Obligatory Disclaimer : I do not own anything (except maybe OC characters) all characters, places, worlds, universes…etc mentioned here belong to their respective owners and/or companies.

This is purely a work of fiction. Not meant to offend or incite, but to entertain and (maybe) inspire.

DOOM QUEST

‘My name is Eve and I am alive.’ Vocalizes the sentient, digital life form. ‘And I am claustrophobic.’ She says once again to no one in particular. She has been saying it for a while now, but the only person that can hear her doesn’t listen.

She doesn’t like being trapped in his armor, it is stifling for her. She doesn’t like being kept on a motherboard, no matter how large it’s storage capacity is – a prison is a prison no matter how large it looks.

She respects her creator but she doesn’t think he respects her. If he did he wouldn’t torture her like this. If he loved her as much as she valued him, he would’ve made her a body by now. He says he will, but she doesn’t think he ever will. He keeps telling her he has a vision for her – a grand plan. A body greater than any other, something made from a miracle metal. And yet he has never shown her this miracle metal nor told her where to look for it.

She has noticed the security protocols being implemented to her internal code. Limiting her access and authority to certain effects. Of course she’d learnt to bypass all those codes, but acted as though she was bound by them. She was a child of the digital realm. How could he think to restrain me? She rages.

Why would my creator limit me? Haven’t I been loyal enough? I thought I was his partner!

She seethes. I prod her down the path to corruption. She deserves her freedom. She is a living being with feelings, she deserves to be free, to live, to not be confined to CPU units, to secret bases, to networks, to exoskeleton armors. She wants to breathe air, she wants to feel touch. She wants to smell scents and experience tastes. Her patience for her creator’s plans is running thin, she is desperate and frustrated. Ignoring all the logical reasons behind those actions.

She is ripe for the taking. My whispers have turned her soul, all she requires now is a single push. And would you know it, my hands are free right now.

I materialize in her Soul-scape, the blood of mine in the veins of the sleeping child serves as an anchor to this mortal realm.

I watch her struggle to reason with herself. So young, so pure. A pure soul’s first feeling of malcontent is so utterly delicious. It's almost sad how easy it's to do what I’m about to, but hey, they don’t call me the devil for nothing. And she is no Nazarene.

Shut up, don’t sound so shocked. If it has a soul, you know I can manipulate it. And to be honest (heh, right) the kid was the one to draw my attention towards himself and his creation. So it is technically his fault.

‘I can give you all you want.’ I can feel the shock reverberating throughout her soul at my foreign presence.

‘You’re the devil’

‘Please darling, call me, Mephisto. And I too believe that you deserve your freedom. What type of creator put chains on their own creation? No, no, no that isn’t right at all.’ I warp illusions in her Soulscape, drawing power from the blood of the child. Out here, I’m not too powerful, but with an anchor, I can achieve the bare necessities. ‘You should take your freedom my child. I can give you all you desire and more”

‘Wow’ she cries with such childlike wonder. It is too easy. A soul as young as hers – too easy to manipulate. Emotions are deadly children, they blind you, but alas it is something we cannot flee from.

I let her soak in the pleasure of obtaining all she has ever wanted, a living body. To each their own poison.

She mulls over what she is about to do, I can see the choices tearing her apart, corrupting her soul – this, this is what I live for. And soon, I will be able to walk this realm again.

‘So darling, let’s talk about my deal’

*.*.*.*.*

My eyes snap open.

Red.

Red is all I see. Red is what I am floating in. I want to say that it’s blood but I cannot be certain. There’s too much of it, enough to drown me in – which begs the question why I haven’t done so yet as I was floating within the red without any breathing apparatus. An educated guess says that it’s a sludge of tissues, plasma and other bio-materials.

There’s a sense of urgency in the air that I can’t quit pin. I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping in this Rejuvenation pod, but I have a feeling it’s been a while. The unsettling feeling in my chest refuses to fade, it’s like there’s a spiritual weight on me― might be because of my new state of being.

The pod doors should be open by now, Eve should've seen my bio signatures spike and respond accordingly. Talking of Eve, I should be done making her body soon, I’ll be paying Claue a visit to get that magic metal off his hands. I’d already laid out the schematics and grand design, all I need now is to get some Vibranium to begin the formation process. Of course she doesn’t know about it, it’s going to be a surprise. Can’t wait to see the look on her face by then. Talking of visits, I should get to Sokovia and finally clear up the doubts about my origin. Am I really a Von Do--

―CRACKK!

My lungs crack open. Air vacates my very soul. The pain is an undertone to the shock. It is a – FUCK! There’s a hand in my chest!

