cashew (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cashew) wrote,@ 2005-03-30 13:23:00 |
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Prince Cafe - Chapter 10
Title: The Prince Cafe
Chapter: 10
Fandom: Tenipuri
Pairings: A little reference of ShishixTori...if even that.
Disclaimer: Original series belong to Konomi-sensei. I take absolutely zero claim for this.
Idea for this story was inspired by the newest set of clear cards with "The Prince Cafe" theme.
Author's Note: *blinks* It's the last chapter. It's the last chapter!! I've finished this series! OMFG! *wibbles* I can't believe I finished writing this. I'm so effing tired and brain dead, but it's done! Now I can concentrate on writing for Psydai! Woohoo! Oh, and yeah, there's a short omake at the end. And ur...does anyone care? :p
===
Chapter 10 – Alpha and Omega
Everyone held his breath as Saeki announced, once again, the start of the tiebreaker. “6-all. Tie break. Hyotei Atobe to serve.”
Atobe threw the small yellow ball into the air and served, clean and fast. Rapidly, he approached the net as the spectators watched the tableau unfold. Both players continued as though they hadn’t been interfered by a dripping wet tensai, while said tensai had to be physically held back by Momoshiro and Kawamura under Yamato’s orders.
“Will Tezuka-san’s shoulder hold out?”
Eight pairs of eyes turned to glare at the speaker. Sensing doom in his near future, Kirihara ducked behind Sanada and squeaked, “Save me, Sanada-fukubuchou!”
Sanada rolled his eyes at his teammate’s antics and dragged the cowering Kirihara out by the collar of his jersey.
Finally, it was Yamato who answered Kirihara.
“For all the time that I have known Tezuka, he has always gotten what he wanted. And right now, there is nothing he wants more than to win this match.” Even hidden behind his sunglasses, the regulars could see the answer was directed not at Kirihara but at the still fuming Fuji.
As the game progressed beyond the 7-7 mark, at the Hyotei side of the audience, Shishido, who had recovered from his run in with Inui Juice 3 games prior, began taking down bets from the spectators on who will win this rematch of the Kantou games. Ohtori tried to talk Shishido out of his illegal behavior, but sheepishly put himself down for betting on Tezuka when Shishido talked over him.
Shishido paused to look at Ohtori with a shocked expression and exclaimed, “Choutarou! You’re betting against your own team?”
The yell had been loud enough to carry into the courts and Atobe suddenly whirled around, ignoring the ball that had sailed back on Tezuka’s return to yell, “Oi! How dare anyone not bet on ore-sama as the winner?” and promptly lost his lead to Tezuka. Realizing his mistake, Atobe quickly returned his attention to the game at hand.
Hearing an opportunity to further carry out their interschool rivalry, Inui dragged an unwilling Kaidoh, followed by the rest of the regulars with Fuji tailing behind, to the other side of the court. Greeting Shishido, Inui laid his bets down for the Seigaku buchou. One after another, the Seigaku regulars wrote their names under the Tezuka column, with the exception to Fuji, who had calmed down from his previous actions and placed his bet on Atobe.
“Hm… Fuji is betting on Atobe?” Inui observed over the shorter Shishido’s shoulder. Shishido gave the towering boy a glare, but said little else. “Looks like he’s still holding a grudge against Tezuka, ne?”
Smiling his deadliest smile at Inui, Fuji answered, “Iie. There’re so many people betting on Tezuka that the payback for betting on Atobe is at almost 1:100. Even if I only bet 100 yen, I will still get 10,000 yen in return. The loss, should Atobe lose, will be minimal.”
Yuuta, who had been caught in the stampeed of Seigaku members and was dragged along, muttered, “That’s just like you, Aniki.”
“Ii, data,” Inui agreed. “I see Fuji’s calculations are quite shrewd.”
“That’s just cold, Fuji-sempai,” Momoshiro observed from the side. “All said, you’re still betting against Tezuka-buchou. Don’t you have any sense of team loyalty?”
Turning his smile on the unsuspecting Momoshiro, Fuji tilted his head at the towering Ohtori and said, “That didn’t stop him from betting on Tezuka.”
“Yeah, but they’re from Hyotei,” Kaidoh interjected with a slight hiss.
“And what is that supposed to mean,” yelled Shishido, who was feeling the rise of a temper tantrum at being boxed in by a looming Inui over one shoulder and Ohtori over the other.
