Momo always found it hard to concentrate during the first few minutes of
the match. This was not because he was a slow starter like Shinji Ibu, the
mumbling weirdo from Fudomine. This was because he usually spent the first
few minutes arguing with Kaidoh physically or cursing him, and everyone
else, mentally.
He was pretty confident that only Oishi, that bastard who stopped at nothing to help the team, even if it involved schemes as horrible and malevolent as their mountain training venue, and his bloody doubles partner with that cat-like face who actually found it amusing and sweet to subject innocents to the kind of torture that had previously only been found in lurid history accounts, higher-level Maths textbooks, and bad porno novels, had actually been planning this horrorfest, that surpassed all his previous experiences with Inui's many juices of terror and carnage, for his third year. Curse them and their stupid, so-called self-sacrificing ways.
So they thought it "good for the team," huh? So they thought it "a surefire strategy," huh? This was a pretty damn surefire strategy to get him to quit the team for a variety of medical reasons, he was sure, among them being, "severe mental stress," "depression due to the current environment," and a severe allergic reaction to snakes in all shapes, sizes, and hisses, which involved nausea, shortness of breath, and fevers if the allergen was not removed from the vicinity quickly.
"Aah, Momo-sempai, look this way!"
"Momo-sempai is so cool!"
Okay, he didn't mind the girls. No, not at all. In fact, he dug chicks just as much as the next man, and he was pretty happy that due to their winning streak, which had started last year when they'd made it to the Nationals and was still going strong, this year, tennis had become the hot sport for Seishin Gakuen, and the tennis players were being scouted, scanned, and sighed over. Inui had predicted that the new Seigaku regulars now had a 65% higher chance of getting girlfriends than a normal student in the school, an observation that had been greeted with much enthusiasm and a 65% increase in the number of Seigaku regulars trying to get girlfriends.
They loved him too. He just wished that they loved him because he was Momoshiro Takeshi, not because he was Momoshiro Takeshi, part of the best doubles pair in Seigaku, that had never lost a match, that was living proof of the fact that your enemies are your best friends. Now, how come he wasn't in singles, when it was so obvious that..
"Ssssssssss..." Speak of the devil... that bloody Kaidoh, ruining his concentration! That hissing sound was so fucking irritating, how come his parents hadn't taped his mouth shut yet? How could they even sleep in the same house with the maker of that horrible sound? Why hadn't their roof fallen in, or their ears spouted blood, or their windows broken? How could they deal with it?
He whipped around, intending to give the snake a good one for getting in the way of his rant, or perhaps to remind him that Kaidoh was supposed to support him, not hiss at him, when he heard the refree.
"40-15, Jousei Shounan lead!"
WHAT???
How the hell could Jousei Shounan have pulled ahead so far and so fast look their doubles team consisted of a retarded midget who wore sunglasses that had been out of fashion since the sixties and a hulk with an IQ lower than that of an ameboa who looked like he was still in the stage of a child's development when you think that the Hulk is the thing to be how could they beat someone like him wait until he got his hands on that bloody snake, he was going to kill him...
"Stop fucking around!" His head snapped back up, and he stared at Kaidoh with revulsion plastered all over his head and sticking out of his spiky hair too. The other gave him a glare that would make Japanese schoolgirls faint right away for all the wrong reasons. "Quit sticking your head in the clouds, you asshole!"
He whirled around, ready with some juicy insults for the viper, that had something to do with his lips and the comparisons one could draw between them and cuttlefish rings, when he realised that the ball was at HIS side of the court. He had missed it. He had been so caught up thinking about how much he hated his new life that he'd underestimated his opponents by a long shot. And Jousei Shounan had taken the lead.
Well, shit.
He couldn't even blame Kaidoh for this one, no matter how much he wanted to. Let it never be said that Momoshiro Takeshi shirked responsibilty and failed to admit his wrongs. He clenched his fists and screwed his eyes shut as he attempted to accept the earth-shattering, vomit- inducing, nerve-wrecking revalation that came with the whole situation.
