fanfic; three sides

[outrival]

Title: Three Sides
Series: The Legend of the Legendary Heroes
Game: havenrpg
Character(s): Zohra and sort-of-Noire.
Warnings: Haven?? But death, mainly.
Summary: Based off of the events of the last raid that Zohra went on. "...he will find himself seemingly by the well where Noire is standing over the dead body of Pia...She will try to attack and kill him."



—

Three Sides

—

Ultimately, Zohra doesn’t know whether to say that Haven’s getting repetitive or if it’s still trying to keep things new once in a while.

Once his surroundings—the housing block spiral, the well—dawn on him, his first thought is, 'Shit, did the store kick me out?' He didn't die, he doesn't think, since he should've woken up in his room, instead of at the well. And, though it's a possibility, he highly doubts that he's gone completely insane. However, he doesn't have any time to dwell any further on it, as he then notices the blonde figure and the familiar voice shouting, at which point his next thought is, 'What pissed Noire off this time?'

Then, finally, he notices the corpse at her feet.

"What—!?"

For a moment, he freezes, his eyes wide—before he's dodging to the side as Noire fires an arrow at him. In those few instants, his mind is no longer on his environment, and neither is it on Noire nor Pia. Instead, it's on one, simple vow:

When, at last, we reach them, I swear I'll slaughter every last one of them.

It's not the first time he's promised that, and he doubts that it'll be the last.

Though, he supposes, this is good. If he's still facing hallucinations, then that must mean that he's still within the store; that is, it has yet to try and expel him. This mission isn't over just yet. And, of course, they are hallucinations. After all, this is the exact kind of stunt that Haven loves to try and pull off, and Zohra's not about to be fooled when he's practically a veteran at this (what kind of hypocrite would he be to have warned his group not to hesitate, if he himself did so?). More than that, though, he knows of Noire's power. He's seen her with a bow, and he's personally overseeing her training in close combat. He can say, without a doubt, that she's strong and that she'll go far as long as she keeps it up.

He can also say, without a doubt, that even on her best day, Noire would be lucky to even as so much scratch Pia.

—Because, even more so than with Noire, he knows Pia. The first person to ever establish herself as stronger than him, who'd always been hailed as a genius and one of the greatest assassins in Roland, and the girl who became his goal, his idol, and who even now remains leagues above the likes of him and Noire. He'll surpass her one day—he's sworn it—but at the moment, he knows that that day is still far away.

He knows of Noire's power, and he knows of Pia's. And so, he knows that Noire could never hope to defeat Pia. Therefore, the likelihood of Noire having killed Pia: null.

Geez, he thinks. It's almost insulting, how Haven continues to create hallucinations of Pia that die so easily. If they'd wanted to make it believable, they could've at least switched the roles. Then again, though Zohra knows Pia to be false, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of Noire being real. Brainwashing isn't beyond them, certainly. Though if that's the case, then this becomes a fair bit more complicated. An illusion would likely be weaker than the real thing, if his encounter with Pia in the last raid is any indication, and to kill the genuine article over a fake—

How heartless would that make him?

But in the end, it doesn't matter.

Heartless or not—

Real or not—

("If you're hesitant, the right thing to do is put it off, you know?")

But there isn't any room to 'put it off' here. And so, Zohra refuses to hesitate. He steels his will and decides: his surroundings are fake, Pia is fake, and so is this Noire. With that in mind, he acts.

(Idly, he wonders if this is Haven's trap. If he keeps doing this sort of thing—if he continues to become the nothingness that's needed for this task—then maybe that's one step closer to regressing and turning into the person he was years ago. Should that time ever come, he figures, then that means that the Yao Corporation has defeated him.)

Tracing light in the air, he prepares his spell. Noire makes her move as well, as she releases her arrows at him again. One interferes with the magic structure, forcing Zohra to redo it, while another skims his cheek and the third harmlessly hits his armour. She continues to yell her curses, but Zohra is no longer listening. Rather, his mind is concentrated only what is necessary; the incessant ramblings of an illusion hardly belong in that category.

If, by any chance, this is the real Noire—he shuts down that line of thought. It's a sign of weakness, and an entirely unneeded one.

