Collab with [@Ruby]

[b][u]The Afterlife[/u][/b]

She hadn’t supposed it was too common to pregame for the Afterlife. Even though the music pounded as it would any other rock club and drunken bodies swung about to the crashing rhythm, it was a place of business. Its inhabitants had slaughtered their way to a right to be present, or at the least, fucked one of those who had.

Shimada had owed Kelly a night out, however. Too many weeks of blowing her off for the less than honest pursuits of her work hadn’t been fair on one of the few normal and stable aspects of her life since the deaths of her family. Kelly didn’t know anything about what her life had been, but she was bright enough to know what her current life was even if she’d taken much effort to hide it from her. When she’d offhand mentioned she had business at the famous Merc club that evening, the young American blonde had made it something of a mission to attend as well. Not that she had any reason beyond the cool factor of a night at the bar, but it was also a general excuse for them to spend some time together and catch up.

The cultural classes she had attended for years in Japan had attempted to invest in her a condescending dislike for the Western practice of relying on locations where the music was too loud to hear yourself think, as a place of social gathering. Her upbringing in Night City had done its best to prevent that particular lesson sinking in. She’d danced and drunk with Kelly through a series of bars and clubs, not one they’d waited to paid to get into. Shimada didn’t like wearing black, it reminder her too much of the Arasaka uniform she’d donned many times before. Her bodyglove for work was an unfortunate exception, it wasn’t much like she could find a replacement in a new shade right off the street. So, despite all warnings about spilt drinks and general city grime, she’d worn white. Black was, of course, slimming, and white did the opposite, the halter top bodycon dress highlighting the flaring of her hips in a way that was certainly appreciated by the door staff of the city. Not that her friend was a hindrance in the charm department.

Time passed, as it had want to do, and the appointed hour had drawn near. Despite Kelly’s assertions she would ‘be good’ and just wanted a look around the famous bar, Shimada packed her off into a taxi. She’d slowed down her own drinking some time before, and the stimms flooding her system were already most of the way to sobering her up, and she didn’t much feel like keeping one eye on the bar while also meeting with a new contact. She didn’t change outfit, just threw on her leather Tyger Claw branded jacket over the top of her dress as she walked the remaining distance to the bar. One underappreciated advantage of her augmented palms and soles was a complete lack of pain from extended time in high heels. Another little hack of life.

She hadn’t spent much time in the Afterlife, but she was a striking enough figure from her few brief visits that Bronson greeted her with only the tepid hostility offered to those expected to get in, as opposed to the outright dismissive contempt for those on their first try. She gave him a flick of a demure smile, not showing her teeth as she had been taught, in thanks. He hardly reacted, but it never hurt to keep on the good side of a walking slab of muscle. As she moved towards the bar, the sway of her gait entirely deliberate as opposed to the influence of the now fully countered night of drinking, she pondered the question of whether she could ‘take’ the infamous Animal gang member. She was still undecided as she perched on the first free barstool.

“A Jackie Welles, please.” A pretty generic choice she was sure in recent months, but it wasn’t her fault that the recently deceased had made a good choice of a drink. The first sip hit her with just enough kick of both vodka and ginger to send a shiver through her. If she ever shut off the rather fancy set of biological augments her old life had bought her she was something of a lightweight. She didn’t mind that, made each drink worth it. Just the one, to steady the nerves she pretended not to feel. The drink didn't last long, before her eyes flickered back up to the bartender.

"One more, thanks." She took the drink in hand before standing. Shimada had already located the Fixer she was after, caught in her periphery, Wakako had informed her enough. A Fixer looking for a crew for a job that aligned with what she wanted, and would need the information she had. Wakako had also added some descriptives about being mad enough to try, but then the kind of change Shimada was after wasn't the kind the entirely sane ever achieved.

She encountered the hired muscle before the Fixer herself, that was to be expected, even those who tended to operate from the main floor still needed something to keep their boothes private. Shimada took a long sip of her new drink as she simply looked up into the meat's eyes for the duration  of the gulp, sparkling hazel eyes meeting the grim,  impatient visage without pause. Another brief smile, before she spoke 'around' the man.

"Hi there Eddie, Wakako sent me." It wasn't exactly the most badass of greetings, but as she took another sip from her drink, her other hand in the bubblegum turquoise of her tyger claw jacket, it was about as much as she could think to offer without screaming "Hello there, let's burn down a megacorp together."

"It's okay, Squama, this is the one who wants to burn down a megacorporation with us."

Eddie wasn't even looking up from the datapad that had her attention when she rose her voice to tell Crispin to let the woman through, and the humor in her words was left to the imagination as her tone remained dry, the humor deadpan. Only when the woman sat and settled did Eddie hand off the datapad across the table to Crispin, "Yeah, this will work. Get the equipment delivered and I'll see about essentials; bedding, provisions, the like. I'll bug Nix about local network security and the special server I'll have to move and setup myself. Thank you, sir."

There was a little 'twang' at the end of her words, a little verbal twist on the word 'sir' that Crispin didn't seem to notice, or care about. The large man just nodded and left the booth, understanding what Eddie meant when she thanked him so formally: [i]You can go, I got this.[/i] 

"Let's be inclusive, Ms. Masako, call that friend of yours over. I promise to be gentle with her."

Eddie's grin was reflective of the same deadpan humor as her indication of who Shimada was to the solo and bodyguard, Crispin, even if it was an impossibility to tell if Eddie was actually even slightly kidding about any of it, all of it, or absolutely none of it.

Shimada smiled politely once again to the muscle as she was allowed through, never quite showing her teeth. She paused before sitting, however, at the request to bring Kelly over, who was currently pestering the bar staff for any fun stories. As was her nature, that was for their own fun stories, she didn’t much care for the big ego mercs everyone else drooled over.

