A/N: In response to reviews…

In general: The idea came to me after playing Heroes of the Storm, since one of Valla's response lines is "My hunt continues." I thought, "Well, her hunt could also continue if Diablo got crossed with Doom since there are demons everywhere."

Lucario: The phrase you mention is something I've only heard in Heroes of the Storm on the Eternal Conflict map when the angel Ilarian is summoned, but yes, you are otherwise correct about that. Valla isn't necessarily my favorite Hero (ingame I like Nova for botstomps and Jaina otherwise) but her line set off this whole exercise combined with other things noted below.

Doomgal: Maybe not, but I went from being stuck to sketching out the entire plot, so… As for the references, at some point (probably while walking back from the gym) I thought "Windrunner would make a good name for an engine" which led me to conclude that Whisperwind sounds like a great stealth device. Now how do I write that into a story?

Chapter 11 – Containment Failure

Lighting problems were common in Mars City. Everyone generally got used to it after a bit of griping ("This company has so much money but doesn't bother to replace burned out bulbs?") and/or tripping on something. However, to cast the entire interior of the base in orange was…different.

"At least I can see better now" muttered a civilian.

Seconds later, an imp bisected his torso.

"Where are they coming from?" demanded Base Commander Don Bailey, before realizing he, too was bathed in an orange glow. Guards in the command center took down several lost souls before they could bite. Bailey looked up in horror, as it dawned on him the entire ceiling now appeared to be one giant demon portal. Unlike the usual, it failed to disappear after letting out a hellspawn or two.

"Lockdown, lockdown!" he bellowed. "All forces, containment level 5!"

In Secondary Artifact Storage, Audrey Manning turned to Valla upon receiving this new order.

"It's hard to contain something when it's coming from everywhere!"

"Something must be holding this portal open" replied Valla. "We must find out what."

As the team swept about seeking the edge of the demon-spawner, Valla explained what she'd seen in her own lifetime prior to the defeat of the Nephalem. Some portals were opened by Coven cultists, others by greater demons such as Azmodan.

Crossbow bolts weaved through clusters of imps, while machine gun fire cut down cherubs.

"Those things are creepy" said Manning. "I still can't get past that." She cursed as her gun ran dry again. "We're going to need an armory stop, and I'd rather do it before we all run out of ammo!"

Sergeant Manning gathered survivors, Valla, and the strange man who commanded beasts into a tram, which mercifully somehow functioned. Perhaps it had to do with most forces being recalled as demons had not yet made significant attacks against this station. Of course, it couldn't get them all the way to the barracks—stopping short due to "magnet failures." Key to their next move, the track remained intact.

"Why have we stopped?" demanded Valla. "We cannot exit here!"

Manning rolled her eyes, before remembering Valla's temporally-displaced status. She pointed at a screen at the front of the tram.

"You could no more drive a cart over thin air than advance this tram without the magnets in its track."

Valla cocked her head, looking at the others as if they were the silly ones, not her clad as she was in armor that more resembled a videogame than anything these soldiers ever saw. Extending her crossbows ahead of herself, Valla fired both on parallel, but converging courses. The heavy bolts easily punctured bullet-resistant glass, whistling away until both embedded themselves in the track a significant distance ahead.

Whether by magic or some other force, Valla remained braced while both crossbows ate up the line they'd just fed out, pulling the Demon Hunter, the tram, and her fellow passengers forward.

"When fighting demons around cliffs, such devices are useful" she replied to inquiries as to why her weapons would have such a function.

The barracks contained enough munitions to rearm those who used explosive-based weaponry. Manning ordered each soldier to grab a backpack ("You can carry at least twice as much!" she said to anyone questioning her). Blood-splattered bodies slicked the floor under an orange glow—the demons had spawned here too. Such desperate circumstances led to the opening of the base's Advanced Tactical Storage—meaning plasma cannons for everyone. That some of these showed signs of battle (including blood) did not deter anyone from taking one. Plasma cells were lighter than bullet-laden magazines, and the weapon they fueled far more powerful than the standard-issue MG-88.

"It appears these people have very powerful armaments" observed Nazeebo to Valla as the two stood off in a corner.

"Yet they lack the foresight to employ them properly" replied Valla dismissively. "They did nothing until this…" She gestured upward.

