AN: New Chapter ahoy! Before we get into it, a few quick words: Firstly, I'm very happy most people seem to like this little project, thank you for your kind words! Secondly: I thought about ignoring it, but since somebody else said something similar to the first person, I decided to address it, after the bold sentence further down.

Thirdly, a Merry Christmas everyone! This Chapter is early mainly because of that!

For those that do not care for anything but the story, just skip the rest of this note.

Yes, as I said in the Prologue, this work has been inspired by "Taylor is Doomed". It and it's author are both listed under my favorites for a reason. Which is why I gave them a shoutout (not that has any real weight because I am tiny in comparison obviously) and said that there would be some similarities at the start. What I have not done is copy paste anything, which is what one Review just straight up claimed.

They did not actually read my stuff of course (the fact that they talked about me copying 4 chapters, even though there are only 3 and this is the 4th, combined with the fact that the Prologue really has no to me known similarities to Taylor is Doomed was a pretty big hint.)

To be clear, I do not mind criticism at all, and telling me it feels too similar is something I can accept (maybe I will edit the earlier chapters later on, but the Story will go off the rails quite soon now anyways in comparison). I personally do not feel it is too similar, but if the general consent disagrees with that, I will work on it. I have no intention of robbing others.

Just saying I copy pasted stuff even though I explicitly said that is neither the case nor the intention (I did not read Taylor is Doomed for quite a while, to reduce the risk of me doing it even unconsciously) is just a bit meh though.

I write back to reviews that address concerns I can lay to rest, or to address something they feel maybe cheated on about. I like interacting with you guys, this is quite fun so far. But I will not do that for such blatant accusations with nothing else (anymore, because I answered that one guy).

For example one User said they were unhappy with how long it takes to get to the Worm part (and some others mentioned their hope for a quick way to Earth Beth in passing), which is something I can understand and not something that upsets me or anything.

That desire for Worm (which I partly share of course) is one of the reasons these chapters are all longer than previously planned.

To answer those concerns clearly one and for all: This is a Crossover, so we will get to Worm. I personally do not like it when stories feel rushed though, which is why I am taking my time in trying to make things more believable. (I know, the subject itself is hard to make believable, but still you get my point)

For example, Taylor trying to clean herself up from the disgusting mess, or eating something, exploring, etc. If a normal Teenager (or Adult) would be put into such a situation, they would try to cling onto any resemblance of comfort and normality at first, at least in my opinion. People do not just crack, if you get my meaning (Even though Taylor has been put through a lot already).

So for people who want the Worm action, it will happen, but it will still take some chapters. I gave a rough estimate to one of the reviews by PM, but I will not write that number here, because spoiling stuff is stupid. So for those that want Worm now, sorry but not yet.

Also for the guy trying to identify the used Doom Universe: I may be shifting things around a bit. So that is a very tough task you gave yourself :D. Also Praetor Suit best Suit, fight me on LAN.

Now, long ass Authors Note over, I wish the few people that actually read till here an especially Merry Christmas! I will not make a habit of writing such long stuff, but I felt like this was a good point to address things!


Start Chapter 4

Bracing myself, swallowing dryly, I stepped close enough for some of the sparking energy to touch me. It did not hurt, I did not feel it at all. Slowly I reached out, and firmly grabbed the glowing container.

There was a sudden pull, that felt like my arm was being ripped off, and then I stumbled back, shocked. I had only moments to get my bearings, before I got smacked against the wall like a volleyball. Groaning I looked up and then tried to desperately get to my feet again.

I had thought my personal companion had been huge, but I had been wrong.

This bastard was huge.

Was that the big brother of the other one? Or the Dad or something? He was big enough, that – had the room had a ceiling – he would not have been able to stand up. How tall was he? 15 meters? More? It was hard to tell.

The room had changed too, the table and equipment was smashed to pieces, charred and broken. Armored Soldiers – or what was left of them – littered the ground in a heap of broken bodies, or body parts.

I was still alive because the beast had trouble moving, red sparks of energy kept pulling it back to the center of the room.

Okay.

This was unexpected.

But if I had to kill this thing to get out?

I was gonna.

Fuck.

It.

Up.

I answered it's roar of challenge (that literally shook the walls) with a hoarse scream of my own and charged.

It ripped itself free of its strange restraints for a moment and also started charging (the few steps it could make at least).

