Fate is a fickle thing as are the men within them

Some men force their fate watching as they themselves turn into unimaginable shapes

Some men battle their fate only to watch themselves burned in its wrath

But those that accept their destiny go beyond what they think possible

And perhaps more

Of Lightning, Flesh, and Swords

An Infamous and Prototype crossover set in the Claymore Universe

Prologue

In the tales of old, it could be said that the aspect of fire represented both the proud heritage and the vilified evils of humanity. Fire gave mankind the strength to grow beyond their infantile mortal coils to transcend their physical limitations.

But here, in New Marais, the only aspect of fire that could be seen here was its penchant for absolute devastation. The city could do nothing but watch as more and more of itself propagated the very fire that consumed its very existence. The sky was filled with ashy brimstone and dense smog turning the once blue sky into a sickening orange. The citizens, however, were far more occupied with something else.

Out in the streets, the sounds of explosions and the ominous bellows flushed the citizens out of their homes. Off in the distance, the Beast moved ever closer towards the Cole Macgrath's position atop St. Ignatius. The Beast was a gargantuan human figure made of fiery ash and darkened stone that stood taller than even the Cathedral in New Marais. With every footstep, shockwaves echoed out into the streets and sent up blasts of air taking with it anything loose enough to fly upward.

Cole was taking the time to catch his breath on top of the St. Ignatius. In front of him, the RFI was charging up for the last time while the looming figure of the beast walked ever closer. As he pulled the RFI out, he felt the energy of device start to empower him, telling him that it was finally ready to fire.

"Zeke," Cole said out loud, "It's fully charged!"

"Go on man," Zeke responded solemnly, ". . . push the button,"

Cole looked down towards the RFI, ready to fire it off, when suddenly the thumps of loud footsteps alerted him to the Beast's presence. Taking a second to glance up, Cole felt himself grow ever more powerful as anger surged through him. The RFI, feeling Cole's anger suddenly gave him energy giving the prime conduit a sense of empowerment.

"No," Cole said shaking his head, "No not just yet,"

With that he ran towards the edge of the roof and let off a wave of energy from his hands that propelled him forward towards the beast. He yelled in anger, all in the hopes that his anger would fuel him further and help him fight the beast. As Cole got close enough, the Beast's residual energies held the conduit aloft as Cole started to fire off large swarms of explosive blasts. The blasts ripped the already damaged being further and caused him to roar. As more shots hit, the beast fell forward. The Beast was finally on its knees.

John White's large body fell as it was wracked with explosions and electrical shockwaves. His body fell into a defeated kneel and as he looked towards Cole, Cole simply looked back at the giant almost to tell off the beast. The tall fiery monster had only been stopped temporarily, but the ferocious beat down that Cole had given gave him a satisfying feeling, the feeling of victory.

As he looked at the beast, Cole Macgrath stood, finally taking out the RFI. The RFI or Ray Field Inhibitor as it was called, was designed to cure the plague that was spreading across the eastern coast and to completely destroy the beast. Of course, there was an added side effect, the real reason why the RFI worked against the beast.

'So this is it I guess. I'm gonna die.'

When the RFI went off, he would be killed. The first time he tried to fire it, he could barely keep himself up. This time, Cole was determined to use it quickly and end it instantly.

*COUGH COUGH*

Cole turned to see Kuo coughing and rushed towards her. He held her in his arms and she cried as she coughed. Kuo had always been the driving force of goodness that Cole had always turned to. In these trying times, however, Kuo had turned to help the beast. She couldn't accept death like Cole could, but Cole could sympathize with the icy woman. Why should they have had to sacrificed their lives? Why should they have been killed off, the ones that did good, and everyone else had to be saved? Kuo couldn't answer this and turned to the beast, but Cole still knew what had to be done.

Kuo only started her journey three weeks ago, when she picked Cole up at Empire City. She thought she could handle what it meant to be a hero . . . not realizing that sacrifices had to be made. Cole, on the other hand, perhaps had the most experience in that field.

As he comforted Kuo, who proceeded to cry in his arms, Cole took the time to think back. He thought back to a time where he didn't worry about sacrifice. He thought back to a time when he wouldn't have to worry about life or death. He even though back to Trish, back to when she told him she loved him, to where she thought he had betrayed her, to when she came back to him, and, finally, to when she died.

