Death was all around him. He could smell the tang of rot, and knew that it was coming for him. He felt the tight feeling in his gut, and washed it away with the knowlege that he was prepared for this. He had prepared. But the knot came not from that, but from the feeling of wrongness that he was not doing this of his own accord. Who's man was he, anyway?
He had no recollection of his childhood, nothing except pain and turmoil. Rape, abuse, seduction, sex, and pain. He was pain, in and out. He remembered being thrown out into the streets various times, until one person, and blue-haired man who's face was unclear, threw him into the core of a Plant to die a slow and painful death. There was were he met HIM. Knives. Knives was sitting under the light of the plant, looking up at the light streaming over his face and half-naked body. The small boy had hid in fear. Men were not his friends, and seeing a man's upper torso uncovered made him sweat with apprehension. Knives turned to him, frowned, then looked harder at the small boy. He was young, impressionable, and most of all, easy to manipulate. He still hid from Knives, until Knives' sweet-seeming voice lured him from his hiding place. "Do you want revenge?" Knives asked, then laughed as his young friend nodded and held out his hand in agreement.
He had done everything for his glorious, white-haired, blue-eyed master. He even submitted to having his arm cut off and a new one, loaded with promise of power, sewed in it's place. Years of radiation from the plants had made his body incapable of change, and him stronger. Meanwhile, Knives taught him the art of manipulation through the mind, and the art of fighting.
The destrustion of July was his one opportunity to shine. After Knives' body had been destroyed, he quickly rebuilt it using the technology of the Plants. He kept intact the most viral parts. Knives' heart and his arms, but especially his mind.
Having his comrades killed was easy. It was the order to get himself killed that was hard. He owed everything to Knives, his life, his strength. He was not his own man. He belonged, mind heart and soul, to Knives.
Death came without warning, as Death often does, and with little respect for his thoughts. The last thing Legato Bluesummers could recall before death was a quiet, piercing laugh, and Vash's face, full of terror at his own brutal deed
