InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Cyborg ❯ Fingers ( Chapter 2 )

The whir of gears and random bleeping slowly became processed and recognizable. Opening his eyelids it took only an instant for his eyes to send the information of his surroundings to his brain.

He was laying bare on a long iron table, his long silver hair pooling over the edges and ending with a curl on the recently moped tile floor. Surrounding him was a series of machines doing various things. A long robotic claw was picking up vials and sorting them by color and size. Two giant metal boxes lined the far wall and had lights all over, blinking continuously. A holographic cat jumped down from on top of a stack of books and spooked a bird. It flew about, than out the window, disintegrating in a flash of color.

Slowly he sat up, feeling a jolt run through his body his hand flew up and grabbed at two wires that sunk deep within his skin behind his ear. He pulled the A/V jacks out of his system and tossed them to the ground, rubbing at the tender spot where they had penetrated his flesh.

He shifted slightly to get a better look. There was a metal sink and counter over in the corner by a homemade desktop computer; a tin of sharp looking utensils lay in a tray, the metallic sheen of it suggesting they had been washed recently. There was a large movable monitor connected to the ceiling.

There was a tap on his shoulder and he snapped his head to the side, staring at a three foot robotic arm, complete with flexible fingers. It was bolted to the table next to his and had a keyboarded connected to its base. The strange thing moved its fingers up and down in a wave and the boy copied. He reached out to touch it and it flinched back, but moved forward and taped the boy's hand in the same place.

“His name is Fingers.” The young man whirled around and stared at the dark haired guy standing in the doorway. Slowly the man walked over and set a box down on the table the boy way lying on. “And mine is Miroku.”

The boy swung his legs off the table to make room for the box and watched through narrowed eyes as the man rummaged through what he had placed in there.

“You see, this is where you tell me your name.” The boy looked at him questioningly and he sighed. “It's considered good manners to introduce yourself to a guest. It's also considered polite to give your name also when someone introduces themselves. I'm Miroku, who are you?”

“I-Inuyasha,” the boy stated, turning pack around to mimic Fingers movements again. The robotic arm was swaying back and forth in excitement. The monitor on the far wall spun around and the letters I N U Y A S H A : ) appeared on the screen.

“That is Monitor. He's kind of weird, but you probably met him before right? That was you who hacked into his system?”

The Large black screen swung down low, close up to Inuyasha. He reached out a hand and pressed his palm up against the black gelled screen. Fingers copied his movement and Miroku smiled. “Monitor,” he pulled his hand back and so did Fingers. He looked over to the robotic arm and held his palm out, Fingers stretched his to his full length as well and he pressed his hand to it. “Fingers.”

“Are you hungry?” Miroku asked as he set the contents of the box down on the long metal table. He pulled out a red cloth and held it out to Inuyasha. “You probably need cloths too hu? Hope you like red, that's all I've got here, everything else is back at my house.”

Inuyasha stared at him and then down at the red sweats and sweater. “Where are we?” He asked as he pulled the items on over his bandaged body. He ran his hand over his chest tenderly and looked up at Miroku puzzled.

“I had to repair you; you were badly damaged and didn't function properly so I brought you to my laboratory.” Monitor clicked on with a picture of lightning and an echo of Miroku's voice. “Ha hah, very amusing Monitor. I'm no mad scientists.” He turned back to Inuyasha. “We're in the abandoned science building abut a mile from the city, I found it and decided to use it for my inventions.” He waved a hand around the room and several things beeped, lit up, or moved in gesture.

“Why didn't you just take me to a hospital? I would have rather had a doctor than a scientist bandage me.” He tugged the sweater on upper his head and pulled his hair out over it. He stared at his long tresses and watched as the strands fell through his fingers like liquid silk. It wasn't this long before.

“Well, I didn't know how to explain you particular anatomy to them. Also they wouldn't know how to get you operational; it took me almost two days to figure out what was originally wrong.”

“What do you mean, `operational'?” Inuyasha turned and studied the seemingly twenty year old man. He had short black hair that scarcely touched the skin on his shoulders. He stretched out a rubber band and pulled it back out of his face while he set out a hotplate and put a pot of water on it. “I don't understand how `my' anatomy is so peculiar?”

Miroku almost dropped the ceramic bowls; he set them down as gently as he could and jerked his head over to the teen. “You mean you don't know what you are?”

“Of course I do! I'm Inuyasha. I'm a sixteen year old high school student from Tokyo and I'll be turning 17 in August.”

“No not who you are, what you are.”

