Danmachi: the Great Devourer

C177: Biotechnica Aftermath

Alt Title Teaser: Result of a choice.

Date published: 1/16/2025.

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"SASHA!!!!" Maine calls out to her as he approaches the car she had landed on. He sees some blood on the glass that fell down around her. Likely from the few bullet wounds that landed on the netrunner before the emp went off. 

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"Ooooh, my back" Sasha can't help but groan as she mysteriously finds a mattress, not even properly hooked on or anything but on top of the car she had crash landed on. The driver comes out all confused, both about the bed and the cute girl landing on his car. He starts berating her but the smile on Sasha's face is majestic as her will to live is shot into overdrive at the near death sensation. 

"Sasha, you're alright" Maine let out multiple deep breaths as he had to run over to this car in a panic. While he is busy brushing off the glass from Sasha, the driver continues to yell at them for any damages to his car. 

Axel takes this time to drive Maine's car next to them and tells them to hop in. They do so though Maine did ask him to simply move over but Axel only responded that there was no time. With the window being fractured, the official alarm of an intrusion is ringing out now so taking the obvious hint, the duo get in and Axel drives off. 

As they leave, the innocent driver pushes the bed off his car and it begins to dissipate into dust and energy from there. Axel sighs as he smoothly drives the car until they get halfway to the base. "We will need to aimlessly drive around for a bit. Sasha, you will have to get out here. I've transferred some eddies to you for a delamain. Go home and then start packing. You will likely need to go into hiding."

"Huh, what do you mean choom?" Maine asks, sitting in the shotgun seat of the car. He turns to look at sasha. 

"What happened Sasha? We got the data and the robots had not been activated yet. You could have gotten out." Maine questions her and her guilt now kicks in. Axel continues driving around in circles for the various blocks to make sure no one is tracking them from Biotechnica through any cameras or anything. His powers don't detect any 3rd party overlay from them but it's better to be safe than sorry. 

"I…I'm sorry. I let my personal stuff get dragged into the gig." Sasha simply apologizes as Axel finally stops the car so she can get out. He then connects a 3 way call between them as he continues giving advice. "Best to leave Night City, at least for a bit and stay away from Biotechnica controlled regions. Or go to these coordinates if you want a life changing opportunity connected to me."

He offers her two choices, the first choice which is leaving Night City, he gives her a map of states that the Bio Corp technically controls. While the other is an address inside the city. Technically a high rise near the center of the city. To anyone else it would seem like a dead end as he doesnt give her any more clues as he cuts the connection, allowing Maine and her to continue anything they wanna say as Axel now drives back to the base. 

He parks the car behind the building as he hands the keys to the car back to Maine as they get out. They both notice that Lucy's group as well as Rebecca's group have already returned. As the duo make their way inside they hear plenty of groans of agony, 

Maine sees the situation and finds that it doesnt need his help so he heads for his personal cooler to get a beer while Axel goes to the bed and gets a Citrus cocktail he makes at the bar. Lucy and Dorio are bandaging up Pilar and Rebecca as they are both sporting a few bullet wounds but thankfully the recent upgrades Rebecca got made her more durable. So she only has a few scuffs while Pilar got one bullet in his right thigh that he is complaining about.

Lucy is just putting a few bandages around Rebecca to help her recover from the few scraps she got while Dorio finally pulls out the bullet in Pilar's thigh which he quite loudly yells in pain from the rough treatment. Dorio steals the bottle of beer in Pilar's hand to dump it on the bullet wound which causes him to shriek before it's slapped right into his mouth so he gets a mouthful of beer to swig down.

Axel smirks at the scene as he hides one of his hands under the counter and condenses some healing energy courtesy of his link with Blythe. He spreads the aura out into the surrounding space which both speeds up the siblings natural healing as well as dulls the pain. Pilar sighs from relief as he thinks the meds he took for the pain are finally kicking in over the adrenaline. 

With the situation settled, everyone begins to relax until Lucy, with a confused look on her face asks Maine about Sasha. The big man grumbles and he explains, "Sasha messed up on the job, but we got it down, don't worry about her" He tries to downplay the situation but he is not good at hiding his emotions. 

As such, Lucy knows that there is more going on but that requires her to approach the person in the group she doesnt trust, the same person who got her caught up in this group. Granted she doesnt mind that latter part but she has good reason for the former, even without any sort of evidence. 

She turns to Axel but he is plugged into his cyberdeck right now, his eyes glowing as one of his hands continues to move, tapping a button, as if switching the channel.

"Ah, found it, they work fast" He suddenly says and waves his hand, connecting to the nearby tv to show what he found. 

