Chapter Text
Vash snapped the corner off a meal block with his molars. They were uncomfortably dense to bite into, but immediately dissolved into the texture of sand when chewed. Par for the course on this planet, really. It formed a sludge in his mouth that tasted of masa harina and lard.
Meal blocks were far from exciting, but they were practical travel rations. Considering Vash had spent the majority of his life transient, meal blocks easily accounted for the majority of calories he’d eaten in his lifetime. They were fine, he supposed.
That didn’t change the fact that once he, Meryl, and Milly arrived in May City, Vash’s first priority would be inhaling anything with texture and flavor. Fluffy, sticky donuts. Spicy noodles with sausage. Vash swallowed and sighed dreamily.
“You can’t seriously be enjoying a meal block,” Meryl spoke loudly to be heard over the wind whipping through the truck’s rolled down windows. The old beater’s AC was busted, which meant that the only way to tolerate the early afternoon sun baking their metal prison was a combination of warm air blasting through the vents and keeping all the windows lowered. It didn’t lend itself very well to conversation.
“I’m not,” Vash shouted back. “I’m imagining a better world in which I’m eating real food. Would it kill people to make these things in different flavors, at least?”
Milly leaned forward from where she was sitting behind the driver’s seat—Meryl’s height meant she kept it pulled far enough forward that Milly or Vash could fit back there comfortably—and rested her forearms on the console so that she was close enough to be heard. “Why Mr. Vash, is the compressed sawdust not to your liking?”
“There are just so many unexplored possibilities! They could add spices at least. Maybe they could be stuffed! Herbs, cured meat, pickled vegetables, anything.”
“Pudding filled meal blocks!” Milly exclaimed with enough enthusiasm to make Vash laugh.
“They’re supposed to be nutritious you know, not dessert,” Meryl very unhelpfully pointed out.
Vash leaned around Milly to look at Meryl. “Hey now, low blood sugar on the road is a health risk. Milly and I could save lives with a dessert line of meal blocks! We established that we all care about saving lives, right? So what do you two say to becoming entrepreneurs?”
Milly giggled in Vash’s ear. Meryl tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
“Nice try, but Bernardelli has a strict policy against Milly and I taking on other work while on our assignment.”
Milly nodded and added, “And it’s a good thing they do, Mr. Vash, because we only went to Tombstone because we couldn’t afford the sand steamer fare and we aren’t allowed to work in exchange for passage. If we did, then we wouldn’t have been lucky enough to run into you again, would we?”
“I got unlucky,” Vash grumbled, then raised his voice to be heard again. “If you can’t afford to take a sand steamer, you two are not getting paid enough. You know that, right?”
“Maybe we could be paid more if the company wasn’t struggling because of somebody’s penchant for destruction,” Meryl yelled.
“What? I can’t hear you over the wind!” Vash lied. Meryl threw one hand up in exasperation. Just one, because she was a responsible driver and kept the other hand on the wheel, which was why Vash was currently relegated to the passenger seat while Milly and Meryl rotated driving shifts. He’d only spun the truck out once, and it hadn’t even resulted in any damage. In Vash’s opinion that single incident didn’t warrant banning him from the keys, but he had been outvoted.
Uninspiring menu and uncomfortably hot truck aside, Vash was honestly enjoying being a passenger. He was following what Meryl considered the most important of the newly revised Vash the Stampede protocols: he was not allowed to run away from them.
Vash still wasn’t sold on that rule. Bailing out was, historically, Vash’s favorite option—it just currently wasn’t his top priority. Travelling together was convenient, and it certainly beat walking all the way to May City on foot. Vash told himself that he was humoring the insurance girls, that was all.
Meryl had enumerated many other protocols that morning when the windows had been closed and talking was easier, but Vash had petulantly tuned her out. If he wasn’t getting paid, he wasn’t going to put effort into developing anti-Vash the Stampede tactics for the insurance industry, thank you. Meryl’s face had scrunched when he’d said as much, and Vash had found it amusing.
Meryl’s face was similarly scrunched now at Vash and Milly’s antics. Vash’s expanding index of Meryl expressions was giving him an appreciation for nuance: she sounded as brash as ever, but there was a quirk to her lips that undercut her sternness. It formed a dimple in one of her cheeks that gave her away even though her eyes were hidden by her sunglasses—of Vash’s sunglasses, that Meryl was currently borrowing.
