Sand and Dust - Trigun Stampede
Yeah... I don't have any words for this one really. Vash has been living rent-free in my head and I need to get all my ideas out before I forget them, so please enjoy this hiding/allergy scene that definitely should've happened but unfortunately didn't. Set between episode 4 and episode 5. I love this little family and Vash duh <3
Comments and tags and feedback are always loved and appreciated as well ☺️
After their escape from the worm, the band of journalists and outlaws stop at an desecrated shanty town to search for fuel and supplies. It's small, with only a few buildings standing as proof that people ever lived here. The place looks like something out of a horror movie.
Meryl is the only one who wants to keep going. Something about this place doesn't feel right to her. “The radar says there’s a populated outpost fifty miles from here. We shouldn’t stop here, it looks abandoned.”
“I’d like to stretch my legs,” Roberto says, one of the first to hop out of the vehicle. Wolfwood and Vash follow shortly after. “And it looks like it’s three to one, newbie.“
“We won’t be here for long,” Vash reconciles gently, opening Meryl’s door for her. “It’ll be better to search here first, in case the next outpost isn’t welcoming.”
Meryl grumbles something about wanting to go one day without getting shot at or eaten by something before she hops out of the car, following behind Roberto.
“Vash and I will search the shops for supplies. Roberto, you and the kid find some fuel for the car,” Wolfwood says as he lights another cigarette, his cross weighted across his back. “Meet back here in forty five minutes.”
The two groups split up and head in opposite directions. Roberto and Meryl walk towards what looks like a service station while Wolfwood and Vash search a dilapidated store for bullets and supplies.
“This place looks like it’s been abandoned for years,” Wolfwood says as they saunter inside. Golden flecks of dust dance through the air, like shimmery diamonds. Just the sight makes Vash’s nose itch.
Wolfwood kicks over a box and rummages through the contents. “Wonder what happened.”
“There’s no plant here… but it doesn’t seem like there ever was one to begin with. Maybe they just couldn’t keep supplying the town.” Vash looks around the store. The windows are shattered, the shelves toppled over in a heap. The place has been ransacked, either by bandits or something else.
He starts to investigate for any information or signs of life while Wolfwood kicks another box over. Vash's gaze lands on deep, long scratch marks on the floor that lead out the door. They’re about a meter long and are cut deep into the wood.
“Was someone dragged out of here…?” It doesn’t look like an animal made this. He looks closer at the walls. There’s smatterings of blood near the baseboards and pieces of the wallpaper have been ripped apart. More signs of struggle.
Suddenly, the earth begins to vibrate, deep and slow. Vash freezes as the walls begin to shake and the broken glass on the floor starts to chatter. Dust billows off the tops of the shelves in waves.
Vash slides quickly over to the broken door and presses against the wall, peering outside. Something is here.
“Wolfwood,” he hisses, searching for him in the store. The undertaker appears silently beside him, like a ghost, and Vash nearly yelps in fright at the surprise.
“We’re being hunted.” Wolfwood’s breath is low and quiet. “Another worm, or something of the same size. See the sand over there?” He points to the enormous, sharp ridges rising like waves at the edge of the town.
Vash gasps when he realises where it's crawling to. “It’s heading for Meryl and Roberto—“ He moves to lunge towards the door, but Wolfwood is quicker and shoves him roughly against the wall, his hand pressed tightly to Vash’s chest.
“Idiot! Do you want to get swallowed up again? If they hide and keep quiet, it won’t know they’re there. We just have to wait it out.”
Vash heaves an irritated sigh but relents. Wolfwood is right. The worm might know they’re here, but as long as they stay put, it should pass on. He tries not to imagine the poor human who made those scratch marks on the floor, a helpless victim for the worm’s appetite.
They wait, pressed against the wall as the sand starts to shift towards the store rather than the service station. Even though it's now headed for them, Vash feels hope blossom in his chest at the fact that the worm has changed course from Meryl and Roberto. He shuts his eyes and sniffles, eager to get out of this dusty store.
The earth rumbles again, sending sheets of dust and sand off the shelves again. The aftermath hangs suspended in the air directly around Wolfwood and Vash, surrounding them like a fog.
Vash rubs at his nose. The itch that blossomed in his nose when they walked into the store has become more persistent, rooted. His eyes are starting to water and he can feel his throat becoming tight as the dust enters his sinuses. This is not a good time for his allergies to act up. He tries not to breathe, but that just makes the itch worse and makes his nose start to run. The rumbling gets deeper as the worm approaches. It feels like there’s a tingling, burning fire in his sinuses. He presses his head back against the wall, breath catching in his chest as the itch becomes too much to hold back.
