Azapin, let go of your strife! I dunno if this is not immediately obvious to you guys, but I AM planning on running Arya through multiple anime, so like, in terms of story we're still at the Chamber of Secrets for Harry Potter. Big scary fuck-off confrontation with the Big Bad(s) won't happen for a while yet, if at all...muhahaha. And its your email, littlecatbug22? Complex email. Also, running over the manga during this chapter has just alerted me to the fact that I've been spelling Bluer's name wrong this entire time. Whoops. I've already committed to this error and fuck it if all the prefect's last names aren't just color references anyways so Imma just gonna leave that one there. Also, apologies for any cricket inaccuracies here, for as Yana mentions in the seventeenth volume, its really hard to learn a sport through books and there's honestly a limit to how much you can understand it without playing or watching it live. Also also, I'm crying loser "I don't know how to code" tears as I slog my way through transmitting this to AO3, because as a MeowVolcano very wisely pointed out, I gotta have backup for this shit. Not to terrify y'all, but currently the only versions of most of my stuff is THIS, the actual story on the actual net. Not even any docs in the Doc Manager. A lot of my really early stuff was saved on word documents on my first computer that have (probably?) managed to transfer over, but like…a lot of that shit should never see the light of day anyways. I only keep it around because I have a deep-seated guilt complex about removing stories from the web (because people have deleted their AWESOME stories on me before) and I need something to remind me that I was a lame little piece of trash human at some point and I shouldn't get narcissistic and cocky. In any case, recent stuff like this is written on Notability and then summarily deleted for storage premium the second I post it online, so I really, really should have backup in case my account explodes or the internet dies or something. (AO3 won't save it in that case, but like…baby steps, here. There's a lot of material to transfer over.)

February 28th, 2020

Arya's POV:

The following morning, after the party in which I had indulged myself with copious amounts of delicious high-end Victorian food (and very awkwardly danced with a few ladies), I actually went into the stadium for our match against the Violet Wolves with a fair bit of enthusiasm, for two reasons.

One, since Ciel was going to be facing the winner either way and I knew he had adjusted for this, our match right here was going to be the only "clean" one of my day, even if I didn't actively cheat myself. For one thing, I knew one of Ciel's enticements for the Green Lion House (and probably Violet Wolves, if they managed by some astronomical chance to beat us) involved Lau and his "brazen harem of women," to quote the manga, and I, well…wasn't going to be floored by the visual of a woman's leg, or even the multiple legs of multiple shapely women. Call it a lack of lesbianism or a surplus of skin exposure in my time, but that just wasn't going to do it for me.

So, to keep in line with Ciel's plot and honestly my own cover, the most "cheating" I would have to do would be to fake discomposure over Lau's half of the scheme, and then continue playing while basically just ignoring Ciel's increasingly blatant cheating and/or underhanded tactics. There would be an undercurrent of frisson and performance anxiety there, one I was keen to –and able to– avoid here, in this match, when it would simply be me and some other Victorian mooks playing ball against a kooky house of spooky fellow youths. For all the pomp and circumstance surrounding this, not to mention the high stakes that would come into play later when it was us versus Ciel striving for an invitation to the Midnight Tea Party, this, right here, was just an over-glorified children's game.

Speaking of which…I thought as we lined up facing Violet House's team on the dusty earth of the cricket pitch itself, my eyes sliding over their near-identical uniforms (with the minor switch of purple instead of green piping around the white cricket uniforms and their own house crest emblazoned underneath the right lapel) without really seeing them. Doesn't Lau set up a betting table later on?

I might have to get in on that action. While Ciel was indeed paying me an honestly generous and extremely liveable wage by Victorian standards, especially when he also paid for my room and board, most of those funds went towards buying more magic books, stationary, or chalk as I continued working to get home. Honestly, I had no idea what the current value of the money I had stashed in my apocalypse bag would even be, other than "a lot," but it never, ever hurt to have more money. Plus, I had a rare and ironclad advantage on betting here, since, barring butterfly effects caused by my very self, I knew exactly how every last bit of this was going to play out.

I mentally bumped that "visiting Lau's betting table" up from a "maybe" to a hard "probably."

"The second match of the Interhouse Cricket Tournament, the Green Lions of Green House vs. the Violet Wolves of Purple House, will now begin!" an announcer roared through a megaphone up somewhere in the stands, and my eyebrow twitched, impressed, as I looked up and saw the lack of speakers. Drowning out the enthusiastically-cheering crowd with only a megaphone and some moxie…not bad. Poor dude was probably going to need a honey-laced drink after this, though.

