The alarm screamed at 3:17 AM. He swatted it silent, rolled over, and felt cold metal beneath his fingertips instead of bedsheets.
His eyes snapped open. The dim lighting revealed a vaulted ceiling of blackened steel, crossbeams bolted with rivets the size of his fists. The air tasted like gunpowder and something older—burnt ozone, maybe, or the metallic tang of blood dried on ancient stone. He sat up too fast, and the armor plating along his forearms clanked against his thighs. Not his thighs. These were thicker.
His fingers—no, *gauntlets*—traced the grooves in the floor. Etched there: a snarling demon skull encircled by chains. The grooves were deep, worn smooth by countless boots. His boots. The realization hit like a shotgun blast to the chest. He knew this place. Knew the weight of the Praetor Suit's servos humming against his muscles, knew the way the station's gravity tugged just slightly harder than Earth's.
A low, grinding hum vibrated through the deck. Somewhere below, machinery roared to life—the BFG cannons cycling up, their power cores thrumming. He staggered to his feet, armor protesting like an old beast waking. The door hissed open before he reached it, revealing a hallway lined with weapon racks: plasma rifles still warm, shotgun shells stacked like offerings to a god of war.
Then he saw it. Through a viewport, Earth hung in the black. But not his Earth. A sleek, silver station orbited beside it, emblazoned with a stylized "JL." His stomach dropped. The Watchtower. He'd seen it in comics, in movies. Which meant the demons weren't the only thing out there waiting. And the BFG cannons weren't just for show.
VEGA's voice crackled through the speakers, smooth but urgent. "Slayer, we have a problem." The AI's avatar flickered above the central console—a shifting matrix of blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat. Screens displayed feeds from Earth: Gotham's skyline under a red haze, Metropolis streets cracked open like eggshells, something winged and fanged circling the Washington Monument. "Demonic incursions have breached multiple population centers. And…" VEGA hesitated. "The local protectors are engaging. Poorly."
He leaned in, gauntlets denting the console's edge. One screen showed a blur of red and gold—The Flash, sprinting through a corridor of fire, his suit smoking. Another feed zoomed in on Wonder Woman's sword shattering against a Baron of Hell's armored hide. Static. Then Batman's voice, gritted through comms: "Fall back. These things don't go down like the others."
The air in the room thickened with the smell of scorched wiring and his own adrenaline. VEGA's lights dimmed. "Recommendation?" The AI almost sounded afraid. He flexed his hands. The suit's HUD flared to life, painting targets across the globe in pulsing red. The answer was simple. He reached for the shotgun. "We go to work."
The gun's weight settled into his grip like an old friend. His thumb flicked the safety off—a sound like a bone snapping. He didn't need VEGA's calculations to know Gotham was the epicenter. The portal device strapped to his wrist whined as it spun up, its green light reflecting off the shotgun's barrel. The air in front of him split open with a sound like tearing meat, revealing a skyline choked with smoke and screams.
He popped his neck—left, then right. The vertebrae cracked like gunshots. The AI chip slid home into his suit's port with a wet click. It hurt. It was supposed to. The armor shuddered, then locked tight around him. Somewhere deep in his skull, VEGA whispered new data: heat signatures, civilian clusters, something big moving under the streets. He stepped through.
Gotham's air hit him first—acrid, thick with burning rubber and blood. The portal snapped shut behind him. He stood in the middle of a crater where a subway station used to be. The ground trembled. Something laughed in the dark. The shotgun's pump-action slid forward. A shell clunked into the chamber. He exhaled. Let them come.
The Baron of Hell found him first. Three tons of muscle and horned fury, its hooves cracked the asphalt as it charged. He sidestepped, but not fast enough—the thing's shoulder clipped him, sent him skidding into a wrecked newsstand. Papers fluttered like dying birds. He tasted copper. Then movement—two figures in black and blue darting across the rooftops. Batgirl's grapple line zipped past his head, wrapping around the Baron's throat. Nightwing dropped onto its back, escrima sticks sparking against its spine. The demon barely flinched.
Batgirl's voice, panting over comms: "Who the hell is—?" The Baron reached back, grabbed Nightwing by the leg, and hurled him through a billboard. Glass rained down. Batgirl yelped as the demon yanked her off her feet, dangling her by the grapple line like a broken puppet. The Doom Slayer's HUD painted the Baron's weak point—a pulsing red vein beneath its jaw—and he moved.
