Chapter 4

"You know," said Kise, staring pensively at his phone. "I really like this friend of yours, Kagamichi. I should meet him sometime."

"He lives in Akita," said Kagami, which he was sure would not deter Kise one bit. "What are you doing mailing Tatsuya anyway?"

"Murasakibarachi wanted his phone back so he could browse the snack sites," said Kise, as though that made any sense at all.

"Everything he's telling you is lies," said Kagami, which as a pre-emptive statement about any of his so-called friends, covered pretty much anything.

"Oh, so that hot American woman wasn't your foster mother, who used to make you two play basketball on the streets for profit and great justice? I'm shocked, Kagamichi. Shocked," said Kise.

"What hot American woman," said Aomine, attention caught back from 2-D's cosplay café, and the girl in a push-up bra wearing Vocaloid cosplay. Momoi smacked his arm on principle.

As Kise began to tell a highly coloured version of their meeting, which Kagami decidedly did not remember involving Tatsuya bleeding all over the floor and the three of them about to dump Haizaki in Tokyo Bay wearing concrete shoes, Midorima adjusted his glasses and said, "I'm not surprised that any friend of his is a delinquent."

"He gets along very well with Murasakibara-kun," said Kuroko, stealing another octopus. The and so do you was pointedly not aired, but Midorima took the hint and subsided long enough for Furihata and one of his classmates to stagger out of the haunted house, blinking frantically in the orange light coming in the windows.

"Hey," said Kagami to him. "How was it?"

Furihata gaped at him, tried to speak, failed to speak, then waved his arms around expressively ending with seizing Kagami by the shoulders and patting him bracingly, as though commending his soul to a god.

"That bodes well," said Kise, brightly, watching him stumble towards the stairs.

"Your new teammates are kind of nervy, aren't they," said Aomine to Kuroko. "High-strung."

"Sakurai-kun," retorted Kuroko, accurately.

Aomine grimaced. They'd spotted Sakurai and, to a lesser extent, Wakamatsu, being given soothing drinks and being petted- or at least, glared at and shouted at to man up while also hand-fed fruits- by Midorima's sempai and Mitobe and Koganei back when they were in the part of the line adjacent to the café. Apparently Touou and Shuutoku could not go five minutes without some kind of one-upmanship about who suffered most with their ace, no matter what the circumstances, and so Aomine and Midorima had made themselves very small, or at least as small as their nearly two-meter, sleekly muscled frames would allow. Kuroko had blinked. Koganei-sempai had had on cat ears.

"Two by two," said the girl manning the entrance, far too cheerfully for a person with her eye hanging out of her face. Someone in 2-B knew horror makeup and had clearly been lured into using their powers for evil and also domination of the Seirin School Festival.

"Here," said Kuroko handing over the coupons as Momoi took his arm, and Aomine made a face and said, "Holy shit do we really have to do this? Let me rephrase that- I'm not scared Tetsu shut up- do I really have to go through with him?"

Kuroko and Momoi shrugged as one and were ushered through the door, cruelly abandoning Aomine to his fate and also Midorima.

Midorima shifted his shoulders sullenly, clutched his sole remaining octopus and said, "I am not particularly enthused about accompanying you either."

"Kagamichi," said Kise winsomely, batting his eyelashes. "We might need to hold hands to keep track of each other while we're in there. Don't be shy, okay?"

Kagami rolled his eyes. "It's a classroom," he said.

"Definitely two," the girl said, sighing dreamily up at them. Well, at Kise. The basketball club had gotten a little more popular since the Winter Cup, but Kagami felt that after having Kise around for hours, if he never heard another girl go into raptures again it would be too soon.

Howls and wails sounded through the walls, familiar after nearly twenty minutes in line. A scream echoed out the door.

"That…wasn't Satsuki," said Aomine. "Definitely wasn't Tetsu."

"No, really?" said Kagami.

"There are more than one pair in a time," the girl said, and nodded to Kagami and Kise. "You two are next, right? Go in when the curtain opens."

On cue, a black-clad hand pulled back the curtain and beckoned them through the door.

"It must be hot in that all day," said Kise, apropos of nothing. "Let's go, Kagamichi."

For a moment until the curtain fell back over the door, Kagami saw the baleful, identical glares that Aomine and Midorima were directing to each other, and had to stifle a snicker.

.0.