I twisted my head from side to side, cracking my neck, as smacktalk broke out on all sides of me, lacing my fingers together and stretching my hands out to crack them as well. As previously stated, I wasn't near invested enough in the outcome of this game to bother with all that inter-house rivalry stuff, and in any case, witty comebacks without profanity were not my forte. And I had a feeling a number of my erstwhile companions (and heck, maybe even some of our less eccentric rivals) would look at me more than a little askance if I threw out something to the tune of "Tough talk coming from a witch bitch" or even something as tame as "You fucking wish."

Ah, linguistic gaps. How utterly confusing and aggravating thou art.

A man in a suit and flat straw boating hat who was, apparently, our umpire/referee, stood at the head of our combined lines and, with great ceremony, popped a glittering silver coin into the air. He knelt on the ground to inspect it as the coin landed, before straightening.

"Green House fields first! Purple House, change into your vests. In this tournament, each match will consist of two innings of twenty overs maximum!"

Since my unfortunate indoctrination into the world of sports, I'd learned far more about cricket than, quite frankly, I had ever wanted to know to begin with, so I was easily able to remove my fancier outer jacket and leave myself with the open-collar white shirt and belted pants alongside the others as I confidently took my place on the field. Though I had never really understood what Bardroy meant in the manga by saying cricket was "like baseball," having to physically go through the motions myself had elucidated things quite nicely.

Currently we, Green House, would have a man (thankfully not me for any time soon) on the left of one of the Purple House batsmen, pitching across to the other batsman, who would, in theory, either hit the ball or miss and have the ball knock over the wickets (the stick-rattle-things set up at either end of the pitch) behind him. If the wickets were downed, the batsman was out and another one took his place. If he hit the ball and it was caught before it touched the ground, he was also out, and again, another Purple House batsman would replace him.

However, if the ball was hit successfully, one of four things would happen.

One, a successful hit would allow the two Violet Wolves batsmen to run between their creases (those chalked or carved lines by the wickets), earning themselves one run, or one point.

Two, a semi-successful hit would have them running back and forth, but if we, the Green House outfielders, caught the ball and hucked it back in time to knock over a wicket before one of the batsmen reached it, the batsman running for it would be out as well.

Three, a very successful hit, after bouncing, would have the ball touch or cross the circular boundary line a fair distance out from our rectangular pitch, earning the batting team –at the moment, Violet Wolf– four runs, or four points.

Four, the most successful hit, a ball that was sent all the way over the boundary line without touching the ground once would earn the batting team what basically equated to a home run, or rather, six runs, aka six points.

Hence, the similarities to baseball becoming clear: the end goal being that beautifully untouchable hit, a boundary six/home run, that would allow the players the maximum number of points as they ran to their wickets/bases, the outfielders gathered around the pitch to intercept a batted ball and chuck it back to tag a batting player out, the wicket-keeper/umpire behind the batter to catch missed balls, and so on.

The Violet Wolves were known to be a tricky, unpredictable bunch, so with the ten players not currently pitching, we were scattered in a fairly loose systematic radius around the ball's direction of travel, ensuring, hopefully, that we would be able to catch whatever the Violet Wolves pitched no matter which way they hit it. Since for some incomprehensible reason, the first team at bat had to don sweatervests (in house colors, of course, because Weston College), there was a bit of a pause before the other team returned to the pitch, a pause in which I had time to exhale slowly and wipe the first telltale hints of sweat from my face. All in white I may be, but it was early June and I was in a slightly-stressful "there-are-hundreds-of-people-watching-me-and-they-will-loudly-announce-and-react-to-every-mistake-I-make"-type situation.

Hoo boy. Sports were rapidly becoming a lot less fun when I had an audience.

In any case, thankfully, I was one of ten faceless(ish) minions out on the playing field, ready to dart after a struck ball like hounds on a fox, so some of the pressure was lightened by crowd psychology. I was already shaking a little at the thought of taking my place as a batsman ("man"), and it wasn't because of the necessary protection implied by the thick leather gloves and shin guards, which, to be quite frank, honestly looked more like armor than sports padding. But hey, there'd be another batsman for the crowd to focus on, unless I was the one batting, and forget pitching –thankfully, by common strategic consensus, I was the rookie new kid, not to be taken off-bench (in the sense of being anywhere in the creases) unless it really was necessary, which it almost certainly eventually would be due to how the game worked. By lucky chance, since the games today were restricted to two innings, and one inning was ten outs, or rather, ten dismissals of players for a caught/bowled ball, if we really laid into the Violet Wolves (I was looking at Greenhill, here) I may or may not be able to avoid being in the real hot seat (solo pitching) entirely.