"In a stunning turn of events, we have received files from an anonymous source that Biotechnica had hidden a dangerous side effect to one of their leading market medicine, Securicine. A noteworthy drug that is said to bolster the immune system against various illnesses and even certain types of cancers. "

"Yet the files also inform that Securicine is not as 'secure' as it seems. The medicine is said to cause genetic deformation. For those that don't know, genetic deformation causes a multitude of other illnesses to sprout, such as skin cancer or the breakdown of organs if the deformation is serious enough. Amongst this file is a list of patients who have used the medicine. Constituting across thousands of pages which we will be publishing on our news page for anyone to look at, for a small service fee of course." The news channel continues to discuss the medicine and how the few people they had contacted themselves to verify the situation discuss the loss of their family members and friends.

Learning that those precious people died due to medicine instead of the actual illness, they promise lawsuits against Biotechnica for their every misconduct in hiding this grave side effects result. 

Suddenly, the news anchor puts their hand up over their ear for a moment of silence before speaking again, "Our sources had just revealed an interesting plot twist to this whole situation. We now learn that a netrunner by the name of Sasha Yakovleva was the one who had hacked her way into the Biotechnica facility and sent us this file. After some cross-referencing, we found that there is a Marina Yakovleva who had used Securicine just 6 years ago whilst fighting a neural virus and died under Securicine." 

Axel then closes the channel as they mention how police is looking for the wayward netrunner due to breaking and entering into the corps facility. Lucy is shocked by the situation but thinking of how Sasha had been kindly teaching her these past few months. She tries to do something but Axel appears beside her, grabbing her shoulder and making her sit down again.

"There isn't anything you can do. I'm sure our own group will be investigated for a while as Biotechnica tries to figure out and punish anyone related to her. By my estimates, the company will lose out on a few billion in total. Part of it is cancellations of sales on that bad medicine, and another larger chunk is due to all the lawsuits that will follow from across the country."He offers many warnings to stay down and cool, not meet with any biotechnica people.

Axel decides to act as the shield for the crew, they likely were barely bothered in the original timeline except the loss of Sasha. But with his intervention, Sasha is now alive and well, which means someone needs to be hunted down. He could keep track of Sasha but would prefer to be surprised by her own chosen path. He spends the rest of the day teaching everyone on how to lie low and that he would help tide them over on any great expenses like rent for the time until Sasha disappears or Biotechnica backs off.

Lucy is shocked by Axel's words throughout the entire lesson as its usage is not limited to just the current situation but even her own escapage from Arasaka and the hunting teams. His level of espionage is far higher than hers but as she uses those methods over the course of the next month, she was able to continue to track the others of the team but still could not find anything about Axel until a year ago when he was 'rescued' from the Animals. 

The crew still meets up regularly or at least keeps in contact to make sure no one mysteriously disappeared. Maine and Dorio are together and as promised, Axel has been paying for their dates since they overspend a bit when they find something they like. Rebecca and Pilar caused some trouble this time but nothing major. Lucy was off the grid while Falco continued his side businesses regarding shipping cars for buyers and sellers.

Axel himself was less lucky as he landed in trouble. One lovely afternoon, 2 weeks into the crews lie low setting. Axel was sitting in a diner and enjoying some lunch when suddenly a few black suv's came parking right in the diner's parking spot. But only a select few of the cars open. From the first car is a group of black suited guards with a variety of implants as one opens the door to a formal looking black haired lady with a case in her hands. 

Stepping out of the car, she makes her way inside and after a word from one of the guards. The other bystanders noticing the situation begin to make their way out of the store to not get implicated in anything. The woman approaches Axel at his table. "Hello Mr. Ram, I hope you don't mind my presence here,"

"I do, Dino, close up for an hour, ill pay for the ones who didn't as an apology" he says and then continues eating his pancakes. The diner owner, Dino, tells his employees that they can have an hour break while he closes up shop except for one door so the people inside can still leave.

A tick appears on the woman's forehead at Axels initial response as she spends a second calming down before setting down the case in her hands.

"Mr. Ram, I am Emilia from Biotechnica, I had some questions for you regarding one Sasha Yakovleva" "and I have no answers, don't know anyone by that name, mmm so good" he takes a bite of his side dish, a plate of fresh store made pretzels. The soft bread, made to his order, has an aromatic scent to it as he takes a bite out of it.

"Ho!" Axel lets out a breath of pleasure, his head facing the ceiling as he leans back in his seat. 

