A/N: Sorry for taking so long to get this up. This chapter was boring as hell to write, so I'm not too sure if it's interesting to read. The next chapter is going to be more interesting, but there is a couple things that have to happen in this chapter first.
So, anyways...read and review or…whatever…
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Along Came A SpiderChapter Six: GONE, ONCE AGAIN
With fists clenched and back erect, I made my way down the streets of Inepril, avoiding contact with the humans in my trek to the Plant. I had managed to slip out of the hotel without either of the women seeing me, but I knew my absence would not go unnoticed for long.
The reason for my temporary escape was to find more information about the Gung-Ho Gun that visited here recently, leaving his mark on the city. To do that, I had to make it to the Plant, which is where Vash was. In a best situation, I hoped to get in, find any evidence of my demon's being there and get back to the hotel before my presence there was noticed as missing.
That, though, was a long shot. I hoped that I could at least get into the plant without running into Vash. Whether those humans noticed that I was gone was really of little importance, since I could easily discount my leaving as going for a walk or to get some fresh air. I doubted those would be able to convince Vash of otherwise, but if he was unable to find evidence of me going to the Plant, then he would do nothing.
I quickly made my way and in a short time was standing before the sealed door of the immense structure. As I reached out to the small panel of keys that I would have had to hack into the main computer with so that I could enter, the door shot open and before me stood my brother.
"Knives!" Vash shouted. "What are you doing here?!" Ever since the incident in Jeneorarock the other day, he had had very little patience with me. "Where are the girls?!"
I scowled. I hadn't expected him to be leaving the same time that I had been entering. "They are alive, if that is what you are worried about." I purposefully left the first question unanswered, because I did not doubt that Vash already knew why I was here.
"Well, I'm going back, so you are coming with me."
"I will not," I said with a frown. "I came here to learn of—"
"You are coming back with me!"
A look of curiosity spread across my face. "You are ordering me? Dear brother, I the situation you have found us in has gone to your head; you may have beaten me and healed me, but I will not obey you."
Vash's face shook with anger. All the things that had happened to him over the past few days had been a tax on even his patience.
"Do you really think I will leave without a look inside?" I shook my head. "You're making this much harder than needs be."
"No! You are going back to the hotel with me and you are going to forget everything about this new Gung-Ho Gun and…" he slowly stopped talking when he noticed something behind me. I turned and there, standing quietly, were the two women. "Let's go, Knives…"
"Why are you so afraid to show them your anger?" the question shocked Vash. "They deserve to be frightened of you, of your power, of what you can do and have done. You are much too patient with them."
"Leave them out of this! They have nothing to do with any of this!" Vash spoke the next sentence into my mind, "And you have caused Millie too much pain as it is…"
Not understanding that last part, I ignored it. "Oh, but they do! Along with the rest of them, they are the reason why we fight and why you are hurt. It is their fault." By this time our quarrel collected the attention of some humans that were watching us with interest, undoubtedly waiting for a physical fight to erupt to quench their beastlike hunger for violence.
"Stop saying that! We go through this every time we get near each other. Don't you understand that it's wrong? Everything you say is wrong!" Vash began to grow unstable, his eyes watered and his clenched fists shook from tension.
I smirked and looked at the audience around us. "I could kill them all…"
Many of the humans stared at me in shock, but only one had the nerve to step forward from the rest, "Hey! I don't like the way you're talking, pal!"
"Fool!" He yelled at him. "You want to argue with me? You want to fight ME?! Look!" I stabbed a finger towards Vash, who happened to be having a bit of a nervous breakdown. "He cowers before me! He is Vash the Stampede, the man you all fear so, and he is afraid of me! He fears me and cries in front of me!"
"No…" Vash said past the lump in his throat.
I looked at him curiously. "What?"
"I don't…I am not…afraid of you! I do not fear you! I do not cry because of you…" he looked into my eyes. "Brother, I fear for you…I cry for you." My mouth gaped open, and I tried to shove words out of my mouth, but the intensity of his stare and his words drove me speechless and left me dumbfounded.
