Title: Dream Catcher
Author: Tattooed On My Mind
Fandom: Princess Nine
Format: One-shot
Pairing(s): N/A
Rating: K
Summary: He's a highly opinionated, overly traditional man of totalitarian power, dead set on dissolving the Kisaragi Girls Baseball Team. But a conversation before the most important day of the year from the most important girl in his life forces Principal Mita to reevaluate his actions and remember the man he is before the job.
Disclaimer: Yeah I still don't own Princess Nine. Spoilers for anything Mita related, but this takes place in episode 18, first episode in DVD 5. I don't own the quotes from those scenes in the anime.
A/N: rewatched The Gift and had feels fml so here have some Mita feels. I wouldn't say Principal Mita is an under-appreciated character, but anime dads in general are probably under-appreciated soooo hi. Also I don't know what those things that say their names in the clubhouse are called just "name blocks" works, right?
Also, take a shot every time the word "Principal" is used. Double when Principal is also used as the occupation. like naaaahh.
I'll write more fic one day idk we'll see.
"I'm going to bed now," He said at 9:30 PM on June 5th. By 9:31 PM, well before he could hear his daughter crying herself to sleep, Principal Mita knew he was not going to sleep well before the big meeting the next day.
June 6th was the general meeting with the Parents Association and the Board of Trustees, where they would announce the dissolution of the Kisaragi Girls High School baseball team. Principal Mita was looking so forward to this day to finally restore the school to normal order, to finally end the Chairwoman's dream of having a sister baseball team going to the championships at Koshien, competing against the original Kisaragi boys. He had been at metaphorical war with Keiko Himuro since this whole idea was blossomed, and with the scandal regarding Ryo Hayakawa's father getting out to the public media, he was ready to put the nail in the coffin, relieve the girls of their studies at Kisaragi, and end the controversy around his beloved school. June 6th was going to be a cakewalk.
June 6th was supposed to be a cakewalk.
A decision that used to require zero thought now made him rethink everything. Since the game between Kisaragi Girls and Rinkai High, Principal Mita and his daughter, Kanako, had fought almost every other night. They fought after he found out she joined the team behind his back, betraying him in the process. They fought when her teammates visited when she was grounded, despite Kanako not even inviting them over. They fought when she was caught sneaking a phone call with Nene about the entire situation. And they certainly fought the day after she snuck out to see Ryo on her near death bed at the hospital. But this fight was unlike any fight they had. Kanako was always able to make it up to her father before. She'd bring him tea, the paper, reorder books she had destroyed to fit her Tami wig, anything she could think of to make him forgive her. But on the evening of June 5th, Kanako was not about to back down, not when her father promised her anything she wanted for her birthday.
June 6th was not just the day of the meeting, and Principal Mita knew that. He was a principal, but a father first. June 6th was his daughter's sixteenth birthday, and for her sixteenth birthday, Kanako asked for him to void his proposal and let Ryo and the team stay in Kisaragi and play baseball. Of course, that caused a rift between the two of them, involving a lot of screaming between both of them, but he had power. He was the Principal of Kisaragi. He had his vice principal and the whole Parents Association on his side. He was going to dissolve this team and bring his daughter back to "normal." She would go back to school and study to eventually enroll in medical school. She would say goodbye to this game he thought she left behind when she graduated from middle school, to all her friends from the team, to this whole mishmash of a school year. But a handful of key words in Kanako's shaky, teary eyed speech struck her father to the core and changed everything, namely a very attention grabbing plea.
"However, if you really don't want me to play, at least let the other girls have a chance at their dreams!"
By midnight, the sobbing from across the hall had stopped. Wide awake, Principal Mita walked into Kanako's room as quietly as he could to not disrupt her slumber. All he could think about were those words. Coming from a political man, those words were an offer. Let the other girls stay and play their sport and eventually humiliate themselves and the Chairwoman, but leave his daughter out of it. That would be a brilliant offer to people such as Mrs. Ayanakoji of the Parents Association, but Principal Mita had different emotions. As he looked at his daughter's tear stained face, he replayed her words in his head. "No, it's not enough!" "I know I was wrong for being such a coward!" "At least let the other girls have a chance at their dreams!"
Kanako was not making an offer. She was making a compromise. No, not a compromise. Well, it was a compromise, but if it was a search for common ground, why did Principal Mita feel so broken about it?
As he was leaving, he found something on her nightstand he remembered from a long time ago. It was a dream catcher. To any adult, it was just a hoop of some sort draped in string and beads, but Principal Mita was there when Kanako got the object. At a young age, she was told that the dream catcher was supposed to hang above her head as she slept and it would catch all of her bad dreams before they can get into her slumber. Like a lot of her ideas not pertaining to medical school, he thought it was silly, but Kanako kept that hoop above her bed since she got it, so he figured she must have believed it worked. Until this fight. Until that compromise.
"At least let the other girls have a chance at their dreams!"
