Man, I’ll tell you what.  That day with Tish pretty much changed my whole life.  When I woke up, I was a lonely, neurotic recluse, or just about, and at the end of the day, I had a girlfriend who was working and living with me.  We spent the rest of the day hanging around the city, telling each other all about ourselves.  She told me about how she became a dancer and how she met Felicity and the others, and I told her about the accident and how I came to do what I do.  Since she was now registered with SORM as an official assistant, I didn’t have to leave out a single detail.  The best part was that no matter how much we told each other about ourselves, there wasn’t a single thing that made either of us want the other one any less.  We were as different from each other as anyone might expect.  We like different music, different foods, but it didn’t matter.  It was almost like we were made for each other.  We grew closer and closer together until we were hardly distinguishable from each other.  At the end of the day, we made plans to move her stuff into my place, and we spent the night on my sofa watching movies.  
Over the next few days, we spent a lot of time at her apartment packing her stuff into boxes.  We told Felicity how the appointment had gone, and she gave us both big hugs.  It was a different experience this time with the fur, though.  We borrowed James and Christina’s car to haul Tish’s stuff over to my place, and most of our evenings were spent filling out change-of-address cards and other infrastructural details.
     One afternoon, we were moving the last of the boxes up to my place.  We got the last of her stuff into the apartment.  I was busy arranging furniture to accommodate the presence of another person in my home when I heard a knock at the door.  I opened the door, and a rather large man battered the door all the way open, knocking me right onto my ass.  I tried to find out what the hell he thought he was doing, but he moved right past me and down the hall to the bedrooms.  I had set up the room across from my room to be Tish’s bedroom, and she was in there at the time getting herself settled in when the guy threw open the door.  
     “Letitia!?”
     “Oh, my God,” I heard her say.  She sounded like one of those girls from a horror movie when Freddy or Jason or whoever walks in.
     “You remember the last thing I said to you?”
     “Dave, wait, don’t – ”
     “I said that if I ever caught you cheating on me, I’d kill you.  And where do I find you?”
     “I never cheated on you, Dave.  Now you, on the other hand – ”
     I heard a slap.  “Don’t lie to me, you little bitch!”  All right, that did it.  I got up from the floor and walked over to Tish’s room.  “How many times did you boff this guy while I was out bustin’ my ass?”  I tapped him on the shoulder.
     “Excuse me?”  He turned around.  He was a good couple of inches taller than me and plenty beefier, but I had a couple of tricks up my sleeve.  Literally, in fact.
     “Hey, you wait your turn.  When I’m through with her, I’ll get to you.”
     “You’re through with her now.  I understand she has taken legal action against you, which would mean you’re in contempt of court right now.  Not to mention that you’re in my home and you just struck my friend.  Now get out of here.”
     “Or what?”  He walked towards me, backing me into the living room.  I was glad.  I’d have a little more room to move in here.  “You think you can take me, Galahad?”
     “If you make me.”
     He took out a very large knife.  “You still think you can take me?  I know how to use this thing.”
     I was unimpressed.  “Is that a fact?”
     He smiled.  “Ask your little friend.  She’ll tell you how good I am with this thing.”
I felt my face begin to heat up.  I though about drawing my sword to scare him off, but then I came up with a better way.  Besides, the sword was treated so it wouldn’t harm living bodies, and I really wanted to harm this guy.  
     Tish picked that moment to walk into the room.  “Brian, please don’t do anything to make him angry.  Dave, put down the knife.  We don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
     “You shut your ugly face, you – ”  I grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled him away from Tish, putting myself between him and her.  I had tried to pull him off his feet, but I couldn’t get enough leverage.  He brought up his knife and lunged at the two of us, but I put my right arm in the path of the blade.  The knife penetrated the plastic outer covering and went all the way through.  It hurt a little, like getting a big splinter, but since the arm was just skin and bones and the knife managed to miss the bones, it wasn’t that bad on my end.  
