Disclaimer: I do not own Prince of Tennis or any of the characters related to it. They all belong to Konomi Takeshi.
Rating: K+ (mention of an adult theme)
Author's Note: A collection of short insights about Rikkai dictated by quote prompets. There are humorous ones and touching ones and ones in between.
Yagyuu x Niou and Sanada x Yukimura exist in here - I love them :) Please review and enjoy!
If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.
"Practice is over for today," Yukimura announced at the courts and the team raced off for the locker room as fast as they could.
"But all of you have to clean up the courts and locker room and run the fifty punishment laps assigned by Sanada before you go. I also want you to practice your groundstrokes for an hour - they were looking pathetic today. I don't really care if it takes you into the evening." Yukimura said with a deadly tone, stopping the team in their tracks.
"And I'll be expecting to see you at 7am tomorrow ready for practice without complaint. Have a good day," he added casually as he strode out with his jacket on his shoulders without a care in the world.
Life is simple, it's just not easy.
Sanada knows that he has a hard time dealing with many different issues that arise during team practice. He was lucky that his team was afraid of him and would never dare go against him no matter how much they disagreed. That's why he settled for two easy solutions to all problems: assigning punishment laps or slapping them.
One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full and he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem.
"I... can't... run... more... laps..." came the exhausted reply of Kirihara to Yanagi.
"Don't look at today's punishment in a negative light. Think of it as extra training for your endurance."
"That doesn't make it better. Getting rid of the fukubuchou eliminates being punished."
Yanagi sighed at the junior ace's somewhat flawed logic.
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
"Care to explain why you ended up being slapped by Sanada?" Yagyuu asked as he noticed the bright red mark on Niou's left cheek.
"He told me that I couldn't beat him, but then I did and he wasn't happy about it. I enjoyed him losing though..."
"Let me guess... you played him impersonating Yukimura."
"Like I said, it was worth it."
To believe with certainty, we must begin with doubting.
"Hi Niou!" Marui said estactically, greeting him in the hall. Niou flashed him a smirk.
"You're Niou, right?" he added just for clarification. "I mean, you look exactly like him. And I don't think you would switch outside of a tennis match... maybe." Niou's smirk remained in place as Marui went insane arguing with himself.
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
"There's a 90% chance that it is going to rain tomorrow, Seiichi."
"I refuse to cancel practice. Everyone's movement is sloppy again and I need to see improvement quickly."
"And about a 98.2% that it will thunder and lightning over this area."
"You don't want to have an extra practice, do you, Yanagi?" Yukimura deduced with a cold stare. Nothing escapes the Child of God.
Practice makes perfect. But if no one's perfect, then why practice?
Poor Niou found out the hard way when he tried asking the Three Demons to cancel practice with this philosophy. They even lessened Kirihara's usual punishment to teach Niou a lesson about trying to get his way.
Common sense isn't common.
Marui was smacked hard on the back by Sanada when he started choking and gagging in the middle of the tennis match.
"This is why I tell you not to chew gum in sports," he said simply.
The next day, the same incident occurred, and Sanada considered leaving him to save himself.
Borrow money from a pessimist - they don't expect it back.
'I am not a pessimist,' thought Jackal as he watched Marui and Kirihara squander away his money at the arcade yet again. 'I've just given into the inevitable.'
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
Yukimura never has doubts about his team's ability to persevere and accomplish success in anything, but he does recognize that they're all fools in some respect. Especially when they all managed to trip over themselves getting off the bus and landed on the pavement in a messy heap.
100% of the shots you don't take don't go in.
"That doesn't apply to tennis, Akaya," Yanagi told Kirihara who restrained himself from returning any shots from his opponent during practice. "It applies to pretty much everything else in life, especially goal-setting and basketball."
Kirihara let out a howl as he lost 6-0.
Chess is mental torture.
Figuring out how to outsmart their opponents can be hard. That's why they have Yanagi, who seems to enjoy this kind of complicated activity. When worse comes to worse, they can just have Kirihara throw the board in anger.
Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted.
Yagyuu was planning on studying for the test he had the next day even though Niou told him flat out that he knew everything on the test and convinced him to spend the day with him. Secretly Yagyuu was glad Niou said it because he didn't want to openly admit that he would have chosen to sacrifice his studies for him.
