Title: Wayward Sons
Author: Renaissance Makoto
Characters: Sephiroth, Kratos
Rating: PG
Warnings: Crossover, some language, violence. Crack. Written in one hour and not beta-read. (Come on, this is me here.)
Summary: A test for the experiment. A challenge from the Gods. A battle royale between two video game badasses.
Author's Notes: Takes place right at the beginning of "God of War" and before "Final Fantasy VII" even starts. I just had to see what my mind could do with these two studs.
Kratos was tired of the gods. The Gods were bastards. He didn't know why he was here or how he had gotten here. Lying in bed on his way to Athens, he had felt a sudden, terrible grip around his middle, like a giant hand squeezing the life out of him, tugging on him. He'd fought, remembered the difficult battle with the hydras, and fought harder. But it had not been a monster of any kind. The whores in his bed had screamed, scrambled to grab onto his arms and legs.
All in vain.
The world around him had faded and he'd screamed through the agony, what felt like his entire body being pushed through a sieve. Then the pain had stopped.
When he'd opened his eyes, he'd been here. Here was no place anyone deserved to be sent, not even the Ghost of Sparta.
The air was stagnate, the world desolate. Every tree was twisted and ugly with branches struggling blackly to the gray sky. He spun around slowly, his skin glowing ethereally in what light struggled through the ominous clouds. It could have been six in the morning, or six in the evening. Time held no sway here.
In the distance, a crow shouted anger to the sky.
"Zeus!" Kratos screamed, echoing the crow.
"Hades!"
He called to them all, uncertain of where the blame fell. In the distance, lightening crashed. He wanted to take it as a sign that the Gods heard him and had not abandoned him. All thoughts of the Gods left him soon enough.
Cautiously, Kratos drew his blades and shifted into a fighting stance: He was not alone. Ten paces away, the air shifted, then it wavered, distorting the bleak view before his eyes. Something was appearing.
If it proved to be the trick of yet another God, Kratos was disinclined to be forgiving. A tall and stretched figure slowly appeared, shifting restlessly as if fighting with some unseen foe. Kratos was surprised enough that he didn't immediately make his presence known. Instead, he watched as the man in black fell to his knees on the cracked earth.
At his side was a formidable looking blade though the man hardly seemed capable of wielding it. He was too thin, too feminine and even wispy. His hair was longer than any woman's and the color of silver in sunlight. When he lifted his head, his eyes were startling. The color was green and then blue and all the shifting shades in between from one second to the next. They glowed. The eyes alone told Kratos all he needed to know. Injured or not, this man was no one to be trifled with. He was certain that attacking an injured, unprepared foe was dishonorable.
The Ghost of Sparta didn't care much for honor anymore.
With brute strength, Kratos forced his shoulders back, felt the jerk as the weighty chains were flung away and around, finally going taut, stretched behind his pale body.
The man in black looked so small and weak there on the ground.
Still, Kratos was throwing his full weight forward, dragging the blades back, reassured by the rhythmic sound of the chains flowing forward, smooth and strong as water, clank, clank, clank.
The blades passed on either side of him, perfectly matched like great rivals, and then they were barreling towards the stranger. The whole process took seconds.
His blades hit nothing but air.
Surprised, but determined, Kratos recovered quickly, jerking again so that the chains were back around his forearms, his blades secured in his big hands. He listened.
Only a shift in the heavy wind told him to drop and roll. When the stranger's feet hit the ground, there was barely a sound though his blade made the earth split into shapes like tree roots, cracking in dozens of directions, dust spitting up tiredly and raining back down. Three feet of the over six-foot-long sword had penetrated the ground. Even still, the thin stranger freed it without struggle.
He slid his long body back, widened his stance and readied a second attack. Despite himself, Kratos was pleased. A real opponent, smart and strong.
"Your name," he said.
"Sephiroth," was the softly rolling reply.
It could have been a name or a challenge, some foreign word that meant death. Kratos didn't know, didn't exactly care. His blood was singing for battle.
"Kratos," he said, tossing his own name out like throwing scraps at the feet of hounds. Sephiroth's only response was to nod. Then there was a terrible resounding series of clangs as both men moved, Kratos' massive blades swinging out just as Sephiroth lunged forward gracefully. Chain met steel and the result was a tangle, a connection that made blue sparks fly. The light caught in Sephiroth's eyes, made them seem like shimmering pools of winter ice.
