See the first chapter for story notes.

Part Five

"What do you think he wants?" Satsuki asked, her voice low and taut, as they hurried through the stadium's halls on the way to the south entrance, weaving themselves through the last of the spectators that had come to watch the quarter- and semi-finals.

"The hell if I know." Daiki looked at her and Tetsu, whose face was set. "Haven't heard from him since graduation." He didn't hear much from Murasakibara these days either, barring the occasional inquiry after some snack food or another, but there hadn't been anything but silence from Akashi since he'd headed out for Rakuzan. It made this sudden summons all the more ominous, because the last thing Akashi'd had to say to any of them was a reminder that the next time they met, it would be as enemies.

Akashi always had preferred to be dramatic about his commands.

Satsuki probably was thinking about the same thing Daiki was, because she looked at Tetsu then, too. Yeah, she didn't think it was a coincidence that they'd gone through several days of the Interhigh without hearing from Akashi, only to receive simultaneous messages from him the first time Tetsu played, either. Great.

For his part, Tetsu didn't have anything to say at all, though he looked tense. He caught Daiki looking at him and looked away, his mouth drawn tight. Angry.

Damn it, it wasn't fair—not when they'd just been on the verge of figuring something out, not when they'd just finished one of the best games Daiki had ever played. Damn it.

Akashi was waiting for them outside, sitting on a bench and looking cool and unruffled as ever despite the fact that the summer heat was oppressive and he had almost certainly just come from playing less than an hour ago. He watched them approach, wearing a faint smile that could have meant anything.

Somehow, by the time the three of them had come close enough to stand in front of Akashi's chosen ground, Daiki was in the middle, with Satsuki on his left and Tetsu on his right. It should have felt like he was looking down on Akashi, who hadn't bothered to stand, but it didn't. Felt more like he and Satsuki and Tetsu ought to have been kneeling or something instead.

The hell with that.

Daiki cleared his throat, since he seemed to have been elected the unofficial spokesman. "Got your message. What's up?"

Akashi looked at him for an unnervingly long time before inspecting Satsuki and Tetsu in turn. "It seemed as though we should speak before finals begin." He was as self-assured as ever—no wonder, really. Satsuki had said that he'd taken charge of Rakuzan's team just as easily as he'd assumed command at Teikou. "I thought that perhaps I ought to make some things clear."

Yeah, this wasn't gonna be any fun. Daiki shoved his hands in his pockets and did what he could to act like he didn't care. Probably didn't work; Akashi had said that his emperor's eye could see right through people, but he felt a little better for making the effort anyway. "Yeah? What kinds of things?"

Akashi's smile didn't waver; it reminded Daiki of Imayoshi-san when he was in a mood to take no prisoners. "You will not play in the final match of the Interhigh."

It was so outlandish that it took a moment for the words to penetrate and make sense. Akashi was telling him not to play in the match against Rakuzan? What the fuck? Daiki knew perfectly well what Satsuki's projections for that match were almost as well as she did, because she'd talked her way through them with him, rehearsing them over and over in a tireless effort to figure out how Touou might find a way to win against Rakuzan and its team of monsters. Their best chances all depended on Daiki being in the game. And now Akashi was sitting on this bench like an emperor on his throne, telling him not to play? That couldn't be right. "What do you mean, I won't play?"

Akashi looked up at him, still smiling, absolutely confident in himself. "You know what I mean, Daiki. You will not play."

If he didn't play, then Touou would definitely lose. That wasn't him being arrogant, either, that was fact, grounded in Satsuki's analysis and Daiki's own knowledge of his teammates' games and what Akashi himself could do. Touou would lose, would deliberately be set up to lose, and no. No, that just wasn't going to happen. Daiki wouldn't stand for it. "You mind telling me why?"

"I did make allowances, you know." If anything, Akashi sounded faintly regretful. He opened his hand, gesturing at Satsuki. "I would really have preferred to see what you could have done with your own team, one that depended on you only, not you and a player of Daiki's caliber. But the bonds of childhood friendship are strong. Who am I to sunder them so lightly?" He closed his hand as Satsuki made a strangled sound and a cold chill ran down Daiki's spine in spite of the sweltering heat. Had Akashi really thought about trying to send him and Satsuki off to different schools?

