"So this is it?" Alucard asked casually as he scanned the shockingly barren city. Vash nodded vaguely, stopping to look away and rest. The last two times he had been fed off of were affecting him more severely than his resilience could keep up with. Recently he had found it impossible to think of Alucard as someone who could be considered a friend or even explain to himself why he shouldn't hate him. The only thing keeping him together now was Rem as he sat on the sand, feeling exhausted. Now that he thought about it, he had never been away from light for so long...
"Yeah, this is it. Half a mile past it should be the place. If we're still planning on doing this at night I'll need you to watch for anything he has lurking as defense. Once inside, i'm going to head straight for the control room – I can't imagine him anywhere else. "
"You know where he is in the ship already?" Alucard asked curiously.
"No, but back when we were in the ship in space, as I've said already, he liked going into the control room. He liked to watch what he had started." They had made the last two days a nonstop trek. No life existed above sand for the expanse they had traveled, only countless silent warnings: crosses of graveyards that whispered uncomfortably of humanity, life, and his own actions.
Only a day or so at the most, he felt his neck absentmindedly, and then I can get away from this guy. He'll have something other than me to eat, and I'll have Knives.
"You've changed quite a bit after only a week of my company," Alucard noted with a grim smirk. "I guess your resilience is finally beginning to fade."
Vash forced himself to look at Alucard. Damn it, he thought, trying not to be annoyed at his companions constant state of not caring. Think positive thoughts, he impressed upon himself as he stood up and began walking.
"Let's rest in that saloon over there," Vash suggested. as they neared the twisted and malformed entry gates to the town. The building seemed to be held up entirely of crumbling brick and rotting wood. Vash fell asleep immediately after his brain registered that not a single bottle of liquor remained from the buildings happier youth. Vaguely he heard Alucard lay his coffin behind the saloon counter before drifting off.
"Where are you going Vash? You can't save them all. You're not even supposed to care about the humans. Stop fighting me. Help me rid the planet of these parasites," Knives' voice echoed like it did so many years ago when they gazed at the thousands of sleeping people, safe inside their pods. A snap to his left made him turn his head violently, straining his ears.
"Knives! Come out! We need to settle things now!" Vash yelled, his revolver out and ready to fire. Desert surrounded him now. It smelled of friction.
"It'll take more than that, brother!" Knives echoed. Light suddenly emanated from Vash's left arm, wings and feathers then sprouting and molding together to form a giant gun. The vast expanse of dust and sand started to condense and form structures: saloons, hotels, and bakeries with people last to form. They were beautiful at first. Sand giving birth to a city full of tan beings nearly floating over the shifting ground until colors gave way to faces and eyes matching those long dead. He remembered them. Their faces. All those he had ran by that day. All those he had killed that one single instant.
"…No!" Vash whispered, eyes widening in fear. "Not again! Everyone! Run away! Get out of the city!" Vash started yelling, waving his free arm as his left 'angel arm' powered up, trying to scare people away. No one listened, they all continued about their business, occasionally looking at the crazy man with a giant weapon for an arm. The gun began to tremble, gathering sunlight and producing deadly energy to power itself. Vash continued screaming at the top of his lungs, trying to make everyone run away, but now it was too late, as people began to realize the danger and back away in horror, Vash unleashed an energy which enveloped the city. A little boy to his left disintegrated as he stood by and watched – the center of the catastrophe. He closed his eyes and opened them again to find himself back at the cool landscape of trees and tall grass. A tear slid down his cheek as he felt his left hand shake. The last 'lesson' his brother gave. Every time he fired his prosthetic left arm, it bashed him. It was the mental hail of 'what have I done?' A constant reminder of how much he had done to the people he failed to save by being the one with the gun capable of destroying cities.
"You have killed more people that anyone I've ever dispensed, and yet you claim to protect them? I look forward to seeing you tomorrow and this companion I heard so much of before destroying the pitiful messenger you sent back to me. I'm not sure why you've decided to finally grow a pair, but by all means: it's been too long as it is. Welcome back! "
He awoke to the sensation of falling. His hands grasped at a smooth surface, gaining no hold and slipping.
"Knives!" He yelled. Extremely groggy, he braced for impact. It was jarring and uncoordinated when he hit the hard floor of the saloon and whipped to a crouch to peer into the evening light delicately lighting the remnants of tables and charred wood.
The laughter that came from absolutely everywhere was unexpected, to say the least. It held so much unbridled mockery that only Alucard could be capable of its level. He had, apparently, fallen off his bar stool. The slipping feeling had been his hands trying to hold onto a smooth counter top.
"Long three feet, was it?" Alucards smirk held practically split his face in half.
"Yes it was, thank you!" Vash smiled grimly. I must be very close to Knives if he was able to send me dreams, he thought, not relaxing easily.
