PoT Fic: "Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp" 5/5 (PG-13) - All-Cast Ensemble
Title: "Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp" 5/5 
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: All-Cast Ensemble, mostly gen with a few slashy overtones.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,392, for this chapter.
Spoilers/Warnings: Boys in dorms. Lots of them. No spoilers unless the Selection Camp arc from the anime still counts.
Summary: Behind the scenes in all the dorms of the Junior Invitational Selection Camp.
Notes: See Chapter 1.
Notes 2: Written for writing_fest. The scenes in this chapter use the prompts: 'two (or more) misremembered versions of the same event', 'space, the final frontier', "If it was up your ass, you’d know where it was", 'car crash', and "And that was only the beginning".
Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp
by Kantayra
Chapter Five
***
The Legend of Sakuno the Brave: Apotheosis
Ryuzaki tried not to wince at the high-pitched squeals as her hospital room was inundated by perky, hyperactive children.
“Are you okay, Coach Ryuzaki?” Kachiro worried.
“We brought you these flowers,” Katsuo hovered.
“I personally had the entire team sign this card for you,” Horio boasted.
“And I made inspirational posters!” Tomoka announced cheerfully. She held up a large sign that said, “Get better, Coach Ryuzaki!” For no apparent reason, it had Echizen’s face right in the middle, surrounded by hearts.
“Uh, thanks,” Ryuzaki blinked at the very bizarre poster before her.
“We’re all very relieved that you’re going to be all right,” Ann said politely, after Tomoka had paraded the poster around for all to see.
“W-We were worried about you,” Dan stuttered and blushed. “Everyone was.”
Ryuzaki put on her best smile. “Well, I trust that all of you have taken care of things while I’ve been out sick.” She didn’t bother to clarify that, by “all of you,” she actually meant “the other coaches and Tezuka.”
“Don’t worry!” Kachiro said proudly.
“We’ve taken care of everything,” Katsuo agreed.
“I oversaw it all myself, personally,” Horio thumped his chest.
Ryuzaki started to get seriously worried. “Uh, hey, where’s my granddaughter? I thought she was coming to visit with you…”
“Ah, don’t worry about Sakuno,” Ann reassured her. “She said she had something to do down in the visiting room.”
“She’ll be here any minute, I’m sure,” Tomoka said. “She’s really saved the day!”
“Has she?” Ryuzaki said with a smile.
“Sh-She has!” Dan squeaked. “She saved us all!”
“I’m sure she has,” Ryuzaki said, amused in a way that adults had to be around children, or else they would go insane.
“It’s true!” Tomoka insisted. “Tell her, guys!”
And that set off the deluge.
“-Huge, dripping fangs and red demotic eyes!” Horio’s was the first coherent phrase Ryuzaki could distinguish amidst the babble. “And he had an axe, too!”
“Wait,” Ryuzaki blinked. “What? Who?”
“-And when I was frozen in terror, Sakuno leapt in out of nowhere-” Tomoka’s voice rose about the chatter for a moment.
“She did? Huh?”
“-Braved the curse and walked right on through, and even made it past the witch that guarded the gate-” Dan’s voice wafted through.
“Uh… I think I’m missing something here…”
“-And Sakuno was all, ‘Punch, punch, I can take you all! We were here first!’” Katsuo explained, while Kachiro acted it out.
“She was amazing!” Tomoka concluded.
“She saved all our lives!” Dan sighed wistfully.
“She’s a hero!” Kachiro exclaimed.
Katsuo nodded vigorously.
“Of course, I totally could’ve done it all, if she hadn’t been there,” Horio added as an afterthought.
“I…see…” Ryuzaki sighed wearily.
Fortunately, at that moment, Sakuno decided to enter, cradling a steaming cup in her hands. All eyes turned to her, and she blushed at the sudden attention. “Y-Yes?” she asked, looking around between them all anxiously.
Ann pressed her palms into Kachiro and Katsuo’s backs and pushed them toward the door. “Come on, guys. Let’s let Sakuno visit with her grandmother in peace.”
“Hey, hey, ow!” Horio complained as Tomoka led him out, too, except by his ear.
“We’re all very happy to see you’re all right, Coach Ryuzaki,” Dan said on the way out. “Good-bye!” He squeaked and shut the door behind him.
Ryuzaki and Sakuno blinked at the mass exodus.
“So,” Ryuzaki said slowly, “what were those wild stories they were telling all about?”
Sakuno blushed and shook her head. “They told you all that stuff?” she sighed, embarrassed.
“Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. If I heard correctly, it sounded like you beat Kabaji single-handed in arm-wrestling,” Ryuzaki chuckled.
Sakuno shook her head vigorously. “They might be exaggerating just a little.”
“A little,” Ryuzaki smirked. “What actually happened?”
“I told Atobe-san about the pots rusting, typed a few words, opened a rusty gate, and then bought some squash,” Sakuno summarized succinctly.
Ryuzaki tried hard not to laugh. “Now, that I can believe.”
Sakuno smiled wryly back up at her.
“What is that you have there?” Ryuzaki finally asked curiously, gesturing to the cup in Sakuno’s hands.
“Oh!” Sakuno squeaked, suddenly remembering what she’d brought. “Here,” she handed the steaming cup over. “I brought some of your favorite tea. I figured the hospital tea wouldn’t be…er…”
“Fit for human consumption?” Ryuzaki suggested, then breathed a sigh of relief at the spicy scent of herbs wafting from the cup. She took a tentative sip, even though the cup was still too hot to drink: pure heaven. “Sakuno?” Ryuzaki finally said with a small smile.
“Hmm?”
“You are a hero.”
Sakuno blushed but managed a small smile back. “I know,” she giggled.
***
The Kirihara/Kamio Wars: The Final Frontier
“Well, now that that’s settled…” Oishi glanced to the two opposite corners of the room.
Over the last week, the line of duct tape in the center of the common room had been deemed insufficient, and there were now two lines, each locking Kirihara and Kamio in opposite corners. There was always a bit of a scuffle at first, while they threw every projectile they could get their hands on, but eventually they ran out.
“Let’s watch a movie!” Kikumaru suggested brightly when no further projectiles presented themselves.
“That sounds good,” Kajimoto said warily, looking back and forth from where Kamio was glaring at Kirihara in one corner to where Kirihara was glaring at Kamio in the other. With a sigh, he sat down on the couch beside Sengoku.
“What do we want to watch?” Momoshiro asked, scrolling through the rather massive list of pirated movies on his computer.
“Something less boring than last time,” Echizen said smugly and pulled his cap down over his eyes.
Momoshiro glared at him.
“Ooh, ooh!” Kikumaru said. “How about something fun and cute?”
Shishido made gagging noises.
“I like romances,” Ohtori suggested.
Everyone blinked at him in horror.
“I, uh, don’t have any romances,” Momoshiro quickly assured the group.
“Let’s have some action,” Sengoku requested.
“With guns and lasers?” Shishido perked up for the first time.
“Explosions in space!” Kajimoto suggested excitedly.
Momoshiro scrolled through his file. “Uh…space? I’ve got, um, ‘Star Trek.’”
“Doesn’t that have lasers?” Kikumaru asked.
“Echizen, you’re from America,” Oishi pointed out. “You’ll know.”
Echizen just glared at him. “All I know is that it doesn’t have tennis.”
Kamio stopped glaring at Kirihara long enough to butt in. “It depends. Which Star Trek is it?”
Momoshiro blinked. “It just says: ‘Star Trek.’”
“Well,” Kamio sighed wearily, “how long is it? Is it movie-length?”
Momoshiro checked the file. “Yes.”
“Then it’s probably either the first one or the last one,” Kamio decided.
Kirihara was busy sulking, but he finally stirred to life at that. “I am not watching ‘Nemesis’ again,” he complained.