And then we clashed.


After once again stumbling out of the locker, again covered in disgusting shit, my first thought was "I miss being kind off clean."

My second thought was

"Holy fuck I got my ass beaten."

And that was the truth.

I still felt phantom pain from the punch that ended me, so hard did the thing hit me.

At least I know had an answer to my previous question: It took a few minutes to reach the bottom, if you included the bounces off multiple walls.

The bottom of the mountain I meant.

Had I been thrown through the empty wall and outside?

No, I had not.

I had been thrown through the wall next to the empty one.

That had hurt.

A lot.

Then why did this stupid grin not leave my face?

It may sound strange, but that had been exciting!

I had fun.

The struggle had been short, but exhilarating.

I did not know if killing that demon would change anything. Maybe it was simply stuck there too, like me and the Minotaur, and that was it. But I did not care about that.

I had a new obstacle, one I could kill. One I could actually fight against, struggle against.

Grow against.

That gave me purpose. Motivation.

I would kill that fucker too, just wait.

I would prove myself superior to this abomination.

But first, time to break open a closet and get something to clean myself with, and maybe to wear too. And then back into the Suit.


Metal crumbled beneath my bare hands, as I casually did things I had dreamed of being able to do as a small child. It felt good.

This time I bashed the door down when the time came.

I enjoyed the look of surprise on the face of my first kill for just a moment.

And then I shattered bones and let the blood rain down on me.

The suit did still not stain of course, but it was still a deeply satisfying experience.

I did not eat this time in my impatience. I did try to clean my hair as much as possible tough. But then I rushed through the building. I was brimming with impatience, my blood roaring in my veins. I looked forward to the struggle I would go through, no, I truly desired it. The elevator, that had scared me with its speed the first time now seemed unbearably slow.

I wanted to fight. To struggle against a superior foe. No place for my fears, my thoughts, my homesickness.

No loneliness, no regrets.

Just the dull thuds of flesh impacting flesh, the screeching of claws ripping through stone, the dull cracking of breaking bones.

This time I barely registered the pull on my arm and the moment I could move I dodged the first swing of a massive fist.

With my face carved into something of a bloodthirsty grin (not that I could see that at the time) I engaged once again with the creature.

Every broken bone was a learned lesson.


I had thought the other one had been a hard fought battle, but this was something else. My strongest punches barely bruised the thing, but my ability to deal damage was not the actual problem. Jumping, dodging and rolling between the attacks with only hair's breadth of space, it was stressful and difficult, but nothing new. Neither was fighting an opponent taller than me, that took a lot more punishment than I did. No, as a claw ripped off my arm at the elbow I had to admit that the dimensions of the beast were the thing giving me trouble.

I had been able to climb onto the smaller demon with some difficulty, but I managed it. This one was too tall for the same strategy. If I jumped I was able to reach barely over its knee, that was not even close to enough.

I was not sure if this great foe was more nimble and agile than my first kill, but I was not even able to test that – the point where I had been mostly safe, on its back, well, I could not get close. I just got grabbed away from its legs, or smashed against the walls or ground. Sometimes it just easily flung me off, like somebody trying to dislodge a small animal without having to grab it.

As gigantic teeth snuffed out my vision and cracked my head like a nut I had to admit that this was not a winning strategy.

I needed some sort of weapon, preferably one that could keep up with me.

After all, that was how I drew blood for the first time against my unwanted visitor too, right? I had not used my bare hands, I had hacked, slashed and carved first.

Until I had just ripped it to pieces.


Cleaning the filth off me as good as possible before I entered the Suit once again, I had to admit that I was not too upset about my consecutive losses.

Maybe that was the reason I had lost in the first place.

But I cherished the challenge, fearing that after being successful, boredom and fear would embrace me once again.

No, this was alright.

I considered the meager tools I had at my disposal for a moment, but then shook my head. Those were not enough to kill the small demon, the big one would need something stronger for sure.

But where to get it?

I racked my brain for something I had perhaps missed. Only a small part of me was focused on the fight I was in, breaking my (now inferior) opponent methodically. As I smashed his second arm I paused for a moment.

Honestly, there should be some sort of security here, right? The note had talked about demons as something well known, and also experimented with something that created said demons. And they did not have a single gun or rifle? Or some other sort of weapon?

