Chapter Twenty-three: Restricted?
Vash stirred slightly from his unconciousness, adjusting his senses to his surroundings before remembering the car ride and their fall.
Eyes flickering as they opened, he could only see darkness, but the fuzzy outlines of metal beams and plastic wiring ran across the ceiling.
Attempting to move, he found restrictions on his forehead, wrists, arms, ankles, knees and waist. The absence of his coat and buckles, save his underwear, was cold enough to make Vash give a slight shiver.
"He's awake, professor."
The sudden sound made Vash start, although he couldn't do much in his state, and was temporarily blinded by the glare of hot, white light that shone directly above him.
He squinted down and realised he was on some sort of metal platform. Wires ran all over him, and some clear, plasting tubes had been driven into his veins. His muscles felt slackened, and Vash knew that he'd been drugged heavily for this. The restrictions were grips in the form of wide, thick bands of a strange, silvery plastic that were nailed into the platform.
A sudden shadow loomed over him, and Vash caught the flash off the man's glasses.
White lab coat, balding head of greyish-white and a triumphant, yet fascinated grin full of browning teeth.
Another darkened shape caused Vash to narrow his eyes in anger.
Rederine smiled serenely back at him.
"Welcome, Vash the Stampede."
Vash's attention was brought back to the other man.
"You're in one of the Corman Labs. Inc laboratories, which are scattered around the planet. We study plants, and you happen to be one of our experimental subjects. In fact..."
The man's grin revealed more teeth as he trilled,
"...you're our most important one."
"Wh-who are you?"
Vash croaked, his voice cracking slightly from dryness. He strained to get a better look at the man in the white coat. The red-head remained silent, though his serene smile had vanished to be replaced with a sort of grimace.
"I am the founder of Corman Labs. Inc -- professor Locke Sherque Corman, sixth in line of the Corman scientist legacy. This is my..., 'assistant', Rederine the Temaski."
A clipboard hovered upwards, a pen furiously scribbling onto the paper as a crazed look crept into Corman's eyes.
"The name of Corman, however, has been ridiculed, put down, absolutely made a fool out of... just because of..."
His eyes hardened as he stole a glance at Rederine, who ignored him.
"...a certain incident. However... you are the key, Vash the Stampede!!"
The maniacal glint returned, his gaze now to Vash.
"I've always wondered about plants, Vash the Stampede. Always thought they were a mystery... but now, I will be able to find out about them!! Where they come from, who they are, what they can do...! You, Vash the Stampede, are the link between us and them. And with you, we might be able to create special plant-humans that are adapted fully to our environment.
"Imagine that, Vash the Stampede! Plant-humans strong enough to crush boulders with a sweep of an arm; so intelligent they can calculate the hardest problems, build the highest tower; supply us with enough energy to last us billions and billions of years!"
The professor excitedly looked down at Vash, who felt nauseated and disgusted. Had Meryl and Wolfwood nearly been killed just so that these psychos could study him?
"I usually wouldn't subdue you this badly, but Rederine has reported brash resistance from you, Vash the Stampede. Therefore I would suggest that it is highly appreciated - and it is for the better - if you would try to resist any of our experiments."
Struggling was futile and useless, and Vash knew it. However, it was difficult to conceal his wince when something started to whirr and hum in the background, and his own blood was visibly sucked through one of the plastic tubes leading from his arm.
Professor Corman's gloved fingers pressed against the metal grating against his heart, and his eyes and nostrils widened in excitement.
"You are so very interesting, Vash the Stampede.... a normal human would not have survived what you have been through...."
A violent shudder ran through Vash's body as the gloved hand examined the scars on his chest with perverse interest.
"Where's the big girl?"
Vash rasped, glaring the best he could at the man.
"Oh, her? She has been drugged and taken away."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Vash growled, his eyes narrowing. Not only was Milly a close friend, but Wolfwood was going to throw himself out the window if anything happened to her.
"Well, she's in another room right now. Oh, which reminds me..."
The professor smiled almost eagerly as he continued,
"She's pregnant... is she pregnant, by any chance, with your...?"
Vash gritted his teeth as he felt something suck out of the sole of his foot.
"NO,"
He shot back angrily, wiping the smile off the professor's face,
"and I suggest you let her go."
