CHAPTER 13

Disclaimer: I don't own Eyeshied 21.

Warning: Diggin' holes, football style, as experienced by one Kobayakawa Sena.

Shout Out: Yes, I am still alive, even if croaking at times. Winter takes no hostages when it concerns cold and high temperature. Other projects will take precedence, so next chapter will be slow in the making,

Music In Question: Show Me How You Burlesque by Christina Aguilera

Ask yourself: "Can I give more?" The answer is usually: "Yes".
Paul Tergat

The week rolled on in the similar vein as it had begun. The only difference was they swapped the jobs around. Thankfully, the weather was kind to them - or was that unkind? - so that the work progressed quickly.

Though not without grumbling on the part of the drafted workers in question.

Sena's body hurt. His parents were not happy what with the waste of the hot water, so Sena had to do with hot showers instead. And massages. Sena never thought he would be grateful for his insane bunch of friends who thought it was a good idea to teach him random bits and bobs when it came to caring for one's own body, but it definitely made his life easier, considering he didn't let go of his usual running schedule.

Okay, that was a lie. His running schedule sucked (damn you, Hiruma), and he could've wept because of that. But the fact was, his timetable was already up to the brink, and Sena simply didn't have time to feel sorry for himself.

"Damn it!" Sena blinked at hearing Kazuki curse at the cheer of their classmates when the soccer goalkeeper successfully defended the goal. "We're being used for slaves." Kazuki spat on the ground, incensed. "So much for basic training!"

"We have enough basic strength already!" Kuroki growled, but Sena could clearly see that his arms were trembling under the load of the iron poles he had to transport to the designed place.

'Enough basic strength? If they do, then I am a pole-dancing llama.' Sena thought to himself dully, but he kept quiet as he brought another bucket of water for mixing the cement.

"It's pretty good to do the basic training…" Monta added his own piece as he stopped mixing the cement to wistful sigh. "But I wanna hurry up and practice some receiving skills too."

'And I want to run far away from the demented sport for whackos called American Football. Neither of us are getting our wishes.' Sena was grumpy. Three exams in a day, almost no sleep and the promise of the 'training' in question once again stealing his precious running time made him feel pretty pissed off. Not enough to go directly against Hiruma, but enough to do something like -

"Why do we have to mix cement anyway?" Hiruma's voice cut through Sena thoughts. "Wood is good enough for the foundation!"

Oh, that was enough.

Sena clenched the mixing pole tighter.

'Speak once more, I dare you…' He mutely growled at the devil that was the source of his troubles.

"If you slack off on the base, the problems will happen in no time." The old man was unrepentantly calm as he searched for a cigarette to smoke.

"It's not as if we were gonna use this building for decades." Hiruma spoke up again, spiking up Sena's blood pressure once more.

'Oh, NOW you are admitting it?' Sena was now officially peeved. Huffing, he stirred with more force, earing Mamori's concerned glance at his person.

Peeved enough to consider a homicide – or at least devil-cide. Either way, there won't be any American Football for him for any foreseeable future. Period.

"But you guys gotta use it till the end of this year, yeah?" The old man spoke again, causing Sena to blink.

"Of course!" Hiruma's bark was snappy and determined.

"To be able to stand firm and untoppled… " The Old Man, as Sena called him in his mind tied the head scarf once more, tightening the knot. "… that requires a firm foundation, no slacking off!"

Sena's eyebrow twitched.

'This is just an excuse for a free labor, isn't it?' He growled to himself, and this time, Mamori glanced at him, alarmed. Sena gave her a strained smile before returning back to his work, mentally imaging himself poking several nice holes into the bleached devil of his captain via his mixing pole.

So he was a friend with some gangsters, sue him.

But on the other side, he could kind of see what the two bastards in charge meant. Going for Christmas Bowl was no easy-peasy, that much Sena knew, and Deimon wasn't that kind of a school that had excess of money to afford the training machines and state-of-art facilities and personnel like American schools who specialized in football did. So they had to do with what they had, while reaching the same or even better results than their rivals who had the access to such things.

