Vash the Stampede (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
plantpacifist) wrote2012-05-12 03:18 pm
plantpacifist) wrote2012-05-12 03:18 pm
Entry tags:
Application to Cape and Cowl
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Mishi
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: I think it's Mishi_Writes, but I'm not entirely certain
IM: ohsarjalim or mishisings
PLURK: mishisings
E-MAIL: ohsarjalim@aim.com
RETURNING: I was a member of the game a long time ago. I used to play Duck and Vash. I don't know if that counts as returning or not, since I do not have any characters in the game at this time.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Vash the Stampede, also known as the Humanoid Typhoon
SERIES: Trigun and Trigun Maximum, the manga.
CHRONOLOGY: A year after the end of Trigun Maximum.
CLASS: Hero
BACKGROUND: First of all, let me appologize for the wall of text. See, Vash is the main character, so played a part in pretty much EVERY major canon event.
Trigun mostly takes place on a small, miserable, desert sci-fi western planet, about 500 years into our future. The settlers are not here by choice: they are the descendants of the passengers of a fleet of colony ships (called SEED ships) which crash-landed on the planet they call No Man's Land, in an event referred to as the Big Fall. The living is hard; the arid wastes of No Man's Land are thoroughly inhospitable to most life. The only native life-forms are sand-worms, and a collective of hive-minded insects able to take over the human body. To survive, humans must depend on plants.
Plants are strange creatures, halfway between angels and insects. They do not seem to be able to survive outside the massive, light bulb-like facilities through which they provide humans with energy, food, and water. Certain specialized plants, known as geo-plants, can somehow make the ground around them fertile. No one on No Man's Land really knows how they work anymore. The technicians who work in the facilities can only tend to their needs, and are helpless when a plant goes haywire. Most things related to plants and the SEED ships they arrived in are now Lost Technology.
What most people know about Vash the Stampede is that he was wanted for 60 billion double dollars for the destruction of the city of July and the murder of Count Revnant Vasquez. They think he is an armed maniac in a red coat who leaves destruction in his wake. A few years ago, his wanted ads were taken down and he was declared to be a localized disaster. Legally, he now counted as an act of God, like a hurricane or a typhoon. This is actually when the story starts. A few months later, however, there was a gigantic energy discharge in the town of Jeneora rock, and a large crater appeared in one of the planet's five moons. Vash, whom people said was responsible for these things, was not heard from for another two years. By the time Vash next entered into the public consciousness, he was embroiled in the mess surrounding Knives' attacks on humanity, a crisis involving plants, and the arrival of a fleet of Earth ships. Though the people of No Man's Land know he was heavily involved in these things, they don't know exactly what happened, and while they have reason to assume he might have been beneficial, they also believe he is traveling with his brother, Knives, whom they know for sure is a dangerous terrorist. In the aftermath of this crisis, communication with Earth has been reestablished and the Terrans are helping to rebuild No Man's Land's cities. However there seems to be nationalist tensions occurring between the old settlers and newly arrived Terrans. Since Vash and Knives disappeared directly after the crisis was resolved, the Terrans are looking for Vash, ostensibly to 'help' them with their inquiries. But since they've reinstated the price on his head, and put one on Knives' as well, one wonders what their intentions really are. That is what the general public knows.
Here is what they don't know: Vash and Knives are independent plants, and they differ from regular plants in three respects: they are male, they look completely human, and they do not need to be contained in light bulbs. They were born from some sort of plant anomaly and found in a plant bulb on the flagship of the Project SEEDS fleet. Most of the functions of the ship were automated, but it had a crew of about seven people who could be awoken in case of emergencies, and a skeleton crew of one: Rem Saverem. It was Rem who found the twins and raised them as her own children. They grew rapidly, and by their first birthday they had the appearance of 10-year-old boys. Rem did a good job of bringing them up; they were happy, compassionate, intelligent boys, and she was proud of them. She schooled them, too. They learned about the history of Earth and of the human race, its faults as well as its strengths, its wars and its foolishness, and they often wondered whether humans would greet them with open arms. They wanted to believe that this was possible, that plants could be friends with humans. It might be difficult, but they had faith.
They had faith, that is, until one day, when they spotted the apparition of some girl leading them into a disused part of the ship. She led them to a special detachable medical module, where the boys discovered something terrible: the report of Tessla. They learned that they were not the first of their kind. Before them, there had been a girl, Tessla, whose birth woke the entire crew from their cryogenic slumber. To them she was a 'great scientific discovery'. The report detailed their experiments on her up until a truly horrific death. They found her desiccated remains floating in test tubes. The trauma of this event has marked both brothers brothers profoundly, and in fact defined their relationship with each other and the world for the rest of their lives.
Knives fainted dead away. Vash locked himself and his brother in the room, and refused to come out for days. When he finally collapsed from hunger and thirst and Rem dragged them out, he refused to eat. He accused her of deceiving him, of waiting a year in order to continue the experiment on the brothers, where she and the crew had left off with Tessla. Rem denied it, said that she had opposed the experiments from the beginning, and should have stopped them by any means necessary. Then one day she made the mistake of bringing a knife into this room to peel a peach. Vash took the knife as soon as she set it down and tried to stab himself with it, but Rem managed to grab it by the blade. They struggled with it, and Vash managed to stab her, injuring severely enough that he thought he had killed her. For a few brief moments he was glad that she was 'dead', but then the horror of what he'd done set in and he cried out in remorse. He tended to her wounds, and got himself something to eat, and they had a heart to heart talk about the future, and second chances, and the drawbacks of suicide. When Knives awoke, he pretended he didn't remember anything about Tessla. Rem and Vash thought he ought to know, and he listened to the story with great seriousness, but he seemed the same as he ever was. Things went on as normal for some time...
And then Knives caused the Big Fall. He introduced an error into the fleet's trajectory, sending all the ships on a crash-course for the planet that would later become known as No Man's Land. His intention was to kill all the humans, but spare the plant ship. Just as Vash and Knives and Rem were about to evacuate, Rem stayed behind to try and correct the error. She and the mothership did not survive, but she managed to save a significant portion of the other SEED ships. Knives revealed his plot to Vash soon after their escape pod took off, mentioning that he had wanted to spare Rem for Knives' sake, but now he saw that she was just as flawed and worthless as the rest of the humans.
Since then, Knives has been obsessively seeking to eradicate the humans Rem sacrificed her life to save, as well as the influence Rem had upon Vash. For the next eighty years, they traveled together. Vash felt he could not leave Knives alone, for fear that he would do something terrible. He needed to keep watch over his brother, and save humanity from him. They constantly clashed over their differing philosophies, Knives maintaining humans were worthless and deserving of death, and Vash contending that they had no right to kill them. One of these disputes resulted in Knives slicing off Vash's left arm. They parted ways shortly thereafter, and that was the beginning of disaster.
