Songs for Daddy- Chapter 47: Play the Game Tonight (Part 7 [first trap])
Part 6
The Field
“Hiruma why the fuck are you out here!?” Takekura barely held back screaming at his friend. “We all know how bad you got messed up!”
“Munakata exaggerates shit all the time and you know it.” Hiruma snapped back as he put his wrist bands on. The rest of the Babies watched the exchange silently. “He wouldn’t have let me out if he didn’t think I could play!”
Takekura shut his mouth to keep from yelling out his anger.
“I know you weren’t there for that huddle,” Hiruma went on, “but I do intend to follow my own damn advice, got it old man?”
“Your own advice?” Takekura muttered dubiously.
“’Busting your ass like that injury is nothing.’” Toganou quoted.
Takekura stopped and looked at Hiruma tiredly.
“How the fuck am I supposed to face your little girl if you get crippled or worse!?” Takekura asked, sounding desperate.
“How the fuck am I supposed to face my little girl if she’s the one that woke me up to play if I don’t go out there?” Hiruma demanded almost hysterically, looking a bit upset. “Please don’t ask me to choose between you two.”
Wordlessly Takekura understood: Hiruma would always choose Emiko over anyone. It wasn’t fair to ask him to stab a friend in the back.
“Let him go,” Gaou told Takekura curtly, “it was a failure on the line’s part anyways.”
“Gaou?” Takekura blinked at the man.
“It won’t happen again.” Kurita assured Takekura as he snapped his helmet back on.
-break-
“Hiruma came out!” Ishimaru gasped, the rest of the Wizards couldn’t help but to stare at the guy. He had a purple bruise on his right hand and his eyes were clearly dilated.
“…Why the hell is he out there?” Kojima stared. Even he knew better than to step out on the field that fucked up.
“It’s the level at which your opponent is playing.” Yamato explained. “Hiruma-shi is playing at his fullest and most reckless for the sake of victory.”
“Isn’t that what we do?” Kojima asked.
“No, Hiruma’s different from every one of you.” Yamato shook his head. “He won’t lay waste to his opponent to win, he’ll just beat them outright, broken hand, concussion and all.” Actually Hiruma would way waste to his opponent to win if that’s what needed to happen and Yamato knew that. He just wanted his boys to see perhaps there was something sportsmanlike about their amazing opponent.
The team stared at Hiruma. All he did was look back and smirk at them while sticking a bit of gum in his mouth.
“The second half is now starting, please return to your seats.” Sanada requested over the speakers.
“Say you fucking babies, are we ready?” Hiruma asked his teammates.
“Orraaa!”
No one knew what to think when Hiruma stepped out onto the field for the second half. This time he’d set up into a formation that no one was expecting: the shotgun.
“He’s not seriously going to be throwing with that hand, is he?” Kojima muttered, a bit freaked out.
“Damn straight he is kid,” Kuroki chuckled at the boy before him, “he’ll even throw you a nice long bomber.”
Normally it’s considered horrible strategy to tell your opponent what you’re going to do next, but right now everyone was sure Hiruma couldn’t throw. So was this all a lie for a runner’s sake? Or was this really coming?
“Set, hut!” Hiruma cried, caught the snap and got into a throwing stance. His line became a passing wall and his receivers went out. The one runner went shooting around the right with no ball. And in that confusion while everyone was trying to focus on the runner and receivers, Hiruma faked a throw and snuck around the left.
After about 15 yards, someone finally figured out that Hiruma had the ball, shouted then went after him. But this itself was a trap because the linebackers that were once chasing the runner were now focused on Hiruma. Pity because Hiruma, with his left hand, tossed the ball to the runningback and he took off at full speed.
“Amateurs!” Kaitani Riku scoffed and blasted past all of the defenders, using his Rodeo Drive and Romping Rodeo Drive techniques as he saw fit.
“Kaitani is running alone! At the 40, 30, 20, 10- touchdown!” Sanada roared, the crowd joining him.
