The Sun had started to kiss the city and we were all more than a little inebriated. I myself could barely mumble out a semi-coherent sentence. The others, well, let's just say they all were worse off than me, except for John. John was bright eyed and looked like he was having a ton of subdued fun watching us make fools of ourselves. In what I thought was a brilliant move, I had a solution for our collective condition, and I used it. Regrowths and Cleanses all around. You get a Regrowth, you get a Regrowth, and you get a Regrowth! I was channeling minute flows of mana on several folks at a time. If I hadn't been riding the booze train I might have realized what an accomplishment that was.

  It wasn't until I hit myself with a Regrowth, that the idea that pouring mana into a bunch of Moxes who weren't used to magic was a dumb py on so many levels. Shit. Thankfully, I didn't have to hit any of them with a strong enough dose of mana to cause those kinds of issues, alcohol only took a brief burst of energy to dissipate. If I had gone that far, I'm not sure things could have been calmed down at all. They certainly noticed I was somehow making them feel a lot better though. The responses varied dramatically.

  I got accused of jacking them with drugs, chemicals or nanites. Which given what little I knew about the Mox was a definite no go. They have a hair trigger when it comes to that shit. If it hadn't been for Rita and Mateo sticking up for me, they might have tried to remove certain equipment that my dies hadn't had the pleasure of fully using yet. As it was, I apologized profusely, because causing trouble even unintentionally needs to be rectified if you want to maintain trust. And I was starting to come around on the Mox, they were becoming alright in my book, so I wanted to keep a connection with them open.

  Now some of them were just miffed at losing their buzz, and others were intrigued by the feeling mana had given them. So it's not like the whole room wanted to skin me, but it was enough people to be a problem. Oddly, it was Susie herself that ended up settling the whole affair. A few quick tests, administered with small chip-like reactive meters, showed that I hadn't spiked or hacked anyone, and that everyone was a little healthier than they were before. Not much because I wasn't really focused when I was throwing spells around like they were going out of style.

  Susie said that pending a demonstration, I was not doing anything wrong, and she thought it was all a misunderstanding. That was very reasona... Wait, that was very suspicious. Okay, what the hell did she want? It was obvious what she wanted, a rundown of my healing services. So I suggested that she should pick two different kinds of folks, one close to fully borg and one close to being fully 'ganic. Why did that matter, they asked, and I expined that it would become obvious after a few minutes.

  First up was one of the girls that worked as a bouncer, she was mostly chrome. Her name was Sam, and she had a lot of problems. I had her y down on a nearby table we cleared off. She was nervously fidgeting, when I asked to touch her. "Do you have to?" She sounded scared, and maybe a little lost.

  "Strictly speaking, no. But I can work faster and better if I do. I don't have to touch anything other than your hand if that makes it better?" I kept my voice even, not quite the tone I'd use with a stray dog, but not far from it either. She nodded and gave me her hand. Let's see, Sam was roughly 80% chrome at this point. Only a few muscle groups, most of her digestive tract, the majority of her brain and her reproductive organs were still meat. That said, my practice session on the Nomads back in New Lordaeron had shown me I could soothe the interface between flesh and chrome and that's what I focused on here. A lot of her chrome had been poorly impnted. Outside of that, I fixed a few hormonal imbances.

  Did she just have one of the most wild experiences of her life? No, probably not, but her voice sure let everyone know she was enjoying her treatment

  "Did you actually just give her several orgasms just by touching her hand?" Rita stare at me incredulously. Folks were getting riled up again though the focus of their attention seemed more positive, at least for the moment.

  "Technically, yes, but it's just a side effect of the process. Something about the energy I used causes this reaction in people who ck a certain amount of the same energy to begin with. Though I was told that if I ever found myself flooded with a higher level of energy than I could normally handle the same thing would happen to me." I expined while pulling more mana from the thin atmosphere. Everyone seemed to calm down a bit after that.

  Finishing with Sam, I suggested that she find a better Ripper. Which on reflection was another obvious ndmine. Of course, shitty work like this wasn't done with her consent, at least not originally. I had been looking at the attempts of a Ripper to fix the mess left behind by some Maelstrom bullshit.

  "Fuck, I'm just poking all the buttons today. I sorry, Sam." I meant it. I don't like digging up old bullshit.

  "No, it's okay. You had no way of knowing that it hadn't been a botched chip job. I'm feeling so much better now. Thank you." She seemed a lot more cheery than when she'd id down. She got up and went to sit down for a while, letting the aftermath of my treatment run its course.

