Author's note:

Dear reader,

Thank you for reading the first chapter of this story and now returning for the second. An extra special "thank you" those who have added A Tale of Four Captains to your story alerts and favourite lists. It truly means a lot!

Last but not the least, I wish to publicly express my gratitude to JuniperGentle and Wilma who sent me the most wonderful reviews and whose words have given me the confidence to continue this story.

I need to apologize for taking so long to update this story. Real life has been completely and utterly brutal during the past year and, sadly, fanfiction had to take a backseat. That being said, things are far better now and, if you're following this, be on the look-out for the next chapter because it will be uploaded as soon as possible!

I hope you will enjoy reading this at least half as much as I have enjoyed writing it!

Yours Faithfully,

Lemondrop

A Tale of Four Captains

Chapter 2: The Bible

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."

Lao Tzu

"Game and Match, Echizen Ryoma! Six games to four!"

Shiraishi Kuranosuke, captain of what he believed to be the most eccentric team in Japan did not hear the umpire's announcement. Instead, the news of Seigaku's triumph was delivered via Kintaro. Or, better said via Kin-chan's elated "Koshimae!" scream which overwhelmed the voice of the umpire and probably did irreversible damage to Kuranosuke's eardrums.

A short glance towards the youngest member of his team confirmed what he had already suspected: Kin-chan was fully prepared to engage into a mad dash across the court, to reach the other extraordinary rookie in the competition. With a steadying hand on the first–year's shoulder, he shook his head and gave a pointed, warning look towards his bandaged arm.

"But, Shiraishi! I want to go to Koshimae!" the rookie whined, his two pleading pools of hazel turned towards his captain.

Kuranosuke could do nothing but sigh. Sometimes he wished he either possessed or at least understood Kintaro's lack of restraint. It must have been so easy to live life without having any notion of propriety, without any regard for socially accepted behaviours and a generally innocent view of the world. Unfortunately he didn't lack restraint, he did have quite a thorough grasp of what was proper or not, and he knew that at that very moment no one was entitled to disturb Seigaku's moment of celebration. They had worked hard to achieve their victory and it was only natural that they would want to, at least for now, celebrate among themselves.

"Later, Kin-chan" he answered with a tone of finality and, albeit reluctantly, the red-head settled down.

Kintaro at least somewhat placated, Kuranosuke allowed his eyes to travel back to the flurry of activity on the court. He could indeed see that their semi-final rivals had formed a tight circle around their own rookie and were congratulating him wildly. Perhaps it was his fondness for the underdog, but he was genuinely happy for Seigaku. Something about a relatively unknown, apparently weak team winning the Nationals gave him hope that, perhaps, in the near future, his Shitenhoji would be the ones claiming the red flag. Then again, there was a very big difference between Seigaku and his own team. Seigaku had a drive that he had never been quite able to instil into his teammates.

When he became captain, after the abrupt departure of their previous buchou, Kuranosuke had been, for all intents and purposes, lost. While he had imagined that he would, at some point, claim the captaincy of the Kansai team, he had never expected it to be so very soon. Thus, as a second year, he had been faced with the daunting task of having to be responsible for a team composed of a very different, very wild set of individuals. Looking back at the first weeks of his captaincy, he had been nothing short of a control freak, trying to force his teammates to believe in the basics that he believed in.

Sometimes he wondered how things would have turned out if they hadn't been forced to recruit Zaizen into their team. The boy, his successor so to speak, was rude, callous, disinterested and entirely unsuited to the free spirit of Shitenhoji. He was also perhaps the only one that could have made him realize the momentous mistake he had been making by trying to mould his teammates into copies of himself.

That being said, the prospect of leaving his team into Zaizen's hand the following years was, for all intents and purposes, daunting. For all his talent in tennis, the generally disinterested nature that the junior displayed made Kuranosuke rather nervous about making him captain the following year. Then again, the 'let be' tradition that he had established during his own captaincy would perhaps suit the already indifferent junior. At least he sincerely hoped that it would.

