A/N: sorry for taking so long to update (not that anyone really cares). I would have updated sooner, but I could never get around to writing. I'll hopefully be able to get the last couple of chapters finished at a more regular pace.
Well, read and review!
…please…
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Along Came A SpiderChapter Eleven: FATHER AND SON
The old jeep threatened to shatter apart as I pushed it to move faster across the barren sea of sand, hitting sand dunes with enough speed to launch the vehicle and myself into the air, and coming close to shooting me from the seat and out onto the ground on more than one occasion.
When I had first left, I wanted to get to July as soon as possible, and now, hours after the annihilations of the Fifth Moon, that feeling was stronger than ever. Even so, I couldn't help but feel that I was leaving something behind. I pushed the thought away, and set my sights on my destination.
I hit another dune, and as the vehicle returned to the ground, I heard a loud crashing sound, but ignored the seeming cries of the jeep and tore through smaller dune. I raced up a gigantic dune, one that was easily twenty feet high, and as I reached the peak, I could see the remains of what was once a great city spread before me.
I had once been proud of the destruction I had caused here; the horrendous explosion, the razing of buildings, the killings; but now, it seemed not only minute compared to the shattering of the moon that Cherub had caused, but the feeling of accomplishment, the sense of doing something great, the pride of doing right, I felt none of it.
The jeep tore down the other side of the hill, making a line for July. I did not know what I was going to do once I found Cherub, but I hoped that that problem would clear itself once I located my minion.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"How am I supposed to know?"
"I was just wonderin'…" Millie said abashedly after Meryl's reply to her question.
Meryl sped across the desert, taking care to avoid any dunes. "I'm not the one that decided to play hero; I don't know what we're going to do when we get to Knives!"
"We're going to have to shoot him!" the big girl held up her non-lethal stun-gun.
"Yeah, and I'll be the one to go first…" Meryl mumbled. Then spoke up, "We have to find him first. I really hope that that thing of his isn't there when we do catch up." The scene from the other night was still fresh in their minds, and neither of the women wanted to meet whatever it was that could erase a moon from the sky.
With her eyes looking out the window of the car, Millie spoke to herself quietly, "I wish he was here…"
Meryl bit her lip, for she knew full well who the 'he' Millie spoke of was. She quickly made her laugh, although it was obviously fake, and said "Yeah, especially since we know full well that Mr. Stampede back there is not any help." Noticing no reaction in her partner's face, the short insurance girl sighed and continued driving.
I wish he was here…she thought to herself.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
In Inepril, Vash the Stampede was in his bed, sitting atop it, looking out a window. He watched as children played in the street and parents watched it happily, the little happiness that the citizens of the dying city still had.
"You should be sleeping."
Not bothering to turn his head to the person in the doorway, Vash kept watching the people in the streets. "I can't sleep."
A sigh was Elizabeth's reply. "I know you're worried, and you have every right and reason to be, but you of all people should know Meryl can take care of herself. There is a reason why she carries around those derringers, after all."
"I know, and for what she is, she is very capable, but…because of what she is, I'm worried. What she might face isn't going to be anything that anyone like her may be able to handle."
"Because of what she is?" Elizabeth laughed, "Why, because she's human?"
The gunman's head spun fast enough that it could have twisted off. Staring at the woman in the doorway, he asked in a surprised tone, "Y-you know?"
"That you're not human?" she smiled, "I've had my suspicions since that day you saved the Plant from me, and from the insurance girls talked about you, I put two and two together.
"Although I've thought about it for a long time, I have to admit that it is a bit strange now that I know I'm talking to a Plant…"
"And now you know Knives is a Plant, along with that clone of his." He took a deep breath and let it out, but his voice still rang with a sound of worry and sadness. "I'm worried about them. The girls don't know what they're going after."
"Awe, that's cute. The big bad legendary gunman, the terror of Gunsmoke is worried about his girl." Elizabeth snickered.
The man turned to the woman with a look of confusion, "My…girl?"
Rolling her eyes, the Plant engineer laughed, "Every time that I begin to think that you're smarter than people give you credit for, you say something stupid like that."
"What?"
"Idiot. Anyone with eyes can see you care about her; even more so than you do the rest of humanity."
Letting out a raspy sigh, Vash closed his eyes, "A large part of me wishes that you were wrong. I can't fall in love with a human! The last time I did that…" he wiped his eyes, "I'm still trying to…cope with it."
"So, you're just going to leave her, because you know, that no matter what, you are going to outlive her, along with Millie, and any other person or thing you care about?"
The man nodded. "As Knives put it to me once, 'The planet itself will become dust before we perish'. Blunt, but true."