Kamio shuddered in agreement. “It should’ve ended with ‘All Good Things…’”
Kirihara’s eyes lit up. “I know, right? Because ‘First Contact’ was fun enough at the time, but they were just screwing the Borg over, so that no one could object when Voyager ruined them.”
“Exactly!” Kamio agreed. “‘Generations’ was a bust. They just wanted to destroy the old model, so they could replace everything with crappy CGI.”
“CGI worked in DS9; it did not work with the Enterprise.”
“And ‘Insurrection’ might have been an okay episode, but it was so dragged out as a movie.”
“I would rather have had ‘Insurrection’ end it than ‘Nemesis.’”
“God, yes!”
“Although ‘All Good Things…’ was still the best ending.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why they had to trash a perfectly good series ending with crappy movies.”
“It wasn’t like TOS, where the show’s life got cut short.”
“Right! There was still DS9.”
“And even Voyager had some good moments.”
“But let us never, ever speak of Enterprise.”
Kirihara shuddered.
Everyone else gaped.
“Uh… What do we do?” Kajimoto asked.
“Back away slowly?” Sengoku suggested.
“I think I liked them better before,” Shishido decided when a lively debate about the relative merits of TNG and DS9 started.
“What a pair of weirdoes,” Momoshiro agreed, like they’d been totally normal before.
As one, the rest of the group fled the lounge that had now been rendered unbearable by two very unexpected fonts of geek-knowledge.
“Oh my god!” Kirihara exclaimed. “I should link you to my blog. I complained so much about the Voyager finale!”
“I didn’t even like the DS9 one,” Kamio agreed. “Quick, what’s your cell phone number? We totally have to go see the new movie together.”
“We do!” Kirihara agreed. “And I want to borrow your DS9 DVDs some day. I have to rewatch the whole war arc straight.”
“It’s the best!” Kamio smiled back at him.
The next day, they were suddenly the best of friends.
“This is creepy!” Sengoku complained.
“Please, make them stop!” Kajimoto whined.
“Will you two knock it off already?” Shishido demanded.
Kirihara and Kamio just blinked at them.
“Have you guys ever considered getting help for your anger management problems?” Kamio suggested.
“Yeah, we’re all practically adults here. Chill,” Kirihara agreed.
It was the final straw, and many very loud “ow”s were heard as the rest of the group descended upon them.
***
Do the Roommate Shuffle: The Pun Is Mightier than the Word
“-can shove it up your ass,” Amane chuckled and sporfled to himself. “So then I said, ‘If it was up your ass, you’d know where it was.’”
Oshitari snickered into his soup. “Well, one time,” he began, “Gakuto was-”
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Atobe announced breezily and settled right down beside Oshitari, so close that their thighs were brushing.
Oshitari blinked over at him. “Atobe,” he greeted, “to what do we owe the honor of your presence?”
Atobe was oblivious to all snide tones when they came attached to compliments to his person, however. “I was just thinking to myself that I hadn’t seen my dear friend Oshitari much this camp, and he must simply be wasting away without my charm and grace to entertain him,” Atobe answered and slung an affectionate arm around Oshitari’s shoulders.
Amane blinked.
Oshitari’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “What do you want?” he demanded.
“What?” Atobe’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Moi? I have no clue what you could possibly be talking about.”
Oshitari gave him a suspicious look, glanced over to the dinner line, then spotted Kabaji sitting across from Shinjoh alone at a table at the far end of the room. They seemed to be entertaining each other or, at least, they were in each other’s vicinity while neither of them was talking or acknowledging the other’s existence. For Kabaji and Shinjoh, that was probably entertaining.
Finally, Oshitari shrugged and returned to his meal. “Didn’t get the fish today, I notice,” he commented smugly.
Atobe glared at him. “No, I prefer the chicken.”
Amane had no clue what all the tension was about, but he was more than happy to butt in at that. “Think of the poor chickens, though. I just don’t think they’ll be able to recoup!” He snorted.
Atobe’s eyes widened at him in horror.
Oshitari snickered.
Atobe’s eyes widened at him in horror. “Such a delightful roommate you have. How ever do you cope?”
Oshitari smirked and let Amane take it away.
“He could always call the cops on me!” Amane snorted.
Atobe blinked for a few seconds. “What? That doesn’t even make any sense!” he insisted, outraged. “They don’t even sound similar.”
Amane just grinned at him.
“A proper pun,” Atobe explained, “should at least be based off homophones. Similar spelling doesn’t cut it.”
Amane’s eyes glittered with unholy light. Oshitari thought for one second about the word ‘homophones’ and waved Amane off. After all, he liked Amane and didn’t want a real fight to break out. Instead, Amane just snickered to himself.
“What?” Atobe demanded.
Oshitari snickered, too.
Dinner went on like that, but Atobe continued to put up with it, which was how Oshitari knew Atobe was going to hit him up for a favor any second now. Atobe followed them back to the dorms, chatting amiably at Oshitari the whole time and, then finally, the bomb dropped.
“Say, Yushi,” Atobe said intimately, “I was thinking about how you’ve been forced to room around this whole camp, and it was rather unfair of me, wasn’t it? So how about you room with me tonight?” He flashed Oshitari a winning, movie-star smile.
Amane frowned at this turn of events.
Oshitari just rolled his eyes. “No,” he insisted, and slammed their door in Atobe’s face.
There was a pause and then violent knocking. Oshitari opened the door.
“Come on, Yushi,” Atobe said apologetically. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Just-”
“You said I snore,” Oshitari pointed out.
“Well, yes,” Atobe conceded, “but there are always earplugs for that, and we haven’t talked all week, and-”
“No.” Oshitari slammed the door on him again.
Amane looked at him curiously. “Won’t he get mad at you?” he asked nervously.
“Don’t worry,” Oshitari assured him. “His bark is way worse than his bite, and he doesn’t hold grudges.”
Knocking sounded on the door again. Oshitari opened it one last time.
“All right,” Atobe confessed, “you got me, fair and square. But you saw what Kabaji was eating tonight!”
“Anchovies, wasn’t it?” Oshitari smirked.
“He gets gassy, Yushi,” Atobe pleaded. “And there’s no escape from that!”
“Then I guess you should have thought of that possibility before you made me room with Ibu, of all people,” Oshitari concluded.
“Do you want me to say I’m sorry?”
“And Shinjoh.”
“I’m sorry, Yushi.”
“And Wakato.”
“Now, forgive me?”
“And one of those dysfunctional twins. I forget which.”
Atobe batted his eyelashes.
“I forgive you,” Oshitari finally conceded with a sigh. “But the answer is still no.”
Atobe gasped in outrage. “B-But…”
“I happen to like my roommate,” Oshitari explained. “Sorry. You could always try switching with one of the others.”
Atobe scowled at him. “I don’t believe this. Betrayed by one of my own!” he exclaimed melodramatically.
“Betrayed?” Oshitari retorted. “Oh, please. I have been exceptionally, unquestionably loyal to you for my entire stint on the Hyotei team. This hardly qualifies as a knife in the back. Now, go open your window for tonight or something, and let me get some sleep.”
Atobe grumbled, finally resigned to his fate. “Oh, take your loyalty and shove it up your ass.”
Oshitari smirked. “If it was up your ass, at least you’d know where it was.” And he slammed the door on Atobe’s face for the final time.
He and Amane turned to each other and laughed so hard they hurt.
***
The High Life: Karma
Because tennis was serious business and camp didn’t come free and this wasn’t a party, Sakaki and Hanamura gave Tezuka homework the last week of camp. First thing the next morning, Tezuka caught the two of them with a pointed “ahem.”
“Ah,” Hanamura said with a smile, “you’ve finished your report?”
“Yes,” Tezuka agreed. “Is now convenient?”
“By all means,” Sakaki said in a bored tone, sprawled over the sofa.
Tezuka pushed his glasses up his nose and began to read from the paper he held before him. “To me, coaching centers on one fundamental principal: karma.”
