Throughout the next two weeks, Claymore crossed the length of the Eurasian and Oceanian landscape, racking her memory for interesting characters she'd come across, characters who'd fit the bill as resistance fighters. She followed rumors, traversed vast distances, and delved into the seediest of locations.
It wasn't always as simple as finding her mark, however. Some recruits turned her down. Some accepted. Some were so drunk, things got out of hand before she could stimulate their alcohol-addled brains into accepting her invitation.
In short, it was a clusterfuck of an adventure. One that could probably fill up a small novella.
So, instead of showing you the full thing, here's a highlight reel of those two weeks.
"I'm looking for Dr. Matilda Fournier."
The desk attendant, little more than a teenager with a five o'clock shadow, looked up from his tattered magazine. Claymore gave a polite wave.
"Uh," the attendant said. "I think Dr. Fournier's busy."
As if to accentuate that statement, a loud, guttural scream came from the door behind the attendant, followed by a round of swears, uttered in French.
"Yeah," the attendant said. "She's got an appointment."
Claymore pulled out her mag pistol and pressed it against the kid's forehead.
"I've just made mine," she said. "Now be a dear and let me in."
The teenager gulped, and scooted out of the way, hands raised. "S-sure," he stammered.
Claymore walked past him, and, once she was out of earshot, giggled. The kid hadn't been in any real danger – her gun had been empty. Knowing this simply made his terrified, pants-shitting expression even funnier to Claymore.
Getting that out of her system, Claymore walked into the operating room. Once inside, she took a step back and blinked. The light inside was really, really fucking intense – for a second, she thought someone had thrown a flash bang at her. It wouldn't be the first time.
When her eyesight came back, Claymore noticed the operating table. A man with a bushy, tangled beard was lying on the table, dressed in a hospital gown. The gown's sterile, blue color had faded a long time ago, replaced mostly by a mosaic of dried blood.
The table itself was also soaked in blood. Several lines of crimson fluid dragged down the side of the table, pooling on the white tiles below.
The patient himself was gasping like a dying fish. Appropriate, considering there was a goddamn bonesaw sticking out of his thigh. The doctor, a slim, bald woman with pointed shoulders, leaned over him, dabbing the wound with an already gore-soaked rag.
"Claus, stay with me," the doctor told the big man. "I'm almost done."
The man grimaced, but he nodded.
The doctor straightened, and then suddenly, threw her weight against the bonesaw, pushing it further into the man's flesh. With a massive shove, the saw completed its journey, accompanied by a spurt of blood and another shriek of pain from the patient.
The doctor wiped a glove against her smock, and withdrew the bonesaw. Without even blinking, she tossed the blood-drenched object into a stainless steel sink.
Holy shit.
"I did tell you, Claus, that you should watch how long you spend hunting in the swamp," the doctor said, admonishing the man. "Those old rubber boots are no good at stopping gangrene. You're lucky I was able to save the rest of you. At the very least, I won't be seeing you in my operating room for some time, oui?"
Claus blurted out something in French. Then, his head lolled backward onto the operating table.
The doctor sighed, and withdrew a walkie-talkie from her uniform.
"Dante? Dante, yes, I need some help here stabilizing Claus… Yes, we've completed the operation. I just need someone to take care of the rest, right? Good."
The doctor cocked her head as she listened to a reply. "What? Someone did what to Frederich? Who – "
The doctor turned, finally noticing that Claymore was standing at the entrance.
Claymore, not knowing what to do, waved.
The doctor, walkie-talkie still planted on the side of her head, looked up and down at her. Then, with viper-like speed, she lunged forward.
Claymore drew back, but felt something being plucked from her coat. Looking up, she saw, with a sinking feeling, that the doctor hadn't been trying to tackle her.
The doctor took a few steps back, Claymore's mag pistol clenched firmly in one blue latex glove. Without hesitation, she took aim at Claymore chest, and fired.
