Inazuma Eleven 3, Book 1 : Morning Twilight

Chapter 24 : The Child of Soccer

Chapter 24 : The Child of Soccer

Holy Road Block A Preliminaries, Zeus vs Outei Tsukinomiya. Zeus Chuu Stadium.

Hearing the cheers of the crowd, a girl of average height sucked in her breath while pushing some strands of orange-brown hair away from the front of her face. With even features, clear eyes that rounded at the ends and fair lips that were tinged a light pink, while not overwhelmingly beautiful, she gave off a pleasant and sincere aura to those watching her gaze around the stadium. Though the girl had played many matches already in the Zeus stadium she still felt her fingers tingle with bursts of electricity as she looked up at the scoreboard...

[0-0]

Despite Zeus's efforts in the first half and the debut of their new hissatsu tactic 'Hell and Heaven' that they had worked so hard to master after their defeat to Outei Tsukinomiya in the semifinals of last year's Holy Road, it was all for naught.

All of their strategies and hissatsu techniques had been rendered useless by Outei's newest ace, Tamaki Takashima. The so-called 'Child of Soccer' had weaved his way beautifully through their midfield, like a fish in water, and it had taken all of their strength just to make sure he didn't score. However, this also meant their offensive line was forced to back off and thus the score remained at a flat 0-0.

They knew Outei was strong, but they were leagues above where they were last year. This was going to be a real problem...

"Noa!"

"Nee-chan!"[1]

Khronoa Yoshizawa turned her head to look in the direction of the two voices who had called out to her and was greeted by the sight of a girl slightly taller than her with short, spiky purple hair dashing up to her. With sharp features, she had a slightly androgynous and cool appearance that evoked the image of an ancient Greek hunter of Artemis. Meanwhile, jogging beside her was a boy, slightly shorter than the two girls with orange hair slightly darker than Khronoa's but eyes that reflected a familiar orange-yellow light as hers. There was no doubt the two were related standing side by side though the boy had a slightly more playful look in his eyes that emphasised his youth.

Khronoa gave a serene smile to the energetic duo that had run up to her and asked curiously,

"What are you two up to? You should be getting ready for the second half now."

"Rhea-san said you looked nervous so I thought I should remind you that those b*stards have got nothing on us, Noa-chan! Let's not hold back and show them everything we've been working to prepare, let's gooooooo!"

Pumping her fist in the air, the purple-haired girl grinned with a touch of frenzy in her eyes while the orange-haired boy crossed his arms and nodded approvingly.

"Selene-neesan is right, Nee-chan. I haven't even used half of my power yet!"

Then flexing his scrawny arms, the boy attempted to show off his arm muscles to his older sister to reassure her but the slightly sad sight of the noodle-like arm made Khronoa desperately struggle to hold back a laugh knowing that would hurt her little brother's self-esteem making her stomach begin to tremble.

"Oh please, Prometheus. Those noodle arms aren't going to do sh*t this match. You just sit back in the goal and let nee-san handle this."

Then, giving a toothy grin, Selene flipped her head to the side and casually flexed her arm which showed off her toned biceps that clearly indicated the hours she had put in at the gym and on the field, putting Prometheus's to shame. Seeing the difference between their muscles, Prometheus sulked and whined,

"Ah, that's not fair. We all know Selene-nee is half-Neanderthal anyway, so she has a head start on—"[2]

"Wahh!"