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---Port of San Francisco---

Doomguy stood stern, with his rocket launcher braced at his side tightly. His visor hides the glare he gives to the opposing Doomhunters that flank each side opposite of him. Floating side by side, stood at attention like floating statues, as Lex Luthor’s helicopter gilded overhead. Doomguy gives bated glances to the threats on each side and keeps his head stiffly tracked onto the helicopter gliding past.. Doomguy braces the rocket launcher onto his shoulder, aiming and taking a bated breath he fires a rocket at the tail of the helicopter. The tail rotor explodes into a violent inferno bellowing like the stream of a flamethrower, the crooked blades slowly spin as the wind gushes past them. The helicopter starts violently spinning out of the air, as it plummets towards the deck of the cargo ship.

The helicopter crashes onto the deck of the cargo ship, the weight bending the stiff metal of the deck. The same cargo ship he had raided earlier was alight with the smouldering wreckage of Lex’s helicopter. With the inferno raging, it was unclear if Jon was even alive at this point. Doomguy, staring off into the distance at the wreckage, is flanked by rockets on either side of him. He shakes his body away from the wreckage and glares at the two Doomhunters. Simultaneously, the abominations release a cascade of lasers and rockets to bombard him. The shock wave propels his body careening into the cargo crane behind him.

Doomguy propels himself upward from the now dented frame of the crane, using his rocket launcher as a crutch to force himself upward. As soon as he rose, the Doomhunters were quick on their feet, and continued their bombardment with inhuman precision. Narrowly avoiding the precision barrage of missiles, Doomguy propels himself up into the air; using his thrusters to double jump into the air. Avoiding the missiles as they pummelled the area behind him.

Using the upward momentum he gained to his advantage, he grabs the heavy cannon out of his warp pack and rests the handguard onto his left hand. He braces the heavy cannon into the crevice of his shoulder, he breathes in and fires at one of the Doomhunters. One attempted precision shot from his heavy cannon directly aimed at the head; only for the shot to ricochet off the air as if the air had turned into hardened steel. Doomguy noticed a slight gleam of a blue glow enveloping the Doomhunter when the bullet ricocheted.

“A proximity energy shield…” He mutters to him, his speech going quieter as he realises that this won’t be as simple as first thought. Yet another barrage of lasers attacks him, robotic precision guiding the lasers after Doomguy’s shadow. Dodging the lasers by a hair width, looking at the lasers passing by his helmet with his eyes as it flies past his head. He watches the lasers slam into the crane behind him as it melts the rusted metal that coated the crane all around.

After witnessing the fact that his regular weapons had no effect upon the Doomhunters, Doomguy knew that he had to lure them into a place where they could not move. He was preparing to lay out his trap but the shriek of metal interrupted the plan he was about to lay out. The cacophony of metal groaning sets the air alight with sound, each shriek a dying cry. The Doomguy snaps his head towards the crane and realises that it is on the verge of a collapse.

Among the chorus of cries comes a bellowing yell from the top of the crane, the low pitch cutting through the singing of the metal. In the cabin of the crane was a man who looked no older than 40, the mans pants looked like a crimson moon in the light. In the chaos of the battle a stray fragment of metal must have come from the earlier barrage of rockets, as the man’s leg was mauled by cuts and crevices. His blood drew lines going down the pant legs. “Fuck,” Doomguy mumbeled under his breath as he rushed straight into action.

Yanking out his super shotgun in a panic, he hastily welds the shotgun and quickly aims for the railing of a platform right next to the cabin. He pulls the trigger and the meathook rushes out from below the barrel. Doomguy can feel the air rushing under his helmet as gravity tugs at his heels along with the persistent Doomhunters; he starts to debate if he’ll even be able to get to the man on time.

