Inazuma Shines Eternal

He’s a rough boy with bruised, bloody knuckles and a deep scratch under his eye. But he has gentle, downturned eyes that remind you of the blue of winters first frost.

He runs into you on your way home from school, crashing into you along the cobblestone path that leads you to your house, and when you get knocked backwards you feel yourself on the verge of tears from shock, but when his shaky hand comes out to help you up with a wobbly apology, you glance up at him and a sudden telltale warmth spreads from where your hands touch down to your toes. You feel your soul mark scratch at your skin and you gasp, but he only winces at the lightning prick of pain that tells him who you are to him.

He helps you up and your face warms. He looks panicked, like a cornered dog. You then spot the smattering of blood across his white school shirt. His shoes are caked with it, with dirt and scuffed from running through the mud. Your face falls and just before you can ask him if he’s okay, he tells you his name, and then pushes past you in a sprint. The scent of blood flies past your senses and you stare at his back as he gets smaller and smaller in the distance.

You don’t see him again for 15 years after that night.

Until one day you hear about the new Warden at the Fortress of Meropide, and without truly thinking - your finger curiously traces the somewhat familiar scar underneath the man’s eye on the photograph on the front page.

Your soul mark then hisses under your skin, the heat crawling up your arm and onto your tongue. Your brow pinches in confusion.

His name is unfamiliar, Wriothesley.

>world settings

By the time I got in line to pay he was loitering at the front of the store again, and I just had that feeling that he was going to try and take the game I just bought, or steal my purse, as soon as I left the store. OR, he was going to try and follow me home. And I know I don’t have to explain that terror to any woman reading this, but all I could think was that I’m in this Gamestop alone with at least twenty other men and something is about to happen. I’m beginning to freak out, to the point where I’ve just pulled my pepper spray out of my purse and into the pocket of my coat. 

So there I am, next in line to pay, and there is this GIGANTIC dudebro right behind me, and I say gigantic as a 6 foot tall woman. He says, “Ma’am? Don’t be offended, but would it be alright if I walked you to your car?” and I was like “Are you serious?” and he was like “There are some weird guys in here right now. Have you noticed that guy watching you?” and then I showed the dudebro the pepper spray in my pocket and he was like “Right on. Would you still let me walk you to your car?” and I said yes.

So I paid, and waited while HE paid, and he walked me to my car. And just as I was getting in, the weird guy who’d been loitering came out of the store, saw me and my dudebro, and turned around and walked away in the opposite direction.