#E.G. Bomber

[gravesforstraydogs]

dude it's a skull

[cruelsister-moved2]

after i did my dissertation and realised how much women's kindness is taken advantage of + often just without individual men even intending to exploit them but because We Live In A Society if you give something away as a woman chances are the person who takes it will be a man, i started feeling like i needed to reduce my desire to help people and keep things for myself otherwise im contributing to that. but more recently i realised this is also exactly what the patriarchy wants from us because women are so helpless if we dont have each other. and on a broader level i dont want to participate in a society where we have to choose between a binary of either paranoid hoarding or being stolen from! so now i decided to go back to my roots which is i would do absolutely anything for a woman. every time im helpful to a man i will help a woman 10x more. problem solved<33

[jsketch12]

I gotta ask:

Eight has gotten stronger after the events from octo-expansion, as a result of being well fed. Since she’s bigger, is she stronger than Vanilla? or Anemone?

Her weapons aren’t terribly reliant on strength, so she’d probably be training for general ability or for mental health, though I don’t see anything in her hobbies/likes list.

How does Vanilla feel about it? They’d likely work out together, both ‘cause of the job and their relationship.

Anemone is just kinda comparison. They look like the strongest out of your non-agents, (although generally looks aren’t everything, especially since definition limits strength). Also it’d be fun to see Eight just halt an incoming dynamo.

Eight is definitely stronger than Vanilla, who mostly exercises just to stay active, not necessarily to build muscle (so she actually kind of struggled a bit while helping put together the contraption in Return of the Mammalians, and that's also why she sprained a tentacle, because she lifted something wrong).

Of course this also means that Eight can pin Vanilla down very easily which Vanilla doesn't mind one bit :)

As for Anemone, it's a tougher question - both Anemone and Eight train to lift, with Anemone focusing on performance in lifting her heavy weapon (the Gold Dynamo Roller). In terms of their weight records though Eight has an edge, though she can't really stop a Dynamo Roller swing because it's so heavy and has a lot of momentum while it's traveling. Getting whacked by Eight's Splatana Stamper would DEFINITELY smart, though.

Bomber on the other hand is on another level and she has a slight edge over Eight especially since she's handling heavy weapons a lot more on top of lifting more often just for fun. Her build is different since she focuses both on power and agility depending on what she's using (e.g. whether she's using Gold Dynamo/Hydra Splatling or Slosher/Douser Dualies)

[lestweforget5]

Is Millie going to go down? What happens to female airmen in the Stalags? She'd go to Stalag Luft IV, not III as she's enlisted, and the enlisted camps were... not treated as well as the officers.

Hello, Nonnie! Thank you for the ask. I assume you are asking whether Millie will go down later in the story, not at Regensburg. Historically, we know that Brady's crew made it through Regensburg, so she's safe ... for now, but if I say too much more, that would be spoilers.

From my research so far, there were enlisted men in certain compounds at Stalag Luft III, though I'm not sure after what date precisely.

I'm taking some very general, non-specific inspiration from precious-little-scoundrel's Those Who Can series (which I highly recommend) in terms of what the outlook on female American POWs could have been in an Integrated-AU in light of the historical treatment of female Soviet POWs. While I am trying to tie in a lot of historical facts to this series, even adjusting for it being an Integrated AU, I will carefully play fast and loose with some details (e.g., who went to what Stalags) if needed for the sake of the narrative.

Generally speaking, I think the treatment of female POWs before reaching a POW camp would depend on who went down, where they were held, under what circumstances they went down (i.e., after what mission), who they were captured by, etc. After they reached a camp, well, it would depend on the camp, but at least with close-knit groups like bomber crews, any women would at least have one line of protection if they ended up with members of their own crew.

[museqmeg]

Reporter’s Notes

___________________________________________________________________

1st chapter: vashmeryl centric

Author’s Note:

This chapter is inspired by my own musings and experiences with my husband and our considerable size difference. I think Vash and Meryl’s is the same as us! I read online somewhere that Vash is 6’2” and Meryl is 4’11” making the difference 15 inches! My husband and I are the same at 6’5” and 5’2”. I thought it would be fun to give Meryl that experience as well since I see a lot myself in her and my husband in Vash - in stature and character.

Also, as an OG Trigun fan I can’t tell you how excited I am for all of the new fans enjoying these characters, world, and story. I hope you enjoy!

____________________________________________________________________

It had been a few hours into the day’s journey, but the heat was insufferable. Meryl checked on Roberto in her peripheral and took a quick glance in the rear view mirror. Both her mentor and their “Typhoon” seemed to be dealing with the heat about as well as she was. It was more noticeable in Vash, since his long red coat wasn’t on and was folded neatly in the seat next to him.

It had been two days since the catastrophe at Jeneora Rock. They had picked Vash up the same night of the destruction. It took little convincing from Roberto to track him down and offer him a ride since the story for the article was even more incomplete, given the recent events. Vash had a small head start on them, but with their truck and trailer, it was easy to catch up. It wasn’t so easy to convince him to accept their offer of transportation to July.

Meryl read it on his face. The guilt and the ‘you guys shouldn’t hang around me, you saw what happens.’ But Meryl wasn’t going to hear it and just told him to get in, they needed to complete the interview. She felt a little bad using his exhaustion and her persistence to win the argument, but told herself it was better than him walking all the way to July.

After the few days of traveling together, they settled into a routine amongst the trio. Roberto smoking, drinking, and cantankerous as ever, Meryl the designated driver, and Vash right behind her - trying his best to not cause any waves and be as little of a burden as possible.

Meryl first noticed his subdued nature in their close proximity of the truck when he chose the seat behind her instead of Roberto. She wondered why he chose that seat, but didn’t reflect on it too long since he probably just picked the door closest to him to get in.

Now that it was unbearably hot and his coat was off, she was starting to piece little details about the Typhoon together.

One, without his jacket on and even sitting, he was taller than average. With his frame usually buried by his loud, red oversized coat, he seemed smaller and extremely submissive to the world around him. Without the coat and his form-fitting gunman’s attire on display, you couldn’t miss the broad shoulders and length of limbs - thus the need for the extra leg room in the back seat. With herself being petite and her seat much further up than Roberto’s, it now made sense why Vash had chosen the space behind her. If she had to guess, he was probably a couple inches over six feet. Slightly taller than Roberto and definitely towering over her just-under-five-foot frame.

Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Now, she could only assume it was because he actively tried to make himself smaller and non-threatening. After seeing how his first interactions with people were usually cautious, timid, and downright goofy, it made sense why he tried to diminish his tall frame. He didn’t want to startle or scare people. It was a stark contrast to the way he handled the E.G the Mine. When her and Roberto essentially kamikaze’d the bomber to get him to diffuse the explosives, Vash quickly came to help. But he was so serious and assertive. Not timid, but aggressive and demanding in that scenario.

Since they were just traveling, he was back to his “lost puppy” act, as Roberto put it. Meryl huffed a sigh after rolling over the two sides of the Vash coin. She took another glance in the mirror at Vash to help rifle through the information and was met with his teal-blue eyes looking back at her. He quickly gave her a warm smile, like the many he would give her and others when he caught them looking at him. The first time she couldn’t look away, but now… she felt her cheeks heat and heart race. She quickly looked away and focused back on the road. She did not need to be any warmer!

“Hey newbie. Why don’t we find a place to stop and take a quick break from the heat. I’m pretty sure there’s a plant station coming up soon where we can charge this heap and find some refreshments.” Roberto waved his flask and empty cigarette pack to emphasize the need to stop. “That good with you, puppy?”

Vash smiled at Roberto and gave him an affirmative nod.

Meryl also nodded before saying, “I think our puppy also needs to go for a walk and stretch those long legs of his.” She took a quick glance in the mirror to gauge his reaction and was not disappointed.

Vash had a look of knowing shock on his face. The startled expression, albeit quick and corrected to a more neutral facade, told her that he knew she was on to him. ‘Good,’ she thought, grinning to herself. What kind of reporter would she be if she wasn’t perceptive?