A short break was called, and the two doubles walked, at least the Jousei Shounan team did, the new Seigaku Doubles 1 team never walked anywhere, they slithered and stalked and strode and skipped (if one member was busy avoiding the other member due to previous apprasals of the other member's sense of style and sensibility that had had been neither very flattering nor very informative), towards their coaches. Ryuuzaki-sensei looked up at them from beneath the mass of wrinkles and lines that made up her face, and smiled, which caused another thirty lines to spring up around her mouth. She then proceeded to nag.
Momoshiro ignored her, too busy trying to process the previously mentioned nasty notion. He also tried to cut out her nagging, but it was proving an impossible task. He took deep breaths. Drank from his water bottle. Mopped his brow. Clenched all the muscles that he never knew the names of that Inui said he needed to develop. Gritted his teeth. Did a remarkably accurate imitation of a schoolchild being forced to drink milk- flavoured cod liver oil (without knowing it). And processed the twice- mentioned, thrice-denied, idea.
HE HAD
"And your doubles combination SUCKS so much, Oishi and Kikumaru were SO much BETTER than you two, I never had had to ever give them a WORD of advice, let alone SCOLD them, but you two, it's a WHOLE different picutre..."
LOST TO
"What kind of doubles is that? You two ACT like your both SO stuck in fantasies of POUNDING each other into the ground with hard objects that you can't even oay ATTENTION to the game, don't you realise that the Jousei Shounan players have IMPROVED, it's not like Seigaku is the ONLY school with good players..."
KAIDOH.
"Oishi and Kikumaru, they BEAT this team 6-4, the LEAST you could do is TRY to LIVE up to your sempais' NAMES and POSITIONS as the Doubles 1. At this level, you SHOULD be able to do the Australian Formation.."
That did it. Momoshiro had borne too much. He had already forced himself to stomach the fact that he had lost to Kaidoh, while not in a physical match, but he had still lost to him, because he had been dozing off and let a ball go by, and his internal organs were still dealing with the shock, causing his blood pressure to go up to heretofore unattainable levels, his mind to reel, and his stomach to lurch as though trying (and failing) to digest one of Inui's juices.
On top of that, he had had to listen to an old hag waggle her forked tongue at him about cooperation and teamwork, and ah-uns and oh-ahs, and other such rubbish such as leaning under the net. He was blinded by the cruelty and mortally wounded by the injustice, and his stomach roiled against her vile exclamations, so grossly misproportioned and illogical, his heart aching from the agony of heroically admitting his faults, a noble deed that had gone unnoticed, and through all that pain did penetrate a hiss through lips of squid and rubber, and that, as they say in folk tales, was the "stroke that broke the camel's back." Or the peach's skin, in this case.
"We'll do it then!" He shouted, not giving a thought to whether he was making sense or surrendering to his illusions again. "The Australian Formation!"
"What?" shouted the old hag, her voice rasping on the disbeliving words. "THAT formation? It's a high-level, complicated formation that requires TRUST and COOPERATION! How will you two, enemies of three years of your life, EVER pull that off? No, I FORBID you from even TRYING! This game doesn't NEED any more mistakes!"
He was about to surrender, say okay, get himself out of the already- sticky situation, when he heard his partner trying to form words while still remaining reptilian from beside him, where he had been busy guzzling water and rubbing more dirt into his bandana under the pretext of shifting it. "We could do that," he was saying, or rather, informing his waterbottle. "We could try. Seishin-ryoku de katsu.." ("Winning with determination.")
He was about to remonstrate with the viper about how it was impossible, when the snake added. "You scared? All you need to do is attack like always. I'm back on defense."
Of course, since the motion of this particular disbeliving debate was "discuss, with examples, how much shit Momoshiro Takeshi can get himself into as a result of his current placing in the team," the cheeky little Tom Sawyer of the twenty-first century just had to put in his two cents worth. "Tear it up, Momo-sempai. After all, you won't want to have to rely on Kaidoh's support, would you?" Ryoma asked, smirking, "After all, he's already been taking your balls for you during the first arc while you dandied around in la-la land, reminiscing about the days when there were no snakes on court, especially those of the two-legged variety. The least you could do is try."
That riled him up enough to agree. He couldn't stand the thought of losing to Kaidoh twice.
