kaleidoscopic neural decay

It's the kicked puppy expression that she receives acter her snapping that ultimately cools the magma of her irritation. The blue of his eyes reminds her of ocean shots of beach themed postcards; calming and somewhat ethereal. That and the sincerity he shows. Lenny means well — she knows this. It's one of the reasons she continues to work with him. Well that, and he's a good asset when she needs one.

If this were any other time she might make some crack about locking lips.

"I am very serious. It's a life of death situation." Her tone takes on a gentler cadence — thoughtful, maybe even desperate if over examined. Selfishly, it's not just Evie's being at stake but hers as well. The chance to gather a piece of the puzzle that is her precarious predicament.

But Lenny is right. It's yet another wasp nest she's about to stomp on. It's the right thing to do. It's necessary. What'sa bunch of torture porn Scavs to a woman that'sbeen accused of offing the Emperor of the corpo world? "Always have to look over shoulders. That's just how my life and this city is. Far from being a bed of roses." Ah, there's that signature charm; punctuated with her giving his shoulder a light, playful shove. "Besides, I'm a dead girl walking. What's another iron in the fire?" A laugh slips from her lips — humor as a mask. Catch flies with honey instead of vinegar. It's the truth however. Pissing people off seems to be her life's work while incurring the ever high costs that come with it.

This woman is oscillating between primary colors. Also, life and death. Mina must have dreamed of making it big. She was meant for more than Night City, living up to four hundred. Immortal, she would have eaten only real, farm-raised sushi—the kind that isn’t petri dished—her organs detoxed of all its rainbow microplastics. She’d have owned a space station orbiting Orion, blind to Night City and all its neon corpo billboards and post-Americana dreams. Untouched by the Relic, her brain would be terrorist-free. She wouldn’t remember Lenny.

Instead, she went Challenger. She’s mid-explosion and RGB mushroom clouds, sitting nose-to-nose. She sticks out her tongue.

“Yeah,” he says at last. He’s violently sincere. “Yeah. I’m worried about you.”

A siren whines and a neighbor slams the door, rattling his trash. Lenny’s eyes turn holographic.

“Alright. I’m hotwiring you through.”

He sends her the coordinates. Jig-Jig Street flashes.

Lenny’s Chinese finger-trapping his arms back into their pleather Armani, the ghost of his cop days on him like a tick. “Free of charge. I’m coming,” he says, fishing his head back up. “You won’t even know I’m there. Hell— Throw me on a leash, say I’m your dog.

She does so emphatically.

❝ Gag me with a knife, Lenny. I hate to hear you speak. ❞

Time for gauze. She clatters through the first-aid kit just beside her hip. ❝ ... Yes, you are dreaming. And yes, I am your moon, and stars. And also, Freddy Krueger. Wake up before I kill you. ❞

Lenny and Addy go waaaay, way back. During his LAPD days, chasing the tadpole starlet around on a case of ... less-than-savory, shant-be-named-yet dealings in the dark. Now, dressing the part of rock bottom snake-oil salesman, with eyes like a wet stray cat and a charm that makes you realize, at times, how some folks do manage to fall for the bullshit, Lenny scalps off her newfound success, selling stardust that she's worn on eBay for $1k a grain. To fund his addiction to fortune cookies.

When he winces, she savors the look and sound, stroking his brow relaxed, and his senses more quiet, with the pad of her thumb.

“Take it easy.”

He unglues his periwinkle eye. He has fully completed his transformation into a back-alley cockroach, living off of 24-hour convenience stores, and the kindness of others, and Tic-Tac painkillers. Stationed against her skinny knees, he even looks it. The faux-snakeskin shirt is open four buttons down. The blood down his temple is syrupy. She strokes his sad brow—because that’s how she is. Unpredictable.