"Shiraishi, I'm going to talk to Yushi! I will come back before the award ceremony!" the self-proclaimed Speed Star of Naniwa said quickly, already making his way towards his cousin. Although it was not strictly required, Kuranosuke nodded his assent, his eyes involuntarily following Kenya to where he was heading to.

For a second, Shiraishi wondered if he should have stopped Kenya. Standing at the top of the stairs, the members of Hyotei's tennis team seemed to be watching their captain as if he was a bomb about to explode. The captain himself bore such a grim expression that, had they not been in a public place, Kuranosuke would have worried that he would have either killed someone or killed himself on the spot.

Quite frankly, he didn't know much about Atobe. Apart from their brief meeting at Seigaku's celebration he had never come into contact with him. And, if the rumours about Hyotei's captain were true, he couldn't say that he would particularly like to associate himself with him. That being said, he couldn't help but feel mildly curious about the rather pained expression the other man bore. Was it disappointment? As far as he knew from Kenya, Hyotei had fallen to Seigaku back in the quarterfinals, and, as such, they would have had enough time to lick their metaphorical wounds. Then again, Kuranosuke himself could attest to the fact that seeing another's triumph was never easy.

He genuinely liked Seigaku. He liked their members, and he liked their captain who had a much hands-on approach than he himself had. But that didn't mean he wouldn't have liked Shitenhoji to be playing in the finals. On the contrary. If anything, the fact that Seigaku had managed to accomplish such a feat made him wonder why Shitenhoji had failed for two consecutive years to accomplish a similar thing. Perhaps, he thought as his eyes travelled to the side of the court occupied by blue-clad figures, it was luck. Or better said, a lack of luck on their part. Or maybe they were just not good enough.

Kuranosuke's eyes travelled to the spot where Seigaku was congratulating their young freshman and, for a second, he studied Echizen's content face. The boy was truly something. Achieving the Pinnacle of Perfection was indeed a feat worthy of congratulation in itself. Opening mystical doors was more Chitose's area of expertise, but he couldn't help but feel slightly cheated. It was rather ironic that Perfect tennis was not the most efficient form of tennis like he had believed but, instead, was perhaps the flashiest, the messiest form of tennis in existence. Not for the first time, he felt that the style of tennis he practiced was not only boring but also rather pointless.

"Shiraishi! Can I go to Koshimae now?" Kin-chan pleaded from besides him and he turned with a sigh. Seigaku was still celebrating and it would be poor form to allow Kintaro to barge in.

"Kin-chan, how about we get ice cream?" he offered in an attempt to, once again, placate their youngest member. For a moment Kintaro seemed split between wanting to rush off to see his new friend and getting the sweet treat. After an almost apologetic look at 'Koshimae' he turned towards his captain, nodded and eagerly attached himself to his buchou's arm.

Not for the first time during the past year, Kuranosuke swore that he would never have children. Or, if he ever had, that he would feed them ADHD pills daily, so that they wouldn't turn out as hyper as Kintaro generally was. Redhead attached to his elbow, as if he was going to make a run for it, they moved slowly out of the arena.

The summer day had cooled off slightly, at the surroundings of the arena were desolate, being in a strange contrast with the general flurry of activity that was taking place inside. Taking a moment to appreciate the general peacefulness, he was about to shake his young teammate off, when Kin-chan stopped in his tracks, his eyes becoming big as saucers. The redhead gave a quick piercing yell, as if he had just seen a ghost, let go of his captain's arm and instead hid behind Shiraishi, his thin arms clasped around his waist.

Regaining his balance after the sudden movement, he was ready to turn to Kin-chan and chastise him for such childish behaviour but the words died on his lips. A quick glance towards the arena suddenly told him why his freshman had reacted the way he did.

