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[hunterofpeace]

Player nickname: Nikki
Player DW: bloopers
Way to contact you:
Email: slipperyslanders@yahoo.com
AIM: sillyslanders
Plurk: makewayforroze
Other:
Are you at least 15?: Yep yep
Current Characters: Sena Kashiwazaki, Roze Thomas, Ellie

Character: Vash the Stampede
Fandom: Trigun, anime

Character Notes:

History:

Project SEEDS – 137 years before the series begins, two boys are mysteriously found on board Project SEEDS, a ship literally containing what was left of humanity after they nearly drove themselves to extinction. After being saved, and presumably named, by Rem, they grow quickly, looking nearly ten by their first year. Though being stuck on a ship has obvious limitations, Rem does her best to teach Knives and Vash about right and wrong, good and bad. Both boys seem to originally take to her, as well as the rest of the crew and their way of life.

However, as usual, ignorance begets fear and one of the crew members, Steve, begins to grow jealous of the boys, something he doesn’t hesitate to show through words or actions. Over time, this begins to gnaw at the way of life Knives has been taught and he begins to wonder if people really are so good, after all.

The Spider- So begins the end of their peaceful days on the ship as Knives works to turn the crew against one another. In the end, only he, Rem, and Vash are left to escape while the ship is crashing toward a planet. With this, all of the humans would be destroyed and only plants, like himself and Vash, would survive. Rem ruins his plans when she stays behind to launch the pods, saving many of them but dying in the process.

Vash quickly learns the truth about Knives, as his brother makes no secret about his superiority complex. Instantly, a rift is made and his first years on a new planet, named Gunsmoke, are spent with a brother he can’t, won’t, leave but whom he can never agree with. He does manage to take pleasure in seeing the humans begin to grow and spread out, establishing cities and homes.

Of course, Knives won’t let that happen. They were all supposed to be dead and the entire land was for himself and Vash. So, the humans had to die and he has just the thing! Two guns that can become more when used by either of them, guns strong enough to easily wipe out entire cities and even reach into space. Just one shot and everything those humans had worked for would be gone. So, Vash does what he thinks he has to: he shoots him and steals his gun, finally running away from his brother.

The Butterfly - Life isn’t easy for him alone and at first, he just wanders the desert for years. Luckily, he’s eventually saved and nursed back to health by a group of people who lived in the sky aboard a ship they never quite made it to Gunsmoke. Even though he leaves to wander around, this becomes a makeshift home, a place he keeps coming back to.

But it’s not to last, though it’s hard to say it was cut short since he doesn’t run into Knives again for nearly a hundred years, when he actually tracks down a relative of Rem’s. Excited, he goes to pay the man a visit only to find his brother standing over a dead body, a manic grin on his face. He owes Vash a bullet and, being the psycho he is, ups it enough to actually shoot OFF Vash’s arm. While he lays there, Knives tries to force him to help destroy everything by activating both guns. Before he can succeed, Vash shoots him instead, badly damaging Knives and forcing him into hiding while he can heal, though he does make off with his own gun and Vash’s arm.

Thanks to this, Vash now wears a mechanical arm which houses a gun and, while he minimized the damage, he couldn’t save the city.

Never to kill - The entire city of July became a casualty that day, giving Vash the 60 billion double dollar bounty on his head. Even if he has no memory of what happened, he never tries to run away from responsibility and this is something that will plague him for a very, very long time, coming back to haunt him in more than one way.

Vash the Stampede, the humanoid typhoon, is now an outlaw, a scary legend known for his impossible accuracy and inability to be killed, even if many try. July may have been the first but it wasn’t the last city that was demolished thanks to Vash’s presence. Strangely, after July, it seems that no matter how bad the property damage, people were hurt but no one was ever killed. There really must have been miracles protecting all of them from such a bloodthirsty outlaw.

