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Scapegoat

Summary:

Legato Bluesummers and his peculiar relationship with Millions Knives.

Notes:

This is a repost of a pair of really old 'fics from 2001. Since they occur sequentially in the same universe and the second one never did have a title, I'm folding them in together. Other than a few minor edits to the first part, I'm presenting them here exactly as they were when I posted them to MadCitML, complete with pointless song lyric quotes at the beginning and end. (What can I say? I was younger then. And no, these are not songfics.)

2001 was long before the Trigun Maximum manga was completed, and a couple of years before any of the manga had been translated into English, so this follows the anime canon only. In particular, Legato's manga origin story wasn't known to me then, although there are a few eerie parallels visible. I guess there's just no way that someone like him could have come from a pleasant background.

Part of the original author's note from 2001 follows. I have yet to repost the "EvilNeffy" story here, so don't worry if you have no idea what that's about.

 

Author's Notes:

 

First of all, this story really, really disturbs me, and not in an ecchi, EvilNeffy sort of way, either. Neither my narrator nor his seme are very nice people.

Secondly, as the above indicates, this is yaoi. Furthermore, one of the early scenes contains nonconsensual oral sex. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Thirdly, the song lyric quoted at the beginning really has nothing to do with Trigun—it just seemed to fit, so I put it there.

Fourthly, I suspect that some things in here may be choppy or poorly explained. Mea culpa.

Fifthly, Trigun belongs to a whole bunch of people, none of whom is me.

[...] And I refuse to get into an argument regarding whether [Legato's] hair is blue or black.

Chapter 1: (Legato)

Chapter Text


me wo dojite.
kodomotachi wa eien wo shinjiterukedo,
genjitsu wa ikarechimatta yoru ni karera wo kuruwaseru.
shitteruyo. motometeita mono subete wa kyokou.

Just close your eyes.
Children believe in eternity, but
in actuality, the insane night drives them all mad.
I know already. The things that you wish for. It's all just your imagination.

—'Scapegoat", by Minami Ozaki (Romanization/Translation: Evol Siren)


The blow snapped my head back against the wall, and for a moment, everything that I saw turned to red and black.

"What were you doing in here, Rat? you're supposed to be out on the floor, working. I don't like little boys that don't work."

I hung my head and refused to look up. It wouldn't have helped, anyway. He always hated it when I talked back.

"Maybe I should just stop feeding you, eh? I'm sure you'll be out of here before you starve to death. Fact is, I don't know how you've lasted as long as you have."

The truth was that I shouldn't have. The clients didn't like boys with hair under their arms or between their legs or on their faces or chests, boys whose voices had begun to deepen, boys that were on the verge of becoming men. I'd been ruthlessly plucking hairs out every morning for quite a while now, and talking as little as possible and in as squeaky a voice as I could manage, knowing that none of us boys ever left this place alive, but I knew I wasn't going to last much longer.

I was already dead.

The thought filled me with a curious feeling of peace. I was already dead, and dead people, at least as far as I had ever been able to tell, didn't feel pain. Only a little longer and I'll stop hurting for good.

"But maybe if you make me feel good, I'll forget all about it for a little while."

Recognizing that as a cue, I dropped to my knees and opened my mouth, waiting patiently for him to fumble his pants open and bracing myself for the familiar, sour, unwashed taste of his cock. I'd been doing this for too long to even feel disgusted about it anymore. It was just another one of the unpleasant things that I had to do sometimes, and at least it didn't hurt too much.

I licked the inside of my upper lip and repressed a wince as I realized that my teeth had cut into me when he'd backhanded me. Great. So this was going to sting, on top of everything else.

I managed not to gag as he thrust into me, instead forcing myself to suck on him, tonguing his shaft in the way that I knew he preferred.

"Mmmm. Oh, you're good at that, Rat. Perhaps I ought to geld you and keep you, what do you say?"

I tensed for a moment, then relaxed. He doesn't really mean it. Less work for him just to kill me. Please, let him kill me!

He was fucking my mouth now, hard enough to almost make me gag. Think of something else, I told myself. What was happening out in the main room?

I could hear people moving around out there. There were clients, then. At least, oh, a dozen, some of whom were probably only here to look at us boys and talk with their friends. Scraps of conversation drifted through the flimsy wooden wall of the storeroom.

"And I said to her, "Honey—""

"Yeah, the cost of bulk water has gone up by two c-cents per litre in Augusta. I think they're having trouble with their wells—"

"Hey, you can't bring that in here! All weapons are to be left at the door, just like the sign says."