Cole knew what it meant to sacrifice.

"It's ok" Cole reassured Kuo.

"It's not ok." Kuo spit back in between her sobs, "You made the right choice. Hell Nix even made the right choice."

Nix had been a fiery hot conduit that always tried to seduce Cole into going at things her way. If there were people that were protesting about Cole, she would always tell him to attack them. If there was someone with a blast core, she would tell him to steal it from them. He would always tell her no and she would always question why they would have to serve the weak and why they had to fight for their pleasure and not her and his own pleasure. He always told her the same thing.

In the end, she understood it and showed her resolve by sacrificing herself to slow the beast for a few precious seconds and in those precious seconds he had been able to get the RFI away from the giant.

". . .I was— I am scared. . ." Kuo continued. Her eyes were red with tears, tears that were now flowing down her face and freezing from her icy cold skin.

"I know" Cole spoke. Kuo looked down ashamed for fighting against Cole.

"Do it," she whimpered

He moved away from her icy body as he stood straight. He spared a look at the kneeling fiery beast's body and shifted his sight back to Kuo. She coughed as he took out the RFI again and prepared himself for the pain.

He felt the energy being drained from his own body. His flesh felt weak as the device beeped in glory. For a moment the world around him felt silent as he let himself go. The moment passed and the energy racked his body as a beam of light flew into the sky. The energy penetrated the atmosphere and was sent out in a wave of energy that reached every conduit in the world killing them.

One by one the corrupted in New Marias dropped dead in the blast's wake. Vermakk 88 agents dropped like flies as the ice caused by their carnage melted with them. The plague went with them as families flocked to their previously thought to be dead members and the sounds of rejoice echoed throughout the city. The sounds of celebrations could be heard throughout the city just for being alive, but one man didn't say a sound.

He ran towards the origin of the blast and found the two dead bodies of the conduits John White and Lucy Kuo. Cole was nowhere to be found. A fear struck him that hit him hard, that his friend would go down as an unsung hero. But here in New Marias, they knew what he had done. The Demon of Empire City had finally become the Patron Saint of New Marias.

However, his story would not end here.

It had only just begun.

"You're definitely not what I expected," said a hooded figure as the platform he stood on rose up. A small growl aimed toward him answered back and gave a punch that sent him flying upwards.

The punch dazed the figure, leaving him in a light-headed state until he flew into helicopter. The copter exploded in a fiery ball of death, subsequently forcing the other planes and metal flyers around it to explode as well.

As the fires fueled themselves, a creature kept its watchful eye over the burning landscape, looking out for the prey that he had so easily punched away. This creature was a supreme hunter, a twisted visage of a human that stood nearly 10 feet tall with a face that appeared to have been melted away on one side. Overall, the humanoid's muscular figure was disgusting sight to behold, but even it was still far less scary than . . . him.

Within a flash, the monster felt its flesh tear as huge spikes shot out from the ground. The pain of torn flesh quickly subsided as did the spikes when the monster's regeneration kicked in. Muscles and sinew wove themselves together as the monster looked back towards the hooded figure, the real monster.

Alex Mercer they called him usually pairing it up with the words terrorist or bioweapon. To those in Blackwatch, they called him Zeus, their biggest and perhaps the last accident they would have. Alex was, in all intents and purposes, simply a human shaped mass of organic matter that could regenerate, transform, and, the most dangerous trait of all, think. If Alex was there, blood usually followed in his footsteps and to him, this would be the same.

"That hurt . . . you ugly freak," he spit out with a glare. Upon closer inspection, Alex's arms were now clawed hands with sharp blades on each finger. While he only used his claws against large numbers of weaker enemies like human infantry, he still felt satisfied that his spikes had hit their mark and decided to change their form. Fleshy appendages quickly surrounded and spun around his claws as they morphed into large and heavy mounds of flesh. When the Hammerfists finally finished morphing, Alex got down to his knees from the sudden weight change, but quickly got up and smashed the two bulky arms together.

