Title: About a Bad Day.
Anime/Manga: Prince of Tennis.
Genre: Humor/Romance (a bit general as well…)
Pairing: InuiXOC… possibly…
Disclaimer: I don't own it, obviously.
Summary: It started with Inui having a bad day, and ended with her following his special training scheme. Will he be able to make her a good tennis player? Is that even what she wants?

Author's note: I wrote a story like this before, but back then it was a oneshot... I didn't really like it, and neither did the people that read it. I decided to re-write/edit the story, and below is the result. The story will also get more chapters, meaning it's not a oneshot anymore. I hope you enjoy!

Inui was in a very bad mood today. First of all, because of a special training program from coach Ryuzaki and Tezuka-buchou, he wasn't allowed to enter the tennis courts. Everyone was working on new, special moves, and for some reason, nobody wanted him around writing down the angles of their shots and the ways one could counter them. He just couldn't imagine what was wrong with that anyway.

The second thing was that Inui's chemistry teacher had forbidden him to use the chemistry lab for at least three weeks. Apparently, this was due to some explosions that had taken place the last two times he had come there. Even though he had assured his teacher that all that was in the mixtures he made was vegetables, the man hadn't believed him. Speaking of which, he'd told the regulars at the tennis club the same a couple of times, but they never took his word either.

To make things short, Inui couldn't come near the tennis club's practicing courts, and he couldn't make a new vegetable juice. Never, and then really never before had Inui felt this bored on a nice, sunny afternoon.

He was now walking around the school grounds a bit, reading through the notes he'd made the past few weeks. There wasn't anything interesting in them at all, off course not. The regulars had all been playing normally to prevent him from finding out about their new techniques, and the other players weren't special to begin with.

After a while, Inui decided to drop by the girls' tennis courts, just to take a look at their play and maybe to gather some data. Not to peek on girls with nice bodies and… Inui blushed and furiously started looking at his data again.

He arrived at the girls' tennis courts a little while later, and saw that there were no scouts there at all and also barely people watching the training. Especially when you were used to the boys courts, you could clearly see the difference in skill and determination between the two different clubs. It was pretty sad, in a way.

"Sadaharu Inui, the coach and 'Data man' from the Seigaku regular boys' team, is visiting the girls' tennis courts. May I ask as to why you are here?" Someone asked behind him. He turned around calmly. There was a girl in tennis clothes, meaning a tennis skirt, a t-shirt with short sleeves and sport shoes. She had her racket in her right hand. He quickly made a notation of all this. She wasn't wearing the regulars' outfit, so he doubted she was really worth the time, but you never knew.

"Just here to gather some data." He said. He now went to the drawing (AN: when you have read those little special pieces in the manga you probably know what kind of drawing I mean) her. She had long, light brown hair, that reached until her mid-back and which she kept in a ponytail with a few loose bangs. Her skin was tanned and her eyes were blue and bright.

"They aren't really seriously training today." She said. "They're just having some friendly matches. Our trainer is officially Ryuzaki-sensei, and she will be with the guy's team all day today, isn't that right?" Inui nodded. Why was she saying such useless things, of course he knew!

"What is your name?" He asked. She looked at him surprised. "To complete your profile, I need your name dummy. Ii data!" He explained, and she grinned.

"I'm not really worth gathering data on, really." She assured him. "I hardly ever play matches and I'm not even that good anyway." She continued. "Some of the regulars are worth watching though." She said, and bit her lip. A short moment Inui thought he saw some kind of sadness in those big eyes of her. Then it disappeared again.

"I see." He said. "Is that a data book?" He asked, pointing to a small book that stuck from her racket bag. She looked at it, and nodded. Then she looked at him questioningly.

"You're here to gather data right?" She asked. "If you want to, you can copy my notes on the regulars and some of the other members that are pretty good. You probably won't see everything they've got today anyway." Inui nodded slyly and started copying the data from the regulars, until he conquered something strange. He tapped the girl, who was looking at the matches concentrated, on her shoulder. She looked at him surprised.

"What does this sentence with the star in front of it mean?" He asked her. She looked in the notebook at the place he held his finger.

"That doesn't matter to you." She said. "You can leave that out in your copy." Inui looked at it while wondering what the hell it could mean. It was very confusing to him, but he left it out nonetheless. Only a few minutes later he had another problem.

