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tanithryudoTitle: Doubles Disasters
Series: Psidai AU, Doubles-1 Trilogy
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2843
Warnings: OOC-ness. Crack.
Pairings: Golden Pair, Shishido/Ohtori, with a bit of Atobe/Tezuka/Fuji, InuKai, Sanada/Yukimura, and MomoRyo if you squinted hard.
Summary: It’s the finals of the national tournament in high school as Seigaku’s Golden Pair faces off with the Silver Pair (or whatever they’re called) of Hyotei.
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis and all associated characters belong to Konomi-sensei, not me.
Notes: Finally, the last fic in the doubles trilogy of the Psidai prequel fics. This one is more than a little inspired by the Battle of the Newlyweds doujinshi.
Doubles Disasters
A Psidai Prequel
The final match of the National Tournament for the High School levels began on a sunny Saturday morning. The two competing teams were from Hyotei and Seishun Gakuen, both of the Tokyo prefecture.
The day did not stay sunny for long.
After having won a nerve-wracking close match against Rikkai's Doubles-2 at the semi-finals, Hyotei's Mukahi-Oshitari had slid back into the trap of overconfidence yet again, and found themselves immediately being swept by Seigaku's Inui-Kaidoh pair. At the court change after the third game, they were thoroughly chewed out by their buchou in a scathing spate of rhetoric that only Atobe Keigo, ore-sama and vocal illusionist extraordinaire, could have the flair to deliver. They were then sent back to the courts with the order to immediately rectify their disgraceful 0-3 score firmly impressed upon them.
(It was also rumored that Atobe had told them in no uncertain terms that if they lost the match, both of them had better start looking for other schools to finish up the last semester of their high school education. However, since that particular rumor originated from the campus of St. Rudolph high school, its validity was questionable at best.)
Nevertheless, the Hyotei Doubles-2 pair did manage to pull themselves together and recall the fact that they were a) a team b) with a tensai on it. But even as they made their comeback, the Seigaku doubles team held their ground with the determined tenacity that characterized both its members.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise that the ambient humidity of the arena had risen nearly three times in the course of the next few games. The real miscalculation in that match was perhaps the fact that the stamina war waged by the Seigaku Doubles-2 made it nearly impossible for Oshitari to balance out his partner in an area that was entirely incidental to tennis play.
When the game hit the 6-6 tiebreaker, and then dragged on to 10-10 with no signs of stopping any time soon, Mukahi finally snapped.
Fortunately, the near gale force winds which derailed snake shots and projectile calculations alike also ended the game quickly in favor of the Hyotei duo. It was then followed by a rather loud and long "discussion" between Atobe and the tournament officials while Tezuka reigned in Mukahi's powers until Oshitari had recovered enough to take over.
No one argued for a replay of the last few rounds of tiebreaker, if only because it would have been sheerest lunacy to let Mukahi back onto the courts again, especially when Japan was in the tail end of a late monsoon season. Finally, it was decided that the match would be declared a tie, which was what the score had been right before the winds started up.
It took a while for the last of the strong winds to die down, and the game continued with Singles-2 in the early afternoon. That match barely lasted 15 minutes total, since Fuji took no mercy on his opponent. And then came Doubles-1.
While shaking hands at the net, Shishido arrogantly asked if his opponents were ready for the match that would decide who was the top doubles pair on the high school level.
Oishi just laughed away the question as he extended his hand. "Let's just have a good game, ne?" he said. However, there was just as much confidence in his words as there had been underneath Shishido's arrogance.
Unsuccessful at baiting Oishi, Shishido turned to Eiji instead. "What about you, Kikumaru?"
Eiji, however, seemed to not even hear the question as he shook hands with Ohtori, his eyes looking around the courts distractedly.
Oishi blinked at the silence coming from his normally boisterous partner.
"Oi, oi," Shishido repeated to the oblivious redhead, starting to get annoyed at being ignored.
But before things could degenerate, Oishi reached out and plucked out a small fluffy earplug from Eiji's right ear. They all stared at it.
"Nya? Oishi?" Eiji looked curiously at his partner.
Oishi opened his mouth to say something, then closed it without making a sound, reconsidering.
"Is that for the Scud Serve?" Shishido asked caustically. He started to snicker. Ohtori looked a bit embarrassed at having his special shot put on the spot like that.
"How long have you had this on?" Oishi asked at the same time.