While Knives sought to better understand the power of plants in general and his own in particular, eventually mastering his ability to create blades from his own body, Vash continued to live among humans, getting into many scrapes, and honing his gunmanship out of necessity. It was shortly after they split up that Vash was found unconscious in the desert by the inhabitants of a SEED ship that had been miraculously preserved, right down to their working gravity plant, which whipped up a permanent sandstorm to hide them from the public. They took him in and accepted him as their own. Vash considers that ship his home - he knows the names of every one of its inhabitants (except for the ones who were born in his absence.) That said, he did not settle down, and resumed his travels, only stopping by the ship for visits.
Nearly seventy years later, Vash managed to track down one of the original crew of the mothership, Crewman Bill Conrad, who had made a fortune from his expertise in plants, and now went by the name of Count Revnant Vasquez. (It's a plothole as to how he survived the ship burning up into the atmosphere... also as to how a human who must be over 150 years old is still hale and hearty.) Conrad had made his home in the city of July, and unbeknownst to Vash, he was working with Knives, under duress, to uncover the secrets of plants. They captured Vash and ran experiments on him, mostly to compare Vash's power with Knives' own. It was these experiments that resulted in the destruction of July, and associated Vash's name with disaster. Knives was severely injured in the explosion; it would take years for him to recover, and Vash's only memory of the incident was the rubble where the city once stood.
This brings us to the present. Vash's appearance has caused a huge commotion in the small border town of Valdour, whose plant has just broken down and whose citizens are desperate for the 60 billion double dollar bounty that will pay for their plant's repairs, so desperate, in fact, that their mayor called in the Nebraska family, fearsome outlaws in their own right, to help bring down the Humanoid Typhoon. Luckily for all involved, Vash defeats the pair, and meets the insurance girls, Meryl and Millie, who explain to the baffled townspeople that the price on Vash's head has been rescinded, and he has been declared the world's first human act of God. Vash is thrilled at hearing there isn't a price on his head anymore. He is less thrilled when Meryl says that although he's no longer a wanted outlaw, he's still a gigantic risk and thus she and Millie must keep him under 24-hour surveillance. Thus begins Trigun.
For at least 20 years before his incapacitation, Knives travelled the world "collecting knives", that is, human servants of great deadly ability and depravity. After his incapacitation, he sent his servant, Legato Bluesummers, to continue this work. These "knives" formed the Gung Ho Guns, a collection of villains whose primary purpose was to cause Vash serious suffering, and to teach him the worthlessness and viciousness of the human race. They begin their work a few months after the bounty on Vash's head has been called off. Legato comes to him in May City and explains this all quite up front, via telepathy. That very night, Vash is visited by the first of the Gung Ho Guns, Monev the Gale. Monev's attack on May city marks the first time in the series that Vash is severely tempted to kill. He refrains only because he believes Rem will truly die if he takes a life.
On the outskirts of May City, Vash sees Monev's corpse, crucified on Legato's order. He meets the second Gung Ho Gun, E. G. Mine, and defeats him effortlessly. Legato has been watching in the distance, and Vash angrily tells him he is not to kill those Vash has defeated, and for that sin, Legato is now the one being hunted. (Legato actually gives Vash the creeps. He's generally a good judge of character, but Knives' servant is such a dark soul that Vash cannot read him at all. I think on the whole Vash is more afraid of Legato than of Knives himself.) On the bus from May City to Jeneora rock, Vash spots a figure in the distance and gets the bus to stop. Thus he rescues Nicholas D. Wolfwood, a traveling preacher carrying a heavy cross, who is more than he seems. The two become fast friends, but part ways once they reach their destination. Vash discovers a bloodbath created by the Gung Ho Guns and ordered by Legato. Dominique the Cyclops, the third of the Gung Ho Guns, challenges him. She tells him that he should rejoice, because those slaughtered were not innocents, but slavers. Vash says again that who lives and who dies is not anyone's decision to make. He defeats her, and she commits suicide, knowing what Legato will do to her if she tries to walk away.
It is at Jeneora Rock that Knives is revived. The moment he emerges, Vash senses him and hurries to his brother's location. He challenges Knives, but Knives somehow activates Vash's angel arm, the power that had destroyed July, a second time. This time, Vash manages to point it up toward the sky, sparing the town from destruction, and knocking a huge crater in one of the moons. Vash disappeared after that incident, which was thenceforth referred to as Fifth Moon.
Wolfwood spends the next two years searching him. (Wolfwood is secretly a special operative of the Gung Ho Guns, charged with keeping Vash alive and leading him to the next Gung Ho Gun and the next fight. Like Vash, he is primarily concerned with the protection of innocents, specifically Vash himself and the orphanage where he grew up. Unlike Vash, however, Wolfwood believes in killing his enemies swiftly so they cannot rise again to plague him.) He finally finds Vash living under the assumed name "Ericks" with a young girl named Lina and her grandmother. Vash has been badly frightened by the power he wields, and has decided to live in hiding so that he will never again have to use it. Unfortunately, the town where he has been living is currently under assault by a gang of thugs led by a man calling himself Vash the Stampede. Lina is kidnapped by the outlaws, and so, with the help of Wolfwood, he defeats the impostor and rescues the girl. It comes out that the mild-mannered Ericks was the real Vash the whole time, and the people of the village become hostile toward him. So Vash and Wolfwood hit the road once again.
They make their way to Tonim Town, where the population has disappeared and Knives' name is written in blood in the town square. There they meet Rai-Dei the Blade, the next Gung Ho Gun. Wolfwood is ready to assist Vash in this fight, but both Rai-Dei and Vash himself tell him to stay out of it. Vash defeats his opponent, but at the last moment, Rai-Dei is about to lunge at him... And then Wolfwood shoots him repeatedly, killing him instantly. He insists he acted to protect Vash, and Vash contends that Rai-Dei wouldn't have killed him. Wolfwood maintains that the only way to protect something is to get your own hands dirty. He takes one of his guns and forces it into Vash's hands and points it up at his head and tells him to shoot: "If you really believe I'm wrong, pull the trigger. In return, my role as the devil will be handed over to you. That way, you won't hesitate to take out the next man that gets in your way." Wolfwood will trade his life if it means Vash learns ruthlessness.
