Characters / Cyberpunk: Edgerunners – Main Characters

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In the City of Dreams, every life is on its own path, and when there are more than six million of them in the same place, those paths tend to cross. What happens when they do can vary; from silently passing each other by like AVs in the night, to clashing in a city-shaking catastrophe, to linking and running parallel, straight into the sunset. And some paths... well, some paths just end completely, be that in a bang at the business end of someone's iron or a silent whimper in a cold hospital bed. But one thing is always constant: you can't avoid it, so it's up to you what to do with it. Will you clash, or will you run in parallel? Or will you end your own path to ensure another keeps going to its destination?

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a story about a boy's path crossing with a girl's. The boy and girl in question are our central protagonists, David Martinez and Lucyna "Lucy" Kushinada.

David is a student of Arasaka Academy who is raised by a single mother and tormented by classist bullies. After he is hit with a personal tragedy, he finds and installs a Sandevistan that was in his home in Santo Domingo. This leads him to run into Lucy, a young netrunner who introduces him to the world of edgerunning and dreams of going to the moon. As the two start to find meaning in their lives in each other, they also find themselves having to carve their paths through the violence and depravity of Night City to stay together.

David Martinez

David Martinez

"Show 'em who you are. What you're made of. You're special, remember?"

Voiced by: KENN (Japanese), Zach Aguilar (English), José Ángel Torres (Latin American Spanish), Alexis Tomassian (French)

A young boy from Santo Domingo who becomes an edgerunner— a mercenary— after a personal tragedy.

