Slight AU in this one, Sena meets Hiruma first and still plays football, and some other games... And of course, OUT OF CHARACTER SENA, because he met Hiruma before Mamori.
Okay, you should know the basic rules of blackjack before reading this or read Chapter 88 or Eyeshield 21 to get a better idea of this.
Chapter 2- What if Sena met Hiruma first?
"Blackjack,"
The young boy, barely at the legal age of eighteen, placed down two cards onto the table, mesmerizing the spectators. As the players sighed from losing once again for what seemed to be the hundredth time. The young boy's brown eyes trailed along the coins that the dealer reluctantly placed on his stack. Kobayakawa Sena.
"Fuck, no way he can get three blackjacks in a row! He's cheating!" accused one of the spectators, but Sena's expression stayed the same.
"Kekeke, fucking idiot, accuse all you want, but he always knows what cards you have." A blonde interrupted from the back of the make-shift casino where he leaned back on his chair and counted the money that Sena had won. "During the time that the other players choose if they want to take another card from the stack, he knows what cards are left, like me, and get a blackjack."
The gum that Sena had chewed popped, shattering the silence between the players. Once again, everyone single one of them was dealt with two hands. "Yoichi, you didn't need to tell them that." Hiruma sneered when Sena addressed him so casually, before proceeding to count the money. Sena didn't sound annoyed or angry, just more expecting, as if he expected the players to figure it out on their own, somehow.
Sena placed down ten dollars while looking at his own cards blankly, as if it was telling him a story that he had no interest in. The other three players, slowly put the same bet, one of them even had a slight smile on his face that only Sena had noticed. Sena looked at his own cards and... Well, he didn't do anything, but despite that, he doubled his initial bet of ten dollars into twenty.
Time stood still for a second.
Everyone didn't believe their eyes, no one, even the smirking one couldn't even muster up a smile when he saw that.
Was Sena that confident in his hand? Or was it a bluff?
Hiruma was just smirking as he finished counting the money, only he, the spectator, knew who would win and who would fail, being the one who calculated the chance of Sena winning, considering the position of the Up-Cards, the cards that were facing up.
"89 percent chance that fucking shrimp would win," Hiruma chuckled; Sena didn't even twitch at the nickname.
Was that a bluff?
No one knew.
Those two were well known in the area, Hiruma was famed for his demonic-like appearance and his uncanny ability to calculate and his tactics in gambling, although he was also the leader of a high school football club, and his 'bluffing' wasn't poker face-based, it was more like showing off his cards because he knew he was going. Hiruma won blackjack by knowing what cards were left on the stack, and getting blackjack each time, making it simply impossible to win against him.
Sena, on the other hand, was different. He had an angel-like appearance, although he had several small scars on his face and arms, probably from being affiliated with Hiruma, and he always played Blackjack or Poker, but in the thousands of games he had played, he had never lost, not once. He had an amazing poker face, which didn't falter even when he got the worst deck possible, and during games, he rarely talked, making him even more of an impossible target to win against, he could memorize all the cards but just left it all on his own skill instead of following Hiruma. Those two were opposites, yet no one, not even when the two were children, had seen them apart.
That night, Hiruma won the most money ever in one night, through Sena.
"Kekeke, the number 21 really fits you, fucking shrimp." Hiruma chuckled as they walked through the roads of Japan. Sena just popped the gum he was chewing in response and polished the handgun in his hand. Hiruma just continued to chuckle until they arrived at Deimon High. "Get into uniform, he pointed at the members that lounged around in there, two of them were familiar faces, Musashi and Kurita who were lounging in the room until the two interrupted their laziness.
"Ah, Sena-kun, Hiruma-san, where were you two?" Kurita called out with his flowery voice only for Sena to point a handgun at them in a, actually, non-threatening way, telling them to get dressed or else they would face worth. Even for six years of enduring Hiruma, Sena still had a soft side, once you get pass the gambling and gun-using part.
Hiruma just laughed when the two scurried to the dressing room with all the other members as Sena and Hiruma trailed behind.
And the first words that Sena spoke that evening were: "We're going to win the Christmas Bowl." As he placed on his eyeshield, everyone could only nod in agreement with his words.
And such was the life of Kobayakawa Sena when he met Hiruma before Mamori.