╰ ❛❛ ╯  fuck this . ╰ ❜❜ ╯

EXHAUSTED OF THE EARTH’S own suffocating weight caging existence into the conformity of polluted airs ˓&̺͆˒ feeding it breadcrumbs of chaos … ╟𝙷𝙴 𝙽𝙾 𝙻𝙾𝙽𝙶𝙴𝚁 𝙿𝙰𝚈𝚂 𝙰𝚃𝚃𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝚃𝙾 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙾𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁 𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙾𝚁𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚂𝙰𝙼𝙴 𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙶𝙸𝙲 𝙿𝙻𝙰𝚈 . 𝙶𝚄𝙸𝚃𝙰𝚁 𝚂𝚃𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙶𝚂 𝚅𝙸𝙱𝚁𝙰𝚃𝙴 𝙰𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚂𝚃𝚁𝙾𝙺𝙴 𝙾𝙵 𝙰𝚁𝚃𝙸𝙵𝙸𝙲𝙸𝙰𝙻 𝙵𝙸𝙽𝙶𝙴𝚁𝚂      𝙴𝚅𝙴𝚁𝚈𝚃𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚄𝙽𝙳𝙴𝚁 𝙰 𝙼𝙴𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙽𝙸𝙲𝙰𝙻 𝚁𝚄𝙻𝙴 𝚂𝙰𝚅𝙴 𝙵𝙾𝚁 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚃𝚄𝙽𝙴 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝚂𝚃𝚁𝚄𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃 𝙼𝚄𝚁𝙼𝚄𝚁𝚂╢. it is a ringing ( SCREECH! ) that displays all the required evidences of his annoyance . arms stretch ˓&̺͆˒ repose atop of the arguable comfort of an age-battered couch , right leg erratically thumping at the beat of a scorching impatience.

╰ ❛❛ ╯  are you going to tell me exactly what the fuck you want or do i have to waste the next five minutes with a headache from this stupid guessing game . ╰ ❜❜ ╯

               OOOOH, PUPPY DOG'S GOT  bite to go along with those sad eyes. She'd be impressed if his attitude wasn't a detriment to her job. Girl's got to make a living, after all, even if that means sucking up to wannabe rockstars like Samurai. Rest of the crew are alright in comparison, but Silverhand is the largest slice of shitcake she's had to deal with in a long while. 

       “ uh, ”  it’s the only thing that falls out of her mouth for the first few moments. after that she sort of just stares.  “ thanks? ”  she’s not sure if that’s the word she should be using right now but, whatever it happens.  “ you need a job done or somethin’? usually oughta go to a fixer for that. but if you got eddies i ain’t denyin’ ‘em. ”

night city was left behind in his rear view, for a while. two years. without a word to many around him (those of which he had shared his plans with had kept loyally closed-lipped), he had disappeared. kerry eurodyne’s gone, did you hear? … yeah, no one’s seen or heard from him. he had gone home, he had gone to the philippines. spent that time on masbate. a good chunk of it was spent getting high by day and fucking anything that moved by night; the rest, dedicated to touching ground again, getting back in touch with his roots, working on his first love: music. gathering the gumption to return to night city came gradually.

progress has ushered forth a new era. signed to msm records, the true start to his solo career was dawning. no more double-tickets, no more reunions. just him. his reemergence hasn’t been quiet: the return of eurodyne spread like wildfire, loud and proud in advertisements pressed forth by the label–he’s back and here to stay!

but kerry kept his word: he didn’t forget molly, or most of them. he remembers her as dependable, capable. swept up into msm’s buzz, offering a hand to those he once knew only felt natural.

“y’know, long enough.” kerry brushes a hand through the hair that tickles at the back of his neck, regarding molly with the slightest of smiles. “but…yeah, actually. i did, if you’d be interested in hearing it.”

               TWO YEARS IS A  long time to go incognito, especially when more than half of the world knows your name. Rockerboys like Kerry Eurodyne are seen as the modern day prophets; preaching babylon and against the greedy until the day they finally sold-out, and built themselves a gilded cage. Samurai reaped both the benefits and consequences of fame in one fell swoop, ultimately imploding. But such a miraculous end paves the way for a successful beginning. Kerry finally has the audience to round out his pipes and stage presence. Molly would've be proud of the guy if he hadn't chained himself to a LEVIATHAN in the process. Record labels are their own kind of jail cell, but it's always been the illusion of freedom that really counts. In the end, Night City has her hooks in all of them, and house takes all. 

               ❝ Dunno', Boss. Been a while since I worked as muscle for something this low-key. That is, unless, you're still getting into all kinds of trouble? I like a challenge, and fangirls don't feel up to snuff, if you catch my drift. ❞   She sidles closer, mirrors flashing neon from a nearby bar sign. Her gaze reflects his own face, expression tinged in silver and pink flourescence. Molly's not a particularly tall woman, but there's something about her that can fill an entire room; a dangerous luminance that drove others to stare, like MOTHS TO FLAME.

