Disclaimer: Isn't this always first? One way or another I'm going to have to find a way to permanently stick the 'disclaimer' to the beginning of each chapter I write . . . Damn things . . . *Sigh* I do not own Trigun. THERE!! I said it!! *Psychologists around the world cheer at the accomplishment*

But anyway. This is my third written Trigun fic. I dunno which is going up first. Eh, I might've already uploaded one; who knows.

In a nutshell this is what might happen if a woman who had Vash's speed used it all for stealing and decided to steal from him, while he's asleep nonetheless.

And this here is . . .

Chapter Two: My Life

As I sat in my room in a ruined three-story building I was using I couldn't but think. I was hurt, and pretty badly, having my back fractured like I thought and more bruises than I could count. That made sense, since I was so nearly covered in the damn impairments. I think now would be a good time for proper introductions, is it not? Well, let's start at the very beginning. And the beginning is my name.

Aluna Mayfield Carolina Hart. I was born exactly twenty seven years ago, on the planet called Firebreeze. It was named accurately; the place exploded with volcanoes and had uncontrollable and unpredictable winds. When I was five I sent away from the final disaster with my only friend, Nor. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was a little firey red-head, playing tricks on people and so on, but never anything that bad. At the time I was taking classes on how to protect myself, as children did on my planet around that time. I was short for my age, but that only promised that I would get a grown spurt early on and become rather tall. I have deep dark blue eyes, as most people did on my planet. The clothing on my planet was much like the ones here, but more advanced so it had less stitch marks. My best friend Nor had pure white hair, cut short with my same eyes and was almost a foot taller than me at the time. He was usually the one to get ideas for tricks to play, no matter which one of us took the blame. We had a very, very good relationship that allowed infinite trust between us, and we'd never betray each other.

Basically, my mother was a . . .not to say 'mean' but she believed that when a child did something wrong that both verbal and physical beratings were needed. My father had died years before, just a few short months after I was born, working on a project to try to either control or predict the sudden outbursts of the volcanoes and gusts of winds, which had been known to reach over three hundred miles per hour. His name was Rick Linny Hart, and my mother was Mayfield Serena Hart, maiden name Frint. I almost had a little brother, but just a few weeks before his due date she miscarried, and he was born. . .with his heart on the outside of his ribcage, and died after an hour. My mom never really got over it, but afterwards she learned how precious I was and lightened up quite a bit. On my fifth birthday exactly is when the disaster happened.

Somebody had tinkered with the innermost core of the planet, and set it ablaze. We had just minutes to get off of the planet before it was to explode, and at that moment Nor was giving me my best birthday present ever. It was a crystal heart, or rather, the equivalent of it. It was a clear red gem, found in clumps and had to be carefully crafted so it wouldn't shatter, and it shimmered in every color. We called it Blaze, after the way it looked like a blazing red fire. It was bigger that his own hand, and he was eight at the time. He knew long before I did that we were in love, and did everything he could to help me reach that realization. I still have the heart, though by now it was worth several billion double dollars even in this old west place. It was the very last piece of Blaze left in the known universe.

Nor had hugged me after I accepted it, and the scene was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and probably ever will. Despite Firebreeze's horrible natural disasters, it was still the most breathtaking place I had ever seen of late.

There was wildflowers of the most exotic type you could find, some that were violet with one huge flowers and several stems inside of it, branching into a thousand miniature flowers per stem, and there was a whole field of them mixed in with a dozen other of just as, if not more, exotic flowers. At that time it was P.M., and because of where we were, the sky was littered with billion upon trillions of colorful stars, and seven moons circled above us. They moved quickly, but because we had two suns that moved together, there was never anything but full moons. They were eight more moons on the other side of the planet at the time, and only once every eight hundred years did all of the moons be in sight. If I had been able to stay on Firebreeze, I would've seen that in little more than thirty years. I was lucky, or so I thought.

