//------------------------------//
// Vengeance 
// Story: You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter 
// by Tatsurou 
//------------------------------//

Ares smiled happily as his harpies delivered Pandora's Box to him.  With this in his hands and Kratos dead, there was nothing to stop him from conquering the mortal world, converting its entirety to worship to him, and then conquering Olympus for his own.  He had thought to use Kratos as his weapon to do this originally, but Kratos proved uncontrollable.  But now, nothing could stop him.

As he laughed his triumph, however, he suddenly heard music coming from a distance away...music that was growing louder rapidly, as though approaching him.  He turned to the source of the music, only to take a rocketship to the face.  Seeing the pink blur leaping off of it as it lodged up his nose, he wondered where the pink pony could have gotten a rocketship.

He could feel blades sink into his side, starting a climb up his body.  He recognized it as the armor being possessed by Calliope's soul.  It was very frustrating when people didn't stay dead like they were supposed to.  When did Uncle Hades allow a revolving door policy in the afterlife? he wondered internally.

However, Pinkie Pie was currently the greater concern...especially as she appeared to be hovering somehow.  Energy gathered between her forehooves as she mixed Zephyros' fire, Zeus' lightning, the spiritual force of Hades' undead, and the red aura that surrounded her now into a bright pink sphere.  Spinning the energies together like cotton candy, she launched a beam of pink light straight at him, putting out one of his eyes.

Ares roared as he reared back, clutching his ruined right eye.  Spying through his still functional eye that Pinkie had seized the peak of the Temple of Athena, ripped it from its foundations, and swung it over her shoulder like a club, he had time to muse, Maybe I was better off facing a Pandora-empowered Kratos...





As Kratos fell into Hades, he struggled to find a way to catch himself before he reached the River Styx.  Others had escaped Hades before.  He would do so now.  Ares wouldn't stop with just him.  He had to protect Pinkie and Calliope!

Before he was able to find anything to grab hold of, however, a massive black canine mouth caught him in mid-air, threw him sideways over two identical heads, and blue hands pulled him onto Cerberus' back.  "Easy there, hero-boy," the owner of the hands assured him.  "I've gotcha."

Kratos looked up at the one who had saved him.  He saw blue skin, an elongated face with yellow eyes and razor sharp teeth, blue flames for hair, a grey and purple toga with blue edging, and billowing smoke coming out the bottom of the robe-like toga instead of feet.  Though he didn't recognize the figure at all, the skull medallion toga-robe clasp at his shoulder and the fact he was riding Cerberus left only two possible identities...and Pinkie was still in the world of the living.  "Hades?" he asked in shock.

"Yup, that's me," Hades replied in a very different voice than usual.  "Hades, Lord of the Dead."  As he spoke, Cerberus raced through a very different Underworld.  "Like what I've done with the place?"

Kratos glanced around.  The glowing, pulsating reds from before had been replaced with muted blues, dark purples, and the gray of stone.  Green flames illuminated echoing chambers.  Various mechanisms under the observations of swarms of imps managed the departed souls.  "It's...certainly different," Kratos managed to say.

"What Pinkie said got me thinking," Hades explained.  "While the Underworld needs me to function properly, it needs my awareness more than my physical presence.  So I reorganized the management structure a bit.  Also, given what she said about becoming a man Persephone could love, I decided to change myself a bit."  He gestured to his very different appearance.  "Think she'll like it?"

Kratos looked the god over one more time.  "Well...even if she doesn't, I think the drastic level of change you're willing to do to gain her affection will at least convince her to give you the chance to make the changes she wants."

Hades smiled.  "That's all I ask, another chance."  He looked up.  "I would ask you to tell me what you think of some of the poetry I've been writing for her-"

Oh dear Zeus, no! Kratos thought silently.

"-but I haven't really got time, and neither do you," the god concluded.

Thank Athena! Kratos praised silently.

"See, Pinkie's gone on a bit of a rampage, one that makes some of yours look like tiptoeing through the tulips, and you need to get up there and stop her," Hades explained.

"Pinkie?  Rampaging?"  Kratos was plainly skeptical.  While he had seen her fight, at best even at her angriest she could be considered to be dancing with Death, not a true rampage.  "I'll believe it when I see it."