"Again with the stupidity. You're really surprising me, Vash. Don't you think that if you run off, or try to squish your feelings to the back of your head, that you're going to feel a hundred times worse than you would if you were with her to her death? And could you bring yourself to cause Meryl all the pain that you would if you left? If you did that, you'd be no better than Knives."
After wiping his eyes, Vash turned to Elizabeth, smiling. "Thanks, you're right. I needed that." He turned to look out the window again.
"This time, I'll be the one waiting."
"Good, that's how it should be," Elizabeth said as she left to the room. After shutting the door, she heard a loud thump, and as she reentered the room, she saw everything was the same.
Other than the fact that Vash was on the ground in a heap after an attempt at standing and walking with his unusable legs.
The gunman smiled up at the plant engineer. "I, uh, I'm not too good at waiting..."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I trudged through the ruins of the City of July searching for my creation, where ever he may have been. Large portions of buildings covered the area, and the ground was strewn with large pieces of debris. Little had changed over the thirty years since I had destroyed the highly populated city by forcing Vash to fire his Angel Arm.
Although I did not see much of the original mayhem, since I had been Vash's makeshift target and the blast had cost me the lower half of my body. I had used the power of one of my brethren to allow me to heal the grievous wound, although it had taken years to do so.
A blast of cold wind hit me, and I looked up to see that it had become dusk; the smaller of the twin suns had set, and the other was a few hours away from joining it. I could also see white streaks in the air; the smaller portions of the Fifth Moon that were more easily subdued by Gunsmoke's pull fell and burned up in the atmosphere as falling stars.
That is only the beginning. The larger ones have not yet fell, I thought to myself. I had never expected Cherub to do anything that dramatic, and even if I had, I would never have guessed that he would have thought of destroying a moon.
As a went deeper into the remains of the city, I scarcely searched for him, as I believed he would be searching for myself at that same moment, wandering through the same ruins searching for his Master. Instead, I casually walked amongst the rubble, truly realizing for the first time the power I had unleashed that day thirty years before.
The initial blast killed hundreds of humans, many more were killed by falling debris and shrapnel, but most died of starvation, dehydration, and sickness from the loss of their homes and the Plants that provided for them. Many, many others died at the hands of one another, fighting amongst themselves like wounded animals.
What had the dying Plant in Augusta meant when she had spoke to me? No matter how many times I thought over that conversation, it did not become clear. Everytime I think about it, that speech the short hum—that Meryl had thrown out into my face comes to mind, I thought angrily to myself. Along with that, the pummeling Millie had given to me after learning that the priest was connected with me was unforgettable, and made me, for some reason, uneasy.
Everything that the Plant had said to me and that Meryl had drilled into me, both of which were related to what had aggravated Millie into anger, were all the same things Vash had spoken of over the last hundred and thirty years.
The sound of someone stumbling though rubble snapped me out of my reverie, and as I slowly turned my body around, I could see a lone figure standing about fifteen yars away.
The sight of the boy, a being whose face was identical to my own (had I long hair of that color at his stage in life, of course), made me perturbed. Before then, the reaction was unexpected, and I did not understand it. It was almost as if I thought that finally finding him would somehow be a bad thing.
The bluish blonde hair of the boy was unusual, and I did not know that reaction would occur. What was more surprising, though, were the two large silver wings that rested against his back. It was not the fact that they were there, but I two silver wings were not what I intentioned.
Vash was right; I was right; Cherub is not full grown…Whether like it or not, I had finally, after a month of worrying and searching, found Cherub the Seraphim, the last of my Gung-Ho Guns, the last of my minions.
Why had the sense of worry not left me?
"Father!" Cherub shouted and rushed at me. He stopped a few feet before me, and stood straight with a large grin on his face the belayed the bloodthirsty power inside his body.
Father?! The word echoed in my head over and over. Of all things, that I had expected the least. Why did he call me father? It was unusual to say the least. Being another mere minion of mine, I had supposed 'Master' or something of that such, but not Father.
It was my intention to create a weapon, not a son; which was Cherub?
"I knew you would find me!"
"Uh, yes, of course I would," I tried to sound as sure and commanding when I spoke to Midvalley or Legato, or any of the other Gung-Ho Guns, but I could not mask completely the uncomfortable tone within my voice.
I had finally found what I had been searching for, a weapon capable of erasing the humans from existence and releasing my brethren, one stronger than all the Gung-Ho Guns combined, and more powerful than Vash and myself, and now I had no idea whatsoever involving what I was going to do now.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"Is this the place, Meryl?" Millie asked.
"Considering it's the only devastated city for over a hundred iles, I'm pretty sure that we're in the right place," Meryl answered lightly.
"Oh, since you put it that way, I guess this is July alright."