Inside, it was dark and cool. The only light came from an abundance of glowsticks, tucked under props, stuck onto costumes, and thoughtfully marking out the route in a sequence of arrows, their neon brilliance muted by sheer darkness and a whole day of use into eerie incandescence.

"Convenient," said Kagami.

Out of the darkness materialized a white figure clad in yukata. It laid a finger across its lips and motioned for them to go on.

Kagami bit back an expletive and took Kise by the elbow. Dammit, he wasn't used to Japanese ghosts. Somehow they were way creepier than just some guy in a sheet or cheap plastic fangs dripping with drool and fake blood. White noise buzzed in his ears, coming from all directions, mingling with various spooky noises and the intermittent howls.

They walked what Kagami judged to be half of the way and Kagami felt better. This wasn't much of anything, yeah. Sure, they were really… really into it, and their costumes were very detailed and Kagami wasn't clutching Kise's hand, but it was dark and no one could see them doing it and Kise's own grip on his was reassuringly clammy and their shoulders kept knocking because both of them refused to walk last.

They were going to get through this. They were.

And then there was a scream from… behind them. They froze in their tracks and realized they could only see the far-off glow of the next marker, but nothing else.

"I scream like a girl," muttered Kise. "Sure, I scream like a girl." The howls up ahead- or beside them?- sounded again and again.

And then Kagami heard it. That.

"Oh, no," he said.

"Kagamichi?" said Kise. He didn't yet understand the danger. "What's wrong?"

The noise sounded again. Where was it coming from? It was the damn walls and echoes in this place. He couldn't see. The glow sticks had been dim when they started and after a few atmospherically lit exhibits were now almost non-existent. The white noise continued to buzz in his ears, supplemented now by the rattle of wooden beads and- and- that.

"We have to get out of here," said Kagami. His grip tightened on Kise's hand, and he began to drag them both towards the exit, ignoring Kise's yelp of pain as he barked his shins on a table, another table, the corner of a 'wall'. Nearly there. They were nearly there.

Kagami could see the door with its collection of attendants bowing to them and whispering farewells, reaching out with their bloody hands to drag at them and 'keep' them from leaving. He barreled past them, Kise making apologies as they went, and tried the door. It wouldn't open. It wouldn't open what was happening why wasn't it opening?

A spectacle in horrible shadow and light, massive and menacing, popped out of the pool of darkness; it was holding the door shut, and said, in what Kiyoshi clearly thought was a spooky voice, "Leaving so soon?"

"Gah!" said Kise, shrinking against Kagami's back. Kagami frantically tried to wrench open the door with the full weight of his sempai upon it, he didn't have any time to spare on that, it was coming, it was coming closer-

Barking delightedly, Nigou ran over Kagami's foot.

"AHHHHHHH," he yelled.

"The devil dogs are hungry!" Kiyoshi announced, grinning. Around them, the rest of the ghosts sent up a chorus of howls.

"What?" said Kise. "What dogs?"

"DOGS?" said Kagami. There was another yap. And another. They'd been coming from all directions. There was more than one.

A warm furry body brushed against his knee. And another. And- Nigou's favorite trick, to dance in between his feet, but those were other dogs there were other dogs, and Kagami was pounding on the door now, let him out, LET HIM OUT-

Kiyoshi tripped over a dog and the door slammed open, spilling Kagami out flat onto his face under Momoi and Kuroko's respectively astonished and blank expressions. Kise, dragged down by their still linked hands, fell onto Kagami, putting bruises all over Kagami's chest with his bony elbows. Nigou swarmed out- to Kiyoshi's cry of "Bad dog!"- to climb over Kise, jump on Kagami's chest and lick his face.

Nigou yapped excitedly. In the doorway, the other two dogs were corralled by their owners, standing sentry over the exit so that they couldn't escape. They yipped and wiggled furiously. They had on trains of rattlers that skidded over the floor noisily and randomly, and between the blanket of white noise and their barks, they made very effective 'ghosts'.

"...Good dog," said Kuroko.

Nigou sat, and wagged his tail.

.0.

"Kagamin you poor baby," said Momoi, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. Kise made mournful noises about his bruised shins to Aomine and Midorima, both of whom were bone-white- at least, as much as Aomine could be- and refused to speak about what they'd gone through in there. They'd been far enough behind that Kagami's ruckus had passed unnoticed, also because they were making enough noise to wake the dead.

