Chapter 6
Getting up from kneeling on the floor beside a dead Elite Guard, Skye put away her prize, dusted her hands off, and couldn't help but smile.
After the Hell Guard managed to kill her, she decided to take some lives to investigate the augmentations and implants of the Elite Guards. Their bones themselves were made of a stupidly strong alloy, their musculature was artificial and maybe half as strong as her own unnatural strength, and so were most of their organs, with redundancies and changes all over the place, to the point that she was leery of even calling them human any more.
And the cranial implants...they were scarily strong. One of the implants immensely increased processing power, another heightened memory recall to the point that, theoretically, they could perfectly picture in their mind anything they'd ever seen before. They also had an implant similar to the one she used for the Praetor Suit, giving them unfathomable control over their armour. Then there were other upgrades like artificial eyes which were far more powerful than regular human eyes, a boost to their sense of hearing, adjustable pain reduction devices, things that made them even better than they already were.
The one she liked the most was the eye augmentation, as the artificial eyes were capable of seeing Argent Energy before it was even dense enough to be normally visible, able to see through walls selectively, with thermal imaging and night vision being a given, and was probably going to be the one she repeatedly took, just for the sheer utility. Being able to literally have better eyes just in general would be amazing.
One curiosity she'd noticed was that with every reset, even though she took a variable amount of time to arrive in certain locations, things only happened when she arrived, like Olivia only getting on the elevator at the Argent Tower when she arrived and saw her. It smelled fishy to her, not quite right, and the fact that other events happened in such a similar fashion, led her to decide that attempting an augmentation was a good idea.
She had carefully extracted the eyes from some of the Elite Guards, since the suit warned her that there was a not-insignificant chance of failure, and in that case it would have to remove the faulty eye and attempt to implant another. In her mind she mapped out the Resource Operations Facility, picking out the best room for what she wanted and making her way there, all the weak demons around not even trying to fight her, with the exception of the Possessed, who were as always completely stupid.
That was another thing, the demons seemed to keep fearing her, even though in this life she hadn't actually been that terrifying. Maybe it was just crossing over slightly like how her body was slowly enhancing, incrementally increasing their fear as she repeatedly killed them. Shrugging, she made her way across the facility, coming up to her chosen room and querying her suit for instructions, following them, which really amounted to taking out a UAC Health Dispenser and activating it, then just standing there as the suit locked itself, holding her very firmly in place and took control of the medical nanites.
A twinge in her neck marked the application of an anaesthetic, which was entirely useless against her. The implants she got at the start of each life had become rather hellish when her body started to utterly ignore the anaesthetic, and her suit had to apply increasingly stronger variants until she overcame them, eventually reaching the point where she couldn't physically be anaesthetized.
But the suit was still bound to at least try unless she told it otherwise, so she didn't care when she felt the needle jab her. What she did feel was the sensation of nanobots pulling her eyelids open, letting others stream inside of her eye sockets. The itchy feeling made her body attempt to twitch, but the internal lining of the suit was firm against her entire body, locking her very solidly in place so she couldn't move even if she wanted to. The suit queried her, asking if she was ready to proceed, and she took a quick breath before consenting.
That was when the pain started, as the nanobots began quickly severing the optic nerves, sending spikes of pain through her head. It was like someone took a spoon, slid it around her eyeballs and began forcing down through the nerves, and at that moment she was more than a little aggravated that the anaesthetic was ineffective, because it was almost as bad as the pain from getting thrown into the Argent Energy Beam.
As the pain started to become more bearable, it also lent itself to the rather embarrassing discovery she'd made about herself that, perhaps through experiencing so much pain over a long period, she was beginning to develop what her suit told her were light masochistic tendencies. Not to the degree that she willingly sought out pain, but the fact that her body was attempting to process the insane amounts of pain she dealt with by sending out pleasurable nerve signals when it received pain, sort of like the crudest version of the Pavlov's dog experiment...maybe?
Even when it was cutting her eyes out and making her whine from the overwhelming pain and the comparatively small sparks of pleasure, her suit still had the time to inform her that her body was undergoing Repetitive Mental Conditioning, and in this case that meant it was attempting to somewhat stifle the overwhelming pain by releasing endorphins. This had the side-effect of conditioning her brain itself to start releasing endorphins every time she felt pain, and now that her brain had started doing it, outside of neurosurgery, there wasn't really a way to condition it out of her brain. Each time she experienced pain now, the conditioning would only become stronger. Most annoyingly, it was one of those slow changes, meaning that when she died and woke up again, it stayed with her.
Not that the pleasure was bad, but she didn't want to come out of this thinking hurting herself was a good thing. Fortunately, it seemed like the conditioning was taking a very long time considering just how many times she had died in various horrifically-painful ways, so by the time she killed Pierce, closed the portal to Hell and found a way home, she doubted it would progress too much.
