Our nearly unspoken plan was simple: force our way through the apartment to get to the penthouse, kill every infected in the way, enter the penthouse, pull the demon out of the husk of the Medeiros girl, and then leave before the authorities came in, after which I would make up an story about an alien parasite that could turn people into mindless puppets, with their major organs active but their brains entirely dead because I neither could nor wanted to hide the massacre from the public.
The fact some of the infected didn't remain human helped.
As for the demon itself, you're probably wondering why didn't I say that I would squash it like a bug, or better yet, give it to Constantine. Don't misunderstand me, I WOULD kill it... but not before cutting it up and finish Albelda's work.
The curate's goal of making a vaccine against demonic possession was noble, and his idea to accomplish it made sense from a scientific point of view... but sadly, he made the mistake of trying to accomplish his task with a purely scientific method, and he had done his research not only in the must inhuman manner possible, but also in a completely unsafe environment. Because of that, more than fifty people had been turned into mindless, soulless monsters.
A perfectly sealed dissection table on Mars, inside a castle from which nothing could get out without my express permission, and which in turn was surrounded by an array of defenses that could destroy a one-inch wide target several miles away, and all under the control of a man who have demonstrated a strength and durability level close to Superman's, though? A safer environment couldn't be found, at least in this cluster of the Orion Arm.
Having said that, let's go back to mine and Constantine's cleansing of the apartment building.
Calling the infected 'zombies' would be a compliment to zombies everywhere, both undead and living ones. They were nearly as tough and just as relentless as the former, but had the speed, intelligence, capacity to use weapons and unrelenting rage of the latter, to the point they reminded me of the armed zombies from DOOM.
All that said, however, they were up against me and Constantine, so their strengths meant nothing against us. Constantine chucked fireballs left and right, when he wasn't just throwing them over the railing down below (while it was kind of an stupid move on the lower floors given how resilient they were, it stopped being so as we went our way up), and I, well, I was Doom Slayer.
"How many floors are left?!" Constantine shouted as he uppercutted an old woman before burning her head, and then snapping her neck. "I'm getting tired of these daft bastards!"
"Six." I replied as I blew apart a balding gentleman. By then we had already killed little more than their total number without as much as tiring. Why did the demon keep sending his puppets against us. "And it's your fault that some come from behind us."
Constantine screamed. "Sod of, you wanker!" He cursed at me, though he was smirking as he did so.
What we didn't know at that moment was that, because of the hivemined the infected shared with the original demon, the creature could see us as we tore our way through his thralls.
It would be the first local demon to learn firsthand what it feels to feel fear.
Fear of John Constantine.
Fear of me.
..........
Several floors above the two, hidden within the darkness of the warped penthouse of the building, the source of the evil that had happened on the place, a disgusting creature shaped like a worm sent its army, and saw, felt firsthand how good they were at fighting, at killing.
For the first time since it had come to the corporeal world, the Worm was afraid. Not wary of the duo's prowess, not furious that its extensions were practically worhtless, not concerned that they were actually getting closer and closer to it, but outright afraid of the unimaginable turn of events that was happening after a long night spreading terror across the building.
It already had an idea of what the despised Constantine would do to it if he reached its host, heard of those demons the bastard had outgambitted and scammed.
However, between Constantine and the soldier, it was the latter who scared the Worm the most, and not just because of the brutal way he dispatched the infected.
There was something about him, At first glance it looked like some kind of power, one that came from his soul, and it wasn't magic. However, even with the true sight that it shared with its hellish kind, it still couldn't make head or tails of what kind of energy was he emanating, only that it was as supernatural at it (the Worm) was.
Which was why the Worm was doing its damnest to kill him, rather than infect him as he had planned with Constantine: the wizard's magic was tied to his soul, a soul that would surely spent eternity in excruciating torture, and the Worm was certain that the soldier's strength came from his. Therefore, the moment tainted blood touched his, he'd become nothing more than another living meat puppet under his will, although a particularly big, strong one.
'Maybe strong enough', it realized, 'to force its way out of the quarantine!'
The Worm changed its mind: he would try everything to infect them. With the brute's strength compensating for their reduced numbers, the infected would barrel through the containment tarp and attack any mortal they could get their hands on; its consciousness would spread across Barcelona too fast for either the Spanish armed forces or the Church to respond.
Soon, it would have an army worthy of the name.
And then it would be able to find her. It was, after all, the whole reason he possessed the Medeiros girl.
Still, it didn't change the fact the brute was an enigma to i.
'Who are you?', the Worm thought as it sent down its first, hastily made contingency to stop the intruders: several infected children. It knew by experience that most mortals balked at the idea of hurting children, even those not of their blood. Even that bastard englishman would no doubt stop long enough to let the soulless creatures infect them. 'It matters not. Soon, you will nothing more than a puppet'
It would get a very, very nasty surprise.
..........
As we kept ascending, resistance became slightly stiffer: the infected that attacked us directly carried weapons (mostly knives, cleavers, and anything they could get their hands on, although a couple carried hunting shotguns, as I stated previously), those who didn't threw stuff at us from the upper floors, tried to ambush us by hiding on rooms... It was all for naught, but it did prove that the demon was not stupid. I also noticed that the infected began focusing more on me, specifically my unarmored elbows, and given their gaping mouths, I quickly deduced why.
It would have been useless. Aside from the fact I was completely inmune to the tained blood, my skin was simply too tough. After all, King Shark, a demigod, had bit me there and he didn't even get through my skin it despite his bite being strong enough to cut a man in half.
Sadly, letting them bite me and receive wouldn't have recovered their souls, it just doesn't work that way.
As we fought, an infected cop, one of the very few in possession of a gun, in this case with a pistol, ran up at me firing its weapon, every shot hitting me right in the helmet.
The moment it came close enough, I cut it in half, then grabbed its weapon and whatever clips it had left and threw them at Constantine.
"I didn't need a gun, but thanks anyway!" He said before blasting away at the infected. His shooting skills were average at best, but not once he shot at me, so and never missed the infected. Being a globe-travelling Occult Detective must have had its perks.
That said, between him and me, he had by far the smaller killcount.