“I’m sure she can manage either way,” She didn’t need to add that her roommate was a Night City native, the kind to watch five people eat chrome on the way to work and call it a quiet day. She flicked her phone to her ear as she moved to sit, sparing the effort to yell across the bar. “Hey Kells, come grab a drink, lady’s buying.” It hadn’t taken long for her to unlearn the formulaic speech, even in English, her education in Japan had provided her. It was a matter of survival really, even the most diehard faker from Japantown would struggle to maintain the formality that had been second nature to her. Of course, she could turn it back on at a pinch, but there was rarely a need for that.

The American blonde arrived in but a moment, a little more sway to her walk than Shimada’s had been thanks to lacking her biomods, but she was still put together enough, offering a hand out to Eddie with a bright smile, “Hey, nice to meet you.”

Eddie took the hand gently between her forefingers and thumb of her right hand, holding it as the woman leaned across the table, Eddie scooting forward in the booth's seating and leaning towards her, the monowire sharp smile on her unpainted and unglossed lips, the black of her jacket and top and pants and boots making the smile stand out all the more, and not always in the best of ways, her tone kind but the sound of her voice coming close to sharp. Eddie got close to make sure the woman heard her, and her blues eyes stared deep into the very soul of the girl's eyes so that there was no mistaking Eddie's intent, "You need to be very careful in this bar, Ms. Kelly. There are people in this bar who could end every life on a city block before anyone could do anything to stop them, and I mean like that," 'that', the word heavy with emphasis as her left hand appeared out of the nowhere of shadow and snapped loudly alongside the word just an inch from Kelly's face.

Eddie let go, and motioned to the girl to sit. Claire stared from the opening of the booth, the gravity of the moment not lost on Claire; this was the inner circle of Hell, and Claire had gained and lost more than she would like to admit to the demons that inhabited it. If anything, it was hard for Claire to hide the shadow of a smirk that inhabited her lips as she waited for Eddie's attention.

"Tequila, Reyes liquor, firewater, agave nectar, a squeeze of lemon juice, shaken over ice and double strained. Tajín Clásic garnish, topped with cerveza and mixed."

The Mexican-Spanish flair came easily to Eddie's decidedly not Mexican-Spanish voice, like an old friend she just hadn't spoken to in a while. Claire nodded, with a small chuckle, "Am I naming this one after you one day?"

Eddie let the smile be her real answer, even as she allowed another, "No, I'm a simple beer kind of girl." Kelly was unlikely to have had an old Cartel classic cocktail common in the tejano haunts of Texas, to say nothing of Shimada, from a country where such a cocktail was, as Eddie well knew, all but unheard of even if they went chasing something truly tejano or Texas, let alone Mexican. Claire disappeared, and Eddie was left to sink back into her seat, and give Shimada a look that was either apologetic, or completely lacking in apology, depending on point of view. 

"Since we'll be working together for a time, might as well start off one step below Blue Glass, as I've already had my fill of that for the week." It was a miracle Conrad wasn't still sunk into a booth somewhere, lost in memory and lights and illusionary spectacle. "I'm told the code was secured, I've got a BD artiste modifying the BD, we'll check to make sure it would pass corpo eyes but...I've got faith. You'll be helping more in the background, closer to working more directly with me than the team. In fact, to be honest, I'd prefer the team never know you're involved at all. More security for you, and less potential for something to go wrong, if something were to go wrong."

“Something will go wrong.” When the words slipped from her lips they were without needless dread or a sense of correction. She had no illusions as to the nature of the task set before them, and those to whom they would shortly be directly set against. One could plan for every eventuality, and still never account for the whims of fate. “I don’t need, or want, to be present at every stage, but I will be involved when the blade drops, those are my terms, if we are to work together.” She was well aware that Eddie had already received most of what she already needed, but that wasn’t to say matters would be more complicated without her. Fixers tended to hate complication, especially when it didn’t even result in a bigger payout. “If they find out who I am, then it will function as enough of a smokescreen anyway.” As far as she was aware, no one beyond the old woman knew who she had been, but she hadn’t altered her face, recognition was always possible. Shimada allowed herself a sip of the drink, savouring the unusual taste, definitely speaking more to the strands of her taste buds that favoured her upbringing in Night City over her adolescence and genealogy in Japan. Kelly wasn’t as reserved, taking a more direct, more American, gulp of the cocktail, offering a celebratory clink of glasses to both other women present.

“Who have you brought together?” Shimada carried on speaking once the second sip was down her, one leg crossed over the other, not leaning back, as she spoke. Some lessons of proprietary didn’t quite slip without concerted effort, and she didn’t mind the contrast between herself and the two true-American women, not for the moment anyway.

Eddie smiled at the ‘cheers’, despite herself, and hoped the girl wouldn’t be dead by the turn of the new year. It was too early to celebrate, and for no one was that truer than herself. It was an unusual balance to the grim seriousness that was her companion of the hour. “No battle plan withstands getting punched in the mouth,” Eddie echoed an old friend from College Station, from a past life, in agreement with the general sentiment. She had quite a lot of experience at contingencies, it gave her a soothed over, quiet, confidence at such a fact. 

“Nix has the bios. Tell him I sent you, he’ll let you see them.” The unmistakable sound of the base of an empty glass hitting a table sounded as Eddie finished her cocktail with a thirst, “I’ll be in touch, there’s more than enough work to do. Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The sheer fire of the cocktail sending heat through her body and her brain let the smirk slip at the comment, given her history, it wasn’t a terribly limiting farewell.