Fanfic / Cyberpunk: Another Daybreak

"Rejoice! A Rider has been born, inheriting a legacy that will turn the page on a new era! In this city of night, the flame has been lit to bring the promised dawn! Let us witness the beginning the first step to the Road to Glory of the Cross of Fire for David Martinez... Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata!"

—Woz upon David's first transformation

David Martinez didn't know what to expect when his mother was put into the hospital following an assassination attempt on a Corpo. What he didn't see coming was said Corpo, Isu Hiden, offering him an internship in her company, and getting into contact with a group of Cyberpunks who were hired by the Company. However, this wouldn't be the least of his worries, as he also acquires a prototype weapon of Hidens' and becomes Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata. Now under the employ of Hiden, he must protect Night City from a malevolent A.I. known as the Ark, while also dealing with the world of Corpos and Cyberpunks.

Cyberpunk: Another Daybreak is a crossover between Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Kamen Rider Zero-One (with elements of the overall Rider franchise), which began on October 3rd, 2022. The fic has been dormant since February 2023 and the author has not posted anything since.

It can be found on SpaceBattles.com here and Archive of Our Own here.

Due to the nature of the work, spoilers for both Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Kamen Rider Zero-One will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Cyberpunk: Another Daybreak contains examples of:

A to M

• The Ace: V rose up to the rank of field agent in Arasaka Counter-Intel in a year and has killed a lot of people in that time, becoming the talk of the office with others whispering about him being the next Morgan Blackhand or Adam Smasher. His latest assignment by the time of Ark's reappearance had him survive a shootout in a Mexican megabuilding with nothing more than a (extremely valuable) katana with the help of Jackie Welles, cutting down more than 50 armed men with it. The author even states that in a fight, V could take an inexperienced David down even with the overwhelming advantage provided by being a Kamen Rider.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: The driving reason for David's descent into crime in the original anime, his mother's death, was averted by Isu stepping in to foot the bill for proper medical treatment. This, combined with the welcoming environment of Hiden Intelligence and his lack of chrome, means that he's in a much better (if still stressed out by being a teenage executive with the fate of humanity on his shoulders) state of mind.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Lucy had an even worse childhood compared to canon thanks to the presence of Ark in the Old Net.
• Adaptational Badass: Ark. It's less that Ark is stronger in this setting than in Zero-One's, and more that it simply has more material to work with. In a setting where everyone is chromed up to some degree, Ark can turn anyone into an extension of itself if they aren't protected with military-grade ICE. The abundance of hackable technology means that it can strike from anywhere and at any time, even without Metsuboujinrai.NET to serve as its arms and legs.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Due to the Legion not existing in this universe, Spearhead Squadron is not a racially segregated expendable force for San Magnolia (which also doesn't exist in this universe). Instead, they're a group of orphans from Megabuilding H10 who banded together to protect their own.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In this story, Maine's crew is working for Hiden Intelligence and is the target of the Corpo hit that killed Gloria in Edgerunners. As a result, David meets them in the second story chapter after accepting an internship and school transfer to Hiden Intelligence's facility.
• Adaptational Job Change: Maine's crew is hired directly by Hiden Intelligence rather than being independent mercs and Cyberpunks. While their old contacts often lambaste them for selling out to Corpos, the generous pay, medical benefits, and protection from Arasaka are too good for the gang to pass up. David also goes from intern to executive Corpo in a hurry by becoming a Kamen Rider.
• Adaptational Nationality: Due to being moved from the fictional world of 86 EIGHTY-SIX to Earth, all of the titular Eighty Sixth district members have their nationality changed from San Magnolian (and in Frederika's case, Giadian) to the appropriate culture on Earth (among others, Japanese for Shinei, French for Lena, and German for Frederika).
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Instead of getting the Sandevistan, David wields the power of a Kamen Rider. A side effect of this is that he has no risk for going cyberpsycho.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In canon, while Lucy and David are an Official Couple, Lucy initially keeps David at arms length for fear of losing him. Here, due to David saving her from her worst fear during his First Day from Hell, Lucy practically clings to him like a Security Blanket, to the point of giving up being Deputy Chief of Cybersecurity to become his secretary. Additionally, the two start bonding much faster due to Hiden's interference.
• Affectionate Nickname: Just as in Edgerunners, Rebecca affectionately calls David "dimples".
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Isu and the other higher ups of Hiden Intelligence intended to leave the world of Cyberpunk after taking care of Ark while keeping their interference to a minimum but were unable to do the latter due to their compassion pushing them to help the less fortunate.
• Animal Mecha: When Ark takes over large amounts of machinery, it tends to smash it together into the shape of an animal, combining a bunch of forklifts around Jose's body to resemble an elephant. It later grabs a school bus and combines it with a cargo truck to make a millipede-shaped monstrosity.
• Appeal to Force: The Tyger Claws have been attempting to drive Hiden out of their territory by attacking Hiden Private International School. When the Tygers refuse to stop and even bomb the premises, Zimmermann tells them to leave under threat of armed retaliation. The Tyger scoff at Zimmermann's threat while boasting about how they're not scared of a "Power Ranger Reject". That's when David and Lucy get the go ahead to flatten the Tygers's motorcycles and fry the Tygers's cyberware with daemons respectively.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: While listing reasons for Edgerunners to not become Corpos, the story lists out the loss of freedom and reputation from being beholden to a Corpo master, the loss of self-expression from being limited to company chrome, and the endless amounts of paperwork Corpos have to do. Shit sucks, yo.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Rebecca still has a habit of greeting people while holding a gun to their head, as she does with David on his first day of orientation.
• Assassin Outclassin': David's first visit to the Afterlife is followed by an attempt on his life by a sniper and a Mantis Blade-wielding assassin. He manages to get himself and Lucy out of the sniper sightline and subdues the assassin with Kamen Rider martial arts long enough for Lucy to quickhack the crook into submission.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Rebecca ends up wasting an entire Scorpion magazine (which costs over 65,000 eddies) because she keeps firing at a millipede Ark form's wheels, even when the wheels visibly regenerate.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Invoked. Isu deliberately jacks up the cost of the GM-01 Scorpion's ammunition to absurd levels (over 65,000 eddies per magazine) via invoices to shell companies and purposefully inefficient production methods. This is to make Hiden's weaponry look unappealingly expensive to prevent the proliferation of this level of technology even though Hiden could produce it far, far more cheaply with the technology it has at its disposal.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Doc is still cutting open people without anesthetic to install cyberware into them in this story. Woz and Misty try to introduce David to Viktor Vektor, but David is too creeped out by what Doc does and the tarot cards Misty left out to even consider going back there.
• Badass Biker: While he's a total gonk with a car, David is a whiz with a motorcycle and takes to the Cyclone Riser like a duck to water after going through the Kamen Rider tutorial. He's soon outrunning the paparazzi with it by jumping up and down buildings and weaving through traffic like a pro.
• Bad News in a Good Way: It's noted by David that Araska Academy has classes on how to "fuck people over with a veneer of civility''. David ends up having to put these to good use when he's forced to fire Julio for circumstances that would probably make even Arasaka balk due to their absurdity.
• Bait-and-Switch: When Frederika is first introduced, she's something of an Inspector Javert character due to believing that David is just a corporate attempt to cash out on Kamen Riders. This lasts less than a chapter due to David revealing the actual circumstances of how he got the suit, revealing that Kamen Riders actually exist.
• Believing Their Own Lies: A sympathetic example - Lucy has spent her whole life since leaving Arasaka believing that it would be impossible to achieve her dream of getting to the moon. First she believed that Arasaka would catch her. When she joined Hiden, she assumed that either they would force her to stay, or that Arasaka would grab her the minute she left. She even thought that Kiwi would force her to stay to avoid being overworked. It's only when David innocently points out that they easily make enough money to pay for a ticket to the moon (in the context of a vacation) that Lucy finally realizes that her dream is within reach and that she has been lying to herself about not being able to achieve it.
• Beneath the Mask: When speaking to MaxTac, David speaks with a kind of cocky bravado that masks how he's panicking and nervous beneath it all as a teenager staring down the barrels of multiple assault rifles.
• Big Entrance: Discussed. David reveals himself to the Tyger Claws by hopping over the side of a seven-story building and landing in their midst with ease. He then mutters that it might've been even cooler if R&D had finished the Zetsumerise Key designed to give him Invisibility so he could appear out of thin air.
• Blood Knight: V says that the shootout in Mexico made him feel more alive than he'd felt in years and reminisces about how fun it was to cut his way through the chaos with nothing but a priceless katana he found.
