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Entry tags:
Tu Shanshu App
Player Information:
Name: IB
Age: 32
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lycanfae
Game Cast: Dinah Lance (Network Post)
Character Information:
Name: “Phantom” Miria
Canon: Claymore
Canon Point: At the end of chapter 126, with the defeat of the Organization.
Age: unknown. I don't even think she knows - Claymores mature, but don't age past maturity. She's a physical adult.
Reference: Claymore on Wikipedia
Miria on Wikipedia
Scanlations
Setting:
This is what everyone knows:
The “world” is a continent about the size of Japan shaped roughly like a cross, with four peninsulas projecting to the four compass points around one central region: Alfons to the North, Lautrec to the West, Sutafu to the East and Toulouse in the center. Toulouse contains the only large city of the continent: the holy city of Rabona. All other settlements are small towns and villages. The whole continent is divided into forty-seven smaller regions.
It is a very pre-industrial world, and while we see very little of ordinary people going about their lives, it's safe to assume the economy is based on farmland and trade, with virtually no middle or upper classes and no government above the level of individual towns. The reason for this level of hardscrabble is partly due to the lack of raw resources on the continent, but mostly due to the yoma that rampage throughout the land.
Yoma are monsters that have lived on this continent as far back as there is history. They are intelligent – capable of language and reasoning – but driven by an insatiable hunger for guts. Taking over the bodies and minds of humans, they can hide in a village or town, killing and eating people on the sly while the people living there have only the increasing pile of corpses to tell them there's a yoma in their midst.
Ordinary yoma are fast and strong, but theoretically a human who was much stronger than average and had enough training could take one on in a fight. But the yoma's ability to hide in plain sight make them impossible to catch, except by the half-yoma warriors of the Organization in Sutafu.
The hidden nature of yoma attacks usually give rise to a great deal of suspicion among the affected communities, especially targeted at people who were close to the victims. It is not uncommon for surviving members of ravaged families to be turned out, out of fear that they may turn out to be yoma themselves. If these survivors are young girls, they may be taken in by the Organization. There, they take on the flesh and blood of a yoma and are transformed into warriors with not just strength and speed that surpasses most yoma, but the ability to detect yoma aura, which allows them to pick out the monster even if it is hiding among humans.
These warriors are nicknamed “Claymores” because of the oversized swords they carry with them, and are easily recognized due to their complexion: the transformation process removes all color from a warrior's skin and hair, and leaves her pale, with blonde hair and identifiable silver eyes. Being half-monster, they are treated with suspicion and distrust by the human population, who also use the terms 'silver-eyed witch' or 'silver-eyed slayer.'
If a town suspects they are being targeted by a yoma, they send to the Organization, which sends a Claymore to dispense with the yoma. The Claymore traditionally arrives, kills the monster and moves on, and all the exchange of money happens with a handler from the Organization. The fees are extortionate, but it is well known that if a village doesn't pay, then the next time a yoma turns up, no Claymore will be sent. The Organization and Claymores themselves are viewed with hatred and fear, but are considered a necessary evil. There is one rule the Claymores live by: to kill a human, even by accident, brings a death sentence to the warrior. This helps keep the uneasy trust between humans and the Organization in most places, but in some places there is no truce. For example, Claymores are expressly forbidden from entering the Holy City of Rabona.
This is what Warriors know:
They do not call themselves 'Claymores' – that is a nickname imposed from the outside. They mostly refer to each other as 'warriors' or 'comrades.' The process of becoming a warrior is painful, torturous and in most cases non-consensual. Girls are sold to the Organization either by their parents or by people from their hometown after being orphaned. It is exceedingly common for young trainees to have witnessed the gruesome murder of their families before being sold by a village that can no longer trust them. Miria was one of those girls. Based on her fierce protective nature towards her comrades, I think she had two younger sisters.
While individual skills and abilities vary from warrior to warrior, they all share strength, speed, an extraordinary healing factor, and the ability to sense yoma auras. As warriors themselves are half-yoma, this includes the ability to recognise each other and sense each other's presence from some distance. Warriors' bodies have virtually none of the needs of a human body. They can go for days on a few bites of food, are immune to extremes in temperature, and require so little sleep that they nearly all make do with napping outdoors, sitting against their swords.
Warriors can suppress their yoma energy inside them, and with time and effort can hide themselves from yoma and other warriors' ability to detect yoma aura. The Organization has also developed pills that suppress yoma auras altogether, even as far as changing their eye color back to brown so their eyes don't give them away. They come with side effects, of course, chiefly the suppression of a warrior's ability to detect yoma auras herself. For this reason they are used rarely, but warriors use them to sneak into places like Rabona, where the Organization is forbidden.
At any one time, there are forty-seven active warriors, each assigned to a different region of the continent, and numbered according to rank from the strongest (1) to the weakest (47). There is a great deal of prestige attached to these ranks, with 1 through 9 (especially 1 though 5) being considered elite warriors, while 40 through 47 are usually looked down on as weaklings with a short life span. High ranking warriors nearly always work on a unique move to use in battle, ostensibly to give them an advantage against yoma who haven't seen it before, but also because these moves give them higher prestige among their comrades. This emphasis on rank causes a degree of competitiveness amongst the warriors, and their assignments to individual regions keeps them from associating with each other too much. Warriors, with some exceptions, tend to be an antisocial bunch.
Their powers come from the yoma flesh they have in their bodies, and while they have a baseline for these abilities that is much greater than a human's, they can increase them all temporarily by drawing on their yoma power in battle. This comes with risks, though, as the yoma battles with their human nature and causes them to become less human. As a warrior draws on 10% of her yoma power, her silver eyes turn gold. At greater amounts, her body starts changing and her flesh starts popping. Drawing on power like this is an incredible risk: it takes an effort of will to pull herself back to humanity. If a warrior draws on more than 80% of her power, she crosses a point of no return and loses herself to the monster. This is called Awakening. Sometimes warriors Awaken in the middle of a fight by drawing on too much power, but sometimes it's a more gradual process, as a warrior feels her ability to contain her yoma power slipping away. Each warrior carries a black card in the hilt of her claymore, bearing her unique personal symbol. If a warrior feels like her Awakening is inevitable, she will send this card through the Organization to a comrade of her choice, a request to kill her while she still has her humanity.
Awakened Beings are much stronger and more powerful than regular yoma, and have a much stronger hunger. In order to protect the Organization's reputation, Awakened Beings are called voracious eaters where ordinary people can hear, and are referred to as a particularly dangerous type of yoma. When a request is put in to deal with one, the Organization sends not one warrior but a team of four. This team is always lead by a warrior ranked in the single digits, and usually contains one in the teens and two in the 20s and 30s. This is usually the only time warriors group together.