Eiji thought for a moment. "Anou... since last night? My sisters had their friends over for a sleep-over and it was so noisy..."
Shishido stopped laughing and stared at the insane redhead. Ohtori looked bewildered. "B-but how did you get by this whole morning without hearing anything?" the younger boy asked.
Eiji shrugged. "If it's important, Oishi would tell me." As if that answered everything. "And I always get what I want from him anyways."
Ohtori looked even more confused. Oishi felt himself blushing. Shishido seemed amused. Eiji was oblivious to it all.
Deciding that the current line of conversation was headed for territory best left uncharted, Oishi spoke up before Ohtori could put together his next question.
"Here, Eiji," he said, handing the earplug back to his partner. "You don't need to use it the first game since I'm serving." With that he headed resolutely back toward the baseline, where he wouldn't be expected to participate in any uncomfortable conversations.
The first two games swept by in a matter of minutes. The Golden Pair won the first game point with their I-Formation, taking full advantage of the formation's strength at targeting the service-returns. Ohtori single-handedly won the second game point with his Scud Serve, the last one of which knocked Eiji's racquet out of his hands even as the redhead managed to catch it.
The next two games lasted longer. The Golden Pair unleashed the Oishi Territory formation to take the lead in the third game. And even though the Hyotei pair were eventually able to break it just enough to snatch a few points, it was too late for them to win the game. After that, the fourth game turned into an all-out net-war between Eiji's acrobatics and the double-up play of Shishido and Ohtori.
At 2-2, service rolled back to Oishi once more, and the Golden Pair were in for a surprise when their opponents proved that the I-Formation was not quite as perfected as they had hoped. After a long game that led to an endless string of deuce-advantages, the Hyotei doubles group managed to take the lead.
After that came Ohtori's service round again. However, now it was also their turn to be surprised when, after two false starts, Eiji managed to return the Scud Serve with his two-handed Kikumaru Rocket shot. Finally, after yet another tedious round of tiebreakers, the Golden Pair finally managed to win the game point and break Ohtori's service round - the first and only such occurrence in the entire tournament.
"Yes! We did it! We did it!" Eiji was jumping up and down like a maniac as soon as the game point was announced. Excited beyond words, he pounced onto his partner with an impulsive and enthusiastic hug.
"Wha--Oof!" Oishi, who had been removing his own earplugs for Ohtori's service round, dropped his racquet as his arms automatically went up to catch his partner's hurtling form. "Eiji!...I...can't...breathe..."
"Eh?" Eiji looked up from his death grip around his partner's neck. The resulting shift in the weight clinging to him caused Oishi to stumble backwards in order to compensate... and thus tripping over the racquet that he had dropped.
"WAAAAAH!!!" *CRASH!!*
Across the court, Ohtori looked up from where Shishido was consoling him on the loss of his service game just in time to see his opponents on the ground in a tangle of limbs. From his vantage point, the writhing of the two fallen players in their attempt to extricate themselves from each other looked very much like...something else.
“AAAH! They’re totally getting it on during a match!!”
The Golden Pair blushed beat-red. But it was telling that they didn’t even attempt to protest the accusation. No one ever believed them anyway.
Shishido cringed as the fleeting vision of himself and Ohtori in place of the position of the Golden Pair flashed across his mind. It really didn’t help that they’d come so close last night to...er...take their relationship to the next step when they’d been interrupted. (Again! For the umpteenth time!) Resolutely, he told himself to think of icebergs and Jiroh’s annoying snores.
And perhaps it was the culminated frustration of a semester full of constant interruptions of his private moments with his Shishido-san. Or perhaps it was Eiji’s excitement projected via his erratic empathy. Whatever the reason, Ohtori suddenly whirled on his senpai, his eyes burning with emotion.
“We can’t lose to them in love! We have to get it on too!”
Shishido’s head snapped up to stare at his kouhai in shock. His mind simultaneously tried to shoot down the gutter and run into a brick wall. “Na-wuh-gah?”
Eyes wide in shock, Shishido stared as his Choutarou stepped up to him and grabbed his shoulders. He finally found enough presence of mind to weakly protest “but we’re in the middle of a m-MMMPPHHH!!” ...and then all thoughts fled his mind again.
Now it was the Golden Pair’s turn to stare at their opponents engaged in a heated lip lock. Unfortunately, Ohtori’s last words had made a challenge to the wrong person.
