Summary:

"Lysandra fires a full clip of bullets into the face of another ghoul, and stabs another whisp in the face. How did this pocket go unnoticed for a full century, anyway? How did they manage to get permission to build a school here? And even after that, did Teikou not have a sorcery contact? The poor kids' mental states stretch that, having such a violent domain in such close proximity can't be good for anyone's heads."

Kuroko thinks he might've found his new light in Seirin.

Meanwhile, aunt Hotaru finds a violent ghost domain hidden within a familiar school.


The first day of school is loud, rowdy and painted pink with sakuras, lined with booths of clubs and various enthusiastic promotors of their own interests. If it was anyone else, they would've been stopped by at least five senpais on their way to their destinations, wherever it may be. But Tetsuya fin the crowd not too much of an issue, his usual lack of presence allowing him to slip past students without them batting an eye. He briefly stops by the maps to confirm his destination, then makes his way to the basketball club's booth.

The booth is manned by three people, two seated in chairs and another... On the floor. Someone else is signing up, a redhead around Aomine-kun's height with a clearly athletic build. Tetsuya winds around the conversing club members, quietly picks up one of the forms and starts filling it in. After brief contemplation, he notes down 'Teikou Basketball Club' in the additional information margins. The redhead next to him leaves first, making a statement about basketball in Japan being the same everywhere before he walks away. Tetsuya stares after him for a brief moment, then leaves the form on the table and leaves after him.

Tetsuya gets a feeling that this person would like a good challenge. He almost feels like how Aomine-kun used to. Who knows, maybe he'll be his new light.

Tetsuya's eyes trails to the redhead's side, where a strange but not malicious aura clings.

Ah, Tetsuya blinks, he has a ghost.

First day of club activities begins not at the basketball stadium nor with anything basketball related. It begins, with as one should expect, an anticlimactic school day. It was only untill after school that Tetsuya changes and makes his way over to the stadium marked for the Seirin Basketball Club, memorising the path as he walks.

The stadium isn't at all far away, but the paths and surroundings are unfamiliar, so naturally Tetsuya arrives at the building with several of his future club mates already standing about, chatting. He enters the court, taking a good look at the new structure Teikou's basketball club building, while well maintained and top of the line, has an age to it. In contrast to Seirin, a new highschool, he could tell that this building lacks the history the one in Teikou holds. A refreshing sight.

He steps to the side when he hears footsteps from behind, and the redhead an American transfer, appearantly, they're in the same class and he sits in front of him, steps into the stadium. The faint aura clinging to him is still there, and Tetsuya can't help but steal a glance. He'll ask his aunt about it later. The transfer observes the surroundings before a noncommittal look crosses his face, and he makes his way to a group that looks like the rest of the first year. Tetsuya sets his duffle bag aside, and almost unconsciously, reaches up to be sure the metal tag his aunt gave him is still around his neck, and makes his way over as well.

A whistle was blown. And instructions to line up was said, Tetsuya follows along. "Alright! Looks like the first years are all here." Someone speaks up, and he recognised him as the person who was sitting on the floor on the first day. He observes the second years, recognising the captain- it was his wallet that he picked up off the floor, the day he discovered Seirin, someone seems to be missing from the roster, however. And Tetsuya briefly wonders where they are.

Some more chatter, and exclaims of disbelief were heard when the girl with the whistle reveals herself to be the couch, not the manager, then proceeds to tell them to take off their shirts.

Well, this is going to be one lively year.


Practice drags late untill after dark, and still Taiga is feeling the itch of wanting a good game- which didn't happen during practice today. It's the first day, so outside of warmups and some degree of training, their couch was mostly getting them settled in and helping them figure out their limits and setting goals. He heads to the court a few stations away from the school, walking distance from his home and the fast food restaurant he frequents and starts playing on his own, meanwhile contemplating what he's heard today.

Kuroko Tetsuya, appearantly one of the Generation of Miracle. He's heard that name being thrown around before, he thinks, never paid too much attention. His performance today wasn't outstanding, and there's absolutely nothing that made him memorable in anyway at all- maybe except for the fact that he kept getting overlooked, or his weird entrence today. He moves to shoot- aiming only to be distracted when he catches sight of a mob of light blue hair standing just a little ways away from the side of the hoop looking right at him like a ghost- and he misses.