The power of an Awakened Being naturally depends on the original power of the warrior who awakened, and therefore her rank. An Awakened former number 9, for example, is much more dangerous than an Awakened former number 35. By Miria's time there exist three Awakened number ones, and their individual power is so great they have reached legendary status. They are called the Creatures of the Abyss; their names are Riful, Isley and Luciela, and their hunger extends to a need to conquer the world. For many years they existed in a three way deadlock, unable to take on each other for the fear the third will conquer the victor in their weakened state. No one from the Organization has been willing to take on these three monsters.
One of these Abyssal Ones, Isley of the North, is male. Before the Organization started using girls for their warriors, they experimented with a generation of male warriors. These turned out to have little to no control over their yoma power and awakened almost immediately, unable to suppress it at all. Isley was the number one of that generation. (Also of note: his number two, Rigaldo the Lion, and number three, Dauf, who after Awakening becomes Riful's consort.)
While Miria was number 6 of the Organization, Isley amassed an unprecedented number of Awakened Beings in the North to form a huge army, with the intention of marching south. While that army fought twenty four warriors from the Organization, he sent more Awakened Beings to Riful in the West and the Organization in the East while he himself went South to kill Luciela. After that battle the balance of power shifted. Luciela was removed from the picture, but the Organization proved themselves finally powerful enough to face the Abyssal Ones. The three-way deadlock became between Isley, Riful, and the Organization.
This is what Miria knows:
[Spoiler Warning from here on out.]
Awakening is not a point of no return. It is possible, with a great force of will, to come back right from the point of Awakening, and suppress one's power back down inside oneself. Miria knows because she's done this.
After helping to kill the Awakened form of her best friend Hilda, Miria was overcome with anger and despair, and having just been through an intense battle with the Awakened Being, she lost control of her yoma power. She was convinced she was about to Awaken, and somehow managed to force it back down. After the experience, she noticed she had changed: it became easier to draw on her power in the middle of battle and to suppress power once it had been used. She also began to feel pangs of hunger, although an ordinary hunger, not one specifically for guts. Miria came to the conclusion that she had actually Awakened, or at least half-Awakened, and wisely kept that decision to herself.
After the experience of killing Hilda, Miria swore revenge against the Organization. She started this quest with a search for information, and managed to discover much about the Organization that was kept secret to most of the warriors.
The two biggest things that Miria discovered were these: 1) The continent she lived on was not the only one in the world, and 2) The Organization created yoma.
On a much larger continent, a war has been waging for generations between many countries divided into two allegiances. One of these sides includes a non-human tribe, allegedly the descendants of dragons. This side quickly took the upper hand in every battle, so the other side began throwing a lot of resources into the development of a new weapon: one that could turn humans into monsters.
The first attempts led to male warriors Awakening in battle and destroying both sides, so the researchers took over the smaller island to use as a testing ground for new weapons. They took samples from the flesh of dragons' descendants and implanted them into humans to turn them into 'yoma,' and then continued research to create Awakened Beings they could control and send into battle against the dragons' descendants. Essentially, Miria's world, her entire life, and every piece of torture she's been though has been an experiment to create a weapon for a war that doesn't even affect her.
Miria discovered this with the help of Rubel - a spy from the other side of the war, working deep within the Organization. She has no stake in the war, but the knowledge reinforced her resolved to destroy the Organization, for her sake and the sake of all her comrades. However, her quest for knowledge did not go undetected by the Organization and she was marked as dangerous, a situation that has led twice to obvious attempts to kill her – once by sending her and three other troublemakers to kill a male Awakened Being they should be no match for, and again by sending her to lead a group of 24 warriors against an unprecedented army of Awakened Beings being gathered by Isley of the North to invade the southern lands. Not one single warrior was expected to survive that assault, and the Organization sent the ones it considered dangerous to its research.
By using the pills designed to suppress yoma aura, Miria managed to fake the death of seven of the warriors, and they hid for seven years before returning south, some for their own reasons. but In Miria's mind, at least, her goal was clear: to finally destroy the Organization that tortured and used her and her sisters.
Notable Warriors of Miria's Generation:
Except that Miria considers every warrior notable. Let's see:
Number 1, Alicia and Number 2, Beth
Alica and Beth are used by the Organization as their Ultimate Weapon against Abyssal Ones. Identical twins implanted with flesh from the same yoma, their trainers worked to completely erase any sense of individuality and to fuse their consciousness. Through this, Alicia is able to completely awaken, essentially becoming an Abyssal One, while Beth holds her human consciousness and control. They are 'completed' while Miria is away in the North.
Number 3, God-Eye Galatea
Trained as the Organization's 'eyes', Galatea has an extraordinary talent in sensing yoma auras. In battle, she can sync her aura with the yoma she's fighting and use it to deflect their attacks. As a warrior, though, she was primarily used to spy on her comrades, using her ability to watch their auras from incredible distances beyond most warrior's detection. However, what she saw often led her to have sympathy and compassion for her comrades. After the sacrifice of twenty four warriors, including many she respected, she abandoned the Organization and went into hiding. Miria later met up with her on her way to destroy the Organization, and the two former warriors have a great deal of respect for each other.
Number 4, Ophelia the Blood-Soaked Warrior
Ophelia was there when Miria almost awakened, and she was the only warrior who Miria feared. Obsessed with hunting Awakened Beings, Ophelia may have prevented Hilda's Black Card from getting to Miria on time, and led to her Awakening. She took furious pleasure in destroying Hilda, and when Miria almost Awakened, Ophelia stood by with apparent glee, hoping to kill her too. Miria was terrified of Ophelia, but never displayed actual hatred or a need for revenge. When Ophelia died, Miria's reaction wasn't shown on panel.
Number 5, Rafaela
Rafaela was a former number two, and the survivor of the Organization's first attempt to make a dual warrior like Alica and Beth. Rafaela was holding the consciousness of her sister Luciela when Luciela Awakened and became a Creature of the Abyss. Rafaela left the Organization for some time, before returning as number five. When Miria was in the North, Rafaela went to face Luciela finally, and disappeared.
Number 15, Deneve
A defensive warrior, Deneve has extraordinary healing powers and is able to regenerate limbs in the middle of battle. Miria first met her on Miria's seventh Awakened Being hunt (Deneve's third) and the first blatant attempt to have Miria killed.
