Disclaimer : I don't own Claymore
Author note : in case you missed it, Yagi redrew the end of chapter 129 and the beginning of 130, with more detailed scenes and a better transition between the two chapters. Just so you're not surprised when reading this chapter. Anyway, I finally got enough material for one of those, so enjoy.
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"Now this is life!" Helen cheered, comfortably lounging in a deckchair, clad in a skimpy red bikini and her eyes hidden behind a pair of stylish sunglasses.
"Helen, what exactly are you doing?" Miria hissed.
"What does it look like I'm doing, Sis?" Helen looked at Miria over the black lenses. "I'm taking a break. Do you mind moving a bit? You're in my sun."
"In case you haven't noticed, WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE!" the leader of the Ghosts shouted.
"Actually, we're not." the undisciplined warrior countered. "They are." She pointed at the large group of Awakened currently mobbing Cassandra and doing a rather good job. "So we might as well relax while we still can. You know we'll have to fight again pretty soon after all."
"You know Captain, Helen does have a point." Tabitha intervened. "Maybe you could, you know, come and join us." she suggested with a blush. "I even…have a suit for you." the braided warrior blushed harder as she held the item in question.
"Tabitha…" Miria sighed tiredly.
"Yes Captain?" Tabitha's nose was now bleeding a little.
"THIS ISN'T A SUIT! THIS IS THREE SCRAPS OF CLOTH HELD TOGETHER BY DENTAL FLOSS! Wait… us?"
Helen simply pointed to where the rest of the Ghosts, minus Clare, were working on their tan.
"WHAT THE HELL?"
Cynthia shrugged sheepishly. "Well, it's nice not being the ones fighting for once. So we made ourselves comfortable."
In the background, Cassandra lost yet another head.
"WOO!" Helen hollered. "Look at'em go!"
"Eww, doesn't that Awakened look like a giant vagina with teeth?" Yuma grimaced, looking at one of Cassandra's assailants.
"I think it's supposed to be a giant mouth." Cynthia corrected.
"But it's on its lower body… You must admit, it is disturbing."
Ignoring Yuma and Cynthia's criticism on Yagi's recent Awakened designs, Galatea resumed explaining the warriors' situation. "Also, this is our way of protesting." The blind warrior had shed her nun's robe for a sexy black bikini of her own. She was laying on her stomach, a beet red Raki, who was wearing only beach shorts, carefully working some sun lotion into her milky skin.
Lucky bastard.
And yes, the Author shamelessly used the excuse to get Galatea in a bikini. Any complaints?
Next to Galatea, Clarice was helping Miata build a large sandcastle. Apparently the Author had provided a giant sandbox in addition to the chairs, parasols and drinks.
"Protesting? For what?" Miria asked confusedly.
"For this!" Helen shouted, waving her hand over her exposed body.
"One of the biggest mysteries about us finally revealed. The readers were expecting something horrible. Some disgusting deformity that would justify people turning away at the mere sight of it. All that build up, all that anticipation, and in the end… this. Okay, a permanent stitched-up wound would be pretty disturbing in real life, but come on! Yagi didn't even try to make the end result look gross when we were done with Clare." Yuma developed.
"Especially not on that redrawn version of chapter 129." Tabitha added while Raki mentally agreed. He had been the one who hugged Clare in both versions after all, and the newer one was, well, curvier.
"Let's face it, those guys who fled when Teresa opened her shirt were wimps." Deneve deadpanned.
"Or lacking any imagination. Geez, ever heard of doggy style?" Helen grumbled. "Surely that's no reason for depriving us of a sex life. What did they fear? That she'd split herself in two? Get real, no one ever heard of a warrior popping a stitch no matter how much jumping, running and fighting we do. HELL NO! We're hot, we're sexy, we're not made of glass, and we deserve to get laid!" she shouted.
Interestingly none of the warriors voiced any disagreement.
"By the way, where is Clare?" Miria wondered out loud.
"We had to tie her up." Deneve explained, tilting her head to the bound and gagged heroine who was glaring daggers at them.
"Let me guess, she didn't approve of Raki applying lotion on you all." Miria guessed.
"Well, this is part of the reason." Yuma answered.