It only occurred to him later, of course, that no matter how good a friend Ryoma Echizen was, he was a bastard first and a friend later.
He was pretty confident that only Oishi, that bastard who stopped at nothing to help the team, even if it involved schemes as horrible and malevolent as their mountain training venue, and his bloody doubles partner with that cat-like face who actually found it amusing and sweet to subject innocents to the kind of torture that had previously only been found in lurid history accounts, higher-level Maths textbooks, and bad porno novels, had actually been planning this horrorfest, that surpassed all his previous experiences with Inui's many juices of terror and carnage, for his third year. Curse them and their stupid, so-called self-sacrificing ways.
So they thought it "good for the team," huh? So they thought it "a surefire strategy," huh? This was a pretty damn surefire strategy to get him to quit the team for a variety of medical reasons, he was sure, among them being, "severe mental stress," "depression due to the current environment," and a severe allergic reaction to snakes in all shapes, sizes, and hisses, which involved nausea, shortness of breath, and fevers if the allergen was not removed from the vicinity quickly.
"Aah, Momo-sempai, look this way!"
"Momo-sempai is so cool!"
Okay, he didn't mind the girls. No, not at all. In fact, he dug chicks just as much as the next man, and he was pretty happy that due to their winning streak, which had started last year when they'd made it to the Nationals and was still going strong, this year, tennis had become the hot sport for Seishin Gakuen, and the tennis players were being scouted, scanned, and sighed over. Inui had predicted that the new Seigaku regulars now had a 65% higher chance of getting girlfriends than a normal student in the school, an observation that had been greeted with much enthusiasm and a 65% increase in the number of Seigaku regulars trying to get girlfriends.
They loved him too. He just wished that they loved him because he was Momoshiro Takeshi, not because he was Momoshiro Takeshi, part of the best doubles pair in Seigaku, that had never lost a match, that was living proof of the fact that your enemies are your best friends. Now, how come he wasn't in singles, when it was so obvious that..
"Ssssssssss..." Speak of the devil... that bloody Kaidoh, ruining his concentration! That hissing sound was so fucking irritating, how come his parents hadn't taped his mouth shut yet? How could they even sleep in the same house with the maker of that horrible sound? Why hadn't their roof fallen in, or their ears spouted blood, or their windows broken? How could they deal with it?
He whipped around, intending to give the snake a good one for getting in the way of his rant, or perhaps to remind him that Kaidoh was supposed to support him, not hiss at him, when he heard the refree.
"40-15, Jousei Shounan lead!"
WHAT???
How the hell could Jousei Shounan have pulled ahead so far and so fast look their doubles team consisted of a retarded midget who wore sunglasses that had been out of fashion since the sixties and a hulk with an IQ lower than that of an ameboa who looked like he was still in the stage of a child's development when you think that the Hulk is the thing to be how could they beat someone like him wait until he got his hands on that bloody snake, he was going to kill him...
"Stop fucking around!" His head snapped back up, and he stared at Kaidoh with revulsion plastered all over his head and sticking out of his spiky hair too. The other gave him a glare that would make Japanese schoolgirls faint right away for all the wrong reasons. "Quit sticking your head in the clouds, you asshole!"
He whirled around, ready with some juicy insults for the viper, that had something to do with his lips and the comparisons one could draw between them and cuttlefish rings, when he realised that the ball was at HIS side of the court. He had missed it. He had been so caught up thinking about how much he hated his new life that he'd underestimated his opponents by a long shot. And Jousei Shounan had taken the lead.
Well, shit.
He couldn't even blame Kaidoh for this one, no matter how much he wanted to. Let it never be said that Momoshiro Takeshi shirked responsibilty and failed to admit his wrongs. He clenched his fists and screwed his eyes shut as he attempted to accept the earth-shattering, vomit- inducing, nerve-wrecking revalation that came with the whole situation.
A short break was called, and the two doubles walked, at least the Jousei Shounan team did, the new Seigaku Doubles 1 team never walked anywhere, they slithered and stalked and strode and skipped (if one member was busy avoiding the other member due to previous apprasals of the other member's sense of style and sensibility that had had been neither very flattering nor very informative), towards their coaches. Ryuuzaki-sensei looked up at them from beneath the mass of wrinkles and lines that made up her face, and smiled, which caused another thirty lines to spring up around her mouth. She then proceeded to nag.
