#Also I'm PMSing which is probably where a lot of the motivation for this came from

[hellsingmongrel]

Ok but your reblog reminded me of some other thoughts I'd had about this, after posting this, so here, adding to it all with more.

The kids go find Melanie after Vash's injuries get to the point where his plant powers are beginning to go haywire. He's sprouting feathers, and there are little vine-like growths that seem to be trying to "hold his arm together." He's also started running a fever, he can't seem to stay awake, and a worrying black numbness starts to creep up his arm. And they really aren't sure what it means, when his hair starts turning black like that.

It turns out that things can't just be swept under the rug, like Rem and Luida and Brad had all hoped. This is too big, it's gotten out too far, and if they don't come out with the truth, now, the feds will take the boys and Tessla will just be the first in a SERIES of fuckups. Conrad is in charge of the officials looking for the kids, and he wants to continue the things they started with Tessla. So instead of letting the government take the boys and cover everything up THEIR way, Rem and Luida and Brad come forward with the truth, publicly, even before Vash has been found. It's the catalyst for the Plants Rights movement.

By the time this happens, though, the kids have already gotten Melanie involved, but she's also been unsure just what to do, when this famous missing boy has been suddenly dropped in her lap by that group of wayward kids she's always done her best to look out for. He's clearly not human, he's SEVERELY ILL, but his friends are all begging and pleading not to turn them in, he's so scared of doctors, the authorities will take him away and they'll never see him again, they may even KILL HIM! It's not until Rem goes in front of cameras and tells their story and the world erupts into shocked outrage that she knows they have a safe way of getting him to help.

Wolfwood is also able to maintain his stoic, surly grumpiness up until Vash stops waking up, and he sneaks out in the middle of the night to the orphanage, banging on the door and doing his best to keep it together when he asks Melanie for help, but it's too much, this is too much pressure and stress for him, and by the time he's able to get it all out, he's a crying wreck. Like those angry, blustery tears little boys do when they're mad at themselves for looking weak, but they also just really need a hug from mom. Even if he's never lived at the orphanage, Melanie has already become "Mom."

He can't even explain why they haven't taken this sick kid to the doctor, other than that he's "special," and until she walks into the little abandoned, burned out building they've been living in, she thinks they mean a kid with some sort of disability. Nope! Guess again, Miss Melanie!

The girls initially sneak out because they had all put a location tracking app on their phones in case they all got seperated in the park. It wasn't the parents' idea, they just decided to do it so they could find each other. Vash's phone doesn't stay on for long, but they could see his location staying at one spot for an hour before going dark, and then one night, when Vash cracks and turns on his phone to make a frantic call home to Rem, he shows back up on the app, and the girls sneak out to find him. It's not at the place the street kids stay in, because Wolfwood may not know much about how technology works, but he's pretty sure he's heard people talk about cell phones being trackable, so he takes Vash somewhere a block or two away, so he can make a call in the middle of the night. It's close enough that when the girls get there, even though Vash still isn't there, they find him easily enough. Maybe he stayed on the phone long enough for the girls to get an uber to the address just in time to see Wolfwood carrying him piggyback back to their hideout, or maybe they hear his voice when they're walking the streets, trying to find him. lbh, he's probably in a constant state of various levels of emotional blubbering, so it probably wouldn't be very hard to hear him crying through a broken-out window.

The girls also know what Plants are, because the subject came up in school, the same way that one sheep did when scientists first figured out how to clone things. So when they start to see Vash's inhuman traits and he has to explain, it's a shock, but easily explained enough. But Wolfwood doesn't go to school, and he doesn't particularly give a shit about the news, so he has no idea what everyone is talking about. But boy, does everyone's biggest freakout about the whole thing end up being when they find out he's actually 6 years old! "What the FUCK, Blondie, you're just a BABY!" "I'm really NOT, can you please not say that??? I'm just as grown as you are!" Much Vash pouting is had, until they all have had a while to get over the shock of it and realize that no, he really is still the same sweet, dumb boy they all hung out with. Though he may get mothered by the girls a bit more, afterward, in their own ways. They really are a group of Mom Friends, lbh. Meryl is the disciplinarian mom friend who keeps everyone on track, Milly is the emotional support mom friend who gives the biggest and best hugs, and Lina is the mom friend who will FIGHT GOD for her friend-children!

There may also be elements of VaMeryl, but in the ace romantic sense, Mashwood because Meryl and Wolfwood are adorable together, and Milly is flirty with Nick, but ultimately queer platonic with everyone but Meryl. And Lina is their collective queer platonic life partner. Doesn't feel romantic OR sexual attraction for any of them, but they are ALL her "little siblings" even if she is the youngest in the friend group and she will take care of them whether they like it or not!

