The First Book of Prophecy
by ANBU Kakashi
Pairing(s): Come on, I just started this thing!
Warning(s): Some swearing, some blood, lots of violence, and maa-giiic (draws word out).
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Bullet 0: Prologue
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"Vash, take care of Knives."
The last words. Fatal words.
Heaving a sorrowful sigh, Rem Saverem entered commands into the ships holographic generator.
To Rem, who was behind the hologram, space was hazy and indistinct, everything blurred.
To the twins however, who weren't part of the hologram at all, it looked like the fleet was falling towards the planet -- and that Rem's ship had been destroyed.
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Joey stepped into Rem's cabin. She looked up from where she was sitting on her bed, reading a book. "Joey. Hi."
"Hey."
Rem set the book to the side. "Have you heard from the twins?"
"Knives contacted us a few hours ago. Apparently the landing was pretty rough. Vash got himself knocked on the head, so he's sleeping that off while Knives keeps watch."
"Will Vash be O.K.?"
"Oh, yes, he will. At least, that's what Knives thinks. And Knives knows Vash better than anyone." Joey chuckled suddenly. "Remember when Vash was running in the Rec Room, and he tripped over the tree root? Knives knew he sprained his ankle before the test results came. He kept on telling us that, but we didn't believe him."
Rem was silent. Then she nodded and sniffed, wiping at her eyes. "Is Vash taking our 'deaths' very well?"
"He's taking it as any human child would. He's angry, sad -- cried the whole way down to the planet. He's having nightmares, and he's furious with Knives for seeming to have orchestrated the whole thing."
Rem let out a sob. Joey patted her on the back. "I know that it's hard Rem, but we have to do it. For Vash's sake."
She scrubbed at her face.
A long uncomfortable silence shuffled in, realized that it was unwanted, and shuffled out.
Rem took a tissue from a box on her nightstand, and blew into it several times. Then, dabbing at her eyes, she asked, "What'll we do about Steve? Rowan didn't actually kill him, did he?"
"Rowan only said that for the cameras." The captain shrugged. "We'll take a vote on it tonight."
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And they did. They pulled out Steve's capsule, and took a vote right in front of it.
"All in favor of keeping Steve in hibernation until another vote is taken, raise your hand."
Nothing.
"All in favor of keeping him this way indefinably?"
Rowan almost raised his hand, but thought better of it.
"All in favor of killing him?"
This brought shocked noises.
"Just covering all the bases, everybody. O.K., who wants to wake him up and keep him here?"
"Just get on with it, Joey," Mary said, lighting her second cigarette.
Joey grinned at her. "Yes, ma'am. Does anyone want to ask Steve what he wants?"
Rem raised her hand. Grudgingly, Mary raised her hand, supporting her friend. Rowan sighed, and raised a hand as well.
"Un-animus then."
And so, they woke Steve up (but they didn't take him out of his straight jacket).
"Hello, Steve," Joey said calmly. The other crewman looked at him, his eyes wild.
"Hello, Steve?! HELLO STEVE?! THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?!"
"Please, Steve, moderate your voice -- or else I'll do it for you."
"You can't threaten me!"
"I'm not threatening you Steve; I'm just making a statement."
Steve ground his teeth together audibly, and looked around. "Where are the monsters," he snarled. "I don't see 'em. They dead?"
"No, they aren't," Rem replied, stepping forth from the shadows. "They're down on the planet -- where they belong."
Steve stared at her, his piggish eyes bulging. "Whaddaya mean, 'where they belong?!' Now, that planet's contaminated by the little bastards!"
Rem felt her face tighten. She had never liked Steve; he drank too much, he swore all the time, nothing short of a death threat would keep him from harassing Mary, (and even then, it only worked for a week) and most of all, he was a howling bigot.
For obvious reasons, Rem didn't like racists. Nine times out of ten, they were rude and ugly to everyone, not just the objects of their hatred, and they only hated those objects because they didn't understand them.
Rem, naturally, didn't feel that way.
Her philosophy was that you should be kind to the object (or else it might decide to blow you out of the sky) as well as try to learn about it -- in the most unobtrusive way possible (or else, again, it might just decide to blow you out of the sky).
Indeed, many of the games that Rem had played with the twins had been tests for their comprehension, reflexes, and judgment of certain situations.
But while Rem was idealistic, she wasn't stupid. She knew that Knives at least, had realized what she was doing, and he would have most certainly told Vash. Since neither of them had said anything, she assumed that they had seen nothing harmful in her gentle probing.
That, however, didn't have much bearing on the situation. What mattered, was Steve.
Speaking of which....
Steve looked around crazily as Mary and Rowan took up the West and Eastern points around the man, forming a compass shape with Rem at South, and Joey at North.
"What the hell are you doing," Steve growled, eyes filled with hate.
"We're going to ask you questions old boy," Joey said. "I suggest that you answer truthfully. You're life could very well depend on them."
Steve stiffened. "Tell me where those monsters are," he hissed.
"So that you can go and beat them some more? Not very likely, old boy."
"They deserved it!"
"We aren't here to discuss the twins," Rowan said clinically. "We're here to ask Steve the questions we agreed on -- and to do what's necessary."
Steve looked nervous at that.
"O.K., Steve," Joey said. "Let's get this over with. What do you want to do?"
Steve looked at him blankly. Joey sighed. "Time's wasting, old boy, and it's something you don't have a lot of. Do you want to be frozen again?"
"No!"
"Fair enough. Alright then, do you want to continue being part of the crew?" Steve made a strangling noise. "I suppose not. So, what do you want us to do with you?"
"I want you to tell me where those little monsters are!"
"Out of the question," Rem snapped.
"Let's just kill him already," Mary said in a bored tone lighting her fourth cigarette.
"You can't do that," Steve cried shrilly. "You can't kill me!"
"That's still under debate."
"Don't scare him, Mary," Joey chided. Then his lips twitched slightly. "We can't kill him. He'd put up a huge struggle, and blood is so much trouble to clean off the floor."
Steve was starting to look faint.
"I think you understand the situation, Steve," Rowan said in his quiet voice. "Either you make a choice -- or you die."
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Steve chose to go down to the planet in the end.
But it wasn't really a true decision in the sense that he made it of his own free will with no pressure. He was helped along by Joey and Mary, who had been going into very graphic descriptions of all the (fictional) executions they had seen (Rem had excused herself from the room complaining of an upset stomach, while Rowan went to the bridge to make sure that the course the ship had been following hadn't been deviated from).
And so, the crew watched the shuttle of Steve go down to the planet (far away from the twins). Whether he would become a hermit or a citizen of the sleepers that Rem and the crew had woken and carefully crashed on the planet was unknown by Joey and the others. But then again, they didn't really care so long as the twins weren't found and killed by the racist.
"Did you really mean it when you said to kill him?" Rem asked Mary.
Her friend chuckled and lit yet another cancer stick. "No, not really. He's too pathetic." Her expression became concerned. "Have we heard from the twins?"
"Joey did. Knives contacted him a few hours ago and said they were doing alright. Vash got knocked on the head, but Knives said he'd be O.K."
"If anybody knew it would be Knives."
"Got that right," Rem agreed. "Apparently --" she swallowed. "Apparently, Vash is very angry with Knives and very sad too. Knives said he cried the whole way down." A strange noise escaped the black haired woman, and Mary dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.