There was time between the quarter-finals and semi-finals for teams to relax and have a light lunch. Nekoma had been allowed to disperse for the break, being told to return to their area at half two, Kuroo had called an unofficial meeting, and so the team had agreed to meet at quarter past two
Hinata had had lunch with Kozume, Kuroo, and Haiba and had excused himself for the bathroom. He entered the bathroom, hoping that someone wasn't in there, as usual luck wasn't on his side. In there stood a player who was on the short side, although still considerably taller than Hinata, with a cunning grin. He immediately reminded Hinata of a snake, "Nekoma, huh" the person commented, turning to look at Hinata, "See you in the finals, be prepared to be crushed,"
"Y-yeah... W-wait! No, we'll do the crushing," Hinata replied nervously.
"Sure, like your team could beat Nohebi," the person rolled their eyes and left.
"There you are, Hinata," Kuroo said as he entered the bathroom, "I had Haiba look in the other bathrooms just in case we're having a team talk,"
"We'll crush Nohebi if we go up against them, right?" Hinata asked.
"Of course, why do you ask?"
"Well, there was this guy, taller than me but shorter than some players, hair swept to the left, slanted eyes and short eyebrows," Hinata began to explain.
"That snake bastard!"
"You know him?"
"He's the captain of Nohebi and an absolute dick. Daishou Suguru, ignore whatever he said to you. He probably was talking out his ass,"
"Okay," Hinata nodded as the two left to rejoin the rest of the team.
"It's going to be hard, I know," Kuroo began his speech, "But we don't choose who we go up against. All three other teams made it to nationals last time, so any match was going to be hard. We're lucky on the one hand that it's Fukurodani that we're playing, we've played them before, but on the other hand, they know about Hinata and his freak quick. Either way, we have to believe in ourselves. If we win this match, then we have a guaranteed spot in nationals. I believe that we can do it. We haven't put in all this work for nothing, the coaches believe in us; even a-"
"-You're going to lose," Daishou said as he interrupted Kuroo's speach, "Your team isn't that good, top eight last time, you just got lucky getting this far," everyone on Nekoma glared at him, even Kozume. Yamamoto was the first to do something by stepping in front of Daishou. The rest of the room was unsure as to whether he was going to insult him or attack him.
"Yamamoto, stop!" Kuroo warned him.
"Kuroo, your stupid hair doesn't count towards your height, don't you know that?" Daishou continued to taunt him.
"How's Mika-chan?" Kuroo taunted back, "Oh wait, two broke up," the team waited for Daishou's response. However, Haiba took the initiative.
"Nekoma has changed," Haiba said.
"Haiba, not now," Yaku hissed.
"Whatever," Daishou laughed as he rolled his eyes, "I see the height requirements have been relaxed once more," he pointed to Hinata and Shibayama, "See you in the finals, if you can make it," and with that he walked off. Kuroo gave the team a moment to calm down before continuing his speech.
"As I was saying. The coaches believe in us; even a pro player believes in us - he even took time out of his busy schedule to coach us; and most importantly, we need to believe in ourselves. The first step to winning is the belief that you can win. So let's go out there and give Fukurodani all that we've got," Kuroo continued.
"Yeah!" the team shouted in reply.
They warmed up, and soon, the match was about to start. Those starting prepared to go on, "Next time I'll start on instead of you," Hinata declared to Haiba.
"Sure," Haiba laughed.
"I mean, I am our future ace after all,"
"I think you'll find that I am our future ace, thank you very much,"
"You wish,"
"Well, I guess we both need to work a bit harder. Neither of us is a regular yet, I'll make sure that it's me,'
"Pssssh, no, I'll become the first regular out of both of us,"
"Still doesn't mean that you'll be the future ace,"
"Just go and score lots of points so that the coaches don't regret putting you on,"
"I'll score more than you,"
"You bet?"