Leaning against the wall, close to the door, stood Yukimura Seiichi, fearsome captain of Rikkaidai and probably the one person in existence that could scare Kintaro out of his wits. Shoulders sagged, eyes looking downwards and hands falling listlessly around his thin frame, Kuranosuke had to admit that the yellow-clad buchou looked much less impressive than he did on the tennis court. If anything, he looked rather frail and lost.

"Shiraishi-san…" Yukimura acknowledged in a soft voice, offering a gentle smile at the picture of the Shitenhoji rookie attached to his captain.

"Yukimura-san… " he replied momentarily stunned by the intensity of the other man's blue eyes. The arms around his waist tightened their grip and he tried his best to loosen it to no avail. "We are going for ice cream… would you like to join us?" Shiraishi offered politely after a moment of very uncomfortable silence. The short figure at his back gave another shrill cry, moved closer and Kuranosuke wondered if there was some truth in the statement 'hugged to death'.

"I don't think that would be such a great idea. But thank you for the offer." Yukimura replied evenly, his eyes stopping for a second on the small, trembling hands of the rookie. A rather sad smile graced his thin features and Kuranosuke could not help but wonder whether it was truly acceptable to leave the other captain alone.

"Well, then… we should go...Kin-chan… let go! I can't walk like this!" he snapped, but, predictably, his words fell on deaf ears. It seemed that Kintaro was actively trying to blend with his captain and Shiraishi was finding the prospect rather daunting to say the least. "Kin-chan!"

"No! No! No! No! No!" Kintaro whined and he could feel the mop of unruly hair move against his back, the deceptively thin hands holding his midsection even tighter.

"Kin-chan, do you know what will happen if you don't stop this nonsense immediately?" Kuranosuke said in a much harsher tone, and turned towards the other captain to offer an apologetic smile.

Quite frankly he had expected Yukimura to look smug at his inability to control his own rookie. But instead of being haughty, Yukimura looked rather miserable, his eyes fixed on the clasped hands of the rookie.

"I don't care!" Kintaro answered in a much more subdued voice and, for once, he understood how scared his young teammate was.

"Kin-chan…" Shiraishi started in a warning voice, raising his bandaged arm to indicate his intention.

"Tooyama-kun, I'm going inside now. So you can let go of Shiraishi-san." Yukimura offered kindly from the side and Shitenhoji's captain stopped in his tracks, glancing at his Rikkaidai analogue.

For a moment Yukimura offered yet another bitter simile and turned on his heels to proceed inside. Kuranosuke watched him move, the image of that parody of a smile burned deep within the recesses of his mind. Was that how he had looked when they had lost in the semi-finals? Did he have the same bitter, self-defeating air about him? Had he felt that guilty?

The answer was no, he hadn't. They had lost, but loosing was a fact of life. It wasn't the end of the world and it simply meant that they had to try harder. Feeling so dejected because of such a thing was nothing but borderline irrational.

Even so, his mind helpfully supplied an image of Atobe's pained expression as he watched Seigaku's celebration, and Kuranosuke could not help but pause in his judgemental assertions. Two different captains, two different teams, both wearing the same expression, both sharing the same feelings. Perhaps he was the one who wasn't normal.

"Kin-chan… It's alright now…" he said calmly, mentally testing the veracity of his statement. Was it truly alright?

Kintaro released his grip and deftly moved in front of his captain, gracing him with a sheepish smile. Looking at the future of Shitenhoji standing in front of him, brown eyes red from tears, red hair wild, childish smile plastered on his features, Kuranosuke sighed. When his turn came, how far would Kintaro go? How far would his team go with Kintaro at its helm?

"Are we still getting ice cream?" the rookie asked in a subdued voice, his hands clasped around his back, his eyes looking hopefully at his captain.

Kuranosuke felt the urge to laugh, composure be damned. Unless Kin-chan actually grew up before he took the helm of the team, Shitenhoji was doomed. The same stood true for Zaizen. Between them, one being too indifferent, the other being too foolish, they would drive the entire team into the ground.

He didn't laugh because if he did, he reckoned he would have immediately lost it. Instead, he merely nodded and steered Kintaro towards the ice cream parlour.

