Darran's first patient for the day had arrived in his office, a plain affair with minimal decoration in spite of the funds he had available to him. It was the Countess del Arheidt again. She'd been one of his earliest patients, after his first foray into surgery for the sake of modification rather than saving life, and one of the more frequent attendees of his services. To many, she was naught but beautiful, absolutely stunning even, possessed of flawless pale skin, and gorgeous red hair, and a figure to kill for; to Darran, she was plastic in form, albeit not literally. Each surgical nick, every spot he'd touched up here and odd feature he'd put in there, all were easily located by his quick and familiar eye.

'Good morning, Darran! And how are we today?' the Countess asked.

'Just fine, thank you, my lady,' Darran responded, flashing a smile, 'but I should really be asking you that question. How long has it been, a couple of months? Are you sure you aren't burning through your funds too quickly?' It was best, he found, to keep pretending he cared about long-term customers personally. He was good at that.

'Oh, trust me, my funds are still [i]plentiful,[/i]' she shot back, grinning in her turn in a manner that others would consider sultry. 'Certainly more than enough for what I've got in mind today, especially considering the advance payment...'

'And pray tell, what did you have in mind?' Darran asked, the door to his room closing automatically, and the security pict-recorder surveying the scene recording slightly modified visual and aural data, indicating no particular misdemeanour on either of their parts. Others were more subtle about their true desires. The Countess was not.

'Well, my dear,' she murmured, leaning in close, 'I've been feeling a bit pressured by some of my more, shall we say, aggressive rivals... I was hoping you might be able to fashion me something for my own defense, just in case I require it.' Of course, what she meant by that was "people are getting too close to figuring out my allegiance to Chaos, and I need a way to kill them if necessary". Not that a weapon as simple as a pistol wouldn't do the job, but apparently, this would be more appropriate for the wiles of the Prince of Pleasure. And who was he to deny her that? Only a surgeon.

'What were you thinking, then?'

'Well, the human ribcage is quite an interesting structure, isn't it? The lower bones, if you ask me, seem almost to be formed like spikes... I imagine six of those, around my right forearm, ought to suffice. Much sharper than usual, naturally.'

'Retractable?'

'Naturally!' the Countess uttered, seemingly a bit shocked. 'I'm not a fool, that I'd rather reveal myself than continue in the shadows. Besides, the pain that forcing them to extend out of my very flesh would inflict... mmhmmhmmm... well, it's certainly a tantalising thought, let's say.'

'Likewise that of impaling your foes, I imagine. Follow me, my fair lady,' Darran concluded, standing from behind his desk - a rare wood on this planet, as it happened, one of the few indicators of significant funds on his part - and heading out through the door the Countess had entered from. A few short minutes later had led them to Darran's operation room, with del Arheidt stripped and reclothed in a surgical gown beforehand (though despite her insisting that they had time, Darran did turn down her sexual advances in the process), and Darran's hands, face, and surgical tools sterilised and appropriately covered where necessary. With all that said and done, Darran had the noblewoman place her arm into a clamp, holding the limb in place at the wrist in order to keep it steady. It remained as tight as it needed to be, despite her requests for it to be tightened just a little bit more.

'Well,' she murmured, twice-rebuked now, 'do you think you could... perhaps perform the surgery without anaesthetic? I can only imagine how [i]unique[/i] being awake whilst you're being operated upon is...' Her breathing noticeably increased at the thought, and yet whilst it was presumably intensely erotic for her, Darran could only stare at her with a mild mixture of annoyance and confusion, his artificial limbs unfolding from behind his back, in particular an extending arm connecting to a pipe of the anaesthetic in particular, complete with needle.

'But then you'd move around,' he countered. Not willing to waste further time on this argument, he inserted the needle into the woman's neck, the drug passing into her system and knocking her unconscious within seconds. With the patient out cold, he began the process.

Step one: cut away flesh from the operating area. Multiple tiny monofilament knives inserted themselves into her flesh just below her wrist joint, first cutting a circle around, and then in straight lines downward, around the major blood vessels where necessary, before pulling the muscle away to reveal the bone beneath.

