Claymore ~ Pokerface
Author's Note:
This is a fanfiction. All Characters © to Yagi, Norihiro sensei.
Original Characters © me. Not beta read.
Teresa of the faint smile, it is said her smile never fades under any circumstance. Today, it broke.
"Welcome to my castle, Teresa," I say.
As Teresa is entering my dungeon with her metallic boots one step at a time an erotic moaning sound echo's behind her every step. Let me explain, I lured the current top ranking, better yet the current most powerful and best claymore into my dungeon or castle as I just said. How I did it, is quite simple. I kidnap easy prey, low ranking claymores and put them in chains, bondaged them and made them moan all day and night. Letting out an irresistible perfume, soon Yoma came looking for a feast. And as yoma gathered so did higher ranking Claymore, each time of course after they defeated the Yoma gathering and tried freeing their fellow warriors I'd interfere and capture them instead, bondaged them and put them to work.
This has been going on for about half a year now and I can confidently say that I almost chained up at two dozen of them. Pretty much half their warrior force is now below my dungeon having an orgy. Now, finally Teresa arrives to set things straight.
"Jack, the ripper. No, I should call you by your old war title. Jack the dragon slayer," Teresa voice echoes through my dungeon as we meet face to face barely a blade apart. I squatting down on a wooden stool with the chair's back facing Teresa and her standing tall, proud and authoritative with her claymore still sheathed behind her back.
"Didn't I teach you, smile, always. The moment your poker face breaks, is the moment you lose, Teresa- chan," I am taunting her, since her face has a sad expression.
"Oh, don't look at me with that questioning face. Don't ask 'why'. You should know the answer already. A Berserker will eventually go berserk. It was but a question of time. Come outside, you can always save these girls later, if you can defeat me that is. We don't want to fight inside here, we'd just end up kill them instead." I motion her to follow me, as I walk towards a back door leading her away from this gloomy and oppressing place. I lead her out into a shinning beam of white light.
Liquid fat, drips down onto white wooden coal sizzling in the process and reigniting the flames. The smell of grilled meat fills this little forest clearing's air as I impatiently wait for my dinner to be ready. Suddenly I sense movement, an animal? No, it doesn't smell like a wild animal, then it must be human.
"Come out, I am not going to eat you," I say in a low but strong voice.
A little blond girl with a pony tail comes out of the bushes not far from the campfire.
"Hey, Oji-san are you a warrior? Your yoki is as faint as a flame that dies to the lightest breeze. It's like you are the same as the Onee-chan I met the other day," the girl says.
Opening my eyes wide I am rather surprised. When was the last time any person was able to tell I had any amount of yoki within me. I lost my berserk hair color and stigma silver eyes eons ago. Since then not once did I use my berserk power. Something inside me wells up, but I quickly suppress the feeling.
"Interesting little Missy, come closer and have a bite," as I slice off the grilled boars leg with a knife. "It's rather good, if I do say so. No need to be shy, even if you aren't really that hungry running around so much will make you hungry. I am Jack, what is your name?" I introduce myself.
"Teresa," she says with a smile on her face.
"Teresa, such a lovely name, it is nice to meet you," I stretch out both hands, the right for shaking her hand and the left still holding the grilled leg to hand it to her. She shakes my right hand and then takes the offered leg and bites down.
"Oh! This is good, Oji-san!" she says as she happily continues eating.
"I am glad you like it," as I eat my own share.
"You asked me, whether I was a warrior earlier, didn't you. Well, yes and no. I would call myself a war veteran from a war far away."
"A war veteran? What is that?" Teresa asks innocently.
"Do you know what a war is?" I asks her.
"No," she smiles.
"You do know what fighting is, especially with that outfit of yours. But instead of fighting with 1 or two people or just a dozen of them, imagine if hundred up on hundred, thousand upon thousand of people come together and fight each other at the same time. That is a war," I say in a rather gloomy tone.
Teresa on the other hand still innocent or so I thought suddenly shivered violently. Memories of some horrible past must have surged up at my explanation. In a sudden reflex I quickly grabbed her, pulled her towards me and hugged her tightly.
"Shhh, it's alright, it's alright. I am here," I say quietly in a warm tone, stroking her back softly as she continues to shiver.
