Mato answers Bobby: "Buxtehude? Yes, of course. Although very little of what I have is religious in nature. He did a lot of organ work for churches but it's dull. My favorites are his seven sonatas. No lyrics, no singing, just music."

He pauses for a moment, then reflects.

"I would go so far as to call them my favorite music of all. As in, of all music. I love the Bach's Brandenburg concertos, and there are some pieces by Mozart that will break your heart and put it back together again, but if I only had one album, it would be Buxtehude."

He cues one up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMcv7HmmUgY

Another moment of contemplation. Then he turns to Doc Painless, who looks like she's floating on a cloud of neurochemicals.

"I'm looking forward to hearing them with some ears that aren't loaners."

Doc Painless, a bit spacy, pats him on his hand. She recoils from the cold metal, then tries patting his arm instead. She recoils again, repeating the process multiple times - never seeming to remember nor learn - until she gets up to his shoulder, at which point she finally gives up looking for something man instead of machine.

"Let's do it right now," she says with a bit of a slur. "Good party trick."

"What? Cybersurgery?"

She nods. "On the table." She grabs her dinner knife and swabs it with her napkin, as if sanitizing it for an operation. "Get a bottle of wine."

"Doc, I don't drink."

"It's for me, not you!"

Mato looks bemused. "Do you have any ears on you?"

She snaps, as if he might have her there. "Let me check my purse."

The woman keeps a straight face to Bobby's jab "You are just sorry you got caught." she comments, amused. She does not respond to the piece about Adeline working for the police, and AM is a sinless criminal with highly sensitive and illegal equipment. Asking a cop for a favor is just unthinkable to her.

When Jawsey comes with his part about Tsimshian, she comments bluntly Tsimshian sure sounds terrible; I wouldn't go there if I were you. she comments truthfully but with no hope of convincing the man to stay, knowing that it is a done deal but still not fully accepting it.

When Doc Painless decides to do cybersurgery on the dinner table, the massive Mato seems to go with her. The young elf is certain that Iktomi is playing with them, and she feels a strange excitement and a hint of dread. "Praise the Trickster." she whispers in appreciation.

Bobby took Mato's recommendation and put it on the list on his link.
"Thanks. I just kinda assumed you'd be more into... metal."

When the doc began talking about surgery on the table, Bobby recognized that as the perfect opportunity to bring out the desert - a formidable fruit salat with real fruit. A delicatessen if ever there was one to be found in Touristville.

To Beta's anti-endorsement he replied: "Can't be much worse than around here. You better learn how to cleanse a place then. I expect some progress in that place once you set up shop." Bobby smiled at that, but it didn't really reach his eyes.

"Tug in everyone - there won't be a treat like that in a long while."

Jawsey is not shy about enjoying the fruit, and encouraging others to do so too. He makes sure that Walon gets some and checks around to make sure that others do too. To the Doc he suggests "Before any surgery or fermented items, have some unfermented fruit first. Vitamins are good for you. And you don't really have a pair of ears in your purse, do you?"

And suddenly he feels it, the seperation. He doesn't quite know why, but those lines suddenly felt wrong, like a guest acting like a host. He's not sure why now he feels it, not earlier, not when he was actually heading out the door. Maybe it was as simple as dessert was served, and that is as far as he'd really planned for tonight.

After a brief struggle on whether to fight the feeling or not, he decides to just flow with it. "Thank you for the fruit."

"I do like metal," Mato tells Bobby. "I like other things too.

"I know you didn't know me then, but I had a quiet, contemplative youth. I was sick a lot, got hurt easily. Pretty poor form for an ork, especially an ork in Sioux culture. I sat a lot. Watched a lot of trid, got fat. Thought a lot of thoughts about what I could be if I could be anything."

He holds up his hands and arms and looks them over.

"This is the answer I came up with. The physical creature. But, still, I still like some of the things from my couch potato days, the days I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling while nursing a broken arm or a twisted ankle. You never grow past all these things; it's just your new self is larger. The old self is still there, just diluted."

The doc unceremoniously dumps out her purse on the table. There is:

- makeup
- a very basic medkit
- a banged-up inhaler of some sort ("oh, there that is!")
- a reasonably new commlink (an MCT-3500, rating 3, a bit anonymous but decent by Redmond standards)
- an assortment of slap patches, one of them labeled "Good Time Charlie"
- a Fichetti Tiffani Needler that matches her shoes ("'do no harm' doesn't mean 'do no hurt'" the Doc explains)
- a bunch of condoms of different sizes ("very important")
- a pair of cybereyes

"Here they are!" she cries triumphantly, holding up the eyes.

"Doc, I need ears, not eyes," Mato points out.

She slams her hand on the table hard enough to make the dishes bounce. "Frag," she swears, exasperated. "I must have left the ears back at the clinic."

She holds up the eyes and shows them to the assembled party.

"Does anyone need new eyes?" she asks. With her other hand, she continues to wipe her dinner knife with her napkin.

It takes all of Jawsey's self-control not to physically recoil at the Doc's offer of eyes. Even aside from the whole 'operating on the dinner table with dinner cutlery' side of things, cyber-eyes have always felt especially invasive to him.

After a moment he decides "Let the core of SIS deal with her" and he slips out of the room for a moment. He rubs his eyes, takes a few deep breaths, and settles himself. He'd wanted a party, he got a party, and now he's out of the party mood, but he still has a responsibility to the party. He braces himself then steps back into the room, refills his wine glass, and takes a good sized swig. A hangover on a small cargo ship probably won't be pleasant, but he'll deal with that tomorrow.

