FINAL ACT///BLOODIED OIL

First ?-? /// Planetfall

"I-is this... my blood?" Gabriel, the former judge of hell, now Apostate of hate murmured in his cracked armor, the machine having beaten, and nearly killed him in their second encounter. As the fallen angel eyed the machine again in its cold, unblinking optic, he tried to summon his anger, his rage. One more attack, one more swing to strike that metal bastard down and return to the good graces of the council. He tried, but he couldn't. He found his rage gone, dissipated, evaporated into thin air. What he found instead both surprised and shocked the fallen angel in equal regard. "I-I've never known such... relief?" In what seemed to be eons, Gabriel reflected in his actions. The defeat, no. the murder of king minos, the decapitation of sisyphus, which of these actions were truly his? He looked up at the machine, wanting to end this interaction before the confusion could fully take hold. "I- I need some time to think... We'll meet again, machine." There was a bright flash of light, then he was gone. The only evidence of his presence here in this hall being the myriad of blood splatters on in the hall, and the soft, echoing taunt of "May your woes be many... and your days few."

The machine processed the speech. "I must've broken him... What has happened since we last fought?" Ignoring those questions, he walked forwards, and into a red, mechanical room. Barren except for a chute leading further down into the bowels of hell, he jumped in without hesitation. With Gabriel gone, there wasn't any blood that could be harvested here anyway. Before the machine even landed, he knew that something was wrong. "This...can't be. I've left Gluttony, haven't I?" Wet flesh pulsed beneath the cold metal of the machine's legs as he walked forward tentatively, rail cannon in hand. Although it seemed similar to Gluttony at first glance, it was clear that this place was different. Clear pipes routed dark red fluid through themselves, jutting out of the flesh, then plunging back in. Metal walkways grafted organically to boney supports, almost as if the metal was somehow grown, instead of manufactured. Disgusting tendrils, slick with an unspeakable mixture of bodily fluids raised platforms up as the machine walked across, nothing to illuminate his way except for his rail cannon. Eyes, both mechanical and organic, watched his every move, causing the machine's paranoia to rise.

The walk was not eventful, this...layer, only having a singular corridor. The soft clank of metal on metal slowly morphed into squelching as metal gave way to flesh. "Altercation is imminent... For the first time, I don't think I'm ready..." The machine would be right in his predictions as when he entered the next room, he saw a huge mass of flesh, bones, tentacles, and organs displayed prominently in it's focal point.

The machine approached it carefully, Railcannon poised and ready to fire. "Welcome... I'd say it's nice to meet you, but we should be very well acquainted, shouldn't we?" The machine swung it's Railcannon around, audio sensors trying to find the source of the voice. The mass twitched, then started to reform. Steel plated folded back into themselves as muscle shrank and condensed. The mass started to grow smaller in size before taking on a form that sparked a sense of familiarity. "I thought that a familiar form would be more... appropriate." The mass, now in the form of a man in a lab coat, approached the machine. "The Steel Angel, the Metal Butcher, The Bloody Maelstrom. My, my, you've gained many titles in your brief foray here. Watching you has been a joy, however, sadly, this is where your little journey ends" The machine pulled the trigger on the Railcannon, only for it to bounce off the hellish mockery of a man before it. "Well, the least I can do is welcome your way out." V1's visor flashed again as a health bar appeared on his HUD, this one labeled with three question marks. "Railcannons won't work...Similar to the other hell-creatures that I have faced. A weak spot. Where is the weak spot?" The machine quickly tasked itself as it stared down the concentrated hell-mass. An eerie smile formed on the man's face, the newly formed mouth stretching unnaturally from ear to ear. Again, V1 tried to damage the avatar again, rapidly throwing four coins into the air and firing a beam of blue energy from his Slab Piercer, letting it bounce between the golden metal tokens, with it gaining more power with every bounce. The beam, like the Railcannon, bounced off uselessly as the stony armor of hell mass resisted the attack. "You know that won't work. I thought you were smarter than that. You were the one who did both Sisyphus and Minos in, after all." A myriad of blue flashes surrounded the man as unstable hell energy started to gather. "Concentrated hell energy... I need to move. NOW!" The machine panicked. There was only one thing that could result from such concentrations of unstable hell energy. He took a few steps to the left, before dropping down into a slide, trying to avoid the impending rain of explosions. In a split second, multiple blue flashes covered the 'man' as the arena shook, flesh and metal charring from the instantaneous release of so much hell energy. V1, to his credit, dodged the brunt of the damage, timely dashes and slides causing most of the explosions to miss. However, even so, V1 found itself heavily damaged from that attack, panels warped and cracked.