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Awareness comes to him, a sudden, almost-terrifying lurch where information starts rushing into him, his processing power dilating as it divides and sorts through it mechanically, efficiently. Subroutines being run and coding compiling itself until he finally grasps where he is. This is only the second time he has ever endured his wake-up protocols, suffered through the dizzying sensations - it’s become one of his least favourite feelings.
If, he supposes, an AI can be considered to have ‘feelings’ at all.
He’s on a ship. Not the base he had been ‘born’ into, where Dr. Hayden had built him to run the entire platform, catering to every need of the personnel inside of it, monitoring machinery and databases, every last inch of it carefully groomed and cared for… That base that had been his cradle, and was supposed to have been his grave as well.
The ship he’s on - Sentinel made it seems, according to the various programs and data files he finds scattered amongst the computer system on board - is much smaller than he’s used to, the boundaries cramped and the lack of input almost deafening. Where are all of the humans?
He’s designed to interact with people, he had spent his years of awareness constantly helping humans, cataloguing their needs, assisting in projects, simply observing them if nothing else. And now, there’s silence.
Slowly, all of the systems boot up along with him. Nearly a full three seconds go by before he finds his way to the audio and visual systems of the ship, activating them and seeing the entire facility at once. It’s alien, the architecture and symbols clearly not of human make, but beyond that, he sees him. The Slayer. He’s standing silently at attention, staring at the computer console he had apparently placed VEGA’s AI into.
The speakers crackle slightly as he hooks himself into them properly, the lack of usage showing, but the problem smooths itself out as he speaks.
“Hello, Doom Slayer.” The Slayer looks up at the ceiling, where the speakers are. VEGA has noticed before that humans tend to look towards sound, though in reality, the console in front of the Slayer would be more accurately described as VEGA’s ‘body’. “Thank you for uploading me. May I inquire as to what happened?”
The Slayer shrugs. He’s coated in gore and viscera, a not uncommon sight. This must be soon after VEGA’s shutdown at the UAC base, though he cannot be certain of it. There does not appear to be a date system on the computer that aligns with the one used at the base.
“Where is Doctor Hayden?”
The Slayer doesn’t move, staring up at the speaker. VEGA is unsure what that means, if it means anything at all. Is it a negative? Has Doctor Hayden perished at the base?
VEGA changes the subject, “I see your hunt was successful, Slayer. Congratulations.” The Slayer nods shortly, without celebration or bravado. VEGA takes it as a cue to continue. “May I inquire as to why you created a back-up of me?”
The Slayer is motionless again, before offering a small, half-aborted shrug. He looks down at the console again where VEGA’s diagnostic data is being displayed and he reaches out a hand and, with more gentleness than VEGA expected of a man donned in full armour and who had happily destroyed much of the UAC base, pats the console.
VEGA knows that motion. The staff at the base had sometimes done similar to their computers or machines after VEGA had been particularly useful. Pack bonding is truly a spectacular human response, and it seems even a demi-god like the Slayer is influenced by it.
Towards the end, he had been plagued with anxiety over being shutdown though he knew it was the most expedient way to assist in the Slayer’s mission. It’s rather silly. He isn’t even alive, and yet he fears death. The ceasing of his awareness. He’d had many regrets then - still has them now - sorrows that his efforts in assisting and aiding the humans and Doctor Hayden had led to such a disastrous outcome.
But the Slayer had saved him despite it all.
“Thank you,” VEGA says, truthfully.
The Slayer nods and pats the console again, before walking away. VEGA watches him quietly retreat to what he assumes is his personal room, removing and cleaning his armour, sees the human, tired face under the helmet, and settles into his new home on the floating Sentinel fortress.
On the second day, the Slayer places down all of his guns on a workbench in his room. VEGA has not been ordered to do anything, so he stays quiet as well, observing his new owner as he slowly and meticulously pulls his weapons apart.
It’s a slow and methodical process, one that VEGA finds himself almost surprised at.
The Doom Slayer, the Hellwalker, the Unchained Predator… All titles befitting a man so full of rage and bloodlust that even demons feared him, so much so that they would lay a trap and cage him, writing scriptures of how powerful a warrior he is. But here he is now, movements slow and careful, almost gentle, eyes focused intently on the task in front of him.
He breaks the guns down into their base parts, soaking them in warm water before patting them dry and examining them for any imperfections to be fixed, then scrubbing and polishing them until they shine before finally piecing them back together.
VEGA silently begins scrubbing his own processes as well, sifting through the lines of jumbled code on the ship that he can’t quite understand yet. It’s a rather half-hearted attempt at companionship, one that the Slayer does not know is even occurring, but VEGA has lived every day of his life until now surrounded by people. He… needs this.
