Author's note: Big thank you to NumberA, who beta-read this and gave me feedback. I've since updated the story, so it's a little different from its original form (mostly stylistic changes).

Disclaimer: I do not own Claymore or any characters therein.


"We'll give you a new life. We'll make you into a silver-eyed warrior. You can be a hero."

Clarice took the man in black's outstretched hand and climbed into the wagon.

She had seen a Claymore once. The town elders hired one to find and kill a Yoma that had eaten four residents in a month. Clarice remembered watching her walk into town. The tall, slender woman had stridden purposefully down the street, sunlight glinting off of her armor. She carried a massive broadsword on her back. Everyone had stopped what they were doing to stare at her. Most were afraid and kept their distance, whispering that she was half-Yoma—practically a monster herself. Clarice was afraid too, but she couldn't take her eyes off of the silver-eyed slayer and had followed her from a safe distance. She looked human, but something about her just... wasn't. From the way she walked, Clarice could tell that she was much stronger than anyone else she'd ever seen.

In less than a day, the Claymore had found the Yoma and taken its head with a single slash of her sword. Then she'd reported to the town elders and left without another word. She may have been a monster, but she had saved them from the Yoma and that made her a hero.

And now Clarice was in a wagon full of girls, heading east to the place that the Claymore had come from. The others cried, but Clarice didn't. She just wondered if there'd be more food at this Organization they were going to.

She was homeless gutter trash; no one would've even noticed if she had died when the town was destroyed.

Clarice had nothing.

Now she had a chance.

She could be like that Claymore she saw. Strong and fierce, wearing armor instead of rags. People wouldn't ignore her like they did back when she was begging for scraps in the streets.

Clarice had no idea what was waiting for her.

Men at the Organization strapped her to an operating table, sliced her body open right down the middle, put a monster's flesh and blood inside of her, and then sewed her up. Later she learned that the incision never healed: those stitches were the only thing holding her guts in.

The surgery was just the beginning of the transformation process. Clarice spent the next few days in agony as the Yoma flesh inside of her fought with her human mind for control of her body. Her human side won the battle, and a new warrior was born.

A warrior unlike any other, for out of all of the silver-eyed slayers, Clarice was the only one with brown hair.

She was special.

Her hair color was a sign that she was destined to become someone amazing. She was going to protect people. She would be a hero, she just knew it.

Some of her classmates were jealous. During their transformations, the pigment in their hair and eyes had faded away completely, leaving them blonde and silver-eyed. They weren't individuals anymore: they were warriors-in-training.

One girl who had been the spitting image of her mother could no longer recognize her own reflection. Another girl whose father had often praised her beautiful green eyes now shed tears from unnaturally silver ones.

But somehow Clarice—a homeless girl who'd been found cowering in a ditch—had retained her chestnut-colored hair.

It wasn't fair.

Then the rumors started.

"They say that there aren't any warriors with colored hair because they're too weak to live! Mud-hairs are failed hybrids."

But Clarice had colored hair and had lived through hybridization, which meant that she must be special. And the girls who said she had "mud-hair" probably just wished that they had colored hair too.

A couple of older trainees nicknamed her "Mudhead" and harassed her daily. They particularly enjoyed holding her face-down in the mud.

"Now your face matches your hair!"

One day, they held her down so long that she nearly drowned, and the men in black put a stop to it. Her tormentors still threw her spare clothes in the mud at every opportunity, and since Clarice wasn't good at standing up for herself, she spent a lot of time washing her uniforms.

The trainees in her class took their cues from the older ones, and either harassed or avoided her. She became a pariah.

Then it got worse.

"Aww... the specialest little warrior can barely lift a claymore."

Clarice was the weakest in her class, but still believed that she was special. She would become a great warrior one day, and trained hard to reach her potential. She would get stronger and show them.

Training was brutal. The girls were in constant pain from the bruises and beatings that they received during sparring, and since they were all still growing, they often popped stitches on their abdomens. They all learned to stitch up wounds very quickly.

