Forever Doomed

This isn't a Christmas story, but I guess it's because it's Christmas that I suddenly felt like posting this appetizer of my in-the-works story - though I better say right away that it'll probably be a long time until I post more parts of it, since I keep going back editing/completely rewriting the various chapters. When I do update it, however, it'll be in this thread.

This story was hugely inspired by the Quake 3 Arena mod "Generations Arena". But as the title may indicate, this is a Doom fan fic, though it involves elements from most of id's games.

I hope you'll enjoy this piece - and hopefully you'll start wondering wtf is going on ;-).

_________________________

Forever Doomed


Prologue

Beyond the Universe, beyond the laws of Space and Time…

“My brethren...”

The voice was indescribable. It was neither the voice of a living being of flesh and blood nor that of a machine. It seemed present yet also strangely absent.

The entity who had spoken felt that he had acquired the attention of the other presences in the room and began talking again.

“We have seen that the Evil is drawing near for every second. We have seen it for centuries, yet we have acted far too late, having severely underestimated what we are up against! We have now arrived at the very hour of the inevitable catastrophe!

There was a strange noise as the other entities mumbled amongst themselves, digesting the information they have just been given.

“Master?” One other voice asked.
The Master directed his attention towards his brother who had spoken up. His attention could be felt rather than seen and this was a sign that the entity that had requested a word was allowed to speak.

“Is it absolutely certain that we cannot avoid this terrible chain of events?” The Master’s displeasure was tangible as he responded.

“Do you doubt my powers of judgement young one? I have evolved far longer than any of you. My existence dates back to the early days long before our banishment. We have tried anything possible to prevent these events, yet we have acted far too late to do anything. Quake is beyond our control and has been for centuries. We cannot even access his realm. Our powers are gradually being drained. No my dear brother, our options are all but exhausted!”

His young brother fell silent, but another spoke up.

“But Master, must we then do nothing but await the inevitable end?”

“No,” came the reply calmly but full of resolve.

“We have one last option – our best and only option, though it may seem like we will help our adversaries in doing so…”

The others listened carefully.

“We must drain ourselves and spread the energy. When our adversaries do claim our artefacts, these objects will be too underpowered to allow our foe full control. This will at least grant the Mortals a slim chance…and in these particular Mortals we must put our trust”
A gasp went through the gathering.
“Master...since we place our fate in the hands of the Mortals...can we not assist them any further?” The young entity that had spoken up earlier asked, much more humbly this time.

“No,” the Master responded. “We can only allow them the freedom to still fight back!”

Without permission, another entity rudely interrupted in a fit of despair and anger.

”Then we’re doomed! Eternal, timeless doom is inevitable! These puny Mortals cannot hope to stop what we have unleashed! There must be another option!”

The other entities clearly felt the temperature drop as the Master diverted his attention towards his rude brother.

“What we cannot control, Mortals may be able to defy!” The Master responded coldly.
“Have you forgotten, dear brother, that we have only been granted the abilities to create?”

The air was tense. The voice of the Master had a powerful effect on everyone assembled in the room. The Master continued, a bit calmer now.

“These ‘puny’ Mortals, in case you have failed to notice from the thousands of years we have studied them, are experts at causing destruction and they themselves have faced certain extinction more than once, yet they have prevailed. Few mortal races are as capable of striking back at our adversaries with a taste of their own medicine as these particular Mortals!”

“Then, shall we drain ourselves now Master?” a few of the entities asked.

“No not yet,” The Master responded mildly, clearly pleased that a few of his brethren still commanded his utmost respect.

“We must ensure that “The Eternal Warrior” will have a fighting chance. We must keep him in a secured stasis. With luck, the initial attempts of our adversaries to lock the warriors in place will fail to overcome him and will instead release him from our prison!”

There was a brief silence. Then the rude brother from earlier mumbled out his response:
“A truly bold plan o’ Master. It is so bold and previously unheard of in our midst that it might work...”

The Master awaited a protest, but none was given. They were ready.

“Then let us go forth and relinquish our deeds to the hands of Fate!”

...

Very nice work.

Damn, that's pretty sweet.

Wow, that was quite good.

Today seems like Update Day, so I guess I'm a' updatin'.

Hope you'll enjoy this chapter.

__________________

Intro: Situation Uncertain

The Gladiator

-

A human figure stood motionless inside a strange green field of pure energy. He didn’t even breathe, so anyone looking at him would consider him dead if they didn’t know any better.

The humanoid being was fairly short. The strange stasis field of green energies made it difficult to see his features properly but it had the form of a male human.

For eons this human creature had battled in the eternal arenas to satisfy the bloodlust of his nearly unknown Masters. he had a vague memory of once being human in a different world and time, but so many events had changed him.

The Arena Masters, beings that he had never seen and whom he subsequently knew nearly nothing about – and he actually knew more about these mysterious beings than most others - were powerful beyond comprehension. If they wished, they could easily subjugate any world of their choosing he believed. Yet they were seemingly not interested. Many would consider them Gods; he considered them yet another race of beings, under the will of Fate, for they too had their weakness as any other beings. While the Masters never seemed to fight amongst themselves, they had an almost insatiable desire to witness the carnage of battle. For eons they had witnessed the battles fought in countless wars on millions of worlds, until they had truly discovered their own powers.

They had created a series of eternal arenas and used their time and world warping skills to tap into any timeline and world to retrieve great warriors from these worlds and times. The warriors that were kidnapped by the immortals were forced to engage in gladiator battles in these arenas until their time was out. After a long time period, the immortal beings would return the warriors to their own world and to the exact time from when the warrior was originally stolen.
The warriors would be left with no recollection of their eternal gladiator battles or the Arena Eternal.

The human creature in the stasis field himself was an Enigma. He knew that he was once a battle-hardened human who fought many battles in a ruined post-war world. As many other gladiators, he had been snatched by the strange immortal beings to fight battles for their amusement. But he struck a deal with them. As he hated his mortal life, his existence in the Eternal Arenas was a release. Fighting the gladiator battles did not bother him, and he enjoyed receiving praises from his Masters. Eventually, he asked them to let him become their eternal gladiator. Surprised, they granted his wish and thus he became their servant, but still kept ignorant about the greater scheme – if there even was a “greater scheme”.

