A/N: And now for chapter three! I wonder how fast my typing skills are. Then again, it depends on how much time I have to type it up. I still have to deal with life! I'm not a robot even if my work is easy! Seriously, mathematics has never been as easy as it is now. I even think that my entrance exams for High school (In Texas, you have to apply for a magnet school/Early College) were easy, and mathematics is where I get my lowest grades. I wonder if the fact that I studied day in and day out to pass them is why. In all honesty, I'm willing to bet that I got accepted, as my interview was with the Astronomy teacher and the PhysEd instructor.

But for anyone who is in high school or has been:

HOW THE HELL DO I KEEP FROM PANICKING IF I'M NOT SURE THAT I WAS ACCEPTED?!

Inspiration from gallery's Claymore novelization. The AU is my own wicked mind.

Disclaimer: Do I look like Norihiro Yagi? In your dreams.

Enjoy!

September 19,

All seems alright for now, but I don't know why things have gone quiet lately. It's like everything just went still. If anything, a little too still. Nevertheless, it doesn't really matter.

~With true sincerity,

Jean Hawkthorne, ranked no 9

A lone figure with a cloth wrapped around his face walked through the desert, on the verge of collapse.

He had gone without food or water for days, but he kept up as long as he had for only one reason before his conscience faded out, not having noticed the black, armored female silhouette.

"Do you not fear me, boy?"

Her melancholy, soft voice echoed through his mind as he slept.

"You'll forget it soon enough."

Raki's eyes snapped open, expectant of the barren wasteland and instead finding wooden walls and carefully carved upholstery. He rose quickly, noting that his tunic was on a nearby chair and that his clothes no longer felt heavy and full of sand.

A middle aged man opened the door, carrying a bundle of fruit and a few loaves of bread in his arms. "You're awake!" He observed.

"You're lucky to be alive." He added, walking in through the wooden door. "It's a miracle that you survived the wasteland with so few provisions."

He was right; Raki's food and water had only lasted for a day.

The man put down the food he was burdened with and turned to the boy staring at him. "You probably haven't eaten in days, have you?" He asked gently. His tone suggested that he himself had children down the line as well.

Raki looked at the food on the table and felt his stomach growling in anticipation.

"Go on, eat." He goaded at Raki's astonished look. Raki looked down at the food as he felt his stomach growling like a starved beast in a cage.

He gulped in air before he could start drooling at the prospect of food before he realized something imperative, speaking to the innkeeper sheepishly.

"But...I have no money to pay for this, not even the room," Raki sheepishly admitted. The innkeeper looked at the boy with a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry. Your food and lodging has already been paid for." The senior replied.

Raki shifted slightly as he found the words to say. "Paid for by who?" He asked, getting ready to move.

"By one of those Devil Eyed Witches." The innkeeper said, his tone serious.

"Huh?!" Raki exclaimed, jolting. "D-did you say a 'Devil Eyed Witch'?!" This time, he began to push off the linens and put his feet to the ground. "What was her name?!"

"Don't know. She never told me and I never asked." The innkeeper said, leaving Raki to contemplate his answer. "Still, what a sight. A Devil Eyed Witch carrying a half dead boy into the village is unusual. She brought you here and laid you in a bed before paying for your food and lodging." The innkeeper relayed as Raki's eyes went wide at the picture that he was forming.

"So...where is she now?" Raki questioned.

"Don't know. We didn't call her, so she must have gone on to her next job." The dark haired man said, shrugging.

Raki darted out of the bed and grabbed his backpack and overshirt, heading for the door. "Thank you!" He called out over his shoulder.

The innkeeper, slightly alarmed, moved to call out to him. "Hey! Aren't you going to eat something first?!"

Raki looked back at him with wide eyes before he once again glanced at the food on the nearby table. He dug in ravenously, causing the innkeeper to become concerned.

"Hey! Slow down, or you'll choke!" The black haired man gently admonished as the boy ate a faster pace than he had expected. Soon enough, the boy had finished and was sprinting out of the inn, leaving the innkeeper behind in his wake.

"Well...goodbye, then." The man said to the now gone boy.

Raki ran around the village, searching for any sign of Clare that he could find before he stilled among the commerce in the market.

"Clare..." He whispered into the air.

'You're not afraid of me?'

'You don't need to know. You'll forget it soon enough.'

