Title: Close to Perfection
Fandom: Bleach
Rating:T for some violence and language
Warnings: Uh…this will not foster Mayuri-love. Trust me.
Disclaimer: I am not Kubo Tite, thus I do not own Bleach. I do not own these characters. I am only borrowing them for my own enjoyment.
She was not quite perfect. Every time he looked at her he wondered how that could have happened. He'd put so much time into her. Countless hours of analysis, experimentation, rejection, repeating, testing, breaking, rebuilding, re evaluation, and equating. She should have been the triumph of his genius. She should have been walking, living, breathing proof of his brilliance. She should have been the one thing that guaranteed the respect and admiration he so deserved from those barely qualified to be his peers.
If anything he was met with even more scorn, skepticism, and worst of all, disregard. They ignored his brilliance, downplayed his triumph, as if any of them could have possibly mimicked him. None of them had a prayer of even understanding his genius, let alone hoping to one day achieve what he had. They would never come close to him, let alone surpass him, and yet they behaved as if he were a child running around showing everyone his new toy truck.
He looked at her and knew something had gone wrong. For years he went over all of his notes. He poured over his meticulous handwriting, leaving no stone unturned. He retested everything. And, after countless years of analysis, he came to realize that whatever had gone wrong had nothing to do with his equations. His science was perfect, as he had always suspected.
Thus, his science no longer a factor in determining the mishap that had manifested in her imperfection, he turned instead to her. And it became glaringly obvious to him that he should not have wasted his time in analyzing his science. The flaw was not of his creation.
The flaw was her.
The problem was, of course, that no matter how perfect the design, once you allowed the creature free reign over it's thinking, there were bound to be unforeseen consequences. The mistake was, of course, allowing his creation the opportunity to gain control over it's thinking. Of course, he'd done this because it would be tiring having to order the creature to do every little thing. When he'd created her he'd given her that free will in order to lessen the burden upon himself. Other, more pressing matters required his thought and he did not want to waste time and energy on menial tasks, such as making sure the damned thing ate. So he'd given her an unfettered mind of her own.
This is where the problem had originated.
He should not have granted her so much freedom over her thinking. It was a mistake to assume that she would be capable of thinking for herself without running into those inevitable flaws that seems to plague every other being in the Gotei-13.
Independent thought breed insolence. He would not allow her to disobey him. However, short of ripping Nemu apart and beginning once more, he had no choice but to let her continue to think for herself. And while he'd considered this option on more than one occasion, he decided that there was a simpler way to demand her obedience.
The first time she dared look him in the eye he hit her so hard she flew across the room. Her body had knocked the worktable over and countless vials of poison and chemicals had crashed to the ground. Furious he kicked her until she spat blood and forced her to clean the glass with no protective gloves. The experimental poisons and chemicals made her hands burn, her eyes water, and her stomach churn. When she'd had the gall to try and leave in order to be sick in private, he'd shoved her down and told her that her work was not done. She had thrown up all over the floor, and he'd kicked her in the back until she'd gone limp. He watched her for the hours it took her to clean up the mess, and only after it was done did he allow her to seek medical attention for her illness.
It was like training a dog, he found. When she did something wrong—left the division's compound without his permission, gave an opinion he didn't ask for, listened to anyone other than himself—he punished her. Of course, he did not merely hit her. No, such physical abuse was inadequate on its own. If all he did was hit her then she'd eventually, after some indeterminate period of time, work up the strength to fight back. No, it required the accompaniment of something with more finesse. Something that would ensure the breaking of her spirit as well as her body. He needed to bend her and mold her, shape her into the closest approximation of the perfection she should have been.
And so he stopped hiding his contempt of her.
The first time he'd told her she was useless she'd been so stunned she'd begun to protest. He'd beat her, and as she lay broken and bleeding he'd spit on her.
"Useless fool! How can you serve me properly when you cannot even remain quiet after I have ordered your silence!" His voice raged and his spirit pressure pushed her abdomen to her spine, snarling as he heard her whimper. "I will not tell you again! Silence!" As his fury increased so did the force of his spiritual energy. The power tore into her, abusing the body he'd created for her. After a long moment, listening to her joints pop, he grinned, pleased. She'd not made a sound.
His tone was disgusted as he passed her. "Clean yourself up, useless girl. I don't want to see you again for the rest of the night."
He could not have been more pleased with the results, all things considered. She became so docile, so quiet, so obedient that there were times he found it hard to find flaws in her. These were rare occasions, of course, but it went a long way to proving that, with the right trainer, even the most hopeless of cases could be made to behave properly. Further proof of his brilliance: he'd taken a flawed, corrupt creation and shaped it into a passable work of perfection. Granted, she was not perfect. There were times when she would forget her training and disobey him in some way. However, he was diligent. He kept careful watch of his dog. He beat it into submission when it bared it's teeth, he cursed it when he made stupid mistakes, and he punished it for being noisy. He asserted his unquestioned authority. As time passed it became less and less necessary to raise hi hand to her. A word, a look, and she withdrew, acquiescing to his demands.
It was as close to perfection as she'd ever get.