Claymore Fan Fiction ❯ Blacklight ❯ Part 1: ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

This is my very first Claymore fanfic and crossover.

Date: 201009

Disclaimer: A Claymore/Prototype crossover. All characters and concepts belong to their respective creators and owners.

Synopsis: What were the youma? Where did they come from? There has never been an adequate explanation given as to how they came into being until ... now.

B L A C K L I G H T

Part 1:

A female figure with blonde hair opened her eyes to find herself lying on the ground in the middle of nowhere. There was blood all over the place and body parts including an arm in a brown sleeve. Right next to her, she could find a large sword and a pair of hands ... cut off? Strangely enough she was not grossed out by the blood and the body parts lying around her. She felt somewhat lethargic but still found the strength to push herself to her feet. Suddenly, tendrils from her body lashed out to grab the arm and the pair of hands gripping the sword, causing them to disappear in a fountain of blood.

'What was that?!!' She wondered.

She could feel the hands and arm in her body being broken down into its base components before being stored as ... bio-mass?

For some strange reason she knew what it was that she had consumed ... consumed?

Oddly enough the digested parts did not feel like cannibalism at all. It felt natural ... like the tendrils ... stretching out from her body. Wait a second here ... tendrils?

She had tendrils? Instinctively, she waved the tendrils in front of her face before touching them with her fingers. They were smooth and very sharp.as could be seen from the cut they left on her finger. Though ... What was this? The small cut vanished from sight right in front of her eyes. Did she just imagine that? Feeling curious, she cut herself slightly on the palm this time. There was little pain ... and like before the cut closed before her eyes like it never was ... leaving her new skin and flesh ... unmarred.

Feeling stronger, she got to her feet and began to look around her for clues as to what happened.

'What is going on?' She tried to recall what had happened but only succeeded in coming up with a blank.

'Where the hell am I? What the hell is this place?'

She wondered.

She tried to remember who she was but her name remained elusive. Frowning slightly, she turned around to look only to find out that a frown did not come naturally to her. A faint hint of a smile graced her face and it felt just right. Her blonde hair cascaded in waves to reach below her shoulder ... she didn't know what she looked like but she had a good idea. As she studied her figure, her eyes fell on the large blade with the symbol of a cross and two slashes on the tips of both sides of the cross carved into it. For some unknown reason, the blade seemed important to her. Feeling as though the large weapon might be able to shed some clue as to her identity, she bent down to pick it up.

The weapon felt right in her hands. After giving it a few practice swings, she was soon lost in her own world as her hands and legs began to move of their own accord. A thrust .. then a swing ... another thrust ... her hands and legs speeded up and soon she was a blur of movement. Finally, after a few minutes, she came to a stop ... feeling more energetic rather than tired after the simple workout.

The rock mounds around her crumbled into broken piles of stones on the ground. The ground cracked slightly beneath her feet. She gazed disbelievingly at the broken piles of stone rubble and cracked ground as though surprised by the incident. Something told her that normal people were not able to shatter stone with a single blow or crack the ground by stamping on it on a whim.

'Who am I? What am I?' She wondered again.

Unable to get an answer to the question she posed to herself, she sheathed the sword and with one last look at the surroundings, left the place.

On a dusty, unkempt road ... a blonde woman was walking with a large sword, strapped to her back all by herself. Her torn clothing with large tears and gaps in it, did not seem to help matters.

"Look who's here." an unwelcomed voice sneered.

"Goldilocks wandering all by herself," a second voice continued.

Two more riders approached from the woods.

"What did you find, Garshan?" the first rider asked.

"Cinderella. Who else?" the stocky bald-headed man laughed.

"Should fetch quite a pretty penny at the stables, Arshod. How much do you think Morgan's buying for this one?" the second rider commented.

The blonde amnesiac woman glanced at them briefly before turning to walk away.

"Probably a hundred gold pieces. Didn't your mama ever tell you that good little girls do not wander around alone?" the second bandit laughed.

The blonde woman studied his face without speaking. For some unknown reason, she did not fear him, nor the large number of comrades that he had surrounding him.

"Goldilocks lost her tongue," the man holding a crossbow laughed.

One of the men on horseback moved to block her way to prevent her from leaving.

The blonde woman drew her large two-handed sword from its scabbard without a sound. The polished metal of the sharp blade, free from its sheath, seemed to glow slightly in the bright sunlight light. The bandits drew in their breath sharply at the slight of the large two-handed weapon.

"She is carrying the weapon of the silver-eyed witches!" the first bandit cried out in alarm.

"A Claymore! A freaking Claymore!" the second bandit swore.

The bandits immediately became cautious.

"I don't want any trouble with the silver-eyed witches, Koreck," one of the bandits on horseback answered.

"Look at her eyes, carefully. She's no silver-eyed witch!" a man who appeared to be the leader scoffed at the suggestion.

The rest of the group turned to look at the woman's eyes. It was true. She did not have silver eyes. They sighed in relief.

"For one moment, you had us going, girl. But nobody fools us ... for long. And now a new chapter in your life begins," the apparent leader of the group remarked derisively.

"Arion!" he barked an order.

One of the men drew out a large net.

"Normally we catch fish with this net. But today we catch something different. Something that moves around on two legs and squeals like a pig when speared. A woman," he licked his lips suggestively.

The rest of the group laughed loudly while making obscene gestures.

He threw the net.

That was the last thing he ever did.

The woman was a blur of movement, her blade cutting through them faster than grass. Within a couple of seconds, the battle was effectively over. The men died in frozen horror ... staring in a mixture of disbelief and shock as their body parts fell to the ground in neatly-cut pieces. A mixture of black and red tendrils erupted from the woman to engulf all the fallen bodies one after another. They vanished from sight so cleanly taken that not even the bones remain.