The agent continues to grind her teeth at Axel's blatant disregard for their presence. She soon enough snaps as she hears another pleasurable moan from Axel as he enjoys his lunch. "Mr. Ram, i believe our presence here requires your more Immediate response, lest something bad happen to you" The guards pick up on her tone as they bunch up closer to the table. One, who is the biggest and most enhanced of the group, serving as its leader is right next to Axel, steps closer and places his hand on the 'childs' shoulder. "It's best that you paid attention, kid".

When the chief guard placed his hand on Axel's shoulder, the atmosphere of the diner began to change. Though only a few who, even after being augmented by so much bioware from Biotechnica, sensed the change in pressure and began to sweat, the guard leader is not amongst them. Though he has his own reasons to start sweating.

As Axel stops eating and calmly puts his utensils down, he slowly turns his head to look at the guard. As Axel only focuses his aura onto that one guard and everyone else only feels the runoff, they all see different things. 

The female agent, while not spiritually sensitive, is able to feel the base pressure being emitted by Axel as she has enough experience being around other powerful or crazy individuals in her line of work. As such, she is on guard for anything he would do, connecting to all the other operatives within the other vans that came with her. 

To the nearby guards, Axel morphs into a beast that seems to tear them apart limb by limb with a manic smile on its beastly face. Chunks of flesh flying all over the diner as the windows are splattered with blood and gore from their internal organs. The beast did not feast on them, they were not worthy of that, they were just prey for it's little games. They snap out of it as they hear their target's voice and nearly suffer a mental breakdown as the visions grow stronger and more vivid, "I'll be using a word that someone I know uses quite often."

"But why should I listen to you, Mongrel?"But for their leader, his senses were the strangest. As he is stuck gazing into Axel's eyes and hearing his words, he seems to see them glow and turn a variety of different colors as they swirl into a pitch black center. His vision changes as he witnesses Axel sitting on a golden throne with a variety of beauties and beasts catering to his desires. 

He soon snaps out of the illusion because Axel blinked, his reaction is quite severe as he assumes it was some sort of illusionary quick hack and begins to draw his gun at Axel. "Noooooo" Time seems to slow down as the female agent reaches out to stop the situation, it is not clear if it is to protect the target who they are supposed to negotiate with or the guard that Axel is backhand swinging his fist towards. Regardless, the situation ends as expected. 

The guard pulls out his gun but is then sent flying as the eyes of all the other guards narrow from the sight of their leader's chest crumpling like a car from the early 2000s. Bit of flesh fly everywhere on the diners counter while the guard leader himself lands against the bottom of the counter, he is just barely alive as he instinctively vomits out half his destroyed stomach. The lower left half of his belly is just turned to mush. Intestines do not spill out only because they too suffered intense damage. (almight special)

A strange silence embodies the room as the agent is trying to think of how to proceed from here while the guards in the area keep their gaze on Axel's extended fist and find that not even a drop of blood stuck to it even after he unleashed such a devastating blow. 

The agent soon receives a message that they can unleash a series of hacks upon Axel, they just need the word but she is still spellbound by the situation. Though that changes as Axel soon gets up from his seat, gazing down at the poor idiot who touched him. But quickly dismissing him from view as he makes his way to the counter and sets down a chip. He then begins to just leave. 

"Do we strike or not?" "Ah, fuck it, we're hitting him" the people inside the vans continue to call the agent who is shellshocked but she finally snaps out as she hears the second declaration. "No, don't. You'll die!!" She tries to warn but as Axel gets to the door, he finds that someone is trying to send a series of quick hacks that would shut down even half of Adam Smashers' health. 

He comments out loud which the people inside can hear, "i'm surprised you all even got to pick up on the faint trace of my signal to even hack. But you see, that signal is a trap". He snaps his fingers and the quick hacks are reversed with a magical amplification effect on them that outright causes the 3 hackers brains to just melt from the reversed strikes. 

Of course Axel doesnt stop there as he wants to send a proper message that he and the crew aren't people that Biotechnica should touch even though they are the victim here, but then they shouldn't have made such a super defective medicine that kills the patient it's meant to cure. To make that point, the cars the hackers were in also begin to melt, all 3 hackers only had a single caretaker in case of emergencies but now those people scream in confusion but nothing happens to them even when the hackers bodies and the cars around them just disappear into puddles of liquid.

Axel begins to make his way home and for the remaining 2 months they were in hiding, the group was left alone. Afterall, why should the company target a group of individuals when just one amongst them could somehow counter their hacks, eviscerate chunks of flesh and metal from a person and then destroy cars when no traces of any sort of bombs or acids were found. The situation can only be relegated to an 'X' files category of events until it could be explained. 

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Alt Title: New Timeline, Threats and Counter-Threats

Word count: 3155 

Drop a comment if you wanna judge my writing or the story. I'll try to respond, especially if you're confused or anything.