Sakaki raised an eyebrow.
“Every player, at one point, was taught their skills. Hours of training and many coaches form the basis of each player’s skills. Coaching itself is, thus, the completion of the circle. What a player receives, he eventually gives back in the form of coaching future generations.”
Hanamura scratched her head.
“One is only truly skilled as a player through their ability to relate their knowledge to others, and one is only truly skilled as a coach through their ability to relate to the challenges a player faces when attempting to perfect their game. In the end teaching - coaching - is the greatest form of achievement because it demonstrates that a player has truly come full-circle and learned the game inside out.”
Sakaki checked his Rolex.
“And it is this meaning of karma, not the moralistic one, to which I refer. The player gets back from the coach that which the coach once received as a player. The coach gets back from his players that which furthers his own goals as a player.” Tezuka cleared his throat again. “Thank you.”
Hanamura blinked. “A very…interesting interpretation,” she commented.
“Quite satisfactory,” Sakaki agreed. “You can go ahead and start practice now.”
Tezuka gave him a curious look. “You won’t be supervising the morning practice?”
“Ah, no,” Sakaki said evasively. “I have other matters to attend to at the moment.”
Tezuka’s gaze turned to Hanamura.
“Dreadfully important calculations to run on my players’ coordination routines,” she explained. “Could you take the whole group today?”
Tezuka just nodded and went off to do so.
Sakaki and Hanamura gave each other a suspicious look once Tezuka was gone.
“So,” Sakaki said innocently and got up, “I’ll just go work on some schedules right now.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Hanamura agreed, “and I’d better finish my coordination reports.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
They both went in their separate directions. Of course, as soon as the other was out of sight, they both bolted for the parking lots their respective cars were parked in.
Hanamura patted the discount card on the seat of her shiny new convertible. Today only, everything at the technology expo was 80%, for teachers only. Clearly, she needed to avail herself of all these beautiful gadgets, for the good of mankind. And possibly also those lasers you could mount to the front of your car that didn’t really do anything, but made you feel like you had phasers. True, they’d be a pain to install, but Hanamura could always make Shinjoh do it and convince him it was a test of his fine motor coordination. Shinjoh would buy anything like that. With a smirk, she hit the gas and backed out of the lot.
Sakaki slid into his Porsche, slipped on his sunglasses, and started the engine. It hummed rapturously beneath his careful touch and purred into gear. He checked his hair in the rearview mirror as he jetted out of the lot. After all, this was an exclusive luncheon with some of the wealthiest parents in all of Hyotei (excluding the Atobe family, alas), all of whom wanted nothing more than to thank him for keeping their unruly teenagers away from the more expensive items in their homes while at tennis practice.
As a result, neither Hanamura nor Sakaki were really paying attention while they pulled out of their respective lots, which - coincidentally - happened to be right across from each other.
The following crunch could be heard all the way from the tennis courts, where the practice matches came to a sudden halt at the sound of violent, twisting metal.
“What was that?” Mizuki wondered.
“Oi, oi? It sounds like there was an accident in the parking lot!” Kikumaru announced.
Of course, that set everyone off running to see what happened.
“My fault?” Sakaki was screeching. “You were driving backwards without even looking where you were going!” The entire front of his Porsche was totaled.
“I had right of way!” Hanamura was screeching back, pointing at the rear-end of her convertible, which was now completely flattened. “How could you possibly have missed me? Oh, that’s right: you didn’t!”
“Ooh, coach fight!” Saeki said excitedly.
Sanada snorted. “That’s what they get for wasting so much money on frivolous vehicles.”
Tezuka blinked at the collision. “Karma…” he repeated slowly to himself.
“Hmm, what was that?” Atobe asked curiously.
“Oh, nothing,” Tezuka almost smirked. “They just really shouldn’t have let their guards down.”
Atobe snickered.
“All right, everyone!” Tezuka called the students to attention once more. “Fifteen laps, now!”
That was enough to save everyone from gawking all day. There were several groans, but eventually everyone headed off down the path.
Really, Tezuka thought as he kept pace with the back of the group to make sure no one was dawdling, the most important part of being a coach had nothing to do with karma at all. That was the thing none of the other coaches seemed to understand. It was actually all about assigning pointless numbers of laps.
***
The Five Trials of Sanada Genichiro: The Beginning of the End
The final day of camp, Sanada woke up, reached over to his bed stand, and found that his beloved cap was missing. He immediately jolted from bed, flew out the door, and - with the unerring precision of a homing beacon - located his cap with the rest of his group in the lounge.
“No, no, I’m Sanada,” Mizuki snickered, put the cap on, and scowled. “A bazillion laps!” he said in a completely failed attempt at a low voice.
“An unimpressive imitation,” Inui commented and scribbled in his notebook. “Excellent data on personal weaknesses.”
Mizuki scowled at him.
“Here, let me,” Saeki snatched the cap from Mizuki’s head and folded his arms over his chest. “Slackers!” he snarled and then completely ruined the effect by bursting out laughing.
“Hey, that was pretty good,” Yuta snickered.
“We’re going to get in trouble…” Kaidoh warned, but he looked more amused than usual, too.
“I think Taka should go next,” Fuji suggested.
Kawamura paled. “This…really isn’t my sort of thing. I-” Fuji shoved a racket into his hand and the cap on his head. “My fire is burning, baby!” Kawamura shouted out and swung the racket around wildly.
Everyone laughed except for Yanagi, dear old reliable Yanagi who took the cap from Kawamura’s head and…promptly placed it on his own head. “Oh, Captain Yukimura,” he sighed like a girl. “You’re so handsome and magnificent at tennis! Assign me laps, captain. Assign me laps hard!”
And that was the last straw. Sanada stalked into the lounge, snatched his sacred cap from Yanagi, and growled at them all.
Everyone gulped at took a terrified step backwards. Sanada’s eyes looked like a bull about to charge.
Sanada’s eyes circled the room in threat and then, just as abruptly, he stalked back out without so much as a word.
“Uh…” Saeki blinked. “Were the laps just implied?”
Inui scratched his head. “This behavior defies all data.”
“I told you all this was a bad idea,” Kaidoh worried.
Yanagi’s face turned pale. “I think he may actually be…mad.” The last word came out like a whimper.
“You mean he isn’t usually mad?” Yuta blinked at him in disbelief.
Yanagi shook his head and was actually trembling at the thought.
That was around when the rest of the group got really, seriously worried…
---
Sanada, for his part, stalked all the way back to his room and snatched up his cell phone. He hit the top button on the speed dial and only had to wait a second for a response. “They messed with my cap,” he snarled into the receiver. “I need punishments. I need punishments for everyone! The more humiliating, the better.”
At the other end, Yukimura’s light, tinkling laughter could be heard. “Oh, what fun! Tee-hee!”
Already Sanada felt better as Yukimura laid out what had to be done.
---
“Sadaharu?” Yanagi asked after breakfast that morning.
“Mmm?” Inui looked up.
“Have you seen Genichiro today?”
Inui readjusted his glasses. “Ah. You mean, since the, er, incident this morning?”
“Exactly.” Yanagi frowned. “I haven’t seen him since. This isn’t normal for him. I’m concerned. We may have actually taken things too far.”
“Interesting,” Inui considered him, and his fingers inched over toward his notebook.
Yanagi glared at him.
Inui forced himself to stop. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen him. He didn’t come to breakfast at all.”
Yanagi’s frown deepened. “That definitely isn’t like him…”
“Is he still in your room?”
“I, uh, haven’t gone back there yet,” Yanagi confessed. He refused to admit that he was afraid of encountering Sanada away from the safety of multiple witnesses.
Inui just shrugged.
Yanagi left the dining hall and was forced to admit that it was a reasonable suggestion. He’d already checked the courts, and Ryuzaki’s group had run the path that morning and hadn’t seen Sanada there. Yanagi steeled himself up and ventured back to his and Sanada’s shared room. After all, he was one of Rikkaidai’s three demons in his own right (even if Sanada was most certainly a bigger and scarier demon).