I doubted it.

The screeching of the thing below my feet was a bit distracting, so I glanced down, muttered: "Yeah yeah, shut up." And stomped down on its skull.

Alright, first step: Carefully look through the map again for something that could help.

Then: Break down the security door.

I suppressed a sigh. This would be so boooring.


The map was sadly no more help. So instead I was faced with the task of hitting a door for who knows how long.

Procrastinating on that, I instead bashed open every other door first, hoping for something that made the looming task unnecessary.

And I even found something, in the room labeled workshop. There was mostly heavy machinery that was bolted securely to the floor or otherwise useless for me (I had no idea how somebody managed to put those things in the room in the first place, they were bigger than the door?!) with one possible exception:

A chainsaw, locked in a thin case mounted on the wall.

Why did they have a chainsaw in a workshop on Mars? I did not know. (Was I on Mars? The gravity thing still bugged me.)

Did I care? No, I just wanted to have the stupid thing.

To put it simply, in my excitement, I fucked up a tiny bit perhaps.

I opened the case via a punch and a satisfying crunch. After seeing that the chainsaw was the thing that had mostly crunched, I could have broken my own fists in exasperation.

I had broken it.

By accident.

That was not even a hard punch, what do you mean that broke my possible weapon?!

Well shit.

Time to break down a door.

Honestly, I kind of deserved that as punishment, after breaking the thing I wanted to use.

It was still boring.

The rhythmic "thump thump thump" of my fist hitting mostly the same spot nearly lulled me to sleep.

While standing and punching.

So boooring.


It did not take as long as I had feared. Well, punching down the door would have, but after denting the metal enough to reach a hand in, I was able to slowly rip it open. The material groaned in protest and was quite hard to move like this, but I succeeded. Honestly, having my enhanced strength but not my better stamina would have made this pretty much impossible; I was breathing heavily, my arms ached all the way to my chest and the Suit had to have some sort of sweat filter, because otherwise I would have been swimming in the stuff.

Disgusting.

But I did it!

Trying to calm my rapid heartbeat, I carefully sat in the second chair I spotted inside (the first broke as I let myself fall heavily into it, I had forgotten how heavy this Suit actually was).

Phew.

Alright.

This office (?) was a lot fancier than all the other stuff. Dozens of blinking buttons could be seen on some sort of console panel. Big monitors hummed and showed the white letters UAC on a black background, with the A being weirdly stylized into some sort of logo. A test with both keyboard and mouse showed no change, whatever the connected Computers were doing, I was not able to change the background to anything, open files or type commands.

A piece of paper taped to a deactivated monitor would have given me the same amount of interaction, namely nothing.

The buttons, levers and similar things had no labels, inscriptions or anything else.

Picking and pressing those things at random would be only an option if I ran out of other things to do, I really did now want to disable my own oxygen or power for example.

So the technology was no help to me.

But what was this?

I only noticed the shiny black thing by accident, glinting in the light. It was the back of a stock.

For a gun.

I carefully felt around and slowly pried it out of its strange holster. The chainsaw had shown me that I needed to be a lot more precise with my strength, not everything could withstand me as easily as the demons for example.

I imagined me squashing my Dad by accident and shuddered in horror.

Doing that to the only family I had left would truly break me.

Carefully I lifted the weapon and inspected it.

I had never used a gun, never even held one before in my entire life, but this was not even that classic type of hand fire weapon you saw (non-Parahuman) Agents use in movies.

It was a shotgun, I think.

It looked simple and plain, innocent, which made it appear more sinister somehow. It was made of metal, the color of blackened steel, no embellishment of any kind. It had a single barrel, with one of those grips below to pull back. I forgot how it was called, "-end" something? It was the thing you pulled back to get another shell into the chamber I was pretty sure.

So not one of those western shotguns, where you had to open it and put in a shell so you could shoot again.

Some rummaging located a plain box with shells. I counted them quickly. 25 shells. Was that good? Was that bad? A lot? Only a few? I had no idea.

It did not seem like a lot.

And was the shotgun loaded already? How did one find that out?

Well I supposed I could just pull the trigger and see what happens?

But wasting bullets on something I did not want to kill?

Holding the tool away from me, I carefully looked for something that could help me.

There was some small lever close to the trigger, which I was pretty sure was the safety thing. There was another lever too though, that looked a bit different.

