Chapter 64 - Out Of The Frying Pan
As Jaune and the Slayer raced their way towards the massive tower in the distance, running on catwalks and leaping from platform to platform, Jaune couldn't help but wonder one thing.
Had the UAC ever heard of the concept of workplace safety? Occupational hazard management? Labor laws?
Seriously, none of the catwalks he'd used so far had railings that even went past his shins, the crawlspaces he and the Slayer were using were full of live and uncovered wires, and the chasms they jumped over seemed to go on forever!
Oum, even before the demons had invaded and slaughtered basically everyone, the workplace accident rate must have been a nightmare!
Before he could voice his thoughts out loud, however, his Aura suddenly screamed at him, and he lost his footing, slipping from the pipeline he'd just jumped onto.
A hand gripped his arm, just as he reached out for the edge, and the Slayer easily pulled him up with one arm, giving him a look.
"Thanks." Jaune winced, as she set him down, a bit more roughly than he'd have liked. "Still getting used to my senses screaming at me so loudly."
The Slayer just looked at him, cocking her head, before looking ahead and cracking her knuckles.
Jaune just sighed, refusing to be in anyway surprised by her thirst for battle. Instead, he decided to wonder what was waiting for them ahead.
More of the fireball-throwing screeching demons that he'd taken to mentally calling Beowolves? Zombies? Those massive eyeless behemoths that reminded him of a cross between a Beringel and an Ursa (or a Super Mutant)?
The answer, as it turned out, was more zombies.
Unlike the usual shambling Possessed he'd been fighting, however, these were bulkier, faster, and had arm cannons that launched plasma bolts (why was it always plasma?!) as well as shields that seemed to be made of light or energy.
And there was also a giant skeleton with a jetpack and rocket launchers on its shoulders.
Who in Oum's name thought giving a giant skeleton zombie a jetpack and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers had been a good idea?!
The Slayer's shotgun barrels began whining as they spun up, and the bulky zombies immediately hunkered down behind their shields while the jetpack skeleton took off, hovering above the battlefield, rocket launchers already tracking the Slayer.
Great.
The zombies had shields and weapons, and intelligence and tactics.
Jaune spent a few milliseconds to bitterly complain about just how full of bullshit this afterlife was, before he plunged his sword into the ground, and the soldier zombies found themselves suddenly immobilized by ice which sprang out of the ground.
The Slayer wasted no time, charging forward, jumping on one of the soldier zombies' heads, and using it as a stepping stone to jump at the skeleton, shotgun belching shell after shell at its jetpack the whole time.
The skeleton screeched, as a lucky shot hit something vital on its jetpack, and as it struggled to stay airborne, the Slayer grabbed hold of its leg, and yanked herself up onto its back, before shoving her shotgun against the back of its skull, and holding down the trigger.
The headless skeleton fell out of the sky, as the Slayer rode it down, and landed in the middle of the group of frozen soldier zombies, before the jetpack and rockets detonated.
Jaune refused to look impressed as the Slayer calmly walked out of the explosion, a feat made much easier by his helmet.
The Slayer still found something from his body language, though, as the rage simmered down with the destruction of the demons, and Jaune could feel the smirk under her helmet as he huffed: "Let's just go."
The Slayer smugly grinned, and made to lead the way, but as Jaune turned, something in the corner caught her eye, and she knelt down to inspect it.
She blinked, as she picked it up and examined it.
An old Space Marine action figure, from her original homeworld.
Must've been taken by the demons, during that invasion, and fallen through the cracks in dimensions until it ended up here.
She smiled softly, as she recalled the past.
Her career as a space marine, and her squad.
Sending her superior and his body cast to Pearl Harbor.
Phobos.
Blood.
Fire.
Death.
The return to Earth.
The remains of...
Most of the Slayer's emotions had been burned away, in the millennia of fighting since then, in favor of absolute and utter rage and fury.
But she had never forgotten them, what had happened to them... what they'd done to them.
She carefully lifted the toy's arm, before frowning and adjusting it slightly.
There.
Perfect.
Gently, she tapped her fist against the toy's own, before pulling away, wiggling her fingers as she did so, smiling as she imitated an old and familiar greeting.