The two women had, only an hour before, spotted what appeared to possibly be July, and now that they had gotten to the ruins, it was beyond a doubt that the remains belonged to that city.
"I had heard so many stories about this place growing up," Millie said solemnly as she looked around, "But I never thought I'd really ever get to see it."
"Yeah…growing up…" the thought made Meryl realize, for a split second, how much different she and Vash were. He had marked his first recorded place in history before she was even conceived. Bounty hunters had already began chasing the Humanoid Typhoon when she was a toddler, and many of his exploits, generally bad, and most likely either lies or placed on him as a scapegoat, were told as scary stories when she was growing up.
But she didn't care.
None of it was important to her. Not his stories, not his past, not his brother, not his exploits; the only thing that mattered was Vash himself.
Meryl realized what she was thinking and quickly shook her head. Thoughts like that were completely out of character for one such as herself. "Well, let's go find that loser brother of Vash's before he starts more trouble."
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As Millie wandered through the streets that were empty—not taking the rubble that littered most of the streets into consideration—she tried her best not to be afraid. The setting suns, the ghastly city, and the threat of Knives and his thing, whatever it was, made it hard.
Biting her lip, the big girl continued her way through the city despite how she felt. Meryl didn't seem worried, so there was no reason for her to be. To distract herself from all the nasty thoughts going through her head, she thought about him…
Mr. Wolfwood wouldn't be acting like this, and I shouldn't either! Millie said forcefully to herself within her mind. He would laugh and everything would feel better, he would be here to protect me…then she corrected herself as she touched her stomach,
Protect us…
But, Wolfwood was not there, of course, nor would her ever be again.
And that's why I need to stop being like this! I need to go find Knives and get him back to Vash, even if I have to smack him and drag him back!
"Millie!" a voice called out from the other side of a large piece of metal. "I think we should split up. We can cover more ground or however they say it that way."
"That's just like you Meryl, always thinking," Millie said happily.
"I'll look deeper in the city, you go look around the edge of it or something, ok?" Millie nodded. "Good, but if you find Knives, or that thing of his, don't do anything dumb."
"Dumb like what?"
"If you find them, think about what Vash would do…then do the opposite, understand?" Meryl had come out around the metal structure and was looking right into the face of the taller woman.
"Uh, I think so…"
"Good, be careful!" the shorter woman waved and in a few moments, Millie was alone again.
The normally cheerful girl sighed, "I wish you were here." She shook her head and stomped her foot, "Nope, that's it! No more of that kinda talk! Nope, nope!" Millie checked her stun-gun, making sure that the weak strap had not broken and to make sure the gun itself was loaded with the non-lethal projectiles.
"Time to get movin'!" She marched as a little kid would to the edge of the city where most of the rubble was covered by the desert sands. The insurance girl continued her search as she wandered her way around the ruins of July. After what seemed like a hundred iles to Millie (which in actuality was nearer to one), she spotted a figure standing far into the desert atop a sand dune.
In the bright moonlight, Millie was able to recognize the tall form of Millions Knives as she ran with all her might, trying as best she could to catch the man before he had a chance to leave.
What she did not notice, though, was the form of another flying above her, heading towards the center of the city, where her best friend was at the moment.
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I stood outside the limits of July, with Cherub by my side. The boy continued calling me by the term 'father', and every time I felt guilt and a sense of incredible awkwardness enter my being.
The winged creature, whose smile never left his face, had brought me to the area, which was as normal as any other. "Do you see what you made me into, Father?" Cherub spread his wings out so that the silvery feathers shimmered with slightly different hues in the light of the moons. "Is this not what you intentioned?"
Good question… "Yes, you are powerful, and…quite…surprising." I could easily see the pride upon the face of the boy. What am I to do with him?
"It's going to rain soon…"
I left my thoughts and returned to the present, looking at the boy in a way of curiosity. I traced his vision up towards the sky, where yellow, red, and white streaks cut across the darkness. That is what he means. "It's going to be an interesting sight, just as last night's, uh… 'performance' was." I was still having trouble speaking to him in a way that would seem in character for myself, but it was difficult as my confusion and unease continued to settle in my stomach.
"Would you like me to show it to you again?"
"What? Oh, no, that is…not necessary." I could see him become disappointed and added, "Besides, you want to conserve your strength."
"I suppose…" Cherub's head perked up and he looked towards the city. "I think something is there, Father."
"Like what?" I asked incredulously. I could not sense anything, but I knew that Cherub's mind was much stronger in the aspect of sensing things such as people. Humans maybe…could it be? No, they couldn't have followed me…could they? I shook my head.
"I'm going to go back and look around, Father, I'll be back soon after I take care of what ever it is that is there." Before I could protest (despite the fact that I didn't know why I was trying to protest), Cherub jumped into the air and flew towards the city.
