A/N: I've seen a very long comment recommending story inclusions and asking how many things from the EU will be included in this story. Durge, KOTOR, Yuuzhan Vong, etc. Trust me on this, you won't be disappointed. For both this chapter and the larger story. As always, please don't be afraid to comment, whether it's criticism or admiration. Either one makes my day better.

Light cones pierced the thick darkness. Ash swirled in little storms as the Horn's repulsors whirred down. Before they were even all the way off, the side doors had opened. The Slayer's thick green boot impacted firmly into the landing platform as he hopped out. The Slayer looked out over the small planet with a grimace.

Mustafar was dark, smokey, and glowed red with lava from its rivers and volcanoes. The Slayer was glad for his helmet's ventilation systems; the ash and sulfur in the air would be choking and overwhelming to any normal person. Already the dusty stuff was settling on his Praetor Suit's shoulders. Distant rumbles from the volcanoes wafted into his ears, and the burbling, slopping, and steaming lava provided a constant undercurrent of noise.

It was like stepping into Hell again. And the Slayer felt oddly comforted as he took in the awful lavascapes and the red smoke. It was like going back home. He thrived in Hellish environments.

And yet civilization still attempted to make a foothold here. He was on a landing platform sticking out a little bit over the lava lake, which had bridges connecting the island it was built on to a blocky complex embedded in the basalt and obsidian mountains. The Slayer had to tilt his head to see the top of it, but the view was still dark and obscured by smoke and ash. And the twisting heat lines of the surrounding lava lake made his vision waiver, like the building was a mirage.

The Slayer tramped purposefully but not hastily on the slim metal pathway leading inside. When he was three-quarters of the way there, the doors sighed open into the walls, and a good dozen soldiers with glowing green eyes on helmets resembling pistachios filed out. And a green ogre-like being with hair styled like an Oriental came out, squinting at him. VEGA identified him as a Falleen.

The Slayer paid them all no mind as the Slayer and the guards approached each other.

"What are you doing here?" the Falleen snarled once he was right in front of him.

The Slayer's fists clenched.

Six seconds later, all of them had died. None of them had been able to raise the alarm.

The Slayer left the bloodied bridge behind and entered the facility right before the blast doors shut over the entranceway. And once more, he was inside a compound.

"The Black Sun's leadership is currently meeting in the Situation Room on the top floor," VEGA said, outlining his path with a red line through a hologram on his HUD. "I am recycling security footage in their base, giving you a clear path to the objective."

Of course. Of course it was on the top floor! And he couldn't just go jumping up through the floors to reach the place, since in order to jump through the building's floors from bottom to top, he might only buckle the floor beneath his feet from the power of his jump.

So, already pissed, the Slayer trudged through the dark hallways to the closest turbolift. He sourly pressed the button and waited for it to arrive.

Once the door dinged open, the Slayer saw that four more pistachio-heads were in the lift. All four of them jumped in place and started to open fire.

The elevator was instantly coated in blood from the Slayer's whip-crack hand swipe. The Slayer came into the silent elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

It was odd, how often he had to impatiently ride in turbolifts. The Slayer leaned his head on the blood-wet wall and looked up exasperatedly. Ding-dong elevator music tinkled out from the speakers. Diiiink… da-ding dink, dink, donk, dink, dink, diiiink.

The lift doors opened. The Slayer strode out and followed the dull hallways to the situation room. No one else came out to meet him. A few turns later, and the Slayer reached three layers of open blast doors. The last door beeped open, sliding into the ceiling. He strode past the doorway into the situation room and took in the sight.

The logo of the Black Sun was marked into the glass window on the opposite end of the dark room. Lava flowed from behind the permaglass in thin rivulets. Seven seats around the central obsidian table were filled with Falleen representatives in flowing violet robes with golden flaring collars. The one at the opposite end of the table looked up at his approach and stood up.

"Ah," he said with a deep, droll tone. "So this is what you look like. Must have been easy, getting into the base."

The Slayer just came to the end of the table and folded his arms.

"I am the head of the Black Sun, Thun Gogix. We anticipated your arrival once we discovered Ziro had died. And we would like to congratulate you. Ziro was a liability more than an asset. I'd offer you a drink, but… it seems you don't want to remove your helmet."