An infected I tore apart. Another I ripped in half. Another yet I decapitated with a backhand. A fourth I grabbed and then threw to a fifth with enough force to make them splatter against the wall. And so on, and so on, I pretty much exterminated any infected that got too close to me.
I focused on killing them, because that way I wouldn't focus on the fact that an entire apartment block worth of people, children included, had been condemned to Hell for eternity. Sure, this wasn't DOOM's Hell where everyone not a demon ended up tortured and harvested, but it was still a place of eternal torture and dispair.
And then, just when we were only three floors from the demon's hiding spot, I heard Constantine shout and point at something waiting for us in front of the stairs.
It was a group of children. Filthy, red-eyed children who were clearly not normal anymore, but children nonetheless. There were four of them, all under the age of ten, with a small girl who couldn't have been much older than five at the head of the group.
Their presence stopped us from our rampage.
"Bloody hell..." I heard John mutter in a mix of shock and anger. Given his career, he must have seen something like this before.
I just stared at the 'children'. On the one hand, well, they looked like scared boys and girls crying out of sheer terror, but on the other I knew they just weren't human, not anymore.
That fact made me even angrier. Not only did that freak take the souls of the innocent to an eternity of pain and terror, it also had the gall to use their bodies like that, to entice people into lowering their guard.
Too bad for it, its little trick wouldn't work on us.
And made me angrier.
The lead infected stepped forwards to me.
"Please, mister." It said in spanish, its voice human in tone unlike the first infected's. ", my mommy turned into a-"
I didn't let it finish: the moment it opened its mouth, I grabbed it by the head and then, without hesitation, gave it the cleanest death I had performed since arriving here: snapping its neck.
The other infected, realizing they couldn't fool us, screeched and charged at me.
Needless to say, they didn't do much before I reenacted what I did to the girl.
..........
Had it had an actual mouth, the Worm (and not just its current host) would have cried in horror... and terror.
The soldier killed the children.
Nay, it diddn't just kill them: it butchered them without as much as a second thought, grabbing their little heads and twisting them with stupid ease, one by one! Like the lion amidst the sheep!
At that moment, hundreds of questions appeared on the Worm's mind.
What hero could ignore the instinct to save infants and then massacre them?
Would his last resort stop the beast and the loathsome magician?
What could it do against such a relentless monster, a beast that might as well sent by Heaven itself with such unrelenting power and will of iron, hellbent on killing it?!
'What are you?!' The Worm screamed as the last puppet died, severing the connection with that floor.
..........
I stood there, motionless, over the corpses of the former humans I had killed. Even though their deaths had been clean and quick, I hadn't even put them out of their misery, since their souls hadn't been trapped there, but in Hell, one I had no knowledge of beyond the basics.
"Slayer..." I heart Constantine say. "You okay, big boy?"
I may have said several times before that the Occult Detective would end up making me contemplate shove a box of cigarettes down his throat, but that would be much later.
I didn't bother to respond, thinking as I was of what I just did. True, they had long ceased to be boys and girls, and from a certain point of view my actions had been necessary, since they could have slipped us and somehow escaped outside... but it didn't change the fact I killed the soulless, hivemind-controlled bodies of children.
No wonder all the demons you kill in DOOM are all adults, and clearly undead.
Again, I stood there, contemplating the bodies.
And then I thought of the demon that took their souls and used their bodies. Everything it had done only made me add more and more horrible experiments to inflict upon it before killing it. Again, though, we had to reach it first.
"Remember, those things weren't human anymore, just soulless husks-" He began to say, possibly trying to comfort me, before I stopped him.
"I'm alright." I replied. I wasn't exactly lying." We must stop it, before more suffer their fate."
Constantine merely nodded.
Finally, after however many minutes and killing several more infected, we reached the last floor before the penthouse where the demon hid, and the last four infected that remained. These, however, could not longer be considered merely infected humans: they had grown taller and bulkier, their nails had been pushed out by claws, and their teeth had sharpened into fangs. It seemed that the infection was also capable of mutating those it afflicted after a time. To be honest, this reminded me of the film.
Unfortunately for them, their mutations would still not be enough to fight us. They were valuable enough for me to merely break one's neck, though, as proof of the 'alien parasitic infection' cover-up.
"That bastard is waiting for us behind that door." Constantine said as he kicked a dead pseudo-demon. "I had planned to just kill it, tell the Vat, and be done with it. You?"
"Extract it if possible, take it back to the Fortress to finish Albelda's work by torturing it until it dies, tell the public a version of the event to not cause panic across the planet, and then give the vaccine to the Vatican... alongside a recording of this. I might require your expertise for the experiments."
Constantine, rather than ponder on my response, merely nodded. "Usually I would ask for some more dosh for working extra, but I consider this part of the Vatican's job. Besides, that wanker has hit a nerve."
We stood in front of the dusty door, waiting if the demon came out itself. After a minute of nothing happening, and then the mandatory count to five, I kicked down the door and barged inside the room with Constantine in tow, guns raised and spells prepared.
And then, as we looked around the darkened room, something slammed into me.
..........The moment they came inside, John heard an unholy screech coming from around them in the dark, followed by something charging at Doom Slayer and slamming into him with enough force to shove him out of the room. When he got a got look at it, John's eyes narrowed in recognition... and disgust.
It had to be the portugese girl the Vatican had told him about... but months of being possessed had turned her into an emaciated shadow of what she once had been: at least seven feet tall, impossibly thing, a grey skin covered in pustules, and a jaw that was simply too damn big for her head.
And then it spoke, the true voice of the freak that had started the madness.
"I'll kill you, monster!" It screeched at Doom Slayer as they wrestled on the ground.
'You couldn't have said something more ironic, couldn't you, slag?' John thought. The guy had proved himself to be practically impervious to damage, but in the not-so remote possibility that he was like Superman, weak to magic or something similar (King Shark didn't exactly count), he didn't want to find out if he was able or not to shrug having a fireball thrown at him by an ally... or if he did, still getting pissed because Constantine threw fire at him like a certain plant-man. Not again.
However, that didn't mean he couldn't try to exorcise the demon inside, although given the situation he didn't dare getting close to the two brawlers.