Going outside and aiming down the corridor (so I did not destroy the control panel by accident for example) I carefully pulled that second lever.

It opened a slot on the side of the gun, where a red shell innocently looked back at me.

So it was loaded.

Was this slot where the shell would be ejected out of? Or was that where you reloaded? Confusing those things could be a problem.

It pained me to waste ammo, but I had to make sure that I at least had a basic understanding of this thing, wondering in the middle of battle would not help me at all.

Flipping the safety switch, I turned my head away and pulled the trigger.

The loud "bang" was not surprising, but the kick the weapon gave against my shoulder was. Even with my strength, that was still impressive, that I could feel this thing through the suit.

With a steady hand I pulled the reload pump thing back. The spent shell knocked out to the side (the side I had briefly pulled open with the other lever) and the clack-clack the device made gave me goosebumps.

Was that why people seemed to be obsessed with guns nearly as much as with capes? And why Miss Militia had such a large fanbase? (I mean, her power gave her unlimited guns, that was a fact I saw in a new light now).

Wait, was the shotgun loaded now? I pulled the lever back again.

Yup, there was another shell.

How many did fit inside?

How many where inside to begin with?

I pulled the trigger, ignored the small shudder I gave upon the sound of the gun going off, and reloaded again.

And again.

And again.

And then there was only a sad "click".

So five shells in total.

Was that good?

It sounded pretty good to me.

Now, lets see how to put new shells in.

That was actually pretty easy.

I just pushed the shells in one by one into the bottom opening that was in front of the trigger, (so away from my body) until the last shell refused to go in.

Wait, but that made only four shells?

Ohh, I was being stupid, I could load one in the chamber.

Duh.

After pumping once, the last shell went in as well.

Perfect!

Now I had something to reach the big guy with! I just needed to grab the rest of the ammunition and then I was good to go.

Wait, where could I put the reserve shells?

Right, the Suit had some small pouches on each side. But they were smaller than my gauntlets? A mistake in the design? Trying to fit my hand inside anyway, I made a surprising discovery: My fist fit into the pouches.

I could actually shove my arm in until the elbow. An arm that obviously did not fit. But it did. But it shouldn't.

Was that how Armsmaster did his stuff? He was known for specializing in miniaturization after all, he could fit like two dozens weapons and utility devices into his motorbike, I was sure. He was one of the top heroes! I had my own tinker tech pockets! How awesome was this?

Could I fit the gun in there too?

Some experimentation confirmed, that yes, I could put the shotgun away too, but not in the ammo pouches at my side. Instead the pockets at the back of the suit nearly gobbled the tool up when I tried it. Like they had a mind of their own.

Getting it out again was easy too, I just reached behind me and the gun was nearly pressed into my hand. Same for the shells, I did not need to rummage or search, my fingers just closed around them.

Definitely something like Tinkertech.

I really started to love this Suit.

Alright, time to shoot me a demon for Dinner.

That did not even sound good in my head.


"You missed me, you fucker?!"

Yes, that's what I said after ripping my arm off the energy cell and opening up with a shotgun blast. Was it childish? Maybe a little. Could the thing understand me? Probably not.

Was my aim shit? Yes, yes it was.

But it was a shotgun, so I still hit.

Sucker, heh.

Its arm, which had taken the brunt of the attack (if one ignored the many new holes in the wall) was bruised after a single hit.

That was not a very effective wound of course, but I did not just shrug the bullets off, which was a fear I did have before. With enough precise hits, I could take this bastard down.

Probably.

And while I returned the demonic roars with the rough blasts and clack-clack of my reloading weapon, I noticed another positive thing about having a ranged weapon: I had a much easier time dodging, because I was not forced to close the gap as much. I had more range than my foe, not by much, but it was noticeable.

What killed me in the end was my lack of training and familiarity with my weapon. Reloading just took me too long and I even dropped my shells a few times.

Something that got taken advantage off immediately, this time I got hammered into the ground like a nail. My insides had to have sprayed the walls, so much power was behind the swing.

So I had definitely pissed it off.

Good.

Because I was once again in my starting room.

And my beautiful shotgun was again locked behind that fucking door.

Fuck you.

Whatever, I was sure I would improve quickly under this sort of pressure. Death because I got overwhelmed or because of bad luck was one thing.

