Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Echo ❯ Chapter II ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

A buzz rang through her ear before she slowly managed to open her eyes once more, seeing her hands being cuffed to a bedrail by rusty metal shackles. As she turned her head to the side, she noticed the man she had seen in her room was now standing at the foot of the bed, tying her knees together with a cloth. She saw that her ankles where already chained together and tied at the bottom rail, restricting her movement. It wasn't like she could move anyway--she was far too tired to move, too hopelessly weak to even bother to stretch her vocal cords in a plea for help. All she could do was speak in a low mumble, staring up at the man.

"Where am I?" she asked in a whisper, the man not even bothering to look her.

"You're here as my hostage, and I intend to keep you here as long as it is required," he replied, standing back. The long, thin and tattered curtains blew up across his face, the man too in tuned in examining if there were any flaws in her imprisonment to notice. But whichever way the wind blew, only one eye would be shown, and never would his hair covering the other falter.

"Are...you going to kill me..?"

"If need be," he replied, taking a seat in a wooden chair across from her view. "But you are of no use to me dead at this very moment, so it is not something to be concerned about at this time."

She turned her head away, seeing the full condition she was in. Her hands were loose enough to move a few inches and rest on the bed, but her feet were so tightly tied that she felt like the circulation was about to be cut off. She could fell her sunburned skin beginning to peel around both her ankles and wrists, unimaginable pain crawling up her nerves every time she moved. Maybe he found humor in this torture of hers with the smile he wore across his face as she struggled to get free, silencing the rattle of chains and she turned her head to glare at him.

"Why?...Why do you do this? Who are you?"

He laughed. "You're not exactly in the position to be asking questions, Katyenka Buskus. But since you are going to be here for a time, you should know of your captors name. It's Legato. Legato Bluesummers."

"Well, Legato Bluesummers," she spoke up from her whispery voice, "you're despicable, and I spit on your grave." She shortly worked a dap of saliva in her mouth, spitting out to the floor at his feet. Before it hit, however, he twitched his fingers, the spit wad suddenly shooting back up and into her throat, making her gag and choke for a few moments. Legato stood, blinking slowly.

"You spit on my grave, but you should know that the many times it has been dug for me I have not been able to lay in it. I suggest you be a bit more respectful the next time I walk into this room, or else you'll be finding I shall be a bit less merciful than what I was intending to be."

In this he turned and walked out the open door, shutting it without even putting a finger down. Her eyes were wide in terror, her lip trembling in shock. It wasn't possible for someone to do that, to shut a door without touching it...was it...?

***

"Hey, Vash...hold on a second!" Knives shouted from a distance, Vash halting for a moment to let him catch up. It had been a while since Knives had gotten exercise, and although he could have fooled everyone that he was in tip top shape he could not deceive his lungs or his legs. They were sore already, his feet starting to become numb and his throat beginning to burn as he put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. "Can...Can't we stop for awhile? We've been walking for about six hours straight."

Vash smiled, shrugging. "Funny, and I thought you were the athletic one."

"No," he replied in a grin, standing straight again. "See, I was the brains out of the brawn. Physical condition meant as much to me as a human's life, which was, and still is, very low. Of course, now I consider my health a bit more important, but human's are still at the bottom of the list."

Turning away, Vash frowned, sighing. "Don't you have any gratitude, Knives? I mean, after all they did for you. They took care of you while you recovered, you know, and you still think of them the same."

"Well, not quite the same as I first thought," he corrected. "At first, I believed humans were worthless, a mistake on nature's part. But as I grew to know them, I realized that they weren't a mistake but rather were meant to serve us, which lived to do our bidding. It was simple really, and all the time we were living on that ship I hadn't seen it. Human's were there to serve us, for me I came to notice and scratch away some part of the truth. For you, you had your security in that woman, that Rem, but unlike me you refused to see that she was only a servant to you, disposable and insignificant."

Vash didn't know whether it was the heat that made his blood boil more than normal or whether his anger was really that astronomical. But as Knives continued, his hands acted on their own, forming fists at his sides.

"It makes me wonder why you even go after this woman now. What do you hope to achieve, to bring her back in hopes that she'll remind you of the lost Rem Saverem?"

"Legato's going to kill her if we don't get her back," he replied coolly, his shoulders beginning to shake. "And yes...I do hope I can save the last connection to Rem."

"Well, I do trust you'll come to your senses and know that she too isn't worth our time. Just another insignificant spider that will die off eventually."

