Neon Nexus: System Override

The protagonist. A lifelong resident of the Stacks, Kai is clever, resourceful, and deeply cynical about the corporate powers that rule Neo-Tokyo. They've survived by being unnoticed, a skill that becomes crucial after awakening as a Coder. Motivated not by grand heroism, but by a desperate need to understand their own nature and to find some measure of agency in a rigged system. Their secret is the anomalous Coder class itself, which they must hide from both corps and system enforcers.

A veteran 'Vanguard' class and leader of a small, independent crew of dungeon-runners and salvage experts operating in the gray zones between corporate sectors. Jax has seen the worst of the Fusion and the corps' exploitation. He's pragmatic to a fault, valuing competence and loyalty above all else. He runs a clandestine safehouse and market for those who want to stay off the corporate grid. He has a soft spot for underdogs who show spine.

A high-level 'Netrunner' for the rival corp, Tsunami Industries. Brilliant, ambitious, and utterly convinced that corporate structure is the only thing preventing total chaos. She is tasked with investigating system anomalies and recruiting rare talent. She sees the world as a complex puzzle to be optimized. Her secret is that she is beginning to detect inconsistencies in her own corp's official history of the Fusion, making her privately curious about truths outside the approved narratives.

A retired 'Artificer' class who runs a cluttered, hidden workshop in the bowels of the Stacks. He is one of the few who remembers the world before the Fusion and possesses pre-Fusion technical knowledge considered heretical by the corps. Cynical yet kind, he acts as an information broker and mentor for those who value knowledge over power. He is secretly piecing together a 'Null-Device' he believes could create a temporary system-free zone.