A few days later ...

A hooded figure in brown robes strolled casually into the village, the hood of the brown robe flapping in the wind slightly. All around the person, curious onlookers turned to look at the stranger, some with suspicion while others with fear. Strangers were not highly regarded for many were the tales of innocent victims becoming prey to the nefarious youma that prowled the land endlessly in search of victims. That being said, there had been a few people who vanished mysteriously from the village without a trace. It was little wonder that the majority of the villagers fled for the safety of their homes, their doors boarded up shut while the braver ones ran to grab their weapons. Times were hard and dangerous.

"Stop where you are, stranger! Or we will hit you with our arrows!" a voice shouted in the direction of the approaching figure.

She came to a stop.

"Remove your hood!" a man ordered loudly.

There was no reply.

"Remove your hood or we will shoot our arrows!" the man who appeared to be the leader warned.

The hooded figure remained still before reaching to the hood to remove it. It dropped to reveal ...

"A woman! Who are you lady?" the leader called out.

"I do not know."

"Where do you come from, stranger?" he asked again.

"I came from the mountain," she answered.

"Her hair looks as pale as those silver-eyed witches. But she has no silver eyes. She can't be a Claymore," another man spoke from his hiding spot.

"I say we shoot her. She could still be a youma," came another whisper.

"We could ask her to leave just to be safe," the first man suggested.

"If only we had a Claymore, she would be able to tell," another person pointed out.

"I'm not taking any chances. The lives of the people in this village are a priority," the leader came to a decision.

"Leave now! Or we kill!" he ordered.

For one moment, the woman looked like she was about to advance forward, regardless of the consequences when she unexpectedly turned around and left the village the way she came. Seeing her departure, the leader could not help but breath a sigh of relief.

It was not easy to get accepted by a village. The people here were a suspicious lot, fearing strangers and what they call 'youma'. The somewhat amnesiac woman walked seemingly without care on the stony road. She had no identity. No memories. No hints as to who she was ... save for this large two-handed weapon with that odd-symbol carved into it and the strange desire to ... consume organic matter including body parts. So far, she had already killed and eaten three raiding parties who had made the fatal mistake of thinking that she was easy prey and from there ... came the information of where she was, what place this was and what kind of people were found here.

Those people who attacked her were bandits, all of them. They would kidnap young girls from their homes, the most beautiful and healthy ones and sell them to slave traders who would then be shouldered with the grim task of breaking them physically and mentally before molding them back up into the ideal slave that would cater to all their sick whims and fantasies. Suffice it to say, those bandits would never do that again. They had all been slain and consumed with nothing more than a spray of blood to mark their passing. Their memories though remained with her. She had put them to good use, learning skills that would take entire years to master. Not just with archaic weapons but useful skills such as unarmed combat, horseback riding, commanding and leading entire groups of military units, public speaking, buying, selling and negotiating with others.

It seemed that those bandits came from all walks of life. Who would have ever expected a mayor, fisherman or farmer to become a bandit? Their memories were as different as their physical forms from which she could adopt at will. Still, they had one thing in common though. All those bandits, whoever they were feared the 'youma'. From what she could gather from their memories, the 'youma' were inhuman beings with monstrous forms and abilities. They could, however, at will, adopt a human guise when staking out their hunting ground in search of human prey. Their human guise was so good that they could not be detected through physical means or mental interrogation alone. It took a 'Claymore' with 'youki'-sensing abilities to sniff them out.

Was she one of them, a 'youma'? A creature that lived only to consume the flesh and blood of the living?

Or was she one of these 'Claymores', a warrior of the mysterious Organisation that was sent to destroy these creatures?

The large two-handed weapon with its strange engraved symbol clearly marked it as a weapon belonging to a warrior of the Organisation. So, by way of inference, she was a warrior of this strange and rather enigmatic Organisation.

Still she was not sure about being a warrior of this Organisation. Possession of the weapon did not automatically mean that she was one of these warriors since she could have taken it from a slain warrior. Without further information, it was difficult to verify her former occupation or background either way since she could just as easily be one of these 'youma' as she was one of these 'Claymores'.

Also, she had yet to encounter any of these 'youma' or 'Claymores' in person.

'My only chance of figuring out the truth ... is to find them,' she thought.

Elsewhere ...

A man in a hooded robe was speaking to another man in a hooded robe.

"Will you do it? We have been receiving increasing reports of people disappearing without a trace from villages near the coast. We believed this to be the work of a group of youma that prowl the area," a male voice spoke.

"We will do it ... for the usual fee of course," the second man answered.

"Our leader would be most pleased if the matter was dealt with as soon as possible," the first man answered before departing into the darkness of the night.

Another figure approached the hooded figure in the shadows after the man had left.

"A most unusual client," the hooded figure said.

"How so?" the figured that resembled a blonde woman with pointed ears holding a large two-handed sword asked.

"The leader of the criminal underworld. Whoever these youma are have to be hurting his operations really badly if he is willing to pay us to get rid of them," the man in hooded robes answered.

"So did you agree?" the woman asked again.

"I agreed ... for the usual price of course. Send the new Numbers Four and Six to deal with it," the man ordered.

"Two single digits?" the woman gasped slightly

"I have a feeling these are no ordinary youma," the man remarked.

TBC

I do admit I need help with writing this fic. For some reason ... I can't seem to write as much as I used to. Probably part of the reason as to why I haven't updated Gamemaster, Timeline, Countdown, Photocopy, Photogrey and Chrysalis in a long time. My mind can't seem to concentrate on anything for long periods these days.