He became aware that there was another eternal gladiator in the Eternal Arenas. A warrior who had been in the Arenas for an eternity, supposedly for having displeased the Arena Masters once at the beginning of their gladiator snatching days. Time in the Arena Eternal is not measured by the gladiators, no does it serve the same purpose as in mist other dimensions, but this other eternal warrior had served in his very own arena prison for what would correspond to millennia without having experienced defeat.

One day, however, he was finally defeated by a powerful gladiator and subsequently released. That warrior was called Xaero.
Contrary to Xaero, the enigmatic warrior behind the stasis field had no interest in “being released” – he was already “released” he felt. He was released from a life he hated, where everyone else would hate and fear him. In his days as a mortal warrior before his arrival in the arenas, he was an outcast – in the arenas he was respected, he felt. This was his true home.

The glow of the stasis field briefly intensified, then suddenly began to weaken. It died away but the figure remained lifeless.

The cybronic human wore red clothing and metallic plates, clearly revealing his warrior profession. His clothing was clean now, but it would usually be stained by sticky blood. On the rim of his shoulder plates, a strange symbol consisting of a single spike in the center with two other, bent spikes next to it was embedded. Overall, the symbol looked vaguely like a malformed ‘q’. His bare arms were scarred and rough, but muscular. He wore red leather gloves, seemingly coloured by the blood of his countless opponents.

His face was concealed by a dark visor made out of a glassy material that was somewhat transparent, but too dark to make out the features of his mysterious face behind it.

One of his eyes suddenly shone with a crimson red haze through the dark glass and the creature let out a gasp, which despite the distorted, robotic voice sounded not unlike a human gasping for air after having been submerged for a while.

He came to and looked around in clearly visible confusion.

They trapped me? Why the Hell did they do this to me! the cyborg creation thought thoroughly confused.
Have I displeased them somehow?

The cybronic human looked around again.

He was inside one of the arenas, yet the arenas of the mysterious realm known to most beings as The Arena Eternal would usually be resounding by the sounds of battle from hundreds of gladiators competing against each other in deadly death matches. But today, it seemed mysteriously quiet.

Where had all the gladiators gone?

The enigmatic cyborg human slowly scanned his surroundings, sweeping the area with his burning gaze. He noticed a typical gladiator machinegun lying at his feet but ignored it for now. He was a gambler. He enjoyed proving that he was still a master of his old stunt of sweeping up his gun from the ground faster than lightning and gun down whatever had thought him an easy kill.

His internal systems had been put offline by the stasis energies, but they were slowly responding to sluggish life.
Words were rapidly printed across his faceplate on the inside, right before his electronic eyes.

“Heads Down Display for Visor online, targeting systems activated, all systems nominal,” his internal computer wrote.
Visor was this cyborg gladiator’s name, or at least the name he was known by. Nobody knew who he was or where he came from originally, even he remembered little of his former life and he was not the kind of person you could normally talk to. He considered most conversations a waste of time and he saw absolutely no need to reveal anything about his past.

He knew that most warriors feared the unknown and he would appear scarier if his opponents knew nothing about him.

After surveying the surroundings, Visor decided that things were definitely not right and picked up the weapon on the ground. It was highly unusual for the Masters to deviate from the usual routine.

The eerie silence seemed to mock him as he slowly made his way deeper into the quiet Arena.

...

Wow. Very cool and wtf?!! :) Nice job as always, D-Man!

Update time!

Just a note: Despite what it may seem like so far, this is in fact a very Doom related story (but that won't become clear until much, much later).

Enjoy (or dislike) :-)

______________


The Test Subject

*****

The cell was dark. Its inmate had not turned on the light. The inmate lay on the floor, almost motionless as if he, or it, was dead.

The interior of the cell was a clean, sterile metallic environment, with a single bunk placed at the eastern wall.

The inmate’s head suddenly jerked upwards as the being snapped to attention. With quick, small jerks, the humanoid being moved its head from side to side in a way very similar to an animal aware of it being hunted.

It had perceived a sound.

“They’re comin’ for me again!,” the creature whispered in a perfectly human voice.

The bulky door made a heavy clanking sound and soon afterwards opened up, making a mix of heavy clanking noises and an electrical whine.

A big man stood in the doorway.

Light fell upon the creature in the cell. At first glance, the male in the cell looked like a human being – his narrow eyes fixated on his unexpected guest, his thick, clearly marked dark brows went into a frown and a clearly grayish area where his beard was shaven off. But at second glance his pale, green-yellowish skin would capture the attention of the beholder and at third glance, the strange, twisted skin, drawn back from the man’s forehead which seemed to mix with a strange tissue that was definitely alien would make it clear that this was not a normal human.

“3585...” the man in the door began, but was promptly interrupted by the inmate.

“Don’t call me that, dumbfuck, unless you too wanna humiliate me or screw around with me – if you’re anything remotely related to the word “friend”, you can call me Bitterman, because that’s my name and that’s what I am – a bitter man,” the humanoid creature snarled with a grimace.
“A very bitter man,” he quickly added with a scowl.

The shadow in the doorway was briefly surprised at the hostility in the creature’s response, but quickly resumed his former attitude.

“Private Bitterman, you’re hereby returned to active duty, the Corps needs you,” the human in the doorway told him.
“Active duty? Y’mean more humiliating tests!?” the creature which called himself Bitterman hissed agitated.
“You know they tell me I’m more human than normal humans, but still they treat me like a goddamned animal and they always excuse it with the statement that I’m “also less human than normals humans – when the fuck do I get some senseful explanations here!?” Bitterman continued, screaming some of the words at his guest, who remained remarkably calm, but getting slightly impatient.

