tampered | Log: Complete

Claymore could walk for five days without resting. Fighting, though, was another thing, and she'd been killing the things since they first arrived. Didn't go down too easy, but not too hard to make it annoying. No, her blade just cleaved, and she followed through, loved the splash of blood on her skin, the screams, the flesh giving way, all of it.

And when they'd gone, she dropped, slumped down against the flat of her blade and dipped too quickly into deep sleep, the resting, exhaustive sleep that would prepare her for more, more, more.

So far, she slept, but she twitched, her foot kicked out and connected with the invisible beast at her side, that whined and moved, pretty lips moved and she murmured something, before slumping back down again.

The strange looking beast had caught his attention, something he was certain shouldn't be visible to human eyes, then again the Corinthian wasn't human. His three sets of teeth smiled as he stopped in the clearing. The Stewards hadn't reached this area yet, but in time they would. Cori was quite confident he could stir Ophelia to motion by then.

"Hey lady," called the nightmare as he got closer, as far as he could without rousing what appeared to be a shadowed poisonous mass to suspicion. "Wake up, I have a message for you."

Her eyes opened, casually, and a wide grin stretched on her face. She wasn't sleepy, when she awoke, she woke, and he was close enough now to smell, and the smell woke her, hyper sensitive to those sorts of things.

But she didn't move yet, no, arched her back and stretched with the clink of bloody armor, the movement of crimson stained fabric, long, blonde, hair tangled in its braid.

"You called me pretty." Ophelia pointed out, smirking coy.

He smelled like the ocean, the shores of the Sea of Night where his master first created him.

"I did, and I can say it's accurate," the Corinthian offered Ophelia sly grins behind his sunglasses. "Are you busy this morning?"

The nightmare unsheathed his sword. It'd been quite a few years since he'd handled one in real battle, but more or less it was like riding a bike. He was revving up for the punchline.

"Not really." She smiled, and slowly stood, lips moving constantly, nibbling bottom and pursing, stretching again, nudging the beast beside her and getting it up, a nudge of a steel toe.

"Did you want something?" A blink, another blink, and she eyed his sword, then eyed hers, still stuck inches into the ground where she could lean against it as she slept.

"Mine's bigger."

"Good."

His zweihänder was shorter and not as wide, but the Corinthian felt comfortable with it between his hands. He could swing it using both or one.

"It's not the size that matters, I'll bet you've heard that before. But tell me if you know this one..." the nightmare said as he drew a mark in the ground with the blade's tip. "Two cannibals sat licking their fingers after a delicious feast. 'Your brother makes an excellent roast,' one says to the other. 'Thanks,' his friend said, 'I'm sure gonna miss him!'"

Ophelia suddenly paused. Her fingers had stopped inches before the hilt of her blade.

Slowly, ever so slowly, her neck cracked. Her lips twisted again, and hackles rose, the beast at her feet rose along with it, it's own hackles and teeth bare.

"What was that?" She murmured, a dark cast over her silver eyes, an all together manic expression on her face.

He licked his teeth and smiled.

"It reminds me of the horny monster who passed your brother in the woods," the Corinthian added, noting the shift in her expression. He watched the beast as well, anticipating which would attack first.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Ophelia snarled, her hand found the hilt of her sword and lifted, wielded the large blade so easily with one hand, leveling the point at the... whatever the fuck in front of her, he didn't smell like a human.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about." She repeated, lips curled back in a feral noise. How- No, no, she didn't know. She didn't.

"Even distraught siblingless little warrior girls like you have to dream."

He raised his sword and tapped the tip of it against hers, their lengths practically closing the distance.

"Boys taste better, didn't you know?"

"You must be really dumb." Ophelia whispered, her hand flickered and her sword did, too, knocked his away before she stalked around him, smelled him, her shoulders stiff, all of her stiff.

"Brother was weak. I bet he did taste good, to a monstrous bitch like that." She was two parts. The little girl who loved her brother, and the monster of a woman who condemned her brother for his sacrifice in her name.

"You've no right to him, either way." She wondered if he bled.

"No, I'm a visionary," he replied, bringing his blade back into a defensive position.

