Lizzy Wizzy's Payback Track

Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I claim nothing; which is what YOU'LL get if you sue me: nothing. Consider yourself disclaimed.

Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 especially the side quest, VIOLENCE

Summary: V helps Night City's most famous singing cyborg get payback on her "cheating" boyfriend inadvertently "saving" him from a worse fate.

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Unknown number, unknown client, a secret meet-up at the No-Tell-Motel?

The aura of mystery 'round this one's so thick I need a machete to hack my way through it. Of course it being you there's probably a powerful femdom on the other side of this which begs the question, are you going to actually fuck this time or GET fucked, I'm good either way.

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I climbed out of a vintage Porsche 911 adorned with the logo of the legendary rock band Samurai, I still didn't really think of It as mine, I seriously doubt I ever will.

"That's because it's MINE, " Johnny Silverhand grumbled, "you drive it like a newbie,"

"Well now you know how I feel when you get control of MY body and I wake up in a fleabag motel with a hangover, shitty tattoos and next to a sketchy-as-fuck stripper." I snarled at the digital ghost.

"Don't be mean, that stripper gave us valuable intel and I gave her her top ten fantasy fuck," Johnny smirked, "who knew so many people in Night City dream of banging a crossdressing femboy edgerunner?"

To be honest, I also found it a little shocking how much my dating prospects exploded since my being fired from Arasaka because of my treacherous boss forced me to ditch my straight-laced corporate persona and lean heavily into the sexually fetishized crossdressing thing I'd been doing as a weekend hobby. But validating Johnny's ego usually ends badly so I wasn't going to agree with HIM.

"Except you forget I exist within your head so I can hear your little internal monologue," Johnny snickered.

I ignored him as I marched forward, I noticed an expensively priced Rayfield Guinevere parked in the back. My cybernetic eyes flared bright and I saw data swimming across my augmented vision revealing the owner as one Elizabeth Wissenfurth. My client's civilian identity.

"Nice car," Silverhand chuckled, his digital ghost leaning casually against the double-parked hypercar, "can I assume it belongs to your -- and I use this term loosely, rock star?"

"Oh is Lizzy Wizzy not edgy enough for the king of edgy rocker boys?" I replied.

"Edgy? Please, she's a performance artist looking for an audience," Johnny mocked, "that's why she went full-cyborg."

"I'm pretty sure the fact she almost died back in '71 had something to do with that."

"Ohh I'm an edgy rocker princess, " Johnny mockingly sneered, "watch me eat a poisoned apple and commit suicide live on stage."

Lizzy Wizzy's background was well-known, practically common knowledge at this point, and since Silverhand's ghost lived on the busted biochip lodged in my head he knew whatever I remembered. Though we often have very different ideas ABOUT what I remembered.

"How much of an attention whore can one person be?" Johnny snorted.

"Should the guy who tried to blow up Arasaka Tower-- twice, really be lecturing anyone about being an attention seeker?" I sighed.

"Take away the full body chrome job she'd be as phony as the US Cracks."

"First Kerry Eurodyne, now you, what's with senior citizens banging on the new kids, gonna tell them to get off your lawn next?"

"They're running around talking heavily accented English. On stage, It was all 'Me-so-horny ... me-love-you-long-time' but when you were helping that blue chick with her stalker? ...what was her name?"

"Blue Moon," I replied.

"Whatever, she spoke perfect English, like she was a native."

"So she's not Japanese, or she grew up speaking it. She's selling an image of a feeling -- big deal. I hate to point this out to you, of all people, but the music business is just that -- a business and musicians are a commodity WITHIN that business."

"And your Lizzy Wizzy is a product placement ad for whoever built her cybernetic body, not some edgy ARTISTE."

It was a tribute to my growing relationship with the deceased rockerboy that I didn't need to hear his sarcasm to know what he was really hot about.

"She knows how to get people's attention which is a goddamn miracle in this jaded-ass city," I argued.

"Getting the attention of rubes is easy; but what's she DOING with that attention?"

"Not blowing up Arasaka Tower, which for you, is as bad as fucking Saburo Arasaka himself." I sighed, "come on and don't scratch her paint job I can't afford to replace it."

"One, lest you forget,...I'm not actually here -- digital engram remember, I'm in your head and Two.. buy her a new car if it's a problem."