Well. If the thing had to be built, Sena would make damned sure it would be built like a fortress, being able to defy the time even hundred years later!

Nobody really wanted to approach their homicidal looking manager, but they sure were impressed with his dedication to work.

"Hey. He is the one you are counting on? Eyeshield something?"

The old man hummed as he pulled a drag, sucking the tabacco-stained air in his lungs.

"'Course, fucking old man. Hiruma smirked at him, sweaty, his black t-shirt clinging to his torso and all fangs and cunning eyes as he leant on his shovel. The old man narrowed his eyes as he glanced at the unrepentant blond devil in disguise.

"You said he is a runner."

"And a damned good one." Hiruma sucked in the evening air, tilting his head up to the sky, exposing the sharp profile of his face.

"If the fucking monkey hadn't dragged him in, the story would be very different." His voice was slightly guttural from his head's incline. "And he fucking knows what he's fucking doing, even if he says he doesn't have any fucking idea. He's faster than even that fucking Oujou's Shin." The grin widened to epic proportions. "Fucking speed of light, man. We will get to the Christmas Bowl this time, even if it kills us."

The old man's eyebrows quirked up with surprise. It was rare to hear Hiruma to speak about somebody - anybody- with that kind of reverent voice. But this shrimp - because like it or not, Kobayakawa Sena was a shrimp – somehow earned enough of Hiruma's respect and dare he say, trust, for Hiruma to have that kind of faith like he did now.

He was happy for Hiruma. Really, he was. Because his friend deserved to have Lady Luck to favor him for once more than anything. And if the luck in question was in the shape of one scrawny runner in the guise of Deimon Devilbats' manager, Musashi won't argue with it.

"Just don't break him." He huffed.

Hiruma cackled.

Friday. One more day and then a blessed rest - or as much rest like one maniac runner (Sena) could do.

The correspondence with Kakei was going as well as it could, though Sena despaired that he was stuck with yet another American football maniac.

What was with him and meeting American football players wherever he went?

If Sena hadn't known better, he would have thought that Hiruma arranged something like this, but knowing Hiruma, he would get into an apoplectic rage if he got even a faintest idea that his precious manager was consorting with the enemy, aka the captain of Kyoshin Poseidons. That or done something horrible to extort all the info from his innocently oblivious Kyoshin pen pal.

Luckily, Sena was level-headed enough that he didn't mention his own involvement with the horrible sport, but in turn he had to suffer through Kakei's enthusiastic odes to it. Sena didn't even try to mention he had been transferred to Japan for his schooling, especially when Kakei mentioned Eyeshield 21 also being back in Japan (apparently the person Hiruma so shamelessly tried to use for his propaganda was also back), out of fear he would be mistaken for them, because Murphy just hated Sena like that and Sena wanted a little bit of peace for his beloved running escapades.

(It was interesting the man was trying to go with the height approach, but Sena just sweatdropped. What did he think he was playing really, basketball?)

But Friday was here, hot and with a chance of evening rain, so Hiruma was particularly vicious on the issue.

The entire week was a hell on both the team's bodies and mentalities. The Huh-brothers had been hissing particularly inventive threats against the Old Beardie, Yukimitsu had fallen unconscious at least three times already today - his mind was strong, but his body was weak - and of course, a certain monkey dared to lie that he was injured to get into Mamori's caring graces. Unfortunately for the said monkey, Sena didn't appreciate his shenanigans and bestowed upon him a very special massage, learned by Aka-chan in America. Crude, hurtful as fuck, but working.

(Aka-chan aimed to be a sports doctor, and her forage into acupressure was invaluable. Especially for Sena and his insane running trails when he had no one to release the stubborn knots in his leg muscles or rejuvenate his body to go past its limits. And considering Aka-chan had to deal with Lupo and his antics, she was more than willing to teach Sena some of the more unconventional uses of the ancient art.)

