"You ever hear of Newton's third law?" Your master asks.
The two of you stand atop the hill overlooking Gherigsville, which sleeps peacefully in the light of the moon and stars. It has been a long, grueling week of training, and to reward you for a job well done your master has brought you a few cases of beer and countless baseballs, which the two of you are belting into the baseball diamond on the other side of town. All in all, it's not a terrible way to celebrate your fifteenth birthday.
You shrug, pushing sweat slicked hair out of your eyes, reveling in how the buzz accentuates the feeling of cool night air against your skin. "Don't think so."
"Well-"
"Oh, wait! That's the one where if you lie about murder, then you get murdered, right?"
Your master turns to look at you, confusion written across his face. "What are you…that's Hammurabi's third law, dumbass. How do you know Hammurabi's third law and not Newton's?"
"Does Netwon's third law have murder in it?"
"Not in so many words." Your master sighs and rolls his eyes. "Newton's third law is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction."
"Sounds like nerd shit," you say, bouncing a ball on your bat a few times before popping it high into the sky. It arcs gently out over the town and lands in centerfield.
"Sure," your master admits. "But you can't discount the nerds out of hand, kid. Sometimes they're onto something. I mean, Newton's third law is why faster pitches go further if you hit them."
You think that over for a minute, chewing on your lower lip. "Huh. That's a pretty nerdy way to say some pretty cool shit, I guess."
Your master snorts. "Newton was a nerdy kind of guy, so I'm guessing he did that a lot. Sort of like how you inevitably find the stupidest way to express any complex thought."
You whack a baseball at him, which he dodges with a lazy jerk of his head. "My point is, kid, that Newton's third law doesn't only apply to baseballs."
"Well, yeah. It would also work with race cars."
Your master chooses to ignore that comment. "It works with people. The things you do, the actions you take…they bounce, kid. Like a ball off a bat. And that sets the dominoes going."
"Kinda mixing your metaphors there, aren't you?" You ask, grabbing another beer.
Your master shakes his head, suddenly looking very tired. "I've had too much to drink," he says. "What I mean is that your actions inspire equal actions, which inspire equal actions, which goes and goes and goes…" he waves his hands, as if trying to gesture towards a vague, infinite possibility that's just out of reach. "Just tell me you understand, kid."
You glance over at him and raise your beer in an approximation of a salute. "Look, I just wanted to drink beers and hit baseballs, and you're coming at me with all this philosophical…Newton nerd shit. I mean if you wanna turn this into a lesson…"
"Ah, fuck it," your master says, raising his own beer in a mirror of your salute. "You'll get it someday, I guess." He twirls his bat. "Bet you twenty bucks I can hit your ball out of the air."
"Fuck that, you're on."
*
You're not sure why the memory of your fifteenth birthday flashes to your mind as Chika's pitch hurtles closer, but for the first time in over a year you feel as if you're beginning to understand what your master had been trying to tell you.
The world has shrunk to a narrow line. Chika stands at one end, bent over, leg kicked back, pink hair flying in the wind. You stand at the other, both hands on your back, knees bent. In the center sits the baseball, flying in a gentle, curving arc, spinning almost lazily as it goes.
You look up, and meet Chika's eyes. You have seen this pitch before, once, so long ago. It felt like half a dream when you first watched it drift around your bat and now the memory of it is even less than that, a wisp of remembrance. But you have seen this pitch before.
Your eyes find the ball again, and you step forward – not with the savage intensity of a child who intends to knock a ball out of the park, but with the slow, determined confidence of a man who knows exactly where he wants his hit to go. Your fingers tighten around the handle until you can feel the wood splinter beneath your grip. You move to swing, eyes locked on the ball, picturing the moment when it slams into Chika's face.
Your swing is slow, almost gentle. And this time, when the ball starts to drift around the force of your bat, you twist your wrist and catch it, twisting your hips with all your might, giving the ball the push it needs.
Once, as a child, you dreamed of being a man who could hit any pitch. Now you wonder if that dream is expansive enough to carry the entirety of your ambition. Your master – Miyata Ryu – is dead. You can feel that in your bones, a solid terrible truth. You don't yet understand what that means for you – you don't yet understand what equal and opposite force was born from that fateful day when he took you as his last disciple. But you remember what he taught you.
You remember how to hit the fuck out of a baseball.
The crack of horsehide on bamboo is the final note of the symphony that began that day, six years ago. Chika's eyes widen, golden irises expanding until they're swallowed by the baseball flying towards her face.
Sachi screams. Whether in pride or fear you don't know, and you don't particularly care. This was never really her story. She had never known your master, had only been a piece in an elaborate game to make you mad, and now the rage burns inside you like a furnace in your gut, filling your veins with scalding blood.
Three of them had come to your town, attacked your team, and kidnapped your sister. To get to you. To eliminate you as a threat. And as Sachi crumples to the ground, you smile.
Because you're finally about to get some answers.
