Chapter 426: A Pride in the Zone
The two teams returned to the court, and the crowd immediately lost it. The whole arena was vibrating from the frustration of waiting during the whole halftime break, and every single fan was leaning forward in their seat as the players took their spots.
The Blacklist lineup had changed, like Nash had announced. Jaz was back, now playing power forward again, while Nash stayed as the point guard, Miko shooting guard, Aiko small forward, and Hana had replaced Rei to play center for the first time tonight.
On the Colossus’ side, Vex and Cross were back on the court. Before the ref could even blow the whistle, Cross walked right up to Nash with a nasty smirk on his face.
"Hope you enjoyed your little break, champ," he sneered. "Because the real nightmare starts now. We’re gonna absolutely destroy you this quarter. You won’t get a single second to breathe. I promise you that."
Nash just smiled.
"I was too busy fucking," he said calmly.
Cross blinked.
"Wait, what the fuck?"
"I said I was fucking busy," Nash replied, waving his hand like it was nothing. "But just focus on the game. It’s cute that you’re giving me all that attention," he straightened up a bit, "but what are you gonna do about the girls?"
Cross frowned, and then his eyes widened.
The Colossus players looked surprised, maybe even a bit confused. One by one, they turned to look at the Blacklist girls.
The girls were standing perfectly still, eyes locked straight ahead. There was this creepy level of focus coming off their bodies, like they weren’t even living beings, but rather, statues.
[Team Zone State activated]
Up in the stands, Chloé suddenly jumped up.
"Wait," she said. For once, she didn’t sound excited, but dead serious. "What is that? What the hell just happened?"
Snow didn’t even look up.
"I swear, if you talk about Blaze’s drip..."
"No, you dummy," Chloé interrupted. "It’s not him... Not like he isn’t remarquable, but... It’s them. The whole team. Just look at the vibe."
"Hm. Care to elaborate? I’m not a psych... " Snow started, but then he stopped dead. His eyes narrowed, and he suddenly looked way more serious. "Okay... that’s new."
On the other side of the arena, Alexia was already leaning forward.
"Do you guys see this?" she asked. "The state of the players. It’s completely different from before."
Griffin squinted, trying to figure out what was wrong.
"What exactly? I don’t see anything new."
"I don’t know," Alexia admitted, "but something is different. They aren’t moving like they were earlier."
Rain, always the quiet one, just nodded. But even he could feel it. The girls were completely still compared to the Colossus players.
And he wasn’t the only one to notice it. A lot of the spectators, even the ones who didn’t know Breakball and came to rub one on a sweaty girl, felt that something was weird. This collective focus and perfect stillness was honestly kind of scary.
What was really intriguing was the whole order: they had all moved into their positions, and then... nothing. Not a single muscle moved.
"You see that?" a fan whispered to his buddy. "It looks like they stopped breathing."
"Stop talking bullshit, the big one’s tits are still moving," the other replied, but his smile was slowly fading.
What nobody knew was that what had happened in the locker room wasn’t just some pump speech. Nash had intentionally turned on each of his teammates and made them hypersensitive, with every nerve burning and every sense dialed up to eleven.
In that specific state, electrified and determined, the wall preventing them from entering "Beast Mode" and "The Zone" basically collapsed. That was the plan from the start. And with this specific lineup, he had a group versatile enough to handle a massive activation, even if it meant they’d be completely drained by the end of the match.
He was determined to use every single one of them this time, in the most destructive way.
On the court, Seth frowned.
The ref blew the whistle, and the best game of the season resumed.
What happened next was way beyond anything Blacklist had shown so far.
Hana got the ball, and without a word or a signal, Jaz cut toward the hoop at the exact moment Hana looked up. The pass was thrown before Jaz even finished her move, a simple glance was all the info needed. Jaz caught it in full stride, and Aiko immediately set a perfectly timed screen on Vex, delaying him just enough for Jaz to dunk it with zero opposition.
"JASMINE FOR THE FIRST BLOOD!" the commentator screamed.
[Colossus 54-68 Blacklist]
The Colossus answered right back. Kael caught the inbound, pulled up without hesitation, and buried a clean mid-range jumper before Blacklist’s defense had even fully reset.
[Colossus 56-68 Blacklist]
On defense, Aiko run back into position the second Kael looked for an opening. It was like she knew where he was going a full second before he even moved. Miko closed the gap exactly when Hall tried a fake, her timing perfect. She intercepted the pass and immediately fired it toward Aiko.
Aiko bolted on a fast break, faking a pass to Nash before driving to the hoop herself. Her shot went up with a spectacular precision.
[Colossus 56-70 Blacklist]
On the opposing bench, the assistant coach stood up, looking totally confused.
"Dammit... Again?"
"Fuck... They can all play like this?" the head coach groaned.
It wasn’t just one superhuman player against a team anymore. It was a full formation, five bodies moving like one single organism. Every individual decision was gone, replaced by a collective intelligence that left zero openings. The Colossus players, who usually won by exploiting tiny hesitations or delays between thought and action, were suddenly helpless. There were no gaps to exploit.
Still, sheer size bought them something. Vex forced his way into the paint on the next possession, backing Hana down with pure mass until he could turn and lay it in over her outstretched arm.
[Colossus 58-70 Blacklist]
Hana intercepted a pass meant for Hall. Her body was just there, exactly where it needed to be, without any obvious calculation. She immediately passed to Miko, who nailed a three-pointer from a spot where nobody expected her to be.
