It all started with Yukimura, he enjoyed breaking his opponents, delighting in the sheer disbelief on their faces. Meeting Sanada and Yanagi helped him start his goal: winning the Nationals for his entire middle school career. They slowly began to recruit talented tennis players to the Rikkaidai tennis club. Whether they were normal or abnormal, it made no difference to Yukimura.
All that mattered to him was their ability to play tennis.
Sanada, with his strange way of challenging people to their limits then crushing them head-on, all the while scolding them for their faults and errors, much to Yanagi and Yukimura's amusement. With his FuuRinKaZan technique, he was Rikkaidai's invincible Emperor, winning most of his games with ease. Disciplined and serious, Sanada would prove to be the only one with most of his sanity left after encountering Yukimura and the rest of the Rikkaidai Regulars.
Yanagi, with his data tennis, which was a mind teaser, left his opponents with their jaws open, wondering if they were playing a calculator that could play tennis through mathematics. A calculator that could play tennis extremely well. Then they'd wonder if they had just played a game of tennis, or if it was just a one-sided math game where Yanagi clearly stated mathematical magic words. Yanagi and his habit of constantly predicting what would come next, what someone would do, the outcomes of almost everything, kept his teammates on the edge…Besides Yukimura, of course. Yukimura made it a game to constantly defy Yanagi's predictions, which, to Yanagi's disappointment, worked perfectly to the point where all his predictions would be the complete opposite of the results.
Marui was a volleying genius, with his mind-boggling tennis that had his opponents dashing all over the courts, wearing themselves out while he chewed and popped his bubblegum slowly. Everyone knew Marui was off his rocker the minute he stepped onto the tennis court, wiping off cake crumbs and popping a piece of gum into his mouth before starting the match. But Yukimura didn't care, oh no. Marui's tennis was beautiful and brilliant. Marui had an inflated ego, with reason, and drove Sanada and Akaya mad, with all his daily claims of being a genius. But no one really had the heart to deny him, since he would mope for days if someone insulted his genius. No one expected to see anyone even more dramatic on the tennis courts than Marui Bunta. That was, until they saw Niou Masaharu.
Niou Masaharu, a trickster. No one in the tennis club would dare play mind games with Niou. Yukimura didn't mind Niou's subtle, and sometimes dangerous, pranks. Niou's tricky tennis, with illusions, was a stroke of luck in finding a talent like that. To Yukimura, Niou was the real genius of Rikkaidai. Not that he would ever admit that to Marui. Niou always left his opponent ashen faced, lying on the hard ground when the match ended. Niou found that it was rather annoying to walk over to them, just to shake their limp, spaghetti-like hands even though the looks on their faces were priceless when he used an illusion. When Yagyuu joined the Regulars and became his doubles partner, Niou was delighted. Now he could play tricks on his opponents where the shock would spread to the audience, not just his opponents.
Jackal, a quiet, steady figure that was only slightly less insane than the other Regulars. Only slightly, but Marui always took advantage of the less than average inmate, and his wallet. Jackal soon learned his wallet was not safe anywhere that was not his house, or bank account with Marui around. Or Akaya. In tennis, Jackal, with stamina that seemed endless and solid defense, rendered his opponents would be unable to score a single point from him. He always had his opponents break down mentally and physically after they were unable to win a point, while running all over the courts trying to return Marui's impossible volleys. Jackal slowly lost his sanity looking after Akaya, Marui, and his wallet, which was always considerably lighter when one of the two spotted it and asked (demanded) for sweets.
Yagyuu, an above average student and a talented golfer, was a gentleman. When Niou asked him to join the tennis club, he showed that he had a spontaneous streak. Saying yes, he would join the tennis club, after a three-second internal debate proved that. With a golfer's clean, sharp swings, each shot being as accurate as the previous, the Gentleman won many matches without resorting to using his trump card: Laser Beam. After Yagyuu earned his spot on the Rikkaidai team, alternately playing singles and doubles with Niou Masaharu who was a major influence on him, he began to switch identities with Niou. Switching during a game would cause chaos in their opponents' minds, undermine them, and crush them. The disbelief in their eyes when the duo removed their wigs, and switched glasses, proved to be entertaining and, according to Yanagi, a 100% chance of victory. Not that the Trickster-Gentleman pair needed that sort of reassurance from Yanagi. Rikkaidai would always win; the chances were always 100%, and would never change.
Kirihara, a loose cannon and Rikkaidai's famous ace, always needed constant reminders that tennis, was in fact, not a game where you had to beat your opponent to a bloody pulp and hospitalize them. It was just a game where you had to win. To always win was the ironclad law of Rikkaidai's tennis club. There really was no pressure. Really. But the nonexistent pressure proved to pressure the ace, to the point where his tennis style became more violent and bloody when his opponent was at National level. To all his opponents that felt his vicious play style, Akaya was the second most dangerous Regular on the Rikkaidai team. After Yukimura, of course, when the yips proved to be far more damaging than the devil's play.
Schools often came to see the kings on their home courts, to see how they played and practiced. By the end of the day, they always walked away dazedly, asking themselves how a group of certifiably insane boys could be the Invincible Rikkaidai.
After witnessing Kirihara Akaya running away from Marui, (when the former stole the latter's bubblegum), scouts from new tennis clubs would walk away thinking they'd have no trouble defeating Rikkaidai. People always laughed when they heard claims of a tennis team that could defeat the Invincible Rikkaidai.
When visitors were unfortunate enough to see Sanada snap, they would run laps alongside the Regulars, worrying if Sanada would break their necks. When coaches saw Sanada shouting at the tennis club to behave and act like human beings, and they recognized the discipline installed into the tennis club. But really. No sane person who witnessed Rikkaidai's tennis practice would ever claim that the Rikkaidai team was a normal team.
Insanity. It was all part of Yukimura's grand plan. The insanity covered up the fact that each Regular, was more than capable of playing tennis. Even when the Regulars had bouts of craziness, (where they'd involve everyone in a ten-mile radius and wreak havoc), they could play extraordinary tennis that people couldn't dream of. They were the champions and nothing, and no one, would ever win against them. Everyone knew the Rikkaidai team was certifiably insane, and that was the way Yukimura liked it. Certifiably insane was the perfect term to describe his team, he thought. It had a nice ring to it too.