Number 22, Helen
Another warrior Miria met on the same hunt, Helen has the ability to stretch any one of her limbs to huge extent, giving them a fluid, elastic property. Helen and Deneve are best friends, nearly sisters.
Number 47, Clare
Ostensibly the weakest warrior in the Organization, Clare is the only warrior to have approached the Organization voluntarily, asking to become a warrior. She took on the flesh of a former number 1, Teresa of the Faint Smile, and inherited from her the ability to read yoma aura to predict her opponent's every move. After her first meeting with Miria, Deneve and Helen, Clare also acquired the right arm of a former number 2, Quicksword Ilena, which she can move with incredible speeds. Clare and Miria are friends, but their goals are very different: Clare is on a revenge quest against a specific Awakened Being.
The three warriors above first met Miria on the same Awakened Being hunt, and are all Half-Awakened, which Miria noticed in their first battle together and is, she thinks, the reason they were sent to their deaths. They became friends on that hunt, and later all four of them survived the Battle of the North. They trained together for seven years in secret and their bonds as friends grew stronger.
Number 14, Cynthia; Number 31, Tabitha; Number 40, Uma
These three, along with Miria, Deneve, Helen and Clare make up the only seven survivors of the Battle of the North. Suppressing their yoma auras first by pills and them by strength of will, the seven former warriors trained without ever drawing on their yoma power, becoming faster, stronger, and more skilled in their individual abilities than ever before. After seven years, the group followed Miria south to face the Organization, having become elite fighters despite having such a wide variety of starting ranks.
And then there are the seventeen warriors who lost their lives at the Battle of the North, whose deaths Miria carries on her shoulders and blames the Organization for.
Personality:
Miria is fuelled by guilt and by a thirst for revenge. Her vendetta against the Organization started when her best friend Hilda Awakened because of what the Organization did to her, and Miria became the one to kill her. After the Battle of the North, both her hate for the Organization and her personal guilt spread to cover the seventeen warriors killed on under her command on a mission that was supposed to kill twenty four.
Even before Miria became half-Awakened, she was said to be one of the best warriors when working in a group. She is a natural leader and cares deeply for her comrades, which has been said to be her biggest strength as well as one of her biggest weakness. While her consideration towards every warrior under her command led to the first victory in the North, her need to protect her friends led to her leaving on her own for her final assault on the Organization. She even disabled one of her friends temporarily to prevent her from following Miria into the fight. Facing the Organization on her own even led to her first defeat, as the Organization used a weapon that was only effective against one warrior.
Miria's compassion also led to her eventual victory, however. From the very moment she turned towards the Organization, she vowed never to kill a Warrior, and when the Organization called nearly forty warriors to cut her down, she defeated them using non-lethal moves only. As they realized that they had been brought down with no actual harm, they turned on her with non-lethal strokes, effectively helping her fake her death in front of the men of the Organization, and without a word, they all joined her rebellion.
It is also worth mentioning that while Miria has every reason to think Ophelia engineered Hilda's Awakening and Miria's own, just to have the chance to kill them, Miria exhibits no actual hatred towards Ophelia herself. Fear, yes, but the blame she puts on the Organization. Every warrior in the Organization has suffered intense trauma, physical torture, and the fear and hatred of the human population. Miria considers them all her comrades and sisters, and blames the Organization, not Ophelia, for the monster she turned into.
Although Miria feels strong bonds with every one of her comrades, she has learned to expect suspicion and distrust from humans due to their hatred of “Claymores.” The only people she actually hates are the men of the Organization, and once she is accustomed to the idea that the foreigners in Keeliai don't instantly hate her, she will have no problems associating with them.
Even with her sword and her physical prowess, Miria considers information the most important weapon in a warrior's arsenal. She started her crusade against the Organization with an investigation into their history and their methods, aiming to uncover the full extent of their evil before initiating her rebellion. In battle, the first thing she does is assess her opponent's abilities and techniques, as well as those of her comrades, in order to exploit the one and make best use of the other. When faced with an unknown variable such as Clare – who showed great prowess in battle despite being the lowest ranked warrior – Miria insisted on facing her with swords, just to work out how she fought and how Miria could use her in the hunting party.
Miria is coming to Tu Vishan having defeated the Organization and completed her long term goal, with a few loose ends to tie up, but no burning desire to return home immediately. Although gods are known on the continent, Miria has no particular affinity for any religion, and she has deliberately avoided thinking of an afterlife. Hearing that she is now part of the In Between will not faze her too much, and not just because warriors are difficult to faze. She will in the medium to long term require evidence of this, but she can be patient for it.
Appearance:
A slender woman who appears to have just reached adulthood, with incredibly pale skin, blonde hair and silver eyes.
Here is a picture, which is from before she acquired some scars, so here's a close up.
Miria's scars actually cover the whole of her body, but the two criss-crossing her face are the deepest and the angriest-looking. Claymores don't scar usually, and this is simple because when her comrades cut her down and then healed her, they had to prioritise healing greater wounds first.
Under her clothes, Miria is split neck to crotch down the center, with a wound that remains open and unhealed, exposing the organs beneath. The gash is sewn closed, and only that thread keeps her body together.
Abilities:
Physical Prowess
Miria has superhuman strength and stamina, enabling her to fight with a sword she shouldn't by rights be able to lift without a great deal of effort. She needs very little in terms of physical comfort and rest, and can get by eating a few bites of food and resting for an hour or so every few days. It is usual for warriors to rest by sticking their claymore into the ground and sleeping against the blade. Since becoming half-Awakened, Miria experiences a greater amount of hunger, but it is still nothing like human level. Warriors also have heightened senses, able to use their superior sight, hearing and smell to track their opponents when their aura sensing abilities are not enough.
Miria can increase her strength, speed and other abilities by drawing on her yoma power. This is an active process that requires a force of will, and sometimes results in a physical change depending on how much she uses. Doing this she runs the risk that she might Awaken and become an uncontrollable monster with a hunger for guts.
Healing Factor
By drawing on her yoma power, Miria can heal almost any wound except a head shot or one to her vital organs. This includes the reattachment of severed limbs. Because it involves the active use of her power, it is a tiring process and needs to be done quickly after sustaining the injury. It also involves the risk of drawing on too much of her power and Awakening.
Aura sensing
Miria has the ability to sense the presence of an aura like hers. Unlike some of her comrades who can track and manipulate auras, Miria's ability is limited to being able to detect the presence of a yoma/warrior/Awakened Being in the vicinity and give her a rough idea of the power of the being. Because all 'auras' in canon have the same dragon-descendent source, the way this translates to panfandom environments isn't obvious. I have set up a permissions post which basically leaves aura detection up to the player whose aura is in question.