The bark of a gun cut off all the other sounds, leaving an abrupt silence behind as it faded. My so-called guardian's cock wilted in my mouth, and he pulled it out, fumbling with his trousers again, stuffing himself back inside so that he could look at least half-dignified, and then running out into the main room.

More gunshots. Five more. It was so quiet outside that I could hear the sound of the brass being ejected as I swished saliva around inside my mouth and then spat, trying to get rid of the sour taste that still lingered there.

More shots, and more, until I lost count. Were they all from the same gun? I couldn't tell, but I had the strange feeling that it was so.

I crawled on my hands and knees over to the storeroom door and cautiously, slowly, stuck my head out at what would have been about knee height.

Blood. The floor was awash in crimson, bodies scattered all over. Nearest to me, three of the other boys, Red and Dick and Whisper, lay together in a pile. The man who had called himself my guardian lay on his back just beyond them, shirttails still untucked and a fold of greyish cloth from his underwear caught in his fly. No doubt that had been hidden from him by the potbelly hanging over his waistband as he zipped himself up.

There were others—other boys, two or three of the other adult staff, several clients, most of whom I didn't recognize. Someone on the far side of the room wasn't quite dead yet, because I could hear him whimper now and again.

Only one person was still on his feet. He stood with his back to me, a smoking gun dangling loosely from his right hand. He had short hair that was very pale blonde—almost white—and he was wearing the weirdest clothes I had ever seen, some sort of one piece suit that covered his entire body.

He took a step toward the door, then another. Leaving me alone with the corpses. Leaving me alive. No! What had I done to deserve to live? What had I done to deserve more pain?

That thought propelled me up onto my feet and forward into the room. "Master, please . . ." I'd been calling every adult male I knew master for so long that the form of address came naturally, and it may have been fortunate for me that it did.

He turned, eyebrows raised. Young, unexpectedly handsome, smiling in a way that I suppose would have frightened someone who wanted to live, eyes like pools of cold blue water with an unexpected undertow at the bottom, that could drag you in and then never let you out again . . .

I swallowed. "Master, please," I repeated. "Kill me."

He laughed. "Interesting. I don't think I've ever met such obliging garbage before. In fact, I do believe that you're the first human in almost a hundred years to puzzle me. Do you really want to die that badly?"

"Yes, master."

"Why?"

"Because living hurts."

"Obliging, intelligent garbage." His smile widened, and he slid the gun back into the holster that hung at his hip. I bit my lip, refusing to cry. It was better not to beg or plead, or even look too eager, if you wanted something, because if they knew just how badly you wanted, they would find an excuse not to give it to you. "I never thought I'd see the day."

"Is . . ." My voice came out sounding hoarse. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Is there something I can do for you, master?" Perhaps I could strike a bargain with him, if there was something that he wanted that I could provide. I'd noticed already that there was a bulge just below the waist of his coverall. Perhaps he was the sort of man who got . . . excited . . . by violence. I'd known more than a few. Generally I was the one that they were violent towards, though.

"Something you could do for me?" It looked like he was about to start laughing again.

I smiled encouragingly and walked toward him with a smooth gliding motion designed to draw attention to my working clothes . . . or rather, the lack thereof. "It looks to me like that has to be uncomfortable, master," I said, touching that bulge delicately with a fingertip. "Why don't you let me take care of it for you?"

"Let me get this straight. you're offering to have sex with me if I agree to blow your brains out?"

"Yes, master."

Now he did laugh. "And here I didn't think there was anything a human could do that would surprise me. Well, I always did wonder what this sex stuff was all about. Go ahead. If I like what you do, I'll see that you die quickly and painlessly. Otherwise, I'll shoot you in the gut and leave you here to bleed to death."

"Yes, master." At last. One more distasteful task, and it would be over for good.

It took me a little while to figure out how to open up that suit of his, and he just stood there and smirked all the while, instead of helping. Then at last I had it unsealed from his throat all the way down to his crotch. He had a nice body, young and lithe and firmly muscled without even a hint of sagging around the waist, and as I nuzzled his groin, I discovered that he smelled pleasantly clean. Maybe this won't be so bad . . .

I kissed the tip of his cock, noticing as I did so that he was watching me. Perhaps he was getting a bit impatient? Immediately, I took him all the way into my mouth, and was rewarded with a soft growling sound. He tasted strange, not like anyone I'd ever done before, but it wasn't unpleasant. This really isn't so bad. Tentatively, I began to suck, feeling the first drop or two of his semen burning on my tongue. Not long now.

