Seth held the ball, facing Nash.
Finally. The two monsters of the night were staring each other down.
It wasn’t the first time they’d faced off that night, but for everyone watching, this was the big one. This was the moment that actually mattered.
"Alright," Nash said, a smug little smile on his lips. "Let’s do this."
Seth didn’t say a word. He just stared back with cold, dead eyes.
The whole arena held its breath. This wasn’t just a game anymore; it was the showdown the Underground had been craving since the announcement of the match. It was the kind of legendary face-off people talk about for years, the kind of shit people would pay any amount of money to see live.
The Best versus The Beast. Finally.
Seth bounced the ball once, the arena so silent that the sound echoed perfectly. And then... the festival started.
He charged to the right, fast and efficient. It was exactly the style that had humiliated dozens of other players before tonight. But Nash just glided with him and closed the gap before the space even existed.
Seth stepped back, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.
He tried again, this time with a harder push to the left, dropping his shoulder to fake a power drive, but Nash didn’t bite. He stayed perfectly centered, ready to snap in any direction.
Third try. Seth sped up his dribble, two quick bounces, trying to create a blur of rhythm to mess with Nash’s head. It had never failed him before.
But the guy he was playing against was a genius of the game long before he became a beast. The move failed. Nash adjusted by a mere half-step, which was all he needed to stay glued to Seth.
In the stands, nobody dared to move. They could all feel it: this first exchange was setting the tone for everything that was about to happen.
"You’re thinking too much," Nash said, his voice way too calm.
Seth didn’t answer, but his jaw tightened. He was getting pissed.
He tried one more time, a fourth attempt, combining two of his previous moves into one fluid sequence. He hoped the complexity would work where simplicity failed. For a split second, it actually looked like it was working, Nash had to shift his weight more than before.
That tiny opening was all Seth needed.
On his fifth try, the right one, his body slipped through the gap, darting toward the hoop. A clear path finally opened up after so many failures.
"HE’S THROUGH!" the commentator screamed, followed by the roar of the crowd.
But Nash, trailing by only a fraction of a second, found an impossible burst of speed. He caught up to Seth just in time to swat the shot away the exact moment it left his fingers.
"...!" Seth took a second to process it, but the game had already moved on.
Nash grabbed the deflected ball and immediately zipped it to Hana, who had just cut forward. She sent it right back into Nash’s stride.
Seth, scrambling to get back into Nash’s path after his own failure, tried to close the gap, his legs eating up the court.
Nash slowed down, just enough to make Seth realize a crossover to the right was possible. Seth committed fully, his feet preparing to cut that trajectory.
But too bad for him, Nash was a speed monster. There was no way Seth was catching him once he took off.
It was a trap.
Nash’s arm moved in a wide arc, the ball disappearing completely behind his back, switching hands at a spectacular speed before popping out the other side, perfectly under control.
Seth, who had thrown all his weight in the opposite direction, couldn’t do a damn thing to correct himself in time.
Nash kept running, dribbling through Kael and Hall as if they were just plastic cones. Then, he stopped dead and launched a disorder shot from a completely improbable angle.
Swish.
[Colossus 60-82 Blacklist]
"ANOTHER INSANE SHOT BY BLAZE!" the commentator yelled. "HOW DOES HE EVEN DO THAT?!"
Only then did the whole arena realize what had actually happened. A thunder of exclamations erupted from both sets of fans.
Chloé stood there, mouth hanging.
"Did he... just pass Seth?"
"Yeah," Snow said, his face frozen for once. "He really passed him."
Over at Mirage, Kaito leaned toward him.
"What is Seth playing at? Even you can’t pull off a move like that."
Mirage didn’t answer. He just kept his eyes locked on the court.
Seth tried to get his head back in the game on the next possession. He went back to his orthodox style, dribbling without forcing the shot, looking for a safer opening. But Nash stayed glued to him like a crackhead to a sexy girl.
Seth saw Kael open and fired a pass.
The ball had barely left his fingertips when Nash’s hand intercepted it. It was a reflex of almost inhuman speed, and the crowd roared.
"What?" Seth couldn’t believe it.
Immediate counter-attack.
He sprinted after Nash, but the guy was just too fast. Nash arrived alone against Vex under the hoop, a crossover sent Vex stumbling, leaving him on his ass as the crowd exploded again.
Seth only managed to catch up to Nash as the latter leaped into the air incredibly high, and the ball followed a lobbed trajectory that dropped straight through the hoop without even touching the rim.
[Colossus 60-84 Blacklist]
Seth landed, completely confused.
Nash turned back to him.
"Come on, champ. We need to try harder to give them a show."
The game kept going, and with it, possession after possession, Seth was dismantled.