Sanada wasn’t in their room, however. Yanagi flicked on the lights to make sure that the lump on Sanada’s bed was just the blanket. That was even more unusual; Sanada was rigorous about making his bed first thing in the morning. Yanagi began to grow seriously concerned, and that was when he noticed the notebook on his bed.
He frowned and reached for it.
“Yanagi Renji,” the cover read. Yanagi recognized Inui’s handwriting.
His eyes widened in slow realization that this was Inui’s data book on him. Voraciously, he flipped it open and began reading. Within mere seconds, he was sputtering in outrage.
“Y-You!” he stormed into Inui and Kaidoh’s room in time to catch them packing before practice.
Kaidoh’s eyes widened in alarm.
“You called me an emotionally-repressed, two-faced coward!” Yanagi snarled at Inui.
Inui turned from his bed slowly, the light gleaming off his glasses, to reveal that he, too, held a notebook that had been ‘accidentally’ left on his bed. “Well, you called me a clingy copycat whose former friendship you could exploit to Rikkaidai’s advantage!” Inui snarled right back at him.
“Well, that’s all true,” Yanagi insisted. “But how dare you-”
“How dare I?” Inui growled.
Kaidoh’s eyes widened as a fistfight erupted right before him, full of screaming, kicking, and fur flying…well, okay, technically it was hair. Slowly, he backed out of the room. He wanted no part of anything this nasty.
---
“Yanagi and Inui both got suspended from the finals for fighting?” Mizuki snickered. “How silly of them.” He lugged his bag over his shoulder in preparation for loading it on the bus.
However, at that point, the strategically-placed rip in the side pocket tore open, and several items fell from his bag.
It also just so happened that Fuji was in line behind him at the time.
Fuji looked down at what Mizuki dropped. Mizuki looked, too. Fuji’s eyes widened. Mizuki’s face went ashen.
“What,” Fuji asked in his softest, most angelic voice, “is this?” He bent over to pick up three items: a box of extra-small condoms, a tube of lubricant, and a picture of Yuta.
Mizuki sputtered. “I-I swear! Those aren’t mine!”
“Hmm,” Fuji smiled beatifically at him, “and last time we met, I thanked you so nicely for taking such good care of my little brother…”
“I swear to god!” Mizuki squeaked. “I’m being set up!”
The only person to witness this exchange was Saeki, but he’d been too busy trying to fit his own oversized bag through his door to catch up to them before they rounded the corner. When he reached where they should have been, they’d vanished into thin air.
No one saw Mizuki for the next two weeks.
When he finally did reappear, he was covered from head to toe in seaweed, had a large tattoo blazoned across his back that he refused to show anyone, and for some reason his voice had jumped an octave. To his dying day, he refused to say what happened to him during those two weeks or even admit that anything had happened at all.
Fuji smiled and nodded at him the next time they saw each other at a meet, though, and Mizuki instinctively broke out into a cold sweat and had to lie down in the locker rooms, sick to his stomach.
---
“Funny about how so many people in your group are disappearing at the last minute,” Kisarazu Ryo said to Saeki when they’d all gathered together at the gym for the close of camp.
“Or is it punny?” Amane snorted.
Ryo looked at him disdainfully. “We’ll be home soon, and I’m telling Bane you said that.”
Amane, disturbingly, looked eager about this.
Saeki’s cell phone took that moment to ring, and he blushed when he recognized Aoi’s number.
“Someone has the hots for our freshman captain,” Amane sing-songed and slung a companionable arm around Ryo’s shoulders.
Ryo shoved it right off.
Saeki looked at the text, though, and his face paled. “Wh-What? This is? How did?”
“Huh?” Amane blinked at him. “What is it?”
Ryo snatched the phone away. There, on the screen, was the message: sorry but im strait. Ryo blinked. “You told Aoi you liked him?”
“What?” Saeki stammered. “N-No!”
Amane read the message over Ryo’s shoulders. “Well, someone did.” Ryo flipped through the menu, and Amane’s eyes widened. “And they sent it from your phone?”
“Wh-What?” Saeki snatched it back. There, under his sent messages was: i luv u! lets b boyfriends! :D Saeki fell to his knees. “B-But… I didn’t! Oh god, my life is over!”
“Uh, vice-captain?” Ryo said nervously. “We’re about to go. Aren’t you coming?”
“Just leave without me,” Saeki whimpered into his cell phone.
“If Aoi’s straight, he won’t be coming ever!” Amane snickered.
Ryo hit him on the back of the head as a favor to Kurobane for later.
---
“Shusuke, I’m scared,” Yuta said nervously. “This is supposed to be Sanada who’s pissed, but it seems like it’s you.”
“It’s not me, I assure you,” Fuji patted his hand. “And, even if it was, you’d be safe.”
Yuta didn’t look convinced.
Especially since, at that moment, Yumiko rushed in. “Where are they?” she demanded. “Where are my adorable little baby brothers?”
Fuji and Yuta both froze in horror.
“There you are!” Yumiko waved and headed over to them. “I got your emergency text message, Yuta, and I’ve brought all the stuff you needed.” She opened up the bag under her arm and began pulling things out to hand to them. “Here’s extra underwear, since you both ran out. I brought you two the ones with little cacti and little rocket ships that I got you for your last birthdays. For some reason, they were buried at the very bottom of your drawers. I don’t know why, since they’re so cute!” She held them up to inspect their cuteness.
All the boys in the room broke out laughing.
“And here’s some anti-itch cream for the boil on Yuta’s butt,” Yumiko handed it over to a stunned Yuta. “And some, er, more special cream for the rash on Shusuke’s, er, special place.”
Fuji gaped at her numbly.
“Now,” she ruffled both their hair, “amn’t I the best big sister ever?” She graced them with a beatific smile.
Yuta screamed and fainted.
Fuji just stood there, frozen almost comatose with embarrassment.
“I am, amn’t I?” Yumiko answered her own question happily.
---
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god,” Kawamura whimpered to himself.
“We’re next!” Kaidoh panicked. “I knew it was a bad idea! I tried to warn everyone!”
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Kawamura asked.
“No one can save us now…” Kaidoh whimpered.
“Ahem,” Sanada’s very recognizable, very authoritarian cough cut them off.
Twin screams followed.
“It wasn’t me, I swear!” Kaidoh insisted.
“I didn’t want to!” Kawamura assured him. “But then I had the racket, and I go kind of crazy when that happens, and I’m so, so sorry!”
Sanada cracked his knuckles.
“Please don’t kill us!” Kaidoh begged.
“We’ll make it up to you! We promise!” Kawamura agreed.
“I have decided on your punishments,” Sanada said very calmly, his eyes hidden beneath the brim of his cap.
Kaidoh and Kawamura clung to each other and shivered.
“A hundred laps!” Sanada ordered.
Kaidoh and Kawamura blinked.
“Th-That’s it?” Kaidoh finally ventured.
Sanada shrugged. “I know it wasn’t either of your ideas,” he conceded. “So a hundred laps before I change my mind!”
“Y-Yes!” Kawamura agreed, and they were both off running.
Sanada watched them go with a satisfied smile and removed the cell phone from his pocket. “It worked perfectly,” he informed Yukimura as soon as he picked up.
“Mmm,” Yukimura agreed, “of course it did.”
Sanada sighed, just like the little girl Yanagi had been imitating earlier. “You’re so incredible,” he purred into the phone.
“Just for that?” Yukimura said lightly. “But, Sanada, I thought you understood. After they made things so hard for my vice-captain, they deserved what they’ve gotten so far…”
Sanada smiled into the phone at Yukimura’s melodious voice of revenge.
“And,” Yukimura said angelically, “that was only the beginning.”