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• Achilles' Heel: The cyber-skeleton he uses in the last two episodes is monstrously strong, but so heavy that it needs built-in antigravity modules to support its own weight. Once Adam Smasher gets fed up with him, he immediately rips off the modules, leaving David a dismembered torso that can only laugh in Smasher's face as he lines up the killshot.
• Act of True Love: After he rescues Lucy, he buys her and Falco time to escape Arasaka Tower by provoking Adam Smasher into a Hopeless Boss Fight. David knows full well how outmatched he is against Smasher, but he does so to give Lucy the chance to live as she is the only thing he has left in his life.
• Affectionate Nickname: His mom occasionally refers to him as mijo in the English dub.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Harassed and bullied by his peers at school due to being from the Santo Domingo district and an impoverished background.
• Always Save the Girl: Even after straining his relationship to the point of considering a breakup, it's clear that he still loves Lucy. So much so that he ends up facing off against the full might of Arasaka and Militech combined when he finds out she was abducted. The ensuing damage he unleashes drives the former to unleash Adam Smasher to deal with him... and even then he still succeeds in rescuing Lucy from their grasp.
• Arm Cannon: David expresses the desire to outfit himself with the same style of weaponized prosthetic arm that Maine has, even calling dibs on Maine's arms if he zeroes out. After the Time Skip, David outfits himself with the same style of Projectile Launch System as Maine, despite it being finicky and Doc noting there are better options available.
• Ax-Crazy: Subverted. Even once he fully succumbs to cyberpsychosis, he retains his sense of morality; the issue is that he becomes a bit of a megalomaniac with a bad case of Suicidal Overconfidence.
• The Berserker: He becomes this once he installs the cyberskeleton. To say David is pissed at Faraday for kidnapping Lucy would be a gross understatement and this discovery, combined with his worsening cyberpsychosis, motivates him to annihilate those who stand in his crew's way.
• The Big Damn Kiss: After he promises to take Lucy to the moon and assures her he wouldn't die on her, they share a long, passionate kiss. With the camera showing a rocket blasting off in the background and them transporting themselves to the moon, this beautiful scene cements his and Lucy's status as the series' Official Couple.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Adam Smasher does him in with his Arm Cannon, David smiling all the while before his head is turned into a mix of salsa and chrome bits.
• Break the Haughty: David was so reliant on his Sandevistan in combat and confident in its capabilities, he never once considered the possibility that someone else would have the same implant installed, and use it against him in combat. Suffice to say, Adam Smasher is very quick to give the young man a brutal reality check.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: It's mentioned that David has top grades in the Academy. However, he's held back by his classmates' bullying and his own lack of motivation to become an Arasaka employee.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: His relationship with Lucy is a gender-inverted example. David is an empathetic character, and one who goes out of his way to help others. He falls hard for Lucy who has a Sugar-and-Ice Personality largely fueled by her Dark and Troubled Past.
• Character Catchphrase: "Like I give a shit," in response to anyone who either tries to talk up their game or talks down to him in any way. They're also his last words to Adam Smasher, rejecting the offer to become a Construct for Arasaka, just before Smasher kills him.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Is a fan of Jimmy Kurosaki's underground cyberpsycho XBD's.
• Color Motif: Green is this for him, representing his initial inexperience in mercenary work and him learning the ropes as an edgerunner. It also reflects how his addiction to cybernetics has poisoned his mind and how it ultimately leads him to his death.
• Combat Parkour: As he grows more comfortable with the Sandevistan, David starts adding some acrobatics into his movements, such as when he grabs onto a shipping container to flip himself through the air and get into point-blank range to shoot Pilar's murderer. After the timeskip, he flips over a member of the Maelstrom trying to cave his head in with a hammer to aim his Arm Cannon at the Maelstrom mook's head.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Or rather Prequel Main Character, to V. V is an experienced Legacy Seeker who befriends people from multiple factions in the process, while David starts out as an aimless rookie who tags along with Maine's crew. David's arc has him slowly succumbing to Cyberpsychosis, something V is seemingly immune to; they instead struggle with their impending death caused by the Relic. Finally, David is ultimately a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond who never stood a chance against Adam Smasher, while V shows World's Best Warrior potential by defeating Smasher.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He grows to be heavily reliant on his Sandevistan implant to turn any potentially difficult situation into a Curb-Stomp Battle. Not only is it a more literal case as his overuse ends up accelerating his cyberpsychosis, it also leaves him completely flat-footed when fighting Adam Smasher, who also has a Sandevistan and is able to keep up with him just fine. This results in him being quickly and easily killed by the more experienced opponent.
  • Same thing with the cyber-skeleton he uses. Monstrously strong, but also a prime example of Awesome, but Impractical against an experienced opponent due to being too bulky to move without anti-grav modules. All Adam Smasher had to do was tear them off and the entire thing was reduced to useless scrap against his less flashy, but far more efficient mods.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Over the course of the series, his over-reliance on cybernetics pushes his natural resistances to their limits and he ends up succumbing to Cyberpsychosis by the finale.
• Cyborg: He starts the series with the standard neural interface as well as ocular implants that most people have. He's closer to full body conversion by the mid-point of the show: he has Cyber Eyes, the Sandevistan (Spine), Maine's Cyberarms, jump-boosting Cyber Legs, a Ballistic Torso and muscle enhancements. More metal than machine even before the cyberskeleton.
• Deadly Nosebleed: When David overuses the Sandevistan, he starts bleeding from his nose as a sign of the toll it's taking on him. By the time he starts using the cyberskeleton, it's escalated to the point of him vomiting blood.
• Deadly Upgrade: The cyberskeleton, which sends his cyberpsychosis into overdrive.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the typical shonen anime protagonist. He has all the tributes of one; short tempered, empathetic, has a special ability, and has ridiculous determination. In any other anime, we'd see him come out on top. However, in the world of Cyberpunk, that's not really possible. Sure, he does manage to become a famed Edgerunner, but it's stated by Lucy that his special ability is just a higher tolerance to cyberware and that doesn't really make him special and he has weaknesses. Not only that but his stubbornness prevents him from listening when Lucy tries to talk him into downgrading for his own safety and his determination to save Lucy causes him to stand up to Adam Smasher, an action of which is considered committing suicide, thinking that with the cyberskeleton he is as special as him. Smasher even mocks him for it.
• Defiant to the End: Blows off Adam Smasher in his last words at the offer of being turned into an Arasaka construct, smiling all the while before Smasher blows his brains out.
• Delinquent Hair: His undercut hair makes him stand out more as a punk compared to his more "proper" classmates.
