"Don't leave me in suspense, now," she drawled, low and teasing, though I could still hear the note of anxiety hidden underneath. "Am I knockout beautiful after my transformation? I know, the glasses were doing a number on my appearance, right?"

Hurting, slightly dazed, and barely functional as I was, I still found enough strength to lift my arm and gently cup her cheek. "You look stunning as always, menace."

The way her nose puckered was both adorable and hilarious.

"Oh no, now he's got you using that nickname! I'm going to murder Yuri when I get my hands on him. Well, maybe not. He helped arrange all this. But still!"

She continued to grumble as she helped me to sit up. I realized we were in a completely new room, one that was sparsely furnished. Besides my gurney, which hardly counted since it was on wheels, I saw only a desk, a chair, and a water dispenser.

"It's just a quick convalescence room," Amelia clarified as she pulled five inhalers out of her pockets. She took one herself, grimaced, and threw it into a trash can I'd missed. Then she dumped the remaining four onto the gurney next to me.

"Take these, please." Something about my expression must have given me away, because she followed up immediately. "Now. No arguments."

"Stupid inhalers," I complained. "I'm gonna need some water first. I can barely talk, let alone huff ouchy powders."

I wasn't lying. My throat felt like a worse desert than the one that stretched outside our fair city, and that was tough to beat. Just the thought of placing a scratchy inhaler in my mouth made me shudder.

"Hmmm, fine, you get a stay of execution," Amelia replied with an easy grin.

I watched her stroll over to the water dispenser. The way she moved had changed. It was a subtle thing, but I'd spent nearly all my time around her recently, so it was hard not to notice.

She always tried to project confidence and security. But for the first time ever, that confidence lay around her like a well-fitting cloak, rather than something she had mugged a guy on the streets for.

"Here you go! Your water, as requested."

I ignored her playful tone and took in her eyes again as I sipped on my water.

The manufacturer had done an amazing job. Amelia had managed to adjust the color to the exact shade of green she used to have. The little cogs that spread out from the irises were a nice touch, too. They reminded me of old-timey clockwork devices. I'd expected the company logo to be hidden somewhere in the pattern, but it wasn't.

"What? I got something on my face?"

"Just admiring how beautiful you are."

I got a blush, but she rallied quickly. "Smooth. Not getting you out of your inhalers, though. Come on, now, all of them. Chop chop. Doesn't matter which you take first. The meds combo was made to be idiot-proof, I guess."

I sighed but complied, leaving a few sips of water for afterwards.

The experience was, as expected, horrible. However, I could honestly say that once I'd chased everything down with water, I felt remarkably better. Not perfectly healed or whatever, but the aches, pains, and numbness receded within minutes.

"Almost worth the inhaler hassle," I grumbled.

Then, finally, I started to move my body properly, instead of keeping myself still as a statue on purpose. There were a lot of mildly alarming 'crackle' sounds as everything settled into place, but Amelia just smirked at me when I shot her an alarmed look.

Beyond that, though…

Well. I didn't feel any new desires lurking in my mind. No unfamiliar impulses I had to grapple with immediately after waking up. Other than a slight sensation of my body weighing me down more than before, I felt fine.

Honestly, I'd expected to wake up and feel like my flesh didn't sit right on my bones. Or like I was a stuffed pastry with too much filling or something. Granted, I should have just trusted Amelia's expertise and gone quietly under her knife, but it wasn't like logic and emotions ever lined up properly.

"Done adjusting? Because we really do need to go," Amelia cut in remorsefully. "Trust me, I get it. I'd like nothing more than to sit here and stare at you for a while… ugh, I mean — oh, stop grinning at me, you idiot! I just mean I can properly see everything again now! Better than I ever could before, actually."

"Yeah, I get that."

I sighed as I lowered myself to the floor, stumbling for a second before my body remembered how to function. Then I spotted my clothes, neatly piled close to where my feet used to be on the gurney, and began to dress. Someone (read Amelia) had already slipped my underwear and a long set of gloves on, covering most of my arm up to my elbow, but had left the rest of my clothes off.

"You literally have five minutes," Amelia chirped from the side. And while I rolled my eyes dramatically, just to make her giggle, I did speed up.

As I dressed, I paid careful attention to my body, looking for signs of what had happened to me. I found faint white lines running the length of my legs, and a few other obvious incision points along my chest and hips. But other than that, there was a remarkable lack of scars or irritated skin.

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It was like I'd gone to sleep, gotten my parts swapped out, and then been put back together so perfectly that I could face the day immediately. Amelia had even assured me that the faint marks and any lingering discomfort would fade completely within forty-eight hours. At most. The more realistic timeframe was twenty-four hours. I was extremely happy I wouldn't be going through a drawn-out recovery.

I was also pissed off beyond belief.

I'd seen people die in the slums because of an infected injury so many times. I had watched people waste away from stab wounds, literally lying on my apartment building's doorstep because they had nowhere to go and no one to care about them. Others dragged around injuries for months, if not years, and never fully recovered.

Meanwhile, in the inner districts, you could play swapsies with your skeletal system and walk away a couple hours after the surgery, none the worse for wear.

Fuck, even if you came in completely wrecked, I was pretty sure they could rebuild most of your body. Using organic material, too!

Amelia didn't talk about her former work in a ton of detail. Not because she was ashamed of working as a ripper, but because it was all familiar and, dare I say, boring to her. But she did let slip about how much 'easier' it was to help patients recover when using cloned limbs and organs. People were less likely to freak out after a major injury if they woke up to find their body matched what they remembered.

