After winning their third match of the tournament, Nekoma had some time to relax before their quarter-finals match. Soon they reentered the court to warm up again. This time they were facing the copycat team - Maageitsuyoi, "I recognise their captain!" Hinata whispered to Kozume.
"Really?" Kozume asked him.
"Yeah, Kanda showed me a photo of him, said that he was a hard spiker to receive,"
"Who's Kanda?"
"A college level libero who goes to the extra classes I take,"
"Oh,"
"We better warn Yaku-senpai!"
"We don't need to,"
"Why not?"
"We've played these guys before, I thought that you might have watched a match, hence you recognised their captain,"
"That makes sense, so Yaku-senpai knows what he's dealing with?"
"Yes,"
Nekoma started with their regular line up, meaning that Hinata was stuck on the sidelines watching the match. Whilst Hinata was no expert in volleyball and the different play styles a team could use, he did notice that Maageitsuyoi were copying how Nekoma played, and how they were copying the team badly. And with both teams playing a more defensive match, the first set dragged on. However both teams had their aces for the offence. Unfortunately Maageitsuyoi won the first set, "We need to stop them from copying us," Kai said.
"Should we sub in Shouyou?" Kozume suggested.
"No," Kuroo replied, "Haiba. It's never a good idea to play deliberately badly,"
"Offence taken," Haiba pouted.
Whilst it took insulting Haiba to come up with the plan, it was effective allowing Nekoma to win the second set. And for the third set, Hinata started on. Partially for his decoy abilities, and partially to stop Maageitsuyoi from copying them again.
Hinata walked onto the court, as expected all eyes were on him. It was natural, what team would think of putting someone his height as a middle blocker; and Hinata wasn't known enough for people to realise that he could jump. Hitting Maageituyoi with the freak quick, Hinata proved why he was on the court in the first rally, "Crazy," their libero said, "Why wait until now to sub him on?"
"To catch us off guard," their captain replied, "And to prevent us from copying them once again," Whilst Hinata did act as a decoy and helped his team score points when he was on the court; when he was off the court Maageituyoi took the lead, taking advantage of the more predictable blockers and regular speeds. Soon they had reached the twenties first, and Hinata needed to serve. Kuroo looked behind him and gulped, whilst he shouldn't be in the danger zone as he was playing the opposite position to Hinata, there was still a chance that he could get hit on the back of the head again. Not to mention that having Hinata be the server at such a crucial time wasn't going to end well.
Hinata tried his best to ignore the score as he served the ball, surprisingly the serve went over the net, allowing the rally to begin, unluckily Maageitsuyoi won the point as well as most of the other remaining points, winning the match [N:M / 1:2 - 15:25, 25:20, 18:25].
Hinata looked at the score as he saw that they had lost - his first lost. I want to stay on the court for as long as possible. I want to be the one that wins, so we can't lose here. Not now! We needed to make it to at least the semi-finals to even stand a chance of going to nationals. I wanted to make it to nationals so that I could play Karasuno there and truly become Nekoma's Little Giant, and I can't do that if I get kicked off the court early on. Hinata retreated along with the rest of Nekoma. Soon they were on the coach back to their school, "Next time," Hinata broke the silence, "Next time we're going to win. Next time we won't get sent home early. I'm going to work extra hard so that I can be more useful to the team next time!"
"Yeah, there's still one more chance this year," Kuroo smirked, "We still have one more opportunity this year. I hope that we all work hard to make sure that we make it to nationals next time,"
"Of course we will," everyone else replied.
Later that day Maageitsuyoi went up against Itachiyama and lost whilst on a different court Fukurodani and Nohebi played each other with Fukurodani winning. The next day, Itachiyama beat Fukurodani but both were going to nationals regardless. Nohebi beat Maageitsuyoi meaning that they got to go to nationals as well.