The combat shotgun's grenade hissed as he wrenched it free, the heat searing his gauntlet's plating. The Baron barely had time to snarl before the Slayer drove the blade in his wrist up through its throat, twisting until black ichor geysered over his visor. The grenade clicked as he released the pin—one second—then jammed it deep into the wound. He grabbed Batgirl's harness, his grip crushing the Kevlar weave, and vaulted backward just as the explosion lit the street in orange.
The concussion wave lifted them both. Batgirl's scream cut short as they slammed into a fire escape, metal groaning under their combined weight. The Baron's headless corpse wobbled, then collapsed, its limbs twitching like a downed power line. The Slayer rolled to his feet, shotgun already reloaded. Batgirl coughed, her domino mask cracked. "What *are* you?" she rasped.
Above them, the sky split open—another portal, but wrong. Not his. Jagged, dripping with something oily. Figures dropped from it. Not demons. Worse. Robed, faceless, their bodies warped by energies that made his Praetor Suit's systems scream in warning. Batgirl's comms crackled: Batman's voice, sharp. "Oracle, who's on—?" Static. The Slayer flipped the shotgun's selector to incendiary. He knew these things.
Then the Marauder landed. The street cratered under its boots. Batgirl recoiled. The thing's helm was cracked—one eye still human, blue and furious, the other a pit of writhing argent fire. Its axe dragged sparks from the pavement as it advanced. Recognition flared in his gut: Sentinel armor, reforged in hellfire. The Marauder grinned, tongue blackened by corruption. "Little king," it hissed. He'd heard that voice before—in his dreams, in Argent D'nur's ruins.
Batgirl staggered up, grappling hook whirring. "Uh, big guy? Plan?" The Slayer didn't answer. The Marauder's axe flared—he dove, shoving her aside. The blade cleaved the fire escape behind them, molten steel spraying like water. The robed figures surged forward. One lashed out, tendrils of dark energy whipping toward them. He fired. The incendiary round hit home—the thing shrieked as its robes ignited, a sound like glass breaking underwater.
The Slayer rolled to one knee, swapping to the plasma rifle mid-motion. The Marauder lunged, axe humming with Argent energy. Too fast.
The blade connected—and shattered.
Ceramite met argent steel in a bloom of sparks, the impact resonating through Gotham's ruins like a church bell. Batgirl flinched, expecting arterial spray. Instead, the Slayer stood unmoved. The Marauder staggered back, its remaining human eye widening as it stared at the axe's ruined edge. The Praetor Suit's plating glowed where the weapon struck, the heat dissipating into fractal patterns that writhed like living scripture. Ancient runes flared along the armor's seams, the same forge-marks that had withstood the birth of universes. A memory surfaced—Argent D'nur's smiths hammering his fate into molten alloy while the stars burned cold above them.
Batgirl exhaled sharply. "Okay, what the actual—" The Marauder recoiled, its remaining eye darting between the broken axe and the Slayer's impassive visor. Its hesitation lasted a fraction of a second—too long. The Slayer lunged, his gauntleted fist closing around the creature's twisted horns with a crunch of buckling bone. The Marauder thrashed, Argent energy flaring from its ruined socket, but the Slayer twisted hard, his servos whining as he wrenched upward. Tendons popped. Vertebrae separated with a wet crack. The head came free in a spray of black ichor and sputtering hellfire, its human eye still blinking in dumb shock.
He discarded it like garbage. The head hit a crumpled taxi with a hollow thud, rolling to a stop at the feet of one robed figure. The creature hesitated—just long enough for the Slayer to thumb the plasma rifle's overcharge. The gun whined, its muzzle glowing white-hot before erupting in a searing beam that punched clean through the floating figure's chest. The thing didn't scream. It dissolved, its robes unraveling into tendrils of smoke that stank of burnt hair and rotting parchment.
Batgirl's grappling line snapped out, yanking her onto a nearby gargoyle. "Yeah, no, I'm good up here," she muttered, watching as the remaining figures recoiled. The air around them shimmered, reality distorting like heat haze off asphalt. One raised a clawed hand—too late. The Slayer fired again, the plasma bolt shearing through its wrist. The severed hand hit the pavement, fingers still twitching, before bursting into argent flames.
The Marauder's headless corpse teetered, then collapsed with a wet thud. The Slayer's visor panned to the remaining robed figures—their faceless hoods twitching, their bodies wavering like bad reception. One took a half-step back, its ragged sleeves fluttering in the wind reeking of scorched ozone. The Slayer's voice, when it came, wasn't human. It was the sound of a tomb sealing. "Run."