The Phantom
Miria's nickname in the Organization, “Phantom Miria,” comes from her personalized technique of using incredible speed in battle. By using bursts of yoma energy, Miria is able to achieve speeds so fast that her opponents are unable to track her, and is able to dodge attacks by seeming to teleport short distances. Because this requires drawing on reserves of power, it has a limited usefulness and tires her out, although now she has much greater stamina than she used to.
After seven years training with a fully suppressed aura, Miria developed the “new Phantom,” building up her baseline speed to the extent where she can reach nearly the same speed but without drawing on her yoma power. This is slower, but still faster than all other living warriors, and has a much greater degree of accuracy than the old Phantom. It can also be used an unlimited number of times.
Having come out of hiding and no longer needing to keep her aura fully suppressed, Miria can use both abilities as needed.
Team Leader
Aside from her consideration for her comrades, even beyond her speed, Miria's other greatest asset is her intelligence. She fights tactically and intelligently, factoring in her opponent's strengths and weaknesses as well as those of her companions. Even at rank 8, she was said to be better than number 1 in a group.
She led twenty four warriors, of ranks ranging from 6 right down to 47, to victory against three Awakened Beings of unprecedented strength, without a single fatality, by grouping them according to ability, so the less experienced warriors gained experience and the leaders learned to lead and compensate for their comrades. Knowing that the rest of the battle was a doomed endeavor, she concocted the scheme to protect as many warriors as possible by giving them a low dosage aura suppressant, so when they fall unconscious it appears that they are dead.
Miria was able to work out in the heat of battle that Helen, Deneve and Clare had half-Awakened, and she caught on immediately whenever the Organization arranged for her to die. Even though she had help from Rubel, Miria deduced much of the Organization's true schemes herself, including the realization that the warrior's Claymores were made of a metal unknown to the continent. The reason the Organization marked her as such a threat was not her hatred, nor her speed and prowess, but her intelligence.
Inventory:
one set of armor, built more for show than protection, silver-colored plating focused around her shoulders, greaves and gauntlets. The shirt, leggings and cape are all grey and white.
one huge claymore sword, almost as long as Miria herself is tall, made of a mysterious metal that cannot be chipped or dulled, capable of cutting into stone and cleaving through all flesh short of the most powerfully armored Creature of the Abyss.
Three aura-suppressant pills
Both sword and shirt bear Miria's mark:
Suite:
The wood sector will be the most like anything Miria really recognizes, coming from a a pre-industrial farming and trade based world and unused to actually living in cities. A single floor will be more than enough, because, let's be honest, she's much more likely to wander into the woods, stick her sword into the ground and sleep against that. Claymores lead a nomadic lifestyle, and the concept of a home to return to is human and alien to her.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
The turtle is sick. They tell her that early. If you start feeling weaker, they say, it's because Tu Vishan is ailing.
Miria cannot remember being sick before, and she doesn't know what to do with the warning. But the day after she arrives, she's practising in the park when she notices her Phantom moves are slower than they should be. Her sword does feel heavier. This, she thinks, must be weakness.
She marks it as interesting, and works to compensate as well as she can.
The hunger, when it arrives, terrifies her. Miria ignores it at first, as she's ignored the occasional pang since half-Awakening, scared it might be a sign that she might start craving flesh. But when the dizziness arrives and the headaches, and the feeling of being so weak that she can barely carry her sword, Miria walks into the Earth Sector and buys some vegetables. She sits against a wall, ignoring the Kedan and everything except her purchase, and she starts to eat them.
She feels much better very quickly, and finds herself smiling.
Ah. So I was only hungry for food.
That evening, she sits against her sword to get some rest, and falls to the ground as soon as she closes her eyes. She hits it hard, and finds herself suddenly able to get up. Her limbs feel too heavy to move, and protest every attempt. She worries for a few minutes, thinking numbly that she may be about to die.
The light is different when her eyes open – the sun having long since departed and leaving only the glow of the turtle shell. Miria's limbs ache, but respond better to her as she pulls herself up onto her feet. She fell asleep, for what seems like hours.
Miria picks up her sword and carries it carefully to the suite she was shown on arrival. There, she lies down on the bed, and thinks how much better this feels than the ground.
When morning comes, Miria decides to leave her sword behind and walks out into the city, wearing ordinary Kedan clothes rather than her armor. It's cold, so she includes a cape that covers her shoulders. She stops at a cafe when she's hungry in the middle of the day, and sits until she's no longer tired from the walk, nodding a greeting to people as they pass without stopping to stare at her sword or her armor.
She remembers the trainees coming out of the Organization with that man, remembers that gladness she felt when she realized they would have a chance to live for once, just enjoying each other's company, like children. She remembers, also, that tiny part of her that was envious of that chance.
The turtle's sick, they told her. It's making her weaker.
Miria lifts the warming drink to her face and lets the steam drive away the cold before she takes a sip, marvelling at how it satisfies a need she had forgotten how to feel.
So this is what it's like to be human. I had forgotten.
She smiles.
Network:
[Video – anonymous location]
[Miria didn't choose a console cafe for this first connection to the internet. It is simply that, when she made the decision to finally reach out to the community of foreigners in Keeliai, she had been sitting against her sword outside the city walls, and it was easier to come into the nearest cafe than make it back to her suite.
Truth be told, she hasn't been back to her suite since first being shown there. After all, what use does a half-yoma warrior have with a suite? This is even her first time within city walls in two days.
When the video starts, there is a pale woman, with ugly red scars crossing between her silver eyes, staring at the screen as her face appears on it. The hilt of a large broadsword can be seen rising from behind her shoulders. It is a second before she speaks.]
Hello. My name is Miria.
[In seven years since breaking from the Organization, this is the first time she's had to introduce herself like that. It still feels strange not to add: 'number six in the Organization.' She finds herself almost adding 'Captain of the Rebellion,' but that wouldn't sit right on her tongue either. So 'Miria,' it is.
The rest, she has rehearsed.]
I have been looking, and I do not think there are any of my comrades or former comrades in this place. If there are, and you see this... [She gives a gentle smile.] I am not hiding, please come and introduce yourself.
[She's been looking. But she hasn't found a single aura that could belong to a warrior or a yoma. But she is not suppressing hers; anyone who wanted could find her and she'd welcome them.]
For everyone else:
I find myself in want of something to do besides exercising my sword arms. Does anyone have a recommendation?