Sena didn't talk much. That ponytailed runner also contributed to his bad mood, considering the little bastard just had to choose his running trail past the American Football club and of course, the ass smirked smugly Every. Single. Time. It was enough to make Sena want to howl to high heavens and quit on the spot.

Only the knowledge that Mamori would be completely defenceless against monkey and outside spectators she was forced to interact with kept him here. Otherwise, fuck the devil maniac and his high flying plans for fucking Christmas Bowl.

Sena sighed. His longing thoughts about Western States were rudely interrupted by the aforementioned devil himself.

"Fucking brats! We're going to a match!"

Sena and the Huh brothers eyed each other.

"D'ya think he is having us on?" Kazuki grunted, his brow already dotted with sweat as he and his two friends balanced the iron beam on their shoulders.

"If he is, then it's a very poor joke." Toganou huffed out.

"He may be kidding about everything else, but never the football." Sena sighed, leaning on his shovel. He grimaced at the feeling of his T-shirt sticking to his body.

Kuroki scoffed. "Tch. At least one thing he is serious about, the clown."

Sena gaped at the dark-haired delinquent's audacity.

"You are an idiot." Juumonji hissed at Kuroki, and Toganou somehow managed to kick the offender into the butt.

The three of them froze when they felt a very ominous aura approaching them.

"A soon to be dead one, apparently." Sena deadpanned. "And Hiruma. He is an American Football idiot. So leave him alone."

The three Huh brothers paled a chalk white at Sena's own audacity against the undisputed ruler of Demion High. If Sena wasn't mistaken, Toganou also mouthed a couple of words from the last rites for Sena's foolish, soon-to-be-departed soul.

The ominous aura stilled.

"Are you fucking trying to tell me what to fucking do, shrimp?" Pointy teeth gleamed at him, and the automatic gun in Hiruma's hands clicked with a seemingly echoing sound.

Sena raised and unimpressed eyebrow.

"As your manager, I am telling you. Now, what match are you talking about?"

"You are the fucking manager, fucking shrimp. Care to guess?" Hiruma's carefree grin was definitely too kind looking in the light of the day and absolutely something to scare unruly kids at night. If Sena had been more superstitious, he would have believed that Hiruma was one of those monsters hiding in the day, only to come out at night to scare the poor brats and gather their frightened shrieks to feed on them, evil little soul he was.

Luckily for Sena, his imagination wasn't so vast. Or colourful.

He frowned as his mind browsed through the brackets, inwardly cursing Hiruma for having placing him to the spot.

"We are having a match with Seibu Wild Gunmen this week." Sena blinked as he remembered his running buddy's words.

'Thanks Shin. You are a lifesaver.' He sent a mental prayer to the Oujou's linebacker (who sneezed in the middle of a pull up, causing Takami to eye him concernedly.)

Outwardly, he raised his eyebrows, unimpressed.

"Oujou White Knights and Seibu Wild Gunmen." His reply promptly stopped the grinning menace in his step, causing an impressed blond eyebrow to rise slightly as Hiruma eyed his grumpy secretary/running back in a new light.

"So you aren't as uninterested you are trying to pass yourself as, fucking shrimp." The devil purred out.

Sena now faced another dilemma.

'Do I let him live in his delusions or be truthful and suffer the punishment?'

"Seibu.-" Juumonji began

"Wild-"Toganou continued

"Gunmen?" And Kuroki ended the question chain.

"Keke. Care to enlighten your uneducated peers, Mister Se-Cre-Ta-Ry?" A certain devil purred at Sena's face, causing the runner and reluctant participant of the American Football Club to lean back a little, his fingers clutching the shovel shaft desperately, just in case he was tempted to use the said shovel to whack some sense into his erstwhile, pointy-eared leader.

