Uploaded: 3/18/2013.

Written: 3/2-18/2013

Edited: 11/18/2013 - (Version 1.02)

Hello! Krieg here with the next chapter of RftA. Sorry it took so long to update; Really had to iron out this chapter.

FYI: My stories shall all be rated "M" for safety's sake. FanFiction is not responsible for the content presented within this story.

Disclaimer: I will make it clear that I do not own Claymore/Naruto or any of its characters, settings, storyline, and/or techniques save my own creations.

X~X~X~X~X

Redemption from the Abyss

X~X~X~X~X

There were few times in her 201 years of life that Riful felt like she was being wholly ripped asunder. The first time were the excruciating months it took for her body to adapt to the changes made during the operation that made her into a half-human, half-yoma hybrid. The second time she had felt such pain was when she had awakened, a day of infamy for her late 'allies' within the Organization. The third and, until now, final time she had felt such pain was when she renounced companionship after 'Silver-Tongue' Integra, a former No. 3, attempted to behead her during a brief nap.

The transfer had lasted only a few seconds, but those few seconds within the chaotic void felt like an eternity of torture and madness. As soon as she entered the black orb, Riful felt her body be twisted, contorted, stretched, and crushed in ways that very few could truly explain or understand. Her screams of agony unequalled were made mute or, in disjointed moments, ear-rending by the warped properties of the realm she was forcibly dragged through. Her mind, having only barely regained its bearings before entering the anomaly, nearly shattered as pain unexplainable crushed on her body. She bled like she had never done before:

Ears.

Nose.

Mouth.

Eyes.

If she could bleed from any given point on her body, she bled. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one's opinion of the end result of her entering the Elemental Nations), She was able to survive the trip.

It was only made possible due to her mental fortitude, built from years of fighting and surviving in her harsh world, and her inhuman body.

Barely conscience after her ordeal, Riful vaguely felt herself fall, accompanied by a roar like that of thunder, from an uncertain height onto cold, hard stone. She heard a loud crack emanate from the force of the impact before it was drowned-out by bellowing wind; Whether it had been herself or the stone to break was a question for another time. She breathed heavily for a few moments after her fall, her aching body lying face-down as she felt dirt and debris brush erratically against her body; These were her first breaths since escaping from that realm of nightmares. Those few moments she took to catch her breath were for naught as the black orb that hovered over her beleaguered body violently withdrew into itself. The precious air in her lungs was punched out as a pressure wave slammed into her, further indenting the small crater she lay within. As soon as it passed, she was able to quickly catch her breath once again. Riful's beleaguered mind, still reeling from the pain of her passage, gradually began to heal from its trauma; She had gone through too much far too quickly to make any truly coherent thoughts at the moment.

'Wha-?'

An image of a dark orb tinged blue around its perimeter.

'Where am-?'

An image of a forest clearing on a sunny day, much of the undergrowth and trees surrounding it destroyed.

'Why does it hur-?'

An image of a large, double-edged sword with a blade that widened towards a hilt with an intricate cross guard as wide as the grip was long, a strange symbol etched near the base of the silver blade.

These were but a few of the half-formed thoughts that were quickly fabricated and discarded within her mind as she lay within the crater. As seconds ticked by, her healing mind regenerating its higher brain functions, a new thought began to form. One that, while suitable for the occasion, was meant for a group of people in another universe.

'WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO ME!?'

X~X~X

Riful was quite proud of her knowledge of warrior techniques, gained from years of study, practice, and/or observation:

The 'Hell Driver' sword technique.

The 'Hydra' body manipulation technique.

The 'Nightstalker' hunting technique.

She was a veritable database of Claymore abilities and fighting styles. With this knowledge, she was able to pin down an opponent/ally's strengths/weaknesses and adapt herself to them. This was one of the reasons why she was once a No.1 and why Riful was presently feeling alarmed; She had absolutely no knowledge of the strange technique used against her, whether it had been its strengths or even prior hints of its existence. The only way that would be possible was if the Organization kept it a secret, even from their own ranks, by training the warrior(s) whom made use of it in isolation at Staff or, more likely, in a remote location.

It was, with these thoughts in mind, that a rage she had never felt before began to build; She had been content to let the Organization do as they will, but that would now seem to have been a mistake that came to stab her in the back. Now that they had a viable weapon to use against her, the Organization would stop at nothing in order to destroy her.

