ACT TWO

Abe, Oki, Suyama and Nishihiro had gone to lurk in an empty alley. Abe looked cautiously from left to right before turning to his teammates.

"Okay," he said seriously. "The first Anti Haruna Club meeting is now in session."

"Anti…" said Suyama.

"Haruna…" Nishihiro continued.

"Club…?" Oki finished.

Abe was a bit taken aback by their sudden display of a Huey, Dewey and Louie-like connection, but he quickly shook it off. "You heard me!" he said. "We have to make sure he gets what he deserves. We must… ruin his birthday party."

The other three stared at him blankly for a few seconds.

"Hey, that's a pretty cool idea, actually," Oki said finally. "That'll show him not to mess with us!"

"I am glad you see it my way, Oki," said Abe. "So, does anyone have any ideas as to how we'll ruin it?"

"It depends on what kind of party it is he's having," said Oki thoughtfully. "We should go investigate!"

"Hang on a sec," said Suyama. "If we ruin Haruna's party… won't we ruin it for everyone showing up as well? Including our own team?"

"That's actually a good point," said Abe. "Okay, we must make sure that it's only severely ruined for Haruna and that Mihashi will still have a swell time."

"And everyone else on our team!" said Nishihiro.

"What?" said Abe. "Yeah, sure, whatever."

"So… should we go… investigate?" Oki tried again.

"Excellent idea, Oki!" said Abe. "Since it conveniently enough just so happens to be getting dark, we can take the bus and reach Haruna's place right past his bedtime."

"Then let's go!" said the other three as all four of them ran off to the nearest bus stop.

The Anti Haruna Club found themselves outside the Haruna residence shortly afterwards. Haruna's bedtime just so happened to be right then, so when the Club silently peered through his window, they could see his mom tucking him in for the night.

"Good night, sweetheart!" said Mrs. Haruna, giving him a kiss on the forehead.

"Good night, mom!" Haruna replied sweetly.

As soon as Mrs. Haruna left the room and shut the door, Haruna flung off the covers, turned on the lights, whipped out his Nintendo DS, and started playing some kind of badass violent fighting game like Pokemon.

"See?" said Abe, pointing directly at Haruna. "That right there. That's a phony."

"We know, Abe," the other three droned, then quickly dove on top of Abe to get out of Haruna's viewpoint just as he turned around to see if anyone was there.

"Anyway," said Abe, pulling out a map. "What we have here is a detailed map of the Haruna residence."

"Do you… always carry a detailed map of the Haruna residence with you?" Nishihiro asked, looking slightly spooked.

Abe chose to ignore that question and pointed at the map. "Since it's spring, it's highly likely that THIS particular window is left open," he said, pointing at a little storage room or whatever pictured on the map. "We could try to sneak through it."

So the four of them snuck around the building until they reached the window to the random storage room, which was INDEED open! It was really small and high up though, since storage rooms don't need huge luxurious windows.

"How do we get up there?" asked Oki.

"Oh right," said Abe. "We'll be needing a stepladder. I'll be right back!" He dashed around the corner and returned a minute later with a big honkin' stepladder. They all agreed that Abe should go first and Oki last, just in case his tremendous nose might get stuck or something. So Abe went, then Nishihiro, then Suyama, and then Oki. They managed to get through the window without having any problems whatsoever. Good for them!

HOWEVER, as soon as Oki landed on the floor, there was a sudden breath of wind that made the window slam shut!!

"Is that bad?" Suyama questioned.

"Actually, yes," said Abe seriously since he knew. "Once that window slams shut, it can get very difficult to open it again. Especially since it's so high up and all."

"OH DEAR!!" exclaimed the other three.

"But it's okay, we weren't going to exit through that window anyway!" Abe declared. "Once we've thoroughly ruined Haruna's party, we'll be exiting through the main entrance.

"Oh good," said the others.

So Abe reached for the storage room's door handle, only to… notice that the door wouldn't budge! At all!

"…NOW we have a problem," said Abe.

***

THE NEXT MORNING, Mihashi, Sakaeguchi, Tajima, Mizutani, Izumi and Hanai met up with Hamada, Kajiyama, Umehara and Shinooka at the baseball club.

"Didn't any of you bring presents?" gasped Tajima, looking so very shocked at his empty-handed teammates.

"It's not that much of a big deal," said Izumi with a shrug.

"If it hurts his feelings, we could always just give him a baseball or something and pretend it was our plan all along," said Sakaeguchi. "Since we DO carry around baseballs all over the place and all."

