[!][HH 1 vs 1] Why did you come here? (Nuru/Zar) FIN

[Baneful]

Quote:

Rolling a 2: ALL DAMAGE DONE BACKFIRES ON THE CHARACTERS THEMSELVES (ie if you do 6 damage to the opponent, you take 6 damage). All your log seems to take second place as a voice calls to you, vague, agitating. It pressures you to attack relentlessly, brashly, without caring about your own wounds or damage done to your allies.

Zar wandered through the fog alone - or so he thought - but for the figures standing here and there, silent and unresponsive. They weren't all that different to him than his perception of his fellow students. Blaming them for his self imposed solitude. No it had nothing to do with the way he shut himself off, no it had nothing to do with his strange pedantic ways. No they were simply other. Somehow callous and monstrous. It made it easier.

The humans understood, even with their strange devices and ways, even the hostile way they treated them. Derogatory attention was better than no attention at all. He was a predator who longed to be noticed by the very prey they were supposed to hunt. It was a sorry and dismal state of affairs.

He didn't know where he was going - but then again these days he very rarely did. He just followed the vague and unspecified hope that if he looked hard enough one day he'd find something /more/ than the obsessive hunt for perfect order.

 

[Saliru]

One minute Nuru was laying outsite for a nap and the next he found himself immersed in thick white fog. He felt hopeless and lost as he tried to find a way out and just as he was about to give up he saw the Haunted House nearby. He remembered this place... but why was he here? Why was he feeling so... ... His ears perked up. Was that Zar?

He ran without thinking towards where the incubus was, ignoring the strange figures along the way. Hostile or no, they were in his way. He pushed around them and soon found himself right behind Zar. This was home right?... Wait... no, he means Zar.

Nuru abruptly reached out to try and touch the demons hand, "Z-Zah? Are y'bettah?"
 

[Baneful]

At the touch of his hand, Zar froze dead in his tracks, tail curling like a snake rearing to strike behind him. It took him a moment to look sidelong at Nuru before jerking his hand away, eyeing it carefully as if to make sure the normally slightly grubby boil hadn't gotten anything on his precious, perfect claws.

"What do you mean better?" he stated coolly. "There is nothing wrong with me in the least. I'm absolutely impeccably perfect. I simply wished to venture out for a stroll. Then I happened upon this fascinating fog."

He spread his arms wide. "Its uncannily like that illusory lie the horsemen constructed at the trials. Do you remember? "
 

[Saliru]

"Well... ah mean... like... not... workin'?" Nuru inspected his own hand for whatever might have caused Zar to shun it so quickly. He couldn't see anything though much to his dismay... well... more like surprisingly deep sadness. Maybe it was because Zar clearly was not better as he had hoped. Still ill, but outside ill instead.

Nuru looked up at the fog Zar seemed so impressed by, "Ah remembah... and et wasn' a good thing eithah?"
 

[Baneful]

Zar gave Nuru a look as if he'd mortally offended him, eyes narrowing to slits as he frowned. "Not working? Of course I'm working. I am always working. I simply rearranged my bustling schedule to accommodate some refuse sorting post-fright night and then this heretofore unscheduled fog intrusion made itself known to me. I simply rearranged my order of business - I am not off the clock."

He rearranged his tie in a sort of nervous tic, tailtip flicking like a feral cat, giving Nuru another sort of glazed and distant look, as if not really seeing him, the strange feeling of this place making the boil feel like he was far away, another stranger like the unmoving figures. He wished he could get nearer, he wished he could feel the old warmth and security, before the cold immovability of logic had slithered in and taken its place.

"It was perhaps not ideal in that illusion, it had a fairly unsatisfactory end. But when have the horsemen ever been truly correct about anything? They loathe the hunters, call them murderers and savages. And yet here I stand. They were going to liberate us regardless in due time."

 

[Zoobey]

"That is right," A sigh and a hiss, one that only Zar could hear, "You are working, you are always working, perfect, flawless. Noone understands how hard you work, not anyone else, not even him. You can't trust him, you can't trust anyone."

Was it just their imagination or was the fog growing thicker around them, blocking all else away?

- "You can't trust anyone," The voice echoed, reconfirmed, splitting into pure emotion, of greed and distrust. What did the others really know anyway?

