Disclaimer: I don't own Prince of Tennis.

This Means War

"Oww . . ." I complained as I walked to school. Kondo since he was my neighbor, as well as my friend, was next to me. I was rubbing my aching muscles from yesterday.

"Really," he said, shaking his head, "You were so into training yesterday, and now you whine about being sore today?"

I stuck my tongue out at him, but I had something else on my mind. I was desperately trying to come up with a plan to bother Tezuka. The initial thought had been to just disturb his precious tennis practice, but I realized that would affect one too many innocent lives for my taste. Lucky for me, I knew exactly who to ask for ideas.

"Nothing's bothering me," I informed Kondo, "I'm going ahead. I want to try to catch Kazuko."

"Should I be worried?" he said, because he knew as well as I did Kazuko's passion for tricks.

I just smiled, waved, and ran. "Let's see . . ." I thought. I went into the main building and into a second-year class room, until I saw the conspicuous scarlet-highlighted head that I was looking for. "Kazuko-chan!" I called, weaving through the throng of students coming in.

"Can I consult with you about . . . something in PE today?" I asked.

She got that creepy little smirk of hers on her face, "Why, of course, senpai. I'm always willing to help somebody up to no good."

I gave my own specialized creepy smile in return. "Excellent."

Ono Kazuko is one of my closest friends, even though she's a year younger than me. I met her during one of my many brief club experiences, the literature club. I didn't learn much literature at the time, though, because I was too busy learning how to pick locks and open windows. Kazuko may seem innocent, but she's one of the best pranksters I know. She would have an idea to put Tezuka in his place.

Four insufferably boring periods later, I finally got a chance to talk to Kazuko. "I want to put the tennis captain in his place," I told her bluntly. I told her all about the little situation yesterday, and she was happy to help. After all, it wasn't very often someone actually asked her to help prank such an important, respectable student.

"The best way to bother someone like Tezuka-san," she said, "Is to affect their dignity. Obviously."

I had figured that much out myself, but in the interest of being polite, I cut the 'Duh' I'd been tempted to add to my sentence and said, "So, how do I do that?"

Kazuko tipped her head and tapped one finger against the base of her neck, a weird habit she has when she's thinking. "Does Kondo shower after tennis practice?" she asked at last.

That was not the kind of question I was expecting, but I answered it none the less. "Yeah, they all do. Why?"

"I bought this fluorescent pink hair dye the other day," she explained, "It's clear until it dries. It would mix quite well with shampoo, I should think . . ."

I struggled, and failed, to hold back my laughter at the thought of Tezuka with fluorescent pink hair. "Perfect!" I said when I'd recovered. "Absolutely perfect! One question, though. How do I access Tezuka's shampoo?"

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question to me, but Kazuko waved the question off. "Oh, that's easy," she said with a grin, "You act like you belong."

And thus, before school the next day, during the boy's tennis practice, I stood outside the locker room with the hair dye, supplied by Kazuko, hidden in the janitor's bucket.

Kondo spotted me right before I headed into the locker room. "Ayame? What are you doing here, and why are you going into the boy's locker room?"

I was prepared for this, though. "I got cleaning duty for being late to class," I announced. I then held out a mop with a ridiculous, taunting grin. "If you feel violated, I'd be happy hand the duty over to you."

"You were late again?" he said, "Aren't you supposed be the smart one, between the two of us?"

I was a little confused by that remark. "Who decided that?"

He sighed, "Never mind. I'll leave you to your punishment, then," he said with an evil grin hurrying away before I could force him to help me clean. Not that I would do anything of the sort, of course, because I needed to be alone of this little operation to be a success.

After entering the locker room, I headed straight for the showers. The trick was to find the one Tezuka used, and try to avoid as many . . . innocent bystanders as possible. At first, I didn't have any idea how to distinguish which bottle of shampoo was his, but then I spotted the glasses case. And nearby that, a few very high level school textbooks.

"Bingo," I sang to myself. I carefully dumped out part of the shampoo and mixed in the dye, which would stay wet because of the shampoo. After carefully replacing the bottle, I proceeded to clean the locker room, even though I had never been assigned to.

That was the part of the plan I hated.

In the first class of the day, math, I anxiously awaited Tezuka's new hairstyle. I had been imagining the look on the face of everyone in the class all, night, and I was so excited it was all I could do not to burst into song.

So imagine my disappointment when Tezuka walked into the room, looking a little more irritated than normal, with perfectly ordinary brown hair.

And instead imagine the looks on everybody's face when Inui Sadaharu, tennis team manager and data master, walked in with fluorescent pink hair.

The high level student with glasses walked through the classroom isle, with every pair of eyes in the entire room following him. I think the teacher choked on his coffee, and the reason for Tezuka's irritation became apparent, because Fuji Syusuke, the third and final tennis regular in my math class, walked in chuckling.

