Chapter9
-Rhez-
Rhez took a drink from his canteen and stopped to look back. The desert had turned into hardpan a few miles back but it wasn't any nicer, just lacked sand. He started walking again, and as he topped a hill he was surprised to see a forest. In truth it looked like it had been a forest at one time, but the life had been ripped from it long ago. The trees were gnarled and blackened, and not a single one of them had a leaf on it. Rhez doubted that any of them were sill alive, just dead husks of bark and rotted wood. The forest stretched for as far as the entire valley it was in, like a sea of black twisted bodies. Rhez walked down into the valley, the shadows from the trees giving some relief from the sun, but not much. The smell of burnt wood hung in the air like it had been that way for a long time. Rhez walked through the black forest for a while, it made him uneasy, like something was watching him. He stopped and listened, had he heard…? Rhez spun and drew his revolver, shooting and blowing a hole in one of the trees. Spiders spilled out of the hole and swarmed all over the ground. Rhez sighed and shook his head. "Damn nasty things…" He said to himself and turned back around. Out of nowhere a thick string of webbing hit his revolver, and yanked it out of his hand and pulled it somewhere back into the trees. "Shit!" Rhez whipped the rifle around off of his back and dove behind a tree. He cocked the rifle and took a deep breath. "Who are you?!" Rhez shouted out from behind the tree. There was no response, only what sounded like a near silent clicking. Rhez listened to the sound, but couldn't figure out what it was. His rifle was ripped out of his hands by webbing from above him suddenly. Rhez rolled away and looked up, but all he saw was a blur moving away through the trees. "Damn it you bastard, what the hell are you?" Rhez heard the clicking again, and he hit the ground just as something smashed the tree he was behind in half. He rolled to the side as a huge spider leg came crashing down at him, piercing the ground as it narrowly missed him. Rhez jumped to his feet and spun around and came face to face with his attacker. "What the fuck?" He stumbled backwards putting a few feet between him and his attacker. It was a man, a man in a tight black body suit, with dull metal anklets and bracers. His face was covered by a dull metal mask that had six circular black glass eye holes. He had black greasy hair that hung down over the mask wildly and four robotic spider legs sprouted from his back and suspended him off the ground. The man cocked his head to the side and gurgled under his mask. "You're in my way freak, and I really don't appreciate being unarmed." The spider legs moved the man forward a few steps as his fingers twitched in anticipation. Rhez smiled and held his arms out. Guns popped out of his sleeves and slid into his hands with a wrist movement. "Guess you forgot a couple." Rhez said as he opened fire. He emptied his semi-automatic pistols into the man, bullets tearing through flesh and ricocheting off the metal. For a second the man didn't move, but than one of his spider legs slashed violently at Rhez. He ducked the attack as it smashed multiple trees to pieces. Rhez flipped backwards as another swipe from the spider legs narrowly missed him. The man cracked his neck as Rhez rolled away from another attack that destroyed another tree. "Bastard didn't even slow down!" Rhez said to himself as the pistols slid back into his sleeves. He reached under the back of his coat and pulled out a sawn off. He rolled out from the tree he was behind as it exploded into splinters after a spider leg crashed through it. "Try and shake this off freak!" He yelled as he fired two shots from the sawn off. A chunk of the man's shoulder blew away and the other shot clanged off of a spider leg, only denting it. Rhez cursed and reloaded as he dodged another attack. "Why don't you just…" He was cut off in mid sentence as the man shot spider webs from his wrists and covered Rhez. He hit the ground and rolled away, his arms stuck to his body. The assassin scurried over to him on the spider legs as his fingers twitched again. He stopped, something wasn't right. He looked down to see a grenade lying on the ground. "Just call it bug spray." Rhez said and rolled further away. The explosion rocked the forest, destroying trees and sending dirt and dead wood flying everywhere. Rhez climbed to his feet as the smoke cleared and managed to get to his knife and cut his way out of the webbing. Rhez looked around and shook his head. "Did the freak get away?" He sighed and put the sawn off away as he started to look for his other guns.