Maybe Livio and Milly are a thing. That's a rarepair in this fandom that I really adore, or maybe Jasmine is also one of the street kids and the mom of that group, and he and Jasmine are sweet on each other. Basically POLYGUN. POLYGUN FOR DAYS. AND THEN SOME. This is a friend group that is going to stick together for the rest or their lives, regardless of the particular relationship the kids develop for each other as they get older! Platonic cuddlepiles are a CONSTANT! And something that Wolfwood is begrudgingly willing to participate in, because it's not like the orphans don't already sleep in one big pile at night, anyway. He's used to it. This is just a NEW cuddlepile for him to get used to. Livio is just perpetually happy for any cuddles.

On the subject of Livio, I've decided Razlo IS a thing, but he's the one that fronts when Wolfwood needs help keeping the kids safe or in line.

Also, Wolfwood already smokes. At one point, Vash makes a crack about him being surprised it's not a vape, but Wolfwood snarks that it's hard enough getting cigarettes with what money he can get, you think he's gonna waste it on vapes??? Besides, he doesn't have anywhere to charge the damn thing! So cigs it is!

Wolfwood and Livio make money panhandling, and most of what they get goes to getting food for the kids. They live in a beach town, (so not REALLY Disneyworld, but this world's equivelant can be in a beach town) so "bath time" for the kids involves going down to the beaches and crowding them all into the little showers set up there for swimmers to rinse the salt water off with. It's an unruly ordeal, but it's become so routine that they can manage to keep the younger kids mostly on task for it. They all share one bottle of shampoo and soap, and it's one of their most precious treasures. Do not lose the soap! It's expensive and has to last them a long time! They probably save whatever extra coins they have after buying food every day until they have enough by the time the bottle is empty to buy one of those giant bottles of the cheapest stuff in the stores. Suave or whatever, the kind that's like $$0.99 for the regular bottles, but the regular bottles would only last like a week tops with that many kids, so they gotta get the big ones. And they let the kids rotate who gets to pick what scent it is every time, that way no one fights over it too bad.

Wolfwood doesn't have the Punisher to carry around, but he's gotten used to piggybacking kids around constantly, so he's still pretty strong. Livio carries them like potato sacks over his shoulder or with his arms wrapped around their chests under their arms when they're playing, and bridal style when shit is serious and Wolfwood's already got one kid. Vash weighs like 50 pounds soaking wet, so he may be all long, spindly limbs, but he's honestly not that big of a deal for Wolfwood to cart around once he starts getting weaker.

Man, so I'm not normally the biggest fan of Modern AUs, nor am I overly fond of fiction focused on kids, but...last night, my sleeping brain decided to concoct this Trigun (Stampede-flavored) Modern AU that now is living rent free in my damn brain! I want to get it out of my head and into the ether. I don't know if I'm going to do anything long-form with it, and I'm having to translate dream weirdness into more coherent storytelling, but here we go.

So it's modern day Earth, like 2024 or some shit, right? And that's when this version of Earth had just begun fucking around with Plant cloning. It's early enough that the SEEDS project hasn't even left the planet, the scientists haven't yet figured out how to put Plants in bulbs and use them for fuel, none of that! But they've already had Tessla happen, and the boys have already been born. Since they're not in space, even though they had to have found out about their sister, Nai hasn't had a chance to literally nuke humanity from orbit, and I guess Rem has had a chance to try and curtail some of his trauma, so he's...more stable? Ish? Stable enough where he's not actively trying to murder everyone. And the boys are "older," like we see in the flashbacks for the time Vash encountered Nai during the Last Run, so probably around 6 years old but looking 16 or so.

Rem has managed to fudge their paperwork so they've started going to school with human kids, to try and give them a normal childhood. Nai isn't as eager to play ball with the whole "being human" thing as much as Vash is, but Vash has got so many friends, Meryl and Milly and Lina are there and they're like the cutest, most stupidly adorable group of friends, just a bunch of little goofballs, like kids that age are. And the school has a field trip to a theme park (it was Disneyworld in my dream because my school actually did this, but ours was a band trip) and Vash manages to convince Rem to let him go. Vash and Nai and Rem are still paranoid about humans figuring out who they are, so you know, he's told to be extra careful and take care of himself, and Nai gives him one of his blades or something for self defense, just in case something happens. Even though Vash would never, that boy has trauma around knives and trying to defend himself, if you've read Trimax, iykyk. But he takes it anyway, and somehow, he manages to sneak it into the park. Maybe the metal doesn't register on metal detectors or something, who knows.

But he's a kid, and kids are dumb. Especially when they're 16. Especially if those 16 year olds aren't actually 16 and don't have the actual lived experience to know better. So he starts playing with the knife in front of the girls, showing off and just being a silly little guy. And then the knife slips. Bad. We're talking "this is how he probably lost his arm in this AU" bad. Blood everywhere, the girls are panicking and take him to the school chaperones and it's like "HOLY SHIT WTF DUDE, We're taking you to the ER, someone call his mom!"