A footstep behind her caused her to spin around quickly, defensively.
She saw the kid standing there, staring at her.
She simply glared at him, daring him to say something.
Jaune, for his part, merely turned his head first, holding up his hands, before breathing a sigh of relief as she finally looked away from him.
He wouldn't have said a word even if she couldn't beat an Ursa to death with her bare hands.
After all, he could recognize the emotions she'd been radiating.
And if he thought he saw the Slayer pocketing the tiny figurine as she stormed ahead, well, he must have been imagining things.
-FIVE ARENAS LATER-
Jaune panted, as he pulled his sword out of the rapidly-dematerializing corpse, and inspected his shield for any signs of damage.
His latest attacker, a massive pink tusked creature that reminded him of a cross between a Creep and a Boarbatusk, had almost knocked him off the edge of the platform as it had charged him, and even bracing himself and planting his feet as it had smashed into his shield hadn't been enough to fully nullify the impact.
Between that, the sheer number of fireballs, rockets, and exploding orbs of plasma that had been launched at him, and the fact that these demons could hit him through his Aura, Jaune felt like he was getting a very painful reminder in why dodging was so important.
And he'd get right on that... as soon as he'd caught his breath.
The Slayer, meanwhile, was casually reloading her weapons, ignoring the numerous red smears across the walls and floors.
Jaune could only stare at her incredulously.
Seriously, how was she not tired?
He'd fought the entire Enclave to a standstill for minutes, and that hadn't been nearly as exhausting as the constant encounters they'd been facing!
Then again, it wasn't like he'd had to dodge nearly as much, against the Enclave...
For the first time in a while, Jaune found himself thankful for the fact that his Aura also sped up his stamina recovery, on top of his normal healing.
He'd have probably been bed-ridden from the cramps alone for weeks, before Beacon.
"I have eyes on Pierce." A voice burst in through his helmet's communications speakers, which his helmet's head-up display helpfully informed him belonged to one Samuel Hayden. "She's boarding an elevator, heading up... oh..."
That didn't sound good.
"That's an Argent Accumulator she's carrying." Samuel reported, sounding as worried as a cyborg could. "She's going to try to use it to open a portal manually to hell."
"While the Argent Tower is non-functional, the connection to their dimension is still viable." VEGA helpfully added, before giving what Jaune felt was the understatement of the year: "We are at great risk, Dr. Hayden."
Jaune had little idea what was going on, having assumed that the demons could just keep teleporting in, as they seemed to keep doing. But he wasn't thick, either; judging by their conversation, someone was purposely trying to open a portal to hell (or another one, at least), whereby things would presumably get even worse than they already were.
Why anyone would willingly open a portal to a dimension where those creatures came from was beyond him, but then again, he'd learned that sanity and common sense weren't the most common resource in the multiverse, between Skyrim and the Mojave Wasteland.
Jaune turned to look at the Slayer, who was growling with contemptuous disgust as she glared towards the top of the tower, and sighed.
This isn't your world.
These aren't your people.
Jaune shook the thoughts out of his head.
It didn't matter what world it was, or who it was.
People still needed help.
And a hero never gave up.
Jaune ignored the whining protests from his subconscious, as the Slayer locked eyes with him, and nodded.
And together, the pair rushed into the tower, looking for a way to the top.
After three minutes of jumping, running up walls of ice, and crawling through maintenance shafts, the two finally entered a massive open room, with a giant red beam of energy shooting up into the local equivalent of the sky, finally giving them a straight shot at getting to the top of the facility.
And, of course, the room was full of demons.
Jaune had no idea if they'd known the pair were coming, and stationed themselves there, of if they'd simply just been waiting in that room the whole time, doing... whatever it was demons did to pass the time.
Jump rope with intestines, maybe?
Then another new kind of demon jumped on to the platform with them, and Jaune gave up on ever being surprised again.
It vaguely reminded him of the smaller fire-throwing Beowolf things, but where those were sleek and nimble, the creature in front of him was a lumbering tank, with a protruding belly, and barrels for arms.
Jaune felt like he really didn't want to know what those fired.
As it saw them, it roared, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth, and slammed the barrels on its arms together, before pointing it at them.