We sat, the two of us, for about half an hour, before the shakes began. Nor took it as something bad instantly, and helped me up and kept me upright the entire time we ran back to his father's lab. That's where we met the first time, when my father and his were colleges and my mom went with him to check over their work, when I was little more than three weeks old. Even though Nor was about to turn three in another few days, one look at me and he said "I'm going to marry her." And the scary part was, he hadn't been told my name or gender yet. It really gets you thinking. After my father died, I spent a lot of time there, as my mom trusted his dad to make sure I wouldn't get into trouble while she worked to provide for us. But I'm getting off the subject.

My mother was still at work at the time, and the first thing Nor's dad said was for us to get in an escape pod and start leaving. But I wouldn't have that; I didn't want to go without my mother. Nor agreed to wait until the last possible second, but even when that second arrived, she had not found us, and we couldn't wait any longer. And by that time, the planet looked nothing like its usual gorgeous scenery.

The ground was splitting, shooting flames and bursting with lava, creating all sizes and ranges of fires and the sky had turned black with ash and burned people. The smell of burned fat hung heavily in the air, and I knew it was all the people I knew and even loved and their homes and parents and children. It scared me to know end, seeing people screaming and running and lit on fire and trying to et away from the infernos but being trapped by it. Nor's father tried his best to kill the flames, but when the planet began to shake unbelievably and tear in half, he pushed a button on a control panel and sent us up into space, away from the death of the only home we knew. Nor was both crying at the loss of his father and clinging to me as I clung to him. I'd never cried so hard before in my life, and never wanted to again. My mother had surely died in those flames, and I was powerless to stop it. For a long time we cried and wished our parents were back, and held each other as tightly as we could. When the pod first took off I was screaming for my mother, hoping against hope hat I would see her running up and could open the door and let her in. I don't know how long we were drifting in space, hours, days, minutes. . . All I knew was that by the time we landed I was tired and hungry and had a headache and was just numb.

Nor protected me with his own body when we crashed down on some planet, and now that I think back I'm glad he did. There was so many pieces of metal and pipes and things inside the pod that I would've seriously gotten hurt if he didn't. I had no clue how to get out, but Nor did; he pushed buttons on something like another control panel and the door opened, but from above us. We landed on our side or something to that effect. When we finally made it out and looked around, I got the worst case of homesickness in history.

You see, my planet was covered in life. Flowers, trees, people, creatures that looked much like birds and lizards and so on, but the planet we landed on had nothing in sight. Literally. In every direction I looked, I saw nothing but sand and sand getting blown around by the wind. I was so lost and confused that I did the very first thing that came to me: I latched onto Nor's arm and didn't let go. It was daytime, and though I couldn't quite see I had the distinct feeling that there was more than just one sun here. I could only hope I was wrong.

Nor always had good judgment, so when he chose a direction to travel in I didn't protest. We both gathered what we could carry from the pod, things like a stash of water and Ito, which is what we called this planet's bread. Even after more than twenty years it still feels funny to say. We traveled for what felt like weeks, trying to shade each other during the day and cover the most ground at night. If I had anything to check the time with every so often, I would've brought it, though it would do little good on this planet. Firebreeze's days were about seventeen hours long, and the nights were on average twenty three. Forty hour days were a normal thing on Firebreeze, and I still miss that even.

We reached a town one day after I looked at the moons and saw for the first time how they worked, and had picked out my moon. It was full that night, and I couldn't help but feel lucky and capable of anything. But nonetheless, I was terrified of this new planet's people, even if they did look just like us. I stayed mostly behind Nor the entire time we looked around the town, holding on tightly. I knew he was looking confident and like he knew where he was going on purpose, because I could feel the way he, too, trembled and knew then that he was as scared as I was. We found something like a alley and slept there that night, hidden in a corner in hopes no one would see us.

The next morning when I opened my eyes I remember thinking that I was back home, comfortable in my own bed. But I wasn't. Somebody had found us the previous night, when we were dead asleep and apparently had decided on taking care of us. Nor and myself were still clinging to each other when I began to notice my surroundings, and that kept me from screaming my little head off. He was still asleep, too, lying halfway on top of me as I had noticed he did a lot, almost as though to protect me even while he slept. Of course, I didn't mind. It felt really nice to be held as I slept and more than that it made me feel safe, as he must have believed it would. I couldn't thank him enough for that.