[Colossus 58-73 Blacklist]
"MIKO AGAIN!" the commentator yelled, his voice almost breaking.
In the stands, Mirage watched with a thoughtful smile.
"Okay," he told Kaito, "I’ve never seen a team play like this. Like, ever."
"... I think we should get ready for the playoffs, like today," Maya added, forgetting the chewing gum in her mouth. "It’s almost scary."
On the Falcons’ bench, Griffin leaned toward Alexia.
"Dammit... How are we supposed to play against that?"
"We’d have to understand how they’re doing it first," she replied, her eyes glued to the court. "And seeing how they’re handling the Colossus... Yeah, this is bad."
The game kept moving at a crazy pace. Cross tried a desperate drive against Jaz, using his usual dribble, but Jaz didn’t react alone. Aiko closed the outside angle the exact moment Cross tried to slip through, while Hana covered the baseline.
There was literally no space left. Cross was trapped and forced to throw a rushed pass that Nash intercepted with ease.
"DAMN IT!" Cross yelled, frustrated, stomping his foot on the floor.
Immediate laser counter-attack. The ball zipped from Nash to Miko, Miko to Aiko, then back to Nash, who found Jaz open under the basket for another dunk. Each pass happened without a hint of hesitation, not even the time to think as if the whole team shared one brain.
[Colossus 58-75 Blacklist]
On the bench, the assistant coach put his head in his hands.
"This can’t be happening... How are we losing that badly? This is a fucking nightmare," he whispered.
Hall answered on the other end, drawing a foul on a hard drive and sinking both free throws, a small, ugly two points that nonetheless kept the scoreboard from feeling completely hopeless.
[Colossus 60-75 Blacklist]
Hall tried again moments later, a forced shot hoping to keep the momentum, but Hana leaped up and blocked it cleanly. The ball bounced straight into Miko’s hands, and she didn’t even need to dribble before launching it forward.
[Colossus 60-77 Blacklist]
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" the commentator screamed, almost hysterical. "I THINK WE ARE WITNESSING SOMETHING NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN IN THIS LEAGUE!"
At the manor, Saya stood in front of the screen.
"What the hell is this? They’re playing so fast... How is that possible?"
The others nodded frantically, too excited to even form a proper sentence.
The coach jumped up, his face pale, screaming instructions that no one on the court seemed able to execute in time.
What made this system so deadly wasn’t actually physical superiority. It was something more basic.
A normal opponent always looks for the exact moment an individual decision is made, that tiny delay between seeing a situation and reacting to it.
That’s where fakes, blocks, and interceptions happen. But when five players stop making individual decisions, and every move by one person becomes the instant signal for the next person’s action, that delay disappears.
There’s no gap to exploit because there’s no decision being made: just a smooth, organic flow where the team reacts like one single body spread across five points on the court.
The Colossus, whose entire strength relied on exploiting those micro-delays, were suddenly stripped of their main weapon.
The game become too fast to follow and too technical to just use brute force.
Seth, however, stayed perfectly calm amidst the chaos. His eyes analyzed every move with intense focus, methodically searching for the smallest crack in this "perfect" system.
"There’s got to be a hole somewhere," he whispered, mostly to himself.
He tried to analyze the next possession, intentionally staying back and observing rather than jumping in. He wanted to find out who, in this well-oiled machine, was actually making the calls. If he could cut off the source, maybe the rest would collapse.
Nash got the ball, and for a fraction of a second, Seth thought he saw it. A flow of information that always seemed to start with him, a kind of invisible metronome that the other four were syncing to.
Of course, it had to be him.
He gave a quick signal to Kael.
"Stick to him. Directly. Cut off the source."
Kael obeyed immediately, leaving his usual spot to mark Nash closely, refusing to let him breathe.
But Nash just smiled.
He simply made a pass shorter than usual, a quick flick toward Aiko. She relayed it instantly to Hana, who sent it to Jaz in a split second. The system kept working perfectly, even without the ball needing to go back through Nash’s hands.
[Colossus 60-79 Blacklist]
Kael stepped back, looking completely lost.
"Like fucking come on!"
There was no source.
Seth realized it at last. It wasn’t a hierarchy, but a network.
Well, if he had waited just a few more minutes, the limit would reveal itself. The ten minutes of duration were almost over, and soon, the girls and Nash would crash.
He raised a hand.
"Give me the ball," he said simply. "From now on, I’m handling this myself."
Every Colossus player knew instantly that he had decided to take things into his own hands, and honestly, maybe it was for the best, seeing how cooked they were.
In the stands, Chloé leaned forward.
"You think their little trick still works against him one-on-one?"
"What a question. He was there from the beginning and look at the score," Snow shrugged. "If it was only Blaze, then he could have, but this is a whole team. Damn, I’ve never wanted to see the rest of a game more than I do right now."
The crowd erupted all at once. Some were cheering for Seth to save the team, while others were begging Blacklist to hold the line against him.
If there was one person who could stop Blacklist, it had to be him, the best. He was the unique uncontrollable variable.
But there was one last variable, something the entire Underground had been waiting for since the first announcement of this match, long before the opening tip-off, and it activated as soon as Seth decided to go all out.
The moment Seth received the ball, a cold shiver ran down his spine. It was a feeling he hadn’t felt in years, maybe never. Something that felt dangerously like a survival instinct.
On the Blacklist bench, Victoria leaned forward, her fingers tightening on the armrest of her seat. Beside her, Dahlia was visibly holding her breath.
𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶
Everyone in the crowd held its breath.
Seth turned around, and Nash was standing right behind him.