Morality in Question Chapter 04
Story by: The HamsterofDeath
A/N: It would have been too mean to leave you guys waiting too long after that particular cliffhanger. I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please let me know what you think of it (bad or good), and maybe also where you think this is going :D
"Meryl?" Vash was leaning over her.
"Vash?"
"You collapsed."
"Milly... what happened to her?"
Meryl tried to get up hastily, but her low blood pressure prevented it. Her left hand managed to grab his arm.
"What happened? Tell me."
She stared at him, demanding an answer. At the same time, she summoned a memory. What did Knives say again?
Vash is trying to slow us down.
"Tell me!"
She gathered her forces and demanded an answer once again.
Vash told her a very believable story about the two running into bandits. There were 6 of them and of course Vash managed to defend himself. A safe path was open, Milly and him were about to escape, when she suddenly stumbled and fell. Vash was absolutely sure that there was no shot immediately before that, and due to covers, the angle of the sunlight and so on it was impossible to aim at them anyway. Vash went back, tried to carry her but it slowed him down.
He still managed to get away somehow, but when he finally had the time to check what was up with Milly, her pulse was gone. She had no bullet wounds. And on top of that, they lost most of what they were supposed to collect.
This is too suspicious.
Of course Vash's story was impossible to disprove.
"Where is... her body?"
Focus. Finish the shuttle. Rewind time. This will have never happened.
Vash gave her a location in the middle of nowhere. A hard to reach place, dangerous, but he promised to get whatever he could back tomorrow. He was exhausted and needed to rest now.
This is a trick, right? You told her to go somewhere, and she will come back in a few days. This is just a lie to keep me from being focused.
But then, Meryl realized how out of character this would be. Milly would never agree to play such a prank on her, and Vash wouldn't either. She felt alone. In a single span of 5 minutes, her view of the world became dark. She dug herself back into her cover closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She wanted to get up and confirm everything herself, but she knew it was impossible.
She had to wait at least until morning. But what was she hoping to gain?
Either Vash had become an enemy, or Milly was dead, or both.
In any case, she had to finish the shuttle. She would work twice as hard from now on. It would distract her. And when she was done, her pain would be gone. Everything would be good.
But Vash was a problem. She could no longer trust him. His story was too strange. He could cause more problems.
It didn't take long before Meryl dozed off again, as if everything had just been part of a dream.
When she woke up again, the warm sunlight pulled her out of a fuzzy world in which she could still talk to Milly. A dying Milly, telling her to help.
"He poisoned me!" she said just before Meryl woke up.
When she had regained her bearings, she felt something moist slide down her cheeks and land on her lap. She brought a hand to her face and realized that she had been crying. She quickly wiped all evidence away and got out of her tent.
Knives was already waiting. His expression was almost as usual, but Meryl believed to see a bit of pity in it. His eyes, usually so cold and steely, displayed a faint gentleness when they landed on her.
"Let's go and get the lost parts. You should know it is the best thing to do."
Meryl agreed. Her eyes felt strange and a bit swollen, she had to force them open.
"Will Vash come with us?"
"Yes. I cannot let him alone here. So I take you with me. To protect you, he will come with us. We can carry more together, we're faster, and it is safer."
Meryl's legs walked faster than usual. She didn't feel any exhaustion or pain. Her body was on fight or flight mode. Four hours went by during which she didn't speak a word. The next day her legs would probably hurt, but she didn't care.
"It is about half an hour from here, in that direction." Vash pointed at a few mountains. "There is a building between them. We were supposed to get the last piece there, but nobody showed up. Instead, there were bandits. I think they might be gone already, with the spare parts."
"It doesn't matter. We will hunt them."
The words escaped Meryl's mouth. Her body was acting by itself.
In her mind, she was elsewhere.
"What you are now experiencing is called cognitive dissonance. You are experiencing contradictory emotions."
Knives told her a few times that during his experiments to 'uplift humans', the most successful method to open someone's mind was to make him schizophrenic and then get the team to work together. It was a technique to get the brain out of a static viewpoint by pretending to have different views, different priorities. Meryl tried it a few times, and it didn't seem to work for her. Until she imagined Knives himself being inside her head. He would say things, point out ideas that she herself wouldn't have had. It was bizarre to talk to an imaginary friend, even more so since that imaginary friend came up with an opinion of his own and sometimes outsmarted her. But at least, she could trust him completely.
"Who do you think did it? The bandits? Vash? Knives? Who gains the most from this?"
"Vash would never do this!"
"So is it Knives?"
"Why would he slow himself down?"
"So it was Bandits?"
"Bandits beating Vash in a fight? Unlikely."
"You have to decide, my dear."
