A/N: To answer a reoccurring question, I have never seen/read Chobits, so
any resemblance is purely coincidental. So, anywho, thanks for all the
reviews! I really love seeing them all, and they make it easier to write
the next chapter. Keep reviewing! I'm at one hundred and thirty. Yay!
Oh, and remember, Myoga's information isn't always accurate. . .
Disclaimer: I think I've already made this clear. I don't own Inuyasha.
Synthetic Emotions
"Tetsusaiga!" Myoga piped happily. "Tetsusaiga was one of Taisho's last projects. Because hanyou are meant to have emotional responses, they often become unstable. Human brains have evolved to cope with emotions, but Inutaiyoukai's engineers found that even the most complex AI could be overwhelmed by intense feelings, like anger or fear. The purpose of the Tetsusaiga program is to balance their instability."
Inuyasha looked from Kagome, who was listening to the flea youkai's explanation with rapt attention, to Miroku, who seemed very proud of himself. He felt a growl building in his chest.
"Shit," he interrupted finally. "Did we come all the way here for this? To listen to some about some mythical 'program'?"
"Shh, Inuyasha," Kagome hushed him. "He isn't finished."
"You've got to be kidding me," Inuyasha complained. "Well, get on with it already."
"Of course," Myoga said, unfazed by this interruption. "Because hanyou are meant to be as close to human as is possible, and permissible under the Replica Act, it was Taisho's intention that Tetsusaiga also would come to replace the codes that restrict a hanyou's actions."
Now Inuyasha could not suppress a snarl. "What's the point of that?" he demanded caustically. "How do you sell youkai if they can't be controlled? It doesn't make any sense."
"The point isn't to sell hanyou," Kagome said calmly, her tone soothing. She was trying to placate him. "Taisho wanted to create. He wasn't interested in the profit--"
"Bullshit!" He didn't want to hear her say that. He didn't want to see the look of sympathy in her eyes. Couldn't she see that it was wasted on him? She must understand that, somewhere. He could still hear her saying, 'I don't want something fake.' Inuyasha tore his attention away from her, forcing her pitying eyes from his mind. "Even if he wanted to create some amazing touchy-feely youkai, you can't sell that sort of thing to stock holders."
"Inuyasha," the girl whispered, and he could almost sense her feeling sorry for him.
"Inuyasha," Miroku said at the same time, watching the hanyou intently. He could see the thoughts moving like clockwork behind the young man's gaze. "Did you know about Tetsusaiga?"
"Keh," Inuyasha muttered, twisting away from both sets of eyes. "I'm going to wait outside, Kagome. Call me if this idiot tries anything."
"I--Alright," Kagome said, nodding. "If that's what you want."
Inuyasha snorted and left the shop.
Outside, it was growing dark. Streetlamps were flickering on, making puddles of sodium-yellow light. Inuyasha breathed in deeply. He didn't know why he did that, but his own algorithms were occasionally beyond him. Why did he sigh, or frown, or show any emotions? Was it because he was programmed to express his emotions a certain way? Or was there something about being angry that intrinsically led to scowling?
And why the hell did he hate the look in Kagome's eyes just now? Anger was an emotion Inuyasha was familiar with--the one he was most familiar with-- but this was different. The sharp surge was still there, but instead of the heat and blankness that generally went with it, there was another feeling, like sinking or falling. That was the only way he could think to describe it as he pondered this foreign response. It was like being low.
He took another deep breath, and smelled the girl scent faintly on his clothes. She had a warm scent, like ginger, or cinnamon and cloves. It was the sort of smell that could wrap a person up and pull him in. Smelling that, the heavy, low feeling eased a bit.
Both the ups and the downs were because of her. Why?
He had felt before, had always felt, but it was different since he woke up. What had changed? Was it the girl? Or the fifty years in storage?
Maybe she had screwed up some of his settings, and he hadn't realized it?
Inuyasha watched as yet another streetlight came to life, lost in his thoughts. There had never been this many questions when he was with Kikyo.
*~*~*
Kagome watched the hanyou leave, trying not to worry about his outburst, and failing miserably. He could be so strange sometimes. Something had been bothering him, but she couldn't tell just what. At first it had seemed that Taisho's idealism had frustrated him, then corporate attitudes.