The gun clicked, empty.
Claymore grinned, but the doctor had no humor on her face. She threw the pistol at Claymore, and retreated around her comatose patient, heading for the exit.
"Wait, wait!" Claymore said, raising a hand. "Don't leave!"
Claymore rounded the table, closing in on the doctor, who was busy fumbling with the handle to the door. She was almost through.
"John Bradford!" Claymore blurted.
The doctor froze. She turned, her frantic attempts to leave all but forgotten. A seething, pissed off expression was plastered across her face.
"What." The doctor spat out the word. It hung between her and Claymore, humming in the air like a brain dead gnat.
"Yeah," Claymore said. "You know him?" She put on a friendly smile and scratched the back of her head. In short, giving off a casual, non-threatening appearance.
The doctor scowled, lips curling back to reveal a set of white teeth that pretty much gleamed with anger.
"What," she said, forcing the words out, "do you want to talk about?"
She was even angrier than Claymore had predicted. It was going to be an easier job than she thought.
"Let's just say I know where you can find a man with a green sweater," Claymore said. "Along with an organization that goes by the name 'XCOM'."
Claymore smiled as she saw the other woman's eyes light up, her stiffness breaking up into a sort of eager savagery.
Ah.
Claymore could never have imagined that Manchester air could smell this good. Ever since ADVENT implemented its Western European Revitalization Program, places like Manchester that had been deemed of "no strategic import" were downgraded, reduced to sparse suburban areas that bordered on total wilderness.
After reminiscing, Claymore looked at what was supposed to be her target's home: a quaint, cozy little house, at least two stories tall, with enough room to house at least seven people. Only one person lived in that house as of right now, though.
Claymore rapped a hand against the wooden door, its unbroken coat of white paint a testament to the owner's care for the property.
When no one answered, Claymore braced herself against the door and pushed. It opened with little resistance, and Claymore walked into a parlor room.
Yep, it was the same as before. The nooks and benches where guests and family usually sat were filled with all variety of garbage. Specifically, destroyed family photos. Broken frames, cracked open like rotten eggs, littered the white tiled floor and the red carpeting. Pictures, formerly filled with smiling men, women and children, gathered dust in various corners, having been burnt beyond all recognition.
Still, if her target wasn't in the house, there was only one other place she'd be…
Claymore continued walking, taking an impromptu tour throughout the rest of the house, which was completely immaculate. Every piece of furniture was free of dust, and Claymore could even smell pine freshener, lingering in the air and coating the inside of the house with its pleasant scent. Claymore half-expected the electricity to be on, with a TV blaring in the living room and a piece of roast beef burning in an oven.
Halfway through the house, Claymore jumped back at the sound of a gunshot. It was loud, and messy – definitely buckshot of some kind. Claymore hastened towards the source of the sound, walking passed the kitchen and out a backdoor into an overgrown backyard.
There, a small, bespectacled woman, probably of advanced age due to the streaks of gray in her hair, stood in the knee-high grass, wearing a t-shirt and military fatigue pants. In her tanned, wrinkled hands she held an old dual-barrel shotgun, its grimy barrel pointed at the other end of the yard.
Without hesitating, the old woman pulled the trigger. It spat fire and buckshot, shattering a large, ornate vase that sat, hidden in the grass.
Even as the vase shattered, its various, dismembered bits flying in different directions into the depths of the backyard, the old woman was reloading, snapping back the stock of her gun and releasing two spent shotgun shells.
"Mrs. Sycamore!" Claymore called from the porch.
The old woman stopped midway through her reloading process, and turned, letting the shotgun's barrel slump forward ahead of her. She saw Claymore, blinked, and then rubbed her wrinkled eyelids with one hand.
"My word," the old woman said. "Is that you, Claymore?"
She threw down the shotgun, and wiped her hands against her pants. "Goodness me!" she cried. "You've caught me at an inopportune moment, Claymore dear."