"Every night I have right to him, the sweet memory of a boy behind your eyes. The smell of blood and cinder and your disgust. I taste revelry tainted with weakness," the Corinthian purred. "Are you going to stop me," asked the nightmare as he tossed his shades aside, revealing the teeth. "Ophelia?"

... That was sort of neat. His eyes had teeth, and they moved. Ophelia almost dropped her sword. That made him almost like an Awakened Being, didn't it?

Of course.

"No." She smiled, and it was eerie, how happy she suddenly looked, with her grin stretched wide across her face.

"I'm going to cut you, collar to cock, and then I'm going to string your guts up in the trees as bait for the monstrous bitches in this City to feed on, so I can kill them, too." Her tongue darted out to lick her lips.

"And then I'll try a taste- Just a taste." To see if he tasted good, crimson, beautiful crimson on her blade that was beginning to ripple.

He turned slowly, following her motions.

"Your foreplay's good, for a girl," the Corinthian replied.

He quickly lunged forward, his sword making a curved slash towards hers.

"Really?" Ophelia asked, childish voice, almost too cute to be a woman with such a deadly precision, the sidestep and arc, heel dug into the ground before she twisted, then paused.

"Maybe that's why he likes me." She wondered aloud, changing direction again, a heavy slash at his midsection, the soft noise of displaced air in her blade's wake.

His blade quickly raised again to parry hers, the force causing the nightmare's heels to dig in the dirt, pushed by an inch from the impact alone. Immediately he retaliated by sliding the edge of his blade against hers, tip aiming for a shot at her collar before he jumped back to put distance between them.

"Really," the Corinthian smirked.

Ophelia was proving to be more than just a tactical diversion. He inhaled the challenge.

Instead of bouncing back, avoiding the thrust of his blade, Ophelia pushed forward with a manic glint to her eyes. It drove the blade against her collar, scraped against bone, but she didn't flinch, instead, the silver of her eyes flashed gold.

"Good, good!" She praised him, using the oppurtunity given by injury to follow through again, to reverse the grip of wrist on hilt and flash of steel at his neck.

Her counterattack slashed a shallow three inch cut along his neck as he retreated. He did in fact bleed, and his blood was wet and red like any human's. But unlike human men, his wound would seal itself in time. Regeneration made this fight all the more dirty, and it was an advantage to both sides.

"Just a taste," remarked the nightmare, their blood on each other's swords respectively. He took note of the beast, its shadow rippling in his vision, then Cori began the chase of this operation. He ran swiftly through the woods despite the weight of his weaponry, and it would be to the Stewards' disadvantage to get in their way.

"I'll get more!" She promised him, a manic grin and she was off as well, chasing him through the trees. Her sword was held just as easily, and as she ran her other hand slicked up the steel, coated her fingers in red and licked them languidly, didn't want to overtake him yet, that wouldn't be any fun, and she wanted to rip him apart.

The beast beside her, though, raced ahead, nipping at the Corinthian's heels.

"Orgasmic" he asked, catching the sight of her tasting his supernatural blood.

Shit that massive mutt of poison was fast. Not far up ahead he could already see the white hides of Stewards forming along a forest path. The Corinthian jumped forward, feeling the ethereal whistle of unseen teeth at his heels. His hand curled tightly around a branch overhead and he swung upward, slick as an aerial acrobat, to land on it then spring off its bending weight. The counter energy was perfect, and he expected the Claymore to follow him.

Right into a line of all three unsuspecting invaders.

"You're awful dirty." Ophelia laughed, felt blood on her tongue and on her mouth, felt breeze ripping past her, braid whipping back behind her, the blur of her legs and motion so natural to her she hardly felt strain from moving.

The gash across her collarbone had closed.

"Wonder why." A muttered musing, and as anticipated, she followed. Isaac ripped into the Stewards first, he couldn't move like she did, but the beast was just as bloodthirsty when she was, a snarl and they couldn't see it coming. But she didn't think about it yet, until she'd sprung after him and suddenly it was white Stewards at her blade, the splash of blood on her cheek and she frowned.

"... Cheater."

The cut down his neck had yet to heal, but it was no longer bleeding freely. One could no longer tell however as soon as the nightmare circled the blade overhead and brought it up into the exposed underarm of a Steward. Its arm severed at the shoulder, sprouting red across his face. It did the job of getting it out of his way, but more were coming at the ready. Cori turned to face Ophelia and grinned.