He growled more loudly as he came, flooding my mouth with seed that burned like cold fire. I swallowed, feeling the odd sensation of it tracing a path all the way down to my stomach. Who is he? For that matter, what is he?

I swallowed again, and licked his softening member clean, but the cold burning didn't stop, although it did center itself in one place in particular—the cut inside my mouth that I'd gotten when my late "guardian" had smashed me against the storeroom wall. It numbed the slight stinging pain of the injury, for which I was grateful.

I felt suddenly dizzy. What's happening to me? I wondered as my vision began to blur around the edges. I looked blearily up at the stranger. he'd gotten the front of his garment sealed about halfway up again. Please, I thought.

Do it now.

He stopped fiddling with his clothes and pulled his gun again, cocking it and pointing it at my head. Then he stopped and lowered it again, staring at me with a thoughtful expression on his face.

I glanced down at my hands. They were shaking, and the cold burning feeling was beginning to spread through my head. I felt very strange.

Kill me!

"No. Not yet."

He slung me over his shoulder like a sack of grain and carried me out of the rundown tavern-cum-whorehouse where I'd spent the past eight years of my life. The last things I remember about that night are the cold of the night air and the warmth of his shoulder against my stomach as I fought the urge to be sick.

Then the cold burning dug deeper inside me, and I was falling into icy blackness.


I was cold when I woke up, too, lying on my back on a metal examination table without so much as a sheet to conceal my nakedness. I immediately sat up, drawing my knees up to my chin and wrapping my arms around them to try to hold in a little body heat.

My arms . . .

I stared with disquiet at a hand that was bigger than the ones I remembered, at a forearm lightly furred with black hair. Slowly, I realized that there was hair under my arms, too, and at my groin, and on my face. That last disgusted me beyond measure. I had to get rid of it. There had been this one client who had . . . No, don't think about that. Concentrate. Need to find a razor.

I uncurled myself a little and looked around the room. Metal walls, metal floor and ceiling, some sort of . . . console? . . . built into the far wall, with little lights blinking on and off all over its surface. Is this a ship?

I slid my legs over the edge of my makeshift bed, only then realizing that there were several bits of complex machinery that I didn't understand hooked up to it somehow, and began to pad around the room. There was a sink in an alcove off to the side, with a mirror above it, but there was nothing else there that could serve my purpose, so I kept on looking.

There was a sheathed knife lying on the console. Well, I probably wouldn't find anything better. I took it back to the alcove, and, after half an hour or so, I had several new shallow cuts on my face and across my throat, and there were a bunch of black hairs and bits of stubble lying in the sink. I rinsed them down the drain, then cupped my hands to gather enough water to sluice over my face.

I looked at myself in the mirror, pensively stroking my more-or-less smooth chin. Who was that stranger looking back at me? Blue-black hair straggled across his forehead and half-hid his left eye. The right eye, the visible one, was that same striking amber-gold colour that had always made me so popular with several of the clients. My hair, my eyes . . . but not my face as I remembered it. Still very beautiful, but the bones were harsher now, the eyes deeper-set . . . it was a man's face, not a boy's. The body below it . . . I ran my hands down my chest. Mature. Young, but mature. Hard and lean. A bit like the blonde man's body.

How long was I asleep?

"About half a year, give or take."

I spun, knife in hand. He was leaning against the frame of a door that I hadn't been able to figure out how to open, looking at me.

«Oh, please. Put that down.» He smirked at me, and it was only then that I realized that his mouth wasn't moving. «You couldn't possibly take me.» Seeing the gun that still hung, holstered, at his hip, I was inclined to agree.

"Master." I went down on one knee, bowing my head, laying the knife on the floor beside me. My voice had changed too, deepened, but my attention just then was focused on him, not myself.

«Not like that. Speak out loud to me from now on, and I'll cut your tongue out to remind you not to. Focus your thoughts. Even garbage like you should be capable of learning that much.»

I concentrated. «Master.»

«Better. Do you understand what's happened to you?»

«No, master.»

«I suppose that would have been too much to hope for. Even genetically improved garbage can't be all that bright. Do you have a name?»

«Legato, master. Legato Bluesummers.» When I strained to reach the memory, I could just barely recall someone calling me that. A woman's voice, I thought. I'd been very small. At the brothel, it had been quickly shortened from Legato to Legat to Lat to Rat, but I had clung to the original, although I didn't really understand why.

«Legato,» the blonde man repeated. «And I'm called Knives.»

Knives. A good name for one so deadly. It suited him.