Before he could act on that, before he could even think his way through that, Akashi lifted his other hand, palm up and opened toward Tetsu. "And I winked at it when I first heard that you had elected to go to Touou after all, even after what we discussed the last time we spoke." Daiki had no idea what that meant, so it must have been a private conversation. Tetsu's expression was so still that it might have been carved out of granite. "As long as you did not intend to continue with basketball, I saw no reason to say anything. But now..." Akashi closed his hand again, abrupt, and smiled at the three of them. It might have looked gentle to anyone watching who didn't know better. "I don't believe I can countenance all three of you on the same team. That is not what we agreed to do."

Daiki heard his own voice as though it was coming from a long way away. "I don't remember us agreeing to anything. I remember you telling us what we were going to do and us doing it, maybe because we didn't have anything better to do. But I don't think that's the same thing as agreeing."

Akashi looked up at him. "Semantics." He dusted his hands, dismissing the argument. "You will not play tomorrow, and I will leave it to the two of you to decide whether you or Tetsuya will transfer schools." A glint of amusement lit his eyes. "Which will win out, I wonder—childhood friendship or the bonds of youthful romance?"

"I'm sorry." Daiki was floating somewhere out beyond the immediacy of anger, somewhere that was calm and very sure, sort of like he thought Tetsu must feel like when he was angriest. "My captain is the one who decides what games I play in, not you. And I'm not transferring anywhere. Neither are Tetsu or Satsuki, not unless they want to, and not because you prefer that they go to some other school. You're not the boss of us anymore, Akashi."

Akashi stared up at him; the worst part was that his smile hadn't even wavered. "Excuse me?"

Later on he would remember this and wonder what on earth had possessed him, but at that moment Daiki had sailed well past the point of restraint or, possibly, sanity. He showed Akashi all his teeth. "You know what I mean, Seijuurou. Fuck. You."

"Ah," Akashi said softly, still smiling. "I see. I admit, I didn't quite expect you to be the one to do this, but perhaps I shouldn't be surprised." He shook his head. "You seem to have forgotten something, however."

It went so fast that Daiki didn't know what was happening until after he'd hit his knees. Akashi rested a hand on his shoulder, holding him down, and smiled at him. "I think you've forgotten what happens to anyone who opposes me."

Daiki looked up, some of his anger filtering back into the calm place. "I haven't forgotten, I just don't give a shit." He reached up to knock Akashi's hand off his shoulder. Predictably enough, Akashi lifted it away before he could connect. "I don't play for Teikou anymore, I don't play for you, and if my captain needs me on the court, then that's where I'm gonna be." He stood up and glared down at Akashi, wondering whether he was going to pay for that and pretty sure that it would be worth it regardless. "You got anything else you wanna say to me, or are we done here?"

For the first time in this conversation, Akashi frowned, showing displeasure in the faint creasing of his forehead. "I think you will want to think very carefully about what you choose to do in the next two minutes."

"No," Daiki said. "I don't need to think anything over. I'm done here. How about you guys, you guys got anything here you wanna finish up?" He didn't—quite—dare to take his eyes off Akashi to look at them.

It didn't matter. Tetsu spoke up after a couple of beats, just long enough for him and Satsuki to have checked in with each other. "No, I think you've summed it up quite clearly, Aomine-kun. I don't believe there's anything else to be said here."

Akashi's smile fell away completely, but before he could say whatever it was that made his eyes snap like that, someone else intervened, all cheerful drawl. "I think I'd like to have a word here, if I might?"

Daiki didn't have any idea when Imayoshi-san had shown up, much less why he'd done it, and he didn't know quite what he thought of it when Imayoshi-san set a hand on his shoulder and insinuated himself into their conversation, but one thing was for sure—it pissed Akashi off. He frowned at Imayoshi-san. "This is a private conversation. Outsiders aren't welcome here."