"Slayer, let her go! I wanna try and exorcise it!"
The Doom Slayer didn't respond, busy as he was fighting with the freak. Either he didn't want to kill her, which he seriously doubted given what the other infected had been like... or the demon had made her that strong. He liked neither possibility.
That said, he did hear him, because he grabbed the monster by the neck and raised it above his head. John chanted the encantation of the spell that would kick the demon out of the body (usually he would have sent it back to Hell, but as stated before the situation didn't allow him) so that the Doom Slayer could capture it with either his stupid strength or his bullshit tech, and then chucked the magic sphere at the thing, impacting and illuminating the entire room for the briefest moment, although not enough for John to discern his surroundings.
Nothing happened. The bitch screamed like a banshee and flopped on the soldier's grasp for a couple of seconds before trying once more to rip the Doom Slayer's faceplate off. It seemed that the 'hiding inside human body' part it screeched about before was literal, because otherwise it would still be out of the girl.
Only one option left, then, if the Doom Slayer wanted to grind it up for the vaccine..
"Rip it out of her belly!" He yelled at the soldier. The girl herself was simply no longer there, it was just a meat puppet. "Trust me, that's where I would hide if I was a tapeworm!"
However, before the Doom Slayer could to so, the possessed Medeiros, with a strength that a body that small simply couldn't have, grabbed the man's left arm and, after raising him above her head, slammed him several times against the floor, raising a cloud of dust that impaired John's vision even more, and with such strength the entire room shook from the force of the strikes.
And then, when the Slayer turned the tables and grabbed her by the head to do the same, and before he could rip the demon out of her living guts, the floor below them gave up.
Both combatants fell down the broken tiles and onto the depths of the building, breaking floors as they plummeted to ground level, leaving an astounded John behind.
"Slayer!" He screamed down the hole, receiving a roar of pain as response, followed by the sounds of something tough hitting flesh and bone. John gave a little sigh of relief: he knew the future soldier could handle the freak, but still, even the meanest sods of London's slums could get worried once in a while.
In another occasion John would have immediatly rushed down the stairs to help his newfound ally, but now that he was in the room that Albelda had been residing in for an unknown amount of time to experiment, he decided to take a look around, see if there was something of interest for him, and discover what exactly did just happen before they got there. Who knows, maybe the curate hid a holy manuscript up there.
Or money. He was dead, it wasn't like his corpse would miss a million pesetas, no?
Muttering the enchantation of an light spell, John raised his hand and illuminating the room.
Looking around the place, what John saw made him frown and curse outloud.
Photos, spanish and portuguese newspaper, files about tests and other paraphernalia about the Medeiros girl, alongside medical equipment and other such things John didn't want to know about. Apparently the Vatican didn't bother to tell him that the possession hadn't been covered, nevermind the fact he simply forgot to ask more than the absolutely necessary (or at least what he believed was the absolutely necessary).
However, it wasn't this discovery what made him freeze.
There, in the floor of the penthouse, and incidentally mere yards away from the hole, laid two bodies, both of them clearly dead. One was of a young man, a cameraman by the fact he had one laying near his head, and the other was... an exact copy of the possessed girl that was currently fighting for her 'life' several floors down below?
"The fuck is happening here?" He muttered to himself as he approached them for an improptu inspection. Frowning, he saw that the man, a brunette barely out of his thirties, had been killed with his eyes open in terror, with several parts of his bocy smashed by something blunt, which he guessed had been a hammer of some sort; on the other hand, his otherwise normal appearance and lack of excessive blood meant he had died human, and therefore his sould was in a better place.
With a sigh, John closed the poor lad's eyes. At the very least this nameless sod was actually resting in peace (that, or passing through the trials of Purgatory to get there), instead of being sent straight to Hell like the others had been.
One out of seventy, children included.
After that John turned to inspect the other corpse. A quick scanning spell confirmed that this one was indeed the Medeiros girl, the real deal, which by extension meant whoever the Slayer was fighting merely looked like her because of the demon.
So, the demon had jumped hosts and turned his new vehicle into an exact copy of the Medeiros girl. For what, he didn't know. Maybe it was fond of demaciated women?
Thinking that maybe it had the key to everything that happened, and guessing that Slayer wouldn't need him for a short while, John grabbed the camera to see what it had recorded. Luckily for him, the thing still had enough juice for fifteen minutes.
What John watched made him: firefighters, cops and news crew get in, infected elder attacks and infects cop and firefighter, the coppers cordon off the area, guy from the MH comes and tells them about the outbreak and a supposedly rabid dog that they tracked there, the little girl that the Doom Slayer killed turns out to be infected, everyone sans the news crew turns into a zombie, the two get to the penthouse... and meet the Medeiros girl, or, rather, the demon inside her, who then beats the guy to death with a hammer.
The recording ended with the girl being dragged into the darkness, screaming... and then having the demon (a worm-like freak of nature) shoved down her throat.
John, morose but otherwise satisfied, turned off the camera.
"Shit seemed like a goddamn horror movie." He mused. And all of that had happened in less than three hours. Three bloody hours to infect an entire building the slow way, and it hadn't gotten worse because they got the dog in time. If the thing got out of the building and started puking blood at everything it saw... And that still didn't say why did it turn that girl into an exact copy of the Medeiros girl.
And, most important of all, who was the 'her' the demon spoke about, the one it was supposed to find? Another demon like it? An important condemned soul that had managed to get out of Hell? Someone who had pissed off a demon prince? All he knew
They needed the parasite alive, at least for the moment.
John sighed as he stood up. "Hope the big guy has already ripped that damn thing out."
And then, just as he was about to run out of the room up with camera in hand so that the Vatican could see firsthand the clusterfuk, he heard the freak roar from below, and then felt the entire building shake in a way he didn't like.
As in, half of the goddamned facade chose that exact moment to fall down, taking the damn tarp down with it! The entire damn place was falling apart! Rather than ponder just how the hell didn't he notice it before, or why hadn't the entire building fallen when the facade did, John chose to leg it before it collapsed with him still inside, but not without sending the camera to the House of Mystery to later send its recording to the Vatican.
And THEN he did run like Hell.
