Claura, Paladin of the whip

Running, always with the running Claura always wondered why they ran. There wasn’t any point to it, well other than to make her laugh as the pitiful things tried to get away. They never could of course, but the chase and their look of horror made her blood run and her excitement build in force. Every close call and mad dash for safety building her anticipation as her prey got more and more desperate, begging, pleading, for her to spare them in between bouts of running and dodging.
They couldn’t do both forever though, and unfortunately for them she’d eventually either seize them in her malicious grip or land a strike on them with one of her tails, the venom from the spines doing her work for her in immobilizing her prey. Well, technically they weren’t her tails, and she used them as whips rather than tails. But they were hers all the same, earned through the blood, sweat, and tears of her previous conquests.
An extra boost of ecstasy rushed through her veins as she remembered the screams of various manticores she’d collected the tails from, beaten, subdued, and put in their place. They wouldn’t have needed them for what awaited them anyways and Claura could put them to much better use than they ever could, there were so many more of their disgusting kin to deal with after all. Her blood began to boil as she thought of all the manticores running loose unchecked. The damn beasts practically acted as if they could do whatever they damn well pleased no matter the consequences during daylight.
The memories of them strutting through streets looking down on others and assaulting whomever they pleased enraged her. The anger replacing the ecstasy of her hunt with vicious fury causing it to end far sooner than she’d wanted as she barreled down on her quarry and snapped its neck with well timed sharp blow. As the lifeless form of the succubus she’d been pursuing stumbled to the ground Claura could only hiss in anger and contempt at having ruined another hunt.
No……...she didn’t ruin it, those damned beasts did, even now those whores denied her satisfaction with their haughty attitudes and salacious smiles mocking her through her memories. Those fucking smiles and the laughs that matched them, just the thought of them made her want to kill each and every one of them slowly. Those fucking smiles and laughs, one pair in particular held a special stranglehold place in her hate, the one that had set it all off. The one that had fucking ruined her life.
Claura grit her teeth as she remembered it, her hold on her whips strengthening, nearly crushing the whips in her hand. She was six years old when it had happened, one day everything was right with the world, her mother and father had laughed and joked and played and lived as a loving family alongside Claura. Her father and mother giggling and kissing and hugging her good night for the last time.
The next morning had started off normally as well with breakfast and hugs and more kissing before her father went off to work. But then her father didn’t come home from work. Her mother had gotten worried of course, called his coworkers, the police, everyone she could. Nobody knew where he’d disappeared to after work, a day passed, then two, then three, then a week and another before it happened. Her mother had just finished picking Claura up from school, the car pulling up into the driveway and the two of them getting out. When they reached the front door however it was open, ever so slightly. Her mother motioned Claura to hide behind the bushes as she went inside to look. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting her mother’s shrieking caused her to race inside after her, what she found was incomprehensible to her. There in the master bedroom was her mother, her father, and that whore, that damn manticore. Not altogether no, her mother was on the floor, crying and bruised, the manticore had apparently decided to take a swing at her, while straddling her father. What used to be her father, the person the manticore was straddling could hardly be called one at all, he was barely anything more than a broken husk giving into its basic desires. She tried calling out to him of course, yelling, asking what he was doing and where he’d been, who that woman was and what they were doing, and telling him that she and her mother had been worried about him. But there was never any reply, except the maniacal laughter of the manticore continuing to straddle him.
Eventually her mother carried her away amidst fits of sobbing and heaving and took the two of them to the car. They went to a hotel then, Claura’s stay there only lasted a week. Her mother’s lasted considerably longer with the help of a mixture of pills and a bottle of vodka. The next few years she’d spent being bounced around from foster home to foster home, piecing together the events of that month amid various incidents of abuse and neglect by her supposed “caretakers”.
She learned to hate, she learned to love to hate. The indignation and fury it gave her was overpowering it made her feel powerful too. Unfortunately feeling powerful and being powerful were two different things as she’d ultimately learned through various fights and humiliations at her schools. Iit didn’t help that she frequently sought out conflict with monstergirls whose natural abilities and power were far more than a match for normal human men, let alone women.
Ironically enough her defeats opened up the path to greater power during her teen years. One of the latest schools she’d been transferred to and been caught fighting in had had an order member working as a school counselor, to him Claura’s large “trouble” file and habit of readily attacking monstergirls, especially manticores had been the perfect recruitment application. Rather than suspend her or go through the usual bureaucracy he submitted a transfer and enrollment form to have her join a “reform and reintegration” program for trouble students. In truth the program served as a basic training and indoctrinating program for potential youth recruits for the order. Oh they still learned how to act civilized and well mannered, but only as a means to an end.
Claura took to the class like a fish to water, her anger and resentment being channeled as effectively as the order knew how to. Learning about the weak points in various monstergirl physiologies, how best to use their own nature and instincts against them, and the various methods for disarming them. A class trip here and there provided them with practice for their theory studies, with “volunteers” supplied by the order to help, it wasn’t until her final trip of senior year that Claura was really noticed by the order.
The trip had been intended to be a typical search and capture exercise with her group being tasked with capturing the latest volunteer alive and with no member assaulted. Everything had been prepared and executed according to plan, the target, a manticore had been starved and beaten beforehand, the group was given their usual gear, and the area closed off by order handlers. It wasn’t until the damn bitch had turned their trap on the team, Claura included that they realized something was even wrong. Of course by the time they did she’d managed to just about knock everyone out and started to advance on one of the male members in an attempt to restore her strength with his “energy” just enough to be able to escape. Unfortunately for her she hadn’t counted on Claura being able to make a speedy recovery, she also hadn’t counted on Claura using her hatchet to cut off her tail while she was focused elsewhere, and she certainly hadn’t figured on Claura clubbing her to death with her own tail all the while laughing maniacally. And laughing, and laughing, and laughing.
Though her team may have failed their mission Claura’s actions brought her to the attention of the order agent in charge of overseeing the exercise, and to the attention of his superiors. Over the next few years Claura would go through even more specialized training and missions, though her missions were far more practical than practice at this point. Eventually the order granted her a high ranking position and a shiny new suit of armor to go with it, only this armor wasn’t like the clunky old sheets of metal that her forebears used, but a lethal weapon of circuitry and motors and interlocking plates of reinforced iron, a technological marvel engineered for combat against monstergirls. And one that she used well, as her whip could attest. she’d replaced the individual tails that comprised it many times over since she first created it, but she still hadn’t added the one tail she truly craved to see dangling among them. She still hadn’t thought up the proper way to earn it, after all such an important whip deserved an equally important act to be worthy of it.
Claura relaxed her grip on her whip as she began to ponder the possibilities for its acquisition. She might not have her precious tail yet, but she’d have it soon of that she had no doubt, Claura smiled at that thought.