The old woman walked over to the porch and up to Claymore, her diminutive, smiling face only coming up to the other woman's neck.
Gesturing with one hand, Mrs. Sycamore said: "Come in, Claymore! Just give me a minute to get ready, and I'll have some tea ready, right quick!"
Minutes later, Claymore was sitting at a small table on the porch, watching the brilliant rays of the sun slide behind white picket fence that surrounded Mrs. Sycamore's home. A cup of tea, swishing around in a dainty mug decorated with rocket ships and baseballs, sat in front of her.
Claymore took a sip and sighed. It tasted good, damn good, but it wasn't strong enough to tackle the itch that tingled throughout her body.
That itch for elerium.
With a swift hand, Claymore took out a small ziplock pouch from her jacket, and sprinkled a pinch of that heavenly, alien goodness into her cup. One swig later, and Claymore's mind and body were sated.
Mrs. Sycamore twitched her nose, not out of disgust for Claymore's habit, but because she hated wasting pure, good tea.
"Nice cup," Claymore commented, hooking a finger through the teacup's handle. "Who's is it?"
"My grandson's," Mrs. Sycamore said, before taking a sip from her own teacup, which was a collage of pink polka dots and unicorns. "Shall I clean up?"
Claymore nodded, and handed the old English woman her teacup.
Mrs. Sycamore squinted, taking aim. Then, she let fly, her wiry, lithe arm launching the tiny blue teacup into the air, before it smashed against the white fence. Blue shards fell like oversized raindrops into the grass.
Without missing a beat, she hurled the second cup. The smiling unicorns and polka dots spun in a furious whirl, hitting the fence with enough force to send one of the pieces of pink porcelain flying to the fucking moon.
Mrs. Sycamore stretched her arms, and then sat back into her chair, a warm smile on her face.
"That's your therapy?" Claymore asked.
"It's quite effective," Mrs. Sycamore said. "At least until I run out of knick-knacks to smash."
Mrs. Sycamore adjusted her glasses, and leaned over towards Claymore. "So," she said. "Why'd you come all the way out here, Claymore dear? A young woman like yourself doesn't make her way out to this lonely corner of God's Green Earth just to keep an old woman company."
Claymore smiled, and gave Mrs. Sycamore her proposition. Pretty soon, Mrs. Sycamore was smiling as well.
"And stay the fuck out!" yelled the bouncer, as Claymore sailed out the door and into the rainy Hong Kong night. The ex-EXALT operative went flying, before landing flat against the rain soaked pavement.
The door closed behind her, leaving Claymore sprawled and fully soaked. She got to her feet, patting herself down to make sure she had everything. She tapped her fingers against her jacket pocket, and sighed with relief that it was still there. Then, her eyes met with the rain, and something clicked. In fear, she began to tear open the jacket pouch.
Out came the ziplock baggie, only this time it was wet and dripping. Great droplets of water slid from the bag's wet plastic surface, revealing the grey, solidifying mush that was the Claymore's elerium stash.
Claymore threw the baggie down the street, watching it splatter against the asphalt. She wouldn't be able to get high off any of that shit.
"Fucking Triads," she muttered. Turning to the door, she shouted: "Fuck you too, Zhang!"
She grumbled a bit more, and then walked off. She needed someplace warm to go before she could rendezvous with Firebrand again. Plus, the Hong Kong air wasn't exactly the best thing to breathe, even after 20 years of ecological reorganization from the East Asian ADVENT Administration.
She hit Hong Kong's main street relatively quickly, turning a corner to be greeted by a barrage of neon lights, holographic displays, and cars blurring by at several hundred miles per hour. The crowds present here provided some measure of comfort, since the number of umbrellas the people carried were more than enough to cover everyone from the rain. But it was still a crowd, and Claymore felt she might suffocate in the sea of yellow rain coats if she stayed any longer.