The Slayer shook his head slowly. He didn't know why he was even hearing them out. Maybe because he wanted to see for himself how scummy it all was.

"We were initially planning on having you join us in filling the void the Hutts left behind. But unfortunately, Ziro's diary implicated us as well as Death Watch, the Pyke Syndicate, and Concord Dawn. Ziro, the damned fool. You've turned us on our backs to the Republic's gaze. And that, unfortunately, is something I cannot permit."

The rest of the Falleen leaders rose up in their seats to better see the exchange.

The Slayer grimaced.

"The Slayer was not planning on an alliance in the first place," VEGA calmly informed.

The Slayer's hand withdrew his lightsaber from hammerspace.

Something dark dropped from the ceiling to the floor at the end of the room.

Both green lightsaber ends ignited right as the lightsaber flew, spinning, from his hand.

Two Falleen heads separated from their bodies. Then four. Six. And Thun's expression of shock was plastered on his face.

But right before his head, too, was cut off, a thick metal gauntlet reached over Thun's shoulder and caught the lightsaber. He now had the Slayer's humming weapon tight in his hand.

The figure was partially in view behind Thun's chair. He was three meters high and heavily built, armored, and armed. A jetpack was strapped to his back. The shiny silver metal covering every inch of him resembled a samurai's armor, and was painted with blue and red highlights. The blade-sharp eye slits in his grilled face mask glowed a malevolent scarlet.

The Slayer stared him down in return.

Thun Gogix quickly slipped out of his chair and hastily gestured at the new figure. "Destroy him, Durge!"

Without even looking, the Slayer's arm snapped out to the side and shot his EMG pistol through Thun's torso. Thun gasped and toppled to his knees. Then on his face.

Durge and the Slayer glared at each other some more in the empty, silent room.

"Nice lightsaber," Durge finally commented darkly without breaking eye contact. "Who'd you kill to get it?"

The Slayer's lips tightened together in anger. Figuring out a way to make the weapon return to his grip would be a worthwhile investment.

Durge chuckled, and it sounded like he was inside a water heater. "Between you and Grievous, it looks like I've got some serious competition now. Let's just see how well you fare without this." He waggled the humming lightsaber mockingly out to the side.

A blue rod of tungsten going just below the speed of light severed the massive arm. The Slayer put the Gauss Cannon away and immediately shot to his lightsaber just before it hit the ground. He swirled it and impaled Durge straight through the torso with it.

A second or two passed. The Slayer kept it right in him, then looked up curiously.

Durge's mask was expressionless. But he did let out a dark, maniacal laugh while looking the Slayer dead in the eye.

And the Slayer joyously felt his adrenaline kick in. Was this finally going to be a fight actually worth fighting?

Durge's fist smacked into the Slayer's helmet, and the Slayer, eager to prolong the fight, let himself and his lightsaber get thrown away. After skidding on the surface of the table, the Slayer put his lightsaber into hammerspace. He wouldn't need it.

"You skug-for-brains," Durge snarled. Thin, pink tendons attached to the fallen limb were attached to the stump in his shoulder and dragging back together. "Thought I'd just lay down and die because of that?"

Huh. So the Slayer's resolve could be imitated. Being too angry to die wasn't exclusive to him. And the regeneration ability was intriguing. How much could it extend?

"This is a Gen'Dai," VEGA explained, with a few encyclopedia pages popping up on his HUD. "He is a walking nerve cluster with no central nervous system or skeleton, and possesses incredible resilience, strength, and speed."

The Slayer would be the judge of that.

Durge's arm reattached to his shoulder with a wet snap, but the armor which the Slayer had pierced remained blown open. Durge lunged onto the table for the Slayer and fired blow after blow for him.

Durge's flurry of fists hit nothing but air as the Slayer deftly maneuvered around each one. Durge's fists, surprisingly, didn't break the speed of sound, but it was close.

"Yes, yes!" Durge exulted as he kept throwing punch after punch. "Everyone else moves in slow motion to me. You're so much better than those filth clone troopers or Jedi!"

