"Hello Everybody, My name is Markiplier and welcome to Let's play: Doomed." Mark inwardly cringed when his voice came out less boisterous than he had planned. Although to be fair, this was a usually par the course when he played while he was tired.

He had just gotten back from PAX West and while he would normally just wait a few hours so that he could shake off fatigue that came from travel, he was in a near panic because he had failed to pre-record enough videos. The trip had lasted a little longer than he had planned, so now he was a day behind on his video schedule.

While he had no tangible obligation to upload videos today, and he was sure that his fans would be understandable why he was unable to, he himself felt the need to post to show his own dedication to his community.

However, he had to rush to find a game to play that would not mess up the schedule that he had planned out for the rest of the week. This led him to the list of suggested games that he had collected over the years. He had to skip over the first couple as he was already planning to play those later in the month.

In his search, he finally found a suitable game. It had been suggested by quite a few of his fans, most of them in Illinois with a few in Wisconsin. Since he was planning to play the new recreated Doom later in the year, he felt that the name was a nice homage.

Which led to him sitting in front of his computer and loading up this new game. He turned to the camera with a genial smile, "I'm sorry if I seem a little out of it. I just got back from PAX, and that was a roller-coaster in itself. I was going through my long list of games and I found this.

Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure that this game doesn't have anything to do with the old game Doom. It also isn't related to the new one that's coming out." He nodded to confirm his point and clicked on the start game icon, "In fact, I've actually been in and around playing with it just to see what it was like. The thing is, this game is an MMORPG, so you get to create your own character."

A new character loaded on screen and Mark looked on full of pride, "Now, like I said, I already started playing, so I have a character set up and I'm happy to say that my character looks a lot like me. You see, this game has a program that scans your photograph and creates an avatar that was recreated from it, then it lets you edit little details."

He clicked on the "edit character" button and it pulled up a new dialogue box, "It's also fun because you can change the age of your avatar. Right now, I've got him set to 26 years old, but what if I tweak him to be 20? Hmm?" he nodded and his voice became playfully wistful, "Ah, to be young again. I remember back when I was naive and new to the world."

He pause with a grin to let his viewers soak in the ambiguity of his statement, "What's even better, I was able to get a weapon that gives homage to my profession. You see, there's a weapon that you can equip called a Vid Box. It lets you pull weapons from games of the past. I've already used a Megabuster from Megaman X and a katana from Ninja Gaiden. It's so cool! As of now, let's get started."

There was a bland loading screen and Mark found his character on a forked road in the middle of a field. He took this time to explain to his viewers, "Okay, so from what I've gathered, the point of this game is to collect nine keys while battling three Boss monsters and navigating through the treacherous terrain." He paused to make his character look around at the peaceful green field that surrounded him, "Yup, treacherous and terrifying terrain."

He started walking forwards but paused, "So… eenie meenie miney… This way!" He turned down the right fork and began to trek up a steep grassy hill, "I'm still not seeing the treacherous terrain here. I mean, it looks more like a…" he trailed off when he looked over the hill and was surprised to see that the landscape had completely changed.

The landscape below him was barren and rocky, but the most notable part was that the place was strewn with what looked to be corpses of defeated knights in armor of varying degrees of shiny.

"Hmm…" I guess I spoke too soon. This looks like some kind of battlefield, but all of the soldiers appear to be wearing the same armor, and I don't see any other knights, so either they turned on each other, or whoever they were fighting came out of the tiff unscathed. Well, I definitely don't want to meet whatever army that they were fighting. He looked over to one body that looked to have been set on fire and couldn't stop the cringe. What a way to go.

Mark made his way through the singed and destroyed landscape until he found himself in front of a rickety wooden bridge over a giant lava pit. The pit was large, but he could still make out the outline of three glowing keys floating above an altar.

Mark gave a flat look, "Okay, there are several things that I find wrong with this situation." he spoke in an exaggeratedly slow pace and he raised a finger to the camera while gesturing to the bridge, "First off, I was just in a meadow and there was absolutely no indication that something of this size was anywhere near this." he raised another finger.