«Stand up and let me get a look at you.»

I obeyed immediately, letting my hands dangle loosely at my sides, having had no modesty to preserve since I was a small child.

Knives examined me closely, his gloved hands poking and prodding at various parts of my body. «Hmmm. I wasn't sure you were going to recover—thought you might end up a vegetable, in fact—the neural scans were pretty inconclusive—but you seem to be all right. I'm going to have to run more tests, to see if I can figure out how much of you is still human, and how much is now . . . like me. Tell me, Legato, do you still want to die?»

«Yes, master. More than anything.»

«Good boy.» He patted my head. «Well, you will, I promise. One day. I must wipe out all the humans if my brother and I are to create our paradise, and you are still human enough. But I want to keep you with me for a while. I want you to help me kill them. Would you like that, Legato?»

«I . . . don't know, master.» The thought of wiping out people like the clients was good. It felt right. But I wasn't sure I liked the thought of killing other boys, other victims.

Knives' smirk was gone. «Think, garbage. You said yourself that living hurts. Isn't it better for them not to be in pain?»

The confusion inside me ebbed away, replaced with purpose. Yes, of course. When you thought about it, it was just so blindingly obvious that I didn't know how I'd missed it. Of course they would be happier dead. Everyone was happier dead.

«Now . . . We made a bargain. Do you remember that?»

«You promised that, if I pleased you, you would kill me quickly and painlessly,» I replied promptly.

«Yes. But you know, Legato, bargains are easy things to forget. you're going to have to make sure that I remember just how good you can make me feel.»

«Of course, master.»

It was easier to get the front of Knives' coverall open this time. Inside it, he was limp. Well, I'd had to deal with that a few times before, with clients who were too shocked or anxious or disturbed somehow to get it up promptly. I squeezed his cock gently until it began to harden, then fell to my knees and began to nuzzle and lick. I still liked the way he tasted and smelled, and as I continued my ministrations, I began to feel a warmth and a tightness in my own groin. It was almost as though I could feel a phantom mouth teasing at my crotch, doing the same sorts of things to me as I was doing to Knives . . .

Is that it? Am I feeling what you're feeling right now? Oh . . .

His semen wasn't like cold fire anymore. Instead, it made my mouth feel all warm and tingly, and satisfied a craving that I hadn't known I'd been feeling until it started to flow down my throat. And as I tasted it, white heat flowered between my legs, an unexpected and incredibly pleasant sensation. My hand darted downward, and I touched myself, feeling for an exquisite moment the strangeness of a hard, pulsing penis attached to my own body. Then it was over, and I felt myself begin to sag as though I were a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

«Clean this up. There are sponges in one of the drawers under the sink.»

Knives pulled his clothes back into place and left without another word, leaving me kneeling there, staring at the puddle of white fluid on the metal floor, right between the spots where his feet had been planted.

I smiled slowly and went to get a sponge.


Knives wasn't a kind master, but he wasn't really cruel, either. It was more like he just didn't take notice of me at all except when he needed me for something. He trained and educated me in a haphazard sort of way, pointing me at books and audio recordings and files of information that he felt that I should read or listen to or view, and then left me to puzzle out for myself whether or not there was anything else that I needed to read or listen to or view first, in order to make sense out of the information. Fortunately, someone—my mother? I couldn't quite remember—had taught me the rudiments of reading when I was still very young, and while it was time-consuming at first, I did manage to puzzle my way through most of the texts I was assigned. I don't think Knives would have kept me on if he'd had to teach me how to read.

He did teach me a few hands-on physical skills, like how to shoot and how to use a knife, in sketchy lessons that I had to practice and perfect on my own. Other than that, he hardly ever touched me for anything except sex.

Sex . . .

Feeling Knives touch my body always drove me wild. On the day that I first convinced him to penetrate me anally, I broke down and cried—not because it hurt, but because it felt so very good and I'd been wanting him to do it for months. I craved the feeling of his body inside mine, fantasized about it, needed it as I had never needed anything in my life before.

And there was more. Over time, I came to crave, not only his touch, but his approval, his good will, the smile that tugged at a corner of his mouth when we discovered that I had developed an accent patterned after some of the old recordings that I had been listening to, the brief flicker of almost-warmth in those cold blue eyes when I said that yes, I understood now, that I had read his notes on my miraculous transformation and made some sense out of them—that I knew that there had been some bizarre, unbelievable reaction that had made his sperm go viral in my bloodstream and start rewriting parts of my DNA, turning me into something that was still part human, but also part other. Part Plant.

