Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The path to door 10 was pretty much peaceful, the only bad thing our FAVORITE expendable Rocket has met was a single electricity hazard which he actually managed to avoid pretty well.
He continued to walk down the different rooms, he thought that the mission was't actually as bad as the H.Q. said, maybe even warning him about 'monsters' just to scare him off but Rocket was a brave guy! He wasn't afraid of fishes, after all.

When the 15th door opened in front of him, the lights flickered lightly. Maybe this was another sign of a random electricity hazard again? Was Urbanshade too broke to fix this despite all the money they had? Rocket decided to not pay any further attention to this as he contunied his to walk down the hallway like the absolute idiot he is.

As he was a few steps away from the 16th door, a loud, obnoxious screeching sould could be heard, the dumbass Phighter finally decided to turn around to see an horrifying anglerfish looking creature lunge at full speed towards him.
"What the-!?"
Rocket started to sprint through the 16th room, hoping that the big fish (monster? He wasn't sure.) would eventually get bored and stop hunting him down. But he didn't know, of course, that Anglers were blind, and whenever the echo of their screech would bounce off something, or someone alive. They would never let go of their target unless they cannot sense them anymore.

He srarted to feel himslef grow tired of all this running, he couldn't breathe properly anymore due to the all the smoke that monster would create as it eventually managed to catch up to the poor Phighter. His body srarted to refuse to obet to his very own commands as he felt his nerves slowly stopping to work. He painfully fell face-first onto the Blacksite's floor. The Angler passed through him and then, nothing.

He was dead, his lifeless body rotting in the Blacksite until the H.Q. sends down a team to pick up the corpse, or if a Wall Dweller decides to eat his remains.

(Rocket is too stupid to know what lockers are for.)

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After his first not-so painful death, Rocket has been re-sent into the Blacksite again. But this time he (probably) had a higher survival rate than before, when he died to some basic bitch Angler.

This time he made some pretty good progress and somehow managed to survive past door 26. Whenever the lights would flicker, he'd rush into the nearest locker to hide (foreshadowing maybe?). Even if he was safe from the Angler and it's variants inside, something didn't feel quite right, and he wasn't usually scared of closed spaces.

He also decided to stick to his secondary mission; securing as many loose assets as he could. Now he'd spend more time in the rooms, opening EVERY drawer, despite H.Q. already warning him at the deployment zone about not getting too distracted by this, and having to focus on the main task.

He made his way through every room, he thought that, maybe, the Anglers were maybe the only monsters who wanted him dead since he didn't have any bad encounter besides them.
The 28th door opened with a light flicker, and this time Rocket knew (thought) what he had to do, he ran to the first locker he spotted and immediately hid inside.

As the seconds passed by, things seemed a bit strange, the usual screech the Anglers would usually make couldn't be heard, maybe he made a mistake and the lights didn't actually flicker? Maybe it was just his imagination. Or maybe it was some other kind of creature, trying to lure the poor boy inside those lockers to trap him? He started to seriously freak out, he tried to open the locker's doors to get out, but they remained shut. This only increased the Phighter's panic. His heartbeat was getting louder, it was the only thing that he could hear as it got faster. His eyes were open wide with fear as he was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating as he tried to open this death trap by ramming against the doors, it was painful, but his fear was much worse.

The metal finally ceased to resist against his endless ramming as they finally opened, Rocket fell (once again) on his side which he used to force open the locker. He whined out in pain as he was most definitely getting bruises with all of this. Maybe even more that that when the dumbass finally looked up to see a green mutated-looking blobfish. And once again, it was the end for him.

Rocket you idiot did we never tell you to not get in locker too early??

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Rocket started to feel extremely unsure about about what he has gotten himself into, and he was still unaware of all the new friends who were waiting for him! And today, it would it would be the grand encounter with the P.AInter (actually just his hacked turrets. He's too much of a bum to survive long enough to actually meet him..).

His assured behavior he usually had when entering the Blacksite for the first time was now long gone. That first encounter with the rarest Angler variant, Chainsmoker, was rather traumatizing but he just had to suck it up and learn from all those mistakes.
Urbanshade decided to not let go of EXR-P until the crystal had been successfully retrieved.

Door 24, it was lower than the last time's record, surely nothing too bad was waiting for him? Pinkie and Froger were the only bad thing he had met so far (besides Angler who already passed twice in this run).

He finally managed to escape the 4-ish maintenance type rooms, he hated them as much as the river rooms (self projecting). Once the door opened, Rocket had to face a brand new danger: turrets.
"Don't worry, they're filled with blanks :)"
He had never met the P.AInter before, but the computer didn't even bother to give a proper introduction before hijacking the turrets, ready to shoot anything that moved in their spotlights.