Clarice did grow stronger: she could run faster, jump higher, and fight with the claymore that she could barely lift before. But in the end it didn't matter. She always fell short. The problem was her yoki. It was laughably weak, and she had a hard time using it to augment her strength, reflexes, and healing like the other girls could.

"I can't believe it took you thirty minutes to grow back one little finger. If that's too hard, maybe you can try reattaching it instead."

She screamed as the blade came down.

Over time, she got faster at regenerating new appendages, reattaching body parts, and healing wounds. She had a lot of chances to practice.

Clarice struggled to control her body temperature and was sensitive to harsh cold and heat, and she needed more food and sleep than others.

The trainees' forced marches were her own personal hell. Clarice could still feel the boot of the Number Forty-One who was leading the exercise kicking her in the side after she had collapsed from hunger and exhaustion.

"Get up, Mudhead. We're not stopping for two more hours. If you can't take it, then save everyone some trouble and die right here."

Clarice struggled to her feet and resumed staggering along behind the pack of trainees. She wasn't the only girl to collapse, but she was the only one that had no one to help her up.

Two and a half hours later, she limped into the trainees' camp. Without a word, she grabbed her rations and stuffed them in her mouth, then set to work on healing her bloody, blistered feet. While the others slept upright, leaning back against the practice claymores they'd stuck in the ground, Clarice slept face-down on the dirt. She woke up to the Number Forty-One kicking her in the side again.

"If you're what passes as a trainee these days, we might as well be training humans."

The forced marches built up her endurance. Clarice was always last to the camp, but she didn't collapse on the way anymore. She never got better at controlling her body temperature, however.

Despite all odds, she survived her training. Very few of the girls that came to the Organization made it this far: many died during the operation that turned them into hybrids; some were killed in training accidents; and occasionally one went over her limit, awakened, and had to be destroyed. She may have been the weakest, but Clarice was still alive. She had been beaten down again and again, but she never completely gave up on the idea that she, the only dark-haired warrior, would fulfill some great destiny. There had to be a technique that she could learn, something that she could do—maybe even something that only she could do. Then, initiation day came and Clarice's weakness cost another her life.

The Yoma leapt towards the other girl, exposing the back of its neck to Clarice. It was the perfect opening. She leapt forward and brought her claymore down on the beast's neck. It wasn't enough. Her blow failed to decapitate it, and the Yoma tore the other girl's guts out before turning to face her. She scrambled back, and the two remaining trainees dashed past her and finished it off.

Afterwards, one girl rushed to the Yoma's final victim and cradled the body to her chest. She turned to Clarice, her eyes full of tears and hatred.

"This is your fault, Mudhead!," she snarled. "You should have died instead of her!"

Clarice looked at the mangled body, its unblinking silver eyes staring back at her. Any happiness she'd felt at passing initiation was replaced by guilt. She wasn't even a good warrior, let alone a special one.

The next day, Clarice received her sword, her symbol, her number, and a handler named Rado. He laughed when he saw her. When she asked why, he told her that the reason that there were no warriors with colored hair was because they were usually disposed of at birth. If a subject retained pigment in her hair, it meant that her body hadn't fully accepted the Yoma flesh. If such a warrior went over her limit, then she would die.

"Your body can't handle the shock of awakening. You'll never need to use your black card. We spared you because we're short-handed. Losing twenty-four warriors at Pieta left us stretched very thin. We'll train anyone who survives hybridization—even if they're defective."

As Rado laughed, Clarice's spirit finally broke. She wasn't special, and she never would be. She'd been spared at birth on a whim, and her survival since then had been a fluke. She had failed her comrades already by allowing one to die in front of her. She was worse than worthless. The brown hair that she'd been so proud of was nothing but a stigma—a sign that she was defective.

For her first few assignments, the Organization sent the new Number Forty-Seven to nameless towns to slay Yoma hardly worth bothering about. It was a struggle to get the townspeople to pay the Organization the fee for her services.

