Wild Card

Scene 1: What the Hell?

Here's an attempt at a more humorous Claymore fanfic. As should be obvious, from both the story and title chapters, I'm changing things up a hell of a lot from canon, and I'm beginning with the first episode of the anime. Note that this will be primarily using the anime continuity, although I'll probably try to fuse the anime and manga together starting at the "Carnage in the North" (also called "The North War" and "The Northern Campaign") Arc, and moving more into the manga after that. Yes, I'm featuring an OC as one of the main characters, and while he certainly has the POTENTIAL to take out an Abyssal One, he won't be able to fully tap that potential for a long while yet. The pairing is up to the readers, but I'll get more to that with the ending note.

"Chief, that's the fourth one this month! What are you going to do about the Yoma?"

The Village Chief looked the questioner in the eyes as he said, "I've already done it, Zaki, and they've accepted our request. I've requested that they send in a Claymore."

A young, red-haired kid asked, "Hey big brother, what's a Claymore?"

Before Zaki could answer, said villager suddenly started coughing up blood, as he, Raki, and everyone else in the street stared in horror at what had happened: a stranger (and a man, at that – not a Claymore) had drawn a massive one-edged blade and impaled Zaki with it, cutting-edge up. Then, the man did a sort of twist, before yanking his sword towards the heavens, essentially bisecting Zaki from the intestines up. Just before gore would've begun flowing down the sword and onto its wielder, the stranger swung his huge weapon forward, flinging the blood and guts off of the ebony blade.

The strangest thing about the entire occurrence, however, was that Zaki's blood had been purple, which was immediately followed by the two corpse-halves transforming, revealing that Raki's older brother had been a Yoma in disguise all along.

The demon-slayer hefted his enormous weapon – around the size of a claymore – onto his left shoulder using just one hand as the dying Yoma-Zaki somehow asked, "How… did you catch me… so quickly… you… son of a bitch?"

The man's emerald green eyes appeared to turn as golden as the Yoma's for only an instant before he kicked the right half of Yoma-Zaki's head and replied, "You can have a million different faces, you filthy bastards, but that godforsaken stench will rat you out every single time."

Then, he turned to the large crowd and said, "Now let me guess, you were expecting one of those Claymores, those Silver-Eyed Slayers, to do this, weren't ya? Well, they sent me this time. Actually, they also sent around half a dozen of those babes to keep me out of trouble, but I got tired of waiting for them, so…. ANYHOW, pretty soon, a stranger in a black suit with smoked glasses and a fedora is gonna come around askin' for money, and you're going to give him the damned money. You'll recognize him because he's pretty darn scrawny, hell, maybe even as far as emaciated, you know? Oh yeah, and whatever you do, GIVE HIM THE DAMNED MONEY."

The villagers simply stared at the man, sharing a massive mutual "What the fuck?" kind of moment. After a moment of striking a semi-cool-looking pose with a self-satisfied expression, the strange demonslayer flipped off somebody who'd looked at him the wrong way, before somewhat calmly waltzing out of town.

A few minutes later…

A group of five Claymores was traveling on the road to a small village, which had reported only one Yoma. Under normal circumstances, the Organization would never have dispatched multiple warriors to deal with anything less than an Awakened Being, but this was a special case: the real reason for having FIVE Claymores on the job was to keep an eye on a so-called "prototype warrior."

And, unlike every other person used by the Organization for the last thirty-something generations, this fighter was male. Galatea, the five-warrior group's leader, suddenly sighed as she detected a relatively distant flare of Yoki aura. But unlike Yoma, Awakened Beings, or Claymores, however, this flare lasted only an instant – Galatea was the only woman in the group who'd previously met their charge, and she was the only one to pick up on the burst as it occurred, although the lowest-ranked fighter in the Organization, Clare, detected it a second later.

The second lowest-ranked fighter in the team, Helen, asked, "Galatea, do they really need FIVE Claymores to keep this guy in line, much less three single-digit Claymores, including one of the top five?"