Not that I had anything against any specific part of the game in the ordinary way, but yeah. Whole stadium ready to scream at me if I fucked up, my fellow players included. I didn't subscribe to social anxiety, thank goodness, but, well, there were some things that could quell any soul that wasn't baptized in the competitive fires of a sportsy spirit. For me, an announcer booming out the words "OH, AND IT APPEARS THOMPSON HAS CHOKED AT THE PRESSURE POINT!" or some variation thereof as the entire stadium booed their fury and disappointment was quite enough to make my heart pound and my palms feel sweaty even just in concept.

Thankfully, the game was proceeding outside of my nervous shakings as one of the non-named Green Lion players in the manga –I thought his name was Reginald, but wasn't 100% on that since I honestly didn't pay much attention to that in our practices– who was standing behind the second batsman wound up and threw, and the batting Violet House player –they looked fairly well alike, in the sense that they all tried to be as individualistic as possible with a profusion of wild hairstyles and streaky colors therein, as well as subtly tanned complexions from their long times rambling about trying to commune with nature or take inspiration from the same– swung hard for the oncoming ball.

There was a nasty crack of padded leather meeting the paddle of varnished and hardened wood, and I glanced up as the ball was sent flying over our heads –to my right. Far right, with at least two people between me and the ball's trajectory, so it wasn't worth running for on my part. Instead, I settled my feet more firmly inside their leather cricket shoes and solidified my stance, waiting for a ball to be tossed my way by fellow players or by another whack of the cricket bat.

"Violet House, four runs!"

Hrm. I thought as I wiped another dampening of sweat from my forehead. Not a good omen for us winning the game.

Given as a lot of Ciel's strategy seemed to be founded upon dealing with Green House in the final, I set my jaw and resolved to fight with everything I had, for these few innings at least. Disregarding the very real chance that my presence instead of the usual player could tip the scales one way or another, we were fucking winning this.

***Time Skip***

I hastily swallowed down a cup of tea from the Green House refreshment table by our changing building, the post-two-hour break for teatime having commenced. We were, quite honestly, hammering the Violet Wolves, who despite such diabolical tricks as spinning balls, disorienting flares of cricket bats, and shifty arrangements of outfielders, were flagging badly. Our defense was too tight: hitting a ball anything short of the boundary line meant it was almost always caught by one of our runners, myself included, who had earned a skinned elbow even despite my white polo shirt when I'd all but nosedived and, had the grass been a modicum more slippery, almost belly-slid across the ground to catch a fly ball.

Being as I needed to dart across to the other cricket stadium, aka across a football field's worth of space through a winding, twisty scenic path, I didn't have time to indulge in this short break of rest with the others: if I remembered correctly, Lau had his betting table over by the Scarlet Foxes and the Sapphire Owls, and I would probably need to do some rummaging around to find it.

Since the promised tea break was only twenty minutes, I needed to move and have my cash in hand. Luckily, there was a five-pound note in my jacket pocket –my actual jacket pocket, back in the changing building. I just had to sidle in –which I did– and grab it out –which I'd done– and now it was up to me to slink off again and run for it across the grounds.

Setting the cup down again, I managed to extract myself from the hearty chatter of the rest of the team, sneak over to the edge of the stadium, and pop out of one of the servant's entrances I had found in my prior rambles, before casting a hasty glance around and sprinting across the grounds for the clamor and excitement of the other stadium.

Arriving slightly winded and sweatier than ever, I self-consciously pulled in the lapels of my cricket uniform, trying to hide the incriminating green piping, as I wiggled through the crowd, looking for a booth with a lot of shouting betters waving slips of paper around. Betting not being the most gentlemanly of pastimes, I doubted my presence, if registered by other Weston students, would be welcomed or allowed to go without a rousing hue and cry of outrage. Possibly even punishment, too, which would certainly complicate the plot of things going forward.

Since I also knew Undertaker would be on-base, as it were, I didn't even dare to cast a subtle distraction or illusion beyond the one I was already wearing, trusting in the focus of everyone else in their dark greys and charcoal suits on the games and whatnot to not notice the singular bright white speck of fabric that was me.

"Hrrrrm…" I whimpered, ducking my head and forging onwards and hoping I wouldn't regret it any time soon.

Familiar shouting met my ear, mixed with the excited calls of numerous other men.