• Boring, but Practical: David is a little disappointed to find that the offices at Hiden are a dull, standard cubicle setting in comparison to the futuristic, cutting-edge offices of Arasaka. Rather than exuding power, Isu prefers to save eddies and use them for practical measures like these. Lucy and Kiwi also use ice baths not unlike the ones they used as Cyberpunks rather than Arasaka's cooling suits.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Aruto includes a tutorial program not unlike Zero-One's inside the Cyclone Riser for David to use, letting him fight competently as a Kamen Rider despite never transforming before. David soon finds that the lessons apply even outside the suit, letting him subdue a Mantis Blade-wielding assassin with nothing but his bare hands and some quickhacks from Lucy.
• Brain Bleach: An Ark-backed A.I. bounced off netrunner ICE and into the toilet system of a men's bathroom, resulting in it using the toilet to attack nearby people. While the A.I. was subdued without incident or casualties, everyone involved needed a bath and time alone after likely getting doused with septic tank fluid.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The Cyclone Riser was the first Transformation Trinket invented by Soreo Hiden long before the events of the story as a prototype for all of Hiden's other Riser and Driver units. Its stats are strictly inferior to that of the Zero-Two Driver used by Aruto and later Isu, but it's still more than sufficient to run circles around MaxTac units. Even more importantly, it's equipped with the ability to nullify Ark's influence, allowing David to rescue others who have been hacked by Ark.
• Broken Masquerade: Hiden has been working with Netwatch in secret to fight off Ark's attempts to breach the Blackwall for decades. But following Ark's reappearance and David's highly broadcasted first transformation and battle as a Kamen Rider, Isu comes clean about the dangers Ark poses and recommends everyone get an ICE upgrade to protect themselves from it.
• Bullying a Dragon: The young, stupid members of the Tyger Claws dispatched to start a turf war with Hiden think they have nothing to fear from a "Power Ranger Reject" like David. He quickly proves them wrong by scrapping more than a dozen superbikes inside of five seconds.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Hiden as a whole is run by a plethora of quirky personalities, such as Rebecca being the Trigger-Happy head of the Cyberpsycho division that subdues and rehabilitates cyberpsychos. David is even more shocked to learn that the entire faculty of Hiden Private International School consists of ex-German military officers, including a Hot-Blooded principal who treats education as a holy crusade to uplift the masses and a vice-principal in a maid outfit.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • David's inexperience, tendency to Open Mouth, Insert Foot, and complete lack of media experience means that he's a Hero with Bad Publicity who winds up being the butt of jokes at his expense. Jin exposes David's inability to drive properly to the entire Hiden R&D division, the media makes it so David sounds like a Hormone-Addled Teenager and a bottom, and he has absolutely no privacy due to his fame.
  • Kiwi on the other hand has to deal with all of the chaos David kicks up as a Kamen Rider, including suffering psychological damage from being attacked by an AI-controlled toilet and septic tank system. The author says this is intentional given her betrayal of the crew in Edgerunners.
• By-the-Book Cop: Melissa is a loyal MaxTac agent who wants things done by the book. But she's also a Trigger-Happy Blood Knight ex-cyberpsycho who would much rather take her perps in dead than alive since that's MaxTac's usual MO.
• Calling Your Attacks: The Cyclone Riser announces David's attacks whenever he uses them with enthusiastic shouting, music, and fanfare. David wonders if this is even necessary, but Lucy finds it catchy.
• The Cameo: Garry the Prophet grabs "a well-dressed Asian man in a well pressed black suit with a pink collared shirt, with a pink antique camera hanging around his neck from a strap" leaving Misty's Esoterica, referring to none other than Tsukasa.
• The Can Kicked Him: An A.I.'s attempts to hack an NCPD netrunner are repelled by the netrunner's ICE, resulting in the A.I. instead bouncing into the software of a nearby toilet. It then uses the toilet and septic system to attack the netrunner and anyone else nearby. While it's subdued without any casualties or injuries, everyone involved wants Brain Bleach from being covered in septic fluid and crap.
• Career-Building Blunder:
  • David fully expects to be fired after he blows the lid off The Masquerade Hiden and Netwatch had been upholding, wrecks Hiden General Hospital's construction site, and unveils Hiden's secret weapon to the world. He's not prepared for Isu's assurance that he'll instead be made the executive in charge of a new Kamen Rider Department of Hiden Intelligence.
  • One of the reasons why Maine's crew wound up getting hired by Hiden is that Lucy got on Isu's radar by attempting to electronically pickpocket the company. Cracking Hiden's ICE is notoriously difficult, so this indicated that Lucy and the rest of Maine's crew are immensely talented.
• Cassandra Truth: Thanks to having listened in on Hiden's private channels, Garry is more knowledgeable about the dangers of the multiverse than most other people in the world of Cyberpunk and does his best to let as many people know about them. The problems are: a) he's already known for being a crazy homeless guy who spouts out conspiracy theories and b) the dangers he's talking about sound just as crazy, if not crazier, than the things he used to say, so most people just brush it off and try to ignore him.
• Casual High Drop: David makes his presence known to the Tyger Claws attacking his school by leaping from the top of a seven-story building and landing in the center of them before casually walking over to one of the gangsters.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: David is in the shower when he gets a call about Ark hacking a school bus full of elementary school kids. The time it takes for him to get dressed, transform, and get down to the garage to grab the Rise Cyclone means that he's ten minutes late to the scene. Rebecca ribs him over this to his embarrassment.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: The Night City press is all over David following his first outing as a Kamen Rider and failure to maintain his Secret Identity. He can't go home to his apartment because reporters have already turned it upside down looking for salacious headlines to write and any house he buys with his new salary will be bugged within days. This means he's forced to hole up in his new office at Hiden Intelligence as the only place secure enough for him to maintain any kind of privacy.
• Clothes Make the Superman: In addition to being a Henshin Hero, David is surprised to learn that he can use one of Aruto's upgrades for the Cyclone Riser, "Rocking Arithmetic", so long as he's wearing the Rider Belt even when not transformed. This "super-thought" lets him process information extremely quickly thanks to being connected to Zea. This grants David enough Super-Reflexes to subdue an assassin in hand-to-hand combat and helps him multitask when dealing with large amounts of info. Woz implies that Aruto installed even more surprises inside and that David will discover more of them as he gains more experience.
• The Chooser of the One: Aruto Hiden passes the Cyclone Riser on to David, selecting him as the Kamen Rider of Night City, under the pretense of it being a mislabeled shipment.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: David is this twofold to his predecessor Kamen Riders, Aruto and Soreo Hiden.
  • David's background is the complete opposite of Aruto's. Rather than a failing comedian who became the heir of the most powerful tech company in the world due to nepotism, David is a struggling working-class teenager earning straight As in hopes of securing a better life as per his mom's wishes for him. Aruto has a firm dream of creating a world where everyone can smile from the heart, while David struggles to find his own purpose in life as someone born and raised in the slums of Santo Domingo until he becomes a Kamen Rider. They share a compassionate heart and desire to help others, but David is vastly more cynical about other's intentions than Aruto is at first.
  • David starkly contrasts the Cyclone Riser's previous wielder, Soreo Hiden. Both of them are motivated by love for their families and desire to find purpose through helping others. But while Soreo is patient, calm, and serious, David is impetuous and reckless. Soreo tricks Aruto into destroying him in the alternate timeline as a Secret Test of Character whereas subterfuge and deception is decidedly not David's strong suit.
• Cool Bike: The Rise Cyclone is an experimental nuclear-powered bike developed by Hiden that can only be fully utilized by a Kamen Rider. It can speed around at 200 mph while remaining completely manueverable through Night City's traffic. He can also take it Roof Hopping as it's capable of keeping up with a Kamen Rider's Le Parkour. It also has a "stealth mode" that lowers the top speed to a "mere" 50 mph while lowering the engine's sound to a barely audible hum, though it's undercut by how David is usually in a striking blue superhero outfit when he's using it.
• Corporate Samurai: V is working for Arasaka Counter-Intel during the events of the story, having just come back from a shootout in Mexico and getting 152 kills attributed to him with nothing but a katana. V, for his part, complains that half of those kills weren't his.
• Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: David represents Hiden Intelligence as a member of its NUSA board of directors, meaning that his actions can reflect well or poorly on Hiden's reputation. He also has all of Aruto's old corporate-themed weaponry like the Attache-calibur.
• Corpsing: In-Universe, Isu and Jin are trying very hard not to laugh when David tells Mosley that a guy named Aruto sent the Cyclone Riser as part of an allegedly mislabeled shipment.
