The Changing Times

Welcome back, dear reader, to the dry and sandy desert plant of Gunsmoke. Follow me and do try to be quiet as we advance over the golden sands and through the hot, dry air to a place that should be quite familiar to you. The ancient canyon stretches over the surface of Gunsmoke for many iles, splitting the face of the planet like some half-healed wound that has refused to respond to medical treatment. Look closely and you will see a town in the distance, a town that you undoubtedly remember hearing about before.

Now, ever so quietly as we near the canyon, notice the man standing forlorn on the edge of the great crevasse. Does he look familiar to your eyes? If not, I find myself unsurprised. These last ten years have worn hard on the man known as Legato Bluesummers and he has changed so much since we last looked on him. The bullet buried deep within the confines of his skull has negated the fountain of youth granted to him by the attachment of Vash's left arm. Now his body is once more subject to the passing of the years, no longer an isolated oasis of frozen time. His once pure blue hair has faded with age, its silky, shining lengths now reduced to a glacial white, tinted with the faint sky blue found far below in the shimmering depths of the frozen ice where only the sun dares to travel freely. If you look closely at his smooth face, you can see faint lines gathered at the corners of his eyes, though those piercing golden orbs still shine as brightly as ever, glistening with a cunning intelligence that not even time can dull.

And like his eyes, ever unchanging, his mind is of the same opinion it took a stand on and held ten long years ago…

Legato spent a lot of time, high up on that vantage point, staring across the expansive horizon. He stood there and waited, as he had ten years ago, although this time he knew not what for. Perhaps he waited for old age to claim his life. Or maybe he patiently bided his time as he waited for Vash the Stampede to come and finish the job he had botched those long years before.

One of the known causes for his retreat to the spot however, was simpler and involved no unnecessary delving into that enigma's psyche. Legato Bluesummers, the last loyal minion to Millions Knives, the bearer of Mankind's doom, spent many of his hours on the edge of that canyon because he immensely disliked the sound of a child's laughter.

Or, more specifically, his disliked the sound of Yume's laughter.

In fact, he disliked any noise the child made.

For the last ten years, he had had to put up with the girl and even, at some more horrendous points, take care of the brat. Multiple times he had tried to introduce the child 'accidentally' to her maker but alas, the girl had an amazing ability to detect danger and avoid it. He recalled each of the plans as clearly as he remembered each one's failure. Legato absentmindedly began petting his left hand as he thought, stroking the eternally soft and sleek skin of Vash the Stampede.

The first attempt on the girl's life had been made roughly seven months after she and Knives had arrived. Legato would have killed her directly by his own hands, and been successful in the attempt, but he knew that to do so would incur his Master's wrath and most possibly his own demise. That was not something that Legato wished to happen and so he plotted out a way for the girl to meet her end and have no blame fall onto his head.

For weeks Legato had been experimenting with his powers on the girl, seeing to what extent he could manipulate her mind and physical actions. His experiments had been fruitless in some aspects as he discovered the most physical activity he could induce her into executing was a mere eye blink or twitch of one of her fingers. The girl's latent abilities protected her from anything more unfortunately. However, quite by accident, he had discovered a weakness of the girl; a flaw not of her abilities but coming from her mind itself.

One rather uneventful day, Legato was relaxing in a chair and musing to himself about his current hunger and how he was craving a hotdog very much at that moment. Knives was out that day and Legato knew not what his Master was doing and he had no desire to ask. His Master's business was not his to know unless Knives saw fit to inform him of it.

Legato noticed Yume look up at him suddenly from where she had been reading a small book Knives had provided for her. She chewed her lip for a moment as she touched her stomach. Then she announced softly, "I'm hungry." Her gaze turned inquisitive. "Are you?" Legato nodded in acquiesce. Her face assumed a thoughtful look and then she asked, "Could we have some hotdogs? I really want a hotdog."

"You just ate an hour ago." Legato reminded her.

"But I'm really hungry and I want a hotdog. Please?" she gave him the look that she usually reserved for Knives when she was endeavoring to melt his heart. Legato looked coldly at her until she squirmed slightly, and then nodded, standing up to fetch the hotdogs. Inside though, he was delighted that she had requested hotdogs as that gave him an excuse to eat some himself. He thought it odd that she was hungry at the same time as he was, for hotdogs too, but he did not dwell long on the notion as he had a much more important activity to attend to.

Later that same day, Legato was once more stretched out on the aforementioned chair though this time he was not in a relaxed state. He was so overjoyed when he brought out the hotdogs for Yume's and his consumption that in his excitement he devoured a large number of the plump edibles. Seven to be exact, and now his stomach was complaining once more, but not of hunger this time. Nausea was assailing the poor man as he clutched the chair's arms hard and tried to convince his roiling belly to stop its imitation of an earthquake ranking a 9.0 on the Richter scale.