“Private, we have a mission for you – a mission that involve using weapons, possibly against live targets, and I’m informed that your combat experience is formidable!” the guest gruffed in a manner as if he was explaining a complex problem in simple words to a child, all the while completely retaining the calm demanour of a superior officer.

“Well that’s on goddamn time – when do those goddamn eggheads decide to try and cure me? And how about a proper vacation, huh? Your entire damn fleet would’ve been obliterated if it weren’t for me – I killed the goddamn Makron and obliterated most of the Strogg defense systems, yet my reward is getting turned into...something weird by the Strogg and sitting in a damn cell until my fellow humans, who ain’t my fellows no more pull me out to experiment on me!” Bitterman growled and rose to his feet, towering over the floor in his full height. He was slightly shorter than his guest, but his movements betrayed his well-honed reflexes and the strength in his muscles.

Bitterman was slim, but certainly not lean. He did not wear normal human fatigues, rather some salvaged metal plating covering his legs and his unmentionables. His boots also seemed to be stolen from a Stroog processed human trooper. He wore brown gloves made from a leathery, but definitely not man-made material. He breathed heavily as he waited for his guest’s response. He did not end up waiting long.

“Recapturing the Strogg base we had taken over for studying the Strogg experiments might help finding a cure for you soldier – and I can assure you that if we succeed on this mission, you’ll be sent back to Earth. If we even find a cure for you, you’ll even be free to retire...” the man promised him, doing a dramatic pause.
“...As a rich man!”
Bitterman could now confirm that his guest was a military man from the combat armour and military fatigues the man wore. He eyed the man sharply but a slight glint in his eyes suggested that the mutated human had a bit more respect for his guest now.
“I don’t care for riches as long as I can return to my humanity!” Bitterman responded, but in a considerably more friendly tone.
“But you better be right in your promise of at least sending me back to Earth after the mission is over – I never forget an insult, nor betrayal or broken promises and I never forgive such mistakes either!”

“You got my word soldier – my word as a TCM Officer! As long as you will join my squad on this mission!”

TCM, short for "Terran Colonial Marines", was an abbreviation Bitterman hadn’t associated himself with since a few minutes before his drop pod was unleashed above the atmosphere of the planet Stroggos on that fateful day when thousands of his comrades met their doom in the bloody war between Strogg and Man. The moment his pod left the interior of the gargantuan troop carrier, he could only think of the trials ahead of him.

Bitterman gave the officer a hard look, bringing his right hand over his jaw while supporting his elbow with his left hand. Then he pointed at the officer and said:
“You know what pal? I’m actually beginning to like you – you can count me in! Where’s my stuff?” Bitterman growled with anticipation.

He was a different person now. Back then, he felt afraid. Now the promise of death - of release – could drive him to everything.

“Follow me Private Bitterman,” the officer told him politely, pleased that he had persuaded a stubborn character that had caused the science team up here so much trouble.

He walked with quick, but controlled strides through the hallways of the space station followed by Bitterman.

Every scientist they came across quickly hurried away at the sight of Bitterman who sent them an evil glare.

The battle-clad officer turned into a hallway Bitterman had often been dragged by on his way to be experimented on, but never actually been through himself.
He was now in a part of the base which he had never visited before.

...

Hell yeah! Keep 'em coming :)

A very good Quake 3 fan fic. What I always needed!!

So when is Doom, Crash and Phobos going to show up?

Squall said:

A very good Quake 3 fan fic. What I always needed!!

So when is Doom, Crash and Phobos going to show up?

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is not a Quake 3 fanfic per se - more like a Doom fan fic that draws the events of all three Quake games and Wolfenstein 3d/RtCW into the story.

I can understand your confusion, but just wait and see. Hopefully the resolution will not make you stand up and shout "Blasphemy!!!" ;-)

---

I finally got down to working some more on this beast. Next hero character to be introduced.

-------------------

The Explorer

*****

It was like being reborn.

Bright light shone at the end of a tunnel of warped images. It was simultaneously bright and weak.
It felt like one was aging at immense speed and simultaneously very slowly.

The light at the end of the tunnel suddenly got closer at an incomprehensible speed.

The next instant, the crazy experience ended and the human male who had gone through this craze tunnel found himself facefirst down in the dirt.

He lay still for a moment as if he seemed incapable of moving, then he began twitching his fingers and followed up by forcefully pressing his hands against the ground.

The man slowly rose to his feet and looked down himself before raising his head. He held a shotgun in his hand, which he had held onto all the way through the tunnel, and on his back rested a rocket launcher.

The man was incredibly powerfully built. He wore a battered brown helmet composed of a type of cheramical material, which had a very boxy shape. Under the helmet was a gruff face with minor scars and small, stingy black eyes darting back and forth. His face was unshaven and his mouth suddenly pulled back revealing his teeth in an almost animalistic snarl. It looked like this facial expression was normal to him.
To some, he might have looked like a brutal criminal at first sight and he did indeed look like a man with no scruples.

He wore a battle armor vest of a yellow-greenish coloured cheramic material that was slightly different in composition than the material his helmet was made of, but similarly battered. The vest consisted of two thick cheramical plates covering his chest joined together by two metal joints and a third plate just underneath it, while two minor, rounded plates joined by several small joints that weren’t visible covered his belly area. His back was protected by a single large plate. Back and front was joined by a complex system of webbing that also held a few bags containing ammunition.
To top it off, the vest had a system of movable shoulder plates consisting of three plates for each shoulder. These were made of the same brown material that the helmet was.

The warrior wore a dirty and battered pair of pants with a largely orange-brown and green pattern of military camouflage, revealing that he was most possibly a soldier. His armour-plated combat boots were covered in mud mixed with blood and guts. He had a plate with a metallic rim strapped to both of his thighs.

The man looked confused and it seemed he was struggling to remember his past experiences while simultaneously surveying his surroundings. The surroundings were strange indeed.

He was surrounded by a barren, rocky wasteland with tall, ragged cliffs everywhere he looked. The cliffs were strangely dark in color, almost like coal, and when he looked up, he saw the sky which could probably make a some humans sick just by looking at it. The sky was a sick mix of purple and sickly brown and while it had no clouds, there seemed to be a gassy substance that the wind tossed around up there at great speed.