...Hopefully.
Taking up the discarded mace, Skye forced it up and over her head, bringing it down in a crushing blow against the Hell Guard, utterly obliterating the torso of the last Hell Guard.
Fighting them wasn't much easier than last time, the first one had its damn shield and the other two kept harrying her, one firing off constant balls or beams of Argent Energy while the other pressed her hard with its mace. But the good part about it was that if the mace-wielder made a small mistake, it'd run right into the attacks of the other Hell Guard, which was exactly what it did, giving her an opening to blast its torso open with rockets and toss a grenade at the worm inside.
The second one almost fried her again with its frenzied attacks, but this time she was much more wary and avoided them, ending the fight by knocking the Hell Guard on its back then bringing down the mace onto its fallen body. She left the mace there, tossing a grenade onto it for good measure, and was rewarded with a small scream as the worm burst out of the body only to get blasted apart by the explosion.
She walked over to the stone platform that rose up, taking the wield-looking crucible and stifling a yelp of surprise as the tether activated to bring her back to the UAC Facility, arriving on a stone platform in the middle of the facility, wandering off it and easily ignoring the corpses strewn about as she headed outside. As the door opened, her eyes widened and jaw dropped slightly as she saw that she was in an arctic base of some kind, the snow bringing a smile to her face.
With a quick query about the air temperature, she popped her helmet off and climbed out of the suit, her smile form on her face as she relished in the cold. Sure, it was wasting time, but snow was something she loved, and being able to take a moment just to enjoy it was totally worth it. The fact that despite it was below zero, the cold was more comforting than anything else.
But while she'd have loved to just ignore her objective and spend that life enjoying the snow, she decided that pressing on would be in her best interest, she could always come back in a later life after all. A quick dusting to clear her clothing of snow, and she clambered back into the suit and sealed it, taking the chip from an Elite Guard as she passed him by.
That was a curiosity she hadn't missed, all the Elite Guards...really most of the facility staff, were male. The only females she remembered was Hayden's personal secretary, who's clothing she was now wearing, and Olivia Pierce. The rest, all the ones she'd seen at least, were male. Maybe the UAC rarely hired females, perhaps a PR issue, people not wanting women off on Mars for some dumbass reason.
Shrugging, she ambled on, spotting a maintenance door hidden in the ruined section of the building. Boosting up to it, she broke it open and checked her Dossier to make sure she wasn't about to be blasted by Argent Energy, eventually finding another collectable and a BFG-9000 shot. The Imps that were in the ventilation shaft leading down mostly just ran away when she dropped in, only two of them staying to fire at her, and quickly met their end with her explosive shells.
As she made her way through and then down a trapdoor, VEGA informed her of how his systems operated, and pointed out one of the two neural networks that she had to interfere with, remarking that she 'should' survive the surge. Rolling her eyes, she looted some more BFG ammo then went and stood beside the lever, her arm reaching up and yanking it down. Immediately her suit started to conduct the electricity and making her grimace as the discharge left livid red Lichtenberg figures down her arm and side, but she finished and with a final tug the neural network went offline.
One thing she really needed to solve was the scar tissue being generated so haphazardly over her body. It covered so much of her body now that it sometimes hurt to move around normally, and since removing scar tissue had the potential to exacerbate things, the UAC medical nanites didn't heal it. As a lockdown initiated from another demonic incursion of only the tougher demons, she put it out of her mind. Apparently, the weaker demons had stopped coming altogether, since she saw no Imps or Lost Souls appearing, but put that out of her mind as she cut a bloody swathe through the demons, swapping between weapons frequently.
In one moment she'd be chainsawing a Hell Knight in half, and the next her Gauss Cannon would be out to pick the head off a Cyber-Mancubus, before then changing to her Super Shotgun to blast a Revenant out of the air. Almost all of her weapons saw use, the only ones she didn't use being her BFG-9000 and her Pistol, one because it was massively overkill, and one for the exact opposite reason of being far too weak. With the toss of a grenade into the mouth of a Cacodemon just as it was about to spit a fireball at her, she blew the last of the demons into chunks, frowning as one of the smacked her helmet.
Sighing softly, she made her way across the blood-covered room to the other neural interface, yanking the lever down for more Lichtenberg figures and bringing out her Missile Launcher, an eyebrow raising as nothing else appeared to attack her. As she approached the main terminal, a frown pulled on her lips as VEGA told her that destroying his coolant systems would speed up the destabilization of his systems.
The fact that he, a sentient AI, was willing to be shut down, kinda upset her. Not enough that she'd stop, a demonic invasion wasn't exactly in anybody's best interests, but it was still a bit upsetting. She unlocked the security door to where VEGA's coolant system was located, demons emerging to try and stop her, not that any of them could hold up to her tri-barreled Chaingun.
