"Dakota, I'm going to give your garage a gift." My eyes met hers. Somehow, I was pretty sure she was only half as crazy as she played at. Not that I had any room to criticize, I was chock full of issues.

"What the wind brings, I won't refuse." She shrugged. So, I'm the wind, huh. Flitting here and there bound only by my own whims. We'll see about that.

I had the Probes assemble my latest creation above the roof of her Garage. I was tentatively calling it a War Pylon. Three double sized Khaydarin Crystals were merged into a single unit. This core was surrounded by two large rotating control rings. Each ring was fitted with three blue glowing hard points beside which floated half size Photon Cannons emitters. Its huge Psifield dampened only by the equally huge cloaking field. It served as a defensive turret, concealment, energy supply and communications relay. Its current range reached all the way back to New Lordaeron. A very useful multipurpose structure. There was a beauty to its madness.

"So ugly." Dakota grunted. I almost shot her right then and there.

The crazy coyote lady turned back towards me. Startled she looked all around, confusion etched into her features. It was like she'd lost something. Heh. Of course, that was because she could no longer see me or anyone I'd come with. Even our vehicles would've seemed to have vanished. Her dumbfounded expression was glorious. That expression was soon carried by all the Nomads not on my exceptions list. They all started searching frantically for any sign of where we had gone. Amanda started chuckling which soon degraded into howling in laughter. Sally and Megan were right behind her their eyes glittering with the desire to commit mischief upon their kinsmen.

Taking pity upon the rest of the Aldecaldos, I had the field exclude us for now. They all jumped like startled cats as we just reappeared. Ha. "While my new toy is active, no one can spy on us. Even if, by some miracle, they did find a way to see through the cloaking field, the cannons would make short work of anything they sent our way." I glared at her, daring her to badmouth my creation again. I was deeply offended by her calling my ingenuity called ugly. Megan grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze to get me to refocus. It worked even, if I still grumbled, under my breath, about ungrateful wenches.

Dakota looked at the Pylon then back at me then back at the Pylon. She smiled. It was a bright joyous smile, I had just fulfilled one of her deepest wishes. "Good job, Medicine Man." Scoffing at her antics, I pulled Megan in for an aggressive kiss. I signaled the Pylon cover everyone with the cloaking field. As far as any satellite was concerned there was now nothing there, just more desert.

I freed myself from a suddenly breathless, glowing Megan. "With that out of the way, we should be just about ready to get down to business." I called everyone attention back to me. "But first... " Several of the teens we had brought along unloaded the water barrels and crates of food into a loose cluster by the garage. I gestured to the pile. "I come bearing gifts."

The Nomads were eager to examine all the piles thoroughly. Most were quick to take cups of water from a hastily opened barrel. Exclamations rang out at its purity and flavor. Moon Well water always tasted light and sweet and the mana never failed to tickled the tongue. That's right everyone, I had the best water. The best on this whole damned rock.

After the food crates were opened, makeshift grills where rapidly erected and a cook out started up. The smell of sizzling beef and roasting corn and potatoes wafted over the area. All part of my dastardly plans, like my Mom had always said it's better to start any dealings with a meal. Then you know that when people are being rude it isn't because they are hungry, that's just how they are.

Well except for the guy still trying to kill me with his eyeballs. I leaned my head down to Megan's ear, "Who's Grumpy over there?"

"Hmmm? Oh, that's Saul. Panam's dad." I could feel her evil grin, "He's not ever going to like you, so you might as well get used to the idea. To be fair, he wouldn't have liked you even before you rocked his daughter's world. He's way too cautious and thrives on controlling every little detail." She waved her hand towards the offending man, earning us both an even deeper scowl.

"Lovely." I muttered. Someday having fun with women was going to invite more trouble than I could deal with. But not this day. I pulled Megan into another saucy round of tongue wrestling.

Once everyone had been fed, we started the negotiations. Since I didn't really want anything from them, my offer was was pretty simple. All I asked from them was news about other cities and the shifting condition of the wilds between them. Well that, and their friendship. In return they would get access to any Outposts I owned, a fair cut of any trades they help to transport, and most importantly knowledge of where some of the hidden reservoirs where once they where built. I threw in preferred trading status for any products, including food, made in any of my future locations.