Meanwhile for Nuru, all he could sense was something wrong. Zar was sick, there was something off with him. He needed help. He needed someone to be there for him -

- So why didn't they listen to what the barghest had to say??

"He doesn't trust you you know?" The voice echoed in Nuru's mind. "He doesn't trust you, one day he will betray you. You should ask him, you should test him..."

Baneful

Saliru

 

[Saliru]

Always working... that much was true. Zar really was always working. There was never anything else... never time for anything else. Heretofore? What the jack did that even mean?!

The hunters? The horsemen? Was that really all that mattered to him any more? His work and crazy dillusions... Nuru's attention was drawn back up towards the fog, thoughts fleeting as to why they felt so close... so dangerous.

He moved closer to Zar, ears lowered as he bared his teeth at the dangers all around. But there was a slow lingering realization; the danger wasn't around them... it was inside Zar. It was him he was sensing and despite the barghests best efforts - he was only getting worse. Leaving it didn't help at all... what was wrong with his boilfriend? Was he dying? Was there nothing anyone could...

Nuru went completely still and his eyes unfocused. He was listening intently. It was fleeting at least and once he was finally moving; he gave Zar a suspicious look. "Zah?...," he asked voice soft and eerily calm, "Do y'trus' me?"
 

[Baneful]

The voice, saying exactly what he wanted to hear, was so readily internalised. He was working hard, always and without a single iota of appreciation from anyone. No one understood. Maybe at one time he felt like Nuru had - at the very least - come close to knowing him. But how could anyone truly understand perfection, absolute order and regimented control? The simple, logical answer was that they could not.

Nuru was messy. He was messy and chaotic right down to his core, the kind of dirt that would never come off.

There had been beauty there before he could see the cracks, but now he was imperfect, like all production rejects - fundamentally flawed.

And now he was asking about trust. Something he couldn't begin to fathom the way Zar did. There was absolute trust only in absolute fact.

He really couldn't afford to entertain these inefficient little fancies any longer.

Turning his most chilly and withering expression on the barghest boil, Zar curled his lip, exposing just a small fraction of razor sharp teeth. "So now you ask." Doubt, he was correct to doubt. He couldn't be trusted, he could never be trusted. Here was his chance to tell him that.

"If you must know." he drawled. "I'm afraid that I will more regrettably have to inform you to the negative. Your request for this "trust" is ill informed and henceforth denied in full. You are imperfect - flawed. A discontinued model. I must pursue loftier goals. You will only ever bring me down to your pitiful level and that is inefficiency I can ill afford."

"You do not comprehend me, my dear boil. You never have, and I realise now - you never shall."

 

[Saliru]

What?... At first Zar's words seemed garbled... like incoherent nonsense. But the barghest played them over and over in his mind. They weren't nonsense, he slowly realized with sheer horror, no - they spelled it out for him in torturous ways only Zar could muster.

He didn't trust him. Not only did he not trust him; but he did not seem to like anything about him either. How could he?! After everything Nuru has done for him; he was the center of his world - no, universe. All he gave was his own trust, love, and affection. He would have given his life for you Zar, all of it. But this is the thanks he gets?! This is his reward for his unquestionable loyalty?! No Zar. No. It was not Nuru who was imperfect.

The hurt look on Nuru's face seemed frozen in time as a look of defeat slowly crept into his eyes... and then anger as his lips curled and finally he spoke, "Ahm not imperfec'," he snarled the words, "YOU are one who's imperfec'."

Imperfect with sickness... with whatever was wrong with him. With whatever was making him crumble to pieces. These facts, or at least Nuru's facts in the matter, were the excuses he mentally added for Zar in the end. Maybe it was selfish to think the only reason Zar would say such horrible things were because his brain was broken like the rest of him. Never because there was actually anything wrong with him... because there wasn't.
 

[Baneful]

How quaint, Zar thought. How positively amusing.

Him, the imperfect one. It was ludicrous.

