Chapter Text
Time is a blank stretch— it is as though Meryl’s mind has a caught gear, click-click-clicking as the machinery of her brain tries to scramble everything into place, everything skidding and grating until that successful, triumphant clack into rightness. Details return in a single second: she is on the sandsteamer, as is Vash, who stands in front of her, pressed up against the tank of the Plant, looking back at her with an out of it, hooded look, and those glowing markings that caused her thoughts to skip a beat in the first place.
It’s like they are floating in suspended motion in this moment— until interrupted. Once from behind: Wolfwood and Roberto burst in, and find themselves caught in the molasses of being stunned by Vash as well. But also, once from the other side of the tank: a security guard in heavy gear and a face-scarf makes belated good on the do not enter signs that adorned the Plant’s storage room, and bursts in, leveling his gun at Vash.
“What are you?” He asks tremblingly, holding up the weapon, and it breaks the moment like the most fragile of glass.
Meryl moves without thinking, trying to get between the dazed Vash and the weapon that could kill him— it doesn’t matter what he is, but she doesn’t want him to die (and not just because she is suddenly even more deeply curious as to his condition). Wolfwood, too, seems to unthinkingly saddle the Punisher behind her, readying it for destruction.
Vash finally comes out of it a bit, glow fading, a bit more life and cognizance coming over his face. He slowly lifts his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot,” he murmurs, to both sides, though he looks a bit too dazed to put his usual fervor behind the sentiment.
“What are you,” the gunman insists desperately, trembling harder, looking at Vash with deep, inset fear. His eyes shakily flick to the rest of the four of them— Roberto, who stands the furthest back with his hands held up, Meryl, who is awkwardly wedged partway between the guard and Vash, Wolfwood, who is holding the Punisher and seemingly frozen by indecision, and lastly Vash, whose skin and eyes still shine with eerie Plant patterns, making him disconcerting despite his attempt at posing passively and his clear exhaustion.
“Don’t shoot,” Vash repeats breathily, listing slightly to the side. The fingers of his prosthetic twitch erratically, clearly damaged. Whatever that caused him to go all strange (as Meryl is currently electing to mentally label it) clearly took a lot out of him.
Wolfwood grimaces from across the room, keeping the giant cross leveled but still not moving. She’s not sure if it’s because of Vash’s usual pacifist insistence, or because she and Vash are still within the line of fire. Either way, she’s grateful for it; she assesses the situation herself, holding still, and thinks about how bad it would be if all hell broke loose.
This is, of course, when hell breaks loose.
It’s the Plant, the one unknown in this equation— it makes a rippling, keening thing that’s not quite a sound, but more of a sensation, and reaches its long fingers out towards Vash, regarding him with large, pleading eyes. The gunman winces, eyes flicking to it and following its gaze, once again landing on Vash. In return, seemingly by instinct, a short second warble emanates from Vash, stunning Meryl and Wolfwood with the feeling. That’s when the man rushes forwards a few feet. He can’t lunge to Vash safely within this window of distraction, so he grabs Meryl, cocking his cold steel gun below her chin.
She freezes in his grasp, and it’s her turn to tremble. He speaks from behind her, chest rumbling with apprehensive orders. “Listen, freak. If you don’t want your little friend to die,” he emphasizes this statement by knocking the edge of the gun from her chin into the soft hollow of her throat, eliciting a small involuntary choking noise from Meryl, “then you’re coming with me.”
He doesn’t seem to even care to address Wolfwood and Roberto in this, focused only on Vash. Even Meryl is a bystander in a way; she is dragged in, obviously, but the man doesn’t care about her outside of the fact that Vash clearly has care for her, based on the tenderness in his still glowing eyes, and his generally submissive posture. Had he not submitted or simply shown any protest, or were Vash the Stampede not a notorious pushover, Meryl doubts the guy would’ve even noted her presence, with how afraid he is of Vash.