• Crossing the Burnt Bridge: An interlude chapter reveals that Katsuo Tanaka has been trying to mend things with David at the request of his father, in the hopes of getting with Hiden. David, understandably, is having none of it, and permanently blocked Tanaka's number on his phone.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Gonks with less than military-grade cyberware simply can't keep up with the super strength and speed of a Kamen Rider. David makes fools of MaxTac in his first outing as Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata by disassembling an entire unit's weapons faster than they can blink. He later blitzes a group of Tyger Claws attacking his school, effortlessly flattening the gang's fleet of superbikes into scrap in five seconds.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Prior to signing on with Hiden, David suffered from a lack of direction, merely going along with his mother's wishes because he knows that it's rationally the best way to live comfortably and make her happy. But becoming a Kamen Rider and a Hiden executive who can actually make a difference gives his life the meaning and purpose he craved for some time. He tells his mom that he thinks it's what she would've done in his place and that he hopes to make her proud of him when she wakes up.
• Destructive Saviour: While David succeeds in rescuing Jose from being one of Ark's puppets, the resulting fight totals the H.I. General Hospital's construction site and sets the project back for months. When it comes time to secure the Shot Riser, David is given a CQC-focused Progrise Key because of the potential economic and political fallout if he were to wreck the space center while fighting off Ark and the cyberpunks out to claim the power of a Kamen Rider.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • David dares Ark to come at him out in the open before using his flashy Transformation Sequence...on live television. It isn't long before the press is breathing down his neck and picking apart his life story. He later laments that he could've transformed inside a porta-a-potty to maintain his Secret Identity, but he had to show off.
  • David absentmindedly promises Rebecca and the Cyberpsycho division some guns from the new Kamen Rider department after she gets up in arms about all the cool gear he has. He quickly regrets it when Jin reveals how expensive that gear is and how that's coming out of David's budget.
  • Kiwi's interlude has her expressing frustration over not being able to hold a conversation with David without him fleeing in terror, due to her overtly threatening him over his recklessness on multiple occasions.
  • Julio is mentioned as having used a rocket launcher on an A.I. drone that Kiwi was fighting. The problems with this are A. he stole it from the MaxTac unit on site, understandably angering them, B. He didn't bother doing any safety considerations, like checking for back blast or considering that he was in an indoor area, before firing, and C. part of the drone's body was a septic tank. David decides to fire him after Kiwi brings this up, both due to Julio committing a gaffe and not wanting to anger Kiwi anymore than he already has.
  • David decides to ask Lena if she could transfer some of his classmates to the Kamen Rider division because he thinks they would be well suited there and he is already aware of their skill set (and, unlike with Julio, knows that they are reliable). Lucy has to point out to him that he's asking her to transfer several of her friends (one of whom is her boyfriend) to a highly dangerous position and that he is unintentionally intimidating her due to being an executive.
• Dirty Business: David feels gross when he has to bribe the NCPD to keep Julio's screwup from becoming a legal shitstorm. This is after David promised to be better for his mom's sake and was settling into his role as the "incorruptible hero of justice". Maine tries to soften the blow by pointing out that good people like David's mom did what they had to do to get by.
• Diving Kick: In true Kamen Rider fashion, David finishes his first battle with Ark with a Rocking The End, Rider Kicking the monster into submission and freeing Jose from its influence. He does it again as a Dynamic Entry to reach some trapped children and later finishes off another A.I. with it.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Kiwi scoffs at the idea that Hiden has a special battle suit that would render the user a One-Man Army. She says this in the presence of David, who is carrying a briefcase containing the Transformation Trinket for a Kamen Rider, which is exactly what Kiwi described.
  • The public assumes that David's Snuff Film XBD collection was intended for another person, with most assuming it to be Katsuo Tanaka. Not only did those XBDs happen to be the ones David actually liked, but while Katsuo had no interest in snuff XBDs, his father does.
  • Frederika notably feels abandoned when none of her classmates take her stand on David being a fake Kamen Rider. David mentally notes that he felt the same way when all the Corpo kids at Arasaka Academy singled him out for not being born into wealth.
• The Dreaded:
  • Ark is an infamously powerful and dangerous A.I. with the ability to interact with the real world and turn anyone's cybernetics against them, including fusing other machinery to the victim and turning them into a bus-sized animal or insect-shaped monstrosity. Given that cyberware is the bread and butter of all of Night City's most powerful individuals, this makes Ark an existential threat to Night City's way of life.
  • Kiwi is the most feared of Maine's crew for her vindictiveness and skills as a netrunner. Her personal grudge against David for causing her so much trouble scares the shit out of him even though he's immune to her quickhacks thanks to ZEA. Pilar gets immediately quickhacked for helping David hire Julio and Rebecca just runs when David breaks the news to her. It gets so bad that David transforms and books it out the nearest window when she tells him she's coming for him. All of this is Played for Laughs.
• Drinking on Duty: Subverted. After getting invited to the Afterlife, David considers stashing some Brosephs in the fridge to deal with the stresses of Corpo life. Lucy strongly recommends against this, citing Isu's Tranquil Fury when Rebecca and Pilar tried to sneak contraband into the building against her strict orders to remain sober at work. Rebecca later tries to nudge David into doing this, only for Lucy to once again bring up the possibility of Isu finding out.
• Drives Like Crazy: After pulling out David's test results from the Kamen Rider tutorial, Jin bans him from driving anything with more than two wheels in earshot of Maine's crew and Hiden's entire R&D department. David, thoroughly embarrassed, complains that he was never taught to drive, but is inexplicably good with a bike despite his inability to drive a car properly.
• Dynamic Entry: David reaches the children trapped on a hacked school bus by Ark by using his finisher Diving Kick to punch all the way through to the section of the bus they're sealed in.
• Endearingly Dorky: His punkish, stand-offish nature aside, David is prone to sticking his foot in his mouth and coming across as a total dork, like when he cheers about having fresh underwear after being forced to bunk at Hiden Intelligence in the midst of the media storm he created. He's also equal parts nervous and excited to get invited to the Afterlife by Rogue Amendiares herself, getting tongue-tied in the process. Rebecca cites him being "adorable" as one of the reasons she doesn't mind babysitting him.
• Enemy Mine: Ark is so dangerous that its reappearance is enough for most of the gangs and fixers with brains to call a temporary truce and focus on rooting out this threat. Saburo and Yorinobu have also ceased warring with each other to direct Arasaka's resources toward suppressing Ark, which leaves a great deal of Arasaka personnel alarmed that it actually happened.
• Entertainingly Wrong: After learning from David that one of his predecessors is responsible for locking Ark behind the Blackwall, Frederika assumes that this means that the Kamen Rider franchise is based on real events and that Arasaka scrubbed it from history due to Kamen Riders standing against the corporation.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Saburo Arasaka may be an arrogant, ruthless, conniving, power-hungry bastard, but even he recognizes what an Omnicidal Maniac Ark is and that Hiden is the only organization capable of containing it. He was ready to throw Arasaka's support behind Hiden in the event that the NUSA tried to pressure Hiden into leaving, only not doing so because Europe and Asia spoke up first, relieving him of that burden. He's also willing to, at least temporarily, bury the hatchet with his rebellious son Yorinobu to focus Arasaka's efforts on curbing Ark's influence.
• Extinct in the Future: Unchecked corporate exploitation has driven most species of wildlife to extinction. When Falco wonders why Ark decided to turn a school bus into a millipede rather than something like a rhino for maximum destruction, Rebecca asks, "The fuck's a rhino?" Word of God indicates that even insects were affected, with mantids being among the groups to die out.
• Face Fault: David trips from the sheer ridiculousness of learning that the NCPD and Hiden staff got attacked by an AI-controlled toilet and septic system—and that it was Julio's fault.
• Famed In-Story: Due to his first transformation and battle with Ark being broadcasted on every TV in Night City, David is soon famous as the superhero who beat back Ark and Hiden Intelligence's first teenage executive.
• Fangirl: Frederika is a big fan of the Kamen Rider franchise. The Kamen Rider Fanclub at the Hiden School, of which she is the only member, is noted by David to look like a shrine.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Arasaka's corporate dominance and tight grip on Night City is mired in corruption and inefficiency as co-workers backstab each other constantly for a chance at advancement. V and the rest of its Counter-Intel division lament that Arasaka employees are still trying to make power grabs in the company instead of working together to counter an existential threat like Ark. By contrast, Hiden's healthy corporate culture and access to otherworldly technology lets them compete with Arasaka and Militech without putting their workers through the wringer.
• A Father to His Men: Maine feels a fatherly attachment to his crew and laments that he was unable to keep Sasha safe when she sacrificed her life to expose Biotechnica's wrongdoings. The main reason he agreed to become a Corpo working for Hiden is to keep his crew safe after Sasha's death. He feels especially responsible for David because of his age and his similarity to Sasha, primarily their shared ability to retain their kindness in a hellhole like Night City.
• Fish out of Water: David, having been taught in the cutthroat Arasaka Academy, is regularly flummoxed by how much nicer Hiden is. He's also shown to be almost hilariously shocked by just how well prepared Hiden is for fighting and how strong the chrome of some of his classmates is.