Somehow Meryl was prepared enough to carry a megaphone, a typewriter, a veritable arsenal of derringers, and who knew what else, but she didn’t have her own sunglasses. That was as ludicrous as travelling without shoes. Vash had taken pity on her since this area’s harsh white sand reflected the suns like a mirror, and it was easier for Vash to deal with the glare as a passenger than it was for Meryl as a driver. As for Milly, she had produced a pair of oversized cat-eye sunglasses not long after second sunrise.
Sunlight glinted off orange lenses as Meryl returned her gaze out the windshield, and Vash closed his eyes against the brief but painful reflection. Vash had been experiencing occasional flashes in the corner of his vision, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the beginnings of a migraine aura or a strange side effect from overextending himself back in Tombstone. He could no longer hear lingering music in his mind, though, and none of his other senses seemed to be on overdrive. That was a point against either theory, but he was still on edge for anything that would tip it from aura into migraine. He’d experienced chronic migraines for a period of time after July, and with his vision acting up again, he was worried they might return.
He took a swig from his canteen in hopes that the sparkles in his vision were simply due to dehydration. Thankfully, the insurance girls had the foresight to carry a decent water reserve when they set out to follow Vash, and if they were conservative it should last them until May City.
On top of Vash’s maybe-impending migraine, the residual limb of his left arm ached. The last time he’d removed his prosthetic was the final night in Inepril after the partygoers helped him to his room, and that had only been for a few blessed hours before he packed up his things and set out before dawn.
Perhaps he was being a bit unfair to the insurance girls; they would almost certainly have been tactful if they’d seen him remove his arm, but Vash hadn’t wanted to risk navigating any more questions from them back in camp. He’d had enough of questions for a long time. Preferably forever.
The more important reason he hadn’t taken off his prosthetic was that the desert beyond Tombstone consisted of sand wastes that were only traversed by sand steamer or bus. While the presence of bandits or pursuit by bounty hunters was highly unlikely in an area this remote, unlikely didn’t mean impossible, and on top of that the lack of bedrock made the area potentially inhabited by worms.
Sleeping with his prosthetic attached and loaded ensured that Vash wouldn’t be caught in an emergency without enough time to put it on, so the security it gave him was worth the discomfort. Vash rolled his shoulder to try and give it some relief.
The Colt ached like yet another sore muscle in the back of Vash’s mind. He could feel the thrum of both halves of his gate, one in his right arm and the other in the sealed chamber above the Colt’s barrel.
His gate hadn't always been split that way. It wasn’t something Vash liked to dwell upon, but using his gate in Tombstone was a stark reminder that something had fundamentally shifted inside Vash when he destroyed July.
Before, the gate in the Colt had belonged to another plant. Presumably, Vash had even been friends with her—the gun had been by his side for over a century, but all his memories of the plant within were lost along with vast swatches of the decades leading up to July.
After everything she’d gone through, she didn’t even have the mercy of being remembered. Vash always made sure to remember the fallen, but he couldn’t even recall her name.
Her origin, though, was far enough in the past that the memories of it were wholly intact. Over a century ago, Knives had disappeared into a SEEDS shipwreck and told Vash to wait outside for his return. Vash had many, many regrets in his life—listening to Knives in that moment was one of his heaviest.
Knives returned with a pair of guns, and presented one to Vash with the audacity to call it a gift.
Each gun contained—used to contain—a plant with a regulation system compact enough to fit within the gun itself. There had been injured plants in the wreckage, and in the name of granting them a higher purpose than creating resources for humans, Knives reshaped them into weapons built for their destruction. Vash had seen what they could do when Knives demonstrated one at only thirteen percent power.
As children, Vash and Knives had taken to plant engineering and frequently helped with the regulation systems on the ship. Knives had especially taken to it, but in his worst nightmares, Vash had never dreamed that something like this was possible. Vash had shot Knives in the leg and fled.
Decades passed, and then Vash destroyed July.