Momoshiro ignored her, too busy trying to process the previously mentioned nasty notion. He also tried to cut out her nagging, but it was proving an impossible task. He took deep breaths. Drank from his water bottle. Mopped his brow. Clenched all the muscles that he never knew the names of that Inui said he needed to develop. Gritted his teeth. Did a remarkably accurate imitation of a schoolchild being forced to drink milk- flavoured cod liver oil (without knowing it). And processed the twice- mentioned, thrice-denied, idea.
HE HAD
"And your doubles combination SUCKS so much, Oishi and Kikumaru were SO much BETTER than you two, I never had had to ever give them a WORD of advice, let alone SCOLD them, but you two, it's a WHOLE different picutre..."
LOST TO
"What kind of doubles is that? You two ACT like your both SO stuck in fantasies of POUNDING each other into the ground with hard objects that you can't even oay ATTENTION to the game, don't you realise that the Jousei Shounan players have IMPROVED, it's not like Seigaku is the ONLY school with good players..."
KAIDOH.
"Oishi and Kikumaru, they BEAT this team 6-4, the LEAST you could do is TRY to LIVE up to your sempais' NAMES and POSITIONS as the Doubles 1. At this level, you SHOULD be able to do the Australian Formation.."
That did it. Momoshiro had borne too much. He had already forced himself to stomach the fact that he had lost to Kaidoh, while not in a physical match, but he had still lost to him, because he had been dozing off and let a ball go by, and his internal organs were still dealing with the shock, causing his blood pressure to go up to heretofore unattainable levels, his mind to reel, and his stomach to lurch as though trying (and failing) to digest one of Inui's juices.
On top of that, he had had to listen to an old hag waggle her forked tongue at him about cooperation and teamwork, and ah-uns and oh-ahs, and other such rubbish such as leaning under the net. He was blinded by the cruelty and mortally wounded by the injustice, and his stomach roiled against her vile exclamations, so grossly misproportioned and illogical, his heart aching from the agony of heroically admitting his faults, a noble deed that had gone unnoticed, and through all that pain did penetrate a hiss through lips of squid and rubber, and that, as they say in folk tales, was the "stroke that broke the camel's back." Or the peach's skin, in this case.
"We'll do it then!" He shouted, not giving a thought to whether he was making sense or surrendering to his illusions again. "The Australian Formation!"
"What?" shouted the old hag, her voice rasping on the disbeliving words. "THAT formation? It's a high-level, complicated formation that requires TRUST and COOPERATION! How will you two, enemies of three years of your life, EVER pull that off? No, I FORBID you from even TRYING! This game doesn't NEED any more mistakes!"
He was about to surrender, say okay, get himself out of the already- sticky situation, when he heard his partner trying to form words while still remaining reptilian from beside him, where he had been busy guzzling water and rubbing more dirt into his bandana under the pretext of shifting it. "We could do that," he was saying, or rather, informing his waterbottle. "We could try. Seishin-ryoku de katsu.." ("Winning with determination.")
He was about to remonstrate with the viper about how it was impossible, when the snake added. "You scared? All you need to do is attack like always. I'm back on defense."
Of course, since the motion of this particular disbeliving debate was "discuss, with examples, how much shit Momoshiro Takeshi can get himself into as a result of his current placing in the team," the cheeky little Tom Sawyer of the twenty-first century just had to put in his two cents worth. "Tear it up, Momo-sempai. After all, you won't want to have to rely on Kaidoh's support, would you?" Ryoma asked, smirking, "After all, he's already been taking your balls for you during the first arc while you dandied around in la-la land, reminiscing about the days when there were no snakes on court, especially those of the two-legged variety. The least you could do is try."
That riled him up enough to agree. He couldn't stand the thought of losing to Kaidoh twice.
It only occurred to him later, of course, that no matter how good a friend Ryoma Echizen was, he was a bastard first and a friend later.