Author's Notes: Taking a break from my Claymore fic "The Organization's Gambit" in order to work on this little number. The tradition for DOA stories is for the intro and finisher to have Aerosmith playing in the background, so for this one it's going to be 'Last Child'.
"So Kokoro, do you have the picture?" Megumi, one of her classmates, asked her. She was leaning over the DOA fighter's bento box intently.
"Hmm?" asked Kokoro, lowering her extremely sugared green tea just enough to look over the lunch canister at her. The doll-faced girl loved being near her friends, but when it came to the topic of her new life and everything it came with, they tended to get really pushy.
"Your long-lost big sister's "dog"? Don't tell me you forgot the picture we asked for," Reiko, another classmate, chimed in. It was obvious from her expression that she was really anxious to see it too.
"Oh him," she said, resignedly putting her canister down before rummaging around in her backpack. "I didn't think I could get very good pictures of him by myself, so I asked Hitomi to help me. She told me since I was her friend she would do her best to get 'candid shots' of him." She found the photo album her half-German friend had given her to her classmates so they could look at them.
"Wow! He's cute," Megumi remarked, flipping through the pages as both girls practically drooled over the pictures of the mysterious man as he trained, talked to various people, or worked on something. "But, um…he's looking at the camera in every picture. Aren't 'candid shots' supposed to be ones where the subject doesn't know the camera's there?"
Kokoro nodded as she picked up a pickled radish with her chopsticks. She munched on it for a bit, then swallowed before leaning closer to her classmates and speaking in a hushed tone. "Lisa says her parents designed him to stop assassins. It's impossible to sneak up on or past him, lie to him, or convince him you're someone you're not."
"So how much do you want for the pics?" Reiko asked, trying and failing to subtly pull the album away from Megumi. "How about 3000 for each one?"
"Cheapskate," Megumi teased, yanking back hard. "I'll pay 5000 for each one."
(Jake is right,) Kokoro thought, seeing the scene her classmates were causing attract more attention. The downside to going to an all-girls' school was that if word got around you brought a picture of an attractive boy in, you were waving a piece of meat at a pack of hungry dogs. (Rich girls are crazy.)
As soon as she finished that thought, she noticed that amidst the clamor of girls that were throwing their lot in with the impending riot, higher and higher bids were being shouted over the album that more than twenty hands were on now. Kokoro was starting to wonder if some of them even knew what they were bidding on when all of a sudden a shout interrupted the fight.
"Hey! He's still got all his clothes on! What a rip off!" one of the girls whose hands were on the album yelled angrily. She released the photo book then angrily pushed her way through the crowd.
"Boo…" some of the other girls said, and nearly half the crowd left once they'd heard that disappointing news. That still left more than Kokoro wanted to contend with, but the end lunch bell fixed that. The album was dropped as the other students scampered after their own bags then ran to class. Left to herself, she scooped the pictures up and stuffed them back into her bag before going to class too.
"Ok, I'm going to take my hands off your eyes now Jacques," Helena said coolly, "but you still can't open them until I say so." She stepped away from her longtime personal servant, whom she still was wondering how he managed to survive the destruction of the tritower, then sauntered over to the car she bought him to perch demurely on the driver's side of the hood.
"'Moiselle, I'm still not sure why this surprise had to be revealed to me in a cargo jet flying over-" he sniffed the air, noticing that it had smelled like saltwater for a while now. "-the ocean, of all things."
"Well, open your eyes and see for yourself." Helena said, leaning back on her left hand and stroking her thigh with her right. Her emerald eyes pierced his hazel ones as soon as they opened. As usual, even though she'd lived long enough to know better, she carefully searched his somber gaze for any flicker of joy or enticement. "So, what do you think? Would you make love to me on the hood of this…what do they call it, muscle car?"
Jake carefully scanned the sleek body of his beautiful owner and the powerful lines of the new Camaro SS that she had bought for him.
It was clear that she had gone out of her way to look tempting, apparently taking tips from Christie in the process. She was wearing her silver and black pleather one piece, which had been retailored into a catsuit. Although she didn't need any, her makeup had the appearance of being the result of hours of work by at least four or five people. She was radiant to start, and now she would be heart-stopping for anyone with women as a sexual preference.
It was less readily apparent that the surviving mechanics had already gotten their hands on the car upon which she rested, threatening to blend in with its black racing lines if she laid along them. All of them were aware of his preference for quiet, so the hood hadn't been cut away to allow any blowers to stick out through it. However, it was more than likely that a turbo charger, cold air intake, high energy spark plugs and other such things were under that large piece of plastic. Then again, Jake knew little about this model, let alone what it came with.
He did know, however that if he was a normal human man, he would have been extraordinarily thrilled at the sight of either of the two, let alone both. Knowing this and feeling what he should, though, were two different matters entirely.
"Is that what you want me to do, 'Moiselle?" Jake grimaced inwardly as soon as he finished that sentence. He knew what she really wanted from him. Like anyone who had a tool or toy that could do just about anything, she wanted to fill in the gaps. Halfway through his introspection, he realized that there were some odd panels on the car.
