Notes: This was a commission for June! Thank you so much! I enjoyed writing this much more than I expected!

Part 1. Rise up

Fudou strolled through the gates of Raimon High with his head held high and his gaze pointed firmly forwards.

His feet jiggled around in his new shoes, his hands were sweating in his pockets, and his tie was too tight around his neck, but he tried not to let it all break the casual, confident smirk that had been on his face ever since the school came into view. A chilly spring breeze brought fallen sakura petals into his path, but Fudou stepped on them without slowing. He was focusing on getting to the announcements board to find out his new class assignments.

But, try as he might not to dwell on it, he couldn't help but think about why he was here. There was nothing to ponder, really, and that just made it worse; the answer was simple, bouncing off the walls in his head. Kidou Yuuto had decided to return to Teikoku Academy.

Fudou's scholarship ran out and wasn't renewed. Not that hard to put things together.

He should have been happy to have received the offer from Raimon. And he had been. Raimon Middle High was two-time champion of the Football Frontier in the last two years and it wasn't a stretch to hope that the success of that crop would extend to high school. Many of them had also been at the FFI and that had been one of the happiest times of his life. With players of such calibre to work with, Fudou would be the last person to complain.

No, that wasn't what was bothering him. Fudou knew, even at that moment, that he would do well in school. He was clever and a good football player that would serve the team well, but as much as he told himself that, he couldn't make himself believe it. Hiding the ends of his long jacket sleeves in his pockets and feeling cold air ripple through his baggy trousers with every step he took, he didn't feel like himself at all.

He reached the announcements board with all the first-year class assignments and craned his neck, staying at the back of the chattering crowd and squinting to find his name. Ah, there it was, class 1-D. Scanning the rest of the names in his class briefly, he was surprised to recognise only one. This surprise spiked into shock when he found only a few more names he knew across the whole board. Surely there should be more names than this? What had happened to last year's championship-winning team?

He reached his classroom just in time to catch a glimpse of Kazemaru Ichirouta, his new classmate, before their homeroom teacher arrived and everyone dispersed to their allotted seats. Kazemaru had been assigned the pimp seat in the back corner next to the window and, from what Fudou had seen, was already falling into that role with ease. Meanwhile, Fudou's seat was bang in the middle of the room, just where the teacher's gaze would naturally rest and with tables and eyes all around him. Son of a bitch.

Their teacher led them through the class introductions, and Kazemaru introduced himself smoothly, striking such a refreshing, handsome figure that Fudou could already see the rest of the girls who hadn't surrounded him earlier fall for him. His classmates passed one by one until it all became a blur and Fudou couldn't tell one guy from another, and when introductions reached his line of seats a stray thread poking out of his blazer sleeve suddenly came into sharp focus. He swallowed, noticing that his throat had gone dry.

The girl in front of him sat back down, and that was Fudou's cue to stand up and mumble a few sentences, hoping that the class wouldn't focus on his sleeves falling almost to his knuckles. He looked around at the (mostly) smiling, curious faces, and paused when he reached Kazemaru in the corner. Kazemaru cracked a grin and gave him a small wave.

Fudou's eyes widened slightly, and he creaked the corner of his lips tentatively up. Before he sat back down, he gave Kazemaru back a nod.

Raimon High's football team immediately made Fudou a starting member, because of course that was what they had brought him to Raimon for. Despite the dearth of familiar names on the class lists, Fudou, whether optimistically or foolishly, still clung to hopes of a second Inazuma Japan. They all evaporated when he met the captain.

"Welcome to the team," said Captain Tamaki, a tall, handsome third-year who wore a headband to hold his bushy hair back from falling into his eyes. He shook Fudou's hand. "We're very grateful you joined us. We thought we were doomed when we heard Kidou – Kidou Yuuto, you probably know him – was leaving after middle school."

He went on to talk about how Raimon now had a playmaker of comparable strength, but with that one mention Fudou's opinion of him was forever struck. It had taken all of his strength to keep a bland smile on his face and to rattle off the requisite polite phrases before the captain moved on to Endou, then Gouenji, then Kazemaru, and finally a dark-haired guy called Handa that Fudou didn't know but vaguely recognised. That day, every single "please take care of me" that echoed in the clubroom might as well have been barbs that jabbed their way into the deepest, darkest recesses of his heart.

But Fudou kept his mouth shut, because as much as he had run his mouth in Inazuma Japan, it was different here. High school-level football was a different, much more physical beast compared to middle school football, and the seniors wouldn't take kindly to a first-year fresh out of middle school who couldn't even keep up in training drills acting out. And he couldn't appeal to the coach, either, because there wasn't one – the teacher on duty was nice enough, but he was also a figurehead whose knowledge of football didn't even extend to the offside rule. The Kidou-loving captain was the boss, and if Fudou wasn't careful, losing favour could lead to no playtime, scholarship status be damned. And no playtime meant no record, and no career. It would be professional suicide.

