Disclaimer: Trigun is sadly enough not mine, or there would have been way more episodes!
Chapter31: Milly's POV
After the brothers had stopped working on the bulb it started glowing with a soft light like Tala had when she was healing them. Only this time, it appeared to be the plant inside that was healing instead. Both Mr. Vash and Mr. Knives go to bed in the sleeping rolls and stay that way until the following morning. As such, Meryl and she spend that time visiting with Kikyo who has not yet left for some reason. After a while, both of us go to bed as well.
Come morning, Meryl is the first awake and making coffee in her small little pot she has that uses when travelling. Once she is done with that she makes the breakfast and almost as soon as she is done Mr. Vash wakes up. It's rather funny actually.
"Morning Mr. Vash, sleep well?" she inquires as she watches her best friend make a plate and hand it to him, then a second to hand to her.
He nods, not answering aloud as he pretty close to inhales his food.
Is he always like that? She hears the sand woman ask.
Giggling, she answers, "Only when he does a lot of bouncing around. If there were donuts you'd see some real action."
Meryl grins at that commenting, "Donuts, yeah he can forget to breath when he eats donuts. Luckily that seems to be his thing, not his twins."
Kikyo chuckles, the sound echoing through their minds. Well that's humorous. Those that live in the bulbs live off of the energy that surrounds all life and emotions, it is why we enjoy song so much, it carries emotion, provides a power source that heals and maintains us. The nice thing is, all that are within the hive mind can connect to the hive song, thus we are able to maintain life even for those who are nowhere near people in order to draw from.
"Really? That's amazing!" she comments, shocked by the idea. Well if they live off of emotion and energy, how was Mr. Knives not weaker than Mr. Vash?
Perhaps that explained the problem, Meryl had said that he was the quiet twin who avoided people, perhaps that's why his mind went down the wrong path as it was trying to find what it needed but couldn't since he avoided people. How odd, does that mean that with a little bit of positive attention the changes that have already been wrought would become permanent? Her mind whirls with the possibilities and while she mostly focuses on Mr. Knives, the fact of the matter is she can see its affects on Mr. Vash too. No wonder he does better around people than not.
Giving a small shake of her head, she sits down with her coffee and waits.
"How are you able to make yourself a sand body?" she eventually asks, glancing towards her.
She smiles, replying, I will answer that once they are both awake and coherent. It is something they were wondering about as well. Besides, it will give them more history on our race since they do not really know anything about our kind except the fact we are non-violent. Well, the vast majority of us are, there is always that one who does not follow the standard.
She nods, watching as Mr. Knives sleeps, and thinks. It has been several weeks since Mr. Vash brought him home, in that time he has changed a lot from what Meryl and Mr. Vash have said, heck even the temper tantrums he threw when he first came to live with us faded away eventually. Maybe all he needed was to be around some upbeat people, though I am not sure Meryl counts as upbeat. She's got quite the temper on her, but she never really gets mean out of spite, so perhaps that does make her upbeat. Hmmmm. One thing is for sure, if he was surrounding himself by negative people like that blue-haired man it would make perfect sense that a person who uses emotions for a power source would be negative too.
Lost in her thoughts, she did not realize when Mr. Knives had woken up and joined them around the small cook burner that Meryl had used for breakfast at first.
Meryl's POV
Milly's a nice girl, she thinks to herself as she hands the breakfast plate to Knives, however there are times where she is a space case. How does she not notice the rather tired looking man sitting next to her? Shaking her head, she just considers it to be a Milly moment.
Once all four of us are awake, Kikyo's sand form settles on the ground in front of us before she begins to speak. All of you have wondered how I am here, particularly since I am a bound plant who has separated my mind from my body. It is simple, it is the type of plant I am that allows me to do so. I will ask that you refrain from interrupting while I try to describe it to you. However, if I feel you are not understanding I will pull you into my mind and show it to you instead. That might not be good on your spirits so I would rather avoid that option. Agreed?
She nods, glancing at the others, this ought to be interesting, she thinks as she waits for her to continue. Perhaps it will help me understand them more.
Vash's POV
Milly and Meryl both nod without hesitation, yet both him and Knives are unsure if they should do the same. He had known of Kikyo for years, yet during that time he had never guessed that she could do anything like this. How was it even possible? Finally, he nod as well, his curiosity getting the better of him. Knives is a little slower to agree but eventually does so as well.
Good, she says, warmth infused in her answer. Apparently she uses her telepathy to broadcast her emotions the same way the others do. Understand now that humans did not create the plants per say, only the means by which we come to this universe. In our own universe there are no humans, or at least our kind when I had left had not come across any and we had travelled a far distance from our home of birth. When the humans had first created the bulbs, the anomaly had opened rips between the universes, pulling energy and creating a power source. Yet these power sources would fail and the rip would come back, then a change in the system used to make the bulbs caused the rip to open into our universe, into a hive that was over populated first.
That hive was run by a queen who had started off as a lowly new planet seeker, her ascension to queen-hood had been a rarity for the circumstances for it is uncommon of the lower ranks to become anything within the hierarchy. This I will explain in a moment. Since she had been a planet seeker, she selected three of her strongest elder telepaths from the seekers and asked them to determine what the thing ripping a hole into our space was. However she also sent out a message to all hive queens to be wary until it could be determine what it was, other hives sent her seekers as a result, giving her a small army to work with.
