For better or worse, no one could deny that the Inazuma caravan had become much more lively since Kogure joined them. As annoying as they were, his pranks were mostly harmless, and could usually get a laugh out of the team- at the expense of the victim of the day. Despite how much they would laugh at the unfortunate teammates caught in any of those pranks, they were all more cautious than before, wary of meeting the same fate. Kogure would try to target everyone sooner or later.

He just so happened to meet his unsuspecting match when he decided to target a certain defender.

"I'm kinda hungry..." Fubuki's weak complain and small sigh were met with quite a few murmurs of agreement, mainly from Kabeyama, to no one's surprise.

"Want one?" Kogure was quick to offer an apparently innocent rice ball to the apparently unsuspecting Fubuki, the very image of innocence plastered on his face.

"Oh, thank you." Ignoring the team's panic and the alarmed yells to please for the love of everything not eat that rice ball, Fubuki smiled and accepted the food, biting into it without a care in the world. Then, he blinked, stopped chewing and turned to the snickering miniature demon, who was already savouring his successful prank. Or so he thought.

"Do you have more of that spicy sauce?"

Silence fell on the caravan as horror slowly dawned on them. Looking at Kogure's shocked face and Fubuki's innocent smile, this couldn't mean anything good.

There wasn't a calm before the storm, it just came crashing down on those unfortunate souls like the gates of hell itself opening upon them.

When the bus stopped to let the team train, Kogure decided to resort to one of his oldest tricks. He had been the first to rush out of the bus, his quiet snickering enough of a warning to stay away from him. Apparently, Fubuki hadn't gotten the memo. Or he just didn't care. It was probably that.

The team was in the middle of their training when the ground caved in under his feet. Kogure turned to face his new victim, already expecting the surprise and anger, not caring for the consequences. He found Fubuki jumping as soon as the ground so much as budged under him, dodging the trap with an agility and reflexes that shouldn't have been possible for any human being. The ball had already been well on its way mid air to him, so maybe if he was lucky Kogure could at least laugh when it would hit him straight in the face- nevermind. With the same impossible reflexes of a moment ago, Fubuki managed to kick it away from him, letting it land safely a few meters away.

"That was amazing! How did you do that?" Fubuki just brushed off Endou's surprise with a small laugh, as if he hadn't just pulled a stunt that would put most Hollywood movies to shame.

"The snow can hide a lot of dangerous things, when you live surrounded by it you learn to recognize what it hides, it's almost the same here."

Well, the traps were ruled out then. Time for another plan.

Most kids would get antsy and grow bored very quickly on long rides, especially kids that tended to be as active as the Raimon team. And so, while Endou and Touko tried to entertain themselves with the loudest and worst version of rock, paper, scissors ever, their managers were silently grateful for the team members that managed to stay calm and not make such a ruckus. Otonashi in particular was just a little envious of Fubuki's ability to simply ignore them and read without a care in the world, while her own work was becoming harder with each second they spent becoming louder- they really didn't need to argue so much over cheating. It was rock, paper, scissors.

Fubuki's blessed peace was broken when something round and small landed on his book. He blinked, silently staring at the frog that just popped out of nowhere. The frog stared back. Or so he thought, it was kinda hard to tell honestly.

The frog croaked and hopped on Fubuki's head, making itself comfortable in his fluffy hair. Fubuki quietly smiled and went back to his book.

A few hours later, and the frog was still sitting there, occasionally croaking just to remind everyone that it was still alive and didn't intend to leave its spot any time soon. Fubuki didn't seem to mind.

Watching the scene unfold, Domon leaned into Ichinose's ear and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.

"I think he wants to keep it." Ichinose was speechless. Behind them, Kogure was not so secretly pouting in anger as he watched yet another failed prank. Already knowing what would happen next, Ichinose wisely decided to at least attempt to do some sort of damage control- namely, dissuading Kogure from pulling any more pranks with animals before it all could escalate.

"They call him the bear killer, did you really think a frog would make him squeamish? I don't think there's an animal that could ever faze him."

At the next stop, Fubuki had quietly released his newfound friend back into the wild, something akin to a disappointed pout on his face. When the others noticed and started giving him strange and confused looks, he just explained that, as much as he wanted to, he couldn't take the frog back home, knowing the poor thing would likely freeze to death back in Hokkaido. Nobody missed the fact that he was more than willing to keep a frog as pet.

Kogure crossed out all the animals from his ever-shrinking list of pranks.

After much more planning and thinking, Kogure's next idea was to shift his pranks' target. He hadn't given up on making Fubuki fall for one of his pranks, far from it, but he reasoned that it might've been easier if he could take the other by surprise, and to do that he'd have to leave him alone for a while. That sounded logical at least.

And that was how when they stopped once again and everyone scattered to do their own thing, he had carefully applied so much wax to the bus's floor it could be used as a mirror. If he was lucky most, if not all, of the team would fall for it, Fubuki included.

He forgot to take into account that Fubuki is almost a professional skater and has spent most of his life on snow and ice.

Needless to say, that prank didn't work either.