Imayoshi-san sucked on his teeth and rocked on his heels until Daiki and Tetsu had to take a step back or risk getting whacked by his elbows. "Well, now, that's an interesting way of looking at it, don't you think?" He didn't have all that much height on Akashi, certainly not as much as Daiki did himself, but he made the most of it and peered down his nose at him. "By my count, you're the outsider here." He spread his hands wide, wide enough that Satsuki had to dodge backwards before he could clock her. "So tell me, what did Rakuzan's captain have to say to my team that got them all upset? I'm dying to know."

Imayoshi-san had a gift, he really did; Daiki had never seen the muscle in Akashi's jaw twitch like that before. "I am only going to say this one more time. This does not concern you. Go away."

"Y'see, that's where you're wrong." All the good humor evaporated out of Imayoshi-san's voice. "Seems to me like I just heard you telling one of my players that he wasn't allowed to play in a game against your team. Seems to me like I just heard you tell him and his teammates that one of them needed to leave for another school. And it seems to me that everything I just heard is entirely my business, because you are fucking with my team and I do not take kindly to that in the slightest." His voice had gone hard, and from what Daiki could see of his profile, he looked angry. Really, genuinely angry. "I'm only gonna tell you this once, Akashi-kun. You run along back to Rakuzan and stop pestering my players and my manager, and I'll forget all about this. You fuck around with them again and you'll find out just how nasty a person I can really be, you understand me?"

Akashi was silent a moment, then—"I did tell you," he said, hand moving fast as he struck. "I will not be opposed—"

Imayoshi-san tilted his head back so he could look up at Akashi from his knees, and he laughed. "That's a cute trick," he drawled. "What's it supposed to do, exactly? Demonstrate the error of my ways?" When he smiled then, it looked more like he was baring his teeth. "Give it up, kid. You can put me on my knees as many times as you like, if you want, and you and your team can quadruple our score when we play, but it won't change a thing. They're not yours anymore. You lost 'em all a long time ago, and the only thing you've done here is helped 'em figure it out that much faster. You've lost. This game is mine. Now get the fuck out of here, I'm sick of looking at you."

Daiki watched the muscle in Akashi's jaw work as Akashi glared down at Imayoshi-san. Then he said, "Don't imagine I'll forget this."

"You'd better not." Imayoshi-san's smile turned sharp like a scalpel. "Next time I have to have this little talk with you, I won't bother being nice about it."

When Akashi hissed between his teeth, it sounded almost frustrated. He turned without saying another word and practically stalked away.

Daiki watched him go, nothing but static between his ears, because holy fuck, he'd never seen anything like that before. "Did that actually just happen?"

"I think so." Satsuki sounded just as dazed as he felt. "Tetsu-kun...?"

Tetsu was looking at Imayoshi-san, who was climbing back to his feet and had switched back to his normal amiable smile. Tetsu's eyes were dark. "I suppose that means we belong to you now?"

Imayoshi-san blinked at him. "No, don't be ridiculous. You're all too much trouble for me." He snorted. "You belong to you, and thank goodness for that. I'm just your captain." He paused and somehow managed to look over the tops of his glasses at them. "Speaking as your captain, I'd be obliged if you did not let Rakuzan quadruple our score. Our chances against them tomorrow may not be all that rosy, but that would be pretty embarrassing. I wouldn't know how to show my face after a loss like that."

Daiki stared at Imayoshi-san, lost for words, but Satsuki came to his rescue. "Even with the motivation you just gave him, I don't believe Rakuzan can do that." Her tone was brisk enough, but she was looking at Imayoshi-san sort of like Tetsu was, kind of wide-eyed and wondering and maybe a little bit pleased.

Imayoshi-san beamed at them. Daiki could almost have believed that was all there was to him, if he hadn't just seen him face down Akashi and win. "Well, that's a relief, I don't mind telling you." He shrugged at them. "I guess the three of you'll want to make your own way home, but you'll have to excuse me. I've gotta run if I don't wanna miss the bus. You enjoy the rest of your evening, okay?" He took off, waving his fingers over his shoulder in farewell, and that was that.

Daiki gave himself a solid pinch, needing to be sure, but no, he really was awake. "Holy fuck," he said after they'd stood there in silence for a minute or two, trying to recover from that. "Seriously, that actually happened?" Wait, had he actually told Akashi to fuck off, right to his face? Holy shit.

"I told you Touou was the right school for us," Satsuki said.