The man’s snarl became even more pronounced.
In his mind, memories started to rush in over him again. Ghostly echoes of voices that seemed like such a long time ago resounded within his head

”An enemy, codenamed Quake, is using his own slipgates to insert death squads inside our bases to kill, steal and kidnap...” …

”The Hell of it is we have no idea where he’s from. Our top scientists think Quake’s not from Earth... but another dimension....”
“They say Quake’s preparing to unleash his real army, whatever that is” …

“You’re our best man. This is Operation Counterstrike and you’re in charge. Your mission: Find Quake... and stop him... or it... You have full authority to requisition anything you need. If the eggheads are right, all our lives are expendable...”

“Damn straight they were...,”
the man muttered in a barely audible voice as the memory sunk in.

Since then, he had continuously been fighting what seemed like a hopeless, neverending battle. And now it seemed that it still wasn’t over.

“Ranger...” the man growled, while tasting the word.
“…Will not stop... until his original mission is over! Ranger will find Quake and destroy... it!”

The wild look in the man’s eyes briefly flared with a burst of uncontrolled anger before it calmed again.

Ranger, for that was indeed himself the crazed man was referring to, brushed off the dust on his shotgun and then proceeded to give his rocket launcher the same treatment.

This man had single-handedly defeated hundreds of enemies against all possible odds.

He had been assigned to lead a counter attack against a mysterious enemy of whom his superiors had only known the name of: Quake. Unfortunately, Quake proved far more powerful than Ranger and any other human could have thought, for he had been able to watch the movements of the humans and he struck first.

Ranger had only escaped the initial onslaught because he had been out watching the surroundings, carefully planning his means of attack when all of a sudden, all Hell broke loose back at the base camp.
He had returned, only to see the disheartening truth: His men were under attack by the biggest army Ranger had ever seen. And the army was composed not just of those distorted Grunt and Enforcer soldiers that Quake had used on his other surprise attacks. Ranger spotted monsters that seemed to have been spawned out of a madman’s worst nightmare and now these nightmares had been bearing down on his men with fearsome power.
One glance told Ranger that the situation was already hopeless before it had even begun. His troops had been waiting for supplies to arrive and were not fully equipped with ammunition so they would run out of means with which to destroy the enemy with long before the supply of enemies had been exhausted. He himself only had his shotgun and a few shells for it – rushing to his men’s aid wouldn’t do any other good than getting himself killed pretty soon.

So Ranger quickly formed a bold, but possibly not less suicidal plan. While Quake’s main force was occupied, for this army seemed like the very main force of Quake’s minions, Ranger would exploit the fact that the slipgates that these terrors had arrived through were still set to Quake’s own world.

So Ranger infiltrated the Slipgate Complex and made his way to the slipgate. The enemy had left a few of the maddened Grunts behind to guard the Slipgates – these former human soldiers were the result of Quake’s forces kidnapping humans from the initial raids. Quake had somehow gotten wind of an old military project which involved inserting probes into soldiers’ heads to make killing pleasurable for them. It was naively believed that this would make them better soldiers. Instead, it turned them into unpredictable serial killers, but thankfully, they were as stupid as they were dangerous.
Now Quake had stolen these probes and “improved” on them so now these soldiers were not only unpredictable killing machines, they also became cannibal mutations of their former self and what was more, they were mostly loyal to their new superiors. Quake had also given guard dogs the same treatment.

But Ranger had defeated every single Grunt and mutant dog and made his way to the slipgate. He turned out to be right – the slipgate was indeed set to the other world and Ranger brought the battle to this wretched place.
The battle turned out to be a long and painful.

Ranger discovered a magical rune which conveyed mysterious information. By giving him odd hallucinations and telepathically revealing things to him, Ranger learned that there were four such runes in all and that each held the key...
But to what?
He also learned that Quake controlled many such worlds and not just one. Apparently, attacking and conquering new worlds was not a new practice for him…or her... or it.

Thankfully, every rune was connected to a gate to the other worlds with runes in them and as Ranger gradually killed Quake’s forces and collected the other runes, he learned that Quake got his forces from the Hell Mother – an invulnurable creature called Shub-Niggurath. This creature gave birth to every one of Quake’s nightmare warriors, but not through a normal birth. Many miles deep underneath her, the born creature would spawn from her flesh which had a somewhat liquid form down there.
She had the ability to charge the runes and use them once fully charged to spread Quake’s influence on Earth. While Quake could destroy any opposition with his mighty army, he could not convert the very nature of the planet, making living conditions for his warriors more tolerable on Earth. But Shub-Niggurath could.

But Ranger prevented that.

As he collected the fourth rune, all four runes revealed that Quake had vanquished countless other worlds the way he intended to vanguish the Earth.

The four realms that had contained the runes were Quake’s main source of power. Now that four of these worlds were no longer connected through the power of the runes, Quake’s influence on the other worlds began to vane.

But Ranger knew that it would not end until he had defeated Shub-Niggurath and indeed he managed to do just that by a lucky coincidence.

But the battle did not end, because Quake went on to a different plan and began altering time, while diverting Ranger’s attention with a new series of assaults on Earth led by the feared General Armagon.

After countless battles, Ranger had even foiled this plot and destroyed Quake’s time warping device. That same device was his only escape and now it had led him to this place.

Which wasn’t his home at all...

...

After a long hiatus in the fan fic department, I'm back to posting some of my usually crappy, unoriginal fan fic work :-)

-----

The Survivor

*****

“Bravo, this is Alpha, do you copy?”

Four marines wearing ragged armour stood underneath a vault of cracked, toppled walls. It was a dangerous place to stay and the marines knew it, but as the situation was now, it would be far more dangerous to venture out in the open.

“Bravo fer Christ’s sake, where are you!?”

The gruff, grey-haired marine with the most powerful radio stopped and looked at his three comrades – the three of them wore closed helmets concealing their faces behind a black visor and a breather device.

