Arc-ventures across the multiverse

by Alvaaron

RWBY and friends gather to watch the adventures of Jaune across the multiverse. A collection of crossovers and one shot ideas for your reading pleasure. Enjoy

18. Chapter 17: RIP & TEAR

Disclaimer, I do not own RWBY or any of the franchises referenced in this work

Chapter 17: RIP & TEAR

Inspiration: DOOM (2016)

"Alright, this universe is slightly different from all the others, namely Jaune Arc does not speak in this one. This version of him is a firm believer in actions speaking louder than words." Blank said, getting Neo to perk up immediately at the thought of seeing another mute on screen.

"Ooh, so he's the kind of guy who talks with his fists then?" Yang asked, punching her palm with an audible smack.

"You could say that." Blank agreed.

"Oh, so a male version of Yang then? Minus the puns at least." Weiss said and sighed while rubbing her temples.

"Not… exactly. This one only has two moods, angry and angrier, he's also a firm believer in bloody murder being the first, best and only solution to his problems."

"…Heh, well this ought to be interesting." Mercury chuckled softly.

"Jaune's a bad guy!?" Ruby asked with wide eyes.

"No. He's a good guy all the way through, it's just that the enemies he faces deserve it completely." blank answered.

"But he's still a monster then, so much for the moral high ground you all love to cling too." Cinder smirked when the audience directed their ire her way again.

"Well, yes, yes he is. Considering he is literally fighting off the forces of hell, half measures don't cut it. He came to the conclusion that the only way to win was to be the single most terrifying monster to tear through the depths of hell, and put the fear of him in everyone standing in his way."

"I'm almost afraid to ask, does he succeed?" Ironwood asked.

"Considering entire demonic hordes broke and fled at the first sign of his approach in the past, I'd say he did. Hell effectively gave up trying to kill him after a while, judging it impossible, in the end they sacrificed one of their most important sites as bait and dropped a mountain on him to seal him away in supposed eternal agony, unable to die or escape." Blank said.

"Oh. That's… horrible." Ozpin said with distaste.

"Nah, it didn't stick. He didn't even feel it, just took a few millennia long power nap until someone released him."

"What." Blake stared blankly at the ball of light, wondering if he was messing with them.

"Ah, I'll just start the viewing, it'll be a series of shorts covering the entire incident." Blank said and the lights dimmed, instead of the screen coming on though, narration started first.

In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened.

One stood.

Burned by the embers of Armageddon.

His soul blistered by the fires of hell and tainted beyond ascension.

He chose the path of perpetual torment.

In his ravenous hatred, he found no peace.

And with boiling blood, he scoured the umbral plains.

Seeking vengeance against the dark lords who had wronged him

He wore the crown of the night sentinels.

And those that tasted the bite of his sword, named him…

The Doom Slayer.

A metal riff started playing as the screen came to life, displaying the title card.

DOOM

"Ah now that's music for the soul!" Yang cheered as she bobbed her head to the beat.

"It is catchy, I assume Jaune is the Doom Slayer then?" Ren asked.

"Indeed" Blank confirmed.

"Man, I wanna know just what a guy has to do to get a title like that." Mercury whistled.

"Get a kill count so large they have to invent a number for it and or slaughter your way across hell multiple times."

Resurgence

Jaune's eyes snapped open, the foul reek of hell spawn filled the air and got his blood boiling. Looking up, he could see the lid of the sarcophagus that held him for untold centuries suspended from the ceiling.

As the argent energy shielding his body faded away, Jaune's attention was drawn to the side when an inhuman screech tore its way free from a transformed human researcher. A quick glance at his limbs indicated he was still held down by the manacles the demons thought strong enough to hold him.

As the demon approached, Jaune pulled on the supposedly unbreakable chains. Within seconds, they'd snapped under his strength. Backhanding the now in range demon hard enough to crack its skull, Jaune gripped it tight with his thumb inside the central hole on its face. Without a word, Jaune slammed his prize down on his sarcophagus, smashing the skull to pulp instantly.

Ripping his other arm free and then his legs, Jaune leapt off his former prison, picking up a discarded pistol on the floor. Grabbing it and thumbing the safety off, Jaune started firing on the remaining possessed in the room with him, blowing their heads off with precise shots.

"Eww… those… things are disgusting. It's not going to be as bad as that dream, nightmare one is it?" Emerald asked, disgust written all over her face.

"Some demons are grotesque, but nothing on the level as that one. Oh and as a safety precaution." Blank flickered once and a purple silencing cylinder materialised around Ruby's seat.

"To protect your ears, some of the guns are… out of this world I shall say. She's free to scream to her heart's content inside that cylinder." Blank explained and received a series of understanding 'oh's in response including a thankful nod from Blake.

Exiting the room, Jaune was pleased to see his Praetor suit just waiting for him outside. As he donned the armour, he found himself running through his memories to his time before the sealing. Argent D'nur remained in the hands of the demons, and the wraiths were still shackled, with any luck, that would change soon.

Attempting to access a nearby terminal for information on the demonic outbreak yielded no results, one of the satellite dishes was misaligned and until it was adjusted, no data would reach him. Any further attempt to pry more information from the terminal was prevented when the system initiated a remote lockout, and an incoming call started playing.

"Welcome, I'm Dr James Ironwood, I'm the head of this facility. I think we can work together and resolve this problem in a way that benefits us both." Jaune shoved the screen away, sending it crashing into the wall and breaking it instantly before continuing forwards.

"That's… rude. At the same time, I had something to do with this mess, don't I?" Ironwood asked with a heavy sigh.

"You are partially responsible for it. You're a well intentioned extremist here, you do what you do because you believe that there's no other choice. The benefits outweighed the risks in your assessments, but you failed to account for your subordinates being far more susceptible to demonic influence than yourself." Blank answered.

"What could General, uh Dr Ironwood have been doing to cause this demonic invasion?" Winter wondered aloud.

"The world was facing an energy crisis that would have meant the near total extinction of humanity in the not too distant future. Every existing energy source was either already dry or simply not enough, to solve it, Dr Ironwood invented argent energy… obtained by siphoning energy from hell itself." Blank said.

"What. I used to work for fire bitch, I've heard and been part of more than enough stupid ass ideas than I ever needed to. But, that has got to be the single most insane idea I've ever heard of." Roman said, Neo nodding vigorously by his side.

"Steal energy from hell… who thought that was a good idea again? How in the world did they not think it would go wrong?" Qrow agreed with the master thief.

"They were very, very desperate. To be honest, it would have worked too, if not for the failure of the human element of the plan." Blank replied.

"Just so we're clear, I'd never do anything like that." Ironwood reassured when he could feel several stares resting on him.

"You won't do something like that, it's true, but you do have the same problem as that version of yourself. Both of you have a tendency to resort to desperate measures when the chips are down, no matter how 'wrong' the solution feels, simply because you think a sure bet is better than risking it all on alternatives."

"Is that so wrong though? Clearly everything has gotten out of hand over there, but you can't afford to risk some things." Ironwood argued.

"Maybe, the problem with picking the sure bet is that it's only 'sure' because you think your data backs it up. If the data is wrong either by mistake or by deliberate sabotage, any decision made on it will more likely than not also be wrong." Blank said and Ironwood fell silent, mulling the words over.

After clearing a hallway of possessed workers, Jaune came across a locked door. Looking down at his feet, he shook his head is disappointment when he noticed the corpse lying there. Whoever it was had to have fallen over at the last second and failed to get up in time before the door sealed shut and bisected him.

Nothing he could do for the man now. Reaching down to grab hold of the corpse's shotgun, he pulled on it and found the man's fingers frozen to the metal, another pull and it came free, tearing the torso free from where it had been trapped by the door, minus the legs.

Undeterred by the gruesome sight, Jaune reached down and forcibly lifted up the heavy door by force, ignoring the protesting whine of the machinery as he stepped through.

There came a roar when an imp leapt down from the pipes, fireballs in hand ready to challenge him. Jaune simply shot the demon in the face with his new shotgun. It was still alive after that, but rapidly ceased to be when Jaune grabbed its mangled face and introduced it to his armoured knee hard enough to splatter the skull completely.

The room beyond was dyed with a sickly orange glow. Jaune's expression tightened under the helmet as he noticed the gore nest, a twisted mishappen blob of flesh made up of the bodies of countless victims, acting as a doorway to hell for the demons. A quick wrench and Jaune removed its core, causing it to explode in a shower of blood and gore and a piercing scream that hurt the ears.

"Ew. Just ew." Weiss's revulsion was blatant for all to see, in Cinder's corner of the theatre, Emerald was nodding empathetically.

"They turn the corpses of their victims into portals? That's… actually a good plan, the more they kill the more portals they can spawn to serve as a staging ground to further their invasion." Winter looked ill as she found herself agreeing with the demon's actions even if only from the tactical standpoint.

"Good thing the Grimm can't do that, or we'd have gone extinct a long time ago." Blake said.

Additional demons started teleporting into the room, drawn by the destruction of the gore nest and making it through before the portal collapsed entirely.

Their rallying cries were rapidly drowned out by shotgun blasts as Jaune went to work. The Doom Slayer fired until his guns were empty, then he used his fists, beating the remaining imps into bloody chunks with his bare hands.

Finishing off the last imp by grabbing it and ripping it in half vertically, Jaune tossed aside the disintegrating corpse, revelling in the surge of energy that fed into his Praetor suit. His body sang with angry energy as power coursed his veins, washing away any hint of fatigue and waking him up fully from his long peaceful sleep.

"Doesn't he take damage at all? He can't possibly be fine after getting hit so many times with those fireballs." Cinder stared at the screen incredulously, as a fire user herself, she knew just how much damage attacks like that would cause. Having someone simply shrug it off like nothing was quite disconcerting.

"His armour is indestructible and the demons are nothing more than food to him." Blank answered.

"Food? They don't look very tasty." Nora commented.

"Not in the normal sense, whenever he kills with a melee attack, he drains away the demon's remaining life force, using it to fuel himself and keep himself refreshed. Long as he's killing, he doesn't need to eat, drink or rest."

"That's… okay… I'm just happy he's a good guy and our version of the kid isn't some life stealing vampire." Qrow muttered with a small shiver.

"Eh, it is what it is. It definitely helped contribute to his reputation though, since hell itself is functionally an all you can eat buffet for him." Blank replied.

An announcement came over the loudspeaker once the clean-up was done, announcing that demonic taint was back in manageable levels and the area lockdown had been lifted. Jaune simply rolled his eyes as he made for the exit, as if there was such a thing as a manageable level of demonic taint that wasn't zero.

While waiting for the elevator to arrive, a hologram sprung into existence, old security footage playing due to damage to several subsystems. The ghostly image of Cinder walked around, muttering to herself. "He cannot be allowed to leave this place, he would ruin everything."

As the hologram faded, Jaune filed the image away in his mind for future reference. Instincts telling him that whoever it was in the recording was at the heart of this mess.

"Why am I not surprised." Roman deadpanned and glared at Cinder.

"You're willing to sell out humanity to the Grimm here so why not sell everyone out to the forces of hell themselves? Par for the course now that I think about it."

"It's called being on the winning side. I'm sure whatever deal I've been offered is worth my time. As for everyone else… what about them?" Cinder said nonchalantly.

"The demons promised you power for your cooperation, and unfortunately for that version of you, they uphold their side of the bargain." Blank said.

"How is that a bad thing?" Cinder asked, unable to comprehend how getting the power she was promised could be detrimental.

"You'll see, you'll see."

As Jaune hit the elevator button to ascend, his annoyance spiked when Ironwood's voice came through his elevator's speakers. "I'm willing to take full responsibility for the horrible events of the last 24 hours. But you must understand, our interest in their world was purely for the betterment of mankind."

