Hezalea Solitreault's Questionnaire

Hezalea lives in a townhouse near the Kitsilano area, where quite a few rich people live. It's relatively new yet quite rustic-looking, with painted walls and wooden floors instead of sleeker-looking material. She wouldn't be comfortable in a place that looked too clean, yet if you checked her room, you'd see that it's incredibly minimalistic and not lived-in. Her old coworker (now her roommate) insists on living in a bigger house and in a more secure location, though she thinks this property would just attract unwanted attention anyway. Either way, he's covering some of her rent so she'd be paying a little under a thousand dollars per month, so she's not complaining.

She lives with 3 roommates, two of whom are UBC students who have no idea why she'd willingly travel all the way to SFU each day. It's not that she likes transit, she just happens to have intel that there's something she's looking for up on Burnaby Mountain. The few hours sacrificed to the buses per day are worth it.

Hezalea works part-time at a construction site. She's used to this kind of dusty, haphazard environment, having spent her youth trespassing through buildings in the midst of renovation. It's a pretty good pay, all things considered, though she opts to save most of her money and spend the rest on necessities. Being a lifelong survivalist means she's still accustomed to having an ability to pack everything and go, not to mention her past occupation.

The one thing she's a bit irked about is how slow things progress in construction around these parts. It feels like she and her team are just hanging around a majority of time, and plugging up traffic for no reason other than being able to stick a truck in the middle of the road.

Hezalea would like to see the world devoid of influence from cowardly puppeteers who hide behind status symbols and figureheads. 

For the longest time she had been working under them herself, because she had nowhere else to go. There was no way to sustain herself in a bustling society, and Japan tends to hide its ugliest side behind smoke and mirrors and anime girls. The system is inherently flawed enough for dozens of orphans like herself to get thrown into a life of clandestine operations, and very few make it out alive. Those who do coincidentally tend to be the ones most obedient to the higher-ups, decorated for all their achievements while guns are pointed at their backs. 

Keep your head up.

Don't look back.

Don't question it.

It was a miracle she had gotten out relatively unscathed, but ever since then, she found herself missing the action and the adrenaline of fighting for a purpose. Combined with the shame of effectively killing a dear friend, she has resolved to become the true definition of a hero in her mind: someone inhumanly powerful, and one who stands against the world if it means they can protect their virtues. She's ready to see society crumble if the roots have rotted for far too long to support themselves under this weight. 

Death?

She'll die a million times just to come back and become more of a pain in the ass for the people she once worked under. It's the least she can do to atone.

It doesn't hurt if she chooses not to feel, after all. 

The dark clouds loomed over the barren land as she stood frozen in place, staring down at a motionless figure. A small gust of wind sent dead leaves flying past her from the direction of a somewhat nearby city that had been obscured by a thin layer of fog. Squinting did nothing to prevent the fresh sting behind her eyes. Every breath was painful and dry, so difficult yet she had to breathe even harder. She shivered, but she didn’t dare move an inch, as though even to simply zip up her jacket would have caused time itself to rupture. No, even if she did move, something irreversible has already been done. Something unforgivable. Something that, no matter how much she explained, no one would believe a word of. 

She wouldn't believe herself either.

A metal smell filled the air as crimson blood slowly dripped from a knife in her right hand. It pooled onto the ground beside her feet, gradually being absorbed by the thin, pale sand. Near it was a much bigger puddle that slowly grew as the person laid lifelessly in front of her. Grief and guilt twisted together in her stomach, and now she wasn't quite sure whether or not she was the one who had killed the very person she looked up to. She wouldn’t do this, would she?

If this had dragged on for any longer, would she have been the one bleeding the rest of her life out in the middle of the arid wastelands?

In spite of how sure she had once been of the fact that she was not a murderer, things had begun to blur for what seemed like an eternity, warping into a wicked, gray zone that stretched for miles and miles. The only thing she knew now was that glasses were not the solution to whatever this was. She couldn’t go to an optometrist and ask them to cure her of all the negligence that led to this. She couldn’t go to them and request something that would help her see the path she had to take to escape this grey world, because that something does not exist.

Once-muffled footsteps from far away became quiet thumps that eventually stopped about a meter behind her, followed by a small series of familiar clicks. She instinctively dropped her knife and raised her hands above her head. It wasn’t any better when a familiar voice sliced through the air. 

“Congratulations. You have slain the beast.”

______

Hezalea's most defining moment wasn't when she learned of her irresponsible father from Hong Kong. It wasn't when her mother died, and it wasn't even when she met her friend and first love.

It was when she killed her.

She would never admit that she was framed even if it could save her life. At the end of the day, even if she had not physically done the act, her negligence and tunnel vision were what culminated into this moment. 

And she questioned everything she had ever chosen to do; this path of hatred, this destiny to lurk silently in the shadows, to become the tooth and claw of an evil government, she condemned all of it. They crowned her the "hero of the city" but all she felt was emptiness. What was she striving for? What point was there in living if she'd just be doing it for someone else? Hezalea could not live like this. Nor does she deserve to carry on Caliose's legacy, but from then on she decided to live for herself.

And no one could stop her.