And he hears that, pictures the doctors finding out he's not human, remembers what happened to Tessla, and panics. Boy does a runner like only Vash can do, and he manages to get away from them, out of the park, and escapes from security. And when parents get involved in trying to find him, the authorities start looking into the incident, and someone in the government overseeing the Plant research is able to recognize the elemental make up of the blade he dropped, and they start having suspicions. So the feds get involved, and it just goes from bad to worse, right?

Meanwhile, loopy from blood loss and panicking and a little sobbing mess because he feels dumb about slipping up and he's afraid he'll never get to go home to his mom and his brother again and is spiraling the way kids do when they panic, he gets lost in the city and ends up stumbling over teenage Wolfwood, who lives on the streets and has a few street kids that he looks after on his own with Livio. They never got to live at the orphanage, but that also means that the Eye (in whatever form it takes in this AU) never got ahold of them, so yeah, shits fucked for them, but it's actually a whole lot better for them than it might have been. And it's Wolfwood without all of the EoM trauma, so you can just imagine what he does when this delirious, bloody, terrified, severely injured kid runs him over in the street, sobbing about being caught by the adults and taken away.

Big Brother Nico do what Big Brother Nico do.

At that point, I ended up waking up, but damn if my brain didn't give me enough details to come up with a dumb AU idea that I kind of love and want to do something with, but I don't know if I have the time or spoons to do so.

Ideas I'd had following this beginning to flesh itself out in my head; Luida and Brad are Plant researchers brought onto the project to help the feds figure out wtf is going on with this whole situation, and when Luida is told to talk to Rem, because she's not giving them anything they can use, the two of them reach a secret accord to bring Vash home safe and sound and cover everything back up nice and squeaky clean the way it should have stayed.

Vash's arm is bad enough that he can't really heal it very well on his own without medical care, Plant healing or no. He's doing better than most kids would, but it still begins to go septic, and it forces Nico and Livio to make the really hard decision to find adults they can trust to bring him to so he can get the care he needs. He still ends up losing his arm, though.

At the end of everything, Melanie ends up taking Nico and Livio and the other kids in, so they still get to have their momma figure, even if she comes in later. Maybe she's the one that they find to help them. Is she maybe someone they've known was mostly safe but was never able to get them to stick around long enough to take care of them? Either way, the boys get Vash to her, and it starts the process of getting him home and the kids finally staying at the orphanage.

Meryl, Milly, and Lina all end up sneaking away when they realize that Vash is in more trouble than the adults are letting on, trying to go find him, since they know him better than anyone other than Rem and Nai. Eventually, they meet up with Nico and Livio while everyone is trying to avoid federal agents.

Obviously it's lovey-dovey Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends and Polygun-flavored, but in the "these kids are too oblivious to think about sexy things, yet" sort of way, because I really do headcanon that at least Vash is ace, Wolfwood is probably demi, and also I am not writing children getting intimate like that. >8/ But kids having little crushes on each other is adorable and I can't not have Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends be the eventual outcome, once those idiots all grow up and get their heads screwed on straight.

Also, because Nai hasn't had a chance to murder everyone, Rem's managed to work with him enough that he's very slowly overcoming his trauma and regaining his ability to trust that he's not in permanent danger. He'll probably grow up to be a Plants Rights activist or something, lbh. Or a politician. But he's not going to murder people, so either way, it's a win/win!

Because Nico's been living on the streets with him, Razlo either hasn't had to manifest as strongly for Livio, or hasn't manifested at all. Livio is still the sweet, shy, crybaby teddy bear we see, and maybe Razlo only comes out when the feds start getting closer and almost managing to grab the kids, and because he's been able to bond with Nico and the other kids so well this time, Livio is close enough to them that the thought of them getting hurt or taken away is enough to make him want to protect their little group instead of just Livio.

Wolfwood absolutely grumbles about how alike Vash and Livio are. Both a couple'a crybabies, geez, what the Hell you two??? But he also is very much a teddy bear who gives the best hugs when one of his little band of gremlins is upset, so he probably spends more time in a cuddle pile than anything else, now that there's two of them to lose their shit at the drop of a hat.

Vash was totally the one very sweet boy in a clique of girls that everyone who'd known him realized, when they were adults looking back, that he was very much the sweet gay kid hanging out with the girls because it was safer to be himself around them than it was to be around the other boys. (This isn't meant as a stereotype of gay kids, this is based on actual kids I grew up with. My friend group honest to God adopted them because we were all a bunch of momma bears.)

Vash is also...not trans? Because he's a Plant and Plants don't work the same way humans do, but he's also not what humans would think of as a cis boy. He expresses a masc presentation, but probably the closest equivalent would be an intersexed kid. Nai, too, tbh, though he's probably more of the "I don't give a fuck" opinion when it comes to his own gender identity. He uses he/him because that's what humans think when they see him, but he doesn't care any deeper than that.