Author's note: I do not own claymore, some of the story elements were inspired by other fanfic author's work and I incorporated them into this tale.
A Warrior's Tale
Sheila fumbled with the keys to her house, it had been one of those days. Going to work, she'd gotten stuck on the freeway because some idiots had decided to let their cars have sex and screwed up the whole damn freeway. Then her moron of a boss dumped a bunch of work on her desk just before lunch, not that she was hungry or anything, it was the getting out of the office that mattered more. At the local coffee house she was hit on by some guy with a camera and a smooth line, then a strangely dressed woman decided that she would be the perfect match for her basement dwelling son. Sheila waited until the woman got distracted by a Mercedes Benz blaring its horn outside and as the woman glanced away. Sheila 'phantomed' out of there and around the corner, the sudden move broke a heel off on one of her expensive designer shoes, it was a girl thing, she liked wearing nice clothes.
"Damnit! When am I gonna learn not to do that in these flimsy shoes?" Sheila muttered to herself as she took off her good shoe and broke off its heel. Permitting her to walk somewhat normally.
Not that she needed to wear heels to gain height, at 6' 6" she towered over most people. She had been one of the tallest warriors, even Galatea looked up at her. Back in the old days, she always stood out simply because of her height. Nowadays, she was still quite tall though not as much of an oddity. The drive home had sucked as well, a suicidal driver had challenged a big rig for the same space and lost in a big way. The white cloth draped over the mangled wreckage told a tale of death at high speed. Sheila resisted the urge to look as she crawled past in her Saturn VUE with its dead air conditioner. Oh yeah, that was out too.
"It sucks to be me." Thought Sheila as she parked her SUV and paused to throw away her broken shoes.
Once inside her modest house, Sheila checked her phone messages and her E-mails, thankfully, there was little to respond to. Most of the old gang had scattered across the globe and simply lived quiet lives, blending into the teeming masses or hiding out on the fringes of society, they lived on and on, ageless, changeless, myths, living in the present, their time long gone. Miria was the closest survivor living nearby and in regular contact with Sheila; who had only recently become a ranked warrior when Miria led the rebellion that had ended the Organization's grip on power. Once in a while, she would hear from one of the other survivors and they would catch up, but mostly they blended in.
The warm water cascaded over Sheila's long, lithe form as she rinsed the crème rinse out of her flaxen hair, she still wore it the way she did when she had carried her great sword in battle against flesh eating monsters, a torrent of pale silk streaming down her back, ending just above her perfect butt. Stepping out of the shower, she glanced at herself in the mirror, even after all this time she still had the trim form of an athletic woman in her early twenties. A woman with a bikini body, only Sheila never wore any sort of two piece swim suits; the implantation scar had faded over the centuries until it only resembled a major abdominal surgery scar instead of the angry, reddened, almost pulsating evidence of past butchery. Absently, Sheila rubbed scar reducing cream over her taut stomach, it was probably a waste of time, but it seemed to help. Her last lover hadn't noticed the scar until after they had been intimate several times. When he'd asked her about it, she'd told him it was from an infected hysterectomy incision. It turned out the idiot wanted children, and he soon drifted back out of her life to marry a fertile woman.
After a light meal and changing into her yoga pants, running shoes and sports top, Sheila walked over to the recreation center nearby in Sherman Oaks, CA. Where she took the jazzercize class twice weekly. It was a nice diversion and she enjoyed being able to lose herself in the dance moves and the pounding beat of the music. Her natural sense of rhythm and grace always came out when there was music. Afterwards, Sheila went with one of her classmates over to the nearby coffee house for a nibblie and a cup of coffee. Susana, her classmate was a tiny Filipina standing barely five feet tall and tipping the scales at all of 85 pounds, she had no idea that Sheila could easily toss her with one hand, or that Sheila was not her own age but several millenia older. There were many other contrasts between them but for some reason, the two had become friends. While Susana radiated geniality and spontaneity, Sheila was more subdued.
Susana was happily nattering away about something that had happened at her job, Sheila was sort of listening and sort of attuned to the aura of her surroundings, the habit had kept her alive for a very, very long time. As they were heading back to Susana's car, several men accosted them suddenly, their leader stepped forward and declared.
"Yo ladies, wassup?" he grinned at Susana and looked Sheila up and down, his eyes boldly lingering over her breasts.
"Check this out! Me and my boys here are lookin' to hook up wit' some fine ladies, an' you two, are fine!"
Susana shrank back away from the leader's leering gaze, she was terrified.
Sheila said flatly, "Sorry boys, we're not interested, please go away!"
Then she stepped forward to go past them, his hand gripped her sword arm as he declared, "Yo, big bitch! We ain't done wit' you, we're talkin' to you, bitch!"
Sheila glared at the owner of the hand and said in a menacing voice.
"Take your filthy paw off of me... Now!" the hand tightened and its owner said.
"I don't think so, bitch! No bitch disses me!"