I had no doubt that the other regulars had a field day making fun of Inui's new hairstyle. And Tezuka had tried to control them, obviously failing. So maybe the mission wasn't a total failure, but it sure didn't have the results I'd planned.

"Oops," I whispered to myself. At the time, I didn't notice Inui's glasses flash my direction as he heard my comment.

Kondo POV

"I – Inui . . ." Oishi stuttered. He had come to visit his old friends, as he often did, and had nearly had a heart attack after witnessing Inui's hair. I mentally sighed. He had been getting reactions like that; even though he had made it very clear it wasn't his fault. Momo had nearly passed out this morning laughing so hard.

"I was the victim of somebody's prank," Inui explained, "There was a kind of slow-reaction dye in the shampoo in the locker room."

Oishi was still trying to calm down. He was amusingly pale, but once he finally got a hold of himself, he managed to ask, "Who would do that?"

Inui shoved his glasses farther up his nose. "At first, I thought there was 50% chance it was a prank of someone on the tennis team, perhaps Eiji, Momoshiro, or Fuji, and 50% chance that it was someone on a dare. However, I now believe there is a 99% chance that it was Suzuki Ayame."

My heart sunk. Ayame had always enjoyed a little mischief, but something like this was way above her usual standard. And what's more, to my knowledge she had barely even met Inui-senpai.

"Why?" I said, finally voicing my thoughts.

Inui looked at that creepy notebook of his and said, "85% chance it was a dare, possibly from Kazuko."

I mentally cursed myself for standing by as she waltzed into the clubroom. And not doing anything as she ran off so see the prankster this morning. It was very Kazuko-esque, that sort of plot. "What about the other 25%?"

"That depends on how angry she was at Tezuka yesterday," he said, "While these sorts of actions are normally considered quite extreme, it's possible she didn't take kindly to being accused as a fan girl."

"Ayame's mildly bipolar," I said flatly. "I didn't think she would do something like this over that, but I also won't pretend it's not a possibility. Though I fail to see how humiliating you got her any retribution from Tezuka."

"Bipolar?" Inui said. I swear I heard him mutter, "Iie, data," as he scribbled something in his notebook.

He looked up from his data collecting and said, "Since she obviously wouldn't know whose shampoo is whose, it's a possibility she made an educated guess, and got it wrong. Perhaps she saw the case for my glasses, since buchou also wears them."

That was exactly the kind of careless mistake someone like Ayame would make. I found myself violently cursing in my head for the second time in as many minutes.

"I'll see if I can find out anything," I sighed tiredly. Usually being around Ayame wasn't a big deal. Occasionally being beaten up by a girl was a little embarrassing, but stunts like this one were way out of her league.

Or so I thought. Even if Inui thought that it was Kazuko's influence, I remembered her angry slamming of the punching bag yesterday and her absurd concentration during her fight with sensei. She was mad at Tezuka, and she was going to release her anger regardless of who got in the way. She was dangerous when she was like that.

I'll let you in on a little secret: Ayama's not bipolar. She'd even been tested, and come back negative. But she sometimes acted like she really was.

She'd been like this when she was young. Taka had quit karate in his 2nd year of junior high, and I personally think that Ayama's arrival at the dojo had something to do with it, along with his new found love for tennis.

It must have been a new experience for Taka, who was considered a prodigy just below Akutsu because of his strength, to be completely clobbered by a tiny, frail-looking girl. Taka had laughed it off, of course. He wasn't the type to let that sort of thing bother him, but I know that he was scared of her, just like everyone else she'd fought that day. Something had made her really angry, her second day at the dojo. And she had mercilessly crushed anyone who had approached her, with a destructive attitude to rival Akutsu himself. Poor Taka didn't have 'burning' mode of protect himself with, and the arrival of another angry karate prodigy was too much for his already wavering devotion to karate.

Ever since then, I've kept watch for the symptoms: a brooding attitude, being abnormally quiet and extremely rude behavior towards people she was normally polite to. And every time she got angry, I'd keep everyone away from her until she cooled off. I'd thought of it as my job, my duty to society. But this time, even though I'd seen her at karate, I'd refused to acknowledge the symptoms.

And then this had happened. I looked at Inui's hair, and tried to stifle another laugh at his expense, feeling distinctly guilty.

"Sorry," I said, leaving. Even though she hadn't done any real harm with this little prank, I wanted to make sure she was controlled before she really hurt someone. Which was a possibility I was definitely not ruling out.

A/N: Finally figured out how to use the grey line breaks! I'm so proud of me! I will be switching point of views between Kondo(being the representative of the regular's POV) and Ayama's. Please tell me if the regulars did anything horribly OOC, so I can fix it when they have bigger roles in later chapters. Like next one. Also, thanks to Frog-kun for the first review. I will always do my best to correct mistakes pointed out in reviews, but we'll see how that goes, because of my . . . questionable . . . writing talent.