Unpredictable like his LAPD days, Lenny running through the manhole steamed streets of the underbelly. Like Lenny chasing a priest’s daughter with the real swan feather jacket, her dead pixel hair reflecting street ads in neon bursts of late-stage Capitalism Coca-Colas, and lemon DHLs, and energy drink pinks. She ran glitching from one screen to the next, her face hi-jacking Los Angeles. He woke up the next day, sweating, thinking she was a virus.

She is, in a way. Adella has spread to every continent. Adella has a fifteen million follower count and will live long after her, digicoded in dark web heaven.

“‘Specialized.’ The word you’re looking for is ‘specialized,’” he stresses now, all-American nasally. The sting whines to a throb, and he slumps back into her. “Look, you don’t call a mechanic to do your hair— or a nun to be your special speed dial, your hands-free buddy.” Or you do. His eye winks back to a nail clipping. “I’m whatever my clients need me to be,” he tells her. “Your genie in a bottle.”

❝ Lenny. I fucking hate you. ❞

Nicklescraper, dreamseller, LAPD former, Leonard " Lenny " Nero. There's no reason at all why these two should ever be mingling, right?, let alone in such a mildewed place. Not the black markets, this time -- not their usual nightcrawling. His apartment. His hole-punched apartment furnished with nothing but popsickle shavings, evidence of some strange addictions, and, perhaps, one or two poltergeists.

Her bodyguard waits outside.

❝ What could be the matter with you this time, huh? ❞ As if she doesn't know. His blood's on her fingers, and she doesn't know? He stands before her while she sits atop the kitchen counter, a cotton ball, drenched in a potion of clarifixing alcohol and some dubious material of her own invention, pinched between her princess thumb and forefinger. She's daubing it all along his temple. Right. He's bleeding off the side of his head. Some deal gone wrong, maybe? Or maybe his brain's finally revolting against itself, having been zapped by one too many Playbacks. Whatever the reason, the tenderness with which she administers the antiseptic suggests that she may not, in fact, totally, entirely, fucking hate him.

Adella has claimed these landlord special peel-and-stick countertops as her throne. Now queen regent, she hails over his ecosystem of empty takeout cartons, and still-oiled frying pan, and the water stain on his ceiling, and the neighbor’s THC which has soaked deep into his plasti-polyester carpeting, his beaded Juicy Fruit curtain. There are cookie fortunes scattered about, too. ‘Luck is coming your way!’ is shrimped at her side. By his fritzed toaster: ‘burnt bridges are hard to cross’. Hiding his bills via object permanence: ‘happiness is a state of mind’.

Adella begins the task of dabbing his split temple, soaking his DNA with twenty-percent real cotton. There are always police sirens outside. It turns her emergency exit red.

“Ming’s didn't put up a wet sign. Can you believe it?” He inhales, still smiling. “I should sue.” She dabs again. The alcohol burns, and Lenny makes a sound, wincing through it. “Just business. You know how it is,” he fixes, slumping forward. “Some guy says he doesn’t do blondes—film’s already been cut—and demands I hand it over free. On the house.”

Lenny leans into her unoffending hand like a cat. The neighbor has begun his nightly ritual of blasting the FM to Jeriko One, and he knows, outside, in the classic men-in-black pose, her bodyguard is skulking. He’s still waiting for today’s deposit of concert tickets, which he will scalp by a hundred percent.

LENNY: you should know me by now. ( @playbacked )

SANTA CARLA WAS NOT WHERE STAR HAD BEEN BORN, BUT EVER SINCE SHE HAD MET DAVID IT HAD BECOME HER HOME. places to rest your head were a dime-a-dozen ── places where you could do that without having to worry about who else would crawl into your room at night were special, at least to her. and hell, if you could look past all the drugs and deaths, it was practically paradise.

right now, she got to enjoy that. the sun didn't hurt as bad when it was going down, and the boardwalk had always been a great comfort to her. there was nowhere to escape to in small towns, but in a place like this, you could be alone with three-hundred people. no one cared about you.

no one, that is, except maybe lenny nero. at least, the lenny she remembered would have.

