A/N: I'm not dead. Just really stressed with school and junk. Please enjoy this.
01.
Kuroko
This caterpillar wanted to be a beautiful butterfly; he wanted to be noticed.
When he finally became a beautiful butterfly, he was eaten.
.:.
When Kuroko was a kid, he was missed a lot. But not in the sense of longing and wishing that you could just reach over and be next someone and soak up their existence. No, it was in the sense that he was overlooked. Never seen. Always invisible.
His parents, shortly after he turned five, barely noticed him. He had to repeat himself several times when his teachers took the attendance because they always assumed he was absent. His "friends" always forgot about him whenever they played together at recess. He's never had a partner for a school project before.
Everything about him felt like a lit match that was constantly being blown on – always wavering, always seconds away from no longer existing.
It frightened him.
He wanted them to know he existed. He wanted to shake people and scream, "Look at me! I'm here! I've always been here! Notice me!"
"You all ready?" Akashi said, his red eyes gleaming in excitement. He looked feral, yet composed. He was oozing with a sense of unpredictable preparedness. "There's no holding back once we do it. It's now or never."
They were in their hangout; an abandoned warehouse in midtown. They had cleaned it up rather nicely, but the outside and windows retained their rustic and abandoned looks to deter suspicion from police.
Akashi sat on a large red loveseat in the middle of the room, above the large lamps dangling from the high ceiling. A blue couch and four loveseats curved around Akashi, with a coffee table in the middle. On the blue couch was Kuroko himself, Satsuki and Aomine, and on the two of the love seats were Kise and Midorima. On the coffee table were several compact handguns. Or there was, at least.
Belatedly, Kuroko realized all eyes were on him. Everyone had taken a gun and was expectantly waiting for him to do the same. Kuroko frowned. Why was he thinking about the past now? He shook his head and reached for a handgun.
"Excellent," Akashi said, he leaned back in his seat, a calculative gleam in his eye. "The game plan is that Kuroko will go in first and take the first shots," he said, tossing him a silencer. "Shoot two of them. After that, we'll rush in and deal with the rest. They won't expect us now; they'll be thinking we're recovering from having most of our best guys down."
They all nodded.
"Let's kill every one of those bastards," Aomine said, practically growling. He shook with excitement. He was thirsty for blood. They all were.
"They took Murasakibaracchi from us," Kise said, tightening his grip on his gun. He was shaking, too. "I can't forgive them!"
Kuroko was shaking, too. Although unlike Kise, it wasn't out of anger, and unlike Aomine, it wasn't out of excitement. He was scared. He want to punch himself. There was nothing to be afraid of. He was the Phantom, the urban legend who silently killed all those who got into the way of his gang.
He felt a hand on his. He looked over and saw Satsuki staring at him, a serious look in her pink eyes. "We'll get them back for Muk-kun," she whispered to him, "we'll get them together. Don't worry."
He nodded, calming down. Here, he was a no good, rotten, dirty, and stupid gangster. But he had them. He had Satsuki, Aomine, Kise, Akashi, Midorima, and Kise. He couldn't lose them, he couldn't lose another one. Not again.
He'd rather be dead than not exist again.