She did not understand. Didn't he want to know about this? About himself?
"Kagome?" Miroku said, bringing her back.
"Is he. . . I mean," the young man was staring fixedly at the door Inuyasha had left through. "Does he?"
"Does he what?" Kagome asked tiredly, wondering just how she was going to explain Inuyasha to her friend. She'd known Miroku for a long time, and she supposed she trusted him with 'most' things, but money and women tended to influence his judgement, and Inuyasha could feasible fall under the category of money.
"Is he what I think he is?"
"That depends," the girl evaded. "What do you think he is?"
"I think 'he' is probably as close as Taisho ever came to realizing his dream." Miroku was obviously interested. He tended not to get excited about things, but she had known him long enough to recognize the symptoms.
"Miroku," Kagome said, deciding to put her faith in her friend. "Inuyasha is precisely what Taisho was trying to make. He feels at least as strongly as you or me."
Miroku took a moment to assimilate that, outwardly calm while his mind was racing with the possibilities. "Myoga," he said after an uncomfortably long silence. "Will you start looking up information on Inuyasha specifically? There must be something, somewhere."
"Of course," Myoga said, leaping from Kagome's shoulder back to the counter top. Kagome watched as the youkai sat down, folding all four arms across his chest, the expression on his minutely articulated face becoming one of concentration.
"If he has emotions, I wonder. . ."
"What do you wonder, Miroku?"
"Nothing," he told her, shaking his head mildly. "You don't mind me looking into this, do you? I'll call you if I find anything."
"No, of course not," Kagome assured him. "But I ought to be going. I don't like leaving him out there waiting, you know?"
"Okay. I'll call you later." The girl nodded and turned to go, her mind still mostly focused on Inuyasha. Why did he respond the way he did? What went on in the hanyou's 'brain?' Had he known Taisho, she wondered suddenly. It was easy to forget he was more than old enough. Kagome was so absorbed in her thoughts, for a moment she failed to register the fact that Miroku's hand was resting gently on the lower curve of her ass.
"Pervert!" she shouted, whirling on the young man and bringing her hand across his cheek in a resounding slap.
Kagome barely had time to recognize the sound of the bell over the door jangling violently, before a blur of white hair and red shirt pushed between her and Miroku, and Miroku found himself dangling in the air from the front of his rumpled purple dress shirt. Both humans were left slack jawed with shock at Inuyasha's sudden reappearance.
"I thought we were clear on this," the hanyou growled menacingly. "You. Do. Not. Touch. Kagome."
Miroku nodded, trying hard to look innocent and dignified, and failing due to the fact his eyes were huge and perfectly round, and his feet were a good five inches away from touching the floor. Inuyasha gave him a light shake, then dropped him.
"Don't you think that was a little extreme?" Kagome asked, voice wavering slightly, in the silence that followed.
"Keh," was Inuyasha's only reply.
"I'll call you later," Miroku told Kagome again, but his eyes were locked the hanyou. The girl nodded to show she heard him, and tugged lightly on Inuyasha's sleeve.
"Kagome, be careful."
That startled Kagome, and she studied her friend before answering, finding real concern in his normally calm expression. "Don't worry," she told him. "Inuyasha wouldn't hurt me."
She believed that.
*~*~*
The smell that met Sesshomaru's nose when he opened the door to his mistress's bedroom nearly made him leave. It was bitter, strongly alcoholic smell, with a sweet edge from melted sugar that bit into the delicate tissue of his nose mercilessly. He found the source with little effort. A half-empty bottle rested on a service tray on the floor next to the bed. The bottle's contents were a toxic shade of cloudy green, and the paraphernalia scattered around it left no doubt in the youkai mind what it was.
Absinthe was illegal in Japan, but then, so were many of Ryoko's pastimes. He was not particularly startled to find the woman drank the stuff along everything else she did. Why would he be surprised, considering the other things she habitually inhaled, ingested, or injected into her body?
The woman herself was sprawled across her bed, oblivious to his presence. Her half-lidded eyes shown feverishly, and a sheen of sweat stood out on her body as she panted slowly.