"Next, who would even find the time to build a rickety bridge in the middle of a battle field," he rose a third finger.

"Then, there is the fact that that bridge is too long to just let me go without incident, and I have not seen the boss battle yet. Therefore, my money's on something popping out of the lava when I'm halfway across." He took an exaggerated gasp of air as he rose another finger and turned to address the camera again.

"Finally, why wood? If it's over lava, then who's to say that the heat won't burn it up? Not to mention embers. Clearly, this was not made by a master architect."

He shook his head in disappointment and he made his character step forward. Once Mark's foot went onto the bridge, the thing suddenly began to shake violently.

Startled, Mark began to shriek and clutched the rope railing with a death grip as the bridge continued to shake. Just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Mark's face froze in a display of his earlier shock. After a few seconds, his face fell and he just drawled out, "Could you not?"

After a few more seconds, he was satisfied enough with the stableness of the bridge enough to slowly creep forward. Just as he approached the center of the bridge, the magma began to bubble and just as Mark had predicted, a huge shape burst from the lava.

Mark shrieked again and ran back to the beginning of the bridge, "I so called it!"

The lava slid off of the hulking figure and revealed scales, fangs and wings. Mark swallowed thickly. The first boss was a fucking dragon. He wasn't too sure what it said about the other bosses to come.

Before Mark could react, the dragon charged him with a roar.

He eeped and rolled to the side, with a quick recovery back to his feet, "Ha!" he laughed with forced bravado, "As if your tiny weak dragon skills could match up to me!"

The dragon made a snuffling noise that Mark realized was a snort, "Boy, you're an annoying little human, aren't you?"

Mark gaped at the screen, "Dude! Did the game just respond to my microphone? That's so cool!" he then addressed the A.I., "Hey! My names Mark! Is there any way that I can get the keys without fighting you?"

The dragon snorted, "You are an interesting character indeed. Greetings, Mark. My name is Aragon and I'm going to eat you now."

Mark shrugged, completely unaffected by the threat, "It was worth a shot."

He quickly dodged again as Aragon charged once more, "Is that all you got?" he yelled then added as an afterthought, "You sad excuse of a cleverbot!"

Aragon roared and charged at him again. Mark laughed as he jumped out of the way, "Maybe you aren't so clever. It has already been established that I can dodge you. I guess all the A.I. in the world can't stop boss habits."

Aragon roared in rage, "You want to see something different, you puny human? Fine." He then proceeded to take in a huge breath before he exhaled a huge, unreasonably large wall of fire.

Mark shrieked and ran. As he hoofed it, he spoke frantically, "I guess this would call for a test run of my new weapon."

He hovered his hand over the Vid Box and a gigantic turtle shell shield appeared and he hid behind it as the fire flew around him.

When the smoke cleared and Mark put his shield away, it revealed Aragon giving him a toothy grin, "Was that different enough for you?"

Mark was unimpressed, "Oh, you're a sassy one." He then hovered his hand over the Vid Box again, "but…" and he smirked as he pulled out the Megabuster, "Would you like a face full of gun?"

He released a barrage of energy blasts and they exploded and sent a roaring Aragon flying.

Aragon smirked indulgently as he picked himself up, "Very impressive… for a human. I'm going to enjoy killing you even more."

Mark nodded and said, "Okay, so this game doesn't have much of a variation for responses. Even so, you shouldn't be surprised that I'm so tough. I am super good at games."

This time it was Aragon's turn to look unimpressed, "Apparently you like to talk a lot too." He growled lowly as he charged for Mark, "I guess it's time for some more variety in my strategy, as you oh so elegantly put it."

Mark was a little confused at the statement. At least, he was, until his attempt to dodge backwards was halted by a blast of heat and he glanced back in horror to see that Aragon had backed him up and cornered him with the lava pit to his back.

"Oh crud." He cursed as he hovered his hand over the Vid Box for one last gamble. With noticeable effort, he lifted a huge gun.

Aragon scoffed as he flew, "Even if you kill me, my body will still knock you into the lava. I will just respawn back after the game restarts, can you say the same about yourself?"

