A/N: Thanks for the reviews. I really enjoy reading them, and I was
wondering how people would respond to the last chapter.
Actually, I have read The Silver Metal Lover. Twice. I love that book. I wasn't thinking of it when I started writing this story, but I did notice some similarities once I got going.
So I realize that this is not an entirely original idea (I could name a few other stories that also share some of the same elements, including the movie, Bladerunner), but I hope that I can do something relatively fresh with a premise that is, if not completely new, at least not stale.
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
Synthetic Emotions.
It was impossible for a youkai to feel thwarted. A youkai could not feel rejected, or hurt, or angry. 'It' would not be affected in the least by the whims of 'its' human master. A machine, whose brain was made up of silicon and wire, with data relays instead of nerve synapses, could not truly experience any emotions. It could not want anything, and since it had no desires, it could not be disappointed when its desires came to nothing. Inuyasha knew these things, and a hanyou was just some twisted f*ck's attempt to make a better youkai.
So why the hell did he 'want' to rip something to shreds with his claws?
Why did Kagome's words hurt so damn much?
"I don't want something fake." The hanyou winced at the memory. He'd thought. . . but it didn't matter what he'd thought, did it? Kagome had seemed to believe the old hag when she said he could feel, and she'd saved him from being dismantled presumably for that reason. The girl was crazy, of course, but it had seemed as though she wanted to believe youkai could be at least almost real. The truth stung. She thought he was 'fake.'
'Maybe she's more like Kikyo than I thought.'
Inuyasha found himself in the living room and suddenly realized he didn't have anywhere to go from here. The girl owned him, so he could not leave. And he didn't want to suspend his functions.
There was that word again. Want. A youkai ought not to be able to want because all their responses were just programmed into them. While hanyou were supposed to be different, they were still essentially the same thing. Weren't they?
If someone knew the answer to that, they had never bothered to share it with him. Kikyo hadn't known, that was certain. She had been part of an arrangement with the company that made him, chosen as a product tester before they put hanyou into market production. They hadn't told her anything about the differences between hanyou and youkai, that would have spoiled the experiment.
He could still remember her voice with digital clarity.
"You cannot love me," she said, tears forming in her eyes but refusing to fall. "You cannot 'love.' You're nothing. A machine. A puppet. You cannot love."
He hadn't been able to say anything to that. Supposedly she had loved him, and she had known how he 'felt' about her. Inuyasha had never known what had brought about that outburst, but it was the last thing she said to him. "You cannot love."
She was right, wasn't she? But if she was, how come just the memory stung. How come he still felt? Kagome had said something about Shippo believing he was scared. Was that the answer? Was he just believing his own false emotions? If that was it, whoever had come up with that one should be put on the list of The World's Most Sadistic Bastards.
Inuyasha's eyes fell on Kikyo's love seat, waiting for morning when Kagome would decide whether or not she wanted to keep it. The hanyou flexed his claws and growled. It would do.
*~*~*
Sesshomaru stepped out of the back of the storage truck, blinking to focus his eyes to the new light, and took in his surroundings. Neatly tended sweeps of lawn rolled away from a red cobbled driveway. Flowerbeds flanked the front door to his new mistress's house, which was more compound than mansion, and a far cry from his previous owner's penthouse suite. Rows of picture windows gave a broken view of the house's interiors, mostly of well furnished rooms painted in a soothing off-white.
The whole scene was lit up by security lights, and surveillance youkai made to look like owls and bats glided through their rounds, or perched strategically in ornamental trees. Security youkai wearing the shapes of wolves roamed around the grounds. Sesshomaru barely deigned to notice the youkai; they were so far inferior to him that comparison was laughable. He alone would be better equipped to protect his charge than a whole army of these barely-sentient toys. However, few people seemed to remember that he was designed to fulfill that role.