𝙲𝚈𝙱𝙴𝚁𝙿𝚄𝙽𝙺 𝟸𝟶𝟽𝟽 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚁𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚂 // still accepting

               ❝ HMM. WHAT IS IT the Brits say? ‘Bully for me?’ ❞   It’s a switch she can turn on and off. The magnitude of her deadly charm drawing stares like moths to light. A simple shift in posture and the aim of her quicksilver stare and the room around her is polarized. Magnetic, she pulls them in. A baited hook between the shining whites of her teeth. Her lips are stained red, lurid against the monochrome backdrop; another nameless alley where people like them conduct business. 

               The man she just dropped for interrupting them squirms beneath the heel of her boot, bloody arms scrabbling for purchase as she continues to press down.   ❝ You and me, Missy. We need to talk. Somewhere private. ❞   She punctuates the seriousness of her point by cracking something vital, eliciting warbling moan of agony from the thug. He’s not going anywhere.   ❝ You know a place, or am I gonna have to drag you all the way back to my capsule. I warn ya, it’s a tight squeeze. ❞   More of a coffin than a hotel room, but Molly’s easy to please. You don’t need much when you’re only in one place for a night or so.

𝙲𝚈𝙱𝙴𝚁𝙿𝚄𝙽𝙺 𝟸𝟶𝟽𝟽 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚁𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚂 // still accepting

               ❝ THAT A PROMISE, GADREEL? ❞   She knows him beyond his misnomer, made the time and connections needed to track down something close to a real name. The Wanderer’s file is sparse, entombed behind far too many firewalls and an encryption key that’d make the most skilled netrunner sweat. The corporation he’s tied to keeps things under lock and key, but little miss Molly has never let a closed door stop her. She didn’t crack it herself, of course. But if she’s anything, it’s resourceful. 

               Molly’s pistol remains in hand, loose but ready along her side. This temporary alliance means nothing in the grand scheme of their relationship. Once the client is recovered, they’ll go back to trying to kill each other. A fight so familiar it’s begun to feel like the natural order of things. Like they’d locked into the same hidden step of evolution that branded all other human beings as prey.   ❝ I know how this dance ends. ❞   Here upon the killing floor, one wrong move can mean your life. Molly doesn’t care about ending up on top, so long as she lands on her feet.   ❝ I didn’t think you were one for delaying the inevitable. ❞

@mirrorlenses· 

      “ fuckin’ gonk, piece of shit ass – ”  her hand flinches back from a shock gifted to her by the piece of tech she’s currently swearing at.  “ god damn. ”  she nurses her finger, placing it between her lips as if sucking on it will magically soothe the tech burn. the scrap is promptly tossed aside and that’s when she sees it land a little too close to someone else.  “ fuck – ”  she is clearly startled.  “ scared the piss outta me. you got pillow for feet or somethin’? ”

𝙲𝚈𝙱𝙴𝚁𝙿𝚄𝙽𝙺 𝟸𝟶𝟽𝟽 𝚂𝚃𝙰𝚁𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚂 // still accepting

               ❝ OOF, MY GIRL IS such a cynic. ❞ Idealists don’t survive in a place like Night City, only the paranoid, the unrelenting; those who see a smiling face and sense the mousetrap underneath. 𝚂𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐-𝚕𝚘𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚢𝚊𝚕, your closest choom is only as good as your most dangerous enemy, janus-faced friendships that always end in spilled blood. She doesn’t look it, but Molly’s got at least a decade on her favorite netrunner, ten whole extra years to experience almost every type of knife in the back there is. She doesn’t expect her and Bug to part on good terms, something will go wrong, it has to. But until that day, they have each other.

               Molly comes up behind where the other is working, one arm slipping across the width of her shoulders while the other dangles a steaming mug of genuine coffee in front of her hacker’s face. She’s always been a woman to play as hard as she works, but Tiyana treats herself like the machines she harnesses, a tireless courier of destruction. The Net is simple an extension of her psyche, a place beyond the meat and all its messy needs. She hacks as if the cables connecting her to cyberspace recharge her spirit like a drained battery, like she isn’t fighting against the limits of her own mortality every second she stays online. Independent console cowboys like T-Bug don’t work for a pension plan, either you hit the marks need to get out, or die trying. 

“You were hurt,” Kumiko said, looking at the scar. Sally looked down. “Yeah.” “Why didn’t you have it removed?” “Sometimes it’s good to remember.” “Being hurt?”                       “Being stupid.”

                                                                              -William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

                           𝙼𝙸𝚂𝚃𝚈 𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙴𝙻𝙴, 𝙰𝚄𝙶𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙴𝙳 𝙵𝙴𝙰𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁𝚆𝙴𝙸𝙶𝙷𝚃.