I woke Nor up, shaking his shoulder lightly, and whispering his name. When he looked at me I pointed at everything I could, afraid that saying something would alert somebody that we were awake. Nor just smiled.

As I think back I can't remember the exact words we used, but I knew what he said to me that morning. "The stars are kind to us today. Don't worry, they'll take care of us. Just have trust in their ability."

He was always like that. Just about everything he said was related to stars or moons or Gods and other such things, and somehow it never failed to relax me. I always believed him, and still do. Perhaps his undying trust in what he believed is what fueled my belief in my moon, but somehow, over time, I began to notice I shared his beliefs as well. But again, I'm getting off the subject.

We got and inspected the room, inch by inch, and found there was another set of clothes for each of us waiting. Whoever had found us must've had a feeling we would stay, at least long enough to get some clothes and food and so on. We laughed out of joy as we changed our clothes, happy that we finally had a break after God knows how long in that forsaken field of sand. Just as we opened the door to look around some more somebody on the other side opened it, laughing about something or other, probably a shared joke. It was an old plump woman, with a bun of stringy white hair, light blue dress and white apron, with smile lines and brown eyes and square spectacles. She knelt down in front of us and giggled about how cute we looked and how we were poor things to have to live outside on the street and so on. I was hiding behind Nor again, who had one of his hands on my arm to keep me calm. I know hat sounds strange, but I had both of my arms around his waist at the time.

"Miss?" he said, gaining her attention. "How did we get here?"

"Oh, my lovely daughter found you there in that dark, dirty alleyway and couldn't just turn away," she said, with something like an Irish accent. Very faint, however. "So she called up my son - her brother - and each of them carried one of you and she gave up her own room for you two o sleep in. What you're wearing now is their clothes, recently washed. Oh," she said, placing her hands over her heart, "I've so waited for a day when God would bless me with children again." She sighed, still smiling, and dropped her hands. "What are yer names children?" she asked, still holding that unbelievable smile.

"I'm Nor," he said. He patted my arm. "This is Aluna."

"What beautiful names!" she cried, and she got up, gesturing us to follow her as she told us her name was Bunni and skipped away. Well, not really, but however she did walk on was a lot like it.

Nor and I followed her as she said, having nowhere else to go. I never once let go of him, and we tripped twice because of it. We ended up in something like a kitchen where three people were sitting. One old man, a young woman and a young man. I could tell that the old man was Bunni's husband, and the man and woman were the two that brought us here. Bunni introduced her children first, Cathy and Edward, and then her husband Marc, who couldn't be less interested in us.

Bunni pulled out chairs for us, and I took the one farthest from Marc, and then she placed two plates in front of us. Thinking back I knew it was eggs, bacon and toast, but at the time it looked disgusting and not something you were supposed to eat. Even more confusing was when she put pieces of metal, a fork and butter knife, in front of us. I just looked at Nor, who was a confused as I was. He decided to ask about it.

"What is all this?" he said, gesturing at it.

Bunni laughed. "It's food, silly! And those are silverware. A fork and a butter knife. Don't you know how to use them?"

"We've never seen them before."

"Oh! You poor, poor things! You've never had a good meal in your poor little lives!" Bunni went on and on about what we were supposed to do with the food and forks but I never really got it.

After a while Nor got the guts to actually taste it, if nothing else. He looked like he was being careful about it, seeing as how he'd never used a fork before in his life, and I just kept thinking poison. But he smiled. He looked at me and swallowed. "It tastes like garnet."

"Really?" I asked, looking down at it. Bunni gasped.

"You've been eating rocks!" she claimed, tears coming to her eyes.

