The Tennis Prince's Bride
R. Tralins' Classic Story of True Love and Adventure
as abridged and beta'd by meg gara.
Disclaimer: R. Tralins and I do not own Prince of Tennis nor The Princess Bride. Nor do I own this story.
Introduction
I discovered the anime Prince of Tennis about a year ago and quickly became a fan. It's funny, exciting, and basically addicting. In fact, over the past few months I have watched every episode I can find and even resorted to watching the Nationals arc on YouTube despite the lack of subs and my inability to understand the Japanese language. I have even watched the musicals and the live action movie. I have spent some money on PoT merchandise and have been spouting off quotes such as "Mada mada dane" and "Hoi hoi", much to the puzzlement of people around me.
I'm sure that many have also felt like this and I won't try to top what others have done for their love of PoT. I'm just trying to establish how I discovered this story.
Because of my newfound love for all thing PoT (see above), I never wanted the story to end. So I turned to fan fiction to satisfy my cravings. As I was surfing through the net, I found this PoT fanfiction in one site. The title of the story was The Tennis Prince's Bride by R. Tralins (RT for short). I was hesitant to read the story because the title was so cheesy. And I figured that it was most probably a story about Ryoma and Sakuno. But I had time to kill and a craving to fill so I went ahead and read the story.
A few hours later, I was pleasantly surprised that it was not what I expected it to be. In fact, Sakuno is never even mentioned in the whole story. And Ryoma, though still one of the most important characters in the story, is not even the hero.
The Tennis Prince's Bride is a story about the True Love of a man and a woman, a conceited prince who wants to tear them apart, and others who found the courage to fight for what they believed in.
I was smiling as I finished reading the story and because it was late already, shut down the computer and slept with dreams of Tenipuri in my mind.
A few weeks later, I found myself remembering, or more accurately, not remembering what one of the characters did. It bugged me all day and that I finally had to get in front of the computer and read the story again.
Unfortunately, I couldn't remember where I read it.
So I googled for it, but for some reason, it looked like the story disappeared from cyberspace.
I was becoming frustrated by then and this continued on for a few days until I resorted to posting some messages over some sites about looking for a PoT fanfic called The Tennis Prince's Bride. There were almost no replied and if there was, it only said "No" and worse - spam. I was becoming obsessed. My friends and co-workers looked at me strangely as I told the story of the 3rd most beautiful woman in Seigaku Country and her True Love.
But one day, I opened my mailbox and there it was. Subject Line: The Tennis Prince's Bride. I eagerly opened the mail and to my surprise, it was not a fellow reader, but the author himself.
In it he wrote:
Hello! I have read the message and thanks you very much for reading my story. I have taken down the site and the story, but I give you the story since you like it very much.
R. Tralins
Attached to the e-mail was the story I have been searching for so long. I quickly emailed my thanks and asked why he took down the story. He then replied that it was because he thought no one was reading it and thought it wasn't very good.
Through our emails, I have deduced that RT has low self-esteem and didn't really believe that he wrote a good story. I encouraged him and told him to try posting the story again in a fanfiction website. I told him that there is a large community of PoT fans there who appreciate writing, even if you write some with Mary Sues.
He finally agreed, with one condition – that I post using my user name. I conceded with a condition of my own. I asked if I could edit and beta his story. In fact, English wasn't RT's first language. He lived in some country called Molvania. I looked it over an atlas but I couldn't find it. I asked him about it and he told me that his country is so small that they don't even put in on the map but it's somewhere in Eastern Europe. But they have a McDonalds and Starbucks and all. Well, if they have a McDonalds and Starbucks, then it must be a legitimate country.
He reluctantly agreed but requested that he get the final say on what parts of the story will be omitted. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the story was so long and I remember my eyes being strained after staring at the computer screen for many hours. Anyway, he said to me that it was okay to omit some scenes but there are some scenes that are necessary to the story. I agreed to let him look over the chapter before I post it.
And that's how this all came about. I'm sorry for the long introduction, but I felt the need to explain it to the readers first for them to understand why the story may sometimes feel incomplete. In some cases, I will be writing a note within the story which will be differentiated by an italic font.
So I guess that's it. Oh, and please try to give some good reviews. We really need to build up RT's self esteem. If there are too many bad reviews I'm afraid I have to stop posting the story or delete it altogether. Of course, constructive criticism is always, always appreciated.
The Editor