Jaune said nothing, simply looking down at his feet. There lay the corpse of yet another victim of the demons, the heavily mauled individual had made it to the elevator in hopes of reaching safety, yet expired just before he could reach the buttons if the trail of blood was anything to go by.

Jaune looked back to the intercom and cracked his knuckles as Ironwood continued speaking. "Everything has clearly gotten out of hand now, yes, but it was worth the risk I assure you."

Slamming his armoured fist into the interface, Jaune smashed it to pieces instantly and the short ended there.

"Can't say I can't understand why he's not willing to listen to you Jimmy. That really isn't helping your case." Qrow chuckled at the morbid display.

"Haah… fair's fair, I probably wouldn't listen to me either in that case." Ironwood sighed and rubbed his temples to ease the building migraine.

"All for the sake of humanity huh… heh just like that version of myself from the nightmare universe." Ozpin said, smiling bitterly at the reminder.

"The road to hell is ordered by the righteous, planned by the well meaning and paved with good intentions. You'll find that truer in more situations than you think." Blank said.

Minor setback

Jaune's plasma rifle sent a steady stream of bolts towards the hell knight, burning off parts of its flesh with every hit. Once the weapon's heat sinks were full, Jaune vented it, releasing a blast of heat outwards that staggered the demon, causing parts of its anatomy to start melting. With it staggered, Jaune punched its head in, knocking it to the floor, then raised his boot and brought it down, pulping the skull.

With the last demon dead, there was no longer any interference and the giant turbines started working again. They dissipated the heat build-up and prevented a complete core meltdown that would have destroyed the entire facility.

With the immediate threat dealt with, Jaune was now free to continue forwards on his quest to shut the hell portal down completely.

"A primary control room has been activated somewhere nearby, it could be Cinder." Ironwood's voice came through the comms but Jaune didn't respond, didn't need to. He was now standing outside a control room of sorts with the shutters down, once he unlocked them, there standing behind a reinforced glass wall was Cinder Fall.

"Authorization, Cinder Fall, alpha 4, 0, 2." Jaune slammed a fist against the glass pane and watched as his fist simply bounced off, even without the shutters, a kinetic barrier was in place to keep him from breaking in. Cinder ignored him as she started fiddling with the control panels, rerouting power from all over the facility to the argent energy tower.

"She has locked me out Dr Ironwood." Penny's voice helpfully informed as Cinder continued to put her endgame in motion.

"Penny is here as well?" Winter asked.

"Indeed, she doesn't have a human body though, just an AI core. What she lacks in combat ability, she makes up for in processing power." Blank informed.

"She in trying to tear open a portal between our world and theirs." Ironwood surmised, getting Jaune to frown.

"You could not have saved them anyways." Cinder smirked before turning on her heels and leaving. Jaune slammed his fist against the barrier again, getting it to ripple from the force of the strike but not much else. By the time Penny had hacked back into the system and unlocked the doors for him, Cinder was long gone.

"Looks like I win again. As expected." Cinder grinned widely, seeing another version of her triumph over her enemies easily brought a smile to her face.

"Keep talking, just keep talking, we'll see how long it takes for you to start screaming when I skin you alive." Qrow growled.

With the argent energy tower overloaded with power and slowly enlarging the hole used to siphon hell's energy, it was only a matter of time before the rift between worlds grew large enough for the entire demonic host to start pouring through.

Unlike with the security system where Penny still had some control over, Cinder's lockout on the power grid was total. There was no remote shutdown and the facility had too many backup generators to simply destroy all of them. That left only one course of action, disabling the tower's induction filters.

Jaune stared at the tower in the distance, storm clouds surrounded the beam shooting into the heavens from it started to increase in intensity. There would be time to deal with the tower later, for now he had filters to disable.

Following the nav points Penny was kind enough to provide, Jaune made his way to the closest filter, only to find a gore nest blocking his way. Popping it by tearing out his heart, Jaune readied his weapons for the incoming reinforcements.

True to form, the red flashes indicating demons teleporting started popping up all around the area. Jaune met the firstcomers with a face full of buckshot, downing them with his shotgun. When the hell knights started arriving, he followed up by feeding them grenades and then melting their faces off with his plasma rifle, the heat wave function serving as a very effective crowd control weapon.

Stumbling back slightly when a hell knight landed behind him with enough force to cause a localised earthquake, he was sent staggering back when the demon punched him right in the face. Shaking off the hit that would have killed a lesser man, Jaune got back up and fired his plasma rifle until it clicked empty.

A roar of triumph came from the hell knight as it realised Jaune was out of ammo. That sense of pride and accomplished died instantly as Jaune dropped the gun, letting it hang by its sling and rushed in close for a melee beat down.

Despite the demon towering over the Doom Slayer and having greater strength behind its blows, it was the one being forced back when Jaune simply powered through its blows and continued delivering haymaker after haymaker.

Finally bringing the knight to its knees, Jaune grabbed its head and kneed it hard enough to shatter the skull. Feeling the lifeforce of the dead demon drain into him, Jaune checked his depleted plasma rifle and found that it was back to half charge, not as much as he would have liked but it would do.

"Okay, how does that work? I get the stealing lifeforce on kill bit but how does that translate to ammo?" Yang asked, her mind tying itself into knots trying to make sense of it.

"It just happens, the full details are murky even to me, but I chalk it up to the same being who made his armour. A blessing for him to continue his endless campaign of terror against the demons, he can use any weapon he picks up like a seasoned professional and when he's low on ammunition, kills refill a portion of his reserves. You'll find he doesn't need to reload his weapons either." Blank said.

"Now that you mention it, I don't recall seeing Jaune reload his shotgun, and there's no way it can hold that many bullets." Pyrrha said.

"We're only temporarily disabling the tower." Ironwood said once Jaune reached the first induction filter, a complex device that funnelled red hell energy through and put out clean blue argent energy on the other side. The Doom Slayer paid no attention to Ironwood's words as he investigated the machinery.

"You need to remove each lens individually. Carefully release the hinges." Ironwood instructed and Jaune stopped his investigation, he'd heard all he need to. Raising his boot, he brought it down, kicking the filter in and causing a spray of blue liquid to fountain into the air, smashing it again, the filter broke completely and hell energy was free to feed into the system, contaminating the refined argent energy beyond.

Red lights started flashing as an alarm blared. "Warning, energy contamination detected."

"…Well… that's something alright." Goodwitch commented with some disbelief in her voice.

"Heh, I like this one. There I was thinking he'd be a goody two shoes and follow instructions, hah! Glad to be proven wrong." Mercury grinned, appreciating the carnage and utter disrespect for authority Jaune was showing.

"Yes, but I do hope you're not getting any ideas of insubordination now Mercury." Cinder said and he shut up instantly.

"Destroying the production of argent energy isn't necessary." Ironwood chided, annoyance dripping from his every word. Jaune paid it no mind, simply exiting the room to proceed to his next target, slaughtering any demon that tried to stop him in the process.

Picking up a rocket launcher from a fallen member of the security forces, Jaune used it to great effect against the summoners once they started spawning in. Infernal teleporting bastards as they were, thanks to his new toy, he had more than enough rockets to share with all of them, doubly so once he picked up a tracking module.

"Was the cylinder really necessary? Most of the weapons aren't that amazing so far… except maybe the plasma rifle. Where's all the cooler stuff!?" Ruby poked her head out of her silencing field to complain.

"Patience. They'll appear soon, have some cookies while you wait." Blank replied and a plate of cookies appeared in front of Ruby.

"Fine." Shrugging and accepting the plate, she retuned to the field and started munching on her new plate of snacks.

"You must stop. The hell energy is unusable without the filters" Ironwood's protests went ignored again as Jaune ground the second filter to scrap under his boot.

"What you are destroying is more valuable than you can possibly imagine. It is a perfect and unlimited energy resource." Jaune didn't reply to the doctor's explanations, simply making his way to the third and final filter and reducing it to scrap as he had the other two.

"We spent decades perfecting the science, selling it to humanity. We balanced their hell energy with our science to make it usable and safe!" Jaune turned and stared at the multitude of human corpses lying on the floor before pushing forwards.

"We solved an energy crisis the world had no answer for, it works! You cannot do this!" Again, Ironwood's protests fell on deaf ears as Jaune focused on wiping out the final gore nest in the area. The many imps hurling fireballs his way were a greater concern than listening to the prattling of a man playing with forces beyond his comprehension.

"If stopping our energy production is all you want, then you need only destroy this lens filter and argent energy will no longer exist in this solar system. We will be back at square one." Ironwood's words only cemented Jaune's resolve as he looked out at the argent energy tower in the distance, still widening the gateway with every second that passed.

Clenching his fists, he slammed down on the lens filter casing, cracking it and eventually shattering it. Grabbing the glowing core inside, Jaune ripped it free and tossed it away, the filtration system exploded violently seconds later.

"You have no idea what you've just done." Ironwood's horrified voice came through the comms again. Jaune simply stared into the distance, the beam threatening to spell the end of humanity had shut off and the gateway to hell was starting to shrink. So, he did actually have a pretty good idea of what he just did.

"Gotta admit, he has a point." Taiyang pointed out.

"I'm not that bad am I?" Ironwood groaned and buried his face in his hands, unable to believe his counterpart was still insisting on the idea of stealing energy from hell being a good one for humanity.

"Not really, but you do have a habit of doubling down when stepping back would be a better idea James." Ozpin said, getting his fellow headmaster to groan again.

"Cinder is still alive, I've detected her life signature in the argent tower. She has removed one of the accumulators from the tower base, it has a unique energy signature that we can track." Penny's voice replaced Ironwood's and Jaune simply nodded. To him, that woman was probably still trying to find a way to force open the portal and he had a bullet with her name on it.

"Well, that's it then. There's nothing else to be done." Ironwood's disappointed voice came through the comms one last time before falling silent, leaving Jaune to exit this section of the facility in peace and make his way towards the tower in the distance.

"You're kidding, doesn't she know when to quit!?" Weiss shook her head, unable to wrap her head around the idea that Cinder was still trying to tear open the portal.

"Across the multiverse, knowing when to fold is very rarely a trait that Cinder possesses." Blank said.

"Primary access points to the tower were destroyed in the explosion. The pipeline is damaged but still intact. There are thrust boots in the maintenance hangar, you can use them to traverse the pipeline." Penny informed once Jaune made it to a 'bridge' leading to the tower. He could see a portion of it near the end had been destroyed in some explosion.

Whatever these thrust boots were, they were probably some kind of additional mobility option. Before he could claim the boots though, he had to deal with the minor demonic presence maintaining the lockdown. Several possessed soldiers and a couple of revenants were waiting for him.

As the revenants roared and sent a barrage of missiles at him, Jaune simply shook his head at the existence of the mashup between a demon and human technology. Clear signs of human experimentation, and even more reason to level the entire facility to prevent all this from happening again.

Suppressing the urge to sigh, Jaune raised his own rocket launcher and returned fire.

"Human experimentation? What is it with these worlds and human experimentation!? First it was turning people into monsters, then people into cyborgs and now people into cyborg monsters. I'm starting to see a pattern here." Blake threw her arms up in the air and complained.

"Huh, it's just a coincidence I assure you." Blank said and several of the audience members shot him disbelieving looks.

"Bullshit." Mercury fake coughed out.

Upon retrieving the thrust boots, he found the additional mobility and 'double jump' it offered a great addition to his arsenal. It certainly made traversing the damaged pipeline a lot easier even with all the demons spawning in to offer themselves up as tribute.

