8mi Chapter 287: Two Rats, One Ball
Chapter 287: Two Rats, One Ball
The announcer’s voice blasted through the speakers, but it did not really matter because thousands of fans in the stands started screaming so loud they basically drowned him out.Chloe leaned forward in her seat, her fingers hovering right over her notepad. In the world of Breakball, most people just got distracted by the flashy moves or the weird street tricks the players did to look cool. But Chloe did not look at the game that way. She saw the whole floor differently.
She had this kind of weird, almost magical ability to notice everything, related to Breakball that is. It was a talent for observation that basically made her the most important person on the Juggernauts team.
Just by watching how a player walked, the way they stood, or the tiny movements of their arms and legs, Chloe could tell everything. She could read if they were tired, what their bad habits were, and if they were actually dangerous before they even touched the ball.
"Oh? I did not expect them to have a team this good down here," Chloe said, her eyes following the Red Serpent team as they walked in.
Snow leaned his head back, looking like he could not care less.
"You sure about that? They look like regular bums to me."
"No, no, you are doing that again, Snow," Chloe said. She turned to him with a serious face, poking his arm to get his attention. "Stop underestimating groups. A single player can be as flashy as they want, but a team that actually works together will always crush them. Even you. The ball just moves too fast for one person to keep up with everything. If you do not have teammates who automatically cover your back, block the passing lanes, or fill the gaps when you mess up a rotation, your whole offense just dies. It is all about balance."
She looked back down at the court with excited eyes.
"See how the power forward is walking? He looks heavy and like the kind of guy who is ready to bruise you inside the paint. But look at the small forward right next to him. He is already shifting his feet, tracking the outside lines perfectly. They just cover for each other’s weaknesses without even thinking about it. They are like a solid, moving wall."
At the front of the Red Serpents stood their captain. This guy was a total veteran from the Rust-Belt district, and he had spent so much time on the court that he probably knew every single inch of most arenas.
From Chloe’s eyes, the aura emanating from him was a steady glow that hugged his body tightly, almost like a clean piece of armor that led his teammates like moths toward a flame.
He did not even bother shouting at his team. Instead, he just gave a few quick instructions and pointed two fingers toward the baseline. The other four players nodded right away, moving in a disciplined way as they took their spots.
Chloe smiled, leaning over the rail. She had spent a lot of time studying the high-tier teams in the Upperworld league, so she recognized that kind of tight, structured baseline immediately.
"This is actually really impressive," Chloe whispered, her eyes glowing with excitement. "It is so rare to see people down here actually playing seriously like this. Their execution is just like the regular squads up in the Upper League. Against a wall that solid, Blacklist is going to have a really hard time trying to—"
She stopped talking right in the middle of her sentence, letting out a sharp, sudden gasp.
"Ah," Rain murmured. "Here is the guy."
Chloe’s jaw dropped, and her eyes went completely wide in total shock as Blacklist stepped out of the dark tunnel.
Nash led them onto the hardwood, like usual, like any other night. But tonight... Chloé saw the Devil.
The sheer weight of the presence he brought with him was just insane. It was not a tight aura that just covered his body like the other captain’s had; it was a massive, suffocating wave of pure energy that slammed onto the court like a continuous wave.
It swept across the entire wood, swallowing the air until the arena felt like it was half its original size.
He walked with a confidence, frowning slightly from the drama in the locker room, and maybe because of that, his aura felt even worse for the young lady.
The three bums, Jinzo, Mac, and the NPC shuffled right behind him, looking like trembling ghosts, but the intensity of the force coming from Nash was so massive it practically swallowed their pathetic demeanor whole.
Chloe was completely speechless, her fingers freezing over her notepad as she stared down at him.
Rain’s pale eyes tracked Nash’s movements as they hit the center line.
"Hm? They’re not going with their usual lineup this time?" Rain whispered.
Beside him, Snow slowly adjusted his position in his plastic seat, leaning forward as his lazy, bored grin slowly vanished.
He gripped the safety rail, his gaze locking straight onto Nash.
"Hm..." Snow muttered. "Maybe you weren’t joking after all. He is definitely not a regular street bum."
The referee threw the ball high up in the air, and as soon as the whistle blew, the first half turned into total chaos.