Spraying down anything that even tried to attack her, she made her way into the coolant room, and destroyed each of the four coolant tanks in quick succession, despite the best attempts from the demons to attack her. Between the time she'd spent fighting them, the arsenal of weapons, the pool of practically unlimited ammo, and the fact she had her eyes upgraded, as well as her uplink and her sixth sense?
They didn't stand a chance.
Steadying herself, she waited as the train came to a halt, her Gauss Cannon already firing at the two Barons that saw the train and leapt towards her.
The first had two steel projectiles punch through his eyes, prompting a stumble and fall backwards off the train into the abyss below, and the other she charged up a precision shot for. The impact knocked the Baron of Hell back a step, giving her time as she changed to her Rocket Launcher and fired off two missiles, both making great black marks across his chest as he roared in pain and barreled towards her.
Smirking, she waited for the last moment then activated her boots and blasted through the gap in his legs, quickly stopping and then boosting the other way, swinging her legs to blast both boots into the side of the turning demon, kicking out harshly and drop-kicking the demon off the edge. As she landed on her side, she rolled, avoiding the bolt of fire that splashed against the metal.
Getting up, Skye brought out her Heavy Assault Rifle and fired off a stream of micro-missiles, followed up by an explosive shot from her shotgun, then balls of plasma out of her plasma rifle, deftly decapitating and perforating the demons arrayed against her. Most of them died just in her opening volley, their own return fire being ineffective as she simply evaded their shots, her smirk firmly planted on her lips.
A sidestep saw her avoid the headbutt charge of a Hell Knight that almost went over the edge, sending a rocket to chase it over as she kept the enemy count down, never letting them get up to the numbers that could potentially overwhelm her with sheer mass of fire. She was really damn good at fighting, but with enough demons, there would simply be too many projectiles to avoid, even for a perfect evasion specialist.
She split the last demon in half with her chainsaw, idly wondering whether her suit was able to pick up music. In return, it informed her that it had access to musical archives and played a few examples. Unfortunately, and cementing her idea that she was in an alternate universe, it had no music she recognized, which was infuriating. The suit offered to recreate music from her memories, which was ever so slightly freaky, but then again, she literally had an implant in her spine and her brain as well as eyes she'd taken from a fucking dead body, so she couldn't exactly say that.
Stepping onto the elevator up to VEGA's core, she gave the suit permission, her spine tingling as the suit presumably read through her memories for music. After a little while the suit gave her a list of songs, all of which she at least vaguely recognized, and she had it just play them all in a playlist, slightly irritated with herself for not asking earlier. Sure, it would be a tiny bit distracting, but killing demons endlessly with no music to listen to was getting a bit old.
While she was doing this, VEGA was obviously losing stability, and Hayden explained how destroying VEGA's core will tear yet another hole between Mars and Hell, but he had somehow coordinated it to send her to The Well, where she was supposed to use the Crucible to close the portal to Mars apparently permanently. She didn't doubt that Hayden either had a plan, or was just using this to also trap her on the other side, since he was probably upset about her breaking so much shit.
Heading forth, she had to let out a quiet whistle at the size of VEGA's core. It was really big, like, the size of Winslow High kind of big. And that was just for his core. The size of the facility just to run VEGA was pretty staggering, and the cost must have been astronomical. Of course, that meant she was going to be the one to shut him down. Two neural locks, one on either side of the central terminal, blocked her access, and were quickly removed from the equation.
As she stepped up to the big 'Core Destruction' button, she hesitated upon seeing the option of making a backup. Quickly querying her suit, she tapped the button and took the chip that was dispensed, her suit assimilating it like it did with the Elite Guard chips. As she pressed the Initiate Core Destruction button, VEGA quietly told Hayden that he had many regrets, just before the core exploded.
When she opened her eyes again, she was on Hell, and apparently on a floating island. Looking over the edge just showed an endless abyss down below, making her wonder just how Hell worked. Was it just a completely chaotic realm of random floating islands inhabited by demons? Did they have towns somewhere, some form of crude trading, like giving two arm bones for a skull and a kneecap, or was it just endless violence and blood?
Probably the latter.
"Kill...her..."
Blinking, she watched as every demon in the area, including the Imps who had just moments ago been ignoring her, all collectively roared and began charging at her. Bringing out the Chaingun, she sprayed slugs at the weaker enemies, immensely cutting down the number of demons charging her. The tougher demons, namely the Hell Knights and Barons of Hell, weren't nearly as effective, forcing her to change weapons and evade there attacks, leaving behind a small pile of primed grenades as she boosted away, then spun and fired a missile at the group.
The explosion blasted the demons to chunks, but she had little time to admire the blood-filled explosion as Cacodemons began forcing her to move evasively, while Cyber-Mancubi and Revenants lent their own ranged attacks to the onslaught, forcing her to take cover being one of the many stone outcroppings. Equipping the BFG-9000, she rounded the corner and fired two of the lethal green balls into the grouped-up ranged demons, then a third shot to the charge of a pair of Pinky's, turning them into puddles of steaming meat.