Name: IB
Age: 32
Contact:
Game Cast: Dinah Lance (Network Post)
Character Information:
Name: “Phantom” Miria
Canon: Claymore
Canon Point: At the end of chapter 126, with the defeat of the Organization.
Age: unknown. I don't even think she knows - Claymores mature, but don't age past maturity. She's a physical adult.
Reference: Claymore on Wikipedia
Miria on Wikipedia
Scanlations
Setting:
This is what everyone knows:
The “world” is a continent about the size of Japan shaped roughly like a cross, with four peninsulas projecting to the four compass points around one central region: Alfons to the North, Lautrec to the West, Sutafu to the East and Toulouse in the center. Toulouse contains the only large city of the continent: the holy city of Rabona. All other settlements are small towns and villages. The whole continent is divided into forty-seven smaller regions.
It is a very pre-industrial world, and while we see very little of ordinary people going about their lives, it's safe to assume the economy is based on farmland and trade, with virtually no middle or upper classes and no government above the level of individual towns. The reason for this level of hardscrabble is partly due to the lack of raw resources on the continent, but mostly due to the yoma that rampage throughout the land.
Yoma are monsters that have lived on this continent as far back as there is history. They are intelligent – capable of language and reasoning – but driven by an insatiable hunger for guts. Taking over the bodies and minds of humans, they can hide in a village or town, killing and eating people on the sly while the people living there have only the increasing pile of corpses to tell them there's a yoma in their midst.
Ordinary yoma are fast and strong, but theoretically a human who was much stronger than average and had enough training could take one on in a fight. But the yoma's ability to hide in plain sight make them impossible to catch, except by the half-yoma warriors of the Organization in Sutafu.
The hidden nature of yoma attacks usually give rise to a great deal of suspicion among the affected communities, especially targeted at people who were close to the victims. It is not uncommon for surviving members of ravaged families to be turned out, out of fear that they may turn out to be yoma themselves. If these survivors are young girls, they may be taken in by the Organization. There, they take on the flesh and blood of a yoma and are transformed into warriors with not just strength and speed that surpasses most yoma, but the ability to detect yoma aura, which allows them to pick out the monster even if it is hiding among humans.
These warriors are nicknamed “Claymores” because of the oversized swords they carry with them, and are easily recognized due to their complexion: the transformation process removes all color from a warrior's skin and hair, and leaves her pale, with blonde hair and identifiable silver eyes. Being half-monster, they are treated with suspicion and distrust by the human population, who also use the terms 'silver-eyed witch' or 'silver-eyed slayer.'
If a town suspects they are being targeted by a yoma, they send to the Organization, which sends a Claymore to dispense with the yoma. The Claymore traditionally arrives, kills the monster and moves on, and all the exchange of money happens with a handler from the Organization. The fees are extortionate, but it is well known that if a village doesn't pay, then the next time a yoma turns up, no Claymore will be sent. The Organization and Claymores themselves are viewed with hatred and fear, but are considered a necessary evil. There is one rule the Claymores live by: to kill a human, even by accident, brings a death sentence to the warrior. This helps keep the uneasy trust between humans and the Organization in most places, but in some places there is no truce. For example, Claymores are expressly forbidden from entering the Holy City of Rabona.
This is what Warriors know:
They do not call themselves 'Claymores' – that is a nickname imposed from the outside. They mostly refer to each other as 'warriors' or 'comrades.' The process of becoming a warrior is painful, torturous and in most cases non-consensual. Girls are sold to the Organization either by their parents or by people from their hometown after being orphaned. It is exceedingly common for young trainees to have witnessed the gruesome murder of their families before being sold by a village that can no longer trust them. Miria was one of those girls. Based on her fierce protective nature towards her comrades, I think she had two younger sisters.
While individual skills and abilities vary from warrior to warrior, they all share strength, speed, an extraordinary healing factor, and the ability to sense yoma auras. As warriors themselves are half-yoma, this includes the ability to recognise each other and sense each other's presence from some distance. Warriors' bodies have virtually none of the needs of a human body. They can go for days on a few bites of food, are immune to extremes in temperature, and require so little sleep that they nearly all make do with napping outdoors, sitting against their swords.
Warriors can suppress their yoma energy inside them, and with time and effort can hide themselves from yoma and other warriors' ability to detect yoma aura. The Organization has also developed pills that suppress yoma auras altogether, even as far as changing their eye color back to brown so their eyes don't give them away. They come with side effects, of course, chiefly the suppression of a warrior's ability to detect yoma auras herself. For this reason they are used rarely, but warriors use them to sneak into places like Rabona, where the Organization is forbidden.
At any one time, there are forty-seven active warriors, each assigned to a different region of the continent, and numbered according to rank from the strongest (1) to the weakest (47). There is a great deal of prestige attached to these ranks, with 1 through 9 (especially 1 though 5) being considered elite warriors, while 40 through 47 are usually looked down on as weaklings with a short life span. High ranking warriors nearly always work on a unique move to use in battle, ostensibly to give them an advantage against yoma who haven't seen it before, but also because these moves give them higher prestige among their comrades. This emphasis on rank causes a degree of competitiveness amongst the warriors, and their assignments to individual regions keeps them from associating with each other too much. Warriors, with some exceptions, tend to be an antisocial bunch.
Their powers come from the yoma flesh they have in their bodies, and while they have a baseline for these abilities that is much greater than a human's, they can increase them all temporarily by drawing on their yoma power in battle. This comes with risks, though, as the yoma battles with their human nature and causes them to become less human. As a warrior draws on 10% of her yoma power, her silver eyes turn gold. At greater amounts, her body starts changing and her flesh starts popping. Drawing on power like this is an incredible risk: it takes an effort of will to pull herself back to humanity. If a warrior draws on more than 80% of her power, she crosses a point of no return and loses herself to the monster. This is called Awakening. Sometimes warriors Awaken in the middle of a fight by drawing on too much power, but sometimes it's a more gradual process, as a warrior feels her ability to contain her yoma power slipping away. Each warrior carries a black card in the hilt of her claymore, bearing her unique personal symbol. If a warrior feels like her Awakening is inevitable, she will send this card through the Organization to a comrade of her choice, a request to kill her while she still has her humanity.
Awakened Beings are much stronger and more powerful than regular yoma, and have a much stronger hunger. In order to protect the Organization's reputation, Awakened Beings are called voracious eaters where ordinary people can hear, and are referred to as a particularly dangerous type of yoma. When a request is put in to deal with one, the Organization sends not one warrior but a team of four. This team is always lead by a warrior ranked in the single digits, and usually contains one in the teens and two in the 20s and 30s. This is usually the only time warriors group together.
