She, Rusyuna, and her current captor all fought using the same style. The incredible techniques created by none other than the Ultimate Enlightened himself, the invincible gunfighting of Vash the Stampede.
She could not help but fondly remember the day she met the Humanoid Typhoon. She was a young girl, and her father had decided it was time she learned the art of war. Her people were a warrior people, ideological decedents of the great Samurai tradition of Japan. According to some rumors, she herself was the descendent of a favored grandson of the Japanese Emperor who had been attending school in the United States at the time of the Nuclear War. It was only natural that she learned the warrior's art, and her father would allow no one but the greatest warrior, the ultimate enlightened to teach her.
She remembered the tournament like it was yesterday. Vying for the favored position of teacher was a veritable army of warrior. The competition lasted for days, but remained open to the end. After all, if a late comer was able to outshine those proven the strongest through elimination, he deserved the title.
It happened just like that too. She remembered when in the last day of the championship, a dust covered vagabond with a red coat quietly entered the fray. Everyone was amused. While the other warriors presented themselves loudly and boisterously, proudly proclaiming their schools, this strange wasteland strider who only listed himself as a Mister "John Doe" entered with a silly smile and a relaxed demeanor.
Everyone though he would be a speed bump for the likes of the remaining few champions, even with a gun. They were wrong. His fights where humorously short, and at times, they were just humorous. He made fools out of his enemies by making a fool out of himself, never seriously doing battle with them. Once the battle was ended her father, seeing through the rather weak name he had chosen demanded that he tell them his true name before being given the title of the Ultimate Enlightened.
The entire city went silent when he introduced himself as the greatest gunman in the wasteland, the most dangerous outlaw who had ever lived, the walking act of god, the man so dangerous that a bounty of sixty billion bottlecaps lay on his head. The Humanoid Typhoon, Vash the Stampede.
Needless to say, her father was impressed and lessons began the next day. She had been frightened. She had expected a monster, the demon that wastelander mother told their children about to make them go to bed on time. What she discovered was the greatest man she had ever known, a man who in many ways was more than a father to her.
He taught her to fight, how to defeat scores of the most dangerous foes with seeming ease, but that was not the most important thing he taught her. He taught her to preserve life, to value it, to see every human life as precious. She taught her to look to the future and see not the chaos of the present, but a new world founded not in guns, but in the power of the human heart, his world where people could live as people.
She realized from his teachings that violence was not the best solution. To defeat an army even without killing does not remove the enemy's will to fight. One must defeat the enemy not with guns, but with words. You cannot truly defeat your enemy with force of arms; rather you must strip them of their armor and embrace them closely. Only through understanding and compassion can you remove the will to fight and thus obtain final victory. This simple realization was the core of her Ultimate Battle Strategy.
She sighed and leaned back thinking of the heroics Vash engaged in the process of her teachings. He saved villages, forced raiders to flee, and despite the occasional disaster, he won the hearts of the people.
Now, she wondered, what would Rusyuna want with her. She remembered the girl fondly. When she had arrived, she had been angry as if she had something to prove to the world. Tenshi created her shadows to act as her body guards, her twins, and her interments of justice, wandering the lands of her forefathers brining peace and enforcing righteousness in the way that she, as queen, was unable to.
While it had taken time, Rusyuna latched onto the ideals and even the difficult techniques of Vash's style with ease and surprising dedication. She had once asked the girl why she wished to become a shadow. The answer had always confused her. To become closer to my father, she had said. She had always wondered what that meant. Thinking back, Tenshi realized that she had also showed an almost unhealthy obsession about Vash even then. Even more strangely, now that she thought about it, she seemed to know him as well.
"How…" she muttered to herself."How did she…"
Tenshi paused as she felt a nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach, and began to come to a surprising conclusion. She remembered Vash once telling her he had a little girl her age that he had been forced to leave because of who he was.
Rusyuna had been abandoned by her father at a young age.
Tenshi had been taught by Vash the Stampede.
Rusyuna originally wanted to become a Shadow to become closer to her father.
Vash the Stampede was Rusyuna Tendo's father.
For god's sake, now that she thought of it, they even looked a like.
She stood up with a new conviction. She knew Rusyuna; she knew that she would triumph. She knew Vash; she knew that when he had a cause to stand behind, he was like a force of nature. She knew that what ever issues they had better them would be worked out. Neither Vash nor Rusyuna were petty vindictive people. They would work things out and together they would come and they would put an end to this travesty.
Together there was no force on earth powerful enough to stand against them.
She knew this.
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(Posted Mon, 16 May 2005 04:05)
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