This was something that would not come to pass if she had anything to say about it.

X~X~X

Riful's eyes fluttered open slowly and painfully, ears still ringing from the very-recent onslaught they had suffered, while blood, her blood, began to congeal all across her body. The first thing she saw were colors and shades; Whites, greys, blacks, and browns. These colors and shades, blurry in her current field of vision, slowly began to sharpen into clarity; Stone, and dirt. She stared at the churned earth and pulverized granite with half-lidded eyes for several seconds as she tried to understand where the speckled rock came from; There was none in the clearing from what she had seen. Movement at the edge of the crater broke her train of thought. She focused her gaze on a person as they stood over her, their body hidden under a dark veil of cloth and leather before a dark red backdrop, as she silently cursed her still-impaired hearing; She would have noticed him sooner otherwise. Not yet knowing of her transition to a different world, Riful presumed this man to be the only thing that had a similar appearance from her world.

'… Of course. How thoughtless of me. I almost forgot about how tactless these recent generations have proven themselves to be; Always seem to be in need of a guiding hand. Though, I am surprised to actually see a Handler here in the field... I don't believe I've ever- No, I remember seeing Dae going out with his retrieval team once... Something about learning how to "lower the host's chances of rejection" or some such... Wait, What happened to the sun...?'

As she pondered the sudden change in lighting while glaring icily at the blurry figure looming over her with unfocused eyes, Riful began to make plans.

All of them included turning the handler above her and the mystery warriors into screaming piles of mangled flesh and blood.

X~X~X

Musashi's entire body was trembling, but it was not from fear; Years of research, done by a couple of Uzumaki seal makers that had converted to the true faith after the fall of their homeland (he cared not for their names or their land of origin, only the results of their studies) along with the scrutiny of a couple of stolen kunai belonging to the infamous Yondaime Hokage (heavily warded to prevent their usage by said man, of course), was all for naught. As he stared at the child that was slowly beginning to come back to her senses, noting the girl to be coated in places by a strange purple liquid (no doubt caused by the summoning ritual), he mentally reviewed the procedures for the summoning.

'Where did we go wrong? Was the location inadequate? The sacrifices insufficient? Was the seal created incorrectly? Just where the hell did we go wrong?...'

He was broken from his thoughts when one of his cohorts, Kyoji Tenji, sidled up to him and, after taking a few moments to make himself presentable, spoke.

"Was the summoning a success, Musashi-sama?"

Turning his head back to Tenji, Musashi retorted with a scathing snarl.

"Look at this child! Does it look like the ritual was a success?!"

Tenji took a couple more steps towards the crater before he looked down into the indentation, locking his eyes on Riful, and frowned.

"I can't really say that our purpose for the ritual has been met, Musashi-sama... Though, in a way, it was a succe-"

Musashi silenced the devotee with a hard smack to his head, forcing the robed figure to stumble before falling onto his side.

"Don't get flippant with me, boy! I have neither the want or need to give allowance for your impudence at this time..."

Tenji coughed before he stood back up. Once he was back onto his feet, hood down and showing the face of a redhead in his late teens, he bowed low before the Blood Cardinal.

"Forgive me of my foolishness, Musashi-sama; It will not happen again..."

The Blood Cardinal 'Hmph'd before he turned back towards the indentation in the chamber floor.

"Of course it won't; Jashin's avatar will make certain of it when he is summoned ."

Ignoring the younger Jashinist, Musashi began to scrutinize the child before him once more, his previous rage towards the girl greatly diminished as his mind tried to find a use for her. He was, however, surprised to see the girl fully conscience and glaring angrily at him. While by itself only a slight shock, the fact that she was in such apparent pain and was able to stay awake despite all expectations made her all the more interesting. As such, Musashi couldn't help but ponder her pain tolerance and strength of will. An idea suddenly clicked and, smirking, muttered lowly so that only he himself could hear.

"... Perhaps there is something to be salvaged from this failure. Once we indoctrinate you to our cause, you may prove to be a most productive servant of Jashin-sama..."

