"What makes an apple fall to the ground?"

"Huh?"

The young girl lay in the dirt on her belly, arms folded, chin resting awkwardly upon layered hands. She was observing a medium-sized apple, an item she had discovered moments ago on the stone walkway, obviously discarded some time ago by its owner. It was whole, and yellow in color save a rough, tan patch and a couple of dark holes. "I said, what makes an apple fall to the ground?"

The blank stare did not leave the countenance of the young boy who was sitting against a withered tree, nearby. "Ummm... 'cause somebody shot it off a wall?"

"Nope."

"Uhhh..." He ruffled his blond hair, turning his eyes toward the tree's branches. "'Cause...uh...because somebody dropped it?"

The girl giggled, elevating herself to her elbows before tucking strands of hair behind her ear. "No, silly. It's not that."

A second boy, who stood adjacent to the first, was also leaning against the tree trunk, and he looked over at the girl in scorn. "How come you ask such dumb questions, Elza? Who cares what makes it fall? They don't even grow them here, anyway."

Elza twisted her body to look at him, a scowl on her face. "It's not dumb! My daddy used to ask that! Don't call it dumb 'cause the answer's really neat!"

"Then what is it?" he asked, appearing just as interested--or in this case, uninterested--as what the tone of his words suggested.

"Guess."

"No."

Elza pouted. "Why?"

"'Cause it's dumb!" he finished.

"Shut up, Kelly!"

"Can you quit it?" asked the first boy, who was looking nervous. "We've only got an hour. I thought we were gonna have fun."

"Me too," said Kelly, "but Elza would rather play with apples. Come on, Clive. Let's go do something before we go back to training."

Clive stood up as Kelly began to walk away, but he did not immediately follow. For a moment, his eyes went back and forth between Kelly and Elza, but despite the young girl's urging look, as well as his own uncertainties, he ultimately sided with the other boy. "Uh...y-yeah. You ruin everything, Elza. We'd ask you to come, but you'd probably do something lame, like...um...go through the kitchen waste and play with melon rinds. Haha. So dumb." With that, he took off after Kelly.

When the two were gone, Elza took the apple into her hands, and stood up with a sigh. "You're the one who's dumb." Inwardly, she cared deeply for both boys, as they had been her only friends nearly since the day she was sold to the Howling Voice Guild. There was an undeniable connection between the three, and Elza only wished to fortify their bond by sharing with them her earliest memories.

No. That wasn't it.

She simply did not want to forget her earliest memories...the ones of her mother and father...the memories of a time she felt truly loved. Perhaps she felt that sharing these memories with her young friends would help accomplish this selfish goal...and perhaps, that was why it hurt to have them so easily dismissed.

Before the girl could grow completely lost in her sadness, something caught her eye. She lifted the apple and stared, noticing an odd movement just beneath the skin. "Huh...?" Slowly but surely, tiny fragments of yellow skin began to disappear, a small black hole gradually appearing. Elza's eyes grew wide as the hole projected itself outward at her, and she gasped, dropping the fruit onto the ground. She continued watching as the dark worm wriggled itself completely free of the apple, and began to dance wildly on the dirt.

---

It was nearly midnight when Elza became certain she was no longer being followed...at least, for the time being. It was many years later, and whatever childhood she had insisted on clinging to had faded away long ago. Still, she managed to hold onto something of a heart, onto something that was human. As long as her two best friends were by her side, she was happy. She was strong. She was fearless. She could do anything in the world.

She never would have thought in a million years that killing a dear friend was one of those things.

Nearly out of breath, she ran behind a thick tree of medium height, the leaves and branches forming a nearly impenetrable roof above her soaked form. As the rain continued to shower the forest all around her, she threw her back up against the trunk, inhaling and exhaling sharply...and she lifted her hands, which were shaking uncontrollably, the only visible evidence now of her "guilt." As she stared at them in the occasional flashes of lightning, images of the past day returned to her, rapidly overlapping in no particular order.

