A System Designed to Fail(Persona 5/Assassination Classroom)

Baseball Time with a Side of Hospital Time

Akira sighed as he went outside with his lunchbox, spotting Sugino sitting on the steps of the classroom, just staring at his open meal before pulling the lid back on, leaving the food untouched. He frowned, coming over and sitting beside him. "Something wrong, Sugino-kun?"

"Huh?" the teen questioned, lifting his head. "Oh, hey, Kurusu-sensei. It's, uh, nothing... just a little disappointed in my fastball."

Akira frowned at that, lightly flicking the boy's forehead. "Something to do with the whole 'E-Class isn't allowed to have extra-curricular activities' thing, right? I have a few friends who were once in a similar position, although it was reversed."

"Reversed?" Sugino asked in surprise. "How so?"

Akira sighed, leaning back as he dug into his meal. "Well, Shujin has never been that famous for its academics. Sure, we churned out the good Kunugigaoka alum as a graduate every once in a while, but the big thing Shujin had going for it was sports, especially once Kamoshida came to town."

"Kamoshida?" the young man questioned in confusion.

"Kamoshida Suguru was an Olympic volleyball player, and when he started teaching PE and coaching track and volleyball at Shujin, it gave us a big claim to fame; our sports programs became our biggest selling point. The first of my friends to suffer from Kamoshida's 'training' was Sakamoto Ryuji. Back when Track was the big thing for Shujin, Ryuji was the star of the team; nobody else could run quite like he did. And Kamoshida... he thought that the track team was an eyesore, so he did everything he could to get rid of it. At first, he just gave the team impossible training regimens, and denied them water throughout the whole thing, even beating them if they complained, but nobody did anything about it. Kamoshida seemed to know that Ryuji was a rebel at heart, though, so he brought up his family... more specifically, his sperm donor. Ryuji's old man... he was never around much back when his folks were together, but when he was, he was always drunk off his ass, and sometimes, he'd even beat his family. Kamoshida exposed that to the rest of the team, and Ryuji lost it and punched him, and in response, Kamoshida busted his leg and got rid of the track team. On top of that, he physically abused the volleyball team too, like my friend Mishima Yuuki, and took advantage of a lot of the girls in the school, including my friends Takamaki Ann and Suzui Shiho. He was actually extorting Ann; essentially making her date him in exchange for keeping Suzui-san in the starting line up. He even tried to make her sleep with him, but when she refused, he forced himself onto Suzui-san instead. The next day, Suzui-san threw herself off the roof of the school building. The bastard ended up being caught when she woke up, because she told the police everything, and a few other members of the school backed up her story, but he still did horrible things. The point is, you can't let selfish adults like the chairman dictate your future. Wait here, okay?"

Akira placed his boxed lunch down before running to the equipment shed and retrieving a pair of gloves, and a baseball, returning to his confused student and handing him the ball and one of the gloves. "Come on, I want you to show me this fastball of yours."

"A-Are you sure?" Sugino asked in surprise.

"Yeah, I'm sure. After all, if you don't keep your skills up, then how can you hope to get onto a team in high school?" Akira pointed out, getting into position. "Plus, my friend Ryuji started playing in third year, and I tend to help him with training, so I like to think I'm pretty good at it at this point. Go ahead, throw me your fastball."

Sugino frowned, pausing a bit before coming down the stairs and onto the field with his teacher, going as far out from the dark-haired man as he would be from a pitching mound before throwing the ball. Akira took mental notes on Sugino's form, actually stumbling backwards a bit from the power behind the throw.