Hiruma was, doubtlessly, the true evil.

This belief was reaffirmed when they saw just what kind of transportation Hiruma arranged for them to see the game in question.

'Five transport units' turned out to be Habashira with four of his motorcycle buddies. Inwardly, Sena swore to himself that his parents would never, ever find oud about his blatant disregard of road safety. (No helmet! Too many riders for one bike! Crashing speed limits like they didn't even exist! Riding through red lights!)

Sena had known that Hiruma was crazy, but that the blond was insane enough to outright ignore all common sense in traffic rules was a bit too much even for him.

Still, that didn't stop him from saddling the bike along with Hiruma and suffer through the sirens wailing after them as the police chased the strange cavalcade on the roads.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he finally dismounted and looked around. There were droves of people, chatting about the upcoming match, ranging from students to adults, but all of them excited to find out who would be the winner of the Tokyo prefecture.

"… and Nagas had won the Kanagawa title as usual – " A scrap of comment floated past Sena's ears, causing him to frown with confusion, before he tried to discern where their devil of commander had taken them now.

"Uh… And where are we now?" He asked, still surprised with the mass of people milling around them.

"We are at Eikou stadium." Mamori's voice floated to him, causing Sena to blink at the girl. Mamori hadn't been excluded from the wild ride, as right now, she was trying to tame her windswept hair in a little bit more respectable hairstyle than the mussed up mess currently crowning her head.

"Right." He sighed, browsing through the messenger bag he managed to grab to record the match. No rest for the wicked – oops, manager. He still scrunched his nose at the faint smell of sweat permeating his skin - they hadn't exactly have time to shower, just change their clothes and it rankled him to go into public like that without a good reason.

(Another offense for the list of their wrongdoings today: No Shower after work.)

"Wild-Wild-Gunmen!"He heard the cheerleaders cheer, and were those bangs gun shots?

Sena paled.

Was it really safe to see that match?

Somehow, they got seats beside the field.

And Sena relaxed a little bit when he saw the cheerleaders had only toy guns, not the ones with live ammunition. Inwardly, he berated himself for having been concerned, because surely nobody was insane enough to use live bullets –

BANG BANG BANG!

-his head snapped around to find out just who was the idiot who just used the real thing.

"Oh, balls. Not another one." He moaned as he covered his face with his hand in exasperation. One Hiruma, he could deal with. Despite the pointy-eared bastard looking devil-may-care, Hiruma was actually careful when it came to his weapons. This idiot - who was apparently a coach for Gunmen - didn't.

The poster with the drawn faces of Oujou's best players under big, old-time western letters of WANTED was haphazardly punctured by the bullets in question.

"Not another one who?" Monta, the innocent soul he was, asked cluelessly.

Juumonji shook his head. "I agree with Kobayakawa. Hey, monkey. Doesn't their coach remind you of someone?"

Monta bristled. "Mukya! I am not a monkey!"

Juumonji raised an unimpressed brow. Kuroki snorted.

"But you can't say they aren't dedicated." Despite the shock at the beginning, now that he was getting used to it, Sena was pretty underwhelmed as he watched the Gunman's cheerleaders dancing across the field.

"But yeah, all that shooting… it's like coach's bad hobby." Monta added, causing the Huh brothers and Sena eye him with wonder. "What? I said nothing strange!"

"No. You said something rational, which is even rarer. Especially for a monkey like you." Toganou snarked, prompting the mon - Monta glare at his person.

"MUKYA! Stop with the monkey nickname already!"

"Our coach is so full of energy. I've had a bad feeling for the second half." A lazy drawl came from the rickety chair - or better, the person lounging in it. The said person was long, skinny and had their face shielded with a cowboy sombrero. He had on an orange jersey with a white number 7 on the chest.

"For the second half – " the coach in question aggressively blew the smoke off the gun's muzzle…. "Let's aggressively! Charge!" He then dramatically, pointed at a player who was drinking his energy drink.