Step two: acquire sample of operant tissue, and use it as the base for the implant. A hollow drillbit inserted itself into the bone beneath the wrist, creating a tiny channel down to the center before drawing out a plug of the substances it had cut through. The drill promptly pressed into a device at the side of the bed- one that Darran had yet to figure out a way to miniaturise suitably for attachment to his body- along with six pins to form a mind-impulse link. In his head, he brought to mind the form desired of his artifice, a number of curved points that would remain hidden within the arm when retracted, and would move out past the tip of a held knife when extended, and all extremely sharp at their tips... though perhaps the bones themselves ought to be serrated on either side, as if they were blades? Since they were intended for combat, after all. Once the design was finalised, the machine beeped once, before stem cells began to bubble within, forming the structures for the individual blades as needed.

Step three: rebuild the muscle and nerve structures in the forearm to accept new implants, and control extension and retraction. This was a simpler matter: spindle-thin actuators extended from one of Darran's arms, each able to manipulate individual threads of muscle and nerve, whilst miniature optics scanned each in detail to determine exactly how it functioned. Threads were split, realigned, spliced, and overall moulded to form. By the time the bone blades were complete, what I had seemed to be quite sufficient.

Step four: attach the new implants, ensure they work as intended. A simple enough procedure. Same process as before, only with direct connection to the implants themselves. Their arrangement was such that once the flesh was fully restored, the arm would appear barely different from its unaltered counterpart, yet testing via electrical current showed that the blades would emerge quite forcefully, one set of muscles forcing them out, and the paired set drawing them back in. Which would be necessary, of course, to properly unsheath themselves from within the Countess' arm.

Step five: restore the cut away flesh. A matter of realigning the meat in its former position and fusing it back together, albeit with newly-cut and moulded channels to ensure extension and retraction would not be too ungainly. He liked having a consistent source of income more than he liked fulfilling the desires of his customers to suffer, after all.

And like that, the job was completed to Darren's exacting standards, and in the span of a mere hour no less. Removing the needle from the Countess' neck, Darran walked out of the operation room to clean his tools before retracting them back into his body. The drill in particular was always a bit fiddly, depending on how much material was still stuck inside it. He ought to figure out a way for the mechanical objects to clean themselves, perhaps an internalised form of the process he used at the moment...

He returned to the sight of the Countess, again nudified, but also with a glazed look on her face. Most likely caused by the bone weaponry extending out of her wrist, dripping a few small puddles of blood on the floor.

'My lady, it's good to see you're up and about,' Darran began, as charming as ever. 'I was going to suggest you allow some time before first extending those blades of yours, but... well, I suppose the warning is slightly moot, considering your circumstances.'

'You know, Darran,' the Countess replied, unsteadily pacing toward him, though unusually calm in tone, 'I did always like your charm. And your appearance. And I don't think it's right that somebody with such allegiances as yours has no dealings in the more sensual side of His blessings, after all...'

'Countess, with all due respect, I am not sleeping with you. In case you're inclined to attack me for the right, I remind you that I can fairly readily cut open a vital blood vessel with but a moment's notice.'

'And I remind you, doctor, that I am a woman of high standing amongst this world's inhabitants. And somebody possessed of many and varied charms and wiles.'

It did seem odd for a moment that she chose to retract the bone blades as she drew nearer to Darran. Less so when, seemingly from out of nowhere behind her, she drew out a gun and placed it just beneath Darran's chin.

'Oh, so you do have a pistol on you,' he mused. 'I wondered about that... only a stubber, though?'

'You understand that its usual positioning isn't exactly accessible to me. It's more of a self-defense measure when a lover is off-guard and thinks the same of me,' she explained, 'though in this case, the situation is somewhat different. Now, I can put it back where it came from, with a smoking and bloody barrel, or you can replace it with... yourself.'

'I do have other patients scheduled.'

'For when?'

'...not for the next couple of hours, I suppose.' And at the end of the day, he considered, sexual pleasure was a better option than mere death.

'Well, if you insist,' Darran yielded with a somewhat overdramatic shrug, 'though I must point out beforehand that, for instance, ending my life for a cheap thrill or offering to Him would be the equivalent of cutting out much greater thrills in the future. I shouldn't need to explain why. If you don't mind, my living quarters are but a short walk away? The benefits of a private practice, after all.' Mollified, the Countess put her weapon away with a smile, and beckoned for him to lead on, gathering her clothes from where they had been neatly positioned outside of the surgery proper. Apparently, she'd be making this walk in the buff, if only to excite herself, since there'd be nobody between point A and point B to observe other than her surgeon. Darran wondered whether that'd add to the upcoming experience enough to avoid harm on his part.