Meryl initially automatically scoffs at the concept. Despite seeing Vash do daring, dangerous stunts on the regular, she generally finds the idea of him being dangerous kind of ridiculous. In her mind, he’s more like some strange, lanky cat; you can throw said cat off a roof and it’ll live, and in general it can perform quite impressive acrobatics, but the cat really couldn’t do much harm with its small claws, and maybe the thing is just such a purring softy when it comes to any affection to even think it could really pushed to do much harm in the first place. However, when she reconsiders the new situation of Vash’s inhumanity (on full display, but so easy to forget even now, just like his genuine danger), she retracts her mental scoff, because right now he does look… freaky, even if she still wouldn’t classify it as harmful or even really scary. She pulls on words from her journalism degree and higher education: perhaps ethereal would be more suited to his current quality than dangerous.
…Regardless, the gunman doesn’t exactly agree. He’s in the “fully disturbed by this turn of events” camp, judging by the way his gun shakes against her throat. Meryl kind of doubts he would shoot her based on the look in his eyes and his general unsureness of the situation, but stays still anyways, because it would be a rather stupid way to die.
Wolfwood, meanwhile, has the energy of a baying dog snapping against its leash. He stays calm, but forcibly so, finger clearly itching on the trigger of his massive gun— there is nothing he wants more than to shoot the guy, but he holds back. Meryl is again unsure as to the exact motivation— he could be listening to Vash’s pacifism for once, could care for Meryl, or have some secret third agenda, because who knows with that guy— but it’s (again) a good thing he does, with the gun held at her throat and all.
“Are we just gonna stand here all day?” Roberto gruffs, as appalling but to the point as ever. Meryl would snap at him, were it not for the pressing reminder of biting steel. He grunts, “I can’t believe we did end up risking our lives,” towards Meryl, clearly a reference to his earlier debate against boarding the sandsteamer at all. Meryl wishes she could psychically project that clearly, her life was the main life at risk here, not his, so the promise of him being safe was still technically upheld.
The gunman frowns, and Meryl feels a grunt stir in his chest from where he has her pinned. Great, he didn’t plan that far, she realizes, and the situation finally settles in, a chill running down her spine as the man considers his next steps.
“I’ll take you in,” he settles on. Meryl wants to scoff again; of course this man wants to take Vash in. Everyone wants to take Vash in, and he’s certainly not the first nor the most threatening to try to get that double dollar bounty. Slowly, the guy reaches up and adjusts something below his face-scarf. “I saw what you did with the plant,” he announces, which is a twist on the usual bounty hunting behavior. With his free hand, he clicks something on his shoulder, and a small radio crackles to life. “Gas the plant room,” he commands easily.
Silence deadens the room as shock sets in. A short, clipped, “affirmative,” comes through the radio, and something hisses— the vents.
Everyone panics, naturally. Even Roberto, normally even keeled and lackadaisical with the effects of constant alcoholism, stiffens and sobers a bit, finally taking the situation seriously. Wolfwood grits his teeth and swings the Punisher as though facing an invisible enemy, and Vash does his level best to straighten up and look slightly less like he’s about to pass out any second.
Meryl can’t do much, especially as the gunman readjusts his grip on her and orders “hold still,” to everyone with a commanding bark. All comply, again, caught in this terrible holding pattern. “I’m going to take you to someone who knows what to do with you,” he directs to Vash, “and you’re my insurance,” he informs Meryl, who winces.
Breaths are short, now, becoming deep and relaxed with whatever is filling the room, undoubtedly a defense system for the Plant.
The gunman continues narrating. “I saw what you did on the lost technology feeds,” he mumbles. “I’m sure someone could find some use for you.”
“Ah,” Vash slurs sleepily, the drugged air and general exhaustion from whatever he did seeming to finally begin dragging him down, “security cameras,” he trails, and his gaze searches then settles on a smooth black orb positioned on part of the room that was clearly part of the original space faring vessel this sandsteamer once was. “Agh,” he hums, though it comes out more of a soft sigh than a legitimately aggrieved noise.
