1 Chapter Juan
Me llamo Juan. They call me Big Juan to ease differentiating me from Small Juan in conversation. Not that Small Juan is a small man. Not at all. Small Juan is actually above average in height and enviably jacked. I'm just extra tall and naturally built like a refrigerator. Small Juan once demanded at a barbeque that he be called Sexy Juan, but his sister and three of his cousins quickly informed him that he can't be Sexy Juan, as I am Sexy Juan. Poor guy doesn't get to enjoy as much food or companionship as I do.
I will never regret putting two of my starter points into Charisma and taking the Lady Killer perk when my street cred hit level two.
Unfortunately for Small Juan, Big Juan is a reincarnator. After I died I got the chance to be the first guy to try out Levid's Magical Wheel of Reincarnation. I think the Devil cheated my role though because the people behind me were looking pretty unenthused when I spun the wheel and it landed on Night City 2050 as my setting and a big Mexican dude as my character. I could have sworn the wheel was landing on Speed Reading as a bonus for me when the Devil (who was calling himself Levid at the time) cleared his throat a couple times and it changed to the Fallout New Vegas System.
People really went nuts behind me, shouting things like, "Oh God, is system! So OP! Very Wow!"
At least that is what I think I heard. The afterlife was pretty trippy.
I didn't get to do a character creator after I vanished into motes of light and became a baby again. I did get to distribute my SPECIAL points and tag three skills from the Fallout New Vegas skill list with Energy weapons swapped to Driving and Lock Picking swapped to Small Crimes (Lock Picking, Pickpocketing, Carjacking).
Everything was adjusted to fit real life and Cyberpunk better, as such min maxing was off the table as I was a real person and not a video game character. You don't want to be below average in anything in real life, so I put two of my five free points into Intelligence, two into Charisma, and one into Luck.
Intelligence to know what to say, Charisma to know how to say it, and a splash of luck to pay for my food and drinks on fight nights.
I considered going all in on luck, but that seemed like a fine way to attract the attention of the worst parts of my new world. Almost always winning at cards may be the best way to earn Caps fast in a game, but in real life the casino notices that you are somehow bending probability and then you better hope you always land crits in the upcoming fight or you're about to wind up the star of a new snuff Brain Dance.
So I locked in my choices and tagged Science, Repair, and Unarmed as my skills. That proved to be a wise choice as I was born in Vista Del Rey, the worst part of the Heywood District of Night City. Almost everything around me growing up needed fixing or tech support, and my willingness to do that work netted me a fair bit of Street Cred. Big Juan was handy as fuck people would say, and if shit went wrong and I couldn't talk my way out of it people found out that Big Juan has big fucking hands.
That also earned me a fair bit of Street Cred.
That Street Cred was even more important than normal as I didn't level up via experience points, but via street cred. It made sense as the level cap in New Vegas was 50 and the Street Cred cap in 2077 was also 50. Being handy and a set of heavy hands got me to level 6 by the time I finished High School. Doing that sucked by the way, but it wound up boosting me to level 7 and giving me a free Perk Point as I already had the Educated perk and a free unlock of the Comprehension perk making High School one of the most rewarding activities I've ever done.. I put it into the second level of the Toughness perk.
Being harder to kill pays dividends in a neighborhood with as much shooting, exploding, and reckless driving as mine.
I put my skill points into Science, Repair, and Guns mostly, with moderate increases into Medicine, Speech, Barter, and Unarmed. Throwing hands was a great way of dealing with the most aweful sort of people ever created while I grew up... big kids. Replacing Unarmed with Guns was a necessity as I got older as those big kids eventually all started packing iron - usually by the third grade - and until I get the eddies needed to borg up in a sweet chrome body running at people shooting at me to punch them just isn't a winning strategy.
Fortunately I'd been able to find all the 'Skill Books' via the Night City Digital Library and for twenty Eddies a year I got to pick up at least 28 skill points in each category. More in some like how there were actually 9 books in the Big Book of Science series and in the Chinese Army: Special Ops Training Manuals.
I was damn happy my local comic book store had issues of Grognak for sale to tip me off.
