Just as a...heads up I guess, Chapter 6 starts going off the rails a bit.

Mostly me following what my mind wanted to write at the time, and it gets kinda silly and...yeah, basically, this story got away from me and now it's like all my other stories, making not much sense and being dumb because yay for my simple mind. I change what I want on a dime and...well, yeah. Hopefully it's not as bad as I think it is and people will actually like it, but I guess I'll have to see.

Welp, enjoy the chapter =D

Chapter 5


Stepping out of the shower, Skye rubbed her hair dry, a small smile curled onto her lips.

After getting cut to pieces by the laser, she'd taken the time and a dozen lives to get all the secrets and whatnot of the base, only dying when she fucked up and fell to her death from misjudging jumps a little and falling too far. Now that she was used to coming back, it really wasn't a big issue. She was able to do all the various challenges, find all the secrets and collectable items, all her weapons and her armour becoming a lot more powerful.

She'd also ended up spending one run just messing with the weapons and gear she'd found, upgrading them and jailbreaking their limitations. She had a Gauss Cannon that accelerated its projectile to a percentage of the speed of light, and a Plasma Rifle that fired a constant beam rather than small plasma orbs. Her boots she'd effectively overclocked, turning them from a jump boost into miniature jetpacks, and spent one life practising flying around with them, which ended up with her accidentally flying into a wall more times than she could count.

Her suit was a bit harder to change, but she was still able to modify it to use any Argent Energy rather than the energy generated from either exceptionally violent deaths or those caused by certain weapons, using that energy to synthesize ammunition and impact compensation nanites. Normally doing that would cause her to mutate uncontrollably, but she'd already established that she was able to survive Argent Energy without mutating when she crushed the Argent Cells, so she was safe from that fact.

It did lend itself to her theory that it was Argent Energy causing her body to improve at a heightened rate, her body staying mostly in the same shape but her strength being far beyond what she should logically be capable of as well as her durability. Unless she had a brute power, she shouldn't have been able to break the manacles she woke up with using just her own strength. One curiosity that she noted was that her suit still didn't detect any activity from her corona pollentia or gemma, leading her to believe that she still hadn't actually triggered yet somehow, even after being killed in so many violent and painful ways, meaning the development of her body had to be being caused by some other source, one likely tired to her awakenings since the development continued over her deaths.

Slipping into the clothes she'd picked out, she then got into the Praetor Suit, heading for the elevator. She'd spoken to Hayden first, and then had her shower afterwards, meaning she could go straight to the elevator and continue on through the facility, coming into the room with the BFG-9000 quickly. She immediately looked around and saw that there were platforms she could jump up onto, so she did so, watching as the floor peeled away.

Next there was a mesh of lasers that descended and started carving the air above the BFG-9000 containment unit. When it rose then lowered again, she spotted the exposed Argent Energy cells on the laser ring, and shooting those with her pistol caused the entire thing to freeze then suddenly fall downwards, slicing open the containment unit for the BFG-9000. Hopping across, she lifted the weapon up, yelping as the platform rocked in place then suddenly fell down, smashing into the ground.

Grumbling, Skye got up from where she'd fallen on her back, examining the BFG-9000 before putting it in her storage. She only had three shots for it, since apparently ammunition for the weapon was highly specialized, and that meant she wanted to save it for a dangerous enemy. She headed for the only door, taking her Super Shotgun out and grabbing the bottom of the door, wrenching it open.

The room she entered was filled with Possessed and explosive barrels, to which a single tossed grenade cleared the entire horde in a massive explosion of blood, guts and gore. Ignoring the squelching of flesh and blood under her boots, she headed for the central console, activating a hologram displaying the scientists fleeing in a panic. Through the open door, she found another Chaingun which went into her storage to join the insane quantity of weapons she already possessed, and as she did so the door at the end opened, revealing another horde of Possessed. Humming, she took out the BFG-9000, deciding to test it, just to see how it fired.