Before his death, Rai-Dei told Vash that the Gung Ho Guns had discovered the location of his secret home, the hidden ship whose inhabitants had adopted him seventy years ago. The two companions hurry there, only to discover that Leonov the Puppetmaster and Grey the Ninelives have already killed a third of the population. They manage to defeat them, but are severely injured in the process. It is at this point that Meryl and Millie, who have been searching for them ever since Vash resurfaced, rejoin them. While the boys recover, the ship receives a message from Earth; for the past hundred years or so, they had been sending a distress signal to Earth, and it has finally been answered. The people left on Earth have developed warp drives, and they have sent ships in aid to the people of No Man's Land. Before they can send a response, Knives destroys the satellite relay. But it will not change the imminent arrival of the Earth ships.
Vash, Wolfwood, and the insurance girls travel together to their next location, but it isn't long before Meryl gets kidnapped by the Gung Ho Guns as bait for a trap they have set up. While Wolfwood faces Midvalley the Hornfreak, Vash deals with Hoppered the Gauntlet, who became a Gung Ho Gun for a chance at revenge against the man who destroyed July. Gauntlet's accusations throw Vash off his game, allowing the Gung Ho Gun to get the upper hand. Their battle takes them halfway across the building. But something stirs Vash's memory; he finally recalls his lost memories of July, the days he spent in the city, how Knives triggered his angel arm cannon and caused the destruction of one of the seven great cities. Gauntlet knocks him onto the cage that was holding Meryl with such force that it is broken open. Gauntlet's lucky shot, coupled with the trauma of recovering his memory triggers Vash's powers once more; he erupts into feathers and appears to be going haywire, when SUDDENLY OUT OF NOWHERE Legato rides in and uses his powers to manipulate Gauntlet into killing Midvalley. Before you know it, Wolfwood, Zazie the Beast, Gauntlet, Vash, and Legato are locked in a mexican standoff. What all Gung Ho Guns had forgotten was that Meryl was still underneath Vash. She aims a shot at Legato, breaking the stalemate. When the dust clears, Zazie is injured, Gauntlet is dying, and Legato is about to use his mental grip on Vash to activate his angel arm cannon. And again, SUDDENLY OUT OF NOWHERE Elendira the Crimson Nail, 13th of the Gung Ho Guns shows up and drives multiple nails into Legato and carries him away. No longer under Legato's spell, Vash manages to regain control of his powers. Zazie escapes in the confusion, Gauntlet breathes his last, and, though shaken, Vash picks himself up and continues on his journey.
While Vash and Wolfwood continue to travel to Knives' hideout, Knives learns about the hair-darkening effect. Spurred by the discovery that his power is limited, he merges with other plants and finally puts his terrible plan in motion. To begin with, he cuts off all satellite communication between the towns of No Man's Land, while Legato recruits the final two members of the Gung Ho Guns. When Vash and Wolfwood arrive, Wolfwood is introduced to Livio the Doublefang, whom he recognizes as a boy from the same orphanage as him. Vash is taken captive.
For the next seven months, Knives is free to implement his plan unmolested. His gigantic airship, the Ark, flies around, wiping towns out one by one, and as he passes, he absorbs each town's plants. The planet quickly descends into panic. By the end of it, most of its population has been wiped out, with the exception of Octovern and December, last of the seven cities. Legato is assigned to stand guard on Vash. He does so by keeping his master's brother suspended in mid-air, using his powers. Doing this for seven months is quite exhausting, so Wolfwood takes advantage of Legato's temporary weakness to storm the Ark and rescue Vash. He nearly dies in a confrontation with Livio, but with Vash's help they both manage to escape. While Wolfwood recovers, he tells Vash about the Eye of Micheal. The Eye of Micheal is an organization of assassins funded by a church of plant worshippers. Wolfwood was trained as one of their operatives, before he betrayed his instructor in an attempt to infiltrate the Gung Ho Guns and kill Knives. The plan did not work, and in retaliation, the man known as Master C turned Wolfwood's childhood friend into an obedient killing machine.
The Eye of Micheal holds Wolfwood's orphanage hostage, as part of a plot for Master C to avenge himself. While Vash ensures the safety of the orphanage, Wolfwood confronts his old friend and his old master. He kills Master C and manages to break through Livio's programming, but to do so he had to give his life. Livio decides to travel with Vash as penance for his part in Wolfwood's death.
Vash and Livio join up with Milly and Meryl on the SEED ship and make their way to December to stop the millitary from attacking the Ark. December is the home of the last intact ion cannon. This gun is powered by plants, and there is no guarantee that Vash's sisters will side with the humans. Using them to attack one of their own might be the final straw that pushes them to rebel against humanity, and in that case, humanity would be doomed. Before they arrive, The army ignores the warnings and fires their cannon, but the cannon won't fire, and the Ark wipes out the millitary presence in December. Survivors gather in Octovern for a last stand.
It is at this point that the Earth ships arrive. Vash and Livio head out to face Legato and Elendira while the insurance girls volunteer to go to orbit and meet the Earth ships. While Livio manages to kill Elendira, he is heavily injured in the process, and Legato, when defeated, has set a trap. If Vash does not kill Legato, Legato will kill Livio. Vash can't let Wolfwood's sacrifice be in vain, so he kills Legato, and suffers a heroic BSOD of epic proportions. Meryl manages to snap him out of it, but Knives is still poised to destroy Octovern.
Using a device on the Earth ship, Vash seperates Knives from the plants he had absorbed. Knives uses his remaining power to pull his body back together - the strain is such that his hair turns almost entirely black. Now on equal terms, Vash and Knives duel, when they are suddenly attacked by a member of the crew of the Earth ships. Vash throws himself in the path of the blast, severely injuring himself in the process. Knives uses his power to get Vash to safety. He entrusts his brother to the care of a man and his son, and grows a tree as payment with the very last of his strength. It will take Vash six months to fully recover.
During that time, the Terrans established communication with the people of No Man's Land and began assisting them in rebuilding their civilization, as well as introducing lost technologies, such as television. They have also reinstated the price on Vash's head. As Vash is getting ready to leave his benefactors' home, it is surrounded by Terran forces and a band of mercenaries, both after the 60 billion. Vash sneaks out of the house through an underground tunnel and shows himself to his pursuers, to divert attention from the inhabitants. As he leads them on a merry chase, he runs into Meryl and Milly, who have found employment with the newly formed No Man's Land Broadcasting Corporation, as announcers on a show documenting the life of the 60 billion double dollar man. Realizing with some dismay that once again, the girls will be putting him under 24 hour surveillance, and with cameras this time, he runs away, yelling "PLEASE LEAVE ME ALOOOOOOONE!!!!!!"