That crossed the line, snapping whatever was holding him back. He ran with a fist towards his brother, Knives sidestepping and kicking Vash in the back. Tumbling across the sands for a moment, he came to stop, turning around and coming back at him. This time, Knives was too slow to estimate when he would hit, and they both went rolling through the landscape, pulling at each other's faces and doing any damage they could to one another. All the while, they were too in tuned to their brawl to notice their guns slid out from their sides, clattering several feet away from where they finally stopped.

A crack in the air was what stopped their fight, both looking up to find a scrubby man standing over them with an armed shotgun to their faces. He wore a brown hat that shaded his already deeply tanned and whiskery face from the sun, with an adornment of fairly simple clothes that included a dark brown cloak. Knives reached to his side but found no gun there, staring back up as the man suddenly slammed him on the side of the face with the back of the gun.

Vash's eyes widened, looking over to find that both of their guns were a ways away. As he glanced back to the man aiming the barrel at him, he prepared to run, only to find that as he budge an inch he found himself surrounded, five more men surrounding them with their guns armed. Without a moment to counter this move, the man to his side hit him in the back of the head, his nose breaking as he hit the ground, his vision fading to black.

The five men tied their hands behind their backs with rusty iron shackles, lifting them up and onto the back of a truck not far away. They laughed as they tossed them into a caged area, slamming the door and locking it shut. As they started it up and prepared to leave, one of the men saw a glinting in the distance, hopping off the back and heading towards it. He stood over Ebony and Ivory a moment later, grinning ear to ear as he took them into both of his blackened, greasy hands. Heading back, he showed them to the man that would sit next to him in front of the caged, gloating on how much of a high price they would fetch.

But he wasn't just talking about the weapons...

***

A paper rattled out of the silence, Meryl sipping her coffee as she turned the page. It had been a while since newspapers started circulating throughout the cities, and luckily this town was just around the paper route. This kept them updated on worldly events, anyway, and would help on predicating when Bernadelli would be sending letters for them. The good thing was that there was nothing worse than the monitoring of Vash the Stampede had occurred, so they were able to stay without worry.

As she read calmly, her mind drifted in thought. The news article spoke briefly of how there had been kidnappings on the bus paths out in the desert, around the two hundred mile vicinity of July's rubble. It didn't take her long to connect two and two, and in it stood and went to the window, worry beginning to strike her.

Vash had been gone about a day and a half by that time, and though it was so soon for her worry to kick in this news didn't help any. He and his brother had both been heading for that area, so who knows what had would happen to them out there. She chuckled quietly to herself, walking back over to the table and grabbing her coffee. As she went for a refill she thought how silly it was for her to fret so much. He was a big boy, he had handled worse in his time than a couple of bandits. But, deep down, that's not what really worried her. What concerned her was the fact that his brother could turn on him again, and bandits wouldn't help any if it just happened to come to that.

Yet she sighed, shaking her head and sitting back down. There was nothing she could do about his decisions at the moment and she had business and letters to attend to anyways. As she turned the page of the newspaper again, she couldn't help but think of him and ordeals he might be going through at that very moment...

***

His eyelids peeled back as the streaks from the sun shined to his retinas, he squinted as he sat up, rubbing the back of his head. He felt flakes of dried blood flick off his hair, rubbing the residue off of his fingertips in front of him and looking at his surroundings. The sun was burning down as the wind whipped through his hair, hearing the cries of others who sat there with him on the back of the moving automobile. There were whole families there, huddling together in fear. Others were unconscious still, redder than a radish in some respects, where the very few tried rattling the cage bars to get the captures' attention. He felt a sickening feeling at the bottom of his stomach as he turned to gaze to his side, seeing Knives already awake with a content look of thought on his face.

"Hey, Knives, where are we?" Vash asked, sliding to put his back on the bars just as Knives was doing directly across from him.

"Don't know. Looks like we came across a couple of bandits searching for 'workers'--at least that's what I've overheard."

Vash saw the condition they were in, the harsh barren landscape looking not so friendly, but knew it was better than staying here. His mind was drawing blanks as to how to get out of this, staring back up to Knives. "Got any ideas?"

"Yeah, but this would be a lot easier if I had my gun," he replied, gazing back with a look of distain.

"Hey, it's not all my fault we lost them!" he retorted, knowing exactly what he was getting at.

Knives just shook his head, leaning forward slightly as he struggled with his hands behind his back. "Now's not the time to argue about this. We should get out of here first." With a quick clack, his hands were brought back in front of him. He rubbed his orange, rust stained wrists, flicking off some of the residue left over from the shackles. "It's a good thing these humans were stupid enough to put on almost rusted through cuffs. Makes it all that easier to escape."

