The rating won't change for a while, but I'll tell you when it's getting closer to it. ;P

I don't own KnB

Credit for my beta, Panda Master X! Thank you so much Panda Master X!


The sun was beginning to set and in the vast, quiet forest, and in their small posse, Kuroko was walking slower than the others, lagging behind them by a few meters. Relentlessly looking behind himself, Kuroko thought to himself, "Kise was keeping something from me…" Kuroko continued to space out and- without paying attention to his surroundings, Kuroko bumped into a tree.

"Kuroko, stop spacing out or you'll be left behind." Kagami spouted.

"Gomen nasai." Kuroko rubbed his forehead and quickly ran towards Kagami who was gazing at Hyuga and Izuki. Kagami was about to look away but caught sight of Hyuga pulling a paper out of his medium sized black bag that bounced with each step he took against his hip. Realizing that the paper Hyuga was scanning was a map of the area, Kagami became puzzled. "Could we be lost?" Kagami thought to himself.

After looking at the map for a while, Hyuga unexpectedly said, "We are pretty close to that one medical town that is very famous for their rare and new medicinal herbs and supplies they've been shipping and producing. How about we go investigate the town before heading back to headquarters?"

Izuki, who was standing next to him, snatched the paper from his hands. "I guess we can go check it out. I actually want to know what goes on there too." Kagami watched Hyuga quickly snatching the map back from Izuki.

"The most famous medical town... why go there now?" Kagami thought.

"Why go there all of a sudden?" Kuroko said, mirroring Kagami's thoughts, as if he could read Kagami's mind and had decided to speak up for him.

Hyuga was delighted with Kuroko's question and quickly replied to him. "The other towns haven't heard a thing from that medical town for four months now, and for most Hogosha… they don't think it's that big of a deal; no one's bothered to check it out, but since we're nearby, I was thinking we should pay a visit to the town." Without their consent, Hyuga hastily darted forward in the direction of the medical town. Following behind him, Kagami was left unsatisfied with Hyuga's response.

"That still doesn't explain why we're going there now." He mumbled mostly to himself. Hearing Kagami's comment, Izuki explained to them that the town was his and Hyuga's hometown. Surprised, both Kagami and Kuroko suddenly felt an urge to go see what was going on at the medical town even more so than Hyuga.

"This seems like it'll be interesting." Kagami commented.

"You're the only one thinking that, Kagami-kun." Kuroko replied as he watched Izuki and Hyuga having a small conversation to themselves.

"Hyuga, are you alright?"

"What made you ask that Izuki?"

"It's just, I didn't think you would want to go back home."

"Well, I felt like something bad was going to happen if I didn't go visit at least once." Hyuga replied.

Observing Hyuga's expression, Izuki smirked. "I see… you're actually worried about him." Izuki thought.

Both Hyuga and Izuki came to a stop once they reached a field of vegetables. Looking up, they saw the sky was clearing up and exposing the starry sky. Gazing straight ahead, Hyuga took notice of their surroundings. "This is very strange. We don't get mist here around this time of year." Hyuga stated slowly. Kuroko, being the last one to make it up to the edge of the field to join the others, felt a chill run up his spine as he heard Hyuga's comment. "I don't like this." Kuroko muttered.

"We all feel the same way Kuroko." Kagami replied.

Together, all four of them started off with a slow walk through the field which gradually changed to a sprint with Hyuga in the lead, guiding them. "Keep up with us, Kagami, Kuroko."


Meanwhile,


A tall head of navy blue hair stood silently in the back of his room, inhaling and exhaling loudly "Damn… this is the second assassination attempt today." He kicked the motionless body across the floor before noticing a head of hot pink hair standing at the door. "Aomine-kun!" The teenager briskly walked up to him while taking out a small white cloth to wipe off the blood splattered on his face.

With an irritated grunt, he whacked the offending hand away like a fly. "I'm fine; you don't need to baby me, Satsuki." he had said with an ice cold voice. She sighed before looking up to see a tall individual wearing glasses standing next to the door where she had just been. "Imayoshi is here, so I'll be going Aomine-kun…"She exited the room quickly after taking a moment to greet the other teenager.

"So, how are you Aomine?" The teen asked while ruffling his messy black hair. Aomine only laughed as he took a seat on his bed. "I'm just not feeling like myself these days. I've been getting a crap load of headaches, not to mention the fact that these damn assassinations aren't helping me out."

The other teenager stopped ruffling his hair at once. "Headaches?"