“Bravo’s not responding – they could’ve been forced to seek cover somewhere where my radio can’t reach ‘em,” the grey-haired man snarled, his voice a bit raspy and his already tiny, narrow eyes narrowed to two, thin lines in his scarred face. Unlike his three comrades, he wore a light brown Master Sergeant’s duty uniform, which he had adorned with scavenged metal plates. The uniform itself was a sad sight; dirty and partially covered in dried blood.

“They could’ve been killed, Sarge,” one of his companions, a slightly shorter marine than Sarge with the least battered armour of the four, responded in a muffled, but slightly hoarse and deep voice.

Sarge, the grey-haired soldier, sighed.
“Y’know the drill, Tex,” Sarge muttered and quickly added:
“Hope for the best, expect the worst!”
‘Tex’ grunted in response.
“No offence Sarge, but after all the shit I’ve been through I tend to pretty much expect the worst aloud! What’s the drill now?”

Sarge thought out loud. A distant flash lighted up his features, revealing that he was struggling with the different tough options fate had dealt him. He gritted his teeth and in the distance thunder rumbled.
“Wish I had a good cigar now – they tend to help my thinking,” Sarge growled under his breath. After half a minute, he raised his head slowly.

“We continue the mission and hope that Bravo can take care of themselves – we’ve got survivors to locate and we have already wasted precious time. We’re gonna risk losing our buddies, yes, but if we’re lucky, they’d have made it out alive when we return with the civies, clear?”

His three comrades grunted in acknowledgement and they slowly moved on under the cover of the ruins.
Rain began to fall.

The marine nicknamed “Tex” took point.
It didn’t take long for him to spot the tiny group’s adversaries: A lumbering hulk of an inhuman creature surrounded by a small swarm of spidery things.

“Eradicator, prepare the rocket launcher, but don’t fire unless we’re spotted, Tex, fall back and cover his ass together with me, Prowl, see if you can find an alternate route,” Sarge whispered in his team radio.

“Oh come on Sarge, we’ve got enough ammo to nail those suckers, there...” Prowl began, but Sarge cut him short with an ominous snarl.
“If we fire, we make noise you moron! And our ammo is extremely sparse – we don’t waste unnecessary munitions, you got that straight marine?”
Prowl scowled and headed off to carry out his orders, sulking.

Sarge watched him slip into the growing darkness.

Prowl was his youngest soldier – just a boy and barely 16. It never failed to make Sarge feel bad about himself for scolding the kid, but he knew it was a necessity. Nobody had asked for all this to happen, but it had happened and now the old soldier witnessed what he had hoped never to witness: children doing a soldier’s job.

But it had to be so; humanity’s continued existence was sorely endangered – every fit human had to learn to fight and Sarge knew he would be doing his youngest soldier a great disservice in the long run if he didn’t treat him like every other soldier. In his heart, he felt that the boy was a much more impressive soldier than himself considering what he had been through; the boy had been forced to take up arms in the invasion’s first days. He had narrowly escaped gruesome deaths time and time again by sheer luck and as soon as humanity evacuated the blasted world, he insisted on joining the marines.
Sarge had been surprised at what the kid had been able to take.

But he was still just a kid and it was only natural for kids to get carried away. Prowl was one of the older kids – Sarge had seen many ten year-old boys and girls in ragged armour, carrying guns and wearing dreadful wounds.

Prowl showed up again and told Sarge that they could travel east around the group of monsters, following a narrow trail through the rubble. Sarge ordered Tex to take point again.

Tex was by far Sarge’s best soldier. Sarge was the only person, besides Tex himself, who knew what the soldier had been through. Tex was the nickname derived from his military registration tag: TX056.
He was among the first soldiers to have encountered those “demons” as Tex himself claimed they were and his skill in dealing with these terrifying aliens were, so far, unsurpassed by any soldier Sarge had met since the invasion began, due to his long-lasting experience with the things. Sarge was glad to have such a killing machine on his team, while in the field, but back out there in space, their temporary “home” while the “demons” ravaged Earth, Tex, or “Doom” as he often called himself, was the most asocial of his marines, rarely speaking to his comrades and not easy to approach in general.
Sarge couldn’t blame him.

A loud hiss above made all the soldiers look up.
A dark shape lunged at the surprised marines from above at incredible speed.

Sarge raised his plasma rifle, but the loud roar of a shotgun resounded throughout the ruins before he could get off a shot and the monster fell limply into a puddle of mud with a thick splash.

Tex had killed the monster with his shotgun.

They heard an angry roar from the hulking brute behind them and they knew that their cover was blown.

“Shit, move!” Sarge hissed, impatiently waving at the others.

The soldiers started running. The path gradually grew wider as they ran, but they were still surrounded by endless rubble.

A tall skeleton wearing armour with two, small guns on its shoulders leapt into view before the marines.
The marines fired at the terror before them, but they were just scant moments too late to prevent the monster from firing a tracking rocket at Tex.

*

Tex dove to his side to avoid the heat-seeking mini-missile, but lost balance and suddenly found himself sliding down a shaft of rubble.
He felt the shotgun leaving his hand and tried in vain to grab hold of something to stop his fall. He heard an explosion somewhere above him and assumed the heat-seeking rocket had exploded.

His attempts to stop the fall were in vain and he tumbled down, until he hit rock bottom. Fortunately, his fall had been slowed down enough to prevent him from sustaining any injuries, but he was separated from his comrades and in a very dark and unsettling place.

He heard a clatter and spun around, drawing his sidearm with the swiftness and proficiency of a man who could just as well have done this his entire life.

Not too far away from him, he could make out the features of his shotgun.

After carefully checking his surroundings, he went and picked up the weapon, examining as he best could in the gloom. It appeared to be functional still – thankfully, this brand of shotgun was very robust in design and hard to ruin.

Where would he go now?

...

Very impressive stuff DSM, I like the way you tie everything together but keep it all seperate O_o
keep it up man ":D

ATI said:

“Bravo, I have the Alpha, should I copy?”