• Determined Defeatist: Knows he has no chance against Adam Smasher by the time they duke it out for real, yet still commits to it, because it doesn't matter if he beats him or not as David had already won by getting Lucy to safety and helping fulfill her dream, as well as becoming a Night City legend in the process. By the time Adam Smasher is done with him, even he recognizes murdering him in cold blood accomplishes nothing for himself as David is self-satisfied, having lived his life to the fullest and there's nothing Smasher can do to break his moment of glory.
• Disappeared Dad: His father is not present and it is never mentioned what exactly happened to him.
• Does Not Like Spam: Dislikes carbonated beverages. Ironically, the drink order that was named for him in Afterlife following his death uses NiCola as an ingredient.
• Doomed by Canon: Has a drink in Afterlife named after him by the events of the game, a feat only possible once someone affirms themselves a Night City legend in a blaze of glory, something further confirmed in the 1.6 Update as he's mentioned in passing as 'having kicked it' a year prior to the game during the exclusive quest referencing the events of the anime. It reached to the logical conclusion in 2.0/Phantom Liberty update, which David's niche ended up located in a North Oak Columbarium along with his other deceased allies.
• Drives Like Crazy: While he and Lucy are being chased by the Tyger Claws, David makes the snap decision to buckle up and swerve through oncoming traffic to get away. He makes constant use of his Sandevistan to barely avoid head-on collisions as he drives against the flow of traffic. The car is precariously balancing on two wheels at multiple points and he repeatedly scrapes against other cars and the highway barriers. Justified by how David never learned to drive and is winging it the whole time with the aid of the car's autopilot.
• Dying as Yourself: Lucy's True Love's Kiss manages to pull him back from the throes of cyberpsychosis long enough for him to help her escape with Falco and provoke Adam Smasher into a Hopeless Boss Fight to buy them time. He uses his final moments to reject Smasher's offer to become a construct and goes out smiling, knowing he kept his loved one safe.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: David lays waste to most of Arasaka and Militech's forces to rescue Lucy from Faraday. After he helps her and Falco escape, he mocks Adam Smasher and provokes him into ignoring Falco's car while engaging in a Hopeless Boss Fight. Finally, just as he's about to die, he refuses Smasher's offer to have the Soulkiller used on him and embraces his fate knowing Lucy is safe.
• Endearingly Dorky: Rebecca calls David "fucking adorable" when he goes googly-eyed and giggles with delight after she tips him a 500 eddies for delivering something to Pilar on Maine's behalf.
• Everyone Can See It: When David asks Maine why he thinks he has feelings for Lucy, Maine's response is a blunt, "We all got eyes." It's implied he has Lucy train David because he recognizes her feelings for him as well and is acting as a Shipper on Deck for the pair.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Pride. David believes that his high tolerance for cyberware makes him special in the grand scheme of Night City, a want he was always denied as a kid growing up in the poverty of a Santo Domingo Megabuilding. Unfortunately after a Time Skip, he ends up taking on too much cyberware even for his high tolerance and it pushes him further and further towards cyberpsychosis.
  • He also lacks any real dreams of his own. He has nothing he truly wants out of life, he just follows the desires of those he gets close to. Because of this, he ends up on a downward spiral of augmentation, attempting to emulate Maine after his death. Even at the end, the closest thing he comes to as far as life goals goes is to help Lucy achieve her dream of going to the moon. Ironically, in his final moments, he did find his dream, being with Lucy.
  • In a sense, his empathy. Some reviewers have noted that his empathetic nature drives him to follow others dreams because he wants to see them happy. However, as one reviewer puts it; In his attempt to make others happy, he made no one happy.
• First Kiss: He receives one from Lucy after he promises to take her to the moon. After she is assured he wouldn't die on her, they soon share a longer passionate kiss that seals the deal on them being the series' Official Couple.
• Fragile Speedster: What he starts out as with his Sandevistan. He can spam it to the point of Speed Blitz and abusing the resulting Super-Reflexes to run rings around his opponents before they can hit him, but his lack of chrome and slimmer build means he can't afford to take a hit, and he tends to favor lighter (and consequently less powerful) firearms due to said physical weakness. After the Time Skip, he graduates to Lightning Bruiser thanks to his later implants giving him more destructive options plus increased strength and defense with no loss in speed.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He would go from a nobody to being infamous enough that a Corpo V in 2077 would mention that he's a subject of interest for Arasaka Counterintel.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Post-timeskip the overwhelming majority of his body has been chromed in emulation of Maine, giving him a bulky physique covered in black articulation joints and segments. Doc comments that it's hard to spot what few organic parts David has left, and worries that even with his high tolerance he's overdoing it. Granted, it's still not a true Fullborg conversion (which would involve turning himself into a Biopod) but it's as close as it gets.
• Gag Penis: He has a noticeable bulge in his underpants when having his chrome examined by Doc is Episode 7, implying that he bought a Mr. Stud.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: David initially refuses to use a gun on jobs and can't even bring himself to pull the trigger on a target at a shooting range due to remembering his mom's death and seizing up. It isn't until a cyberpsycho attacks Lucy that David overcomes his hesitation and shoots to kill, even if Maine is technically the one who lands the killing blow.
• Geek Physiques: David is smart enough to get into Arasaka Academy and maintain high grades. Lucy notes that David doesn't really have the physique of an edgerunner and takes him out jogging to build up his stamina. Following the Time Skip, David is much bulkier as a result of his experiences and steadily increasing cybernetic enhancements.
• Good Counterpart: To Adam Smasher by the end of the series, as David himself is nearly a full-borg much like Smasher is while in the Cyberskeleton, but has far more selfless motivations than Adam Smasher's self-serving power trip. Their resistance to Cybernetics also come from opposite sides in that David's tolerance comes from his mental and emotional stability due to a positive upbringing while Smasher's resistance comes from natural psychopathy borne from a violent background. In fact, had things not ended up the way they did, it could have been possible for David to be his Redeeming Replacement in the setting if he'd kept on fulfilling his mother's dream and climbed the Arasaka ladder to succeed the sociopathic borg.
• Go Out with a Smile: His last moments before Adam Smasher reduces his head to bits of chrome is satisfaction in knowing that Lucy was able to escape and finally be free from Arasaka’s clutches.
• The Hero Dies: David, The Hero of the story, dies fighting Adam Smasher to ensure Lucy's safety.
• Heroic RRoD: Even with his high tolerance for cybernetics, his addiction to installing implants begins to exceed his tolerance limit after the Time Skip. This is exacerbated once he installs the cyberskeleton, as the insane mental loads from his cybernetics, combined with the lingering trauma of his mother's and Maine's deaths and Lucy's abduction, drive him into episodes of hallucinating, maniacal laughing, and coughing up blood.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Goes down swinging against Adam Smasher in order to buy time for Lucy and Falco to escape.
• Iconic Item: His yellow EMT jacket, which belonged to his mother Gloria before her death. It's an unlockable item in a 2077 side-mission where V tries to investigate David.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: It's made clear early on that David was a very intelligent student and probably could've gone somewhere in the academy if his mother hadn't died, forcing him to get the Sandevistan implant out of desperation.
