Could you play with us?

Shoes squeaked with pivots and shuffles down the polished wooden floor of the gym. The basketball arched neatly and soundlessly through the net in an orange blur.

"Goddamnit." Chouza, the redheaded player huffed, doubled over in exhaustion, "Guys, I think I'm done. I can't keep up with Namikaze; he's too fast."

"Maybe if you spend the same amount of time working out as you do making bets on my sleeping habits with Inoichi, you wouldn't be struggling so much." Shikaku replied, wiping the sweat off his forehead with a wristband.

"Oh fuck off, Shikaku. You guard Namikaze then."

"I'll pass."

"And why is that you goddamned hypocrite?"

"It would spend the valuable and minimal energy resources I have."

"Minimal? What the—you bastard, your new clock went off at six in the morning! I actually had to get up and shut it off because you kept on sleeping!" Chouza growled.

"Don't be bitter," Shikaku responded unsympathetically, "I'll treat you to barbeque after this."

"Right. With the money you borrowed from me."

"Shut it, you two. You sound like old men." Inoichi said, dribbling the ball, "Hey Namikaze, stop being an unmerciful bast—jerk and slow down a bit on us. You're carrying your entire team."

"Huh?" Minato looked back in mid-jog, hardly tired while his teammates and his opponents in the casual 3 v. 3 game were struggling to catch their breath. Noticing this, the blond scratched his head with a guilty smile, "Sorry."

"God, we've been here for two hours and you're hardly sweating." Chouza pointed out while airing out T-shirt that was drenched at the top.

"Good thing we never have to play against you in a real game." Shikaku said as they changed after making a deal with Minato to stop after the next basket.

"I can pay for the court today." Minato offered once they reached the top of the stairs from the locker room to the front reception.

"I'm only going to tell you this once, Namikaze, but don't ever mention paying for guys like Shikaku unless you seriously intend to, because they'll leech off you without shame. I say this from experience." Inoichi advised.

"Oh, so are you going to chip in then, Inoichi-the-wise?" Shikaku asked.

"I left my wallet at home."

"Liar." Chouji grabbed a wallet from Inoichi's back pocket.

"Okay, can you not reach for my ass?"

"It's fine. I can pay." Minato smiled and left the three bickering friends and his two other teammates for the front desk with his wallet.

"Two and a half hours. That's 7,000 yen, please." The red-haired receptionist sitting crosslegged on a chair casually said, "Oh, and you have to sign out on the clipboard here."

He looked up in pleasant surprise, "Uzumaki-chan!"

"Oh, Namikaze!" She grinned. "What's up?"

"I'm well, how about you? I thought you worked at Ichiraku Ramen now."

"Oh, I still do. This is one of my other part-time jobs." She replied, taking his money and punching the buttons into the cash register, "I have five"

Minato's blue eyes blinked in astonishment, "Five? Isn't that a lot?"

She shrugged casually, "Well, I don't really go to college or anything. Anyways, what are you doing here?"

"Playing basketball with a few other guys from the team I'm on." He pointed back to the guys behind him, who were still bickering, "The gym at our university is being renovated, so we're practicing here for the winter."

"That's cool. What do you play?"

Before he could respond, a black haired young man stepped in front of him and interrupted, "Excuse me, miss, but I'd like to request that this gym facility be closed off to the public for the exclusive use the Koshougan basketball team."

Kushina glanced at the college student's preppy, cable-knit sweater vest with a college insignia at the breast. She wore a wary look on her face, hardly charmed by his charismatic smile. "Yeah…I need to check with the manager about that, pretty boy."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to inconvenience a lady. I'll save you the trouble." He took all of the bills out of his wallet and flipped them carelessly in front of her, "This should cover it."

Minato's eyes widened at the stack of 10,000 yen notes. But Kushina was unconvinced, and so was Chouza, who overheard the student about their age:

"Hey, you're kidding me, man. What does Koshougan need with a public gym facility?"

