This is a fascinating AU look at Tessla, and interesting, how accommodating Knives is of her - and Vash, so insensitive to the plight of his bulb sisters because he dismiss the possibility of their sentience, life is easier if you take that view, but the moral risk of being wrong?

I really love how cozy Knives and Legato are together, a nice change.

Methane gas in an enclosed space and he chance lighting a cig?

Wait a minute, Vash is bipolar so sometimes he's hyper, and he's a lush. Rem would give the plants cough syrup when they are rowdy... Wait a minute!

STEVE, an asshole in every universe! A CREEP.

I don't think he really thought the kids were monsters, he was just insecure, because he was the fifth wheel who didn't fit in, the one eating alone.

/Vash finally managed to speak. "I put them on that train."/

A while...a few years ago, there was a plane crash involving a group of exchange students (Germany to France? France to Germany? Spain?) that was just ABOUT to return home. One of the deceased students almost didn't board the plane, because that student had forgotten his/her passport with the host family...but in the nick of time, I don't remember if the host family showed up with the passport, or if a boarding agent waived oversight (or both, with different students or different plane crashes) - the student boards the plane and dies with the rest of the group. I wonder how haunting it must be, to have even an act of goodness bring about tragedy.

I find it weird that in the first chapter, Wolfwood said something along the lines of, isn't it weird that out of the first free born plant, Knives is the only crazy one, before noting that Vash is bipolar and Tessla has OCD...

Then we actually met the three of them, and KNIVES same to be the sane man of the bunch, seriously, from what I've seen SO FAR, I rather be stuck in a car / apartment with Knives then Vash - smashes car window Stampede or Tessla rips dog's head off Nikola - and what's messed up is that Tessla made a puppy that's pseudo sentient with her own DNA and then kills it too.

Knives is really super chill so far, he's not a morning person, but Legato waking him up didn't resort in smashy smashy, and while Legato is creepy, Knives, not Tessla or Vash, is the one who can compromise enough to be in an actual relationship.

LOL, Knives and Legato's BDSM thing - it's got the Tessla stamp of approval.

I so need to read the manga, maybe, I heard that it's so different from the anime in a way I probably wouldn't like.

...but Vash isn't telepathic right? Except with Knives, and even then, Vash can't read Knives's mind, they can communicate telepathically, but Vash can't read anyone's mind. Pretty telling, if Knives and Legato could read human minds, and they both hate humans, and now Tessla too.

I think about that Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Earshot", when the slayer was slowly going crazy because she could read everyone's minds, or rather, she can hear and cannot unhear their 'immediate thoughts', I think it would be like being beaten by tree after tree after tree, and never being able to appreciate the forest.

Grigori Alley gives me chills, good writing, a creepy scene that could standalone but one that further sets up this universe.

Wolfwood noted earlier that independent plants were known for having mental illnesses, well, if all the plant schools were run like the one Wolfwood just visited, no wonder!

Jeeze, Elendira and Midvalley has such short fuses, how did they ever make it through the public streets without causing a massacre? The public is full of a-holes, private and professional (I've lost count of the time I've been dressed down by immaculate women during to sell me make-up because I look tired)

As an anime fan who has only ever seen the adult Knives as a smiling douchebag with a glass of wine (seriously, he was smiling like a douchebag, a Joffrey level one)...trying to see Knives in ratty clothes, in a ratty apartment...

But my KnivesLegato shipper heart is glad to see them together in this verse.

Though that AN about Vash's pending loss of his arm has me going :(

I have a fear that there will be a surprise reveal that Rem's car crash wasn't an accident.

D'awwww, Knives trust Wolfwood with the little plant children.

A universe with the Tessla incident AND Steve The Stupid Jerk? Yikes.

I don't think Tessla exist in the anime universe, or she was on another ship. The whole Tessla thing in the manga was Knives learning not only do bad humans commit evil, but good humans condone that evil and do nothing. In the anime, the role of evil was personally taken up by Steve, with everyone else condoning him, and then there was Knives'fear of being eaten and what happened to the planet earth.

But I has a crack theory that Kuroneko is the spirt of Tessla, so...

Well, as far as I know, a transwoman is someone who was born male but feel like they are a woman. A transvestite is a straight man who dress up in woman's clothes for sexual reasons, and a Drag Queen is a man who dress up as an exaggerated woman for performance reasons (so a Drag Queen can be gay, straight, or bisexual - there is a comedic tradition of all male tropes like Kids In the Hall doing their sketches in drag - and sometimes they pass as female characters without any exaggeration).

Elendira is probably a Wholesome Crossdresser - yeah, he/she is working for the bad guy, but that's got nothing to do with his/her gender or dress or sexual preferences.

Morningstar City? Did Rem name this one too? I'm starting to think that they were all on acid.

I have OCD and I maybe ironically don't take sertraline for control freak reasons - I don't like handing over control of my brain to something I have to keep taking, even though the med does work.

There is a place where you accidently call July "January"... if I recall correctly, it's where July attacked Vash and Wolfwood was trying to get her off him.

Other than that, wonderfully surreal - I mean, I love your interpretation of the Plants. You may actually (eventually) get a fanart from me of this chapter, because I think July would be fun to draw, a truly horrific subject.

And Vash approaching her to try to pull the glass out of her, and stroking her back even as she's trying to kill him ... very touching and such "Vash" things to do.

Wolfwood's accusation that "All females are Rem" to him was just heart-rending, as well as Vash's idealism in the face of, well, reality. (Much like the canon sources in theme here). I also appreciate Wolfwood's simple, down to earth narration manner - "her display thingie." It fits him.

I also don't see how some people (we talked of this on AIM) could see V/W yaoi in this - they banter like very straight men, like slightly perverted buddies - about girls and their attributes.

"The noses have it!" is SUCH a Milly thing to say. I must say I'm rather intrigued by your subway OCs here - is Annie a hybrid?

I feel sorry for poor limo driver Toby... some of his energy taken, taken advantage of, young and naive.