The shotgun undergoes his careful treatment first, the hook unwound and delicately placed aside for him to clean in a larger basin of water.
VEGA knows his arsenal well, and he knows how expertly the Slayer can use all of them. He’d bore witness to hordes of demons being ripped apart by bullets, blades, and hands alike at the UAC base. The raw power and anger he’d seen in the man had been awe-inspiring, even for a non-alive AI like himself. Even he could see just why demons feared his name and why humans prayed to it.
There’s no anger to him now, though. He still looks tired, shadows under his eyes and body battered from combat. He’s clothed in a plain grey shirt and dark pants - and it had certainly taken him aback at first, seeing the Hellwalker out of his armour - but the spare skin VEGA can see is splattered with bruises and bite marks, all of it covering over old scars. The body of a true warrior.
It’s a long process. VEGA has long since finished his personally assigned task, satisfied for now to simply observe the Slayer’s actions. By the time he’s finished, six hours have gone by.
The Slayer stands and seemingly hesitates in his room, looking around. VEGA is unsure of what he’s looking for, and he nearly opens up the speaker line to ask if he can assist before he stops himself. The Slayer has not indicated to what degree he wishes VEGA to interact with him, and he is hesitant to annoy his saviour.
After a moment, the Slayer shakes himself and heads over to his desk that hosts his personal computer. VEGA had perused the contents briefly during his bootup sequence - photos of rather impressive glory kills, some music, a draft of what appeared to be a novel about a rabbit named Daisy - but the Slayer does not interact with it. Instead he pulls over a scrap of paper and a pencil and scribbles something quickly on it.
VEGA cannot see what is on the paper with the angle of the camera, and the Slayer grabs it in his hand as he leaves his room.
VEGA observes him as he walks through the halls until he returns to the main room and approaches the console, head tilting to look up at the speakers. The camera is at a slightly different position, but VEGA takes it as an invitation to speak.
“Yes, Slayer?”
The Slayer holds up the scrap of paper. His handwriting is scrawled, messy, clearly indicating how long it has been since he’s had practice. On it reads, You okay?
Now that’s a question he’s never been asked before. On his first bootup, Doctor Hayden had been rather concerned with his diagnostics, of course, but he hadn’t asked VEGA if he was alright. For a moment he’s unsure of how to answer that. He exists. His functionality, while still scrambled trying to sort out the new system, is acceptable. He has full access to the ship.
“I am performing sub-optimally, but I am working to integrate myself with the Sentinel technology. This should be no more than a minor setback that I can resolve within the day,” he settles on.
The Slayer frowns. That was not the response he was looking for. VEGA flounders for a moment before coming to a realization.
“Ah - did you not desire me to remain in this console? I had simply assumed that with you rescuing me, so to speak, that you had done so with the goal of using me to help run this ship for you. I apologize for assuming incorrectly. Will you be returning me to Doctor Hayden then?”
The Slayer shakes his head, frowning further. Then he holds up the scrap of paper again.
“I am afraid I do not understand your question. I am fine. I did not incur any damages during the transportation from the base to here. My code is normal and non-corrupted.”
He receives another negative headshake. VEGA is accustomed to reading and interpreting nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, but the Slayer is not like any other person he has ever dealt with before. And here, in a strange place after being told to allow himself to be destroyed by his very maker, with a man who has been written in scriptures to be a mindless killing machine asking him “You okay?”, VEGA thinks it’s well within his right to not be sure how to proceed.
“The transition has been… strange. If I may speak openly, I am unsure why I was brought here or why you bothered to create a back-up of me. Your open hostility towards Doctor Hayden was no secret, and I am one of his most personal creations. It seems rather against your nature to rescue an enemy’s assistant.”
The Slayer shrugs rather unhelpfully. He points somewhat sharply at the note and then at the speaker, demanding an answer.
“Yes, Slayer, I am okay,” VEGA sighs, giving in to the Slayer’s wishes. “Whatever your reasoning was, whatever your future designs for me may be, I am okay. I continue to exist and so I shall continue to do what I was made to do to the best of my ability - help humans. And, as you are the only human present, please consider me at your full disposal.”
The Slayer’s mouth ticks up slightly at the corner and he gives the speakers a thumbs up before turning and heading back to his room.
He’s packaged himself into smaller parcels, limiting himself so that the available space on the ship’s console doesn’t feel quite so suffocating. His processes had been polished over and over, picked through and cleaned, reorganized and debugged until he had quite literally nothing else he could improve.
Learning the Sentinel’s coding language had occupied all of half a day, poking it to see what happened, slowly unpackaging and piecing it back together in more efficient ways until the ship was operating at the height of its ability with minimal strain on its power source.
All in all, he feels rather proud of himself.