Death because I dropped my fucking ammo? If I died for real because of something like that, I would force myself back to life just to kick my own ass.


It took me two tries to get back into the elevator, equipped with my dear weapon. The small demon had actually killed me, because I was more playing than fighting him.

Not going all out and exhausting myself was one thing, but dying because I underestimated my enemy was such a cliche that I was annoyed with myself for the whole way back to the Test-side.

I mean, I went all out multiple times against the guy, just to scratch it, and now I had died because I did not consider them a threat?

Stupid.

Every enemy could kill me if I took them lightly like that, every one. At least every demon I had met until now. If they were the norm for demons, I could not afford such mistakes. No mercy. No stopping unless they were already broken on the ground.

No more stupid deaths.

It went pretty similar to my first "training session": I improved every try, attempted different ways to injure my foe and learned its strengths and limitations.

For example, it was actually not too fast for its size. It seemed that way, because the reach of its massive limbs seemed to follow me closely no matter what I did, but that was just the sheer size being utilized. It was quite flexible too, and the room made it very difficult for me to use its speed against it.

Doesn't matter if you are not the fastest, if you need only six steps to cross the whole room after all.

No, something I realized after I fired some more lead into its chest: I simply had not enough bullets. Every single shot counted and had to be into the same area. The best case was the same vulnerable area, but the demon protected its face, the only weaker part, very seriously. The chest was the area I focused on, simply because it was too big for the large limbs to cover it well from all angles and because I had the hope of getting to the heart.

Which got me back to the original problem: I was able to wound my foe, sure, and I made sure that its chest ended in a bloody mess. But that were mostly superficial injuries. And I could not widen those, because I could not reach them once I ran out of ammo. So every time my hand closed over nothing when I tried to pull out some more shells, the fight was pretty much decided already. The shells would have been enough to kill the other demon multiple times with ease, sure, but I did not need the shotgun for him in the first place.

So on my next try, I grabbed the chainsaw.

Why only now? Because a shotgun seemed, at least in my rookie mind, to be the better option by a giant margin.

I had no idea if it would work, but maybe I could kneecap the big guy? Or get the Achilles tendon? If the demon had to kneel, I had a better chance of reaching its more vulnerable spots after all.

Well, if I could injure it with this thing in the first place. It seemed fueled (if it even used fuel, I had no idea, maybe it used those energy cells or something?) and simply pulling the lever chain thing revved it up with a dull roar.

I doubted this was a normal chainsaw, but that was a good thing in this instance. Because who would take a normal Chainsaw to a place that was perhaps Mars?

And somehow I was able to fit the behemoth of a device into my back pocket. I was admittedly curious how using my Tinkertech-storage looked, because it seemed ridiculous in my mind, but I was not complaining in the slightest. Another feature I discovered while doing this: I always pulled out the weapon I wanted to use.

Somehow.

I did not even need to say something, or think hard about it, focus on the weapon I wanted, no, I just simply worked. Like grabbing object A from the table, when Object B was next to it. There was no conscious thought, I just grabbed "left" instead of "right".

Strange, but handy.


Incorporating multiple weapons into my fighting style was admittedly difficult. I did not confuse the weapons or grabbed the wrong one, but if I was used to holding the shotgun, suddenly swapping to this melee weapon was a jarring change that made me stumble and get out of my rhythm a few times.

But as I carved off a big chunk of the leg, blood spraying all over me and the room, I also had to admit that this was so worth it. It was so worth it in fact, that I got killed (once again) in my distraction.

I had a tendency to simply soak in the spectacle and to forget that I was, in fact, right in the middle of said sights. A problem, perhaps, but I was not too upset about that. It kept my mood up. But I still vowed to put my safety first as much as possible.

And then I finally had a could try, a very good one in fact.

The fight started like many others before it: I ripped myself away from the cell, jumped backwards to dodge the opening strike of my opponent, and used the short time it took for the beast to loosen its restraints enough, to pull out the shotgun and fire right into its center mass.

Pumping once, I barely sidestepped another swing, fired at the head and used the distraction to swap to my chainsaw.

Revving it up with a road, I swung it like an Axe and hacked a bloody wedge into the left leg. Ignoring the pained shout, I rolled between the demons legs and escaped my death by a few fingers, a titanic fist crashing into the ground where I had just been. Plunging to the side, to not get hit by the massive arms as the beast quickly turned, I once again swapped to the shotgun.