Perks and Skills weren't the only way for me to power up though. The Intense Training perk was 'free' but I had to actually train intensely to get it and it tracked each SPECIAL stat separately. I could only achieve this ten times but each point was very important to my future.
The best way to explain it is that if I were to get a pair of cyberware Gorilla Arms while at a strength score of 5, then the arms would work as advertised. If I had a score of 8 the arms would have a 60 percent increase in maximum strength. A score of 4 would make them underperform by 20 percent.
This is why I joined the Cross Country team in high school and took the Weight Training class every semester from Sophomore to Senior year. I needed to max out Endurance as it is without a doubt the most important stat to me as not only does it make me baseline harder to kill, but it also doubles the durability of any installed cyberware and governs how much chrome I can install safely for my sanity.
At a maxed out score of ten I can go full borg without ever worrying about going cyber psycho. I had Endurance maxed out by graduation and picked up two points each in Strength and Agility for my troubles. The final point was a race between Charisma and Perception as the entire K - 12 program in Vista Del Rey didn't even get me halfway to the next level of intelligence and I was too busy to study much in my free time.
Shaking hands, kissing babies, picking up chicks, and helping little old ladies drove Charisma up, while keeping my head on a swivel to avoid bullets, missiles, cannons, cars, trucks, flying vehicles, junkies, gang bangers, and cyber psychos pushed Perception.
By the size of those two lists you can guess which crossed the finish line first. Obviously Perception as growing up in the poorest part of the city outside of Pacifica meant I'd seen much in my young life.
Despite the promising earning power of my High School Diploma I followed my father and brothers in joining up with the Valentino gang. That's where I met my side kick, Small Juan. We joined up on the same night and I swear they put us together just so the OG's could shout 'Send the Juans.' every time some shitwork came up.
God damn, Momma screamed at me that night.
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Name: 'Big' Juan D. Welles
Level: 7
AKA: Juan Grande, Sexy Juan, Juan with the Thiccness, Handy Juan, Juan with the Big Hands, The Taco Terminator
SPECIAL
Strength: 7
Perception: 6
Endurance: 10
Charisma: 7
Intelligence: 7
Agility: 7
Luck: 6
SKILLS
Barter: 58
Driving: 45
Explosives: 45
Guns: 78
Small Crimes: 45
Medicine: 58
Melee Weapons: 47
Repair: 78
Science: 86
Sneak: 63
Speech: 58
Survival: 49
Unarmed: 72
PERKS
Lady Killer, Educated, Comprehension, Toughness (2), Intense Training (10)
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I'm trying something new out with this one, going for the much toted System Fic, but doing it Fallout New Vegas style as that is to this day my favorite leveling system of all time. I'll obviously have to change some things to fit the Cyberpunk setting, but for the most part if you need a better understanding of what a Perk does for Juan the wiki works.
As for how SPECIAL and SKILLS applies to a 'real life' situation, I have each of the SPECIAL Attributes being set to 5 as an average human (And I mean Average, not sedentary) and 10 as double the average which works out pretty much across the board as if 5 Intelligence is 100 IQ 10 is 200 IQ, something very high, but within the human range. The same works with Agility. If five is the top run speed of an average person which is 12 miles an hour (this is average when people are running for their lives) then a 10 score puts him at 24 miles per hour making him just slightly faster than Usain Bolt (23.5 MPH).
For SKILLS 50 is a journeyman, 75 is an expert, and 100 is a master, someone who would easily become a Night City Legend for just that skill alone. Between Intense Training and all the Skill Books, Juan is a very competent person. Which is very weird for an 18 year old, but would explain why he already has Street Cred before even really making his debut on the streets.
As for the Title of the story breaking my utilitarian trend, I figured if I was going to write a system fic then I needed a suitably generic name. Still got the correct keywords so it's all good.
And I know I said I'd do Naruto next. The next chapter is almost done, but this one came to me hard and flowed forth smooth and sweet.
Edgerunners and 2077 Content is up for adaptation, but we are still eight years out from that content in the timeline and I feel like playing around with the Juans doing gangster stuff for a while, like cholo buddy cops.
You can support me and my family at ko - fi . com / jmanm