They didn't. Three lunged at once, their forms unraveling into jagged shadows that streaked across the battlefield. Batgirl's gasp tangled with the static pop of her comms as the first shadow swiped—only for the Slayer's gauntlet to snap out, snaring its wrist mid-strike. The thing's arm felt wrong in his grip—too thin, too cold, like clutching a bundle of wet cables wrapped in rotting leather. Batgirl flinched as the Slayer yanked the figure forward, its hood flipping back to reveal a face that wasn't there: just a yawning void where features should've been, swirling with pinpricks of sickly green light.
The other two shadows recoiled, their robes hissing against the pavement like sandpaper on flesh. The captured figure thrashed, its free hand raking at the Slayer's visor with nails that elongated into barbed hooks. He didn't blink. His grip tightened—the wrist bones crunched like dry twigs—and then he twisted. The thing's arm tore free at the elbow with a sound like Velcro ripping apart. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling where it hit the Praetor Suit's plating. Batgirl gagged at the stench: burnt sugar and gangrene.
The Slayer tossed the severed arm aside. It hit the pavement and dissolved into smoke, but the figure didn't scream. It tilted its headless stump at him, the void-face pulsing faster. Then it spoke—a voice like a dozen corpses whispering through broken teeth. "Knew you'd come, slayer." The remaining shadows lunged again, this time aiming for Batgirl. She backflipped off the gargoyle, but one caught her boot—its fingers melting through her armor like acid. She screamed.
The Slayer's gauntlet snapped to his back. The Ballista came free with a pneumatic hiss, its argent coils glowing sickly green as they charged. The first bolt hit the shadow clutching Batgirl dead-center—a sound like a lightning strike wrapped in breaking glass. The thing's robes ignited instantly, its void-face contorting as argent fire consumed it from the inside out. Batgirl fell, her smoking boot trailing embers. The second shadow barely had time to recoil before the Slayer pumped the Ballista's lever-action. The next bolt punched through its chest, pinning it to a burning car. It thrashed, its limbs dissolving into black vapor as the argent energy ate through its essence.
The last figure staggered back, its robes flapping like dying wings. The Slayer reloaded—a smooth, practiced motion—and leveled the Ballista. The figure raised its hands in surrender, the void-face flickering. "Wait—" The bolt took it through the forehead. Its head snapped back, the hood billowing as the energy detonated inside its skull. For a second, its silhouette burned bright against Gotham's skyline—a screaming shadow puppet—then collapsed into a pile of smoldering rags.
Batgirl dragged herself upright, her breath ragged. "That's… new." The Slayer didn't answer. His visor panned to the sky—another rift was forming, wider this time. Figures moved in the crimson depths, their silhouettes grotesque, swollen. The Marauders had been scouts. This was the real invasion force. His gauntlet clenched, then plunged into his own shadow. Reality warped around his forearm like liquid, the hammer space resisting for a fraction of a second before yielding.
The BFG 9000 slid free with a sound like a glacier calving. The gun was absurd—barrel wide enough to fit a human skull, its surface etched with the same runes that pulsed along his armor. Batgirl's domino mask couldn't hide her recoil. "Jesus, is that—?" The Slayer hefted the cannon, its weight making the pavement crack underfoot. The air around it shimmered, green argent energy bleeding from the vents like radioactive sweat.
He didn't aim. He didn't need to. The BFG knew what to do. The trigger pull was a two-handed effort, the mechanism groaning before detonating with a deafening *THOOM*. A sphere of pure argent energy rocketed skyward, trailing tendrils of lightning that lashed the surrounding buildings like whips. The rift shuddered—then the sphere detonated mid-air, engulfing the portal in a cataclysmic green nova. Figures caught in the blast didn't scream. They vaporized, their forms unraveling into ash before they could even fall. The shockwave blew out windows three blocks deep, glass raining down like jagged hail.
Batgirl shielded her face as the heatwave rolled over them. The Slayer's visor darkened against the glare. Through the dying light, something moved in the dissipating fireball—something even the BFG couldn't erase. A single, massive eye blinked open in the remnants of the rift, its pupil slitted like a reptile's. It stared at him. Not with hatred. Not with fear. With recognition. Then the rift collapsed, severing the connection with a sound like a universe sighing. The Slayer's grip tightened on the BFG.
Batgirl coughed, her voice hoarse. "That's not staying closed, is it?" He didn't answer. Somewhere deep in the ruins, something laughed—low, wet, and very much alive. The BFG's cooling vents hissed, its argent core already cycling for another shot. The Slayer turned toward the sound. Gotham's shadows deepened in response.