"Why should we?"
It was the first time Rederine had spoken in front of Vash since he had woken up.
"Because she had nothing to do with this."
Vash snapped, his eyes trailing a white liquid being extracted from his knee-cap warily.
"Oh, but she'd go back and find your darling friends, and after they recover, they might come here."
Vash let out a harsh laugh.
"In that case, I suppose I don't want to wait around for you to leave so you can kill them."
He clenched his fists tightly, and his whole body tensed and grew rigid as he tried to gather enough energy to break out of the plastic bands.
However, after several minutes of straining, Vash knew that there was something definitely wrong. He let out a puff of wasted breath, his eyes clouding in confusion.
Numbing drugs don't work on me the way they work on humans because our chemistry differs so much, Vash thought; so what's going on?
Rederine jammed a needle of a syringe into Vash's turned wrist, causing Vash to suck in his breath painfully. The professor was not in view, although Vash could still sense that he was in the room.
"Just in case you forgot, I'm a quarter of a plant,"
Rederine drawled, his eyes darkening. He pushed in the chemical in the syringe into Vash's bloodstream, taking his time as Vash breathed jerkily from the pain.
"The professor has run several tests on me, and has come up with a drug that affects plants as well."
"I-is that so,"
Vash said with difficulty as the chemical brought a strange heaviness to his head, as though a huge weight was pressuring him.
The professor swam into view, carrying several glass phials. Vash caught the glint of a blade in his other hand.
"Don't worry,"
said the professor's voice. It sounded as though he was speaking behind a pane of glass, and Vash struggled to keep his conciousness as the voice said with false assurance,
"it's not going to hurt you."
Rederine appeared to stiffen as a sharp pain awoke Vash's senses for a split second, but immediately plunged into a black-hole of confusion and nothingness. His vision fractured and blurred as a numbness came like a thick and suffocating blanket, and the last thing Vash saw before he blacked out was the shiny surface of the knife.
"Hum de hum hum. Hum hum de dumdedum. Hum hum--"
"Stop singing."
Wolfwood pouted as he looked out his side of the window, his eyes lingering on the steering wheel that was being held by the hands of the small insurance girl.
"Oh come on, give me a break here,"
He begged, looking at her with all the puppy-sadness he could muster,
"I'm getting a stiff neck here from not being able to drive..."
"No, you're getting a stiff neck from not being on the lookout,"
Meryl countered, her eyes glancing at Wolfwood in a wary manner,
"and if we fall into quicksand I will soooo kill you."
"Okay, okay,"
Wolfwood grumbled, looking through the sheet of glass before him in the manner of someone sulking. Having just woken up only a few hours ago, and then to be taken charge of by the small girl...
"Hum hum de dum,"
Wolfwood began, and Meryl snapped,
"If you sing that awfully toneless tune again I will ditch you in the nearest quicksand hole, got it?"
"If you can,"
Wolfwood grinned, and Meryl had to laugh.
"Okay, I'll drive the car into the nearest quicksand hole but get out before it sinks."
"Hey, that means I'll have the car!"
Wolfwood joked in half-hearted excitement, and Meryl smiled.
"Do you know that you're acting a lot like a certain brown-haired friend of mine?"
"What?"
Wolfwood asked, startled,
"She wouldn't joke around,"
"No, she wouldn't,"
Meryl agreed,
"But she would definitely whine about not being able to drive."
Wolfwood looked out at the sand that stretched out before them. The skies were beginning to lighten, causing a few grains to turn the soft rays of light into white pricks of crystal. He squinted at a strange looking swirl of sand before jabbing Meryl in the general direction of her arm.
"Ow, ow, what's wrong--"
"It's a quicksand hole,"
Wolfwood said, his eye catching on a something in the sand that was dull but starting to reflect the twin-sun's rays with a metallic shine,
"and I think I see something else..."
Meryl stopped the car so they could see where they had to drive around. Wolfwood walked and stooped over to pick up the mysterious object before it could slip into the edge of the quicksand.
It was a silver six-shooter.
A very familiar, silver six-shooter.
"Uh oh. Major no good."
Wolfwood said, turning the gun in his hand round. It has to be Tongari's, he thought grimly, it's not like you see two of the same custom-made gun everywhere you go.