PERSONALITY:
To understand Vash's motivations and principles requires the answer to this question: Why did Vash and Knives react so differently to the Tessla incident? Well, before that unfortunate event, when both twins hoped fervently that they could be friends with humans, it was Vash who had the more pragmatic outlook. Although he was just as hopeful as his brother, he cautiously acknowledged that it would probably take a lot of hard work to achieve their goal. This realistic approach might have prepared him to some extent for the terrible truth about Tessla, but it could not prevent the heartbreak. He was still filled with the same anger, and fear, and despair as his brother, so what exactly was the difference? Just this: Vash was the one who stabbed Rem. He saw the blood on his hands. He believed he had killed his mother, and felt the horror and remorse of it. He learned, on an emotional level, how wrong killing was. This is why he has such an aversion to it; it's not just that he promised her memory he wouldn't snuff out the lives she had sacrificed herself to save, it's not that he thought he would disappoint her if he did (although those reasons also play a part). It's because if he killed someone, anyone, it would be like stabbing Rem all over again. That is why killing Legato was so traumatising for him.
His philosophical objections to the act are obvious, of course. Vash holds all life sacred because he believes everyone deserves a second chance. Anyone can turn their life around. The ticket to the future, as Rem once told him, is always blank. Unfortunately, where Vash is concerned, nothing is as clear-cut as it seems at first. Although he has no trouble applying this belief to humans, he's always had a tough time applying it to himself. This is the other reason the destruction of July and the death of Legato affect him so much. He can forgive nearly anyone for anything, except himself. He still carries terrible guilt for the destruction of July, and he doesn't believe such a monstrous sin can be forgiven. And yet in his final confrontation with Knives, he still tries to convince his brother not to fight anymore. To clarify, he believed that Knives, whose involvement in July is the least of his crimes, could reform, while Vash could not forgive himself for the mere destruction of a city. Vash gets called a hypocrite a lot in the series by people who don't understand how he can abide by his code, but in reference to this case, the epithet would be fitting.
To tell the truth, Vash doesn't really place much value on himself. He has no real sense of self-preservation, or shame. He once stripped down and barked like a dog to save Lina's life; he will do anything if it means saving a sentient life. He's always getting himself into scrapes because he can't ignore someone in trouble. He's always ready to help other people, but never asks for help himself. When his friends ask him what's wrong, he tends to smile and shut himself off. He doesn't want anyone to worry about him, doesn't want to drag them into his problems.
Vash isn't easy to get to know. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be much to him. He appears to be nothing more than a bumbling idiot with a jones for doughnuts, a friendly goofball who lets women and children walk all over him. Even when he's serious, he has a penchant for melodrama. ("The dog of destiny thrives on the stench of blood and gunpowder." What a ham, eh?) He wears his heart on his sleeve, cries, laughs, jokes at the drop of a hat, but he is not an open book. His "harmless idiot" routine is not entirely genuine. He rarely volunteers information about about himself - when asked to introduce himself, he often gives a fake name or a joke answer. ("Don't you feel I'm like a peaceful hunter, ever chasing the mayfly of love?") He doesn't often outright lie, but he will weasel out of personal questions at most opportunities. And as Wolfwood notes, his frequent smiles are empty. He has been known to smile even as people are running him out of town, throwing rocks at him. When Milly asked him why, he replied: "How am I supposed to look? I don't know anymore." Part of this behavior comes from the necessity of hiding who and what he is. He is, after all, a very dangerous individual, a member of a species capable of blasting a hole in the moon, and a marskman without peer. The other part is that this is the way he copes with over 150 years of gunsmoke pain and heartbreak.
Vash has survived his whole life on a cutthroat colony world where everyone owns a gun, getting involved in every potentially lethal situation if he had some chance of preventing loss of life. The scars on his body are a testament to the countless times he's been beaten, bloodied, shot at, run out of town, betrayed by the very people he is constantly working to save. He has been betrayed so many times, and the pain must be unimaginable. However much he acts like a child at times, he is also a very old, very tired man, and weary of all the shit that life has thrown his way. It comes across most in his dealings with Wolfwood and Knives; with them, he is willing to concede points he would never dream of admitting to anyone else, like when he thanks Wolfwood for helping him save his home, even though Wolfwood had killed in order to accomplish this. But despite his weariness, despite the temptation to give up, let the human race defend itself against Knives, let Knives destroy himself in his genocidal crusade, he always perseveres. Even under the crushing weight of the guilt he bears about Lost July, his determination propells him onward.
What drives Vash is his unshakeable faith in humanity. "I won't say all humans are wonderful," he tells Knives. Some of them are rotten, some of them are saints. Most of them are just people, with good and bad in equal measure. As a group, they are capable of terrible things, and they are capable of great things. Overall, Vash still believes they are worth saving. And it's worth noting that Vash is a very good judge of character. He knew that at one point, Wolfwood seriously considered killing him, but he also knew that the priest wouldn't be able to go through with it. He was able to stay perfectly composed while his friend aimed a gun at the back of his head. This is also why he was able to trust Livio after Wolfwood's death. This isn't blind trust. When he let Monev the Gale go, he kept his finger on the trigger the entire time.
POWER: Vash is a plant, therefore he possesses strength, speed, reflexes and healing capacity beyond those of an ordinary human. He is also capable of communicating telepathically with his brethren, as well as with people who have psychic abilities (such as Legato Bluesummers). His main power comes from the energy stored within him. This is what makes it possible for Vash to fire off the Angel Arm cannon, which can reduce an entire city to rubble, and blast a huge crater into the moon. His power is limited - he only has a certain amount. As it gets depleted his hair gradually turns black. When he uses the last of his power, he will die. Therefore as the series goes on, Vash learns to be more economical with the use of his power. He has been known to use it to morph his body in order to intercept bullets that might otherwise have hit something lethal. (That's what the Trigun wiki calls defensive feathers. They look like little twisty wing things growing out of his body.) He has also used it in order to create 'special' bullets which pack a lot more punch, capable of significantly harming a Knives at the height of his power. (I don't even want to know what those things would do to a regular human.) Also, Knives has demonstrated the ability to grow plants (specifically, an apple tree) and Vash could most likely figure out how to do it himself.
This will be toned down, however, in that he will keep all of his superhuman strength/speed/agility/healing/etc stuff but will be cut off from his ability to use the the Angel Arm cannon. Also the special bullets will only be able to create, idk, small explosions. Not enough to level a building, just enough to punch a hole in it, sort of thing. Plus, since he pretty much runs out of power at the end of Trimax, when he comes through the Porter, it will have restored some of what he lost in the course of the story, so he will have blond hair. But I am basically keeping the special bullets and the defensive feathers in reserve on the off-chance that I get another Knives or some other adversary shows up who is just that tough. In over a year of play at C&C, Vash used the bullets once, in order to stop Knives. So in the regular course of things, he will function much like a badass normal.
