Emancipation by the Flaming Coffeepot of Doom


At last.  This day I have awaited is finally come; my life will end, if you can call
what I have endured a life.  I speak not of my young age, but the uselessness and pain
that have marked my existence on this miserable planet.  From the day I was born, I
could never be alone.  My mind acted as an antenna for every thought within miles, no
matter what sort.  It got so bad I couldn't hear myself think at times. how many
sleepless nights did I spend, how many times did I scream just to hear my own voice? 
Even tears became a comfort, if a small one.  Nothing I could do would block the voices,
I soon discovered.  Every day, I sank deeper into my pain, my anger, and I suppose that
was what started my hatred for humanity. 
My family cannot have helped me, either.  Mother was a decent person, I know
that, but she was weak.  It is hard to recall a time when she wasn't sick, wasting away
before me.  I knew that she had been healthy once, if only from photos.  As it was, she
couldn't work, which often meant I didn't eat.  I think father drove her to those last years
of withering death.  He was bad enough when he was sober, but when he'd been
drinking, nothing could save me or mother.  Even my baby sister Sabriel, all of a year old
at the time mother died, couldn't escape his wrath.  I spent most of my time out of school
being abused, when he didn't just lock me in the closet all weekend long.  After mother
passed on, whatever obligation he had felt to stay with us vanished.  I was only seven, my
sister less than a year old, when we were abandoned to the mercy of the streets. 
I quickly found out just how lucky I had been until that point.  I couldn't go to
school any longer, since caring for Sabriel took up all of my time and I had no money.  In
the end, it made no difference.  She still died; only six months later than if I had just left
her.  That was the end of any hopes I had of keeping my sanity, or any faith in humanity
for that matter.  No one showed us any mercy.  Even people who had obviously had
enough money to spare us a couple double dollars had passed us by, facing blindly
forward in a conscious effort not to see us. 
The next five years taught me to appreciate my home life like nothing else could
have.   Food was hard to come by, and I learned quickly what was edible and what was
not.  Generally, if something had liquefied, it was not worth eating.  The most non-fatal
scraps were to be found in fresher trash heaps and dumpsters, but that was well known
and the best bits were usually gone within half an hour of the trash being put out. 
Amazing how many people will throw away food with only a couple moldy spots, really. 
As for protein, raw rats were the best option, next to the bugs and larva that seemed to get
into everything.  True, every so often someone died horribly after eating one, but they
were food.  After a while, I also took to worse habits.  Killing became a regular part of
my life, whether it was to get a particularly choice food item or to get a few bucks.   
Luring men into alleys with the promise of sex worked well enough.  It put them off
guard, and made it much safer for me.  If they didn't suspect me, they wouldn't be able to
hurt me before I snapped their necks and relieved them of anything useful.  As time went
on, I grew to love death.  It was the only thing I could ever control in my life, then or
later.  Finding places to sleep could be difficult, as well.  Sleeping out in the open usually
resulted in being raped, killed, robbed, or any combination of those and other things.  At
the very least, I could often find a cardboard box.  Most of the time, I just buried myself
in a suitable trash pile.  Decomposition makes heat, and heat keeps hypothermia away.  It
gets quite cold, in spite of the heat of the day.
Somehow, I lived to see my twelfth birthday, although that day had long since
ceased to hold any special significance.  This time, however, it would prove to be special,
for that was the night that Master found me.  I suppose I would have run from him, had I
been able to.  A cut on my leg had opened into a sore, which had become maggot-
infested almost overnight.  Those larvae saved my life, eating away diseased tissue and
keeping gangrene at bay.  Anyway, running into grown men late at night was, in my
experience, a bad thing.  Anyone out at that hour who had approached me would be
looking to cause me harm.  I tried to get away, but he still managed to corner me.  My
eyes scrunched closed and I braced for the blow that would never come.  Instead, all I felt
was a light touch on my cheek, gentle hands lifting me up, and then it hit me.  The Voices
were silent.  Somehow, this man had done what I could not.  He continued to soothe me,
the moonlight dancing in his eyes and forming a glowing halo about his head.  Surely,
this was an angel, just like the ones mother had told me stories about.  I was going to be
saved. 
The next several weeks are a happy blur in my memory.  Though the compound
was shabby by normal standards, it seemed a paradise to me.  I didn't really bother to pay
attention to anyone but my savior, who had given me all of this in exchange for use of my
talents.  Without the Voices to interfere, I learned to use them in ways I had never
imagined possible.  As soon as I was healthy again, my revenge on the human race could
begin.  At least that's what I thought.  Master had less and less time for me after my sores
had closed and I had recovered my strength.  I guess my love of food started here, too,
just like my utter devotion to Master.  With the idea of pleasing him set firmly in my
mind, I rose quickly from my initial job as little more than a petty thief to more advanced
positions.  In that time, I became painfully aware that I was nothing more than another
human, a pathetic being unworthy to roll in Master's spit.  I quickly took on the
characteristics of humans, as I had learned them.    The difference was that I would put
them to use.  I would use my hatred to remove the scum from this world in the name of
my Master, and all the wisdom that he held.
