RimFire
"I've decided on a name for our Jaeger. We're going to be RimFire," said Kuroko at dinner one day, completely out of the blue.
Kagami scowled out of principle. "Don't just go deciding that on your own!"
"I designed an emblem for us too," said Kuroko, and he took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket.
Reluctantly, Kagami took a look. He had to admit, RimFire sounded pretty cool. And the emblem Kuroko had designed was nice too.
"It's a basketball rim. And it's on fire," said Kuroko in his usual deadpan voice.
"Ah! You'll be RimFire! And you'll be protecting the Pacific Rim. There's a pun waiting to be arranged in that, just give me a second."
"Izuki, go find a kaiju and walk into its mouth!" shouted Hyuuga.
"Hmn, that's actually a good idea," said Kiyoshi. "Naming our Jaegers. The military designations for them are kind of bleak."
"All the best mechas in anime have real names," agreed Furihata. "Except the ones in . . . you know, that series where all the characters get majorly screwed over, and killed, or cloned and . . . actually, let's not think about that."
"I'm not sure the military is going to be alright with us renaming our Jaegers ourselves," spoke up Riko.
"We should probably wait and get permission first," agreed Hyuuga.
Kuroko looked at them with a blank expression. "That might be a problem. Because I already painted RimFire with its new logo and name."
Kagami spit out the gulp of his drink he'd just taken. All over Fukuda, who yelped in surprise and disgust.
"You repainted JPU-06?" Kagami demanded.
"I repainted RimFire."
"RimFire does sound much better than JPU-06," agreed Kiyoshi. "Hey, Izuki, we should rename our JPU-05 too."
"We should," said Izuki, nodding.
"Don't just go deciding this on your own!" said Hyuuga.
"Let's think of a good name then," said Kiyoshi, ignoring his captain's shout.
"You little bastard," said Kagami, ignoring everyone else in turn. "You better not have completely screwed up our Jaeger!"
With that he got to his feet and took off running toward the hangar. Everyone else exchanged looks, most amused, a few slightly worried, or in one case, completely blank. Then they followed.
What they found when they reached the hangar wasn't horrible. In fact, the newly christened RimFire looked very striking in its new paint job. Before it had been identical to all the other JPUs (Japanese Units). The gunmetal-blackish color hadn't been bad, but without the numbers, it was impossible to tell one unit from another. Kuroko had added a lot of red, with a few white highlights, so that RimFire was done out in Seirin's colors. He'd even done the lines on the main body so that it resembled the lines of their basketball jerseys. The logo he'd come up with, was painted just above the designation number, that had been in the middle of the Jaeger's chest. It looked like a fiery halo, done in street art style. There was no denying that it looked awesome.
"Hey, do mine next!" said Koganei. "Do mine next, Kuroko! I want a custom paint job like that! Don't you, Mitobe?"
Mitobe nodded, looking impressed.
"You did this yourself, Kuroko?" asked Hyuuga.
Kuroko nodded.
"And no one tried to stop you? No one even said anything?"
"I didn't ask for permission. But no one told me I couldn't or tried to stop me."
"They probably didn't even see you," Kagami muttered. He stared at his and Kuroko's Jaeger, eyes narrowed and judgmental. Everyone stood waiting with bated breath for his reaction.
"Well?" asked Riko finally. "What do you think of it, Kagami?"
Kagami slowly tore his eyes from it and turned his gaze to Kuroko. He stared at his partner, his copilot, for several seconds, a scowl on his face. Then his expression changed into a grin. "I like it."
Kuroko gave one of his rare full smiles. "I knew you would."
An Interview With Kagami Taiga
Interviewer: Can you tell us a little bit about your co-pilot, Kagami-san?
Kagami: What? Weren't you vetted? You're not allowed to ask about –
Interviewer: I don't mean for you to tell us his name, or home address or anything. All I'm asking is for you to tell us a little bit about what kind of a person he is? The whole world's dying to know even just the slightest thing about him.
Kagami: But he doesn't want the whole world to know. That's reason enough not to say anything.
Interviewer: There are rumors that you and he don't get along, you know. That he's actually a horrible person, so the reason you won't talk about him is because –
Kagami: What the hell? No! That is not true! My partner is not a horrible person! He's the greatest guy I know!
Interviewer: So you two do get along?
Kagami: Of course we get along. You can't drift with someone if you don't get along with them.
Interviewer: And how would you characterize your relationship?
Kagami: He's my best friend, obviously.