Sesshomaru caught a breath in his throat. Surely absinthe couldn't account for this. The wormwood alcohol was dangerous, but while his data banks didn't supply him with detailed information, he was fairly certain that it wasn't capable of producing this king of state. Drawing another slow breath through his nose, he sifted through the scents of the room until he defined an almost nonexistent, chemical smell. It hid underneath the stronger odors, faint even to him. Approaching Ryoko slowly, he scanned the room for the source of this faint, unnerving smell.
Eventually he found it, coming from a tiny, silver tin. The container was too small to be a snuffbox, and too deep to be a cigarette case. Opening the tin gingerly, he found it was full of a crystalline white powder. Cocaine, he wondered, taking a small amount on his finger and applying it to the tip of his tongue to check for the telltale numbness. Instead, he was tasted something sickly sweet, and undeniably chemical.
The pieces fell into place. Tranquility.
Tranquility was a relatively new drug, but very contraband. In humans it produced a euphoric state in small doses, and oblivion in larger. It had no effect on youkai, of course, but still, Sesshomaru couldn't entirely fight the reflex to gag. The woman was stupider than he'd thought if she was taking this stuff. No one 'dabbled' in Tranquility. It was as addictive as nicotine, and nearly as dangerous as opiates.
'Why the hell did she decide to do this tonight?' he wondered, aware that his company would not be required now. He doubted that she would be coherent enough to appreciate them until tomorrow morning. Still, what had possessed the woman to put Tranquility in absinthe?
He was still pondering that when he heard the main gate swinging open, and the soft rumble of a car engine pulling into the drive. Suspecting he had found his answer, the youkai looked out the window. A sleek black luxury car was slowing to a stop in front of the main door.
*~*~*
A/N: Alright, thanks for reading. I decided that since this is the future, I could invent a new drug that had the effects I wanted for the story. Originally I was going to have Ryoko shooting-up heroine, but I don't like needles (I know that's a really stupid reason not to do that, but there it is). Anyway, I'd like to assure everyone, I do not use, nor do I encourage the use of, any of the drugs I attribute to Ryoko. I feel this ought to be clear from the way I characterize her, but I wanted to clarify that.
I don't think this is my best chapter. I'll try to do better on the next one. Most of the stuff about Tetsusaiga and Taisho is necessary to the story, but I really hate having to put off action for exposition. It's one of my bad habits. Please review. I do welcome constructive criticism. It's starting to worry me how few people have had anything bad to say about this.
Until next time.
Oh, and remember, Myoga's information isn't always accurate. . .
Disclaimer: I think I've already made this clear. I don't own Inuyasha.
Synthetic Emotions
"Tetsusaiga!" Myoga piped happily. "Tetsusaiga was one of Taisho's last projects. Because hanyou are meant to have emotional responses, they often become unstable. Human brains have evolved to cope with emotions, but Inutaiyoukai's engineers found that even the most complex AI could be overwhelmed by intense feelings, like anger or fear. The purpose of the Tetsusaiga program is to balance their instability."
Inuyasha looked from Kagome, who was listening to the flea youkai's explanation with rapt attention, to Miroku, who seemed very proud of himself. He felt a growl building in his chest.
"Shit," he interrupted finally. "Did we come all the way here for this? To listen to some about some mythical 'program'?"
"Shh, Inuyasha," Kagome hushed him. "He isn't finished."
"You've got to be kidding me," Inuyasha complained. "Well, get on with it already."
"Of course," Myoga said, unfazed by this interruption. "Because hanyou are meant to be as close to human as is possible, and permissible under the Replica Act, it was Taisho's intention that Tetsusaiga also would come to replace the codes that restrict a hanyou's actions."
Now Inuyasha could not suppress a snarl. "What's the point of that?" he demanded caustically. "How do you sell youkai if they can't be controlled? It doesn't make any sense."
"The point isn't to sell hanyou," Kagome said calmly, her tone soothing. She was trying to placate him. "Taisho wanted to create. He wasn't interested in the profit--"
"Bullshit!" He didn't want to hear her say that. He didn't want to see the look of sympathy in her eyes. Couldn't she see that it was wasted on him? She must understand that, somewhere. He could still hear her saying, 'I don't want something fake.' Inuyasha tore his attention away from her, forcing her pitying eyes from his mind. "Even if he wanted to create some amazing touchy-feely youkai, you can't sell that sort of thing to stock holders."
"Inuyasha," the girl whispered, and he could almost sense her feeling sorry for him.
