Author's note:
Hello there, Fellas! You're probably thinking: "Bitch, you came back in December of 2020! Where the fuck have you been?" The answer is: aside from being a typical me (lazy, played games or just slept like a bear) I was on a job hunt for almost a year. Ended up becoming an administrator in some no-name fitness club (while the payment is decently small, I do not have to work in a goddamn warehouse for 12 hours a day and for an even lesser pay). Got into linguistics institution and currently trying my luck with Chinese (I have problems memorizing hieroglyphs and writing them correctly. Hell, I was able to only memorize some basic sentences and the word "grey", which suspiciously sounds exactly like the Russian "Hui")
I also had successfully finished Doom Eternal with its DLCs, played some zombie games (got hooked on Project Zomboid recently), got a few refreshing ideas, a new perspective on the story & how to end it (though the question is: with my speed of publishing things, will I be even able to finish at least a quarter of this story in a few years or not?)
Now, my shitty excuses aside, some comments made me want to clarify a few things:
1) This is not a canon story (nevermind that I'm publishing this on a site with the name "fanfiction". That's like supposed to be a dead give-away). I was literally mentioning it (and will continue doing so) in every chapter way before the identity of MC from new DOOM games was officially confirmed. Plus, the game kind of hinted at the existence of different timelines (at least Horde Mode is happening in another, separate to Doom Eternal timeline. And don't get me started on customizations and in-game Codex hinting at that)
2) In this fic, Hell Walker is the Betrayer (except he was reincarnated (sort of) a few times & doesn't look like Commander "V" at all) since at the time his identity was not 100% confirmed...
But once DOOM ETERNAL came out, considering that their stories for Demon-hating are (but not entirely) similar (one lost his wife, kid and a bunny, was forced to fight and then saw his second home being slowly destroyed. Second – lost his son, was tricked to betray his own & then exiled himself into Hell itself for his misdeeds), I saw no reason to abandon this story and reboot it. Again.
3) The Wretch is an OC (there is no "Wretch" in the character selection here (aka "who is present in the story" when you post it). Same as "Doctor Peters" or "Davoth/Dark Lord of Jekkad/Hell).
4) Samuel Hayden and Samur Maykr (aka 'Seraphim') here are two separate beings (though their paths had crossed and will keep on crossing as the story progresses).
5) Expect cheap references, random easter eggs, poor humor, grammar, swearing, lazy bum intensiveness, blood and guts (R.I.P Kentaro Miura) and Guts with Big Fucking Guns.
Now...
Disclaimer: I do not own DOOM (except from the game copy I bought on some random web page for 499 RUB (6.99$ maybe?) and Xbox360 versions of the previous DOOM games) or Familiar of Zero (wich I freely watched on the internet). This is just a fanfic of some crazy ass dude and most of the stuff I'm going to write won't be canon. Hope you'll enjoy this fic.
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Chapter 4: Aftermath, Part 1.
Tristian Magic Academy, Library. Midnight.
(11 Hours since the end of 'The Duel')
Imagine you are a teacher in a private school for noblemen's children. Day starts off like any other: there's nothing eventful, everyone's relaxing and young minds are just having a good time...
Then you're being informed that a human familiar with the Sentinel runes decided to beat the ever living crap out of one of your students. This resulted in:
1) A whole lot of paperwork
2) A headache from questioning students about the incident
3) Making attempts at calming said students down
4) Preparing for a bombardment of letters from parents, whose kids didn't feel safe even after trying to reassure them
5) Thinking trough the options on how to deal with the General Grammont – a father of the earlier mentioned student - in the safest way possible without getting fired or worse - assassinated
The latter seems to be the most complicated one due to the fact that it was General's child, who nearly got killed. And while talking with the ones responsible for the current health state of the Grammont boy provided an interesting perspective, it didn't give much heads up on how to peacefully resolve the upcoming storm. It only left a whole lot of questions.
If you were in this situation, the first set of words that would've come into your mind would probably be...
"*sigh* Brimir, end me" – that was the first thing that came out of Jean Colbert's mouth after 6 long hours of searching trough books in the library. Aside from mentally preparing himself, he was trying to find more clues on who is Valliere's familiar and maybe some additional information about the runes he happened to get (assuming there is more to find). So far, he only stumbled upon terms like 'Argenta', 'Wraiths' and 'Lucifer's Bane'. The latter was some kind of a weapon, that brought suffering to its foes...
While he found it interesting, it lacked details.
"Tough Day?" he heard a feminine voice call out from behind – it was Secretary Longueville, leaning to the right side of the wall with a somewhat concerned look in her eyes.
"You could say that again... by Brimir, what a day" he muttered with a hint of annoyance. Secretary leaned off the wall and approached him.
