TERESA OF THE FAINT SMILE

scene XII, part I

When a monster wonders, what are you, then you're finally starting to understand. I'm not human. Yet everyone manages to get it wrong, about just what I am. My kind has no vainglorious name. We're warriors. Some which happen to be stronger than others. Strong enough to dispatch a single yoma without breaking a sweat.

One move - and the arm comes off. Why not give the villagers a show? They came out of their homes and into the streets to watch me. Their faces are transfixed, horrified. No one looks away.

The monster grunts against the force of its arm tearing free, its golden eyes wild. "No! It can't be! How...? What is she?!" Oh, that old line again?

The faintest smile touches my lips. One step and I seem gone, but my cloak ruffles behind me as I land on the other side of the yoma, who is sliced through the chest. It falls on its face, kissing the dirty street. As it growls in disbelief, "What-" I plant my foot on its head to silence it. The tip of the claymore slides easily through the skull and slips out the other side, between the eyes. There's no regenerating from that. But, with a wider smile, I twist the blade around to seem extra diligent. The town center is so choked with craven silence that everyone hears the sound of crunching bone.

Unfortunately, humans can never keep from wagging their tongues for long.

"Oh... Oh my..."

"She crushed the yoma!"

Whispers ripple through the crowd. Disgusted, impressed, terrified. I ignore them and give the long slender hilt of the sword a tug with one hand to free it.

"Ah..." A man approaches from behind; he moves with forced, reluctant steps. "Hey..."

With a sharp flick of the wrist the dark blood defiling my blade is cast off. Apparently the spray hits the villagers that still stand around to gawk. They screech. Oops.

"What are you doing?" A man shouts, flecks of blood around his mouth.

"Hey! Easy!" Someone barks at him.

I glance their way and they both shut up. Beads of sweat spring instantly up from their skin, just from the scrutiny of my gaze. The claymore is slid into place in its holster between pauldrons with a familiar klack of metal. Time to move on.

"Uh... Hey..." It's that timid man again, holding a large rucksack. "Thank you for helping us. This is your payment."

"Don't need it," I dismiss the proffered bag.

"Huh?" Plenty of the other villagers hear this and adopt the man's blank look.

"A strange-looking man dressed in black will come for it later," I explain without turning away from the bloody corpse at my feet. "Give it to him then."

"Eh? But... If that's all we know, what if we make a mistake and give it to the wrong man?"

My voice cools. "I don't care. In that case, it will be the same as if this village never paid. Next time, no matter how many yoma appear in your town, we won't come to help."

The words don't sink in deep enough. The man stutters.

I lift my chin and show him the cold silver of a warrior's eye. "So be careful. When a village doesn't pay, yoma will show up a few days later and wipe it out." My gaze lingers. "Or so I've heard."

"We... We'll pay!" He assures, raising his voice instead of taking one more step in my direction, as I don't dally another minute in the dismal place. "We'll pay without fail!"

"Glad to hear it," I smile to myself, "That's the wise choice."

It is arid, the breezes few and feeble. The road taken from the town is a wide berth of dirt, many small stones regularly swept to the side. The ranges that saw up from the ground are unimpressive these days, crumbling like stale bread. The sky looks torn at the edges where it comes into junction with the earth.

It is not a long travel through the broken countryside before a black shape looms up from the end of the road. The languid rolling of the figure's long concealing cloak flows with the waves of heat rippling off the ground. I pay the man no heed and he passes like a stranger, the top of that hood marking him no taller than my chest.

"You scared another village, didn't you... Teresa?"

I stop at the sound of my name and peer down at the man in black. "I told the truth, Orsay." The Watcher has no sense of humor. "We never lend a hand to a village that doesn't pay. No matter what happens afterward."

"That's true." He concedes, keeping the shadows bent over his face, "But the way you say it, you make it sound like we send the yoma after them ourselves."

Mischief tugs at the corner of my mouth. "Oh?" I tease, "You mean we don't?"

A thread of sunlight delineates Orsay from his brow to his chin as he casts an upward glance. That was enough for me to distinguish his pockmarked scarring concealed from the darkness inside his hood. It ravaged him from the scalp to his neck, completely covering his right eye. A face only a mother could love, I assume. Though it doesn't seem possible a Watcher could come out of any willing woman.

"Careful what you say," Orsay mutters, "Our job is to slaughter yoma. We would never do such a thing."

Typical response from the Organization. Perhaps if they say it a few more times even they will start to believe it. I don't offer a lick of contrition and merely await orders. Orsay, as expected, operates purely on business. "Now, about your next job. A two-day walk west of here is Teo village."

"Any other details?" My gaze remains on him, but the man has lowered his head.

"You need more?" Such passive-aggressiveness!

"Huh? Uh, not really." Drawing out his time here, for someone as impatient as Orsay, was just a little fun. Not that he ever appreciated it.

"The number of yoma, what they're like... it's all the same. Find them and kill them. That's all." See? Annoyed already.

With a small, complacent smile I salute him, "Aye, aye, boss." And then I am on my way west.

...

Teresa... a half-breed created by the Organization. A seventy-seventh generation Claymore... warrior 182. No matter what yoma she faces, she slays them without exhausting her yoma power. For that reason, her face never grows ugly or contorted, and when she slays the creatures, she seems to have the faintest of smiles.

So she's known as Teresa of the Faint Smile... The strongest woman among those called Claymores.

With all this in mind, Orsay watches the Claymore's tall, slender white figure dip along the bobs in the road. The sunlight seems to ignite the edges of her pale blond hair, and it is that halo which shines brightest and is the last vestige seen before she disappears from the Watcher's sight.