"But more importantly, we had to prevent her from being her usual self and doing something stupid and reckless." Cynthia continued.
"Like interfering in Priscilla's fight and screwing up for dumb reasons like 'revenge' and 'only I am allowed to kill her' in typical shonen style." Deneve finished. "And we had to gag her because her bitching was getting annoying."
"MMMPPHHHHHRRRR!" Clare's muffled protest came through her gag. 'Like picking a fight with Isley of all people was smarter!' she wanted to say.
"Calm down Forty Seven." Helen half-scolded, half-teased. "Or no Raki-time for you." Said man was now tending to Clarice who sighed contentedly.
"Yes," Deneve agreed, "there's no way we're fighting Priscilla if we can avoid it."
Further away, the Riful-lookalike kept on pounding what remained of Priscilla into the ground.
"Damn, never thought we'd see Priscilla getting her ass handed to her." Helen commented. "I can't believe Riful kind of survived. Did anyone see it coming?"
We interrupt this fic for a special announcement by the Author : "I TOLD YOU SO SUCKERS!"
"I can imagine him doing a silly dance right now." Yuma muttered before returning her attention to the seemingly one-sided fight. "Still, this is kind of embarrassing for Priscilla."
"The undefeatable monster. The being who surpasses the Abyssals. She obliterated half of Isley's body in an instant, ripped off Alicia's head without transforming, and one-shot a possessed Dauf like nothing. She's had her badass status reaffirmed multiple times. Heck, after merging with the Destroyed she's supposed to have become even more badass. And look at her now, getting kicked around by a naked loli zombie that seemingly came from nowhere." Helen sighed.
"Well, she is also in the middle of a mind war for the control of the body. This could explain her poor performance." Tabitha reminded.
"Besides, having a character utterly thrash the current strongest is a common technique to establish or re-establish how powerful they are." Deneve stated in her Dr. Deneve voice. "Usually Priscilla is the one dishing it out. And Miria seems to be on the receiving end of this quite often."
"Hey!" Miria protested.
"Remember how Hysteria, and to a lesser extend Rigaldo, defeated you at your own game?" Deneve said, crossing her arms under her bikini-clad breasts. "Or even the first Awakened Being we faced?"
The spiky-haired warrior shrunk. "Oh yeah."
"There have been some assumptions that Clare may be stronger than Miria now, due to her cutting some of Cassandra's heads to pieces with the Quicksword when Miria couldn't." Helen shrugged. "But it doesn't prove anything since Miria specializes in speed, while Clare is a sensing type with a destructive special technique. I mean, if it was true, I would be the strongest warrior here. Who else can blow a huge hole in an AB in an instant?"
"We know you're badass, Helen." Deneve commented though she was smiling slightly at her friend.
"Damn true!" Helen cheered while pumping her fist.
"Anyway, this is just another common manga element. As the protagonists get stronger, so will the antagonists. This in turn forces us to get stronger, and so on." Deneve explained. "If you remember, we started with Yoma, then Awakened Beings were introduced, then the Abyssals."
"Yeah, but it was never so complicated before. Except for Clare's habit to receive power-ups, very few of us ever managed to defeat Awakened Beings one on one. The separation in powers has always been respected until recently." Cynthia pondered.
"In the manga version at least. Do you remember in the anime when it was revealed Priscilla wasn't fully Awakened and she bulked up? Talk about an ass pull." Helen complained. "Hopefully this won't happen here."
Helen snorted. "Damn, now I regret the good old times when the Abyssals were actually the top of the food chain."
"Don't you mean the times when 'Abyssal' actually meant something." Galatea asked. "The Abyssals are supposed to be a league of their own. Heck I witnessed Alicia tear through a dozen Awakened like they were nothing. Even if all the Awakened attacking her are all former single digits, Cassandra should have taken out at least a few of them already."
"It doesn't help that the battle between Roxanne and Cassandra caused no casualties. I'm not complaining about this, but somehow I doubt we'd have survived if we had been around when Isley and Luciella fought." Cynthia added.
