Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Incompatible ❯ Chapter 0025 ( Chapter 25 )

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 25

**~**

**Well…that was a waste of time.** He thought sourly as he trudged through the endless sand, the light of the moons casting an almost surreal beauty to the barren landscape as he left the lights and sounds of October City behind him. Of course, he'd been unable to interrogate **every** human in the city, but those he had found that had any contact with Meryl had been anything but enlightening. No one seemed to know anything about the woman or her disappearance beyond what they'd learned from Vash and Millie. It was all very frustrating for Knives. He'd hoped he could get the necessary information and find her trail from the city, but all he'd managed to uncover were more mysteries of other women who'd disappeared quite suddenly, never to be seen again. He was beginning to wonder if things like this happened often in this part of the world. The other places he'd been to hadn't had anything even remotely like this, but then again, he hadn't been looking for it there either.

He sighed and shook his head. He'd wasted a week in traveling to the city and then another week in useless questioning. He was no closer to finding the long cold trail now than he had been two weeks ago. Meryl had been missing for a month and a half now. If he did manage to find her now, he doubted she'd be alive. He didn't like that thought, not at all. He didn't want to think of the small woman's life being snuffed out. He wasn't certain what it was about her that drew out nearly long forgotten feelings of protectiveness, but he was willing to admit that that was what he was currently feeling. She'd been the one to set him on his path of discovery, after all, even if had been in an indirect way. It was through Meryl Stryfe that he'd begun seeing humans as more than parasitic organisms.

Due to the nature of her disappearance and the fact that so much time had lapsed, he didn't have much hope of actually finding the trail, but he was willing to keep trying. Perhaps Vash had overlooked something in his haste brought on by worry. Knives knew his brother was a fairly skilled tracker, but he also knew that he wouldn't utilize every means available to him. Every living organism left a trail and if one knew what to search for, it was possible to follow that same trail to the living individual…or at least to a location fairly close to them. It was time consuming and energy draining, but it could be done. Knives had become adept at it early in life, after first arriving on this dusty planet. He'd used it on more than one occasion to find Vash when the other Plant hadn't wanted to be found. He doubted his twin understood how Knives had found him those times and he wasn't about to let him in on the secret as of yet. Once Vash came to accept his true nature, then he would gladly tutor him in mastering his latent abilities long left undeveloped. It really was frustrating to have a Plant wandering around that wouldn't accept that he was a Plant. Knives hoped his brother would wake up someday soon and realize that he wasn't human and come to embrace that fact. The sooner he stopped trying to be something he wasn't, the sooner Vash could find his 'love and peace' that he'd been searching for. Of course, he just **had** to be stubborn about it. "Idiot." He muttered, though not without affection.

He would have to find a suitable place to make camp…somewhere he could remain isolated long enough to find the elusive trail that he was searching for. He needed a place that was quiet and isolated, where he couldn't be disturbed. He knew it would take a while to find the trail he was looking for considering how much time had lapsed since Meryl's alleged abduction. He was inclined to believe that she really hadn't left of her own free will, but he still didn't have enough evidence to support the theory that she'd been seized by force. He only had his gut feeling, something he wasn't prepared to rely on. Vash went with instinct, but Knives preferred cold, hard facts to support any assumptions made. It was his brother's penchant for ignoring logic that had led to so much disaster following in his wake. Of course, he was now beginning to wonder if he'd relied too much on logic in the past as well, but at least he hadn't destroyed cities just by being in them. Knives couldn't understand how so much destruction could come about by Vash's mere presence. July City and August City aside, he knew full well that his brother hadn't caused any of the devastation he'd seen in the last two years intentionally. It just wasn't like him to go out of his way to cause harm to the humans he loved so much. He'd been left with the conclusion that Vash really was related in some strange way to the whirlwind he'd been nicknamed after…the destructive force of the typhoon seemed to suit him.

After an hour of walking Knives decided to leave the main road and direct his steps towards the open desert. He had to be certain that he wouldn't be distracted by humans passing by too close to him while he searched for the faint trail that would lead him to Meryl. He wondered if Vash had met up with Millie yet. He thought it was highly likely since his brother hadn't appeared to be too far when he'd contacted him. He would really like to know what had happened between those two since he'd left two years before. At the time, he'd assumed that Vash returned Meryl's affections, yet now he was beginning to wonder since he seemed rather attached to Millie from what he gathered from the way she spoke of his brother. Of course, he could be reading more into it than there actually was. Human emotions had always puzzled him and he wasn't nearly as adept at labeling them as his brother was. Perhaps he'd merely misinterpreted what the woman had been telling him, yet he highly doubted it. There was something just beneath the surface that led him to believe his assumptions were correct.

Shaking his head sharply to dislodge the thoughts racing around within his mind, he surveyed his surroundings and finally settled on a jumble of rocks piled off to his right as a likely campsite for the night. As he settled within the natural lee, protected from the wind and blowing sand, he decided to forgo a fire for the night, not wanting to attract the attention of possible roving bands of humans. He didn't want to deal with their bothersome chatter at the moment nor did he wish to chance coming across the disreputable variety either. He wasn't in the mood to deal with bandits patiently and he doubted his brother would approve if he merely killed them rather than sending them on their way. Once he set himself into the proper mindset for finding the elusive trail he was searching for, he didn't want any distractions if he could help it.