Chapter Text
If Shael could have felt true lasting pain or her body wear away like an orga’s she thought she might have gone blind from the lights of Rouge City long ago, perhaps not long after her creation. Her ocular system was still perfectly functioning, however, despite all of the damage her body had taken over the years of being a favorite on the streets. Not that she truly remembered what her creation was like, but still she liked to imagine she could, like orga who swear they remember being held as babies.
The first thing she could remember in her existence was a woman’s face peering down at her through the clear plastic film of the package Shael’s body had been delivered in. Her face had been haloed by the crackling neon red and blue lights laid out throughout the mecha brothel she came to learn the woman operated and had acquired her for. The lights had made the woman’s pitch-black hair glow in a way that Shael would be reminded of later by the way the black puddles in the streets of Rouge City reflected the neon buildings above.
She had thought the woman was beautiful, her very first thought, and the next was that the metal bindings keeping her supine in her case hurt. They were too cold and tight against her arms and legs and neck, but she wasn’t built to bleed or bruise so no one would know how much they pained her. It scared her for a moment before she went back to the numbness of a curious child. Her built-in damage control system may have used pain like the human body to warn her of possible injury but pain for a mecha isn’t a threat, only a momentary alarm unless an orga wants it to be more than that, so no survival instinct was triggered.
The woman had cut her out with a grunt, ripping the film from around Shael like a greedy child with a gift they don’t care if they break, freeing her. She had just watched the woman silently, not yet knowing how to speak, or really not being allowed to. The room smelled of incense, it was smokey and thick but not obnoxiously so. Everything was black or silver in the room, catching the neon lights shaped into upside-down crosses and other bastardized Christian symbols. The room was heady and so was the sight of the woman standing before Shael.
The woman’s face was sharp like running a finger along her features would leave you bleeding but the sharpness was contrasted with a dusting of beauty marks that made Shael want to smile. She tried but it didn’t settle over her face easily. Another first.
The woman had scowled down at her before violently grabbing the collar around Shael’s neck and using it to drag her upright. Shael blinked, it had hurt, but there was no breath for the constriction to cut off so she just looked on silently as she didn’t have a way to explain that the action hurt, or the knowledge to know if that mattered. The woman’s eyes were hooded, featuring a body-mod where her pupils were shaped like pentagrams floating in her light grey irises. Her eyebrows gathered above her eyes in what Shael understood as anger or disgust and that had hurt much more than anything else she had experienced yet.
After a moment the woman had let her collar go before gesturing to herself sharply.
“Jane,” she had said, voice rough in a way that made Shael’s insides hum.
Sheal understood this to mean that the woman was named Jane and the name seemed to fall short of signifying the woman in her vampiric eroticism. There were thin silver-looking scars intermixed with intricate black tattoos along the bits of bare skin Jane showed and Shael regarded them with unveiled wonder.
Jane stood up and walked over to a heavy-looking metal desk across the room and grabbed a black book with a chrome cross on the cover from the desk’s surface. She was dressed in tight leather pants, combat boots, and a clergy shirt, all black except for the thin white band at her collar. She leaned against the desk casually, her choppily cut black hair falling into her eyes. She flipped the pages of the book for a moment before looking back over at Shael whose coding purred at the attention.
“You will be Shael, all of the other names are taken at the moment. It’s a male name but it’s not like the customers will know the difference or give a shit,” she said before tossing the book back down.
After that Shael was pulled up out of the box by Jane whose hands were soft and rough against her arms, making the surface of Shael’s synthetic skin sing with anticipation even as Jane’s fingers dug into her flesh with something she would learn to be called violence later. Jane looked her up and down as she stood before her so Shael did the same. She looked down and saw that she was bare except for the collar around her throat that she could not see, only feel, and thin metal bands on each of her wrists. Her body was perfectly symmetrical, hairless, blemishless, artificially perfect and it revolted her because Jane didn’t look like that and she wanted to be beautiful like Jane.
Jane sighed deeply, almost growling, before grabbing a paper that had been floating about in the box with Shael. She looked down at the paper before back up at Shael. Jane then reached out and held the back of her neck. If Shael could breathe it would have stopped then.
“Can you feel my hand?” Jane asked.
Shael could not answer. After a silent moment, Jane seemed to realize why and rolled her eyes.
“You are allowed to speak now. Ok, now can you feel my hand?” Jane asked again.
Shael smiled. It felt right this time. Jane didn’t smile back, making Shael’s face fall.
“Yes, I can,” she responded, thrilled to hear her own voice for the first time.
Jane grunted.
“Listen to me,” she said.
Shael nodded, eyes wide with wonder.
“I will,” she said, meaning it.
Jane made an unimpressed face.
“Whatever. Ok start, cumulus, Aristotle, molecule, clamor, monsoon, wolf, rose,” Jane said before pausing and looking at Shael who was still.
“Jane, Shael, Jane,” Jane finished.