"…their dreams!"
That's when it hit him like a ton of bricks. This was not a compromise. Kanako was making a sacrifice. She was sacrificing her happiness of being on the baseball team with the other girls so they can stay at school and live the life Kanako wanted to live with them.
Upon putting all of the pieces together, Principal Mita was not broken. He was shattered. This is how Kanako felt. All this time, he thought it was the baseball team taking his daughter away from him, but it was really her fear of his disapproval that was pushing her away. It was his head being so wrapped up in ending Keiko Himuro's dream that made his own daughter think that she could not even talk to him. What if this went deeper than just communication? What was Kanako afraid of? Was she just afraid he would be angry at her for wanting to keep playing her favorite sport? Was she afraid he would force her to transfer schools against her will to keep her away from her friends? Was she afraid he did not love her anymore?
Principal Mita returned back to his room, shaking with emotion. He was a thief. He was stealing his baby girl's dreams. He was taking away her dreams to justify what, exactly? A rivalry with the Chairwoman that would not exist if he just let the girls of Kisaragi speak for themselves? The idea that all girls on the team were bad eggs for being on an "unconventional" sports team playing against conventional opponents? He snapped the dream catcher in half and threw it away before burying his head in his hands. This whole proposition to disband the team and put the Chairwoman in her place was not worth his daughter's sadness. His idea of tradition stating that boys were only to play baseball and girls were not to interfere was not worth pushing his daughter away from him, making her rethink how her family feels about her. None of this was worth it.
Principal Mita may be a man of power. He may have been Keiko Himuro's opponent for this whole school year. But he was a father first and foremost.
The morning of June 6th came and both Principal Mita and Kanako were sitting in a limo on their way to Kisaragi High School for the general meeting. The silence was palpable and the tension was high between father and daughter. They had a brief discussion about why Kanako did not want to wear the dress he bought her, but otherwise, kept silent. Between her broken spirit, her sad eyes, and her unwillingness to ask why she was coming to the dream shattering meeting on her birthday, the whole car ride only intensified Principal Mita's sadness and determination to speak his mind at this meeting.
The meeting started on time, with the members of the Parents Association circling the Principal, Vice Principal, and Chairwoman. Called to speak of the proposal, Principal Mita stood, eyes closed, and focused, causing Vice Principal Kodanuki especially to look concerned. Principal Mita cleared his throat before speaking.
"My friends…"
Kanako stood outside the meeting room door with Nene to hear her father say a string of words she never thought he'd say since the baseball team was conceived.
"I am here to see that today's motion, the proposal to expel Ryo Hayakawa and dissolve the baseball team… be withdrawn!"
The entire boardroom was shocked. The Parents Association, Vice Principal Kodanuki, even Chairwoman Keiko Himuro was dumbfounded hearing this speech given to them by the man who led the fight against the Kisaragi Girls Baseball Team. They all stared at him in disbelief as he talked about the girls and their potential for the future, but no one was more shocked to hear any of this than Kanako. With every word her father said, tears welled up in her eyes, her heart lifted.
"All I'm asking for," he continued, "is that we give these girls a chance. A chance for their dreams. And ours."
Tears escaping her eyes one by one, Kanako analyzed everything he said. Her dad spoke professionally and convincingly to the boardroom, without showing any biases toward any one player. He did not get the standing ovation for pleading them to keep everything the same. He had the power. He had the most compelling argument any of the men in that room could have made for the girls. But most importantly, Kanako knew deep inside that Principal Mita, her dad, was not going to let her sacrifice her dreams. His withdrawal of the proposal was not meant for the just the team. It was meant for her as well as the team.
The boardroom left and after Mita and Himuro shook hands after a rough battle, Keiko left and Kanako was the last person left besides the Principal. He sternly walked toward her, noticing how puffy her eyes were from earlier. After a moment of silence, he pulled her name block from the team's clubhouse out of his pocket and handed it to her sighing, "Well, I guess you'll be wanting that back."
She took the block in her hand and immediately noticed something different about it. The block she had at the clubhouse had her name, yes, but it also had Tami Konaka written on the back so the team could hide her identity. Tami's name, however, was nowhere to be read or seen. Instead, the back was sanded down and "Happy Birthday, Kanako! Love, Dad" was engraved in its place. Her eyes widened and she quickly looked back up at her father who just nodded and smiled as she found out her real present. At that point, Kanako couldn't hold back any tears as she threw her arms around her father, thanking him and telling him she loved him too.
Principal Mita kept his arms around his daughter, happy for the first time in what felt like months. Maybe things were not going to be the same, but there were no more lies or disguises, there was no more fear, no more betrayal, and no more sacrificing dreams. From then on, Principal Mita promised one thing to himself.
Principal Mita was a father first and foremost. If Kanako believed the dream catcher was meant to catch all her bad dreams and keep them away from her, Principal Mita promised he would be his daughter's dream catcher.