About 29 minutes later, they all reached a shabby building. It was empty, at least it seemed that way. No Milly, no dead Milly, no Bandits. There were no traces of blood anywhere. Meryl checked the surroundings. Everything Vash said could be true.
"Oh, so the bandits took care of the body. Why?"
"You have a point. What do you think, by the way?"
"I have no opinion for now. We need more information. For example, ask Vash where exactly Milly was. Then check for traces in the dust."
There was a trace in the dust on the ground. It looked like someone walked towards a point, then collapsed. Then, the body was dragged somewhere. Meryl followed it, while Knives was inspecting the surroundings.
"He is looking for the parts I think. You can keep looking for Milly. You are a good team."
"Thank you."
Vash was more or less passively standing around, not trying to stop them, but also not helping.
"Isn't it suspicious? He looks to me as if he is planning his next excuse."
"Thank you, but for now, help me look."
The trace stopped outside of the building. Did the wind blow sand over the trace? It gradually became thinner, so it was possible. Vash was looking outside of a window, checking what both Knives and Meryl were doing.
"Stomp on the ground."
"What?"
"Stomp on the ground. Check every few meters."
Meryl looked a bit stupid, but she didn't care. After a few minutes, she heard a very unexpected noise.
In the meantime, the real Knives put his fingers into the sand. He dug through it for a minute, until he found a screw. It could have been any screw, but it wasn't. He recognized the shape. It belonged to one of the spare parts, a simple transformator.
He kept looking and found more small pieces in the sand. Meryl knew what was going on in his head. He was reverse engineering hundred of possibilities. Everything he could imagine that could have possibly happened. To him, this was a puzzle.
Meryl also started to dig. What she found was nothing less than a trap door. Of course, it was locked. But it didn't withstand a shot from Knives' gun. Vash wouldn't allow the gun anywhere near his brother, but even he had to agree that leaving him completely helpless on such a dangerous trip was a stupid idea. So in the end, it was decided that she would carry the gun and only give it to Knives if the situation became hopeless. The AGL arms .45 Long Colt was much more efficient than her derringers. They felt like toys in comparison. She hadn't been surprised to hear that Knives built the gun from scratch.
The trap door opened, a ladder appeared, and Meryl almost jumped into the hole. To her surprise, it wasn't dark. This was some kind of underground hideout, and she heard noises. Laughter. And praise of cooking skills.
"Looks like someone is alive and well," said Mental Knives. Meryl lost her composure and barged right into a room with at least two bandits in each corner.
What she saw, was very, very confusing. The bandits were taking care of a person who looked exactly like Milly. She was lying in a bed, being fed what smelled like the soup she used to make.
Knives jumped down behind Meryl. "Wait! You cannot just..." He stopped when he saw the scene, too. Then he shouted "Vash! Explanation!"
No answer came back.
Meryl shouted "Milly! Explanation!", any Milly was happy to give a short summary.
"Well, we were carrying these heavy boxes full of spare parts when suddenly, a guy with a mask – that one – asked us what we were carrying. He said it was their territory, and we are not allowed to take anything without his allowance. He pointed a gun at us."
Her tone changed from happy to mysterious.
"And then I became dizzy. I remember Vash pulling me behind a rock and shooting at the poor guy. We started to run, but I couldn't feel my legs anymore. I tried to run anyway, but that is all I remember. I woke up here."
And it turned out she gave the recipe to the bandits' chef to thank them for taking care of her.
Knives had another important question. "Where are the boxes?"
Milly pointed at an overweight guy with a hat.
"That's the boss?"
Milly nodded.
Meryl approached Milly and looked at her more closely. After making sure that she was fine, she finally allowed herself to give her a heartfelt hug. "I am so glad you're alive! But what do you mean, you got dizzy? Just like that?"
"I don't know. It felt like getting up quickly after a hot bath."
"It was hot yesterday, wasn't it? And the box, how heavy was it?"
"You think I over-strained myself?"
Meryl counted. She saw four people and heard another one making sounds. They were at least five. So the excuse of Vash might be valid.
"Can you come with us?"
"I think so. I feel a lot better now."
Knives was in the middle of negotiations. Apparently, Vash caused some trouble for the bandits which were not really bandits but just merchants living here, using bandit outfits to scare the competition away. It wasn't completely clear if Vash knew about what he was doing and whether or not he was taking spare parts without permission, but Knives assumed he did know very well.
At the end of their discussion, the merchant leader looked very happy. You could see currency symbols floating in his eyes.
"What might he have promised him?" wondered Meryl. Mental Knives seemed to know.
"What do you think?"
Meryl was puzzled, then she realized that there was one thing that they had and could give away for free. The shuttle, after they were done with their plan. Of course, it would never happen if the plan succeeded, but the merchants didn't know that.