____________________________________________________________________

This might turn into a collection of drabbles following the Tristamp crew over their two month journey to July. Since the show was a little faster paced and not a filler anime, that’s where we fanfic writers can step in and write shenanigans. ;)

[rosencrypt]

RTD2 Trilogy is about (false) dichotomies

After Wild Blue Yonder I'm having Thoughts about Doctor Who.

Knowing the expression but not the song, I assumed the relevance was that the Doctor is all about exploring the open, unknown sky. Having now seen the episode and had a chat to my Beloved about Jungian dialectics, Persona's Shadow Selves etc., I'm appreciating the title choice much more.

This is a story all about inherent contradictions. The ship is at the end of the universe, but the universe is everything. The ship is both agoraphobic and claustrophobic. There's nothing beyond, but also Nothing beyond. There's a countdown to a bomb detonation, but that's a good thing, but also the Doctor is running to stop it, but also we want him to fail, but also we still don't want the ship to explode? It even extends to the viewer - we all know that Donna survives to feature in the next episode, but I've seen a lot of people (and in the moment I was one of them!) worried that she might actually die in that corridor.

And as the Doctor* says, humans are capable of believing two opposing ideas at the same time (can a superstition also be a fact?). Apply this to Wild Blue Yonder, the song. As humans we know that although it sounds jolly it's also a war propaganda song - it's both catchy and an explicit endorsement of horrific violence. To an adult who understands the reality, like Wilf or the Doctor, teaching children to sing the song is grotesque. The Not-Them however only mimic. They ask questions and can algorithmically regurgitate information, but they only take things at face value. They are children. War is a game, and they want to play! RTD may here be critiquing cycles of inherited conflict or possibly the glorification of violence in fiction (probably both), but he's definitely using the Not-Them as a mirror. If Nothing exists out there, then there is nothing but what we send. If we fill the nothing with e.g. songs about how jolly it is to soar with scouts ahead and bombers galore, we shouldn't be surprised when nothing flies to fight, guarding the nation's border. After all, Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force.

Consider The Star Beast in this light. It's also all about things not being as they seem! The Meep vs the Wrarth Warriors, the controlled UNIT troops, Rose. Then we have less episode-specific concepts, like the DoctorDonna and Fourteen being both a wholly new incarnation and a return of Ten.

Probably here I should speculate about the final episode, but it's 1am and I should be in bed. Basically, Doctor Who is many things at once. It's good! It's bad! It has 60 years of continuity, including I'm pretty sure at least 3 previous appearances by Isaac Newton, but the only bits that count are the ones any given writer feels like acknowledging at the time. The TARDIS is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

In this way, these specials are much truer celebrations of the series than they at first appear. They're both anniversary stories, but they don't feel that way - more like beginning and midseason episodes from the Fourteen and Donna series we didn't get. They're so much bigger, and madder, and better. And what's more Doctor Who than that?

*And also Visser One in Visser! I KNEW I'd seen that emphasised in a SF thing recently, but it took hours for me to remember.

[kinbari14]

Vash the Unkillable Gunman vs E.G. The Mine Bomber

[whataboutfractions]

you joke, but i have legitimately considered writing like a rundown on which episodes of jetters contribute what to the overall narrative, whether that be plot (e.g. eps like 10 or 22, which do shit like introduce characters and events directly) or theme (e.g. eps like the 11-12 two-parter and ep 15, which are more lowkey but establish a groundedness to the world or shed light on the details of character relationships). the only reason i haven't done it is because it'd require a comprehensive rewatch to confirm specifically for every single ep and while i might be autistic i'm also lazy

also i won't even lie, while on an objective level i consider dolphin bomber a funny gag, a grudge has been instilled however irrationally over ten years of searching for jetters content and finding nothing but entirely irrelevant furry porn

[mega-ringsandthings-world]

Detail #2 I noticed, Vash is in the middle of the argument with Nebraska over killing the E.G Bomber when the sound of Knives playing the piano is heard for the first time in the ep. Right before Nebraska finishes asking Vash “who’s side are you on?” is when the first piano notes are heard. Knives had already entered Jenora rock and was presumably up in the diner during the entire chase with the E.G Bomber, so he was listening to everything that happened after Vash disarmed the bombs, and chose that exact moment to begin playing and alert Vash to his presence. Either (probably) for dramatic affect, or because when Vash put himself between the E.G Bomber and Nebraska and tried to reason with Nebraska, Knives couldn’t stand listening to him do so and interrupted it.

[brokehorrorfan]

Streets of Fire will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on March 14 via Shout Select. The 1984 rock and roll fable is directed by Walter Hill (The Warriors), who penned the script with his 48 Hrs. co-writer Larry Gross.

Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Amy Madigan, E.G. Daily, and Willem Dafoe star. It features original songs written by Jim Steinman, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, and Ry Cooder, performed by The Blasters and The Fixx. 

Special features for the three-disc set will be announced at a later date.

Amid a brooding rock & roll landscape, the Bombers motorcycle gang, led by the vicious Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe), kidnap diva Ellen Aim (Diane Lane). Her hope for rescue lies with unlikely heroes: soldier of fortune Tom Cody (Michael Paré) and his sidekick, the two-fisted beer-guzzling McCoy (Amy Madigan). Joined by Ellen's manager, Billy Fish (Rick Moranis), the trio plunges headfirst into a world of rain-splattered streets, hot cars, and deadly assassins.

Pre-order Streets of Fire.

[foximator-blog]

what would be the super moves [e.g. elec man's thunderbolt] for the mm2 masters

Metal Man: Metal Rush- Where he throws three gigantic saw blades in random arcs, but with a delay between them so you can anticipate from which height and angle he's attacking from.

Air Man: Air Fury- Air Man causes wind to blow mega man upwards, and Mega man must duck and weave as Airman shoots the air shooter upwards towards the airborne blue bomber.

Bubble man: Bubble Barrier- Bubble man bounces around in a big bubble, before sending it towards mega man with the third bounce.

Quick Man: Quick Barrage- Quick man zips around the room incredibly fast in a boomerang shaped trail from random angles each time, with delays between each dash.

Crash Man: Crash Destroyer- Crash man gets angry and bull charges at mega man, sometimes jumping. He creates an explosion everytime he hits a wall or lands from a jump while angry.

Flash Man: Similar to time man, I think Time stopper already is like a special move. So maybe now he's just invulnerable while activating it. He probably also occasionally fires a single shot while moving back and forth.

Heat Man: Heat Inferno- Heat man charges up an immense fireball to dodge, similar to Mega man's version of atomic fire.

Wood Man: Wood Roll- Wood man curls into a rolling log like he does in the arcade games, and moves back and fourth, throwing a big leaf into the air that slowly drift back down each time he hits a wall while rolling.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Kareem Muhssin

Published: Nov 2, 2021

“One of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot, is while they’re denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied. While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party. It’s upside-down world.“

-- Salman Rushdie

For most people, ‘oppression’ is defined as prolonged unjust treatment or exercise of authority. It describes a situation in which people are governed in an unfair and cruel way, and denied basic opportunities and freedoms. For the Islamic propagandist, however, the term means something else entirely: oppression is defined as any situation in which Muslims are not in a position of authority over non-Muslims. This mindset is what underpins claims of “global Muslim oppression”: Muslims are oppressed wherever they do not have dominion over non-Muslims, and are thus required to abide by secular law, rather than shari’ah – that is, the legal system established by Muhammad and spelled out in the Qur’an and sunnah.

