Knives looked around as his brother wheeled him into the daycare. Was the girl here? Knives found himself actually worrying a little. If the girl was not here then she might be more ill than they had stated. However, she was there, with her head rested on her folded arms as she slept quietly at her table. Vash rolled Knives over to the table and then left to give away the donuts to the daycare children.

Knives studied the sleeping child for a moment. She looked so innocent, as a light contented smile dwelled softly on her face. Knives felt something stirring within him, an emotion so foreign to him that he could not name it. He furrowed his brow in thought, searching for a name for this unknown feeling that sprouted and took root in his soul as he stared at the girl.

Finally, he decided that whatever it was, he would figure it out later. He could not waste his entire day sitting here, just thinking. He wanted to discover more about the child and why she had been absent the day before. Knives reached out and paused. He would not touch a spider willingly except in special cases, which usually involved violence and death. The spider's, of course.

He turned inward and gently brushed his mind with hers instead. He felt her mind come slowly to life, dragging her out of the deep, lethargic sleep she had fallen into. Yume's small head lifted off the table and she rubbed her eyes, looking around. Knives-sama?

"Greetings," Knives spoke aloud.

"Knives-sama!" Yume grinned brightly at him, "I'm so happy to see you! I missed you yesterday! Although I had two dreams with you in them!"

"Really?" Knives found it disturbing that she dreamed about him.

"Yeah! In one you just talked to me for a bit and then went away, but in the other you were running around through a field of flowers and we played tag and had a lot of fun!"

"That's… interesting…" Knives blinked. He, Millions Knives, the one who would bring about the final fall of mankind, play a game of tag? What was this human child thinking? It was absolutely absurd! And she thought their conversation last night had been a dream? "Why weren't you here yesterday?"

"...I was sick," the girl said, hesitating for a moment.

"You are lying again."

"Wait," realization crossed over her mind, "Last night when we talked, that wasn't a dream?"

"No, it was not."

"Wow! Knives-sama was in my dream! Really in it! That's so cool!" she clapped her hands in glee.

"Yes, riveting. Now, tell me why you weren't here yesterday. The truth."

Yume's face fell. She picked at a scratch in the table. "I don't want to…"

"You are going to, whether you want to or not," Knives growled.

"It has to do with my family…" Yume did not look up and meet Knives' eyes.

"Tell me about them then so I will understand."

"How about I tell you about my family and me, and then I don't have to tell you why I wasn't here yesterday?"

Knives mentally snorted. A human child was bargaining with a superior being such as he? Impossible! But, then again, he did not really want to push her to tell him something she did not want to. If it was a touchy subject, he would leave her be about it. "All right, fair enough." Knives silently wondered to himself why he let her off telling him like that. Why did he not want to push her?

"Well, I live in a kind of big house with my mommy and daddy though they aren't my real mommy and daddy. I was adopted one year ago. Someone found me wandering around outside a Plant bulb and couldn't find my parents so they took me to the orphanage."

"So the humans you live with right now aren't your true parents?"

"Hai, I don't know my true parents," she looked sadly at him and then asked, "Did you know yours?"

"I do not believe I had any."

"What?" Yume looked confused, "How can you not be sure? Everyone has parents! Silly Knives-sama!"

"I am a Plant, a superior being."

"Plants, like in the bulbs?"

Knives ground his teeth together at the mention of his enslaved brethren, "Yes."

"Heh, maybe because I was found outside a bulb and my parents couldn't be found, maybe I'm a Plant!" she grinned weakly.

Knives lifted an eyebrow and thought about it. Actually, it was plausible. A Plant could have given birth in a bulb and released its child outside. It could happen. And the girl did have telepathic abilities, a characteristic of Plant heritage. But what were the chances? Knives chided himself not to sidetrack his mind with idle fancies like that. Night was the time for serious thinking. "Do you have any siblings?" he asked the young girl.

"Well, mommy is pregnant, but she's been pregnant also two times before, and both times the baby died inside of her. So I don't think I'm going to have a little brother or sister…"

Vash approached the two, holding a nearly empty bag of donuts. "Hey Yume! Want a donut?"

"Really?" Yume's eyes lit up and she bounced up, "Yay for donuts!"

"Corrupting the human youth?" Knives asked his brother with disgust as the girl reached into the bag and pulled out one of the last sticky, sweet treats.

"There's nothing wrong with eating!" Vash laughed, "Besides, humans need to eat to survive."

Yume smiled up at Vash broadly. "Thank you, Donut-san."

"You're welco-wait a minute! Donut-san? I thought I was 'Person-san?'" Vash scratched his head, confused.

Yume just smiled up at the Plant and then began to eat her donut. After a moment, Vash smiled back at the girl and patted her on the head. "I like Donut-san more. Thanks." He walked off.

"Why do you insist on calling others by names you give them?" Knives inquired of the girl.

"Life's more fun that way!" she grinned back at him, giving him a good glimpse of the donut filling her mouth.

Knives shuddered. "Never, ever, ever do that again."

"Do what?" she asked, after swallowing her food.

"Speak with your mouth full. Eating is disgusting enough without you having to show me the digestive process."