Rocket took some time to examine the room, there wasn't only one turret but three of them. All the hiding spots were pretty far away, maybe there was a switch to disarm the turrets somewhere? He hoped so, it was impossible to make a run for the next door without getting shot at least twice.

The Phighter decided to run towards the first hiding spot (a table that was flipped over on it's side, probably bulletproof). He waited a few seconds for the turret's laser to get out of his way and... NOW!
Rocket sprinted and threw himself behind the table and with that, he was he was out of the turret's field of view, or so he thought, as one of the many lasers spotted his leg that was slightly out of the hiding spot and immediately started shooting at it.

He didn't notice until he felt an horrible pain when a bullet pierced right through his muscle, another one followed as the the turret emptied it's first chamber.
Rocket let out an unintentional pained scream, trying to retract his leg before the turret's reload. The view was even more disgusting than the pain, visible holes were made by the bullets all the way into his flesh, some veins were probably torn apart inside as the blood flowed out onto the floor, making a crimson puddle underneath him.

It was disgusting; he wanted to throw up not only because of what he was witnessing, but the pain was also unbearable. He felt tears running down his face, he just couldn't control it. Rocket started to regret everything; he regretted accepting this mission, he regretted what he did. He just wanted to go back to back to the surface and see all of his friends and his father again.

Sobbing uncontrollably, Rocket didn't care if the P.AInter or H.Q. knew what what currently going on. It wasn't even relieving to cry here, it just made everything 10 times worse. He just sat there sniffling and sobbing with the pain he felt inside his leg. He hoped that someone or something would feel pity for him and would safely head him to the crystal so he could finally leave. He stayed there, crying for almost 20 minutes until the turret's whirring couldn't be heard anymore. Did P.AInter actually feel bad for him?

Rocket tried to wipe away his tears as he crawled out of behind the table: the turrets were retracted. He finally felt a little bit of hope again, he silently thanked P.AInter before trying to go forward in the room, huge mistake.

The turrets had detected the sudden movement and quickly deployed before re-scanning the room and the second one and found nothing but Rocket himself, who didn't even realize anything before receiving shots all over his body. His pained screams were unheard under the ominous, endless shooting sounds. The room had turned into an ocean of blood.

Not even the Wall Dwellers would want to eat ts bruh 🥀

Chapter Text

It's useless to keep trying, really. But was it his own choice? Absolutely not, at this point, he was just some kind of puppet Urbanshade loved to put in some traumatizing stories. I'd he ever had the chance to go back, he'd immediately refuse this mission. Staying in a cell for the rest of his life was definitely better than getting killed by fishes and sentient AIs endlessly just to be revived and re-sent a few hours after.

And with that, he was back in another run. This time he had found some useful items; a blacklight, a flash beacon and a medkit. Which will definitely be useful if he ever encounters turrets later, but for now his progress was clean. Door 40 without any really dangerous encounters, only things he had met before. And honestly? He just knew something was waiting for him.

Door 41; of one the rare rooms without any locker. And guess what happened? What happened?? A light flicker of course!.. nvm actually two light flickers.
Rocket gulped, it was Blitz, and if he didn't hide in the next following seconds he was dead (once again)..
He ran as fast as possible towards the next door and thankfully: a locker was there.
With a sigh of relief, he quickly opened the door to hide and got immediately caught off guard by two big purple eyes staring at him, and just from that, he knew he had fucked up.

Without having the time to proceed anything else, the Void's tentacles had already imprisoned him inside that damn locker.
Everything felt cold and it was hard to breathe inside, almost as if there was almost no oxygen. He felt something grabbing his arm as it started to forcefully twist it and... SNAP!!
A horrible crack was heard followed by a pained scream. The Void was trying to break his bones. He finally realized this as he felt his other arm getting grabbed.
Rocket started to cry once again at the pain as the Void kept twisting his arm untill another loud crack was heard, and another loud cry.
The Void probably had enough of his stupid struggling and screams for help as it shoved one of it's tentacles down his throat, his cries and pleas were finally muffled as the creature went back to breaking his bones, one by one.