The apparent last straw had been when a dog decided that Midorima's very last octopus resembled one of its favorite chew toys, and snatched it from his loose fingers. Even now, they twitched as he recalled the exact sensation of his lucky item being wrenched from his hand, and then a wet tongue licked over the exposed part of his fingers. He'd screamed. Aomine had panicked.

It had only gotten more embarrassing from there, mostly because Kiyoshi, Kise and Momoi had collectively decided that Kagami had suffered enough and was a poor baby, and then deposited them all at 2-D's café to recuperate. They received no such sympathy.

"Why did we go into the haunted house again," said Aomine with his head on the table, eyes dead.

"To see Nigou, of course," said Kuroko. Nigou had run right back into the dark cool place full of treats and screaming people, to Kuroko's un-evident disappointment.

"Kuroko I'm going to kill you you knew he was in there and you still let me go in," said Kagami.

"Nigou is our team dog," said Kuroko, with a shade of apology, and also contempt. "I didn't know that the sempai would volunteer some of their own dogs as well."

"Nice gimmick, though," said Kise. "Kurokochi, I was terrified."

Kuroko ignored this.

"Why do you even have a team dog," sulked Midorima.

"I'm assuming, because having one of you Teikou guys wasn't complicated enough," said Miyaji. "Please say you've been less awful than usual today."

"I'm not a dog," said Midorima, forgetting himself enough to glare at his sempai.

"A dog would be better trained," said Miyaji.

"Hell, if we could put Aomine on a leash," said Wakamatsu.

"Leave me out of this," said Aomine grumpily. "Ryou, get me a drink."

"B-but- I'm almost out of coupo-" he stammered.

Momoi reached into her pocket and produced a remaining sad half a book. She directed meaningful looks around the table and they pooled their tickets in the center.

"Drinks for everyone," she said, to Koganei.

"Right, drinks for everyone, Momoi-chan," said Koganei, grinning. 2-D had been doing a brisk business in mopping up 2-B's terribly traumatised customers, mostly because people in adorable cutesy cat ears were the perfect salve to being hunted through the darkness by wild yapping underbred wolves.

Momoi rested her head on Kuroko's shoulder, and sighed happily. "That was fun," she said.

"Yes," said Kuroko, and turned his head to look at everyone else, sipping hot chocolates for consolation, her hair brushing his nose, and her weight warm against him.

"We should do this again," said Kise, taking his cue.

And Kuroko said, "Yes."

Midorima, Aomine and Kagami all snarled, "No."

~Omake~

Requested by redskies previously, and reposted here for lols.

Touou's school festival dawns, and Kagami doesn't want to fall deeper into the web of being one of the crazy people, but apparently Sakurai cooks like a goddess and Momoi has all his avenues of contact and if he doesn't go Kuroko will find a way to make him pay. Plus, he's pretty sure that even Aomine can't escape the clutches of abject humiliation in the name of school spirit.

Abject humiliation, in this case, apparently includes being perched in the window of his classroom not allowed to wear a shirt.

Kuroko turns his face to the wall with laughing.

"Tetsu, I'll kill you," snarls Aomine. "I'm cold."

"Poor baby," coos a serving girl, but takes up the spray bottle and spritzers Aomine again, so that water drips off his chin, collects in the hollow of his collarbone, beads down the planes of his chest.

A group of girls behind Kagami squeak. Aomine breaks off his sulk to smirk at them, but when he opens his mouth Momoi smacks him.

"No talking to customers," she says, sweetly.

"This isn't even your class," he whines.

"I'm on loan," says Momoi, serenely, looks wistfully at the spray bottle. She looks incredible, and her and Aomine together framed in the window were all the draw the class stall needed. Kagami doesn't even care what's going on in there- though it does smell delicious. He'd go in anyway.

"Aominechi," says Kise, still shaking with laughter, "It's so nice to see they know how to play to your str- your- streng- ahahahaha god I can't stop Kagamichi hold me up I'm dying."

"That can be arranged," snarls Aomine, but then there's a flash and who took that? Who- wait. Duh.

"Who wants the copies?" says Kuroko calmly.

"Are you kidding me?" says Kise, gasping for breath as he peeks over Kuroko's shoulder. "I'm going to have this shit framed. Let's get a group, too."

Aomine lunges.

"Go the fuck in and buy something," Aomine says, when all his efforts to wrest the camera from Kuroko end in vile and utter despair, defeated. "I'm not putting on a free show."