Meryl also finds herself going loose and boneless in the guy’s arms; he nearly falls when she slumps, unable to support her own weight, but he readjusts. From ahead, she watches Roberto sit down and sigh, accepting sleep easily, while Wolfwood drops the Punisher with a loud clang.
When the gunman’s balance is upset, Vash makes a slight lunge, but simply ends up upsetting his own balance and stumbling on the catwalk. He twitches, but stays down with another sigh.
“Sleep well,” he says, peering down at her with his masked face, unfazed.
Meryl’s vision goes dark, too.
xXx
When she wakes, she observes the sandsteamer guard seems to have made good on his promises: she is in a metallic room, presumably as some sort of “insurance” regarding Vash. The room is strangely techy, and looks more like someone hurriedly converted their garage into a prison cell than it does an actual prison cell— complete with a large folding door made of sheets of metal.
Meryl immediately goes to lift it, to no avail— even after wedging her hands and grunting and groaning. She does hear snatches of conversation through the metal: the gunman that subdued their group of four in the first place, with his harsh, sharp voice, and a second unknown voice, this one softer and asking questions of the gunman.
“I’m glad you brought it here,” the second voice says, “it’s much more valuable to science.”
“I saw the way he was able to give the Plant more energy,” the gunman gruffs in agreement, “and I knew that was worth way more than his bounty.”
“And you were correct,” the sciencey-voice reaffirms, drifting a bit around the other side of the garage. “An independent plant,” he snorts softly at the subject as though it is a marvel. Meryl blinks, filing it away— that’s what Vash is? What does that even mean? “Using its energy dispersal and connections, perhaps we could find ways of improving our usage of plants, and their conditions.”
Meryl really doesn’t like the way Vash keeps getting called it by the science guy, but isn’t exactly in a position to do anything about it. She skims the perimeter of the garage for weak spots, tools, anything to bust out of the place.
From the other side of the barricade, a switch is flipped, and electricity begins humming. It sets her hair up on end unexpectedly, and she’s not the only one. The gunman, vaguely surprised, inquires, “what are you doing, then?”
“Basic diagnostic tests that we normally run on plants,” the science-y guy sums in short. “Testing its connection, that sort of thing.” He explains it quickly— not impatient in the irritable sense, but clearly desiring to get on with whatever “testing connection” entails.
Ah, plant engineer, Meryl realizes. It makes sense that would be the kind of person an average sandsteamer worker would call to deal with strange plant phenomena— perhaps he even was a contact of the steamer itself. It’s not exactly helpful information to the immediate getting out issue, but hey, it’s something.
Her brain whirrs into gear for a moment as a thought occurs— Vash really is a plant, then? At least to some degree? She twirls the idea in her head, letting herself consider the implications fully now that there are somewhat less pressing matters than the literal pressing matter of the gun that was at her neck. Him being some kind of altered human experiment would explain his quirks that she had come across; his extremely competent capabilities, his apparently long lived youth. It was still so strange, though— she had previously chalked his collection of oddities up to a few different theories (from continued surgeries to cloning to a very similar father), and none were anywhere close to the idea that he was a plant, because who ever heard of a plant-human hybrid…?
Right on cue, as though he had heard her thinking of him, Vash makes a sound from behind the thin metal of this garage door— a sound of pain, and discomfort. Meryl pauses in her fruitless, useless search of the barren concrete cell to press her palms against the garage door.
The gunman makes a disgusted sound from the other side of the door. “Do those things have to be all the way in his skin?”
“It’s procedure to put the electrodes into the skin of the plant,” the engineer flippantly responds.
Meryl shudders, picturing Vash tied to a terrible lab table.