"Tetsuma! You're our main force! Drink water aggressively!"

"Tetsuma Jou… Record for the 40-yard is 5 second exact. Bench-press record – 115 kg."

"M-my god!" Kurita's trembling voice didn't exactly inspire confidence in any of the listeners to Hiruma's rattle-off of the data.

"It's not just the statistics that make this guy fearsome…"

Hiruma lifted his head from the laptop's screen to look at the team around him.

"It's his fucking ability to fucking stick to the fucking pass routes, no matter what."

"Pass…" Mamori began, blinking

"Routes?" and Monta ended the question.

Hiruma raised his head, looking into Sena's eyes. "Your call, fucking manager."

Sena sighed. 'Why me?'

But knowing better than to protest further, he coughed politely and then began.

"Pass routes are routes - or ways for the players to run in order to receive the ball – "

"SLANT!" Sena's explanation was interrupted by the Gunmen's coach calling out to the stoic-looking player they had discussed previously, throwing him the next can of energy drink which was caught flawlessly after the player did some kind of a weird-looking run.

"-like that." Sena finished. "Slant is one of the routes. When the name of the route is called, the one who will receive the ball next knows which kind of route to run to get the ball passed to them."

"You mean there are many kinds of routes?" Yukimitsu asked, intrigued.

"Of fucking course." Hiruma snorted as he pulled out the papers with straight and wiggly things inscribed on them with the apparent names along, passing one to each member of the club.

"Whaaah!?" Monta yelped.

"Fucking hell, you expect us to memorize all of them!?" Toganou was the next, looking at his list like he wanted to drill holes in it with the power of glare alone. "Are you nuts!"

"N-Not all of them!" Kurita frantically waved the incensed Huh-trio off the indifferent devil. "J-Just practice those you are particularly good at!"

Sena sweatdropped. He then looked back at the paper in his hand, his eye cursorily moving from one route to another. Sixteen routes total. And Hiruma was positively generous, to hand them cheat sheet like this.

"You guys." He called out to the Huh Brothers.

"Huh?" Juuumonji began,

"Huuh?" Toganou followed

"Huuuh!?" and Kuroki finished the Huh-chain distractedly.

"All Huhs present." Juumonji sighed, relieved. Sena just quirked his eyebrow at him, making the gangster faintly blush at his quip.

"Are you trying to tell me that you can learn Japanese, which is, by the way, one of the most difficult written languages, but a simple couple lines has you scared stiff?" Sena's arch question caused the trio to both puff up in pride and bristle with indignation.

"Hell no!" Juumonji bit out.

"Who the hell are you calling scaredy cats, huh?"

"Why did you steal my huh, huuh?"

"Are you calling us brainless HUUUH!?"

Aand- here's the brawl.

In all that commotion, Sena almost didn't hear Yukimitsu asking Hiruma one very important question.

"Um. But Eyeshield 23… he remembers them without fail?"

Sena got a bad chill creeping up his spine. He opened his mouth to refute the question because hell no, but Hiruma was faster.

"Of course. He's studied at the University of Notre Dame, after all."

"A-Amazing!" Yukimitsu did a twirl of his pen around his fingers, a tongue poking out of the side of his lips as his eyes zeroed on the innocent piece of paper. "Alright! I gotta work hard!"

Sena wanted to cry.

'That damned devil will be the death of me.'

Of course, the Gunmen had their own share of problems.

The pause between the half-times was slowly coming to an end, and the Gunmen coach did the last checks.

The rotund man with strong moustaches, semi-circular sunglasses and clad in cowboy attire slumped on his chair, sighing. Entertaining masses was a tiring business, after all.

"… speaking of which. Kid. Did Tetsuma eat his food?"

He asked the long-limbed player number 7 draped in his own chair.