We have to pay for that damage somehow - 130+ years isn’t very long in the eye of history but it’s enough time for people to not only build cities but to set up businesses that would have originally seemed like a luxury; an insurance agency, for example, insurance agencies that would find Vash a problem. So, one such agency sends out two women to find and follow him, doing what they can to minimize the property damage whenever he was around. Not that Milly and Meryl will have an easy time finding Vash since so many outlaws pretend to be him in order to strike fear and ensure cooperation.

But when they do, he’s in trouble, having been captured by a man after the bounty. Not that it’s easy to believe since he seems to be a bumbling fool, making jokes at inappropriate times and running away from bullets. Somehow, he does manage to get away with only injuring the captives.

As he does in the next town, where he helps catch a man monopolizing the water supply, releasing the wall that was holding it back and allows it to flow back into the city. In the next town, he steps up again, inspiring the towns people to fight back against would be thieves, even snapping a legendary gunsmith out of his stupor.

It isn’t until Inepril City that all doubt is erased, however. The city’s plant has broken down and they need a lot of money to fix it. Vash is worth a lot of money. It seems like a perfect fix except Vash isn’t easy to capture. For hours, he runs from them all, never shooting. In desperation, because they’re tearing their own town apart trying to find him, the mayor brings in the Nebraska family, a father and son outlaw team that seem less concerned with whom they kill than they are with the money.

As Milly and Meryl, as well as the rest of the town, watch on, Vash works to save the same women who held him at gunpoint as the mechanical fist comes crashing down on them. Even when it risks his live, he doesn’t allow them to die and takes down the giant son with only six bullets, none of which were shots meant to kill. Luckily for them all, the family had a bounty on them too and Vash gives the 700,000 double dollars over to them. Without having to die or kill anyone, he’s able to give them enough money to fix the plant.

And I’ll be taking him just before this.

Personality:

Vash is a martyr, a hippie, and a cowboy.

The first, and more driving, aspect of his personality is his emphasis on human life. Most notably, he refuses to kill but it doesn’t just stop there. He actively tries to save others and make their lives better. Many times, his own life is in danger but he won’t kill and he won’t back down to let others kill. If the only solution seems to be to let someone die, he doesn’t consider it an answer at all and keeps pushing until he finds a way to save everybody.

I think Wolfwood says it best as he’s dying. The answer’s always been there, if only people had looked harder. Vash looks.

So, he’ll put a lot of things aside to save a life. The man seems to have no shame in what he would do to save someone, even going so far as to get naked and act like a dog to save the life of a girl he’d become close to. Others around him question how he could do such a thing but he never hesitates. Begging, pleading… If he has to do it, he will.

But Vash isn’t going around, grimly looking for problems to solve. Nope, he cheerfully goes around looking for problems to solve. He smiles easily, jokes a lot, and acts silly even in tense situations. A lot of times, this makes him come across as an idiot but it’s all in good fun. So, while he does ham it up, not all of it is an act. He really is a guy that enjoys live, enjoys the small things, and wants to continue living as he does.

Sometimes, a lot of times, he WANTS to come across as an idiot. People are more careful around a legendary outlaw and so, if they don’t think he’s Vash, he has another advantage. In order to do this, he’ll push the persona past “grinning idiot” to “too stupid to live”. When he walks into a hostage situation, he does so wearing ear buds and singing along, giving himself the excuse of not seeing the authorities outside and making the criminals think he’s just a fool that’s wandered in instead of a man there to save the day.

There are times when it goes the opposite direction. Cheerful, friendly Vash can be quiet the crybaby. Sometimes, it make sense to cry but he’ll cry over much smaller things too. Offend him, refuse him, ask him to share? There’s probably going to be some tears shed.

Speaking of being refused… Vash likes the ladies. Most of the time that he pushes it, he needs to stay close to a woman in order to protect her but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy the company, anyway. It’s another aspect of his that can be exaggerated but that has some basis in truth, even if he himself would have to shut it down before it got too far, thanks to the price he’s paid for refusing to kill: the scars.

Then there are his serious moments. When someone tries to kill another person, rather it good or bad guy, he’ll begin his usual lecture. When the danger is serious and everyone already knows he who is, he drops the façade and really focuses, showing off his skills instead of making them seem like a streak of good luck.

