Fanfic / Cyberpunk: Fatherhood

"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he is wrong."

—Charles Wadsworth

V is having dinner with Jackie when an unknown number calls his phone. As it turns out, the caller is a teenager whose mother recently got caught in a car accident, and the kid finds his number among her items listed as "Emergency Only". The thing is, the number was listed under the name of "Vinny", and the only one that ever called V that was his ex, Gloria Martinez.

Cyberpunk: Fatherhood is a Cyberpunk 2077 x Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Crossover Fanfic written by RobinRounds, where V turns out to be Gloria Martinez's ex and David's father. Suddenly finding out that he has a son, V takes it upon himself to adapt to these new circumstances and be a real father to David, helping and supporting him however he can. But even as David tries to handle having a high-up Arasaka Suit for a dad, not only does this drag David, Gloria and their associates into the tangled web of corporate espionage, V has his own demons to wrestle with... including paternal issues of his own.

Link to FanFiction.Net version.
Link to Archive of Our Own version.

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The story has the following examples of:

• Abusive Parents: V's father, Robert John Linder Jr., is a real piece of work. More or less embodying the worst traits of a stereotypical corpo, Robert has emotionally and psychologically abused both his wife and son for years, to the point where she's a virtual prisoner in the Night City home and V hasn't spoken to him for years; and that's before he tried to first bribe Gloria to stop seeing his son before sending an assassin after her once he found out she was pregnant.
• Ace Custom: V, and later David, possess an Apparition, an Arasaka elite-exclusive handgun, which has been modified with a Kanone scope and a Countermass recoil reducer.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: After being Chromed down, Maine looks leaner with sleeker chrome. It's enough to cause him & Dorio to fuck more often than usual.
• Adaptational Job Change: Downplayed; Nadia, the Trauma Team medic, is Gloria's personal nurse here.
• Adaptational Karma: Tanaka Sr. dies from being assaulted by Tygers not long after he was arrested by V. While Katsuo is his father's sole inheritor, he also inherits the debt his father racks up from feeding his XBD addiction, forcing him to sell almost everything to settle it, leaving him with some clothes and bare furnitures.
• Affectionate Nickname: Lucy calls David "Puppy", on the fact that she is his first romantic relationship ever. This is also how the other crew members describe David's affection for Lucy.
  Kiwi: And you're (Lucy) stuck with the love-struck puppy who's begging for your attention.
• All for Nothing: V, with Jackie's help, was tasked to remove the criminal elements in Neo-Oaxaca for Arasaka to expand their reach into the city. However, the aftermath of their method made the now-dead city so hazardous that Arasaka immediately canceled the plan.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: The main reason why it took David time to prepare himself to introduce Lucy to his mom.
  David: Lucy! Told you to only call me that in private. And definitely not if we were visiting Mom!
  Gloria: And why is that, mijo?
  David: Because...Ugh, mom teasing...
• An Arm and a Leg: Lucy lost her left arm and Pilar lost one of his legs and his penis from a gang war between The Animals and Voodoo Boys that V instigates. Thankfully, Vicktor managed to get them prosthetics to replace them (though Pilar opts to have his other leg replaced too and he gets a dick...upgrade thanks to Rebecca and Falco).
• And I Must Scream: Chapter 32 reveals that Doll chips, or at least those used by Robert, leave the victim's true consciousness fully aware while their body becomes a mindless, obedient puppet. It's no wonder why both V and Eleanor would prefer death to being trapped in that state.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Averted. V promises that he could easily find another crew to keep his son safe if Maine's group refuses to protect David as he does Solo jobs. It's just that V is so intimidating that Maine has to call Gloria for reassurance that V really means it.
• Asshole Victim:
  • V tracks down the pack of Animals who caused David and Gloria's car accident, and subjects them to a vicious hack that essentially cooks them alive with their own cyberware.