After a moment of consideration, the science-y one asks, “do you still have to be present? Not to be rude, but…”
“He’s a dangerous outlaw that brings disaster everywhere he goes, and a plant that can be out of his tank— he’s dangerous, and I’m not leaving you or anyone else alone, unarmed,” the gumman blusters. Then, undercutting his statement, he questions with strong curiosity and blatant confusion, “what are you doing now?”
“These nodes connect from the plant to this core, to get readings,” the engineer explains, now fully irritated. “It puts the plant in a sort of open state, so I can easily pick at its problems— or, in this case, how it ticks.” He murmurs, mostly to himself, trailing off at the end, “I wonder what it even produces…”
Meryl shudders at this conversation, and tries to rid her brain of the imagery it produces.
A moment later, there is a click as a switch is flipped, and Vash goes from heavy breathing to screaming. Meryl gives up on a finessed search and instead begins to bang desperately against the door. “Vash,” she yelps, as though that could call him to her, where it is safer, and “stop, stop,” as though her pleading would get them to listen. Her imagination goes to an even more crude lab table, adding scalpels and dancing electricity to the mix to create a horrific scene.
“Looks like the other one’s awake,” the gunman observes, and his voice shakes, clearly unnerved by the screeching that gives the impression that Vash is being tortured.
Then, there’s a loud banging. At first, Meryl imagines it to be from Vash, somehow— even though she imagines he is contained, and the noise is too loud to be anything he could reasonably produce, even if he thrashed with full force. It takes a familiar rattle to realize it’s a machine gun emptying into the lab. Through the din, Vash’s screams cut out, and Meryl fears the worst.
“Cover,” the gunman barks, and Meryl takes his advice even if it wasn’t directed towards her, diving to the cement side border of the garage as several bullets poke holes in the giant metal door. She hears pained cries, ans now three sets of labored breathing— the engineer and the gunman, alongside Vash.
“Don’t worry, I’m not killing, blondie,” a familiar voice sounds after the spray dies out. There’s a tonk tonk sound of a fist knocking against something, maybe thick glass, and Wolfwood growls, “damn, this thing is sturdy.”
“Wolfwood,” Meryl yelps from the garage, rushing back, shaking it with her hands as though that will urge him faster.
“Oh, noobie,” Roberto grunts in surprise and a small amount of relief (which Meryl tucks close to her chest) from the other side. A moment later, the garage door creaks open, making a grating sound.
Meryl is greeted by a scene different than her imagination. There’s not a terrible, macabre nightmare mad scientist set up: Vash lolls in what looks like a smaller (but still large, given their usual size) plant tank, bubbles drifting from his mouth as he floats in the strange liquid. The markings from before light up his skin, glowing especially brightly and even looking strangely feather-lined at the wired nodes that erupt from just beneath his skin— looking at those, the way they push his skin from underneath, Meryl feels the urge to vomit. All the wires connect at the base of the tank to a main bundle that connects to a second, small tank with a floating, fleshy seed (the core, apparently, though Meryl and her present pleasant company understand very little about plant mechanics). From there, the seed has a few cables that spring out and wind themselves to hook to a fleet of now shot up chunky computer terminals, a few of which still spit out readings (again, meaningless to those in cahoots with Meryl), and the rest of which flicker and crackle with the Punisher’s damage. Behind the terminal, the gunman and a sort of willowy looking scientist hide, bleeding but not fatally shot— Wolfwood went for the legs, apparently.
Roberto stands at the edge, poised by the mounted controls of the door, and Wolfwood studies the plant tank, the Punisher leaned against it.
Meryl summarily ignores them and rushes to the tank, pressing her palms against the second barrier of the endeavor, meeting smooth glass. Distressed, she keens, “why haven’t you let him out yet?”
In explanation, Wolfwood takes up the Punisher and shoots point-blank at the glass— there is an explosive thunk sound, but the bullet pings right off, shooting across the lab and embedding itself into a wall. Meryl stares at it, wide eyed, and Wolfwood lets the massive cross fall to being idly held.