Koriol Celestheryne:

Former co-worker turned roommate. They've gone through things together (though it was mostly Hezalea being shot at and hunted down) and this teamwork has transferred well to being able to coexist in the same household. He's got a knack for mysteries and he'll always drag Hezalea along to make one of those evidence pinboards, and they'll spend hours ruminating over the most trivial matters. Examples include whether peanut butter and jelly is really the best combination, and what the ratio should be if it were true. Between the two of them, they have a silent agreement not to ask any questions, though she does get strange looks from him every now and then when she acts a little too spooked by a worm on the ground. She has a feeling he already knows what's up, but it doesn't have to be said out loud. It even seems dangerous for him to try putting it into words; wealthy and smart as he may be, he's just a regular civilian, and there's a reason why his station was behind a desk covered in sticky notes that he's drawn on. She trusts him, at the very least, though sometimes he'll do something stupid and she has to be the one to clean up the stains. Maybe that's their fate for engaging with a sneaky lifestyle for so long.

Luciole Garnychelis:

Just a regular uni student who Koriol met in his studio class, but really, no one around Koriol or Hezalea can really be "normal". There's something off about the way she smiles relentlessly through anything and everything; she even beats Koriol at maintaining such a serene pokerface, as if she's just stuck this way. Hezalea is sure that she has her bad days, but something tells her she doesn't want to know what that entails (it wouldn't be farfetched to assume Luciole can and will kill people, and experienced as Hezalea is at doing that as well, she's still going to try avoiding such confrontations on school grounds). At times she speaks of a certain ideology that neither Hezalea nor Koriol can currently identify, so she's one of the many mysteries that Koriol is watching over at the moment. Hezalea herself is hesitant on treating a person like a scientific test subject, so she tries to interact with Luciole normally. At the end of the day she's just an ignorant girl who somehow got caught up on something that no single person can comprehend. It would be nice if Hezalea knew how to talk to this person normally, but her social skills have always been subpar. What happened to the days when she'd just have to stay silent?

Caliose:

An... old friend. Hezalea chose the name "Caliose" for her because she didn't have one, pronounced similarly to "Helios", the Greek god of the sun. Because... Caliose is her sun. Always will be.
If there’s any word to describe their first meeting, it’s that Hezalea was amazed. Hezalea’s never been a believer, while Caliose was nothing if not a million wishes on a star. And seeing this almost made her think there was a future beyond the fray. Almost. Because in the end she was convinced that she was made for this life---she’d established too much in it to just throw it all away, no matter how much Caliose raved on about freedom. In a way she felt like she was holding Caliose back but there were so many other aspects stopping her that Hezalea’s measly grip was just a drop of water in the storm. Hezalea’s love was like a fire and she knew it. She kept a safe distance and never followed up on the feelings. Only that she didn’t know whether Caliose was a mere drop in danger of evaporating, or an ocean waiting to swallow her whole. She’d rather think of the latter because she couldn’t stand thinking of Caliose as anything less---vast as the ocean and the realms beyond---nor could she fathom hurting Caliose when that’s been the one thing she was careful not to do. (Funny how the strongest wills would never be enough against an evil system.) If it were an ideal world she wouldn’t want anyone to feel any emotion for her because her life’s told her time and again that it only leads to pain for both parties. Except she also couldn’t stand it if Caliose ever stopped looking at her.
If only life were fair to those who truly believed in the greater good.
But Caliose, to fate, was never the sun. She ended up being Icarus, sent plunging to her death for hoping too strongly.
Hezalea must atone, for she was the sun all along.

Hezalea had a happy childhood.

It was by no means normal; if anything she and her mother were suffering in these slums, but they were never unhappy. She can remember the warmth of her mother's embrace and the soft words of encouragement that always hid a bittersweet tone underneath. She remembers the fleeting times in which she'd come home on her birthday and her mother would be waiting with what small gift she could afford. Her mother tried her best; she was kind, and she taught Hezalea how to be a human being. 

But she also remembers the day she came back to her mother crying. It was the anniversary between her and Hezalea's deadbeat father, who had left the moment he found out her mother was pregnant. Hezalea hadn't heard much of him beforehand, nor did she even know what a "father" was considering the rest of the kids in the neighbourhood usually had no family at all. By that point her mother's health was deteriorating, and just a short while later, she died of a heart attack.

Hezalea would never forgive the man who left her in this state.

She doesn't even remember where her hometown (if she could call it one) was, because no one would mention the real name, as a form of revolution against the city. Not to mention she and a few others were carted off (no one would miss them or even notice they were gone) before they could really call the place "home". Apparently she had talent. She had prowess. She showed potential. They put her into school and she struggled but she pulled through, thus proving their theories and hypotheses, whatever that could mean.

So why were those scientists so intent on "improving" and "changing" her if she were good enough?

Of course.

They only saw her as a tool. A machine. A child soldier, a child assassin - she didn't kill children; she was a child and she was an assassin - who didn't even know her own age anymore. She can only guess nowadays, but only if she could even measure herself by normal means for an average person. She knew she was different the moment she woke up in a hospital bed in Japan, guns and daggers at her side for her to choose from. And she didn't think much of it. She had fundamentally changed, perhaps even forgotten her mother's words for a year or two or more.  

She had nothing but her mother's maiden name (Solitreault) and the name of the man who betrayed them.