Summary: Detectives Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno are assigned a baffling case that takes them from Konoha's glittering holographic high-rises to its augment-infested depths, trying to find nine cybernetically-enhanced replicants with the power to bring their world to its knees. Along the way they stumble over a conspiracy as old as the city itself, and their only hope of getting out alive is a mysterious pair of data thieves with more secrets than anyone.

Rating: M

Warnings: Language, homosexuality, sex, violence, gore, character deaths, general unpleasantness, philosophy re: androids being people, vague angst, etc.

Word Count: ~3600

Pairings: Sasuke/Naruto, Sakura/Ino, Kakashi/Obito, Madara/Tobirama

Disclaimer: Hah. I want some of whatever Kishimoto was smoking, but Naruto's not mine.

Notes: This is…a very old story. Kind of. It was the first fanfiction I ever really started, though it's gone through so many revisions and rewrites since that it's practically unrecognizable. I've got a lot of it written, though there are still gaps that need to be filled in and fleshed out, and am finally happy enough with it to let it see the light of day. Hopefully someone enjoys my madness, because sci-fi is my drug, and this fic is practically my baby.

(Title comes from I Blame Coco's song of the same name.)

Self Machine

Chapter 1

Sasuke takes ten seconds to breathe through his nose as they slide out of the hovercar, reminding himself just why it would be a bad idea to strangle his partner.

Most of those reasons, perhaps tellingly, have more to do with witnesses and plausible deniability and Aniki would be crushingly disappointed if I didn't get away with it than they do moral and social norms. Not that he thinks anyone would blame him, given the subject at hand.

"No, Sakura," he says through gritted teeth. "I am not signing up for a dating agency."

Sakura rolls her eyes like he's being the difficult one here, even as she flashes her badge at the scanner. It clicks, then beeps, and the boundary barrier flickers off, letting them through and then flickering back up behind them. "Sasuke," she says witheringly, "you had a fling with Neji Hyuuga. If that's not a desperate cry for help, I don't know what is."

Sasuke is willing to admit that that maybe wasn't his finest moment—Neji is to emotional attachment and the idea of a healthy relationship what Raid is to a cockroach infestation—but he is a twenty-five-year-old human male and cannot be expected to make intelligent decisions where certain needs are concerned. He opens his mouth to inform Sakura of this, but catches one glimpse of her dangerously arched brow and subsides with a disgusted grunt.

Never mind, then.

Thankfully, with absolutely impeccable timing, one of the crime scene techs picks that moment to wave at them. "Uchiha, Haruno! Hey, you made it!"

More than happy to escape the looming conversation—because when Sakura wants to Have A Talk god help whatever poor soul tries to get away—Sasuke neatly changes direction and heads for the cramped mobile lab, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket to keep away the worst of the biting cold. Downcity is always about fifteen degrees colder than Midcity, permanently in the shadows of Upcity's high-rises and only sporadically touched by Konoha's weak sun. The winter is just setting in, but down here it feels like it's already December.

"Of course we did, Hagane," Sakura says as they reach the tech, though not before shooting Sasuke a sharp look that says more clearly than any words could that she's only letting this drop for the moment. "Do I look like the type to miss a party?"

"One hell of a party, if the aftermath is anything to go by," Kotetsu says with a veteran's signature black humor, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Towards the end of the alley, his fellow lab-rat Izumo is crouched over a dark shape, DNA scanner in one hand. "We're finding bits and pieces and not much else. Someone really went to town on him. Definitely one of yours, though."

Sasuke studies the body and its surroundings, picking up blood splatters that glitter gaudily in the spinning police lights before dropping back into darkness. Lots of blood—enough to assume that the victim was killed here, rather than dumped. That's always a nice head start on a case. "ID?" he asks, narrowing his eyes as he tries to sort things out. The lump is the body, but there are several smaller shapes around it that he can't quite make sense of.

"Can't get a lock on the guy. If he's in the system, he's had a few augmentations since his last database entry. Feel free to check it out, everything's been recorded." Kotetsu shrugs, then turns when one of his machines beeps and slides over to see the readout.

Sakura makes a thoughtful noise, tucking her face down a little further in her scarf as the wind gusts. "Must have been recent changes, then," she offers. "Mandatory physicals are what, every four months?"

