Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis does not belong to me!

This Means War

Ayame

In the purchasing of the voice recording, my plan was partially finished, but there was one other piece of electronics that I needed to get my hands on. I went to the office supply store the next day, after school, and purchased a very large and complicated scientific calculator, the kind most kids in my math class used. I would have used my own, except somewhere along the line I'd covered it in stickers, and that would get in the way of my plan. I went home, and carefully started to pull apart the electronics, until it appeared as though a robot had come into my room and thrown up on my desk.

I jumped when I heard the click of the door to my room open behind me, making the wires fall out of my hands. "Gah!" I yelled, looking to see who it was, even though I already knew.

It was my mother, the only person in the world who would just walk into my room. To be honest, not very many people even went into my room, and dad, Kondo, and the house keeper always knocked, especially if I had the door close. I looked up at her. "Do you need something?"

"Am I not allowed to check on my own daughter?" she said, all innocence. I set down the electronics I was adjusting and spun my desk chair around to face her, where she leaned in the doorway.

My mom is pretty, with shiny black hair and warm eyes, but I think she looks tired and sad all the time. That's what you get for being an emergency children's doctor, I guess. It ages you fast, to see so many young people die. Both she and dad have the same look in their eyes, like they're always feeling infinitely guilty for the children that they couldn't save. I know I should be sympathetic, but I'm a teenager, and I feel the same way about them as every other teenager does. A refusal to respect their problems, or perhaps a very self-center view of their relationship with the world. And I know it, too, but I'm certainly not likely to do anything about it.

"It's allowed," I said, "Just unusual. Are you sure there's absolutely no ulterior motive here?"

My mom fake gasped, and said "I'm so insulted you would think so. What have I done to have such a suspicious daughter?"

I held up my hands in surrender. "Alright, sorry." I looked at her. She seemed uncomfortable. "Is something wrong?"

"Actually, I was wondering if you could . . ." she began, but I cut her off.

"I knew it! I was right. And you were complaining I was suspicious," I sighed, saying the last sentence in an overly chiding voice. Really, it was just like her to reject something so completely then do just that ten seconds later.

Mom gave me a dirty look, then said "Anyway, I just wanted to know if you could keep one of the patients company. She's three years younger than you are, but I think you would get along well. You could help her with her homework."

I sighed, even though I didn't really mind. Keeping patients company wasn't as bad as people would expect, once you got used to it. But there was one thing I had to know before I went anywhere near the mystery girl's hospital room. "What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy," my mother answered, "She can walk with crutches, and doesn't have any mental symptoms, but she's naturally very weak and she is easily tired."

"Hn," I nodded. I picked up some of my physics homework that I should have been doing anyway, and said, "I'll go see her. What room?"

My mom smiled at me, "Thanks, sweetie. I knew you'd help, even if you complain. Room number three-forty." Getting to know the patients was awkward, so I took my time walking through the house and to the small hallway that lead to the second floor of the hospital. Taking the stairs to the third floor, I passed and greeted the doctors, nurses and specialists that I knew. I rapped on the door of the room labeled 340 and opened it a crack.

"Can I come in?" I asked, and I heard a soft sort of voice answer, "Yes. Can I help you?" I opened the door to see a girl with slightly curly dark brown hair. It was a little disarrayed, like she couldn't be bothered to take care of it. She had big green eyes, and a sort of soft, kind looking face. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd seen her face before.

"Um . . . I'm the daughter of the doctors that own this place . . ." I started. This was always the hardest. "I don't have any siblings, so I sometimes like to stay with the patients who are going to be with us for awhile, and my mom thought I might get along with you, so . . ." The trick was to make it sound like it had been arranged entirely for me. Because most patients did not appreciate being reminded of the situation they were in. Sometimes they got mad at me, grumbling about this and that. We're not supposed to treat the patients differently, but the truth is, they need to be treated differently, or nothing's ever going to work at all. What you had to do was treat them differently respectfully.

The girl's eyes lit up. "Would you? My brother and parents are always so busy, and it's hard to go out for very long, so it gets lonely." I couldn't help smiling at her. She was one of the nice types that recognized we were trying to help and not be rude. People like her are usually kind and generous to a fault, but they were great friends.

"Of course," I told her, "My name is Ayame. My mom didn't tell me yours . . ."

"Oishi," she told me, "Oishi Sachiko." I dropped my books in surprise. That explained where I'd seen her face before. Now that I thought about it, they really looked alike. "Ah . . . is something wrong?" she looked at me innocently.

I set a smile onto my face, the mask was Fuji-worthy. "No, nothing. By the way . . . your brother . . . . his name wouldn't be Shuichiro, would it?" I stooped to get my books, hiding my face. It was just my luck to run into someone who was related to Eiji's best friend. She seemed nice enough, though. Maybe she would even help me.

"Do you know him?" she said, confirming what I already suspected.

"Aa . . . Loosely," I smiled, "I know his friends, from Seishun . . ." She looked a me, obviously startled by my sudden change in attitude. "We don't really get along."

