Guest Author - The Futile Existence

Vash is carrying Millie and Meryl because apparently he's destroyed their car. Switch to an adobe desert town where rough buys bash into a jazz bar. They're the Roderick Thieves. One of their captive women looks at Legato at the bar and the thug swears at her and stomps on her. Legato says he plans on destroying all of mankind soon, so if these are the first to go, that's fine with him. He causes the evil guy to tear out his own heart. The rest of the crew draw their guns and Legato causes them all to shoot each other.

Legato tells the girls, "Now you know just how much pain there is in living." He advises them to make good use of the time they have left and leaves.

Shortly afterwards Vash and the 2 girls arrive at the town. He heads into the saloon and sees the death, and wonders who did that. Legato goes up to face the rest of the Rodericks. Legato says to himself, "just kill half of them" and sure enough, half of them die. He has just about every nasty bounty hunter in his employ now.

Vash knows it must be Legato and sees him on the windmill. He goes up and sees the pile of Roderick corpses. Suddenly a woman shows up - 'One of the Gung Ho Guns'. Dominique the Cyclops. Vash says that even though they were bad people, Dominique didn't have the right to kill them.

They have a gun battle and Vash is amazed at her talent and teleporting powers. Then Vash realizes her eye is involved - that she hypnotized him with her eye. He blasts the eye and then tells her instead of cleaning up criminals she should be cleaning up the house after someone she loved. Millie and Meryl show up to rescue the 'innocent woman'. She runs off.

Vash tells Meryl and Millie that they have to stay behind now, that it's too dangerous for them to come along with him. Vash heads off to hunt down Legato.