"Fuck, bugger, shit..." He screamed every swear of the english language he knew as he rushed down the stairs, the apartment block falling apart around and behind him. "This can't get worse, can it?!" His legendary luck chose that moment to make the snipers outside to blast at the uncovered building when they saw John running down the stairs, their shots landing dangerously close to him. "Yes, yes it can!" He sped up, dodging falling rubble and jumping over holes as he went.
When he finally decided to just jump to the ground floor and rush through the door, the building finally came down on itself, releasing a ginormous cloud of dust that covered the entire street, causing the crowd around the building to run away, and burying the infected's bodies.
As for John?
After getting up from the asphalt he had fell on, and cursing Doom Slayer, God and several other deities for nearly getting him crushed or shot, he began dusting himself.
"Bloody space marine could have tried and keep it tight and let me get down the fucking stairs, but nooo, he had to bring the entire damn building down with me still inside! And the damn coppers thought I was a goddamn zombie! Fuck!" He had been in life-threatening situations before, but this was the first one that didn't (fully) involve the supernatural; the closest had been that mafia chase back in Monaco.
All that said, John was fine and dandy.
But then, he remembered that Doom Slayer had been fighting the demon. Sighing yet again, John delved into the cloud. He pretty much doubted that Doom Slayer needed his aid, but someone had to make sure the guy didn't accidentally kill someone that didn't deserve it.
'Where are you, you big green bastard?' He thought as he looked around and moved through the cloud of dust, trying to discern either the huge frame of his temporary compadre or the outright eldritch silhouette of the demon's host, and pushing out anyone he bumped into to both keep them safe and to not bump into them again.
And what does he see when he finally meets up with the big greeb dobber, and the cloud finally dispersed, granting John full vision? The Doom Slayer surrounded on all sides by GEO troopers, all of them aiming their guns at the soldier, their officer in charge shouting at him to get down to the ground, something with which he obviously didn't comply. Behind the line of troopers, a dirtied woman was screaming hysterically about how it was the Doom Slayer's fault.
Too bad for her that John had seen the recording, and knew what she actually was.
The demon-inhabited girl either didn't notice or didn't care that John was there. "He killed them all!" It screamed in spanish as it pointed at Doom Slayer; as a matter of fact, that was the only thing it said, probably to make the 'hysterical, traumatized girl' guise more effective.
John snarled when it finally dawned on his mind: the damned freak was trying to put the blame on the Doom Slayer, and these people were daft enough to buy it outright, rather than, say, ask more of what happened in there, or, more importantly, how the fuck was 'she' still alive after the building fell apart!
He also wondered why was it still alive despite going against the Doom Slayer, but he didn't ponder on that for long.
Unfortunately for it, it was within casting range of the Occult Detective, and he had the perfect spell for the occasion: transmogrify, the spell he used when his bank account was too low and his hatred for pigeons reached its peak; best of all, the transmogrified didn't change back to their original form if they died, so there would be no stupid misunderstandings when they killed it.
He did feel sorry for the lass, but if the creature controlling her body. Besides, he morosely thought, it's not like she could be saved anyway.
"Get away from her, she's not human!" He screamed in spanish before launching the ball, hoping that the GEO would fall for it.
The moment the sphere of magic hit the crying girl, he. Five seconds later, what had been an otherwise pretty lass was now what could be best described as the unholy love child of a troll and a dog. The freak, seeing that its ruse had been blown, roared in rage, slammed the Doom Slayer back into the destroyed building with a swip of its arms, and began to rip the GEO closest to it apart, with most of them too shocked too react fast enough as it tore through them; the few that weren't fired everything they had at it, but their weapons had no effect.
Seeing the massacre taking place in front of him, John grimaced: maybe revealing its true self by accidentally making it stronger hadn't been the best idea. If it decided to just puke blood at everything it saw...
Fortunately, and before the thing thought of doing exactly that, the demon's rampage was stopped by the Doom Slayer, who grabbed it by the head and...
Honestly, John didn't really know what the Doom Slayer would do now that he didn't have to restrain himself. Smash it to a bloody pulp and retrieve the parasite from said pulp? Rip it apart with his bare hands? Blow it apart with his shotgun? Maybe pull that supposed chainsaw John heard about to use?
None of the listed: he merely shoved his hand inside its stomach, making it scream in pure agony, and then pulled its guts out, screeching maggot included, as John himself had told him to do minutes prior. Then, before the screaming monster fell, some kind of tube came from the back of the Slayer's armor and spat flames at the thing, roasting it until it turned into a burning mush.
"Holy shit..." John muttered.
And then it him. After however many minutes fighting alongside the brute, now he realized something: bigass guy from the future, bigass guns, uses a chainsaw, fights demons without fear of them... Why did he tick all the marks of a Space Marine? As in, the ones from the goddamned Warhammer 40K of all things?
To be honest that was beside the point at the moment, but still, John couldn't help but wonder about the coincidence.
The detective didn't have time to ponder about this coincidence, bcause as the remains of the transformed woman broke apart, the Doom Slayer turned to face the surviving GEO, raising the wriggling worm in the air.
"This creature" the Doom Slayer began to say, raising his voice so everyone could hear him. ", is an alien parasite from beyond our solar system that landed on Earth. It can take control of living bodies via virical infection, destroying the minds of those infected. This monster from above has killed seventy men, women and children."
The news: they reacted with the expected horror of what happened, terror about the possibility of more 'aliens' coming, anger that the evil-slaying hero hadn't killed it yet, relief that everything had ended well (relatively speaking), sorrow that people had died anyway... The typical really, only on a much larger scale, and public. At least he didn't say it was a demon.
So, Slayer spoke with the authorities about what happened, told them to search for the bodies of the infected and burn them, and some other things John simple didn't care about, with the detective near him all the time. He didn't like people in general, but having something of good PR could help him in the future.
However, when Doom Slayer called up his now iconic portal to leave the scene, instead of doing so outright, he stood in front of the blue space-time hole and stared silently at John.
John understood what the soldier was silently saying. "You want me to come with you?" Seeing him nod, he continued. "Need help with the maggot, right? Try to know what it knows, I mean."
Again, the Doom Slayer nodded, before turning around and going through the portal.