He tried to adjust, changing his whole approach, ditching his usual style for a series of quick fakes, trying to mess with Nash’s timing through pure speed. But Nash absorbed every single fake without losing his balance. His feet stayed exactly where they needed to be until Seth, out of options, was forced to take a contested shot that bounced far away from the rim.
In the short list of Seth’s failures, this one might have been historical.
Hana grabbed the rebound and launched the game forward again.
On the next possession, Seth tried something else: he called for a screen, wanting to create the space that his own talent wasn’t enough to generate anymore. Kael stepped up to set the pick, becoming a massive wall between Nash and Seth.
But Nash just glided under the screen. His body squeezed through a space that objectively shouldn’t have existed. He stayed glued to Seth as if the pick had never happened.
"What the hell is this?" a sub on the bench muttered. "How does he get past Kael’s screen with that size?!"
Seth, frustrated by yet another failure, tried to go one-on-one in total isolation. He went for a crossover followed by a second one in the opposite direction, hoping to create enough confusion to force an opening.
Nash stayed perfectly synchronized. His body responded to every change in direction a fraction of a second before Seth did, as if he already knew the rest of the sequence before Seth had even fully decided it.
"How..." Seth breathed, almost despite himself. It was the first real crack in his voice since the duel began.
In the stands, nobody was talking anymore. Everyone was watching the exchange with religious concentration. This was exactly why they had come tonight, and they were getting their money’s worth.
But soon, the first turn of the quarter arrived. The side effects of the Team Zone state were starting to seriously hit the rest of the Blacklist girls. They were exhausted, their movements becoming clumsy.
Dahlia didn’t waste any time. She made the calls: Kai, Hina, Alicia, and Rumi stepped in one after another.
It was a complete swapaloo, but it didn’t really mess up the team’s rhythm with Nash still inside. His stamina was just way higher, and his passive skills kept him from feeling the burn that was killing everyone else.
Alicia, fresh and totally rested, didn’t waste a second. The moment she got the ball, she launched a three-pointer from the corner.
[Colossus 62-87 Blacklist]
The Colossus fans started clutching their heads. This wasn’t just a losing game anymore, it was turning into a goddamn catastrophe.
"That’s for you, my king!" Alicia screamed toward Nash, blowing him a kiss with a wink.
Nash tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t stop the grin from forming. He gave her a wink back, feeling the eyes of the crowd on him.
Cross tried his luck next, charging toward the hoop, but he ran straight into Rumi.
Cross thought he could handle it, he was ready to pull off his usual dribble routine, like before, but he didn’t realize that Rumi wasn’t a "traditional" player like Rei or Jaz.
Rumi didn’t just block people, she played dirty. She positioned herself exactly where he needed to go, her shoulder slamming into his with a calculated thud. Right at the moment of contact, she gave him a discreet but heavy shove, not too strong, but enough to surprise him and throw him off balance, and subtle enough that the referee didn’t even notice.
Cross stumbled, losing the ball in the scuffle, nearly eating the hardwood.
"Hey!" Cross barked, spinning around to glare at her. "What the hell was that?"
Rumi widened her eyes, throwing her hands up.
"What’s with ya?" she drawled. "I ain’t done nuthin’."
Cross immediately pointed a finger at the ref.
"Are you serious? You saw that! That was a clear foul!"
The referee, who clearly didn’t give a shit about Cross’s whining, just waved his hand to keep the game going.
"Play on."
"Play on," Rumi repeated, a smug, mocking smirk on her lips. As she repositioned herself, she deliberately let her hip brush against his, sliding a knee just close enough to make him stumble again.
"Ayaya, ya fragile for a dick, ain’t ya?"
"WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM!?" Cross screamed, his frustration boiling over.
"Man, stop it. She’s just a girl, she can’t eat you," Hall remarked, he too falling for that.
Kael managed to salvage a bit of pride for them, hitting a difficult shot that somehow went in, a tiny individual win in a collective disaster.
[Colossus 65-87 Blacklist]
Kai went for a powerful dunk under the rim. Vex, who had just recovered from his own fall a few minutes prior, leaped up in time to swat the ball away cleanly. The ball was sent flying violently back toward the half-court line.
"IN YOUR FACE, BITCH!" Vex yelled, looking genuinely happy about this small victory.
But on the next possession, Nash took control immediately. He orchestrated a fluid movement, flicking a short pass to Kai, who finished with an easy bucket under the rim.
[Colossus 65-89 Blacklist]
"Eat my dust, bitch!" Kai shouted back at Vex.
In the stands, the atmosphere was getting heavy. The gap was staying wide despite the Colossus’s best efforts. The match felt balanced in terms of energy, but there was one massive, glaring problem for the reigning champ.
Their captain.
The point guard, the distributor, the finisher of the team, he was being completely neutralized by Nash.
One spectator leaned over to his neighbor.
"Since when has Seth been dominated like this?"
"Never," the other replied. "It’s never happened, not even once in two seasons."
