I awoke on a bed. Not just any bed, no. This bed was so soft and comfortable. Not at all like my own. I could just sleep here all day-

I bolted upright. Where was I? I tried to think back- did I get home after the heist? The last thing in my memory was stumbling into the alley with a killer headache and covered in valuables. What happened?

And why the hell was it so cold in here? I pushed off a bunch of ice packs, shivering. What kinda cruel torture was this? The room looked familiar. Very familiar. What was I doing in Mira's room? The interface popped into my vision, distracting my line of thought.

「Stealth - 6>7」

「Deception - 2>3」

「Request - Eye of Avarice - Complete

Crow's Wheel of Wares」

「Use now?」

What? No, I didn't have time for this right now. I stumbled off the bed, my foot catching on the railing. My own 'bed' was just a mattress on the floor, so the rail completely took me off guard. I slammed face-first into the wall and my ankle twisted at an awkward angle. I could already feel blood beginning to pour from my nose.

Footsteps came rushing down the hall at the racket I made. The door slammed open, revealing my Mikata. She held a bunch of ice packs in her hands. My cruel torturer finally revealed themselves.

"Are you-" Her heavily concerned voice cut off. Mira stopped in the doorway in what I could only describe as heavily stunned. A second passed as she looked at me. "Pfftt! Hahahaha!"

I held my bleeding nose in embarrassment. "Don' laugh!"

It only seemed to make her laugh harder. For the next several minutes, she continued to laugh at me while I tried to stop my nose from bleeding. Several long, uncomfortable minutes as she just laughed at me, her hurt mikata, with reckless abandon. What a slag.

We moved to the living room. The smile still clung to her lips, though it looked more like one of relief. "Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh so hard. It was just such a relief to see you stable again. Kinda just bubbled out of me."

"It's fine." I rubbed at my arms uncomfortably, trying to warm up a bit.

She pulled me into a tight hug. Her happiness immediately turned to tears. She was taller than me, so she literally cried down into my scalp. "I'm so glad you're okay! The quack pa brought said you were brain dead."

"Obviously, I'm not." I patted her back lightly. Eventually I managed to extract myself from her arms and rub the moisture out of my hair. "How'd I get here, anyway?"

She sniffled slightly and rubbed at her eyes. "That guy you've mentioned, Shinobu, brought you to us. You shoulda seen Pa'. He looked ready to strangle the guy when he showed up carrying you half-dead with delirium."

Shinobu brought me? I knew he was a good guy, but damn. To think he brought me from a shitty alley across the entire city to Mira and Uncle Ezra. "How'd he know to come here?"

Mira smirked. "You kept calling out for me. How sweet! Didn't know our Shiro was such a-"

"Shut it." I had nothing. She was my best mikata. Closer to a slightly older sister than anything, though I'd never tell her that to her face. "What happened to me, anyway?"

"Heatstroke? Pa's seen similar in the desert with FSA troops. Especially closer to the Eternal Sandstorm- Oh! I need to tell him you're up." Mira darted off to find her phone.

While she got that taken care of, my mind drifted to Blackout. Heat stroke? More likely, it burned my brain out. The doc that diagnosed me as brain dead likely wasn't a quack. Probably was actually brain dead for a bit there. Blackout was dangerous.

If I didn't have Quick Healing… It brought me back from the brink. Guess when the interface said it'd heal fatal injuries, it really would heal fatal injuries. What was the extent of that though? What if only a speck of my blood survived? Would I heal back from that? I really didn't want to test something like that.

Mira hung up the phone and smiled brightly at me. "You're fine? You are fine, right? So, how'd it happen? Shinobu was chased out pretty quick, but he mentioned being on a job. Oh! He said to call him when you get the chance! Was it with the Jade Fang?"

Classic Mira, ever the spitfire. "One at a time? Um. I feel fine. Kinda good, actually. I overused some chrome, I think. The job was a hit on a transport truck."

I dunno if I'd ever use Blackout again. I noticed last time, but the overheating was a serious, serious flaw. The Advent Phantom was fine in almost every other way. Chrome that killed its user was bad chrome though.