“Ke ke ke!” Hiruma laughed at the frustrated linebackers. “Did you really think this game was going to be easy?”
“Because I’ll tell you something, next play, won’t be a kick.” Hiruma informed then with a grin, “one hundred percent prediction,” and a wink for added effect.
“Wha-!?”
Hiruma casually ignored the sputtering and walked over to Kurita.
“Stop holding back and blast those brats into next Tuesday.” Hiruma informed Kurita quietly.
Kurita nodded gravely.
“Oye fishlips, switch out with Gaou.” Hiruma ordered.
“Looks like its comeback time.” Musashi grinned.
“Damn straight, fucking old man.” Youichi agreed.
Needless to say there was nothing Saikyodai could do to stop Kurita, Gaou, and Takekura ramming into them. The line crumpled like aluminum foil and Hiruma causally walked into the touchdown zone. This pissed off the Wizards but there was nothing that could be done about it. Mostly because trying to stop Gaou and Kurita was going to be damn near impossible, especially with how strong they were.
“You fuckers were holding back on me!” Kojima screamed. He was a lineman, he knew how these things worked.
“…Yeah, sorry.” Kurita bowed slightly, sincerely apologetic. He just couldn’t get into it when Hiruma wasn’t around….
“Fatty!” Hiruma called from the newly-forming huddle.
“Ah, coming!” Kurita waved to the Wizards and hurried over to Hiruma’s side.
“…He just crushed us and then runs off like it’s the most causal thing in the world.” Another lineman shuddered.
“I’m going to kill that Hiruma!” Kojima vowed as his teammates dragged him away.
Yamato, on the other hand, was starting to feel pressured by all of this. He found himself calling a time-out to try and impress the urgency of the situation onto his team. The Wizards found the fact a time-out was called by Yamato very strange. These boys couldn’t help but to look over at their coach’s angry face in confusion. What was going on?
“They have the entire second half to recover 24 points,” Yamato told his team, “after that try for point, I think we can expect eight point conversions from now on.”
“Three touchdowns.” Banba held up three fingers. “Just three and they catch up.”
“A single kick or safety can tip the balance then,” Yamato went on, “we might have the lead right now but this does not guarantee our victory!”
“You must widen that gap at all costs.” Banba told them sharply.
“But the Babies can’t score-!” One of the wide receivers protested.
“You fool! Did you not remember the first four minutes of this game!?” Ishimaru snapped at the guy. “The Babies scored 14 points in those four minutes! They stopped scoring touchdowns because Hiruma left the field, but now he’s back! And the first damn thing he does is score another 8 points! We’re not even a full minute into the second half yet!”
Most of the Wizards were staring at Ishimaru’s words.
“He’s right.” Yamato remarked gravely. “Hiruma Youichi’s specialty is comeback victories. In every single professional game he’s been in he scores about 30 to 40 points in the second half.”
“If he can get 40 points on a good day, then we need to score three times to keep him from being able to catch up.” Banba told them gravely. “The effort here does not solely rely on the defense, the offense has to keep scoring or we will lose this game!”
“So, since they have the second half to make up those three touchdowns, I’m sure they’ll keep up their current kicking pattern in favor of attempting interceptions or shutting you down in defense.” Yamato told the team. “Now go out there and receive it!”
“Oye, Tetsuma,” Hiruma went over to the large, power receiver, “I need you to catch the old man’s squib kick, can you do that?”
“Affirmative.” Tetsuma nodded, stood up, and stoically walked onto the field.
“Gaou, you’re on kick team, crush anyone you see.” Hiruma added the order and went and sat down on the bench. His head was still throbbing up a mess and his hand wasn’t responding as well has he had hoped it would.
“Do you want some ice?” Juumonji asked, looking at that purple hand. Hiruma would be a fool if he thought he could throw with it.
“I need what little feeling I have.” Hiruma left it at that. Juumonji was someone he could trust completely with his actual state. Mostly because Juumonji wouldn’t try to stop him if Hiruma decided he wanted to do something stupid.