“Nya, Oishi! We can’t let them win this either!” Eiji pounced again.
“Eiji! Wha--MMMPH!” Oishi, who had finally gotten up into a sitting position, found himself crashing back to the ground again as he was enthusiastically kissed by his partner. Whatever protests he might have made also fled his mind as Eiji’s empathic aura surged out of control.
At the sidelines where the rest of the Seigaku team was gathered, Fuji was the first one to feel the effects of Eiji’s aura before its full impact fell on the rest of his team. His inner sight was quickly blinded by the bright aura-glow, and he stumbled blindly to where Tezuka, with his null-aura, had been standing.
“Tezuka? Where—“ *CRASH!*
He did find Tezuka, after tripping over someone’s bag and falling right on top of the other boy, sending the both of them onto the floor with Fuji lying haphazard across his buchou’s lap. That was when the full emotive force of Eiji’s empathy hit them, and Fuji decided that oblivion was probably easier to endure.
Tezuka, on seeing that Fuji was no longer conscious, was reaching out to move the tensai off of him when he was interrupted by the arrival of Atobe, the Hyotei buchou. The normally self-possessed young man was staggering as he tried to remain conscious under the Golden Pair's aura.
“Tezuka! Do something! Turn them off—“ And then he too succumbed, toppling over in a graceful faint...also right on top of Tezuka.
Tezuka grunted as he was pressed back into the bench. His head struck something hard, and then all was black.
Ryoma, who was twitching on the ground nearby, saw his buchou go down along with any hopes that someone would be able to stop the disaster on the courts. Desperate for anything to relieve the press of the emotive aura on him, he made the mistake of turning to his Momo-senpai, who was also twitching on the ground nearby.
“Momo-senpai! D-do something!”
Inui, who had collapsed on top of Kaidoh (having quickly calculated from observing Shishido and Ohtori’s unaffected state the probability that he would be less affected by the aura if he was in a position to better appreciate its effects), muttered quietly into his kouhai’s ears, “85% chance he’ll just make it stronger. As usual.”
“I-I’m trying!” Momoshiro, unfortunately, never learned.
“Try harder!”
“70% chance that Echizen will try to channel Momo in the next three minutes. 90% chance it will just make things even worse. Have I ever told you that your habit of shyly dodging from my kisses is adorable? 95% chance that if we imitate Shishido and Ohtori, we’ll be as unaffected as they are.”
“Fssshhuu.”
“Well, affected only in the good way, at least.”
By this time the Golden Pair’s aura had washed over the entire stadium, and there were hardly anyone left still standing. The rest of Hyotei had fallen early just like Seigaku. Oshitari’s tranquil aura only worsened the tensai’s receptivity to the emotional overload. Mukahi was already overwrought from the earlier events of the day and didn’t take much to get knocked out. Even Jiroh was making vaguely happy sounds as he slept.
At the top of the stands, one of the few people whose powers allowed him to resist the wave of emotional energy, Sanada Genichirou, let out a plaintive “Yukimura!” as the other boy fainted right in front of him. He managed to catch the Rikkai buchou, but his rescue was made useless when Kirihara collapsed onto his back, tipping all three of them over onto the ground. They were followed by Yagyuu and Niou, whose twitching bodies landed on top of Kirihara. The press of all three bodies prevented the Rikkai fukubuchou from being able to get up, and Sanada had to resign himself to where he lay half-fuming and half-concerned between the targets of his annoyance and the object of his concern.
Beside him, Marui had also fallen, and his unconscious form was throwing off visible sparks everywhere as his own hyperactive aura interacted with the overabundance of energy in the air. Jackal, also, was down for the count, his aura sink having been pushed past its limit for perhaps the first time. And finally, Yanagi had slid down into a fetal position against a nearby fence, absently muttering something under his breath that sounded vaguely like “does not compute...does not compute...”
Still the chaos did not stop there. The national tournament for the high school level was also an event that was covered by the major sports broadcast networks -- live. And naturally, the combination of Momo’s chaos aura and Echizen’s amplification-channeling produced the unique and freaky result of allowing the free-floating emotive aura of the Golden Pair to be carried along television transmission signals. Thus anyone who had been watching the tournament on television that day also fell prey to the same aura effects as those at the stands of the stadium.
For the first time, a large chunk of the population of Japan (not to mention many avid spectators of other countries) discovered the true horrors of the Golden Pair's aura taken to the absolute extreme.
Time passed.