Suddenly, Kirihara pushed his way to Shishido’s side and piped up in the hearing range of the Seigaku members with, “I want to place a bet on Atobe-san.” Clearly he was one who did not learn his lessons. Or it could just be that the boy had a short attention span. Regardless, he suddenly found himself under the glare of the Seigaku regulars for the second time in under an hour, but with out a threatening fukubuchou to hide behind. Looking around at the sudden silence, Kirihara assessed the situation and quickly came to the correct conclusion of “Eep.”
He was saved from his imminent death when Sengoku also pushed his way into the circle that was beginning to grow around Shishido to place his own bets, strategically blocking the attacking path of the Seigaku regulars.
“Put me down for Atobe-san too. I’m feeling lah-kee!”
Before the last “ee” fell, Sengoku suddenly found himself under a pile of bodies, the closest being Momoshiro and Kaidoh. Kaidoh was hissing viciously, “Take that back, you leprechaun.” And Momoshiro decided to do away with verbal abuse and resort to pinching painfully at Sengoku’s left cheek.
Taking in the chaos that had stemmed from his illegal entrepreneur activities, Shishido muttered to Ohtori, “Maybe you’re right, Choutarou. I really shouldn’t have started the betting pool.”
“Too late,” a new voice spoke up. Kamio and managed to climb over the pile of struggling tennis players to place his own bets. “You’ve started the pool, so you’ll have to finish it, or face the wrath of unhappy customers. Now, put me down for Tezuka.”
Shishido was about to put down Kamio’s name when he heard, “You probably shouldn’t be doing this. Tachibana-san wouldn’t like it if he knew his teammates were participating in illegal gambling and betting on non-professional players just makes the entire situation even more distasteful. After all, it’s not as if Tezuka-san and Atobe-san are playing a match to entertain their audiences. We should respect their love for the game instead of capitalizing on it like some bad after-school special…”
Although Ibu Shinji’s mumbling was a rather persuasive argument, the other people involved had become so habituated to Ibu’s usually pointless rambling tangents that they merely ignored whatever was coming out of his mouth this time. Chalking up Ibu as being part of Seigaku’s insanity, Shishido quickly jotted down a new name in his book.
It was then that Yamato showed up and announced, “I’d like to place a bet under Tezuka and Atobe.”
“Yamato-sempai!” Oishi gasped in shock. “Shouldn’t you be trying to stop us?”
“But why would I do that, Oishi?” Yamato smiled back eerily at the Seigaku fukubuchou.
“Because what we’re doing is illegal?” Oishi questioned back, though his voice wavered under the steady gaze.
“Ah, but if you know it was illegal, then why continue participating in the activity?” was Yamato’s reasonable demand.
Answerless, the boys stared at one another, a feeling of shame and guilt slowly building. Even Shishido looked suitably chastised. It was then that the only innocent member began his “I told you” speech.
“I knew nothing good would have come out of this entire situation. This was why Tachibana-san always said to follow rules unless you had to break them. The only time when Tachibana-san did anything questionable was getting our coach fired, but that was a reasonable thing to do, since he was treating us like crap and we didn’t really hit him. It really isn’t a violence problem if we were the one being bullied in the first place and it’s not as if we didn’t go through the proper channels. Just because we had to rough him up a bit before he’ll let us go see the principal was no reason to say that we actually had a violence problem…”
And so, what had began as a reasonable chastisement was once again derailed by a tangent, as was the usual for Ibu Shinji.
It was then that Tezuka and Atobe appeared in the betting circle, looking weary and, for the lack of a better word, thoroughly debauched.
“Eh? The game ended?” Kirihara, no longer under attack by Seigaku, asked the obvious.
“Aa,” Tezuka replied blandly then looked back at the staring faces. “What is it?”
“Well? Who won?!” Momoshiro finally asked the question that was at the heart of the betting pool.
“Neither,” was Atobe’s answer.
“But how?” Echizen, who had remained silent due to the combined effect of Inui juice and having to forfeit his game, finally spoke up.
Instead of answering, Atobe turned and hollered, “Kabaji!”
“Usu.”
The hulking form of Kabaji lumbered over with something draped over his shoulder. When he dumped his load onto the ground before the spectators, they realized it was a fairly traumatized looking Saeki.
“Ask him,” Atobe sneered, fingers plucking at his racquet to work off the restless energy.
Looking up at the confused stares, Saeki shrugged helplessly and said, “We didn’t have any balls left for them to play with.”
His declaration was met with stunned silence. Finally, Fuji clarified, “Are you saying that all of the balls are no longer in playing condition?”
Saeki nodded sheepishly. Awed stares turned to the two standing buchou-tachi.