I guess these powers come under three umbrellas: physical abilities, telepathy, and plant powers. If you need me to eliminate one completely, it will be the last one.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE: http://capeandcowl.livejournal.com/1185928.html#comments
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE: http://capeandcowllogs.livejournal.com/104544.html#comments
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER: n/a
NAME: Mishi
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: I think it's Mishi_Writes, but I'm not entirely certain
IM: ohsarjalim or mishisings
PLURK: mishisings
E-MAIL: ohsarjalim@aim.com
RETURNING: I was a member of the game a long time ago. I used to play Duck and Vash. I don't know if that counts as returning or not, since I do not have any characters in the game at this time.
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Vash the Stampede, also known as the Humanoid Typhoon
SERIES: Trigun and Trigun Maximum, the manga.
CHRONOLOGY: A year after the end of Trigun Maximum.
CLASS: Hero
BACKGROUND: First of all, let me appologize for the wall of text. See, Vash is the main character, so played a part in pretty much EVERY major canon event.
Trigun mostly takes place on a small, miserable, desert sci-fi western planet, about 500 years into our future. The settlers are not here by choice: they are the descendants of the passengers of a fleet of colony ships (called SEED ships) which crash-landed on the planet they call No Man's Land, in an event referred to as the Big Fall. The living is hard; the arid wastes of No Man's Land are thoroughly inhospitable to most life. The only native life-forms are sand-worms, and a collective of hive-minded insects able to take over the human body. To survive, humans must depend on plants.
Plants are strange creatures, halfway between angels and insects. They do not seem to be able to survive outside the massive, light bulb-like facilities through which they provide humans with energy, food, and water. Certain specialized plants, known as geo-plants, can somehow make the ground around them fertile. No one on No Man's Land really knows how they work anymore. The technicians who work in the facilities can only tend to their needs, and are helpless when a plant goes haywire. Most things related to plants and the SEED ships they arrived in are now Lost Technology.
What most people know about Vash the Stampede is that he was wanted for 60 billion double dollars for the destruction of the city of July and the murder of Count Revnant Vasquez. They think he is an armed maniac in a red coat who leaves destruction in his wake. A few years ago, his wanted ads were taken down and he was declared to be a localized disaster. Legally, he now counted as an act of God, like a hurricane or a typhoon. This is actually when the story starts. A few months later, however, there was a gigantic energy discharge in the town of Jeneora rock, and a large crater appeared in one of the planet's five moons. Vash, whom people said was responsible for these things, was not heard from for another two years. By the time Vash next entered into the public consciousness, he was embroiled in the mess surrounding Knives' attacks on humanity, a crisis involving plants, and the arrival of a fleet of Earth ships. Though the people of No Man's Land know he was heavily involved in these things, they don't know exactly what happened, and while they have reason to assume he might have been beneficial, they also believe he is traveling with his brother, Knives, whom they know for sure is a dangerous terrorist. In the aftermath of this crisis, communication with Earth has been reestablished and the Terrans are helping to rebuild No Man's Land's cities. However there seems to be nationalist tensions occurring between the old settlers and newly arrived Terrans. Since Vash and Knives disappeared directly after the crisis was resolved, the Terrans are looking for Vash, ostensibly to 'help' them with their inquiries. But since they've reinstated the price on his head, and put one on Knives' as well, one wonders what their intentions really are. That is what the general public knows.
Here is what they don't know: Vash and Knives are independent plants, and they differ from regular plants in three respects: they are male, they look completely human, and they do not need to be contained in light bulbs. They were born from some sort of plant anomaly and found in a plant bulb on the flagship of the Project SEEDS fleet. Most of the functions of the ship were automated, but it had a crew of about seven people who could be awoken in case of emergencies, and a skeleton crew of one: Rem Saverem. It was Rem who found the twins and raised them as her own children. They grew rapidly, and by their first birthday they had the appearance of 10-year-old boys. Rem did a good job of bringing them up; they were happy, compassionate, intelligent boys, and she was proud of them. She schooled them, too. They learned about the history of Earth and of the human race, its faults as well as its strengths, its wars and its foolishness, and they often wondered whether humans would greet them with open arms. They wanted to believe that this was possible, that plants could be friends with humans. It might be difficult, but they had faith.
They had faith, that is, until one day, when they spotted the apparition of some girl leading them into a disused part of the ship. She led them to a special detachable medical module, where the boys discovered something terrible: the report of Tessla. They learned that they were not the first of their kind. Before them, there had been a girl, Tessla, whose birth woke the entire crew from their cryogenic slumber. To them she was a 'great scientific discovery'. The report detailed their experiments on her up until a truly horrific death. They found her desiccated remains floating in test tubes. The trauma of this event has marked both brothers brothers profoundly, and in fact defined their relationship with each other and the world for the rest of their lives.
Knives fainted dead away. Vash locked himself and his brother in the room, and refused to come out for days. When he finally collapsed from hunger and thirst and Rem dragged them out, he refused to eat. He accused her of deceiving him, of waiting a year in order to continue the experiment on the brothers, where she and the crew had left off with Tessla. Rem denied it, said that she had opposed the experiments from the beginning, and should have stopped them by any means necessary. Then one day she made the mistake of bringing a knife into this room to peel a peach. Vash took the knife as soon as she set it down and tried to stab himself with it, but Rem managed to grab it by the blade. They struggled with it, and Vash managed to stab her, injuring severely enough that he thought he had killed her. For a few brief moments he was glad that she was 'dead', but then the horror of what he'd done set in and he cried out in remorse. He tended to her wounds, and got himself something to eat, and they had a heart to heart talk about the future, and second chances, and the drawbacks of suicide. When Knives awoke, he pretended he didn't remember anything about Tessla. Rem and Vash thought he ought to know, and he listened to the story with great seriousness, but he seemed the same as he ever was. Things went on as normal for some time...
And then Knives caused the Big Fall. He introduced an error into the fleet's trajectory, sending all the ships on a crash-course for the planet that would later become known as No Man's Land. His intention was to kill all the humans, but spare the plant ship. Just as Vash and Knives and Rem were about to evacuate, Rem stayed behind to try and correct the error. She and the mothership did not survive, but she managed to save a significant portion of the other SEED ships. Knives revealed his plot to Vash soon after their escape pod took off, mentioning that he had wanted to spare Rem for Knives' sake, but now he saw that she was just as flawed and worthless as the rest of the humans.
Since then, Knives has been obsessively seeking to eradicate the humans Rem sacrificed her life to save, as well as the influence Rem had upon Vash. For the next eighty years, they traveled together. Vash felt he could not leave Knives alone, for fear that he would do something terrible. He needed to keep watch over his brother, and save humanity from him. They constantly clashed over their differing philosophies, Knives maintaining humans were worthless and deserving of death, and Vash contending that they had no right to kill them. One of these disputes resulted in Knives slicing off Vash's left arm. They parted ways shortly thereafter, and that was the beginning of disaster.