• Foil: Pilar and Kiwi. Kiwi was on of the least emotive members of Maine's crew, while Pilar was one of the most boistrous. Kiwi's entire face except her eyes have been replaced with chrome, while Pilar's head only has cybernetic eyes. Kiwi has plenty of traditional smarts as a netrunner, while Pilar has more street smarts than even he seems to be aware of (and incidentally appears to have a higher IQ than Kiwi). Kiwi initially had reservations with joining Hiden because of trust issues (namely not wanting them to make a mistake that would get Maine's group killed), while Pilar trusts them immediately for precisely this reason (namely recognizing that they need Hiden's help to at least manage Maine's chrome addiction).
• Foregone Conclusion: Sidestory and omake chapters have all but confirmed that Rebecca will become Kamen Rider Vendetta at some point in the future.
• Fortune Teller: Woz asks David to meet him at Misty's Esoterica, David walks in to find the Death arcana staring back at him, which Misty insists was left over from a previous reading. David, understandably creeped out by this and Misty's insistence that he meet Viktor Vektor, gets David to clear out and swear to never come back. Unbeknownst to him, the Death arcana is associated not with doom but with major change and transformation in one's life, perfectly matching his meteoric rise from broke Ordinary High-School Student to executive corpo and Kamen Rider.
• French Maid Outfit: Vice principal Theresa Winter inexplicably wears one of these despite being an otherwise serious, normal, and tired teacher. The sight of it is so bizarre that David considers getting new eyeballs because he thinks he's seeing things.
• Friend on the Force: Mosley acts as a guardsman who keeps Hiden updated on Ark's most recent whereabouts and any potential leaks it can get through. He helps police the net and assists Hiden's netrunners with containment and information-gathering.
• From the Mouths of Babes: While rescuing a group of kids Ark is holding hostage, David hears one of the shouts, "Madre de dios! We're all fucking dead, chooms! We're all fucked!" Given that the rest of the children are shouting age-appropriate fearful phrases like I Want My Mommy!, David stops to process what he just heard until Lucy gets him back on track.
• Geek Physiques: David was a straight-A student at Arasaka described as "gangly" and a doctor at Hiden Private Hospital says he really ought to work out and put on some muscle.
• Genre Refugee: Most of Hiden's staff and associated characters are notably at odds with the Cyberpunk world of Night City (which is the Trope Namer for Cyberpunk). Particularly notable is just how idealistic they are, even if it doesn't reach Wide-Eyed Idealist levels. Part of this can be excused due to the big-wigs of Hiden literally coming from a different universe, while most of Hiden's school staff and students hail from Europe, which is not under the thumb of the corporations in Cyberpunk 2077.
• Gilligan Cut: Lucy groans and says that Isu will never approve of David's plan to hire his classmates as part-time members of the Kamen Rider department. One page break later, Isu wholeheartedly supports David's initiative and signs off on measures to start drafting contracts.
• Godzilla Threshold: Ark is so dangerous that Saburo and Yorinobu are willing to pull an Enemy Mine and unite temporarily to oppose it. V's co-workers take this as a sign of how truly boned they are if Ark goes unchecked because Saburo and Yorinobu are never on the same page.
• Going Native: Despite continuing to work to find a way home, the members of Hiden Intelligence are equally devoted to improving the Crapsack World they've found themselves in, standing out as the only MegaCorp with an Honest Corporate Executive and fighting evil with Kamen Riders. They've also had to make some sacrifices to remain in business, as David is forced to bribe the NCPD to cover up Julio's screw-up.
• Good Feels Good: David beams with joy and pride when a school bus full of elementary school students thanks him for saving them from Ark. As someone who was Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life, this acknowledgement and appreciation means the world to him.
• Good Is Not Dumb: For all that Hiden is The Idealist, the organization is not stupid — their international school has multiple armories and the staff are ex-German military, because they know that they need to defend themselves against assault by the local gangs.
• Got Me Doing It: As a result of hearing so many terrible puns from Aruto, David occasionally uses them himself.
• Gratuitous Japanese: As robots produced by a Japanese company, Isu and Jin speak with Japanese Honorifics and intersperse Japanese phrases throughout their dialogue. Given how badly Arasaka dominates Night City, it's hardly out of place.
• Groin Attack: Rebecca punches Pilar in the groin after he makes some dumb remarks. He's more upset that she broke his Mr. Studd than the actual pain he felt from it.
• Hammy Herald: Woz is introduced congratulating David on the excitement that will come to define his life as a member of Hiden Intelligence before invading David's personal space and saying how he looks forward to seeing David seize his potential. He also exclaims his "Rejoice!" catchphrase upon David's first transformation.
• Hand Cannon: The GM-01 Scorpion is a handgun that fires incredibly expensive ammo with 22,000 pounds of force, making it a pistol-sized anti-materiel rifle. The recoil is so immense that Rebecca needs upgrades or an exoskeleton to handle it and it easily shatters concrete with a single shot.
• Handcuffed Briefcase: To David's alarm, the briefcase containing the Cyclone Riser handcuffs itself to his wrist and will only unlock with Isu's direct permission, forcing him to skip school and try to contact her to get it off. Woz instead bypasses the lock and allows David to use it to rescue Jose from Ark, setting David on the path to becoming a Kamen Rider.
• The Heart: It's implied that Pilar, of all people, was this for Maine's crew, as his interlude shows that he has the most emotional concern for his teammates and recognized that Maine needed Hiden's help to treat his chrome addiction.
• Henshin Hero: In true Kamen Rider fashion, David is able to access incredible Super-Strength and Super-Speed by transforming into Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata with the aid of the Rider Belt. With it, he's able to battle Ark wherever it appears by moving fast enough to Speed Blitz MaxTac units while kicking and punching with enough force to send tons of debris flying.
• Heroic Sacrifice: All of Hiden Intelligence previously believed that Aruto had died to trap the Ark within the Blackwall with Isu taking decades to recover from her Heroic BSoD.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Despite making an glowing first impression as a Kamen Rider, the media quickly pry into David's private life and discover his XBD tapes. It isn't long before Night City knows him as both a teenage superhero wunderkind and a horny gonk who lucked his way into an executive position at one of the most powerful corporations in the world.
• Hidden Depths: Surprisingly, Pilar's interlude reveals that, despite being very self-aware about his lack of intelligence, he scored higher than Kiwi on an IQ test. He's also very aware that Maine has chrome addiction and needs help to avoid going cyberpsycho.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: As part of the Needle in a Stack of Needles plan to conceal the shipment of the Shot Riser to Hiden NUSA HQ, multiple Hiden operatives are dressed in plainsclothes while transporting the packages. David is also dressed in normal clothes so he can be on the premises in the event that he has to transform.
• Honest Corporate Executive: In a MegaCorp-dominated world where 80-hour workweeks and a couple of days off a year are considered luxurious, Isu continues Hiden Intelligence's goal of bringing about a world of smiles. This also extends to the company's employees, as its internship benefits alone outstrip that of full-time employees at Arasaka. Employees aren't mandated to work on weekends and have full healthcare coverage. According to Isu, she hopes that Hiden Intelligence's example will improve worker rights around the world.
• Hope Is Scary: Kiwi's focus chapter reveals that her reason for being the member of Maine's crew most uncomfortable working with Hiden is because she's just not used to being able to trust others so earnestly. In particular, her hatred of David is because Lucy adores him, and Kiwi is worried that David will end up getting Lucy killed protecting him.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: The first thing Jose does when David and Lucy arrive on site is ask if David is into Lucy. David himself is a subversion, as he's more interested in snuff films than the pornographic XBDs the press found in his room.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: After hearing the leader of a group of Tyger Claws mooks say that they're not scared of David or Ark, David has to ask Lucy if this guy even knows that all the gangs, the Tyger Claws included, are scared shitless of Ark and what it can do. Lucy can only surmise that this group in particular is made up of idiots that the higher ups of the Tyger Claws want to get rid off as soon as possible, and that they are using Hiden to make that happen.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Downplayed. David loves the perks of being a Kamen Rider and an executive Corpo, but his life is moving so fast that he wants some sense of normalcy amidst the chaos as a teenager thrust into the role of a protector of humanity. This is the reason why he's so insistent on going to school despite his responsibilities.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Mosley is clearly frustrated with Hiden's "Rider bullshit" and wonders why a 17-year-old nobody like David got the Cyclone Riser instead of someone more experienced. After Isu announces David's promotion to executive, the narration says that Mosley could use a really, really strong drink.
• In a Single Bound: The superhuman strength and speed granted by the Kamen Rider suit lets David roof hop from building to building and perform feats of parkour that even the most seasoned edgerunners would be in awe of. He back flips 200 feet in the air without a problem and sticks the landing with grace.