Sighing and shrugging to no one in particular, and wanting to know if he could actually create a vaccine from the worm with his help, John walked after Doom Slayer, wondering if he could smoke in that Castle Grayskull of his.
..........
So, how was the chapter and end of the Hellblazer arc? Too narrative heavy? For the public's strangely understanding attitude, don't worry, Doom Slayer and Constantine coming out of a building and saying that seventy people died will have consequences that he'll have to address and explain the parasite.
As for John's sudden cavalier attitude in the end, this wasn't his first rodeo, only the biggest: he's been desensitized to a point due to these things.
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Stupid the Ork
Sep 22, 2021
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Stupid the Ork
Never enuff Dakka
Sep 27, 2021
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#411
The news of a barely-stopped alien assimilation plot stopped by the Doom Slayer reached everyone on the planet.
Some called us murderers for what we had done, others called those shortsighted morons for not seeing the bigger picture, others yet looked up at the stars with dread of more 'alien' parasites landing, with several governments starting projects to defend their countries from possible body-snatchers. The rest merely wondered about the possibility of it having landed on Earth after I came. My actions on the building also worsened Bruce's opinion on me, but at that moment I didn't know, nor would have cared if I did, because I was too busy fulfilling my self-imposed tasks alongside Constantine.
First, we went straight to the Vatican and gave the recording of the camera to their exorcists' division, so that they knew what exactly happened, and that one of them nearly cause Judgement Day to come much closer than it should had.
Even John, who loathed the Church with a passion for obvious reasons, was not okay with their cries of horror as they saw the madness Albelda unleashed, then sorrow when they realized seventy innocent had been vanquished to the River Styx because of one of their own wanted to create something that simply could not be made.
And then their pain turned to shock, confusion, and wonder when I told them that I would finish what Albelda started, but with the proper procedure and the adequate equipment... and mistrust when I said Constantine would help me on the task.
His response on the matter?
"Well I don't like you or the Guys Above either, but hey, I'm all on stopping Hell from taking the easy way for free souls." That, and an obscene gesture you all might know.
After that, it was time for the two of us to work on the Worm, starting by taking blood samples from it and experimenting on them, and then scalating. Even with the Fortress' technology and Constantine's arcane knowledge, it took us a while to extract the enzyme from the creature and then purify and modify the extracts with magic.
Then again, part of the reason it took us some time was sheer, pure spite against it and its kind.
Its screams could have been music to my ears, but I was too busy extracting everything to care for that. Didn't help that during all that time, Constantine didn't stop pestering me about: how did I put my guns away, why did I have a picture of me holding a rabbit and, most important of all, what was the strange energy my body was bloated with.
Knowing that he wouldn't be satisfied by anything but the truth, I did what I had refused to do until then: tell him the truth about me (as Doom Slayer of course).
If you believe that it was stupid and hasty decision, understand that this is John Constantine we're talking about, a detective who when he puts effort into it doesn't even need access to his 'particular skills' to found out stuff, and he had already become suspicious about my fake background, since according to him it was the first time technology could interact with demons. Well, that and finding out that he could not summon demons to the Fortress.
That said, I didn't reveal him ALL the truth, only the entirety of DOOM 2016... and a tweaked DOOM II.
Namely, the demons no longer being able to get out of Hell, this time because I decided that enough was enough.
"So, you're telling me you're from another dimension with yet another Hell, and that you stopped them invading Earth six bloody times, got trapped in Hell for however long, got found by an order of Hell-fighting knights, became their leader, got coffined into a machine that made you into a demigod..." He began to list.
"Yes."
"Then got betrayed by some priests, killed those priests as payback, got entombed alive because Hell couldn't kill you, then the corporation that started everything retrieved your ass, and after stopping yet another invasion AND wrecking Hell so badly you actually destroyed it, got sent here alongside this very place by the Hayden bloke." He listed in a single breath, an amazing feat given his habit. "Did I get everything right?"
VEGA was the one who replied. "Indeed you are, Mr. Constantine."
Constantine looked up at the ceiling. "Oh, right, I forgot about the robot."
You'd expect him to go on a tirade, but instead he raised his arms and gestured at the stone walls around us. "Just the damn facts there's a keep on Mars, that your technology actually worked on a demon, should be enough proof for anyone, mate. That, and the fact you aren't the first bloke from another dimension I've met. That reminds me, where do your bad guys go when they die now that your Hell is a mass graveyard?"
"Don't give a damn about that."
In resume, saying that he took the revelation in stride would be severely understating it. The fact I became the destroyer of my dimension's Hell helped. He did wonder why hadn't the local Heaven and Hell done anything regarding me, but he chalked it up to them being Heaven and Hell.
It wouldn't stay that way, but at that moment we didn't know.
All that said, it didn't stop him from being a... what was the word he also used from time to time? Oh, yes, a twat. What else could you call a man who callously smoked in your house despite you asking him to not do it, and somehow managed to sneak into the workship without either me or VEGA knowing it, and modify one of the water evaporators to create whisky?
That last one could actually be seen as a test for future settlers, but still, he just irreparably changed a machine just to get drunk. Asshole.
Finally, after several weeks of inflicting continuous torture on the Worm (both physical and spiritual), we managed to get the vaccine. It would not work on the stronger demons sadly, and the process to create more doses was simply too long ever with Constantine's help, but anything lower than properly named demons would be unable to control or even influence those injected with the vaccine, and we did have enough resources to make sufficient doses for those who had to deal with demons: we could replicate more anyway.
Now the only thing stopping us from permanently killing the little freak thanks to a special spell from Constantine that would have dissolved it's essence was the need for information.
Again, it took us some time to pry it out of its disgusting body, but eventually it spilled the beans.
Specifically, why it came to Earth, why did it possess the Medeiros girl, why it planned to create an army of possessed and, most important of all, who was 'her'. It had been sent to Earth by a deity of pure evil (he wasn't exactly a demon per se, but because of the sheer malice on his soul he was considered a true demon for all intents and purposes) to search for his progeny so that he could escape Hell and conquer the universe. Whatever passed as its throat tore itself apart before we could get more, but I didn't need further info to know it was talking about.
