PLEASE READ: In case there is any confusion, let me please remind you that this fanfic is based of the Trigun manga, NOT the anime. While the same general plot idea is the same, there are some massive differences between anime and manga, the most relevant in this case being the existence of the thirteenth Gung-Ho Gun, Elendira the Crimsonnail. For those of you now scratching your heads and saying, "Who?", I strongly suggest you get clued before trying to read. As of this chapter, you are setting yourself up to get mightily confused. You do not have to have read the manga to necessarily understand this fic, although it is helpful; just as long as you know who everyone is. While I'm happy to answer basic questions (i.e., "What is the Angel Blade?") I will not individually spoon-feed you Elendira's stats, or explain the whole damn manga to you. You can find all that on Sumire's manga translations, the link to which is on any reputable Trigun site. Thank you.
Like A Criminal – Chapter 2 of 16 – "Zephyr"
By Bennu (an autonomous, legally crushable, non-Trigun-owning entity)
* * *
Outside the cold glass porthole, far below and away, the desert stretched out like an endless golden animal, patterned by dark rough mountains and bound only by the delicate blue sky. It was bold and brightly beautiful, framed by expensive wood and red velvet that somehow, compared to the expansive wild wasteland heart, seemed meaningless.
That was alright. I like meaningless things, too.
Looking out always made me feel vertiginously poetic, as if I were perched on the brink of eternity, some epic greatness, staring into the void but never falling. I almost always avoided giving the bitch of an earth below me any real attention, because I simply don't need to. I'm not tied to it anymore; none of us are. We're not tied to much of anything, really, except maybe the ship herself.
She's a twin-zephyred airship, the only one on the planet. We're not the only ones in the sky; I've seen the Sky City, and the satellite tracking station in the city of November. But we are the only ones who move about with impunity, flying from nowhere to nowhere, landing when we damn well feel like it, stealing what we want from the saps on the ground and taking off again.
I own the ship. Well, I stole it, really, but possession is nine-tenths of the law anyway, and the people I took it from have never expressed interest in getting it back. If they had, I would be dead, along with the fifteen crew.
Sometimes we land just because I need to assure myself that humanity is still alive and kicking around down there. I don't have any particular love for my species, the scuffling, crude beasts that they are, but if the Apocalypse goes down while we're flying, I would like to know. So far, so good for Homo sapiens, if you can call living on Gunsmoke a "good" thing.
Living above it, however, isn't that bad. It is a nice view.
I stretched and turned away, pulling the drapes over the bright porthole and settling back down in bed. It was noon and I had no particular inclination to get up today; after nearly thirty years, the ship practically ran on its own, and I was tired. I felt my age, even if I didn't particularly look it. Almost fifty—when had I gotten so old? It had felt almost lifetimes ago, that I had walked through the wreckage of July, the stench of a million deaths in my lungs; lifetimes since I'd run in the direction of sanity.
I looked around me, at the looted wood furniture and expensive paper books, even a little Lost Technology: a graceful black telephone, supposedly some sort of communication device from all the way back on Earth, humanity's ancestral home. He'd given it to me, apparently repaired by his hand, in an age past. Now it was a lovely bookend. In the corner, never out of my reach, sat an innocuously fashionable white suitcase.
For a long time, I just lay there and felt the shadows permeate my bones, listening to the thrum of the engines. I had no clue where we were going. At least we were getting there appreciably fast.
I must have fallen asleep, because I was suddenly, rudely awoken by a shrill, loud ring. For a moment I looked around, rubbing the grit from my eyes, wondering if I had dreamed the noise. It had seemed real.
Then it came again, that ringing. It was the telephone, that dusty thing, which had sat silent for three decades now. Someone was trying to call me.
And I knew /exactly/ who.
That's why I sat stock-still through two more insistent, piercing rings, frozen in a helpless, universal reaction to shock and fear. I honestly was afraid—what could they possibly want from me now? I should have pitched that telephone and all my memories of that time over the side long ago, watching it spin down and away into the swallowing gold below...
One more ring. I had to do it; it was pointless to think I could run. If He wanted me, He was going to have me. At least I had a little autonomy here, a little space between myself and whatever He had in mind.
I reached up, my hand painfully pale on the ebony receiver. I picked up and tentatively placed it to my ear.
"It's been awhile, hasn't it?" spoke the cool, unmistakable voice of Legato Bluesummers.