'I wonder if all this is necessary, or if the master of the house is simply paranoid,' the youkai thought as he attempted to smooth some of the wrinkles out of the rumpled suit he wore. He would have preferred to change his clothes, but unfortunately, this was all that his last owner had sent with him.
"This way," the truck driver commanded him, but Sesshomaru didn't pay him any attention. It wasn't as though the man owned him, and there was nothing in his codes that required him to obey delivery boys. Instead he continued to make himself as presentable as the circumstances allowed, something which his makers had included as part of his secondary programming, and watched out of the corner of his vision as figures moved behind two of the picture windows. One was probably is new mistress. Who was the other? A servant, perhaps? Doubtful, as both figures had appeared to be human. He would probably be required to familiarize himself with the other members of the household.
When he was satisfied with that his suit was in the best state in would reach without a dry cleaner, he strode up the steps toward the front door, ignoring the livid truck driver as he brushed the man out of his way. One clawed hand extended to ring the bell, but the door opened before Sesshomaru touched it.
The person Sesshomaru found himself facing was not his new owner. She was a girl, probably about thirteen or fourteen, and wearing her pajamas--a white tanktop and a pair of light blue pants patterned with pink flowers. There was a bandage on one of the girl's wrists, and a fading bruise shadowed her left eye. 'How did she get those?' She regarded Sesshomaru with unabashed curiosity, seemly completely unconcerned with her state of undress. What she made of him was harder to tell. She wasn't afraid of him, that much was clear. Not that she should be, but many people were afraid of him nonetheless. Most of his past owners included. He had half suspected his last owner wouldn't give him to her sister, but return him to his manufacturer to be dismantled.
The girl met his scrutiny with wide, dark eyes, then smiled for no reason at all the youkai could fathom. What was this girl doing here? And where was his new owner?
"Go to bed, Rin," a raspy, female voice said, answering Sesshomaru's unspoken question. The voice belonged to a woman who stood near the top of an opulent flight of stairs, the kind people put in the foyer to let other people know how rich they were. This woman was somewhat taller and rounder than his last mistress, but the resemblance was there. She had the same soft black hair, though hers was cut short, and the same almond shaped dusky eyes. She was a little younger, and she wore fewer cosmetics, so the dark rings under her eyes were visible. Her posture was unnaturally relaxed, as though her bones failed to hold together in the proper way.
The girl backed up a few step, but didn't leave. She fixed a blank gaze on the woman who was, presumably, her mother. That would make her the 'daughter' which his last mistress had spoken off.
"Rin," the woman said again, threateningly, a frown knotting her brow.
This time the girl did leave. She still showed no sign of fear. Sesshomaru watched her go until she ducked around a corner and disappeared.
"Don't mind her," the woman said, drawing the youkai's attention. "She is not well."
"Madame," Sesshomaru said noncommentally. The woman wore a red silk robe patterned with silver bamboo stalks, and black lingerie underneath, not entirely hidden by her robe. He guessed the effect was meant to be alluring. He chose not to respond; if she wanted play-acting she could very well ask for it.
"Call me Ryoko," she told him, swaying as she descended the stairs. "Madame sounds so formal, and it makes me feel old." As she approached him, she raked him over with her eyes, taking in his long silver hair, pointed ears, the marks on his cheeks.
"You're very well made," she murmured when she stood only a few feet away from him. "I wonder why my sister got rid of you?"
"I believe she tired of youkai," Sesshomaru told her, his tone disinterested.
Ryoko laughed. "My good luck then. I'm tired of men."
Sesshomaru chose not to answer that and allowed himself to be led upstairs to a bedroom. His first impression was of sloppy house keeping. Various articles--mostly clothing, though he also spotted an umbrella, some romance novels, and a water pipe--littered the ground, and any other relatively horizontal surface. A pair of panty hose hung from the back of the vanity chair, and an open tube of mascara was leaving a stain on the eggshell carpet. Lipstick, nail polish, and a vibrator shared the nightstand with the pedestal to a cordless phone. The phone itself was nowhere to be seen.