Glancing around, Claymore noticed a door propped open, revealing the dry, inviting insides of the building. Without a second thought, she stepped across its threshold.
Instantly, the sounds of car exhaust, pounding rain, and grumbling Chinese workers were replaced by synthetic pop beats and laughter. Before Claymore could register where she was, a hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her deeper inside the building.
She was escorted down a darkened hallway, before emerging out the other side into a large room, blazing with multi-colored light. Loudspeakers pounded furiously into the ether, spitting out rapid-fire lyrics to some Chinese pop song while dozens of people shook and danced in the center.
Claymore blinked a few times, and then found herself being shoved onto a red couch.
"Ni hao, gweilo," said her would-be "kidnapper". Claymore looked up and saw a scantily clad Chinese woman leering down at her, a snakelike grin on her lips. Things felt surreal, but it wasn't because of the unusual and uncomfortable situation that Claymore found herself in. Rather, it was the two items on the woman's head that made Claymore question her sanity.
She saw fucking cat ears poking out of the woman's black hair.
The woman laid one finger, the nail slathered in deep, red gloss, against Claymore's shoulder.
"Tired, huh?" she said in broken English. "No worry. I make you feel all right, eh?"
Claymore blushed a bit, which prompted the woman to lean in closer and whisper more sweet nothings.
But those goddamn ears. Claymore saw them twitch and move on top of the woman's head, like they were some kind of living antennae. Jesus Christ, she thought. What the fuck were the city folk doing nowadays?
Completely repulsed, Claymore sat up and pushed away her.
"Sorry," she said. "Uh, no thank you?" Without waiting for a reply from the blue-balled woman, Claymore decided she was already dry enough, and began to walk towards the exit.
On the way, Claymore got a better look at her surroundings. This seemed to be one of those "Advent-sanctioned clubs" that had cropped up in recent years. Bright, neon signs stamped with the ADVENT logo loomed down from the ceiling, as if the administration itself were supervising the patrons of the club. Dozens of people, ranging from common workers to low-level government officials, flocked about the dance floor, laughing, drinking, kissing, and grinding. Dispersed about this crowd were dancers like the one that had molested Claymore earlier, walking about with all manner of animal features genetically grafted to their bodies.
Despite its seal of approval, the club was just as raunchy, if not more so, as the illegal establishments the administration had shut down twenty years ago. Claymore felt like she'd received front row tickets to the biggest orgy in human history.
A sick feeling slithered in her stomach when she realized this might be the future of her species – glorified pack animals, spending their days eating, drinking, and fucking.
Claymore couldn't stand it a second more. She would, in all honesty, face a nest of psychotic, drug-addled bandits rather than spend more time in this literal fuckfest.
Claymore opened the door to the club's entrance, and walked once more down the dimly lit hallway. But this time, she heard something odd. There was a banging sound. It wasn't from the club. It was coming from further down the hallway, near the tiny entrance she had first been dragged through.
Pressing her head to the walls, Claymore slowed her pace, moving step by step until she found an adjoining passage that led to some other part of the building. The banging got stronger, followed by what appeared to be an argument in some Chinese dialect.
Soon, Claymore reached the end of the passageway, marked by a pair of large, grimy doors, with small, vertical windows installed in them. Claymore crouched near one and looked inside.
A young Chinese woman, dressed in a ratty hoodie and faded jeans, was being restrained by two Advent troopers. She was giving them a hell of a time, wriggling and shaking, twisting the troopers' arms into uncomfortable positions. Meanwhile, some skinny, pony-tailed guy in a black suit stood, watching the whole scene.
To Claymore, the man didn't seem agitated one bit, judging from his relaxed posture and the cigarette sticking out of his mouth. His back was to her, allowing her to catch sight of a rectangular object tucked inside his back pocket.
While Claymore was still trying to comprehend what the hell was happening, one of the troopers barked a few words in Chinese before smacking the girl across the head. She went limp, her only motion being the inconsistent, slow rise and fall of her chest.