"It just so happens that the varnish on the wood flooring is not up Koshougan's standards. So while that is being corrected, the basketball team needs a court to practice on. This facility just happens to be the most convenient for all of the members of our team."

"Which is a perfectly good reason as to why you can't share, because…" Inoichi replied.

"Well, as the prefectural championship title holder and regional finalists, Koshougan just can't afford to have outside…civilians tampering with its practice environment."

"We need a place to practice too." Chouza argued.

"You six play collegiate basketball?"

"Yes." Chouza replied stiffly. He could hear the condescending tone masked behind pleasantry. He turned to Inoichi to ask, "He just judged me for my weight, didn't he?"

Inoichi ignored him and reiterated, "Yeah, we play for Konoha University."

"Ah, one of the smaller schools. That's why I don't recall ever playing you."

"Okay bastard. First of all, we were in the regional tournament. And secondly, Konoha is three times the fucking size of Koshougan." Chouza glared.

"Alright. Alright. It's not a big deal guys," Shikaku sighed in exasperation, "we can just find another gym."

"Are you sure you're in a position to say that, Shikaku? This is the cheapest gym in the city and you're already broke." Inoichi pointed out.

"Oh, I can go out of my way to reimburse you gentlemen for your troubles." The young man offered.

"Awesome. Com'on guys, let's go." Shikaku started walking away.

Chouza grabbed his shirt and yanked his unmotivated friend back, "The fuck? You're just going to take his money and leave?

"If it means not having to waste my energy dealing with bothersome people, yeah."

"Well I'm not backing down." Chouza glared determinedly.

Sensing a fight about to break out (more from Chouza's end), Minato stepped in and put on a diplomatic smile, "Guys, I'm sure we can reach some sort of compromise."

"We'll take your team on." Chouza ignored Minato's attempt to be friendly.

"Huh?" That was not what Minato had expected. Misunderstanding Chouza's belligerent reply for an open challenge to physical violence, he panicked, "W-wait! Akamichi-kun!"

"Five of your guys and five of ours. Here. In exactly one week next Saturday morning. We'll play a full court game."

A smile of amusement flashed across the private college player's face, "Sounds like a plan, then. Oh, you can keep the money as a tip, miss." He mentioned as Kushina was about to hand his bills back, "It was just extra change."

"It was just extra change." Chouza mimicked in a high voice of disgust. He collapsed on to the couch in the lobby in frustration, "Bastard. Him and practically all of those Koshougan snobs. Think they can hand people money and expect them to be their bitches."

"But man, his parents must be loaded. Look at all this cash! How much money do you think is here?" Shikaku looked over at the counter.

"I don't give three fucks." Kushina said, leaving the money untouched at the table as she started playing with the mini basketball hoop behind the counter.

"If you don't want it, I'll take it." Shikaku said.

"I was planning to try origami later with that, but sure, go for it." She simply replied.

"Shikaku!" Chouza watched unbelievingly as his friend crammed the bills into his pocket.

"What? Don't complain, your barbeque will be 100% paid by me now."

"Um, sorry to ruin this for you guys, but the two of us are busy next Saturday." One of the teammates guiltily mentioned.

"You've got to be kidding me. That makes only four of us!" Chouza said, aghast at the prospect of playing with a missing position, "Why didn't you say so beforehand?!"

"Who had the chance to? They didn't stand a chance against your PMSing." Shikaku grumbled.

They sat at the lobby, trying to rack their minds for someone who would be free next day.

"Oh the sweet sound of impending defeat." Shikaku finally broke the silence with his cynical comment.

"Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find someone…" Minato reassured his friends.

He trailed off and looked in the direction of the desk, where Kushina was casually making consecutive shots with a miniature basketball. His blue eyes lit up at an idea. He hesitated for a moment before calling out her name.

"Uzumaki-chan."

"Hm?" She made another basket.

"Have you played basketball before?"