"Hm?" Alucard asked, casually sitting on his coffin, he had most likely seen him squirming before falling but had just watched the spectacle spill onto the floor in comedic style.
"We're close. Let's go and get this over with," he said feeling less than himself.
"Lead the way," Alucard intoned, hefting his black coffin onto his shoulders and standing by the saloon door.
-!-!-!-
"So those were robots?" Alucard asked, ripping the head off of the last of the mini army and casting it aside. Piles of mechanical garbage lay behind them. Vash nodded, digging in the sand at present. The ship itself was impressive. It spanned as long as the eye could go until tricks of desert heat and sand ripples played themselves out, hinting that the great chunk of technology never ended.
"Found it!" He mumbled to himself, lifting a small machine from the dirt into his hands and pressing foreign symbols. A curt thwish noise made him look up. A door had opened before them, allowing entrance into the ship.
"Humans didn't use robots to protect themselves last time I was awake," Alucard stated unhappily. They peered inside the unlit entrance. As the time currently did not allow for the suns to be out, their pitiful flashlight showed a ten foot length of hallway. Alucard moved ahead of the light, preferring to see ahead.
"Welcome-to-Seed-ship-four-zero-three- V-A-S-H," greeted an automated voice from speakers placed along the ceiling. Lights flashed on halfway down the eerily quiet area. White walls tanned by dust and grayed through time revealed themselves.
"I think there is a lot that I have missed since being locked away." Alucard stated, sounding impressed by the electronic voice. "Does it understand speech or is it like a message answering system on a cellular telephone?"
"A what?"
"Did they not have telephones a century ago?"
"When were you locked away, again?"
Alucard grinned and snapped his fingers. Every source of the sound instantly crackled and died.
"Nevermind."
The pair walked farther down the hall until a door opened before them, allowing them into the first section of the behemoth SEEDS ship.
Again that crackling noise followed by bits of plastic and speaker pieces hitting lightly against surfaces.
"Are you going to do that in every room?"
"You're absolutely right -there are more efficient ways!" Alucard closed his eyes and snapped his fingers a second time, this time as if on cue to something.
"You...didn't just take out all of the speakers, right?" Vash wondered aloud.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"What if, well, I – I guess we're not going to surprise them now."
"Now they can talk to us in person.
"I'm sure Knives gave them something to use other than ship speakers -"
"Those are gone as well."
Vash threw his hands up in the air, wishing madly for donuts and a bench. Experiencing a lack of both, he examined the large room. It appeared to have been devoted once to storage and loading. Gridded cat walks made an intricate maize at least a hotels height above them and stacks of highly organized and secured storage units lined the walls. The very air of the space exuded a level of high use. The site of units having been moved, the lack of dust, the foot prints in sand accumulating on the hard metal-like floors, and more importantly the blood leaking from one of the storage boxes themselves a little ways off. Vash began to move towards it.
"That was unnecessary," called an obviously annoyed voice from somewhere within the large room. Between the boxes, catwalks, and echoing of boots, Vash eyed his surroundings carefully.
"Our young friend Jake is inside that box." Alucard commented, ignoring the voice. Upon seeing Vash moving towards the red stained box he shook his head and softly answered the unspoken question: "He's dead. You're brother wants you to feel turmoil – don't feed the beast, please."
Hesitating, the Humanoid Typhoon backed away, keeping his back to tall island of units as he scanned the room for the source of the voice.
"Where is the control room?" Alucard asked.
"At the opposite end. We have to get to the top of the cat walks to get into the passenger area and follow that through-"
Without warning, Alucard grabbed Vash by back of his coat and tossed him like a toy upwards.
Reflexes saved him. He clung onto a catwalk rail before descent could make friends between his skull and the floor several catwalk levels below.
"Jeeze, Guy -what was that for!?" He managed to yell to the tiny form of a red dressed vampire below. The man waved in response and walked down the maize of boxes, disappearing through a thick wall.
"Oh, right. He can just walk through anything he wants! Some people have all the luc-"
"'Ello, there! You know, ignorin' people is rude t'mos people. " A graveled voice boomed into his ears as he turned to see a pair of lovely translucent eyes through the sites on a very formidable looking weapon pointed dead center of Vash's forehead. The man was short but highly muscular. A beard covered most of this face under his nose. Really the height difference was such that he must have been a full four feet shorter.
"You're absolutely right, how about- " And Vash was gone before the the bearded man fired. Oddly enough when it did fire, he aimed high at the ceiling above his would be victim.
Small beads of what resembled black fire spread across the ceiling, at first looking startlingly like fireworks for daytime use. Confused, Vash watched as one small black piece landed on his coat sleeve. The response was immediate. The thing suddenly donned eight legs and crawled quickly towards his neck.