Closer. Closer. Closer. The clank of the railing rings out as the Doomguy impacts the railing at speed. He

uses the momentum of the meathook and propels himself over the edge of the railing. Doomguy rips one of the doors off and grabs the operator, jumping off and falling right into a portal he summoned as he falls onto a street outside of the port, his praetor suit absorbing all of the impact as he lets the crane operator run away.

As if they had preempted the Doomguy actions, another pair of portals opened out onto the road as the Doomhunters spilled out onto the streets, weapons brandished at the ready. “NO!” Doomguy exclaims in surprise as he attempts to lay down suppressive fire on the Doomhunters to gain their attention, in hopes that he’ll anger them enough to distract them from the fleeing hordes of civilians. Doomguy saw them all filling out of shops across the street. People marched with haste out of stores in single file lines, filing out of stores one by one, their eyes glued to the battle.

The glint of streetlights gleaned off of the cold steel of the doom-hunters lasers, as they brandished their weapons at the horde of innocents that dashed by. They let their weapons alight, a stream of lasers rushed towards the civilians. One by one people fell, they let their weapons cut through, bodies disfigured as the lasers lit them alight. They vindictively targeted the crane operator, him being the first to be pummelled and disfigured beyond comprehension. The crane operator had panic frozen onto his face, his last thoughts clearly being able to be read off of his face. That face burned itself into the Doomguy’s brain, the smell of singed flesh lingering within his mind. Panic turned into anger as he stared at the inevitable fate of someone he had just stolen from the jaws of death. “NO!” Doomguy screams out in rage as he tugs on the handle of the ballista, he tightens his grip into a vice-like manner and exclaims under his breath “I thought I would have had a better opportunity to use this.”

He holds down the trigger as the ballista charges up, a bright light of orange emanates from the weapon as the sling pulls the two metal prongs at the front pull back like a crossbow. He releases the trigger and the prongs jolt forward and the bolt cuts through the air. The sudden jolt of recoil causes Doomguy to skid a few inches back, sparks releasing from the bottom of his boots.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The orange laser beam slashed through the defence shield of the Doomhunter, the beam leaving bare the mangled socket as it tore through the left arm. Singed flesh being left eviscerated as blood spews from where the shoulder once was, as the various missiles and laser cannons crumpled into each other and crushed themselves as they fell onto the ground. The rapid cascade of damage damaged the missiles, causing the missiles to explode inside the energy shield, forcing the hunter to deactivate its defences to save itself.

“Desperation directive activated,” said the Doomhunter, the tone flat and emotionless, with no hint of the damage done in the way it spoke. Its actions spoke differently though, acting as if it was a tiger viciously fighting against a closing cage, as it started rabidly shooting whatever weapons it had left. Along with the fully intact Hunter, they shifted their attention to the Doomguy, but this brought a new problem into the mix.

Doomguy tenses his body out of frustration while leaping forward, as he suddenly dashes away at speeds invisible to the human eye. He dashes a short distance as he suddenly appears right in front of the Doomhunter, confused as to what even happened or even how he closed the distance between him and the Doomhunter this fast, one of the hunters took advantage of his confusion and took the opportunity to fire a missile directly into Doomguy’s chest.

The Doomguy is propelled flying back into a car, with the fuel leaking out like a fountain, Doomguy shuffles his boots, causing a spark setting the leaking gasoline allight. All of a sudden, a fiery explosion engulfs him. “What the hell just happened?” Doomguy asks himself, collapsing down onto his back as he stares into the palm of his hands, tracing the lines down to his wrists. As he closes his eyes for a moment and jumps out of the burning car and without a second thought, starts attacking the Doomhunters again.

With the streets barren of any activity, Doomguy knows he has to keep the battlegrounds in the street as he doesn’t know if people have evacuated far enough yet. He fires his super shotgun, his mind unable to focus on the fight due to what had just happened. Iit felt as if he was able to dash a short distance at a speed he never knew he could reach.