Fighting to the end of it, the thrust boots meant that he cleared the damaged section easily, landing with a solid thud on the other side of the gap. His anger grew when he noticed Cinder standing on the other side of the viewing screen messing with some elevator controls.

Once more a kinetic barrier and reinforced glass stood in his way, and Penny had yet to hack into the doors to allow him access. The treacherous woman noticed him and grimaced, picking up a cylinder glowing with red energy, she carried her precious cargo into the elevator and prepared to ascend.

"Ah… that's an argent accumulator she's carrying. She'll try to use it to open a portal manually into hell." Ironwood's words confirmed Jaune's suspicions.

"While the argent tower is non-functional, the connection to their world is still viable. We are at great risk Dr Ironwood." Penny said as she rapidly worked to grant the Doom Slayer access to the tower.

It didn't work, Cinder had already sabotaged the doors in the event Penny tried to open them. The doors started to open slowly before there was a small explosion and sparks flew, causing the door to grind to a halt. The only option left was for Jaune to pry open the doors himself and by the time he did so, Cinder was already on her way to the top of the tower.

"Well, well, well, too late to stop me again. Doesn't he ever get tired of failing?" Cinder smirked as Jaune was once again too late to catch her counterpart.

"He hasn't failed yet, he'll catch you sooner or later." Pyrrha said.

"And then Jaune-Jaune's gonna break your legs." Nora followed up.

"Count on it." Ren finished.

Jaune stomped downwards, flattening the skull of a summoner. Three imps were all that was left of the small taskforce sent to impede him, everything else was already dead. Dodging their fireballs with quick footwork, Jaune closed to melee distance and vented his plasma rifle, melting them down.

With all opposition in the area vanquished, he was free to advance again. According to Penny's info, much of the tower was actually hollow, nothing more than a casing built around the central pylon for maintenance purposes. Various lifts, side passages and repulsors would get him to the top if at a slower pace than the central elevator.

Making his way through the maintenance ducts, he came to a viewing platform, the argent energy pillar was clearly visible through it. No demons in sight but given the strength of the pillar, Jaune knew they'd be mobbing him as soon as he stepped foot inside.

Sure enough, the instant he lifted a door and stepped through to the interior, a mancubus leapt up to challenge him. Roaring and smashing its arm cannons together in defiance, it started firing fireballs towards Jaune.

"Damn look at that fatass, hasn't he ever heard of a diet or a treadmill?" Mercury clapped sarcastically at the sight of the morbidly obese demon.

"Still… that thing can jump." Emerald commented, what the mancubus lacked in walking speed, it made up for with ridiculous jump height, easily getting around the arena to try and blindside Jaune.

"Those cannons more human experimentation again?" Torchwick asked.

"No. Those armour and weapons on it are natural growths… as natural as anything can be for a demon anyways. As for experimentation on them, well…" Blank trailed off into silence.

Unfazed by the wall of flaming death approaching him, Jaune dodged to the side and raised his rocket launcher, firing the rockets directly into the demon's exposed unarmoured belly.

Credit to the mancubus's resilience, despite having multiple high explosive projectiles introduced to its flesh, it refused to go down. Until Jaune jumped onto it, shot out its eye with a shot gun and ripped one of the cables on its back free, causing the behemoth to explode in a shower of blood and gore.

As though that was the signal, demonic reinforcements started pouring in in force, including a number of hell knights and several more mancubi. Stowing the empty rocket launcher and drawing his shotgun, the Doom Slayer got to work.

"Again with the eye, why, just why!?" Emerald complained.

"It's… certainly effective." Summer said slowly, equally creeped out.

"If it has a head, it has a weak point. And generally, the weakest point on a head would be the eyes, or eye as the case may be." Blank answered.

"That's… one way of looking at things." Goodwitch said.

"The energy signature of the argent accumulator indicates that it is nearing the top of this facility." Penny informed Jaune while he was on board a service lift taking him up.

"If she ruptures that accumulator near the argent beam, she could open a portal to their world that we will never be able to close." Ironwood added, emphasizing the severity of the situation.

Jaune's rage simmered inside at the bad news, but there was nothing he could do. None of the service elevators in the area reached the top and snails moved faster than them. He was stuck jumping and climbing from platform to platform trying to pick his way upwards.

Smashing his way past several more waves of demons in his climb, he was finally gaining on Cinder if Penny's tracking of the argent accumulator was correct.

"You cannot stop me from claiming what I am owed! What I was promised!" Cinder's voice reached him through the intercoms, a small hint of panic in them as Jaune was hot on her heels.

Penny's navpoint pinged on his HUD, indicating Cinder was on the other side of a set of sealed blast doors. Jaune gripped the doors at their seams, pulling them apart, the metal folding inwards and the machinery groaning in protest.

"THIS IS NOT THE END! IT'S ONLY THE BEGINNING!" Cinder screamed out as she twisted the lid on the argent accumulator, before jumping backwards and into the argent beam, getting transported to the other side and having the accumulator explode in the process.

The blast wave ripped the doors asunder and tossed Jaune backwards, sending him crashing to the floor in a heap. When he got back up, he was treated to the sight of the argent beam going haywire and demons spawning in by the bucketload as the portal was forcibly wrenched open and widened by Cinder.

As he continued fighting, the argent beam grew brighter and brighter, until finally there was a brilliant flash and Jaune could see no more.

"I win as expected. So much for not failing to stop me." Cinder gloated, relishing in the hate being sent her way.

"Bullshit! There's no way she wins like that!" Yang slammed a fist onto her armrest, denting the thing as her hair started leaking embers into the air.

"Relax, that's just one short, there's still more to come." Blank's words lifted the audience's spirits somewhat and put a damper on Cinder's

"They're still screwed though, with all the demons already there… what!? I'm just saying!" Roman raised his hands in defence when he found himself the subject of multiple angry glares.

"Technically speaking yes, but since everyone in the facility aside for the doctor is already KIA, functionally, there isn't much difference other than clean up going to take longer." Blank clarified.

"Oh… that's good? Better? Worse?" Weiss shrugged, unable to come up with a solid answer.

Old friends, old enemies

The bloody baron of hell sank to its knees, unable to stand anymore with all the damage dealt to it. One green eye stared tiredly at the approaching Doom Slayer. Jaune planted a foot on its head and grabbed its horn, with a violent wrench, he tore the protrusion free, taking a chunk of flesh with it. The baron's dying cries were silenced when Jaune clubbed its skull in with its own horn.

"Wait, isn't he supposed to be dead? Is he in hell or something?" Mercury asked.

"No, and yes. When the argent tower destabilised, he was sucked in and thrown into hell, and now he's killing his way out of it again, business as usual." Blank answered.

The noxious air of hell was familiar to him, and so was this section of hell. It had been remodelled extensively since the last time he was here but he recognised enough of it. This was where the demons entombed him after their epic failure at killing him. And now it was his way back, Ironwood's men had left a fully functioning transporter here and the demons hadn't destroyed it or even investigated it.

He felt a tiny bit of amusement that the demons were so terrified of his legacy they didn't bother investigating his tomb even after Ironwood had it shipped across worlds. If they had, the demonic invasion would probably have happened sooner.

Not that it would have made much difference, he'd simply have woken earlier that's all. Jaune holstered his weapons and activated the console, there was a brief tugging sensation and then he was between worlds again.

"He's going back already? Aww… I wanted to see fearless leader kick butt in hell." Nora whined.

"He'll be back later." Blank answered.

Jaune's boots thudded onto a metal platform, upon looking up, he was back in the UAC facility on mars. He hadn't taken a single step before Ironwood's voice intruded on his thoughts again. "The argent tower is destroyed, the portal can no longer be closed from this side. The hell energy flows from a location in their world we call, the well."

Exiting the room he was transported to, Jaune was treated to the sight of the facility in even worse condition than before. The damage to the buildings and structures was far more extensive than before his sojourn to hell, thick black smoke poured from the still burning buildings and shrouded the night sky.

"But you've returned, the only flesh and blood to walk between dimensions. So there may be a way." Ironwood's chuckles grated on Jaune's nerves as he blew apart a surprised cacodemon that rounded the corner unprepared. Jaune lowered the gauss cannon, deactivating its siege mode and nodded appreciatively at the firepower the weapon possessed.

Once Ruby stopped vibrating inside her cylinder, she poked her head out of the silencing field and started firing off questions rapidly. "What was that? A laser weapon? Plasma? How do I build it?"

"Neither, it's an electromagnetic weapon firing tiny flechettes instead of a single slug. If you do build it, mind the recoil." Blank answered.

"Recoil? Oooh… I have ideas already." Ruby retreated back into her cage and started scheming, she already used the recoil from Crescent Rose in her fighting style, if she could swap out the standard sniper rifle bit for the gauss cannon…

'More recoil, more speed, more firepower…' Qrow read his niece's lips and sighed when she started giggling silently inside her silencing field.

Get to Lazarus labs, retrieve artefact, use it to find a way to shut off the portal at the source. Simple plan, Jaune liked it, simple was good… except for the part where the demons were content to lead him on a wild goose chase all over the area.

To get to the labs, he needed to go through the advance research complex, to get to the ARC, he needed to take the tram, and to take the tram he needed a god damned key card. Of which only one was still functional in this entire demon infested section of the facility. And of course, it had to be stolen by a demon who thought the card's owner made a good chew toy.

Needless to say, he was royally pissed off. Funnelling that rage into his blows, Jaune extracted his pound of flesh from every demon the dark lords threw at him in their pathetic efforts to stem his offensive.

As Jaune punched a flying cacodemon hard enough to send it hurtling towards its earthbound brethren, bowling over several before it popped like a balloon, he mused that the one good thing about the portal being out of whack was concentrations of argent energy popping up in places.

Those concentrations functioned as temporary powerups for the Doom Slayer and allowed him to perform feats of inhuman ability. Such as punching enemies hard enough to reduce them to bloody chunks in a single hit without the need to weaken them with gunfire first.

"Whoa, he can punch. I wonder, if I get Jaune to boost my semblance will I be able to hit that hard?" Yang furrowed her brows in thought, the idea of being able to slaughter Grimm en masse with a single punch was very tempting.

"No experimenting with Jaune's semblance Yang, we don't need you to be a live example of why children shouldn't play with fire." Blake swatted her partner on the head before her imagination could lead them down the road to a lifetime of detentions.

"Oh come on, just think about it! Victory in one punch! What's not to love?" Yang defended.

After clearing out a sizable chunk of the demonic presence in his vicinity, Jaune finally retrieved the key card from the deceased pinky. The upper torso of its chew toy was only barely recognizable as human, but at least the card was intact.

Backtracking to the tram station and clearing out some more of the possessed UAC workers, Jaune boarded the tram and scanned his key card. The vehicle rumbled to life and he was on his way.

"It's time we meet in person, my office is on the second floor of this facility." Ironwood's voice cut into Jaune's thoughts and the Doom Slayer briefly wondered if he should take the opportunity to put a bullet or two into the doctor before canning the idea. The good doctor had a lot to answer for, but stopping the demonic invasion came first and for that, Ironwood was still helpful.

Any hopes that the demon taint might not have spread this far died when the tram pulled into the station. Jaune's expression was grim as he beheld the blood splattered waiting area and several half-mangled corpses lying around the area. The amount of blood spilled did not tally to the number of corpses visible and Jaune could easily tell that meant most of the bodies had already been dragged off to form gore nests. Which would undoubtably be problematic later on.

Climbing to the second floor, he was greeted with sight of several possessed just milling around until they were melted into piles of goop by a wall of fire. The mancubus responsible lumbered into view shortly after.

"They're killing their own? Why?" Winter asked.

