Everyone had seen how exhausted Nash was, how he’d been stuck under his own basket just trying to breathe. But now? Standing there like he was ready to go again?

They were losing their mind.

His presence drew the entire defensive gravity of the Raptors like a flame drawing 6 feet moths. Yet, he hadn’t fully recovered, very far from that. What motivated him, was everything he had done and got that brought him to this point.

The girls were giving their all now, so what if he was tired?

[Black Link: Active. Team Movement Speed +5%. Rotation Speed +7%.]

The invisible aura of his leadership snaked across the hardwood, tethering itself to Jaz, Nia, and Alicia.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 85.

The margin was tight, and the Raptors were looking for a way back into the light.

Jax was sweating buckets, eyes locked on Nash’s stupid calm face.

"Don’t give him space!" The Raptors coach was screaming himself red, smacking his clipboard against his leg. "Double team him now! He’s faking! Look at him, he can barely walk!"

But Nash wasn’t out of gas; he was five steps ahead.

Go ahead, send the double, Nash thought, that little smirk on his lips.

As Nia recovered the ball, Nash immediately recognized the tension in her shoulders.

She’s overthinking again, he thought. He needed to activate all his passives, but it required an explosive trigger.

"Nia! Right now! Finish them!" Nash barked, his voice reaching Nia and snapping her out of it. Driven by her internal vow to be useful, she drove hard toward the right elbow. Sensing her explosive burst, Jaz made a violent cut toward the low block, shoving her defender aside like a damn bulldozer

[Echo Step: Activated. Teammate Burst Speed +12%, Vertical +18% for 4 seconds.]

The sudden speed change caught the Raptors completely off guard. Nia fired a perfect bounce pass right to Jaz under the basket. Jaz caught it clean, fingers digging into the leather as she launched upward. The Raptors center threw his whole body at her, but with the extra boost, Jaz just kept rising. She took the hit mid-air, eyes locked on the rim, and powered the ball through the hoop with a ferocious, one-handed slam.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 87. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The whistle blew.

"Foul! Count the basket!" the referee shouted.

[Momentum Chain: Triggered. Next shot gains +25% accuracy and ignores defensive pressure.]

Jaz landed hard, sneakers screeching on the floor. Instead of looking stressed, she broke into a wild grin.

"Fuck yeah!!!" she roared, pumping her fist as the crowd lost their minds. Seriously, chills. She’d just scored two points through contact and earned a free throw.

Feeling the system’s power surging through her, Jaz walked to the line like bomb continuously exploding. Tired? Nah. She looked hungry.

She received the ball, bounced it once, and released a flawless shot that barely rippled the net.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 88.

The Raptors coach, too, looked ready to explode.

"Pressure! Don’t let them set up!" he screamed, pacing like a caged tiger. "Jax! Do something!"

Jax tried to respond, driving hard down the lane, but Nash was already steps ahead.

They’re panicked. They’re forcing the interior, Nash noted, intentionally dropping back to let Black Link do its thing.

Nia cut off Jax’s path instantly, forcing a bad pass. Nash anticipated the trajectory perfectly. He didn’t sprint; he simply took a calculated step forward, his long arm deflecting the ball right into Nia’s waiting hands.

A turnover.

Nia pushed the break, but instead of forcing a shot, she dropped the ball back to Nash at the top of the key. Nash caught it, his vision expanding as he mapped the entire defensive coverage.

Time to arouse the shooter, he thought.

With a no-look, behind-the-back whip pass, Nash threaded the needle between two closing defenders, putting the ball exactly into Alicia’s shooting pocket on the three-point line.

[Shared Focus: Bond Activated. Receiver gains +6% accuracy, -10% turnover chance.]

The catch was seamless. Alicia didn’t even need to look down at her feet; the ball felt like an extension of her own hands. Pure adrenaline flooded her blood.

Oh, I am definitely cooking this, she giggled, a wild, ecstatic spark igniting in her eyes.

A Raptors guard lunged desperately, his hand obscuring her vision, but the Momentum Chain and Shared Focus buff completely ignored the contest.

Alicia rose into the air, perfect form, perfect release.

Swish.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 91.

The arena went absolutely berserk. The crowd was jumping out of their seats, chanting Blacklist’s name in a deafening roar.

On the sidelines, Lina and Sarra were clutching each other, screaming with joy.

"They’re doing it! They’re gonna win!"

Amara was no longer biting her nails; she was jumping up and down on her seat, shouting vulgar trash talk at the Raptors’ bench.

"Yeah! Suck on that, you oversized clowns! You can’t touch them!"

Saya just sat frozen, mouth hanging open. That bitter look was gone, replaced by something like fear mixed with awe. She wanted Nash to fail, wanted to see him crumble... but watching this level of Breakball genius was terrifying.

"How..." she whispered, her voice trembling. "He was dead tired a minute ago. How is he making everyone around him look like world-class superstars? He’s a monster."

In her room, Zayela almost kissed her screen.

"I knew it," she murmured to herself. "I knew you could do it."

The game continued to escalate. Nash purposefully slowed the tempo down at times, using the Iron Pulse passive to let the girls to recover energy faster during live play.