I shudder to think what state I would've been in without the help of Quick Healing. Or what state the beta-testers were in. Maybe I just got a faulty eye though? No way they passed something that cooked the user's brain.

Mira frowned, staring at my chrome eye. "That's some serious chrome if it puts you in that situation."

"Experimental-"

"You put experimental chrome in your body?! Are you insane?!" She shrieked and stared at me as if I was an idiot.

I attempted to raise my hand placatingly, but she swatted them down. "L-look, it's based around Medtech stuff, and it's mostly safe. The tech is even cutting edge. It's just- just that its extra feature isn't quite finished."

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"Oh my! I couldn't tell!" She grabbed my arm and started to pull me towards the door. Easily at that. She was way stronger than me. "Let's- lets get that pulled out right now."

I dug my heels in. "W-wait! I'll have it removed and upgraded in two weeks for free! They should have all the kinks fixed by then. And it won't be a problem as long as I don't use the extra feature!"

She paused at the door. Her grip tightened on my wrist. "Two weeks?"

"Y-yeah. Outside the augment, it's perfectly safe." I rubbed lightly at my eye socket. "Generations better than my old eye."

"Hmm…" She ran a hand along her hair, a sign I knew to mean she was thinking deeply. "Fine! You better not use that feature again though!"

I sighed. "Okay, mom."

Mira swept my legs and knocked me to the floor before I could even react. "Serves you right. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, young lady!"

"Hey! I'm a patient! And you literally just did the same thing!" She wasn't the only one with a few tricks up her sleeves. I activated my Perks and sneakily snatched her leg, causing her to fall on top of me.

And so began a wrestling match between two very unbalanced opponents. I lost. Terribly. She had the muscle and training advantage, and even with my underhanded tricks I couldn't do anything thanks to ignoring Insight.

She won the battle, but I definitely won the war when Uncle Ezra found her putting me in an armbar in the entryway and nearly whipped her ass blue.

— — —

I stared at Uncle Ezra and Mira unwillingly. They wanted to be around when I contacted Shinobu again. Something about checking his intentions? He'd repeatedly proved himself to me. And it wasn't like this was the first time they heard of the guy. I definitely brought him up in the past… maybe since they finally got a visual of the guy?

Anyway, they were both trustworthy. I saw no problem with it, or of sharing any of my secrets… except maybe the interface? I didn't have a clue how to approach that conversation in the first place.

The call rang for a very short time before he picked up. "Shiro? You alive, mikata?"

"Nova. Just a heatstroke from my chrome." I ignored Mira's pointed stare. "How'd it end? I wasn't all there."

"Flawless! Well, except for the part with you wigging out. I was first to the alley, kept the vultures from snatching you and leaving. I was going to take you to Nael's." He sighed. "Wasn't even sure if you were injured. Acted all loony on my, mikata. Thought you got high off something. Kept calling Mira, Mira."

Across the table, Mira smirked. I shot her a glare. "How'd the loot go, though? I take it they didn't notice."

"Like I said, mikata; flawless. According to my insider, they didn't know till several hours after arrival." He laughed heartily. "And thanks to the- uh, 'extra step', they aren't on our trail at all."

"So how much are we looking at?" That was the real question I was interested in. Rayn. More specifically, how much would go to me? I went brain dead for that money, so it better web worth it.

"You managed to nab thirteen low-level Daemons. Fix to six hundred each. The assorted chips were low end. Somewhere around eight hundred for all of them. Five Black ICE programs too, each at three hundred. The insane part was that black briefcase you snatched. Even my insider didn't know, but it held an unbound Net Architecture."

"Total?" The numbers already were making my head spin.

He cheerfully answered. "Twelve thousand five hundred Rayn. Our splits? Three thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven Rayn. Pretty damn good for how flawless it went… outside of your condition."

"That's Nova! When will it come through?" I asked, already formulating plans for more heists. I've only done small-scale stuff in the past, and I didn't realize quite how lucrative it could be if I moved my sights just a bit further up. Sure, the danger was far more... but the Rayn!