The fact that the option was 'a little more expensive' than cybernetic replacements of middling quality, by inner district standards of course, was mildly infuriating.

If the people in the slums had access to that kind of tech, then the flesh harvesters would be out of work within a fucking week. Instead, they were out there, targeting the healthiest, prettiest, and most vulnerable members of the slums. Scummy rippers too, though I'd argue there wasn't much of a distinction between the two.

"You okay?" Amelia's words came to me in a whisper as she closed her arms around me, and I realized I had frozen in place after I was finished dressing.

"Yeah… yeah. Just thinking."

"About?"

"Just… stuff. My past, I guess. Things I saw in the slums." I cleared my throat, then turned around to give her a little kiss and a gentle smile. "Shall we get out of here?"

She sighed contently. "Yeah, let's."

I luxuriated in her warmth and the softness of her hand as she pulled me along. I honestly didn't pay much attention to the hallways we passed through. All my focus was reserved for her and my memories.

"So, how did the surgeries go? Any issues?" I asked, more to hear her talk than out of curiosity.

"Nah, went buttery smooth! I had ya done in, like, an hour and a half. And that I mostly spent fine-tuning things. Over-tuning them, really. I just… wanted you to never even feel a difference between before and after the surgery, you know? At least no negative differences. Positives are what we're here for!"

I melted a little at that, and I stopped her immediately for another kiss. "You're the best, you know?"

"I do!" She giggled, still a little flushed. "But I don't mind being reminded. Anyway, yeah. Got done with the surgery, put you back together, which also means I finished fixing up your shoulder, by the way, so you're welcome! And then I cleaned everything up. Can't have people wondering why the operating theater looks like an oil spill instead of all bloodied up. Plus, it's best to leave rented ripper setups the way you found them."

I shook my head, amused. I had a feeling she'd have done the cleaning whether or not there was a risk of my 'blood' giving away that I wasn't exactly normal.

When we got down to the garage level of the complex the ripper clinic was in, a car was waiting for us. Tinted windows, subtle plating, the whole shebang. Yuri really was treating us like VIPs.

Thanks to that, and the fact that the car was apparently auto-drive, I got to spend most of my time in it 'forcing' cuddles on my adorable ripper and looking lovingly into her eyes. She enjoyed complaining about me 'pawing' at her like a puppy, but then again, she was trying her best to burrow into my chest, so…

"You're paying a lot of attention to my eyes," she said when we reached our megabuilding, carefully looking away from me as we got out of the car.

"Well… can't blame me. They're pretty. The pattern's interesting, too. Looks a ton better without the Machina logo, honestly."

That got a delighted giggle out of her, though it also sounded a little malicious. "Yeah, I know. My uncle didn't exactly get them through official channels, seeing as they're a military model, so they're fully jailbroken. I have access to all the customization settings. Would have paid the subscription to be able to do it anyway, though."

"Wait… subscription?"

"Mmhmm, why do you think a lot of people are stuck with the logo on display?" she teased, then turned to look me in the eye again. Her brand new cybernetics flashed, and the Machina logo appeared among the little cogs that decorated the whites of her eyes. Then it vanished. Suddenly, the cogs also vanished, leaving her eyes looking organic. Then the cogs came back without the logo, and Amelia looked away.

I was kind of stunned. Everyone in the slums with cyber eyes had those stupid logos. At least, everyone I had met. I'd just assumed they were a perma feature.

"Wait… I think I remember seeing some kind of logo on your father's eyes?"

It was a bit tricky to remember. At the time, I'd been focused more on the red parts of the good doctor's eyes, along with everything else that was going on. But I could swear it was there…

"Yeah." She didn't look happy at the reminder. "He, ah, had a Machina model, too. They're just the best for rippers, okay? Anyway, do you really think his cheap ass would have opted to pay a single credit for anything he didn't have to?"

I snickered. "No, I suppose not."

"I can tell you he wouldn't. Seriously, I have no idea what my mother was thinking, marrying that idiot. She had more than a few other prospects, and she —"

Amelia clammed up, looking less like she wasn't supposed to share this info with me and more like she just didn't enjoy thinking about it.

Except I was curious now. "Prospects…?"

She sighed, but she gave in. "My mother's family… You wouldn't know from my uncle, but they're… wealthy. Influential. Proper top corpo family and all. My mother was an asset. But she wasn't set to inherit, and she wasn't the firstborn daughter either, so she 'got away with' marrying an 'extremely promising young scientist.' Ugh. Like she didn't help prop him up to make him look better."

I just blinked at her for a few seconds. There was a lot there to unpack. "So… your mother chose your father?"

"Apparently." Amelia shrugged. "When they got married and he immediately started taking advantage of her, my uncle blew up. However, my father was apparently beneficial to the family, so my grandparents refused to do anything. My mother stayed, too. So, Uncle Yuri broke ties with the family and moved to be a little closer to Mom. Their family wasn't based in Zanos, you see."

"So… your suspicious, probably ganger uncle comes from incredible wealth and influence?" I stammered.

"Yep yep. And I'm technically a corpo princess. Serve me well, peasant, and riches will be yours!"

We had finally reached our apartment, and she threw the door open. "Behold, my glorious castle! Also, on a more serious topic…" Her tone switched rapidly from 'pompous' to 'teasing' as she zeroed in on the one thing I'd refused to do so far. "You gonna check your stats now?"

"Yeah, yeah…"

I couldn't properly explain why I was stalling. It was like I still expected something to go wrong. Some hidden defect to appear and throw me for a loop. If anything of the sort existed, I knew it would reflect in my status.

But she was right. I couldn't avoid it any longer.

With one final reluctant sigh, I dove in.

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