The other three warriors in Galatea's group – Miria, Jean, and Clare – all listened intently and without input for the moment as Galatea chuckled a bit and replied, "As incredulous as it sounds, yes. This man is completely unpredictable; although I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as calling him unstable. Nonetheless, he's a certified loose cannon, and if he's not kept in check, he poses extreme danger to himself and both the lives and the sanity of those around him. You'd probably get along quite well with him, Helen – he's got your attitude, and while he's normally a fun-loving, laid back kid, he's a different person entirely when he's angry… Let's just say that the things – and people – surrounding him at that time have a surprising tendency of breaking into tiny pieces. I remember one time back at headquarters it took Alicia the Black of all people to calm him down." (1)

Jean, both alarmed and surprised that the person they would be watching was capable of such raw power and apparent devastation, asked, "What on earth was he so angry about, and how did Alicia manage to calm him down without killing him?"

Galatea replied, "When I asked the same questions a day or so later, I heard that he'd gotten irritated at how everyone was treating him, and he'd practically screamed that in order to get anyone's attention and to see him as anything more than a tool, he had to go on a destructive rampage. He went ballistic because everyone treated him as more of a thing rather than a person – even to a greater extent than WE are."

Clare pointed out, "You still didn't explain how Alicia calmed him down without resorting to murder."

While the Numbers 1 and 2 weren't nearly as homicidal as the Blood-Soaked Warrior Ophelia or Undine of the Twin Swords, they still had a reputation for suffering absolutely no nonsense under any conditions. Beth in particular had a habit of putting people in the hospital, although she made certain to apologize at some point.

Galatea, at this point, did something very un-Claymore-like: she sweatdropped as she explained, "Vincent – that's the kid's name, by the way: they call him Vincent the Bronze (2) – he was basically upset that everyone was apathetic, even hostile towards him for no real fault of his own, and then Alicia offered to be his friend, and he calmed down completely after that. And I do mean completely: he sobered up, dropped his Yoki levels down to normal, and was on his best behavior for the next three months as long as Alicia came to visit him at least once a week."

At that point, EVERYONE sweatdropped, even the normally unflappable Miria and Jean. And then, to compound everyone's confusion, a rather peculiar fellow came walking up the road in their direction.

The man was fairly tall, around six feet, and while he was muscular, it wasn't anywhere near as ripped as, say, Undine of the Twin Swords. He was dressed nearly all in black, wearing dress pants, semi-casual shoes, and an opened jacket with a blood-red shirt underneath. Walking with his hands behind his raven- and spiky-haired head, the odd wanderer was whistling a tune that was mind-numbingly familiar, but impossible to place. Jean was the first to notice the rather huge black zanbato on his back, which was a bit larger than the zweihänders which gave Claymores their name.

As the man revealed his green eyes, he stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the Claymores, before proceeding to bow before them and tip an imaginary hat while saying, "My my my, aren't you some rather lovely ladies. If you're looking to tour the town over that hill, I'm more than happy to be your guide. While I admittedly don't know anything about that waste of space they call a village, nor do I care about it very much, I'm certain I can invent enough amusing BS to keep you entertained for a while, misses…?"

Galatea, who, although the leader, often had Jean or Miria take point, walked forward and chastised, "Vincent, what the hell are you doing out here? We're supposed to be heading into that town, not out of it. Or did you forget that there's a Yoma we were hired to kill?"

The newly identified Vincent looked surprised for a second, before he asked, "Wait a minute. You said there was only one Yoma in the village."

Sighing, Galatea confirmed that the reports specifically said one Yoma, and she added that she'd only detected one, not including the Claymores with her, or Vincent.

Scratching his head for a second or two, he then asked, "Did you detect it in the village over the hill?"

Tapping her foot in growing impatience, Galatea once more affirmed that Vincent had just left their destination.

