The Kind Of Thing You Never Forget

It was after their third kaiju fight when it happened. Something Kuroko would never forget. A milestone in his and Kagami's friendship. Something that would stay in his mind far longer than their third kaiju kill.

It had been a particularly hard fight. Even with Furihata and Fukuda backing them up, that kaiju had been a bitch. It had way too many arms. Kagami thought that it should be christened Octobitch. Kuroko didn't think that name was worse than any of the other monikers that people had come up with for the kaiju so far. This one really had been a bitch. Kuroko planned to fully support calling it Octobitch, when Kagami brought the naming of it up. He hadn't yet, not verbally, but in the drift, his thoughts had been as clear as Kuroko's own, and while they'd been trying to rip off its extra arms, they'd both taken to thinking a mental mantra in sync: Die Octobitch, die!

"Hey."

Kuroko looked at Kagami, exhaustedly, but curious. Kagami had used the tone of voice that meant he was going to say something important.

"Good job today," said Kagami.

That confused Kuroko. Because that went without saying. Kagami had expressed his approval of Kuroko's perfect synchronization of their thoughts in the drift. Saying it out loud was . . . redundant. But Kagami was using that tone that meant he thought this was important. So Kuroko went along.

"Thank you. You too, Kagami-kun," said Kuroko. And to be extra polite, because he considered Kagami worth every courtesy, he gave a bow to his partner. Not too low a bow, but low enough to show proper respect to one's copilot.

"Hey. Here."

When Kuroko looked up, Kagami was holding a hand out toward him. His hand was clenched in a fist. Hovering there in the air. At just the right height for a fist bump.

Kuroko stared at it. Then moved his eyes to Kagami's.

"Come on," Kagami said gruffly.

Kuroko couldn't help it. A smile tugged at his mouth as he quickly made his own hand into a fist and bumped it against Kagami's.

It was nothing earth shattering. There was no flash of lightning or dramatic background music. Real life wasn't like that.

It was just Kuroko and Kagami.

But at the same time it was more than that. They were more than that. And Kuroko felt like there was nothing that they couldn't do together.

It was the kind of thing you never forget.

Can Do

"What do you think?"

Kuroko's voice was deadpan, but his expression was a little bit telling. The rest of Seirin knew him well enough to know that he was nervous. Furihata guessed that any artist must feel that way at least a little bit, when they revealed their work.

"I LOVE IT!" shouted Koganei, waving around the piece of paper with the mock up emblem Kuroko had made for his Jaeger on it, while Mitobe made alarmed motions toward him, trying to calm him down. "Look, Mitobe! Isn't it awesome! It's amazing! I love it! With this we will truly be Ever-Changing Magical Star!"

Amidst all the waving, Furihata was able to get a glimpse of a blue star trailing yellow lightning bolts. Sketched in colored pencils, but with a street art feel to it. He knew the final version would have more of that street art feel, since it would be done in spray paint.

Kuroko's eyes were smiling as he moved them to Izumi and Kiyoshi, who had received their own sample much more calmly, though both were clearly happy with the results.

"It's perfect," Kiyoshi said, giving Kuroko a warm smile.

"You really drew out the heart of the matter," said Izuki.

"Shut up, Izuki," growled Hyuuga.

"Look, he even managed to make our emblem a pun!"

Izuki held up the symbol Kuroko had sketched out for Iron Heart. It was a heart, colored gray, with detail work added to make it look kind of steampunk. It was like the heart had been welded together out of several metal sheets, and riveted in place. And right in the center of it was a steely blue eye, much like Izuki's when he was using his Eagle Eye.

"Iron Heart. Eye-ron Heart! Get it! Get it!" Izuki looked like he was over the moon.

"Die, Izuki! You too Kuroko!" Hyuuga said angrily.

Kuroko just continued smiling with only his eyes.

"You did a good job on them," said Kagami. "Who knew you were hiding artistic talent?"

At his copilot's praise, Kuroko beamed slightly, and looked a little happier, though his expression really didn't change.

Riko smiled indulgently at her boys. She and Hyuuga had been very pleased with the design Kuroko gave them for Clutch Time the day before: an hourglass topped with a winged skull. Tsuchida and Kawahara had also been happy with the emblem for Catal Rhythm: two basketballs turned into connected music notes.

