The Slayer dropped Flash behind a shattered armored personnel carrier—no ceremony—just a gauntlet pressing him flat against bullet-pocked metal. Flash gasped. The Slayer's HUD flared. The super shotgun's twin barrels slid free with a sound like bones breaking. Meat hook gleamed under oily moonlight. Distantly, Batman grappled upward—too slow—as tentacles thicker than subway tunnels erupted from the bay, their suckers lined with teeth that chewed through steel supports like wet tissue. The Slayer exhaled. His boots left craters in the asphalt. The shotgun cycled once. Twice. Four shells loaded in under two seconds. A new waypoint pulsed red on his visor. Directly beneath Wayne Tower's foundations. Directly where the monstrosity's main mass coiled unseen beneath the city's bones.
Saltwater and diesel fumes choked the air as the Slayer breached the harbor's perimeter—chain link fences peeled back like foil. The shotgun's muzzle flash illuminated a security booth split vertically by something with too many joints. His boot crushed a drowned corpse's ribcage—not human, not anymore—its fingers still twitching around a ruptured fuel canister. The meat hook's pneumatic hiss preceded its arc through rotting dockyard cranes—steel groaned as the Slayer swung over a chasm where the pier had collapsed into the creature's waiting maw. The shotgun roared midair. A chunk of something gelatinous and shrieking vaporized twenty feet below. He landed rolling—kneeling—scanning—just as tentacles the color of drowned corpses erupted from the waterline. Each one ended in a gaping sphincter ringed with teeth dripping neurotoxin. The HUD tagged them sequentially. Irrelevant. His gaze locked onto the central mass breaching the surface—a pulsating mountain of blistered flesh studded with half-formed faces screaming soundlessly. The Unmaker's activation sequence whined like a dying star in his grip.
Batman's grapnel ricocheted uselessly off the creature's hide—the Dark Knight twisting midair to avoid a swipe that would've bisected a battleship. The Slayer didn't watch. His fingers danced across the Unmaker's rune-etched casing—each glyph flaring hellish orange as ancient safeties disengaged. The weapon bucked violently in his hands—not recoil, but something worse—as if the plasma core housed a trapped demon fighting to escape. One tentacle whipped toward him—too fast—until the meat hook's monomolecular edge intercepted its trajectory mid-swing. Flesh parted silently. The severed appendage writhed—its tooth-lined orifice spewing acidic bile that ate through concrete like sugar. The Slayer wrenched the hook sideways—using the creature's own momentum to launch himself up its quivering flank—boots sinking inches deep into tumorous growths that burst beneath his weight. The Unmaker's targeting array spun wildly before locking onto the nightmare's sole intact eye—a cataract-filmed orb larger than a subway car, its pupil dilating in primal recognition of the weapon now pressed flush against its cornea.
Something in the beast's core detonated before he even pulled the trigger—not pain, not fear—but the Unmaker's mere presence triggering a chain reaction in its corrupted biology. The air itself screamed as eldritch energy backlashed—visible as violet static crawling across the Slayer's armor like sentient lightning. Batman shouted a warning—too late—as the tentacles spasmed violently inward—not attacking—protecting. The Unmaker's muzzle flared white-hot. The discharge wasn't sound—it was the absence of it—a vacuum tearing through reality that left blood streaming from Flash's ears three blocks away. The creature's eye didn't explode. It unraveled—its molecular structure disintegrating in concentric rings—flesh peeling back layer by layer like an infinite onion revealing the screaming faces within. The Slayer rode the collapsing mass downward—his free hand driving the meat hook deep into its disintegrating cortex—steering the dying behemoth's convulsions away from the shoreline where emergency crews scrambled.
Then—silence. Not true silence—but the deafening kind—where tinnitus replaces gunfire and adrenaline drowns out everything else. Batman landed hard beside him, cape shredded, one gauntlet missing fingers. The Dark Knight's voice came through the Slayer's cracked visor like a bad radio transmission: "That weapon—" A tremor cut him off—not aftershocks—something deeper. The Unmaker's vents hissed as it cycled down—its core now dark except for three pulsating runes. The Slayer didn't answer. His HUD flickered—then displayed coordinates that shouldn't exist—somewhere beneath Gotham's bedrock—somewhere older than the city—somewhere laughing. Batman followed his gaze to the harbor's now-placid surface—where no bodies floated—no wreckage remained—just a single, still-steaming crater shaped like a screaming face. The Slayer holstered the Unmaker with finality—its magnetic clamps engaging with a sound like teeth snapping shut.