"Yes, you did." Tetsu's voice was quiet. When Daiki whipped his head around to look, Tetsu was smiling at her, faint but true. "You were right."

"Of course I was." Satsuki tossed her head, but her smile trembled at the edges, just a bit. Nobody else would have seen it, not unless they knew her. "I'm always right, aren't I? About the important things?"

Daiki bumped his shoulder against hers. "You pretty much are," he said as Tetsu murmured something that amounted to the same thing.

"I'm glad you both know it." Satsuki smoothed her hands down her skirt and fixed a look on them. "Because here's something else I'm right about. It's time for the two of you to talk." She held up a hand when Daiki opened his mouth. "No, it is." She was looking at Tetsu, though, not him. "You've dragged this out long enough."

Daiki hardly dared to breathe, not until Tetsu said, slow, regretful, "I did already agree that you were always right, didn't I?"

"You most certainly did." Satsuki's voice barely even wavered. "So you don't have any choice now. You know I'm right." She smiled at them, impartial. "I'll just leave you to it, okay? And remember, no more hitting each other. You have a game tomorrow."

Daiki watched her go and didn't quite dare to look at Tetsu until he said, thoughtful, "I'm not sure that letting her spend so much time around Imayoshi-san is the best idea you've ever had."

"It wasn't my idea," Daiki told him. "And you know better than that. Satsuki does what she wants to do. I just try and keep up."

"Mm." Tetsu slanted a glance at him, like he didn't quite agree with that. "I wonder." But he didn't say anything else.

Daiki rubbed a hand through his hair and finally sighed. "So, you wanna get out of here?"

Tetsu inclined his head. "Yes, I think that would be a good idea."

It hadn't always been strange to be silent around Tetsu, but now it was. Daiki paced along with him, sneaking looks at him and trying to figure out whether he should say something (what?) or wait for Tetsu to start this time. Since the last time he had tried to talk to Tetsu hadn't exactly gone so well—or the time before that, either, huh—he kept his mouth shut and tried to be patient, for a change. Tetsu walked along in silence next to him, and if Daiki had needed to say what was going through his mind, he would have said that Tetsu was puzzled, maybe. Or just reluctant.

It wasn't the first time Daiki had stopped to wonder whether Satsuki really did know what she was doing when she told him to do something. He just had to hope she was right this time, too.

Tetsu broke his silence when they were about halfway to the train station. "I guess we don't have to wonder which one of them would win in a cage match anymore." He sounded more wry about it than anything else.

Daiki laughed, but not because it was a particularly funny joke. "I guess not. Too bad we didn't know it was coming so we could sell tickets, huh? I know at least three people who would have liked that show."

"I wonder how much they would have liked it." Tetsu had his eyes forward, but the way he held his mouth looked a little uncertain.

Daiki thought about that, and the other three. "Okay, all Murasakibara would have cared about was the popcorn. I'll give you that. Not so sure about Kise or Midorima."

"Kise-kun seems to be doing well at Kaijou."

It sounded like a change of topic, but Daiki didn't think it was. Not with Tetsu, who sometimes came at things from peculiar angles. "Yeah, it looks that way. Kasamatsu doesn't seem to tolerate much shit, from what I've seen." And there was the game Kise had just played, too. "Guess he's figured it out. How not to hold back, you know? Be interesting to see what he does with that." Hah. Interesting. Like that did justice to the way his pulse sped up just thinking about possibility.

He caught the way Tetsu turned and looked at him from the corner of his eye. He looked back and raised his eyebrows at the faint way Tetsu was frowning—what had he said to make Tetsu look like that?

Tetsu looked away and didn't say anything before they reached the next crosswalk and were mounting the stairs. "You really have changed, haven't you? Since coming to Touou. I wasn't sure before."

Daiki exhaled, relieved. Finally. No more beating around the bush. "Maybe, I guess." He didn't feel like he'd changed all that much since the first day of classes—more like things had changed for him. Like some things were easier, and some things were clear again, like they'd used to be.

Tetsu paused in the middle of the crosswalk and leaned against the railing to look down the street. "You have. Or you've gone back to how you used to be. I can't quite decide." Daiki stopped next to him and faced back the way they'd come, resting his elbows against the railing. Tetsu glanced at him. "Is basketball really fun for you again?"