Vincent the Bronze appeared lost in thought for a moment, before he said, "Well, we might as well go somewhere that's not so goddamn boring, because I already killed that one a few minutes ago. Probably traumatized his shell's little brother and a few dozen or so innocent bystanders too, but oh well, it's not my fault they don't have the stomach for disembowelment. Hey, that was borderline funny in a sick and deranged way, if you think about it."

Helen, who had briefly broken her record of longest time silent while awake, asked, "And what was the funny?" She was going to wait until she got a taste of this kid's sense of humor before judging him.

"I said that they don't have the stomach for disembowelment, which normally involves the destruction and/or removal of internal organs, often including the stomach, so I basically implied that they didn't have the stomach for a process which usually destroys their stomach, meaning that they maybe already went through it, so that they couldn't do it again, know what I mean? Do ya get it? Huh? Huh? Do ya get it? Well? Do ya? Do ya? Do ya?"

Jean, Clare, Miria, and Galatea exasperatedly smacked their foreheads, and unknowingly in unison at that. Helen, meanwhile, was chuckling a bit at the paradox Vincent had created. She walked up, slapped him on the back, and said, "Okay, we're definitely going to need to make you less morbid and make your funnies funnier" – Helen laughed harder after realizing what she'd just said, joined by Vincent as well – "But you've got promise, I'll give you that. Clare, Jean, and Miria: if it's the last thing we do, this kid and I are going to make you laugh your asses off!"

With this declaration, Vincent (who had instantly taken a liking to Helen, since she was the first person since Alicia to laugh at one of his admittedly lame jokes – although Alicia did it more out of pity than anything else) added a charismatic "HELL YEAH!" for punctuation.

Miria's eye began twitching, while Clare nearly choked at what was going on, Galatea rolled her eyes, and Jean narrowly avoided a heart attack as she said, "Dear God of Rabona, there're two of them."

(1) For one thing, the Organization viewed Vincent as too valuable a possible weapon to destroy at the moment, and when he Hulks out, Alicia and Beth are pretty much the only Claymores strong enough to calm down/restrain him WITHOUT unleashing their Yoki, and also without causing considerable injury to themselves and/or Vincent.

(2): I'll explain the origin of his epithet in a few chapters, but it's definitely something that none of the Claymores, Yoma, or Awakened Beings have in common with him (including canonically, as far as I know).

For the pairing, these are the immediate options: Clare, Helen, or Galatea, while much later on, Clarice and even Priscilla will be viable options. No, I'm not making it a harem no matter how many people ask, because I simply can't write polygamy very well, regardless of how hard I try. Also, Jean and Miria aren't options, because Vincent will eventually come to see them both as mother/sister figures. Deneve isn't either, although she'll join the gang in time for the Awakened Being Hunt.

To be honest, I'm not really a big fan of Raki. As he said himself, he talks big, but at the end of the day, he's a useless coward. The only times he showed any more purpose than as Clare's cook or a potential meat shield were at the end of the Rabona mission, when Raki pulled Clare back from Awakening, and at the very end of the anime, in which he prevented Clare from killing Priscilla and tried to slow down her Awakening while Jean sacrificed herself. Total shame, since I liked Jean much more than I did Raki…

Even so, I had to come up with a legitimate reason to stop Raki from tagging along like he does in canon, and then it hit me: have Vincent slaughter Yoma-Zaki in broad daylight before Raki knows what a Claymore is, therefore doing a Claymore's job, although in a very disrespectful and sorta flippant manner (like how I envision Helen on speed might act), and then basically run like a bat out of hell before anybody has the chance to question him about anything. Therefore, I can keep Raki safely in the dark and out of my way, while satisfying the canonical Clare's desire to keep him safe (she threatened to string me up by my intestines if I actually killed him, as was my first impulse). I plan to deviate from canon in quite a few interesting ways, including my take on several future story arcs. Also, I don't know if friendly!Alicia has been done before, but I'm willing to bet that it hasn't.

And now for this rant of mine to come to an end.

Review please, but rip off Kakashi-sensei when you do: Tell me your likes and dislikes about the chapter, as well as your dreams for the improvement of future chapters.