In the West, Muslims enjoy benefits that they can only dream of in the Islamic world, from gainful employment to social welfare. Indeed, this is why they emigrate to Europe in such huge numbers, giving up everything for a chance at a better life. And yet, it is common to hear Muslims complaining of “Islamophobia” and “Western oppression” – for ultimately, they are not in a position of authority over non-Muslims. No amount of state subsidies can reverse this attitude. On the contrary, the better they are treated, the more resentful they become; for in the Qur’an, Muslims are warned that if non-Muslims treat them well, it is only to lure them away from Islam. In a blistering sermon, the British-Pakistani preacher Abu Waleed puts it well:

Among themselves, Muslim grievance-mongers will vent their contempt for democracy and desire for shari’ah. To win the political support of non-Muslims, however, they are obliged to disguise their authoritarian agenda. Thus, they point to genuine cases of oppression – for example, those of the Rohingya Muslims in Burma or the Uyghur Muslims in China. It is difficult to overstate how cynical this is, for just like the Kurds, these groups are widely regarded with suspicion by Muslims for having an identity other than Islam. This mistrust can be plainly seen in how, on the detainment and torture of over a million Uyghurs in Chinese ‘re-education camps’, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has thus far been completely silent.

The same goes for the war in Iraq. Under Ba’athist rule, jihadists had an ally in Saddam Hussein. Indeed, not only did Saddam handsomely reward the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, but as early as 1994, his regime was implementing elements of shari’ah, e.g. amputations of the hand and foot. With his removal by American forces in 2003, official Iraqi support for terrorism and shari’ah was ended. This is what informs claims of Iraqi oppression by Muslim propagandists, not the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost. Indeed, if human life was their concern, then they would condemn Saddam’s chemical purges of the dissident Shi’a and Kurds with equal vigour. But of course, to win over non-Muslims, they have to pretend to care.

Muslim propagandists couldn’t give a damn about the suffering of the Uyghurs or the Iraqis, but will happily exploit it to propagate their fantasy of global oppression. Indeed, if there is one thing which Muslims are suffering from, it is a massive persecution complex. For over 1,400 years, Islamic imperialists have been spreading their religion by the sword, executing non-Muslims who refuse to convert to Islam or live as second-class citizens (dhimmis), all the while claiming to be the victims of persecution. This disorder is rooted in the Qur’an, which repeatedly bemoans the treatment of the Muslims by the Meccan polytheists, whose way of life Muhammad was determined to destroy. Here are two examples of this from Surat al-Imtihan:

O you who have believed! Do not take My enemies and your enemies as allies, extending to them affection while they have disbelieved in what came to you of the truth, having driven out the Prophet and yourselves (only) because you believe in Allah, your Lord. [60:1] Allah only forbids you from those who fight you because of religion and expel you from your homes and aid in your expulsion – (forbids) that you make allies of them. And whoever makes allies of them, then it is those who are the wrongdoers. [60:9]

In Pakistan, the government deliberately seeks out Christians to clean the country’s sewers. In Egypt, Coptic Christians regularly have their churches attacked by jihadist thugs. In Saudi Arabia, Christians are forbidden from building churches or practicing their religion in public. In Nigeria, 3,462 Christians are estimated to have been killed in the first 200 days of 2021; this equates to roughly 17 murders per day. And yet, Muslims claim to be the ones who are oppressed. What they really mean is that they have yet to achieve a state of absolute dominance over Christians and other non-Muslims. In a brilliant exposé of the deceptive tactics used by Muslim apologists, Apostate Prophet (Ridvan Aydemir) nails this point:

The Muslim persecution complex leads the affected to see discrimination where there is none at all. For example, many Muslims have been quick to cite the recent inspection of Asim Qureshi – director of the hardline Salafist lobby CAGE – at Heathrow Airport as evidence of “Islamophobia”. In reality, Qureshi and his group have myriad ties to extremists and jihadist groups, from Al-Qaeda to the Taliban. Qureshi himself has described ISIS executioner Jihadi John as “kind and gentle”, and refuses to condemn the stoning of women for adultery. Thus, it is only right that he attracts the interest of airport security. Qureshi’s “oppression” at the hands of security personnel is a pure fantasy, fuelled by a deep-seated enmity towards non-Muslims.

Arguably, the Muslim persecution complex was most readily observable in Sayyid Qutb – a leading figure of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 60s, who remains a cornerstone of the modern Islamist movement. In his self-pitying manifesto Milestones, which is required reading for many Muslim youth groups and student societies, Qutb alleges that the Jews are engaged in a conspiracy “to eliminate all limitations, especially the limitations imposed by faith and religion, so that the Jews may penetrate into the body politic of the whole world and then may be free to perpetuate their evil designs”. Qutb goes on to accuse the West of devising a careful scheme to erode belief in Islam and ultimately destroy Muslim society:

The Western ways of thought and all the sciences started on the foundation of these poisonous influences with an enmity towards all religions, and in particular with greater hostility towards Islam. This enmity towards Islam is especially pronounced and many times is the result of a well thought out scheme, the object of which is first to shake the foundations of Islamic beliefs and then gradually to demolish the structure of Muslim society.

This paranoid, baseless drivel appeals to resentful young Muslims, who, raised to believe that their religion is perfect, would sooner blame the infidel West for the decrepitude of the Islamic world. If the ummah flounders while the West pushes back the frontiers of technology, then there must be some wicked kuffar conspiracy designed to keep the Muslims down. They cannot allow themselves to think that by obsessing over which foot to enter the bathroom with, or whether or not their food contains gelatine, Muslims might be responsible for their own misery. This culture of victimhood is the fundamental reason that the Islamic world is in such a dire state today, as this brave Iraqi news anchor eloquently affirms:

==

For the Islamic propagandist, however, the term means something else entirely: oppression is defined as any situation in which Muslims are not in a position of authority over non-Muslims.

Remember: Muslims are told by both Allah and Muhammad that Islamic supremacy is their birthright, and their divine mission is to make the entire world fall to Islam. That they are to fight until all worship is for Allah alone, where either everyone submits to and embraces Islam, or lives in the shadows as a second-class citizen, paying the jizyah tax as a form of humiliation.

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-52/Hadith-196

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah 's Apostle said, " I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' and whoever says, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' his life and property will be saved by me except for Islamic law, and his accounts will be with Allah, (either to punish him or to forgive him.)"

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-1/Book-8/Hadith-387

Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah."

https://quranx.com/9.29

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Jalal/9.29

Fight those who do not believe in God, nor in the Last Day, for, otherwise, they would have believed in the Prophet (s), and who do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden, such as wine, nor do they practise the religion of truth, the firm one, the one that abrogated other religions, namely, the religion of Islam — from among of those who (min, ‘from’, explains [the previous] alladhīna, ‘those who’) have been given the Scripture, namely, the Jews and the Christians, until they pay the jizya tribute, the annual tax imposed them, readily (‘an yadin is a circumstantial qualifier, meaning, ‘compliantly’, or ‘by their own hands’, not delegating it [to others to pay]), being subdued, [being made] submissive and compliant to the authority of Islam.

https://quranx.com/2.193

Fight them until there is no [more] fitnah and [until] worship is [acknowledged to be] for Allah. But if they cease, then there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors.

https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Jalal/2.193

Fight them till there is no sedition, no idolatry, and the religion, all worship, is for God, alone and none are worshipped apart from Him; then if they desist, from idolatry, do not aggress against them. This is indicated by the following words, there shall be no enmity, no aggression through slaying or otherwise, save against evildoers. Those that desist, however, are not evildoers and should not be shown any enmity.

Fitnah has a number of meanings, but all of them refer to standing in the way of Islam: blocking, opposing, resisting, "persecution," shirk (describing or attributing anything or anyone as being equivalent or contemporaneous with Allah), kufr (polytheism/non-belief). Anything which gets in the way of "submission," the literal definition of "Islam."

In the video above, Waleed quotes, in part:

https://quranx.com/48.29

Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves.

https://quranx.com/4.89

They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.