Like him.

Years slipped past that way. I'm not sure how many. Knives' notes had included the fact that, after the brief but intense growth spurt that had pushed me from early adolescence into adulthood, my aging rate had slowed dramatically, by a factor of something like seven to ten times. I wasn't immortal the way a Plant would be, but I had several good centuries in front of me before I got too old to be useful to Knives.

I know that he tried to duplicate me, to create an army of loyal demi-Plants to act as his assistants, but the fluke that transformed me never happened again. That was one of only two things that I ever saw make him really angry.

The other was his brother, Vash.

The love-hate relationship between the two men was oddly intense, at least on Knives' side. I never really understood it, possibly because I never had a brother of my own. I don't know when I started to get jealous of it. It might have been when Knives took me on that first outing to test the skills of slaughter that I had learned. We walked into a particular office building in a small town near the crashed ship where we made our home, and systematically slaughtered everyone inside, finishing up in the president's office on the top floor. I used my gun with precision, making every shot count, and Knives gave me a wicked, approving smile as we surveyed the final scene of slaughter together, looking at each other over the three bodies piled together in the middle of the floor.

I don't remember which of us it was that first began to laugh. I do know that it was Knives that grabbed my arms and kissed me roughly, his teeth gnawing at my lower lip until we could both taste blood as well as smelling it and seeing it all around us.

Mere seconds later, I was bent forward across the desk with my pants down, writhing as he pounded into me, our joining lubricated with the last vital essence of the woman who had once owned this office. It was hard, fast, furious sex, lasting only a minute or two, both of us desperate for release.

Knives' growls as he came were normally inarticulate, but this time, I thought I detected a word as he spilled his essence into me. A name.

"Vash!"

I couldn't be sure, because it was a bare split second later that my world exploded into the white light and heat that was an orgasm, but I was somehow left feeling both shamed and jealous.

Yes, perhaps it was that late in our relationship that I started to hate Vash and the way he was treating my master. Or perhaps it began the first time I ever heard that hated name, and saw Knives' expression soften, as he spoke it, into a warmth that he would never, ever offer me. I don't know. I don't remember. And I don't care.

It wasn't long after that that Knives heard that Vash was asking about someone in July, and set off to confront his brother. Alone. I didn't quite dare ask to go with him. He was still my master, and I lived in daily fear that he would break his word, turn me away without fulfilling our bargain.

«Legato!»

The cry burst into my mind late one night, while I was trying to concentrate on a book about geology. That was the sort of reading that Knives had begun setting for me by then—geology, biochemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, engineering. Normally, I devoured it all with a will, but my master's absence had made me uneasy.

The scream, and the instant of burning pain all across the front of my body that accompanied it, sent me running for the door. I was barely able to force myself to grab traveling clothes and food and a full canteen and lock everything up behind me before setting off for July at the best pace that I could manage.

Knives needed me.

It took me three days to reach the city, three days during which I heard nothing out of my master at all. To be honest, I didn't know how I had heard him the first time. Normally, we couldn't contact each other when we were more than ten iles or so apart. Perhaps agony and desperation had given his message more strength than usual.

I was worried, but not unduly so. Knives was tough. He was a Plant. He would survive whatever had happened to him.

I didn't dare let myself think that what I'd heard might have been his dying cry . . . and if it had been, why would he have screamed my name and not his beloved brother's?

I really did hate Vash.

I expected to find a city at the other end of my journey. Instead, I found a pile of rubble and more than a million human beings fighting each other for what little food and water remained there in the ruins. I had to shoot three people just to keep them from stealing my canteen, but every time I laid another body on the ground, the survivors backed away from me as though I had encased myself in a force field. Eventually, word seemed to get around, and there were no more attempts to take my water from me. At another time I might have killed them anyway, but I was here now for Knives, not for them.

I found him at the very center of the destruction, as I had somehow known I would. I sensed it when I was near him. I even knew which slabs of rubble to lift out of the way, straining, feeling as though my shoulders were going to be dragged out of their sockets by the weight.

«Master? Are you there? Master?»

«Le . . . ga . . . to . . .»

I scrabbled frantically through the loose brick, uncovering an arm, and then realizing that it wasn't attached to anything, although it was oddly free of decay for a severed limb that had been lying here exposed to the weather for three days.

Deeper. Another arm. I dug some more, uncovered a body that was still breathing despite having been crushed under that weight of rubble, recognizing it despite the blistered and blackened skin.