"The demons are hardly united, they hate everything almost equally, including each other. The only reason why the demons are capable of mustering any kind of cohesive force at all is that their fear of the demon lords holding their leashes outweighs their hatred for them." Blank answered.

"Fear is an excellent motivator." Cinder quipped.

"Sure… up until you get careless and turn your back, and then someone's gonna stick a knife in it." Roman fired back, Neo mimed stabbing someone violently with a cheerful smile on her face before running her thumb across her neck.

As thanks for clearing out the possessed for him, Jaune tipped the mancubus with two gauss cannon shots, the blue beams of death reducing the demon to chunky salsa.

Continuing onwards and lifting the lockdowns by wiping out the demons wherever he found them. Jaune heaved a sigh as his earlier suspicions were confirmed, a gore nest stood proudly in the centre of the lowest floor of the wing Ironwood's office was in. It's unmistakable red glow dyed the area the colour of blood.

Shouldering the gauss cannon and drawing his plasma rifle, Jaune destroyed the gore nest and got to work. As the imps and revenants started spawning in, Jaune vented his plasma rifle. The heat wave searing them all and destroying the imps instantly. The revenants lasted a little longer until Jaune brought them to their knees and used their shoulder mounted rocket launchers to smash their skulls in, putting the transformed humans out of their misery.

When the mancubi and hell knights started showing up, Jaune fell back, leading them into a kill box where they would be easy pickings. Infusing himself with a build up of energy that supercharged his strength and allowed him to go back to one punching demons, Jaune let his mind wonder while his body did the work on instinct.

Reading over the files Penny was nice enough to send him on the UAC's research on the various build ups, Jaune noted that the scientists had termed this particular one 'Berserk'. It was a pretty apt name Jaune mused as he ripped a hell knight in half at the waist. The rush of energy and the heady feeling of power certainly didn't do anything to contradict the name.

"Hmm… I'm not sure if even Hazel has the strength to do something like that." Cinder muttered under her breath.

She mused about using magic to achieve that level of strength for a bit before deciding otherwise, as much of a psychological edge she'd get on her enemies by ripping one of them in half in front of the others, it just wasn't her style. Much easier to just burn them all… less messy too.

Once the lockdown had been disengaged, Jaune was free to climb back up and head for Ironwood's office. As he hit the controls to unlock the door, his vision went haywire as a massive surge of electricity ran through him.

The door swung open afterwards and a robot that towered over Jaune was there to greet him. "Do not be alarmed by the system update. It is a prototype of our interdimensional tether, a means for me to pull you back from hell. I'm sorry for the… jolt, but I didn't think you'd allow its installation voluntarily. I'm Dr James Ironwood, I have supplies in my office, this way please."

Ironwood stepped back and gestured for Jaune to follow him. For a brief moment the Doom Slayer considered just putting a bullet in his back for the 'surprise' before shaking off the thought.

"Huh, you are an actual tinman in this one Jimmy." Qrow commented.

"What happened to this version of me?" Ironwood asked.

"Incurable brain cancer. You cheated death by transferring parts of your brain into a robot body and abandoned your old one. And yes, medical technology there is advanced enough to pull it off." Blank answered.

"Oh… so tinman is actually brainless. That must be why he thought tapping energy from hell was a good idea." Qrow surmised, drawing a long-suffering sigh from Ironwood and a glare from Winter at the insult.

"That is one explanation for it but there's more to it than that of course. To that Ironwood, humanity would not be able to stave off extinction long enough to discover a new energy source. It was either tap into hell or watch as humanity wipes themselves out in unending wars to secure what little resources remain." Blank said.

Ironwood's office was large and surprisingly spartan at the same time. several shelves with books and files lined one wall and his table stood in the centre of the room. The only decoration present in the office were the statues lifted from hell during one of Ironwood's expeditions.

Jaune stared at the stone copy of his own Praetor suit and the images of his former comrades the night sentinels. It had been a long time since Argent D'Nur fell to the forces of hell and it was a little heartening to see something of his old friends remain intact.

Idly, he wondered just how long he'd been sleeping in the UAC facility he woke in. Certainly long enough for Ironwood to analyse his suit and find a way to apply the tether to him remotely and create the knockoffs sported by the supposed UAC elite forces. Shame about the kill switch Cinder activated remotely.

"The destruction of the argent tower is… devastating. But, I am committed to helping you close the portal. All of our work and understanding of their world is derived from the inscriptions on a large stone artefact we pulled from hell in the earliest days of the program." Ironwood started speaking once he saw that Jaune had finished resupplying his ammunition from the office stockpile.

"We call it the helix stone. It is our most closely guarded asset." A hologram sprung to life in the centre of Ironwood's table depicting the stone.

"Cinder was obsessed with it. From it, we learned how to manipulate hell's energy. Bend it to our will. Take advantage of their resources. It also led us to you. The helix stone shows us how to harness the power of the well. I believe it will show you how to shut it down." Jaune said nothing, simply looking at the stone.

"For years, Cinder has kept the helix stone in her private office in the Lazarus labs, which is only accessible through a secure elevator from the advanced research complex across the chasm." Ironwood said and turned away from the window to face the Doom Slayer.

"Your affinity for guns is apparent, I'm confident you'll find something useful there as well. The service elevator is at the end of the hall." Ironwood pointed to the exit and the doors opened for Jaune.

"A secret facility with only one entrance housing a top secret artefact. I can understand that. But why in blazes was it given to her without oversight!? Did nobody question what would happen if she went rogue?" Ironwood demanded an explanation from Blank, missing the sheepish cough from Ozpin in the process.

"As with most things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Before that Cinder turned traitor, she was one of the best minds on the project, possibly second best, right behind your counterpart. Having it sequestered in her office made sense in that it was convenient and sped up progress. As too oversight, on the one hand, your other self trusted her too much, on the other, what oversight you put in place failed when they became corrupted too." Blank explained.

After taking the service elevator down, Jaune found himself exiting the facility, noting the chasm Ironwood mentioned. A gore nest was in the area and the way forwards was sealed off by a barrier that would not go down until all demonic taint in the area had been forcibly expunged.

Rocket launcher loaded and ready to go, Jaune got to work. Tearing out the core of the nest, it blew apart with a mind tearing screech and the demons showed up right on schedule. With a haste powerup in the area plus the recent restock, Jaune had plenty of rockets for all of them and the speed to finish his gift deliveries like a very angry green coloured Santa Claus.

The demons went down quickly under his sustained fire. Then the cyber mancubus showed up and Jaune found himself reconsidering his decision to not shoot Ironwood again. Heavier armour, cybernetic targeting systems, overhauled arm cannons that fired plasma orbs with toxic residue. Oh the urge to turn around and put a few bullets in the overgrown robot grew with every second.

"What gives!? I thought you said no more human experimentation!" Roman complained.

"Ah… I said they didn't experiment on humans for this. I never said humans didn't experiment on demons." Blank said.

"Why. Would. Anyone. Do. That." Weiss spat out the words slowly.

"To make them more lethal of course."

"Again! Why!?"

"To see if they could be weaponised, but mostly just to prove they could. Demonic corruption didn't happen overnight, just little whispers in their sleep at first, ideas they 'came up with' one day. Little things add up."

Jaune stowed the gauss cannon once the upgraded mancubi were dead. Fortunately for the world at large, the demonic cyborgs shared the same weaknesses as their unaltered counterparts. Their protruding belly still made great targets for massive damage and with enough firepower, they would go down.

Once the security field was deactivated, Jaune began the task of slowly jumping across the chasm, using several platforms built into the sides of rocky pillars as footholds. He found his entry point into the complex in the form of a ventilation hatch that opened periodically.

Once it opened again, he simply jumped in and was on his way. Several imps and possess engineers were there to greet him and the Doom Slayer thanked them for their welcome with buckshot and grenades.

According to the information from Penny, he needed to go up. Most of the maintenance lifts in the area were non-functional but the turbines in the area were. Jumping on, he allowed the updraft to carry him upwards until he found his access point at the top.

The twisting passageways eventually led him to a circular section of the complex. The corridor went all the way around, surrounding an inner chamber that was locked off. Several other rooms branched to the sides.

And of course, there were demons everywhere, including several more cyber mancubi.

With the curvature of the hallway and the cramped quarters, his gauss cannon and rocket launchers weren't optimal here. Drawing his minigun instead, the strangely shaped rotary barrel started to spin as he warmed it up.

When the demons noticed him, they came running. Jaune flicked a switch on the minigun, causing the barrel to split into three small ones, all ready to fill the air with red hot lead. And fill the air it did, the mobile turret sprayed a solid wall of death towards the oncoming tide, easily shredding the rank and file demons and also inflicting massive damage against the cyber mancubi. Each bullet dealt minimal damage to them even when impacting against unarmoured flesh, but several hundred rounds impacting every second… they were shredded to pieces before they even knew what happened.

"A gun that is also a gun. I dig it." Mercury shrugged his shoulders and grinned, appreciating the design of the weapon.

"Interesting design, but I highly doubt the ammo consumption is sustainable." Winter analysed.

"True, but this version of the minigun was always meant to be used as a stationary gun emplacement. Short bursts to save ammo and prevent the barrels from overheating. But, the Doom Slayer already found an upgrade for it to keep the barrels from melting and ammunition isn't really an issue since he can just tear it from his enemies." Blank said.

"Man, what I wouldn't give to be able to beat Grimm like piñatas until ammo comes out." Nora said, her mind already conjuring scenarios where she waded into a mass of Grimm and emerged by climbing out of a mountain of grenade launcher ammo.

"Oh yeah, if that could happen, I'd never need to buy ammo for Ember Celica again." Yang commiserated, aside from Weiss, their weapons were the biggest lien hogs simply due to the amount of dust that went into them. Even with a stipend from Beacon, using their weapons could honestly be compared with burning piles of money at times.

After wiping out the demons Jaune tried to gain entry to the central chamber again to no avail. The door was locked and required a retinal scan. Suppressing his frustration, he started hunting around the various rooms, looking for an intact corpse with at least one good eye.

Just when he was about to give up and decide to start pounding on the floor until it gave way to the level below him, he chanced upon one. The poor bastard only had his upper torso left, the rest of it probably ripped away by his transformed colleagues. Bringing it up for a closer inspection, Jaune noted that while one eye had been clawed away, the other remained intact.

Slinging the body over his shoulder, Jaune made his way back to the access panel. Grabbing the torso by the back of its head, Jaune slammed its face into the scanner, a few seconds later, there was a small ping and the doors unlocked. Jaune paid the welcome message no mind as he allowed the corpse and its now mangled good eye to fall from his hands and entered the room.

"Again. Again with the eye. The guy was already dead! Doesn't he know how to respect the dead!?" Emerald yelled and Mercury just rolled his eyes, even if he was a little freaked out by the almost casual approach Jaune took to desecrating corpses for his own benefit.

"Not really. Considering the forces of hell have the tendency to reanimate or repurpose corpses for their war efforts, he stopped caring about the dead a long time ago. As far as he's concerned, the dead are too dead to worry about what he's doing and anyone alive to object can take up their protests with the demons first." Blank said.

"He's seen a lot of death." Ozpin stated.

"Indeed."

Inside the chamber, he found an oversized cannon suspended inside a smaller chamber at the centre. Instinctively, Jaune knew the gun was made for his hands. He was drawn out of his reverie by the doors sealing shut behind him and an announcement being made.

"Biometric mismatch detected. Scanning, unauthorised personnel detected. Expulsion to commence in 5… 4…" Jaune didn't wait around for the countdown to finish, jumping upwards and mantling onto a ledge created when the rooms machinery folded back into the wall.