"That's why I'm dirty."

Those at a distance open fired at the pair (trio). He neatly slid his blade into the torso of another, between the plating and hip skirt, using it as a bodyshield before kicking it off his weapon in the Claymore's direction.

Firing? Ophelia had never encountered guns personally. She'd heard of them, seen Nnoitra's bullet wounds, but she'd never seen one, she'd never heard one, and she'd never even been shot by one.

So she paused, at the strange noise, turned her head as she sliced a Steward in two.

The bullets caught her full frontal, and her body moved with them as metal ripped through muscle, luckily missed bone. A rather upset expression crossed her face, and she blinked once, blinked twice.

Ophelia froze, looking down at the holes through her skin as her eyes slowly began to shift to gold.

"They don't play nice," he said, noticing the bloodied holes in her form. The neck wound had already healed, and judging from her expression these would too. More than anything, the Corinthian hoped she was displeased.

Not but seconds later, a higher ranking pasty came to engage them both in a fight, wielding what appeared to be a two-ended light staff. Cori silently bet himself if she would take off its head first or its hands. Or come after him--another one caught him in the shoulder.

"Don't gawk, pretty lady," hissed the nightmare, he turned to engage the shooter, putting it and the other Steward between them.

She looked down. Slowly, she seemed to be moving slowly, to her, she slipped her fingers in to her shoulder and dug around until she came back with a bullet between her bloody fingertips.

She examined it for a moment before she exploded into movement. Suddenly she was no longer still, she was all movement, all whirling steel, and the Stewards between them were suddenly dead, her sword rippled, seemed to bend and twist, and her hand pulsed, arm pulsed, muscles bulking as she released the yoma power in her body.

Ophelia's eyes had gone from silver to pure, bright, gold, and veins were racing up her neck, the bullet wounds closing even as her eyes locked on the Corinthian.

He was in her sights, and she was moving again.

Beautiful.

The Corinthian smiled, honored to bear witness to such a display, and he planned to live to tell the tale... As long as he could outrun her to safety. It was a dangerous mission, this one, but it was the kind the nightmare felt he could accomplish. They were practically dancing through the Stewards, all sinew and steel to their armor and lasers. Trailing blood and bile, among other things. His sword cut through the barrel of a weapon, causing it to backfire through another line. The white horror turned with another arc of his sword, to watch his back against Ophelia and her beast too.

He beckoned to her with a bloody finger, all the while letting the creatures take the brunt of her attacks.

She could be beautiful, in that disastrous, devastating way, in the way of knives and smiles that were far too sharp. And her lips, full and pretty, were stretched insane and thin over too white teeth.

She pursued him without thought for injury or strain, even though she had already forgotten how this had started, why she wanted to kill him so badly. But the want to kill stuck with her, with the nagging reminder that perhaps his guts would taste good, counting each Steward as she passed, for her game.

The Corinthian beckoned, and Ophelia came, in a ripple of her sword that arched through an outstretched arm towards his head.

He ducked quickly but not without a fallen lock of snow white hair. It shined in the light, far more unearthly than any chalky Steward's hide. If only the Corinthian had wanted a little haircut. He used his leverage to barrel his shoulder into her, ironically as another one of the bastards missed lancing her smiling face.

"Look up," the nightmare alerted, regarding the creature.

How much ground they could cover was up to his wit and her tenacity. They could fight across the scene at the Durandal, along the cannon-firing hull of the Swann, and further along the rocky coast and by the frigid lake. How many could they cut down or send to scatter? The Corinthian could last hours into days if he was up for the challenge, though this objective asked for at least until nightfall. Was the Claymore up to it?

There was enough sanguine covered organ to go around after all.

Claymore could walk for five days without resting. Fighting, though, was another thing, and maybe she could go days, but she'd need breaks, perhaps. She could burn through her muscles without a care, if she needed to, burn through yoma power until it burned away at her, she didn't care when she was so fully ensconced in this bloodlust of hers.

"Oh," Was muttered softly, and she dodged, threw her body to the side by wresting against the Corinthian, so close since he'd barreled in, as she moved the lance wielder lose an upper body.