"Alright. Go shower and get changed," said Riko. "Good work today, everyone."

Furihata caught Kuroko's eye as the others all started toward the locker room. Kuroko understood and said something softly to Kagami, telling him to go on ahead without him. Kagami looked a little disgruntled. Furihata could understand why. Once you'd drifted with someone, you tended to want to keep them close. It was almost like they were an extension of yourself. You became protective of them, and you couldn't very well protect them if they weren't with you.

He wished Fukuda was here with him now, but his partner had sprained an ankle, and any injury that any of the Seirin Six (all twelve of them) sustained was always treated with an alarmist's attitude. The Jaeger Program's doctors had him on crutches for the next week, so understandably, he wasn't moving around too much. He'd entrusted Furihata to relaying the name they'd chosen for their Jaeger.

"So . . . Fukuda and I came up with a name for our Jaeger," said Furihata when it was just him and Kuroko.

"I'm glad," said Kuroko in his usual deadpan.

"It . . . it sounds a little strange, but . . ."

"I doubt you can top Koganei-sempai's choice for strange, Furihata-kun," said Kuroko.

"Ha. Probably not. But . . . some people might think ours is a little pathetic."

"Then some people need to learn what it means to put your life on the line and fight kaiju."

Furihata smiled. Only Kuroko could sound protective while being completely blank and deadpan. "Yeah. Hah. True. But . . . what we chose kind of signifies how Fukuda and I feel. See . . . we've never been excellent at anything. We've never been exceptional or stood out in any way. Not like people like Kagami and Kiyoshi-sempai, or Captain. Or you."

"I don't –"

"You're exceptional. You don't stand out, because you look so unassuming and your lack of presence but anyone who knows you knows damn well you're exceptional. Fukuda and me, we're not like that. We're average, with no trump cards. Anything we manage to be above average in is because of really hard work. Until now. Our drift compatibility . . . you know what I mean," said Furihata.

Kuroko nodded his understanding. Furihata appreciated that. He wasn't trying to fish for compliments and get Kuroko to refute what he was saying. Any refuting of it would be lies anyway, and Kuroko was an honest kind of guy.

Furihata and Fukuda had never been great students or great athletes. In a normal school, they would have been second string in the basketball club. Their grades were nothing to comment on, good or bad. They had no special talents or skills, or anything. Except being drift compatible. And both of them felt a little bit like it was wasted on them. Like that gift should have been given to someone like . . . like the Generation of Miracles. Or the starters from Seihou. Aggressive go-getters. People who would make the most of it.

But it hadn't been given to them. It had been given to Furihata and Fukuda. Maybe only because of Coach's training regiment and the Seirin team's solidarity. So little was known about the requirements for drift compatibility, but everyone agreed on one thing. There was no way in hell that six teams of drift compatible teenagers should have come out of one school, let alone one club. Not when drift compatibility was a trait so rare that a search of Japan's entire military hadn't found a single pair of pilots since the advent of the Seirin Six.

It was very possible that Coach's methods had managed to change something in them on an almost psychic level, letting them sync up with each other. And if that was true, it was extremely likely that her methods would be copied. Or at least, people would attempt to copy them. In time, average pilots like Furihata and Fukuda might become obsolete and they both knew it.

But for now, they were here. They'd been given an opportunity and a gift, and they planned to make the most of it while they were here, and while they were among the few who could make a difference now, and save lives.

"We chose Can Do as our Jaeger's name," said Furihata. "Because . . . it's our affirmation that we believe in ourselves and our team. I know it's kind of –"

"It's perfect."

Kuroko was really smiling now. Not just with his eyes That sight filled Furihata with warmth.

"You think?"

"Yes. It's perfect," repeated Kuroko.

"I know it might be hard to come up with an emblem for that," said Furihata. "It's kind of abstract."

Kuroko, instead of answering with words, picked up his sketch book off the bench, where he'd kept it all through practice, waiting to reveal the new emblems. And right in front of Furihata, he began drawing.

He didn't use colored pencils this time. Furihata assumed he'd add colors later. He just used a regular graphite pencil, and employed cross-hatching to show shading. Furihata didn't understand what he was drawing at first, but watched closely, and within a minute, the image became clear.