I sense nearby the people from the organization, trainers, those who train little girls to become warriors. They must be searching for Teresa. She probably ran away from the organization. Should she return today, she'd surely be scolded and taught a lesson or two before she's put back to training. More or less they would break her in both her mind and body until she obeys them without question.
"Well, maybe not tonight," I say in a quiet voice and lift her up into arms and vanish from the campfire taking with me the boar and Teresa.
As the days light finally vanishes I stop at a nearby hollow tree trunk. It will serve us for the night at least. As I stop and lay her down, her body also finally stopped shivering. She lies on the ground in her fetus position as I watch over her and eat the leftover cold boar now.
Disgusting how quickly something so delicious can go bad.
"Jack-oji-san, you are so nice and warm," Teresa murmurs in a quiet voice. She holds onto my right hand with her small hands.
"You think so? I don't think I am as nice as you think I am," I try to counter argue.
"No, you are my hero," she says with an energy and smile that pierces my heart.
"A hero, eh? No, I am not a hero, little Teresa. If anything I am a dragonslayer," I say in a cold, dead like tone.
"A dragon slayer? That sounds fantastic!" she says as if she did not pick upon my tone of voice. Instead her eyes shine as if it was story time. I guess I myself am at fault for quirking her interest.
"It is not much of a heroic tale though, but it looks like I won't be left alone until I tell you this tale of mine."
I lean back against the roots of the tree making myself comfortable and giving Teresa a leg pillow before I tell her the tale of the dragon slayer.
In a land far away, where you have to sail by boat at least six moon cycles or more, there rages an endless war between men and dragons. And in that war young recruits are given a spear and a piece of wood to serve as shield and thrown into the battlefield.
"Hey, kid guess you are the newest recruit, eh?" a bearded man with an iron helmet, iron sword and iron shoulder blades says to me. I on the other hand am barely peeking out of our trench shivering from toe to toe holding tightly my spear and shield. My only wish is to survive this coming charge.
"Good, that's a good instinct, boy. It'll keep you alive, but I tell you, you should hide underneath the dead the moment you got a chance. Remember, poke this spear into the easiest target you can find then hide underneath it until the end. That's how you live as a human and a coward," he whispers me the secret for survival.
I don't care if they call me a coward, I just want to go home to my mother and sister back on the fields. Dreams of heroics and honor quickly died within me when rampaging dragon soldiers ransacked and looted our village, leaving behind fire and death barely five harvest festivals ago.
Suddenly, as I am remembering the ransacking and looting, something in my stomach rises up and shoots up my throat and out my mouth. I am vomiting right out onto the trench. The other recruits next to me are laughing at me.
"Look at him, he's so dead!" they laugh, belittling me. I can't even fight back as my body is still vomiting out the last of the bread and water we had not so long ago.
Then the war horn sounds in a long and loud tone.
"Charge!" everyone roars.
Even if you don't want to charge, you have no choice, the ones behind you will push you into a charge or trample over you. Without a choice I run out of the trench with the other of the first line. Wooden buckler on my left, short spear on the right I just run straight forward towards the enemy line.
The other side, too, charges at us with spears and axes in their hands. Then within my vision I see someone on the opposite side with an ax right in front of me. I lift my buckler and lower my spear aiming at his torso as I keep running. He throws his ax in hope of cleaving me in half, but it hits my buckler instead and my spear reaches him piercing his torso in a splash of blood. I quickly let go of the spear and run towards him with my blurry vision I just dive underneath him as his body falls forward. However someone a shadowed appears next to me as I hide. Someone must have seen me hide and come to kill me off, as I am more or less immobile and helpless now beneath my own first kill.
'Shit, shit, shit,' I think to myself as I see my life about to flash before my own eyes. Then all the sudden the body, who is about to execute me, collapses lifelessly.
"Kid, good job hiding beneath the body!" a voice sounds through all the fighting. It is the same voice back in the trench. "Captain," I voice trying to explain myself. "Stay there and don't move a muscle. Kids your age shouldn't be fighting a meaningless war."
Metal clashes upon metal, shouts of roaring men fighting each other are only muffled by screams of pain and agony or when blood fills their throat making it impossible for them to voice out anything.