Yume was once more occupied with her book, happily coloring in a small picture in the book intended for such a purpose. She glanced up to look at Legato's pale face and said in a cheerful voice, "You don't look so good, Legato man!" Legato glared balefully at the child with as much ferocity as he could muster in his weakened condition. She merely smiled and returned to her coloring.

After a moment however, the furious motions of her small hand ceased and she looked up once more, her face now as pale as Legato's. She quickly set down her book and crayons and put a hand to her head, mumbling quietly to herself, "I don't feel well…"

Legato lifted an eyebrow slightly at this turn of events. He wondered for a moment if the hotdogs had spoiled but dismissed that thought. He had purchased them only two days before and the refrigeration unit that they used usually kept hotdogs fresh for at least two weeks before they began to decay. And they were always long gone before that much time had elapsed from their purchase.

Why then was the girl feeling sick? She had only eaten one of the plump meat foods and that was far from any amount of food that would cause her to feel bad from overeating. So why was she feeling just like he was?

An idea sparked to life in Legato's brain and he mused over it for a long moment, staring at the uneasy looking child as he thought. Then he concentrated hard on the roiling motions of his stomach and the nauseous feeling building within his body, amplifying it outward and at the girl, forcing the sensations down her mental throat. She lurched to her feet and staggered out of the cavern. From his chair, Legato listened with a certain satisfaction as the girl heaved out the contents of her small stomach over the edge of the path on the canyon's side. "So," he excogitated, forgetting about his physical misery as he tasted the pleasant words traveling over his tongue as they left his mouth, "there is a chink in her suit of armor after all. This is a pleasing discovery."

After a few more tentative experiments and some very pleasing results, Legato came to the conclusion that he was able to affect how the girl felt though it took a great deal of concentration on his part or a very powerful emotion that he was feeling and could direct at her. As a result of her sensitivity to others' feelings and state of mind, the girl had a large gap in her abilities that left her open to this unseen and hard to perceive attack. Although it was not direct control of the girl, it still was quite a powerful force against her as she was still young and thus easily manipulated and unaware of the backdoor to her feelings.

Legato continuously monitored all traffic with a fifty ile radius of their encampment and two weeks after his experiments, he discovered a small group of bandits moving through this area. This was when his first plan on Yume's life was hatched and quickly put underway. He concentrated on the girl, awakening within her small body the desire to run, to jump, to send herself sprawling into the sand of the desert. He saw her eyes light up and she sprang to life, bounding over to Knives. "Knives-sama!" she called out in her annoyingly cheerful voice.

"Yes?" he looked coolly at her but Legato saw the small tug at the corners of his lips, the sign of a suppressed smile. While Legato's countenance remained calm and unmoved, inside he felt his emotions boil and churn in anger and jealousy. He hoped with a vicious internal grin that the bandits killed her slowly and painfully.

"It so sunny and nice outside! Can I go play up the path?" she asked, giving him a look that would have melted ice.

"It's always sunny here," Knives answered, his expression unvarying. "It is a rare occasion when clouds gather over one area." He enjoyed stringing her out but he always gave into what she wanted and she had grown to know that.

"You're so silly, Knives-sama!" Yume laughed and the little ringing chimes echoed through the cavern that they lived in. She skipped toward the entrance and called out over her shoulder, "See you later Knives-sama! Bye, Uncle Legs!"

Legato felt his well-kept composure begin to crumble at the child's parting shot. She had made up the nickname for him recently and although it was evident that it got under his skin faster than any other thing she could say, she still called him it. He supposed that she was so oblivious to the nuances of human body language that she could not understand that the moniker irritated him. Legato breathed deeply and closed his eyes to think calming thoughts, which were mainly composed of images of Yume's decapitated body strewn over golden desert sand stained a rusty color with her blood.

Yume skipped through the sand, singing a song that she recalled from her time at the daycare. "The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out." Although she knew not what a 'water spout' was and doubted that it could rain enough to wash anything away, she liked the little ditty's tune and found it stuck in her head often. Her eyes were drawn to a small dust cloud that was close on the horizon and growing. Curiosity flooded her mind and she skipped towards the cloud, intent on discovering its origin.

This turned out to be a group of thomases, ridden by tough looking men wielding guns. Yume stopped and stood in their path, waiting for them. The lead man saw her and when his group was fifteen or so feet away from the girl, he pulled his thomas to a halt and stared at the little girl with a slightly puzzled look. "Hey, kid! What're you doing out here alone?" he asked in a gruff voice.

"Playing in the sand," Yume answered with a smile, rocking back and forth on her heels. "What're you up?"