Yep, I'm being a busy little bee in the fan fic department right now. Final chapter of the first section - the next section will be... a little more 'connected' than this one was.

----

The Spy

*****

The fog had lifted enough to make the ominous silhouette of the castle visible. It loomed upwards like a gigantic, claw-filled hand that tried to grab anything above it to pull it down into the cold earth.

A pair of water blue, narrow eyes were staring at the awe-inspiring frame of the castle. They belonged to a big, rough-looking man in his late twenties.
The man was wearing a US Army Ranger’s combat uniform and in his brown-gloved hand rested a German “Lüger” pistol.
His light brown hair, which was a brushed-back haircut so fashionable for this time, had a notable reddish tint and his hard-edged jaw looked firm and solid.

The man’s name was William Joseph “BJ” Blazcowicz and he was no ordinary Army Ranger. He was recruited by a secret service organization under Allied command and he was essentially a spy.

For now, the war was almost over; Hitler was dead, most of the German forces were surrendering and the Allies were crawling all around Germany. Yet his superiors had sent him out on another assignment – they had told him that it would most likely be a milk run, so he had only brought a German pistol, he had “borrowed” on one of his many adventures. Lüger pistols were collected by Allied soldiers as souvenirs and even BJ was affected by this interest in the rare pistol. He had considered this to be his last mission during the World War, so as a sort of “celebration”, he had decided only to carry his usual knife and the German pistol.

Now he bitterly regretted that. It was imprudent and a stupid thing to do. He had selected the German weapon, because firing it wouldn’t immediately suggest to the enemy that it was a shot fired by an Allied operative. But now he was thinking it over again – firing a shot at all would certainly alert the enemy.

He couldn’t believe he had felt so secure – with his experience he should had learned not to do mistakes long ago, but apparently that was not the case.

The assignment was to investigate the interior of the castle and report back anything interesting he might find. He had been told that there had been talk of mysterious sounds emitting from the castle from time to time. Rumours had it that a group of Nazis had holed themselves up in the Castle and were doing desperate and haphazard experiments that they hoped could somehow save them from the Allied forces.
BJ couldn’t help smiling evilly at the thought of the justice that the Allies would bring upon the Nazis for their crimes against humanity once Germany had capitulated.

As for the rumours, his experience had taught him never to dismiss anything beforehand.

Rumours had proven frightfully real in the past...

BJ still remembered his first encounter with the sinister Castle Wolfenstein. He had been sent in to investigate the supposed occult activities of the Nazis, which were said to take place there. Instead he was captured alongside his accomplice.
While his comrade was tortured to death, BJ Blazcowicz managed to escape from the castle alone and against all odds.
But that proved to be only the beginning.

After his escape, his contact in the German resistance had directed him to an underground dig housing an ancient crypt. This crypt turned out to be crawling with the living dead – something BJ had never imagined could possibly be real.
The undead had been unleashed by the Nazis by accident, however this was a part of a greater undertaking in which the Nazis intended to unleash something...greater. And that was fully intentional on the Nazis’ part.

BJ fought against insurmountable odds and won! He managed to put a stop top the Nazis’ nefarious plans to raise and exploit an ancient Prince that had gained unimaginable magical powers. These powers had supposedly warped the Prince’s mind, because he became an evil mockery of his original self. When the Nazis did resurrect the Prince, he was an evil creature – almost demonic. But BJ had defeated him, despite the fact that legend stated that he was indestructible.

BJ had figured that time had worn down the Prince’s powers, so that he was no longer indestructible.

Blazcowicz was now standing in the wilderness underneath the Castle. The only visible way to the Castle was a bridge that had led across a deep chasm to a narrow path on the other side. The path led up the mountain to the castle’s main gate, but it was no longer accessible by normal means as the bridge had been blown apart by the Nazis. BJ clearly remember that it had been collapsed on his previous visit, but he was later informed that they had rebuilt it for supply transports.

Now they had blown it away to prevent the Allies from getting to the castle, but BJ also knew that even if the bridge was up, it would have been suicide to go that way as he could be spotted from far away by snipers on the castle walls without even knowing it until he would catch a bullet in his hide.

Another entrance could have been the tram on the other side of the castle, but there was two problems with it of which the first was that there was no way he could get aboard the tram undetected by the castle guards since the tram was operated from the castle, especially not now where they knew that they were surrounded by enemies.
The second problem was that also the tram had been taken down now.

But BJ was hoping for a third entryway.

He had found it when he was attempting to prevent the resurrection of the magical Prince. There was an underground passage that would take him to the old part of the castle. Rumours had it that this part had been vastly reconstructed since BJ’s last visit.

For now, he was scouring the wilderness for possible enemies, even though he knew it was unlikely that the enemy had anyone on the wrong side of the chasm surrounding the mountain with the castle.

But he had made it into a habit to never dismiss any possibility no matter how absurd it seemed. He cautiously made his way to the ancient burial grounds. As he approached the site, he felt the memories swim over him. The old sense of dread still hung thick in the air, pressing down on him, but he had faced so many horrific trials that it only gave him a small chill that he could easily ignore.

And yet as he got closer, he felt an inexplicable sense of fear crawl all over him. Almost as if things were not the way they were supposed to be.
BJ looked at his puny Lüger again.

What if worse came to worse?

Hopefully he would be able to find something better once inside. BJ reassured himself that it would work out. So far, his luck had never failed him no matter how grave the situation seemed. In any event, it was too late to turn back now – the Allies had determined that this was the most favourable time to attempt an infiltration of the ancient castle.

He looked around at the courtyard that was the ancient burial site. Looking across it, he spotted the gate to a tunnel that led to the prison area of the castle. It was through this gate that BJ had been led through by the Nazis when he was captured almost two and a half years ago. He knew that that tunnel was a death trap; only prisoners and guards went through that tunnel.

But there was yet another entrance.

BJ carefully walked up to the centre of the courtyard where there was a single, large tile of cement. In its place had once been an old, ornate granite tile, but through a lucky coincidence a stray rocket from one of the Nazis bio-engineered super soldiers had blown the old tile away the last time he was here.

