Chapter 413: The Day Before

It was still early in the morning, but there was already a massive crowd in front of the underground betting shops. The guys were all bundled up in their coats, clutching their credits like they were already holding the winning ticket.

On every wall, you could see the same two faces: Nash jumping in the air and Seth, seen from behind, with the kind of look that tells you immediately that things are going to end badly. Someone had even spray-painted a poster: THE BEAST VS THE EMPEROR. Nobody bothered to scrub it off; it was like everyone had already acknowledged the nicknames.

Even the guy selling skewers had doubled his prices. Nobody complained. When the atmosphere is this electric, you don’t argue about the price of chicken, you just pay and shut up.

Meanwhile, over at the Falcons’ training ground, practice had just wrapped up. Everyone was slumped on the benches, completely wiped out and drenched in sweat.

"So," Shane asked, crashing down onto a bench, "who’s planning on watching the clash tomorrow?"

"As if you needed to ask," John replied, pushing his glasses up his nose. "The whole city will be there, idiot."

Travis, who was leaning against a locker, gave a casual little laugh. He was fiddling with a rubber band between his fingers.

"Yeah, stupid question. The tickets sold out the second they hit the market. It’s the real shock of the season. We’ve faced both of them, so we know what they’re capable of. We’ll be in the crowd like everyone else."

Griffin didn’t say anything.

He just sat there, staring at a spot on the floor in front of him. Even though he wasn’t talking, you could tell this was hitting him hard. He was tense, almost too tense.

Without even realizing it, his grip tightened on his water bottle. Suddenly, the plastic cracked, and a jet of water sprayed right onto his knee.

"Dammit," he muttered.

He stood up quickly to go find a mop. The others watched him for a second and then exchanged a look. Rain followed Griffin with his eyes until he disappeared down the hallway.

Rain understood exactly what was eating Griffin alive. The Falcons wanted to be different from other teams. They were the kind of team that refused to cheat, play dirty, or stab people in the back. They never used the girls on their roster as pawns to win, unlike a lot of other teams in the Underground, like the legendary Dust Dogs. They wanted to win the right way, or not at all.

The dream was simple: become the best, but do it honestly.

Except reality was way uglier. They had clashed with both of those teams, and as for "winning the right way or not at all," well... It was not at all. The problem was that both of those teams had an "anomaly", a monster capable of shredding any tactical plan, no matter if you’d spent months working on it.

The result? Third place. Technically, that’s a good spot. But to them, it meant nothing. It was just a reminder that they weren’t at the top.

However, Griffin’s irritation, and even that stupid accident with the bottle, actually pleased Rain. He saw exactly what he wanted to see: hunger. A real rage to do better and a total refusal to be satisfied with third place, even if it was honorable.

And it wouldn’t end there. After tomorrow’s match, the next step was the playoffs. They would finally have their chance. Their own revenge to take.

A small smile appeared on Rain’s face.

A little further away, Alexia remained silent. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, lost in thought.

She knew exactly what this match meant. It was the real test for Victoria. The moment where she would finally achieve the dream that, despite all the years and effort, Alexia had never been able to give her.

There was something about it, a strange feeling, something... complicated, crossing her face. She quickly looked down at her phone, the screen lighting up faintly, and watched it for several seconds until it turned off again.

The afternoon dragged on forever for the people waiting for the game, but for the main actors, it was the exact opposite. Between the last-minute tactical tweaks and practicing their plays, every team had this weird feeling that this last light practice before the big day actually mattered more than they thought.

The Blacklist gym was starting to empty out. Ballons were being tossed back into the bins, and the girls were leaving the court in small groups. They were chatting and acting like they didn’t have a care in the world, even though you could totally feel the tension hanging in the air.

"Come on, let’s get out of here," Miko said, her towel draped around her neck. She stopped when she realized Rei wasn’t following. Rei was just standing there a few meters behind, still clutching a basketball. "Rei? You coming?"

"Go on ahead," Rei replied, flashing a smile that was way too quick to be real. "I’ll catch up in a minute."