She cleaned up the rest of the demons using her Plasma Rifle, none of them being strong enough to actually stand up against her, no Hell Guards or any enemy even comparatively tough. With the demons handled, she took the Crucible out, climbing up onto the weird bone statue that was marked and putting it against the glowing red orb, holding it for a few moments before being knocked back, her arm tinging as she felt Argent Energy flowing through it from the Crucible.
When she read the Codex entry she gained when she absorbed the immense quantity of Argent Energy pouring out of the statue, which was apparently a Wraith before it got turned into whatever it now was, she was surprised to see that it was apparently once an elemental being, like a ghost or something. It made her wonder exactly how it went from being that, to being turned into bone and used for whatever it was now being used for.
Shrugging, she headed for her next objective, eyeing the well as she did so. There were two more big red beams of Argent Energy fuelling the giant orb in the middle, and she could assume quite easily that she'd also be absorbing that orb. As she climbed up the cliff between the first and second Wraith, the voice she heard earlier spoke again. "She must not be allowed to free them."
So...by jabbing the Argent Energy orb things, she was freeing something? Maybe the Wraiths were still alive and aware, imprisoned and used for their energy. The Codex did say they had some kind of unique energy source, perhaps that was what The Well was drawing upon. That just cemented in her mind the idea that she should shut this all down once and for all. Sure, it might mess up Earth a bit, but she wasn't going to doom intelligent beings to that sort of a fate.
Just imagining what it'd be like made her shiver. Being trapped for an eternity and constantly drained of power, it wasn't a fate she'd wish upon anyone...well, maybe the Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse Nine...and Nilbog...and a few others, but aside from them, nobody. She killed her way up to the second Wraith, using the Crucible to absorb the energy streaming out towards The Well, being knocked back and grimacing as more Argent Energy began burning through her right arm. None of the demons had fled or cowered, probably because of the voice that was speaking, commanding them to attack her. Sometimes she saw the demons hesitate and attempting to not attack her, but the fact remained that she couldn't just let them live, not if they were shooting at her.
As she unlocked the second Codex entry, she shifted her perspective of the Wraiths accordingly. They apparently would unleash their wrath if not worshipped, and their protectors were actually really just mobile prison guards, keeping an eye on them as well as harnessing their power. She still wouldn't wish their fate upon anyone, but maybe whatever was speaking, a Dark Lord perhaps, had a point. If freed, what if these Wraiths decided to just attack her. If they were really so scary, then freeing them was probably not a great idea.
Then again, she was draining their core things of energy, so perhaps she was actually killing them or something. A shame, but she'd long-since gotten over killing things. Following her objective, she headed through a mazelike cave, coming out in the third killzone beneath the remaining Wraith, demons emerging to assault her whilst the Dark Lord forced them to fight her, Imps and Lost Souls and Unwilling all attacking her along with the barons of Hell and Hell Knights and Cyber-Mancubi, so many different kinds of demon, all of whom wanted to tear her to pieces.
Blasting off a BFG-9000 shot, the arcing green lightning burst all of the weaker demons, leaving only the stronger or those that were out of range. She fired off a second shot, following up with blasts from her Gauss Cannon that severed heads and limbs and blasted through even the heavy armour of the Cyber-Mancubus. She then leapt into the air over a swing and changed to her Chaingun, unleashing three barrels of fury upon the Hell Knight that tried to punch her, quickly turning those shots onto the rest of the demons, only halting her fire for brief intervals to reposition or avoid attacks.
For the Imps and those demons that obviously weren't willing to fight her, she tried to make those deaths as quick as possible, going for head and torso shots, while those that seemed to revel in the pain and anger, the Pinky demons as well as the Barons of Hell, Mancubi and Hell Knights, they didn't go down as easily. When they did go down but without dying and disappearing in bursts of Argent Energy, she let them suffer before finishing them off.
When the last demon fell, she put away her guns and flexed her arms, activating a UAC Health Dispenser that solved some of the nasty muscle-eating sensations she was getting from overusing her stimulants, walking up to the third Wraith as she did so. A quick jab and subsequent explosion, and she almost et go of the Crucible itself as it felt like her hand was on fire from the Argent Energy pouring out of the damn thing.
Still, she kept a firm grasp as the pain receded and the Crucible contained the energy, putting it away in storage only when her suit told her it was safe to do so, not wanting to destabilize it and accidentally crush herself under mountains of loot. Following her objective, she came across a gaping hole leading to a dark cloud, and a big runic circle marking the ground below, and after checking the Dossier, she took a breath, then hopped off the cliff, landing on the ground below.