Daiki got the feeling that Tetsu wasn't just talking about the games against Seihou and Kaijou, so he thought about playing Onita first thing that afternoon—Onita, a team without any flashy players or genius aces, who'd gotten all the way to the Interhigh quarter-finals on skill and hard work and hadn't bowed their heads once, not even when the final buzzer had sounded and the game had been called for Touou. "Yeah," he said, because that game had been satisfying, even if it hadn't been demanding. "Yeah, I guess it is." He hesitated a moment, watching Tetsu looking out over traffic with an expression that was a little gloomy. "What about you? Basketball any fun for you?"

Tetsu took a while to answer that, like he was thinking over his reply as carefully as Daiki had. "It was." He sounded surprised to be saying so. "It was a fun game. I haven't played like that in a long time."

Yeah, there was that. Okay. Fuck, he'd rehearsed this over and over, so it was time to finally say it out loud. "I'm sorry about that." Daiki couldn't quite bring himself to look at Tetsu, so he stared out over the street instead. "The way we got there at the end—that was shitty of us. You deserved better." His voice felt funny, kind of thick in his throat, especially when he glimpsed the movement next to him—Tetsu turning to look at him full on. Daiki plowed on. "Especially from me. I just—got so wrapped up in what I was missing from the game that I forgot to care about anything else. Or to listen. I'm sorry."

Tetsu looked up at him, solemn, like he was listening to every word and inspecting them and Daiki to see whether they were genuine. When Daiki finally stumbled to a halt, he nodded once and raised a hand to rub his chin. "The thing that was hardest wasn't when you and everyone else left me behind on the court," he said, slowly. Almost methodical about it. Daiki set himself for whatever was coming next. "I thought it was at the time, of course. But I was mistaken. The hardest thing came after that, when you met Kagami-kun and started to come back again, after you'd forgotten about me. Watching that was—difficult. Yes. Difficult. It's not pleasant to be replaced, even when you know that your replacement is better than you."

Bracing himself hadn't done much good; Daiki flinched back from that and the quiet, level way Tetsu laid it out for him. "Fuck, Tetsu...!" But Tetsu's eyes didn't waver. Daiki swallowed hard. "I didn't—I wasn't trying to replace you. I really wasn't. I just—you've seen how Kagami plays. When I met him, it was—what you told me that time, it all came back to me, you know? That there would be players I could go all-out against, who would want me to do that. It was a relief. I wasn't trying to replace you, I just got all caught up in how relieved I was that basketball could be fun again. Could be more than just the games we were winning." He looked at Tetsu, anxious, wondering whether he was even making any sense. "What I liked about Kagami was how much he reminded me of you. Only I wasn't paying attention to you and didn't realize—anything, I guess." Tetsu was still just looking at him, not reacting. Daiki groped for the right way to explain it and finally struck on something that felt right. "Kagami is—I want to play against him. But I want to play with you."

Tetsu blinked once and seemed to relax, mouth easing and shoulders loosening. "Do you? Really?"

Daiki nodded and dug his fingers into the strap of his gym bag, hardly daring to hope. "Yeah, I really do."

Tetsu exhaled and glanced aside. "I missed playing with you. I missed you. I have for a long time." He gestured before Daiki could open his mouth to apologize again. "I'm not done yet. I missed you, and that was one of the things that made me angriest. I wanted to be done with you and basketball. I wanted to move on with my life, and I still couldn't stop missing how we used to be. I couldn't make myself go to another school, even when it meant seeing you all the time and remembering everything I'd thought I'd lost. Isn't that stupid?"

"...you always were the stubborn one. Never knew when to quit." Daiki watched him close his eyes and laugh, nearly soundless. "But not stupid. Never stupid."

"I thought I must be, considering." Tetsu looked at him again. "I did give up," he said, steady. "I gave up. Do you understand? I gave up, just like you were tired of people doing."

It came out sounding almost defiant, but—it didn't sound quite right to Daiki's ears. Not exactly. He hitched his bag up on his shoulder as he thought about it. "You came to Touou. You watched our games. Did you give up, or just take a break and call it giving up?"