The player's head was nudged up, and a faintly whiskered face with strangely zig-zag shaped eyebrows and lazy eyes peeked at him tiredly. "Of course. I even gave him a list of things to eat." The player drawled out.

The coach huffed. "He turned out terrible last year!"

'And whose fault was that?' The now-named Kid thought, exasperated. See, Tetsuma Jou had a habit of taking everything literally and exactly to word. So, the last year, when the coach told the team not to eat too much before the game….Tetsume apparently starved himself for three days, and when the day of the match came, he had been so weak he couldn't participate in the match, thus causing the Gunmen to lose. "…Because he'll carry out orders exactly to the word." Which was fine when it concerned pass routes, but not so fine in the ordinary life…."But judging from the first half, there shouldn't be any problems." Kid concluded lazily, but the lanky player still felt there was something amiss in the picture.

Huffing, the coach reached for his own can of drink. "I even told him to drink the water aggressively…"

Lazily, Kid raised his body up in the chair, his gut telling him the 'Bad Thing' has finally happened… but not what the 'Bad Thing' in question was.

".. Aggressively?" He parroted the coach's choice word plaintively, causing both of them to freeze and then lunge out of their chairs simultaneously as they turned to look back, searching for Tetsuma's form frantically.

Their eyes widened with horror when they finally found him. Tetsuma was, true to the orders, drinking aggrresively - in fact, he had drunk at least twenty of the cans, causing his stomach to expand to hold all of the liquid, prompting a double screech of horror from both the coach and his fellow player.

"Uggghaaaaa!?"

Monta blinked.

"What's with that offensive stance? It's so spread out…"

Sena tilted his head. "You're right. It's kind of weird looking." He manned the camera, trying to get a good angle of the positions, and muffling a curse when he was jostled.

"That's the Shotgun." Hiruma's voice was calm and succinct as his sharp eyes scanned the breakdown of the players scattering all over the field.

"Shotgun what?" Mamori's voice was similarly baffled, but she still watched the match avidly.

"It means having receivers run in all directions, just like a bullet of shotgun." Kurita explained kindly, smiling at Mamori

"The strategy is focused on receivers…" Hiruma pointed out, only to be interrupted by an excited monkey. "This is a great strategy, then!"

"Not so great." Toganou deadpanned, causing Monkey to glare at him.

"But Shin alone... can't take down all those receivers on his own." Sena remarked quietly.

It was a sound strategy against Oujou, who was known as a defense-oriented team. Get the ball running fast, with multiple receivers to switch at will when confronted by opponent and –

His eyes widened when he saw Shin approach the Gunmen's number seven, intent to down him. 'Any moment now - !'

"What a pity, but…." Kid mumbled to himself. "We're doing way too well today."

Calmly, he waited, even in the face of Shin's impending assault.

'Tetsuma will faithfully run on his track…' His eyes closed for a moment…'So I know where he is, even if I close my eyes!'

Eyes blazing open, he snapped the ball forward, almost too fast for eyes to see, the ball soaring above Shin's taken-aback form

"That's way too fast!" Takami's desperate scream cut the air, but it was too late.

The outcome was the inevitable, even if Tetsuma was forcefully stopped.

"Gunmen… gained 13 yards!"

Sadly for Gunmen, the rest of second half had to be played without Tetsuma, who had finally succumbed to the demands of his rolling stomach.

(Too much drunk liquids finally demanded their due.)

Even with Gunmen in the lead, Oujou White Knights managed to scramble enough points (via Shin) that allowed the match to be concluded in their favour.

Sena looked at the table. 20-21, in favour of Oujou.

He grimaced.

And those teams were the monsters they will have to contend with in the fall tournament.

"If Tetsuma was still playing… the Seibu team would probably won." He muttered to himself thoughtfully. It was a sobering thought.

"If we're gonna be champions, we have to defeat all those people… Ugh. A hero's road sure is tough." Monta complained, hissing with discontent.

"I'll be waiting for you in the finals."

