Edgerunners: Heritage
is a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Alternate Universe Fic by Corgopolis and Kaelynn_Laefon.
The story adds a wrinkle to Lucy's past: as an infant, she was kidnapped from her parents by Arasaka, and her father in particular has spent years trying to find her. As a result, events diverge from the anime as David, Lucy, Rebecca, Falco and Kiwi are joined by a mercenary crew charged with ensuring Lucy's safety—and by extension, the crew.
Due to the nature of the story, all spoilers for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners will be unmarked.
The story features examples of the following tropes:
- Blessed with Suck: In Chapter 7, Faolan eventually reveals to Kiwi his abnormal transplanted heart, with has contributed to his superhuman feats. The downsides are that his heart has made him incompatible with cyberware; and that he can't actually feel anything physical, like touch, tempurature, pain and even carnal pleasure.
- The Gadfly: Faolan like to mess with people in conversation, and is cheery when doing it. This quickly makes his few moments of anger all the more noteworthy.
- A Minor Kidroduction: The story starts with a brief sequence of two parents having their infant daughter taken from them by Arasaka troopers. The baby is a one-year-old Lucy, and the parents are in fact Lucy's biological parents.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Kiwi lashes out at Faolan, accusing him of having no idea what it's like for her to have had an cyberware operation against her will, or to have sold out the only people who have ever been kind to her. The normally-snarky Faolan soberly tells her, "I wish that I didn't."
- Oh, Crap!: In Chapter 3, Kiwi has a prolonged one when she returns to her apartment to find Faolan inside waiting for her. There, Faolan tells her that he knows that she sold her crew out (but doesn't really care and still needs her cooperation); that he will hunt her down if she makes Lucy cry from her recent ordeal; and implies that while he might not care why Kiwi betrayed Lucy, the crew most certainly would if they knew.
- Original Character: Heritage introduces several, including Lucy's parents, Faolan and his team of mercenaries, etc. Despite this, the author focuses more on the surviving members of the crew than on the OCs.
- Outside-Context Problem: For a Netrunner like Kiwi, infiltrating and sabotaging people's cyberware is a natural skill to have. This makes Faolan terrifying to her when he first appears; she couldn't detect any cyberware from him at all, leaving her powerless to stop him from neutralizing Faraday and his guards.
- Posthumous Character: As the story deviates from Episode 8 onwards, Gloria, Pilar, Dorio, Maine, Jimmy Kurosaki, and Tanaka are all dead as in canon.
- Refuge in Audacity:
- In Chapter 3, Kiwi discovers the armored mercenary waiting for her in her apartment. Faolan recommends that Kiwi take the handgun she stashed in the kitchen drawer and aim it at him, and that if he can't convince her to not kill him in five minutes, she's free to shoot him. He even acquiesces to taking his helmet off. By the end of the scene, Faolan successfully convinces Kiwi to cooperate with him, for Lucy's sake.
- Later, Faolan makes sure that Rogue helps David and company fake their deaths, at the cost of the merc willingly barring himself from The Afterlife for violence on the premises. Granted, the guy he attacked was a Tyger Claw who happened to hear about what happened the other night and probably assumed it was an opportunity, but ultimately nobody expected that.
- Wham Line:
- In Chapter 2, when Lucy and Faolan properly meet face-to-face, the mercenary respectfully bows his head and says: "Miss Lucyna Kushinada, last daughter of the Kushinada family, it is an honor to meet you at last."