"Give me a red card!"

"Aww, my good man. Going with the sure bet, I see!"

"Red for me as well!"

"Give me one over here too!"

"Yes, yes. Be right with yoou~! Come, come! These festivities are held only once a year! Aren't there any gallant hearts who'll put their money on Blue House, the long shot~?"

I popped through the crowd, gasping, and held up my five as I bent over to breathe, my other hand bracing on my knees to hold myself up.

"Fiver on Blue House." I wheezed, and the paper was instantly snatched from my hands before I could blink, making my look up in surprise to see a Chinese girl with an eerily bright smile and her hair in two covered buns holding my money.

"You sure?" she chirped. "108 to 4 betting odds, Red favor! Noooo taking it back!"

I raised an eyebrow and grinned a little, trying to exhibit an aura of confidence and control when I was shining with sweat and gasping from my frantic run.

"I meant what I said and said what I meant, ma'am." I raised my empty hand, palm-up. "Gimme gimme."

Her perky grin widened, and she ripped off a tab from the pink reel and handed it to me. "Come back after the match to collect your winnings, or pay out your debt!" she trilled, and turned to entice another avid gambler. Lau (and his entourage) were milking this crowd for all they could get, probably in no small part because Lau, like me, knew Ciel was on the field and therefore –if the pun could be pardoned– all bets were off. There was, after all, no greater bet for an unscrupulous house to spin than a sucker bet.

I stuffed the tab deep in my pocket and ran for the Green House match again.

***Time Skip***

Boisterous cheering roared across the field as we hit the fourth over in the second inning of the Green Lions versus Violet Wolves match. We were ahead of the Violet Wolves by about fifty points –being in the bottom of the ninth, as it were, this meant that the game could still go either way depending on who bowled and if we, Green House, could keep our batsmen up and hitting sixes (or fours). The Violet Wolves, however, could close that gap if they knocked enough of us out of batting, so there was still a fair amount of tension in the air, and competitive glares all around.

Me? I was just happy I hadn't yet disgraced myself on the field and managed to hit mostly fours with an occasional six on the rare occasions I had to be put up to bat.

But anyways. Tensions high. Cheslock, the fag to Violet –who was doing something with his shoe way off behind Cheslock in the dead zone– was bowling, and from the smirk on his face and the ominously deft way he was rolling the ball around in his hand, things did not look good for our batsman…which thankfully, wasn't me.

"Go, Green House!"

"Crush them, Purple House!"

As students from both houses –and a fair amount of parents and alumni, if I wasn't mistaken– bellowed their encouragement from the stands, Cheslock smirked and lowered his arm. "Dull bowls are just not my style. Here I go!" he sneered, and then whipped his bowling arm out and back, sinking down as his leg skidded out in a rough half-circle that had dust billowing up. "Give us a fancy dance, you macho meatheads!"

I was somewhat disappointed I couldn't see this in anime format, as I knew there would definitely be embellishments worth watching. If I remember correctly, the manga panel involved flames?

"Rushing Violet Vapor, Purple Burnout!" Cheslock cried, pitching the ball fast and hard as it soared towards the batsman. It was a low ball, and our man aimed low, but when the rubber cricket ball actually hit the ground, it suddenly darted forward like it had been yanked by a string, zooming past the batsman and sending our wickets flying.

"Bowled!" the announcer cried as murmurs broke out from the students by the rails.

"What's the story with that low bowling form and sudden acceleration?!"

If I remember correctly, I thought as I shuffled a little on the bench to make room for the returning batsman as our next guy got up, it's something to do with a topspin on the ball.

Not illegal, but also difficult to do, so there was that. Thankfully, Greenhill was ahead of me on the bench, so by any standard of things, this should soon be over. If they bowled him, even with that super-ball, I would eat my betting ticket.

"Say Violet, what do you think of my-" Cheslock began proudly as he turned, only to splutter as he saw Violet was not so much as facing the pitch, instead crouching on the ground and pulling weeds(?) as he remained oblivious to the world around him. "You weren't even watching?!"

I sweatdropped as Cheslock waved the arm of his pointing hand at the prefect, demanding that he "at least try to be involved here," before turning around irritably to chuck another Purple Burnout at us as another batsman took the metaphorical plat.

"Bowled again!" the announcer roared as, predictably, our guy still missed and the ball decimated the wickets once more. "Is even Green House helpless against him!?"

Edward scoffed from slightly further down the bench, and Greenhill stood up.