  Next up was George. George, worked the bar with Mateo, and was about 70% ganic. He id down on the table and shoved his hand at me like I was offering him the job he always wanted. On the outside he was a well put together dude. Nothing seemed visible wrong with him. Inside he was a fucking mess. Every organ was to some degree messed up. I worked on them one by one until I finally got down to his private areas. At some point someone had tried to remove his bits. Also someone had done severe damage to his waste exit port.

  Was this the work of Scavs, Maelstrom, or the vengeance of a jealous rival? The ministration of prison violence? I couldn't make sense of it. What the hell was going on here? Poor bastard had been through a blender and then the blender vioted him. That didn't set right with me. On a fundamental level, I now felt obligated to correct this mess. I put all my effort into fixing him. Every bit of concentration I could muster and every ounce of mana I could draw was turned toward making this poor man whole again.

  When his man tackle was whole once more and his other issues were healed, I started to come back to the world only to find him crying. Sobbing uncontrolbly. I didn't know what else to do, I gave him a hug. We could all use more hugs, right? All the sudden, I was a flotation device and he was drowning.

  "It's okay now, Brother. It's over." Fuck me, I didn't know what to say. So I said the first thing I could think of.

  "George!" Susie tched on to both of us, like a koa to a tree, and George slowly transferred all his attention over to her. This allowed me to separate myself from that awkward sandwich. Good thing too, they'd started making out right then and there. Whoa!

  I realized after a moment this is what Susie really wanted from me, or was hoping for. George was Susie's input, and someone had scrambled him good, probably because of her.

  This shitty city was still showing me its fucked up cards, and I didn't think it was even remotely through yet.

  It's nice to help folks, though I was noticing a worrying tendency to shift into different mindsets around different groups of people. Usually, I hadn't even realized I had changed. Maybe, I had always been that way, adapting to suit the needs of the moment. I'd never needed to change much back home, so I'd never seen who I really was before. That begged the question, was there a "real" me, in the first pce? Nope, set that aside for now. I started breathing in the manner John had shown me while running a list of things in the room. This technique helped to ground you to where and when you were. This helped wrangle your thoughts towards your goals and not get lost in your own bullshit. Ironically, the method was developed to help distracted children with their schoolwork ages ago, but Assassins seemed to love it. Fun facts, from John Wick.

  Refocused, I watched the open dispy of vigorous affection taking pce right in front of me. Way too close, I could feel their bodies heating up. I backed off and left them to their fun. SusieQ was still kind of a bitch, but at least now there was an obvious reason for her behavior. I'd have been pissy too.

  While George and her continued, uh, testing his new equipment, the rest of the Mox crowded me again. This time asking for their own turns under my hands. The thought crossed my mind that I really should start charging folks for this. Then I thought about whether we really had time for all of this mess, or if I was letting myself get distracted as a means to stop thinking about my test fuck ups? Then my brain countered with a, "Nah, don't be a dick about it", and a "I could work on my issues ter". So, I had John and Jim line them up and I started helping them one at a time.

  So many of them had small issues with cyberware. Even having access to a good Ripper was no guarantee that your body could handle the chrome. Also, over time even the better install jobs started to wear the flesh down, not to mention the stresses that built up on the cyberware itself. Thankfully, I could easily take care of the damaged flesh and even strengthen the connection to their chrome. Easing a lot of the minor problems in a few minutes. Healing the Mox soon fell into a routine. Just to break the monotony, I tried examining them while bringing out some of the instincts and knowledge from my Warp-Smith css. An idea that paid out a few dividends, I could now identify the types of wear and damage on their chrome while still running Regrowth on autopilot. However, no matter how I tried, I couldn't affect the cyberware itself with Psi or Mana. No surprise there, just mild disappointment.

  In this session of mass healing, there where a few stand out cases. The Mox had a lot of enemies and rivals and often ran afoul of their competition. This had lead to an unreasonable amount of old bullet wounds, poorly healed cuts and misaligned broken bones. Medical care was very much a matter of how much you could afford to spend on it. Under no circumstances would I say that you got what you paid for, but it did make a rge difference if you could drop an extra thousand eddies here or there. So, I was seeing many different levels of treatment of a lot of the same problems.