Mark ignored the taunt, but noted it for later, and pulled the trigger, releasing a huge bola that launched out and wrapped around Aragon. Due to the speed and force of the weights, the dragon was propelled upwards enough to fly above him. And straight into the lava pit where he exploded into data.

Mark looked on confused, "Wait… but how did he..." he gestured weakly to the lava pit, "and he actually came out of..." he then gestured to the camera before he frowned and gave the lava pit a disproving look, "Why was it lethal for him to fall in if he spawned from it?"

After a few seconds of disbelief, nothing happened, so he blinked, "Well, okay then. While I did enjoy how the dragon was aware that he was a program and had no concern about death, a nice feature, the method to defeat him was a little illogical.

From the way that he spoke, he seemed to think that I had other progress before I came to him. I have a feeling that he wasn't supposed to be the first boss, so there's a chance that the other battles would be easier. Not that that was really that hard.

Although I have a feeling that there may have been multiple ways to defeat him. I find it hard to believe that everyone would have the same admittedly stupid idea to throw the dragon into the same pit that he came from."

Mark walked over and swiped up the keys before he huffed and turned back where he came. Once more, he made his way through the battlefield of dead warriors that he now realized must have been past warriors that tried to slay the dragon.

He then went back up and down the hill and found the path again. With a sigh, Mark said, "Well that wasn't so bad. Hopefully the other keys will be equally acquirable. Now that we've taken care of the dragon, it's time for the next challenge."

He faced the other path from the fork and couldn't help but notice that further down led to another hill. He sighed exasperatedly, "Looks like it's time for another drastic scene change."

He started up the hill and froze at the top as he stared at the structure below that seemed slightly out of place.

Mark pointed back at the structure, then back at the dragon lair, then back and forth between the two, "Is that a school? Like, an actual school within the middle of a field? Alright, so I may not actually be an architect, nor do I understand what kind of curriculum that they would teach, but why in the world would someone put a school right across from a lava pit."

He made his way down the hill and slowly creaked the door open, "…and it's a high school. A really dark high school. It just gets better and better."

The building was completely dark except for a small light on the ground off to the side. He knelt down and picked up a flashlight, "I don't really like where this is going. Why has this suddenly turned into a horror game?"

He slowly walked down the hallway, but paused and looked up to the bulletin board to read the flier for announcements, 'Casper High of Amity Park presents the new ultra-recyclo vegetarian meal presented by one Sam Manson.'

"Amity Park? As in the Amityville horror? And Casper high? As in the friendly ghost? Okay, so the school and town names seems a bit like the game makers may have been trying too hard to set up a ghostly building."

He looked down to the next flier which was dated a few weeks later, 'Lunch ladies revolt. Cries for the menu to be returned to normal. Workers enraged over the waste of gallons of unused hamburger meat. Revolt ending in the death of one Patricia Heaton, beloved cafeteria worker and friend.'

Mark looked skeptical, "What kind of school would have a bulletin board like that? It seems like it should be in a newspaper, but instead they have this story of death on colorful construction paper. I would like to speak to the principal about this negligence."

He stepped back and addressed his audience, "So from what I've gathered, this school changed the lunch menu, it enraged the lunch ladies and they revolted with poor ol' Patricia falling in the crossfire. Now her evil ghost is haunting the school to get revenge for all of that hamburger meat that was abandoned to rot. Now that I'm here, she's going to hunt me down and stab me in the butt."

Mark sighed and followed the path until he found himself in a cafeteria. With barely even a glance at his surroundings, he walked past the counter and into the back room. That was where he found three large refrigerators that he assumed probably held the unnecessarily large quantities of hamburger meat.

He reached up and grabbed the handle…

"What are you doing, young man?"

Mark nearly jumped three feet in the air and he whipped around to see a sweet looking old woman dressed as a lunch lady She was heavyset with a pink dress and hairnet with a white apron and yellow rubber gloves. Even seeing the harmless looking old lady, he was still uneasy for some reason.

He put on a forced smile, "Hi friend!" he ignored when his voice cracked, "Are you Patricia Heaton? Are you the lunch lady that died in the revolt?"

The lunch lady smiled serenely, "Oh, dearie, I merely died to protect the menu. It had been the same for years and to change it was pure evil."