“How’s your head?” Juumonji asked.
“I should be going straight to the hospital when this is over.” Hiruma left it at that.
Juumonji said nothing in return mostly because he had a feeling Hiruma would not be going to the hospital right after this game. He’d be going out to dinner with everyone else. Probably because Emiko would want to go and Juumonji did observe that Hiruma had issues denying his daughter the few times she asked for things.
At least that’s what he noticed in the times he occasionally visited the Hiruma-Anezaki house hold.
Takekura pulled back his leg and the Wizards backed away, waiting for that boomer of a kick. Who were they to think it would be an on-side kick? The Babies were in their normal kick formation and everything, even Tetsuma had been playing with the kick team this entire time, nothing out of ordinary.
The stands issued a loud gasp when the ball stumbled sideways and Tetsuma dove for it. It was painfully clear the Wizards had little practice with how to handle a sudden on-side kick as they crashed into each other and froze in the confusion. Not only that, but Tetsuma went running with the ball, Takekura as his lead blocker.
“You shitty ass-!” Kojima cried as he went for Takekura only to get side-tackled by Komusubi.
Takekura chuckled and ran on to crash into an unprepared lineman. Clearly the fact Takekura was a strong, muscular construction worker didn’t seem to translate to his ability to crush and smack around an opponent, at least in the eyes of the surprised Wizards. Since forming the Babies, Takekura choose to keep up his practice as a linebacker so that in situations like this he wasn’t a useless player on the field like Kotaro was.
Tetsuma continued forward, literally carrying any opponent that managed to get their hands on him with him down the field. It took 40 yards before Tetsuma was finally brought down.
Hiruma put a piece of gum in his mouth and stepped onto the field, happily chewing while he thought of plans. What to do, what to do? Something tricky? Something complicated? Something simple? What were those fucking opponents expecting?
Green eyes narrowed.
Pop.
“Oye, huddle up.” Hiruma said casually, the gum back in his mouth and the smirk present upon his face.
American Announcer Booth
“How disappointing! I was hoping for one of those clever, trick formations Youichi’s famous for.” Hendrickson sighed when he was looking down at the usual offensive formation. In fact the formation was one of the basic ones, so basic it’s the number one choice for teaching to a team as their first formation.
“No.” Lewis up a hand while he scrutinized the formation below, his expression intense. “It only looks that way.” Lewis’ expression turned from one of extreme concentration to one of pleasant surprise and satisfaction.
“What do you mean Clifford?” Hendrickson asked with a frown, what did Lewis see that he did not?
“The runningback is probably a foot to the left than what would be ‘correct’, but since the second runner isn’t giving any signals of being confused by this, I can safely say that’s intentional.” Lewis explained. “Which is a curious choice considering that Youichi is a right handed quarterback….”
“You’re right!” Hendrickson muttered in amazement. “How come the Wizards’ defense hasn’t noticed?”
“Same reason why they can’t see Sena do the same thing.” Lewis chuckled at some personal joke.
“Sena? As in Eyeshield 21?” Hendrickson. “Your teammate?”
“Yup!” Lewis smiled almost evilly. “You see, Bob, both Riku and Sena are abnormally small football players, if they duck down just a little bit, you can’t see them through the line at all.”
“So the reason they haven’t noticed is because they can’t see Riku?” Hendrickson paused after he said that. “Wait-! Why aren’t they panicked they can’t!?”
“They never saw him to begin with,” Lewis answered, “normally Riku’s head is hidden by the quarterback’s body, and it’s been like that in all of the plays in this game. Also because the distance isn’t that much different than normal, the bench isn’t going to be aware anything is amiss. The reality is only spectators like ourselves can see there’s something amiss.”
“So they don’t know this is a trick formation.” Hendrickson concluded.
“Of course not,” Lewis scoffed at the thought that the Wizards might actually have noticed, “which is just the first trap.”
“The first trap?”