Trigon's daughter. Raven. This demon had turned itself into a worm to search for Raven. Constantine even managed to rip an image of her from it, showing us a gray-skinned, purple haired young woman with blue eyes.
All done, I squashed the maggot under my boot, and Constantine's spell made sure it's death was permanent in case it was one of those little bastards who could cheat death.
So, Trigon wanted his daughter back, as always, but this time he nearly started a pseudo-zombie apocalypse just to ease the search of her, instead of trying to influence her.
Problem was, while he knew about Trigon, Constantine didn't know much about her, only her name,, a bit of her past, the fact she (supposedly) was on Earth, and now what she looked like: she just hadn't intrigue him enough for anything more. I couldn't just ask VEGA to find her for us either, since for some reason he couldn't find her even with her picture.
Then there were the seventy souls the Worm took. No way I would leave them to suffer in eternity, no matter how much John told me they were already either extinguished, or turned into demons themselves and that as much as he wanted to see me do a reenactment of my 'One-man Hellish Apocalypse' here, it would be best to wait and see if I actually could take on the big players, as he named the demon lords and such other powerful fiends.
As much as I hated to admit it, he had a point: the demons from DC were different from those of DOOM, and the only ones I had met were a lowly imp and a literal worm respectively. I needed to know if I could take on them.
However, just because I couldn't rescue them didn't mean I wouldn't, as a certain philantropist once said, do my damnest to avenge them. Them, and any innocent people who had been wrongly condemned to Hell for however long.
First, though, we would find and help Raven, mainly because we could actually do so, and to fuck Hell over. To do it, however, we had to find her first, and this time neither VEGA nor Constantine's magic could help. That, in turn, meant we would need the help of everyone I knew of that could aid us, which in this case meant Clark and co. plus their friends, which were Wally West...
And Bruce Wayne.
Which was why I sent a message to Clark to gather them somewhere so I could bring them to the Fortress so that we could talk. The kryptonians and the power-armor user had already been here, and Bruce simply did not care about being on Mars, more focused on the ironworks outside, not saying a word but clearly not happy with them, nor the fact Constantine was there with me, having apparently met him a couple of times prior; the feeling, naturally, was mutual.
Wally, on the other hand? He was ecstasic by being there.
"Well, damn!" He whistled as he watched the surface of Mars through a mirror. "Never expected to be the first man from Central City to set his feet on Mars AND the famous Fortress of Doom! Well, infamous, but you get the point."
After that I gathered them in the main hall to explain them the situation at hand.
"Remember the parasite from Barcelona from a month ago, the one that infected those people and took over their bodies with no chance of saving them?"
Saying that Bruce was angry at me for my actions in Spain would be understating it.
"You mean the one who infected those people, people you seemingly didn't bother to cure of their affliction?" He practically growled at us.
I didn't bother to look at the Dark Knight. "They could no longer be considered human, or even alive in a certain sense."
"It doesn't change the fact you killed them instead of restraining them."
"No, mate, we killed their soulless, flesh-eating husks. They were already dead." John replied.
Yes, we decided to tell them the truth about the nature of Worm. After all, there was no need to lie to them about that given who they were.
Naturally this quizzed them. "'Soulless'?" Clark parroted, confused.
"The parasite was not an alien, but a creature from Hell that had found aother way to both possess people... in a way they could not be saved." I told them. "We didn't want to start a panic by revealing the truth."
"Wait a minute here." Kara spoke first. "Are you saying that the alien you captured... was actually a demon? As in, a fire and brimstone Hell demon whose job is to torture sinners for refusing God until Judgement Day? Those demons?" She was understandably freaked out by the sudden reveal.
"No, Superluv, we're talking about japanese yokai, who are mistranslated as demons." John said sarcastically. "Of course we mean demons from the Bible!"
"So, do we have to get holy water and a crucifix or something?" Wally asked, half jokingly, half serious.
John snorted at that. "Depends on the demon, speedy, and if they are really demons, and even if they are, you have to have faith in you for the latter to work. And then there's a difference between Hell, and Hel."
Bruce said nothing, since he already had an encounter with the supernatural, although this was the first time he heard anything about the Biggest House itself.
I raised my hand to stop John from talking further, knowing that the detective would try to explain everything he knew about Hell just for kicks. "All that said, we haven't called you here to fight demons or give Hell a visit."
"Then why did you call us, Slayer?" John asked.
"The worm had come here in search of a girl."
Kara raised an eyebrow at this. "Girl?"
John took over at that point. "The lass' name is Raven, or Rachel Roth, I'm not sure which." He conjured an image of her for them to see." She's the half-human daughter of Trigon, a very, very nasty demon who apparently requires her aid, willing or not, to get out of Hell. The parasite wanted to create an army to facilitate its search. Not exactly the father of the year."
Wally whistled when he looked at Raven's image. "She looks a bit old to be just a girl. Stupid question, but do you know-"
"No."
Clark ignored the younger man's not-so innocent questioning and looked at me. "You want our help searching this girl." He said, earning a nod from me. "You can't?"
"For some reason, VEGA can't pinpoint her location, and Constantine's magic can't either.
"VEGA?" Bruce asked.
"The Fortress' robot butler. Anything on this solar system, he can see it. Well, anything san's Rachel current position" John replied in a proud tone for some reason, as if he was VEGA's creator. Very possibly to mess with Bruce.
Mess with Bruce he did, more sp
"How? If you can't find her with your technology and Constantine's magic, what hope do we have?"
"Any help would be welcome. You three have friends, you in particular are a world-famous journalist with connections, West is a police officer with access to the U.S police database, and Wayne has the resources."
After talking some more about it, the kryptonians, Wally and John happily decided to help me out in the mission.
Bruce, naturally, was another matter entirely "Why would I help you after everything you have done?" He growled at me. "Do you really want to help this girl... or kill her before she becomes a problem?"
I stared at him for a good ten seconds, before unclasping my helmet and looking straight in the eyes. "Because you wouldn't do it for me, but to help a girl who's being hounded by the forces of darkness to unleash the apocalypse."
We kept our staredown for a good while, with the others not knowing what to do and not wanting to escalate things by doing anything.
