Revenge is Sweet

Chapter 1

Echizen POV

I was finally truly happy. I had a genuine smile on his face as I was thrown into the air by the rest of the Seigaku regulars. I had just figured out what Seigaku was to me: they were family.

"Hoi, hoi! O'chibi! That was awesome!" Eiji chirped while bouncing up and down with excitement. I laughed at my childish sempai's antics. Out of all of them, Eiji Kikumaru, a third year glomping machine, was probably the most hyper one of them all.

"Yeah! Echizen, that was awesome!" Momoshiro Takeshi exclaimed, capturing me in a headlock and messing up my hair. Momoshiro was my best friend, and often took me out to burgers after practice.

"Good job, Echizen," Tezuka Kunimitsu said. Leave it to the stoic captain to still be looking unemotional on the outside, even though we had just won the Nationals.

"Ii data. It seems that the only time Echizen will not make a cocky remark of 'mada mada dane' is when he wins the Nationals. I believe that the cause of this is because he is still in shock from the realization that we just won," Inui noted. Inui Sadaharu was the team dataman and creator of the most vile juices, Inui Juice. Fuji and Tezuka were the only people on the team to be able to stand the taste of the dreaded Inui Juice. I'd long since come to the conclusion that Fuji's tastebuds had died a while ago, given that he had no problem drinking the nasty concoctions.

Fuji smiled and called, "Good going, Echizen-kun!" Fuji Syuusuke was the team's resident sadist and blackmailing master. He certainly had killed his sense of taste some time ago, as he enjoyed Inui's gruesome juices and enormous globs of wasabi on his sushi.

"Great game, Echizen!" Taka-san called. Kawamura Takashi had a multiple personality disorder. In general, he is gentle and friendly, but when he holds a racket, he suddenly becomes bold and starts yelling "BURNING! BURNING!" like a crazy maniac.

Kaidoh just grunted and turned his face away from me. I could still see that he had a small blush on his face, though. Kaidoh Kaoru's nickname is Viper, and he looks intimidating to most people, but is actually pretty kind-hearted.

Oishi fretted over me saying, "Are you okay Echizen-kun? Do you need to go to the hospital? You hit your head pretty hard earlier. You should probably go home and rest. We'll celebrate at Kawamura Sushi, okay?" Oishi Shuichiro was the basically the team mother and had a mother-hen personality.

"Eh, whatever," I said, not particularly caring what I had to do at the moment. I mean, we had just won the Nationals! Of course I didn't care what I was doing at the moment.

I started heading back home when I suddenly remembered that Oishi hadn't told me when we were going to celebrate.

I doubled back and stepped through the front door of the stadium and heard everyone still celebrating. I let a soft smile spread across my face, remembering what they were all excited over. Suddenly, it was all quiet.

Then I heard Momo whisper, "Do you think he's gone yet?" I froze in place and just peeked around the door.

The rest of the regulars except for Fuji were huddled in a circle in the middle of the tennis court, whispering quietly to one another.

"There's a 97% chance he's already left the stadium, 2% chance he got held back by someone, 0.8% chance he's outside drinking Ponta, and 0.2% chance of him returning here," Inui stated robotically.

"Tezuka, when can we get rid of Echizen?" Eiji whined, tugging on Buchou's sleeve.

"Soon, Eiji. Later, we can tell him to aim higher. Try for the Grand Slams, perhaps," Tezuka answered, looking indifferent as always.

"Good! He's really annoying and irritating all of the time," Oishi complained.

"Have you ever tried treating him to burgers all of the time? It's a total waste of time and money!" Momoshiro chimed in.

"Yeah. He's really rude to his sempais. Echizen needs to learn how to respect his seniors," Kaidoh said, frowning.

I felt my heart break a little at every statement my teammates said. The I spied Fuji stalking over to those traitors with his icy blue eyes open, looking genuinely angry.

"What exactly are you guys talking about?" he demanded.

"We're simply discussing the best way to get rid of Echizen. Since we've already won the Nationals, we don't need him anymore. That's been the plan from the start," Tezuka told him calmly.

"What plan are you talking about, Tezuka?" Fuji asked icily, glaring at every one of them. A few regulars shivered and took a step back. They knew better than to cross Fuji, whether he was already mad or not.

"Didn't someone fill you in? The plan was to get Echizen to join the team, pretend to be his friends, win the Nationals, and then dump him," Tezuka answered.

"No way am I taking part in that. Echizen is probably my only real friend here. He's the best one out of all of you fakes. He doesn't deserve that," the sadist said, his voice rising.

"Then we'll have to kick you off the tennis team then, traitor," Kaidoh growled menacingly, leaning forward and taking a step towards Fuji.

"Fine then! Kick me off then. I'll still side with Echizen," Fuji hissed.

Then I made my appearance. My stony glare swept over all of the regulars and some of them flinched. "What exactly is going on here?"