“The second will be whatever he’s planning to do with the play once it starts.”
Part 8
The Field
“Hiruma why the fuck are you out here!?” Takekura barely held back screaming at his friend. “We all know how bad you got messed up!”
“Munakata exaggerates shit all the time and you know it.” Hiruma snapped back as he put his wrist bands on. The rest of the Babies watched the exchange silently. “He wouldn’t have let me out if he didn’t think I could play!”
Takekura shut his mouth to keep from yelling out his anger.
“I know you weren’t there for that huddle,” Hiruma went on, “but I do intend to follow my own damn advice, got it old man?”
“Your own advice?” Takekura muttered dubiously.
“’Busting your ass like that injury is nothing.’” Toganou quoted.
Takekura stopped and looked at Hiruma tiredly.
“How the fuck am I supposed to face your little girl if you get crippled or worse!?” Takekura asked, sounding desperate.
“How the fuck am I supposed to face my little girl if she’s the one that woke me up to play if I don’t go out there?” Hiruma demanded almost hysterically, looking a bit upset. “Please don’t ask me to choose between you two.”
Wordlessly Takekura understood: Hiruma would always choose Emiko over anyone. It wasn’t fair to ask him to stab a friend in the back.
“Let him go,” Gaou told Takekura curtly, “it was a failure on the line’s part anyways.”
“Gaou?” Takekura blinked at the man.
“It won’t happen again.” Kurita assured Takekura as he snapped his helmet back on.
-break-
“Hiruma came out!” Ishimaru gasped, the rest of the Wizards couldn’t help but to stare at the guy. He had a purple bruise on his right hand and his eyes were clearly dilated.
“…Why the hell is he out there?” Kojima stared. Even he knew better than to step out on the field that fucked up.
“It’s the level at which your opponent is playing.” Yamato explained. “Hiruma-shi is playing at his fullest and most reckless for the sake of victory.”
“Isn’t that what we do?” Kojima asked.
“No, Hiruma’s different from every one of you.” Yamato shook his head. “He won’t lay waste to his opponent to win, he’ll just beat them outright, broken hand, concussion and all.” Actually Hiruma would way waste to his opponent to win if that’s what needed to happen and Yamato knew that. He just wanted his boys to see perhaps there was something sportsmanlike about their amazing opponent.
The team stared at Hiruma. All he did was look back and smirk at them while sticking a bit of gum in his mouth.
“The second half is now starting, please return to your seats.” Sanada requested over the speakers.
“Say you fucking babies, are we ready?” Hiruma asked his teammates.
“Orraaa!”
No one knew what to think when Hiruma stepped out onto the field for the second half. This time he’d set up into a formation that no one was expecting: the shotgun.
“He’s not seriously going to be throwing with that hand, is he?” Kojima muttered, a bit freaked out.
“Damn straight he is kid,” Kuroki chuckled at the boy before him, “he’ll even throw you a nice long bomber.”
Normally it’s considered horrible strategy to tell your opponent what you’re going to do next, but right now everyone was sure Hiruma couldn’t throw. So was this all a lie for a runner’s sake? Or was this really coming?
“Set, hut!” Hiruma cried, caught the snap and got into a throwing stance. His line became a passing wall and his receivers went out. The one runner went shooting around the right with no ball. And in that confusion while everyone was trying to focus on the runner and receivers, Hiruma faked a throw and snuck around the left.
After about 15 yards, someone finally figured out that Hiruma had the ball, shouted then went after him. But this itself was a trap because the linebackers that were once chasing the runner were now focused on Hiruma. Pity because Hiruma, with his left hand, tossed the ball to the runningback and he took off at full speed.
“Amateurs!” Kaitani Riku scoffed and blasted past all of the defenders, using his Rodeo Drive and Romping Rodeo Drive techniques as he saw fit.
“Kaitani is running alone! At the 40, 30, 20, 10- touchdown!” Sanada roared, the crowd joining him.
