Me: Haha. Hahahah. HAHAHHHAHAHAHAHA- *laughes hysterically*

Shindou: What is wrong? Why are you laughing like that? It's creepy.

Me: Oh, gomenasai, Shindou-kun, hahaha. It's just that, pffffhihi, this story was just some random scene from my mind that I wanted to get out and I already got ten reviews. TEN REVIEWS, FOR JUST THE PROLOGUE! :D BWAHAHAHAHAA!

Kirino: But... that's not even all that funny...

Me: Eh? It isn't?

IE-cast: *shakes heads*

Me: ... *awkwardly clears throat* Inazuma Eleven © Level 5. Hope you enjoy.

"A-are you sure about this?" Tenma stuttered as he glanced at the dark trees that were about twenty metres away from them. Thick wisps of fog floated between the wooden stems, making it impossible to see the ground. The Misty Woods looked, in one word, terrifying. He shivered and turned back to his navy haired friend.

Tsurugi gritted his teeth. "Of course, there is no way I'm letting Kariya talk to me like that." But even he didn't move. Shindou suppressed a sigh and looked back at the mysterious forest, just like his friends. If Kariya hadn't mocked Tsurugi like that, I wouldn't be here now, he concluded sourly.

Kariya Masaki was the son of a local hunter that lives about a kilometre away from Raimon and he was a year younger than Shindou. The boy often helped his father with placing and emptying the snares and sometimes they were gone for over a week to hunt somewhere far away. Kariya was also very good with his slingshot; Shindou knew no one else who could kill a rabbit from a thirty-metre distance with said weapon. He had all the qualities of a hunter: he was fast, agile, quiet and patient.

"Can't we just forget about it and play soccer for a while?" Shindou suggested, although he already knew the answer. When it came to his pride, Tsurugi Kyousuke never backed down. Tsurugi was the blacksmith's son and apprentice, even though one wouldn't think him to be. Blacksmiths are usually tall, tanned and heavily muscled men whose skin is constantly covered in a mixture of soot and sweat. While Tsurugi was indeed rather tall, he was also incredibly pale and his arm muscles weren't that spectacular. That didn't mean that he wasn't strong, though: Shindou had seen him move loads of metal like it was nothing. Sure, Shindou himself was quite strong too, but Tsurugi's strength was from a whole different calibre.

"I won't let him look down on me," the tallest boy in the group replied.

Earlier today, Kariya had entered the blacksmith's workshop to pick up his father's order of one dozen arrowheads. The hunter and his son were no strangers there, even though they mostly shoot with sharpened sticks without a metal point. But they had gone after a deer recently and for big preys like that they used metal arrowheads. Kariya's father liked to keep a little stockpile of the deadly pieces of metal, so as soon as they returned with their catch, he ordered new ones at the local blacksmith.

Kariya had been sent today to pick them up and at that time, Tsurugi was the only one in the workshop as his father was outside to nail a new horseshoe on the hoof of an old carthorse. The order was already prepared and the young hunter only needed to hand over the amount of coins that had been agreed upon. But as he was doing so, Tsurugi noticed a dark-red spot on the other's cheek, like someone had slapped him. He smirked and made a comment about it, something along the lines of a secret girlfriend who had broken up with him. Kariya stuttered a little and went bright red before he composed himself.

"What are you talking about?" the teal-haired boy had asked in a semi-vainglorious tone. "I'm sure a lot of girls would want me, but who needs them? I can hunt, I can cook, I can take care of myself... I'm afraid that I have to disappoint them if they are after this boy."

"Sure," had been Tsurugi's reply as the navyblue-haired boy rolled his eyes. "Then what about that sore spot on your cheek?"

"Oh that," Kariya shrugged indifferently and brushed over his cheek as if he only realized it when Tsurugi pointed it out. "That's my battle scar, and I have to say I'm quite proud of this one."

"Oh sure. How did it happen? Did a bunny slap you in the face with its ears?" Tsurugi teased and laughed hoarsely, which soon turned into a coughing fit as his body tried to free itself from the soot particles that he had inhaled during his work.

The hunter hadn't moved a muscle back then, or so Shindou was told. When the other calmed down, Kariya calmly took one of the iron arrowheads out of the bag and played with it between his fingers. "Very funny," he said, focussing on the glimmering of it in the little light in the workshop, "but no. Actually, I got this from entering the forest." He looked up and pierced his eyes in Tsurugi's. "Kiriyoshi's forest."

Tsurugi's smile had quickly disappeared after that and he looked nervously out of the window in the direction of the Misty Woods, before he cast his gaze back on Kariya. A joke was funny from time to time, but talking about Kiriyoshi while the sorcerer lived so close to them didn't seem like a great idea. Who knew what magic that person used to keep an eye on them? Maybe he was looking right now! He cast another anxious glance at the dark trees in the distance.

Kariya shrugged and acted like it was no big deal. "Yeah, my father and I had set out some snares in the outskirts of the Misty Woods and he wanted me to empty them. So he ties this rope around me so I won't get lost and then I'm off." He suppressed a smirk when he saw how intrigued Tsurugi was by his story. "I already emptied two and set them back up, and then I headed to the third one. This is where it gets ugly. So I get at the spot where we placed the snare, but it was much different from the other two. There was no mist."

