Disclaimer: I do not own Prince Of Tennis. I only own my Original Characters.
A/N: This is me attempting to update sooner, but I'm not sure how much my definition of sooner varies from others. -_- A lot of stuff has happened since my last update, and one thing that particularly hit me hard was the death of Christina Grimmie. It took a while for me to even accept it. She was one of the first people I subscribed to once I discovered Youtube in my middle school years. I feel like I grew up alongside her, and now that she's not here I feel a bit dejected I guess. I sincerely hope the violence ends and we can have peace one day.
"Speech"
'Thoughts'
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Naomi followed Reizo as he led her further into the room and took in the atmosphere. There were small clusters of people spread around on the floor. Each person talking animatedly to their friends while they waited for things to get started.
"There's more people than I thought there would be." She couldn't help but comment on the sheer number of people that seemed to be present. It was nowhere near the amount at the tennis courts, but it did seem a lot for a dance club.
"Yeah it's always like this in the beginning. Not to worry, the number dies down after they have the Team Tryouts."
Alarmed, she looked up at Reizo's face with shock. "There are tryouts for a club?" she asked, incredulously.
Reizo just laughed, but explained the details behind the tryouts, "The tryouts are for regular positions. RikkaiMillion isn't just a club where we learn how to dance. We compete at events called contests all across the country, and then there are some non-official contests between schools just for fun. The tryouts are for the positions on the team in order to compete."
"Were you a regular last year Reizo-kun?"
"I was, but I ended up injuring my ankle and couldn't compete for majority of the year. This year I'm determined to actually win."
There was a fire burning behind his eyes as he spoke, and Naomi could feel the intensity of his desire to compete. She was reminded of the boy's tennis captain that Natsuko pointed out to her. Both he and Reizo had obstacles in their paths that prevented them from doing what they enjoyed, yet they both were determined to overcome them and improve.
Naomi had always been cautious of her physical well being as it was essential to her ability as a dancer. She had never injured herself to the point where she couldn't dance, so she had no idea what they must have felt. Even during her most intensive dance practices and performances, she was careful to never push herself to the point that she might cause excessive damage to her body.
Lost in her thoughts, she was jostled out of them when Reizo bumped her lightly with his shoulder, before motioning for her to pay attention to the front of the room where a girl and guy were standing.
"Welcome everyone to RikkaiMillion's first meeting! I'm Nagase Mina, and I am the co-captain of RikkaiMillion. This is Ogata Ebizo, my co-captain. To start the meeting off we ask that you get into separate lines based on your year in order to sign the sign-up sheets on the tables to my left." She nodded to Ebizo before stepping back slightly.
He cleared his throat before speaking, "Like Mina said, I'm Ogata Ebizo the other captain. After you finish signing up, we're going to go over what RikkaiMillion is and what we do here. So please settle yourself on the right side of the room after you finish signing up, so we can begin when everyone's finished."
The girl, Mina, was really pretty. Naomi couldn't help but stare at her as she spoke. As expected from someone holding the captain position, she had a very powerful aura which matched her toned body and confident voice. Her dark red hair was long and wavy, parted down the middle framing her very, very green eyes. The way they swept over the room as she spoke, along with the daring jut of her chin gave Naomi the feeling of being sized up. Even when she smiled at the end of her talk, it seemed almost sarcastic.
The guy, Ebizo, was also really good looking.
'Is being good looking a part of the position requirements or something.' Naomi couldn't help but think only half-joking.
He was also taller than average, complimenting Mina's height which was also taller than average. His shoulder-length black hair was tied back in a ponytail, exposing his high-cheekbones and striking blue eyes. While he did seem like the more relaxed out of the two, something about him also kept Naomi's nerves on edge.
Together they looked both intimidating and awe-inspiring.
Reizo and her shuffled over to their designated line, and made small talk as they waited their turn.
"Those two are so cool! I can't wait to see what they have in store." Naomi couldn't get rid of the striking image they created out of her mind as she waited.
"Yeah that's Ebizo and Mina for you," Reizo said with a shake of his head. "You just wait until they give you a demonstration later on. Then you'll be really impressed."
"Okay next!" called the girl sitting behind the table in front of them.
"Hey Suri. Got stuck with sign-up duty hmm?" Reizo joked with the girl who just gave him a flat stare. "Oh someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
Her brow twitched slightly as she closed her purple eyes in an attempt to calm herself. After a moment, she opened them as she flipped her long black hair over her shoulder and pointedly ignored Reizo as she instructed Naomi on how to fill out the form.
Reizo swiped the baseball hat that she was wearing and held it out of her reach as her short stature couldn't match up to his taller figure.
"Jin!" She called out to the guy that was walking up to them, "Can you please control your friend here? He seems to think disturbing those who are hard at work is amusing." Her tone as flat as her stare.