"Oh, sorry, Knives-sama!"

"Just don't do it again."

"Okay…" the two lapsed into silence. Yume sat at the table and played with a pencil, lazily doodling across a small piece of paper. Knives sat in his chair, watching the girl. She was one of the oddest beings he had come across and, no matter how much he tried; he could not understand the way she thought. He would have her completely figured out one moment, then the next thing she did would astound him and he would have rethink his views of her.

They must have sat that way for longer than Knives had thought, for soon Vash walked up with two children latched onto his legs, tangling them up in his long, red coat. "But Vash-san, sir! We don't want you go home!" the one on his right leg whined.

"Yeah! Just a couple more games of checkers! Please?" the other begged.

Vash tried to pry the children off but to no avail. "No, I have to go! I'm sorry!"

"We won't let you leave!" the girl attached to the right leg announced.

"Yeah! You aren't gonna leave while we're on your legs!" the left leg boy grinned triumphantly.

"Spider scum, let my brother be. Now!" Knives barked, giving the children a glare that if looks were physical forces, it would have slammed them through the wall and sent them flying off the planet, into the darkness of space.

The two children's faces paled and they clung to Vash's trench coat in fear, hiding their faces in its ample coverage. Vash turned a small glare on his brother and then talked to the children, "I don't think you want to try to prevent me from leaving. You'll have to deal with him."

"Well… you'll be here tomorrow, right?" the little girl asked letting go of his leg after wiping her snot on his coat as the boy did the same. What is with the human children and wiping their bodily fluids on others? Knives thought to himself.

"Yes, I will. We'll play checkers then, okay?" Vash answered.

"Awh… okay… c'mon Yuki." The girl grabbed the boy's hand and dragged him off.

Vash turned angrily to his brother. "Will you please stop scaring the children?"

"Why do you care so much about spiders such as they?"

"Knives, we've been over this time and time again! Please, not now! I'm going to get a headache…" Vash put his hands on the wheelchair's handles.

"We are leaving?"

"Yes, we are. I'm ready to go when you are."

Knives looked at the little girl who was looking up at him. "I shall return here tomorrow. You will not be absent then?"

"I'll try not to be."

"If you are not here, I will be most displeased." Knives frowned.

"I can't promise, but I will try."

"That is better than nothing, I guess. Until then, farewell."

Yume climbed up into Knives' lap and gave him a hug. "Bye, Knives-sama." She quickly climbed down and Vash pushed the 'paralyzed' Knives out of the daycare.

Knives lay awake in his bed that night, thinking. Was the child a Plant? Many things pointed to such a conclusion and some did not. She was telepathic and the vast majority of humans had no such abilities. She was young but very intelligent for her youthful appearance. The humans she lived with were not her true parents and she had been found alone, outside of a bulb.

Yet, if she was a Plant, she showed no knowledge of her superiority to the humans. But, Knives thought, neither does my brother. He also had no proof of any exaggerated growth rate that would signify Plant heritage. Something is telling me though, something is telling me she is no mere spider…

Knives searched through his mind, scouring it for that thing he knew lay inside. The thing that screamed at him, she was not a human. His search seemed to be in vain though. Nothing he could come up with justified his feelings that she was a Plant.

Then, a shudder ran through his mind and body. His feelings… Of course! How he felt for the child! No mere human could make him feel that unknown feeling that coursed through his veins every time he looked at the girl. It was not love. Far from it. It was closer to… kinship. She had to be a Plant. He could not feel that for a human.

Knives smiled softly to himself and he stretched out on the bed, completely relaxing every muscle in his body as he let his mind drift off to sleep. Tomorrow he would begin to teach her the inferiority of humans. He would not let her turn out like Vash had. No. She would follow in his footsteps and together, they would conquer the world and completely annihilate Mankind, destroying along with it all traces that it had ever been on the desert planet. Then, they would live out their lives in peace, with his brother and the liberated Plants.

That night, Knives' dreams were filled with the screams of humans as they died and the joy-filled faces of Plants as he destroyed their bulbs and released them from their life-long prisons.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jeril: Greetings. I hope you all have had a good week. ^_^ I have. My birthday was on Friday the 13th, for those of you who did not know.

Yume: Friday the 13th? O.O Isn't that supposed to be bad?

Jeril: No, no. Friday the 13th's are my lucky days! ^_^ I had a lot of fun. Yuppers!

Yume: Is there any birthday cake? *grins innocently*

Jeril: Yup! Help me hand it out to the reviewers, would you? *cuts up the cake and puts begins to put the pieces on plates*

Yume: All right! Yay for birthday cake! *grabs a few plates and skips off to give them to reviewers*

Jeril: *speaks as she's cutting cake* Also, I renovated my web site and if you go to the section where you can view all the stories and their summaries and such, look under the Trigun section and you will find this one. Underneath it is a link to some art I did for this fanfic. Check it out! _ Sorry it's so big though. I couldn't draw it any smaller.

*gasps* Is Yume a Plant? Has what Knives discovered true? Yume! Is it?

Yume: I ain't spoiling nothing! ;p *laughs evilly*