Thanks to everyone, I kept going back to recheck every connection at everyplace there was one.
It is now running like a champ again.
I'll share my experience should even one person ever fall into the funky riddle I was in.

I wish I could tell you exactly what it was, but for some reason there is a 7volt feed going to the ignition switch that then goes to the engine cut off switch on the left handle bar(another 850 had 12.5 volts), when the circuit is complete there the voltage jumps up to battery voltage 12.8.
When I went to bypass the cut off switch with a striped wire it arched, stuck to the lead in the clip and started getting hot. I yanked it off. When I tried it again 10 minutes later, because that's what we do when we can't believe it happened the first time, I couldn't believe it: all power came back up and its been running like a champ all afternoon. Its my main wheels while I live in Costa Rica, plates and all right down main st.

thanks again for all your ideas and help