  With Phillis, who liked to go by Ly, there was nothing but issues. Malnutrition, addiction to a few different drugs, and improper nanite function were the main culprits. I couldn't affect the nanites directly but I could get her body to flush out the messed up batches. There wasn't an organic part of her that hadn't faced extreme damage at some point in her life. It didn't help that her cyberware was some of the cheapest and poorly chipped junk that I had seen to date. She looked and felt like she was in her eighties and on her st legs. Maybe a few months of life left in her. But I continued working on her, and lo and behold she really did come out like a whole different person on the other side of my treatment. No one could have imagined she'd look like a dy in her twenties again. There was no way in hell, I was going to ask her actual age.

  Then there was Kaz. She had been the captive of a deranged group of AI worshipers. She was so twitchy she hit me a few times by accident, while she was going over the treatment she had received at the cult's hands. I'll spare you the details, other than some folk just aren't right in the head. Once again, Rita had been front and center in the group that smashed the cult down, and she'd pulled Kaz back to the Mox herself. That brought up more memories of Sinn, that I had to shut out. I healed the st scraps of flesh left in Kaz and did my best to smooth her ridiculously raw neural connections.

  More and more tales of tragedy were piled at my feet. Causing me to work harder, yo push myself further. To right the wrongs set before me. At some point, my awareness caught golden energy flowing from some of the Mox that I'd healed. Sure, that made sense I guessed. They had faith in me from my acts of healing. Isn't that one of the paths that had gotten us Saints in the past? As long as they didn't start chanting about me in, what was it? Oh yes, "High Gothic", I didn't see the harm. Might even protect them a bit if another Daemon was running around somewhere.

  When I was finally done it was well into the afternoon. And I felt like a wrung out rag. I didn't think I could channel more mana if my life depended on it. So the fels and I sat with Rita, Revy, Susie and George, while we shared our rations. No offense to the Mox's cooks, but I felt like real food would help me recover better.

  Rita, Susie and Revy sent me all of their data on Saphie. I sent all of it on to Alina and asked her to give me the highlights, while I munched away on a wonderful sandwich from a ration pack. BBQ Brisket. Nice. I noticed it was apparently okay for all the dies to steal food off my pte. I barely got any of the crispy beer battered fries that came with the sandwich. I didn't see a one of them going for Jim or John's food. What the fuck was that about? I had even offered them their own packs, which they declined. Did I have sucker tattooed on my forehead? Sigh, whatever, I had plenty more ration packs. The next one I pulled out had a Chicken Rice Casserole that was so delightful, I almost decided to stab Rita when she snagged a bite. I grumbled a bit instead. Once again, I was saddened that my side dishes disappeared before I could get to them. Seriously, what the fuck!?

  Alina returned with a profile on Saphie, ying out in simplest terms a profile of who she was and what she wanted. Saphie was a genius. I didn't have a better term for it. She absorbed knowledge like a sponge and spat out amazing ideas. My poor simple brain couldn't follow half of what she had published on her own. Her works contained a thousand ways to improve life, especially where cyberware was concerned. All before she'd even taken her first steps into Academia proper.

  As little of her work as I could understand, I already had a good idea what'd happened to her, if not who had done it. It was pretty obvious she had been snatched up by some Corp. Either to eliminate her before she could become a problem, or to force her to work for them. I didn't need Alina for that much of the puzzle. Hmm. It sure would be nice to find her alive, but I was not going to bet on it.

  The hunt for Saphie should start at her st known location. However, the apartment she had been renting at the time was already in the hands of another renter, preventing a closer examination, at least by me and the boys. We would wait until nighttime and have a Probe sneak in and scan everything. Risky, but feasible. That'd give us a quick rundown of what might have been going on. We'd also have an Observer park over the apartment and use its powerful scanners to peal back any long forgotten secrets hidden there. It might take longer, but it would be far more thorough, and the current occupants would remain none the wiser. While that was taking pce, we would take a Probe and hit all of her known favorite hangouts.

  Other Observers were tasked with investigating the most likely culprits. Which with the information we already possessed, appeared to be Raven Microcybernetics, Biotechnica, and the Tyger Cws. My gut leaned toward Raven Microcybernetics right now, but I had nothing concrete to base that on, other than most of her innovations involved the same type of Cybernetics to some degree. We all knew how Corps got when you got near their IPs.

  It might take a while before we managed to pry any usable info out of our efforts, but I had a good feeling about this one.

  With the ball already rolling on the Saphie investigation I turned my attention back to the Mox and my food.