Fanfic / Group Chat

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Group Chat is a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (and, as of Chapter 67, Marathon) Log Fic (with occasional, sometimes extended, traditional prose interludes) written by Arrow S. Morgan and Kaelynn_Laefon.

The fic explores a relatively simple premise: what if Lucy had made a group chat for the canonical crew? As a result of this one tiny change, the characters communicate better with each other, David ends up in a polyamorous relationship with Lucy, Becca and Kiwi, and the tone largely shifts towards sex comedy... until it doesn't.

It can be found here.👁 Image

Group Chat contains examples of:

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Subverted. Adam Smasher is still a pretty frightening and unpleasant person, but this fic initially gives him a notable core of humanity that is very much not there in canon... until chapter 64, where he brutally murders Michiko Arasaka and turns on the crew as easy scapegoats.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: As the first person in a long time to go out of his way to treat him with basic courtesy rather than fear, Smasher is willing to befriend David and occasionally help him out.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Rebecca is typically Fun Personified. The initial effects of cyberpsychosis, plus Black Lace, turn her into a sadistic, unstable Blood Knight who racks up a relatively high body count very fast, and reduces a Serial Killer turned merc into Ludicrous Gibs.
  • Kiwi is generally pleasant, if a bit of a Deadpan Snarker. Harming her or anyone she cares about, or defending anyone who does, is a good way to shorten your life expectancy.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: As of the most recent chapters, Adam Smasher and the alternate Lucy summoned by Saburo Arasaka are sharing double duty.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Debido, a mutated clone of David create by Arasaka for Adam Smasher (who resembles a younger bobblehead David) is this. While he doesn’t look too odd for Cyberpunk, he apparently pukes weird green goop and lays eggs. Even Smasher was unaware of that.
• Black Box: Rebecca's spinal replacement she gets for the Biotechnica job comes with an unknown component that none of the ripperdocs she takes it to can identify. It later turns out to contain a copy of Durandal, and Jjaro timeline-hopping technology.
• Blood Knight: Rebecca starts showing shades of this during the Biotechnica job. She goes full-on into it during the Nightstalker fight.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Adam Smasher is... a very, very strange man, who does not look at most situations the way normal humans do.
• Brick Joke: Invoked Trope in chapter 11:
  Author's note: Christ, I kept this brick joke in the air for ten whole chapters before it landed. I'm amazed at my restraint.
• Cerebus Retcon: A meta example; Kiwi's ventilator mask goes completely unexplained in canon, but in this fic, is explained as a direct result of Faraday breaking her jaw so badly that it needed a full replacement.
  • Subverted, somehow, by the release of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit for the tabletop game, which gives the ventilator mask a very similar explanation but doesn't attribute it to Faraday (and leaves her behavior around him in the show largely unexplained).
• Cerebus Syndrome: The fic took a noticeable left turn from pure goofy sex comedy (or, 👁 This example contains a TRIVIA entry. It should be moved to the TRIVIA tab.
  in the author's words, "a pure shitpost") to a moderately more serious tone around chapter six.
• Chekhov's Gag: Rebecca getting taller through cyberware is initially brought up offhandedly as a joke in chapter four. It comes back forty-three chapters later in the Biotechnica job as part of her over-the-top chrome setup.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Rebecca has very frequent moments of this, as does David.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Kiwi and Lucy essentially trade duties as this, for Rebecca and David in their less lucid moments.
• The Comically Serious: Most of the comedy surrounding Adam Smasher is derived from putting him in odd, mundane situations.
• Cosmic Horror Reveal: Chapter 67 reveals the existence of the Jjaro and W'rkncacnter in the fic's universe.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Rebecca ends up using dangerous combat drugs in a moment of desperation, which enhances her performance, but also drives her already unstable mind into a bloodlusted insanity.
• Death by Adaptation: Michiko Arasaka is still alive in canon, but is murdered by Adam Smasher here.
• Deconstruction Fic: While it doesn't start in this place, it ends up as an odd example targeted at the fandom rather than the canon. The final villain, Izanami, is an alternate Lucy from a Dark Fic in which David was successfully captured by Arasaka and she sold her soul to an Omnicidal Maniac AI from beyond the Blackwall to take vengeance, summoned to this fic's timeline by Saburo Arasaka using Jjaro technology, and is being explicitly portrayed as childish, short-tempered, and short-sighted; by contrast, when Rebecca jumps timelines after activating Durandal, most of the other ones are relatively light-hearted ideas for fanfics and silly crossovers. The author has stated in the fic comments that the subtext here is very, very deliberate.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: While it's definitely not without awkwardness, David somehow manages to befriend Adam Smasher, of all people.