• I Die Free: David outright rejects Smasher's offer to become a construct and accepts his fate knowing he kept Lucy safe. Given that engrams don't legally have rights, his decision ensured he wouldn't become Arasaka property.
• Informed Ability: David Martinez was a top scoring student in Arasaka Academy, implying he is pretty intelligent and talented individual. However, after starting his career as a cyberpunk, he didn't show any ourstanding skills in planning, wits or technical knowledge, solving most difficult situations with a use of a simple, brutal force.
• Irony: David hates fizzy drinks of all kinds. The drink that's named after him posthumously is 50% cola, aka a fizzy drink. David really has no luck. The other 50% is vodka for the record.
• It Gets Easier: At first, David is so reluctant to kill that Maine has to force him to carry a gun. After the Time Skip, he admits to Lucy that he's killed so many thugs that he's lost count and grown completely numb to it. It takes killing an innocent woman in a fit of cyberpsychosis to finally shake him.
• It's Personal: Faraday kidnapping Lucy as well as his plans to bring her back to Arasaka strike a nerve for David. So much so that he goes on an all-out rampage against Arasaka, Militech, and MaxTac to rescue Lucy, and he later screams in rage when Trauma Team tries to help Faraday escape.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Sacrifices himself at the hands of Adam Smasher to ensure Lucy not only survives her capture by Arasaka, but fulfills her dream of escaping Earth and living on the Moon far away from her troubled past.
• Laughing Mad: David does this after he destroys a convoy of Arasaka vehicles, largely as a result of the cyberskeleton exacerbating his cyberpsychosis.
• The Leader: He takes up a leadership position for the crew after Maines death, though Kiwi doesn't like to take orders from him.
• Leitmotif: His relationship with Lucy is heavily associated with "I Really Want to Stay at Your House".
• Likes Older Women: David is 17 years old at the start of the series and turns 18 during the Time Skip. He falls in love with Lucy, a woman who is 2-3 years older than him.
• The Lost Lenore: Becomes this to Lucy after giving his life to save her.
• Love at First Sight: He's completely smitten by Lucy the second he catches a glimpse of her in the first episode.
• Man in the Machine: Once he installs himself into the Cyberskeleton, the only recognisably human parts of him remaining are his head and torso. While it's enormously powerful, he's only clinging on to his sanity by a thread through the use of industrial quantities of immunosuppressants, and once they run out he would have been completely lost to Cyberpsychosis were it not for Lucy kissing him. And once Adam Smasher disables the Skeleton's antigravity generators, the whole thing collapses, crushing David's spine under its weight.
• Mr. Fanservice: His shower scene in episode 4 shows him exercising under the spray, going as far as showing his ass from a nice angle while he's doing squats. Pure eye candy.
• Mundane Utility: He uses his Sandevistan implant, a military-grade piece of cyberware that grants the user Super-Speed, to sneak Rebecca past a Bouncer at the Afterlife bar after she gets stopped at the entrance for looking too young.
• My God, What Have I Done?: David is horrified after he mistakenly murders an innocent woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time while hallucinating due to cyberpsychosis. His guilt is only compounded by how she sees the similarities between her and his own mother.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: His final thoughts as he's being beaten to death by Adam Smasher are of the time he spent with Lucy and the rest of his crew, good and bad.
• Nervous Tics: David taps his foot whenever he's nervous or stressed.
• Nice Guy: He cares deeply about those close to him, including his mother and later his crew. Whether its getting bootleg software to help his mother save money or saving people within his crew when they are endangered, he goes out of his way to help people with their troubles. Lucy falls for him for this very reason, stating that he's the type of person who'd go into a fire to rescue someone—anyone—even when he knows he's going to get burned.
• No One Gets Left Behind: David adopts this attitude in Episode 6 when Dorio and Maine are left behind to face Trauma Team as well as the NCPD. Lucy tries to get him to drop it but it doesn't take. In the end, he's unable to save either of them.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: His physiology gives him greater tolerance to implants than the average person, letting him use a military grade implant with minimal side effects. He believes this makes him one in a million, and he indeed does gain reputation as an edgerunner and Arasaka's interest in his heightened tolerance. However, he isn't unique, he was just one of multiple prospects on Arasaka's list. And even his high tolerance is just that: tolerance. Eventually, his heavy augmenting catches up with him just like it did with Maine. And when he squares up with Adam Smasher, an ACTUAL one in a million, Adam beats David without breaking a sweat and tears the cyberskeleton to shreds, all while mocking him for thinking he was "special". The only consolation David gets aside from getting Lucy away alive is that Smasher admits their fight was "fun", which is more than what most "meat" can get the borg to admit to, and is impressed enough to offer David a chance to survive out of some twisted respect.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Although he's a kid from the Santo Domingo district, neither the English dub nor either or the Spanish dubs, Latin American and European, gave him a Latino accent even though his mother has one. In the Latin American Spanish one, he even speaks with a very thick Mexico City accent instead in order to accentuate his rough upbringing.
• Official Couple: He and Lucy become this, and their relationship forms the emotional core of the series' plot.
• One Degree of Separation: Ironically enough, a Corpo V very narrowly avoided involvement with David back when they worked with Arasaka Counter-Intel, noting that their boss at the time was keeping a close eye on Martinez, but V was never a part of the CI group that got involved with David's crew.
• One True Love: As the series progresses, it becomes clear that he and Lucy are soulmates who have searched for meaning in their lives—and found it in each other. While David is initially upset with Lucy for her Manic Pixie Dream Girl act, he never resents her and joins Maine's crew partially to get close to her. It soon becomes clear how far both are willing to protect one another, and David's willingness to help others wins over Lucy's heart. Once they become an Official Couple, Lucy trusts David to the point of revealing her traumatic childhood at Arasaka as well as her deep-dive neural port, and both come to value the other's life over their own. While their relationship does become strained from David's slippage to cyberpsychosis and Lucy's unwillingness to share the truth of Arasaka's plans for David, both David and Lucy remain committed to one another when push comes to shove. Their love is so strong, Lucy's True Love's Kiss helps David recover from his cyberpsychosis... which sadly ends with David sacrificing himself to help Lucy escape Arasaka Tower.
• Opposites Attract: He starts the series as a kind-hearted Arasaka Academy student raised by a single mother who works overtime to pay for his tuition. Lucy starts as a brooding and somewhat cynical edgerunner who ran away from Arasaka after being exploited as a child. The two become an Official Couple and the actions they take to stay together directly affect the series' plot.
• Pre-Mortem Catchphrase: Just before he dies, Adam Smasher offered to make David into a construct for Arasaka. David blows the offer off with his usual line, "like I give a shit."
• The Power of Love: According to Mike Pondsmith, the primary reason David has such a higher-than-average tolerance towards cybernetics is Gloria: who, by Night City standards, provided him with a loving upbringing shielded from the inescapable poverty and constant danger that leaves most of its citizenry deeply unstable. And even after her death, Maine's crew provided him the solid support network needed to not be consumed by the trauma and the stress of his new criminal lifestyle. It’s only after he starts pushing the latter away does his tolerance for augmentation rapidly begin to deteriorate.
