Vash eased up on his attacks as he saw how much collective damage the group was capable of. Sure enough, they’d succeeded in weakening it! And it almost seemed like the thing was about to make a retreat! Still not wanting his teammates to kill the thing, he was about to attempt to call a ceasefire, when the zombie-fied dragon that he’d caught glimpses of earlier (which really weirded him out — but it was a question for another time, at this rate), charged into the battle only to be viciously torn apart by the Gore Magala. Vash hardly even had time to react to the whole thing before the transformation began… 

Vash’s jaw dropped as he found himself momentarily unable to do much more than stare at the thing. The Stampede couldn’t believe it. It hardly even looked like it had simply transformed. Instead, it looked like a completely different dragon — it couldn’t possibly have been the same beast that they were fighting before. Vash could hardly think of how to even [i]begin[/i] to attack the thing, though he was pulled out of his stagnant thoughts by the now much stronger version of the dragon’s dark aura rolling out underneath them. 

Vash’s jaw seemed to lower itself even further when he saw Ranma — the girl he felt absolutely certain was dead — managed to crawl out of her crater, still alive. He watched as the dragon charged up an attack to send her way, and, before he even had time to charge towards her and push her out of harm’s way, he was shocked to see one of Archer’s weapons block the attack. Watching the assassin continue to fight, it was nice to know that he wasn’t quite as heartless as the gunman first assumed…

Vash retreated towards the back of the group, still trying to think of something he could do. He watched as his teammates fired off all sorts of insane attacks, some of them even summoning their own monsters to fight for them, and Vash couldn’t tell any of them not to aim to kill anymore, just because he knew that they were all fighting for their lives, and it looked like it would be a long time before any of them got close enough to killing the beast for Vash to speak up. He looked down at the gun in his hands. He wanted to keep shooting at the thing, but he still only had a limited supply of bullets, and there seemed to be no use in shooting blindly if he couldn’t spot any area where the creature wasn’t so well-armored that he could actually damage it. Watching everyone else’s grand attacks, he almost even considered…

No. No no no. That’s a horrible idea — far too likely to hurt his teammates. Vash couldn’t believe he actually gave the thought any serious consideration, even for a second. Still looking to the other fighters, his eyes landed on Felt — and the strange, aura-filled flask that seemed to be materializing in his hands. “Wait, is that the same dark stuff that that dragon-” he began to ask, but he cut himself off as Felt, without much hesitation, tossed it at their foe. Vash froze for a moment as he waited to see what would happen.