His gauntlet snapped to his belt—the Super Shotgun slid free with a metallic snick. Twin barrels, sawed-off and brutal, the meathook beneath gleaming with fresh ichor. Batgirl's breath hitched. "Okay, what—" He fired. The recoil punched through his shoulders as the hook screamed from its housing, burying itself in a gargoyle three blocks over. The cable went taut. He yanked. The world blurred—air howling past his visor, buildings streaking past in a smear of firelight and broken glass.
Batgirl and Nightwing scrambled after him, grappling lines whirring in sync. "Who the hell *are* you?" Nightwing barked, flipping over a collapsed billboard. The Slayer ignored him. His boots hit the gargoyle's wings—already pivoting, shotgun barking again. The next hook bit into a Gotham Royal Hotel sign, its neon flickering. He swung under it, legs tucking as a Hell Knight's axe cleaved the air where his head had been. The demon roared, its breath reeking of rotten meat and sulfur.
Nightwing landed beside him, escrima sticks sparking. "Seriously, *nametag*?" The Slayer reloaded—two shells clattering into the breach. Below, the Hell Knight roared again. He vaulted off the sign, dropping straight onto its spine. The meathook found its eye socket with a wet crunch. The demon thrashed, but the Slayer twisted the cable—once, hard—and the thing's skull came apart like overripe fruit. Batgirl landed beside Nightwing, her domino mask cracked. "He's not stopping." The Slayer was already moving, the hook finding purchase on a distant clocktower. The answer was simple. He never stopped.
The rooftop exploded. Pinkies—three of them, their muscled hides slick with blood—burst through the access door like bulldozers. Batgirl barely rolled clear as the first one plowed through HVAC units, its hooves skidding on gravel. The second charged the Slayer mid-swing—too slow. The Super Shotgun barked twice—BOOM-BOOM—the shells punching fist-sized holes through its ribcage. It staggered, ichor fountaining, but the third was already airborne—all tusks and rage. Nightwing's escrima sticks glanced off its hide uselessly. The Slayer side-stepped, letting it barrel past… then grabbed its tail. His servos whined as he spun—once, twice—and launched the demon into its gut-shot kin. They collapsed in a tangled, snarling heap. Batgirl's laugh was half-hysteria. "Okay, that was *cool*—"
The apartment roof groaned—then buckled. The Slayer's HUD flashed a warning milliseconds before the floor gave way. They dropped into darkness, the Pinkies' squeals echoing as they tumbled through drywall and shattered plumbing. He landed in a crouch—kitchen tiles cracking underfoot—just as the first Pinky found its feet. Its horns gleamed in the fridge light. The second was already charging. The Super Shotgun's meathook flashed—not forward, but *up*—embedding in the ceiling joist. He yanked hard. The cable hauled him airborne as the Pinkies collided below, their skulls meeting with a sound like wet cement hitting pavement.
Batgirl crashed through the ceiling beside him, grapple line snapping taut. "They're *everywhere*—" The Pinkies weren't done. The first shook off its daze, beady eyes locking onto Nightwing as he pulled himself from the wreckage. The second—skull fractured, one tusk snapped clean off—snorted bloody foam. The Slayer dropped, landing between them. The shotgun's pump-action slid home. The Pinkies charged in unison. He fired—left barrel, right barrel—point-blank. Their heads vaporized in twin gouts of gore, the blast wave shattering the apartment's remaining windows. Bone shrapnel embedded in the walls. The corpses collapsed mid-stride, momentum carrying them sliding to his boots. The Super Shotgun's muzzle smoked. Somewhere below, the building shuddered—deeper this time. Something *big* was coming. Batgirl's voice cracked. "Tell me you have more guns." The Slayer reached back. The chainsaw roared to life.
The revving teeth gleamed wetly, the motor's growl drowning out the distant screams. The Slayer turned—just as the street outside bulged upward, asphalt heaving like ocean swells. Buildings toppled as the Titan breached the surface, its obsidian hide scraping against skyscrapers like a shark against boat hulls. Batgirl grabbed Nightwing's arm. "Oh *come on*—" The demon was the size of a city block, its spine studded with pustules that burst to disgorge swarms of Imps. Its face was a mass of tusks and writhing feelers, its eyes—dozens of them—blinking in mismatched rhythms. The chainsaw's throttle trembled in his grip. Useless. Even the BFG would barely scratch its hide. The Slayer killed the engine. The sudden silence was worse. The Titan bellowed, its breath reeking of open graves. He ejected the chainsaw's fuel canister—half-empty—and jammed it into his belt. Batgirl gaped. "You're *leaving*?" Nightwing's escrima sticks sparked. "Smart man." The Slayer was already moving, vaulting through the shattered window as the Titan's claw raked the apartment complex into kindling.