"Is it fair to assume that it's related to the incident with one of our students getting nearly beaten to death by a big, oddly handsome brute of a man our students managed to summon?"
"Well..."
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Flashback start
Colbert stood next to the headmaster, looking at the key figures of the today's incident – one was the perpetrator and the other was his "master" – a pink haired girl, mocked by other students for making explosions when attempting to cast any spell and also known for being the daughter of the famous Karin the Heavy Wind.
The girl was noticeably worried. The man in question? Not so. He was actually pretty calm, although it seemed like he was ready to fight if the situation is going to call for it. Back in the summoning day, Jean noted to himself that this man is not an ordinary one. The posture, the physical build, the scars...
And the eyes - those nearly-black brown eyes spoke of experiences no normal man could live through - the rivers of bloodshed and horrors of war. Yet, there was a little spark in them that couldn't have been missed by Colbert's observation skills. It was like a fire. 'What fire though?' he wondered.
"Greetings, miss Valliere. I think there is no point in explaining why you have been called here, yes?"Headmaster Osmond casually asked, which in spite of his good, but perverted nature, was just a little bit unsettling to Louise. She nodded.
"There is no need to worry. We only wish to know why your summon has attacked one of our students." Headmaster reassured her.
"There... there might be a problem with that, sir." She mumbled, but loud enough for everyone to hear. Headmaster responded:
"Colbert notified me of his condition. Simple 'yes' and 'no' questions will do at the moment" Girl wanted to say something but then paused and all of the sudden, had a baffled look on her face
"Are you out of your fucking mind?"
To say that the two professors were stunned would be an understatement. It seemed like Louise Valliere responded to her familiar, but considering that he didn't said anything, it weirded out the two professors. Although they also noticed that he was looking at her like they, in fact, were actually talking.
"Half of the academy already heard me talk to you like I have some kind of an imaginary friend or I'm mentally challenged. So yes, at this point I don't give a shit about this one" The more she was responding to nothing, the more they were questioning the sanity of their student. Then, the girl turned furious and Jean could have sworn he saw her eyes briefly turn red.
"YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT EVEN WORSE FOR ME IF I SAY SHIT YOU WANT ME TO SAY! THAT'S WHY!"
Her summon gave her an unsettling look and then, in just five seconds, Valliere's facial expression was changing in so many ways, two professors started to actually think that something was really wrong with her.
"FINE! FINE! You win!..." she seemingly lost a one-sided argument with a mute brute of a man. She then proceeded to repeat the "Count to four – inhale... count to four – exhale…"matra for about a minute. After she was able to calm down, Headmaster asked her:
"*Cough* excuse us for interrupting, but mind telling us... what it was just now?" Louise nervously glanced at her summon and then, somewhat uncertainly, said:
"My fami… I mean... me and Doomguy have a... mental connection? Basically, he can hear what I think and I can hear what he thinks."
"Huh… Well, that explains this little episode of insanity we just witnessed." Osmond mused aloud. This newfound discovery also managed to awaken Colbert's thirst for knowledge.
"That... Is… AMAZING! A mental link between the master and a familiar is a rare occurrence on its own. But a link between the master and a human familiar? That's something extraordinary! Tell me how does that work. Can you hear each other's thoughts or there are certain conditions to it? How does he sound like to you?" He started to barrage Valliere with lots of questions and getting a little bit too close for her comfort.
Osmond, after working with Jean for so many years learned two things:
1) When he learns something new and it happened to be something interesting to him, he won't stop asking questions or looking for information to satisfy his curiosity
2) When he is interested in something, sometimes he gets physically exited and everyone could see this.
At the moment, the second one was happening and remembering some cases they had in the past 'cause of Colbert's excitement, it was a cue for the Headmaster to intervene.
"Jean, Jean – calm down, please. Not the right time for such questions" he was able to snap Colbert out of his mental and literal boner. After he calmed down, he continued, but stayed on the topic this time.
"If we ask… Doomguy a question, you would tell us what he said, yes?" Louise nods her head. Colbert smiled and continued:
"Well then... first question is..."
Flashback end
"By 'I got carried away a little bit', you mean to say that little Colbert got a little bit excited, yes?" Longueville asked with a cheeky smile that was about to transform into a full on laughter due to the face Jean was making.
"Do you really have to nitpick this one?"
"Just for a little bit, but yea." Her smile got even wider after seeing another interpretation of the grumpy cat's face.
"So, what did you asked him?" she went back to the topic at hand
"Lots of questions. Some were off topic, some were not. Apparently he was the leader of a group of knights, known as the Night Sentinels, from the land of Argenta. I tried to find if there was a similarity between them and the runes, but so far, I was only able to stumble upon mentions of Argenta and some others, but no details or specifics, so this leaves me more room for questions."
"What about the related topics?" Colbert wasn't entirely sure how to respond, but eventually...