«Wa . . . ter

I uncapped my canteen and tilted it, letting the precious liquid drip between those blistered lips. «There isn't much left,» I warned him, «and I doubt we can get more here. Will you be able to walk, master?»

«I think so.» Knives' tongue slid out to lick a bead of water off his lip. «Vash hit me hard, but not that hard. It'll be a few months before I'm entirely back to normal, though.»

I weighed the canteen as I recapped it. Little more than half full, and it would take us longer to get home than it had for me to get here. Knives was sitting up now, but he was moving stiffly, and I could feel little jabs of his pain being transmitted to me. He wouldn't be able to move fast, and his eyes . . . I still have nightmares about what the blast had done to his eyes. He was effectively blind. I would have to lead him.

We needed help.

And we would find none anywhere in the ravening mob that filled the city. I knew that. We"d be lucky to get back out again with our supplies intact.

I helped Knives to his feet. He looked terrible, his chest blackened, clothes burnt away, other parts of his body blistered . . . How could Vash, whom he claimed to love, do such a thing to him? What kind of monster was my master's brother?

«The arm.» Knives pointed a shaking finger at the severed appendage that I had first uncovered. «Vash's arm. Bring it.»

I stuffed it into my pack. Vash's arm. Well, at least my master's pain had not gone completely unavenged.

We limped together down a pile of rubble and up the other side. At the bottom of the second hill, one of the humans approached us, eyes very obviously on my canteen.

«Get back,» I ordered him, then drew in a breath to try again a moment later, when I realized that I had projected my mind at him as I would have done with Knives, instead of speaking aloud. But to my surprise, the man's eyes glazed over, and he backed away until he fetched up against the remains of a wall, and even then he was still trying to walk backwards.

Seized by a suspicion, I ordered him, «Act like a chicken.»

He bent his elbows, planted his hands in his armpits, and began to cluck, eyes still glazed.

Knives and I left town in the company of four sturdy young human males. They helped me half-carry my master along until, one by one, they dropped dead from lack of food and water and rest. Weak, I thought as I kicked one fresh corpse in the ribs. Hopelessly weak. Knives was still on his feet despite his injuries, and neither he nor I had had more than a swallow or two of water since leaving July, and yet it was the humans who were dropping like flies. Granted, I hadn't offered them my canteen, but nevertheless . . .

The fourth survived until we reached our home, and I released him from my spell just before I keyed the door open. He immediately collapsed to his knees, and then to his stomach, clawing at his throat in an agony of thirst.

"You understand that being alive means being in pain now, don't you?" I asked him. "Good."

I shot that nameless human in the gut and left him there to bleed to death. It seemed fitting, somehow. He hadn't amused me.

I took Knives to the old infirmary and began the time-consuming task of hooking him up to diagnostic machines that didn't always quite work properly on his unhuman body.

«Vash's arm,» he told me as I worked. «Put it in the stasis box for now. When I've recovered, there's something I'm going to want you to do with it.»


Six months later, I was the one in the infirmary, lying on the familiar metal examination table and feeling the painless vibration of the bone saw that was finishing the work of severing my left arm.

Somehow, when you told me that you wanted to keep Vash's arm, this wasn't quite what I envisioned you doing with it.

He'd been smiling that strange smile at his as he looked down at me where I was cuffed to the bed, my body aching pleasantly from the first sex I'd had in weeks. He hadn't wanted to touch me until he was completely, scarlessly, healed.

—Only you can take Vash's place for me, Legato, even for just a little while. That's why I need you to do this. Your cells are enough like ours that there's no chance of tissue rejection, and it will help us track him, help us keep an eye on him. Depending on how well it works, it might even make you a bit more like us. Wouldn't you like that?

What could I have said but yes? The only thing I wanted in life was to make myself less human. More like Knives. More worthy of him.

I felt bone grate against bone as the machines fitted Vash's arm into place against my stump. Then they began the tedious work of putting me back together again. Each layer of tissue, each muscle, each tendon, had to be individually fused together in the correct order, or I was going to be crippled.

At last, at last, the machines bonded the skin together, leaving an angry red mark behind to divide my pale skin from Vash's, essentially the same colour but slightly more tanned. I willed the hand to form a fist. The fingers twitched as though they'd forgotten exactly what it was like to be under the command of a brain, then gave in and followed the order I'd given them.

I worked with that arm as the machines released the restraints that had held me motionless against the table and deactivated the devices that had numbed the relevant part of my body. It obeyed promptly, as though it had always been where it was. As the machines took my old arm away to be disposed of, I laid both my hands in my lap. Almost the same, the right a little paler and wider, with black hairs on the back, while the new left was slightly tanned and narrower and furred with near-invisible blonde.

