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The sky broke open like a god tearing a curtain. Rain fell in flat sheets, a white noise that swallowed the city, hammered the rooftop court, and turned the painted lines into slick rivers. Lightning serrated the clouds, then carved the empty air into silver veins each flash a heartbeat, each thunder a drum. Under that furious sky, five silhouettes moved with a grace that seemed to make the storm hush for a second, as if even the weather stopped to watch.

"Everyone, listen."

Jalen "Flash" Carter's voice cut through the roar—young, but the command was iron. He stood at midcourt, drenched, the wet cotton of his jersey clinging to his muscles. At fifteen, he carried himself like a monarch who had never known a crown but had forged one from every sprint, every study, every defeat. The rain painted his white-blond hair silver; his eyes were dark coals, calm under the storm.

Around him, the Raptors assembled: Tyrese Lang on the wing, cool and precise; Malik Ryker crouched low, coiled like a spring; Zion Vale stood with his hands on his hips, mind already three plays ahead; Kobe Morales stretched at the rim, shoulders like a fortress.

(Tonight's not practice.) Jalen thought, feeling the wet thump of his heart sync with distant thunder. (Tonight we make weather that remembers us.)

He blew air out through his nose and the team moved.

The First Drill, Speed Carving

"Flash World, warm up." Jalen said, and it was not a warm-up; it was a name for a small apocalypse.

Tyrese fed the ball to Jalen. The world narrowed: the rain's hiss became a fine static; the floodlights turned into flares. Jalen's first step was a blade clean, sharp, impossible to follow. He sliced the lane, shoulder ticking an extra angle, a phantom dribble that left defenders reaching for air. He tapped the brakes with the ease of a man who'd taught his muscles the grammar of stops.

(Time thins when you push it.) he thought. (You outrun seconds, not opponents.)

Then he hit it, the Flash World State II an inner switch. Motion tightened into diamonds. Jalen's hands were a metronome; the ball obeyed like a trained hawk, biting the palm and snapping out again. His speed wasn't raw; it was architectural. A crossover that warped the defender's balance, a behind-the-back like a sleight of hand, a euro step the whole gym felt in its knees. He finished with a reverse layup that kissed the glass.

Every move was a punctuation mark; with each, the ground under his shoes gave a soft, earned crack, as if the court acknowledged the force passing through it.

"Again," Tyrese breathed, exhilaration in his voice.

The Sniper's Cadence

Tyrese Lang worked the corner like a man calibrating death. The raindrops skittered across his arms, but his release was incandescent fast enough that the storm looked slow by comparison. He practiced catch-and-shoots, a hundred repetitions coded into his bones, each shot a chord.

"Three counts," he said aloud between breaths. "Catch. Square. Release."

The first shot flew; the ball hummed like a tuned violin and hollowed the net with a clean bell. He pivoted, jabbed, caught another pass off a curl and let it fly—a Harbor Splash in miniature and the ball sat in the net like it had always belonged there. His eyes were flat, untroubled.

(Cameras can't register it.) he thought, not with arrogance but fact. (They simply replay a half-second too late.)

But his steadiness fed the Raptors' rhythm; defenders began to respect the corner, to choke on the imagined dagger even before he set foot into the arc.

The Lock's Wall

Malik Ryker's domain was the sidewalk of denial. He worked defense like a mason stacking stones, deliberate, unyielding. He shadowed drives without telegraphing intent, his hands a country of fast, patient thunder.

A teammate attacked the rim; Malik's feet churned, forcing an angle, then a body block that used leverage more than force. He met the offensive with a shoulder, not to bully but to redirect the path, and the attacker's plan snapped like a twig.

"Lockdown," Malik said, more to himself than anyone else. "Make them forget the idea of scoring."

On the next play, he baited a pump-fake and stole the ball cleanly phantom fingers in a ghost's sleeve and spun the court into transition with his outlet pass. The steal was a message: we will deny your story.

Zion's Chessboard

Zion Vale stood with the ball like a professor about to correct an exam. He didn't move much; he observed, parsed, allotted the court into angles and probabilities.

"Set the pick at the elbow," he called, voice calm over the rain. "Kobe, roll hard—Marcus (he named the internal nick) seal Brick's line." His words were a quiet map, but every teammate's footfall became a node connecting the plan. Zion's passes threaded like a seamstress's best stitches: unexpected but precise. He envisioned quarters, imagined their opponents' counters three steps away.

(If I see three plays ahead, I make the first two inevitable.) he thought. (Basketball is a river of choices; steer it where you want.)

Kobe's Gravity

Kobe Morales moved as if he had invited gravity to be his ally. He anchored rebounds with hands like cranes and shifted his weight to let opponents feel the presence of a force field.

Kobe practiced tip-ins and putbacks: the ball coming off the rim like a trapped bird, and him, always, there to snatch it. He jumped with a timing that made the arc feel intentional, as if he bent the parabola a hair to let the ball rest in his arms. Each dunk he practiced was not brute force but choreography: plant, gather, explode, land.