Suddenly, he pulled out a small, shiny pistol and pointed it at her while the rest of the gang moved in to surround them. Glaring menacingly at anyone considering intervention, another one of the gang members grabbed Susana's arm. Susana began crying loudly and pulling away from him, the leader momentarily took his eyes off of Sheila, it was all the break she needed.
In a flash, Sheila's left hand closed around the leader's gun hand and crushed it, breaking every bone. Blood ran out from between her fingers and the hand's owner gaped in disbelief at his mangled hand as he dropped his shiny pistol. Sheila deftly kicked the blood stained pistol out into the traffic and in a blur of motion, laid every one of the men out.
When the fight ended, Sheila turned around to see Susana gaping at her, her almond shaped eyes very, very wide. Seemingly in a state of shock, Susana called 9-1-1 and reported the fight, then they walked away from the scene.
Back at her car, Susana looked up at Sheila for a long moment then she said tearfully.
"You saved me from those men, they would have raped me and you." Quickly recovering her wits she blurted out, "I… I had no idea you were so strong or so fast! Where did you study martial arts? I used to study Tae Kwon Do with my brother and thought I knew something about martial arts, but I never saw anything like what you did just now."
Sheila smiled at her talkative, diminutive friend and said nonchalantly, "Oh, it's something I learned when I was a young girl, at the orphanage where I grew up."
She left out the part about it being a very, very long time ago. The two friends hugged briefly and a shaken Susana hopped into her BMW and drove off.
Walking home, Sheila pondered the day's events, the work related part had definitely sucked hind titty, she wondered why she allowed some of the idiots in her life, to be in her life. Working was a farce, most of her sister warriors had whole fortunes piled away in secret bank accounts. Sheila herself had over nine hundred pounds of gold and several tons of silver hidden away, she worked mostly to stave off boredom.
Illness was never an issue, her hybrid nature included an immune system modern medicine couldn't explain. Only severe battle injuries could lay one of her kind low and really only complete decapitation could actually kill one of her kin. Almost none of her kind had died in centuries, except for poor Jean. She had come out of hiding during one of the many wars between England and France and ended up becoming France's greatest heroine, Joan of Arc.
Of the others, the abyssals and the awakened beings, only the abyssal Riful of the west had survived and was known about. Bloody Agatha was hidden in the storm drain system beneath a large midwestern city and persistent rumors of Priscilla's still being alive still occasionally surfaced. Riful once had a brief career as an actress who played young girl roles. Her awakened form was that of a petite young girl, it was an easy role for her to play. Sheila chuckled to herself as she thought about Riful's film career, what would those guys have thought if they had known just how old or what Riful actually was. "More like eighty centuries than eighteen years." Sheila thought.
Entering her house, Sheila strode into her living room and looked up at the only reminder she had left of her days as a warrior, her great sword. The thing that had given her and her sister warriors, the nickname the organization never acknowledged, her claymore. It hung up there on its wall hanger brackets, still gleaming, still wickedly sharp, still untarnished, its unbreakable, mysterious alloy allowing it to survive unchanged, down through the centuries. The huge swords were the inspiration for the lesser claymores made by human sword smiths for human warriors.
Sheila took the great sword down and hefted its comforting weight. Many a yoma or an awakened being had gone down beneath her massive sword and somehow, she had held on to it all these years, many of the others had simply vanished over time or had been lost through an accident like the plane crash that took so many of the swords down with it. Others had been dug up along with the remains of their former bearers and were in private collections. The survivors had hotly debated revealing themselves to protest the desecration of the ancient graves. In the end, it was decided not to come out of hiding and Yuma had waged a skillful campaign of "disputing" the existence of Claymores and Yoma in ancient times. She also simply ignored the few swords that had been found.
Sheila swung the heavy blade with the ease of a trained swordswoman, the muscles of her body remembering the movements learned through many an hour of practice and countless battles. On a whim, Sheila picked up her phone and punched in a special phone number, one not listed anywhere, but known to all the survivors, after a few rings a familiar voice answered the phone.
"Hello, Sheila, it's good to hear from you." Sheila responded, "Hi Miria! I was just thinking, have you done any sparring lately?"
"Not since last time, so few of us still have our swords, remember?"
"Well, you know I've still got mine and I recall that you and Galatea still have yours. So, I thought we could spar sometimes, y'know? Keep up the old skills." Replied Sheila cheerfully.
After a pregnant pause, Miria replied, "Sure! Why not? We all could use the workout, we're just not getting the physical challenges we once did, let's get together next week end, you can come out say, Friday evening? I'll call around and see who else can come."
"Sure thing Miria, I'll see you then!" Replied Sheila and she hung up the phone.
"Sometimes, it really sucks to be me." thought Sheila as she lay in her darkened bedroom, "Work sucks and some of the people I've met suck, but tonight, I was able to stop a gang rape and protect my friend. I talked to an old friend and we're going to have a sparring match next week, of course, she'll wax my ass! It'll be worth it though, being able to use my strength instead of holding back for fear of hurting anyone. Most of the time it sucks to be me, but tonight, it was pretty good to be me." And with that thought, she drifted off into sleep's gentle embrace.
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