Running With The Wolves (Shoto Todoroki X Izuku Midoriya)

Chapter 8: The Hunter Becomes A Scullion

He was in the woods, or at least what he thinks it was. The place was dark, so it was a bit hard for him to really tell. He was following something, a trail of long thin glowing white smoke he thinks.

He followed the trail through the dark woods, that's until he spotted something at the distance. Whatever it was, it glowed a bright white, just like the trail of smoke he was following. Once he got closer and closer, that's when he realizes, it was a wolf, and it was starring right at him.

The longer he starred at those brightly glowing white eyes of it's, the more he didn't want to look away. And from the looks of it, even the wolf itself appears to do the same. Suddenly, familiar golden glowing patterns of light appeared above the wolf's face.

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Shoto shot up from his bed in cold sweat with a shriek. And he could've sworn he saw more of those glowing patterns hovering above his face, before vanishing in a split second. The boy then began to calm his heavy breathing, slowly processing that what he had seen earlier was only just a nightmare.

Suddenly, he felt this tingling sensation coming from his right arm. Raising it to see, that's when he saw them, golden glowing lights swirling around it. Twisting his arm into different angles, the boy then watched as the glowing patterns dissipated into the air in an instant.

"Shoto?" He heard his father call out to him from downstairs, which was soon after followed by the sounds of his heavy footsteps walking up the steps.

He must've heard him scream from the ground floor.

"Father?"

His father's large head then emerged from beneath the second floor. Shockingly, the man's strong face had this concerned look etched across it.

"You alright?"

Regaining his composure, the boy simply replied with a tone devoid of any emotion "It's nothing!" Looking away from the man, he then added "Just a bad dream!"

The boy was clearly still upset about what happened last night. And the man cannot blame the boy for suddenly acting coldly towards him, especially during this early hour in the morning.

Breathing out a deep sigh, the man then said "Well, you should make an early start of it. Both of us." Turning away from his son, his head then sank below the floor as he descended down the stairs. "Let's go!"

Oh, that's right! Today was the day, the day he begins a new life. No longer a hunter, going out in adventures and into the wilderness. But as a lowly servant boy, stuck within these bleak walls and doing what he was being told.

And just the very thought of him going through with it, it made him let out a loud frustrated groan. Turning his head towards his bedroom window, Shoto then watched as the dark blue sky from outside slowly began to brighten.

"Well, here goes nothing!"

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The moment both he and his father entered the scullery of the Lord Protector's castle, Shoto, once more dressed in his pilgrim clothes and his long hair tied into a low braid closely watched as scullery maids, women older than he chopped fish with their large butcher knives, churning butter inside enormous barrels and stir soup from within large pots. But the thing that made the boy cringe uncomfortably was seeing the way how these maids performed in sync amongst one another, and to think he was expected to do the same. The place was also unbearably busy with noise: the clattering of kitchen utensils, the swishing of milk and cream, the metallic banging of pots and pans and so much more.