"I see," she said, thoughtfully, "Now that you mention, I think Eiji said something about a girl who didn't like the tennis team, when he came over. Was that you?"

"Probably," I smiled. "I'm quite notorious now, aren't I?" I was pretty sure that I was going to seem a little hardcore to someone as docile as Sachiko, but then she started to snicker.

"Some of the stuff you did sounded pretty smart. I thought the thing with the hair dye was really funny," she said, "What are you going to do next?" I wish I could've seen my own face at that moment. I bet it was absolutely hilarious. Who would have thought that Oishi's sister of all people would have her own little evil streak? I set my books down on the table in her room and said, "One moment. I'll show you."

I hurried back to my room, picked up the calculator, which I had left open, and the recording module I had salvaged from the device I'd gotten yesterday. I brought it into Sachiko's room, and showed her what I'd done so far.

"I'm recording various noises into this little microphone here," I said, showing her, "Then, if I attach this wire to the back of the calculator, I can make it say anything I want when someone presses the equals sign, or any other button for that matter." Sachiko looked like she didn't really get how I was doing it, but she caught the general idea.

"I see," she said, "So, who's the lucky one to be on the receiving end of this calculator?"

"Why, Tezuka of course," I smiled, "It wouldn't look half so ridiculous if someone like Eiji had it, would it?"

"But how are you going to get him to take it?" she said. I shrugged, I had already thought of that. It wouldn't be that hard with some of the other . . . skills . . . that Kazuko had taught me.

"I'm going to steal his," I said bluntly, "And replace it. He leaves his backpack outside in PE everyday; it shouldn't be that hard to get into." I already knew that he was horribly organized, like me, so I would be able to find and replace it fairly quickly.

"What if he knows it's different?" she said, "Won't he be angry that you stole his calculator?" I laughed; she was worrying if he was going to get angry.

"He's going to be irritated no matter what," I said, "So it doesn't really make a difference. Besides, everyone in class has the same calculator, so this is the right kind. I don't think he has his name on his, either." Because that was the kind of personal touch Tezuka wouldn't include for most things. I spent the next few hours at Sachiko's side, carefully making attachments to my special present for Tezuka, and finishing my horrible physics homework. Interestingly enough, even though Sachiko was only 14, she was much better at it than I was. Kind of pathetic, on my part anyway.

"I . . . hate . . . running!" I complained to one of my friends in my PE class. Don't get me wrong, I'm not completely out of shape. I have to be relatively strong to be in karate. But my endurance is so terrible I don't like to think about it – the best thing to do in karate is finish the match quickly, and then you don't need endurance. So every time we have the six mile cross-country at school, I feel like I'm going to throw up, which actually puts me in a better position than some people, who can't finish it or really do get sick. And then there are people like perfect Tezuka, who finish the whole thing before every one else without breaking a sweat. Lucky for me, that meant that Tezuka had been sent off to occupy himself with training while everybody else finished, and his backpack sat abandoned with everybody else's, outside the locker rooms.

I snuck over to the bag and opened it, immediately identifying the bag that would hold things like glue sticks and calculators. I opened it, and to my pleasure, found a calculator identical to the one I'd changed. I'm no Inui, but it seems I can predict some things. Probably helps that I choose a very predictable person.

I quickly swapped the calculators, stuffing his original one into my backpack. PE was nearly over, and everything was going perfectly, until sensei called us all together and made an announcement.

"There was a gas leak in the science room, so the second floor is being evacuated for the day. This means that a few more students will be joining us who had classes there," she was interrupted by general cheering from people who had friends that might be coming, "and you will all have a second PE period, for today only." And she was interrupted again by a collective group of moans, from people exhausted from the previous PE lesson and probably felt like shooting themselves at the thought of another one. I may have been one of them.

Slowly a group of students who should have been having class on the second story filtered outside, gossiping, chattering, and conspiring about what might have happened. After all, it isn't very often that something like this happens, so naturally people would spread rumors about it, saying it was a bomb scare or something equally ridiculous.

I wasn't happy about the extra PE lesson, and then the teacher announced something that ruined my day completely. "We'll be playing volleyball," she announced, "And I will be choosing teams." To normal people, that doesn't exactly sound like Armageddon, but I'm not a good team player. The fact that I don't get along with the regulars, who are some of the most generally liked people in school, should speak for itself on that. The teacher started reading off names for teams, which were made up of six people. My team was made up of me (obviously), a boy named Akira who came from the deserted second floor, a girl named Megumi who was one of the 'kya, kya' fan girls, her friend Haruko, a second year that had come from the second floor that I didn't know, and, in some stupid coincidence because our last names are close together in the alphabet, Tezuka. As far as I could tell, the boy I didn't know and Tezuka were going to be the only ones that could actually play, because Akira had asthma. It's a big thing at our school to beat Tezuka at anything, so there were sure to be some people willing to try for that, and because we had to be a team, they also got the honor of trying to work around the dead weight.