That was the correct way to use this passive. He could see their enjoyment growing with every possession; they were no longer playing under pressure, they were playing in pure synergy with him.

They were laughing on court, totally dominating the court.

Except for one NPC who messed up a perfect pass from Nash by fumbling it while adjusting his shorts.

"My bad! Shit!" the NPC stammered, sweating bullets.

The crowd groaned but Nash just clapped him on the back.

"Relax, just stay focused."

The distraction didn’t matter. The synergy between the core four was reaching its absolute boiling point. Nash could feel the invisible strings of the system.

The girls weren’t just focused - they were locked in completely. Ready to burn the court down for him.

[System Warning: Team Synergy Reached 100%. Zone State Ready for Activation. Trigger Command Required.]

Nash closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, inhaling the sweat-drenched air of the arena. When he opened them, a cold, piercing crimson glow flickered deep within his pupils.

"Alright, girls, let’s kill them!" Nash shouted, and BOOM. Like lightning struck center court.

Suddenly Jaz, Nia and Alicia’s eyes lit up with colored flames.

Zone State activated.

Everything doubled: speed, strength, accuracy, reflexes... all blending together into some kind of Breakball god-mode.

They didn’t need words anymore. Just pure instinct, moving like one person with four bodies.

What... the hell is this? Nia thought, even though her face stayed deadly serious. Everything felt like slow motion.

The Raptors bringing the ball up had no idea what hit them. Jax tried to dribble past Nia, but to her now-doubled reflexes, it looked like he was moving through syrup. Before he knew what happened, her hand flashed out so fast it blurred.

Swipe.

She stripped the ball cleanly without a single millisecond of hesitation. In the exact same motion, without looking, she whipped a backward, overhead pass toward the opposite side of the court.

Alicia was already sprinting before the ball had even left Nia’s fingertips. Their minds were perfectly linked. Alicia caught the ball mid-stride, her body moving so fast she looked like a black and orange streak on the hardwood.

This is incredible! she thought, a feeling of absolute euphoria filling her as she stopped dead on the perimeter, her sneakers barking against the floor.

She rose into the air before the defense could even rotate a single step.

Swish.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 94.

The arena went completely silent for a beat, paralyzed by the sheer velocity of the play, before exploding into a riot of noise.

"What the fuck was that?!" Drex murmured, standing up from his seat. "They didn’t even look at each other! When did they get so good?!"

Even Roam stood up, his eyes wide.

"The... literal... Fuck... Is happening?"

The Raptors’ coach stood frozen on the sideline, his hands dropping to his sides.

"No..." he whispered, his face completely pale. "I’m finished."

But he was halfway right, they where all finished.

The Raptors guard tried to push the ball up the court, his eyes wide with panic. He tried to pass to his forward, but Jaz materialized out of nowhere, her massive body moving with the terrifying agility of a guard.

She intercepted the ball in mid-air, her feet barely touching the ground before she launched a full-court bomb.

Nash didn’t even need to look up, he knew exactly where the ball would land.

He jumped higher than humanly possible, caught it way above the rim, and slammed it down so hard the whole backboard shook.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 96.

On the bench, Victoria stood perfectly straight, a slow, majestic, and deeply satisfied smile stretching across her normally icy features. She looked at Nash, her eyes gleaming with absolute reverence. "Beautiful," she murmured, chest tight not with worry now but with the thrill of total domination. "You really are the king of these rats."

It wasn’t a contest anymore. It was art. Violence. Precision. The Blacklist core moved like a perfect machine, leaving the Raptors frozen in place as the lead grew. Every pass was perfect, every cut explosive, and Nash stood at the center, conducting the Zone like some kind of Breakball god.

Only five seconds left, but Nash wasn’t about to let the Raptors slink away without getting completely wrecked first.

"One more," Nash’s voice echoed. And just like that, they moved.

The Raptors players were already broken, shoulders slumped, sweat dripping, their faces just blank stares of defeat.

Jax stood near the free-throw line, his eyes empty, watching as Blacklist moved like a single terrifying machine, too fast to even track properly.

Nia went first. With a sudden, brutal crossover, she left her defender stumbling, knees buckling, arms flailing, while she passed past him. Didn’t even look before whipping a pass so fast it made a sound like a gunshot toward the corner.

Alicia caught it mid-step. The Raptors guard tried to close in on her, but she was too damn fast now, the Zone State made her reactions twice as quick.

Instead of shooting, she smirked and used his own momentum against him, slipping past like a ghost before driving hard toward the baseline. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she sent a sharp overhead pass straight into the paint.

Jaz was already in the air before the ball even got there. She caught it one-handed, towering over the defense, but instead of dunking it herself, with two giants sandwiching her, no, she saw Nash cutting through the middle.

So mid-air, she twisted, adjusting just enough to lob the ball perfectly toward the rim.

Nash jumped, the whole arena froze.

His fingers grabbed the ball at its highest point. Then—BAM—he smashed it through the hoop so hard the backboard shook, the rim groaned like it was about to break, and the buzzer blared at the exact same second.

BOOM.

Nash hung there for half a second, before dropping lightly back to his feet.

Raptors 80 – Blacklist 100.