Tsurugi blinked. "No mist?"

"Not a single wisp of fog. I could see the ground clearly, and what I saw..." He shuddered to build up the tension.

"What did you see?" Tsurugi's face was a mixture of curiosity and anxiety.

"The whole ground was covered in strange patterns. Circles, holes, curly lines, you name it. The snare was in the middle and there was a rabbit caught in it. To be honest, it looked like some kind of ritual or something."

"And what did you do then?"

Kariya shrugged again. "I walked towards it and emptied the snare, of course. That rabbit was our catch, after all."

"You took a rabbit that Kiriyoshi wanted to use for his sorcery?" Tsurugi exclaimed incredulously. He wasn't sure whether he should praise Kariya for such bravery or hit him on the head for so much stupidity.

Said boy nodded with a serious expression on his face. "Or at least, I tried. I walked towards it and then suddenly, big plants grew from he ground at break-neck speed and they grabbed my legs. I was stuck, nowhere to run. Those plants were tough vines, you know? Unbreakable."

"And then?" Tsurugi asked breathlessly, which was quite unusual for the usually quiet and composed boy.

Kariya pointed at the low ceiling of the workshop. "The branches of the trees began to grow too, they probably wanted to tie my arms. But I didn't let it get that far. I grabbed my knife and sliced the vines in one sway." He took out said knife and moved it back and forth near his feet as if he was cutting invisible plants. "Then I jumped backwards, but those plants followed me. It was crazy how fast they grew, you know. Anyways, they tried to grab me again and again but I cut them down and managed to get away from them. Maybe during that fight one of them hit me in the face, but I didn't even notice."

Tsurugi sighed a little once he realized that his companion's story was over. "It seems like you had a lot of luck this time."

Kariya frowned and huffed indignantly. "What luck? This was all thanks to my quick reflexes, my cool head and my accuraty with knifes. Luck had nothing to do with it."

"Sure, sure," Tsurugi said, turning around to look for the bellows. During their conversation, the forge had died down a little and his father wouldn't appreciate it if it extinguished completely when he came inside. "As I see it, you had an awful lot of luck. Or a guardian angel or something. Just take it from me that you should stay far away from the Misty Woods, Kariya. It's dangerous there, you shouldn't deal with strange forces like Kiriyoshi."

"Of course you say that," Kariya sneered at Tsurugi's back and he put the arrowhead back in the pouch as he walked to the doorway. "I guess I should expect nothing less from a coward who avoids the forest like the plague. But unlike you, I'm brave enough to get near those trees." Then he was gone, leaving Tsurugi's rigid silhouette facing the orange flames in the forge.

Shindou swallowed once more, but the lump in his throat didn't disappear. If Kariya just hadn't made that last comment, everything would have been fine. But now that Tsurugi's pride was aggrieved, the boy wouldn't stop at anything to restore the damage. Even if that meant dragging his three friends with him on a crazy trip into the Misty Woods.

What neither Shindou nor Tsurugi knew - and Kariya planned to keep it that way - is that the real story behind the sore was a lot less heroical. The young hunter indeed entered the Misty Woods with a rope tied around his waist and he emptied two snares, but that's where the similarities stopped. As Kariya had been on his way to the third snare, the fog around him thickened and he couldn't see the nearly invisible markings that led to the final trap. The inability to see more than half a metre in front of him and the feeling of being lost in a soundless world made Kariya nervous, to say the least. He jumped up every time he heard something and looked frantically around in search of whatever caused the noise. After a while he concluded that he was, indeed, lost. Not that he couldn't get out, of course, that was why he had that rope, but there was no way he could find the third snare in this mist. So he decided to give it up and head back to his house (walking slightly faster and noisier than usual because the forest creeped him out) and said a small prayer of thanks to whatever god or goddess was listening up there.

Not knowing that the slap wasn't from some devilish plants but from an angry hunter who didn't like it that his son skipped one snare despite the boy's valid argument, Tsurugi wanted nothing but to prove that he was just as courageous as Kariya, if not more courageous. As soon as his father had called it a day, Tsurugi went to his friends and asked - more like, ordered - them to join him on his mission.

And here they were. But not for long, if it was up to Shindou.

"Alright, I've got enough of this. This is ridiculous." He turned around and Shinsuke and Tenma eagerly followed him, glad with the opportunity to get away from the woods.

"Come on," Tsurugi called out from behind. "He called us cowards, you're not letting him talk to you like that, are you?"

"No, he called you a coward," Shindou pointed out. "And you're the only one who is bothered by it. If you want to venture yourself between those trees for the rest of the afternoon, be my guest, but I'm going to play soccer." He took a few steps and fervently hoped that Tsurugi would see the absurdity of his own plan, that he realized that humans shouldn't go against such unknown forces. But as Shindou glanced over his shoulder, he got the shock of his life:

Tsurugi was gone.

That idiot had actually entered Kiriyoshi's territory!