Why couldn't I play, you ask? First of all, as previously mentioned, I was never a good team player. Second, I could barely stand being with in a ten foot radius of Tezuka. And finally, I cannot play volleyball to save my life. I don't know why, but every time I try (which I have, at a variety of picnics and other social gatherings) I manage to inflict a variety of injuries on both myself and the people around me.

In our first game, Tezuka served first. Lucky for us, the other team was only able to return it once, so we got quite a few points. Until the serve changed, that is. I stood to one side, and tried to stay out of the way as we lost all the points we'd won. Then the gym teacher came over.

"Come on, Suzuki!" he said, "I know you're strong, so play!" I gulped, and stepped out onto the court. PE was one of the few classes I wasn't on the bad side of the teacher, so I had to do what he said. The next time the ball had been hit towards me, I attempted to knock it back, awkwardly hitting it off my wrists. It flew into the air and caught on the net, bouncing back to our side. The gym teacher just gave me a withering look, and went off to make sure everybody else was playing.

The next time the ball came my direction, I managed to hit it over the net, but I also knocked the wind out of one of the players of the other team. By the third game, I had hit Akira's back, tripped Haruko, and some how managed to smack the ball into the boy I didn't know and hurt my own wrist in one stroke. How's that for talent?

It wasn't until the fourth game, though, that I finally got what I wanted. I got roped into serving, and when I finally managed to hit the ball instead of tossing it and dropping it to the ground, I hit it hard. It flew through the air – and abruptly stopped, slamming the back of Tezuka's head. His neck snapped forward and his glasses fell, and for a split second I was actually worried, that I'd hurt him.

That only lasted for a second, though. It quickly became apparent that no serious damage had been done, and I worked to repress my laughter as Megumi and Haruko freaked out about the welfare of their precious Tezuka-sama. "Are you – okay?" I said, my voice breaking as I tried to keep it from being completely obvious I was thrilled with his predicament.

"Aa," he said, feeling on the ground for his glasses. Seeing Tezuka kneeling on the ground was more than I could ever hope for. Best of all, I managed to last the entire lesson without inflicting or receiving any injuries larger than scratches or bruises. Pretty good day, as thing go.

The next week or so was really quiet. The district tournament was coming up, so the regulars were all too busy for anything else. And, most unfortunately for me, the teacher didn't allow us to use calculators in math for quite sometime. I spent my time practicing karate, getting forced to help Kondo practice tennis (usually by hitting the balls at him, because I don't have the hand-eye coordination for anything else), and spending time with Sachiko. Oishi's younger sister turns out to be some kind of math genius; I've probably learned more from her than I have all year.

However, my calculator did get its moment to shine. We were factoring with routes, and to help speed the process up, we were instructed to use calculators. As I tried to follow a formula I didn't understand in the least, I abruptly heard a shrill screech that lasted for less than a second. I repressed my knowing snicker, and looked around with everybody else. The crease between Tezuka's eyebrows had gotten deeper, but I don't think he realized it was the calculator that had made the disembodied shriek. The teacher looked in the hall, and upon having decided that no one was really being murdered, every one went back to their math.

It was only a minute later that the calculator went off again, this time it was a squeal not unlike that an angry pig would make. Tezuka, being the bright guy that he is, was already starting to see the connection, which was proved when he hit the equals button immediately afterword, allowing for an eerie ringing to resound through the room. Unfortunately for Tezuka, and much to my pleasure, one of the fan girls next to him was also starting to see the pattern.

"Um . . . Tezuka-san?" she said, "I think that calculator . . ."

"Aa," he said with a concise nod. Meanwhile, the other students were taking random guesses at what was causing the clamor. I heard something about a ghost, something about a cat, and something about a raccoon. But no one else had realized that it was Tezuka's calculator. Yet.

The calculator made noises two more times (both in Tezuka's attempt to make it shut off) before the people in Tezuka's vicinity had figured out where the sound was coming from. Then came the moment I had been waiting for. A spread of giggles made it's way around the room, as everybody learned what was going on. I covered my smile with a notebook, in order to avoid looking too responsible.

Tezuka looked at his desk, his expression set in stone. One of the guys next to me muttered to the person next to him, "Can you imagine? Tezuka, with something like that! Who managed to get him to use it, do you think?" I could resist an evil giggle listening to them, and the two boys looked at me, enlightenment in their eyes. They both simultaneously scooted a couple of inches away from my desk. The teacher came over, and Tezuka handed the calculator to him, silently demonstrating its problem, triggering another wave of laughter as the sound of a cow spread through the room.

I could feel the eyes on my back for the rest of class. It didn't take a genius to figure out who had done it – but that day I did gain some recognition as the genius who was able to trick Tezuka Kunimitsu. The random digs because people were upset that I was tormenting their precious regulars stopped that day, so even though it didn't last long, it didn't go to waste.

A/N: Interesting fact here: the calculator hack is entirely possible, if you know what you're looking for. My computer's been breaking lately, so it could be awhile before I update again, sorry. Please review and help me get better!