In a perfect world, they would be, but Sasuke's childhood wasn't entirely what it should have been for the youngest son of the Uchiha family. He's seen just how many people manage to fall through the cracks. Or slip through them, as the case may be. "Only if he had a steady job," he counters with a faint huff. "Or if his job actually bothered to pull his med records. Or—"

"Yes, yes, I remember the academy lectures just as well as you do, Sasuke," Sakura interrupts, wrinkling her nose slightly. "Still, even if he's got augments, he'll be in the system somewhere. Unless he has the money to make them full splicings, and I can only think of, what, ten people in the whole city who are rich enough for that. And if one of them were missing, we'd already know."

Sasuke concedes this point with a tip of his head, casts a quick look back at the frowning Kotetsu, and then jerks his head towards the alley. "Come on. Work."

Sakura trails after him with a beleaguered sigh. "I'll have you know I don't actually have to put up with you, you uncommunicative jerk. I could have been a doctor," she complains. "I could have spent my life in the lap of luxury, redesigning eyebrows and giving wealthy morons new bodies every time the fashion changed."

Izumo is close enough to catch the tail end of her litany—one Sasuke has heard many, many times over the past three years they've been partners—and grins, regardless of blood splattered thick and viscous over his surroundings. "And missed this?" he asks cheerfully, a flick of his free hand encompassing the grimy alley, one wall piled with overflowing trash bins and the other ankle-deep with muck that looks to be equal parts gutter run-off, machine waste, more discarded trash, and several other things Sasuke doesn't want to identify too closely. Through it and around it are the scattered shapes Sasuke had been looking at earlier, now unfortunately clear—body parts, and no small number of them.

"If this is a party, maybe I need to redefine my idea of a good time," Sakura mutters, grimacing as she picks her way over to the main piece of the body. Sasuke follows her, wary of his feet, because what's left there is pretty much a featureless trunk, and everything else is laid out around them like a macabre sort of puzzle. "Got anything, Kamizuki?"

"Soon," Izumo promises, tilting the DNA scanner to show them the rapidly decreasing list as it shuffles through possibilities. "His augments were pretty standard, simple to rule out—higher muscle density, heavier bones, armor-like skin over his hands."

"A street tough, maybe? Those are the ones mid-level enforcers usually go for," Sasuke suggests absently, crouching to examine a glitter that catches his eye. Noticing, Sakura tosses him a pair of tweezers, and he nods his thanks as he lifts the thing free of the muck. A narrow ring, or maybe a wide earring—it's been sheered neatly in half, so it's a little hard to tell. He holds it up for Sakura's inspection. "Can you think of anything that can do that?"

She doesn't look happy as she crouches next to him, snapping a pair of gloves on. They shimmer slightly, burning away all bacteria and foreign materials, and she starts sifting gently through the waste around them. "You mean besides whatever it was that killed four other people in Downcity in the last two months? Not really."

It's the same MO as their current case, Sasuke knows, but this seems…different. He rocks back on his heels, studying the scene, and frowns. "Why so violent?" he asks.

"I thought murder was one of those inherently violent things?" Izumo ventures, sounding vaguely amused as he fiddles with an array of buttons.

Sasuke leaves it up to Sakura, as ever, to translate, and she does so with a sigh and a brief, halfhearted glare. "What the verbal wonder means," she says dryly, "is why so much more violent? The last four were killed, but they each had a single wound to an artery—almost neat. This is…"

Not neat. Sasuke rises slowly, and he's been a cop since he was eighteen, and spent a good portion of his life before that in Undercity, which would probably make Hell seem cultured and welcoming in comparison. But this, this is so utterly violent and merciless, even for a serial killer, that it makes his stomach turn. It's possible it's just escalation, but Sasuke doubts it; too much, too sudden, especially when the other murders were so straightforward they were almost clinical.

Sakura is moving away, heading for the walls at the mouth of the alley. Sasuke replaces the ring and then mirrors her, heading for the other end where it butts up against a thick concrete wall. He studies the stone, eyes only just picking out faint score-marks starting about halfway up, a good fifteen in the air without any handholds or convenient ledges nearby.

"Noise barrier," Sakura calls, voice pitched just loud enough to carry between them without reaching the street. "There are scorch marks here—it must have been a powerful one. Either police-grade or illegally modified. No wonder nobody hears anything when these murders are happening."