“That is what I am. I'm also supposed to be rude and stubborn and violent. Wanna test me out?”

“I wouldn't mind. Considering your hardware is too complex for me to decipher. I would mind finding out just what a cyborg could do.” Miroku smiled as Inuyasha opened his mouth to say something but closed it in though of what he just said.

“What do you mean, you built a cyborg? That's kinda cool.” He looked over at fingers and stretched his hand out again in a wave. This time fingers responded in the same way, moving his upper tech sideways instead of forward.

“I didn't build him, I found him. And if you look over there you'll see him.” Miroku was enjoying this. The boy seemed interested and let his gaze follow in the direction Miroku indicated. The holographic cat jumped down from the high table where he had tried to pounce on the holographic bird and landed on a stack of empty boxes.

The cat landed with a thump that caught his attention. Holographs don't go thump, but what was a live animal doing near all this equipment? The feline struggled on the unbalanced empty boxes that began to topple over. Miroku let out what sounded like a frightened squeak and lunged to catch the cat as it fell, but it grabbed onto the clothed object that Miroku had pointed to and slid down, dragging the sheet with it.

Fingers folded back slightly as Inuyasha tensed. Monitor backed away a bit farther and Miroku turned to him with a smile.

“What is this?” Inuyasha asked.

“It's called a mirror.” He replied.

“I mean this!” he shouted, reaching a hand up fearfully to touch his face. The muscles in his face were open and visible, covering almost all of what appeared to be metal. It was a gruesome sight. Like a horror film, his skin was completely gone from his hairline to his chin.

“Well, I had to access your mind somehow. You chest is already bandaged but you woke up before I could put the layer of skin back over your face.” Miroku turned around to pick up the small blonde cat as he spoke. “We'll eat lunch afterwards; if you lay back I'll have you patched up in bit.”

“Oh hell no! Your not getting anywhere near me you sick freak! What the hell did you do to me?” Inuyasha was shaking, he wanted to punch the mirror, to shatter the image it held within, but he new that wouldn't help. The man who called himself Miroku stepped closer to him, the cat jumping down from his arms as he outstretched his hands in an effort to calm the fearful cyborg.

“Calm down Inuyasha, I'll patch it up. From what I've seen with your chest you'll be healed in about three days without so much as a scar. It's already halfway done, you don't even need the bandages anymore, but if you don't let me patch up you face the skin will take a month to cover it again and you don't know how it'll form.” Inuyasha backed away from the man; he was talking like it was natural for a guy to be faceless! How many people had this psycho taken down here?! What was going to happen to him?

“Stay away. I mean it, you better just leave me the fuck alone you bastard. Get the hell away from me!” Miroku kept coming closer and Inuyasha kept backing up. He backed right up into Fingers and jumped as he felt the robotic arm's hand grab onto his shoulder. He really was in a horror film!

He froze. What were they going to do to him now? He was so dead. He glanced at the door behind the man. What where his chances of getting past him? Fingers still had a grip on his shoulder and the man was in front of him, monitor hovered nearby and that thing could swoop down fast to knock him off his feet. The cat mewed from over by the door and slowly it swung open, a figure emerging in the room.

“Oh my! What do you think your doing Miroku?!” There in the doorway stood an old woman in a baggy white shirt and loose red pants. She held a tray of sandwiches and cookies in her hands and a shocked and frightened look on her face.

“Nothing Kaede Inuyasha just got a little hysterical when he saw himself.” Miroku turned around to give a smile at the old woman as she walked over to the table, the little cat mewing at her heels.

“Well of coarse he's hysterical. How would you act if you woke up after such a traumatizing experience on a cold metal operating table surrounded by electronic gadgets with a huge part of your head taken off?” The woman set the tray down beside the hotplate and pot and picked up something from inside the box. It was a plastic package; she opened it and placed the hard dehydrated noodles in the pot. The cat jumped up on the table and nibbled on one of the sandwich slices.

“Who are you people?!” Inuyasha screamed. The old woman now known as Kaede turned around and approached him. He would have moved but he was afraid of just what the robotic arm on his shoulder was capable of.

“Hands off,” She said, taping Fingers on the top with the metal fork she was stirring the noodles with. “I'm so sorry; I know you must be frightened. I'm Kaede.” She gave a friendly old lady smile that brought the wrinkles in her cheeks together.

Inuyasha reached his hand up to rub the place where Fingers had held him and followed the woman slowly back to the table where he had woken up on. The cat mewed softly in acknowledgment of his presence and went back to eating her tuna sandwich.

