Oni BSB 33: Sins of the Father (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, April 02, 2018, 13:47 (2233 days ago) @ Ragashingo

After awaking from her nightmare, Mai makes her way to perhaps the most interesting Tech Crimes Task Force facility yet. Obstinately a prison, this highly secure facility is in actuality far more of a bio-research lab!

Situated across the rooms of this lab are multiple pods that look to be some sort of cryo pods. Or could they be medical pods? Or SLD “wombs” for “birthing” more Simulated Life Dolls like Shinatama? Or could they be for something else far, far more scary? (Hint: They probably are!)

Speaking of Shinatama, our first terminal sheds some sickly light on the TCTF’s attitude towards Mai:

Sytropin
Project: 14 (1.3.51)
Subject: Status Update - Prime Daodan Symbiote 1B(h)

SLD remote analysis of the subject (ref. Hasegawa, Mai) indicates that she remains stable. We are maintaining latency with regular injections of Sytropin, but the dose has to be increased every 3 to 5 weeks to keep up with her bolstered resistance.

Project goals remain unclear: Commander Griffin seems content to stabilize the host/Daodan symbiote for as long as possible.

Subject: Status Update - Prime Daodan Symbiote 1B(h) [cont]

If she is intended as a contingency of some kind the team has recommended cryofreeze as an all around safer alternative to keeping the organism active and evolving, however slowly.

Senior researcher Kerr has been very vocal in his concerns about our treatment of the symbiote.

Team members are concerned that Kerr may suffer from an unprofessional attachment that may compromise his objectivity towards the program.

We’ll learn significantly more about the Daodan Symbiote in a bit, but for now, we see that Commander Griffin was going to great lengths and great risks to keep Mai active and… evolving? As a contingency? A contingency to what? The global catastrophe outside the atmospheric processors is one possible answer, and would probably be Mai’s best guess up to this point. But then she meets her uncle, Dr. Kerr.

Kerr sends Mai on a mission to activate three generators to provide power to what must be some incredibly advanced (and expensive!) equipment in his lab. As usual, Mai meets armed resistance from various TCTF troopers, but by now her fighting skills are more than sufficient to deal with most of them without breaking a sweat.

Once Mai returns to her uncle, he instructs her to climb into some sort of large scanning device. Once inside, Dr. Kerr tells Mai that he is taking a look at the Chrysalis inside her and testing to see how far it has integrated into her body. Wait, what?!

Mai, being just as confused as we are, asks for an explanation. And Kerr delivers. The Chrysalis, which is rightly termed the Daodan Chrysalis, is the result of research between Mai’s father and uncle. It is Mai’s father’s solution to the toxic outside world that killed his wife. Consisting of hyper evolved cloned tissue from a host body, the chrysalis is reinserted into its host where it reinforces or, in extreme cases, totally replaces damaged tissues and organs. Evidently, it is this Daodan Chrysalis that has given Mai her superhuman abilities that have gotten her this far!

That’s the good news. Next, Kerr lays out the bad news. Mai’s father and uncle poured everything they had into their Chrysalis project, but it was not enough. When most legitimate organizations refused to help them they turned to the Syndicate. You know, the organization that perpetrated everything from stealthily turning normal people into addicts with singles doses from hyposprays, to the group that literally took control of people’s minds by hacking mass market sub-dermal implants. But while Dr. Hasegawa and Dr. Kerr thought the Syndicate was uninterested in their work, it turns out they were wrong.

The Syndicate kidnapped Mai’s father, Dr. Kerr, Mai herself, and the two prototype Daodan Chrysalises based upon her and… her brother. Muro! That’s right, Kerr reveals that Muro is in reality Mai’s brother. Perhaps that’s how he knew so much about her at the airport? Somehow, Kerr managed to escape the Syndicate with Mai. He sought out the safety of the TCTF, but, as we’ve seen, Commander Griffin isn’t someone you can really trust.

Griffin forced Kerr to implant Mai’s chrysalis looking to keep Mai as a weapon able to counter whatever the Syndicate managed to do with the Chrysalis. Mai is shocked at this revelation. She questions what her chrysalis is doing to her and what she is becoming. Muro, Barabas, Mukade… they all had Daodan Chrysalises implanted inside them and they are/were all vicious murderers capable of nearly unstoppable superhuman feats. Mai rightly wonders what she will become.