Vash fingered the handcuffs as well, finding that part of it crumbled to the point where he could slip his hands free. Knives looked up front, seeing that all five men were sitting there and only paying attention to the bottles of boos in their hands. All the better, of course, as Knives stood and ran to the back of the cage as quick as he could, people staring after him as he began picking at the rusty chain and lock. Within moments, he snapped them apart, swinging the door open and pausing for a moment, looking back, grinning, and gesturing for Vash to go first. People smiled and got up, some taking those who were still unconscious and jumping past Knives, landing on the desert floor even while the truck was at a constant speed. Vash was last to face him, helping those who hadn't gotten off yet, and having the same expression as Knives had as they hesitated to jump. They didn't trust each other, and they both knew it, but they would have to if they were ever going to get anywhere. So, as if simultaneously, they jumped from the back of the truck, rolling before they came to a complete stop.

They were left in a cloud of dust for a minute or so, coughing as they were helped up by a couple of hands. As Vash smiled and thanked them, Knives shoved them off quickly, those around him backing away in slight fear by his intimidating eyes. Vash just sighed, both of them being addressed by a woman in her thirties with two children by her side.

"Thank you ever so much, sirs. We don't know what would have happened if we had gotten to their destination," she said, smiling gratefully.

Knives said something offensively under his breath, but no one besides Vash seemed to notice.

"Why, it was nothing miss. We were just doing what all good citizens do!" Vash answered in his most heroic voice, getting a few oohs and ahs but making Knives gag a little. He just smiled widely, waving goodbye as they all went their separate ways. Knives questioned to himself if Vash was going to act like that the whole way but it wasn't like he had another choice to this matter. It would all be over soon, he hoped, and soon, he would come to realize, was pretty much a far fetched wish in this circumstance.

***

Later in the day, four of the operators of the truck were awoken from their drunken slumber to find that the vehicle had come to a stop. The man who was to be driving had gotten out without even shutting the door, swearing his head off on how much trouble they all would be in for letting the workers escape. One of them, still probably not on his hangover yet, said not to worry about it in a slurred motion, the others standing stern on the outside but trembling severely on the inside.

"Nah, whyz you all worryin'?" the drunk one spoke, grabbing the guns Ebony and Ivory at his sides. "Za mans prolly sippin' down sum pillz anywayz! Am I right? Huhz?"

The men did not respond, but only could stare behind him with still, wide eyes. The man shrugged, turning around and seeing what they were all staring at. Before he had a chance to say a word, he was gripping his own throat, dropping the guns to the sands. The man to whom they were staring at reached down, taking the guns in his hands and inspecting them. He looked up with his amber eye, the man beginning to run back and forth as if by force. Shutting his eyes, he aimed the gun a little to the left, estimating when he could fire as the rest of them scrambled to get away and hide behind the backside of the truck.

They heard a shot and a thud to follow, gazing back that the drunken man was now somewhat sober because of his experience, unharmed to say as he dropped the clutch around his neck and inched away. Legato shrugged as he opened one eye to see that there was no damage, putting both guns to his sides and folding his arms across his chest.

"It is a real shame. My aim is becoming poor as I sit around this place. Maybe I should come out and have more target practices..." He grinned at their quivering fear. "So, why did you let them get away?"

"I-it was those t-two blonds, I know it was! They were different, I tell yas!" one of them exclaimed.

"Of course they were. I told you to keep an eye out for them, and what do you do? Give them chains that couldn't hold an infant," he retorted, his smirk fading.

"Oh, was that them?" another inquired, scratching his head.

Legato's expression became an annoyed scowl, reaching his hand out and having the man skid across the dirt and his neck placed within his palm. He dug what nails he had into the man's skin, cutting off his air momentarily. "Yes, it was them, and I should have your eyes ripped out because of this. At least then you would have an excuse to be blind." He threw the man to the ground in a burst of anger, pointing an accusing finger and the rest of them. "I will give you one last chance to find these two. If you fail, do not dare show your face in my presence again. Understood?" With a nod they hurriedly left into the rubble of the city streets, Legato taking Ebony from his side once more as he turned and walked along.

'So...they really are coming...' he began to chuckle until it became a full fledged laugh. Those who hid in the shadow heard this laugh come from his lips, and although they weren't quite sure the reason for it, the knew it was something ill that stirred within those thoughts of his.