It was only after he became accustomed to the rooms messy state that Sesshomaru noticed that nearly everything was expensive. Even the nail polish was the most expensive brand out there. Most of the clothing, which was left lying out so thoughtlessly, was designer. The labels and tags baring fashionable names and attached to things which their owner obviously didn't care about one way or the other stated clearly that money really was no object.
He only had a moment to register this before finding his mistress pressed against his chest, her fingernails dragging lightly over the back of his neck while her lips left kisses on his jaw. Sesshomaru closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around her, drawing her in closer. 'Back to the game.'
*~*~*
When she was through with him, Ryoko dismissed him with a wave of her hand while she lit a cigarette with the other. "There's a room at the end of the hall for you to use. Last door on the left."
Realizing his business with his mistress was done for the night, Sesshomaru quickly dressed and left. The smell of her cigarette followed him, burning his sensitive nose. He glanced down the hall and saw the room she had given him. The door was open, revealing what looked like a guest bedroom. For a moment the youkai wondered at the logic of this before concluding that it was very likely that the woman would want him to have his own room for when her husband returned. For all that her own room was practically drowning in feminine things, he had still smelled the man she shared it with sometimes, and his clothes had been in the closet.
She hadn't told him that he had to go to his room, though, so there was nothing requiring him to. After another instant of deliberation, he walked back down the stairs and studied his new home.
Like the master bedroom, everything he saw spoke of money. The living room furniture was soft leather. Crystal and antique china were displayed in glass cases. Both paintings and wall hangings were done by artists who were either old and famous, or trendy and famous. The Monet in the largest of the three dining rooms was an original, and the decor had been chosen to match the glowing pastels of the impressionistic water lilies.
The kitchen was less extravagant than the rest of the house, but still very well appointed. The counter-tops were all marble. The refrigerator was stainless steel, as were the eight burner range and twin ovens.
It was in the kitchen, sitting on a marble counter-top, that Sesshomaru found Rin. The girl was still in her pajamas, and was eating a bowl of some marshmallow filled, sugar coated breakfast cereal. The box and the milk were still resting on the counter next to her. The youkai watched as the girl shoveled her cereal into her mouth and kicked her feet in the air.
When she saw him, Rin motioned with her elbow to the box beside her.
"I don't need to eat," Sesshomaru told her without inflection. The girl's expression fell at his words and she sighed sadly. Her black eye once again caught his attention. It had faded to a yellowish green, so it must have been fairly old. There were other bruises, too, on her arms, and one at the juncture of her neck, partially hidden by her tanktop. They were all old and nearly gone. The bandage on her wrist drew his attention as well. It was taped tightly, and the faint smell of antiseptic was apparent to the youkai. That was newer than the bruises.
"What happened?" Sesshomaru wasn't sure why he asked that. He hadn't even realized he was going to. But looking at her, he found he wanted to know.
The girl looked up, and for a long moment just met his cold golden gaze. Then, without warning, she smiled. Sesshomaru did not know what to make of this.
*~*~*
A/N: Alright, so I may have lied about how dark Sesshomaru's subplot was going to get. I wasn't really sure myself until I started writing it. Anyway, I bumped up Rin's age, but I don't plan to put any real Sess/Rin in this because I don't think she's really old enough, and Sesshomaru is still quite a ways away from having a real intimate relationship. The reason I bumped up Rin's age was because I felt really bad about the idea of putting a little kid through the stuff I'm putting Rin through. In fact, I still feel kind of bad about it. . .
I will probably change the rating on this story soon. I haven't actually decided yet if there will be any lemon in here, or if I'll keep the citrus strictly lime, but If you haven't noticed, some of the themes are getting a little mature, and with the addition of Rin's mother I'm going to be slipping in some drug references as well. What's more, I'm starting to have some trouble censoring my language.