His first hit absolutely clobbered the ball irrespective of Cheslock's tricky pitching –the ball could have as much topspin as it wanted: when hit at that velocity, and undoubtedly with the subtle angle adjustments Greenhill had made to counterattack the errant spinning backlash, it had absolutely no choice but to go flying almost straight up in the air as it rocketed off to the very outskirts of the field.

The crowd roared approval, a deafening volume that was by no means unrelated to the many, many, extremely loud Green House members with lungs of iron and the air capacity of a well-heated blimp.

"A six!" the announcer cried excitedly. "That's Greenhill for you! The man known as the best cricketer in the history of this school!"

"Kuh!" Cheslock gasped, flinching back. "Dash you, boss monkey!"

I tilted my head back to raise an eyebrow up at the announcer, however.

Sure, I knew he was good and all, and he fulfilled the cutout prop characteristics for an anime character in his position and appearance and whatnot, and there was that whole line about-

"There's no such thing as a ball I can't hit!"

-yes, thank you Greenhill, but the best cricketer in the school, ever? This place is hundreds of years old, right?

Damn, man.

After that, sadly for Violet House, it went pretty fast. Cheslock went down after his perquisite last four bowls without so much making a dent in Greenhill's six-scoring streak, and no one could touch him after that as Greenhill whacked ball after ball off into the far distance, much as he had done on the practice field when he'd left his somewhat effeminate-looking partner to scramble after them time and time again when there was no one obliging around where they landed.

Cozening was not for the faint of heart and weak of track skills.

"Amazing!" bellowed the announcer. "Greenhill is unstoppable! When'll he quit hitting the ball?!"

I could almost hear the whistle and see the cartoonish glint of air as the very last ball soared over the stands and the crowd –the parts that weren't supporting Violet House, anyways– screamed and cheered their approval as we were left 213 points to Violet House's measly 120.

"The victory goes to the Green Lions!" the announcer boomed, as if there was any other possible conclusion with that points spread, and the crowd continued to cheer vigorously as the rest of our team went out to congratulate a sweaty Greenhill.

"That was practically a whitewash!" Edward said smugly as he faced his prefect, who had a complacently pleased look on his face.

"Of course." he agreed, then blinked and looked over at Violet some distance away near the stands, who was scuffing his shoe against the grass again. "Nn? Violet, what are you doing?" he asked as he stepped over. "Now that the match is over, it's time to shake hands."

"I'm done." Violet sighed as he stopped moving with one last sideways scrape. "Don't step on it, okay?" he added, bringing Greenhill up short as he almost stepped onto a massive crop circle (lawn circle? grass circle?) of Violet Wolf House's emblem that Violet had, apparently, been spending this whole match working on carving out of the field.

"Wha-?!" Greenhill spluttered. "Now look here you! Take this more seriously!"

***Time Skip***

Thankfully, there was a much longer break, presumably for players on both sides to catch their breath, as we went into the final match, so I had enough time to snag my morning jacket –which at least helped disguise the fact I was one of the cricket players– and saunter, rather than sprint, back over to Lau's betting table. It was much more crowded, possibly because of the unexpected upset with the Red vs Blue House game, possibly because word had simply gotten around that it was here, and I had to employ hearty use of my elbows, as well as hold my arms close to my chest, to bully my way through the crowd and avoid anyone figuring out by touch that my chest was squishy and curved outwards. The pushing around here was like chickens at feeding time, and much more rabid than any other Victorian gathering I had seen thus far.

And that included a terrified populace fleeing from basically-zombies.

But I managed, and I waved my pink tab at one of Lau's…assistants?…as she took it, raised one immaculately-groomed eyebrow, and then grinned cheerily, turning to fish out my winnings from a leather suitca-

Oh.

Oh my.

Even for Victorian England, that was a lot of bills.

"You paid five, on 108 to four odds, you get £135 back!" she chirped, seeing, my stunned half-disbelieving expression as she handed me the money, and her sparkly, inviting grin grew wider. "Want to bet again? 150 to one odds, Green House favor!"

I swallowed hard, then looked up and grinned, even daring to fan the bills playfully like I'd seen it done in movies.

"Put it all on Blue House."

"All 135?"

"Yup. Maybe I'll be lucky again, yeah? Always good to bet on the dark horse!"

"Yuppie!" she cheered, snatching the bills back out of my hand and exchanging them for another pink slip. "Come back after the game! Hope you don't lose~!"

Oh, I will though. And by losing, not to be too pretentious, I will gain my victory!

…I wonder how much money my winnings would be in modern terms?

9.48 PM, USA Central Time