Settling her stance, she pulled the trigger, unleashing a globe of green energy that lashed out with strands of lightning, utterly obliterating the Possessed in chains as it flew through the air, eventually splashing against the wall at the back and melting a crater in the super-dense metal. She licked her lips as she looked down at the gun, putting it away in her storage for later use, against enemies that might actually need such a powerful impact.

As a Pinky came sprinting around the corner, she was already drawing her Rocket Launcher and firing off a shot, the rocket forcing the demon to stagger. Angling her feet and leaning forwards, she blasted towards the demon as it staggered, her arm reaching to snatch ahold of the horns on its head. Ripping one horn off, she turned it downwards and stabbed through the head of the demon, jumping to avoid the frenzied swing of the second Pinky as she swapped to her Super Shotgun, putting two rounds into its face and following up by two more in its chest, finally taking out her Heavy Assault Rifle and firing a cluster of micro-missiles that blew apart its face in a shower of blood. When she entered the main chamber, the facility voiceover announced yet another lockdown, bursts of Argent Energy loudly announcing the arrival of various demons.

And, whipping out her Chaingun, Skye began butchering them with high-calibre punishment.


Blasting off a shot from her BFG-9000, Skye watched the green ball of energy smash against the chest of a Baron of Hell, obliterating it into a steaming fleshy pile.

Apparently summoning the elevator to the Lazarus Labs got the attention of two Barons of Hell. One of them met an unfortunate end at the blade of her chainsaw, and the other got melted by her BFG-9000. The lockdown rose when she killed the second Baron, and she wasted little time gathering up anything she missed then taking the elevator down deep underground to where Olivia Pierce stored the Helix Stone.

As she arrived, she was surprised to see a literal pillar made out of blood and guts. Bypassing that was another hologram, this time of Pierce and a UAC researcher. They appeared to be talking about the Doom Slayer, the one who was meant to appear, the guy. While she listened, she nabbed the fuel and ammo lying around, as well as a datapad about the Lazarus Labs that she read whilst roaming forwards. Further into the base there was an Imp trapped by the elevator, obviously still alive, though as she entered it went deathly still, making her smirk.

Grabbing ahold of the elevator itself, she forced it down slightly, watching the Imp as it scrabbled up on top of the elevator and watched her for a moment before she let go of the elevator and it ascended. The look of utter confusion on its face was definitely worth letting a single Imp escape her. As it rose, more Imps climbed up, and these ones seemed all too willing to attack her, so she responded in kind, blasting them with heat from her Plasma Rifle and hosing them down, leaving several charred corpses to disappear as she looked around and saw a vent.

Heading through it, she found a Gore Nest and quickly eradicated it and the demons that emerged, exploring around to find another Elite Guard and yet another Chaingun to put into her storage. Curious, she decided to examine the corpse, using the combat knife that she found way back at the very beginning to pry open the armour and then start a pseudo-autopsy, mostly just to satiate her own curiosity. "What are you doing?" Hayden asked her.

Regretting not bringing the paper and pens along that were in his assistant's desk, she looked around before sighing, tapping the end of her finger in blood and writing 'autopsy' on the wall for him to see. "I see. You know, you could just ask VEGA if you were curious about their implants, extensive as they are he is fully capable of informing you of their augmentations." Shrugging, she kept cutting, taking out the various augmentations whilst VEGA did exactly that, explaining what the augmentations did, how they worked, and even how the Elite Guards were modified using pure Argent Energy to be faster, stronger and tougher than even a peak human could be, and that was before those augmentations buffed them even further.

After the impromptu autopsy, Skye made a note to do an autopsy on the first Elite Guard she found next time she woke up, since she'd be able to experiment with the implants and augments and see how they worked for herself. After all, everything she'd taken apart so far from the Praetor Suit and the pistol to the Plasma Rifle and Chaingun she'd been able to understand, despite having never handled anything bigger than a BB gun before, nor having any mechanical inclination. If that was the case, then it made it likely that if she got the chance to study the augments, she could potentially understand and even use them.