  • Considering how Jimmy Kurosaki purposefully drove people into madness in the process of creating his XBDs just so he could entertain himself with their suffering, his slow and agonizing demise at V's hands is very well-deserved.
  • A mortally wounded Faraday is eventually found by Junior, and subjected to a Fate Worse than Death so horrifying^note Being brutally tortured, then converted by Maelstrom into a chromed-up remotely controllable attack dog that you can almost feel sorry for the foul Fixer.
• Bastard Bastard: V's father, Robert John Linder Jr., is this. His mother was knocked up by a Rockerboy (heavily implied and later confirmed to be Johnny Silverhand himself) who never showed up to his birth or life in general, and he grew up to be an utter asshole completely determined to be everything his dad wasn't out of spite.
• Beyond Redemption: After Jackie confesses to Padre about unleashing "Phonoi" in Neo-Oaxaca, Padre admits that there's no way he can absolve Jackie for taking part in something so horrendous: instead, he should attempt to clean up as much of Night City as he can to seek some limited form of penance.
• Breather Episode:
  • The self admittedly crack-y Chapter 24 revolves around Rebecca acquiring a comically oversized cyber-dong for Pilar in between the crew's failure to kill Faraday, and Chapter 25, where Robert Linder Jr. kicks so many dogs that you start to lose count.
  • Chapter 33, which mostly focuses on David and Lucy's life together, provides a welcome reprieve after the truckloads of Medical Horror experienced by V while mind-controlled in Chapter 32, as Robert puts his sinister plans into action, though not without ominous Foreshadowing of events to come...
• Broken Ace: V, on the surface, is one of Arasaka's top Counter-Intel agents, who is able to outfight, outwit, and out-hack most characters. However, his father's cruel streak seems to have left an imprint on him, making V a Consummate Professional who rarely hesitates to conduct violent method on his job. Then it gets more literal when V temporarily succumbs into cyberpsychosis while chasing Faraday, forcing Jackie and Maine to fight him to stop him.
• Commonality Connection: V and Rebecca bonded over having terrible parents and being a Closet Geek.
• Consummate Professional: Jackie describes V as this as he explains to David why his father did what he did at Neo-Oaxaca.
  Jackie: There are three types of killers in the world. [...] The third is the most terrifying. They do it because they feel they have to. It could be the simple solution to a problem or a moral issue. In the end, they have a problem and they kill to solve it.
  David: And which is my father?
  Jackie: He is definitely the third.
  David: Why is that so bad?
  Jackie: It's not an issue to them. You need to die, then they kill you. No speeches, no negotiating, no torture, no delay. No chances. Done, gone, over it. Next problem. It's what lets him be so efficient at his work. He doesn't hesitate or wait. He can still kill for money or pleasure. But if it is a task, then it is done without any of the guilt or hesitation that another person has. He will walk into a standoff and fire the first shot. There is no such thing as risk or acceptable casualties or any other reasoning. Does it need to be done? If Yes, then bang.
• Cool Uncle: Jackie is this to David and, by extension, Lucy.
• Corporate Samurai: This V is the Corpo Lifepath one, and it shows. He's an extremely skilled combatant, can be utterly ruthless when the need arises, and has, or at least tries to have, a plan for every situation.
• Consummate Liar: One of the many necessary skills for a Suit, as V lies on the spot on why he fully invested in David to Jenkins.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: In an Ironic Echo of his own XBDs, Jimmy Kurosaki is tortured with extreme prejudice by V, who first doses him with custom-brewed drugs designed to completely disable his sense of pain before flaying the skin off his body and sticking the underlying flesh with needles, taking time to tie slips of joss paper to the back ends of each needle in a twisted tribute to all of Jimmy Kurosaki's victims. V then caps off the entire ordeal by dosing Jimmy with stimulants to reawaken and amplify his sense of pain before leaving him to be shredded by an entire case' worth of GASH grenades planted throughout the room Jimmy was trapped in, all of which were rigged to activate when someone tripped the motion sensor to the room's back door, which the two NCPD cops that arrived to investigate the room triggered.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • V singlehandedly beats Maine's crew before they try to pry the Sandevistan off David.