There, stood in front of her, was one Olivia Pierce, considerably injured and splattered with blood, holding her bleeding abdomen. Looking closer, she could see that the woman had clouded-over eyes, making her wonder if she was blind. "They promised me...so much..." Pierce said quietly, glancing up before being struck by a stream of Argent Energy, lifting her from the floor with a shriek of pain.
Taking a few wary steps back, Skye brought out her Gauss Cannon and primed it, watching as the stream cut off and her body flopped to the floor, being absorbed into the bloody ground beneath her. Splashes of blood started spraying upwards, and out of the ground came a massive crab-like...thing. it had mechanical parts and a stupidly-exposed brain, as well as a bony face and two stubby arms.
She was ready when it started firing small bursts of red plasma at her, rolling to the side and unleashing shots with her Gauss Cannon, growling as each wound closed up. If she wanted to kill the damn thing, she'd need to hit it hard and repeatedly. A quick swap to her BFG-9000 and she blasted off two shots, being forced to move as the crab thing smashed its legs down towards her, her boots helping her to boost out of danger.
Blasting away with rockets, she almost got bisected by one of the lasers that suddenly appeared, forced to boost again to drift up and then between two that crossed over, all the while firing missiles at the demon. She grunted as a pillar suddenly smashed out of the ground under her, smacking into her side and flipping her over. Letting her weapon go into storage, she landed on her hands and immediately sprung away, watching as a leg crushed the air she had just inhabited.
Landing on her feet, she brought out her Chaingun, unfurling the extra barrels and spraying bullets at the brain of the demon, prompting it to roar and shake its body before leaping in the air and attempting to body-slam her. She evaded by darting forwards underneath the demon, leaving a string of grenades as she did so. Quickly turning, she grinned as the underside of the demon was blasted by explosions, though it didn't seem the underslung cannon was affected when it swivelled around and fired more plasma at her.
The demon surprised her by launching what she could only call giant grenades around the room, their explosions making her wince as shrapnel smashed into her. It didn't do more than reduce her armour then her impact compensation, but that still meant a lot of damage. Bringing out the BFG-9000 again, she unleashed two more shots, blinking as the green energy crackled across its face and seemed to stun it.
Bringing out her Gauss Cannon, she blasted shot after shot into it, avoiding the few sprays of lasers it tried to fire at her as she unleashed dozens of shots into its squishy brain. When it got back up, she pulled out the BFG again, and watched with a grin as it tried to move away, though not fast enough to avoid her accuracy. The green energy ball splashed across its face again, and it fell down onto its belly, leaving it vulnerable as she unleashed more ordnance upon it, throwing grenades, firing rockets and spraying bullets and plasma at it.
With a final blast from her Gaus Cannon, the monstrosity staggered back, limbs flailing in pain as blood poured from its wounds, no longer able to sustain its healing. Internal explosions knocked it about, and it smashed into the ground facefirst, scraping the ground as it tried to move, to attack, to do anything to stop her. Walking forwards, she watched as it tugged its face out of the ground and screamed at her, to which she equipped her BFG-9000 and slammed the barrel into its mouth, firing a blast of energy that obliterated its head and most of its body.
After a moment, the tether activated, beginning to lift her up. Skye equipped her pistol and let the tether pull her out, watching as Hayden approached her. He couldn't see the gun, not with how she was holding it, and began monologuing at her about how Argent Energy was necessary, that it'd be worse without it, as if so many people hadn't died. It was almost as if he couldn't see that by using Argent Energy, he was rolling out the red fucking carpet to demons.
As a voice announced a re-route of the tether, she watched him activate the Crucible, revealing it as a big fucking sword, and began to walk away. Shifting her arm, she drew it across herself whilst detaching her helmet, tapping her chestplate with the barrel and making him turn around. If he had eyes, she was sure they'd be widening as she angled the pistol up under her own chin. "Sto-" He began, but before he could take a step towards her, she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger, the shot going straight through her head. Then she opened her eyes, and grinned up at the stone sarcophagus lid above her.
Time for the endgame.
As she absorbed the third and final Wraith energy ball, she watched The Well disintegrate, considering the Crucible without activating it.
Her plan, if it could be called that, was fairly simple. She would kill the 'Spider Mastermind', which was the Fourth Dark Lord of Hell, and then let Hayden bring her back. She would then activate the Crucible blade. The raw and limitless Argent Energy contained within the weapon would cut through the pure Argent Energy powering the tether system and free her, thus letting her carve Hayden's stupid robot face to pieces. He wasn't visibly armed, but the few runs in which she tested the Crucible meant she saw that he simply didn't bring her back after killing the Spider Mastermind if she had activated the crucible, instead simply leaving her in Hell.