"You know what I want, Jacques!" Helena growled, returning his attention to her. She was angry, as he expected her to be. He had lost count of how many such conversations they'd had, and wondered why his nature always came out to be his fault. At least she wasn't blaming herself. That was drama he could do without. "I want you to want me. I want you to look at me with that hunger in your eyes that so many other men get when they l-"
(This should distract her for a moment. Whether she'll continue demanding that I fuck her or switch to beating me is still up in the air.) Jake had interrupted her by pressing his lips against hers. The action could hardly be called a kiss, although that is what it resembled. Over years of doing this to her and having her do it to him, he'd figured out exactly what angle and amount of pressure she preferred to have their lips join at, and when to use his tongue. However, thanks to his defect, there was still no passion, only a desire to please.
And if there was one thing Helena wanted, it was passion. The fact that her favorite toy couldn't give it to her was infuriating. But he always tried, and for the most part was a better person than she deserved the company of, so she invariably returned to him sooner or later. If not, she called him to her.
"You're a failure, Jacques," Helena said after managing to force herself to break the 'kiss'. "Do you understand how much it hurts a woman's self-esteem, when she sees that her company brings you no pleasure?"
She didn't know why she felt it necessary to tell him things like this. She knew full well that when Lisa's parents controlled how his brain developed, they decided that a man that found happiness only in the approval of others would work hardest for that. And Donovan tightened that noose even further by making those 'others' into a permission-based list. As his owner since he was taken out of the vat, Helena was the one who controlled that list. God knew that her misery was the kind that adored company.
"I think you should use it to go pick up Kokoro. She should be released from that awful school her mother sends her to soon," Helena ordered as she slid off the hood. Jake watched her cautiously. There was no telling what she was going to do, especially when she seemed calm. She opened the driver's side door and tossed the key to him. "Get in the car, you're about to be dropped off."
"'Moiselle, we're thirty thousand feet in the air. I don't think this is a good-" his mellow protest was cut short by the daggers she glared at him. Clamping his mouth, he got into the car, and she shut the door and walked to one side of the cargo bay they were in.
"Do not worry about our altitude. In your case, that will not be a factor for much longer," she punctuated this remark by activating the ramp controls and the cargo release.
Jake sighed and started the car, then put it in reverse and released the emergency brake. The subtle purr of the engine was completely overwhelmed by the sound of the air rushing around them as he blazed out into the blue sky below. He swore he saw headlights before the roof of his car dipped below the edge of the ramp. After more seconds than he would have liked, the extra panels on the Camaro tore away and released four massive parachutes, which thankfully deployed both fully and simultaneously.
Helena leaned in the driver's side window of the sleek black Aston Martin that her assassin/handmaid took to replace her silver Jaguar, idly musing over the possible deeper meaning of the two switching vehicle color preferences. Bright silver eyes met her dark emerald ones and she paused in her pondering of her relationship with her two barely human servants, and theirs with each other, to give Christie her order.
"See to it that no one interferes with their time together," Helena told her, the ice of her tone adding its own ring to her melodic voice.
"With great pleasure," Christie purred as she started her luxurious auto's monster engine. Then she felt a harsh grip on the forearm closest to the window, and turned to look at her 'boss'.
"That includes you. If they're not facing a dire threat, I do not want them to see you," Helena added, irritated that Christie was the kind of person that made it necessary to spell this out. Then she said to the passenger, "and I especially don't want you to be seen. Your presence is only a precaution for an extreme emergency. In any other case, you are forbidden from going outside."
Alpha-152, having taken the code name Amiko, blinked her glowing eyes and nodded, cowering away from Helena as she did. The blonde still wasn't sure how Jake brought her back under DOATEC's control, or taught her how to speak for that matter. But she only spoke to him, and for the most part still tried to avoid everyone else except Lisa. Which brought another mystery to mind: no one ever refused Lisa's presence, even if they were normally highly antisocial. Helena stood up and moved to release the Aston Martin as she decided she would have to find out how Lisa did that.
As soon as the British auto was released, its driver shifted into first and gunned it like she was on a drag strip. Amiko was sure they made it to third gear before the rear tires left the ramp, and somehow they cleared it without striking it with the bumper. The clone looked around in a near panic when Christie didn't immediately release the parachutes, ready to teleport if they reached terminal velocity.
"Woohoo! Now this is what I call bloody entertainment!" the assassin crowed as the Aston Martin arced into the cloudy blue void of the sky surrounding them.
The sudden deceleration caused by the parachutes' deployment didn't reduce her excitement. She was in an expensive, powerful car miles above the ground with a beautiful, clearly unwilling woman at her side. Death was still a very real possibility, and there was no replacement for the adrenaline rush. Christie looked over at the subdued, terrified demihuman in the passenger seat and wondered if there was time to rape her before they hit the ground.
"Target vehicle coordinates stabilized," the GPS, apparently voiced by Sean Connery, interrupted her lurid thoughts, as computers were wont to do. Christie turned her attention to the tracker, which showed that Jake had landed on the top floor of a multi-tier parking lot. As she took more direct control of her own vehicle and shifted into neutral to allow a slightly gentler landing, she wondered if he meant to do that.
"Well, mon Ami," Christie started, directing the car to a dead end street just big enough for it, "shall we go watch the kids play together for a while?" She returned her gaze to the clone, wanting to see her reaction to her bastardization of Helena's language. Disappointingly, Amiko said nothing while she intently watched the tracker's representation of Jake's car as he wound his way down the floors at around 80 miles per hour. "Spoilsport."
Christie considered ways to make the latest in the line of Kasumi's clones more fun as she shifted into first, then second again and made her way onto the main streets.