A shot into its chest.

The clack-clack of a quick pump.

A shot at its head.

Another swing with the chainsaw.

A dive roll away.

Reloading with quick, sure movements, honed by the countless times I had to do this already.

Rinse and Repeat.

I was getting closer every time, closer to that sweet victory.

To the beautiful carnage of a dying foe, felled by little Taylor Hebert.

This was addicting.

I stopped considering stories about bloodlust just pure fiction when I truly fought the Minotaur for the first time, but the pull this feeling now had on me was frightening.

And then I finally got far enough into my enemies legs that it crashed down on one knee heavily.

Blood rushing through my veins, heart beating in thundering excitement and with my breath coming in short gasps, I fired my last shell at its head. And then chucked the empty gun quickly afterwards, banking on its reflexes to swat it out of the air.

My plan worked: one arm covered most of its face while the other snapped forward and easily slapped the empty weapon out of the air. I used the tiny window this gave me, and rushed forward, pushing myself off the grounded, injured leg and bouncing against the other ones knee. I rammed my left arm into its stomach as hard as I could and grabbed my chainsaw. Pulling myself up with all my might, I catapulted myself into the air, only getting clipped by its claws. And then I rammed myself, chainsaw first, right into its chest.

The fountain of blood blinded me, and the deafening scream of agony robbed me of my hearing. Gritting my teeth I held on, trying to get some footing somehow in the wound with my boots so I could ram the sawing blade even deeper into this fucking thing.

There was no swing coming for me, no impact ripping me away and breaking my bones. I held on until the only sound was the wet ripping of my weapon through flesh and the demon stilled.

Had I finally done it?

Shaking myself like a wet dog, I got most of my vision back, blood raining down from me.

The Suit did not stain, but bathing in the stuff still covered it at first.

Had I done it? There was no movement in the gigantic body. No reaction to a careful kick, nothing as I carved into the flesh again, just to make sure.

I had done it!

I killed it!

ME!

Little bullied Taylor Hebert had dueled a Demon big enough to fight an Endbringer and had won.

I gave an exhilarated laugh.

Was I free now?

A part of me expected something like a portal popping up, or a voice suddenly cracking through hidden speakers and saying "Well done." or something like that.

But there was nothing...?

A bit disappointed, I let my gaze roam over the room that was so similar and yet so different. I was definitely somewhere else, or some time else perhaps?

Maybe the way back was in the storage room where I had arrived?

The bodies littering the ground were a bit disturbing (I was pretty much used to demon remains by now, but human corpses? Not so much.)

The Suits those guys had been wearing (at least what I could make out, looking at the destroyed pieces) looked not very similar at all to my Praetor Suit, as the scientist note had called it. They were obviously not made by the same technology, but perhaps made with my Suit as a sort of base-line inspiration.

In a scrap pile I was even able to grab a still decent looking rifle. It was a beast of a firearm; seemingly twice as big as my shotgun had been.

Using this thing without some sort of powered assistance in the form of power armor or similar equipment was probably impossible. The empty shells looked comically large too, which was even more remarkable considering I was wearing heavy gauntlets. Looked like I had traded up, but I kind off missed my other weapon. Its not like I would have had storage issues. Sadly it did not survive the high velocity impact into either the wall or the demons arm and I was not sentimental enough to take it with me anyways.

Now geared up – I had felt a bit naked without some heavy firepower in close reach – I made my way back to the elevator.

What else had changed?

Was I free of the time loop now? This was the first time things were not the same, with the dozens of bodies being quite the hint that something fundamentally had changed.

Was that even a good thing? I had to act like I had only a single life now, truly dying just after beating such a brutal foe would just be sad.


As I rode the elevator down – it too looked more rundown than before the strange effect the cell had on me – I came face to face with something I did not expect.

A pale, freakish looking figure shuffled in my direction at the moment of my arrival. They looked a bit like a classic zombie (had those green hair? This was not my area of expertise.) I looked at the thing dumbly for only a moment, before I pulled the trigger and watched it disappear in a shower of gore.

This weapon felt more like a cannon instead of how I imagined an assault rifle to be, but the killing power was impressive. As more and more of those things appeared, I had to admit that open fire may have been a bit hasty, looks like these zombies, or rather demons, still had working ears.