The floor opened up revealing a mesh of lasers below that would have sliced any unfortunate interloper to pieces. Above him, more lasers appeared on a ring, ready to cut downwards and finish off any intruder trying to avoid the laser floor by climbing on top of the weapon container.

Too bad the intruder was the Doom Slayer. Drawing his assault rifle, Jaune simply fired on the upper ring, damaging the thing and causing it to collapse with the lasers still active. Cutting through the metal casing protecting the gun, the thing fell to pieces and Jaune was free to leap onto the platform and claim his prize.

the platform, damaged by the falling laser grid couldn't withstand the sudden impact and the supports gave way shortly after Jaune claimed the gun. Crashing to the level below, the Doom Slayer shook off the impact and hefted his new weapon, smiling appreciatively under the helmet.

Exiting the ruined lab, he found himself facing down a veritable army of the possessed. Hardly a threat and easy enough to mow down with his plasma rifle heat discharge, but no, none of that. Not when he had a new weapon to test.

Pointing it in the direction of the horde, Jaune depressed the trigger and the weapon discharged a glowing emerald orb in their direction. Lightning bolts shot out from the central projectile, striking every demon in the room with him and causing them to explode. The projectile itself crashed into the wall and detonated with a flash.

There was a burst of rose petals and Ruby appeared in front of blank, wide eyed and breathing hard. "Details. Now."

"The BFG 9000. Yes, it means exactly what you think it means." Blank said before Yang could open her mouth.

"Fires a burst of ionised argent energy, explodes on contact for massive damage. But biggest feature about it is that argent energy reacts with the energy inside the demons, destroying them from the inside out and will effectively one hit kill every demon except the absolute toughest hell has."

"So, how do I build it!?" Ruby demanded, vibrating in place fast enough she was starting to leak petals everywhere.

"Well, it uses argent energy, so I'm afraid you can't. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to tell you how to open a portal to hell just so you can build bigger guns." Blank denied her request instantly.

"Aww…" Ruby stopped vibrating and started sulking, it was like looking at a kicked puppy.

"Well, you could create a similar effect with the right application of dust, it won't be as powerful, but there's no risk of end of the world scenarios with it." Blank compromised and Ruby perked up instantly, shooting off her thanks at a thousand words a second.

"I'll have a copy of the notes readied and brought back with Jaune Arc the next time he's back here." Ruby accepted the answer and skipped merrily back into her silencing field, if she could have the gun in real life, at least she could appreciate the carnage it was causing on screen.

"That girl loves her weapons far too much." Taiyang sighed and shook his head at his daughter's mannerisms.

"Everyone has to have a hobby. Besides weapons are better than lame puns." Summer said, oblivious to Taiyang and Yang suddenly grasping at their chests as a heart attack assailed them.

The elevator leading to the Lazarus labs wasn't too far off from where he picked up his new favourite gun. As expected, a gore nest induced lockdown blocked his way once more. Destroying the nest sparked the next round of combat.

Crushing wave after wave of imps, hell knights, revenants and mancubi with his arsenal. The once relatively pristine and sterile lab environment became covered in demonic blood and gore. When the barons of hell and cyber mancubi started spawning in to impede his quest, dark glee filled the Doom Slayer as he brought the BFG to bear against them, vaporising all of them and relishing in their cries of terror and pain.

When the lockdown disengaged, Jaune entered the elevator and activated it with a face splitting grin on his face.

"Anyone get the feeling the kid may be enjoying this a wee bit too much?" Roman said.

"He's enthusiastic." Ozpin confirmed, internally wishing he had a legion of huntsmen with that fervour and skill to send against the Grimm.

"Hey, if I had a gun that exploded all my enemies without even needing to aim, I'd be excited too." Qrow shrugged and there were several agreeing nods.

"You're not wrong on that." Roman agreed.

Upon entry to the Lazarus labs, the place barely resembled an installation dedicated to science anymore. Mutilated corpses hung from the ceiling and piles of blood flesh were stacked against the walls in places. Rune circles covered the floor in places among other signs of demonic rituals. Sad thing was, it wasn't even the demons who did this.

"The people here… they did this to themselves?" Pyrrha asked in a shocked voice.

"Indeed." Blank answered.

"Why? No never mind, let me guess, demonic corruption and they were promised power if they did this… or their higher ups have a twisted sense of humour." Weiss's flat tone conveyed all of her displeasure at the sight.

"Correct on both counts. Needless to say, that promise of power never materialised for these individuals." Blank said.

"Cinder activated the hell wave from somewhere inside this facility. I did hope she could rise above their influence. I was wrong." Jaune wondered if Ironwood's little speeches were some way for him to shirk the blame onto his former subordinate. As far as he was concerned, they were both equally guilty for letting things get to this point.

"She proved to be weaker than I thought she'd be." Once more the Doom Slayer remained silent as he traversed the empty hallways, seeking a path to the helix stone.

"How dare he, I am not weak, I will never be weak." Cinder seethed at alternate Ironwood's insult.

"You sold out your own people on some vague promise for power. That's weakness to me." Qrow smirked and chugged from his flask.

"I have the sense to be on the winning side, that's all." Cinder replied.

"Oh yes, you're gonna join the side who's so terrified of the man hunting you that they won't even go into his tomb after he's been carted off. That sounds like the winning side to me alright." Cinder fell silent, unable to find a comeback to that.

A laser beam from a hell razer scored a line across the ceiling as Jaune grappled with it, slowly forcing the arm and the beam upwards until it melted the demon's own face off. Letting the headless corpse fall, Jaune dodged out of the way of a charging hell knight before shooting it in the back with the gauss cannon, using the recoil to get him clear from more mancubi fireballs.

The helix stone wasn't far off now, all that was left was for Jaune to clear out the main laboratory. Rage fuelled his blows against the demons and he sorely regretted not waking earlier, as far as he was concerned everyone who worked in this place deserved the death sentence.

This was definitely the place they were using to experiment on demons. A dissected mancubus's corpse occupied a large table in the centre of the room and all around the place, there were stasis tubes containing various demon organs.

Jaune fell back into a side passageway before raising the gauss cannon and switching it into siege mode. As a new wave of demons eagerly rushed to meet him, he depressed the trigger, firing a blue beam of death straight through the centre of them and blowing all of them to pieces save one mancubus. That one he finished off by getting close and tearing its heart out with his bare hands and shoving it back into its greedy mouth.

Once the lab was clear, Jaune shot the accursed place one last glare before pushing forwards. He didn't have the time to waste levelling the place. The room beyond the lab was something of a museum, stone tablets were proudly on display, filled with inscriptions.

Jaune paid them no mind, they were peanuts compared to the actual helix stone. That and more demons were spawning in, someone down there was clearly getting desperate to stop him. Oh well, nothing the BFG couldn't handle, green death wiped the room clean and he was on his way again. The elevator to Cinder's private office was right in front of him and waiting.

"Yeah! Go get em fearless leader!" Nora cheered, seeing Jaune wipe the floor with demons and get close to his goal easily got her pumped up.

Jaune staggered back after approaching the helix stone, the images directly uploaded to his mind gave him a major headache. Truly, he detested such a means of information transfer but there was no denying its speed and effectiveness.

The crucible, and the wraiths.

Those were his targets now… a chance to settle an old score. Eons ago, he failed to prevent the fall of Argent D'Nur to the forces of hell and its power was taken. Now it seemed he'd be going back to finish things, to set the wraiths free at last.

"The crucible, that's what she was looking for. Penny, did you get the location?" Ironwood's voice came through the comms, having caught the helix stones activation and the info it transmitted.

"Yes, it is located in an uncharted region of the titan's realm. We will need to rupture another argent accumulator to create the portal. The only accumulator in this sector is in specimen CD-587." Penny answered, getting Ironwood to chuckle.

"You're going to have to… remove it. Once you've extracted the accumulator, it will become unstable. The ruptured casing should cause a rift strong enough to send you back to their world, we can determine your point of entry by using the tether system I uploaded to your suit. Retrieving the crucible is critical, without it we have no way of shutting down the well and closing the hell portal here on mars." Ironwood instructed, conveniently leaving out what specimen CD-587 was.

The Doom Slayer's blood sang with angry energy, demanding he go out there and rip and tear until it is done. When the demons showed up as expected, the urge to put the laughter in slaughter was almost overpowering.

In the end, Jaune settled for grinning widely as he beat the demons to a bloody pulp with his bare hands.

"What is this Argent D'Nur anyways?" Blake asked.

"Another world that hell invaded long, long ago. The Doom Slayer fought alongside their defenders and held the demons at bay for a long time. Until they were betrayed by one of their own when he made a deal with the demons to resurrect his fallen son. As with most deals with the devil, they honoured the words of the deal but not the spirit of it, and Argent D'Nur was lost, absorbed into hell's dimensions and the bulk of its population slaughtered or converted into demons." Blank said.

"And the wraiths? What are they?" Ren asked next.

"Physical gods and the source of unlimited power. They were the source of Argent D'Nur's strength, empowering their defenders to nigh invincibility. But after the betrayal, they were shackled and used as batteries, feeding hell with more energy to use in conquests of other worlds."

"Oh. And now Jaune is going to set them free?" Pyrrha asked.

"Yes."

After fighting his way past several sections of the lab turned into a chapel for demonic worship, Jaune reached ground zero. The site of the first hell portal that sparked the initial invasion and through which demons were still entering despite the large hole in the sky.

Several button presses later and the portal was shut off. It wasn't much compared to the main portal but every little bit counted, especially since this meant that demons wouldn't be able to pour in after he closed the big one.

Ironwood was still talking about how Cinder was weak of mind and to blame for all this and trying to justify that the risks were worth it, how the Doom Slayer's presence was supposed to be a way to mitigate those risks. Jaune tuned it all out, there was a room full of demons beyond to butcher and that was infinitely more appealing than listening to some robot espouse the insane logic behind exploiting hell for its resources.

After wiping out the remaining demons that made it through the Lazarus hell portal, Jaune was left taking an elevator down to a secure vault. Heavy duty blast doors tougher than anything he'd seen since waking up stood between him and specimen CD-587, a quick wrench of the release lever and it started to open slowly.

Jaune's eyes widened when two massive limbs reached through the opening and forced the doors open with brute force alone. Before he could react, the giant demon on the other end had already grabbed him and tossed him inside the containment chamber. Behind the demon, the doors started sealing shut, the mechanisms going haywire from the sudden attack on it.

A pissed off roar came from the armoured demon as it stomped its feet, causing the room to rumble. Pure unadulterated hate burned in its eyes as it recognised Jaune. As the Doom Slayer got back to his feet and drew his weapon, the feeling was mutual.

When he killed something, Jaune expected it to have the courtesy to stay dead.

"Big… monster…" Nora whispered in slight awe despite herself upon seeing the cyberdemon.

"Looks personal, what's the story behind that?" Taiyang asked.

"That's the cyberdemon. A demon that Jaune killed in the distant past. It's remains were fossilised and recovered on one of the expeditions to hell. When the noticed parts of its flesh would reanimate when argent energy was introduced to it, they tried bringing it back to life with some mechanical upgrades. Originally, they kept the brain sealed off from the energy so it wouldn't come back to 'life' completely." Blank said.

"I sense a but in there somewhere." Weiss said and rolled her eyes.

"When they tried adding an argent accumulator and neural link to it so it could have an almost endless supply of energy to fix whatever battle damage it took, they lost control. That link instantly fed the energy to the brain and reactivated it, and then it was too tough, too strong for the UAC to kill or incapacitate. Best they could do was lock it up inside that holding cell."

