DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.
How he moved so quickly, Vash wasn't entirely sure. He and Barkeep had split up at the gates to cover more ground, then there was a tug in his mind and he simply needed to move and speed answered his urgency.
It didn't matter. He was here and one of O'Brien's people had a gun on Meryl. That was all he needed to know.
Vash's hand thrust itself out, clamping around the cylinder of the gunman's revolver to keep it from rotating. What did rotate was the weapon itself as Vash brought it up and around, taking the man's wrist along with it, executing a disarm so forcibly that the gunman's finger was broken as Vash wrenched the weapon from his hand.
The high-pitched sound of a wounded animal tore itself from the gunman's throat. He fled under the instincts of a would-be predator suddenly finding itself prey. Vash let him, emptying the captured weapon and tossing it away.
Meryl's eyes were able to focus again by now. She looked happily up at Vash, searching for some kind of clever quip to make – until she saw his scowl. There was something in his eyes that his sunglasses hid, but she could feel it – this was still not the Vash she knew.
He glanced at her, looking her up and down. This was not at all how Meryl had thought things might go, Vash bursting on the scene and saving the day and cheerily greeting her with a cocky grin and some nonsense about love and peace.
There was no cheer in his once-over. She couldn't even tell if there was concern in the scan for physical injury.
He nodded, seemingly more to himself than her. Then he walked away from her.
Meryl just watched him, too out of sorts to follow.
Or maybe, just maybe, too afraid of the man who could save her and then look at her so coldly…
Vash's steps took him further into the panicking thomases and dust and gunfire. Further into the chaos.
He let his senses guide him, tell him how to move and when to fire. Milly had the rifle; Barkeep had said the old man, Dodd, would have longarms as well. Filter out rifle fire. Filter out derringers, too – who knew, Meryl might decide to jump back in in her bullheaded fashion. All other gunfire he marked for return fire; Ranger, lacking both longarm and derringer, would just have to be lucky enough to not be shooting in his general direction, he could only be so selective right now.
Sounds here, sounds there. Vash moved with his preternatural speed, his plant mind detecting each gunshot and calculating where it came from and automatically plotting trajectories and directing his body's movement. It was slightly less accurate than when he could see where the gun was aimed, but with the reduced visibility the enemy fire was less accurate, too. He dropped to a knee, drawing and emptying his revolver with such speed it could have been mistaken for a full-auto burst, then breaking and reloading with equal speed as he rose and went back on the move, using his burst as a marker to draw fire while he moved elsewhere.
He was without plugs, having refused the ones Barkeep had offered going on. Didn't need them, never had. Doc had once told him he had a heightened medial olivocochlear reflex, then dumbed it down for him as, "Your body protects itself from hearing loss by turning down the volume on things like gunfire." Whether Vash was born like this or if it was some plant adaptation developed through time, he couldn't tell.
It didn't matter, anyway. There was no need to know the whys and wherefores of his body, it was enough for now to know he'd never be at risk of damaged hearing.
Enemy, over there. But as Vash aimed, a panicked thomas came bounding his way. He moved with it, snapping his shot while dropping to his knees and bending backward as the thomas leaped. His drop to nearly full ground-level put him well out of harm's way from the claws, the beast moving what felt like high overhead before landing and continuing on its frenzied way. Vash's eyes and sights stayed fixed, confirming the man was wounded in the forearm, weapon dropped.
Back to his feet, already aiming again as he did. Fire. Hit to the shoulder. New target, shift and fire on the move, leg wound. He adjusted and fired again, the shot hitting the gun-side bicep. Another O'Brien gunman, a quick double-tap put rounds in the arm and side. Reload, the fresh shells already in while the spent ones were still in the air.
More gunmen. Vash never slowed down, firing on the move. One sounded from the reaction like he snagged a hit in someone's hand or wrist. Then a thigh wound. Forearm. Shoulder.
Reload, empty the cylinder, reload, empty the cylinder.
The dust didn't seem to bother his breathing. However, it was hard to tell really where the shots were going except by movements he could just vaguely make out. It was also getting hard to care – what did it matter so long as opponents were being neutralized?