The veins were beginning to crawl further up her skin, her body to shift and crack. Golden eyes, too keen, too hungry.

She was just getting started.

More blood complete with steaming hot viscera. It was harder to tell which was his and hers and theirs anymore. That was one of the better aspects of the Corinthian's body, and most likely the Claymore's: the superior ability to withstand infection. He maneuvered out from under her as she completed her swing. Placing further distance between them. The nightmare mirrored her expression, and one might think they could read each other in body language alone.

"Keep up, I'm just getting started," Cori said as he licked his bloodstained lips.

If she could last then so would he, the Resistance needed it.

They kept it up.

Ophelia lost track of time, and she lost track of how many she'd killed. She moved and she moved and she moved. Her arm swung her blade until the blade wouldn't move anymore, and then she switched hands, and swung again. The beast beside her moved with her until it stopped moving and she left it behind, moved on after him and pursued still.

Until suddenly, she paused. The Claymore couldn't recall if the sun had set and rose. She had thought it did.

But somehow, there weren't any more. She couldn't even smell any more, not... close, anyway. Her sense of smell was clouded, though, by the mist of blood, of bile, of gore clinging to her person and to the ground, to the bodies, to everyone and everything. Her arm moved weakly, slicked the red off her blade, and she blinked, focusing her golden-pulse-silver eyes on the Corinthian.

She took a step.

Ophelia was confused. Veins twitched. Her leg trembled.

He'd kept track of the time as he was ordered to, though on the Corinthian's terms it was a task in which he was indulging as an opportunist. The sun had already set, dark orange and red light descending on the City's mysterious horizon. It made the blood on their persons appear black, but the smell was all the same, and the body parts were in surplus. He'd sustained more damage now than he had before in many years, even worse than when he took Daniel from Loki and defended the throne room of the Dreaming.

His left hand had been slashed across the palm, making it painful to wield the blade but certainly not impossible. He had several cuts and bruises from general impact with Claymore and Stewards alike, more blood from her and more artillery rounds from them. But he was still standing, neck wound a thin line, gash to his shoulder dulled from bright red to dirty brick. His jeans soaked every fluid from them, turning the blue into something purple and black. Messy. And satisfying if not for one more thing...

There were no live Stewards left in this part of the woods. They had either retreated or were laying in pieces in the snow. Cori knew about their fast decomposition rates. The cold should slow it, but now, when she appeared to be faltering, was his only real chance. He was so fucking tempted. The nightmare rest his sword on his intact shoulder and reached for his knife. With urgency he cut at one of the disembodied heads, removing a milky white eye from its socket to jam it into his own face. Their language was alien, and in death all he saw was her coming to behead it as its last vision. But it was sustenance, and it gave him the energy to continue fighting if her misstep was only a brief falter.

"More..." his teeth eyes rasped, cautious in their eerie tone.

Ophelia killed monsters that are human guts. She killed them because they killed her brother, not because they killed humans, not because the Organization ordered her to, and not because she was the 4th strongest of their number, the most adept at hunting down Awakened Beings. She killed them for that reason only, even if she didn't know it herself.

Slowly, she moved, to watch him, her eyes draining from the vibrant gold into pale silver, veins retreating from her skin, from the swell of blood. Still again slowly her hand moved, wiped a dab of viscous blood from her breast and licked it clean, almost idly as she watched him.

"..." Ophelia bent, and it hurt. Her body hurt, not from wounds, because it appeared as if she had none, but from the burn of yoma energy put into healing those wounds. She regenerated, but she was an offensive type, not a defensive. She thought, who do I have to kill to live, not how do I protect myself to live, and her regeneration took more effort, more time, and more energy than a defensive type's did, but she'd done it anyway, because wounds in a fight like that got in the way more than burning yoma power did.

Her fingers closed around a Stewards' steaming guts and she yanked them out, dangling pink and thick between her bloodied nails.

"Hungry?" She purred. If he was, if he ate guts, then she'd move again, despite the burn out, and kill him. Kill him, because if this, too, excited him, then he was an Awakened Beings, and those all died by her hand. If not... she couldn't remember why she started chasing him in the first place, her childish memorry lost to the manic excitement of the fight itself.