The power of an Awakened Being naturally depends on the original power of the warrior who awakened, and therefore her rank. An Awakened former number 9, for example, is much more dangerous than an Awakened former number 35. By Miria's time there exist three Awakened number ones, and their individual power is so great they have reached legendary status. They are called the Creatures of the Abyss; their names are Riful, Isley and Luciela, and their hunger extends to a need to conquer the world. For many years they existed in a three way deadlock, unable to take on each other for the fear the third will conquer the victor in their weakened state. No one from the Organization has been willing to take on these three monsters.
One of these Abyssal Ones, Isley of the North, is male. Before the Organization started using girls for their warriors, they experimented with a generation of male warriors. These turned out to have little to no control over their yoma power and awakened almost immediately, unable to suppress it at all. Isley was the number one of that generation. (Also of note: his number two, Rigaldo the Lion, and number three, Dauf, who after Awakening becomes Riful's consort.)
While Miria was number 6 of the Organization, Isley amassed an unprecedented number of Awakened Beings in the North to form a huge army, with the intention of marching south. While that army fought twenty four warriors from the Organization, he sent more Awakened Beings to Riful in the West and the Organization in the East while he himself went South to kill Luciela. After that battle the balance of power shifted. Luciela was removed from the picture, but the Organization proved themselves finally powerful enough to face the Abyssal Ones. The three-way deadlock became between Isley, Riful, and the Organization.
This is what Miria knows:
[Spoiler Warning from here on out.]
Awakening is not a point of no return. It is possible, with a great force of will, to come back right from the point of Awakening, and suppress one's power back down inside oneself. Miria knows because she's done this.
After helping to kill the Awakened form of her best friend Hilda, Miria was overcome with anger and despair, and having just been through an intense battle with the Awakened Being, she lost control of her yoma power. She was convinced she was about to Awaken, and somehow managed to force it back down. After the experience, she noticed she had changed: it became easier to draw on her power in the middle of battle and to suppress power once it had been used. She also began to feel pangs of hunger, although an ordinary hunger, not one specifically for guts. Miria came to the conclusion that she had actually Awakened, or at least half-Awakened, and wisely kept that decision to herself.
After the experience of killing Hilda, Miria swore revenge against the Organization. She started this quest with a search for information, and managed to discover much about the Organization that was kept secret to most of the warriors.
The two biggest things that Miria discovered were these: 1) The continent she lived on was not the only one in the world, and 2) The Organization created yoma.
On a much larger continent, a war has been waging for generations between many countries divided into two allegiances. One of these sides includes a non-human tribe, allegedly the descendants of dragons. This side quickly took the upper hand in every battle, so the other side began throwing a lot of resources into the development of a new weapon: one that could turn humans into monsters.
The first attempts led to male warriors Awakening in battle and destroying both sides, so the researchers took over the smaller island to use as a testing ground for new weapons. They took samples from the flesh of dragons' descendants and implanted them into humans to turn them into 'yoma,' and then continued research to create Awakened Beings they could control and send into battle against the dragons' descendants. Essentially, Miria's world, her entire life, and every piece of torture she's been though has been an experiment to create a weapon for a war that doesn't even affect her.
Miria discovered this with the help of Rubel - a spy from the other side of the war, working deep within the Organization. She has no stake in the war, but the knowledge reinforced her resolved to destroy the Organization, for her sake and the sake of all her comrades. However, her quest for knowledge did not go undetected by the Organization and she was marked as dangerous, a situation that has led twice to obvious attempts to kill her – once by sending her and three other troublemakers to kill a male Awakened Being they should be no match for, and again by sending her to lead a group of 24 warriors against an unprecedented army of Awakened Beings being gathered by Isley of the North to invade the southern lands. Not one single warrior was expected to survive that assault, and the Organization sent the ones it considered dangerous to its research.
By using the pills designed to suppress yoma aura, Miria managed to fake the death of seven of the warriors, and they hid for seven years before returning south, some for their own reasons. but In Miria's mind, at least, her goal was clear: to finally destroy the Organization that tortured and used her and her sisters.
Notable Warriors of Miria's Generation:
Except that Miria considers every warrior notable. Let's see:
Number 1, Alicia and Number 2, Beth
Alica and Beth are used by the Organization as their Ultimate Weapon against Abyssal Ones. Identical twins implanted with flesh from the same yoma, their trainers worked to completely erase any sense of individuality and to fuse their consciousness. Through this, Alicia is able to completely awaken, essentially becoming an Abyssal One, while Beth holds her human consciousness and control. They are 'completed' while Miria is away in the North.
Number 3, God-Eye Galatea
Trained as the Organization's 'eyes', Galatea has an extraordinary talent in sensing yoma auras. In battle, she can sync her aura with the yoma she's fighting and use it to deflect their attacks. As a warrior, though, she was primarily used to spy on her comrades, using her ability to watch their auras from incredible distances beyond most warrior's detection. However, what she saw often led her to have sympathy and compassion for her comrades. After the sacrifice of twenty four warriors, including many she respected, she abandoned the Organization and went into hiding. Miria later met up with her on her way to destroy the Organization, and the two former warriors have a great deal of respect for each other.
Number 4, Ophelia the Blood-Soaked Warrior
Ophelia was there when Miria almost awakened, and she was the only warrior who Miria feared. Obsessed with hunting Awakened Beings, Ophelia may have prevented Hilda's Black Card from getting to Miria on time, and led to her Awakening. She took furious pleasure in destroying Hilda, and when Miria almost Awakened, Ophelia stood by with apparent glee, hoping to kill her too. Miria was terrified of Ophelia, but never displayed actual hatred or a need for revenge. When Ophelia died, Miria's reaction wasn't shown on panel.
Number 5, Rafaela
Rafaela was a former number two, and the survivor of the Organization's first attempt to make a dual warrior like Alica and Beth. Rafaela was holding the consciousness of her sister Luciela when Luciela Awakened and became a Creature of the Abyss. Rafaela left the Organization for some time, before returning as number five. When Miria was in the North, Rafaela went to face Luciela finally, and disappeared.
Number 15, Deneve
A defensive warrior, Deneve has extraordinary healing powers and is able to regenerate limbs in the middle of battle. Miria first met her on Miria's seventh Awakened Being hunt (Deneve's third) and the first blatant attempt to have Miria killed.