"Hopefully you won't see too much," Hades continued.  "She's starting to unravel the fabric of reality."

Kratos blinked.  "And that's...bad?"  When Hades nodded, he continued, "How bad?"

"End of the world as we know it bad," Hades replied, "as that's what it's going to cause if she isn't stopped.  Because of that, a few rules have been bent slightly to get you to her sooner rather than later."

"Meaning what?" Kratos asked in confusion.

As they reached a hole in the cavernous roof above, Hades took hold of him.  "Meaning this!" he said, hurling him upward.

At the top of the hole, Zeus took hold of him, pulling him out into the City of Athens.  "There you go, son," the god said calmly, catching his breath.  "We're cutting things a bit close here."

Looking around, Kratos recognized where he was.  "You were the gravedigger?" he asked in shock.  "Did you know what Ares would do?  Why didn't you warn-"

"I didn't know," Zeus interrupted.  "I suspected.  The Fates would not advise me in this situation, so I covered a possible outcome by digging a path here to Hades.  Then this situation came up, and Hades and I had to finish the passage using divine power under Ares' radar.  Thankfully, the things Pinkie is getting up to make it hard for him to sense anything else."  A massive smoking eyeball landed beside them, the edges of the burn hole glowing pink.  "She's being rather vicious right now."

Kratos gasped in shock before turning and rushing into Athens.  With all of Ares attention on the fight he was currently engaged in, his armies could not manifest, and Kratos faced no opposition as he charged to where his daughters needed him.  His only obstacle was dodging around pieces of the Temple of Athena that littered the streets, had knocked over other buildings, and continued to fall from the sky still.

As he raced through the Temple of the Oracle, he found the Oracle herself surrounded by a strange blue field that masonry and other things that came towards her bounced off of, and had apparently half-incinerated some of Ares' troops that had attempted to breach it.  "Oracle?" he gasped in shock.  "What magic is this?"

In awe, the Oracle held up the paper wrapper that had been around the cupcake Pinkie had given her.  Some crumbs still clung to it, and it was the source of the glowing blue light.  "I held on to it.  It was my thought that I could learn how to perceive Pinkie's influence on the flow of time...but that is impossible.  I certainly did not forsee that it had such power inside it.  ...perhaps it is better not to know what may come next.  That seems to be the lesson Pinkie has brought us...she has brought us hope."  She seized Kratos' wrist.  "But she has lost her hope!  You must get to her, Kratos!  Don't let her become a monster!"

Nodding, Kratos rushed ahead.  Imagining Pinkie consumed by the rage that had driven him before he'd sworn himself to Ares...he couldn't allow that to happen.





As Kratos came out to the seaside where the battle was waging, he saw Pandora's Box resting on the ground, almost inviting him to wield its power.  However, as he rushed forward, he saw something he could scarcely believe.

The sword shaped bridge he had crossed on his way out of the Oracle's Temple before had been ripped from its moorings.  Pinkie clutched the hilt, swinging it about in a crazed fashion as she chopped away at Ares, who desperately defended himself with his own weapons as best he could.  At the same time, Calliope had made her way to Ares' shoulder, and was sawing away at his neck with her sword.

"Pinkie?  Calliope?" Kratos gasped in shock.  Seeing the red aura suffusing Pinkie and starting to fill Calliope, he knew he couldn't let this continue.  "Pinkie!" he shouted as loud as he could.  "Calliope!"

Both turned to face him, their red auras fading.  "Father?" Calliope gasped in shock.

"Daddy?" Pinkie gasped.  As her rage faded, to be replaced by surprised joy, physics reasserted itself as she began to fall, dragged down by the weight of the massive sword she was holding.

"Sister!" Calliope screamed, diving off Ares' shoulder to catch her.  Ares brought his hand up and caught them both, beginning to squeeze, anger filling his single remaining eye.

Kratos heard his daughters scream in pain.  "NO!"

Ignoring Pandora's Box, Kratos braced his foot on it and leapt into the air, somehow propelling himself with enough force to fly straight towards where Ares clutched his daughters.  As he flew through the air, his mind went back to how much his life had changed since he had taken Pinkie in.  She had brought him joy, brought him hope, given him reason to look forward to the future.  She had brought back Calliope.  She had befriended the gods.  He found himself remembering the taste of her cupcakes.

