I - Memories and Resurrection

The cold barrel of his gun against my head, trembling like a scared animal despite its killing power.. the owner of it, giving me the same look, only with a deep resistance the gun could never show - it had no eyes. The muscles around my mouth stretching into that awful, maddening smile even as it coaxed and taunted; threw the bait to him word by obnoxious word.

This plan was only half the will to kill myself, to encourage the freedom I never knew and would not if Vash didn't break.. the other half was me still carrying out Mas-Knives' orders, still making Vash's life miserable, still messing with his head. My mouth ran on autopilot, hitting on every sensitive spot I knew of - including Rem Saverem. Watching him, seeing if he would crack, seeing this lovely phenomena in layers: one Vash's struggle with himself, the other the pain on his girlfriends' faces as I - no, they - inflicted.. serious pain. The gift from my master stiff as if it already was dead, twitching with every hit to those stupid girls… I never showed any of this to him. Kept on grinning. Kept on taunting.

As he continued to fight I decided to give up on him.. but not the weapon at my head.. I induced my powers upon it, the cold barrel becoming a comforting warm as I made it change, made it what separated I from him.. this would further his pain and sorrow because he would've killed me - blowing half my head off, no less - with something that made him different..

I don't know how, or care how, but he stopped it. Made the warmth flee and the beautiful appendage known as an Angel Arm turn back into a dull, boring gun. But I saw the control in his eyes beginning to crack; it kept me going, kept me inflicting emotional pain on him and physical pain on them.

Finally I gave him a proposition, logical and fantastic at the same time: stop the madness, plug the source. My brain, in other words.

The physical pain to them furthering… deep as I dared. Which was deep, considering the fact that I was not killing them. Not yet. Increasing, increasing.. and finally that control did break. The gunshot like a million explosions, explosions that were now swimming agonizingly through my head like the hot piece of lead now lodged inside…

Even as my body fell bonelessly forward, blackness taking over my sight like evil flowers, I kept my eyes on him. Kept that maddening smirk upon my face.. I wanted the last thing I saw to be the look on his face at what he'd just done..

My mission had been to make his life miserable. And he looked it.

Quite definitely, in fact.

That was then. This is now.. Though one cannot keep up with a now in death; too mundane, and one loses track. Certainly I have - or had, I'm not "here" anymore, dammit! - a long, long mortal time ago..

Death wasn't as intoxicating as I had thought it to be.. but in a way it was. I shouldn't have been surprised about my destination; heaven the epiphany of illusions and hell the very place man walked. But I was… and rather soothed by it: my own epiphany of illusions. A world which had never heard of Millions Knives, the Gung Ho Guns, or - Heaven forbid! - Vash the Stampede. A world in which I was free… no orders, no psychic powers, no bullets in my head, just utmost freedom in every aspect..

And what better way to celebrate freedom than as a child, the time when all humans are meant to be carefree? Certainly nothing I knew of at the time.. just horsing around, catching bugs, sticking my toes in the mud and playing seesaw with this girl that was already here, waiting...

But as all illusions are, no matter how perfect they seem, this one was short-lived. I may have been in that perfect world for centuries.. but it felt like a week or a weekend of summer vacation. At least, what my younger self thought of it as.

While I had begun to play tag with the mysterious girl

(Allegro? Is that you?)

again, the world became.. ethereal. Unrealistic. Dreamlike, if one should put it that way. She was just standing there, atop the abandoned seesaw, all the playground equip-stuff rusted like my very own psychic powers at this time.. of course, I had no idea about the powers thing; I was too busy being confused.

There was a man beside her now.. just a shadow with one gold eye, one red, both glaring fiercely at me.

And suddenly the world was darkening, as if sucked away from me, like I was standing on quicksand. She opened her mouth, raising her hand to wave, and then it was gone. I was alone.

And my head hurt like hell. At first it was just a dull ache, throbbing as a heart does, but then it grew, flaming through my skull.. bringing back the remnants of memories..

But for some reason, I couldn't touch them. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Even in my illusion I had been breathing.. now both movement and breath were stifled by something, something warm and resistant and gooey, like the mud I had been sticking my toes in moments before.. my eyes opened to slits even as I attempted a scream - choked horribly, it was, making it even harder to get air into my already burning lungs..

Blue. No longer black but blue, the very own color of my hair, the color of the cloudless sky in my perfect world. And I sensed/saw someone - no, two someones beyond the blue.. I moved harder, squirming against the blue thing, fingers brushing what felt like glass..

Too much.. blue.. can't breathe…

"Release the damn thing already!"

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