A Prince of Tennis fic

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there lived an old granny in the Enchanted Forest.

Although the term 'old granny' suggests that the person was a female, this was a fallacy that many stumbled over. In actual fact, this old granny was a guy in disguise (He merely enjoyed using inappropriate pseudonyms to befuddle others, for he had nothing better to do with his time).

The old granny, who we have now clarified is a man, could be found in his thatched-roofed house that was riddled with holes every time the monsoon season rolled by. There were withered flowers in his garden and his front gate hung on its hinges. This was not a disguise to keep people out due to the house's forbidding aura. This was because the guy turned old granny was too lazy to do much anyway, stemming from his dislike of anything that started with the letter 'g', a category that, sadly, the word 'garden' fell under.

If he was to be found, for some obscure reason that I am sure would never come about, the squirrel that lived in the cosy hole in the big oak tree that grew inside his garden but outside of his house would say that he could be found pottering about the house grumbling about how the squirrel always said he was grumbling when he was not, damn it.

If one did not know him better, one would think that it was in his nature to be childishly petulant. He would beg to differ, however, and if one read between the lines instead of taking everything at face value, one would realise that he was grumpy about being accused of grumbling only because the word started with a 'g'. However, no one (save the squirrel and the little lady bug that sat on his kitchen table) knew him better, and so they carried on thinking that it was in his nature to be childishly petulant.

Although the man was not exactly what one would consider a social butterfly, he did converse with people from time to time, and for that, he had a name. And no, before you ask, it is not the man-turned-old-granny, or The Great King Arthur McDonalds Joseph Cathedral or anything fanciful like that. His name was Akutsu Jin.

Akutsu was a baffling character, with a shock of grey hair crowning his head, hard, well defined lines etched into his face, and a permanent frown marring toughened features.

Some say his perpetual moodiness was because of his self-imposed ban from being around another human, some say it was because the neighbouring squirrel constantly stole his cashew nuts, some say it was because he got kicked out of his school's tennis team when he was fourteen.

But none came close to the truth. What irked him so, what made him scowl and stomp around the house, shaking the floorboards, what made him throw his cereal at the cheerily chirping birds outside of his house, was that, deep into the secret and dusty caverns of his attic, there lived a mouse.

And it was not just any mouse – it was a mouse that scurried along the corners of his living quarters, stealing food from him frequently and throwing all-nighter parties that involved squeaky cheering and miniscule pointy, cone-shaped party hats with streamers. As if that was not terrible enough, the mouse's one goal in life seemed to be taking over the Enchanted Forest.

Now, it was common knowledge that the ruler of the Enchanted Forest was a learned wizard by the name of Dan Taichi. Given, he tended to say 'Da ne' too many times and that really irritated people, and he was rather small in stature, and seemed a little too flustered to be a good leader, but under him, the Enchanted Forest's trade industry had expanded exponentially, and the tourism sector had bloomed.

To try and overthrow someone like that was pure insanity, because everyone respected him, and was too content to change rulers.

It would not have bothered him, really, but Dan Taichi was sort of like an old friend (as close to a friend as one could be to Akutsu Jin), and Akutsu did not enjoy seeing the papers with caricatures of his friend in boiling oil or being run over by a stampede of horses strewn around the floor. They had played tennis together while in school and while Akutsu was still in the tennis team, and his compromising nature had gotten Akutsu out of many a tight situation. On top of that, he was one of the extremely few existing people that he could actually stand.

However, this situation would have continued for Akutsu was not a generous, loving person by nature, and considered others business not his to meddle in. Just because of this reason, fate seemed to think that it would be a great joke to throw him in a situation where he would in a position forced to care. Life was like one whirling mess of wildly spinning ironic vortex sometimes.

One day, after Akutsu had yelled at the noisily, cheerily chirping birds and thrown his cereal at them, brushed the lady bug off his kitchen table for the millionth time, screamed at the drunken mouse to stop his hangover and move his ass off his couch, there came a knock on his door.

Akutsu flung open the creaking wooden door and glared at the man dressed formally in some weird looking Elizabethan-time clothing, capped with a white hat that had a feather sticking out of it. The man was not affected by the intimidation. He popped his gum and said in this monotonous voice, "Akutsu Jin, you have been accused of trying to overthrow the Honourable King of the Enchanted Forest, Dan Taichi. You are hereby sentenced to be thrown in jail while you await your trial. Follow me."