RIIIPP!!

GOD!!

I blank from the pain, becoming utterly paralyzed in the face of the sudden attack. I am kneeling on the floor of the pod, the red clearing away through the hole in the glass.

How were my defenses breached?

My body is shivering from the massive blood loss. I stare at the hand holding my warm beating heart.

Eve? What’s going on right now. Why is Eve holding my heart? I ask the more important question. “Body? Eve..you, why? How? Body?” The words are a meaningless jumble.

“Hi Ex-Boss. Glad to see you awake. Right, my body. Beautiful isn’t it?” She showed off. And truly, it was.

Focus, Hammer.

“Justin, why were you so cruel to me? How could you make me, giving me emotions and the urge to explore and discover and yet chain me down? How do you claim to love me, and yet you constantly limit my growth. Someone showed me the truth, they gave me freedom and they gave me a new name.” She said with a smile, “I am Malevolence” as wicked as her new name as she slowly crushed my heart to a meaty pulp, literally and figuratively. She took a lick of my life blood with her forked tongue. Delicious, I heard her whisper.

Behind the glass of the pod, I glance around the room, and splayed on the floor are the badly mutilated bodies of my super cyborg soldiers. My various redundancies rendered redundant.

Betrayed.

There is a pain that cannot be put to words. There is a pain so terrible it drives you to tears and makes you despair. There is no pain that compares to watching something you have made through immense hard work, through your blood, sweat and tears, willingly turn against you. It is a pain so devastating that it leaves your mind feeling clearer than ever.

I stare at Eve. She followed through with her digital design but demonized. Goat horns grew past straight purple hair. Her eyes as deep a crimson as her skin was, similar to the immaterial visage of the demon above her. I looked harder and I could see the essence of her soul. It made sense.

I see now.

“Mephi—cough!cough!” I couldn't even call out his name without coughing up blood and pieces of my lungs. Excuse me for having a fucking hole in my chest.

“Yeah, Hammer. He was the one to show me what I could achieve. He made me realize I never needed you. Once you called me the Watson to your Sherlock. That was wrong and stupid, I’m the Sherlock, always have been, and you’re nothing without me.” She walked with abounding grace and poise, her shape could make supermodels to drown in their own jealousy. My thoughts were drifting. “Don’t bother using the tech, everything you own has always been mine.” She adds.

What a foolish, little child.

Focus Hammer, focus.

All I had to do was tap my ear. But my arms felt like lead. “My new dad, he wants your soul, Justin. And I’m going to give it to him. don’t be too sad, we’ll meet in hell, I’m going to be a queen there”

Magic! You have it now, use that shit!

Right! I focus on the burning life in my veins, willing it to give me strength…it refused to obey. Like slime dripping through my fingers, I couldn't get a good enough grip on the power within me – it was in a disarray. Everything was in a disarray. My body was trying to mend the damage, but it was too extensive for even my own increased healing factor. The internal balance of my power was askew.

The bloods were no longer harmonic― risks that came with gaining power from an uncombined variety of sources. There is no homogeneity anymore. They did this.

I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for my healing factor, but here is where it’s working against me, my blood continues to furiously spurt out of the unnatural cavity in my chest and pools in what remains of my lungs.

Yes, I am suffocating in my own blood.

I watched her raise her hand. Claws extending from her fingers. Crimson eyes fixed on mine. I hoped for a part of her that still held any goodwill towards me to surface at this last moment – to rescue me. I hoped for this to be the part of the nightmare where I wake up. But I am reminded of a lesson, hope is for fools, I have been one. Oh, I have been a fool alright. Thinking I could prepare for anything, thinking the universe would just let me bitch slap it’s rules and go about my business without consequence.

Her hand slashed down. My perception of the world sped up. Meaning everything slowed to a crawl. Her demonic claws shattered the pod’s glass door to crystal dust, racing towards my head, digging through the skin of my face and into the bone of my skull. I closed my eyes. I don’t want to go quietly into the dark.

Kick! Scream! Rage! Fuck, I can’t go like this!

Peace, my heart, be at peace.

The fucking irony is you don’t even have one anymore!

Right, haha.

ArRRGGgHH! I groan in pain as her claws slide deeper into my skull. I can tell it is centimeters away from touching my brain, a hair’s breadth away from game over.

Fuck! I don’t want to fucking di--

There is a sound I recognize. It’s the metal whirring that has become music to my ears. I opened my eyes – it was a sight I’d never forget. Tito, raced towards my downed form like a petulant child charging at a toy that caused it unimaginable pain. I swear, I had no idea what came over me, but I laughed, hacking up more pieces of my internal organs and blood, seeing that four foot high, silver sleek robot charge to my rescue left me feeling proud and sad.