Molly is the kind of person who likes to keep busy. When she isn’t working as an assassin or bodyguard she can be found sticking her fingers in far too many pies, playing fast and loose and looking for her next fight. She invested millions in a German casino after receiving her payment for the first big heist she ever completed, spent three years losing more money than she earned and loving every second of it. When stocks and business management began to bore her, she took on the alias Misty Steele and began competing in underground blood matches as a featherweight fighter. 

These were illegal fights, almost always fatal for one or more participants, and garnered the attention of only the most notorious criminals. Big money was bet on the winners, but the shiniest pot went to the fights with no survivors.

‘Misty Steele’ had eight matches spanning the length of a year. Back-to-back wins where she brutalized her opponents into messy red pulps and left more than one man in ribbons. All cybernetic enhancements were on the table. If you had the chrome, you might as well use it. She was on a roll, gathering eyes and ears and enough cred to pay for damage caused by each fight. Molly called it a hobby, but as Misty it was her whole world. Up until the day some fucker going by the stage name the ‘Burmese Kid’ sliced her open in front of 3000 people. 

closed starter //  for @mirrorlenses​:         HE IS LATE, CAUGHT BETWEEN the oscillating thrums of a city crowd & the infuriating interruptions of machine traffics. It is a grievous error on his part. This place waited for no one, lest of all those who dealt in matters of underhanded acquisition. As far as someone like Kasidy was concerned, Gadreel’s inability to be on-time to meet a contact was not only a stain on his record, but also a slight against the company itself. Thus, propelling himself at a quicker clip, the man all but cuts through anyone who would have such misfortune as to stand in his path. Twisting himself around bends & carving a path to open corridors, this machine bounds forward at an unnatural kilter, artificial tendons stretching & flexing under the strain of his effort to make up lost time. A built-in indicator lets him know when the coordinates are reached; only then does he slow to a complete stop.  His marred visage turns towards the warehouse, the keen vision of an enhanced optical apparatus scanning over the outside. Oddly enough, there were no doors on this side of the building, but there was a service ladder leading up to a steel terrance wrapt partially around the top. Locked in the upright position to prevent intruders, the ladder was inaccessible at the ground level – not that it particularly mattered. Coiling down to the ground, he launches himself up easily enough to grab the bottom rung, then quickly scales the fixture. Momentum carries Gadreel over the lip of the terrace & directly into the doorway above, which, as he presumed, negligently had not been locked. It opens with a quiet push.  Instinctually he adopts a feline approach, legs bending & cushioning any noise that may betray his arrival beyond the quiet latch of the door. However, his damaged gaze quickly hones onto something down below that has him resentfully forfeit all efforts. He stands, hoisting his legs over the barrier of the inside scaffolding so that he may drop heavily onto the ground below. A metal hand raises to adjust his hat as Gadreel slowly comes to his full height, an exasperated & pointed glare shot in the direction of a certain recognizable someone who had beaten him here. His voice is ragged & is punctuated by the distinct rattle of a wheezy breath, an accusatory finger jabbing in the direction of the man seated beside her.

“ That’s  my  fuckin’ contact. ” 

               NEVER WORK AGAINST A Russian, not unless you wanted to become the work. Another shepherding anecdote from the Finn, built on all the bad experiences you can rack up on an extended lifespan. She should’ve listened. The Soviets aren’t known for making fair deals, and she’d heard of more than a few mercs that landed in an early grave after ending up on the wrong side of one. It’d been sentiment alone that steered her into accepting the gig. What remained of Jones’s mind reached out to her through the vestigial networks of her past life, played out old debts to invoke Molly’s aid. He wants whatever’s buried in Mr. Kuznetsov’s mind, bad enough to summon old ghosts when he finally put in the call. Dog, Johnny, Kumiko... Jones cracked her good, always did, even when speaking through a binary decoder. 

               So now she’s here, a sitting duck in a warehouse watching her cargo wear a groove into the concrete. He started pacing before the top of the hour, and it’s been nearly ten minutes since. Their contact is late. Jones wouldn’t stand her up, especially not when he’s this close to the prize. Which means the person supposed to meet them here was either intercepted, or this is a trap. Both spell trouble of differing magnitudes. A hitch in the so-called ‘milk-run’ she’d been assured. This is why Molly prefers to conduct business in person. This day and age, there’s no such thing as a secure line. 

               ❝ Sit down a sec, Comrade. Don’t wanna tire yourself out before extraction. ❞   More so it’s distracting, and she’s trying to think. Kuznetsov says something too quietly for her translator to pick up, and drops down into the seat next to her. It offers only a moment’s respite before the clanging rhythm of the access ladder being ascended rips Molly from her thoughts. 

               The Wanderer would be more intimidating in person if this was their first encounter. But given the mortality rate of their occupation those who manage to stay alive tend to cross paths on more than one occasion. She quickly angles Kuznetsov behind her, the squat, rectangular shape of her fletcher pistol emerging from its holster. The safety’s off before the cyborg hits the ground, the weight of his enhancements making the floor shake upon impact.