A set-up. It was all a set-up. She, Clive, and Kelly had all passed the test, but only one of them could become Guildmaster. Anyone would have thought the problem solved when the Elders chose Kelly...yet the problem was far from being solved. Kelly's new position included wielding the weapon Storm, a gun said to possess a spirit of its own. Unfortunately for Kelly, the gun did not choose its appointed master. It did, however, choose Elza. Shocked, and even resentful of this outcome, the Elders set up a duel between Elza and Kelly...an event that was fixed before it began. Mond and Stern were the guns chosen for the duel, only one of which was loaded that day. Kelly had realized the Elders wanted him to kill Elza, eliminating the obstacle between him and Storm, and so he elected to wield Mond, the unloaded weapon. Shortly after she shot Kelly down, Elza realized that not only had it all been a failed set-up, but now the Elders were planning to pin the crime on her. Overwhelmed by so many revelations at once, she took both guns and ran.

The tears came now as she thought about Kelly's final words. She had seen many terrible things in her young life, and had essentially been trained to be an assassin, but this was something for which she could never have prepared. Her only link to compassion, to humanity...destroyed by her own hands. She had been trained to kill, but this was...

"No..." Having finally caught her breath, Elza pressed her hands against the sides of her face and shook her head. It wasn't true. It just couldn't be. She couldn't have killed him. Kelly wasn't dead. He was just off on a mission with Storm, which had fully accepted him, and when she returned to the tower, he and Clive would be right there, smiling, appreciating the fact that they still had many more moments to gather together, just as they had done when they were children. It didn't matter that Kelly hadn't had the most delightful of personalities since he took charge. He was still a good guy and an experienced gunman and everyone liked him, and there was just no way he could have been killed at his young age because he was Kelly, intelligent, cautious, and skilled, and she had never lost a loved one to death.

Never.

But recollections of truth persisted in betraying her fragile state of mind, forcing her to at least acknowledge the extent of her responsibility. Elza only fought back harder, pushing away what she could not handle at the moment. It was out of her hands, just as when she was sold to the Guild. She had no control over her parents' terrible financial situation, and she had no control what the Elders had plotted, or over the fact that Kelly was...was...

"No...no, no, no..." Truth finally prevailed as an unexpected set of memories invaded her mind. That warm smile he always had for her, the kindness he always extended to friends...especially when they became more than friends. The way he felt between the sheets, the comfort of his embrace...that reassurance that, no matter what happened or didn't happen between then, his presence would be a constant one. But now that she was thinking of him in the past tense, there was no more reassurance or warmth or even friendship for that matter. And this forced her to face what she'd been hiding from for the past several moments. There was only one person responsible for Kelly's fate...and that person was she.

"Please, no...I can't...I can't..." She had invested many years training in brutal environments with the deadliest weapons known to man, witnessed countless horrors involving friend and enemy alike, and found her childhood over before it barely began...yet the simple fact of knowing she was responsible for another person's death broke her far more easily than all of her experiences in the Guild combined.

With nothing else permitting a distraction, Elza let loose a scream...and then another, even louder and lengthier than the first.

He was dead.

And she had killed him.

Finally accepting this reality, Elza slowly sank to her knees and sobbed loudly. She had killed him. Her close friend...a man with whom she had shared secrets, dreams, and even a bed once upon a time. How could this be? How could they have ended up in a horrifying situation where they were forced to kill one another?

Just then, the man's last words came back to her.

"I loved you and Clive..."

"I loved you, too," Elza wailed, tears pouring down her face. "And now...and now..." She continued sobbing, knowing she would never again experience a casual gathering with good friends, or all those things she took for granted. When she returned, she wouldn't be welcomed by Kelly's smile or Clive's cheery greeting. She would only find certain death--only this time, it would be her own.

She couldn't even begin to think about how Clive was taking the tragedy, let alone what he probably thought of her. Clive was also a good man, and...as it so happened, he had also once been her lover. He was her best friend, along with Kelly. Elza didn't trust or love anyone more than her two closest companions. Kelly had been the eldest of the three, and he was conscious of the things that happened behind the scenes...as evidenced by his decision to wield Mond in the duel. Clive, on the other hand, was different...he was more blind to such things. Sometimes it was that he was conflicted, but much of the time it was naïveté.