One of the other men grinned at the girl, exposing his yellow, rotten teeth to view, and Yume wrinkled her nose at the sight. "We're playing too."

"Wanna play together?" One of the other men chimed in, winking at his companion and fingering a large knife at his hip.

"Sure!" Yume jumped up and down and clapped her hands in joy. "I haven't had anyone to play with in a long time! Knives-sama and Legato man never want to play with me."

"Knives?" The leader waved his hand at his men to shut up with their snickering. "Who is this Knives?"

"I live with him and Legato man! He's the best!" Yume smiled happily.

A small man who looked suddenly nervous piped up. "Boss? Wasn't there that incident at Tonim where everyone disappeared and they found the name 'Knives' written on a monument in blood?"

"Yeah." Yume noticed that most of the men had turned quite pale and were looking about themselves restlessly.

"You think this is the same Knives?" the man asked the leader, who was gnawing on his lip with agitation.

"It's not that common a name, boss!" another man chimed.

"Yeah, we shouldn't chance it!" The entire group was nodding and murmuring to themselves in agreement. The boss opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted.

"Hey! Who're they?" the small man pointed toward the way Yume had come and at two figures moving quickly towards the bandits. "You think one of them could be that Knives guy, boss?"

"How should I know?" the leader snapped. "I've never seen this psychopath before! How can I know what he looks like?"

"Ask the kid!" someone yelled.

"Yeah!" The leader fixed a threatening glare on the child and barked, "Is one of those guys Knives?"

Yume turned and squinted, looking at the approaching people. "I can't really tell. It's hard. The sun's behind them. One of them looks like the Legato man. They might be them. But I dunno!" She shrugged and smiled.

The men stared at her with a quizzical look. One of them turned to the other and said in a low voice, "Why's she smiling?"

"I dunno, but I don't think she's all together, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I agree."

Yume looked more closely at the two figures and let out a loud squeal of delight. "Knives-sama!" She dashed towards the Plant and latched herself around his waist, hugging him tightly.

"Hello, girl. Having fun?" Knives asked Yume although he kept his eyes on the group of bandits in front of him.

"Yeah! Meet my new friends!" Yume jumped back and waved excitedly at the group of men. "They're really nice!"

"I'm sure." Knives' voice was frosty and Yume could tell something was wrong but what it was she was not very sure of. He grabbed her hand and turned to face Legato. "I trust you will take care of them?"

"Of course, Master." Legato nodded and Knives left, Yume in tow. She protested for a few moments but realized that there was no way she was going to be allowed to stay with her new 'friends' and so she quieted down and followed Knives obediently.

Legato faced the group of bandits, his expression calm but his voice dripping with anger. "You stupid, pathetic men. Every day you break what little laws this godforsaken planet has. Every day you kill people. And this one time you decided not to? You are truly useless."

The leader of the group drew his gun. His comrades grinned, thinking their boss was going to shoot the unarmed man standing before them, but their grins quickly faded when he took aim at one of their own. "Boss, what-" the unfortunate man started but his words were cut off by a loud crack and a blossom of red blood on his chest that ran down his shirt. He stared at the wound for a moment with a stupid, puzzled smile on his face, and then slid off his thomas to land on the sand quietly.

"Help me! I can't stop myself!" the leader howled, his face contorted in shock as he watched his hand take aim once more and shoot another of his companions.

"He's gone mad! Stop him!" the small man cried out, pulling out a large shotgun and taking aim to shoot at the man under Legato's control. Then he watched in surprise as he took aim once more and shot the man on the thomas next to him.

Legato stood, watching impassively as the men turned on each other, wildly shooting people who they had known for years and suddenly perceived as a threat. When all were lifeless corpses draining their lifeblood into the golden sands, he stared at the chaotic work he had created. Then, he turned and began walking back to report to his Master.

And that is generally how all of Legato's attempts to destroy the girl had gone for the past ten years. No matter his medium to complete the job, it has failed whether by human error, or by the girl's own blind luck.

Legato stood on the edge of the crevasse and looked up at the clear, unclouded sky. He felt his lips quiver with the hint of a smile as he recalled the incidents. Someday the child's luck would run out. It had to. And, when that long awaited day came, Legato Bluesummers would be waiting patiently for her, holding a one-way ticket to Hell with her name on it.

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Back after a long, long absence, here I am. Hope you all enjoyed the chap. It probably wasn't what you expected and I would love feedback on it, like always. That's pretty much all I have to say except if you're craving more Trigun stuff by me in the gap between the next update, check out my two oneshots and my Vash songfic to the song "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd. I'm going to try to finish this fic by its one year birthday, the 4th of May. So expect my updates to be much more frequent. The next chapter will be focused somewhat on Vash and what's happened to him in the past ten years. I'll see you all then. Take care until next time.