Her suit was able to implant technology into her spine and brain in literally half a minute with no lasting effects that she'd noticed, including no scarring somehow, so maybe it would be able to also implant the augmentations. Without the kill chip present in their brains of course, that was something she was not going to have put in her head. But it was definitely a modification to think about, just as she planned to modify basically all of her gear.

As she went through a pair of maintenance doors, by which she meant literally breaking them open, she found a Combat Support Drone, and lacking any better options she got the Stun Bomb for her Plasma Rifle, since the BFG-9000 didn't accept any modifications, probably because it didn't register as a proper weapon, being experimental tech and all that.

Flying up through the trapdoor, she wandered through the facility, ripping vents off and searching them for secrets, picking up all the guns and ammo and gear she found along the way, which included a datapad about the Cyberdemon, something she already knew she was going to have to fight, groaning lightly as she looked at it. Big, heavily armed, and probably a bitch to fight...maybe the BFG-9000 would mulch it.

She could only hope.


Dropping through a trapdoor, Skye snatched the trigger of the BFG-9000, killing the cluster of tough demons with a single shot.

It wasn't that she was worried, but Revenants, a pair of Cyber-Mancubus and a Cacodemon, as well as various other fodder demons, meant that to deal with them all invited too much risk of getting swamped, especially with her uplink offline owing to the Argent Energy practically choking the air from the massive portal torn in the skies. She was leery of moving too fast as she used her various weapons to blast apart the demons, a lockdown initiating as Pinky's began trying to charge her.

She unleashed a second BFG-9000 shot to clear the room, then began alternating between her Plasma Rifle, her Chaingun and her Gauss Cannon as demons appeared and were blasted to pieces. As the fight went on she noticed that more and more of the Imps and lesser demons decided simply to run away from her rather than fight. The bigger and dumber ones, like the Pinky and Mancubus, kept fighting her, but the smaller and weaker ones showed more intelligence by not trying to beat her. As she finished them off and searched behind copies of the Helix Stone to find the various secrets, she pondered what she would do if she couldn't go home.

There was always the chance that returning was physically impossible. If that was the case...no, it couldn't be the case. She would find a way home, even if she had to tear apart Hell itself to do so. She had spent too long and endured too much just to get stranded on the red fucking planet in an alternate reality. There was a chance that she wasn't in an alternate reality, just in the far future, but it was far too unlikely.

Entering the elevator heading down, she checked through her inventory, the weapons she accumulated and their ammo stockpiles. Each now had more than enough ammo to suffice, all except for the BFG-9000, that one had ammo that was way rarer than any other weapon, which was why, unlike her other weapons, she had to be strategic about using it.

Taking the weapon out, she opened up the casing protecting the energy cell, the green glow intensifying as it was exposed to the air. At some point, she was going to get it from its storage place then just sit down and dismantle it, figure out how it worked so she could change it. The round it fired was powerful for killing regular enemies and leaving a crater in the wall, sure, but not nearly as powerful as she suspected it could be, especially as new and experimental as it was. if the sphere containing that energy were to actually release properly, it wouldn't just collapse in on itself after melting a certain amount of material. It would detonate, sending a wave of highly destructive Argent Energy. And depending on how much energy was fed into the shot, that could make a very hefty crater.

As the elevator reached the bottom, she closed the casing around the energy cell and put the gun away, striding out into a room decorated with stone tablets. Ahead of her, she could see her target, the Helix Stone. As she approached, she had to admit that it was very pretty to look at. heading around the base of the containment field, she attempted to access the system, and found it blocked, probably by Olivia.

Having a quick explore, she headed to the office that was marked, where a gravelly voice spoke with Olivia, evidence that something demonic was directly communicating with her. It wasn't just her reading ancient transcripts and being stupid, she was directly conversing with a demon, perhaps the Dark Lord that was mentioned in the Baron of Hell Codex description? None of the demons she'd encountered so far had any ability to speak, or at least they hadn't tried to.