Return fire came, but if Vash's elevated senses had a hard time with this environment, the average human senses were much worse off. Any shots that came close did so by luck more than skill, and still weren't close enough to test how well he could avoid them.
But some shapes that were hazy through the thick dust grew into discernible forms, then further solidified into silhouettes, then finally into a group of O'Brien men rushing at the source of the gunfire that had plagued them for the past few minutes.
If anyone who knew Vash could only see his outline and the actions he was taking, they would not know who this man without restraint was. He shot one man in the kneecap, sending him crashing to the ground. Another received a double-tap across his midline, striking the hip and another part of the pelvic girdle, destroying his weight-bearing ability and therefore mobility as he too went down with a screeching wail. A third was hit in the torso; Vash saw it impact and bounce off what must be a rib, a shot so improbable that it defied even luck and had to be divine providence. There were so many other soft targets in that region that he normally never would shoot there.
Only one man was left barreling at him, and Vash's weapon still had two rounds live. He stepped and pivoted with the gunman's momentum, a hand coming up to from behind to further accelerate him on his way, gun barrel coming up at 90 degrees to the enemy's face to loose a double-tap.
Several things happened in almost the same heartbeat – the two shots, right on top of each other, issued forth a double helping of muzzle flashes, the brief plumes of fire not brief enough to keep from damaging the man's eyes and blinding him; the dual reports of the gunshots so close to his ears sent pain coursing through them, deafening him; and he butted against the barrel of Vash's revolver, searingly hot not just from the fresh double-tap but from the rate of fire Vash had been demanding of it since entering the fight. All of these kept the gunman from noticing the vicious snarl that tore itself from deep within Vash's soul with the doubled pulls of the trigger.
The gunman couldn't even hear his own anguished cry as the momentum from Vash's push sent him stumbling face-down in the sand.
Just to be extra sure, Vash took a moment to stride over and retrieve the enemy's weapon from its holster, emptying it and tossing it. He reloaded his own weapon and moved, spurred by the unseen dark things riding him, to rejoin the fight, the living weapon seeking fresh targets.
He lived up to his moniker of The Humanoid Typhoon, moving and firing in the thick, dusty pandemonium so rapidly that one couldn't be blamed for thinking there must be more than one man responsible for this storm of gunfire. Targets were shot as fast as he detected them.
At last, after several more speedloaders had been used up, his revolver clicked empty just in time for another panicked thomas to come at him full-tilt. There was no thought of dodging this one – Vash crouched and leaped, coiled muscles propelling him straight for the beast, teeth bared as he brought his empty weapon up and smashed the butt against the side of the thomas's head with all the force he could muster. The thomas fell, unconscious, its body thudding dully.
New targets were suddenly on him…four, five, six, Vash couldn't be sure and he just didn't give a damn. They tried to pile him in a crowded mess of fists, too close to each other to risk using their guns, but they weren't ready for him eschewing defense for immediate offense.
He didn't need his weapon loaded for it to be an extension of himself, enhancing his rage-fueled strikes. The gun butt came down on a wrist, breaking the fragile bones in it. A palm strike sent the butt smashing into a man's jaw. The barrel thrust straight into another gunman's solar plexus before Vash swung the hefty frame up to crash into his head right behind the ear.
In a matter of moments, they were out of the fight.
Vash patted himself, seeking another reload; his ammunition was starting to run light, but he found one all the same and reloaded just in time to be aware of a target coming from behind at the same time as he saw movement from the corner of his eye. He fired blindly behind as he pivoted, letting his other senses guide the shot to where the target would be, not concerned with where the target would be hit, while he dealt with the second target coming from the side. In a whirl, he seized that target's gun arm and sent the target over and onto his back. A booted foot stepped hard on the target's wrist, forcing it to release its grip on his weapon. The target found himself staring up into an eternity of blackness that was really the barrel of Vash's revolver.
Vash's finger began to tighten, pounds of pressure starting to build into a trigger squeeze, while the target's mouth moved noiselessly, his eyes silently begging for his life.
No more. No more mercy for those who granted none to others. The thing inside was done whispering, it was outright shouting at Vash from its place in his soul.
Let none survive.