While Knives sought to better understand the power of plants in general and his own in particular, eventually mastering his ability to create blades from his own body, Vash continued to live among humans, getting into many scrapes, and honing his gunmanship out of necessity. It was shortly after they split up that Vash was found unconscious in the desert by the inhabitants of a SEED ship that had been miraculously preserved, right down to their working gravity plant, which whipped up a permanent sandstorm to hide them from the public. They took him in and accepted him as their own. Vash considers that ship his home - he knows the names of every one of its inhabitants (except for the ones who were born in his absence.) That said, he did not settle down, and resumed his travels, only stopping by the ship for visits.
Nearly seventy years later, Vash managed to track down one of the original crew of the mothership, Crewman Bill Conrad, who had made a fortune from his expertise in plants, and now went by the name of Count Revnant Vasquez. (It's a plothole as to how he survived the ship burning up into the atmosphere... also as to how a human who must be over 150 years old is still hale and hearty.) Conrad had made his home in the city of July, and unbeknownst to Vash, he was working with Knives, under duress, to uncover the secrets of plants. They captured Vash and ran experiments on him, mostly to compare Vash's power with Knives' own. It was these experiments that resulted in the destruction of July, and associated Vash's name with disaster. Knives was severely injured in the explosion; it would take years for him to recover, and Vash's only memory of the incident was the rubble where the city once stood.
This brings us to the present. Vash's appearance has caused a huge commotion in the small border town of Valdour, whose plant has just broken down and whose citizens are desperate for the 60 billion double dollar bounty that will pay for their plant's repairs, so desperate, in fact, that their mayor called in the Nebraska family, fearsome outlaws in their own right, to help bring down the Humanoid Typhoon. Luckily for all involved, Vash defeats the pair, and meets the insurance girls, Meryl and Millie, who explain to the baffled townspeople that the price on Vash's head has been rescinded, and he has been declared the world's first human act of God. Vash is thrilled at hearing there isn't a price on his head anymore. He is less thrilled when Meryl says that although he's no longer a wanted outlaw, he's still a gigantic risk and thus she and Millie must keep him under 24-hour surveillance. Thus begins Trigun.
For at least 20 years before his incapacitation, Knives travelled the world "collecting knives", that is, human servants of great deadly ability and depravity. After his incapacitation, he sent his servant, Legato Bluesummers, to continue this work. These "knives" formed the Gung Ho Guns, a collection of villains whose primary purpose was to cause Vash serious suffering, and to teach him the worthlessness and viciousness of the human race. They begin their work a few months after the bounty on Vash's head has been called off. Legato comes to him in May City and explains this all quite up front, via telepathy. That very night, Vash is visited by the first of the Gung Ho Guns, Monev the Gale. Monev's attack on May city marks the first time in the series that Vash is severely tempted to kill. He refrains only because he believes Rem will truly die if he takes a life.
On the outskirts of May City, Vash sees Monev's corpse, crucified on Legato's order. He meets the second Gung Ho Gun, E. G. Mine, and defeats him effortlessly. Legato has been watching in the distance, and Vash angrily tells him he is not to kill those Vash has defeated, and for that sin, Legato is now the one being hunted. (Legato actually gives Vash the creeps. He's generally a good judge of character, but Knives' servant is such a dark soul that Vash cannot read him at all. I think on the whole Vash is more afraid of Legato than of Knives himself.) On the bus from May City to Jeneora rock, Vash spots a figure in the distance and gets the bus to stop. Thus he rescues Nicholas D. Wolfwood, a traveling preacher carrying a heavy cross, who is more than he seems. The two become fast friends, but part ways once they reach their destination. Vash discovers a bloodbath created by the Gung Ho Guns and ordered by Legato. Dominique the Cyclops, the third of the Gung Ho Guns, challenges him. She tells him that he should rejoice, because those slaughtered were not innocents, but slavers. Vash says again that who lives and who dies is not anyone's decision to make. He defeats her, and she commits suicide, knowing what Legato will do to her if she tries to walk away.
It is at Jeneora Rock that Knives is revived. The moment he emerges, Vash senses him and hurries to his brother's location. He challenges Knives, but Knives somehow activates Vash's angel arm, the power that had destroyed July, a second time. This time, Vash manages to point it up toward the sky, sparing the town from destruction, and knocking a huge crater in one of the moons. Vash disappeared after that incident, which was thenceforth referred to as Fifth Moon.
Wolfwood spends the next two years searching him. (Wolfwood is secretly a special operative of the Gung Ho Guns, charged with keeping Vash alive and leading him to the next Gung Ho Gun and the next fight. Like Vash, he is primarily concerned with the protection of innocents, specifically Vash himself and the orphanage where he grew up. Unlike Vash, however, Wolfwood believes in killing his enemies swiftly so they cannot rise again to plague him.) He finally finds Vash living under the assumed name "Ericks" with a young girl named Lina and her grandmother. Vash has been badly frightened by the power he wields, and has decided to live in hiding so that he will never again have to use it. Unfortunately, the town where he has been living is currently under assault by a gang of thugs led by a man calling himself Vash the Stampede. Lina is kidnapped by the outlaws, and so, with the help of Wolfwood, he defeats the impostor and rescues the girl. It comes out that the mild-mannered Ericks was the real Vash the whole time, and the people of the village become hostile toward him. So Vash and Wolfwood hit the road once again.
They make their way to Tonim Town, where the population has disappeared and Knives' name is written in blood in the town square. There they meet Rai-Dei the Blade, the next Gung Ho Gun. Wolfwood is ready to assist Vash in this fight, but both Rai-Dei and Vash himself tell him to stay out of it. Vash defeats his opponent, but at the last moment, Rai-Dei is about to lunge at him... And then Wolfwood shoots him repeatedly, killing him instantly. He insists he acted to protect Vash, and Vash contends that Rai-Dei wouldn't have killed him. Wolfwood maintains that the only way to protect something is to get your own hands dirty. He takes one of his guns and forces it into Vash's hands and points it up at his head and tells him to shoot: "If you really believe I'm wrong, pull the trigger. In return, my role as the devil will be handed over to you. That way, you won't hesitate to take out the next man that gets in your way." Wolfwood will trade his life if it means Vash learns ruthlessness.