So, no, Fudou couldn't complain, although there was plenty to say. Raimon High's football team was not as good as Raimon Middle High's had been. Not by a long shot (ha, ha). Their only strength of note was their iron wall defence, of which the existing team was incredibly proud. But it was at the expense of their offence, and with the new crop of first-years noticeably lacking in defenders, this strategy would not last to the next year. In fact, once he saw the defence in action and realised that at least three first-year strikers he knew could break through it (to be fair, one was in his team), Fudou was doubtful that it would even last the year at all.

But he grit his teeth and kept running, kept up his physical conditioning, kept ignoring the sidelong glances whenever he made a play that was more aggressive than they had been expecting, waiting for the day he could do something.

Kazemaru approached Fudou at the end of the second week of morning practice.

"Let's walk to class together after showering," he said, his eyes glinting with good humour. Fudou would have thought that he had just emerged fresh from those showers if he hadn't been partnering with him through a gruelling set of laps and drills for the entire practice. He didn't even want to think about how ratty and grimy he looked next to him.

But they were going to the same place, and Kazemaru seemed like a pretty cool guy. Fudou didn't see a reason to say no.

That day he solved some of the mystery behind the empty class lists. Some of Kazemaru's former teammates had switched schools or quit football, and Someoka specifically had gone to a sports high school in Hokkaido. The day after that, Kazemaru told him that Ichinose and Domon had moved back to America. Two days became a week became an after-practice routine, and, yes, Kazemaru did end up being rather cool.

The whistle blew, and finally, the nightmare match that had been worse than every single of his high school practices combined was over. Fudou dragged his leaden legs to the halfway line. He wanted to just get the handshakes over and done with so they could all go home.

Iida, the captain and playmaker of Teikoku High, stood opposite Tamaki. They were the same height, but Iida held himself up with grace and strength, while Tamaki's shoulders fell in a defeated slump. The gap between the two teams couldn't have been greater. Fudou was glad Iida was graduating next year, because, frankly, someone who looked like he could play another match right after this one had to be a monster.

Also, Kidou had been on the bench the entire time, and surely, out of everything else that had happened this game, that was the funniest and most frightening thing of all? That Kidou, who had once been the outstanding, terrifying general of Teikoku Academy, had been overshadowed in high school just like everyone else?

Just like everyone else, Fudou thought fiercely even as he exchanged a glance with Gouenji, who was pulling up his socks while waiting for both teams to assemble. Maybe not so much Gouenji, who had come close to several chances today, but Fudou wasn't stupid enough to think that just because he was first-string playmaker meant that he was good.

In fact, it probably just meant that his team was bad.

He shook hands with whoever the person opposite him was (one of Teikoku's defenders, the right-flank; his accuracy with long passes had been impressive, actually), bowed, and turned to leave, already thinking about how best to tune out of Captain Tamaki's post-game speech. He had been nursing a growing anxiety about his decision to enter Raimon for quite some time, and if things kept on like this, he might need to think of an exit strategy. Just in case.

A familiar, but still unexpected voice stopped him.

"Hey, Fudou!"

Fudou turned.

"Sakuma," he said, and if Sakuma noticed his reluctance, his bright smile didn't waver.

"Good game," Fudou continued, though pushing the words out was difficult because it had really been anything but. Sakuma's mouth twitched, but he didn't call him out on it. The Sakuma in middle school would have, but neither of them were in middle school now.

"It's been two months!" he said instead, and he was looking exasperated now. "You haven't been answering your messages!"

Fudou shrugged. "Got a new phone," he said, then realised that he had only bothered to exchange his new contacts with the people he saw regularly. "Uh… oops."

"And you didn't tell me? Unbelievable." Sakuma rolled his eyes and put one hand on his hips. "I don't have my phone with me, but text me with your new number later, okay? Actually, go get LINE while you're at it. I can't believe there's a high schooler alive who doesn't have it!"

Fudou shrugged again, though a rueful smile was forming on his face despite himself. Sakuma yelling at him was pretty nostalgic. He looked at Teikoku's bench and saw Genda sitting there, watching them both. Fudou raised his hand in greeting.

"Yeah, sure," he said, and Sakuma's mouth quirked up into a smile that, like his own, didn't quite reach his eyes. The three of them had been inseparable just a few months before, but Fudou was suddenly struck with the thought that he might not speak with either of them again until the next time they met on the football field.

Instead, Fudou found himself hanging out more and more with Kazemaru.

It started out stealthily enough – their lunch breaks were short, and most classes tended to keep to themselves. Fudou didn't have much to say to any of the other first-years on the team on the best of days, much less random members of his class, so naturally he stuck with the only person he knew. That Kazemaru always had really delicious-looking bentos only sealed the deal.

On the day of one spectacularly bad practice, Kazemaru didn't even complain when Fudou swiped his chicken drumstick. He did give him the stink-eye, though, saying, "You owe me for that."

"This is great," Fudou said in response, tearing out another piece of meat with his teeth. "Your mum's a really good cook. Is this cumin?"

"What?" Kazemaru said, then gave up and started eating the rest of his food. "Anyway, our defence is pretty complicated, huh?"