She had tested the weapon out on the stone and metal around and the blade sheared through almost as if it had a monomolecular edge, effortlessly parting material. If it wasn't able to kill Hayden, it'd at least give her time to bring out the BFG-9000. If he could survive that, then really there wasn't anything she could even do against him. As far as she was aware, he was just made up of strong metal alloys, the same metal alloys the BFG was able to make craters in.
After Hayden was dead, she'd have plenty of time to work out how the tether worked, and use it to find a way to send her home. Nobody in the entire damn base was going to help her, aside from VEGA, but he was running at such a minimal capacity after being backed up in her suit that even though he would be happy to help her, he had no access to his memory banks nor the processing power he'd need to actually assist aside from just being a friendly voice and an observer/organizer.
Turning her attention to the hole where the Spider Mastermind would emerge, she headed over, checking her gear before dropping down. She had already killed it five times over, and became exceeding efficient at avoiding its attacks and dealing the maximum damage. Her first move was to stun it with the BFG-9000, then use her Gauss Cannon to blast it repeatedly in the brain, basically denying it the opportunity to even fight back. She only had to move to avoid intermittent laser blasts, and even those weren't enough to really hurt her with maximum armour and health.
As the demon fell down and died in an eerily similar way as it had the previous times, she moved forwards and fired a BFG shot into its snapping mouth, blasting its internals to pieces. She swapped to the Crucible, stabbing the Dark Lord in the face with the weapon and grinning as she felt the Argent Energy pouring out of the body into the Crucible, her arm only staying closed against the pain by her manually locking the suit in place, outright forcing her arm to remain stationary.
A few moments later, the tether activated, drawing her upwards, her grasp still firmly on the Crucible. As she re-emerged in the UAC Facility, she watched Hayden approached and began to speak, but she was focused more on activating the Crucible. After just a moment, the blade speared out, disrupting the delicate balance of the tether and dropping her to her feet.
Hayden took a hasty step backwards, but he was much slower than she, and it showed as she darted towards him and lashed out repeatedly, carving straight through his mechanical chassis, knowing better than to think one slice would destroy him, not after fighting so many demons. She sliced and sliced and carved and rent and tore until his chassis resembled little more than dust on the ground, which she then blasted with the BFG-9000 for good measure.
Taking a few moments, her lips curled up as she realized that she had done it! She was...well, mostly free. The Dark Lord was dead and the Argent Energy from the demon absorbed into the Crucible, and Hayden was destroyed, so he couldn't take it from her. Clenching her fist around the weapon, she disabled it and put it away, resisting the urge to hop from side to side. She walked away from the tether device, quickly finding the control panel from the device, and her smile slipped away as she looked at the controls.
Hayden had set it to send her to some weird temple floating invisibly in orbit around Earth, and her suit informed her that it was the base for the Night Sentinels. But he'd done something funky with the tether, made it so that it'd send her forwards in time until a significant demonic presence was detected. How exactly he did it she had no idea, that was just what her suit and VEGA were telling her, but apparently he was pragmatic enough to not just send her into Hell with no way to retrieve her.
Shrugging, she looted around, her storage containing pretty much everything she could find in the entire base, the contents of every crate, every hidden nook, every gun and bullet and ration and health dispenser, it was all shoved away into her storage alongside all the extra that had been generated by her modified suit. She took out the Crucible and considered it.
Her suit used raw Argent Energy to make ammo and medical supplies for her, so maybe she could connect the Crucible, a source of infinite Argent Energy, to her suit, thereby effectively making herself invulnerable. Of course, that'd rely on her being able to do something like that, and the suit itself probably wasn't designed for that kind of thing. Spinning the object around her hand, she winced as it started sparking with Argent Energy.
Blinking, she frowned as it began steadily increasing in quantity, and her arm began feeling like it was burning again as more and more energy was poured through it. Deciding to see what was going to happen, she attempted to let it go, and her eyes widened when her hand refused to open. Her suit wasn't locked down, and both VEGA and the suit itself seemed to be trying to get her hand open, during which time the Crucible simply charged up further.
Gritting her teeth, she figured that if it was about to explode or something she'd just appear on the sarcophagus and would know to not keep on holding the dam thing, so she simply shut her eyes and endured as it got more and more painful. She shut off VEGA and her suit, simply focusing on trying to blunt the pain that was her arm. It felt worse than her whole body being thrown into the Argent Energy Beam, and what was worse was that it was spreading, the pain creeping along her entire body.
As it spread, she found that the pain was...well, it didn't seem like it was receding, almost like she was putting her hand into a super-hot bowl of water and that sort of pain-numbness that came with it was starting to spread. It started at her fingertips, and started spreading across her body, chasing the wave of pain crossing over her. Her fist was still tightly clenched around the Crucible, and as the pain-numbness covered her entire body, making her feel light-headed, she felt the middle of the Crucible crack.