"Yeah. I used to play in high school. Why?"

"Woah woah, hold up Namikaze." Shikaku interposed, "You realize that you're asking a chick to play against guys who won the prefectural tournament."

Minato optimistically smiled, "Give her a chance. She says she's played before."

"Did I forget to mention that our opponents are guys again?"

"It's worth a shot, Shikaku. She's actually pretty tall for a girl and look, she shoots better than you do." Inoichi smirked as she made another basket.

"We can head back down to the gym and do a few more drills. Then we can vote on it." Minato suggested hopefully.

"So, what do you guys think?" Kushina asked excitedly, after dribbling past Chouza and making a lay up.

"Jesus, you're almost as fast as Namikaze." Chouza puffed, trying to catch his breath.

"Yeah. You and Namikaze work really well together." Inoichi observed.

Minato looked over at Shikaku, who finally admitted, "She kind of sucks at turnaround jumps, but she'd make a good pitch in for small forward."

"So?" The girl asked with her red hair tied back in a long ponytail.

Minato retrieved the ball and passed it to her with a smile.

"Could you play with us next Saturday?"

When Kushina walked into the gym, she expected her yawn to have a solitary, loud echo, the kind of echo that rung in an empty room. Instead, her eyes were blinded by the artificial lighting above; she covered her ears from the overlapping noise of a bouncing ball. After adjusting, she opened her eyes in a squint just in time to watch Minato pivot and dash down the court in a dribble. With still some sleep in her eyes, the blond in his hair seemed to trail behind him in color, like a yellow flash of a lightning bolt.

He caught sight of her scarlet ponytail and held the ball in his hands, "Good morning, Uzumaki-chan."

"Morning." She rubbed her eyes, "Jesus. Why the hell are you up this early on a Saturday?"

He smiled as she grabbed a ball from the rack, "To practice. Like you."

"You don't need it." She snorted, "You're insanely good already. Why try even harder?"

"Thanks, Uzumaki-chan. But I'm not that good. Besides," He laughed humbly and shrugged, "I just want to make sure I don't disappoint anyone."

She reached up and then tried touching the ground—it was a good attempt, considering that her flexibility was awful. "If it's anyone that's going to disappoint, it's me if I don't get that turnaround jump. Nara, Yamanaka and Akamichi have given me all these pointers this past week and I still don't really get it."

He wondered if the tone in her voice sounded somewhat gray, but before he could open his mouth she rebounded back up and held up her fists.

"But today is the day! I can just feel it!" Her teal eyes glinted with determination.

She walked onto the court. With her back facing the wall, she turned with her legs awkwardly squatted and robotically threw the ball. It soared over the backboard and hit the brick wall. She did all this muttering to herself.

It made him smile some reason, as he stopped to watch under the guise of drinking his water.

"What?" She noticed his observant blue eyes and demanded aggressively.

Thrown off guard, he almost dropped his water bottle. Luckily, he caught it in a fluster and darted his eyes to the opposite corner of the gym.

"I'm getting there!" She insisted.

"Um. Do you want some help practicing?"

"No. I'm fine on my own." She tried again. This time the ball flew a meter past the right side of the backboard.

"Okay fine. Just tell me what looks wrong."

"Your knees look kind of off." He offered.

"Really? Yamanaka said they should be about 45 degrees."

He walked over and grabbed the ball in her hands, pulling it upwards so that her stance was slightly higher. "Put your feet a bit closer together so that's about shoulder length."

She followed.

"Now push off with your right leg to turn and shoot."

She did. The ball hit the rim this time. She turned back to him after getting the rebound with a grin.

"Hey, it kind of works better!"

"It's because Yamanaka-kun was telling you advice that works for him. But you're a bit different. See," He went behind her and had her defend the ball, "you're a bit shorter so you don't have to crouch as much."