Rocket was getting dizzy and his view was all blurry from the pain and that fucking tentacle shoved down his throat made everything even worse, he kept gagging on it as he kept trying his best to breathe.
His stomach tightened as the pain was getting beyond unbearable, a gagging sound escaped his throat as he felt himself throw up the only thing he had eaten in the entire day (some disgusting food that Urbanshade would give to their prisoners, it's even worse than hospital food).
He was disgusted as this reaction his body had, as he finally felt the Void Mass retract it's horrible tentacles.
Rocket coughed out, one of these horrible feelings were finally gone, but not for long; the Void Mass just wasn't finished yet. It placed it's tentacles on top of his head and with one last painful snap, everything went black (once again).

Blitz DID pass by but uhmm he didn't want to mess with the Void Masses either..

Chapter Text

"Thank you for using our 'Limited-time Imaginary Friend remote! We hope you enjoy the next two days with your very own, real, not-so imaginary friend!"

Rocket jumped out of surprise at the sound of the loud, obnoxious voice escaping from the crimson red remote he had just used, he threw it away where he found it. He needed to stop being so damn curious in here.

He turned around and froze when he saw a red stain slowly forming in his view, the stain was getting more and more discernable and he finally noticed the oh so familiar silhouette all in red: It was Sword.

"...Hey"

Chapter Text

If they wouldn't get a revive all the damn time, EXR-P would've already killed themselves. This very simple sentence was the talk of the Hadal Division's staff for the only reason that it has been said bt EXR-P 'Rocket' themselves.

But did he care? Absolutely not. Because a few hours after a revive (and some painful memories), he had been sent back underwater again. Even if his physical condidtion was intact after every revive, the same couldn't be said for his mental state. Death after death, he'd think that things couldn't get any worse and yet he always managed to be proven wrong. The only thing that made him keep going was that very small change of getting the crystal to finally be free again.

He had met some non friendly turrets earlier in this run, he somehow managed to survive but ended up greatly injured (like the idiot he is...). Door after door, Rocket would pray to find a medkit somewhere. Looking around he noticed two offices, great, one of them would definitely have a med, right?

After opening every drawer in the first office he had found nothing, as in nothing that meant no medkit because he did find a Code Breacher and a Spr-INT. Maybe those would've been useful before encountering the turrets.

With a dissapointed sigh, he turned around before noticing 'something' making it's way out of the room, what the hell was it?
The creature in question was some kind of white fluffy bean, some parts of it's body were purple notably it's long antennae, similar to a rabbit's ears. It didn't seem aggresive in the slightest. Rocket was mesmerized at the creature's ignorance as he followed it out of the office to some kind of resting side of the room; he was in a rush earlier and he didn't even notice it.
The 'small bean' (that's how he named them for now) joined a group of two other white beans, they really seemed harmless as he noticed a document on the nearby couch, it was labeled 'Deep Sea Bunnies'. Bunnies? With that name, Rocket already liked them.

He kneeled down to take a closer look, one of them tried to climb on him, Rocket got a stupid smile at how cute it was.

"Hello you silly thing...!"

He hesitated before petting the bunny and to his own surprise: it didn't get scared nor ran away, it even seemed happy at the affection.

"Aww... You're so cute!"

Until he noticed one of them walking away with a Spr-INT. Wait... Was it his!? He checked his pocket to realise that the item was indeed missing.

"HEY! You stupid- that thing belongs to me!"

He said in disbelief as the bunny went in some kind of hole made in the wall, almost like those things cats used to go outside. Roxket tried to take a look at what was inside but it was too dark to see anything until he saw the bunny in question coming back with something else: a flashlight.

"Huh? Is this for me?"

The bunny pushed the item in front of him

"Okay... Maybe you're not that stupid..."

Thez bunny made a happy sound after receiving more headpats before Rocket turned around to give the Code Breacher to another Sea Bunny.

"Please try to find a medkit this time..."

And the secound bunny went in the hole with the item, Rocket prayed once again for any healing thing to see the creature come back with... not medkit, but a random picture instead.

"...Maybe you guys ARE stupid after all."

He took the picture to have a closer look. It was a simple picture of a woman, she had bunny ears and vivid purple eyes. She heavily looked like the Sea Bunnies.

"I asked for a medkit, not a picture of your mother or whoever thsi is."

He handled the picture to the thired and last bunny , hoping that this one will be smarter than the others ad actually bring something good. He stared at the inside of the hole, trying to see any white or green box but instead he was some light flicker. It was some kind of round object with something similar to the Urbanshade logo on it. He decided to lean in closer to take a good look, it looked lke it could be disarmed.
Before Rocket could do anything, the item flashed it's light before making a detonating sound: a fucking landmine.
It exploded without any other warning and Rocket didn't have the time to back away as he could feel his skin burn in the small explosion before, once again, his health dropped to 0.

Oh and the bunnies died too btw, all his fault.