First Repair
"Mind if I take a look at that arm?"
"What? You? You've got to be kidding me. Do you even know what this prosthetic is before you go asking to look at it?"
The woman glared at me, fury written across her face.
"It's a broken prosthetic, that's what. And I'm a technician. Fine. If you'd rather not show me, don't. Rest here as long as you like. I'll let Gordon know you stopped by."
I gave a dismissive wave and took a step toward the door.
"...This is Mega-Corp hardware. Not something just anyone can work on."
The hard line I'd taken made her voice lose some of its edge. I turned on my heel and stepped back inside.
"Yes. A Cheonroe mana-firing amplification prosthetic."
Surprise flickered across her face.
"You recognized it? This isn't a production model. It's custom."
"Custom or not, Cheonroe's signature tech doesn't just vanish. You can tell from the engineering that went into it."
"...I guess that's Gordon's apprentice for you..."
"I'm not his apprentice. I'm a hired technician. So what's it going to be?"
"...Fine. Take a look. Just a look."
Truth was, she didn't have much of a choice. From the looks of things, her prosthetic had given out mid-combat, and in a situation like this, hunting down a proper technician wasn't exactly an option.
"Alright. Excuse me for a moment."
I approached her slowly. My heart had started to pound.
Because there was a pretty woman standing in front of me? Not a chance.
The prospect of collecting a repair fee from a client who looked like she had money was, at best, a secondary reason. What really had my pulse racing was the fact that this arm was the first intact, genuine Mega-Corp original I had laid eyes on since arriving in this world.
When I'd played Fusion Punk as a technician build, what had I regretted most?
The main game was set in 2333, after most of the Mega-Corps had already fallen. Nothing still lying around was intact. Finding a genuine Mega-Corp original was like plucking stars from the sky. Everything was a patched-up repair job, modified into rags across generations.
And now, sitting right in front of me, was a piece of genuine cyber-gear packed with the cutting-edge technology of a Mega-Corp that had not yet been destroyed.
I swallowed hard and laid my hand on the prosthetic.
A soft hiss.
Mana threads unspooled from my fingers and seeped into the arm.
"Wh-what? You're a mage?"
"Shh. Let me concentrate. I can't afford to lose focus."
She pressed her lips shut at that.
I poured my attention into the prosthetic through the mana threads. Through the Demon Eye of Spell Breaking and those threads, the precision schematic of the Cheonroe prosthetic unfolded before me.
God. That's actually beautiful...
So this was a genuine Mega-Corp original.
The mana circuitry, aligned without a micron of error, and the placement of every major component — to a technician's eye, it was practically a work of art. A level of precision in a completely different dimension from the rag-patched relics of three hundred years later. And the exterior? Just as stunning. Skin so smooth it was nearly indistinguishable from a human arm, densely packed with tactile sensors. You could feel the effort that had gone into making sure it wouldn't be a burden in daily life.
Plenty to learn from this.
Admiration, however, could wait. There was a fire that needed putting out first. Sparks kept jumping from the arm, and traces of pain were beginning to show on the woman's face.
I pushed the mana threads deeper, tracing the backflow to its source. Hairline fractures had opened along the mana conduction lines inside the prosthetic. Recoil from the leaking mana had cracked the inner walls as well — which explained the sparks bleeding outward, and the surge of mana flooding back into her core.
"That must have been one hell of a fight. The mana conduction lines blew out, and the recoil collapsed the inner walls. Was it a strong opponent?"
"Yeah. It was. I almost had them, though. One more fully charged shot and I would've finished it. The prosthetic just had to blow in the middle of charging..."
"If it blew mid-charge, it's a miracle you're even alive."
Hmm. Something's off here.
I stared down at the arm for a long moment, then looked up again.
"Do you service this prosthetic yourself?"
"...No. Our crew has its own technician. He handles all the maintenance."
"Then that technician's work is a mess."
"What? What would you know about our technician?"
"The output frequency of the mana coils inside the prosthetic is way out of sync with the internal mana coming off your core drive. That's something that should have been calibrated every time it was serviced."
"No way. Are you sure you're not the one who's wrong?"
Hmm. Close with that technician, then.
Watching her start to bristle, I decided to take a step back. There was nothing to gain from picking a fight with a client before I'd been paid.
"Ah. Right. Never mind. It's not that serious anyway. Won't get in the way of using it. Just a bit of noise, that's all."
That was a lie, of course. The frequency gap was wide enough that there had almost certainly been pain. I considered leaving it out of spite, but a mismatched output frequency on a prosthetic this fine kept needling at me, so I went ahead and synced the core to the arm.
Phew. That's better.
After that, I drew mana from the battery in my Mana Induction Coat.
Thank god I built that mana battery early.
Trying to repair gear of this caliber without one and I might have hit mana overflow three times over.
The conduction lines in this prosthetic were a mithril-silver alloy. Naturally, nothing in this shop could repair an alloy like that. But I had Suture Healing.
I spun the mana threads as fine as they would go and stitched the split conduction lines and the cracked inner walls. Then I laid Suture Healing over the top. The synergy with the threads kicked the spell's mechanism into motion, and the holes in the lines and the fractures in the walls sealed shut.
A sharp hiss.
The sparks jumping near her shoulder died in an instant. Her ragged breathing eased.
"Wait... huh?"
She opened her eyes.
"My body feels... lighter."
"It should. The first aid, at least, is done properly."
Curious to admire a little more of that cutting-edge Mega-Corp engineering, I pushed the mana threads all the way into the heart of the prosthetic. And that was when I was tracing the mana circuitry that connected to the mana drive.