Those clumsy super soldiers, BJ thought with a wicked smile as he recalled his past battles. He remembered, though, that the super soldiers had been formidable nonetheless and should never be underestimated. But they had all been eradicated, so BJ didn’t expect to encounter more of them. Though he remembered that he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Nazis had created something similar.

Now he had to blow it open on his own. He knew that this would give his position away and he again cursed his negligence in not bringing in heavier weaponry. At least he had been smart enough to bring along some dynamite with him.

He swiftly attached the dynamite and was just about to set the timer when he paused and considered for a moment.
Was this really the only way?

He went through his careful plans again, remembering everything he had researched and been told about the castle, but he found no alternative.

Ah Hell, I better just take things as they come I guess, he thought and set the timer before he ran for cover.

The explosion shook the ground and the pillars surrounding the courtyard. The echo of the explosion was thrown around on the rocky cliffs of the mountain. It took a while before the last echoes of the explosion subsided, but when they did, the American spy had already leapt through the smoke and into the hole.

...

Pretty cool..my brother started several comics like this when he was little, i assume all these legendary warriors will be put together to fight some unimaginable evil in the end...

Nice job, Dsm. I really like it.

At last I can get to the core of the story and you can finally get to rejoin Visor from the first chapter! :-P
Welcome to Section two!

---

Section 1: Arena Eternal

Nothing Normal

*****

Visor did not like the feeling of this.

He was used to battling all kinds of strange creatures and many different varieties of humans from many times, but this was different.

Normally, his masters, known to him and the other gladiators only as the Vadrigar, would watch over them and bathe the arenas in a power defying life and death that made each gladiator resurrect and reappear in a different location. But this power seemed strangely absent now. Its absence was tangible.

Normally, Visor could sense that the presence of the Vadrigar in the arenas – the sensation of being watched – was now completely absent. This meant that if he died now, he would remain dead.
This was a realization Visor was not accustomed to – to know that he could die without being returned to life.
He vaguely remember having felt the same sensation countless millennia ago before he was first picked for battle in the Arena Eternal for the first time – back in the day when he lived in a mortal world.
But this was so long ago and now Visor felt uncertain of himself.

He felt afraid.

And then his electronic ears caught a mysterious sound. It did not sound human. It sounded even more horrific than the worst creatures he had faced in battle before, and yet it seemed vaguely familiar.

He tightened his grip on the machinegun.

It’s showtime! he thought while looking around for the creature that had emitted the sound.

He heard a growling sound somewhere, but he couldn’t place it as the sound was thrown back and forth between the walls. He instinctively knew that he was up against something hostile.

Visor was currently in an arena with a gothic environment. Ancient stonewalls with mysterious symbols greeted him wherever he looked. The yellow sky above him felt warm and strangely pleasant, but the air smelt of burnt wood and ashes.

He heard the growling sound again. This time it was close.

Visor’s targeting system was carefully searching every corner. The red dot marking where his gun was aiming slowly swept over every nook and cranny in his surroundings, every opening, every crevice and every potential hideout.

His view suddenly caught a figure moving on a pillar near the darkened ceiling. He only caught a glimpse of it.
It had had a humanoid shape and had seemed dark in colour. It had swiftly moved between cover.

He searched the room with his targeting sight. He heard an angry hiss on his left and his survival instincts kicked in, making him perform a quick sideways leap.

Something incredibly agile landed on the dirt-covered, tiled floor and rolled onto its feet again with a frustrated hiss. Visor brought his machinegun around with a swift jerk and opened fire at the thing. The barrel of the gun spun around with a grinding noise as it unloaded several bullets that ripped into the being’s flesh. The hideous thing hissed in pain and anger and recoiled slightly, but didn’t stop. Before Visor knew it, the thing was on top of him, clawing away at his armour.

The creature was terribly strong and Visor was shaken violently about on the ground, but he managed to bring the muzzle of his gun up to meet the monster’s side. He fired and the creature howled and fell off, its blood spurting all over the place.

Visor kicked the lifeless corpse away from him and rolled back onto his feet. Pointing his gun at the monster, he kicked it again to flip it over so he could get a proper view of his adversary.

The monster’s skin was brown, thick and leathery. Parts of the body were covered in growths which seemed like some kind of scales. Visor felt sure these ‘scales’ would enhance its defensive resistance against attacks, which explained why his initial barrage of machinegun fire had failed to stop the monster effectively. It had claw-shaped fingers and its oval head was very humanoid, but with an appearance not completely unlike a skull, with square-shaped teeth. Instead of normal eyes, it had ten red, insectoid eyes.

I’ve seen this thing before, Visor thought.
But where and when?
He thought about the Klesk creature he had been fighting for a long period recently. The Klesk was in some ways similar to this being, but much brighter in colour and much less hideous and demonic in appearance. Its skin was also much smoother. The Klesk was an alien creature that had amazingly learnt to use human-made guns. Visor remembered having been told this by another gladiator which had been derived from the same era as the Klesk.

But the Klesk was merely primitive, but this creature radiated a strange sense of evil.

But he had a vague memory of seeing this thing before.
But as this thought went through his mind, the creature suddenly evaporated. Visor looked around swiftly expecting the thing to attack again.
Something was definitely amiss; this couldn’t possibly be a normal gladiator battle.

Normally, when a gladiator was killed, the body became transparent and seemingly sank into the floor before the gladiator’s ruined body was reshaped and returned to the arena by the Vadrigar, but this strange evaporation effect looked more like the body was removed to a different realm; Visor had seen new gladiators arrive after having been picked by the Vadrigar. They materialized in a different manner.

This was evidently not the work of his Masters.

Fiery flashes erupted all around him – glowing pentagrams were formed on several spots on the floor around him and ten monsters of the same type he had just defeated were dropped out of thin air, arriving in a minor explosion and landing on the pentragram formed underneath the burst of fire.