Complicated was perhaps the wrong word. It was more complex than most, and definitely more complicated than the fluid, flexible back line that Inazuma Japan had run in the FFI. (Though with football newbies like Tsunami on the team, they probably couldn't have run anything else.) A few days ago, the seniors had given them a little book of all the situations their defence could face and precise instructions on how to react in each case. It was all meticulously laid out, and theoretically sound, but something about it rubbed Fudou the wrong way. You just couldn't plan for everything like that in football.

"You listening?" Kazemaru broke into his thoughts. "I just about managed to keep my jaw from dropping when they gave us the book. I can't believe they want us to memorise it all. It's totally impossible!"

Fudou held back his scoff, but he couldn't stop his lips and eyes both from twitching upwards. "Don't bother," he said, putting the drumstick down. "You won't need it by the time they actually call you up to play."

"Hey, don't say that –"

"You gotta be seeing it. Football's becoming more offensive, goals per match are going up and will only keep rising. Pouring everything into defence is stupid, and if the captain and the rest of that iron defence don't see that, the team will never get anywhere." And neither would he.

Kazemaru was frowning now, but Fudou couldn't stop.

"What? Ask Gouenji, he'll tell you the same thing. With a team like this, we won't get anything done this year."

He was speaking quietly so he wouldn't get overheard trashing the hand that fed him. But the way Kazemaru was looking at him made him feel like he'd just dropped a napalm bomb between them.

"You should cut the sempai some slack," Kazemaru said. "They're trying their best. Especially the captain."

Fudou gaped at him. He probably had Kazemaru's chicken stuck in his teeth, but not a single part of him cared.

"You complain about practice all the time too. What makes this any different? You know I'm right."

Kazemaru paused. He seemed to be putting his words together, and struggling to do that, too. Fudou didn't think he'd accept anything his friend had to say. In his opinion, no amount of respect for your seniors excused not putting in your highest quality plays.

"Try to see things from their point of view," was what Kazemaru eventually came up with. He must have seen the retort bubbling up, about to burst out of Fudou's mouth, because he suddenly grinned, a quick, fierce, sharp grin. "Let me tell you something."

He told Fudou about Raimon long before Fudou had first encountered it. Raimon before even Kazemaru himself had joined it. Raimon Middle High had been a provincial team who hadn't participated in the Football Frontier for over ten years. Then Endou had joined, and Kazemaru had watched him painstakingly recruit new people for his ragtag team. A year came and went and still the team didn't have a full roster, but Endou didn't give up. As Kazemaru talked and talked, Fudou picked the chicken back up and chewed.

When Kazemaru paused to take a breath, Fudou said, "And so? You're saying it takes time and we should wait? Instead of changing the situation now for the better?"

"I'm saying," Kazemaru said, "that Raimon has risen up from nothing before. And yes, it does take time. Endou couldn't have taken Raimon to number 1 in Japan in our first year of middle school with only three regular players and one manager no matter how hard he tried. But that one year wasn't a waste of time. We wouldn't have gone so far the next year without the skills and experience they gained that year."

"Huh," Fudou said. He was picking the drumstick to the bone. Kazemaru was probably grossed out because he wasn't looking him in the eye.

"And they started from nothing. Nothing except for some scribbles in a notebook that only Endou can read. But we started achieving things, step by step. I joined. Gouenji joined. Domon and Ichinose came, Kidou came, we won the Football Frontier and it just went on from there. So it's exactly the same now as it was then, don't you see? Except this time, we don't have nothing. We've got our sempais' tactics and statistics, and Endou and Gouenji, with all their experience since middle school, and Handa, and next year we'll probably get Kurimatsu and Kabeyama and maybe some other really good first-years. And of course we've got you."

Fudou scoffed for real this time.

"And you know what?" Kazemaru was barrelling on. "The sempai seem pretty fixated on you being another Kidou, but I'll tell you something they don't know. Back in middle school, the hardest part was when we were just starting out. We had to pull ourselves up from the dirt and make ourselves known. Endou most of all. Kidou wasn't there for any of that, and while we couldn't have won the championship twice without him, he never had to do that. Not like that, not for so long." Kazemaru paused, then looked him in the eye, not even blinking at the grease spots around Fudou's lips. His brown eyes were warm and his hair, framing his face, was like a rippling, calm lake. "Not like we did."

A chill ran down Fudou's spine. This was all hitting a bit too close to home. Had Kazemaru been on the bench during the Fire Dragon match when Hibiki spilled his sob story? No, he'd been on the pitch getting hit in the face by Fudou's pass, so it was just coincidence.

No, it wasn't. Kazemaru had seen him in Shin Teikoku. Of all the fucking –

"And we won't be able to do it again without you," Kazemaru finished.

Fudou, finally, had the presence of mind to wipe at his chin with his sleeve. "You're really serious about this, aren't you."

Kazemaru nodded, regarding him levelly, and for a moment all the noise in the room blanked out and it was just them, staring at each other.

"I've never been more serious about anything in my life."

Even if it seems nothing is bright
The last bit of hope is getting out of my sight
Total gain is slight, can't get sleep at night
Until the day I find a ray of light
I'll never give it up