"This is Watson," I sighed, "there's literally nobody within several hundred city blocks who can afford a Rayfield Supercar, ...and that includes me,"

"Who actually owns a Rayfield." Johnny pointed out with his customary smirk.

"I don't think a high performance car I found in an abandoned shipping container in the middle of The Badlands counts as buying," I replied dryly.

"Why not?" Johnny asked, "That's why you're currently driving MY car!"

The reason I had Johnny's car, gun and a bitching duplicate of his jacket was one of several complications I've had to deal with ever since I slotted a prototype biochip into my head and got a digital ghost of a part-time anti-corporate terrorist, part-time rock music legend -- full-time asshole as one of several unexpected side effects.

I walked through the lobby past the homeless guy and joytoy relaxing on a.battered overstuffed couch while unknowingly sharing a smoke with Johnny. He looked like he was sleeping. Then he waved to me and I waved back out of unconscious reflex causing the joytoy to blow me a kiss, why not? Unlike me, she couldn't see or hear the digital ghost so it looked like I was acknowledging her personally.

I went to the room I'd been invited to, opening the door to reveal a figure standing in the shadows like some old world film noir Femme Fatale.

"I thought you weren't going to show up." She complained.

"The No-Tell-Motel," I replied, "for an anonymous meeting place its really not that anonymous."

"It's quiet, and quiet works for me," she replied, "works for us both."

She stepped out of the shadows and I immediately recognized Lizzy Wizzy aka Night City's infamous chrome-plated Rock Goddess. I also noticed that her supposedly unfaithful input slash manager Liam Northam was tied to a chair.

"Shit, Lizzy?" He yelled, "what's going on here, why's this fruity-ass merc here?"

"Can I assume this is the fallout of your conversation about who I saw him meeting with and what they were talking about?"

"You could say that," Lizzy snickered.

"Hey Northam, you look ... a little tied up," I sneered, "let me guess.. finally found a problem your credits or bullshit couldn't get you out of?"

"Fuck off mercenary," Liam snarled, "Lizzy don't believe anything this freak show tells you,"

"Dude lesson one of stepping out on your input, don't be rude to the nightclub bar and wait staff cause some people tend to remember that shit -- as in people willing to accept a ten thousand eddie bribe for the directions to the VIP section."

"I was only meeting a client for you baby," Liam pleaded with a seemingly unmoved Lizzy, "Someone who wants to ride the Lizzy Wizzy Train,"

"V gave me the security video dumbass!" Lizzy sneered.

"Security video?"

"Yeah, Northam, lesson two of cheating is don't do it in a place with an easy to hack security system that allows real-time downloads and data transfer."

"So you saw us -- you saw I wasn't cheating."

"You met some Arasaka-bitch behind my back -- asshole."

"To get you signed up for Secure Your Soul, digital immortality Lizzy, it's the next step in the career of Lizzy Wizzy."

Lizzy Wizzy was already a renowned artist and successful celebrity by 2071. Her early career was basically a series of remixes of popular musical trends. Pop Tart, Punk Rock Princess, there's even an album of remixed torch songs and jazz and blues standards. Then she got the bright idea to commit suicide, live ... onstage, during "an erotic re-imagining of Snow White ..." according to the press release. She ate a neurotoxin-laced apple that caused immediate organ failure throughout her entire body.

The Trauma Team boys swooped in, gave her a full body cyber replacement and restarted her now mechanical heart. Restart-Reheart-Repeat, the song she started singing when she woke up after the operation, became a number one chart topping hit and the ring tone I used for one of the many friends who stopped talking to me when I lost my corporate job and became an outcast and Night City's latest up and coming edgerunner.

Lizzy Wizzy, Her body now almost entirely chrome head-to-toe; immediately became one of only two full body cyborgs in Night City with Adam Smasher, Arasaka's chrome-plated psychopath, being the other. Most people think Adam Smasher is an urban legend so rarely does he make any public appearances, so Lizzy was instantly both unique and iconic, two things artists often spend their entire lives and careers trying to achieve.

Cyber enhancement is as common as it comes these days. Swapping out organic eyes or ears to fix vision or hearing loss is as standard as going to the dentist. Some professionals with dangerous jobs or equally dangerous lifestyles go further. In my case, swapping meat puppet arms and hands for cybernetic ones, adding subdermal armor and implants that enhanced stamina, reaction time and endurance to make combat situations survivable. I even have a few goodies attached to my visual and cerebral cortex, that increased my onboard cyberdeck's memory and data processing speed or sped up my combat response time allowing me to make split second decisions, especially of the combat hacking variety, considerably faster and easier.