From inside, Vash only stirs slightly. His eyes open a little, revealing an electric blue covered with intricate patterns, then slide shut again with a soft huff that bubbles into the liquid.
“At least he’s not screaming anymore,” Roberto points out. He jabs a thumb over his back to the damaged monitors, and says, “maybe you could just shoot those again. Turned the electricity off the first time.”
Wolfwood wordlessly shoulders the Punisher once more, and fires another spray of bullets into the monitors. The engineer and the gunman yelp, quivering from their cover.
“How do I let him out?” Wolfwood yells at them, seeming to remember they exist from the fear. He levels the cross in the direction of the monitors. “You pull any shit, and you know what’ll happen.”
“If I come out, you won’t shoot,” the engineer says with a shaking voice, trying to confirm.
Wolfwood gives an aggrieved sigh. “Kinda made a promise to someone to not kill,” he explains irritably. The man points the gun, and it clacks threateningly, and he further elaborates in a growl, “but that doesn’t mean too much to me, and it means jack if that guy dies.”
“Right,” the engineer says slowly, coming out with his hands up. He pauses to look back at the cowering gunman, and commands in a shaky deadpan, “don’t do anything too heroic,” clearly knowing perfectly well that the gunman is content to quiver behind the monitors and stay alive. Slowly, he makes his way past the damaged monitors, then to the core seed that Vash is connected to. He depresses the top with a twist and a soft push, then runs his finger along now glowing lights that shine from beneath the metal.
Vash’s tank begins draining slowly, leaving his near lifeless body to swirl down and then lay on the floor, curled up and panting.
Wolfwood nods approvingly, having watched the whole process with a hawk eye. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He brushes one hand over the Punisher, and commands in a deadly calm tone, “now lower the glass, and get back to your hidey hole.”
One final press with a shaking hand lowers the tank's glass, causing it to begin sliding it into the metal ground, and the engineer complies, slinking off.
Vash wheezes, again opening his eyes, this time for longer and looking a bit more with it and coherent. “I’m dyin,” he groans plaintively, weakly pressing his knuckles to the sliding glass.
“No you’re not,” Wolfwood snaps, though he clearly has no idea what he’s talking about if the panicked look on his face is anything to go by. He places the Punisher on the ground again. “Just some shitty tests,” he says, looking with ire towards the men behind the terminal, “like a bad doc visit.”
Vash just responds with a long, drawn out moan, ever the one for dramatics.
Still, he rushes to Vash’s side when the glass fully lowers, and Meryl does the same, kneeling in the remaining slightly viscous liquid. Vash tilts his gaze gently up at them, still clearly out of it, and still glowing like a lightbulb is underneath his skin.
She places her hand on the left shoulder, above where the prosthetic is connected, and Wolfwood grips his right, making to sit him up. They both jump back— touching him is like touching a buzzing piece of machinery, with both a vibrating sensation and a faint sort of shock of energy.
“Sorry, still… open and connected,” he slurs, as though that explains much of anything.
“The electrodes,” Meryl says, finding a wire and tracing it to right above where it is burrowed beneath the skin. Her fingers grace wet, small, downy feathers at the very edge of the insertion point, and she pauses. “We have to get them out,” she says, steeling herself. She finds another, and wraps her fingers around both of them, and shudders.
Energy runs through the wire as well, making her feel dizzy; suddenly, she gets a strange bundle of impressions that assault her mind. It’s like the time her roommate tried to teach her to go cross eyed, but it’s not just her eyes or a headache building between her eyebrows, it’s every sensation. She feels weak, and like she’s breathing heavily, like there’s something itching beneath her skin at several points, and like her back is pressed to the cool, wet metal that in actuality is just below her knees. It’s enough to shock her momentarily.
In her moment of pause, Wolfwood grabs a node for himself. Meryl watches— as best she can, with the strange cross-eyed phenomenon— as his face twists up in confusion as he presumably experiences the same sensation. Still, he yanks without question, as does Meryl. The nodes come loose easily.