Sena straightened out.

He had a rival waiting for him – and Sena would be damned if he wouldn't deliver.

"YOU'RE ALL PATHETIC!"

On the other side, the Oujou didn't exactly have a reason for celebration, courtesy of their irate coach.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU LET THEM SCORE 20 POINTS! WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU ALL DOING!? YOUR SPIRITS ARE TOO LAX….!" Coach Shoji was completely apoplectic. He had slammed the side of his fist on the water container, causing it to collapse with a muted sound and the water to dribble out of the small pipe installed in it.

Shin tuned out the coach's creaming. He already knew he hadn't bene playing his best. Turnign his lead on the side, he saw something turquoise in the corner of his eye.

His body stiffened with shock, as he looked at that turquoise blob once more.

'Deimon uniforms.'

And then, there was Deimon's manager, explaining something to the nose-bandaged kid on his side.

Shin's blood ran cold.

He knew that person.

And to think that person had gotten into the trouble of watching Shin of all people to play ….

'I've played poorly in this game'.

The conclusion was short and bitter.

His fists clutched at his side helplessly as he sat the table with the result condemning him, and then, in his memory, there was a flash of that red light he chased after –

'What the hell am I… doing here?'

Takami turned around to ask Shin something, only to be stopped cold by intense pressure coming off Shin's body. Shin's entire frame was stiffened, and the hands clenched into unforgivable fists, while Shin's glare could scorch someone with its intensity if it was aimed at the person - but instead, it was sightless, aimed at Shin alone.

Takami knew Shin - knew just how far his teammate could go in regards of training, but he never, ever saw him burning with self-recrimination like that.

There was only one person who could elicit that kind of reaction out of the usually stoic line-backer but he wasn't here… was he?

"Hey, where is Shin?" Ootawara asked, grinning while he farted, causing one poor sour following up behind the huge linebacker on the bus to faint from the gas.

"He said he's gonna run back." Takami answered, his tone long-suffering. Really, it had been almost expected, what with Shin's little reaction outside.

Coach Shoji didn't say anything.

Everything that needed to be said was already spoken.

Sena hesitated.

And of course, his fidgeting had to be noticed.

(Damn it.)

"Sena, whaccha doing?" The monkey's voice cut to him, causing Sena to blink in the evening light.

"Eh… I thought that since we are here, we may just as well run back to school as an afternoon practice." He grinned, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

Here was to hoping he could get some running done, without interruptions….

But one monkey just had to perk up, didn't they?

"Ooh! Seems you are full of motivation!" Monta piped up, grinning.

Sena waved his hands dismissively. "Well, it's just a thought and - "

Inwardly, he wanted to strangle Monta. He so didn't need anyone think that his little suggestion was interesting enough to uptake it!

'Drop the suggestion, please. Let me have my little piece of running heaven…' He mentally begged his compatriots.

But apparently the so-called compatriots didn't have mental radars to understand his little plea, or if they heard it, then it was just overwhelmed by enemy force of a certain devil.

Sena's spine unintentionally stiffened with alarm.

"Is that so?" Hiruma's grin was a tad too wide for Sena's comfort.

And then, to Sena's horror, he elegantly vaulted off Habashira's precious motorbike (Habashira hissed at the uncouth method), and stood up in all of his spiky-haired, pointy-eared, sharp grinning glory.

"Everyone off the bikes!"

Sena's internal ghoulish scream of despair could be likened to one of the famed picture of The Scream in its intensity and bone rattling grief at his loss of his precious running-time.

And so, in this gentle spring evening, as the 'fucking secretary' aka one responsible to teach the newbies the basics, one Kobayakawa Sena was given the duty of teaching his fellow comrades the routes.

Yes, all sixteen of them.

Yes, to both sides.

"SLANT!"

(And if nothing else, he got at least some of his running quota filled, even if not in a sense he had wished for.)

/To Be Continued/