I'm sorry about the wait. This took too long.


"This is dangerous, Fuji," Atobe said warily, massaging his temple as he spoke. It was a very Tezuka-like thing to do, which was, of course, why Atobe did it.

"I know," Fuji replied, smiling sweetly, "That's why I propose it."

Atobe sighed. What he had been thinking when he joined forces with Fuji, he had no idea. He must have been hypnotized. Mesmerized. Put under a spell.

"If you're against it," Fuji continued, smile widening, "I could always show your team those...pictures of you."

Ah, yes. He'd been blackmailed.

Atobe sighed again. "As of now, Yukimura is still the true heir," he said slowly. "If anything goes wrong with the plan, and he catches us, he could make our lives very miserable." Miserable was, as they both knew, a gross understatement.

"I know," Fuji said brightly. "But if we don't do anything, he could make my brother's life very miserable."

Atobe couldn't have cared less, but he decided not to point that out. He couldn't afford to die just yet.

"Speaking of the throne," Atobe started, his voice carefully blank, "Which of us will be the ruler if we win?"

There was a pause as Fuji considered him, smile twisting into a smirk. Atobe smirked back at him.

"Who knows?" Fuji murmured, eyes glinting dangerously. "We'll just have to find out, ne?"

"Of course," Atobe drawled. "Of course."

Neither of them would go down without a fight.


Back in his control room, almost forgotten to the world, Mizuki stared at his screens with all the amusement of a supervillain.

Or at least, that was what he thought. Yuuta decided he looked more like a kid with a donut.

"They've all formed alliances," Mizuki said amusedly, turning to look at his subordinate. "Even Yukimura."

"Well, obviously."

Mizuki laughed darkly, twisting a strand of hair around his finger. "They really think they can win this, don't they?"

"There's a seventy percent chance that they will," Inui pointed out helpfully from a corner.

"Silence, subordinate part two!"

Inui shook his head mournfully. If only, if only he hadn't poured juice over his coach, he might have been part of the winning side.

"Fuji Syusuke will pay," Mizuki said, infuriated. "I will defeat him."

"The data never lies," Inui pointed out.

Mizuki shot him a dirty look. "I will make it," he ground out.

Yuuta rolled his eyes.


Mizuki had been wrong – everyone had not formed alliances. Yanagi was acting alone.

It's better that way, he concluded. A partner would only compete with me for the throne.

Yanagi actually didn't have much of a reason to take part in the chaos. He had no issues with Yukimura taking the throne. Which was why he decided to wipe out all of Yukimura's enemies first, and then turn against Yukimura himself. That way, even if he lost, things would end the way he'd wanted them to.

He was only partaking because it was fun.


"This is crazy," Atobe deadpanned, folding the papers in front of him to face Fuji fully. "Are you crazy?"

Fuji shrugged. "That depends on the definition of crazy. But anyway, it's a good plan. Yukimura won't know what hit him."

Atobe sighed. "Remind me to destroy you once all of this is over."

"Hm."


"Yukimura-senpai," Echizen called cautiously, spinning around in his swivel chair and staring at the ceiling.

"Yes?" The voice was muffled slightly. Yukimura was crouched under one of his tables, tinkering with the wires under it.

There was a pause. Ryoma continued staring straight up, slowing in his spinning. The ceiling seemed to be vibrating. He was fairly certain that it wasn't supposed to.

He could hear something from above it. Steady thumps, the pace almost hypnotic.

"I think the ceiling is going to fall," he realized.

Yukimura didn't even look out from under the table. "I know."

"We should get out of here."

"Actually, you should get out of there. The rest of the ceiling will stay perfectly intact." He sounded sure of himself.

"How would you know?"

"I planned it."

Ryoma was still doubtful, but he decided to take the risk and crouched under the table with his senior.

The ceiling fell.

"The ceiling fell," he said, staring at his squished swivel chair in disbelief.

"I told you, I planned it."

"I was almost under it."

Yukimura shrugged. "I would have remembered that eventually. More importantly, look at what it was hiding."

From the hole in the ceiling hundreds of wires led out, tangled and twisted in an overall mess. They looked important.

"Our friends have been spying on our communications," Yukimura said, amused, like he'd been waiting for this moment his entire life, "and stealing information from our databases."

"And that is a good thing why?"

"Because half of the information on our databases is false, and the rest I stole from them. I've hidden our true information elsewhere."

A grainy, distorted image of Atobe appeared on the screen. "I heard that," he snapped.

"Monkey king?"

"I heard that too, brat!"

Yukimura hummed to himself as he pulled out a wire cutter and hacked through the wires like a civilized mad man.


"Walnuts," Yuuta deadpanned. "Our ultimate weapon is walnuts?"

"That's grammatically incorrect," Inui pointed out.

"Nobody freaking cares! Why is our ultimate weapon walnuts?"

"...also grammatically incorrect."

Yuuta flung a handful of walnuts at him before turning to his supposed boss. "You do know my brother's allergic to wal- oh. Oh. Um. You're not trying to kill him, are you?"

Mizuki tried another supervillain laugh, and although it still didn't make the cut, it did sound considerably more insane. "This is war, Yuuta. You can't avoid casualties."


"They're crazier than you are," Atobe said, eyebrow twitching as he stared at his handheld screen. "They don't even make sense."

Fuji smiled cheerfully. "They're working on the assumption that dumping truckloads of walnuts over our heads will somehow result in me swallowing one."

"You're more likely to die by cracking your head on them."

"They try, Atobe. They try."

"They could very well try harder."

"They really couldn't."


"I'm bored," Ryoma announced, like it actually mattered to Yukimura. "Can I go now?"

"Echizen-kun, we're supposedly at war. Leaving isn't an option."

"But I'm not even doing anything!" He didn't even have his swivel chair to spin around in anymore.

Yukimura considered that. It was true. "Fine, I'll set you up to negotiate with Atobe-san."

"...I'm the last person you'd want to negotiate with Atobe."

"Yes, so it helps that I don't actually want to negotiate with Atobe. I just want to annoy him."

"..."

"That way, he'll hurry up and make a move."

"Oh."

At that moment, the ceiling collapsed. Yukimura hadn't planned it.


"Yukimura won't know what hit him, you said," Atobe drawled as he watched the chaos unfold on his screen.

Fuji's smile was dark. "I meant it literally."


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