The suit barely noticed, stopping only to let out a foul exhalation of smoke.
Whatever was going on, Claymore knew it wouldn't end well for the girl. She felt for the girl, she really did. Being helpless, trussed up like a fly in ADVENT's enormous web, was a shit experience beyond compare. But Claymore knew her own importance, and knew that she couldn't compromise her mission over some random girl.
Apparently, though, said girl hadn't run out of options. She buzzed to life like some Frankenstein beast, and twisted, smashing her elbow against one of her captors' faceplates.
A loud crunch was heard, and blood began to dribble out of the Advent trooper's exposed mouth. The trooper's gloved hands raced up to contend with his injuries, leaving the girl's right arm entirely free.
Without hesitation, the girl then threw her free arm at the other Advent trooper. The trooper, in response, turned her head, letting the girl's knuckles slam against her helmet with a hollow thwacking sound. Cocking her head back again, the trooper grabbed the girl's left arm in one hand, and kicked upward, driving her plated knee into the girl's stomach.
The girl fell limp again, pushing ragged breath through her mouth. The trooper was far from over, however. A fist collided against the girl's face, cracking her head to the side. A wad of blood flew from her mouth in a vibrant, crimson arc, before splattering into the divots on the tiled floor.
The suit raised a hand at the trooper.
"No," he said, his broken English cushioned in a heavy Chinese accent. "Don't hurt merchandise."
Claymore's nostrils flared. That was it.
In one smooth stride, Claymore kicked the door open. She stopped for a mere second to pistol whip the suit in the back of the head with her mag pistol, causing him to slam against the concrete floor. In another second, Claymore had adjusted her gun, before turning and pumping a single magnetic round into each of the Advent troopers. They both fell back, propelled by the rounds, before falling against the tiles.
The girl jumped back, falling and scooting away from Claymore. She stammered in some Chinese dialect, repeating "Gau mehng a!" in a wavering, high-pitched tone.
Claymore held up a hand.
"Stop! I won't hurt you," she said. She took a few, slow steps forward, before crouching in front of the girl. "Are you okay?"
The girl's eyes widened.
"H-help," she croaked. "Please."
Before Claymore could respond, a sudden chattering caught her attention. She turned to see the pony-tailed Chinese suit yammering into a cellphone. Without thinking, she brought her hands around and snapped off a shot. The man flopped to the floor, while the top half of his scalp congealed on the wall behind him.
Claymore turned her head towards the girl. "He won't hurt you anymore," she reassured, before walking over to the body. She reached a hand around the corpse's backside, moving around a bit before withdrawing the square object she had seen in the man's pants earlier. It was a small stick, made from smooth black plastic. A white Advent logo pulsed in the center of the stick.
There were at least 500 creds stored in that credit stick, Claymore knew. She turned back, and got a good look at the girl she'd just rescued.
The girl stared at Claymore, her eyes still bulging from her sockets in fear. But that wasn't what Claymore was looking for.
There.
Sticking out like some kitschy Halloween costume, were those feline monoliths, sticking out from the girl's trimmed black hair. They marked her as one of the building's employees.
It made perfect goddamn sense now.
"I've got a ride out of here," Claymore told the girl. "Away from this place. Come with?"
The girl was still, like a deer in the headlights of a car. Her pale skin rendered her like some fanciful ice sculpture, rather than a frail, frightened person.
Finally, she nodded. A small, twitch of a nod, but a nod nonetheless.
The Skyranger's jets lit the night as the craft made its latest voyage from the industrial playground of East Asia into the vast tracts of undeveloped European landscape. On board, a single soul was carried, soon to join nine others in the bowels of the mechanical behemoth known as the Avenger. Like a lit match, this last person would serve as the catalyst, igniting the frayed wires of revolution and causing a rupture that would shake the foundations of ADVENT.