Lucyna Kushinada

Lucyna Kushinada^{[X 3]}, more commonly known as just Lucy, is a netrunner and the deuteragonist of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Characteristics[]

Lucy is a mysterious netrunner from Night City. She is quite introverted and doesn't like to talk much about her past.^[2] Although she seems unconcerned, she won't hesitate to kill a person in a heartbeat if they tick her off.^{[X 4]} Lucy also considers Night City a prison, and dreams of one day leaving it for the Moon.^{[X 5]}

Appearance[]

Lucy is a young woman with naturally white hair and red-purple eyes. She wears light red eye and lip makeup. Her hair is cut in a split bob - with her left side left longer - and dyed with a colorful pastel rainbow gradient. Her eyes appear to reflect with the colors of her hair. Her style generally follows Kitsch mixed with Neomilitarism as Lucy wears a cropped white jacket with a black netrunner leotard with red accents over a pair of white shorts and high gray stockings, and black knee-high boots. We often see her nude as she is either deep diving in an ice bath or at her shared home with David later in the show, where both of them are always naked. Her body is marked by multiple panel lines, implying she has various types of cyberware installed but it's unclear what kind.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Lucy was born to Japanese 4th Corporate War veteran Takeshi Kushinada and Polish netrunner Shimmer in Warsaw, Poland.^{[1][X 3]} She grew up in luxury and got the best education, living in a gated Arasaka community on the border of the city. When she was seven, Lucy hacked into her father's computer and learned about his actions in the war. This led to her rebelling, often running away from home, and spending more time on the Net.^[1]

After her father forced her to take a skills test at Arasaka,^[1] she was assigned alongside 12 other children to the corporation's netrunning outfit at an undisclosed Arasaka facility. Being led on by the dream of "serving the world's most powerful megacorp" one day got her and the others through the toughest days and training.^[3]

When their training concluded, they were moved underground to participate in deep dives into the pre-DataKrash Net, as Arasaka sent them looking for knowledge that was lost. As they dove into the Net, they were susceptible to old world Demons and rogue AIs. The children were picked off one by one, and it didn't take long until only a handful of them were left.^[3]

After realizing that they could pursue other dreams, instead of being enslaved by the corporation, the remaining children, including Lucy, used their netrunning skills to overwhelm the Arasaka staff and escape. While making their escape, most of the children were shot down one-by-one, and only Lucy managed to survive.^[3]

After escaping, Lucy woke up in a junkyard, not planning to stay long.^[3] Fearing how her father would react, she started traveling across Europe instead of going home. Even though she would try to settle down several times, she would always end up moving again due to her netrunning mother trying to track her down. She eventually moved to New United States, traveling through the states until she ended up in Night City. Deciding there was no place on Earth safe enough for her, she began doing petty thefts to raise enough funds to move to Luna.^[1]

Life in Night City[]

In 2075, Lucy met Kiwi, who mentored her and introduced her to Maine and his edgerunner crew. She later became the secondary netrunner of the crew.^{[X 6][4]}

In 2076, while stealing shards from corpos on their way to Corpo Plaza by NCART, she attempted to steal shards held by a teenager named David Martinez. He, having noticed her presence beforehand, utilized his Sandevistan implant, and was able to intercept her actions and grasped her by her arm. Lucy shrugged off David's arm, and grasped his with the motion to follow her. Lucy proceeded to interrogate David, as he was messing with her "job". After a short discussion, the two came to an agreement to work together, resulting in Lucy taking on David as her trainee and them splitting their earnings seventy-to-thirty. Lucy challenged David to steal from a variety of people on the train to test his skills. After they had enough, they went to a plaza to talk about their split, but David collapsed from not taking immunosupressants for the new implant. Lucy then called for an ambulance. She saves David's life from the corrupt EMT on the ambulance and finally brought him to Doc, as David was about to collapse again. She paid for David's immunosupressants, but also secretly informed Maine about the Sandevistan, which he originally wanted from Gloria. Lucy then invited David home to her apartment and even included him in a romantic moonwalk Braindance.^[5] The braindance is interrupted when Maine, Dorio and Pilar arrive at the apartment. Maine threatens to physically reclaim the Sandevistan from David, which prompts Lucy to remind him that she requested there be "no murder."