What is that?
In a tucked-away corner of the output control circuit, a strange mark caught my eye. Not a crack from impact — a hairline gouge, as if someone had scraped it out on purpose.
Do I tell her or not?
If I send her off without saying anything, she's going to end up a corpse...
I hesitated, then decided to at least put it on the table.
"...Miss."
"Hm?"
"Has the technician who serviced this prosthetic recently given you any reason to hold a grudge?"
Her brow furrowed.
"Ha? What are you talking about? We're close."
"I think that crew technician of yours was trying to kill you."
I used a mana thread to give the problem circuit a light nudge. A sharp tingle ran through it, and her shoulder jerked.
"Someone's sabotaged the overload safety valve. Have you noticed your prosthetic drawing more mana lately than it used to?"
"What? I... yeah. Lately the mana consumption's been creeping up!"
"Someone gouged a hole in the safety valve's circuit. With a hole in that circuit, mana would have been leaking the whole time — worse handling, more drain. And the more you charged it, the worse it would have gotten. One full charge and the entire prosthetic would have gone up in a mana explosion. The mana drive in your core wouldn't have survived the recoil either."
Horror settled over her face, and for a moment her expression came apart. She had someone in mind.
"You sure? Can you prove what you just said? If you can't, you die here by my hand. I need to be certain."
The instant our eyes met, a chill ran straight down my spine. She wasn't threatening me. She fully intended to kill me if I couldn't prove it. The subject I'd touched was that raw.
"Proof? Not sure I've got any of that... Let me take another look. Give me a moment."
I drew more mana from the external battery, stitched the damaged safety valve, and used Suture Healing.
They didn't just damage it.
To my surprise, a second micro-component had been seated right beside the safety valve. No intact prosthetic would have a piece that dangerous sitting there.
I teased the component out of the circuit and handed it to her.
"This should do as proof."
"What is it?"
"An overclock chip. It was sitting right next to the safety valve. You don't normally leave something like that there."
Her face went cold as she took the chip. She stared at it for a long time, and then a decision settled over her features.
"I almost died. You saved me. And you showed me something I didn't know — that someone I trusted wasn't on my side. I'm sorry I dismissed you at first."
Now. This is the moment.
You bring up the bill while the other party is still drowning in relief and gratitude. That's how you collect full price without a pointless haggle. It was the optimal collection window I'd learned surviving as a technician in Fusion Punk.
I put on a carefully composed face and held out my hand.
"If you're grateful, you can start by paying the repair fee."
She snorted a laugh.
"How much?"
Let's see...
In Fusion Punk I could have named an exact figure. This world was hundreds of years earlier. I didn't actually have a feel for what anything was worth. The most I'd ever earned from backbreaking repair work was fifteen thousand credits, so...
"Let's call it a hundred and fifty thousand credits."
Given the complexity and the value of the prosthetic, I should have been charging far more. But I was still a nobody with no name to my work, and she seemed to be an acquaintance of my landlord, so I threw in a discount. And... remembering those terrifying eyes, I couldn't bring myself to quote high. In Fusion Punk, the characters who'd overcharged on repairs and gotten shot for it numbered in the dozens.
"You're thinking smaller than I expected. That enough for you?"
"Excuse me?"
"Here."
She pulled a card from inside her coat and tossed it onto my open palm.
"There's five hundred thousand credits on that card. Keep the change. It's all yours. Honestly, this barely covers it — you saved my life. But it's all I've got on me."
I bent at a perfect ninety degrees without a second's hesitation.
"Not at all! Thank you so much! Please visit our shop anytime something comes up!"
"Ahahaha! God, you're a riot."
She looked down at the repaired prosthetic and flexed the arm a few times.
A low whine. A rushing hiss.
Whether she was drawing mana up or letting it down, the sounds coming off that arm were terrifying. Good thing I'd gotten paid first. After watching that, I don't think I could have asked for the repair fee.
She finished checking the arm and turned her eyes back to me.
"One more thing."
"Yes?"
"What happened here. What you found out today. That's a secret between the two of us from now on. You and me. Nobody else. Got it?"
The eyes that said it were dull, sunk in a damp kind of darkness. I met them straight on and nodded.
"This place is like my examination room. Doctors don't leak their patients' secrets."
She studied my face for a moment.
"...What's your name?"
"Dex is fine."
"Dex... Dex."
She rolled the name around in her mouth, then smiled with only the corners of her lips, her eyes still dead. Somehow that face was strangely alluring.
"Alright, Dex. I'll remember that name. We'll see each other again soon. And when we do, I won't be coming to pay a repair bill. I'll be coming to settle the debt for my life. Assuming I survive, that is."
That's a hell of a thing to say.
"Understood. If it starts hurting again, you're welcome back anytime. Patient."
The sales line of a lifetime, if I said so myself. If she was going to pay me again, she had to survive first. That was how you got repeat business.
She treated herself with medicine from inside her coat and came to a stop at the door. Then she looked back at me one last time, a faint smile on her face.
"This time Gordon actually landed himself a proper apprentice."
"Like I keep saying, I'm not an appren—"
"I'm going."
The door opened and shut in a single breath.
"...My head's a mess."
After she left, I looked down at the card in my palm.
"Five hundred thousand credits..."
So that's why she paid so much. Hush money, huh?
But so what if it was hush money? Yesterday I'd nearly killed myself for thirty-five thousand credits. And just like that, I had more than ten times that.
Tomorrow I was buying jelly. No more of those awful nutrient tubes.