Content expression plastered on his face, hands covered in melting pistachio ice cream, Kin-chan seemed momentarily appeased and Kuranosuke thanked Kami-sama that for at least five minutes he would not have to worry about his rookie going off and doing something ridiculous. Or at least he hoped that he could afford such luxury. After all, Kin-chan was nothing if completely and utterly unpredictable.

However, at the risk of destroying his hard-earned moment of peace, Kuranosuke knew he once again had to step into lecturing-captain mode. Ever since Zaizen had joined their team, that particular mode had seemed to all but vanish. To a certain extent, Shiraishi-buchou had learned his lesson about being too overbearing with his teammates. But, like always, Kin-chan was a special case. Their rookie, for all his talent in tennis, had the behaviour of a five-year-old and the social graces of a kindergartner. There were a lot of things that he needed to learn and, for the general welfare of the team, Shiraishi had taken it upon himself to impart those valuable bits of knowledge. He absolutely hated it.

For one, he hated breaking his own promise not to interfere with the general conduct of his teammates. But, even more, he hated the fact that everything he said to Kintaro seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Shiraishi was not someone who liked doing things in vain. He abhorred excesses and unnecessary actions, his own style of tennis being sufficient proof of how much he liked efficiency. Against all odds, his relationship with Shitenhoji's rookie was the perfect anathema of that. Their conversations seemed to have a set formula which proved, thus far, to be completely inefficient: he said something, Kin-chan whined, he threatened, Kin-chan was sacred, he got the impression that Kintaro had learned the lesson, Kin-chan did not understand a thing.

"Kin-chan, you should apologize to Yukimura-san" he said in a measured, serious voice and Kintaro turned to face him immediately.

"Why?" the rookie asked genuinely confused, big eyes pleading and lips quivering at the mere prospect of facing the Rikkaidai captain.

"Because you were very rude earlier and he didn't deserve to be treated like that" for a moment, Kuranosuke had been tempted to forgo explanations and, like always, raise his bandaged arm. Instead he stifled the tempting impulse, and responded as calmly as possible.

"But he's evil!" Kintaro replied as if he was articulating a universal truth.

That statement, pronounced with such childish sincerity, gave him pause. Was Yukimura Seiichi evil? Of course he wasn't. That was a question that didn't even deserve to be dignified with an answer. Admittedly, the Rikkaidai captain's style of tennis was somewhat underhand, but that didn't make him 'evil'. At least not in the way Kuranosuke himself defined the word.

"I don't think he's evil, Kin-chan" he replied evenly, looking at his kohai seriously.

"But he hurts people…" the red head replied quickly, his voice a notch higher than before. "He hurt me and he hurt Koshimae…"

Kuranosuke suddenly had to stifle the impulse to bang his head against the ice cream counter. Yes, Kintaro was right in his assertions. If you were a five-year-old, that is. Otherwise, a reasonable twelve-year-old would have acknowledged that, sometimes, people who hurt other people were not evil. Especially during a game.

"That's only how he plays tennis… You sometimes hurt people when you play tennis, don't you?" he tried explaining as patiently as he could, but he wasn't very optimistic about the direction in which the conversation was going.

"But I don't want to. It just happens sometimes. He wants to hurt people" Kin-chan's response came promptly, his eyes still a mass of confused brown.

"I don't think he specifically sets out to hurt others. He just wants to win for his team. That's not evil, is it?" Kuranosuke tried again, already feeling like they would be going in a circle for a long time before he would ultimately engage into the tried–and-tested 'poison-arm-threatening' method and force Kintaro to apologize to Rikkaidai's captain.

For a moment, Kin-chan seemed to mull over his captain's words and a flicker of hope awakened within Shiraishi. Perhaps, he understood what he was saying?

"What about you?" Kintaro asked and his captain was confused for a second.

"What about me?" Shiraishi asked in absolute confusion, momentarily wondering how in the world Kin-chan had dragged him into the entire situation.