Emphasis mine. The idea of "equality" is un-Islamic. The Muslim is not the equal of the kufr. Anything which proposes equality - equal treatment, equal respect, equal rights - is an insult, an attempt to make the Muslim kufr, and violates the divine right of Islam and Allah to rule over all, and subdue and subordinate all under its self-granted authority.

https://quranx.com/3.118-119

O you who have believed, do not take as intimates those other than yourselves, for they will not spare you [any] ruin. They wish you would have hardship. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater. We have certainly made clear to you the signs, if you will use reason. Here you are loving them but they are not loving you, while you believe in the Scripture - all of it. And when they meet you, they say, "We believe." But when they are alone, they bite their fingertips at you in rage. Say, "Die in your rage. Indeed, Allah is Knowing of that within the breasts."

https://quranx.com/4.74-76

So let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory - We will bestow upon him a great reward. [..] Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the cause of Taghut. So fight against the allies of Satan. Indeed, the plot of Satan has ever been weak.

Taghut refers to anyone or anything that is worshiped that is not Allah.

As far as Islam is concerned, the world is already Allah's. Human governments and laws are already illegitimate, because Allah has already delivered his eternal message (quran) and eternal law (shari'ah).

[kineticpenguin]

Every mention of the canceled USS United States supercarrier on Wikipedia (ordered and canceled in 1949) is very angry and bitter about it, and blames Air Force malfeasance.

E.g., "a victim of budget cuts and US Air Force interference," "The United States Air Force viewed United States as a challenge to their monopoly on strategic nuclear weapons delivery," and "Looking to cut the military budget and accepting without question the Air Force argument on nuclear deterrence by means of large, long-range bombers."

But I think just one look at that thing's design should tell you it was fucking stupid as hell, and a conventionally-powered flush deck supercarrier with no hangar bay and no clear mission beyond "um have jets and nukes on it" would be a colossal waste of money

[trigun-floopers]

S1 Ep 3

Everyone is reeling from the crawling bombs attaching to their bodies:

Vash ruffles his hair, trying to get out as much sand as he can, "Who's this E.G. Bomber?"

Roberto turns around and grumbles, "His real name is Ew Gross Motherfucker."

"Cut!"

"His real name is Guess Imma Lit That Up."

"Cut!"

"His real name is Fire In The Hole."

"Cut! That's it Bertie, no more Gummy Worms for you!"

[chibivesicle]

Trigun Stampede - Episode 3 review; well, that escalated quickly.

Another Saturday has arrived here in North America and the new episode of Trigun Stampede has dropped.  Knives is making his first appearance in the present along with various characters from the anime/manga assisting him in his quest to destroy humanity on the planet.

A note for those who are reading my meta for the first time - I like to do indepth analyses looking at various themes, links to other media and anything else that strikes my fancy at the moment.  If this is not your cup of tea, you likely will not enjoy my metas.  If you want more context for my format, please feel free to look at my archive and skim my chapter summaries for Golden Kamuy which were either single or two chapter summaries that followed the manga in real time.

Sorry for the interruption! Let’s get back to the action with Knives in the desert.  He shows full true villain form by walking to Jeneora Rock, by foot and barefoot in an approaching a sandstorm?  It seems that his attack on the city is likely coordinated with the sandstorm since everyone is running to the main street for shelter.  Or is the sandstorm a feint for the chaos to confuse the city, since no sandstorm ever arrives?

We get an awkward shot of our core group of named people and Rosa finally confirms that she must be pregnant by holding her belly as she struggles with Tonis.  I’d have to admit, I spent the first two episodes trying to determine if she was pregnant or not but this seems to confirm it.

The action continues to be going at a rapid pace in this episode as more of the phage virus bombs attach themselves to everyone.  Roberto continues to be our source of information stating that these bombs have to be the work of the ‘Easy Bomber’ Ethan Gilbert Hamilton.  Due to the information that our seasoned reporter knows, Vash quickly figures out where he is watching them from and fires a single bullet at him to flush him out.  As the citizens rush out of the city, a few more are taken out by a landmine.

This then allows for the transition to the anime/manga name of E.G. the Mine, who introduces himself to the group stating that he’d been upgraded by someone.  It then cuts to the OP.

After the OP, E.G. hops into his roller cage in search of the treasure, which Vash immediately realizes is the plant.  The animation shows what E.G. can see on his visor as CGI in a CGI animation to lead him to the plant to steal.  He drops little bombs to try to trip up anyone chasing him up the stairs.  I’m going to assume he was able to avoid his landmines as he spins off across the sand before hitting the metal of the city structure but I’ll come back to this later.

While Vash is chasing E.G., Roberto and Meryl are talking about what makes him the humanoid typhoon.  This is Roberto explicitly explaining that his nickname explains the chaos that surrounds him and how you get swept up on it.  His grim suicide joke about the bomb on his back, gives Meryl and idea.

Vash gets tossed around as E.G. tries to escape with the plant, now between the wider wheelbase of his roller cage? Tire? I dunno what to call it so roller cage it is.

As it is rolling back down the stairs, Meryl and Roberto approach and they just sort of stand there.  Which results in Roberto jumping in to protect Meryl from being run over.  I’m not entirely sure why they decided this was a good idea.

However, it gives me a good idea that each time Roberto either tosses/pulls/pushes Meryl out of the way from being hurt might be a good drinking game prompt.

While this is going on, Vash is yelling at him to disable the bombs since he already stole the plant.  Yet, E.G. wants to use the act of stealing to allow him to kill all the civilians of the town.  Vash pulls his gun and points it directly at him and we see our first very serious Vash facial expression here.

There is even a zoom in to see the nervous swallowing as the barrel of the gun is pointing at him. 

It appears that this is enough to break his concentration and he veers off course, ultimately flying off the structures and back onto the sand.  With Vash knocked off as well, he loses hold of his gun giving E.G. the opportunity to pick it up and aim it at Vash, basking in his ability to defeat the feared humanoid typhoon.

The awkward pair of Roberto and Meryl rush in with Roberto calling E.G. by his former nickname distracting him for a tackle, while Meryl uses her camera flash to slip by and grab onto his arm with the gun.

This is where Meryl’s brilliant ideal comes to fruition as they latch onto him with the literal time bombs on their backs.  With their assistance Vash leaps into action and gets him in a stranglehold from behind.  We get to see some angry Vash eyebrows here.  Anyone else getting the eyebrow vibes of Amaro from FLCL?  Not as thick but similar in the dark contrasting nori color.  It might just be me.

And by threatening to blow him sky high along with them, E.G. caves almost immediately and Vash pushes a red button on his back.  Okaaaaay.  Sure.  That completely solved the crisis.  The phage bombs disarm and fall off of everyone at 8:30 into the episode.  I’m also going to assume that this also disabled all the landmines since no other landmines explode the entire rest of the episode.  What was the point of laying all those landmines to only use one in the plot?

With that, based on both the manga and anime, we can say our goodbyes to E.G. the Mine as he’s failed in his task to both steal the plant and kill the populace of the city.   Roberto is the one to tie his hands behind his back with a simple rope and Nebraska wants his revenge but Vash stands between the two.  Again, Vash is asked ‘Whose side are you on?’ This is something which also appears to be a statement that everyone likes to say to Vash.  I’d like to give the writers the benefit of the doubt on this narrative catchphrase, but it comes off as lazy writing.  I think you can achieve this by different characters using other statements that still get to the point that Vash isn’t on anyone’s side.  Which makes me wonder why everyone is so fixated on the concept of a certain ‘side’. 

However, Vash is distracted and turns to look back up to the saloon that is called a diner with an expression of shock and then fear.  Below the swinging doors we can see a figure in silver seated at the upright piano, playing the tune that everyone else can hear.  We saw the upright saloon style piano in episodes 1 and 2, which fits in the Western decor.

However, this threw me for a loop as I wasn’t expecting the piano to sound like more classical style piano.  I would have expected to hear the tune on a piano like the one below.  Yes, the music on the piano below is more ragtime tunes, but it is the sound that matches the old time Western feel.  By having an old upright saloon style piano the visual matches a Western look but the sound is completely clean and modern, again highlighting this version of Trigun Stampede is sci fi more than anything else.  I honestly thought when the music started playing it was just a dramatic cue from the OST to let us know that Knives was here and things were going to get heavy, not that he was literally playing the piano.  Do we know that this is now his theme music? Yes 100%.  It would be harder to make dramatic sounding music with a saloon style piano - you’d have to dig into the dramatic soundtracks from old silent films to get a similar vibe.

