Chapter 3: Thunder and Lightening and Apples
A flash briefly illuminated the insides of a dark room. A single figured was crouched by what passed for a window.
"One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand. Four one-thousand." A nearly childish voice whispered.
Crash!
Rumbling...
Another flash temporarily blinded the rooms occupant.
"One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thous-"
Crash!
A flash quickly followed the rumbling as thousands of droplets of water fell from the sky.
"One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand. Four one-thousand. Five one-thousand."
Crash!
Yet another flash.
"One one-thousand. Two one-thous-"
"I never would have pegged you as one childish enough to count the time between thunder and lightening, Helen." A second figure slide into the room and crossed to stand next to Helen.
"Four one-"
Crash!
"Goddamn it, Deneve, you made me loss my count."
"Mhmm?" Deneve acknowledged her role in Helen's forgetfulness, but made no apology as she made to lean against the wall next to the window.
"I brought you something." Deneve turned to glance at her partner and, as if late, lover, but in the darkness even with Claymore night vision could only make out the outline of her face.
"What'd you bring me?" Helen asked with childish delight as she turn from her cross-legged sitting position. It even looked as if she was thumping her knee in excitement the way only a young boy would if he was about to receive a piece of cake.
"Mhmm. It's an apple."
"Ohhhh-"
Flash!
Immediately Helen became preoccupied with counting the time between the thunder and the lightening again. "One one-thousand. Two one-thousand."
"Six one-thousand. Four one-thousand!" Deneve whispered quietly to try to mess Helen up.
Crash! The deep rumbling in the sky echoed longer this time, the lightening strike was probably in the same region of the mountain range as the Ghosts now.
"Six one-thousand!" Helen said, proud not to have gotten messed up by Deneve's counting. "That's thirty kilometers away."
Deneve frowned. "No, it's two kilometers away."
Another flash lit up the room. This time there was barely any time before the huge rumbling of the sky's laugh threatened to deafen the two Ghosts.
"It was six seconds away, so you times by five and you get the number of kilometers away the strike was." Helen stated.
"It was six seconds away, so you divided by three and get two kilometers." Deneve informed Helen.
"The Sister at my orphanage always told me that since God knew he wouldn't want to blind and deafen you at the same time, so he separated the thunlightender which comes down from the sky into both thunder and lightening. And the way to tell how far away the strike is to times the number of seconds by five and you get the number of kilometers." Helen looked up from her position on the floor to stare incredulously at her companion. "Duh."
"Helen, the name of this sister didn't happen to be Galatea, and was pulling your leg, was she?"
"Deneve, why would a former single digit, God-eye, of the organization decide to become a Sister at some orphanage, that would just be silly."
"Hmm." Deneve agreed, remembering that they were still in the North during the time skip, thus rendering the whole Galatea joke that the author had been building up for completely useless.
"So therefore since, Galatea is not in fact a nun, I must be right."
Deneve sighed. "I don't know, but what if Galatea did end up becoming a nun? What then?"
"That would be as likely as Galatea hurting her eyes just so the Organization couldn't find their "God-eye" again. She has way too big of an ego to ever live modestly as a Sister. Or blind!" Helen was suddenly in Deneve's face, much more concerned about her now hypothetical idea of a blind, Galatea acting as a nun.
"But what if...?" Deneve logically had to ask, as there was of course a small chance that Galatea actually would end up as a blind nun.
"Slave for a day." Helen proposed, her pinky finger held out for the solemn oath of the Pinky Promise. Sighing at Helen's childish antics Deneve curled her pinky around Helen's. "Deal. If Galatea does by any chance end up a nun-"
"A blind nun." Helen corrected.
"- A blind nun, then you get to be my slave for a day." Helen nodded in agreement, thinking Helen's immature actions were over, Deneve was surprised when Helen grasped her pinky tighter.
"And-if-I-win-you-have-to-give-me-free-apples-every-day-starting-now!" Helen poured out and then took her pinky back triumphantly.
"Dammit, Helen." Deneve cursed.
"Pinky promise!" Helen jeered. "Anyway, I'm right."
"No, sound travels through the air at 335 meters per second, which is one kilometer ever three seconds. Light travels-
Another flash of lightening blinded Helen and Deneve again.
"One-one thousand, two-one thousand-" Helen went back to counting.
"Light travels at 300,000,000 meters per second, so you will basically see the lightening at an instantaneous speed even for our half yoma skills. If lightening were-"
Crash!
"12 one-thousand!" Helen said above Deneve, who had closed her eyes in exasperation but continued to raddled of facts she had thought she had long ago forgotten, doing quick calculations in her head for the ones that she had.
"- to strike, say six miles away, we would see it .00003 seconds after the strike and hear is 28.3 seconds afterward. Therefore we divide the number of seconds by the number 3 and get the number of kilometers. So this most recent strike was-"
"Sixty kilometers away!" Helen raised her voice.
"Four kilometers away." Deneve finished, her voice even, and her eyes still closed.
"Sixty kilometers." Helen yelled, ignoring the fact that the other five Ghost were probably trying to get their (little needed, but well appreciated) sleep for the night.
"Four kilometers." Deneve corrected.
"Sixty kilometers!"
"Four kilometers away." Deneve began to raise her voice just slightly, a hint of threatening menace in it.
"Four kilometers!" Helen said.
"Sixty kilometers." Helen cackled with glee from her successful attempt at tripping up Deneve. The short haired warrior rolled her eyes underneath her eyelids. "Helen, you know I meant four kilo-" Deneve was cut off by her lover's lips.
Deneve's high end intellectual, many one-sided, conversation and thought process was cut short as her breath hitched in her thought and her main thought process went from calculating mathematics to, "Oh, soft."
Crash! Another boom of thunder was heard, but the two weren't paying attention anymore.
Even though Deneve's eyes are still closed she could feel Helen begin to grin through the kiss and she weaved her hand through the longed haired Ghost's hair, and shifted forward into the kiss. When Helen bit Deneve's lower lip and added tongue to the kiss Deneve found herself grinning into the kiss too. A minute of so in, Deneve would have started to wonder exactly how far they were going, if not for the fact that her thought process had only expanded from "Oh, soft." to "Hmmmm, Helen."
Suddenly Helen jerked away from Deneve's embrace. Confused only momentarily Deneve couldn't help but smile when Helen's words reached her ears.
"Is that an apple that you have?"
(Almost seven years, one time skip, and several chapters later, the Ghost arrived at Rabona where an Awakened Being was laying waste to the holy city.)
"Who are you?" The Awakened Being asked.
"You do not need to know, because you will die here." Clare said.
After a very short battle the Ghost defeated the Awakened Being. (Awakened Beings? The Ghost ate them for breakfast. Everyone knows that once you go to the mountains for training you come back a BAMF that no one can defeat except your arch rival.)
Deneve and Helen soon found themselves facing a very familiar Ex-Claymore with a certain sense of deja vu.
Galatea was looking very... nun-ily.. and well... blind.
"You have got to be shitting me." Helen and Deneve exclaimed together.
Wow, I'm really updating this fic fast. With this chapter I'll have more chapters than reviews. So, you all should review more... Um... Yup...
Heleneve. You know you ship it.