"Oh dear, I sure hope we won't offend him!!" Umehara exclaimed as he and Kajiyama started biting their nails. "Angry sports players can be so scary!"

"HARUNA IS A NICE PERSON!!" Mihashi piped at the very top of his voice. "I… I kind of wanted to give him something, but… I couldn't think of anything… awesome enough for someone like… Haruna!"

Tajima skipped over and placed an arm around Mihashi. "Then you should have done what I did! I drew him a picture and had Shi-noo-ka make him some cookies." Tajima proudly showed everyone a LOVELY picture he'd drawn of him and Haruna being bestestebuddies and skipping through a field of flowers, and then pointed at Shinooka who was standing there with a big ol' plate of cookies.

"I… couldn't do that…" said Mihashi, looking so very ashamed.

"It's okay though!" said Tajima. "We'll just say my present is from the whole team!"

"No that's okay, Tajima!" the rest of the team assured him.

"So should we get going, or do you want to stand around and chat some more?" Hanai asked.

"LET'S GO!!" yelled all the baseball players.

"I don't know, I kind of want to stand around and chat some more…" said Kajiyama.

"Yeah, me too!" Umehara agreed.

"DON'T BE RIDICULOUS!" yelled Hamada as he started shoving them along.

So Nishiura waltzed over to the nearest bus stop and boarded the very next bus, only to be faced by various members of TOSEI scattered around on the seats.

"Oh, it's Nishiura!" Kazuki greeted them. "How nice to see you!"

"Did you guys get invited to that birthday party too?" asked Junta, who was sitting next to Kazuki (well of course).

"Yeah," said Hanai as he sat down next to someone random… Shingo. "I take it you guys were too, then."

"Yep," said Shingo.

"Hey, you!" said Rio, sounding as excited as Rio possibly could. "…Tajima! Why don't you sit next to me?"

"That seat's occupied, though," said Tajima, pointing at Jin who was indeed already sitting next to Rio.

"Oh," said Rio. "Um… no, it's not!" He proceeded to kick Jin out of his seat.

"Hey!" whined Jin, but he quickly got over it and sat down next to Izumi or someone.

"Well all righty then!" said Tajima happily as he jumped into the seat next to Rio and the two of them started talking about stuff.

"It's so nice to see Rio mingling with others, don't you think?" Kazuki observed.

"I dunno…" said Junta. "I'm kind of jealous."

"Yeah, me too, actually," Kazuki nodded.

The two of them sighed heavily.

"You know, if this keeps up, we might have to do something drastic!" Junta declared, clenching his fists.

"He sure looks happy though," Kazuki noted sadly.

"He does, doesn't he!" said Junta. "That's it, of course! He's being POSSESSED by that little Nishiura guy!"

"Gasp!" said Kazuki.

Sakaeguchi and Mihashi were sitting next to each other, and Sakaeguchi noticed that Mihashi was twitching pretty badly.

"Mihashi, are you okay?" Sakaeguchi asked.

"AHH!" Mihashi nearly jumped through the bus.

Sakaeguchi looked around. "You know, a lot of the people on this bus were third runners once, if that helps!"

Mihashi took a deep breath and looked around, then started staring at all the people in the bus that had been third runners during the Nishiura-Tosei match.

"So… you come here often?" Mizutani asked the person he was sitting next to, Yamanoi.

"To this bus, or to this Haruna fella's house?" Yamanoi asked.

"Um… both, I guess," said Mizutani. "It doesn't matter. I was just trying to start a conversation!"

"Well in that case!" said Yamanoi. "Do you like baseball?"

"Do I ever!" said Mizutani excitedly as the two of them started having an exciting conversation about baseball.

Hamada's nerdy friends, meanwhile, were sitting at the very back of the bus trying to make themselves invisible, and Hamada and Shinooka were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

That's when the bus came to a screeching halt to let some more people on! To be specific, four guys wearing Tosei uniforms boarded it.

"It's SAKITAMA!" Tajima bellowed, recognizing Ichihara, Daichi, Oyama and Sawamura immediately.

"Wait, why are they wearing Tosei uniforms?" Izumi raised an eyebrow.

"They didn't get invited to the party, so our coach Wolverine made them dress up as members of our team in order to get in," Jin explained.

"Why?" Izumi asked.

"I think it's because Sakitama's pitcher is Coach Wolverine's son or something like that," Jin shrugged.

"Remember, we're supposed to be members of Tosei!" Oyama informed the entire busload of people with a wink. "So work with us and play along, all right?"

"Sure, whatever," droned everyone.