    Jackie: If I wasn't beside you, I'd think we were getting a raid by MaxTac!
  • With V instructing him through the phone call, David single-handedly beats Katsuo's hired goons.
• Dead Man's Switch: In the event that his father would trigger his Doll chip, V rigged up his brain with a dead-man's switch on a 24-hour timer, and if he was Dolled and unable to reset the timer, his personal network would upload his specialized memory-wipe virus to his brain and purge the Doll chip of his father's software (or if the worst happened, wipe his brain entirely and kill him outright).
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Drugged from her meds, Gloria accidentally reveals to David that V is his father.
• Disappointed by the Motive: What grinds V's gears the most about why Jenkins went ahead with the ultimately pyrrhic operation to clear out Neo-Oaxaca - Jenkins botched the bidding and wasn't around to supervise it, because he was getting his rocks off in a seedy club with another executive who was supposed to get him ahead in the company.
• Disaster Dominoes: Befalls Katsuo Tanaka. After flying into a rage at David's new-found success, he recruits a bunch of thugs to chase him down, which ends very badly after the fight is broken up by a team of Arasaka Counter-Intelligence agents led by V. This leads to Tanaka Senior being placed under investigation, at which point his own employees stab him in the back and leak as much compromising information on the man as possible, which is enough to get him terminated from his post, leaving his son alone and saddled with mountains of debt.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • "Robert John Linder" is the real name of Johnny Silverhand, so given that V's piece-of-work father is called Robert John Linder Jr, V is his grandson — which is why Rogue is so interested in obtaining DNA samples from him and David. Of course, this is also rather amusing given that Silverhand would be rolling in his grave to discover that he has a son and grandson who are Arasaka execs, given his extreme hatred of Corpos and Arasaka in particular. Naturally, everyone apart from V's parents themselves and Rogue is unaware of this.
  • Gloria sees a news report of a gang war inside the Grand Imperial Mall and someone suffering cyberpsychosis and causing absolute carnage, commenting that whoever did it was a monster. David, beside her, chokes because the one under cyberpsychosis was V.
  • Lucy gets jealous at David being friendly with their new neighbour Takami Kaneko — who is actually his dad's sister Valerie in disguise.
• The Dreaded: V is this to Lucy, and not just because he's Arasaka's Counter-Intel Suit.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In Chapter 25, V's father goes to Dogtown to meet with Kurt Hansen, the leader of Barghest and one of the main antagonists of Phantom Liberty. Linder is impressed by the control Hansen exerts over Dogtown, and the two seem to be building up to a Villain Team-Up.
• Eating the Eye Candy: The Netrunner Suit is meant to help David's Sandevistan cool down better...but it also emphasizes Lucy's favorite curves on him.
• Everyone Can See It: most of Maine's group teases how evident David and Lucy are for being into each other, no matter how much the latter denies it.
• Everyone Has Standards: Pilar may be a horndog, but he's loyal to his girlfriend, and he also finds incest, both roleplay and genuine, too depraved for his taste, as shown when he harshly rejects Valerie (in disguise) when she tries to pry information out of him by pretending to be a Joytoy looking for someone to get their incest play fix and calling him "Onii-chan".
  Pilar: Look, I'll admit I've watched some fucked up porn, and I know where you're going with this, but that's a line I won't cross.
  Valerie: Please? You're just gonna leave me out here on my own?
  Pilar: Jesus...Nope. No way. Not happening. Not goin' to jail over this. I'm not that kind of criminal!
  Valerie: Not even if I can make it worth it, onii-chan?
  Pilar: Fuck no. Get outta here you degenerate brother-fucker!
• Everyone Is Armed: A standard for Night City, but when Faraday sends a Scav crew after V and Maine's crew, the crew going after Maine at the Cojo busted in on a Valentino birthday celebration, resulting the Scavs getting themselves turned into Swiss cheese for their troubles.