His confusion became mixed with his anger, he attracted the Doomhunters to a populated area. What was he thinking? This cloud of emotions became a fog in his mind, preventing him from planning his attacks as he was riddled by powerful lasers and missiles.Doomguy could feel burning pain rising throughout his body, despite his armour being fully intact, he was unable to launch any form of a counter attack. Through the jarring pain, Doomguy shouts to his on board AI to scan for civilians, it reveals to him that all of the civilians in a twenty city block radius had been evacuated.

With his back against a wall, he knew he had one move available that would get the Doomhunters to at least halt their assault or even stop them completely. He pulled out his weapon of last resort out of his warp pack, the BFG-9000 and began to charge it up.

He fires it directly at the ground as a huge green explosion engulfs the area, destroying half of the city blocks that were evacuated as the buildings all around him were eviscerated into rubble. A huge plume of smoke and ash raised as a mushroom cloud several hundred feet into the air as the shockwave from the explosion damaged buildings and vehicles in close proximity, while the shockwave destroyed glass from further distances as civilians tried to flee from the direction of the battle.

From further away, news helicopters and media teams were analysing and broadcasting the situation to the rest of the world, eyes from all over fixated on what could only be described by calling it indescribable. They broadcasted everything, showing what has happened and pondering the possible reasons for the destruction with one talking point being shared amongst them.

The only possible reason for Justice league presence within San Francisco was for them to find Jon Kent, with other information being reported that Batman and Deathstroke were fighting in the medium rise neighbourhoods and Raven fighting Circe in downtown. The entire situation has sent the civilian population into a craze with what seemed like Doomguy, fighting something that they had never have seen before, what could honestly be described as abominations of nature. These unknown threats sent a shockwave into what could already be called a frenzied scene as more reports came in on the absolute devastation these inhuman things brought.

But as the dust from the impact of the BFG-9000’s explosion was settling, Doomguy burst out of the rubble, panting as he caught his breath. Sitting down on the rubble he climbed out of as he rubs off the dust on his visor, seeing all around him was nothing but rubble, fire, and a fog of ash that reached hundreds of feet into the sky.

“Are they dead?” Doomguy asks his AI as he looks at the radar and sees the one thing he least expected, three pings. The sight of the three pings made him want to go berserk but his exhaustion halted him in his tracks.

But one thing that he found odd was two of the Doomhunters holding still while the third was moving around. Scanning the area as his AI gave a potential explanation in its monotone female voice, “The third one is a reinforcement sent in because most sensor capabilities on the previous two Doomhunters have been nullified.”

“Okay… what about that thing that happened earlier, what the hell was that?” Doomguy inquired, his brain scattershot in what thoughts were going around at the time.

“The ability is called ‘dashing’ your father, the doom slayer too had this ability, it allowed you to move across short distances on both the horizontal and vertical planes at near the speed of light. It requires intense practice to master.” The AI said as Doomguy nodded in approval as he grabbed onto the grip of his super shotgun that was half buried, seeing that it fell off of his thigh holster.

He pulls it out of the rubble and mounted it back onto his holster as he cracks his knuckles and neck, releasing any stiffness that was there. Taking a deep breath in as he leans his head down and then leans it back up, breathing out as he gets up onto his feet.

“Let’s get this over with.” Doomguy muttered as he walked down the rubble. Walking as if he were an athlete after a long football match with his head down and his arms swinging about, just waltzing towards the enemy with no real plan in mind.

The rain from the eastern parts of the city slowly arrived over them. Each and every raindrop bringing down the grains of dust that were launched into the air, purifying the atmosphere but removing whatever cover Doomguy had as his vision got clearer. Streaks of rain landed onto his visor, casting rays of light into his eyes

He could see more silhouettes of the environment around him along with the Doomhunters as more of the dust settled onto the ground. “Alright, come and get me you monsters,” Doomguy grits his teeth as he pulls out his plasma rifle from his warp pack, knowing that only his energy weapons are able to damage the Doomhunters.