Mark made a face, "Oh. So I guess you're nutso bonkers, then. Fantastic."

Suddenly, the lunch lady's smile seemed a bit more strained, "So I guess that you don't agree with my sacrifice. I guess you have to die now."

Mark's eyes widened minutely, "Man! I keep forgetting about the microphone."

With her statement, her eyes turned red and she seemed to catch alight with green flame, "You will die for your ignorance! But first…"

Suddenly, the evil aura disappeared and the lunch lady turned back into a sweet old woman, "Would you like a cookie?"

Mark was taken aback and he drawled out with uncertainty, "No?"

As if a switch had been flipped, the evil atmosphere returned and the lunch lady was evil again, "Then feast on your doom!" she raised her hands menacingly and the refrigerators began to tremble.

Before Mark could even start his question, the appliances burst open and began leaking out the expected hamburger meat. At least, Mark HOPED that it was hamburger meat. It all conglomerated together and rose into a giant wave above her head.

Mark gaped, "Woah. Let's save the meat and greet for later."

The lunch lady roared in anger and the meat broke apart and formed several little meat-made creatures, "Go my meat minions!"

Mark crouched low, "You're goose is cooked!" after his brilliant obligatory one-liner, he hovered his hand over the Vid Box and he pulled out a lightsaber.

The minions charged and Mark easily sliced one cleanly in half, "I prefer my meat monsters well done," he sliced another, "Roasted!"

Two jumped at him and he leapt up as they crashed together, "Hey, you've got something on your face!" he sliced their heads off, "Oh wait, never mind."

The lunch lady looked as if she was sucking on a lemon, "Is it really necessary for you to give commentary?"

Mark startled, "Oh, I forgot about the response software... again," he shook his head, "Never mind that, no way! The whole reason that these people watch my videos is for my glorious commentary! I would never want to deprive them!"

She looked unimpressed, "Your destruction is imminent! But first…" she paused and the evil atmosphere disappeared again, "Would you like some pie?"

Mark was thrown off even more with the sudden change. After a second of thought, he decided to try a new tactic, "Yes, please?"

The lunch lady looked taken aback, but then she turned evil again, "Too bad! Treats are only for good little children!" with another wave of her hands, the meat gathered behind her and rose into a tsunami of meat.

Mark yelped and jumped back behind a counter and hid as the meat crashed overhead. Mark peered around the barrier as the woman brought up her hands again. Suddenly, he got a brilliant idea. He called out to the lunch lady before she could launch the attack again, "That's a lovely apron!"

Suddenly, the lunch lady turned meek again, "Thank you sweetie. Such a nice young man."

With her distracted, she was no longer holding up the meat that was hovering above her head. The large quantity of meat fell and crushed her and she exploded into data.

Mark smirked triumphantly, "Looks like you got to MEAT your maker!"

He then proceeded to break down into an exaggerated hacking cough that lasted far longer than necessary. Finally, he stopped and sighed, "…and I'm an idiot.

XxoxX

Mark exited the building and made his way back to the fork in the road where he first began the game. However, now that he had six keys, now what?

"Where am I supposed to get the next ones? Following the game logic, the first six keys were grouped in three, so that means that the last three keys will be together, so how do I get them? I've already taken the two paths to battle the dragon and the psycho lunch lady." He paused as realization hit him and he groaned, "Don't tell me that I go back down the path that I started on. That would mean that I accidentally skipped the first and probably easiest boss battle and any possible battle mechanic tutorials."

He sighed in resignation and made his way down the first and hopefully last path, eventually finding another hill, and with an exasperated sigh, he trekked over to his next destination. And he found himself in front of what looked to be a warehouse... a very dark and creepy warehouse... in the middle of a field surrounded by grass.

Mark chose not to comment. He instead made his way to the front door and slowly creaked it open, only to be met with endless piles of... "BOXES!" Mark's battle cry seemed to echo off the blank walls, which he noted as a cool feature.

He shuffled through his inventory and, much to his delight, found a crowbar. He was just about to start on the nearest pile of boxes to begin his mindless rampage to find the keys, only to freeze when he heard someone respond to his yell.