«How do you feel?» Knives wandered into my field of vision and perched on a stool beside the table on which I sat.

«No different, really, master.»

«Oh? Here, take this. In your left hand.»

I hesitated, then accepted the heavy black pistol that rode at his hip. I'd never touched it before. When he'd taught me how to shoot, he had used a different gun.

Knives' eyes narrowed, and the cover popped off what I'd thought was a block of solid metal mounted over the barrel. Inside was something like a rod made of concentrated light.

My new hand felt very strange. I stared, fascinated, as its flesh merged with the metal of the gun. I could feel it changing into something that—

A nova of agony erupted in my upper arm, and I bit my lip to muffle a cry of protest. The transformation had reached the red mark that divided my flesh from the bit of Vash that my master and I had just recycled, and my own cells couldn't quite manage to do what Vash's were doing, although I could feel them trying. I clutched at my arm with my other hand and tried not to scream as the pain of the incomplete transformation went on and on and on.

«Enough.» I'd never been quite so happy to feel Knives' voice, not even when I had dug him out of the rubble. My arm was suddenly just an arm again, and the gun was just a gun, and my master pried it gently from between my fingers. «We'll try again in a couple of weeks. Perhaps that worthless half-human body of yours can be taught a few new tricks, although I suspect that bonding properly with a weapon will always be beyond you.»

Damn Vash, anyway. If he were going to lose an arm, he could at least have had the decency to lose the entire arm and part of the shoulder, too.

«Mmmm.» Knives' fingers were playing lightly over my knuckles, over my left wrist, exploring my new arm. Suddenly, he reached up and unsealed his clothing, guiding my left hand to his crotch. «Here, Legato. Touch me with my brother's hand. Be Vash for me, this once.»

Obediently, I squeezed and massaged his hardness, feeling a familiar echo between my own legs, but my thoughts were dark.

Damn you, Vash.


It was after that that Knives began to send me out, now and again, to search for his brother. It was slow, careful work. I had to visit every town, every village on the planet, and even though I needed less food and less rest than a human would, that still took a very long time.

I saw him first in the city of December, halfway around the world from home, after more than a decade of searching. Except that I didn't know that it was him. The only pictures of Vash that Knives had been able to show me dated from when they had been children together, and although he had described the changes, told me about Vash's preferred clothing and hairstyle and the gun that he would be carrying, I still couldn't believe that the guy in the red coat who was scarfing down donuts in front of a vendor's stall in the market could possibly be him. He looked . . . so very human. But still, he was the first person I had met with the right kind of hair and coat and gun, so I followed him for a while, just so that I could be certain that he wasn't Vash.

That was the biggest mistake I had made since I had met up with Knives. I should have known. I would have, if I had been paying attention, because the very moment I spotted him, I experienced the strange tingly feeling that was all the tiny hairs on my left arm simultaneously standing up on end. But it wasn't until I had seen him face down eight thugs in a bar and take them all out without killing them that I understood that this was really him. The sixty million double-dollar man. The Humanoid Typhoon.

My nemesis.

Vash the Stampede.

I stayed in the bar for long enough to watch him get plastered and pass out on the floor, then left by the back door.

This was my master's brother? This horrible, weak creature was the only being on the planet that Knives genuinely loved?

My hands are shaking. When did that start? I slid them into the pockets of my coat, where I let them clench into fists. Why, Knives, why? Why do you love someone who's so unworthy of you, while I . . .

I wanted to tear Vash apart. I wanted to rip all of his limbs off, one by one, and substitute them for my own, until I became him, became not-human, and Knives would look at me with that warmth in his eyes that he normally reserved for memories of his brother . . .

"Hey, pretty boy! Get outta here! This is a private party!"

I had been so distracted by my own thoughts that I hadn't even realized that I wasn't alone in the alleyway. Two men, and a woman . . . no, a girl . . . one of them holding her while the other unfastened his pants.

"Hey, I'm talking to you! Are you listening to me? We ain't gonna share, understand me?"

I smiled. Eager to die, are you? Well, that is the natural order of things, after all.

"I want you to take out your gun," I said, both aloud and with my mind, to the man who was fumbling with his trousers. "I want you to point it at your head. And now you're going to pull the trigger."

Blood and brains and fragments of skull and bits of hair splattered all over the other man and the girl, both of whom were too frightened to move. I admired the artistic effect for a moment before I turned my concentration to the second man.