It wasn't until then that Vash learned that Knives hadn’t just created the guns to be weapons—they were also a template. When Knives pried open Vash’s gate, it was as though it was drawn to his sister’s in the Colt with a gravity neither she nor Vash could fight, and they merged and twisted into a weapon orders of magnitude more powerful than any plant could be on its own.
When Vash came to after the explosion, he was kneeling in iches of ash in a body that was foreign to him. Vash was missing his left arm, and his right felt similarly severed despite it trembling under his weight. His gate was tender and swollen, and prodding at it triggered a painful sort of double perception: he could feel the gate in his arm, but he also felt the gate within the Colt where his sister—who was she again?—should be. Vash reached out but couldn’t feel her in the way plants sang to one another, intimate and free flowing. Instead the connection felt invasive, like she had been crudely grafted into Vash's mind. Like they had fused.
She screamed, and so Vash screamed too, and it hurt. She clawed at Vash’s memories as though gaining purchase could save her from drowning, shredding them as she sank into Vash, tearing backwards through his history until her sense of self dissolved entirely.
She was the only direct casualty of July.
It made Vash want to tear his skin off, rip his mind open, and tear her out for both their sakes, but she had already dissipated like smoke. She was gone, and her gate had become Vash's. He dry heaved onto the ground as if he could expel the stolen power.
In the years since, Vash had never regained the memories that the plant damaged in their violent fusion. If that was the price he had to pay, Vash would give all of that to her and more.
Every time he fired the gun was to honor the sacrifice that she had never asked to make. Vash vowed that he would only use his Colt in pursuit of peace, and he resolved to never open his gate again.
But then he did. Yesterday. Vash took a deep breath.
The edges of Vash’s vision flashed again, and Vash let out an unhappy whine. His brain felt like overstretched elastic, and his vision was being so mean to him right now.
Meryl’s voice rang out like like thunder after lightning as she shouted, “Did anyone else see that?”
Then Meryl slammed on the brake, skidding the truck to a stop.
Milly let out an eep and Vash, who realized half a second too late that there was a good reason seat belts were invented, flew forward and his head ricocheted off the windshield. He leaned back with a hiss, because it seemed a headache was in the cards for him one way or another.
He rubbed at his forehead and glowered at Meryl. “Listen, I said I was sorry about spinning out earlier, but this is a bit hypocritical.”
“Hush, you’re still grounded from the keys,” Meryl said, flapping her hand dismissively in his direction as she stared out into the sands.
“See what, ma’am?” asked Milly, slightly breathless and clutching a novel to her chest—the one she’d been reading when it wasn’t her turn to drive.
“There’s something out there. I thought it was just my imagination, but now I’m sure. Someone might be signaling for help.”
Vash leaned over the center console to look out over Meryl’s shoulder, examining the horizon with renewed interest.
Another flash, but Vash was looking in its direction now. It wasn’t at the edges of his vision, and Meryl had seen it too. That meant that it wasn’t just in his mind—it was real, and unease built in his stomach.
“Someone stranded this far out?” Milly said. “From the maps we checked, ma’am, I thought we decided that nobody would be out here.”
“Nobody should,” Vash corrected. “And the timing looks irregular, not in a pattern of three, so I don’t think it’s an SOS.”
Then the light went steady, and Vash finally made the connection. It wasn’t a distress signal, and it wasn’t the bright sands—it was the reflection of the sun off the lens of an infrared camera. Now that he was looking at it, Vash could make out the metal rod it was mounted on poking out of the sand. The camera that was now locked onto them instead of spinning in a circle.
Vash had been a fool for dismissing it as a migraine aura, because now they were out of time.
“Meryl, floor it!” Vash shouted, and she must have not wanted to question the urgency in his voice, because she slammed on the gas as hard as she’d slammed on the brake. The acceleration plastered Vash back into his seat, and all three of them screamed in unison as an impact behind them shook the ground and the air, blasting sand dozens of feel high right where they’d just been stopped. The car lurched again as the unstable ground rippled underneath them, and Meryl wrenched the wheel to steer into the skid, and oh, that was far more intelligent then what Vash had done when he’d spun the car out by panicking and letting go of the wheel, but it still wasn’t enough—
“Get down!” Vash yelled. Then his ears popped, and the windows shattered in a torrent of heat and glass.