We met team three walking out as we were heading to the inner courtyard.
"I really thought we would be going against you guys in the finals," I said to Hiroshi.
"Same here, I thought we would win," Hiroshi said regretfully. "If only this hadn't happened..." He held out the horseshoe-shaped pusher. A large part of the bottom had been torn off.
"How did that happen?"
"One of the defenders smashed into it on accident," Hiroshi said, running his finger over the broken edges. "The ball started rolling the wrong way and it took us over a minute to get it back on track."
"In the end, team two won with a minute and thirty six seconds against a minute forty one seconds. That was just so cruel, don't you think?" The most arrogant girl in the class, Misuzu, put her hand on Hiroshi's shoulder and sighed.
"It's their fault they hit you."
"Well it was an accident, so what can you do about it," Hiroshi said unconvincingly. "Be careful," he said as he left. "Who knows what will happen in the finals."
Hearing something like that before a match felt like some sort of omen. We started paying extra attention to everything around us. And when we saw team two's attacker, we were taken aback.
"Is it riding on a wheel?" Satoru whispered disbelievingly.
"We considered that too, and decided not to do it because the axle wouldn't hold up. How strange. Isn't it a bad idea to do this with clay?"
Shun squinted at the attacker.
"Look closely; it's a ball, not a wheel."
The main body of the pusher had a ball set into the bottom. Since you could only see about half of it, it looked like a wheel.
"It looks like the body is just riding on the ball. If something bumps into it, won't it fall off?" Satoru said calculatingly. "They should have stuck it in all the way."
"No, if they put it in as far as possible, it'll be easy for sand to get in, which would be a disaster. But even as it is now, I think it would break soon anyway," Shun said doubtfully.
"If sand stops the ball-wheel from moving, then it's the same as just pushing it normally, right? They probably just want to get a good start to break through our defense," Maria said calmly.
Our questions were answered as soon as the match started.
"Two of them...!" I exclaimed in surprise.
The two aces of team two, Ryou and Akira, were both controlling the pusher.
Ryou was probably operating the body of the pusher to direct the marble ball, while Akira concentrated on keeping the two halves together as well as removing anything that might jam the ball-wheel. Having two people use their canti in such close proximity is dangerous, so most people would avoid having multiple people control one piece, but in this case the benefits far outweigh the risk.
Since the ball-wheel didn't create much friction against the ground, they could move it smoothly with their canti. Even when they were moving as fast as team five had been, they had perfect control over the marble ball.
Even though we tried as hard as we could to defend, the pusher zig-zagged easily through the gaps in our defenders.
Satoru's defender pulled a sharp u-turn chasing after the pusher and crashed into Mamoru's slow-moving one, sending it flying off the field.