          " I KNOW YOU WERE THE KIND OF COP WHO WASN'T GOING TO BUST A KID FOR GETTING BY, " seven years ago, star hadn't exactly said thank you for that. she had been too scared to stick around, and if she were being completely honest, kind of pissed that he'd stopped her from making some money.

she had also cried that night, thinking about everything that had already happened before he showed up, and she definitely wasn't going to tell him that. " now i hear you're not even a cop at all. "

          ...

star paused. she really didn't mean to sound so harsh. " are ... you okay, lenny? "

The smile he flashes is neither.

“Oh, good. Good.” He fastforwards through it. “You remember me.”

The video rental store is quiet. It smells like plastic and cheap tanning bed lotion, a side effect of being a beach town. His knockoff Rolex clicks the counter.

“And I remember scraping you out the back of some nutjob’s Chrysler. Some forty-two-year-old low life with a ring on his finger like sausage wire.” Behind her, Taxi Driver is lining up a presidential shot. The AC wheezes on life support. A song echoes like post-Rapture elevator music, rousing the dust off the shelves. “...I hear someone’s got you on wire,” he says at last, loud in the silence. “And I’m talking the just-for-one variety.”

Instantly there's a look of full offense on her features; brows shot completely up, eyes widened and nose scrunched up. In a way she looks almost like a cobra ready to spit venom. "I don't want it to get my rocks off! I'm a nasty, perverted slut but not like that, goddamn! Jesus fucking Christ Lenny..." the disgusted expression remains for a beat longer before dissolving with a sigh. "If I wanted to be a gore whore I'd watch horror flicks."

Glass of alcohol is thrown back in one swallow. A mistake if truth be told. Because she really has to hold back a cough. The taste is pungent, sour but not in the tart kind of way. Her stomach gurgles at the choice offering. Hand wipes the barest sting of tears from them.

"And for the record, I'm not here to ask you to do the investigating. I'm here as the PI." Cup is set back onto the table. Her expression softens, somewhat somber. "I'm searching for...an associate that I have good reason to believe...no, that I know was taken or traded off to whoever makes those BDs."

There's a certain stabbing of guilt that washes over her. Too slow. She's not going fast enough. Every second wasted brings Evelyn closer to her possible end. And it would be all V's fault.

“V. Come on. That’s not…” Precariously, he holds up his hand. He sits, the cushion quicksanding beside her. “Boundaries,” he placates.

He has the remarkable talent of looking like a dog caught in the rain. His NCPD-issued eyes are the same baby blue as his ‘ganic ones. They sponge the city’s monoxides, acquiring a kind of cellophane sheen under the right UV lighting. When he looks at V, coughing at his terrible discount alcohol, you can see the circuits connecting in his brain.

A girl goes missing. She’s kidnapped and shipped off to a darkroom, waking up strapped to a table with a fishing line of drool from her mouth to the dental chair pleather. Pairs of eyes like stoplights punch through the dark. A buzzsaw screams.

Scavs.

He sets his baijiu down with a sick-to-your-stomach clack.

“V. Viv. Let’s… step back a minute. I mean, this whole thing stinks. You could smell it from all the way up Yorinobu’s penthouse,” he breathes, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. “These guys— You go after them, you’ll be looking over your shoulder. For life,” he warns. He leans in like the walls have ears. “I used to live this, alright? I don’t think they qualify as human.”

As if V doesn’t know. Of course she does. Lenny thinks about this faceless girl, someone’s daughter and best friend, with jelly nails and a twenty-year-old glitter pen diary. The lump in his throat bobs.

It's said you can tell a lot by a person by what their living space looks like. And Lenny's? Average. An average bachelor pad in an average neighborhood in Heywood. It's fitting for a guy like him. Because so far she hasn't unraveled anything past that. If she were to be honest, she's always found him more interesting than the product he peddles.