Five seconds pass. Her and Wolfwood make eye contact, clearly deliberately ignore whatever just happened, and go for the remaining nodes.
It happens again, stronger this time. And that’s when things get very weird.
The last of the nodes slip out of Vash’s skin, buzzing with that energy. His markings flare, his feathers prickle; Meryl can feel it through her hands, and something prickles on her skin, too.
“Something is wrong,” Vash says slowly, thickly, tongue flopping in his mouth awkwardly. She thinks Vash says it, at least; it could be her saying that, chz she feels his voice humming in her own chest, mouths the words along with him.
“Yes, it’s… this isn’t,” Woflwood’s voice stumbles, coming from… to the… left-right-inside her chest…? All three at once, somehow. “Right,” he finishes slowly, unable to think.
She blinks, hard, shaking herself. Closes her eyes, tries to focus on sensations— there’s the metal floor at her back-knees, no, just her knees, the sensation of her hands on Vash’s shoulders, the sensation of two pairs of hands on her shoulders (one pair slender, one large and square), no, wait, that last one isn’t right either!
There’s sounds of scuffling— Roberto, and the gunman, behind the terminal. She tries to snap her focus to it, staring through tesselating perspectives. Her arm reaches for the Punisher, but not in the right spot, and she didn’t want to do that— and then the gunman darts away, yelling.
Roberto curses, and turns his attention to the three of them on the ground. “Alright noobie,” Roberto’s voice rings, his hand on someone’s shoulder (maybe her’s?), “I don’t know what kind of weird trip you all are on,” he growls, and Meryl supposes they probably do look strange, having held still just breathing and struggling to speak for an indeterminate amount of time, “but we need to go. The idiot ran while you were distracted, and he’s gonna call backup,” he says, glaring back at the giant terminal.
As if on cue, an alarm begins to blare in the research facility.
She gets up. It’s hard, but they’re all getting up, so that makes it easier, and Roberto is hauling her up by her collar, making it even more easy (albeit more uncomfortable).
Running is surprisingly easy, she observes as the four of them sprint through the glowing red lights and blaring alarm. The alarm bleats to the leftrightback of her, but it doesn’t matter; there is animal instinct in running, and a clear path forwards. Use too long limbs to languidly fling herself through a closing door she was sure she crossed a moment ago, spray the next with fire from the Punisher that isn’t in her grasp to ensure it stays open.
It’s not a huge facility, and soon enough, the four of them hit the hot sand running. Bullets spray somewhere behind her from the windows, but it is no matter; Roberto is already launching himself into the driver’s seat, and she feels her own body flinging into the side door while the other two clamber in the back… or is she in the back? No, Meryl sees herself sitting in the passenger seat, buckling in.
“Drive,” someone, maybe her, choruses, and Roberto doesn’t need to be told twice— the car grinds against the sand for a moment, then jolts forwards. Meryl winces as she feels herself fly for a moment, and land, but doesn’t she have the seatbelt? That was Vash she saw bump along in the back, Wolfwood and her are buckled. This is all wrong, her brain screams, another part just leaks this strange out of place feeling that it takes her a moment to identify as guilt.
“I’m sorry,” Vash says, and she mouths the words as he does, forced to be the strangest mirror. He repeats it a few times, slurring, and Wolfwood’s voice joins into his mantra, but Meryl is pretty sure it’s all just Vash.
She closes her eyes and tries to focus solely on herself, but instead just plunges into a nightmare of mixed sensations with a gasp, like she is in quicksand of pressing, claustrophobic feelings and three sets of senses. Opening her eyes doesn’t help, either, and suddenly she’s breathing hard, and listening to her breathing, and she’s going to throw up—
“Are you okay, noobie?” Roberto’s voice echoes from all around her, a gentle hand on her shoulder that she feels from her own body and sees from outside of it.
Her brain feels like an overheated lightbulb, and she just manages a groan before it pops, and everything goes silent and thoughtless.