Rockets rained down all over the holding cell as the cyberdemon launched a barrage into the air, causing multiple explosions everywhere. Jaune retaliated with his own rocket launcher burst fire, the explosive ordinance detonated against the cyberdemon and only served to piss it off further.

With the argent accumulator constantly keeping the cyberdemon buffed up and regenerating the damage taken, Jaune could already tell the fight wouldn't end until he got rid of that accumulator.

Backing off and sprinting to the side when the cyberdemon tried blasting him with its arm mounted laser cannon, Jaune retaliated with his own gauss cannon. The siege mode blast doing work when the cyberdemon stopped in its tracks to fire any wave of missiles into the air.

Avoiding the rain of high explosives, Jaune fought the urge to curse when the cyberdemon closed to melee range with a sudden burst of speed and just barely missed smacking him in the face with its arm.

Stowing the gauss cannon and drawing the BFG, Jaune fired it, sending the orb of emerald energy straight into the cyberdemon's face. As testament to its sheer tenacity and the argent energy supercharge, the demon didn't die in one hit unlike its weaker brethren.

Blood flowed from the multiple wounds and its face was a royal mess of mangled flesh but it still lived. The demon was stunned and Jaune would have to take what he could. Running low on ammo for his gauss cannon and rocket launcher, Jaune switched to the super shotgun, an archaic weapon that packed a surprising amount of punch.

Shooting the cyberdemon in the face repeatedly with it, Jaune blasted off more and more of its flesh, damaging the demon faster than it could regenerate.

A howl of bloody murder emanated from the demon's destroyed jaws as it got back to its feet, the damage from having argent energy violently tear its way across its organs shrugged off for the time being.

The cyberdemon's arm cannon switched from the slow firing beam weapon to its rocket launcher configuration, sending a volley of rockets towards the Doom Slayer. It's howl of rage was deafening when none of the rockets connected, its weapon lacking the lock on system that Jaune's own rocket launcher had.

Undeterred by the weapon's failure, the cyberdemon's other arm formed an energy blade around its claws. When it swung the arm, a wave of burning energy shot towards Jaune.

The Doom Slayer ducked and jumped over the incoming blasts before firing the BFG again, stunning the cyberdemon once more. This time instead of closing in with a shotgun, Jaune drew his minigun in mobile turret mode.

The endless stream of red hot lead struck the stunned demon, chewing through its reinforced human armour and demonic flesh at the same time through sheer volume of fire alone. The entire front of its chest was reduced to a red mess and the cyberdemon sank to one knee, trying to reroute energy from the accumulator to healing instead of augmenting its own strength.

Seeing his opening, Jaune dashed in and leapt onto the cyberdemon's hunched over torso, grabbing hold of the argent accumulator embedded in its upper body and ripping it free in one motion.

The cyberdemon staggered backwards and Jaune leapt off. It raised its arm cannon to fire before a gurgle left its throat and the demon fell over backwards, collapsing to the ground with a giant thud. Without the argent accumulator animating it, it was back to being a lifeless corpse.

Jaune looked down at the accumulator in hand and noted that it was shaking greatly and the energy field around it was dangerously unstable. Tossing it away, the accumulator detonated with a white flash, when the light died down, he was already back in hell.

"Whoo! That was intense, and since that explosion sent them both to hell, guess they went out with a Yang eh?" Yang joked and the theatre was filled with groans and grumbles again.

"Don't make me get the spray bottle Yang. I mean it." Ruby poked her head out of the silencing field to give her warning before returning inside.

"I'm starting to think you silenced the wrong niece." Qrow muttered under his breath.

"…That is a distinct possibility." Blank said.

Before Jaune could leave and try to get his bearings, red lightning sparked around the fallen cyberdemon and it started to move again. The only sign of the anger boiling inside Jaune at the demon's sheer audacity to require killing a third time was a twitching eyebrow.

"You're kidding, isn't it dead? Why is it getting up!?" Mercury was taken aback at the demon getting back to its feet with an angry roar despite the ridiculous amount of damage it'd already sustained.

"Hmm, if argent energy reanimated the original corpse and argent energy is a derivative of hell energy, I assume a direct infusion of hell energy by simply being there is enough to reanimate it with whatever argent energy is left inside." Ozpin muttered, sipping from his mug as he processed that line of thought.

"Close, but not quite. Hell energy on its own will just corrupt the argent energy back into more hell energy, which won't really work on the cyberdemon. That was the direct intervention of one of the dark lords of hell in their attempt to find a way to stop the Doom Slayer. Not quite argent energy so no more potent regeneration, but enough to get it to move again." Blank answered.

"These dark lords, if they're that powerful, why don't they engage the Doom Slayer themselves?" Cinder asked.

"They tried, once. Never felt the need to try again. Can't be a lord if you're too dead to rule. And the last time an actual champion of hell rose to fight him, a demon more powerful than any that came before it or since, the Doom Slayer murdered it and used its corpse as a stepping stone to greater carnage in the lower levels of hell that suddenly lost their greatest protector." Blank replied.

The ground rumbled beneath Jaune as the cyberdemon used its magic to manipulate hell's terrain, raising walls of earth spikes on either side of Jaune, boxing him in. It loosed several loud roars that might have passed for laughter as it swung its energy blade, sending waves of power towards the Doom Slayer.

Jaune didn't even flinch, simply ducking or jumping over the waves as they came. So lateral mobility was shot to hell thanks to the spikes, that was fine though, he didn't really need to move much when he was using the mobile turret.

Firing the BFG's last round to stun the demon again, Jaune unloaded with the mobile turret, dealing as much damage as he could before the cyber demon could get back up.

While the demon was stunned, the rock walls lost their cohesion and crumbled, the magic holding them in place disrupted. Jaune continued firing until the cyberdemon was back on its feet before starting to move.

When more energy waves came his way, Jaune rapidly switched to the gauss cannon and fired it mid jump, using the recoil to push him out of the firing line and to safety.

With ammunition for most of his power weapons depleted, Jaune switched back to the super shotgun and got in close for maximum effect. Taking care to avoid being hit by the cyberdemon's flailing arms, Jaune blasted away at its exposed chest.

Their little dance of death continued until a good blast from the shotgun caused the cyberdemon's legs to collapse under its weight, bringing the demon to the ground with an earth-shaking crash. As it struggled to get back up, Jaune decided to take out some of his pent up anger on the demon.

Grabbing hold of its horn and tearing it off in a show of force, Jaune hefted the horn like a club and used it to smash the cyberdemon's face in when it turned to look at its vanquisher. Between the diamond hard horn and the Doom Slayer's strength, the cyberdemon's skull stood no chance, the entire top half of it was completely smashed to pieces and the cyberdemon went down like a ton of bricks.

With its brain destroyed in the hit, no amount of argent or hell energy would be reanimating it again. Nonetheless, Jaune waited for a minute for the son of a bitch to twitch before tossing the horn away and walking off, glad to be rid of this ancient thorn in his side he swore he got rid off long ago.

"Third times the charm huh?" Qrow said, just happy that Grimm for all their nightmarishness were nowhere near as hard to kill as that.

"Indeed. One more short to go." Blank said.

"So… we gonna see fearless leader tear through hell now?" Nora asked.

"Towards the end of it when he frees the wraiths yes." Blank answered.

"Meh, was hoping we'd see it right now… but I guess we can skip the fetch quest bit." Nora shrugged her shoulders and she was then the subject of stares from the audience.

"Fetch… quest…?" Blank said slowly, trying to comprehend the meaning of the words in regards to the situation.

"Well yeah, Jaune-Jaune's just running around the demon world right now trying to collect that crucible thingy right? That's totally a fetch quest." Nora pointed out with one finger stuck in the air.

"That's… true… I guess… but… but…" Blank shut up and let the next short play.

Settling the score

Jaune stomped up to the last hell guard protecting the crucible from him. The demonic mech was battered and broken from his attacks. Grabbing hold of its chest plating, Jaune ripped it free, exposing the 'pilot' inside. The snake like creature powering and controlling the hell guard tried to resist being torn free to no avail.

Jaune ripped the demon free and grabbed its writhing body with both hands before pulling in opposite directions, tearing the demon in half and killing it.

As the pillar containing the crucible rose up, Jaune was free to remove it and stow it away. He blinked in surprise when he caught a green glow out of the corner of his eye. Looking up, he noticed several ghostly apparitions appearing in front of him.

Five spectral knights in armour, fallen night sentinels greeted him. The Doom Slayer struggled to find words as he was greeted by his lost comrades. As the lead sentinel saluted him, Jaune wanted to return the gesture but he never got the opportunity.

Electricity rippled across his form as the tether system activated, Ironwood having detected his collection of the crucible through the tether and was now pulling him back to mars. Before Jaune could say anything, the portal was open and he was through, leaving the ghosts of his comrades behind.

"Damn, talk about poor timing." Roman winced as the ghostly reunion was cut short.

"That could have gone better." Ironwood muttered and rubbed his face with his hands, there was no way that timing would do anything to reduce the bad blood between his counterpart and the Doom Slayer.

"Poor Jaune." Pyrrha said.

As Jaune's boots slammed into the ground after the portal dropped him back on mars, his blood was boiling and demanding he just start destroying things. Ironwood's voice intruding again only incensed him further. "You have the crucible. And with it the means to contain the power of the well. We have a plan to send you there. Penny will walk you through the process."

Jaune pushed the rage down, right here and right now, there weren't any demons to destroy. Better to stow that anger away for later use. Again, stopping the demons came before any personal vendetta against Ironwood.

Exiting the section of the UAC facility he landed in, the area outside the airlock was a snowy windswept wasteland. The freezing wind howled as it blew through the damaged buildings, it would have chilled to the bone if not for the Praetor suit.

"This is my primary operating facility. It's where I was created and where my core processing unit is maintained. It takes approximately 2.4 terawatts of power to sustain my operational capabilities." Penny said.

Ironwood started coughing instantly. "How much power!?"

"A lot." Qrow summed up with a laugh at Ironwood's sudden loss of composure.

"But it's been decided that we can use that power to send you the source of the portal. I will not survive the procedure and am unable to self-terminate. So I will walk you through the process." Penny continued.

"WHAT!?" Ironwood roared and shot out of his seat.

"No way! There's no way Jaune is going to kill Penny right!?" Ruby popped up in front of Blank and asked in a pleading tone, unwilling to watch one of her friends kill another again.

"Relax, this Penny is different from your own. This one is a complete AI, the process will disable Penny yes but she gets uploaded to storage by Jaune. She can be brought back whenever they rebuild the facility housing the AI core." Blank assuaged.

"Oh, that's a relief then." Ruby went back to her seat and collapsed in it with a relieved sigh.

"My security systems operate on two separate neural networks that terminate in this maintenance facility. Each termination point is protected by an electrified field but you should survive the surge." Penny informed Jaune as he dropped in through a hatch in the ceiling.

Spotting the levers he needed to pull, Jaune made for the closest one and grabbed it. Immediately the electrified defences tried repulsing him, shocking him repeatedly as he pulled it down. Not a grunt of pain left the Doom Slayer as he carried out his task, deactivating the first network before wringing his hand out.

The alarm sounding must have alerted the demonic hordes in the vicinity because they came running almost immediately. Jaune shook his head before embracing a berserk powerup in the room, feeling the supercharge hit, he went to work.

Once done painting the maintenance facility red with the blood of demons, Jaune went and deactivated the second network, granting him the ability to override the lockdown in place at the console.

"My vital operating systems are now vulnerable. I recommend destroying my cooling systems first. This will accelerate the destabilisation process." Penny informed.

Destroying the cooling systems wasn't too difficult, four coolant generators just needed to be shot to pieces. Jaune went about doing so until the demons started warping in again to stop him. As a sign of the portal over mars widening, their numbers were growing greater and greater with every encounter.