Finally, Atobe broke the silence with a soft huff. “Che. I’ll settle this with you at the nationals,” he addressed Tezuka. Then turning to leave, he tossed over his shoulder, “Kabaji, collect everyone and let’s go.”
“Usu.”
Kabaji grabbed the Hyotei doubles 1 pair in an undignified fireman’s carry and walked off after Atobe. Shishido’s cursing could be heard even when the Hyotei team had disappeared from sight.
“Ah well, that was interesting,” Sengoku commented as he climbed to his feet now that the Seigaku team was no longer piled on him. Waving goodbye, he trotted off, followed by the Fudomine pair, who took Sengoku’s departure as their cue to leave.
Sanada appeared shortly to collect Kirihara who was still muttering, “But they didn’t even finish the game. How can they not finish a game and leave it like this? Are they really this willing to walk away?” Not bothering to acknowledge the other people present, Sanada dragged Kirihara off by the collar of his shirt, looking distinctly pained.
As the audience dispersed now that the spontaneous practice match had ended, Tezuka sent a general glare at all of his teammates. Everyone wisely stayed quiet. Finally, Tezuka let out a stern, “It’s getting late. We still have training tomorrow. Everyone go home and show up early for practice. Dismissed!”
“Hai!” Eight voices answered in unison and the Seigaku regulars were soon scrambling to follow their buchou’s orders.
As the trainees collected their equipment, Yamato approached Tezuka and patted him on the shoulder. “You did well,” he commented with a smile. At Tezuka’s disbelieving gaze, Yamato elaborated, “they may not look it, but now you’ve showed them without a doubt that their pillar is back and standing and they’ve gained more confidence. With a leader like you, Seigaku will definitely win the nationals.”
Considering Yamato’s words, Tezuka finally agreed, “Aa.”
In the last rays of the setting sun, Tezuka collected his equipment and left the courts with his team, their voices still ringing across the now empty fixtures.
~*owari*~
OMAKE
Oshitari stared at the spatula in his hands and back at the Hyotei buchou who was trying to stuff a sleepy Akutagawa into a pink frilly apron.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Oshitari said for the tenth time in as many minutes, after Atobe had announced that they were going to take a page out of Seigaku’s training menu and open a restaurant, with Oshitari as head cook, as special training.
“Ore-sama,” Atobe responded with great dignity, “does not kid.”
Title: The Prince Cafe
Chapter: 10
Fandom: Tenipuri
Pairings: A little reference of ShishixTori...if even that.
Disclaimer: Original series belong to Konomi-sensei. I take absolutely zero claim for this.
Idea for this story was inspired by the newest set of clear cards with "The Prince Cafe" theme.
Author's Note: *blinks* It's the last chapter. It's the last chapter!! I've finished this series! OMFG! *wibbles* I can't believe I finished writing this. I'm so effing tired and brain dead, but it's done! Now I can concentrate on writing for Psydai! Woohoo! Oh, and yeah, there's a short omake at the end. And ur...does anyone care? :p
===
Chapter 10 – Alpha and Omega
Everyone held his breath as Saeki announced, once again, the start of the tiebreaker. “6-all. Tie break. Hyotei Atobe to serve.”
Atobe threw the small yellow ball into the air and served, clean and fast. Rapidly, he approached the net as the spectators watched the tableau unfold. Both players continued as though they hadn’t been interfered by a dripping wet tensai, while said tensai had to be physically held back by Momoshiro and Kawamura under Yamato’s orders.
“Will Tezuka-san’s shoulder hold out?”
Eight pairs of eyes turned to glare at the speaker. Sensing doom in his near future, Kirihara ducked behind Sanada and squeaked, “Save me, Sanada-fukubuchou!”
Sanada rolled his eyes at his teammate’s antics and dragged the cowering Kirihara out by the collar of his jersey.
Finally, it was Yamato who answered Kirihara.
“For all the time that I have known Tezuka, he has always gotten what he wanted. And right now, there is nothing he wants more than to win this match.” Even hidden behind his sunglasses, the regulars could see the answer was directed not at Kirihara but at the still fuming Fuji.
As the game progressed beyond the 7-7 mark, at the Hyotei side of the audience, Shishido, who had recovered from his run in with Inui Juice 3 games prior, began taking down bets from the spectators on who will win this rematch of the Kantou games. Ohtori tried to talk Shishido out of his illegal behavior, but sheepishly put himself down for betting on Tezuka when Shishido talked over him.
Shishido paused to look at Ohtori with a shocked expression and exclaimed, “Choutarou! You’re betting against your own team?”