     Which is more than I could say for him.  He looked at the large knife blade sticking all the way through my arm, he saw the lack of blood in the wound and the lack of screaming pain from me, and he just sputtered.  “What the hell…how are you…”
     I didn’t give him time to finish the thought.  I gave him a solid right to the side of the head, and he went down.  I then pulled the knife out of my prosthetic arm, inspected the damage, which I could fix with a little glue, and I turned back to Tish.
She stared at Dave’s body on the floor for a few seconds, and she started shaking.  I grabbed her before she could collapse to the floor, and she started sobbing uncontrollably against my shoulder.  A quick idea came to me, and I turned around so she wasn’t facing towards her violent ex-boyfriend on the floor.  
     I patted her on the back and rocked gently.  “Shh, shh, it’s okay, Tish.  It’ll be okay.  Is your cheek okay?”
     “It’s wearing off,” she said as she slowly calmed down.  “I’ve had worse.”
     “Well, you won’t have any more.  Do you remember anyone saying what the penalty was for violating a court order?”
     “It was a long time ago.  I can’t remember.”
     “Well, whatever it is, I promise it’ll be a treat in comparison.”
     “What do you mean?”
     “I’m gonna make sure he never comes back here again, and I guarantee he’ll never want to come near either of us.”
     “Brian, you can’t be sure of that.  You stood up to him, and he’ll never forgive you for that.”
     “Tish, I’ve dealt with bullies before.  The worst thing they do to you is make you afraid of them.  So I’m going to make him afraid of me.”
     Several minutes later, David came to.  He woke up to find himself hanging from the ceiling in the Cyber Shop storeroom by his wrists.  His back was to the door and the shop lights were off, so all he could see were the rows upon rows of cubbyholes.  The only illumination in the room was the little lights on the cubbies.  Some of them were green, but most were red.  It helped lend the room a little atmosphere.  He had been stripped down to his underwear, and his clothes were in a heap in the corner.  Tish was leaning against the back wall, having composed herself, and I was standing facing him.  
     “Ah, good,” I said.  “You’re awake.”
     “What the hell do you think you’re doing?  Where are we?”
     “You’re in my place of business, David.  As to what I’m doing, I’m going to make sure that you never bother Tish again.  She told me about the little falling-out you two had some years back.  It seems you didn’t get the message.”
     “Hey, we were perfect together.  We were happy.  And she goes around with other guys, doing God knows what.  What was I supposed to do?”  He sounded aggressive, still trying to pretend he had the upper hand, the idiot.
     “Actually, she tells me that you were the one being unfaithful, but it’s irrelevant at this point.  What’s relevant is that you need a lesson in the proper way to treat a woman, and that you ought not to trifle with those who are more capable than yourself.”  I slowly approached him, giving him an opportunity that I hoped he’d take.
     He did.  I had purposely left his legs untied, and he took his chance to swing one of them at me.  I caught his shin in my hands, and I twisted his leg in a way that it was not meant to twist.  He called out in pain, and when I decided that it had twisted as far as it would, I wrenched it off at the hip and tossed it into a nearby vacant storage compartment.  I closed the door, the anesthetic fog filled the chamber, and the light changed from red to green.  
     “Apparently you still haven’t learned your lesson.  I told you not to mess with people who are more powerful than you.”
     He stared at his leg through the glass door of the compartment, and then he looked around the room in earnest for the first time.  In all the chambers with green lights, he saw hands, feet, arms, legs, and a couple of pairs of eyes.  He looked back at me, and his face was pale.
     “What the hell is this place?”
     “I call it a workshop, but some times it’s more like a laboratory.  People come to me asking for a replacement part, and I give them one.”  I was being vague on purpose; I hoped that he would assume I was grave robbing or something, stealing people’s limbs and giving them to other people.  “As you can see, I do pretty well for myself.  And of course, I’m not only the owner, I’m also a customer.”  I rolled up my right shirtsleeve to expose my shoulder, and I peeled away some of the skin on the prosthetic arm to reveal the mechanical structure underneath.  “You certainly picked the wrong apartment to storm into, David.”  I turned away from him and went over to the pile of his clothes, and on my way, I winked at Tish.  She smiled at me.  It seemed to be working well.  
     From the pile of clothes I took the knife that David had brought with him.  I approached him slowly to build the suspense.  “Tish?”