Kuroko was drawing two fists, bumping together. It was the gesture Furihata had seen him and Kagami start making before and after battles, or during practice. He'd thought that was their thing. But Kuroko seemed to be giving it to Furihata and Fukuda now too.

"There." Kuroko held the finished product out to Furihata once he was done. Furihata was stunned to see that Kuroko had gone so far as to personalize it for them. The small, pale scar on the side of his wrist, and the two moles on Fukuda's hand were both included in the drawing.

"It's perfect," echoed Furihata, not meaning to use Kuroko's words from earlier, but they just slipped out. "I love it, Kuroko. Fukuda's going to love it too. It's perfect."

Permanent

If there was one thing that Kuroko would never understand, it was how some people could treat the bonds they formed with others so lightly. He could figure out their reasoning. He was just never able to really get it. Because every one of the few friendships he'd formed in his life, he treasured. The idea of voluntarily giving up even one was nauseating. He may have disappeared from the lives of the other Miracles, but their bonds had been severed long before his vanishing act.

It saddened him to feel a familiar ache in Kagami-kun's mind when Kagami's memories of his childhood best friend touched Kuroko's consciousness. They were too much like his own, of his friends. Good times, tainted by a bad ending. Disbelief that Himuro was throwing everything they had away, like so much rubbish.

Yet Kagami still wore the ring. Even though he wasn't sure if Himuro kept his, or whether or not he still wanted to be his brother. That last one was a moot point now, Kuroko was sure. Now that Kagami was famous as humanity's ace, everyone wanted a piece of him. RimFire's logo had been pirated a hundred times over. Kagami's old number 10 Seirin jersey was considered high fashion. And there were so many knock offs of his ring floating around on the market, you couldn't walk into a Maji Burger without seeing at least four people wearing them. Everyone loved him now, scary face and all. Kuroko was sure Himuro would be no exception. Everyone treated you differently when you were famous. That was why Kuroko never wanted to be famous. He didn't want fake affection. And he sure as hell didn't want that fake affection making him think he was better than everyone else, like it did to so many people.

Kagami's sadness about Himuro bothered Kuroko. Any sadness that Kagami experienced bothered him, honestly, but this was worse than any other. Because Kuroko knew just how horrible that kind of loneliness was. He wanted to fix it for Kagami.

He wanted to do something to prove to Kagami that he would never cause him that kind of pain.

He wanted his friendship, no his brotherhood with Kagami to be permanent.

And he wanted a symbol for it. Something far more lasting than a long forgotten sweatband, or a tiny scrap of metal outgrown years ago.

"What's wrong?" Kagami asked after practice.

Kuroko had spent all day and last night stewing over the problem. Ever since yesterday, when he and Kagami had taken out that damn cicada kaiju, and he'd gotten Kagami's memories of Himuro. And finally, Kuroko had come up with an answer.

"Nothing's wrong," said Kuroko.

"Bullshit. I know you," Kagami said and smacked him in the back of his head. Lightly. Not hard enough to hurt. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong. I promise, Kagami-kun," said Kuroko. "I've just been thinking about something."

"What?" Kagami asked.

"I want to get a tattoo."

Kagami gave a startled laugh. "That's a random thing to be thinking about so somberly."

"Not really." Kuroko stopped walking. Kagami immediately stopped too and looked Kuroko in the eye. "I want you to get one too, Kagami-kun."

"Huh?"

"The same one as me," said Kuroko. He twisted his wristband. Not Ogiwara's. He only wore that one into battle. Like any wristband, it had a limited lifespan. So for everyday practice, he wore ones that weren't so special, so he wouldn't wear out the last symbol of the lost friendship that he still treasured.

Kagami still looked confused. So Kuroko twisted his sweatband again, and looked meaningfully at it. Then he moved his gaze to Kagami's ring, knowing that Kagami was tracking his eye movements. When he met his copilot's eyes again, he saw understanding there.

"Tattoos are permanent," said Kagami.

"Exactly." Agreed Kuroko.

Kagami slung and arm around Kuroko's shoulder and started walking again, pulling Kuroko along with him. "So you better choose us something cool if we're going to have it on our skin forever."

"RimFire's symbol," said Kuroko.