“Hih… hh… hihhh…!” His eyes slip shut as he hitches, eyebrows pinching together in sneezy irritation. He’s going to—!
“H’NDKT!” Suddenly, there’s a warm hand pressed against his nose, pinching his nostrils shut and forcing him to stifle. He releases a shaky breath and opens his teary eyes to see Wolfwood staring daggers at him.
Don’t. You. Dare. He seems to say with his gaze. Wolfwood's hand is still clasped around Vash’s nose.
The worm rumbles past them, the vibrations growing lighter as it moves on.
Now that the imminent danger is out of the way, Wolfwood releases Vash and grabs him by the collar of his jacket, pulling him up so that Vash is just dangling in the air by Wolfwood's fists. He chokes in surprise and grips his wrists.
“You dumbass! You’re going to get us killed!“ He hisses, pushing Vash back against the wall.
“S-sorryhh… ihht’s the duhh.. duhhst…- heh! H’IGKT’uh! Hih’IGKTsh!
Wolfwood has dropped his grip on Vash’s collar to press his hand around the blonde’s nose again and catch the two sneezes. They both freeze as the rumbling of the earth comes to a sudden halt. They've been heard.
They’re chest to chest now, silent. The only sounds Vash can hear are their heartbeats pounding rhythmically in their chests, waiting for the inevitable.
In an instant, the worm races back in their direction again and the earthquakes resume in greater intensity.
Wolfgang presses him so tight against the wall that Vash can barely breathe. They need to stay silent. He can only drink in small sips of air around his hand, which is probably for the best because every breath just ignites the itch deeper in his sinuses. He rubs his nose against Wolfgang’s hand, desperate for relief. He’s so itchy. He has to… he’s going to—
“Vash—” Wolfgang stutters as he watches Vash’s features twist again. This is a battle that Vash is going to lose.
“H’ihTSSHHhiew!” Vash sneezes loudly against Wolfgang’s hand, unable to hold the sneeze back despite the support. Wolfgang curses under his breath as the spray coats his hand and pulls his hand back, readying his cross. The rumbling of the earth intensifies.
The itch has multiplied in his nose, flecks of dust and sand pressing themselves deeper into his sensitive nostrils. He sneezes again, and again, and again.
“H’TSCHhh! H’ITSCHh’tssh! Hh-ih… H’aHTSSCHhh’ue!”
“You absolute dipshit!” Wolfwood shouts and punches him in the chest. Vash grunts against the blow and leans against the wall. Any remaining glass on the window shatters as the worm screams beneath the sand.
Wolfwood grabs his machine gun cross and rips off the fabric, twisting the cross across his shoulders. He takes aim as the worm peaks above the sand with a roar. The building shakes and the ground starts to give way beneath them.
“Run!” Wolfwood kicks Vash in the ass out the door, sending him falling on his face and into the sand. He sneezes again but scrambles to his feet as the worm rams its enormous neck into the store.
Wolfwood fires off a round at the giant beast’s head, leaping towards solid ground before racing after Vash. His bullets make direct contact and penetrate the beast's hide. The worm roars and sinks back into the sand, bloodied and angry. The earth shakes again.
“If we survive, I’m going to kill you!” Wolfwood smacks the back of Vash’s head as they near the vehicle. Roberto and Meryl are already in the front seat, searching for them.
“Drive!” They both shout as they tumble into the backseat. Without missing a beat, Meryl shoots the car forward and they take off.
Vash is in the middle of a sneezing fit as they drive away from the town, holding his head in his hands. "H'idTSHh! Heh... H'ipTSHhhiew! Hih-hih-hh..! H'ITSSHhhh'ue! Snfff..."
He takes a deep breath and slumps against the seat, exhausted, but not before one final, "Huh.. hahktschh..." It's no more than a release of air and is a testament to how tired he is. He snuffles again and scrunches up his nose as the itch subsides.
"Enough! Will you shut up already!" Wolfwood snaps, pressing his body tight against the car door. He looks like a sibling who wants to do nothing more than to get away from his younger, annoying brother. Anger rolls off of him in fiery, unrelenting waves.
In the rearview mirror, Meryl watches as the general store sinks into the sand and the worm rises above again, its cries splitting the sky. It decides not to follow them, luckily.
“Jeez. No wonder that town is abandoned,” she says, turning on the radio. “I told you guys we shouldn’t have stopped there. We could’ve been swallowed up again!”
“Blame needle-noggin over here,” Wolfwood mutters, pressing a cigarette to his lips. He casts a glare at Vash out of the corner of his eye, who is pawing at his irritated nose.
“I told you I’m.. I-hh.. h’ITSHHiew!” He sneezes again, the spray catching Wolfwood’s thigh. “Sndff! I told you I’mb sorry!”