It's not cheating if you don't get caught.
Yagyuu looked down at the homework he was just handed back with an annoyed look on his face. He had gotten a C and figured out instantly that his homework had been switched. Yagyuu looked behind him where Niou was sitting, humming a tune and staring out of the window. Niou ended up serving detention that day as a result of Yagyuu's revenge.
You want to run out in front, prepare to be tripped from behind.
"There's cake in the locker room?" Kirihara exclaimed after hearing Yukimura telling Yanagi in the hallway and took off running to the location. Five seconds later, his face was on the ground and he didn't understand what had happened. A flash of red-pink hair disappearing around the corner answered his question.
We are all either fools or undiscovered geniuses.
"Doh? Tensai teki?" Marui taunted as he used one of his specialty shots.
"Bunta... the ball fell back on our side," Jackal pointed out with a sigh.
Kirihara didn't let him live it down for the next week.
All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.
"We won't lose, we have the iron wall of defense," boasted Marui.
"Whoa? When did we get one of those? Will it go down with a tank attacking it?" asked Kirihara looking around wildly at the school.
"I'm referring to Jackal!"
"... Oh, I thought that was just a random somebody that just liked hanging with you."
Jackal didn't react - he had accepted a long time ago that people tended to not notice him despite his superior defensive tennis skills.
He who laughs didn't get it.
Kirihara joined in on the team's collective laughter because he didn't want to be the odd one out and noticed that even Sanada was chuckling. What he didn't understand was that they were laughing at what Yukimura drew on his face while he was sleeping in the locker room.
You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.
Jackal saw the tennis bag that been wanting to buy for months in the display window of the store. Opening his wallet, he sighed and walked away because he was broke once again from buying Marui his usually supply of cakes and bubble gum.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
"I think that if we slowly lower Marui's sugar intake without him realizing it and slowly increase the intensity of his training, he will develop stamina without having to eat all of the time," Yanagi stated.
A week later, Marui was unable to move anywhere without the aid of Jackal.
"Okay, if we slowly lower Marui's sugar intake without him realizing it and slowly increase the intenisty of his training, he will not feel very well and we will have to take care of him until he recovers..."
If at first you don't succeed, failure may just be your style.
Akaya Kirihara failed yet again to beat any one of the Three Demons in a set. This was his 50th time and he ran off after practice to continue training again for the next challenge. He doesn't accept failure, but at least he's motivated by it.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
As the team ran their 100th lap around the courts, they vowed to never to steal Sanada's hat and lie that it was ruined as a joke again.
All people have the right to stupidity but some abuse the privilege.
Kirihara thought that Sanada would be nice to him if he congratulated him on finally getting together with Yukimura because it showed that he supported his superiors. The team hit their foreheads in unison as Sanada went crazy and punished him for the rest of the year. Even Yanagi didn't think that Kirihara was dumb enough to make the mistake of confirming that Sanada really did have a heart.
My mind is like lightning - one brilliant flash and then it's gone.
"Jackal, Jackal! I have a great idea!"
"What is it, Bunta?"
"We should get Sanada a birthday present! Then he'll be easy on us today!" exclaimed the volley-specialist cheerfully.
"That's a good idea. What should we get?"
"... That's a hard question. Maybe we should just treat it like a normal day..."
I can resist everything except temptation.
"You just had to do it, didn't you Niou?"
"It was sitting right there in the shower room and he didn't notice..."
Yanagi was restraining a vengeful Kirihara who was currently sporting Marui's red-pink hair.
"The problem with you is that you're not afraid of anything."
"It's not a problem if it works for me," Niou answered back with a thumbs up and devilish smirk as he walked out.
I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
"Niou! You need to pick up the pace!" yelled Sanada as his team rounded the corner of the courts running laps again, Niou seemingly lagging far behind the regulars.
"What? Can't you see that I'm actually ahead of them?" Niou answered back hotly.
Most people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them.
If this wasn't true, Sanada may have killed all of them by now. With his sword instead of a gun because he was much more confident in that skill. No need to accidentally hit innocent bystanders.
The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.
"Umm... where's one of the training walls?" Yukimura asked politely, but the team knew that he was seething underneath.