Because what else was there, really? That one emblem summed up everything there was to their friendship. Basketball and the light that Kagami had reignited in Kuroko's life. And now it was the symbol of what they could do together, when their souls and wills fused together with one purpose – to defend everyone and everything they loved. But when you dissected it to its base level it was a ring. A band. A circle. Unbroken and endless. And they didn't need to ink it onto their skin to prove that was what their friendship was, but Kuroko wanted to anyway. It was a subtle form of bragging that what they had was permanent. As long as they were both alive their friendship would never be broken.

"Over our hearts?" Kagami asked.

"I was thinking around our biceps."

Either would work. Both options held their own symbolic reasons. Around their biceps seemed like moving up. From the tiny ring that had once been around Kagami's finger, and the sweatband around Kuroko's wrist, to a bigger, higher place. And over the heart, for the obvious symbolic reason.

"We could get both," said Kagami. "You know the others are going to want in on it."

"Yes."

The Seirin Six was a tight knit family now. When one of them had a good idea, they willingly shared it with the others.

"Around the arm is one that only we can do. The others could get it on their arms, but not around them, like a bracelet. Their logos can't be skewed out that way. But over the heart is one everyone can get. Er, except maybe coach . . ." Kagami went scarlet at the thought.

"The human heart is higher in the chest than most people think," said Kuroko. "She could get Clutch Time's emblem there alright."

"Oh. Good," said Kagami. His face slowly began returning to its normal color. "Now the only problem is finding a tattoo shop that will ink underaged teenagers."

"That's no problem at all," said Kuroko.

"Why's that?"

Kuroko smiled at him. The answer was obvious, but Kagami hadn't seen it. He loved that about his best friend. "Because you're Kagami Taiga. No one's going to tell you that you can't get a tattoo."

Normally Kuroko wasn't one to advocate taking advantage of your fame to be an exception to the rules. But this was for a good cause. Besides, it wasn't like they were kids anymore. If they were grown up enough to protect their country from giant monsters, they were grown up enough to make decisions they'd carry with them for the rest of their lives.

And this was just an extension of the best decision Kuroko ever made.

Missing You

They say that danger can bring someone's priorities to light better than anything else. Example: when a fire alarm or smoke detector goes off, the first thing a new mother will always do is look toward her baby.

So Aomine thought that it meant something when, the first time a kaiju made landfall in Japan, his first thought was of Tetsu.

On the one hand, it didn't make sense. He hadn't seen Kuroko in like a year. The last time they were face to face was right after their third-year middle school championships, in the locker room. He could hazily remember the crushed look on Kuroko's face. And why did only now he feel a pang when he realized that Kuroko's face looked more distressed than their crushed opponents' faces?

He'd had one quick glimpse of him at their graduation ceremony. That was the last time he'd truly seen Kuroko. There was one time when he was supposed to meet him, shortly before their first year of high school. Kuroko had called him out of the blue and asked him to meet him on a streetball court. Aomine had texted him back that yeah, he'd be there . . . but he'd ended up sleeping through the meeting.

He hadn't seen or heard from Kuroko since.

But when the first kaiju to come to Japan went on a rampage in the Greater Tokyo area, eventually reaching the edges of Tokyo itself, and the entire country was in a state of emergency, Aomine's first thought had been of Kuroko.

"We're sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please hang up and try again."

Aomine hung up and tried again ten times that day, and fifty more once all the phone lines had finally been reestablished. Nothing changed. Kuroko's number never came back online. But his name never appeared in any of the databases of kaiju victims. Aomine checked, very often, fearful of what he would find, though what he was dreading never happened.

Finally, Akashi confirmed that Kuroko was still alive, and had just paid his entrance fees for his second year of high school at Seirin High. Aomine thought about tracking him down. Pulling a Kise and crashing his practice, like Kise had done to both him and Midorima. Or just visiting Kuroko at home. He wanted to see him again. Or maybe what he really wanted was his best friend back.

He didn't work up the nerve to actually try to find Kuroko until after the second kaiju attack on Tokyo.

That one was significantly less disastrous, thanks to the discovery of two new teams of drift compatible pilots. Lives were still lost. Including the lives of the two veteran Jaeger pilots who'd been sent in to take care of the kaiju initially. But thanks to the new pilots, casualties had been kept to a minimum.