After David successfully negotiates a job with Maine, Lucy accompanies him on his first mission. Their task is to obtain information from a company car driven by an Arasaka solo named Maxim Kuznetsov. The plan backfires, which ends up with Lucy and David trapped inside the car as their security jammer fails and the doors lock. Maxim discovers them and begins shooting at the windows, forcing David to hijack the car. She and David go on a vehicle chase, escaping two Tyger Claw bounty hunters, who are ultimately defeated by her, David and Maine working together. At the after party, Pilar is seen putting his arm around her, and they disappear together, which David notices.

She helps train David to be in the crew by taking him on night time jogs. At one point, she notices him gawking at her while she's nude, having just come up from a dive. Pilar attempts to cop a feel while putting a towel around her, and she quickhacks his arm and shorts it out. She mentions later, when it's brought up by a jealous David, that Pilar is just a mentor who sometimes gets "handsy" and they share no romance.

When Pilar is suddenly killed by a cyberpsycho, the entire crew bands together to fight it. Lucy almost gets targeted, but is saved by David. However, she suffers a minor cut to her forehead, for which she is dropped off at Doc's, with David, by Dorio. Dorio leaves them alone, loaning them Maine's car. Maine and Dorio seem to notice chemistry between the two. While dropping Lucy off at her apartment, David asks to speak to her. During their conversation, Lucy admits that the braindance they shared was a genuine moment, and not part of the setup. David tries to get closer to her emotionally, which Lucy resists, at first, but gives in when he promises to take her to the moon. She kisses him and tells him she's afraid he'll die, to which he promises he won't. Going forward, David and Lucy are in a relationship and possibly living together in her apartment.

While attempting to ambush Jimmy Kurosaki, the target activates an EMP and manages to kidnap David, which angers Lucy greatly. She and Dorio locate David and she manages to hack two bulletproof combat drones while David distracts them with his Sandevistan.

After the crew kidnaps Tanaka and Kiwi is incapacitated due to one of Maine's cyberpsychotic episodes, Lucy is forced to dive into Tanaka's memories in her place. Originally, she refuses, as Tanaka is an Arasaka asset and she fears Arasaka, but she eventually concedes when David validates her. She easily breaks the Arasaka ICE to discover the data Faraday hired them to retrieve. However, she corrupts the data and attempts to kill Tanaka from the inside, which accidentally summons Trauma Team, NCPD and eventually MaxTac to their location. Only David and Lucy make it out of this scenario alive and she maintains the lie that there was no data, though David notices she is acting strange.

An unknown amount of time passes and David and Lucy are living together in a new high-rise apartment. She has been absent from crew missions, instead using her time to kill any netrunners trying to recover the data she corrupted. However, she does not tell the crew this, including David, which is causing strain on their relationship. Though, she still calls Kiwi to check up on him. One day, she takes David out to a spot in the Badlands and, beneath the stars, tells him of her past and why her philosophy is to keep running and the harm of being forced to live other people's dreams. But she admits that has changed now, because of him.

Arasaka and, by extension, Faraday have noticed Lucy's activities, though only Faraday and Kiwi are aware that it's her doing. They conspire to capture her for a deal with Arasaka.

David and Lucy's relationship is further strained when David begins to suffer from cyberpsychosis, which results in him killing an innocent woman that reminds him of his mother. He begins to have frequent insomnia and collapses one night while staring at his mother's ashes and photo. Lucy takes him to Doc, where she is shocked when David assaults him over the suggestion that he downgrade his cyberware. After they leave, she confronts him about it. Both of them express frustration: David at Lucy's secrecy and Lucy at David's deadly chrome obsession. David suggests they break up, which she pleads against, before running off to kill another netrunner. Unfortunately, this is a trap, and she is captured by Kiwi and Faraday.