Until next time, I'm not a mind reader, so please review. Thanks again.
Actually, I have read The Silver Metal Lover. Twice. I love that book. I wasn't thinking of it when I started writing this story, but I did notice some similarities once I got going.
So I realize that this is not an entirely original idea (I could name a few other stories that also share some of the same elements, including the movie, Bladerunner), but I hope that I can do something relatively fresh with a premise that is, if not completely new, at least not stale.
Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha.
Synthetic Emotions.
It was impossible for a youkai to feel thwarted. A youkai could not feel rejected, or hurt, or angry. 'It' would not be affected in the least by the whims of 'its' human master. A machine, whose brain was made up of silicon and wire, with data relays instead of nerve synapses, could not truly experience any emotions. It could not want anything, and since it had no desires, it could not be disappointed when its desires came to nothing. Inuyasha knew these things, and a hanyou was just some twisted f*ck's attempt to make a better youkai.
So why the hell did he 'want' to rip something to shreds with his claws?
Why did Kagome's words hurt so damn much?
"I don't want something fake." The hanyou winced at the memory. He'd thought. . . but it didn't matter what he'd thought, did it? Kagome had seemed to believe the old hag when she said he could feel, and she'd saved him from being dismantled presumably for that reason. The girl was crazy, of course, but it had seemed as though she wanted to believe youkai could be at least almost real. The truth stung. She thought he was 'fake.'
'Maybe she's more like Kikyo than I thought.'
Inuyasha found himself in the living room and suddenly realized he didn't have anywhere to go from here. The girl owned him, so he could not leave. And he didn't want to suspend his functions.
There was that word again. Want. A youkai ought not to be able to want because all their responses were just programmed into them. While hanyou were supposed to be different, they were still essentially the same thing. Weren't they?
If someone knew the answer to that, they had never bothered to share it with him. Kikyo hadn't known, that was certain. She had been part of an arrangement with the company that made him, chosen as a product tester before they put hanyou into market production. They hadn't told her anything about the differences between hanyou and youkai, that would have spoiled the experiment.
He could still remember her voice with digital clarity.
"You cannot love me," she said, tears forming in her eyes but refusing to fall. "You cannot 'love.' You're nothing. A machine. A puppet. You cannot love."
He hadn't been able to say anything to that. Supposedly she had loved him, and she had known how he 'felt' about her. Inuyasha had never known what had brought about that outburst, but it was the last thing she said to him. "You cannot love."
She was right, wasn't she? But if she was, how come just the memory stung. How come he still felt? Kagome had said something about Shippo believing he was scared. Was that the answer? Was he just believing his own false emotions? If that was it, whoever had come up with that one should be put on the list of The World's Most Sadistic Bastards.
Inuyasha's eyes fell on Kikyo's love seat, waiting for morning when Kagome would decide whether or not she wanted to keep it. The hanyou flexed his claws and growled. It would do.
*~*~*
Sesshomaru stepped out of the back of the storage truck, blinking to focus his eyes to the new light, and took in his surroundings. Neatly tended sweeps of lawn rolled away from a red cobbled driveway. Flowerbeds flanked the front door to his new mistress's house, which was more compound than mansion, and a far cry from his previous owner's penthouse suite. Rows of picture windows gave a broken view of the house's interiors, mostly of well furnished rooms painted in a soothing off-white.
The whole scene was lit up by security lights, and surveillance youkai made to look like owls and bats glided through their rounds, or perched strategically in ornamental trees. Security youkai wearing the shapes of wolves roamed around the grounds. Sesshomaru barely deigned to notice the youkai; they were so far inferior to him that comparison was laughable. He alone would be better equipped to protect his charge than a whole army of these barely-sentient toys. However, few people seemed to remember that he was designed to fulfill that role.
'I wonder if all this is necessary, or if the master of the house is simply paranoid,' the youkai thought as he attempted to smooth some of the wrinkles out of the rumpled suit he wore. He would have preferred to change his clothes, but unfortunately, this was all that his last owner had sent with him.