Eyes snapping open, she looked at the broken object, and her eyes rolled back into her head when she felt the broken weapon force itself into her hand, shards slicing through her hand and then up her arms, cutting through the muted pain to return it tenfold, like razor-sharp ribbons slicing across her body, but mostly centred around her right hand and her arm.
She felt wetness on her face, and she choked out a single laugh at the fact that she was actually crying, before the pain cut that off with a strangled noise, her fingers feeling like they were being flayed and sliced, snapped and pulverized and twisted, all at the same time. Forcing her eyes to look at her hand despite the agony she was in, she felt a coldness across her entire body as she saw shards of the broken Crucible swirling around her hand, the majority of the weapon having disappeared. She saw the moment the rest of the shards suddenly straightened, and they all plunged into her hand, a scream of pain being torn from her throat before her vision blacked out.
Then, the pain stopped. She opened her eyes, to an unfamiliar ceiling and a throbbing agony across her entire body, as if every heart-beat just extenuated the pain. "Oh, bravo!" Blinking, Skye looked for the source of the voice, gawping as she saw a floating blue ball approach her. "Very well done. I must admit, I expected your arrival earlier, but you sure know how to flip a table. Or I suppose in your case thousands of tables." Blinking, she attempted to sit up, but found that her body really didn't want to move, not that she could blame it.
"Now then, I wouldn't move if I were you, your body is still attempting to get used to its new inhabitants." New...inhabitant? her face must have relayed her question, since the ball wiggled around. "Well, not quite inhabitants as much as simply making room for your inheritance." She gave the ball as deadpan a look as she could muster. "Oh...well...I'm not supposed to but...oh alright."
She got the feeling that whatever this thing was, it liked the sound of its own voice. "And yes I do in fact, thank you for noticing. Now then, you defeated the Spider Mastermind, and absorbed its essence into a receptacle that was already filled up with Wraith Energy. Those Wraiths, being very pleased about having their souls freed, decided to give you a friendly...nudge as recompense for freeing their souls from eternal torment. One thing leads to another and your body absorbed the Crucible, which included the energy from both the Fourth Dark Lord of Hell, and the three Wraiths of Argent D'Nur, each one a dimensionally-powerful being in their own right, and even more so with how long the three Wraiths had been left to accumulate power for their 'Well'."
Blinking, she opened her mouth, but when no sound came out simply closed it again. "Yes, I'm afraid your designation as a Slayer is still rather firm. There are workarounds, but I think your voice is sufficient payment for the power you have won." Taking a deep breath, Skye calmed herself down, resisting the urge to glare at the little blue ball. "Now now, none of that. You have given me plenty of entertainment over your time on Mars and in Hell, and so it's only fair that you go home with what you have earned. That includes your suit and the contents as well as your own little modification."
Skye's eyes widened as she felt her torso being lifted up, being left in a sitting position, which led her get a look at her...unscarred body? "Yes, those unsightly scars were supposed to be a reminder and a warning for you to not get lax, but it appears you have no concern over being scarred heavily, and so I did away with them. You would have been able to do so yourself, but your inheritance was still settling in, and as they were partially my own design and fault, I supposed it wasn't worth the bother." Dropping her eyes, she examined her body, very tentatively moving her left arm.
When the blue ball said nothing or told her to stop, she moved more confidently, though kept her right arm stationary. It was completed unmarked, the only scar she had on her arm was a tiny cut that she very vaguely recalled on her index finger. Raising that hand to her face, she found none of the scar tissue that marked her face, nor her throat, or chest, or anywhere really. "I understand you might want a few cosmetically, but, well, you'll be able to make those changes easily if you so wish."
Turning her focus to her right arm, she glanced from it to the ball then back again, smirking with the ball shifted in a somewhat agitated way. "Your arm will be...tender, as it contained the highest concentration of Crucible shards. It will be your best arm for channelling energy, though if you wanted you could fire some out of the back of your ankles if you felt like it. It'd just be easier to use any dimensional-level powers through that arm than elsewhere." Nodding, she lifted her right arm, biting her lip and pausing when she felt just how sensitive her arm was now.
She spent maybe an hour, maybe days, or maybe just ten minutes, shifting her right arm, rolling her fingers and wrist and elbow, slowly working movement back into it. While she did so, she moved the rest of her body, noting that while some parts of her body were still sore, that ache was going away quickly, the only part being particularly sore being her right arm.
When she was confident enough to do so, she twisted herself to the side and slipped off the pure white and luxuriously soft surface she'd been supported by, taking a few cautious steps that quickly became much more confident. "Well, that limitless energy is definitely doing you the world of good." She shrugged, lifting her right arm up and ignoring the twinges that came from the action. There were no scars to show where the Crucible forced itself in through, though maybe that was a good thing, since some of the parts of the Crucible were pretty large, even if it was turned into shards.