AM likes fruits, and a vegetarian diet is easier. It feels more familiar than all these deers and livers and whatnot. She taps on Jawseys back and says, "This is it for me." pausing, she is not sure what to say, so she remains silent and then says, "Bye". Her eyes search the room for Kira, and with a quick look and facial gesture, she makes it clear that she is ready to leave. Addressing the DOC, she asks "Do you want to go partying? I bet you are fun at parties, and Kira knows all the fun places." Perhaps she can remove the doc before their kitchen becomes an operating room. AM does not wait for a proper reply,

Looking at her friend, she asks softly, trying very hard not to sound pleading. "Can I drive your car?". The mere thoughts of manually driving a nice car make her grin like other people do the day after they get laid. Once outside the building, she breathes the night air and feels free. "Finally it is over. she says to herself, but then texts on the SIS channel. >> Sorry for ditching you, but I don't do goodbyes very well. I will send you a location if you want to join me later.

The Doc snaps her fingers, the percussion incredibly loud for some reason.

"YES, I would like to go partying," she says as if it were obvious.

She stands, grabs Cutty's hand, and tries to pull him up.

"Oh, no," he says. "Clean living. I'll be up at 0500. Can't sleep a minute longer. Well, once I slept in to 0505."

The Doc practically clings to him. "If I told you you had a nice body, would you hold it against me?" she purrs.

Cutty laughs at the double-entendre. He practically picks her up to move her aside. She pouts.

Kira, sensing AM's sadness, gives her a hug from behind. "You know what I like about you?" she whispers gently. "My arms." She gives AM another quick squeeze then says, "Let's go!" She leads the charge out the door with AM and the Doc.

"I'll, uh, do dishes then," Mato says. He looks to see if Waylon has left any food or if he's vaccuumed it all up. He begins clearing dishes off the table, only to freeze for a moment when he finds one of the Doc's forgotten eyes rolling around between the wine glasses.

Bobby went to help Mato. He was always surprised how quickly parties could end. His belly was full, and he actually wished all the foreign people were away now and he could just lie down on the sofa again.
But for that they had to move the table and get rid of the extra chairs again.
"Nice feast - let's not do one again anytime soon", he murmured to himself.

The short elf enjoys the hug and the excitement of leaving an event dedicated to celebrating a close friend leaving her for obscure reasons. "Thank you for coming; you are a true friend."
On the way to the car, she says He is a hole in my soul; I felt like we had some meaningful connection. We even formed a magical society together, committing in front of the spirits. It was a big deal, and not a month later, he was leaving us. "

Her thoughts run free, Jawsey had a good thing at SIS, an even better offer from a dragon, and instead, he is going to fix his childhood experiences as if they matter more than the present, as if his current friends are less important. She can try to be polite all she wants, but it stings... The past is gone, and the future is for dreamers and fools, but in the present, as in right now, the man chose to go to a toxic wasteland where nobody awaits him rather than make sick money with SIS or even work for a beautiful dragon lady. Could they all mean so little to him all along? Was all this friendship just a mask of a super sophisticated elf? She can never say, Jawsey was so gifted with reading people and misleading them that nobody could know the man if he did not want them to.

She moves the Ford to make room for the BMW and takes a moment to appreciate the slick car. "She is gorgeous, just like you." she comments and slowly enters the car breathing in the smell of its leather seats.

Jawsey ushers the last guests out as Bobby and Mato are already cleaning up. Well, none of them were habitual night owls. Well other than Bobby being a literal owl, and Jawsey putting his body to bed then roaming astrally, and .... Ok, maybe none of them were that sociable in general.

Once the guests are all gone he briefly slumps against the door in relief. Then wonders if he should have also put himself out so that the others could have the peace of what was now _their_ house, not his.

But no, he still has stuff to grab, and clean up to help with.

He enters the kitchen with the comment "It sounded like such a good idea to me before the party. Well, done now.". He grabs a cloth to start drying and putting away what Mato has washed.

"Someone should be by to pick me up just before five AM. So I won't wake you up to say goodbye then.". He puts a few glasses in a cupboard. "So I guess what I'm saying is goodbye.". He picks up a plate and starts drying it without really seeing it. " And thank you."

"I'll be up," Mato says lightly, as if it were no big deal. "Sleep regulator, you know.

"I'll watch your back. No sense in getting fragged on your way out of town."

Mato washes dishes with the water on steaming hot. If it bothers the sensors in his cyberhands, he doesn't show it.

"So are you going to flit back here as an astral ghost?" he asks. His tone is light, casual, as if he's curious rather than invested in the answer. "It's the speed of thought, yeah? You can dip over here whenever you want. Or are you looking to make a clean break?"

He hands Jawsey a hot wine glass.

Jawsey eyes the steaming glass and finds a sudden need to use both hands to gesture in support of his words, so avoids taking it just yet "Oh, I fully intend to visit. It isn't as easy as that to make the astral trip, but it is certainly possible. Maybe more like going to Tacoma from here than it is like going to Cutty's gym from here." His gestures appear intended to convey some ideas of subjective distance.

"But we'll see how the visits go after a while. The more that our experiences diverge, the more that I don't know the people that you are talking about and the more experiences you have all had that I wasn't part of, the more it will feel strange when we talk, like we are making the effort to stay in touch but without a lot to stay in touch about. And it doesn't help that you don't know the people that I'll be dealing with, nor the places." He slowly pulls his hands apart as his words add layers of social distance. "Conversation is always harder without context. So if after a bit I send a matrix message trying to figure out a time to visit in the coming weekend, and everyone is busy, and that keeps happening .... well, drek happens." He shrugs, and finally takes the glass, wincing a bit at the heat, but not raising any blisters.

"What do you want us to tell Urubia?" Mato asks, continuing to clean. He does his best not to let his metal fingers unintentionally etch the glass.

"She might already know. And I doubt any of us could lie to her effectively. But if she - or her intermediaries - inquiry about you, what would you like us to say?"