Yay! Real chapter! *Audience sighs* Well, this just has one POV, Vash's, even though most of it is a first-person narrative by Wosh. Don't worry, I swear it's not too boring! Besides, I think Wosh is a cool character…*dodges rotten vegetables*

Yeah…thank you to all the people that reviewed after my last-chapter-reviewe-thank-you and any of those that I forgot to thank before when…well, yeah. ^_^

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I followed Knives into the bar walking as fast as possible without running, looking around frantically as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

"The little shit must have left!" Knives growled.

"I didn't leave," said a calm, soft voice from directly to my left. I turned to look at him, my still-unadjusted eyes barely discerning his dark-clad figure from the shadows of the wall he was leaning against.

This man had seen Meryl! Here! My mind screamed at me.

"Yes I did," he said in a slightly amused voice.

Wait, I knew I hadn't said that aloud. My mind automatically flickered back to the last man who had always known what I was thinking. A man who spoke softly as well…

He stepped out from the shadows, and I relaxed somewhat as I made sure that he wasn't Legato. There was no aura of evil radiating from him, no simple and perfect malevolence in his gaze. In fact, he was rather open and unassuming-looking. He smiled at me slightly and motioned to a near-by table.

"Would you like to sit down?"

I nodded numbly, my angst slowly wearing off, and sat at the table, followed by himself and Knives, who still looked suspicious.

The man removed his hat and bit his lip in thought, analyzing us. The sweep of his penetrating deep blue gaze made me feel incredibly uncomfortable, so I decided to stare at the glasses lined up above the bar, looking back at him when he finally spoke.

"You don't trust me. Neither of you do," he sounded a little exasperated. "What can I do to make you trust me?"

Knives narrowed his eyes at the man. "Tell us your story. All of it. And what it has to do with these insurance girls."

The man sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Familiar hair. "Then I'll tell it from the beginning. My name is Wosharu. My last name—my real last name—is inconsequential. Yes, I can see the look on your face, Vash the Stampede. I'm a wanted outlaw. But then, so are you, so why the shock and surprise? It doesn't really make a difference. I was born in a small, relatively unknown town, the son of the local prostitute. My father, of course, was pretty much unknown due to that.

"I had a hard childhood. None of the men in town wanted to make it seem like there was even a possibility that they were my father, so all of them either ignored me or abused me. After all, their reputations would be crushed if it was known that they had spent a night or two with my mother, but nothing would happen to them if someone saw them beating up the town bastard." He said bitterly, absently smoothing the cloth of his hat, lost in his memories.

"My mother was really my only family. She tried her best to be a good mother, but she never was very good at it. She said that se had had one son before me, but she realized that the only way she knew how to make a living was selling herself on the streets, so she gave him to foster parents. Part of me wished she had done the same with me, given me some semblance of honor. But the rest of me…well I loved her. Loved her failed attempts at mothering. Loved how she and I spent evenings trying to teach ourselves how to cook something decent. Staying up late and watching cheesy horror movies." He sighed. "Look what I've gotten myself into, now I'm telling you my life story. I'll move on if—"

"No, keep going," I said quickly, trying to conceal the emotion that had sprung up in tear form into my eyes. Knives gave me a perturbed look and elbowed me under the table.

"No crying!" He hissed.

I gave him a scathing look, then turned back to Wosharu. "Please continue."

He smiled slightly. "Well, as I was saying my mother and I had a few years of relative happiness together before I started to display signs that I wasn't a regular child. One day, when I was being accosted by one of the men in town after he had gotten drunk, I snapped. He had shoved me into a trash bin, and then next thing I knew, my vision was being overtaken by red and the man slammed backwards into a brick wall. I lashed out at him over and over again but not physically. It was with my mind. By the time I snapped out of it, he was lying unconscious against the wall and blood was streaming out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. I saw him for the first time with rational eyes and I was horrified. I was only a little boy, not more than nine years old. So I ran home and never told a soul. Until you two, that is.

"But after that, my strange powers kept on resurfacing in random ways. I could watch a person and in addition to hearing what they were saying, I would hear what they were thinking as well! At first I didn't realize what was happening. I would answer questions that no one had ever asked, only thought. People looked at me like I was a freak, and I suppose I was.

"With my limited knowledge of what was happening to me, I built my own sort of fantasy world around me and withdrew into myself. I suppose if nothing had snapped me out of it, I would have eventually gone completely insane. At that point, not even my mother could reach me any more. And remember when I said she was never good at mothering? Well, this is where it comes in. She decided my condition was too much for her to handle, so she let me do whatever I wished.

"One day, I wandered my way to the town Plant. It was late at night, so all of the workers were gone. With my psychic powers, I was able to open the locks on all of the doors, and I wandered to the very bulb itself. It was as if some force had been guiding me, because I never could've found my way through that metal labyrinth by myself.

"I have no memory of what happened within that chamber, but all I know is that when I came out, I had returned to the real world. I saw myself within the grand scheme and I knew that I was different than other people. I also knew that I couldn't stay in that town any more. I couldn't stay where people knew what I could do. I couldn't stand their stares. So I returned to my house, packed up a few of my possessions, kissed my mother goodbye, and left. At that time I was fifteen.

"Over the course of my travels, I tested the extent of my powers and also racked up my current criminal record. I found that once people found out that I was different, once they realized that my capabilities were in any way extraordinary, the responded with violence. That's when I gained my nicknames. Angelsbane. The Black Devil. Just because of the way my powers tended to get out of hand when I was angry. And that happened a lot in the early days.

"My power had grown as I had gotten older, and the same amount of anger that had been directed towards that drunk when I was a child was easily enough to kill five men when I was an adult. I always regretted it afterwards. Even though I hated all of the ignorant, mean fools who had angered me, I always thought to myself 'what if that was the man who was my father?'. The idea had obsessed me from my very early youth, probably because it had been both physically and mentally pounded into me for all of my childhood.

"The years passed, and the anger of youth has gradually faded away. I guess you could called me jaded now. I go from town to town, sitting around, drinking, and occasionally getting rid of those who come for my bounty via whatever means necessary.

"Those insurance girls of yours intruded briefly upon my life in a flurry of light against the blackness in my mind, and I enjoyed it. They all had their own little stories inside their minds. Stories of excitement and adventure, of love and loss, so much different from the bland violence of most people around here." He motioned to the few other people in the bar. "Something moved in me when I met them. A something that I haven't felt in nearly twelve years. I wish that I could go after them, but I knew I was destined to tell you about them." His gaze shifted from its focus on a spot somewhere in the distance to us.

"But now that you're here," he said, his emotions quickly shifting to excited cheerfulness. "I can go with you two to find them!"

"No." Knives said flatly. "Your sob story was very touching and all but we don't need you to come along and slow us down."

"Oh, so you'd rather I didn't tell you in just what direction those girls went?"

"Oh, come on, Knives," I said, recovering from my emotion at Wosharu's life story. "It wouldn't hurt to let him just come along."

Knived growled and pulled me up from the chair. "Would you excuse us, please?"

He yanked me off to the side. "Do you honestly want this psychic freak to follow us around for however the hell long it takes us to find these insurance girls?"

"I heard that!" Wosh called from the table.

"I don't see what your big problem is!" I said back. "He knows where they went, and I'm guessing that the next time we randomly pick a direction to travel, it might not be the right way!"

Knives let go of me with resignation. "Okay, you win. We'll let him along." He muttered.

"Good choice," said Wosh, grabbing his hat and walking over to us. "Follow me."