-Stran-
-Two Weeks Earlier-
Several days have now passed and Stran and Knives continue there ethical debates. Stran's attitude towards Knives has lighted up some as he begins to realize just how right Knives might be. After all humans where destroying every thing that found including each other. That had to be the same reason they left there old planet now there working on this new one. Knives continually more then nudging Stran in the direction he wanted him to go in. Stran thought that he was coming to these conclusions on his own but in the back of his mind he never stopped questioning Knives motives.
The days continued to pass and slowly Stran stopped questioning Knives and they began to train together this was as much a benefit to Knives as it was to Stran as Knives had not had much hand to hand combating skill's to begin with letalone in the past three years. For hours at a time they would train eight nine some times ten hours strait.
A week or so later a group of people should up at the compound six men and two women. The first two men looked identical both of them shoulder length brown hair red vest's and knee length brown duster's and brown pants. Another was a tall man with wild black hair, he wore a black metal mask with six black red glass eyes. He had a long closed black trench coat and a large hump on his back. There was a priest, middle aged with slicked back black hair with grey down the sides. He absently spun a small black cross in his hand and whistled a hymn to himself. A stunning beauty stood next to him with her shoulder length blonde hair cut precisely and held by a red hair clip. She had a tight red dress on, with a short black coat on overtop of it, and acted like this was a waste of her time. The last one was a very tall girl black and red hair put up into long pig tails with bangs that came down past her eyes which where blue and brown. She wore all white cloths that looked much like Stran's but she wore a long purple coat that covered her arms and buttoned at the neck and below her waist leaving her bear torso completely visible. Stran immediately took notice to her looking into her eyes every chance he had.
He had become so quickly infatuated with her that he all together forgot about Vash and why he had left in the first place. Some times late at night Stran would lay in bed completely worn out from a long day of training with Knives and the new recruits he would just lay there trying to figure out what it was that had been bothering him there was a sense of un fulfillment in his life but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Yes master I understand" the girl in pigtails replied to knives as he turned his back and returned to looking out the window. The girl walked to Stran room on the other side of the compound and knocked on his door. A second or so the knob tuned and Stran opened the door. "Tia…what are you doing here" "May I come in Stran." "Stran paused for moment "Yeah sure come in."
Stran opened the door the rest of the way and stepped aside. Tia walked in and stood for a second before sitting on the bed. "I've seen you stare at me Stran." He quickly tries to say something but be fore he can open his mouth all the way Tia cuts him off. "It's ok Stran I like you to… I have since I got here. Will you come sit on the bed with me." Stran looks up at her from the ground and rubs the back of his head. "Um…um…sure I guess." Stran walks over to the bed and sits down on the other side. Tia crawls to the top on her hands and knees and sit down with her back against the wall. With Stran's back towards her Tia puts her hand on Stran's chest and leans him back on herself putting his head in her lap. Stran becomes very nervous and bites his lip. "Your so tense Stran calm down every thing will be alright." Tia tells him as she strokes her hand threw Stran's long hair. "It's…it's just that I feel like some things wrong a cant tell what it is I'm sure I'd have gone insane trying to figure it out by now if it wasn't for you. Some times I feel like my inside's are being ripped to piece's trying to figure this out I think I'm going." Tia puts her finger over Stran's lips silencing him. "Sssshhhh every thing will be good from now on, now we have each other." Tia says before putting her hand on his cheek and leaning in to Stran's face to kiss his lips. Stran puts his hand on the side of Tia's head covering her cheek and hiding his fingers in her hair making her stop for a second while he stared into her eyes then letting her go and closed the distance between there face's. They laid there nose to nose for what seemed like an eternity before Stran finally put his lips over Tia's bottom lip kissing her gently. Tia removed Stran's coat as he unbuttoned Tia's long red trench.
"Yes soon everything will be ready." Says Knives as he looks out upon a vast desert landscape watching the second sun set.