X~X~X

Her hearing was still shot and her muscles screamed in protest, but Riful had regained enough control of her body otherwise to finally lash out at the thrice-damned handlers standing over her. The first one to be targeted was the young redhead. While it was interesting to watch the interactions between the two Organization members, now wasn't exactly the time for observation; All she needed to currently know was who the handler in charge of this hunting party was. As crimson blood from the shredded remains of the redhead rained upon her nude body courtesy of her pitch-black tendrils, Riful quickly took advantage of the other's shock and wrapped the remaining handler up with more of the deadly appendages.

She needed something to use against the Organization and those mystery warriors if she was to escape relatively intact.

As she watched in amusement as the handler squirmed within her grasp, spreading her senses around herself in order to detect her would-be hunters, she couldn't help letting her mouth quirk up into a smirk. 'Arrogant, conniving fools the lot of them. Always acting as if they are in total control of any given situati-'

She gasped when she felt something constraining her senses, confining her yoki to the large chamber she lay within. 'W-what?!' She thought, shocked to the core. 'Why can't my senses reach beyond this room?!' As Riful shakily began to stand up, The annoying ringing within her ears finally beginning to abate, she took a good look at her surroundings in hopes of finding whatever was restraining her senses. She blinked.

Once.

Twice.

This place was no clearing in a forest.

Just beyond the huddled forms of hooded figures stood immense columns and walls, chiseled from granite, that stood in a semi-circular pattern around the the immense room she stood within. On the far wall and down what corridors she could see from her position were rows of what appeared to be glass lamps, their unnaturally-steady flames lighting the way for whomever it may concern. Connecting each lamp was a strand of wire that disappeared behind corners and walls, the purpose for the strands unknown to her. Hanging from the walls were exquisite tapestries of red and black with gold trimmings. Centered on these tapestries was a black symbol on a red background; a triangle circumscribed within a circle. Sitting next to the walls were the occasional stack of crates, barrels, and sporadically-placed metal poles with the same symbol sewn into the tapestries held proudly aloft for all to see. The floor, or at least what little undamaged sections that remained, was made entirely from stone; Its flat surface polished to a shine. She noticed that in sections of flooring closest to her, warped and fractured from whatever brought her to this place, reddish stains leading towards her that gave off the most alluring aroma; Human blood.

The most interesting thing she saw in the room, however, was when she turned around to find a ragged wall of granite. While it was unremarkable by itself, what was glowing on its surface made her do a double-take; Intricate symbols were carved (or drawn; she did not know which) into the granite wall from top to bottom. They were even on the ceiling, pulsing with energy and bathing the chamber a crimson hue. It was where these symbols were etched that her senses ended; They were blocking her yoki. Glaring at them balefully, Riful couldn't help but be both angered and intrigued by the ethereal display; What were they and how, exactly, were they blocking her yoki?

Riful turned her head towards the man in her grasp to get her answers when the annoying ringing in her ears was replaced with his annoying voice

"... Kore no Imi ha nanidesu ka watashiga iko u!"

Riful openly stared at the man in her grasp, raising a dainty eyebrow in confusion; She understood none of the words pouring out of his mouth. She pulled the handler closer to herself, keeping a close eye on all of the other hooded figures kneeling, of all things, in the chamber, and spoke warningly to the now-still man.

"Please stop playing whatever silly game this is meant to be; I am in no mood for such nonsense..."

X~X~X

"... Bitte aufhören zu spielen, was dummes Spiel dieser sein soll; Ich bin nicht in der Stimmung für so einen Unsinn."

Musashi openly stared at the child/creature holding him in her grasp; He understood none of the words she had just spoken. When she had first attacked, he caught by surprise and immediately assumed she to be the holder of a Bloodline, a powerful one if he were to give his opinion. Once he was able to supress his shock, he thrashed against the tendrils that had once made-up her arm. He stopped, however, when she brought him closer to herself. As the distance between the two grew slimmer, Musashi was finally able to get a good look at her. What he had originally assumed to be an unknown substance created during her transition through the Summoning Realm was instead a purplish fluid that was, even now, trickling from her blooshot eyes. There was only one possible explanation; She was a Demon and the purplish fluid on her body was her blood. His thoughts were confirmed as she spoke to him in an alien tongue not even a moment later; Nothing else but Demons could possibly speak such an inhuman language. Her speech finished, there was only one thing to do.