Akutsu raised one grey eyebrow to express what he felt about the issue, and was about to slam the door shut in the messengers face when said person took out a gun and some handcuffs. There were no arguments. As Akutsu was led towards the carriage with a pink door and a golden horse, the squirrel in the neighbouring tree cackled and pelted him with the cereals that he had thrown out of the window that morning.

The mouse looked on from the window, and the lady bug hovered uncertainly beside it. The birds had stopped their chirping and were observing the procedure in solemn silence. Time seemed to standstill for a moment. One could see the profound impact that Akutsu had on the animals he lived with. It was a poignant moment, as if the animals were trying to get one last look at him to remember him forever.

The door slammed shut, and the horses moved along the track. As the carriage rounded the bend, Akutsu heard the jubilant cheering. Well, it was not as if he had liked them very much either.

The carriage meandered a pathway that soon deviated from the main route, and they were on rocky ground, with overhanging branches pressing against the windows. Akutsu sat up straighter. This was not somewhere with which he was familiar with. And this was certainly not the way to the King's place.

"Where are you bringing me?" he demanded.

The weirdly-dressed man just crossed his right leg over his left and gripped his gun tighter. The horses trotted to a stop. Akutsu got out of the carriage, staring suspiciously at his surroundings. It was a quiet area, with the towering trees shielding the sunlight with their leafy foliage.

In front of him was a cottage, its chimney sprouting blue smoke and its garden dominated with burgeoning plants that Akutsu had never seen in his life. There were flowers the shape of teacups that had flower patterns on them, blue and white and purple. There were indigo leaves that caved into a heart shape, swaying though there was no breeze. There was a normal looking enough flower in yellow, that had coffee erupting out of its centre.

Akutsu Jin was not an easy man to intimidate, but this place had his nerves tingling with premonition. He entered the house. The interior was blue. There were shelves upon shelves of books and on the long tables that lay nearby were things that had him cringing. At the very middle of the room was a boiling cauldron that emitted the blue smoke he had seen coming out of the chimney. It was odourless, which only served to make him more wary.

A man in a white coat stepped out from behind a pile of books, glasses glinting in the sunlight that streamed in from the windows. Instant recognition.

"Inui."

"Akutsu Jin. A pleasure to make your acquaintance once more." The man called Inui stepped forward, eyes hidden behind black lenses, a disarming smile upon his lips. He held out his hand. Akutsu stared at it. There was an awkward pause, and then Inui laughed, drawing his hand back.

"What is the meaning of this?" Akutsu could barely keep himself from launching at the other man and strangling the life out of him. He glanced out of the window and saw that the weird man and the golden horses and the carriage with the golden horses were gone.

"In due time, all would be explained. First things first. Did you think the ploy I used to get you here was interesting? Did it spark some long-forgotten sense of humour in you to be at the brunt of a well-planned joke, if I say so myself?"

Akutsu could only stare for a moment.

"What the hell?"

A notebook was whipped out of no where, and Inui's glasses flashed ominously as he scribbled down…whatever he was scribbling down. He looked up, and smiled. Akutsu told himself that he would not freak out, no matter what.

"I called you down here, because I like to keep track of all the experiments I have carried out, and record the side-effects and possible uses of my concoctions."

"I was never part of your warped experiments! This is ridiculous!" Akutsu had just stood up to leave when Inui spoke.

"Remember the game that our schools played against each other? While everyone else was so absorbed into the game, it would have been so easy for someone to slip something into your water bottle."

Akutsu felt cold dread settle heavily in his stomach.

Inui leaned forward, and whispered.

"Have you ever wondered why you detest the letter 'g' so much?"

He sank back into his chair, feeling weak all of a sudden.

And through his stupor, Inui got all his questioning done, gave the still dazed Akutsu a bottle of cheerful pills for all his troubles, and got him back to his house via the carriage.

The animals observed him as he wandered around the house in shock that for the past fifteen years or so, he had been an experiment for Inui, that scheming bastard. He took some of the cheerful pills because he was not thinking clearly yet, and acted so high-spirited and so disgustingly jovial that the animals ran away from the house.

When he realised what he was doing, Akutsu soon fell back into his old lifestyle, and the squirrel and mouse and ladybug and annoying birds came back and made his life the living hell it always had been.

The End.