And behind it, Jaune spied three more just like it, similarly obese and armed, among the multitude of hordes of demons roaring at them.
The Slayer and Jaune reflexively leapt to the sides as massive fireballs flew out of the creature's arm-cannons, and as Jaune heard the Slayer's weird shotgun barrels beginning to spin up, he decided to leave the demons in front to her.
The Slayer kicked off of a nearby wall and charged for the creature, easily dodging or outrunning the projectiles flying at her, and jumped into the air, as it slammed its arms into the ground, and a wave of flames erupted from them.
Mancubus.
Predictable.
Huge guts.
Eye.
KILL
As gravity began to re-exert itself on the Slayer, she activated the Delta-V Jump Boots she'd looted from a body, thrusting herself forward at the Mancubus, before punching through the chitin covering its chest.
As it roared in pain, and rockets and fireballs from the other demons smashed into its back, she levelled her shotgun at its singular eye, and held the trigger down.
Jaune didn't bother looking back, as the massive corpse toppled to the ground.
Instead, he sprinted forward, aiming to take the two big guys out at the back.
A soldier zombie got in his way, arm cannon pointed at him.
Jaune slid under its legs, lashing out with his sword as it did so.
The demon collapsed to the floor, bisected horizontally at the knees, before Jaune quickly snapped a shot back at its head, ending it.
As Jaune quickly scrambled to his feet, his Aura screamed at him.
Right.
He dove forward, plunging his sword into the floor as one of the big eyeless guys leapt at him from the right, and ice sprang up from the ground where it landed, momentarily stopping it, before the Slayer descended upon it furiously as he continued running ahead.
One of the big creatures roared at him as he approached, aiming its natural flamethrower at him, trusting in its natural defenses to protect it.
Jaune stabbed his sword into its protruding gut, and the Aura infused sword burst into flames.
Unknown to Jaune, the diet of a Mancubus (i.e. anything organic) rots in their digestive system, causing their innards to be highly flammable.
The massive creature exploded in a shower of putrid (and toxic) guts, and Jaune found himself thankful for the fact that he was in a fully-enclosed suit of armor.
Left.
Jaune ducked to the right, as a stream of flames came at him from the left, and channeled his Aura into his blade again, as he thrust it into the barrel of the other creature's arm cannon, freezing the biomechanical flamethrower.
Before it could react, he used the sword as leverage, to pull himself up and forward, grabbing hold of the creature's natural armor and planting his feet against its chest, before delivering a haymaker right into its eye, as the Slayer had taught him.
Behind.
Jaune gripped his sword and kicked off to the side, as another eyeless giant tried to turn him into a pancake (and instead turned the second creature's head and chest into a red paste), before raising his shield as it spun around agilely, jumped up, and brought its arms down on him.
He grunted, as the blow bypassed the Aura around his shield, and matched its hellish strength against his own, armor-augmented and Aura-enhanced as it was.
But still, he refused to let his knees buckle, refused to let himself be flattened, as the shockwave of pure, unrefined, infernal Argent energy was deflected by his shield.
Then he was sent skidding away, as the creature suddenly launched a kick at him.
Before the creature could leap at him, however, a rocket suddenly slammed into its leg, blowing it off.
As the creature howled in pain, Jaune turned to see the Slayer tossing a rocket launcher away, before pulling out a chainsaw (where she even pulled it out of, and where she'd even gotten the rocket launcher and chainsaw from, was utterly beyond him) and running at the crippled beast.
The creature attempted to swipe at her with one of its claws, but she easily removed the offending limb with a swipe from her roaring chainsaw, before bringing it down between the Hell Knight's head and its neck, carving it apart diagonally.
As the Slayer stepped away from the bloody dematerializing giblets, she looked towards the kid, and offered a thumbs up, which he weakly returned, before tentatively asking: "So... where'd you get that?"
The Slayer just quietly looked at him, and Jaune just sighed.
"Fine." Jaune rolled his eyes, sheathing his sword. "Keep your secrets, then."
The Slayer snorted in amusement.
"The energy signature of the argent accumulator indicates that it is nearing the top of this facility." VEGA urgently cut into their helmet's comms, ruining the moment.