  Falco: Honestly, it was like in those old west movies. Bad guy comes walkin' in and draws iron, entire saloon does the same. Almost felt bad for the other guys.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Shortly after David and Lucy adopt one of Night City's sphynx cats, "Takami Kaneko" (Valerie) a "new neighbour", drops by their apartment — the feline immediately hisses at and hides from her.
• Eviler than Thou:
  • After escaping, critically wounded, from the Grand Imperial Mall shootout, Faraday runs into RJ Linder Jr. He interrogates, horrifically tortures and mutilates the Fixer, before sending him off to Maelstrom. There, he is turned into a borderline-full-borg Meat Puppet attack dog, all while deliberately letting him suffer as much as possible, which utterly breaks what's left of his mind. It's so horrible it's almost possible to feel sorry for Faraday, and dramatically marks Robert's ascension as the Knight of Cerebus Big Bad.
  • And after he initiates V's Doll chip, he tasks him with assassinating Director Abernathy. She was also trying to use V as her puppet, but unluckily for her Robert got there first.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Katsuo, when he sees David's Apparition, asks him where he got it. When David explains that he got it from his mentor and asks Katsuo why its a big deal, the latter explains that only Arasaka's executives can procure that firearm before the Oh, Crap! kicks in, realizing that David has a backing of an Arasaka elite.
• Explosive Leash: On his interrogation, V straps grenades on Lucy's neck and Maine, Pilar, and Dorio's ziplocked hands that will explode if one of them tries to tear it.
• Expy: Wordof God has stated that Robert John Linder Jr. is inspired by Tywin Lannister, also the scheming patriarch of a Big, Screwed-Up Family. The AI image used to represent him definitely bears a resemblance.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Double. First, Tanaka Sr tries to throw his son under the bus to avoid being apprehended by counter-intel, but the moment words spread that Tanaka Sr. got in trouble with Counter-intel, his coworkers immediately spills out whatever bad deeds they could against him.
  V: All sorts of skeletons were just shoved out of every closet. Almost as if dozens of employees that worked with him kept whatever dirt they had in the hopes of burying him one day. Who knew?
• Family of Choice: V considers Jackie and Mama Welles to be his family, and the feeling is mutual.
• Fix Fic: While there's a fair share of darker moments, especially everything pertaining to V's actions in Neo-Oaxaca, for quite a while things are going pretty well for the characters. Maine's crew are enjoying power boosts, having better resources, and have avoided becoming the Dwindling Party they were in canon. Meanwhile, V, Gloria, David, and Jackie are slowly becoming something resembling a family. Unfortunately for them all, this all goes to hell after Robert John Linder Jr. decides to re-insert himself into his son's life.
• Fond Memories That Could Have Been: Gloria starts to imagine what could've been if she told V about David earlier and raised him together, or if the son & father's first encounter is as fellow Arasaka businessmen, as she was anesthetized. Downplayed, as she reminded herself that V is here now, and that's what matters.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Gloria decided to get a full Chrome conversion during her stay at the Trauma Center, as the injuries suffered during the car crash would never fully heal and cause her chronic pain. This involves transplanting her brain into a fully customized "Gemini" frame that looks exactly like her previous body. This new body was supposed to be a base-line civilian model, but V's (justified) paranoia led him to make it capable of Super-Strength and immune to everything but anti-tank weaponry.
• The Gadfly:
  • Kiwi really likes to tease Lucy.
    Lucy: Ugh, fuck me...
    Kiwi: I think we both know David can handle that for me.
    Lucy: *Spit Take* Let me correct myself. Get fucked.
    Kiwi: You first, girl.
  • Apparently Gloria is this toward David.
    Gloria: Why do I suspect you two don't actually watch the movies?
    David: It's not like that! We do watch the movie. Not our fault we sometimes fall asleep.
    Gloria: Is that what you kids call it nowadays?
    David: N-n-no! Ugh, Mom...It's not like that!