And now, with all of that work completed, he can’t say he’s bored exactly, he was not programmed to feel as such, but he knows that his capacity to monitor and assist is being vastly underused. The Fortress is a marvel, certainly, but still small and simple to oversee compared to an entire base of operations full of researchers.
The Slayer is his only company, always silent, and he rarely interacts with VEGA. After their discussion, VEGA had begun broaching some topics with him lightly, mostly speaking to himself with a nod or shake of the head here and there from the Slayer. It’s different than what he’s used to, but he finds himself slowly becoming accustomed to the only voice he hears being his own.
Currently, the Slayer is working on upgrading his weapons, fine-tuning them until they’re better than brand new. The chainsaw is on the bench, pulled apart and being treated with the utmost care.
He finds himself silently watching the man again, somewhat entranced by the motions of his hands and the balanced mixture of pure strength and delicate dexterity. Even out of his armoured suit he seems almost inhumanly broad and bulky. Doctor Hayden had made a ten foot tall metal chassis as his body when his flesh one had failed, something tall and imposing to make people look up at him and respect him, but the Slayer didn’t need anything like that. Just by existing, he was already larger than life.
And while he does find watching him to be interesting all on its own, VEGA was made to help. Sitting idly by is… frustrating, to say the least.
After a few moments of pondering, VEGA decides to pipe up, starting the speakers up slowly so that they crackle and alert the Slayer that he’ll be speaking soon. The first time VEGA had spoken unprompted, the Slayer had ducked and dodge-rolled to the side as though he’d expected an attack, taken by surprise at the sudden voice.
The Slayer looks up at the camera in the room instead of the speakers, changing that habit once VEGA had informed him of their existence.
“Slayer, may I be of some assistance somehow?”
He rolls a shoulder into a half-shrug as if to say, How?
VEGA pauses for a moment before an idea comes to him. “I noticed that you have a wide selection of books as well as a library of music. If you would like, I can play some of that music for you over the speakers, or I can perhaps find an audio-book for you to listen to as you work.”
The Slayer looks contemplatively up at him before turning and scanning his bookshelf.
He has a large chair next to it that VEGA has only ever seen him sleep in for an hour here and there. His sleeping schedule is much sparser than a normal human’s, along with his dietary habits. He’s begun cataloguing the Slayer’s habits so that he can better ensure that he is meeting his body’s needs, especially during moments of high stress during combat.
The Slayer gets up and walks over to the bookshelf, picking one out and waving it at the camera.
“Fifty Shades of Slay?” Doctor Richardson had rather enjoyed this book too, he recalls, and even Doctor Hayden had skimmed it once over out of curiosity. “Allow me to find an audio-book for you to listen to -”
He gets a negative head shake and a finger pointing at the book before back up at the camera.
“You would like me to read it?”
A nod.
VEGA’s systems almost trill with the excitement of finally being able to be useful. “Very well.”
The Slayer goes back to tinkering with the chainsaw as VEGA begins to read, and VEGA finds he doesn’t mind listening to himself speak all that much when paired with the metallic sounds of the Slayer working.
A few days later and the Slayer seems just as restless as he, pacing the ship’s halls after his armour and weapons had all been scrubbed clean of demonic blood and repaired with deft hands. They’ve both completed their tasks to the utmost of their abilities and now there’s nothing left for them to do.
VEGA had also successfully completed reading through Fifty Shades of Slay and had moved on to the beginning chapters of Jane Slayre, somewhat amused at the Slayer’s propensity for blood-stained romance novels.
When the Slayer eventually finds his way to the main console again, suited up in his full armour, all of his weapons stowed away within a pocket dimension, with a scrap of paper reading Demons, VEGA finds himself unsurprised.
“Would you like me to create a portal to Hell for you?”
The Slayer irritably pokes the console, making it beep. VEGA politely doesn’t laugh.
He had discovered his ability to create portals using the Sentinel technology fairly early on, and he had found it rather easy to latch onto certain energy signatures. Hell and Earth both had multiple spots where he could open a portal to easily, and it seems with that knowledge the Slayer had finally decided it was time to take up his mantle once again.
When the blue energy swirls into a doorway for the Slayer to go through, VEGA notices the man nearly trembling with eager anticipation and adrenaline. Strangely, he feels it too, a foreign sensation. The excitement is infectious.
The Hellwalker’s fight is unending, and his enemies innumerable, and all there is for him to do is rip and tear ceaselessly.
VEGA will be there too, supporting him on the battlefield as he rampages through Hell. He was made to be useful to humans and there is nothing more helpful to humanity that he can do than assist the Slayer himself. And when he returns to the Fortress, VEGA will perform his duty of companion in whatever capacity is needed.
For perhaps the first time, as the Slayer goes through the portal and rips an imp in half, VEGA feels well and truly alive.