Elza had to wonder what had gone through his mind when he heard the news. How did he feel about one of his best friends killing the other? True to his sense of justice, he probably blamed her and desired vengeance. If he spotted any shades of grey in the stories of the Elders, he likely attributed those to lapses of time caused by her. Kelly was dead, and if she was responsible for it, then she was truly a criminal by all definitions. Elza would not consider it a great shock if he volunteered to carry out her sentence.

Not because I'm guilty, Elza thought sadly. His devotion to the Guild limits his vision. If the Guild states it, I might just as well be rotten to the core, because he wouldn't believe anything else. And all because of them...

Her eyes narrowed, sorrow and grief slowly transforming into anger. If only they hadn't made those stupid rules...if only Storm had chosen Kelly and not her...if only it hadn't mattered. She slowly stood, turning her face to the darkness behind her.

"Damn you all..." she hissed. "If you'd just left us alone, he'd still be alive. If you weren't such a twisted bunch of individuals who raises children to be killers, none of this would have had to happen."

Suddenly, as though insulted by the ensuing silence, she quickly stood and turned around. "Do you hear me?!" she shrieked, thrusting the lower part of her palm at the tree trunk. The thin cracks in the bark scratched her skin as she pummeled it, but she hardly acknowledged this. "This is all your fault!" When the outburst yielded no reply, she whirled back around with a disgusted cry, throwing her back against the trunk. "All your fault," she whispered, feeling the tears return. "All of you...depraved...and because I didn't prevent it, I..."

The sound of a gunshot ringing through the air jerked her back to the present, and she did not wait for its owner to identify himself before she was back on the run. She knew who it was, anyway, so his identity was no surprise; the timing, however, was a bit close. Somewhere in her heart, she wished that Clive would have at least taken at least several days to debate becoming her executioner, rather than jumping headfirst into the decision. Perhaps that would have given her some comfort, assuring her that some small part of their friendship had indeed existed, and still did.

"I know you're here, Elza!" Clive shouted in the distance.

As though possessed, Elza continued running through the black rain. She did not look back.

---

Several years passed before Clive caught up with her. They had already met once in Muse with the help of an unwitting teenage boy, an encounter that ended in Elza's escape.

Over the course of those few years, Elza had gotten used to the chase. It was almost like a game to her, now. A game one could even say that, on some warped level, she was secretly enjoying.

Kelly was gone, but she still had Clive. And for as long as she could elude him, this would always be a guarantee. And if she had to die by his hands, at least she would be in the company of a dear friend...even if, at present, he loathed her with all of his heart.

"Stop where you are."

A series of clicks followed the command, and Elza did as she was told. Slowly, she turned around, and sure enough, there was Clive...dressed in his black cloak, aiming Storm at her.

Though anyone else might have reacted with alarm, Elza kept her composure, meeting his glare with a smirk. "Clive."

"Elza," Clive quickly spat. "Throw down your weapons."

The young woman shrugged. "Gosh, Clive, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't seem to be holding any weapons, as you can see--"

"I mean the ones strapped to your body," Clive interrupted through gritted teeth. "The ones you stole from the Guild. Do it. Now."

Elza let out a sigh, as though the instruction were a mild inconvenience. "Fine, fine." Removing Moon and Star from their holsters, she knelt down and set them on the ground.

"Now take three steps back."

Again, she did as she was told, but this time, without delay.

Clive then moved forward cautiously, still aiming Storm at her, and for a moment, Elza thought he would fire at her. When he was only a few feet away, however, he lowered the weapon. "Hold your hands out, palms down."

"What, no immediate execution?" the woman asked nonchalantly. "How sweet of you."

"That was recommended to me," Clive said coldly, moving closer. He reached into his cloak and pulled out some rope. "However, I see it more proper that you are brought to justice on the very ground on which you spilled Kelly's blood. I have no other reasons."

A half-smile curled on Elza's lips. "So you say, boy. But it sounds like mercy to me."

"Call it what you will. You are being charged with the crime of murdering your Guild Master, and it is my responsibility to see that you pay for your crimes."

"Haha. Come on, Clive, we're both adults here. Are you sure there's no deeper, underlying reason you won't kill me?"