• Gag Penis: The Dong-of-Dafoe. It is so big that it is recalled out of poor sales from people's sheer horror of it, from how Rebecca's, David's & Lucy's react to it implies. And it is going to be attached to Pilar...
• Grandma's Recipe: Gloria's Crazy Bread. It's one of many things David misses about not having his mom around.
  Gloria: David talks about my crazy bread?
  Lucy: Yeah, said it's his favorite food you make because it's never the same twice.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Katsuo, after seeing David not only getting better chrome but becoming smarter than him. As it turns out, Katsuo was already envious of David for having a loving & caring mother, but only started to hate him because David squandered his mother's efforts by having a side job as an XBD seller.
• Hate Plague: V created various programs in his mission in Neo-Oaxaca, with one of them, coded "Phonoi", worked like one and he used it to gradually wipe out the city's inhabitants.
• Hates Their Parent: V utterly despises his father for completely justified reasons. Fitting considering said father, Robert John Linder Jr., hates his father, heavily implied to be Johnny Silverhand, for being a no-show for his entire life including birth.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: Lucy refuses to admit that she has feelings for David despite constant needling from the rest of the Crew. Kiwi has to trick her into admitting she went home and fell asleep in bed with him after watching some movies (Lucy denies having sex with him, and what we do see implies she's right).
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Misty always wishes to experience this, so when Jackie gets high by overexposure to drug explosion, she decided to document his rambling, hoping that his acid trip turns out to be this.
• Impossible Task: After the confession, Padre ended up condemning Jackie to one for having a hand in the agonizing demise of Neo-Oaxaca. He must try to save and protect the innocents of Night City for the rest of his life.
  Padre: I want to give you a Sisyphean task. A city of sin, for a city of sin. [...] As you have damned the people of Neo-Oaxaca, you will save the people of Night City. Never again let your hands be touched by the blood of an innocent, but bathe them in the blood of the murderers, the rapists, and the betrayers.
• In Spite of a Nail: Even though Gloria survived the accident, Katsuo's badmouthing of her causes David to implant the Sandevistan she scavenged anyway to beat him up.
• Intoxication Ensues: After taking too many painkillers after the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, V wears his old Rockerboy outfit and starts horrendously singing while playing electric guitar at his apartment.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate:
  • V kills the back-alley surgeon and pays for Gloria's hospital stay and Trauma Package out of his pocket, saving her life.
  • V's intervention prevents David from being kicked out of Arasaka Academy after his fight with Katsuo.
  • Jackie pays for David's immuno-suppressants, which are much better than the ones he used in canon, then later brings him to get the Sandevistan checked by Viktor, a more qualified Ripper.
  • V "convincing" Jenkins of David's value as the Counter-Intel Director's personal "Mini-Smasher" means that Arasaka won't actively seek the kid for his high Cyberpsychosis tolerance.
  • Maine, after some thorough convincing, ended up Chroming down, ensuring that he won't end up having cyberpsychosis anytime soon.
• It Makes Sense in Context: In Chapter 24, Rebecca bought Pilar a large cyber-dong in order to get him out of his funk from losing his original, only for the case to be stolen by three clueless thugs who thought it looked valuable. As she's angrily chasing them down, they all run by David and Lucy out for a walk, and Rebecca shouts at them to help her. What she says causes them to briefly display faces "best described as 'Lovebirds.exe has crashed'", though she does explain more accurately what's going on when they get on the holo-call.
  Rebecca: Help me dammit! Gangoons took my penis!
• It's All About Me: David sees the Arasakas as this, considering that they have their own subject in school called Arasaka History and Culture
  David: Of course they'd consider Arasaka a subject on its own.