The basketball bounces off the rim and falls into his new club mate's hands, who stare up at him with the same expressionless look he seems to wear all the time. For someone wearing a weird jacket that makes him look like a walking fashion disaster, he has way too little presence. How did he not notice him?

Annoyance rises in him. "Since when were you here?" Taiga asks, narrowing his eyes. He didn't notice anyone else in the court before he arrived, so he has to have arrived after him, right?

"Hello." The guy replies politely instead, nodding in greeting, which answers exactly none of Taiga's many questions. His eyes drift briefly to the side like he's daydreaming, before settling back on him.

"What are you doing?" Taiga asks again, fixing his uniform jacket as he walks towards the guy, who moves to toss the basketball back towards him.

"The apartment I live in is close by," Kuroko replies as Taiga catches the ball, "this is the court I usually go to. What are you doing here all by yourself?"

PLaying basketball, Taiga snarks in his head, "nothing," he says instead.

"Is that so." Kuroko states without fluctuation.

It=aiga thinks back to his abandoned train of thoughts before he was interrupted, and decides to fuck it, why not. "I was in America up until my second year in middle school," he decides to open with that, "and when I got back here, I was appalled by how low the standards here are." That seems to catch Kuroko's attention, and he looks at him with what Taiga will interpret as a little more interest. "I'm not playing basketball casually or for fun, I want an all out game that can get my blood pumping."

"I've heard all about you guys, the supposed Generation of Miracles from our year. You were on that team, weren't you?" Something seems to have shifted in the boy's eyes that he can't read. "I have a good sense of how strong the others are- people who can succeed carries a special kind of scent." He throws the ball back towards Kuroko, who catches it and raises a brow. "But something isn't right with you, weak people has a scent as well, but you. You've got nothing, and whatever you're good at has got no scent at all." He gives the guy a once over, then gestures for a challenge. "Show me, I want to know just how good this Generation of Miracles is."

A pause. "How fortunate." The blue haired teen meets his eyes, shrugging the jacket off as he speaks. "I have also been wanting to see how strong you are." The boy tosses his jacket over his bag, leaning against the basketball hoop. "One on one." He offered.

"One on one." Taiga grins, and braces himself for an unknown challenge.


Tetsuya thinks he's found his new light.

Kazami Taiga reminds him of the Aomine Daiki he became friends with to an almost painful degree. Passionate and looking for a challenge. He listens as the redhead advises him to give up basketball, and faintly thinks of how many times had he recieved that piece of advice before. Perhaps it would've mattered to him years ago, but Tetsuya knows his place on the court, and knows that one on one wouldn't be the place where any judgement made would be accurate to his performance or what he can offer in a team.

"...raw talent is a fact of life," walking over to pick up his belongings, Kagami-kun says, "to put it frankly, you've got no talent for basketball."

He turns to leave, and call him petty, but Tetsuya feels like its wrong to just let him leave like this without getting a last word in- so he speaks up. "I don't accept that." He says to his retreating figure. His classmates stops and glances back. "First of all, I love basketball." The words comes out easy now. Much easier than before, and Tetsuya almost surprised himself, "and I don't share your opinion, I don't really care who's strong or who's weak."

"Hah?"

"I'm not like you," Tetsuya states, then pauses, he's feeling a little cryptic today. "Unlike you, I am a shadow."

He doesn't stop Kagami-kun from leaving afterwards, and puts his jacket back on first thing after. It's a part of the old uniforms uncle Mafuyu gave him, something that looks quite out of place o his person with those impractical amount of belts attached. He's asked what they were for before, and didn't get a straight answer for either of his guardians.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Tetsuya belatedly realises he forgot to text that basketball practice lasts until after dark. He digs his phone out, and pauses at the messages.

'Tetsu-kun, your uncle and I won't be home tonight, dinner is in the fridge, I also had breakfast made in advance just in case.'

