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The great, towering demon had emerged from a massive portal, dwarfing skyscrapers and making the other demons scurrying around it seem like nothing more than ants.
The entire world had held its breath when the ARC reported that the Slayer was fighting it, flashes of explosions and fire raining down from the skies gracing his battlefield. She had imagined that she could feel the earth tremoring beneath her even from there, but it had merely been her legs shaking with terror. Footage had emerged after, blurry and low quality, but she had watched it over and over until her eyes ached.
She remembers the refugee camp she’d been at, clusters of dirtied, bloodied, injured people gathered around radios and televisions, all of them deadly silent and waiting for the news. And she knows they had all been wondering the exact same thing - if the ARC broadcast would bring hope or crushing despair.
When the cacophony stopped and the titanic monstrosity had fallen, the world finally exhaled.
The Slayer is god-like, of that she’s absolutely sure, more akin to an avenging angel than a human like them - but human he still is. Genetics don’t lie. And a human going against something like that? It was impossible.
But he had won.
She can see clear as day in her mind’s eye the injured doctor at her right, falling to her knees and weeping, hands raised palm up to the sky in thanks. The bruised and battered soldiers on her left cheering and screaming in support of the Slayer who had saved them all. The prayers rising up around her. Parents holding their children tight and for the first time in weeks, truly believing that they had a future in front of them.
It was a religious experience unlike any other.
She’s not the only believer of the Destroyer’s time on Earth, she’s sure of it. The UAC had spread propaganda decrying him, sullying his name, claiming he would not save them. It was all lies.
The only thing worth believing in now is him.
She gets to work at the ARC as soon as she possibly can.
They’re looking for whatever personnel they can get their hands on: doctors, scientists of any kind, therapists, soldiers, anyone with half a brain and a willingness to endure thankless hours and thankless tasks to repair humanity’s mistakes.
The UAC is slowly dismantling itself, cannibalizing itself from the outside in. The demonic brainwashing from the upper echelons is shaken and dissolving in the face of the Slayer’s ultimate victory. Holograms are dismantled and the staff, left without a figurehead or orders, slowly filter back into society.
In its place, the ARC still stands, receiving communications from Samuel Hayden as he guides them. He’s with the Slayer, he says, and that’s all it takes to convince them to follow his orders.
They begin by taking back hellified zones, slowly cleansing away the burned in sigils and demonic carvings. The Slayer is still working, too. ARC members keep reporting sightings of him as he works tirelessly to clear out the remaining demons, their numbers dropping drastically every day. Every sighting is a boost in morale, and Elena takes to leaving her radio on 24/7, tuned to the special channel designated for tracking Slayer movements.
That doesn’t stop people from dying, though. The numbers still slowly climb upwards, but the curve is flattening and soon… Soon, humanity will bounce back. They always have, and they always will.
And perhaps this time, they will have finally learned not to meddle with things they should not be touching.
She touches the pendant around her neck bearing a crudely made mark of the Slayer, one she had gotten from a street corner priest as he evangelized. The mark of the beast he’d called it. The beast, the Slayer, the Destroyer, the Doom Marine - he’s been given so many names. If he is a human, she wonders what his birth name is, or if he even remembers it anymore.
Elena knows that people wonder about her sanity when she preaches in the ARC’s labs as they work, as she collects figurines and posters and whatever other paraphernalia she can, stuffing her corner of the lab full of it. It’s not healthy, but in a world like this she’ll take whatever solace she can.
And so she collects - she collects crude paintings, glass and wood cut carvings, shirts, posters, and figurines. Various manufacturers had already capitalized on his image, creating plastic figures of him posing with his guns. Of course, there’s also the demons. She collects them too, viewing them as a list of enemies conquered by the Slayer, enemies she doesn’t need to fear anymore.
The crown of her collection is the large plastic Icon of Sin - a name shared with them by Doctor Hayden - she’d requested some of the techs to make on their 3D printers. They’d most likely only agreed out of pity for her. She’d seen it in their eyes.
She thumbs over the mark one last time before turning back to her work and letting it envelop her.
Alarms blare shortly only a few minutes later, sending a rush of panic and nausea through her as her flight response kicks in, her head knocking against the table as she rushes to hide under it. She grabs her pendant so tightly she thinks she may have cut the skin of her palm on it.
Not again, not again, not again -
“Attention - the Slayer has entered the facility,” the speakers announce.
She can barely hear it over the sound of blood rushing in her ears, her heartbeat pounding out of her ribcage. After a moment, she slowly crawls out from under the desk and sees some of her coworkers doing the same. They all look bewildered as the message finally sinks in. The Slayer… is here?
“Are there demons here?” one of them asks, eyes wide and darting around, but they listen and can’t hear any screeches or gunshots.
“I don’t hear anything…”
“Why else would he be here?!”
Panicked whispers and strained tension fill the room as they wait.