Fortunately, Kerr provides one last bit of good news. The Chrysalis doesn’t turn someone into a killer. Instead, the Chrysalis adapts to and enhances a person’s true nature. “You are changing...into a more powerful, resilient version of yourself,” Kerr tells his niece.

But, then the worst happens. A TCTF trooper with a Mercury Bow enters the scanning room and fires a shot at Mai. Tragically, at the last second, Kerr jumps in the way. It’s possible that Mia with her body armor and Daodan Chrysalis might have survived the toxic effects of being struck by a frozen mercury bullet. Kerr? He dies nearly instantly.

With troopers closing in on all sides, Mai makes a run for it. Along the way, she comes across an unlocked terminal that reveals even more about just how potent and powerful her Chrysalis is:

Project: 14 (9.1.28)
Subject: Chrysalis Removal - Prime Daodan Symbiote 1B(h)

Research Team C has failed to determine a way to reverse the Daodan implantation if the Host develops in an unwanted direction. There are two key reasons for this:

1) The Daodan technique subjects select cells to a hyper-evolutionary process before replanting them in the donor's body. The Daodan 'clone' grows inside the body of the donor, replacing the host's organs with its own hyper-evolved biomass.

Subject: Chrysalis Removal - Prime Daodan Symbiote 1B(h) [cont]

2) Professor Hasegawa's theory was that the Daodan Chrysalis would replace damaged or weakened biological systems in the host body as required, enabling humans to survive what he saw was an impending collapse of the Earth's biosphere. This leads to the first difficulty. Namely that the host organism's original organs are 'devoured' and replaced by those of the Chrysalis. The second difficulty arises from the nature of the Chrysalis itself: the organism possesses an unearthly ability to adapt to adverse stimuli.

Subject: Chrysalis Removal - Prime Daodan Symbiote 1B(h) [cont]

Attempts to perform invasive or exploratory surgery are met with near instantaneous mutation in the host organism, repairing skin and organ damage almost as it happens.

If we can communicate with the Chrysalis directly it may be possible to directly influence its physical development.

It is possible to overload the recuperative capacity of the Chrysalis, but doing so would prove fatal to the host body.

Subject: Chrysalis Removal - Prime Daodan Symbiote 1B(h) [cont]

We do hold out hope that an alternative treatment method may exist.

If we think of the mutated cells as a cancer we could theoretically attack the Chrysalis with the implantation of a second cell cluster modified to destroy the Chrysalis cells and possibly reverse the mutation they caused.

How the Daodan Chrysalis might respond to this threat to its existence, and what effect such a treatment might have on the host body remains unknown.

So, this is how Mai has been able to fight and be punched, kicked, shot, and hit with explosives over the last few days without suffering any permanent injury. The effects of the Chrysalis devouring the organs of its host don’t sound particularly painless… but maybe they are? If skin or bone or any other organ is quickly being replaced by a toughened, evolved version, maybe the pain Mai experienced was quickly extinguished as she rapidly healed?

In any case, Mai takes a serious, quite possibly fatal risk using this new information. In order to escape the overwhelming TCTF forces converging on her, she flings herself into a vat of powerful acid, trusting her Chrysalis to protect her. The pursuing TCTF troopers all agree that she must be dead and give up pursuit.

In the final scene of this chapter, we see Mai surrounded by acid that appears to have been powerful enough to burn her armor completely away. Mai doesn’t appear all that comfortable, either. Presumably and apparently, Chrysalis or not, sinking beneath a vat of powerful acid hurts… a lot.

All in all, this is an incredible, insightful chapter in Mai’s story. We finally learn about her past, and can fairly easily guess what happened to her father and brother. Professor Hasegawa was likely killed by the Syndicate once he no longer proved useful. I’d like to think he resisted and refused to implant a Chrysalis into his son for as long as he could, but unfortunately we just don’t know.

What happens now? Mai seemed pretty darn angry after her uncle was killed in front of her. “You’ll all pay!” Those seem to be pretty strong words for the young woman who up until now seemed most interested in keeping the peace and learning about her past…

Previous: 32: Dream Diver
Next: 34: Phoenix Rising