Interviewer: So you two have always gotten along?
Kagami: I guess. I mean at first . . . the situation was kind of complicated. When I first met him, he was injured and . . . I can't tell you about that. Even if I could, I wouldn't. It's none of your business.
Interviewer: He was injured? Badly?
Kagami: Well, yeah, but –
Interviewer: Did his injuries keep him from playing basketball with you during your first year at Seirin?
Kagami: I see where you're trying to go with that! You're trying to figure out if he's my age or a year younger than me. I'm not answering that.
Interviewer: I really can't slip anything by you, can I, Kagami-san?
Kagami: Hah. I know I'm not that smart. I know you've tricked me into talking about him, a little. I wasn't smart enough to avoid that trap.
Interviewer: You're surprisingly modest for humanity's ace against the kaiju.
Kagami: An affect of my partner's influence on me. I was a hothead and an idiot before I met him.
Interviewer: And he changed that about you?
Kagami: Yeah. In the drift . . . it's hard to explain, but you share memories. Your partner's memories become your memories, and yours become theirs. Not all of them all at once. But the more you drift with them, the more of each other's memories you get. You don't become each other, or anything, but you definitely change from having so many of another person's experiences, like you'd lived through it yourself.
Interviewer: And the memories your partner gave you caused you to get new insights?
Kagami: Yeah. I want to make something clear now. The reason I don't talk about him is not because we don't get along. It's because he doesn't want people knowing who he is. He's a very quiet and reserved guy. He likes his privacy. And I respect that. Really, I respect everything about him. Even though I'd like nothing more than to tell the world how great he is, and brag about having him for a best friend. What I've learned about him since we've been in each other's heads taught me about kinds of strength that I'd never thought about before. There's no one I respect more than him. And there's nothing I'm more proud of than knowing he feels the same way about me.
Interviewer: A-are you tearing up, Kagami-san?
Kagami: O-of course not! No way! I just got something in my eye! Got a problem with that?
Interviewer: No, no. Here's a tissue. So you can get it out of your eye.
Kagami: Thanks.
Interviewer: Well, we're about out of time. Thank you for answering my questions, Kagami-san. And if you could just answer one more . . . On the off chance that your partner hears this interview, is there anything you want to shout out to him?
Kagami: There's no need. I don't think you get the concept of the drift yet. Anything I'd want to tell him, he already knows.
Secondhand Impressions
Kagami wanted to hate the Generation of Miracles.
He'd only ever met one of them face to face, and Kise Ryouta hadn't made a good first impression. How could he when he showed up at Seirin's practice, out of the blue, leading a flock of fan girls, who it took ten minutes to get rid of . . . and then he went ballistic, demanding to know why they didn't have any Kurokocchis.
Opinions of Kise, by Seirin in general at that time, ranged from this guy's freaking nuts, to WTF? At the time, none of Seirin had any idea who or what Kise was talking about, and why he was getting so worked up over them not having him/it. The guy even went so far as to accuse them of lying to him and trying to keep Kurokocchi all to themselves, and grew increasingly more and more distressed when he realized they weren't lying. That there was no Kurokocchi in the Seirin basketball club.
(And though Kagami did know that the kid he'd saved from bleeding to death on that streetball court a month ago was called Kuroko, he sure as hell wasn't going to mention it. Not to Kise the psychopath. Most likely, he thought Kuroko Tetsuya had nothing to do with this, but on the off chance he did, he sure as hell wasn't throwing Kuroko to that mad dog. The poor kid had been through enough)
By the time their practice game rolled around, Kise had mellowed out a bit, and at the end of it, he was almost . . . decent. But first impressions last.
And the next impression Kagami got of Kise, and every other member of the Generation of Miracles was even stronger. He got it in the drift, when his mind was connected to Kuroko's. And he didn't like what he saw one bit.
There were good things about them, yes. Of course. They had been Kuroko's friends once. And Kuroko loved them. Even at the end, when they abandoned him, he still cared for them so much that it was like a physical ache. Even though he thought what they did was so wrong, he forgave them almost as soon as they'd done it. He just wanted his friends back.
It pissed Kagami off. Those fuckers obviously had no clue what they'd thrown away. The good that they'd done in Kuroko's life was completely drowned out by all the bad they'd done and the pain they'd caused him as far as Kagami was concerned.