More and more barons were pouring through as well, Jaune's lips set in a thin line as he recognised the developments. It was Argent D'Nur all over again, as soon as the barons started showing up in force, it meant the main demonic host was about ready to invade, no more of these scouting forces. Humanity was running out of time.

"Scouting force? You're kidding, a scouting force did all this!?" Winter could hardly believe it.

"They are world conquerors, of course they'd have the numbers to back up their ambitions. Most of the demons that came through in the first wave were scouts and trailblazers, there only to secure the landing zone for the rest of the army." Blank said.

At least Jaune had the BFG to speed things along. Numbers didn't really matter when the BFG was capable of clearing the room all by itself, after expending all its ammo to clear out every wave of reinforcements. Penny was nice enough to direct him to spare power cells that could be repurposed into BFG ammunition.

"Thank you, you can now move to where my core is to complete the process." Penny thanked Jaune once all four coolant generators had been destroyed and the demons cleared out. Already, sections of her speech were slurred as the meltdown began.

Jaune remained silent, a tinge of unease inside him. Over the eons he'd been fighting demons, he'd killed a lot, lost a lot of comrades too. But never had he ever been thanked by one of his comrades for having to kill them to defeat the demons. It was… disquieting.

"Ah good, so he's still human under that armour." Roman commented.

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" Yang glared at him, challenging him to say something stupid.

"Hey, just saying he's really good at killing, and really quiet at the same time. You have to admit in places he feels more like a machine than the actual AI here. There's being a consummate professional and then there's this." Roman clarified and Yang had to concede the point.

As Jaune followed the path marked out for him by Penny, he found himself standing on a ledge overlooking a monorail and no way forwards.

"The train below will take you to the entrance." Penny said as the small goods transport vehicle came around the bend and slowed to a stop, allowing Jaune to jump on.

Once he was aboard and had secure footing, the train started up again, taking Jaune to the terminus where Penny's AI core was located.

"For you to gain access to my core, the demonic threat must be removed from the room ahead." Penny informed as the vehicle pulled into the station.

Jaune didn't need to be told twice as he started firing as soon as the demons were in sight. The gauss cannon in siege mode picked off the exposed mancubi and revenants before they even knew they were under attack.

Once the doors sealed behind him though, multiple barons of hell leapt out from hiding and started hurling green plasma blasts towards him. Jaune leapt off the train and started using the various walls and platforms as cover from the attacks.

As the attack splashed harmlessly against the walls and slagged them instead of hurting him, Jaune returned fire with the BFG, exploding the barons and surrounding demons.

With their ambush a failure, whichever demon lord was in charge of hampering his progress started throwing every last demon they had at their disposal at him. Pinkys, cacodemons, revenants, mancubi and even more barons eventually.

All in an effort to overwhelm the Doom Slayer in the uncomfortably cramped quarters of the train terminus. Jaune relished the challenge, the rapid pace of battle keeping his blood pumping. Firing rockets and gauss cannon shots when he had the range for them, he switched to the super shotgun when things got up close and personal. And when the demons started funnelling through corridors, he had a mobile turret or micromissile launcher waiting for them.

Constantly keeping on his toes, Jaune remained one step ahead of every demon trying to box him in. And whenever the demons thought they had him cornered, a BFG shot would change their minds for however long they had left before the argent energy fried them from the inside out.

When only one floating cacodemon was left, Jaune circled around and leapt onto it from behind, climbing over it like it was some twisted rock climbing wall. As the cacodemon's one eye locked onto him, Jaune rammed and armoured fist straight into it, before ripping free and leaping off. The cacodemon whinnied in pain before bursting like a balloon.

"Eyes. Again. I give up. At least that's not going to happen on Remnant." Emerald threw her hands in the air in frustration at the sight, taking some comfort in the fact that the Doom Slayer didn't exist in their world. Just a noodle of a boy who didn't pose much of a threat compared to everyone else.

"Yeah, about that… heheheh…" Qrow chuckled at a memory of a previous viewing.

"What? What about it!?" Emerald asked nervously upon hearing Qrow's dark laughter.

"Oh nothing much, just one of the futures waiting for you. Right before your execution, the kid was nice enough to feed you a last meal, he scooped out your eyeballs with a rusty spoon and fed em to you." Qrow replied with another round of chuckling.

"…what?" Emerald squeaked out and paled considerably when none of Qrow's body language indicated any lie.

"The hell man?" Mercury said equally freaked out, not even his old man had that level of brutality and that man was as cold as they came.

"Something something, revenge for framing my niece and his partner during the Vytal festival something something." Qrow said and grinned when he saw the two swallow nervously.

Cinder was about to say something but Blank beat her to the punch. "Yes, that is one of the universes where Jaune Arc burns you alive at the stake. And no, neither magic nor your master saved you from it. He keeps you burning for seven days straight."

Cinder's mouth shut with an audible click.

As a moving platform carried him upwards, Penny tried speaking to Jaune but the words were slurred to the point where it was almost impossible to make out what she was saying, the meltdown severely impeding her functions.

"Once Penny's core is destroyed, the vacuum of energy will pull you back through to hell. We have your destination set to the well's location. Use the crucible to power it down and the portal here on mars will be closed permanently." Ironwood said as Jaune stepped off the platform.

"They will not allow access to the well without a fight… but I'm sure that's what you're looking for isn't it?" Ironwood fell silent as the doors opened up, red alarm lights flashing all over the place as the meltdown continued.

Beyond the doors lay the Ai core, a giant piece of machinery that somewhat resembled a giant brain. Smoke was starting to fill the area as the core's destruction continued, and now it was up to Jaune to speed along the process.

On either sides of the core lay the neural processors. Jaune went up to them and ripped out the plugs on them, causing argent energy to start spilling through and slagging the machinery from the energy discharge. Explosions followed shortly thereafter.

Returning to the centre console, Jaune found that Penny had already set up the system nicely for him, all he had to do was the final step, push the button and initiate the core destruction in place of an emergency shut down.

Hesitating before pushing the button as Penny's slurred words came through his helmet's speakers, Jaune instead hit the key for backup, storing Penny's software inside a chip he then removed and stowed away securely.

"Thank you Penny." Ironwood said as Jaune finished the core destruction process. There was a blast of heat and light and the Doom Slayer was between worlds once more.

"Oooh… time for the final showdown, I can feel it." Nora said as she started munching on popcorn.

"Guess we'll finally see what happens to Cinder huh, this ought to be good." Roman rubbed his hands together and started laughing evilly while Neo took a page out of Nora's book and started chowing down on a bowl of ice cream.

When the whiteness faded, red replaced it. Red skies, red sands, red rocks, almost everything was a shade of crimson. Jaune took a deep breath, held it there for a moment before releasing it. After so long, he was finally back. Argent D'Nur, warped by being sucked into hell but still easily recognisable as the land he once fought so hard to defend.

As he strolled down the deserted pathways, he thought he actually recognised the street it used to be. Once upon a time, it would have been filled with children laughing and playing, now not even the ghosts of a slaughtered people remained to mark it… just their memories.

"That used to be his home?" Ren asked.

"For a time, it was. Then he failed to protect it." Blank answered.

Ren's fists clenched tight as bad memories resurfaced before he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "I see."

Seeing the demons desecrating the once proud cities of Argent D'Nur with their filthy footsteps royally pissed Jaune off. This place had no strategic value, was hardly a good defensible location and held nothing of importance. That there were demons present in this location at all wasn't so much a garrison force as it was a slap to his face.

Taunting, they were taunting him with his old failures by having demon trample over what he once held sacred. Jaune knew it was a trap, that going down there was asking to be mobbed. But he didn't care anymore, the blood was rushing through his ears and his tortured soul screamed out for the vengeance owed to the fallen with interest compounded in blood.

Leaping down from his perch, Jaune landed right on top of an imp, his heavy combat boots squashing the demon's head on landing. Super shotgun coming up, he blew away the next couple of imps before they could react.

Switching to his gauss cannon next, he took out the floating cacodemons with precise shots. Scarlet flashes occurred all around him as the demons started pouring in when their trap was sprung.

Jaune held his tongue, making a beeline straight for a berserk argent energy build up that had been sucked through the hell portal sometime earlier. As the energy empowered him, Jaune made it a point to viciously remind every demon in the area with him why they were terrified of him to begin with.

He wasn't trapped in hell with the demons, the demons were trapped in hell with him.

"Yeah! Rip and tear Jaune!" Nora cheered as the Doom Slayer tore an imp in half vertically before spinning around and punching a hole straight through a hell knight.

"I should probably start instructing Jaune on how to fight with his fists actually. He is getting better with a sword but there's no harm in having a back up since he's not too set in his ways yet." Yang mused and Pyrrha found herself agreeing with her.

"It is a good idea. I've been working on his sword and shield skills but hand to hand combat really isn't my forte. Perhaps we could work out a schedule?"

"Yeah… and maybe a training par- I see you hiding there Rubes, you're not getting out of proper training." Yang pointed at her sister, easily spotting her attempts to hide in her seat when the topic of hand to hand combat came up.

Ruby gave up hiding once Yang caught her and shot up, pointing a finger at her sister, she started protesting and yelling a lot. With the silencing chamber in place, Yang couldn't make out what she was saying but she could guess it was something along the lines of 'I have Crescent Rose and that's enough'.

"None of that Ruby, you will get proper training or so help me I'm cutting off your cookie and strawberry supply. Go on, try me." Yang delivered her ultimatum and was rewarded with Ruby paling and sinking into her seat.

Three steams of energy fed into a central point in the sky before the energy continued upwards. At the source of each of the three streams lay the shackled wraiths and Jaune's primary targets. With the streams serving as guides, he made his way to the nearest one, slaughtering all demons in his path with extreme prejudice.

"KILL HIM"

A thunderous voice echoed telepathically as a demon lord psychically commanded all demons in the area to attack him before he shut off their source of power. As Jaune crested the hill and came to the site of the first wraith, he found a bunch of demons already there to answer their master's call. A single thought ran through the Doom Slayer's mind as he readied his weapons for the blood bath.

Bring it.

Demons swarmed and the BFG answered. The fighting became exceptionally fierce once Jaune's BFG clicked empty and he had to massacre the demons the old fashioned way. Bullets, rockets, plasma, metal flechettes and his own fists and legs when the occasion called for it, Jaune gave it everything he had.

The familiar yet twisted landscape bore witness to the Doom Slayer's rampage once more as demon blood watered the streets on a level that hadn't been seen since the initial demon victory. Jaune bashed in a hell knight's skull and revelled in the surge of life energy he absorbed plus the additional ammo for the BFG.

Firing it immediately, Jaune's glee at the carnage was outstripped only by his boiling hatred as he continued rampaging through the demonic lines, giving no quarter and expecting none in return.

Once the last demon bit the dust under his boot heel, the doors leading up to the wraiths slowly opened up. Poor design, luck or divine intervention, Jaune didn't know and didn't care, his way forwards was clear and if it was another trap he'd just shoot his way out of it again. This time there wasn't a mountain for the demons to drop on him.

The mangled body of the wraith lay at the top, energy constantly pouring from an orb hovering over it. It was barely recognisable now, the demonic taint of hell having warped the poor creature into something that resembled a living corpse.

Jaune closed his eyes at yet another reminder of his failure before drawing the crucible. There was a click and several spikes shot out of the bottom of the handle, Jaune plunged the spikes into the orb and twisted the crucible as though it were a key in a lock.

There was an explosion and Jaune was blasted backwards. When he got back to his feet, the energy stream had been cut off and one of the night sentinel ghosts was standing there to greet him, pointing the way forwards before fading away.

