Prince of Tennis:

Fudomine Chuugaku

For those who don't know them (and for me, because only three are really showcased in the anime and manga):

Back row: Sakurai Masaya, Mori Tatsunori, Uchimura Kyosuke (hat), Ishida Tetsu
Center: Tachibana Kippei
Front row: Kamio Akira, Ibu Shinji

This is Tachibana An, Kippei's little sister. She's part of it, too.

The Ultimante Fanfic Challenge: found here.

The table on my livejournal: found here.

Writer's note: Fudomine (called The Black Unit when first introduced in the manga, which I thought was appropriate) is the Cinderella team of The Prince of Tennis. A public school (where everyone else is private), they had a coach who didn't care, and upperclassmen who bordered on abusive. Tachibana is a year older than the others, and a transfer from another district (Kyushu), where he was considered one of the best two there. With his help, they founded a second team, and worked hard that year. They surprised everyone when, in the Tokyo District Preliminaries, they completely defeated two seeded teams - and lost only to Seigaku after some intense battles. They pulled off another suprirse when they defeated Hyotei at the Quarterfinals for the Prefectural Tournament (the reason Shishido now wears a hat and no longer has long hair - it was a stunning defeat for him against Tachibana), causing that number one seed to have to settle for the consolation spot (beating out the team Fuji's brother played on, St. Rudolf's).

Long story short (everyone choruses "Too late!"), they made it to the national tournament, only to be beat out in the Quarterfinals by Shitenhouji, due to injuries (Shinji hurt his arm - nearly broke it, I think), a forfeit (Ishida and Kamio wore themselves out against Ishida's older brother and his partner), and Tachibana lost to the friend he'd injured the year before. But the fact that they went so far - from being an unnamed and unknown team - was amazing.

Writer's note 2: This is mostly going to be me getting used to writing these guys, and getting to know them. I hope that you enjoy getting to know them as much as I do!

Writer's note 3: There are some of these which go together. I'll list them at the bottom (unless you'd rather they be listed at the top).

The Black Unit