Thanks so everyone who's been following this, and as always, comments are most appreciated!
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Pairing: All-Cast Ensemble, mostly gen with a few slashy overtones.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,392, for this chapter.
Spoilers/Warnings: Boys in dorms. Lots of them. No spoilers unless the Selection Camp arc from the anime still counts.
Summary: Behind the scenes in all the dorms of the Junior Invitational Selection Camp.
Notes: See Chapter 1.
Notes 2: Written for writing_fest. The scenes in this chapter use the prompts: 'two (or more) misremembered versions of the same event', 'space, the final frontier', "If it was up your ass, you’d know where it was", 'car crash', and "And that was only the beginning".
Outtakes from the Junior Invitational Selection Camp
by Kantayra
Chapter Five
***
The Legend of Sakuno the Brave: Apotheosis
Ryuzaki tried not to wince at the high-pitched squeals as her hospital room was inundated by perky, hyperactive children.
“Are you okay, Coach Ryuzaki?” Kachiro worried.
“We brought you these flowers,” Katsuo hovered.
“I personally had the entire team sign this card for you,” Horio boasted.
“And I made inspirational posters!” Tomoka announced cheerfully. She held up a large sign that said, “Get better, Coach Ryuzaki!” For no apparent reason, it had Echizen’s face right in the middle, surrounded by hearts.
“Uh, thanks,” Ryuzaki blinked at the very bizarre poster before her.
“We’re all very relieved that you’re going to be all right,” Ann said politely, after Tomoka had paraded the poster around for all to see.
“W-We were worried about you,” Dan stuttered and blushed. “Everyone was.”
Ryuzaki put on her best smile. “Well, I trust that all of you have taken care of things while I’ve been out sick.” She didn’t bother to clarify that, by “all of you,” she actually meant “the other coaches and Tezuka.”
“Don’t worry!” Kachiro said proudly.
“We’ve taken care of everything,” Katsuo agreed.
“I oversaw it all myself, personally,” Horio thumped his chest.
Ryuzaki started to get seriously worried. “Uh, hey, where’s my granddaughter? I thought she was coming to visit with you…”
“Ah, don’t worry about Sakuno,” Ann reassured her. “She said she had something to do down in the visiting room.”
“She’ll be here any minute, I’m sure,” Tomoka said. “She’s really saved the day!”
“Has she?” Ryuzaki said with a smile.
“Sh-She has!” Dan squeaked. “She saved us all!”
“I’m sure she has,” Ryuzaki said, amused in a way that adults had to be around children, or else they would go insane.
“It’s true!” Tomoka insisted. “Tell her, guys!”
And that set off the deluge.
“-Huge, dripping fangs and red demotic eyes!” Horio’s was the first coherent phrase Ryuzaki could distinguish amidst the babble. “And he had an axe, too!”
“Wait,” Ryuzaki blinked. “What? Who?”
“-And when I was frozen in terror, Sakuno leapt in out of nowhere-” Tomoka’s voice rose about the chatter for a moment.
“She did? Huh?”
“-Braved the curse and walked right on through, and even made it past the witch that guarded the gate-” Dan’s voice wafted through.
“Uh… I think I’m missing something here…”
“-And Sakuno was all, ‘Punch, punch, I can take you all! We were here first!’” Katsuo explained, while Kachiro acted it out.
“She was amazing!” Tomoka concluded.
“She saved all our lives!” Dan sighed wistfully.
“She’s a hero!” Kachiro exclaimed.
Katsuo nodded vigorously.
“Of course, I totally could’ve done it all, if she hadn’t been there,” Horio added as an afterthought.
“I…see…” Ryuzaki sighed wearily.
Fortunately, at that moment, Sakuno decided to enter, cradling a steaming cup in her hands. All eyes turned to her, and she blushed at the sudden attention. “Y-Yes?” she asked, looking around between them all anxiously.
Ann pressed her palms into Kachiro and Katsuo’s backs and pushed them toward the door. “Come on, guys. Let’s let Sakuno visit with her grandmother in peace.”
“Hey, hey, ow!” Horio complained as Tomoka led him out, too, except by his ear.
“We’re all very happy to see you’re all right, Coach Ryuzaki,” Dan said on the way out. “Good-bye!” He squeaked and shut the door behind him.
Ryuzaki and Sakuno blinked at the mass exodus.
“So,” Ryuzaki said slowly, “what were those wild stories they were telling all about?”
Sakuno blushed and shook her head. “They told you all that stuff?” she sighed, embarrassed.
“Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. If I heard correctly, it sounded like you beat Kabaji single-handed in arm-wrestling,” Ryuzaki chuckled.
Sakuno shook her head vigorously. “They might be exaggerating just a little.”
“A little,” Ryuzaki smirked. “What actually happened?”
“I told Atobe-san about the pots rusting, typed a few words, opened a rusty gate, and then bought some squash,” Sakuno summarized succinctly.
Ryuzaki tried hard not to laugh. “Now, that I can believe.”
Sakuno smiled wryly back up at her.
“What is that you have there?” Ryuzaki finally asked curiously, gesturing to the cup in Sakuno’s hands.
“Oh!” Sakuno squeaked, suddenly remembering what she’d brought. “Here,” she handed the steaming cup over. “I brought some of your favorite tea. I figured the hospital tea wouldn’t be…er…”
“Fit for human consumption?” Ryuzaki suggested, then breathed a sigh of relief at the spicy scent of herbs wafting from the cup. She took a tentative sip, even though the cup was still too hot to drink: pure heaven. “Sakuno?” Ryuzaki finally said with a small smile.
“Hmm?”
“You are a hero.”
Sakuno blushed but managed a small smile back. “I know,” she giggled.
***
The Kirihara/Kamio Wars: The Final Frontier
“Well, now that that’s settled…” Oishi glanced to the two opposite corners of the room.
Over the last week, the line of duct tape in the center of the common room had been deemed insufficient, and there were now two lines, each locking Kirihara and Kamio in opposite corners. There was always a bit of a scuffle at first, while they threw every projectile they could get their hands on, but eventually they ran out.
“Let’s watch a movie!” Kikumaru suggested brightly when no further projectiles presented themselves.
“That sounds good,” Kajimoto said warily, looking back and forth from where Kamio was glaring at Kirihara in one corner to where Kirihara was glaring at Kamio in the other. With a sigh, he sat down on the couch beside Sengoku.
“What do we want to watch?” Momoshiro asked, scrolling through the rather massive list of pirated movies on his computer.
“Something less boring than last time,” Echizen said smugly and pulled his cap down over his eyes.
Momoshiro glared at him.
“Ooh, ooh!” Kikumaru said. “How about something fun and cute?”
Shishido made gagging noises.
“I like romances,” Ohtori suggested.
Everyone blinked at him in horror.
“I, uh, don’t have any romances,” Momoshiro quickly assured the group.
“Let’s have some action,” Sengoku requested.
“With guns and lasers?” Shishido perked up for the first time.
“Explosions in space!” Kajimoto suggested excitedly.
Momoshiro scrolled through his file. “Uh…space? I’ve got, um, ‘Star Trek.’”
“Doesn’t that have lasers?” Kikumaru asked.
“Echizen, you’re from America,” Oishi pointed out. “You’ll know.”
Echizen just glared at him. “All I know is that it doesn’t have tennis.”
Kamio stopped glaring at Kirihara long enough to butt in. “It depends. Which Star Trek is it?”
Momoshiro blinked. “It just says: ‘Star Trek.’”
“Well,” Kamio sighed wearily, “how long is it? Is it movie-length?”
Momoshiro checked the file. “Yes.”
“Then it’s probably either the first one or the last one,” Kamio decided.
Kirihara was busy sulking, but he finally stirred to life at that. “I am not watching ‘Nemesis’ again,” he complained.