Naomi just watched out the corner of her eye as she filled out the form she was given with little effort. The guy called Jin came up and grabbed the hat from Reizo's hands and placed it gently on Suri's head before laughing at her slightly surprised look.
"Man Jinsei, she's really got you wrapped around her pinky hmm?" Reizo teased, having forgotten about Naomi's presence at the moment.
Jin, or Jinsei blushed brightly, his face matching his dark red hair. Rolling his green eyes at Reizo, he ran one hand through his curly hair, and used the other to shove Reizo lightly.
Naomi took this moment to hand the filled out form back to the girl with a small smile. This seemed to remind Reizo of her existence so he took that moment to introduce her to them both.
"Oh right, guys this is Tadeshi. She just transferred here." He gestured towards her, "These are my friends, Nakajima Jinsei and Nakanishi Suri. They were both regulars with me last year." Jinsei just smiled in greeting while Suri seemed taken aback.
"Tadeshi? Like the investment company?" Suri asked, her tone betraying her surprise.
"Uh yeah. That's my family's business. I'm Tadeshi Naomi, nice to meet you!"
"Hmm my family must have worked with yours at one point then. I remember my dad used to talk about the Tadeshi group and how his close friend was the head. Small world ne?"
"Well it was nice meeting you Tadeshi-san," Jinsei smiled warmly at her before turning his attention to Suri. "Suri, Mina and Ebizo want to talk to us really quick. Reizo make sure you don't hurt yourself this time. I already filled out your form for you; I figured you would forget like last time."
Giving a quick fist bump, handshake to Reizo, Jinsei walked off with Suri following behind. As she watched their backs move further away, Naomi watched them talk in relaxed, affectionate tones. Turning to Reizo, she asked the question that had been on her mind.
"Are those two...together?"
"You could tell?" At her flat look, Reizo laughed and continued, "Yeah, they're together. No one knows how they met or why they work, but they work so it's all good I suppose. They're our number 2 pair."
"Number 2? Who's number 1?"
Reizo gave her a side smirk as they sat down on the right side of the room. "You'll see soon enough."
Before she could protest, both captains called for everyone's attention. Once again Mina stepped forward to speak.
"Alright, so many of you probably know this, but for those that don't we'll explain. RikkaiMillion isn't just a dance club. We have contests that we are a part of. That is why we have a team of 'Regulars'. Regulars compete in contests which are divided into the following categories: Individual, Pair, and Group. Aside from contests, to raise funds we teach choreography to different age groups at different dates throughout the year. More information on that will come from our advisor, Matsuda-sensei who couldn't make it to our meeting today."
Stepping back, she let Ebizo take his turn to speak. "Now not everyone can be a regular as many of you probably guessed. Regulars are decided through tryouts and the judges will be Mina and I along with Matsuda-sensei. We will also be having a guest judge join us. I'll explain how tryouts go in a bit, but first let me explain what it means to be a regular. There can be ten active regulars and two bench regulars. Once you become a regular, you're expected to put in a lot of extra effort, and the main difference between non-regular members and regulars is that regulars create choreography while non-regulars learn the choreography. Back to tryouts, we have tryouts every semester, so just because your regular position was secured for one semester does not guarantee it for the next."
As Ebizo concluded his part, Mina stepped forward to wrap everything up. "Tryouts will be held one week from today, the same time and place as today. You will be required to choose a genre at random at the end of today's meeting and then create a two minute choreography for a song from that genre. It is not expected that your performance will be perfect, but to be a part of the team you need flexibility in your abilities. Contests sometimes give themes or genres so you have to be able to adapt and execute your choreography. We will be judging you on creativity, fluidity, skill, and how well you stuck to the theme."
She paused before motioning to someone towards the back. When she continued the lights in the studio had dimmed except at the at the back. "Now we're going to have demonstrations of what we mean by pair, individual, and group contest categories." With a final smirk at everyone, she and Ebizo left the studio.
Music started up in the background, and everyone turned around to see Jinsei and Suri warming up. They had changed out of their uniform as well. Their black and white outfits complimented each other's with his basketball shorts and tank top combo matching her shorts and oversize t-shirt. The cherry on top was the matching bucket hats that sat on both their hats. Sharing a smile, they got into position.
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A/N:Okay so it's finally time for performances to start! Finally :)
So with every performance there is a youtube video that I base it off of. Most of them will be based on the videos that 1Million Dance Studio puts out. Their videos are amazing and this entire fanfiction is in part inspired by them.
Also I put up some pics of what I think each character looks like on my deviantArt account. Granted they're not exactly what I pictured, but they're close enough. I think they just look younger than what I imagined, but I hope you guys can age them slightly mentally .
My DeviantArt username is Lovely-Rose-13 and if you enter lovely-rose-13 .deviantart. com without the spaces, it should take you right to them.
Can't wait to have you guys read the next chapter when things start to get interesting ;)