"Augmented," Sasuke adds, gesturing upwards. Not that being augmented is anywhere near as rare as it was fifty years ago, but it cuts down their pool of suspects regardless. "No regular human could jump that high."

Izumo makes a noise that draws their attention back to him as he rocks back on his heels. "Or your perp's not human at all," he says grimly. "You're looking at the earthly remains of Waraji, no known name beyond the alias. His file's been flagged for smuggling, murder, extortion, arms dealing, and, last but certainly not least, overhauling and reprograming replicants to sell on the black market. Works for Gato."

Sasuke huffs, tucking his hands back into his pockets. "Makes a nice set," he offers, dry as dust. "To go with the man wanted for stealing replicants, the woman wanted for hacking and cracking them, and the two people selling free and papered replicants as to-be-owned models. All of whom just so happened to also work for Gato, who is forever denying accusations that he's the biggest black market replicant dealer in Konoha."

"So we've either got a very pissed-off android or a replicant rights enthusiast on our hands," Sakura mutters, rubbing her temple with a grimace. "Awesome. I honestly couldn't say which is worse."

Sasuke rolls his eyes. "The crusader," he says flatly, sidestepping a particularly deep pool of muck and going to hover near Sakura, who has moved to studying the body. Izumo lets her easily enough, knowing that her training rivals or even outstrips his in the area of medical knowledge.

"Definitely the same device as killed the last four," she murmurs, carefully tilting the trunk to get a look at the slashes. Sasuke doesn't quite look away, but it's a near thing. For the most part he's absolutely fine with corpses and the various things that come along with being a Major Crimes detective. But this one, so carefully dismembered and scattered, is almost too much for his equilibrium.

"Watch the eyeball on your left," Izumo warns placidly, and Sasuke rapidly decides that it's time to relocate.

"Checking with patrol," he informs his partner, and then beats a careful retreat back into the mildly fresher air of the Downcity street.

Of course, because the universe hates him, it's his absolute least favorite pair of Vice cops holding up the wall at the edge of the crime scene. Kankuro gives him a vicious grin, twirling his electro-mag rod through his fingers as Sasuke approaches.

"What's the matter, Uchiha?" he taunts. "Looking a little green there, aren't you? Ouch!"

Temari casually withdraws her elbow from her brother's gut and offers Sasuke a far more polite smile. "Uchiha. I thought this was one of yours. Same circumstances as the last—street was pretty much empty, no one heard anything, no one saw anything. Kankuro and I were on our way to 57th and East 9th when we noticed the blood and called it in. We took statements from the people in the surrounding businesses, but everyone's saying a whole lot of nothing."

That is equal parts unhelpful and unsurprising. Downcity is infamous for its lack of witnesses, even when crimes happen in broad daylight in the middle of the street. People here are only slightly more accommodating than those in Undercity, which means "not at all" rather than "will knife you for asking".

Some days, Sasuke really, truly wonders why he took a dead-end job on the police force rather than the cushy corporate office job his father offered him.

(Besides the fact that this job allows him to tackle fleeing suspects. That's just about the only perk he can think of right now.)

A hand on his elbow is enough to pull him out of the daze caused by reexamining his life choices. Sasuke glances around to find Sakura at his shoulder, trading perfunctory I've-seen-you-naked-but-we're-exes-so-let's-pretend-I-haven't smiles with Temari. "Anything?" he asks.

Turning away from the other woman, Sakura pulls her scarf up a little higher and shakes her head. "Not at the moment," she says, a thread of irritation in her tone. Sasuke takes a prudent step back. "We'll know more once Hagane and Kamizuki get done analyzing everything."

Also unsurprising. This entire case seems to be a series of baffling dead-ends and improbable circumstances, and Sasuke is getting tired of it. He grunts his acknowledgement, tips his head to the Vice cops in farewell, and turns away, heading back to the hovercar. Sakura falls into step beside him, expression analytical. Because they've been partners since they ended up in Major Crimes, Sasuke knows not to push. If Sakura figures something out, she'll share.

Working with her has been good for his patience, if nothing else.

It's only when they're halfway back to the precinct that she finally stirs from her spot leaning against the window, straightening a little and raking her fingers through her hair. Sasuke glances at her before turning his eyes back to the road, but it's enough that she'll know he's listening.

"Replicants aren't usually this…vicious," she says after a moment.