Kamio shuddered in agreement. “It should’ve ended with ‘All Good Things…’”
Kirihara’s eyes lit up. “I know, right? Because ‘First Contact’ was fun enough at the time, but they were just screwing the Borg over, so that no one could object when Voyager ruined them.”
“Exactly!” Kamio agreed. “‘Generations’ was a bust. They just wanted to destroy the old model, so they could replace everything with crappy CGI.”
“CGI worked in DS9; it did not work with the Enterprise.”
“And ‘Insurrection’ might have been an okay episode, but it was so dragged out as a movie.”
“I would rather have had ‘Insurrection’ end it than ‘Nemesis.’”
“God, yes!”
“Although ‘All Good Things…’ was still the best ending.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why they had to trash a perfectly good series ending with crappy movies.”
“It wasn’t like TOS, where the show’s life got cut short.”
“Right! There was still DS9.”
“And even Voyager had some good moments.”
“But let us never, ever speak of Enterprise.”
Kirihara shuddered.
Everyone else gaped.
“Uh… What do we do?” Kajimoto asked.
“Back away slowly?” Sengoku suggested.
“I think I liked them better before,” Shishido decided when a lively debate about the relative merits of TNG and DS9 started.
“What a pair of weirdoes,” Momoshiro agreed, like they’d been totally normal before.
As one, the rest of the group fled the lounge that had now been rendered unbearable by two very unexpected fonts of geek-knowledge.
“Oh my god!” Kirihara exclaimed. “I should link you to my blog. I complained so much about the Voyager finale!”
“I didn’t even like the DS9 one,” Kamio agreed. “Quick, what’s your cell phone number? We totally have to go see the new movie together.”
“We do!” Kirihara agreed. “And I want to borrow your DS9 DVDs some day. I have to rewatch the whole war arc straight.”
“It’s the best!” Kamio smiled back at him.
The next day, they were suddenly the best of friends.
“This is creepy!” Sengoku complained.
“Please, make them stop!” Kajimoto whined.
“Will you two knock it off already?” Shishido demanded.
Kirihara and Kamio just blinked at them.
“Have you guys ever considered getting help for your anger management problems?” Kamio suggested.
“Yeah, we’re all practically adults here. Chill,” Kirihara agreed.
It was the final straw, and many very loud “ow”s were heard as the rest of the group descended upon them.
***
Do the Roommate Shuffle: The Pun Is Mightier than the Word
“-can shove it up your ass,” Amane chuckled and sporfled to himself. “So then I said, ‘If it was up your ass, you’d know where it was.’”
Oshitari snickered into his soup. “Well, one time,” he began, “Gakuto was-”
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Atobe announced breezily and settled right down beside Oshitari, so close that their thighs were brushing.
Oshitari blinked over at him. “Atobe,” he greeted, “to what do we owe the honor of your presence?”
Atobe was oblivious to all snide tones when they came attached to compliments to his person, however. “I was just thinking to myself that I hadn’t seen my dear friend Oshitari much this camp, and he must simply be wasting away without my charm and grace to entertain him,” Atobe answered and slung an affectionate arm around Oshitari’s shoulders.
Amane blinked.
Oshitari’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “What do you want?” he demanded.
“What?” Atobe’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Moi? I have no clue what you could possibly be talking about.”
Oshitari gave him a suspicious look, glanced over to the dinner line, then spotted Kabaji sitting across from Shinjoh alone at a table at the far end of the room. They seemed to be entertaining each other or, at least, they were in each other’s vicinity while neither of them was talking or acknowledging the other’s existence. For Kabaji and Shinjoh, that was probably entertaining.
Finally, Oshitari shrugged and returned to his meal. “Didn’t get the fish today, I notice,” he commented smugly.
Atobe glared at him. “No, I prefer the chicken.”
Amane had no clue what all the tension was about, but he was more than happy to butt in at that. “Think of the poor chickens, though. I just don’t think they’ll be able to recoup!” He snorted.
Atobe’s eyes widened at him in horror.
Oshitari snickered.
Atobe’s eyes widened at him in horror. “Such a delightful roommate you have. How ever do you cope?”
Oshitari smirked and let Amane take it away.
“He could always call the cops on me!” Amane snorted.
Atobe blinked for a few seconds. “What? That doesn’t even make any sense!” he insisted, outraged. “They don’t even sound similar.”
Amane just grinned at him.
“A proper pun,” Atobe explained, “should at least be based off homophones. Similar spelling doesn’t cut it.”
Amane’s eyes glittered with unholy light. Oshitari thought for one second about the word ‘homophones’ and waved Amane off. After all, he liked Amane and didn’t want a real fight to break out. Instead, Amane just snickered to himself.
“What?” Atobe demanded.
Oshitari snickered, too.
Dinner went on like that, but Atobe continued to put up with it, which was how Oshitari knew Atobe was going to hit him up for a favor any second now. Atobe followed them back to the dorms, chatting amiably at Oshitari the whole time and, then finally, the bomb dropped.
“Say, Yushi,” Atobe said intimately, “I was thinking about how you’ve been forced to room around this whole camp, and it was rather unfair of me, wasn’t it? So how about you room with me tonight?” He flashed Oshitari a winning, movie-star smile.
Amane frowned at this turn of events.
Oshitari just rolled his eyes. “No,” he insisted, and slammed their door in Atobe’s face.
There was a pause and then violent knocking. Oshitari opened the door.
“Come on, Yushi,” Atobe said apologetically. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Just-”
“You said I snore,” Oshitari pointed out.
“Well, yes,” Atobe conceded, “but there are always earplugs for that, and we haven’t talked all week, and-”
“No.” Oshitari slammed the door on him again.
Amane looked at him curiously. “Won’t he get mad at you?” he asked nervously.
“Don’t worry,” Oshitari assured him. “His bark is way worse than his bite, and he doesn’t hold grudges.”
Knocking sounded on the door again. Oshitari opened it one last time.
“All right,” Atobe confessed, “you got me, fair and square. But you saw what Kabaji was eating tonight!”
“Anchovies, wasn’t it?” Oshitari smirked.
“He gets gassy, Yushi,” Atobe pleaded. “And there’s no escape from that!”
“Then I guess you should have thought of that possibility before you made me room with Ibu, of all people,” Oshitari concluded.
“Do you want me to say I’m sorry?”
“And Shinjoh.”
“I’m sorry, Yushi.”
“And Wakato.”
“Now, forgive me?”
“And one of those dysfunctional twins. I forget which.”
Atobe batted his eyelashes.
“I forgive you,” Oshitari finally conceded with a sigh. “But the answer is still no.”
Atobe gasped in outrage. “B-But…”
“I happen to like my roommate,” Oshitari explained. “Sorry. You could always try switching with one of the others.”
Atobe scowled at him. “I don’t believe this. Betrayed by one of my own!” he exclaimed melodramatically.
“Betrayed?” Oshitari retorted. “Oh, please. I have been exceptionally, unquestionably loyal to you for my entire stint on the Hyotei team. This hardly qualifies as a knife in the back. Now, go open your window for tonight or something, and let me get some sleep.”
Atobe grumbled, finally resigned to his fate. “Oh, take your loyalty and shove it up your ass.”
Oshitari smirked. “If it was up your ass, at least you’d know where it was.” And he slammed the door on Atobe’s face for the final time.
He and Amane turned to each other and laughed so hard they hurt.
***
The High Life: Karma
Because tennis was serious business and camp didn’t come free and this wasn’t a party, Sakaki and Hanamura gave Tezuka homework the last week of camp. First thing the next morning, Tezuka caught the two of them with a pointed “ahem.”
“Ah,” Hanamura said with a smile, “you’ve finished your report?”
“Yes,” Tezuka agreed. “Is now convenient?”
“By all means,” Sakaki said in a bored tone, sprawled over the sofa.
Tezuka pushed his glasses up his nose and began to read from the paper he held before him. “To me, coaching centers on one fundamental principal: karma.”