The yell had been loud enough to carry into the courts and Atobe suddenly whirled around, ignoring the ball that had sailed back on Tezuka’s return to yell, “Oi! How dare anyone not bet on ore-sama as the winner?” and promptly lost his lead to Tezuka. Realizing his mistake, Atobe quickly returned his attention to the game at hand.
Hearing an opportunity to further carry out their interschool rivalry, Inui dragged an unwilling Kaidoh, followed by the rest of the regulars with Fuji tailing behind, to the other side of the court. Greeting Shishido, Inui laid his bets down for the Seigaku buchou. One after another, the Seigaku regulars wrote their names under the Tezuka column, with the exception to Fuji, who had calmed down from his previous actions and placed his bet on Atobe.
“Hm… Fuji is betting on Atobe?” Inui observed over the shorter Shishido’s shoulder. Shishido gave the towering boy a glare, but said little else. “Looks like he’s still holding a grudge against Tezuka, ne?”
Smiling his deadliest smile at Inui, Fuji answered, “Iie. There’re so many people betting on Tezuka that the payback for betting on Atobe is at almost 1:100. Even if I only bet 100 yen, I will still get 10,000 yen in return. The loss, should Atobe lose, will be minimal.”
Yuuta, who had been caught in the stampeed of Seigaku members and was dragged along, muttered, “That’s just like you, Aniki.”
“Ii, data,” Inui agreed. “I see Fuji’s calculations are quite shrewd.”
“That’s just cold, Fuji-sempai,” Momoshiro observed from the side. “All said, you’re still betting against Tezuka-buchou. Don’t you have any sense of team loyalty?”
Turning his smile on the unsuspecting Momoshiro, Fuji tilted his head at the towering Ohtori and said, “That didn’t stop him from betting on Tezuka.”
“Yeah, but they’re from Hyotei,” Kaidoh interjected with a slight hiss.
“And what is that supposed to mean,” yelled Shishido, who was feeling the rise of a temper tantrum at being boxed in by a looming Inui over one shoulder and Ohtori over the other.
Suddenly, Kirihara pushed his way to Shishido’s side and piped up in the hearing range of the Seigaku members with, “I want to place a bet on Atobe-san.” Clearly he was one who did not learn his lessons. Or it could just be that the boy had a short attention span. Regardless, he suddenly found himself under the glare of the Seigaku regulars for the second time in under an hour, but with out a threatening fukubuchou to hide behind. Looking around at the sudden silence, Kirihara assessed the situation and quickly came to the correct conclusion of “Eep.”
He was saved from his imminent death when Sengoku also pushed his way into the circle that was beginning to grow around Shishido to place his own bets, strategically blocking the attacking path of the Seigaku regulars.
“Put me down for Atobe-san too. I’m feeling lah-kee!”
Before the last “ee” fell, Sengoku suddenly found himself under a pile of bodies, the closest being Momoshiro and Kaidoh. Kaidoh was hissing viciously, “Take that back, you leprechaun.” And Momoshiro decided to do away with verbal abuse and resort to pinching painfully at Sengoku’s left cheek.
Taking in the chaos that had stemmed from his illegal entrepreneur activities, Shishido muttered to Ohtori, “Maybe you’re right, Choutarou. I really shouldn’t have started the betting pool.”
“Too late,” a new voice spoke up. Kamio and managed to climb over the pile of struggling tennis players to place his own bets. “You’ve started the pool, so you’ll have to finish it, or face the wrath of unhappy customers. Now, put me down for Tezuka.”
Shishido was about to put down Kamio’s name when he heard, “You probably shouldn’t be doing this. Tachibana-san wouldn’t like it if he knew his teammates were participating in illegal gambling and betting on non-professional players just makes the entire situation even more distasteful. After all, it’s not as if Tezuka-san and Atobe-san are playing a match to entertain their audiences. We should respect their love for the game instead of capitalizing on it like some bad after-school special…”
Although Ibu Shinji’s mumbling was a rather persuasive argument, the other people involved had become so habituated to Ibu’s usually pointless rambling tangents that they merely ignored whatever was coming out of his mouth this time. Chalking up Ibu as being part of Seigaku’s insanity, Shishido quickly jotted down a new name in his book.
It was then that Yamato showed up and announced, “I’d like to place a bet under Tezuka and Atobe.”
“Yamato-sempai!” Oishi gasped in shock. “Shouldn’t you be trying to stop us?”
“But why would I do that, Oishi?” Yamato smiled back eerily at the Seigaku fukubuchou.