Number 22, Helen
Another warrior Miria met on the same hunt, Helen has the ability to stretch any one of her limbs to huge extent, giving them a fluid, elastic property. Helen and Deneve are best friends, nearly sisters.
Number 47, Clare
Ostensibly the weakest warrior in the Organization, Clare is the only warrior to have approached the Organization voluntarily, asking to become a warrior. She took on the flesh of a former number 1, Teresa of the Faint Smile, and inherited from her the ability to read yoma aura to predict her opponent's every move. After her first meeting with Miria, Deneve and Helen, Clare also acquired the right arm of a former number 2, Quicksword Ilena, which she can move with incredible speeds. Clare and Miria are friends, but their goals are very different: Clare is on a revenge quest against a specific Awakened Being.
The three warriors above first met Miria on the same Awakened Being hunt, and are all Half-Awakened, which Miria noticed in their first battle together and is, she thinks, the reason they were sent to their deaths. They became friends on that hunt, and later all four of them survived the Battle of the North. They trained together for seven years in secret and their bonds as friends grew stronger.
Number 14, Cynthia; Number 31, Tabitha; Number 40, Uma
These three, along with Miria, Deneve, Helen and Clare make up the only seven survivors of the Battle of the North. Suppressing their yoma auras first by pills and them by strength of will, the seven former warriors trained without ever drawing on their yoma power, becoming faster, stronger, and more skilled in their individual abilities than ever before. After seven years, the group followed Miria south to face the Organization, having become elite fighters despite having such a wide variety of starting ranks.
And then there are the seventeen warriors who lost their lives at the Battle of the North, whose deaths Miria carries on her shoulders and blames the Organization for.
Personality:
Miria is fuelled by guilt and by a thirst for revenge. Her vendetta against the Organization started when her best friend Hilda Awakened because of what the Organization did to her, and Miria became the one to kill her. After the Battle of the North, both her hate for the Organization and her personal guilt spread to cover the seventeen warriors killed on under her command on a mission that was supposed to kill twenty four.
Even before Miria became half-Awakened, she was said to be one of the best warriors when working in a group. She is a natural leader and cares deeply for her comrades, which has been said to be her biggest strength as well as one of her biggest weakness. While her consideration towards every warrior under her command led to the first victory in the North, her need to protect her friends led to her leaving on her own for her final assault on the Organization. She even disabled one of her friends temporarily to prevent her from following Miria into the fight. Facing the Organization on her own even led to her first defeat, as the Organization used a weapon that was only effective against one warrior.
Miria's compassion also led to her eventual victory, however. From the very moment she turned towards the Organization, she vowed never to kill a Warrior, and when the Organization called nearly forty warriors to cut her down, she defeated them using non-lethal moves only. As they realized that they had been brought down with no actual harm, they turned on her with non-lethal strokes, effectively helping her fake her death in front of the men of the Organization, and without a word, they all joined her rebellion.
It is also worth mentioning that while Miria has every reason to think Ophelia engineered Hilda's Awakening and Miria's own, just to have the chance to kill them, Miria exhibits no actual hatred towards Ophelia herself. Fear, yes, but the blame she puts on the Organization. Every warrior in the Organization has suffered intense trauma, physical torture, and the fear and hatred of the human population. Miria considers them all her comrades and sisters, and blames the Organization, not Ophelia, for the monster she turned into.
Although Miria feels strong bonds with every one of her comrades, she has learned to expect suspicion and distrust from humans due to their hatred of “Claymores.” The only people she actually hates are the men of the Organization, and once she is accustomed to the idea that the foreigners in Keeliai don't instantly hate her, she will have no problems associating with them.
Even with her sword and her physical prowess, Miria considers information the most important weapon in a warrior's arsenal. She started her crusade against the Organization with an investigation into their history and their methods, aiming to uncover the full extent of their evil before initiating her rebellion. In battle, the first thing she does is assess her opponent's abilities and techniques, as well as those of her comrades, in order to exploit the one and make best use of the other. When faced with an unknown variable such as Clare – who showed great prowess in battle despite being the lowest ranked warrior – Miria insisted on facing her with swords, just to work out how she fought and how Miria could use her in the hunting party.
Miria is coming to Tu Vishan having defeated the Organization and completed her long term goal, with a few loose ends to tie up, but no burning desire to return home immediately. Although gods are known on the continent, Miria has no particular affinity for any religion, and she has deliberately avoided thinking of an afterlife. Hearing that she is now part of the In Between will not faze her too much, and not just because warriors are difficult to faze. She will in the medium to long term require evidence of this, but she can be patient for it.
Appearance:
A slender woman who appears to have just reached adulthood, with incredibly pale skin, blonde hair and silver eyes.
Here is a picture, which is from before she acquired some scars, so here's a close up.
Miria's scars actually cover the whole of her body, but the two criss-crossing her face are the deepest and the angriest-looking. Claymores don't scar usually, and this is simple because when her comrades cut her down and then healed her, they had to prioritise healing greater wounds first.
Under her clothes, Miria is split neck to crotch down the center, with a wound that remains open and unhealed, exposing the organs beneath. The gash is sewn closed, and only that thread keeps her body together.
Abilities:
Physical Prowess
Miria has superhuman strength and stamina, enabling her to fight with a sword she shouldn't by rights be able to lift without a great deal of effort. She needs very little in terms of physical comfort and rest, and can get by eating a few bites of food and resting for an hour or so every few days. It is usual for warriors to rest by sticking their claymore into the ground and sleeping against the blade. Since becoming half-Awakened, Miria experiences a greater amount of hunger, but it is still nothing like human level. Warriors also have heightened senses, able to use their superior sight, hearing and smell to track their opponents when their aura sensing abilities are not enough.
Miria can increase her strength, speed and other abilities by drawing on her yoma power. This is an active process that requires a force of will, and sometimes results in a physical change depending on how much she uses. Doing this she runs the risk that she might Awaken and become an uncontrollable monster with a hunger for guts.
Healing Factor
By drawing on her yoma power, Miria can heal almost any wound except a head shot or one to her vital organs. This includes the reattachment of severed limbs. Because it involves the active use of her power, it is a tiring process and needs to be done quickly after sustaining the injury. It also involves the risk of drawing on too much of her power and Awakening.
Aura sensing
Miria has the ability to sense the presence of an aura like hers. Unlike some of her comrades who can track and manipulate auras, Miria's ability is limited to being able to detect the presence of a yoma/warrior/Awakened Being in the vicinity and give her a rough idea of the power of the being. Because all 'auras' in canon have the same dragon-descendent source, the way this translates to panfandom environments isn't obvious. I have set up a permissions post which basically leaves aura detection up to the player whose aura is in question.