"Heh, maybe not the strongest woman... rather, the strongest monster."

Perhaps there is a streak of humor in him after all.

...

The sanguine glow of the setting sun mingles at the edges of Teo's cold, stony shadows. The market yet bustles, the sturdy wooden stalls still boastful of vegetables and grains. The gentle shusssssh of the wheat fields usher me to the city's narrow gate, the subtle scent of the coming harvest on the breeze.

A merchant supervising his stall looks my way and a sound escapes from beneath his peppered mustache. I am the unexpected guest that could never go amiss. Well, perhaps guest is too strong a word...

"It's a... Claymore..."

Vanishing to the naked eye, I appear in the next moment beyond the gawking merchant in perfect nonchalance. The chasm I have opened in his body, splitting him from the shoulder to the ribs, erupts in a wash of blood. His last gasp is colored red.

"Wha-?!"

The screaming begins.

I look over my shoulder at the body falling to the ground. It caught the corner of a table and took a crate of apples down with it. The bruised fruit roll in every direction. "That's one," I say.

Panic engulfs the market. Someone's shout rises above the din, "What was that?!"

"What do you think you're doing?! You -" The peasant doesn't get to finish. I thrust my arm. The puncture of flesh and bone is so fluid, the transition through the back of the man's skull so quick, that an entire moment flashes across his eyes - realizing that he is already dead.

"That's two." The smirk curls. My sword leaps for the sky, outracing the torrent of blood erupting from the peasant's split head. More screams, but I do not allow them to distract me. Hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting - none of these things hold a candle to the ability to feel yoki.

"Murderer!"

Even stampeding feet, as the rabble scramble to distance themselves from me and the dripping claymore in my hand, hit my ears as no more than a dull patter.

"It's killing people!"

I can never lose my mark. "That's three," I say, a mere blur in the corner of my prey's eye. Without a misstep, the man's head is shaved away from his lower jaw. The head hits the ground and spins away.

"She's, she's gone mad!" Another villager stands there, frozen with wide eyes, as his neighbors abandon him with all the speed they can muster.

He doesn't see me appear behind him. The sword moves just as fast, so he doesn't feel the killing blow, either. "That's four," He can still hear; but the moment he turns his head to see the back of my flowing hair is when he splits in twain and those pieces fall to the ground.

The human screams change, shrilly splitting the air. I know what is taking place without laying eyes on the remaining auras. The yoma are shucking their human bodies. The flicker of their yoki intensifies as the change becomes complete; their skin toughens like leather and stretches taught over immense muscle, their lips thin as their mouths widen and fill with jagged teeth and their eyes become feral and gold.

"What kept you?" The bare shift of my head, a tendril of blond hair pulling back from a silver eye, is enough of a taunt. "You should've summoned your power the moment you saw me... don't you think?" But sometimes it is worth reminding pests like this how cowardly they are.

Then they might just put a little effortinto things.

One of the two yoma charges, enthusiastically leaping with it's arms stretching for me, eager to draw blood. It makes a graceless landing, what with the hips removed from the body from my midair counter. The torso lands first, then the legs in a mortal spray of dark blood. Oh well, one couldn't have expected more in a fight with unremarkable opponents. Yoma have no imagination.

I land standing on two feet, my sword sticking through the neck of the remaining monster. Its severed vocal cords permit a strangled sound of bewilderment.

"Whatever you do, it's useless." I wrench free my sword, incidentally removing the monster's head. Its body joins its kin on the dirty city street.

"Eeeeek!"

"The bodies... they're...!"

"They're all... yoma!"

Humans, how sad it is to rely on such primitive senses. Only now, when the false villagers I've killed have been exposed by their deaths as monsters, do they understand how misplaced their trust was. And yet... never do they falter in their distrust. Humans are unfortunate creatures indeed. The villagers emerge from hiding, hovering beyond the gore of the dead yoma still dressed like men, likely puzzling over how this could have happened. Of course they are especially shocked due the circumstances.

"You're one lucky village. Seems that seven yoma were living here. The request for the yoma hunt came from another town. The creatures did all their feeding in neighboring towns and lived quietly here."

By the looks on their faces, it could take time for that to sink in. Doubtful the humans would learn from this. Of course if they could, there would be such a need for warriors like myself.

"Now," The gloved fingers around the claymore hilt adjust, the five-foot-blade remaining aloft, "I felt the aura of seven yoma from outside the village. But how many did I kill?" I look down at the body laying near the toes of my sabatons, the steel speckled in blood.

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five." I calmly point to each corpse. "Six." The villagers are not so calm. Some even have droplets of sweat clinging to their cheeks. No one has to say it: there is one more monster standing in the crowd. Perhaps I will mistake any one of them for my next target.

"Hmm." I thoughtfully touch my temple. "I wonder..." I glance at a cluster of peasants. They cringe. "Where..." I sweep my gaze to the other side of the market, and feet nervously shuffle, stares go astray. "Hmm." I tap my chin, fretting. "Well, well. What if I don't find it?"

The fear is swelling, rippling through the murmurs and terrorized faces. My silver eyes pierce through the bodies, following the invisible threads of yoki. "What, indeed." Another man, this one standing behind a small girl. How amusing.

"Did you think you could use the child as a shield?" The man slowly realizes I am now standing behind him. "Fool."

The body renders itself into two even halves, taking for granted that I had moved my sword at all. The corpse lands on each side of the child in a rain of blood. The girl, who stood as thin and still as a reed, turns her blood-soaked face and looks up at me with eyes as earthy green as mine are cold and hollow. They share a simple understanding. It is over.

TERESA OF THE FAINT SMILE

scene XII, part I

end