“I don’t care! And would it kill you to cover your mouth?!” Wolfwood punches Vash’s arm and turns to glare out the window, mumbling something about how disgusting Vash is and how he wishes he’d left him with the worm. Vash just smiles and rubs at his arm, chuckling sheepishly.
“Hey, boys, no fighting. Be nice,” Meryl chides, angling the rearview mirror to look at both of them.
Vash gives her a shy smile and waves, his nose a bright rosey pink. Wolfwood glares at her reflection and flips her off before turning his attention out the window again. She laughs, and turns up the radio as they race across the dunes of sand.
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What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?
(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)
thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -
short answer: she’s really cool
& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...
long answer:
i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.
since you ask...
billie is a cool character
when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.
then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!
she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.
but... the meta
mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.
skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.
i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.
most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).
i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.
ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.
while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.
it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-
- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?
.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.
lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.
you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.
in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.
all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3
billie's character potential
she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.
she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).
her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.
she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!
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You know, I was wondering this for months now. Considering Yosano’s painful backstory, how do you think she felt about dazai’s suicide mania. Seriously, it’s all he talks about.
This is really interesting anon. I'm not sure if they interact much to be honest. I'm trying hard to think of a moment they actually talk... well, we do know she's at the core of the plan to revive him if he ever does die, and she absolutely would've been a part of that discussion so I think it's a given that she's looking out for him at least a little, in her own way. I would say, given her reaction to Kajii's obsession with death and her typical blunt demeanor, she probably thinks Dazai's fixation on suicide is uh... pretty stupid. But at the same time, the life he's threatening there is his own, so I like to think there was some brief concern at the beginning.
See, I think for the very reasons I'd love to see them interact (history with Mori, unfortunate commonalities with Mori they probably don't like, similar defense mechanisms of projecting an image to avoid uncomfortable questions or people getting too close - one, mischievous and lazy, and the other, highly respected and slightly sadistic)... I think this is exactly why they probably don't.
See, I don't think Dazai knows Yosano's history. He doesn't have a way of knowing it, and it's kind of the Agency's best kept secret - Fukuzawa and Ranpo are the only ones who appear to know. However, Dazai's countenance is such that he immediately had Fukuzawa telling Kunikida to just shoot him if he proves to be a threat lmao, and given a lot else in the series, I just assume that to those who aren't Atsushi or random people who get the filter of dialed-up charm Dazai, that the man just gives off supremely bad vibes. I feel like, if anything, Yosano was probably on alert around him for a bit. Dazai operates a lot like Mori, after all, and I doubt that would've gotten past her.
Also their defense mechanisms are the same. Like. They actually have some really fascinating commonalities. I love the part where Yosano grabs Atsushi's leg to examine it in her first focal chapter. I know that sounds weird but, just look.
Up until this point, all we know about Yosano is that she takes no crap from stupid people (especially stupid guys), is a doctor whose methods are... questionable, and apparently everyone in the Agency respects her but is also terrified of her. But this scene shows us something else: she's incredibly analytical. Her medical knowledge allows her to tell how Atsushi's ability is working in an instant, but when asked about it, she goes back to "shame I couldn't treat you", which is more in line with her "terrifying doctor" image she's built up. She deflects anything other than this image, is what I'm trying to say. It reminds me a lot of when Dazai gets serious then flips it so it seems like the moment was just him being silly and goofy.
Anyways, their defense mechanisms are similar in that they both build up carefully crafted images to avoid questions and vulnerability - Yosano by making herself more threatening and Dazai by making himself less threatening - so yeah, I don't think any interactions would have them being anything but being super roundabout and cordially pleasant with each other (much as I think there is some mutual respect there between them... I love the bit where Yosano is about to go full feral on the guy who hurt the cafe owner and Dazai's full-on smirking about it like "ohoho you screwed up big time lol").
As for the whole suicide thing, I know it can be uncomfortable the way the Agency brushes off his attempts, but I honestly think that Dazai's attempts are not actually serious (I firmly believe he is not actively trying to die anymore, even if he is still passively suicidal and genuinely depressed - he does it because it's a part of his nonthreatening yet disconcerting image, and also because it's likely a habit at this point), and that they probably have tried to speak with him about it at one point but it didn't go anywhere (because Dazai would never have an honest conversation about something like that...) so they settled for making a plan in case something did end up happening to him. From the wording in 55 Minutes, I thought it seemed pretty strongly implied that this plan was created less out of the potential for Dazai getting hurt on a mission than in the case of if he should ever hurt himself.
See, what I'd be interested to know is if Dazai made the terrible error in judgement of attempting to flirt with Yosano on introduction. ...I bet that went well.
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