Lightning, Blood, and Steel
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 look beyond their hovels where they cowered to transcend their physical limitations. Gone were the days when man cowered the and feared the unknown.
But here in New Marais, somewhere and some time away from us, the only aspect of fire that could be seen here was its penchant for devastation. The city could do nothing but watch as more and more of itself propagated the very flames sought to devour it whole. The skies were muddled with an ashy brimstone as dense smog turned the once blue sky into a sickening orange. To many, an all-consuming fire would have drawn the denizen's entire attention, but the citizens of New Marais 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. He could be seen, a giant humanoid figure of fire that moved slowly towards the center of this fine city. With each booming step, this "Beast" of a man moved ever closer towards the St. Ignatius, shockwaves echoed from each step as it sent up blasts of air taking with it anything loose enough to fly upward. This ever looming monster, unstoppable and unfettered by bullets and blasts of all kinds, looked on at the one thing that could stop him, a smaller figure still catching his breath on the top of St. Ignatius.
Cole Macgrath, the so-called Demon of Empire city, found himself on a church. Why the name came to him as he shielded his buzz cut head from buffeting winds with his bandaged covered hands, he could not say, but at least he was finding the thought funny. He, a so-called demon, was taking refuge on a church as the RFI was charging up for the last time. This small sphere of metal glowed brightly for Cole, brighter than any other source of power he had seen. Even the shadow of the beast seemed feeble compared to this beacon of hope.
It almost made him forget what he was about to do . . .
Almost . . .
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, a pause coming as though he wasn't sure what else to say, ". . . 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, sparked alight. Cole felt lighter, stronger than before and in that moment, he did let himself go for his own sake.
"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 as a scowl came across his face, 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 swaths of explosive shots. The blasts ripped the already damaged being further and caused him to roar in agony. A shot to his face peeled off chunks of his the beast's head. A shot to the stomach punched a hole straight through. This visage of an unstoppable beast was crumbling just like the beast's form whittled away until its knees buckled under its weight. Its powers dissipating, the Beast finally fell on its knees as Cole floated down slowly, his breath still remaining in his chest even after the adrenaline rush.
As The Beast fell into a defeated kneel and looked towards Cole, Cole simply looked back at the giant. 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. It was a childish 'fuck you' of sorts … but hell, it was one good thing in a sea of bad news. Satisfied, Cole Macgrath stood triumphantly, 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.'
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. All he needed to think about was the good he was doing.
*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 sacrifice their lives? Why should they have been killed off, the ones that did good, and everyone else had to be saved?
Shit, he was doing that again. Doubting this path.
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 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 thought 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.
'This is what needs to be done' he repeated over and over again in his head.
"It's ok," Cole reassured Kuo, but Kuo was shaking herself out of his arms.
"It's not ok." Kuo spat 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. In the end, Nix was on the side for good and showed her resolve with true sacrifice.
It was all worth it.
It was all worth it.
". . . 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.
"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. When he readied himself, 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 fell 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 followed as families flocked to their previously thought to be dead members and the sweet chorus of rejoicing civilians 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, his face would mark the very church he stood upon.
Some people swore that they heard a voice though, a voice that went across the stars. Some say that he had never died and had gone somewhere else. But what all could say was that there was only one definite thing to say.
Cole had lived half as long but twice as bright.
But, things were not as they seemed.
In another place and time, a helicopter exploded into a fiery ball of shrapnel and death. Broad daylight marked the USS Ronald Reagan, a far cry from just days before when the red hues of organic matter stained the sky. The first explosion was quickly followed up by others, the domino effect of inactive planes and helicopters that were just a little too close to one explosive happy vehicle. Even as the violence came, as bodies were strewn about in excess, but soldiers came running up onto the deck to take the place of the dead.
A creature kept its watchful eye as it towered over the scene. Looking out for the prey that it had so easily punched away, this supreme hunter stood nearly 10 feet tall in the twisted visage of a human that seemed to have been melted and remade over a dozen times. The hunter's form was a disgusting sight to behold, but even it was nothing compared to . . . him.
Within a flash, the monster felt its flesh tear as huge spikes shot out from the ground. The pain of torn flesh brought a quick roar, but it was merely superficial damage 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. Of course, the truth was that this was merely a fleshy imitation of the ex-Gentek scientist Alex Mercer and the leather jacket he had worn that night. Alex preferred Blackwatch's little name for him, but even then, Zeus was a rather unfitting name for him.
After all, he preferred eating gods than ruling them.
Alex's arms flicked up as clawed hands jerked out from the ship's deck. These wicked blades flicked between each other as he bounced from foot to foot, keeping light on his toes as the monster seemed to aim a retaliate. Just as the monster bent its knees, Alex snapped to action. Fleshy appendages quickly surrounded and spun around his arms as they practically reshaped his sharp hands into heavy mounds of flesh. Alex got down to his knees from the sudden weight change but quickly adjusted.