• The Intern: David gets his start with Hiden Intelligence when Isu offers him an internship with its cybersecurity division to help him get back on his feet following his mother's near-fatal car accident during a shootout on the highway. Rebecca, Kiwi, and Lucy initially use him as an errand boy to get cigarettes from the vending machine, but that ends after he's suddenly promoted to executive Corpo by becoming a Kamen Rider.
• In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: Inverted. David believes he must be dreaming after flatlining in the car crash when Isu foots the bill for Gloria's continued treatment and offers him an internship at Hiden Intelligence. He brushes the thought away when he takes Isu's offer.
• Irony:
  • Gloria slaved away for years and illegally illegally sold chrome she removed from dead cyberpsychoes to get David into Arasaka Academy in the hopes that he would one day end up on Arasaka's top floor. The events that happen after she gets put in the hospital cause David to instead become an executive of Hiden practically overnight.
  • While looking through David's XBD collection, everyone assumes that he was interested in the pornographic ones and that he was selling the Snuff Film ones to someone else, when the pornos were a joke gift given by Doc and the snuff ones were what he was actually interested in. Even more ironically, the assumed customer for the snuff XBDs was Katsuo.
  • This time around, it is Lucy who is completely smitten with David, who returns her feelings in a more reserved manner.
• Just a Kid: David is as surprised as anyone else when he's chosen to become a Kamen Rider, agreeing with Mosley's assessment that someone like Maine would be better suited for the role than a gangly teenager with no idea what he's doing. He reiterates that he's just seventeen when Woz tells him that it'll be David's duty to uplift others as Isu and the rest of Hiden Intelligence did for him.
• Katanas Are Just Better: During a shootout in a Mexican megabuilding, V apparently managed to find Honjo Masamune, a priceless national treasure-class sword forged by Masamune himself to cut through "a little more than half" of the eighty-nine gang-bangers he admits to killing with Jackie Welles. Despite the sword being nearly eight centuries old, it cut through meat and chrome like a knife through butter and makes him the talk of Arasaka's Counter-Intel office.
• Kid Hero: 17-year-old David is the only member of the main cast to still be in school when he joins Hiden Intelligence. He's frequently referred to as a "schoolboy" saddled with the responsibility of taking out the most dangerous A.I. behind the Blackwall, Ark, wherever it appears.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After spending hours fighting off countless Netrunners from across Night City, Kiwi decides to let them have the Hiden General Hospital servers before calling it a day. After all, the only data on them is a list of robot dogs being given out to children at orphanages and kindergartens.
• Liberty Over Prosperity: Maine's crew gave up the freedom of being respected mercs to take up Corpo roles at Hiden Intelligence. While many of their contacts lambasted them for selling out, Maine and the others know that the eddies, access to medical care, and protection from Arasaka are all too good for them to pass up.
• Lightning Bruiser: Kamen Riders are this relative to almost everything else in the Cyberpunk universe. They can punch and kick with the concentrated force of multiple tons of TNT going off, shrug off enormous impacts, and run circles around Kerenzikov users with ease. Militech estimates that a single Kamen Rider could decimate an entire armed battalion.
• Living Emotional Crutch: David unintentionally becomes one to Lucy after saving her from Ark - Lucy is so terrified of the latter due to her Dark and Troubled Past that, after David proves able to defeat Ark, she really starts looking for ways to spend time with him and is noticeably more relaxed around him. Her reasoning for becoming his secretary highlights this—not only does she like him, she needs to face Ark for all the hell it put her through in the past, and David is her ticket to them.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: David learns that the Cyclone Riser is now locked to his DNA after he transformed for the first time, meaning that he's the only one able to use it.
• Man of Kryptonite: Given how important cyberware to Night City, Ark represents an existential threat to the city's way of life. In a place where more chrome = more power, Ark's ability to subvert and turn that chrome against them makes it an unfathomably dangerous threat to Night City's population.
• Meaningful Rename: Isu takes on the Hiden name upon taking on the role of Hiden Intelligence's president, demonstrating her continued devotion to Aruto's and Korenosuke's ideals and the world of smiles they aspired to create.
• The Merch: In-Universe example - one omake chapter has Lucy reveal that Kiden wants to make merch for David as a Kamen Rider, specifically an action figure. She manages to manipulate him into at least being open to the idea, and after informing the developer of said toys as much, proceeds to squee over how she will get her own David Martinez action figure.
• Mirror Character: Rebecca and Melissa Rory are Trigger-Happy Blood Knights who use hi-tech weaponry to take down cyberpsychoes and heavily enjoy their jobs. It's made clear the only reason they don't get along is that, as a MaxTac officer and a Hiden Cyberpsycho Division associate respectively, Melissa's generally tasked with killing cyberpsychos while Rebecca is tasked with bringing them in alive for rehabilitation.
• Mission Control: Lucy's primary role in the Kamen Rider department is to act as this for David, keeping him updated on the situation, driving the Rise Cyclone remotely when David is fighting, and coordinating efforts between Hiden and local authorities.
• Moment Killer: Just as Shin and Lena are about to hold hands, Frederika interjects to reveal that David is a real Kamen Rider. Lena mentally notes that she's probably never going to have the courage to attempt this again, while verbally wondering if Frederika is psychic.
• Mundane Utility: The Super-Speed and Le Parkour granted by being a Kamen Rider is great for manuevering around Ark's monsters. David also uses his powers to outrun the press (who have surrounded the Hiden office twenty-four-seven) and get around without getting stuck in traffic jams.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Inverted with Pilar, who is fine with Becca (potentially) pursuing a relationship with David, as David could provide a spruce of stability for her that Pilar can't.
• Mystery Meat: Due to cows being nearly extinct in the setting, burgers are made from things like worm protein. Woz comments on the quality of the meat when he sits down with David at a diner to discuss the nature of Kamen Riders.
• Mythology Gag:
  • David using his Kamen Rider powers to get Lucy and himself to their medical appointments calls to mind Episode 2 of Edgerunners, where Lucy released the gurney David was on to escape the cyberpunks posing as doctors. In an inversion of those events, it's Lucy who is staring at David in awe as opposed to the other way around.
  • Kiwi mentions that the only data that the netrunners trying to break into Hiden's hospital servers have is the list of Thousers being given out to kindergarteners and orphaned children, referencing Gai Amatsu's beloved robot dog whose loss was the beginning of his Start of Darkness.
  • David's efforts to reach Hiden General via his Kamen Rider powers also calls to mind his absurd driving in Episode 3 of Edgerunners.
  • Maine's thoughts on David bring up Sasha, a former member of his crew who was only seen in a music video promoting Edgerunners.
  • The first batch of new weapons that Hiden Intelligence provides to the Edgerunners are the GM-01 Scorpion and the GX-05 Kerberos.
  • While eating with Woz, David thinks Woz is a "mumbo jumbo wizard person" for somehow keeping attention off them in the middle of a crowded diner. Woz says that while magic is real, it's Haruto's specialty more than his.
  • After hearing a bit of what Woz, Jin, and Isu can do, David wonders what other powers the Kamen Riders who came before him might have. He stops himself from thinking that jamming out on a guitar or beating on drums too hard could be a Kamen Rider power because of how silly that'd be.
  • The Recursive Canon plot point is derived from Kamen Rider Saber + Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger Super Hero Senki, in which Touma inspires Shotaro Ishinomori to continue writing and drawing about superheroes, ensuring the continued existence of the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai worlds.

N to Z

• Needle in a Stack of Needles: When Isu has the Shot Riser called in from Japan, she makes sure to conceal it by having several identical shipments with fakes being shipped through different channels. This is to make each delivery look like the real one to decieve any potential attempts at interception by Ark or a Cyberpunk looking to exploit the power of a Kamen Rider.
• New Transfer Student: David is required to transfer to Hiden Private International School as part of his internship package and to sever his ties to Arasaka. While no one actually expects him to attend after he becomes Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata, he insists on going to give himself some semblance of normalcy in his life and a break from the pressures of work.
• No Badass to His Valet: David technically outranks Maine's crew by virtue of being an executive of Hiden Intelligence's NUSA branch. But he's so inexperienced and out of his depth that Maine and the others treat him more like a kid to be mentored than their boss from another department.
• No Hero to His Valet: Kiwi hates David's guts for the hordes of netrunners she had to fight off following his debut as Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata, and her fears that his naivety and recklessness will get her and Lucy killed. She never minces words with him even though he outranks her as a board executive and the two trade barbs and swear words regularly. Her interlude confirms that her feelings on the matter are more complex than she will admit, and wonders how to talk to him about it without getting him to run away in terror.
• Noodle Incident: Hiden's PR and Marketing teams were able to get Rebecca into a mascot outfit once because she owed them so much.
