Aomine ran across a space filled with blinding lights, shoes squeaking on the polished floor. An indistinct noise roared around him, a sound he recognized as spectators cheering in a crowd.

There were opponents around him, but he surpassed them easily. He only had eyes for what was across the space. He had to put it in there, whatever it was. But, Aomine didn't have it in his possession. Someone only needed to pass it to him or he could steal it—

"Aomine-kun."

The whispered voice sounded monotonous and male.

"Did you forget the reason why you exist right now as you are?"

It didn't matter. What was important was shooting something into the basket; he didn't exactly know what.

"I can tell you the reason why you remain here in this endless game of chance."

Could he really? Did he know him from somewhere?

"Yes, really, Aomine-kun." Ignoring his second question, the source of the voice emerged to show a dark outline of a person with a glowing eye the color of ice. They took another step out into the light, revealing a pale uniformed boy, his jersey donning a strangely startling number eleven. Face still obscured, he stretched a splayed hand toward Aomine. Within his palm materialized a round and familiar orange object.

His one blue orb glanced down at it and back to him, gesturing with his eye to take it.

Seeing it sparked an emotion inside of Aomine, and he stepped forward to take it, only to pass through it and the boy into the darkness in which he came from. He was beginning to feel the nausea from the loss of solid ground and he fleetingly glimpsed the other's lips form a pair of words.

"...unto death, Aomine-kun. We never really had the chance to—"


Aomine woke with a start, immediately wincing at the dull ache pulsing in the center of his sternum. His body had minor scrapes that were probably more serious before but had healed themselves while he was unconscious. He rubbed at his mask, an animal's bottom jaw.

The dark haired Hollow tried to remember his dream. He knew it was something important, his mind urging him to remember it right away, but another thought over took the others.

It all came back in a rush; Tetsu was not here.

The pain hurt even more knowing they weren't together.

He recalled the events before he passed out from exhaustion and the dark deed he had done in panic after discovering he was alone.

How could he tell his friend what he had done?

Aomine had slaughtered potentially strong friends, Menos who had still yet to develop a personality. How ashamed his pacifist partner Tetsu would think of Aomine.

The navy haired Hollow didn't have many memories of when he and Kuroko were one, but he definitely remembered the agony he felt after his sudden happenings. Satsuki would say he had recognized the accompanied pain of evolving. The technical stuff she spoke of didn't matter to him, only the word "evolving" caused fear to run through his body.

Aomine hated the idea of himself evolving, when Kuroko could barely keep up with his casual stride on an uneventful and slow day. It was gradual, but the darker Hollow noticed though Kuroko was his other part, he was much weaker. Evolution should be happening to his best friend, not him, but the more he thought about it, his horn-helmed companion was able to stay within Aomine's much denser reiatsu. He thought of the coexistence of the earth and the moon, and the force that kept them separate and untouched; it was a similarity he would keep in mind.

He needed to be reunited with Kuroko soon. Aomine didn't know how long the smaller Hollow would survive alone in a forest of colossal mindless predators.

"It's precisely because you killed on purpose that you're evolving Ahomine," a sinister voice snarled.

Shut up.

"Can't you see? You could unconsciously kill your precious Tetsu too."

Stop it.

"You, yourself, are the same as these hateful monsters—"

Aomine shoved the dark thoughts back to the recesses of his head. At unguarded moments when he was away from the pale boy Hollow, his mind would wander in a negative direction, and such thoughts would surface. He would practically run back to his friends and they would show their disbelief at his unusual behavior. For Kuroko, a minuscule widening of his eye would indicate his surprise, and for the female centaur, a nagging comment on how unexpectedly fast his usual sloth self moved.

If the navy-haired Hollow could find Tetsu, then he would soon feel normal again. Being around him put Aomine at ease, he believed. He always assumed it was the comfort of being in the presence of someone you cared for.

He remembered a conversation he had with the one eyed Hollow, at a time before they had met Sakurai and Momoi and still had one name.

xXx

"Being together is much more satisfying than being alone, is it not Aomine-kun?"

"Is it? To be honest, I don't mind being alone," Aomine quickly responded, startled by his traveling companion's sudden question. They had been walking for some time and he minded Kuroko didn't feel like making conversation yet. Although, his near transparent presence and blunt questions still needed time for him to adjust to.

"Is that so...," Kuroko had murmured with a raised eyebrow. Aomine had noticed the slight change of tone in his usual quiet voice, as if he didn't believe him. The smaller Hollow was right to not believe his words, but he didn't want to have Kuroko believe that Aomine needed to depend or be with someone like a child to his mother.