• Domestic Abuse: The reason for Kiwi's extreme distaste for Faraday isn't initially directly stated, but turns out to later be this: they were previously in a relationship, in which he was emotionally and physically (👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
  at the very least) abusive towards her.
• Drugs Are Good: Zig-zagged. Most of the characters casually smoke marijuana, with the effects being treated as almost entirely positive, and Rebecca is depicted using synthcoke at one point without any major negative effects; however, Rebecca using Black Lace, a combat drug that induces psychosis, in order to win a fight is depicted as a horrifying Dangerous Forbidden Technique that radically changes her personality, turning her into a sadistic, implacable Blood Knight.
• Evil Is Petty: When Michiko Arasaka politely declines to have sex with him, Adam Smasher responds by murdering her.
• Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue: By necessity, due to the fic's initial format; many chapters are largely or entirely made of dialogue, which sometimes leads to jokes deriving from the withheld information.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: Adam Smasher's reinterpretation as a Punch-Clock Villain is largely based around this, as an attempt to synthesize his earlier characterization in the tabletop RPG with CD Projekt Red's current characterization of him.
• Friendly Enemy: Despite being a hated figure in the underworld, Smasher is still able to visit the Afterlife on occasion and is on decent enough terms with Rogue due to both being Living Legends.
• Fun Personified: Rebecca is generally this.
• Gag Penis: David's is described as going up to his nipples.
• Glad He's On Our Side: During the Faraday job, Rebecca internally notes that it's a good thing that Adam Smasher's allied with her crew after witnessing him singlehandedly tear through a group of heavily armed 6th Street gangers.
• He-Man Woman Hater: As the team's mission to act as Adam Smasher's wingman for Michiko Arasaka draws closer, it becomes increasingly clear that Adam sees Michiko not as a person he wants to reestablish an emotional connection with, but as a piece of meat he wants to satisfy his urges on. When Michiko tries to politely turn his advances down, Adam kills her without a second thought.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Kiwi passes time on the moon by reading a programming manual for Commodore 64 assembly, which gets her roasted by Rebecca.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite this, Pilar, Maine, and Dorio all end up being Killed Off for Real just as in canon, though with slightly different surrounding context.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the fic had already noticeably taken the path of the aardvark prior to chapter 50, Nightstalker is a much more threatening and serious villain than anyone previously thrown at the crew.
  • The alternate Lucy revealed in chapter 87, meanwhile, is somehow a step up even from that.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: David initially has no real idea who his father was, with Maine having some suspicions that he might be. After Maine is Killed Off for Real, it's confirmed.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": When the crew realizes that their alliance with Smasher, coupled with their ties to Militech, might kick off a Fifth Corporate War.
• Old Master: After Adam Smasher betrays them and gives them a three-month grace period to prepare, the team track down the full-borg Shaitan to train them.
• Power Dynamics Kink: Discussed; Kiwi is moderately worried that the decently-sized age gap between her and David introduces some odd power dynamics, but also finds it kinda hot (to David's amusement).
• Power Perversion Potential: Double-subverted. The fact that the Sandevistan is a force multiplier makes it an astoundingly bad idea to use it while having sex, lest David hospitalize his partners; however, he's still able to figure out how to get some use out of it.
• Psycho Serum: Black Lace. While depicted in its Cyberpunk 2077 form, the portrayal of its effects is based more heavily on the tabletop game's depiction, where it effectively induces temporary (or, if you're unlucky, permanent) cyberpsychosis in order to give the user a combat advantage.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Adam Smasher is portrayed as much calmer and less vicious when he's off on the clock.
• Put Their Heads Together: David takes out a pair of guards using this... and the Sandevistan. The results are... gristly.
• Required Secondary Powers: Discussed and Played for Drama. David's Sandevistan gives him Super-Speed, but at the start, that's the only major cyberware he has, and it ends up putting major strain on his heart, necessitating further organ replacements.
• Rescue Romance: Cruelly Subverted. Not only does Michiko Arasaka have absoluely zero interest in sleeping with Adam Smasher even after he, Rebecca, and Lucy save her from a kidnapping attempt, she is outright terrified of him.