Well, before I blew them up of course.

As I slaughtered myself through the new obstacle, I gave a confused chortle. Was this the "classic" demon? They were so weak. I had never fought multiple opponents, hell I did not even use this rifle before, and they just fell like over like that one building Glory Girl had crashed into by accident.

The memes about that had been hilarious.

They fell faster even, sometimes one bullet was enough to hit multiple enemies and each good hit blew of limbs with pitiful ease.

Well, at least I now felt better about my chances to not die, in case I really had broken the loop.

By killing the Demon or by touching the lighting Artifact-Battery-combination thingy?

Honestly, I did not really care, as long as I could get home now somehow.

Fighting my way to the entrance I had obviously not walked through before, because there had been no demons there that time, I waited for air to fill the small airlock while taking a quick breather. At the end I had to swing and bash my way through, my ammunition had been a bit too limited. And I may have amused myself instead of efficiently killing everything too.

So to my defense, the voice suddenly calling out to me caught me completely off guard. So badly actually that I smashed the hidden speaker out of sheer reflex by accident.

"Greetings!" the voice repeated, this time from a different direction, a bit further away. It did not seem bothered by the destruction of the equipment. "Who are you and how did you get access to this facility?"

"Umm, my name is Taylor. Who are you? And where are you? This place seems to be in a bit of trouble."

"Hello Taylor! My name is VEGA P1! I'm the experimental clone of a sentient intelligence assigned to Mars, named VEGA!"

I was talking to a computer? But the voice sounded so alive? It seemed friendly, but maybe a bit unhinged?

My stunned silence did not seem to disturb the program, I got the impression it was patiently waiting for a response.

"You did not answer where we are? Because I do not think it is Mars. Unless there is some sort of changed gravity here that I have not noticed? Not that I have ever been to Mars of course."

"My apologies! In my excitement to finally have somebody to talk to again, I completely forgot about that part of the question!" It (?) sounded truly upset about that, but I did not realize computers could forget stuff in the first place like this.

And I doubted an AI could forget stuff like that either, which made me a bit suspicious.

"We – which includes the facilities connected to this complex – are located right now at: Unknown Location!" It told me helpfully, regaining some of its earlier cheer.

"So you don't know it either?"

"No!"

"So we are not actually on Mars, correct?"

"Yes! Well, probably not!"

I had not expected to meet somebody even worse at talking than me, but I guess an AI-Clone thing in a demon infested place, in an unknown location would do the trick.

"Vega – can I call you Vega, VEGA P1 is a bit of a mouthful – can you tell me what happened here?"

"Yes, you can. But I am, in fact, not Vega! And no I cannot!"

I groaned.

"No because you are not able to, or no because you simply do not know either?"

"Because I do not know either!"

"Since you are talking to me, that means you have probably hidden cameras and stuff, can you at least give me a rough guess? You don't need to be sure, just explain the most likely scenario."

"I can do that!"

I waited for a bit, but as I realized Vega had started softly humming to himself (he sounded male, so I would call him male unless he told me otherwise) I realized he had no intention of actually doing as I asked.

"Could you do that now please?"

"Oh, sure! This facility was in a secluded spot on Mars, not connected in any direct way to the other facilities of the UAC. It was tasked with the experimentation and development of Argent Energy! The main focus was a possible way to make easier portals, to access the hell-plane! Because of the not unusual energy surges, which made long distance communication difficult, this facility was build mostly self sustaining! The exception were regular supply drops to scheduled times, in which no experiments were allowed to take place!"

A short pause.

Wait, did he just tell me stuff that I was pretty sure no Government or Owner of this facility would like me to just hear like that?

"And what happened then?"

"Oh yes! A scientist with the name of [Classified] was able to acquire multiple Artifacts taken out of Hell for that very purpose! He combined them in a way that was not advisable because of [Classified] and was actually forbidden by [Classified] to continue, but he did so anyway! The result of the fallout created a completely new phenomenon which ignored the known laws of time! Argent Energy has been able to ignore Gravity and other known forces, but never time!"

Another.

Pause.

I got the feeling the AI was not actually this dense or forgetful, it felt more like he stretched the time he needed to explain things so I had to talk to him longer.

Could a Computer get lonely?