"Stomach," he identified the partial sack she pulled between her deft fingers, "great for haggis, shit for anything else."

The Corinthian spoke through his normal mouth, still maintaining his sanity despite the brief euphoria of eating an eye. Consuming the ocular organ excited him, especially when the organ belonged to an enemy. Just like Loki's eyes. He cut at the Steward's other eye and held it up to Ophelia.

"In the old days, people had many beliefs about violent death. They believed a corpse would begin bleeding again if its murderer walked by. They believed that the last thing you saw before you died was recorded, frozen, on the inside of the victim's eyes. Do you think it was me, or you?"

He grinned.

But did her eat guts?

"That one's mine." Ophelia answered easily. Her hand moved, the guts waved about with the motion as she pointed to each of the ten odd bodies still not fully decomposed.

"Yours," She labeled them, "Mine," because she remembered her kills, and if they weren't hers, they were his, and she knew which ones belonged to her.

Her grin mirrored his. Or maybe his mirrored hers.

In a manner of speaking, yes. He cooked them and turned guts into an excellent stew, a wonderful plate of pickled tripe, there wasn't anything he couldn't cook and make delicious for human consumption. Hell if the Corinthian made the effort to learn how, he could easily cut fugu and have a 100% guarantee of not poisoning his customers. But that was besides the point.

The nightmare's attention turned to each corpse as she labeled them, not at all distracted by the waving entrails.

"You're pretty good," he complimented her, smiling as he tucked the eye back into the Steward's socket. He concluded that it tasted bland, a bit like cod left out to defrost for too long. No individuality, no spice. "The Corinthian," the white horror introduced himself.

There was a long pause. The Corinthian, like a title. How very nice. And he was fast, too, and good, and she wanted to keep going but she was so tired.

Her lips pursed, and her tongue slipped out to lick more blood from her lips. Her silver eyes fixed on him. Why was she chasing him again? Did she want to kill him? What for?

... He had given her some fun, after all.

"Ophelia." She murmured finally, "Blood-Soaked Ophelia," smiling innocently, slipping down onto her sword that she stabbed into the ground, nestled the blade between her shoulder blades and leaned back against it, knees tucked up and streeeeetching luxuriously, beginning to strip off her armor with little muttered noises at the numerous cuts and damages to the harsh metal, reveling more of her unblemished skin.

Edited 2008-01-08 21:56 (UTC)

"The name suits you," he upnodded as she reclined on her own blade. The nightmare watched her remove her armor, piece by piece, revealing regenerated flesh. He admired the speed at which she healed, wondering if she too had been created rather than born like most other individuals. Small talk for later, at least now they were acquainted.

"I have another engagement," the Corinthian stretched, arching his back and reopening shallow wounds when his skin pulled taut over his muscles. He hardly flinched from the pain. "I'll remember you," said the nightmare, a great compliment in his own terms.

Ophelia watched him, her nose wrinkled at the sight of the wounds reopening. It smelled wonderful, his blood, unlike most blood she'd smelt in her long life. Not as good as the blood of Awakened Beings, of course, or those something akin to her sisters, but good nonetheless.

Pity, that the Stewards' blood tasted so badly.

"Come back." She smiled, and it was her own offer, to fight again. She'd only need rest for a few hours at most before she would be able to fight at a good capacity again, and with her bloodlust so riled, she wasn't about to let it go to waste alone.

His blood would always be of the sea and his flesh of the sand at night. It was how he was made. She smelled similar, not in the place but in the structure. A thing to be made, not sired.

"I will," the Corinthian promised, though without specifying when, "pretty lady."

The nightmare ducked into the dark shadows of the woods, like moonlight on the ground.

For she had been made. The basic construct was a shy human girl, who'd run for her life and watched her brother sacrifice himself for her. The rest was the Organization that had ripped her body apart and replaced her organs with those of a yoma monster, and taught her to kill.

"Mm." Pretty lady. Not as cute as good girl, but it was just fine. With a content little smile, the half-monster nestled back against her sword. A soft whimper and the shadow beast finally caught up, trailing the hissing poison of blood and lay beside her. Such a nice pet, from Isaak. Isaak was the caller kitten.

So many names.

Ophelia closed her eyes. She still liked blood-soaked best.

Log: Complete

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