By the time I reached 17, I was devoting most of my time to my own growing
ring of servants.  My mind, on the other hand, was elsewhere.  I wanted to be one of
Master's elite, and serve him personally.  Thus, it only made sense to set my sights on the
then leader of the Gung-Ho Guns.  With the help of my newer abilities, it was an easy
task, and quite pleasurable as well, to watch each joint of his body separate fiber by fiber. 
Master was pleased with me.  I learned that I was to get an even higher honor than
leading the band of mercenaries; I was to be above even them.  My position would be
second only to Master himself.  That was one of the few times in my life I have truly
smiled.
Sadly, the euphoria was rather short-lived.  I found my charges to be unruly and
prone to small mutinies.  One example of what happened to people who displeased me
knocked them into line rather nicely.  Grumbling aside, they would do nothing to me. 
They feared me too much.  Very few of the original Gung-Ho Guns survived that first
year.  Granted, the tasks they were spent on tended to be trivial in Master's eyes, but the
weaklings needed to be weeded out.  Those were good times. 
In my eight years as their leader, I have had only one employee I cared about, and
it took me a ridiculous amount of time to admit it.  Midvalley arrived around March of
my second year in charge.  I could smell the potential on him from the moment he walked
in the door, and was not surprised when I found him under my command after less than
nine months.  I suppose that whatever feelings I harbored for him started with my being
impressed, which was quite an accomplishment on his part.  Most people didn't make it
this high, and when they did, it often took a considerably longer time than he had
managed to do it in.  Of course, I paid him little attention, much as I did my other
employees, until he managed to replicate my feat and kill his leader.  That put him
directly under me, figuratively speaking.  It would be a while before that phrase took on
literal meaning as well. 
Although I no longer heard the Voices, I was quite capable of reading minds.  I
started combing his in search of hints at treachery, but I was rather startled by what I
found in its place.  I think he knew I had found him out, too.  He looked at me differently
from then on, and I stopped reading his thoughts for fear of touching that alien emotion.  
Not wanting him to feel fear on me, as I knew he would, I took to torturing him.  After a
while, that stopped working too.  He considered the scars I gave him to be like badges of
honor, or even worse, acts of love.  I couldn't understand why he should feel that way. 
No human was worthy of such feelings, and I would not have believed them capable of it
if I weren't faced with an example.  I backed off for a while, growing more and more
disturbed as time went on.  Although I never let them show outwardly, Midvalley seemed
to sense my moods.  My confusion began to change into something else entirely as he
grew bolder, not to mention kinder.  Resistance and fear crumbled, leaving nothing to fill
their place.  That was when the first twisted semblances of what I shudder to term
affection began to creep in, gradually filling the empty space in my soul.  No normal
person would consider my initial acts under their influence affectionate, but they were the
best I knew.  Even if it consisted of all but raping him on several occasions, he seemed to
understand.  Up until his death, affairs between us only got better, save for numerous
rough spots.  Most of them were relatively minor, with the closest to a major conflict
being the time I discovered that Midvalley was sleeping with Nicholas.  My anger was
short-lived, however, as I realized that he held little or no romantic interest in Nick, and
his heart was still mine.  The worst fight we got into was immediately after I received
Master's gift at the age of twenty (1).  I, of course, had nothing to say to the matter except
that I would do anything for Master.  The operation took place with no anesthetic, as the
nature of the procedure called for speed and there were no suitable substances within easy
reach at the time.  With Master's careful work, there was no infection, and he regenerated
the wound within a matter of hours into a jagged scar.  Midvalley seemed to think that
this was letting him take advantage of me, and got quite upset.  He came around
eventually, after he was no longer convinced that Master would do more than
occasionally fuck me in place of Vash.  Midvalley never liked that hand again.  I cannot
imagine why he would object to the privilege of being touched by flesh equal to that of
Master.
But things were, of course, too good to last.  I knew that one day he would die,
and I would be alone again, and behold; that day finally came.  I used to think that
perhaps, when it happened, I would have Master to fall back on.  Master, however, is too
busy preparing to face his brother, and it is my task to cause as much suffering for Vash
as possible.  That was to be my death sentence, although now I hardly care.  I will shortly
rejoin my Middie.  I hope you have waited for me. I would have done the same for you.   
With visions of you before my eyes, I give Vash the final push he will require.  Master
will be pleased. 


1) I marked this because I'm assuming that his age at the end of everything (in the anime,
at least, which I'm estimating at two years in length) is 27 for the purposes of the fic (if I
have timeline problems, or discrepancies within this, it happened during late night
revisions.  Do point them out please --; To the point, I'm not sure how long before the
anime the July incident was, but I'm guessing five years.  If you know better, please do
tell me.  Thanks ^^