FS Character Storyline: Tsuki-Kage and the Dural Project

Dural was previously a human woman. Her name was Tsuki-Kage, a kunoichi female assassin and mother of the current (10th generation) Kage-Maru. Several years before the 1st World Fighting Tournament, the mysterious J6 corporation had been keeping the best fighters in the world under surveillance but Tsuki-Kage in particular attracted their attention. Impressed by her exemplary fighting ability, J6 abducted Tsuki-Kage from her village, Hagakure.

J6 used her body as a prototype for their terrifying Dural Project, an experimental bipedal weapon system. In conjunction with Rafale Defense Systems J6 armed her body with various cybernetic enhancements and subjected her to brainwashing, transforming Tsuki-Kage into a cyborg void of all human emotion. It was during this time that a young woman with versatile combat abilities named Sarah Bryant came to the attention of J6. Seeking to add her combat data into future versions of Dural to increase its lethality, J6 abducted Sarah and brainwashed her.

J6 squads later returned and obliterated Hagakure village, leaving no survivors. Amongst the dead was the 9th Kage-Maru, the father of the current Kage-Maru. Learning of J6’s connection to this and the 1st World Fighting Tournament, Kage-Maru entered the contest determined to avenge his father’s death and rescue his mother, Tsuki-Kage. Though he fought admirably, Kage-Maru was unable to locate his mother.

Kage-Maru finally succeeded in rescuing his mother during the second tournament, and for months they tried to put their lives back together in a small, secluded village. However, since arriving at the village, Tsuki-Kage’s health began to deteriorate at an alarming pace. Kage-Maru's investigation into his mother’s condition revealed that her transformation into Dural had now made her dependent on cybernetic enhancements to survive. He resolved to enter the third tournament upon learning that a new Dural model had been developed, hoping its technology held the key to his mother’s recovery.

Kage-Maru retrieved the cybernetic parts from a new Dural unit he defeated after winning the third tournament, and had them applied to Tsuki-Kage. To his horror, not only did his mother not recover, the technology caused her to completely revert back into Dural. She immediately attacked Kage-Maru and escaped, and was later recovered by J6. Kage-Maru learned of the 4th World Fighting Tournament and decided to enter to tournament with the sole purpose of killing Dural to end his mother’s suffering.

At J6, tests on Tsuki-Kage revealed that because she had spent too long without her cybernetic enhancements, her combat skills had degraded to the point where J6 no longer saw her as a viable basis for mass production. Approving only Dural's exterior shell for production, J6 began plans for a new model and started searching for a subject that would be compatible with the transformation process. From a shortlist of targets, Sarah Bryant was nominated for assimilation.

J6 inserted a production model Dural into the final match of the 4th World Fighting Tournament, throwing the tournament into chaos. Thinking the unit was Tsuki-Kage, Kage-Maru drove himself to destroy the unit with his bare hands.

Identifying structural weaknesses in Dural’s design, there were urgent calls from within J6 to both strengthen the production models immediately and also secure a new test subject for the Dural Project. Under pressure to provide results quickly, J6 looked to data obtained from a previous subject of theirs, Vanessa Lewis.

Aiming to physically integrate Vanessa into Dural as they had done with Tsuki-Kage, J6 successfully abducted her during the 4th World Fighting Tournament. However, apparently with the help of an insider, Vanessa escaped the day before the planned operation.

Vanessa had escaped but J6 had been able to successfully transfer her combat data into a production model Dural, creating a new, superior variant they named V-Dural. J6 immediately began preparations for holding the 5th World Fighting Tournament, planning to use it as a platform to not only test V-Dural’s performance against the best fighters in the world but to also flush out those responsible for Vanessa’s escape. Suspecting that Tsuki-Kage is still being held captive deep within J6, Kage-Maru resolves to once again free his mother and put an end to the evil organization.

Dural variants

All known versions of Dural are based on a humanoid female form. As Tsuki-Kage, the subject used as Dural’s prototype was a woman, all subsequent candidates for assimilation were female seemingly for compatibility reasons. Her shell is a highly classified alloy, and can change color to adapt to different situations. With each successive tournament, her appearance became more streamlined and though veiled in secrecy, several upgrades became apparent.

First appearing in the 1st World Fighting Tournament, the prototype Dural was effectively the body of Tsuki-Kage within a matte aluminum/gold cybernetic shell. The top layer of this shell, or ‘skin’, was comprised of small interlocking plates giving Dural's body a blocky, segmented appearance. Over the course of the tournament, Dural was shown to be able to ‘learn’ a range of fighting techniques from the attending combatants.

By the second tournament Dural’s upgrades included full facial features, with eyes, a nose, ears, and mouth. An apparent upgrade to her CPU allowed her to learn more fighting techniques, as her combat vocabulary appeared considerably larger than before. A special testing arena was constructed in a tank to test the unit’s underwater combat performance, in an effort to make Dural a truly amphibious weapon system.

With Sarah Bryant’s combat data uploaded, Dural assumed Sarah's physical profile in the third tournament. Her chrome/gold colored skin alloy was greatly improved, giving her body a much sleeker, highly reflective look. Tsuki-Kage was retired from service due to performance concerns, but her shell was approved for mass production. One operational Dural unit was also fitted with an experimental optical camouflage that bent light around her body gradually making her transparent, but the effects were only temporary. This model was tested during the tournament, and defeated by Kage-Maru who harvested key cybernetic elements from the body.

In the fourth tournament Dural still mimicked Sarah's profile but had a unique fighting stance. Her usually chrome skin could also adopt a light blue hue. Her optical camouflage was improved greatly, keeping her disguised for longer and making visual detection even more difficult than before. The camouflage’s cooling apparatus resembled heavy breathing when the unit was motionless. The upgraded stealth technology compromised the shell’s integrity however; resulting in the unit’s single-handed destruction at the hands of Kage-Maru.

The new V-Dural model, created as a stop-gap measure, featured Vanessa Lewis' profile and stance after J6 uploaded her combat data into a production model. Initial tests showed this version to be far superior in all aspects of hand-to-hand combat, and without the camouflage technology featured in previous versions, Dural was much more resilient to physical attack. This variant retained her chrome exterior from previous versions, as well as a new metallic black color replacing gold and a camouflage skin that replicated stone.

The future direction of the Dural Project will decided based on results gained from combat tests carried out during the 5th World Fighting Tournament.

Adapted from virtuafighter.wikia.com

 

wow good job if only vf would flesh out its story cuz this is gold