"...young Grammont attacked one of the servants of the academy, blaming her for something she didn't do. This 'Doomguy' decided to intervene. This provoked the boy to try kill him. Then I asked him why after defeating him, he dealt with him in such a brutal way..." he went quiet after that. That was a bit unsettling to the secretary.
"What did he say?" Jean was silent for almost a minute, contemplating if he should say it out loud.
"He brutalized that kid to discipline and show him what humility is"
"That doesn't sound bad, now that I think about it. Boy was indeed a little bit full of himself" He scoffed at this one.
"Don't forget that the young Grammont is likely to have one eye left and his father ain't thrilled with the news of his precious boy being brutalized. He'll be coming in to pay a visit soon" Secretary's eyes widened up a bit on that one.
"Personally, that boy needed a lesson in humility. Damn, I think many young nobles need it, but his way of doing it? That was way out of the line" before getting back to his business, he suddenly realized something
"By the way, what are you doing here? Didn't the headmaster dismiss you for the day?" the question caught her off guard.
"Oh, I was just... eehhh… looking for something to read before bedtime." She wanted to mentally slap herself for coming up with something so stupid. 'No way Colbert would buy this'
"Oh I see..." Lucky for her, right now he is a half asleep, rambling thinker. The secretary mentally signed in relief.
"Now that I think of it... I've been here longer than I needed to. I'll go finish up the rest in my room and then *yawn* take a good night rest. Tomorrow is going to be an even harder day, after all" He started to clean up the mess he made on the librarian table.
"That is an excellent idea, Colbert. Really." Secretary encouraged his departure while pretending to look for a reading material somewhere on the shelves. Once he packed everything up, after they said their goodnights to each other and he left the library, Longueville dropped her façade. She didn't come here to look for a bedtime story...
She came here with a purpose of making a plan to get a specific book from the vault of this academy and Longueville was confident that she is going to succeed at this. After all, she got to uphold the reputation of an infamous thief who could steal anything.
"The only problem I have at the moment is the Sentinel familiar…" she pulled out a list of things contained in the vault. It was big, but only two things were an object of her interest. One of them made a mischievous smile appear on her face.
"…but if my source is correct, the solution is closer than I might think." Forquet the Crumbling Dirt is going to land her strike very soon...
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Louise's Dreams.
This time, she was in some pretty unusual barracks – floor made of bunch of thick metal strings, fully metal walls and somewhat uncomfortable to sleep on beds – if you could call these shelves "beds". Currently, she was standing in line with the evenly dressed men – a superior of hers walked in front of her. He started to talk.
"Here is the drill: Deimos disappeared and we lost connection with the Phobos base. We are being deployed on Phobos to restore the connection and find out why it happened. Now, to the armory... GO!" After hearing the orders, she and dozens of other men went into the "armory", but one decided to remain to ask more questions.
"Sir, what do you mean by 'Deimos disappeared'?"
"It literally vanished into thin fucking air, private! Now fucking GO! TO THE ARMORY, SOLDER!" Their superior yelled with a hint of annoyance at the private.
When they got to the armory, she went to a locker with the name "William Flynn Taggart" written on it. She opened the locker, and was left disappointed with its containments."Lieutenant, I only got a pistol here." She said
"Then you take that pistol and move. Or you got something to say to me, corporal?" Louise had an urge to tell him off, but she choose not to "...got nothing to say, lieutenant."
"THEN FUCKING TAKE IT AND MOVE WITH THE REST OF THE SQUAD TO THE LANDING ZONE!" He yelled. Shortly after that, they were all in some bizarre metal construction, and she was, apparently, operating it. Her superior started to speak into some radio panel.
"This is lieutenant Francis Stone, UAC security. Requesting permission for landing. Phobos, do you copy?" there was dead static. He repeated the question few more times, but it was met the same way.
"No signal indeed... Corporal, land the bird nice and easy." she did just that. Soon after the landing, they left the space shuttle and their superior started to give out some orders here and there
"Alright folk, it's time to move out. Taggart, stay here. Defend out ticket out of here at any cost."While a simple order, she was baffled by the idea of doing such a task… with a pistol of all the weapons.
"Lieutenant, I need a better weapon for that." This 'matter of fact' statement didn't sit well with the commander.
"For the last god damn time Taggart... YOU GOT A PISTOL AND THAT IS ALL YOU'RE GONNA GET! NOW SHUT THE HELL UP AND DO AS I SAY! That's an order." At this point, she just wanted to knock that asshole out, but instead...