The BFG-10,000's activation sequence lit up his spinal column before his hands even moved—every vertebrae locking in place as the weapon materialized from interdimensional storage—its barrel unfolding segment by segment like the ribs of some long-dead god. The air around it warped visibly—oxygen igniting in brief blue coronas along its charging coils. Batman staggered back—not from fear—from raw physics—as the Slayer's boots left molten prints in the asphalt. Wayne Tower loomed ahead—its upper floors now leaning precariously—windows shattered into jagged teeth. Something pulsed within its foundation—something that matched the rhythm of the BFG's power core. The Slayer adjusted his grip—the weapon's biometric scanners flaring crimson as they synced with his retinal HUD—marking structural weak points—marking civilian shelters—marking the single optimal entry vector that wouldn't collapse the entire block. He exhaled once—steam curling from his rebreather—and stepped forward.
Batman's grapple hooked his pauldron—useless against six tons of armor and momentum—but the message was clear: "There are still people inside." The Slayer didn't pause—just rotated his wrist—the BFG's tertiary display projecting thermal scans across Wayne Tower's buckling framework—two hundred and seventeen trapped souls—three of them clustered directly above the pulsing mass in the sublevels. The weapon's barrel depressurized with a sound like a dying whale—its targeting lasers painting the lobby's shattered marble floor in intersecting red lines—calculating—adjusting—waiting. The Slayer's free hand moved—a single gauntleted finger tapping his temple twice—then pointing downward. Batman's eyes narrowed behind his broken cowl—then widened in understanding. The Slayer wasn't aiming at the tower. He was aiming beneath it.
Concrete exploded upward before the BFG even fired—the foundation vomiting forth a thrashing column of fused demonic bodies—their limbs still twitching as some greater intelligence puppeteered their remains into a makeshift shield. The Slayer's lips peeled back—not a smile—not a snarl—just bared teeth as the BFG's core detonated—not green—not anymore—but a searing white so pure it burned shadows into the surrounding buildings. The beam lanced through the organic barrier like sunlight through rotted wood—igniting each demonic husk from within—their silhouettes flash-incinerated midair—before the energy pulse reached the thing beneath—the thing that hadn't finished screaming when Wayne Tower's entire basement level vaporized—revealing the cavernous hollow where Gotham's oldest secret had been hiding—where something wearing a dead Kryptonian's face uncurled from its amniotic throne—smiling.
Doomsday's claws—if they could still be called that—sprouted fresh bone spurs even as the BFG's residual energy seared his regenerating flesh—each limb bifurcating into barbed tentacles studded with the same pulsating runes that now scarred the Slayer's armor. His spine arched—vertebrae visibly elongating beneath patchwork hide—ribs splitting open to release a cloud of locusts carved from calcified screams. The Slayer exhaled through his nostrils—steam hissing from his rebreather—as he catalogued the changes—the way Doomsday's regeneration patterns now mirrored Hell's own resurrection protocols—how each wound sealed itself with writhing sigils instead of scar tissue—how the creature's pupils had fractured into six-pointed stars. He'd seen this before—in the bowels of Argent D'Nur—when the first of the Dark Priests learned to stitch Hell's essence into mortal flesh.
Batman's batarang glanced off Doomsday's temple—useless—the projectile embedding itself in a nearby wall just as the demon-Kryptonian's fist met the Slayer's chestplate—a blow that should have atomized city blocks—yet only cratered the pavement twenty feet deep—the kinetic energy dissipating through the Praetor Suit's runic baffles—its inner layers screaming as they converted raw force into searing argent fire—venting the excess through the Slayer's boot jets—scorching Doomsday's thighs as he backflipped across the crater—landing in a crouch—his free hand already palming a grenade cluster—primed—cocked—released—all in the span of a blink—the explosives detonating against Doomsday's reopening wounds—filling each pulsating cavity with micro-shrapnel carved from the same celestial bronze that once felled titans.