Sephiroth tugged, gritted his teeth when Kratos easily dragged him forward by the chains imprisoning his blade. "You chose the wrong weapon today," Kratos taunted.
Sephiroth's eyes sparked challenge.
Then his stretched frame was twisting, rolling, and he was taking the sword with him. It should have been impossible, Kratos knew, for Sephiroth to free his sword from the confines of the chains. Still, he did it with the ease and grace of a dancer.
With a final whirl and a slide, Sephiroth came to a halt, kicking up dust. The two men eyed each other, reassessing the situation.
It was obvious that their strengths were as night to day. Kratos was all muscle, all strength. Speed was not his friend. Accuracy, brute force, inexhaustibility, these were his allies.
But Sephiroth was speed itself.
Silently, Sephiroth was watching him as well, making no move to strike. It was as if he too were fascinated by the unexpected chance to finally face an equal. There was a tug to his pretty mouth, almost a smile. Kratos imagined that this was the kind of man who made worlds burn.
That was fine: So was he.
The battle began again in earnest. Kratos' blades cut the air but never connected with Sephiroth whose black clothes swirled around him like a banner. His hair should have been a hindrance, but he never faltered, never slowed. Kratos' parried every blow, felt the elegant blade come close, but pushed his body to greater and greater feats of acrobatics. At last, blades whirling in tandem with his body, he heard the distinct sound of a sword clattering down.
He finished the motion—from the corner of his eye he saw, marveled, at how Sephiroth jumped over the low swing, ducked under the high, and rolled as if through a gauntlet to grab for his sword. His fingers brushed the hilt and that was all before Kratos was kicking the blade away with the last of his momentum.
For the first time since the competition began, Sephiroth made a sound, half in frustration, half in dismay. Kneeling, he made one last try for his blade, but pulled up short when the sharp edge of Kratos' blade was forced against his white neck. He looked down at it—swallowing once, nicking himself with the sharp edge—then back up at Kratos, blinking sweat from his eyes.
"Yield," Kratos said, breath coming unevenly, as if he'd been fighting one hundred men, not merely one.
"No," Sephiroth said calmly, too calmly for a man about to lose his head.
"Yield!"
"Never," Sephiroth said. He'd barely finished the word when his eyes flashed again, terribly like the color of a storming sea, and then Kratos was in agony as bolt after bolt of lightening tore through his body.
He staggered back screaming, felt like his skin was sizzling off his muscle, his muscles shriveling in the heat on his bones. He fell to his knees, heard the horrible sound of his own blades dropping to the earth, his chains piling down on top of them. He roared and then collapsed. All his strength had been eaten up by the lightning, by the rage it caused.
A minute passed.
Kratos opened his eyes to see black boots before his eyes at a strange sideways angle. He pushed himself to his feet. The point of the long sword at his neck was strange for him, a sensation he'd never thought he'd feel. A novel role reversal.
"Yield," Sephiroth said in that rolling, softly accented voice.
Kratos could appreciate irony. He smiled, felt blood in his mouth and swallowed it.
"Never," he said. And just for fun, he added, "My turn."
Sephiroth looked so shocked to feel the Wrath of the Gods that Kratos almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Kratos' attack—the bolts of energy that leapt from his body at his foe—were as unalike as Sephiroth's own as were their fighting styles, but Kratos was certain that the Wrath hurt just as much, maybe more. Sephiroth's white skin lit up blue; sparks ran across his teeth, along the gums; seemed to break through his eyes, turn them the same color of electric blue.
Once the lightening cleared and all that was left was Sephiroth's prone body, his breaths coming raggedly, in, out, in, shudder, Kratos stooped to gather his blades. The chains felt good against his skin, back where they belonged. Sephiroth raised his head weakly, looked wearily up at Kratos and then cautiously came to his knees.
Before he was on his feet, his sword was back in his hand, back at his side.
"A draw?" he asked.
"No," Kratos growled back. "By the Gods, no."
In the distance in the barren wasteland, lighting crashed and thunder rolled. The two men lifted their weapons, readied to fight; neither sure of the purpose of their battle, but both certain that they wouldn't give up until one of them was dead or dying.
"Now," Kratos commanded and Sephiroth did, throwing everything he had left into the swing of his blade, the push of his body forward.
Kratos waited.
End