DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.
Protecting Milly
Free once more, Knives worked his limbs, stiff and numb from the time and effort of escaping his restraints, willing his circulation to resume. He was determined that this would be the final time the traitor and his accomplices shackled him.
It was clear that simple though she may be, the big woman and her weapon were of ample threat. So while Vash was his ultimate target, this was no suicide mission, and it would have to be the big one first, then the small one, then the traitor.
His first attempt had been sound enough, excepting the small one – there had been nothing wrong in his selection of a kitchen knife as an impromptu weapon. So a kitchen knife it was again, a sharp cutter with some heft to it.
Knives could have been a wraith in the darkness as he slowly but smoothly crept out of the basement and into the kitchen and on to the big woman's bedroom. Vash had set up crude measures of detection – placing toy cars on the basement stairs seemed rather childish – but Knives moved with care, detecting and avoiding them, sweeping his foot gingerly in front of him with each step, gently testing for anything that would hurt or trip him.
At last, he was at the big woman's room. His patience was about to pay off. So many times he'd been frustrated, but Knives had lived a long life with a lot of hate in his heart. He had learned how to focus that hate into patience, willing it from a lump of fire into a frozen ball. Many decades ago, a little boy who had found out what humans were capable of was so scared that he hid within himself. But he prayed to not be scared, and it was the ice god of hate who answered that prayer.
Knives opened the door, his weapon ready – and paused.
The woman was sound asleep, her big stun gun propped in a corner. There was no way for her to awaken and reach it in time if Knives were to attack.
But there was also something that shouldn't have been possible on this cloudy night that blocked out the light from the moons – one wall was lit in silvery light, showing the clear silhouette of a cross.
And there through the window…
Knives closed the door and retraced his steps, replacing the knife in the kitchen and returning to the basement. He could always execute this operation later. Right now, he needed to think.
Outside Milly Thompson's window, off in the distance, shadowed in the lack of moonlight, was the shape of a man. The tall, lanky figure nodded to itself as if it had somehow been able to see Knives' retreat. It leaned against a cross as big as it was and smoked its cigarette as it continued to keep watch over Milly.