"No," Nor said. They must not know about other planets yet. "Where we come from, that's just what we call it." I could tell he was wondering why somebody would name a rock after a delicious type of food, as I was, but he kept it out of his eyes. He looked at me again and smiled. "It's a little less sweet, and not as. . .fluffy as garnet, but it's good." He couldn't really get the fork down, I could tell, but he tried anyway. If this was how things worked here, then we were going to have to learn. As far as we knew, this was our last home.

Even as I tried to get used to the fork Bunni droned on and on, Nor answering every now and again. She asked if we were brother and sister, and Nor just shook his head, not really giving an answer. At one point Cathy leaned over to talk with me, but I was still too scared and jumped, directly out of my chair. Nor kind of spun out of his chair and helped me up, whispering in my ear that he could tell these people were alright and not to get so scared so easily. I felt like crying there, mainly for being stupid. A tough, uncomfortable silence followed, and Bunni broke it by claiming we needed baths.

We both sparked at that; that was one of the words we shared on both planets. Oh God, a bath. . .

Bunni led us outside the house and into another, much smaller house, like the size of a shed. It had a huge bath in it, though not too deep, and as she went to get water we both stripped down, laughing and wanting nothing more than to be clean. After the bath was filled we splashed each other, playing silly games for amusement and, after a good hour or so, finally got around to using soap.

That evening we got showed around the house, taught what did what and how things worked here, and Nor feigned being incredibly slow so I could catch it all. We didn't worry so much about their food as well, just associating it with foods we already knew. While Cathy and Edward taught us, or rather me about every little thing Bunni was gone, making up a spare room with a bed and so on, so we could stay. Marc just grumbled about how he didn't want to hear us screaming ad running about all the time, and Nor pointedly assured him "we would not do such a thing on a daily basis" getting odd looks from everyone present.

While in bed Nor and I spoke about how odd it was to have such short days, now that we really had a sense of time. As normal human beings we only needed around eight or nine hours of sleep a night, but since this was the first time since the planet's explosion that was could sleep soundly, we slept for over twelve hours, catching up on all the sleep we missed in the mean time.

The next morning was just like the previous one, only we had calmed down quite a bit. We talked and laughed and answered questions and took another bath, again playing oddball games and splashing each other. When night came we got taught again, and then ate and were sent off to bed. Of course, we couldn't sleep so easily, and stayed up all night playing games as quietly as we could.

We slept every thirty-two hours, which the family noticed, but they didn't really ask about it. This routine became a daily basis, and we all were fine with it. Eventually our sleep time changed, fitting more comfortably at being awake just thirty hours, and ever since that's where it stayed. We had a wonderful life there, and after a full year I was five inches taller and Nor was two, making me still nine inches below him. On that year's morning we got surprised when we woke up, still sleeping in the same bed, when we saw their entire family smiling and wearing colored pointed hats and holding a cake, which we had had before. I sat up quickly, waking up Nor in the process, and he looked stunned by the family's sudden presence there. Bunni handed each of us a box and Cathy placed the cake before us, telling us each to make a wish in our heads and blow out the candles in one breath to make it come true. Neither of us were sure about why we had to do this, but it seemed like a special day so we didn't ask questions. I made my wish for us to never separate, and Nor made his, whatever it was. I smiled at him as he did me and in one breath we blew out the candles, which totaled at fifteen.

Bunni told us to open the presents in our laps so we did, knowing what they were by Christmas being just five months back. I got a gold necklace with half a heart on it that said "BEST" and Nor got another one with the other half of the heart that said "FRIENDS." I pulled up my hair and let Nor put mine on me as I did him, and we both in unison thanked this family we now called our own. But pain still lay ahead, as I learned that very night.

Nor and I were talking, outside and staring at the stars as we so often did, when Bunni called us in. Something about the stars that night made me feel uneasy, and after another few minutes I found out why. Just as we were getting into bed I was bombarded with thoughts of my mother, my father, and my home in the sky. It hit me so hard I collapsed and started to cry, not even feeling it when Nor came to my side and tried to hold me. He obviously didn't know the exact reason why I was crying, but it was just as obvious that it was about Firebreeze.