Before his death, Rai-Dei told Vash that the Gung Ho Guns had discovered the location of his secret home, the hidden ship whose inhabitants had adopted him seventy years ago. The two companions hurry there, only to discover that Leonov the Puppetmaster and Grey the Ninelives have already killed a third of the population. They manage to defeat them, but are severely injured in the process. It is at this point that Meryl and Millie, who have been searching for them ever since Vash resurfaced, rejoin them. While the boys recover, the ship receives a message from Earth; for the past hundred years or so, they had been sending a distress signal to Earth, and it has finally been answered. The people left on Earth have developed warp drives, and they have sent ships in aid to the people of No Man's Land. Before they can send a response, Knives destroys the satellite relay. But it will not change the imminent arrival of the Earth ships.
Vash, Wolfwood, and the insurance girls travel together to their next location, but it isn't long before Meryl gets kidnapped by the Gung Ho Guns as bait for a trap they have set up. While Wolfwood faces Midvalley the Hornfreak, Vash deals with Hoppered the Gauntlet, who became a Gung Ho Gun for a chance at revenge against the man who destroyed July. Gauntlet's accusations throw Vash off his game, allowing the Gung Ho Gun to get the upper hand. Their battle takes them halfway across the building. But something stirs Vash's memory; he finally recalls his lost memories of July, the days he spent in the city, how Knives triggered his angel arm cannon and caused the destruction of one of the seven great cities. Gauntlet knocks him onto the cage that was holding Meryl with such force that it is broken open. Gauntlet's lucky shot, coupled with the trauma of recovering his memory triggers Vash's powers once more; he erupts into feathers and appears to be going haywire, when SUDDENLY OUT OF NOWHERE Legato rides in and uses his powers to manipulate Gauntlet into killing Midvalley. Before you know it, Wolfwood, Zazie the Beast, Gauntlet, Vash, and Legato are locked in a mexican standoff. What all Gung Ho Guns had forgotten was that Meryl was still underneath Vash. She aims a shot at Legato, breaking the stalemate. When the dust clears, Zazie is injured, Gauntlet is dying, and Legato is about to use his mental grip on Vash to activate his angel arm cannon. And again, SUDDENLY OUT OF NOWHERE Elendira the Crimson Nail, 13th of the Gung Ho Guns shows up and drives multiple nails into Legato and carries him away. No longer under Legato's spell, Vash manages to regain control of his powers. Zazie escapes in the confusion, Gauntlet breathes his last, and, though shaken, Vash picks himself up and continues on his journey.
While Vash and Wolfwood continue to travel to Knives' hideout, Knives learns about the hair-darkening effect. Spurred by the discovery that his power is limited, he merges with other plants and finally puts his terrible plan in motion. To begin with, he cuts off all satellite communication between the towns of No Man's Land, while Legato recruits the final two members of the Gung Ho Guns. When Vash and Wolfwood arrive, Wolfwood is introduced to Livio the Doublefang, whom he recognizes as a boy from the same orphanage as him. Vash is taken captive.
For the next seven months, Knives is free to implement his plan unmolested. His gigantic airship, the Ark, flies around, wiping towns out one by one, and as he passes, he absorbs each town's plants. The planet quickly descends into panic. By the end of it, most of its population has been wiped out, with the exception of Octovern and December, last of the seven cities. Legato is assigned to stand guard on Vash. He does so by keeping his master's brother suspended in mid-air, using his powers. Doing this for seven months is quite exhausting, so Wolfwood takes advantage of Legato's temporary weakness to storm the Ark and rescue Vash. He nearly dies in a confrontation with Livio, but with Vash's help they both manage to escape. While Wolfwood recovers, he tells Vash about the Eye of Micheal. The Eye of Micheal is an organization of assassins funded by a church of plant worshippers. Wolfwood was trained as one of their operatives, before he betrayed his instructor in an attempt to infiltrate the Gung Ho Guns and kill Knives. The plan did not work, and in retaliation, the man known as Master C turned Wolfwood's childhood friend into an obedient killing machine.
The Eye of Micheal holds Wolfwood's orphanage hostage, as part of a plot for Master C to avenge himself. While Vash ensures the safety of the orphanage, Wolfwood confronts his old friend and his old master. He kills Master C and manages to break through Livio's programming, but to do so he had to give his life. Livio decides to travel with Vash as penance for his part in Wolfwood's death.
Vash and Livio join up with Milly and Meryl on the SEED ship and make their way to December to stop the millitary from attacking the Ark. December is the home of the last intact ion cannon. This gun is powered by plants, and there is no guarantee that Vash's sisters will side with the humans. Using them to attack one of their own might be the final straw that pushes them to rebel against humanity, and in that case, humanity would be doomed. Before they arrive, The army ignores the warnings and fires their cannon, but the cannon won't fire, and the Ark wipes out the millitary presence in December. Survivors gather in Octovern for a last stand.
It is at this point that the Earth ships arrive. Vash and Livio head out to face Legato and Elendira while the insurance girls volunteer to go to orbit and meet the Earth ships. While Livio manages to kill Elendira, he is heavily injured in the process, and Legato, when defeated, has set a trap. If Vash does not kill Legato, Legato will kill Livio. Vash can't let Wolfwood's sacrifice be in vain, so he kills Legato, and suffers a heroic BSOD of epic proportions. Meryl manages to snap him out of it, but Knives is still poised to destroy Octovern.
Using a device on the Earth ship, Vash seperates Knives from the plants he had absorbed. Knives uses his remaining power to pull his body back together - the strain is such that his hair turns almost entirely black. Now on equal terms, Vash and Knives duel, when they are suddenly attacked by a member of the crew of the Earth ships. Vash throws himself in the path of the blast, severely injuring himself in the process. Knives uses his power to get Vash to safety. He entrusts his brother to the care of a man and his son, and grows a tree as payment with the very last of his strength. It will take Vash six months to fully recover.
During that time, the Terrans established communication with the people of No Man's Land and began assisting them in rebuilding their civilization, as well as introducing lost technologies, such as television. They have also reinstated the price on Vash's head. As Vash is getting ready to leave his benefactors' home, it is surrounded by Terran forces and a band of mercenaries, both after the 60 billion. Vash sneaks out of the house through an underground tunnel and shows himself to his pursuers, to divert attention from the inhabitants. As he leads them on a merry chase, he runs into Meryl and Milly, who have found employment with the newly formed No Man's Land Broadcasting Corporation, as announcers on a show documenting the life of the 60 billion double dollar man. Realizing with some dismay that once again, the girls will be putting him under 24 hour surveillance, and with cameras this time, he runs away, yelling "PLEASE LEAVE ME ALOOOOOOONE!!!!!!"