"If she ruptures that accumulator near the argent beam, she could open a portal to their world that we will never be able to close." Samuel Hayden added.
Finally, Jaune felt like he had a better understanding of what was going on.
Breaking the thing on its own created a portal.
Breaking the thing near an "argent beam" created a permanent portal.
Between that and what he'd heard earlier, he inferred that the initial incursion, while having devastated the local facility, could be considered relatively contained, small-scale, and temporary.
A portal that couldn't be closed, though?
Well, they'd probably overrun the planet (assuming there was much on Mars to overrun).
Jaune and the Slayer glanced upwards, to the top of the facility, before sharing a look.
With a long-suffering sigh, Jaune created a massive slope of ice, and the pair began sprinting for the top.
-KADINGIR SANCTUM, HELL, ONE BIG BATTLE LATER-
The Slayer stuck the three-point landing, as the portal spat her out over a familiar keep, and growled in frustrated anger.
They'd been slow, too slow, between the hordes of Revenants (she wasn't nearly as surprised by their presence as Jaune; she'd faced them before, when they'd invaded her home dimension, and while back then the Revenants had been dead demons stuffed into combat suits and thrown back into battle rather than a UAC super soldier program, demons were still demons) and Hell Knights that had thrown themselves at the pair, and while she'd mercilessly slaughtered them all, of course, they'd managed to buy enough time for that damned idiot cultist leader to tear a hole in the fabric of reality.
The last thing she remembered was reaching out for the kid, surrounded by dead demons, looking on in shock as the silvery-white light had engulfed them...
Her eyes widened under her helmet, and she looked around wildly.
Where was the kid?
He'd been the first person since the Night Sentinels to be able to keep up with her, and while he needed some work (okay, a lot of work), she couldn't deny that it had been an... interesting change of pace from the past few millennia, not fighting alone.
And now there was no sign of him.
The Slayer grunted, feeding any emotions welling within her into her infinite growing rage.
Yet another victim of the demons.
As if in response, a demonic voice boomed out a warning across the Blood Keep, that travelled throughout the Umbral Plains and the Great Steppe: "She is here."
Damn right she was.
And it was time to remind Hell who they feared.
-THE OTHER SIDE OF KADINGIR SANCTUM, HELL, THREE ARENAS LATER-
The Cacodemon howled in pain and irritation, as it once again tried to shake off the mortal that had the audacity to not only land on it, but to also stab it!
A completely and utterly done and exasperated Jaune simply smacked the floating meatball at the back of its head again with his gauntleted fist, shutting it up for the time being, as he stared down at the new dimension he'd found himself in, and wondered just what was wrong with his afterlife.
Floating rocks chained to islands, lakes of boiling blood, structures of bone and rusted metal dotting the desolate landscape, all illuminated by the dull light...
It was like the Mojave Wasteland all over again, but worse.
At least he hadn't died to get here this time.
He'd just been at ground zero when that dust-damned crazy lady had decided to open the portal, and the next thing he knew, he'd been falling through the air, before landing on a floating meatball with an eye and a mouth.
Since then, he'd just been taking a look around "Hell", learning more about the world and its denizens, and looking out for any signs of the Slayer.
Not that he was worried about her; she could rip apart demons with her bare hands, and was probably almost as fast as Ruby Rose.
She was just his best hope for survival.
He'd given up on looking out merely for signs of conflict, though.
In this dimension, they seemed to be prone to infighting.
One of those giant skeletons had screeched at him when it had spotted him, and aimed its rockets at him, before a fireball had suddenly taken out its jetpack, and it had fallen to the ground, and devoured by a group of the obese demons.
Even now, he could see bursts of flames in the distance, where the Beowolves were tormenting zombies, and howls filled the air around him.
All the while, his Aura screamed at him constantly, and he had to fight down the rising migraine.
Yes, Aura, he knew this dimension was dangerous!
Maybe it was time to just give up...
He'd been fighting for so long...
He must have been so tired...
Jaune tossed those thoughts rising out of his subconscious into the back of his head, along with his Aura-enhanced instincts and migraine, and did his best to ignore them.
Give up?