• Red Baron: People start calling him "The Sandevistan from Santo" once David starts gaining notoriety as an edgerunner
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: He goes on one against Faraday due to his betrayal and capture of Lucy. With the Cyberskeleton, David literally carves a path straight to Arasaka Tower where Faraday is attempting to hide.
• Sanity Slippage: David was already pushing his tolerance for cybernetics to the limit, but he truly enters the downward spiral in Episode 8 after he kills an Arasaka lab assistant while hallucinating. His descent to cyberpsychosis goes from bad to worse when he attacks his Ripperdoc in a break and contemplates breaking up with Lucy after she tries to pressure him to downgrading.
• Secret Relationship: Post-timeskip he keeps the fact that he and Lucy are living together in secret from the other members of the team, frequently asking Kiwi how Lucy's doing only to go home and make love to her.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Once he meets Lucy, it becomes crystal clear that no one else remotely interests him romantically. Maine is aware of this and as a Shipper on Deck he has David train with Lucy.
• Sleek High Rise Apartment: After the Time Skip, he and Lucy live together in one of these. It's heavily implied that they were the previous tenants for the exact apartment V earns in the game if they achieve the "The Sun" or "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" endings.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Downplayed. David's high cyberware tolerance earns him some well-deserved fame in Night City, but it's still just tolerance and not complete immunity like he seems to think he has. Upon meeting Adam Smasher, the guy who's actually immune and can afford much greater augmentation, David arrogantly scoffs at the brute and calls himself his equal. Smasher wastes no time putting the punk back in his place without so much as a scratch.
  Smasher: Could say I'm special.
  David: Well, so the fuck am I!
  Smasher: That a joke?
• Smarter Than You Look: His punkish looks belie the fact that he was a straight-A student back at Arasaka Academy.
• So Last Season: A tragic case. His Sandevistan is useless in the final fight, because Adam Smasher has one too - and he calls it a "rudimentary implant", meaning the device David relies on so much is basic equipment for the major players in Night City.
• Speed Blitz: His Sandevistan lets him outrun his opponents and hit them faster than they can react unless they're packing similar cyberware.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: He makes one of the biggest mistakes (and breaks the most cardinal of rules) in Night City by actively squaring up with Adam Smasher in the final episode, partially due to lack of awareness prior and partially due to being deep in his own Sanity Slippage. However, once he actually starts fighting Smasher, David quickly realizes he's so out of his depth that he opts to just run as fast and far as he can with Lucy. When that doesn't work, he chooses to sacrifice himself so that Lucy can escape with her life.
• Super-Speed: His Sandevistan implant grants him this, and it's his primary ability.
• Support Your Parents: David joined Arasaka Academy at request from his mother to become an influentional man in the Night City. Unfortunately, that didn't end well.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The cyberpunk version of this with Lucy. Solos are treated like warriors, while netrunners are treated like mages.
• Terms of Endangerment: Directs the word "choom" (the Future Slang equivalent of "friend" or "buddy") towards his enemies at times.
• Their First Time: He loses his virginity to Lucy not long after they become an Official Couple, something Maine quickly determines with just a glance.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: David does this at the end of Episode 6, as he's still processing the traumatic events that ended in Maine's and Dorio's deaths.
• Took a Level in Badass: Halfway through the show, he amps up his cybernetic implants to the extreme, going from a scrawny teen to a musclebound hulk. At the same time, he ends up taking the leadership position in the team due to Maine's death.
• Tragic Hero: David is the protagonist of a Tragedy and the choices he makes ultimately result in his death.
• Tragic Keepsake: His signature yellow jacket was an EMT coat that belonged to his late mother. In Cyberpunk 2077, V can discover David's yellow jacket after completing a side quest added in the 1.6 update.
  • He also takes Maine's cybernetic arm after his death, true to what they had discussed.
• Tragic Mistake: His unwillingness to listen to "Doc" and Lucy in Episode 8 marks a point of no return for David, as his desire for improved cybernetics starts overtaking the relationships with the people closest to him. This, combined with Faraday using Lucy's voice to trick him into installing the cyberskeleton, ensured he would begin to succumb to cyberpsychosis.
• Unknown Rival: To Adam Smasher in the finale; David is having a massive Sanity Slippage and is Drunk with Power due to his Pride (as well as his need to protect the people he cares about) getting to him, overloading his tolerance to cyberware in the process, and thinks he's the hottest shit on the block in the process—but to Adam Smasher, he simply scoffs at pecking higher than he should and doesn't even acknowledge him as a person the entire time they are fighting, in fact, he didn't even see doing the job as thrilling for himself because he was essentially taking out a kid on their training wheels. Even afterwards, when David is about to die as a result of his Heroic Sacrifice, Adam Smasher's Villain Respect only extends to equating David to a fun distraction than a serious fight he was having.
• Unskilled, but Strong: David is gifted with an extremely high tolerance towards cybernetics, which grants him ease of usage with some high-grade implants that would drive most people mad, however, he has almost no skill towards using most of them aside from his first (and most useful) in the Sandevistan, and even then he tends to rely more on his ability to spam it repeatedly than careful planned activations. Even after the Time Skip, where he is substantially more comfortable with his implants, he's still not quite as capable as he can be, especially as he starts going over his body's insane tolerance limit rather than optimize his chrome to benefit him. Exaggerated when he dons the Cyberskeleton and becomes a One-Man Army so powerful that nothing Militech or MaxTac can do to compete with him, but he cannot control it and is on death's door before long... then he finally meets someone who's Strong and Skilled in Adam Smasher who does him in rather quickly.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: The fact that he had a very fortunate upbringing by Night City standards with a loving parent who protected him from the worst of the city meant that he had relatively high amounts of mental fortitude and emotional stability, allowing him to withstand cybernetics more than the average gonk.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: After the Time Skip, David forgoes wearing a shirt altogether, which shows off his incredibly toned body and his many, many implants he's put into his body since taking charge of Maine's gang.
• The Worf Effect: When equipped with the Cyberskeleton, David is a veritable One-Man Army carving his way through MaxTac, Militech and Arasaka soldiers with ease. Against Adam Smasher however, David is nothing but a mere nuisance to the Boogeyman of Night City and is killed with little difficulty, showcasing precisely why Adam Smasher was on the top of Night City’s pecking order until V came along.
• Worth It: After he gets his Sandevistan cyberware installed instead of selling it to pay for rent, the first thing he does is beat the shit out of Katsuo, his bully of a classmate who coldly mocked his mother's death over the phone the previous day. This, naturally, gets him expelled from Arasaka Academy, leaving him penniless and screwed out of an education. David, while initially depressed, has no regrets over it.
• Your Head Asplode: This is the aftermath of how Adam Smasher ends up killing him.