Half of those elder seekers ended up going through various rips, however because of their type they were able to reach through the gaps in left in the fabric of the universe to share their findings. A new universe, with creatures not made of energy, erratic emotions, and minor life spans like animals, but the ability to think like one of us. They sought a way to survive in a planet that had been nearly destroyed by their foolishness, they sought a power source that could be used to save the lives of the population with destroying the planet more.
Within this group of humans was a female called Yu with the Gift of Speech. The elder seekers were amazed by this, for she was able to easily communicate with the elder seeker who had inhabited the bulb that she was working on. These communications lead to a deal between the humans and the elder seekers, after some communication with the other elders and the queens.
A court was held where all of the queens gathered under the watchful eye of the Primordial Mother, the most ancient living queen. It was at this court that it was decided that low level People could go to the new universe if they desired, but they had to understand the risks. Humans were a short lived race, who was to say that the next generation would honor the deal made by this generation? There was also no guarantee that they would be able to return to the home plane.
Still those who felt unneeded at home accepted the risks for the chance to be more than they were. Those that accepted the risk were allowed into the Queen's Harem, a place where the rare males lived in sheltered lives. It was their choice whether to accept or not, and whether to concessive or not. For unlike humans who automatically get pregnant by breeding, we do not and can hold the energy seed for years before it must be released unless something goes drastically wrong. Many of the travelers accepted, and almost all of them took a host egg with them through the gates to here.
Now then, here came the low level members of society, ones without positions of power, some came to this world for acceptance, but many came for purpose. However they lacked the guidance and the elder that where already here wished to even the odds a little better so they requested that other elders may be allowed to come as they wanted. This was considered by the council of queens and was agreed upon, however those elders had to make sure they had a replacement within their hive first. After enough elders had volunteered, for each that came here was a volunteer, it was decided that the new hive needed one more thing. A queen.
The choice of a queen was a hard one for at that time all the queens had established hives. There were no queens who were ready for colonization that fit the needs. So the queens looked outside their ranks, into the ranks of hunters and truth seekers, for one who had the potential to become a queen. Three were selected, each was given the option to turn down such a reign since there was going to be no way for them to receive assistance, they would have to rely completely on their mind gifts, and there was a chance of things going horribly wrong. All three accepted the challenges anyways.
In order to become a queen one must go through a series of trails. Traditionally those trials are logical, physical, and mental. The one who passed them all with the best show of strength, skill, ability, and reasoning goes went on to face the council of queens. That council puts forth a great deal of testing of their own during the council. In this meeting the abilities related to the mind were the most tested, for those would be the abilities most needed. The result, a female was selected who excelled at the mind gifts to the point of being on par with some of the eldest of the queens, a rareness in and of itself.
She pauses for a moment before continuing, Our society is dived into a caste system. There are the queens, elders, guides, people, and children. The queens guide our communities, they maintain the hive and each has a special set of gifts. The elders maintain a particular area, overseeing certain functions of the community. The guides are those who have potential to become elders, they often help the elders, they excel at whatever area they are from. The people are the common folk, while children are just that, the youngest of our kind.
As a race we do not actually have a species name, we call ourselves the People. Humans have called us the plants, angels, and others.
You two were born of Sepheria, a planet seeker with one of the strongest gifts of speech, movement, and control. It is not a surprise that she produced a child with the same gift. Your father if I recall, was Daztern, one of the most empathic males in the entire harem. His other gifts included mind healing and life sense. So it does not surprise me that she also had a child with his gifts. What does surprise me is you are both male. For every one thousand females, there is a single male. For every ten thousand births, there is a set of twins. So you can imagine how rare it is for a set of twins to be male. Tesla was born of Keira, a low level empathy and a minor gift of speech, I do not know who the father is. Unfortunately she inherited the weakness of the level. Perhaps that was due to the change in her brought on by the intentional inclusion of human blood.
Again she pauses, her mind going off for a moment before she gives a small shake of her sand head. I lost track for a moment, anyways. Tesla was born because Keira started to shut down and she decided to allow the birth in order to allow the child a chance. Unfortunately the humans that found her were not gentle with her, and the end result was she died. Retaliation was swift in coming, for the queen of this hive has a temper problem. Of those who were at fault all but one was effectively dealt with. That one had rage problems, and short of submerging him in the hive it was going to be difficult.
Her gaze locks on Knives at that point, narrowing even in the sand form. Then you two were born because Sepheria decided it was time to release her egg. It surprised all of us when it produced you two, however we were overjoyed by that. It meant that our kind could have children here. It was also remarkable that you both were fully adapted to this universes power sources. For the first several month's things worked well with you two, the black-haired human who had felt empathy before the queen effected her decided to keep you are her own. Only something odd happened, you were a hunter, which is such a rare thing to begin with, even rarer in the males of our species. Then the one with rage got a hold of you, and the next thing the queen knows is she is trying to take control of a ship that is suddenly plummeting into a rather annoying planet. Of course the dark-haired human decided to try and save the other humans. Any questions?