Miko stared at her for a second. Something about Rei’s vibe felt off, but she just shrugged it off. She didn’t want to push it, so she just nodded and headed toward the locker rooms with the others.

The second Miko was out of sight, Rei’s smile vanished.

She stood there alone in the now-silent gym, squeezing the ball in her hands. Her eyes were locked on the scoreboard above the hoop. She let out a long sigh, her shoulders drooping.

"Here we are," she whispered, mostly to herself.

"Here we are where?"

Rei jumped nearly out of her skin. She spun around and found Nash standing right behind her. He had one eyebrow raised and a towel around his neck.

"Seriously," she said, pressing a hand to her chest to calm her heart, "how does a guy your size manage to be so invisible? It’s not even humanly possible."

"Stealth mode," Nash replied with a smirk. "My specialty. That, and the fact that I always notice when someone close to me isn’t making their usual face."

Rei looked away, her fingers tightening around the leather of the ball.

"It’s nothing."

"Is it the match?"

She looked at him for a moment, trying to find a way to lie or escape the conversation, but there was no way out. She sighed.

"You really don’t let anything slide, do you?"

"Nope. But why bother hiding it? It’s better to be worried together, right?"

Rei hesitated, her fingers drumming nervously against the ball.

"It’s just... the last time I played them, I couldn’t do shit while we were getting slaughtered," she admitted, her voice dropping. "I just watched my girls get humiliated without being able to protect them. This time, yeah, you’re here, you’re the captain, you’re stronger than me... and not just physically... all of that should make it different. But..." She sighed again. "Some losses just hurt. And there are others you just want to forget completely. I don’t know which category this one’s gonna end up in."

Nash looked at her for a beat. He nodded slowly, not judging her or trying to act like her feelings were small. Then, a small smile appeared.

"You’re not wrong," he said. "But that’s exactly why this whole situation is a total miracle."

Rei frowned, looking completely lost.

"What do you mean?"

Nash gestured for her to give him the ball. She passed it over, not really getting where he was going with this.

He stepped up to the free-throw line, adjusted his grip, and shot.

The ball hit the rim, a total miss. It was shocking coming from him. But the ball bounced perfectly and landed right back in Nash’s hands without him having to take a single step.

Rei blinked, a bad shot. That was rare for him.

"You know," Nash continued, totally unfazed, as if he hadn’t just missed, spinning the ball on his finger, "everyone always gives me the same speech. ’Face your fears.’ ’Never run away.’ Honestly, I always thought that was bullshit."

He shot again. Clink. Hit the rim. Same bounce, the ball landed right back in his palms. Rei looked confused.

"Me? I’m a street rat," Nash continued, completely indifferent to the fact that he was giving a sequel to his missing. "My only real technique has always been running away. And you know what? It worked, most of the time."

Another shot, another bounce. Exactly the same spot on the rim. The ball traveled the exact same path as the first two.

"Except one day, I started answering back instead of just running," Nash said. "After that, once I figured out how to get back up after getting hit, I learned how to take a punch." He shot again. Same impact point, same return. "And once I knew how to take a punch, I learned how to hit back. And once I knew how to hit, I started to want to win."

At that exact moment, something sparkled in Rei’s eyes.

The same impact point every time. The same bounce angle, the same return path. The ball was landing in Nash’s hands without him moving a single centimeter.

It wasn’t bad luck, no, it was such perfect control that he could deliberately aim to fail, over and over, with absolute precision.

He kept firing shots. Each one hit the exact same spot on the rim, and each one came right back into his grip without him shifting his weight.

"So I fought, over and over, until my first real victory. And the funny thing is, the more I fought, the more I actually lost. But the more I lost, the more I learned how to win. So, I ended up learning how to lose properly, too. And after learning how to lose, I eventually learned how to not lose at all."

This time, the shot went clean through the net. Swish. No rim, just the sound of the nylon snapping.

Nash caught the ball as it bounced back to him, a smile on his face.

"It’s normal to be scared," he said. "It’s even normal to lose again sometimes. The only thing that actually matters is being just a little bit better than the version of you that lost yesterday."

