PRIVATE Tatuagem | Closed

Jocelyn Tashiro

push it real good
Jocelyn Tashiro
Eddies
332
Character Bio


Jocelyn had worked the overnight shift at the all-day, all-night diner where she had her day job. Her feet were sore and she was tired, but at least she had a few rolls of eddies to show for her trouble. She had found that unbuttoning the top three buttons of her uniform blouse was a sure-fire way to get more tips in the evenings, when the salarymen and midlevel managers wrapped up their day but wanted to grab a bite before heading back to their megabuildings. Something about real (well, real-ish) food served with a smile and a hint of cleavage was preferable to a microwaved vending machine burrito or, God-forbid, a tube of soy paste.

Then in the mornings, it didn't matter how many buttons were done up, the people in the morning just wanted someone efficient with the carafes of coffee, which Joss was, thankfully. So she had extracted a decent amount for the time spent. Not enough -- not by a long shot -- for what she wanted, but... enough to worry. So she had tucked the money into her socks, curling around her ankles.

She stopped at a crosswalk, took a moment to check her phone. She had a few memes from her foster brother, an update on a cyberspace gig she had scheduled it for later in the afternoon. The only unexpected item was an automail from her own shared capsule apartment, announcing that the elevators were down for unexpected maintenance and wouldn't be up until after 1:00 PM.

That was a bummer. Jocelyn wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep, but young and spry as Jocelyn was, she was not hiking up 74 flights of stairs young and spry. She was tempted to turn back to the diner, but she suspected they wouldn't want her sitting there in her uniform. She looked around, noted the intersection, and a memory chimed with her. A tattoo and piercing parlor she had passed several times on the way to and from work. She took a left, headed down the street instead of crossing, and found the place. Nowear -- charming, she thought. It wasn't long before the young woman was pushing into the shop, pausing a moment to let her eyes adjust.

"Hello," she greeted the store's attendant -- proprietress, though she wasn't to know it. Joss stood back to look up at the sketches and designs for tattoos and piercings, in the manner of a student of art at a museum. She had piercings -- one through her septum, a few each on each ear -- but no tattoos. Not yet, anyway. "Are these all yours?" Joss asked, nodding at the displays.


 
Nowear was well into its fifth year of operation though it had taken some time to garner a reputation and clout among the other artist studios of the city. Queenie fashioned herself a naturalist artist, which had not been terribly popular when she'd first opened shop, but a certain fashion and nostalgia for old-world aesthetics had risen over the last two years.

Most people wanted the stark lines of the cybernet covering their skin. So she'd hired on another part time artist to cover that niche. Lately, though, interest in the intersection of technology and the living world had begun to show up in the form of combined designs. Nostalgia for those that had lived in a time or a place where they might actually see, touch, or smell a real flower was strong. Most of the people living in Night City had only ever seen flowers in holo-zines, and more recently on the skin of Nowear's proprietess.

"Yes," said Queenie, bright eyes casting an easy look to the wall of art, "the ones with the flower stamp on the lower corner are mine. I have two other artists in residence."

Her gaze then shifted from the art to the girl. Young, a waitress from the diner.

"I love the lemoncello pie Brida makes," she admitted with a smile, fingers lifting to curl at her lips in thought as she looked past the wardrobe for any sign of ink on her, "do you have any?"

She did not make clear if she was asking the girl if she had any pie or ink.
 


Jocelyn stood on her toes to be able to more closely examine the drawings. A native of Night City, born and bred, she could only ever remember seeing flowers in Valentino graffiti and tattoos, maybe the occasional piece of old clothing. Never in the wild. She had heard rumors that there were parts of North Oak where flowers -- real flowers, not the synthetic or holographic kind -- were cultivated for the benefits of the wealthy and well-connected in the city, but she had never had occasion to go to North Oak. She was not exactly one of their kind.

Some of the drawings were more angular in nature, lacking the floral imagery and the stamp of the others. She had seen designs like this on the occasional edgerunner at Lizzie's or other hangouts. She liked them; they seemed very cool. As a netrunner herself, the geometric patterns that echoed circuitry and cyberware had a certain comfort, but the natural sketches -- the delicately shaded petals on the flowers, the gently circling vines along stems, the diabolical thorns -- were appealing, too. Almost exotic, somehow.

Her eyes lingered on a drawing for a moment before @Queenie drew her attention back to her. "You and half of Night City. The Lemoncello sells out every time. You wouldn't believe how upset people can get when they miss it." She meandered closer to the proprietress so that they could speak at a more conversational level. "I don't have any on me, but next time she makes it I can put some aside for you. Your place is on my way home, it's no problem to drop it off."