"NO, i've had enough neck biters, thanks!" He smashed his hand on it and rubbed it into his jacket to find it left a soot like stain. He dodged and tried to avoid them in the dim lighting, aiming to make it to the door he knew existed just at the end of the next catwalk, just as the metal-like grid shook with extra weight. Bearded man had resumed his hunt, not dealing well with maneuvering the grids with his stature.
The door was within site Vash fired a few rounds at to slow the persuit but managed to gain seven new soot-spiders -he had no idea what else to call them. Struggling, he began smashing them with his gloved hands.
"Agh, why spiders?!"
The white door did not open for him. Crap! A very large fuzzy soot-spider landed on his back as he struggled with the door electronics. He hardly felt the thing until it started to crawl into his collar. Meanwhile the heavy shaking of the grid told him his new friend had caught up with him again. Desperate, he kicked at the railing next to him. I can use it to pry the door open! It broke off and fell to the first floor. A brief, agitated, silence overtook him for a about a quarter second.
'Seriously? I needed that!
The big spider suddenly made contact with his skin and a severe burning added to the power he gave to kicking another piece of railing off – this time grasping it.
The second he had it he scooped the spider off of his neck and stomped it with his boot. Half of it had disintegrated. "What are these things?"
The bearded man lifted his weapon and aimed. Ignoring the spiders recently landing on his person, Vash shot the mans hand. Not wasting a second, he jammed the railing into the door where it met the wall and jimmied it open. The door, however, had other plans. It did not want to stay open, increasing pressure to remain shut. The frequency of boot steps ceased.
Vash took in a quick breath, dodging a bullet and then a punch that could have landed into his gut from the Spiderman.
"Stop yer movin'!
"No thanks!"
He turned, ready to jump from the cat walk when, as if by magic, the door opened. Vash ran inside and the door shut as quickly as if it had been trying to close and not open.
"Ding!" Alucard joked as Vash flattened the last of the soot-spiders into his jacket. It looked much darker as a result. He felt the burn on his neck and winced, his fingers trailing bumps until one gave in, his glove coming back with the clear fluid of a burn blister.
"Very funny." Vash thought back. Somehow he didn't remember the ding of the elevator doors when they had first met being so hilarious.
"One last jest. Our contract is going to end soon, after all."
"Wait, who did you find?"
-!-!-!-
"You'll regret that. You just lost what tiny advantage you had, idiot!" Cried an aged man despairingly. "I wanted to have a little fun," he explained after a brief pause, sounding let down.
"You will tell me where my master is." Alucard said, his voice coming from everywhere at once and amplified a hundred fold. It held a faint flicker of hyper impatience.
"You work for Knives?" Asked the voice, once again sounding confused. It sounded young, but held a quality of much older confidence.
"Where is my Master? Where is she?" Alucard roared. He was not talking the to the enormous man attacking him. Before the man could give a baffled reply all of the boxes and machinery he hid behind were completely obliterated, Alucard racing through the middle towards him.
"What-!" Gasped a man in his fifties, bulging with muscles and eyes black with whatever augmentation had taken place to create a being his height of ten feet. Alucard dragged him along by his neck, ignoring his struggles.
"Where is my master?" Alucard asked as calmly as he could seemingly muster with such excitement rushing into his red eyes.
"I, I don't know what your talking about!" The man screamed, feeling a cold chill of fear and hard nails digging into, breaking, his skin and burrowing into neck muscle. It was programmed into most human Psyches: Fear all that is and forever will be a monster. Alucard was sending him this message now, making his victim understand killer instinct anew.
Alucard probed his mind, his grin not fading in the least at what he found. The man knew nothing.
Can't breath! Can't breath! Oh God, I cant breath! His thoughts screamed. Alucard's grin finally changed to an amused smirk, and he threw him to the side, his body flying across the floor now covered in demolished boxes and machinery and hitting the metal wall of the ship with a dull thud. Blood splattered around his body at the extreme impact and he slid slowly to the floor, not moving.
"I am too exited…" He mumbled, walking toward a pair of clear doors. That voice asked again what he needed, what he came for, if not for the man who would eliminate the human race as his companion did. Once again, it was ignored.
In the hallway that the door led him through were numerous doors and labels, each locked. At the end of the hallways was an even larger room with an elevator to his left and stairs to his right, while a glass double door stood in front of him. He walked quickly towards the glass door. Glass shattered in all directions as he didn't bother opening them.
"Integra?" His voice was suddenly hushed. Another long hallway led to a titanium door blocking the entrance of yet another room with a keypad on the side for a password to open it. Smirking, he stared at the door intently and then walked into it.
Inside the middle of the room he stopped, closed his eyes and opened them. The excitement in his eyes was suddenly replaced by blood lust and resignation. He bowed to a glass tub filled with water and a young blond girl with blue eyes. No older than ten. Her eyes were closed, but they opened as Alucard grinned, looking up into her previously closed eyes.
"I have returned, master."