The Slayer punched Durge in the chest. The armor cracked into splinters and Durge was thrown against the glass on the other end of the room, heavily spiderwebbing it. The Slayer sprinted at Durge, jumped off the end of the table so hard it went flying, and collided into Durge so hard the window shattered.'

Both warriors plummeted. The dark skies of Mustafar rotated in the Slayer's view as he grappled with Durge.

They eventually landed on a catwalk, heavily denting the thing and forcing them both to separate. Durge got to his feet to find the Slayer already there. Both warriors began sizing each other up in the smokey red light.

The window's shattered glass shards rained all around them, flashing light everywhere as it was refracted. It made Durge look grimly murderous in the dim redness of their surroundings.

The situation room's window had been overlooking a mineral extraction plant halfway down the mountain. The Slayer appropriately took in the backgrounds they were high above: Coolant tanks several stories high; conveyor belts miles long and zigzagging between separate plants; catwalks and buttresses keeping the refineries stable; energy shield generators; power generators; landing pads for flying droids. It was a mess of machinery and metal all around the lava harbor, and the Slayer could see that should anything go amiss, the whole thing could come apart.

The Slayer swiped his lightsaber out of hammerspace and deftly cut the beam behind his back. The glowing pieces separated, and both he and Durge plummeted again.

Durge landed first, on a collection plant's shield generator. He crouched and fired his gauntlet up as the Slayer quickly followed. It didn't hurt the Slayer, but he did allow himself to skid away from Durge.

This close to the surface, hissing steam and billowing smoke rose from the machinery and the lava harbor, obscuring the Slayer's vision and turning the air an opaque scarlet. The metal surface they were standing on was undoubtedly hot, and the burbles and slops of the red lava couldn't drown out Durge's inhuman, twisted laughter.

Out of the smoke, from Durge's arm, shot hundreds of splintered metal bits that pelted the Slayer, pinged against him, and did absolutely nothing. A roar like a jet engine followed, and a stream of flame erupted from Durge's other arm and enveloped the Slayer in a warm blanket of fire.

The Slayer responded by leaning down and punching into the shield generator as hard as he dared.

The space between them erupted in a deafening blast that sent the two of them flying in opposite directions. Durge flew into the side of a steel girder on another generator. And the Slayer landed atop a whirring conveyor belt far below.

The Slayer got to his feet on the moving surface as Durge ignited his jetpack and blasted out of the mess of girders. He sailed through the dark skies, eyes locked on the Slayer far below.

The Slayer popped out his HAR and sniped the jetpack off one of Durge's shoulders. It shattered with a satisfying dink. The other jet couldn't keep him in the air, and Durge promptly fell onto the conveyor belt as well, shaking it and making the Slayer spread his legs to steady himself.

Durge charged on his hands and feet like a mechanical gorilla. He quickly closed the distance to the Slayer and hurled a punch as he got close. The Slayer tanked it and retaliated with a punch to Durge's rib– so hard that the entire side of him was blown away with a deafening boom. Durge's armor and gelatinous, raw pink insides splattered all over the conveyor belt, and flew over the edge into the lava far below them.

Durge simply glared at the Slayer. Immediately, the raw flesh began to sizzle back and malform into a rough outline of his arm and chest. But since the armor had been torn away, Durge's rippling tissue was bare and exposed to the murderous heat.

"So," Durge snarled. "You can take and give a hit. But I was buried alive! For sixty years!" Durge lunged for the Slayer and slammed fist after fist into the Slayer's obliging helmet. "If that didn't kill me– if the Sith and the Mandalorians and the Bloodboilers of Kragis couldn't kill me– then YOU will not kill me!"

The Slayer smiled as Durge fruitlessly railed against him. Compared to the Slayer, Durge was out of his league. If only he knew… But Durge's resilience, fury, arsenal, and will was comparable to the Slayer's– even if it was a smaller version of him. The Slayer dubiously put a high honor on Durge's name and powers so far– Durge could likely survive in Hell. Perhaps even thrive there.

The problem was, Durge's fury was hot, so it used him. The Slayer's was cold, and so he used it.