Shrugging, she looped around the desk, activating the screen attached to the desk to override the security lockdown. Behind her a hidden door hissed open, revealing more holograms, of the Praetor Suit and the sarcophagus she woke up in. There were a few assorted things for her to grab including an Argent Cell, and some armour, and at the end of the central ring was a control unit that gave her full access, allowing her to head back and open the security around the Helix Stone.

As the containment field fell, she felt a spike of pain in her head as memories...no, not memories, visions appeared in her mind of a hilt or something. Wincing, she waited for it to pass, and shook her head to clear the lingering headache there. "The Crucible, that was what she was looking for!" Hayden explained, making her raise an eyebrow. "Your suit relayed what you saw to me. VEGA, do you have the location?"

"Yes, it is in an uncharted region of the Titan's Realm. But the portal in existence is far from there. To gain access, we will need to tear open a second portal with another Argent Accumulator. The only one in this region is inside of specimen CD587." Hayden seemed amused as he explained that specimen CD587 was the Cyberdemon she had already seen, making her growl.

He pointed out what she was going to have to do, and as he finished talking, a demonic presence emerged to cause a lockdown, with Imps, Hell Knights, a Cyber-Mancubus and other demons appearing all around the circular room to attack her. By this point though, Skye had more than enough experience, and fighting the demons was more just a routine exercise. Sure, her uplink was offline again thanks to the damn Helix Stone being a maelstrom of Argent Energy, but even without that, her sixth sense and her ingrained abilities meant she had no issue blasting the demons into pieces.

When the last one fell, the floor dropped away and revealed a hidden zone beneath the stone. With the demons in there falling quickly to her weapons, she encountered another hologram showing Olivia and the cultists sacrificing someone, stabbing them with a knife a few times. Following through and killing a few assorted demons, she eventually found a way out and up through a maintenance hatch, then dropping back down through a maintenance door to a group of Possessed.

They quickly found their ends when she blasted them with a shot from her explosive shotgun attachment, finishing the rest off and heading through. Making her way along the corridors, she came across a massive storm of Argent Energy being channeled into the body of a Summoner, making her wonder just what the fuck kind of experiments they were really running down here. They made the Revenants, Cyber-Mancubi, and the other enhanced demons, so maybe they were also trying to make other demons stronger somehow.

Another hologram, this one of Olivia activating the Hell Wave that killed or demonized all 60,000+ workers on site, leaving just herself, Hayden, and Skye alive. As the hologram cut out, she expected Hayden to defend himself, pointing out that Olivia was the one to do it all, but instead, he just told her that she was their only chance at stopping Olivia before she managed to succeed in her plans and doom the human race. She had to admit that while she didn't like him much, at least Hayden was pragmatic.

On the control panel there was a big button for disabling the portal, and she did so without hesitation, watching the storm of Argent Energy recede and close in on itself like a singularity, making her wary that it was going to explode. When it vanished into nothingness, she held her breath for a few moments, watching in case it did explode, eventually releasing it in a sigh as nothing happened.

Most of the facility itself was rather regular and boring, there wasn't anything new or interesting jumping out to attack her, just the same enemies she'd already been fighting. Not that it was a bad thing, being able to cruise through and blast demons was good, it meant she was definitely orders of magnitude above how bad she was when she first woke up, but it did leave her a little dissatisfied when half the demons opted to just run away and disappear in bursts of Argent Energy. Any who fled she decided could live, so long as they didn't attack her of course, and it seemed more than most were happy to take the chance to get away from her.

She kept a wary eye on her Dossier, making sure she didn't miss any secrets as she gleefully made her way through swarms of demons, taking a certain measure of glee each time she saw a demon decide to flee from her instead of fighting her. As she finished the last Cyber-Mancubus and the lockdown disengaged, she took a moment, took her helmet off and clambered out of her suit, sitting on top of it as she ate through another ration pack.