She 'spoke' to the ball, and by that she mostly just mentally said what she wanted and the ball responded, almost as if she was querying her suit. Her first question was about how she could get home, and the response was that she could do it whenever she wanted, now that she had power behind her. She just had to open a gate and she'd be able to go. The ball then informed her about the situation at home, mostly by using small windows.
Apparently, the ball had set it up so that each time she reset, her home dimension would reset as well, meaning that for them, it had only been about eight hours, that being how long it took for her to loot literally the entire UAC Facility and everything else. She asked about herself, and the ball shifted to show her that she was currently in hospital and for all intents and purposes was in a coma after suffering severe head trauma.
Blinking, she pondered how the hell she was going to explain the changes that had occurred to her body. Sure, all the scars were gone, but she was obviously more toned and fit than the facsimile of herself lying in bed in a coma. The ball helpfully reminded her that she could change her appearance at will now, she just had to use her energy and will for it to happen. As long as she had enough energy, that was pretty much how most of her brand of abilities would work, willing something to happen then relying on her energy to make it so.
That led to her creating a mirror in front of herself, and subsequently changing her entire appearance, including form, height and even gender, to many different combinations, before returning to her ordinary look. Amusingly enough, it was only when she started making her hair cycle through a rainbow of colours that she realized something the blue ball had said, and turned to face it, speaking her statement out clearly.
"Yes, when I said limitless, I did mean it. For all intents and purposes, you are a walking, talking beacon of infinite energy now." Blinking, Skye took a moment to process that before shrugging and setting her hair to keep cycling, admiring the changing colours for a moment before changing it back to black. "Hmm, curious. Normally mortals freak out more upon learning something...oh. I should probably mention that by limitless energy, that means your soul is irrevocably linked to that source of limitless energy. You are, effective immediately, a de facto perpetual being, an immortal. If you wanted to, you could even abandon your body entirely and take up another form, like a ball of floating blue light!"
Staring at the ball for a moment, Skye let the ramifications of that roll over her for a moment, before shrugging again and messing with her hair, changing the length and the thickness and curliness. "Curiouser and curiouser." Skye merely spoke into her mind, pointing out that she'd already spent effectively years fighting demons, so the fact that she was bound to a source of infinite energy and literally immortal really didn't matter. She'd seen plenty of death already, and while she'd be sad to see friends and family die, she'd still have the time she spent with them. "You know you could just bring them back if you so willed it."
Stopping her hair experiments, she rounded on the ball, glaring at it as she mentally spoke to the ball in a caustic tone, relenting as it moved away from her and honestly seemed apologetic. It wasn't that the idea didn't have appeal, but bringing back the dead like that just...it nudged her the wrong way. Maybe one day, if she needed it and couldn't think of any alternative, she would just barely consider it, but it wasn't likely, not by an absurdly long shot. "I...apologize. It has been many Myr...sorry, Megayear, millions of years, since I've actually had family or a physical form beyond this."
Skye's eyes dropped as she spoke her own apologies into her mind for assuming the worst so quickly, before perking up and asking about the Imp she saved each time she was in the Lazarus Labs, then smacking her own forehead and using her own path, willing to see the Imp and opening a ring-shaped hole, spying it running through Hell and smiling slightly before closing the portal. "Oh, that reminds me. You are also now the Fifth Dark Lord of Hell, so those demons have to obey you."
Her head twisted to the side to stare at the ball in surprise, who laughed softly. "And by obey you, it means they will follow orders, but they are also sentient beings when not being directly controlled by a Dark Lord. The Imps and weaker demons were not directly commanded to attack you, it was simply in their instincts to do so. The more dangerous foes, they were directly ordered to attack, it is why very few tried to flee or hide." Humming, she made a chair for herself and kept fiddling with her appearance, eventually throwing her arms up and making herself look like normal.
She couldn't die anyway, at least according to the ball that she still hadn't gotten a name from. She could sustain injuries like a normal human, but even if her body was atomized and then those atoms obliterated, she'd still exist and be fully aware, she'd basically just be an invisible ghost. The ball then proved itself by effectively teleporting around the room, proving that he could reform himself wherever he wanted.
And it was definitely a he, unless it just didn't care about gendered pronouns. After more experimentation with her abilities, which included crushing several large objects into tiny thimbles, she settled on going back home. The ball gave her a bit of a helping hand by telling her to just picture being back in her body in the hospital and she would be inhabiting it, to which she thanked him, offered and was rejected a hug, then pictured what he described and flexed her energy, her eyes drifting shut.
Then she opened her eyes.
Okay, firstly yes...I did warn you that this goes off the rails in this chapter.
Secondly, please do leave reviews, it helps me know what people like or dislike. It also helps to get the story better noticed so more people will find it, meaning if you really enjoy it and want others to do so, then reviews are awesomeness multiplied by...like, three? I don't know, the metaphor grew legs and ran away from me.
But yeah, reviews please! And please don't be too harsh #.#
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