The sci fi versus Western vibe contrast is highlighted by how the anime leaned into that older tech feel.  I don’t think it is quite fair to compare it with the manga since there is no OST, though the overall visual style is very much Western.

Episode 2, ‘Truth of Mistake’ from Trigun had this nice little insert here with the old phonograph with a heat warped record.  It really highlights how the original team at Madhouse leaned into the Western aesthetic with the old and warped feeling to the sound making the ‘wah waah’ as the record played.

What all of this is telling us by episode 3 is that Trigun Stampede is most definitely not Trigun nor the Trigun Maximum manga.  It is something completely different and the Western vibe has been only transferred over at a superficial level thus far.  This is a sci fi series on a desert planet with a general feeling of lawlessness but it is not equivalent to the myth of the wild west popularized by American media after WWII. 

This was in part a cold war era tactic to solidify a made up American identity of the lone white straight male gunslinger in the public consciousnesses.  Which is totally not accurate but that’s the American media industrial complex at work!  If you want to learn more about this, I’d suggest watching these videos by Kaz Rowe here about the much more diverse history of the wild west in terms of sexual orientation and race.  Having lived in a city for almost eight years, where Billy the Kid stayed in a certain building (there’s a plaque to prove it!), it is pretty obvious that many of the people of the past living in the region were not white men based on demographics alone.

and here:

We know for a fact that Yasuhiro Nightow is of the right age to have grown up watching American media that fed into the original lone gunslinger myth and that there was a lot of trans Pacific crosstalk between American media and Japanese media, specifically samurai films and wild west films.  Keep in mind that Gintama also feeds into this as it has the samurai theme of chambara which plays into that dialogue with American wild westerns. 

This was a rather long winded tangent to note that the media around the wild west is more complicated than just ‘white dude shoot gun at bad guys’ - and that due to this media awareness, the original manga and the anime by Madhouse are adding to this visual language across the Pacific based on their own age and demographic backgrounds.  I find it nice that Trigun Maximum has a diverse and queer cast and that Kas Rowe’s own research dovetails with that nicely in the videos above.  It is like a little bonus the more you think about it.

Back to the episode!

After listening to the piano a bit, Vash screams at everyone to flee the town immediately.  He knows who is playing it and knows it will end very badly.  E.G. escapes despite Nebraska trying to shoot at him and most of the group scatters.  Roberto and Meryl smartly flee while Rosa looks at the plant and seems to be torn.

E.G. excitedly rushes to Knives to ‘grace him with his presence’ which promptly gets him death by blood loss due to both of his arms being cut off.  Welp, it was nice to know you E.G. . . . I guess this version of the Gung-Ho Guns don’t have the succeed or die pact as a rule?  Like Vash, I’m not a huge fan of lots of blood and gore, so even though the manga had some pretty gross stuff, I’m not thrilled to see it in the anime.

Taking his time, Vash slowly approaches Knives entering the room and aiming his gun at his brother.  Based on their conversation, it has been a long time between they last saw each other and it is clear that Vash isn’t clear on Knives intentions behind stealing the plants.

At least he’s articulate in his intentions with strong working of taking it back and that it ‘belongs’ to him.  Before immediately correcting that the plant belongs to the both of them.  Of course Vash is against the theft of the plant as the town would die which then prompts even Knives to ask him ‘whose side are you on?’

So again, we have this concept of ‘sides’ which remains unclear in the first three episodes since there have never been any clear factions defined.  We know that there are general civilians, criminal elements like the Nebraskas, corrupt military police, Knives and his Gung-Ho Guns (to be revealed); however, the conflict between them is muddy at best at this point in the narrative.  Definitely not keen on this set up. 

The two of them both realize neither has changed over the years and then Knives is able to toss Vash’s mind into a sort of other state where he’s still a child and he points out he still can’t do some sort of fundamental ability as a plant, which leaves him frozen in place.  Child Vash cries out to Nai from the other plane and the action shifts to Nebraska still on the quest for revenge for his son’s death.

Nebraska gets an arm chopped off by Knives to allow for him to build his bad ass boss character and Vash cries out to Nai to stop.  This third episode also makes it clear that the markings on Vash and Knives are not a tunic underneath but instead some aspect of their plant-ness as they fade out around the ankles and wrist.  This is why we see Vash wearing a turtleneck, to cover up the markings.

Knives is making his way to the top of the structure when a vehicle pulls up; Grey the Ninelives appears to be a robot in this version like the original anime.  We also get a man in a suit with a briefcase leading a young girl to the location who is also barefoot.

Knives continues to leisurely and barefoot (eeewww) stroll up to the top of the structure.  I know this is a stylistic choice, but the sand and grit that would have stuck to his bloody feet is just - ick.  Think of how it would feel between your toes.

Rosa and the two unnamed mothers race to the top of the stairs to make a stand against Knives and Grey delivers Conrad and the young girl.  He tells them to stand down, which is good advice in this situation.

Knives remarks that the Doctor has arrived and tells him to retrieve the other plant. They leave and Knives handles the three women.  To fit his name of Millions Knives, he uses his nanotech chains of razor blades to make quick work of the two nameless women, slicing them up, leaving Rosa with her friend’s hand only.  Rosa in shock retreats back into a wall as Knives uses his razor blade chains to skip over her.  I’m going to guess that he didn’t kill her because she was pregnant and not that she would no longer put up any resistance after seeing her friends exploded before her on eyes. 

Vash has caught up to Knives again and tells him to stop.  His gun still has the weird frosty bit from Knives on it and Knives asks him again ‘Whose side are you on?’  as he removes the dying plant as well.

Meanwhile, Roberto and Meryl find Tonis hiding since that’s what is mom told him to do.  As they somehow know that Rosa went back into the town?

The action jumps back to the Vash-Knives showdown where Vash tries to shoot through the chain of razors and Knives mocks him for trying to shoot his own brother.

This allows for Knives to go into true villain form by getting all old testament. with his line of ‘In the past, God rained fire from the sky, destroying the city of depraved fools.’ We know that Knives is taking this out of context as he knows that many people on the planet are just trying to survive as indicated by Rosa and her behaviors.  This isn’t a Sodom and Gomorrah parallel but we know that Knives has his own plan for things.

Vash again is in utter shock realizing that he intends to destroy the entire town and he tells Rosa in absolute fear to run.  With his advanced nanotech razor knives, he slices up the namesake rock of the town.  Evil organ music plays as Knives laughs and Vash pulls shell shocked Rosa away.

Grey with the unnamed girl escape with the healthy plant, while Knives takes hold of the dying plant with his razor chain. Vash asks aloud why Nai is doing this as he pulls Rosa along as the rock collapses.

As the area collapses, Meryl tries to hold onto Tonis, but he falls from the unstable structure as Roberto holds onto her.  He later pulls her out of the rubble before she rushes to see how Vash and Rosa are only to see that Tonis had somehow lost an arm in the fall?

Rosa monologues that they are lost; they lost the town, the plant and people died.  And since Knives is Vash’s brother she tells him to leave.  It is his fault that their town was destroyed and if he’d never have come there, this wouldn’t have happened.  Silently, Vash picks up his bag, dusts it off a little and begins to walk off into the moonlight night as Meryl chases after him.

He stops for her and picks up Tonis’ cage of insects which glow and he releases them into the night sky as he smiles sadly and Meryl asks him why.  He with his sad smile then replies that he doesn’t deserve to cry.

And he continues to walk, heading east to July where he knows that Knives is.  It is unclear from the context to far if July is still a functional city and Knives is living there or if the Lost July incident has already occurred and Knives is living there.  We didn’t get much from the establishing shot in episode 1.  This is pretty much it with what I’m assuming are the puppet vultures from the original.  But since Vash was attacked by the corrupt Military Police from July, it implies that there is still some sembelance of order in July and maybe they were even trying to get the money to pay for something in July that is the result of Knives actions?