Sliding down the counter a little further, taking in more of the art. "I feel like a bit of a fraud here," she confessed, a self-deprecating chuckle in the back of her throat. "I had a tattoo once. Nothing like this," Joss added, gesturing with a nod toward the designs behind Queenie. "Real prison tat shi -- er -- stuff. Not that I was in prison, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that that's where the guy learned. Got it lasered off last year. The, uh, association ended."

 
Amusement colored her cheeks and shifted her lips into a small little smirk thinking on the divine nature of the Lemoncello Pie and it's rarity within the establishment. It had happened to her, a low chance of nabbing the last piece, late ... very late one night after a particularly long surgery. Time spent in the machine wore on the body as much as the mind, and Queenie found sugar helped the recuperation process along rather well.

So it came to her as a surprise that a delivery service could be in order, and her dark brows arched high over her brow at the thought.

"You could do that?" she straightened on her stool, drawing pad in lap, and gathered her dumbfounded wits about her. Lemoncello on a whim. Her hands lifted, stylus gently cradled in one, and pressed together under her chin in a thankful gesture, "I would be..." her head shook as she struggled for the words that could so aptly describe- "much in your debt."

On a quiet eve in Night City, Lemoncello Pie made by a woman named Brida at a nondescript diner suddenly joined the economy of street credit.

Taking a moment of contained excitement for herself at the prospect of the potential surprise of pie in the future, Queenie watched the girl browse the front case of piercings and the further pieces of tattoo art on the wall behind her.

"Hmmm," she offered in thoughtful wonder, "tell you what. If you can make good on this pie delivery," the woman leaned forward and looked around conspiratorially, "consider a new small tattoo on the house. If you want one, anyway."
 


Jocelyn didn't know what possessed her to make the offer, but the delight the woman showed at the prospect made it all worth the while. "Don't go telling people, or they'd all expect Lemoncello Pie, and on wheels to boot," said Joss with a wry look over her at Queenie. "Two months ago we found out that um -- do you know that bakery over on Miller? DiMarco's -- we found out that they were coming in and buying whole pies and then turning around and selling them at a markup. Lemoncello was popular but you'd be surprised. There was a time when we had bananas. The real sh -- uh, stuff, remember that? Brida made amazing banana cream pie."

She closed her eyes, ran her tongue along her bottom lip. Joss could almost taste the bananas.

"Anyway one of the other girls happened by the bakery and saw them in the window. Twenty eddies for a slice of banana cream pie -- I mean, the cream was soymilk, but the bananas were real -- but twenty eddies? Crazy, right?"

She continued perusing the tattoos, her eyebrows shooting up at the woman's offer. "Wait, really? That's very generous. It's -- like, it's just pie. Even if it's really good pie." She turned toward the woman, a disbelieving half-smile on her lips. "It's a deal. She makes 'em on Monday. Bring you a whole pie." Jocelyn grinned, her head turning again to look at all the tattoos. "I'm -- not in a hurry to get one, but it's really tempting. I've never seen such detail in a tattoo. Have you been doing this long"


 
A whole pie.

One whole pie.

Una torta intera.

Queenie wasn't one for a lot of words, but not out of any disliking for those that were. This gal clearly had a lot to say and she was perfectly happy to listen, especially to stories involving pie even if there was dastardly piegate plots afoot.

"I am allergic to banana," she admitted with a pout and a shrug, "but I know a good pie when I see one." And all of Brida's pies looked amazing.

"If you bring me a whole pie," Queenie made a face of overwhelmed surprise, which looked similar to feeling overwhelmingly bloated, "you can have your pick. Any tattoo you want."
 


"That's -- that's really nice," Jocelyn said. It was very generous; she knew tattoos weren't cheap. That understanding was accompanied by a slight niggle at the back of her mind that she didn't recognize right away. Like a clue in a mystery holo that you didn't pick up on until the detective unraveled the plot at the end. The young woman couldn't help but admire Queenie's tattoos, every one that she could see completely unique. She didn't know if they were real flowers or not; the woman was obviously a creative. What was to say she didn't make up her own blossoms and blooms?

"I'm Joss, by the way. Since we're going to be, uh, business associates of sorts."