He spoke slowly and quietly, but despite this, his voice was heard clearly and precisely, "I fear that you'll get what you want and, in the end, you will regret it."
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Once I had returned to my room at hotel (without learning anything about my demon, I might add), I could not decipher what Vash had meant. What would I possibly regret after exterminating the humans and freeing my fellow Plants? It did not make sense…
There was a knock at my door accompanied by a voice. "Mr. Knives? May I come in?" It was the tall human. Before I could answer, the door opened and she walked in, leaving it open only by a hair. "Mr. Knives there's something I need to ask you…well, a couple things, or maybe it's only one…no, it's a couple…"
The human babbled on and, quickly, I couldn't take it anymore. "Just ask!" the quicker I got this over with, the sooner she would leave. As a looked at her, I got this odd feeling in the back of my mind; Vash and I, although unable to directly read the minds of humans, did have the ability to sense human minds. At the moment though, this human was confounding me. It felt as if there were two minds at work, hers and a much weaker undeveloped one. I shook my head, thinking that that was impossible.
"It's about in Jeneorarock…well, and at the plant, too…um…" she said, brining my thoughts back to what was at hand.
I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Yes, I remember what happened, since I was at both."
"Oh…yeah…" she was having trouble getting out whatever it was she needed to ask. I wondered why Vash let her come to me? He probably doesn't know she's in my room…either that or he does and he's letting her in here to toture me, I thought to myself.
"Well, I wanted to ask you why your name was in Jeneorarock and why you were laughing and why you got into a fight with Mr. Vash today and…um…that's it, I suppose."
Ever since I had awoken those few weeks ago, I had been awaiting a question such as that to be asked by her. Now that she had asked, my answer would be simple, quick, and concise; if I was lucky, it would give her respect for me, or it would strike fear into her. Either way, she would not bother me for much longer.
"It is because I, Millions Knives, brother to the one called Vash the Stampede that you hold so dear, am the master of the Gung-Ho Guns." As I spoke, her eyes grew wide. She obviously recognized the name 'Gung-Ho Guns'. "I am the one Vash sought to battle when he left you and the other woman, that is why we were wounded.
"Why was I happy to find my name in that ghost town? It is simple…that was the symbol of the Gung-Ho Guns, meaning that it was a Gun that wrote it."
"You…" she trailed off for a second, as if she was suddenly having a flash of memory. "You're the one that sent that Legato man after Mr. Vash?"
I smiled, "Of course! Legato was intelligent—for a human—but, he needed direction. Everything he did, I ordered him to."
The human's eyes watered and a pinch of confusion hit me. I had expected her to be angry or scared, but this was an odd reaction. "Wh-what about Mr. Wol-wolfw—"
"The priest? Pfft!" I snorted, "Legato's killing of him was the best order I had—" before I knew what had happened, I found myself on the ground, my face sore from what seemed like a punch, and the back of my skull throbbing from pain given to me by a crash into the wall.
It took a few seconds to collect my thoughts, and then, I looked up to the woman, and she stood there, her face filled with hate that I could not have imagined existed in a being like her. Her face was red and water poured down her cheeks. Her right hand throbbed a bit as if she had just hit something…
She punched me! I didn't even see the swing, Hell I barely realized that I had been hit until after the fact! What the Hell is this woman's problem?
Her lip quivered and she wiped her face with her sleeve. "You…you…jerk!" She swung at me more, and the confusion in my mind seemed to make everything go faster, so I did not do anything besides raising my arms to hold back the onslaught. She let out more insults as she slammed her fists (oddly powerfully, I might add) into my forearms. "You bastard!" that one really surprised me.
As blow after blow landed on my arms, I did nothing to retaliate. I did nothing to cease it. I only stared at her. I stared as a spoiled child would to the first person that took the initiative to discipline it. The confusion and shock couldn't leave my system to allow me to move or make sense of the situation.