"Oh, I bet,"
"Fine, loser owes the winner meat buns," Hinata ran over to the other subs, "I'll get one of the others to count,"
The whistle blew, and the match began. Sarukui served the ball, and Yaku received it, passing the ball to Kozume, who tossed for Fukunaga. Fukurodani's front line went in to block the attack, deflecting the ball for Komi to receive. Komi received the ball and passed it to Akaashi, who tossed for Washio. Kuroo got a touch on the ball, it deflecting off of his fingers. Yaku tried to receive the stray ball, managing to get a touch, but it deflected off him and went out giving Fukurodani the first point of the game. Sarukui served again.
The first half of the first set, whilst leaning in Fukurodani's favour, was pretty close. The point gaps were only ever one or two points wide and often varied who had the lead, "How many points has Haiba scored so far?" Hinata asked Teshiro.
"He's made three attempts and has scored two points, albeit one off of blocking," Teshiro answered.
"Well two's an easy number to beat," Hinata smiled triumphantly, "I'm sure they'll sub me on soon," Hinata was correct, he was subbed on at 17:15 (to Fukurodani), by this point Haiba had scored another point.
Akaashi was slightly tensed when he saw Haiba and Hinata swap. He hadn't exactly wanted to deal with Hinata. With their current experience and Bokuto playing at their best, Fukurodani had a low chance of blocking Hinata's freak quickly. Not to mention Hinata's read blocking, Akaashi had seen it in the works back in July, but it was now October giving Hinata three months to work on it. Chances were that it had improved. The final reason Akaashi was uneasy about Hinata's entrance was the extra training that Akaashi had been providing him himself. Whilst Hinata was nowhere near being a competent setter, he understood how a toss worked and could do a simple toss to the generic hit spot. If push came to shove, Akaashi was sure that Hinata could set the ball for a teammate with a fifty per cent success rate. Plus, Akaashi knew that he had probably sped up Hinata's read blocking improvement. All Akaashi could do was hope that Bokuto wouldn't go into his emo mode whilst Hinata was on the court. If that was the case, then the match could take a turn for the worse.
Fortunately for Akaashi and the rest of Fukurodani, Bokuto was still performing well, with no signs of his emo mode coming. But if Akaashi knew one thing, Bokuto was unpredictable. Sure enough, another freak quick later, and Bokuto's anger was coming on, resulting in balls being hit into the net and Nekoma gaining a lead, "Akaashi, one more," Bokuto demanded. Akaashi ran through the possibilities in his head, toss to Bokuto, or didn't toss to Bokuto. On one hand, Bokuto could successfully spike the ball and return to normal. On the other hand, he could miss the toss or slam the ball into the net, fuelling his emo mode. However, if Akaashi didn't toss to him, he would get annoyed at Akaashi and sulk on the court. Akaashi tossed the ball for Bokuto. As expected, Bokuto missed, and the infamous line was spoken, "Akaashi, don't toss to me," and the emo mode had come on. The team all let out a collective mental groan.
"Okay," Akaashi replied, "Use this time to get back into the game," whenever Fukurodani played a team for the first time and Bokuto went into his emo mode, it would often confuse the other team, however this was Nekoma who they had a training camp with and knew about the emo mode. Not that their confusion mattered much, Akaashi was confident that Fukurodani could still turn things around.
"Aw man, Bokuto-senpai's in his emo mode again," Hinata sighed, "And I kinda wanna help him out,"
"Hinata, don't," Yamamoto warned him, "Let this play in our favour,"
"But we know the rest of the team can play," Kai pointed out.
"Yeah, but at least we don't have to deal with Bokuto for a bit," Yamamoto replied, "Let's attack with full force,"
Although the rest of Fukurodani was strong, without Bokuto's strong straight spikes Nekoma's defence had less work to do, allowing them to have more attack opportunities, and with Hinata on they had his decoying abilities on their side. Soon, Nekoma had reached the set point, but not without Fukurodani being close behind. With one more hit from Fukunaga, Nekoma won the first set 20:25.