"Well... Akaya lost to it again."
"He should know that the wall will always have the last shot. Why did he have to destroy it?"
"Seiichi..." Yanagi said. "Children don't understand such complicated things and will fix the problem in the only ways they know how."
It is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.
"What are you doing in my room?" questioned the startled person who jolted awake when the lights unexpectedly came on.
"Climbed up the tree and through the window," came the nonchalant reply.
"You didn't..."
"Because I know that you'll be okay with it when you calm down."
Sometimes Yagyuu wished Niou didn't know him as well as he did.
The trouble with being punctual is that no one's there to appreciate it.
'It's okay,' Yanagi thought as he arrived at the locker room a full hour before practice. 'No one ever notices that I'm always the one that gets everything ready for practice. I've gotten used to it now...'
When he reached the storage room, his eyes widened in surprise as he noticed that all of the nets and balls were missing, but there were two pieces of paper in its place. "Take a break for the week... My normal two solutions are not fixing Niou's attitude problem." and "The team will appreciate you in three days when they're running laps because nothing is set up." Yanagi couldn't help but smile at the hidden thank you's from his two best friends.
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
"Niou-kun... You're like a disease. You take over my senses and affect everything I do. And I spend more time in bed doing something other than sleeping because of you."
"I can fix that," Niou offered with a sly smile.
"No, I'm good," Yagyuu answered back. "Your solution usually results in me wondering why you are avoiding me, which in turn has the same effect as the initial problem."
"But then you always find me later at night somewhere."
"That always lands me in your bed after you confirm that there's nothing wrong."
"See? Good remedy, right?"
You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
Yagyuu had a hard time getting up the next morning. The reason was laying next to him, clothes discarded by the side of the bed, clutching his blanket tightly and breathing deeply.
Yagyuu smiled and brushed back a stray lock of silver-white hair from his partner's face who was sound asleep.
'Well, just this once,' thought Yagyuu as he moved closer to him and went back to sleep, choosing to go past his normal Saturday wake-up time for the first time in his life.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer and we wish we didn't.
"Do you think I should wear this blue sweater or this green sweater, Sanada?" Yukimura questioned holding up both choices.
"Uh, blue."
"Why?"
"Well, go with the green one if you don't want blue."
"... You think I look bad in sweaters." Yukimura accused.
"You're trying to make something work when you already knew that it wasn't going to," Sanada stated simply. "So get neither and that will solve the problem."
"Why didn't you say anything before?"
"I prefer to remain alive as long as possible."
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
"Fukubuchou, is it possible for two men to have sex with each other? I mean... does that fit there?" asked Kirihara curiously.
"Tarundoru," came Sanada's strict reply as the team tried to hold back from laughing.
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
To Yukimura, Sanada was the powerful and intense harmony of french horns, trombones, and tubas in a dramatic orchestral work. He was the main part of the foundation of the team - the driving force of instilling discipline and pride among the tennis club.
To Sanada, Yukimura was both the soft, lyrical trumpet melody and the pronounced trumpet fanfare that lead the rest of the orchestra. Quiet yet demanding, he inspired others to emulate his feelings and people refused to see what would happen if they defied his rule.
Their relationship would have been considered to be a cacophony if there were lyrics, but they threw those out in favor of creating a beautiful symphony out of what they could offer for each other.
How long has it been since someone touched part of you other than your body?
"Say Yagyuu..." Niou began with his usual drawl, stroking Yagyuu's hand softly. "Do I touch your heart when we're together?"
"No, the last time I've felt that was when I was with Yanagi before you a couple of months ago," Yagyuu replied smoothly. Seeing the Trickster's eyes widen with surprise before looking down with uncertainty, Yagyuu caught him with a swift kiss on the lips.
"I lied. You touch my heart and soul every second of my life even when you're not around."
Smile, it enhances your face value.
"Go on, try it Sanada," Niou encouraged. "Let me see a smile. A large one."
"This is ridiculous," Sanada said with a scowl. He regretted ever choosing the 'dare' option against Niou. He forced his face to form what he thought was a happy smile and looked around at his teammates with cold eyes.
The team ended up in hysterics on the floor... including Yukimura.