But that second tragedy galvanized Aomine into action. He'd finally realized that he wasn't guaranteed a future. None of them were, with kaiju rising out of the ocean every month, and attacking one of the countries on the Pacific Rim. It was only a matter of time before another one came to Japan.

He had no way of knowing then that they were seeing the advent of the Seirin Six, and that for the next two and a half years, not a single kaiju would make landfall in Japan thanks to them. When scraps of information started to become available about them, he would follow it every bit as eagerly as the rest of the nation, getting excited over every little detail, following every conspiracy theory, that they might be teenagers, that they might be basketball players, that one of them was a teenage chick with huge boobs. He found himself missing Tetsu even more then, because who else had always listened to his rantings about the things that excited him? Before those had only really been basketball and girls with big busts, but Kuroko had always been willing to listen, even if he didn't contribute much to the conversation.

But that came later.

After Aomine went to Kuroko's apartment.

Kuroko's recently emptied apartment.

He broke in to make sure Kuroko wasn't just ignoring him.

It wasn't completely empty. There was still stuff in the kitchen, like bowls and cutlery, pans, and chopsticks. But no food, except some nonperishables, like instant ramen. Kuroko's parent's room still had a futon in it, and some keepsakes and personal items. Pictures and the like. Kuroko's own room, however, was completely bare. Not one photograph was left on his walls, or one pocket book left on his shelves. His futon was gone, as was all his basketball gear. Anything that showed his friend had ever lived here was gone now.

Aomine had a few theories about what happened. The most likely being that Kuroko had moved in with a friend. He knew Tetsu's parents weren't around much. Or at all. He knew Kuroko disliked being alone and –

And he'd left him alone. For about two years now. That made Aomine feel like shit.

Obviously Kuroko would make other friends. Obviously someone else would see Kuroko for the amazing person he was. And apparently, they were being a better friend to Kuroko than Aomine had ever been. They were making sure he didn't have to be alone anymore.

Aomine wasn't sure whether he wanted to thank them or kill them.

He made a few more attempts at finding Kuroko. He went to Seirin and tried to visit their basketball club, only to find out that it had been suspended indefinitely. (And he found out later that Kuroko had never even joined it anyway.) Then he just went to Seirin and stood in front of the school's gates, making himself very visible, to make up for the fact that Kuroko was so hard to see that . . . well, that Aomine couldn't see him anymore. He kept his eyes peeled and used every trick he knew to bring his shadow into view. But he never managed to find him.

Which, he took to mean, Kuroko didn't want to be seen, not by Aomine anyways. If he did, he would have gone up and talked to him then. There was no way Kuroko hadn't seen Aomine there in front of his school.

So, that was that. Aomine could take a hint. The disconnected phone alone had honestly been enough, but he hadn't been able to give up without at least trying to track down Tetsu.

He didn't want either of them to die with this still between them, unresolved. But just like he'd once closed the door on Tetsu, now Tetsu had closed the door on him. For the time being, at least, there would be no reconciliation.

Aomine couldn't blame Kuroko. He just wished that one day, things would change. That maybe, on some random day, out of the blue, he'd run into Kuroko again, on a streetball court, or in some random restaurant. That he'd sit down at a table he thought was empty, only to jump out of his skin moments later when he realized that he was being watched by a deadpan pair of blue eyes, over the top of a vanilla milkshake's lid.

And if or when that ever happened, Aomine swore to himself that next time he wouldn't fail Kuroko. Never again.

Emblems of the Seirin Six

RimFire: A fiery basketball hoop

Clutch Time: An hourglass topped with a winged skull

Iron Heart: A grey heart, split into several segments, riveted together, with a steely blue eye in the center

Ever-Changing Magical Star: A blue star, trailing yellow lightning

Catal Rhythm: Two basketballs turned into music notes, joined with a bar

Can Do: Two fists with their knuckles touching, in a fist bump

For those who've been wondering how Koganei and Mitobe's Jaeger got its name, it's from the anime's fourth opening theme song (the second opening of the second season.) "Hengen Jizai no Magikarusutā" by GRANRODEO. That translates into Ever-Changing Magical Star. Most of the Jaegers got their names from the theme songs. With the exceptions of Clutch Time and Iron Heart, which each got their names from a trait associated with one of their pilots.

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