The doors to the lab open and one of the weapons R&D techs comes rushing in, looking flustered. They only get halfway into the room before Elena and the others stop them, asking rushed questions about every possible demon or threat could be coming if the Slayer himself has come here.
“No, there’s no - well I don’t know if there’s demons - but Doctor Hayden informed us over his comms that he’s here for something Hayden left. They’re getting ready to go after… something, I don’t know! Okay?!” they burst out, looking absolutely frazzled. “I was just told to get my ass over to the storage room and unlock it for the Slayer!”
On cue, as if summoned, the doors open again and it’s him. Elena struggles to breathe right. The vengeful angel she prays to so she can sleep safely at night.
The Slayer.
The R&D tech all but sprints away, the rest of the scientists backing away and watching with wide eyes as the Slayer stalks in, looking around him with a shotgun in hand. Elena freezes - she’d be hyperventilating if she could breathe - as his gaze sweeps over her then pauses.
The Slayer stops dead in his tracks and looks at the plastic Icon of Sin sitting innocently on her desk.
He doesn’t move for a long moment. Is he upset? Creating a toy from something so catastrophic, a demon, his enemy - surely it would be taken as an insult.
Elena rushes over and grabs it, flustered, then puts it back down, starting and stopping her sentence nervously without getting out any actual words. God, it’s like she’s a teenager all over again, getting caught doing something wrong by her parents.
“It’s - it’s really nothing, the guys in the production labs got bored, you know how things can be when you get those kinds of guys together on a slow work day -” Does he? It’s hard to imagine the Slayer ever having a job, a normal one with co-workers and unions and benefits. “Anyways, I’ll just get rid of this -”
The Slayer makes a small, half-aborted motion as she picks it up, as though he was going to reach for it before deciding otherwise.
Elena pauses. She turns towards the Slayer with it in her hands, and his head clearly angles down towards it though the lights in the room cast a glare on his visor so she can’t see his eyes. “Did… you want to look at it?”
He seems to nod slightly, shotgun vanishing in blue light, and slowly reaches out a hand to her, carefully, like a cautious animal testing the waters. With a start, she realizes it’s probably the inverse - the Slayer moving carefully so as not to spook her. She smiles warmly at him to show that she’s not afraid - how could she be afraid of her saviour, after all? - and offers the Icon toy to him.
She hears an annoyed drawl from his helmet. “I’m sure this is not what I asked you to come here for.”
The Slayer jerks his head sharply, flipping himself the bird before taking the Icon from her and examining it. He pokes the forehead a few times and nods in satisfaction before the toy vanishes into what she can only assume is a sort of pocket dimension, the same as where he keeps his weapons.
“You and your toys…” the same annoyed voice sighs.
The Slayer ignores it completely and gives her a short thumbs up before moving past her. Elena waves goodbye and manages to keep standing until he’s out of the other side of the lab and gone, collapsing back against her desk. Her coworkers alternate between staring at her in disbelief and staring at the door the Slayer had just passed through.
“Well… Er… That was…” one of them tries awkwardly, before falling silent again.
None of them really seem to know what to say, how to respond to the force of nature that had just passed through their lab on the way to a new goal.
Once Elena recovers from her shock, she can’t help but grin like a madman, turning back to her station and happily going back to work. It was small and pointless, but she’d managed in some way to give something back to the man who’d saved the world.
She’ll need to remember to find a way to treat the techs that made her the Icon to begin with.
When they've finished retrieving the item they need to find the Seraphim's body, the Slayer returns to the Fortress, immediately pulling out the Icon of Sin toy he'd been given. Samuel doesn't understand his fascination with them, but he's put together a collection he'd imagine many humans on Earth would be envious of. At the very least, he supposes, they put some effort into making them accurate. The Icon is detailed and large, standing well above the other toys the Slayer's found.
"Now that we are prepared, we should hurry to the Atlantica Facility. The Seraphim is the key."
Why he still bothers speaking of the Seraphim as a separate entity to himself, he isn't sure, but the Slayer doesn't appear to want to follow orders anymore today. He waves Samuel off flippantly and returns to his room. He slowly counts to 60 to recover his patience before he bothers checking the cameras.
As he'd suspected. The only bit of armour the Slayer had bothered removing was his helmet, too eager to do much else. He's pulled out a table with some mock buildings, streets, and cars he'd printed and built, putting together a small city block. Then he puts the Icon in, followed by a figure of himself, and various other demons. Building up a play battle for himself, as though he didn't have enough of killing demons already.
The Slayer makes shooting and explosion noises as he moves the figures around, grinning and playfully extending his own arm blade along with his plastic self's.
Samuel idly wonders what those who pray to the Doom Slayer would think if they saw their saviour clinking figurines together in a small mock-battle. He decides he doesn't really care or want to know and disconnects himself from the camera feed, leaving the Slayer to his privacy. They still have time. If it puts the Slayer into a better headspace for what's to come, it's not really a loss.
It's hard to remember at times even for him, but the Slayer is still human despite it all.