Bruce gave up before I did, sigh of defeat and everything. "I'll see what I can do."
All that said, they couldn't just stop their duties as heroes just to find Raven, they still had people to save and crimes to stop, and so did I; John... well, his 'heroics' were his job. Nevertheless, I was grateful that they accepted.
So, for several more weeks I continued my job as a hero at the same time I searched for Raven, sometimes helping Constantine with his issues (faking being his bodyguard here, intimidating some ghosts there), and others him helping me when I decided to get involved in some mystical/magical stuff.
And then, one day as I manually searched the planet for any sign of Raven's location, any, I discovered a very peculiar sight in Japan. When John, who at that moment was visiting the Fortress, came over and saw the screen, he voiced what both of us thought at the display.
"Is that a hoplite? A hoplite fighting the bloody Monstrous Manual?"
..........was, indeed, a hoplite; no way we could mistake that crested helmet and muscle-ladden bronze cuirass for anything else, wielding a shortsword that he was clearly skilled with alongside a round, wooden shield. As for the man himself, he looked like your archetypical greek hero, tall and well-built (enough to send a several-thousand pound monster flying with a punch) but due to the helmet covering his entire head that was the extent of our knowledge.
"He's an unknown vigilante that began to operate in Tokyo a few weeks after the Red Trident attack." VEGA replied as we watched him fight. "He has yet to speak in public or receive a name, the latter due to his lack of appearances."
"Interesting..." I muttered. Was he related somehow to Themyscira, despite clearly being a man, or was he just some brave soul modeling himself after the greek warriors of the past?
The truth ended up being a mix of both, but at that moment I didn't know it.
On the other side, there were the opponents he was fighting: orcs, goblins, barbarians, ogres, undead of all kinds, even demons... or, as Constantine had put it, the 'bloody Monstrous Manual', which was a very apt description. And they were slowly but surely overwhelming the lone warrior with their sheer numbers: as skilled and strong as he was, there were simply too damn many of them for him.
Then there was the fact they didn't bleed red, but black, and not in the sense that their blood was black, but because instead of the crimson liquid, from their wounds oozed...
"Is that thing coming from that neck ink?" I heard John mutter behind me as the hoplite beheaded an orc. Sure enough, the monster's stump spewed black ichor as it fell, before the entire body, and anything it had on, turned into a man-sized glob of ink. Ditto for the others the soldier killed.
Said globs then reassembled into other monsters that jumped once more into the fray, seemingly fresh unlike the hoplite. Calling the fight 'unfair' would understate it.
"It appears that the horde is some kind of collective paintings turned to life by unknown means, most likely magic of some sorts." VEGA informed.
"Thanks, Brigadier Obvious." John snarked before getting closer to the screen. "Still, he's right about that: those freaks aren't real, in the sense they don't come from Mordor, or Cimmeria, or wherever they're supposed to have come from."
And there were a lot of them,
Brave, but why was this man fighting against an enemy he couldn't beat, instead of retreating to fight another day, aside from simple honor? The fight took place in a forest in Kanto, not a city, and it didn't seem that there were civilians to protect nearby.
At first, that is.
When VEGA panned out the view, we found out why: there was a small group of people spectating the fight from between the trees, most of them wearing a hotchpoth of clothing. What made it strange wasn't their wardrobe, but the the pack of wolves that was with them, some of them larger than the others... and more expressive, given the fear-stricken expressions they had. That said, the people themselves weren't exactly normal either: they seemed human at fist sight, but upon closer inspection they had pointed ears, narrow irises, and fangs, if the ones who had their mouths open were anything to go by.
Oh, and some of them had tails of all things for some reason. The situation was becoming stranger and stranger by the second.
I turned to Constantine since he'd know more about this than me. "Who are they."
"More like what. Yokai, wolf yokai given their looks and the mutts with them, and by their size some of those have to be yokai too. Which is strange by itself, because last time I checked those things lived in zoos."
Quick story lesson that will be relevant in the future: in my original Earth, the japanese wolf had been hunted to extinction by order of the Emperor during the Meiji Revolution. In this one, they managed to survive, but only in captivity.
And then it struck me, the (possible) reason of everything that was happening.
Which turned out to be close, but not to the extent I thought.
The hoplit hade found the wolf yokai pack being chased by the ink monsters, decided to help them, and then found out the hard way that sometimes you can't fight an entire army of nearly unkillable creatures by yourself, at least not without the adequate equipment. As for why weren't the wolves helping him, they probably might have been unable.
"What are these yokai capable of?"
John thought it over. "Not much compared to the others: they can turn into wolves, run much faster than your average athlete, some can get even faster than that, and overall are slightly stronger and tougher than your average human, but not by much. They're actually kinda low on the yokai totem pole."
Then there was the million dollar questions: where did the horde come from, why were they attacking, when did it begin, and who created them.
And then, as the still nameless hoplite lost his shield to the mob, we saw him. The man who had to be the origin of the horde, a jacket wearing, middle aged 'gentleman' who was watching as the hoplite fought from a safe distance... and two storeys above.
Because of his looks and calm demeanor, the man reminded me of the stereotypical japanese detective, with the jacket, the hat, and even the closed eyes. I would have even considered him a noble officer, if not for the glaring fact he was standing atop a demon that could be best described as a blue, non-burning balrog.
And that smile of his... was not a kindly, serene smile, to put it simply.
Not helped by the fact I knew who he was. Still, as it had happened before, I wasn't supposed to know his identity.
"VEGA."
"Uehara Daizo." Also known as the BBEG of Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo, and a parody of inspector Zenigata... and who apparently was also Brushogun himself, instead of merely using the man. "He's a detective from the TMPD, famous for stopping and incarcerating various criminals."
Naturally John scoffed at that. "He probably made those criminals."
"He's not a metahuman if that's what you're wondering. Scans indicate that, as I stated before, he's using magic to generate the creatures."
I turned to John once more. Magic was his field of expertise, after all. "Any idea of who he or it might be?"
John inspected the image of Daizo closely, before grunting. "Dunno, never saw a yokai capable of creating an army of murderous inkblots before, and he doesn't strike me as a wizard with that garb of his. Gotta need some info on him."