Bursting through the doorway came the short human who gasped at the site. "Millie?!" The tall one ceased from the mad barrage of my arms and rushed to the smaller woman. "Oh, Meryl!" tears were streaming down her face. "h-he…he…Wol-Wolf…" she couldn't get the words out of her mouth and instead fell to her knees; the black-haired woman glared at me with eyes filled with hate, more hate than were there before, and more hate than I could possibly imagine her showing me being so close in quarters such as these.
I stood and, being in a state of confusion from the attack, stumbled out of the room and bumped into my brother. "What is her problem?" I asked him in a tone of genuine confusion.
"This is why I didn't tell her about me, about you, about the Gung-Ho Guns, or anything in connection with Wolfwood's death…" Vash spoke to me, but his eyes were on the two women, the smaller one hugging the other as she wept.
"What would she gain from attacking me?! Why did she…" I, for the first moment in a long while, had been truly confused by a human.
Shaking his head, Vash spoke quietly, "It's not about what she has to gain, it's about what she lost…what you took from her—who you took from her…"
As I stared into the room at the tall woman, no…as I stared at Millie, the feeling I had confused me. She had beaten me, yelled at me, touched me, belittled me, but yet I was not angry in the normal sense. She was the first person to attack me like that, and it was, according to Vash, not out of greed or hate, but for concern for another.
I shook my head. No, it was impossible. Humans would not risk themselves for another, especially when that other was already dead. They do what they want for themselves, for personal gain…but, right before me, kneeling on the floor in the arms of her friend, was a direct contradiction to my theory and I did not know if that was a reason to be pleased or enraged.
Only once before was there a being that contradicted my theory on the human race and she died because of it.
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In her darkened room, Millie sat atop her bed; her face was stuffed into her palms and tears had left them wet. Up until her conflict with Knives, she had been able to contain her emotions, but now that she knew he had a major part in Wolfwood's death, she couldn't stop crying.
The woman now knew why Vash and Meryl, whenever she would ask about Knives's past, would ask her to be quiet or forget about it; she was unsure if asking Knives was a bad idea, but she wanted the truth and now she had it.
A hiccup escaped her throat and made Millie's body jump a bit. For the past month, ever since the day Wolfwood died, she had felt empty, as if she had lost a part of herself that she never knew she had.
The usually abnormally happy and cheerful woman now tried her best to hold back her tears, but it was impossible for her. Millie placed a hand over her gut; although Wolfwood was gone and she felt torn, there was a part of him in her and in more ways than one.
She laid down into her bed and cried herself to sleep.
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Vash stood outside near the vehicle they had been using. He came out into the night to get the items he had gone searching for a few days back when they had been driven out of town. The trunk popped open, and inside was a collection of items dear to him, but yet hated by him.
A tattered ball of red material, a cross, two guns, one black and one silver, and another metallic gun. It was his coat, Wolfwood's cross punisher, the colt revolvers of his brother and himself, and the gun chamber of his mechanical arm. He had left each in the desert in hopes that none would have a need in his life again, but, as fate so often did to him, he had no choice but to wield the weapons of a killer in hopes of ending death.
He had already been wearing his leather suit when he came out, so he slipped into the red trench coat right at that moment. He placed the .45 revolvers into the holster pockets on each of his thighs, his own on his right and Knives's on the left.
Vash opened the chamber of his left arm, the prosthetic one, and normally, the gun would have slipped out into the ready, but Knives had shot it off during their last battle. It was easily fixable, though, and in a few moments it was working as good as it was when he first got it from Doc.
Grabbing the straps of his friend's weapon, he tossed the cross punisher over his shoulder with a loud thump. Vash did not want to take it, since it was rightfully Millie's, but he did not want to bother her and Vash did not know the true strength of the Gung-Ho Gun he was to meet.
Under the light of the moons, including the bright crimson of the Fifth Moon, the one that held the legacy and the mark of the Humanoid Typhoon, Vash stood not as the man he had hoped to become, but, once again, as Vash the Stampede, the man he was cursed to be for all time.
