I ran out the door of the inn and saw my worst nightmare coming true… Yoma were everywhere, buildings were in flames, and people were crying and screaming. And I- I could do nothing to help them.

Suddenly, I saw her, she was like a white goddess come down to rescue us from the heavens. She wore what all claymores did, a white, skin tight undergarment, shoulder guards, some sort of skirt thing, and boots, but the thing that really caught my eye was her weapon, the one she was named after; a claymore sword. Five feet of deadly steel…

She swung left and right slicing the Yomas in half, then she turned toward me, a look of concentration on her face, her eyes a gleaming silver, and she threw the claymore at me. I was too scared to move, and stood stock still as I watched the sword fly over my head in slow motion, then jumped as I felt the warm sticky substance that I knew was Yoma blood cover me from the back.

I watched her walk towards me, and turned to watch her pass me and put her foot on the dead Yoma's head pulling her claymore out with a sliding sound before flicking the blood off of it and sliding it into its sheath on her back with a metal clang. I wanted to thank her for saving my life but couldn't get my mouth open enough to do so. She continued on, her path taking her out of our village and into the woods. I knew then what I wanted to do; I wanted to be a claymore…

I waited for the stranger in black to come and collect the goddess' fee for two days before I finally saw him. He was a tall, wiry man who had a rather large nose, and walked with a slight limp, but I knew he was stronger than he looked. I ran up to him as he was leaving the village and tugged on his cloak for his attention. He looked down at me with a disdainful air, and asked me what I could possibly want from him.

"Sir, I- I want to become a claymore," I said as I squirmed a little under his intense gaze.

"Go back to your parents little girl, I'm sure they are missing you." he said with a slight shaking of his head.

I hurried with my reply of truth, "But you see Sir, they're dead and so is my little sister. I have nowhere to go, and if you don't help me I'll have to go into the prostitution business, and I really don't want to do that. So I beg of you, Sir," I closed my brown eyes for a moment, then opened them as I continued with my request, "Make me a claymore."

I watched a gleam come into his eyes, and he nodded as he began walking to the west. I hurried to catch up with him, "Sir? Was that a yes?"

He didn't stop walking as he replied, "Yes, it was a yes, now you'll have to keep up if you want to become a," I thought that I heard the faint word, monster, come from his lips, but he spoke the other word out loud, "Claymore…"

We journeyed for what seemed like years, staying in inns and eating in restaurants every night. A couple of the towns we stayed in, the man had to go and pick up a goddess' fee, and would leave me with our horses that we had picked up in the second town we had visited.

Finally, we arrived at what he called the organization's head quarters. As I watched the claymores mill around, I self consciously tugged my auburn locks into a loose ponytail, that left some stray bangs in my face. As we would pass, claymores would stop and stare, gossiping and pointing at me. A few smiled and welcomed a future comrade, while others looked at the ground and shook their heads at my choice.

Within a few minutes of riding past the gates, we arrived at a huge stone building, and I could hear screams and crying coming from within. My arms and legs shook as I climbed out of the saddle, and I had to steady my self by hanging onto the horse's mane for balance. The man came over and took my hand and led me into the dark gloomy interior of the building. After my eyes adjusted to the gloominess, I looked around, and was met with the sight of many iron cells, a few holding women in different stages of becoming claymores.

The man led me past cell after cell until we arrived at a large wooden door. He opened it and I was suddenly in an opposite of the rest of what I'd seen. This room was brightly lit and the only thing that even vaguely resembled something out of a prison in here was a stone slab in the middle of the room with steel restraints on it.

When I turned around the man in black was gone, and I was all alone in this room. I stood there for a moment before walking over to the slab and sitting down. After a moment, another man came in holding containers of something along with a great amount of tubing. He nodded towards me, acknowledging my presence, as he sat the stuff down on a table. He walked back towards me and spoke, "Hello there, my name is Kylen, and I will be the one helping you to transform. Now what is your name?"

"Shadow," I managed to get out of my suddenly parched mouth.

"Well Shadow, why don't you lay down on that slab," when I had done so, he walked over. "Now, I'm going to have to strap you in, okay?"

I nodded, and he proceeded to close and lock the restraints, one on each ankle, one on the wrists, and two across my chest and midsection. I lay there shivering partly because of the cold stone against my skin and partly because of the fear that was filling my body. What if I die? How much will it hurt? What if it only works halfway and I become some sort of monster even worse then a Yoma? But then I remembered the goddess that had saved me, and my fears subsided. One day I was going to meet her and learn her name.

"Are you ready?" the man asked me. I nodded, and then felt a sharp an on the inside of my elbow. The pain went away, and I was caught thinking, Is it over already? Then my entire arm started to burn and boil from the inside, I clenched my jaws for as long as I could, and then I screamed. It was a long scream of pure agony, and I begged the man to kill me, to put me out of my misery, he shook his head and I saw him standing over one of the buckets, only now the bucket had a pump, and coming from the pump was the tube that was connected to my arm. As I watched he pushed down on the pump and my arm which had gone down to a slow burn spiked up, and I was screaming and begging again. This lasted for forever, and then he had to change to a second bucket, bringing more burning, until finally, I passed out.

When I awoke I was in one of the cells I had seen earlier, and with me was another woman who looked to be further along in the transformation than I probably was. Her hair was long, down past her shoulders, and only about six inches of it remained her natural color, which seemed to be a dark brown. Her eyes, which I could tell were originally a blue, were turning silver on the parts closest to her pupils. Nothing else about her would have led me to believe that she was undergoing the same thing as me if I hadn't seen that.

She spoke after she assumed I was done looking at her, "You must be in the final stage of becoming a claymore."

I was startled, "What do you mean?"