Most remained oblivious to the afternoon flying by in their unconscious state, except for poor souls like Sanada.
It was early evening before the aura finally faded away and people began to regain consciousness. Some speculated that perhaps those on the courts had finally released all their pent up energies. Many didn’t remember those first groggy moments of recovery. Most just didn’t want to know.
Hyotei and Seigaku both defaulted their D1 match, one step ahead of the tournament officials who were about to do the same.
Since it was far too late to continue the tournament and the stadium wasn’t booked for the night or the next day, the last match of the tournament finals was postponed and tentatively rescheduled for the following Saturday. That date was then pushed back by another whole month due to three weeks of nearly non-stop rain, along with several violent storms that pervaded the next few days.
Mukahi would have gotten the blame for that, except no one wanted to set him off again, so Oshitari caught most of the flack when his partner’s back was turned. But then his detractors soon found out why it was a really bad idea to have a tensai with a sadistic streak annoyed at them, and quickly learned to keep silent around him too.
Finally, two official documents arrived at Hyotei and Seishun Gakuen along with the new finals schedule, signed and sealed by the government Psi-department at the highest levels. It consisted of a long and tedious list of restrictions for the D1 pairs of both schools and the D2 pair of Hyotei, with clauses as specific as “the Shishido-Ohtori pair and the Oishi-Kikumaru pair shall nevermore be allowed to play on the same court in practice or in matches”, or as tortuously vague as the final statement, upshot of which was that no one wanted to see any of the three pairs playing in official tournaments ever again.
So in the end, the question of who was the best doubles pair between the Golden Pair and their Hyotei rivals was never and never will be resolved. However, if ever asked of their impressions of that fateful day, each of the four boys from that match would be more likely to blush in abject mortification than to express annoyance at the chance of a good fight forever lost.
But then again, deep in their hearts, none of them really considered what happened that day to be something to regret.
Footnotes:
1. The ordering of the matches at the Nationals for the purposes of this universe isthe standard D2, D1, S3, S2, S1 order that most of Tenipuri used so far. the S3-D2-S2-D1-S1 order used in the manga for the Nationals matches.
2. Monsoon season is typically June-July in Japan. Momo's birthday is in late July. So by anime continuity, the Nationals probably take place in mid or late August. So the "tail end of a late monsoon season" seemed reasonable to me.
Series: Psidai AU, Doubles-1 Trilogy
Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2843
Warnings: OOC-ness. Crack.
Pairings: Golden Pair, Shishido/Ohtori, with a bit of Atobe/Tezuka/Fuji, InuKai, Sanada/Yukimura, and MomoRyo if you squinted hard.
Summary: It’s the finals of the national tournament in high school as Seigaku’s Golden Pair faces off with the Silver Pair (or whatever they’re called) of Hyotei.
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis and all associated characters belong to Konomi-sensei, not me.
Notes: Finally, the last fic in the doubles trilogy of the Psidai prequel fics. This one is more than a little inspired by the Battle of the Newlyweds doujinshi.
A Psidai Prequel
The final match of the National Tournament for the High School levels began on a sunny Saturday morning. The two competing teams were from Hyotei and Seishun Gakuen, both of the Tokyo prefecture.
The day did not stay sunny for long.
After having won a nerve-wracking close match against Rikkai's Doubles-2 at the semi-finals, Hyotei's Mukahi-Oshitari had slid back into the trap of overconfidence yet again, and found themselves immediately being swept by Seigaku's Inui-Kaidoh pair. At the court change after the third game, they were thoroughly chewed out by their buchou in a scathing spate of rhetoric that only Atobe Keigo, ore-sama and vocal illusionist extraordinaire, could have the flair to deliver. They were then sent back to the courts with the order to immediately rectify their disgraceful 0-3 score firmly impressed upon them.
(It was also rumored that Atobe had told them in no uncertain terms that if they lost the match, both of them had better start looking for other schools to finish up the last semester of their high school education. However, since that particular rumor originated from the campus of St. Rudolph high school, its validity was questionable at best.)
Nevertheless, the Hyotei Doubles-2 pair did manage to pull themselves together and recall the fact that they were a) a team b) with a tensai on it. But even as they made their comeback, the Seigaku doubles team held their ground with the determined tenacity that characterized both its members.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise that the ambient humidity of the arena had risen nearly three times in the course of the next few games. The real miscalculation in that match was perhaps the fact that the stamina war waged by the Seigaku Doubles-2 made it nearly impossible for Oshitari to balance out his partner in an area that was entirely incidental to tennis play.
