Miria Chapter I: Trainee Miria

I tried not to look at what the man was doing to me, it hurt terribly and I kept my eyes clamped shut. The knife bit in to my flesh as he cut me open, my body restrained so that I couldn't move. I must have passed out from the pain…

When I woke my body was on fire, pain lashed at my senses and I could barely move at all. I wasn't the only one in the cell; there was another girl in the corner that was breathing hard, as if she'd just gone through a lot of pain. The clothing that I wore wasn't my own. It clung to my body, showing my lack of curves. I was so sore that I couldn't even get up from the floor; my head pounding like there was no tomorrow. I didn't want to feel all of this pain, it hurt so much and yet I felt as if I was being burned and burned alive. There were five other girls in the cell that I woke in. One of them had short orange hair and chocolate brown eyes. She was clutching at her stomach, like she was in a lot of pain. I tried to get up and I realised that I shouldn't have. The moment I got up I screamed in pain and fell back on to the floor again. I wanted my Mama and Papa, but they sold me to the Organization because they didn't want me. I felt the tears spring in to my eyes when I realised that they didn't love me, they never had. All my Papa had wanted was a boy. Mama had been so ashamed when I was born that she hid me from my Papa, ashamed that she'd given him a girl. I was treated no better than the Claymore who came to our town to kill the yoma. My parents had jumped at the chance of getting rid of me the moment a man in black had come for the payment for the dead yoma.

"She's strong," Papa told the man, "she'd make a good Claymore,"

The man in black bartered with Papa until he was happy with the price. I cowered when the man came for me. I didn't have a choice…

Tears slid down my cheeks as the pain grew worse,

"Hey, my name's Hilda, what's your's?" the girl with the orange hair seemed to be fine now, as if the pain had left her for a short while,

"Miria," I whispered, the pain lashing me, burning me with no real end in sight.

"You'll be ok Miria," said Hilda kindly, "it will end soon,"

She held me. I froze; no one had ever held me before. Not even my Mama held me. Yet here was this girl who didn't know me from Eve and she held me. I hesitantly hugged her, my face in her shoulders. I drifted off in to an uneasy sleep.

I dreamed that I was walking along a corridor, a strange dress flowed to the ground, it was a light purple, with a slight train,

"Are you ready Miria?" a voice asked me, "Today our comrade is getting married,"

"Really?" I say, "I'm honoured that she even invited me at all,"

"Really Miria, do you think that she wouldn't?" the voice asked me again, "You are the one that saved her life; it's the least she could do."

I woke to find that my eyes were no longer their pale blue, Hilda told me as much.

"Wow your eyes are already silver!" she exclaimed as she helped me to my feet. I almost fell over as my feet hurt. Hilda caught me and I looked at her. Her hair was a pale blond already, but we had been in the cell for five days that I knew of. I don't know how long she was there before I was thrown in. I was told that I was almost the record. I heard that there had been a trainee that had her eyes change after the first night, and her hair was drained in less than two days. I felt sorry for her. But I guess she would have known how I was feeling now. I winced as the pain echoed through my body, Hilda seeing that I was in pain gave me a tight hug. I held on to her like she was a lifeline that had been haphazardly thrown my way. I felt her hold tighten and I buried my face in to her shoulders, my barely there breasts pressing against her chest. Her arms were around my waist and I could feel the pain rush through me again. I screamed loudly as it ripped the depths of my mind. I cried as my body felt like it was being cleaved in two. My grip tightened on Hilda and she held me as tightly as she could in return.

A week passed and my once strawberry blond hair was now pale blond. I was hauled out of the cell with Hilda and we were dragged down many corridors before we came in to a large open room filled with about forty or so girls, almost all with blond hair and silver eyes. Each of us regarded the other with a critical eye, who was stronger, who was the better half yoma. There were a couple of girls who still had colour in their hair and I heard the men say that they would be failures. I suddenly realised what they were saying. I shuddered and all too soon a man came out with a bunch of wooden mock swords. He gave each of us one and demanded that we stand in lines. Once he was happy, (although I doubted that he was happy at all, I just took it as once he'd stopped yelling at us) he told us that he was to teach us swordsmanship, (swearing most of the time, though I soon learned to ignore that and focused on the words between the swearing to get as much) and we had better pay attention. One of the girls let loose a snide comment and he flew at her, hitting her unmercifully with the wooden blade,

"Stop it!" I cried, and then he rounded on me.

"You will do as you're told you little bitch!" He snarled, the blade swung at me and I gripped the wooden blade and used it to block his attack. A loud crack told me that he didn't make his mark and that I had successfully blocked the blade. He swung again aiming for my legs, but I countered that as well. It wasn't long before I was stuck in a dance. I tried going on to the offensive, bring a smooth arc to his left shoulder, only to have my right hip hit. There was a dull thwacking sound as it hit me, and the sword was off kilter, I would fall if I didn't rebalance myself. I jumped hard from my left foot and I got his left shoulder. He grunted and glared at me. I waited for him to attack again.

"Well, well, it looks like you can handle a sword bitch, but I wouldn't get too cocky if I were you," he growled,

I took it as a half dismissal, but remained focused in case he swung at me again. It wasn't until he went up the front and gave us our drills that I was able to relax a bit. He made us do the drills for hours and hours. He showed us no mercy. He swore a lot and said that he would be surprised if we made it past this point in our training. We were told that we would progress on to proper blades next week and would have sparring matches. I was ready to drop I was so exhausted. We were taken in to rooms and told to clean up. No one felt hungry despite the fact that we'd been working hard today. I lay in the straw pile that was in one corner of my room, I think I slept, but I couldn't be too sure. The straw irritated me and I could hear the clanking of amour, so if I did sleep it wasn't for long.

