CASCADES OF DARKNESS
Chapter 00: Epilogue for Normal Days
Anzu Mazaki was late.
She had overslept and missed the bus to Domino High. This was terrible! She had already missed a full week of school on a trip to watch a stage show abroad, and now she was about to miss her first day of classes back! She ran down the street, a piece of toast dangling precariously from her mouth, a mixture of panic and jetlag numbing her appreciation for the irony of the stereotype.
She had told dad to wake her up if her alarm didn't! This was seriously not good! An earful from whomever was droning on in the faculty lounge this time was the last thing she needed.
In her rush, she began to cross the street as the light switched to a deep green.
It was the verdant chartreuse of oblivion. Only the bleakest, truest agony remained for young Anzu as the many pounds of metal careened toward her.
It took only a split second. The blare of a horn. The blur of thirteen tons of unforgiving momentum. Eyes widened as she lost her balance. She could feel the catch in the back of her throat. Anzu closed her eyes, bracing herself for the worst.
There was the screech of brakes and the crash of impact, but Anzu felt no pain. In fact, she heard the crunch of steel against something stronger rather than of bone against steel. And as Anzu slowly opened her quivering orbs, she realized that this something stronger was a fist.
The black silhouette against the fading sun was nearly inscrutable. But the merest glance was enough to telegraph to Anzu the truth behind what had saved her. Someone had punched a bus to a standstill. She stared with no lack of incredulity and smelled the sharp, familiar sting of ozone.
It reminded her of something in her past. Something locked away in somewhere, somewhere in the dark corners, in only the most penumbral vestiges and recesses of her memory's viscera.
A shudder ran through her, like an icy sword. She felt a crystalline, lucid tear trickle down from the azure pools that were her orbs. It was a single tear, but it echoed down her face, as well as down her memory. Something about this was eerily familiar, but she couldn't reach far past her memory's scar tissue. Why couldn't she remember…? What couldn't she remember? And above all else…
Why was she so afraid?
Within the fading light of the sunset, she shuddered.
The tawny, incipient twilight held within its paradoxical hues of sunset orange a peculiar sight. It was as if the air around the fist attached to the person was bent, shimmering with a petulence and ferocity matched only by some sheer, silent will that could control it.
At this point, Anzu Mazaki was unaware of whether the hand was attached to the person, or the person to the hand. However for now, the brownette regarded the figure before her.
His hair was jet-black, slick, smooth, and ebon. It drank the evening sun, lightless, wafting in the foreboding wind. A shard of glass fell from the bus's ruined fender. The flummoxed driver, a miserable-looking woman now escorting her passengers off the bus.
As adrenaline pounded in her ears and the air crackled with the sharp taste of the myriad ozones, Tia could not help but to liken the trajectory of the hair to a penitent willow, or perhaps the wings of a disgraced and fallen divine about to take its umbral flight.
It was ephemeral.
It was terrifying, and yet there was something irresistible to it.
"Wh-who are you…?" She spoke shakily, unsure of herself. Why had she spoken? Anzu would perhaps never know. But there was something impelling about how his studded coat billowed with the wind, something about how the leather of his fingerless gloves shone beneath spiked metal cuffs, something about his authority and poise, that seemed otherworldly.
He stared at her with his eyes. They were eyes that had some enigmatic quality to them. Something of peril true were held within those lightless eyes but she caught the glint of something that betrayed his oppressive mien.
His eyes spoke before he did, quietly: "...-suke."
A wind blew in from in front of him, and Anzu flinched at the sudden gust of cold and stagnation. When she opened her eyes, she found herself alone in the middle of a crosswalk. A bus was parked not twelve feet from her, completely undamaged and emergency lights flashing, and a nervous driver crouching next to her.
"Oh, thank goodness you're okay!"
The bus driver sighed with relief. "When you passed out like that, you really had me worried. I-I'm so sorry about it."
Anzu looked up, unfeeling and dazed. "Wh-where is he?"
The bus driver stared back. "Who's 'he'? You're the only person on the crosswalk. Are you sure you didn't hit your head?"