The gesture registered as a challenge aimed directly at the Supreme hunter and, with a roar, the monstrous humanoid gathered his bearings as he prepared himself. Alex looked on with strange fascination, but his expression quickly changed into utter horror as the Supreme hunter opened up with a tendril barrage devastator. Tendrils flew out, skewering everything around the Supreme Hunter, some even managing to reach Alex's position. He dodged the clumsily aimed tendrils as he smirked with a sort of sick glee. As the tendrils pulled back, Alex prepared himself as he gathered most of his biomass into his arm and started to drag it.

A split second later, Alex flung his arm towards the Hunter and smashing it into the ground more. Blood and sweat was pouring from the monstrosity as it roared, but it was quickly silenced by a few more smashes to the face. The hunter retaliated back with a swipe of his arm, but Alex had already backed off with his now Whipfist and sent the bladed tendril flying into the monster's gut. The tore through the monster's stomach area, but quickly regenerated to the weak attack as the monster rushed towards him.

For several minutes, the Supreme Hunter fought a losing battle as he flung powerful, yet uncoordinated attacks that missed. In truth, the large bulky body of the Supreme Hunter could not hope to keep up with Alex's agility and, by the time the monster got to its knees, it regeneration was starting to slow as well as it attacks.

"Well, wasn't that arrogant of you," Alex mocked the hunter's bloody form, "I've already kicked your ass freak so screw off." His right arm changed as the tendrils on this body twisted it into a huge curved blade that could slice the armor off of tanks. As he closed the distance, Alex jumped up from under his neck and sliced the Supreme hunter's head off.

"Grow that back"

He landed, still watching the creature turn into a lump of dead twisting flesh. It gurgled as the blood gushed out from its large open wounds and slumped chest down onto the ground. Alex now had other matters at hand.

He ran towards the lowered deck and went straight towards the nuke. From the looks of it, he still a couple minutes before it detonated. He gave himself a small smirk; the Supreme Hunter had barely given him any trouble. He grabbed the nuke as gently as any superhuman monster could and placed it on the platform. When it reached the top, he was greeted by several soldiers foolishly pointing guns at him.

"You know that I got a nuke right here?" Alex smugly stated.

The soldiers looked at each other as held their guns and their ground.

"I suggest you get out of my way before I have to make you move," he said as he hefted the large nuke. Upon hearing this all of the soldiers bolted as fast as they could.

Nukes tended to usually do that.

Alex calmly walked towards one of the helicopters and quickly got to work. After attaching the nuke to the helicopter, he started up the engines. The soldiers watched in awe how fast he had worked and by then, most had started to evacuate the aircraft carrier. After about a minute of working, the craft lifted itself up into the air and, when it finally rose high enough, the nuke swung along under the Copter's belly.

As the virus flew over the darkened water, thoughts ran around through his head, all of which gave him an uneasy feeling. The viral outbreak that made him was started by the real Alex Mercer. Alex was a sociopath willing to infect an entire city for survival. Of course, what eventually happened led to his creation. The old Alex died at Penn Station and was reborn as Zeus.

As him

So what was he? Was he the sociopathic Alex Mercer just waiting to show his true colors over time . . . or was he something else?

There some certainties, however. He knew what he could do, what he could achieve. He was a virus that ate people. There was no doubt about it. More and more as the thought the various faces of those he consumed welled up inside him and started to spill out. He could feel their fears, the wants, their loved ones, and their deaths, but that wasn't what disturbed him. What really bothered the virus was again, who he was as a person.

Could he really go back to humanity at this point?

Thoughts like these and more slowly swirled to a stop as he finally found the helicopter at a safe distance away from the city. With the press of a button, Alex detached the bomb, sending it into the water, and the copter turned away as the bomb sunk into the depths. He pushed down on the helicopter's controls, accelerating it away from the soon to be explosion.

And then, it went off.

Most humans would have panicked in Alex's position, but this wasn't something he hadn't accounted for. In order for the bomb to be at a safe distance from the city, the bomb would have to be placed while he was still in the blast.

And he really didn't care.

"Bring it," he said as the blast tore through the helicopter, burning him alive in a vortex of nuclear energy.

In a distant twisted realm of absolute darkness, some . . . thing sat on his knees as it looked down.

Its eyes glinted as its mouth morphed into a sadistic grin.

"Finally," he said with a twisted glee, "New toys to play with."

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