Rei stayed silent for a while, processing everything. She looked a bit embarrassed, but she was understanding where he was getting at.

"So," she said, sounding a bit hesitant, "is... is that why you never lose?"

Nash laughed lightly.

"I’ve lost a shitload of times. I still lose regularly. If everything actually went my way, I’d spend my days in my fairy-tale Upperworld knocking up every girl that walked past."

Rei crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"You... you couldn’t just give a nice, inspiring speech without adding that at the end?"

"Yeah, I know," Nash said with a wide grin,"The Upperworld isn’t exactly the paradise I imagined either. I get the disappointment."

He handed the ball back to her.

"We don’t always win. But we know what needs to be done to win. So we do it. Over and over, until we finally win for good."

Rei looked at the ball for a long time. Her expression softened, and a light smile finally appeared on her face.

"You’re really something else, aren’t you?" she said, taking the ball from his hands.

Throughout the Underground, the excitement kept rising, hour after hour.

The underground itself was split into four main conferences. It was like four different neighborhoods or leagues, each with its own teams, its own beefs, and its own way of doing things.

Most people just stay in the area where they were born; they rarely have a good enough reason to cross over into another part of the Underground, unless perhaps for doing some business, trying to run away from a shitty life, or maybe for an event so huge that it was worth the trip.

The West conference was always the big dog. It drew the most crowds because that’s where the Breakball legends lived, guys like Mirage and Snow. These players were basically gods in the sport, each building a massive reputation over the seasons. Compared to the West, the South conference was usually a ghost area without competition.

But not this time.

For the first time in ages, two absolute monsters of the game were about to clash in the South. Because of that, every single corner of this changing conference was filling up with new faces. People were being pulled in like magnets.

In a crowded shopping street, Mirage was doing some browsing. He had a circle of thirsty girls following him around, basically drooling over him.

A bit further down, a total beast of a man, a giant of at least 7’7 feet was strolling calmly with a few friends. He didn’t have to say a word; he just walked with this slow, detached vibe, and the crowd instinctively scrambled out of his way to avoid getting crushed.

Outside an electronics store, a group of people had gathered to watch some players from a well-known team testing out the newest gear. One of the players didn’t give a fuck about the crowd; he just stayed glued to his phone, not even glancing up once to acknowledge the fans.

Then, in a quiet street, Chloé and Snow were walking side by side. Chloé was buzzing with energy, while Snow... well, Snow looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

"Seriously," Chloé said, gesturing wildly with her hands, "we’ve gotta find a way to actually meet this Nash guy."

Snow didn’t even look at her.

"What’s the point?" he asked, sounding completely bored. "Since when does liking someone’s game mean you actually need to meet them in person?"

"It’s just field research!" Chloé shot back way too fast, her face twisting into a pout that looked almost funny.

In reality, this had nothing to do with "research" anymore. She was obsessed. She wanted to see him play live, to feel the raw power of that "anomaly" with her own eyes instead of through a shitty screen. Even being in the crowd wasn’t enough. There was a part of her, a part she’d never admit to anyone, that dreamed of analyzing his style as closely as she analyzed Snow’s every single day.

"He’s an anomaly with no known curve," she insisted, totally ignoring Snow’s skepticism. "You should try to get to know him, like, for real. He’s exactly on your level."

Snow didn’t say a word. He just kept walking, completely unfazed by her argument.

"Snow!" she yelled, practically jogging to keep up with him. She clutched her notebook tight against her chest, already calculating in her head how long it would take her to score just one interview with someone from Blacklist.

All over the Underground, the same thing was happening. The whole city was holding its breath for what everyone already saw as the early finals of the Underleague.

A little further away, in a quieter part of the district, far from all that noise and hype, there was a small cafe where the usual late-morning crowd hung out.

Alex opened the door with a casual movement, her mind drifting, thinking vaguely about her own training for the afternoon. Then, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Her eyes had scanned the room, a habit she couldn’t shake, and had frozen on the back of the room.

Victoria was there, sitting at a table with a steaming cup in her hands, looking completely relaxed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be there.