She jumped and turned in the middle of the air to throw the ball again, only to miss by a centimeter. He patiently acted as the opponent as they practiced for the next half hour, trying to figure out why her shots weren't making the hoop despite the fact that her form seemed nearly perfect.

Thrown off balance in the middle of a turn, she jumped too far forward and crashed into his chest. Without second thought, he reached out and got a hold on her left arm before she fell backwards.

"Sorry!" He apologized quickly.

He noticed that the arm he was holding was the one that left the ball last each time she threw the ball.

"What? I'm fine, you can let go you know."

"Uzumaki-chan, are you left-handed?"

"Yeah. Is that wrong, because there's no way in hell I'm fixing that in one day."

"No, it's fine." He let go with a laugh, "It's just that, all this time we've been trying to tell you what to do under the assumption that you were right-handed."

She blinked, "That kind of stuff matters? I thought left-handed people just had to deal with it."

"Try pushing off your left foot instead and see what happens."

He handed her the ball and she started dribbling. When he tried to go on the offensive, she guarded for a few bounces and pushed towards the hoop. She pivoted to her right and leapt.

Against the white light, her scarlet hair radiated a sort of amber glow as her long ponytail whipped across his eyes and then behind her shoulders. The faint scent of citrus shampoo made him realize just how close he was to her. So even if he was notoriously known to have the most durable balance on his team, and even if her arm grazed his shoulder only ever so slightly, he fell back onto the ground anyway.

She slipped on her landing and crashed on top of him.

The ball bounced onto the ground and settled to a slow roll.

That was all he could hear, since his vision blurred slightly. He guessed that somehow, he had hit his head against the hard wood floor.

"Hey Namikaze! Namikaze!"

The voice pulled all the colors and shapes back into place. So the first thing he saw was a strand of red hair. Then his own reflection in a pair of bright teal eyes.

"Namikaze! Did you see that?" She grinned triumphantly, still on top of him "I got it in! A clean shot!"

She felt heavy, but all he could notice was how her blue-green eyes outshone the sweat on her face and the red hairs sticking out of her elastic band. But remembrance of social standards reminded him that he was expected to do say something, do something, rather than just look at her for the rest of the time.

Finally, he awkwardly offered a handshake.

"Congratulations, Uzumaki-chan."

She looked at his hand for a moment, as if considering something, before accepting it with a beam.

"Thanks!"

It was weird. Suddenly he forgot that he had someone sitting on top of him in the whole time.

"Matching jumpsuits and cheerleaders. Niiice." Shikaku whistled underneath his breath at the bench when he noticed the other team walk into the gym accompanied by an audience.

"Wow. It's like they're bishounens right out of an otome game for preteen girls." Inoichi blatantly said, without care for whether the five players on the other bench overheard his analogy.

"Pfft. Like UtaPri gone basketball." Chouza mocked.

Noticing Shikaku, Inoichi, and Kushina's stares, he then quickly added on:

"I have a sister."

"I hope you don't mind." Minato politely approached one of the players, a redhead, as they warmed up, "We had to find someone outside of the team to pitch in."

"Oh, interesting. Who did you guys get?" The young man turned and saw Kushina at the bench.

From the look in her eyes, she seemed to notice him as well.

"Very interesting." The Koshougan student grinned to himself before calling out, "Yo! Hime-sama!"

She glared, "Great. I find out today that Bleach is on hiatus and now you show your ugly ass face in my life. My day is perfect."

Minato wondered if he was missing something in their less-than-pleasant salutations. Upon introducing each other at the center of the court, he learned that the redheaded man's name was Uzumaki Kaminari.

"Hey, Uzumaki. Are you two related?" Chouza asked as they got into position, watched Minato and the other team's point guard check the ball.

"No. Uzumaki's a common last name." Kushina replied, "I just know Kaminari from a place I used to work at."

They got off on an even start, with Kushina communicating easily with the rest of her team. From an outside point of view, she could've almost passed for a regular player. With Minato, she was able to hold her own against the opponents, aggressively going for shots and side shoving for opportunities.