Tetsu made a face, exasperated. "I'm not sure letting you spend so much time around Imayoshi-san is a good idea, either." But he didn't sound like he meant it. If anything, Daiki thought that maybe he meant the exact opposite. "I tried to give it all up. I thought that I hated basketball. Doesn't that bother you at all?

Daiki didn't even have to think about it, but then, it was a pretty stupid question. "No, not really. Why should it?"

That was definitely an exasperated sigh. Tetsu frowned at him and shook his head when Daiki shrugged. "I should have known you were going to make giving basketball up difficult," he said. "But somehow I didn't expect it. I thought you'd already given up on me. But you didn't, did you?"

How was he even supposed to answer that? "I forgot for a while, I guess," Daiki admitted. "But... only for a little while. I didn't ever mean to give up on you." That much he was sure of.

Tetsu seemed to accept that. He nodded, silent, and looked away again.

Daiki watched him and took a breath, nerving himself for what he wanted to say next. "I know... you told Satsuki you didn't want to go back to the way things were." Tetsu tensed at that. "I can see that. I get it. So..." He paused, watching Tetsu. "Maybe we could start over instead?"

He honestly didn't know what Tetsu was going to say to that and tried not to fidget as the seconds ticked past and Tetsu thought. Then Tetsu looked at him, eyes warmer than they'd been in a long time. "I suppose we could do that."

Relief rushed through Daiki, enough to make him dizzy. "Thank fuck," he said, sagging against the railing. "Fuck, Tetsu."

Tetsu's eyes glinted. "Your language is appalling."

Daiki just grinned at him, giddy. "What, that's not new, you know that."

Tetsu's smile was faint, but it was real and that was all that mattered. "I suppose I do, at that." He turned away from the railing and resumed walking.

Daiki fell into step with him, feeling the ache in his cheeks from how hard he was smiling. "Yeah, well. Satsuki's given up on trying to reform me."

"Momoi-san is certainly smart enough to know when not to fight a losing battle," Tetsu said, quiet laughter lurking under the calm of his tone. "You are the walking definition of a hopeless case."

"This is what I've missed," Daiki said. "The constant grief you give me." He grinned at Tetsu and knocked against his shoulder, friendly, and laughed when Tetsu gave him a dirty look and elbowed his ribs. "Fuck, Tetsu. I've really missed you."

Tetsu's voice was quiet when he looked up and said, "I've missed you too, Aomine-kun."

If Daiki hadn't already learned better, he would have assumed that Imayoshi-san's lack of a smile during their pre-match strategy session was the guy's serious face. So much for that, he thought, but paid attention to it anyway as Imayoshi-san walked them through the last-minute updates that Satsuki had made to the data she had compiled on Rakuzan's team. "I'm sorry that it's not as thorough as it could be," she said. "Akashi-kun knows to take certain precautions." Meaning that he'd almost certainly restrained himself and his team during the tournament and that he'd eliminated at least some of her usual sources of information to boot. (Not all of them; Satsuki was secretive enough to have protected some of her channels, and not even Daiki could say what all of her methods for data collection included.)

Imayoshi-san did manage to find a smile for her. "No apologies are necessary, Momoi-chan. We'll just have to make the best of what we have." His smile melted away again as he looked around at the rest of them. "This is going to be a hard game, there's no use trying to pretend it won't be, and I figure Rakuzan'll be playing for blood. But we're going to fight them every step of the way, and if they want to win, well, they'd better damn well be ready to pay for it." He looked around again and whatever he saw on their faces seemed to satisfy him. He nodded, sharp. "Now let's get out there and show them what we're made of."

Kagami had said that Akashi had done his trick of knocking people to their knees with Seihou's captain after Iwamura had stepped in to defend Tsugawa, who'd mouthed off about Rakuzan. Satsuki's data said that Akashi had done the same to a handful of other team captains as well—the ones who'd insulted Akashi or the team that had a first-year captain. Daiki couldn't help noticing that Akashi didn't bother with trying it on Imayoshi-san, not again, not even when Imayoshi-san paused to greet him with a lazy, "Good to see you again."

Man, Imayoshi-san had balls.