"Look at her hair: is she really even a Claymore? How do we know that the Organization isn't cheating us? What if there's another Yoma that conveniently appears right after she leaves?"

Even humans knew that there was something wrong with her.

Next, she was sent up north to take part in an Awakened Being hunt. Clarice was polite and tried to make a good impression on the other warriors on her team, but they took one look at her hair and would barely speak to her.

"You're dead weight, a loser who just barely scraped by to get the lowest number."

Clarice didn't try to defend herself. They were right.

She had wanted to be special, to be admired, to be worth something, but she had been born unlucky twice. She could train endlessly and become stronger, but what was the point? She'd never be above average. Warriors didn't usually live long anyways. Clarice had no family to avenge, and no friends or rivals among her fellow warriors. She wasn't driven by an intense hatred of Yoma the way her comrades were. Sometimes she thought of the girl who'd died during initiation, and almost wished it had been her. Almost.

She had no reason to live, but she didn't want to die.

Maybe she was just a coward.


Clarice could not have been more different from the warrior that she was partnered with.

Miata had the longest, most beautiful platinum blonde hair that Clarice had ever seen. She couldn't have been more than ten years old, but was already ranked Number Four.

Miata was also mentally the age of a small child, couldn't take care of herself, and missed her mother so much that she tried to breastfeed from Clarice. Of course, Clarice had no milk, but allowed the suckling since it calmed the little girl down. Now Miata called Clarice "mama" and refused to leave her side. She didn't seem to realize that her real mother was dead.

Miata had incredible physical strength—she could rip a Yoma to pieces with her bare hands—but her mind was broken so badly that there's no way she should have been allowed to leave headquarters. The Organization must be in very bad shape if they had promoted this unstable child to single-digit warrior and sent her out with the most pathetic fighter they'd produced in years.

Miata was capable of protecting them both, without using any of her yoki. She fought totally by instinct, and used brute strength rather than technique. Even while on aura suppressants, she could detect Yoma through a kind of sixth sense.

At the first sign of danger, the needy little girl turned into a monster more savage than any of the ones they fought. Clarice was scared of her.

Although Miata didn't need her protection, Clarice still wanted to help her fight. She hated being dead weight... but she was. Every time they fought a Yoma or an Awakened Being, Clarice got wounded, sometimes so badly that she thought that she would die. Miata always came through without a scratch, and then ran over to make sure Mama was going to be okay. It was humiliating.

Clarice was working on healing her latest set of wounds one day when she realized that she did have a reason to live now. If Mama died, then Miata would lose her mind with grief and awaken. If Miata awakened, she'd be unstoppable.

And Clarice really didn't want the girl to lose another parent. When Miata had begged Mama not to hate her after she'd been scolded, Clarice's heart broke. Someone as strong as Miata lived in fear of being rejected by a mother who had died long ago. It just wasn't right.


Clarice and Miata were washing their hair in the river one afternoon when the little girl made a sudden discovery.

"Mama's hair is brown... Why is it brown?"

Because I'm defective.

"Because it's, uh, special."

"Oh... And Mama smells different than other warriors... Not strong..."

You don't have to say it out loud.

"Mama smells best... Safe... I love Mama."

Clarice froze for a moment, and then splashed water on her face to hide the tears rolling down her cheeks.

Once both of them were clean, dry, and dressed, they settled down for the night. As usual, Miata crawled onto Clarice's bedroll and started nursing. Clarice looked at her face. Her eyes were closed and she was totally relaxed, sprawled out on top of Clarice like she belonged there.

"Safe."

Clarice could barely fight, but now she could keep someone safe. Someone trusted her, depended on her. To one person, she was special. Reaching down, she brushed some stray hair away from the girl's face. Miata made a small noise acknowledging the touch but didn't open her eyes. Clarice would be this terrifying child's mother for as long as she needed her.