“Ke ke ke!” Hiruma laughed at the frustrated linebackers. “Did you really think this game was going to be easy?”
“Because I’ll tell you something, next play, won’t be a kick.” Hiruma informed then with a grin, “one hundred percent prediction,” and a wink for added effect.
“Wha-!?”
Hiruma casually ignored the sputtering and walked over to Kurita.
“Stop holding back and blast those brats into next Tuesday.” Hiruma informed Kurita quietly.
Kurita nodded gravely.
“Oye fishlips, switch out with Gaou.” Hiruma ordered.
“Looks like its comeback time.” Musashi grinned.
“Damn straight, fucking old man.” Youichi agreed.
Needless to say there was nothing Saikyodai could do to stop Kurita, Gaou, and Takekura ramming into them. The line crumpled like aluminum foil and Hiruma causally walked into the touchdown zone. This pissed off the Wizards but there was nothing that could be done about it. Mostly because trying to stop Gaou and Kurita was going to be damn near impossible, especially with how strong they were.
“You fuckers were holding back on me!” Kojima screamed. He was a lineman, he knew how these things worked.
“…Yeah, sorry.” Kurita bowed slightly, sincerely apologetic. He just couldn’t get into it when Hiruma wasn’t around….
“Fatty!” Hiruma called from the newly-forming huddle.
“Ah, coming!” Kurita waved to the Wizards and hurried over to Hiruma’s side.
“…He just crushed us and then runs off like it’s the most causal thing in the world.” Another lineman shuddered.
“I’m going to kill that Hiruma!” Kojima vowed as his teammates dragged him away.
Yamato, on the other hand, was starting to feel pressured by all of this. He found himself calling a time-out to try and impress the urgency of the situation onto his team. The Wizards found the fact a time-out was called by Yamato very strange. These boys couldn’t help but to look over at their coach’s angry face in confusion. What was going on?
“They have the entire second half to recover 24 points,” Yamato told his team, “after that try for point, I think we can expect eight point conversions from now on.”
“Three touchdowns.” Banba held up three fingers. “Just three and they catch up.”
“A single kick or safety can tip the balance then,” Yamato went on, “we might have the lead right now but this does not guarantee our victory!”
“You must widen that gap at all costs.” Banba told them sharply.
“But the Babies can’t score-!” One of the wide receivers protested.
“You fool! Did you not remember the first four minutes of this game!?” Ishimaru snapped at the guy. “The Babies scored 14 points in those four minutes! They stopped scoring touchdowns because Hiruma left the field, but now he’s back! And the first damn thing he does is score another 8 points! We’re not even a full minute into the second half yet!”
Most of the Wizards were staring at Ishimaru’s words.
“He’s right.” Yamato remarked gravely. “Hiruma Youichi’s specialty is comeback victories. In every single professional game he’s been in he scores about 30 to 40 points in the second half.”
“If he can get 40 points on a good day, then we need to score three times to keep him from being able to catch up.” Banba told them gravely. “The effort here does not solely rely on the defense, the offense has to keep scoring or we will lose this game!”
“So, since they have the second half to make up those three touchdowns, I’m sure they’ll keep up their current kicking pattern in favor of attempting interceptions or shutting you down in defense.” Yamato told the team. “Now go out there and receive it!”
“Oye, Tetsuma,” Hiruma went over to the large, power receiver, “I need you to catch the old man’s squib kick, can you do that?”
“Affirmative.” Tetsuma nodded, stood up, and stoically walked onto the field.
“Gaou, you’re on kick team, crush anyone you see.” Hiruma added the order and went and sat down on the bench. His head was still throbbing up a mess and his hand wasn’t responding as well has he had hoped it would.
“Do you want some ice?” Juumonji asked, looking at that purple hand. Hiruma would be a fool if he thought he could throw with it.
“I need what little feeling I have.” Hiruma left it at that. Juumonji was someone he could trust completely with his actual state. Mostly because Juumonji wouldn’t try to stop him if Hiruma decided he wanted to do something stupid.