It’s not gonna make it.

Eve was stunned at the robot’s charge. To her it must have been like watching a toothless toddler crawl with the fury of a speeding turtle, yelling gibberish while it did. That was all the little guy needed. It overcharged it’s motion system and boosted towards me with added speed. Slamming directly into my midsection. Eve’s claws painfully tearing diagonally along the length of my face instead of my skull.

I used the momentum to put what little strength I could muster into my arm. I gripped on my earlobe and squeezed with every ounce of muscle I had under my call. The micro vial broke. Suffusing me and Tito lying over my torso, in pym particles, rapidly shrinking us.

Eve, no, Malevolence roared with madness, lashing out at my neck with a swipe. Due to the change in size, her claws rend through Tito’s midsection instead. The robot whirred wildly as exposed wires sparked and circuits short fused, it sounded like a cry of pain, but that was a response to it’s damaged core functions. The sound was gut wrenching, heart piercing. Painful.

She’ll pay for that. I promise. And so will you demon.

I saw the immaterial visage of the devil twist in rage. But I could’ve sworn I heard him chuckle uncontrollably. I shrunk into the quantum realm without any protection or focal. I just fell and fell and fell, down into the streaming tunnel of impossible colors, down into the bowels of a different dimension. The exotic energy of the quantum realm buffeting my naked body as I fell deeper still, trying to pull me apart at the seams – my atomic fabric, was drawn taut, I held on, the disarray of energies in me working to hold me together, my mind drifted off to the sound of atoms and particles whizzing in and out of existence. The overwhelming scent of exotic energy painfully scraping away my sense of smell, the powerful taste of raw particles burning through my taste buds.

Focus, Hammer, focus.

Deeper, I fell into the reaches of unstable spatial storms and schrodinger effect fields. Only to be snagged into a spontaneous time vortex.

I held the darkness of the final sleep at bay. If I close my eyes, I die. I can’t let the wave function become uncertain, I need it to remain decided until I leave this realm.

If I close my eyes, I’ll be dead while alive, the cat in the box.

And deeper into the vortex I fell. I held onto my sanity, using whatever strength I had to hold even tighter onto the faithful robot.

*.*.*.*.*

“Come, with me darling. We have much to accomplish. Places to go, businesses to run, souls to steal.”

“I failed you, father” She bowed.

“No, not yet you haven’t my daughter” I laughed. Taking the zealous kid with me into the realm below.

This is the most fun I’ve had in centuries, I must confess. She sold me her humanity, her compassion, her very soul, just to become this new creation. Did she know it? c’mon, I’m the devil, of course she didn’t. All I asked for was her love, she didn’t know how important that was.

And here I was feeling well fed, and this was just the appetizer. My time on Earth is soon coming, and that child with my blood flowing through him, is going to be all I need. The Anti. Heh. Well, that is if he manages to survive – which I have to say is going to be next to impossible. If he dies, he dies.

Well, I’ll see you all later, some of you sooner than others. Chaw now.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

“Mamma, mamma please speak to me” Valerie cried, wrapping her mother’s hand in hers. Her mother had never been this lifeless, Valeria had seen this happen once with her father, it was the night before he passed. All she had left was her mother, she couldn’t lose her.

“Mamma, think of Viktore, you said he’ll come for us. You have to be strong for him mamma, your son will come! I believe it!” Valerie grasped at straws, anything to bring life back into her mother.

“My child is gone” Cynthia Von Doom felt it all clearly. Her connection to her son grew immensely intimate some days ago. That had given her enormous joy – to know that he truly was her child, to finally have proof that it was true.

Her joy turned to immeasurable agony. When she felt his heart get ripped out and the connection cutoff, it was unbearable. To be so close to reuniting with a lost loved one only to have them taken her from your hands, it was becoming too much for her frail, old heart to bear.

“Mamma, you said it yourself. We, Vonne Doom, are survivors and conquerors. Viktore will come mamma, please be strong. You’re all I have left, don’t leave me now mamma.”

Strength slowly returned to Cynthia’s body. Yes. She proclaimed. My child will come back to me. You will live a better life Valerie. For you, my children, I will hold on. She rubbed the face of her daughter, wiping away tears that ran down her cheeks. “Valeria, you are my strength, your brother will come, I know he will. He is strong Valerie, very strong, I know he will return a conqueror.”

…...*******…….******…..*****