Memories of what she had said to him that day replayed in Raki's head. The words in his head were like freshly made silk cloth, vivid and incredibly smooth.

The boy was spurred from his trance by a masculine voice from behind him. "Hey, you there!"

Raki turned to face a man with dark hair parted strictly down the middle with curtains that framed his face hanging beside his jaw. "Um...yes?" The boy replied meekly.

"You're the one that Claymore brought into town yesterday. A Claymore was looking for you." He said to his junior.

Raki let out a gasp of surprise at the man's words. "Wh-what? Where...? Where is she now?"

The man blinked. "Uh...she left town and headed to the woods nearby."

Raki grabbed his pack, beginning to sling it over his shoulder and ran with determination set in his eyes. "Thank you!" He called over his shoulder.

The man that he had just spoken to merely said "oh" in response.

The young boy trekked through the forest, desperately searching for Clare. He began to huff in exhaustion before he saw a layered metal sabaton among the things littering the forest floor.

"C...Clare!" Raki exclaimed with a smile on his face before he saw something different with the woman he was seeing in front of him.

Long, pale blonde hair that reached her chest, differently shaped armbands and a completely different face than he was expecting. Even her pauldrons were different, and she didn't wear the signature ascot on her neck.

'It's...it's not her.' Raki thought, outwardly silent.

"Are you alone?" The strange female asked of the boy.

"Eh? Uh...yes." Raki replied. "Are you the one that saved me?"

"Hmm? Oh...that. No need to thank me." The stranger smiled.

Now, Raki was confused. "But why did you? You don't even know me. You even paid for my food and lodging."

At this, the stranger quietly chuckled. "I just wanted to help out. We Claymores are kind at heart."

The boy before her noticed that something was suddenly very, very wrong with the whole picture. "Huh?"

"What's more..." The woman trailed off, walking towards him until she could reach forwards and touch his face gently. "I took a liking to you." She said, leaning in towards the wide eyed boy's face. "I wanted to make you mine."

Raki abruptly shoved the imposter away from him in stark realization. His eyes were squeezed shut, and the woman's eyes were wide with shock.

"You're not a Claymore! Claymores never, ever call themselves by that name!" Raki declared.

The woman's eyes widened at the tidbit of information.

"Oh? Is that so?" She said, before her face immediately became grotesque and terrifying. Veins roped her now darkened face and her fangs became more apparent. "I didn't know! I'll have to remember that."

A vampire.

Suddenly, the fake grabbed Raki by the hair from behind and looked out towards the foliage. "You're pretty smart. But you followed me, just as I had planned." Raki visibly grimaced at the foul scent of its breath as it traveled along the rim of his ear. The vampire then raised its attention to the green foliage and raised its voice to a different decibel. "YOU CAN COME OUT NOW! I KNOW YOU'VE BEEN FOLLOWING ME! AREN'T I YOUR NEXT JOB?!"

A thud made by a metal sabaton was the answer to the vampire's loud shout as soon as Raki opened his eyes slightly to glimpse familiar red hair. Everything that was ingrained into the boy's memory made a startling leap when he realized just who that color belonged to.

"C...Clare..." Raki numbly whispered.

Everything about her, from the way her hair was cut down to her metal sabatons, had remained unchanged.

"You don't give up, do you? No matter how far I run or where I hide, you stick to me like a shadow. I'm sick of it."

Clare stepped forwards, causing the vampire holding Raki hostage to quickly begin to speak again.

"Hey, hey, hey! Don't make another move."

Clare stopped walking, her expression the same as always.

"I know how fast Claymores are. Take one more step and I'll rip out his throat. One false move, and I'll do it." The fake said before it made a request. "First, drop your sword. And no tricks."

Clare reached for the hilt of her sword as if it were muscle memory. Her eyes were once again suffused with a hellish glow as her pupils sharpened.

"What makes you think that a hostage will stop me?" Clare questioned.

Raki blinked in surprise. Did she not remember him as well as he remembered her? For a small second, his captor shared some disconcerted surprise but it had vanished just as quickly.

"I never thought it would until yesterday." The fake chuckled. "But when I saw you carry him into the village with such care, I changed my mind. I knew that he would be useful."

So it had been Clare that had saved him? Raki's eyes widened at the revelation.