And with Vash walking off into the night, the episode ends.

Overall impressions:

This episode was less cohesive than the first two.  The pacing seemed a bit off and it kept flipping back and forth too much between locations and characters.  E.G. the Mine shows up, reeks havoc, surrenders only to be killed by Knives.  It leaned into the scif fi aspect even more with E.G.’s simulated cage view bit and the appearance of Conrad who is only in the manga but had helped Knives out (he had no choice) and even examined Vash for Knives to determine who had the better angelic power potential (Vash).  This episode was an opportunity to demonstrate how ruthless Knives is with all the slicing and dicing of people.

Themes thus far into the narrative:

i.) Brotherly conflict - 100% confirmed as a major theme in this version.  This is much more at the forefront of the story with the reunion, Vash being tossed into the other plane due to the lack of his development of his own powers.  Knives being a terrible older brother, and Vash asking ‘why’ and Knives never answering him. All in all, Vash being owned by Knives.

They also show that neither of them has changed since their last meeting and unknown number of years ago.  We don’t have enough background to know if it was 80, 130 or 150 etc.

ii.) Unclear concept of sides - Good or bad, the team at Studio Orange want to beat into your head the theme of ‘sides’.  Rosa, Roberto, Nebraska, Knives they all ask Vash about his side.  Unfortunately, we are lacking the context and world building to understand what all the possible sides are with clarity. 

Vash’s side is likely respect for all life, but that is based on the anime and manga knowledge of him.

Rosa’s (general civilians) side is to scrape by.  Make a living and anyone who prevents this is their enemy.

Criminal elements’ (either corrupt July MP or Nebraskas) side is to do crime and profit from it.

Knives‘ side is to exterminate all humanity, claim all the plants for himself for something.  We have no idea if he will follow Trigun Maximum in this objective.

This is the best I can come up with for the moment.  I think the creative team wants to show how nice their CGI is and are really trying to milk the action scenes but it leaves little room for characters to breathe.  Honestly, their animation is quite good, it is clear they are a great animation studio in that regard.  I see no issues with their quality factor.  However, their storytelling and narrative structure is not their strong suit as far as I can tell.  I know they did Beastars but that was a very direct adaptation of the manga, to the extent of my knowledge.  Beastars manga readers weigh in if I’m off about their adaptaion. 

Another friend noted that the character designs are generic which upon hearing that, makes sense for me.  They do look generic in the way many of the isekai animes fall into expected looks for characters.

iii.) Barefootness/footprints in the sand - means something.  What it is I don’t know yet.  Knives apparently likes to feel the things between his toes, and the unnamed girl is also barefoot with Conrad.  We’ve seen lots of visual framing with footprints - Knives approaching Jeneora, Vash following the wheel tracks and then Meryl chasing after him.  Footprints and tracks in sand specifically have a strong sense of impermanence associated with them as the winds quickly shift the sand and remove all traces of your path.  Does this mean you are literally a speck of sand in the universe?  Or that you are important even though your mark is limited? 

Does being barefoot imply a closeness to nature?  To God?  To both?

For me, the concept of being barefoot in the desert is - ick, ouch, stabby-stabby pain in your feet. A good descriptor of walking in a desert is pointy rocks and pointy plants, meaning you always want to wear protective footwear.  Sure, you can wear sandals, but don’t do so during spring dust storm season.  The grit between your toes is unpleasant.  This sort of feeds into my thoughts of the superficial feeling of the wild west that Trigun Stampede is using.  It looks like it but less of the logistics with these shoe-less people running around.  That’s why in the original everyone just wears normal shoes.  Knives can get away with his lack of clothing at times in the manga since he never walks around casually outside - he’s always in a building, ship or someplace.  What Knives is not is someone who’s out for an afternoon stroll in the desert landscape in these versions.

Characters and general observations:

Vash -  With his reunion with Nai, it is immediately clear that the two are polar opposites and Vash does not understand at all what his brother is doing.  Vash seems to flip between being befuddled by his brother or sad rejection boi.  We don’t get any example of his skill as a gunman in this episode or his creative solutions to problems.  Just a lot of confused pleading or angry about not being able to save everyone and get along.  Manga Vash was pretty sad and guilt ridden as well, but he still had a sense of humor to lighten the load.  Stampede Vash currently seems to be more resigned sadness.  Will this change when his brother from another mother, Nicholas D. Wolfwood appears?

Meryl and Roberto - I currently see them as the awkward pair.  Meryl is quick witted enough to show she can think under pressure to stop E.G. and her use of the camera flash was clever.  Yet, she still needs to be constantly saved by Roberto who continues to info dump for the audience.  She is less whiny in this episode but it would be tone deaf for her to be like that in the current circumstances.

Rosa - Is clearly a character that stands in for the regular people of the planet.  Honestly, I can’t quite get her deal. She’s inconsistent in her behaviors and I wonder if it is because she is our named stand in for regular folks?  She swings back and forth between trusting Vash to save them and cursing him at the same time.  Do we have poor characterization of her or is she this erratic?  Hard to tell.

Tonis - is our child who must be saved and also a victim of the chaos.  Either the loss of his arm will allow for him to maybe get a new one like Vash (good) or gain a new one to work for evil? 

Knives/Nai - Is a genocidal chaotic plant with a plan he wants to put into action.  His plant abilities are more advanced that Vash’s and a ruthless cold blooded killer.  Definitely our big bad with a strong old testament ‘wrath of God’ approach to eliminating all of humanity.  In this version, they took is slicing arm ability and literally interpreted it as Millions Knives.

E.G. the Mine - We only knew you briefly.  One of the valid critiques of the original was the lack of backstory and motivation for the Gung-Ho Guns in the anime.  Stampede also doesn’t give us anymore information.  Okay, they give us a real name for him as his ‘Easy Bomber’ moniker but that doesn’t do much else to make it a better retelling of his own motivations. He again, is just a man who wants to use his actions as an excuse to kill.  Opportunity lost.

Conrad - The Doctor from the manga who was on the ship with Rem, Vash and Knives and dicovers them and keeps their secret.  He stays hidden for some time in the manga only to be found by Knives and is forced to work for him witholding the key information that Knives is not immortal and that as his hair turns black he is indeed aging.  That Knives will eventually die and that his power is limited.  He didn’t do a whole lot other than helping Knives analyze Vash’s own body and gets killed by Knives.

Unnamed Girl = Zazie the Beast? - With her blonde hair and barefoot nature, I think this is Zazie the Beast. The walking barefoot may be a way to communicate with the sandworms and the fact that in the manga Zazie can change hosts as the representative of the insects of the planet.

Grey the Ninelives - appears to be a robot.  The anime vesion was a robot that Wolfwood fought while in the manga it is nine individuals in the body.  Since Stampede is full on sci fi, I’m going to go with either robot or mind of a human put into the robot to operate it.

Welp, that is all for this week.  We shall see what happens in Episode 4 next week as it is likely that Meryl and Roberto indeed chase after Vash on his way to July.

[triplesilverstar]

Not the first heartache, or the last

Rating: 18+ Minors DNI

Pairing: Vash X F!Reader

CW: Canon typical violence, threat of rape, drinking, death, implied character death, choking, mental breakdowns, medical inaccuracies 

Word count: Roughly 3.7K wordsA/N: Part 25 of the series. Chapter six of A return to Jeneora Rock, the fall of the town and your first encounter with the second plant independent. 

Things were going crazy in the chaos after Gosef ran out of the diner and you watched the explosion, one of the spider like bombs crawling up and attaching to your thigh while you followed the others out into the street. Based on the chaos you have a good idea who the hell it is that’s causing this, and you once again find yourself pissed for the second time that day at law enforcement's inability to keep people in prison. Trying to keep your actions from being too visible you start scanning the area, just where would he set himself up for maximum control and view. 

“Known, as E.G. Bomber, caught just the once by none other than the Ghost Sniper. It’s getting a little suspicious how many outlaws you catch that seem to escape prison.” Roberto’s words are a clear dig at you as you unsling your rifle from your shoulders.