Lucy Kushinada

Lucyna "Lucy" Kushinada

"Got this feeling. Think you and I'd make a pretty good team."

Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Emi Lo (English), María José Moreno (Latin American Spanish), Dorothée Pousséo (French)

A young Netrunner who runs with Maine's crew, with dreams of leaving Night City and going to the moon.

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• Action Girl: Downplayed. While Lucy can hold her own rather well in a fight with her Monowire, it is not her realm of expertise to be facing opponents head-on like Dorio or Rebecca, and despite being nimble on her feet, she is not quick-handed as the others either as she struggled to pull out her handgun to save David from a Tyger Claw who would have killed him if not for Maine.
• Act of True Love: When she discovers Arasaka's plans to experiment on David for his tolerance of cybernetics, she destroys the data related to David and kills Tanaka Sr. She continues this one-woman crusade after the Time Skip by hunting Arasaka netrunners looking to recover the deleted data on David, often at a high risk of capture or death. Sadly, her inability to communicate clearly and her fear of David's growing obsession with cybernetic upgrades strains her relationship with David and ultimately leads to her being caught by Faraday.
• All for Nothing: Her wanting to protect David by keeping him off Arasaka’s radar ends up getting her captured by the corp and forcing David to don the Cyberskeleton in order to mount a rescue attempt. Even if Adam Smasher hadn’t killed David at the end, his succumbing to Cyberpsychosis from the Cyberskeleton would have, meaning Lucy’s efforts to keep David safe only ensured his death.
• Bathing Beauty: Whenever she needs to connect to cyberspace, Lucy takes an ice bath naked. The show justifies this since netrunners can overheat while connected and thus need cooling solutions such as ice baths to regulate their temperature.
• The Big Damn Kiss: After David promises to take her to the moon, she and David share a long, passionate kiss. With the camera showing a rocket blasting off in the background and them transporting themselves to the moon, this beautiful scene cements her and David's status as the series' Official Couple.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: Her decision to do this in Episode 8 leads to a merciless deconstruction of this trope. After David attacks "Doc", she pleads David to downgrade his cybernetics, which causes him to consider breaking up with her. Rather than telling him the truth about Arasaka targeting him for his tolerance to cybernetics or providing a firm answer on the future of their relationship, she runs off to pursue an Arasaka netrunner trying to decipher the info she deliberately destroyed. Her decision to do this backfires spectacularly, as the "netrunner" was actually a trap from Faraday, leading to her being captured, David installing the cyberskeleton, and ultimately spelling David's death. In trying to keep the love of her life safe, Lucy's actions inadvertently sentenced him to death, a fact that hits hard on her when she reaches the moon.
• Broken Smile: She has a subdued one during the ending while she is on the moon, accentuated by her eye makeup which look like eye bags.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Her relationship with David is a gender-inverted example. Despite her initial Manic Pixie Dream Girl act, she has a Sugar-and-Ice Personality largely fueled by her Dark and Troubled Past. She falls for David due to his empathetic nature and willingness to go out of his way to help others.
• But Not Too Foreign: In both directions as Lucy is confirmed by one of the producers to be half-Polish and half-Japanese.
• Child Soldier: Was an Arasaka netrunner from early adolescence, conscripted alongside dozens to potentially hundreds of other children to cross the Blackwall into the Old Net to retrieve the lost data from within, something considered so extremely dangerous that even some of the best netrunners do not dare to do so.
• Color Motif: Purple serves as this for her. This color signifies death, and how people close to her (including David) end up getting killed due to the choices she makes.
• The Corrupter: She introduces David to the world of edgerunning, first by pickpocketing marks on subways before having him run into Maine's crew. To be fair, David's options were limited at that point as he was expelled from Arasaka Academy, not to mention he had no family members left after his mother's death.
• Covered with Scars: The tattoo-like pattern on her back is revealed to be a series of scars. This came from her childhood when Arasaka exploited her and sent her to the Old Net. Lucy barely escaped an encounter with a rogue AI behind the Blackwall, but not before the AI clawed onto her back, creating the pattern she has to this day.
• Damsel in Distress: Her attempts to silence every Arasaka Netrunner who knows about David ultimately results in her being captured by Faraday and his goons. The entire final act of the series then revolves around David and the suicidal lengths he and his crew resort to in order to rescue her.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Lucy was a Child Soldier for Arasaka's netrunning ventures into the corrupted Old Net, meant to fight the rogue AI and daemons that pollute it and recover the vast amounts of lost knowledge on the web. However one day, her and her fellow children had enough of dying for a dream that wasn't theirs and fried the brains of the Arasaka caretakers to escape, with Lucy being the Sole Survivor from her team's breakout. In fact, it serves as her motivation to escape Earth altogether and live on the Moon so she can be as far away from Arasaka as humanly possible.
• Dark Secret: The deep-dive neural port she has on her brain stem serves as this for her. Not only is it a dead giveaway of her Dark and Troubled Past being conscripted and exploited by Arasaka, it also would make her a target for both the corporation and dodgy fixers such as Faraday. She only connects via her neural port when alone with David or in private, as she uses more common forms of connecting to cyberspace in any other situation.
• Death Glare: Gives a surprisingly menacing one to Jimmy in pair with a chillingly cold death threat spoken right after he surrenders.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: After the initial setup to bait David to Maine, Lucy puts on a cold shoulder to David, keeping him at arm's length for quite a while. Ultimately, it's because she cannot bear to let him kill himself, as she's all too aware of the fate of Edgerunners in Night City.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even though her first date with David was a Honey Trap so Maine's crew could jump him for his Sandevistan, Lucy was never going to let David be killed, telling the crew flat-out "no murders."
• Expy: According to Yoh Yoshinari, Lucy's design was inspired by Motoko Kusanagi, another aloof Cyberpunk heroine known for her uncanny hacking skills and penchant for rocking revealing and tight outfits. Yoshinari also noted that he consciously tried his best not to make Lucy look too much like the Major while designing her.
• Fatal Flaw: Failing to communicate with others. Her unwillingness to disclose to David what she found from Tanaka as well as her efforts to eliminate Arasaka's netrunners adds further strain to their relationship (on top of David's growing addiction to cybernetics). While Lucy meant to protect David, her efforts meant she was unable to rejoin David's crew, causing him to question the future of their relationship and ultimately leading to her being trapped by Faraday.