"PRAISE JASHIN! THE HARBINGER OF EDEN HAS ARRIVED! OUR-"

X~X~X

Riful was confused, even shocked, by what was happening. The man she was holding with her clearly inhuman appendages went from silent contemplation of her words to ecstatic shouting, the word "Jashin" or some subtle variant of it used repeatedly within his strange language. This, of course, went against all her expectations of what the man would do; Who the hell starts shouting gleefully after watching a compatriot be shredded not even five feet away from themselves and then be held hostage by the creature that killed said compatriot? Upon hearing the seemingly-insane man's shouting, the other figures in the room fell from kneeling into outright bowing towards her. As such, there was something she simply had to have answered.

Just where in the nine hells was she?

Riful took a couple shaky steps towards the edge of the crater, planning on exiting the room to get a better grasp of her surroundings. As she did, she saw a spark of anticipation enter the bound man's eyes; A trap?

She immediately came to a halt and prepared herself for whatever lay in store for her, but was stopped when the man somehow was able to free one of his arms from her bindings and began to wave it in front of her, speaking his incomprehensible language once more.

X~X~X

Musashi noticed her tense as she prepared to exit the crater. At first he thought his cohorts had somehow spooked her, but immediately dropped that thought; What would a being such as she have to fear from mere mortals such as he and his flock? It than immediately struck him; She had been looking at the seals on the wall earlier as if it was her first time seeing such things.

There were seals, inactive at the moment, placed onto the floor of this chamber.

Based upon how she was acting, Musashi believed she had detected them and thought she was about to be attacked! Quickly, he freed one of his arms from her bindings using a shinobi trick he had learned during his early days as a Tokubetsu Jonin of Sunagakure (Village Hidden by Sand) and began to wave his free arm in front of her. He had, luckily, caught her attention before she had done anything too drastic.

"Calm yourself! You have nothing to fear here amongst us, Holy One! We are your-"

Musashi was cut off when pain, glorious pain, sprang forth from his wrist.

X~X~X

She had stabbed the fool's wrist with a tendril and wriggled it around within his flesh but, instead of screaming his head off like any normal human would, the man was moaning as if he found pleasure from having her cut into him. Even as she stared incredulously at him, the man jerked a couple of times in her grasp.

Was... was the weird man humping her tendrils?

Now fully healed though still rather bloody, Riful squawked in indignation and dropped the now-revealed silver-haired man, his aged face grinning in ecstasy, before she began to fling her arm about in a rather humorous, though utterly futile, attempt to remove the memory of his revolting actions.

"... You... You defaced my hand!" She whispered, cradling her hand as if it were poisoned while glaring at the human twitching spasmodically on the floor. Her disgust instantly switched to rage. "You dirty lecher! Allow me to return the favor!" She snarled before another, untainted, tendril flew forth from her head to remove the hand from his damaged wrist. She was not expecting what happened next.

The man recollected himself from whatever euphoric trance he was in and, to her utter astonishment, lept high into the air, dodging her attack, before falling back towards the floor. Alighting upon the cold granite, he immediately turned towards her and began waving his hands disarmingly in an attempt to calm Riful as she prepared to unleash hell. Cautiously, she decided to listen to him; She was still angry with him, but there were simply too many things not adding up:

The warriors she had been searching for had yet to make an appearance or even be detected.

The man before her was clearly human but was able to easily jump twelve feet into the air just now.

Her senses were unable to reach beyond those strange glowing symbols.

Thinking about it now, these humans had more than enough time to end her life (as infuriating as that thought was) while she was incapacitated.

Strangest of all, the people in the chamber were not showing any fear like she had come to expect from humans whom discovered her 'secret', but instead were bowing to her as if she were some deity.

'... How strange. If I am correct, these humans seem to have abilities not too dissimilar to those of a warrior of the Organization without the need to implant the flesh and blood of a Yoma. Yet they show respect, if not outright adoration, to a creature such as myself, almost as if they have never encountered or had prior knowledge of an Awakened Being... The elderly one shows a morbid love for pain... Hmmm... perhaps not so much "love" as he feels "pleasure" from pain. To top it off, those strange etchings keep my yoki at bay. Just what is going on here?'