"Crash the boards, then cash the opportunities," he muttered, his voice a quiet drum.

The team fed him once during a broken press; he rose, a building with legs, and thudded the rim with a dunk that resonated through the rooftop. A lightning bolt slashed the sky at that precise second, as if the storm answered.

(We're not kids here.) Kobe thought in that moment. (We're a wall that moves.)

They paused, rain soaked through jerseys, breath visible in the cold, hands on knees. The intensity had shifted from practiced mechanics to a molten anticipation. Jalen stepped forward and raised his palm, not to quiet them but to mark the beginning of something else.

"Tonight," he said, and his voice was not merely loud; it was a decree. "Tonight we train as if the throne is already ours. We don't wait for fate. We make it. We carve it. Each sprint is a hammer. Each shot is a claim."

The thunder rolled, and he took it as an ovation.

"You know why we're here. Zeus is the mountain the world looks at. They bow to him because they don't know how to climb. We climb. We don't ask permission."

Zion's jaw tightened; Malik's shoulders straightened. Kobe's eyes flashed. Tyrese's hands tightened on the ball. The storm had become a choir that answered them, not with a voice but with a percussion of rain.

"You are not fifteen tonight," Jalen continued. "You are the choice of every second. Speed is not about moving faster, it's about making faster the only thing that exists for your opponent. When you enter the Flash State, time doesn't slow for you, it collapses for everyone else."

He began pacing, voice a blade that carved purpose into their ribs.

"We are not playing for trophies or praise. We're playing to make a name that doesn't fade when the lights flicker. We are playing so that when others speak of kings, they remember a storm before they remember a crown."

He looked each of them in the eye.

"Tonight we sharpen, we damn the soft, we push past pain because pain is an old friend and friends keep you honest. Zeus… is loud. We will be louder in ways that matter."

They inhaled. The rain hammered like applause.

Jalen called the next drill: flash transitions. It was not a drill so much as an invocation. One by one they entered the chain, Tyrese at the wing, Malik at the trap, Zion with a pocket pass, Kobe sprinting the lane. Jalen took the ball, blinked, and the moment dissolved.

In Flash State II, Jalen's first step was a prophet. He attacked left, his shoulder shook the man guarding him with a phantom suggestion, then he braided his dribble into a rhythm that felt like music at first and then a locked drum. Each movement left the defender a fraction behind, and those fractions added like debts: soon the defense owed the court to Jalen.

He exploited seams with a surgeon's knife: a spin to free, a shoulder fake to buy a millisecond, then a lightning-quick behind-the-back feed to Zion at the elbow. Zion's pass threaded the gap like a needle, landing in Kobe's hands as he ripped past the crumbled big man. Kobe's dunk came down with an authority that felt like a verdict.

The sequence was perfect because each player did not merely react, they anticipated, they had practiced to the point where instinct and plan were indistinguishable.

(We dominate by being inevitable.) Zion thought as he watched the replay in his head

different angles, possible counters, then the right pass.

The Storm Answers

Lightning struck the metal beam beside the court, and the entire structure shivered. For a second the world was white-light clean. Jalen, drenched, laughed—a short, fierce sound. It was not triumph so much as shared recognition.

"Again," he said.

They ran the sequence until their lungs were gravel and their legs felt like hollow columns of lead. Each repetition stripped a mistake bare and then burned it away.

At the end, Jalen walked to the edge of the rooftop. The city lay below, a grid of unlit squares and distant traffic. He pulled his soaked hood back and faced the moon, a slab of cold indifferent silver. Rain ticked down his neck.

(Zeus… the name echoes like a challenge.) Jalen thought, remembering the mural at Olympus, the man everyone had dubbed a king. (He thinks a throne is his because his voice is louder. Thrones crack. Lightning doesn't ask permission.)

He whispered aloud, the words nearly swept away by the rain.

"Zeus… I will break your throne."

The statement was small in the vast night, but the storm took it and grew louder, as if the weather itself had decided to keep watch on a boy who spoke like a king.

When the Raptors gathered their gear, laughter and heavy breathing mixing, they were not the same team that had arrived. Something had shifted: not power, exactly, but a tempering. They were sharper, harder, a blade folded and folded until it refused to bend.

(Tonight we made weather that remembers our names.) Jalen thought as he slung his bag over his shoulder. (Tomorrow we bring it to a court that is not ours and remind them what lightning does.)

They left the rooftop together, shoes slapping wet concrete, coats zipped tight, voices low and dangerous. The storm continued above, indifferent and grand, but beneath it the five figures walked with the kind of silence you hear after thunder, an echo that means the world has been touched and altered, just a little.

Rain cleansed the city; it also baptized the Chicago Raptors. Tonight they were fifteen, soaked and tired and hungry. But the hunger had teeth.

And one boy, white-blond hair plastered to his skull, looked back once at the moon and swore chrome and thunder into his bones.

"Zeus… I will break your throne."

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