5 Chapter 5

The next day was.. excruciating. Seeing that I had much more stamina, the coach asked Chris to give me additional and tougher exercises.

After the morning practice, the third years called for Furuya and I.

"The two of you will be pitching in the bull-pen in the afternoon."

Both of us were excited for being allowed to pitch again. Miyauchi, the third year catcher himself had asked to catch for us.

He easily caught Furuya's pitches, much to the boy's surprise. Then, it was my turn to pitch.

"Miyauchi-senpai! I'm gonna go wild!!" I said with a crazed grin on my face and threw a fastball towards him that was easily faster than 160 kmph.

Miyauchi was dazzled by the sheer momentum of the ball and had to brace himself to catch it. When the ball smashed into his glove with a bang, he could feel the slight stinging pain even through the heavy protection of the mitt.

Miyuki huffed and said, "His fastball makes you wanna run away from it. The guy's a beast."

After I threw a few pitches Chis said, "For today and tomorrow, you'll be allowed to practice pitching in the bullpen together with fielding practice to condition yourselves for saturday's match. The two of you will be pitching that day.

As the sun went down, the both of us pitched to our hearts content. Meanwhile in the trainging field..

*CLANG*

"What's wrong!? Where have all your voices gone!?"

*CLANG*

"G..ive me an..other.."

"I can't hear your voice at all! Isashiki! What happened to your usual prowess!?"

"G..Give me another!"

*CLANG*

Isashiki stumbled and tumbled but managed to catch the ball.

"I've never taught you to catch like that!"

"Kominato! What happened to your usual smile!?"

They all were so tired that they couldn't even stand on their own feet.

"What's wrong? Are you finished? Yuki.."

As Yuki stood up struggling on his feet and forcing his tired body to move, I felt inspired.

'This... this is why I came here. For the grit, the tenacity and the greed to be better.. this rush of adrenaline.. it makes me wanna push myself harder and harder. I will make sure to take the team to nationals.. no matter what happened in canon.. Yakushi High, Teitõ, Hakuryū, Inashiro Industrial and Komadai Fujimaki High... You all better be ready.'

(PLAYBALL!)

It was finally saturday and we were up against Osaka Kiryu High. All three of us first years were in the starting lineup.

Furuya was the starting pitcher and boy did he have a bad start. The fatigue from the golden week was clearly showing as his pitches were all over the place.

He gave up three runs in the first inning itself. The batting order managed to score two runs in three innings but things weren't looking better as Furuya lost another seven runs in second and third inning.

The spectators gathered were beginning to disperse..

"Tsk.. what kind of crappy match is this! It's totally messed up because of that pitcher!"

"I only came because I thought it would be an interesting match with Kiryu High."

"We don't even want to jeer.."

"Let's go home! We obviously don't want to see Seidou losing like this."

The Kiryu lineup was not swinging their bats at all until there were atleast two strikes and because of his unstable pitching, he had already thrown more than a hundred pitches in merely four innings.

I didn't appeal to the coach to sub Furuya out because I knew it was his way of making Furuya aware that he could conciously trust the fielders as they trusted him.

Furuya didn't give away any more runs in the fourth inning. But, despite his comeback, the batting order was not doing well against Kiryu's ace, Tachi.

Fifth inning.. It was Tachi's turn to bat and Miyuki decided to ask Furuya to throw a pitch he had never thrown before. The result.. was the last devil ball of twentieth-century.. the split finger fastball.

It was surreal to witness because Furuya actually messed up the pitch. In fear of throwing another ball, his grip wasn't tight enough and instead of throwing a forkball, he threw a pitch not known to many even in the pro world.

Furuya revived after throwing the SFF and no batter was able to land a hit off his pitches. It was his last inning in the match and boy did he end it with a blast.

In his at-bat, Furuya hit a long home run against the pitcher who was giving trouble to the rest of the team.

Seeing him only fueled my fighting spirit.

For the next four innings, I struck every batter out. They weren't even willing to face my pitches at all after they witnessed my fastballs. With my fast tempo and no wasted pitches, I breezed through Kiryu's line up like a sickle cutting grass.

As for my at-bats, I hit home runs on both of my turns and completely shut down their momentum.

After Furuya's display of his pitching and batting, it was natural for me to do better and show my dominance on the field.

It was a direct challenge too all the pitchers on the team.

'Think you can do better? Bring it on.'

I didn't know if I was going to be chosen as the ace for the summer tournament, but that day.. I showed them all.. that I owned the mound.