"Damn you," I snarled, seriously considering hanging up and trashing the phone. There I'd been, about to have a heart attack, thinking He had called—and it was just Legato. Yeah, sure, it'd been a long time, but still... At least Bluesummers was a human being, and when you got down to it, I could deal with him. "What the hell do you want? Or is it your idea of 'cute' to stand a girl up for half a lifetime?"
He laughed, rich tone rendered flat by the static of what was probably a more-than-tenacious connection. "It's not a question of what I want," he explained silkily. I could hear him smirking. How little had changed. "It is, of course, His wishes alone that matter. And it is His wish that you return to our company immediately."
"Why?" I sputtered. "Why now?"
"You will be informed upon your return. All I may say is that the plan was merely... temporarily deferred. And that your compliance is not optional. I can hardly wait to see you again. It's been entirely too long. Farewell."
The line went dead in my hand. Shaking, nerves frayed completely by the flush of adrenaline into my long-abused body, I set the receiver back in its cradle. Two strides took me to my suitcase; hefting the familiar weight, I wondered if, just perhaps, the last three minutes had just been a nightmare.
After all this time, lightning strikes again out of the blue... I still had nightmares about July, of wrestling a hysterical Legato to the ground as he struggled to run into the firestorm that followed to look for our Master. Our Master, who had survived the destruction a burnt and bleeding shred of a being, wounded beyond what twenty human beings could have survived. I dreamt and woke up screaming and shivering, and now He was growing well again, or at least well enough to command Legato to call on me, something that I knew the blue-haired man despised. Something was happening, and whether I liked it or not, I was going to be sucked in and used by the Apocalypse once again...
There was a rapid knock on the door, then one of the navigators, a surly, rough-looking woman who I quickly realized I did not know the name of, pushed her way in.
"I heard a noise," she said, eyeing me oddly.
"It was nothing. I just have some old business to attend to," I explained, trying to look as regal as I could. I probably looked like crap from sitting in bed all day. I hadn't even thought about putting on makeup yet. "Tell the pilot that wherever we are now, to turn and head for Dhimitri."
* * *
It took us two weeks at our fastest clip to get there. I stood at the helm, watching the horizon obsessively, low-level panic riding on my hip, hand clutched around the handle of my case. My face was impassive, painted immaculate, but my organs seemed to be rearranging themselves constantly. At last, as the first sun set behind us, something loomed out in the distance. I saw it first, but, then again, my eyes are sharp and only I knew what to be searching for.
As we drew closer, the pilot gasped. "God, it's real."
Dhimitri rose from the rocky earth like a claw, triumvirate towers reaching up to rake at the dark blue sky. I pushed him out of the seat to guide the ship in; I knew what I was doing, even if it had been awhile. At the same time, the pilot looked on in horrified awe. Apparently, he had listened well to the hearsay that called this place the homestead of the Devil.
The engines slowed and we moored at the tip of the tallest tower, where several men had appeared bearing heavy cables to hold in the ship. I dropped a rope ladder out of the bottom of the gondola and scattered down, suitcase still at my side as my feet touched the metal platform of the landing pad.
"It's like this was made for us," the pilot said, amazed, from where he stood behind me. I turned.
"That's because it was," I said. "You should get back in the ship, and stay there. I doubt this business will be pleasant."
He nodded, dazed by it all, and looked happy to obey.
The strange men who had moored us mulled around, looking like they were waiting for something. I stared at them; seven big bruisers with submachine guns and too many muscles. I sighed and was about to try and attempt communication with the brightest-looking one when I heard the cocking of a pistol behind me and I whirled, finger already squeezing the trigger, suitcase instantaneously revealing itself to be a crossbow, pounding a massive nail squarely into the chest of a grunt.
The remaining six reached for their guns but moved far too slow; it was like they were trapped in water, and I fired six more times in rapid succession, bursting six thick skulls like overripe fruit. Panting, blood rushing through my ears, I stared up across the platform, where Legato stood, clapping politely.
He hadn't changed at all. It was like the last three decades had ignored him entirely; his face was smooth and still almost boyish, his fine blue hair falling rakishly in his eyes. He wore the same black turtleneck and white slacks he'd always loved, and that dramatic white coat had but grown a few new accoutrements. Grinning evilly, he wandered languidly towards me, making a great show of inspecting my handiwork.
"As eager to kill as always." He smiled, almost sincere as he viewed the splatter of brain material and blood. I stared into the empty sockets of the skull on his sleeve and wondered who it had been. "Oh, it's been entirely too long, hasn't it, Elendira?"