The destroyed shield generator had shut down the blue outlines of the mineral collection plant. And a fountain of lava exploded underneath the girders keeping the conveyor belt in the air, turning the weakened metal into something resembling taffy. The Slayer and Durge flailed their arms to maintain balance on the collapsing structure. The lava river flowing ceaselessly beneath them finally swept away the durasteel beams, and the Slayer turned and leaped into the air, shattering the conveyor belt beneath him.

The Slayer landed on the roof of an armored tower, which was beginning to tilt at a slight but noticeable angle. The Slayer looked around the glowing red landscape. Then down over the edge.

Incredibly, Durge had managed to survive by shooting his muscles and tendons out like a tentacle, whipping around the edge of the same tower. Durge was now scaling the tower with ruthless efficiency.

The Slayer fitted micro-missiles on the HAR and fired a flurry down at Durge. They popped against both his exposed flesh and his armor, and seemed to be only as effective as sparklers.

The Slayer frowned and drew out his plasma gun as Durge reached the lip of the building. He respectfully stepped back to allow Durge to get to his feet.

As soon as his feet were firm on the tilted tower, Durge's armored left hand hurled three bolas that wrapped around the Slayer's arms and sparkled harmlessly with electricity. The Slayer annoyedly pried them off, not breaking eye contact once with Durge.

Durge fired another billowing jet of intense flame into the Slayer's frame. It blocked his view, but the Slayer knew that Durge's view would be blocked too. So the Slayer rushed, sliding beneath the flame jet, and aimed the plasma rifle right at Durge's upper torso as he came under Durge's arm.

Durge looked down at the Slayer. His eye slits gleamed bright red.

The released heat blast instantly vaporized the top half of Durge's armor, throwing burnt pieces off the building and into the lava flow beneath them.

Durge's face was now exposed– it was fanged, contorted in fury. Durge roared, and it drowned out the squeal of the tilting tower, or the thunder of the lava bombs exploding all around them. The monster wrapped one tentacle arm around the Slayer's arm, holding him in place.

Now in close quarters, the Slayer instantly broke free of Durge's arm, put the plasma gun away, and procured the Beavertooth Painsaw, whirring and buzzing. It plunged deep into Durge's stomach, chopping and cutting deep into Durge's muscles. The Slayer wanted this to hurt.

"You don't get it, fool," Durge growled, wrapping his other tentacle arm around the Slayer's neck. The chainsaw instantly started to freeze up and falter as it encountered denser tendons and muscle that wrapped around the frame.

The Slayer couldn't help but watch with some amazement as the Gen'Dai's body flexed around the chainsaw with immense strength. Spewing blood and roaring with pain, Durge's entire body clenched on the saw.

The chainsaw broke into pieces. The remnants were absorbed into Durge's body.

Now that was something that made the Slayer genuinely angry.

Durge laughed darkly and sucker-punched the Slayer's helmet. It did absolutely nothing.

The Slayer retaliated by reaching up and clenching both sides of Durge's face. With two thumbs buried in Durge's eyes, the Slayer clenched his fists.

It was like squishing ground beef, bundling between his fingers. The hunter had no bones to speak of.

The tower's final support foundations gave way, and the thing toppled over horizontally into the smoking lava river. The Slayer and Durge had been subconsciously angling their feet so they had been at the right angle to stand once it had happened, and so both were on the curved side of the tower as it slowly began to sink.

Durge's flesh quickly began to reform under the Slayer's fists, and the Slayer withdrew them. He had been trying to prolong the fight for as long as he could, but the pantomime was over now. The Slayer reached down and scooped up some molten rock that had gotten onto the tower.

Durge was gurgling and snarling as he bubbled back to a resemblance of his normal form. It quickly stopped when the Slayer forced a handful of lava into Durge's torso.

The lava made contact with the chainsaw fuel absorbed into Durge's body.

Durge exploded once again, steaming and smoking as he relentlessly but slowly regenerated his upper half. But the Slayer gave him no time to get back in shape. He kicked Durge off the tower and watched him sink into the deep red molten river.