When the game hit the 6-6 tiebreaker, and then dragged on to 10-10 with no signs of stopping any time soon, Mukahi finally snapped.
Fortunately, the near gale force winds which derailed snake shots and projectile calculations alike also ended the game quickly in favor of the Hyotei duo. It was then followed by a rather loud and long "discussion" between Atobe and the tournament officials while Tezuka reigned in Mukahi's powers until Oshitari had recovered enough to take over.
No one argued for a replay of the last few rounds of tiebreaker, if only because it would have been sheerest lunacy to let Mukahi back onto the courts again, especially when Japan was in the tail end of a late monsoon season. Finally, it was decided that the match would be declared a tie, which was what the score had been right before the winds started up.
It took a while for the last of the strong winds to die down, and the game continued with Singles-2 in the early afternoon. That match barely lasted 15 minutes total, since Fuji took no mercy on his opponent. And then came Doubles-1.
While shaking hands at the net, Shishido arrogantly asked if his opponents were ready for the match that would decide who was the top doubles pair on the high school level.
Oishi just laughed away the question as he extended his hand. "Let's just have a good game, ne?" he said. However, there was just as much confidence in his words as there had been underneath Shishido's arrogance.
Unsuccessful at baiting Oishi, Shishido turned to Eiji instead. "What about you, Kikumaru?"
Eiji, however, seemed to not even hear the question as he shook hands with Ohtori, his eyes looking around the courts distractedly.
Oishi blinked at the silence coming from his normally boisterous partner.
"Oi, oi," Shishido repeated to the oblivious redhead, starting to get annoyed at being ignored.
But before things could degenerate, Oishi reached out and plucked out a small fluffy earplug from Eiji's right ear. They all stared at it.
"Nya? Oishi?" Eiji looked curiously at his partner.
Oishi opened his mouth to say something, then closed it without making a sound, reconsidering.
"Is that for the Scud Serve?" Shishido asked caustically. He started to snicker. Ohtori looked a bit embarrassed at having his special shot put on the spot like that.
"How long have you had this on?" Oishi asked at the same time.
Eiji thought for a moment. "Anou... since last night? My sisters had their friends over for a sleep-over and it was so noisy..."
Shishido stopped laughing and stared at the insane redhead. Ohtori looked bewildered. "B-but how did you get by this whole morning without hearing anything?" the younger boy asked.
Eiji shrugged. "If it's important, Oishi would tell me." As if that answered everything. "And I always get what I want from him anyways."
Ohtori looked even more confused. Oishi felt himself blushing. Shishido seemed amused. Eiji was oblivious to it all.
Deciding that the current line of conversation was headed for territory best left uncharted, Oishi spoke up before Ohtori could put together his next question.
"Here, Eiji," he said, handing the earplug back to his partner. "You don't need to use it the first game since I'm serving." With that he headed resolutely back toward the baseline, where he wouldn't be expected to participate in any uncomfortable conversations.
The first two games swept by in a matter of minutes. The Golden Pair won the first game point with their I-Formation, taking full advantage of the formation's strength at targeting the service-returns. Ohtori single-handedly won the second game point with his Scud Serve, the last one of which knocked Eiji's racquet out of his hands even as the redhead managed to catch it.
The next two games lasted longer. The Golden Pair unleashed the Oishi Territory formation to take the lead in the third game. And even though the Hyotei pair were eventually able to break it just enough to snatch a few points, it was too late for them to win the game. After that, the fourth game turned into an all-out net-war between Eiji's acrobatics and the double-up play of Shishido and Ohtori.
At 2-2, service rolled back to Oishi once more, and the Golden Pair were in for a surprise when their opponents proved that the I-Formation was not quite as perfected as they had hoped. After a long game that led to an endless string of deuce-advantages, the Hyotei doubles group managed to take the lead.
After that came Ohtori's service round again. However, now it was also their turn to be surprised when, after two false starts, Eiji managed to return the Scud Serve with his two-handed Kikumaru Rocket shot. Finally, after yet another tedious round of tiebreakers, the Golden Pair finally managed to win the game point and break Ohtori's service round - the first and only such occurrence in the entire tournament.
"Yes! We did it! We did it!" Eiji was jumping up and down like a maniac as soon as the game point was announced. Excited beyond words, he pounced onto his partner with an impulsive and enthusiastic hug.
