Cyberpunk 2077: V

Chapter 31: The Afterlife

So...what did one wear to The Afterlife, exactly?

V managed a few hours of restless sleep after her talk with Misty, and when she finally got up, she texted Jackie for their daily plan. He said that there wasn't any point in trying to grab a gig or anything that day, so he was going to hang out with Misty, get some boxing in with Vik during his lunch break, and head to the meeting on his new ride from the Esoterica.

Sounds good Jackster. Quick Q - what the hell do I wear? Are we goin' to the 9s? 

We don't need tuxes and pearls chica, just wear your most badass merc rags! I'll meet ya there, 6pm sharp. Chao!

Telling a Nomad to put on their most "badass" clothes was an oxymoron. Unless you were a Nomad merc who had regular dealings with outsiders, you didn't spend too much thought on your appearance. Nomads were about functionality, and so was V. Sure, she had some kind-of-cool stuff, but only because of the hand-me-downs. She thought about reusing her outfit from their Maelstrom ordeal, but it still more geared towards functionality, and obviously didn't have the effect she was going for that day.

For a fleeting moment she thought about hitting a clothes shop, but she was trying to scrounge eddies to pay back Vik, and it would have been so wasteful to go out and buy something she'd only need for one night. 

With gigs on a pause and nothing else to distract her until the meeting, V decided to do some chores. She fueled up her Hela and the Orange and parked them both in her apartment garage, then took out the trash. After a heavy gym session and shower, she got right to pawing through the meager fillings of her closet. It was tough going - what on earth did she have that would fit Jackie's idea of "badass"?

After a lot of mixing and matching and a little bit of Net inspo, V felt she had a pretty good outfit.

A skintight but silky black turtleneck armor weave shirt and the old black flight jacket she got from Vik worked well together. Those along with some dark jeans she modified for her sword and black combat boots made for what she felt was a decent pass at "badass merc rags". 

V thought that she should do some makeup as well, but all she had was some leftover metallic gold eyeliner and a tube of old chapstick. The gold wouldn't jive at all with the vibe she had going on, but without any makeup she wasn't sure if she'd fit in Jackie's vision. She really wanted to sell the look...this was THE AFTERLIFE they were waltzing in to. V and Jackie needed to look the part. Since she didn't have the time or the know-how about makeup to even attempt to go out and buy anything herself, she decided to do something drastic: reach out to her apartment neighbor, Jeanie Jean, for help.

Jeanie Jean was a character. She was a self-proclaimed up-and-coming fashion designer who wanted to "use fashion to fight back", whatever that meant. Jeanie seemed younger than V but had white streaks running through her dark brown hair, claiming they came from her teen years dabbling with netrunning. One day she couldn't decrypt some ICE fast enough and she got a bad shock that fried some of her synapses and turned part of her hair white when it grew out again. After that, she turned to fashion.

To V's luck, Jeanie Jean was actually home for once; but true to form V was snatched into her apartment and thrown into a salon chair before she could barely get her ask out. Jeanie proceeded to swipe through a full presentation of her latest designs on a projecter table, saying: "Oh now you would look so fabulous in this collection, sugar. I call it, The Shackles of the CorpoSlave, the gilded cage that we are all locked into in this corpo-tocracy!" The clothes she showed V looked really good; something one might see at a Jingugi; but upon closer examination, while sleek and almost regal, they also looked like they would restrict movement and be very uncomfortable to wear. "Shackles" indeed.