Episode 28: A New Regular Appears?!



It's the first day of Tokyo Prefecture Matches. The Seigaku team is supposed to meet at the venue at exactly 10 AM. Ryoma just woke up and as he held his alarm clock.... it's uh.. 5 minutes before 10AM?! He's going to be late and their team would be disqualified if they couldn't register on time!

Meanwhile, as the Seigaku team watches some school practice on their own, some mysterious guy with an angry expression is staring intently at Syusuke's (Fuji-senpai) back. Before we know who that guy is, he's taken away from another guy who's quite fond of twirling his hair with his fingers.

Seigaku's got a crisis now. Echizen is nowhere to be found! They're going to be late in registering so it would spell disqualification for them. Oishi-senpai contacted Ryoma and told the team that Ryoma (as Ryoma told Oishi-senpai over the phone) is helping a very pregnant lady. The team sweat dropped and immediately knew it was a lie. Coach Ryuzaki sighed and told Horio to come closer to her, as he got closer, Coach Ryuzaki fitted a cap on his head and told them all that Horio's going to be disguised as Ryoma and Kaidoh is to lend Horio his regular jersey.

The journalists, Inoue and Shiba were also there at the venue and is covering all the schools when they ran into last year's prefectural champion and the only one who defeated Seigaku, the Hyotei Gakuen. Atobe, the silver-haired self-proclaimed and captain of Hyotei greeted Inoue and told him that they'll just defeat everyone once again. Shiba was a bit put off by Atobe's attitude and stared annoyed at his retreating back. Inoue calmed Shiba and just explained that it's just the pride of someone who sits at the throne of Hyotei Gakuen's over 200 tennis members.

Ryoma finally arrived only to find that Horio is in a bit of a pinch because of his big mouth. Horio got himself an impromptu match from one of the school's regulars because of his boasting (although he's pretending to be Ryoma) his (or Ryoma's) Twist Serve. The random player who challenged Horio (who he thought was Ryoma) pushes Horio to play him and show him his twist serve. Horio pleaded with Ryoma to switch with him.. after some bargaining (although it wasn't continued) Ryoma agreed. As they switched, Ryoma mimicked Horio's line before hitting a twist serve which was, "I'm Horio, with my 2 years tennis experience, I'll give you my best shot", which was quite funny.

After finishing the match against the random player, Ryoma ran up to his team and got a scolding from Tezuka and Coach Ryuzaki. Seigaku is already playing another team and Kaidoh's match as a Singles 3 is coming to a close. Ryoma followed Kaidoh in Singles matches as Singles 2, and as Ryoma stepped into the court, Coach Ryuzaki told him to go wild. Ryoma didn't but still swept Singles 2.

The next match made everyone teeter in anticipation, even the Seigaku freshmen were watching eagerly saying that this will be their first time, Shiba butted in and asked them what's that first? Inoue answered her that this would be everyone's few chances to see the King of Seigaku play a match as the ever elusive Singles 1. Shiba stared in awe as Tezuka make his way towards the court. All other schools who doesn't have a match gathered around Tezuka's match because this is one of the few times that they'll be able to watch Tezuka and they wouldn't be missing this for the world. They're all whispering "It's Tezuka's turn" and going all "ooh"s and "aah"s. Even Tezuka's opponent seemed petrified at first, but he prepped himself up by telling himself that even though Tezuka's at National level, he's still a middle school student like him. Yeah right. Dream on! It's Tezuka's turn to serve first. He let out a no touch ace against his opponent. His opponent couldn't even move nor see that extremely fast ball. Sakuno commented that this is Tezuka's real power which Ryoma easily contradicted by telling everyone that this seemed like a practice match for him.

Needless to say, Seigaku won. Of course. Their next opponent, Akiyama was staring on the board and feeling helpless upon learning that they'll be Seigaku's next "victim", they knew that they have no chances in winning. So they just stared listlessly on the board. When suddenly, the guy who's twirling his hair earlier made a reappearance asking about how they feel now that they'll be Seigaku's next opponent. The guy twirling his hair told Akiyama's captain that he's going to help their team make Seigaku's inevitable win over them difficult.

As the match of Seigaku against Akiyama started, Inui noticed that something's just not right about their wins over Akiyama. Even though they're winning constantly, the matches seemed to be drawn longer and the shots of Akiyama were concentrated on the places where Seigaku's having difficulties. Inui knew something's up immediately when he saw the same guy who's still twirling his hair watching their matches. Inui told Tezuka that he'll go for a walk. Tezuka looked after Inui's back and also knew something's up.

Right. There was indeed something wrong. Inui stood close to the guy who's intent on playing with his hair who we now know goes by the name of Mizuki Hajime, the new manager of St. Rudolph and is also some kind of a Data Tennis player like Inui. Mizuki's been spying on Seigaku's characteristics when the instance arise wherein the opponents know Seigaku's weaknesses, Mizuki even gave exact simulation results on St. Rudolph's ongoing match so that there's no need to watch over them. Inui remained quiet after a while and left Mizuki. Inui goes to Tezuka and told him that their match against St. Rudolph wouldn't be an easy one.