"Wha--Oof!" Oishi, who had been removing his own earplugs for Ohtori's service round, dropped his racquet as his arms automatically went up to catch his partner's hurtling form. "Eiji!...I...can't...breathe..."
"Eh?" Eiji looked up from his death grip around his partner's neck. The resulting shift in the weight clinging to him caused Oishi to stumble backwards in order to compensate... and thus tripping over the racquet that he had dropped.
"WAAAAAH!!!" *CRASH!!*
Across the court, Ohtori looked up from where Shishido was consoling him on the loss of his service game just in time to see his opponents on the ground in a tangle of limbs. From his vantage point, the writhing of the two fallen players in their attempt to extricate themselves from each other looked very much like...something else.
“AAAH! They’re totally getting it on during a match!!”
The Golden Pair blushed beat-red. But it was telling that they didn’t even attempt to protest the accusation. No one ever believed them anyway.
Shishido cringed as the fleeting vision of himself and Ohtori in place of the position of the Golden Pair flashed across his mind. It really didn’t help that they’d come so close last night to...er...take their relationship to the next step when they’d been interrupted. (Again! For the umpteenth time!) Resolutely, he told himself to think of icebergs and Jiroh’s annoying snores.
And perhaps it was the culminated frustration of a semester full of constant interruptions of his private moments with his Shishido-san. Or perhaps it was Eiji’s excitement projected via his erratic empathy. Whatever the reason, Ohtori suddenly whirled on his senpai, his eyes burning with emotion.
“We can’t lose to them in love! We have to get it on too!”
Shishido’s head snapped up to stare at his kouhai in shock. His mind simultaneously tried to shoot down the gutter and run into a brick wall. “Na-wuh-gah?”
Eyes wide in shock, Shishido stared as his Choutarou stepped up to him and grabbed his shoulders. He finally found enough presence of mind to weakly protest “but we’re in the middle of a m-MMMPPHHH!!” ...and then all thoughts fled his mind again.
Now it was the Golden Pair’s turn to stare at their opponents engaged in a heated lip lock. Unfortunately, Ohtori’s last words had made a challenge to the wrong person.
“Nya, Oishi! We can’t let them win this either!” Eiji pounced again.
“Eiji! Wha--MMMPH!” Oishi, who had finally gotten up into a sitting position, found himself crashing back to the ground again as he was enthusiastically kissed by his partner. Whatever protests he might have made also fled his mind as Eiji’s empathic aura surged out of control.
At the sidelines where the rest of the Seigaku team was gathered, Fuji was the first one to feel the effects of Eiji’s aura before its full impact fell on the rest of his team. His inner sight was quickly blinded by the bright aura-glow, and he stumbled blindly to where Tezuka, with his null-aura, had been standing.
“Tezuka? Where—“ *CRASH!*
He did find Tezuka, after tripping over someone’s bag and falling right on top of the other boy, sending the both of them onto the floor with Fuji lying haphazard across his buchou’s lap. That was when the full emotive force of Eiji’s empathy hit them, and Fuji decided that oblivion was probably easier to endure.
Tezuka, on seeing that Fuji was no longer conscious, was reaching out to move the tensai off of him when he was interrupted by the arrival of Atobe, the Hyotei buchou. The normally self-possessed young man was staggering as he tried to remain conscious under the Golden Pair's aura.
“Tezuka! Do something! Turn them off—“ And then he too succumbed, toppling over in a graceful faint...also right on top of Tezuka.
Tezuka grunted as he was pressed back into the bench. His head struck something hard, and then all was black.
Ryoma, who was twitching on the ground nearby, saw his buchou go down along with any hopes that someone would be able to stop the disaster on the courts. Desperate for anything to relieve the press of the emotive aura on him, he made the mistake of turning to his Momo-senpai, who was also twitching on the ground nearby.
“Momo-senpai! D-do something!”
Inui, who had collapsed on top of Kaidoh (having quickly calculated from observing Shishido and Ohtori’s unaffected state the probability that he would be less affected by the aura if he was in a position to better appreciate its effects), muttered quietly into his kouhai’s ears, “85% chance he’ll just make it stronger. As usual.”
“I-I’m trying!” Momoshiro, unfortunately, never learned.
“Try harder!”