Right from the first play, the game became a one man show. The captain of the Red Serpents tried to set up his defense, acting all confident with his aura, but it didn’t mean a thing. He thought he was a wall, but he didn’t realize he was facing a bulldozer.
Nash basically owned every single inch of the court. At one point, he did a crossover so fast and so low that the defender literally tripped over his own shoes. Before anyone else could get there to help, Nash zoomed to the rim and slammed the ball down with a dunk so hard the backboard chains were shaking.
On the very next play, he drifted out to the corner, caught a loose ball, and launched a three pointer that snapped the net perfectly.
But the real nightmare was his defense. He was like a monster on the perimeter. He knew exactly where the ball was going, using his long arms to swat the ball away twice in a row. When the other captain tried to drive for a layup, Nash came out of nowhere and slapped the ball straight into the third row of the bleachers. It made the veteran captain, a black belt of this sport, look like a total joke in front of him. Nash was just dominating everything.
Meanwhile, the other guys on his team were completely useless. Jinzo was shaking so hard that he messed up a simple pass and sent it out of bounds, and Mac was just running in circles, totally out of breath.
But it wasn’t a big deal, as the minutes went by, Nash kept scoring from everywhere by himself, so slowly, they just gave up.
They stopped running and just stood there on the wood, panting, realizing they weren’t even worth noticing.
The Red Serpents tried everything they could. They played as hard as they possibly could, but they were just getting crushed.
Up in the stands, five thousand fans were going crazy, screaming and stomping their feet. This was exactly the kind of brutal beatdown they paid to see at the Volt-Tech Arena.
"Wow... he is really something else..." Chloe gasped.
Her eyes were glued to the court, and her blonde ponytail swung as she leaned in. She forgot she was even supposed to be taking notes on her pad.
"Look at him go! He just stole the ball, ran the break, and scored all by himself! He is doing everything and... and he doesn’t even look tired! He is amazing! How did someone like that go unnoticed till now?"
Snow didn’t say a word. He was leaning forward so much that his chest was almost touching the safety rail. That lazy, bored smile he always had was completely gone. He watched Nash move down the lane, his knuckles trembling slightly because he was gripping the iron bar so hard.
By the end of the second quarter, the big electronic screen showed a ridiculous score.
[ BLACKLIST: 58 // RED SERPENTS: 24 ]
Then the second half started, and that is when the true nightmare began for the Red Serpents.
The three useless guys were pulled out of the game, and Jaz, Nia, and Alicia stepped onto the hardwood, along with another NPC to fill the spot.
Now that the three main girls were on the court, Nash changed how he played. He stopped trying to score everything himself and became an assist machine.
He read the floor perfectly, giving the girls easy, simple passes right where they wanted them. Nia took over the playmaking, staying totally calm and moving the ball smoothly while Nash drew the defenders toward him.
Alicia started raining fire from far away, hitting three long shots in a row thanks to Nash’s quick passes. Under the hoop, Jaz played with a fierce energy, her eyes glowing every time Nash fed her the ball for an easy layup. They were putting on a show for the crowd, doing every play perfectly.
The Red Serpents completely lost hope now. That solid defense Chloe had liked earlier was smashed into pieces. They couldn’t score, they couldn’t defend, and they couldn’t even breathe under the pressure of a team that actually worked together. It was a total massacre.
Rain watched the final minutes from inside his big hoodie. His pale eyes were fixed on the scoreboard as the numbers kept going up.
"He is very strong," Rain said quietly. "He can control the whole game by himself, but he knows how to make his team shine when the right people are on the floor."
When the final buzzer sounded, the electronic board showed a humiliating final score.
[ FINAL // BLACKLIST: 124 // RED SERPENTS: 48 ]
The stadium exploded with a deafening roar, but on the court, the other team just stood there in the paint. Their shoulders slumped, completely broken by how bad the defeat was.
Snow didn’t say a single word. He slowly stood up, letting his arms drop to his sides. His usual cocky and arrogant attitude was gone.
He stared down at the floor for a second, watching Nash not even celebrate this win. Then, he turned around and walked down the steps toward the exit in total silence.
Rain and Chloe didn’t try to stop him. They just watched him leave and shared a smile. Being friends for so long, they both knew exactly what Snow’s silence meant. The war for the qualifiers had officially begun.