That was until the redheaded player from the other team became impatient and jabbed her at her rib cage as she was running down the ball. She stuck her hand out to save herself from the fall, but ended up feeling a sharp pain shoot up her arm instead.

"Fuck!" She cussed and grabbed her wrist.

"Uzumaki-chan!" Minato stopped and knelt down beside her, "Are you okay?"

"I think I did something to my wrist." She flinched in pain as he gingerly reached for her hand.

"Hey, Uzumaki." Chouza jogged up with the other two behind him, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." She gritted.

"I don't think you should play anymore, Uzumaki-chan." Minato suggested after checking her wrist, "You've sprained your wrist."

"What?! No way!" She shot back angrily, "I'm fine!"

"How unfortunate. But you won't seriously let stay in, right Namikaze-kun?" The redheaded Koshougan player said with an expression of worry plastered over his face, "It wouldn't be right to have a princess play with an injury."

"Oh when are you going to stop spewing shit out of that pretty face of yours?" Nara interrupted with an annoyed look, "You were the one who knocked her over, asshole."

Kaminari smiled innocently, "What do you mean? This is a friendly game, but basketball's a physical game. You should've kept that in mind before you got her—

"Look, just as much as I find women annoying, what pisses me off even more are guys like you who would stoop so far as to foul a girl to save your shitty ass pride."

"Are you implying that my teammate here cheated?" The black haired player from earlier asked.

"You're the one who spends 90 grand a year on your education. You tell me, genius." Inoichi replied.

"Look. I really lament that you guys believe that I would do such a thing to Kushina-chan. But what are you going to do now that her left hand is injured?"

"This."

Before Minato could tell what she was going to do, Kushina got up and punched the redhead square in the nose with her right hand.

"You bitch!" He covered his nose in pain as the other four looked on in horror.

Minato stared in shock as Inoichi and Chouza tried to keep a straight face.

"She broke my nose!" He looked around expectantly for some kind of outrage from his team.

Shikaku replaced his smile with an unconvincing version of sympathy, "What? I didn't see a thing."

"Who's unfortunate now?" Kushina challenged violently.

The other Koshougan players held Kaminari back before he charged at her.

"Come on, Uzumaki. It's not worth it." One of them said.

Another one whispered into his ear and caused the redhead's eyes to widen as if he had just recalled a bad memory. As if she could read his mind, Kushina flashed a devious smirk.

"We can buy out another place." The black haired player said as they walked off.

"Yeah, I'll tell my parents about this. Then we'll see who's the last one laughing."

"Well, joke's on you. Because then you'll just have to tell them how you got your asses kicked by a girl." Inoichi called out.

Chouza noticed Minato still on the ground, "Hey, Namikaze. It's over. You can get back up. Everything is PG again, you know."

He did know. He had been paying attention to the whole thing; the way she recklessly threw her fist; the way she wholeheartedly grinned without regrets; the way her ponytail swung behind her as she did all that, like some fearless fire.

In the middle of staring in amazement, he had just forgotten to stand.

Just so we have the original schools straight…

Konoha University: the public university Minato, Inoichi, Shikaku, and Chouza attend

Hanamichi College: the women's college Yoshino attends

Koshougan College: the prestigious private college introduced this chapter.

As for OCs…Uzumaki Kaminari—Kaminari is a Shito deity of thunder that often can be referred to as Raijin.

For those of you that like Uta no Prince-sama, my apologies (I guess). I'm not a huge fan of anime adaptations of otome games, but I have a close friend who does and I love to make jabs about them just to annoy her. I find UtaPri particularly hilarious for its ridiculous misuse of percentages (if 1000% wasn't absurd enough, they had to go ahead and make a sequel…which wasn't 1001%, but 2000%.)

Anyways, just my ramblings. As always, thanks for reading! I appreciate any and all reviews :)