Welcome to my first fic for the site, aptly named...
Slam Dunk II: Second Power
Why did I call it "Second Power", you ask. Well, basically, I am going to introduce a few more apparently powerful characters into the original storyline (after the Summer Championships and Shohoku's loss in the third round of the IH, which I prefer to call, Summer Championships), and I am going to come up with the conclusions on a few loose end of the story, such as who ACTUALLY won the Summer Championships. (You'll be surprise – or un-surprised, depending on your attentiveness to the 10+-year-old series)
For this story, the focus would still be on Sakuragi Hanamichi (surnames first, if you wonder, because I prefer to use the Chinese-Japanese surnames-priority naming method) but I will also provide a few focus-chapters on our new characters (co-main with Rukawa and Sakuragi) so that you'll not get lost on their origins and all.
This chapter is completely skippable, because this is just an in-depth explanation of the new characters
New characters:
Yukigawa Mai – A sophomore transfer student from Tokyo, a quiet girl with a hidden but nonetheless impressive academic record. Aspires to do something different from her businessman-father's hopes for her – go into the world of basketball instead of sitting in front of the desk all day typing documents. To do so in the non-existent girls' basketball team, of course she must create one... but... how? Will Shohoku's hard-headed principal and dean be impressed? Or will Mai end up becoming the second Ayako?
Yukigawa Arashi – The younger brother of Mai, Arashi also hopes to deviate away from his father's aspirations from him and, like-minded with his sister, is a basketball fan and a proficient player. Somewhere in him tells him that he can match a lot of the national players, but lying around the street basketball corners of the hustle-bustle in Tokyo doesn't make him a star, he wants to jump onto the national scene and make a splash. Is this the timely help that Sakuragi and Rukawa – or, in fact, Shohoku - needs? Or will Arashi replace Sakuragi by accident instead?
Goston Yamir – A half-Jap, half-Bulgarian hailing from Nagoya, his 2.1 meter height makes him extremely exposed to human eyes. Being shy doesn't particularly help the problem much. A senior who sincerely hopes that, with his last shot at better college basketball, he would be asked to join UCLA, his dream college for basketball (although for reasons unknown). Is this guy a mere replacement of "Gori"Akagi? Or will the team have a fiercer backbone then ever?
Aoiyama Uchiro – A shady sophomore character hailing from a nearby high school, he doesn't seem like your typical boy-next-door with constantly changing, outlandish hairstyles that the dean will be horrified at, but deep within his flashy exterior is a deep, dark past he wishes to forget. Will he be the second pre-"conversion" Micchy? And what skills does this average-height boy have that makes him unique amongst all the players?
Shinichi Kawasaki – Your typical inspired-person kind of character, he has nothing but reverence for the Shohoku players especially after the giant-slashing feat by Shohoku which rocked the entire nation. He joins Shohoku as a freshman only because of the round-two miracle, but will he prove that with a loud-mouthed addition as him, he will contribute to a rising power? Or will he become the team's ultimate hindrance?
Teams and the 6 months after the Summer Championships:
Shohoku:
With Sakuragi's back injury taking three months to heal, the Shohoku team had difficulty trying to play without a powerful forward as him, even with the all-Japan professional Rukawa on hand to help. A shock decision by Anzai sensei to pull out of the Winter Championships sent the local teams into a whirl of surprise, as Ryonan and Kainan had actually placed a slight focus on playing in the event of "meeting up with that crazy red-haired monkey".
Anzai announces his retirement plan within the next two years, which sent yet another shockwave in the team. However, the "old man" as they liked to call him, has assured that a younger, livelier replacement will help him starting from spring. Who can possibly match the old man's wise guidance on and off court?
Ryonan:
Sendo was injured in late-July due to a biking accident that put him out of match-fit condition for 3 months, a month after Sakuragi picked up his "slam-table" back injury. With both Uozumi and Sendo out, Fukuda assumed the captain's role but unfortunately, his style of one-man-show play has put off a lot of his Ryonan teammates, despite numerous qualifying-round match wins. Fukuda was immediately and obviously isolated by the Ryonan players after Sendo's return in time for the Winter Championships, but a public discussion held by the coach shortly afterwards has left the Ryonan players assured that Fukuda will play team basketball more, and hence he did not sink into depression, fortunately, like he once did.
Ryonan lost out to Shoyo for the qualifying from the prefecture stage, and hence, did not take part in the Winter Championships.
Kainan:
Maki's graduation from college meant that the team is now short of a backbone, which they hope can be found amongst the freshmen or amongst the transfer students. For the Winter Championships they decided to play "quick-draw" basketball (speed and power) which had them racked up unbelievable scores of more than 200 against minnow teams. However, the relative inexperience has costed them a championship – once again, first foiled by a Meihou during Summer, then by Aiwa. Kainan's pride is at major stake here, can they reclaim in during the next Summer Championships?
Shoyo:
Faced with an uphill task of replacing themselves, Shoyo has decided to give more exposure for freshmen and Sophomore as Kenji Fujima has decided that, given the state of the team then, by January they'll be officially "undone" by themselves since all the starters in the Summer Championships are seniors.
To their surprise, Shoyo accidentally found a raw but talented team amongst the sophomores and freshmen, among them Koshiro Aoi, a freshman with a calm shooting stance and leadership sense on the court, and Sumitomi Seiichi, a sophomore with a Dennis-Rodman-like attitude, and an even louder presence under the basket. Passing the baton on to Aoi, Fujima takes a permanent role on the bench – as a coach – and defeats a rather loose-disciplined Ryonan in the qualifying stages to qualify for the Winter Championships. However, like Kainan, Shoyo's relatively inexperienced players found themselves out of gas halfway through the Winter Championships and subsequently, they were defeated under the hands of a more experienced ensemble from Aiwa High School, during the Round of 16. Since then the Shoyo school authorities had been laying out a lot of human and financial resources for recruitment of basketball players to Shoyo, but how the 4 new players of Shohoku slipped past their recruitment drive is a baffling question.
Disclaimer:
This work is only a fan fiction (or fanfic for short), that is, fiction based on part or all of another written or illustrated fiction, written by fans of the said fiction. There is absolutely NO relation between the author of the original series (Inoue Takehiko) and the author of this fanfic (Pasonia Seltia Keros), NOR is there any relation between the fanfic's storyline development and any ACTUAL storyline development henceafter made by the original author (although in SD's case, the storyline is left stagnant for more than 5 years.)
Ok, I'm posting this introductory page first for a quick peek into my take at the subsequent events after Book 31 of Slam Dunk. However, since it's been quite long already, I am bringing the background of the story to a contemporary setting, which in this case, would mean that the story's second year will start in 2004, so take note. (Seems like a huge jump, yeah, but I'm also about to bring a few elements like the NBA into the story, so it is inevitable that I have to do this rather odd adjustment to the storyline background. ESPECIALLY when you have a humongous object like Yao Ming going to the NBA.)
I will incorporate contemporary elements but I try to keep that at its minimum. I mean, I don't want my story to be ruined by whole pages of net chatting. (o)