• No-Paper Future: David complains that it's 2077 when Pilar and Rebecca make a mess of his office by printing out all their findings on paper, while conducting an investigation into the gangs of Night City. He wonders why they didn't just use digital displays or at least used a different, unused meeting room to make a mess in. Dorio also struggles to gently turn the pages of paper documents because of how flimsy they are to her and her cyber-muscles.
• No-Sell: David's connection to ZEA via the Cyclone Riser gives him the highest level of ICE imaginable, rendering him immune to quickhacks, even from netrunners as skilled as Kiwi. This means she has to get creative when tormenting him as revenge for his screw-ups.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Justified. When David's plan to stop a runaway bus goes awry, he tries to stop it from going careening off the road by using monowire as a Blade Brake to anchor the bus to the highway above it. Luckily for everyone involved, Hiden's R&D took a situation like this into account and had the monowire gradually tighten to slow the bus down rather than bringing it to a sudden stop, letting it gently hang a foot from the ground without throwing the passengers overboard.
• No True Scotsman: Frederika is initially hostile to David because she views him as an attempt by Hiden to cash in on Kamen Rider to make a quick buck. His attempts to explain himself get rebuffed as she denounces him as a fake and a corporate shill as Showa-era Kamen Riders were never part of a corporation. Once she learns how David got the Cyclone Riser, revealing that Kamen Riders are real in the process, her opinion does a complete 180 as he immediately fills all of her criteria for a "real Kamen Rider".
• Oblivious to Hints: Faraday has been sending Kiwi a nonstop stream of emails asking for insider details on Hiden in exchange for eddies, seeming not to notice that he's actively being ignored (Kiwi has sent them straight to the junk bin).
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: David runs away before Jin and Woz start fighting, but he hears about some of the collateral damage that the fight caused in the news.
  It was not a sure thing, but there was a nice, formerly empty, part of the badlands ten miles from the Night City city limits proper that was now on fire. There was also 'the largest fire tornado in the west coast since the time of RED' that was thankfully moving away from the city rather than towards it.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Kiwi is furious with David after the media fiasco he created with his public debut forces her to fight practically every netrunner in Night City trying to break into Hiden's servers to learn more about the mysterious Kamen Rider. She repeatedly brings this up whenever anyone has complaints about her behavior because of the grudge she developed from battling her way through the netrunner equivalent of Verdun.
• One Degree of Separation: V's and David's respective social circles overlap to this extent. V's favorite ripperdoc, Viktor Vektor, is based in the same building as Misty, who's the girlfriend of Jackie Welles, a friend of the Martinezs. The author has gone on the record about his intentions to keep this level of separation as V and David operate differently.
• Only in It for the Money: Subverted. On the surface, this is the reason why Maine's crew "sold-out" and went from being respected Cyberpunks to Corpo minions. But their side chapters paint a different picture. Maine is a Father to His Men who wanted to give his crew a better, safer life, Kiwi wanted to be free of the cutthroat backstabbing and paranoia that came with life in Night City, and Pilar wanted to make sure that his Family of Choice (especially Maine given his chrome addiction) got the treatment and care they needed.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • The normally foul-mouthed and boisterous Rebecca, after receiving unintentional advice by David about how to gain some of Hiden's cutting edge weapons legally, gives him a relatively quiet and serious thank-you. Everyone is visibly unnerved by her Dissonant Serenity.
  • When Rebecca asks to know more about Hiden Aruto, Isu looks and sounds like a smitten woman than the professional and polite business executive that the Edgerunners were used to dealing with.
  • Saburo and Yorinobu Arasaka never agree on anything, so the fact that they buried the hatchet temporarily in regards to Ark immediately leaves all Arasaka employees on edge.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot:
  • David has a habit of sticking his foot in his mouth because of how fast his life is moving. During his first day on the job, he thoughtlessly calls attention to a briefcase that Aruto says the other Mega Corps would kill to get. Later on, he congratulates Kiwi on cleaning up the media fiasco... momentarily forgetting that it's the same fiasco he caused, earning him a prolonged death threat from her.
  • This is discussed by Regina, who remarks how obvious it is that David has no experience handling the media, making him an easy target for slander and smear jobs. He asks her former colleague Max to look out for David, lest David be buried under a pile of undeserved bad press.
• Ordinary High-School Student: While David was a straight-A student and an outsider among the corpo elite, Arasaka intelligence indicates that there aren't any physical or genetic markers that make him special. His courage and willingness to help others aside, he's a perfectly ordinary teenager with no traits that would mark him as an ideal Kamen Rider. Given that David doesn't chrome up like his Edgerunners counterpart, he has no reason to believe he's anything special either as he doesn't discover his tolerance for cyberware. David's life before Hiden is so ordinary his classmates at Hiden International Private School are dumbstuck that he's never learned to shoot and kill to survive given the nature of Night City. One side chapter has Saburo Arasaka himself wonder what David was born with to enable his compatibility to the Hiden Rider System despite his normality and status as this trope, unable to realize that it's what's in David's character, not his genes, that determined his ability to use it.
• Outside-Context Problem: Ark and the Kamen Riders are entities completely outside the normal frame of reference of the Corpos and Cyberpunks in Night City. In particular, Ark's abilities (which including violating the law of conservation) make it a threat beyond even what MaxTac—a police unit that specializes in stopping cyberpsychos through lethal force—can handle.
  • Ark's presence in the Old Net didn't just leave Lucy with more trauma than her Edgerunners counterpart; it has also left the AIs in said Old Net in disarray. Most if not all AIs are misanthropic, but Ark has apparently gained many of those programs as allies through fear, while other AIs just want to get the hell away from this thing. And this is before factoring in the allies of Hiden and the Ex-Aid Kamen Riders fighting Ark within the Old Net.
  • The gangs find David to be this even more than those who were already in the know, like Arasaka, as they can't properly gauge just how much of a threat he is.
• The Paragon: Woz tells David that Kamen Riders are meant to both protect the people and uplift them from where they currently are.
  "A Kamen Rider's true power has always been to be the deciding factor on the course of history. To prune undesirable outcomes through martial prowess, and to cultivate better futures through their charisma, intellect, or force of will. Most importantly, to inspire and uplift those that come after them, just as Isu Hiden and Aruto Hiden uplifted you… and you will uplift others."
• Passing the Torch: The Cyclone Riser is Aruto's private property and not owned by Hiden Intelligence, meaning that Aruto specifically chose David to become a new Kamen Rider. This is part of the reason why David gets a Rank Up to the head of a new department so quickly, as Isu respects Aruto more than anyone and trusts in his decisions.
• Pen-Pushing President: Despite being a Kamen Rider, David still has to deal with normal corporate things—including writing a notice of termination for Julio after the latter manages to have an Epic Fail through pure stupidty on his first day at work. He mentally notes that his classes in Arasaka Academy for putting Bad News in a Good Way are already being put to use.
• Perception Filter: Woz is able to manipulate people's perceptions to let him and David sit down at a diner without being hounded by people who know David's face from his Kamen Rider debut. Woz specifies that this isn't something David can learn, telling him to see if Hiden has any solutions for maintaining David's privacy.
• Point of Divergence: Due to Isu's intervention, Gloria has a chance of recovering from the accident that claimed her life in Edgerunners and David has both a stable job and an education to look forward to. This also means that he lacks the impetus to become a Cyberpunk, selling the Sandevistan his mom looted to Doc as planned. Lampshaded by Woz, who remarks that David's legend is going to be different than it would have been had Isu (and the Kamen Rider universe in general) not been around.
  Woz: (to David) You have taken your first steps on the long road to fulfilling a great destiny. It will be different from the legend you would have carved had Hiden Isu-san not intervened, but even the flapping of a butterfly's wings will not change who you are.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: David doesn't get the reference when Aruto claims he can complete the tutorial because he has all the time in 'za Worldo' because he doesn't read Japanese cartoons, although he also claims that Arasaka didn't import things like anime, so that might also have been a factor.
• Pretender Diss: Frederika feels that David is not worthy of being a Kamen Rider, believing him to instead be a corporate shill in the same manner as Arasaka's corruption of other Sentai works. She's completely unaware he's an actual Kamen Rider, having gained his powers from a different Kamen Rider setting that the Cyberpunk world never made before the DataKrash.
• Properly Paranoid: Hiden Intelligence makes sure that all of their buildings are as fortified as possible. This is due to the many, many stories Isu and her friends have heard from the other Kamen Riders and them reading up on Night City's history. This comes in handy when members of the Tyger Claws bomb Hiden's school.
• Public Domain Artifact: Honjo Masamune is a katana forged by the legendary blacksmith Masamune and an artifact worthy of being called a national treasure. After stumbling upon it on an assignment, V uses it to cut this way through more then fifty chromed-up men in a shootout without the blade chipping, despite it being nearly eight centuries old at that point. It's so cool that V is worried that the fiercely patriotic Saburo Arasaka would have V's head for using it as a meat cleaver.