"You want to win for the team but instead of hurting others you hurt yourself. Like Tezuka-san, only that you don't have a bad shoulder..." the red-head explained with a smile.

"I don't really hurt myself, Kin-chan" Shiraishi countered, not entirely following Kintaro's logic. Which, to be honest, it wasn't an entirely novel experience.

"Yes you do. You play boring tennis because that's what makes Shitenhoji win. You also don't play the people that you want to play against, but the hardest people because you want us to win. You also took poison to make your arm stronger and have to bandage it every day!" by now, Kin-chan was so pumped up that he had risen from his chair and was jumping slightly up and down in excitement.

Kuranosuke was speechless. Completely and utterly devoid of words. Was this truly how the youngest member of his team saw him? He didn't know whether to be flattered or not. Apart from the statement about the poison hand, which was obviously a fabrication on his part, the other assertions had hit surprisingly close to home. Kuranosuke had always made a concerted effort not to be selfish as far as his team was concerned, especially after the disasters that were last year's National Tournament and the first weeks of his captaincy. As such, he had always tried to be what his team needed him to be and play not in the way that he wanted, but in the way that he needed to. That being said, he had never expected any of them to take note of it. Especially the youngest of them and the one who was decidedly the most oblivious to the subtleties of the world surrounding him. He was oddly touched.

"Kin-chan…" Kuranosuke tried to stop his kohai and perhaps thank him for his kind assertions, but the read-head seemed to be on a roll.

"So, you and Tezuka-san want to win but don't hurt anyone but yourselves. Like heroes. And that means that Yukimura-san is the big boss" Kintaro was now grinning like mad, obviously pleased with himself at his deductive skills.

"The big boss?" Shiraishi asked more than a little perplexed.

"Yes… like in a video game. You have small evil and then you have the big evil at the end. That's the big boss." the young red-head said, as if it was something so obvious that everyone would have understood what it meant.

"Life isn't really a video game, Kin-chan." Kuranosuke tried to impart the sad truth to his kohai, but Kintaro's expression remained completely blank "For example, if this were a video game, then 'the heroes' would defeat the 'big boss', right? But neither myself nor Tezuka even played Yukimura, much less defeat him"

"That's because you are not the big heroes. You are small heroes. Koshimae is the big hero" the kohai argued, not quite understanding why his captain didn't really get it.

Kuranosuke simply gave up, his shoulders sagging slightly. For a moment, going by his assertions about his tennis style, he had believed that Kinatro had somehow gained an ounce of introspection and reason. However, he reckoned that changes did not happen overnight, much less as far as Kin-chan was concerned. The conversation, like a thousand others of the sort, was not going anywhere. Even so, Kuranosuke couldn't bring himself to be too disappointed about it. That was simply how things were.

"But don't be sad, Shiraishi. I think the small heroes are way nicer than the big heroes" Kin-chan patted his captain's shoulder in comfort, his smile and eyes the picture of complete and utter innocence. He clearly took Shiraishi's defeated expression as sadness at not being a 'big hero'. "And you are a way cooler small hero than Tezuka-san. You have the poison arm, after all! I bet you can even defeat Yukimura-san with it, and then you can become a big hero as well!"

Shitenhoji's captain didn't bother replying, and instead handed over a napkin to his kohai so that he could wipe his face clean of the pistachio ice-cream.

As they walked back to the arena to meet up with the others, and Kinatro kept going on and on about how 'small heroes' were better than 'big heroes', Kuranosuke simply laughed. They might have lost the National Tournament twice in a row, but, as things stood, Shiraishi found himself proud to be the captain of the most eccentric team in Japan. Even if, according to Kintaro, he was only a 'small hero'.

A/N: First of all, thank you for taking the time to read this. I certainly hope you have enjoyed this chapter and that I managed to keep Shiraishi in character. I would appreciate it if you took the time and sent me your comments via your reviews.

Next up: The Child of God