“Yea, my job is catching them. Someone else is supposed to keep them locked up so maybe throw that chastising tone elsewhere drunkie.” It’s always bothered you how when outlaws and bandits escape from prison that people blame you, so you don’t even try to hide the annoyance and anger in your voice, letting the venom drip into your words. “Keeping people in prison is not my job.”

“How did you catch him last time?” Voice somber you look at Vash and nod, eyes flicking to the top of Jeneora Rock where you suspect him to be. You know Vash will understand the unspoken words.

“When I caught him, he was hanging out where he could watch his handy work. So I tricked him into running and when his back was turned got off a shot to knock him out. Get ready to run” voice level you pull your rifle up, spinning your body, and fire, hitting the edge of the rock causing debris to rise up and send the bomber running. “I’m heading for higher ground, he’s a slick one, keep your guard up!” Yelling after Vash before heading in the opposite direction and up the walls of a building again for a higher vantage point. 

“This is not going to be fun” you hiss to yourself, preparing for the worst, because a man like him is only here for one reason. Carnage. Once high enough that you’ll have a clear view of what’s going on below you and if the fight moves, you bring your rifle up, looking through the scope and double tapping your ear piece forming the connection to Vash’s. Listening to the conversation, and holy shit, that is one crazy looking cage. The metal looks like the same substance as the prosthetic you’re quite familiar with, which means it’s going to be one hell of a nut to crack. 

Tracking as the drum like object begins to move, you take a deep breath, the eye not looking through your scope seeing the explosions around Vash. When the drum turns for a set of stairs you fire, putting it just off kilter enough to make it spin out before it’s back on track. “Damnit” hurrying across the rooftops you keep following, at least knowing where it’s headed is allowing you to sort of adjust your path and taking shots that, while they aren’t doing any damage, are at least slowing the spinning drum down so it can adjust, giving you and hopefully Vash time to catch up. 

Nearing the top of the town you hear even larger explosions, it has to be the vault doors being blasted open. Once there you’re running, lungs burning from the effort and feeling the muscles of your calves screaming for relief “Snipes!” You’re almost at the stairs when you hear Vash’s voice both behind you and directly in your ear, turning around to face back towards the entrance at the base of the tank. He’s barely slowed his gait, no time to take all those stairs, fingers intertwining to make a cup and dropping to one knee, using your hands as a stirrup. The bottom of his boot landing in your palms and you hurl with all your strength giving him the altitude he needs to launch the cable from his wrist and sail nearly two thirds of the way to the top. 

Vash well on his way you take a deep breath, all these stairs are going to make you curse your decisions from yesterday, hearing explosions above you. Starting up, taking them two at a time, “Snipes! Dodge” you don’t hesitate to grab the railing and throw yourself over the edge, hands gripping tight to the metal as the two men, and drum, now holding the plant race past you. Well fuck. You should have stayed down on the ground. 

A short while later you find yourself wondering how in the hell had things gone to shit so fast? You’d been trying to follow Vash and E.G. Bomber, wait no he’s calling himself the Mine now, not Bomber, through your scope after getting back outside and heading down the stairs and rooftops. After they’d taken a turn too sharply and wiped out you were moving positions again. Pausing as you felt the bomb attached to your leg loosen its hold and fall away, taking great lungfuls of air now that the danger from that was over. It seems calm. Until you hear an explosion and Vash’s voice yelling for the townsfolk to run away from town, moments later breaking that calm, his voice cutting clear across the tech lodged in your ear to “stay away from the Diner.” So much for the two of you quietly slipping out of town. 

You know what you need to do in the meantime. You start following his lead, yelling from your elevated position to those that hadn’t followed after him and those that hadn’t been in the diner when the bombs first went off. Rifle slung you start running, calling out until your voice was the only one you heard ringing in the area and doing as you were told to stay away from the location the diner is in. You think. The same area you’d hear piano notes begin to float from. Now yelling for Vash himself, unsure what is going on but a feeling in your gut that things are not well, after his warning you’d heard a click from his end indicating he was shutting his own radio off. You’d hadn’t heard that in a long time.

You only realize it after it’s gone silent, you can’t hear the piano that was playing in the distance anymore, the hackles on the back of your neck rising. You have no idea how you managed it, chalking it up to instincts and muscle memory, but you drop and roll forward before freezing on the balls of your feet, crouched forward and balanced with your fingers spread on the ground. The shift of air currents above and in front of you, as you focus in on the metal directly ahead, sharp knife like objects that would have ended you. Two more stark lines of metal tendrils above you, one where your head would have been if you’d just kept running. They’d been so sudden, like a bolt of lighting across the sky. 

“How interesting” you keep still, while the metal above you returns to the figure with lazy ease almost as if they were dancing along, glancing towards them, it reminds you of tentacles on an octopus. 

Controlled.

Fluid.

Fast.

“You’re not the usual human garbage I was expecting.” Deep breaths in, trying to calm your racing heart. Again instinct and years of dodging fast moving objects ingrained in your muscle memory save you as you dart around a second time, a warmth spreads across your cheek.

Contact. 

Not fatal. 

Don’t seize up.

Keep breathing, your muscles are burning from the exertion of the last half hour. Legs still sore from your actions the night before, damn are you regretting jumping off that building now. 

Back against the wall and a set of haphazard stairs from the explosions that followed the crazed bomber between you and the figure whose identity you are starting to suspect, a flimsy defense, but you’ll take anything. The figure is wrapped in something, a robe maybe, and you can smell the bite of copper, there’s more blood around then just the amount on your face. “You are a lucky one, aren’t you.” 

There’s no point in trying to raise your rifle, you do know who this is from cautions given by Vash regarding his twin, and you know your best is nowhere near enough. And right now, you are far from your best. For a third time, you dodge the metal tendrils that seem to be made of knives, but those are not the threat this time. Quick movements and you find yourself gasping for air. Your back is still to the wall, your feet are dangling, rifle digging into your shoulders, a hand wrapped around your throat exerting enough pressure to cause pain but nothing more. Yet. He lets out a noise of amusement, no other words make sense in your mind to try and describe it. It’s like a cat that has a mouse clearly in their claws, a noise as if to say ‘I have you, now how much more can you amuse me’. 

“I was planning to just kill you,” you can see a portion of his face, just enough to see one side, and it strikes you hard, seeing a face that is oh so familiar, that you can spend hours staring at while doing nothing else. “To watch as my brother mourned his companion , no one has ever stayed with him this long before. He seems to truly care for you, a balm for his loneliness. But in the end you're just another one of the vermin to be removed in the grand scheme of things. Another filthy human pulling him away from me.” His voice is void of emotion, like he’s speaking to a creature that doesn’t understand words. You can feel your heart starting to race, and swallow, trying to slow it back down, the figure hasn’t placed enough pressure to fully close off your airway. The edge of your vision is starting to grow darker, even with the opening it’s still not enough oxygen to fuel your brain. 

“Now however” the figure presses closer, breath fanning across your ear “I see you might be something else, something unexpected . Tell me little vermin, do you think you’re worthy to walk beside him?” You know he can snap your neck in a moment. But right now, screw him. If this is the end, you won’t let your final words be silence. Swallowing hard and taking as deep of a breath as you can.  

“No.” You have no idea if he’s surprised by your answer or not, the briefest flick of his fingers around your throat the only indication he’s heard you, and you keep talking “But that’s not up to me anymore. Or you. So I'll keep walking beside him, as long as he’ll let me.” You tense then, as his one visible pupil dilates, eye shades lighter than the ones you’re used to staring into. You're expecting to feel your vertebrae snap before you die. But it never comes, instead laughter. Laughter that leaves your blood running cold. 

“Maybe it is more than luck, little vermin” you catch the full view of his face as he pulls back, it makes your heart churn to see the same face as the man you love with zero emotions. Zero empathy. A void of nothingness. You do not like that look, but see the brief glance of assessment. Like there was something he had missed and now trying to fit that final piece into a puzzle. After what feels like ages, but at most was only a few minutes. 