She pointed to a part of the cell wall above my head, "Go ahead and take a look at yourself."

I sat up slowly, and turned to see a mirror, and in that mirror was my reflection. I was beautiful, more gorgeous than I'd ever dreamed of being. I had blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail and bangs hanging in front of my eyes in a haphazard way. My eyes were almost completely consumed by silver except for on the outmost edges, and then I noticed something. My body had completely matured; my chest which had been practically flat was now outfitted with full, round breasts, and my boy-like hips had grown until they had a width to them that would make any straight man stare. I stood up awkwardly and spun around in front of the mirror in a graceful turn, I noticed that I was much taller than my former four feet, three inches, now I was more like five feet, eight inches.

As I stood there admiring my new self, my cell mate stood as well, and stretched, "How long have you been in here? Name is Marie, by the way."

I looked at her, she was only a little shorter than I was, and a heck of a lot prettier, "Um, I don't really know…" I paused in thought and then gave her my own name, "My name is Shadow, and it's nice to meet you."

We shook hands as she asked her next question, "So kid, where did you come from?"

"Probably about thirty miles or so south of Pieta; what about you?" I asked, as I sat back down. I noticed that my voice had changed, too.

"About 15 miles east of Pieta, actually."

As it turned out, Marie and I had a lot in common. We talked for hours, until suddenly she said "Your transformation is over, you are now a full claymore."

"How do you know?" I asked hesitantly.

"Your eyes; they're completely silver now." She said in a calm voice

As soon as she had said the words, the man who'd brought me here showed up and unlocked the cell and beckoned for me to come out. I stood, as did Marie, and we hugged good-bye, not knowing if we would ever see each other again. I walked out of the cell and the man closed the door back, the grabbed hold of my arm and led me down the hall until we came to a set of very large oak doors. He pushed a button, and the doors opened, and light spilled in. I could tell that it blinded him, but my eyes took only seconds to adjust to the sudden brightness. When his eyes finally managed to follow suit, he led me to another building, only this one was smaller.

He told me to go inside, and that he'd wait for me to be finished. I opened the doors, expecting more doom and gloom, but instead found myself in a brightly lit armory-slash-clothing store. A woman immediately came and led me to a room with a curtain over the entrance. She pushed me in, closing the curtain, and taking my too small dress off at the same time. I stood there, covering my self with my arms, and then received some folded white cloth, and something black, too. More items followed soon after, such as shoulder guards and cape, boots, and at last, the claymore sword. I gazed at the beautiful weapon for a moment before being interrupted by the woman who came in behind the curtain and pointed at the sword and then at the wall. I was too stunned by her audacity to come in while I was undressed to do anything other than what she told me. Once I had laid the beauty against the stone wall, the woman pulled the black cloth over my head, and then handed me the white cloth, I unfolded it and realized it was the same thing that the goddess that had saved me had been wearing under her armor. I pulled it on, and was pleased to find that it fit like a glove. Next, came the boots, easy to slide on, but hard as hell to get off. I noticed the latter after I realized there was something in the bottom. The shoulder guards were the easiest to put on, but the woman had to help me slide the claymore into its sheath on my back. And then, I came to the skirt thingy; the woman had to show me about five or six times how that thing worked. If I had my choice I would've left the damn thing there.

Then we set about to getting my symbol sewn onto the black cloth that flowed over my neck with white thread. When I looked into the mirror I saw it for the first time. It consisted of two straight horizontal lines that ran across a vertical line, a circle, and each end of the horizontal lines had diagonal lines that either pointed to the top or the bottom of the vertical depending on if it was the top or bottom horizontal line.

When we were finished I was led into another room where a man was sitting at a table. I stood there for a moment, not sure of what to do, until the man made a motion with his hand that mimicked a warrior pulling their sword out from its sheath. I did so, and presented my weapon to him. He took it and laid it on the table gently then beckoned for me to sit down in the chair across from his. I sat down silently and he motioned for me to tilt my chin up. I watched him begin to chip at my sword with some tools, and almost jumped up to stop him, before realizing he was carving my symbol into the weapon. When he'd finished carving he picked up a bottle of red liquid, and painted in the grooves of my symbol until it looked as though it had been painted with blood. After he'd finished he handed me back my sword, and looked to the door; I noticed it wasn't the same one I'd come in through.

I stood and walked through the door which led outside. I took a few steps into the open and looked for the man in black. It wasn't long before I spotted him sitting on a bench a little ways away. I walked to him, and stopped a few feet away from his person. He stood and walked around me in a circle a couple of times before stopping in front of me with a couple of slow claps, saying, "Congratulations. You have become a claymore."

Serena: Hi people! okay, well this is my first fanfic, and I've completely fallen in love with the anime series, Claymore. So umm, you're free to review, but please don't be too harsh. I do have feelings, you know. Oh, I almost forgot! There are going to be more chapters whenever I have the chances to get them uploaded, so be looking foward to those.

Shadow: I know I will be!

Serena: *raises eyebrow* Shadow, aren't you supposed to be killing Yomas?

Shadow: Well yeah, but I wanted to read your story about me. *smiles*

Serena: *sigh* Okay then, but don't let the man in black catch you.

Shadow: Puh-lease! As if he could catch me! *winks* Please tell me you have some romance planned for me.

Serena: Ye- Maybe... You'll have to keep reading if you want to find out, now won't you? *smiles wickedly*

Shadow: Ugh! *moans* I hate it when you do this Serena!

Serena: I know! *smiles wide* Well people I supose I'll be seeing ya'll when I post my next chapter, that is, if Shadow doesn't kill me first...

Shadow: ... don't tempt me...

Serena: I was kidding.

Shadow: I wasn't.

Serena: Well, I'd better run, literally. See you guys later!