Sakaki raised an eyebrow.
“Every player, at one point, was taught their skills. Hours of training and many coaches form the basis of each player’s skills. Coaching itself is, thus, the completion of the circle. What a player receives, he eventually gives back in the form of coaching future generations.”
Hanamura scratched her head.
“One is only truly skilled as a player through their ability to relate their knowledge to others, and one is only truly skilled as a coach through their ability to relate to the challenges a player faces when attempting to perfect their game. In the end teaching - coaching - is the greatest form of achievement because it demonstrates that a player has truly come full-circle and learned the game inside out.”
Sakaki checked his Rolex.
“And it is this meaning of karma, not the moralistic one, to which I refer. The player gets back from the coach that which the coach once received as a player. The coach gets back from his players that which furthers his own goals as a player.” Tezuka cleared his throat again. “Thank you.”
Hanamura blinked. “A very…interesting interpretation,” she commented.
“Quite satisfactory,” Sakaki agreed. “You can go ahead and start practice now.”
Tezuka gave him a curious look. “You won’t be supervising the morning practice?”
“Ah, no,” Sakaki said evasively. “I have other matters to attend to at the moment.”
Tezuka’s gaze turned to Hanamura.
“Dreadfully important calculations to run on my players’ coordination routines,” she explained. “Could you take the whole group today?”
Tezuka just nodded and went off to do so.
Sakaki and Hanamura gave each other a suspicious look once Tezuka was gone.
“So,” Sakaki said innocently and got up, “I’ll just go work on some schedules right now.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Hanamura agreed, “and I’d better finish my coordination reports.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
They both went in their separate directions. Of course, as soon as the other was out of sight, they both bolted for the parking lots their respective cars were parked in.
Hanamura patted the discount card on the seat of her shiny new convertible. Today only, everything at the technology expo was 80%, for teachers only. Clearly, she needed to avail herself of all these beautiful gadgets, for the good of mankind. And possibly also those lasers you could mount to the front of your car that didn’t really do anything, but made you feel like you had phasers. True, they’d be a pain to install, but Hanamura could always make Shinjoh do it and convince him it was a test of his fine motor coordination. Shinjoh would buy anything like that. With a smirk, she hit the gas and backed out of the lot.
Sakaki slid into his Porsche, slipped on his sunglasses, and started the engine. It hummed rapturously beneath his careful touch and purred into gear. He checked his hair in the rearview mirror as he jetted out of the lot. After all, this was an exclusive luncheon with some of the wealthiest parents in all of Hyotei (excluding the Atobe family, alas), all of whom wanted nothing more than to thank him for keeping their unruly teenagers away from the more expensive items in their homes while at tennis practice.
As a result, neither Hanamura nor Sakaki were really paying attention while they pulled out of their respective lots, which - coincidentally - happened to be right across from each other.
The following crunch could be heard all the way from the tennis courts, where the practice matches came to a sudden halt at the sound of violent, twisting metal.
“What was that?” Mizuki wondered.
“Oi, oi? It sounds like there was an accident in the parking lot!” Kikumaru announced.
Of course, that set everyone off running to see what happened.
“My fault?” Sakaki was screeching. “You were driving backwards without even looking where you were going!” The entire front of his Porsche was totaled.
“I had right of way!” Hanamura was screeching back, pointing at the rear-end of her convertible, which was now completely flattened. “How could you possibly have missed me? Oh, that’s right: you didn’t!”
“Ooh, coach fight!” Saeki said excitedly.
Sanada snorted. “That’s what they get for wasting so much money on frivolous vehicles.”
Tezuka blinked at the collision. “Karma…” he repeated slowly to himself.
“Hmm, what was that?” Atobe asked curiously.
“Oh, nothing,” Tezuka almost smirked. “They just really shouldn’t have let their guards down.”
Atobe snickered.
“All right, everyone!” Tezuka called the students to attention once more. “Fifteen laps, now!”
That was enough to save everyone from gawking all day. There were several groans, but eventually everyone headed off down the path.
Really, Tezuka thought as he kept pace with the back of the group to make sure no one was dawdling, the most important part of being a coach had nothing to do with karma at all. That was the thing none of the other coaches seemed to understand. It was actually all about assigning pointless numbers of laps.
***
The Five Trials of Sanada Genichiro: The Beginning of the End
The final day of camp, Sanada woke up, reached over to his bed stand, and found that his beloved cap was missing. He immediately jolted from bed, flew out the door, and - with the unerring precision of a homing beacon - located his cap with the rest of his group in the lounge.
“No, no, I’m Sanada,” Mizuki snickered, put the cap on, and scowled. “A bazillion laps!” he said in a completely failed attempt at a low voice.
“An unimpressive imitation,” Inui commented and scribbled in his notebook. “Excellent data on personal weaknesses.”
Mizuki scowled at him.
“Here, let me,” Saeki snatched the cap from Mizuki’s head and folded his arms over his chest. “Slackers!” he snarled and then completely ruined the effect by bursting out laughing.
“Hey, that was pretty good,” Yuta snickered.
“We’re going to get in trouble…” Kaidoh warned, but he looked more amused than usual, too.
“I think Taka should go next,” Fuji suggested.
Kawamura paled. “This…really isn’t my sort of thing. I-” Fuji shoved a racket into his hand and the cap on his head. “My fire is burning, baby!” Kawamura shouted out and swung the racket around wildly.
Everyone laughed except for Yanagi, dear old reliable Yanagi who took the cap from Kawamura’s head and…promptly placed it on his own head. “Oh, Captain Yukimura,” he sighed like a girl. “You’re so handsome and magnificent at tennis! Assign me laps, captain. Assign me laps hard!”
And that was the last straw. Sanada stalked into the lounge, snatched his sacred cap from Yanagi, and growled at them all.
Everyone gulped at took a terrified step backwards. Sanada’s eyes looked like a bull about to charge.
Sanada’s eyes circled the room in threat and then, just as abruptly, he stalked back out without so much as a word.
“Uh…” Saeki blinked. “Were the laps just implied?”
Inui scratched his head. “This behavior defies all data.”
“I told you all this was a bad idea,” Kaidoh worried.
Yanagi’s face turned pale. “I think he may actually be…mad.” The last word came out like a whimper.
“You mean he isn’t usually mad?” Yuta blinked at him in disbelief.
Yanagi shook his head and was actually trembling at the thought.
That was around when the rest of the group got really, seriously worried…
---
Sanada, for his part, stalked all the way back to his room and snatched up his cell phone. He hit the top button on the speed dial and only had to wait a second for a response. “They messed with my cap,” he snarled into the receiver. “I need punishments. I need punishments for everyone! The more humiliating, the better.”
At the other end, Yukimura’s light, tinkling laughter could be heard. “Oh, what fun! Tee-hee!”
Already Sanada felt better as Yukimura laid out what had to be done.
---
“Sadaharu?” Yanagi asked after breakfast that morning.
“Mmm?” Inui looked up.
“Have you seen Genichiro today?”
Inui readjusted his glasses. “Ah. You mean, since the, er, incident this morning?”
“Exactly.” Yanagi frowned. “I haven’t seen him since. This isn’t normal for him. I’m concerned. We may have actually taken things too far.”
“Interesting,” Inui considered him, and his fingers inched over toward his notebook.
Yanagi glared at him.
Inui forced himself to stop. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen him. He didn’t come to breakfast at all.”
Yanagi’s frown deepened. “That definitely isn’t like him…”
“Is he still in your room?”
“I, uh, haven’t gone back there yet,” Yanagi confessed. He refused to admit that he was afraid of encountering Sanada away from the safety of multiple witnesses.
Inui just shrugged.
Yanagi left the dining hall and was forced to admit that it was a reasonable suggestion. He’d already checked the courts, and Ryuzaki’s group had run the path that morning and hadn’t seen Sanada there. Yanagi steeled himself up and ventured back to his and Sanada’s shared room. After all, he was one of Rikkaidai’s three demons in his own right (even if Sanada was most certainly a bigger and scarier demon).