"Hey, what's this?" He asked, and she looked at him irritated.

"Can't you see?" She asked. "It's a drawing." She immediately answered, not waiting for his answer. Inui sighed.

"I can see it's a drawing." He said, as if talking to a toddler. "What I was asking is what the drawing is supposed to… well, you know, what that thing in the drawing is?" She looked at him judging. Then she realized he really wasn't joking with her, and she immediately looked annoyed again.

"It's the captain, Riko-san." She said gravely.

"Aha…" Inui said. "And what is that then, is it also part of the captain?" He asked, pointing to something that could possibly be the head of a person.

"No, it's not. It's a tennis ball." Inui's jaw dropped.

"Where's her head then? And what's that?" He pointed to some kind of tentacle that seemed to grow from the captain's back. He really hoped she didn't look like that in real life, which must be terrible. However, considering this girl's lack of drawing abilities, that chance wasn't bigger than 0, 02 percent.

"Her head is over there." She pointed. "And that thing is her racquet." She continued.

"Why is the tennis ball five times as big as her head?" Inui asked curious, deciding to not tell her he thought the racquet was a tentacle. He really wondered why she made those drawings anyway, you couldn't get any data from them at all. "And do you take drawing classes?" He added, seriously.

"Shut up about the tennis ball, I know I'm not that good at drawing. I do take drawing classes though." She said. "I just want to get a little better at it, that's why I make drawings next to my normal data as well." Inui sighed. The chance that she would ever improve her drawing abilities was less than 1 percent.

"Thank you for letting take over your data, Moroko Nanaki." Inui said a while later.

"So you did know my name after all." She concluded with an unsatisfied look on her face

"Of course I did." He said. "Ii data." Inui then looked up and saw a few girls were approaching them. Regulars, he noticed as they were wearing the regular's outfits. With the data he'd gotten from Moroko-san he already knew their names, ways of playing, and weaknesses. This was really convenient.

"Nanaki-san." One of them spoke. He could identify her as the captain of the team, Tokaki Riko. "I was wondering if you'd want to play a match against me. You haven't played any matches today yet, have you?" She asked. Moroko nodded. "So, do you want to play against me?" The captain asked. Inui looked at her suspiciously. For some reason, her intentions to play against Moroko didn't seem to be very honest.

"If you really want to, I'll play a match against you." Moroko said and bowed for her. Riko smiled; Inui shivered slightly.

'One set match, Tokaki Riko to serve!'

Inui had decided to watch the match carefully. On all strong players from the girls' team he had data right now, except for Moroko-san. She had told him she wasn't that good at all, but there was a reason why the captain wanted to play against her. And he suspected it was not because of the weather or some other irrelevant circumstances. Moroko-san was probably better than she'd told him.

"Oh, look!" He heard behind him. "Nanaki-senpai is playing against the captain!" When he looked around, he suddenly noticed other matches were stopped, and that everyone, including the first years that should be cleaning the courts, was coming to watch this game. It was really getting more and more interesting by the minute.

Riko served first. It was a nice, pretty fast shot, just like stood in Inui's data book. Riko had practiced her service until it was neat, but hadn't taken effort to put any kind of spin of effect in it. It was easy to return, meaning in her service games the rally was very important. Apparently, in this case it wasn't. Moroko hit a cross shot back, that was placed so tightly in the front that Riko couldn't reach it anymore.

'0-15'

"It's a return-ace." Someone whispered. "As expected from Nanaki-senpai!" Inui frowned. He really didn't understand. If this girl was respected by everyone so much, and was able to take points from the captain of the team, why wasn't she a regular? He started making basic notes, and smiled at seeing she was right-handed indeed. "Ii data." He muttered.

The next serve, the backhand one, was returned with a cross shot as well. Inui kept counting those kinds of things, so he would know the probability of each shot being hit if he ever were to play against her. In the end, it was another return-ace; Riko couldn't reach it.

'0-30'

"Wow, Nanaki-san really is amazing." One of the regulars said in amazement. Inui turned to look at her, and decided it might be a good idea to get a little more background information on this player. There had to be a reason she barely played while she was this good.

"I'm sorry," He asked them politely. "Why isn't Moroko-san a regular when she is so amazing?" The girls looked at him in astonishment.