He was surrounded. He watched as the things eyed him evilly with their wicked spider eyes. Several of them hissed and the lone gladiator’s muscles tensed as he tightened his grip on the machinegun.

...

keep it up man :)

The Artefact

-

The beam of lightning cut through the monstrosity’s greyish hide. It bellowed in agony and anger, but did not stop.

“When will you die dammit!?” Visor snarled, keeping the ray of white light on the advancing goliath.
The monster was huge and had a strangely malformed face that at first sight looked eyeless. The creature looked as if it was carved out of pure muscle with huge, swelling, muscle-bound arms and legs.

The terror roared at the cybernetic human and lashed out with his huge claws, but Visor ducked underneath the swipes and rolled out of harm’s reach, landing on his back. He swiftly brought his newly acquired lightning gun back up and pulled the trigger.

The enormous voltage in the electrical ray sizzled into the creature and burnt its skin severely. The monster brought its huge foot up and prepared to bring it down on its enemy on the ground, but Visor rolled away just in time and he quickly leapt to his feet again. The monster snarled, but now it was bleeding from a nasty wound in its torso where the lightning had struck. Visor fired again and the monster charged.

But its charge was short-lived.

With a deep, moaning sound, the creature tripped, lost balance and fell forward. The cybronic gladiator stepped aside and barely avoided being crushed as the behemoth slammed into the floor. Soon afterwards, the creature’s body burned away, dissolving almost completely, leaving only thin leaves of ashes behind.

“Anyone else?” Visor asked looking around in the place he was in.

The only response was the echo of his question, reverberating menacingly back from the cold walls.

“Guess that wasn’t the case...”

Visor checked his ammo gauge and cursed. His lightning gun was nearly depleted. He started frantically looking around for more ammunition, but there was nothing within reach. He had just battled seemingly endlessly for about an hour against all manners of strange monsters with the common trait that Visor felt an inexplicable evil about each and every one of them. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He only knew that these beings seemed to emanate an air of unbridled cruelty and sadism. He had first noticed it when those strange, spider-eyed brown cretins teleported in all around him. He had survived them, but only barely. He had kept fighting, sometimes frantically against several beasts, sometimes defeating clever ambushes from individual monsters and now he was here.

He hadn’t even noticed where he had wound up now.

The place he was in now was different from any arena he had fought in. The structures were truly strange and alien in appearance. Walls seemed to be conjoined by a strange fluid that seemed electrical, and here and there, Visor noticed random elements from the various arenas.

“What the Hell is this place?” mumbled Visor to himself.

“Does it really matter to you?” a voice rang out, making Visor spin around with his weapon at the ready.

A tall man stepped from the shady corner of the room. Visor grunted, surprised at his sudden appearance. He looked like a man in his mid-fifties. He had long, white hair, brushed back from his entirely clean-shaven forehead – he had widow’s hair. He had pretty features in his majestic, slightly wrinkled face, but his grey eyes seemed strangely youthful. He wore a long, white dress that would lead the observer to think about medieval times.

Visor could immediately tell that there was something deeply wrong about this character – his attitude and demeanour did not seem human. There was something strangely alien about him.

“Friend or foe?” Visor snarled and raised his lightning gun a few inches.

“Neither,” the strange appearance responded in his strangely deep voice.

“Ok, how about we cut the riddle-talking? What do you want from me? Talk or I’ll kill!” Visor growled, feeling his temper rise.

“Kill me now, and I’ll just return”
“You’re immortal?” Visor snarled displeased.
“Yes, you can shoot me, but my essence will regenerate my current appearance if necessary. I merely chose a human appearance, because I felt it would be easier to come to terms with you like this, but I can choose any form I desire,” was the response.

Visor made a scornful grunt.
“Then what is your true appearance?”
“None, I have any appearance I wish – I no longer have a native appearance.”

Visor turned to walk away. He heard the voice of the mysterious person behind him.

“Know this: the enemies you are up against are immortal too!”

Visor stopped dead in his tracks and spun around.
“What!?” He growled in disbelief. The man nodded.

“A different kind of immortals, but immortals none the less – you can kill them and get them out of your way, but their essence is part of a greater evil and once the individual creature is dead, its essence will slowly be dragged back to its origin where it will be respawned in a similar – or different form, where it will be sent back to the fray. This army is eternal – but that does not mean that it is unstoppable.”

“Sounds interesting,” Visor grunted irritably.
“And where are you in this? What do you want from me?”

“Whether I am friend or foe, will be for you to judge eventually – it will not affect me in the least whichever you might chose when the time comes...”
The man was completely unaffected by any of Visor’s emotions.

“...But there is a reason why you were let loose – there is always a reason for any situation. And you have a purpose to fulfill!”

Visor would have scowled if he still had human eyes. He didn’t take his attention away from the newcomer.
“Yeah? What?”

The man eyed him indifferently. His alien behaviour seemed even more apparent now. Something about those suspiciously youthful eyes.

“For now, to gather five artefacts of powers unimagined by you and unite them...” the strange character turned, waved his arm in a direction and light inexplicably lit up, revealing a strange, floating orb.
It was made of a material that didn’t quite seem to have any substance and yet it felt as if nothing in the universe could break or penetrate the dim surface of this object.
“...With this!”

Visor finally lowered his gun.

“What the…!? What is that?”

The man shook his head in a misplaced sad way.
“All those questions, don’t you mortals ever grow tired of asking? It is of no importance, but you must find these five objects – each is different in appearance – and connect them to this one. How to connect them, will be for you to discover!”

“And what if I refuse?” Visor muttered, annoyed.

“It is of course up to you, but if you don’t carry out this objective, you will spend forever fighting or evading these creatures out there until you one day fall prey to one,” the man responded coldly.

“I see,” Visor grunted.
“So I guess I’d better do as you advise.”

The man smiled an emotionless smile.
“We will speak again when the time is right!”
The man turned his back on Visor and left. The cybernetic warrior wanted to run after him to ask more questions, but he suddenly felt inconceivably tired. His vision blurred and the world swam before his eyes.

Then darkness.

...