"As soon as the fixer sells the lot off. There might be some minute variability in the pay since she's running it through a Night Market." I could practically hear the grin on his face. "Thanks, Shiro. Couldn't have pulled it off without you."

"No problem. Just call me again if you need me." There was something else… what was it- "Oh, and consider that favor you owed me gone. Thanks for taking me out of the alley."

"Course!" Shinobu sighed. "Ishimaru-sama would've had my hide if I got you killed in a gig. You might think he's just joking when he says you're his favorite, but he really does have a soft spot for you."

Nonsense. He acted that way with everyone. "I'll see you later."

"Cya." The line went dead.

…

I could feel both their eyes boring into me. The awkward silence broke to Uncle Ezra. "So three thousand Rayn, huh?"

"I guess so." I almost couldn't look at him. I mean, they knew that I was a crook, but this was the first time they'd ever been smacked in the face with it. Usually, we just didn't talk about it considering their connections to the government.

Uncle Ezra slapped me on the back. "Good job, kid. Your parents would've been proud of you, even if they wished you would've entered a different field. Your dad and mom always used to celebrate after a successful gig…"

A smile sprung to my lips. He rarely talked about my parents. Guilt, I think. He was on deployment when they were killed, and he couldn't do anything to help me in the first seven months I was by myself. He didn't even know they died till he returned to the city. The Jade Fang truly pulled through back then. "Thank you, Uncle Ezra."

"Eee!" Mira shook my arm around. "I'm so happy for you, Shiro! That's some serious bank! So, what are you gonna spend it on?"

"I dunno… maybe buy some parts and stuff and fix up my bike? It's been acting up. Then save for a drought I guess." I hadn't thought of it. I could also upgrade my living conditions. Most studio apartments were around fifteen hundred Rayn a month…

But then I'd be moving out of my nice free cargo container. It'd probably be best to wait and see if my current streak of Rayn and gigs kept up. It'd be dumb to start buying without making sure my income was secure.

So my income, assuming I got at least two gigs a week like I had, was somewhere around twenty-four hundred Rayn. Silage was somewhere around three hundred a month plus the fifteen hundred from the apartment. Likewise, it was my main expense.

I would have around eighteen hundred Rayn left over to spend on other things. That was assuming everything went well though. And not including AE3 prices. So maybe cut off an extra one or two hundred. I could try to get a new apartment in a couple weeks.

And maybe look at some alternative revenue streams while I was at it? Maybe I should drop picking pockets entirely. It didn't pay all that well compared to the time it took, at least with my skill level. I was much better off going for something else a bit more lucrative.

"I've got an old tool bag I can give you. Might not be the best quality, but they'll be free till you upgrade. Oh, and I could send for a mechanic to check it out. On the down low, of course." Uncle Ezra said.

"I'll think about the tool bag, but definitely not the mechanic." I shrugged. "This'll be a good experience for me."

"Then take the tool bag. It's not like we need it." Mira said, nudging her dad in the side.

He immediately agreed with her. "Right."

I had the sneaking suspicion they were scheming something, but I couldn't say no. I did need some tools to start with. "Fine."

And that's how I ended up in a cab ride the next day with not just a bag of tools, but a bag of medical supplies too. Oh, and a very high-end multitool that must've cost at least seven hundred Rayn. Yeah, they were plotting something. I couldn't even stop and argue with them since my cab was waiting, which was even more annoying.

The cab dropped me off back by Big Mike's. It was a bitch and a third to carry all of the stuff on my little half-working bike and cart it back to my cargo container. Even more annoying? Carting it up the welder ladder.

I collapsed onto my bed. Even calling my mattress a bed felt insulting after sleeping on Mira's, but it was the best I had. I stared up at the ceiling, as I tended to do these days. With just a thought, the interface appeared in my vision.

「Request - Eye of Avarice - Complete

Crow's Wheel of Wares」

「Use now?」

Sure.

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