Disclaimer: See previous chapters.

This Means War

Ayame

When I got home, I put my uniform in the dryer and spread my things out by the window to dry in the sun, before showering for a long time in a desperate attempt to get the glitter off. Lucky for me, my parents weren't in the house when I got home, so there weren't any awkward questions at first.

Despite my efforts, there was no way the glitter was coming off. That meant that the entire tennis team was going to pay, and I already had an idea how to do it. My house is directly connected to the hospital my parents own and operate, so I went through the side door and into the antiseptic smelling halls. I used to hate that smell, but after living with it for so many years, I barely even noticed any more. Kondo once told me that even outside of the hospital I smell that way, like a doctor, like the smell has made its way into my skin and is never going to leave.

There was one thing that was good about living right next to the hospital, though, and that was that I had access to a very thin, very strong and nearly invisible kind of tape used to cover stitches. "I need it for a school project," I explained to one of the nurses. They all knew me, so borrowing supplies from the hospital wasn't a big deal. You'd be surprised how many simple medical tools work excellently for other projects; it wasn't the first time I'd taken something for school.

The next thing I needed was a small knife. I located one about the right size in the kitchen, and added it to my tape.

After that, I snuck into my brother's room, which had pretty much been left the same since he had gone to college, because my parents were always too busy to clean it out. A little rummaging through the dusty drawers, and I found his store of Airsoft pellets, as well as the funny little mechanism that you could pour the pellets into and it would feed them quickly into the little cartridges. I took them both, and then set my little collection of supplies on my desk. I took out my phone, which luckily hadn't sustained too much water damage, and called Kazuko.

"Kazu?" I said to her, my voice dripping sweetly, "I need your help again."

"I suppose," she said, "But try not to screw up this time. Not that a pink-haired Inui wasn't funny; it just wouldn't look good for us to mess up twice."

"Don't worry. I've got another plan, and there's much less room for error this time," I reassured her. "Not as funny, but it'll certainly irritate Tezuka . . . and my other targets." Today was Friday, which left me the entire weekend to execute my plan.

"Please meet me in the front gate of the school after club activities, so about 4:00 tomorrow. Make sure your parents are willing to not question your whereabouts for a few hours," I explained, all business.

"This sounds interesting," she said, her voice dripping with mischievous innocence, "Alright, senpai, we'll try it. Do I need to bring anything?"

I considered for a moment. "Bring your lock picks," I told her, "They'll make it a lot easier."

Kazuko chuckled. She loved picking locks; she thought it was a fun challenge. "Alright, then. Just know that if we're breaking into an important building we're graduating from pranks to felony."

"I know," I sighed, "We're not going into anything too high tech, don't worry. Nobody will know, or care."

I spent the rest of the night alone, like usual. Since my parents had their hands full with the hospital, I barely ever saw them except in passing. I had made friends with a little 8-year-old with leukemia that had come a while ago, and had been hanging out with her, but last night she'd died, which was why I wasn't eating.

It's unbelievable what you can get used to if it hits you often enough. If you had told me in the first year of middle school that in five years, I would be used to my friends dying overnight, I would have kicked you and called you stupid.

I would have been wrong.

"Good afternoon, senpai!" Kazuko said, coming over to me.

I smiled at her. "Yeah. Let's do this!" I was pretty excited, because even though the plan didn't have the comic value of the pink hair, it would definately irritate Tezuka, which was something I couldn't wait to see.

"So, what's the plan?" she asked, looking at the backpack I was carrying.

"We're going to sabotage the tennis balls," I told her matter-of-factly.

She shrugged, "That oughta make them pretty mad . . . and look pretty stupid, if we do it right."

"That's the hope," I said, "I'll explain more once we break into the storage room in the back of the school."

Kazuko followed me to the shed where the school stored sports equipment. She examined the lock on the door.

"Can you get it?" I asked.

"Of course," she said with a smile, "They probably haven't changed this lock since the school was built. I could get through with a bobby pin."

She then proceeded to take out a small metal tool that she used to move tumblers, and within a matter of minutes, had opened the door on the shed. "Taa-daa!" she said.

I clapped my hands once, "Alright! There's more, though." We entered the old building and pulled down the baskets of tennis balls the club used for practice. I took one ball and held it out for Kazuko to see. I grabbed a knife from my backpack, and made a small cut through the surface of the tennis ball.

It is a fact that tennis balls have a skin about three fourths of an inch thick, and are from that point on, completely hollow. By slightly squeezing the cut tennis ball, I was able to use the Airsoft loader to fill the ball about a third of the way with the small pellets. Using a small bit of the invisible tape, I sealed the cut so that you could only see the scar if you were looking for it. I then stood and dropped the ball on the ground. Its bounce was low and at an awkward angle.

"I'd like to see them practice with this," I grinned.

"It would be difficult," Kazuko said, a wicked smirk forming on her face.