• Femme Fatale: Briefly plays this role as part of the trap against David when they first meet so Maine can get his Sandevistan implant back from him, deliberately luring him with his obvious attraction towards herself to eventually 'destroy him' for crossing the gang. Once David joins instead though, this is completely dropped and they earnestly fall in love with each other.
• Final Girl: Excluding Falco, who was only a part-timer, Lucy ends up being the Sole Survivor of Maine's Crew in the series conclusion.
• First Girl Wins: David first laid eyes on Lucy in the series, and their feelings for one another remain firm all throughout the series despite Rebecca's advances early on. Unfortunately, Lucy doesn't feel like much of a winner after David sacrifices himself to ensure she lived.
• First Kiss: She gives one to David after he promises to take her to the moon. After she is assured he wouldn't die on her, they soon share a longer passionate kiss that seals the deal on them being the series' Official Couple.
• Foil: To Alt Cunningham. Like Alt, she is a beautiful, talented netrunner who had a brush with artificial intelligence, and whom has fallen in love with a man who is way below her league, in this case Santo Domingo native David, much like Alt fell in love with notorious rockerboy Johnny Silverhand. Moreover, like Alt, Lucy attempts to to protect her love interest from Arasaka, but inadvertently gets him killed when he ends up having to rescue her from them. Unlike Alt, however, Lucy doesn't get trapped in the net as an engram, and retains her humanity even to the end as she makes her way to the moon, to her own emotional detriment as she realizes what it cost to get here there. One can also draw certain parallels between the two being in exile, with Alt behind the Blackwall and Lucy on the Moon, both of them cut off from the life they once knew and the men they once loved. Lucy's plight, however, is more her fault due to her obsession with protecting David becoming a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, while Alt ended up where she is due to Arasaka's scheme and Johnny's impulsive mistake.
• He Knows Too Much: She goes on a one-woman crusade to kill any Arasaka netrunner who knows about David and the destroyed information they had on him. This behavior and David's addiction to upgrading his cybernetics trigger a catastrophic chain of events, ultimately leading to David installing the cyberskeleton and getting killed by Smasher.
• Home Nudist: She prefers to remain in the nude when she is within the comfort of her own home. This is sensible, given her role as a netrunner requires her to stay cool in order to prevent damage from overheating while at work. She is also never seen wearing a cooling suit, as she prefers to conduct intensive netrunning in an ice bath naked. Given she was forced to wear a suit 24/7 at Arasaka as a child, it's heavily implied that cooling suits remind her of her Dark and Troubled Past, hence why she insists on simple cooling methods such as ice baths despite being able to afford much more sophisticated equipment.
• Honey Trap: Her first date with David and her initial Manic Pixie Dream Girl behavior is revealed to be this, as she was trying to help Maine's crew recover the Sandevistan Maine paid for from David. She feels guilty for doing this and becomes scared that David would resent her over this incident when she falls in love with him for real.
• In Love with the Mark: Remarkably falls for David rather quickly despite pretending to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl so Maine's crew can get the drop on him for seemingly stealing Maine's paid-for Sandevistan implant, enough to have shown her dreams that she hadn't shown anyone else. It does play into the drama of her being a Defrosting Ice Queen after he joins Maine's crew because she is in love with David enough to be afraid of him dying, as is the fate of all Edgerunners.
• Invisibility Cloak: Lucy is seen using the Optical Camo cyberware while pickpocketing eddies and data shards from people with ties to Arasaka. Doubles with Visible Invisibility, as her hair is shown as she’s moving. It’s also the first thing David sees from her while going to Arasaka Academy and later when he’s on the subway.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Lucy is cold, manipulative and lacks the ability to properly communicate with her partner, but she truly loves David and the crew, and is heartbroken by their deaths.
• Karmic Thief: David first meets her while she's stealing data chips from passengers on a train, his included. At first, he thinks she's a petty thief, but when she tells him she only targets Arasaka suits, he's eager to join in.
• Leitmotif: She and her relationship with David are heavily associated with "I Really Want to Stay at Your House".
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: She puts on an air of this during their initial meetings, particularly when she rides the stretcher David is on out of the back of a moving ambulance into traffic while laughing her head off. However, this turns out to largely be an act to get on David's good side. Her more normal state is more brooding and withdrawn, partially fed by her fears about David dying and her fears about Arasaka turning him into a lab rat later on when she learns about the info they have on him about halfway through the series.
• Meaningful Name: Her last name is Kushinada, which is based on the Shinto goddess Kushinadahime. In Shinto mythology, Kushinadahime is the goddess of love and the sole surviving child of Ashimazuchi and Temazuchi. This last name thus perfectly reflects Lucy's romance with David driving much of the series' plot as well as her Dark and Troubled Past being the sole surviving member of her netrunning team after escaping Arasaka.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The reason she and her fellow Child Soldier netrunners decide to kill their handlers at Arasaka
• Ms. Fanservice: With a slender and curved figure, a pretty large bust, and a white-haired Sci-Fi Bob Haircut, Lucy is a gorgeous character, and one who was clearly designed to appeal to viewers who are attracted to women. It is also not uncommon to see her naked as she prefers ice-filled tubs to keep her cool while in cyberspace over suits.
• Official Couple: She and David become this, and their relationship forms the emotional core of the series' plot.
• One True Love: As the series progresses, it becomes clear that she and David are soulmates who have searched for meaning in their lives—and found it in each other. While David is initially upset with Lucy for her Manic Pixie Dream Girl act, he never resents her and joins Maine's crew partially to get close to her. It soon becomes clear how far both are willing to protect one another, and David's willingness to help others wins over Lucy's heart. Once they become an Official Couple, Lucy trusts David to the point of revealing her traumatic childhood at Arasaka as well as her deep-dive neural port, and both come to value the other's life over their own. While their relationship does become strained from David's slippage to cyberpsychosis and Lucy's unwillingness to share the truth of Arasaka's plans for David, both David and Lucy remain committed to one another when push comes to shove. Their love is so strong, Lucy's True Love's Kiss helps David recover from his cyberpsychosis... which sadly ends with David sacrificing himself to help Lucy escape Arasaka Tower.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She's only known as "Lucy" in the series proper, with her full name only being revealed on Rafał Jaki's Twitter.
• Opposites Attract: She starts the series as a brooding and somewhat cynical edgerunner who ran away from Arasaka after being exploited as a child. David starts as a kind-hearted Arasaka Academy student raised by a single mother who works overtime to pay for his tuition. The two become an Official Couple and the actions they take to stay together directly affect the series' plot.