Sanada wasn’t in their room, however. Yanagi flicked on the lights to make sure that the lump on Sanada’s bed was just the blanket. That was even more unusual; Sanada was rigorous about making his bed first thing in the morning. Yanagi began to grow seriously concerned, and that was when he noticed the notebook on his bed.
He frowned and reached for it.
“Yanagi Renji,” the cover read. Yanagi recognized Inui’s handwriting.
His eyes widened in slow realization that this was Inui’s data book on him. Voraciously, he flipped it open and began reading. Within mere seconds, he was sputtering in outrage.
“Y-You!” he stormed into Inui and Kaidoh’s room in time to catch them packing before practice.
Kaidoh’s eyes widened in alarm.
“You called me an emotionally-repressed, two-faced coward!” Yanagi snarled at Inui.
Inui turned from his bed slowly, the light gleaming off his glasses, to reveal that he, too, held a notebook that had been ‘accidentally’ left on his bed. “Well, you called me a clingy copycat whose former friendship you could exploit to Rikkaidai’s advantage!” Inui snarled right back at him.
“Well, that’s all true,” Yanagi insisted. “But how dare you-”
“How dare I?” Inui growled.
Kaidoh’s eyes widened as a fistfight erupted right before him, full of screaming, kicking, and fur flying…well, okay, technically it was hair. Slowly, he backed out of the room. He wanted no part of anything this nasty.
---
“Yanagi and Inui both got suspended from the finals for fighting?” Mizuki snickered. “How silly of them.” He lugged his bag over his shoulder in preparation for loading it on the bus.
However, at that point, the strategically-placed rip in the side pocket tore open, and several items fell from his bag.
It also just so happened that Fuji was in line behind him at the time.
Fuji looked down at what Mizuki dropped. Mizuki looked, too. Fuji’s eyes widened. Mizuki’s face went ashen.
“What,” Fuji asked in his softest, most angelic voice, “is this?” He bent over to pick up three items: a box of extra-small condoms, a tube of lubricant, and a picture of Yuta.
Mizuki sputtered. “I-I swear! Those aren’t mine!”
“Hmm,” Fuji smiled beatifically at him, “and last time we met, I thanked you so nicely for taking such good care of my little brother…”
“I swear to god!” Mizuki squeaked. “I’m being set up!”
The only person to witness this exchange was Saeki, but he’d been too busy trying to fit his own oversized bag through his door to catch up to them before they rounded the corner. When he reached where they should have been, they’d vanished into thin air.
No one saw Mizuki for the next two weeks.
When he finally did reappear, he was covered from head to toe in seaweed, had a large tattoo blazoned across his back that he refused to show anyone, and for some reason his voice had jumped an octave. To his dying day, he refused to say what happened to him during those two weeks or even admit that anything had happened at all.
Fuji smiled and nodded at him the next time they saw each other at a meet, though, and Mizuki instinctively broke out into a cold sweat and had to lie down in the locker rooms, sick to his stomach.
---
“Funny about how so many people in your group are disappearing at the last minute,” Kisarazu Ryo said to Saeki when they’d all gathered together at the gym for the close of camp.
“Or is it punny?” Amane snorted.
Ryo looked at him disdainfully. “We’ll be home soon, and I’m telling Bane you said that.”
Amane, disturbingly, looked eager about this.
Saeki’s cell phone took that moment to ring, and he blushed when he recognized Aoi’s number.
“Someone has the hots for our freshman captain,” Amane sing-songed and slung a companionable arm around Ryo’s shoulders.
Ryo shoved it right off.
Saeki looked at the text, though, and his face paled. “Wh-What? This is? How did?”
“Huh?” Amane blinked at him. “What is it?”
Ryo snatched the phone away. There, on the screen, was the message: sorry but im strait. Ryo blinked. “You told Aoi you liked him?”
“What?” Saeki stammered. “N-No!”
Amane read the message over Ryo’s shoulders. “Well, someone did.” Ryo flipped through the menu, and Amane’s eyes widened. “And they sent it from your phone?”
“Wh-What?” Saeki snatched it back. There, under his sent messages was: i luv u! lets b boyfriends! :D Saeki fell to his knees. “B-But… I didn’t! Oh god, my life is over!”
“Uh, vice-captain?” Ryo said nervously. “We’re about to go. Aren’t you coming?”
“Just leave without me,” Saeki whimpered into his cell phone.
“If Aoi’s straight, he won’t be coming ever!” Amane snickered.
Ryo hit him on the back of the head as a favor to Kurobane for later.
---
“Shusuke, I’m scared,” Yuta said nervously. “This is supposed to be Sanada who’s pissed, but it seems like it’s you.”
“It’s not me, I assure you,” Fuji patted his hand. “And, even if it was, you’d be safe.”
Yuta didn’t look convinced.
Especially since, at that moment, Yumiko rushed in. “Where are they?” she demanded. “Where are my adorable little baby brothers?”
Fuji and Yuta both froze in horror.
“There you are!” Yumiko waved and headed over to them. “I got your emergency text message, Yuta, and I’ve brought all the stuff you needed.” She opened up the bag under her arm and began pulling things out to hand to them. “Here’s extra underwear, since you both ran out. I brought you two the ones with little cacti and little rocket ships that I got you for your last birthdays. For some reason, they were buried at the very bottom of your drawers. I don’t know why, since they’re so cute!” She held them up to inspect their cuteness.
All the boys in the room broke out laughing.
“And here’s some anti-itch cream for the boil on Yuta’s butt,” Yumiko handed it over to a stunned Yuta. “And some, er, more special cream for the rash on Shusuke’s, er, special place.”
Fuji gaped at her numbly.
“Now,” she ruffled both their hair, “amn’t I the best big sister ever?” She graced them with a beatific smile.
Yuta screamed and fainted.
Fuji just stood there, frozen almost comatose with embarrassment.
“I am, amn’t I?” Yumiko answered her own question happily.
---
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god,” Kawamura whimpered to himself.
“We’re next!” Kaidoh panicked. “I knew it was a bad idea! I tried to warn everyone!”
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Kawamura asked.
“No one can save us now…” Kaidoh whimpered.
“Ahem,” Sanada’s very recognizable, very authoritarian cough cut them off.
Twin screams followed.
“It wasn’t me, I swear!” Kaidoh insisted.
“I didn’t want to!” Kawamura assured him. “But then I had the racket, and I go kind of crazy when that happens, and I’m so, so sorry!”
Sanada cracked his knuckles.
“Please don’t kill us!” Kaidoh begged.
“We’ll make it up to you! We promise!” Kawamura agreed.
“I have decided on your punishments,” Sanada said very calmly, his eyes hidden beneath the brim of his cap.
Kaidoh and Kawamura clung to each other and shivered.
“A hundred laps!” Sanada ordered.
Kaidoh and Kawamura blinked.
“Th-That’s it?” Kaidoh finally ventured.
Sanada shrugged. “I know it wasn’t either of your ideas,” he conceded. “So a hundred laps before I change my mind!”
“Y-Yes!” Kawamura agreed, and they were both off running.
Sanada watched them go with a satisfied smile and removed the cell phone from his pocket. “It worked perfectly,” he informed Yukimura as soon as he picked up.
“Mmm,” Yukimura agreed, “of course it did.”
Sanada sighed, just like the little girl Yanagi had been imitating earlier. “You’re so incredible,” he purred into the phone.
“Just for that?” Yukimura said lightly. “But, Sanada, I thought you understood. After they made things so hard for my vice-captain, they deserved what they’ve gotten so far…”
Sanada smiled into the phone at Yukimura’s melodious voice of revenge.
“And,” Yukimura said angelically, “that was only the beginning.”
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