I did not bother to watch him as he flew into the deeper parts of July. While I thought about what my next step with Cherub would be, a voice called out from behind me.
"MR. KNIVES!!"
My chest turned to stone. I turned, and there, racing up the sand dune as best she could, was Millie. "How…why are you here?!" I yelled.
"To get you, dummy. You ran off and I came to stop you!"
For a possible captor, she is sure cheery, I thought to myself. "Meryl is with you, is she not?"
"Um…oh, she's back in the town looking for you, but now we can go get her and get back home," she answered.
My teeth ground together. "Cherub just went into the city…" I told her, "Looking for someone…"
The big girl's eyes visibly widened in worry and shock. "You mean…that thing you were looking for…It's down there…?" I nodded. "We need to help Meryl!" she rushed up and grabbed me by the arm.
I twisted out of her grip, "No, you two should not have followed me."
"Well, it's not like we have choices! Mr. Vash is hurt, so I…come on, Mr. Knives! We need to help Meryl! It's my fault she came here."
I looked away from the woman and to the sandy ground. Why is this even a problem? It should be good, one less human to worry about, but…why am I unsure? I thought.
They are thieves and liars, stealing all the time!
'Taken gifts we willingly offer?' the voice of the Plant argued.
They do it selfishly, and constantly!
'To allow their children to grow and live?'
I clamped my mouth shut until it began to numb. I couldn't think of what I should do next. There as what I thought was right, then there was the Plant, Vash, Meryl, and Millie that thought differently.
I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Millie running, but this time away from me and towards the city. "What are you doing?!"
The tall girl stopped and turned, "To help my friend!"
I pulled my revolver out and aimed it at her, "Do that, and die!"
"You won't do that."
My arm and hand, no matter how hard I tried to do otherwise, shook. "Wh-what makes you think that?!"
Millie smiled and turned to continue on her way to save her friend. I stuffed the gun back into my pocket holster.
Why would she throw her life away for another? What good would come with that?!
"DAMMIT!" I screamed at the night sky and kicked the ground in anger and frustration, knocking sand into the air around me. As I got control of myself, I calmed down and crossed my arms. After a few minutes, I couldn't help but look over my shoulder towards July, where Millie and Meryl were.
I did it again, no matter how badly I didn't want to look, over and over again. I clenched my fists and made my way down the sand dune.
"Trouble maker!"
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
As Meryl continued her way through the remains of the City of July, she looked everywhere for signs of Vash's brother, or the thing that he created. She turned to go towards a different direction, and as soon as she had done that, something big fell out of the sky in front of her.
The small woman tumbled back and fell onto the ground, landing on her butt. "What in the world?" she looked up to see the object, which was in actuality, was a boy in a black coat. She instantly noticed a resemblance between the boy with Vash and Knives.
This must be…
"Yes, I am Cherub, the one that you fear so much! And the killer of Vash the Stampede!" The vile grin of satisfaction on the boy's face gave Meryl chills.
"Sorry to say," she said, pushing her fear behind her, "but you didn't do to good of a job with Vash."
"What do you mean? You're lying!" a look of concentration appeared on Cherub's face, "You're telling the truth…No matter, after I take care of you, I'll go straight for the Humanoid Typhoon and finish my mission."
"Take care of me?" Meryl whispered.
Cherub jumped backwards a five yars, placing thirty feels between him and the woman. That was when Meryl first saw the wings, huge and shimmering, shining in the moonlight. He raised his hand towards Meryl, and a strange light appeared upon it.
Closing her eyes, Meryl looked away and thought of something that could calm her. Oddly enough, to her at least, Vash was the first thing to come to mind.
"NO!" a familiar voice shouted out, and when Meryl opened her eyes, she could see Millie, her partner and best friend, standing between the two.
"What? A second one?" Cherub was slightly surprised, but that feeling quickly left him. "Just another target. You shouldn't have come here, I don't see why you did."
"Well, I'm not leaving!" Millie said with a tone that Meryl did not know the gentle woman was capable of.
"Oh, Millie…" Meryl said.
"Fine! Then you will both die!"
More energy poured out of Cherub, his eyes glowing blue, and his arm changing shape and color. As it grew and contorted into something that Meryl could only imagine in a nightmare, the boy called over the energy that Meryl just then noticed was deafening.
"Humans, meet the Angel Arm!"
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A/N: Well, at least that wasn't as short as I was expecting it to be. Still, I wished I wasn't so lazy when it came to writing and updating. It takes me two weeks to update with something that takes me only 4 hours to write. _
I am so lazy…
Well, it's that time again! Time to review! ^_^