One wraith freed from its chains, two more to go.

"Progress baby, progress! Still think you're on the winning side Cinder?" Roman mocked the irate fall maiden.

"He hasn't won yet." Cinder spat out.

"Maybe, but everyone can see the writing on the wall… except you evidently." Roman laughed as Cinder squeezed her armrest impotently, with two barriers between them, there was nothing she could do even if she wanted to.

The demons were fighting with a desperation he hadn't seen in a very long time as Jaune neared the final wraith. They were throwing everything and the kitchen sink at him now.

And all their sacrifices succeeded in doing was delay the inevitable.

Nothing would stand between him and righting the wrongs of the past. Nothing.

Picking up two imps, Jaune smashed their skulls together repeatedly until they had the consistency of mashed potatoes before using the corpses as flails, beating back the demonic horde one body at a time.

"Oooh… idea…" Nora cackled to herself as her imagination activated again.

"Nora. No. No beating Grimm to death with other Grimm." Ren denied.

"Aww… what about-"

"No beating other humans with more humans either." Pyrrha shot down the idea before Nora even uttered it.

"Okay… but then-"

"No using faunus either. And that's racist!" Blake chimed in, already seeing where Nora's train of thoughts was going.

"Is it though? Hmm… if I beat a human using a faunus as a club, is that racism or helping to fight for faunus rights?" Yang's question caused Blake's mind to short circuit instantly and she swore there was smoke coming out of her ears now.

"Of course it's… why are we even discussing this?" Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose, catching herself before she got dragged into the insanity of it all.

"Nora." Her friends fired back the answer in unison.

Upon freeing the last wraith, the night sentinel ghosts appeared again, directing him to a pit. At the bottom of it, he could make out a giant runic circle on the floor. Nodding his thanks to his deceased comrades for pointing out the way, Jaune leapt through, landing on the ground below with a thud.

Looking up, he suppressed a grin as he realised why the ghosts had directed him here instead of simply leaving him to wait for Ironwood to pull him back. He helped set the wraiths free and now they were helping him settle the score.

Cinder Fall stood hunched over several metres from him. Still alive and blood soaked, blind white eyes stared back at him as she stood in the centre of the runic circle. Whatever she'd seen in her time here had clearly broken her, such was the reward for working with the demons, for the wages of treachery are suffering.

"They… promised me… so much" Cinder said in a harrowed tone. Before Jaune could put a bullet in her, hell energy zapped her and suffused her entire being, getting her to scream in agony. Once it faded, her limp form fell to the ground and sank into it as though the ground was liquid.

Jaune took several steps backwards as ground starting bubbling, blood welling up from dry earth and splashing everywhere. The tremors continued to grow until a massive mechanical spider leg burst out of the ground, followed by another.

Then an oversized exposed brain emerged, pushed up by a third spider leg on the back, attached to the brain was an ugly mug not even its mother could love. The white cybernetics and the design of it left no doubt that that was Cinder transformed.

A spider mastermind of all possible demons… fitting really. For all its supposed brain power, Jaune was about to prove that Cinder had a case of terminal stupidity and had most assuredly reached an evolutionary dead end.

"W-what is that!? What happened to me!?" Cinder yelled to make herself heard over the mix of retching and laughter in the theatre.

"You wanted power, you went to the demons for power, they gave you power." Blank answered while ensuring there were enough buckets to go around for the squeamish.

"That… there's no way any version of me would have asked for that!" Cinder protested.

"Your requests were simple, power, access to Argent D'Nur as your new home, disposal of everyone else once they outlived their usefulness. All the researchers who worked with you are dead save Ironwood. You're in Argent D'Nur now. And the spider mastermind is one of the strongest demons in existence. The forces of hell actually did uphold their end of the bargain completely, but maybe you should have been more specific about what you wanted." Blank pointed out.

"You said it wouldn't be as disgusting as the hunter universe, that's a walking brain attached to a spider! How is that less disgusting than what we saw!?" Blake just barely kept from yelling at Blank.

"Hmm? I would think the nightmare version of General Ironwood would be more disturbing and as to monster brains… ah that's right, I haven't shown you the brain of Mensis yet." Blank muttered to himself, getting the audience members who were paying attention to pale.

"Woah! W-we're not going back to that universe, right? I'm not sure my stomach can handle any more of that." Yang asked nervously.

"Not anytime soon, but there is one last viewing in that world, I'll show it eventually for closure." Blank answered.

"Ah who cares! Cinder's a freaking spider!" Roman burst out laughing at the ridiculous sight, Neo giggled silently by his side.

"Oh… that hit the spot. Say, any chance of her turning into something like that in our world?"

"It's low. It's not often anyone survives to the point where they require such extensive tuning in Remnant." Blank said.

"Ah… so you're saying there's a chance then." Roman grinned and Cinder just gulped, a tiny nugget of doubt brewing inside her that she wasn't able to quash completely.

"Salem would never betray me like that." Cinder declared and Blank just chuckled.

"Sure, the one who though you how to use and discard pawns would most definitely not discard you when you're no longer useful." Cinder fell silent upon hearing those words.

"And then there're the rare timelines where Salem finds an escape clause in her curse, dumping her immortality on you instead. Sounds great on paper until you realise she does it after wiping out all of humanity and faunus kind in those timelines. All alone for all eternity, you'd be the most powerful individual in existence by default."

Plasma fire streaked towards Jaune as the plasma cannon on the spider mastermind opened fire on him. Jaune retaliated with his own plasma rifle, red and blue streams of plasma crisscrossing the arena as they shot at one another. Jaune's speed and smaller profile kept him out of reach of Cinder's attacks while he barely needed to aim to shoot the giant target.

When Cinder started telekinetically tearing blocks of earth from the ground to hurl at him, Jaune used the opportunity to fire a few gauss cannon rounds into her brain. When the rocks were hurled at him, Jaune simply used the recoil to escape and assume a new firing position elsewhere.

As the transformed Cinder raged, her violent throes caused several pillars to burst from the ground. As she slammed her legs into the ground and electrified it, trying to kill Jaune with lightning, the Doom Slayer jumped on top of the pillars and resisted the urge to just laugh at the display. Giving him an out for her own attack however unintentional it was, terminal stupidity indeed.

Shooting her with the BFG, Cinder was stunned as she displayed the same weakness to the weapon as all the other demons. Like the cyberdemon and hell guards though, she was made of sterner stuff and wouldn't go down with one shot, he'd at least grant her that.

While she was stunned, Jaune closed and started shooting at the brain with his super shotgun, the pellets tearing into the soft flesh and causing it to bleed heavily.

Backing off once Cinder managed to shake off the stun and open fire on him with laser projectors mounted on the spider chassis. The red-hot beams scored the ground and walls as the legs flailed about, creating an impossible to predict pattern.

Getting hit by the lasers several times, it burned wherever the beams touched but Jaune shrugged it off. Pain of this level was nothing new, he'd gone through worse and likely would continue to do so in his campaign against hell.

When Cinder switched back to her electric attack. Jaune clambered back up onto one of the pillars that remained intact and deployed the mobile turret, once more sending a stream of death into Cinder's unarmoured brain.

The spider mastermind's screams of pain were music to his ears.

"So… still think you're on the winning side?" Qrow smirked as Cinder just glared at him, Salem's agent unable to come up with a good comeback with all the evidence pointing to the contrary.

Her two minions exchanged an unsure glance, wondering what all this meant for their future. Emerald remained undyingly loyal to Cinder but Mercury doubts were growing. Idly he wondered if he should try running away, there was always a demand for assassins in Mistral's underworld, he should be able to disappear there.

As the damage started to pile up, the spider mastermind's mechanical legs started to fail as well and it was reduced to crawling at times. The originally pinkish brain was now blood red from all the lacerations and puncture wounds.

With a final volley of rockets, Cinder's legs gave out entirely and the brain spider collapsed to the floor in a daze. Jaune approached with the BFG drawn, oh he could have ended it at range no problem. But after everything Cinder had done, that wasn't happening.

Oh no, no easy deaths today. They weren't here in person but Jaune knew this little fight was currently being viewed by every demon lord in hell who thought they were worth the salt. It was time to make an example of Cinder, prove to hell that their worst nightmare had returned and was eager to make up for lost time.

Grabbing one of Cinder's fangs and using his feet as a brace, Jaune forced her mouth open as he jammed the BFG into her mouth. He left it there long enough for Cinder to realise what was about to happen, relishing in the fear and panic in the demon's eyes just before he pulled the trigger.

The emerald blast took off half of Cinder's head and splattered brain matter everywhere as a trench was excavated right down the centre of the brain. The now worthless remains crumpled to the floor as Jaune removed the BFG and stepped back to admire his handiwork. It was a wonderful work of art if he did say so himself.

"One hell of a message to send." Ironwood muttered upon seeing the brutal execution.

"The demons will know humanity has a new protector. That should give them pause before they try this again." Winter said.

"Portal's closed, bitch is dead, all's well that ends well right?" Qrow chuckled only to freeze when Blank coughed.

"Yeah… about that…"

Electricity zapped Jaune as the tether activated, Ironwood pulling him back at last. When the white light faded, he was back in the UAC mars facility. Only, unlike the previous times he'd returned, the electric field didn't fade away, holding him in place as the tether didn't deactivate.

"You've won. It's over. You've stopped the invasion and closed the portal. But it's come at a price." Ironwood stepped out of the shadows and approached Jaune.

"Argent, Penny, this entire operation. You see I've watched you work, come to understand your motivations." Ironwood leaned in close and Jaune regretted his inability to spit at the machine for his unexpected but inevitable betrayal.

"You think the only way is to kill them all. Leave nothing behind. And you may be right. But we can't just shut it all down. Without argent energy, it will be worse. I don't expect you to agree." Ironwood reached out and grabbed the crucible, tearing it away from Jaune as the Doom Slayer struggled in his bindings.

"But with this, we can continue our work. I am not the villain in this story, I do what I do because there is no choice." Ironwood defended his betrayal as an announcement indicating the tether coordinates had been rerouted was made.

"Our time is up. I can't kill you, but I won't have you standing in our way." Ironwood shook the crucible once and a scarlet energy blade materialised.

"Until we see each other again." Ironwood turned and walked off as the tether activated again, transporting Jaune to destination unknown. Heavy metal started playing again as the short came to an end.

"You're kidding, after all that, I still decide to restart the project?" Ironwood whispered out.

"As I said, you believe that desperate times call for desperate measures. And that version of you is desperate enough to risk another demonic invasion because you see a chance of extinction far preferable to a guaranteed extinction in the near future. I won't tell you what to think or believe, I just ask that you not let your paranoia and fears rule you." Blank answered, leaving the general to stew in his own thoughts.

"Everything goes bad again doesn't it?" Weiss asked with a sigh.

"Indeed, the demons invade again and Jaune returns to slaughter them. Perhaps I'll cover it in the future. For now, feel free to refresh yourselves, next viewing will be ready shortly." Blank said.

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Author's notes: In the beginning, I just wanted to adapt the final mission, but then after going through it, there wasn't enough content. It'd have been a 3k words chapter or something, so I adapted the whole game. Hope you've enjoyed this chapter, and for those who celebrate it, happy lunar new year.

Ninja edit, so Doom Slayer's misspelling has been corrected. Transcribing lines of dialogue from the game without subtitles and not double checking afterwards was a bad idea in hindsight.

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Cast list:

Jaune Arc as The Doom Slayer

James Ironwood as Dr Samuel Hayden

Cinder Fall as Dr Olivia Pierce

Penny Polendina as Vega