He will kill her.

She readies another arrow, but by then, it's too late. Zohra has completed his spell, and with this, he knows that it's over.

"I offer up this contract, to bear the spirit beast of light which sleeps in the atmosphere!"

A faint light envelopes his body—and then he's gone.

If the distance between them had been greater, Noire might've had the advantage. The fact of the matter, though, is that she didn't. Like this, a long-range fighter such as her loses its benefits, and for someone like Zohra, who specializes in close combat, he has the upper hand. This reality is only reinforced the shorter distance is.

With his newfound speed, he closes the gap between them in an instant, moving to stab her with his knife. She jumps back (dimly, he notes that the reflexes of this hallucination aren't too bad), and so Zohra's blade merely nicks her side, barely deep enough to draw blood. It's just as well, though; that's exactly what he was going for. It's his victory.

Noire steps back, presumably to gain some distance—before she lets go of her bow, collapsing as she begins coughing up blood. Casually, Zohra kicks her bow away as he steps towards her, staring down at her with a passive expression.

"Does it hurt?" he asks. "Poison tends to do that."

He doesn't know if she can even hear him now, as she curls into a ball. The pain's probably unbearable by this point, he knows. Dying by poison is a cruel way to die.

Placing his poisoned dagger back where it belongs, Zohra takes out a clean one. As Noire's in no state to attack him anymore, he crouches down by her body, before grabbing her shoulder and forcing her on her back. She's struggling now, though he can't tell whether it's him or the pain that she's trying to fight. Either way, it's a familiar sight, from during his training. It's the appearance of someone who's going to die.

The difference between Noire and all of Zohra's other friends who died from poison, however, is that he'll at least grant her the mercy that their instructors didn't care to.

"Even if you are a hallucination..." He says quietly, and he almost wants to laugh, because what is he doing? "... Sorry about this."

It's the first and likely only time he'll ever apologize for a kill.

(... He really is getting sick of all this.)

Without a word or any hesitation—why hesitate now, of all times?—he plunges the knife into her heart. In her last moments, before the life leaves her eyes, she looks at him with an expression of hurt and betrayal, not unlike the one 'Pia' gave him back then. He stares back with a cold look (hefeelsnothingheisabladeandhewillcutdownanythingthatgetsinhisway), doing his best to not glance at Pia's corpse that lays near her, even though he can easily picture it after having to dream of it every fucking night for a week thanks to that fog.

Closing Noire's eyes, he removes the blade from her body, at which point his surroundings begin to change again. He flicks his knife, shaking Noire's blood off of it, before hiding it once more. The location change completes, to which Zohra frowns. It's a familiar place, though not one he has fond memories of.

Well, if nothing else, he knows what to expect now. He'll likely die at the end of this, regardless, especially what with being on his own (again), but he refuses to let this raid end in utter failure like last time. If he's to die either way, alone and insignificant, then he'll at least get something out of this.

Five days. If he isn't disposed of permanently, it'll take five days to come back. At the end of that period, he can confirm whether it truly was Noire or not that he killed, as well.

He just has to hold on for a bit longer.

"... Ah, geez, what a shitty mission," he says, a tired smile on his face. "Morgan's probably forgotten all about our arrangement, even though she swore she wouldn't..."

It's going to be strange, not having a welcome back from a mission for the first time in years—and it's in that moment, when he realizes that, that he wants it so badly that it hurts. To not be alone, to be fighting with his team (his real team, not a bunch of acquaintances), and to be strategizing and gathering information alongside them. He'll, he'll take fighting with his allies here right now (like he could ask Morgan or Noire to join him, though), or even to know that someone's waiting for his return.

They're wishes that can't be granted, though. Not anytime soon.

Just five more days until he can meet with his friends here again, if he feels like it.

—But how much longer until he can meet with Pia and Peria?

It's almost funny, he thinks. Though he has no intention of falling apart, if there's one thing that will break him, it won't be through death or loss or any of the sort of trauma that's been destroying everyone else around him. He's no stranger to such things, after all.

(Ah, he knew it—caring about others really is the most foolish thing a human being can do.)

In the end, what will likely ruin him, if anything, is what he's unaccustomed to: loneliness.