Miroku grumbled as he walked over and Kaede smacked his hand with the fork when he tried to grab a cookie. “Ow!” he shook his hand softly and looked at Kaede in question. She nudged her head in the boy's direction and Miroku nodded in understanding. He slowly put the contents of the box that they weren't using back, moving the box over to the counter that Fingers was bolted to. Kaede turned the hotplate onto a lower setting and used the folded up ends of her baggy white shirt to move it over beside the box. Than she picked up the tray, much to the dismay of the cat, and moved it as well.

Inuyasha watched as the two busied themselves, Kaede with clearing off and wiping down the metal table while Miroku ruffled through the tin full of equipment.

 

`I had better get out of here while I can.' He thought and slowly inched towards the door.

 

“And where are you going?” He heard the old woman ask. He turned around and saw Miroku had laid a long thin cloth over the table. “You need yourself patched up before you go anywhere. Now come and lay down. I wont let you just leave looking like that.”

 

Reluctantly Inuyasha made his way over to the two of them and lay down on the table. “How come I don't feel like my face is off?” He asked.

 

“Because,” Miroku began, “I jammed some of your receptors. You can't feel anything in the front part of your head.” Slowly the procedure began and Inuyasha watched as Miroku laid a floppy material over his exposed tissue.

 

`M facial skin,' he thought. It weirded him out to think it was probably sitting in some tray nearby this whole time. He tried to focus his attention on some of the questions he had. “How can I talk if my skin is gone? I have no lips.”

 

“You send a message to your voice box and that projects your words through two speakers in the back of your mouth, you actually don't need to move your mouth. That's why I thought you were originally human, you do things that your really don't need to.” Miroku grabbed a tube of clear liquid as he spoke and began to run it over the joining pieces of flesh.

 

“What do you mean “originally human”? I am human!” he tried to sit up but felt a pant in the side of his skull and his lower body went limp. “What happened?”

 

“I shut off a portion of your receptors in your body. You can't send a signal to move now. Keep yelling and I'll shut off your voice box too.” Miroku stated.

 

Kaede smacked him on the head and went back to cooking.

 

“Ow! Dang do you want him to mess me up by getting all upset?” He rubbed the back of his hand as he reached for some white bandages, dipping them into a greenish, peculiar smelling liquid before placing them around his face like a papier-mâché art project. “This is some medicine made by Kaede herself. It'll help your healing along.”

 

Inuyasha just growled and remained still as he continued the place the redolent strips of cloth over the sides of his face.

 

“Ok, Inuyasha. I'm going to switch your receptors on again. If you feel too much pain that you don't think you can handle it just tell me and we'll switch the ones in your face off again.”

 

Miroku pressed the tab key on Fingers' keyboard and from Fingers' index finger came a small needle. Fingers jabbed that into two separate locations in the side of Inuyasha's head and a sharp pain went with each one, then slowly, he began to feel a dulled pain around his face. Starting from his hairline and going around to just in front of his ears, then stopping about his chin.

 

He sat up; tapping gently at the moist cloth around those parts, when the bandages dried it would be difficult to move his mouth. He watched as Kaede removed four bowls from the box and began putting an equal portion of the seasoned noodles into each one. He sniffed the air and his moth began to water. It smelled good. Kinda like the ramen he usually ate, yet different in someway.

 

Kaede turned and smiled that kind old-lady smile that made her wrinkles look weird, She held up the bowl and a fork and he smiled two, the skin on his cheeks feeling a bit weird as it tried to move with the muscles underneath. He figured he would ask his questions later. Right now he was starving.

 

~*~*~*~*

 

Well, here's chapter two! I like how things are flowing so far. I wish I could describe the room their in a little better but I can't. All three of them are a little weird but that's how their supposed to act right now.

 

Alright, so to clear something's up Inuyasha has been a cyborg for about two years but his memories were locked away so he only remembers his life up until the train accident that will be explained in the next chapter. He doesn't very well recall his life all too good at the moment because of the event here but you'll see him more clearly soon, and, as you may already know, Miroku is kinda a tech fanatic.

 

So comment about this if you like it, rave about it if you don't. Just tell me what the heck's going on in your head as you read this. Are you even reading this?! Do people even know what I ramble on about down here at the bottom of the page?! DO YOU KNOW HOW LONELY IT IS DOWN HERE!!!!!!!!

 

………………………&# 8230;I'll shut up now….and just fade away…

 

See you in about a week! XP

 

-rin