She brought a finger up to her chin as the tendril receded back into her head and hummed in thought, silently running her yoki across the men and women before her...

X~X~X

So many things were not adding up for Riful: There had been no Halfbreeds when she was freed from whatever damned technique they used, but instead what appeared to be cultists in ornate robes that made trying to solve this strange puzzle all the more difficult; The prostrate forms before her were human, no doubts about that, yet the elderly man was able to jump to a height no mere human could possibly attain without outside assistance. It was worsened by the fact that she could sense a strange energy flowing through all of them even now. Building upon that, the energy she could detect with her senses was so alarmingly similar to yoki, yet so utterly different that to call it yoki would be foolish. Then there was that orb... that painful, damning orb...

Perhaps it was these strange humans that held the key to this puzzle.

X~X~X

Stepping forward, Riful's bare foot made contact with the surface of the undamaged flooring. As soon as it did, crimson symbols began to branch out from where her foot touched before they completely covered the chamber floor, forming an intricate pattern of pulsing shapes, lines, and curves. Just as before, her senses could not reach beyond their glowing curves. Scowling at the etchings, she looked up to see the silent figures gazing at her with adoring eyes, the robed man she had been holding hostage earlier giving her a knowing smirk under the dull-red light, and awaited their reaction. Almost as one, the others began to cheer in a mixture of delight and religious reverence.

She quickly walked up to their 'leader' as the noise died down and tried to convey her need to go outside using hand motions, seeing as verbal and possibly written language was useless at the moment. He seemed to understand her plight as he began to lead her and the other robed figures down winding halls and other spacious rooms filled to the brim with crates, his and the others' robes shifting and ruffling from the brisk walk through the well-lit spaces, before finally opening a great cast-iron gate to the outdoors. Light poured into the hallway and, taking advantage of their momentary blindness, Riful hurriedly slipped past him and found a spot near some ruined columns that afforded her a good spot from which to stretch her senses. quickly plopping herself onto the cool earth, ignoring the questioning gaze and surprised gasps of the others, and quickly pumped her yoki into the surrounding land. In no time, her senses covered several kilometers of land with her at the center. She could feel the heartbeats of every living being within her perimeter, both large and small, as well as the mysterious energy. The strange energy she found in the humans and creatures surrounding her seemed to be everywhere along with hints of other types of energy; Yoki, the energy she was most familiar with, was absent.

Riful stared at the picturesque mountainside in front of her for a few moments, taking some delight in watching the shrubs sway in the revitalizing afternoon breeze and some goats graze upon some greenery, before one of the cultists meandered over and offered her a robe. She let her eyes linger on the offered clothing before finally accepting the meager gift, seeing as her sundress had been destroyed. As she wrapped herself within the robe, many thoughts and feelings swirled in her confused mind.

'While I may not know where I am or what is going on at this moment, I will eventually find my answers.' She looked to the few remaining humans standing beside her, staring at her with reverence. '... And these people, as strange as they seem, likely know more about the situation than even myself.' One of them, the elder from earlier, stepped forward and offered her his bloodied hand. She stared at it for a couple moments before closing her eyes in thought, ignoring the sweet smell of his blood. '... I will stay with these people and learn what I can from them; Their language, their abilities, and their knowledge shall become my own. Who knows...' She grasped his hand, using it to leverage herself back onto her feet. '... We may all become the best of friends.' Riful smiled whimsically as she was lead back into the Jashinist citadel.

Her first act as 'god', or whatever she was to these people, was to punish the old man for his perversion (A crime he would bitterly deny when the language barrier was finally broken many months later) before finding herself a warm meal and taking a well-deserved nap.

X~X~X

Sorry again about the wait. I tried to have Riful operate under a "fight-or-flight" mode through the majority of this chapter, seeing as she was "defeated" by a "mystery warrior(s)' technique" only to wake up in the middle of a Jashinist Temple surrounded by cultists. Twas harder to write than I had initially thought.

Romaji (latinized japanese) text was made using Google Translate, the translated sentence "これの意味は何ですか!私が行こう", and ' '; Don't blame me if some of the word structure is off.

EDIT (11/18/2013)

Redone the ending; made some mistakes in her characterization and corrected them (She wants friends after all; Killing the cultists would be wasteful and foolish of her if they worship her).