• It's Personal: V learning that Faraday tried to have Gloria killed during her surgery on top of sending goons to attack him and Maine's crew causes him to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the crooked fixer.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Besides the Explosive Leash, V also dunks cheap booze on the crew when they don't answer him, burning them due to the high alcohol-to-flavor ratio.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Katsuo's Motive Rant for why he hates David hits him more deeply than he likes - in that David disrespected his mother's sacrifice to get him into Arasaka Academy only to squander the opportunity by slacking off and selling XBD videos. When the realization allows Katsuo to get in one good hit that knocks David off his feet, David doesn't retaliate, and Katsuo doesn't push further.
• Knight of Cerebus: V's sudden explosion of out-of-the-norm movement & actions attracts the attention of his truly vile father, Robert John Linder Junior, a high-ranking Arasaka exec and sadistic Control Freak who subjected V to a torturous upbringing, has his wife Eleanor locked in a Gilded Cage under twenty-four-hour surveillance, and tried to have Gloria assassinated when he discovered she was pregnant with V's child. He quickly sics mercenaries on V's family, with the aim of having them kidnapped once he deems it appropriate. Chapters 22 and 25 prove that he's even worse than he first appeared, showing him upstaging Faraday in a horrifically brutal manner, demonstrating that he has a penchant for using Doll chips and brainwashing to control people, including his wife, who has tried to kill herself multiple times as a result, and is planning something deeply unpleasant for V, Gloria, David, Lucy and everyone else involved based on his twisted idea of "family". It's apparent that as soon as he shows his hand, things are going to get very bad, very fast.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: In Chapter 24, Falco laughs until his sides hurt when he sees Rebecca's horrified reaction to Pilar's new prosthetic penis, "the Dong of Dafoe". Later in the chapter, Rebecca herself collapses in laughter when David, Lucy, and a hapless wannabe thief sees what the case the latter was trying to steal actually contains (said prosthesis).
  • And later in Chapter 26, Maine loses it watching Pilar interrogate a trio of thugs for information — using his new tool.
• Medical Horror: There's an extremely disturbing and disturbingly long scene in Chapter 32 where V, under the control of the Doll chip, is completely ripped apart and rebuilt while only sedated, having all of his chrome replaced with whatever his loving father desires. It's almost certainly a punishment for the real V, who is locked inside his brain the whole time.
• Mushroom Samba: When the crew tries to raid Tyger Claw's drug-producing plant, one of the Tyger Claws tosses an explosive into the production machine, causing it to explode and exposing the crew who were in the building a heavy dose of said drugs, causing this to them. The girls have to take them to Dorio's apartment for them to detox safely.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Jackie has this moment when he finds out that one of the Neo-Oaxaca's districts he & V send the Phonoi program into was their housing complex, killing the gang's non-combatants, including children.
• Nightmare Sequence: Lucy always has nightmares about her time escaping Arasaka in the form of being chased down an Endless Corridor, but after his "interrogation", the nightmare now adds V waiting for her at the end of the corridor, before strangling her.
• Ninja Maid: While Nadia is Gloria's nurse here, she still retains her Trauma Team training.
• No Badass to His Valet: Being a badass Corporate Samurai doesn't stop Mama Welles from throwing La Chancla at V for not keeping in touch with Gloria for almost two decades, despite always lamenting about her in his drunken stupors and Mama Welles's insistence to do so.
• Noble Demon:
  • As business-driven as Saburo Arasaka is, he still implements family-oriented policies in the company, such as an immediate message to an employee's loved ones if they are passing.
  • Katsuo is a believer of Self-Made Man with an intense dislike of XBD due to his father's addiction to it means he has no time for him, and so he hates David for disrespecting Gloria's financial sacrifice by doing the bare minimum at the academy and becoming an XBD seller under her nose without sharing the profit with her.
    “When I first learned it was just you and your mother, and how much she cared. I almost envied you. Then I learned more about you, and it disgusted me. I might have forgiven you if you had a valid excuse; "Oh, I didn't have time to study because I needed to work my night job to help my mom". And don't try to argue that pushing XBDs was a job. I'm sure selling illegal soft to our classmates brought in the cash, but I doubt your mom saw a single eddy of it."