• Pun: As per usual, Aruto's comedy skits rely too heavily on bad wordplay. He says that Hiden Manufacturing does a "Satis-Factory job" and tells David that it's "Phone-omenal" to meet him. This inevitably elicits a Lame Pun Reaction from David, who grimaces when he makes an Accidental Pun in a case of Got Me Doing It not long after finishing the Kamen Rider tutorial. Jin also plays into it from time to time, saying it keeps Aruto around Hiden in spirit.
• Quickly-Demoted Woman: Subverted with Lucy - while she swiftly loses her position as Deputy Head of Cybersecurity for Hiden's Night City branch, this is because she made the choice to become David's secretary (to his shock), and her old boss, the equally feminine Kiwi, is still heading Cybersecurity.
• The Quisling: The Voodoo Boys are considered the prime suspects behind the holes in the Blackwall that Ark is reaching through. They hope that helping the AIs like Ark will earn them favors when the AIs eventually break free from the Old Net.
• Rank Up: Exaggerated with David, who goes from intern to Executive at Hiden practically overnight.
• Razor Floss: The Spinning Spider Progrise Key creates superheated monowire for David to use. It's sharp enough to slice through reinforced steel like it was made of paper. David also uses it as a Blade Brake to stop a school bus from careening over a highway barrier.
• Recursive Canon: Kamen Rider as a franchise apparently exists in David's world as a work by Shotaro Ishinomori pre-DataKrash. David can only respond with a Flat "What" when confronted with this knowledge and is baffled when Frederika calls him a copyright infringer and a fake Kamen Rider.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Jin is fully on board with Hiden Intelligence's mission to produce a world where everyone smiles from the heart. But the glee he takes in providing Kamen Rider-tier weaponry to Rebecca and the Cyberpsycho division as well as his willingness to pick a fight with Woz over petty reasons indicate that his old habits as an ex-terrorist die hard.
• Retired Badass: Hiden Private International School's faculty consists entirely of retired German military officers who have access to three fully-stocked armories on campus. This is unfortunately a necessity, as the nature of Night City means that gangs like the Maelstrom, Tyger Claws, and the 6th Street would have no qualms with shooting up a school or holding it hostage.
• Rescue Romance: It's implied that Lucy starts falling for David after he fights off Ark after his first transformation.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Unbeknownst to the rest of Night City, Isu, Jin, and many members of Hiden Intelligence are disguised Humagears, androids who can seamlessly pass for humans with total free will after achieving Singularity.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Arasaka and Militech both assumed that Hiden had some kind of secret weapon kept under wraps. While correct, they never considered that Hiden had it intended for a target other than humans.
• Roof Hopping: The superhuman speed and strength granted by the Kamen Rider suit lets David easily parkour his way across buildings In a Single Bound. He later discovers that he can do this with the Rise Cyclone too when he's in a hurry.
• Rookie Red Ranger: David rockets up to executive Corpo status practically overnight thanks to becoming Kamen Rider Ichi-Gata. But he's utterly out of his depth and needs constant pointers from others for guidance in both the corporate field and his battles as a Kamen Rider.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Maine's thoughts reveal that he was thinking of cutting Lucy loose after learning that she got caught trying to picksocket Isu Hiden to keep the rest of his crew safe. It didn't come to that, but he's ashamed that he even contemplated doing so to a member of his crew.
  • Under the pretense of having to catch up on his emails, David excuses himself from a tense meeting between Jin and Woz and promptly books it upon hearing the activation of the Slashriser and the Beyondriver.
  • After David informs Rebecca that Kiwi is after her due to Rebecca helping David vet Julio (who screwed up his first day so badly that Kiwi was mentally scarred), and that Kiwi is currently taking her revenge on Pilar (who also helped vet Julio), Rebecca takes David's advice and makes a run for it. David does the same when Kiwi declares that she's coming for him.
• Secret Test of Character: When David's classmates decide whether or not to take up his offer to join the Kamen Rider department, Shin watches without saying a word. The narration then reveals that Shin already agreed to join, but only shared this with Theo, Kurena, and Raiden, because he only wants his friends to join if it is their choice, since if they knew, all of them would follow him out of loyalty.
• Sexy Secretary: Lucy ends up becoming one for David, as she explicitly requests a transfer once he puts in a request for a secretary. It's for equal parts wanting to be close to David and needing to confront Ark.
• Share the Male Pain: All the men in the room (save Jin) simultaneously wince after Rebecca punches her brother in the groin for making fun of how her height prevents her from driving the Rise Cyclone.
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: David misses his first day at his new school at Hiden because of being stuck with a Handcuffed Briefcase, and the chaos that came with his debut as a Kamen Rider forces him to not go to school for a while longer. He's actually concerned that about how behind he'll be when he hasn't even set foot on campus by the end of the week. This is Played for Laughs, as his co-workers are dumbstruck that he's worried about school when he just dodged an assassination attempt (and Rebecca rescinds her disapproval of David's priorities if it means he won't turn out like Pilar). Heck, even people outside of Hiden, like MaxTac, can't believe David's actually anxious about heading to school when he mentions it, leaving him frustrated that that is the unbelievable part.
• Shout-Out:
  • The leader of Hiden's legal team is named Apollo Wright.
    • Apparently, another member is named Vinny Gambini.
  • The mercenaries that Regina hires when going to see Max are based on the Bebop Crew.
  • David's classmates and teachers in the new Hiden school are based on the cast of 86 EIGHTY-SIX.
• Sketchy Successor: Mosley is baffled that David, who is Just a Kid with no experience in the corporate world or as a combatant, got the Cyclone Riser and blew The Masquerade wide open. David himself is confused about why Aruto chose him of all people to take up the Kamen Rider mantle and is under immense pressure to succeed despite his inexperience. Regardless, Isu assures David and the world that he is the right man for the job due to her faith in Aruto's decision.
• Skewed Priorities: David's co-workers are confused by his insistence on going to school when he's got the fate of humanity on his shoulders and is already making a six-figure salary. But he believes that he needs a little bit of normality in his life given how Roof Hopping at 200 mph on a nuclear-powered motorcycle is quickly becoming his new "normal".
• Slave to PR:
  • As depraved as the Mega Corps of Night City are, even Arasaka and Militech wouldn't be able to escape the media shitstorm they'd get if they blew up a school bus full of elementary school children taken hostage by Ark. That's why they leave the problem to Hiden once they realize that the hacked driver isn't the only man on board.
  • After dealing with the Tyger Claws attacking Hiden International Private School, Lucy points out that Jotaro is now honorbound to retaliate and start a turf war after the group he sent to attack Hiden got humiliated. On the flipside, Hiden would risk appearing weak and invite further attacks if they didn't respond in kind, making said turf war inevitable.
    David: Corpo politics and posturing is bullshit.
    Lucy: Why do you thinkmost Edgerunners thought we were crazy for singing up with Hiden?
• Smarter Than You Look:
  • Rebecca may be a foul-mouthed Trigger-Happy Blood Knight, but she's also an avid reader of science fiction, particularly works by Philip K. Dick. She gets up in arms when David expresses surprise at her using complex vocabulary during first impressions.
  • David's attitude, punkish appearance, and naivety as a teenaged executive Corpo means that a lot of people underestimate his intelligence. But he quickly and correctly deduces that Isu and Jin are Kamen Riders themselves solely from their reactions to David getting mailed the Cyclone Riser and their familiarity with Kamen Rider tech. As David himself says, those straight-A grades didn't earn themselves.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Due to the immediate intervention of Hiden Intelligence, Gloria Martinez is merely put into a medical coma rather than killed.
  • Can also be applied to the members of MetsubouJinrai.NET and Azu since they were transported to the Cyberpunk world before the events of Zero-One Others could take place.
  • Diego Ramirez, the cyberpsycho from the "Smoke on the Water" side gig, can potentially be killed by V in the game in self-defense. In this story, he's been rehabilitated and is working under Rebecca as part of Hiden's Cyberpsycho Retrieval division.
• Speed Blitz: David's first encounter with MaxTac ends with him using Ichi-Gata's overwhelming speed to dismantle their guns before they can shoot Jose.
• Spoiler: Woz reveals to David that Hiden Intelligence's Japanese HQ is sending over a Shotriser to be given to another Night City employee of David's choosing. This was supposed to be an enormous surprise on Isu's and Jin's part and Woz spoils it as revenge for Jin chasing him down the other night for not telling them that Aruto is alive. It isn't long before Jin picks a fight with Woz over it, resulting in a fire tornado that lights the badlands outside of Night City ablaze.
