Arcaea: The World of Glass

[Main] Black Fate

Hikari.
Tairitsu.

If they knew each other's names, if they even knew their own, would that change how they had
felt from then until now? "Light" and "Conflict"... Names so lofty, in a world so bizarre,
so outlandish... Would they have considered the meanings, and found different paths?

Or would any divergence, any turn or taking of a choice, any circumstance or odd spin of fortune's wheel still have set the two girls into inevitable dissent and discord?

Hikari, who still does not know her name, would be unsure. Tairitsu, likewise, is however damned with fateful knowledge, and knows dissent and discord between them will always be.

Nothing will change. Nothing would.

The girl in white and the girl in black cannot reconcile.

This, all of this, may only lead to—

"Ah!"

Hikari's voice escapes her when the blade of her foe comes. She raises her hand at once, and with it, glass strikes against glass. It holds, it shines—unbroken, and in her piece Hikari can see her own pale face, agonized and frightened.

A heartfelt conversation has led to this—to a heart-pounding clash.

She takes a single step in retreat as her body bends from the force of the other girl's strength.
Her skin goes cold; she finds she can't breathe.

She realizes there, looking deep into the now-close eyes of the girl attacking her that her being
attacked is not the source of the fright clawing and gripping at her insides. It is not that, nor the
fact she can hardly resist as the push of Tairitsu's blade inches her own nearer and nearer to her
taut neck.

No. The sweat in her palm, the breath trapped in her lungs, it's all because the person before her— the girl who had felt to her a tragic and sorrowful figure only moments before—seems now so
utterly changed.

She is not the person she'd spoken to like a fellow and friend. In fact, she doesn't seem like a
person at all. Her stare is so purposeful, her jaw is unmoving, and those fingers of hers,
clutched so tightly they're now stained red—

Nothing but a beast garbed in black. A shade, brimming with malice.

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Let this end peacefully.

Find common ground.

Don't be weak. Don't falter.

With these thoughts in mind, Hikari pushes back.

They have both seen and felt the throes of battle within near countless memories, but vicarious
recollections are no substitute for a genuine struggle between life and death.

Their impromptu blades meet again, entirely without grace. Tairitsu's strikes stay vicious and direct, while Hikari's movements are desperate, forever a hair away from a harmful, fatal slip. She only defends; she does nothing more. If she could stop this without violence, she'd do so in a heartbeat.

Their flurried tussle is hampered by the peculiar surroundings of the broken church: lamps and
benches placed under a sky. The two move between the aisles. Tairitsu darts toward Hikari's feet, but her target remains planted. Hikari lifts the piece of glass that had once served to rescue her, bracing for the rising cut.

But a cut does not come. Instead it is that black parasol: tearing up quickly through the air and
cruelly into her waiting guard.

"Gh...! Hah...!" she groans, panting. It feels like fire has swallowed her hand, and her small finger
she swears it must have been bent. Her anomalous piece flies from her grasp, and as soon as she
is without a weapon, the pained girl withdraws immediately.

To her own surprise, Hikari lands after her first leap with no waver, no fall. She leaps back again,
her dress fluttering, and she finds herself standing atop the pews just in time to avoid another
coming blow. So close... Can this not be ended with words?

Even if it could, she can't even find a single word to say.
Even if she could, she isn't given any chance to speak.
And even when, blessed, she is afforded both; gaining enough distance from her pursuer and time alone to begin preparing her voice—

a new blade shoots out from nowhere—

it finds her cheek, swift—

and, just like that, it cuts, glancing across her skin.