DoomStuck Chapter 10: Personal Demons, a Doom + Homestuck Crossover fanfic

John wandered aimlessly across the battlefield, unsure where he was, where he was supposed to go, or what he was supposed to do as he waited to wake back up on HORAV again. As he walked he saw the burning wreckages of numerous different types of ships as well as the broken remains of Sentinel robots like the two guarding Yaldabaoth's palace on HORAV. Countless bodies littered the ground. Some were demons, some were Night Sentinels, and some were strange black or white carapaced creatures. There were even a few absolutely gigantic demons with buildings chained to their backs, many of which appeared to still be alive despite the fact they really shouldn't be but appeared to be rendered completely immobile because of their wounds.

If John didn't know any better he would have thought the giant demons were Titans, but that didn't make any sense to him. If he remembered correctly then there should have only ever been one Titan, the Champion of Hell which was currently rampaging around on HORAV. Plus these ones were a lot smaller than the Champion. So he just assumed they just had to be another species of demon that hadn't been mentioned in his abridged demonology book in order to conserve space, or something to that effect. That or perhaps he might have misinterpreted the section about the Titan.

Either way it didn't really matter. If those wounds hadn't killed most of them, then nothing he could do would kill them either. So whenever he saw one he would just ignore it and continue walking since he doubted he could hurt them and they were all too injured to move let alone try to attack him or anyone else.

He occasionally saw an insane demon or two that hadn't been killed in whatever disaster happened here rampaging around or fighting each other. In those cases he would not hesitate to attack them with a sword he had found on the eviscerated corpse of a Night Sentinel. He hacked Imps, Gargoyles, and Pinkie demons to bits with the sword and either ripped fully grown Hell Knights, Mancubi, and on one occasion even a stray Baron of Hell limb from limb or otherwise beat them to death with his bare hands and sometimes even their own limbs.

Over the course of these fights, especially the one with the Baron of Hell, he had accumulated quite a few burns, cuts, scratches, broken bones, and even a compound fracture in his left leg. As he was resetting a few of his broken bones to the best of his abilities considering he had absolutely no medical training whatsoever, he had discovered that he had as much control over his own physical pain and his pain tolerance as he had over his negative emotions, determination, and sanity.

After experimenting with his new found control over his own pain and pain tolerance by increasing and decreasing them to certain extremes, he had learned that enough pain could serve as a lure to attract even more of the insane demons that were left wandering the battlefield. As such he decided to have pain engulf every last cell in his body and constantly kept it at a level that would likely kill an entire major city's worth of people, and that was by no means an exaggeration. It was much worse than any torture that any demon other than an Arch Demon or a full on Hell-God could produce and it attracted the insane demons like moths to a flame. It was extremely convenient as the fact they came to him made slaughtering them so much easier.

Not having much else to do in the intervals between fighting the insane demons he was luring to himself through his own pain, he thought about what had just happened to him and what he was. In order to remain sane he had been forced to relinquish his connection to his friends and family for it was too human and as such was nothing but a weakness. Instead he fully embraced something dark inside himself.

It wasn't "Rage", not exactly anyways. It was something much deeper, darker, and more terrible than mere "Rage" though it was still very closely related to "Rage". It was something more vicious and cruel than any demon. It was beyond mere anger or hatred. There wasn't really a word for it that he knew of but it was something akin to but not quite the same as a drive… or an oath. An "oath" written in his very genetics to exterminate absolutely everything he hated — mainly demons, Dersites, Traitor Night Sentinels, and evil in general — with a ferocity and righteous fury that could make the Hell-Gods themselves tremble in abject existential terror. That was all that mattered to him now. Friends, family, personal happiness, and anything and everything even remotely "human" were all not just irrelevant to him but were completely against his very nature. He had no "humanity" as he was never even Human to begin with.