Kuroko felt his rage in the drift. Characteristically, he matched it with serene acceptance, that he couldn't change the way Kagami felt, even though he disagreed with what Kagami thought, and added in another feeling that was somewhere between touched and embarrassingly grateful that Kagami thought Kuroko was worth defending, and getting angry for.
That only made Kagami want to hate them more. They never deserved a friend like Kuroko.
But the truth of the matter was, Kagami couldn't hate them. Not completely. Not when he knew what kind of potential they had in them, and what kind of people they were capable of being.
So instead of hating them, he resented them. And hoped, if not with all his heart then at least with a good chunk of it, for Kuroko's sake, that one day, they would again become the kind of people who deserved a friend like Kuroko.
Aomine's Sick Fantasy
He didn't mean anything by it. It was just a daydream. A stupid boy's dream of glory that he knew he'd never attain, but that didn't stop him from dreaming about it.
In the story he spun in his mind, he was tapped for the Jaeger Program. He passed his drift compatibility tests and all that. How, he never really worked out. No one knew how they tested for drift compatibility anyway. That was an unimportant detail in the overall plot he envisioned.
When he got to the Japanese Jaeger Program's headquarters, the mood was grim. They'd just been struck by tragedy, with RimFire and Kagami Taiga at the center. A tougher than usual kaiju had appeared so naturally Kagami had been sent to take care of it. But in the course of that fight, Kagami's co-pilot, his unnamed, faceless shadow, who never appeared in any interviews, and never allowed his information to be released to the public, was killed in action.
If he'd known, if he'd only known, Aomine never would have fantasized something like that. If he'd just had a face to match to that position, even if it wasn't Tetsu's face, he might not have dreamt up such a sick scenario.
But in his sick fantasy, Kagami's faceless partner was killed, and Kagami the hero, the legend, the ace of all humanity, sank into depression. RimFire was repaired but stood idle while the program's brass tried to find a new partner for Kagami.
Then, one night, after training, Aomine and Kagami met. In the gym, of course, where Aomine had gone to practice basketball by himself.
Sometimes in his fantasy, the gym was deserted when he arrived, and Kagami came in after him. Other times, Kagami was there, practicing by himself, and though Aomine would have left, in respect to the veteran pilot's obvious desire to be alone, Kagami called out and stopped him.
After that, it was pretty much the same every time Aomine daydreamed it. They ended up playing one on one against each other. And Kagami was good. Really good. Possibly even better than Aomine. Back and forth across the court they raced, returning basket for basket, neither getting a clear advantage against the other, and neither backing down even an inch.
At the end of it, they were both covered in sweat and on the verge of collapse, panting like crazy, but grinning, even laughing sometimes.
Then Kagami held out a hand to Aomine. There was a darkness in his gaze, but the light of hope too, and Aomine took his hand without a second thought.
"Thanks," Kagami said. "I haven't felt like this since . . . I'm sure you know. So, thank you."
Then, the next day at training, Kagami would come stomping in, ignoring all the attention that his mere presence garnered, and going directly to whoever was in charge of training. He spoke with them, and Aomine couldn't hear what was said, but he saw Kagami pointing at him, and moments later was called over.
And that was how he became Kagami Taiga's copilot. In his sick fantasy anyway.
Ironically, Aomine wondered, both during and after these daydreams, if losing your copilot was anything like what it had felt to lose Kuroko. Or what it felt like when he realized that he'd lost Kuroko. It hadn't been until over a full year later when Aomine actually felt the loss of his best friend. He knew that it had to be worse for Jaeger pilots. What they lost there was no chance of getting back. At least Kuroko was still out there and alive, even if he'd cut ties with the Generation of Miracles as permanently as he could, changing his phone number, then dropping off the grid. Aomine could hold out hope that someday when he least expected it, he would run into Kuroko, in a restaurant, on a streetball court, anywhere. And that Kuroko would be willing to stop and listen long enough for Aomine to apologize.
In his fantasy, he actually did feel bad for Kagami, even though he was, in a way, hoping for this to happen to him. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to.
When the first phase of Aomine's daydream came true and he was tapped for the Jaeger Program, and he finally got a face to go with the man, or boy really, he'd been daydreaming had died, and not just any face, but the face of his best friend . . . the mere thought of what he'd fantasized about made Aomine want to throw up.
It's going to be another chapter or two (possibly three) before the GoM officially arrive at the Japanese Jaeger Program's headquarters, and this fic catches up with Kuroko no Drift Compatible. But they're on the way! And there will be more shenanigans about the Seirin Six's logos next time!
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