While they were warming up, Sakurai found an excuse to edge close to him and Tetsu. "Um, sorry to bother you." He glanced around anxiously and lowered his voice even further. "Is there some kind of bad history between the captain and your former captain?"

Tetsu handled answering that while Daiki kept a sharp eye out for either of the captains in question. "They've had a philosophical disagreement." He paused. "Or possibly a territorial one."

Weirdly enough, that explanation seemed to work for Sakurai, who nodded and apologized again when Wakamatsu yelled at them to get back to warming up.

Even knowing what Akashi could do, even knowing that he had three of the Uncrowned Generals on his team, the shock of the first quarter of that game stayed with Daiki for a long time afterwards. Rakuzan crashed into Touou's game like a fist. Akashi was everywhere at once, somehow, and anticipated every attempt at a play they made. When he wasn't intercepting their passes or striking the ball out of Daiki's hands, their small forward was there to dribble circles around Wakamatsu and Susa, moving the ball even faster than he could talk. Rakuzan's shooting guard kept getting in the way, somehow, like he'd taken a page right out of Kaijou's playbook and wanted all of them taken out of the game for racking up too many fouls. The only good think Daiki could say about Rakuzan's center was that at least he was less hostile than Murasakibara, because he was certainly just as much of a pain to get around. When the buzzer sounded at the end of the quarter, they'd only gotten a paltry thirteen points on the board, and Rakuzan was leading them by a full twenty points.

"I told you that no one is allowed to oppose me," Akashi said as Daiki stared at the scoreboard and seethed.

Daiki set his teeth and walked away without bothering to reply. Satsuki was gnawing on her lip and Kantoku had already made a mess of his hair. Tetsu handed him a water bottle as he sat, and no one said anything at all, not until Imayoshi-san murmured, "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm beginning to be a little bit irritated by Rakuzan."

That broke the tension; everyone seemed to relax at once. Wakamatsu socked his fist against his palm. "These guys are assholes."

"I'm sorry," Sakurai said. "I'll get around their #8 somehow, I promise!"

Satsuki cleared her throat. "I've been watching, and I think that Akashi-kun may still lack the stamina that will let him make the fullest use of his emperor's eye for the full four quarters."

Imayoshi-san pounced on that, which said something about how poorly the game was going—Daiki didn't really think that Akashi's stamina was all that poor. "In that case, let's focus on a broader game. Do whatever you can to keep him moving, Aomine-kun. Make yourself nice and annoying, you're good at that."

"It's what they call natural genius." Tetsu said it straight-faced, too. Daiki forgot to be irritated over Akashi and grinned at him, delighted by the insult and by having Tetsu back on his side. They caught a few funny looks from the rest of the guys, but Tetsu's small smile was just as good as a grin from anyone else.

Daiki hit the court for the second quarter in a better frame of mind than he'd left it, which he didn't think Akashi had missed—Akashi rarely did anything as overt as glaring, but when they faced off before Daiki seized the ball and tried to cut around him, he thought that Akashi looked pretty out of sorts. And that was just fine by Daiki.

The thing about playing Akashi was that it should have been fun—Daiki stretched his game as hard as he could, driving himself against his limits and Akashi's powers of perception. It should have been exciting. He was playing harder against Akashi than he had against Kagami or Kise, but Akashi rarely permitted him to complete even his most formless plays, and that frustrated Daiki far more than it excited him. What fun was a game where he couldn't act without being countered before he'd even begun? Not much, that was for damn sure, and not even the fact that Akashi's hair was dark with sweat by the end of the first half or the fact that they'd managed to keep the gap between their respective scores consistent really satisfied Daiki.

There had to be something more he could do, didn't there? Some way to get around the way Akashi could tell what he was going to do before he did it. "Wish I could misdirect his attention the way you do," he said out loud while he worked on his share of the honey lemons. "I bet he'd love that."

"It's unlikely that you'd be able to learn how to do that." Tetsu could have maybe tried to sound sympathetic, but he looked distracted, like Daiki had just said something too interesting to let him pay attention to the little social niceties.