He hadn't given up when he'd run away from home to go to Beacon.
He hadn't given up when he'd been faced with the daunting task of Initiation.
He hadn't given up when Cardin had found out about his secret and blackmailed him.
He hadn't given up, during the Vytal Festival.
He hadn't given up, when he'd woken up in Skyrim, with just his scabbard and the tattered clothes on his back.
He hadn't given up, when he'd gone after Alduin.
He hadn't given up, when he'd died to Alduin.
The Volkihar, the dragons, the Enclave, the Legion, the Divide, the Mojave and Capital Wastelands...
None of those had ever broken him.
Give up?
To throw in the towel now, to just lie down and die...
That would just be spitting in the face of the people who'd stood by him.
Courier Six. Sarah Lyons. Ruby Ironwood. Serana. The Dragonborn. Ruby Rose. His team. Pyrrha Nikos.
Even his family; they may never have supported his dreams of being a hero, but they'd never raised him to be an Oum-damned quitter!
Most of all, though, it would be tantamount to admitting that all the effort he'd put into improving himself, into chasing his dreams, had been a waste.
Give up?
Even if he was trapped in this dimension with no way out, even if it was hopeless, even if he would finally die forever in this Oum-forsaken dimension...
He'd never give up.
If he was going to die here, he'd make sure he took down as many of the demons with him as possible.
Until then, though, his best bet was to try and find the Slayer...
An explosion rocked the floating meatball under him, and he looked down in surprise, as a swarm of flaming skulls flew at his makeshift aircraft.
Why hadn't his Aura warned him about those?!
... oh, right.
His Aura was telling him everything in this dimension was dangerous.
Asking it to pinpoint something specific was probably a bit too much to ask for.
As another flaming skull hit his floating meatball and exploded, Jaune quickly decided it was time to get off.
Making sure he was above a particularly large floating rock, Jaune channeled his Aura into his sword, still impaled in the demon, and as it was cooked and electrified from within, Jaune yanked his sword out, ducked a third floating skull, and jumped.
As he fell through the air, he spun around, pulled out his pistol, and took careful aim, taking out the flaming skulls chasing him, before holstering his empty pistol, and turning back to the ground.
Once he was near enough, he braced himself, tucking in his legs, before diving into a timed roll just before he hit the ground, allowing him to bleed off his momentum without depleting his Aura too much.
Once again, he thanked Oum for Pyrrha showing him her landing strategy a few times.
The shaking of the ground quickly got his attention, and he immediately turned to see the third new type of demon since his arrival approach him.
Unlike the flaming skulls and floating meatballs, this one seemed more than content to walk.
Also unlike the flaming skulls and floating meatballs, this horned demon was massive.
It wasn't as large as a behemoth, but it certainly towered over the eyeless Super Mutant-things.
Jaune refused to show any signs of fear, or back down, as it approached him, sniffing him.
It was just how the day was going, after all.
The Baron of Hell, the Royal Guard of the current Dark Lord, quickly came to a conclusion, as it studied the strange human before it.
This one's soul energies were extraordinary!
What kind of demon would be born from this one, one they'd blackened his soul with the fires of torment, and thrown him into the pits of Nekravol?
How much Argent Energy could they extract from his pain and suffering, before his final transformation?
By the unholy arachnid intellect of the current Dark Lord, was it staring at a potential Titan? Maybe even a new Icon of Sin?
Its bloodlust kicked in, and it roared as it stomped forward.
Irregardless of what the soul in front of it could be, the next course of action was clear.
Kill its mortal shell, and subject it to all the tortures of Hell.
Jaune automatically raised his sword, to intercept the creature's talons as it casually swiped at him, before both his and the creature's eyes widened, as the sword's blade deflected the behemoth's three claws.
It had been a while, since he'd seen something his blade couldn't cut.
The creature swiped at him again, and once more he parried the blow.
It roared, and a ball of green energy appeared in its hand.
Jaune immediately ran for it, not wanting to see if his Aura could heal him from that.
The green energy ball flew in front of him, and a wave of heat slammed into him as it collided with the ground, vaporizing a fair chunk of it.
Jaune turned back to find the horned creature grinning sadistically at him, and clenched his fist around his sword and glared at it in response.