'Best case scenario we would be back by morning and you'll see us after school. We will text you if that is not the case.'

'I left a batch of coins on the table if you need them,

That's new. Tetsuya tilts his head, his guardians' jobs hold many similarities to the police force, so he's not particularly surprised. He shivers, when he suddenly gets the strange sensation of being watched, and hurries home.

Somewhere behind him, a man with gold-rimmed glasses stares after the blue haired boy, unseen by any of the passer-by's.

"Kuroko Tetsuya, huh." He snaps the book in his hand shut, "interesting."


"I hate ghouls."

Lysandra spat the words like they're dirty, stabbing the ground with her sword as she gets back on her feet. Her mouth tastes like iron, and she spits the redness from it before raising a hand. She's been bleeding all over the place earlier, there should be enough by now.

The splatters of red on the rows and rows of barbs and ground glows at her command, reshaping themselves before chains erupt from them, piercing the forms in front of her. The ghoul screams, and Lysandra flicks her hand. The chains change direction then, ripping their pray apart into chunks of... whatever they're made of. What it holds in its rib cage tumbles out, and Lysandra spends no time in tossing a coin over. it erupts into flames.

One down, she glances up at the screaming poltergeist perched at the top of the trash heap, and however many that thing is going to summon to go.

There's a crack and a groan, ice covers the ground of the area to her right before gunshots rung out, and two mutated whisps screams before being scattered to the winds.

A wall of ice erupts in front of him, and Lysandra joins her husband behind it for shelter, before a memory of gunfire rings and everything around them starts exploding.

"Really, who doesn't." The man wipes at his brows, not even looking as he lashes out to his left, taking a shade's head clean off with his katana before it reaches them. Lysandra tucks her bangs back as she fires a shot into some poor ghost's neck, trying to sneak up on her. Mafuyu grits his teeth. "Elias is takingawfullylong."

"Give the guy a break, even with Anthea covering his back it can't be easy making a containment and stabalisation field in," she stabs another whisp in the face, "this. The rune stones they gave us exploded the moment we got in, and the new set I just designed isn't exactly a simple one."

Lysandra turns her gaze up and through the ice to the source of their problem— a poltergeist. The ice wall is quickly turning opaque from the cracks, with the now slowly ceasing gunfire, but she can still see the ghost, laughing in hysterics, tearing at its own face as the space around them distorts and shifts with its own crumbling sense of space, time and self. A little ahead of them, the trenches, barbs and tanks twist and groans before the bodies in them starts convulsing, twisting, and then even more ghosts erupts.

"Third wave incoming." Mafuyu murmurs, half for her and himself, half for their teammates through the communicators, "there are 5 more ghouls this time."

"Fuck." Anthea says through her earpiece, with feelings. Lysandra agrees.

"I'll deal with those." Lysandra grimaces as she swipes at her arm, the lines on it pulsing briefly as the stamina replenishment rushes through her. Poltergeists' power levels can vary based on their memories, or simply put, how traumatised they were before they died. So lingering war ghosts are theworst. But this isn't time for sympathy, they need to contain this before the domain leaks and the it recreates a 1917 western front in the middle of a school in Japan.

She's not surprised how far this thing is from where it was likely created, but how did this pocket go unnoticed for a full century, anyway? How did they manage to get permission to build a school here? And even after that, did Teikou not have a sorcery contact? The poor kids' mental states stretch that, having such a violent domain in such close proximity can't be good foranyone's heads.

She has a principal to beat up after this, it seems.

5 people against the memory of a war this will be a long night. Hopefully Tetsuya's gotten home already. This place is too close to home for comfort, and Lysandra wouldn't be able to forgive herself if anything in here gets out. She needs to check on her nephew too, once this is over. Domains like this can have dormant effects that can go unnoticed for decades before they surface.

The ice wall drops behind them, and on cue, Lysandra fires a full clip of bullets into the face of another ghoul. It screams but charges undeterred, and as the magic density in the air gets high enough, Lysandra raises her arm, and moments later, a lightning bolt pierces the sky above Teikou Middle School.