Glancing up at the ceiling and the sound of claws rattling against metal, she raised an eyebrow. The Imp scampering on the roof had a conspicuously-dented midsection, making her wonder whether it was the same one she'd freed. She watched as it skittered along, climbing down the wall, putting one hand out and taking her pistol from storage. If it thought she was a vulnerable target out of her suit it'd be quite heavily surprised.

As it turned out, she was the surprised one as it got to the floor and approached her, putting down a pack of shotgun shells before retreating twice as fast as it had approached, disappearing up the wall and through a vent. Blinking, she put down her food and slipped into the suit, slotting her helmet on and approaching the pack of shells. She half-suspected a trap, but maybe that Imp was actually trying to thank her for saving it when she could have just torn it in half.

Picking up the shells, she saw that there was nothing wrong with them, the Imp probably had been observing her and recognized that she used them, then found the pack somewhere else in the base and brought it to her. The thought brought a thin smile to her lips, the first actual act of kindness she'd seen in...well, chronologically it'd probably be years now.

Skye turned her head to look up at the vent the Imp disappeared through, kicking the thrusters in her boots into action as she drifted up towards the vent. She wasn't sure if demons even needed to eat, but a return gift wouldn't hurt. Pulling out a ration pack from her storage, she placed it at the end of the vent, drifting back down towards her own food and getting back out of the suit and finishing the meal. As she put her helmet back on and headed for the elevator, she glanced back and her smile grew as she looked up at the vent and saw that the ration pack was gone.

She had no idea what was going to happen when she broke the connection between Mars and Hell, and she wasn't exactly going to not do it just for one Imp that repaid her with ammo after she saved it, but it'd definitely make her feel at least a little bit bad. Feeling bad for a demon...well, there were weirder things to feel bad about. The elevator doors closed and began to descend, taking her down towards the Cyberdemon and the Argent Accumulator.

When the doors opened again, she saw a pair of massive doors awaiting her, armour, ammo and a few guns piled up outside the doors alongside a datapad that informed her with more details about the Cyberdemon. She tore open the panel her HUD marked and saw the lever there. Flicking through her weapons quickly, she settled on starting with her Gauss Cannon and upgrading to the BFG-9000 if necessary. Reaching up, she grasped the lever and yanked it down.

Immediately there was a roar as the Cyberdemon noticed the opening doors, and she put the end of her gun towards it, firing off a shot that held it back while she slipped into the room, the doors quickly reversing to close behind her, locking her inside with the demon. Charging up a second shot, she was forced to abort it and roll to the side as the demon levelled its left arm and fired a stream of missiles at her.

She kept shifting to the side, taking out her BFG-9000 and firing directly at the demon, growling as it simply took the impact. Her suit quickly informed her that the Argent Accumulator itself was animating the demon, and that she would need to force the demon down and vulnerable so she could rip the accumulator out of the port on its chest. Growling, she tossed a pair of grenades out under its arm which blasted it upwards, sending the next volley of missiles up to splash the ceiling.

Using that moment of time she swapped back to the Gauss Cannon and managed to get off a fully-charged shot, pissing it off as the jets on its back activated and sent it rocketing towards her. Kicking her own jets into action she blasted upwards, spinning in the air and planting her boots against the ceiling, then kicking off hard and equipping her chainsaw the bring it down in a vicious slice down the arm of the Cyberdemon.

In retaliation it swung that same arm and smashed her in the chest, her armour taking the impact but still sending her sprawling, forced to immediately prone-roll to the side to avoid a laser-beam that gouged a huge hole in the floor itself. Taking out her Plasma Rifle, she started spraying down the demon with a hose of plasma, running sideways to avoid the dumb-fire missiles.

The Cyberdemon switched tactics, aligning a laser against her and forcing her to stop firing and roll out of the way again. This time she came up holding the BFG-9000 and unleashed another green globe of death, followed up by a second and then a third, each impact visibly causing the Cyberdemon immense pain as it roared out in fury and launched dozens of missiles from its back. Her uplink took note of their trajectories, picking out all the landing points and giving her HUD-based markers for the only safe positions to stand, which she deftly entered, swapping to the Missile Launcher and firing some of her own, blasting back at the Cyberdemon as it was hit by some of its own missiles.