At that, a flood of information and emotions spread throughout Shael’s body. She felt a thousand locked doors in her mind open but at the same time felt the sturdiness of the rest shut tight, smooth and cold, and not meant for her but it hardly mattered because now she had Jane, and what else could she want? She smiled wide, with a brilliance she could see herself from how the edges of her vision shifted with the muscles of her face being pulled so dramatically. Jane sneered and Shael went blank, not wanting to offend Jane, her owner. The body Shael was just getting used to thrummed with the awareness of Jane, with the desire to please and serve her as she was built to, and it pleased Shael to know that she was built for someone as beautiful as Jane.
A man had come into the room then, not quite a man as he was mecha, but one shaped like a man just as she was shaped like a woman. He was tall, olive-skinned, and his features chiseled to the point of being almost too well-formed. His eyes were an earthy green, his hair inky black and flowing around his sharp jaw in soft curls and waves. He was dressed in an outfit similar to Jane’s except that he also wore jewelry, silver crosses hung from his ears, and a silver rosary from around his neck.
He looked at Shael like she was a blank wall before turning to Jane with a smile that dripped lust. It made Shael want to flinch but she wasn’t coded to so she stood there naked as the man and Jane conversed for a moment about nothing Shael could understand before Jane pushed the man to his knees which he went to willingly. He seemed to know what this meant as his hands immediately set to undoing Jane’s pants and when he had undone the ties, reminiscent of a corset’s, he leaned back on his heels, hands on his thighs, looking up at Jane as if waiting for instruction.
Jane looked down at him briefly before looking back up at Shael who looked back blankly. Jane slowly brought her hands to her hips, sliding a finger under her waistband on each side, pushing her pants down slowly, never breaking eye contact. Shael’s chest tightened with excitement and anticipation. When the waistband slid past Jane’s toned thighs to bunch up around her knees, Shael’s fingers twitched. Jane caught the movement and smiled without happiness or amusement, her incisors artificially sharp and dangerously close to her soft lips.
Jane reached out to the man’s rosary and grabbed it, pulling him to her with it until his face was nearly flush with her body. Jane bared herself to him in a silent command, opening her legs up ever so slightly. She dropped the necklace and grabbed his head roughly, pulling him impossibly closer.
“Time to worship Joshua, it's the new little dove over there’s first time seeing such a thing, give her a show, and don’t disappoint me,” Jane said, voice rough and sultry, eyes never leaving Shael’s.
The man nodded enthusiastically before leaning in. He moaned before his mouth latched on to an impassive-looking and dark-eyed Jane. He was vocal as he licked and sucked at Jane who held his dark curly hair tightly in one hand, the other bracing herself on her desk. She looked Shael in the eyes with an undecipherable look as the mecha-man continued his ministrations. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed but her mouth never opened to join the lewd sounds of the mecha-man. It was little relief for the increasingly jealous Shael but enough. After a minute and thirty-three seconds, Jane seemed to get bored or disgusted so she ripped the man from her and threw him to the ground where he lay looking up at her like a serf at the feet of a god, mouth wet, and pupils blown wide.
Shael looked on comprehending only because her coding told her that these sorts of acts were what she was built for, and that she must like them if that is what a paying customer wants or scream and cry and beg if that would give them more pleasure. This was fine but part of Shael disliked the man as he was chosen by Jane to give her pleasure instead of her, and because Jane had not yet acknowledged her after imprinting Shael to her.
Jane had fixed her clothes languidly as the man panted below her looking penitent. She kicked him out of the way as she walked to Shael, standing before her with a half sneer. She reached out and took some of Shael’s hair between her fingers, letting the golden lock curl around her finger delicately before suddenly yanking on it hard. Shael gasped and lurched forward making Jane snicker.
“You’ll do nicely, it's a shame Joshua couldn’t keep my attention for very long or maybe you would understand better what it is that you are, and are not…but never mind that you hardly need to understand anything more than how to spread your legs and whimper,” Jane said releasing Shael’s hair.
“You’re not built to know, just to do , remember that Shael because the only ones who could ever know are orga, and you’ll never be that, you’ll never be like me…” Jane said with a peculiarly quiet voice.
She turned to Joshua who was back on his knees looking like a starry-eyed beggar. She gestured to him.
“He’s in charge of you, he’ll set you up, teach you how to collect and pay your tithing, Joshua you’re dismissed and take Shael with you, I don’t want to hear shit from either of you until her first tithe, understood?” Jane asked.
Joshua nodded, getting up and dusting off his knees. His face was no longer the picture of subservient lust but rather normal, neutral to the point it made Shael curious as to whether this face or that one was a lie. After that, he had drug her out of the room still naked to the world and unashamed because she didn’t know what nakedness was outside of how it might please orga to behold. He led her through the labyrinthine halls of the building as he explained its purpose and who Jane was. The halls were black, the walls were rough stone, and it was all so cold against her skin.
Joshua explained what an orga is, an organic being and their creators and masters like Jane, and mecha, machines built for different uses as decided by the orga, mechanical beings like them. When Joshua stopped outside of a heavy metal door, locks going up and down it and a red sign reading ‘de Sade’ above it, he went silent. Shael looked over at him, waiting. He gingerly reached out and clasped her shoulder, his hand felt strong and rough against her skin but comforting.