"What's wrong? I-- oh."
Meryl's face fell at the sight of the gun. She swallowed.
"Uhm... you don't think he...?"
She gestured towards the slowly shifting sands of quicksand, and Wolfwood shook his head vehemently.
"He wouldn't lose grip on his gun. If he was falling, he'd take extra care to not lose it."
Meryl nodded, taking the six-shooter out of Wolfwood's hands and running a thumb across it. As it rubbed lightly against her gash, she felt a sudden jolt of pain to her chest.
Letting out a choked groan of pain, she clutched at her chest, making Wolfwood look at her in alarm.
"Is it your injury?!"
"I'm fine,"
Meryl gasped, and clutching the gun tightly to her chest she squeezed her eyes shut.
The pain soon dulled to a faint ache, and she opened her eyes. Wolfwood looked at her worriedly.
"You shouldn't over-exert yourself, even if it's for Tongari,"
He said gently. Meryl shook her head.
"I'm fine,"
She repeated, when she suddenly grinned.
"and you're allowed to over-exert yourself for Milly, I see,"
Wolfwood ran a hand sub-conciously over the scars on his neck that had remained from the threads, and only shrugged.
"I've been through worse."
He said off-handedly, and Meryl rolled her eyes.
"Riiight. And Doctor Lonners told you to be extra careful not to burst those stitches."
She retorted, tossing the six-shooter back to Wolfwood and heading towards the car.
But inwardly Meryl wasn't feeling so fine.
I don't feel good about this at all, Meryl thought with a slight frown,
I have a feeling that red-clad moron is up to his neck in trouble... or he's going through something bad. That's what my gut-feeling tells me.
"Hey, he told you the exact same thing!"
Wolfwood protested, and hastily managed reach the car before Meryl, scooting into the driver's seat and fastening the seatbelt before she could do or say anything.
"Okay, now, let's go. I hope he told us the correct address."
Meryl let out a groan.
"You have bad luck with vehicles,"
She grumbled, and he laughed.
"Not really,"
He replied, turning the car around the circle of quicksand,
"just with motorcycles."
As Milly's soft-blue eyes slowly began to register upon a metal grating in the floor, a pain in her head brought her up to her knees.
"Araa?"
She looked around, her eyes widening as she realised she was in a room of metal walls, with only a single, dull light-bulb above her. There was no recognisable door. She winced suddenly, and took her fingers gingerly to her temple. She felt a caked amount of dried blood, and sighed, bringing her hand away from the cut.
"Uhm, let's see..."
She thought out loud, looking at the metal grating,
"I'm in a room I don't know. I think that amber-eyed man put me in here. Oh no, what are they doing with Vash-san?!"
She bit her thumb-nail before continuing,
"So I'm alone, and I should probably get out of here somehow..."
Then she giggled and patted her stomach.
"Okay, so I'm not completely alone, am I?"
She then looked around. The only openings she could see was the metal grate, which was wide enough to fit three or four donuts, a ventilation grate above that would have fit two of her comfortably that appeared to be nailed down with iron, and a circle of a silvery plastic directly above on the ceiling that kept the light above.
Seeing no choice, she stood up to attempt the silver plastic when she nearly jumped out of her wits to hear and feel something slip from her coat and crash onto the floor.
As the echoes faded, Milly opened an eye from between her fingers to find...
Her stungun?
"Araraa?"
She bent down, surprised, her stungun plainly intact, and was even more surprised to find a slip of paper with it.
Run away if you can.
Milly stared at the sentence on the paper, turning it around and looking at it upside-down but wielding no clues to the bearer. But Milly knew who had written it.
"That amber-eyed man, he isn't that bad, is he?"
She said to her stomach with a smile. Then she hitched up her stungun with a determined look set on her face.
"I can get out now,"
Milly sang happily,
"I think I'll start with this!"
She loaded the stungun with a grin that lit her eyes.
[A/N: Hum de hum hum... not sure how this made you peeps react... I don't know if I'm sadistic with Vash and the experiments now, actually... Oh well - even though I wrote it, I guess I can still feel icky about it. Anyhow, just hope that the others get to Vash before it gets too gruesome... his fate lies in your reviews.... *laughs*]