• Riddle for the Ages: Just what the hell is Debidio, beyond being at least part David? The world may never know for sure.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Butterbean, Rebecca’s pet cat. He’s so cute, everyone who sees him gets the urge to scratch and pet him.
• Rule of Three: After David and the gang run into Katsuo Tanaka again while in the process of clearing out Fingers' office, they decide to off him for good by driving him nuts with Kiwi's custom-made LOL, 69 quickhack because Katsuo has just become a thorn in their side at this point (mind you, this is after David punched Katsuo out back in Arasaka Academy and caught him making cat torture XBDs while on a mission with Rebecca).
• Running Gag: Several.
  • David's Gag Penis.
  • Kiwi's EnduroDrink-dispensing nipples.
• Shout-Out: During the Moon Arc, the enemy running team trying to kidnap Michiko Arasaka are all LARPing as Shadowrun archetypes.
  • At the same time this is happening, David and Kiwi are in another part of the lunar resort playing Vampire: The Masquerade, with the Storyteller being heavily implied to be Mark Rein-Hagen, that game's creator.
  • During the action sequence leading up to the end of the Moon arc, Adam Smasher rips out a mercenary's heart and uses "Kali-ma" as a Bond One-Liner, much to Lucy's utter befuddlement.
• Stealth Insult: David manages to tell Adam Smasher to touch grass without being hunted down and murdered for it, entirely because Smasher doesn't recognize the phrase.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Kiwi tears Faraday a new one in chapter 17, calling him out on his egotistical behavior and pretensions of grandeur.
  Kiwi: You here?
  Faraday: Hello, Kiwi. I would appreciate it if you didn't bother me for non-work-related reasons.
  Kiwi: Shut the fuck up. Right now, I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen.
  Faraday: Excuse me?
  Kiwi: (mutes Faraday) Again, shut the fuck up. The Tanaka job wasn't a bust because the data didn't exist, it was a bust because we destroyed it. The data concerns one of our crew members, who I happen to care very deeply about. Actually, pretty much our leader, with Maine and Dorio flatlined. not only that, it concerns Arasaka wanting to kidnap him and use him as a guinea pig for experimental cyberware until his head pops. There is a grand total of one person in the category of "people I've sat on the face of" who I'd be okay with that happening to, and that's you. Do not contact us about that job again. Do not contact us again, period. I am well aware that I am burning this bridge by doing this. This might shock you, but I do not care. There are other, better fixers in Night City, who aren't my shitty, manipulative ex. We'll survive without you, and if you send anyone else after us, or after David Martinez, I will personally hunt you down and I will make your fucking Mr. Studd burst into flames. Am I making myself perfectly clear? (unmutes Faraday)
  Faraday: I don't think you fully realize what you're doing here.
  Kiwi: Oh? What, exactly, do I not realize, Faraday?
  Faraday: Threatening someone as well-connected as I am is generally not a smart decision, Kiwi.
  Kiwi: Go fuck yourself, you fucking gonk. "As well-connected as I am"; don't make me laugh, you're just Militech's current bitch-boy. Do you really think they're gonna go to bat for you?
  Faraday: Yes, actually. I do.
  Kiwi: Then you're even fucking dumber than you look. Bye. Ideally for the rest of our lives, so I don't have to put in the effort of ending yours. (blocks Faraday)
• Take That!: The Simpsons is noted as still ongoing, and is stated to have severely dropped in writing quality, to the point where the crew uses it primarily to amuse Debidio.
• Trash of the Titans: Rebecca's apartment, prior to David doing some cleanup on it.
• Violence Is Disturbing: While it doesn't necessarily come up often, when violence happens in this work, it's rarely pretty. The vast majority of fights end with some sort of bloody mutilation or another, and Adam Smasher's rampage in chapter 64 nearly crosses into Gorn territory.
• Vulgar Humor: The fic's pride and joy, especially in Rebecca-focused chapters.
• Weird Crossover: Absolutely no one was expecting this fic to turn into a Marathon crossover in Chapter 67.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 50.
  • Chapter 64 somehow manages to top that one.
• Worf Had the Flu: On the moon, David ends up in a fistfight with Adam Smasher, due to him starting up on a Hannibal Lecture towards Lucy (after being reminded that she's former Arasaka property). Ordinarily, this would end very, very, very badly for David, but due to Smasher being in a much, much weaker borg body meant to pass for human, David actually fights him to a draw.
• World of Snark: Kiwi already had her Deadpan Snarker moments in the original series, but this fic expands it to everyone else, too.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Throughout the story, it seems like David (and by extension his girlfriends) actually managed to make genuine friends with Adam Smasher. Then Adam murders Michiko Arasaka and pins the blame on the team, without an ounce of hesitation or guilt.
• Your Head A-Splode: David attempts to take down two guards in chapter 27 by bashing their heads against each other while using the Sandevistan, and ends up showered in chunky human-salsa.