Crack!
I, Ken Yamato, heard sound of a wooden bat making a solid connection with the 150 kph ball thrown over the inside corner of the home plate. The stadium lights illuminated the stadium since it was getting darker.
Nora and I had made little adjustments to our tactics since the practice match yesterday. The situation now was that it was the top of the fourth inning of the true match, meaning that we had to win in two innings with us trailing them by seven in the score. There was one run batted in with the last pitch. Thankfully, we only needed one more out to end the half. We had used up all of the bench warmers so any further errors would leave us shorthanded on the field. As things were going, our team had 18 points and our opponents had 24 points. Another issue that surprised us and compounded the problem was that someone on the other team had bought out about half of our bench. Some of the players on our team were enticed by a cash payment that was decent enough to let them lower the net debt they owed to the company a good chunk.
We need to win this match or we'll be sucked into FIB without any leverage. Now... there was an added adversary, the other team's manipulator.