I turned back to the screen. "VEGA, anything else of interest that we may use?"
"He has been recently appointed to solve a case about man-eating monsters terrorising the region, and does not like metahumans. He's an otherwise unremarkable individual, that's the extent of my knowledge. I'm sorry."
'Man-eating monsters' that he most definitely made himself, given that some of the ink creatures were essentially wargs. Given who the hoplite was fighting for, it was obvious it was a set-up to eliminate the yokai, but for what reason, we didn't know at the moment.
John took a cigarette and lit it "Say, Slayer, aren't you going to help the lad?" He asked before taking a whiff.
"I will, but first I want to see if the greek recovers." I replied. "Who knows, maybe he's an olympian in disguise."
"I'm afraid he's not, Slayer. He does, however, have a divine signature. From which god, I do not know."
"Well, so much for surprises." John deadpanned.
Eventually, a hit from a axe-wielding barbarian pulled the warrior's helmet off, revealing a young man (could not be older than twenty five) with brown, braided hair and a trimmed beard. Unfortunately, his otherwise handsome features were marred by the profuse bleeding from his mouth. Those ink freaks hit hard despite lacking real bones and muscle mass.
And then, after Daizo jumped down the demon to gloat and was about to execute the hoplite with his pistol when one of the wolf yokai, a young redhead dressed in red clothing and wolf pelts, jumped down the cliff at incredible speed with a sword in hand, screaming at the top of her lungs, and threw several small, green somethings in Daizo's direction. I thought they were shurikens at first, but later I found out they were leaves of all things. Sharp, deadly leaves that could pierce fake orcs... but not Daizo's jacket, it seemed, whose reaction to the attack was akin to someone annoyed at having normal leaves thrown at them, despite the fact it seemed to be just a normal jacket.
The moment she got close enough, the detective pulled a jitte (a kind of japanese batton) out of his jacket and engaged her just as the girl's blade was about to reach his throat.
She was good with the sword, fast enough to become a blur, and powered by righteous anger; the problem was that Daizo was even better with his jitte, much, much better, had a longer reach than her, and possessed inhuman reflexes.
And then he suddenly grabbed the girl's sword by the blade, yanked it from her grip, and punched her hard enough to send her back several yards away. Like any good old villain, he had been merely toying with her.
The wolf girl managed to stop herself from sliding across the dirt, but then the mob of ink monsters fell upon her. However, rather than killing her outright, Daizo made his creatures grab her and force her to watch as the hoplite's beating intensified, now carried on by giant demons and dragons who were kicking the poor bastard towards each other, like some demented match of soccer.
The still-nameless girl began to struggle, to scream at them to let him go, but all she got were the mocking laughs and jeers of the horde. Her peers were watching from above, frozen in fear, both of what was happening and because they knew they were next.
The hero being beaten to death in front of a confident villain, a girl crying as said hero's life was slowly and painflly snuffed out, the villain silently gloating because he was sure of his victory...
That would not stand, not with me.
It was time for a little deus ex machina to save their asses.
"VEGA, open a small portal."
In the form of a weapon capable of burning ink away... and a fragmentation grenade. You'll see why the grenade soon.
..........
Sorry for the lack of length for the chapter; I planned to make it longer, but the draft got so long I ended up deciding to divide it. Well, that and I accidentally deleted that part. So, the non-DC characters have been finally introduced, alongside a baddie from DC that very posibly none of you expected to see.
One thing: none of the characters introduced here are original, although that's a bit obvious with Daizo given he's the main (but twist) villain of Trouble in Tokyo. Guess where the yokai and the hoplite are from.
That said, the monsters are actually from Wizardry, but because the game is basically D&D John's statement is not that far off. It's also very popular in Japan, which is why I made Daizo make them, although the next chapter will reveal they didn't start that way.
Barricade said:
4th degree is anime/video game 'your flesh dissolves to blackened bone'. Most people seeing it either instinctively block it in their minds as unrealistic, or start heaving on the spot until they can't see it anymore/its out of their LOS while shutting down & completely unable to aid the injured person.
To put it another way, even DOOM's two newest games never showed true 4th degree burns. They either showed indistinct full body gibs/chunks, 'misted' a body, or did something far less than 4th degree (more bloody, less crispy). Probably because its one of the few things that just showing once on screen, will, on its own, earn a Mature/R-rating, if not hit the automatic censoring ceiling or even bannable ceiling.
Indeed, which is why I made the plasma rifle's bolts hot enough to burn the flesh off your bones: no need to censor anything, nor fire-resistant demons to use as targeting practice.
I mean, not all the Red Trident goons were found as fleshy corpses...
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Stupid the Ork
Oct 1, 2021
New
So, the seeds for the Justice League have been finally seeded, but just like any good plant, it'll take them some time to grow into the superhero team we all know and love. Aside from that, does the chapter feel forced to you? If it does, my fault for writing it that way, but I want to keep the story going. Don't worry, none of the plots mentioned here will be abandoned, we'll see them again in the future.
Also, the ending is where I start adding a few non-DC things to the story because I think I can make them work. This time is two of them, and while I don't want to spoil them, I can say this: one has one of the largest story counts in Fanfiction, and the other is a helluva anachronistic hack and slash.
Finally, kudos for Hida Reju for suggesting the booze thing!
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Sorry for the cliffhanger, wanted to post the chapter this day.
Was the scene with the infected children done right? Did I go overboard by using them... and killing them? I mean, in the sequel they do kill the girl, and there's also the matter of the the japanese's son, who we didn't see after the infected escaped the workshop.
Lord_Anthrax said:
Speaking of that
if when this gets back to the Justice league there going to be annoyed since to someone who doesn't know about the demonic infestation or deal with it often it's going to look like Doom Slayer and some British asshole just attacked an apartment building
First, as I have said several times before, the League doesn't exist yet. Second, they (well, Doom Slayer mostly) already have an alibi in the form of an alien infiltration. Well, that and the following chapter expanding things further.
As for the infected becoming demon-like, that's a nod to Demons, a 1985 italian horror movie, which basically was proto-REC given the 'demoninc possession that spreads through bites' thing.
Last edited: Sep 20, 2021
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