Apparently very pissed off now, the Cyberdemon started flailing its right arm, sending waves of Argent Energy sweeping towards her. Evading each attack, she changed to her shotgun and fired the explosive round, then the Heavy Assault Rifle micro-missiles, followed up by more Rocket Launcher shots. For a finale, she brought the Gauss Cannon back out and planted the charged shot right between the Cyberdemon's eyes, making it stumble backwards then fall to one knee, breathless.

Charging forwards and increasing her speed with the jets on her feet, she lunged up and grasped the end of the Argent Accumulator, tearing it out of the chest of the demon mercilessly, followed up by a solid punch to the face that knocked it flat on its back. As she landed, she saw the accumulator seemingly exploded and tossed it away, where it floated up into the air for a moment before doing just as she suspected, exploding into a wave of Argent Energy.

As her vision cleared from the detonation, sparks of Argent Energy began striking the corpse of the Cyberdemon, making her realize that the only reason it needed the Argent Accumulator was because it couldn't sustain itself with the weak amount of Argent Energy on Mars. In Hell, the air was thick with the stuff. She winced as she checked her various guns, spotting two BFG-9000 shots sitting by the door behind the Cyberdemon.

The demon began to get up, and Skye wasted no time in sprinting past it, dropping another pair of grenades right in its face as she passed it and reached the door and the two extra shots. Spinning and equipping the BFG-9000, she immediately blasted both shots into its back, wincing as it slammed its right fist into the ground and rose stone spikes on either side of her, a feral grin on its toothy face as it started firing missiles at her and slicing lines of Argent Energy at her.

With her boots still active, she was able to evade the shots, blasting forwards and planting her quickly-equipped Gauss Canon right against the hole that was left by the Argent Accumulator, firing thrice in quick succession. As the demon staggered back she took a firm hold of the armoured chestpiece grafted to its flesh and began to tear. It swung its arm at her, and she felt as her impact compensation gave way and her leg snapped from the brutal impact, but she didn't care, it could be fixed.

Dropping the Gauss Cannon and letting it go into storage, she pulled herself up against the demon, planting her feet against its shoulders and pulling as hard as she could, tearing away the metal plate with a sound of elastic snapping and an unholy bellow of pure agony. As the plate hit the ground, Skye was absolutely covered with blood, revealing that the plate had been very tightly connected to the Cyberdemon. Grinning, she pulled out her Gauss Cannon and fired a single shot right at its chest, obliterating its vulnerable torso in a shower of guts.

As she did so, she then toppled sideways, realizing that yes, her leg was still broken in multiple places, and putting weight on it was all but impossible. Biting back a whine of pain, she took out a Health Dispenser from her inventory and activated it, sighing as the nanites quickly fixed the broken bone. It still hurt, but she'd felt so much pain that compared to the time she used one to fix her arm all those deaths ago, it was not nearly as noteworthy. When the nanites were done, she tentatively put weight on the newly-fixed leg, then grinned and charged forwards, booting the corpse of the Cyberdemon harshly.

Sure, she was used to pain, but it didn't mean that it didn't fucking hurt.


Skye passed through the Titan's Realm pretty quickly, the enemies not standing a chance against her arsenal of weaponry.

A few times she almost ended up dog-piled or knocked off cliffs, but thanks to the modifications she had made to the jumpjets she had, it made it that much easier to suddenly evade attacks when really they should have landed. The verticality added a whole new aspect to combat, though even upgraded as they were, her armour was far too heavy for sustained flight.

At some point she ended up in another region of Hell, 'The Necropolis' apparently, and with that she had to find another automap to update her Dossier, though again there were no new demons and those she did run into she'd already killed plenty of. The Barons of Hell remained a very considerable threat, with their durability and strength making them very hard to put down while they could literally tear her apart if they got a firm hold over her.