He didn't want to be viewed as weak to his only friend. How hypocritical of him.

"Then, you would not feel lonely if I decided to disappear from your side right now?"

Aomine paused. His large hands were frozen behind his dark blue head where before they were interlocked casually. After Kuroko's loaded question, they were clenched tightly, and he soon let them fall helplessly at his side. His companion had a talent of prodding him with particular questions he would rather not answer but did anyway. Their silence could last for days.

This time, Aomine could detect the multiple meanings implied into one simple question. It was Kuroko's way of saving energy and words. Like him, the tan Hollow had a way of answering them in a simple way too, but with more thought to his answer.

"You don't care enough about me?"

Of course he cared.

"Do you really want to be alone again?"

Sure.

"You're lying aren't you?"

...Yeah.

"Do you want me to feel lonely too?"

No. That he couldn't bear. He himself could bear it, being alone.

But Kuroko, he wasn't strong enough to withstand it. However he imagined his weaker friend on his own, he could see the worst situations happen.

His lone fragile figure wandering the desert dunes, falling down from fatigue, no one by his side to help him stand, struggling to his knees, collapsing from the effort-

This, he would not allow to become reality, the Hollow determined.

"Kuroko," he called out. While Aomine had succumbed into his thoughts to think of an appropriate response, the horned Hollow had been observing him, patiently. He genuinely seemed curious about his answer, even if he appeared a bit too forlorn. Aomine saw no deception or hidden intention in his piercing blue eye, only trust and expectation.

He turned to fully face Kuroko, his first true friend in Hueco Mundo, and they stared at each other for several moments. Dark azure and tan to fair ice and pale, they were two sides of the moon. If Aomine had a heart, he would have heard it beat as time ticked by slowly.

Aomine had then raised a hand and ruffled the soft powder blue hair peeping out from the back of the boy Hollow's nape. Kuroko had widened his eye, his face transitioning into bemusement at the other Hollow's affectionate action. He had only softly smiled in return, hoping his friend would interpret the message he was conveying correctly. Aomine was not a person of words.

The one eyed Hollow had continued to search his smiling face, and after a solid few minutes, he made an expression of satisfaction. Closing his eye with a nod and closed mouthed approval, he had brushed off the calloused fingers making a mess of his hair.

"Unlike me, Aomine-kun, some may not know what you mean with just your actions," he had chided Aomine, attempting to straighten the random strands with little success.

He had laughed heartily, enjoying the scene of his normally stoic friend struggling with something as mundane as his own hair.

"Yeah, I know. I'm just glad that you understand Kuroko."

xXx

He and Kuroko had grown closer from that point and many of their memories blended together to form an image resembling happiness. But, the smaller Hollow's question had never been forgotten. There was always the question of whether solitude was an option either could take at anytime.

Aomine wondered if Kuroko would prefer to leave Aomine and make other friends. His reiatsu was the prime cause of most of their deaths.

As if reading his mind, Kuroko would call his full name without his usual honorific and smile reassuringly. His smiles were memories a person had to keep note of with how heartwarming they were. Momoi probably fell for them at first sight, making Aomine slightly jealous that someone other than him could see such a rare sight.

Aomine needed his best friend's assurance the most, after all.

Looking around, he discovered that the surrounding area was filled with crystallized "trees". There was only one place in Hueco Mundo growing these unique "trees": The Forest of Menos. It would explain why he had seen so many Gillian-class in one spot.

Last he recalled, the Forest was located underground. Aomine had no memory of him and Kuroko traveling into the entrance of the forest of colossal giants. Glancing above toward the caved ceiling, he could barely spot several dark holes dotting it, revealing specks of moonlight.

They must have fallen through from the surface and crashed to the bottom.

A whining noise reverberated through his head when he tried to remember what happened before their fall. He felt they were escaping from something he deemed "dangerous", the first time he ever had in their large amount of time together. He wasn't worried about himself, but rather his friend, sensing the killing intent directed towards him.

He couldn't dwell on the past too much, though. Aomine was only certain of the alarming sense of foreboding as he compared the state of his body from the fall to the state he imagined of the more fragile and weak one-eyed Hollow.

Aomine made a dash into the forest of quartz and crystal in search for his friend, tripping and scraping himself as he went. He neither noticed pieces of his Hollow mask at his collarbone crack and disintegrate away or the gray feline eyes that followed his silhouette from within the shadows.