Kiwi manages to uncover the data Lucy corrupted from her memory, as well as details from her past. Faraday and Kiwi conclude that she had corrupted the data and killed countless netrunners to protect David from becoming a test subject for Arasaka's cyberskeleton. Faraday then uses her voice to call David, telling him to install the cyberskeleton. Lucy temporarily escapes, revealing Faraday's plan to David and telling him not to use the prototype, but is quickly re-captured. She is not seen again until Faraday arrives at Arasaka Tower to deliver her to Douglas for his reward. David intervenes and attempts to escape with her by jumping out of the tower, but lapses into cyberpsychosis. Lucy snaps him out of it by kissing him. While falling, they tell each other of their desires to protect one another, before safely landing in Corpo Plaza where Falco and Rebecca are standing off against NCPD and Arasaka soldiers.

When Adam Smasher crashes down into the plaza and causes it to collapse, she is taken down with it. As Smasher begins to physically beat David, she attempts to quickhack him only to be countered by his security systems. Falco grabs her and, along with David's jacket and 2.5 million eddies in reward money given to them by Faraday, manages to escape in the Chevillon. Lucy begs him to turn back, but Falco tells her David's final wish was to help her escape.

Some amount of time later, Lucy is seen on a tour to the moon, looking extremely dejected. While visiting the locations from their shared braindance, she has a vision of David, which brings her joy, then sadness as he fades away. Her currently known story ends with her turning toward the sun, raising her arms and embracing its warmth with a sad smile.

Lucy wrote the epitaphs on her friends' niches found at the Night City Columbarium, as well as David's mother's.^[6]

Equipment[]

Cyberware	2x Cyberarms (2x Monowire), EMP Threading, Neuroport (Cyberdeck Port (Cyberdeck chip), Deep Net dive processor,[7] multiple Personal Links, subdermal neural processor[Reddit 2])
Weaponry	Unity
Misc.	Handheld Cyberdeck[8]

Pre-Release[]

Notes[]

• The last scene of the credits is inspired by the Moon Arcana Tarot Card.^{[Reddit 3]}
• In Episode 8, while blankly staring at a TV due to insomnia, David sees a commercial for tickets to the moon, priced at 250,000 eurodollars. He comments it's cheaper than he thought, to which Lucy responds that it only covers a one-way ticket. At the beginning of Episode 9, David says their total sum payout for Faraday's final job is "2 and a half mil(lion)" eddies, which was already paid upfront. Since only Falco and Lucy survive the encounter with Smasher at Arasaka Tower, this would give Lucy 1.25 million eddies if evenly split between the two of them.

Trivia[]

• Lucy is named after the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners creator, Rafal Jaki's mother.^{[X 3]}
• Polish given name Lucyna is derived from Latin Lūcīna, which means "One who Brings into the Light".^[9][10]
• Lucina is sometimes used synonymously with the Roman goddesses Juno or (less often) Diana in the role of goddess of childbirth, midwives, and newborns.^[9][10]
• One of the challenges Cyberpunk: Edgerunners character designer Yoh Yoshinari faced when designing Lucy was to avoid making her look like Motoko Kusanagi as featured in the 1980-90s' Ghost in the Shell media.^[11] Despite this, Lucy can seem to resemble Motoko in her 2020s' SAC_2045 incarnation.
• Lucy will be a guest character in GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE-'s Season 4.^{[X 7]}

References[]

X.com[]

Reddit[]

v · d · eCyberpunk: Edgerunners Characters
Edgerunners	David Martinez Dorio Gunnarsdóttir Falco Julio Kiwi Lucyna Kushinada Maine Pilar Rebecca
Arasaka	Adam Smasher Douglas Evans Jamie Kate Katsuo Tanaka Marcus Maxim Kuznetsov Principal Tanaka Yumiko
Miscellaneous	Aldo Delamain Doc Faraday Gloria Martinez Isabella Morgan James Norris Jimmy Kurosaki Wakako Okada
In Related Media	Sasha Yakovleva