“How’s your head?” Juumonji asked.
“I should be going straight to the hospital when this is over.” Hiruma left it at that.
Juumonji said nothing in return mostly because he had a feeling Hiruma would not be going to the hospital right after this game. He’d be going out to dinner with everyone else. Probably because Emiko would want to go and Juumonji did observe that Hiruma had issues denying his daughter the few times she asked for things.
At least that’s what he noticed in the times he occasionally visited the Hiruma-Anezaki house hold.
Takekura pulled back his leg and the Wizards backed away, waiting for that boomer of a kick. Who were they to think it would be an on-side kick? The Babies were in their normal kick formation and everything, even Tetsuma had been playing with the kick team this entire time, nothing out of ordinary.
The stands issued a loud gasp when the ball stumbled sideways and Tetsuma dove for it. It was painfully clear the Wizards had little practice with how to handle a sudden on-side kick as they crashed into each other and froze in the confusion. Not only that, but Tetsuma went running with the ball, Takekura as his lead blocker.
“You shitty ass-!” Kojima cried as he went for Takekura only to get side-tackled by Komusubi.
Takekura chuckled and ran on to crash into an unprepared lineman. Clearly the fact Takekura was a strong, muscular construction worker didn’t seem to translate to his ability to crush and smack around an opponent, at least in the eyes of the surprised Wizards. Since forming the Babies, Takekura choose to keep up his practice as a linebacker so that in situations like this he wasn’t a useless player on the field like Kotaro was.
Tetsuma continued forward, literally carrying any opponent that managed to get their hands on him with him down the field. It took 40 yards before Tetsuma was finally brought down.
Hiruma put a piece of gum in his mouth and stepped onto the field, happily chewing while he thought of plans. What to do, what to do? Something tricky? Something complicated? Something simple? What were those fucking opponents expecting?
Green eyes narrowed.
Pop.
“Oye, huddle up.” Hiruma said casually, the gum back in his mouth and the smirk present upon his face.
American Announcer Booth
“How disappointing! I was hoping for one of those clever, trick formations Youichi’s famous for.” Hendrickson sighed when he was looking down at the usual offensive formation. In fact the formation was one of the basic ones, so basic it’s the number one choice for teaching to a team as their first formation.
“No.” Lewis up a hand while he scrutinized the formation below, his expression intense. “It only looks that way.” Lewis’ expression turned from one of extreme concentration to one of pleasant surprise and satisfaction.
“What do you mean Clifford?” Hendrickson asked with a frown, what did Lewis see that he did not?
“The runningback is probably a foot to the left than what would be ‘correct’, but since the second runner isn’t giving any signals of being confused by this, I can safely say that’s intentional.” Lewis explained. “Which is a curious choice considering that Youichi is a right handed quarterback….”
“You’re right!” Hendrickson muttered in amazement. “How come the Wizards’ defense hasn’t noticed?”
“Same reason why they can’t see Sena do the same thing.” Lewis chuckled at some personal joke.
“Sena? As in Eyeshield 21?” Hendrickson. “Your teammate?”
“Yup!” Lewis smiled almost evilly. “You see, Bob, both Riku and Sena are abnormally small football players, if they duck down just a little bit, you can’t see them through the line at all.”
“So the reason they haven’t noticed is because they can’t see Riku?” Hendrickson paused after he said that. “Wait-! Why aren’t they panicked they can’t!?”
“They never saw him to begin with,” Lewis answered, “normally Riku’s head is hidden by the quarterback’s body, and it’s been like that in all of the plays in this game. Also because the distance isn’t that much different than normal, the bench isn’t going to be aware anything is amiss. The reality is only spectators like ourselves can see there’s something amiss.”
“So they don’t know this is a trick formation.” Hendrickson concluded.
“Of course not,” Lewis scoffed at the thought that the Wizards might actually have noticed, “which is just the first trap.”
“The first trap?”
“The second will be whatever he’s planning to do with the play once it starts.”
Part 8