"I don't want to make the baskets too heavy, though," I warned, "So only do this to about one out of every three balls. It'll be more confusing that way, anyway."

Kazuko nodded. I gave her some of the spare supplies I'd brought along as a last minute thought this morning, and we both set to work. It took about two and a half hours to use up all of the Airsoft ammunition I'd brought along, but by the time we were finished, I was pleased with a job well done.

We replaced the tennis baskets, which we had been careful to make sure still weighed a reasonably normal amount, and then left and locked up the shed. Kazuko grinned at me.

"You up for ice cream?" she said, as though we hadn't just done something pretty evil and partially illegal.

I signed up for extra library duty on Monday, so I could see the effects of my experiment. I watched carefully, from a distance, as the boys started to practice. Thankfully, Inui hadn't brought custom color balls that day, and it was practice matches, after Tezuka's many laps. Ryoma was the first one to pick up one of the tampered balls. He was playing a practice match against Eiji. I sort of wanted to see him try one of his famous 'Twist Serves' with our special tennis ball, but since neither he nor Eiji were going all out, I didn't get to right away.

It certainly didn't work properly, though. Echizen served the ball, and it fell with an awkward 'thunk' on the ground and bounced sideways, out of the court.

The freshman who was the referee, a short kid with mushroom-top black hair blinked, and stuttered, "F – Fault."

Echizen looked confused. Then he abrupty looked angry. He glared and Inui, and I realized that he thought that this was some kind of secret training that he had set up for them, but not told them about. He pulled another ball out of his pocket and served, this time trying to adjust for the Airsoft pellets he didn't know weren't there.

Unfortunately for Echizen, the ball he had corrected for was perfectly normal, and didn't land in the right area.

"Double fault," mushroom-top said, "0-15, Eiji." Mushroom looked absolutely mystified, and Echizen looked teed. Neither of them had any idea what was going on.

I giggled.

The practice proceeded according to my plan. The level of the tennis played that day looked like it was an elementary school PE class. They looked absolutely ridiculous, trying to adjust for the pellets. The expressions on their faces should have been cast in bronze as they watched their many years of experience suddenly seem pointless, because nothing was consistant. Momo faired the best, because his power play wasn't affected as much by the bounce of the ball. Ryoma, Fuji, Oishi, and Tezuka did horribly because their special spins and techniques were rendered utterly useless by the randomly changing handicap on the balls. Tezuka nearly had steam coming out of his ears by the time the practice was over, because of all the problems caused by the modified balls.

The best part was when Horio, an annoying kid who joined in middle school, managed to take three normal balls, and didn't correct for any of them, thus winning against Kaidoh. Horio ran for his life, afterwards, of course, but later I heard stories of a miracle freshman, which lead me to believe Horio had told a slightly altered version of the story to his classmates later. I was proud of how much I had caused the tennis team to lose face, even if it was only for today.

Overall, the mission was a huge success. I hardly could have asked for better results.

Kondo

Something weird was happening at practice today. There was something wrong with some of the tennis balls. At first, I had no idea what was going on, neither did anybody else. Then I saw somebody sulking in the shadows by the locker room.

Ayame. Somehow, she was behind this. That didn't take a genius to figure out.

"Tezuka!" I called, "Stop practice."

I went over to him and elaborated. "Somebody tampered with the balls." I held up one of the ones that hadn't been working properly and shook it. There was a distinct rattle. "Hear it? There's something inside."

"I hear it," he said shortly. No wonder, this was enough to make even him lose his cool.

I checked over the tennis ball carefully until I found what I was looking for. A hairline crack, pressed together and sealed, and nearly invisible. "Here's the cut. Somebody put something into some of the tennis balls that destroys their bounce."

Tezuka scowled. Not just a little downturn of the corners of his mouth, a real scowl. I couldn't believe it, though he was irritated for a good reason. This was going to be nearly impossible to fix, because even if we were able to take the beads or whatever out of the tennis ball, they would still be cut and wouldn't work properly if they ever landed on the cut. Which basically meant that we had to check through all of the tennis balls and replace the ones that had something wrong with them.

Inui appeared behind us. "Tezuka is angry about something," he said, and I jumped. One thing I'm never going to understand is Inui's ability to sneak up out of nowhere.

"His expression has tightened 76% since you started talking to him," he informed me. "Perhaps, you know why this practice is wrong?"

I showed Inui what I'd found one the tennis balls.

"It is vengeance for the glitter;" Inui said flatly, "Ayame's target has expanded. She no longer only holds a grudge against the captian, but the entire team."

"Is that so?" Fuji said, "Then we'll have to retaliate, now won't we?"

"No," I said, "No we won't."

But since I'm the voice of reason, who's going to bother listening to me?

A/N: So, I'm having trouble writing anything funny, but I'll just leave it how it is. Please review if you have critiques, suggestions, or comments. I think the chapters are getting shorter . . . I must work harder!