The Phantom
Miria's nickname in the Organization, “Phantom Miria,” comes from her personalized technique of using incredible speed in battle. By using bursts of yoma energy, Miria is able to achieve speeds so fast that her opponents are unable to track her, and is able to dodge attacks by seeming to teleport short distances. Because this requires drawing on reserves of power, it has a limited usefulness and tires her out, although now she has much greater stamina than she used to.
After seven years training with a fully suppressed aura, Miria developed the “new Phantom,” building up her baseline speed to the extent where she can reach nearly the same speed but without drawing on her yoma power. This is slower, but still faster than all other living warriors, and has a much greater degree of accuracy than the old Phantom. It can also be used an unlimited number of times.
Having come out of hiding and no longer needing to keep her aura fully suppressed, Miria can use both abilities as needed.
Team Leader
Aside from her consideration for her comrades, even beyond her speed, Miria's other greatest asset is her intelligence. She fights tactically and intelligently, factoring in her opponent's strengths and weaknesses as well as those of her companions. Even at rank 8, she was said to be better than number 1 in a group.
She led twenty four warriors, of ranks ranging from 6 right down to 47, to victory against three Awakened Beings of unprecedented strength, without a single fatality, by grouping them according to ability, so the less experienced warriors gained experience and the leaders learned to lead and compensate for their comrades. Knowing that the rest of the battle was a doomed endeavor, she concocted the scheme to protect as many warriors as possible by giving them a low dosage aura suppressant, so when they fall unconscious it appears that they are dead.
Miria was able to work out in the heat of battle that Helen, Deneve and Clare had half-Awakened, and she caught on immediately whenever the Organization arranged for her to die. Even though she had help from Rubel, Miria deduced much of the Organization's true schemes herself, including the realization that the warrior's Claymores were made of a metal unknown to the continent. The reason the Organization marked her as such a threat was not her hatred, nor her speed and prowess, but her intelligence.
Inventory:
one set of armor, built more for show than protection, silver-colored plating focused around her shoulders, greaves and gauntlets. The shirt, leggings and cape are all grey and white.
one huge claymore sword, almost as long as Miria herself is tall, made of a mysterious metal that cannot be chipped or dulled, capable of cutting into stone and cleaving through all flesh short of the most powerfully armored Creature of the Abyss.
Three aura-suppressant pills
Both sword and shirt bear Miria's mark:
Suite:
The wood sector will be the most like anything Miria really recognizes, coming from a a pre-industrial farming and trade based world and unused to actually living in cities. A single floor will be more than enough, because, let's be honest, she's much more likely to wander into the woods, stick her sword into the ground and sleep against that. Claymores lead a nomadic lifestyle, and the concept of a home to return to is human and alien to her.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
The turtle is sick. They tell her that early. If you start feeling weaker, they say, it's because Tu Vishan is ailing.
Miria cannot remember being sick before, and she doesn't know what to do with the warning. But the day after she arrives, she's practising in the park when she notices her Phantom moves are slower than they should be. Her sword does feel heavier. This, she thinks, must be weakness.
She marks it as interesting, and works to compensate as well as she can.
The hunger, when it arrives, terrifies her. Miria ignores it at first, as she's ignored the occasional pang since half-Awakening, scared it might be a sign that she might start craving flesh. But when the dizziness arrives and the headaches, and the feeling of being so weak that she can barely carry her sword, Miria walks into the Earth Sector and buys some vegetables. She sits against a wall, ignoring the Kedan and everything except her purchase, and she starts to eat them.
She feels much better very quickly, and finds herself smiling.
Ah. So I was only hungry for food.
That evening, she sits against her sword to get some rest, and falls to the ground as soon as she closes her eyes. She hits it hard, and finds herself suddenly able to get up. Her limbs feel too heavy to move, and protest every attempt. She worries for a few minutes, thinking numbly that she may be about to die.
The light is different when her eyes open – the sun having long since departed and leaving only the glow of the turtle shell. Miria's limbs ache, but respond better to her as she pulls herself up onto her feet. She fell asleep, for what seems like hours.
Miria picks up her sword and carries it carefully to the suite she was shown on arrival. There, she lies down on the bed, and thinks how much better this feels than the ground.
When morning comes, Miria decides to leave her sword behind and walks out into the city, wearing ordinary Kedan clothes rather than her armor. It's cold, so she includes a cape that covers her shoulders. She stops at a cafe when she's hungry in the middle of the day, and sits until she's no longer tired from the walk, nodding a greeting to people as they pass without stopping to stare at her sword or her armor.
She remembers the trainees coming out of the Organization with that man, remembers that gladness she felt when she realized they would have a chance to live for once, just enjoying each other's company, like children. She remembers, also, that tiny part of her that was envious of that chance.
The turtle's sick, they told her. It's making her weaker.
Miria lifts the warming drink to her face and lets the steam drive away the cold before she takes a sip, marvelling at how it satisfies a need she had forgotten how to feel.
So this is what it's like to be human. I had forgotten.
She smiles.
Network:
[Video – anonymous location]
[Miria didn't choose a console cafe for this first connection to the internet. It is simply that, when she made the decision to finally reach out to the community of foreigners in Keeliai, she had been sitting against her sword outside the city walls, and it was easier to come into the nearest cafe than make it back to her suite.
Truth be told, she hasn't been back to her suite since first being shown there. After all, what use does a half-yoma warrior have with a suite? This is even her first time within city walls in two days.
When the video starts, there is a pale woman, with ugly red scars crossing between her silver eyes, staring at the screen as her face appears on it. The hilt of a large broadsword can be seen rising from behind her shoulders. It is a second before she speaks.]
Hello. My name is Miria.
[In seven years since breaking from the Organization, this is the first time she's had to introduce herself like that. It still feels strange not to add: 'number six in the Organization.' She finds herself almost adding 'Captain of the Rebellion,' but that wouldn't sit right on her tongue either. So 'Miria,' it is.
The rest, she has rehearsed.]
I have been looking, and I do not think there are any of my comrades or former comrades in this place. If there are, and you see this... [She gives a gentle smile.] I am not hiding, please come and introduce yourself.
[She's been looking. But she hasn't found a single aura that could belong to a warrior or a yoma. But she is not suppressing hers; anyone who wanted could find her and she'd welcome them.]
For everyone else:
I find myself in want of something to do besides exercising my sword arms. Does anyone have a recommendation?