That said, I tried to preserve as much of my meat body as possible. Subdermal armor instead of bio- synthetic chrome, minor modifications to my central nervous system but foregoing the use of a Sandavista or Berserker system that would basically let me move around the entire world in bullet time or turn me into an unstoppable cyber-juggernaut.

Then there's Lizzy Wizzy, the only natural meat in her body was possibly the several grams of brain matter that she was born with and she'd likely swapped out a lot of THAT.

Rumor was her body was endlessly customizable not just with colour-changing hair or voice boxes specifically optimized for arena shows versus intimate club gigs, skins and clothes optimized for video/audio playback. The scandal sheets even claimed she had customized attachments specifically for sexual dalliances. I had no trouble believing that last one after spending time with Mommy Meredith.

Lizzy's legs were encased with thigh-high platform boots and a pair of cut-off jean shorts. They barely contained her chrome ass cheeks as she paced back and forth between Liam and myself like a predatory cat. Above the shorts she was wearing a tight studded tube top that held and uplifted a pair of conical tits that looked surprisingly real, whether they were chrome or synth-leather or a combination of the two, they looked like they'd been customized to bounce enticingly with every step she took. Her breasts even had nipples one could discern through her sexy top.

On her head she was sporting a cotton candy-colored pony tail swaying out behind her and dropping to just above her hips. Pony tail? But it had been shorter when we met last time in this very room. Clearly she'd customized her hair. I wondered if she had removable hair extensions or did it grow out or shrink to whatever length, colour or density she required. She looked incredibly hot!

She's made movies, music, live event rock concerts that double as conceptual art shows. By 2077 she was a legend. She'd been quiet the last few months. "Working on new material..." was the official story from her media company. The notoriously fickle attention span of Night City's great unwashed masses were focused on new acts like US Cracks the J-Pop Import band who were secretly as American as apple pie flavored kibble or veteran artists engaged in artistic reinvention like Kerry Eurodyne, but everyone was sure when Lizzy Wizzy finally reappeared it would be epic.

She'd come to me personally, skipping the numerous Fixers in the city whose discretion can occasionally be as negotiable and fickle as their finder's fees.

I normally avoid clients who avoid fixers. Practically every mercenary in town has a story about a private gig that went sideways leaving the edgerunners up to their eyeballs in the kind of toxic shit you'd have avoided if you knew the client neglected to share significant details.

Hell, I was a living breathing cautionary tale of what happens when you don't know who you're really working for or why.

That said I was surprised a bog standard peep job connected me with one of Arasaka's most secretive projects. One that was of profound personal interest to me AND the digital personality camped in my brain.

"You think that I wouldn't find out about your little Arasaka deal?" Lizzy sneered, "there was audio playback included with that video V got for me."

"Look," Liam whined, "it might sound odd but this was going to be fine."

"Oh Yeah," I commented dryly, "you just wanted to record Lizzy's digital ghost, let them edit her personality to your specifications like the Dolls who work at Clouds before they imprison her in Arasaka's digital prison."

I didn't bother trying to hide the sarcasm in my voice.

"Okay I'm not trying to turn her into a Doll, that's just being dramatic."

"What were you going to do to my engram once you copied me?" Lizzy asked.

"Nothing permanent!"

"Yeah he just wanted to edit out the parts of you he doesn't like, " I replied, "you know, like a song track."

"Nicely done!" Johnny sneered, Silverhand was a purebred anarchist. To quote an acquaintance, he'd burn down half the city just to prove a point and the other half just for shits and giggles.

Watching Northam self-righteously destroy himself was giving Johnny a noticeable and slightly distracting chubby.

"I just wanted to smooth out some of your less focus group friendly traits," he replied, "stuff that's just a little more aggressive and distant then I'd like,"

"What the Hell does that mean?" Lizzy snarled.

"He thinks you're going cyberpsycho." I explained.

"Would you please stop helping," Liam snapped, "Lizzy honey, why's he even here?"

"I thought you were just cheating on me," Lizzy sneered, "Cliche as fuck but no big deal. Hell, no one's ever gone broke doing a jilted lover tour on the talk show circuit,"

Lizzy turned around and faced her manager, "-But copying my mind and editing my personality? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"It's Secure Your Soul -- everyone is doing it and as far as editing personality traits goes what's the harm in sanding off some rough edges?"