The paper on the back was, admittedly, one of his least favorite pranks, too tame and lame to be fun unless the victim could be riled up easily- namely, Someoka. With all his other pranks failing, he couldn't really afford to be picky. And so, Kogure quickly scribbled all kind of dumb and rude things he could think off on a paper, adding a few stupid-looking doodles here and there for extra effect. The rest was easy- far too easy; he only had to wait for everyone to be asleep, sneak out of his spot and attach the paper to the unsuspecting Fubuki's back without waking him up. Easy, really.

Holding back his snickering to not wake anyone up, Kogure sneaked back into his spot, an evil grin plastered on his face before falling asleep.

The next day, Kogure woke up early, eager to see one of his pranks finally being successful on the elusive kid. Third time is the charm, after all- fourth? Fifth? He wasn't sure anymore, having lost count time ago, but honestly, who cared?

He watched Fubuki slowly stir and wake up, calmly yawning and stretching, taking all the time in the world to fully wake up and be a more or less functional human being again. It was all going according to his plan. Then he noticed the lack of a paper on his back. What.

"What's that on your back?" Confused, Kogure turned to look at Kabeyama, ready to ask what he meant, when he noticed the big guy holding a paper in his hands. "This, look." He quickly snatched the paper off Kabeyama's hands. It was the paper he prepared the day before. And it had been on his back. How did Fubuki even do that, it was beyond him. Of course he couldn't be sure that it had been Fubuki, but it had to be him, there was no other explanation.

Crumpling the paper with all his strength as if it had personally insulted him and stolen his food, Kogure angrily threw it away and stomped off, determined to prepare another plan and ignoring the still confused Kabeyama, left to wonder what just happened.

A bucket of water. It was a classic prank, one he knew by personal experience would work without a problem. Kogure actually found it a bit boring when it was just plain water, but being constantly on the road it was hard to come across his more creative ingredients, let alone to hide them on the bus. Water would have to do.

He quickly prepared the bucket a little before practice ended, convincing Fubuki to go back first with a half assed excuse- it honestly surprised him that it even worked, he couldn't be that clueless with all his prank attempts, right?

Well, it didn't really matter when the defender was finally about to fall for one of his pranks. Or so he thought, because of course it failed once again. Curse you, Murphy.

The bucket was falling just like he planned, but before the water could spill all over the unsuspecting Fubuki, he lifted his leg and used his signature defensive hissatsu, albeit a weaker version than what he reserved for their matches. He hissatsu'ed a bucket of water. Kogure had to use all his willpower to not smack his own face so hard it would give him a concussion. To top it all off, Fubuki just kept going on his merry way like he wasn't almost hit by a bucket of cold water, letting the ice crumble behind him without so much as saying a word.

Kogure wasn't one for conspiracy theories, but by now he was fairly convinced that Fubuki wasn't human.

It took far more time than Kogure would've liked to find anything at all that he could use against Fubuki- namely, eavesdropping like he always did until he could get something useful. Like the team's managers conversations about their players wandering until they mentioned and speculated about Fubuki's odd fear of some very loud noises.

As luck would have it, the dark clouds in the sky could only mean an oncoming storm.

Plans were starting to form in Kogure's mind, quietly watching the other for any reaction. If Fubuki was already affected by the storm, he was good at hiding it, his perfectly calm expression not betraying his emotions.

His composed facade shattered at the first thunder.

Seeing Fubuki curled up on himself, breath shaky and eyes wide, completely unresponsive to anyone's attempts to snap him out of whatever hell was going on in his mind, Kogure quietly slipped back into his seat, all his childish plans forgotten. That didn't look like a great prank anymore.

Uncapping his marker, Kogure quietly observed the sleeping face of his teammate, thinking of the best thing he could draw on it to make him regret all those failed pranks. Once he decided, he got closer to start drawing, ready to do a quick and flawless work.

Fubuki's eyes snapped open before the marker could touch his face, and Kogure had to slap a hand over his mouth before his startled yelp could wake up the rest of the team.

He was ready to rush off and slip back into his seat, knowing the defender was far too nice to try and get him in trouble for this, when he noticed the look in his eyes. They were sharp and wild, almost glowing in the dark like a predator's gaze locking onto its prey. It was terrifying, to say the least, and Fubuki hadn't even spoken yet.

"Try to touch me with that thing again and I'll break your arm in so many pieces they'll need tweezers to put whatever they find back together." Needless to say, the threat was more than enough to scare Kogure shitless, using all of his willpower to not scream as he ran back to his seat. He had nightmares of a big wolf with an evil glint in its bright eyes that night.

The next morning, Kogure didn't dare to approach or even look at Fubuki, quickly looking away whenever the defender glanced in his general direction.

"... Did you do something to him?" Fubuki simply looked at Someoka, the perfect imagine of childish confusion and innocence. He shouldn't be allowed to look so innocent, really, it was like talking to a newborn puppy.

"Nothing that I know of, I have no idea what's wrong with him. Why do you ask?" Someoka raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"You do know he's been trying to prank you for days, right?"

The smile Fubuki gave only left him with more questions than answers.