To peak their interest more, I showed off the modifications to my Omaha and armor. While excellent, I didn't actually expect any of that to blow their minds. Though the shielding got a lot of attention. Sally showed off the new Special Operations Rifle based off Raynor's huge weapon. It had to be her, I couldn't handle the thing. I hadn't realized it at the time, but Raynor's damned monster was a gauss rifle, launching depleted uranium rounds at near relativistic speeds. The ability to precisely manipulate magnetic fields of the Khalai tech as well as substituting crysbronze alloy bullets took the weapon from a devastating anti-tank weapon to truly nightmare levels of damage. Not only was it half the weight, it could fire almost as fast as a Copperhead. When Raynor had first fired the new model his resulting comment was, "Ultralisk, who?" I had no idea who or what an Ultralisk was, but Jim seemed mighty impressed.

While the SOR was still a little too large for indoor work, I had a cut down model on my too do list, along with a new full auto shotgun design.

The Nomads loved the ridiculous damage and proportionately low recoil. Who wouldn't? Sadly, I wasn't ready to show off the power armor to outsiders yet, but I wasn't going to hold it back from my allies either. I just wanted to get its functions smoothed out and some safeguards worked out for if anyone turned on me. Hey, I'm new to this, not stupid.

When the show and tell portion was finished, I presented they with a simple contract clearly stating the aforementioned terms. All in plain, everyday English. Wouldn't you know it, most signed on the spot. I had no illusions that it was due to my winning personality, or even my amazing goods on offer. No, it was that Amanda trusted me. Everything else was just frosting. Still a few wanted something else.

At first I thought it was greed. Which was an easily dealt with snag, but no, they just wanted to wait until I had "proven" myself to them. Alright, I told them that if they clearly defined what that meant I'd be more than happy to prove myself. The hazing that followed was more annoying than anything else. A lot of silly little fucking tasks design to embarrass me, or make me uncomfortable. Jokes on them I'm always uncomfortable. I put up with it for a few hours before I just started laughing after they wanted me to do the Chipmunk song and dance for the zillionth time. I get it, my performance was masterful, but come on! Then there was the drinking. I had to drink them under the table. Not that there was a table just a camp fire that we had to avoid stumbling into after more than a few bottles of snakebite moonshine had made the rounds.

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Argh, never drinking again. Just kidding! Regrowth and Purify took care of all my troubles and Cleanse cleared up all of the resulting mess. By that point, I was enjoyed watching them all have a few moments of extreme discombobulation. Finally, everyone had signed except sourpuss Saul. He said he'd only sign if I let him punch me as hard as he could. I briefly thought about shooting him and just dealing with Panam afterwards. Nah, she'd probably be pissed. So, I let the gonk pop me one right in the kisser. With my new higher body stat, it was not so bad. Sure it hurt, but no where near as bad as it should have. I suspect my face did more damage to his fist than the reverse. I stared him in the eyes the whole time, trying to let him know, I was absolutely going to pay him back one day.

He kept his word and signed the damned contract. Now I was 1000 Company Points and an Adjutant Token richer. Go me.

Was it worth it?

A short while later, I gave that wily wench Dakota the option to lay down, on her couch, to avoid certain difficulties. She'd taken me up on the offer for healing and we entered her private office in the garage, Megan and Sally were hanging around with matching looks of demented anticipation. Either they didn't like Dakota very much, or they liked her a little too much. I'd have to look into that one later. Hmm. I pulled a chair over beside the crazy lady and plopped down. Truth be told, even with a few casts of Regrowth snuck in here and there I was feeling a bit tipsy still. Maybe, my lingering sloshing might be because I've been working a little too hard, and not getting enough sleep. But there was too much to get done to really relax.

Eh, not like I had a choice. Not really. I wanted the best for people in general and even better for MY people. That was a weird thought to me, my people. Who the fuck was I to have people? Nah, let not start, I've been down this self-inflicted rabbit hole before. Focus, I was getting too caught up in my thoughts and concerns. Concentrate on the moment. I had a crazy lady to heal.

I placed my right hand on Dakota's stomach. As the first pulse of my mana crashed through her body, I started to get a sense of how unbelievably messed up she really was under all that odd rambling. Botched cyberware was damaging the organs around them. Followed by so many residual injures that had never healed completely. There were remnants of gunshots wounds, marks left by blade damage, and the leftovers of massive impact trauma. A high speed car crash was my guess. Her lungs were garbage, they'd been seared by chemical cocktails and what felt like actual fire damage. Lastly, her digestive system was barely held together by hope and prayer. No telling want had caused all of this mess. Did she swallow razor blades at some point?