Introduction out of the way, the edgerunner said: "Did you make those yourself? I mean, did you draw them all? I would guess you probably couldn't tattoo all of them on yourself. But what do I know? My tattoo was done with a hot nail and ink from broken pens." This last bit was said something in a slightly apologetic tone, as if admitting her sordid tattoo history was a professional discourtesy in the establishment of one who clearly treated it like an artform.


 
Perhaps she had gotten so used to people knowing her name that introducing herself hadn't occurred. The truth of the matter was that most clients, be they those undergoing ink, skin, or cybernetic graphing, had reason to remain anonymous. Queenie didn't offer a name unless given one, and she found that sort of protocol helped put people at ease when they clearly had quite enough to worry about.

So when Jocelyn, or Joss as she called herself, gave a name it drew a bright smile from the woman, "Queenie," she replied and glanced down to her own ink.

"Yes, most of them. A few are designs by other artists - the oldest ones are from home." Italy. Europe. A hotbed of creative ink masters. How she missed it, the nostalgia so strong it could seize the lungs.

"We do not use nails and pen ink here," she offered gently with a soft chuckle, "my clients would not come back if we did."

And repeat business kept them afloat when new clients were down in numbers.

"And I can pay for pie if ink does not interest you. Don't want you getting in trouble on account of my sweet tooth."
 


It was an unusual name, to be sure, but beautiful too. "Queenie," Joss echoed, her lips twitching up at the edges into a faint smile. "That's a pretty name."

The offer of eddies rather than a tattoo struck Jocelyn, and she had to thoughtfully consider it. She was saving up for a new cyberdeck; the one she had was second-hand (read: stolen) and it tended to chug if she tried to do more than one thing at once -- it had almost scorched her during the kerfuffle at Lizzie's Bar from working too hard. But street credit was almost as important as chrome.

You had to look the part, after all. A badass tattoo would give her a bit more cache than she already had. Might get her some better gigs.

"Ink's good," said Joss, tearing her gaze away from the art. "Especially since I'll be in the hands of a real pro." She gave a genuine, toothy grin at the idea of it. "Don't worry about trouble. I fixed the Navotainment system in Brida's car gratis -- said it hadn't been working since the '60s -- so she probably won't begrudge me." Joss cleared her throat. "Do you design piercing jewelry, too?" She nodded toward the display by the counter. "Where did you learn to do all this?"


 
So she was a bit tech-savvy then. It was amazing what the streets grew in young people around here - they were adaptive and resilient like nothing else. Setting aside her tablet and stylus, she slid from her stool and moved to lean on the piercing case.

"I have designed some," she nodded, "but mostly those are done by one of my employees. I prefer to draw," she tugged her tablet over and turned it for Joss to see the current tree design she was working on for a client.

"Always liked to draw. Hm, it was not a very appreciated talent where I worked before. When I first came to Night City, I stayed with a friend who got me a job at another tattoo shop - Inkblot. I learned there with Dominic. His parlor was burned down two years ago during a gang war."
 


Joss's eyes lingered on the jewelry for a moment until Queenie pulled her tablet over to show her the tree she was currently working on. "That's stunning," Jocelyn said, studying the picture, taking in the design and the detail. "There's something quite -- "A pause as she struggled to find the right word before settling on one that wasn't quite right. " -- quite scary about it -- don't you think?" Nature, untamed and sprawling, was a foreign idea to the girl, who had never left Night City. To her trees and flowers were linked subconsciously to the dangerous diseases that had led Night City to eradicate wildlife over the years, bits and pieces of things she could remember snippets of from her school years.

"Beautiful, too," Joss added truthfully, glancing at Queenie through her eyelashes briefly. The last thing she wanted to do was offend.

She felt a pang at the mention of the gang war; she had been involved with 6th Street for a spell, before her conscience caught up to her. One too many regular people threatened, one too many burned homes and stores had made her sour on the concept of belonging that the orphaned foster-house reject had longed for. It came at too high a price for her tastes. Joss wasn't sure that 6th Street had been involved in the burning of Inkblot, but it might as well have been. Violence begat violence, vengeance begat vengeance, and a lust for control and power and eddies was the root of it all.

"That's a shame," Joss finally said, her voice quiet. "But... seems like you landed on your feet? This is a great place you've got here." She wanted to ask after Dominic -- somehow invested in the fate of a stranger through this compelling artiste of a woman -- but it felt too personal, too soon. Her phone buzzed and after fishing the chipped screen out of her pocket, she glanced at the notification. From a fixer, requesting an update. She tucked her phone back away and turned back to Queenie. "Sorry -- should get out of your hair. Um, that pie -- bring it over Monday? Around this time?"


 
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