"C… Clo… Cloud!"

"Bayonetta! Report! What's going on?"

"C'mon, guys. This isn't funny."

Zero's voice sputtered through the commlines, just barely getting through the static.

"GUYS! WHAT'S GOING ON-"

"Don't get your servos in a twist. We're fine." Cloud strained.

"You don't sound fine."

"Supernova. Bayonetta and I are looking for our Senzu Beans. Krateroth was worn out from the Supernova, but he healed up already."

"Hurry up then!" Zero replied, "I can't get through. It looks like they upgraded their Fulgore units with some T-1000 tech. They're a bit tougher now. I think I heard Metal refer to them as 'Terminator-Gores.'"

"All these upgrades, and yet, they still can't come up with a more original or creative name." Bayonetta commented, "Cloud, I found our beans. But we'll have to split it. I don't think that it'll bring us back to 100%, but it should be enough to pull off the fusion one more time to bring down Krateroth and hopefully get Kratos out of there."

*BOOM!*

"I'll see what I can do to get there. Just hang on." Cloud looked around the arena they were fighting in. It was mostly untouched except for a few burn marks. He had to act fast and get to Bayonetta so that they could fuse back into Cloudnetta.

This was going to be tough.

Cloud managed to get across the area to Bayonetta as he tackled her into the next room… Through a wall.

"Was it really necessary to be that rough?" Bayonetta asked as the dust cleared.

"Better than being an open target. Now we got to hurry up. It'll only be a matter of time until Krateroth tries to cut us into more pieces than Freeza when he stared down Future Trunks for the first time." Cloud reasoned, "Now let's hurry up!"

The two of them ate their respective bean halfs as Bayonetta got into position. Cloud did the same.

"FUUUU…"

*CRASH!*

Krateroth burst in, clearly in anger.

"I WILL MOUNT YOUR HEADS ON A PIKE AND USE IT FOR TARGET PRACTICE!" He shouted.

He also happened to have lost all his hair, or what was left after it burned off in the attempted Supernova.

"-SION!" Cloud and Bayonetta were in position for the final part of the fusion dance, as Krateroth rushed forward in an attempt to stop it.

"HA!" He was too late.

A great flash of light appeared, and managed to blind Krateroth for a brief moment as he calmed down a bit. "What in the…?"

"Back to this, huh?" Cloudnetta surmised, "It feels pretty good to be back again!" They declared.

"Grr… You'll still fall to my power!" Krateroth declared as he summoned his Masamune blade.

"Try it!" Cloudnetta taunted, "We… I'm more than enough to take you down!"

"You will fall by my hands!" Krateroth raged as Cloudnetta summoned their Umbra Buster.

"Try it, pretty boy! I think we both know what happened when your Sephiroth Half and my Cloud Half threw down. How'd it go again?- Ah, right. He kicked your ass harder than Venom did to Bane!"

"HUURAGH!" Krateroth was clearly being influenced by Kratos' Spartan Rage, as he started to attack more aggressively. His attacks started to become more predictable, and easier to counter, as Cloudnetta quickly took advantage of it by using their superior strength and combat prowess to make several decisive blows to Krateroth in a matter of seconds.

"How… How are you more powerful than before?" Krateroth snarled as he coughed up a bit of blood.

"Easy." Cloudnetta answered, "I'm a being that has a single focus: Taking you down, and freeing Kratos!"

"That's… That's two things." Krateroth noted as he got up.

"Hmm… So it is." Cloudnetta acknowledged with a shrug, "But I'm still going to beat your ass!"

Krateroth took one more swing at the opposing fusion as they easily dodged, and activated Witch Time.

"So I do have this. Interesting…" They noted before preparing to take a swing with the Umbra Buster as if it were a baseball bat.

*SLASH!*

"WHY DON'T YOU TRY THIS!" Cloudnetta declared as they prepared more strikes, "OMNISLASH! VERSION 5!"

*SLASH!*

*SLASH!*

*SLASH!*

Several more slashes of the blade continued until the final strike was readied, and the blade came down in an intense overhead strike.

*BWWZZT!*

The Krateroth Fusion split- Literally. In the light of the final slash, Kratos was freed from his imprisonment, just barely conscious.

"Im… Imp… Impossible!" Sephiroth muttered from his grounded position, "That power… Those weapons… They were all at my fingertips!"

"Kratos!" Cloudnetta rushed towards their friend's side, "Are you feeling okay?"

"I… I will live… How did you do it? How did you free me?"

"It wasn't that hard. Just make your fusion burn through all that power, and then it was easy from there. Thanks for the help, by the way."

