With the morning over, the coaches decided to move the weightlessness training to a week later. For one, they had wasted the whole morning dealing with the nurse; for second, they were not sure if Jin, still leaking from his behind, was a good mate to have in a weightlessness situation. Combined with the propensity of violence of some of the All Star members, they were not sure if some of them would come out alive. Not to mention that Kiyota was still shaking from his ordeal. The young Rookie was given the day off to calm down and to write his motivational letter in peace.
They hence collected all the writings from the other nine players to read while the rest practiced basketball or something else that afternoon. All except one person – their vice-captain.
Akagi was chosing what shirt best to wear for his dates. Pink? Would pink make him look less scary and more like those pop stars with swoopy hair? No, definitely not pink… How about a Hawaiian shirt with palm trees and the beach? That seemed oddly suitable. Hang on, he did have a T-shirt with a picture of King Kong clambering on Empire State Building printed on it… Now that is a cool T-shirt, he decided to wear that.
Little to his knowledge, that decision would seal his relationship with the nurse for years to come.
When the coaches had the pile of motivational letters in front of them (hey, nine is a pile!), a sense of dread filled them. Memories of the Ink blot test crept back into their mind, which made them shudder involuntarily. With trembling hand, Coach Takato picked up the first one from the pile.
To the coaches' delight, it wasn't too bad! The reading of the motivational letters from the bunch of trouble-makers/idiots/ arrogant assholes turned out to be less of an ordeal than expected.
All the players said something one could consider sensible. Rukawa wanted to be the best player of the Inter-Galactic, and would take anyone or anything down who stood in his way (he kindly pointed out that he doubted all the creatures in the universe could be considered always as 'one', like, hominid). The coaches were happy that there was no drool-mark or crinkly edges on the paper. After all, the motivational letter did have something to do with basketball.
As for Sakuragi, ever so boastful; claimed that it was the honour of the entire Universe to have the chance to witness his geniuses. Something he claimed was the chance of a life time that they wouldn't regret. The letter ended with a 'Nyahahahahahaha', which the coaches decided to strike it out.
Akagi and Mitsui wanted to lead their team to victory; though Akagi had, to the coaches' delight, left out the bit about kicking the opponents' teeth in should they dare to interfere with their plans. In fact, Mitsui offered his opponents two choices should they stand in his way, to have their teeth kicked in or to be beaten up into a pulp; or both. The coaches decided to hide the last bit from Coach Anzai.
Jin wanted to be the best 3-pointers, while Maki and Fujima believed that if they could be the best point guard in the Inter-Galactic, their team would be invincible – no position on the court is as important as the Point Guard. They smelled a whiff of perfume on Fujima's paper.
As for Hanagata, Hanagata just wanted to play by his captain and best friend, come hell or high heaven.
OK, all that wasn't so bad was it? Then they saw that there was still one letter left… the one that belonged to the Ryonan's Ace.
"This better be good…" thought Coach Taoka as he picked it up gingerly.
The only reaction after reading that 'thing', if they could call it a motivational letter that was; was to wince.
It sort of went like this:
'They sometimes call me the scoring machine, sometimes the genius… I don't get it. Why can't they make up their mind? Sure, basketball is kind of fun, winning is kind of fun, too… but sometimes I just wish Coack Taoka would just leave me alone so I can go fishing… last week I caught a huge fish, a horse-markerel, that was cool!'
The letter read like a 5-years old homework.
"Sendoh!" roared Coach Taoka as he crumpled the Ace's motivational writing in his fist, "You call this a motivational letter you Idiot? You get your sorry ass over here now!"
"Oops… " Sendoh was just finishing up his penalty shots for their 3-on-3 as he heard the outcry, "Guess Coach Taoka didn't like my motivational letter after all…"
The Ryonan's player then sped off court, to the squeal of Mitsui as he was now allowed to be the substitute player instead of being the referee.
One figure could be seen chasing another spikey-head figure around the campus that afternoon.
The three-on-three ended in Maki, Hanagata and Rukawa's favour.
Coach Anzai wasn't sure if it was indeed such a good idea to invite the boys to a late lunch, considering how much the boys ate, this endeavor might actually made a dent in his wallet, or his anonymous Swiss Bank Account.
However, the team had gone through much during the three days. The cockroach, the imaginary shark, the poisoned coffee, the inedible breakfast, the hostage situation, just to name a few. There were far too many incidents that the boys had dealt with, erh, rather marvelously and he definitely wanted to reward them.
He managed to coax both Coach Takato and Coach Taoko to share the bill, which the latter two agreed grudgingly.
They thus went ahead with their plan.
That afternoon, all 13 of them sat around at a large table with a teppan in the middle. Uozumi, the giant of a Japanese man, clad in his chef robe and a hachimaki, yielded the metal spatulas expertly as he portioned the vegetables, grilled fish and chicken from the sizzling hot surface to each of the plate of the All Star Team.
The three coaches sat at one end of the table and watched.
Mitsui was recounting his gangster lifestyle and fighting techniques to the attentive Sendoh, Hanagata and Jin, who nodded while looking utterly impressed.
Rukawa was listening to Maki, Fujima and Uozumi discussing different types of leadership styles and the responsibility of being captains.
Akagi was sitting between Sakuragi and Kiyota, trying to thwart any attempt by the two to strangle each other; and at the same time secretly syphoning the food from the two juniors' plates into his mouth. He was going on a date tonight, so he better ate his fill now as not to behave like a food bulldozer in front of his precious date later.
Three of them smiled.
Maybe, just maybe, when this team finally worked together, they would really win the Inter-Gallactic.
~ Owari ~