Snow, arms crossed, watched the scene with a level of attention he rarely gave anything.
"I didn’t think it was possible, but this guy... He’s really stronger than Seth," he said finally, almost against his will, as if the words themselves were hard to swallow.
Chloé didn’t say anything at first. Her usual fangirl excitement was gone, replaced by a silent, growing shock. She loved Nash’s style, sure, but she hadn’t imagined him at this level, especially not against Seth Vane in his prime.
It wasn’t that it was impossible, but the gap felt unnervingly huge.
"I can’t believe it," she finally whispered.
On the court, Seth’s frustration was changing. It was slowly turning into pure incomprehension. Every adjustment he tried was anticipated before it even happened. Every change in style hit the same wall: a calm, smiling Nash.
Something finally snapped behind Seth’s usual cold exterior. A crack too deep to hide.
"I’m Seth Vane," he hissed, his voice trembling. "Nobody has ever put me in a position like this. Not Snow. Not Mirage. None of the so-called ’best’ players in this whole league." He clenched his fists. "How the fuck can a rookie be putting me through this?"
He squared up against Nash again. There was a real desperate determination in his eyes now, it wasn’t confidence anymore; it was a visceral need to prove something to himself.
"I’m going to put you on the floor," he spat. "Just like everyone else."
Seth lunged at him, trying to shadow every single move. But Nash was like liquid, and not the slimy one he pumped in Chio earlier.
He was constantly moving, shifting direction, changing his rhythm, varying the height of his dribble.
The ball never stayed in the same place long enough to be predicted. A dribble between the legs, a full spin, a crossover followed immediately by another. Every move flowed into the next with an insulting smoothness, pure street style that no academy could ever teach.
Seth stayed close, physically there, but he was never actually there, he was being humiliated, toyed with, one move at a time.
"Fucking bastard!" he muttered.
Nash smiled. He loved it, he loved the reaction.
"If you’re so strong," Nash said, lifting an eyebrow, "why am I getting past you so easily, but you can’t get past me?"
Then, without any warning, he moved.
A simple cross-over, executed with a speed that left Seth zero chance to react. Nash’s body weight shifted one way and instantly snapped the other, right at Seth’s pivot foot.
Seth’s ankles gave way instantly. He tipped over, his entire weight slamming hard onto the hardwood floor.
A collective gasp echoed through the arena. The entire crowd froze in shock. Seth Vane had just been put on his ass, for everyone in the Underground to see.
Mirage, Snow, Rain, Chloé, Alex, all stood there, completely stunned. None of them could find a single word to describe the scene.
Nash was already driving toward the hoop, and behind him, Seth lay on the floor, eyes wide, frozen, unable to do anything but watch.
At the last second, instead of taking the shot himself, Nash flicked a pass to Alicia, who was wide open on the wing. She slammed home a three-pointer.
[Colossus 65-90 Blacklist]
Seth stayed sitting on the floor for a moment, staring at the ceiling of the arena without actually seeing it.
Hall and Kael stepped in to help him up, each grabbing an arm and lifting him carefully. He let them do it, his legs shaking as he found his balance, but his eyes were empty. He was somewhere else, as if a part of him was still stuck on the floor.
"Seth," Hall asked, "you okay?"
He didn’t answer.
The game resumed around him, almost as if he wasn’t there. The ball circulated between his teammates, Hall to Kael, Kael to Cross. Every pass resonated in his head like a sound coming through a thick layer of fog.
In his mind, the image of that last dribble played on a loop, over and over again. That cross-over, that speed, no human should have been that fast.
And behind that image, other memories piled up: every block, every interception, every failed attempt since the quarter started. It all stacked up until it became unbearable.
Is he... iS hE AcTuALly bEtTeR thAn mE?
A cold shiver ran up his spine.
Suddenly, the ball arrived.
He jumped, a small gasp of surprise escaping him. His hands clamped down on the ball at the very last second, nearly letting it slip through his fingers.
He stood there for a moment, completely lost, clutching the ball to his chest, unable to remember for a moment what he was actually supposed to do.
Then, instinct took over. He started moving, bringing the ball up the court, trying to launch an attack just like he had done hundreds of times before.
But unfortunately, a Seth running with the ball was a trigger for the predatory instincts of that monster.
Nash appeared in front of him.
Before he could even think, before he could calculate his options, Seth’s body reacted on its own. A pure survival reflex took over.
He passed the ball to Cross.
Cross, shocked by the sudden decision, quickly passed it to Kael, who sank a clean three-pointer.
Seth stood still for a second, blinking. He was almost as surprised as everyone else by his own choice, unable to explain what had just happened inside him.
Nash looked at him and smiled.
"Smart ass," Nash said.
The buzzer for the third quarter sounded.
[Colossus 68-90 Blacklist]