Every little detail further paints a picture. Idly she wanders, taking in everything she can. Not the most luxurious homestead — far from it. Cozy in it's own way. An ambiance that's reminiscent of her own home. Although she had expected something with a bit more...razzle dazzle, considering his more snappy sense of style. Suit and tie like any stereotypical salesman.

"It's not just any snuff your twin is pushing." A couple of the paper balls are scooped up, gaze barely sneaking a peek at the contents. A nearly full can is spotted and shot taken. And — both miss with one bouncing off the rim. No sports career in her future.

A soft huff leads to her flopping down onto the sofa right beside the briefcase. V wiggles as if making herself comfortable which is pointless. This is suppose to be biz, not a friendly house call. "Hear he's got a particular kind. Death's Head variety. Need to get my hands on one."

He double takes like what she’d said was crazy.

“Just what do you want with that, anyway? V, for crying out loud— That stuff’s sick. I’m talking the empty-out-your-dinner, rubber-walls kind of sick.” He pours baijiu into the glass and clacks it down in front of her. Ribbons of hair have curtained over his eye. “You don’t want it, V,” he says, sniffing in and nasally. “Trust me.”

He swishes a gulp by the bottle as she wiggles in his turmeric armadillo-skin couch—it’s the only seat in the living room. She would have sunk in—his head manifesting memories. Lenny had worked NCPD Vice. He’d jacked in to mildewed XBDs, nauseatingly familiar with the Scavs, and Death’s Head, and neural overload-induced comas. Sometimes he dreams he’s strapped to a table crying, only he’s a twenty-something runaway, a Joytoy with jelly nails, and the BD zaps just as they come with the buzzsaw and he’s wide awake, disco ball eyes and cotton-fingered.

V wants to investigate. V, feline with a certain Valkyrian, holographic rage.

but siegfried has to tell himself that this doesn't make the man a saint. he can not let it make a difference . . . in these days, lenny would probably sell his own grandmother for the right deal. for a moment the merc finds himself wondering what has gotten nero fired, how he's come to be where he is now. siegfried has long since stopped wondering the same about himself.

“Come on, pal. It’s Night City.” Lenny’s smile is stickered on, open-mouthed. “Can’t throw a rock without hitting the garbage.” 

He thinks he saw it, though. There may have been the chromatic wheel rim in this man’s eyes, the brief shine of familiarity. He remembers that night two years ago, the NCPD parked at a lemon curb by a mildewy gas station-slash-convenience store, vacuuming down synth-hoagies. They found him, then. They harassed anyone, sometimes as a sign of machismo, sometimes because they’re bored, sometimes because they can. Lenny, an outlier, pried them away. 

Now it’s 2077, Lenny stripped of his badge and bottom feeding with the rest. 

Maybe being ex-NCPD will make this worse.

“What do you want. Hey, how about a penthouse. You’re so high up in the sky, even all the dumpster fires look like the Big Dipper. Like fuckin’ Vegas.” He keeps his arms stretched out between them, his last two lines of defense. His teeth gleam. “An Aerondight? A girl? ...Three girls—at once— Listen, I’ll hook you up with twenty-five percent of the cut I make tonight, you see what I mean? I could write you a check—”

It would be a lie to say she didn't get just the tiniest bit of enjoyment from her unintentional fright. What makes her let out a soft snort of a laugh is the mention of ethics. Even without employing the use of exploitation in his works, he still contributes to the creation and feeding of brain potatoes. He's just another brick in the wall, just like her, just like everyone else.

Yet she has no room to judge. Not now, not ever. If nothing else, Lenny's more tolerable than majority of residents in this hellhole. Delightful at times. Handsome depending on the day and lighting. Of course she's bought product from him once, maybe twice. Not her cup of tea.

Head tilts, a hint of a grin starting to tug at her lips in. "Sure, sure." V murmurs with a nod of her head. Nub of the fastly smoked down cigarette is carelessly tossed onto grimy concrete, boot grinding the nicotine remnants with more agression than necessary.