"Convergence?" suggested the witch doctor.

"Yes. That."

"Such an event must have a source" said Nazeebo, "so we must find it and destroy it."

Valla gave the other Nephalem a sideways look, disdaining him for stating the obvious.

"I have attuned my mojo to this disturbance" he continued. "The closer we are to its edge, the more its eyes will glow."

The first good news since she met Manning (a person who wished to do something about these hellspawn) caused Valla's attitude to change immediately.

"Well done! We should communicate this to the others!"

Manning, too, appreciated the development. Realizing her firepower was only useful so long as those employing it remained alive, she instructed several troopers to grab riot shields in lieu of heavy weaponry.

"We cannot assume that this…thing…will follow any logical pattern. Let's start searching perimeter corridors."

"But ma'am" protested one marine, "wouldn't it make more sense for whatever this is to be coming out of Delta Labs?"

"The source of the demons is not the source of the convergence" replied Nazeebo, as if this settled the matter.

Manning decided to just go with what these statues-turned-flesh had to say—they were correct about the threat posed by demons while her superiors had been wrong on a scale that now cost lives. From a practical perspective, there was no compelling reason to not listen to them. It took a half hour of constant fighting until the group (slightly smaller) reached the edge of whatever it was that linked their world with one far less pleasant.

"Looks like one of those phase compressors from the dumb emails we keep getting about 'new defenses'" groused one Marine. "Except, it's backward."

"Technically, they did deliver" replied Manning. "Just…not what we were hoping for."

The complaints of Explosives Specialist Canaan Westfall confirmed what was already suspected—the device, originally intended to reduce demon-spawning related to teleportation as mentioned in base-wide messages had been modified with technology that caused it to perform the exact opposite of its original function.

"And whatever someone slapped onto the compressor, I've never seen this tech before. In fact, it doesn't even look like UAC hardware!"

"Ouch!"

He yanked his hand away, blocked by a green shield that materialized upon getting too close. Punching in the usual access code on a pad that extended beyond the field, he got zapped again.

"Figures they put force fields on these boxes, but don't give us anything other than armor!" he shouted, his voice rising.

"So how do we blow it up?" demanded Manning. "There's always a way to do that."

"Step back, boys!" chirped Sabeen Whitwer, toter of the one working BFG-9000 the squad found in Advanced Tactical Storage. Much to her dismay, the BFG blast splashed harmlessly off shielding, doing precisely nothing.

She pouted. "Nothing could repel energy of this magnitude!"

"What if it's not the amount, but the concentration?" asked Westfall. "That blast got spread over the whole shield—if it is focused onto a smaller area it might break through."

Valla and Nazeebo watched with some curiosity as the pair worked with technologies they'd never seen before. Even custom-engineered sentries were not this complicated. The resulting contraption contained a BFG, two plasma rifles, and several grenades.

"Let 'er go!" bellowed Westfall. Whitwer's eyes drooped as her prized loot blew itself apart, channeling its power forward into a searing green-blue beam that ripped through the device's energy field and tore into the addition Westfall noted was not of UAC design before blasting out the other side like a blowtorch. Overhead, orange retreated, leading to cheers from the assembled Nephalem and their Marine comrades.

"We have done it!" shouted Valla. "Onto the next…"

Her words died like their hope as the ceiling disappeared, covered once again by demon portal.

Nor would anything positive come of Sonya's stint under Dr. Hatchnas.

"For reasons I cannot explain, she is dying" reported the doctor simply. "The spear through her torso is not helping, though it is not the reason one would ordinarily think. It is not blood loss or trauma to organs that is killing her—in fact, she should already be dead if that were the case."

Sonya's face contracted into a mask of pain, and her only answers to questions were grunts or gestures.

"If stone can turn into flesh, is it not also possible that this spear has…inexplicable properties?" she noted in her log. "We have tried to remove it, but it has resisted out most powerful cutting tools. Even a Mixom Beavertooth proved unable to sever it."

Actually, the chainsaw's namesake part shattered, ricocheting pieces around the surgical suite. Minor wounds requiring extraction of metal bits resulted, but given the situation such things were judged lower-priority compared to the dozens pouring in with life-threatening demon-slashes.