"This way," the truck driver commanded him, but Sesshomaru didn't pay him any attention. It wasn't as though the man owned him, and there was nothing in his codes that required him to obey delivery boys. Instead he continued to make himself as presentable as the circumstances allowed, something which his makers had included as part of his secondary programming, and watched out of the corner of his vision as figures moved behind two of the picture windows. One was probably is new mistress. Who was the other? A servant, perhaps? Doubtful, as both figures had appeared to be human. He would probably be required to familiarize himself with the other members of the household.
When he was satisfied with that his suit was in the best state in would reach without a dry cleaner, he strode up the steps toward the front door, ignoring the livid truck driver as he brushed the man out of his way. One clawed hand extended to ring the bell, but the door opened before Sesshomaru touched it.
The person Sesshomaru found himself facing was not his new owner. She was a girl, probably about thirteen or fourteen, and wearing her pajamas--a white tanktop and a pair of light blue pants patterned with pink flowers. There was a bandage on one of the girl's wrists, and a fading bruise shadowed her left eye. 'How did she get those?' She regarded Sesshomaru with unabashed curiosity, seemly completely unconcerned with her state of undress. What she made of him was harder to tell. She wasn't afraid of him, that much was clear. Not that she should be, but many people were afraid of him nonetheless. Most of his past owners included. He had half suspected his last owner wouldn't give him to her sister, but return him to his manufacturer to be dismantled.
The girl met his scrutiny with wide, dark eyes, then smiled for no reason at all the youkai could fathom. What was this girl doing here? And where was his new owner?
"Go to bed, Rin," a raspy, female voice said, answering Sesshomaru's unspoken question. The voice belonged to a woman who stood near the top of an opulent flight of stairs, the kind people put in the foyer to let other people know how rich they were. This woman was somewhat taller and rounder than his last mistress, but the resemblance was there. She had the same soft black hair, though hers was cut short, and the same almond shaped dusky eyes. She was a little younger, and she wore fewer cosmetics, so the dark rings under her eyes were visible. Her posture was unnaturally relaxed, as though her bones failed to hold together in the proper way.
The girl backed up a few step, but didn't leave. She fixed a blank gaze on the woman who was, presumably, her mother. That would make her the 'daughter' which his last mistress had spoken off.
"Rin," the woman said again, threateningly, a frown knotting her brow.
This time the girl did leave. She still showed no sign of fear. Sesshomaru watched her go until she ducked around a corner and disappeared.
"Don't mind her," the woman said, drawing the youkai's attention. "She is not well."
"Madame," Sesshomaru said noncommentally. The woman wore a red silk robe patterned with silver bamboo stalks, and black lingerie underneath, not entirely hidden by her robe. He guessed the effect was meant to be alluring. He chose not to respond; if she wanted play-acting she could very well ask for it.
"Call me Ryoko," she told him, swaying as she descended the stairs. "Madame sounds so formal, and it makes me feel old." As she approached him, she raked him over with her eyes, taking in his long silver hair, pointed ears, the marks on his cheeks.
"You're very well made," she murmured when she stood only a few feet away from him. "I wonder why my sister got rid of you?"
"I believe she tired of youkai," Sesshomaru told her, his tone disinterested.
Ryoko laughed. "My good luck then. I'm tired of men."
Sesshomaru chose not to answer that and allowed himself to be led upstairs to a bedroom. His first impression was of sloppy house keeping. Various articles--mostly clothing, though he also spotted an umbrella, some romance novels, and a water pipe--littered the ground, and any other relatively horizontal surface. A pair of panty hose hung from the back of the vanity chair, and an open tube of mascara was leaving a stain on the eggshell carpet. Lipstick, nail polish, and a vibrator shared the nightstand with the pedestal to a cordless phone. The phone itself was nowhere to be seen.