When a knock sounded on the door and Bunni asked what was going on, Nor told her it was nothing he couldn't handle himself and tried his best to calm me down. I knew it hurt him to see me like I was, crying and unable to stop. All he could do was hold me close and wait for me to calm down enough to tell him what I was crying about in the first place. That took quite a while, I knew that much, but Nor refused to tell me for how long. I told him I missed my mother, wished I had gotten to know my father, and missed all the beauties of Firebreeze and so on. Nor empathized for a while, and then changed the subject. He was really good at that.

I don't what part about the game we were talking about lightened my mood, but suddenly I found myself talking enthusiastically about it, and wondering if there were other children who would like to play it and so on. Eventually Nor had me laughing again, but that did nothing to make me forget. For the past few months the two of us had no reason to cling while we slept, and usually we didn't even touch each other, but tonight we kind of needed that. We fell asleep curled up together.

Over the next three years I had very few emotional breakdowns, and Nor had a few of his own, but all in all we had excellent control over ourselves and our emotions. I was nine now and Nor twelve, and for some reason every now and again while he spoke his voice went high. I know now why that was so, but at the time I had no clue and just made fun of him for it. But life brings back to you what you put out, I learned. When I turned fourteen I had my very first menstrual cycle, and it was hell. Bunni had told me before that it was going to happen soon and that it was normal and I shouldn't get scared, but I thought I was dying. The entire time Bunni tried to explain to me it was fine and I didn't need a doctor and so on Nor was laughing, continually saying "Roundabout is fair play!" just to make me regret making fun of him.

Oh, he paid dearly for that. Later that night, when I got everything figured out and under control, I started whacking him with my pillow before he could retaliate. I managed to get him face-down on the bed we still shared after all this time and sat on him, hitting him again and again on the head to make him pay. At this time I had my hair long, reaching my hips, and Nor was super-tall and his hair reached his earlobes, but short beneath that. It was a nice hair-style on him, and I so hated to mess it up like this, not! Eventually he got a block in and managed to flip over, making me fall over with a squeak. He spun around and pinned my wrists beside my head, playfullness the most dominant sparkle in his eyes at the time, but that quickly faded. We both realized, in that instant, that we were man and woman, having gone through puberty and he was lying on top of me on our bed on the lucky full moon night and the house deserted.

The family had gone out, and we had decided on staying behind, which was probably the luckiest thing I ever let happen. Well, besides when Nor for the first time kissed me.

I'll skip over all the details and just tell you that I was very happy it happened and couldn't think of anything that felt better in my entire life, not even on my fifth birthday and the present Nor had given me. Which reminds me, I kept that heart with me. It sat on my nightstand, on a stand Nor gave me on my true sixth birthday, and it never really moved from there. I'm not sure if it was Nor's question or my answer that finally made our relationship official, but it was one of the two. For a while we tried to keep it a secret, but the way we stopped taking baths together was probably the biggest sign, right next to the sudden need to cuddle while we slept all over again. You should've seen Bunni's face when she found out and crowed she just knew it was going to happen soon and so on. But Bunni was getting pretty old; a month before we celebrated her seventieth birthday and Marc was already dead, having died the previous year.

Cathy was married by then, and had twins, and Edward was shyly taking one certain blonde on dates every night. Bunni kept crying and laughing about how her children were growing up so fast and that included us, seeing as how she took it upon herself to make sure we knew to call her "Mom" and always sighed when we did. It felt a little strange, considering it was like she adopted us and now we were together and called her mom of all things, but it didn't matter. It wasn't like every person in this town didn't know who we were and which family we lived with and so on.

On Nor's eighteenth birthday he went out and got a job, making money with his skills he learned on Firebreeze, which made him an indispensable worker. I did the same, finding I could get a job at a recently opened martial artist center that almost no one took seriously. Of course, hardly anyone took me seriously since I was just sixteen and a woman at that. But it helped me remember how to do that type of self-defense and that helped me teach it to others. That place, just like the mechanical place Nor worked at, boomed in sales since we started working, and after I hit age seventeen we showed Bunni how much we made and she nearly had a heart attack. We repaid her back for how kind she had been to us by giving her a new house and a nurse to make sure she was always healthy and had someone to keep her company, considering Edward finally moved out with his new wife. Nor and I went to visit her each day after we got of work.