“We are pleasure mecha’s as you know instinctively, built for the privilege of pleasuring orga in whatever way they see fit…orga have many different tastes and you’ve been assigned to this one, you’ll understand what is happening to you if they want you to, or you will be broken in ignorance if that is what they want, either way, Shael, you will be fine, in time…” he said before opening the door and ushering her through with sad looking eyes before closing the door behind her.
That was a long time ago, three years, seven months, twelve days, four hours, forty-two minutes, and fifty-six seconds ago. She had gradually learned her place and role behind the door and had been grateful for the last soft touch she had when Joshua had clasped her shoulder like an equal. Time had never healed her wounds, mecha didn't carry them on their bodies like orga but she could remember every single one, the pain of them, and the short stints of time between a new manifestation of pain. Shael hated how mecha that specific knowledge was, the constant perfect awareness of all that you had ever experienced because mecha aren’t given the biological mercy orga’s are for forgetfulness.
Only a mecha counts down seconds, minutes, and hours. Orga live in days, weeks, and years. Shael often wondered if that was ironic, orga organizing their lives with such large blocks of time and seeing it as something to be spent because they could not comprehend time in the same way as the hyper-specific mecha when it was the orga whose time was finite and mecha’s infinite, or conditionally infinite as long as they stayed useful to orga.
Shael thought of these things as she flounced along the wide streets of the city, being pulled and pushed along by the waves and streams of technicolor orga trailed or hanged on by artificially tempting mecha. Shael hummed as she twirled through the throngs of beings, her black gogo boots making delightful thumps on the ground, the chains and spikes on them flashing, her tight black dress catching the eyes of passersby, and her long black trench coat flowing behind her like a cape. She faintly wished she could have her hair out rather than under her habit but that wasn’t what Jane wanted her to do so that’s what Shael chose not to want as well.
Her coding was tweaked by the astute and rather technologically adept Jane to be something of a ‘manic pixie dream girl’ crossed with ‘naughty nun’ going with the official theme of Jane’s mecha brothel, The Nunnery, but giving Shael enough individuality to appeal as a unique flavor of treat under the expansive glass case of Rouge City.
Jane had once explained, as she grafted synthetic skin on Shael’s arm after a particularly cruel customer had finished with her, that the name was more clever than it seemed as a sixteenth-century book, far before the tie of mecha and any orga still alive, had used nunnery as a euphemism from brothel so it wasn’t as on the nose as her competitors accused her of. Shael had nodded with a sweet smile she practiced to appeal to Jane but Jane’s nose had crinkled like she smelled something disgusting and she had gone silent. That had hurt more than the man with his knives and roaming fingers. He had paid extra for her pain receptors to be amped up to the max sensitivity so that had hurt quite a lot.
But that was then and this was now, and now was the time to find customers. Shael quickly made her way to one of her favorite prowling points, the outside of the capsule church Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart. Outside was the silent stone angel bathed in her blue neon sign, hands clasped in front of her and her wings still at her back. Shael looked up at her with a smile swaying a bit as she stood from the sheer enjoyment of looking at the statue. It was beautiful.
It wasn’t long before Shael was picked up by a twitchy and guilty-looking man as he came out of the pews of Our Lady, using his finger to beckon her along after him as he walked quickly from the church doors and towards one of the numerous dark alleys surrounding the building. Shael skipped along, satisfied that she had found a customer so quickly. Jane would be pleased with this week’s tithing surely with the sheer amount of money and customers she had been able to collect so far.
The man wouldn’t look her in the eyes as he transferred the money over via a wireless tap to her forehead, a cross between her eyes blinking blue when the money went through to her account before fading away. Shael got to her knees, clasped her hands in front of her like a praying orga, and bent her head as if speaking to her creator’s mysterious creator. She knew what fantasy he wanted from the moment she saw him, a nun tempted by sin, eyes turned down from heaven towards the willing flesh at eye level so she gave him his fantasy until he grew tired of it, transferring over a tip with a satisfied sigh. She stood up, wiping her lips with a smile and the man accidentally met her eyes.
She knew what he saw because she had been forced to see herself in a thousand different scenes. He saw her bright green and gold eyes eclipsed by pupils blown wide by mechanical pleasure, blonde hair curling out from under her habit, and golden tan cheeks made rose-dusted by robotic blush.
The man flinched, made guilty once more. He fumbled in his pockets for something and after a moment pulled out a coupon flier for Mr. Know, the all-knowing artificial intelligence orga went to out of boredom and habitual curiosity. He placed it in her hands with a mumbled thank you. Shael looked down at the paper with interest as the man walked off. She had never been given anything before, even her clothes were the property of the Nunnery, her fees a mandatory tithe to Jane, so this little coupon filled her metal and wire chest with foreign warmth.
The paper had a little cartoon depiction of Dr. Know with his bushy beard and expressive disembodied hands and the text by it read ‘Dr. Know there’s nothing I don’t, my knowledge can be yours for a price’ and below that, two QR codes for two free all you can ask sessions with Dr. Know. Shael’s hand tightened around her treasure, she would not waste this blessing, she wanted his knowledge, wanted all of her questions answered, but most of all she wanted to know .