"How did I help?"

"You were fighting from the inside. I could tell. When your fusion tried to attack us, your Spartan Rage might have given him a boost in power, but it also hurt his rationality."

"He became predictable…" Kratos realized.

"Exactly." Cloudnetta confirmed, "Now then… What to do with Sephiroth?" They asked as they turned towards the One-Winged-Angel who was busy trying to get away.

"Perhaps a punishment fitting the crime?" Kratos suggested.

"How so?"

"Fusion attack. Why not give it a try?"

"Hmm…" Cloudnetta pondered this for a moment, then shrugged, "Eh, it can't hurt to think of something… How about…" They started to prepare a powerful technique, and took a battle stance, "LIMIT CLIMAX: MADAMA METEORRAIN!" They declared as a powerful burst of energy surged through their body, and they used the Umbra Buster to cut open a portal that showed Madama Butterfly striking a mountain larger than Mauna Kea, and sending the shards through the portal tumbling towards Sephiroth.

"No… NO!"

*BOOM!*

"A bit overkill if you ask me, but I'd say that it gets the point across."

Sephiroth was barely alive after the attack. Well beyond beaten, battered, and bruised. If one hadn't seen the attack hit him, they would be forgiven if they had assumed that it was a mere training dummy that had been torn apart.

"Okay, we're done here." Cloudnetta said as they made their way towards the door with Kratos in tow.

"I gotta say, when I realized that it was merely down to the two of you fusing to defeat our new foe, I was not exactly confident in your abilities to defeat that fusion." Rayden said as they made their way back to the hotel, "I am glad to be proven wrong."

"You and me both, old man." Zero added, "Ugh, I think I pulled a servo fighting Metal Sonic and all those new Terminator-Gores."

"I know I already said it, but that is a dreadfully awful name. Why not 'Fulgore-1000' or something more creative than 'Terminator-Gore'?"

"To be fair, they aren't exactly the creative type. The guy who broke Batman's back got his name from a warden who called him a 'bane to everything holy.' Because that screams subtlety."

"You're in no position to be saying that, Mr. 'if big bad corporations have their way the planet will be destroyed.'" Zero quipped.

"Oh, and the guy who ended up going from 'zero to hero' because of a virus, is any less cliched?"

"Boys, please." Bayonetta chided, "You can have fun comparing sizes later. Right now, I just want to get back to the hotel, spend several hours in the spa, and some well-earned beauty sleep."

"Try not to make it for over a thousand years this time, okay?" Zero quipped.

"I swear, you do that one time…" She murmured under her breath.

"Are you going to have a bed buddy with you?"

"Did I rub off on you when we fused?" Bayonetta asked Cloud, "Because it's either that, or you've been around your boyfriend too much."

"So this is how Yang and Tifa feel…" Cloud rumbled, "And I'll have you know that Dante isn't really my type. And his hair reminds me too much of Sephiroth."

"Because it's white?- By that same logic, I should remind you of him because of how much hair we have."

"I noticed that you didn't complain about him being male though…"

"We all saw Steve's abs. I think we know where we all stand on this."

"Tracer said that if she wasn't gay, and… y'know, already in a relationship, she'd be willing to date Captain America." Zero recalled, "But then Diana flexed, so I think she forgot about that."

"What does he have that I don't?" Cloud asked.

"A suit that makes him look badass?"

"A personality that just makes you want to follow him into an impossible battle?

"A weapon that doesn't look like it's compensating for something?"

"Ha ha…" Cloud snarked, "Like that joke hasn't been done to death a million times before."

"Quit your whining." Zero grumbled, "I'm tired. I don't want to hear any complaining out of you two."

"Hello tired. I'm Kratos."

The other four just stopped in their tracks as Kratos kept walking on as if he didn't just tell a joke.

"I… I don't even…"

Kratos kept walking.

"Did… did he just…?"

He kept walking.

"WHAT?"

And he just kept walking.

X: And this ends, Aftermath Style: Fusion Reborn! Big shoutout to Screwattack for doing this as a community Death Battle all the way back in December of 2017, so I had inspiration. You guys, are the absolute best.

Wade: Brown-nosing already, huh?- Trying to get a job there?

X: Look, I was bored. I looked back on some old DBC fanart, and this story came to me.

Pinkie: Hey, it's alright to look for inspiration. It's interesting as to how you incorporate ideas from the podcast into the actual story. Anything special for when they hit battle 100?

X: I'll try to have a Goku-Superman chapter up by then. No promises, though.