"...Roger that"
Once more she decided against doing anything to him. 'Enough problems as it is' she thought to herself. Lieutenant and the rest entered the facility, and about five minutes later, she started to get these transmissions:
*HOLY JESUS! WHAT IN THE FUCK IS THAT?!*
*IT THREW A GOD DAMN FIREBALL!*
*FALL BACK! FALL BACK!*
*MAN DOWN! I REPEAT: MAN DOWN!*
* WE GOTTA GET THE HELL OUT OF H-*
The communication was cut off and then followed a loud agonizing scream that echoed across the entire Phobos base. They all died to an unknown enemy.
"Fuck..." Louise murmured in shock, checked the amount of ammo in the clip, took a deep breath and went to investigate the area "And I only started to like this shithole... if only for a little bit." She opened the door and at first glance, met a fellow solder...
If only it wasn't for the pale skin and red glowing eyes. The "solder" made animalistic growl and raised its rifle with the intent to kill. Louise dashed left – away from the gunfire and started to fire back with a pistol. A few shots later, she eventually got it in the head, popping its head like a balloon and splattering the brain matter all over the wall, after which its lifeless carcass hit the floor while twitching all the way down.
"Damn, that was close." She got up and approached the dead body to grab a rifle off of it, quietly humming to herself some kind of a battle melody. She then heard a whole bunch of inhuman sounds coming from the other side of the wall. There was another door leading to the source of these screeches. One part of her wanted to get the fuck out of this place – back to the ship. But the other...
"To Hell with this!" She raised her rifle and ran towards the unknown.
End of the Dream
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"Zero! Zero, wake up!" Louise was shaken out of her dreams by voice she considered to be in the "last to see and last to hear" category. Especially in this particular morning with her dreams, bad mood and simply for disliking Kirche.
To put it bluntly, the redhead made Louise see red. She instantly leaped off her bed and lunged right at Kirche with the intent to strangle the life out of her. Normally, her small and thin figure wouldn't allow her to grab onto her, but this time, something was different. Not only was Louise able to do just that, she actually lifted the Germania noble by the throat with her thin hands.
"Let... g..." Kirche attempted to ask Valliere to stop, but the pressure on her throat was strong enough to turn 'talking' and 'breathing' into quite the complicated to do tasks.
"How many fucking times do I have to tell you to fuck off and never bother me again, huh? HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES, YOU BITCH? YOU WANT ME TO JUST KILL YOU?! FINE! HAVE IT YOUR WAY!" Zerbst's face turned a deep shade of purple as she wasted her last amounts of strength to fight back. She might have been a dead man, if it wasn't for the fire salamander that bit into Louise's leg.
"AHHHH! YOU SLEAZY FUCKER!" She had to let Kirche go just to get the lizard off herself. While she was at it, redhead was both coughing and desperately breathing to get more air into her system. She was also shocked that the little girl she usually made fun of became so abnormally strong.
Louise was able to overpower the salamander, land some hard blows on its thick skull and pulled it by its tail in the direction of the balcony "Ever wanted to fly like dragons? Well, you're about to!" just when she was about to throw it off the balcony and before Kirche could manage to react, an armored green hand firmly grabbed onto her shoulder – that was Doomguy.
Louise turned around and looked into his eyes with quite a fiery gaze, as if she was quietly challenging him.
'Let. Go.' He commanded. In her mind, he actually sounded even more powerful that he normally does, but she still decided to keep staring at him in defiance.
'Now.' Eventually, it started to physically and mentally hurt her, so she had to let the lizard go. After that, she tried to leave her own room, but was stopped by Doomguy once again.
"LET GO OF ME, TAGGART!" It caught Doomguy off guard, but only for a little.
'No. We need to talk. And we need to talk NOW' the emphasis on the last word caused her quite an immense headache – kind of similar to the one she had back in the headmaster's office. She then realized that there is a way for her to fix this particular problem of hers.
"Count to four... inhale... count to four... exhale" she repeated it a few more times, which had slowed her heartbeat, dulled the headache and got rid of the red glow in her eyes (of which she is still not aware of).
Meanwhile, Kirche was able to recover enough to be able to speak again. Since she was strangled just a while ago, her response was this:
"Are you out of your mind?! Darling, did you see that?! ZERO HAD COMPLETELY LOST H-"
Whatever sentence she was trying to finish, the unsettling stare Doom Slayer gave her shut that attempt down. He then pointed at the door – a loud and clear message, considering the circumstances. Kirche called out to her salamander and quickly proceeded to leave Louise's room. Doomguy then closed the door behind her and looked at Louise:
'For starters: you don't have to worry about being expelled because of the Grammont incident.' When she heard this, she was relived. Even her headache was now completely gone. She really was thinking that her life was over.
Then she remembered what he did to her classmate and got more than just curious on how is she supposed to not worry anymore.
"Wait, what? What do you mean?"
'I'll explain later. Now, I need you to answer me on one simple question...' He kneeled just to match his gaze with hers and asked her as bluntly as it was only possible.
'Since when did you start to see dreams of my past life?'
To be continued…