Doomsday staggered—not from pain—but surprise—his regenerating flesh momentarily rejecting the foreign metal—veins blackening where the shards burrowed inward—seeking the core. The Slayer didn't watch—his fingers already twisting his wristblade's pommel counterclockwise—an audible *click* resonating through the battlefield—before wrenching the entire assembly free—revealing the cruciform socket where Hell itself once forged his final weapon. The Crucible's handle slid loose—blackened bone wrapped in sinew—its dormant runes weeping thin trails of smoke across his gauntlet.
The moment the argent flame erupted—three feet of searing scarlet geometry hotter than damnation's core—Doomsday's regeneration *stuttered*. The creature's pupils dilated—not at the blade—but at the *hilt*—where the Maker's Sigil pulsed beneath layers of calcified demonic residue. His roaring ceased mid-breath—a sound like a glacier splitting—as primal recognition overrode combat protocols. The Slayer stepped forward—his armor creaking under gravitational anomalies—each footprint leaving smoldering puddles of liquefied pavement.
Batman saw it first—the way Doomsday's back-knees locked—the way his claws retracted halfway—as if the creature's spinal cord had just received conflicting orders from two nervous systems. The Crucible's light painted his face in hellish relief—exposing what the Kryptonian DNA couldn't hide—the squirming *something* beneath his skin that recoiled from the blade's aura like a vampire from sacramental wine. The Slayer exhaled—a sound like a furnace door slamming shut—and swung.
The Crucible didn't *cut*—it *unmade*—its edge bypassing flesh entirely to sever the infernal tethers binding Doomsday's soul to Hell's machinations. The demon-Kryptonian's scream fractured into three distinct voices—one mortal—one alien—and something older than both—as his left arm hit the pavement *still twitching*, its stump cauterized by energies that scorched the air with the stench of burning scripture. The Slayer adjusted his grip—wrist rotating—blade angling upward—precisely where the HUD's thermal overlay showed the densest cluster of hellish signatures—right between Doomsday's newly exposed ribs.
Doomsday's regeneration surged—meaty tendrils lashing outward like starving pythons—but the Crucible's afterimage hung in the air like a guillotine's shadow, and wherever those reforming limbs crossed that searing scar in reality, they *burned*. Not cauterized—*erased*—each contact point leaving voids in the creature's biology that pulsed with distant supernova light. Batman's gauntlets dug into the rubble—his pupils reflecting the impossible geometry of a blade forged to kill gods—as Doomsday's remaining arm swung blindly—only to freeze mid-arc—its claws retracting—its sinews withering—as the Crucible's backswing cleaved upward through pelvis, spine, and the writhing nest of hellish parasites where his heart should be.
The bisection wasn't clean—how could it be, when Doomsday's very molecules fought to exist—but the Crucible cared nothing for physics. Chitin split like rotten fruit. Arteries blackened mid-spurt. The demon-Kryptonian's upper half slid free with a wet *crunch*, his torso hitting the pavement first—mouth working soundlessly—eyes darting between the Slayer's visor and his own still-standing legs three feet away. The regeneration runes embedded in his flesh pulsed frantic crimson—then dimmed—then *fizzled*—as argent fire raced through his nervous system like a lit fuse, each withered vein illuminating briefly before collapsing into ash.
And then—movement. From *inside* Doomsday's sundered ribcage. The Slayer's boot came down—not on flesh—but on the squirming *thing* that had been puppeting the corpse—a writhing mass of hooked filaments and chitinous plates that shrieked in a voice no throat should produce. The Crucible's tip pinned it to the bedrock—its heat reducing the abomination to a thrashing stain—just as Wayne Tower's ruins trembled with the arrival of fresh portals—not demonic this time—but cold, precise, and humming with power the Praetor Suit's scanners labeled in blood-red glyphs: *LUTHOR-CLASS INTERDICTORS*. The Slayer wrenched his blade free—its light catching the first glimpse of armored silhouettes descending through smoke—their weapons identical to the one now carving his coordinates into Hell's own doorstep.