Chapter 423: Recovery Matter
In a small apartement, a guy was rushing down the hallway.
He had a beer in one hand and his phone in the other, checking the live score of the game. He reached his son’s room, barging right in and shoving the door open.
"Are we winning, son?" he yelled.
His son was sprawled out on the bed, with cock buried deep inside a girl wearing a big Blacklist jersey riding him. Both were frozen like deer in headlights.
"Dad!" the son screamed. He scrambled to grab the bedsheets, frantically pulling them over the girl to hide her sexy ass cheeks as she tried to dive behind him to get out of sight. "I told you to knock before coming in!"
The dad just stood there for a second, blinking. He slowly set his beer down on the floor and put his hands on his hips.
"It’s the game of the year and you’re fucking, son?"
"Dad!" the guy yelled again.
"All right, all right, I’m going, keep playing with your sister," the man grumbled.
For the average Breakball fan, the end of the first half of the game meant that it was time for BreakZone, the most-watched recap show in the entire Underground. It was the place where two ex-players, who now made a living as commentators, spent their time ripping apart every single match in real-time, minute by minute.
That night, the two guys were on the biggest game of the season, and for sure, they were having a blast.
"That second quarter," the first guy started, "is straight-up historic. Blacklist actually took the lead back from the defending champions, and they did it while their starting five was basically out to buy cigarettes. It’s insane."
"And then there’s this rookie, Chio," the other guy added, shaking his head. "Nobody even knew who this girl was before tonight. She just pops up out of nowhere and ends up being the top scorer of the quarter. She’s outperforming Blaze and Alicia, who are supposed to be the regulars on the team."
"A total nobody," the first guy remarked, tapping his finger on the desk.
"Yeah, a nobody who just spent six minutes making the reigning champions look like a bunch of rookies," the second guy replied.
While they were talking, the same broadcast was looping on dozens of screens all across the Underground.
Over at a warehouse, two security guards had completely forgotten their jobs. They were huddled over a single phone, their radios abandoned on the ground between them. A delivery truck was just sitting there, waiting at the closed gate, but the guards didn’t give a fuck about the driver, and the guy himself was busy catfishing someone anyway.
In a clinic room, a patient fan of Blacklist, hooked up to an IV drip, was in the middle of a loud, aggressive argument with the guy in the bed next to him, a die-hard fan of the Colossus, both ignoring the screen mounted on the ceiling.
Elsewhere, in a bar, the waiter had literally dropped his tray right in the middle of his shift. He didn’t even bother to pick up the glasses; he just stood there, frozen, staring at the screen. His boss, the owner of the bar, was just as hooked and didn’t even notice his employee was failing at his job.
At a construction site, a group of workers were piling up on top of each other just to see over their coworkers’ shoulders to glimpse the phone screen balanced on a tool crate. Their foreman was screaming his lungs out from the sidewalk, trying to get them back to work, but nobody heard a word he said. They were totally locked in.
Back on the set, the commentator leaned in toward the camera again.
"Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this fucking show. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep dazzling us. Just give us a second half that’s as goddamn crazy as the first one was."
In the Blacklist locker room, it was a real mess. The vibe was a weird mix of total euphoria and pure exhaustion, everyone was wrecked but was still too happy about it.
After the combo of Beast Mode and the team Zone, Chio was completely cooked, lying on a bench with her eyes closed, like she’d just taken a hammer to the head. Her chest rose and fell slowly while she tried to get her breath back.
Right next to her, Rei was sitting up, but her legs were shaking whether she wanted them to or not. She still had a tired smile on her face. Alicia and Mai were just collapsed next to each other. They didn’t even have the strength to talk, but you could tell even they were thrilled.
"We did it," Alicia breathed, her voice shaking. She looked like she didn’t believe it herself. "We actually managed to stand up to those monsters."
"One half," Rei corrected, raising a finger. "We held for one half."
"And that’s one more half than those assholes thought was possible," Jaz called from the other end of the room, a huge grin on her face.
Aiko, stretching on her bench and cracking her joints, added.
"If we did it once, there’s no reason we can’t do it again. So, back to the original lineup?"
Nash was sitting a little apart. His head was down and he was wiping the sweat off his face with a towel, trying to settle a breath that was still uneven. The plan had actually worked and they were doing the miracle, but the same problem he had with the previous version of Blacklist was bouncing back: the obligation of playing the whole match.
If it was any normal game, the problem wouldn’t exist, but considering that he’d have to pull out the zone again... Yeah, his lungs were cooked.
Victoria walked up to him, arms crossed, looking down at him.
"Looking at the pathetic state you’re in," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "it might be smarter if you just started the third quarter on the bench."
Nash looked up at her, one eyebrow raised. He didn’t seem to care about her attitude.
"Negative."
"Nash," Dahlia cut in, clutching her tablet tight against her chest like a shield, "seriously, look at yourself. You can barely even sit up straight."
"I’ll recover during halftime. That’ll be enough to play," he replied. His voice was dry, short, and completely dismissive.
"Nobody’s saying otherwise," Victoria snapped back, tapping her foot impatiently on the floor. "But there’s a huge difference between ’enough to play’ and being ’at your best.’ Take ten minutes of rest, and you can come back fresh for the start of the fourth."
Jaz frowned, pushing herself up from the bench. She looked genuinely worried.