• Starstruck Speechless: David's reaction to meeting with Rogue Amendiares, Queen of the Fixers and owner of the Afterlife, is to call her "Missus" and speak excessively politely like the starstruck schoolboy he is. He immediately catches himself and realizes that he just screwed up her first impression of him, but keeps running his mouth a while longer until Rogue changes the subject to get David in focus.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Woz has a habit of appearing and disappearing whenever he feels like it, making his entrance after David's orientation to tell him about how different his legend is going to be thanks to Isu before vanishing just as quickly. This spooks David, who mutters that he's going to need some chrome for his heart if this keeps up.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: As a Kamen Rider working for Hiden, David is able to showcase his idealism and Nice Guy personality in an environment that supports it. He's an Endearingly Dorky but reckless hero who becomes a Lightning Bruiser of a Kamen Rider when transformed and fights to defend humanity from an Omnicidal Maniac. While smart, David's impetuousness and inexperience means that he doesn't always think things through, leaving his more savvy co-workers to pick up the slack for him.
• Stunned Silence: When Melissa asks for a statement from Hiden on the resolution of the hacked bus incident, David floors her by asking to hurry it up because he's late for school. She's so baffled by this statement that she drops her tablet and is left standing there with her jaw open.
• Super-Reflexes: David is surprised to learn that he has access to Ichi-Gata's Rocking Arithmetic ability even when he isn't transformed, letting him process and respond to information as though time had slowed to a crawl.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When David leaves the office to meet Woz, Isu assumes David is being proactive in his role as a Kamen Rider. In truth, David wanted to get away from the office and put off dealing with HR work and the deluge of emails in his inbox.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Kiwi denies that Hiden has a secret weapon that could change the face of warfare or an armored battle suit with enough power to take on an entire NUSA armored battalion. David says that's an awfully specific reference, but Kiwi says that's simply what Arasaka and Militech think Hiden has. Unbeknownst to David and Kiwi at the time, the mega-corps are right.
• Take That!: After his experiences with "Doc", David is understandably apprehensive about meeting with Viktor and asks Woz to meet him at a nearby diner instead. The author says this is a light jab at fanfics in which Viktor's gentler touch solved all of David's problems with chrome in Edgerunners.
• Tempting Fate: In the first chapters, David thinks that nothing can possibly go wrong at his new internship right before he's greeted by Rebecca with a gun to his head at the door. When he gets word from Aruto that an extremely important package is being shipped to him, David wonders how much trouble a single package could possibly be. Later that day, he's attacked by Ark at a construction site and has to use the package to become a Kamen Rider.
• Terms of Endangerment: While confronting the Tyger Claws, David calls one of the currently scared shitless gangsters "choom" as he prepares to pancake the gang's superbikes against a nearby wall. He then threatens to do the same to the Tyger Claws themselves if they don't leave.
• Theme Naming: David's power set and abilities are named and themed around insects, in part due to the sheer number of animals that are Extinct in the Future (with Word of God indicating that mantids and other insects were not spared).
• This Is Gonna Suck: David's reaction to realizing that, among the other things that happened since joining Hiden, he'll have to tell his mom how he ended up with Lucy as his secretary.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: David asks Woz why one of the other, more experienced Kamen Riders handle Ark instead of a total Rookie Red Ranger like him. Woz responds that letting the other Kamen Riders operate too openly could trigger a Lensman Arms Race with the other Mega Corps, particularly Arasaka and Militech. He also says this is David's story, not Isu's or Jin's, and to ask them for more answers as to why they haven't intervened in public sooner.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Isu forbids the use of Black ICE in Hiden's cybersecurity measures, which frustrates Kiwi to no end when she has to repel the same netrunners over and over again when they try to break into Hiden's servers.
• Tranquil Fury: Isu never has to raise her voice to let everyone know when she's upset, addressing everyone with the same impeccably polite tone as she always does. And yet, everyone straightens up and starts sweating bullets with a collective Oh, Crap! when Isu shows up in the aftermath of David's debut as a Kamen Rider.
• Trapped in Another World: Hiden Intelligence and the Kamen Riders are not native to David's world, having been sent there decades ago by a battle with Dai-Shocker. While they're still trying to find a way home, Hiden Intelligence continues to try to make the world a better place even in locales as dangerous and corrupt as Night City.
• Trauma Button: Ark is this for Lucy - when it is unleashed in Chapter 2, Lucy is reduced to a terrified mess and just wants to cower in a corner and hope it doesn't find her.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: David's classmates all know how to carry, maintain, and use a gun and are prepared to shoot to kill given the enormously violent nature of Night City. The fact that he doesn't and isn't ready to kill people gets him ribbed by his class and co-workers who wonder how he's survived this long.
• Truce Zone: As per usual, the Afterlife is the home of Rogue Amendiares, Queen of the Fixers, and a strict neutral zone where violence among factions won't be tolerated. So when David narrowly dodges an assassination attempt just outside its doors, every Cyberpunk and Corpo inside is immediately on the hunt for the perpetrators who broke the truce.
• Wacky Homeroom: David's class at Hiden is significantly more bizarre than his former class at Arasaka. This is Justified in that not only is Hiden filled with Bunny-Ears Lawyers, but most of the staff and students are from Europe, which has a notably different culture than Cyberpunk's version of the United States and Japan (namely, the corporations don't have the same amount of clout there as they do in their home turfs).
• We ARE Struggling Together: Hiden and MaxTac are ostensibly on the same side when it comes to subduing cyberpsychos to mitigate loss of life. But in practice, the two butt heads over Hiden's idealistic desire to rehabilitate cyberpsychoes when MaxTac officers like Melissa Rory are Blood Knights who'd rather take their perps dead than alive (not that Rebecca is much better in the Trigger-Happy department).
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jin furiously calls out Woz for withholding the fact that Aruto is still alive albeit trapped within the Blackwall.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Rebecca's default solution to most problems is to shoot it. She's especially happy to shoot her new Hand Cannon helpfully provided by Jin out of David's budget. This mindset works against her when she empties the entire magazine into the wheels of a bus hacked by Ark even though the wheels keeps regenerating thanks to a special liquid metal alloy. David thanks Lucy for stopping Becca from wasting another 65,000 eddies worth of ammunition.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Discussed. From the perspective of the Mega Corps of Night City, Hiden Intelligence seems suicidally generous with its pay, work hours, acts of charity, and willingness to rehabiltiate cyberpsychos as part of its goal of bringing about a world where everyone smiles from the heart. Lucy wonders if Isu was dropped on her head as a child to be this nice, unaware of Isu's Artificial Human nature as a HumaGear. Despite this, Isu is the second most powerful woman in the world in terms of resources and influence, second only to Hanako Arasaka. Hiden in general is a subversion, as they're not blind to the vices of Night City and have struggled to make a difference while trying to find a way home.
• With Due Respect: At a strategy meeting to facilitate the same transport of the Shot Riser to Hiden NUSA HQ, Maine prefaces some advice he'd like to give David with, "David, I know I'm technically your employee…" David tells him to just say it because he knows he's inexperienced and has more important things to worry about than Corpo hierarchy.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: After enjoying the many perks of being a Kamen Rider and an executive Corpo (the superpowers, the Cool Bike, the gargantuan pay e.t.c.), David's bubble gets popped when Woz informs him of the ridiculous level of responsibility that Kamen Riders have. While he's willing to tackle it, the stress of learning that the fate of humanity rests on his shoulders is a sobering thought for David.
• The Worf Effect: David demonstrates the superior speed and power of a Kamen Rider by casually dismantling the guns of six heavily armed MaxTac officers equipped with Kerenzikovs before any of them could realize what happened.
• Wrong Context Magic: The Kamen Riders and Ark are completely unlike anything that Night City, much less the Cyberpunk universe as a whole, have ever encountered. With it they bring a killer A.I. able to affect the real world as well as turn any robotics into hulking Mechanical Abominations, Alternate Universes, and superpowered armored warriors who can kick with as much force as TNT going off while running circles around MaxTac units armed with Kerenzikovs.
• You Need to Get Laid: When David starts worrying about all the school he's missing because of his new job as a Kamen Rider/executive Corpo, Pilar says he needs to drag David down to Lizzie's.
• Young and in Charge: After becoming a public figure by transforming on live television, David suddenly finds himself on Hiden's board of directors as the executive of the Kamen Rider Division. While he has enormous perks (and a six-figure salary), he's clearly not ready for the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy that this entails and would rather procrastinate to answer an invitation from Woz than deal with the hundreds of emails flooding his inbox.
• You Remind Me of X:
  • Yorinobu is reminded of his younger self when he sees David on television: a young, brash idealist and rebel who wore his heart on his sleeve and rode for joy of being alive.
  • David's desire to do good and willingness to put his life on the line for it reminds Maine of Sasha Yakovleva, his crew's young and kind netrunner who gave her life to expose Biotechnica's wrongdoings that killed her mother.

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