And sometimes, he comes close to breaking his oath. When Monev kills people in the town Vash is arrested in, he brings out his gun and crams it into his eye. Though it never changes his entire outlook,that was a moment where he had doubt, where he really had to wonder if it was okay not to pull the trigger.

One of Vash’s biggest flaws comes from his determination not to kill. A lot of villains will keep on hurting others, if they’re not taken to jail or when they’re released. There are times when Vash has to face the people that’s been hurt by the ones he wouldn’t kill and he can’t offer an explanation, only say that they deserved to live. Somehow, it does seem like something good did come from it, even if it can’t justify all of the bad.

Another one is a small amount of hypocrisy. When he and Wolfwood are running from the sand worms, he won’t let the priest shoot them. However, he eats meat. Shame on you, Vash, shame on you.

An important, if almost impossible to notice, change happens near the end of the series. Vash loves people, he really wants the best for them, but a lot of his life has been based on what Rem has said, on her teachings. Once he realizes he does it because it’s what he wants, that he too is allowed is make mistakes and try to correct them, his conviction actually becomes stronger.

Other:

Vash and Knives are living plants. That comes with various abilities, some only useful in universe, such as the ability to fix other plants. Knives seems to be more aware of these powers as he seeks them out while Vash just wants to live a normal life.

As I mentioned in the personality, Vash is covered with scars. Head to toe.

Also, Vash only ever introduces himself with his real name to play up how big of a joke it would be if he were THE Vash. For everybody else that he spends enough time with to need a name, he seems to use a lot of different ones.

Additional Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vash_the_Stampede Customary Wiki link for ya.

So, I did two first person samples to try to show a more accurate picture of him. Hope it’s okay!

First Person (entry type):

Hello, ladies! [Have a Vash trying on his best “charming” smile.] It’s come to my attention that some of you might not know me so let me to introduce myself. [Again, since this is the third post he’s tried like this.] I am the great wanderer of the mighty desert, the handsome nomad in search of a home, the brave pioneer in the uncertain territory of the heart!

But you can just call me Steve.

So, how about it? It sounds good, doesn’t it? Make sure not to fight, we wouldn’t want anybody to get hurt and there’s enough of me to go around.

[He points at the screen, still using over dramatic movements.] I’ll be waiting for YOU.

---

I couldn’t do it, Rem, I couldn’t save them. All of those people are dead because of me and then I almost took another life. I knew it wasn’t mine to take but I almost forgot.

No, that’s not true. I almost didn’t care.

I’m scared, Rem, I’m really scared. What am I turning into? I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, I just want people to stop hurting, I want to stop hurting them. Why can’t I see how do to that? I know if you were here, you could see the solution.

I just wish you were here.

Third Person:

“Come on, don’t be like that. I’m trying. You’re so haaarsh.” Vash the Stampede, legendary gunman was currently whining to the resident leader… of children, an eleven year old boy who wasn’t amused at Vash’s attempt at their game. All he had to do was throw the pebble and make it land on the square with most points. It was a mindless game, one made by kids in a town without much money but Vash was enjoying himself, even if he was being mocked by all of them. It was just sometimes, kids could be so mean! Didn’t they know how hard it was?!

“Even Johnny’s getting high scores today and he usually can’t even make it to the boxes!” the boy insisted.

“Okay, okay.” The pebble landed exactly where he wanted it, inches away from what the intended target was supposed to be. “Awww…man, this really isn’t my day!”

Up next was Johnny, actually looking excited for his turn instead of dreading it. This time, when he threw the pebble, Vash didn’t have to flick another to help knock it on course. With confidence, he was able to score, beaming proudly as he joined in the kid’s laughter at the expense of the blonde stranger. But that was okay, because it was worth the trade to see how happy the smallest boy looked, even while he shot the gunman a sympathetic look. He was a good kid, he just need a boost, something to make him know he could do it, and that was far more important than Vash looking good in front of a group of kids. At this point, he found their joking fun, probably because their laughter came so soon after, and his own voice wasn’t long in joining in.