"Inuyasha," Miroku said at the same time, watching the hanyou intently. He could see the thoughts moving like clockwork behind the young man's gaze. "Did you know about Tetsusaiga?"
"Keh," Inuyasha muttered, twisting away from both sets of eyes. "I'm going to wait outside, Kagome. Call me if this idiot tries anything."
"I--Alright," Kagome said, nodding. "If that's what you want."
Inuyasha snorted and left the shop.
Outside, it was growing dark. Streetlamps were flickering on, making puddles of sodium-yellow light. Inuyasha breathed in deeply. He didn't know why he did that, but his own algorithms were occasionally beyond him. Why did he sigh, or frown, or show any emotions? Was it because he was programmed to express his emotions a certain way? Or was there something about being angry that intrinsically led to scowling?
And why the hell did he hate the look in Kagome's eyes just now? Anger was an emotion Inuyasha was familiar with--the one he was most familiar with-- but this was different. The sharp surge was still there, but instead of the heat and blankness that generally went with it, there was another feeling, like sinking or falling. That was the only way he could think to describe it as he pondered this foreign response. It was like being low.
He took another deep breath, and smelled the girl scent faintly on his clothes. She had a warm scent, like ginger, or cinnamon and cloves. It was the sort of smell that could wrap a person up and pull him in. Smelling that, the heavy, low feeling eased a bit.
Both the ups and the downs were because of her. Why?
He had felt before, had always felt, but it was different since he woke up. What had changed? Was it the girl? Or the fifty years in storage?
Maybe she had screwed up some of his settings, and he hadn't realized it?
Inuyasha watched as yet another streetlight came to life, lost in his thoughts. There had never been this many questions when he was with Kikyo.
*~*~*
Kagome watched the hanyou leave, trying not to worry about his outburst, and failing miserably. He could be so strange sometimes. Something had been bothering him, but she couldn't tell just what. At first it had seemed that Taisho's idealism had frustrated him, then corporate attitudes.
She did not understand. Didn't he want to know about this? About himself?
"Kagome?" Miroku said, bringing her back.
"Is he. . . I mean," the young man was staring fixedly at the door Inuyasha had left through. "Does he?"
"Does he what?" Kagome asked tiredly, wondering just how she was going to explain Inuyasha to her friend. She'd known Miroku for a long time, and she supposed she trusted him with 'most' things, but money and women tended to influence his judgement, and Inuyasha could feasible fall under the category of money.
"Is he what I think he is?"
"That depends," the girl evaded. "What do you think he is?"
"I think 'he' is probably as close as Taisho ever came to realizing his dream." Miroku was obviously interested. He tended not to get excited about things, but she had known him long enough to recognize the symptoms.
"Miroku," Kagome said, deciding to put her faith in her friend. "Inuyasha is precisely what Taisho was trying to make. He feels at least as strongly as you or me."
Miroku took a moment to assimilate that, outwardly calm while his mind was racing with the possibilities. "Myoga," he said after an uncomfortably long silence. "Will you start looking up information on Inuyasha specifically? There must be something, somewhere."
"Of course," Myoga said, leaping from Kagome's shoulder back to the counter top. Kagome watched as the youkai sat down, folding all four arms across his chest, the expression on his minutely articulated face becoming one of concentration.
"If he has emotions, I wonder. . ."
"What do you wonder, Miroku?"
"Nothing," he told her, shaking his head mildly. "You don't mind me looking into this, do you? I'll call you if I find anything."
"No, of course not," Kagome assured him. "But I ought to be going. I don't like leaving him out there waiting, you know?"
"Okay. I'll call you later." The girl nodded and turned to go, her mind still mostly focused on Inuyasha. Why did he respond the way he did? What went on in the hanyou's 'brain?' Had he known Taisho, she wondered suddenly. It was easy to forget he was more than old enough. Kagome was so absorbed in her thoughts, for a moment she failed to register the fact that Miroku's hand was resting gently on the lower curve of her ass.
"Pervert!" she shouted, whirling on the young man and bringing her hand across his cheek in a resounding slap.
Kagome barely had time to recognize the sound of the bell over the door jangling violently, before a blur of white hair and red shirt pushed between her and Miroku, and Miroku found himself dangling in the air from the front of his rumpled purple dress shirt. Both humans were left slack jawed with shock at Inuyasha's sudden reappearance.