As the last Baron of Hell toppled, she sighed, resting her arms on the back of her shotgun and resting for a moment. She had to cut off the stimulants because according to the suit using them for almost six straight hours had a very high possibility of causing irreparable damage to her body, to the point of spontaneous organ failure, internal haemorrhaging, and very likely death. It was the equivalent of coming down from a drug high, the full-body ache and tiredness.

Before this point, she'd never actually been in her suit using the stimulants for so long, and it hadn't come up, but now that she knew, she was going to try to cut down on them, only using them when absolutely necessary. The only reason she used them anyway was that they just generally made her faster and stronger. Sure, she was already plenty fast and strong already, but having more never hurt. Shrugging her shoulders, she picked up the shotgun, planting it on her shoulder as she glanced around, a yawn pulling itself from her mouth.

As soon as all this bullshit was over and done with, she was going straight home, and faceplanting her bed for a week. Her body wasn't tired, but she'd been non-stop awake for such a long time that being able to just switch off for a while was going to be amazing. Making her way towards the objective, she watched as her suit grabbed all the ammo, armour and other items in her path, and her attention to the ground meant she saw several big and dead worm things on the ground, making her wary of an attack from the floor.

Seeing that her HUD was intending for her to touch the big runic circle thing on the wall, she reached out and did so, wincing as her mind was assaulted again. She only regained control of her senses in time to watch as a platform her HUD marked as containing the Crucible disappeared into the ground, and beyond that, a new form appeared, drawing her attention as she shook her head and brought out her BFG-9000.

It was made of chitin from the looks of it, or just regular bone, with flesh binding it together and runes inscribed on the armour. The chest folded away, and a worm, the same worm she saw outside, slithered into it. As she raised her gun to shoot it, the chitin snapped closed and activated, the figure raised its arm, which was holding a mace, and smashed it into the ground. A green ball formed around it, and a quick switch and shot from her pistol revealed that the ball was marking the presence of a shield.

The shot apparently annoyed her enemy as it started to charge her, leaping up into the air. As it swung down, the shield receded, just for a few seconds, but rose again before her tentative explosive shotgun shell hit him. So, she'd need to bait out an attack then blast it before it rose its shield again. She could do that, no problem. Well, not really, the thing was really quite fast and pretty relentless, only taking a second or two between attacks, meaning she had very little time to re-orient herself.

That was when she realized that when the shield was up, the demon couldn't attack her. She used her boots to make some space, grinning as the demon went to the middle of the little arena they were in then began to spin, releasing jets of fire that tried to sweep at her. After a short while, the shield dropped and she blasted it with rockets and then a follow-up BFG-9000 shot.

When the shield was up, she kept probing it with pistol shots, ready to swap to a much more lethal weapon in an instant. Watching the demon raise its right arm, she saw a large ball of plasma form and prepared to dodge it, jumping upwards as it suddenly split into three and speared along the ground. Her own shots started smashing against the demon, spewed out by her Chaingun in high quantities before it got its shield back online and roared at her. Apparently the worm thing didn't take too well to getting shot and having its fleshy bits mostly turned into swiss cheese, even as Argent Energy crackled across it and healed the holes.

Bringing out the BFG-9000 again, she boosted to the side and fired a green ball of death at the side of the demon as it landed, the energy smashing against its left arm. That was when the demon let out a roar that made her vision go blurry, and cleared up in time to see it throw the mace in its right arm directly at her, impacting her shoulder and sending her flying back to smack against the teeth-like protrusions surrounding them.

With a growl, she took out her Rocket Launcher, blinking as she realized that it was no longer generating a shield. Maybe it needed the staff that had been in its left hand to make shields? Whatever the case was, it was obviously very, very pissed at her, and it was now sprinting directly towards her. Pushing herself off the bones, she charged right back, watching as it rocked an arm back to punch her.