So much for that. Daiki made a face at him and also at Imayoshi-san, who was watching them, and wished there was room enough for him to get up and pace while he waited for the break to end. Moving would have made it easier to think and to ransack his brain for everything he'd ever seen Akashi do and everything Satsuki had ever said about him, in case there was something in there he could use—anything at all.

But the break ended without him finding any inspiration.

Daiki threw himself into the third quarter, figuring that playing with everything he had was the only option and hoping that at least some of his speed and agility would help get around Akashi and his asshole teammates. He tasted acid in his mouth every time he moved for the ball, to pass it or to try to send it to the net, and Akashi managed to be there to stop him, wearing a smug smile as he did. If this was what losing felt like, no wonder it pissed other players off so much.

The break between the third quarter and the fourth passed in grim silence. There were thirty points between their score and Rakuzan's, and Akashi showed no signs of slowing down—well, that had been a faint hope at best. Damn. Damn.

Sakurai looked almost relieved when Imayoshi-san gave orders for the substitution, and neither Ikeda nor Morita looked inclined to complain that Tetsu was going to play. If anything, they looked sort of like Sakurai did—better you than me, their eyes said.

Tetsu just looked up at Daiki as he adjusted his wristbands. "It's not over till it's over, right?" His eyes were still determined, even though they both knew how unlikely a comeback was going to be.

"Damn straight," Daiki told him.

It felt like a joint slipping back into place, aching and right all at the same time, when Tetsu lifted his fist and offered it to him. "Let's remind Akashi-kun what we can do together."

Daiki bumped his fist against Tetsu's. "Let's do this thing," he said. They went to meet Akashi together, and it didn't matter how fiercely Akashi glared at them, or what the final difference between their scores ended up being—he had his partner back and wasn't going to lose him again.

Imayoshi-san allotted precisely ten minutes of practice time for moping over the loss to Rakuzan. He kept time with a stopwatch, and when it beeped he clapped his hands, the sound sharp in their ears. He leveled a smile at them, small and very sure. "All right, that happened. It's over now, and the only thing I want you thinking about now is the Winter Cup and how we're going to win it." He and Kantoku launched right into the post-mortem and their revised training schedules, which Daiki was pretty sure were harsh enough to satisfy even Midorima's need for punishment.

(Midorima had texted him after the game: None of us could have done better. Daiki hadn't answered, because it hadn't really helped.)

No one even hinted at wanting to complain at the demanding drills, not with a twenty-point loss still fresh in their minds, even though half the club ended practice draped across the bleachers and most of the rest were barely standing. That ought to have been enough for anyone, and most of the club did stagger out to get changed the second Imayoshi-san turned them loose. A few people stayed behind—Imayoshi-san himself. Sakurai. Wakamatsu. Susa.

And Tetsu.

"You're practically dead on your feet," Daiki told him when Tetsu went to retrieve a ball from the cart, because it was true. Tetsu's shirt was soaked through and he was moving at half-speed.

Tetsu picked through the balls carefully, as though looking for just the right one. "I'm sure I'll sleep soundly tonight." He tested the bounce of one of the balls and glanced at Daiki. "Next time I want to win."

Yeah, so did he. Daiki looked over to where Satsuki was lingering by the doors, waiting for him to get changed so they could walk home together. He shrugged at her as he grabbed a ball for himself, but she didn't look displeased or even all that surprised. Instead she wandered over to take a seat on the bleachers, settling in like she expected to be there for a while.

"I think I might be able to do something against the emperor's eye," Tetsu said then, abrupt. "But it's going to take some work and some time to develop it."

Daiki had been wondering about that since the last play they'd made together, the one that had gotten past Akashi and had left him looking puzzled by trying to figure out how they'd done it. Heck, he'd been wondering about it since the other day, when he and Tetsu and Kagami had talked over burgers. Daiki rolled the ball across his knuckles and bounced it idly, and said, "Cool. You want any help with that?"

He held his breath until Tetsu said, "Yes, I think I would."

Daiki grinned at him, the warm glow of satisfaction at that spreading through his chest and dissipating some of the chill that had settled there at the end of yesterday's game. "I'm ready to get started when you are."

Tetsu smiled back at him, gaze steady and sure. "I know."

"So tell me what you're thinking," Daiki said then, and Tetsu did.

– end –

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