I think it would continue like this forever, when suddenly a roar of a beast echoes through the entire battlefield.
"Dragon!" everyone shouts or screams. It roars again more people screams. And quickly the battle sound changes and quiets down.
"Hey, kid still alive?" the captain says in a painful voice. "Yeah," I whisper.
"Listen, doesn't matter if its a dragon or a human. If you slice off its head it dies," he says before blood muffles his voice. Out of the hill of dead above me I peek out to see the iron blade he carried lying now next to him.
Stomp, stomp as the ground shakes and the dragon moves through the battlefield. The battle seems to have died down and only the dragon and me are left. I hear the gushing of blood and crushing of bones above me. Is it eaten the dead? I try to see what is going on when suddenly a giant mouth opens up from the sky above chopping down on the dead.
All of the dead and me are swallowed with a gigantic bite. With its tongue it pushes us towards its sharp back teeth ready to crush iron and bones alike.
I am so dead, I think to myself when I feel cold iron in my right hand. The captains blade is lying next to me. I grab it and quickly stab the tongue that is pushing me towards its teeth. Nothing is happening, it seems like it doesn't register that I just stabbed his tongue. It just keeps pushing the meat towards its back teeth, however due to its injured tongue not as fluently as before. Scared I just swing the blade wildly cutting the tongue into piece in the process. It doesn't change it motion. Is it immune to pain? Does it not realize it just lost its tongue? I panic after I sliced off its tongue and feed it to its own teeth. But it doesn't realize the difference and chews down its own tongue.
Still in the dark I cuddle myself in the place where the tongue used to be trying to figure out how I will survive this.
'Whether dragon or human, cut of its head and it dies' a thought echoes inside of me. "Captain," I murmur as I touch my chin. Suddenly an idea pops into my head, I feel out my neck then my chin then put to fingers into my mouth to measure the length of my own mouth.
"It's not quite cutting of the head, but maybe it'll do," I think out loud and move myself behind the dragons tongue or better said where the tongue used to be. With all my might I stab the large two handed sword deep into the soft flesh.
After a while the body suddenly sinks to the ground, collapsing onto its own weight. Did I do it? I can't believe it. The dragon is motionless on the ground, that I am sure off. I pull out the blade and slowly crawl out of its mouth.
Finally I am inhaling fresh air filled with the stench of iron, blood, shit and mud. Still it's fresh air way better than the mouth of a dragon. I am curious though how I managed to kill it and trace its chin all the way to the cut I made.
There I find a second head, a smaller head, the size of about a human adult. The head is severed from the rest of its body. A lucky strike, my two handed claymore sized blade cut through its soft flesh and severed its head. It wasn't skill or anything, just pure luck that I slayed this dragon. Still they probably will think I deserted if I return empty handed. Using the claymore I sever the humanoid head from the dragon's body and slowly crawl towards my camp. I don't want to be ambushed by looters or stragglers that may still roam the field of battle.
As I crawl I spot another dragon humanoid eating the dead. It doesn't notice me as its head is digging deep into the flesh of the dead. I sneak up behind it with just my line clothing and claymore and sever its head with one strike. The body just slumps down spilling out a fountain of blood.
I take the second head with me as well and soon reach the trench line. Holding the two heads high I shout "Friendly!" a few repeated times. Seeing the two dragon heads they let me in.
"Holy shit, he killed two dragons," some of the survivors or recruits that didn't fight in this battle murmur as I inside. 'Dragon slayer' someone says.
I hand in my two heads to people in the back line dressed entirely in black linen cloth. "Rest, you've earned it Jack the dragon slayer."
Unsure of what will happen to me I entered the common tent and rest for the night, shivering still in fear of the battle that occurred this day.
"Hungry?" I offer a boars' leg to Teresa, who walks out from the dungeon into the courtyard filled with dead awaken beings. All their heads were severed cleanly from their neck.
"Guess not. Still, you should not fight on an empty stomach," I see her declining my offer. I pull out a claymore stuck to the ground and toss the boars' leg into the air.
Just as it reaches it's peak both Teresa and I dash towards each other clashing our blades against each other.
To be continued...