“Because what we’re doing is illegal?” Oishi questioned back, though his voice wavered under the steady gaze.
“Ah, but if you know it was illegal, then why continue participating in the activity?” was Yamato’s reasonable demand.
Answerless, the boys stared at one another, a feeling of shame and guilt slowly building. Even Shishido looked suitably chastised. It was then that the only innocent member began his “I told you” speech.
“I knew nothing good would have come out of this entire situation. This was why Tachibana-san always said to follow rules unless you had to break them. The only time when Tachibana-san did anything questionable was getting our coach fired, but that was a reasonable thing to do, since he was treating us like crap and we didn’t really hit him. It really isn’t a violence problem if we were the one being bullied in the first place and it’s not as if we didn’t go through the proper channels. Just because we had to rough him up a bit before he’ll let us go see the principal was no reason to say that we actually had a violence problem…”
And so, what had began as a reasonable chastisement was once again derailed by a tangent, as was the usual for Ibu Shinji.
It was then that Tezuka and Atobe appeared in the betting circle, looking weary and, for the lack of a better word, thoroughly debauched.
“Eh? The game ended?” Kirihara, no longer under attack by Seigaku, asked the obvious.
“Aa,” Tezuka replied blandly then looked back at the staring faces. “What is it?”
“Well? Who won?!” Momoshiro finally asked the question that was at the heart of the betting pool.
“Neither,” was Atobe’s answer.
“But how?” Echizen, who had remained silent due to the combined effect of Inui juice and having to forfeit his game, finally spoke up.
Instead of answering, Atobe turned and hollered, “Kabaji!”
“Usu.”
The hulking form of Kabaji lumbered over with something draped over his shoulder. When he dumped his load onto the ground before the spectators, they realized it was a fairly traumatized looking Saeki.
“Ask him,” Atobe sneered, fingers plucking at his racquet to work off the restless energy.
Looking up at the confused stares, Saeki shrugged helplessly and said, “We didn’t have any balls left for them to play with.”
His declaration was met with stunned silence. Finally, Fuji clarified, “Are you saying that all of the balls are no longer in playing condition?”
Saeki nodded sheepishly. Awed stares turned to the two standing buchou-tachi.
Finally, Atobe broke the silence with a soft huff. “Che. I’ll settle this with you at the nationals,” he addressed Tezuka. Then turning to leave, he tossed over his shoulder, “Kabaji, collect everyone and let’s go.”
“Usu.”
Kabaji grabbed the Hyotei doubles 1 pair in an undignified fireman’s carry and walked off after Atobe. Shishido’s cursing could be heard even when the Hyotei team had disappeared from sight.
“Ah well, that was interesting,” Sengoku commented as he climbed to his feet now that the Seigaku team was no longer piled on him. Waving goodbye, he trotted off, followed by the Fudomine pair, who took Sengoku’s departure as their cue to leave.
Sanada appeared shortly to collect Kirihara who was still muttering, “But they didn’t even finish the game. How can they not finish a game and leave it like this? Are they really this willing to walk away?” Not bothering to acknowledge the other people present, Sanada dragged Kirihara off by the collar of his shirt, looking distinctly pained.
As the audience dispersed now that the spontaneous practice match had ended, Tezuka sent a general glare at all of his teammates. Everyone wisely stayed quiet. Finally, Tezuka let out a stern, “It’s getting late. We still have training tomorrow. Everyone go home and show up early for practice. Dismissed!”
“Hai!” Eight voices answered in unison and the Seigaku regulars were soon scrambling to follow their buchou’s orders.
As the trainees collected their equipment, Yamato approached Tezuka and patted him on the shoulder. “You did well,” he commented with a smile. At Tezuka’s disbelieving gaze, Yamato elaborated, “they may not look it, but now you’ve showed them without a doubt that their pillar is back and standing and they’ve gained more confidence. With a leader like you, Seigaku will definitely win the nationals.”
Considering Yamato’s words, Tezuka finally agreed, “Aa.”
In the last rays of the setting sun, Tezuka collected his equipment and left the courts with his team, their voices still ringing across the now empty fixtures.
OMAKE
Oshitari stared at the spatula in his hands and back at the Hyotei buchou who was trying to stuff a sleepy Akutagawa into a pink frilly apron.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Oshitari said for the tenth time in as many minutes, after Atobe had announced that they were going to take a page out of Seigaku’s training menu and open a restaurant, with Oshitari as head cook, as special training.
“Ore-sama,” Atobe responded with great dignity, “does not kid.”