Clive scowled. "I would silence myself if I were you, and quickly." He brought the rope up, intending to tie her wrists. "I could just as easily grant you your wish." Elza's hand was on his before he finished the sentence.

"But you won't," she replied as his eyes met hers. "Something inside you...won't let you. Do you know what that is, Clive?"

Clive hesitated, but then pushed her hand away. "I told you what it is. Don't add to your crimes by further delaying your arrest."

"Clive...don't you want to ask me how it happened?"

The man's eyes narrowed. "I know how it happened. And I can't believe you would resort to cheap tricks, such as playing on my sympathy."

Elza looked genuinely hurt. "And I can't believe you would condemn me so quickly. Did you ever ask why I would do such a thing to a friend?"

"Jealousy and resentment, of course," Clive said...or recited from memory. "You and I both know he was insufferable the moment he became Guild Master. Naturally, you believed you were the better person for the job, and while I might have agreed, murdering him was the thing furthest from my mind."

Elza shook her head, clearly pitying him. "Again, there you go, judging me. You have no idea what went on, Clive. You're the same as ever, believing everyone...except for the one person who always believed in you."

That caught his attention. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying...that I've always felt strongly...about my two closest friends...in more ways than one. We shared so many memories, Kelly and I...just as you and I had our memories." She brought a hand to his face, and gazed into his eyes. "Don't you remember, Clive? How we believed in each other, how we stuck together when everyone else was going mad? How we..." She drew closer, leaving mere inches between their faces. "...how we promised that nothing would ever come between us?"

Somehow, her words and actions were enough to lull his anger. "Elza..." Clive lowered Storm, and gradually dropped the rope. "The fact remains, you shot him--"

"It was a duel. These things are bound to happen."

"Elza...you tampered with his gun." Despite this rehearsed accusation, another emotion was taking over him. "...d...didn't you?"

"Clive..." Elza whispered, searching his face. "Could you really find it in your heart...to believe I didn't?"

"I..." The man's expression grew forlorn. "I want that more than anything in the world...but..."

"You can have that, Clive," she replied to his hesitation. "Believe me, you can."

"It's too late..."

"No..." Elza's other hand touched Clive on the shoulder, eventually drifting down his arm. "It's never too late to believe." The hand caressing Clive's face lowered itself gently to his chest. "All it takes...is inner strength...it's as simple as that."

Clive's eyes widened briefly. "Elza...you..."

"You do...remember a time like that...don't you?"

Seeing the woman's expression grow weary, Clive at last relinquished all his defenses. "Elza..." His grip on Storm completely relaxed, and his other hand slowly found a home upon Elza's cheek. "There's...so many things I..."

"I understand," she said softly, touching his elevated wrist for a moment. "How much time...was lost between us? It doesn't seem fair at all. So many things I took for granted when we were kids. But now, after all this time, here we are..."

"When we were kids..." Clive echoed quietly. In his expression was bewilderment, something which was replaced shortly afterward by renewed hope. "What are you saying? That...that we have a chance to make up for lost time?"

Elza's hands moved further downward with much discretion. "What do you think I'm saying, Clive?"

"I..." Clive's mind was swimming with confusion as well as what could almost be considered bliss. He did not seem to take notice as Elza lifted Storm by the barrel and relieved his hand of the weapon. "...I don't know. I just...I hope..." His free hand went up to join the other, softly framing Elza's face. "Elza..." Inspired by something in the woman's expression, he crossed a thumb to the opposite end of her mouth, slowly rubbing it across her bottom lip.

Elza tried to suppress a reflexive, breathless utterance to no avail. Her eyes shut, and she reminded herself to remain focused...though a part of her couldn't help but acknowledge how good it felt to be touched again. By him. By Clive…who was now shortening the distance between them.

"What...makes an apple fall to the ground?" he suddenly asked.

Immediately regaining her senses, Elza quickly pulled the gun back with both hands. She slammed the butt of the weapon into Clive's gut with brutal force, completely knocking the wind out of him. The man dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Gazing down at Clive's unmoving form, Elza then replied with a devious smirk.

"Just the simple fact it's rotten to the core."