"Inui-san, you were here!?" One of them asked. Then the other asked, "You don't know about Nanaki?" He shook his head, and she continued. "She had an accident when she was nine years old. Because of that she isn't able to play very long matches. No matter how many times we asked her to join the regulars, she said she wouldn't do that. She's really good at short matches though, I heard she already plays tennis for about eight years." She says.

"Nanaki-san is also our coach." The first girl said. "She takes our data, but that's mostly to see how we can improve ourselves, and then she tells us what we should do for training." She thought for awhile. "I don't think Nanaki-san can beat Riko-san though. Riko will probably make it an endurance match."

"Moroko-senpai is much better than captain Riko." Inui looked at the girl who had said this, to find out it was just a small, shy-looking first year. "When she was nine years old," The girl suddenly continued, on the edge of tears. "She got into an accident. She was walking to a bus stop, when someone on a motor cycle was about to hit the younger girl in front of her." She said.

Inui was making notes as quickly as he could now. "That girl was only seven years old, and she was walking in the middle of the road. Moroko-senpai pushed her out of the way, and saved the girl's life. But in return for that, the motor cycle rode over her left ankle and right foot." At that point the girl started crying. "It's… all my fault Moroko-senpai can't properly play tennis, no matter how much she'd love to!" She then shouted out.

While a few other first years tried to soothe her, Inui looked to the courts again. Moroko had won the first game, and was now about to start her serve game. 'Something is off.' He thought confused. He had to get the information from the doctor to find out what it was, but he knew there was just something that didn't fit.

Moroko-san served and Riko returned the shot. It was placed on the other side of the court, near the baseline. Because Moroko had moved to the middle of the court after her serve, she could reach it without much effort. Then Inui noticed that she closed her eyes for a split second, and gave the ball a little spin to make it go in the corner completely in front of the court, near the net.

'15-0'

Inui heard various people gasp around him, while this was just going on and on. When it was 4-0 for Moroko, after only twenty minutes, he started to see what she was doing. It was really hard, because there were rarely any rallies, but he noticed now. It wasn't that Riko wasn't a very good tennis player, but Moroko didn't give her a chance to attack. She always closed her eyes a split second, and then hit the ball at a place in which it was impossible for the opponent to return it. It was a bit like 'Data tennis', just different.

However, it was also at that moment that Riko started making point after point. The rallies got longer and ended almost always in Riko's advance. Knowing that you get the best data from an opponent when he's losing, Inui grinned evilly and filled in the rest of his data.

'6-4, game set and match for Tokaki Riko!'

Moroko walked off the tennis court after having shaken hands with the captain. She approached the place where Inui was standing, put her tennis racquet in her bag and drank some water, obviously ignoring him.

"That last ball, when you would've taken one more step to the right and had swung your racket with a little more power you would've gotten it. Do you want to talk over the rest of the match as well?" Inui pushed up his glasses. "I've got it all in here." He said, motioning to his notebook.

"No, thank you." She said. He looked at her and noticed she was sweating a lot. The match hadn't even taken up an hour; she really didn't have any stamina at all.

"Do you know?" Inui asked. "A girl told me about the accident five years ago. Very good data, by the way-" She growled at him suspiciously. "Anyway, I thought something was wrong back then. She said it was her fault you couldn't play tennis properly." Moroko looked at him with questioning eyes.

"So what?" She asked.

"That wasn't true. You could play properly." He said. "So, while I had all your data, I made a call to the doctor that treated your injuries back then, and asked him about it. He told me your ankle and feet have already completely healed physically. The fact that you loose long matches has thus nothing to do with that accident. Ii data." He concluded his monologue. She sighed. Then she abruptly stood up and started walking away. Inui stood up as well, and picked up his bag.

"Come training with the Seigaku boys regulars." He shouted at her, and she stopped and looked back at him. "You suck right now, but I'll make you a training scheme to work on some things." He turned around and pushed up his glasses. Then he started walking away from him. She didn't call him back. He hadn't expected her to. The chance was less than 10 percent.

"89 percent chance of her coming to the training tomorrow." He muttered. "Ii data."

Author's Note: I don't know much about the girls' regulars, because they aren't that important in the manga. Meaning, the info I gave in this story isn't true. You could've probably guessed that for yourselves, but I decided to tell you anyway. Anyway, reviews would be nice… I'm going to write the second chapter now...