It was only after he became accustomed to the rooms messy state that Sesshomaru noticed that nearly everything was expensive. Even the nail polish was the most expensive brand out there. Most of the clothing, which was left lying out so thoughtlessly, was designer. The labels and tags baring fashionable names and attached to things which their owner obviously didn't care about one way or the other stated clearly that money really was no object.
He only had a moment to register this before finding his mistress pressed against his chest, her fingernails dragging lightly over the back of his neck while her lips left kisses on his jaw. Sesshomaru closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around her, drawing her in closer. 'Back to the game.'
*~*~*
When she was through with him, Ryoko dismissed him with a wave of her hand while she lit a cigarette with the other. "There's a room at the end of the hall for you to use. Last door on the left."
Realizing his business with his mistress was done for the night, Sesshomaru quickly dressed and left. The smell of her cigarette followed him, burning his sensitive nose. He glanced down the hall and saw the room she had given him. The door was open, revealing what looked like a guest bedroom. For a moment the youkai wondered at the logic of this before concluding that it was very likely that the woman would want him to have his own room for when her husband returned. For all that her own room was practically drowning in feminine things, he had still smelled the man she shared it with sometimes, and his clothes had been in the closet.
She hadn't told him that he had to go to his room, though, so there was nothing requiring him to. After another instant of deliberation, he walked back down the stairs and studied his new home.
Like the master bedroom, everything he saw spoke of money. The living room furniture was soft leather. Crystal and antique china were displayed in glass cases. Both paintings and wall hangings were done by artists who were either old and famous, or trendy and famous. The Monet in the largest of the three dining rooms was an original, and the decor had been chosen to match the glowing pastels of the impressionistic water lilies.
The kitchen was less extravagant than the rest of the house, but still very well appointed. The counter-tops were all marble. The refrigerator was stainless steel, as were the eight burner range and twin ovens.
It was in the kitchen, sitting on a marble counter-top, that Sesshomaru found Rin. The girl was still in her pajamas, and was eating a bowl of some marshmallow filled, sugar coated breakfast cereal. The box and the milk were still resting on the counter next to her. The youkai watched as the girl shoveled her cereal into her mouth and kicked her feet in the air.
When she saw him, Rin motioned with her elbow to the box beside her.
"I don't need to eat," Sesshomaru told her without inflection. The girl's expression fell at his words and she sighed sadly. Her black eye once again caught his attention. It had faded to a yellowish green, so it must have been fairly old. There were other bruises, too, on her arms, and one at the juncture of her neck, partially hidden by her tanktop. They were all old and nearly gone. The bandage on her wrist drew his attention as well. It was taped tightly, and the faint smell of antiseptic was apparent to the youkai. That was newer than the bruises.
"What happened?" Sesshomaru wasn't sure why he asked that. He hadn't even realized he was going to. But looking at her, he found he wanted to know.
The girl looked up, and for a long moment just met his cold golden gaze. Then, without warning, she smiled. Sesshomaru did not know what to make of this.
*~*~*
A/N: Alright, so I may have lied about how dark Sesshomaru's subplot was going to get. I wasn't really sure myself until I started writing it. Anyway, I bumped up Rin's age, but I don't plan to put any real Sess/Rin in this because I don't think she's really old enough, and Sesshomaru is still quite a ways away from having a real intimate relationship. The reason I bumped up Rin's age was because I felt really bad about the idea of putting a little kid through the stuff I'm putting Rin through. In fact, I still feel kind of bad about it. . .
I will probably change the rating on this story soon. I haven't actually decided yet if there will be any lemon in here, or if I'll keep the citrus strictly lime, but If you haven't noticed, some of the themes are getting a little mature, and with the addition of Rin's mother I'm going to be slipping in some drug references as well. What's more, I'm starting to have some trouble censoring my language.
Until next time, I'm not a mind reader, so please review. Thanks again.