Repair
A fic in which Otte attempts to learn to write Naoto's voice.
"It's broken."
Naoto sighed, taking the offered pocketwatch from...whatever this child was meant to be. She wondered if she was drugged and suffering from hallucinations, very vivid hallucinations of a child with her face and her voice, in some ridiculous coat. However, this theory was not well-founded – she was thinking too normally and rationally, and the area around her was too stable and detailed to be a falsehood. Naoto could only operate under the presumption that what she was experiencing and witnessing was truth until further evidence arose.
"Indeed," she said, leaning against the wall as the child stared expectantly up at her, "It has been broken for quite some time now."
She moved to slip it back into her pocket, but the child seized her hands, and glared up at her with fierce, yellow eyes. Naoto took a brief second to acknowledge the pain as the doppelgänger held tight onto her fingers, gouging her skin with small nails through the long sleeves of the coat. She was reacting to external stimuli – this was good, it meant she was alive, and it meant she was likely still of a sound mind.
"You fix it!"
It wasn't a question, or even a request, it was a demand. A loud, petty demand that set Naoto's teeth on edge.
She shook her head firmly, and to her horror, the child began to wail and bawl. There was something distinctly horrifying about watching a perfect double of herself weep and screech like a baby. The child wiped at its tear-stained face with the ridiculous sleeves, and stomped on the ground over and over with one foot, still wailing breathlessly.
"I want it fixed! I want it! I want it! Fix it!" the child screeched, and Naoto had to look away from the crying duplicate. She suddenly felt as though she may pass out, feeling a distinct fuzziness in her head she knew shamefully well from her habit of over-working. She had theories that this duplicate may be some clever trick of the culprit, a very cruel and unusual form of emotional torture. If this was true, again unlikely, but she had to consider all possible options, Naoto had to presume the culprit had capabilities far beyond what she'd ever anticipated.
All the same, this theory was ridiculous and she could conjure no scientific reasoning behind such an idea. She could not think how the killer would be capable of creating a perfect double of her, or how he could know about this little "Secret Laboratory". She had shared with no-one this little pretend-game of hers, and besides that, even if she had, no-one had the capability to simply dip into her head and see how she had envisioned it.
"Fix it! Fix it!" the child wailed, and Naoto clutched at her head, trying to think through the ear-splitting noise of its crying. The child was pounding pathetically at her stomach with tiny fists, and Naoto thought for a split-second that it had become even smaller than usual.
"That would be a waste of time," Naoto informed the child, as patiently as she could, "And highly impractical. This toy has been broken, again, for a very long while, and even if I were to fix it, I have no idea of the correct time anyway."
Naoto looked at her digital watch. The screen had been blinking nonsense since she had woken up in this surreal place. She theorised that during the fall here – she had felt the sensation of being thrown by her captor, strengthening her conclusion the culprit must be a male of decent stature – it had simply been knocked and broken. This was, however, quite inconvenient, as Naoto found it difficult to have any concept of how long she had been here.
Her impaired sight was another point of frustration for her. For some reason, the entire laboratory was swathed in an impenetrable fog. She had to move very close to anything to observe it, and considering the amount of lethal-looking needles and blades in this room, she was less comfortable drawing too near to anything here than she ought to be. There was the occasional low, mechanical hum that made her tense and draw back to whatever safe area she could find. For all her training, she still felt a low wave of unease and fear ebbing and flowing through her body in her time here. She could scarcely imagine what such tools were for, but for once did not want to investigate any further.
"So?" the child snapped impertinently, "I don't care. I just want you to fix it!"
Naoto sighed and sat down, forcing her hands away from the child. The child stared at her, trembling and Naoto feared another tantrum. However, instead, the child's face broke into a massive smile and she sat down in front of Naoto, grinning from ear to ear, the labcoat spilling out around its wrists and ankles.
"It's okay! I'll fix it! Then we'll be okay! I'm a genius!" the child said, and then suddenly took on that ridiculous, dramatic voice it had used once or twice before, "The body alteration process! The preparations are almost done! We will have everything we want very soon!"
The child tossed back its head and laughed, a great booming cackle normally used by mad scientists in poorly-made, low-budget movies. Naoto admitted to an embarrassingly vast knowledge of such movies, stemming from a childhood obsession of them. This was, however, behind her, and she felt no real urge to indulge the child in such silly and pointless games.
"I do not need or desire whatever this process of yours is about," she said sternly. The child's gleeful expression melted into anger again, and Naoto found herself subjected to a very loud huff and a pout. Naoto had quickly learned that the child's moods were very quick to change, as well as the subject of its disconnected ramblings, and its behaviour and tone of voice. There were few things in the child's mannerisms that remained constant.
"It's not fair. We..." the child paused mid-rant, and traced shapes on the floor with a finger, "We were born wrong! It's not fair! It's not fair!"
Naoto sighed, and shifted back a little. She did not like this child, she did not like this laboratory, she did not like those drills or needles or saws or any of the other innumerable horrors surrounding her. She felt herself shiver and grew tense, trying to control it. She could presume the culprit was watching her, and she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear. She would seize it, master it, and expel it from herself. Detectives were meant to be fearless.
"Life is rarely fair. You should accept that, and endeavour to be less troublesome in future," she said, pulling her knees close to herself. She leaned her forehead on her wrists and closed her eyes, immeasurably tired. She hadn't slept in quite some time, having been kept awake by this relentless child, and the fact that if she wasn't prepared, she could very well be murdered was hanging over her head. The best she could hope for until those children arrived, was a few precious, quiet moments, and a chance to rest.
"It's not fair. We were broken from the start, we were never gonna work! People tr-treat us like...I'm not a kid! We just gotta prove it! I can fix it! I'll show the whole world!" the child nattered on and on. This rant was one familiar to Naoto, too familiar. The child touched on this subject often, and at this point Naoto often found herself giving up analysis, in favour of blocking the noise out. She tried to push the incessant voice away and despite herself, Naoto found her awareness fading as she slipped into dreams, dreams that were much less disorienting than her reality.