«Let her go. Don't try to talk.»

He released the girl and took a step back, mouth working silently. His trousers were soaked. Apparently, his fear had made his bladder let go. How very human. And how crude.

«Now reach inside your chest and crush your heart.» It was a manoeuvre I had only tried once before, with a gang of bandits that I'd met outside the ruins of July, but it had worked just beautifully then, and it did so now, also. I enjoyed the look of total panic in the man's eyes as his body moved against his will and snuffed his life out. Don't worry. you'll feel better soon.

I considered the girl, who was staring at me, eyes wide. She was about the same age as I had been when I had first met Knives. No, I decided, acting on some inexplicable instinct. Not her. Not yet.

I walked past her without another glance, ignoring her pleas to wait, to stay, as she found her voice. I had no further interest in her.

I filled my canteen at the nearest fountain and then headed for the edge of town. Now that I knew where Vash was, I should be able to track him easily enough, and Knives had to know.

It wasn't until I was several iles out of town that I realized I was being followed by someone—a mounted someone. A pursuer on foot I would have ignored, since there was no way that a human could maintain the punishing pace that I set for myself for more than a day or so, but this was a slightly different situation.

I stopped in my tracks and turned, waiting for the stranger to catch up.

As she got closer, I realized that this wasn't a stranger after all. It was that girl from the alley.

She stopped her mount a yar or so away from me. I waited.

"I wanted to say thank you," she said at last.

"I didn't kill those men for you." Idly, I considered my options. Should I kill her or ignore her, send her back to town or paralyze her on the spot to die of hunger and thirst? The possibilities were endless.

"Still, you probably saved my life. I'm Dominique."

"Legato Bluesummers. If you have nothing further to say to me, I have somewhere else that I need to be." I turned away from her and began walking again.

Somehow, I wasn't at all surprised when she nudged her mount forward to follow me. Inwardly, I shrugged. She was nothing to me either way. Eventually she'd get tired of this, and go somewhere else, especially if I continued ignoring her.

I was wrong. Wrong for the second time in less than eight hours. She followed me all the way back to Knives' stronghold, and when I told my master about her persistence, he decided that we might have a use for her after all.

Dominique the Cyclops, first of the Gung-Ho Guns. I developed her eye myself. A simple enough device, once you understood the principles.

Eventually, others joined her. Chapel. Midvalley. Grey. My creations, just as I was Knives' creation. My servants, just as I was his servant. My loyal human henchmen.

They're all dead now, of course. They were never meant to survive tangling with Vash the Stampede.

But still, they were such very useful tools, and so easily manipulated . . . I remember the look on Dominique's face when she first saw me with Knives, first realized that he was more than just my master, and that I would never cleave to her. It twisted her so nicely, showed her for the first time that life really is pain.

She was too blind to see that Knives didn't really care about me any more than I cared about her, that all he ever saw me as was a body that would carry out his plans and serve as a willing receptacle for his lust.

He has always reserved his love, his caring, for one person only, and that person isn't me.

Damn you, Vash.

Knives loves you so deeply, and you don't even realize it. And for that, you're going to suffer.

You're still hesitating, aren't you? Come on, shoot that gun. I promised Knives that you would suffer for what you did to him, for all the pain that you've caused him. Life is pain, I know that—in fact, I spend my time showing that particular dimension of the truth to others—but why do you have to cause him more suffering? He doesn't deserve it. Why weren't you there for him when he needed you, Vash? Why did you make him turn to someone who could never be more than a very distant second-best to him?

He's a great man, a wonderful man. He just wants what's best for us all. Doesn't the thought of a place without pain or suffering attract you at all? That's all he ever wanted to create. That's what I wanted to help him create, but it wasn't my help that he wanted.

It was yours.

And you failed him.

Come on, damn you. Pull that trigger. Learn the true meaning of life. Or shall I teach it to those girls instead? Yes, let's have that villager over there, the big one, kick them again. Ah, you don't like that, do you? Your finger's beginning to tighten. Good.

He promised me, you see. Promised me an end to all the pain. It wasn't until recently that I realized that that end could only come at your hands. Knives seems to take a bizarre interest in keeping me alive, and you're his brother, his mirror, like and yet opposite. You were the one who had to become my death.

Come on, damn you, shoot. End my pain. Or shall I use one of your friends to provide you with a little incentive? The one with the shorter, darker hair, perhaps? Or the other one? Which one do you worry about the most?

Yes, that's the way. Go on. Kill me, and then go to him. He needs your he—