Vash the Stampede
From Ars Arcanum Wiki
Contents |
The Mun
Name: Ashley
Contact:
- AIM: the donut outlaw
The Character
Name: Vash the Stampede
Age/Birthdate: 152 years old; with July 21st as a non-canon birthday
Canon: Trigun Maximum
Canon Entry Point: The start of volume 9
Journal: http://localdisaster.livejournal.com/
Card: Page of Cups (Reversed)
Card-Related Abilities/'Card Tricks:' None yet
Defining Attributes and Abilities
Starting with learned skills, Vash is incredibly skilled with guns, his weapon of choice. As a result of decades of practice, he can hit targets that other people would consider impossible, and pull off a wide range of trick shots, including accurately shooting into a room blind (after he had seen it once!). There's still plenty of things that can disrupt his aim, of course, but most of the time he misses because he means to.
Of the two guns he carries, one is a six-shooter revolver, and the other is a machine gun hidden within his mechanical left arm.
He has a couple of conventional skills (including survival skills), but the most notable one would be the general operation of what was called 'lost technology' on his planet. Vash was raised around technology more advanced than what you'd see in the 20th century, and while time has eroded his memory to some extent, he's still capable of using advanced computers and other systems. He might not be able to use them well if it's anything other than a basic computer, but he can try.
Vash has a number of actual abilities, all originating from being a Plant. For one, he has a much longer lifespan than a human, the upper limit of which is unknown. Vash can also use his power to heal his wounds, though only in a limited capacity. He's also capable of communicating with other Plants through mostly empathic means; however, Knives was the only Plant who he didn't have to be in close contact with to feel extreme emotion from.
The primary use of his abilities involves the fact that, being a Plant, he possesses a great deal of internal energy. His right arm is capable of turning into a large gun called the Angel Arm, which in turn directs the energy to results that can be downright catastrophic. The instances in which he destroyed July and cratered the Fifth Moon were both from being mentally manipulated into using his maximum output - he's capable of uses of this power on a much smaller scale, including as an energy shield or infusing the energy into an object (such as bullets). However, Vash is both inexperienced and VERY reluctant to use this ability except when absolutely necessary. It doesn't help that he no longer has the extra energy to spare; any further uses of energy will deplete him, and turn his hair increasingly darker, until the loss of energy results in his death. His arrival in this new world subsequently reduced the amount of energy available to him; now it would only take the destruction of a small building to kill him.
The last use of his Plant nature is a bit more versatile. Vash is able to sprout 'feathers' that can go from having the normal density of garden-variety feathers, to being able to stop bullets. They're malleable to limited extent, and can also be given an incredibly sharp edge. These are formed right out of his skin, and somehow absorb parts of his clothing in the process; while he can shed feathers this way, any harm done to these extra appendages would likely hurt him as well.
Personality
Vash comes off the same way to a lot of people. He's loud, cheerful, clumsy, and a complete idiot at times. Then there's the times he acts the part of the Vash the Stampede the people of Gunsmoke know - a stoic, incredibly skilled gunman that never fails to bring some form of calamity or major property damage.
First impressions are everything, he's learned. Vash is a man that hides behind a lot of masks. That's not to say that everything he does is false, but he has a very bad habit of hiding his negative emotions away. The world could be falling apart around him, and he'd be trying to find a reason to smile. Vash doesn't let anyone get close to him if he can help it, out of the abiding belief that most people that do so are going to end up either very badly off, or dead. He's the perpetual wander, passing through people's lives without revealing anything of his own, hopefully leaving everyone else a little better off through his actions. His catch phrase of 'LOVE AND PEACE' is what he wishes for everyone else, not for himself.
He is by no means as heartless as those familiar with the rumors would believe. Vash is a pacifist, who refuses to take a life and will only seriously injure someone at all in self-defense. He would do nearly anything to save another person from death, no matter who they might be or how badly he might get hurt in the process. It's to the point that he didn't use his own powers for years, out of the fear of how destructive they could be. Vash might not let people get close to him easily, but at the same time he refuses to think that people as a whole are inherently bad. He is the sort of person who would speak a message of forgiveness even to someone that had committed heinous crimes, because it's his belief that it is possible to make up for what you've done as the future is what you make it.
Considering his past goals and obstacles, he's shown himself to be a very determined individual, often not stopping to think at all before throwing himself in harm's way and continuing on even when the outlook is bleak. In fact, he's shown a severe lack of forethought when it comes to anything planned ahead of time, being far better with using inventive solutions on the spur of the moment. Vash is very slow to anger, but when he's truly angry, it's a fearsome sight. This is the only time that he's ever ruthless with his attacks, toeing the line of his refusal to do fatal damage to an opponent.
Background
Vash was born over 150 years ago on the SEEDS colony ships, which were searching for a planet to inhabit. These colony ships were powered by Plants, which had been genetically engineered for that purpose. Vash and his twin brother Knives were the offspring of one of the Plants kept in captivity, but were raised by a human woman on the ship named Rem. Everything was peaceful enough, until the twins found out that another girl had been born from the Plants, and experimented upon until it killed her. Where Vash snapped and managed to work past the trauma, Knives internalized it and came to believe that it was necessary to save Plants from the humans using them. Knives caused the SEEDS ships to crash on a desert planet, which killed Rem and millions of other colonists in an event that came to be known as The Fall.
Vash and Knives stayed together for decades, wandering the planet, until the extreme difference in their views caused them to split in a fight that took Vash's left arm. Some years later, Vash was close to death and found by the residents of the last SEEDS ship to remain operational. They provided Vash with a new arm and gear, and when they told him that Knives had started mass-murdering humans, Vash vowed to put a stop to him.
Vash wandered the planet for years as he perfected his marksmanship, getting in plenty of scrapes, but it wasn't until Vash was about 105 that he came into contact with Knives once again. In that confrontation, Knives activated Vash's Angel Arm, which destroyed the entire city of July and killed nearly everyone within the blast radius. A bounty was put on Vash's head for $$60 billion, which remained for a time until it was decided that pursuing him was too dangerous and he was instead declared mankind's first localized disaster. That was when Knives began his killing game. He sent the Gung-Ho Guns after Vash, a group of assassins charged with causing him as much suffering as possible. It wasn't Knives' intent to kill Vash, but instead to bring him over to his way of thinking by showing him just what humans were capable of.
After Vash blew a hole in the Fifth Moon, he went into hiding for two years until being forced to come out of 'retirement' and face Knives' minions once more. He got into fights with other members of the Gung-Ho Guns, one of which nearly activated his Angel Arm a third time, Vash's own force of will finally being strong enough to stop it from happening. Other adventures include being captured by Knives for nine months, eventually escaping with Wolfwood's help.
When Wolfwood left to defend his orphanage, Vash followed, unwilling to let his friend fight his personal demons without help.