The gesture registered as a challenge aimed directly at the Supreme Hunter and, with a roar, the monstrous humanoid leaped forward before it gathered his bearings as he prepared himself. Alex was smart enough to move out of the way and then some as tendrils spilled out from the hunter's body in a similar fashion to Alex's own maneuver. Had Alex not been pressed for time, he might have admired the quick ingenuity of closing a distance to unleash such a powerful attack with little warning, but here, he was just annoyed.
He dodged the clumsily aimed tendrils with a scowl; the damned thing had imitated him, like a child trying to act out his betters. As the tendrils pulled back, Alex saw the supreme hunter's haggard state. Alex pulled nearly of his biomass into his right arm, causing it to smash into the floor. Just moving required him to drag his arm, but that wasn't a problem at all as he gathered momentum.
A split second later, Alex flung this overgrown tumor towards the Hunter and smashing into its chest. Blood was pouring from the monstrosity as it roared, it's body concaved inwards by the strike. Alex took pleasure in going for the legs, snapping the thick limbs like twigs before the hunter retaliated back with a swipe of his arm. With the distance long range, Alex turned his arm into a whip-like appendage, snapping it forward without a second thought. He tore through the monster's stomach area, but it quickly regenerated and stood up again.
For several minutes, the Supreme Hunter fought a losing battle as he flung powerful, yet uncoordinated attacks that missed. The large bulky body of the Supreme Hunter could not hope to keep up with Alex's agility and Alex knew it. He toyed with the damn thing, going on for longer than he needed to when he began to watch the soldiers around him pull back. By the time the monster got to its knees and its regeneration was slowing, Alex had paused and recalled his nuclear situation. He had let himself go; how foolish of him.
His right arm changed, twisting it into a huge curved blade that shined among the black flesh. Alex darted one last time underneath the hunter's vision. Before it could do anything, he jumped up from under his neck, slicing the Supreme hunter's head off as he absorbed the creature into himself.
"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. An angry scowl came over his face, realizing how much time he had wasted fooling around.
He grabbed the nuke as gently as any superhuman monster could and placed it on an ascending platform. When it reached the top, he was greeted by several soldiers foolishly pointing guns at him.
"Move" he growled. He wasn't about to waste any more time.
The soldiers looked at each other as held their guns and their ground. One of them even had the gall to come forward
"Idiots," he said as he hefted the large nuke right up to their faces, breaking their line of sight. The soldiers bolted backward but it was too late as Alex's right limb had snapped forward, whipping through the multitude that got in his way. All of them fell, their bodies severed in half. They were all screaming for only a moment before they gurgled.
Free from distractions, Alex calmly walked towards one of the helicopters and quickly got to work, attaching the nuke to the helicopter before he started up the engines with a machine-like efficiency. After about a minute of working, one minute less on the timer, Alex drove the helicopter up quickly as the nuke swung along underneath.
The virus could waste little time. Even with the added weight messing with the trajectory, he flew over the darkened water with a steady balance. Mental experience of the tens of hundreds of soldiers guided him with only the true pilots shouting above the swath of voices. He had no other thoughts in his head then and there, perhaps a side effect to his mass consumption of soldiers. This ride out to sea, even with the thought of death looming about, it barely affected him. Not even thoughts of Dana or Dr. Ragland came back to haunt him, though he did have passing thoughts.
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 appear explosion.
And then, it went off.
Most humans would have panicked in Alex's position, but this had been accounted for. For the bomb to be at a safe distance from the city, he was undoubtedly going to be in the blast, whether he liked it or not. A human, a mortal, fleshy human, would have asked what could have been done. They would have asked why there were there and perhaps they might have asked why they needed to die, but Alex had no such question or introspection.
Like the hundreds he ate, this experience was a means to an end, one step to some imagined finish line that he had conjured up on his head. He was going to be hit by the blast, but he was going to survive.
All he asked was ... what was next.
He didn't even say a word as the blast tore through the helicopter, burning him alive.
Finally,
Somewhere, in a place where things existed and could never exist,
Some time, in a time that could and could not take place
Sat a person that could and could not exist.
He was grinning
He was grinning wildly
A smile marked by memory and fondness of what was long gone.
"Oi took 'im long enough."
He licked his black stained lips and stood.
He looked at the sight, feeling the joy of his youth.
He saw something he had never thought to see again.
"Looks like I got a job tuh do."
Hello all. Long time no see for those returning. Thanks for reading
Please Review. All reviews are welcome for this reboot.
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