I am Gung-Ho Guns.
Try as I might to deny this tiny little fact, the fact remains crystal clear:
I am Gung-Ho Guns.
I am part of the 12-man strong killer gang led by Legato, an enigmatic but cruel person who would kill you as much as look at you. I am part of a gang that kills for pleasure and for wanton cruelty.
I am part of the gang that is sent one by one to kill my friend. I suppose I should be glad that my role is simply to find Vash and bring him to Knives, but I can’t help but wonder at the eventual outcome. For surely it would be too simplistic to think…?
Yes.
Did I ever want to be part of it? I don’t remember. In the beginning it was about finding revenge. Beyond that, perhaps a home after my own parents were killed. After all, no one else seemed to care about the little runt whose parents were murdered. Even father’s best friends. After they realized that father’s funds were sucked dry and his child was left bereft of everything in the world, they had flung him out into the world where faces had no names and names had no meaning.
And then he came.
Chapel Greenwood, the man with the dead impassive eyes and a stone heart fit enough to freeze the sun cold. A man who had no scruples, no morals and an unflinching steel resolve. Somehow he knew about me, who I was and what I needed. He offered a chance at revenge, a reason for living, and a chance to get back at the cruel world who had so unfairly dealt me a bad hand.
And me, being the child burning for revenge, eagerly took up his offer.
I should have known that a life taken could no sooner bring back my parents than asking the sky to fall. I thought that by silencing the murderer who killed my parents, I could still the horror and the nightmares that I had by night.
Did they? How was I to know back then, at seven, that they would inevitably lead me back to being the exact mirror of they that took my childhood away from me?
Chapel saw the natural flair in me back then, and honed my gun skills to the seasoned killer than I am today. Life is unfair, he would always say, while holding up the ever elusive apple in front of my young eyes, and it was up to us to make the best out of our situation by seizing the best choice for ourselves. In the case of the boy he raised, it was to be a gunslinger. Like him.
Because of what I could do, I easily became the feared and notorious agent of death, and an expert of the gun. That Chapel presented to me a cross-gun – a variant of his very own – was an indication of the high hopes that he had for me. By and by, through Chapel, I was introduced to Legato and subsequently Knives. I was good at what I did, maybe the best, but somehow despite it all, deep down inside, I thoroughly hated myself.
I killed. But to what end, for what cause? I looked around and saw more suffering, more pain, and more orphans just like myself…
And so I left Gung Ho Guns, Chapel, my past, one night and ran away to the other end of the world. I fancied that by pretending it did not exist, it did not. But back then, for a time period, it didn’t – and Nicholas D. Wolfwood was not Gung-Ho Guns feared killer but simply, Nicholas, simple everyday man off the street. I was happy to be myself – to be that suave gunslinger who defended the weak and innocent; but more than that, pastor and founder of Orleans Orphanage.
I can’t change my past, but surely I can do something about others.
It gave me pleasure to sit down and watch the children laugh and play and be given the childhood that I never had. To be greeted with calls of “Nicholas oniisan”. To see that joy and delight in their eyes preserved and cherished.
And I would do everything I can in my power, to make sure that it stays that way. I would do everything to protect them from this cruel world and be brought up in a world where they could live happily and peacefully and safe. Even if it meant leaving them at times to travel throughout the desert to raise funds for them, and to keep my old enemies from finding them.
I thought that I could continue this indefinitely.
But life has a pretty funny way of turning its tables on you just when you think that. Because this is usually the point where rude reality comes in.
I thought I could run, change my name, but still they found me. Worse, they found the orphanage and used it against me.
I should have known that Chapel would not have let his favourite protégé and assassin go so easily. I should have known that once inside, it was simply just not possible to escape Knives and Legato’s clutches.
I have not seen the interiors of a church for a long time.
The gun and the blood betrays me.
I realize that now. There is no denying it.
My dreams are shattered in the dust.
I am Gung Ho Guns.
…And I am sorry, Vash.