On my eighteenth birthday Nor actually went out and bought us a house to live in, although I didn't know since he had me blindfolded along the way there. We got what we had out of our adopted home and moved it all into the new one, getting everything we had settled in one long day. Nor, in the meantime, had kept the bedroom off limits, which got me thinking but not too deeply. I was used to his surprises by now and knew better than to spoil them.

In the time it took to unpack I noticed a few things about myself. One, my training and teaching had made my footsteps not even there, and I could sneak up on Nor a lot. I also noticed how smooth my movements had become, and found I could steal things that he was wearing, like a bracelet or tie. He always looked so shocked when he found out it wasn't even funny. For a while I thought he was faking being surprised, but I'll get to that later.

When Nor finally let me in the bedroom, he had his hands over my eyes. I was giggling all the way. When he pulled his hands back, I gasped. I don't know how he did it, but somehow or another he'd found plants or grown them and the room was literally covered in them. None of them were like home, but this was as close as this planet could get, so I knew he did a lot to get a hold of them. And then he did the most romantic thing a guy could do. He gave me this whole speech about how much he loved me and wanted me to marry him and thought that it would make for a lovely memory if we made love that night, and I couldn't help but kiss him as thanks for everything he did.

But the worst part was, our life in that house didn't last very long. We'd spent little more than a few months in that house before my moon became hidden again, and the bad luck that followed was positively the worst thing that could happen. You know how sometimes something so bad will happen and you think it can't get any worse, and then you say it and it does? That's the kind of "worst" thing that happened.

Somebody broke in, I still don't know who, and when Nor and I woke up it was to a pair of guns to our heads. I was fine with letting him take what money we had; we could get it again, but Nor had other ideas. My Blaze heart was among those possessions, and he wasn't going to give it up without a fight. And then. . .the gun went off, and Nor. . .he didn't get up again. I don't know what possessed me to fight this guy off, but somehow my speed increased and I not only got the guns from him, but took back everything he tried to steal from us, and mercilessly threw him out the four-story window. I still don't know exactly what made me think if I kept Nor company he'd wake up, but for some reason I cuddled up to him and forced myself to fall asleep, and woke up with the worst state of reality the universe could give.

I screamed and cried and had a really hard time letting Nor go, him being the absolute last thing I had in my life. For whatever reason I couldn't let anybody else see him like this, and buried him myself. It was hard to let him go but I had no choice, now did I? Whatever possessed me then told me to get what I could carry and leave, so I did. I packed up my clothes and money, and carefully wrapped up my Blaze heart, and left on foot, without a second look back. I marked Nor's grave behind my house so that when Bunni came looking for us she'd find him, and left a note on my bed - which I hadn't bothered to change the sheets so it was still soaked in blood - so Bunni would know all of it. The body outside of the thief I left there, and I don't know if it was found or identified. All I knew was that I was gone, leaving behind my life and starting a new one. But this time, I would not be so kind about it. I started to use my skill in speed, agility, and sneaking, and became the best cat bandit this world had ever seen. Now I have fifty thousand on my head to be found and caught, but that's because they only found so many clues that could lead them to me in all the burglaries I did.

My entire life followed that path, and now, as I lay injured on the floor of my current housing, I know for a fact that no matter what will follow after me, I have no choice left but to face it with a vengeance. I blame the universe for killing my family and my lover, my love, and I will not rest until I receive proper compensation for that. It may take until the day I die, or beyond, but it will be done, for I was never a woman to just lose.

-Aluna Hart

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Whew! That took a while, didn't it? I have a few thanks to give out to the reviewers.

Ghosts-girl23

Nicole

Thanks!! Seriously, as long as somebody wants the story to play out, I'll finish it. Hoped ya like it.

(Chapter one had exactly 4,601 words. That makes it the longest chapter I've ever written, by a thousand!)

See ya!