearranged, the letters spelt out MISTAKE.
