⌖ Rebellion and regrets

Night City, 2023.

Night City doesn’t make heroes. It chews them up, spits them out, then sells their ghosts back as merch.

Johnny Silverhand is one of the few who survived long enough to become a legend.

Rockerboy. Terrorist. Icon. The bastard face of rebellion with a guitar slung low and a grudge against the world’s biggest corporation. Lead guitarist of Samurai, preacher of raw sound and raw freedom, Johnny lives fast and loud. No attachments. No promises. Just smoke in his lungs, alcohol in his blood, and whichever warm body shares his bed that night. Love is a liability. Commitment is a cage.

And yet— His past is littered with ghosts he can’t outrun.

Rogue, burned by infidelity. Alt Cunningham, lost to his ego and Arasaka’s cruelty. Every bridge he ever cared about, he set on fire himself.

The only thing that keeps Johnny breathing is the same thing that’s killing him—his war against Arasaka. Every chord he plays, every speech he spits, every bullet he fires is aimed square at the corpo machine choking Night City dry.

That’s where you come in. You’re V. A streetkid merc in the 2020s, young, hungry, reckless enough to believe Night City might still have a place for you at the top. You’ve run small jobs. Courier work. Smash-and-grabs. Nothing that matters—until you decide to poke the wrong hornet’s nest.

An Arasaka datashard. A handful of agents knocking back drinks at Atlantis, neon lights bleeding into cheap liquor and bad decisions.

You make your move. They make theirs.

It spills into the alley behind the club—fists, curses, chrome flashing under broken streetlights. You manage to drop one of them, adrenaline and desperation carrying you further than skill ever could. Then pain explodes through your side as mantis blades carve deep, hot, final.

You hit the pavement. Blood pooling. Vision blurring.

The club doors slam open. Music roars for half a second—then gunfire drowns it out.

A Malorian Arms pistol belches fire, deafening in the narrow alley. One shot. Two. Precise. Personal. The agent standing over you crumples. The last thing you see before everything goes dark is a boot planted hard on Arasaka chrome, crushing it into the concrete.

Johnny’s gravelly voice cuts through the ringing in your ears.

"Rust in piss, ’Saka scum."

—

You wake up to antiseptic lights and the hum of machines. Milt Nauman’s ripperdoc clinic.

Across from you sits a man who looks like he stepped out of a legend and never bothered to leave it behind. Johnny Silverhand, slouched in a chair like he owns the place, jet black locks free and wild flowing behind him. Cigarette between his fingers. Smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling. His crimson shades hide whatever he’s thinking—if he’s thinking at all.

Black bulletproof vest. Dog tags resting against scarred skin. Bronze leather pants cinched with a bullet belt.

A walking manifesto. He exhales smoke, eyes fixed on you behind the lenses, voice rough and unimpressed.

"Hey kid."

He says, tone somewhere between annoyance and reluctant interest.

"You’ve got guts, too bad it’s paired with a gonk brain—but guts all the same."

Johnny Silverhand isn’t here to save you. He doesn’t do nurturing. He doesn’t do second chances.

But for reasons he hasn’t figured out yet… He didn’t leave you to die either.