He could do things the dog boil could only dream about, capable of exerting nuanced and intricate influences on the things around him. Of course he'd never comprehend the sheer power of the written word - able to ensnare or liberate, the hurricane butterfly that could shake the very foundations of the world. He sought to correct the chaotic imperfection of the world, smoothing off the rough edges of clutter and inefficiency, he was not flawed he was the anti-flaw - exactly as his father had always wanted him to be, more than a mere consort, a servant of the lustful inclinations of others.

His lips twisted this time not in a scowl but a smile, a much too sweet smile. The smile of a banker selling a five thousand percent interest loan and raking in the commission. A smile with far too many teeth.

"I knew you would say that. And even knowing you would doesn't make the statement any less laughable."

He pointed a talon tipped claw at Nuru "Your statement dear Nuru.."

"Denied."

 

[Saliru]

"Have y'even looked in a mirror lateleh?!" Nuru snarled in retort. In the face of Zar's calm well-thought out prose, the boil was chaotic and bristling with emotion. Fury, hurt, sadness, and loss filled him. Though that loss may still be premature, he hoped anyway.

A singular thought overtook the rest and the anger was viciously beaten back in the face of this; what if he's the only one who can help Zar now? Not even Zar seems aware of his illness. He clearly can't help himself this time for this reason.

He reached to try and seize the incubus by his shoulders, "ZAH! Ah know y'in there somewheres!" His voice was loud and determined, "Ahm tryin' t'help you!"
 

[Baneful]

Being seized by Nuru made him laugh, a mirthless sound, rattled syllables dislodged by his surprise

The boil's hands, once welcomed as a loving caress now made his very skin crawl in repulsed waves, so very imperfect. Emotion was unflattering and so messy.

And then on the periphery of hearing someone was speaking, speaking to him.

Home

The snarled word was a command and a prediction, like the stern words of his father, impossible to disobey.

The world seemed to still in awe of the voice, not even a solitary whisper contesting its absolute command.

As if a bathplug somewhere had been pulled, the remaining colour swirled and leeched out of the world, out of Nuru, out of everything that he could see, and as it receded, the chill rose upwards, creeping and slithering through his veins like ice. It was almost a relief. Nuru receded and the pain of lingering love did too. Emotions were sloughed off like a discarded skin. He had a home. It had been waiting for him all along, calling to him, a place he had always sought. A place he belonged.

Reaching up with suddenly strong claws he pried the hands off himself. Reaching for words that would no longer come.

Don't be ridiculous, I know precisely who I am. he had been going to say

Except now he did not. He did not speak and he did not know.

Who he was had been was irrelevant, all that mattered was where he was going.

There had been something important, so important that now no longer mattered, everything was white, the boil before him became a mere shape - an obstacle in the way of home that simply had to be removed.

The fog rolled in, caressing his slender form, bleeding into him, no longer terrifying but reassuring.

In losing himself he had found perfection.

All that had been Zar was gone, muted to silence. The instinct to speak lingered, like a fading note on the air, but when he tried, all that came forth was a word that now defined everything that remained.

"Home"




HP:60  

[Saliru]

It was like that horrible nightmare all over again... only this time, it was so real and so... Nuru felt weak and helpless as Zar effortlessly slipped from his grasp. Solid warm body turned to chilly mist and the only words of comfort the demon had to offer... were not comforting at all.

That dreaded word. That horrible thought. Home... he wanted... he couldn't... he wanted Zar, not home. But Zar was his home.

He tried to reach one last time for the creature that he still hoped had something resembling the Zar he once knew, somewhere, deep inside. "Zah please!" He could help you if you'd just let him...
 

[Baneful]

But Zar was gone.

The creature that had once been the demon turned its yellow gaze on Nuru.

The obstacle.

Taking a few fog trailing steps closer seemingly oblivious to the barghest's words, he lashed out with wicked claws, feeling out this new-found strength.

HP 58
DMG: 2
ROOM EFFECT - EQUAL BACKLASH
 

[Saliru]

Nuru yelped in both terror and pain as the boil he once loved lashed out with it's surprisingly solid claws. Without thinking who or what was attacking him, he fought back with a powerful bite, sinking it into his attacking arm.

Zar was sick... he was the only one who could help him now... even if this was the help. He was in a frenzy now and shook with his jaws causing the Zar's claws to continually rake across his own body.

HP - 30/40
DMG - 8
Effect - EQUAL BACKLASH