Sasuke nod his agreement, spotting one of the slightly-less-dubious food carts and pulling over. The only thing waiting for them back at the station is more paperwork and the headache that is this case. He's always happy to put off paperwork, and they can wrestle with the case just as well out here, so they might as well avoid the station's vending machine food and eat an early dinner now. "Your turn to pay," he reminds his partner as they both slide out onto the streets. They're on the edge of Downcity, right before the incline that will bring them to Midcity, and it's already noticeably warmer. Sasuke unzips his heavy jacket with relief.

Sakura makes a face at him, but obligingly digs out her wallet as they approach. "I can't tell whether this job or your eating habits are going to kill us first," she grumbles.

Maybe it's petty, but Sasuke takes pleasure in ordering the greasiest maybe-a-burger on the menu, just because.

Still, once they're safely back in the car, Sasuke turns most of his attention away from his lunch to prompt, "Vicious?"

Picking dubiously at her sauerkraut-smothered hot dog, Sakura nods. "Right," she says. "Even the other four murders were bad, if in a different way. Those weren't crimes of passion. Somebody stalked those people, cornered them, set up sound barriers, and then murdered them. It doesn't matter that it was just one clean cut. It was still premeditated and just…cold."

Sasuke considers the crime scene they just left, scattered body parts and blood soaking into the muck, and puts his burger down. "So what changed?" he asks, frowning out at the street. "Waraji isn't any worse than Zori, or Tayuya, or Hidan and Kakuzu. If this had happened to the last two, I could understand it—it makes sense for a replicant to get angry at one of their own doing this kind of thing, and Kakuzu didn't exactly make a lot of friends. But for a simple street thug who got ahead of himself? It doesn't fit."

Sakura sighs, mouth tightening in frustration. "You're right, it doesn't. A copycat, maybe? Serial killer cases tend to bring out the psychos."

"This hasn't been publicized," Sasuke points out. "It's criminals being killed. The news isn't interested enough to drag it out into the spotlight."

His partner chews, swallows, and then shakes her head. "Waraji didn't even fight back," she huffs. "No defensive wounds, so that wasn't the reason for butchering him. But I don't get it, Sasuke. It's like there were—" She stops suddenly, eyes widening.

Let it never be said that Sasuke needs everything spelled out for him. He catches the direction of her thoughts in an instant and finishes, "Like there were two different people." And…that makes a lot more sense. One to subdue the victim, one to set up the barrier. The first is cold, methodical, but the second is more violent, unrestrained. For some reason, they switched jobs for Waraji's murder, or maybe…

"Waraji wasn't carrying a knife," Sasuke realizes suddenly, glancing over at Sakura to see if she's made the connection. Judging by the blank look she gives him, she hasn't. Then again, she's from a nice Midcity family, and never had to learn the lessons Sasuke now knows by heart. "Sakura," he says patiently. "I would carry a knife in that part of Downcity. Even Itachi would carry a knife down there. There was a holster on Waraji's belt, so where was the knife?"

The pieces are falling together in Sakura's steel-trap mind. "No defensive wounds, because there wasn't time for them," she realizes, words gaining speed. "Waraji knew he was cornered, and he did try to fight back. He got the first one with his knife—not a killing blow, but maybe serious—while the other was setting up the barrier. The first falls back, the second sees what's happening and attacks. Without the first to hold them back, it's a slaughter, and then the second takes the knife, takes the first, and gets out of there, but they're not nearly as careful as the planner. That would account for the marks on the wall, and the scorches from the barrier, which we've never seen before."

"That accounts for just about everything," Sasuke murmurs. "And if we're right…"

"Blood," Sakura agrees, darkly satisfied. "The techs might be able to pull the first's blood out of the muck—any wound serious enough to take them out of the game must have dripped somewhere. And even if it's just replicant fluid, that should be enough to give us a clue."

This would be why Sasuke picked his Major Crimes job over that cushy office position. There's nothing quite as satisfying as the clues lining up, the facts coming together. Now they just have to wait and hope that their hunches are correct.

With a soft sound of approval, Sasuke starts the hovercar and inputs their destination. As it merges back into the street, he settles back in his seat and decides that this small breakthrough is enough to justify finishing his dinner.

The fact that Sakura winces when grease drips down the wrapper has absolutely nothing to do with it.