Meryl saw what she believed to be the smile of a victor on Knives' face. Mental Knives commented that he must have gotten more than just spare parts.
"Because even if he got them for free, we still lost a day? So what he got now is better than getting the day back?"
"You are learning quickly."
Knives was done with all negotiations and now being followed by a nerdy looking guy.
"He will help us. We'll be done a lot faster."
Meryl's face showed a smile. Knives saw it, and he understood what it meant. She understood what he did, and he understood what she was thinking. He approached her, leaned and whispered in her ear so as to not be overheard.
"Come visit me at midnight. I want to show you something."
"You did it. You passed!" Mental Knives was happy. Not as much as her, though.
"I will," responded Meryl proudly, blushing from the unexpected proximity.
Knives, followed by his new assistant, left the underground bunker, carrying the parts they came here to get.
Vash had come inside in the meantime, and he was aware of the situation. Meryl observed him closely. He behaved and moved as usual, but his face gave away some subtle hints of worry. He was brooding over something.
"Vash, what's up with you? Aren't you happy?" Meryl thought it was time to confront him. He was acting out of character, at least he should have helped searching.
"Oh, I am. About Milly, that is."
"But?"
"I don't see how he did it."
She could hear the smirk on Mental Knives' imaginary lips when he spoke in her inner ear. "He suspects Knives planned this. He cannot figure out how that was possible, and now fears being completely outmatched. But don't tell him you know that. In fact, better play stupid."
"Who did what?"
"My brother."
Vash spaced out.
"Vash?"
"Sorry. I think I should tell you what is really going on. Let's go outside."
Meryl followed.
After being outside of hearing range, Vash began to spill the beans.
"When Milly collapsed, I had no idea what was going on. My first idea was that Knives somehow poisoned her. It was possible. If she was dead, you might have focused completely on building the shuttle and reversing time. It would have given you a motivation. You would not consider it being a mistake at all. Just to get rid of your grief, you would have done whatever Knives wanted. It fits perfectly. It was the best option he had."
"But he couldn't have known about the merchants."
"He spent all his time in the shuttle. Him knowing the merchants was a possibility, but did it seem to you like they recognized him?"
Meryl summoned their faces. "No, they met him for the first time. Maybe he knew about them, without knowing them personally?"
"No. For this to be a plan, he would have had to know where we were getting the parts, make sure the timing of the poison was perfect, and instruct the merchants to attack us, but make sure not to injure Milly. He had no way to do any of that. You were with him all the time. He was always focused on his ship, was he not?"
Meryl summoned more memories. "Yes, he was constantly bossing me around or giving me lessons."
Meryl continued the train of thought. "If he was able to communicate despite all that and plan everything that precisely, it would have been easier to just have the merchants deliver the parts and skip the search and rescue mission."
"It's a mystery to me. I can't figure out what happened."
Vash seemed desperate. Meryl almost felt pity, despite understanding the huge difference between them. Back when she only knew that Vash and Knives were much more intelligent than average humans, she imagined them as two people having normal minds, but with the ability to process information faster, do complex calculations and the like. But after Knives introduced her to his way of seeing the world, she knew how wrong she had been.
Knives' mind was completely different from hers, and so, she assumed, the same must have been true for Vash. She only began to grasp the beginnings of really understanding his way of thinking. So Vash, she further assumed, must have had a mind that was equally hard to follow, but at the same time worked differently.
"You are still betting on me changing my mind?" asked Meryl.
"Yes. I am sure Knives is lying. He will go back, but once there, he will know what exactly he needs to do to make humanity go extinct."
He put his hands on her shoulders. His eyes betrayed the extent of his fear as he started pleading. "My brother hasn't changed, Meryl. He hasn't changed at all. You don't really know him, but I do. You have to believe me!"
The last time Meryl and Vash had this discussion, at the very beginning before they agreed on doing it, Meryl asked a few questions that now seemed stupid to her.
"Why don't you just stop him now? You could just destroy whatever ship he finds."
"No, I can't. I need to let him do this. If I don't play along, he will try to escape. He might eventually succeed, attempt to do it all alone, might succeed again, and then I would have no way to stop him. If I am around, see what he is trying to do, maybe I can prevent his plans completely."
Now, it was clear to her what Vash meant. Follow Knives to the still operating spaceship and blow that up. No worm hole, no time travel, no Knives ruling the world. This was his plan. Leave some room for Knives, but observe him closely. Always be one step ahead. As long as Vash managed that, everything was fine.
What happened today was a good reason for Vash to be desperate. He has not been in control. Not at all. He had no idea how Knives could have done it, and it freaked him out.