Rather than get her neck snapped, she jumped up, curling herself sideways and practically rolling around the punch, her leg sweeping around to smash her heel into the face of the demon, sending it stumbling away. Turning the fall into a proper roll, she leapt again, landing on the head of the demon and reaching down to grass pthe chitin protecting the worm.

With a pull that made her arm burn, she tore the protective plate off, then stuffed a grenade into the hole the worm was residing in, a grin on her face as she heard it shriek followed by an explosion that knocked her off the top of the chitin construct, forcing her into a slightly awkward landing. Standing upright, she pulled out a health dispenser and activated it to fix the pain in her right shoulder, watching with a groan as two more of the demons, or 'Hell Guards' as her HUD pointed out oh so helpfully, emerged from the ground.

This was going to be irritating. Two Hell Guards this time, one with a mace and one with a staff. Flexing her right arm to make sure it wasn't tensing up, then brought out her Super Shotgun and watched as the two demons took offensive stances. Then, she tilted her head. They didn't have shields...or maybe they were invisible, though that was less likely. Bringing out her pistol she fired a probing shot and grinned as it impacted the chitin of one of the two demons.

Her attack prompted the two to action, the one with the mace charging in and smashing down while the one with the staff held back, launching balls of plasma at her. Avoiding the mace, she unleashed several blasts of buckshot right into the central plate of the first Hell Guard, the shots doing significant damage. Backhopping away from the oncoming plasma, she swapped to her Chaingun, swapping out the attachment from Gatling Rotator to Mobile Turret, then deploying the weapon and spraying down the mace-wielder with all three barrels, only stopping the onslaught of rounds when the staff-wielder sent a wave of Argent Energy towards her.

The mace-wielder was obviously already heavily damaged from the insane amount of rounds that had hammered it, and took more than a few seconds to heal and chase after her. Switching it up slightly, she brought out her Plasma Rifle, spraying down the Hell Guard and scoring holes in the chitin protecting it as it roared and charged after her. When forced to jump up and avoid a wide wave of Argent Energy, she got smacked in the side by the mace, sending her flying across the arena, though her impact compensation stopped it from doing more than breaking one of her fingers. Ignoring the pain, she brought out her Rocket Launcher, firing two shots off then a third after avoiding another ranged attack, the third explosion staggering the Hell Guard.

Spotting an opportunity, she brought out the BFG-9000 and fired a shot at the staff-wielder, distracting it long enough for her to charge forwards and smash her fist twice into the central chitin plate, then ripping out the worm. It tried to bite her and wriggle free, but by taking ahold of its tail, she got leverage and tore it in half. With a casual toss, she threw the two pieces towards the remaining Hell Guard, grinning as it spun its staff then slammed it into the ground, sending a wide wave of Argent Energy across the entire arena.

She jumped over it, then brought out her chainsaw and used her jets to adjust her descent, scraping the blade of her weapon right down the middle of the Hell Guard, leaving a large gouge in the chitin that took a while to knit over. Dropping off a grenade, she jumped away and boosted herself with her jets, watching as the Hell Guard tried to smash the ground with its staff but stumbled as the grenade went off right beside its leg, shredding the flesh there and scorching the chitin.

Drawing her Gauss Cannon, she deployed the Precision Bolt and lanced a trio of shots right into the central chitin plate, melting the material heavily and making the Hell Guard flail and smash the ground repeatedly, frenzied waves of Argent Energy bursting out in all directions. One of them blasted straight through her legs when she was forced to land, and she fell over with a pained whine as her legs were flash-fried inside of the suit.

Growling, she brought out the BFG-9000, aiming it right at the stupid fucking Hell Guard and unleashing all she shots she was capable of. By the time she stopped firing, the Hell Guard was barely recognizable. She hoisted herself up, and her eyes narrowed as she saw the Hell Guard moving a little, raising its staff in her direction before it let the end drop and fell backwards, a wave of Argent Energy spilling forth in all directions. She closed her eyes as it approached, unable to stop a scream of pure pain as her body was fried both inside and out.

Then she opened her eyes.


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