*
"Komori was his school, back when he was in school," Chika says, pressing an icepack gingerly to a cheek that has swelled up to the size of an apple. It makes it hard for her to speak, but she manages as long as she's slow and deliberate in her pronunciation. "He was the first graduating class."
"Never heard of Komori," you grunt, working some of the blood from your bat with a wet rag. You sit with the three members of the Komori High Baseball Club, nursing your various injuries. Sachi, over loud protest, had been sent home to assure your mother that none of this was your fault. You figure you're still going to catch a beating, but the good news is that you hurt so much you'll barely feel it.
Haruhi sniffs. "You've heard of it," she says. "But the school doesn't have a functioning baseball team, so you probably never gave a shit."
"Fair enough."
"The first graduating class got together and decided to run the school," Chika continues. "And for a while, everything worked out well. But only for a while."
"Factions started to form in the leadership," Jin says. "Miyata had one vision for the school, others had different ones. The disagreements started to get…violent."
"Sounds like a hell of a school," you say, raising your eyebrows.
Jin nods. "It's one of a kind. The board came to blows…most of Miyata's allies were killed, and the rest were ousted. They purged the baseball club not long after."
"Purge isn't a strong enough word," Haruhi spits. "They burned and salted it. Wouldn't even meet with us until Miyata was dead, and we still nearly had to file a lawsuit just to step on the damn field." She meets your gaze, and her eyes are hard and unflinching. "And it didn't come free."
"See, the student council had heard about you," Chika says. "They were watching Miyata, or doing their best, anyway, and so when you showed up and started winning state titles…" she shrugs. "It's not hard to put two and two together, you know?"
You frown. "So they told you that you couldn't play baseball until you took me out, huh?" You ask. You don't like how that quiets the fire in the gut – there aren't many things in this world that you wouldn't do in order to play baseball. "I can respect that," you say after a moment, thinking about your words carefully. "Coming after me, sure, it's all part of the game. But my team…and Sachi? That's bad shit."
The three Komori players share a look.
Your frown deepens. "What was that?"
Haruhi rubs the back of her neck. "Your team and your sister weren't…exactly…part of the plan."
"What?"
"We wanted to fight you last night," Jin says. "We were waiting at your clubhouse and everything. But then your team came in, and we sort of realized we didn't know what you looked like."
You try to lift your eyebrows higher, only to realize that there is indeed a limit to how high they can go. "You came all the way out here and you didn't even know what I looked like?"
Chika groans and adjusts her icepack. "Well, we asked your team which one of them was Takahiro Takahiro, and they did the whole Spartacus thing…you know, I'm Takahiro, no I'm Takahiro…" she rolls her eyes. "So we kind of had to fight them all. Wasn't until the last one went down that we realized you weren't there at all."
"And Sachi?"
"Walked in afterwards, started threatening to call the cops," Haruhi says, hanging her head. "Chika started panicking-"
"I didn't panic!"
Jin shakes his head at you. "She totally panicked. Offered to buy her a ton of ice cream."
"Ah." You nod your head. "That was a mistake."
"We have literally no money left," Jin says. "Your sister can really put away a sundae. Well, she passes out, and for a minute it was touch and go there because we thought we might've killed her."
"No, ice cream coma is a fairly common Sachi problem," you admit, pinching the bridge of your nose. "This is all starting to add up, if I assume you guys are completely incompetent."
The three of them share another look. "We deserve that," Chika says.
"Obviously." You take a moment to think, running your fingers idly along the length of your master's bat. Your bat, now and forever, you suppose. "So…I'm thinking I know what happens now."
"We swore an oath to the student council," Jin says. "To find the last disciple of Miyata Ryu and eliminate him as a threat to the school."
You smile wide and sharp, the brim of your cap drenching your eyes in shade. Your master had been a smug son of a bitch - once upon a time you would've said you knew that better than anyone, but now you've met the Komori High Baseball Club, and now you're not so sure. But no matter how smug he had been, he had taken you under his wing, taught you how to hit a baseball, and that means something. His swing and Newton's Third Law had set you on this path, and if there's one thing you're sure of, it's that you won't be able to sleep right until you look his killers in the eye and give them a taste of bamboo. "Well what are you waiting for?" You ask, stretching out to your full height, ignoring the way every bone and muscle protests at the movement. "Take me there. I may be a Devil, but I'd never dream of harming my own high school."
-THE END-
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Hey guys.
So it's been a week since the last update, and in that time I've been sitting here wracking my brains trying to nail down a future for this quest, and unfortunately I haven't really found an avenue that satisfies me. Slugger has been great fun to write, and I really appreciate all y'all participating, but with the above update I think I'm going to shut it down. This was the end of the planned first arc, and I think it mostly works as a soft finale for the story. Consider this a "chapter 0" for a manga that never got picked up.
If you're still interested in participating in Gally quests, I'm working on an idea that will serve as a stealth sequel/quasi-reboot to my previous
Dark Prince of Camelot Quest, so keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks.
Again, thanks so much for participating. I'm sorry for the abrupt end, but I hope y'all had fun, and that I get to see y'all again in future quests!