No matter what they may have looked like on the outside he and the Slayer were neither Human nor Argenta and they never had been, he realized that now. They had always been something else entirely. They were tools... no, not tools. Tools could be used for constructive purposes, to build or create works of beauty just as much as they could be used to destroy. However, he and the Slayer were only meant for one purpose and one purpose alone, to destroy. Rather than tools they were weapons of mass destruction that had been generated by this "game" specifically to completely exterminate the "virus" that were the Demons and potentially other even greater threats that he was currently unaware of.

Whatever their species was probably didn't even have an actual name as there were only two of them in existence, himself and the Slayer. Ultimately he supposed it didn't really matter either. In the end no matter what they were called they were just monsters who had been created for the sole purpose of wiping out the demons that had infected the "game" since the "game" needed help to eradicate them as it completely lacked the means with which to do so on its own. They were designed for the sole purpose of the complete and total annihilation of Hell and everything that happened to them up until this point was meant to mould them specifically for that purpose.

As such the only thing that mattered to him now was fulfilling his role. He would stop at nothingto eradicate every last trace of evil he came across no matter how small or insignificant. He didn't care about the cost, what he would have to give up or sacrifice to accomplish this or how much pain he had to go through. So long as he succeeded that was all that mattered to him. If he could also protect those he used to consider friends and family in the process then that was just a minor bonus at most.

He supposed this was probably for the best for everyone anyways. The fact that he had cared about them had likely just put them in even greater danger by making them even larger targets of the Demons and Traitor Night Sentinels then they already were. So logically speaking the fact he no longer cared about them should mean they were no longer as high priority targets as they used to be since they could no longer be used against him. Plus it meant his sanity had remained fully intact and thus he could continue helping them even if he was now much more distant. He had not been designed for friendship or family anyways.

The only major downside, in his opinion, was this crushing loneliness that had taken root inside him and had officially joined the rest of his constantly growing cosmically intense negative emotions. It was honestly almost enough to make John want to cry. However he refused to do so as he felt he couldn't let himself show any sort of weakness or vulnerability as he knew the demons — especially the ones that were currently speaking to him inside his head — would not hesitate to use that against him even for an instant.

Even so, he couldn't help but wonder if this was how his father/brother/alternate self the Doom Slayer had felt after the fall of Argent D'Nur during his one man genocide against Hell. Impossibly angry, afraid, sad, guilty, melancholy, ashamed, remorseful, soul shatteringly lonely, along with any and every other negative emotion imaginable to a degree that was decidedly unimaginable.

Eventually John started approaching a canyon when he saw two people walking up a hill on the opposite side of the canyon. Looking at them, John realized it was his father with the lady that he assumed was Dave and Rose's ecto-biological mother who he recognized from the ecto-cloning thing in the lab in the Veil. His father appeared really happy to see him. John's reaction, however, was a lot more subdued. It was good to see his father was alive and well but that was the extent of it. He wasn't really happy, excited, or anything else to that effect. Approaching the edge of the canyon he floated into the air and began crossing the gap at a casual pace, not really in that big of a hurry to reunite with his dad.

However, right as he was nearing the other side of the canyon he suddenly vanished and the ring that was once on his finger fell down into the crimson blood-filled water of the river below.

[The Hell of Rage and Violence]

John suddenly woke up and found himself propped up in a sitting position against a large rock. He was wearing the armor that Samur and the Wretch had made for him, and the Unmaykr was laid across his lap. He could no longer feel his wounds, however, so it seemed that whatever happened to him while he was asleep didn't transfer over to his waking self which was good to know.

Putting the Unmaykr away, he realized he could no longer hear most of the demonic voices in his head. However, the voices of the Greater Demons that were constantly trying to make him offers remained though they sounded a bit quieter and they spoke a little less frequently than before. Apparently whatever anti-demonic possession properties his new helmet had were not enough to completely prevent greater demons from invading his mind if they wanted to, but it was enough to completely block out any less powerful demons. Well, it was good to know the actual limits of the anti-demon runes. He'd have to let the other know as soon as possible.

John was about to get up and go looking for the Wretch when he received a pesterchum notification from an account that he didn't immediately recognize off the top of his head.