After almost six months of drills I was beginning to have them memorised. It wasn't too bad, once I got used to it. The girls in my class would often complain that our teacher was too harsh, but I ignored the gossipers. There were a couple of girls that had been called out of training, and I noticed that they had blood on their uniforms after they came back. They didn't say what it was, nor did they say why they were called out, all they did was quietly pick up their drills, with slight tears in their eyes.

We had just finished the drills when the two girls were called away again. There was no mistaking the look in their faces; it was one of horror and fear. They left quietly and I felt the first real thrills of fear as I thought on what might be happening. The blood had been between their legs and they had breasts that were large enough to be noticed by men. I felt truly sick at what might be happening to them. I didn't want to even think about it yet I was sure that they were afraid because of the blood they had on their uniforms. Whatever the men had done to them to cause them to have blood on their uniforms must have hurt. I couldn't help but wonder what it was that caused such bleeding, but I couldn't draw a clear conclusion. I hated it when I didn't understand what was going on. I grimaced with annoyance and struggled to come to terms with what was going on, sitting on my pile of straw that was also my bed. I heard that at least the warriors got almost proper beds, though they were not much better than our straw versions. Most of them slept with their backs on their swords, especially since there wasn't much use for a bed.

A couple of weeks later and we were told that we would be travelling with warriors for survival skills. We had been in training for almost a year now and had progressed to the practice claymores. Survival skills were as simple as it sounded and as my eleventh birthday approached, I was sent to travel with a warrior. I wasn't even told her name, so when I met her I felt awkward. I was told that she was the Number 6, and not given a detail more. I quietly took to looking at my feet when I was taken to meet her. Thankfully Hilda was with me, so I wasn't on my own. She was a tall lithe warrior whose hair was pale and long. She wore a side fringe to the left and she was very vain. She had to be sure that the humans saw her from the best angle, and if they acted up, it was their own fault that they failed to notice just how pretty she was. However there was more to her than met the eye. She was smart and she knew that the men needed her for whatever purpose that no one else was supposed to know except herself. I found the two weeks with her were a drag and I was impatient to return to my drills that I practiced each night. Hilda joined me and we would often spar. The warrior was too busy getting her beauty sleep to really care about what we got up to and when it came down to it, she was downright boring. I wasn't sorry when the two weeks were finished.

Another year passed and our training was considered to be complete. The men had called out ten names of girls that were going to go with a handler to some ruins to the north, we were to gather outside the ruins and await further instructions. As soon as I heard my name I walked up to the group of girls that were to follow the handler in question. He wore a bandana over his left eye, and it looked like his veins were sticking out under it a bit. He guided us to the ruins and he held out his staff, he spoke to us, his voice unassuming, oddly bored for one that was meant to inform

""This staff marks the division of the two teams," he said, the staff coming right in the middle of us, putting five girls on one side and five on the other, "Your weapons will be true claymores, and you will be expected to fight as a group using the surrounding ruins. It will be the same as a real battle, with the winning team being promoted to warrior status."

We all stood and looked at the teams, I looked at the opposing team and I wondered what the man had meant by a "real" battle. I could only begin to imagine what that was going to mean. A real battle, with proper claymores… I wondered if that meant that we were expected to kill each other and I hoped that this wasn't the case. It wouldn't be right that we would have to kill each other because that would be wrong and it wasn't the right thing to do. Hilda and I walked together as the teams were split up, my team sent to one side of the ruins and the others were on the other side. I sighed and paused as I felt something strange. It felt like a light, just to the left of where we were standing and I didn't know what the hell it was. It wasn't anything that I had ever felt before and I was pretty sure that I knew what a half yoma felt like since I was one myself. I slowly tried to work out where the other team was and I stopped as I came to a realisation. I couldn't feel the other team at all, and what I could feel was that the light was coming our way and it wasn't about to stop any time soon. I tensed,

"Something's coming this way!" I yelled, the others tensing with me as we looked towards where this strange presence was. I tensed and waited to see what was coming. It stopped and then I wasn't sure what was going on, or why it had stopped. I sharpened my ears and I could hear faint guttural breaths coming from behind a ruined building. I jumped from the ground hard, getting behind the building and as I turned I was behind a yoma. It didn't even notice that I was even behind it, even as I swung the claymore with all my might, both hands grabbing it with all the physical strength that I possessed. The yoma turned as my blade drew closer to its head, and as my blade sliced through it, I could feel the other girls come running towards me. The yoma's corpse fell, its purple blood spraying everywhere. The others looked worried,

"Maybe we should find the other team," suggested one girl, her long wavy hair framed her face so that she looked gentle and soft.

"I don't think that they are alive," I tell them, "I can't sense them at all."

They look at me like they don't know what I'm saying, but then reality sinks in and the truth of my words begin to resonate with them. As far as I was concerned, we were broken in with fire.

We walked out of the ruins, no one was hurt, but we were shaken, or rather I was the one who had yoma blood over her, and the others were shaking like leaves in the wind. The man looked at us and led us back to Sutafu, where we would be given our emblems. I stood nervously as we were told we would also receive our ranks as well. I stood in front of the line of girls and I was given amour. As I looked at the clothing that they gave me, I began to wonder why it was slightly different from what I wore as a trainee. I realised that the neck piece had the emblem that was to be identified by. I looked at it and I began to wonder just what challenges I will face. I paused as a realisation dawned on me. I had to live; I would live as long as possible. I would live, and I would face the inevitable like each day was the last day I would ever fight.