"I thought we were clear on this," the hanyou growled menacingly. "You. Do. Not. Touch. Kagome."
Miroku nodded, trying hard to look innocent and dignified, and failing due to the fact his eyes were huge and perfectly round, and his feet were a good five inches away from touching the floor. Inuyasha gave him a light shake, then dropped him.
"Don't you think that was a little extreme?" Kagome asked, voice wavering slightly, in the silence that followed.
"Keh," was Inuyasha's only reply.
"I'll call you later," Miroku told Kagome again, but his eyes were locked the hanyou. The girl nodded to show she heard him, and tugged lightly on Inuyasha's sleeve.
"Kagome, be careful."
That startled Kagome, and she studied her friend before answering, finding real concern in his normally calm expression. "Don't worry," she told him. "Inuyasha wouldn't hurt me."
She believed that.
*~*~*
The smell that met Sesshomaru's nose when he opened the door to his mistress's bedroom nearly made him leave. It was bitter, strongly alcoholic smell, with a sweet edge from melted sugar that bit into the delicate tissue of his nose mercilessly. He found the source with little effort. A half-empty bottle rested on a service tray on the floor next to the bed. The bottle's contents were a toxic shade of cloudy green, and the paraphernalia scattered around it left no doubt in the youkai mind what it was.
Absinthe was illegal in Japan, but then, so were many of Ryoko's pastimes. He was not particularly startled to find the woman drank the stuff along everything else she did. Why would he be surprised, considering the other things she habitually inhaled, ingested, or injected into her body?
The woman herself was sprawled across her bed, oblivious to his presence. Her half-lidded eyes shown feverishly, and a sheen of sweat stood out on her body as she panted slowly.
Sesshomaru caught a breath in his throat. Surely absinthe couldn't account for this. The wormwood alcohol was dangerous, but while his data banks didn't supply him with detailed information, he was fairly certain that it wasn't capable of producing this king of state. Drawing another slow breath through his nose, he sifted through the scents of the room until he defined an almost nonexistent, chemical smell. It hid underneath the stronger odors, faint even to him. Approaching Ryoko slowly, he scanned the room for the source of this faint, unnerving smell.
Eventually he found it, coming from a tiny, silver tin. The container was too small to be a snuffbox, and too deep to be a cigarette case. Opening the tin gingerly, he found it was full of a crystalline white powder. Cocaine, he wondered, taking a small amount on his finger and applying it to the tip of his tongue to check for the telltale numbness. Instead, he was tasted something sickly sweet, and undeniably chemical.
The pieces fell into place. Tranquility.
Tranquility was a relatively new drug, but very contraband. In humans it produced a euphoric state in small doses, and oblivion in larger. It had no effect on youkai, of course, but still, Sesshomaru couldn't entirely fight the reflex to gag. The woman was stupider than he'd thought if she was taking this stuff. No one 'dabbled' in Tranquility. It was as addictive as nicotine, and nearly as dangerous as opiates.
'Why the hell did she decide to do this tonight?' he wondered, aware that his company would not be required now. He doubted that she would be coherent enough to appreciate them until tomorrow morning. Still, what had possessed the woman to put Tranquility in absinthe?
He was still pondering that when he heard the main gate swinging open, and the soft rumble of a car engine pulling into the drive. Suspecting he had found his answer, the youkai looked out the window. A sleek black luxury car was slowing to a stop in front of the main door.
*~*~*
A/N: Alright, thanks for reading. I decided that since this is the future, I could invent a new drug that had the effects I wanted for the story. Originally I was going to have Ryoko shooting-up heroine, but I don't like needles (I know that's a really stupid reason not to do that, but there it is). Anyway, I'd like to assure everyone, I do not use, nor do I encourage the use of, any of the drugs I attribute to Ryoko. I feel this ought to be clear from the way I characterize her, but I wanted to clarify that.
I don't think this is my best chapter. I'll try to do better on the next one. Most of the stuff about Tetsusaiga and Taisho is necessary to the story, but I really hate having to put off action for exposition. It's one of my bad habits. Please review. I do welcome constructive criticism. It's starting to worry me how few people have had anything bad to say about this.
Until next time.