"Wow, either you're a bullshit specialist or you're dangerously naive," I sneered, "Secure Your Soul is the public face of Soul Killer."

"That's a fairy tale that netrunners tell to explain why they fucked up easy gigs," Northam snorted.

"Soul Killer was designed by Altair Cunningham," I replied.

"Who?" Liam asked.

"Top-tier netrunner -- basically Rache Bartmoss with tits and ass but without the creeping sense of paranoia." I explained, "or Spider Murphy minus the childlike whimsy."

"She used to date Johnny Silverhand of Samurai," Lizzy gushed.

"You know your History -- She's why Johnny stormed Arasaka Tower," I replied, "Johnny was trying to rescue her the first time he invaded their headquarters and he was getting revenge for her death that last time."

"Alt Cunningham is fifty years dead, why does it matter?" Northam snorted.

It mattered because both The Voodoo Boys and Netwatch believe, quite rightly I might add, that Cunningham escaped the Arasaka's data fortresses and onto the network before Silverhand managed to blow them up.

It mattered because they thought she was still out there, a digital ghost haunting cyberspace beyond the Black Wall that separated the safe corporate-controlled internet from the vast untamed digital wilderness where lurked savage artificial intelligences and dangerous app-demons capable of frying the unwary.

It mattered because Cunningham's ghost, largely disconnected from the flesh and blood woman she was fifty years ago, was now my only hope to safely untangle my mind from Johnny's before the biochip that brought us together finished its sinister mission to rewrite my brain matter into a perfect receptacle for the personality of Johnny Silverhand.

Odd that the only thing of Alt Cunningham that's arguably left after all this time was strong emotions for Johnny. She occasionally acted like a pissed off ex girlfriend around Johnny Silverhand who famously had a lot of those.

"That's another urban legend," Liam was saying.

"What's not a legend is Mikoshi," I answered, "Arasaka advertises that theirs is the most secure database on the planet, everyone who's been digitized for Secure Your Soul, their engrams are stored in that database and Arasaka has absolute control of whatever is in there."

"How the Hell do you know?"

"Because, Dumbass," I sneered, "I used to WORK for them. I've seen the contracts. When you give them your engram Arasaka gets absolute control over it. For ninety percent of people that means less than nothing but you honestly think Arasaka won't comb through Lizzy's mind and memories?"

"Looking for what? Corporate secrets? She's a rock star for God's sake."

"Like for instance, if the scream sheets were right, anything about a certain horny corporate executive with a cyber modification fetish who reportedly gave Lizzy access to cutting edge cyberware to try and get in her pants."

"That's just a stupid rumor," Liam snapped.

Lizzy snickered, "No it isn't," she replied, "Total mod chaser, I've been objectified before, comes with the territory, but THIS GUY treated me like a mobile life- support system for my cyberware and the Maelstrom girls he fucks get it worse."

I snorted, "Anyway I recorded Liam's meet and greet and you know the rest of the sad story. "

I had my own digital ghosts to deal with and a whole city full of people with a seemingly vested interest in seeing me dead and the resources to try to make it happen. So I pretty much put the case out of my mind.

"-- At least until Lizzy Wizzy called me and asked me to come back to the No-Tell-Motel," I finished.

"I never noticed it before but he even says my name differently from you," Lizzy sneered at Northam, "With you it's with a hint of dread lately but with him it's awe and just the slightest bit of desire,"

Lizzy looked at my outfit with approval, "-and obviously respect."

In my defense I was sporting my own mercenary-flavoured version of the rockerboy look that Lizzy Wizzy favored. Ballistic synth-leather hot pants and leggings, armorweave half-shirt that showed off my midriff, (subdermal armor makes dressing slutty so much more practical) thigh-high combat boots and an ocuset that interfaced with my cyberdeck to shorten the upload time for my combat hacking and made targeting with a smart pistol piss-easy.

The biggest difference between us -- other than money, fame, and a distinct lack of people trying to kill HER for the malfunctioning prototype biochip in HER head, was the Samurai jacket, not Johnny's; that one crumbled to dust and threads fifty years ago. This armored duplicate, a gift from The Queen of the Afterlife and Johnny's ex Rogue Amedaries, had several distinct advantages over the one Johnny Silverhand famously wore back-in-the-day. It could take a bullet, actually an epic amount of bullets and even explosive damage if necessary.