As it lumbered towards him, he heard a screeching sound, and saw a flaming skull flying at him.
Jaune danced out of its way, and as it flew past him, he smacked it with the flat of his blade, redirecting it into the behemoth's face, which it exploded upon contact with.
The smoke cleared, revealing the horned behemoth now glaring at him, bleeding from a few shallow cuts from the bone fragments that had managed to cut through its thick hide, and raised a hand.
Another green orb of energy began forming in its hand, and it prepared to leap at the mortal, and smash the ball of super-heated plasma into it.
Jaune focused his Aura into his sword in response, and ice coated the blade while electricity danced around it.
Before either of the combatants could make a move, however, Jaune heard the sound of what, in that moment, he felt was the most beautiful thing in all the worlds.
The sound of multiple barrels spinning up.
The Delta-12 Chaingun the Slayer had picked up from the UAC's doomed expedition to the Kadingir Sanctum possessed an Argent-infused piston that compressed gas within the firing crucible to over 220,000 PSI.
When released by the pull of the gun's trigger, 15mm uranium-coated incendiary tungsten slugs were launched with a muzzle velocity of over 4 times the speed of sound.
The Baron of Hell's arm was torn off by the sudden hail of shells that slammed into its shoulder, and the plasma orb it had held dissipated into the air as the slab of meat smacked the ground.
As it roared in pain and shock, the Slayer landed in front of it, smashing the 45kg weapon into its forehead with all her unnatural strength, bringing it to its knees.
Before it could react, she gripped hold of one of its horn, planted an armored boot against its head, and ripped the horn off in a shower of blood and gore, before spinning it around, and ramming it into its eye socket.
The Slayer spared a look for her vanquished foe, as its body burned away, before turning to look at the kid with barely-concealed surprise.
She hadn't expected to even find him here, let alone find him holding his own against a goddamned Baron of Hell.
As she looked him over, checking for any injuries or breaches to his armor, Jaune stepped up to her, and lightly hugged her in sheer relief as he said: "Thank Oum we found each other. I could certainly use a friendly face... uh, helmet, that is..."
The Slayer just cleared her throat, before snorting in amusement.
"Uh, anyway..." Jaune firmly changed the subject as he released her, face burning under his helmet. "So... this is Hell?"
Grunt.
"... is there a way out?"
In response, the Slayer simply pointed at a row of distant blinking lights, beacons set up by the UAC during their expedition.
"Oh."
The Slayer just gave him a blank look.
"Hey, how was I supposed to know those weren't natural to Hell?! It's not like I've been here before, and I was a bit pre-occupied fighting that horned behemoth thing!"
Silence. Continued blank stare.
Jaune's eye twitched under his helmet, and he gave up on defending himself: "Let's just get out of here."
Author's Note: Apologies for how late this chapter came out. Work's been even more of a bitch than usual. Moreover, trying to figure out how to fit what is essentially a series of arena encounters into an actually-coherent story is... well, there's a reason I decided to take a departure from my normal style of writing, and deal with it in a more... episodic fashion.
And seriously... who the hell approved of the UAC's Revenant Program? And who the hell would volunteer for it?!
Also, just something to take note of; Hell, for all its brutality and depravity, isn't just known for cruel and unusual punishments. And while the Doomslayer may be incorruptible thanks to sheer anger... even with Aura shielding him from the worst of it, Jaune isn't anywhere near as pure. He may not be hallucinating, but his subconscious thoughts, his self-interest, his ambitions... even if it can't make him fall, it can certainly nudge him in the wrong direction.
But that's also the thing about whispers. No matter how much it promises, no matter how much it tempts... he's still the one in the driver's seat. The same emotions being amplified from within him, by the demons who attempt to corrupt him, can just as easily be turned into fuel to resist the influence of the infernal.
Rage may be associated with negativity, but it isn't inherently evil. Emotions fuel the soul, gives strength where we may falter, but our actions? Those we can choose.
And the Chaingun really deserves to be stronger than it is in-game. Everything I grabbed from its description is from the lore. 15mm Uranium-Coated Incendiary Tungsten Slugs fired at over Mach 4.4? That's all really there.
