DEVIL'S BRIDE

Drabble set featuring the start, the end, the ups and the downs of Youichi Hiruma's attempts and success of courting (re: blackmailing) Primrose Dorea Potter into being his girlfriend.

I do not own Eyeshield 21, if I did... the games would be more interesting! There's only so many times I can see the same formula of a match before it gets old. Also, there would be more character exploration.

000

The circumstances of our meeting were fucking weird.

I'm still not sure if it was for the best... or for the worst. Either way... it was fun. And I don't think either of us gave a shit about anything else at that point!

000

MEETING

FRIDAY 13th AUGUST 1996

Her feet pounded the tarmac hard as she sped down the streets, twisting and dodging past business men, school children and mothers in the mid-afternoon heat. She didn't stop as she kept her legs stretching and her arms pumping, feet already numb from the repeated impact against hard concrete and tarmac as she sprinted. People glanced and followed her progress as she ran, wondering what was going on, but eventually moved on with their lives, leaving the girl who raced as though the hounds of hell were after her to her own devices.

She skidded, breaking hard at a right angle, the worn rubber of her sneakers finding poor grip on the ground, necessitating a hand touching the ground before she pushed off and shouldered her way into the crisp, air conditioned lobby of the hotel. People stared as she launched herself desperately at the counter.

"Dursley reservation!" the girl barked in English, "Are they still here?"

The startled receptionist woman, one of the few on staff who could speak English exceptionally well, quickly checked her computer and looked up, shaking her head. "No I'm afraid not miss, they checked out earlier today when a business car came to pick them up. I have a forwarding number of the company if you would like to contact t- Miss? is... is everything alright?" the receptionist asked, unable to stop herself from being concerned over the expression that suddenly crushed the desperate young woman's face.

For Primrose, no, nothing was alright. She pressed a hand over her face, feeling her eyes sting and her lips tremble threateningly. "T-they just... ditched me," she whispered. Really, she should have expected it. Vernon had done this before, though usually it tended to be just in Europe where it was fairly easy for her to hitch-hike back, get the police to give her a lift or wait for one of Dumbledore's underlings to take her home. This was the first time Vernon had managed to give her the slip since she was eight years old, and it was in Japan of all places! She could barely speak the language, she had no access to a magic alley, she only had the clothes on her back and the wand, chocolate frog and Sneak'o'Scope in her back pocket. She'd left her trunk at home and took only a backpack of clothes – which Petunia would have no doubt either thrown in the bin or taken with her.

All of a sudden, it was like the mad strength that brought her here so quickly drained from her legs, sending her falling to the floor in a daze.

Sixteen and stranded in Japan, suffering insomnia, night terrors, post traumatic stress, dealing with the death of a classmate, the death of a godfather, the torture and endangerment of her bestfriends, the knowledge that she would have to be a murderer, the fates of an entire civilisation weighing on her shoulders, without a penny to her or a single word of Japanese under her belt...

Too much. It was... just too much.

She started to cry.

000

Two days later, she still cringed thinking about it. Sat on a bench at the park she had joined the local homeless in living out of a cardboard box, it was just a waiting game now. Thankfully, Petunia had left her backpack with the hotel staff so she at least had something to her name – even if that was just her clothes, Invisibility Cloak and one of Hedwig's feathers. And a handful of Galleons and Sickles. The problem was, she was a little worried about walking into a Jewellers with them and trying to get some actual Japanese money – she didn't know if Goblin made currency would be charmed or not, or if it even was pure gold. If she sold it, she could even possibly be done by the Ministry for breaking the Statitute of Secrecy. So, in order to get food, she exercised a former talent she hadn't had much use for since starting Hogwarts.

Pickpocketing.

Which was probably how she came to have the dubious pleasure of catching the attention of one fourteen year old Hiruma Youichi. When he spotted her lifting the wallets of his minions as they lurked around the pink light district.

Spotting the suspicious looking mousy man had been easy, so was shadowing for half a street to make sure he wasn't planning on noticing her, he wasn't, he was entirely too interested in whomever he was following. Perhaps a friend or a business partner or even his lover, who knew, but his attention was wholly fixated upon that person and he would be an exceptionally easy mark.

Making sure her scavenged Pokemon League cap was low over her eyes, so as to hide the majority of her face, she started running and 'accidentally' bumped him, spinning around, hand slipping into his suit jacket as she passed by, palming his wallet and tucking it into her armguard. All in the split second it took her to 'right her balance', scream an apology in Japanese and sprint off.

He never noticed a thing.

The blond demon who was watching him, to make sure he held up his end of the bargain, however... he saw everything. And his grin got eight times wider and pointier in response as he completely forgot about Disposable Minion Eighty Eight and followed the progress of the sneak thief girl as she sped up, she sped up impossibly. His eyes widening as he realised just what kind of speed that girl was going through the streets and just how many wallets she was picking up with every twist of her scrawny body.

Primrose didn't know why, but she felt a chill down her back as every instinct went off, sounding the klaxon in her ears. She pegged it. Forget the wallets, she got the fuck out of there.

And Hiruma laughed all the harder in delight.

000

Okay, little house-keeping. Information on Hiruma is a little thin on the ground so I'm going to be making a little up. For one, his birthday. I stole that from his Japanese VA – December 4 and arranged things to work to the HP fandom. Hiruma managed to land himself an older woman. His height is unknown but I'm pegging it at 6'4" as he looks just over a foot taller than Sena who's 5'1".

Primrose. Believe it or not, its a fairly common name in England, old, yes, but I know a few elderly ladies with the name and I quite like it. As for the details. Yes, she's a little more Slytherin than canon, mainly because being a girl she's had to learn how to safeguard herself from more scrutiny and a different kind of threat. Sad fact is, people notice and care a lot more when they suspect a girl is being abused than a boy so she's had to be a lot more careful about hiding it. She's had to worry about sexual predators who would focus on a little girl without someone to give a damn, child grooming and all that. While at home things were a bit better than canon. Vernon, regardless of how fanon likes to paint him, I don't think would be a sexual predator of any sort, especially towards her – too afraid or disgusted about getting freak on him. And since he's dealing with a girl, I think it would be a case of he spends the majority of his time pretending she doesn't exist, leaving her almost entirely to Petunia who I'm pegging as almost bi-polar in regards to it. Cruel and kind by turns and times.