"Who dares disturb the Box Master!?"

Mark blinked in confusion and turned to the voice and came face to face with a rather stout man in a pair of blue overalls and a blue beanie and black gloves. As far as he could tell, this was just a normal warehouse worker. There was absolutely nothing about his appearance that would support his claim as the Box Master. It was certainly not enough to warrant the confiscation of the magic behind Tiny Box Tim. So he decided to respond the best he could… with overly apparent sarcasm.

"Is that an official title, or are you delusional?"

The warehouse worker didn't even seem to notice Mark's snark and seemed to be seriously considering the question. Mark decided to call him Boxy for simplicity's sake, "Actually, no. It was not my original name, but once that man took over this game, he allowed me to create my own domain and I became what I am today," he paused and seemed to shrink into himself, "For the record, I don't' want to share who I once was."

Mark paused. What a weird way for an A.I. to respond. The game programmers must have really worked on the weird backstory. And yet they can't come up with legitimate stages beyond a lava pit. Seriously. There is no explanation for why there is a school or a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. He shook off the thought for later pondering and chose instead to goad Boxy, "So does that mean that you know Tiny Box Tim?"

His sarcastic question was met with a resounding silence and the man looked at him, considering. Suddenly, Boxy's eyes lit up and he looked like a kid on Christmas, "Oh my sweet Corrugated Cardboard! That name... Could you possibly be the pink mustached one?"

Mark blinked in surprise, "What?"

Boxy nodded eagerly, "Yeah, yeah! That one guy on the internet videos that plays video games to entertain others? You clearly showed your love and affection for a sweet little box and you even offered to defend it from bullies.

"What?" Mark didn't even try to hide his incredulous tone.

Boxy didn't even seem to notice, he just continued to gush, "I may not be able to watch internet videos often, but when I do, I always follow your videos. Especially the ones that have you punishing and vanquishing evil boxes that could bully your little biscuit. You are a saint and an inspiration."

He ran out for a few moments and then returned with the three keys, "Now normally, I'm supposed to fight you for these, but seeing as you're practically a refrigerator box sized celebrity, I guess this can just be a freebee. Now go, before I get caught.

Before he could even respond, Mark suddenly found himself with an arm full of keys as he was pushed out the very door he entered from, and the door slammed behind him. He took a moment to compose himself and once he did, he threw his composure out the window.

"What?" Mark spoke as if he had had a stroke. He paused, then repeated himself with a higher pitch. Finally, he regained his composure again, "That was… I don't know. I think that may have been a shout out to me from the creators of the game. That is so cool! To reference my past antics and to give me a free pass because of my gaming? This is always flattering when I find something like this."

Mark sighed dreamily one last time before he turned around and headed back towards the intersection. After a few more seconds of basking, he finally shook it off and nodded in satisfaction.

"Anyway, I think that that's a good place to stop. This game is interesting enough, but it looks like I've been playing for about an hour and a half. I guess I'll end the episode here. In the meantime, thank you all for watching. Click the annotations for more videos that I've done and as always I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye!"

Mark clicked out of the software and saved his project. He sent a copy of the video to Matt and he stretched and all but fell into his bed. It was time for a well-deserved nap.

However, as he slept, a dark shadow appeared and hovered above his bed. The figure cackled, "You think you escaped? Ha! I did not take over the game and create a trap for you just to let you escape. The game has only just begun."

A dark fog began to creep in and when it cleared, the room was clear of both occupants.

End

Disclaimer: I only own the story. Characters and videogame props belong to their owners.

A/N: So I decided to write this because I recently found Markiplier on Youtube. I loved his content and I wanted to write this as a fan. *shrugs* I tried to find fan fiction since Markiplier constantly references it in his videos. However, it's surprisingly difficult because I only found stories about unrealistic relationships or obsessions. If someone were to read this and knows of a good fanfiction that isn't about these could you suggest it? I would like to read an adventure if possible. Now unfortunately, I'm still relatively new to Markiplier's content, so I haven't quite got his mannerisms down. Also, I'm not good at dick jokes.