The pieces of flesh and metal that remained of Durge thrashed about in the river, already ignited and shooting flame into the smokey sky. Then they sank beneath the bursting surface.

Much like the tower the Slayer was stuck on. Lava lapped at the Slayer's feet, then his shins, and finally, the tower rested on the bottom of the lava riverbed.

The filters in his helmet were working just fine. So why did the Slayer smell something… off?

The Slayer sloshed around in the lava, turning in every direction. All of a sudden, mists of smoke and toxic fumes rose from the lava. Pungent emissions hissed from all around him. His vision was blocked, and no matter how much he smeared his helmet, he could not wipe it away. He couldn't see.

Then shapes emerged from the fog of fumes. They grew firmer, less opaque. Finally, the silhouette faded away. A tall woman with chocolate hair, smiling and hoisting a giggling son in her arms.

The Slayer suddenly felt short of breath. He couldn't move. He knew her face. Knew his son's.

"Flynn!" Chloe cried once she spotted him. She curled an arm. "Come on, you'll be late. Hunter's having a friend over in the park. Let's make the most of our time while you're on shore leave, huh?"

"Daddy!" Hunter exclaimed with that broad smile, reaching for him.

The Doomslayer's lips pressed together with hatred, concealing pain. They were dead. A long, long time ago. He couldn't move, couldn't take his eyes off his wife and son.

"Hey, come on. What's the matter?" Chloe wondered sincerely. "Something bothering you?"

She was so understanding! So willing to listen! And she even had that little white daisy hairpin she always loved. Hunter was still as small as ever, still a bundle of joy in his mother's arms. And it would be the biggest he would ever get.

Perhaps it was his family. Maybe it was just the fumes. But something welled up in the Slayer's eyes.

A brown rabbit hopped around from under Chloe's foot, and she made a noise of surprise, bent down, and picked her up too.

"Daisy," Hunter importantly said, and patted the rabbit's long ears.

The Slayer's face was contorted in fury. And the notion that his own family was seeing his anger, that his family was the catalyst, just made him even more angry.

No, it wasn't his family. It was that they had died. That he wasn't there when they needed him. And that it still lingered within him for far longer than it should– if families should ever fade away, that is.

Either this was a malevolent spirit trying to disguise as what he loved, or the toxic fumes made him see things he subconsciously had hidden within him. Flynn wasn't sure which was worse.

Deep, chaotic, audibly warped music subconsciously vibrated in his mind. A deep growl built up in his throat. Chloe and Hunter looked visibly taken aback. The shocking realism for it all only accelerated the Slayer's fury.

And the Doomslayer bellowed.

The force of it dissolved the vision. And the foggy fumes. They blew away the fog, and even caused a wake in the lava river along his voice's trajectory. Suddenly the Slayer found himself back on a sinking piece of debris in a lava river, with a basalt mountain stretching far above him.

The Slayer stopped his earth-shattering roar and glanced back up at the collection plant. And he bent his knees and rocketed off, causing the tower beneath him to burst into pieces.

The Slayer hurled through the air in a graceful arc before falling and landing on a three-story cooling tank. He skidded to a halt on the curved surface, then looked way down at the devastation in the lava river.

That river was cursed. Like the Styx. Psychological torture was not common in Hell aside from its awful environment, so when something did hit him hard in the mind, it was not able to get a good read on the Slayer. Not like he had just faced now. The Slayer always managed to pull through. He had never once yielded to Hell's power. But he far preferred the physical challenge to the mental one.

Chloe. Hunter. His little football graphic T-shirts, her pearl necklace. Daisy's long, slender brown ears, flattened by a little hand.

The Slayer roared again at the uncaring lava river, his eyes boiling and his fist tight enough to crush diamond. How dare it! How dare the demons! The disgusting, filthy monsters all deserved to die. Suffer. Bleed, and cry.

Including Durge. The Slayer glared at the spot where Durge's remains had fallen in.

Not even Durge's regeneration could handle being completely incinerated. But there were probably bits and pieces of Durge which had been flung out from his punches that had remained. The Slayer wasn't entirely sure if those could regenerate into the full monster again. But it would take too long to check the machinery for the little pieces. And besides, if Durge did get back, the Slayer was looking forward to his retaliation. Durge couldn't hurt him, but it still would be nice to see something unique. and the Slayer wanted to make him explode again.