"You may be part vampire and a ruthless killer, but you can still remember your past life. Even a Devil-Eyed Witch never forgets them, even if you have your emotions under control." The fake then gestured slightly to Raki before it continued. "For instance, when you were younger, you must have had a little brother. Maybe the boy reminds you of him."

Clare remained still.

"WELL? AM I RIGHT?" The fake crowed with a monstrous cackle. "GO AHEAD! IF YOU CAN KILL ME ALONG WITH THE BOY, THEN DO IT!"

All of a sudden, the sound of metal ringing as if it were a sword from its sheath made itself known. Raki blinked at the sight of the red haired dhampir throwing her sword into the shallow ravine.

"How's that?" Clare replied. That was all it took for the vampire to let out a string of raucous laughter.

"YOU FOOL! YOU HUMANS REALLY ARE FOOLS!" The fake said, letting go of Raki. "No...you're only half human. You Claymores are half of nothing!" The vampire shot forward, claws at the ready.

A vermillion geyser erupted forth from the hole in Clare's abdomen, her enemy's arm portruding from the elbow down.

Raki's warning came too late.

"I got you!" The monster giggled. "I sliced right through a Claymore!" Looking up at Clare's green eyes, it reveled sadistically at the pain Clare must have been feeling. "Hurts, doesn't it? Even if you are a Claymore, when your guts are pierced-?" The vampire stopped when it noticed that Clare had grabbed the limb stuck through her body.

She jerked backwards in a leap, tumbling down the slope with her prey in tow. The vampire grunted with each thud against the roots protruding from the leaf covered ground.

"Don't make me laugh! Do you think that a fall like that can hurt a Nosferatu?" It boasted before Clare stomped on its arm when they reached the bottom. The woman reached for her sword, surprising the Nosferatu underneath her feet.

"Eh?" It uttered in surprise as it looked to its left before Clare sliced through the arm that had impaled her.

Letting out a scream of pain when it noticed, the vampire's eyes widened when the edge of the blade slid through its head effortlessly, ending its existence. Clare stood at the blood spraying corpse and watched as every last drop fell away and onto the forest floor.

The redhead gripped the lifeless arm and wedged it out as it made a sucking noise. Coughing up blood, she threw the useless appendage onto the ground as she kneeled to the ground. her abdomen throbbed violently as crimson fell onto the ground in droplets.

Clare clenched the wound around her abdomen and let her power flow to the wound as veins once more became visible on her face. The wound sealed itself shut within minutes. Raki came bounding down, backpack in hand.

"Clare!" He yelled. Said warrior stood to her full height and sheathed her sword. "Are you okay?! Clare!" Raki continued as tears rushed down his cheeks like waterfalls. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Clare! It's my fault! It's all my fault!"

"Don't get the wrong idea." Clare interrupted. Raki stopped speaking immediately. "I didn't throw away the sword because of you. I only did it to trap the Nosferatu. If I'd gone through you to get to him, you would be dead and he would have gotten away. I only used my sword to lure him in." Clare explained, turning to her side.

"Oh...I see..." Raki stammered.

"What are you doing here, anyway? You're a long ways from your village." Clare said to the brown haired boy.

Raki could not form a coherent sentence in reply when Clare came up with a conclusion.

"Did they throw you out?" Clare asked. Raki's only response was a startled jerk.

"N-no...it's just that..." Raki mumbled.

Clare's eyes looked downwards to the ground in front of her. She remembered the night that her parents died; her brother had killed them both and then went after her before he too was killed.

"No...that's not why. I'm...I'm not a vampire." Raki sobbed.

"Do you know how to cook?" Clare asked from out of the blue. Raki blinked before looking at the redhead before him.

"Eh?"

"You said before that you'd do the cooking. Are you any good?" Clare asked as her shadow loomed over the boy. Raki nodded vehemently in response to her question. "Okay then. If you can cook, you can follow me until we find a town where you want to live."

Raki's face visibly brightened as the tears that remained became tears of gratitude and joy.

"Okay!" Raki exclaimed and followed her.

A/N: Chapter three at last. It took me from February to June to get this finished up due to school and other stuff. And yes, that question was something that I needed to get off of my chest. If anyone can tell me, review or message me. Credit for help with the last names goes to shadowqueen15 and inspiration for the story entirely from gallery's Claymore novelization.

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~Deathblow88