"Wait, you guys actually want to pull him out? He’s the only one who kept our score alive all through this half."
"That’s exactly the point," Dahlia said, scrolling through her data on the tablet. "He gave everything he had. We can’t just ask him to go back out there in this condition for a whole third quarter."
"But without him," Alicia protested, her voice sounding desperate, "how are we supposed to—"
"You’ll manage," Victoria cut her off, her voice getting louder and more commanding. "You just proved you could hold your own without the usual starters. You can survive ten more minutes without him."
A deep silence fell over the group. The girls exchanged glances, and you could tell they were starting to realize Victoria was right. They were scared, but they knew the logic held up.
"I can take on more responsibility on offense," Rei finally said. She straightened up, though her legs were still shaking from the effort of the game. "Just until he recovers."
"And I can handle the playmaking and distribution a bit," Nia added. "I’m not as good as Nash, but I can do enough to keep us floating."
Nash shook his head. He wasn’t having it. "No."
"Nash," Victoria said, her voice turning cold and hard. "This isn’t a negotiation. Seth just woke up. You saw him play this last quarter. If I’m not on the court when he decides to really go for it, we’re dead. Game over. Period."
"And if you collapse in the middle of the third quarter because you refused to breathe for five minutes," Dahlia replied, not blinking, "then we’re even more dead."
Nash stayed silent for a moment. His jaw was tight, and he looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew he didn’t have a winning point. He was beat.
"That’s exactly why," he finally said, shifting the conversation toward the team rotation instead of admitting he was wrong, "that I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks with the rest of the team either. Rei needs a break, so we have to change the center, and it’s not going to be Jaz. I’d prefer she starts at power forward, and Kai stays on the bench as a surprise card to mess up their defense during the game." He then turned to Alicia, who looked just as exhausted as the rest of them. "Miko, you go back in for her... Hina too... that leaves me to help out in the back."
Miko, who was sitting a bit further away, just nodded. She was already tightening her laces, ready to get back into the action.
"Works for me," Jaz said, rolling her shoulders to get her muscles waking up again. "I’ve still got some gas in the tank."
"And I recover fast," Rei added, sounding a bit annoyed that everyone was treating her like she was fragile. "I could have started."
"We aren’t sure if we can win this quarter without you, but we’re sure we’ll lose if you aren’t at your best," Victoria insisted. "We need two main lineups for each half, not one man sacrificing himself for the last two quarters."
With all of this going around him, Nash felt so much regret. This whole rest-and-rotation thing was only part of the solution he took too long to realize. He understood, a little too late, that by trying to be careful he’d completely neglected his cards.
He had waited way too long before activating the zone and beast mode. It was frustrating. The starters had had plenty of time to breathe and reset before he finally go on the game. If he’d tried it from the first quarter, he would’ve spared his team all that unnecessary stress.
He wanted to go back and do it all over again, but this time without waiting, without taking useless risks, but he was exhausted, and Chio was literally KO, stretched on her bench.
Victoria was right, more than she could imagine.
Dahlia came closer, clutching her tablet to her chest.
"It worries me knowing you’d be out there against Colossus," she said. "You’re our pillar in this, so you need to recover enough. We can manage for a bit, but we’ll have to get ready for a violent comeback in the fourth."
Nash was immobile for a moment. It was so frustrating, everything was perfect, everything was going his way. They were about to do it, to beat the champ. But at the very last moment... Despite all of his skills?
Nah, impossible. He couldn’t lose, he had no excuse for even considering defeat, because he got something that probably no one else in the underground had: the System.
His brain froze for a moment, just the time for his gears to start operating again.
Then, he chuckled.
"I’m glad you’re all worried about me," he said, getting up slowly. "But I don’t think you realize who you’re dealing with."
He stood up and walked to the middle of the locker room, looking at every girl there, and the tired look on his face was replaced by something way more... intense.
"Listen up," he said. "I have something to admit. I fucked up tonight. Like, really fucked up." He let out a bitter little laugh. "Do you get it? Victoria gave me a dream team, literally, and I was too chicken to actually use you guys right."
The room went dead silent. The girls looked at each other, totally confused. They didn’t expect him to actually say he was nervous.
"Nash..." Alicia started, sitting up on the wooden bench. "It’s not your fault. We’re the ones who—"
"No," he cut her off, shaking his head. "I can’t fuck this up any more. Not when I have everything I need right here."
The girls didn’t really get what he meant. To them, it just sounded like he thought he was the reason they couldn’t perform, and it sounded wrong on a thousand level to them.
It was the opposite, they were slowing him down, hence why he had to play the assist distributor while having the best offensive potential.
"Stop it," Jaz said, stepping closer. "Don’t talk about yourself like that. We’d be in deep shit if it wasn’t for you."
"Yeah," Rei added. She stood up, though her legs were still shaking from the game, and walked right up to him. "You don’t have to carry this all by yourself. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we trained. To be useful to you."
"We played that quarter as a team," Mai said. She usually sounded like a robot, but this time she actually sounded like she cared. "Don’t start acting like the one at fault now."
Nash looked at them one by one. Feeling all that genuine care actually made his chest full, full of a contained euphoria, considering what he was about to do.
"Thank you, girls, it really matters to me... but I refuse to blow this because I’m playing it too safe," he continued.
He took a deep breath and his face became more serious.
"Girls. I need to be honest with you."