As he walked away from his home, and what he wished to consider his family, the cold desert night air brushed through his hair. He soon reached the outskirts of Inepril and, looking into the direction of the ruins that had once been Augusta, took his first step towards his new opponent.
He didn't get to take another step, since the fist of a certain insurance agent smacked him in the back of the head, making him jump and yelp like a little child. "And where do you think you're going?! HUH?!" Meryl yelled at Vash's face. "You better not being going to do something stupid, Mr. Typhoon!"
Vash rubbed the back of his head and smiled at Meryl, "Well…you know me, me and stupidity are kinda inseparable."
"You don't have to tell ME that…" Meryl sighed. "You're going to find that Gung-Ho Gun, aren't you?" her eyes were filled with a sense of hope, hoping that she was wrong, but she also had the look in her eye that showed she knew she was right.
"I…I have no choice…" Vash stammered, "I must stop he, or she, or it, or whatever from killing. It is my job to stop it, since my brother is the cause of this and he doesn't seem to be willing to clean up his own mess."
Meryl let out a short laugh, "You're brother…" she didn't need to say anything for Vash to know how strongly she hated Knives for what Millie was going through. She stared into Vash's eyes intently, "You better come back. If you don't I'll be ticked."
A goofy grin grew on his face. "Oh, I wouldn't want that. It would make a Gung-Ho Gun look friendly…" Meryl punched him in the arm, but Vash could see the smile on her face. Before Meryl knew what happened, Vash wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.
With her legs dangling a foot or so off the ground and suddenly being squeezed tightly by a this man, Meryl was more than a little shocked, but she didn't fight it. The hug was tight, but not crushing and she actually squeezed back.
After a few moments, Vash put her down and took a step back. "I need to go now…he, whoever he is, is waiting for me."
Meryl nodded. "Yes, you do. You're right, it is your job, you need to stop everything evil that Knives has placed on this planet Good-bye…"
"Good-bye, Ma'am!" Vash grinned at her and then, turned and walked away. Meryl wiped a tear and shouted to him, "You better not die!"
Vash waved and responded, "Thanks for the advice!" Meryl wiped another tear and, being too far away to see, did not notice Vash doing the same. And, for the second time, Vash was gone, once again.
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As days passed during his trek through the desert towards the ruins of Augusta, Vash the Stampede could only think of two things. One was the inevitable fight against the (according to Knives) Leader of the Gung-Ho Guns, but the other, which occupied his mind even more than the soon life or death battle that may decide the fate of the world, was that of a short, black-haired insurance agent.
He quickly found himself in the ruins of the city. Mounds of debris, metal, wood, and other types of substances, littered the area. Large portions of many homes and buildings were still erect, but the proof of the existence of others were only the jagged fossils that arched into the air and laid atop the ground.
Vash's gaze stuck to the form of a being standing atop of a large jagged portion of metal that stood upright. He jumped back as the features of the boy came into his focus. The face on the Gung-Ho Gun was familiar beyond anything. The boy, appearing to be of fifteen years of age, had eyes identical to that of Vash. The boy's mouth however resembled Knives's. The build of his body was similar to both, and the hair, which hung freely near the boy's waist, was the pale blonde of Knives's own locks.
Overall, the boy standing above him atop the piece of rubble looked as Vash would had he been a teenager. Mouth gaping open, Vash stared in disbelief as the boy, who wore a black trenchcoat similar, but not identical, to Vash's red one, looked down upon him with a smile of elation.
As the warm air of day blew through the area, the boy's coat did not move, undoubtedly being weighed down by the dozens of weapons stolen from the Inepril gunsmith. The boy opened his mouth and called down to Vash in a greeting that chilled him to the bone and shocked him even more.
"Hello, Uncle!"
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A/N: this one is a bit shorter than the past few chapters, but that's because I didn't want to go any further. The next chapter will explain Cherub and everything, so…um, yeah, I'll get to writing that one soon. That's the one I've been looking foreword to writing the most so far. Not only that, but we'll all get to learn how good I am with fight scenes…
Anyways, time to review!!