"Well, I can just go to sleep to ease the pain." Aomine mumble to himself, ignoring the look on Imayoshi's face as he stared at him.

"That's not going to solve the headache problem... did you have these headaches when you were younger? If you did, didn't they make you take some sort of medication for that back when you still live at headquarters?

Aomine questioningly raised an eyebrow. Not many people knew about the medication they gave him. "Yeah, every year the GOM had to take some kind medication, but I never knew why we needed it. I doubt it was for the headaches because I never had them when I was younger." After Aomine finished speaking, they both turned, because someone else began talking behind them. "Heh, you didn't know why you needed to take medication back then? How stupid are you?" Both Aomine and Imayoshi stared at the two teenagers standing in the middle of the hallway, one with spiky, light blonde hair and the other with light brown hair.

"Ah, Sakurai did you bring some of your food with you? I'm actually hungry." said Aomine.

"Don't ignore me!" the taller, blonde teenager shouted.

"Calm down Wakamatsu, so what was that ruckus I heard earlier about, Sakurai?" Imayoshi looked towards the smaller teenager who stood with a somewhat frail posture.

"Um…all the information I was told about it is very recent; basically, it was about this other GOM member named Kise." said Sakurai.

"Kise? What about that guy?" Aomine asked, looking a bit more interested than he had a moment ago.

"Nothing much, just that he ran away with one of his comrades after the entire village- including his teammates- were massacred." Sakurai replied.

"Hm, well, that's cool... now, can we get this dead body out of my room? Actually, I think it's better if I change rooms again." Aomine blatantly stated, looking bored again.

Slamming his hand against the wall, Wakamatsu shouted at the seated man in irritation. "Oi, Sakurai was explaining something probably very important about one of your old friends, and all you can think to say is 'that's cool'!? You're getting on my nerves again!"

Imayoshi smiled as he stepped in between the two before the conflict got worse, "Let's change the subject here. Besides the information we just heard from Sakurai, I happened to find even juicer information; so how about it? Want to hear it?"

Wondering what Imayoshi would say next, the other three stared at him persistently, distracted for the moment. "But first, we need to go meet up with Susa." Imayoshi stated matter of factly while making an about-turn and exiting the room.


Back to Kuroko and the group,


Getting anxious, Hyuga turned around slightly to speak to Izuki. "Let's speed up the pace, Izuki."

"What? No, we have to keep this pace in order to let Kuroko and Kagami catch up to us. Besides, you need to calm down, Hyuga..." Trying to convince Hyuga to slow down only aggravated the teen even further. "Fine. You can slow down for them. I'll just go up ahead by myself." Speed walking up ahead all alone, Hyuga's figure was lost in the fog.

"Baka… I'm sure Kiyoshi is fine. He isn't that weak..."

"Izuki! Hyuga! Are you there?" Hearing Kagami's voice, Izumi turned around, trying to see them through the fog.

"I'm right here! Hyuga got impatient though, so now we have to go catch up to him before anything happens. Hurry up you two!"

Izuki stood there waiting for the two of them to find him. Upon seeing their silhouettes, he shouted again to catch their attention. "How slow can you-" Izuki's eyes widened when he noticed that two more silhouettes appeared behind the pair. Taking a guess at who the two may be, Izuki took a chance and lunged forward. "Watch out!" Pushing both Kagami and Kuroko aside, Izuki was hit in the stomach with a nunchuck followed by a punch to the face.

Immediately falling to his knees, Izuki looked up to see two teenagers standing in front of him smiling. The one holding the nunchucks had long messy hair covering his eyes and the other teenager had spiky light brown hair.

"Well, that just confirms what I was thinking." Izuki thought.

Unaware of the amount of danger in their current predicament, Kagami and Kuroko pulled out their weapons for protection, "Wait." Izuki raised a hand to stop Kuroko's and Kagami's movements. For a moment, Kuroko and Kagami hesitated to follow orders, but put away their weapons as Izuki got up, flinching because of the pain.

Glaring at the two newcomers, Izuki spoke again, "Where is the rest of your group? I don't see Hanamiya-" In that instant Izuki realized what was happening. He truly regretted not trying harder to stop Hyuga from leaving by himself. "Kagami! Kuroko! Go after Hyuga!"


to be continued,

How was it? I hoped you enjoyed this chapter as well. :D and i know that this chapter was short, gomen. FYI, it took forever because of my lazy-but good- beta, hahaha. (she wrote that herself)