“70% chance that Echizen will try to channel Momo in the next three minutes. 90% chance it will just make things even worse. Have I ever told you that your habit of shyly dodging from my kisses is adorable? 95% chance that if we imitate Shishido and Ohtori, we’ll be as unaffected as they are.”
“Fssshhuu.”
“Well, affected only in the good way, at least.”
By this time the Golden Pair’s aura had washed over the entire stadium, and there were hardly anyone left still standing. The rest of Hyotei had fallen early just like Seigaku. Oshitari’s tranquil aura only worsened the tensai’s receptivity to the emotional overload. Mukahi was already overwrought from the earlier events of the day and didn’t take much to get knocked out. Even Jiroh was making vaguely happy sounds as he slept.
At the top of the stands, one of the few people whose powers allowed him to resist the wave of emotional energy, Sanada Genichirou, let out a plaintive “Yukimura!” as the other boy fainted right in front of him. He managed to catch the Rikkai buchou, but his rescue was made useless when Kirihara collapsed onto his back, tipping all three of them over onto the ground. They were followed by Yagyuu and Niou, whose twitching bodies landed on top of Kirihara. The press of all three bodies prevented the Rikkai fukubuchou from being able to get up, and Sanada had to resign himself to where he lay half-fuming and half-concerned between the targets of his annoyance and the object of his concern.
Beside him, Marui had also fallen, and his unconscious form was throwing off visible sparks everywhere as his own hyperactive aura interacted with the overabundance of energy in the air. Jackal, also, was down for the count, his aura sink having been pushed past its limit for perhaps the first time. And finally, Yanagi had slid down into a fetal position against a nearby fence, absently muttering something under his breath that sounded vaguely like “does not compute...does not compute...”
Still the chaos did not stop there. The national tournament for the high school level was also an event that was covered by the major sports broadcast networks -- live. And naturally, the combination of Momo’s chaos aura and Echizen’s amplification-channeling produced the unique and freaky result of allowing the free-floating emotive aura of the Golden Pair to be carried along television transmission signals. Thus anyone who had been watching the tournament on television that day also fell prey to the same aura effects as those at the stands of the stadium.
For the first time, a large chunk of the population of Japan (not to mention many avid spectators of other countries) discovered the true horrors of the Golden Pair's aura taken to the absolute extreme.
Time passed.
Most remained oblivious to the afternoon flying by in their unconscious state, except for poor souls like Sanada.
It was early evening before the aura finally faded away and people began to regain consciousness. Some speculated that perhaps those on the courts had finally released all their pent up energies. Many didn’t remember those first groggy moments of recovery. Most just didn’t want to know.
Hyotei and Seigaku both defaulted their D1 match, one step ahead of the tournament officials who were about to do the same.
Since it was far too late to continue the tournament and the stadium wasn’t booked for the night or the next day, the last match of the tournament finals was postponed and tentatively rescheduled for the following Saturday. That date was then pushed back by another whole month due to three weeks of nearly non-stop rain, along with several violent storms that pervaded the next few days.
Mukahi would have gotten the blame for that, except no one wanted to set him off again, so Oshitari caught most of the flack when his partner’s back was turned. But then his detractors soon found out why it was a really bad idea to have a tensai with a sadistic streak annoyed at them, and quickly learned to keep silent around him too.
Finally, two official documents arrived at Hyotei and Seishun Gakuen along with the new finals schedule, signed and sealed by the government Psi-department at the highest levels. It consisted of a long and tedious list of restrictions for the D1 pairs of both schools and the D2 pair of Hyotei, with clauses as specific as “the Shishido-Ohtori pair and the Oishi-Kikumaru pair shall nevermore be allowed to play on the same court in practice or in matches”, or as tortuously vague as the final statement, upshot of which was that no one wanted to see any of the three pairs playing in official tournaments ever again.
So in the end, the question of who was the best doubles pair between the Golden Pair and their Hyotei rivals was never and never will be resolved. However, if ever asked of their impressions of that fateful day, each of the four boys from that match would be more likely to blush in abject mortification than to express annoyance at the chance of a good fight forever lost.
But then again, deep in their hearts, none of them really considered what happened that day to be something to regret.
Footnotes:
1. The ordering of the matches at the Nationals for the purposes of this universe is
2. Monsoon season is typically June-July in Japan. Momo's birthday is in late July. So by anime continuity, the Nationals probably take place in mid or late August. So the "tail end of a late monsoon season" seemed reasonable to me.