Closer V leans towards him further invading his space and blocking out the rest of the world around them. Mischief sparkles in glowing fuschia. "We both have a bone to pick with the fucker. What if I told you though that neither of us could have that problem anymore?" The insinuation is left hanging, like an apple from a tree just ready to be snatched.

V isn’t Mace, though. She’d dabbled in his wares, although her particular wants aren’t the things the clients in his milieu go for, and after unplugging, freeing her cocoon of Okiku hair, she’d decided: not for me. Which he can respect. But he knows the mischievous look in her eye. She leans in, invading his personal sphere. She smells of flowers cut through the cigarettes, sticky peach nectar.

He thinks she might be ready to say first-degree murder. “You’re kidding.” He doesn’t buy it. He opens the door. “Yeah. Yeah,” he finally says. “Come in.”

Lenny leads her into his apartment. The door clicks shut. This is his haven, his impenetrable army of discarded Chinese takeout cartons, crumpled-up paper balls, and Jiffy Popped aluminum windows. There are bowling pins of alcohol and gin and tonic on the table—a carryover from the English blood in him—with his twentieth-century cumin carpeting, the pots in his sink. The downstairs neighbor smokes THC.

This is the sad domain of a dumped man.

“Christ. He’s selling snuff under my name, V. I’ve got people hot dialing me for blackjacks.” He tosses his briefcase onto the couch and beelines through the beaded curtain to his kitchen. He comes back with what might be the only clean glass left, and Lenny peels off his faux Armani, loosening his tie. “Two years of branding down the gutter,” he quietly gripes. He looks tired while uncapping a baijiu.

once they are out of sight of the busy street the henchman gives the other one last push as he lets go of him. he corners lenny in the dead end of the neon - lit alleyway, squaring his shoulders to ready himself for his task. but some hesitation remains in his eyes even as he narrows them at the dealer wordlessly.

At ten-thirty on a Saturday night, he wades through the backwash of Heywood selling binary dreams and neural circuit lap dances vaguely strung out, unmedicated. He steps too far into the wrong territory. He gets caught and manhandled, dragged until the rubber of his shoes shaves against the sidewalk with the promise of a coma. This man knows he’s ex-NCPD. He might not wake up.

“Alright, alright. Hey, I get it. Gotta put food on the table.” Lenny has sharp canines, almost Draculic. “You and me both.”

This man shoves him into an alleyway, wet dumpster smog and neon strawberries. Lenny holds his arms to buffer distance between them.

“Okay, okay. Ex-cop. That’s what they told you, right? ‘Course they did.” He makes something like a smile. He springs. “Listen. Remember ‘75? Outside El Pinche Pollo, some of Night City’s finest roughing you up, saying you’ve been giving them the wild eye? Remember a guy telling them to knock it off?” He jostles. “You’re looking at him!”

Lenny starts rustling with his wrist now. He unlatches a watch.  

@playbacked ⛧ starter

Beside him she leans back against the wall in the back alley. "Been awhile. Lenny." A nonchalant, informal greeting. V glances up at him as she digs cigarette case from her pocket. "You're not looking too good. I hear you've got some serious competition ramping up."

“Jesus. V.” He huffs in air, looking bedraggled. “Yeah, I know.”

V shadows the alleyway. She’s always struck him with those neon Benadryl eyes, this cyber Yūrei with her malware hexes and her honeypot magic. In the night, obscured by the ghost of ventilation steam, he can see her kicking gravel. She’s sucking on a cigarette. He wonders what her other vices are: maybe some Stim. Maybe some Boost.

“V, you know I’m operating on pure, unfiltered talent here,” he rebuffs, sticking the key in. He’d made a deal with the custodian to give him back-door keys in case the front was held hostage. “I’ve got respectable clients. Ethics,” he stresses. “None of that— psycho-sadist artery build-up.”

Never mind the fact that Lenny serves perverts and cheaters and backseat, alimony-skipping low-lives.

Her hair is so long, she could take flight with it.