Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Incompatible ❯ Chapter 0019 ( Chapter 19 )

Trigun Fanfic

Trigun © Yasuhiro Nightow * Shonen Gaho-sha * Tokuma Shoten * JVC * Pioneer Entertainment (USA) Inc.

The following fanfiction was written by me (Chiruken) and is intended for the sole purpose of shared entertainment and not intended for publication or sale.

--Incompatible-

Trigun Fanfic Featuring Knives and Meryl. Knives hates all humans. Meryl just hates Knives. It's a match ideal for the promise of Eden.

By Chiruken

Chapter 19

**~**

Knives glanced up at the lopsided sign swinging lazily overhead in the constant wind that bombarded the town ahead of him. "Kern…" He squinted at the faded lettering and tilted his head to the side. "Kernel…ah…I see." He shrugged and continued on his way, studying the deserted streets warily. He knew there were people here, had sensed them before he'd even entered the town itself, but they appeared to be in hiding for some unknown reason. He wondered if it was another of those circumstances where the humans lived in constant fear of raids by other humans. It was disturbing, really, how frequently that occurred. "No more war…no more stealing…a veritable Eden. Yeah…right." Rem's teachings came back to haunt him at the oddest times, such as now.

He stopped beside the well and peered over the edge with a frown. He couldn't smell water, but that didn't mean it wasn't there…just perhaps further down inside the dark interior. Raising his hand, he flicked a loose pebble over the edge and listened intently. It took a rather long time for it to hit the bottom with a soft, echoing splash. Straightening, he looked around himself at the buildings in disrepair. It appeared the humans didn't much care what their environment looked like. He frowned and shook his head. He'd found many settlements like this one. The people had just given up and continued to exist, not really living at all. They moved around like puppets, enacting a strange play that was their life, not really caring at all what went on around them. Their apathy was clear to see. With no hope, they had no actual reason to try and when they'd come to that realization they'd just given up entirely. They ate, they drank, they slept…but that was it. They went through the motions of living beings, but inside they were already dead, like their life had been sucked out of them by the dry environment they lived in. Knives found it all very disturbing to see.

The silence was almost deafening as he continued with his inspection of the quiet town. There was one street and it was lined with rickety buildings looking like they were ready to fall down at any moment. He suspected that one large gust of wind would knock everything over like a set of dominoes. There was a stable that proclaimed in faded lettering that there were Thomas' for rent and feed to be had for the small fee of one double dollar per bucket. He wasn't certain if that was a fair and reasonable price, but decided that it wasn't worth his time to worry about it. He had no intention of going anywhere near the loathsome beasts. On the opposite side of the street was what remained of the sheriff's office and jail. He winced, wondering if Vash had happened into this town in the past. The jail was nothing but an empty shell of blackened material, the roof caved in and the walls crumbling. Obviously nothing would be held in **those** cells any time soon.

Continuing along the street he looked from side to side, building to building, his uneasiness growing. The saloon's double batwing doors hung crooked, one side nearly falling off its hinges as it squeaked in protest as the wind rocked it to and fro. The windows with the bold lettering were broken, the words nearly impossible to read through the jagged edges of the shattered glass. A barber shop with its distinctive red and white pole, broken in the middle and leaning across the warped planks of the boardwalk, had lost its door and windows and stood open to the elements, a knee high drift of sand in the doorway. He shook his head and frowned thoughtfully. He knew there were people here, but where were they? He could feel their eyes following his moves yet no one appeared to challenge him or welcome him. It was all very odd.

A general store, the remains of its goods scattered across the floor haphazardly. An inn, the doors gone and the once welcoming interior dark and silent, the carpet on the floor faded and tattered. A post office with its darkened windows partially boarded, the door broken, its splinters sticking outwards grotesquely. Across the street stood a sand steamer station, abandoned, the sign lying in the sand in front of the creaking doors. He crossed the street slowly and stopped to peer into the dim interior. Nothing. Not even a left over piece of luggage left behind by some forgetful passenger. Something had happened here, that much was obvious, but what it had been was as of yet beyond his ability to decipher. Everywhere he looked was desolation and a sense of abandonment. He shook his head and looked towards the few houses left standing. They looked equally abandoned and unlived in, curtain-less windows peering back at him in silent accusation. He blinked in surprise and tilted his head to the side. Accusation? What would make him think that suddenly? Until he'd read the sign he'd never heard of the town of Kernel before.

The one remaining building that he had yet to approach was a church, its steeple rising up into the sky like a silent sentinel standing guard over the flock it could no longer call to its services with the silent bell hanging in its peak. He approached it slowly, eyes moving over the small cemetery sitting beside it with the mounds of sand slowly sinking and the cracked and faded crosses silent testament to the mortality of the humans who had lived and died there. No flowers adorned the graves, no offerings to the people who rested peacefully beneath the blowing sand, their bones slowly withering away to the dust surrounding them. The small fence surrounding the graveyard was falling down in some places, the boards weathered, the paint faded to an ugly nondescript grey. Wood was precious on this barren and dry planet, so it had taken a lot of effort to create the fence standing before him in waves of rickety guard duty with dried clumps of tumbleweed and sagebrush pressed against it, sand forming drifts that put even more strain on the flimsy barrier. It was only a matter of time before the planet claimed the meager offering into its bosom once again.

Turning his attention back to the church he sighed softly. The people he'd sensed were inside, peering out at him fearfully. He couldn't see them, but he could **feel** them, their thoughts whispering at the edge of his mind. They were all silently willing him to leave, to ignore them, to pass by without noticing that they existed. A part of him wanted to approach the doors and throw them open, confront the humans cowering in terror within the sacred confines of the house to honor their god, and demand to know what had happened. And yet another part of him cringed away, not wanting to know, not wanting to discover the reason behind the desolation he'd witnessed in the tiny, dying town of Kernel. This is what he'd predicted to his brother all those years ago. Humanity was on a course of self-destruction and it was only a matter of time before they destroyed themselves and disappeared from the universe, only to be remembered by those left behind…the Plants they had used and abused, raping their power and sucking the life out of them for their own selfish needs.

He turned away from the church and began to slowly walk away. "Sometimes…" He whispered softly, the hot wind capturing the words and tugging them away across the barren landscape over the dunes stretching towards the horizon. "Sometimes I hate being right."