"You know, this is funny too. Isley was supposedly the most powerful warrior back then by far, and is still considered one of strongest to this day. But it didn't seem to carry into his Awakened form." Raki pondered. "I mean, it's widely thought that if Teresa had Awakened, she'd surpass even Priscilla. By the same logic, even if they were both Abyssals, shouldn't Isley have been significantly more powerful than Luciella? Instead their battle seemed pretty close. It's almost like Yagi added that bit as an afterthought."
"You're overthinking it. Making sense of power levels in a manga is a headache." Helen advised sagely. "Just sit back and go with it."
"You're right. Besides I wouldn't count Priscilla and Cassandra out yet." Raki sighed as he looked at the battles. "Neither seem especially worried at the moment. And you know Priscilla, the more battered she gets, the more dramatic her retaliation will be."
"Well, she should hurry up, she's just a head and a torso now." Deneve commented dully. "And it looks like she'll soon be even less."
Clare let out a muffled hiss of outrage through her gag.
"This is strange, usually she'd have already regenerated by now. Do you think she can regenerate from just a head?" Cynthia mused.
"With our luck, she can. This is precisely my point." Helen said. "We'll be back in the fray soon. Might as well relax while we still can."
"Indeed, we should thank Miria for the opportunity. If she hadn't brought the ABs in, we'd be up our necks in it." Yuma acquiesced.
"Well, as expected from our Captain." Tabitha smiled. "She did move all the Organization's warriors to side with her after all."
"But to do this with our sworn enemies, she must have made a very good point. Talk about mad persuasion skills." Helen grinned at Miria who coughed nervously to hide her embarrassment. "What did you do Sis? Made'em an offer they couldn't refuse?" she asked in a very good 'gangster' voice.
"Well, you see…" Miria started only to be interrupted by another voice.
"Excuse me."
Miria turned around and came face to face with Wild Horse Octavia; the Awakened was in her human form, a friendly smile on her face.
"Yes?" Miria asked.
"Considering most of us probably won't survive the battle, I was wondering if I could take my share of the payment right now." the former Number Two asked politely.
"What payment?" Helen asked, voicing everyone's confusion while the fearless leader gulped nervously.
"My, the one Miria promised for our assistance of course. Surely you're not going back on it." Octavia's smile never faltered even though her Yoki flared briefly.
Miria was now sweating a bit. She hadn't thought of this! "No, of course not. A deal is a deal."
Octavia beamed a smile that would have been dazzling until you remembered what she was. "Thank you." Her right arm shot out, splitting in tendrils that wrapped themselves around Raki and deposited the young man securely on her shoulder. "I'll be going then."
"WHAT THE HELL?" Raki shouted while everyone looked shocked at this.
"Miria! Don't tell me you…" Helen looked at their leader, feeling sick that she'd sell the human to those monsters. Next to her, Clare doubled her efforts to free herself and lunge at Miria. After all, if Priscilla died, someone had to take her place on her hit list, right?
"Are you nuts? They'll eat him!" the usually stoic Deneve screamed.
"Captain…" Even Tabitha looked appalled at Miria's deal.
"Oh, don't worry," Octavia reassured them, "we promised we wouldn't harm him." This seemed to calm everyone down until she giggled. "If anything, he'll be eating me rather than the other way around." she finished.
Everyone's eyes turned to the now very sheepish Miria.
"Miria… you… YOU PIMPED ME OUT TO A BUNCH OF AWAKENED BEINGS?!" Raki shouted in disbelief.
"Well, guts are easy to come up with." Octavia explained. "But quality time with a handsome, friendly young man on the other hand… Now that's something we rarely get." She purred as she walked away with her price. "Now come on, I'll show you exactly why I'm called Wild Horse Octavia, and I'm not talking about my true form."
"MI-RI-A…" Helen growled warningly as she and her friends put their clothes on, glaring all the while. Well, except Deneve who just couldn't simply take off her shirt, and had instead dramatically ripped it off, again. To the side, Cynthia and Yuma untied Clare, whose right arm was bulging in preparation for the Quicksword.
"I thought they'd die in the fight." Miria tried to justify lamely.
"GET HER!" Clarice screamed.
"OFF WITH HER HEAD!" Clare roared.
"YUMA THROW!"
Miria avoided Yuma's flying sword and started running, her friends hot on her heels.