• Not So Stoic: Rebecca's shameless flirting manages to crack V's calm facade multiple times, to Lucy's amusement.
• Old Flame: It's clear that there is something still going on with V and Gloria even after they broke up.
• One Degree of Separation: Rebecca is surprised to find that Nadia, Gloria's nurse, is dating Pilar without any of them knowing it.
• Out-of-Character Alert:
  • Jenkins is alerted to V's action when he, who rarely submits requests for his work, suddenly floods out various requests in one day.
  • In Chapter 33, David receives a call from the doll-ified V, who invites him and Lucy to meet his parents. Asides from the odd, robotic manner the puppet is speaking in, this throws up two major red flags — V hates Lucy, and has been very cagey about his parents. It's enough for the couple to go to Gloria with their concerns, who is able to confirm that they should now stay as far away from him as possible, given she knows very well what an evil bastard Robert is, and that V would never willingly interact with him.
• Papa Wolf: V may only have re-entered the Martinez's lives recently, but he will give it all when their life is on the line. Ask the Animal gang members responsible for Gloria's accident and Maine's crew (who kidnapped David to get the Sandevistan off of him).
• Poor Communication Kills: Almost. On one end, Maine thought Gloria ghosted after he paid for the chrome, and that a kid has the one he seeks, not knowing that it is Gloria's son, so when Lucy runs into David by chance, he gets her to bring him in to get the hardware. On the other end, Jackie and V don't know about Gloria's contact with Maine's crew, so when Lucy lures David in, they think someone is honey-trapping David to get the Sandevistan off him, which would kill the kid, which is why V goes in guns blazing.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: One of Robert's many, many Kick the Dog moments in Chapter 25 is the reveal that he's implanted his own wife with a Doll chip^note Per Word of God, he did this on their honeymoon! — when he engages it, she becomes a simpering, submissive 'Stepford Wife' puppet. She's already been Driven to Suicide because of this, but he's forcibly implanted her with chrome that won't let her die. Chapter 32 makes it even worse, revealing that she's conscious the whole time.
• Red Baron: V is known as "The Plagues" within Arasaka's Counter-Intel circles for what he had done to Neo-Oaxaca. He developed a variety of techno-viruses that could spread rapidly within a connected populace and inflict debilitating effects, from the violence-instilling Phonoi to the memory-wiping Lethe.
• Related in the Adaptation: V is David's father in this fic. Additionally, V's father is implied to be the bastard son of Johnny Silverhand, making the rocker boy/terrorist V and David's grandfather and great-grandfather respectively.
• Second-Act Breakup: In Chapter 28, Gloria breaks down in tears and demands that Vincent leave after he confesses to her about what he did in Neo-Oaxaca and his cyberpsychosis attack at Grand Imperial Mall.
• Sexual Euphemism: Chapter 26 is full of these as Maine works off some of his stress with Dorio.
• Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum!: Training Shards is this, which Gloria dislikes, finding it a "shortcut" that makes her hard work putting David into Arasaka Academy to be All for Nothing.
• Secretly Wealthy: As it turns out, Dorio has a well-kept, clean, fancy apartment she got from her Suit parents.
• Shipper with an Agenda: Rebecca tries to mend V and Gloria's relationship...so she can add herself between them and create "The Great Harem" with them.
  Gloria: Sooo what? You're gonna figure out how to solve all mine and V's relationship problems just so you can fuck us both?
  Rebecca: Pretty much.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Rebecca transforms from a scrappy gun-toting edgerunner into high-class arm candy through loads of V's eddies worth of fancy clothes and chrome.
• Shoe Slap: Both Jackie & V got hit with one from Mama Welles when they bring David to her place for the first time.
• Shout-Out: When he was a teenager, V liked to play rock covers of video game music. His friends nicknamed him "Little V" during this period.
• Silk Hiding Steel: V wants Rebecca to be a bodyguard under the guise of arm candy on his task of infiltrating Tyger Claw's casino, and he's willing to spend eddies on luxurious clothing and chrome-works to make it convincing.
