Swol

Bats and Ori get untied and most of their home invaders begin leaving. Maine exits quietly while Pilar continues spewing curses at Ori, threatening to do a whole manner of things, including biting his nose off for some reason...

Once they're gone all that's left is Kiwi, who decides to finish her cig before actually leaving... While Bats obviously wasn't happy, it did give Ori some time to talk with her.

"You gonna tell anyone else about what we did at Biotechnica? Or just your crew? I'd rather to have most of Night City know who I am, not yet at least."

...

"Do you know why I accepted the job?" she answered his question with one of her own.

"The Eddies, why else?"

She shakes her head, "While that is a part of it, Maine was the one who asked me to take it when I spoke to him about it. Unlike your average merc who's lookin' for money, power, excitement... Maine's in it for his people, dunno if he sees Rebecca as a daughter or something, but she's still family to him." she kills her cig and stands, "Without the crew, I'm alone in this city. I can't be as selfless as Maine, but I've got a line too."

She starts walking towards the door, but glances over her shoulder before she leaves, "Take care of Rebecca for us, it's a full-time job though, don't lose your head."

Bats locks the door behind her, turning tired eyes to Ori, "You're friends are fucking nuts. Your girlfriend better be worth all the shit she's gonna put us through if those three were any indication..."

------------

Ori stares into the bathroom mirror with an odd expression on his face... It'd been two weeks since the Biotechnica job, and they were finally starting to get back out there again. The heat had died down enough that taking small jobs wouldn't be a problem.

While he hadn't made much progress on finding Cat or making Eddies, he'd used all his free time working with the nanites... The upgrades were... Significant.

His height hadn't changed in the reflection of the mirror, but everything else was a different story. His previously average-looking body had been thrown into a wood chipper and remoulded into what could only be described as perfection.

Six-pack abs with pecs to match, arms big enough to look like some customized Cyberware... He was absolutely shredded. Even his face had undergone an indirect change, his increased muscle mass giving him a firmer jaw, larger neck, and a more distributed layer of subcutaneous fat, making his features sharper. (He basically looks like a Baki character now... Yay for plastic/nanite surgery!)

He must've spent ten thousand or more Eddies on nutrition packs alone to keep up with nanites' demand, but it was all worth it in the end. His muscles were like corded steel wrapped taut around his bones.

He raises his arm and tenses his bicep, his eyes glued onto the bulging mass that swells. It was a weird feeling, suddenly being this buff without having to do most of the work. It was good, while also a bit awkward... Was this how people felt after they got full body modifications?

Of course, it wasn't just his muscles that'd gone through a change. The nanites had also upgraded his ligaments, though this was more to prevent his new muscles from tearing them from his bones accidentally.

There were still improvements that could be made, but any of that would need to be done after extensive monitoring and testing of his body and its limits. Organic material, or at least the material the nanites currently had access to, could only get so strong before you start getting drastically lower returns.

For instance, if Ori wanted to be able to lift a hundred KG more then the nanites would need to expand the muscle groups used in it by forty percent... That didn't sound bad until you realise the prior improvements would only increase the muscle mass by five to ten...

So, the only real things he had left were upgrades to his organs, his brain, and biological enhancements, such as the alterations the nanites had made to his skull after examining the Woodpecker.

While he was incredibly wary of having the nanites mess with his brain, it was a little too late for him to worry about it now... If they were going to take him over, they would have done it by now... Not to mention the fact that any significant upgrades to his base body now would need to be done via his brain.

Improvements to his reaction time would only be possible via his nervous system and the parts of the brain responsible for it. He remembered well how stupidly fast the Tyger Claw that had the Sandevistan was, so he was well aware that even with his physical upgrades he wasn't close to a fully teched-out chromejock yet.

Speaking of Cyberware... The nanites refused to allow anything huge, like a Cybernetic arm cannon or something, but he had managed to convince them that subdermal armour was integral for their survival... The only problem now was actually finding some that suited him.

Unsurprisingly, subdermal armour needed to be customized to your body identically since it was literally as close to skin-tight as you can imagine. Add the fact he wanted to best quality possible and he was having trouble finding one good enough. He had Bats on the case but he doubted he'd find anything anytime soon.

He'd also searched around for a Sandevistan, but most were either death traps that would fry your brain in a couple of uses, or so expensive that they'd make a corpo blush. There was a reason why those who had one were considered around the same threat level as a tank... Made him wonder if Arasaka had so many they could just toss down to their Tyger Claw lackeys.

The nanites also had a problem with the sandevistan, in that they'd probably need some custom software to integrate into it. Though that was only speculation from both the nanites and Bats after looking over everything.