EVENT: Closing Ceremonies (Saitama Prefecture)

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By the time the ceremonial closing speech had begun, lunch had just ended and in all likelihood most students were ready for a quick nap.

Comments

[the_worst_ace]

Of those caught up in the concepts "pride of Saitama" and "national source of Pride," Haruna Motoki might arguably be among the most ardently attentive, since these words of inspiration, as predictable and as boring as some might say they were, held a lot of meaning for him.

So, as like usual sitting next to Akimaru, who may or may not have been paying close of attention, and sitting with the rest of Musashino, including all the senpais (this was to be their last formal event in high school baseball), Haruna thought a lot about the season he'd just had, and the season soon to come.

Over the summer, without fully realizing it, his goals had shifted. Oh, he still fully intended to go pro, either directly out of high school or after playing in college (he hadn't yet decided what would be better). That goal was his life-long dream and would never change, barring injury or death or whatever annoying matters of fate might make it impossible, such as if suddenly he were called upon by the nation of Japan to do covert ninja work off in Thailand or something-- he took his responsibilities as a citizen quite seriously, after all.

But now he also had added to that goal a new one: make it to Koushien. He didn't aspire for full-out national conquest: his assessment of his own team's skills was realistic enough for him to see that this was a bit of a reach, even with his own amazing baseball prowess fronting the entire enterprise. But his senpais had worked so hard and had given him so much; it would only be right to try to bring that dream into fruition, even if they'd be in the stands instead of out on the field, where they obviously would rather have been.

And without the senpais around to make this happen, regardless of next year's crop of first year students who would be signing on (hopefully with some really great prospects, attracted to Musashino by Haruna's own awesomeness), the only way this was going to happen was if Akimaru started seriously working for it.

Getting Akimaru's inspiration up was proving difficult. The night prior to the ceremony, Haruna had opened up the first volume of Bleach, and started reading, almost immediately to get bored and annoyed since it was just some dumb fighting and ghost story, which made this different from Naruto how? But then the girl with the sword showed up and started sassing at the main guy, and the girl with the sword was very cute and interesting, and so Haruna felt maybe reading this wouldn't be so tedious after all. It was shocking and outrageous, however, that the main guy ended up accidentally stealing all her powers, and so obviously Haruna would have to keep reading at least until she got all of her powers back again.

But Haruna knew that reading Bleach alone was not going to be enough to inspire Akimaru, amazingly and epically lazy as he was. The next day's game might be better, and Haruna was looking forward to that because of all the promised snacks as well as the opportunity to endlessly lecture Akimaru about baseball, but in their assigned seating he'd been placed next to Shun, his Ninja Apprentice, so obviously Shun would need to be afforded some teaching as well, and on the other side of Shun was Takaya, and Haruna was going to make special efforts to be thoughtful and considerate towards his old Todakita catcher, since he'd so recently broken Takaya's tender heart. Maybe he'd have Akimaru give Takaya some snacks as well?

Anyway. Haruna really wanted Akimaru to come on board and start working seriously. It was so stupid that Akimaru was a ninja too but absolutely refused to admit it or live up to the code. After Bleach, he wasn't sure yet of what his next step would be, but honestly Haruna had to admit that this was becoming a goal too, in its own right, since it would be great to see Akimaru be as awesome at baseball as he had every potential to be. Unfortunately, Haruna wasn't sure how to best teach a catcher to be a catcher. Maybe he could talk to his old Todakita coach and see if he could help Akimaru.

The closing ceremony went on, and unlike a lot of the people there, Haruna wasn't gossiping or joking on the side. He was drinking in every word, and thinking hard about the future.