     “Yes?”
     “Now, what do you think someone might pay to have big muscles like these?”
     “Oh, I don’t know.  Someone might pay a lot for them.  Myself, though, you couldn’t pay me to take them.”
     “We’ll, that’s to be expected, isn’t it?”  I went over to David and plunged the knife into his other thigh.  I had concentrated enough to make sure there wouldn’t be an actual wound, but due to his heightened state of anxiety, the pain was there anyway.  I rotated the knife around his leg, severing the leg and stowing it in its own cubbyhole.  The gas entered, the light changed, and David was left swinging.  
     “Well, I gotta tell you, David, I’m getting a little tuckered out.  What do you say we let Tish take a crack at you, eh?”  He turned his head toward me with a fearful, pleading look on his face.  He clearly didn’t want Tish anywhere near him, especially in his current state.  I turned my left leg toward David and extended my sword from my leg.  I drew the sword from its sheath and handed it to Tish, who walked up beside me.  I kept the knife for myself, since the sword would work no matter who was using it.  
     “Brian’s quite a powerful guy, isn’t he?” she said.
     “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Letitia.”
     “Well, he’s taught me a thing or two as well.”  An elaborate tribal tattoo faded into view covering half of her face.  “You see, he’s offered me a job, so I work for him now.”  Lizard scales grew out from the neckline of her t-shirt and faded upwards along her neck.  This was the most important part of this whole thing.  She was taking the upper hand against her tormentor, denying him the ability to intimidate her ever again.  “And he told me earlier, while you were out, that this was my chance to prove my skill.”  She grabbed one of David’s upper arms and severed it from the shoulder, allowing it and the rest of David to swing free.  She then grabbed his other arm and cut it off as well, and David’s limbless torso dropped to the floor, landing on his now unprotected testicles.  He let out a cry of anguish and fell onto his back.  Tish and I stood over him, she with my sword and I with his knife.
     “I think we’ve proven to him how foolish he was in coming here,” I said.
     “Please, don’t hurt me, I’ll never come back here again, I won’t bother you anymore, I swear!”  He did his best to plead, but I think some part of him knew he was screwed no matter what.
     “No,” I said.  “You won’t.”
     I knelt down and severed his head from his neck with his own knife.  I handed the head to Tish, and she tossed it into a cubbyhole, slammed the door, and watched him as he slowly passed out from the anesthetic.  
     When he was all the way unconscious, she turned back toward me and embraced me.  “Thank you, Brian.  I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
     “And I hope you never have to find out.”
     “I hope so too.”  We kissed.
    “Okay,” I said, “we’ve got to get him back upstairs and back to normal and call the police before he comes too.”
     “Aw, you mean we can’t leave him like he is?”
     “Well, we definitely can’t leave his head in there much longer, or he’ll suffocate.  And I want him thinking this was all a horribly realistic dream when he wakes up, or at least a terrifying experience that he’ll never be able to prove to anybody.  Besides, you know you really don’t want him to stay helpless like that forever.”
     She thought for a moment.  “Well, maybe just a little.”
     “I can deal with a little.”  
     We carried his parts back up to my apartment, reassembled them, and redressed him.  We also bound his wrists and ankles with some zip-ties I had in the kitchen.  Then, I picked up the phone and dialed 911.
     “911, emergency.”
     “Hello, this is Brian Fontaine.  A man just came into my apartment and threatened my girlfriend with a knife.  She had previously filed a restraining order against him, which he violated.  He’s currently knocked out and restrained.  I need you to send a unit over right away.”  I gave them the address.
     “We’ll send someone right over, sir.”
     “Thank you, I appreciate it.”  I hung up the phone.  I went over to Tish and sat with her, keeping an eye on David until the police arrived.  They arrested him for breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon, and violation of the restraining order.  We haven’t seen him since.
     That night, we finished arranging Tish’s things in her room, but she decided that it would be better if she slept in my room that night.  Due to what had just happened, I consented.  I hadn’t wanted to rush into sleeping together since the move-in had come fast enough, but it would be better for both of us this way.  We fell asleep that night in each other’s arms.