“I’ll let you live.” He drops you like a sack.

“For now . ”

Your lungs scramble to refill themselves and get oxygen flowing freely to your brain again. “You might prove a useful tool later, in ensuring my brother's obedience.” He’s walking away, while you keep gasping for breath, hand over your chest. You have no idea how long you sit in the chaos, body numb, mind repeating his words. For now.  

You don’t find yourself moving again until you hear a shout screaming for help nearby that you recognize as Vash, scrambling as you run towards his voice. Finding him cradling Nebraska in his arms and blood pouring from the area where his arm should have been attached. 

“Snipes! You’re ok!” You nod dropping down beside him and pulling a sealed compression bandage from your pants pocket, ripping the edge of the package open.

“I’m fine Vash, hold him still” you aren’t going to tell him about running into his brother and the words that were spoken to you. Now is not the time, and you are far too shaken from hearing them, the same statement still rattling around in your brain. For now. Compression bandage wrapped around the stub to try and keep him from bleeding out and once secure you stare hard at him. “Go Vash. I’ll get Nebraska out of here. Pleas-” you swallow hard, forcing the tears that want to form down. “Please don’t do anything stupid.” So many more words are left unspoken. Staring back at you hard for a moment himself before giving you a curt nod and running up the stairs.

“Come on Nebraska, we need to get you out of here” Using his remaining arm you’re partially throwing him over your shoulder and forcing him to walk along with you. “That’s it old man let’s get out of here.”

Now that he’s not on the verge of passing out from blood loss the shock is setting in, the same words repeated over and over again. “Monster.” You find yourself swallowing trying to keep moving down the stairs closer to the entrance of town. All you know from Vash is that his twin told him almost a century ago that he would make a new world, and it leaves a sinking feeling in your gut after finally meeting him for the first time. Unlike Nebraska, you don’t think he’s a monster, no, you’ve met monsters. Vash’s twin Nai, now Millions Knives, is something else entirely and a part of you wants more information to try and figure that piece out. 

Before long, even if it is slow going you find yourself at the edge of town where a few townsfolk are standing watching their town burn. Passing Nebraska off you run back into town, heading where you’d left your and Vash’s bags, it might seem odd but everything else you both need are inside. And at the rate things are going, you’re not going to have any medical supplies after tonight.

The sound of Vash’s pistol reaches your ears, a sound normally lost in the din, but after this long you’ve trained hearing for the rarely heard sound. Head darting up, even from this distance you can see glints of light off fast moving objects. Vash found Knives. And as you watch, you feel terror deep down in your bones, his choice in names is correct, watching what could be millions of blades as they slice through Jeneora Rock. Stone, metal, people, it doesn’t matter, his blades slice through all of it. You’re lucky enough to be far enough outside the town to just watch the chaos, watching the rock about the town split into pieces, and as it slides down the rest of the town seems to follow breaking into pieces all around. Your heart is churning, and not because of the reasons it should be, but because Vash will survive this, and it will be another weight added to his burden. You find yourself falling to your knees and crying silent tears. 

Later, again unaware of the passage of time, too caught up in watching the destruction unfold, a hand on your shoulder stirs you from your stupor, people need help, and you can provide some of it, your bare bones abilities in basic medical skills can help keep people alive and you get to work, patching people up and pulling them from the rubble. Waiting for your lover to appear, and start putting the pieces back together. 

Now hours later, dusk long gone, you finish wrapping the injuries Gosef had sustained while his father sat nearby and from the corner of your eye could see an exhausted Vash trying to approach the survivors of Jenoras Rock. You could see the sorrow on his face clear as day, as he made his way towards Rosa. 

In the rubble you had found Tonis and patched him up as best as your limited medical expertise would allow. For all you knew, all you had done was delay the inevitable. The moment Rosa had seen you with him however, you’d been pushed away from her son. You’d let her, you had no words for her and her frantic movements told you even if you did she didn’t want to hear them.

You watched as Rosa told Vash to leave, and watched the heart wrenching sorrow on his face. Turning back to your pack and pulling a few supplies out to leave for the Nebraska family to try and keep themselves alive long enough to get more help.

Standing, you grabbed your gear and started following after Vash. Not for the first time because of what happened, though your heart yearned for it to be the last time. Meryl was calling out after him, shuffling to catch up. You passed Roberto who was watching the scene, lighting a cigarette. 

“Do you always follow after him?” feet stopping a short distance away and watching Vash pick up Tonis’s worm cage partially buried in the sand. Trying to keep your face neutral, to act as if the question isn’t throwing you. That’s not the slander you’re used to seeing thrown at your feet after the Typhoon strikes. 

“No. I walk beside him” your voice is low, barely audible. 

“Why?” It’s a good question, a loaded question with what he leaves unasked. Your first instinct about him was spot on, he’s definitely the more observant of the two.  

“Because, no one else will.” And those words make your heart burn, A man who fights for everyone but himself. You don’t bother with any more words, too tired from the events of the day to try and have a conversation when all you want is to get away from here with your other half. Moving once more you catch up in time for Vash to once again pick up his bag and pass in front of Meryl who looks for all the world like she’s about to cry from all the injustice today has brought. Wasted energy for something that doesn’t exist. 

Your heart shudders in your chest hearing Vash’s soft voice “I don’t deserve to cry.” You want to reach out to him. You don’t, clenching your fist tight enough to feel your bones creak. Experience has taught you right now he’s mired in his own despair, he’s more likely to push you away instead of accepting the comfort of physical contact because he feels he doesn’t deserve it. Catching his eye, you smile softly at him walking beside him and between the vehicle tracks, a visible reminder that you’re here and you have no plans to be anywhere else. 

You both walk in silence for a few hours, the only sound aside from the wind is your breathing. His eyes have never left the horizon, on occasion you let your hand brush against his, a silent indication you’re still there with him, but don’t press any further. After a while you exhale and watch the vapor cloud rise in front of your face, the temperature is starting to drop. 

“We should stop for the night, Vash.” He doesn’t say anything, only nodding as you stop to set up the quick campsite. Bags dropped to form a backrest and bedding placed, you turn to him. Face upturned staring at the sky, you reach out both hands gently grabbing his face, pulling him down to press your lips against his forehead, selfish in your wish to try and comfort him. A shaky exhale leaves him as his arms wrap around you to keep you from moving any further away, it eats at you since he can be so free with his tears when it’s you hurting, but he swallows it down when it’s for himself. His forehead is pressed against yours now, eyes downcast and solemn the weight of the world bearing down on him. “I’ll take first watch Sunshine.” 

You feel his breath against your cheek as he agrees, the first words he's spoken to you since he left you with Nebraska off to face his brother and you can feel the weight eating at his soul. Settling in, you find him clinging to you, face buried in your chest. You start carding your fingers through his hair, and eventually, you hear his breathing even out. You shift just enough to wrap your arms around him as well and stare out in the distance. It’s going to be a long night, and you know he won’t stay peaceful in his slumber for long. You’ll stay awake the whole night, to keep your love as safe as you can while he tears himself apart in his own mind. 

JuLai City

Back in JuLai, plants secure the figure seated against the vehicle as the doctor speaks, finds himself curious. “Is the Ghost Sniper another of your experiments, Doctor? I thought I knew about all of them.” 

Doctor Conrad pauses for a moment, before carefully answering. “No. The young lady you’re referring to is a complete enigma. All the information we have on her goes back only seven years when she first stumbled into May City, before that nothing.” Watching as Knives closes his eyes in thought. 

“Perhaps it might not have been luck after all” one of the coils of blades appears, slowly moving towards the Doctor that upon closer inspection he notices the red substance coating one of the blades. “A sample for you, Doctor.” 

The next day, a new bounty poster is issued for one “Ghost Sniper” the only amendment from the one you and Vash had seen in Jeneora Rock being the statement “Alive” written across the text. 

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