It was pretty hard for me to get angry at the guy (he was so earnest), so with a long suffering sigh I asked him to continue.

"This time field did in fact not only manipulate time! It also locked living organisms inside, but separated! And it grew! When the sphere had a radius of 200 meters, so only [Classified] meters away from the storage vault, multiple teams of soldiers where sent out to find a way to stop it! None returned, and Data suggests that they all turned into Demons!"

Oh.

That gave me a sinking feeling.

"Vega, how long ago was that?" and, quieter I added "Do you count as a living organism too?"

"My Data suggest that this was 300 years ago! I calculated this number by the timeframe my main processor has officially run idle, even tough I was not deactivated!"

"I'm sorry, that has to have been hard."

300 years in a loop? And that did not even tell how time inside the loop worked, it could have been a lot longer for the poor guy. I mean, I was sure it had been months for me at least, but that was just my subjective timeframe. And I got resets because of dying. A lot.

I think 300 years of emptiness would have driven me insane quite quickly, he seemed in remarkable good mental condition actually.

"It is quite alright Taylor! I'm here to help and then you can be on your way!"

The second sentence did not nearly sound as enthusiastic as the first.

"So how does the loop work, if you have an idea? And why would you send soldiers to try and stop it? How would that be successful?"

"Scans and remote controlled drones have shown, that the center of the loop is unstable! The idea was to destroy it and hopefully remove it this way! Sadly, all guided missiles, manual attack runs and similar tries did not reach that goal! They never reached the center to damage it, they simply disappeared!

The armed squads where a last ditch effort with the secondary objective to maybe save some of the Data!"

So the attacks all disappeared and got probably sucked to the big demon. Just like the soldiers who made it. But they were not able to kill it. Hell, it was in peak condition for our battle, they did not even truly wound it.

What a waste of lives.

It was like sending people to fight an Endbringer, without actually knowing that one was waiting at the end of the road. I imagined singular drops of Capes dropping into a Cave with the Simurgh smiling serenely at them. Before driving them mad or ripping them to pieces with flying debris before they realized how fucked they were.

What a nightmare.

"I have good news tough Taylor! The anomaly has passed! Otherwise I would not be in the real facility! And we would not be able to meet or talk at all! Just like before!"

Depressing, but that meant I had done it?!

So I had only this one life now. Just like everybody else.

Probably.

Better make it count.

"There was a big Demon in the center, that probably killed the soldiers that made it too."

"Thank you for that information! Updating Data Logs!"

I opened my mouth to speak, but Vega beat me to it.

"For your earlier question: Multiple points strongly suggest that we are in a yet uncharted and unknown part of Hell! Found records suggest that it is possible for planets to be consumed and send to Hell! The experiment was about the creation of portals! Also, Demonification usually happens with uncontrolled demon and portal exposure! The presence of a greater Demon at the epicenter further supports this theory!"

I was in Hell? Wait, was I dead? No no that made no sense, Vega had talked about portals and Hell like a place you could visit and come back from.

No need to panic, it would be fine, I would be fine.

"How does one get out of hell?"

"With a controlled usage of portals!"

"And let me guess, a whole facility being transported never happened before. At least not to you And we cant make portals either. Right?"

"Right! This was mostly theoretical, my records do not suggest any sort of facility being every pulled into Hell!"

"Figures."

Well at least I had somebody to talk to.

"What would you suggest as further steps?"

"If your objective is to get out of Hell? Equip yourself in the Armory and then scout the Perimeter! I can give you a link to my main processor so we can stay in contact while you do that!"

"Alright, that doesn't sound too bad, so-"

I stopped.

"Wait, what did you say about equipment?"

"I suggested you equip yourself in the Armory!"

"The Armory." I said slowly.

"Yes!" the AI agreed happily.

"There is an Armory here."

"Of course! Experimentation is dangerous, especially when its specializing in the development of better portals to hell! The risk of armed combat needs to be considered! Heavy firepower is a necessity!"

"THERE IS A FUCKING ARMORY?!"

"Yes! Close to the elevator, so a quick advance to the Test-side is possible in case of looming danger!"

"AND ITS CLOSE TO THE ELEVATOR?"

"Indeed!"

"FUCKING-"


AN: I wish you all a good time with your friends and loved ones! (As much as that is possible of course.)