AN: Wow, this was forgotten, wasn't it? Bet you guys didn't even think it still existed at this point. I was moved at the fact people still seemed to be adding it to their favorites, so I decided to give a few updates. If I manage to finish it, I might even rewrite it - because, as you can most definitely see, I was terrible at writing back then. Enjoy!

Silence was a thing of beauty sometimes. It enabled one to have a fleeting moment of serene calm, almost. It helped the mind think. It helped you sort out the many emotions that plagued daily, monotonous stressful life.

Not here.

For all it's contradiction, the silence seemed to echo, bouncing about every square inch of the stadium until all was enraptured by it's enchanting mute song. Like a dance, one moved to the music, and Kuroko very much deemed himself the most beautiful of dancers in that moment. A siren, he idly thought. A small smile quirking up on his porcelain face at the thought.

A time-out had been called, the whistle still seeming to linger away and above the void of dumb silence. Rakuzan's phantom player had fainted, his exhaustion from trying to keep up with his blue-haired double proving too much to handle for his average build. It was an unsettling queer thought, that the small, weak and pathetic boy with a docile existence had so much energy left in him. Enough to last running up and down a stadium several times with his breath still seemingly even, his only gasps and pants being the soft rumblings of laughter that seeped out of his chest every so often after seeing something he deemed hysterical.

Riko narrowed her eyes, brown orbs seemingly glinting with analysis. An annoyed 'tsk' sound came from her, before she turned to Kagami. He still seemed shocked and out of his depth after his earlier altercation with the phantom. A blank face and sagged shoulders indicating he was either tired or emotionally drained.

Probably both, Riko thought to herself.

"I think he's been lying to us."

Riko brought herself out of her musings to gaze at the team captain who spoke up.

"Then we both share the same thoughts." She quipped, tight-lipped, her hands wrapping tightly around her clipboard in what was always a display of her anxiousness.

"What do you mean?" Kagami lightly prodded, his solemn reverie broken by the new discussion.

"Apart from whatever the hell that is,-" She pointed to the still form of Kuroko, his emerald eye glaring up at the ceiling lights. "-he's still up and ready to go. Even if his emotional state is different, surely he'd still have the same basket-case level of a stamina he's always had? It's not like he magically got superpowers all of a sudden."

That would be too easy of an explanation, Riko sardonically lamented.

Kagami, as if on instinct alone, burst into defence for his friend, "But it's Kuroko we're talking about here! He'd never lie to us!"

Riko snapped right back, her brow creasing in anger at the naivety of her ace player. "Then explain how he's still able to breathe, Kagami! Never mind scoring bloody baskets at this rate."

Kagami stayed silent, his body jumping back as if shocked, before once again deflating and mumbling some pitiful defense that only he and the gods could hear.

"Whatever the case is, this isn't Kuroko we're looking at right now. It's something else entirely. Something incredibly shitty."

Akashi, for all the grandiose statements and smooth delivery against his teal opponent, was scared. He had never felt such an emotion before, banishing it along with his weaker self that was locked away in the deepest, darkest depths of his consciousness. Yet here it was, niggling and biting away at his neck, causing a shiver to painstakingly crawl up his spine like a nightmarish spider every time he gazed into that single, green eye.

It called to him. It beckoned him to come to it. Invited him to fall into it's emerald, shining beauty and lay in it's embrace before he rotted and died and couldn't escape it's black chasm of a center.

Dangerous, he idly thought. Fear was dangerous. It caused him to over think and be taken away with nonsense. He breathed, feeling the gaze of his team-mates on him. This was not how Akashi Seijuro acted. This was not how a leader acted. They did not fear, they were fear.

"Tomei Ayata, you're in." Akashi's voice was like silk and soft, but the order was absolute and spelled reckoning in the face of the one to disobey. He didn't need to turn his head to know the second year student was scrambling to step up from the bench. He didn't even need to tilt his head to give any indication that he acknowledged the newcomer who saddled up next to him. No, he thought. For he was King on this court, and he was perfection in all it's forms. His will shall be done, always. No exceptions.

He looked up towards that glowing, forsaken eye which smiled it's malice at him.

No exceptions. Not even if he wanted to rip out his eyes and scream at the sight of such a monster.