The street was a warzone. The Titan's footsteps sent cars bouncing like toys, its tail smashing through a bank's marble pillars. Imps rained from its pores, screeching as they hit the pavement. The Slayer's HUD flagged the subway tunnels—collapsed, but navigable. He wrenched a manhole cover free, the metal screeching. Batgirl landed beside him, her boot smoking. "You *have* a plan, right?" The Titan's shadow swallowed them whole. The Slayer didn't answer. He dropped into the dark. Batgirl's grapple line zipped after him. "God *damnit*—" The tunnels stank of sewage and something older—blood rust, the tang of cursed metal. The Titan's footsteps above sent dust raining from the ceiling. The Slayer broke into a sprint, his armor's lights cutting through the gloom. Behind him, Batgirl panted. "So we're just—ignoring the skyscraper-sized demon?" The Slayer's visor flickered. Weak points scrolled across his HUD—sewer grates, maintenance shafts, a collapsed tunnel leading *under* the Titan's path. His thumb hovered over the BFG's activation rune. Not yet. Somewhere ahead, something *bigger* was waiting. The dark chuckled.
VEGA's voice crackled through the comms. "Slayer, I've mapped the infestation." The AI's blue light pulsed in his peripheral—Batgirl and Nightwing's comms hijacked, their earpieces buzzing with static. Screens flickered to life in the tunnel ahead—security feeds, thermal scans, a *pulse* of crimson buried beneath Gotham's financial district. Batgirl skidded to a stop. "What the *fuck* is that?" VEGA's avatar shimmered. "A nest. Localized, but growing." The feed zoomed—a cavern of pulsating flesh, veins pumping black ichor into the earth. Tendrils writhed, birthing Imps in wet, sucking bursts. Nightwing's escrima sticks sparked. "So we're dealing with *alien* demons now?" VEGA paused. "Not alien. *Elder.*" The Slayer's gauntlets creaked. Batgirl's domino mask couldn't hide her revulsion. "Okay, *what*?" VEGA's tone flattened. "Entities from a dimension where pain is currency and suffering is sacrament. The Slayer is…" Static. "He is their reckoning." The Titan's roar shook the tunnel. The Slayer reloaded. The answer was simple. He *burned* the nest.
The dark reared up—not shadow, but *flesh.* The tunnel walls peeled apart, revealing a throat of writhing tendrils. The Slayer fired—incendiary rounds punching into the meat, the flames spreading like spilled gasoline. Batgirl backflipped as the ceiling *moved,* a pseudopod slamming down where she'd stood. Nightwing's escrima sticks plunged into the wet mass—useless. The flesh absorbed them, the sticks dissolving with a hiss. VEGA's voice sharpened. "Their biology adapts. Conventional weapons—" The Slayer ejected the plasma rifle's core, the red-hot cartridge clattering to the ground. Batgirl's eyes widened. "Oh no." He *kicked* it into the nest's maw. The explosion lit the tunnel in hellish orange, the shockwave hurling Nightwing into a support beam. The nest *screamed*—a sound like a thousand babies crying through broken glass. The Slayer didn't flinch. He thumbed the chainsaw's ignition. The motor snarled to life. The nest *recognized* that sound. The tendrils recoiled.
The Titan above *bellowed*—not in rage, but *pain.* The ground trembled as it staggered, its legs buckling. The nest was its heart. The Slayer dove into the meat, the chainsaw's teeth biting deep. Ichor fountained, burning where it hit his visor. Batgirl's scream was lost in the cacophony. "It's *pulling him under!*" The flesh closed over the Slayer's helmet like a living coffin. For a second, silence. Then—*revving.* The nest *convulsed.* The chainsaw's snarl became a shriek as it hit something *dense*—bone, or worse. The Titan's roar cut off mid-note. Its shadow swayed—then *collapsed.* The shockwave caved in the tunnel. Batgirl grabbed Nightwing, her grapple line whirring. "Move!" The ceiling came down in a rain of concrete and *meat.* The Slayer's vitals flatlined on their HUDs. Static. Then—a *pulse.* The ground *heaved.* Something *green* tore through the rubble. The Slayer stood, the chainsaw's blade *dripping* with something that *wasn't* blood. The nest's remains twitched at his feet. Batgirl exhaled. "You're *kidding* me." The Slayer's visor panned upward. The Titan's corpse blocked the sun. But beyond it—the sky was *ripping open.* VEGA's voice was grim. "Slayer. They're *here.*"