As all those memories of Pinkie flew through his mind, he pulled forth the Blade of Artemis.  Blue light poured forth from his body, enveloping the blade.  As he swung it, the aura extended beyond the edge of the blade, severing Ares' hand at the wrist.

As Ares screamed in agony, Kratos put the Blade of Artemis away, grabbing Pinkie and Calliope up in his arms.  Bracing his feet on Ares' severed wrist, he kicked off, throwing the Blades of Chaos out to latch onto whatever hold they could find.

The Blades embedded themselves in Ares' neck, right below his Adam's Apple.

Pinkie gasped.  "I've got an idea!" she said happily.  Shifting Calliope onto her back, she took the Blade of Chaos from Kratos' left arm.  While that should have been impossible, Pinkie had never learned the meaning of that word.  Binding the chain to Calliope's armor, she then kicked off of Kratos, sending them both circling around Ares neck.

Each of them managed to evade Ares flailing arms until they came to the back of Ares' neck.  "Circle!" Pinkie shouted for some reason, giving Kratos just enough warning to twist his body so they passed harmlessly by each other instead of slamming into each other.  Their momentum increased with centrifugal force.  "Triangle!" Pinkie shouted just before they would have impacted in front.  "Square!" she shouted again just before they crossed in back.  "Cross!" she yelled again as they passed in front.  After that, the chains had shortened enough they could each brace their feet on Ares' shoulders, one on either side.

Blue light suddenly erupted from Pinkie's body, racing through Calliope's armor and down the chain she held.  As it reached the Blade, it leapt from that blade to its mate before racing up the other chain and infusing Kratos, the taste of victory - of hope - filling all three.(1)  "Pull!" Pinkie screamed out, and Calliope and Kratos pulled with all their might.

The last thing registering in Ares' mind was shock as the chains sheared through his flesh like a hot knife through butter, sending his head spinning through the air as his body began to fall.

As Kratos leapt from the falling body, he saw Pinkie and Calliope start to fall.  In that moment, he did not see the physics defying pony and the invincible armor spirit.  He saw his daughters, and in his eyes, they were falling to their deaths.

Screaming in fear, he lunged for them.  Looking around, he searched for some anchor for his single Blade of Chaos.  However, the only place he could latch onto was the brace where the sword bridge had once hung, and the earth there was too soft to anchor the blade in, and the bridge moorings themselves too strong.  A desperate plan formed in his mind.

This is going to hurt, he thought to himself as he flung the blade forward with its magic command ingrained in its flight.  Wrapping its chain around the moorings, the blade then flew back to Kratos.  Spinning, he angled himself to lodge the Blade in his back, locked between two ribs.

As he screamed in agony, he held out his other arm, catching Pinkie and Calliope to him as they all fell.  Holding the chain with his right hand, he played it out, slowly swinging them towards the ground.  However, as Ares power started to fade from the world, the Blades began to lose their power.  Just as the chains fell apart, Ares' body released a massive explosion, the shockwave sending Kratos and his daughters flying.

As they approached the ground, Kratos twisted himself to hit the ground back first, cradling his daughters in his arms, taking the impact of each of their bounces across water and stone until they came to a screeching halt at the base of the mountain where the bridge had once rested.  Struggling to catch his breath as he removed the Blade from his back, Kratos looked down on his daughters.  "Are you both alright?" he asked desperately.

Calliope nodded, hugging him tight, her armored hands forcing his self inflicted wound closed with her own spiritual energy.  Pinkie sat in his lap, hyperventilating for a time.  When she caught her breath, she grinned widely, threw her hooves into the air, and shouted, "Again!"

As Kratos stared at his impossible little girl, his lips began to turn, slowly but surely curving upward into an expression he had not worn for as long as he could remember.  And as Pinkie's joy increased tenfold at the sight of his returning smile, Kratos threw his head back and laughed.

He laughed until his jaw ached.

He laughed until his wounds throbbed with the pain of his joyous spasms.

He laughed until his lungs burned with a need for air.

He laughed as he pulled his daughters into a grateful, loving embrace, as another discovery temporarily erased the awe of killing a God.

He laughed until he discovered just how good it felt to share laughter with the ones you love.






(1) Those of you who have played God of War 3 should realize here what the blue light has signified all along...and next chapter will explain where it came from.