I turned to Sally and Megan, "This is going to take a while. Brace yourselves." That made them laugh for some reason but I'd already started muttering about stupid doctors and crazy bitches that let themselves get wrecked this bad. After the first minute I'd dug deeper into the Regrowth spell than ever before. I'd begun to instinctively alter the shape of the mana flow and poured every bit of energy I could scrap together through the new shape. Yes, that pattern worked much better. The mana seemed to almost gain a will of its own as it rampaged through her body. It possessed a primal hatred of the injures and a burning desire to fix the broken flesh. A chiming sound rang through my head, though I was lost in the task, trying to wrangle the energy to focus on one injury at a time

A small corner of my mind noted that her voice rose dramatically in pitch and volume, heh. Let's see how like a coyote you really are. Her cries of joy and pain joined the world in fading out as I increased my concentration on the spell.

When I became aware of my surroundings again, I heard a hoarse groaning and grunting, tinged in ecstasy. The body under my hand jerked and twitched in involuntary reactions to having been overwhelmed in mana induced pleasure.

"You're back with us? Good. You really worked her over good. She didn't stop howling the whole two hours you where working on her." Megan was running her fingers through my hair. That felt nice.

"Hahaha! I love it, you marvelous bastard. The legendary Dakota screaming like a new XBD porn starlet. Next target, Rogue herself." Sally gave me a crushing hug, from behind, I didn't mind. Her body was a joy to be pressed against.

"Who's Rogue?" I was very woozy after burning all of that mana. Also, I felt cold. Likely a side-effect, I'd never noticed before, from the overuse of magic. I'll have to look into that later.

Both ladies started cracking up. "She only the most preem and baddest bitch in all of Night city. She owns the Afterlife. That's THE place for the best mercs and runners in the city and maybe the world." Megan had started rubbing the tips of my ears. Heavens, I really liked that.

"We could end up there someday soon. Especially once you start making waves, She'll want you under her thumb. Don't let her play you." Sally growled at the thought of this Rogue getting her hands on me. And yet, they wanted me to get my hands on her? Make that make sense.

I stared at the mess I'd made of Dakota, who still spasmed in a gurgling tangle. I was somewhat curious if she would thank me or curse me when she regained her senses. Could go either way. If she did end up cursing me, at least she'd be doing it with a healthy body. She already looked years younger, which was another side effect of healing that most women would be thankful for, or so I hoped. Sally and Megan both looked almost eighteen again. I'd long since returned to looking like a baby faced version of me.

I won't lie, my session working on Dakota made me feel both fulfilled and yet eager to grab Sally and Megan and rush home to get them to express some more interesting sounds. The last few times the ladies had, after some conversation, made sure not to leave me hanging after our fun time. I was quite over having testicle cramps after our sessions. Thankfully they took a certain level of satisfaction from seeing how much they could get me to react to their ministrations, though it always seemed to devolve into pushing my limits to see if I would loose control and ravage them. One day, and probably soon, I would give in and take them, but not yet.

I wanted something from them first. though I wasn't quite sure what it was. Also I wanted to have something amazing to give them before we took that last step into a deeper relationship. I'd also like to know that everything was as safe for us as could be before we lost ourselves in the dance of passion. I had a feeling that once that door was open we'd spend ages lost in the throughs of each others bodies.

For now, hands and mouths were enough. And in the depths of my darkest thoughts, I enjoyed knowing I could turn them into puddles of mush at my whim while they had to work hard to achieve anything approaching similar results. Mana was very much like cheating at life, and I loved it. I supposed I wasn't as much of a good guy as I had thought. But fuck it, I'm going to seize what ever happiness I could from this situation.

Once we had indulged thoroughly in our passions, they fell asleep, leaving me to my thoughts.

I wondered if it was the classes affecting my mentality. A more primal nature from the Druid class, the desire to experiment and refine results from the Warp-Smith, physical dominance from the Paladin. While I'd never been a push over, I certainly seemed to be getting more aggressive as my time here progressed. How far would I go?

I was loath to bother Meadran with my concerns unless it was a critical problem. He needed soon rest after all of the activity of our transfer here. Not to mention, he needed plenty of time to absorb more mana, and fully integrate with this world. I didn't know how I knew that, but it was an idea that rose up when I thought of him, and I had no reason to doubt it. Faergin would soon be rooting as well, another thought that just shifted from the void. So I shouldn't put to much on his shoulders either. Lumi, when I'd brought it up, the other day, said I worried too much. His mindset was that having Power was good, and having control was good. Being the one with both was best. It seemed simple, but in practice, I was a long way off from being in control.

Raynor had just snorted at me, saying "Don't worry, Hoss. You go bad and I have this great rifle you gave me." He patted the rifle with a fatherly touch, not even looking at me.

He was joking, right?