Garden of Madness

TITLE: Garden of Madness

AUTHOR: WotanAnubis

FANDOM: No More Heroes

DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters and am not making a profit.

RATING: NC-17

PAIRING: 8/8

NOTE: Selfcest, or incesturbation, fics pose quite a number of problems to the writer. Like, for example, figuring out just what the hell the plural of 'Shinobu' might be.

Sequel to Life and Death

* * * * *

Dr. Naomi, manufacturer of beam katanas for the discerning customer and part-time mad scientist, walked through one of the darker parts of her laboratory, followed by a thick patch of silence. She felt a bit like Orpheus, expect that the pale green light in front of her wasn't the outside world and the silence following her wasn't her lover.

Naomi had heard of Shinobu, or at least her reputation, before. For some reason, being an expert creator of tools devised for slicing people into very tiny bits had given her a working knowledge of Santa Destroy's criminal population (which was to say, its population). Shinobu, it seemed, was not one of those killers who killed because they liked it. This wasn't particularly comforting to Naomi. The insane, at least, could be counted on to let her live because they knew she'd soon come up with entirely new and interesting ways of helping others to an early grave. A sane girl like Shinobu, on the other hand, might decide not to let loose ends dangling after the job was done.

Too late for those concerns now, though. The job was done, after all.

"Here we are then," Naomi said, stopping in front of the ceiling-high tube that filled the lab with vague, sickly-green light.

Shinobu stepped in front of her and regarded the tube critically. Or, to be more precise, she regarded the person floating in its liquid critically.

Naomi wasn't really an expert when it came to cloning. Compared to her expertise in weaponry she was only a gifted amateur. However, she was the only one in Santa Destroy with any knowledge of the process so it was only reasonable that Shinobu had come to her for this job. She'd probably heard about her previous cloning work, done for some depraved college girl with a bloody baseball bat. Naomi had tried to forget about that particular job, but her occasional nightmares wouldn't let her.

"Are you sure this is an exact clone?" Shinobu asked, circling the tube.

"Yep. Exact in every detail," Naomi said.

"And she has my personality?"

"Almost."

Shinobu gave her a look that promised a quick death. "What do you mean by that?"

"I uploaded the memories and brain patterns you had last Saturday. It's Monday now," Naomi said.

"I see," Shinobu said. "Let her out."

"If you'd step away," Naomi said.

Shinobu obediently stepped behind her, keeping her hand loosely on the hilt of her katana. When Naomi punched a few buttons on a nearby console the liquid began draining from the cloning tube, taking the sickly light with and changing the green hermaphrodite in