• Poor Communication Kills: Her Fatal Flaw. After the Time Skip it's revealed the reason she stops going on gigs with the crew is because she found out about the cyberskeleton project and Arasaka wanting to use David as a test subject for it due to his natural tech affinity. She deletes the information and begins killing anyone at Arasaka who knows about David, but never tells David about Arasaka's plans for him, presumably so he wouldn't be tempted to upgrade. Unfortunately her not sharing the information results in David falling into a trap where he dons the cyberskeleton.
• Razor Floss: Her main choice of weapon is a Monowire — a thin razor wire that extends from her wrists, which is sharp enough to cleave people in two in a single motion.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes turn red whenever she is uploading quickhacks against others or utilizing Breach Protocol to gain access.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: Let's see: an aloof, mysterious, and beautiful girl who acts as the primary Love Interest of the male protagonist, has unusual iridescent hair styled in a bob, often wears a form-fitting black and white outfit, and has a tragic history as a Child Soldier working to battle "monsters" for an inscrutable MegaCorp? That's a lot of checked boxes.
• Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: Has a short bob cut that is uniquely luminescent against the lights of Night City.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Her ultimate goal is to accumulate enough money so she can emigrate to a Lunar colony and escape Night City and Arasaka's influence for good.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: As someone who was exploited by Arasaka as a child, Lucy becomes fearful of Arasaka exploiting and killing David, especially once she discovers their plans to experiment on him for his tolerance to cybernetics. Consequently, Lucy does everything in her power to prevent this by killing netrunners looking to decipher the information she destroyed as well as not telling her loved one what she found from Tanaka Sr. These actions in the long-term lead to a disastrous domino effect, culminating in David installing the cyberskeleton and ultimately being killed by Smasher.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Lucy is petrified when she realizes Tanaka Sr. is an employee of Arasaka and pleads for David's assurances after Maine's crew decides to have Lucy take control of the gig's netrunning component. This change in behavior is due to Lucy suffering from PTSD from her traumatic childhood being exploited as an enslaved netrunner for Arasaka and her being the Sole Survivor from her team's breakout attempt.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She quickly falls in love with the kind-hearted David. Just before their Relationship Upgrade she calls him the kind of guy who would jump into the fire to rescue someone—anyone—even when he knows he's going to get burned.
• Slasher Smile: While steering David's gurney down a highway, Lucy is shown grinning and laughing like a maniac.
• Sleek High Rise Apartment: After the Time Skip, she and David live together in one of these. It's heavily implied that they were the previous tenants for the exact apartment V earns in the game if they achieve the "The Sun" or "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" endings.
• Sole Survivor: Aside from Falco, who ran part-time with them, Lucy is the only living member left from Maine's crew by the end of the series. She is also as far as she knows the only survivor of her original Arasaka netrunner team.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She initially gives David the cold shoulder after initially trapping him with Maine's crew to retrieve Maine's paid-for Sandevistan implant. However, she falls in love with David after he joins Maine's crew and starts becoming afraid of him dying or being exploited by Arasaka. Once she becomes an Official Couple with David, she is shown to be genuinely caring, loyal, and protective to a fault.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The cyberpunk version of this with David. Solos are treated like warriors, while netrunners are treated like mages.
• Teen Genius: As a child, she was selected by Arasaka to join a group of elite young netrunners, whose task was to explore the Old Net and recover lost data. A task extremely difficult and dangerous even for adults, yet she was able to survive confrontations with deadly security programs and malevolent A.I.s.
• Their First Time: She takes David's virginity not long after they become an Official Couple, something Maine quickly determines from David with just a glance.
• Tragic Hero: Lucy is the deuteragonist of a Tragedy and the choices she makes ultimately result in the deaths of her lover and nearly everyone she cares about.
• Tragic Mistake: Her decision to pursue an Arasaka netrunner trying to decipher info on David instead of telling him the truth behind her actions turns out to be this. The "netrunner" is revealed to be a trap from Faraday, and her capture creates a situation that drives David to installing the cyberskeleton and ultimately losing his life.
• Trauma Button: Mentioning someone being directly tied to Arasaka, especially if they are an executive from the company, will send Lucy into an episode of PTSD. This is due to her Dark and Troubled Past involving Arasaka enslaving her into netrunning as a child as well as her being the Sole Survivor of her team when they broke out.
• True Love's Kiss: She does this in Episode 10 to David just as he was about to completely succumb to cyberpsychosis after he previously exhausted his immunosuppressants. This kiss helps him recover his sanity long enough to help Lucy escape Arasaka Tower.
• Tsurime Eyes: Her eye design is this, illustrating her Sugar-and-Ice Personality.
• Undying Loyalty: She develops this for David as their romance blossoms. It's to the point she's fully prepared to Break His Heart to Save Him and die herself if it means ensuring he'll live. Unfortunately for her, David absolutely refuses to allow her to throw her life away as she has something to live for with her dreams and sacrifices himself instead to ensure she is able to live on the Moon.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lucy deliberately botches the job with Tanaka Sr. once she finds information concerning Arasaka's plans for David. This hasty action, unfortunately, results in Trauma Team being called into the gang's hideout and directly leads to Maine and Dorio's deaths. Their deaths drove David to step up as the leader of the crew unbeknownst to him about her hand in it. Moreover, her unwillingness to disclose her one-woman crusade against Arasaka to protect David leads to a disastrous domino effect that ends in her capture, David installing the cyberskeleton, and ultimately David's death, the one death she was trying to avoid all along.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend:
  • When David is abducted by Jimmy, she (along with Dorio) disrupts Jimmy's attempt to Mind Rape David and then quickly hacks the two sentry drones that open fire on him. She is also the first to threaten to kill Jimmy.
  • Not to mention there's also her whole murderous rampage through any Arasaka's netrunners who try to decipher the info she deliberately destroyed from jacking into Tanaka Sr. ICE concerning making David into a lab rat for the Cyberskeleton project, which is bloody enough to get the full attention of Arasaka to find out what the hell is going on.

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