PERSONALITY:
To understand Vash's motivations and principles requires the answer to this question: Why did Vash and Knives react so differently to the Tessla incident? Well, before that unfortunate event, when both twins hoped fervently that they could be friends with humans, it was Vash who had the more pragmatic outlook. Although he was just as hopeful as his brother, he cautiously acknowledged that it would probably take a lot of hard work to achieve their goal. This realistic approach might have prepared him to some extent for the terrible truth about Tessla, but it could not prevent the heartbreak. He was still filled with the same anger, and fear, and despair as his brother, so what exactly was the difference? Just this: Vash was the one who stabbed Rem. He saw the blood on his hands. He believed he had killed his mother, and felt the horror and remorse of it. He learned, on an emotional level, how wrong killing was. This is why he has such an aversion to it; it's not just that he promised her memory he wouldn't snuff out the lives she had sacrificed herself to save, it's not that he thought he would disappoint her if he did (although those reasons also play a part). It's because if he killed someone, anyone, it would be like stabbing Rem all over again. That is why killing Legato was so traumatising for him.
His philosophical objections to the act are obvious, of course. Vash holds all life sacred because he believes everyone deserves a second chance. Anyone can turn their life around. The ticket to the future, as Rem once told him, is always blank. Unfortunately, where Vash is concerned, nothing is as clear-cut as it seems at first. Although he has no trouble applying this belief to humans, he's always had a tough time applying it to himself. This is the other reason the destruction of July and the death of Legato affect him so much. He can forgive nearly anyone for anything, except himself. He still carries terrible guilt for the destruction of July, and he doesn't believe such a monstrous sin can be forgiven. And yet in his final confrontation with Knives, he still tries to convince his brother not to fight anymore. To clarify, he believed that Knives, whose involvement in July is the least of his crimes, could reform, while Vash could not forgive himself for the mere destruction of a city. Vash gets called a hypocrite a lot in the series by people who don't understand how he can abide by his code, but in reference to this case, the epithet would be fitting.
To tell the truth, Vash doesn't really place much value on himself. He has no real sense of self-preservation, or shame. He once stripped down and barked like a dog to save Lina's life; he will do anything if it means saving a sentient life. He's always getting himself into scrapes because he can't ignore someone in trouble. He's always ready to help other people, but never asks for help himself. When his friends ask him what's wrong, he tends to smile and shut himself off. He doesn't want anyone to worry about him, doesn't want to drag them into his problems.
Vash isn't easy to get to know. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be much to him. He appears to be nothing more than a bumbling idiot with a jones for doughnuts, a friendly goofball who lets women and children walk all over him. Even when he's serious, he has a penchant for melodrama. ("The dog of destiny thrives on the stench of blood and gunpowder." What a ham, eh?) He wears his heart on his sleeve, cries, laughs, jokes at the drop of a hat, but he is not an open book. His "harmless idiot" routine is not entirely genuine. He rarely volunteers information about about himself - when asked to introduce himself, he often gives a fake name or a joke answer. ("Don't you feel I'm like a peaceful hunter, ever chasing the mayfly of love?") He doesn't often outright lie, but he will weasel out of personal questions at most opportunities. And as Wolfwood notes, his frequent smiles are empty. He has been known to smile even as people are running him out of town, throwing rocks at him. When Milly asked him why, he replied: "How am I supposed to look? I don't know anymore." Part of this behavior comes from the necessity of hiding who and what he is. He is, after all, a very dangerous individual, a member of a species capable of blasting a hole in the moon, and a marskman without peer. The other part is that this is the way he copes with over 150 years of gunsmoke pain and heartbreak.
Vash has survived his whole life on a cutthroat colony world where everyone owns a gun, getting involved in every potentially lethal situation if he had some chance of preventing loss of life. The scars on his body are a testament to the countless times he's been beaten, bloodied, shot at, run out of town, betrayed by the very people he is constantly working to save. He has been betrayed so many times, and the pain must be unimaginable. However much he acts like a child at times, he is also a very old, very tired man, and weary of all the shit that life has thrown his way. It comes across most in his dealings with Wolfwood and Knives; with them, he is willing to concede points he would never dream of admitting to anyone else, like when he thanks Wolfwood for helping him save his home, even though Wolfwood had killed in order to accomplish this. But despite his weariness, despite the temptation to give up, let the human race defend itself against Knives, let Knives destroy himself in his genocidal crusade, he always perseveres. Even under the crushing weight of the guilt he bears about Lost July, his determination propells him onward.
What drives Vash is his unshakeable faith in humanity. "I won't say all humans are wonderful," he tells Knives. Some of them are rotten, some of them are saints. Most of them are just people, with good and bad in equal measure. As a group, they are capable of terrible things, and they are capable of great things. Overall, Vash still believes they are worth saving. And it's worth noting that Vash is a very good judge of character. He knew that at one point, Wolfwood seriously considered killing him, but he also knew that the priest wouldn't be able to go through with it. He was able to stay perfectly composed while his friend aimed a gun at the back of his head. This is also why he was able to trust Livio after Wolfwood's death. This isn't blind trust. When he let Monev the Gale go, he kept his finger on the trigger the entire time.
POWER: Vash is a plant, therefore he possesses strength, speed, reflexes and healing capacity beyond those of an ordinary human. He is also capable of communicating telepathically with his brethren, as well as with people who have psychic abilities (such as Legato Bluesummers). His main power comes from the energy stored within him. This is what makes it possible for Vash to fire off the Angel Arm cannon, which can reduce an entire city to rubble, and blast a huge crater into the moon. His power is limited - he only has a certain amount. As it gets depleted his hair gradually turns black. When he uses the last of his power, he will die. Therefore as the series goes on, Vash learns to be more economical with the use of his power. He has been known to use it to morph his body in order to intercept bullets that might otherwise have hit something lethal. (That's what the Trigun wiki calls defensive feathers. They look like little twisty wing things growing out of his body.) He has also used it in order to create 'special' bullets which pack a lot more punch, capable of significantly harming a Knives at the height of his power. (I don't even want to know what those things would do to a regular human.) Also, Knives has demonstrated the ability to grow plants (specifically, an apple tree) and Vash could most likely figure out how to do it himself.
This will be toned down, however, in that he will keep all of his superhuman strength/speed/agility/healing/etc stuff but will be cut off from his ability to use the the Angel Arm cannon. Also the special bullets will only be able to create, idk, small explosions. Not enough to level a building, just enough to punch a hole in it, sort of thing. Plus, since he pretty much runs out of power at the end of Trimax, when he comes through the Porter, it will have restored some of what he lost in the course of the story, so he will have blond hair. But I am basically keeping the special bullets and the defensive feathers in reserve on the off-chance that I get another Knives or some other adversary shows up who is just that tough. In over a year of play at C&C, Vash used the bullets once, in order to stop Knives. So in the regular course of things, he will function much like a badass normal.
I guess these powers come under three umbrellas: physical abilities, telepathy, and plant powers. If you need me to eliminate one completely, it will be the last one.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
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