  Rebecca: So...what type of joy-toy should I be? Classy secretary your type? Or maybe the brain-dead bitch in heat does it for you?
  V: Clever, cute, and capable. Not too different from what you're acting now actually. Just, you need to be a little bit more on guard.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: V & David have one when they went to the Trauma Center after the first day of the exam.
  V: Sounds like you got some fans out there.
  David: Doubt it.
  V: I was talking to the Caliburn (car).
  David: W-was that a dad joke?
  V: I mean, it was a joke...and I am your father.
  David: You know, I was worried about your sense of humor. Then I remembered your life.
  V: Well, you're part of it now. So what does that make you?
  David: The best joke you ever made.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Thanks to V putting Gloria on his Trauma Plan, she gets much better medical treatment.
• Stacy's Mom:
  • Gender inverted; Rebecca really wants to bone V, much to his discomfort and David's embarrassment.
  • Then Played Straight when Rebecca also wants to bang Gloria as well.
• Strong Family Resemblance: David resembles V during his younger years.
• Through His Stomach: Lucy asks Gloria for her Crazy Bread Recipe so she can surprise David by making one for him.
• Toilet Humour: One of the questions in Viktor's Cyberpsychosis test is whether the tester laughs at the word "poop".
• Torture for Fun and Information: The only description of how Maine and Pilar shake down three thugs for information - they tie them up, pull down their pants, and give them an eyeful of Pilar's new prosthetic tool.
  Maine: Just don't expect me to watch. Last time you ripped their ass open all the way to their guts and I don't wanna see another guy die when you pull out.
• Tough Love: V cares a lot about David, but he isn't shy about spelling out how stupid he's been and how much trouble he's caused his mother, and how his cheapness nearly got her killed by the guy running a sketchy back ally clinic.
• Tragic Keepsake: A lot of Maine's cyberware used to belong to his former squadmates (something that he hasn't told even Dorio about), hence his initial hesitation to chrome down. After Viktor convinces him to do so to save his life, he keeps his squad's old parts in his apartment.
• Trespassing to Talk: Rogue visits Gloria in the Trauma Center to find out more about her, which appalled V because Platinum Trauma Plan means that no one should've been allowed to visit Gloria without either his or her permission and/or knowing.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Lucy is reduced to this after a nightmare regarding her past and a distant shootout between the 6th Street and the Valentinos right after she had finally calmed her nerves.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 30 is easily the biggest example of this, by quite a long shot. First of all, the chapter is presented from the POV of V's sister Valerie, a cheerfully sociopathic Tyke Bomb and one of her father's operatives. From her perspective, we witness Robert finally making his move and confronting V, revealing he knows about Gloria and David, and inviting him to dinner. Once V (very reluctantly) complies, we're treated to a creepy scene of Robert acting Faux Affably Evil while the brainwashed Eleanor behaves like a Stepford Wife, which concludes with Valerie ambushing V so Robert can activate his Doll chip. Yikes.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • V allows himself to get beaten by Jenkin's Tyger Claws mooks to convince Wakako to get him in contact with Rogue.
  • Instead of outright pickpocketing their target, David's first Edgerunning gig involves staging an assault with him, Lucy, and Kiwi as innocent bystanders and Rebecca as the culprit.
• You Just Told Me: Rebecca tricks V to come out of his Closet Geek by saying a Fandom-Enraging Misconception about Philip K. Dick.
  Rebecca: I ain't book smart, but even I can tell you're downplaying.
  V: Fine, I may... just maybe, be a casual fan of his works.
  Rebecca: Right, what was I thinkin'. You probably just browsed Pre-persons and enjoyed all the pro-abortion stuff.
  V: The fuck are you on about? *Glaring at her* Pre-persons was so anti-abortion that he was getting death threats, in the nineteen-fifties!
  Rebecca: Gotcha! *Finger guns*
  V: Oh gawdamnit.

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