The Slayer rotated, taking in his view. The rest of the refinery's machinery was beginning to sag too. But it was none of the Slayer's concern. His problem was now parkouring up to the Black Sun base and establishing control over it.

Luckily, it was a problem he was more than willing to solve.

The route back up to the shattered window ledge was a mix of jumping, climbing, swinging, and scaling through the maze of machinery, catwalks, and beams. It was a pity, really. It was all going to sink into the lava, and the Slayer had wanted to have a long, drawn-out, epic fight among more of the machinery. But plans never survive first contact with the enemy.

Once he had gotten back to the basalt mountain, the Slayer punched a deep hole in the rock wall with his fist, then hoisted himself up and punched another hole.

The process repeated until the Slayer once more was at the window ledge. He pulled himself up and rolled to his feet amid the shattered glass panels and dead bodies.

Oddly enough, the bits of gore from Durge's arm had disappeared from the floor.

The Slayer trudged deeper into the room, stomped on Thun Gogix's body so hard it shattered like an egg, and stalked for the central computer terminal way against the side wall, a wet squish accompanying every other step.

Once VEGA had hacked the computers, several records began to show up on his HUD, quickly cycling into new ones.

"I am currently integrating the Hutt's funds you have access to with the Black Sun's. Rather than making a new account and transferring the credits from both organizations, I simply added you as a new transactor and locked everyone else out. Initiating… Integration successful. All of the Black Sun's wealth is now yours, along with the Hutt's. You could realistically be the richest sentient in the galaxy at the moment."

Well, that solved the money problem. Plus, now that the wealth wasn't trickling down from the top anymore, most of the people in the syndicates would simply leave. They might start up their own organizations soon, or try to fill the void, but that was what the Slayer was for.

What to do, now that he was a multimillionaire? Trillionaire? Perhaps order some Federation starships and armament. Wouldn't want to leave his own ship hanging alone.

"Commission placed," VEGA informed him, and a small chunk of his account was depleted before his bulging, surprised eyes. "The battleships were already under construction, and seven will be delivered as soon as possible."

A list of names popped up on the order receipt, and the Slayer squinted at it. The Slayer's eyes ran over the seven names, and, after digesting that he was going to now own a good sized fleet of battleships, he nodded approvingly at each name of his future ships.

Eternal

Dark Age

Night Sentinel

Hellwalker

Predator

Incorruptible

Daisy

The Slayer's eyebrows furrowed, however, at the last name. His fist clenched. In fury or anguish. He didn't exactly know. He knew that VEGA was just trying to be sentimental, but… what if the ship got destroyed?

"Another file from their records is intriguing," VEGA informed him before that line of thought got too far. Pictures of another base on Mustafar popped up on his HUD. "A Separatist base from the Techno Union is located elsewhere on the planet. It mines minerals from the lava and houses a droid factory within its bowels. Taking the base would give you a heavily armed fortress on this planet, the resources from its mines, and a permanent supply of battle droids."

Tempting. The Slayer thought about it for a minute. It didn't take long to come to a conclusion. He had time to swing by and… pay them a visit.

"In the meantime, I have activated the automated defense mechanisms in the base, which has saved you the trouble of going floor by floor flushing the resistance out. I have also dispatched a Federation carrier and its battle droids to strip this place of supplies. We can leave the system whenever you decide your work here is done."

The Slayer smiled. VEGA was just a computer program, but he was helpful and benevolent. And multitalented. He couldn't do this without him.

"It is my honor to help the Hellwalker however I can," VEGA humbly acknowledged in his ear.

The Slayer turned back to Thun Gogix's stamped and bloody corpse. He strode over, knelt beside him, and fished out his wallet and credentials. Then he kicked the corpse onto his back and strode out into the eerily empty hallways.

His fault, the Slayer fumed at the corpse's memory as he walked. His fault, for setting up shop in Mustafar. For taking advantage of the innocent. Hell attracted the Hellish.

And where the Hellish were assembled, the Slayer was too.